by Jaye Wells
He motioned toward the couch in the sunken living room. The U-shaped leather couch was the color of rich cognac and looked as expensive as everything else in the room. Through the large windows along the back wall, the sun was kissing Lake Erie. Dusk. Only two nights until the Blue Moon, and we were no closer to finding Dionysus than we’d been a week earlier.
“What happened?” I asked, praying he had something that might break the case wide open.
He pulled two glasses from the bar and poured a couple of fingers of Pappy Van Winkle bourbon in them. Only the best in the Volos house. He didn’t bother asking me if I wanted any. I didn’t bother pretending I didn’t.
“One of my labs at Volos Towers was robbed.”
I frowned. “After midnight, right?”
He nodded and handed me my glass before joining me on the couch. “My security guy called me about an hour after I got home to let me know.”
“What was taken?” I took a gulp of the bourbon and savored the smoky sweet burn on its way home.
He grimaced. “That’s where this conversation gets tricky, Detective.”
I pursed my lips. “Been cooking dirty, Johnny?”
His jaw tightened at the nickname he’d always hated. “The cook was clean, but the materials weren’t exactly sanctioned by Uncle Sam.”
Most legitimate magic labs had to use ingredients authorized by the Federal Drug and Potion Agency. The government claimed this kept clean magic pristine, but everyone knew it was so they could ensure they got every penny in tax revenue they could from Big Magic companies, like Sortilege Inc.
“All right, so you were cooking something that might not be exactly legal. You got reason to think the perp was our friend Dionysus?”
John set down his drink and rose. He retrieved a file folder from the long granite counter separating his state-of-the-art kitchen from the living area. When he came back he threw the folder on my lap. Frowning, I opened it. Two photographs fell out. The first showed overturned stainless-steel tables and broken glass and equipment littering the floor. On the wall, someone had spray-painted the phrase IN VINO VERITAS. The second shot showed a large walk-in freezer with empty and overturned shelves.
My heart kicked into overdrive. “I’d say this looks like his handiwork.” I looked up at John. “How bad is the potion he took?”
John finished off his bourbon before answering. “About six months ago, a party contacted me needing a special package.”
“Should I even bother asking who?”
He shook his head. “It’s safer if you don’t.”
“Safer for me—or you?”
He smiled but didn’t elaborate. “They wanted me to develop a truth serum.”
I frowned. “That’s what all the secrecy is about. Everyone and their brother tries to cook a truth serum at some point.”
He shook his head. “They wanted something odorless, tasteless, and totally untraceable by all scientific and magical means.”
My eye widened. “Jesus. And you said yes?”
He had the decency to at least grimace. “The price was right.”
I sighed and shook my head. All along I’d suspected John had still been cooking. But hearing him admit to being what basically amounted to a magical mercenary made me sick to my stomach. Especially when he was cooking such dangerous shit. “You’re a bigger asshole than I gave you credit for.”
“Careful, Katie. It’s a long fall down from a high horse.”
I gritted my teeth and resisted rising to his bait. “So to recap: You made a completely untraceable truth serum, which has now been stolen by a fucking lunatic who plans to unleash some kind of weapon on the city in two nights.”
He thought it over a second. “ ’Bout sums it up.”
“Not quite,” I said. “Because now you want me to help you find him. Right?”
“Yep.”
My laugh was bitter. “You got a pair of brass fucking balls. I’ll give you that.”
“Look, Kate, I know you’re mad at me. I probably even deserve it.”
I snorted. “Oh, you definitely deserve that and more.”
“Regardless, we have the same goal where Dionysus is concerned.”
“Not really. I want to stop him before he can hurt innocent people. You just want your property back.”
He tilted his head. “Jesus, you’re so jaded. What the fuck happened to you?”
I thunked my glass on the table. “Life happened, John.”
“As it happens, I have just as much investment in protecting this city—more. Especially now.”
