I didn't find out until I tried to leave that Dylan wasn't going to let me. He offered a few times to take me to the hospital, and every time, I told him no. Lauren and Dinah were with me as we sat in his office. Dylan had closed the door to give us some privacy. I didn't know where Dan Holbrook, my old boss was, and frankly, I didn't particularly care to find out.
After much cajoling, I'd managed to talk the younger cop I'd met the other day into bringing me a cup of coffee. He'd brought Dinah a soda from the vending machine. Dylan was seated on the other side of his desk, his white dress shirt unbuttoned and his tie pulled loose. "Dylan," I said. "Stop looking at me like that."
"Start talking, Camila,"
"About?" I asked, tilting my head with the question. "You know what," he said. "What the hell happened in there? What the hell were you and Ms. Myoi doing? What the fuck was that thing above the table and how is it you collapsed, woke up, painted the interrogation room floor with your blood, and are sitting there calmly in front of me as if nothing fucking happened?"
"Are you about to have hysterics?" I asked. "Don't be a smartass, Camila. Not right now." I pulled my legs up in the seat, nursing my cup of coffee since it seemed he wasn't going to let me leave any time soon. Neither Lauren nor Dinah spoke, but Dylan shot them both an expectant look and asked, "Either of you going to tell me?" Dinah shook her head, indicating she wasn't going to peep. Lauren said simply, "The answers to the questions you ask are not mine to tell."
"We told you what was happening, Dylan, as much as you needed to know. Mina is part fey. She was using her energy to try and figure out what I am."
"That doesn't tell me anything, Kassandra. And no, you really didn't tell me what was happening. You knocked my gun out of my hands and told me not to shoot."
"If you had shot at it, Dylan, it wouldn't have done any good and someone in that room might've gotten seriously hurt. It was a battle of metaphysics, not weapons."
"What the hell was Ms. Myoi talking about your magic?"
"You know I'm a witch, Dylan."
He leaned back in his seat, shaking his head. "Mila, I saw you move. I saw your eyes."
"My eyes?" I asked. "What'd my eyes look like?"
"Unlike you," he said. "I don't know. They didn't look right. They shouldn't have been that bright. I'm going to ask you again, what happened?"
"You were in the room, Dylan. Mina and her cousin are part fey. That's how they were able to protect themselves when they were attacked. When Mina raised her energy to explore mine, it did something. I'm not sure what."
"The night hag is stalking Camila and when Mina combined her energy with Camila's, even briefly, I believe that energy blazed like a light by which to guide the being to her," Lauren said. "Mina said she was trying to shield me. Could you sense the energy?" I asked. Lauren offered a slow nod. "She tried to camouflage your energy as soon as she sensed the creature, I think, for fear that it would use your energy to try and manifest."
"But it didn't need my energy to manifest, Laur. It manifested even though she was shielding my energy."
"So I believe," she said. "What are you two talking about?" Dylan leaned forward, and he looked more irritated and uncomfortable than I'd ever seen him. "The thing that attacked us in the interrogation room is a being that lives in the astral realm, Dylan, and it put some kind of metaphysical tracking device on Mina or me and when she and I raised energy, it found us. Lauren suspects that Mina tried to shield me so that it couldn't feed psychically off my energy and use my power to manifest in our reality. Are you following me?"
"Explain power."
"I'm using the words power and energy interchangeably. Every piece of life around you, from a plant to a person, has energy."
"The Chinese call it ch'i," Dinah said. "Life force."
"Spirit?" Dylan asked. I nodded. "Pretty much. It's the life energy that flows throughout everything living. The Druids themselves were animists believing that everything that was a part of the natural world and living had a spirit, a rock, a tree, a flower, et cetera," I said. "What were you and Ms. Myoi doing to the table?" I pushed my hair up and held it, wanting some air on my neck. The room was stifling and I suddenly wanted to be outside.
The fact that Dylan wouldn't let me leave was making me feel trapped. Not a good feeling after I'd been attacked in the same building. "The creature had used its energy to create a portal, Dylan. We sought only to close it."
"Mila, the table was glowing as if you'd poured glow-in-the-dark paint all over it."
"We were using energy."
"I've never seen anything human use energy like that." I released my hair with a heavy sigh. "I'm not human, Dylan. There, are you happy?"
"What are you? Are you like Ms. Myoi and her cousin?"
"Yes, Dylan. I'm part fey." He looked as though he didn't believe me, but after a moment, he said, "That explains your height."
