Rematch by

Goth-Fog

This is the first chapter, the prompts used are "London Fog" and "The Sleuth".

Be advised, there will be reference to death and prior sexual encounters in this chapter.

Read Goth-Fog

“What a soup,” Haleth muttered as she pushed open the heavy door leading out of the dark precinct—she and her superior had been wasting too much time sitting around and avoiding bringing up the half-confessions they had made over the burned body of an unfortunate boy. “Care for a drink before heading home?”

Aredhel suppressed a shiver; she would not have made it this far in the police force if she had not learned to hide every reaction that might have been interpreted as “girly” or “hysterical” and she was not about to let that carefully crafted mask slip only because she was unexpectedly reminded of one of the most grievous mistakes she had ever committed. One that she would have repeated, if given but half a chance, whole-heartedly.

Shrugging, she expressed dispassionate acquiescence in a way that hopefully obscured how much she loathed the idea of returning to her empty flat and her overflowing thoughts just yet.

They walked slowly down the street through a fog so impenetrable and wet that it felt like a thousand lifeless hands brushing against every inch of bare skin.

“’s a night for murder,” Haleth commented tonelessly, doing her best to give the impression that she was not shaken to the core by the sight of a kid—burned to a crisp—whom she had known much less than she might have wanted to.

Aredhel merely nodded; she, who thoroughly relished the unleashed violence of a good thunderstorm, felt almost claustrophobic in this dense, dead, disgusting prison of mist.

Neither one commented on the fact that they all but threw themselves into the public house as if escaping invisible, intangible murder and mayhem in the cold, dark, deserted streets outside of this oasis of greasy, orange light; they simply took a seat and ordered a drink, pretending that this was just another night on the job.

“So,” Aredhel finally said, looking at her subordinate above the not perfectly clean rim of a thick-walled glass, “what, or rather who, was your poison?”

Bringing her gaze from the ominously billowing banks of grey fog rolling by the window back to her companion, Haleth gave her a crooked grin. “Caranthir,” she then said, pulling up her shoulders as if to defend herself against potential judgement or mockery.

Aredhel pressed her lips together to keep from scoffing—Haleth was reliable, brave, and wickedly smart and yet, it was hardly surprising to hear that she had not escaped the fate of falling into that roiling, enchanting maelstrom of bad temper and sweet insecurity. “Fair,” the detective finally admitted, “he’s a good-looking man.”

Unlike her boss, Haleth did not find it necessary to keep her intuitive reactions in check, so she chuckled in open self-deprecation. “He’s as pretty as a man can be, of course, but…he’s also a good sort, I think.” She wiped the back of her hand across her mouth as if to erase that burst of honest sentimentality as soon as it had crossed her lips.

“You think?” Aredhel grinned, but there was more empathy than humour in her eyes. “Why did it not work out?”

“He’s not forthcoming with information about…well, everything really,” Haleth replied to both questions calmly. “It’s a damn shame, I can tell you that. What about you? You said that you did…”

“That could become a problem,” Aredhel mused, thinking of the investigation they would have to struggle through—if Haleth had parted on better terms with her former almost-lover than she had with her own trespass in human form, they might have gotten a leg up.

Patiently, Haleth lifted two fingers to order another round and waved her hand at her boss—she had put her cards on the table and expected reciprocation.

“Celegorm,” Aredhel finally confessed. The barking laughter exploding from her cold lips sounded strained and her mouth snapped shut with an audible clack.

“Not bad,” Haleth grinned appreciatively. “Why was there never a second date? Don’t tell me he’s a louse in the sack?”

This time, Aredhel’s chuckle was fast and entirely too loud to be dishonest. “Oh no,” she laughed, “he was…No, it was not that. There is too much anger in that man and too little willingness to mellow and grow.” She sighed. “I have terrible taste—a well-documented and deeply regrettable fact, isn’t it?”

