city of dragons 07 - fire and flood

by Val St. Crowe

  Wells: My lawyer’s pushing it through, and I’m coming to the funeral. I think they’re going to make me come in handcuffs and foot manacles, but I’m going to be there.

  Black: How’d you swing that?

  Wells: It wasn’t cheap, let me tell you.

  Black: (chuckles) You little dog. Well, we’ll all be happy to see you, and I know it means a lot to you.

  Wells: It does. She was taken too soon.

  Black: Definitely was. Far before her time. Uh, I hate to bring this up right now, but there’s a shortage of lemongrass on this side, and we’re not going to be making any pad thai anytime soon.

  Wells: Seriously? You have noodles?

  Black: Oh, we have noodles.

  Wells: Then make the pad thai. You know what? We’ll talk about this at the funeral.

  What the hell that was all about, we weren’t sure. But it sounded as though Wells had been allowed to leave the prison to attend a funeral. I asked Lachlan if that ever happened, and he said it was possible sometimes that inmates could be granted a release for important life events. He wasn’t sure why it had been expensive, however. Either Wells had paid people off to get it granted, or he’d paid his lawyer a lot to argue the case. Either way, it sounded as though it wasn’t something that typically would have been granted to someone like Wells.

  We went to look for Zach to ask him about it, but he’d gone home for the day. He’d been on an early shift today. So, we decided we’d talk to him about it the next time we were back at the jail, and we left.

  * * *

  Lachlan banged on the door of an apartment on the top level in a high rise building out by the highway. He’d been knocking for the last two minutes.

  “I don’t think anyone’s home,” I said quietly.

  Lachlan made a face. “You’re probably right. I can’t believe we came out here for nothing.” He banged on the door again anyway.

  And the door opened. A drake peered out. He had wisps of dark hair on the top of his skull, but otherwise he was shades of red, covered from head to tail in scales. He had reptilian eyes and features. And he even had claws. I didn’t know the guy, and he might be scum, but I felt bad for him. Not all drake transformations were quite this complete. He barely looked human anymore. This was the guy who Adam Day, Tim’s friend from high school, claimed was his alibi.

  “Peter Marsh?” said Lachlan.

  “Who wants to know?” The drake stared at us with unblinking eyes.

  Lachlan flashed his badge quickly. “We want to ask you a few questions about Adam Day. We understand he’s a friend of yours.”

  Peter laughed a little, and there was a funny edge to his laughter. He opened the door wider. “Adam? Yeah, he came by here earlier and threatened me and said I was supposed to tell lies for him if anyone came looking. I was afraid then, but I got some dice, and now I’m not afraid of anything. Including you. You’re a cop? Big deal. I can do magic.”

  Lachlan laughed. He opened his mouth, and bared his fangs at Peter. “I’m a vampire.”

  “A vampire cop? That’s not even possible,” said Peter.

  “Trust me,” said Lachlan. “Possible.” He pointed at me with his thumb. “She’s a dragon. And we both breathe fire.”

  “I’m still not afraid of you,” said Peter, laughing.

  Right, it was the dice. He was high, and dice made the person taking it feel invincible. That was why so many people ended up as drakes after taking it. They took dumb risks and got themselves killed.

  “You don’t need to be,” said Lachlan. “We’re not going to hurt you. Especially since you’re being so cooperative. So, what lies were you supposed to tell for Adam?”

  “He wanted me to say that we were together some night in May,” said Peter. “We weren’t, though. We don’t hang out too much, honestly. He uses me. Gets me to do stuff for him for dice. I hate the bastard, but it’s always too good of a deal to pass up.”

  “What kind of things does he want you to do?” I said.

  “Dumb things,” said Peter. “Watch people, girls mostly, tell him where they go and what they do and who they see. It’s an easy way to score the stuff, so I do it.”

  “Did Peter ever talk to you about a guy named Tim? His friend from high school?” said Lachlan.

  “No,” said Peter.

  “Did he ever talk about a box in his closet with underwear and a phone and a lock of hair?”

