Volatile Bonds

by Jaye Wells

  I blew out a breath. “Any new findings on Valentine’s body?”

  He moved over to a desk and pulled out a file. “Didn’t find any fragments of a bullet in the head, and there’s an exit wound.” He pulled out an image of Basil’s charred head and pointed to a spot that was supposed to be the exit wound. I couldn’t see much besides a mess, so I took his word for it. “Last I heard, CSI wizes hadn’t found the casing or any fragments on site, either.”

  “Which means someone wasn’t looking hard enough,” I said.

  “Or whoever shot Basil did a cleanup before they torched the lab,” Franklin offered.

  “So, no tracing a gun,” Morales concluded.

  “Of course not,” I said. “That’d be too easy.” To Franklin, I said, “Go ahead and give your report to Mez when he comes. Looks like we’re officially taking the case from the BPD.”

  Morales added, “And let us know if you turn up any other DOAs that match the Kostorov potion.”

  “I know you’re taking the Valentine case, but should I loop Duffy in on this virility potion thing?” Franklin asked.

  “At best, we’d be able to pin manslaughter on the wizard, but you know how hard it is to get that shit to stick,” I said. “Besides, you heard Duffy at the scene yesterday. He’s not real eager to pick up new cases at the moment.”

  “Understood,” Franklin said. “You got any ideas of where to start tracking down the source of this shit?”

  “We’ll have to do some digging,” Morales said. “You got the widow’s information?”

  Franklin shook his head. “I got the attending’s phone number, though. He can give it to you.”

  I took down the doctor’s name. “We’ll do our best to track this down, but we’re already working the Valentine investigation. Gardner’s not gonna be real thrilled about using resources if this turns out to be some low-level wiz selling bad potions out of his van or whatever.”

  “Tell that to the widow,” he said, his tone uncharacteristically grim. “Or that kid’s mom. Your brother’s about that age, right?”

  It was a low blow and he knew it, but he didn’t look the least bit apologetic.

  “All right,” I said, “I get it. We’ll see what we can do. Just don’t expect a miracle.”

  He laughed but the sound held little humor. “In this business, miracles are in short supply, Prospero.”

  Chapter Five

  We got to the gym bright and early the next day. After our trip to the morgue, it was one of those mornings where it felt like even an IV drip of coffee wouldn’t be enough to get me through the day. But now that we were potentially juggling a murder case and Franklin’s virility potion case, the To Do list had grown exponentially, so there was no sleeping in.

  The light in Gardner’s office was on, indicating she was already at work, and judging from the noises coming from Mez’s lab, he’d pulled an all-nighter following his visit to the morgue. But the doorway into his lab had a heavy curtain pulled across it, which meant he wouldn’t welcome an interruption. We needed to talk to both of them, but first we had a couple of calls to make.

  “You take the widow and I’ll reach out to Val to see about getting evidence from the lab?” Morales said.

  I nodded and dialed the phone number for Kostorov’s attending physician. After navigating my way through the hospital phone tree for about five minutes and getting a generic voicemail box, I hung up. In my cell, I found the number for a nurse named Maggie Smith that I knew at the hospital who might be able to help. Luckily, I had her direct line.

  “Kate? Is everything okay?”

  She was right to worry, since I only seemed to call when there was an emergency. We’d met after Danny had been hexed by a dirty magic potion, and the last time we’d talked had been after Pen had had a terrible car accident.

  “Yes, everyone’s good,” I said. “I was actually hoping you could help me on a case. I was supposed to talk to a Dr. Singh, but I can’t seem to reach him.”

  She snorted. “Yeah, he worked a double shift. He’s probably in a self-induced coma about now.”

  “Well, the thing is I’m trying to get ahold of the widow of one of his patients who passed away last night.”

  “I was working last night. Who’s the deceased?”

  I told her Kostorov’s name.

  She made an ain’t-that-a-shame noise with her mouth. “Yeah, hard to forget that one. What do you need the widow’s info for?”

  “Medical examiner called us in for a consult. Need to talk to the wife to find out exactly what he took.”

  “Geez, Kate, I’d love to help, but I can’t give out her address or phone number without her permission or a warrant.”

