The Knights of Maenara Collective (2 of 10)
The kitchen smelled wrong, not rot exactly, but something sharper underneath the citrus-bright disinfectant. Copper and sweetness, like blood cut with sugar, like someone had tried to scrub away evidence but only succeeded in making it more obvious. The kind of smell that gets into your sinuses and stays there, that you taste more than breathe.
Nicola stepped inside, her boots joining the muddy constellation already tracked across tile that looked too new, too clean for a house this old. Evidence markers dotted the scene like abandoned chess pieces. The overhead lights flickered once, twice, then steadied into a hum that sounded almost organic, almost like breathing.
Voices drifted from down the hall, one of them unmistakably Warren’s. It was too smooth for the setting, like bourbon poured over a memory. She followed the sound past a breakfast nook where a disposable coffee cup wilted sideways on a cushioned bench, still half-full, cold enough that condensation had stopped forming on the outside.
She found him leaning against the wall just outside what had been her grandmother’s library. He was grinning at a forensics tech and describing his losing hand from last Friday’s poker game like they were at a bar instead of standing ten feet from a corpse, “Three queens, two bluffers, and not a damn heart among ‘em. Story of my life.”
Warren always played the clown. It kept people from noticing he was the sharpest bastard in the room and the only one who hadn’t left when the Knight family imploded and Nicola ran.
“Warren,” she said, flat as Delta water.
He turned, his face lighting up in that practiced way of his, all teeth, and performance. “Well, look what the bayou dragged back. Detective Knight, returning from the land of unsolved mysteries and truck-stop coffee.”
Nicola didn’t return the smile. Her hand throbbed where the cut had reopened on the door handle at the warehouse, blood seeping through the makeshift bandage. “You called me in.”
“Technically, Oakley called. I’m just the messenger.” He gestured toward the library like a game show host revealing a prize nobody wanted. “Your witness awaits. Try not to scare her off with that whole ‘I’ve-seen-things-you-people-wouldn’t-believe’ stare you perfected.”
She ignored the jab, her eyes drifting past him to the room beyond, where a woman paced barefoot on polished floors. Her silk robe was the color of old wine, bandaged neck, dark hair pulled into a knot that was trying to stay elegant but failing. Grace Broadchurch. The name had been in the text from Maddie, along with “author” and “new owner” and “not handling this well.”
“Is she your victim?”
“One of ‘em.” Warren tilted his head toward the hallway. Nicola caught a glimpse of legs crumpled awkwardly on hardwood, half out of frame, positioned wrong. “Other one’s not talking.”
Warren’s voice dropped into that tour-guide cadence he used when he wanted to sound important. “Grace Broadchurch. Homeowner, author, minor celebrity in certain circles. Writes fantasy novels about vampires who don’t sparkle and dragons who eat their riders. Thinks adjectives are a food group.” He smirked. “You two should get along great, both allergic to straight answers and comfortable with dead things.”
“Why are you still here?”
“Moral support. Plus, she refused to talk to anyone but ‘someone who takes this seriously.’” He made air quotes with his fingers, wedding ring catching the light. “Apparently I don’t qualify since I suggested her attacker might’ve been human and not, quote, ‘something with teeth that shouldn’t exist.’”
Nicola stepped past him without asking permission, her shoulder brushing his as she moved into the library.
The room hit her like a fist to the chest, same built-in shelves her grandfather had installed, same window seat where she’d read on summer afternoons when the air was too thick to breathe outside, but everything else transformed. The books were different now, newer spines in organized rows instead of her grandmother’s chaotic stacks of occult texts and botanical guides. A sleek desk sat where the reading table had been, laptop closed, papers scattered like something had interrupted work mid-thought.
Grace turned at her entrance. Her eyes flicked down, taking in the grease-stained shirt from working on Del’s truck, battered boots that had walked through more crime scenes than Nicola could count, her old leather jacket that had belonged to her grandfather before it belonged to her. Then back up, lingering on Nicola’s face just long enough to catalogue: honey-colored eyes that had seen too much, exhaustion worn like armor, a jawline that suggested she’d bitten back more words than she’d ever spoken aloud.
Grace’s gaze held interest but stayed carefully neutral, the way you study a painting in a gallery when you’re not sure if you’re supposed to understand it or just appreciate that someone else does.
“Why don’t you go check your hair, Detective Warren?” Grace said without looking at him, her voice cream poured over broken glass. “I’m sure there’s a camera crew outside dying for a statement about your dedication to justice and your winning smile.”
