Owl's Fair (The Owl Star Witch Mysteries Book 2)

by Leanne Leeds

  “The grocery chain?” the vampire asked, his expression slightly confused. “You want to go to a grocery store chain’s office in the middle of the night?”

  “She owns it,” I told him, pointing toward Alice. “This whole thing started with her. Maybe if we break in and ransack the place, we can find some evidence—”

  “You can’t break the law,” my mother informed me.

  “Look, I don’t really plan to ransack the place. Just slip in and have a look around, see what we can find.” I pointed to Archie. “As to your point, I’m breaking the law just by having an owl.”

  “You make me sound like such a rebel,” Archie noted. He looked pleased.

  My mother kept her eyes on me. “You know what I mean.”

  “I do.” You mean I should play it safe and do what you say. “But I can, and I’m going to,” I informed her in a stern voice. “There’s a reason the Vegas mafia created an army of vampires to do their bidding.” Rex looked surprised I knew of his history. “I spent fifteen years sneaking into places no one knew I’d ever visited. Between the two of us?” I glanced at Rex. “No one will even know we were there.”

  “But you work for the police department,” Aunt Gwennie said. “What if you get caught and lose your job?”

  “I don’t work as a police officer. And as a consultant? It’s not my responsibility to uphold the law. Just assist the people that do.” The expressions staring back at me ranged from disapproving to worried. “Guys. I promise. I was in the military, I know how to read a contract. I don’t even have a moral turpitude clause in the thing.”

  “What’s moral turpitude?” Althea asked.

  “A vague sounding thing that means you did something bad, and it violates the morals of the community, I think,” Aunt Gwennie told her.

  “Wouldn’t her outfit qualify?” Archie asked wryly.

  “As far as my job is concerned, I’m just some random citizen of Forkbridge.” Aunt Gwennie nodded slowly, but my mother and I faced each other in silence. “Which job is more important, Mom? The job with Emma or the job your goddess assigned me?”

  That caught her off guard.

  Rex watched my family debate the ethical and moral boundaries of my investigative techniques, his face unreadable.

  Which, again, he’s a vampire. His face being unreadable is kind of just his face.

  My mother looked at Rex with suspicion. “I don’t like the idea of you going off with a vampire by yourself. No offense meant.”

  “I’m not sensitive,” the vampire responded evenly to my mother’s suspicion.

  “Is that all?” I asked, throwing up my hands and feigning relief. “That’s easy. We can solve that in a second.”

  “How do you propose we do that?” my mother asked.

  “Which one of my younger sisters would you like me to take on this illegal adventure?” I waved my arm at Althea and Ami. “Do you want me to drag Ami along on her first break-in? I mean, she’s not even legal to go into a bar yet, but sure.” I smiled. “Let’s take her on her first burglary. I’m sure she can learn as she goes. Althea’s busy, so how about Ayla? Want me to go get the thirteen-year-old out of bed? She snuck into my Jeep last time. Might be easier just to take her.” I paused. “You tell me, Mom. Which one should I take?”

  My mother’s face looked like it’d been on the receiving end of a palm strike to the nose. Mom wasn’t used to being spoken to like this, and everything in her posture recoiled from me. “I don’t like your tone, young lady.”

  Of course she didn’t.

  “Then start being serious, Mom. Or start taking me seriously. I was in the military; he’s ex-mafia. This won’t be the first rodeo for either one of us.” My mother’s eyes narrowed. “The clock is ticking, and we have to figure out where this threat is coming from. Definitively. I don’t have time to do ‘Ami’s first burglary.’ She’s not trained; she has no experience at this—”

  “I really don’t want to break into an office building,” Ami murmured.

  “—and by the way, your paranoia that I can’t defend myself against a vampire? Offensive. Really offensive,” I told her curtly.

  “No one is trying to offend you, Astra, dear,” Mom responded coldly.

