Gift of Curses, page 10
“Waleed al-Mufti,” he said in greeting to Detective Granger. “I’m Detective Arshad’s lawyer.”
We had always joked that with a last name like that, he couldn’t be anything but a lawyer. A mufti was a Muslim legal advisor. Given that Waleed was a practicing Muslim, not a lapsed one like myself, Waleed the Mufti was actually a mufti. It still made me giggle a little inside despite the seriousness of the circumstances.
Granger grunted and didn’t take the hand Waleed offered out to her. Waleed didn’t seem the slightest bit bothered. He opened his briefcase and took out a stack of papers, which he set on the table once the briefcase was out of the way. It was tempting to sneak a peek at what was on them, but I restrained myself. I had studied his tactics in court, even before he’d finished law school. If I knew him as well as I thought I did, only the topmost pages had anything to do with me. The rest was all to make it look like he had more supporting me than he did.
“Why don’t we get right to it?” Granger said.
I looked to Waleed, who gave me a slight nod. I let out a slow breath to steady myself and started talking.
Granger grilled me for two and a half hours. It was surprising. Most of the times I was in this box, it was an all-day process. The aim was to break me down and make me admit to having done something wrong.
Which I had.
There were a lot of things I’d done wrong in the last 48 hours. I’d kept my suspicions of our killer being a djinni to myself for too long. I’d been too reluctant to harm him. If I had gone into that warehouse intending to neutralize him from the beginning, would that have changed things? Would Miraj still be alive? Or was I eating myself up over nothing?
I didn’t admit any of that to Granger. I didn’t even admit it to Waleed. The less he knew, the better. It felt like this was the only situation where I could believe that.
I expected Rowan to be stuck in interrogation much longer than I was, considering he was the one who had done the actual shooting. When I walked out of the interrogation room, there he was, leaning back with one foot against the wall, his eyes closed, and his arms folded across his chest. Despite the casual stance, his jaw was set hard and his hands were clenched into fists. I was only half-way across the hall when he spoke without opening his eyes.
“Done with you already too, huh?” he said.
I nodded, even though he couldn’t see it. “We’re on administrative leave until they finish the investigation, but—”
“They’re already calling it a good shoot. I know.”
He scowled and lowered his leg to stand upright. He finally opened his eyes, though he didn’t look at me. Part of me wished I knew what was going on in his head. The other part of me was glad I didn’t.
Still, he was my partner. It was my job to know what was going on in his head.
“Are you okay?” I asked.
His scowl deepened. He shifted a little, scratching his jaw, adjusting his sleeves, before he crossed his arms again.
“I don’t know what happened,” he said, his voice tight through the admission. “I just— I didn’t even want to shoot him. One second I was aiming at the ground, the next... It was like I wasn’t even control of my body.”
“You weren’t. It wasn’t your fault.”
“Yeah, well. I don’t fucking like it.”
There didn’t seem to be any point in telling him that nobody liked it. The haunted look in his eyes was enough to tell me it would keep him up for a long time. I doubted there was much I could do or say to ease any of his guilt. I wished I could have at least given him a hug, but that seemed like as bad an idea as any of the ones I’d had so far this week.
I’d been so focused on Rowan, I hadn’t even noticed Waleed approaching until he touched my arm. I yelped and jumped a little. Rowan snorted, and I shot him a dirty look for it.
“Sorry,” Waleed said in his own Iraqi dialect, holding his hands up. “I’ve got to get going. There's a stack of cases on my desk taller than the Burj Dubai. I’ll call you if anything comes up.”
“Sure. Thank you, for this.”
Instead of responding in words, he dipped his head down and kissed my cheek. This close, the smell of charcoal beneath his cologne made it through my mangled sinuses. It should have made me sick that he smelled so much like the dead djinni, but I found it comforting. I may not have ever been in love with Waleed, but I did love him in the way I loved everyone I cared about. We had been through one of the most difficult parts of our lives together. He would always mean something to me, and the familiar smell identifying him as an afrit would always be comforting.
I wondered if Ariadne would mind how many of my exes I was still friends with. She knew about Waleed, of course. The three of us, with Waleed’s husband, had gone for dinner together once or twice. Medical examiners didn’t have the same apprehensions about hanging out with lawyers that cops did.
Thinking about Ariadne made me realize just how long the past few days had been. I had pulled some late nights working in Homicide, but it had been a while since anything had felt this exhausting. All I wanted right now was to curl up with her on the couch with a bucket of popcorn and a terrible horror movie. Would she mind if we did movie night tonight instead of tomorrow? We always tried to make time on Wednesdays for it, but surely we could make an exception and do it on a Tuesday for once. Maybe we could have two movie nights this week. It wasn’t like I would be working any late nights until they cleared me to return to the field. If what Rowan said was true, that they were already calling it a clean shoot, it wouldn’t be long.
