5. Keelan

Chapter 5

Keelan

I reached Albrecht’s office just as the late afternoon shadows began to cloak the city of Saltstone. The sun hung low in the sky, painting the buildings in a dusky orange, but I couldn’t find any comfort in its warm light.

The weight of Albrecht’s death pressed hard on me, tightening my chest with each step I took. The investigation, still in its infancy, had been frustrating enough—a missing ledger that felt like little more than busywork.

Now it had turned deadly.

I hadn’t expected murder. I hadn’t expected any of this.

Jorin, the guard standing watch outside the door, caught my eye and nodded. His cloak fluttered in the evening breeze, snapping behind him like a hound nipping at his heels. He looked uneasy, and for good reason. We didn’t see many murders in Saltstone—not in the Merchant district.

“Is Albrecht . . . is he still in there?” I said, feeling silly for struggling with how to ask about a dead body. I was a Guardsman, for Spirits’ sake. I should be able to handle a crime scene without losing my senses.

Still, nerves battered my chest like enraged hornets scrambling to escape.

“Not a pretty sight.” Jorin nodded again as I approached.

I steeled myself. “Anyone else been inside?”

“Just the physiker to confirm he’s dead. Didn’t see any sense calling a full Healer for a corpse. I made sure she didn’t touch anything other than the body.”

“Good man.” I gave him a tight smile and clapped him on the shoulder. Jorin was a career Constable, one of the guys who’d be guarding crime scenes and battling the bad guys for the rest of his life. His unfortunate lack of creativity would keep him from doing much more.

But the world needed good men and women on foot, I supposed.

I sucked in a breath and gripped the door handle.

This was my case now, and I had to prove I could handle it. The thought should’ve filled me with resolve. I should’ve felt a jolt of enthusiasm or pride or . . . something . . . but instead, all I felt was a gnawing unease.

It might’ve made some strange sort of sense, me feeling uneasy about a rapidly escalating case, but that wasn’t the source of my souring stomach.

Declan fueled my angst.

I couldn’t shake visions of my baby brother—seeing him earlier, hearing his voice, feeling the growing expanse between us. Declan had been so eager once, so full of light. Now he avoided looking at me, and when he did, there was something unreadable in his eyes. It felt as though he stared through a murky glass from far away, watching but not seeing me.

I don’t think he’d devolved into resentment—at least, not yet.

But he was close.

I felt like I stood before a door that had closed and would never again fully open, a door I loved with all my heart, the one door that had always been open to me when others slammed shut.

And the worst part was, I didn’t know how to fix it.

Focus, Keelan. There’s a dead man who needs you right now.

I pushed my brother from my mind and opened the door. “Let’s see what we’re dealing with.”

A wave of musty air hit me, tinged with the coppery scent of blood. I braced myself for what I knew I would see, but the scene still sent a jolt through my chest.

Albrecht’s body lay sprawled on the floor behind his desk.

His eyes were wide open, staring at the ceiling. His throat had been cut, a jagged, vicious line of crimson and black across his pale skin. Blood pooled around his head in a grotesque halo. Ledgers were scattered across the desk, many splattered with blood.

I swallowed hard and forced myself to focus on the details, not the horror of the scene.

My heart pounded.

Saltstone saw kidnappings and thefts but few murders. In fact, I couldn’t remember one in the last few years.

Yet here I was, the lead investigator examining a dead body.

This was no time to lose control.

I needed to think, to look for anything out of place.

“Lock the door behind me,” I told Jorin.

He’d poked his head through the door to watch me work. Disappointment crossed his features as his head withdrew and the door squealed shut.

The silence was sudden, the room suffocatingly still. Except for the faint sound of my own breathing, nothing stirred.

I stepped forward, advancing slowly, rolling the ball of my foot to test each spot before planting it firmly onto the floor. Starting at the door, I worked my way around the room. Albrecht’s office was small, cramped with shelves filled with documents and books. Aside from blood splattered in every direction, everything appeared to be in its proper place.

I approached Albrecht’s body, careful not to step in the pool of blood that welled about his head and shoulders. His face was frozen in fear, his eyes wide, his mouth open in a final, silent scream. I knew better than to read too much into his expression. Still, something about the set of his mouth and furrowing of his brow made me think confusion had been his last emotion—aside from the obvious surprise of having his throat opened.