Averting her gaze, Haleth licked her lower lip nervously. Aredhel’s short-lived marriage and the circumstances of her son’s birth were touchy subjects that they wouldn’t unpack in a crowded bar while outside a thick, blinding blanket of fog did its best to asphyxiate the city.

“That,” Haleth then said without looking at the other woman, “could become a problem too. Do we owe them the courtesy to warn them, or would that corrupt the investigation?”

They pondered the question for a moment—the night was darker than dark; it was positively opaque and their hearts were weary. Old ghosts and lost loves rose up from the long-dead soil of their souls and wafted through their minds alluringly.

“I could give him a call,” Aredhel said with another fitful shrug. “I suppose they’ve been told but we’ve got to fix appointments to interview all of them anyway and—as they’ve all left the county to live who knows where—we might get the time zones and scheduling issues out of the way already.”

Haleth nodded eagerly—it made no sense to hanker after what could not be. The objects of their thinly veiled longings were thousands of miles away and would most probably not have much relevant information or wisdom to impart but they couldn’t leave any stone unturned and so, they would have to get statements even from people who might not have seen their youngest brother in years.

Holding her phone so tightly that her knuckles were white with tension, Aredhel waited for the booming ringing to be replaced by the tinny sound of an answering machine.

“Rissë, hey, long time no see,” Celegorm’s own warm voice resounded instead. “How have you been?”

“Celegorm,” she gasped, unduly surprised that he would pick up his phone. “Do you still have my number saved?”

“Well yes,” he replied in that arrogant self-evident tone that had made her heart skip a beat once upon a time, “but aren’t you the one calling me? Doesn’t that mean that you still have mine as well?”

She bit her lip—as a matter of fact, she did not have his number saved. She knew it by heart.

“Is this about Amrod? I’ve heard you made detective—I wanted to send a basket, but I didn’t know if you’d find that appropriate. I guess you’ll want to talk to us—why don’t you come up to the house? Bring Haleth, Moryo would certainly be happy…somewhere in his dark, dark heart.”

“House?” Aredhel squeaked, hating the way the conversation was slipping out of her fingers.

“Well, yes, I cannot promise you’ll get a very warm welcome though.”

Exchanging a warning glance with Haleth, Aredhel drew herself up—slouching in her chair like a cowering child would not bring her any closer to the solution to this mystery. With trembling fingers, she set down her phone and turned on the speaker function so her second-in-command could listen in.

“Where are your brothers, Tyelko?” she then asked, slipping back into a long-lost routine much too easily for comfort.

“Why, we’re all back home…”

The glass she was holding slipped from Haleth’s grasp and burst into an explosion of sloshing beer and flying shards of glass.

Bear-en & Sleuth-ien

This is the second chapter. The prompts used are "Against the Odds" and "Killing me strangely".

Be advised, there will be (more specific) reference to death and some unresolved tension in this chapter.

Read Bear-en & Sleuth-ien

They should not have come right away, Aredhel realised as they drew up in front of the stately manor and were greeted by shuttered windows and a closed door.

“Damn, Rissë,” Celegorm laughed wryly as he came down the steps, “when I invited you, I didn’t expect you to show up half an hour later. I am sorry, but the family has gone to bed already.”

He still looked so terribly good, she thought instinctively before her professionalism could kick in—he was evidently lying. Despite the heavy shutters and the drawn curtains, she could make out blades and flashes of light, filtering through the bastions of dissimulation stubbornly.

“Give us a moment to mourn and get our thoughts in order,” he went on when he saw her unconvinced mien.

“To dispose of the evidence, you mean?” she shot back sharply.

A hand, broad and strong as a paw, was pressed against the rippling muscles of a broad chest. “You wound me,” Celegorm said in a tone that sounded much too honest and vulnerable, filtered through the persistent mist that carpeted the scene.

He looked like a golden bear, sharp-toothed and lethal, standing there on the steps leading up to a house they were denied access to.

Beside her, Haleth growled impatiently—she was not known for her bedside manner and Aredhel extended a soothing hand behind her back. She had been doing this job for too long not to know that some people had to be handled with the utmost care lest they clam up and become a monumental hindrance in the case.