  “And I’m not trying to offend you.” I really wasn’t. But I wasn’t exactly trying to be delicate with her feelings, either. “But I know what I’m doing. This is my lane. I know how to drive in it.”

  Rex and I jumped into the Jeep. I reached forward to start the engine and then paused. Holding up my finger, I climbed into the back and looked under anything and everything not nailed down. I even opened the toolbox.

  “Sorry,” I told him, sliding back into the front seat. He raised his eyebrow. “My thirteen-year-old sister. She has a habit of sneaking into the Jeep just when things are getting risky or dangerous.”

  “Ah. Understood. Where is this office?”

  “About fifteen minutes away. At least, the way I drive.”

  “Nice Jeep,” he said.

  “Thanks.”

  We both fell silent for a bit. I thought about how much more difficult this was turning out to be, especially with Emma out of commission.

  I wasn’t a detective. The nuances of clues and things pointing to a guilty party, deciding who needed to be caught? That wasn’t anything I’d had to deal with before, not really. My job at the ministry involved going after a target. I got a file with a name, information, a picture. It wasn’t easy, but…well, I never had to decide who that target would be.

  “Are you all right?” Rex asked me, his voice deeply concerned.

  I glanced at Rex. Vampires were masters of mimicry—they could present as concerned, caring, loving even if there wasn’t a bone in their body legitimately feeling that way. Evolutionary sociopaths, my trainer called them. My mother was right, honestly, to be a little worried. His deep concern for me was likely nothing more than his way of building rapport because he needed me.

  Because if he didn’t need me?

  He wouldn’t be here.

  “Right now, I really wish your sister would wake up and help me out here,” I said, my fingers tightening around the steering wheel. “I was just thinking about the fact that my skill set lies in chasing down someone already known. I don’t have a whole lot of experience in playing Colombo. I feel like I’m just floundering, here, trying to figure out what’s going on.”

  “You have some skills that apply to the current situation,” Rex pointed out. “You always knew who you were assigned to bring in, but you still had to use your wits to track them down. Surely, you questioned people they knew or their co-conspirators. Had to decide who was lying, who was telling the truth.”

  I’d forgotten Rex was the one that told Emma who I was and what I used to do. She mentioned that he had been one of the vampires turned by a crime family in Las Vegas, and it made sense they would know exactly who we were. “Okay, yes, if they had co-conspirators, I did—”

  “That’s right, I forgot,” he said with a quick shake of his head. “You worked for the Witches’ Council. Very few that you chased had committed crimes, much less had co-conspirators.” The tone in his voice made it clear he wasn’t a fan.

  “And you worked for the mob,” I pointed out.

  “I did, indeed,” he admitted.

  “So, I signed up to protect paranormals. I joined the military with the best of intentions. The leadership being completely corrupt wasn’t my fault.” I glanced at him. “What’s your excuse?”

  He didn’t respond.

  Despite my bite-back, Rex and I were likely far more similar than I ever would’ve suspected back when I was working for the military. We both carried out the whims of narcissistic leaders who felt entitled to control other people. We both punished those that didn’t do precisely what those leaders thought they should.

  “How, exactly, did my sister wind up in a coma on your couch?” Rex asked after a certain amount of silence.

  “I don’t really know
. When we met with the rebel pixies in the swamp, they said that their leader— a chieftain named Pistachio Waterflash— was using sacred water and pixie dust combined to bring women under his control.” I exited off the highway toward Forkbridge’s relatively small business park. “I’ve never heard of anything like it, and I’m not sure the pixies had either, to be honest.”

  “Don’t you have the power of psychometry?” Rex asked.

  “I do,” I told him.

  “Why didn’t you just read my sister to find out when it happened?”

  “Since you’re looking through her eyes and ears all the time, why don’t you just tell me when it happened?” I glanced at the passenger seat.

