by Gina LaManna
But Matthew was right. There was one more thing that I wanted in exchange for my help. Something more valuable than my salary, more precious than gold, more desperate than the tangled strings of passion that hovered between the vampire and me. I stepped outside, away from the background noise of the party, and closed the door firmly behind me.
“The Hex Files,” I said into the quiet of the night. “I want them. All of them.”
“Those are sealed,” he said with a growl, as if he’d already known my demand. Captain King’s dark eyes bore holes into mine. “You know I can’t give you those.”
“Then you don’t need my help.” I stepped back into the warmth of the pizzeria, held their gazes for a long moment, and then slammed the heavy door shut.
I’d barely turned around before a loud crack ripped through the party, and the sound of splintering wood sent those with a little wine in their systems thinking a bar fight had broken out.
I knew better. Looking back, I found my sturdy front door splintered right down the middle and completely lopsided on its frame. As I’d slammed the door, Matthew had stuck his hand out to block it, and the entire door had shuddered and forfeited. A solid mahogany panel was no match for Matthew King’s strength.
The man could be equal parts intimidating and sexy, and sometimes both at once. This was one of those times, and I hated my visceral reaction to him when I wanted to feel nothing but anger.
“The Hex Files,” he said in an almost inaudible hiss. “You’ll have twenty-four hours with them—off the record. No copies, no notes...nothing. Nobody aside from the three of us will ever know you saw them.”
“Fine,” I said, my voice a whisper. “Let me get my coat.”
I reached for my jacket, avoided my mom’s open-mouthed stare, and muttered to Jack to keep the party going until I returned. My youngest brother stared with bemused wonder at Matthew and Nash before giving a firm nod.
“King,” I said, as I stepped over the smashed wood on the ground. “I’ve got one more demand.”
“What’s that?”
“A new door.”
Chapter 2
Murder never smells pleasant.
Especially when the source of death is a complex set of runes that only the most advanced sorcerer can perform. Especially when the victims’ blood is frozen solid in their veins, freezing the victims’ faces into a permanent contortion of pain.
That’s how we found the mayor and his female friend—a possible companion, though we couldn’t be sure until we ID’d her. As cars weren’t allowed in the Sixth Borough, Matthew, Nash, and I had hopped onto one of the spell-powered trolleys that crisscrossed the length of the city and made it to the outer edge of the Goblin Grid in under five minutes.
The scene of the crime was a seedy motel in close proximity to the casino. It acted as a crash pit for those who’d lost their money or needed to buy an under-the-table supply of SpellHash—a relatively harmless recreational drug favored by the young paranormal crowd. It made people relaxed, hungry, and sometimes paranoid, but in the scheme of magically-laced drugs, it was pretty innocent stuff.
The only other reason to visit the Motel 6th was in the company of a Goblin Girl—an attractive female goblin outfitted in a little skirt and littler bra. These women roamed the casinos looking for customers, and while the practice was legal, it was a distinctly gray area of the law. In short, the Motel 6th was hardly the place Mayor Lapel would ever want to be seen, let alone found dead.
“He went out with a bang,” Nash said, having perfected the dark humor so predominant in cop circles. “Or, seems to look that way. This one’s clearly a Goblin Girl.”
“We don’t know that yet,” Captain King said smoothly. “We’re running down her identity now. We all know the records of Goblin Girls are a pile smoke and lies. I’ll be impressed if anyone admits to even knowing her real name.”
“How old do you think she is?” Nash asked the question to the general public, but I could tell it was directed at me. “Do you think she’s underage?”
I barely processed the question. Since I’d stepped into the room minutes before, my brain had been working on overdrive. It’d been cranking through an analysis so familiar it was like I’d never left my job.
The sounds of the techs toiling away, their hands covered with Fingerprint Eraser charms, faded to nothing as I sank into my role as Reserve. Nash’s commentary filtered in one ear and found a storage space deep in the recesses of my mind to be processed later. Even Matthew—his form one I was always innately attuned to—couldn’t crack my concentration.
