Demon Hunt

by A. Blythe

  I decided to swallow my pride and pay Reed a visit. I needed answers and, if anyone had them, he did.

  It was too late for Reed to be in the Office of the Protectorate, so I took the train to his house in Swarthmore. It was a good thing he traveled at the speed of angels because the train ride was far too long. I wouldn’t be excited about this commute in my human form.

  At some point it occurred to me that I should call and warn him of my arrival, but part of me was curious what I’d discover if I caught him unawares. He seemed so perfect all the time. It would be nice to know he didn’t put the cap back on the toothpaste or that he left dirty dishes in the sink when he wasn’t expecting company.

  The neighborhood was much more suburban than I expected. Even though it was already dark, I could see bicycles scattered on the lawns and every driveway seemed to have a basketball net. I passed a few people walking their designer dogs. Cockapoos and Labradoodles outnumbered good, old-fashioned collies and terriers.

  Why did Reed choose to live here? He was a young, single Naphil and this was clearly a family-friendly neighborhood.

  Finally I arrived in front of number twenty-one. The cookie-cutter house rivaled Flynn’s brownstone for best reflection of middle class America. The only thing missing was a white picket fence and I wondered if it was because the yard was warded. I thrust out my hand and stuck it over the grass. Nothing attacked me or electrocuted me.

  I lifted a foot, preparing to step onto his walkway.

  The front door opened and Reed’s head poked out. “I wouldn’t do that if I were you.”

  “A little help then, please.”

  He retreated inside the house, presumably to hit a button.

  “Is it safe to walk up?” I called.

  He reappeared with a nod and I strode up the brick walkway.

  “Why didn’t you text me that you were coming?” he asked. Reed’s broad smile hit me hard. When did I become vulnerable to those perfect Naphil teeth? I was beginning to feel like a traitor to my inner bitch.

  I opened my mouth to reply but quickly realized that I didn’t want to admit the real reason.

  “My phone battery died,” I lied and slid my hand inside my pocket to turn off the ringer.

  He opened the door wider and stepped aside. “Come in. I’m glad you’re here.”

  The inside of the house matched the outside to a T. Tasteful and stylish gray paint on the walls. An antique dresser and a colorful Shiraz rug graced the foyer.

  “Your house is…really nice.”

  I couldn’t even credit Tessa with the decor. Reed didn’t have a Tessa in his life, not that I knew of anyway, unless Melania had played more of a role in his life than I realized.

  “Thank you.” He walked into the family room and offered me a seat on the well-worn brown leather club chair. “Can I offer you a drink? I have vodka and tonic. Or are you still riding the mojito wave?”

  “No thanks. I’m good.” An awkward silence ensued. “I was going to call you and apologize…”

  Reed held up a hand. “There’s no need, Alyse. You don’t owe me an apology. I like seeing your compassionate side.”

  Wow. So his glasses were both rose-colored and silver-lined.

  Reed grinned at me. “When should we try again? Tomorrow night? Or maybe that’s the reason you’re here now?”

  He seemed so enthusiastic that I almost wanted to tell him yes, if only to see the look of delight on his face.

  “Actually, I came to ask you about Melania.”

  “Melania?” he echoed. “What about her?”

  “For starters, what have you been saying to her about me? She doesn’t seem to like me very much.”

  He chuckled and sat down on the wingback chair opposite me. “Don’t let the dimples fool you. Melania has a tough streak.”

  “I noticed.”

  He clasped his hands together and observed me. “Why do I feel like there’s more to your question?”

  “I’m surprised you’re not rummaging through my thoughts to figure it out.”

  “I’ve made a conscious effort to stay out of your head.”

  Ha! “Since when?”

  His expression clouded over. “It doesn’t matter when. So you don’t trust Melania. Why not?”

  So he snuck a peak inside after all. “Don’t you think it’s a strange coincidence that she showed up right before the attempted robberies? And that the men were all subjected to spells that she specializes in?”

