Summary:
Quest Investigations #3
This client is all wet...
After receiving a hot tip on the whereabouts of my almost-boyfriend’s nearly-ex-husband (hey, I told you—it’s complicated!), I thought my love life was finally coming up for air. But when we stake out the remote lake, it’s not the ex who surfaces.
It’s the Faerie King’s long-missing mother (and I mean really long, as in double-digit centuries), and she wants to hire Quest Investigations. Since one of my bosses is the king’s brother, he has a tsunami of…feelings about her as a potential client, and refuses to take the case. Instead, he passes it to me.
Yes! However…
Should I be thrilled at the vote of confidence or suspicious that he’s tossing me in the deep end without a life preserver, the better to punish the woman who abandoned her kid all those years ago?
You know what? It doesn’t matter. I may be Quest’s token human, but I’ve proven I can get the job done, so I dive right in. Then the lady explains what she wants me to do: find her missing child.
Seriously? I expected more of a challenge. All I have to do is introduce her to the king and bingo, case closed. But when she says, "Not that one," this little family drama threatens to send ripples throughout the supernatural community—especially with my boss in over his head as the prime suspect in a fae kidnapping.
As if things weren’t complicated enough… Remember that nearly-ex? When he shows up and muddies the waters, I’m faced with a choice: I can solve this case or I can finally hook my almost-boyfriend.
Dammit.
The Lady Under the Lake is the third in the Quest Investigations M/M mystery series, a spinoff of E.J. Russell’s Mythmatched paranormal rom-com story world. It contains no on-page sex or violence, and although there is a romantic subplot, it is not a romance. The series is best read in order.
Summary:
Psycop #4
Victor Bayne’s job as a PsyCop involves tracking down dead people and getting them to spill their guts about their final moments. It's never been fun, per se. But it's not usually this annoying.
Vic has just moved in with his boyfriend Jacob, he can’t figure out where anything’s packed, and his co-worker is pressuring him to have a housewarming party. Can’t a guy catch a break?
On a more sinister note, Vic discovers there’s absolutely no trace of him online. No trace of anyone else who trained at "Camp Hell," either. Everyone Vic knows has signed a mysterious set of papers to ensure his “privacy.” The contracts are so confidential that even Vic has never heard of them. But Jacob might have.
What other secrets has Jacob been keeping?
Vic has just moved in with his boyfriend Jacob, he can’t figure out where anything’s packed, and his co-worker is pressuring him to have a housewarming party. Can’t a guy catch a break?
On a more sinister note, Vic discovers there’s absolutely no trace of him online. No trace of anyone else who trained at "Camp Hell," either. Everyone Vic knows has signed a mysterious set of papers to ensure his “privacy.” The contracts are so confidential that even Vic has never heard of them. But Jacob might have.
What other secrets has Jacob been keeping?
Original Audiobook Review October 2026:
How has it been over 6 years since I first discovered PsyCop? Listening to Gomez Pugh's narration brought it all flooding back as if it was yesterday. I think I expressed my love of Secrets, the series, of Vic & Jacob, & the world building in my original review and don't want to risk spoiling anything by adding more. I will say, the combo of romance, mystery, and paranormal tells a story of danger that entertains you and leaves you never wanting Secrets to end.
As I said in the previous reviews I'm late to the party with this series, 10+ years late but oh my god it doesn't matter because PsyCop is absolutely brilliant! The world building, creating a world where psychic/paranormal phenomenon is not only an integral part of society but woven so realistically and believably into said society that from all other aspects is pretty much as we know it, well it makes one expect to see a PsyCop badge the next time you're unlucky enough to see a cop at your door. Do I actually want to live in Vic and Jacob's world of psychic danger? I don't know as I'd go that far but I sure am loving tagging along for the ride.
So, Secrets, well the title pretty much says it all, there are secrets everywhere and Vic's need to find them may lead to more than just answers, they may lead to heartbreak. But for all the intricacies of the story you'll have to read it for yourself, because I'm sure there are others like me who are new to the world of PsyCop too and for them I don't want to ruin anything.
The blending of humor, heat, mystery, romance, danger, paranormal, and all around mayhem is incredible making this another great entry in an already superb series.
Artist Kisses for the Omega by Lacey Daize
Summary:Mountain Springs Omegas #7
Benjamin thought he'd escaped his mother's machinations, but something is calling him home.
Benjamin escaped Mountain Springs once before: eight years ago when he decided to enlist rather than have his mother foist an alpha on him. His original plan had been to stay as far away as possible, but when the time to re-enlist arrives, he finds he can't do it. He returns home, unsure of his decision. Then he runs into his old high school crush.
Philip wants a mate, but without being tied down by all the alpha stereotypes.
Philip lives in a world of expectations. An alpha-born alpha, he's expected to be among the best of the best. But that's not what he wants for himself. He pursued painting rather than a typical job like business, and he wants a strong omega, rather than one who will expect all the traditional alpha mindsets. He's starting to wonder if love is in the cards for him when he comes across a former soldier, and the most beautiful man he's ever met.
The attraction is mutual, and instant. But can love blossom when meddling parents have other plans in mind?
Recipe for Romance
One Artist Alpha
One Veteran Omega
A Chance Meeting
A Meddling Mother
The Push of Fate
Artist Kisses for the Omega is a 15.2K word , non-shifter, M/M, Mpreg romance, featuring a tough-as-nails omega, a gentle alpha, some knotty fun, and plenty of being true to oneself
It was such a treat reading this one with the alpha/omega relationship not what you usually see. It's a nice blend of typical and a-typical when it comes to Benjamin and Philip's roles in the journey. It really isn't that huge a part of the overall journey but it just adds an extra level of entertaining joy.
One thing that really stood out for me here is the Benjamin's mother. I had an amazing relationship with my mom so reading bad moms always stands out and in standing out they also tend to fall under my sharper eye. What seems like a mom who wants her son to find a mate is masking something far worse, I won't say more as I feel I've leaked too much already. Just know if you want happy happy moms, be aware.
Artist Kisses is just an all around joy(despite the above mentioned mom) that entertains and warms the heart, all the things I've come to love in the Mountain Springs Omegas series so far.
RATING:
Summary:
Cold Case Psychic #6
Cold Case Detective and newlywed, Ronan O’Mara, is sitting on top of the world. When he returns to work after his honeymoon, he finds more waiting for him than a stack of dusty cold case files. Hidden in the mail on Ronan’s desk is a letter from Tank Hutchins, aka The Riverside Ripper. Convicted of murdering a woman three years ago, Tank claims he is innocent and asks Ronan and Tennyson for their help in proving who really committed the crime: his twin brother, Tim.
Psychic, Tennyson Grimm, is reluctant to meet with the convicted murderer who’s placed his faith in Ten’s gift. When Tennyson realizes Tank is innocent of the crime for which he’s serving twenty-five to life, he knows that he and Ronan have to do whatever it takes to set things right.
Together with Tank’s private investigator, the mysterious Jude Byrne, Ronan and Tennyson retrace the steps of the original investigation hoping to find the one piece of evidence that will get Tank’s conviction overturned and bring the real killer to light.
When new evidence leads them to believe there’s a larger conspiracy at play, will Tennyson and Ronan be able to find the killer before he returns to complete his diabolical plan?
Medium Trouble #3
Hiro
Seeing the dead has never been easy, but the last thing I expected was to be a pawn in a serial killer’s game.
Moving in with Maddox was supposed to be the only thing we needed to worry about. Not a dead teacher, and not the fact that a serial killer knows my abilities. Following the trail left behind leaves us racing against time to figure out how to stop the murders before the final victim falls. Thankfully, I’m not alone. Maddox and my wonderful team of unusual ghosts are there to make sure that we don’t end up players in this twisted game.
Maddox
Nothing is drawn to Hiro like danger and ghosts, and this time, he’s managed to find himself tangled in both. Suddenly I find myself caught between protecting Hiro and saving the lives of those who are next on a deadly list. The killer’s mistake is that he doesn’t realize just how far Hiro and I will go, and that we’re going to end this game before the final pawn falls.
The Lady Under the Lake by EJ Russell
Chapter One
“Does Zeke know you’re coffee-cheating on him?”