This family undoubtedly was of that sort.

“That was not my intention,” Aredhel said in her gentlest voice, “but you must understand how important it is that we speak to everyone who was on the premises as soon as possible.” Before you have a chance to get your stories straight and coordinate your lies, she thought bitterly.

“That would be all of us,” he replied sheepishly, but the hard, cold gleam in his eyes belied his inoffensive posturing. Moreover, Aredhel knew him too intimately to be fooled by this exaggerated persona of a well-meaning simpleton he loved to play to get away with his trespasses.

“All the more reason to get your depositions. You have nothing to hide, do you?”

The affable smile vanished instantly and his eyes followed Haleth as she started to prowl around the house in search of clues and treacherous indications of wrongdoing.

“We have plenty to hide,” he then answered the rhetorical question with disarming candour, “but none of these things is pertinent here. You don’t really think that we’d kill our own brother, do you?”

Aredhel hesitated just for a moment too long—his eyes glazed over as if he had thrown up a silver shield and his mouth curled into a disdainful scowl.

“Come back in the morning and we’ll answer your questions as best we can,” he snarled and turned on his heels.

“Boss?” Haleth called from the side of the building. “Here is a window that is boarded-up with planks. Looks recent!”

“Oh,” Celegorm chuckled humourlessly as he turned at the door to gauge Aredhel’s reaction, “that must be father’s study. Sometimes, an experiment goes awry, or a party gets too out of hand. What can you do with seven sons?”

“There was a party? When?” Aredhel jumped on that titbit of new information that they had managed to wrest from him.

“Yesterday,” he admitted, “had I known that you were still interested, I would have invited you.”

It was harder than expected not to fall prey to his easy charm and his sharp smile, but she dug her nails into her palm and conjured up her sweetest smile. “Well,” she purred, “you can invite us in now, can’t you Tyelko?”

“No can do,” he laughed, honest regret lacing his voice, “come back tomorrow, dear, and I’ll tell you all I can.”

“You have always been a terrible liar,” Aredhel groaned, holding his gaze stubbornly and pinning him in place by sheer willpower while Haleth continued to slink around the house noiselessly. “When did you last see your brother?”

His face darkened and then he shrugged slowly and jerkily. “I am not entirely sure, to be honest.”

There was guilt there, flickering bright through the fire of Celegorm’s anger—regret washed through Aredhel as she realised that she would have to push his buttons mercilessly in hopes that he’d let something slip if she only fanned the flames of his puerile defence mechanism competently enough.

They had sworn not to hurt it each other when they had parted—so many years ago—and she hated that she would have to break her word.

---

The creaking noise of old hinges protesting alerted Haleth and made her hasten her steps towards a small back door, barely visible in the ambient darkness.

She would have recognised the silhouette standing in the doorway anywhere, no matter the lighting conditions, and the painful jolt the sight of Caranthir’s haughty expression gave her took the wind out of her sails.

Coming to a halt a few steps away, obscured by a largely untended bush, she observed the oldest son of the house almost folding himself in half to fit through the old, evidently disused door.

During her recon mission, she had clearly seen that there was a huge, beautiful door leading out from an elaborate outdoor patio to the garden, so she could only surmise that this tiny opening was one of the original portals of the historic building.

“The police are out front,” Caranthir hissed urgently. “Get a move on!”

Before he could vanish once more—an uncanny talent of his—Haleth stepped out of her hiding spot and called his name.

Caranthir froze on the threshold before discreetly widening his stance as if he expected her to rush him and force her way into the house.

“I had wondered if you’d come,” he commented in a lazy drawl that was so unlike the tight, strained tone he had used just a few moments prior that Haleth instinctively knew that he was dissembling. “There is nothing we can tell you that would be helpful.”

Tight-lipped, she thought with a mix of longing and despair, he had always been private to the degree of being hostile and unreachable—one could not have any dealings with him without getting the nagging feeling that he was holding back the best of what he had to offer, be that truth, love, or services, to win the imaginary negotiation that was his life.

