A/N: Thank you for reading and reviewing, and for your favorites and follows. I really do appreciate it.
"Remind me again why I'm here?" Tamsin snarked. She had pulled up to the house, parked haphazardly at the curb, and seeing the three women all outside the house in question set her into an unease, an unease she usually quenched with either alcohol or sarcasm. In this case, there was no booze in sight. There was only Jane slumped on the first few steps at the front door, Angela lost in thought in the yard, and Bo marching up to her with purpose.
"Thank God," the succubus said in a low tone when she saw her. She grabbed Tamsin's hand, having no patience for games, and led her inside the house. Jane followed them wordlessly, but Angela remained outside, clearly too shaken.
"Jesus, this house reeks of death," Tamsin nearly gagged. "Like, murder. Whoever died here did not go quietly," she said as she looked into the family room.
Jane finally found her voice at the statement. "How do you know that?" She asked less in disbelief and more in an attempt to understand. What a cop she would be if she possessed of the skills that these two did.
"It's something fae can sense, I guess. It's easier for me since death is what I do," the blonde answered. Quite honestly, she said: "this is what the river smelled like when I came to collect you, kid. Like you fought like hell to live. Whoever died here didn't want to, and it sure as shit wasn't natural."
"The coroner said that Maria died of a heart attack," Jane offered, playing devil's advocate. While some saw the practice as petty and annoying, it was a detective's greatest and oldest asset. Tamsin would know.
"I don't doubt it. But it didn't start out that way," she replied. The Boston-Italian fell taciturn again.
Bo motioned the both of them further inside, then slammed the door with purpose, and the Valkyrie jumped at the sound. When she saw the marks on the posts, she stopped and stared.
"This is why I called you. Do you know what this is? What did this? Is it fae?" Bo interrogated. Her voice caught the shake that Angela's had only a half hour before. The weakest floorboards creaked periodically in the ensuing silence, though none of the three could quite place who had stepped on them.
Tamsin reached out, running a hand just above the angry lines, not daring to touch, not being stupid enough to touch. She leaned in and sniffed, her face immediately wrinkling in disgust. This is what smells. "My guess is yeah, something fae was here. If all this…" she gestured to the mess in the home, "transpired and all humans were able to say definitively is that she had a heart attack, then there's something non-human at work. But see these scratch marks? That blood? Those are distinctly human."
"Like, Maria Talucci human?" Jane chimed in. A trickle of dread had slowly started running from the top of her head to her belly, but now it began to bubble and grow.
"If that's the woman that died here, probably," Tamsin shrugged, as though none of it affected her. Detective Rizzoli, in the meantime, felt lightheaded.
"OK, if you're right, and that blood is human, I need to get Maura and some crime scene techs here now," she barked, the authority in her voice doing little to calm her.
"NO," both fae women yelled simultaneously. It was Bo who continued. "Call Maura, tell her to come and collect samples. That's a good idea. But DO NOT call crime scene people here until we know more," she ordered.
"Bo, I get that there's other forces at work, but there is also real, bonafide human blood here. Which means this could be a crime scene. It is my job to make sure that protocol is followed in an efficient and timely manner."
"And I get that, Jane, I really do. But you yourself just said there are other forces at work here. Forces that are way more up my alley, and way more up Tamsin's alley. All I'm asking for is time, and a call to an expert. I promise we won't disturb anything, or even stay in the house. But just give us some time. Ok?" Bo stepped into the vicinity of a bristling Jane, and dared to place her hands on biceps, rubbing thumbs up and down the black fabric covering them.
The detective's face softened in increments until she nodded in the affirmative. "Ok. But not a lot of time. An hour, tops."
The succubus let out a breath of relief and smiled brilliantly. To her, the best responses to her touch were the ones that didn't come from her power. "It won't even take that," she asserted, and turned to Tamsin again, whose blue eyes stormed with equal parts jealousy and amusement. "I'll ask again: do you know the fae that did this?"
"Could be a million types," said the Valkyrie. "Let me do a walkthrough of the house and then I can try to narrow it down."
Jane all but growled, but Bo's pleading gaze, brown eyes meeting brown eyes, stopped her. Tamsin glided around the domicile, and returned before the Italian could even begin to worry about her disturbing things. Fae can be scary fast, she thought.
She must have stood unmoving for a fair amount of time, because the Valkyrie's voice cut cold like ice when she heard it. "What are you waiting for? Call Maura, get her down here. And Bo, you better call Trick. All the pictures ripped up? That says serious revenge fae to me. He'll probably be able to tell you what kind."
Jane bolted to attention again, and pulled out her phone, speed-dialing a familiar number. Her eyes never left the tall blonde, who opened the door to go visit with Angela, and ask her about what she saw earlier in the week. After three rings, a honey voice answered the call.
