“I fired him. He got a couple hundred bucks. He was on a trial period.”
“How much did you agree on initially?”
“We didn’t really discuss it per se. My base pay is sixty these days. Ya know, to be competitive. I told Celesse to tell my secretary to tell human resources to throw him on the payroll. He was...an aggressive hire.”
“Why did you fire him?”
“He was a little shit.”
“Performance, then. Did he want to be terminated?”
“He didn’t contest. He wanted more money, though.”
Rosemary put on glasses and looked at Lucan cautiously. “Lucan, I’ve been your attorney for five years and all of this is bullshit and you know it. What aren’t you telling me? You know what, never mind. Don’t tell me. Please.”
“Got it.”
“So, let me understand this. You hired this kid to work for you as an errand boy, fired him for ‘performance’, he wanted more money, and so his father came and shot you?”
“Yep.”
“Why was his father involved?”
Lucan made a flying motion with his hand. “Helicopter parent, I guess. How should I know why some random dude wanted to kill me?”
“You don’t pay me enough for this,” she said.
“You think I want to sit around and chat with MCU agents all day?”
“Come on, let’s get this over with.”
Lucan sat up on the bed. Rosemary shook her head and opened the door for Demetrius.
The detective entered, sat down, and looking at his paper, which already had some notes on it, he said “Thank you for your cooperation, Lucan. First, some basics. Why were you at Skyscraper Park?”
“I was spending some quality time with my daughter.”
“You normally have bodyguards. Where were they?”
“I told them to stay back at the entrance to the park by the elevators,” Lucan said. “It’s usually safe.”
Demetrius jotted down some details that Lucan couldn’t read. He didn’t take his eyes off the paper, but his voice was confident, like he knew something.
“We identified the man who attacked you. His name is Bartholomew Dyer. Age fifty-two. He lives in Bogville. Do you know him?”
“We met once before.”
“When?”
“Last night.”
“Tell me more.”
“I hired his kid to be my personal assistant. He sucked, so I fired him. His dad wanted me to give the kid more money. It’s a money grab, detective.”
Demetrius confirmed the money due and he added up the tallies on the paper. “What did his son do for you?”
“Errands. Random stuff that would bore you, detective.”
“You’ve had some financial difficulty this past month, is that right?”
Shit. The interrogation was turning. Lucan didn’t know where Shalewood was going, but he didn’t like it.
But before he could open his mouth, Rosemary interjected and said “Mr. Shalewood, what are you getting at?”
“My question is relevant,” Demetrius said. “It’s my understanding you had to shut down your new state-of-the-art grimoire production factory.”
“Yeah.”
“Four days ago.”
“Yeah.”
“The same time you hired Mr. Dyer’s son, is that right?”
“Were you an English major in school? All these coincidences and symbols you’re painting here are lovely.”
“My job is to connect dots. Why did your factory shut down?”
“I don’t have to answer that.”
Demetrius grinned. “No, you don’t, do you? But you see the problem, don’t you, Lucan? Your factory shuts down. You hire the kid. You get shot. Is there anything you’re leaving out?”
“Yeah. The part where I get up and walk away. You’re trying to say it was my fault I got shot? And that somehow this has to do with my business operations?”
“You’re the only one I can talk to. Bartholomew is dead.”
Lucan almost fell off the bed. “What do you mean he’s dead? He was alive when I last saw him!”
If the bastard was dead, how was he going to get his revenge?
“A dragon captured him, but he cast a spell and broke free. Police shot him and he fell off the roof trying to escape.”
“Shit.”
“Sorry. You don’t get a day in court this time. His son might. He’s the one I’m looking for.”
“Give him the kid’s information,” Rosemary whispered.
“His name’s Tony,” Lucan said. “My secretary will give you what you need.”
Demetrius closed his notebook. “I appreciate that. I’m sorry for the questions, but I won’t overstep my bounds. But it’s awfully strange, though, Lucan—those coincidences. Someone might see all of this and start asking you harder questions.”
