And we're back again for another chapter. I simply procrastinated on this one. I'm... not good with cowriting projects and don't intend to engage in another one ever again, but I do owe it to my partner (and more importantly, you all following this) to at least finish this cowriting project, so this story will be continued until it's finally finished.

Here you go.


Bo's POV

Kenzi and I stepped into a room filled to the brim with shelves and cases, holding every manner of object from skull necklaces to shark teeth bracelets, opal tiaras and ordinary looking jackets. Seems he's a jewelry collector. I thought with a soft sigh. Why does everyone feel the need to put magic in jewelry? Why not a cup or a weapon or... hell, a glove maybe? Always a necklace or a tiara.

I saw Kenzi looking around, her face alight with childish glee as if she had just been given a lifetime's worth of Christmas presents in one day. I rolled my eyes and moved closer to her while Arval was polishing a ring of some sort, an old thing with a large black gem in the center. Coming to Kenzi's side, I leaned down closer to her.

"Take a look at the corpse," I whispered. "Don't steal anything."

"How many times do we have to go over this?" Kenzi hissed. "You can't steal from a dead person."

I rolled my eyes in slight annoyance. "Yes, but everything here is in the property name of someone who's alive, so don't even touch anything!." I nudged her to start looking while I moved in the opposite direction, to see if I could use my ability to see and sense life energy of any sort in order to identify the nature of the thieves.

I turned my gaze upon the nearest set of recent looking dusty tracks, knelt down and sighed, closing my eyes and taking in a long deep breath, carefully focusing and clenching my eyes tightly shut as I breathed in the spiritual atmosphere of the room.

I tasted the chi on the air, cool and soothing like menthol to a sore and dry throat, faintly minty and full of promise. Even though it hadn't been that long since i'd last fed, i felt a part of me clench inside and my breath quickened slightly. I forced a firm hand of control over myself, forcing myself not to give into the temptation to just get up and grab up the nearest person and ride them into sweet, sweet orgasm. I had a job to do and faeing out in such a fashion wouldn't be the greatest possible impression I could make on my latest client.

Giving it a further moment, I finally released the breath I'd been holding and opened my eyes. I saw the intricate webbing of the various life signatures, brighter more vibrant strings belonging to those who'd been here within the past few hours, and the dimmer grayer ones belonging to those who'd been here and gone much longer.

I'd tapped into my succubus vision to get a glimpse into the world come and gone, I could see the signatures of those who had been here and even identify some of them, well their species if nothing else. I'd heard tales of some Succubi who'd perfected their vision to such an extent that they'd been able to see into events of the past, see the people that the life signatures belonged to in practically Blu-ray clarity, see their actions and even hear their words and perhaps even their very thoughts!

But I knew that I was practically a lifetime away from achieving that particular feat, so I just stuck to the task at hand and started following the lines of dimly glowing lights. I winced as I saw bending, twisting and intertwining threads of life force going pretty much all over creation and sighed. This was going to take a while.

Well, at least none of this was available to the public, but god, I wish I could bring Dyson in on this; his nose would be perfect for this! Deciding not to dwell on things that I didn't have, I decided to get back to work, focusing my vision on some of the brighter threads to try following them instead. I made sure not to follow the ones that were too bright as they could lead me to my own trail, to Arval's or to Kenzi's.

Kenzi POV

Whelp, it's a bitch that Dyson isn't here. I grimaced as I cautiously poked at the gaping wound in the victim's throat. If nothing else, he wouldn't be on the verge of upchucking everything he had for breakfast this morning.

I felt the blood leave my face as I uncovered one flap of flesh and unveiled a piece of foreign material that, upon reluctant inspection, I found to be a tiny, jagged but razor-sharp tooth. Oh gods, eww, just... eww. Why do I have to be the one examining the body? Bo's the one with the medical nerd girlfriend, she's more suited to this than I am!

I took a quick swig of vodka from my hip flask, even as I gathered the evidence into a small plastic bag. Drawing on years of minor-league alcholic experience, I carefully juggled taking quick swigs from the flask as I took more bags out of my pockets to gather up things I noticed about the place that I was pretty sure shouldn't have been there. A small dark hair here, trace of reddish mud that I was pretty sure wasn't from the immediate area there, teensy bit of what appeared to be cheese... it smelled like cheese anyway.

I'm the knowledgeable thief! Speaking of which, very shiny object 2 o'clock-NO! No. Bad Kenz. Here to examine body not steal things, even though I'm the one who should be scoping out how the crooks got into this place instead of Bo. Yeesh, Bo doesn't even know how to pick a pocket, let alone sneak into a super secret, mystical, highly illegal museum/smuggler's den thingy. Speaking of, get a giant cake with a stripper hidden inside or no...?

Tonight was a special night, a night for celebration and joy, a bit of alcoholic wildness, and just maybe a bit of classic, hot stripper jumping out of a cake type fun.

I carefully picked out a last teensy bit of something I suspected to be someone else's lunch from the wound, before standing up to my full unimpressive height and sighing, then whimpering as my back gave a snap crackle and pop. Oh, I am getting too old for this crap. I sighed inwardly. How old am I anyway? Okay back to business. Probably no stripper in a cake. Bo will probably fae out and she has enough problems without Little Miss Blonde and Judgy getting on her about cheating on her with a stripper, even though it goes entirely against her fae nature to be monogamous. Which Miss Blonde and Possessive should know since she's a fae doctor.

I walked up to a nearby shelf full of items and sighed longingly as the shininess filled my vision and a deep pang went through my little con-artist soul. If only I could just... but no, that's a bad idea. Bad. Very, very bad. Hm...

I caught myself drooling at a large silver cross covered in deep blue sapphires and crimson diamonds with tracings of white gold around the edges. I knew it could fetch two million dollars easy if presented to the right people. Stop it! This isn't the time for fantasies, even if I did find a good moment to nick it, there are any number of Fae here who can probably smell the damned thing on me! And besides that, Bo's gonna make me empty my pockets the moment we're out of here anyway...

I indulged in one last longing look at the large, strangely ugly and gloriously beautiful cross before turning around and walking smack into the chest of a not terribly imposing, but very cross-looking security guard. While he did look rather typical in that he definitely overindulged in the donuts, he was still definitely a strong-looking asshole with thick arms that looked like they could toss Dyson across a room with little issue. He was glaring down a very large and hairy nose straight at me with very beady yet somewhat psychotic looking eyes.

Well damn.


And there you have it. I'm sorry it took so long and I'm working out a schedule as we speak, but just know, I'm in college and I have work to do so don't expect updates as often as you would want them to be... and don't hold me to any of my updates cause things happen.

Not only college, but I'm not one for cowriting projects (especially recently), so I was rather reluctant to touch this one, but then I realized how long it was since we updated it and I figured that it would be better to touch it now than to leave it for July.

Aside from that, just wanted to let you guys know I'm now on Tumblr (gothalbinoangel-fanfction), Twitter ((a)gothalbinoange1), a Facebook (Goth Albino Angel) and an Archive of Our Own account (GothAlbinoAngel). There are more details on my profile.