by Tegan Maher
I helped her make a new batch of mood lotions and enjoyed brushing up on my herbology. I wasn't much good at it because I was a water witch rather than an earth witch, but it was always good information to have. We added the ingredients from her recipes, she stirred the pot and added her magic, then we bottled them up.
After what seemed no time at all, Colin popped through the door and I glanced up, smiling.
Mia stepped forward and held out her hand. "You must be Colin. Destiny's told me about you, and it's a pleasure to finally meet you in the flesh."
Smiling, he took her hand. "The pleasure's mine." He took a deep breath. "This place smells amazing. I could smell it halfway down the block. Usually herbal shops smell like old incense to me, but not yours."
It helped that her shop was well lit and decorated in light, summery colors, too. I'd been in a ton of shops just like he was describing, and when Mia had decided to go this route, she'd been determined to make it light and happy versus dark and dreary. I was sure it was one of the reasons she attracted so much traffic. Her products sold themselves, but the appearance and atmosphere got them in the door.
"Thanks," she said. "I didn't want people to mistake the place for some phony psychic shop. When I bought it, everything was dark wood, purple velvet, and black paint." She shuddered. "Just ... no."
"So," I said, "Did you learn anything?"
He held out his hand and wobbled it side to side. "A little, but not as much as I'd like. Everybody I talked to said Dain was a straight shooter. He didn't gamble, drink too much, or chase women. No wild parties, or at least not many, and everybody seemed to love him."
"That sounds too good to be true," I said.
"Not really," Mia replied thoughtfully. "People would say the same thing about you or me and they'd be right."
I tilted my head at her. "I highly doubt that. I piss people off on a regular basis. My mouth has a mind of its own."
"That's just sass though," Colin said. "It actually makes you interesting and better at your job."
Huffing a breath through my nose, I said, "That's not what Cass would have said." Cass, or Cassiel, was the fallen angel I mentioned earlier. Before he got the heavenly boot, he was the angel of temperance, though he'd been really bad at his job—thus the penance he was serving managing the bar. He was a mean drunk, a loudmouth, and a bully.
"Cass was the last person to be handing out personality advice or judging anybody," Mia said.
Colin nodded. "Yeah, next to him, sand paper was soft and cuddly."
They weren't wrong. Nor were they the only people to think so. Diana, a fellow angel, poisoned him just a few weeks back. Turns out, he should have tried harder to be a good angel versus an embarrassment to the family. And try though I had, I couldn't find out what, if anything, had happened to her for killing him.
"But finding out he was a decent guy doesn't help us out," I said. "I was hoping to learn that the dude had some sort of serious personality quirk. Just being a regular guy doesn't help us at all."
"Actually," Mia said, "it just may. I mean, if he were a womanizing, thieving jerk, you'd have dozens of suspects. Now you just have to find one or two people who had a grudge, and you've probably got your killer."
“Yeah, or if it was his older brother who took a knife to the back rather than Dain,” Colin said. My contact said he’s well-known for his exploits. I have no doubt we wouldn’t have to scratch more than the surface to come up with a list of names as long as your arm of people who’d want to kill him. Or at least beat the daylights out of him.”
“Figures,” I said, shaking my head. “Nothing’s ever that easy.”
Before we could discuss it more, the foxy sisters, as we liked to call them, came strolling down the stairs, tails in the air. Colin did a double take. Calamity and Tempest looked strikingly similar with one exception: Calamity had one blue eye and one green eye. It was a little startling at first, but you got used to it.
They had a third sister, Chaos, who lived with our cousin Cori. Like Calamity and Tempe, she was black and white, but had green eyes. Mia, Cori and I could, of course, tell them apart from any angle, but others had a hard time if they weren't looking at them head on.
"Colin, meet Calamity," I said. "Calamity, this is my ... friend, Colin."
"Pleased to meet you, Calamity." Colin said, his brow furrowing for just a second as he threw me a quick glance.
