by J L Collins
And there she was, pulling me into a hug, completely forgetting about just how angry she was not even ten minutes before. She squeezed me tightly and I did the weird mom thing I do where I smell her head because even at fourteen years old, she’s my baby. It felt right, even as fragmented as my heart felt. I was lighter than ever, done with holding back from Fi. But it was definitely not something I wanted to put myself through ever again.
“Thank you. Thank you for telling me. I told you I’m grown-up enough to handle this stuff,” she said, smiling toward the end.
I pulled back just a little, raising a brow at her. “Eh, you have your moments.” I hugged her close again, finally able to breathe again.
15
On the Move
With Fi in school for the day, I was on my way to go pay my little brother a proper visit. The last time I saw him, he was pretty much attached at the hip to a bottle of Muldoon’s Shock Syrup. Neither of us were really in the mood for each other’s company.
The gate to the manor house swung open as soon as I approached it, and I waved to the MARC civic officer who was stationed outside the front door. “Morning, Officer.”
He tipped his hat toward me. “Ms. Brady.” He unlocked some kind of complex locking mechanism before the door opened; its creaking a quiet echo in the main entryway.
“Even more security?” I asked him.
“Inquisitor Brady has asked us to keep a higher-detailed security on the house, yes. It’s meant to be only temporary.” His tone implied the truth was a little more complicated than that.
The huge open foyer spilled into the rest of the manor—which was relatively silent and unoccupied. Uncle Gardner was certainly at work, and Aunt Ginevra could’ve been anywhere, as much as she did throughout the community. And of course, I knew Tristan was probably upstairs in his room being angsty about his house arrest. Maybe I should pop into the kitchen for a quick snack and some water before dealing with all that.
Using my wand, I directed a floating platter full of Aunt Ginevra’s favorite biscuits and jam, along with a pitcher of ice water, up the staircase ahead of me. My mouth watered just looking at them.
The portraits and paintings along the wall hadn’t changed since I’d lived here. There was the portrait of me and my mother, Maureen, before Tristan had been born. She was beautiful, with dark eyes and strong yet elegant features, her hair pulled back into a beautiful red braid. Next to her I was thin and gawky, with my front teeth missing and a wide grin. It was my favorite of just the two of us, and it happened to be right beside my favorite painting—a beautiful scene of a sunset over Lake Lachlan with a black-maned unicorn drinking along the bank. I paused to look at it, smiling to myself.
Positioning myself and the floating platter outside of my brother’s bedroom, I knocked with my wand-free hand. “Tristan?”
I could hear him talking, though there didn’t seem to be anyone else in the room. I knocked again, trying to see if he could hear me.
Feet pounded the bare floor and the unmistakable sound of a fire message whooshing out of existence caught my attention. Tristan threw open the door, wild-eyed.
“What was that all about? Go on, don’t make me just stand here like this.”
He moved out of the way, and for the first time I noticed the tint in his cheeks, even under very obvious scruff. “Nothing,” he muttered.
“Yeah, okay. Not suspicious at all.”
He rolled his eyes as I landed the plate on the wide dresser across the room. “I was just . . . sending a message to Brennrie. She’s been busy at the castle.” He saw the pitying look on my face. “But she’s trying to find time to come see me. It won’t be much longer, I’m sure.”
I poured his glass of ice water first, keeping an eye out for any opened bottles of Muldoon’s Shock Syrup lying around. “Have you two made up, then?”
“You could say that. The Queen isn’t thrilled about it, though. She doesn’t like her courtesans wrapped up with our kind, I don’t think. Not that it matters. It’s not like we can have much of a real anything with me cooped up here.”
I sighed. “I get it. I’d be going stir-crazy too.” I remembered the extra guard by the front door. “Any particular reason Uncle G has security ramped up?”
The color in Tristan’s cheeks drained quickly. “There’s a price on my head. And from what Brennrie’s managed to find out through the court’s whisperings, Delaney Drakar is on the move.” His voice was softer than usual, thoughtful even. I didn’t like it one bit.
“On the move? What is that supposed to mean?” I was more concerned about the newer information. It wasn’t exactly news that there were factions out there out for my brother’s blood—it had been the whole reason he was under protection in the manor house to begin with.
“In the Dark Market, she’s been keeping her people close to her—closer than normal. It’s a pretty good sign that she’s intending on moving into someone else’s territory. And with more territory gained, there’s more people in her grasp. More of a chance to get whatever she wants.”
Okay. I definitely didn’t like the sound of that. “Is this something that happens a lot? I know the Dark Market operates differently since I was in training.”
He took a swig from his glass, closing his eyes. “Not too often. It’s sort of a big deal when it does. She’s smart about these kinds of things. Delaney knows when to strike and how to do it without drawing too much attention to herself. Plus, she’s really good about not getting her hands dirty. She’s even got these two messed-up bastards on her payroll, or so I’ve heard. Changeling brothers—the Renaldi Twins. Deadly, too. Though for Changelings, you’d think they’d be pretty smart. They’re not.” Tristan snorted, sitting down on the edge of his bed. “Delaney’s sitting high on that self-made throne of hers. At least in the Dark Market.”
