"I didn't get anything out of him."
"You got an information request," Hunter said. "It's more than Jess gave us. The fact is, they need us as much as we need them. It'll just take her a while to catch on."
Just then the food arrived, cutting off their conversation. It would be easy to point out that if Hunter dropped his attitude towards his sister, she might let her guard down a bit too. Morgan was tempted. But he didn't think Hunter was likely to listen, so he kept his thoughts to himself.
"So, what next?" Morgan asked when the waitress had gone. His tea smelled amazing.
"We go back to the office and find out as much about Reginald Klyne as we possibly can," said Hunter. "Then we have currency."
Hunter's files on Klyne were sparse. He'd lived in a terraced house in Harehills, near the bookmakers where he'd worked. His only known associates were co-workers. Hunter had interviewed as many of them as he could find, and they all said the same thing: Klyne kept himself to himself, lived alone and was chronically single, as far as anyone knew. He knew everything there was to know about greyhound racing - except which dog to back. He was a prolific gambler. Online, betting shops, trackside - if someone was offering odds, he'd take them.
Hunter's conclusion, when he'd exhausted all available leads back in April, was that suicide was the most likely outcome, especially considering how much Klyne owed. The debt collectors had accepted it, at least as a working theory, but asked him to keep looking.
There was one thing that didn't seem to fit the picture. Klyne had a Facebook account, most of which was public. The last post, dated 23rd March, featured a picture of a door in a cluster of heavenly clouds and said simply, 'What a way to go.' There was an aubergine emoji and a smiley face next to it.
Morgan scrolled down. Nobody had commented on the post. Nobody had commented on any of his posts. He'd only had ten Facebook friends, all of them gamblers or bookies from the look of it, but he'd posted nearly every day, with racing tips or pictures of greyhound sanctuaries or with annoying shares of whatever was trending at the time.
It was all very sad, really.
"So, that aubergine emoji makes it look like whatever he planned, sex was involved," Morgan said. "Who with, do you think?"
"I don't know. The only woman he knew was the branch manager at William Hills. She's married with three children, and they were on holiday when he disappeared."
"Maybe a prostitute," said Morgan.
"Or maybe he likes aubergines. Or maybe it's some kind of emoji shorthand."
"Penis smile?"
"What?"
"That's how it would read. If it was literal."
"Nobody says 'penis smile,' Morgan. I mean, wow. There's something really creepy about that. Penises don't smile."
"Maybe you're not treating yours right," said Morgan, blandly.
Hunter snort-laughed.
"Maybe he just wanted moussaka for dinner." Morgan sighed. It felt grubby, somehow, piecing together all the bits of this man's life. Things he'd probably been really ashamed of when he was alive.
He glanced up from his computer to find Hunter looking at him.
"What?" said Morgan.
"Nothing."
"What??"
"Just looking."
"Oh, really? And do you like what you see?"
"Possibly."
Morgan turned back to his screen, trying to repress a smug grin.
"D'you want to go for a drink after work?" Hunter asked.
Morgan was about to say something along the lines of 'fuck, yeah', and then he remembered.
"Sorry, I've got to go somewhere at six."
"We could finish early if you like."
"I thought you hired me because of your immense workload."
"Fuck, Morgan, you drive a hard bargain."
"After work tomorrow, for sure."
"Oh. Good."
"What d'you want me to do with our betting friend? I take it if I send what I've found so far over to the police you'd sack me."
"They probably know a fair bit of it already. Keep it all to hand, just in case. Forget about him for now. I've got some addresses for you to run. See if any of them actually exist."
Well, that sounded like fun.
Of the first ten pages of addresses, only one existed as far as Morgan could find out. Hunter seemed pleased, but he didn't say what it was all about. Or, rather, when Morgan asked he said, "Just a hunch," in a tone that Morgan was coming to understand meant that he wasn't about to say anything else. Then Hunter's phone rang. Morgan heard him arrange to meet someone in Sophie's.