"You, too, Colin," she replied.
Calamity and Tempest exchanged a look and Tempe raised a shoulder. "See what I mean?"
Calamity nodded. "You're dead-on. It'll work itself out, though."
I scowled at them and Colin looked confused. Mia covered a laugh with a cough. "What do you mean by that?" I demanded.
Calamity rolled her eyes. "I mean exactly what I said: it'll work itself out."
I knew she was referring to Colin and I, so I glowered as she ambled away, tail swishing. "Nobody likes a smartass, you know," I called after her, hoping beyond reality that Colin hadn’t figured it out too. She just flicked her tail and kept walking.
"Sorry," Mia told Colin. "She's got a mind of her own, but usually, she's at least polite."
"She was polite," Tempest said, defending her sister. "How was that not polite? Destiny's family; the rules are different."
Technically, she had a point, and I'd given up on trying to figure them out years ago.
Glancing at my phone, I realized it was already three o'clock. "I still need to run to the grocery store and grab a couple things," I said to Mia, "but do you wanna meet us in an hour at the Cracked Cauldron in an hour or so supper?"
She grinned. "That sounds great. I haven't had one of their burgers in forever."
I'd had my first experience at the Cracked Cauldron several weeks back when I was there with my brother Michael, trying to figure out who offed Cassiel.
"Speaking of Michael, we should see if he can come too," Mia said. I didn't get to see him last time he was around."
Colin nodded. "That's actually not a bad idea. He might have more insight into what's going on."
As an investigator for the Paranormal Criminal Investigation Bureau, my brother traded in information and other goods. He’d been a troublemaker when he was younger, but when his best friend was killed in an alley during one of their misadventures, it scared him straight. Thinking about it, I was a little surprised I hadn't heard from him already because there's no way he hadn't heard about the murder. I said as much.
"That is odd, now that you mention it," Mia said.
"Oh," said Tempest, "Actually it isn't. He's undercover and can't get away."
"And how, exactly, do you know that?" Mia asked.
"Rocky popped in a bit ago while you two were in the kitchen making the lotions. He wanted to check on us," Tempest replied. Rocky was Michael's wolf familiar.
"Geez," I said, "Thanks for coming to get us. And when were you going to get around to telling us?"
"We just did," they said together.
Of course they did.
"We'll meet you at the Cauldron in an hour," I told Mia, glaring at the two familiars.
"See ya then," she said. "Maybe we'll be having fox burgers instead."
Don't laugh—I was seriously considering it.
I pushed through the doors and felt the little tug of reality as we stepped outside the range of the happiness spell. Nothing too noticeable, unless you knew it was there.
Colin drew his brows together. "Did you feel that?"
I explained it to him, surprised and impressed he was that sensitive, and I explained how it worked as we made our way to the other end of the street.
I adored the place. Unlike human grocery stores, they carried all of the regular stock, but also catered to just about every magical creature you could think of, divided by aisle, for the most part.
There were all the standard aisles—canned foods, frozen foods, personal hygiene, cereal, etc.—but there were also specialty aisles that carried items like fa
ux blood, elixirs to help new vampires and werewolves control the bloodlust, high-SPF sunscreens, and pick-me-ups for tooth fairies and other creatures who had jobs that required high output in a limited timeframe.
The latter was a proprietary blend invented by elves, but nobody would admit it was for Santa Clause, mainly because his existence was a mystery. Rumor had it he did, but the elves who worked for him were locked into an air-tight non-disclosure agreement.
I grabbed some cereal and other items that, though available at the resort commissary, cost an arm and a leg if you bought them there. On a whim, I picked up a bottle of the bloodlust elixir for Marissa.
I spent most of the time there irritated at Tempest for the whole Rocky and Michael situation.
On the way to the Cauldron, we passed in front of ChocoLatte, a specialty chocolate and coffee shop. They didn't have just any chocolate though—Charlie, the chocolatier and coffee connoisseur who owned the shop, was an artist. He made the most heavenly creations on the planet.
