Mousey was already something else!
[No, wait, don't laugh yet. I'm actually a little worried. I just rewatched the recording. If this is real, Rowan might not only have blood on his hands—there could be human trafficking involved. I'd almost prefer this to be fake…]
[Yeah… but… before all this blew up, there were rumors among Rowan's fans that he used to host random invite-only meetups. Travel, lodging, meals—all covered, and you might even get to meet Rowan in person. At first people thought you had to be a high-level member of the fan club to get drawn, but some newer fans with no score data at all said they were invited. They used to say he treated old and new fans the same…]
[What? There were meetups like that? I've stanned Rowan for years and never heard.]
[I was invited. The staff member who contacted me demanded secrecy. If you agreed to go they'd send a confidentiality agreement—"for Rowan's sake," they said.]
[Aren't you just trusting them blindly? What if it's a scam?]
[The invitation came from Rowan's manager's Instagram, though. I was too busy to go and I'm just a casual stan—but now I'm terrified.]
Gossipers online, sensible Rowan fans, and fans of his rivals who'd been burned by him before all started digging. They traced anyone who said they'd gone to those meetups—and found that after their attendance, those accounts stopped posting on Instagram. One or two could be coincidence; nearly all of them? Not a coincidence.
Some eagle-eyed onlookers found an even more chilling common thread in the victims' old posts.
[Those fans chosen to attend—either they were orphans, or their parents were already dead, or they'd basically been cut off by their families. If one of them disappeared, no one would notice anything wrong for months…]
[Oh my God—so being a stan is dangerous now? They want my money and my life?!]
[Wait, hold on. What gives you the right to jump to conclusions? There's no official announcement—how are you already convicting Rowan? Is this Ollie buying astroturfers to smear him so he can climb higher? Shameful.]
[Ollie's always had the "next-door little brother" vibe. This—this is gross if it's him.]
[??? Ollie buying astroturfers? Please. He'd rather spend the money on extra snacks than on fake armies of bots. And does he even have the brains for that?]
[Guys, wake up. This isn't ordinary chatter anymore. If Rowan's studio were even slightly on top of this, they'd have posted to soothe fans. But since the incident, has he posted? No. He's probably being detained by police right now—why pretend otherwise?]
It had to be said: Ollie Blake's public image was far healthier than Rowan Tate's—not only because Rowan loved to pick fights online. Ollie's face was a huge asset in the entertainment world. Most people who saw him liked him at first glance. He mostly loved food and didn't stir trouble, so when something like this happened, neutral observers weren't stupid about which way to lean.
[He was just hiding and eating some spicy strips and your golden boy ran into him, so dramatic. If future criminals were that dumb, they'd save the cops a lot of paperwork.]
[So anyway, does anyone know how Ollie's doing? I'm actually worried Caleb beat him to death.]
[No one knows.]
[No updates on either of his accounts. Probably getting scolded.]
Ollie wasn't getting yelled at—he was cooperating with the police. After all, he'd been the one to call it in.
Rowan's manager messaged the moment anything went wrong. They might have tried to stall with excuses—"Rowan was rehearsing a script"—but the police arrived before anyone could leave the building. That was because Ollie had called.
"Yes. Jenna Carter was a friend of mine. She's been missing a long time. She'd mentioned that cloud drive account to me earlier. I didn't know what it meant then. Rowan used to date her. When that live stream went sideways, I felt uneasy. I figured Jenna's disappearance might be connected, so I checked that account."
Ollie felt like he'd used up every ounce of intelligence he owned constructing that story. It was hard—was he supposed to tell the detectives that Jenna's ghost had whispered it to him? Jenna herself was standing right there, in a way that made explaining tricky.
"I know where the girls who haven't been sold yet are. I've told a cop friend who's nearby, but I don't know if they'll get there in time."
"Oh?" The man who looked to be the captain of the unit leaned forward. "You know a cop?"
"Yes. She's with Westside Precinct One. That captain should've received the call; otherwise you wouldn't be wasting time with me here."
As Ollie said, Westside Precinct One had taken over. A case at that level usually gave a detective a hunch when something wasn't ordinary.
When Caleb Ross arrived at the station, Ollie was behaving like a very good guest in the waiting room, clutching a plush toy that some cop had left in an office. A woman officer who looked older than most was pouring milk for him.
"You're twenty-one already?" she said, smiling. "You look so young. Is work tiring? Are you eating properly?"
The sight of Ollie sitting politely and drinking milk warmed her. She used to handle cases involving celebrities, and she knew the shiny lives often hid pain nobody else saw. She'd once seen a celebrity give in to that pressure. She didn't want the glowing kid in front of her to go the same way.
"My manager's here! Ms.—can I go home?"
The female officer glanced over; Caleb nodded politely. "Hi. I'm Ollie's manager. I already checked and we can take him. The incident was sudden—he might be in shock. If you need anything from his company, Starline Entertainment, we'll fully cooperate."
Caleb really wanted to drag this trouble-prone little hamster back and rattle him until he woke up. Until the police called, Caleb had assumed Ollie's only connection to the incident was accidentally filming Rowan's meltdown. He hadn't expected Ollie to be the one who called the cops.
Luckily the whole thing had been kept tight so far. No one outside the investigation knew Ollie had been to the station, which would have been too easy to twist.
The female officer believed Caleb's worry wasn't a performance, and slowly accepted that Ollie's life in show business was, on the surface at least, not disastrous.
"All right, Mr. Ross, leave us your contact info," she said.
Before Ollie left she lingered. "If you ever get tired of show business, you could come apply as an auxiliary—Precinct One's always short-staffed. Didn't you say you knew Captain Harper? She could write you a recommendation."
Ollie half-smiled, giving the expected thanks. He just wanted out of the industry and back to the mountains. He missed his kind uncles. Even a monster learns to feel beaten down after too many days of office life.
"Caleb, go to Westside. I'll text the address to you."
He had to go claim Jenna Carter's body and bury her. Jenna didn't have family anymore—otherwise she wouldn't have gone missing so long without anyone raising the alarm.
"Why are you getting involved? The police are handling it," Caleb said. He didn't want Ollie around anything dirty. He also worried that poking around could anger people—Starline could only protect them so much.
Ollie took a breath. "I need to claim Jenna's body for her. If possible, I want to take a couple days off to bring her back home."
Caleb blinked. "You actually knew Jenna? Why didn't you ever say anything before?"
"I didn't meet her, no. But I saw her spirit. She told me the password to the cloud drive and to call the cops. Also…" Ollie's voice softened, "I don't know exactly what she went through, but she did good things. Helping her would be…beneficial to us spirits. Even if that didn't matter, I still want to help."
Caleb was blindsided by "spirit." He felt the temperature in the car drop and found himself scanning the windows like someone expecting—then dreading—proof.
"It's fine, Caleb. Don't be scared. She's not here right now. Once the police give us the all-clear I'll have her wait near her body. Her good karma isn't weak—if we're lucky maybe someone will come for her."
Caleb went pale. Ollie, seeing the change, hurriedly rephrased the rest.
When Caleb first learned Ollie was a little fae-thing that sometimes lost his human form, he'd almost passed out. Ollie's transformation wasn't stable yet. In a safe space he could stay human, but he might revert anytime. The fact that Ollie had been holding it together for two weeks was already impressive.