“Did that noise just come out of you?” I asked, pushing Jack so he wouldn’t land on me. “You better not faint, there’s no way I’m dragging you out of here.”

  “I really, really hate bugs!” Jack said, gathering himself up.

  Had it not been so hot and smelly where we were standing, I might have let out a laugh. Jack had just taken on a guy who was easily twice his weight without a single thought, but one yucky bug crawls out, and he’s swooning like a damsel in distress. Examining the body one more time, I could just make out the edge of the knife under the victim’s arm. It was the same as the others.

  Without warning, there was a crack of thunder and within seconds rain was pouring down on us in a torrential downpour the likes I had never seen. About a dozen more cockroaches swarmed out of the dead guy’s stomach cavity. Jack took off down the alley, and I was right behind him. Once we reached the corner, we ran down the sidewalk until we reached the awning of a building.

  It was a tight fit, so the two of us had to stand shoulder to shoulder in order to avoid the rain—not that it mattered much, since I was already completely drenched. Now I knew why Lopes gave me the poncho. Relief washed over me when I discovered my phone had remained mostly dry in my pocket. I quickly punched the address into a car service website, since I really had to get back to the station. I hoped the rain would break the heat a bit, but at least Jack's bare arm was cool against my shoulder.

  “We should call that body in,” I said.

  “I’ll do it once we’re not near here,” Jack agreed.

  It didn’t look like the rain was ending any time soon. I watched a drop as it fell from my hat onto one of my soggy sneakers. Jack was staring out into the rain.

  “Quid pro quo. While we’re stuck here, I’ll ask you a question, you answer honestly and then you can ask me one,” I suggested.

  “Sounds fun,” Jack said with the usual boyish smile returning to his face.

  “All right, how old are you?” I was always curious about this when I met the Fae since they didn’t age like humans. Jack appeared to be in his mid-twenties, sometimes younger, but he had a few tells (like his word choices) to hint he was much older.

  “You humans and your ages. I don’t know, a few centuries. I don’t keep count,” he said, “My turn then. Why doesn’t this stuff bother you — the deaths I mean?”

  “It does,” I answered honestly. Without missing a beat I asked, “Where are you from, originally?”

  “Norway,” he said.

  I tried to detect an accent when he talked, but I couldn’t. Perhaps he was better at blending in than I gave him credit for.

  “Why would you work for Mab?” he asked.

  “You work for her,” I replied, unintentionally avoiding the question.

  He scoffed. “I’m a Fae of her court. She made me. You’re a human of no court. You have a choice, and you know what she is. So, why would you give up your freedom to her?”

  Now I could sense the frustration in him that I felt in many of Mab’s subjects. She wanted unquestionable obedience in her court. After all, she had created them, sculpted them with her own hands. But, like any child, the Fae yearned to strike out on their own and rebel. Perhaps that was why she treated me differently, and also what made her subjects dislike me.

  “I had to pay back my father’s debts,” I said following Jack’s gaze out into the rain. The drops were smacking so loudly against the asphalt that I was having trouble hearing my own voice, but Jack seemed to be understanding well enough. This was the question I was building to, and I wanted to discern the answer. “What purpose were you made for?”

  I could feel Jack’s arm tense next to me. We stood beside one another, watching the rain for what felt like a long time. When he finally spoke, there was a change to the timbre of his voice. It was normally light and airy like the wind, but now there was a low tone underneath it. “Mab made me to ease the pain of those freezing to death. Young, old, I find them and help them drift into pleasant dreams before death claims them.”

  I swallowed and stopped myself from shivering. “You’re not in the right place for that,” I said.

  He nodded to agree and then said, “Quid pro quo. Why would your mother give you to Mab?”

  Just as quickly as the rain began it ended. I had the answers I wanted, and was grateful for the reprieve, so I stepped out from the awning. Unfortunately, the air was just as hot and had become even thicker with the moisture.

  When the car I ordered pulled up, I asked Jack if he wanted a ride. He declined with a somber expression. While I rode down the street toward the station, I watched Jack, who remained under the awning with his hands tucked into the pockets of his sopping wet jeans until we turned the corner and he was out of sight.

  As soon as I arrived at the station, I opened my suitcase to get a change of clothes. They must have waited for the rain to pass to unload the van, which gave me time to head to the restroom and get dressed before retrieving the camera. Lopes saw me and shook her head at my wet clothes. I shrugged back at her in response.

  After getting dressed into more professional attire, I retrieved the camera and searched for my new desk to upload the pictures.

  “You don’t have a login yet,” Chen said from the adjoining desk. “Just use mine for now. Upload and print the pictures that are pertinent. Then Lacroix will go through the ones you uploaded and let you know if he needs any more. The printer takes a long time, so we don't want to print all of them at once.”