Eleri glared up at me from under her shiny brown bangs. “I’m not coffee-cheating. I’m engaging in beverage diversification.” Her gaze shifted to the woman behind the cash register at Wonderful Mug Coffee Shop and her expression went—dare I say it? No, I couldn’t, not out loud. Eleri might classify herself as my BFF, but she tended to take exception when anybody other than her broke out the dryad humor.
Oh, what the heck. I needed to vent a little steam somehow.
“If I didn’t know you better,” I murmured as we moved toward the counter, “I’d call that look positively…sappy.”
She tore her gaze away from the cashier to glare at me again. “I will hurt you, Hugh.”
I smirked down at her. “You won’t. You luuuurrrve me. In a very platonic way, of course.”
“You know,” she said, eyes narrowing, “for somebody who’s probably getting some regularly, you’re in a remarkably prickly mood. I’d have thought Lachlan would have banged you into a state of bliss by now.”
At her mention of my almost-boyfriend, it was my turn to scowl. “We haven’t been able to follow up on that lead on Wyn’s whereabouts yet.” Was I whining? Yeah, probably. After our last case at Quest, a grateful Herne the Hunter had gifted us the location of Lachlan’s soon-to-be-ex-husband, and I’d had visions of falling into bed with my selkie hottie before dinner. “We drove all the way to Eugene and then the beaver clan who owns the lake wouldn’t let us launch Lachlan’s new canoe. Apparently there was some coming of age thingy for one of their kits. No outsiders allowed. Then Lachlan got a last-minute fishing trip call.” Followed by back-to-back bookings for the last two weeks, curse Oregon’s unexpectedly sunny October weather.
Eleri gave me a wicked grin. “Guess those best laid plans went a little agley, eh?”
“Shut up, or I’ll tell Zeke you’ve been scoring lattes behind his back.” Our demon office manager kept us well supplied with some of the best coffee in the known universe, given his access to druid-blessed coffee beans.
She sniffed. “We’re not exclusive. Besides”—her expression shifted to her usual lively mischief—“he’s distracted this morning.”
I blinked. “Wait. You’ve already been to the office? Why do you need Wonderful Mug then?”
She rolled her eyes. “Oh, please. You of all people should be able to sympathize with a little extracurricular flirting. Unresolved sexual tension for the win,” she said when the cashier—Sierra—smiled brightly at her, before calling an older man over to the register and taking her place behind the espresso machine.
I frowned. “Sierra’s a barista now?”
Eleri’s cheeks turned pink beneath her tan. “Only for me.”
I narrowed my eyes. “Exactly how often do you come here?”
“None of your business.”
“She’s human, Eleri.”
“I could make the obvious response, Hugh, but that would be beneath us both.”
I flinched, but tried to cover it with a cough. You know, sometimes I actually forgot? That I was human too? I was surrounded by the supernatural community at work and in my personal life, given that I was sort-of-dating a selkie. But my knowledge and participation were the exception. Most humans had no idea that supes walked among them.
Unless said supe screwed up and gave themselves away, thus endangering not only themselves, but their human friend-slash-paramour and the entire paranormal community.
I was learning there were exceptions, grandfathered in when the Secrecy Pact was initiated after virtually all the European-born vampires migrated to the United States through Faerie following World War I. Long story, but the only part of it I was interested in personally was the selkie-human relationship exception clause that meant Lachlan and I could actually be together once he severed the handfasting knot with his fae husband.
Something that would be a lot easier once we actually found the man.
Since I wasn’t totally lacking in self-preservation instincts, I chose to ignore that particular conversational black hole. I cleared my throat. “Zeke’s distracted, so you’re doing him a favor by scoring contraband beverages?”
“Not contraband, Hugh. You’re as bad as my clan chief,” she groused, “blathering on about how we shouldn’t drink anything but unfiltered rain water, same as our trees. Tradition.” Her voice was loaded with disdain. “Bah. Nothing but an excuse for laziness if you ask me.”
“I don’t know,” I said as we stepped up to the counter. “Some traditions are okay.” I was depending on one in particular. Counting on it, in fact. But the selkie/human loophole was one that expanded freedoms. Eleri’s clan chief seemed only interested in the traditions that removed them. I couldn’t blame Eleri for trying to—yep, I was going there—stick it to him.
“Same again, Flora?” Sierra called, addressing Eleri by the Mug name I’d given her the first time I’d dragged her to the shop.
“Again?” I murmured. “You’ve been here already today?”
She elbowed me in the ribs and smiled at Sierra. “Absolutely. And a flat white for my annoying friend here. He could use the extra caffeine.”
Sierra grinned at me. “Morning, Hugh. Nice to see you again.”
“You too, Sierra,” I said with a somewhat forced smile. After Eleri graciously allowed me to pay for both our drinks, I dragged her over near the windows while we waited for Sierra to prepare them. “Exactly how distracted is Zeke?”
“Very.” Her peat-brown eyes sparkled, although I wasn’t sure if it was because she dearly loved gossip—all fae did—or because Sierra kept casting her flirty glances over the milk steamer. “The King and Queen are coming to our office today.”
I blinked at that. “The King and Queen. Of Faerie?”
She nodded. “Mmhmm. And Zeke’s freaking out a little, trying to make sure everything is perfect.”
“Why? Not why is Zeke dithering, but why are they coming to us?” Since Niall O’Tierney, one of our Quest bosses, was the King’s half-brother, interacting with His Majesty wasn’t completely unheard of, but most of the time we went to him. And as far as I knew, the Queen had never crossed our threshold. She never left Faerie. Maybe because she sort of was Faerie, or at least its avatar. I mean, I’m sure Niall must see both of them more often, although my brain stuttered at the image of what a Sunday dinner at their Keep must be like.
“I think,” she said, low-voiced, “that Niall’s getting ready to propose to Gareth. He’s consulting with Their Majesties about the details.”
“He doesn’t need their permission, does he?” Niall’s boyfriend, Gareth Kendrick, was the last true bard in Faerie, and in the past, their union might have been problematic, given that Niall was Unseelie fae and Gareth was Seelie—think Chaotic Neutral and Lawful Good. But after the Convergence that merged the two spheres, the fae were all one big dysfunctional family now. Besides, the King was Unseelie and the Queen was Seelie, so any cross-sphere objection would be pretty hypocritical.
She chuckled. “Not permission. I think Niall’s actually nervous.”
“Nervous? Are you serious? He and Gareth have been in love for literally two centuries. He can’t be afraid Gareth’s going to say no, is he?”
“Love is a funky thing, Hugh,” she said, her gaze resting on Sierra. “It screws with your logic.”
“Good point,” I muttered. My own relationship wasn’t exactly logical. All I can say is if you’d ever met Lachlan in all his upright, grumpy glory, you wouldn’t question it in the least. “So are you just going to hang around here all day, sucking up more caffeine than is good for you and making goo-goo eyes at Sierra?”
“I do not make goo-goo eyes,” she said, totally making goo-goo eyes. “I’m here to meet Blair.”
“Blair?” I blinked. “Lachlan’s friend Blair?”
She nodded. “It’s some kind of teacher development day, so they don’t have school. I like the kid, and since you’re spiriting Lachlan away on another Wyn hunt, I volunteered to hang out with them.” She wrinkled her nose. “The less time they have to spend around their revolting father, the better.”
I liked Blair too. “You don’t have to. They could come with Lachlan and me.”
She huffed. “Please. Like I’d expose them to that. They’re only twelve. You’d probably scar them for life.”
I gaped at her. “We’d never do anything in front of a kid! We won’t do anything, anyway. Once we find Wyn, he and Lachlan still have to go through the sundering ceremony before Lachlan’s officially unmarried.” Lachlan, stickler for keeping his promises that he was, refused to so much as kiss me on the mouth while he was still married. We’d had some world-class hugs—and there might have been a little friction involved, if you know what I mean—and he’d kissed my hand and the top of my head, but nothing more. And you know what? Eleri had a point about unresolved sexual tension. Because yowzer. The anticipation was approaching critical mass with every heated look Lachlan tossed me.
