Chapter Five — The Staff

  The staff didn’t gather in the same room.

  That was Kael’s call.

  People lied better in groups. They borrowed confidence from one another, rehearsed shared narratives, filled silence with agreement until the story hardened into something they could all pretend was true. Alone, they fidgeted. Alone, they corrected themselves. Alone, they remembered details they wished they hadn’t.

  Kael liked alone.

  It wasn’t cruelty. It was efficiency. Isolation peeled away performance. It left the body with nothing to hide behind except habit, and habit was always louder than intent.

  He had Cyras’ sitting room cleared and repurposed into an interview space—a room that looked unused and expensive, furniture positioned for aesthetics rather than comfort. A place where no one ever bled, no one ever argued, and no one ever confessed anything real.

  Perfect.

  Kael stood near the window with the blinds half-drawn, letting the light cut the room into slats. He didn’t sit behind the desk; he didn’t want the false authority. He wanted them to forget who he was supposed to be, and remember what they were.

  Mara waited near the door like a silent hinge. Not present as a participant. Present as a warning.

  Kael began with the night guard.

  The man entered stiffly, shoulders tight, eyes scanning the room as if he expected the walls to accuse him. He perched on the edge of a chair like it might explode beneath him. Uniform crisp. Boots polished. Posture too perfect to be comfortable.

  A man trying to look like someone who hadn’t done anything wrong.

  “Name,” Kael said.

  “Derrin Holt,” the guard replied immediately.

  “Race?”

  “Vellith.” Derrin shifted, clearly uncomfortable.

  Good.

  Discomfort meant the question mattered. Kael didn’t care about the answer. He cared about what the answer cost.

  “Shift?”

  “Twenty-two hundred to zero six hundred.”

  “No breaks?”

  “One,” Derrin said. “At oh-two-hundred. Ten minutes. Authorized.”

  Kael nodded, writing nothing down yet. He kept his hands still. Let Derrin fill the space with his own need to be believed.

  “Who relieved you?”

  “No one. I remained on premises.”

  Kael tilted his head. “You said break.”

  “I remained at the security station,” Derrin corrected quickly. “Head is adjacent.”

  “How adjacent?”

  “Eight steps.”

  Kael’s eyes flicked to the man’s boots.

  No scuffing.

  No dampness from the courtyard fountain outside.

  No dust from the entryway.

  Either Derrin had not moved much—or he was practiced enough to clean himself before walking into this room. Either possibility told Kael something.

  “You hear anything unusual?” Kael asked.

  Derrin shook his head. “No, sir.”

  “See anything?”

  “No, sir.”

  Kael let the silence stretch.

  Derrin’s jaw tightened, tendons visible beneath the skin. His fingers curled once at his thigh and flattened again. A micro-motion. A man holding himself in place.

  Kael didn’t blink.

  Silence wasn’t empty. Silence was pressure.

  “You check the monitors during your break?” Kael asked.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Before or after?”

  “Both.”

  “Logs show a gap,” Kael said calmly.

  Derrin swallowed. It was the first honest reaction.

  “System glitch,” he said.

  Kael nodded as if that made sense. As if systems glitched on the one night a child vanished.

  “When did you start working here?” Kael asked.

  “Three months ago.”

  “Who hired you?”

  “Mr. Taly.”

  That, Kael wrote down.

  Not because it was incriminating.

  Because it was ownership.

  He dismissed Derrin without comment and moved on.

  The housekeeper cried.

  She cried quickly and thoroughly, like someone who’d been holding it in since dawn and finally found a room where it was allowed to spill. She apologized repeatedly—too much, too often—clutching a handkerchief she kept folding and unfolding like she might wring answers out of it.

  “I didn’t hear anything,” she said between sobs, her pixie-wings shuddering the entire time. “I swear. I would have—I would have come running.”

  Kael believed her.

  Fear left a different mark. This wasn’t fear of being caught. This was fear of being blamed.

  She described her night in small, domestic details—what time she locked the pantry, how she checked the laundry chute, how she put out fresh towels because Mrs. Taly likes the edges even. She kept saying Shae’s name like it might summon her back.

