“You don’t understand. In my Mundane career, it was as if I’d been going down this endless hallway and way at the far side, I could just make out a door with a gold star on it. If I could get through it, only then would I be rewarded with a wealth of fascinating cases. The problem was, not only was it a long, boring path, that door never got any closer. But when I became Nefesh, suddenly there were doors everywhere and each one had some exciting adventure behind it.”
I pressed my fists into my eyes hard enough to see stars but they weren’t the gold ones. They were dull and cold like the future unspooling in front of me.
“I don’t want to go back to that endless trudging, but who am I to attain my dream at the cost of other people’s magic? How do I live with that?” I laughed bitterly. “Damn my pesky morals.”
Priya would have said that everything would work out. That there had to be another way and I’d have gone along with it, knowing the truth in my heart.
Levi didn’t offer me false hope or empty comfort, but he held me until the afternoon sunshine weakened into lengthening shadows, while I wrestled with which version of myself I could live with.
Chapter 17
I was woken by a text from a blocked number that said Vespa would see me tomorrow.
Groggy, I rolled out of my bed and did some much-needed laundry. I’d wanted to sleep in my own space, so I’d bid Levi farewell late last night. Coffee and the half of an omelet that Priya had left–along with a note that she’d gone to meet Miles–kicked my sluggish brain into gear. Bless her for restocking our food supply.
The Blank still coursed through my system, my magic off-line. Much as I didn’t want to use my powers on anyone, not having it left me jittery.
I kept Gavriella’s ring on me, even though I wasn’t about to test it without my magic.
Gathering the laundry, I dumped the clean clothes in a heap on the cream antique sofa with carved wood trim and tufted upholstery that I’d inherited from my grandparents. It had come with a large tapestry entitled Paris in the Moonlight that was made up of abstract geometric shapes suggesting the Eiffel Tower at night, which dominated the wall across from my bed. Neither fit my personal design aesthetic, but they reminded me of sitting on that sofa and watching my grandmother get dolled up for all the parties at the predominantly Jewish country club that my grandparents had been members of.
I rooted through the pile, picking out my favorite black jeans and a faded but very soft skater hoodie.
My first stop of the day was my office. Thursdays tended to be quiet around the shared workspace, because Eleanor worked from home, Bryan met with clients at their workplaces, and unless Priya was around, I was alone.
At the sight of the smashed glass in the door to the workspace, I stumbled over the final step to the second-floor landing of our building. Pulling out my spare mini Taser, I crept inside, careful to avoid broken glass. The common reception area was untouched and Eleanor’s and Bryan’s offices were undisturbed.
The frosted glass office door with my business name stenciled in gold, however, was shattered. I ran inside and cried out, doubling over like I’d been punched in the gut.
My office was destroyed. The filing cabinets were knocked over, though thankfully still locked, and furniture had been flung around the room, smashed into unrecognizability. My desk chair lay on its side, the wonky wheel broken off and rolled into the middle of debris like an undetonated bomb.
The dartboard lay on the ground surrounded by busted darts, a dirty smeared boot print covering the fibers. The photo of Priya and me graduating university was gone.
I dashed away tears and hurried to the safe, which had been dragged about a foot away from the wall. There was a gouge on the floor under the corner, like it had been dropped, but the door was locked and, when I opened it, the pouch lay safely inside. I grabbed it and hurled it against the wall, screaming at the top of my lungs.
My office wasn’t fancy and I only had a part-time staff of one, but it was mine. I’d worked my ass off to get this far. Coming through the door with my name stenciled on it lifted me out of any funk. My apartment was my home, but my office was my heart.
The Blank hadn’t left my system yet and I was still without my powers, otherwise, I’d have nuked that feather’s magic without a second thought. Even if I couldn’t smell any lingering magic to confirm any residual lily and dust scent that proved Malach had been here, my gut said it was him.
Compulsion or not, he’d violated my sanctuary.
