Mission accomplished, I finally broke the kiss. I tucked my hands behind my back and stepped away from him. “You’d better go now, or I might not let you.”
He was heavy-lidded and drunk with pleasure. A look I remembered. And a state of being I’d been counting on. “Yeah. See you tonight.”
“Tonight.” I walked him to the door, keeping his gaze locked on mine until he was out in the hall. “Bye, Coop.”
“Bye, Lilibeth.”
I shut the door and leaned against it, my smile unstoppable. I reached into the back pocket of my jeans and pulled out the prize that kiss had earned me.
Cooper’s keycard.
I waited until I was sure he was out of the building, then I went downstairs. Toly’s office was dark. He was probably in the shop. Or wherever. Right now, I didn’t care.
With nerves racing through me, I stood in the vestibule facing the elevator. I was about to swipe Cooper’s card through the reader when my phone rang. I jumped, then caught my breath and checked the screen.
Greyson. I answered. “Hey.”
“You all right? You sound funny.”
“I’m fine. The ringer scared me. What’s up? You find out anything about—”
“Not over the phone. I have something else I need to do, but I can be there in the next hour or so.”
That was more than enough time for me to investigate and get back to my apartment. “Sounds good. And since you’re now on the approved list, you can come on up.”
“See you soon, princess.”
“Hah-ha. Bye.” I tucked my phone away and ran the card through the reader. It worked like a charm.
Thirty seconds later, I was standing in the alcove of the Basement. On my own. I grinned, unable to be anything but tickled at my own sly ingenuity. I stuck Cooper’s keycard in my back pocket with my phone for safe keeping.
Then I said a little prayer he wouldn’t miss it anytime soon.
I tiptoed forward to where the alcove met the main hall and looked down both directions of the corridor. No one. I took a big sniff. No trace of Owen’s aftershave either, although I wondered if Greyson would have been able to pick something up. His senses were definitely keener than mine.
I turned back to look at the two locked rooms on either side of the elevator. Greyson said those rooms were above his paygrade, but Cooper was a fireman. A first responder. Surely they had access to everything.
And if they didn’t, I’d do what I did best and slip under the door.
I took the keycard out again. My instincts said try the door on the right first, so I did.
As the keycard went through, the red light on the pad changed to green. Nice as ice. I turned the handle and pushed the door open. The room beyond was dark, and very little light filtered in from the dim alcove.
I didn’t see a light switch so I swapped the keycard for my phone and fired up my flashlight.
The room was disappointingly empty except for a wire rack holding what looked like rolled-up vinyl banners and a wheeled cart with some folding chairs. I sighed. Greyson had been right. These rooms were storage.
I decided to check the one on the left anyway. When the light went green, I opened the door a crack and was about to stick my lit-up phone inside when a faint blue glow registered. A security light maybe. I took a step in, expecting to see more stuff that had been mothballed.
Instead, I saw where the faint blue glow emanated from. A good-sized crystal sat on top of some sort of cage-like structure. The light coming from it pulsed as if it was growing stronger. My eyes adjusted a little more and I realized there was a person inside the cage.
Owen.
I slipped inside and let the door close behind me. I blinked, trying to get my eyes to adjust further to the darkness. “Owen, can you hear me?”
No response. He was clearly unconscious and strapped into a seat in the center of an odd contraption that looked like a cross between a giant erector set and a birdcage. I stepped closer. Magic energy danced through the room. Elven magic.
The glowing blue crystal at the top was about the size of my fist. It crackled with energy and every so often, a soft moan escaped Owen.
As my eyes adjusted further, I took a closer look at him. Strands of silver wire wrapped his wrists, ankles and forehead. The strands snaked out to the cage, then wound up through the apparatus to meet at the base of the crystal.
I glanced back at Owen. The points of his ears were gone, rounded off like a humans, and he was pale. As if the life force was being drained out of him. The pieces of the puzzle I’d been trying to solve started clicking into place.
“Hang on, Owen. I’ll get you out of here.”
I reached for the lock on the front of the cage.
Something cracked me on the back of the head. Pain exploded through my body, and my vision filled with sparks. My hands slipped off the bars of the cage, and I fell, only catching a glimpse of a person who seemed vaguely familiar before everything went black.
I woke up with my head throbbing so hard I could barely see. I had no idea who’d hit me or how long I’d been out. I reached to brush my hair off my face and couldn’t move.
I tugged at my arms. Restraints at my wrists and elbows kept me from moving anything more than my fingers. As my vision slowly returned, the bars of a cage came into focus around me. I’d been confined to the cell where Owen had been. I looked around and found him at the edge of the glow’s soft circle. He was lying near the wall, facing away from me.
My heart sank at the thought that he was dead. I had to get out of here. Besides the restraints, the strands of silver were connected to me now.
“You’re a busybody.”
I turned my head, trying to see who’d spoken, and succeeded in making my head ache even more. The voice was as vaguely familiar as the person I’d seen before blanking out. It took a moment for my eyes to focus and another second for my aching head to make sense of who was standing in front of me. “You?”
“Yes, me.” Cookie Featherstone shook her head. “Who did you think was doing all this? My grandfather?” She laughed.
