“You have a deal,” I said, and Marley squealed with delight.
“Are you sure Sierra comes here every Thursday night?” Florian asked.
My cousin and I sat at the bar of the Whitethorn, an old pub between Fairy Cove and the Lighthouse. It was so close to the sea, you could taste the salt in the air every time you drew breath. Residents claimed you could feel ancient magic clinging to the air there, like heavy fog.
“According to Rick, yes,” I whispered.
“Your new minotaur friend?” he asked.
“You should meet him,” I said quietly. “He’s very nice. I actually think he might hit it off with Linnea.”
Florian choked back laughter. “I’d give anything to see Mother’s reaction to Linnea dating a minotaur, as though a werewolf weren’t bad enough.”
“Rick is no ordinary minotaur,” I assured him in a hushed tone.
“Why do you keep whispering?” Florian asked. “No one else is here.”
I gestured helplessly to Captain Yellowjacket behind the bar. “His parrot has a big mouth.”
“Just the way I like my women,” Bittersteel squawked from his perch. “Big in every way.”
I covered my face with my hand. “Is there no sexual harassment policy in this place?”
Captain Yellowjacket stepped in front of his feathered companion. “He doesn’t get out much, Ember.”
“Maybe you should remedy that,” I said. “Like right now.”
On cue, the door blew open and Sierra stepped inside, along with two friends. One was a shifter of some kind and the other was the genie I recognized from Haverford House. The one with the disappointing outcome for his love life, at least according to the runes. Our eyes met briefly and a hint of recognition flashed in his eyes. He drifted over to hover next to my stool.
“Evenin’, Captain,” he said. “I’d like a round of crackleberry ales for my friends, including these two beauties right here.” He smacked the counter in front of me and I jumped.
“That’s nice of you,” I said.
“Any friend of Artemis Haverford’s is a friend of mine,” he said. “I’ve been going to see her for years.”
“My name’s Ember and this is my cousin, Florian.”
“I recognize a Rose-Muldoon when I see one,” he said, his attention fixed on my godlike cousin. “I’m Geoff and that’s Sierra and Fargo.”
I waved to Sierra, who had settled into a booth with Fargo. “Yes, she and I met recently. She owns the ceramics place.”
“That’s right,” Geoff said. “Does a booming business, too. Her garden gnomes are known all over the world. Some gardener even features them in her YouTube videos.”
“Really?” I didn’t realize it was a worldwide business. They didn’t seem particularly special. They looked like garden gnomes I’d seen in the human world.
“Oh, yes,” Geoff said, stopping to swill his ale. “She even gets custom orders from higher-ups in the paranormal world.”
I shot a quizzical look at Florian. “There are higher-ups?”
My cousin took a nonchalant sip of ale. “There are always higher-ups.”
“What makes them so popular?” I asked. I was always intrigued by trends. I knew all about Cabbage Patch dolls in the Eighties from my dad. Their insane popularity remained a mystery me.
“Paranormal Monthly featured the gardens of Queen Alinor and there were two of Sierra’s garden gnomes on display. Sales skyrocketed after that. The fairy queen is beloved in the paranormal world.”
Florian nodded. “The copycat phenomenon is very real. I remember a phase where residents here were dying their hair white-blond to look like one of us.”
Geoff chuckled. “I remember that. My ex-girlfriend was one of them. She quickly got fed up with the roots growing in and switched back when one of the hair tonics burned her scalp.”
Florian patted his own head. “It’s good to be natural.”
“Why don’t you join us?” Geoff asked. “It seems a shame not to, as we’re the only ones here tonight.”
“Sounds good to me,” I said. Without an attractive female to hit on, I was half expecting Florian to ditch me. To his credit, he stuck with the plan. He was eager to get to the bottom of Grover’s murder, too. Anything to shift the spotlight back to the sand sculpture competition.
We settled into the large booth with Sierra and Fargo. They seemed to be deep in conversation about some town called Spellbound and why the paranormals were trapped there. Whatever the reason was, they didn’t seem to agree on it.