I crouched to get a closer look.

Had there not been blood everywhere, he would have appeared as neat as when I’d last seen him, a man of business ready for his next client to arrive. His hair was tightly combed, covering what territory its wispy strands could manage. His spectacles were slightly askew, and his tie lay slung over a shoulder, but I suspected those were symptoms of him falling to the floor rather than clues to solving the man’s murder.

My eyes trailed down his face to his neck.

The wound was ragged, vicious.

Whoever had killed him hadn’t planned to do so with a tidy, sharp knife. It looked like they’d used a serrated blade most often seen in the hands of fishermen scaling the day’s catch down by the docks.

I pulled a small leather-bound notepad from my cloak and scribbled a note.

My gaze continued to his shoulders, then his chest and arms. I’d almost shifted to examine his legs when something about the way his left hand was bent caught my eye. The fingers of that hand were curled inward, stiff, as if they’d grasped something before he died. Using a kerchief from my pocket to keep from touching the dead man’s skin, I pried his fingers open.

His hand was empty.

I let his hand rest on his body and sat back. My Gift was only useful with a live suspect who sought to obscure the truth, but my Guardsman’s intuition screamed in my head. Whatever the man had been holding, I was sure of two things:

First, it had been taken by the killer. That was an assumption, and I knew better than to count it as fact, but everything in me knew it to be true.

And second, the item in question held the key to unlocking this case—at least, getting me several steps toward a resolution.

I grabbed a lantern from the desk and held it down toward Albrecht’s hand, again prying it open using the kerchief as a glove. On the inside of his palm was the indention of something . . . lines within circles within lines. Had the man lived, such lines would likely have faded by now. As a corpse, they were frozen in place like the rest of him.

“That has to be an Enchantment,” I muttered. “But why would an accountant have something Enchanted that others would kill to possess? And what does this have to do with the missing ledger, if anything?”

Shoving the kerchief back into my pocket, I scratched my head, as if fingernails in my scalp might impart mystical knowledge or insight.

I looked back up at the wound on his neck.

The cut was savage, uneven, as if done in a hurry, maybe even by someone inexperienced.

There were no other visible wounds.

There were no signs of a struggle.

Had Albrecht known his killer?

“Whoever did this must’ve taken him by surprise,” I said, standing and stepping away from the body.

But why?

I glanced at the desk, scanning the ledgers and receipts scattered across it, as though tossed like a table side salad. Albrecht was far too neat to leave his desk in such disarray. Someone had rifled through them, but there was an order to the mess. It looked as if whoever shuffled through Albrecht’s work had been searching for something specific.

Something missing.

My mind raced, piecing together fragments of what little I knew, knowing I was missing far too many pieces to form anything resembling a full picture.

“What do I know?” I asked, grounding myself.

Albrecht had been the only one with access to the ledger that disappeared.

If he was truthful—and correct—he’d been the only person who knew where it was kept.

He’d also been the only person with access to that storeroom.

Clearly, Albrecht had been wrong about everything.

Or had he lied?

My Gift pricked the muscles of my back as I remembered our conversation.

I still had no clue what was in the ledger.

Was it accounting of the rich and powerful, simple entries denoting their land and wealth, as Albrecht had said?

Merchants were tenacious in their privacy, but would they kill to hide what they owned? That seemed a stretch, especially for the Merchants of Saltstone, who enjoyed unparalleled trade and wealth.

If the missing ledger contained something dangerous—information someone wanted kept secret—it could explain why he was killed. But what information could be so damning?

Every answer I found only raised more questions.

What had Albrecht held in his hand?

Was that what the killer was after, or were they looking for the missing ledger?

If whoever killed the man now possessed both the ledger and the mysterious item, what did that mean? Was there even more afoot than a murder?

That thought sent a shiver down my arms.

I stood and returned to the desk, sifting through the papers, hoping to find something I’d overlooked. I came across a small, bloodstained paper poking out from beneath the edge of a heavy leather-bound book. Carefully unfolding the parchment, my eyes narrowed as I read. The page was a receipt for a shipment of goods—nothing unusual on its own—but the date drew my eye. The transaction was listed for a week after the ledger had gone missing. The name at the top of the receipt was Tomas Fielder, a Merchant I recognized from the docks.