Waleed gave Rowan a polite nod. “Oak.”
Rowan turned his scowl to Waleed. “Al-Mufti.”
The corner of Rowan’s lips twitched just slightly, and Waleed gave a proper grin. Waleed held his fist out, and Rowan bumped his own against it.
“You two know each other?” I said.
Rowan and Ariadne knowing each other was strange enough. But Rowan and Waleed? Where could they possibly have even met? I didn’t expect them to have many overlapping cases. The thought of them being in the same room socially made my head spin.
“Rowan did security for an event a few months back,” Waleed explained. “He’s not half bad, for a cop.”
Rowan snorted. “Yeah, says the lawyer. I can’t believe you were engaged to this guy, Arshad.”
The heat that travelled up my neck and face was so intense, I was almost afraid I was accidentally drawing up a barrier through it. So not only did he know Waleed, but he knew we’d been engaged? What else did he know about me that he hadn’t thought worth mentioning? Had Waleed told him, or had he looked into me himself? I flattened my palms against my thighs to keep from balling them into fists and forced a smile that came out tighter than intended. Rowan’s raised eyebrow suggested he wasn’t missing my reaction.
“I think this is your queue to fuck off. See you ‘round, al-Mufti.”
Waleed gave a slight wave before disappearing down the hall.
“All right, Arshad, what’s up with you? That vein in your forehead looks like it’s about to explode.”
My hand flew up to cover the spot he pointed at. He only laughed, and I remembered that I owed him a few punches.
“You know Waleed and I were engaged?” I demanded.
“Yeah, so? I know a couple things about you.”
“How is that?”
He shrugged. My temper got the better of me, and I shoved him. It seemed to be surprise more than force that made him stumble back. His dark eyes fixed on my face and I could see him calculating whether he needed to defend himself. His posture tensed only briefly before he relaxed, evidently deciding I wasn’t planning on hurting him. He tucked his hands into his pockets and shrugged again. Even though he lowered his head a little, I could see he was still watching me. Not my face, but my shoulders. With his hair falling over his face, I almost couldn’t tell. It was clever.
The face could lie. The shoulders could not. If I intended to hit him again, my shoulders would give it away. With his hands in his pockets, I doubted he could move fast enough to block me. I couldn’t be sure, though. Realistically, if I threw a punch, he would see it fast enough to move and make me hit the wall instead. If I hit hard enough, I might even fracture my own hand, and he’d gain the advantage.
Again, I was realizing just how much of his body language was a ruse. He was much more calculated than I’d given him credit for.
“How do you think? People talk. I heard you had one of the best close rates in Homicide. When rumour got around you were looking to get out, I did some proper digging. I didn’t make detective for nothing, you know.”
The little lip twitch wasn’t a full smile. It was guarded. He had secrets. Lots of them. So did I. We were entitled to them. I was entitled to them.
“You went digging into my life?” I snapped. His eyes darted to my face long enough to give me a window to shove him again. “You went digging into my life! You didn’t even know me, and you went digging! Do you know what kind of invasion of privacy that is? Is that how you found out about me and Waleed? Did you find Ariadne that way?”
Rowan held his hands up. It almost looked more like he was preparing to stop me from pushing him again than it was to placate me.
“Woah, back up. I met Waleed before I looked into you. And I met Ariadne forever ago. I worked on a case where my victim turned up dead. Case got handed to Homicide, but I talked to her about it a couple times.” He paused, watching my face. “Got handed to you, actually.”
I was so surprised by his words, I forgot I was supposed to be angry. I’d had so many cases in three years, and so many of my victims had been assaulted before death, it took me far too long to mentally comb through them all.
“Pixie girl,” he said quietly. “Asphyxiated to death.”
My mouth fell open. Ariadne had done the autopsy on that case. That was how I’d met her.
“So, what?” My throat was dry. “You’ve been following me since?”
Rowan snorted.
“I’m not some kind of stalker. You know how many of my victims ended turning up dead? I forgot you even existed. But you’re good. Really fucking good. Why do you think I talked Sabine into getting them to transfer you to us?”
I blinked. “Uh… You what?”
“I told Sabine I wanted you in our unit. You are ruthless, and you don’t take shit. You know how many superior officers you’ve pissed off?” he said, laughing.
I knew I'd pissed off a good number of them, yes. I gave him a wry smile. There was a bright glint in his eyes I hadn’t seen before.
“Listen to me, Arshad. We make a great team. I know this case didn’t exactly go as planned, but—”
“Not as planned?” I repeated. “The victim is dead, and we don’t even know who bound him in the first place.”
