a force of nature.

“No,” she admitted. She couldn’t lie. She had not seen a body. “But someone is dead. And we all know who it was. There was only one left. They have picked apart the council one by one, and they’ve reached the finish line. That’s unlikely to be an accident, is it?” Which left what as the next step? Did they move on to the new council members? Would the culprit continue to pick off anyone who dared to take the job? And would they move on to the others then, to members of the coven, high fae of the court, the wolf pack?

While Alder was busy redressing himself, Anna was busy dressing down, letting her dress fall to the rocky shore first, then stepping out of her undergarments too, which would only get in her way in the water. Smirking slightly as he averted his eyes, she called out to him, “What a gentleman. I didn’t even have to ask.” Then she turned and dove into the water. Anna enjoyed fashion and dressing up–she had spent much of the day dressing up others as they put on costumes fitting for founder’s day–but a beautiful dress couldn’t compare to the feeling of her scales climbing over her legs, slotting together until they made a tail of a deep blue green that would have blended easily with the water if not for the shimmer just beneath the surface. She reveled in the feeling, dipping far below the waves, before returning to the shore.

This time, she leaned on the same rock that he had hidden behind, laying her cheek on her folded arms. She listened to his offer, eyebrow raising.“Accommodation?” she repeated. “So if I start to feel unsafe in the water–which covers two thirds of the planet, the place where my powers are the strongest–I should, what, hide out in your apartment? Or are you going to buy me a fishtank?” Did he think she lived in the ocean like some sort of dolphin? She would be swimming home to a nice beachside house in Sunny Harbor, but she found it far more entertaining not to correct him and let his imagination run wild. “Should I hide behind you as you defend me? Oh, I do hope you have a sword. And a white horse.” The amused sarcasm would be hard to miss. “Go home, Alder. If you need to be a hero, I’m sure there is a frightened human somewhere on the beach you can rescue.”

He knelt beside the rocks for just a second. “No one’s immune,” he said softly, just barely over the sound of the rushing waves. “My mother was immortal, you know. As immortal as anything could be. Or did you forget?” Alder didn’t fool himself – Anna didn’t have to care about his whole tragic backstory, or his mom, or even this town. What then? She had to care about herself. It was rather obvious she cared for herself a whole lot, but he wondered what it was in him that immediately put him on the defensive in regards to this situation. Probably the worry of federal involvement – after all, three or more dead is the definition of a serial killer. Lunar cove was protected, sure. But the possibilities had to make someone else’s skin crawl but his own.

Alder shook his head, dipping his hands into some water and tossing some drops at her. “I’m just trying to look out for the community that I see as my own, personality differences or no. But I think enough prominent people have died for my liking. Two too many. Three now, probably.” Licking his lips, he squinted into the near darkness before standing. And then he felt it – a sudden pull from the innards of someone’s soul, and then the fading. Whoever it was, they moved on. He tried to gauge where the feeling came from – he wasn’t that concerned though, knowing whatever remained would be in the news by the morning. He could feel the blood leave his face, not that she could see it. Even if she could, it wouldn’t have bothered him. Alder straightened.

In the century and a half of her life so far, Anna had seen and done many things across many continents, but she could not say she had ever before had a naked man recite her a sonnet on the banks of a murder scene. Alder had always been fun to play with–that little flash of fear in his eyes always made her feel that she hadn’t gone completely soft in this tiny town, and for that, she always appreciated running into him–not that she’d ever tell him that. She had never hurt him–she never planned to hurt him–but it was enough that they both knew she could. Having no desire to lose that impression, it was a great effort to keep her face impassive and not let slip how pleased–and amused and impressed–she really was. Anna liked being feared, but she also liked being adored, and he had checked both boxes at once.

And he was right of course. It was all a game. A game where the rules were never spoken aloud but nevertheless always applied. A game he was getting quite good at. Anna watched as he pulled himself from the water, a shadow of a man, for without the light of the fireworks and a dull moon, the darkness hid him well. She hummed softly as she pretended to consider the exchange. “Fine,” she said, letting go of his clothes as he reached for them. “I accept your offer. And you were right. Sonnet eighteen is cliche and would not have been at all acceptable payment.”

Beauty and summer had their worth, but they simply couldn’t compare, not with everything that you are is both the joy and the terror of lesser things.