  He glared at me. “If I knew what was going on, don’t you think I would’ve done something about it already? It doesn’t work like that. I don’t know everything she’s done and everything she’s seen and everything she’s talked about with everyone she meets. I can connect with her, check on her, but I don’t spend all day spying on my sister.” He shifted in the seat. “Besides, I didn’t know there was anything to be concerned about until it had already happened.”

  “Here’s what I know.” We pulled into the parking lot next to a dark office building. Aside from a few older-model cars, it was empty. “The glowing star card came up in Alice Windrow’s reading. That means that within seventy-two hours, she’s going to be dead, and the goddess Athena doesn’t want that to happen. Right now, she’s the sole private owner of Punktex. She became the sole private owner after her parents inherited the ownership from a distant relative. They were killed soon after. I mean, like, within a few weeks of inheriting the company.”

  “What does that have to do with pixies?” Rex asked, looking confused.

  “I don’t entirely know. There could be two things going on here since pixies aren’t exactly known for playing a long game. With the new rules around interacting with humans, though?” I held up my hands. “I just don’t know. But Alice is a pixie follower.”

  “What’s a pixie follower?”

  “Someone who follows the path of the pixies.”

  His brows drew together. “The path of the pixies? Is that a thing?”

  “A new religion, apparently. Yeah, I don’t know. Not important. Anyway, Alice seemed pretty normal when she got her reading, but later she started acting…I don’t know, giddy? Obsessed? And when she and Emma got together, it was like whatever crazy obsession the two of them had for Pistachio Waterflash? It was doubled. And if the star card thing glowed and she started acting like a nutter thanks to the pixies, I feel like it has to be related.”

  “If the rebel pixies you met with are correct, that means the two of them are doused with whatever this pixie potion is,” he said. I nodded. “And we don’t have any idea why Emma was doused with this. Could it have just rubbed off on her accidentally?”

  “Not if the rebel pixies are telling the truth. Pistachio touched her arm in this, like, creepy way when we met with him,” I explained. “My guess is that’s when it happened.”

  “Okay,” he nodded. “But why?”

  “So, that’s where we’re getting into theory.” I leaned back and tapped the steering wheel. “I don’t know anything for sure. We said very little to the chieftain beyond asking him about Alice Windrow.” I raised my eyebrow. “What better way to slow down an investigation into what you’re doing than to drug the female detective investigating the case?”

  Rex thought about it for a moment. “Why not drug you?” he asked.

  I sniffed. Maybe it was because I detected the distinct odor of suspicion coming off the vampire. Or, you know, allergies.

  “I don’t know. Maybe witches are immune. Maybe he didn’t see me as a threat. For whatever reason, I am not dazzled by Pistachio Waterflash. But your sister is.”

  “So what conspiracy do you think he’s trying to cover up?”

  “This is a guess,” I said and pointed to the building. “Paul Wakefield, the CEO of Punktex, would basically get all control of the company if something permanent were to happen to Alice Windrow. He’s the only one with clear motivation to want her dead. I don’t know how he’s linked to the pixies, but starting there seems like a good idea.”

  “And you think we will find evidence of something in there?”

  “I think it’s better than poking around a swamp and trusting pixies.”

  We didn’t sneak into the building.

  We walked in through the front door.

  Vampires had a few extremely useful powers, one of which was a form of hypnosis. Originally used to lure in and ensnare their victims, now they tended to use the ability to walk right into blood banks seemingly undetected.

  Well, some of them.

  I’m sure some still used their powers to gain victims. There are always stubborn stragglers on any evolutionary path bringing up the rear.

  I wasn’t sure which one Rex was, and I didn’t want to ask.

  In any case, Rex Sullivan dazzled the security guard with his vampire charms, causing the young man to slip into a deep sleep right at his desk.

  “I’ll take care of the security cameras,” Rex told me, stepping around the desk and gently moving the snoring security guard. Suddenly, he frowned. “Astra? These cameras have been turned off already.” He looked up at me. “The whole bank of them. They’re all black.”

