Deadline

by Jennifer Blackstream

  Peasblossom hugged the honey packets to her chest, her eyes a little glazed, as if she were already thinking ahead and was no longer paying attention to me. “Okay.”

  It said a lot about Peasblossom’s pride that she let a thin layer of honey remain behind in the bowl and left to start building her network. I smiled, affection for my familiar warming my chest. She’d probably give herself a title and everything. At least today’s technology meant she could find me again when she needed to. What had I ever done before—

  I froze.

  The phone.

  I could call Arianne. Her hypnosis spell wouldn’t work over the phone. My brow furrowed and I tapped a finger on the tabletop. At least, I didn’t think it would work. Definitely not if I distorted her voice somehow. It was so obvious that I almost smacked my head with my hand. Why hadn’t I thought of this sooner? With the phone and a lucky bluff…

  I opened the app store and, after a quick search, found what I needed. A distorter that would filter the voice I heard instead of filtering my voice should be enough to break any charm Arianne might try. I looked up the number for Suite Dreams.

  Even with the extra precaution, my nerves were still a little raw when I dialed her number. I signaled the waitress for a refill on my tea.

  “Hello?”

  I snorted, then clapped a hand over my mouth. The app had chosen a voice that sounded like a cartoon chipmunk. “Um, hi,” I managed. “May I speak with Arianne?”

  “May I ask who is calling?”

  I looked down at the app, frantically trying to change the voice selection. “Yes, this is Shade Renard.”

  “One moment, please.”

  I chose a different voice and put the phone back to my ear.

  “Mother Renard. I did not expect to hear from you again.”

  I froze, horrified. The new voice made her sound like Mother Hazel.

  “I, uh…” I stared down at the phone, scanning the list for a safer voice.

  “I had nothing to do with Helen Miller’s disappearance. If you call me again, the next time you hear from me will be in your dreams, Mother Renard. Or perhaps I should say your nightmares.”

  “No, no, wait, don’t hang up!”

  I gave up choosing a new voice and put the phone to my ear. “This isn’t about Helen Miller. In fact, I apologize for that. I realize now how insulting I was.”

  “If that’s all, I am rather busy.”

  She didn’t sound inclined to accept my apology. “There is one more thing.”

  “Another missing person you’d like to lay at my doorstep?”

  “No!” I forced myself to calm down, curling my fingers around the mug’s smooth handle. Goddess, she sounded like my mentor. Why did she have to sound like my mentor? “No, actually, it’s about a wizard.”

  “A wizard?”

  Interest lightened her tone, a definite improvement over the suspicion of a moment ago. I took a fortifying sip of tea. “Yes, a very powerful wizard. I’ve been contacted by several people—magic users—claiming he’s been threatening them. One of them mentioned seeing him entering your hotel and thought he might have visited you too, and I wanted to see what your impression was.”

  “Who is this powerful wizard?”

  “His name is Isai.”

  Arianne scoffed, disdain thick in the sound. “I am not threatened by Isai. He is the vampire’s pet now, and everyone knows it.”

  “So he didn’t threaten you?”

  “He would not dare. I suppose he insulted me, offering me money and thinking I would be stupid enough not to see the danger in what he asked of me.” She paused. “Is this about what happened to Tybor Aegis? Do you believe Isai killed him?”

  Tybor Aegis? Killed? I thought fast. “Well, you can see why people are concerned. And the task Isai was asking for help with…it’s dangerous, isn’t it?” Stay calm, stay calm. “He must realize you would guess what he’s up to.”

  “Any ward strong enough that Isai needs help to break it is protecting something powerful or something dangerous. If Tybor didn’t realize that, then that’s his fault. Personally, I have no desire to involve myself in something guaranteed to bring trouble. Which is why I will say goodbye to you now, Mother Renard. I trust this will be the last time we speak.”

  I nodded, then realized she couldn’t see me. My brain whirred, trying to incorporate what I’d just learned into what I already knew. “Of course. Thank you for your time. And if something changes and he does threaten you, don’t hesitate to call.”

