by Jaye Wells
“The main word in that sentence was whacked, as in homicide. We work arcane crimes that violate federal statutes.”
“How many of those you closed lately?” he challenged. “Last I heard, your bosses in Detroit weren’t too happy with how few major coven leaders you brought to justice lately.”
He wasn’t wrong. Less than a week earlier, our boss, Assistant Special Agent in Charge Miranda Gardener, had read our team the riot act about our lack of big busts.
“Pretty sure the suits in Detroit wouldn’t consider solving the murder of a low-level wizard a win,” Morales shot back.
Duffy smiled a smile I’d come to dread. It’s the expression people get when they know they have you cornered. “That’s where you’re wrong.”
He stepped toward the refrigerator. It was one of those vintage jobs with rounded corners, like people had in the ’50s. The fire had left its exterior darkened so it resembled a sarcophagus.
“How would your bosses feel if you showed them this?” he said.
The heavy door required a couple of hard yanks to open. But once it did, his smile grew even bigger. Frowning, I stepped forward and used my flashlight to illuminate the dark interior. Inside, neat bricks of plastic-wrapped cash filled the top two shelves.
Morales whistled.
“You ain’t seen nothing yet.” Duffy pulled open the freezer. Water splashed to the floor from the melted ice. But nestled in the center of the space were several gallon zip-top bags of potions.
“Holy shit.”
“Bet Gardner would love to see MEA get credit for a seizure like this,” Duffy said.
The thing was? She totally would. Not that we’d admit that to him. The instant he thought he had the upper hand, he’d screw us over.
“Why in the hell would anyone leave this behind?” I asked.
“Lots of reasons,” Duffy said. “Maybe they were in a hurry or they thought the fire would destroy it.”
“Or maybe they didn’t care about the potions at all because the murder was personal,” I said.
Duffy shrugged, looking unconcerned.
“What’s your angle on this?” Morales asked the same question I’d been thinking.
“I told you, stats.”
I crossed my arms. “Sounds to me like what’s really happening is Mayor Volos is putting the vise on Chief Adams, who’s rolling that shit downhill to Captain Eldritch, who’s passing it on to you. No way Volos is promoting Adams to Commissioner without a decrease in crime stats.”
Duffy sighed. “Something like that.”
“Which begs the question,” I said, “did Eldritch put you up to this?”
“Doesn’t really matter, does it? Because whether he did or not, if I tell him the MEA’s balking at assisting us, he’ll go right up the chain to Volos.”
Which meant we’d probably get the case whether we wanted it or not. The MEA’s continued presence in Babylon depended on a good political relationship with the mayor and the BPD.
“But it doesn’t have to be like that,” Duffy said. “No reason it can’t be a favor I owe you.”
Considering that the last time I’d spoken to Duffy, he basically accused our task force of being dirty, this was an interesting development. Either he had a secret he wasn’t telling or his ass was really in a sling with Eldritch.
“We’ll have to take this up with Gardner,” Morales hedged. He wasn’t lying, but technically, as the number two on the task force, he had the authority to accept or decline the case. Most likely he was buying us some time to work through the possible angles. “In the meantime, I’ll leave Mez to help with the evidence collection. If we do take it, he’ll need to be in on it anyway.”
“And if you don’t?”
“Then you’ll owe us a favor.”
Duffy snorted. “I’ll expect your call by end of day or I’ll bring in the FBI.”
It was an empty threat. The FBI had stopped getting their hands dirty with arcane crime about a decade earlier. They mostly took cases with ties to domestic terrorism or Mundane organized crime. It was less messy than chasing covens and got more media coverage, to boot. America did love its mobster myths, after all. Far sexier and easier to believe than the truth—that the real threat to our cities was America’s addiction to magic’s easy fixes.
“You’ll hear from us when you hear from us.” Morales flicked a parting wave in Duffy’s direction and we made our way back outside.
“Talk to Mez,” Morales said. “I’m going to call Gardner.” He walked toward where we parked, away from the eager ears of the cops on the scene.