  “She’s the one who told us the spells that were used,” he argued. “Why would she do that if she was the one who performed them?”

  “To cover her tracks, obviously. We won’t suspect her if she swoops in to save the day.”

  Reed gave a firm shake of his head. “Absolutely not.” He considered me for a moment. “Is this a jealousy thing? Because I don’t have any interest in Melania. I never have.”

  I shot up off the chair. “Are you kidding me? I’m trying to crack a case, Captain Reed. I’m piecing together the facts.”

  “Well, your facts don’t add up. What’s her motive? Melania doesn’t need money. She comes from a wealthy family.”

  Was everyone in this town made of money except me? It was certainly starting to feel that way.

  “Money isn’t the only motivator,” I said. “You know that as well as I do. It was my bank and Farah’s store that were targeted,” I said. “If she really dislikes me, maybe it has something to do with that.”

  His laugh was cold and bitter. “So somehow these crimes are about you? Incredible.” He raked a hand through his wavy, blond hair. “You have a real talent, Alyse. You think you don’t have any superpowers, but you’re wrong. The power of delusion is alive and well in you.”

  Ouch. I felt frustrated, but what did I expect? Melania was his friend and, like me, he was loyal to a fault. My reaction would have been exactly the same.

  “I’m sorry, Reed. I shouldn’t have come all the way out here.”

  He stood, his expression grim. “Yes, you should have.” His voice softened. “But it should have been for a very different reason.”

  I swallowed hard. “Reed, I can’t…”

  “You can’t stay. I know.” He turned and walked toward the foyer. “I’m happy to help you with the case in any way I can, but no more accusations about Melania. You’re wrong about her just like you were wrong about Tessa.”

  I nodded slowly and made my way to the door. “You really do have a nice house,” I said, and stepped onto the brick walkway.

  He shut the door and switched off the front light, cloaking me in darkness.

  “Wait, you didn’t tell me you actually bothered to console Flynn,” Farah said, aghast.

  We were lounging on the couch in her living room the morning after my visit to Swarthmore, and now she was demanding an excruciating level of detail about my date with Reed because I’d originally only given her the abridged version of ‘it sucked.’

  Thankfully, Katrien was still asleep, so I didn’t need to subject her to the pathetic story.

  “Reed seemed to expect that I would check on Flynn,” I said. “He must have me confused with some kind of good person.”

  Farah snorted. “Can you imagine Flynn as a loyal husband? Poor Tessa is setting herself up for a world of hurt.”

  “I don’t know,” I said, thinking. “Tessa has rolled with every punch that’s come her way. She’s accepted my presence, to a degree. She’s accepted Flynn’s true form. Nothing seems to faze her.”

  “She must really love him,” Farah said.

  Unconditionally, I thought and my conversation with Reed came flooding back to me.

  “Do you think we have issues with love because we don’t have parents?” I asked.

  Farah inclined her head. “You mean djinn in general?”

  I nodded. “We don’t experience unconditional love the way humans and other species do. Maybe it makes us dysfunctional.”

  Farah punched me in the arm. It was her w
ay of showing affection. “You’d take a bullet for me, wouldn’t you?”

  “I’m pretty sure I have.”

  “And I’d do the same for you, even if you’d pissed me off an hour before. And you joined the Colony Games because you wanted to protect Pinky.” She crossed her arms. “That’s unconditional love, Alyse. We don’t need a mother and a father to learn how to care about others. We learn it just by choosing to be a part of this world.”

  “Then why are we all so deficient in the romance department?” I asked her, tugging a woven blanket over my shoulders. “Me, you, Mix, Flynn. Katrien ended up a slave. Prince Simdan doesn’t have a consort and he’s royalty for gods’ sake.”

  “It sounds like Flynn isn’t deficient anymore,” Farah pointed out.

  “Except he told her he didn’t want to get married.” I didn’t share his other comment in the restaurant. There was a chance it truly had been a slip of the tongue when he’d said love instead of loved.

