Third Time's the Charm

by K. J. Emrick

  Her gaze is almost as sharp as Kurt’s wolf-eyes as she gives me her answer.

  Moral support.

  “Moral support,” she says out loud, with a disdain that was cold enough to freeze a summer day in July. “I’m sure a woman like yourself wouldn’t understand. You come here in your jeans and your sneakers and your little rope sash looped over your belt and you think you can just bully your way into this family’s concerns? Please. I’ve fired servants for less.”

  I’m not impressed by her attitude, or intimidated by it either. I can see her with my future-sense which means she’s human, plain and simple, with no magic for me to worry about. Miss Priss over there isn’t a threat to me, and sticks and stones won’t break my bones. So, neener-neener. I’m not sure where she lands on my suspect list, but I’m putting her on there just because she annoys me.

  Besides, I like my outfit just fine. The recent addition of the little rope tassel on my belt caught her eye, apparently. She might be mocking it now, but just wait until it’s all the fashion. Who’s going to be laughing then?

  “We’ve already decided our ‘next step’ as you put it, Miss Stone.” Ulva’s tone is dismissive, like I’m a fly she needs to shoo away. I can see why she and Harper are such good friends. Sitting up straight enough for her dress to cling to every inch of her curves, she declares, “The Garoul Necklace has been stolen from us, and it shall be returned. No doubt the rascals who have been picking fights with our family are behind this and they shall be punished for what they have done. Then they will return what is ours.”

  Rascals? Picking fights? Who the hell is she talking about?

  Kurt grumble-whuffs something that’s almost understandable as words, and as he does he flexes his claws out, and in. Out, and in.

  “Well said, brother,” Lowell tells him with a firm nod of his head.

  “There will be a reckoning for all involved,” Ulva promises them both. Then, making sure everyone sees her do it, she turns her eyes to Molly. “All those involved.”

  “I did everything I could to keep it safe!” Molly blurts out. “I put it in that box with every defensive spell I know laid over it. Nobody could have taken it out of there!”

  “And yet,” Ulva says smoothly, “someone did.”

  “Yeah, Molly,” Harper chimes in. “How do you explain that?”

  Kurt actually snaps at her. Actually takes a freaking step forward and snaps his jaws shut and the sound of his sharp teeth clacking together sets my bones on edge.

  Da-a-amn.

  Harper’s expression changes. Just for a split second she actually looks hurt. But then she sniffs and it’s like it never happened. “Don’t talk to me like that, Kurt. It’s your girlfriend that screwed you over, not me. Ulva’s right. If Molly wasn’t in your life you wouldn’t be where you are right now.”

  Kurt snarls and his nails rake the hardwood floor, but Harper just sits there, looking down at her fingernails, until he stops. If a wolf can wear human emotions on their face, then right now Kurt looks defeated. Resigned to his fate. He doesn’t quite turn to Molly, but his body language says he needs to be alone.

  Tail hanging low, he trots off to the other side of the room where another doorway leads further into the house, his tail between his legs the whole way.

  When he’s gone, Harper sniffs again.

  “Kurt, wait!” Molly calls after him, too late to stop her boyfriend from being gone. She rounds on Ulva and Harper, her little hands curling into fists, lifting herself up on her toes to her full five-foot-nothing height. “You two are horrible. You’re horrible! The only one who has any sense in this family is Kurt and you’re not doing a thing to help him! You’re all…you’re just horrible!”

  Her voice lifts to a shout by the last word that rings through the room, carried by the force of her anger and I’m guessing more than a little magic. Over in the corner, a table lamp shoots out sparks and fizzles, the lightbulb going dark.

  Pixie witch magic. I have the feeling Molly is a lot more powerful than she knows.

  Her cheeks turn red as she sees what she did. Embarrassed at her own outburst she stomps past all of us and out the same door I came in. A moment later the front door slams.

  “She always did know how to make an exit,” Harper snarks.

