26. Banned

O ctavius stared at the baffled expression on Detective Robins’ face. He had to say…the interrogation was not as much fun this time.

“I understand it’s suspicious, but I had nothing to do with it. Nor would I have had time to even attempt to mess with the lines of that piano, as…well, I was here for hours, and had only been in the restaurant for fifteen minutes before it happened. Really, there is no way I could have had anything to do with any of the incidents—not the guillotine, not the slide, or even the arrow. Security footage of the park will show you that I have not, in fact, been near any of the locations until the moments of those deaths.”

“We have long come to the conclusion that you are not murdering anyone, Mr. Evander. But that doesn’t change the fact that people around you are dying.” The human took a deep breath. “You’re a private investigator, so tell me about your cases.”

“Nobody from my past cases is trying to kill me.”

With the paranormal ones…frankly, most of those had final conclusions where no one was left alive to even try to kill him.

Could it be one of the human spouses he’d exposed…maybe? But unlikely, in his mind… He’d had no interaction with them whatsoever. At least, not enough for them to narrow in on him. If it were one of those humans, they’d likely be trying to kill Turney as well.

It wasn’t adding up, to be honest. The lack of scent, and just the majority of the locations would suggest it was someone paranormal, yet the methods screamed human. As any paranormal would have known that none of those methods would have been enough to kill him. Well, the piano would have hurt…and ugh…the guillotine would not have been fun to heal from, and the arrow to the face…also not fun, but he would have healed regardless…

“Well, you’ve pissed off someone!” The man tapped a piece of paper on the table. “I want names.”

Octavius slowly picked up the pencil that was lying there with a sigh.

Turney quietly followed behind Octavius, as they all left the police station…again. Here’s hoping there won’t be a third time , Turney thought.

Once back in the van, having gotten into the seats in the back behind Theo and Sprinkle, Octavius sighed and said, “Okay…someone is trying to kill me.”

“Someone stupidly incompetent,” Scarlett drawled.

“Or human,” Theo suggested.

Min-ji snorted. “I find it hard to believe a human would have been able to pull off the death in the slide.”

“It could be that the slide was truly an accident?” Turney suggested. “The question is…who did you piss off, Octavius?”

The vampire huffed. “No one comes to mind. But someone is mad… What we need to do is look for more clues.”

After recent realizations… Octavius not knowing who he’d pissed off…really wasn’t that surprising. Part of him wondered if there were times that the vampire had pissed someone off without realizing. But rather than talking about possible clues…there was one glaring issue with this whole thing. And he was pretty sure he knew the answer already, unfortunately.

Stretching, his joints popped as he accidentally brushed against what appeared to be a button near the vents above him.

“Uh oh,” Octavius squeaked, as a panel in the roof began to open. The vampire jumped up and began to repeatedly press a different button on the roof, but it was doing nothing to stop, what appeared to be an honest to God disco ball, from descending.

Turney stared, feeling baffled, as the lights in the van went out, and the disco ball lit up and began to twirl. While, coming down right in front of it was, what looked to be, a small bat-sized cage with a stripper pole in it.

“Oct-Octavius…” he croaked. One of his eyes started to twitch as the ball turned off and receded, along with the cage, back into the depths of the roof… The button the vampire had desperately been pressing had finally worked.

“I can…explain,” Octavius said slowly as he sat back down.

“Oh, you can?” he asked with a stiff smile. “Go ahead then…explain. Explain why our work van has a disco ball and a bat stripper cage.”

Theo made a choking noise. “This would be one of those moments where seeing would have benefited me.”

“Well, you see…” His boyfriend cleared his throat. “It’s for when…we need to…blend in! Yeah, blend in, and go undercover.”

Scarlett snorted.

“It’s just too…” Min-ji’s voice cut off as she made an odd noise, before she lost it and started to giggle uncontrollably.

He rolled his eyes. “In what world would we ever need a bat-sized stripper cage to blend in for a case?”

“WE COULD!” Octavius cried.

“You are not writing either of those things off as a business expense,” Theo drawled.

“What?! But that’s not fair!” the vampire whined. “Fun hater!”

“You know what is also not fun? Being audited by the IRS,” the werewolf stated with a snort. “Now…back to the people getting murdered around you. If we want to look at the crime scenes, we will have to go at night, and also try to avoid the security cameras.”

Octavius pouted, but didn’t respond to either of the things Theo said, while Min-ji finally stopped laughing.

Clearing her throat, the witch, voice still laced with humor, said, “We’d have to find them first.”

Pushing the ridiculousness of what they’d just discovered away, he frowned at the focus of the discussion. Security cameras were good and all, and yeah, they would need to figure out where they were, if they wanted to look closer… However, there was something more important that they needed to talk about first.