“But you’re going the wrong way, you know.” She nodded back toward the beach and the chaos behind them, the yelling, the scattering people, the fear. “There is almost certainly a murderer behind us. You should have stayed in the water.” She took a step closer to the waves herself, walking backwards so as to keep her eyes on him even as she reached behind her back to unzip her dress. “And what a shame it would be to lose another pretty face.”

Alder didn’t need her to react physically to know when he’d done well. You see, maybe if she was human, he might need that kind of tell. But Lunar Cove was built by different stuff by people themselves made of different stuff. Animals, at least from a human standpoint, were lesser beings because they weren’t sentient the way they were, or whatever else. The arrogance of humanity in general had long been lost on him, but was additionally lost because he was fully capable of seeing and knowing things that few without the inclinations natural to him would understand. There was an almost nearly solid white line, akin to lightning, that trailed across the siren’s chest. Satisfaction, at least as Alder felt he could interpret it, was a fairly pure experience for every species. “I appreciate it,” Alder chuckled, slipping on his jeans first. He pulled on his shirt, letting his eyes trail off.

“You know it’s murder?” He questioned. “You know for certain, Anna?” The fae were good at speaking in approximates, vagaries. He watched as she unzipped her dress, but quickly averted his eyes, the indication of her words driving a sincere discomfort straight down into his gut. He snorted though, at that last bit: a shame it would be to lose another pretty face. Whatever the complexity of their relationship, he chose to take the statement with the emotion with which he might’ve said it. Get home safe. 

But he would not be able to raise spirits in this state, no, and in any case, he found himself startled by a voice in the dark. Rohan glanced up at it, blinking a few times, before making out a familiar face. “Oh…uh.” His brow shot up. “Sure, yes. Wait, are you…? Nevermind.” He shook his head, dutifully grabbing the bundle of clothes into his arms. “Do you want me to, like, just throw them in the water? The shore’s rocky. You know what? I’m going to lay them right here where you can reach them. And then I’m going to turn around and stand guard, okay?”

x

Alder could feel the daze wafting off of the man as he spoke and then focused. “Am I – yeah, I’m probably exactly the one you’re thinking of,” he answered. He watched the man a second longer and then climbed up the rocks, peering out from underneath his eyebrows into the darkness. He looked for any auric features in the crowd that might detail what had just taken place – but all he could see was the fuzz, sporadic colors of a crowd moving to disperse.

“Thanks,” he muttered, slipping on his clothes, one leg and arm at a time, standing a guard of his own. “That – that sound, that was a banshee. A fucking banshee.” He might’ve been talking out of a weird sense of shock, having just gone below the water when everything was fine enough, and breaking the surface into a stranger place. “You know where everybody you love is, guy? We should move on. Crowd’s got the right idea even if there’s a bunch of different notions on how to do it safely.”

─── · 。ﾟ☆: *.☽ .* :☆ﾟ. ───

Poppy heard her phone go off and checked it to see Alder was texting her asking to talk about this. Setting up in bed as she dragged a hand down her face, she sat there for a moment as she woke up fully. She’d barely got any sleep last night from everything that had happened with the council and checking on Finn. While she knew she should have checked in with Alder sooner by the time she’d got back to her apartment her phone was dead and she wasn’t in the mood to deal with it then.

Hearing the phone beep once more and she sighed to see he had texted again and was saying he was using the emergency key if she didn’t respond. I’m alive. You can come over. She replied back before pulling her phone off the charger, then walked over to the closet. Grabbing jeans off the hanger, she jumped into them and buttoned them. Figuring the t shirt she’d slept in worked well enough to at least handle this discussion. Raking a brush through her tangled hair before she tossed it up into a messy bun then went downstair to the bar. Even though nobody was in Poppy unlocked the door, but left the closed sign on the door. Especially since none of the cooks or other bartenders were in right now.

Flipping on the light to the kitchen and she got out a pan and cooked the normal eggs and put the toast in the toaster she had just for her. While she cooked she turned on the coffee pot, figuring if she was about to handle coven business then she was going to need all the energy her body could muster up. After she finished up his normal breakfast she transferred it to a plate, then turned off the burners. Carrying the plate to the bar and she left it on the barter as she made the familiar drink and left it with it. Leaving it on the bar top for whenever he came in while she went to attend to her coffee.