Warren chuckled, unbothered, already backing toward the door. “She’s all yours, Knight. Good luck sorting fact from fiction. My money’s on seventy-thirty split, heavy on the fiction.”
Grace muttered, just loud enough for him to hear: “Arrogant little camera whore.”
His grin widened as he vanished down the hall, his laughter echoing off walls that remembered different voices, different laughter, different ghosts. Nicola didn’t sit. She waited, letting the silence settle between them like dust motes in afternoon light, letting the room breathe around them. The house was watching, she could feel it the way you feel eyes on your back, the way you know when you’re not alone even in an empty room.
“Detective Nicola Knight,” she said simply, not offering her hand. The cut on her palm was still bleeding sluggishly through the handkerchief, leaving dark spots on the fabric.
Grace arched an eyebrow, something shifting behind her eyes…recognition, maybe, or something closer to confirmation. “I know.”
Nicola frowned, her cop instincts firing. “Have we met?”
“No,” Grace said, too quickly, like she’d been expecting the question and had rehearsed the answer.
“But your mother left behind a lot when she sold this place. Photos mostly. Journals. Margins full of half-finished sentences and warnings nobody bothered to finish.” She gestured vaguely toward the desk where a box sat half-open, tissue paper spilling out like entrails. “The previous owner, some contractor who bought it for renovation and lost his nerve, boxed everything up in the attic and left it. I was going to donate the lot to the historical society until I opened one and a name fell out like it had been waiting for me to find it.”
She paused, watching Nicola’s face for reaction. “You were in the pictures. Honey-eyed. Younger, but unmistakable. Same way of looking at the camera like you were trying to see through it to whoever would look at the photo later.”
Nicola’s expression didn’t change, but something behind her eyes went cold and still as deep water. Her hand drifted unconsciously to her collarbone, to the scar burning there beneath her shirt, the mark that pulsed in time with her heartbeat. “Let’s stay focused. Tell me what happened.”
Grace watched her another beat, reading something in the rigid set of Nicola’s shoulders, the careful blankness of her face. Then she sighed and stopped her pacing, pulling the robe tighter around herself though the room wasn’t cold. If anything, it was too warm, air thick as summer despite the November chill outside.
“I didn’t imagine it,” she said, each word carefully enunciated like she was building a wall out of syllables. “I didn’t dream it. I didn’t have a psychotic break or a gas leak hallucination or whatever patronizing explanation that peacock out there is preparing for the press conference. And I’m not insane, no matter what anyone thinks.”
Nicola nodded once, sharp and economical. “Go on.”
Grace crossed her arms, fingers digging into her elbows like she was holding herself together by force of will. “I was working. Research for a novel, a historical fantasy, vampires and blood magic and court intrigue, the usual.” She laughed, short and bitter. “Ironic, considering… I lost track of time, ended up working past midnight. Got a phone reminder about a trip to Baton Rouge tomorrow, today now, I guess, and remembered Derek and I hadn’t finalized the itinerary.”
“Derek?”
“My assistant.” Grace’s voice caught on the word, went rough at the edges. “Derek Peabody. Twenty-six, efficient as hell, smoked weed on the porch when he thought I was too focused to notice even though I could always smell it on his clothes when he came back in.” Her eyes went distant, seeing something that wasn’t in the room anymore. “He was supposed to leave at ten. I texted him, told him to come inside, to quit pretending I couldn’t smell the joint drifting through the windows.”
Nicola watched her talk, cataloging details. Sharp memory for some things, selective about others. Grace was performing, but there was substance underneath the performance, genuine grief mixing with something else, fear, maybe, or confusion that hadn’t settled into coherent thought yet.
“He didn’t answer,” Grace continued, her voice steadier now, falling into narrative rhythm like she was dictating to herself. “So I got up to check on him. The lights flickered, once, twice…then died completely. Just… gone. Like someone had flipped a switch, but smoother than that, more deliberate.”
“Power failure?”
“I don’t know. The whole house went dark at once. No gradual dimming, no warning.” She moved to the window, looking out at the garden barely visible in the floodlights the police had set up. “I stumbled back to the desk, found my phone, turned on the flashlight. Walked out to the hallway calling his name. Then I saw him at the bottom of the stairs, crumpled like something had folded him wrong before dropping him.”