"Dr. Isles," said Maura on the other line, sounding deep in thought despite the prompt greeting.
"Hey, it's me," Jane said simply, not quite yet willing to burst the sweet bubble of hearing Maura against the strangeness of the moment.
"I can hear that," the doctor laughed. There was no response; she had Jane's full attention. "Your voice is unmistakable, Detective. How's it going?"
Jane gulped. She looked to Bo, who looked right back at her with a twinkle in her eye. She blushed, hard – she had to be imagining the sudden heat in her best friend's tone. "It's, uh, it's… well. I ain't gonna lie, Maura." Nevertheless, she still paused.
"To me you hardly ever do," the medical examiner said with concern. "What's wrong?"
"I need you to get down here, Maur. There's blood, and I need you to collect some samples."
"Ok, call CSRU and I'll be right over. Your old neighborhood?"
"Yeah, see, we're trying to be real discreet about it first. So can you just head over?"
"But Jane-"
"I know, I know. Just trust me for a little bit, ok?"
"Ok. I'll be right over. Do you have the address?"
"Thanks Maura. You'll see my cruiser in the driveway. Turn down my old street and you can't miss it." With that, the call was ended and Jane turned back to the private investigator.
"You get that taken care of?" Bo asked, teasing in her tone.
"Yeah." Jane said. She coughed a cough of embarrassment. "Who's Trick?"
A master of deflection, Bo mused. "He's an ancient fae. He's been around for almost two thousand years, and he knows a lot about these kinds of things," she answered.
"Ah."
"He also happens to be my grandfather," she added, almost sheepishly. Jane's eyes flickered and she bared her teeth in a teasing grin.
"Grandpa, huh? He's your big bad expert?"
"Just because he's my mother's father doesn't mean he's not all the things I just said, Jane," the succubus said, leaning into the other woman and looking up at her. Jane nodded, unsure what else to do. "We should facetime him so we can get some answers though." And just like that, the reality of the situation set back in. Both of them looked around at the discarded items and few pieces of destroyed furniture, a smaller mess than the feeling of violence behind it would have otherwise suggested.
"Let's get to it then."
The tone dialed two, three times, before an older man, balding, with kind eyes and handsome features appeared on the screen. "Bo," he said simply, his voice infused with love and what Jane placed as devotion. "You know, I got this phone at your behest, your insistence that I wouldn't be able to put it down. But so far, you're still the only one who's ever called me on it," there was a good-natured teasing in his words, and he ran a kingly hand over his vest and tie, brushing away some of the dust from the bar he stood behind. Instantly Jane was reminded of Korsak behind the bar of The Dirty Robber. I guess everyone's got a wise-old barkeep friend.
"That's because all your friends are as technologically challenged as you are," Bo returned. Her smile was soft and warm, not predatory as the detective was used to seeing it. "But I didn't call to exchange pleasantries, Trick. I'm on a case."
"Oh?" he asked, waiting.
"Yeah. It's weird," she turned the phone towards the woman next to her, showing her to her grandfather. "This is Jane. Her mother is the one that called me in. I would say it's safe to talk around her; she knows about us. She's talked to Lauren." Not exactly a truth, but Trick was guarded with fae information when it came to humans.
He surprised the both of them, however, with his next question. "Is she Tamsin's charge that got away?"
"Y…yeah," Jane choked out, finally able to speak aloud to someone besides Tamsin about the event. "That's me."
"It's not every day that someone sees the Styx and walks the earth to tell about it, Jane. You were very lucky," said Trick, in study and wonder. He apparently had never seen someone who'd done it. Detective Rizzoli nodded in acknowledgement, unsure of how someone should respond in such a situation. She had no experience in it. "Now," he turned back to his granddaughter, "what seems to be the problem?"
"Well, like I said, I got a call from Jane's mother about weird things going on at a friend's house. That friend had recently passed away, apparently of a heart attack, but when she went to begin the clean up of the home, she noticed torn up pictures, a bedroom in disarray…"
"Show me some of the pictures?" he interrupted, ancient mind already whirring with possibilities.
The two women moved about the house, showing him several photos of Maria that had been ripped in half, and others from which she had been removed entirely. When they moved to the master bedroom, Bo spoke again. "There was also this photo album out, which Angela said wasn't there before. Just this time."
"Let me see it," said Trick. On the screen, Jane saw him pull out glasses to view the miniscule representation of the album. There again were Maria and Tom, even though both women had half expected the page to be turned or closed. "Ok. Anything else out of the ordinary?"
"Show him the door," Jane barked, her voice harsh from having stayed silent for so long.
Bo felt herself bristle at the sound. She obeyed with fervor, half aroused, half in disbelief that she had forgotten the most stark reminder of possible fae dealings. The desperate scratches were even larger than when they first arrived earlier in the morning.