  I stifled a curse. Stupid laws protecting people’s privacy. Made my job a real pain in the ass sometimes. “I get it. Any way you could call her and ask her to get in touch with me?”

  “That should work.”

  “I’d owe you a big one, Maggie.”

  “Sure thing. One of my girlfriends who works over at Memorial said they had a guy come in with the same problem. Whatever they took is nasty. I hope you find whoever’s putting it out.”

  “That’s the plan. Listen, if you hear of any similar cases coming in, can you give me a heads-up? Since you’re on the front line, so to speak.”

  “Sure thing. I’ll text you once I’ve gotten in touch with Mrs. Kostorov.”

  After I hung up, I chewed on my lip for a moment. I needed to talk to Mez to discuss the work he’d done on the Valentine potions, but before I could grab Morales from his phone to go talk to the wizard, Gardner’s door opened. “Morales, Prospero—I need an update.”

  Morales hung up from the call with Val. Together, we went to Gardner’s office to fill her in.

  “How’d it go at the morgue?” she asked without preamble.

  “Franklin has three bodies he believes are tied to the same virility potion,” Morales said.

  She frowned. “When he called, I assumed he was bringing us information on the Valentine case.”

  This is where things were going to get tricky. Technically, the favor we were doing for Franklin wasn’t exactly kosher, so we needed to sell it to Gardner.

  “He’s got three dead men who all appear to have taken the same virility potion that stopped their hearts,” he continued. “Based on Franklin’s initial findings, the potions probably didn’t come from Aphrodite’s crew.”

  She didn’t look convinced. “Three men dying from hard-ons isn’t exactly shocking in this town, Prospero.”

  “One of the vics was a sixteen-year-old,” I said. “Whatever this potion is, it’s extremely dangerous, and it’s possible a new outfit is moving into town to sell it. If we ignore this and the press gets wind of it later, we’ll be crucified.”

  She sighed. “You talk to Duffy about this?”

  “So far, we don’t have any reason to believe these are homicides,” Morales said.

  She pursed her lips, thinking it over. “All right. Once we have Mez’s results, we’ll assess the need for further involvement. But this is not your priority—the Valentine case gets top billing.”

  “Got it,” he said.

  She looked down and wrote something on a pad. “Speaking of, any progress there?”

  “We spoke to Aphrodite yesterday. Something strange is going on with them.”

  “Them?”

  “Long story,” he said. “Anyway, the Hierophant is planning a wedding.”

  “Whose wedding?”

  “It’s an alchemical wedding,” I said. “Aphrodite is marrying their masculine and feminine sides to each other.”

  “What’s that got to do with Valentine?”

  “We’re not sure yet,” Morales said. “But Aphrodite’s acting strange and seemed to imply there might be some upheaval happening in the covens.”

  “There’s always upheaval in the covens,” Gardner observed in a dry tone.

  “Yes, but now we’ve got multiple dead men who took
virility potions that aren’t connected to Aphrodite, and someone killed their nephew, to boot,” I said. “Something’s going on.”

  “I need more than speculation here. Bring me facts and evidence.”

  “Understood,” Morales said. “Aphrodite also said that Basil might have been dating a Votary girl. We’re going to track her down today.”

  She nodded. “Good. I talked to Eldritch first thing this morning and told him we were officially taking the case. He offered full cooperation, but you come to me first before you go to Duffy.”

  “Yep. I talked to Val Frederickson before we came in,” Morales said. “She’s sending over some evidence collected at the scene. They found Basil’s cell phone in a trash can near the scene. If it’s okay with you, I’d like to bring Dixon in on that to track down call history and texts.”

  “Sounds good,” Gardner said. “Let me know if you need extra hands beyond that. Shadi’s team can be available for surveillance or leg work. I want this case in the win column ASAP.”

  We both nodded.

  “Well?” she said. “Why are you still sitting there? Get to work.”

  * * *

  By the time Morales and I exited Gardner’s office, the lab “door” was open.

  “I’m going to go talk to Mez,” I said.

  He nodded. “I’ll see if I can get bead on Little Man and Mary.”