  “No.” Peter looked at us like we were nuts. “Look, if that’s all, you guys are kind of ruining my buzz. I think I’m done with this conversation.”

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  “So,” said Lachlan. “Adam Day has no alibi, and Simon Wells left the prison to go to a mysterious funeral, which may or may not be related to the case.” He was driving the rental car back to his father’s house.

  I was in the passenger’s seat. “Doesn’t look good for Adam.”

  “No, it doesn’t,” said Lachlan.

  “And if Wells has enough clout that he can swing getting out of jail to go to a funeral, maybe it does mean that he’s got some guards in his pocket, and maybe he did get them to let him out of his cell that night so that he could smother Tim.”

  “And maybe he killed that Poole guy as well,” said Lachlan. “Same way. On the other hand, maybe he got the magical talisman at the funeral, and he smuggled it back in to the prison that way, and he did the murder with magic. Could be either way.”

  “Could be,” I said.

  He gripped the steering wheel. “Here’s what we’ll do. Tomorrow, we’ll go and talk to Matt Black, see what we can shake down from him. And we’ll keep digging into Adam. I think I might know some other kids who knew both him and Tim. Maybe they can shine some light on that situation, find us a motive or something.”

  “Okay,” I said. “Sounds good. You don’t think we’re being neglectful with Levi Bradley? What if it’s him, and we’re not looking into him much?”

  “Yeah, you’re right,” said Lachlan. “We need to get some information on him, if only just to eliminate him. We’ll talk to Zach about that when we ask about Wells and the funeral.”

  * * *

  The rest of the evening passed uneventfully. Lachlan and I stopped to pick up takeout on the way back to the house to feed everyone. We’d been doing that a lot, but the truth was that no one much felt like grocery shopping or cooking. I knew that Vivica had her hands full with the boys, and Lachlan and I had our hands full with the case. Lachlan wasn’t actually a bad cook. He did his share in the kitchen when it was necessary. I did usually do most of the cooking at home, but that was because I liked cooking.

  I had never learned as a kid considering that neither my parents nor my grandparents had any idea how to cook anything. So, I’d never observed anyone cooking. We had servants who did it, and—with the exception of Felicity, who I’d latched onto as a teenager—I’d never spent much time with the servants.

  Anyway, when I got married and lived with Alastair, it was mostly the same thing. We didn’t always have staff that came in and cooked all our meals, though. Sometimes, we’d order from someone who would deliver pre-cooked meals that we only had to heat up. Alastair did that a lot because he liked being able to control my portion size. He liked controlling everything.

  When I finally got free of Alastair, I decided I wanted to be self-sufficient, and one of the things that a self-sufficient person can do is cook. So, I’d taken some classes at the local college on cooking, and I’d really liked it. Cooking was fun for me when I did it. But truthfully, whenever Lachlan and I were waist-deep in a murder case, I wasn’t much for cooking.

  This was one of those times.

  We ate. We put the boys to bed.

  Lachlan went outside with the dragons. I watched him from the window. He stood in the center, and he made the dragons fly in complicated formations above his head. He made them breathe fire into the evening sky. All the time, he had this exultant look on his face, as though he were having the time of his life
.

  I was worried. I got out my phone, and I called Ophelia.

  “Penny,” she said. “I thought you were out of town.”

  “I am,” I said. “I’m sorry to bother you. If you’re busy—”

  “No, I’m fine. The dinner rush has died down at the restaurant, and I’ve got nothing cooking. What can I do for you?”

  “I just wondered… is there anyway to know if a person is being taken over by dark magic?”

  “What person are we talking about here? Are we talking about you?”

  I sighed. “It’s Lachlan. He’s allowing the powers of the blood dragon to come out, and he can breathe fire, and there are more rogue dragons showing up outside our house every day, and he seems to think of them as extensions of his body, and… Sometimes he gets so angry. I’m worried is all.” That wasn’t all I was worried about. I was worried about the Green King as well. But I didn’t know what to do about that. At least not yet. If Ophelia could give me some way to set my mind at ease about Lachlan, maybe I could tackle the Green King problem.

