by A. L. Tyler
She tilted her head. “Oh, Jette. We both know he’s not the kind of man who can say ‘no’ to women like us.”
I flashed back to the first time I’d met Nick, and the feel of my face crushing into back alley gravel as he held me down with almost no effort, cold cuffs slapping onto my wrists.
“He’s more than capable of saying ‘no’,” I said coolly. “I really suggest you don’t push him.”
“...haven’t seen him in a few weeks. He left a note that he was going out of town for business, and I guess that was a little strange because he knows I don’t give a damn. But he still sent his rent, so—oh.” The landlord, an older man with gray hair and wire frame glasses, stopped and smiled appreciatively at Millie. “Hello there. How are you?”
“I’m excellent, thank you. A little cold.” She stood up straighter, swaying on her feet like a cobra. “How are you?”
“I am excellent as well. I’ll turn the heat up for you—”
“Okay.” Nick grabbed the keys from the landlord’s hand. “I apologize, Mr. Hannover, but we are on the clock for this investigation. I appreciate your help. We’ll let you know if we need anything else.”
“I should really stay, just in case—”
“Mumoriae.” Nick’s lips barely moved as he uttered the word, twisting one of his rings for focus. The spell made a sound like the flapping of wings as it passed from Nick to his target. He put a hand on the landlord’s shoulder. “Thank you, Mr. Hannover. You’re going to go back upstairs and continue watching your game show. The police came to do a well-check on Mr. Roost, but didn’t find anything significant. Your help was greatly appreciated.”
The man looked confused. He turned and started back up the stairs.
“No fun,” Millie hissed.
I looked gravely at Nick. “You know how I feel about memory spells.”
“I know how you feel about handcuffs,” he replied, opening the door. “And that hasn’t done me any favors, either.”
Millie winked at me. “Kinky.”
We followed him in. Considering it belonged to the magically endowed heir to one of witch society’s most influential families, it was oddly tame.
A long entry hallway branched out to dining room with a sitting room on the left and a kitchen on the right. Sunlight streamed in through every window, illuminating the pale yellow walls bordered by bright white trim. The place must have been professionally decorated; it looked like it had been taken straight out of a magazine.
“George Roost?” Nick reached for his gun. He bent down, picking up the stack of mail that had collected just inside the door, and set it on a small table in the entryway. “My name is Nicolas Warren. I’m here on behalf of the Bleak. I have some questions for you.”
Protocol. George Roost wasn’t here.
“Jette?” he asked cautiously.
“Nothing,” I replied. There was very little magic in this place, and none of it malicious.
“I’ll check the kitchen,” he said. “You start in the living room.”
“I’ll take the bedroom,” Millie quipped.
“You’ll stay where I can see you, and you won’t touch anything,” Nick said humorlessly. “Or I will shoot you.”
Millie scowled.
“What are we looking for?” I asked.
“Anything that tells us where he went.” He re-holstered his gun and took out his cell phone instead, taking pictures of the whole area before we disturbed anything. “And anything weird. You’ll know it when you see it.”
Chapter 11
I WALKED INTO THE LIVING room. Millie dutifully followed Nick, keeping her arms crossed.
George had a lot of throw pillows on the couch, and there wasn’t anything under them. I looked out his windows to the quiet street below, and I was drawn to the little chime of a cleaning spell coming off of a natural jay’s feather on the white fireplace mantle.
I looked at his family pictures hung on the walls and set on the tables.
“Find anything?”
I glanced over at Millie. Her eyes wandered over the Roost family photos.
“Must have been nice,” she said. “Mabe and I were on our own from a young age. Our parents did things the Bleak didn’t look kindly on. They were taken away, and we ended up with our aunt and uncle. Good people. But they already had five kids of their own, and getting enough to eat was a struggle. When Mabe turned sixteen we decided to strike out on our own. I was twelve.” Millie carefully lifted one of the pictures from the mantle. “She was everything to me. I was everything to her. And we didn’t have things like vacations or new clothes. Hell, we didn’t even have a house most of the time, but what we did have, she gave me most of it.”
