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I was starting to think I didn’t actually like Elliot very much.
What do you want from me? I’m surrounded by shifter bones, ghosts, and feds.The ghosts were honestly the worst. When it had been just Theodore and Rosemary, Ward had been able to get them to mostly leave me alone.
But once we started finding more of them, he hadn’t been able to pay enough attention to all of them at once, and they’d started getting… clingy.
Nobody—not Ward or Doc, anyway—seemed to know why, but ghosts really like elves. Doc’s theory was that it had something to do with our innate magic, but we’re apparently like fucking catnip to the dead, so when they weren’t preoccupied with Ward’s questions, they would just end up drifting over to me. Or something.
I can’t feel them like Ward can, and I certainly can’t see them, but I just feel… icky. Kind of clammy and uncomfortable. Unless they actually touch me, which is cold and horrible. This bunch had the decency not to do that, at least, but I could still tell they were there, and I did not like it.
Add that to the temperature being in the upper 80s and sunny, and I was hot, dehydrated, tired as fuck, and nearly constantly creeped out by the proximity of dead people. The fact that I hadn’t told anyone to fuck off at some point was a goddamn miracle as far as I was concerned, and I wanted a little more appreciation of that from Elliot.
He wasn’t forthcoming.
This morning I got him back by texting him at six—my time. Five his time.Today I’m going to be extra polite.
Asshole,was the response I got back.
My work for the morning done, I’d gotten dressed in my new Target cargos and t-shirt—since we were still fucking digging, someone had done a clothes run because we were all gross and hadn’t brought overnight clothes—and headed out to collect Ward from his room.
Most of the team was emerging at the same time—people carrying gear out to their cars or vans, someone running around with the coffee-order-clipboard who stopped and got both my and Ward’s orders, which by now I knew by heart.
Madeeha met us at the museum, yawning at the early hour of about seven am, and let us back into the yard.
“You don’t sleep either, huh?” Ward asked her as she moved aside to let us in.
She laughed. “I’m a grad student, and they’re paying me overtime.”
“Sounds like a glamorous life,” he teased.
“Hey, the other day I got free raspberries.”
I snorted as Ward chuckled. Out of all of us, Madeeha definitely had the best attitude.
Taking the time to sip my coffee before Raj issued orders, I looked around and realized that this might well be devastating for the museum—the whole yard had been ripped to fuck, holes dug all over the place, the grass either dead or actively dying from dozens of feet, equipment, tools, and so on. One big magnolia in the back of the yard was pretty much the only remaining plant life that hadn’t been subjected to crime scene torture—it was the favorite lunch spot of most of the team, in fact.
Next to me, Ward made a small noise, and I looked down at him.
He smiled up at me, the corners of his eyes crinkling, and I realized that I really hadn’t seen him make that happy of an expression in the last few days.
“What?” I asked.
“Mason’s coming out this afternoon,” he replied, which definitely explained his upturned mood.
“Doc bringing the kid with him?” I asked.
“Yeah. And some research he and Taavi have been doing on the Sun Stone fragment copied onto that page,” Ward replied.
Thinking of Elliot, I deliberately kept my face neutral. Or tried to, anyway. I was not going to be a jackass about Taavi being involved in this investigation. I was not.
I texted Elliot.I am going to be a mature adult about Taavi helping with this case.
Elliot sent me back a surprised emoji face.
I sent him a middle finger.
Doc arrived about four hours later, bringing food, a couple coolers with cold beverages, and a very excited eleven-year-old. Surprising pretty much everyone, Kurtz had instantly taken to Jackson Turner-Manning, Doc’s nephew, who was more than happy to not be anywhere near the plethora of dead people in the yard and had gone with Kurtz into the museum, the faun keeping the eleven-year-old otherwise occupied while Doc showed Ward, Raj, and I what he and Taavi had figured out.
The short version was that they thought the reason we were finding so many dogs was that the sacrifices were taking place on a very specific part of the Aztec calendar. Apparently, there were animals or something assigned to particular days, and one of those days was the day of the dog, which was also dedicated to their god of the dead—the dog-headed asshole. Working theory was that the sacrifices were being made to dosomethingand that the dogs were being used as spirit guides to take the shifters to the afterlife.
