CHAZ’S TALK of home made Sully think of Artie. He checked his phone in the car on the way back but saw no response from her. There was a message from Tom, though, about The Night Walkers.
A book-shaped package arrived. I opened it and… voila. My spell craft has worked again. Tom attached a photo of the first edition on Sully’s pillow. Have some fun while you’re gone. This will be here waiting for you whenever you come back. Cough, on Sunday, cough. Until then, get what else you deserve.
Sully smiled at the message. He was happy to have his book but also bummed. The chase was over, and from Chaz’s melancholy expression, so was this case.
When they arrived at Chaz’s place, he dropped his bag, the files, and his jacket before flopping down in the middle of the floor. Right in the front hallway. He lay down as if he’d been struck by that arrow and didn’t get up. So Sully sat down between his legs. When Chaz didn’t move, Sully traced his hands over his waist, his hips, and then over his heart.
“Just as I suspected.”
“What?”
“You’re alive,” Sully said. “No stake through your heart. No blood loss. So what’s wrong?”
Chaz didn’t answer.
“Did you get fired?”
“No, nothing like that,” Chaz finally answered. He propped himself up on his elbows but remained on the floor. He flinched as he seemed to replay the whole ordeal in his mind. “The police force can’t fire me. They need as many people working as they can. Jack told me as much.”
“Don’t tell me the fight word for word. I don’t need to hear it. And I don’t want you to keep hurting yourself with it.”
“I’m suspended, though. Can’t come back until… God, I don’t even know.”
“That’s not so bad.”
Chaz shrugged, morose and sullen. God, and people think I’m a downer. Sully inched closer and tried to rub Chaz’s heart again, but the joke seemed to wear thin. When Chaz remained quiet, Sully wanted some music. He didn’t have his CDs, but sections of the opera were on his phone. He brought them into a playlist and turned his phone volume up really loud. Chaz watched what he did with a curious expression, then smiled as he recognized what it was. They stayed on the floor, the phone blasting out lyrics about sinners and saints and the flowers they brought to one another’s doorsteps in order to keep the police away.
“I don’t think we found the right person.”
“Hmm?”
“Ramirez. Maybe he was the vamp that killed those people. But someone still killed him. I don’t like how that plays out. It doesn’t make any sense.”
“Why?”
“Because it doesn’t add up. In the other cases we’ve looked at, two people were killed at once. That’s hard to do. Takes someone with real skill, like a cop. But not a rookie cop.”
“What about chemicals? Drugs?”
“I thought about that. Maybe Patrick was delirious with sun-sickness or subdued using the special kind of bark that affects vamps, but I don’t buy it. The tox screen was inconclusive on that front since the bark tea can leave someone’s system with enough time. I talked to Katja about it. With the victim in the water too, our results are fucked.”
“Hmm. So you’re thinking two killers?”
“Or one who was brilliant at setting up a fall guy. I still don’t think that Fatima would have gone down that easily. She was a fighter.”
“She would have been protecting Darcy, though. She may have tried to get in the way to save him, and paid the price for it, while Hector was a sneak attack and Patrick was delirious and couldn’t fight back.”
“Fatima was protecting him? Because she was part of the underground system with arrows?”
“Yeah. Fatima and Hector were both in charge of bringing Darcy and Patrick out of bad situations. They were targeted and went missing. Artie had a couple more fleets go missing but didn’t realize the pattern until I told her about the vamp. Here, come.” Sully tugged on Chaz’s hand. “Come to a different section of your floor so I can show you the labyrinth of materials I found.”
Chaz didn’t move. Sully huffed.
“I know you can’t work your murder case anymore. That sucks, especially if you don’t think you have the right guy. So don’t work the murder case. Work with me on figuring out these forms, because it will help outline the sex-trafficking rings that aren’t Artie’s safe passages. Then maybe you can save more people.”
After another moment of moping, Chaz nodded and allowed Sully to lead him into the strange fort made up of the case files and medical forms written in Czech from the house. They weren’t official medical forms, but stuff that was only used in the monster hospital and research facility so they wouldn’t lose track of how many people were coming in and out, what creature they were, and what route they took.
“Why in Czech?” Chaz asked. “That’s the one thing I’ve struggled to understand for this entire ordeal.”
