Chapter Four

Ben

The main office was heaving as I stepped inside. I deliberately averted my gaze from the incident board that took up most of one wall, already knowing what I'd find there: crime scene photos from four bodies. All men. All killed in the same way. All found in their bedrooms with the same symbols drawn in blood on the wall, and all missing their fingers and thumbs. And absolutely no fucking leads. Not a single one.

It had only been two weeks since the discovery of the first victim and already the killer had struck three more times to prove we had a bona fide serial killer on our hands. One who wasn't afraid to kill and kill again. The latest victim had been discovered two days ago—thirty-eight-year-old Baris Demir, a married father of three, who'd originally hailed from Turkey. I'd interviewed his wife myself, his widow sticking to her guns that her husband wasn't gay and that she would have known if he was. It hadn't quite been as harrowing as interviewing the first victim's parents, but it had run a close second .

Duncan Whitaker's parents had confirmed he'd only recently moved to London from Southampton to attend university. Biggest mistake he'd ever made. His mother hadn't been able to stop crying for more than a minute at a time during the interview. His father had been more stalwart, but the redness of his eyes had spoken of that only being a temporary measure for my benefit.

I'd learned nothing more useful than that Duncan had been gay. Between sobs, his mother had spoken at length about how proud she was of him coming out when he was still in high school, about how he'd even taken his boyfriend at the time to the sixth form dance and not given a damn if he got flak for it. They'd shown me his room, but I'd already known there was nothing useful to be gleaned from it. Duncan didn't have dark secrets that would lead us to a killer he'd already known. He'd just been in the wrong place at the wrong time. He'd done what a lot of young men did: taken someone home. But for him, that decision had proved fatal.

"Ebeneezer," Paul White said in greeting as I took the seat behind my desk. Lou raised his head from the adjoining one to offer me a nod. "I'm not fucking Scrooge," I said in answer to the ongoing attempt to find out what Ben was short for. I rued the day I hadn't just lied and claimed it was Benjamin the first time of asking.

"Could have fooled me," White's partner, Oliver Barell, offered. "Remember that Christmas tree I oh so generously put on your desk? Barely five minutes had passed before you chucked it in the bin."

I rolled my eyes. "You mean the one with little cocks hanging from it instead of baubles? "

"Thought you liked cock?" Paul said with a smirk and a very poor impression of my Welsh accent.

"I do. Just not as Christmas decorations. Call me fussy."

"We do," Oliver said. "That and a hundred other things when your back's turned."

I didn't credit that with a response. It was all well-meaning banter, anyway. There might have been some people in the department who had a problem with my sexuality, but it wasn't any of the three men in my direct vicinity. Oliver had even told me once during a drunken after work pub visit that he was glad I was gay, that in his words, it meant more skirt for the rest of them without my handsome mug getting in the way.

Lou cleared his throat. "DCS wants to see you, and he made it clear it needed to be five minutes before you got here."

My gut did a somersault, and a rubber band wrapped itself round my chest. "Don't tell me there's been another one?"

Lou's gaze drifted to the incident board that I still hadn't looked at. "Not that I know of."

My chest loosened slightly. I wasn't ready for four to become five yet. It was going to happen, though, if we didn't catch him. And that was looking about as likely as me waking up tomorrow and deciding I'd been wrong all these years and I was straight after all.

I rose from my chair, eyeballing Lou when he didn't move so much as an inch. "Come on then. Shake a leg."

He sat back in his chair, fixing me with a sardonic look as he folded his arms across his chest. "Are your ears just for decoration? I said he wanted to see you . Not us . I'm on desk duty until further notice."

"What!" When my exclamation had heads turning our way, I lowered my voice. "You're my partner. Don't tell me cutbacks have gotten so bad that they're sending us out on our own." I ignored Oliver and Paul as they did a terrible impression of pretending they weren't listening while taking in every word.

Lou shrugged. "Word on the street is that as of today, you've got a new partner."

"What do you mean?" None of this made any sense. "Who in their right mind would decide that in the middle of the biggest case we've had in years?"

Lou shook his head. "You're asking the wrong person. I just do what I'm told. And I've been told to keep searching for any links between our victims and feed it back to you. Baros didn't directly say I'd be taking a back seat, but I can read between the lines."

"For fuck's sake!" I stared at Lou for a few seconds longer, but when he had no further explanation to offer, I spun on my heel and headed for Baros' office, rage and frustration transporting me there in half the time it would normally have taken. My knock was louder than normal, my fingers relishing the opportunity to curl into a fist.

"Come in."

I tamped down on my antagonistic feelings as I stepped over the threshold. Detective Chief Superintendent Wilson Baros wasn't the type of man you went to town on. Not unless you wanted to be sent away with a flea in your ear. "Sir," I said instead. "You wanted to see me."

