Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty

The Supreme Court - DI Marchant

The door to Lily's chambers bore no name, just a number: 714. Marchant watched as MacTire pressed his palm against the dark wood, muttering something under his breath. Something shimmered briefly into view under MacTire's hand, stretched taut across the door, before disappearing with a 'pop' that burst across my skin, tickling like static electricity.

"What?" I managed to stutter out before MacTire silenced me with a look.

"A ward," MacTire explained, pushing the door open, "they're standard procedure for sealing off a crime scene, something to keep out unauthorised visitors and magical interference... though," a growl rumbled deep in his throat, "someone's been here recently. Very recently."

My investigative instincts prickled. "How can you tell?"

"The wards have been disturbed. And..." MacTire's nostrils flared. "Remnants of someone's scent lingers. They've tried to scrub it, but it's still there..."

The chambers beyond spoke of interrupted life. A half-finished cup of tea sat on a cluttered desk, a thin film of stale liquid beginning to form on its surface. Bookshelves lined every wall, their contents jumbled together without apparent order. A laundry basket overflowed with clean clothes, still waiting to be put away.

My body seemed to move of its own accord, my feet stopping in front of the largest bookcase. My eyes skimmed over the shelves, landing on a stack of worn, leather-bound books, taking in the strange symbols carved into the leather.

"She wasn't like Raven, was she?" I murmured.

MacTire's attention snapped to me. His eyes narrowed. "What makes you say that?"

I stepped closer to the bookshelves, fingers hovering near the spines. "These," I said, pointing to what I assumed to be titles. "She was studying something. A lot of them look... well, specialised. These marks look familiar... magical... She..."

MacTire's hand shot out, grabbing my wrist before I could touch a book. "Don't," he warned, his voice low and firm. "You don't touch any of those."

I frowned, confused. "Why?"

"Those are grimoires," he explained, his gaze flicking to the shelves with unease. "No telling what kind of charms or protections are on them. If you grab the wrong one..." He trailed off, the implication hanging in the air. "Things could go very wrong."

I nodded slowly, the weight of his warning sinking in. "Right. I'll keep my distance."

I moved away from the bookcases, carefully stepping through the space, cataloguing details with practised precision. "She was investigating something."

MacTire's attention snapped back to me. "What makes you say that?"

"Look at how it's arranged. Chaos on the surface, but..." I gestured to the desk. "The mess is methodical. Like my case boards when I'm working multiple angles. She was hiding her work in plain sight."

A notebook lay open, its pages filled with what looked like shopping lists and daily appointments. But I caught patterns in the seemingly mundane entries. Dates ranging over the last few years. Names that appeared too regularly to be coincidence.

"Over here." MacTire stood before a full-length mirror, head tilted. "The scent is strongest over here, but something's off..."

I approached, and yeah, something was off. There was a subtle distortion in the mirror's surface, like heat waves rising from summer pavement--I would have dismissed it as a trick of the light, or maybe put it down to a lack of decent sleep had I not felt an inexplicable urge to step back, as though the mirror itself was repelling me. MacTire prodded and probed at various points around the frame, until a sharp click echoed round the empty room. The urge to look away vanished as the glass swung forward, revealing a hidden compartment.

"Clever girl," he muttered, reaching inside. His hand travelled deeper and deeper into the void--far deeper than should have been possible, as though the space behind it had no end at all, like the reflection of a room that wasn't there.

MacTire's hand finally withdrew from the compartment, gripping a stack of papers, yellowed and brittle with age. He set them down on the desk with a soft thud, flipping through them with practised ease.

"Diaries," he muttered, pulling one out and dropping it onto the table as his attention shifted immediately to the next item--a large, folded map. He spread it out carefully, his brow creasing as he took in the markings scrawled all over it.

I leaned in, my pulse quickening. Several locations were circled in bold, red ink. I recognised them immediately--each marked the spot where the one of the Coven Killer's victims had been found.

"These are the murder sites," I said, pointing to the map, my voice tight. "But... what about these other places?"

I traced my finger to the additional marks scattered across the map. The locations seemed random--places I didn't recognise, some of them on the outskirts of the city, others as far away as Winchester.

MacTire didn't answer immediately. He just studied the map for a long moment, his brow furrowed. I glanced at him, waiting for his reaction. Finally, he shrugged, his eyes flicking up to mine, giving nothing away. "Could be anything," he said quietly, then turned his attention back to the papers.

I didn't buy it. "But these other locations... they have to be connected, don't they?"

MacTire's expression didn't change, but the silence that followed felt heavy with something unspoken. Then, without looking up from the papers, he added, "Maybe, maybe not... I don't see anything obvious."

I swallowed, my mind racing. I glanced at the map again. The locations of the murders--marked in red--were no accident. But these other spots... what could they be? And why would Lily have been looking at them?

I turned my attention to the papers MacTire had spread across the desk, settling on the list of names. Some were crossed out, others highlighted and I didn't recognise a single one... until I saw it. A name that made my stomach tighten with anticipation.

"Raaf," I whispered, my finger tracing over the ink, "Leif Sigmundson - can't be many of those floating about... isn't that the guy Raven mentioned earlier?"

MacTire's gaze flicked up, his jaw tightening as recognition flickered in his eyes. "Raaf?" he echoed, his voice low, a touch of something dangerous underneath. "Yeah, he's a wolf like me, you've met him actually... let me look at that."

I felt a cold knot form in my chest as MacTire pulled the page towards himself. Raaf--a man, a werewolf, I'd apparently met already--being in that list couldn't be a coincidence...