That didn’t mean I wanted it to go on forever, though. Remember my boss and his two hundred year relationship? Yeah, supes are really long-lived. Humans? Not so much. I wasn’t willing to wait until I was past my sell-by date to hook up with Lachlan.
But with any luck, today we’d remove our last big impediment and be that much closer to our own personal supernova.
Sierra bustled over to us wearing a purple pea coat that matched Wonderful Mug’s signature to-go cups, two of said cups in her hands. “Here you go. I’m all set.”
I took my cup, giving Eleri the side-eye as she took hers. “All set?”
Eleri lifted her chin. “Once Lachlan drops Blair off, we’re going to the zoo,” she said almost defiantly.
Sierra grinned, dark eyes crinkling at the corners as she retrieved two more cups from the counter. “Animals smashing pumpkins! It’s the best. We’re meeting my ex there, along with her sisters and niblings.” Sierra must have read the shock on my face because she buffeted my arm. “We’re still friends, Hugh. No drama at all.”
“Right,” I said doubtfully as Lachlan’s truck pulled up outside. “Looks like my ride’s here.”
The three of us left the shop and clustered on the sidewalk in the chilly breeze. Lachlan got out and circled around the front of the truck, his hands in the pockets of his sea-green anorak. “Good morning, Matthew.” I still shivered whenever Lachlan said my name—MattHugh—like he could see both sides of me: Matt Steinitz, ex-tabloid photographer, and Hugh Mann, Quest investigator. He nodded at the two women next to me. “Ladies.” He lifted his left eyebrow, the one with the scar bisecting it.
Since Sierra was gazing up at Lachlan, her eyes wide, I said, “Lachlan, this is Sierra Rose. Sierra, Lachlan Brodie.”
“Wow.” She held out a hand to shake his. “You look exactly like Jason Momoa as Aquaman.”
Lachlan’s lips quirked. “So I’ve been told.” He opened the passenger door for Blair to climb out.
The kid seemed a little paler than when last I’d seen them, not that they’d ever looked especially robust in their oversized army surplus jacket. Their long brown hair whipped in the breeze, almost as though it had a life of its own, probably because Blair wasn’t wearing their rainbow beanie. However, they were sporting a pair of narrow, rectangular glasses that I didn’t remember from the other times we’d met, the red frames matching the sweater under their jacket—a sweater I knew Lachlan had purchased for them.
“Hey, Blair,” Eleri said brightly. “Cool glasses!”
“Thanks,” Blair murmured. As usual, they didn’t focus on anyone’s face—they had a condition called prosopagnosia, facial blindness. However, they had an excellent memory for other features—relative size, voice timbre, and fashion choices. Their smile dawned when they spotted Eleri’s forest green Doc Martens.
“This is my friend, Sierra. We’ll be meeting some of her friends at the zoo.”
“I’m pleased to meet you, Blair.” Sierra held out the second cup. “This is for you, if you like hot chocolate. If not, I can whip you up something else before we go.”
“I like hot chocolate.” They took the cup. “Thank you. Your coat’s the same color.”
Sierra grinned. “When something works, it works. Know what I’m saying?”
Lachlan rested one big hand on Blair’s shoulder. “Call me if you need me. Otherwise, I’ll pick you up this afternoon.”
“Oh stop fussing, Lachlan,” Eleri said, linking her elbow with Blair’s. “We’re going to have fun and won’t think about you even once. Right, Blair?”
Blair smiled up at her with the same hero worship they reserved for Lachlan. “Well, maybe once.”
Lachlan chuckled. “I’ll not take that personally. Have a good time.” He opened the door and gestured me inside with a smile that made my toes curl. “We’ve got an appointment to keep, Matthew, if you’re ready.”
I raised my cup in farewell to Eleri, Sierra, and Blair, and practically leaped into the truck—not easy, since it had no running boards and the cab was about three feet off the ground, but I managed. Heck, I practically flew.
Because the end of my very long, very dry spell was in sight at last.
Secrets by Jordan Castillo Price
"You don't need the futon," Jacob called from the living room. My living room. The one he'd been sharing with me since an incubus exploded in his swanky Lakeview condo last fall. I was in the kitchen at the time, trying to determine exactly how attached I was to the corkboard next to the phone, the one where I stick small pieces of paper until I forget what the notes scrawled on them were supposed to mean.
"I have a living room set," he said.
I vaguely remembered Jacob's living room set. I'd seen it at his old condo maybe twice before it'd gone into storage. I'd been too busy ogling his naked body to pay much attention to his décor. When I wasn't busy shooting at the incubus who'd followed him there, anyway.
I worked the yellow sticky note I was holding between my thumb and forefinger, rubbing it, creasing it down the center. It was so damp with sweat, it molded to the shape of my palm. I shook it loose and it landed on the countertop. I scrubbed my palm against the leg of my jeans, and wondered if I'd managed to leach all the sticky out of the note. Stupid of me. I'd made a deal with Jacob that I'd only keep the things I marked with a yellow paper tag. It had seemed like a big stack of stickies, at the time. But my stack had grown awfully thin. There aren't as many sticky notes in a pack as you might think.
It was the week of my thirty-ninth birthday, and there I was, poised to move out of my bright white apartment and into the old brick loft building, a turn of the century cannery, that I now owned with Jacob. I'm not sure which part was weirder—that it had taken me so long to find someone I was that serious about, or that it had even happened to me at all. I'd always figured I was too screwed up to do the whole long-term relationship thing with anybody. Ever.
"Vic? The futon."
I looked down at the soggy paper square on the countertop. Maybe Jacob was right about the futon. Almost-forty-year-olds didn't generally have cheap futons as the focal point of their living rooms. Especially not when there was actual furniture around they could be using. Besides, it would free up that sticky note so I could mark something else I wanted to keep.
I touched the seat of the barstool under the kitchen counter. Vinyl and chrome. I liked my barstools. Did I need to put a sticky on each of them, or was it understood that they were a set?
Jacob appeared in the doorway, flashing his washboard abs. He wasn't trying to seduce me; he was mopping sweat from his face with the hem of his black T-shirt. Still, he was distracting, to say the least. "Bedroom's packed," he said, tugging his shirt back down. "Where are those barstools supposed to go?"
"The…kitchen?"
He frowned. It was more of a thinking-frown than a cull-your-shit-already-frown. I think. "Maybe. Or maybe we can put a bar in the basement."
If we did put a bar in the basement, Jacob would be drinking at it alone. Not because I don't drink, which I don't, but because I don't do basements. They're creepy. Even the ones that've been finished with paneling, indoor-outdoor carpeting and dart boards.
But I didn't argue. I don't do confrontation any better than I do basements, or shots of Jägermeister.
"Why don't we just take it all and sort it out once we get there?" I suggested. Jacob hadn't thought it was a good idea the night before, but it couldn't hurt to try one more time and see if I might wear down his resolve. "There's plenty of room."
Jacob went to the sink and held his hands under the tap. He splashed cold water on his face and performed another ab-flashing maneuver that would bring any card-carrying queer to his knees. "How many times do you want to end up carrying this stuff?" he said. "We don't need two of everything."
And my furniture was all cheap pressboard crap, while his was real. Yeah, I knew that. But still. I had a hard time wrapping my head around the idea that the hundred-year-old cannery, a bizarre student attempt at Egyptian revival, was my new home. I pressed a sticky note onto a narrow white plastic end table in the corner and heard Jacob sigh.
"What?" I said. "That's where I keep my keys."
Jacob stepped back from the sink and eased his way toward me. Sweat made his fitted black T-shirt cling to his body, and his deep olive skin glistened in the greenish light cast by the fluorescent overhead fixture. He kept on coming at me until he'd backed me into the wall, where the plastic table threatened to warp under the weight of my thigh. The smell of new sweat was heady, and it turned my furniture frustration to thoughts of sex. I felt a warmth deep in my belly. No, lower. Damn him. Neither one of us needed to resort to arguing. We each had our ways of trying to get what we wanted.
He took my face in both of his hands. His palms were cool from the water. Jacob's built like a linebacker and I'm more of a goalpost, but at six-foot-something, we at least stood eye to eye. It made it for easy kissing.