“That is for us to decide,” she countered harshly. It was not clear to her why this one man could provoke such devastating, irrational, corrupting ire in her when she usually prided herself on her cool head so much.

“Where has he been?” she asked then, her brows knitting in distrust, as she nodded at the dimly illuminated corridor she could only barely make out over Caranthir’s shoulder. “Getting rid of critical evidence, huh?”

He flinched back as if struck. “No matter what disdain or hatred you—deservedly and fairly—hold for me,” he said coolly, “I will not allow you to speak thus about my brother. Nelyo is beyond fault and blame.”

Arching one brow, Haleth cocked her head. She had almost believed him, but the slight hesitation and the noticeable tremor in his voice gave his own lack of faith away at the last moment.

“That is also for us to determine,” she insisted and turned to leave when she heard Aredhel call for her. “We’ll be back.”

“You’ve said that before,” Caranthir jeered, “so forgive me if I am not exactly holding my breath.”

A thousand replies—angry, disappointed, heartbroken idiocies—bubbled to her prickling lips and were swallowed back down.

Caranthir, beautiful as he might be, was no longer an inaccessible, vain dream. He was now a potential foe; someone she might have to cuff and throw into jail.

Inadvertently, she asked him the same question as Aredhel had put to his brother and she got a similarly vague answer which left her with a queasy, unsettling feeling in the pit of her stomach. How could one not know when one had last seen one’s brother?

Both Aredhel and Haleth felt terrible as they drove back to the city centre; they had achieved nothing other than to warn their targets and flounder miserably in the face of old acquaintances who could have been so much more—it was embarrassing and a clear professional failure.

The worst part though was that they fervently hoped, against all reason and probability, that these men were only guilty of being thoroughly infuriating.

They knew that they should have recused themselves from the case and yet, neither one of them was ready nor willing to do so.

Just as they were about to part ways, the e-mail from the coroner kept them rooted to the uncomfortable car seats—it turned out that the debris found around and on the corpse was not, as initially thought, regular dirt and rubble linked to the gruesome demise of the victim.

“Gemstones and rare metals?” Haleth groaned. Every way they turned, supposedly safe leads turned into confusing and incriminating surprises that cemented the case against the immediate family. “Could it not simply have been the molten remains of the regular items found on a man of that age? No? Is that too much to ask?”

“We need a full, extensive, and detailed list of the components,” Aredhel mumbled, typing furiously on her phone, while Haleth looked on in apprehensive silence—she was deeply dismayed and worried by this change of events to the point where she was not sure she’d find any sleep that night.

“Tomorrow first light,” Aredhel announced and got a grim, determined grunt from the passenger side of the car as her only reply.

They didn’t dare look at each other and, as each got ready to go to bed in her own flat, they found that they could hardly bear to look at themselves in the mirror.

Red Hair-ings

This is the last chapter. The prompt used is "Red Herrings".

It's a slightly longer chapter with references to trauma, mental health problems, and a slightly creepy Maglor.

Lots of love from me!

Read Red Hair-ings

Bright and early, Aredhel and Haleth set out, once again, for the sprawling mansion on top of the steep hill—their motivation was high, but their hopes were not after the fiasco of the previous evening.

“We’ll have to ascertain where Maedhros has been,” Haleth said decisively even though she was highly doubtful that the taciturn oldest son and heir apparent would share such an intimate detail of his life with mere mortals such as they were.

Aredhel scoffed in disbelief as she flicked a finger against the meticulously straightened and styled hair of her colleague—usually, Haleth threw her shoulder-length hair up into a more or less tidy bun, but today, she had apparently found it necessary to make an effort.

“He’s still got that power, huh?” Aredhel mocked, pointedly ignoring the fact that she was also wearing her best black pantsuit as if she was going to a formal funeral rather than to a preliminary interrogation.