  Next to her, Ulva sighs dramatically. “If only she would make her exit permanent. We both know she’ll be back. Unless I can convince my brother to dump the little witch.”

  Harper crosses her arms over her chest. “Fat chance of that. He’s in love.”

  She twists that word until it sounds ugly. The woman’s got issues.

  “Kurt has been in love before, as you recall,” Ulva adds with the same sneer for that word.

  I guess they both have issues.

  “Excuse me,” I say before they can start going off on tangents. “I have a question.”

  “Are you still here?” Harper taunts me. “Your employer just walked out. Maybe you should go follow her.”

  “You mean like a dog chasing a bone?” I shoot back, knowing the reference to a dog would—excuse the pun—ruffle some fur.

  Ulva shoots to her feet, surprisingly stable on those high heels. “Watch your tongue in my house, werdane. You insult this family at your own risk.”

  “Okay, first of all, I have no idea what a where-dane is. If you’re going to insult me, you have to at least make it make sense.”

  Her eyes grow wide, and the whites flood into a dark, dark brown from corner to corner. Those are wolf’s eyes looking at me now. She actually snarls at me and bares her teeth. Well, well. Looks like I touched a nerve. Guess I win that one.

  “Enough, both of you.” It’s Lowell speaking this time. He leans back in his chair with a calm sort of intensity pulsing off him. “That is enough from everyone, I think. We have a problem that we need solved, for the sake of our family’s position in our werewolf society. Sidney has agreed to help us. I should think it would be just that simple.”

  “Yeah,” Harper snorts. “She’s agreed to help us for money, you mean.”

  “Whatever the reason is, she’s agreed to help. You know as well as we do, Harper, that most werdanes won’t do anything unless they get paid. I tell you what, Sidney. If you can find the person who took our necklace, and if you can keep our family name out of the situation, then I’ll agree to match your fee, and double it.”

  That…would amount to a tidy sum, actually. Especially if it takes me more than a day or two to find the thief. My mind starts crunching numbers and adding up line items and then I stop, because as fun as it is to fantasize about my bank account being higher than a few hundred dollars for a change, this wasn’t about the money. Especially since Arnie Chen’s money has made me comfortable as it is.

  That didn’t matter. Molly Knowell is depending on me.

  “Mister Dachiana, I don’t need your money. I’m not saying I’d turn it down, but the fact of the matter is you aren’t my employer. Molly is. I’m more than happy to keep working this case for the amount she and I have agreed on.” We haven’t actually discussed payment yet, now that I think about it, but nobody in this room needs to know that. “If you want me to find the necklace and keep all your family secrets to myself then I won’t charge you for that, because it seems to line up perfectly with what Molly already hired me for. I do, however, have two conditions.”

  He blinks at me in surprise. Then he folds his fingers together in front of his face. “Well, well, well. Could it be that you’re different than other werdane we’ve had dealings with, Miss Stone? How refreshing. Very well, tell me what your conditions are.”

  “Oh, yes,” Ulva says dramatically. “Do tell.”

  I keep my eyes focused on Lowell. “My conditions are simple. First, I want to know what the hell a where-dane is.”

  His barking laughter brings some life to the angles on his face. “Why, that would be you, Miss Stone. A werdane,” he says, giving the word a stronger inflection, “is someone who is a normal hu
man, born without the ability to change their form. The word means ‘mundane human’ in its literal translation.”

  A werewolf calling me normal. Well, isn’t that ironic? “I’m hardly normal.”

  “Maybe not,” is Harper’s dry retort, “but that doesn’t make you special.”

  Lowell clears his throat. “You have a small sort of magic, Miss Stone, from what we have been told about you. However, magic doesn’t make you special. Not in the way our family is. Now then. What is your second condition?”

  The arrogance of this family would make Nicki Minaj seem like a choir girl. Be that as it may, I need answers from them. “Ulva, I need you to tell me what you meant earlier when you said the rascals picking fights with your family would have to be punished. What rascals?”

