3
On Wednesday evening, Nick, Qatar, and I arrive at his school. The Monday meeting was used to make students aware of their classmate’s passing, allow them to ask questions, give them a forum to verbalize their feelings, and invite them all to the memorial service that had been scheduled for this evening. Kantrelle’s parents hadn’t been up to attending in person, the pain being too fresh. If people could agree to not dress like they were going to a funeral, the ailing mother and father agreed be virtually present. Nick and I wore sweaters and pale dress pants. Most of the other attendees looked like they were attending job interviews or wanted to look good for a cookout hosted by a new acquaintance.
Unsurprisingly, Qatar is the only one of about a hundred attendees so far who was dressed in her Clausian mourning attire. A long, dark red gown drapes to within a half inch of the floor, the fabric heavy and soft. Her sleeves bell open dramatically beneath her palms. She tops herself off with a massive hat adorned with fake poinsettias housed in rings of vinyl Christmas ferns. The most exasperating point being the crimson, lace veil unfurled in front of her face.
We keep a few paces behind her, though I think most people realize that she’s married to me and gave birth to Nick. People refuse eye contact, find a reason to move away from her, or even abruptly turn their back and shake their heads as Qatar nears them. As she passes, I see the looks of disdain, shock, and confusion as their eyes settle on me. I watch the tips of our canvas sneakers as I lead Nick over to the office off to the left, allowing Qatar to continue on her path through the center of the lobby.
“You okay?” Nick asks.
“Shouldn’t I be asking you that?”
He just nods and drops his eyes to the floor before responding.
“I don’t really know. I’m…it’s not like I knew her but…I don’t know. It still doesn’t feel…right. I’m not as bad as her parents or her friends, I guess. But I’m not…okay, really.”
“I think that’s okay,” I smile to a woman passing by with a smaller child, maybe a first grader. “Normal.”
“Normal?” Nick looks over at me with one eyebrow raised. I only seem to remember how tall he is when we stand side-by-side like this. Another growth spurt and he’ll have to start looking down at me.
“Well…” I look away. “Let me know if I can do anything.” I feel, more than see, him turn to look ahead again, into the swirling pool of uncomfortable parents, administrators, teachers, and children.
He nods before walking away toward a cluster of students about his age. Dire is among them, so they must be his classmates. Her green eyes are glistening with tears and she turns in my direction with a sorrowful smile. I respond by copying her face and nodding to her. She wraps her spindly arms around Nick’s waist as he approaches, burying her face into his stomach. Her bronze hair is covered with a pale blue scarf, but ringlets peak out on her forehead and the nape of her neck. Nick murmurs into the scarf, rubbing the back of her long, black, wool coat soothingly.
The motion makes me sad. He’s far too young for such a mature situation. Being in a position to make major strides, or major failures, in this case in unsettling. Hopeful and terrifying at the same time. None of these people, the nearly infantile to the nearly adult and beyond, deserve this. Guilt pulses within me. How foolish was it to get excited about solving these murders like they’re a puzzle. Recreational and calmly challenging. As if the stakes aren’t desperately high.
Press my back up against the wall beside the administrative office door helps steady the quaking as it begins to spread across my body. In essence, I am responsible for all the lives in this building now. All the lives in this city. Every beating heart.
That clenching of my chest begins. It feels like the ground is moving beneath me. I’m sweating.
The next body—or whether there will be one—is in my hands.
Spreading my legs and splaying my fingers across the tile behind me, I focus on slowing my breathing and reassuring myself that I’m not about to slide from the floor and into the depths of Hell. Chief Chitara promoted me for a reason. I can do this. I have to. I will.
When I open my eyes again, Qatar’s face makes me flinch. I’d give anything to be anywhere but in front of her. Hell sounds just fine.
“Faking another panic attack? All by yourself? Who’ll gasp and applaud for you, Allon?” She grabs my arm and links it with hers, nearly literally dragging me into the center of the small lobby. I hate that I cling to her, still feeling like my next footfall won’t land on solid ground.
“This is a time for this safe, quiet community to come together and support one another.” She stops and turns to face me.
“The community wants to hear from the people who are supposed to keep us safe. Even when they’re failing”
No.
“Everyone!” Qatar trills cheerfully, drawing the attention of the people nearby. Gradually, citizens come toward us from the auditorium and the gym where they’ve been milling about.
“Qatar, please—”
“My husband,” she says over my whisper, “Detective Allon Lee-Page, has graciously offered to answer questions about the apparent serial killer we have living among us.” She turns on her smile, which is more of a snarl, though maybe only I can tell. She bows, handing me the floor. “Snowflake?”