Cheap paper cups were rolled and squeezed nervously between sweaty palms as they walked up to the house which looked surprisingly like a huge, many-eyed beast, coiled and ready to spring upon them unexpectedly.

“Have you ever been here before? Inside, I mean?” Aredhel asked, resenting the fact that she couldn’t stop babbling as if the weighty silence surrounding the bizarre structure—transformed, expanded, and renovated once too often—was too heavy to bear.

“No,” Haleth replied between two tiny, nervous sips of her coffee. “I’ve met the man in the wilderness, so to say—I’ve inadvertently stumbled into his usual hunting grounds. We’ve never made it to the point where he’d invite me to his hereditary estate.”

“Do you know the others?”

Crushing the by-now empty container between her twitching fingers, Haleth shrugged half-heartedly. “I know of them,” she said vaguely. “I’d want to say ‘as a woman’, but let me amend, as a living, breathing, seeing person, I am aware of them…but no, I’ve never been formally introduced. You?”

“Our mothers were friends,” Aredhel mumbled without taking her eyes off the house as they crept towards it warily. “I have not been here in many years though. Brace yourself then—they are strange.”

Her hand trembled just the tiniest bit as she raised it to let her fist fall against the heavy oaken door—before she could knock though, the door swung open, and a beautifully melancholic smile appeared.

“Come in,” Maglor greeted, “I suppose my brothers are still braiding their hair to look their best, grief does not prevent vanity.”

Haleth’s brow knitted in confusion; he had a disconcerting, almost frightening intensity and so, she studied the oversized portraits of the sons of the house instead to escape that terrible gaze that seemed to look right into her quailing soul.

“Káno,” a sober, forbidding voice resounded, “watch your mouth.”

Shooting an alarmed look at her boss, Haleth retreated a few hasty steps.

“You can cut out the threatening posturing,” Aredhel hissed as she realised that they had been kept in the foyer for much longer than she had planned on being detained. “We’ve understood that you’ll defend and protect your younger brothers. I’ve got a big brother as well, I know the drill.”

A commotion upstairs nipped every chance of a prolonged staring contest between Aredhel and the two oldest brothers in the bud.

“What happened to my window then?” The thundering, rich voice exploding like a storm seemed to shake the very walls around them. “I’ll have to replace it! This is not safe!”

“Father, please, there’s a detective downstairs. Keep your voice down!”

“Has he come to investigate who locked us in our own house or where my prototype has vanished to?”

“It’s Írissë, dad, come on…I’ll replace the window later, don’t worry!”

Again, Haleth sought Aredhel’s eyes for reassurance. They all seemed so uncannily composed that it made her feel as if she was sleepwalking through an endless, nightmarish maze of half-truths and expertly obscured secret agendas. Everything but the death of the boy seemed of immense urgency, and she could not even begin to understand why not one of them seemed to be grieving.

“He is not mad,” Maglor declared in a tone that made it very clear that his father was, as a matter of fact, beyond common folly. Fëanor reigned the twilight space where genius and insanity collided to create or annihilate galaxies. “The window was a special invention of his—it was easily breakable from the inside—in case of a spill or if the need for a speedy exit was to arise—but it was almost impenetrable from the outside. He is paranoid and possessive when it comes to his ideas, you must understand!”

Neither Aredhel nor Haleth could truly comprehend how the man could be so upset about a mere pane of glass, no matter how exceptional, when his child lay dead on a slab in the morgue. “What is this about your keys? And what exactly has been lost?” Aredhel pushed on for fear that she would drown in the quagmire of her own doubtful thoughts and base suspicions otherwise.

“That has nothing to do with Amrod,” Caranthir’s cold voice cut unexpectedly through her urgent questions. “Except for the fact that—for a lack of keys—we were all right here.”

“Not all,” Haleth rasped as she whirled around to face him, eager to see his face and terrified at the same time. “As we’ve found your brother downtown.”

He stopped in the middle of the stairs he was coming down at a stately, leisurely pace—his eyes were hard and unreadable, and his mouth tightened into an unforgiving line of stark disapproval.