“And we probably never will. But he’s not out killing people anymore, and Margaret What’s-her-face is behind bars for selling bad spells. At the very least, they'll charge her for fraud. I know it’s not much. It’s not anything, but…” He rubbed the back of his neck. “Okay, I’ll be honest. This was bad. But what went down wasn’t our fault, not really. Forces literally outside of our control fucked shit up. But isn’t that more reason for us to work together? So we can stop shit like this happening again?”
He grabbed my wrist. I almost flinched back away from him, but held myself still.
“Come on, Arshad. I think we can make this work.”
Was he out of his mind? What part of the last 48 hours suggested that?
“Why me?” I asked. “There are plenty of cops with good close rates that I’m sure would love to work in Special Crimes.”
Rowan nodded. “Yeah, there are. But the difference between them and you is that you give a fuck about the victims. It isn’t just a job or an ego trip to you. You’re going to push for the victim. That’s why you became a cop, isn’t it? Because you want to do good? That makes you the kind of person I want on my side.”
He said person, I noticed, not cop.
He was right. I became a cop to do good. And he was right, I pushed. From what little I’d heard about him, he did too. Even if today had been a complete and utter disaster, he was right about one thing. We were getting on the same page, and I wanted to see this through.
I nodded.
“One condition,” I said.
“Name it. Anything you want, Arshad.”
“Call me Fairuz.”
Fairuz’s story continues in Gift of Shadows: Barrier Witch Book One.
Gift of Shadows Preview
Chapter 1
“If nobody else is going to say it, I will. Our victim has no eyes.”
I glanced up at my partner from over the purple lenses of my aviator sunglasses. He wasn't wrong. The victim was also missing several organs: liver, kidneys, maybe something else. That wasn't exactly unusual. It was the eyes that threw me. Based on Rowan’s words, I wasn’t the only one.
I sighed and rubbed my neck. Who would have thought a day would come when missing organs would be normal to me?
I took a sip of my Tim Horton’s coffee. It tasted like burnt water. Until my usual place reopened, or at least until I could get my Turkish coffee maker from my parents’ place in Ottawa, it would have to be enough to feed my caffeine addiction. The paper cup was quickly cooling in the late February winds. I held it between my gloved hands, trying to keep the coffee inside at a drinkable temperature as I stared down at the body.
It was hard to tell just from looking at it whether or not this was a Special Crimes case. Homicide should have been handling this, but my partner of nearly a year now, Rowan Oak, and I had been a couple of blocks away anyway on another, far less interesting case. Plus, the missing eyes definitely suggested something not normal. It could have just been someone who liked eyes, or it could have been someone poaching them for spells. Or maybe the human-looking man sprawled out on the pavement surrounded by police tape wasn't actually human.
The Homicide department was going to have a fit either way. I wasn't going to waste time waiting for them to show up. I'd worked Homicide before Special Crimes. It might not have been in this neighbourhood, but it was all the same. This wasn't my first road trip.
Rowan always insisted the expression was ‘rodeo,’ but that didn't make any sense to me. He was from Alberta, everything was about rodeos to him.
The point was, I knew what I was doing, and I knew that every second counted. If Homicide had a problem with that, they should have showed up faster.
I crouched down to get a better look at the body, moving an arm over my face to block the stench. The end of my jacket almost brushed the pavement Winter had kept the body from decaying some, but it still smelled like a corpse. I’d almost forgotten that smell. I didn't see as many bodies these days as I did in Homicide, and I wasn't as used to it as I had been.
The victim appeared to be a Caucasian male, with almost Mediterranean complexion, dark hair, and a short beard trimmed close to his jaw. Mid-20s or so — it was hard to tell. He might have been of average build if he had all of his organs. On the left side of his neck was a tattoo of what looked like a strange compass. Of course, he had no ID on him. That would have been too easy.
We needed more information. A lot more information.
Continue the story in Gift of Shadows.
Also by Amir Lane
Barrier Witch
Gift of Curses (#0)
Gift of Shadows (#1)
Gift of Ashes (#1.5)
Gift of Secrets (#2)
Gift of Darkness (#3)
Morrighan House Witches
Rise (#0)
Shadow Maker (#1)
Bad Omen (#2)
Panther Queen (#3)
About the Author
Amir Lane writes supernatural and fantasy books with LGBT+ characters. From the frigid and mysterious land of Northern Canada, Amir is obsessed with loud music and black magic. They spend most of their writing time in a small home office or doing the circuit of local coffee shops. They live in a world where magic is an every day occurrence, and they strive to bring that world to paper.
When not figuring out what kind of day job an incubus would have or what a necromancer would go to school for, Amir enjoys visiting the nearest Dairy Queen, getting killed in video games, and watching cat videos.
Amir loves to connect with readers online. They can be found on their Facebook page, and at their website where you can find out more about their work.
For more information about Amir, check out:
www.amirlane.com
contact@amirlane.com
Amir Lane, Gift of Curses