All these worried, confused eyes look at me and my body is stiff and cold, like a shell I just entered instead of the flesh I was born with.
My knees nearly give out when I hear the Chief’s voice from behind me.
“Qatar, you’ve been an officer’s spouse for more than a decade.”
She steps up beside me like nothing is wrong with her. Standing to her full six feet in a solid black suit, she looks to be in top form. As if she wasn’t in the hospital at all today.
“You forget that we don’t discuss ongoing investigations?”
The air between the two women is stifling. Thecrowd starts to back away, like they’re giving two martial artists fighting space. The seconds drag on, but neither Qatar nor Chief Chitara’s feet move an inch, though the pairs of shoes surrounding us all trickle out of my field of vision.
Finally, blessedly, Qatar’s blood-red pointed boot shifts one inch toward the gym.
“I have not forgotten, Yari.” she says, in a voice like lava. I sense the chief bristling at the use of her first name by someone she hates as much as I do. Qatar takes a few steps toward the chief, stopping in front of me just long enough to huff, before moving on.
I exhale.
“Jesus, Allon. You need to ditch that scrotum shredder. Breaking her neck almost seems like a fair trade for my job and freedom.”
“Thank you.” I might wet myself with relief.
She sucks her teeth and flicks her hand dismissively.
I begin to ask a question with “The Hub–” but she widens her eyes at me. So, I start again, more quietly. “How are you here?”
She motions for me to follow her and uses her badge to override the administrative office locks. Once the door is shut behind me, she lifts a pant leg. Beneath it, she has turned her calf so that I can see a black strip, like a band of electrical tape, along the back of it. It reaches higher up her thigh and on down into her shoes.
“An exo-skeleton. It helps refine and intensify my brain’s commands so that they actually reach the appropriate muscles.”
“So…that’s it? You’ll be okay now?”
She lets her pant leg fall in time with her face.
“Not exactly. This is a prototype I had to threaten the Hub director to get access to, let alone take out of the building. And it’s only good for about five hours.” Hands on her hips, she starts to pace in front of the long, white front desk. “It’s not a long-term solution, no.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Allon, don’t do that.” Her voice doesn’t rise, but it’s not warm either, and she continues to pace. “None of this is your fault. Or mine. It’s just life. It’s just…shit.”
She shrugs and then stops mid-step, one foot hovering a couple of inches above the ground for a second before she lowers it. She looks into my eyes for a split second, startling me. I look over at the holographic brown bear, the school mascot, stalking across the empty stone beside us.
“I know you’ve accessed the files.”
I nod. The silence builds alongside my discomfort. I swallow my knee-jerk apology and wait for her to do or say something. Finally, she brushes her thumb against her lips before asking, “And…do you have…questions?”
“Okay. Many.” I can hear the puzzlement in my own voice.
“Fuck yeah, you do,” she mumbles at the ground, still rubbing her lip. “There’s so much. And no time. The point is, I…was in love with one of them. She committed suicide.” The chief pauses, staring unblinkingly at the floor for a few seconds, then continues. “The point is…” she repeats, like a nervous tick. If Yari Chitara is anxious, things are much worse than I even imagined.
“You think this is real?” I ask. She immediately stands up to her full height, about to defend herself. I turn my palms up between us. Trying not to judge or scare her, just to show my concern and desire for understanding. She relaxes slightly.
“I don’t think so. I have no way to prove what we meant to each other, the things she did, the things their kids could do. It was…nothing I could tell anyone else about.”
Her pacing resumes and I become more perplexed. As direct as she has been in the nearly two decades that I’ve known her, this behavior is like a completely different person. Softspoken, contemplative, restrained, subdued. But that points to everything she said she experienced being the truth. I’d probably behave similarly if I had to tell someone something so outlandish. It has to be true. But how? Magic doesn’t exist. Humans don’t have special powers. Has the city’s police force really been led by a mad woman all this time?
“I don’t think there’s any way around it,” she comes to a halt again in front of me. “You’ll just have to see for yourself. Just like I did during the investigation, I can tell you everything I experienced. But, just like the other officers who heard what I knew, you’ll probably think I’ve been hallucinating or misunderstood something.” Her face goes hard, just like during the interrogation.
“Okay. Where can I see? Who can I talk to?”
“One of them. All the Wellingtons are Arrids. But none of them want to speak to me, of course.”
“Wellingtons? Like the orphanage? Solo Wellington is one of these…beings?”
“Yes.”