The tension crackling in the air threatened to provoke an unwelcome reprise of the spontaneous combustion that would claim another slew of unsuspecting victims.

“We’ve heard there was a raucous party,” Aredhel dove into the breach Haleth’s tactlessness had hewn into the stalwart defences of the inhabitants of this eerie house. “Maybe…there was even a fight?”

“Father is working on an alternative energy source,” Maedhros explained evasively, “but it’s not going all that well so he’s irritable these days. Nothing out of the ordinary.” He did not deny the suggestion of a quarrel, but he also did not gratify their attempt at worming their way into his head with an affirmative statement or admission of something being amiss.

“And some jokester had locked all the doors late at night,” Celegorm added tempestuously as he pushed past Caranthir and strode down the stairs with all the flair of an Old Hollywood Diva. “We were here when…” He didn’t finish his sentence—he couldn’t.

“So you all keep saying,” Aredhel groaned. “And Haleth here is right—very evidently, not everyone was in the house at all times.”

“We were locked in the night before yesterday and only managed to find the keys one by one throughout the day,” Caranthir specified calmly. “We do not know what happened.”

“What about the window then?” Haleth interjected, throwing back her head defiantly.

“It has nothing to do with anything,” Maglor said a little too quickly with an unnaturally bright smile that might have fooled less suspicious minds than those present. “It was an unfortunate accident.”

Aredhel shook her head; if what they said was true and they had been confined against their will, the fact that someone had indeed forced their way outside was eminently relevant. She could not understand why they all insisted on being so contrary—did they not yearn to be cleared?

“I’d also want to know what happened to the window,” Fëanor’s tired voice resounded from above.

“Father,” another voice pleaded and then retreating steps echoed through the hall as someone—presumably Curufin—led the patriarch into relative seclusion.

With as much objectivity as she could muster, Aredhel took in the scene—it was vital that she be able to observe and judge the assembled people as important witnesses and potential perpetrators rather than old childhood friends. Maedhros looked as if he had not slept in days and the way Caranthir glowered at the ceiling as if his accusatory gaze could penetrate brick and mortar to strike those holed up on the upper floor was indicative of deep-seated conflicts that might well shed a light on what had transpired in the house, leading up to the tragic death of one of the twins.

She remembered them as mere toddlers, rotund and happy, and her heart broke at the thought of the charred, mangled body they had found in a dark, abandoned alley.

Catching sight of the remaining twin, near-catatonic, seated on a sofa that seemed to swallow him, through the open living room door, she quailed at the thought that she would have to interrogate Amras, who had lost half of himself, as well as his vexingly unhelpful brothers.

The walls seemed to be closing in around her, immuring her in the voracious, mute misery of a family she had disclaimed a long time ago.

“This is not going anywhere,” she finally said in a trembling voice, tapping Haleth—engaged in a stubborn staring contest with a statuesque and unnaturally pale Caranthir—on the shoulder. “Let’s examine the rooms and be done with this.”

Aredhel was desperate to get out of the house—to breathe fresh, unsullied air and cleanse herself of the cloying aroma of wordless agony that seemingly clung to her skin and hair; her every movement stirred the turgid current of unspoken resentment and fragrant secrets and she felt as if she was advancing through molasses as she made her way up the stairs.

In a grotesque procession, they proceeded through the different bedrooms, gritting their teeth against the horrible, humiliating sensation of unforgivable intrusion and callous trespass as they stood—detached and professional—in the most intimate sanctum of people who now felt like quasi-strangers.

From time to time, Haleth let slip a tiny groan of dismay or a choked gasp of shock at the sight of a heap of nails on Maglor’s nightstand or the empty spaces in Caranthir’s gem collection.

She, who had never really met the seven notorious scions of a noble house, was aghast to have to watch on powerlessly as they dug their own graves.

