HUNTER STREET was littered with empty parked cars when they arrived. Clouds moved overhead and blocked out the sun, like an omen. Chaz squinted as they walked down the street. The houses were all two stories, the kind where people raised families. A park behind them was outlined by flowers the city had planted. Not exactly the typical place for a brothel.
“How do we know which one it is?” Jack asked. “There are so many houses.”
“Guys. Here.” Chaz gestured toward a house in the middle of the block. Wooden boards, like the kind in the storefront in Winnipeg, were over the top windows. Declan nodded, understanding Chaz’s point of comparison without words. Jack led them both to the porch just as rain broke out.
An awning over the doorway sheltered them from the worst of the rain. The house, though boarded up like the storefront in Winnipeg, seemed different. He glanced across the street at a house that was brightly painted, with a sign that said Open hanging on the garage. Could they both be brothels? Did that make any sense?
Jack knocked on the door. Thunder covered up the noise, so Jack knocked again.
No answer.
“I don’t think anyone is here. We’ll need a warrant if we want to get inside.”
“Not if I hear sounds of distress,” Declan said. “We are investigating a gang case now. And this is a house filled with sin. We could be rescuing an innocent.”
“Maybe it hasn’t even been used in a while,” Jack said. “Check the other entrances?”
While Jack stayed at the door, Chaz and Declan walked in opposite directions around the house. Many of the windows were shut tight and sealed with some kind of superglue; the resin had hardened and turned blue. Other windows not facing the street were spray-painted blue, as if to mark the place as inactive. Chaz found a storm door that was off its hinges and blocking the porch pathway. The door behind the broken screen was closed. Chaz knocked.
Nothing. No sound at all. He knocked again and called out, “Hello?”
“Krvelačný ďábel!”
Another language he didn’t know. Chaz tried to put his ear against the door and slid a hand on his gun. The voice sounded again but not from inside the house. Chaz glanced around the corner to glimpse the house across the street with the Open sign. A woman stood in one of the highest windows, waving her arms as she spoke. Her yells in the foreign language soon faded to murmuring. It was the same language as the woman in Winnipeg, Chaz was sure.
“I think we have the wrong one,” Chaz called out. “We should go across the street.”
Neither Jack nor Declan answered him. Chaz walked around the porch again but saw no one at the front of the house. He muttered curses under his breath, his hand still on his gun. He walked across the front lawn and to the end of the driveway. He surveyed the house to see if there was any movement from the boarded-up windows, then turned to the woman across the street.
“Are you okay?” he shouted to her.
The woman’s murmuring stopped. She opened the window and caught Chaz’s attention with another wave of her arms. She pointed to the house in front of him and made the motion of pulling back an arrow.
“Cupids?” Chaz asked.
The woman shook her head, but she made the arrow motion again and again.
“Are you hurt?” Chaz called out.
“Chip!”
Chaz turned away from the woman to meet the wild eyes of Jack. He’d run around the left side of the house, his face red. “Chip! We need you here right now.”
Chaz stared up at the woman in the neighboring house, but she had disappeared back inside. Only the Open sign on the garage glowed. The rain had soaked through Chaz’s clothing, but he didn’t care.
“We fucking need a translator,” he said as he walked back under the safety of the awning. “There are too many witnesses, but we can’t understand a single one.”
“Yeah, yeah, maybe. You have to see this first.”
Jack opened the door, which seemed to be wedged off its hinges, too, already open and allowing them entry. The living room was on the garage side and the windows were all swapped, exactly opposite to the other house. A divide between human workers and creature workers? Customers can cross the street and have their fill of either?
Jack led Chaz into a living room area with a couch pressed up against a wall and a coffee table in front of it. There were dozens of issues of Desire on Fire, like a catalogue of Cupids. When Chaz leaned over a half-open one on the top of the pile, he saw their second victim right away.
“Hector Juarez,” Chaz said. In his photo, he was baring his fangs. They had been elongated through the use of Photoshop. Come and Suck Me Dry was written underneath the image. “Shit. This vamp could be shopping through these magazines.”
Jack nodded gravely. “We’re going to have to get a crime tech here to collect everything. This looks like the end of the line for sex workers—where Patrick would have gone if not for his death.”
Chaz wasn’t so sure it was the end of the line. It looked more like a holding pen than anything else. Chaz followed Jack into the adjoining kitchen, where coolers sat on the table, along with empty bags of blood.
“Hey, guys,” Declan said, assessing the fridge. “I don’t think this is the afternoon snack.”
