Black Market (The Wizard Hall Chronicles Book 2)

by Sheryl Steines

  Jack grimaced at the editorials, thoughtfully read the food section, and made mental notes on the movie and theater reviews. After reading each section, the FBI agent threw it on the growing pile.

  With the final newspaper section left in his lap, he remembered this was vacation and leaned back, breathed in hot, salty air, and stared at the ocean. The waves rolled in, washing away footprints collected during the morning rush of tourists. The water, a clear crystal blue, should have invited him in. Instead, Jack wiped away sweat from his brow with a towel and realized disappointedly that relaxing was hard work and a little boring.

  “Go take a dip,” Amanda suggested as she reached for her own book, leaving the magazine on the top of the pile.

  “No. I’m good. Just finishing the paper.”

  “News?”

  “I promise, I won’t do anything with it,”

  “You wouldn’t be you if you let it sit.” She smiled at him, and her white teeth sparkled against the tan she was cultivating. Jack’s stomach flipped and flopped in that happy way.

  Finally giving in to the tug of the news, Jack opened the front page: murder, a teacher’s strike, city hall, gang warfare. Nothing peculiar or odd. Since he was currently in paradise, the news made no difference to his mood. He chose to be happy and worked on relaxing. Accepting his good fortune, Jack thought of taking a nap before lunch and washing his hands of the outside world.

  While others played in the warm water and paddled on large boards, Jack returned to the paper, which was nearly finished. He almost escaped thoughts of work, but of course he pushed it and trouble fell in his lap: a story just enough to raise the hairs on the back of his neck.

  It wasn’t odd to find a murdered John Doe; that wasn’t what caught Jack’s attention. It was the picture of the victim. It was his riding cloak.

  He reread the article from the very first word. John Doe, found dead in the middle of Busse Woods, a large park just outside Chicago. The police had been unable to identify the victim and requested the help of the community to identify him.

  When Jack gleaned nothing more from the story content, he returned his attention to the computer-generated picture beside the article. Long hair tied in a ribbon, a riding cloak loosely draped over the victim’s shoulders.

  I’ve seen this before.

  Jack remembered well his first and only foray into the world of magic. The cloak on the John Doe pictured in the paper was similar to the one worn by Wolfgange Rathbone the night Jack arrested him for the murder of Princess Amelie of Amborix eight months ago. It was a fashion choice Jack was unfamiliar with, but as he worked with Annie Pearce and her team and had the opportunity to meet several others wizards, he realized that some wizard traditions survived in the modern world, but the riding cloak was common in the magical community.

  An overwhelming feeling churned in the pit of his stomach. It gnawed at him in a way he couldn’t ignore.

  A covert meeting gone wrong? A body dump? That damn riding cloak!

  Few details were released to the press and Jack hunched over the paper, rereading the article for a third time, gleaning the words for anything that might be relevant.

  He noticed the sidebar’s short notes related to the main story. At first, Jack didn’t notice a connection between the weather service’s claim there had been no lightning strikes in the area the day the victim died, until he read the cause of death… Electrocution?

  “Can a spell do that?” he murmured.

  “What, sweetie?” Amanda asked, turning the page of her book.

  “Nothing… just normal weirdness,” he responded. He continued to read the sidebar’s debate about whether the victim been electrocuted or struck by lightning. After considering the weather at the time of death, authorities had concluded the victim was murdered by electrocution.

  After so many months of believing he saw magic all around him, Jack had finally found something. Something weird and worrisome. His left eye twitched.

  “Damn,” he said under his breath.

  “Everything okay?” Amanda rolled over to face him, concern on her drawn lips. Her finger grazed his knee.

  Leave it alone! the voice in his head pleaded.

  But Jack couldn’t leave it alone, not when the feeling overpowered him so strongly. This was the case his mind had thought he was seeing all along. “Yeah. I just need to make a phone call.”

  “But Jack, you promised.” Amanda grimaced.

  Jack kissed her, enjoying the taste of pineapple and rum on her lips. A groan of pleasure escaped his lips as he pulled away and stared into her bright green eyes.