Grabbing the coffee spot and she poured it into a large cup, then walked back into the bar. Stopping as she watched Alder rush in and she raised an eyebrow. “You good?” She questioned, before taking a sip from her cup as she looked over the clearly messy man in front of her. “It’s fine.” Gesturing for him to take a seat where she had the food. “So do you want to talk about the murder yesterday or do we need to handle the you situation first, because you look like shit.” She admitted honestly, then put the cup of coffee down for a moment. “I know this hasn’t exactly been an easy year for you so if this triggered something then I get it.” Trying her best to comfort him because she knew that this had affected so many in a negative way since they’d all spent the last year losing people they loved.

x

Ahh. Gotta love it. Gotta love to hear that Poppy Reed tough love, loaded like a thirty-eight special. His grin was more like a grimace. It hurt in a weird way. It felt better in another. You could definitely expect that she’d say it the way she saw it. “Love you, the way you do that no nonsense thing, but c’mon. My ego isn’t strong enough to take it this far up the ass so early.” He sat down. Whatever. I’ll just bring her that top shelf shit later.

He wolfed down his eggs and toast. Threw back the orange juice like a shot, then he sipped the whiskey. He watched her for a long moment. The pair had an antagonistic relationship, no doubt. “The me situation? It isn’t a little odd to you that we’re getting picked off like bugs under a rock?” Alder got up. He washed his face in the sink behind the bar. His movements were short, a little like the way he learned to be in Poppy’s presence from time to time. “Plus,” he smirked. “It’s not all bad. Sure, I got the news and had to chill in some tall grass for a while before the sun came up. Read some old journals my mom kept. I think if I’m gonna break, it’s gonna be later. When the time isn’t right and it isn’t convenient and you’re gonna be so annoyed.”

Alder sat, finished the drink. “I’m sick about it. But I want to know your impression. I mean – from a federal standpoint, three or more murders within or outside of the US is considered serial killings.” He shrugged, rubbing his temple with a finger. “And then there’s the whole matter of uniting the groups within Lunar Cove, getting things figured out, and what we’re going to share. The ‘me situation,’ is about continued maintenance. Everything else is… A little more gray than that. And we’ve gotta figure out what we’re gonna say.”

As the banshee’s cries rang out through the beach and as the crowd was ushered off back to their homes, Anna considered briefly finding out for herself what had happened. But she also knew that it would be the talk of the town come morning, and her self preservation was stronger than her curiosity. So rather than head home, the siren headed for the water, planning to dive in, transform, and swim off until this all blew over. Truthfully, it was how she had expected to end the night anyway: she had been on land for far too long now. What she hadn’t expected was to get to the water’s edge and find a bundle of clothes and the man they belonged to bobbing in the water.

She smirked. “What? These?” She crouched down next to the clothes and held them up, only then realizing in the dark who it was. It was a small town, after all, and Anna had lived in Lunar Cove as long as he had been alive. “Good evening, Alder. Well, well, it does look like you were having fun tonight.” This was not the time to be playing with the poor man, she knew that, not when there was so much panic ringing out behind them, but he looked so desperate, and her rush to get out of there quickly was now at war with her own amusement. “Hmm, but what will you give me in return?”

“Anna,” he murmured. He hoped his return in amused tone hid the multitudes of anxiety within him then – someone most assuredly had died, he chose tonight to run off and leave his clothes, and Anna Donnelly stood before him. Alder knew what it was like being in a panther’s path. Both parties were usually surprised, but Alder could always sense a wave of hunger roll off the panther before he spoke to it. He decided to rest an arm on a rock, then lay his head down. It was always nice, you know, giving the panther a choice.

“What do you get in return?” He lifted his brows. He would prefer not to bullshit. He’d prefer not to play any games. And yet… he knew he was already engaged in one. Alder decided right then and there he’d pull a couple years of English classes right out of the back of his mind, back where he stuffed his nonsensical favorite things.

He took a deep breath. “But wherefore do not you a mightier way, make war upon this bloody tyrant, time? And fortify yourself in your decay, with means more blessed than my barren rhyme? Now stand you on the top of happy hours, and many maiden gardens, yet unset, with virtuous wish would bear you living flowers, much liker than your painted counterfeit: so should the lines of life that life repair, which this, time’s pencil, or my pupil pen, neither in inward worth nor outward fair, can make you live your self in eyes of men. To give away yourself, keeps yourself still, and you must live, drawn by your own sweet skill.” He considered the sonnet carefully. Animals usually liked it when one would say strange things, especially the deadly ones. No, Anna may not be deadly to him at the moment, but most of the fae were deadly, though they might not know it. But Anna knew well. He could see the intensity in her otherwise prismatic, jewel-like eyes. Alder was reminded each time he saw her.