“Oh God.” Jack held his nose as he walked over to the fridge stuffed to the brim with blood. Chaz did too, though he really couldn’t smell it. The faint undercurrent of blood was like the taste of water to him. Normal because he’d been around it so much.
“Are they bad?” Jack asked. “I mean, it’s a bad situation, but have they expired? Is that the smell?”
“Maybe,” Declan said. “But the fridge shouldn’t smell because these have been preserved. My guess, the empty bags and coolers have the bulk of the scent. It looks like they were stockpiling and didn’t have time to remove it all.”
Declan gestured toward an indentation of four corners on the hardwood floor, as if a large coffee table had been there, and then been removed. Chaz’s stomach was queasy. Why did a brothel have that much blood? And why was the brothel no longer in business?
“You guys notice anything missing?” Chaz asked. “Other than the shape there and maybe some blood?”
“No. What?”
“Well, where are the mattresses?”
“Hmm?” Jack said.
“If this is a brothel, where do people go to have sex?”
“Um. Well.” Jack gestured to the couch when he saw nothing lining the rest of the first floor. “Here?”
“I don’t think so. The couch would be way, way more worn and gross-looking. It’s next to this coffee table and the magazines. It’s set up more like a waiting room. And this kitchen, with the blood, missing table, and these drawers….” Chaz opened a kitchen counter drawer where utensils would be. Needles and medical equipment stared back at him. “This was a blood station. Not a sex one.”
“So this is a makeshift doctor’s office?” Jack said, reassessing the waiting room and then the new medical equipment. “Huh. I suppose that makes sense.”
“We still haven’t checked upstairs,” Declan said. “They could have taken tricks there. I’ll go look.”
They both followed Declan up the stairs and did a quick sweep of the area before they explored the rooms. The wood floorboards in the hallway creaked with each movement of their feet, so they sounded like a herd of elephants. There was so much noise with each step, it seemed less and less likely that people would have fucked upstairs. Sure, not all brothels were as nice as Artie’s, but none of this added up.
Declan came out of the first room with a furrowed brow. “Um. I….”
“What?”
“It’s only hospital beds,” Declan said. He surveyed the next three rooms and nodded again. “All of them. Hospital beds with expensive equipment.”
“Like an operating room?” Jack said, pushing ahead to survey for himself.
“It’s set up like a wing to heal in,” Declan added.
Chaz followed behind Jack and confirmed the sight for himself. Nothing but beds, heart monitors, IV poles, and bedpans. This wasn’t a brothel at all.
“It really is a monster hospital,” Jack said. “I’ve heard of places like this. Supernaturals can’t go to our emergency rooms without outing themselves, so they go here. They get their wounds treated, but they also get treatment for different illnesses.”
Chaz nodded. He’d had all of his injuries treated at Artie’s, or he’d suffered through them. The vampires in the dens often tried to cure themselves, but only did so by drinking, which was a makeshift solution at best. But of course, other monsters would band together and form a community that would include doctors to treat their illnesses.
“Wait, so if this is a hospital,” Declan said, “where is the brothel?”
“Across the street,” Chaz said. “I thought the other house was to divide between monster and human brothels, but it’s not. It’s the brothel—here’s the emergency room for the workers.”
Jack’s expression became grave, while Declan remained stoic. The three braved the rain outside and ran across the street. The sky was growing darker by the second, though it was still the afternoon. Jack knocked on the front door. No response. Not even the distressed call. When Jack tried the knob, it was locked.
“We don’t need a warrant,” Chaz said. “I heard a woman crying inside.”
“Good. Because I’m going in anyway.” Jack took a step back to slam his shoulder into the door. It didn’t budge.
“Ow. Shit.” He rubbed his arm. “Being a staff inspector has already made me lose my edge.”
“Let me try.” Chaz slammed his shoulder into the door once, twice, and though the pain smarted through his arms, he finally got it open. He wasn’t any stronger than Jack, but since his body could heal that much faster, the bruising he felt from his efforts was nothing but a minor inconvenience he was more than willing to bear.
They stepped inside and were greeted with row after row of blood coolers in the living room and the kitchen. They surveyed the rooms in a hurry, along with the upstairs, to make sure it was clear. The house was set up in the exact same way—hospital beds, blood stations, and coolers.
“I don’t understand, though,” Chaz said. “I saw a woman here. She was waving at me across the street.”
“Maybe she ran?” Jack said. “She could be long gone by now. Let’s see if we still have a blood bank here.”
They put on gloves before crouching in front of the coolers and opening each one. After several minutes, they still found nothing.