  “Just one call and then I’m done.”

  “One.” She reached around his neck and held him close, her tongue parting his lips.

  Annie who?

  A strong sense of duty and his desire to do the right thing bore down on him until the part of his rational brain that saw monsters around every corner made him pull away reluctantly. “Five minutes.”

  Amanda held up five fingers and frowned at him.

  Hopping across the increasingly hot sand, Jack found an empty corner of the beach beside a rock and dialed Annie’s number, secretly hoping it would ring to voice mail.

  “Hello?”

  “It’s Jack Ramsey.” Apprehension took over his voice. He regretted the phone call immediately.

  I’ll just tell her I got the wrong number.

  “Hey Jack. It’s been a while. Four months since the trial, I think. How are you?”

  I’m on vacation calling you. How do you think?

  It had been a while since he had even talked to Annie. After turning a blind eye to the manufactured evidence and enduring the demanding trial, Jack had avoided Annie. He hadn’t seen or heard from her since Rathbone was convicted of Princess Amelie’s murder. Both needed time to put the case in the past.

  Though Jack regretted this call, it was time to face the facts. Magic existed, and this victim had most likely died due to a spell, jinx, or hex. Jack really didn’t know the difference. Unfortunately, hearing Annie’s voice caused that old familiar stress to settle in his chest.

  “I’m on vacation.”

  Why didn’t I tell her I butt dialed?

  Annie chuckled. “Really? And you’re calling me. That’s not vacation.”

  “Yeah. Amanda doesn’t think so either.” Jack glanced at Amanda. Turning in her lounge chair, she met his gaze and smiled as she re-crossed her legs.

  “A girlfriend? Nice. Go back to her. Whatever it is can wait.”

  Silence filled the line. Jack thought maybe Annie had hung up on him, but then he heard a male voice speaking to her in the background, which pulled Jack back to the gnawing feeling in his chest. “I need you to look at one tiny little thing,” Jack said. “If it’s nothing, great. If it’s something… but it’s probably nothing.”

  Jack watched Amanda, who looked incredibly sexy in her string bikini, a golden tan developing on her skin. It didn’t surprise him when a lean, muscular, deeply tanned man sat beside her on the lounger and attempted to engage her in conversation. Gracefully, Amanda waved the stranger away. Jack’s heart sped up.

  “Okay,” Annie said on the other end of the line. “If it’s something, we’ll look into it. If not, you wasted ten minutes of vacation. So what do you have?”

  Why did I call again?

  Amanda caught Jack’s gaze as the man slunk away. She waved him toward her with a wide smile. Jack returned the smile and held up a finger signaling one more minute.

  “Okay. It’s stupid. But a guy dressed in a riding cloak was found dead in Busse Woods. The cause of death, get this, electrocution. Does that mean anything to you?” The FBI agent had solved hundreds of cases in his career. As he explained this one to Annie, the story sounded just as bizarre as when he had originally read it.

  “Are you sure that’s where the body was found?”

  Annie’s request for clarification bothered Jack but at the same time offered him validation. His initial
instinct must have been correct. “Yeah. Why?”

  “If it was just the riding cloak, I’d think costume, but the portal to the black market is in Busse Woods. It’s very possible the victim is a wizard.”

  “You can check on it?” he asked as Amanda waved to him again, pointing up toward the hotel less than a hundred yards from where they sat. Anxiously, Jack tapped his hand against his thigh, desperate to return to return to his vacation and to Amanda.

  “Yeah. We’ll look into it. Go vacate.”

  “Thanks, Annie. I think I owe you again.”

  “No doubt, Jack. I’ll keep you posted.”

  “Really not necessary,” he said before hanging up. Feeling ridiculous for even calling, he sauntered back to Amanda and took Annie’s advice to vacate.

  Chapter 2

  Knock… knock… knock… knock.

  Knuckles rapped quickly against the cheap cubicle wall, the hollow pinging breaking Annie’s concentration. She pushed away the book she was reading. It was filled with vague theories about elemental spells; she was hoping to learn something useful about fire elemental spells.