"Look,” Tempest said, sighing. “I'm sorry I didn't come get you when Rocky showed up. It was right before we came downstairs and the whole introduction thing went down. And you were relaxed and having fun with Mia. I didn't want to jerk you back to reality when there really wasn't any point."
If she were anybody else, I'd say she was apologizing because she wanted chocolate—and that was, without a doubt, part of it—but she didn't like strife any more than I did.
I relented. "Fine. I guess I get it, so thanks."
"So," she said, hopping from the ground where she’d been trotting along beside us onto a vendor's table and then onto my shoulder, "chocolate covered bacon?" As a female and a carnivore, it was the best of all worlds to her. And to me too, for that matter.
I smiled. "Chocolate covered bacon it is. Colin?"
He grinned his wolfiest smile. "I'll never say no to bacon."
I don't know why I even bothered to ask.
CHAPTER TEN
WE HAD A SMALL CUP of espresso each while we picked out more chocolate than anybody should eat in a week. Thankfully, he used bags spelled to keep the contents cold and intact, so I just stuffed them in my bottomless bag, knowing they’d be fine. And yes, I’d stolen the idea from Harry Potter. It was sheer genius on JK Rowling’s part. Making the bag bottomless had been easy; making it light enough to carry fifty pounds of goodies had taken me months to figure out.
Street vendors lined the sidewalks, and we stopped along the way to admire the goods on display, but didn’t buy anything. For the most part, they were all the same from one visit to another, so unless you needed something specific, the novelty wore off after a couple trips.
Before I knew it, it was time to make our way to the Cracked Cauldron.
By the name, you'd expect it to be dark and dingy, or at least I had the first time I'd gone there. I’d been wrong. I mean, it was nothing fancy, but looked like just about any other sports pub in the US, or maybe the world; I wasn’t exactly well-traveled so I could only speak for the ones in the lower half of the eastern seaboard. It had a long wooden bar, lots of TVs, and a huge bear-shifter bartender. Okay, maybe that last part isn't quite as common, but I'm willing to bet it's not as rare as you'd think, either. You just never know.
"Hey Shane," I called to him as we claimed a high-top table near the bar. It wasn't quite late enough for the happy-hour crowd to trickle in, so we pretty much had the place to ourselves.
"Well if it isn’t Destiny Maganti and her pretty fox," he said, sauntering toward us. "And Colin, if I'm not mistaken?"
"You got it," Colin said, holding out his hand. They shook, and it was nice to see it wasn't one of those competitive shakes.
"How's your brother?" he asked, sliding menus in front of us. The first time I’d been there, I’d been looking for a safe place to hide because people were trying to kill me, or so I’d thought. Michael had sent me to the Cauldron to wait on him, and told me to ask for Shane. As a result, the burly bartender had taken me under his wing.
"Busy," I said. "He's working now, or else he'd be with us. My cousin Mia’s joining us, though."
"Good, then,” he replied, his voice booming in the near-empty spac. “What can I get you to drink?"
We ordered, and when he brought us back our drinks, he paused.
"Listen, I usually make it a practice to listen rather than talk, but Michael's a friend of mine and he asked me to look after you when you were here and he wasn't around."
I leaned toward him. "Okay, I appreciate that. Is there something I should know?"
He sighed and rubbed his jaw, scraping the whiskers. "That's just the thing. I know those brothers; my wife's best friends with one of the women who work in their household, and you know as well as I do, the help knows everything."
That was a fact, regardless of what race you were. For some reason, folks like that tended to overlook people who worked for them, so there really wasn't any such thing as a secret in a place like that.
"So what's your take on it?" I asked.
He crossed his arms. "If it were Dain's older brother, Evan, who got knife to the back, I'd get it. For that matter, all three of the older ones are rabble-rousers and have caused their share of hard feelings. But not Dain. He's one upstanding guy. He never hits on another man's woman—for that matter, I've never seen him disrespect any woman. He doesn't gamble or pick fights. The worst he ever did was drink a little too much sometimes, and even then he either went quiet or was the life of the party. It just doesn't make any sense."