“Wait,” Turney huffed.

They all turned to face him.

“What?” Octavius asked, his pout disappearing.

“Shouldn’t we first figure out how this person even knew we were going to be here?”

The vampire frowned, tilting his head. “Maybe…someone who hates me just happened to be here too?”

“Just happened to be here, and be able to follow around more than one paranormal creature without being noticed?” he asked, making sure his disbelief was clear in his voice.

Octavius shrugged. “Maybe.”

Turney rolled his eyes. “Octavius, I’ve been suspicious of those damn emails you told me about since before we even left the house. Let me see your phone.” He held out his hand.

“Emails…” Theo said slowly. “I don’t like where this is heading.”

Frowning, the vampire pulled his phone out of his pocket and placed it in Turney’s palm. “I don’t see what they have to do with anything.”

Flipping the phone open, he quickly went to the man’s email app, and found it already signed in to the company account. Scrolling, Turney was unsurprised to find the emails were all still there. What was surprising was the number of emojis in the subject heading of the emails… There were four separate emails spaced out over the last four months.

Tapping on the first one, which was dated four months ago, his brow rose at the contents. Bright, colorful, and flashy, the ad for Duckvilla was full of sparkles, gifs, cartoons… It looked like something that was meant to entice a child, not an adult…or rather, a very hyperactive, easily entertained vampire, who liked sparkly, flashy things.

He quickly moved to the next email, dated a month and a half ago, and found it was all about the current Mallard Mysteries week, along with special discounted room rates for the convention.

Looking at Octavius, he asked, “When did you first discover Mallard Mysteries?”

“Well…about two months ago, in January?” The vampire frowned, and then corrected himself. “No…it was early December, but I didn’t start watching until after the holidays as there wasn’t time.”

“Correct me if I’m wrong, but did you, before that, start buying up any official merch you could get your hands on, while obsessively watching small clips that people uploaded online? And is there now perhaps a room in Scarlett’s house that is slowly filling with Mallard Mysteries memorabilia?”

Octavius blinked, his eyes going wide. “How… How did you know?!”

Turney knew because when it came to things Octavius liked, his boyfriend was exceedingly predictable. The room thing, he hadn’t been a hundred percent sure about… But after listening to the vampire complain that his BTS photocard collection was no longer in an easily viewable location, due to them not living there…he’d made an educated guess.

Scarlett let out a growl. “Octavius, what room did you clutter up?!”

“It’s just one room,” the vampire cried. “You have others!”

Ignoring them as they started to bicker, he checked the third email. It was from last weekend, and was the email Octavius had spoken to him about, dealing with room availability. That there were plenty of rooms left, was in fact, mentioned more times than you should be able to fit into one email. The ‘Book Now’ button was purple instead of blue, telling him it had been clicked.

Turney checked the last email, which was from the day they booked, and found the confirmation for their rooms, along with a link to download the Duckvilla trip organization and reservation app. The app link was also already clicked.

Having a sneaking suspicion, Turney backed out and went back to the first email from four months ago. He sighed as he eyed the purple link that let him know his boyfriend had in fact clicked to find out more—hell.

Pulling out his own phone from his pocket, he flipped it open.

TURNEY

I need you to check the company email, specifically four emails from [email protected]. See if there is anything off about the links and the app mentioned. ASAP, please.

CORMAC

Is there a reason?

TURNEY

Someone may be trying to kill Octavius… May, as in, someone is very much trying to kill Octavius, and I’m pretty sure he clicked on things he shouldn’t have.

CORMAC

Yeah…old paranormals and emails can be a bad combination. But, sure…why not. It's probably more interesting than the shit I’m doing right now.

Eyeing the texts he sent, he frowned as he read the email address. Goddammit… Turney looked up the park on his phone, and after going to the official website, he sighed heavily in defeat as he read the email address that was listed.

Shaking his head, he quickly shut down Octavius’ phone.

“Why did you shut it down?” the vampire asked with a frown as he took his phone back.

“Because the email you got those messages from is spelled Duckville, instead of Duckvilla, and I’m pretty sure you downloaded, at the very least, a tracker onto your phone.”

Octavius’ eyes widened, looking truly shocked. “How is that possible?”

Min-ji snorted.

“May…I suggest we enroll him into some digital literacy classes?” Theo hesitantly put out there.

“I did… It didn’t work.” Scarlett sighed. “Then again, it was over twenty years ago. So maybe a refresher would help…or maybe we just have to…explain it in a way that will keep his attention.”

Octavius’ eyes narrowed. “I don’t…remember…taking any classes.”

Turney groaned, rubbing at his temples. “Oh, my God, you are so banned from checking the company email from now on.” After thinking about it even just briefly, he quickly corrected, “No, you're just banned from emails entirely.”