"I did." He waved a hand at the seat in front of his desk and I sat. Shrewd blue eyes studied me. Baros might have been in his late fifties, with hair more gray than black these days, but he was still as sharp as ever. "You look tired. You need to get more sleep. "

Coming from the man who kept calling me in the middle of the night to send me to crime scenes, the comment was nothing short of hilarious. When did he think I slept? "I'll try to get an early night," I said with an admirable lack of irony. I would, probably at the point where I gave in my detective badge or retired, whichever of those events came first.

Baros tapped the folder in front of him. "I've been reading up on Satanic Romeo…"

I pulled a face at the name. It lacked imagination if you asked me. Satanic because of the symbols he left in blood, and Romeo because he picked his victims up and had sex with them first.

He held the folder up. "Is this up to date?"

"It is."

"So no new leads?"

I shook my head. "Trust me, I wish I had better news for you. He'll slip up, though. Everyone does eventually."

Baros' eyes narrowed. "But how many more will die before that happens?"

Knowing I wouldn't get a better opening, I sat forward in my chair. "That's why we need as many officers on it as we can. Out on the streets, I mean. Not sat here doing background checks that any junior detective could do."

"What are you getting at, Weaver?"

"Lou said—"

Baros cut me off. "We need a fresh approach. One that'll catch this bastard before he kills half the gay men in London. We're already struggling to keep the finer details from the press. Once they get hold of it, we run the risk of copycats or the usual attention seekers looking to confess just to get their five minutes of fame. "

Baros' words stung all the more for being true. It might only have been two weeks since the first murder, but those two weeks already felt like a lifetime. And four murders in such a brief space of time didn't bode well for the future. How many after a month? Two months? "What do you suggest? I've already made a request for extra manpower to canvas gay clubs. He's picking those men up from somewhere. We only found Grindr on one of the victim's phones, so it's unlikely he's finding them that way."

Baros steepled his fingers in front of him. "How many gay clubs are there in London?"

"A few, but…"

"And how many officers would it take to cover them all?"

I sat back in my chair, frustration building. "So we just sit back and let him kill again? Is that what you're saying?"

"I'm not saying any such thing," Baros said smoothly. "I'm saying we take a more progressive approach. And that's why I have a new partner for you."

Despite the heads-up from Lou, the confirmation was no less of a kick in the gut. "How is a new partner going to help? It's going to do the opposite. Lou's up to date on the case, and he and I work well together. Bring someone new in and I'll have to waste time bringing them up to speed."

Baros' stony expression said my pleas were like water off a duck's back. He leaned forward to press the intercom. "Send him in."

Just when I thought things couldn't get any worse, Griffin Caldwell strolled in and I realized it had just gotten a million times worse, and that was putting it mildly.

"Mr. Caldwell," Baros said effusively. "I'm Detective Chief Superintendent Wilson Baros. Please take a seat. No doubt your curiosity is running wild about why I asked you here today." As Griffin sat, Baros waved a hand my way. "This is DCI Ben Weaver. Ben, Griffin Caldwell."

My tongue felt too large for my mouth, like it didn't belong there and wouldn't do what I needed of it in order to shape words. My immediate reaction was to say we'd met, which would be akin to saying the pope was a bit religious.

Could an instantaneous connection that had rocked me to the core, a whirlwind romance, passion the likes of which I'd never experienced before or since, a year of living in each other's pockets, and then a split that had almost broken me, be summarized as having met. I didn't think so. Not to mention the side effects of that relationship that I still carried with me to this day. That I could feel what he felt, taste what he tasted. Granted, some days it was stronger than others, and there were a few where it barely registered at all, but it was always there in some respect.

Sometimes my emotions spiraled out of control, and it took a moment to work out that they weren't my emotions. Instead, they belonged to this man. My fated mate because of his damn necromancer blood. The man who had made it more than clear he never wanted to see me again. The same man who was sitting less than a meter away from me and had turned his cool gaze my way, the familiar brown eyes lacking even a shred of warmth.

I could feel it, though. Beneath the impassive exterior for the DCS's benefit, was a whirling maelstrom that told me he'd been just as unprepared for my presence in this meeting as I was his. It seemed fate had seen fit to bring us together once more.

"Pleased to meet you," I said as I held out my hand. It was simpler to pretend we'd never met. Far fewer questions. I just hoped it wouldn't bite me in the ass later .

His hesitation in taking my hand felt like a lifetime, but was probably only a second or two. Despite the coolness of his skin, sparks flew as our palms met, catapulting me back into memories I'd worked hard to forget. Long evenings spent in bed together, sweat still drying on our skin as we laughed at things that didn't deserve that much hilarity. Mundane tasks made fun because we were doing them together. Meals with friends. Phone calls for hours. Gifts exchanged. A marriage proposal that had never manifested into more than that. The list was never-ending, and it burned like acid as it played like a slideshow in my brain.

Despite the three years that had passed, Griffin didn't look that much different. A few more lines around the eyes. A few pounds heavier. More tired. Did I look any different to him? Did I care? A squeak of Baros' chair as he shifted his weight had me jerking my gaze his way and registering that he'd been talking.