Matthew knew better than to interrupt. He left me alone, urging Nash to do the same. I was vaguely aware of King clearing the crime scene completely of techs and other Sixth Precinct officers before retreating himself. I was left alone with the two bodies—the way I preferred to work.
I closed my eyes, took a deep breath, and returned to the doorway to begin my process. A process I’d perfected over seven years on the job, and a process that had led the Sixth Precinct to the highest rate of closed cases ever. When my eyes flashed open, I was back in business.
The room was full of old, desperately wilting Residuals that were mostly gone. In a hotel room with a constantly revolving door and customers fashioning all types of spells and hexes and charms after a drunken night at the casino, the Residuals never quite left. My breathing felt heavy, constricted—as if the room were incredibly dusty and filled with pollen.
My peculiar gift was that I could physically see Residuals, unlike almost everyone else. I was one of five registered Reserves in all paranormal realms. My talent happened to be stronger than most. Even Lucia, a worthy pixie to take over my role at the force, would never see the same detail in Residuals as me. It wasn’t her fault; it was the nature of the beast.
It’s difficult to explain how my talent works, but I have spent so many years attempting to help others understand that my spiel is well rehearsed and automatic. It goes something like this: All spells leave behind traces. It’s part of Newton’s Third Law that for every action, there’s an equal and opposite reaction. All magic takes energy, and when a spell is performed, it doesn’t just vanish. It leaves behind trace amounts of the energy used and sprinkles them into the atmosphere on a level that’s invisible to everyone.
Everyone except me.
To me, these leftover bits of energy are like the breadcrumbs that Hansel and Gretel followed into the woods, leading them to the wicked witch. Except it’s much more than breadcrumbs. I can actually see the remnants spells leave behind: I can tell if the breadcrumbs are from whole wheat or white bread, from a croissant or a cinnamon roll. Hell, I can tell if it’s not even bread in the first place but rather a trail of crumbled cookies.
Residuals are valuable to me within twenty-four hours of the spell being performed in most cases. Longer than that, and the details fade. When the Residuals are fresh, I can pick apart pieces that point to the user of the spell, the type of enchantment cast, the results of it—did the spell misfire? Was it strong? Did it kill?
As soon as a spell is cast, that energy begins to be reabsorbed into the universe. From ashes to ashes, and all of that jazz. By the time a full day has passed, it’s hard for me to confirm anything more than the existence of an invoked spell. The rest of the details are often muddied beyond recognition, like a footprint that’s been out in the rain all day.
So, I set to work on the motel room, dusting back the minutia of magic—the incantations and magical traces that meant nothing to the case. Someone had performed a zap to warm up old takeout food in the non-functioning microwave yesterday morning. A Shaver invoked by a woman late last night had been spelled in the shower, and earlier this morning, a lazy maid had hawked an illegal form of a Cleaning Curse to get the room in shape for its next guest.
Once I’d sorted through the trace spells and catalogued them in my brain, I focused on the bigger ones. A streak of glittering red particles invisible to the human and paranormal ey
es, save for my own, told me that a magical contract had been signed in this room. The red shimmered like dust particles visible beneath stunning sunlight, and I let my mind haze over as I teased apart the details and filed them into place.
The contract had been performed by a woman—someone older than the body at my feet. The spell was at least twelve hours old, while the bodies had been here for no more than four. I processed that and moved on to the next.
A cluster of green signaled an illegal drug trade had happened here with SpellHash—again, it had been about twelve hours before. It probably had something to do with the contract. I shook away the green and focused on a splash of pink that had seemed innocuous at first glance, but upon review, deserved a second look.
The spell had been performed by... I hesitated. I couldn’t get a read on the gender, which often happened if the person had been trying to remain concealed. He or she might have used a charm to mask their fingerprints and footprints, which would have clouded the Residuals, but the spell itself seemed out of place.
It was simple Moving Magic—a quick spell a student might use to shift heavy equipment in their dorm room, for example—but the amount of energy it had taken was enormous. There was more concentrated pink near the door than anywhere else in the room.