  She glanced up, grateful for the reprieve. Bucky Hart stood at the entrance, holding the police file Annie had requested.

  “Bucky, you rock!”

  Bucky, the computer guru of Wizard Hall, sauntered into the office as if he owned it and sat in the chair across from her. “You’re such a tease, Ms. Pearce.” Bucky plopped his feet on the desk; his left canvas shoe, ripped at the toe, flapped around before settling. He lowered the frayed hem of his Aerosmith T-shirt when he leaned back in the chair, purposely leaving Annie to wait for the manila folder she was so anxious to read.

  Cocky, he tossed the folder on her desk. “Open it.” Bucky’s watery blue eyes twinkled at her.

  Annie had seen Bucky break into servers all over the world and find whatever information needed, so she couldn’t hide her disappointment when she opened this very sparse file.

  “This is it?”

  “I can only get you what they have.” He crossed his arms against his chest defensively.

  Annie felt bad. She hadn’t meant to accuse him. “Sorry. It’s just so… thin.”

  Bucky shrugged unapologetically and took out his phone to occupy himself while Annie did a precursory reading of the file just in case she needed more information before he left.

  The reading started with the nearly blank evidence list, which was a good indicator as to whether or not the murder was magical. If John Doe had been killed with a jinx, Annie expected a confusing lack of evidence. Her stomach churned as she read the scant list. Either nothing was found on or around the victim or the CSI team had missed all the evidence. She highly doubted the latter option. Those hairs on the back of her neck stood straight up.

  Bucky, always thorough, had divided the autopsy photos from the crime scene photos. Annie lay the crime scene shots across her desk. They were eerily familiar; a location she had visited hundreds of times, just outside one of the world’s four portals to the black market.

  Why leave the body here?

  The Busse Woods portal was the most used portal to enter the market. A magical murder just outside the portal couldn’t be a coincidence. Annie was becoming more anxious about this murder.

  Bucky was listening to music. He drummed his fingers against his thigh, swiped his phone screen, and bobbed his head.

  Annie grimaced and returned to the photos. The body had been discovered lying on top of a patch of exposed brown grass. The rest of the clearing outside the portal had been covered in a thick layer of snow before the crime scene unit arrived.

  A warm body could have melted that patch. Maybe it was something else.

  It was the cloak that had given Jack enough concern to call Annie while on vacation. The cloak was an unmistakable item of clothing still worn amongst traditional wizards and definitely not a common item among nonmagical society. The frayed hem of the cloak was covered in mud splatter, and the victim’s expensive leather shoes were caked in mud, leaves, and twigs.

  Good call, Jack!

  “Who wears a cloak and leather shoes to a forest preserve?” Annie asked out loud.

  “Can’t think of anyone, ’less they were heading into the market,” Bucky said without stopping his swiping and typing.

  The market.

  The teleportation spot was located behind the evergreen trees, a short distance away from the portal.

  Was he running from someone through the muddy trails?

  Shuffling through the pictures, Annie recognized a well-worked crime scene. She’d investigated a double homicide with the FBI last year and had spent a lot of time observing their procedures. This crime scene was covered in footsteps that traversed the snow in all directions as separate teams of investigators searched for clues, examined the victim, or interrogated witnesses.

  “Do you think we could get an aerial view of the crime scene? I’d like to examine the footprints if I can.” Annie said to Bucky.

  Bucky glanced up, shrugged, and returned to his phone. “I’ll see what I can find.”

  With a magnifying glass, Annie reviewed the crime scene for signs of spells that hadn’t hit the mark. She examined leaves, branches, and tree trunks, searching for broken or singed foliage. Finally, she spotted it: a tiny hint of a wayward spell near the portal. Just a hint of a broken branch and a scorch mark. She circled the picture with a red marker for further investigation when they finally made it to the crime scene.

  Behind her, the printer whirled to life, spitting out a complex satellite picture of the crime scene. “Thanks,” Annie said.