Geoff cleared his throat. “Fargo, Sierra, meet my new friends, Ember Rose and her cousin…”
“Florian Rose-Muldoon,” Sierra interjected. She stuck out her hand. “Good to meet you. I’ve always wanted to see these cheekbones up close and, oh my, they are as divine as I imagined.”
“I must’ve inherited my mother’s cheekbones,” I said, absently touching my face.
“You’re a Rose,” Sierra said, taking a renewed interest in me. “With your coloring, I didn’t realize you were one of the Roses.”
“I only discovered it myself recently,” I admitted. “I grew up in the human world.” I generally found that if I offered a bit of personal information about me, I got personal details in return. Although Sierra certainly seemed to have no shortage of things to say, I was on the hunt for specific intel.
“Where in the human world?” Sierra asked.
“New Jersey,” I replied.
“Interesting. I have a lot of contacts there.” Sierra poured the ale down her throat like she’d just come from a week in the Sahara.
“Because of the ceramics business?” I queried.
“That’s right. My distribution is in the human world and the paranormal one,” Sierra said. “I don’t like to be constrained by societal norms.”
Florian laughed. “Then I highly advise you to steer clear of my mother because I’m fairly certain she invented societal norms.”
“I met your mother at a coven fundraiser once,” Sierra said. “I spoke to her about popular garden plants. In my line of work, you learn all about the plants, as well the planters.”
I bet.
“You’d be amazed by the custom requests I’ve gotten,” she continued. “Usually they want the gnomes to look like them. They send me pictures of their spouses, or kids, or whatever.”
I snickered at the idea of having a garden gnome made in Aunt Hyacinth’s image. A gnome wearing a kaftan with cat faces on it. Glorious!
“What’s so funny?” Florian asked.
“I have an idea for your mother’s birthday,” I said. “You’ll have to tell me when it is.”
“Mother doesn’t celebrate birthdays,” he said. “She finds it lowbrow.”
Of course she did.
Sierra snapped her fingers impatiently. “Yellowjacket, where’s the next round? You’re slacking off, vam-pirate, and you know I can’t tolerate incompetence.”
I recoiled slightly. Captain Yellowjacket was descended from Blackfang, the most fearsome vampire pirate in history. Even I didn’t have the stones to snap my fingers at him.
Captain Yellowjacket seemed unperturbed by Sierra’s behavior, although I did catch his parrot making gagging gestures behind the bar. Not a fan of the valkyrie’s, presumably.
Once she was good and tipsy, I attempted to extract the information I wanted.
“I thought of you last night when my daughter wanted to renegotiate the terms of her bedtime,” I lied. “She hasn’t even hit eleven yet and I’m ready to throttle her half the time. Yet you work with teenagers every day and live to tell the tale.”
“That’s because I know how to keep them in line,” she said with a loud hiccup.
“Of course you do,” Fargo said. “You’re Sierra, the valkyrie.”
“Stop kissing my ass, Fargo,” she snapped. “It’s annoying. Anyway, I’ve got teenagers coming and going at all hours, even when I’m not there, and they’re never a lick of trouble.”
“That�
�s probably because they’re afraid of you,” Geoff said. “You’re not exactly the sweet and cuddly type.”
“You didn’t object to my type the other night,” Sierra shot back.
I cringed as Geoff’s face turned beet red. “You must have to monitor them, though,” I said, steering the conversation back to teenagers.
“Yes,” Florian said quickly. He seemed to catch on to where I was heading. “I’d bet another round of ale they steal from you and you don’t even notice. They probably go in at night when no one’s there.”
Sierra slammed a fist onto the table. “Minotaur shit! They wouldn’t dare steal from me.”
I gave a nonchalant shrug. “I don’t know. Kids tend to think they’re invincible.”
“There are only three teenagers with the codes to deactivate my wards,” Sierra said, holding up three fingers. “And I have an iron grip on all three.”
And I bet I knew exactly which three teens she meant. “Why give the codes to any of them? That’s more trust than I would have.”