"It has little to do with my height," I said. "The fey, like humans, come in many different shapes and sizes. The creature you saw earlier was fey too."
"All these years," he said, "and you never told me. Why?"
"It doesn't change who I am, Dylan, and I didn't know myself until recently." He pushed his chair back and stood, pacing the small area behind his desk. "That's how you're able to sense things and catch things we'd miss." He seemed to be talking to himself, so I didn't offer up a response. He stopped pacing. "What can you do?"
"That's a personal question, Dylan. I'd rather not answer it. I'm still human," I said. "I can't tell if you're in denial or if you're trying not to creep me out," he said. "What do you mean?"
"You were vomiting blood, Camila, and not just a little bit of it. Most humans wouldn't be standing after that."
"Trying to banish the creature came at a price for Camila." Lauren swooped in, saving me from trying to explain something I didn't fully understand myself. "Her human body struggled to serve as the vessel for the energy she was trying to take in to sever the creature's link to our world. The fey blood in her veins merely makes her a bit stronger than a human, Detective, but she is no immortal." It was partial truth and she told it well. I was certain the only thing that had kept me from being seriously injured or worse was the fact that I was a lycanthrope. There was no way I was going to tell Dylan that. Fey, he might've been able to handle, but finding out I could turn furry once a month, or whenever I wanted to, really would've changed his perspective more than I was willing to.
Fey was the lesser of two evils when it came down to it, because although neither was evil, per-se, our modern society was not exactly favorable to shape-shifters. In fact, the protection around us was finicky in and of itself. To kill a werewolf in human form was murder, but to kill a werewolf in wolf form, at worst, was animal cruelty. Nice, no? As vampires had been embraced and accepted into our modern society, so had been the fey and elves. All three had protection that lycanthropes and shape-shifters did not, despite the fact that some of the fey, like Normani, were capable of changing their shape at will. Still, a lot of people believed that the fey and elves were benign.
Mostly, that was thanks to the rise of modern fiction. But belief doesn't change the fact that good and bad come in a lot of different guises. Humans have their inner beasts as much as any lycanthrope. "How much stronger than a human?" Dylan asked. "Strong enough that the price I paid was only a little blood."
"Are you sure you're all right?"
"I'm fine," I said for what seemed the fifth or sixth time. Dylan returned to his seat. "So how do we catch this?"
"We've already got a plan set in place. We're merely waiting to put it into action."
"A plan that you were going to go rogue on and leave me out of again?"
"If you didn't happen to notice, Dylan, it's a bit dangerous for you."
"Looked like it was a bit dangerous for you too, Mila."
"Fair enough," I said. "What's your plan?"
"We're going to summon the creature and use it to track the initial summoner to find out who's really behind the murders."
"You're going to call that thing on purpose?"
"Yes."
"Mila, you know if this thing is behind the murders, there's nothing to prosecute."
"Actually," I said, "there is. The night hag was summoned by someone at the first scene. That, I believe, is where you will find your original murder and your murderer. Did the results on the blood work come back?"
"Inconclusive," he said. "Which is fucking weird, considering."
"Then the blood more than likely belonged to one of the Blevins," I said. "They cross-reference the DNA?"
"They did." He retrieved a folder from his desk and opened it. "They appeared to have a match, but there were too many doubts surrounding who or what the blood belonged to to know for sure." I wondered if, though humans shared a similar DNA structure with the fey and elves, if something in elvish or fey blood would throw off the test entirely.
I asked Dylan as much. "Both of the Blevins were part human. Do you think being fey and elf would throw the test off completely?"
"I don't know," he said. "Their team doesn't have a specialist on site that's familiar with fey and elven blood. I don't think we have one in the entire state."
"For the sake of this case," I said. "They might want to bring one in." Arthur scribbled a note on a piece of paper and slid it into the file. "I'll let them know. There's a guy in Kansas they can contact. What are you going to do when you find the murderer?"
"I think that's where you can come in. Last I checked, I can't be in two places at once. Can you put a team together?"
"You sure you can find this thing?"
"I'm sure a friend of mine can, yes. She's more experienced than I am."
"I'll put a team together," he said, no arguing, no more questions. It surprised me. Dylan was trusting me. I didn't expect that. "You call and tell me when and if you've tracked the killer's location. I'll send the team out to perform the arrest."
"May I leave?" I asked. "Yes." I stood and was almost to the door when he said, "And, Mila?"
"Yeah?"
"Be careful."
"You too, Arthur."
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I feel like I should restate (even tho ive put it in all of the books descriptions) this is not my writing, I am merely converting it to camren.