by WB McKay
"You know," I said, "I would have thought it was more embarrassing when the scepter was returned to MOD without us catching the thief."
"Don't. Push. Me."
I used to have a cordial relationship with my boss, I swear. I mean, we were friendly enough, I thought, but the tension between us had been building for a while now. I wasn't helping any.
"Get back to MOD immediately," he said.
"Good," I said. "That's where I was going."
He hung up.
While we'd been grouching at each other some of the FAB agents had shown up. I'd have thought the exploding bridge would have brought them around sooner. They were looking into the abandoned car and happily ignoring me. I doubted they'd make some great find or that they needed me there to observe their efforts. It wouldn't work as an excuse to avoid Hammond, that was for sure.
"You!" I called over. "I need a car."
The satyr in a freshly pressed suit tossed his keys right to me and pointed to one of the cars. That was easy enough. I didn't bother admonishing him for not asking for my badge first; they'd likely all been briefed on their way to the Tucson entrance. I liked to believe that briefing held a warning about dealing with the likes of me.
For a reason I couldn't figure, the elves and witch were standing on the sidewalk without making a fuss. The elves had been running left and right up to that point. "Get in the car," I told them. We'd head back to MOD. Those three could sit in interrogation rooms while I went to the Kinneys'. It would give them some much needed time to realize what trouble they were in. I rarely used my office, but I had a change of clothes in my desk. Something made me think it was a bad idea to show up at the Kinneys' in sweats I stole from a werewolf. I had that hunch.
The three of them got in the car as they were told.
I stopped Owen on the sidewalk. "Why do you think they're being so quiet?" I whispered.
"Most people aren't regularly chased by government agents, involved in wars between witches and wolves, and invited for a ride along on a car chase," he said. "I think they've reached their limit."
"Huh." I looked in the back window. They did look a little out of it. I got in the car and started her up. "Can the witch hear yet?" I asked.
"No," said Lyssa.
"Do either of you have healing magic?"
No one answered.
"Do either of the elves in this car have healing magic?"
"Some," said Lyssa. "But it's difficult and it doesn't do much."
"I'm sure your witch friend would appreciate having some of her hearing back," I said. "Give it a try."
I spied Lyssa giving it a shot in the mirror. The witch pulled away at first, but eventually let Lyssa hold her hands up to the witch's ear.
"The number you two did at the museum was impressive," I said. "Getting past all of that security must have taken a long time to plan. Not everyone could have done that."
"It took a while," said Cedric.
"It was only the human security system that alerted us the scepter was gone at all," I said.
"We didn't see a problem with that because we knew we'd be away by then," said Cedric, his ego sufficiently stroked.
"How was it that you wiped the magic from the scene like that?"
"Oh," said Cedric. "It was nothing."
"It should only help to tell her things that weren't us," said Lyssa. "The witches gave us a charm."
"A charm did that?" I'd seen charms do interesting things. I owned a multi-use glamour charm that allowed me to subtly adjust my features for a brief time. But a glamour charm that covered multiple magical scents at a crime scene and lasted indefinitely?
"It was like nothing I've seen," said Lyssa. Her voice overflowed with awe. "I've studied advanced magic my whole life, but this was beyond what I've seen. I don't know how the witches got their hands on it."
My question exactly.
"I'm done," said Lyssa.
"Hello, witch."
"What do you want, faerie?" asked the young woman.
"And we have conversation," I said. "That's a start."
"I can't believe I healed this witch," said Lyssa.
"It's a disgrace," said Cedric. "They attacked us at the apartment and again at the grocery store. They couldn't stick to the deal they made."
"We didn't attack you," said the witch.
"I don't believe you," said Cedric.
"We waited at your apartment. You never showed."
"We should have never agreed to work with you," said Cedric. "Witches lie."
"Hey," I said. "I thought I recognized you. You were at the apartment. Why did you attack us?"
"We were waiting for these two jerks. They didn't show up to the hand off."
"And you attacked me because?"
"We heard you call for backup. We couldn't let someone else get in that apartment in case it was inside."
Note to self: talk quieter on the phone when you're on the job. I cut to the big question since we didn't have much time in the car together. "Do you have any idea who took the scepter from you?"
"No." She crossed her arms over her chest. For a witch who'd been through everything I'd seen that night, she was awfully young, early twenties. "Should I?" Her snottiness made her sound younger.
"It would be convenient, yes," I said. "If you really don't have any idea, how do you know they're not going to come after you?"
"Why would they do that?" I didn't have to look in the mirror to know she was skeptical; her tone said I was ridiculous.
"What's your name?"
"I don't have to tell you that."
"Okay, witch. I'm Agent Sophie Morrigan, of the Magical Object Division of FAB. You stole a scepter that someone else wanted. They might have problems with you, or want things I don't know about yet. I have no way of knowing without more information."
The mirror showed her glaring out the window. She didn't believe me, but she wasn't sure.
"Do you have a guess on who it might be?"
"No," she said. "And I wouldn't tell you even if I did."
"I can keep you safe."