"Don't wait up," Hunter said, as he hunted around in his desk drawer. "I might be a while."
Morgan flipped through the thick stack of addresses he still had to check. Plenty to keep him going 'til home time. Probably half of tomorrow morning, too.
Hunter pulled some keys out of his drawer. He stuck one set in his pocket. On his way out of the room he dropped the spare set on Morgan's desk.
Then he paused at the door, came back and leaned over the desk to give Morgan a kiss on the cheek. Then he kissed him on the nose as well. And then on the mouth.
Morgan kissed him back, a whole load of soft, lingering kisses until they were both breathing fast and Morgan was seriously considering dispensing with all the 'take it slow' crap and dragging Hunter into the bathroom for a quickie. Or maybe they could do it right here. On his desk. Next to the shiny new Mac.
But Hunter pulled back, his cheeks flushed and his eyes glazed over. "Tomorrow, Morgan," he said, his voice croaky.
"Bright and early," Morgan said.
Hunter left the office. Morgan listened to his footsteps fading as he went downstairs, heard the bang of the front door. He leaned back in his chair and loosened his tie a little. He was hard as a rock and considered rubbing one out, just to get the use of his brain back. But he wasn't an exhibitionist, in the usual run of things, and although he was technically alone, Hunter had installed at least one camera that he was aware of. Besides. There were a few remnants of professional conduct he'd quite like to cling to.
He arrived at Dr Rosero's at five to six. The waiting room was as tidy as ever. Well, casually tidy. There was a blanket tossed over the back of a couch, artfully off-centre. The magazines were in piles that weren't entirely straight. Over in the kids' corner toys were strewn on the carpet, no longer contained by the big green toy box.
There was a bookcase full of books of motivational quotations and sayings. Morgan had read most of them, over the years. There were no actual windows, just mirrors. Morgan sat opposite one and checked himself out, as he was alone. He looked just like he always did. Appealingly untidy. Marginally scruffy hair. Smartly dressed, although he'd taken off his tie and rolled up his sleeves on account of the heat. Professional. Yes.
The door at the far end of the waiting room opened.
"Good evening, Morgan," said Ms Rosero. "Do come in."
Morgan submitted himself to the squeeze of the blood pressure cuff, the scratch of the sampling syringe and the coldness of the stethoscope while he went through his monthly physical. Ms (technically Dr these days) Rosero swept through the usual questions about his magic (Had it flared up? Had he used it since their last meeting?), his control (Rated on a scale of one to ten.) and whether he was getting enough sleep and eating properly. She encouraged him to call her Michaela now he was all grown up, but he frequently forgot to do so.
Should he tell her about Hunter? No. Hunter was nothing to do with magic.
He settled into the technically comfortable, ergonomic seat opposite Ms Roser… Michaela. He smiled at her.
"So, Morgan," she said. "How have you been?"
He took her through the catalogue of his life for the past month, right up to the Move-U incident. Right. That, he should talk about.
"I didn't know people could look me up on a register," Morgan said.
"There's no official register. I understand there's a company that hoovers up information on
majos from the Internet, so it's only if you declare it on social media, or as your occupation, or if you've appeared in any news reports."
Morgan sighed heavily. "The bloody warehouse."
"It doesn't define you, Morgan. You've done so well since then."
"But it does define me, doesn't it? Every time I think I'm past it, it just comes right back up and bites me on the arse. Sorry."
"If they knew you were majos before they hired you, they can't have minded. It's likely they thought it was an asset."
Well. Okay. He hadn't thought of it that way.
"What assets do you think your magic brings to the workplace, Morgan?"
He wanted to shrug sulkily and mutter something about being able to light the boiler. One of the problems of having the same therapist he'd had as a kid: his inner teenager tended to pop up for a bit of a strop sometimes. But he'd always liked Michaela and he trusted her completely. When he'd left school he'd been transferred to a guy in a majos centre who was heavily into circuit training on the grounds that a strong body equalled a strong mind. That hadn't really worked out. He'd been limping along with a painfully well-meaning woman, who squinted at him worriedly no matter what he said to her, when Ms Rosero turned up to give a talk at a Coven meeting. While Morgan had been struggling through college trying not to explode anything, she'd got herself a PhD from the Majos Psychology Department in Barcelona and had come back to head up Majos Support for the North East. She had been based in Durham, but she'd taken one look at Morgan and arranged to move her clinical work to Leeds.
