Page 37 of The Hive Queen

In the dark of a few hours ago, I hadn’t noticed how lean Amalia had gotten since the last time I saw her. She’s always had strong features, but the years have whittled away any softness. Not that she had much to begin with.

“You doing okay, kid?” Though, at this point, she looks the same age as me now.

She pouts out her full bottom lip. “Aww, Grandpa Flint, do you want to stuff me full of cocoa and cookies?”

“Yeah, I do.” Concern fills me. “Are you hard up for cash? I can make a transfer.”

Her expression hardens. “No, I can take care of myself.”

I sigh, but don’t push. We’ve given Amalia company cards before, but she never activates them. “I suppose you’re here to tell me why you were in that alley?”

She jiggles her shoulders. “I don’t really want to. It’s a big payday if I can take this one down on my own.”

“Can I take a look?” I lean forward and gesture to the file in her lap. “Who’s paying?”

Reluctance in every motion, she drops her foot back to the floor and passes me the file. “Job came in from the demon court. There are a bunch of them open right now. Place is swarming with bounty hunters, but I got my hands on this one. It emptied my savings account, but I have everything lined up and the case is private for two weeks.”

I whistle low. “Must be a big payoff to take that gamble.”

I turn the file and spread it out on Pen’s desk. Big payoff, indeed. Three hundred gold coins. At an ounce a piece, that comes out to nearly a quarter million on today’s market.

Shit, instead of waiting for jobs to come to us, maybe we should take some bounty cases to pay for the Conservatory project.

“There’s not much here.” I flip through the details. “Not even a description.”

“They’re all like that.” She leans forward to prop her elbows on the desk. “Rumor is that the high council is trying to cover their collective ass and track down some monsters that escaped a few years back.”

I return to the first page. “Why did you pick this one?”

“The MO was the most unique. Makes it easier to track.” She reaches out to point to a line at the bottom.

My gut clenches. “Yeah, exploding dicks are pretty unique. So that’s why you were there last night?”

“Yes, and no.” She stands and walks around the desk to lean down next to me to show me a file on her phone. “There have been other deaths. The man from a month ago, two from surrounding cities, and then the two recent ones. There was a pattern of one a week until yesterday, which had me circling back to the alley. Broken patterns have reasons.”

I turn my head to frown at her. “You knew about the alley one and just left him there?”

She snorts. “I called it in, but the police don’t care about a dead homeless man.”

The Clearhelm Police might not, but the Woo Woo Squad certainly does.

“It’s a good thing, too.” She swipes away the files of the other murders to reveal a photo of the alley, darker than it was when we arrived and the techs already had their floodlights set up. She points to something near a still leg. “See that?”

Bile rolls in my stomach. “Yes, I see the phallus. I’ve seen it in an evidence bag, too.”

“Which means the dicks aren’t being blasted off.” Excitement fills her voice, and she zooms in on the detached piece of flesh. “My theory is that there was something wrong with the guy that rendered his dick useless for whatever purpose they’re being gathered for. So she had to go find new prey.”

That aligns with what Sharpe and Pen were thinking earlier.

I rub a hand over my stomach, though the sympathy pain comes from a bit lower. “She?”

“Pretty sure, from what I saw, which was admittedly not great.” She swipes the screen again.

A blurry image appears of a dark garage with a single car parked to the side of a security light.

Amalia zooms in on the car, and a shadowed figure takes shape.

At first, I think the person is misshapen, but then I realize the figure sits reversed in the front seat of the car, one hand above their head pressed against the ceiling. What I first mistook for a hump is the swell of a breast, but the image is too dark and out of focus to get more detail.

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