The Collective
Oakley’s voice faded from the phone, tinny and final. Grace crossed her arms, mouth set in a line that could cut glass. She didn’t argue.
She wanted to. God, she wanted to. She had objections lined up in mental bullet points. Beginning with her total lack of medical training and ending with the part where she was about to be hidden away with a concussed detective who also happened to be beautiful, infuriating, and half convinced Grace had murdered her assistant.
Instead, she glanced sideways. Nicola winced as she shifted in her seat.
Nicola turned to the medic, her voice low but steely. “Can you put together a kit? For the road. I’ll need to change her bandage.”
The medic looked between them. Then nodded, already moving. “Saline, gauze, tape, antibiotics. You know what you’re doing?”
“Enough,” Nicola said.
She extended a hand to Warren without a word. He hesitated, then took it, helping her to her feet with surprising gentleness. She wobbled. Leaned on him just slightly.
“You good?” he asked.
“You’ve got a crime scene to manage,” she replied, not quite meeting his eyes.
Warren exhaled. “You’ll never change.”
Nicola only nodded. Then to Grace: “Let’s go.”
They slipped out the back of the house and into the stairwell, a narrow, forgotten thing that smelled like damp concrete. “I found this stairwell once after a bottle and a half of Chardonnay and a fight with my editor,” Grace said. “Thought it was a broom closet.”
Nicola gave a crooked grin, brief, then she paled and braced a hand against the wall. Grace noticed the grin first. Then the pallor. Then the fact that the detective looked like she might fold in half. She wrapped an arm through Nicola’s without waiting. “Don’t argue. It’s faster this way.”
Nicola didn’t argue, but she noticed the warmth of Grace’s arm, the smell beneath the blood, herbal, alive. She went still.
Grace paused, caught her gaze. She looked like she wanted to ask a dozen questions.
Nicola lifted a hand. “No questions until we’re not covered in blood.”
Grace’s mouth pressed into a line. “Fine. But I’m keeping a list.”
They reached the alley. The rain had streaked the packed dirt into a sticky mess. Fog clung low and thin, like gauze draped across the back lot.
A car waited. Old, boxy, rust-worn. “She’s old, loud, and made me slightly cooler in ’93,” Nicola said, nodding toward it. “Rougarou.”
Grace half-laughed, half-scoffed. “As in the bayou werewolf?”
“No questions.”
Nicola leaned against the car door, clearly riding out another wave of dizziness. Grace moved quickly to help her into the passenger seat. Nicola exhaled slow and deep as she settled in, body going still in a way that said she was barely holding it together. Grace walked around to the driver’s side. Opened the door and slid in.
The seat dropped lower than she expected. The mirrors were all wrong. The dash looked like it had been pieced together from three different decades.
She reached for the gearshift. Found first, then reverse, then back to neutral. The engine sputtered and died.
“Of course,” she muttered.
She restarted it. Tried again. The car shuddered and stalled.
“You’ve got to sweet-talk her,” Nicola said, voice quiet but not unkind.
“You name your car after a swamp monster and now I have to flirt with her?”
Nicola tilted her head, amused. “Reverse is a trick. Pull up on the shifter just a hair while easing left. She’ll catch.”
“That’s ridiculous.”
“Works, though.”
Grace tried it. The shifter caught. Rougarou rumbled awake.
“You’ve trained her,” Grace said under her breath.
“She trained me.”
They rolled forward. Made the tight turn around the barn. The road ahead was barely a road at all muddy, rutted, and swallowed by trees. Only the engine hummed, low and steady. Branches brushed the car’s flanks.
Grace didn’t speak. Nicola’s eyes were shut, one hand resting lightly on the dash like she was grounding herself. Grace wanted to ask something. Anything. But she let the silence breathe.
The red tail lights blinked once as they vanished down the road, swallowed by the trees.
—
It was just past 1:30 AM.
The moon hung behind clouds like a thought half formed. Humid air pressed in from all sides. Trees wept silver. Shadows stretched and twisted. The car hummed down narrow back roads, headlights carving a path through the dark. Behind them, the house faded, an ache, a warning, a heartbeat gone quiet.
“Follow Canal Street ’til you hit Salt Bay,” Nicola murmured.
Grace frowned. “I thought Salt Bay was condemned.”
“Some of it looks that way. I’ve been working on it for years.”
Nicola didn’t elaborate. Her head throbbed. Her body felt like it had been packed in lead.
The streets worsened. Sagging warehouses rose on either side. Fishing nets hung from skeletal posts like ghostly curtains. Crab traps rusted in neat little rows. Street lights flickered like dying stars. The air shifted. Brine. Rot. Something older.
Grace tightened her grip on the wheel. “Are you sure this is safe?”
“Yes,” Nicola said. Her voice didn’t waver. “Take a left.”
Grace squinted. A cat darted behind a barrel. She missed the turn.
“You just missed it,” Nicola said.
“Sorry. There was a cat. But… this place doesn’t feel right.”
Nicola shrugged. “It never did. Even when it was working.”
“It’s not just that it’s run down,” Grace said, easing the car into a careful turn. “It feels… watched.”
“It’s quiet here,” Nicola said. “That’s all I needed.”
“Quiet and empty aren’t the same thing.”
Nicola didn’t answer.
GRACE TURNS PRECARIOUSLY
The warehouse came into view, hulking, rusted, and half-swallowed by creeping vines. A sign hung askew above the doors: Guidry Shrimp Co.
And just like that, they were THERE.
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