Wellington House is an orphanage near Ali International. The only one within about 200 miles, the number of orphaned children being so low there is no need for masses of facilities in a single city. The same way we only need a handful of officers to manage crime in Louisville. Now I remember the moment I stepped into her hospital room last week and she’d been watching Solo, the eldest, and his siblings receive a key to the city from the mayor. That look on her face had been because she’d known what they were. But why would her knowing mean she couldn’t talk to them, or that they would refuse to talk to her? If they weren’t human, and she knew about them, they could’ve used their powers to keep her from talking. But they hadn’t. Or had they?
“Allon. Come back to Earth, please.”
“Sorry, I—why did you say they won’t speak to you? Why ‘of course?’”
Her eyes flit around the room and she starts pacing again. It probably just feels good for her to tell her body to do something and have it obey.
“Solo’s one of four kids. Solo, Duo, Trio, and Hark. I met their mother and fell in love with her and we had a relationship.”
“Okay,” I say when she’s quiet for a few seconds. Her mouth tightens and she huffs, like I’m forcing her to speak against her will.
“She was…married. It was an affair.”
“An—you—” A monsoon of clarifying questions swells up within me, but I can’t get a single clear one out. Chief Chitara is one of the most honorable, responsible, upstanding people I’ve ever met in my life. The idea of her being romantically involved with someone who’s married has me reeling as much as her revelation about these “Arrids” she’s seen.
“Don’t focus on that,” she says, keeping her eyes on her feet. I close my gaping mouth, trying to fulfill her wish. But this is a bit much to take in all at once during a memorial for a dead teenager. My boss, my friend, is a cheater.
My mother’s face and my father’s wounds fill my head.
No. It’s not the same.
“We need to go. It’ll be starting soon.” She walks past me, calling her badge up on her wrist unit. I follow her out the door. Alejandro and Ngoc are just coming through the front doors, Alejandro rubbing his hand across Ngoc’s back. Her eyes are pink and she looks like she hasn’t slept in a week. Alejandro’s expression is shockingly compassionate as he pulls Ngoc closer to him. We nod to them as we pass.
“Allon, I am going to be in surgeries for the foreseeable future, so you really have to dive into taking the lead on this one. Even with the media.” She waves to people who greet her as she makes her way into the auditorium. “I’ll hang back here. Batterie’s almost done. It’s a safe bet to consider yourself on your own from here on out.”
My boss may have broken up a marriage, magic is real, I am hunting a supernatural killer, and I’m on my own. Fuck me.
Chief Chitara takes a quick step to the right as she enters the auditorium door and leans back against the polished, white wall, eyes roving over everyone who is filing into the room.
“Get a meeting with Kantrelle’s guidance counselor,” she says in a low voice.
“Flora Manning,” I pull from my memory of the case.
“Yes. Go sit.”
I comply, headed to a seat just a few feet in front of the chief. As far away from Nick as I can get. If Qatar comes to find me, she won’t bother him. He’s on a rear row across the room, one arm around a sobbing Dire, her face buried into his chest. His eyes are wet and the site pulverizes my insides, so I look away.
There is a holographic display hovering above the right end of the stage, Kantrelle’s miserable-looking parents framed within it. They nod to sympathizers who greet them before being seated, get up as they need to grab a tissue or something to drink, and console one another through fits of despair. Solid, supportive. How could Yari interfere with something like that? Then again, if my own parent could, why couldn’t someone who didn’t have any children? No wonder the Wellingtons don’t speak to her. It’s probably just her luck they haven’t had her assassinated. Or done it themselves.
I turn to the door, throwing my left forearm over the top of the seat next to me, hoping to wave Qatar over to me before she gets too close to the display and the parents see her ridiculous attire. But a group of people entering the auditorium in a cluster gives me pause. There are six of them total and there is no question that they’re related. Noticing Solo among them, I realize they are the Wellingtons.
I don’t know the man at the front of the group, but he could be a model with a tall, slender, powerful physique, long sable locs reaching down to his ankles. He’s dressed in a snug, navy blue sweater and jeans. He—along with the other five people—has locked eyes with me. There is a small, stunning woman with short, electric blue locs curled all over her head in a way that reminds me of Medusa. Another woman is taller, but with a short, red mohawk, the shaved parts of her head an inky black. The other men look more like trees than humans, with massive chests and arms straining the fabric of their matching scarlet button-up shirts. My heartbeat picks up. The look on their faces is not one of familiarity or even curiosity. It’s something more desperate, almost predatory.
The long-haired lead man puts his arm out as Solo looks like he’s about to come my way. He’s too far away from me to hear his words, but whatever he says makes Solo step back and the rest of his family visibly relax.
I feel a hand press my forearm hard into the back of the seat. I look up to see Chief Chitara smile wearily.
“That’s Duo, with the longest hair. You know Solo, and the woman with the blue hair is Trio. The redhead is Hark. The big guys are Daddy Wellington, Pace, and Uncle Lux…Vanity’s brother.”