So, he owed her more than the sulky teenager he'd been back in the old days.
"What I don't get is how they thought magic could clean the windows. It's not like I could just vanish all the shit off them."
"I don't think the people who searched for you on the database were thinking you'd clean the windows, do you?"
"I don't know."
"You don't think they might have hoped you'd charm clients for them?"
"That would be dishonest."
"Indeed it would."
She had a wry smile on her face. He wasn't sure why. "I don't do that."
Then he wondered about Alice. She'd opened up to him so quickly. Had he inadvertently turned the encanté up to ten? And what about Hunter? What if he didn't really like him, but Morgan had turned the mojo on because he wanted him to so much?
"Where are your thoughts taking you?" Michaela asked.
"Nowhere good. I suppose."
She waited.
And waited.
"What if I do it without meaning to?" Morgan blurted.
"How would that work?"
"What if I'm just being nice to someone, just ordinary nice, or polite, and the encanté accelerates it and they fall in love with me?"
"Have you met someone?"
"I was exaggerating."
Another agonising pause, but this time Michaela was the one to break it. "When you lose control and your other powers flare; say your fuego, for example, do you know it's happened?"
"Of course I do."
"Even in a minor way?"
"Even a spark. I still get the tickling feeling in my fingers and toes. My lips, sometimes."
She nodded. This was old ground. When Morgan was first training with her he'd learned that tingle as a warning sign. He'd conditioned himself to use it as a trigger to clamp his control down tight.
"But I've never had that with the encanté, not unless I'm consciously using it. Which I never do."
That was a lie. He wouldn't deliberately charm someone into his bed, or to persuade them to spend money they didn't want to spend. But there were times it seemed harmless and saved time, or made people happy. Like the time he charmed the doorman of a fancy club Caleb was dying to get into. Or when the guy at the train station tried to fine him for not having a ticket when he'd left his train pass at home.
But, conscious charms aside, he always connected quickly with people, when he wanted to. People seemed to trust him instinctively. Like Alice. And Sahil. And he knew Michaela was the same.
"Getting along with people isn't necessarily a magical skill," Ms Rosero said. "A lot of history's leaders have charisma, without being majos. Martin Luther King. Winston Churchill."
"Hitler?"
"The jury's still out on Hitler."
"But that's what scares people, isn't it? That majos can influence peoples' minds?"
"One of the things, yes."
He wanted her to tell him it was okay, that he wasn't really scary. That his power, if people knew how strong it could be, wouldn't push everyone away and get him rejected and feared and locked up. But the only person who knew he could do more than stir up a gentle breeze on a still day was Ms Rosero. And she'd been working with him since he was a child to make sure he didn't give himself away to anyone else.
He realised he was holding his breath. He let it out in an abrupt whooshing sound. "I just want people to like me for myself. But how can I know they do? What if it's all just encanté?"
"Your majos is part of who you are, and research suggests that for some of us that power gives us a certain advantage; it can make us appear more attractive to many susceptible individuals. But I'm not so sure I see that in you, Morgan. I think you're just a very likeable young man. Nonetheless, if you chose to use your power, you could be even more likeable, for the period you could sustain the encanté. But even you couldn't achieve that for long enough to maintain a friendship in the long term."
"Long enough to get laid?"
Ms Rosero was unshockable, but Morgan was cross with himself for letting it slip out.
"Not without knowing it. Morgan, you are one of the most self-aware majos I've ever worked with. Even if you didn't feel it at the time, surely you would feel the drain afterwards?"
