17. Hart

Leaving Cane asleep after the day and night they'd spent together felt wrong, somehow. The prospect of getting out of bed had never felt like a chore, but now it did. The cold air waiting for him outside the covers was a threat instead of a welcome to a new day.

He touched Cane's sleeping face gently, careful not to wake him. He mapped out the piercings and scars one by one, his fingers feeling like they had a mind of their own as they danced over his skin. It was almost obsessive.

Would it be so wrong to stay here forever? Was there anything more important?

It was hard to search his mind for the answers to those questions. They felt mired and sticky when he reached for them, tricky to work loose, like something else was holding them back so he could sink further into the bliss of nothingness.

He frowned, a slight headache radiating as he fought to clear his mind of the cobwebs. He unglued himself from Cane's warm body, slipping into the bathroom quietly and turning the water on for the shower.

Stepping under the spray, he hissed at the chill water, letting it slide down his body and watching as it swirled into the drain. He felt unreasonably resentful of it, like it was running and taking something away from him. Hart didn't want to wash their scent off his skin. He didn't want to smell like shower gel, even if it was Cane's.

He opted to skip the shower gel completely, turning the water off and walking out, letting his skin air-dry as he toweled his hair. He swept it away from his face, borrowing Cane's toothbrush to brush his teeth and staring at his reflection.

He noticed his pupils were a little dilated and furrowed his brows as he got closer. Nothing. It's nothing, his brain said.

He nodded, finishing in the bathroom in just a few minutes, padding back into the dark room and watching Cane's ribcage expand with each breath he took. The covers slipped down, revealing the fresh burn on Cane's chest. Hart's mark. Something feral roared in Hart's chest. Possessive and ugly, but not unwanted, for a change.

They'd exhausted themselves on each other, both emotionally and physically. Barely stopping to eat, or drink, or talk. Something felt fundamentally different between them, and Hart didn't know what it meant. All he knew was that he wanted to crawl back under the covers, naked, and glue himself to Cane's skin. Wanted to block out the world around them for just a little bit longer and keep whatever was happening between them to himself.

Just crawl back in.

The temptation had his feet moving before his head caught up. He paused, jerking. There was still danger looming over Cane, and it was Hart's job to try and fix it. His headache got more painful, but he pushed it away and got dressed, allowing himself one more look at Cane before quietly slipping out of his apartment.

He hopped into his car and peeled away from the drab curb in front of Cane's building, heading toward the Cursebreaker Headquarters.

His phone continued pinging with the notifications from their group chat, but Hart had only had one text on his mind since it woke him up that morning.

Fix:A cursebreaker from Arcstead came in with some info. We're at the HQ.

He rushed through the deserted streets of Slatehollow, running a red light when he realized there was not a single other person on the road besides him. There was somebody with answers waiting for him. Somebody who could help him. And after seeing Cane on the edge of breaking down, he knew he had to get those answers as soon as he possibly could.

He pulled up in front of the headquarters and jumped out of the car, barely remembering to turn it off and lock it before he was bursting through the front door.

Taylor was sitting at the front desk, a small mirror with an LED light on it perched on her desk as she plucked her eyebrows.

"Everyone is in the…" she started before lifting her head up to look at him and freezing mid-sentence. She ran her eyes from the top of his head all the way down to his shoes, raising one half-plucked eyebrow. "You okay?"

He huffed, waving the question off with his hand.

"Fine," he said, walking through the long hallway toward the meeting room. He wanted to stop by his office and grab his tablet and the notes he had on this case. He wanted to have a list of questions prepared and be as thorough as he could be, but it felt like something inside him was screaming to just get to it and get it done. There was no time to dawdle when everything Cane was and had was hanging by a thread.

He burst through the door, finding everyone already settled around the large desk.

Fix was sitting with his back to the door. Ash was next to him and his mouth fell open the moment Hart walked through the door. Midas was absent, as usual. Wren was somewhere in the building, if the sounds of screeching were anything to go by. Black was sitting with his feet propped up on the desk, leaning into someone Hart had never seen. He was roughly Ash's build and height, but looked much more polished and put together than Ash usually did.

He had a dark brown knit sweater on, and his dark hair was styled into a thick coif on top of his head. He was classically handsome, with a sharp jawline and thick, expressive eyebrows.

Black nodded at something the man said, then looked up, eyes growing wide when they landed on Hart. He was starting to get irritated with their reactions.

"What?" Hart snapped, walking fully into the room and pulling out the chair next to Fix. He ignored another set of eyes landing on him with questions written all over.

"Your hair." Black pointed to Hart's head, and he raised his hand, running his fingers through it.