I found Mez near an idling fire truck. The loud engine created enough white noise that no one could hear us.
“Duffy wants us to take the case,” I said.
“You told him no?”
“Of course.”
“Think that’s gonna stick once you talk to the boss lady?”
I sighed. “Probably not.”
“What do you need from me?”
“There are some party favors in the freezer that need analyzing. Let me know once you’ve identified the type of potions we’re dealing with so I can start linking them back to the covens.”
“I can do some basic field tests, but I usually need to bring samples back to the lab to verify the chemical makeup.”
“Just see what you can do. I’m hoping I can talk Morales and Gardner into punting this one.”
“Why?”
“Because it reeks of a shitstorm.”
“Don’t they all?” He laughed. “Did you see the body?” Off my nod, he whistled. “I don’t know who that cat pissed off, but they sure wanted to send one hell of a message.”
“I have a bad feeling we won’t like the meaning of the message or to whom it was intended.”
He shot me a weird look. “Nice grammar, Emily Dickinson.”
I laughed. “One of the benefits of having to help a sixteen-year-old pass his English class.”
“Speaking of,” he said, “is Danny liking the new school?”
“It’s fine. He says public school is way easier than Meadowlake had been. Now that he’s settled, he’s asking when he can start up lessons with you again.”
Danny was my younger brother. In addition to being his annoying older sister, I also had been his legal guardian since our mother died ten years earlier. The lessons I mentioned were in clean magic, which was Mez’s specialty. I would have taught him magic myself, but I only knew how to cook dirty.
“Tell him I’m ready when he is.” He nodded over my shoulder. “Your boyfriend’s back.”
I elbowed him in the ribs. “He’s not my boyfriend.”
“Uh-huh. What do you call your little situation, then?”
I thought for a second before answering. “Partners with benefits.”
“You two are a trip.” He snorted. “Although I never thanked you.”
“For what?”
“I won a hundred bucks from the office pool. Shadi thought you’d keep stringing Morales along and he’d eventually just get sick of your shit.” He winked. “But I knew you’d come around.”
I ignored the flare of temper. After all, I had resisted the attraction for a while. Still, I didn’t love the idea of my sex life being the subject of a team-wide betting pool. But in our line of business, showing discomfort put a target on your back. “Seeing how I did all the work, I feel like I should have gotten a piece of that payday.”
He smirked. “I’ll buy you a beer next time we’re near a bar.”
I grinned. “Deal.”
By that time, Morales reached us. “Gardner wants us to come to the office.” We must have looked guilty, because he paused and gave us suspicious glares. “What are you two talking about?”
“Oh, you know, wizard stuff.” I waved a hand. “Call me if you run into any snags here,” I told Mez. “We’ll let you know once you can take custody of the evidence.”
He saluted me and sauntered off to rejoin Val.
“Rea
dy?” I asked Morales.
“What do you think about all this?” he asked as he walked toward the SUV.
I squinted at the green clouds. “I don’t know. I got a bad feeling.”
“You just need to eat. You’re always sort of nihilistic before you’ve had breakfast.” He bumped me with his shoulder and shot me a roguish grin.
“I mean it,” I said. “Something’s off here. Why is Duffy so eager to give us this case?”
“Maybe because he doesn’t think he’s got the chops to solve it. He had to bring in the real heroes to get the job done.”
I rolled my eyes. “Or maybe he’s setting us up. I’m telling you—this one’s gonna be messy. I can feel it.”
“Admit it, Cupcake, you’d be bored if things were too neat and safe.”
The words were delivered casually, but they felt heavy on my ears. Instead of analyzing that reaction, I elbowed him. “Seeing how you’re so keen to be someone’s hero, you can buy breakfast.”
Chapter Two
We were back at the office by noon. Morales parked his SUV in the scrub-brush parking lot next to the train tracks. The old brick building that served as the task force headquarters used to be a boxing gym owned by a man named Rooster. The gym was on the second floor over a bodega that sold cold sodas, cheap snacks, and nudie magazines. We passed the entrance to the shop and went through a glass door that still bore the Rooster’s Gym logo.
