Disclaimer: Copyright infringement of any kind not intended. I graduated from the Google School of Criminal Justice with a minor in Supernatural Studies. Un-beta'd.

Author's note: This is the sequel to The Miseducation of Leah Uley. Rated M for strong language, violence, and mature situations.

Enjoy!

Chapter One

"If you had to choose a turning point in your life. Anytime for any reason, what would it be?"

Leah might have needed some time to come up with an answer. After all, she was face-to-face with her therapist, someone who was supposed to help her... figure out her life. A couple of years ago, things had been so simple then, both in her personal life and her professional. If she had to provide an answer back in, let's say, 2016, she would have most likely mentioned her father's untimely death. That would have been an easy, understandable answer.

But now, in 2019, the answer was clear. There were no challengers, definitely runner-up's, but December 10, 2017... goodness,

That day had started out perfectly fine, only to end in effectively setting up the groundwork for what Leah was today: a soon-to-be-divorced, shape-shifting detective, working for a unit that technically did not "exist".

That had been a little over a year ago.

Since December 10, 2017, Leah could no longer trust her husband or his mistress— a woman, her cousin, who she loved as a sister.

Since December 10, 2017, Leah's pain and grief had pushed away one partner for another: a man who seemingly disregarded Leah's less than stellar reputation around the police force. A man who was the reason she was still alive today.

Only a month later, January 15, 2018, Leah would find herself at LaPush Hotel, hovering over the mutilated body of the Chicago Dahlia, Jessica Stanley. Soon, she and her partner would be engrossed in one of the most insane, convoluted cases in Chicago's illustrious criminal history.

Five months had passed since that fateful night in tunnels, and despite other changes to her body, Leah still hadn't experienced what it was like to be a wolf.

Four months had passed since Leah had received the news about her soon-to-be-ex-husband's attempted murder: a bullet to his head forced into a coma, forbidding him to work until the turn of the new year. He was no longer working for the Voldemort Unit, despite his admirable efforts. All parties involved agreed it would be wise for Sam to lay low for a bit.

It had also been four months since Sam had agreed to give Leah the most-desired divorce. Almost four months since that fateful conversation with Jane, a former member of the Volturi who, out of pure grief, decided she would no longer interact with the Volturi and ratted them out. Nothing officially had come out of it besides Paul using every favor in his book to somehow get someone from the Volturi out of Moldova.

Four months since Mike Newton had been found dead in Cook County Jail, soon before he would agree to accept a plea deal. Manslaughter instead of murder-one for the death of Lauren Mallory. Essentially ruled as a suicide, but anyone with a brain held some suspicions that Mike had met his demise at the hands of another.

Who? No one knew.

It seemed that no one still knew much of anything, but Leah was going to change that. She vowed to change that.

After all, Jane had given her the tapes. She had seen the murder of the Chicago Dahlia with her own eyes, though could not read out of the faces of the preparators—Leah would get to the bottom of it one of these days, come hell or high water.

"December 10th," Leah would later breathe out, circling the date on an old calendar with a marker. She ripped the December page out of the booklet and pinned to an area beside her bedroom door.

A date to remember.

The date when she stopped being Leah Uley and returned to being Leah Clearwater. Figurative-speaking, of course. Her much-needed divorce wouldn't be finalized for another few weeks.

"Alright, we're only going to be doing this for a little while," Leah declared one February night, giving her partner, Jacob Black, a pointed look from across the kitchen table. "After all, we still have to go to work tomorrow and somehow arrest someone connected to our case."

The detectives were at her place, sitting at her kitchen table, having finished a light dinner following their long shift. Leah needed this tonight. She needed not to think about what she didn't know... life and work. A card game over some wolfbane-free beer would do the trick.

"You're the boss."

Leah smiled as she dumped the cards onto the table. She neatly stacked them and began shuffling.

She was in a pleasant mood. She had been in a pleasant mood since the turn of the new year. Just a couple of weeks before, she had celebrated her one-year anniversary being in a crime-solving partnership without driving another detective away. In two weeks, she would no longer be married.

In three months, she would be taking one week off for a much-needed trip to Vegas. Drama, be damned.

2019 was looking up for her.