  “You ask, you shall receive.” He returned to his phone yet again.

  Thanks to the aerial photo, Annie could see that the clearing was marked with footsteps and crossed with long, thin lines. She double-checked the pictures of the John Doe. Sure enough, the heels of the victim’s shoes were caked in mud.

  He was dragged.

  Annie circled the start and end of the drag marks. She sighed.

  Was he dragged before or after he died?

  “I think he was killed in the clearing,” Annie commented to herself. Bucky grunted.

  Feeling her time with Bucky growing short, Annie returned to the riding cloak. Her gut told her it was the key. Such a small clue, yet it had set this all in motion. The heavy fabric fell from the victim’s shoulders. It had been twisted, either because it had been yanked or because it slipped from his shoulders when he fell to the ground. Annie summoned a magnifying glass to examine the brooch that pinned the cloak together.

  What is that design? It’s not American or based in witchcraft.

  It reminded Annie of several heavy links on a very thick chain. She had never seen the design before and circled it before handing the picture to Bucky.

  “Hey, can you find out what this is?”

  “Sure. Let’s see.” Bucky snapped a picture and did whatever it was that he did with his phone, leaving Annie to stare at the photo again.

  She drummed her fingers against the desk, impatient as Bucky surfed the internet.

  “I’m not finding that exact design,” he finally said. “Though from all the symbols I’ve seen over the years, I would guess we’re looking at something Middle Eastern.” He held up his phone and showed Annie several designs from the region.

  Definitely similar, just not the same.

  “So we start with the Middle Eastern databases?” Annie asked, handing him back the phone.

  “I’ll have Mrs. Cuttlebrink in the library examine the pictures, see if she has any other ideas.” Bucky’s phone beeped. He glanced at the screen, typed something, and looked at Annie. “Take another look through the file for anything else. I gotta book it,” he said and placed the phone on his desk.

  Feeling pressured now, Annie glanced through each page quickly for anything that appeared weird or needed additional information quickly. She spotted the witness list. There was one name: Troy Waters. Annie was unfamiliar with th
is name. He wasn’t on any wizard watch list.

  Probably nonmagical, she thought.

  “Can you search for a Troy Waters?” she asked Bucky. “Find out if he’s magical. He found the body.”

  “On it.”

  It didn’t take Bucky long to put down his phone. “Nothing in the magical databases. And yes, he has an Illinois driver’s license.”

  “For now I’ll make the assumption he’s not magical. So what do you think?” Annie asked. Over the course of his career, Bucky had pulled scores of police reports and had seen everything. She trusted his first impression.

  “First look, like I said, he’s wearing a cloak, to a forest preserve. No one dresses like that to hike. He was probably on the way to the market or leaving it. It can’t be a coincidence that the victim was found just outside the portal.”

  His phone buzzed and clicked again. He took a quick glance. “Second thing, there’s no nonmagical evidence. I see a few broken twigs and one scorch mark near the portal. I say it’s a magical murder,” he said definitively.

  “I need to get into the morgue and look at the body,” she said.

  “It’s probably time to create some identification for you. This seems to be a recurrence.”

  Annie chuckled under her breath. This was her second case involving a victim at the Cook County Morgue in Chicago. Under most circumstances, the Vampire Attack Unit removed bodies from the morgue, but since this was an unofficial case sent to her by a vacationing FBI agent, Annie would be verifying the magical murder. She sighed.

  “Unfortunately Jack is a really good source,” she said, grimacing as she remembered the overwhelming smell of antiseptic used to clean the autopsy room at the morgue.

  “The FBI guy?”

  She hadn’t realized she had said that so loudly. “Yeah. Him. He sent this my way. Unfortunately, his instincts were good.” Annie piled the pictures and the notes together and stuck them in the folder. “Let me know if anything else pops up in the file.” Annie didn’t need to remind him; he did that anyway.

  “Who am I?” Spreading his arms wide, Bucky grinned broadly. The gold tooth at the back of his mouth flashed. “All over it. I’ll text you if there’s any emergency exposure. Anything else?”