  “Thanks, Chen,” I said and went to work. It wasn’t long before Lacroix came rushing into the room.

  “Y’all are not gonna believe this, but there’s another cold one down by the water this time. Sounds like it's been out for a bit. Gonna need y’all to suit up again before the evidence is washed away,” Lacroix said, “I’ll be heading there now.”

  I marveled at how put together Lacroix remained after being out in the heat all morning. His brown suit remained immaculate, and I could barely detect sweat on his brow.

  Lopes groaned, “Back into the oven? I just got settled.”

  “No worries, your hair can’t get any frizzier,” Chen teased.

  “I ain't waitin’ on the coroner this time. Some of us got work to do,” Lopes said.

  I smiled, deciding not to mention that she was the one who told me to sit in the van and get paid for doing nothing.

  “O’Malley, grab the camera, you’re coming with me,” Lacroix ordered.

  My heart skipped a beat when I heard my name. I shuffled around gathering the camera case and searching for the clean suit.

  This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

  “Nevermind the suit. You won’t be touching anything. I need pictures of what’s there. Let’s go,” Lacroix said.

  I scurried after him toward his squad car. It would be the first time I had ever ridden in the front of a police vehicle. Forensics normally had its own vans. The inside was impeccably clean, not even a coffee cup in the cupholder. It even had a hint of new car smell. After flipping the lights and sirens on, Lacroix sped through the city. I gazed out my window nervously, the creole cottages and townhouses with their unique floral terraces becoming a blur.

  All of a sudden Lacroix stomped on the brakes. I slammed into the seatbelt, startled. By this point my heart was ready to leap out of my chest. Lacroix had his reflective sunglasses on, making it impossible to see where he was looking.

  “Oh, come on!” Lacroix yelled, “I swear this happens to me every time I gotta get somewhere!”

  The sound of horns rattled the dashboard as a band of musicians led a parade of people dressed in black. I recognized the song as “St. James Infirmary,” a jazzy tune about a soldier who spent all of his money on prostitutes and died from a sexually transmitted disease. Trumpets and trombones blasted the melody while a tuba honked the beat with a big bass drum. Onlookers excitedly joined in dancing through the streets and adding more time for us to have to wait for the crowd to pass.

  “Second line,” Lacroix explained, “How they do funerals ’round here.”

  “I’ve never seen anything like it,” I thought out loud. “This happens a lot?”

  “Sure does. Everything’s a party ’round here. Even death. Makes driving impossible sometimes.”

  “I guess Irish funerals aren’t too different,” I said.

  “Any excuse to get drunk. The things I’ve seen on Bourbon Street.” Lacroix sighed. “ ’Least some people been trying to put an end to that. There’s a church on Pirate’s Alley, they got a group going to help people off the drugs and alcohol. Our John Doe had a coin from them in his pocket.”

  “Pirate’s Alley?” That piqued my interest. I was hoping to visit some of the pirate locations of the infamous John Lafitte, since my father was supposedly descended from the Pirate Queen, Granuaile’s family. Although, her children had a different surname, so I suspected it was more of my father’s tall tales.

  “Yep, you’ll have to see the old Blacksmith shop and pirate bars. Best tourist trap in New Orleans,” Lacroix said.

  As soon as the crowd passed, Lacroix went back to his speeding down the narrow roads. He would’ve made a good cab driver in New York with his utter disregard for traffic laws. I was grateful when we got to the location in one piece.

  There was already police tape across the end of the alley, and two squad cars had beaten us to the scene. They must have been in the area when Jack called. Lacroix parked near them, threw his badge around his neck, and motioned for me to follow.

  “Let’s go, Newbie.” He ducked under the police tape and into the alley without waiting to make sure I was behind him.

  I had hoped some of the smell had been washed away in the downpour, but somehow it was even worse. Luckily, one of the only pieces of PPE I made sure to bring was a mask. The odor still felt like it was in the back of my throat from the last time I was there.

  “Body’s been here for a few days,” Lacroix said, “O’Malley, get his arm there with the weapon. It’s the same as this morning, brass-handled dagger.”

  I took pictures as he directed, weary of any cockroaches crawling out. Lacroix, however, had no qualms squatting right next to the body.

  “No pile of jewelry this time,” he said.

  “Hmm?” I hadn’t realized it, but the gold chains that had been near the victim’s head only an hour before were nowhere to be seen. Likely someone had snatched them, and I hoped they didn’t see Jack and me fleeing the alley before they did.

  “Same thing, self-inflicted laceration to the center. Eye damage, like they were blind,” Lacroix said while circling the body to take in all the details.

  “Wait, did you say self-inflicted?” I asked, “Then these aren’t murders?”