Why would Albrecht have a receipt for a transaction that wouldn’t even occur for several more days?

I pocketed the paper.

As I stretched my back, my mind wandered back to the Mages’ Guild. Atikus had warned me that the case might not be as simple as it seemed, but even he hadn’t anticipated a killing.

And Declan . . .

Did he know how much that visit had unsettled me?

Did he even care?

The way he’d stood there with his arms crossed and that distant look on his face—it haunted me now.

Come on, Rea. Head in the game. Solve this case.

I tried to shake myself free of familial drama, annoyed that my cloak couldn’t shield me from such distractions. Did every lawman struggle to balance their private lives with their duty to the public?

Would I always feel torn between my two worlds?

Or was this yet another teenage phase Declan would emerge from, likely with no recollection of the toll his words and actions had taken on those around him?

I sighed and turned back toward Albrecht’s body.

This wasn’t a random act of violence.

It was deliberate and emotional .

The gash across his neck screamed of anger, possibly hatred. I was surprised to not find more wounds.

Someone had wanted the man dead.

A soft knock on the door boomed throughout the space. I nearly leaped out of my boots.

I opened the door to find Jorin, his face grim.

“What now?”

“I sent word to the Merchants’ Guild to expect you,” he said. “Figured you’d want to follow up there next.”

“This day will never end, will it?” I rubbed my tired eyes. “Thanks, Jor. Lock up behind me, will you? No one goes in without me here.”

“You got it, Chief.”

Chief.

That made me chuckle.

It’s what the rank and file called an investigator.

It was a term of respect, bordering on endearment, if such existed between Constables.

No one had ever used that word to address me.

A smile formed against my will.

Jorin didn’t seem to notice my swelling pride.

He peered past me through the open doorway at Albrecht’s body, and his face paled. “Think this has something to do with that missing ledger?”

“I’m sure of it.” I closed the door behind me. “But we’re only scratching the surface. There’s more going on here than we realized. I can feel it.”

Jorin grimaced. “You need backup? If this is bigger than—”

“No,” I cut him off, more sharply than I intended. “Not yet.”

He hesitated, then nodded. “All right. But if you need anything—”

“Thanks, Jor.” I nodded, though my mind had already moved on.

The Merchants’ Guild.

There had to be someone there who knew more about Albrecht’s dealings, someone who could tell me why he’d been meeting with Tomas Fielder.

If anyone could tell me more, the guild was the place to start.

As I walked through the dimming streets, my thoughts seesawed again.

How was I supposed to reach Declan?

How did anyone crack a sixteen-year-old’s shell of indifference?

I wasn’t a parent. I certainly wasn’t his parent. Spirits, I didn’t even have parents of my own.

But I was his big brother, and that meant something.

It meant everything.

It was my job to protect him, no matter what.

The chasm between Declan and me had opened a few years ago. I felt it when it happened. I knew that first time he looked at me sideways rather than straight on through the eyes of an awed younger brother.

When I left the Mages’ Guild for the Guard, those awful, distant glances became the norm, and the gulf separating us stretched like the banks of a raging river worn away by time and flow.

How was I supposed to bridge that gap?

Could one even repair a relationship with a wandering teen?

How did parents not pull their hair out every day?

He was so distant now, so lost in his own world.

And the worst part was I had no idea what was going on in that world. I was too caught up in my own life—this investigation, my training, my ambitions.

Had I been blind to his struggles for too long?

Had I looked away on purpose?

Guilt percolated within me, the festering of an old wound now sour with rot.

But I had to set everything aside.

I had a murder to solve.

A renewed sense of purpose quickened my pace as my mind shifted gears yet again. No matter how simple this case had seemed at first, I knew it was going to lead to somewhere dangerous. I could feel it in my bones.

By the time I reached the Merchants’ Quarter, the sun had vanished.

The city felt colder.

I had to solve this.

I had to prove myself.

I had to protect everyone.

Still, as I reached the steps of my next interview, I couldn’t shake the feeling I would end the day even deeper in shadows.