Burying themselves in their personal flaws—pride, stubbornness, and a categorical refusal to admit to any kind of weakness—they seemed all too eager to ruin any chance of redemption the women’s goodwill might have procured them.

They did not speak to one another or indulge in comforting touches, but they stood side-by-side like gruesome, impassible, mute sentinels as Aredhel and Haleth executed their duties with heavy hearts and sorrow-laden minds.

If one of them was guilty, Aredhel knew, they probably all were. It was a well-established truth that—fight and squabble as they might—the boys were fiercely loyal to one another and would rather go down gloriously together than make it out alive on their own.

“Do you care to explain?”

Silence. Final. Unyielding.

“Didn’t think so,” Aredhel muttered and went back downstairs, eager to get to that boarded-up window in hopes that the forbidden room would give her any new insight that might seal their fate or—which was much more desirable—would exempt them miraculously.

“You can’t go in there,” Fëanor, wild-eyed and unkempt, sprang out of the shadows like an unleashed panther. “You have no right to look at my secret designs.”

Both women flinched. They wanted to scream at him that they cared nought about his designs and inventions—they wanted to shake him until he understood that they desperately, despairingly, doggedly tried to save his sons’ lives.

“Nothing in that room can give you any clues,” Curufin assured them as well, his eyes muddy with guilt and pleading. “He didn’t die there.”

“But something in that room would tell us more, wouldn’t it?” Aredhel insisted; her infallible instinct had picked up on a scent and she had her nose to the ground now, ready to follow it to wherever it might lead. “There is something you are hiding!”

“No,” he rasped, meeting her inquisitive, intense gaze bravely, “there is nothing in that room that could give you any answers.”

“Was there?” Haleth interrupted shrewdly—she had learned to read between the lines and make out the shapes sketched in the empty spaces around a seemingly innocuous picture. “Maybe, it’s not so much what we’d find in the room and much more what we wouldn’t find that would help us?”

The sight of stony faces all around and strong arms flexing instinctively made the hair at the back of her neck rise up in alarm.

Decisively, Aredhel took a step towards the door and its pervasive aura of secrecy and prohibition.

“Please don’t,” Celegorm pleaded and took her hand in a gesture so unprofessional and tender that she flinched violently. “Trust me…There are secrets—guilty and terrible but utterly irrelevant—that you don’t need to unearth to get to the bottom of this.”

“You forfeited your right to privacy when you denied us entry yesterday,” Aredhel replied coolly. “I am not entirely sure whether you can keep us out of the room, but just to be on the safe side, I’ll check that with a lawyer.”

A sigh of relief rustled through the congregation.

“I cannot let anyone else have access to it in the meanwhile though,” she continued in a steely tone, “and you’ve been contrary and singularly uncooperative, so I’ll take the lot of you down to the precinct.”

“There is enough incriminating evidence,” Haleth added weakly—she visibly hated this, no matter how adamantly she tried to keep a straight, professional mien.

“A word,” Maglor piped up suavely—he looked considerably less flustered than his siblings. Maybe, Haleth thought with a shiver of visceral revulsion, he simply was the better liar.

Pulling the two women into the living room and closing the door, he gave them his most condescendingly soothing smile.

“Nelyo broke the window and I’ve put up the boards,” he explained in a hushed, conspiratorial tone, “at that time, my father’s prototype had already gone missing, and the doors were locked.”

“Did he take it?”

“Of course not,” Maglor scoffed, “you don’t know my brother. He went to see…” For a moment, he looked abashed.

“My brother, right?” Aredhel clenched her jaw. “He went to see Finno; I should have known. It should be easy to check up on that.”

“Please!” An elegant, shapely hand with tell-tale callouses alighted on her forearm like a rare, delicate bird. “Don’t let them know that I’ve given them away. They think nobody knows.” All pretence of bonhomie seemed blown away and his eyes were wide and wild in a drawn, pale face that looked like a porcelain mask about to crack under the pressure and heat of the turmoil raging in his soul.

Aredhel grinned in a fit of all but forgotten comradery. “Don’t forget that I am your counterpart in this. I’ll be discreet.”