“Life is strange,” Rosemary said. “Are we done?”
“I’ll be chalking this up as a domestic dispute,” Demetrius said. “You’re innocent, of course, even if you did something to provoke it. But even the least astute journalist is going to ask the same questions. Consider this a practice session, Mr. Grimoire.”
Demetrius nodded, stood, and strode to the door. “Oh, and by the way, my wife’s not dropping out any time soon. She’s looking forward to the debates.”
Lucan frowned. He wanted to curse Demetrius out but thought the better of it.
When the detective left the room, Lucan kicked the bed and threw his pillow against the wall.
***
Demetrius entered his car and settled himself on the leather seats. He had parked on the first floor of the parking garage and his car was submerged in shadows. An air-conditioning unit in the wall gave additional privacy and a chill in the air.
He disliked Lucan on sight. He had never met the billionaire, but it was clear he was hiding something.
He pulled out his phone and dialed, the light from the phone the brightest thing in the car.
“Mr. Governor? Yeah, it’s me. It’s about your nephew. We need to talk.”
X
Celesse hunched over her laptop in the waiting room of the hospital.
Her fingers moved furiously as she searched for Bartholomew Dyer.
She wasn’t going to stop until she found everything about him.
He didn’t have social media accounts. His phone number had been disconnected. She found newspaper articles that mentioned him as pro-governor.
BARTHOLOMEW DYER, A RESIDENT OF BOGVILLE, WAS RELUCTANT TO SPEAK AT THE ELVEN TOWN HALL MEETING, BUT WHEN HE DID, HE EXPRESSED SUPPORT FOR GOVERNOR GRIMOIRE.
The date was before Lucan announced his candidacy, but it was enough.
Pro-governor. Elven. Bogville resident. Bogville was normally a stronghold for the governor—many of them were direct descendants of elves that died in the exodus ranches. The governor drew his support from the traditionalists.
The exodus. Why hadn’t she thought of it?
She searched a database of exodus descendants that she had used once to locate potential donors for Lucan’s campaign. The website was calm, in a granite hue that reminded her of an epitaph.
Dyer.
She found four matches. A man and a woman, aged seventy-two. A pair of grandparents, aged ninety-four. Their profiles were accompanied by sullen photographs of elves dressed in black robes like elders with sad, jewel-tone eyes. Their faces were austere and even though the elves were dead they still gave her a chill. She took screenshots of the profiles and closed the window quickly, unable to look them in the eye.
“This is perfect,” she whispered.
She found a statement from Bartholomew, from an interview conducted with exodus survivors.
THE YOUNG ELVEN MAN REPORTS THAT A TEACHER HELD HIM BACK FROM ATTENDING THE EXODUS, AGAINST HIS FAMILY’S WISHES. HE TRIED TO ESCAPE HIS TEACHER’S HOME, BUT HIS PARENTS’ BOAT HAD ALREADY SET SAIL TO FOUR PALM ISLAND IN THE MIDDLE OF THE DRACONIAN SEA. THE YOUNG BOY RECAL
LS HAVING TO ID HIS MOTHER, HIS FATHER, AND GRANDPARENTS. HIS TEACHER ATTEMPTED TO ADOPT HIM, BUT HE RAN AWAY, WAS EVENTUALLY PULLED INTO THE FOSTER CARE SYSTEM BUT EMERGED AS AN INDUSTRIOUS CITIZEN, WORKING ON THE PRODUCTION LINE IN MAGICAL PRODUCTION FACILITIES.…
“Even better,” Celesse said.
She kept searching, and she found an image of Bartholomew, burly and unsmiling as he leaned against a truck. Tony sat inside, squinting at the camera. The sun must have been bright that day.
She searched his address and arrived at a photo. A tea parlor in town square with an apartment above. A strong, masonry building. With a quick keystroke she took a screenshot of the photo, invoking a shutter sound from her laptop.