"Seriously?" Jacob laughed, watching the cards flow through his partner's fingers. "I thought we were playing a real card game."

"Do not underestimate the power of UNO," Leah advised. "It's a very competitive game, and I can't promise you that I'll be cordial." She narrowed her eyes. "You're going down, Black."

"You're serious about this game," Jacob remarked, watching Leah as she shuffled once again. She was making moves as if she was a seasoned card dealer. "A kid's game."

Leah looked up, not breaking her stride. "Uno is for all ages, Detective. And Yes, I'm very serious about this game. Get ready to get your ass kicked."

Jacob gave her a lopsided grin. "Hit me."

"We're going to raise the stakes," Leah said, dealing the cards to herself and Jacob. "Get some money involved. Twenty dollars for each winning round."

"Gambling, are we?" Jacob asked, giving Leah a playful grin before examining the cards in his hands. From the way his smile dropped, his hand wasn't that lucky.

"Just making things more interesting, Black," Leah said, adding a smirk. She pulled out a few bills from her pocket and slammed it on the table. Jacob did the same. "You're in? We're doing five rounds."

Jacob shrugged. "Don't mind making some money."

Leah snorted. "What makes you think you will?"

"I do know how to play UNO," Jacob claimed. "I'm a master at this game."

Leah raised an eyebrow, amused. "Are you?"

"Yeah," Jacob said, smirking. "You'll see."

He wasn't able to prove much.

"So close, yet so far," Jacob would groan five minutes later, picking up some cards from the deck. He needed only one card in his hand to win the game; he had five.

"I thought you were a master at this?" Leah taunted, losing yet another card. "You're not living up to your vow."

Jacob gave her a look, mocking annoyance, before tossing a card in. "Disappointed?"

Leah tossed in yet another one. "Extremely," and then, grinning, "UNO!"

"Damn it, woman," Jacob grumbled but was unable to fight his smile. He slid a twenty-dollar bill across the table and clapped, determined to get his money back. "Alright, let's go again."

"You're really setting yourself up for failure, Detective," Leah said, smirking as she shuffled another deck. "I don't want you to lose any more money."

"Oh, fuck you," Jacob replied without much heat. "You're going down this time—" he stopped at the sound of his buzzing phone. He retrieved it from his pocket, unlocked it, and laughed. "This guy..." He held up the device for Leah to see. "He's on a date."

Leah slightly leaned over the table and smiled. "Aw, look at Embry. He's smiling. She's cute."

"The name's Lisa Chan. She's a paralegal at Johnson and Frank's. He met her while he was trying to get documents for the slaughterhouse case."

Leah chuckled and shook her head. "He would," and then, "Conflict of interest won't be an issue?"

Jacob pocketed his phone. "Nah."

"What about you?"

Jacob gathered the cards and held them up in his hands. He examined them carefully looking above them when he remembered that Leah had asked him a question. "Huh?"

"Testing the waters?"

"Kinda a bad time."

"Not to Embry, it is."

"It's never a bad time for him," Jacob pointed out; he didn't sound upset or anything, but the teasing tone from before had disappeared. "You know, Rebecca's still trying to set me up..."

Leah could vaguely recall Jacob mentioning about something about blind-dates; nothing had come out of them. He never seemed to be itching for a romantic partner.

She picked up the first card of the deck and placed it in the middle of the pile. Yellow-5. She tossed in a Green-5. "Team single forever?"

Jacob shook his head and tossed in his card. "I dunno... sometimes, I miss it, you know. For years, I've shared a bed with someone, had breakfast the next morning with someone. Only to do it all again the next day. And now, for some time, it's just me, myself and I."

Leah stared at her cards. She knew how he felt; she felt the same way. But the thought of starting something new didn't entice her. She needed a goddamn relationship-detox; maybe that would help with everything.

"One-night stands?" Leah suggested. "It'll get you a girlfriend for the night. Promise she won't be an escort."

"Isn't sleeping over against the rules of a one-night stand?"

Leah shrugged. "I wouldn't know much about that," she admitted, somewhat bitterly. It had been a while. "But I guess you're right." She tossed in a card. "Have you considered casual dating?"

"Thought had crossed my mind."

"And?"