She stared down at the family picture that featured a family of five. Two smiling parents, George with his sister, and his baby brother still in his mother’s arms.
“She worked a lot of odd jobs to keep me fed. Not all of them legal, either. I think that’s where I got my tolerance for danger, and the expectation that someone would take care of me.” She smiled sadly, her eyes filling with nostalgia. “Then George and his fortune came into the picture. That’s how I got into the academy, probably, was George pulling a few strings. I worked my ass off to make the grade, but I was never a bookworm like you.”
“Hey.”
We both looked sharply over at Nick. He gestured at Millie, and she slapped the framed photo face down on the mantle before holding up both hands in acquiescence. Nick went back to hunting through a display shelf in George’s dining room.
“Anyway,” Millie went on. “It’s nice to have someone looking after you, isn’t it?” She glanced lovingly at the rest of the pictures. “Even if he’s dangerous. You can’t help who you fall for, right?”
I glared back at her.
“I was talking about Alex,” she purred.
“Were you in love with Alex?” I asked. I was sick of being the focus of her questioning and hoped a dose of her own medicine would make it stop. I moved on to looking at a fish tank along the wall opposite the windows. When Millie didn’t answer, I turned back and saw a strange look on her face.
“Yes,” she said. Her eyes bore into me. “I was.”
I turned back to the fish tank, desperate to change the subject. I didn’t bother raising my voice even though he had moved on to the bedroom. Nick’s hearing was excellent. “He had the time and forethought to set up a fish feeder. Looks like he’s been gone for three days. If the timer’s right, he’s planning to be back in five days.”
I bent down to look at his little aquarium of tetras and danios; the tank was at the perfect height to view from the couch. A new thought struck me, and I glanced into the entrance hall before meeting Nick in the bedroom. I poked my head into the master bath.
“One hook for keys,” I said. “And it looks like he was the only one using this bathroom. He lived alone.”
Nick’s eyes wandered the room. “So he disappears right when we got the tip on him, but he took his sweet time doing it. He set up a fish feeder and packed a bag. Those aren’t the actions of a guy who’s running for his life from the Bleak.” His eyes narrowed as he turned on Millie. “Or someone who might want revenge for her sister’s murder. Why now?”
Millie’s doe-eyed surprise looked genuine, but that didn’t mean much. “What?”
Nick played it off like he was straightening his jacket, but I saw him reach for his gun. “You’re telling me the week that George Roost decides to leave town on business is the week that you happen to decide to follow up on Mabe’s disappearance?”
She crossed her arms, frowning. Her voice dripped with sarcasm. “No. I totally killed a rich guy, then decided to feed his fish, bring the Bleak in on it, and hang around to go down for murder.”
“Why now?” Nick demanded again. One finger on his right hand twitched, and I moved away from Millie. I’d been shot with anti-magic bullets before. It wasn’t an experience I cared to repeat. “Why here? Why get caught on a bank cam
era?”
Millie’s face flushed in frustration. “Because I was waiting for the right guy. I’ve known for years that necklace was in there, but I didn’t want just any handler. And then Jette lands on the map again, and people are saying you were working with her, and it was kismet.”
“You planted the necklace,” Nick accused.
“You have the bank paperwork,” she replied. “I’m a thief, not a forger. And you have the video evidence of me taking that necklace from that vault. And you know that a report of the necklace and its whereabouts would have gone nowhere with the Bleak because of who I am and who he is. What I did, and bringing it to you, was literally the only way. Please, do not stop now. She was my sister, Warren. My sister.”
I sighed. Nick still had a hand on his gun. Millie was on the verge of tears. “George is rich. Maybe he travels a lot.”
Nick’s eyes flashed to me. “Why tell the landlord?”