  Kael asked the same questions anyway.

  What did you hear? What did you see? What changed?

  She had nothing.

  Nothing, and guilt for it.

  Kael dismissed her gently, because gentleness cost him nothing and bought him more later.

  Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

  The kitchen staff argued with one another.

  Two voices overlapping, correcting timelines, defending their positions like the truth was something that needed protecting from itself. They resented Cyras openly. Resented the house. Resented the way grief trickled downward and pooled at their feet.

  One swore they heard footsteps near midnight. The other insisted it was the pipes. One claimed the courtyard gate chimed softly at some point. The other said that chime hadn’t worked in weeks.

  Kael didn’t correct them.

  He watched their anger like a flame and noted where it pointed.

  Anger made people careless.

  Anger also made them honest in the wrong ways.

  “What did you see?” Kael asked.

  “Nothing,” one snapped.

  “Then what do you believe?” Kael replied, calm.

  Silence.

  They exchanged a look. Not trust. Recognition.

  “We believe,” the older one said finally, voice lowering, “that this house is cursed.”

  Kael said nothing.

  He didn’t ask what kind of curse. Noctra had a hundred names for the same truth.

  He asked who had been dismissed recently. Who had been threatened. Who had been paid off.

  That’s when the former nanny surfaced again, like rot beneath polished floorboards.

  He asked about her last.

  He didn’t do it for drama. He did it because people told the truth more easily after they’d already lied about everything else.

  The head of household services sat stiffly, hands folded, voice trained into neutrality.

  “Dismissed almost four months ago,” the man said. “For speaking out of turn.”

  “About what?” Kael asked.

  The man hesitated. It was brief, but it was there.

  “Domestic matters.”

  “Translate.”

  The man’s mouth tightened. “She implied Mrs. Taly was… unfit.”

  Kael’s pen paused.

  “Unfit how?”

  The man looked down at his hands as if the answer might be written there.

  “Emotionally.”

  Kael nodded and closed his notebook.

  “Thank you,” he said. “That will be all.”

  He didn’t press further. Not yet. The staff were afraid of Cyras. Afraid of the house. Afraid of the shape Lyris’ grief might take if it ever stopped being restrained.

  And fear made people protect the wrong things.

  Kael was escorted down the hall again, past the children’s room—still closed, still untouched—toward a smaller sitting area near the rear of the house. Sunlight filtered in through tall windows, softened by sheer curtains. The warmth didn’t reach the air; it sat on surfaces like decoration.

  Someone was already there.

  She sat on the floor.

  Not sprawled. Not collapsed. Knees bent neatly to one side, hands folded in her lap, posture relaxed in a way that looked learned rather than natural. A low table had been pulled close, children’s blocks arranged on top of it in quiet, deliberate shapes.

  She didn’t look up immediately.

  Kael paused in the doorway.

  “Are you the nanny?” he asked.

  She glanced up then.

  Her face was unremarkable in the way that made it difficult to remember later—mid-thirties, perhaps, dark hair pulled back simply, eyes steady and observant without being invasive. She wore practical clothes, soft fabric, no jewelry.

  “Yes,” she said. Her voice was even. Pleasant. “I’m the current caretaker.”

  “Name?”

  She gave it.

  Kael wrote it down without comment. Not because he trusted her—because he didn’t trust anyone in a house this clean—but because names mattered when you started pulling threads.

  “How long have you been with the family?” he asked.

  “Three months, one week and four days.”

  Kael paused for a brief moment before writing it down.

  Exact.

  Not “around three months.” Not “since spring.” Exact.

  People who answered like that were either deeply conscientious—or deeply trained.

  “And Shae?” he asked.

  A fractional pause. A breath taken at exactly the right time.

  “She was bright,” the woman said. “Curious. She liked patterns.”

  Kael’s gaze sharpened. “Patterns,” he echoed.

  “She noticed things adults missed,” the nanny continued. “Symmetry. Repetition. She asked good questions.”

  Kael nodded slowly. He crouched slightly so he was closer to her eye level—not threatening, just present.

  “Did she trust you?” he asked.

  The nanny met his gaze without flinching. “Yes.”