"I've heard about you, you know. Sophie Morrigan."
"Is that so?"
"You're the one who did all that to Clarissa." I managed not to slam my head into the steering wheel. Clarissa. I'd recently worked a case tracking down a reaper's scythe. During the case, I'd run into Clarissa. Put more accurately, she'd tricked me into believing she was assigned to work with me as a witch expert, being that she was both an agent and a witch herself. As it turned out, she had not been assigned to work with me. Things had gotten worse from there. She was in prison now. I hadn't read the list of charges, but if there was any justice in the world, one of them was being a pain in my ass.
"How is Clarissa?" I asked.
"Awful," said the witch. "You've thrown her in a fae jail. She's human! And she didn't do anything to you!"
"Is that what she tells you?" Clarissa shouldn't have been able to get messages out to humans from a fae jail, but again, I was getting sidetracked. There were too many things to consider and not enough time. I slowed the car a bit, wanting to buy myself a few more questions. The more information I had before facing Lana Kinney the better prepared I'd be for whatever happened. "You hired the elves," I said, prompting her.
"My coven did."
"And you had the money for that?"
"It was important to us."
Not exactly an answer, I noticed. "Where did you get the idea for this?" She didn't answer, but I had some ideas. "You said you've been learning things from Clarissa, even though she's not supposed to have contact with other witches," I said.
"You can't prove anything."
"Did you get your messages from Clarissa through someone else?"
All it took was a glance in the mirror. Her face was too expressive. Her eyebrows shot up to her hairline. She hadn't thought I'd be able to guess that. Now she thought I knew something.
"What do you know about who you're talking to?" I asked.
&
nbsp; "Nothing."
"Witches lie," mumbled Cedric.
"We do not!" the witch yelled. "They were helping us! I don't know who they were!"
"Helping you with what?"
"Witches' rights, something you'd know nothing about."
"Enlighten me."
"Fine." The girl leaned over Lyssa in the middle seat to get closer to me. "If the fae were exposed, or even just had the threat of exposure, it would be the first step to witch acceptance. If the fae are exposed to the humans and the human element is more real--in their face so they can't ignore it--it would be about fae versus human, and the witches can turn it around to magic versus non-magic instead. Then, bam! We're part of fae society. We'd be valuable, you know, because we know about magic and we know about humans so we can be, like, liaisons. Plus, if the fae are real, then humans will start taking witches seriously."
"So everyone everywhere will respect you then," I said. "That's some scepter."
"What's that supposed to mean?"
"So you don't know anything about this fae who gave you money and advanced charms. Did they tell you about the scepter and what it could do?" It made no sense that a witch would have enough information on the fae artifact to even think to hire the elves to steal it for them. That was, unless some fae was pulling their strings.
"We paid for it mostly ourselves!" the witch insisted.
"So did they tell you the fae would respect you because of the exposure before, or after, they told you about the scepter?"
The witch didn't reply to that. When I turned to look at her, she was crying.
"Lyssa, did you know anything about this other fae?"
"No," said Lyssa.
"Though it makes sense," said Cedric. "It never made sense that the witches were smart enough to put this together. I should have known."
"I think the witches have been angling for something like this for a long time," I said gently. I didn't know why I felt the need to compliment the witches' criminal prowess, except that I felt the need to defend the girl. It was true that it didn't make sense for the witches to have access to that kind of information, but Cedric didn't have to be such a dick about it. "That's why your coven was living so close to the Volarus location in Tucson, right? Because you were putting yourselves in a situation for information?"
"It's in Vail, not Tucson," she corrected.
It wasn't normal for witches to be so close to a Volarus location. They didn't get along with the fae. Covens would avoid the fae, as far as I knew, when they could. Of course, Clarissa, and now the Tucson coven, had different ideas. "You were committed to this," I said. "It was all part of a long term plan." I glanced in the mirror. She was looking at me like she was disgusted with my nonsensical conclusions. "Is something I said wrong?" I asked.
"We can live where we want, you know," she said. "Not everything is about faeries."
"You sure told me, witch," I said. "Now I'm going to drop you off at MOD headquarters so you can be properly arrested by faerie agents and processed at a faerie jail for crimes you committed against faeries because you just so clearly do not care about Faerie." I turned around to smile at her. "Good luck with that."
Actually, they'd toss her into interrogation so I could ask her more later, but she didn't need to know that was coming.
Cedric grabbed my headrest and pulled himself forward. "You could say you never found us," he said, and then whispered, "We have money."
"The money you were paid by the witches?" I asked. "I think I'll pass."
"Money is money," he said.
"Spoken like a true elf," said Owen.
"Care to share a little of your hoard, dragon?" asked Cedric.
Owen didn't respond. I would have liked to see him offer Cedric a piece of his hoard. Owen hoarded books. They were old, and most of them worth a lot of money, but it wasn't what Cedric had in mind. It wasn't what I'd ever had in mind. With my job at MOD, when I dealt with dragons it was people who'd stolen dangerous magical objects for their hoard.