“Some of them need to come and go at odd hours,” Sierra said. “I’m not hauling my ass over there on Friday at midnight to check on…” She waved a dismissive hand. “Inventory.”
“You’re usually too drunk by midnight, anyway,” Fargo said, with the laugh of a deranged hyena. Hmm. Come to think of it, maybe he was a werehyena.
Sierra jabbed him in the chest with her elbow. “I’m not a drunk. You’re the one who fell off the broomstick at that wizard’s birthday party.”
Fargo smiled at the memory. “Plunged straight into the ocean. The water felt good.”
Geoff seemed to be the only one keeping his wits about him. “You’re lucky you didn’t drown.”
“We like living on the edge, Geoff,” Sierra said. “You should try it sometime.”
“I, for one, don’t like living anywhere near the edge,” I said. “In fact, if I don’t stop drinking now, I’m going to have the worst hangover. Florian, would you mind if we headed home?”
He shot to his feet like he’d been waiting to leave for hours. “Your wish is my command.”
“Hey, that’s my line,” Geoff objected with a wry smile. He seemed like a decent genie. I hoped he wasn’t tangled up in whatever Sierra had going on. If so, there wasn’t much I could do to help him.
“It was nice chatting with you all,” I said.
“Be sure to come by and choose a gnome,” Sierra said to Florian. “I’d love to be able to tell prospective buyers that Florian Rose-Muldoon keeps one in his famous bachelor pad. Maybe I could even come and see it in person. Snap a few naked pictures. You could always hold the gnome in front of the family jewels, if you’re feeling modest.”
Florian flashed a good-natured smile. “I’ll have to get back to you on that.” He steered me toward the door, the smile still plastered across his gorgeous face. “You got what you came for?”
“Does a cauldron bubble?”
“Depends,” Florian said. “If you’ve added an alkaline…”
I rolled my eyes. “Yes. The answer is yes.” And Friday at midnight, I’d finally get to see what Sierra’s teenaged employees were really paid to do.
Chapter 18
At five minutes to midnight, I waited outside Sierra’s Ceramics, huddled in darkness. I wasn’t sure which teenager I’d be dealing with until I saw the flash of crystal sparkling in the moonlight.
Spencer.
I observed the satyr as he approached the door and used his fingertips to type a code on the magical keypad. It glowed blue and the door swung open. I hurried in behind him just before the door clicked shut. If I’d been Indiana Jones, I wouldn’t have had time to grab my hat.
I crept down the corridor, careful not to make a sound. Spencer headed for the main room, his hooves echoing on the linoleum floor. When I entered the room after him, rows and rows of garden gnomes stared back at me.
Spencer began to remove the lids one by one. It wasn’t hard to guess what he intended to put inside.
I stayed in the shadows. He seemed able to operate by moonlight alone so the lights remained off. He went to one of the kilns and reached inside. Of course! The kiln was only a facade. There was no fire inside.
He grabbed a nearby box and began withdrawing bags from the kiln and chucking them into the box. Surely, Sierra could implement a better system than this. A little magic would’ve taken care of Spencer’s tasks in about five minutes, but to include a magic user on a regular basis only increased the risk of discovery. Sierra probably guarded her secret like a dragon guarded its treasure.
I inhaled deeply and stepped into his line of sight. “That’s quite a system you’ve got there, Spencer. Too bad you don’t have any witches or fairies on your team to help out. It would be so much easier.”
The satyr froze. “How…how did you get in here?”
“I followed you in when you deactivated the ward,” I replied. “I guess you’re the lucky penny tonight.”
He dropped the box onto the floor and shut the door of the kiln. “I like to come here at night. It’s quiet.”
Nice try. “I bet your house is quiet in the middle of the night, too. No need to traipse all the way here.”
“I get paid double,” he said.
Now that made more sense.
“Even after what happened to Grover you keep coming here?” I asked. “How can you look yourself in the eye?”
Spencer’s cheek muscle began to pulse. “That had nothing to do with working the night shift.”