I swept my useless office furniture into a pile against one wall, but left the safe where it was since it was too heavy to move without my enhanced strength. Same with trying to right-side up the filing cabinets.
From the dents on my drywall, Malach had hurled my whiteboard against it repeatedly. The notes had been erased, but I remembered the names and magic types of the five men who worked with Edrice. Three of them were elementals with fire, water, and earth power respectively. There wasn’t a trace of any of those powers here, so it wasn’t them. One had invisibility magic which may have allowed him to get in undetected but he couldn’t have done this type of damage without super strength.
The final employee on the archeology site had a rare type of ability: he could temporarily null magic, which was cool, but didn’t help with either the attack on Omar or this vandalism. And there was still the matter that none of them had left the site.
I lay down on my floor, staring up at the ceiling. What hard facts did I have about Malach? He was about six feet tall and had some way to fly. He had a lean build, but didn’t want his face seen, and he wanted that feather. I turned those facts over and over in my head, until shouting and raucous laughter from the street broke my concentration. I went to the window to yell at them to keep it down. A group of teens were sharing a bag of chips as they horsed around. The tallest kid had an androgynous look about him.
Why “him?” I had no idea what gender if any that teen identified as, but I’d been quick to make assumptions.
I phoned Edrice, keeping the pleasantries short. “What about a woman having a crush on you?”
“The only lesbian in our crew is happily married, and her wife is much more interesting than I am.”
“Are any of the other women Nefesh?” I said, grasping at straws.
There was just one: Nadija Culianu, a Romanian archeologist, consulting on the dig.
Not only was Nadija tall, but she had Animator magic. That could explain how she’d flown; she’d animated the costume wings. They didn’t need to be large enough to follow the laws of physics because this was magic. It also explained how she’d destroyed my office. She’d simply animated the objects and flung them around.
Best of all? Nadija had completed her job on the project five days ago and left the site.
My gut tightened with the excitement of closing in on my quarry. I still didn’t have motive, but I’d get that out of her once I found her. Edrice gave me Nadija’s cell number, so I tried it, hoping to set up some kind of meeting, but it was no longer in service.
I texted Priya what had happened and not to come here. Then I called a glass repair place and locksmith, using up my emergency credit card reserves to get them to my office right away. I spent the next couple of hours cold-calling every hotel and motel in Vancouver asking to be put through to Nadija's room.
By the time I found her at a budget motel in East Vancouver, the glass in both the workspace doors and my office were replaced. My poor door was naked without Cohen Investigations stenciled on it, but that would have to wait. I’d fixed the locks on both doors and left notes for Eleanor and Bryan to discuss going in on an alarm system. We’d had one when we originally rented the space, but the company that managed our workspace had changed a couple of months ago, and it was no longer part of our rent. The three of us meant to share a monitored system, we just hadn’t gotten around to it yet. That was on us.
I left them new keys to my office, as we’d eventually entrusted each other with a sp
are set.
Checking the safe three times that the pouch and feather were secured until I took them to Vespa, I locked up and drove to the motel. The rooms were actually individual bungalows with the one Nadija had rented located at the far end of the property.
She didn’t answer when I knocked and said, “Housekeeping.” Ensuring that no one was around, I picked the lock and slid inside.
The room stank of lilies and dust so badly that my eyes watered. That wasn’t right. The Blank hadn’t cleared my system and I shouldn’t have been able to smell her magic.
Her angel robe and wings were packed in an open suitcase, along with gloves that were reinforced with some type of heavy metal bar in the knuckles and a weighted vest. I searched through her things but found no weapons. There were clothes, a minimal amount of toiletries–and the photo of Priya and me with a red X over my face.
Wonderful. My own creepy stalker. Well, rule number one: no face-to-face confrontations until my powers came back. What had been the most cautious way to determine if I could beat the cravings was now a major thorn in my side. Given the attack on my office, she was enraged, likely still compelled by the feather to act out in extreme ways, and she had magic while I didn’t.