“It doesn’t hurt being part of one of the town’s most prominent families, either,” I said, biting into a biscuit. The buttery flakiness practically melted in my mouth.
“Very true. You’d think the Fontaines would want to distance themselves from her. But all I’ve ever seen is the opposite. It doesn’t matter that she’s deep in the Dark Market. With them, it’s all about family.”
“We can’t really talk, in that case. That’s pretty much how the Brady family has always been, too. I mean look at us. We’ve passed down one of the most petulant members of our family over the past several generations, just because he’s a cat. Who does that?” We both shared a grinned.
“Sometimes it’s still hard to believe he picked the Human Realm over Spell Haven. I always figured he would eventually get tired of us and go live in the forest or something.”
“I wouldn’t put it past him just yet. Especially now that we have our dog, Jax.” My smile faded. The bed creaked a little as I sat down next to Tristan. “Do you think Delaney is someone we should worry about? I mean with the investigation? I’ve looked over the case files but no one’s made mention of her as a possible suspect. I didn’t see anything about an alibi or evidence otherwise, so maybe no one’s officially marked her as one. Does it seem like something she’d be a part of, maybe?”
Truth be told, I knew it wasn’t exactly MARC protocol to bring in someone without any proper tie to a case. But the last time I’d seen information about Delaney Drakar had been in the old case archives in the basement of the MARC headquarters. She had quite an extensive list of not-found-guilty’s under her belt. Which meant that she’d been in a lot of sticky situations where she managed to squeak past, unscathed. A person like that was definitely one to keep an eye on, if you asked me.
“I don’t know, Gwen. I mean, she’s done a lot of people dirty but—”
“She had Enoch, your former employer, murdered. We all know that, even though it didn’t get pinned on her.” I thought about the cold-hearted man sitting in the prison underneath the MARC, and shivered.
“I know, I know. I just don’t know what she would have against Rourke. She’s no
t a townie, despite her family. She rarely leaves the Dark Market anymore. It seems like a reach to me.”
“She really likes power grabs. Becoming the Overseer of the Dark Market is about as powerful a grab you could possibly make. But having the Book of the Wise in your hands along with it . . . who knows what she would be capable of? It’s still missing you know, and we’re no closer to finding it than we were when we saw it was gone in the first place.”
He still seemed skeptical. “Yeah, I mean you have a point. But she’s so well-connected, I doubt she’d really even need that. She’s never really cared about anything but gaining access at the Dark Market to control it. She could care less about the rest of Spell Haven. It’s the underground she’s after.”
I gulped down my glass of water and sat it down, my thoughts circling the drain, too. It was probably dumb to start a scattershot approach of tracking down suspects in the case. I wasn’t going to completely let Delaney Drakar off the hook, though.
Once I was done catching up, I knew exactly where I was going next.
16
A Delicate Situation
I swear sometimes, talking to Uncle Gardner is like talking to a brick wall.
He was pacing back and forth in one of the smaller conference rooms, Rourke’s murder case spread out across the table between us. I hadn’t expected him to be in the middle of a meeting with the other heads of the MARC, so I had to stand outside and wait. When the others made their way out of the room, I peeked my head in only to find Uncle Gardner bent over the strewn about paperwork, rubbing his temples.
“I don’t know why they aren’t taking this more seriously,” he muttered to himself, his gray brows knitted firmly together. “They’re too busy worrying about the wrong things.”
According to him, the MARC heads had been arguing over some decade’s old feud between the werewolves and the vampires spilling out of the Dark Market and into the streets of Spell Haven proper. Apparently, a couple of vampires were egging on a werewolf family downtown, and the fur went flying. Literally. The MARC was always having to keep the tensions at bay between the two races of creatures. It was part of the reason the MARC existed in the first place.
I frowned. “Why don’t they just let some of the civil officers handle them? It seems silly to focus their attention on something that happens every blue moon.”
Placing his hands on the back of a chair, he sighed. “I think they’re terrified, frankly.”
“Of what?”
“We’re still on the hunt for An Leabhar na Ciallmhar, and of course we’ve delegated a team to work on that. I have my best Shadow Hands working that case as we speak—unfortunately it’s the bigger problem since nothing can be done for Rourke. Finding it will also give us a better idea of what happened to him and why. They’re scared of what this all means. The most powerful spell book in Spell Haven—in all of Danann even—gone. Our Keeper of the Pages, dead. No real leads. Suspects with damn-near perfect alibis. It’s not looking good, no matter which way you slice it.”
“So instead of trying to work harder, they just want to stick their heads in the sand like a bunch of ostriches and pretend nothing is wrong?” It figures.
Uncle Gardner shrugged. “The last thing powerful authorities want is to look incompetent. And if no one knows the implications of what’s going on, then no one will question the MARC. They’re fearful of losing their power, and they’re fearful of someone else gaining control of it.”