Something in his tone made the hair on my neck stand on end. “Why now?”
He leaned back and looked me directly in the eyes. “Because I’m running in Owens’s place for mayor.”
The words were so incomprehensible and unexpected, they left me punch drunk. “Wha—”
He nodded. “The special election will be held in March.”
“What the fresh fuck? You? Mayor?” I laughed out loud now that my brain had started working again. “That’s fucking hilarious.”
His face hardened. Not with doubt but with that look proud people get when they’re doubted. “I don’t see what’s so funny about it.”
“You can’t be serious. You’re a criminal.”
An eyebrow rose. “With a sealed record thanks to an immunity deal.”
I paused. I’d forgotten about that part. After John turned on Uncle Abe and testified against him, he’d gotten a clean bill of legal health thanks to the US attorney’s office. “Hernandez isn’t running?” After Owens died the head of the city council, Pablo Hernandez, took over as acting mayor until a special election could be held. Hernandez was one of Owens’s longtime cronies. I’d just assumed the mayor’s office was as good as his.
John picked at an invisible speck on his leg. “Mr. Hernandez has had a change of heart about his ambitions. He’ll serve until the election is over, but he won’t be running.”
I frowned. “What about Rebis?” Anton Rebis came from old steel money. Despite his full coffers, no one had expected him to give Owens much of a problem in the election. But now Owens was dead. Would the city really pick an Adept, like Volos, over an old-money Mundane candidate?
“Soon Mr. Rebis will be busy doing some damage control over an unfortunate incident involving a minor.”
I blinked. Owens was barely cold, but John had already managed to not only launch a bid for mayor, but also ensure any opposition would be destroyed. “Holy shit,” I said. “You really want this?”
He nodded. “I really do.”
“What’s your angle?”
He shook his head. “Why does there have to be an angle, Kate? Why is it you’re the only one allowed to serve this city?”
That brought me up short. “I didn’t say that—”
“Anyway,” he said, standing, “regardless of my motivations, I’m entirely too busy with the campaign to seek vendetta justice against Dionysus.”
Something clicked for me in the subtext of his little speech. “Oh, wait. I get it.” I stood, too, and went to stare out the windows overlooking the lake. “Now that you’re running for mayor you need to keep your nose clean.”
“Yes,” he said, coming to stand next to me. “Plus, I would like to announce my candidacy on November first.”
I looked up at him and laughed bitterly. “And displaying Dionysus’s head to the masses will do wonders for your campaign.”
His lips twitched. “I knew you were a smart girl.”
I closed my eyes. A sensation of water closing in around me, rising up to cover my head. The moral part of me, the one that had principles, wanted to tell John to go fuck himself. To walk away and let the whole fucking city sink to the bottom of Lake Erie. But the cop part of me—the watchdog—couldn’t surrender the henhouse to wolves like Uncle Abe and Dionysus. I knew which side of me would win. It was always the part that won despite the murky grayness of the choice. When I opened my eyes again, I found John
watching me with a solemn expression.
“You hate me again.” A statement.
“I never stopped.”
Turning away, I went to go look at the pictures. I’d have to spin whatever information I got from John with the team. But I reminded myself that one more half-truth in a history of lies wasn’t so much a sin as a means of survival. “What do you know that I don’t about Dionysus?”
“That’s the problem.” John refilled his glass. When he held up the bourbon as if to ask if I wanted a top-off, I shook my head. Now that I knew the score, I couldn’t risk it. He shrugged. “I’m not sure I know much more than you. This guy’s good. Thorough.”
I nodded. “He’s been one step ahead of us this whole time. We only find clues when he wants us to find them.”
“What do you know about his motivations?”
I looked up from the pictures. “The usual. Mom and Dad thoroughly fucked him up, so now he’s making the world pay. Only he’s charismatic enough to sell his revenge as a new sort of religion.”