It was unstyled and soft to the touch, a few locks falling onto his forehead. Hart found it surprising to feel it like that when he was at work, since it was usually gelled into submission. It almost felt like a decision someone else had made for him that morning without asking for his input, but he couldn't find it in himself to care all that much.

"I was in a hurry," he said as an explanation.

Black nodded slowly, the finger still up in the air and his eyes still glued to Hart's hair. It was annoying beyond reason.

"And the outfit?" Ash asked next.

Hart looked down at himself, realizing he had zero recollection of getting dressed before leaving Cane's apartment, which had resulted in him wearing the suit trousers he'd had on the day before, his boots, and one of Cane's long-sleeved t-shirts that hung on his frame. It was obvious to anyone who had ever met him that it didn't belong to him.

"I spilled coffee on my shirt," he said, knowing it sounded completely hollow, but again, it wasn't important at all.

"You have changes of clothes in your car," Black said. "Multiple, color-coordinated ones. Like a psycho."

"And a few in your office," Ash added. "Which you walked by just now."

Hart glared at them both, wishing they'd just stop talking for once. He was feeling raw and unmoored and he just wanted to get to the point. He pushed his fingers into a bruise Cane had left on his thigh the night before to ground himself, and swallowed the curse that threatened to tumble out of his mouth.

He was becoming slightly more aware of how removed from his usual self he was that morning. He didn't know what to do about it other than to just try to fix the root of his issues, which was Cane's struggle.

"How about we hear what Damir has to say?" Fix said, as usual, the only one who realized there were more pressing matters than Black's and Ash's madness.

He pointed to the man sitting next to Black. Hart squinted at him, looking the man, Damir, over and trying to place his face. He was sure he'd seen him somewhere before. It was putting him on edge that he couldn't remember where, though.

"Do I know you?" he asked sharply.

Damir's brows winged up toward the dark, wavy tresses falling over half of his forehead. "Not that I know of?"

Hart scanned his face again, trying to grasp the elusive strand in his head. All he could find was thin air, and he felt immediately shamefaced. "Never mind. Sorry, that was rude of me."

"Maybe I just have one of those faces," Damir said with easy humor, giving him a gracious exit. "And you look around my age, so we would have been at Nexus at the same time probably."

It did make sense. After being split into teams they'd rarely spent any significant time with others, so at best, Hart might have seen him in passing and it had triggered a memory of a face among the masses.

"Probably." Hart offered his hand, doing his best to circumvent the weirdness of how he was feeling and do his job. "I'm Hart."

Damir accepted Hart's hand, giving it a firm, friendly shake without breaking eye contact. "Damir. Interpersonal specialist from Arcstead."

"Thank you for coming," Hart said, schooling his voice to match Damir's steady, soothing one. He knew he could do it, it was just taking some extra effort at the moment. "We really appreciate all the help we can get with this."

"Well I didn't really have a choice," Damir admitted with a self-deprecating smile, shaking his head. "But I'm more than happy to be of assistance."

Hart frowned. "I'm not sure I understand."

"Brace yourself, brother," Ash said. "This one's a doozy."

Damir nodded. "Yeah, it's honestly pretty strange," he said. "I was driving home from a case just near the border of Arcstead and Slatehollow, up north. Figured I'd cut my drive short by going through Slatehollow instead of circling around. In the middle of my drive, my car started acting up."

"Acting up how?" Hart asked, and Damir chuckled.

"I caved recently and splurged on one of those fully electric cars, self-driving tech, all of that," Damir said. "I've never been one to spend money on stuff like that, but it was my birthday recently, and I figured I'd treat myself."

"Right." Hart tried really hard to remain polite and patient when he wanted to scream at the man to get to the damn point already.

"Anyway, I'm driving, and the screen starts glitching, my music cuts off, this weird static sound gets really loud, and then I start getting all this info displayed on my car screen." Damir pulled out a Nexus issued tablet. "I was instructed to show you this. It's the exact thing that showed up in my car."

He turned the tablet on and played a video.

It showed an image of a light gray screen with black block letters glitching in and out of sight.

Slatehollow team

Find Hart

Give him the name

Arianna Layton

The words faded and the video cut off, leaving Hart's head spinning even more than it had been.

"Bit of déjà vu, that," Black said, pointing at the screen, eyes wide and confused.

"A bit, yeah." Ash nodded. "Except this time, someone is trying to help?"

"Wait, you've already seen this?" Damir asked.

Fix shook his head. "No, not this. But we were hacked recently, having someone warn us not to look into some stuff we found while working a case."

"You've been hacked?" Damir asked. "Our systems are supposed to be secure."

"We notified Nexus and PUMA, so they're looking into it," Fix said.

"Not turning up anything though," Ash added. "And now this!"

"And you have no idea who sent this?" Hart asked Damir, eyes still glued to the dark screen between them.