Jacob looked at me, hard, and then he closed his eyes and dove in. What do they call 'em, pheromones? He must've been giving them off in clouds. My head shifted gears—from hoarding, to sex—the second his lips touched mine.
He pressed himself into me, chest to chest, thigh to thigh, and he threw heat like a furnace. A big, damp, sexy, man-smelling furnace. He drew his lips away from mine slowly, our breath mingling for a second before he started kissing lower, working his mouth along my jaw toward my neck.
"I'm keeping my table," I said. My voice wobbled a little. I'm such a pushover.
Jacob grunted, and stretched the neck of my baggy T-shirt to scrape his teeth against my collarbone. The sharp rasp sent a jolt of heat down to my cock. I was beginning to feel a lot more than an indistinct warmth down there.
"What do you think you're doing?" I said. It was pretty obvious, but I couldn't resist. "I thought we were on a schedule."
Jacob didn't dignify that with an answer. His hand covered the bulge at the front of my jeans, instead. My breath hissed in and my back arched as my body strained for his touch.
It was humbling to have someone able to press all my buttons that well. Maybe it was a little scary, too. What if Jacob used his superpower for evil, not good? Would it matter? Probably not, as long as he kept me drugged with sex.
I grabbed for his hair, but it was too short to get a handful. Wet with sweat, too. Fuck, that made me hard. He met my eyes. Not as dramatic as me grabbing him by the hair and forcing the eye contact, but that was okay. I just needed to see the look, the one that lets me know that he's got it as bad for me as I do for him.
Jacob stared at me hard while he stroked my cock through my jeans. The importance of what I would take to our new place and what I would leave behind for the Goodwill truck dwindled. Where could we have sex? That was all I cared about.
"When you said the bedroom was packed…?"
Jacob grabbed me by the upper arm and pulled me into the living room. Through the bedroom doorway, I could see my mattress and box spring stacked against the wall behind a barricade of boxes.
The living room was a wreck, but Jacob hadn't started boxing it up quite yet. My cock throbbed impatiently as I shoved a laundry basket and a crate of DVDs and videotapes out of the way and dragged the futon off its frame. I toed off my loosely-tied high tops and stripped down fast. Jacob dropped a gym bag next to the futon and started peeling off his sweaty clothes. I knelt down on the futon, which was only slightly more padded than the floor, and unzipped the bag to see what he thought we'd need from it. I shoved aside rolled-up pairs of socks, a T-shirt and sweatpants. Underneath all that, I felt a plastic bottle with a familiar shape. Lube. "So, you were planning on getting lucky," I said.
"There's always hope."
"I have a living room set," he said.
I vaguely remembered Jacob's living room set. I'd seen it at his old condo maybe twice before it'd gone into storage. I'd been too busy ogling his naked body to pay much attention to his décor. When I wasn't busy shooting at the incubus who'd followed him there, anyway.
I worked the yellow sticky note I was holding between my thumb and forefinger, rubbing it, creasing it down the center. It was so damp with sweat, it molded to the shape of my palm. I shook it loose and it landed on the countertop. I scrubbed my palm against the leg of my jeans, and wondered if I'd managed to leach all the sticky out of the note. Stupid of me. I'd made a deal with Jacob that I'd only keep the things I marked with a yellow paper tag. It had seemed like a big stack of stickies, at the time. But my stack had grown awfully thin. There aren't as many sticky notes in a pack as you might think.
It was the week of my thirty-ninth birthday, and there I was, poised to move out of my bright white apartment and into the old brick loft building, a turn of the century cannery, that I now owned with Jacob. I'm not sure which part was weirder—that it had taken me so long to find someone I was that serious about, or that it had even happened to me at all. I'd always figured I was too screwed up to do the whole long-term relationship thing with anybody. Ever.
"Vic? The futon."
I looked down at the soggy paper square on the countertop. Maybe Jacob was right about the futon. Almost-forty-year-olds didn't generally have cheap futons as the focal point of their living rooms. Especially not when there was actual furniture around they could be using. Besides, it would free up that sticky note so I could mark something else I wanted to keep.
I touched the seat of the barstool under the kitchen counter. Vinyl and chrome. I liked my barstools. Did I need to put a sticky on each of them, or was it understood that they were a set?
Jacob appeared in the doorway, flashing his washboard abs. He wasn't trying to seduce me; he was mopping sweat from his face with the hem of his black T-shirt. Still, he was distracting, to say the least. "Bedroom's packed," he said, tugging his shirt back down. "Where are those barstools supposed to go?"
"The…kitchen?"
He frowned. It was more of a thinking-frown than a cull-your-shit-already-frown. I think. "Maybe. Or maybe we can put a bar in the basement."
If we did put a bar in the basement, Jacob would be drinking at it alone. Not because I don't drink, which I don't, but because I don't do basements. They're creepy. Even the ones that've been finished with paneling, indoor-outdoor carpeting and dart boards.
But I didn't argue. I don't do confrontation any better than I do basements, or shots of Jägermeister.
"Why don't we just take it all and sort it out once we get there?" I suggested. Jacob hadn't thought it was a good idea the night before, but it couldn't hurt to try one more time and see if I might wear down his resolve. "There's plenty of room."
Jacob went to the sink and held his hands under the tap. He splashed cold water on his face and performed another ab-flashing maneuver that would bring any card-carrying queer to his knees. "How many times do you want to end up carrying this stuff?" he said. "We don't need two of everything."
And my furniture was all cheap pressboard crap, while his was real. Yeah, I knew that. But still. I had a hard time wrapping my head around the idea that the hundred-year-old cannery, a bizarre student attempt at Egyptian revival, was my new home. I pressed a sticky note onto a narrow white plastic end table in the corner and heard Jacob sigh.
"What?" I said. "That's where I keep my keys."
Jacob stepped back from the sink and eased his way toward me. Sweat made his fitted black T-shirt cling to his body, and his deep olive skin glistened in the greenish light cast by the fluorescent overhead fixture. He kept on coming at me until he'd backed me into the wall, where the plastic table threatened to warp under the weight of my thigh. The smell of new sweat was heady, and it turned my furniture frustration to thoughts of sex. I felt a warmth deep in my belly. No, lower. Damn him. Neither one of us needed to resort to arguing. We each had our ways of trying to get what we wanted.
He took my face in both of his hands. His palms were cool from the water. Jacob's built like a linebacker and I'm more of a goalpost, but at six-foot-something, we at least stood eye to eye. It made it for easy kissing.
Jacob looked at me, hard, and then he closed his eyes and dove in. What do they call 'em, pheromones? He must've been giving them off in clouds. My head shifted gears—from hoarding, to sex—the second his lips touched mine.
He pressed himself into me, chest to chest, thigh to thigh, and he threw heat like a furnace. A big, damp, sexy, man-smelling furnace. He drew his lips away from mine slowly, our breath mingling for a second before he started kissing lower, working his mouth along my jaw toward my neck.
"I'm keeping my table," I said. My voice wobbled a little. I'm such a pushover.
Jacob grunted, and stretched the neck of my baggy T-shirt to scrape his teeth against my collarbone. The sharp rasp sent a jolt of heat down to my cock. I was beginning to feel a lot more than an indistinct warmth down there.
"What do you think you're doing?" I said. It was pretty obvious, but I couldn't resist. "I thought we were on a schedule."
Jacob didn't dignify that with an answer. His hand covered the bulge at the front of my jeans, instead. My breath hissed in and my back arched as my body strained for his touch.
It was humbling to have someone able to press all my buttons that well. Maybe it was a little scary, too. What if Jacob used his superpower for evil, not good? Would it matter? Probably not, as long as he kept me drugged with sex.
I grabbed for his hair, but it was too short to get a handful. Wet with sweat, too. Fuck, that made me hard. He met my eyes. Not as dramatic as me grabbing him by the hair and forcing the eye contact, but that was okay. I just needed to see the look, the one that lets me know that he's got it as bad for me as I do for him.
Jacob stared at me hard while he stroked my cock through my jeans. The importance of what I would take to our new place and what I would leave behind for the Goodwill truck dwindled. Where could we have sex? That was all I cared about.
"When you said the bedroom was packed…?"