“No?” I queried. “I thought maybe Grover messed up a delivery and Sierra’s not the forgiving kind, is she?”
“You’ve got it all wrong,” he blurted, and then promptly clamped his mouth shut. He didn’t want to risk saying too much.
“Then explain it to me,” I said. “I was your age once. I remember what it’s like to…” I trailed off, the gears clicking away in my head. Spencer was telling the truth. This wasn’t about making a mistake or shirking responsibility. This wasn’t even about Sierra’s illegal side business, although the two were connected. My mind flashed to images of Alec and me kissing and groping each other like two hormonal teenagers. My heart beat faster. I remembered the way I’d felt in his arms that night. The intense high.
“You okay, lady?” Spencer asked, taking a step backward.
“I remember what it’s like to feel alive,” I whispered. The realization crashed down on me and I couldn’t believe the idea hadn’t occurred to me until now. Jordy’s dad. The immense pressure on Jordy to achieve.
“You should go,” Spencer said uneasily.
I held up a finger. “Not until you tell me the truth.” The dots were there, begging to be connected. This wasn’t about the distribution of illegal substances. That business was only tangentially connected. Bruce was the key. The centaur was reliving the high of his youth, and dragging his daughter and her friends along for the dangerous ride. No doubt he missed the intensity of the games and had tried to replace it with something more illicit. Something that resulted in the death of an innocent elf.
“The truth is I don’t know what happened to Grover,” Spencer said.
I fixed Spencer with my hard stare. “His death was accidental, wasn’t it?”
His fingers gripped the crystals on his necklace like he was searching for the answer there. “I just told you I don’t know what happened. How would I know it was accidental?”
“Because you were there,” I said, advancing toward him. “You, Jordy, and Aldo. And Bruce, of course. Can’t forget the big guy. He’s the reason why no one is talking, isn’t it?” Sierra was intimidating, but it was the centaur that controlled their actions with a viselike grip. Their fear of Bruce outweighed their fear of the sheriff. I didn’t blame them. Bruce Hoskins was an intimidating centaur. Put him on a team with a valkyrie like Sierra and those kids’ lips were vacu-sealed.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Spencer said, his face drained of color. “I told the sh
eriff already. I saw Grover earlier that night, but he went home early. I have no idea how he died.”
I ignored his lies. “You do know! You even went to the unicorn stables because you heard their horns have healing properties. You were desperate when the vampire blood didn’t bring him back. Kelsey chased you off, but it wouldn’t have mattered, you know. They weren’t the right kind of unicorns. The horn wouldn’t have made any difference.”
I saw relief reflected in his soulful brown eyes. The idea that he could’ve saved his friend with the unicorn horn must have gnawed at him.
“Spencer,” I said, injecting as much compassion into my tone as possible. “Grover was your friend. His family deserves to know the truth.” I placed my hand on my wand as a preventative measure, in case those crystals were more than decorative. “Cindy deserves to know what happened to her brother. She blames herself. You don’t want that on your conscience, do you?”
Spencer looked conflicted. When he finally spoke, his voice was barely audible. “No one checked the vampire blood supply before we started. Jordy had won a game earlier, so she and Bruce were distracted, talking about the championships.”
“Tell me how it works,” I prodded. “You came here to Sierra’s because she has some kind of agreement with Bruce, right?” I wanted to know about the group’s nocturnal activities—the real reason Grover was coming home in the middle of the night and slacking off at school.
He nodded, twisting his necklace. “Bruce figured out that she was using the gnomes to transport deadly plants and stuff, so he threatened to expose her unless she made a deal with him.”
“So she agreed to let you keep a stash of your own,” I said.
Spencer nodded. “Bruce got the idea about coding from his job.”
“He works as a healer’s assistant,” I said, suddenly remembering.
“Yeah. Aldo’s uncle got him a job because Aldo and Jordy were friends. Anyway, he treated some dryad last year after the dude almost died from nightshade and Bruce figured out how to bring him back with vamp blood without turning him into a vampire.”
“And let me guess—the dryad he treated talked about some kind of heightened emotional experience.”
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