Jacob shrugged, feigning nonchalance. But Leah did notice how stiff he had become, even for a split second. "Tried it a couple of months back..."

Yeah, Leah remembered that.

She vaguely recalled Jacob talking it. She hadn't talked about it because Jacob hadn't mentioned much about it. The woman in question was a kindergarten teacher. A nice lady, but Jacob hadn't mentioned her name after a couple of weeks.

"Doesn't mean you should stop," Leah pointed out, and then, sighing, "Aisha said I should go out and look for something, but I can't bring myself to do it."

"Those marriage vows."

Leah nodded bitterly. "Those marriage vows."

It was funny yet sad how everything was turning out. Leah was sticking to the rules of a fruitless marriage from the very beginning while Sam hadn't for the past three years.

"I guess you can wait until after the divorce," Jacob said. "Shouldn't everything be finalized by the end of the month?"

Leah nodded. Detective Aisha St. Pierre, her good friend, and potential wingman had told her the same thing. "You need to start doing things for you," she had said.

Leah had to suppress the urge to remind her friend, quite passionately, that she would be fine all by yourself. Instead, she had told Aisha in a more subtle manner.

"That's not what I meant, and you know it," Aisha had responded, eyeing her friend, disappointed.

The temptation was there. She wouldn't admit it, not even to herself. It had been nagging at her for quite some time, but not to the point where she had no choice but to toss caution to the wind. It would only make things more complicated, she had told herself. Worse— she didn't need worse.

"But I'd still be legally married to him," Leah reasoned. "A part of me thinks it's hypocritical. I'm mad at him for cheating, and then, I'm going to do the same?"

"He started it."

"It doesn't matter."

"You only said a part of you. What does the other part say?'

Leah blinked and then rolled her eyes. "I hate that you're a detective, always picking shit up."

Jacob smirked. "Part of the job."

"Honestly?"

"Honestly."

"I need to get laid."

Jacob let out a loud laugh. "Oh my fucking God."

Leah threw a stray card at him. "You wanted me to be honest."

"And I'm glad that you are," Jacob replied, still chuckling. He continued once he was able to contain himself, "So, how about it, wanna be each other's wingmen? It'll definitely get Rebecca off my back."

"You're kidding," Leah said, and then after realizing that Jacob wasn't, "Thought you said that you wanted to be alone."

"I said I didn't want to be in a relationship," Jacob clarified. "A tumble in bed won't hurt."

"I'll be your wingman," Leah said. "Married, remember?'

"Ah, right. So, how about we wait until after everything's finalized to make sure we help each out? We have a couple of weeks."

"No, I.O.U's?"

"I don't wanna forget, and you get mad at me. So, after divorce?"

Leah nodded. She had done it before. Way back. It was a partners-thing; you scratched their back, and they would scratch yours. "Sounds like a plan."

Waste Management.
1500 N Hooker St. Presence requested ASAP.
Potential bio-hazard.

"Potential bio-hazard," Leah said the following morning, reading off the note in her hand, hastily scribbled on about an hour ago. "Looks like the hazmats are coming out. Can't make this up."

She had received a call from dispatch regarding a sight she and her partner should "see". The dispatch had been vague, not her fault. There was a ten-car pile up on Lake Shore Drive; some victims brought to the hospital, one or two, dead. That was the priority. Not found the body at the city landfill.

"You have got to be fucking kidding me," Jacob replied, shaking his head as he pulled into the landfill's parking lot. It was the middle of the morning. Cold and dreary. The winds weren't doing the real-feel temperature any favors. "Just one day, I'd like to fall upon a simple homicide."

"No homicides are never simple," Leah bounced back. She had learned that fact the hard way. She wished it wasn't the case. She didn't need any more complex homicides. The city didn't need anymore. Not for another night, another week, for eternity. "Some are less complicated than others."

Jacob snorted as he rolled down his car window to present his badge to security at the gate. Leah did the same. "When was the last time we had a less complicated homicide case?" he asked, driving away.

Leah couldn't precisely recall. Maybe a year ago? Before January 15, 2018. Before the proverbial shit hit the fan in the city of Chicago. Before the Chicago Dahlia was found mutilated in her luxury hotel suite.

"Mike Newton," she suggested, crumbling the note into a ball before shoving it into her coat pocket.