  “Excuse me?”

  Her voice turned to ice, those two words sharp enough to cut through the din of a kindergarten classroom. The fact that she still sounded like my mentor made it exponentially more disturbing. My stomach twisted and I tightened my grip on the phone, holding on for dear life.

  “And why would I call you, witchling? Are you suggesting that I would need your help? Need you to save me?”

  I bristled at that, despite the unease snapping along my nerve endings. Witchling was a word for a young witch, an inexperienced witch. I had started my studies later than most, and that made me a joke in some circles. I didn’t appreciate it.

  Before I could think of a response, let alone say it, my phone beeped, alerting me that Arianne had hung up. And she’d been angry.

  I set my phone on the table and slumped back against the booth. That was two apology gifts I owed her.

  I shoved that thought from my mind and focused on the blank notebook in front of me. A dead wizard. A possibly murdered wizard.

  “It might be completely unrelated,” I muttered.

  After staring at the notebook long enough for the waitress to bring me a fresh pot of hot water for my tea, I pressed the pen to the paper and began to write. Start with the facts, then move on to supposition.

  Isai. He was the perfect suspect. He’d created the wards, he could’ve dismissed them with a thought. And though Anton had noted that Isai had never met Helen, he’d admitted in the file that it was possible the wizard had seen her coming and going during the actual work. After a second of hesitation, I added, possibly killed another wizard to steal his power. There was no doubt about it, Isai had the means, motive, and opportunity.

  But Anton was burning his spellbook. A spellbook that Isai prized enough to give up his freedom, serve someone he despised. If he had the stolen book, he must know by now that it was spelled shut. How long would he attempt to open the book before he gave up and returned it to save what remained of his spellbook? Anton would never trade for it, but if Isai framed someone else for the theft, he might at least stop the vampire from burning any more pages. Who would he frame?

  Dabria. A professional rogue, weak in her own magic, but unrivaled when it came to stealing from others. She had the skill to best the traps. Anton had no doubt customized the wards in Serafina’s castle against her specifically, but I doubted he’d have had her in mind when designing the wards to his vault. But she wasn’t in the book. How could she have known the book existed, to say nothing of where to find it?

  Flint. He knew about the book better than anyone, had his name written in it. He’d seduced a guard, had known where to find the book. He claimed to have an alibi. To kill the guards, to break the wards, to pass the traps…he would have needed someone else for all of that. Would have needed to seduce someone much more powerful. Possibly even one of my other suspects? And he had tried to kidnap me today. Why do that if he wasn’t worried?

  I dropped the pen and slouched back in the seat. I needed proof, physical evidence. And I didn’t have any.

  “You’re going to regret that.”

  I looked away from my notes to the table beside my booth. A man sat there, a glass of whiskey on the table in front of him. He turned in his seat, speaking to a man standing at the to-go counter trying to balance two travel cups of coffee one on top of the other to free up his other hand for the bag of food. The man paused in the middle of settling his chin on the top cup for added stability to stare
at the speaker.

  “I’m sorry?”

  The man next to me gestured at the coffee with his whiskey. “You’re going to regret that.”

  “I’ll be fine.”

  He shrugged and continued staring into his glass.

  Curiosity made me watch the man with the carry-out order. He made it to the door with impressive balance, giving the man at the table an I-told-you-so look. As he pressed his back to the door to push it open, someone else opened it from behind him. I caught a flash of a man in a business suit with his phone glued to his ear, and then all my attention was on the carry-out man hissing as hot coffee spilled over his shirt.

  The man with the whiskey didn’t glance up at the disaster happening in the doorway, but he seemed to feel my gaze on him. He met my eyes without reacting.

  “Precog,” he said.

  I tilted my head. “Witch.”

  He nodded. “First time here?”

  “Second.”

  His eyes clouded. “Won’t be the last.”

  His precognitive observation comforted me. Perhaps that meant I wasn’t going to die solving this case. Or it might mean that Peasblossom would drag me back here for more honey before I closed it.