Jacob grabbed me by the upper arm and pulled me into the living room. Through the bedroom doorway, I could see my mattress and box spring stacked against the wall behind a barricade of boxes.
The living room was a wreck, but Jacob hadn't started boxing it up quite yet. My cock throbbed impatiently as I shoved a laundry basket and a crate of DVDs and videotapes out of the way and dragged the futon off its frame. I toed off my loosely-tied high tops and stripped down fast. Jacob dropped a gym bag next to the futon and started peeling off his sweaty clothes. I knelt down on the futon, which was only slightly more padded than the floor, and unzipped the bag to see what he thought we'd need from it. I shoved aside rolled-up pairs of socks, a T-shirt and sweatpants. Underneath all that, I felt a plastic bottle with a familiar shape. Lube. "So, you were planning on getting lucky," I said.
"There's always hope."
Artist Kisses for the Omega by Lacey Daize
Chapter 1 - Benjamin
I hefted my duffel bag over my shoulder and stepped down from the bus. The door swished closed behind me since I was the only one getting off in Mountain Springs.
It was only as the rumble of the departing bus sounded behind me that I acknowledged that I’d come home. The noise of the engine and tires signalled the end of a major chapter in my life.
“Thank you for your service,” a random passerby said, nodding in my direction.
“Thank you,” I replied methodically before reminding myself that I needed to change into civvies when I got home.
Home… could I really call it that? Those starting years in the barracks had felt more like home in a way. At least there the expectations were clear, and not based on something as stupid as alpha or omega. I was to follow the same rules as everybody else on base, keep myself and my things tidy, and report for duty as ordered.
Nobody tried to go behind my back to set me up with alphas, and nobody cared if I didn’t want to do all those traditionally omega things. None of that mattered. My superiors wanted to see a good soldier, and I’d worked hard to be just that.
Even when I’d moved off-base with a friend the expectations were clear and reasonable.
I closed my eyes and took a deep breath before turning to walk to my family home.
I still didn’t know what had made me decide not to re-up. When I’d left Mountain Springs just after high school I’d been determined to never come back. I’d even stayed on active duty for all eight years, watching people who’d enlisted at the same time as me go to reserve status. But just as I was getting ready to sign on for another eight I found I couldn’t do it.
Something was calling me home.
I stopped and looked around. I’d made a point of staying away from Mountain Springs for my whole term. When I saw my parents and brother it was because they came to visit me. Instead of coming home I’d spend my leave doing all those things omegas weren’t supposed to enjoy. I went hunting with my buddies, did wilderness survival adventures, discovered beautiful places on the back of a dirt bike, and went whitewater rafting.
Nobody would have questioned my love of adventure if not for my damned womb. I was a man after all. But male omegas weren’t supposed to like manly things. We were supposed to have some sort of natural paternal instinct.
Fuck that.
My entire life had turned on its head the day I went into heat for the first time. Instead of standing up to bullies when they picked on smaller kids I was expected to let an alpha protect me instead. I was supposed to give up all my interests in order to learn how to cook, clean, and knit.
Just the thought of all that stereotypical omega bullshit made me see red.
I realized I was near the park, and decided that I wasn’t quite ready to face my parents. I found a bench in the shade and sat on it.
“Why the fuck did I come back?” I asked myself. “I left for a reason, and in eight years mom and dad never seemed all that likely to change their ways.”
One thing was for sure, just because I was back in Mountain Springs didn’t mean that I had to live with my family. Finding an apartment would be one of my first priorities. I’d socked almost everything I’d earned into savings. After leaving the barracks I’d roomed with another omega from my unit in an off-base apartment, and would carpool in with him. We’d both kept our expenses low, and I’d managed to set aside a tidy sum. I was far from rich, but I had enough of a cushion to allow me to decide what I wanted to do next.
Coming home was likely just a longing for some nostalgia, and once I got it out of my system I’d move onto someplace where my family couldn’t meddle in my day-to-day life.
I grimaced at a cramp.
“Great,” I muttered. “Just what I need: to be stinking of pre-heat just as I get home. Mom will probably have a line of alphas to introduce me to before dinner.”
I felt slick start around my entrance at the thought of alphas. It had been a while since I’d last taken a knot, and my instincts were more than happy to remind me that I currently didn’t have any other obligations, so it was the perfect time to get pregnant.
I shook my head, grabbed my duffel and resumed the walk to my parent’s house.
I wasn’t a kid anymore, and I wouldn’t let my mom walk all over me. Just because she was baby-crazy didn’t mean she could push me into having a kid before I was ready.
Even if I did feel my biological clock ticking some days.
Dead Ringer by Pandora Pine
PROLOGUE
Massachusetts Correctional Institution- Cedar Junction
2000 Main Street
Walpole, MA 02070
17 October
Detective Ronan O’Mara
Cold Case Unit
Boston Police District C-6
101 Broadway
South Boston, MA 02128
Dear Detective O’Mara,
My name is Thomas Hutchins. My friends and family call me Tank. You might know me better as The Riverside Ripper. Around here, I’m just known as inmate 889345.
I’m sure you’ve heard this line a million times before but, I’m innocent. The problem is that I don’t have an alibi for the night Lorraine McAlpin was murdered. I was home alone watching the Sox get their asses kicked by the Yankees. My cell phone verifies that I was home, or at least near the cell tower closest to home. The only problem is that Lorraine McAlpin’s house is near that cell tower too.
“My” DNA was found at the scene of the crime. I use quotation marks over the word “my” because there’s a slight wrinkle in my story. My DNA isn’t just my own. I share it with my identical twin brother, Tim Hutchins.
I’m not throwing my brother under the bus here. I’m really not, but if I didn’t kill Lorraine McAlpin, then that only leaves one other option. I don’t want to believe Tim is capable of committing this crime. Worse, I don’t want to believe he’s capable of letting me take the fall for something he did.
According to the testimony at my trial, Tim was at home with his wife, Michelle, on the night of the murder. Would my sister-in-law lie for my brother? I can’t say for certain. They’ve got three small children under the age of six. Tim owns his own business and is the sole provider for his family. Life for his family would change greatly if he were sitting here wearing an orange jumpsuit instead of me.
I have a new lawyer. His name is Bradford Hicks. You may have heard of him. He successfully got Marco Bishop’s conviction in his triple murder case overturned. I’ve also hired a local private investigator named Jude Byrne.
I’m writing to you because I’ve heard of your success with your partner, Tennyson Grimm, in solving cold cases. It’s too late for your detective work to save Lorraine McAlpin, but it isn’t too late to save the next victim of her killer.
It also might not be too late to save me from twenty-five to life as a guest of the Massachusetts Department of Corrections.
I’m enclosing Bradford’s phone number and email address. I would like to meet with you to discuss my case if you are available for a consultation. It would mean the world to me, Detective O’Mara, to be able to sit down with you and lay out the facts of this case. As I said, I’m innocent. I know you and Mr. Grimm can prove it.
Take care,
Thomas Hutchins
Inmate 889345
Ghost of Deceit by Alice Winters
Chapter One
HIRO
“Hey, mister, do you wanna color with me?”
I look down at the child reaching out to me with her small hand. She looks to be about six or seven; it’s hard for me to tell. Why she picked me, I’m not sure. I guess when your other option would be someone like Maddox, I can’t blame her. I might love Maddox with all of my heart, but he’s not always the most… approachable. He’s currently busy talking to some people a few doors down the hallway, so I give the little girl a nod and let her take my hand.
“Sure,” I say, not quite sure where we’re going.
She tugs me into a classroom and sits me down at a table across from the only other person in the room. The lady looks tall squeezed in the tiny chair made for children. She’s leaning on the table, elbows on it while holding her head on her hand and just watching us curiously.
“We’re coloring our favorite pet,” the little girl explains as she turns to her paper that she seems to have just started working on.
“Who is this?” the teacher asks, clearly having a right to question who this strange man the child pulled into the classroom is.
“My friend,” the little girl says as she waves to the pile of crayons, obviously wanting me to participate in this coloring activity.
“Does your friend have a name?” the teacher asks.
“Probably,” the girl says before picking up a purple crayon that she’s using to color in what is either a rock or a dog.