She pulled up her email client and typed in a message: KILLER WAS PRO-GOVERNOR. ALSO AN EXODUS KID AND IT LOOKS TO HAVE MESSED HIM UP. TWO ARRESTS FOR PUBLIC INTOXICATION BUT NO INDICATION OF A HABIT. YET.
She attached the photos she’d taken and emailed it to her fact checker. She needed as much ammo as she could to help Lucan fight back. All she needed to do was give a small trickle to the press and they would take care of the rest. It would also make her look good; campaign manager girlfriend, on the warpath because of the shooting. Good quality for a First Lady to have.
Not that she was faking it. But she had a limited window to make the most of the news cycle, and since Bartholomew was dead and couldn’t defend himself, she had no problem exploiting his image.
She shifted her focus to Tony. He was still out there somewhere. Probably in hiding.
She found several matches to his name, including several social media pages that were locked.
But they all said he attended Magic Hope University.
How had she forgotten that?
She found a number to the registrar’s office and confirmed that he was still a student there. The clerk could not tell her any more.
She held his address in her hand and a photo of Tony on her phone. Tony had a stressed look on his face, like a teenager going through turmoil.
She hated him, from his elven ears to his blood. Sure, he hadn’t tried to kill the man she loved, but he was just as much to blame.
She had to find him before he started talking.
XI
Miri watched as Old Dark yawned and lumbered awake. His eye sweltered beneath his eyepatch, and he looked like he had been in deep sleep. She wondered what sleep was like after a thousand year curse.
If it were her, she’d never want to sleep again. But if you were holed up in a cage all day, what else were you going to do? If she was ever able to update her thesis with her observations, the world would be shocked indeed to know that the great dragon lord spent most of his time sleeping.
“I am going to see about getting you a television again,” she said.
That would be a tough battle. Lucan cursed her out the last time she brought Dark a television. But cruelty was cruelty and she wasn’t going to stand for it.
Dark yawned again, exposing a gum line with missing top teeth. His jaw cracked and he twisted his sinewy neck until it popped. Then he settled his gaze on her and grinned.
“I dreamt about you, Miri Charmwell.”
“I told you to call me Miri. How are you?”
He glanced around the room. “Do you even have to ask the question?” he asked tiredly.
“How do you feel?”
“The curse is strengthening,” Dark said. He paced around the cage like a lion in an enclosure. “It’s terrible, Miri. I can feel it in my broken wings, crushing them more and more every day. It’s a miracle they haven’t fallen off.”
Dark paused and looked her from head to toe. He sniffed. “You smell positively awful. Been gallivanting in the bogs, have you? Birch smell doesn’t become you.”
How did he know?
Did he really smell the bog’s flora on her? The smell of nature must have been magnified to a dragon, and there wouldn’t have been any hiding it. She was fascinated—what would it be like to know where someone had been just by smelling them?
“Yes. I have been at the Ancestral Bogs all day.”
“Did you find the treasure? Was all of my gold still intact?”
“They’re still dragging the water,” Miri said. “When I left they had barely removed all the trees.”
Dark’s eyebrows raised. “What do you mean they removed the trees?”
“We had to hide your tomb.”
Dark grimaced, but she couldn’t tell if it was from pain or from the news.
“Where did you hide it?”
Miri shrugged. “Lucan handled it.”
“You mean that foul-mouthed fop has control of my ancestral mausoleum?”
His voice was quiet, but she knew the tone. He was going to burst into anger at any moment. She turned and motioned to the door. Earl entered, pushing the flat screen television, its screen still cracked from when Lucan threw it over.
“Yes,” she said, pretending to be absent-minded, “I’ve been told it’s in a safe place. Earl, use the outlet over there.”
But Dark didn’t respond. He sat down and ran his claws against the bars. “Your fearless leader has a death wish.”
“Tell me something I don’t know,” Miri said. “Now, what was it you liked to watch? Oh, right—the news channel.”
She pressed a remote control and turned the television to the news. A commercial for Skyscraper Park aired. It showed people jogging through the park’s lush foot paths and panoramas of the flower-encrusted skyscraper complex as Skyscraper Park flashed on the screen in cursive white letters.