  “There are a few spells I think I might be able to do,” said Ophelia. “But not while you’re all the way out in Texas. Now, if you were anywhere near San Antonio—”

  “We are. We flew into the Austin airport. We’re north of San Antonio.”

  “Really?” she said. “Well, then, you might want to give my friend Rebecca Fletcher a call. She reads auras. Might be able to tell you if there’s a problem. Might also be able to give you a spell or a ritual for protection, if that would ease your mind.”

  “It would,” I said. “You said this Rebecca’s in San Antonio?”

  “Yes, she lives there. I can give you her phone number if you’d like.”

  “I would love that,” I said. “Thank you so much Ophelia. You have no idea how grateful I am.”

  “Glad to help, child. Glad to help.”

  My phone beeped. I took it away from my ear to look at the screen and then put it back. “Oh, Ophelia? Can you text me that number? I’ve got an incoming call from Connor. I better take it.”

  “Sure thing, Penny,” said Ophelia. “You take care now.”

  “You too,” I said to her. “Bye now.”

  “Bye.”

  I hung up with Ophelia and switched over to Connor. “Connor? Everything okay? Is anyone hurt?”

  “Everyone’s fine,” he said.

  “Good.” I let out a sigh of relief. “Did something happen, though? Is it the Green King?”

  “No, nothing happened.” There was a touch of amusement in his voice. “Calm down.”

  “What’s up, then? Are you calling just to chat?”

  “I’m getting back with you about hacking the electronic locks,” he said.

  “Oh, right! I completely forgot that I asked you to do that,” I said. “Thanks so much for getting back with me. What do you have?”

  “Well,” said Connor, “I can’t say that it’s impossible, but I couldn’t find anything on doing it. If it’s been done, whoever did it isn’t bragging about it on the Internet or providing handy how-tos giving step-by-step instructions. And frankly, that’s the only way I do any of the stuff I do online. I Google things, and then I follow the instructions. That’s it.” Connor always said that, but I knew he was selling himself short. He was talented when it came to computer stuff, and he was just being humble.

  “So, you think it’s unlikely?”

  “I do,” he said. “I also feel like it would be practically impossible for one of the inmates to do it. They don’t have computers or even cell phones, and I feel like you’d need to be able to write a script or some code to get in and do this.”

  “Could you do it on a cell phone?”

  “Me personally? No way. Could most people do it? No. Maybe there’s some genius out there who could figure it out. I don’t know. But unless you’ve got a big computer nerd as a suspect, I’d personally pursue other theories.”

  “Okay,” I said. “Thanks, Connor.”

  “Sure thing,” he said.

  “So, you promise me that everything is okay back in Sea City?”

  “Hot, muggy, crowded,” he said. “I’m sitting on my back porch, and there are drunk vacationers two floors up who are laughing like hyenas. Can you hear them?”

  I couldn’t. “I don’t hear anything except you.”

  “Well, consider yourself lucky, because they’re incredibly annoying.”

  “If anything happens, anything at all, you call me straight away, got it?”

  “Of course, Penny. Of course. And you and Lachlan? How are you guys holding up out there?”

  I looked back out the window at Lachlan, who was standing among the dragons, arms outstretched, eyes closed as they flew above his head in overlapping rings, each one bigger and higher than the next. It looked as though Lachlan had a halo of dragons. Behind him, the sun was setting in the west, lighting him up like some kind of glowing wizard. “Yeah, uh, we’re fine,” I said. “Totally fine.”

  God, I hoped we were.

  * * *

  Lachlan wasn’t pleased when I told him that we were going to San Antonio the next morning. He wanted to get cracking on the case right away. But I said that this would help put my mind at ease about his powers, and he caved. We got in the car and drove. It wasn’t too long of a drive down to Rebecca Fletcher’s house.

  She lived in a little bungalow surrounded by white-stone-filled flower beds laden with blooming cactus and wide-leafed plants. We found her in the back, down a walkway in her garden, yanking weeds that were growing up out of the white stone.