"Not a single one." Damir shook his head. "I assumed it's to do with your newest case. We did get your email and have been digging into our old cases. Nothing from the newer generations, but we had our intake manager start going through the physical ones we still keep. It's slow going."

"And this is all they sent you?" Hart asked. "Whoever it is?"

"Yup." Damir nodded, before frowning. "Well no. They also texted my phone a few seconds later telling me that they'd hack my car again and drive it here themselves if I didn't comply."

Hart stared at the tablet in silence.

"Has anyone heard of an Arianna Layton?" Hart asked, and they all exchanged looks that put Hart even more on edge. "What?"

"We went through public records of cursebreakers and casters while we were waiting for you. She's not on either," Fix said. "And if she's a commoner, it'll take a while to track her down."

"I texted Cyrus just before you got here," Black said, biting his lip before turning his phone to show it to Hart. "He just got back to me. Her name was on the list Morgan and Ash pulled out of the house."

"What?" Hart asked again, snapping his head up to look at them. They all shook their heads, clearly just as confused as he was.

"They still have nothing on it," Black said. "PUMA has been digging with all their resources, but it's like not a single one of those people have ever existed."

"Well, clearly they have!" Hart said, slamming his palm on the desk, making Black startle and stare at him. The following silence allowed the echo of his outburst to ring through the room, and it made Hart's teeth tingle with discomfort.

"Hart," Fix started. His voice was placating and meant to be soothing, but Hart was having none of it.

"I'm gonna ask Cane if he knows her," he said. "Somebody has to know her if this was sent to us."

He stood up, pushing the chair away from the desk a bit too forcefully for it to be justified by him being in a rush. He paused for just a second. He was clearly very disturbed by the lack of direction Damir had brought. His hopes had been high, and now they were squashed by a piece of information they couldn't use in any way. At least not anytime soon. That was all it was.

"I'm sorry I didn't bring anything more useful," Damir said, expression and tone apologetic as he spoke. "I'll get my team to dedicate more time to looking at our old cases, and I have a few connections to a few other teams, so I'll email them as well."

"Thank you," Hart forced himself to say. "I do apologize for being on edge like this. The case is just…"

"I completely understand," Damir said, hands raised. "We've all been there."

Had they, though? Hart honestly doubted it.

"I'll let you know…" he started, but was cut off by the door to the meeting room being thrown open and a tiny figure rushing inside.

"Did anyone see…" Wren looked up from the floor to the team, blue eyes growing wide and words dying on his lips when they landed on Damir.

"Teddy?" he whispered, his entire body frozen in place.

Damir's face reflected Wren's emotions almost perfectly. Like a mirror. He stared at him in wonder, as if he'd never seen another human being before. He jumped up from his seat, the action rattling the chair and spurring Wren into motion.

He gasped and fled the room, his steps echoing down the hallway.

"Teddy?" Ash asked, staring at Damir with a frown on his face. "I thought you were Damir?"

Damir shook his head, his eyes never straying from the door. "Not to him, I'm not," he whispered.

"Care to explain that?" Ash crossed his arms over his chest, stepping closer like he was ready to fight. "Because we sure as shit haven't heard of you, but clearly there's some history there that just sent my little brother running for the hills."

Damir winced, visibly and painfully, but it didn't seem to be at Ash. "I…don't think it's my place to say. I need to talk to him."

He pushed his chair back again, taking a step toward the door.

"You won't find him," Fix said.

Damir snapped his head toward him, his hands shaking slightly and vulnerable heart on show for the room to see. Beating and bloody. "He was just here."

"And now he's not," Fix said, running his gaze over Damir carefully, like he was trying to figure him out. "Wren has this look in his eyes when he doesn't want to be found. That was the look."

"Wren?" Damir breathed out, as if tasting the name on his tongue for the first time. He choked on a laugh and looked down at his feet, a pained, sad smile painting his lips. "My Little Bird."

There was so much in those words. So much in that name.

Hart couldn't process any of it though. Not the body language. Not the nuance. He was usually so attuned to people in a room, but he was watching all this happen as if through a haze of smoke. He was there physically, but his mind was already straying away, urging his legs to move.

The palpable yearning in the room, cloying and thick, only fed into his own selfish desire.

Cane, his brain whispered.

Why wasn't Hart with him? There surely wasn't anything more important. He was having trouble remembering exactly why he'd come to the office in the first place. Being here was useless. He had much better uses for his time.

He simply got up while everyone was distracted and walked out. He ignored Taylor's call at his back, letting the door to the building slam behind him and getting into his car almost mechanically.

He ignored the buzzing in his head, the nagging sense that something wasn't right, fixated on one thing only. Getting back to Cane.

Because how could that be wrong?