Trick's eyes widened just a bit, having seen worse in his lifetime.
"Tamsin said, with the way the house smells, like murder, and the scratches on the post and everything, we're dealing with some revenge fae," Bo offered in the quiet.
"She'd be right. Those are the drag marks of a soul reluctant to leave their home. Jane, the people who lived in this house-"
"Person," Jane interrupted. "Just one person. Maria had grown kids and was divorced."
"Did the person," Trick corrected himself, "who lived in this house recently travel to Italy, or Eastern Europe? Many of those cultures carry the dead out of the house head first for a reason – they believe that taking them feet first will allow the soul too much time to grasp the doorframe if they are not restfully dead. It's how they try to protect themselves against haunting."
The Boston-Italian went cold. Ice water flooded down her spine, or so she felt. "Let, let me ask," she stated, and threw the front door open. Angela was laughing at something Tamsin had said. The midmorning sun attacked her eyes for a moment before she could adjust, and she looked hard at her mother in result. "Ma! Maria ever go to Sicily?!" she yelled, in a way that harkened back to Angela's harps for her and her brother when dinner was ready. This was a cruel imitation, born of fear.
"Yeah, about five years ago! Went all over, saw all kinds of things. Why?" Angela recalled the time with nostalgia, then became frightened at the look on her daughter's face. Jane turned back to Bo.
"You hear that, Trick?" Bo asked, eyes not leaving Jane, concern etched over her face.
"Yes. Looks like the work of an underfae that inhabits the catacombs in Palermo. The locals tell her legend as a ghost story. Did any men live with Maria during that time?"
"Yeah, her husband Tom. They have kids, but they all moved out a long time ago," detective Rizzoli answered, leaning against a wall as the magnitude of the possibility of fae involvement grew. "Tom died a couple years back."
"Did they ever complain of strange things happening to them after their trip, especially to Maria?"
"I don't know. Why?"
"Because I think you're dealing with that ghost. The legend goes that a very young woman, no older than 16, was to be married but the night before her wedding, she caught her would-be husband with someone else. The townspeople said she went crazy and eventually killed herself, but in reality, she was fae, on the eve of her dawning."
"Dawning?" Jane croaked out, still reeling.
"Like fae puberty," Bo offered, "except there's a trial you have to pass. If you don't, you turn into underfae – a subhuman creature that runs on emotion and desire."
"Exactly, and this young woman's heartache propelled her right into the dawning. She wasn't ready to handle the rigor, and she turned. She inhabits the catacombs, and is said to try and take a lover to replace her fiancé every so often. Men are advised not to look into her eyes."
At that, Jane's eyes widened. Realization dawned. "La sposa? You kidding me? That's an old ass bedtime story… my Ma used to tell us when we'd been bad…" Immediately Tamsin's words came back to her: More like your childhood bedtime stories. Usually the scary ones. People come in contact with us all the time, and always have. They just don't always have the words to describe us properly sometimes. "It's a real thing?" she finished weakly.
"I'm afraid so. It's actually a pretty recent occurrence, considering. A couple hundred years, maybe? Enough that I don't have that much information on the subject," Trick said, knowing his words were a lot to absorb. "I think the locals have a better idea of how to deal with her than I would. People have tried to kill her, but the Palermo catacombs have some pretty ancient magic protecting the dead in them. I was there when it was consecrated – the ground has a way of protecting the… life inside it. Supposedly, when she sees a man that she fancies-"
"She follows them home. If they're married or engaged, she tries to oust the wife," Jane finished. Her skin, usually flush with Mediterranean blood, was white as Bo's.
"Yes. But I've never heard mention of her leaving Palermo before. Boston's an ocean away," he mused.
"And five years is a long time," Bo added. The other woman began to pace and wring her hands.
"Is the thing gone now? If it isn't, how are we going to get all the way to the fucking island and find out a way to get rid of her?!"
"Jane-"
"These are my fucking people, Bo. I don't care if Satan himself is the murderer, but Maria didn't deserve to die. Not being dragged feet first out of her house and into hell."
"If it comes to that, I will go. This is my case, and fae stuff is my specialty. You don't have to worry about not having any contacts, I'll make them," Bo said softly. She reached out and grabbed the detective's hand, thumb rubbing over a scar on the palm that she had failed to notice before. Jane flinched, but the succubus continued. Eventually, fight seeped out of her, and while she didn't squeeze back, she smiled, disarmed.
For the second time that morning, a cleared throat startled them apart. "If I may interrupt, I don't think a flight to Sicily will be necessary. Your mother spoke several times about Mrs. Messina, the medicine woman, who lives two blocks from here," Maura, in a flawless prada ensemble, stood not two feet from them on the porch. She spoke with uncharacteristic cold and reserve. "Perhaps she could help."
There were no samples collected.