Leyla recognized the sound of the wailing banshees almost instantaneously and she knew exactly what it meant. It would have been more shocking if she hadn’t given the fact that she was a pixie herself and a now recent addition to the Fae Court. But, someone was dead and, if they weren’t, they were about to be. It was the kind of warning that sent shivers across your spine and the hair on the back of one’s neck to prick up and, if Leyla hadn’t just spotted her sister across the other end of the beach, she may have been in just as much of a frantic state as the rest of the crowd.

Only now that she had the confirmed that the only family worth considering family was safe, she found herself hanging back along the shoreline rather than attempt to push and shove way throughout the masses. And it was good thing she had too, because if not she would have missed out on a sight that couldn’t help, but make her smile, even despite the precarious circumstances they now found themselves in. “Were you-” Leyla found herself doing a double take as she eyed the man up and down. “Were you skinny dipping?” She asked, trying her best to hold back hint of a laugh beginning to build in her voice as her eyes scanned the ground for the clothes in question.

“You mean these clothes?” She found herself asking as she bent down and scooped the pile up into her arms. “I mean I could, but then again,” An amused hum left the Pixie’s lips as she met his gaze with a mischievous glint of her own. “What’s in it for me?” Leyla knew it was probably in poor taste to tease a man in the midst of a potential murder scene, but the mischievous criminal in her couldn’t help, but capitalize on an opportunity when she saw one.

x

Alder stifled a laugh, letting air escape his nose. “Oh, she’s funny,” he muttered, holding out a hand. He was still waist deep in water, his other hand against the rock he was hiding beside. “Funny.” He squinted into the night, pausing a second to look at the moon. The banshee’s scream still seemed poised to raise the hair on the back of his neck.

He didn’t know where his coven was at that exact moment, and given the circumstances of the last couple of months, he was eager to know, so he was eager to give in. “Alder Wildes,” he said, considering whether he should get out of the water completely since it didn’t appear the woman would close the gap as a kindness. He looked at her, drawing a breath. He realized she had to be fae. Nevermind the depth of color, much brighter than a human’s would be. Nevermind the width and height of her energy. “Leave it to one of the fairefolk to want to play a game.” Licking his lips, he thought fuck it, and got out of the water. “I was always told never to make a deal with a fae, but a little one couldn’t hurt, could it?”

Shaking his head, he stood in front of her. “Clothes. And then you can tell me what it is you want, and then we’ll decide what we can do.”

THE MORNING AFTER.

Alder didn’t bother driving over that morning. It was one of those paranoid things – if his car was still in the garage underground, in its usual spot, someone might still think he was home, right? It didn’t matter anyway. DTLC’s public transportation wasn’t bad, and he hadn’t intended on driving out of his way that morning.

As a matter of fact, already he’d texted his supreme. We should probably discuss this. There wasn’t a reply – she probably wasn’t awake yet. Or, more likely, she hadn’t even been to bed yet. He sends another just a few minutes before he leaves – I’m using the emergency key for Starlight if you don’t respond. She did, eventually.

The door was open, the city’s towers looming overhead through the glass ceiling. The hanging lights weren’t on, and the sun streaked into the building in a rather offensive way. He squinted, pushing his messy cropped hair back. He rolled up the sleeves of his wrinkled white shirt and hoped she wouldn’t tease him too bad about it. He hadn’t slept for lots of reasons, between getting caught early in the night with his clothes off in public and a straight up murder, he was in a bit of a testy mood.

“Shit,” he murmured, stopping short, realizing she’d put out breakfast. “I should’ve brought something, Pops. I’m sorry.”

Name: Alder Hewitt Wildes. DOB: 11/17, 35 years old Species: Witch Occupation: Environmental Engineer, Coven Advisor Pronouns/Gender: He/Him, male Sexuality: Unsure, straight leaning Relationship Status: Single. Place of birth: Providence, RI

It was risky, he’d known it. By nature he was fairly relaxed, didn’t always necessarily play by the rules. But as the banshee wail rang outward, a cold feeling crept up his spine. His eyes narrowed with realization of what he was hearing… He felt and saw the sudden jolt from within the crowd as he made his way to the edge of the beach, trying to avoid getting noticed. The cool water lapped against his back. The air around him as he knelt in the water, trying to keep himself somewhat submerged. He was far enough from the crowd not to be noticed entirely, and the darkness at that moment, between booming fireworks, was his friend.