I glanced over at MacTire, his fingers brushing over the names. He leaned back, a weary sigh escaping him as he looked up from the paper in his hands. "Most of these people... they're members of the Court--" he said, the weight of those words hanging in the air.

"That's not just a random list of names," I said, my voice tight. "Do these have something to do with the murders?"

MacTire stared at the page, lips pressed in a thin line. "I don't know," he said at last, his voice low and edged with something unreadable. "But Lily seemed to think she was on to something... and got too close to something dangerous maybe?"

"So she was following people, tracking patterns," I said, spreading the map across the desk. "Look--these red markers are where bodies were found. So these blue ones... may be future sites?"

MacTire rifled through the journals, frowning, before lifting a sealed envelope. His fingers brushed the ornate wax seal. "We can't open this," he muttered, holding it up. "It's addressed to Raven."

My fingers itched to reach for the envelope, but I hesitated. A whisper of logic tried to drown out the insistent pull of my curiosity. "We're not going to learn anything from just staring at it," I said, forcing calm into my voice. "But we can't just leave it? Can we?"

MacTire shot me a look, but before he could answer, I felt the pull beckoning me forward. My feet moved without permission, and my hand reached for the letter.

"Marchant, don't--"

"You'll note," MacTire growled, "that I said 'can't' not 'shouldn't'... you ok down there?"

I rubbed my head, and blinked up at him through slitted eyes--my brain slowly catching up with my new position.

"Ow?" I half asked, half ground out in frustration, every muscle aching as if I'd received a massive electric shock. I didn't know what, exactly, had happened but finding myself on the floor surrounded by books and the debris of what used to be a bookshelf, clear across the room from where I'd been standing was all adding up to a booby trap of some kind.

"Noted." I ground out through clenched teeth. "Now, don't just stand there looking smug, help me up already."

MacTire swept forward, brushing aside the debris, and froze. His hand hovered over a small figurine, fingers tightening around it. His jaw clenched as he inhaled deeply. "Electronics," he growled, holding it up for me to see. "It's a camera. Someone's been monitoring her."

My eyebrows shot up. "From a sniff? Seriously?"

Ignoring my incredulity, MacTire threw the figurine to the floor, shattering it in a single, deliberate motion. Amid the wreckage, a tiny lens mounted to a thin circuit board glinted like a shard of glass. He bent down, retrieving it with a grim expression.

"Well," I said, trying to shake off the residual haze from my encounter with the wall, "I guess her investigation wasn't as secret as she thought."

"No," MacTire agreed, pulling what looked like a microSD card from the back of the device. "Someone found out." He straightened, his eyes scanning the room as if expecting the walls themselves to tell him who. "The question is, did they find what they were looking for?"

I opened my mouth to ask but stopped as he gestured silently toward the floor. My eyes dipped to where he was pointing, where faint scuff marks were almost imperceptible on the floorboards. Nearby, a drawer sat pulled out just a fraction too far, its contents poking out. A few books on the shelves I hadn't demolished leant at irregular angles, breaking the room's careful chaos.

"Ah," I muttered, heat rising to my cheeks. "Of course the place had been searched. I, uh, probably should've noticed that sooner."

MacTire glanced at me, one brow raised in wry amusement. "You took a pretty good knock to the noggin," he said dryly, offering a hand to pull me to my feet. "I'll let it slide this time."

Brushing myself off, I frowned at the figurine's remains. "So, this card--I hope we've got footage of whoever searched this place..."

MacTire's lips pressed into a thin line as he pocketed the card. "If it hasn't been tampered with, maybe. But whoever planted this wasn't careless. They probably didn't leave much behind."

"And if they were smart enough to cover their tracks," I said, thinking aloud, "they either weren't worried about being found or figured they'd already got everything they needed."

MacTire's eyes darkened, his voice low. "Or they knew exactly what they were looking for--and knew it wasn't here anymore."

The weight of his words settled over us. If Lily's room had been under surveillance, her movements and research weren't just compromised--they'd been catalogued, and somebody from the Court was in this right up to their neck.

"The fact is," I said, staring at the scattered evidence of Lily's investigation, "someone noticed what she was doing. Got suspicious enough to plant surveillance."

MacTire nodded grimly. "And they were thorough enough to hide their tracks. Which means anyone connected to these names..." He gestured at the list. "We can't trust any of them. Not until we know more."

"What about Raven?" I asked, fingering the sealed letter. "This was meant for her. And she couldn't have got through that ward, right? Plus..." I hesitated, remembering how Raven's sharp edges had softened when she spoke of her adoptive sister. "If anyone deserves to know what Lily found, it's her."

A low growl rumbled in MacTire's throat. "Maybe. But Lily went to all this trouble to keep her investigation hidden, even from her own sister. We need to be careful about--"

He froze. Before I could ask what was wrong, footsteps echoed in the corridor outside.

MacTire blurred into motion, sweeping the journals and maps back into the mirror. But the letter to Raven remained on Lily's desk taunting me. My fingers twitched towards it, answering the silent demand that I act, stopping short as I recalled what happened the last time I'd touched it.

The door started to swing inward. With no choice but to risk another shock or leave evidence in plain sight, I grabbed it. Raaf stepped through the now open door, moving with a predator's grace that made me grateful he was supposed to be on our side. His nostrils flared slightly--scenting the room just as MacTire had done earlier.

I let out an involuntary sigh of relief--part triumph at securing the letter, part surprise at not being thrown across the room again. Raaf's gaze flickered to me at the sound, his expression unreadable.

"Everything alright in here?" he asked, voice carefully neutral. "Thought I heard something fall."