“I’m Hiro Moore,” I say with a smile. “They’re just talking out in the hallway, so do you mind if I join?”
The woman smiles back. “Sure. But if the principal has them, it’ll be a while.”
After squeezing myself into the tiny seat, I pick up a piece of paper and set it down in front of me before grabbing a black crayon to draw an outline.
“Are you doing a kitty?” the girl asks excitedly.
“I am. I’m going to draw my cat Stella. What about you?”
“This is my pig, Pinky!” she says. Clearly… clearly, I was very wrong. It’s a pig, not a rock or a dog.
“And you?” I ask the teacher.
She smiles. “My dog Otis. He’s a sweetheart.”
“I LOVE dogs!” the little girl says as she swings her arms out wide, knocking over a container of crayons.
“Oh…” The teacher stops as she stares at the girl for a moment, looking confused. “Um… honey… honey, be careful.”
“I’m super careful,” she says as she scribbles wildly across the page. “I’m almost done! LOOK!” She holds up the drawing of her “pig” for all of us to see.
I just barely got the outline done, but I hold up my paper. “That’s awesome. What do you think of mine?”
“She’s so round!” The girl finds this hysterical as she points. “You could roll her!”
“I’ve warned Maddox that she needs some restrictions, but he secretly thinks she’s too cute and gives her whatever she demands. She’s very demanding,” I say, which makes the girl smile.
“What about yours?” the girl asks the teacher.
The teacher holds up a drawing for us to see and I stare at the rough sketch of a man staring back at me. His black eyes peer right into mine, a smile prominent on his face.
“That’s a weird-looking dog,” the girl says, her smile falling.
“What?” the teacher asks, appearing confused before turning her paper around to look at it. “No… no, I’m sorry, let me fix it.”
She grabs the red crayon and starts scribbling over the man’s face. “I’m fixing it, see? It’s getting fixed, it’s going to be all better—”
“You were so bored that you decided to just color all alone?” Maddox asks from behind me.
I jump, startled, and look over my shoulder at the handsome man leaning against the doorway. When he sees my face, his amused expression dissipates. “What’s wrong?” he asks as he steps farther into the room.
I turn back to the table to find that I’m completely alone. The teacher and child must have been spooked by Maddox; the only thing left to show they were even here is the little girl’s container of crayons that’s knocked over.
“You alright?” Maddox asks.
I nod as I reach out to pick up the crayons. “Yes, it was just… so the ghost of a little girl asked me to color. She didn’t seem to realize she was dead… I don’t know why I went with her…” I say, trailing off.
Maddox sets a hand on my shoulder, giving it a gentle squeeze. “Is that Stella?” he asks as he looks down at my drawing.
“You like her?” I ask as I push those other thoughts aside and grin at him.
“She’s so round!”
“This is literally what she looks like! You keep feeding her too much,” I say as I stand up and move to toss it in the trash, but Maddox takes it before I can. He folds it up and tucks it into his pocket. I don’t know why something so ridiculous makes me feel happy.
“They said they’re ready for us. Are you good?”
I take a deep breath because I don’t think I’m ever good when faced with a body. I guess I get used to seeing them—hell, being able to see the dead has always pulled me into the path of the recently deceased—but it doesn’t make it easier.
“So the next-door teacher found her body this morning,” Maddox explains as we leave the classroom.
“Do they know if it happened this morning?” I ask.
“I don’t know much yet. All I know is that her name is Ellen Keefe,” he admits as he leads me down the hallway where others from Maddox’s team are waiting. I’m hoping they weren’t waiting on me while I was off coloring in a classroom like a weirdo.
After putting on gear to keep from disrupting the crime scene, I follow Maddox into the room where the teacher I just finished coloring with lies facedown on the floor, her pink frilly blouse covered in blood.
Like… I knew the teacher I’d been coloring with was dead, but I didn’t realize she was the one we were here to see. She didn’t act like a newly formed ghost, so I hadn’t even thought about it.
“Careful where you move, it looks like she was stabbed over there,” Maddox says as he nods at the desk. I can see the blood sprayed across it, telling me that whoever it was who’d attacked her had done it when she’d been working at her desk.
“Do you see her anywhere?” Maddox asks.
“Umm… well… she’s actually the woman who was coloring with the girl. She acted normal, so I thought nothing of it,” I say. Generally, when someone dies, they’re so distraught over their own death that they don’t move from their death place for a good chunk of time. Even then, they don’t seem to understand how to interact with people, so the way she’d been talking to me made me assume she’d been dead a while and wasn’t the person we were here for.
“So she’s here?” Maddox asks.
“She was.” I look around the room and try not to think about how the poor woman had tried to make a dash for the door to get away from the attacker. How she didn’t get far before bleeding out on the ground. How she seemed quite nice when she was interacting with me, and now she’s dead.
“You alright?” Maddox asks.
“Yeah, I’m going to see if I can find her,” I say as I back out of the room before nearly running into Keaton, a detective who’d worked with Maddox some before he’d been killed. While he was kind of a dick to me when alive, he’s nicer now that he benefits from my ghost abilities. Especially after I allowed him to leave his death place quite quickly. I think he also enjoys being involved and perhaps even likes being harassed by Reggie, Maddox’s friend.
“Sorry,” I say, to which Keaton just grunts, clearly not caring.
A few living people look over at me to see what I’m apologizing about, but I pretend I don’t notice them as I slip through the door. I know that there’s been some talk about what I can do around the department, but I’m still not going to broadcast it. For now, I’m strictly considered a consultant who works with Maddox on certain cases. I still have my bookstore, which is my primary job, but ever since I went to Maddox to help find my brother’s killer, I’ve become an asset.
It’s always so much easier when you can ask the dead who killed them.
When I step out into the hallway, Keaton follows me. “Looks like she’s been dead at least a couple of days,” he says.
“Thinking Friday?” I ask.
“Possibly. I’m sure Maddox can tell better since I can’t actually touch her,” Keaton says with a sigh. I know not being able to be involved bothers him, so I try to do what I can to give him opportunities to work with us because even though his personality isn’t top notch, he’s a good detective and actually nice under his icy exterior.
“She was hanging around this other classroom earlier today, so I’m going to see if I can find her,” I explain.
“Okay,” he says as I head toward it and he trails after me.
“Reggie isn’t attached to you today?” I ask, wanting a bit of a distraction as I look for the ghost.
“I don’t know who that is,” Keaton says, even though he clenches his jaw at the mere mention of him.
“Oh? Never heard of him?” I’m trying not to be amused by his reaction.
Of course, that’s the moment Reggie shows up and goes, “Oh. My. God.” I assume he’s going to go on about how could Keaton possibly not know who he is, but instead, he’s just beaming at us… and a beaming Reggie is rarely a good thing.
Reggie is Maddox’s best friend who passed away five years before I met Maddox. He’s a very attractive and sassy man who has both helped and haunted me since I met him. He initially thought it’d be fun to try to scare me away from Maddox by pretending to be his dead fiancé. I soon learned that Reggie was just an ass who got his kicks by making my life a pain—and was horribly entertained by it. Truth be told, I really do appreciate and care for Reggie, even when he’s a monster. And somehow… he has an odd talent for using my ability to manipulate things normal ghosts could never even touch.
“You two are just”—he kisses his fingers in a whole “chef’s kiss” kind of gesture—“beautiful together. We should all get N to the A to—”
“We’re not getting naked in an elementary school,” I hiss.
This doesn’t deter him at all. “What are you guys doing here?” Reggie asks as he looks around. “Omg. Are you going to have a baby?”
How he came to that conclusion, I don’t know. “What? Do you think people just come to elementary schools and kidnap children when they want one of their own?”
He shrugs. “God, I’d have loved to have been kidnapped by you two when I was a kid. Oh wait… you’re a baby compared to me. You’d have been an idea in your dad’s sperm pouch still.”
Keaton and I both look at each other with extremely disgusted expressions. It’s nice to share a common ground with him. “You leave me with him, and this is what I have to deal with!” Keaton complains.
“Don’t listen to him, Hiro, he likes it. He’s just playing hard to get,” Reggie says as he winks one eye at Keaton and then the other and then back to the first eye. It honestly just looks like he got sand tossed in his face or something.