“The one? You’re lucky, then. I think… I think it has to do with Artie and her sisters. They speak a lot of languages. It’s scary how many. I always thought Greek was her first because she used to always tell me the Greek etymology of words.”
“The bugs?”
“No, that’s entomology. Etymology is the history of a word. Like our English word for nostalgia comes from the Greek words nostos and algos, meaning painful homecoming.”
“Huh. I never knew that.”
“And trauma is the Greek for wound. All wounds, even psychological trauma, heal. She told me that when I first got there. Then she gave me a bunch of books in Czech. I thought she was just being nice to me, but now I think it’s her first language. Or the one she practices the most, because it’s the language of safe passage. See?” Sully held up a form that outlined someone’s intake interview and the routes they took to get to Artie’s door. “Every single person gives directions in Czech. I know the whole forms are in Czech, but if their speech is underlined, Czech was their original language. Czech became the language on the form since it’s what they used to talk in when they didn’t want people to listen. So Artie wrote her research in it too.”
“Huh. You keep saying research,” Chaz said after Sully explained some more forms. “What do you mean?”
“Artie calls it that. She’s not just trying to get people out of the industry who don’t want to be there. She’s also doing experiments. Gathering data. It’s all leading to something bigger.”
“Something bigger like what?”
“I don’t know. She knows way more about it than me, and after I came to the house, I checked out for a while. I didn’t want to care. But now… I know it’s so much bigger than I can even fathom. I called her earlier to ask about these names that kept coming up, thinking they were part of her missing group. You recognize them?” Sully handed off the form and Chaz read them out.
“Blake Miller, Liz Hornbacher, Matt Davis, Chandler Paz.” Chaz shook his head. “I don’t think so. They could be cold cases, though. I see… so many bodies in this line of work.”
“It’s okay. Artie will tell us whenever she gets back to me.”
“What about these names?” Chaz asked, pointing to Heather, Didi, and Anna.
“The sister houses. Artie’s isn’t the only one. She’s in Toronto, where the most people come through. But there are houses all over Canada.”
“And she’s been doing this for years?”
“Yes. It’s huge. I don’t even think we could understand it all, even if we worked for all of your suspension.”
“I can’t believe this.”
Sully pursed his lips, unsure if Chaz’s words meant he couldn’t—or wouldn’t—believe all of the research was true and for the greater good.
“So many gang cases have those saint cards attached to them. But you’re telling me that they’re incidental. They belong to this system, and this is the better one. So there could be gangs out there looking for Artie, right?” Chaz said, rolling over the ideas in his mind. “People could have gotten upset with her for rescuing women and men?”
“I suppose that’s true. Everyone’s upset when money is lost.”
“So what if that’s it? What if we can’t connect any of these other murders because it’s not being done by one person but many? And they’re angry that Artie is taking people out of the life?”
“It makes sense.”
Chaz nodded along, eyes alight. His mind seemed to be turning like it had when they first discovered Reggie’s van. They were working together again. Partners, partners.
For the next hour, they scoured the forms and made lists of names, dates, and locations. Chaz recalled what he could of the gangs in the area and how the Bloody Hearts could be a part of it, and Sully brought together what he could remember from the house he worked at for a week before following the arrows. By the time they were done, the sun had sunk lower in the sky. Sully checked his phone, but there was still no message from Artie.
“Are you okay?” Chaz asked.
“Yeah, I’m fine. Just waiting on Artie still.”
“Do you think something happened to her?”
“No,” Sully said. “She’s not one to fuck with. And I heard from Tom, so I know everything is fine.”
Chaz nodded, accepting this answer. “Let me know when you get her again. I want to talk to her too. If she’s had run-ins with gangs, we could compare notes. And since I have no idea when I’m going back to the force, it would be a good use of my time.”
“Sure,” Sully said. Tom’s words from before came to him. Bring him Sunday. Meet the family. Meet Momma. Sully had been nervous to bring Chaz over before. But now it seemed natural. After today, it was like they could do anything together. “You know, Tom suggested we both go over on Sunday.”
“What’s happening on Sunday?”
“A lot of things. A seminar for the new girls and guys about how to have safewords, codes, and watch out for bad johns. Some basic biology about creatures that will help when talking about what infections spread and how to stop them. I’ll probably have dinner with Artie too. Maybe Tom. You’re welcome to come.”
“And question people then?”
“Sure, but I was also thinking we could all eat dinner. I know you don’t need to, but maybe we can get you some blood. Have that with us.”
