Cian

I decided the best way to re-enter the house without being scolded—because, yes, my parents still treated like me a baby—was through the side door, which led right into the kitchen. Mom and Dad were likely in bed, and their bedroom was right next to the front door, so that was an automatic no. Entering through the back required scaling our fence, and I'd injured myself doing that before, so that was also a no. Side door it was, then.

My key jolted around in the lock for a moment before the door gave. I swung it open, stumbling into the dark.

The lights flicked on.

I froze.

Lifting my hand to shield my eyes from the sudden bright onslaught, I squinted at the kitchen island. My mouth fell open. "Lucie? The heck are you doing in my house? At two in the morning?"

There she was: sitting there with her arms folded, a dark eyebrow risen above ice cold ebony eyes. A cream-colored oversized sweater hung off one golden brown shoulder, her black curls spilling down to her elegantly curved collarbones. Most of all, she looked utterly pissed at me. I'd been expecting a lecture from Mom, not Lucie.

Vinny appeared next to her, a reflection clearing in water. A sheepish smile played at his lips. I looked at him in alarm, suspecting he was the cause of this. "Vinny? What's going on?"

"You tell me," he replied with a shrug, seating himself on the edge of the island. "What did the angel say? Anything good?"

I gave him a withering look, and focused on Lucie instead, slowly approaching her. "Is everything okay, Lucie?" I asked her. "Do you need a ride..." I trailed off as she pressed a finger to my lips, manually silencing me. I raised an eyebrow down at her, ignoring the rather persistent thought that there was something oddly tantalizing about my current situation, about how close she was to me. The crisp scent of roses lingered on her skin, but there was something else there, something wrong. My eyebrows furrowed fleetingly.

"When I remove this finger, Cian," she began, "you are going to tell me everything. And I mean everything. You're not going to leave anything out about the murder, or what this angel said about it. You're also not going to protest when I tell you that, next job you get, I'm coming with you. Got it?"

I hesitated. Something about bringing this innocent girl along to see a dead body did not appeal to me. I also was not all that content with telling her the very thing I hadn't wanted to tell her yet. Vinny was going to get a very serious admonishment from me. He apparently misunderstood the word loyalty. "Got it," I murmured, though her finger muffled my reply.

Lucie removed her finger. "Speak."

I looked down at her with a sigh, then towards Vinny, who shrugged at me. Only after I realized I really didn't have a way out did I speak, first telling Lucie what I was sure Vinny had already said about the murder scene. I added details about how it might be linked to Dempsey, then told them both what Caprice had said about seeing a "shadow." I watched both of their expressions morph to surprise, then to thoughtfulness. Lucie's even dissolved to cold fear.

She took a seat at a barstool. Her hands were trembling. "A shadow killed the man?" her eyes flitted to me. "So it wasn't...wasn't human?"

I shook my head at the ground, pulling my hood up further. I leaned against the counter, a bit exhausted. It had been a long, arduous day, and all I truly wanted to do at the moment was sleep. But, no, Vinny couldn't keep his mouth shut. "I don't know. Caprice wasn't specific enough. It could mean that Richard Hall just didn't get much of a view of his killer, not a literal shadow. I don't think the latter's possible, anyway."

"But could a person," added Vinny matter-of-factly as both Lucie and I glanced in his direction, "have left as neat a note as something, say, supernatural? There was no blood at the scene except for those words. I mean, for a human to have done that—it's virtually impossible."
"You know what?" I said suddenly, crossing my arms. I went to the fridge and pulled it open, its cold air hitting me in the face. I pulled out the leftovers of the apple pie Mom had made last week, which weren't quite bad yet. "I'm starving and I think we're overthinking this," I told the two of them, shrugging my jacket off and draping it over a stool. Without my hood over my head, I felt strangely exposed.

I retrieved a fork and popped the lid off the tupperware, shoving a good helping of cold pie into my mouth, because I was too lazy to heat it up. The apples and cinnamon were slime on my tongue, but I was also too lazy to care.

Lucie looked on in mild disgust, and I pointed my fork at her. "I say, you go home, and I go to sleep, and we forget about this until all of us are well-rested—"

"What happened to your neck?"

I paused in the middle of chewing on partially frozen crust to give Lucie a skeptical look. She watched me as I placed a few cautious fingers to my neck, feeling the skin. Sure enough, Caprice's nails had left raised marks, red and tender. I winced each time I touched them, remembered her slamming me to the ground, knocking the wind from my chest. You were a pity project.

I coughed into the silence. "Nothing. Nothing happened."

Vinny was suddenly next to me. I exhaled in surprise. "Cian," he said, narrowing his eyes at my wounds. "That's not nothing. What happened? Did that angel do something to you?"