  I took a breath, ready to introduce myself, but the clouds in the precog’s eyes grew thicker. He turned back to his table, staring into the golden whiskey as if he were looking straight through it to another future. Precogs had notoriously short attention spans. Hard to blame them, considering how many futures vied with the present for attention.

  My tea was cold, but I drank it anyway. I needed the caffeine to fortify me against the barrage of orange construction cones waiting for me on the long drive home.

  I gathered my notebook and pen as a woman at the table on the other side of the precog burst into a fit of giggles. She rose from the table, fanning her cheeks with her hand.

  “Of course I’ll go to your sister’s wedding with you!” she told the skinny teenager still sitting. “Oh, Landon, this will be so much fun!”

  The teenager grinned, but before he could speak, the girl backed up a few steps, taking her cell phone from her pale pink jacket. “I’m going to call my sister. She’s going to be so jealous!”

  I stood. As I left, I heard the precog’s voice and turned to see him lock gazes with the teenager, gesturing toward the retreating giggler with his head.

  “You’re going to regret that.”

  Chapter 12

  Finding a wizard wasn’t as easy as looking him up in the phone book. It took seven calls to other witches I knew before I found someone who’d heard of him. It took three more calls to find someone who knew where he lived. It was almost four thirty before my GPS led me to a nondescript house in a cozy suburb in Olmstead Falls. I gazed out the windshield at the small ranch-style house with its red brick and white trim. It didn’t look like a wizard’s house.

  Most wizards were prone to shows of power and affluence. They didn’t all go to the extremes Isai did, with gold rings bedecking every finger and matching chains hanging like champions of capitalism around their necks, but more often than not, they were the peacocks of the magic world. Not so for Tybor Aegis.

  “What’s your game, Tybor?” I said to myself. “You don’t live in an upscale building. You don’t distinguish your house from the outside with magical or non-magical decoration.” I frowned and extended my senses, reaching out with my power the way one might extend a hand, feeling for a wall. “You don’t even put wards around the property to warn trespassers they’ve stumbled onto the territory of a mighty wizard.” I tapped a finger against the steering wheel. “Either you are an anomaly, or you aren’t a very powerful wizard. Or you are powerful…and you are in hiding. Were in hiding.”

  After a few minutes sitting in the car, I acknowledged that I wouldn’t learn anything that way and I needed to go inside. The only problem with that was the rather large man sitting on the porch. He watched me sitting in my car, the sharp look in his eyes belying his relaxed position. To any human, he was just an average Joe hanging out on his porch, enjoying the few hours of the day that didn’t threaten to freeze your eyeballs in their sockets. The black T-shirt and jeans made him look human enough. But if I concentrated, I picked up a greenish tint to his skin. He had ogre in his bloodline somewhere. I’d bet my broomstick on it.

  I was also willing to bet he was a member of the Vanguard, here to protect the crime scene.

  “Mother Renard.”

  I whipped around in my seat, my heart leaping into my throat. My eyes widened when I saw who stood on the other side of my car.

  Vera raised a hand. “It’s all right, it’s only me.” The red and black checkered skirt she wore flared around her legs, swaying as she stepped back from where she’d bent toward my passenger window. Her black peacoat parted to reveal a formfitting red shirt the shade of crushed strawberries. She nodded toward the door. “You heard, then?”

  I forced myself to relax and quickly rolled down the window. “I spoke with Arianne earlier. She mentioned it.”

  Vera’s lips pressed into a thin line. “Arianne again. I don’t like the way her name keeps coming up.”

  “I don’t think she had anything to do with it.” I hesitated, toying with the black zipper on the pouch at my waist. “Peasblossom heard rumors that Isai has been going around trying to get help breaking a ward.”

  The rusalka’s eyes narrowed. “Oh? What ward?”

