“Are you sure she’s human?” Serah took a step closer to the circle and then appeared to think twice about it as she rocked back on her heels. “There are a number of races that look very similar to humans but technically aren’t. Sirens and succubi. Maybe even an elf.”
“Maybe.” I shrugged and then winced as pain cut across my wounded back. “But there’s something about the woman. Just feels human. I’m sorry I can’t explain it.”
“You sure it doesn’t have to do with her boobs?”
I glared at Serah and she glared right back. Sure, I’d noticed the creature’s boobs, but then I’d been shocked that they were there in the first place. That’s what I got for being sexist when it came to acts of violence.
“Anyways . . . I think we’ve got a start, though not as big of one as I’d hoped.”
“I’m not sure what we can do next.” Serah shoved one hand through her mussed short hair. “It’s not like we got a good look at her face to get an ID. I also don’t think you want me going to the police, describing how I know that it’s a woman we’re after.”
A stiff grin twitched on my lips. “I’d prefer it if you didn’t.”
“Then what do we do?”
“I need you to do two things. One: try to get another sample of her blood. I want to see if I can come up with a tracking spell.”
Serah nodded. “I think I can come up with an excuse to get my hands on another sample. Two?”
“Use your contacts with the police to keep you in the loop on this.”
“With the crime being a murder, they have jurisdiction. Not TAPSS.”
“I know, but you’ve still got plenty of friends on the force, right? You can pull some information out.”
Her eyes narrowed and she slowly shook her head at me. “That’s why you told me. You need me to give you the information that the cops have.”
I started to shrug but stopped myself rather than strain the seeping wound. “I can do it myself, but my magic use might catch the attention of the Towers and we need the Towers involved.”
“Yeah,” she breathed. She turned away from me, her eyes skimming over the basement with a new understanding. This wasn’t the realm of a tattoo artist. It also wasn’t the realm of the Ivory Towers, but of one rogue warlock. She was somewhere no human had ever tread and lived. When she turned back, I could see all the questions colliding in her brain, fighting to jump off the tip of her tongue first.
Lifting my hand to stop whatever she was going to say next, I smiled weakly at her. “Can we hold off the questions for another time? It’s really fucking late and my back is killing me.”
“Can I have just two questions?”
“Yeah, I guess.” I didn’t want to answer any more questions, but I figured she had earned them considering how poorly the night had gone.
“Why are you doing this? I mean, I know you said that you’re doing it because of Trixie, but is that really the only reason?”
I scrubbed my hand over my face, sure that I was now rubbing in dirt but I just didn’t give a damn. For Trixie, I would do anything, but Serah was right. The elf wasn’t the only reason I was standing in the basement just a couple hours before dawn bleeding. “Something she said, that I was the only one who could do this, stuck with me. You’ve got a killer who has been created based on a powerful potion. You’re going to need someone versed in a little magic to track this person down and I don’t see anyone else from the Towers volunteering.”
She made a little noise of acceptance in the back of her throat and nodded. “When this is over and the killer is caught, are you going to kill me?”
“No, Serah, I’m not going to kill you,” I groaned, more than a little agitated that this topic kept coming up.
“I’m serious!” she snapped, looking as if she really wanted to stomp her foot in frustration. “You’re trusting me with a big secret. You don’t know me.”
Anger bubbled from the petite woman, but the protection spell didn’t stir, so I took it as a sign that she wasn’t violently upset with me. “No, I don’t know you, but I trust you not to tell anyone while we’re working together because you don’t want to see me lynched.”
“And when it’s over?”
“I’ll wipe your memory.”
Her face bunched up a bit at that pronouncement as if she were weighing the alternative, which was definitely death in her mind. “Will it hurt?”
I chuckled as I walked back over to the table in the far corner and picked up her gun. I’d clean up this mess tomorrow. I was too damn tired now. “No, it won’t hurt.”
At my urging, she preceded me up the stairs. I turned off the light and returned the protection spell to its normal active status before ascending the stairs to the tattoo parlor.
A quick glance at the clock revealed that we’d been down there less than a half hour but it felt like it had been far longer than that. Dawn was only a couple hours away and I was eager to get to bed for a few hours. There really was no chance of salvaging the evening.
“Get some sleep,” I said, handing her gun back.
Serah clicked the safety back on before shoving it into her shoulder holster. Reaching in her back pocket, she pulled out her wallet and withdrew a little card. “Here. Call me if you hear from the goblins. I’m going with you.”
“Yes, ma’am,” I said with a smirk as I shoved the card in my pocket. She was adjusting to the knowledge that I was a warlock pretty fast. But then, most people in Low Town adjusted fast. There was too much weird shit here and if you didn’t adapt, you were likely eaten . . . or you just went insane.
Chapter 7
Gravel crunched and pinged against the undercarriage of Bronx’s Jeep as he slipped off the old narrow road onto a weed-choked pull-off that might have once been someone’s driveway. After spending the majority of the day leaning on my few contacts with fingers in illegal activities, I finally had the address to a farmhouse in the middle of nowhere. It was supposedly the goblins’ base of operations. Dropping in unexpectedly wasn’t smart, but goblins weren’t the friendliest of creatures. They weren’t going to be happy to see me even if I was there on business, and trying to go through the right channels to schedule a meeting would have taken days if not weeks.