I thought for a moment. “Maybe he was expecting something in the mail this time.”
Nick finally removed his hand from his gun. He brushed past me and Millie gave him a wide berth as he walked out. I followed and found him carefully looking through George’s stack of mail in the hall. He gestured me over.
“Something is wrong here,” he said. “We’re not the first ones to search the apartment.”
I looked up at him with a furrowed brow. He looked back down at the mail and I followed his gaze. He flipped slowly through, and I brought a hand to my mouth.
When we’d come into the apartment, Nick had picked up the mail in a stack. He hadn’t shuffled it, but someone else had.
The mailing dates were wildly out of order. If the mail had been coming through daily, one would anticipate the newest mailing dates on top, getting older as they went down. But these dates were wrong. Judging by the oldest I saw and the shear volume, George had been gone a lot longer than three days.
Nick watched me with anticipation.
“No magic,” I said. I glanced at the door. “Whoever it was must have had a key. They came in, searched the mail, and then shoved it back through the slot after they left to hide their entrance. But they forgot to put it back through in the right order.”
“Distance and priority levels can affect the mailed date,” he said with a sideways glance at me.
I fished through the stack, pulling four nearly identical postcard coupons from the same local car repair place. Same distance, same priority. The oldest dated one was on top of the stack.
Nick smirked as he set the mail down. “I told you, you’re good at this job.”
THREE WEEKS. THAT WAS our best guess on how long George had been missing, and none of it made sense anymore. Nick sent me copies of the pictures he had taken of the apartment, but nothing other than the mail seemed odd.
Maybe he really was just away on business. Maybe he had a house sitter keeping an eye on his fish and his rent... And shoving his mail back through the slot to make it look like no one had been by.
Mabe went missing. Now George, too. And George’s dates didn’t match up with anything Millie had been doing.
“It’s not a coincidence,” Nick said over the phone that night. “It’s never a coincidence. This is all connected somehow.”
I lay in the bath, purging magic as the water boiled around me. Farrow’s house had several bathrooms, but I had taken a liking to an old, deep, claw-foot tub off the hall of the second floor. Most of the rest had been innovated to modern plastic molded tubs, and with my fiery habits, porcelain was best. There was a window that looked out on the stars and a massive cottonwood tree.
I’d split that tree in half with magic the first time I came here. The dead half had been hauled away for firewood. The other half still had healthy green growth, though, and that gave me hope.
My phone was on speaker, sitting next to the sink. It almost gave the illusion that he was standing just outside the bathroom door.
“George was missing before she even went after the necklace,” I said. “And I’m assuming she’s still there? She hasn’t bailed?”
I heard the low growl of frustration in his voice. “She’s still here.”
“And we both know she could leave at any time.” I nodded to myself. “So why stay, then?”
“I called in some extra help for monitoring. She’d have a hell of a time leaving unnoticed now, even if she can walk through walls.”
“I don’t think she’s going to,” I said. I cringed at what I was about to say, but in this one instance, it was the truth. “She wants justice for her sister, and she’s willing to put her life on the line to see it through. I’ve been there.”
He took a long pause. “Perhaps.”
I took a moment to ask myself if I really wanted to know, but it was hardly a question at all. I had to know. I just didn’t want to ask. The distance the phone provided made me just bold enough.
“Nick, have you ever... done stuff, I guess, that you knew was wrong?” I didn’t know how to ask about Samson Grift and the things he was known for. I just hoped that Nick was as disgusted by him as I was. “For personal gain, maybe?”
I had been over it and over it in my mind, and the only reason I could figure that Grift had been removed from all the records was embarrassment. If he had been successfully framing people, the Bleak wouldn’t have wanted the failure of their system to become public knowledge.
And hence, Samson Grift didn’t exist anymore except in the memories of the people who had known him.
“If you’re asking about the blood again, I assure you, it’s humanely sourced.”
The water around me bolted cold as I pursed my lips in frustration. The only way I was going to get the answers I wanted was if I came clean with him, and I couldn’t do it.