My gasp drew Matthew to my side. His movements were liquid like mercury—a hint of supernatural to his very presence. Shimmery with speed and silent as a grave. Nash followed at a distinctly more human pace as I knelt over the bodies.
I quickly encased my hands with a Fingerprint Eraser charm to not disrupt the tech’s work on the bodies and rested a hand on the young woman’s arm. She had the look of a Goblin Girl, but a new one—her complexion tinged just slightly green, and not the deep, leathery green of the older ones.
“She wasn’t killed here,” I murmured. “This is obviously complicated rune magic, but there’s just not enough energy in the Residuals here for the murders to have been committed in this room. They were killed elsewhere and moved here.”
“You catch a whiff of the spell?” Nash asked. “What does it look like to you?”
My older brother seemed more curious than most about exactly how my talent worked. Though he’d never shown a hint of jealousy, I often wondered if he begrudged me the career advantage of being a Reserve. The truth was, he was an excellent cop—the best in the business. Probably better than me if we tallied up work ethic and drive, but there were simply things he couldn’t do—like see Residuals. Fair or not, that was life.
“Pink Residuals. A normal spell—nothing that even set off my alarms at first glance.” My knees creaked as I stood. I was instantly aware that even at my full height, I barely came up to Matthew’s shoulder. “Speaking of—there was a SpellHash deal in here last night. Might want to get the drug team to look up the last residents of this room and trail them. Usually there’s no legal contract if someone’s just buying some Hash for recreational purposes.”
Nash snorted. He’d worked on the drug unit for his first five years on the force. “Like they gave their real names at check-in. And anyway, I know Donny,” he said, speaking of the front desk receptionist who’d let us into the room. “He calls me when a wanted person pops up around these parts.”
“Well, he didn’t call you last night, and there was enough SpellHash in here for me to feel the high off the Residuals,” I said. “I think Donny isn’t as honest as you’re hoping, bro.”
Nash scowled. “We’ve got to choose our battles, Dani. Something you don’t understand, not having to—”
“The mayor,” King interrupted. “Any Residuals around him?”
I studied the man sprawled on the floor. He had a bit of a belly in the way of most comfortable politicians, but he wasn’t an un-handsome man. His salt and pepper hair could be considered dignified, and he stood somewhere taller than me and shorter than King. In life, he had a friendly smile that had likely won him the position of Mayor of Wicked.
“From what I can tell, the mayor hasn’t performed any spells in the last few hours.” I focused more intently on his fingers. “Not a single Residual there. I’m guessing whoever killed him started the runes a while ago. If you want more information, you’ll need to find the actual crime scene. This is just the staging zone.”
“Why stage here?” Matthew wondered aloud. “If the killer wanted to make a scene, wouldn’t he make a bigger splash? A seedy motel is hardly high profile.”
“The mayor is high profile enough,” I corrected. “The scene is just the backdrop. Maybe it’s a message of some sort. Maybe the murderer is trying to tell us, or the general public, something.”
“Some sort of renegade killer?” Nash looked skeptical. “Determined to expose the mayor for his tryst with a Goblin Girl?”
I shook my head. “It’s gotta be more than that.”
King’s nod wasn’t of agreement, it was of acknowledgement. “Why go through all the trouble of killing with runes when the murderer could’ve ended things quicker?”
I tsked under my breath. “I just don’t know. There’s not enough here to go on.”
“You forget,” Nash said with a bite to his words, “that the rest of us never have Residuals; this is all we ever get.”
My eyes cut to him. “That’s why you have me and Lucia.”
My retort hung in the air. They didn’t really have me, nor did they have Lucia anymore. It wasn’t modest of me to admit, but a lack of Reserve on staff would most certainly hurt the force’s close rates. Sometimes the answer to the case was written in the Residuals, and closing it was a simple matter. Unfortunately, that wasn’t the case with the mayor.