Of course, I wasn’t in the best of moods either. Trixie hadn’t been waiting for me at my apartment when I returned last night. She’d kindly put dinner into old butter bowls and placed them in the fridge before leaving me a note stating that she’d gone home after talking to Bronx. It had been tempting to go over to her place and slide into bed next to her, but instead I stretched out on the couch and glared at the ceiling until sleep claimed me. She needed her space. Between the news of my return to the dark side and Kyle’s death, Trixie could use some time to herself.
I was even proud of the fact that I’d managed to refrain from rushing over to her place first thing in the morning, but rather waited until noon to call her. Her lovely voice drifted through the phone to me, sounding strong but wary as she promised to return to my place that evening to get an update on any progress made in finding Kyle’s killer.
But all that self-control had left me edgy and pissed.
The troll turned off the engine and killed the lights. The heavy silence of winter consumed the night, threatening to suffocate us. There were no chirping crickets, no howl of the wind, and no distant hoot of an owl. Just a vast nothingness and the cold gleaming snow set against a black sky.
“How do you want to handle this?” Bronx asked. His seat creaked as he turned to look at me in the passenger seat. Serah’s coat rustled softly as she moved closer, ready to join in our little adventure.
“I thought we’d just talk to them. Nothing too strenuous,” I said, my eyes skimming over the large white three-story farmhouse rising up like a forgotten sentinel against the darkness. Nothing moved and there was only a faint glimme
r of light peeking out of a heavily shaded window on the second floor.
Serah scoffed and flopped back against the backseat. Glancing over at Bronx, I found the troll frowning at me, his yellow eyes narrowed.
“Have you dealt with goblins before?” Bronx said, sounding more than a little skeptical.
“No. Not directly.”
“This won’t go well,” he muttered.
“Yeah, I’ve heard that they’re a pain in the ass, but they can’t be entirely unreasonable.” Lifting my left hand, I rubbed my eyes with my thumb and forefinger. A dull ache had started along the bridge of my nose and was creeping through my skull. “They run an underground business. How can you ever hope to have customers if you can’t talk with them?”
“The goblins started this little enterprise because they’ve discovered that they love gold more than they love eating human babies,” Bronx explained. “They don’t give a damn about seeing that childless vampires are able to have a family of their own. They don’t even care if these children go to good homes. They want the money these desperate people are willing to pay.”
“And when you’re desperate, you’re willing to put up with a lot of shit,” Serah chimed in from behind me, her soft voice pricking my conscience. Was I some of the shit she was willing to put up with just so she’d get a little respect from her coworkers? Wonderful.
“Look, we find the ringleader and we ask if they’ve heard anything about these murders,” I said sharply as I grabbed the handle on the door. “That’s it. Once we get our answers, we leave. I’ve got other things I’d rather be doing tonight.”
Without waiting for my companions to agree with my poorly thought out plan, I shoved open the door of the Jeep and climbed out. A small wave of relief swept through me when I heard two more doors open and close behind me. I preferred to have Bronx with me during this encounter. He had a knack for pulling my ass out of the fire. I wasn’t as confident about Serah. She might have been a police officer for five years, but there was no telling what kind of experiences had filled those five years. Had she ever been in a high-stress, shoot-or-be-killed situation? I wasn’t ready to bet my life on that.
“I’m sure I probably shouldn’t ask,” Serah said as she walked with me on my right.
“Then don’t,” I snapped.
“But is there any chance you can use your hocus pocus to speed this along?” she whispered.
I fought the urge to roll my eyes. Despite her attempts to be quiet, I was sure that Bronx had heard her. The cold, still air carried her words too easily, but at least she was attempting to keep my secret to herself. When I rolled off the couch this morning, I was partially expecting to find a lynch mob waving torches and pitchforks outside my window. I was mildly disappointed when they weren’t there.
“No, I will not be using any hocus pocus, hoodoo, or voodoo to get us through this interview,” I growled, not caring who heard me.
“No abracadabra?” Bronx pushed.
“No.”
The silence was punctuated by the crunch of the frozen snow under our feet as we marched up the winding drive to the farmhouse. A couple inches of fresh snow had fallen that afternoon, coating the world in a twinkling blanket of white. It was like living in a cheap, dime-store novelty snow globe. A thin layer of snow underfoot, black sky above, and cliché Norman Rockwell winter scene in the foreground. Of course, I doubted that old Norman ever imagined goblins on the other side of those windows. But I could be wrong.
“You ever try to pull a rabbit out of a hat?” Bronx asked, surprising a laugh out of Serah.
Glancing over my shoulder, I glimpsed the tiny smirk that was lifting one corner of the troll’s fat lips. “Keep it up and I’ll a rabbit out of your ass.” But my threat fell flat because I was struggling not to smile as well. Bastard. Bronx always knew how to put a stop to my sulks whether I wanted him to or not.