  “Did sleeping beauty over there knock into a switch when he fell asleep?” I asked.

  The vampire scanned the desk and found the button that turned the security cameras off and on. “No, he couldn’t have. I was watching him.”

  I came around the back of the desk. “Well, turn them on. Let’s see if anything is going on. If someone turned them off deliberately, somebody is trying to hide something.”

  Rex nodded and flipped the switch. The grainy images flickered gray-blue snow, then lines, and then came into focus. Ten cameras focused on ten places in this relatively small building. All seemingly empty—

  “There,” he said quietly, pointing. “There are people in that office.”

  “Two people,” I said, leaning forward.

  Then I blushed.

  The camera was not high definition, and I couldn’t identify the two people locked in a heated embrace on a couch in a large office. I could tell enough to surmise the visual content of the confab would have gotten the security feed an R rating from the Motion Picture Association of America. At the very least.

  “Why would someone meet late at night in an office?” Rex asked.

  I stared at the vampire. You lived in Vegas, the city of sin. Really? You can’t think of any reason two people would be in flagrante delicto on an uncomfortable office couch in the middle of the night? Really?

  That’s what I wanted to say, but I needed the vampire.

  So I didn’t say it.

  “Maybe they were working late, and one thing led to another. Maybe this is an ongoing affair, and they meet here to avoid detection.” I shrugged. “No idea, but we need to go and find out. Judging by the furniture, that’s an executive office.” No one other than executives had couches in their office. At least not in my experience. “That could be Paul Wakefield. And if it is, I’m going to bet dollars to donuts that woman’s not his wife. It could be a pixie.”

  We crept quietly up the stairway so the elevator would not ding and give away our presence in the building or on the third floor. I’m a little embarrassed to admit that Rex stepped even more softly than I did. I prided myself on my cunning ability to skulk quietly, but the vampire? He elevated it to an art form.

  As soon as we opened the stairwell door, we could hear murmured, breathy words from the office down the hall. The hallway was dark. Light from a lamp in the office gave a smoky, dim glow. I pointed toward a corner, and Rex nodded. We tiptoed toward it, but still couldn’t see inside.

  “Oh, Paul, Paul, Paul,” a woman crooned. “You know what we have to do, baby. You know why we have to do it.” Heavy panting. “It’ll be incredible. Just
you and me. Please, baby, you have to do it for me.”

  The voice, even in its excited state, seemed vaguely familiar. I wracked my brain, but I couldn’t quite place it—even though I was sure I’d heard it before.

  “I can’t. My wife would kill me,” Paul responded to his female companion. “I’m already in so much trouble! I could go to jail!”

  “No, no, you’re not going to go to jail,” the woman told him breathlessly. “Those people in Orlando don’t know anything about us. I’m sure the accountants just messed up. Everybody loves you, Pauly. One look at that face? How could anyone convict you?” More kissing noises.

  I made a face. “Paul Wakefield,” I mouthed to Rex.

  “But who’s the woman?” he mouthed back.

  I shrugged. “Clearly not his wife.”

  “She is not as excited as he is,” he said, his eyes sparkling with concentration. “His heart rate is quite elevated. Hers is not. It’s like she’s playing a role.”

  Sounded like Paul Wakefield was getting played by a femme fatale.

  But who?

  And why?

  “Oh, Meryl, this is wrong,” Paul Wakefield moaned when he came up for breath. “I can’t do this to my wife. I just can’t!” More smacking sounds demonstrating that despite his protestations, apparently, he could.

  “Meryl?” Rex asked.

  “Meryl Hawkins,” I told him, my eyes narrowing. “Well, that…” I thought for a minute. “Yeah, that doesn’t clear anything up at all, really.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  “I wonder if that woman is even capable of having a relationship with someone that doesn’t already have a commitment to someone else,” I muttered as Rex concentrated. “Prominent people and adulterous affairs seem to be her hobby.”