“It doesn’t make sense to me. Not yet,” I quickly corrected, resuming my stroll around the edge of the crime scene. I paused at the doorway. “No sign of forced entry. There’d be gold Residual for a Lock Lifter, but there’s nothing.”
“We’re holding Donny for questioning,” King said, and it was an invitation. “Would you like to join?”
I sighed. “I’m not getting back to the pizza party tonight, am I?”
Captain King rested a hand on my back, his touch cool against my skin, though the effect was a burning zing that went straight to my gut. We might have broken up, but it wasn’t due to a lack of chemistry. The chemistry between us was enough to set the Necromancy Lab on fire—especially when we couldn’t act on it. At least when we were burning up the sheets at night, we got a reprieve from the sexual tension between us. This was unbearable.
I stepped away from him, and King’s lips tightened. He dropped his hand and marched forward. “No, Detective, I’m afraid your slice will have to wait.”
Chapter 3
While Nash hung back with the bodies to supervise the techs and the evidence sweep, Dani and Matthew made their way down to the motel lobby. Matthew dropped back, letting Dani take the lead as she ran a hand through her brilliant, waist-length blond hair and stepped into the office. Matthew admired her as he always had, but today the admiration was clouded by concern.
The weight of this case hit like a hammer with the first call to the station. Matthew had been at home preparing a solitary dinner for one when the urgent Comm had pulled him from his feast of synthetic blood. Nash had arrived at his door minutes later, insisting they get his sister involved with the case.
Matthew had agreed, for the sole reason his hands were tied. A dead mayor found in a potentially compromising position with a Goblin Girl would be a borough-wide nightmare, if not more. The ramifications of cases this size often bled over into New York, and whether the humans were aware of it or not, the consequences rippled across society.
The faster the precinct could close this case, the better for everyone. And the ticket to closing this case would be her, of course. The bane of Matthew’s existence and the love of his life. Legend said that vampires could only truly fall in love once. If that were the case, Matthew King was a hopeless soul. He’d found and lost his love, which made him destined to be alone.
&nbs
p; “Are you talking to him, or should I?” Dani asked Matthew. “What sort of badge will I be getting, by the way? I don’t want some stupid placeholder; I want the real deal.”
“What kind would you like?”
She considered, her mouth tilted in a thoughtful pout. “Honorary Detective,” she said with a shrug. “Might as well stick with what I know.”
Matthew’s nod was confirmation, and he jotted down a note to have Felix get her that badge, stat. Knowing Dani, she’d poke her nose around whether she had a badge or not, and a civilian asking questions into the mayor’s murder wouldn’t reflect well on the department. The sooner Felix could get her official, the better.
“I’ll let you take the reins on the questioning,” he said. “Keep things light if you can. Donny’s a, ah, friend of the department.”
Dani rolled her eyes. “Yeah. He’s a sleazy sometimes-snitch and a liar. He addressed my breasts when I first arrived at the motel. I don’t think friendly is in the cards.”
Matthew couldn’t blame Donny all that much for his interest in Dani’s figure, seeing as Danielle DeMarco was the most beautiful woman Matthew had ever laid eyes on. But he’d never admit that aloud these days, or Dani would squeeze the non-beating heart right out of his chest.
“Right,” Matthew said instead, his tone light since he trusted Dani to make the right calls. “Then let’s try to keep things civil.”
With a snort, Dani gave a shake of her head. The former detective rapped her knuckles against the door to the inner office and didn’t wait for a response before entering. That’s how she worked—ask forgiveness, not permission.
“Can we have a minute?” Matthew asked the officer in charge of watching Donny. “You can wait outside.”
The officer—a half elf—gave a succinct nod and moved outside. Dani ignored the whole exchange, perching a hip on the desk and studying Donny.
Donny’s head was tilted down and his eyes were focused on Dani’s body. Matthew spoke some harsh words in a voice that was a hint too growly to be professional, and Donny’s eyeballs popped right back into his head. He paled as he brought his gaze to Dani’s face.