I stood up to stretch, mulling this over. What was more surprising; the MARC wanting to keep all of this under wraps, or them holding too tightly to their image in the eyes of the public? “What about you? Aren’t you worried about that too?”
“No. If my power is stripped from me for not doing my duty properly, then it will be because it is true and not for any other reason. We’ll find out who did this to Rourke, and we’ll find the book. The question is, will it be too late?” He drew himself to his full height, a solemn look on his face. As straight-laced and brutally honest as my uncle was, he was a good man who cared not about his title or his power, but about what was right and what was wrong. He was the reason I became a Shadow Hand in the first place.
“Then maybe we should go back over everything one more time,” I said as I gestured to the paperwork on the table. “It wouldn’t hurt, and Tristan mentioned something to me that might help a little.”
I told Uncle Gardner what my brother had said about Delaney Drakar and her moving in on territory in the Dark Market, as well as my theory about her possible involvement with our case now.
“If she has more people to do her bidding, then she has more power to get what she wants. I don’t know exactly how she has this hold over people, though I think I have an idea,” I said, thinking back on her civil records several floors below us in the MARC’s archive room in the basement. She was very good at winning civil cases against others, taking their money, taking their property. With the right people in her pocket it would be pretty simple to go bigger. “I know what Tristan said about her only caring about her position in the Dark Market as the Overseer, but I don’t know if I really buy that. She seems like the kind of person who’s always grabbing for the next scale on the dragon to climb, not caring who she has to push off to get to the top and ride.”
Uncle Gardner slid a few pieces of paper my way. “That may be true, but we’ve already questioned her and she has a pretty solid alibi. Her family was holding a benefit charity at their home for the Spell Haven’s Retirees. There are several photos that were even in the paper the next day of her being present. The charity was held the evening of Rourke’s death. She has witnesses claiming she was with them at an afterparty well into the next morning. It all aligns with Rourke’s time of death,” he said, pointing to the Health Maester Goodwing’s medical examination report.
I groaned. Her involvement would’ve made so much more sense than anything else. “Wait. Just because she didn’t do the deed herself, doesn’t mean she didn’t have anything to do with it. What if she hired someone to kill Rourke? Maybe she paid someone off!” Bribery wasn’t a huge thing in Spell Haven—most people here were honest and peaceful. But the Dark Market was full of less-than-upstanding citizens. Someone coming from that kind of background would definitely be into bribery and extortion. Maybe even hiring a hit.
“It’s . . . possible. But without a solid reason based on evidence to search her home or her businesses, we have no way of knowing. Not to mention her family. Even when I insisted on interviewing Delaney here at HQ, I saw plenty of push-back from others. The Fontaine family is well-connected, and does a lot for the community. In appearances, so does she. And even with her dealings with the Dark Market, she’s seen as an extension of her family. I tried to get some backup with pushing for a warrant, but ultimately it was declined. Right now, my main focus is on an intel mission a few of my Shadow Hands are on. In the Dark Market, actually. Not only are our next reasonable suspects those die-hard Enoch loyalists who still believe your brother was responsible for Enoch’s murder—or at least those who are angry at his spying on them for us—but I feel as though they might offer up some information on Delaney Drakar’s work in the market. With the price on Tristan’s head still standing, it’s only attracting more attention as time goes on. I for one, would like the boy to have freedom to walk freely. Preferably out of the manor and back to his apartment.”
I could understand Uncle G wanting his space back as his own. But just the idea of the Dark Market still standing made my blood boil. “I don’t understand why you don’t just swoop in and shut the Dark Market down for good. Then maybe all the creeps that do their business there will get the point.”
“It’s a delicate situation and believe me, we were working on it until Rourke’s death. Right now, our priorities are to find the book and his murderer . . . as well as any accomplices,” he added, giving me a knowing look. “Then we can get back to shutting the market down and taking care of all of the threats against Tristan.�
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An acid green flame bloomed into existence to the left of him. “Sir, your one o’clock appointment is outside your office,” a polite female voice spoke inside the flames.
His shoulders sagged, but Uncle Gardner gave me a grimace of a smile and started placing all the paperwork back inside the case file. “Thank you, Arinda. I’ll be right there.”
I wished him luck, stepping outside of the conference room after him.
As I watched him head around the corner to the elevator, others filing past him and going on about their workdays, I stood against the wall. It wasn’t in my nature to feel hopeless like this, but here I was, feeling hopeless. Enoch’s loyalists might not have anything to do with the murder case, but if they were still bitter about Enoch’s death, then maybe they wouldn’t mind giving up some dirt on Delaney.
I could only hope these Shadow Hands infiltrating the Dark Market knew what they were doing. Because if they didn’t, then I would be taking matters into my own hands.
17
An Unfortunate Rejection
It’s funny how disconnected you can feel bouncing from one realm to the other. In Spell Haven, I was moving through the morning as if it were the sugary syrup that drips down the redbud trees in the woods. But when I go back home to the Human Realm, time speeds up and before I know it, half the day is gone. Aside from the ridiculous driving back and forth from the gateway to Midnight Pitch.