"Well, this has been enlightening," I said, wholeheartedly meaning it. "We need to be moving along, though. Criminals to chase, evil plans to uncover. Out of my car."
"This isn't your car," said the witch. "You stole the first one and demanded the cops hand this one over, which is close enough to stealing this one, too."
"An astute observation, something I'd expect a crime lord like yourself to notice. Good work." I led them all into the office and handed them off to the others. It should have felt satisfying. I'd caught the original thieves and the ones who hired them. It shouldn't be hard to round up the rest of the Tucson coven with the information we had. I'd uncovered two layers to the investigation. And yet, it wasn't enough.
One more layer to go, I thought to myself. And it started at the Kinneys' house.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
The scepter was gorgeous. Pictures in books did not do its glory justice. The dampener kept it from producing any magic, but I could still feel its power reaching out to me. Even beyond that, the gold and gems were so expensive, so artfully placed…
Both David and Lana Kinney hissed, which should have snapped my attention to them but I found my head moving sluggishly in their direction. My thoughts slowly broke through the fog, one word of alert blaring through brighter than the rest: want.
Shit.
That brought me back. I'd stepped closer without noticing. I retreated now. "I apologize."
"It's okay, dear. We know covetousness when we see it."
I swallowed hard. Covetousness was a trait I shared with dragons, but one I thought I had much better control over. I blamed the scepter. It was exceptional. I would have forgiven myself without a second thought if I didn't feel Hammond's gaze drilling into me. He didn't normally come out into the field like this. The Kinneys had him doing all kinds of odd things.
"You were saying before that you found the scepter on your doorstep?" I asked.
"That is correct," said Lana.
"What alerted you to its presence? Was there a knock? A doorbell? Did someone call you?"
Hammond stepped on the back of my heel. It hurt like a sonofabitch. Yes, with the fae, it was considered rude that I continued asking her direct questions. Because the fae couldn't lie, it was custom to leave room for people to talk in circles. But I was a government agent. I was excused from rules like that. With everyone but a member of the fae council, it seemed.
"I thought I heard something, so I went to check the door."
"You checked the door? Not your butler?"
"I checked the door."
I hated these games. With the way she'd worded that, it may very well have been that she heard the butler calling her name after he spoke with the thief. When I'd arrived, the human staff had been missing. To demand the right to question them would mean calling a council member a liar. It shouldn't have--it should have been fair play to do whatever I needed for the law--but should wasn't a word that applied to that case.
"Did you see anyone around?" I'd asked this first thing, but I'd asked enough questions now that I could circle back and give her a second chance.
"We didn't see the face of who returned it," said Lana. "I don't know what to tell you."
I was in danger of breaking a tooth I was grinding them so hard.
"I don't see what this matters now," said David. He placed a hand on his wife's back. "The scepter has been returned. I don't see a need to punish a thief who saw the error of their ways. We'll put it in safekeeping, and everything will be fine now."
I forced a smile and opened my eyes wide, the picture of innocence. I doubted I pulled it off, but it made it easier for others to pretend if they wanted to. "And you don't have surveillance videos?"
"This is my private home," said Lana.
"You're a high profile figure in the city with a home that suggests you have many items worth stealing," I said. "You should have surveillance video on your front porch and outside your windows in addition to other security measures
."
"I appreciate your concern, Miss Morrigan."
Her tone suggested it would be a bad idea to remind her that my title was agent or to point out that she had never directly answered my question as to whether there was a surveillance video. The whole situation was beyond ridiculous.
"She's trying to look out for you, Mrs. Kinney," explained Hammond. "We see a lot of theft working our job."
"Understandable," she said. "If that'll be all, this entire ordeal has set me behind schedule."
Hell no, that's not all.
"Absolutely," said Hammond. "Thank you for your time."
I turned to him wide-eyed. Thank you? Thank you! The words promised a favor. He'd been doing his job--doing her a service--and now he was promising her a favor? He pretended not to see me. I possibly stomped my feet a little hard on my way out of their foyer.
"Owen," his mother called after him. "A word."
I thought he'd continue out with me, but I felt him leave my side. I continued on my way.
Once on the street where Hammond and Owen had parked their cars, Hammond spun around and leaned over me. "You were on the scene," he said. "Why didn't you call other people in?"
I'd already been thinking about this too much. I didn't have an answer. At the time, I'd been afraid of inciting violence against people who didn't deserve it, but there was a question of the greater good. I supposed I wouldn't know how that worked out for a while yet. The only answer I could give Hammond was that I thought I'd had it handled. That wasn't something he'd want to hear.
"I need permission to meet with former Agent Clarissa Stark."
"What?" he sputtered. "What in the world for?"
"She's been getting messages to the witches involved in this case through a third party. I believe that third party to be the thief in this case."
"You heard the Kinneys." He opened his car door and looked at me pointedly. "The case is closed."
"We haven't caught the person behind all this!"
"You heard the Kinneys," he repeated, and shut his car door in my face.
He drove away without another word to me.
"Sophie." Owen was still walking down the driveway and he did not look okay.
"What is it?" I walked back toward him but he shook his head.