“What the hell does this mean?” Jack flipped a cooler around and held it up. An arrow was spray-painted on it in the same shade of dark blue as the walls and the windows of the other house. “Where is this arrow supposed to be pointing?”
“I have no idea.” When Chaz flipped around another cooler, he found another arrow. “What the…? They’re everywhere.”
By the time they examined all of them, they’d found an arrow painted on every single one. They’d been positioned to point toward a bookshelf. They inspected the books before Jack spotted paint along the back. When they started to remove the books, they found a giant arrow on the back of the wood. It pointed to a book that was glued to the shelf itself. When Chaz tugged it forward, it didn’t budge, so he pulled horizontally in the same direction as the arrow. The shelf turned on an axis, allowing them access to another room the size of a closet.
“It’s a passageway.” Jack shone his flashlight into the closet, which extended down, deeper and deeper into the house’s foundation. “So they can bring in new recruits? Is this where they break them in?”
“I have no idea anymore. But I guess I know where the woman went.” Chaz turned to Declan, but he wasn’t with them. He’d sat down at a desk in the far right corner. “What do you have?”
“A photograph of Saint Jude.” Declan held up the hand-painted saint card. It was the same as the one they’d found on Hector, with Jude surrounded by flowers, holding a staff, and wearing green. “There are also piles of paper here. All written in a language I don’t know.”
“What language?”
“That’s the problem. I don’t know.” Chaz came over by Declan’s shoulders, immediately recognizing the familiar loops of the Czech language. “It’s Czech.”
“You know it?”
“No. I’ve just heard it and seen it enough now.”
“Is it from the immigrant center?” Jack asked.
“I have no idea. We need a fucking translator. And they can’t be from the immigrant center, because they’re inside the triangle.” Chaz sighed. He wished more than anything that the woman hadn’t run away. Maybe they could have made her feel safe and she could have told them what was happening there. Chaz supposed they could follow the tunnel and see where it led, but they’d need to call in backup for that. They would need to call backup for everything here, because they’d wandered into some kind of strange, archaic plot with saints and sinners that no one could grasp.
Saints and sinners. Like Sully’s play. While Declan seemed to grow more frustrated by the second, and Jack grew overwhelmed, Chaz started to feel as if some of those pieces were falling into place.
“We should just give this case away, boss,” Declan said. “Or let it drop. This is actually out of our depth.”
“No, no. It’s the principle of the thing now. It’s going to be pried from my dead hands.” Jack huffed and grabbed his phone. “Look, I’m going to call it in as a crime scene. We’ll get the techs here and Katja for the blood, and maybe we can find something from there. I can put in for a translator from the department too.”
“I may know someone,” Chaz said. “For translating Czech. He mostly knows Slovak, but let me check in with him?”
“That’s nice, but you know we—”
“You know we can’t do that because of rules and regulations. But we’re investigating monster-on-monster crime now. And you know how the department is going to react,” Chaz said. He pushed harder as Jack seemed to grow more and more malleable to the suggestion. “Come on. You know this is the best solution. How long did it take us to get Spanish translators last time?”
“Three weeks.”
“Exactly. Let me talk to my friend, okay? Maybe he’ll say no. Maybe he’ll say yes.”
“And maybe,” Jack said, biting his lip, “we’ll finally get lucky in this case.”
“Exactly.” Chaz smiled as butterflies overwhelmed him. The idea of Sully on a case was too much—in the best way possible.
“But the Brigade,” Declan said, his voice harsh. “We can’t let them get any of this information. That’s why we can’t get a random person to—”
“I know, I know. That’s the department’s concern right now. So we will get a nondisclosure agreement. Or something. I’m just… desperate at this point.” Jack sighed as he surveyed the evidence in the room once again. “So, yeah. Get your friend. We’ll work out the details later.”
When Jack excused himself to get a signal on his phone, Chaz noticed the rain had stopped. The sky was still dreary, but there were a couple more hours of daylight left. He felt for Reggie’s address in the bottom of his pockets; a new plan formed in his mind.
“Do you mind if I cut out?” Chaz said, turning to Declan. “I should really talk to my friend, and you know, make sure he’s amenable—”
“Yeah, sure, whatever.” Declan was still elbow-deep in all the Czech papers on the desk, his eyes distant and glassy. It took Chaz a couple of seconds to notice he was holding his SA chip and flicking it mindlessly.
“I can stay—if you need—”
“No. I’m fine. I think, if we’re going to get anywhere on this case, it’s best to split and cover more ground.” Declan tried to smile, but it was forced.
Chaz returned the expression before he left the houses behind. Halfway to Reggie’s last-known address, Chaz realized he was humming Sully’s opera.