“Was the boy gone by that time?” Haleth asked, buffeted by the sheer agony in the eyes that now fell on her like a bone-breaking avalanche of stone and light.

“I don’t know,” Maglor admitted quietly. “That is the crux of the matter—we just surmised that he was here. We have…failed.”

“I will have to take you in,” Aredhel said, quiet regret in her voice, “if only to keep you safe. We don’t know who did this and whether they would not come for the rest of you.”

“We can take care of ourselves!” Maglor bristled.

Haleth, who could not bear the idea of finding the man she had allowed to slip through her hesitant fingers cold and dead, shivered. “We can’t take the risk,” she spoke firmly, dissimulating the quake of fear and longing in her heart as best she could.

“Oh you two,” Maglor laughed, “you could ask the pitiful clowns out and be done with it. If locks and a raging Fëanor cannot keep my brother in place, I doubt you and your flimsy bars could. Don’t do this to Nelyo—his brother is dead and he needs the comfort of…”

Aredhel nodded her understanding.

“Nobody killed my brother,” a wavering, thin, lifeless voice cut through their flimsy charade of good-humoured bickering. “Or I did.”

They all whirled around—they had forgotten about Amras, sitting motionless on the couch still, staring into a void that was unfathomable and unreachable for them.

“It was I who locked you in,” he went on in the monotone voice of one drowning on the inside. “Curvo and Father had been fighting all day about the blasted prototype. Then, all of you were screaming about whether it would work or kill us all. Amrod said he’d take it out of the house and store it somewhere safe, and I promised to make sure that none of you could catch up with him too soon. If only Nelyo had been content to stay put—no, he had to go break the only window he knew would give easily and thus alert everyone to the disappearance of the accursed thing. It is my fault my brother is dead.”

He took a deep shuddering breath. “I’ve texted him, letting him know that you knew. His last words were to hide the fact that he was gone and get rid of the keys in ludicrous ways. He must have become careless—I don’t know.”

“The metal,” Aredhel whimpered, “the stones.” In her mind, she went over the more extensive list she had found in her inbox that morning—she had thought about all kinds of torture devices or exotic weapons, but the idea of a novel device had not once crossed her mind. She should have known better.

“Oh kid,” Haleth exclaimed, feeling awkward. Her arms suddenly felt too heavy and coarse for the kind of comforting embrace she clumsily insinuated into the still air of a deathly silent room.

“I am so sorry,” Amras exclaimed and—like a dam breaking under the pressure of the penned-up violence of a river—he threw himself into the velvet pillows and wept bitterly.

They would all be sorry, Aredhel thought, and it would take years if not forever to even begin feeling somewhat steady again.

Helplessness and a vague, aimless anger—directed at no one in particular and yet so overwhelming that she could barely breathe—overcame her and she leaned heavily against the back of an ornate chair.

“Let’s pack you up,” she finally sighed, “so you can bid farewell to your brother. How about that?”

Maglor nodded gravely, looking more like a fairy tale prince than ever before, and conjured up a heart-wrenching smile.

“Call your brother, all right?” he said to Aredhel and gave her upper arm a feeble punch. “Can I entrust Tyelko and Moryo to you?”

Aredhel and Haleth watched as he lifted Amras into his arms and carried him out, exchanging whispered words with his other brothers, and getting them ready to depart promptly.

Yes, they would stick together, come what may. They would also deflect and try to lose themselves in frantic activity to avoid coming to terms with the terrible loss and their own share of guilt before they were ready to face those bleak, devastating truths—everyone, the women knew, had their own way with dealing with the unimaginable and it was hardly their place to impose healing to those who were not even able to look at the wound.

Nodding at each other grimly, the two policewomen accepted their share of the burden to carry and stepped back out into the hall resolutely.

---

Chapter End Notes

So, I hope you've enjoyed this.

It might have run away with me ever so slightly, but--as I said--I love crime stories.

Thank you for reading!