My favorite part about coming back to the office was when the stink of old vinyl mats and the ozone scent of magic hit me. After working there for several months, I’d come to associate that perfume with coming home.
As we climbed the staircase, the sounds of a busy office filtered down toward us. Now that we had some new blood on the team, the old gym was always pretty busy.
At the top of the steps, I spotted Shadi Pruitt on the phone at her desk. Her combat boots were perched on the edge of her desk while she talked. The other two members of her team were in the center of the ancient boxing ring. They faced off over a table that had been set up in the center with a bulletin board nearby that held pictures and other information pertaining to their sting.
“How’s it going, boys?” I called. They were too involved in whatever their debate was to answer, but Dixon waved halfheartedly in my direction.
Deputy Dixon and Detective McGinty were our team’s version of the Odd Couple. McGinty was a BPD gumshoe who only had a couple of years left before he started collecting his pension. His mustache was more salt than pepper, and he had a ruddy Irish complexion and blue eyes that looked sad even when he smiled. He had the soft body of a cop who’d spent a good part of his time sitting in a city-issued car, but he’d been on the job so long that there wasn’t much he hadn’t seen or done. He wasn’t an Adept, but he brought tons of experience to the team.
On the other hand, Deputy Aaron Dixon had the trim physique of a runner. I hadn’t seen him eat one carb in the month he’d been on the team. He’d only recently earned his sheriff’s deputy badge after spending his early years working as a guard in the county prison. Gardner had pursued him for the team because he was an Adept—albeit one who rarely practiced the Arcane arts. But I suspected it was his rookie eagerness to please that made him so appealing to Gardner. Plus, he had a knack for technology that made him useful for surveillance and research. He might have been green, but he wasn’t naïve. He’d grown up in the affluent Highland Hills suburb, where all the upper-middle class Lefties lived, but considering how few Black families lived there, I couldn’t imagine he had an easy time.
Shadi hung up the phone and pulled her boots off the desk. “What did Duffy want?”
“Clandestine lab explosion,” Morales said. “Someone offed the wiz before they blew the place up.”
Shadi only stood as high as Morales’s shoulder, but what she lacked in inches she made up for in badassitude. Her black hair was pulled back into a no-nonsense bun, and her face was free of makeup—not that she needed it with her clear brown skin and high cheekbones. Besides running her own team, she also was a surveillance expert and was pretty damned handy with assault rifles. “He dumping it off on you?”
“He’s sure trying.” He shrugged. “Gotta talk to the boss lady before we know for sure. How’s your case going?”
She pursed her lips and shot an annoyed look at the men in the ring. “Good, except those two knuckleheads can’t agree on a damned thing.”
I grinned. “Have you tried couple’s counseling?”
She made a disgusted sound and raised her voice to be heard. “I’m about to give both those motherfuckers a time-out.”
The two in the ring grumbled something but went right back to their bickering.
“Good luck with that,” Morales said.
My phone buzzed at my hip. I checked the screen. The number was from the medical examiner’s office. “It’s Franklin,” I said to Morales.
Just then, Special Agent in Charge Miranda Gardner opened the door to her office. “Morales, Prospero.”
It wasn’t a greeting—it was a command. She might wear the sensible pantsuits and heels of a public servant, but only a fool would miss the authority radiating from her or the raptor’s eyes that missed nothing.
“Coming, sir,” Morales said.
I nodded to indicate that I’d join them in a minute and lifted the phone back to my ear. “Talk to me, Franklin.”
“Thought you might want to know we got the dental records. The vic was Basil Valentine.”
“Interesting.”
“He ain’t been to the dentist in a couple of decades, but the records match.”
“Did you call Duffy?”
“He told me to call you.”
“Naturally. Thanks for letting me know.”