She was right. And he hadn't, not once since he'd met Hunter. If he had, he wouldn't have flared up back at Move-U. Or in Hebden. Certainly not to the point of scaring himself as much as he had recently.
He took a deep, calming breath. "Thank you."
"Think of it like evaporation. If you leave a glass of water out but don't drink from it, you don't see it evaporate. But you can see when the water level goes down. If it makes you feel better, do the measurement exercises for a little while. I can give you some indicator strips if you'd like?"
Morgan liked when Ms Rosero brought science into things. It was very reassuring. He agreed and left her office a few minutes later with a pack of paper strips in his wallet and a fresh thought in his head.
If it was okay to use encanté to get Caleb into a club, it had to be okay to use it to, say, solve a murder.
So long as Hunter never found out.
Chapter Thirteen
It was nice to come to work and have a desk that was actually his, even if it was only for three months. Not borrowed or allocated or scheduled. Just his. Morgan shyly took out a little pen pot and put it on his desk. It wasn't anything special, just a plain grey metal one he'd picked up from the discount stationer's on the way to work. But he liked it. He put a couple of pens and a pencil in it and smiled to himself.
Hunter was hard at work already, reading through a filled fit-to-burst folder of stuff with a frown on his face, so Morgan made the coffee.
"Anything I can help with?" Morgan asked as he placed Hunter's mug on his coaster.
"Have you done those addresses?"
Morgan pointed at the pile of papers in the top of Hunter's in-tray. "Finished them last night. I emailed you the ones that are real. There's only eight of them."
Hunter let out a low whistle.
"What were they for, anyway?" Morgan asked. "It wasn't some weird initiation ritual, was it? Like sending an apprentice to buy stripy paint?"
Hunter snort-laughed. "No, Morgan." He leaned back in his chair. "It's a fraud enquiry. Those are a bunch of addresses they think were given by the same eight people applying for various kinds of credit."
"Including their real ones?"
> "Looks like it. Good work, Morgan."
Morgan sat on the edge of Hunter's desk, keeping very tight control on his encanté. He'd tested himself already that morning and scored a zero point four. As the maximum was a hundred, he was happy with that. "So. Do I get a reward?"
"That depends. What do you think you deserve?" Hunter's eyes sparkled at him.
"You're the boss." Morgan leaned back on one hand and hoped he looked alluring. Whatever happened, his attraction to Hunter was one hundred per cent natural, which was a bit nerve-wracking, because what if Hunter didn't like him back anymore? What if it had all been a magic-fuelled mirage?
What actually happened was that Hunter got up, came around the desk and kissed him. And while Morgan was busy being kissed, Hunter slipped his hand on his belly, one finger slipping between the buttons of his shirt. It tickled in a really good way. Hunter didn't move much, just kept the weight of his hand there, reassuringly heavy. His tongue filled Morgan's mouth, and Morgan's magic was about the only thing he did have under control. He found himself imagining all the very wonderful and indecent things he wanted to do with Hunter, most of which involved being very, very naked. He was such a good kisser. Morgan wondered what that sinful mouth would feel like around his-
There was a buzzing noise.
What?
Bzzzt. Buzzing. A buzzer. Shit.
"Wait," Morgan pushed Hunter back, breathlessly. "Door."
"Why?"
"What d'you mean, why? Someone's at the door."
"Nobody ever comes to the door."
"Well, they are now. What if they're a potential client?"
"We could close for the day."
"Is it a good idea to turn business away?"
Hunter made a growling noise, stomped over to the entry panel by the door and pressed 'talk'. "Hunter PI, can I help you?"
"It's Jess. Open up."
Hunter swore under his breath and unlocked the door.
Morgan slid off the desk and took a steadying sip of his tea. Two sets of footsteps approached, both even, measured steps. No heels.
The door opened, and Hunter's sister stood there, with Sahil in tow. She looked around and seemed surprised by what she saw.
"Good morning," said Morgan, trying to remember how to be professional. "Can I get you a drink or anything?"
Hunter and Morgan: Gatecrasher Page 12