Chapter 1: The Alchemist's Puddle

The crime scene smelled like burnt copper and regret.

Detective Jade Hawkins crouched beside what used to be Master Alchemist Cornelius Blackthorne, her grey-green fingers hovering just above the puddle of viscous, amber-colored goo that had once been a person. The warehouse's concrete floor was scorched in a perfect circle around the remains, and the acrid stench made her pointed ears twitch in irritation.

"Well, this is new," she muttered, her voice carrying the gravelly undertone that marked her troll heritage. Her sharp, intelligent eyes—more elven than troll—scanned the scene with practiced efficiency. "Even for Veridia's standards of weird shit."

"Language, Detective Hawkins." The smooth, amused voice behind her made Jade's shoulders tense. She didn't need to turn around to know that Drew Hemley had arrived, probably looking like he'd stepped off the cover of Metropolitan Detective Quarterly even at this ungodly hour.

Jade stood slowly, her imposing frame—nearly six and a half feet of muscle and barely contained irritation—casting a long shadow over the puddle. "What are you doing here, Hemley?"

Drew Hemley sauntered into her peripheral vision, his perfectly styled hair somehow immune to Veridia's perpetual drizzle and his expensive trench coat unbuttoned just enough to suggest casual confidence. The subtle silver charm on his wrist caught the harsh crime scene lights as he pulled out a notebook.

"Captain's orders," he said, flashing that easy smile that made half the precinct swoon and made Jade want to punch something. "Congratulations, Hawkins. You've got yourself a partner."

"I work alone." The words came out flat, final.

"Worked alone. Past tense." Drew crouched beside the puddle, careful not to let his expensive suit touch the floor. "Besides, this case is apparently too 'delicate' for one detective to handle solo. Captain Morrison's exact words."

Jade's lip curled, revealing the subtle tusks that jutted from her lower jaw. "Delicate. Right." She knew exactly what Morrison meant. Too weird for the human detectives, too important for the department to let the half-breed troll handle alone. The familiar sting of discrimination settled in her chest like old scar tissue.

"So," Drew continued, seemingly oblivious to her darkening mood, "what do we know about our liquefied friend here?"

Despite her irritation, Jade found herself falling into the familiar rhythm of case work. "Cornelius Blackthorne, master alchemist, found by his assistant this morning. No signs of forced entry, no struggle, no witnesses. Just..." She gestured at the puddle. "This."

Drew pulled out a small silver stylus and poked gently at the edge of the goo. It rippled like thick honey, maintaining an unsettling internal consistency that suggested it was still somehow organized matter.

"Fascinating," he murmured, and for a moment his charm-boy facade slipped, revealing something sharper underneath. "The cellular structure appears to be intact but completely reorganized. This isn't decay or dissolution—it's transformation."

Jade raised an eyebrow. "Since when do you know about cellular structure?"

"I contain multitudes," Drew said with a wink, the easy smile sliding back into place. "What about that?" He pointed to something Jade had been deliberately avoiding looking at directly.

Scorched into the concrete beside the puddle was a sigil—a complex geometric pattern that hurt to look at, its lines seeming to twist and writhe even as she stared. The symbol radiated a wrongness that made her troll-enhanced senses scream warnings.

"Haven't seen anything like it," Jade lied smoothly. She had seen it, in her mother's old books, in the forbidden texts that mixed elven high magic with troll earth-craft in ways that violated several international accords. But admitting that would open doors she preferred to keep locked.

Drew was studying her face with those clever eyes of his. "Hmm. Well, whatever it is, it's—"

The puddle moved.

Not the gentle ripple from Drew's stylus, but a sudden, violent lurching motion that sent waves across its surface. Both detectives scrambled backward as the amber goo began to rise, pulling itself upward in defiance of physics and common sense.

"Okay," Drew said, his voice strained but still maintaining that infuriating calm, "definitely filing this under 'not in the training manual.'"

The thing that had been Cornelius Blackthorne continued to reshape itself, forming a vaguely humanoid silhouette with too many arms and a face that was nothing but a gaping maw lined with crystalline teeth. When it spoke, the voice was liquid and wrong, like words being gargled through syrup.

"Help... me..."

Jade's hand went instinctively to her service weapon, then stopped. What was she going to do, arrest a puddle? "Blackthorne?" she called out, fighting every instinct that told her to run. "Can you hear us?"

The creature's head turned toward her with a sickening squelching sound. "So... cold... the fire... the fire in my veins..."

"Drew," Jade said quietly, not taking her eyes off the thing, "please tell me you have some kind of magic cop training I don't know about."

"Working on it," Drew replied, and she could hear him rifling through his coat pockets. "Just keep it talking."

"What happened to you?" Jade asked, taking a careful step forward. Her troll heritage might make her resistant to most magical effects, but she had no idea what this thing was capable of.

"The sigil... forbidden knowledge... they promised... promised eternal..." The creature's voice was becoming more coherent, more desperate. "But the price... oh gods, the price..."

"Who promised?" Jade pressed. "Who did this to you?"

The creature let out a wail that sounded like steam escaping from a kettle, its form beginning to collapse and reform erratically. "They're coming... more will follow... the formula... must warn..."

"Got it!" Drew suddenly shouted, producing what looked like a small silver pendant from his pocket. He began muttering something in what sounded like Latin mixed with a language Jade didn't recognize, and the pendant began to glow with a soft blue light.

The effect on the creature was immediate. It let out another wail, but this one was filled with something that might have been relief. The amber goo began to still, solidifying slowly back into the puddle they'd found.

"Thank... you..." came one last whisper, and then Cornelius Blackthorne was truly dead.

The warehouse fell silent except for the distant hum of the city and their own ragged breathing. Drew pocketed the pendant with hands that weren't quite steady, and Jade noticed that his perfectly styled hair now had a fine sheen of sweat.

"So," she said finally, her voice rougher than usual, "still think this case is going to be 'delicate'?"

Drew let out a shaky laugh. "I'm starting to think 'delicate' might have been optimistic." He looked down at the now-still puddle, then back at her. "Any theories about what just happened?"

Jade considered several responses, most of them involving telling her new partner exactly where he could shove his charm and his mysterious magical pendants. Instead, she found herself saying, "Someone killed him. Someone with access to magic that shouldn't exist."

"And they might not be done," Drew added grimly.

"No," Jade agreed, staring at the scorched sigil that still made her eyes water. "I don't think they are."

She pulled out her phone to call the magical forensics team, already dreading the paperwork this was going to generate. As she dialed, she caught Drew watching her with an unreadable expression.

"What?" she growled.

"Nothing," he said, but that easy smile was noticeably absent. "Just thinking we make a decent team."

Jade snorted. "Don't get ahead of yourself, sunshine. We survived one crime scene. That doesn't make us partners."

But even as she said it, she couldn't shake the feeling that Drew Hemley was going to be more trouble than she'd bargained for. And in her experience, trouble had a way of multiplying when you weren't looking.

The puddle that had been Cornelius Blackthorne lay still and silent, but the sigil beside it seemed to pulse with malevolent promise in the harsh warehouse lights. Whatever had started here, Jade was grimly certain it wasn't over.

Not by a long shot.