  Her lips twitch, amused at me not knowing the answer already. “This is a rough neighborhood, Miss Stone, and most people aren’t as civilized as werewolves are. There is a gang in this section of Detroit who like to think they own this territory. They’re wrong, of course, but that doesn’t stop them from trying to start petty fights with us in an attempt to make us leave. They call themselves—”

  “The Northside Demons,” I finish for her, even as I hear her say the words at the same time with my future-sense. Guess I did know that one after all.

  “Yes, the Demons.” That might have been a hint of respect in her voice for me. Maybe. “They have done everything they can to push us into paying what they call protection, or else force us to move. So far, it hasn’t worked. So far, we have killed over a dozen of them, but they aren’t smart enough to take the hint. I believe they stole the necklace to harass my family.”

  “But they have to know they can’t win against a group of werewolves?”

  There’s that smirk again. “They don’t know what we are, Miss Stone. It makes it all the more fun to hunt them down on the streets where they feel safe. Safe,” she says again, tasting the word with her tongue. “That’s such an arbitrary word, don’t you think?”

  I can actually hear the enjoyment in her voice as she tries to throw veiled threats at me while casually talking about murdering people. Gang members, but still. Thugs are people too. What she says makes sense, however. Even if she’s a top suspect in my mind, this is the second time someone has brought up the Northside Demons. I’d have to be stupid not to see the obvious motive for them to steal something that precious from the Dachianas.

  And Ulva is already planning her revenge, even without a shred of evidence that they’re involved.

  Which means there could be a bloodbath in the making if I don’t find out who the thief really is. At the very least, I’ve got to eliminate the Demons as suspects.

  “All right,” I say to all three of them, taking a moment to give my belt tassel a tug. “I’m working this case. I’ll do what you asked and keep your family name and your secrets out of it, but you have to let me do this my way. No killing people. No hunting people. You let me find out who really took the necklace and then we’ll see what punishment is reasonable after that. If you break my conditions then I’m not bound by any agreement, either, and don’t be surprised if you see your name all over the internet news sites. Do we have an understanding?”

  “I think,” Lowell says to me, “that you might have forgotten where you’re standing.”

  “I’m in a room with two werewolves and their sidekick. I know exactly what the score is. You might want to find out a little about me, first, before you start thinking I’m just another werdane you can intimidate. You might find I’m hard to scare off. Even harder to kill.”

  Lowell’s eyebrows lift up, but he doesn’t argue with me. One gloved hand makes a fist in front of his mouth, and he coughs into it. Harper snorts and turns away like she’s suddenly bored with me. Ulva’s smile is hard to read, but her eyes flash to the sharp brown of her wolf form again. No mistaking what that means.

  “Fine,” she finally says. “We have a deal.”

  The way she says it leaves me thinking of that old adage about how deals were made to be broken.

  I get to show myself out, walking past the butler who was most definitely giving me the stink eye. Frankly I have too much on my mind to worry about social status.

  For the fun of it, I take a five dollar bill out from the spending cash I have in my pocket and leave it for the guy on a side table near the front door. His expression melts away to a frown that makes his mustache quiver. Guess there’s just no pleasing some people.

  Roxy’s engine turns over nice and smooth and I drive her back to the gate, hardly noticing the landscaping around the Dachiana estate this time. The gate opens for me when I get closer without me having to do anything, and then I’m out on the street, and driving away.

  Reaching down to my waist I give the tassel on my belt a hard yank. “So what do you think?”

  With a pop that makes my ears ring, Harry is suddenly sitting in the passenger seat next to me with his knees pressed up against the dash and both hands fumbling for the adjuster lever. “I think you need to keep this seat back, if you’re going to be bringing me with you more often. Ah. There. That’s better.”