While I didn’t plan on facing off with Nadija, I did have to find her, and I couldn’t stake out this motel 24/7 on my own. Nor could I go to the police. Not the Mundane ones for obvious reasons that they legally couldn’t apprehend a Nefesh suspect, and not the Nefesh cops since according to all records, I was still Mundane and shouldn’t be working a case with a Nefesh suspect. The irony being that, at this moment, I really was Mundane.
Levi had the means and ability to put people on a stakeout, but Moran had been clear about not involving him or the police and I wasn’t about to do anything that risked getting my hands on the smudges in the vials. That left the Queen, who had as much of a vested interest in resolving this as I did.
If she’d get involved.
I probed the idea for every way this request could blow back on me and explode, but it seemed like a fairly low risk. The Queen wanted Nadija caught and my magic kept on the down-low. This situation certainly fit both of those criteria. Unless I did something stupid and pissed her off–not in my plans–Her Majesty would have no reason to go after me.
Bracing myself for the price I’d have to pay this time, I used another precious bronze token to go back to her mansion.
July of my thirteenth year was a hot one. Even in the shade of the ferry terminal building, sunshine baked my skin, causing my heavily applied eyeliner to run down my cheeks. I dug in my day pack for a tissue and fixed it as best I could, watching the other kids being dropped off by their parents in Mercedes, BMWs, and Range Rovers.
Talia and I weren’t poor, but we weren’t rich, either. Not like these kids. I recognized some of them from the country club that my grandparents belonged to. The girls wheeled suitcases, their skin shiny and their hair straightened.
With the tip of the cane I’d been given in rehab, I pushed my scruffy backpack behind me, and tried to pull my shorts down over the long red gash on my right thigh. Talia had bought me a bunch of khaki pants to wear, but my declaration that it was my body and I’d wear whatever the hell I wanted to didn’t seem so badass in the face of openly disgusted stares.
A Town Car pulled up and this gangly boy with black hair and the bluest eyes I’d ever seen got out of the front seat. He didn’t say good-bye to his dad, who popped the trunk without a word to his son. The boy grabbed his suitcase and watched his father drive away with an unreadable expression.
Even Talia and I, both thrilled for time apart, had hugged when she dropped me off.
The boy caught me looking. “Got a problem, Frankenstein?”
That got everyone’s attention. They closed in on me like a pack of wolves. Idiots. I was The Girl Who Lived. I’d survived worse than them.
I twirled the cane between my fingers. “Frankenstein was the doctor. If you’re gonna insult me, at least be smart enough to do it properly.”
One of the girls laughed, but dropped her eyes to the ground when her friend elbowed her.
The boy came closer, a smirk on his face. “How’d you get it, huh? Did you cut yourself in some Satanic ritual?”
“You’re awfully interested in my scar,” I said. “How come? You got some freaky fetish?”
He flinched. “Fuck you.”
A stocky kid about half a head taller than everyone with a serious expression loped over to the boy and punched him in the shoulder. “Forget her. I heard they finally got a decent cook.”
Everyone broke into chatter about how bad the food had been last year.
The blue-eyed boy gave me a look that this wasn’t over. I smiled grimly at him, picked up my backpack and strode inside the terminal.
Momentarily dazed to find myself standing in the sticky night of Hedon and not that long ago summer, I crossed the flagstone terrace to join the Queen. She sat in a chair with a martini, looking out over the Tannous and Dershowitz families down in the grounds, who were marking out the dance floor with the wedding coordinator.
“What possible interest could you have in that memory?” I said.
“I don’t choose what gets revealed.” The Queen sipped her martini, the picture of cool in a red slip dress that revealed her impressive décolletage. This was a woman who luxuriated in her every curve, and why not? She was damn sexy. “You give me too much credit, chica.”
“No, I give you exactly enough, Your Highness.”
She laughed, a tinkly sound like ice against a glass.
“I found Omar’s attacker.”
The Queen looked around. “Where is he?”