While trolls were unattractive from a human point of view, I’ll have to say that they could have passed for supermodels when compared to goblins. Covered in pasty greenish gray skin that always looked greasy, the goblins possessed long, spidery limbs and narrow torsos, as if they spent the majority of their lives teetering on the edge of starvation. Their sunken milky orange eyes glowed, reflecting the light as if you could see the fire of madness burning in their souls. You just prayed they didn’t smile, revealing a mouthful of crooked, jagged yellow teeth.
Goblins were the stuff of nightmares and were what you thought of when it came to the monster under your bed or hiding in your closet. If you were unfortunate enough to have something under your bed as a child, there was a good chance that it was a goblin rather than the extremely rare boogeyman. He just wanted to steal a couple years of your childhood. The goblin wanted to strip your flesh from your bones while you were still alive.
Taking a deep breath, I pounded on the front door. A goblin just a few inches shorter than Serah jerked the door open and stared at us in confusion. “Appointment?” he demanded in a high, squeaky voice that sounded like he was dragging his pointed teeth along a chalkboard for shits and giggles.
“No, we don’t have an appointment,” I replied, wincing. It felt like my eardrums were starting to bleed.
The door slammed shut in my face before I could catch it.
“I believe that was the wrong answer,” Bronx said blandly.
Flipping my friend off with my left hand, I pounded on the front door with my right. The door was pulled open a couple seconds later by a different goblin. This one was my height but he was missing his right eye. Unfortunately, he wasn’t wearing an eye patch so you could clearly see the poorly healed hole in the creature’s head.
“Appointment?” he demanded in a rough voice. I was willing to guess that whatever had taken his eye had also tried to rip out his throat.
“No, we need information,” I quickly replied. I took a breath to explain that I wished to speak to their boss, but I didn’t get a chance.
“This ain’t a library,” the one-eyed goblin announced before slamming the door shut.
“Strike two,” Serah murmured, earning a chuckle from Bronx.
Oh, this was just fucking dandy! I was so glad that my companions were having fun while I was getting the door slammed in my face. Magic was starting to look appealing, but I’d already proclaimed that I wasn’t going to use magic. Growling, I reminded myself that I didn’t need it for every little damned thing, and pounded on the door again.
We waited longer this time before the door was pulled open by a third goblin. Taller than his other companions, his large lower lip was split down the middle from where it had been cut and never properly sewn up. What bothered me was the faint light of intelligence that sparked in his eyes, unlike the other two.
“Appointment?” he said.
“Yes,” I said with a hearty sigh. My right arm shot out and wrapped around Serah’s shoulders before I jerked her against my side in a tight embrace, earning a surprised squeak from her. “We’re the Smiths. Gage and Serah Smith.”
The goblin’s scraggly eyebrows rose on his sloped forehead and he sniffed the air slightly. “You smell like cops.”
“Nope,” I quickly replied, upping the wattage of my smile in an effort to look even more harmless. “I’m a tattoo artist in Low Town and my wife is a postal clerk.” I felt Serah stiffen under my hand but I squeezed her arm through her coat and she flashed the goblin a somewhat manic smile.
“And him?” The goblin jerked his pointed chin toward the troll standing behind me.
“Enforcer for Jack and the Low Town Pack,” Bronx explained before I could come up with a viable excuse as to why a desperate human couple had brought along a large troll to a black-market baby dealer. “If you can help them, the pack gets a finder’s fee for pointing them in your direction.”
“You work for Reave?” the goblin demanded, still soundi
ng more than a little skeptical.
Bronx grunted. “Till the dark elf was snatched by the Towers.”
The troll’s answer sounded convincing. Of course, Bronx had been a member of the underworld once and had worked for the mob boss Reave, but that had been a long time ago. . . . Well, sort of. He’d given it up until I’d fucked up his life and dragged him back in when he’d saved my life. Yeah, that’s what friends are for.
The goblin stepped back, opening the door wide enough for me to enter the farmhouse first, trailed by my companions. From the foyer, I could see the dining room on my right and the living room on the left, while a narrow staircase led to a dark second floor. The furniture in the living room was ragged, with the stuffing poking out through the rips in the stained fabric. There was a table and a trio of chairs set up in the dining room. A scattering of paper covered the table, indicating that it likely served as some type of office. The rooms I could see were lit by a collection of candles and old kerosene lamps, creating a thick nest of shadows and a low haze of smoke about the place.
“Wait,” the goblin ordered, pointing toward the chairs in the dining room.
I nodded, grabbing Serah’s hand and pulling her along with me while trying to maintain an appearance of nervous fear and hopefulness. It wasn’t hard. Serah just looked anxious, which worked for our lie. I couldn’t see Bronx as he continued to stand behind me, but I was confident in his ability to look intimidating. With the mass of a small mountain, the troll had “frightening” down to an art.
“A postal clerk?” Serah demanded in a harsh whisper as soon as we were alone.
“Sue me. I blanked. Be grateful I didn’t say swimsuit model or telemarketer.”
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