  “I was waiting on the Medical Examiner to confirm it, but I’ve been doing this a long time. The cuts were sloppy, and the angle made me think John Doe did himself in. Not to mention, that fancy knife was under him. Doesn’t make sense for a killer to stab someone, drop the knife under the victim, and leave.” Lacroix pointed to the current body as he recounted what he saw in the last one. “Not saying it’s impossible, but I was hopin’ to write off the suicide by tomorrow and move on. Then this came along.”

  “Same knives,” I said.

  “Yep, same style of everything. I wouldn’t be surprised if there was jewelry here, and someone ran off with it,” Lacroix said, “Maybe the guy who called it in.”

  Even if Lacroix wasn’t a good driver, he was a good detective. I had to be careful what I said around him to avoid piqueing his curiosity. He seemed like the type to get answers.

  “Whelp, guess that’s that,” he said while standing up and clapping his hands together. “Get all the angles you can, especially the knife. Gotta cross all our T’s before we wash our hands of this.”

  “What do you mean?” I asked.

  “This has cult written all over it. Not my jurisdiction. I’ll be calling the FBI, sending them everything we got and helping out here and there, but this’ll be their problem now.” When Lacroix spoke, I was surprised there wasn’t even a hint of regret over losing a case. He really did seem glad to pass it off as someone else’s problem.

  “That’s it then?” I asked.

  “You disappointed, Newbie? Don’t worry, there’s plenty of murders ’round here. You’ll have your fill of them soon enough,” he said, “This isn’t my first cult case either. They’re always messy; we’re better off passing this one up the ladder. All that witch and vampire shit brings the crazies out.”

  Unfortunately for me, suicide did not remove my suspicion that the Fae were involved. In fact, it made it more likely in my experience. There were many Fae “muses” who took pleasure inspiring humans to meet an early demise. The fact that a Lutin purchased the suicide weapons was also leading me to a conclusion I did not like.

  Suddenly there was a noise from behind the dumpster next to me. The crumpling of trash being displaced made it clear that something was moving nearby. As I peered over curiously, I met Lacroix’s eyes just before a blur of mangled, brown fur flew at me. I barely had time to cover my face before feeling a sharp pain in my arm. It was biting me. I fell backward into the brick wall of the building behind me while Lacroix cursed and grabbed the furry monster with both hands. In an excruciating moment of tug-of-war, he pried the largest jackrabbit I had ever seen off of me. As it was tugged away, its teeth dug a deep fissure into my arm. Lacroix then launched the dog-sized beast back into an open dumpster before slamming it shut.

  With Lacroix’s arm around my shoulders, he led me out of the alley. I cradled my arm close to my chest, listening to the horrible growling and thumping noises the animal was making from inside the dumpster as we left. It sounded more like a Tasmanian devil than a rabbit.

  When we reached the yellow tape, he said, “Ah, hell, that thing really got you.”

  The sleeve of my light blue shirt had been torn and stained with my blood. “I don’t have health insurance,” I said, in shock, like a true American. My hand grasped the wound tightly, since I didn’t want to see the damage.

  “Don’t you worry none ‘bout that. You got hurt on the job. Your rabies shots and whatnot’ll be covered,” Lacroix said. Then he yelled to a uniform officer, “Call a medic. O’Malley was bit by some animal. Send more officers to secure that scene better and call animal control. I don’t want no one else gettin’ jumped by a Rougarou out here.”

  “I just got my rabies shots, had a case with dogs,” I said, but didn’t want to go into the details. I was actually bit by a person dressed as a dog. “What’s a Rougarou?”

  “Ha, you ain't no Cinderella,” Lacroix joked, and it took me a minute to realize what he meant was that I did not have a way with animals. “Rougarou’s just one of them spooky stories we tell kids ’round here. Like a werewolf, but sometimes they’re wererabbits. That thing sure was ugly. Let’s get you back to the car to sit.”

  “Does that mean I’ll be turning into a rabbit soon? I never liked carrots much,” I said while we walked back to the car.

  “Neither do rabbits,” Lacroix said, “But in all seriousness, sorry about this O’Malley. The boys are gonna give me hell for letting you get attacked by Bunny Foo Foo .”

  Of course, I knew it wasn’t just a rabbit. It was definitely a Pooka, likely the one Jack was looking for, and if Lacroix wasn’t there, I shuddered to think of how much damage he would have inflicted. Being Mab’s detective wasn’t enough to keep me safe from every deranged faerie I came across.

  On top of that, the clock was ticking. I only had five hours until sundown, and since our main Fae suspect just attacked me at a crime scene, I was leaning towards faerie involvement in the deaths. Mab would be displeased, and thanks to Jack I was caught up in it. My only hope was that I could find a way to remove the ring so I wouldn’t have to face Jack’s fate with him.