“He must be involved somehow.”
“Not in a major way. All he does is help out by bringing an exceptionally gifted employee to dinner once in a while.”
So that’s the “date” Owen had been going on. “So when Toly checks all the employees to see how skilled they are, he’s doing that for you?”
She scoffed. “Not entirely. He’s also doing that so he doesn’t have to concentrate so hard on running the shimmer. He’d rather spend time building his toys.”
There was no point in keeping my visit to the B&B a secret now. “Then why does he have an office at your B&B?”
“He doesn’t. That’s my office.”
“And your toy designs?”
She put her hand on one of the cage’s metal bars. “Those weren’t toys. Those were prototypes of more magic-gathering devices. My prototypes. I am the granddaughter of a tinker, you know.”
“You’re an embarrassment is what you are.”
Her lip curled. “You couldn’t leave it alone, could you? Nice of you to make your way down here on your own, though. Saved me the effort of getting you here.” She leaned in. “And I already knew you’d been at the Gingerbread. I saw you on the security cameras. You would have been next anyway.”
She straightened and glanced over at Owen. “He was just about done, so it worked out.” Then she smiled. “Now I’ll have extra crystals to sell this month. Bonus! And you’re a strong one.”
She had no idea. As my wits returned, I understood exactly what she was doing. Those puzzle pieces? All together now. And the picture was clear. Cookie was stripping the magic out of the workers with this contraption, and she was selling the crystals on the underweb. I scowled right back at her. “Stronger than you are smart.”
She ignored my dig to watch a spark of blue travel up one of the silver threads and into the crystal above me. “Really strong.”
Actua
lly, she was smart enough to access the Basement. I had to know how she’d done that. “How did you get down here? Only Nocturne Falls employees have access.”
She batted her lashes at me. “Date the right people, and you can lift a keycard pretty easily.”
Just like I’d done. “Why do it here? Why not do this at your inn?”
Cookie stared at me, her mouth quirking up slightly. “This is a lot more private. And so convenient. And soundproof.” She leaned in. “Sometimes there’s screaming. And I can’t have my neighbors snooping, now can I?”
Screaming? That sent a new chill through me. I had to get out of here.
She twirled my silver bracelet around her finger. “Not sure why you were hiding your light under a bushel.”
Cookie obviously didn’t realize I was the Winter Princess. But that’s what happened to elves who left the NP and didn’t bother to educate themselves on their own culture.
She continued, “You make the rest of them look practically human. Which they technically are now.”
With their elven magic stripped, the workers essentially became human. She wasn’t just taking their magic, she was taking their identities. No wonder Will hadn’t known his name when I’d questioned him at the B&B.
Even worse, Cookie had turned him into slave labor. Like grandfather like granddaughter, apparently. I scowled at her. “You are never going to get away with this. You or your grandfather, because I don’t believe for a cold second he’s only bringing you employees.”
She laughed. “I’ve been getting away siphoning magic off the employees for years. And my grandfather has no idea what I’m doing down here.”
“You expect me to believe you built this contraption?”
Anger flashed in her eyes. Good. I wanted to make her angry. “I don’t care what you believe, but I built it. It’s based on one of his toy ideas that went horribly wrong, but I fixed that.”
“It’s still horribly wrong.”
“Not from my side of things. The money I make on these crystals beats what I made running that wretched B&B any day.”
My hands were at my sides, but still too far away to reach my phone. And I could feel that crystal draining me. The urge to close my eyes and give in was strong. “Let me go and we can still make this right.”
“You might as well save your breath.” She stepped back and glanced at the crystal again. “I might get four or five out of you. Most of them give me two. Occasionally three. I should see if Grandpa Featherstone can get more like you.”
While she was distracted, I pointed my fingers in her direction and called the power remaining in my veins. Ice needles shot forward. Most ricocheted off the bars, but some hit their target and buried themselves into Cookie’s upper thigh.
She yelped out a curse and limped backward. She glared at me before checking her leg. It was too dark for me to tell how much damage I’d done. “That’s enough of that.” She pulled a fragment of blue crystal from her pocket, stuck it into the lock and turned.
The glow from the crystal above me traveled down over the cage to the floor, sealing me inside the cage with the blue light. I lifted my fingers to give her a second dose of ice, and she shook her head.
“You’re just wasting your power.”
I let another bolt of ice out anyway. The shards hit the blue glow and hissed into vapor. Snowballs. This was not looking good.
“Told you.” She clucked her tongue. “The fight will go out of you by the second crystal anyway. Just relax. Being human’s not so bad. I’ve got a room already for you at the B&B, and in a couple of months, you’ll be settled into your new identity.”
“Is that what you did to the other workers? Like Franny?”
“Franny’s name is Leah now, and she’s very happy in her new job as manager of my cleaning business. Speaking of, I could use another toilet scrubber.” She grinned like that was the funniest thing ever. “You’ll see. You won’t remember that you ever were an elf, either.”
“You’re a disgrace to our people.” I had to think of something. The urge to sleep grew stronger every second.
She rolled her eyes. “This conversation is over. I’ll be back in a couple of hours when you’re too weak to open your pie hole.”