The new names and faces are committed to memory as she speaks. The pain in her voice labels Vanity as the deceased mother.
Turning back to the group, Duo is starting at me with a pair of unsettling silver eyes. Not the pale gray that I’ve seen in other people’s irises, but a hard, glistening metallic hue more like polished platinum. I could swear they’re glowing from across the room. Too bright to be so far away.
“Allon, look at me.”
I do.
“I chose you for a reason. Not Oleg. Not Alejandro. You. You can do this.”
With that, she turns and walks out into the lobby. The entire Wellington group’s eyes follow her. There is disdain thicker than the tension between Yari and Qatar directed at the chief’s back.
Duo snaps his head back to me as if I called out to him, but finally directs his group to continue on down the center aisle. I find myself standing, unable to take my eyes off of his, and he doesn’t break eye contact with me. He uses Solo’s shoulder to guide him so he can keep staring at me without running into anything. Finally, he reaches a row at the front of the auditorium. Looking into his eyes is not uncomfortable or awkward, even though I don’t know him. I have an alarmingly strong urge to walk over to him. Why? To say what? To do what?
When he sits and turns to the stage, the connection is severed, an odd spell broken. I slowly descend back into my chair.
“Jesus help me, I’m in the ladies room for two minutes and you…why did you sit all the way back here?” Qatar’s voice makes me cringe. She’s looking around for a better pair of seats, or maybe for Nick.
“I saved one for you,” I say, glancing at the back of the Duo’s head, the profile of his face as he turns to talk to Solo.
“What a dumb thing to say. I can see that. Santa bring you a brain,” Qatar waits for me to step out of the row and allow her inside. The seats are filling in quickly. I don’t dare glance at Nick lest she follow my gaze and spot him.
The lights dim and the principal calls for everyone’s silence and attention. She says some consoling words to the parents and thanks everyone for their attendance, noting how much of a rare tragedy it is to have someone so young taken in such a heinous manner. To my surprise, the next person she calls up is a Duo.
He ascends the short stairs to one side of the stage and stands at the podium in place of the principle. He looks ill standing up there, nodding his acknowledgement to the screen showing the sorrowful faces of Kantrelle’s parents before he begins to speak.
“I’m not sure how long I can stand to be up here. But I just want to say that tutoring Kantrelle really was a joy. She’s…she was a bright girl. She struggled with personal living skills a little bit.”
Kantrelle’s parents and many of the staff smile or laugh softly.
“And we worked hard on that, but I think…I think that, for her, it was difficult because she had a mind that was always going about big picture concepts so much that she couldn’t focus on the little things very well. She could dream about owning her own house, but couldn’t pay her bills on time in a simulation. That sort of thing.” He smiles, but his head drops. He takes a step back from the podium, still clinging to it with his hands so hard even I can see the veins on the backs of his palms. My throat constricts.
He composes himself and stands up straight again, waving off the offer of a tissue from the principal.
“I want justice—vengeance for Kantrelle. No one had a right to do this. No one.” Duo turns to Kantrelle’s parents. “Kandice and Trellion, I am so very sorry. If there is anything at all that you need from me, please just call me.”
Her father, the one who attacked me the night she died, opens his mouth to reply, but just swallows and nods instead. Duo does the same and then descends the stairs and collapses into a chair next to Solo who puts an arm around him. When Solo looks back at me, I avert my gaze.
“So sad,” Qatar murmurs.
What is it with me and this family? Do they know me from somewhere? I don’t know that I’ve ever interacted with any of them until now, but they look like they want to pounce on me for some reason.
The rest of the service consists of various people who knew Kantrelle getting up and talking about their relationship with her, their fond memories, and how brokenhearted they were to hear of her murder. I spot Alejandro and Ngoc just a couple of rows in front of us and slightly to the left. Alejandro looks intensely uncomfortable while Ngoc shudders in his arms. Kantrelle’s parents were able to tough it out, but the strain this event puts on them is evident in their faces. Finally, after about an hour and a half, the principle calls the memorial service to a close by announcing that one of the trees in the park across the street would be dedicated to Kantrelle and cared for by her classmates until they graduate at the end of the year. As soon as she’s done speaking, every Wellington’s gaze locks on me as they rise to leave.
I get messages from Nick and the chief back-to-back at that moment.
Nick is going to go to Dire’s house instead of coming home with us.
The chief thinks the killer might see this memorial as the next best thing to the scene of the crime. Here, they’ll get a full dose of the impact the murder had. The power they have over the state of the city.
Whoever killed Kantrelle is in that auditorium with you right now.
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