  No hesitation. No embellishment.

  “Did she cry when she went to bed?”

  “No.”

  “And during the night?”

  “No.”

  Kael waited.

  “She slept through,” the nanny added. “Until morning.”

  “And you were on duty?” Kael asked.

  “Yes.”

  “How often did Mrs. Taly check on Shae during the night?”

  “Only once,” the nanny said. “10:32 p.m.”

  Kael’s pupils narrowed. “Not midnight?”

  “Mrs. Taly is usually in bed by eleven.”

  Kael wrote that down and circled it.

  “And the last time Mr. Taly checked on Shae was 5:17 p.m., if that matters as well.”

  She never broke eye contact—almost daring Kael to suspect her, or to trust her.

  Kael glanced at the blocks on the table. They were arranged in a careful spiral, each color placed with intent.

  “Who put these out?” he asked.

  “She did,” the nanny replied. “Yesterday afternoon.”

  Kael reached out and nudged one block gently, disrupting the pattern.

  The nanny watched the movement.

  That was all.

  No irritation. No correction. No reflex to fix it.

  Just observation, like she was seeing what Kael would do when given something delicate to break.

  “Did anyone come into her room last night, after Mrs. Taly?” Kael asked.

  “No.”

  “Did anyone leave it?”

  “No.”

  Kael straightened.

  “You understand why I’m asking these questions,” he said.

  “Yes.”

  “You understand that, statistically, someone in this house enabled what happened.”

  “Yes.”

  “And you don’t feel accused.”

  The nanny considered that for a beat longer than necessary.

  “No,” she said. “I feel observed.”

  Something in Kael’s chest tightened—not alarm exactly. Recognition, maybe. He pushed it aside.

  “Good,” he said. “That’s part of the job.”

  He made a note. A small one. Not incriminating. Not exculpatory.

  Just a mark to remember the moment.

  “Where were you when the child was taken?” he asked.

  “In the adjoining room,” the nanny replied. “Sleeping.”

  “You didn’t hear anything.”

  “No.”

  “You didn’t wake.”

  “No.”

  Kael studied her face. Calm. Controlled. Griefless, but not cold. There was something about her stillness that wasn’t emptiness. It was choice.

  “You’re a Mara, correct?” he asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Interesting,” Kael said, letting the word sit between them, “that so many of you would be natural enemies to the Fae… but you still manage to work for the Talys.”

  It wasn’t really a question. It was a test.

  The nanny’s expression didn’t change.

  “What need have I for pointless hatred?” she asked, calm, unwavering, practiced.

  Silence stretched.

  Not awkward. Not embarrassed.

  Weaponized.

  Kael could feel it in his teeth. In the slight tightening of his tail against his leg. In the way the room seemed to hold its breath with them.

  Finally, he nodded once.

  “Thank you,” he said. “That will be all for now.”

  The nanny inclined her head slightly, acknowledging dismissal.

  Kael turned to leave—then stopped.

  Something caught his eye.

  The nanny was smiling.

  Barely.

  Not at him—at the disrupted spiral of blocks on the table, the broken pattern slowly unraveling. The smile flickered across her face and was gone almost before it existed.

  Kael watched the blocks.

  Watched the spiral become something else.

  He didn’t like that his mind wanted to assign meaning to it.

  He didn’t like that his instincts leaned forward.

  He didn’t like that some part of him—deep and old—recognized a certain kind of patience.

  Kael turned back.

  She looked up, expression neutral again.

  “Yes?” she asked.

  He searched her face for whatever had triggered the smile. Found nothing.

  “Nothing,” Kael said after a moment. “Just… thinking.”

  The nanny nodded, unbothered.

  Kael left the room and closed the door behind him.

  In the hallway, the house felt colder.

  He told himself the smile meant nothing. People smiled for all kinds of reasons—relief, habit, nerves.

  Still.

  As he walked back toward the front of the house, Kael found himself replaying it in his mind, the way it had appeared and vanished without explanation.

  How odd, he thought.

  And then, like he’d trained himself to do for years, he let it go.

  Because the most dangerous things were never the ones that announced themselves.

  They were the ones you decided weren’t worth noticing.