“She.” That didn’t even rate a flicker of surprise. Then again, look who I was talking to. The Queen knew exactly how formidable women could be. “I found her motel and all her stuff, but I can’t stake it out constantly. I need help please. Would you give me some of your guards?”
“Didn’t Moran explain it to you? I cannot involve myself in matters that occur outside Hedon. No, Ashira, I brought you in to handle this, and I expect you to do so. Or those vials will not be yours.”
“With all due respect, there has to be something you can do. At least let Levi help.”
“Mr. Montefiore may be fond of you, but he will not turn a blind eye to formal channels of justice in this matter. I regret you’re on your own.”
“You’re being unreasonable.”
She raised an eyebrow.
I hurriedly dropped my gaze. “I’m sorry. I had no right to speak that way. I’m anxious to wrap this up, but I’ll figure it out.”
“Do you know why this woman went after Omar?”
“No. Her sole focus seems to be this feather so I don’t even understand why she’d–”
A crazy thought hit me. I jumped to my feet, jogged down the stairs, and grabbed Omar by the shirtfront. “Did you swallow the feather, you stupid son-of-a-bitch?”
Shannon screamed and Husani tried to pull me off, but I stomped on his instep.
Someone calmly cleared their throat. Moran had appeared, sword in hand, looking pointedly between me and Omar.
“If I’d actually attacked him, he wouldn’t be standing.” I released Omar, smoothing out his clothing. He wasn’t worth me turning to stone. Again.
“Your gentle demeanor reaffirms my faith in humanity,” Moran said.
“Thank you for seeing that. It’s hard dimming my bright light so I don’t blind you lesser mortals.”
“Play nice, Ash,” he said and left.
I whirled on Omar, who shrank back. “You did swallow it, didn’t you? You came across the feather on the site and stole it from her.”
“Her? You got attacked by a woman?” Chione broke into belly guffaws. Masika swatted her, but that only made her laugh harder.
“Gonif! Thief!” Ivan said.
“Takes one to know one,” Husani said.
“You’re too stupid to marry my daughte
r,” Ivan said.
“Daaaaaaddy,” Shannon wailed.
“He is right,” Masika said and spat at her grandson’s feet.
“Teta!” Omar gasped.
“Look at you in-laws coming together. I’m delighted I provided this bonding moment,” I said. “Your entire history with that damn feather. Now.” I glared at Omar until he answered.
“I didn’t steal it.” He sank into a chair. “Not exactly. I was supposed to accompany the trucks with the antiquities back to Cairo when I heard something break in one of the tents in the living quarters. A stranger came out, and figuring he was a looter, I approached. That’s when he pulled a knife on me.”
Shannon gasped. Husani and Chione nodded like this was business as usual.
I prodded Omar’s shoulder. “Keep talking.”
His expression turned distant. “I only meant to disarm him, but when he got close, I saw the feather and…”
“Did you bury the body?” Masika said.
Omar huffed. “Of course, Teta.”
So much for plausible deniability. I could never go to Egypt.
“Is that where you kept disappearing to when you got to my house?” Shannon said. “You were spending time with a feather?” Her voice rose in a furious shriek.
Really? The murder wasn’t the issue?
Omar flushed and Husani gave him the universal head shake of “not cool, dude.”
Rachel handed her a drink which Shannon took a pretty good slug of without coughing.
Omar hung his head.
“Then this Angel of Death showed up,” I said, “demanded it back, and you swallowed it.”
“It was the only way to keep it,” Omar said.
“You’re sure you dug deep enough?” Masika jabbed Omar in the chest with a bony finger.
“Teta, yes. I put him in the grove.”
I froze. “What grove? Wasn’t the site in a flat scrubby area?”
“Yes,” Chione said, “but there are a lot of orchards and natural pools.”
“Orchard or grove?” I growled.
Omar frowned. “What’s the difference?”
Death & Desire: A Snarky Urban Fantasy Detective Series (The Jezebel Files Book 2) Page 19