After I hung up, I turned to Shadi. “You hear anything on your rounds about an O boy named Basil Valentine? Last I hear, he was pimping for Aphrodite.”
“Doesn’t ring a bell. Why?”
I crossed my arms and leaned against her desk. “That’s the name of the vic from the explosion.”
“I’ll ask my CIs. See if anything comes up.”
“Cool, thanks.”
She nodded and marched off to play referee for Dixon and McGinty. I stowed my bag at my desk and went to join the conversation in Gardner’s office.
My knuckle barely tapped the door before Gardner’s voice barked out, “Come in.”
Inside the cramped room, the tiny window let in cold, milky light. Behind the desk, Gardner sat in front of a stack of case files that were organized with military precision. She wore a brown suit that matched her hair, with a cream-colored blouse underneath that matched her complexion. She wore no jewelry.
Up until a few months earlier, she’d worn a tigereye cabochon ring on the middle finger of her left hand. Tigereye was the stone of truth and logic, and the middle finger was the Saturn finger, which represented responsibility and security. But after a run-in with a sadistic Brazilian shaman in the spring, the ring had been lost and the finger upon which it had sat was now permanently crooked and its knuckle swollen.
“Sorry, sir,” I said, taking my seat. “That was the ME. He confirmed the identity of the victim as Basil Valentine.” I said this more for Morales’s benefit than Gardner’s, but she nodded as if he’d already filled her in.
“What’s your read on this?” Gardner asked.
I sucked in a breath and blew it out, buying time to gather my thoughts. Things were always tricky when it came to working with the BPD. I was still technically on their payroll, so I had to balance that with the fact I spent every day with the task force. “It seems weird. I don’t buy Duffy’s eagerness to hand it over. Last time, he acted like we’d pissed on him when we asked to take a case.”
Morales spoke up. “He’d do it if word was coming down from the mayor’s office.”
“Explain.” She tossed her pen on the desk and leaned back as if she’d just dared me to impress her.
“According to Duffy
, the increase in murder stats got the brass nervous,” he said. “Duffy said he needed to get this case off his books to up his percentages. Our guess was that Eldritch is trying to increase the closure rate to impress Mayor Volos.”
“That’s bothering me, too,” I said. “What’s with all the murders over the last few weeks? Ever since Puck got put in jail for Charm and the Brazilian’s murders things have been hot.”
Puck used to be one of the up-and-comers in the Votary ranks. He’d gone down six weeks earlier for the murder of one of the leaders of that coven, an old-school wiz named Charm. He’d also been charged with murdering two A Morte coven hit men who’d actually been murdered by our mayor. The fact Puck was still alive in jail probably meant A Morte wasn’t buying him as the killer. But that was a pretty touchy subject in the office, since we’d all technically been accessories to that crime, and the idea of A Morte finding out about Volos’s or our involvement would be serious bad news.
“Are you thinking that once Puck was off the streets, the Votary rank and file started jockeying for positions?” Gardner said.
I nodded. “Most of the murder reports I’ve seen have been happening in Votary territory. But the issue at hand is whether Basil Valentine’s murder can lead us up the chain of command, and I don’t think it can. Last I heard, he was a low-level pimp for Aphrodite.”
“But you said yourself that the lab looked like a Votary cook,” Morales said.
The Votary coven used magic that was the closest to traditional alchemy. It also happened to be the coven I’d grown up inside, so I knew it best. Unlike the Votaries, the O’s practiced sex magic and the Sangs practiced blood magic. Neither of those traditions usually used complex alchemical lab setups to cook their potions.
“Is that true?” Gardner asked.
“Yes, sir,” I admitted reluctantly, “but even if he was working with the Votaries, most of the deaths so far have been simple drive-bys involving potion-filled projectiles being shot from pellet guns. All the bodies are from low-level corner wizes. None of the big players have been involved.”
“Yet,” she said, crossing her arms. “I have to admit I’m curious about the connection. Plus, I’d sure love to send my boss a framed image of money and potions from a big bust.”