I set a hand on Keaton’s chest that feels solid beneath my touch. “I’m sorry.”
“Thank you,” he says.
Reggie throws his hands up in the air. “I even wore my best clothes for you.” He turns around like he wants to give Keaton a chance to see how nice his ass looks in his jeans. Keaton remains completely oblivious until Reggie deflates a little and starts walking away. I watch as Keaton’s eyes drop right down to Reggie’s ass.
They’re very clearly meant for each other.
“Reggie, I’m looking for the ghost of a teacher. A lady in her late thirties,” I say.
He turns to me and holds something out in his cupped hands. Even though I know he’s not holding anything physical, I’m still wary, but like a dumb man, I put my hand out to take what he has to give. When he uncups his hands and puts “it” into mine, I realize there’s nothing there. Honestly, it’s the best possible outcome.
“There, take my heart… I no longer need one,” he cries before passing through a door.
I stare down at my outstretched hand before passing Reggie’s “heart” over to Keaton. “I don’t want it.”
He glares down at it, like there’s actually a heart in my hand. “Does it look like I want it?”
“Yes, Keaton, yes it does,” I say before “tossing” it at him and continuing on my journey. Even with the three of us separated and looking, we can’t seem to find Ellen’s ghost. After half an hour, I return to the room her body was found in, in case she reappeared there or Maddox has something else to share.
A quick glance around the busy room tells me she’s not there either, so I head over to Maddox as I leave Reggie and Keaton to continue searching. “She’s hiding for some reason,” I say. “At first, I thought she was spooked about you coming to the room, but I actually think she spooked herself with her drawing.”
“Her drawing?” Maddox asks as he stops what he’s doing to turn to me.
“Yeah… we were drawing…” I quiet down as Mick, a tech who works with Maddox, walks up. He’s never shown me that he’s judgmental, but I’ve never point blank told him I can talk to ghosts.
Maddox glances at him. “Need something?”
“No, the janitor is here, though. Said he’d talk to you when you had a minute,” Mick says.
Maddox nods before turning back to me. “Okay. So the picture?”
“Yeah, we were supposed to draw pets and she thought she was drawing her dog but when she finished it, she revealed a man’s face,” I say.
“What did he look like?” Maddox asks.
“Well… it was done in crayon, and I only had a moment to look before she started scribbling over it. She gave him like… yellow hair so maybe blond? His eyes were solid black but maybe he had dark eyes?”
“If you were to watch a security tape, do you think you could pick him out?” he asks.
I shrug, honestly not too confident. “It was a pretty obscure drawing,” I admit. “But I’ll try my best. We at least know the person she was drawing was a man, likely blond or light-haired.”
“Right.” Maddox turns to Mick. “Okay, where’s the janitor?”
I don’t miss the curious way Mick is staring at me before he leads the way out of the room. As we step out into the hallway, a ghost breezes past me like they’re on a mission. I turn to make sure it’s not Ellen, but it’s a young man, maybe mid-twenties. I consider asking him some questions but before I can, I find Mick introducing us to the janitor and feel it’d be a bit rude to run off.
“Can you tell me anything that could help?” Maddox asks.
The man looks quite distraught as he nods. “I-I saw Miss Ellen on Friday… after school, I mean,” the janitor says, clearly shaken up. He’s nervously rubbing at his arms as he looks between the three of us. “I always start from this end of the hallway before heading toward the other side. She was still working so I slipped in and did what I could while not disrupting her. She’s always the nicest lady… so sweet. She’d help me move desks if I had to mop and always had something nice to say. When I walked into the room, she was on the phone. She seemed upset about something, but the moment she saw me, she got off and smiled like normal. Told me it was just some useless family drama. She said she had some lesson plans for next week to work on, and then she was headed out for a date night.”
“Date night?” Maddox says thoughtfully. “Do you know anything about her date?”
“I mean, she’d mention him here and there, but it was generally just in passing. I… I don’t even remember his name,” he says, sounding apologetic.
“That’s okay. Mick, let’s see if a family member or a friend knows who she’s dating so we can check with him to see if she made it to the date,” Maddox says.
“I’m on it,” Mick says as he heads over to flag someone else down. Maybe to see if someone who was friends with Ellen knew who she had been dating.
“Did you see her leave the building? What about her car? Was it here when you left?” Maddox asks the janitor.
“I didn’t see her leave, and honestly, I didn’t pay attention to the parking lot. I park at the other end,” he says, pointing. “It’s closer to the janitor’s closet. And the remaining teachers park over there.”
“Nothing else strange?” Maddox asks.
“No. I’m sorry I couldn’t be of more help.”
“You were a lot of help. If you think of anything else, please don’t hesitate to contact me,” Maddox says.
The janitor gives him a nod and Maddox whisks me over to the principal. “You have cameras up on the entrances. Mind if we take a look?”
“Of course not,” she says as she leads us back toward the office.
“Hiro, if you see anyone who could possibly fit the description, let me know,” Maddox says.
“I will.” Honestly, I don’t have much hope. The drawing did little to show me what the man looked like.
“What time do you want?” the principal asks.
“Let’s start with Friday morning. I’m assuming doors are locked during school hours?”
“They are, but we had a school activity day on Friday. The twelfth graders take buses over here from the high school once a year to do an activity with the kids. So there were more people than usual inside the building. The teachers did walk the high schoolers in, though.”
She gets the recordings set up. Thankfully, the only entrance is the main one that goes right past the office since the remaining doors stay locked.
“We’re lucky this is an elementary school,” I say. “It’s easier to pinpoint the adults.”
“Definitely,” Maddox says.
A few parents go in with their child, but most leave them outside the door where a teacher stands to guide the little ones inside. The first man who fits the bill heads in fairly early. When Maddox notices me looking, he points at him.
“Who is this guy?”
The principal leans in to get a better look. “That’s Mr. Smith. He’s a fifth-grade teacher.”
When we’re done watching the AM recording, Maddox has made a list of only two names that fit the description.
“She could have been wrong,” I tell him.
“She could have. But I’m going to guess she wasn’t,” he says. “If it was someone she loved or cared about, would she have scratched out his picture?”
“True,” I say.
The principal is watching us, clearly wondering what we’re talking about, but she doesn’t ask. “I also have a list of all the parents who came in to pick up their children throughout the day. We don’t allow the parents into the school, though. They’re allowed to step into the foyer that’s locked, sign out their child, and then the secretary or nurse brings the student to them. They also have to page us to even be allowed in the foyer.”
“Great, thank you,” Maddox says before turning his attention back to the recording.
The issue comes when the seniors arrive. There are about a hundred of them according to the principal and as they flood in, jostling around, it’s hard to keep track of all the people. The camera doesn’t span out to the buses, so we can’t even see if someone joins in the middle of it.
“Could we get some twelfth-grade teachers in here to tell us if there are students who they don’t recognize? We aren’t ruling out that it was a high school student, but I’m guessing the teachers took a roll call when they got back on the buses to go to the high school?”
“I will have some teachers over here immediately to go over that with you,” she says before she steps back into her office. While we wait for them, Maddox and I go over the rest of the recording. It becomes clear that by the time the janitor leaves the building, locking it behind him, Ellen had never left.
“I don’t think I was much help,” I say as I look down at Maddox’s long list of people and the times they left the building.
Maddox gives me a reassuring look. “Hiro, everything helps in a case like this. You were able to identify that the victim is afraid of a man, which could cut down our pool by quite a bit.”
That’s when Reggie steps into the room. “Hiro, I have something you might want to see.”
“Maddox, I’ll be back. Reggie has something.”
“Okay. Call me if you need me,” he says.
I give him a nod and follow Reggie out into the hallway.
“Did you miss me?” he asks with a flirtatious look that makes my eyebrows knit.
“Loads,” I say sarcastically.
“We can cuddle tonight, I promise,” he says with a grin.
“No thanks. What did you want to show me?”
“Come, come,” he says as he hurries me back to the room where the teacher’s body is.
When I walk in, I immediately see what made him call me in—the ghost I’d passed on the way to the office is currently lying on the floor next to the body.