  “So is this why you’re reluctant to give Captain Milk-n-Honey a fair shake? You think you’re not capable of real love?”

  Music interrupted our unusually heartfelt conversation.

  “What in the Plasma Plane is that weird music?” Farah asked.

  I plucked my phone off the coffee table. “Theme song from 48 Hrs. I’m trying it out as a ringtone.” I tapped the screen. “Good morning, favorite detective. You have news, I hope?”

  “Meet me on the corner of 9th and Walnut in twenty minutes.”

  I tried to picture the row of stores on that block. “Was there another attempted robbery?”

  “No,” she said. “That’s the location of the Wawa where I like to get my coffee.”

  “Good to know your priorities are in order.”

  “Come alone,” she warned me. Gee, that didn’t sound ominous at all.

  Thompson was waiting for me on the corner, clutching her beloved Wawa coffee. An icy wind slapped me in the face with each step I took toward her.

  “We need to take this party indoors,” I said. “My lips can barely move.” I’d never experienced cold weather trapped in human skin. As a djinni, I could simply activate my inner heating system and—boom—I was impervious to temperature.

  She jerked her head. “There’s a store right here that’s open.”

  We ducked inside and I felt instant relief from the cold. “The irony is not lost on me that my last name is Winters.”

  “But it’s not even winter yet,” Thompson chastised me. “You’re going to need to get used to this or consider becoming a snowbird.”

  Since snowbird was not an option while I was a target for every supernatural criminal I’d tangled with, I’d have to suffer in heavy coats and thermal underwear like everyone else.

  “So what’s the update?” I asked, as a salesperson intercepted us.

  “Good morning. Can I help you ladies find anything?” she asked.

  I took notice of our surroundings for the first time. “We’re in a baby store.”

  The salesperson squinted at me. “Yes, this is Baby Mine. Are you shopping for a baby shower gift?”

  Shoot me with a copper bullet now.

  “Yes,” Thompson said, smiling at the woman. “A friend of ours from work is expecting and the office is throwing a shower.”

  The salesperson clapped her hands together. “How lovely. Boy or girl?”

  “She’s waiting to find out,” Thompson replied, smooth as silk.

  “We have some wonderful gender neutral clothing over here.” The salesperson gestured to the far corner of the store. “Lots of greens and yellows.”

  “Thank you,” Thompson said. “We’ll let you know if we need anything.”

  The salesperson took her cue and left us alone to browse.

  “You lie like a champ,” I said. I wasn’t sure why I was surprised, probably because Thompson was generally so straightforward.

  “I’m not lying,” she said, moving toward the gender-neutral corner. “Pamela is pregnant. She’s one of the secretaries in the precinct. I actually got invited to this one, so I figure I should buy a nice gift.”

  She thumbed through the racks of infant footie pajamas. “What are your thoughts on giraffes? People think that’s cute, right?”

  I held up a striped onesie with a colorful elephant embroidered on the front. “I’m no expert, but this elephant is adorable.” No reaction. “You’re human. Haven’t you been to a baby shower before?”

  “My cousin’s.” She shrugged and examined another outfit that resembled a bear costume. “Are these pajamas?”

  “No clue.” It was the blind leading the blind, apparently. “So what do you need to tell me that you couldn’t tell anyone else?”

  “It’s not that I can’t tell anyone else,” she said. “I just couldn’t tell you within earshot of your new friend.”

  “Katrien?”

  Thompson took a long sip her coffee and smacked her lips together. “Did she ever tell you how she got to Philadelphia?”

  “She stowed away on a cargo ship to New York and then took a train to Philadelphia.”

  “How’d she buy a ticket?”

  “She didn’t. She made herself invisible and hitched a ride.” I unfolded a mint green onesie with a soft yellow turtle. “You have to get this. I don’t even understand what I’m looking at, but I know it will make grown women squeal.”

  “We recovered footage of her at 30th Street Station,” Thompson said.

  I wasn’t sure what her point was. “So what? I just told you she took a train from New York. And I’m sure she was too weak to keep herself hidden the whole time. Her power would’ve been sapped.”