“Weather is on later tonight,” Miri said. “For now, I guess the news will have to do, though I don’t know how much of it you’ll understand.”
“I understood it very much, Miri. But tell me: what do you make of Frog?”
Frog was the dragon of the weather. He was a middle-aged river dragon who famously ingratiated himself with one of the news stations to become a weather forecaster. He had a strange way of speaking and Miri sometimes wondered if he was mentally sound.
“Do you know Frog?”
“No, at least I don’t think so. I knew a lot of river dragons in my day. What do you make of him, Miri?”
Miri stared at the ceiling as she tried to find the words. “Eccentric would be the first word that comes to mind.”
“Oh?”
“He’s not the most intelligent dragon in Magic Hope City.”
“Then how did he gain such a celebrity status?”
“No idea.” Miri pulled up a chair and opened her notebook. “Where were we with our information session? Here we go: the aquifer.”
Dark sighed. “I remember our pact. To tell each other everything. But I don’t feel like talking today. I am in too much pain.”
“What else are you going to do?” Miri asked. “Besides, I only have fifteen minutes. Maybe less.”
The dragon settled on the floor and waved his hands telling her to proceed.
“You always claimed to be protecting the aquifer. I think I know why but—”
“What do you think you know?”
“My theory is that—”
“Theory? Oh ho, tell me your little theory.”
Miri slammed her pencil against the notebook. “Will you let me talk?”
“The aquifer is personal, Miri. Have you ever seen it?”
She had heard of the great caverns beneath the world where rivers of magic flowed. She’d seen pictures of them; the great stalactite formations, explorers standing on the edge of a roiling pink river. The legends said that this was magic in its purest state. It was so potent that using a simple spell could kill a man. Only a dragon could wield it. Otherwise it had to be filtered. Humans had developed filtering technology, the most significant scientific breakthrough in the last century.
“I’ve seen pictures.”
“Do you not have access? From what you’ve told me, everyone in this city uses magic like water.”
“No. Aquifer access is restricted. A
t least here in the city. No one would want to visit it anyway because the magic is too strong. But there are still Keepers who guard access points in the wilderness.”
“Protecting the old way of life!” Dark exclaimed. “Tell me about these Keepers.”
“No, we were talking about the aquifer, so let’s get back on topic. You know the qualities of the aquifer more than any dragon that has ever lived. You knew that elves couldn’t use unfiltered magic. The aquifer was a political weakness for you. You feared that if elves ever figured out how to channel magic, it would be the end of your race.”
Dark regarded her statement, stroking his chin.
“Was I close?” Miri asked, her eyes wide with excitement.
“Not at all.”
“What!”
She had explored this idea in her thesis. She’d spent countless hours to discover this! It was a stinging blow.
Miri scratched her head. “I’m confused. What am I missing?”
“When you woke me up in the bogs, what did you encounter?”
Miri screwed her face together, thinking back to that fateful night. The image of thousands of Magic Eaters flowed across her mind—fetid-smelling snails crawling on tentacles that made her want to vomit.
“Surely you’re not talking about Magic Eaters? They’re monsters.”
“Have you ever experienced a monster ‘problem’, Miri?”
“We have them outside the city all the time.”
“I figured as much. That is what happens when you use magic with total abandon. Don’t you think we dragons wouldn’t love to use it to solve our problems? We might have disposed of you elves a long time ago. But when you use magic, there is always leftover residue. And that residue attracts monsters.”
Miri nodded. “We devoted entire councils to the problem. This city was originally a safe haven from them. But I didn’t think that was your only reason to protect the aquifer. I thought stockpiling gold had more to do with it.”
“Ha! Gold and magic are different.”
“But then why did you hoard? A dragon has no use for gold.”
“But humans and elves do.”
“What, you’re saying that you collected it just so we couldn’t have it?”
Old Evil (The Last Dragon Lord Book 2) Page 7