The mention of blood seemed to make Chaz ravenous. He bit his lip, and Sully saw the sharp edges of his teeth. For a brief second, he wondered what they would feel like inside his body. What it would feel like to remove the blood. It would be intimate; it would have to be. And it was possible, from the stories that Chaz had told, that he didn’t have to change someone. As long as he didn’t cut his mouth at the same time. Maybe it would be possible for them to get close without Sully changing himself yet again.
“Okay, that’s something,” Chaz said. “I can go to see Artie and everyone. I’d like to interview people who are coming in, too, because chances are, they’ve run into our gang or perp.”
“What about reading Artie’s interviews with them? I don’t know if they’ll be up to talking with cops.”
“Those interviews are good. Believe me, this research is impressive. But I know aspects of this case that Artie doesn’t, and what doesn’t stick out to her will stick out to me.”
Sully didn’t answer for a while. Chaz inched closer to him, nudging him with his arm. “You can be there too. You’ll make them feel at ease. We work well together that way.”
“I don’t know….”
“I’ll have dinner too. Right after we’re done.”
“Yeah?”
“I’m… not sure what I’m doing, though.”
“What do you mean? Dinner is dinner….” Sully wanted to take back the question as soon as it was out of his mouth. Chaz means as a customer or as a boyfriend. Being partners was one thing, but the lines between everything else were even blurrier than before. Do you kiss a customer against the wall of a church? Give them a knife to protect themselves? Sully didn’t know, so he focused on what he did best: an exchange. Show me yours and I’ll show you mine. Bad story for bad story, an outing for an outing, crime scene for a crime scene. He grabbed Chaz’s hand and brought their bodies close together. Their lips hovered over each other, and Sully saw how much Chaz’s pupils dilated when their gazes met. Sully wanted Chaz to kiss him, fuck him, and maybe bite him. Sully swallowed back how much he wanted those things at once and focused only on Chaz. He put his hand on his thigh and kept their lips extra close as they spoke.
“How about this? If you go with me on Sunday, I’ll do something with you on Saturday. Or tonight. What do you want to do? Anything.”
“Anything?”
Sully laughed uneasily. “Well, I can veto if it’s something like bestiality. Even I have my limits.”
“Not bestiality.” Chaz ran his hand up and down Sully’s thigh, his gaze intent. After a moment of excruciating tension, Chaz barely whispered, “You know Yiddish, right?”
“Oh. Well. Not quite. I looked into it more after you asked me the first time and Yiddish is far more German than I thought. I mostly know Hebrew, and really, I’m just passable. I took a theology class in school and one of John’s buyers for his business was Hassidic. So I talked to him and his brothers a lot. Why, though?”
“Have you ever been to a synagogue?”
“Yeah, a couple times. With John. He was Jewish but nonpracticing. He only went when his business partners went.”
“I’m half-Jewish,” Chaz said. “I know I told you already, and truthfully, I don’t know what I believe, especially with what has happened to me. I never really practiced anything when I was with my family, because they had their separate traditions and what we did was more a mix of my mom’s Caribbean culture and my dad’s practices whenever holidays or special occasions came around. But there are certain things I miss, you know?”
“I can imagine. Do you miss a synagogue in particular?”
“No, not really. I know there was one my father used to go to, but I never went past a certain age. Maybe three or four? My mom never went either. She and I would hang back and make food for dinner, then talk to my father when he returned. I… I don’t know what I’m asking.”
“You don’t have to know anything for sure. But if this is what you want, then we can go.”
“We can?”
“Yeah. That’s not something I would veto. Isn’t it Shabbat too?”
“Yes, at sundown.” Chaz smiled and nodded. “Sometimes I think about it during times like this. My dad wasn’t strict about many things, but he never worked on Shabbat. As soon as he came home on Friday, he wouldn’t turn the car on. He used to make me take the bus whenever I wanted to go to a concert on a Friday night. I used to hate him for it, but now… I respect it.”
Their bodies had separated as their conversation grew more serious. Sully reached to take Chaz’s hand into his own and sat up straighter. “Is this what you want to do? Go to a temple or synagogue?”
Chaz nodded. Sully was surprised when Chaz kissed every knuckle on his hand, as if Chaz was trying to plead with him.
“We can go, then. This is easy, Chaz. Very, very easy.”