  “And that was on the fifth?” Thompson queried, taking the mint green onesie from my hand to inspect it more closely.

  I calculated the days in my head. “Yes, that’s right. She arrived at night so she slept on a bench in the city before she went searching for Flynn.”

  Thompson set down the onesie and removed the lid from her cup before draining the remainder of her coffee. “The footage is dated the sixth.”

  I stopped rifling through baby clothes and thought about the timeline. “I’m sure with all the travel and her condition, she could have made a mistake. If it was early enough in the morning, it still would’ve been dark. There’s a chance she thought it was still the night before.”

  Thompson removed her phone from her jacket pocket and pulled up a video. “This is from a hidden camera at the station.”

  I watched as a familiar man in a cashmere turtleneck sweater stood in a shadowy corner of the platform, checking his phone.

  “It’s one of the bank robbers.”

  “Gary Henshaw.”

  A young woman approached him, her dark hair styled in a long braid down her back. She wore a tailored suit and carried a briefcase.

  “Is that our spellcaster?”

  Thompson pursed her lips. “Wait and see.” I continued to watch as they spoke. He smiled at something she said and the woman inched closer to him. The train whistled and her face jerked to the side. My stomach knotted at the sight of the familiar profile.

  “I don’t think she knew the camera was there, do you?” Thompson asked.

  “No,” I said quietly. “Is this the only footage you have?”

  “I’m afraid so.” She tucked her phone back in her pocket. “What do you want to do about it?”

  I grabbed a nearby baby toy and squeezed it in frustration. The monkey’s belly squeaked in response.

  “What’s her end game?” I asked.

  “I figured you can find that out for me.” She chose three onesies, including the mint green one, and headed toward the register.

  “Three onesies?” I queried. “That’s your nice gift?”

  Thompson stopped walking and glanced at her meager pile. “You don’t think this is enough?”

  “Not if you want to be invited to more events.” I grabbed a couple of toys from the shelf next to me—one that looked like a s
kinny elephant but seemed to be a rattle—and a baby book. “I may not know babies, but I know people. And people like to get things. Let’s go.”

  We marched to the register and dumped the items on the counter for the salesperson.

  “All set?” she asked brightly.

  “Yes.” Thompson noticed the gift wrap options behind the woman. “Can I get these wrapped too?”

  “Of course.”

  “You don’t have wrapping paper at home?” I asked.

  Thompson raised her eyebrows. “Do you?”

  That wasn’t really the point.

  We left with her items in some kind of basket wrapped in cellophane and tied with an enormous green bow. It looked very professional.

  “Good job,” I said, patting her on the back. Although I smiled, my thoughts were stuck on Katrien. What was she up to? Were these attempted robberies somehow tied to her revenge scheme? I couldn’t imagine how. What ties did Aladdin have to my old bank and Tops and Bottoms. The only common factor was me.

  “Do me a favor and keep this under your hat for now,” I told Thompson.

  “Who am I gonna tell?” Thompson asked. “I’m PTF. I mainly work alone.”

  “I know,” I said. “I’ve been to your janitorial closet, remember?” Her ‘office’ was housed in a lower level of the building under the stairs. She was the Harry Potter of the precinct—Harry Potter when he lived with the Dursleys, not Hogwarts Harry.

  We stepped outside and the cold air smacked me in the face once again. “I’m buying a scarf with my next paycheck,” I muttered.

  “Be careful, Alyse,” Thompson warned. “She could be dangerous.”

  “No ‘could be’ about it. She’s a djinni with a secret agenda,” I said, with a regretful sigh. “That’s the epitome of dangerous.”

  12

  My plan was to head right home and decide the best way to handle Katrien. Maybe brew a nice cup of tea and see if she could predict her own unraveling in the tea leaves. Unfortunately, fate’s plans trumped my own. I was a quarter of the way to South Street when a black Lincoln Town Car pulled alongside me and the driver’s side window rolled down.