"… quite irregular, I'll admit, but it's something that's been under discussion for a while, and this case is moving so fast that it seems a perfect opportunity to try it out."

"Wait!" I interjected. "What exactly is it you think he'll be able to do?"

Baros turned his shrewd gaze my way. "Mr. Caldwell is a necromancer. A man capable of bringing someone back from the dead."

"I…" I'd been going to say I knew that. Barely a minute had passed, and I was already in danger of slipping up. "I know what they do. I just don't know how that's going to help us." Neither did Griffin, if his furrowed brow was anything to go by. At least I wasn't the only one in the dark. My brain did some speedy mental gymnastics, the full implications of what Baros was suggesting finally dawning on me.

It dawned on Griffin at the same time, my ex-lover sitting straighter in his seat. "The board will never grant permission. It's been up for discussion before and it turned into a lengthy debate about ethics that just went round in circles until they shelved the idea altogether. And if you think I'm going behind their backs and losing my license over it, you need to think again."

Relief washed over me. There'd been a moment where I'd actually believed I might have to work with him. Like that could ever have ended in anything but disaster.

The DCS picked up a piece of paper from the corner of his desk and passed it across to Griffin, leaving me as nothing but an onlooker. Which was all kinds of fucked up when it was my case. "They've already agreed," he said simply.

Griffin snatched the piece of paper from Baros' hand with the air of a man who thought he was being fed absolute bullshit. I knew all about the mysterious board who governed every move a necromancer made from our time together. Griffin had often described them as a bunch of people who knew nothing about how the real world worked and who spent their time working out the best way to inflict misery. Well, he hadn't quite phrased it that politely, but that was the general gist of it. Griffin scoured the piece of paper while both Baros and I watched him.

If it had been anyone else, I might have leaned across to read it. But seeing as I didn't know what getting close to Griffin would do to me, I stayed firmly rooted in place, searching for clues in his expression about what he was reading. He remained carefully neutral. At least until he shook his head, his gaze lifting to Baros. "I can't believe you got them to sign off on this. How did you pull that off?"

"They okayed it?" I asked.

Neither man so much as glanced my way, never mind answered. Apparently, I'd achieved invisibility.

"They recognized that their best interests lie in stopping these murders," Baros said quietly.

"Why?"

Given the word hovered on my tongue, it took a few seconds to realize Griffin had beaten me to it. "Yeah, why?" I echoed, thinking we'd have a better chance of getting an answer if we presented a united front, despite the absurdity of that considering our history.

Baros' shrewd gaze skimmed between us. Did he know there was a connection? One that we'd hidden. I steeled myself for him to call us out on it, but the moment passed without him saying anything. "Let's just say we persuaded them they could play a crucial role in modernizing the police force, and that it wouldn't look good if they refused. They have enough detractors as it is."

I leaned forward. "I just want to check I've got this right. You're suggesting we bring a murder victim back to life, so we can ask them questions about how they died? How are the relatives going to take that, do you suppose?"

There was a challenge in Baros' gaze when we locked eyes. "If you're not up to the job, DCI Weaver, I can find someone who is."

"That won't be necessary." My words were as cold as his stare. "You'll have to excuse my confusion, but I needed clarity. It's my first time in fifteen years of being in the force that I've been partnered with a necromancer. "

Baros shoved the folder my way. "You'll need to brief Mr. Caldwell. He should know what he's walking into."

My gaze slid Griffin's way, finding him wearing a slight frown. "He hasn't agreed to it yet," I pointed out. "I can't think of many civilians who would volunteer their services in this way."

The DCS raised an eyebrow. "Well, Mr. Caldwell? Now you know the board has sanctioned it, can we count on your cooperation? Your boss, Cade Everleigh, has assured me we can call on your services for as long as they're needed. He seemed to think the change of scenery might do you good."

It was all I could do to hold back a snort. Change of scenery. Right, because crime scenes were all the rage for kicking back in. If that was the case, I'd be the most chilled out person who'd ever lived, and I was far from it.

During the long silence that followed, I held my breath. This would be where Griffin would tell Baros where he could stick his job. He'd walk out, and we'd go back to pretending we weren't meant to be together, that I wasn't the chosen one decreed by his necromancer abilities. I could pretend it hadn't cut like a knife to see him again, that I hadn't noticed how he'd barely looked my way since his arrival in Baros' office, and life would get back to normal. Or as normal as it could be when murders dictated your every waking moment.

"I think," Griffin said slowly, "that I need to know more before I can make a decision."

What? That wasn't what he'd been supposed to say. Unless Griffin had changed, which I sincerely doubted, he wasn't the type to be maneuvered into something he didn't want to do for the sake of being polite. And if the little snippets about him that had reached my ears from well-meaning friends were anything to go by, he'd only gotten worse in that regard, not better .

Fuck! I really didn't want to find myself stuck between a rock and a hard place with the case, but it was looking increasingly likely that's what would happen.