Bride (Ali Hazelwood) by Ali Hazelwood

            “Ha.” The governor downs the rest of his wine. “I just bet she did. I heard he got around.” Of all the things he could have said, this one is the most wrong.

            Lowe calmly dabs his mouth with his napkin and rises to his feet. He unhurriedly walks around the table, toward the governor, who must realize the error of his ways. His chair screeches against the floor as he stands and begins retreating.

            “I meant no offense— Ow.”

            Lowe slams him against the wall. The governor’s wife screams, but stays put in her chair. I run to Lowe.

            “Arthur, my friend,” he murmurs in the governor’s face. “You stink like you’re made of lies.”

            “I’m not— I don’t— Help! Help!”

            “Why did you have Thomas Jalakas killed?”

            “I didn’t, I swear I didn’t!”

            Four Human agents storm inside the room, weapons already drawn. They instantly point them at Lowe, shouting at him to let the governor go and step back. Lowe gives no sign of noticing them.

            “Tell me why you killed Thomas, and I’ll let you live.”

            “I didn’t, I swear I didn’t—”

            He leans in. “You know I can kill you faster than they can kill me, right?”

            The governor whimpers. A drop of sweat trickles down his red face. “He— I didn’t want to, but he was talking to journalists about some embezzling my administration was involved in. We had to! We had to.”

            Lowe straightens. He dusts himself off, takes a step back, and turns to me as though we are the only two people in the room and four firearms are not still trained on him. His hand leisurely finds my elbow, and he smiles—first at me, then to the guards.

            “Thank you, governor,” he says, leading me away. “We will see ourselves out.”



* * *





            “I have several people tailing him,” Lowe informs me once we’re in the car. “And Alex is working on monitoring his communications. He knows we’re onto him, and we’ll be alerted as soon as he makes the next move.”

            “I hope ten wolves are currently shitting in his backyard,” I mutter, and Lowe half smiles and puts his hand on my thigh in an easy, absentminded way that would only make sense if we’d been driving places together for years.

            “It just doesn’t add up,” I vent. “Say Serena really did just interview him for a financial crime story. Maybe she was the journalist he was talking to. Where does Ana’s name on her planner come from?” I guess it could be unrelated. But. “There is no way she coincidentally met with Ana’s father and found out about Ana through other channels. No fucking way. Did someone plant the name? But it was in our alphabet. No one else knew about it.” We’re silent while I churn on it, staring at the streetlights. Then Lowe speaks.

            “Misery.”

            “Yeah.”

            “There is another possibility. Regarding Serena.”

            I look at him. “Yeah?”

            He appears to painstakingly line up the words. When he speaks, his tone is measured. “Maybe it wasn’t Thomas who told Serena about Ana, but the opposite.”

            “What do you mean?”

            “Maybe Serena found out about Ana from another source, and then used the information to blackmail Thomas over his relationship with a Were and force him to tell her about financial crimes he might know about. Maybe she wanted to break the story, but changed her mind when she realized that she was in danger of being targeted by Governor Davenport. Unlike Thomas, she wasn’t a public individual, and she had the option to disappear.”

            I shake my head, even as I realize that some of this is a distinct possibility. “She wouldn’t have left without telling me, Lowe. She’s my sister. And there are no digital traces. She wouldn’t know how to avoid them. She’s not me.”

            “She’s not. But she did learn from you for years.” He looks deeply sorry to have to say this.