  “I don’t know yet. I considered the possibility he might have the book and be trying to get into it.” I ran the pad of my finger over the nylon of my pouch, drawing absent-minded designs. “I was at Goodfellows, and I got to thinking. You said Arianne is the best at wards. If Isai has the book, maybe that’s why he’s looking for help. The book is warded, right? Would Arianne be able to open it?”

  “Not yet,” Vera murmured. “But eventually, yes.” The soft peacoat shifted as she slid her hand into the pocket. “And did he ask her to do such a thing?”

  My nerves tightened as my focus narrowed down to her hand where it disappeared in black fabric. I tried not to hold my breath, tried not to think too hard on what sort of weapon the vampire’s wife might carry in that pocket. Don’t be stupid. Why would she want to hurt you?

  I cleared my throat. “Yes. Well, maybe. I called her and made up the story that several magic users had contacted me claiming Isai visited them, and they felt threatened. I asked if he’d been to see her, and she admitted he had, but she claims she turned him down.”

  “She didn’t mention what he wanted help with specifically?”

  Her hand was still in her pocket. I resisted the urge to throw the car into drive and speed away. My, wasn’t I feeling paranoid. “No. She just said any ward strong enough that Isai needed help to break it means trouble, and she has no interest in anything that will bring trouble.”

  “Sounds like Arianne.” Vera pulled a tube of ChapStick from her pocket and popped the cap off to spread it over her lips. A soft breeze carried the scent of cherry into my car. “She is reclusive. But I’ve never gotten the impression she’s a bad person. And I’m a very good judge of character.”

  I didn’t raise the question of how someone who was a good judge of character ended up marrying the Otherworld’s equivalent to a mob boss. I gave myself a mental pat on the back for the show of tact.

  Now that her hand was out of her pocket, and the would-be weapon was revealed to have been a harmless tube of ChapStick, some of the tension bled from my shoulders. I unzipped my pouch and dug around for a mint. “Anyway, it was when I mentioned people felt threatened that she dropped Tybor’s name. She thought his murder was the reason the other magic users felt threatened. She said she had no need for my protection and hung up.”

  Vera’s eyes widened and her cherry-scented lips parted. “You…offered her protection?”

  My cheeks grew warm. I put a handful of tissues and a thermometer on the passenger seat and continued digging for the mints. “Not in so many words. I si
mply said she could call on me if she had need to. I offended her earlier, I was hoping to smooth things over.”

  “But you offended her again instead.”

  I sighed. “She’s so touchy.”

  Vera gave me a rueful smile. “I’d say I’d put in a good word for you, but Arianne can be stubborn once she’s formed an impression of someone. I’m sorry to say you should consider a charm against nightmares, at least for a few weeks.”

  A chill ran down my spine, but I pushed it away. I found the mints and pried open the circular tin. “I’ll think of something.” I popped a mint into my mouth, then held them out for Vera. “Well, relevant to the case or not, something about Tybor’s death brought the Vanguard. So either there’s evidence that his murderer was another species…”

  “Or it was sensational enough it was guaranteed to make a huge splash in the human news,” Vera finished. She waved off the mints.

  “I hope it’s the former.” I put the mints back in my pouch, then paused as something occurred to me. I looked at Vera. “Wait a minute. I’m here because I talked to Arianne. Why are you here?”

  “Tybor used to work for Anton,” Vera explained. “When his death was reported, Dimitri’s system flagged it—just as it did when Helen Miller disappeared. I know Anton will want details, so I thought I’d come out and see what happened so I would have more information for him when he wakes up.” She leaned in. “Between you and me, he can be quite cranky if he has too many questions and not enough answers.”

  I’d noticed that. “So Tybor worked for him. Something to do with wards?”

  Vera nodded. “Yes. Tybor warded my stepmother’s castle for Anton, back in the Old Kingdom. When it came to wards, he was second only to Arianne, that I know of.” She looked toward the house. “When I heard of his murder, I thought perhaps the thief may have come to him to open the book.”

  I held up a hand. “Wait. Tybor warded your stepmother’s castle? Serafina’s castle?”