I started pacing around the living area. Helped me think better as I talked. “So far we know he’s stolen a rape potion and a truth elixir. So it’s a good bet whatever he’s planning involves those two things.”
“Nothing tears down society’s foundations faster than truth and sex,” he said. “What’s his delivery method?”
Worrying my bottom lip with my teeth, I made a pass by the kitchen. “Water sources?”
“Lake Erie is the water source for the entire city. Too large.”
“But he could dump it into one of the filtration tanks.”
“Maybe, but that seems too quiet for his MO. He’ll want fireworks.”
I stopped and turned. “When we raided his last known residence, there was a bomb waiting for us. Probably more where that came from.” My heart picked up pace. Two nights, two nights, two nights, my mind chanted. I started pacing again.
“Considering how much potion he stole from Aphrodite and me, he’s got to have a large facility to store all this stuff while he prepares.”
My pacing trail took me past John’s bar. With the cogs of my mind spinning, my gaze barely grazed each item I saw. “The BPD’s already searched all the warehouses at the docks,” I said. “And all the abandoned factories along the tracks. It could be any—”
I stopped in my tracks as a wine label on the bar captured my attention: a dancing satyr playing a lute. The name of the brand was Veritas. I grabbed the bottle and pointed it at him. “Where’d you get this?”
John shrugged. “A client sent it to me. Haven’t had a chance to try it.”
“When did you get it?” I looked down at the bottle and flipped it over.
“About a week”—he paused as if it had just clicked for him, too—“ago.”
The label on the back held the typical jargon about alcohol percentage. The description said, “This sexy red should be consumed when you’re ready to lose all your inhibitions.” I held up the bottle and recited the name of the vineyard. “Dithyramb Winery—Babylon, Ohio.”
John’s eyes widened. “You’re shitting me.”
Dithyramb was the term for an ancient hymn to Dionysus.
I shook my head and handed the bottle over. My brain was busy thinking about the call from Val. Pulling my phone out, I checked the image she’d e-mailed me. “I’ll be damned.”
“Hmm?”
I looked up. “Last night, Dionysus hexed a couple of sororities on campus with a rape potion. We arrested one of his followers on site thinking he’d slipped it into their drinks. But I found out earlier the potion had been in the wine when it was bottled. The labels of the bottles on the scene match this one.”
John hefted the bottle in one hand. “Who else you think he sent these to?”
I glanced toward his door. “I’d bet our friend across the hall received some, or it was hand-delivered.” I made a mental note to call my friend Val at the BPD CSI lab and see if they’d logged any opened wine bottles at the crime scene.
“Let’s see what we can find on this winery.” John walked over to the counter, where a sleek, silver laptop sat open like he’d abandoned it when I’d arrived. He quickly shut down a window filled with what looked like accounting spreadsheets. The only number I saw on it had so many zeros I couldn’t count them.
He pulled up a browser and entered the name of the winery. Two seconds later we found it. “Jesus this guy’s got a pair. Creating an entire online presence for his secret lair?”
The front page had a picture of a bottle of wine bearing the same label as the one John had received. Along the top were typical links: Home, About, Discussion Boards, Map.
The map showed a location on the far side of Babylon, along the Steel River before the city’s pollution got ahold of the water. The area was a popular destination for Babylonians looking to get away for a weekend. Lots of charming bed-and-breakfasts and antiques shops. And, apparently, the headquarters of a madman masquerading as a winemaker.
“I’ll be damned. I’ve driven by that place before. Back then it was called Babylon Cellars.”
John clicked on the Discussion Board link. And immediately ran into a password-protected page. A large red warning claimed this area was for members only, but there was no place to request membership. “Wonder if this is how he spread his instructions to his followers.”
I pulled my phone from my pocket and punched a number. “Gardner, it’s Prospero, can you call the team together at the gym.”
“We’re all here,” she said. I cursed realizing that while I’d slept off the potion from the night before, they’d been working all day to break the case. “You coming in?”