Light burst into the room as the door opened, outlining two silhouettes in its frame. “Lilibeth?”
I’d never been so happy to hear Cooper’s voice. Judging by the shape of the second silhouette, Greyson was with him. Relief washed through me. “Over here. Under the blue glow.”
Cookie swung around and lifted her hands, sending shards of ice hurtling through the air like bullets. Whoa. Unexpected. Cooper threw his hands up and met the ice with a wall of heat in return. The shards disappeared in little hisses of steam.
Cookie started round two as Greyson appeared at the side of the cage. “Are you all right?”
“Yes, but I won’t be for much longer.”
Cookie flung a hand toward him, and shot a blast of cold at Greyson, turning him into a vampire popsicle.
I had to do something. I glanced at the crystal, then at the cage holding me, and an idea began to form. I started generating every ounce of cold I could muster.
With the cage sealed by the blue glow, the temperature inside began to drop. It wouldn’t affect me, though. Outside, the ongoing battle raged between Cooper and Cookie. She’d no doubt helped herself to some of the power she’d drained off the workers, because there was no way she should be that strong.
Fortunately, Cooper’s firepower was fairly impressive. He returned every one of her blasts of ice with bolts of fire.
At the first metallic whine, I glanced up. The metal struts were stressing under the intense cold. Just a little bit more now. I pushed harder, closing my eyes and dropping the temperature even lower. My head throbbed with pain. The effort of fighting the crystal’s drain while producing this much cold was taking its toll. The head wound wasn’t helping either. My breath puffed out of my mouth in clouds of vapor and turned into tiny snowflakes that whirled around on the freezing currents I was creating.
Almost nothing was visible beyond the foggy blue haze of the cage’s confines now. One of the bars creaked like it might snap.
Cold enough.
I rocked back and forth, getting some momentum going. Finally, the chair tipped back. The silver threads snapped, and the wooden chair shattered as it landed. The cage disintegrated. I threw my arms over my face as it came down in pieces around me. Something thumped hard against my belly. I peeked through my arms. The crystal had fallen onto my stomach. I lay there for a moment, a little stunned by the impact.
Then my senses returned. I grabbed the crystal and stuck it in the pocket of my hoodie. Greyson had started to thaw, thanks to the blasts of heat Cooper was battling Cookie with.
Enough already. She needed to go down.
I built a baton of ice in my hands then whacked Cookie on the head with it. Probably the same thing she’d done to me, but I doubted she’d enjoyed it as much as I just had.
She went down hard and lay very still. I crouched down and checked the pulse in her neck. “Not dead.”
Cooper walked over, staring at me like he’d seen a ghost. Which I guess technically I was. The ghost of girlfriends past. “Jayne? What the hell are you doing here?” He looked around. “Where’s Lilibeth?”
Oh boy. “Long story. Lilibeth’s fine. Look, I’ll be happy to explain later, but first can you defrost the vampire?”
Four hours, three sheriff cars, two ambulances, and one very unhappy vampire later, the ordeal was over.
I’d gotten away with a check-up on site. My head wound had already healed, and the goose egg left behind got smaller every minute, thanks to my supernatural healing abilities.
Greyson had been carted off to the hospital to be checked over by a supernatural doc. Freezing to death couldn’t really happen when you were already dead, but apparently he needed a serious infusion of blood to make him right. Once that happened, I knew Gre
yson would probably show up at my door.
Cookie and Toly were in holding cells at the sheriff’s station. Juniper and Buttercup were at the hospital with Owen, who was never going to be fully elf again, and the shop was closed with a note on the door that said we were doing inventory.
Cooper and I, however, were back in my apartment. I was exhausted, but Cooper deserved an explanation. First, though, I owed him an apology. “I’m sorry I swiped your keycard.”
“You’re lucky I realized pretty quickly that you’d taken it. And that I ran into Greyson. You wouldn’t be you anymore.” He glared at me. “Not that you’ve been you since you got here.”
Cooper’s eyes held a storm of irritation. Which I deserved. “I didn’t have a choice.”
He just grunted.
I shifted the ice bag I was holding against my head. I could have frosted up my hand and used that, but the ice bag was much more dramatic and a few sympathy points from Cooper wouldn’t hurt. “I’m really glad you two showed up when you did.”
He sighed. “Are you going to be okay?”
I nodded. “I’ve already re-absorbed the magic that was drained from me.” It was as simple as holding the crystal and calling the magic back into my system.
“And Owen? And the rest of the employees?”
The sigh that escaped my lips wasn’t a happy one. “They’ve undergone physical changes that can’t be undone. Might be possible to return some of their magic to them, but the crystals Cookie already sold, that magic is gone for good.”
He was silent a few moments. “You were right about something bad going on.”
“I just wish I’d figured it out sooner.”
“You could have told me who you really were.”
“I couldn’t.”
“Why not?”
I explained the whole thing from start to finish. And I apologized again for stealing his keycard. He still looked majorly ticked off, all arms crossed and brows knit in that judgy way of his I remembered so well.
Miss Frost Solves A Cold Case Page 20