"You're not the first one to say that," Colin said, shaking his head.
"It's true." Shane was thoughtful for a minute. "The only person I can think of that he ever had a bone with was his brother's soon-to-be brother-in-law. They never did get along. Dain dated his sister for a while, and rumor has it she cheated on him. That one really is a rumor though. The real reason they broke up was never mentioned. Nobody knows for sure because he's a private guy."
"Yeah," I said, thinking back to how he was the quietest one of the crew that day. "I got the same vibe from him."
"Anyway," he said, "I heard you were the one who found the body. When you came in, I figured you were in The Gate until the heat died down some at the resort. You did the right thing; from what I hear, they have all the king's horses and all the king's men working on it, and though they won't go out of their way to start problems, they won't hesitate to do ... whatever they can to catch whoever did it."
While he was talking, somebody else came in, and the sunlight from the open door flashed on something on the wall behind him. Looking around him, I realized he had a huge knife and sword collection displayed there. I motioned to them and smiled. "That's some brave art you have there, given the place must get pretty rowdy sometimes."
He grinned. "Those are so warded, an army of sober magicals couldn't get them off the wall, let alone a handful of drunk ones."
"So do you collect them?" I asked, thinking of the dagger in Dain's back. One of the elves went out of his way to clear his throat and say how thirsty he was. Passive-aggressive jerks.
Holding up a finger, he said, "Gimme one sec to get this guy his beer and I'll be right back. While he was gone, I pulled a pen and a small notepad out of my purse and sketched out the design on the dagger as best I could.
"Now," he said, swinging the end of the bar up and coming back to our table. "To answer your question: yeah, I collect them. I've had a fascination with antique weaponry, knives and swords in particular, since I was a kid. Why?"
Colin slid the picture I'd drawn around so he could see it. "Does this look familiar to you at all?"
He sucked in a breath, then picked the notepad up and examined it closer. "It's more than familiar. I've seen it in person, and it's no wonder they're keepin' the murder weapon a secret. What color was the stone in the pommel?"
"Red," I replied. "Why?"
"That's a ceremonial dagger, made by the dwarfs when each of the faerie princes was born
as offerings of peace," he said. "Each of them had a different stone. The heir's—Evan's—was a diamond, then the next was a sapphire, then an emerald, then a ruby. If your drawing is accurate, he was killed with his own knife."
You could have knocked me over with a feather.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
"SO I GUESS WHAT YOU need to ask yourself is who's powerful enough to take a faerie's own dagger from him and kill him with it,” Shane said, his face thoughtful. “That’s no easy task.”
It took me a few seconds to recover from the surprise and to absorb the information, then I realized something. "Wait a minute," I said, holding up a finger. "They were in board shorts. None of them were carrying knives, so it wasn't taken off him. All they came to the tiki with were towels and surfboards."
Shane chewed on his lip, thinking. "That makes more sense. Dain was always the best fighter outta all of them, mostly because he was so level-headed. I can't think of a single man who could have taken it from him, even by surprise."
"That begs the question, though," said Colin, "where was it at and who had access to it?"
Each room in the resort had a safe, and there was a main safe in a room off Blake's office that was warded to hell and back for items too valuable to be left in a room.
"It was either in his room or in the hotel security vault in Blake's office," I said, "assuming he didn't just leave it lying in the open in his room. For that matter, why bring it with them at all?"
Shane shook his head. "He wouldn't have left it unguarded in his room. He may have put it in the safe, though. They carry them everywhere. They used to be used for warfare, which we all know isn't a thing anymore, really, but they're also used in ceremonies and as proof of identification. If, for instance, they were on official business, they'd carry the knife to declare their status. Also, dwarfs are odd when it comes to gifting. If the princes didn't carry them, it could be seen as an insult."