I put my protective gear back on before walking over toward the body, knowing I’d have to get quite close to interact with the ghost. “Excuse me?” I say quietly, but a tech turns to me.
“What’s that?” she asks.
“Oh, sorry, I was…” I just resort to smiling, hoping that makes her return to working.
She looks a bit uncertain but gives me a smile as well and turns back to what she was doing before I interrupted her. Since I can’t seem to get the ghost’s attention, I reach out to nudge it.
“Please don’t touch the body,” she says, clearly keeping track of me.
“I… wasn’t. I was… there was…” God, this is so fucking awkward. Reggie could, of course, touch them for me, but no, he’s off pestering Keaton who is trying to snoop around and calling one of the men a “useless waste of space.”
The ghost finally opens his eyes and sees me staring at him. I do some kind of eye flick thing to be like “Hey, dude, come with me.” He clearly thinks I like making my eyes roll around in my head because he goes right back to ignoring me. Quickly, I get up and hurry over to Keaton who is breathing down Mick’s back while going, “He’s so goddamn unorganized. What is this shit?”
“Keaton,” I hiss.
Mick and Keaton look over at me.
Mick’s eyes get extremely wide as he looks around. “Detective Evans is here?” he whispers.
So much for keeping things quiet.
I just give him an awkward look that’s somewhere between a grimace and a smile, then nudge Keaton while jabbing a finger at the body. He seems to get where I’m going because he heads over to the guy, kicks him, and says, “Get your ass up, we have some questions.”
And he thinks Mick’s skills are bad.
The ghost’s eyes snap open and he looks up at Keaton like he’s never seen such a rude person in his life. Honestly… he probably hasn’t. But when he tries to close his eyes again, Keaton folds his arms over his chest and glowers down at him.
“If you want to find her killer then get your ass moving,” he says.
“God, he’s so hot,” Reggie says.
I’m unsure how to comprehend this. “He’s verbally abusing a man who probably lost someone he cares about.”
“Yeah, while being sexy.”
I give up. I literally give up. Ghosts clearly have issues. But at least they’re helpful as Keaton drags the guy out into an empty classroom where I can close the door and freely talk to him.
“Hi, my name’s Hiro, I’m a consultant with—”
The man rushes up and grabs onto me. “You can see me? You can actually see me? For real? Is it real?” he asks, words coming out in a rush. Since I’ve gotten better at controlling who can and can’t touch me, I let him. I feel like maybe getting to grab onto me and shake me around a bit could help him trust me. That is until it becomes a little painful and I push him back.
“Yes, I can see you. We’re trying to figure out who killed—”
His eyes get wide. “I saw him! I saw the man who did it!”
“Do you think if you saw him on a video, you could point him out to me?” I ask.
The man looks extremely eager. “Yes! I can. Where? You have a video here?”
“In the office,” I say. “Before that, can you tell me what your name is?”
“It’s Ryan Jones.”
“Ryan, can you tell me what happened?”
I take out a notebook as he nods enthusiastically.
“Yes! Okay. So I missed part of it… but when I heard her scream, I came running. This man was standing over her as she jumped up. At this point, he’d stabbed her with the scissors. She took off running and he stood right by the desk and watched her go. He didn’t even try to chase after her, but she was panicking as she bled everywhere. She didn’t make it far before she fell to the ground.”
“Can you tell me what the killer looked like?” I ask.
“Umm… yeah… he was like… I think around my height. Wearing… I just… I just know that if I see him, I can recognize him. What are we waiting for?”
“Okay,” I say as I lead him out of the room and into the hallway. “Did you recognize him?”
He glances over at me. “Like did I know him, you mean? No. I don’t think I’d ever seen him.”
I write it down anyway, and when we get to the office, I hand my notes to Maddox who quickly reads through them.
“Okay, we’ll play through the video again,” he says, which likely leads to the principal questioning our sanity. She’s probably wondering how we’re planning on pinpointing a guy none of us have seen.
But we sit down and start from the beginning anyway. The entire time, the ghost’s eyes stay glued to the screen.
Maddox and I wait patiently, and it’s not until the school buses of kids come in that he points. “That guy! Right there!”
“Pause it,” I say before pointing. “Here?”
“Over one. Yeah… yeah, that guy. That’s him.”
While the guy isn’t exactly blond, he does have light-colored hair.
“Do you know this guy?” Maddox asks the principal.
“Yes, that’s Mr. Hoffman, a high school teacher. He’s one of the teachers on the way over to help now,” the principal says uncertainly.
“Great, thank you.”
“You don’t… I mean, you don’t think he did it, right?” she asks.
“We have no suspects at this time,” Maddox says, easily dodging the question.
As we head out, Maddox pulls me after him. “We’ll grab him before he comes inside. I want to talk to him at the station.”
“Okay,” I agree as I follow him.
I know that even though we have someone pinpointing the killer, that’s not enough. My information from ghosts rarely stands up in court; even if they’re the victim and point blank tell me who killed them, there’s little I can do without concrete proof. So I follow Maddox out to where we wait for the guy. When he shows up, Maddox simply pulls him aside and I stand back as Ryan waits next to me while just watching.
“Thank you,” the ghost says as he reaches out to me again. “Thank you… I’m so glad she doesn’t have to suffer with her killer loose.”
I give him a soft smile, happy I can help. “You’re welcome.”
Multi-Rainbow Award winner E.J. Russell—grace, mother of three, recovering actor—holds a BA and an MFA in theater, so naturally she’s spent the last three decades as a financial manager, database designer, and business intelligence consultant (as one does). She’s recently abandoned data wrangling, however, and spends her days wrestling words.
E.J. is married to Curmudgeonly Husband, a man who cares even less about sports than she does. Luckily, CH loves to cook, or all three of their children (Lovely Daughter and Darling Sons A and B) would have survived on nothing but Cheerios, beef jerky, and satsuma mandarins (the extent of E.J.’s culinary skill set).
E.J. lives in rural Oregon, enjoys visits from her wonderful adult children, and indulges in good books, red wine, and the occasional hyperbole.
Jordan Castillo PriceAuthor and artist Jordan Castillo Price writes paranormal sci-fi thrillers colored by her time in the Midwest, from inner city Chicago, to various cities across southern Wisconsin. She’s recently settled in a 1910 Cape Cod near Lake Michigan with tons of character and a plethora of bizarre spiders. Her influences include Ouija boards, Return of the Living Dead, “light as a feather, stiff as a board,” girls with tattoos and boys in eyeliner.
Jordan is best known as the author of the PsyCop series, an unfolding tale of paranormal mystery and suspense starring Victor Bayne, a gay medium who’s plagued by ghostly visitations. And her quirky, sweet, magical series The ABCs of Spellcraft is sure to make you smile.
Lacey DaizeLacey lives in New Mexico with her four critters. She’s a Jill-of-all-trades by day, but loves writing in her spare time. She dabbles in a variety of pairings, but jumped feet-first into the deep end of omegaverse the first time she read it. She loves the play on social expectations and the different ways to express romance.
Sick of the slogging rat-race of her 9-5 job, Pandora Pine put pen to paper (literally!) to make her ambition of becoming a romance novelist a reality. She cut her teeth in the dog-eat-dog world of fan fiction, still dreaming of the day when she would be a published author.
In her spare time, Pandora fancies herself an amateur nature photographer. She enjoys mucking around in swamps, hiking through the woods and crawling around on her hands and knees in her backyard seeking out the perfect shot. Pandora is a fan of roadside seafood shacks and always thinks Mexican food is a good idea at the time.
Some of Pandora's favorite things are chocolate, writing longhand with purple pens, and handsome men falling in love with each other.
Alice WintersAlice Winters started writing stories as soon as she was old enough to turn her ideas into written words. She loves writing a variety of things from romance and comedy to action. She also enjoys reading, horseback riding, and spending time with her pets.
EJ Russell
Jordan Castillo Price
Alice Winters
The Lady Under the Lake by EJ Russell
Secrets by Jordan Castillo Price
Artist Kisses for the Omega by Lacey Daize
Dead Ringer by Pandora Pine
Ghost of Deceit by Alice Winters