She swallowed hard, her hand rising unconsciously to touch the bandage at her throat. “I thought he’d tripped at first. Heart attack, maybe, or a stroke. He was too young but it happens, right? But when I knelt beside him, his eyes were wrong. Empty. Like he’d already been gone for hours even though I’d texted him five minutes before.”
“And then?”
Grace’s voice dropped to barely above a whisper, forcing Nicola to lean in slightly to hear. “Someone was behind me. Close enough that I felt breasts against my back, felt breath on my ear. Female, I think, but I couldn’t see. Then teeth…” She shuddered, the memory rolling through her like cold water. “Fast and sharp like a cat. Right here.” She touched the bandage again, fingers trembling.
Nicola stepped forward slowly, her boots silent on the hardwood her grandmother had polished every Saturday morning without fail. “So you were bitten.”
“Yes. Then nothing. I lost consciousness, woke up on the floor with Derek still…” She didn’t finish, couldn’t finish. “They were gone. Whoever they were, whatever they were, just… gone.”
Nicola’s eyes narrowed, her detective brain running through scenarios and discarding them as fast as they formed. “No forced entry that we’ve found. No screaming that neighbors reported. One clean kill, one bite. Single attacker you didn’t see.” She paused, letting the silence build. “Doesn’t add up. Story’s got holes.”
Grace stood abruptly, the movement sharp enough to make Nicola’s hand drift toward her weapon out of instinct. “You think I’m lying.”
“I think you’re a writer who’s used to making stories make sense, and reality doesn’t always cooperate with narrative structure.”
The room went cold, not temperature cold, but something deeper, like the air itself had withdrawn its warmth out of spite. Grace’s expression shifted from vulnerable to furious in the space between heartbeats. Her hands curled into fists at her sides, knuckles going white.
“How dare you.” Her voice was low, precise, each word sharpened to a point and aimed at Nicola’s throat. “I write fantasy novels, Detective. Dragons and vampires and magic that doesn’t exist outside of covers with embossed titles. I know the fucking difference between fiction and a dead man at the bottom of my stairs.”
She stepped closer, trembling with rage or adrenaline or both, close enough that Nicola could smell her perfume under the copper-blood-fear scent, gardenia and summer heat, something floral that reminded her of Ellie’s garden, of plants that shouldn’t bloom in November but did anyway because they didn’t care about seasons or sense.
“I came here to escape,” Grace continued, her voice rising. “To finish a book in peace, away from publishers and deadlines and people who think writing is just typing with delusions of grandeur. Instead I lost my assistant and got assaulted by something I can’t explain in terms that don’t make me sound like I’ve lost my mind. So forgive me if my testimony doesn’t fit into your neat little boxes and official report templates, but I’m not performing for you. I’m trying not to fall apart while standing in a house that knows more than I do about what happened.”
Nicola held her ground, but something in her expression softened, barely perceptible, the smallest crack in the armor, but Grace caught it like a hawk spotting movement in tall grass. “You’re right,” Nicola said quietly, the words costing her something. “I’m sorry. That was out of line.”
The apology seemed to disarm Grace more than the accusation had. She blinked, some of the fire draining from her posture, shoulders dropping half an inch. “You’re not just here for the case, are you?” Grace said after a moment, her voice shifting back to something thoughtful, analytical. “You’re here because of this place. It’s in your blood. I can see it in the way you’re standing. Its like you’re trying not to touch anything but you remember where everything used to be.”
Nicola’s jaw tensed, muscles jumping under skin. “Lot of things in my blood. None of them your business or relevant to a murder investigation.”
Grace moved to the desk, her hand hovering over something Nicola couldn’t see from her angle. “Your mother left more than photos.” She lifted a book, old, leather bound, spine cracked from years of handling. “This was hidden in a hollowed-out section of the wall upstairs. I found it when I was having the place rewired.”
Nicola’s breath hitched, caught in her throat like a bone she couldn’t swallow. Her grandmother’s grimoire. The one she’d been forbidden to read as a child, the one her mother had sworn was burned after the funeral.
“Letters too,” Grace continued, watching Nicola’s face carefully, cataloging every micro-expression. “A diary that ended mid-sentence like she’d been interrupted and never came back. Photos of you at different ages, always with those eyes. Your grandmother wrote in the margins, notes about bloodlines and bindings and something called Maenara that she underlined so many times the pen tore through the paper.”
She set the book down gently, reverently. “I’ve been researching your family for six months, Detective. The Knights of New Orleans, the ones who disappeared or died young or went mad. The ones people in town won’t talk about except in whispers after their third drink. Your grandmother, Evangeline Knight, who grew plants that shouldn’t exist and knew things before they happened. Your mother, who sold this place like it was contaminated and never looked back.”