  She looked up at us. She was wearing a billowing white tunic over capri pants. There was a silk patterned scarf wrapped around her head. She wore big hoop earrings in her ears. “You two are early.”

  “Are we?” I said, checking my phone. “I thought we said that we’d meet at 9:00.” I looked down at my phone. It was 8:53.

  She got to her feet. “It’s all right. You’re not that early.” She offered me her hand. “You must be Penny.”

  I shook with her. “Yes, that’s me.”

  She turned to Lachlan. “And you’re Lachlan. You’ve got the aura I’m meant to be reading?”

  “So I hear,” said Lachlan.

  She laughed and shook hands with him. Then she let her hand drop and turned back to me. “You’ve got nothing to worry about. I don’t see anything worrying in his aura. He’s a devoted partner and father. You and your son are the most important things on earth to him. He’d do anything to keep you safe.”

  “But that’s the thing,” I said. “There are some things he shouldn’t do to keep us safe.”

  “Well, he’s got a good heart,” she said. “And his aura’s clear. I wouldn’t worry if I were you.”

  “Oh,” I said. I chewed on my lip.

  “Well,” said Lachlan. “I’m very glad we drove all the way down here. Really puts my mind at ease.”

  I clasped my hands together. “Don’t you, um, have to do anything more than that to know?”

  She shrugged. “Not really. I read auras automatically. I’m used to doing it. It’s second nature for me. A lot of people aren’t sensitive enough to see auras, but they do feel them. I’d say as much as half of the population will get a bad vibe from someone, and that’s generally caused by a broken or disturbed aura. Those sorts of bad vibes are typically something that a person simply senses right away. No in-depth study necessary.”

  “Oh,” I said.

  “If you want, I could lay hands on him,” said Rebecca. “Sometimes I get flashes of the future that way. They aren’t certain, nothing about the future is.”

  “Do that,” I said.

  She smiled. “Could I have your hands?”

  Lachlan shrugged and held his hands out.

  She took them. She closed her eyes. Then her smile widened. “I see the two of you together for many, many years. Several human lifetimes. I see you watching your son. He’s flying.”

  “Flyi
ng?” I said.

  “Yes, he’s a dragon,” she said. “He’s beautiful. He has deep blue scales and he’s flying over the ocean.”

  “He can shift?” My voice broke. Most dragon-human hybrid children couldn’t shift. The fact that Wyatt could meant that he would have magic, and that he would have a long lifespan, like any other dragon. I had been frightened, because Lachlan had taken Wyatt’s powers, but it seemed that things would be okay.

  “He can shift.” She opened her eyes, beaming. “There’s a lot of love in your future.”

  I wiped tears from my eyes.

  “Well, there you go.” Lachlan grinned at me. “Let’s go.”

  “Wait,” I said. “Ophelia said something about a protection ritual? What about that?”

  Rebecca considered. “Well, I do often advise people to do a cleansing ritual, which can strengthen your aura.”

  “That would stop a person from going evil?” I said.

  “I don’t know that people actually… go evil,” said Rebecca. “It’s far more complex than that.”

  “No,” I said. “It’s not. We’ve gone evil before.”

  “It’s true,” said Lachlan. “And we were both pretty oblivious to the fact that it was happening at the time, so if Penny thinks something’s off with me, I do think we should listen to her.”

  “I didn’t say that something was off,” I said, sighing. “I just worry that maybe something is.”

  Rebecca patted my arm. “Nothing’s off.”

  “How do you know?” I said. “You don’t know him.”

  “If you want to try the cleansing ritual, I can tell you what to do,” said Rebecca.

  “Please do,” I said.

  “Okay,” she said, “well, you’re going to need to go to a body of water somewhere, and you’re going to need some herbs. Some lavender and some sage. If you need them, I do happen to grow both here. I’d be happy to sell you a little bit.”

  * * *

  “Look, who did you say you were again?” said Matt Black, friend and associate of Wells. He had sunglasses on and a pair of khakis with sandals. He was standing outside his house on the front stoop. He had not asked us inside, and it was pretty warm out here.