  Now that he has enough leg room he stretches out and slides his seatbelt across his lap. He grins like a little kid going for a ride with his family on a sunny afternoon, just happy to be here. I’m happy for him to be here, too.

  If I’m being honest, I wasn’t sure this would work. I’m thrilled beyond words that it did, and I have to say, more than a little smug at this trick I figured out. I knew that Harry couldn’t travel far from his rug. It’s a fact he’s had to live with ever since becoming a genie. At the same time, his rug was never something I could just slip in my pocket. I’ve crammed it into the backseat a few times but even moving it back and forth like that is far too cumbersome.

  And yet, Harry kept telling me about all the rooms and spaces that he has inside his rug. As impossible as it seems, he’s got quite the palace going on in there. So I got to thinking…if he can only travel in the rug, what if he was in one of those rooms in the rug, and we only took the room with us? Not the whole thing, just one room. Just one small part of the rug. Kind of like being in a mobile home for genies. A home away from home.

  Tugging on the tassel on my belt, I smile. I cut it off from the corner of his magnificent rug, and tied it in place, and now Harry gets to come with me everywhere I go. Ha. In your face, genie rules.

  “You are very smart, Sidney Stone,” Harry tells me, knowing what I was thinking. “In several thousand years, no one has been able to give me this much freedom. Now that I have it, I can be of much more help to you.”

  “I’m glad I was your first,” I joke with him.

  Out of the corner of my eye, I would have sworn I saw his cheeks flush.

  “So Harry, since you’re here to help me out, tell me this. What’s your impression of what we heard back there? Molly, Kurt, Kurt’s brother and sister. What do you think?”

  “Hmm. Yes,” he says, clearing his throat for some reason. “Well. I think your best suspect is definitely his sister. Ulva is a very aggressive woman. I saw that right away. She stands to be next in line to their mother’s throne now that he is stuck as a wolf.”

  “Yeah, I thought the same thing.”

  “We think very much alike,” he said with a smile, looking at me out of the corner of his eye. “I knew there was a reason I was sent to you.”

  I give him a good-natured slug on his shoulder. “Aw, thanks big guy. But, I don’t think we can rule out the brother, either. Lowell. He just moved up a step towards the throne, too. Now all that stands between him and ruling the werewolf clans is Ulva. Maybe he plans on getting rid of her, too.”

  “But he did say he wanted the necklace found, did he not?”

  “Yeah, but if he’s the one hiding it then he can say that without worrying about me suspecting him. He keeps the necklace, Kurt is stuck as a wolf, and then Ulva either meets with an untimely death or he lets out the information
that the necklace is gone and the other clans rebel against Ulva leading them, too.”

  “Yes, they did mention the clans would not follow them if they knew the necklace was lost.”

  “Exactly. Then, when all is chaos, he ‘finds’ the necklace from under his bed or wherever he hid it, and he’s the hero who gets to lead them. Pretty devious, right? I think Lowell needs to stay on our list.”

  He thinks about that for a while, and then nods his head. “I agree. People are devious, even if they are shapeshifters. The rule of the werewolf clans is quite an honor as I understand it. There is no telling what any of them might do to get to their mother’s throne.”

  “Yeah. Exactly. Makes you wonder what their mother thinks about all of it, right?

  “I have never met the werewolf queen. I suppose we could ask her…?”

  “Might have to before this is all over. For now, I have another suspect to talk to, and Harry, I’m ready to make my first wish in this case.”

  He manages to make a little bow, arm across his waist, even in the tight confines of Roxy’s passenger seat. “I am always at your service, my lady.”

  Yeah, he is. Having him here with me like this is going to work out really well. I can see that already.

  What I need from him now is something very specific. A piece of information that I know even Chris and the police couldn’t get for me. I need to talk to the leader of the Northside Demons, and yes the police would know who that is. I could find that out myself, for that matter, with a simple internet search. If I asked Chris for his help, he’d probably even be able to get me his listed address.