Grace stepped closer, close enough that Nicola could see the gold flecks in her brown eyes, could count the freckles scattered across her collarbone above the bandage. “I know something happened here. Something that made your mother run and made you run too. And whatever attacked me tonight…” She paused, searching for words. “It knew this house. Moved through it like it belonged here. Like it was coming home.”
“You think you know me,” Nicola said, voice low and dangerous, the tone she used on suspects who thought they were smarter than her. “You think reading some old journals and looking at family photos makes you an expert on bloodlines you can’t even pronounce correctly.”
“I know this house recognized you the second you walked in,” Grace shot back. “I felt it shift, like it had been holding its breath and finally exhaled. Don’t tell me you didn’t feel it too.”
“What I know,” Nicola said, stepping forward into Grace’s space, using her height advantage, “is that a man is dead at the bottom of these stairs, and you’re standing here in your silk robe giving me ghost stories and occult theories instead of useful information.”
“Don’t you dare condescend to me.” Grace’s voice shook with fury. “I let you in. I told you everything I remember, everything that makes sense and everything that doesn’t. And now I’m just another hysterical woman to you? Another unreliable witness who reads too much and imagines too much and can’t be trusted to know what she saw?”
“I don’t know what you are yet,” Nicola said, and the honesty in her voice was worse than any accusation. “But your story’s got holes, and I don’t trust patchwork.”
“You don’t have to trust me. Just don’t insult my intelligence.”
“That’ll depend on how many lies you tell.”
Grace turned on her heel and stalked from the room, her bare feet slapping against hardwood. Seconds later, a door slammed upstairs with enough force to rattle the windows in their frames, to make the house shudder like something living recoiling from a blow.
Nicola let the silence settle around her like sediment in disturbed water. She stood in the library breathing air that smelled like old books and her grandmother’s mint tea and something underneath that might have been memory. The house was too quiet, listening too hard.
She moved down the hall past evidence markers and photographed blood spatter, toward where Derek Peabody lay at the base of the stairs. Mid-twenties, slack jaw, neck broken so thoroughly his head sat at an angle that made her stomach clench. One arm beneath him, twisted wrong. No blood beyond what had pooled in his mouth. No sign of a struggle. No defensive wounds on his hands No torn clothing, no scuff marks on the floor, just a body bent at angles that physics could explain but biology couldn’t survive.
Nicola crouched beside him, her bad hand throbbing. The cut had opened further, blood seeping through the handkerchief and dripping onto the floor. She barely noticed, too focused on details that didn’t add up: his shoes were clean, no mud from outside. His phone was still in his pocket, no damage. His eyes, half-open, showed no burst vessels, no bruising around the throat.
Like someone had just… stopped his heart. Reached inside and flipped a switch.
She’d seen clean kills before…mob hits, professional assassinations, mercy killings that were anything but merciful. But never this clean. Never this precise. Nothing with this kind of surgical specificity.
“Thought you’d be halfway through a heart-to-heart by now.” Warren reappeared from the kitchen, coffee in hand like this was a normal shift. “Or did our witness prove too much for the great Detective Knight? Did she out-weird you? That would be a first.”
Nicola didn’t answer, still studying Derek’s hands. No tissue under the nails. No bruising on the wrists from being grabbed or restrained. He hadn’t fought because he hadn’t known he needed to fight.
“Chief wants you to call when you’re done playing who’s-wittier-with-the-writer,” Warren continued, leaning against the doorframe like he owned the place. “Also, forensics found something weird in the garden. Some kind of marker, occult-looking. They’re bagging it now before it gets contaminated by dew or whatever.”
Nicola stood, checked her pockets automatically. No phone. She’d had it at the warehouse, had set it down while examining Ellie’s book, must have left it… No. She’d put it in her jacket pocket. She remembered distinctly, muscle memory from years of the same motion.
“Problem?” Warren asked, too casually, reading her face.
“My phone’s in my jacket.”
“So get it.”
“Miss Broadchurch is wearing it.”
Warren’s eyebrows rose. “You gave your jacket to a witness? That’s not even close to procedure.”
Nicola ignored him, already moving toward the stairs, her boots striking wood like punctuation marks. Behind her, Warren laughed. The bastard actually laughed and called after her: “At least she’s got good taste in vintage leather!”
End of part one…
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