“I think it is. Jason Woodtail… I don’t know how to say this… he’s not entirely… well… present. He barely eats, he doesn’t talk, and he doesn’t show any interest in what’s happening around him. I do believe his actions had nothing to do with politics, or even with the old hatred between werewolves and werefoxes.”
“So… he was of no use to Jonathan…” concluded Roman, looking straight into Blake’s eyes. Blake nodded in approval. Yes, they were on the same page. Father and son… or, well, daughter.
“I…” Jane’s voice cracked. “… maybe. I don’t know.”
“Thank you, Jane. Take care.”
The line went dead and the Sylfurs were left to make sense of what they had just found out. However, no one spoke. A lot was going on in Roman’s mind, and Blake could barely keep her mouth shut. The context wasn’t the best one. They had to wait until Sebastian,
Julian, and Charles left so they could talk about it in peace and start making a plan to throw Jonathan Redfur out of the Council. It was clear his intentions were fishy, to put it mildly. Of course, the moment Blake became the main Inari of Clan Sylfur, Redfur would be forced to step down as per his agreement with her father, but… would he? They weren’t so sure now. He had a secret agenda, they could tell.
CHAPTER FOUR
Demons from the Past
Seth closed his smartphone and threw it across the room, then plopped on the bed and covered his face with his hands.
“Shit!”
His thoughts were a mess, running in circles, trying to make sense of the conversation he had just had with the retired detective, but his lips could only produce one word over and over. “Shit. Shit. Shit.” He had had to dig deeper, hadn’t he? He had simply had to think out of the box and approach the case from a different angle. Well, now he finally had some answers. Not the ones he had expected, but answers nonetheless. And he hated them.
“How am I supposed to tell Amelia?” He rubbed his eyes and ran his hands through his blond hair. “But she needs to know…”
She needed to know who killed her parents, even though it might make her hate him. She needed to know there was no way Milla was her biological mother, because Milla couldn’t have children. Even if it threw her whole life off its axis, Amelia had to know the truth. Or… part of the truth. Seth didn’t have the whole picture yet, but he was getting there. As much as it hurt, he was determined to get to the bottom of it.
Just after he told her he had hit a dead end with the investigation and promised her he’d try everything, an idea struck him: there was no perfect murder unless… it was committed by someone who was not entirely human. He couldn’t believe he had wasted the whole month of August looking for two humans who had killed her parents. Of course he couldn’t find a damn thing. They weren’t humans. No clues left behind… In and out without alarming anyone, not even the two victims sleeping in their bed… Only shape-shifters could move so fast and so silently, work so perfectly. There had been two detectives working on the case, and Seth had only managed to speak to one of them. The old man had agreed to help him and had answered most of his questions, but when Seth had finally come with the crucial one - “Is it possible that the two murderers were not humans, but shape-shifters?” - the detective had fallen silent. Then, he had given Seth his former partner’s phone number.
As it turned out, his partner was a long time retired detective who was also a… bear-shifter. Now, he lived in Norway, in an isolated house by a small lake. He was far from old, as bear-shifters usually lived for around 300 years, but he had gotten tired of chasing down low-life criminals and scumbags, and decided it was time to take his wife and three children and live peacefully somewhere far away from the bustle of London. At first, he had been reluctant towards Seth.
“How do you know about this case?” he had asked him.
“Their daughter, Amelia Bennett, is still alive and she is trying to find out the truth about her parents’ death. She has gone through so much… She deserves to know.”
“And what is her relationship with her, if you don’t mind me asking?”
Seth had hesitated. “She’s recently married into Clan Sylfur. She’s the Alpha bride of Blake Sylfur, my future Alpha.” Bear-shifters had a whole different ranking system, so it was easier to use the terms Alpha and Beta. Even though they sometimes organized into sleuths and even clans, werebears tended to be solitary and live far away from each other even when they were blood-related. The only time when they recognized an Alpha was when their species was threatened and they were forced to team up to protect themselves.
“I see…”
Seth had identified something similar to melancholy in the bear-shifter’s voice.
“I’m glad to hear she is well. Even now I find myself thinking about her, wondering what had become of Amelia Bennett. Years after we failed to solve that case I checked up on her to make sure she was all right. I couldn’t be happier when I found out Monique Delacroix had bought her for her boarding school. I wish I could have done more for her, found the ones who had turned her into an orphan and bring them to justice.”
“They were shape-shifters. That’s why you were assigned the case.” Seth had decided to attack the issue head on.
“Yes. Did my former partner tell you that? He shouldn’t have… That is classified information.”
“I figured it out myself. And why is it classified?”
“Oh, what the hell? So many years have passed… And if you have a better shot at it, why not?” The bear-shifter had taken a deep breath and held it in for a couple of seconds before releasing it with a sigh. “It’s classified because they weren’t just any shape-shifters, they were fox-shifters.”
“I don’t… I don’t get it. Why does that matter?”
“It matters a lot. Even though we were never able to prove it, my partner and I had come to the conclusion that they must have belonged to the Tricksters.”
“The assassins’ guild?” Seth had had to sit down. The not-so-small detail had been a blow to his head.
“Yes, the fox-shifters’ assassins’ guild.” Mentioning that was unnecessary, as they both knew none of the other shifter factions had such a guild hidden in the underbelly of the rebel groups that still thought the peace treaty was a mistake. Yes, there were enough wolf-shifters and a few bear-shifters who believed the war should have only ended when the humans would’ve been defeated, but none of these factions had taken their cause as far as to form an assassins’ guild and actually give it a name. In this respect, the fox-shifters had proved to be quite resourceful. And illegal.