“I’ll be there soon.”
“Everything okay?”
“I found him.”
“Get your ass here yesterday.”
“Yes, sir.”
I hung up. “All right. I’m headed in.”
John stood. “You’ll be careful, right?”
I grimaced at him. “Don’t pretend you care about anything other than getting credit for breaking the case.”
He put his hands on my shoulders. “Shut up. You can convince yourself I’m your enemy, but deep down you know it’s because we have unfinished business.” His hands kneaded my flesh and his pupils had that special light men’s eyes get when they think you’re going to allow them access to one of your holes.
“Thanks for reminding me.” His lips started to curve into a charming smile. I removed it with my knuckles.
His head snapped back. Pain shot through my hand and wrist. When I pulled it back, blood coated the skin. John’s blood. It was my turn to smile.
A rivulet of blood leaked from his left nostril. He didn’t wipe it away. Instead he watched me with red-flushed cheeks. I couldn’t tell if he was angry or turned on, but I suspected it was a little of both. I wasn’t naive enough to believe John actually wanted me; more that he wanted to assert himself over me. “That was… unexpected.”
“Shouldn’t have been,” I said, shaking my throbbing hand. “Stay away from Danny.”
He stepped forward, lording his height over me. “Or what?” he whispered.
I made a gun out of my fingers and stabbed it just over his heart.
His eyes flared. He caught my hand with his larger one and pulled it up to his mouth. His tongue flicked against the sensitive skin, sending lightning from my hand down to my toes.
Snatching my hand back, I closed it into a tight fist. I told myself the unexpected spike of arousal was an aftershock from the night before. But my libido called me a liar. Like magic, John was a dirty vice I couldn’t afford to indulge or I’d risk losing myself to it completely. Mixed in with the shameful attraction was a hefty dose of anger that left me unsure whether I wanted to fight him or fuck him. My breath coming faster, I pushed away. His eyes tracked me like a predator.
“This isn’t over,” he threatened.
I licked my suddenly dry lips. “It was over ten years ago.”
“Like hell it was.”
I shook my head. “You’re poison. I don’t want you in my life.”
He raised his hands to the side. “Like it or not, I’m in it, sweetheart. Besides, you came to me—twice, now, isn’t it?”
I clenched my fists. He was right. Like a junkie I kept coming back. “Won’t happen again.”
“We’ll see.” He smiled. “Good luck with Dionysus. I’m sure that partner of yours won’t find watching your ass a hardship.”
The spike of jealousy in his words pleased me. “He hasn’t complained about it so far.”
With that, I turned the ass in question toward him and walked away. “Good-bye, psycho.”
“Good night, Kate.”
Chapter Twenty-Six
An hour later Gardner slammed down the phone and marched out of her office. Mez, Morales, Shadi, and I were gathered around the whiteboard in the old boxing ring. I’d posted a map with a big red X over the winery onto the board. While she’d been on the phone with Eldritch, I’d been telling them everything I knew so far, which wasn’t nearly enough to make this op a slam dunk.
“He can’t spare the backup,” Gardner said. “Some of Aphrodite’s girls are staging a protest at city hall and there’s a jumper on the Bessemer Bridge who’s got traffic backed up for miles.”
“Did you tell him this winery is the best and only lead we have on Dionysus?”
She shot me a give-me-some-credit look that prompted me to immediately mumble an apology.
“Okay, so we don’t have BPD backup,” Morales said. “What’s our play?”
Gardner scowled and looked down at the floor. After a few tense moments, she shook her head. “We can’t risk it.”
“Sir—” I began, but she cut me off.
“Save your breath, Prospero. I understand the risks involved. I also know how close we are to the Blue Moon. That’s exactly why I can’t send you in. This guy’s been one step ahead of us since the new moon.” She shot a grave frown around the circle. “He’ll for damned sure have the winery rigged in case of ambush.”
“But—”