A Local Habitation

I looked up again, eyeing Quentin. “Please tell me you know what that means.” He turned red. “Good. I didn’t want to explain it. So we have basically no connections.”


“None.”

“And of the four victims, two have offices that don’t seem to exist.” We’d done Peter’s office before Colin’s. It was almost empty, containing a desk and an assortment of office supplies. The few personal touches we found dealt with football—a Butler University pennant on one wall and a foam-rubber football that he probably tossed around when he was bored. There was nothing that provided us with a visible motive for murder, and that worried me.

“One at least—I mean, no one’s actually said Barbara had an office.”

“Right.” I dropped myself into the chair by the fish tank. The Hippocampi fled to the far end, the tiny stallion swimming back and forth in front of the rest as he “protected” them from me. “Maybe she worked out of a broom closet, I don’t know. No offices means no leads. Not that we’re getting much from this place unless you like weed.”

“What?”

“Never mind.” I shook my head. “So they were telling the truth about the turnover rates. It doesn’t look like they’d lost an employee in a long time before this started.”

“So where does that leave us?”

“It leaves ‘us’ nowhere, Quentin. You’re leaving as soon as your ride gets here.”

“And what if I won’t go?” He crossed his arms, jaw set.

“Sylvester’s orders, kid. You’ll go.”

“Why are you so determined to get me out of here? I want to help. I want to—”

I grabbed the collar of my shirt and pulled it down, exposing the scar on my left shoulder. Quentin stopped talking, and gaped. I held the collar down long enough to make sure he got a good look before tugging it back into place, glaring at him.

“That was made with iron.” His eyes were wide, and scared.

“Good to see they’ve taught you what iron damage looks like.”

“How did you—”

“I lived because I got lucky, and because someone was willing to pay a lot to keep me around a little bit longer. Most people don’t get lucky.”

He swallowed, and stood. “I’m going to feed the Hippocampi.”

“Good idea,” I said, and reached for the stack of folders. I didn’t want to scare him—he was making more of an effort to do the right thing than most purebloods twice his age would bother with—but he needed to realize that this wasn’t a game. This was real, and he was going home.

The Hippocampus food was on the shelf beneath the fish tank. Giving me one last sidelong glance, Quentin opened it, shaking bits of dried kelp and barley into the water. The tiny horses flocked to the food, their wariness forgotten as they chased it around the tank. I smiled faintly and flipped the first folder open.

They liked records at ALH: everything from employment history to diet and heritage was recorded, like they were trying to paint portraits of their employees on paper. Even though was it helping us research, I couldn’t figure out why they’d bothered in the first place.

The first page of Colin’s file included a listing of family members. I found myself wondering who was going to have to tell them he was gone. Disgusted by the thought, I slammed the folder down on the desk and pushed it away. “This isn’t helping.”

Quentin looked up from feeding the Hippocampi. “What do you mean?”

“They were normal.” I indicated the folder. “All were purebloods less than three hundred years old, all lived human at some point without cutting their ties to the Summerlands—nothing out of the ordinary. Barbara was local, and Yui was from Oregon, so there’s a West Coast pattern . . . only Colin was from Newfoundland, and Peter’s last listed residence was in Indiana.”