Jacob pulled into a parking space, turned off the car and exiting the vehicle. "That was a suicide."

Leah retrieved her coffee from the car's cup holder and followed her partner's lead and gave him the look. "So, they say."

"So, Bella says."

"Oh, come on, you can't think that's the end of his story," Leah said, bringing the Styrofoam cup to her shivering lips. The cup was full of caffeine, two shots of espresso with tons of sugar. "Slitting his own throat before accepting a plea? That was just convenient."

"We've been looking into his death since October. It's now February—haven't found a damn thing."

"Maybe we're not looking hard enough."

"Maybe."

"What do you have for us?" Leah would later ask one of the many cops, monitoring the crime scene, as she walked among garbage, all littered and compiled into towering piles inside a landfill north west of downtown Chicago.

Jacob followed close behind her, both arriving at the landfill about ten minutes earlier. They had received a call back at the station about another murder victim. They didn't even know if the victim fell under their "jurisdiction" for they were no longer regular homicide detectives. Leah and Jacob were a part of the under-the-table Supernatural Crimes Unit, commonly known as the Voldemort Unit.

They were technically supposed to handle homicides relating to the supernatural and their affiliates. They were unofficially only supposed to handle homicides relating to the vampire covens.

"About an hour and a half ago, a couple of guys from sanitation fell upon a body half-way out of a garbage bag," The cop said, shivering at a rush of the brisk wind. "Female: twenties, brown hair… I guess she was white."

Leah raised an eyebrow. "You guess she was white?"

"Decomposition didn't do her skin any favors."

Leah nodded. "Ah."

"Wonderful."

Leah and Jacob exchanged looks.

It was just the two of them again, to an extent. With Sam, Embry's original partner, now gone, Paul had more or less moved the cop to Aisha's team. It was a good move for Embry, who would soon be taking the detective exam with Paul's blessing.

"Got an ID?"

"Surprisingly yes," the cop replied. "A driver's license was found—Gianna Castellano of Cicero, Illinois."

Leah and Jacob shared another look, this one alarmed, surprised and relieved, "You have got to be fucking kidding me," Jacob said.

He would repeat those words a few minutes later.

"Good afternoon to you, too, Detectives," Dr. Eric Yorkie, one of the coroners at the Cook County Office of the Medical Examiner, said, leaning next to a white body bag. "Thought you'd both be here earlier. We're just about ready to leave."

"Pile up on Lake Shore," Jacob said, eyes glued to the body bag. "Is it true? Is it really Gianna?"

"According to her driver's license, but of course, we would have to confirm through tests."

"Can we see it?" Leah asked.

Eric nodded.

"Holy fuck," Jacob cursed, jumping back. He held the back of his hand to his nose and repeated, "Holy fuck."

The putrid smell hit Leah as well. She held her breath, covering the bottom half of her face with her scarf. She wanted to throw up. She wanted to run as far away from this damned place as possible, but she held back.

She was at the point where she could handle being around the newly-dead. There might be a stench to the hours-old dead bodies, but she learned to equate the smells with the bathroom or the underground L stations. But this—no.

Eric shook his head. "Yet another reason why I'm glad I'm just a human. Weak sensitivity for the win," he said, and then, "Bodies wrapped in garbage bags can do wonders to the decomposition process."

"Thank you for that," Leah said, finally gaining enough coverage to drop the scarf from her nose. She took a step further, standing by Eric's side with Jacob soon joining her. All were looking down at the body in disgust.

"Estimated time of death?"

"Don't know," Eric admitted. "Unfortunately, when one is found in among garbage in the middle of a Chicago winter, the variables… vary."

"Cause of death?"

Eric rose from his stance and shrugged. "Can't tell exactly. The body's in a weird frozen putrefaction stage of decomposition. I notice there was some sort of gash across the neck, but I can't confirm anything until we perform some tests."

"Well, it seems that our case just got even more interesting."

"You knew her?"

"She was presumably there when the Dahlia got killed," Leah explained. "She was one of Demetri's many lovers. We also found traces of her blood at the scene."

Eric looked between the body and Leah. "Well, shit."

"Call Embry," Leah directed Jacob. "Tell him we found his victim number two."