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She was tempted to heave a sigh and roll her eyes to the heavens, but she had a job to do, and complaining wouldn’t get it done any faster. Besides, her dad was watching her, and Joy was pretending not to, but she was watching Gabi even closer.
Gods—Joy Mackenzie. Gabi’s only love, the girl who still held her heart in a vice-like grip. She justhadto be here on this beach, a witness in only the third call Gabi had responded to since yesterday, the first two being the theft of a rare porcelain ornament in an ongoing feud between elderly neighbours and—the icing on her first day cake—public indecency from a man Gabi wished she’d seen a whole lot less of last night.
As Pride, everything was her responsibility, but she hadn’t thought she’d be dealing withthison her second day. Or on her two hundredth. Agedale was a typically sleepy seaside town. Yet inside the white tent Gabi had erected, a girl lay murdered, no older than sixteen. She was caucasian, dark haired, with blue, now-empty eyes, with the word ‘naughty’ cut deep enough into her cheek to show muscle and sinew, and a deep gash from her throat to her stomach. Wand snapped, no phone or purse in sight. Taken, Gabi assumed, and the wand snapped to send a message. It would have been easy to assume this was an elf or fae murderer, a species motivated murder, but Gabi learned that not always the most obvious theories were true.
Gabi’s original plan after finishing her field training had been to work for Liverpool’s police and climb her way up to detective—not to become what amounted to a sheriff in her hometown. But this was no different to what she’d been trained for and what she’d expected to face in a big city. It was the fact of it being inAgedale, where Gabi had grown up playing on this strip of beach, safe in the knowledge that nothing really bad could happen, that threw her.
Now she was responsible for keeping everyone safe. And someone out there had killed a teenage girl.
Gabi took off her coat, zipped a clean forensic suit over her shirt and jeans, and examined the body, just standing there for long minutes on end and letting her mind process what it was seeing, making connections and jotting down the details. It had been impossible, in the beginning, faced with her first dead body, to look at the victim and not be sick, to not want to cry or run away or scream at the world.
It wasn’t much easier now, if she was being honest. This was a person—aperson, killed. Gabi had never been naïve enough to think murders never happened, but knowing and looking down at it were two different things. Her stomach had clenched into a nauseous knot the minute she pulled back the tent flaps and looked at the girl, her round cheeks, her big, unseeing eyes. Even the smell of decay—slight enough to tell Gabi the girl hadn’t been dead for longer than a few hours—couldn’t distract from the twist in her heart, the sickness steadily filling her.
She’d called her dad after that first murder scene and begged him to tell her it got easier to look at a corpse and not see a person, to stop the wrench of her gut and the pressure behind her eyes. He’d told her the day it got easy was the day she stopped being a good detective.
Which meant no, it did not get better. But it was easier to do what needed to be done when Gabi didn’t think of her asthe girl. In front of her now was abody. If Gabi relaxed her tight grip on the leash around her thoughts, she’d fall down a slippery slope, her inner voice telling her this was her fault. She’d been Pride for one whole day, and someone was dead on her watch. A kid.
The sound of Gabi’s camera shutter was as loud as a gunshot in the silence that had filled the tent, blocking out the sound of the ocean and seagulls crying. Or maybe the rush of quiet had filled Gabi. She’d fucked up after one day. She’dfailed. The thought did not leave, even as she finished her examinations and collected what bits of evidence hadn’t been blown away by the wind or washed out by the sea, sketching notes for herself in her fresh notebook.
The heavy feeling over the body didn’t help, either. As an elf, Gabi had environmental magic—and even though Gabi’s magic only worked sporadically, her senses were faultless. Now, they were telling her something cruel had happened to this girl. Something hadtaintedher before she’d been killed. Gabi always sensed people, be it homely or concerned, ditzy or conceited. Gabialwaysgot a sense about someone from the way they affected their environment. The way this body was affecting the environment … her death had not been painless.
When it came to moving the body, getting it into the body bag, Gabi’s senses flared and she locked her limbs on instinct, hand twitching towards the telescopic baton at her waist beneath the protective plastic suit. It felt like she’d inhaled chemicals, astringent and biting. Her nose burned, but more than that hersensesburned. Something about the body was … wrong. She’d known that already, sensed it through her power, but … there was witchcraft or magic here. It wasn’t a surprise since the girl had been a witch herself—the broken wand was evidence of that, as was the absence of either subtly (fae) or sharply (elves) pointed ears—but Gabi’s senses were one hundred percent sure. This victim had been touched by something supernatural. Killed by power if Gabi’s suspicions were right, not by a knife or brute strength, despite the cut on her cheek and the bruising around her neck.
But Gabi needed someone with stronger senses—and a more reliable magic—to confirm that. She’d always relied more on her mind and logic than her elven magic. Hence her very human career path.
Heaving a sigh as she braced for company again, Gabi pulled the tent flap aside and whistled, summoning her dad. “Help me with this body bag, would you?”
She scanned the beach while Bo made his way closer to the tent, alert for anyone watching—it wouldn’t have been the first time a killer returned to oversee an investigation—but the beach was empty of anyone but Gabi, her dad, and Joy.
So far.
Gossip would spread. In Agedale, it always did.
Bo made a show of sighing, but he dutifully picked up one end of the bag and helped her carry the body outside. He had an overly grouchy look on his face, and Gabi smirked, waiting for whatever he was going to say.
“Do you know what retired means, Gabriella? Re-ti-red.” He dragged the word out.
Gabi made ahmmsound, pretending to ponder it. “I’ve heard it means you laze around the house, available for assisting bright, young daughters in carrying bodies to their cars.” Truth be told, it meant his leg—injured chasing down a teenage fae thief in the night—wouldn’t stand his weight for long periods at a time, which in turn meant he couldn’t be running after thieves and criminals whenever the need arose. And despite his insistence that he could stay on to fill out the necessary paperwork required of a Pride, Paulina had not so gently insisted he step down. Couldn’t have her law enforcement sullied by a disabled man.
Gabihatedthat bitch.
Bo tried to scowl at her reply and failed, laughing brightly, creases forming around his brown eyes—the same shade as hers. It was probably a bad time to laugh, given they were carrying a corpse and sliding it into the back of Gabi’s car—she’d put plastic covers over the entire backseat in preparation—but she laughed too, needing the release from the stiff tension in her body and the sharp warning from her senses.
“Smartass,” he said when Gabi had arranged the body on the back seat. “No idea where you get that from.”
Gabi snorted, slamming the door to her black Ford Mondeo. “Old Josie tells me I’m just like my dad in his youth.” She turned to look at him but caught sight of the figure on the beach instead, her arms wrapped around herself. Gabi’s smile slid off her face.
Right.
Joy.
Questioning.
“Jesus, I don’t know how to do this,” she admitted, her chest pulling tight as she unzipped her plastic suit.
Until she’d seen Joy, Gabi hadn’t realised she’d expected her to be the same. But of course, Joy was different, her hair longer and a different style—but the same vivid pink it had been years before. She’d even grown taller, though still nowhere near as tall as Gabi, and she dressed differently. Jeans and a mystical T-shirt instead of a long, swishy dress. Still the same bright pink furry coat though; that’d never change.
Gabi had hoped, in the quietest, smallest corner of her mind as she drove home yesterday, that maybe they’d see each other, and everything would be as it had been. But Joy was a different person, and Gabi hurt Joy in a way they’d never recover from—even if it had been an accident.