"Vinny, I'm fine. It's no big deal," I assured him, stuffing my face with more of Mom's leftovers. "It'll heal in a few days."

"You can't sit there and expect us to be okay with this," Lucie argued, and I glanced at her. She had folded her legs in her seat, her arms crossed over her chest. Her voice held no room for lies at this point. I wondered why she suddenly cared so much. "From the look on your face, those marks are just the tip of the iceberg, aren't they?"

She bit her lip.

I closed my eyes. Caprice's voice was still hissing in my ears.

Lucie said, "Cian."

I got up from my seat, fork and now-empty tupperware in hand. "I'm going to bed," I told the occupants of my kitchen. The air conditioning kicked in somewhere in the house, whirring to life. "I should have been there two hours ago, but I'm going now. Go home, Lucie—ack—"

The fork fell from my hand, clattering against the tiled floors. The plastic tupperware thudded next to it; I cringed, sure I must've woken Vinny's and my parents up. My chest seared with pain, and with a grunt, I went to my knees, sputtering. I tasted saliva as it welled in my mouth, my nostrils flaring. The floor was cold underneath me as I shuddered.

"Cian!" shouted Lucie. I heard her feet as they hit the ground, coming towards me.

Vinny told her, "He's fine, he's fine. His heart just stopped."

If I wasn't too busy trying to get to a sitting position, I'm sure I would have laughed at the look on Lucie's face. "Do you realize what just came out of your mouth, Casper?"

"Hey. For the record, I am not a little white blob with a face!"

"Cool it, you two," I ordered, my voice raspy in my ears. I managed to sit up, but was leaning heavily to one side. My head spun a bit. "Vinny's right. I'm fine. I just...well, someone else isn't." My brain was already sifting through images the death had brought me. I saw the bay, a boat, a fishing rod. 538. An address?

Lucie kneeled before me, her fingers scrambling to pick up the things I'd dropped. Shoving them to the side with a clink, she gazed at me with eyes as wide as discs, her hair a fuzzed halo around her flustered face. There it was again: the roses scenting her skin, the something strange underneath. "What the hell just happened? Did you die?"

"Not precisely," I replied. "I felt someone else's death. It's how I know when a soul needs directing."

"Oh." She frowned. "Are you okay?"

"I told you. I'm fine."

Her eyes narrowed. "You've lied to me before."

"Not this time, Lucille," I said, and was satisfied to see her face twist a bit. With a sigh, she reached out her hands, getting to her feet. I looked up at her, the overhead lights blurring above her head. "What are you doing?"

Her smile seemed to glow. My heart stopped again, but this time it was pleasurable. "I'm helping you up, smart one," she told me, then reached further, seizing my wrists. My pulse thumped against hers as she tugged me to my feet; her skin felt warm and silky, reminded me of cozy nights and blankets, a lit hearth on a cold evening. The fire was in her eyes, inviting and nurturing.

"Damn," Lucie said, returning her hands to her pockets. She examined my face; I saw her eyes flick lower to my neck, then back up again. "I liked it better when I was taller than you."

She glanced at Vinny. "Now, are we going to this job or not? When I said I was coming with you, I was telling the truth."

"It's two AM," I reminded her.

"I've got nothing better to do."
"Why are you so adamant about this, anyway?"

Vinny piped up from beside us: "She made a good point on the way here, Cian," he said, then appeared instead at the breakfast bar, making both Lucie and me jump. He tried to hide the amusement in his face. He failed. "The murder may not be a murder at all. It could be just one in a case of serial murders."

I had a bad feeling about this; there was something in my chest that kept ticking and ticking like a malevolent clock's hands. "Yeah, but we don't know that."

"Not yet!" Lucie countered. She pointed an ambitious finger at me, jutting her chin. "And when we do know, I want to be there. That's why I'm going. Admit it, angel boy, you need me. If anything's linked to Dempsey, I'll be able to figure it out quicker than either of you, since I knew him. You tried to do this by yourself, but you can't."

Vinny's expression was prideful, which only made me scowl at him. He knew what he'd been doing when he brought her here. "Isn't that right, Cian?" he said, tipping his head back. He regarded me from underneath a few misplaced strands of his thread-like hair. "We're a team. The Find Dempsey team. Formidable. Undefeated."

"I hate you," I hissed at him, and he just smiled and mouthed Love you, too. To Lucie, I said, "Fine. We're taking the Escalade. I know where to go."

She marched past me on the way to the garage, a childish smile on her face. "Lead the way, Dora the Explorer."

I hid my face behind my hand. "Please don't ever call me that again."