“I was pretty sloppy in the beginning, but now—”
“Nope.”
His light chuckle instantly drew a smile from my lips.
“Promise me you’re going to sleep tonight.”
I nodded again. “I’m going to try.”
“Good. Call me if you need me. Goodnight, Jette.”
“Goodnight, Nick.”
He hung up, and the house went silent around me. Then it was just me, the bath, and Samson Grift.
I closed my eyes and remembered the feel of my hand closing around Kane’s ankle. The fire, spreading from me to him, and his screams of agony. I couldn’t do it like that again.
I swallowed nervously and a tremor ran through my body, waking ripples across the bath. What would he say when I finally found him? Did he even remember my father, or were there so many that he couldn’t be bothered?
No fire. Ice, maybe. It would be better if he was unconscious first, because then there wouldn’t be screaming. Could I kill a man while he lay there defenseless?
Yes. When I remembered the confidence in my father’s eyes when he was taken away, it filled me with rage. He knew he was innocent. He didn’t think he was leaving forever. It wasn’t the look of a man who had betrayed his government, condemning his daughter to a life on the streets.
I ate garbage. I slept in the snow. Some days I didn’t sleep at all because I was afraid someone would steal my money and my blankets, and that was all I had—everything else had already been stolen by the Bleak.
I had a house, and a room, and a bed covered in stuffed animals that my father had given me over the years. Coats hung in the hall closet. There was food in our refrigerator.
The Bleak sold it all in under two weeks. They kept the money. I kept my anger, and I couldn’t lose it now. I had to know the truth.
When I finally dragged myself out of the bath, I turned on the television just to have some noise. I put on some comfortable clothes, made some tea, and stared longingly at my laptop. I wondered what the Bleak knew about Louis Irvine, the man who Grift had let go.
But after too many late nights, I was exhausted. I left the television on and crawled into bed, wondering if a fish tank might help.
Chapter 12
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THE NEXT DAY I DOUBLED down in the evidence room, multiple windows of old magical convicts open on my computer screen as I read up on Louis Irvine, Nicolas Warren, and anything related to either of them that might have been an overlooked reference to Samson Grift.
Whoever he was, he’d been scrubbed. There wasn’t even a reference to the arrest Jason Wolff had talked about; Louis’s record was clean. If anything existed on Grift, it was at a level of security clearance probably much, much higher than mine.
“Okay, seriously, you’re obsessed.” Marge parked herself next to me, a cup of coffee in one hand and a cherry danish in the other. “What’s up with you and this Grift guy?” She squinted at the screen as I shuffled my windows. “And Louis Irvine... you’re looking up Nick?”
“No,” I said in a low tone. Luckily, I was well-rested and had my lie ready. “Nick asked me to see if there were any addendum made to a case a few years back because some other agents did the followup on Grift when he was assigned elsewhere.”
Too bad Marge didn’t buy it.
“This is the paranormal cop version of internet stalking, isn’t it?” Marge said. “You have a crush.”
“Oh. My. Gods.” I turned to her. “If you people do not stop...”
She sat back, pleased with herself. “You’ll what? Hex me?”
I cocked my head. “I may just.”
Marge’s eyes darted away and back. “You can actually do that?”
“Yup. And unless you want to be bald for the next seven years, you’ll stop.” I had no idea how to make her bald for seven years. I was sure it was possible, but the ancient magic I had absorbed was a little too wild for intricate spells I wasn’t familiar with. “Nick and I are not romantically involved. We do not want to be romantically involved, and we never will be romantically involved. End of.”
“Fine.” Marge scoffed.
I waited for further questions, but she turned back to her computer. A quick glance at an open photo of some obscenities spray painted on a wall told me there was a new hit in the serial vandalisms that had plagued us for the last week. It was probably just a punk kid, but Marge was convinced there was a hidden message in his scribbles.