  Walking into the lab, I called, “How’s my favorite lab rat today?” My tone sounded forced to my own ears. As much as I tried to keep work and private life separate, lack of sleep made it hard not to bring my frustration over the Danny school situation into the lab with me.

  He looked up from the worktable where he was labeling samples. “Tired. I was up all night, processing everything from the arson scene and the morgue.”

  “Sorry, man.” I let my resentment melt away. It was hard to stay mad at a man who’d stayed up all night processing semen samples for you.

  “I tell you,” he said, “some days I wish I were a vampire.”

  “Nah,” I shot back, “you’d look terrible with a widow’s peak.”

  “I’d rock a cape, though.”

  “True enough.” I wandered over to the lab setup, which had green and blue liquids simmering away in Erlenmeyer flasks while other liquids crawled through clear tubing. “All right, let’s start with the arson labs.”

  He pulled out a file folder filled with handwritten notes and computer printouts. “We got about two hundred potion patches of Buffalo.”

  Buffalo was one of the main potions currently being peddled by the Votary coven. Its full name was White Buffalo, which was due to its main ingredient being peyote. It was a potion that promised to expand consciousness, but usually ended up making its addicts schizophrenic.

  I whistled. “Damn.”

  He nodded. “It’s a nice haul, but that’s not all we got.” He tapped his pen on the clipboard where he had all his data. “There was also a stash of Chains. A big one.”

  “Chains” was one of the most abused dirty potions sold in the Cauldron. They called it that because it was super addictive, but it also created a paralytic affect in the user, akin to being bound in chains. Recently we’d had reports that it had started leaking to other cities, which meant the regional office was going to be really happy once news of the eventual bust hit the front page.

  “That’s a great haul. Did you tell Gardner?”

  “I will once we’re done here.” He motioned for me to join him at a microscope set up near the windows.

  “There was a third potion in the freezer. The stash was small—only about fifteen vials.”

  “What is it?”

  “I’ve never seen anything like it before.”

  A rack near the microscope held three vials containing a red liquid. On the rubber lid of each, there was an Asian symbol I didn’t recognize. “What’s that symbol?”

  “It’s Chinese,” he said. “Cinnabar.”

  “That’s odd.”

  “I’ve never seen anything like this in Babylon. Have you?”

  “The cinnabar, yes. It was a trademark ingredient of my Uncle Abe’s potions. But you don’t normally see Chinese symbols on anything here.”

  “Okay, so in the same stash, I also found about fifty red pills.” He poured a few pills out on a scale. They were red with the number 69 on them.

  “I’ve never seen those before either, but someone’s not into subtlety, are they?” I asked, referring to the sophomoric symbolism.

  “So, here’s the thing,” Mez said. “Based on my lab work, I think that the stuff in the vials is pretty similar to the formula in the pills.”

  “How so?”

  “Look in the microscope.”

  Closing my right eye, I looked with my left. Had I been looking at a Mundane chemical compound, I would have seen a bunch of squiggles. But since I had the ability to read magic and the compound was arcane in nature, there was a sort of hologram of a dragon hovering just above the squiggles. Problem was, I couldn’t tell Mez that I saw the hologram, because he didn’t know I could read. The reasons I’d hidden it from most of the team were complicated, but normally, it wasn’t an issue because evidence collected via arcane means, such as reading potions to find out who made them, wasn’t admissible in court.

  “What am I looking for here?” I asked.

  “That’s the slide containing the liquid potion. See how there are wiggly bits and straight bits?”

  I focused on looking past the roaring dragon to the potion itself. “Okay, I see them.”

  “Move aside for a moment.”

  I stepped over to let him put a new slide in the ’scope. “Okay, this slide has the powdered pill on it.”

  He moved out of the way and I looked again. This slide had the dragon, but the image was weaker. In addition, a cupid with a bow was superimposed. I pulled away, blinking to clear my eyes from the confusing imagery. I wondered if the cupid was Basil’s signature. When I looked again, I looked past the holograms to the potion itself for more clues.

  “I see straight and wiggly pieces and—” I blinked and looked again.

  “You see them?” he asked.

  I adjusted the focus on the microscope. “Little black Xs.”

  “Right, those are consistent with yohimbe bark.”

  I stood up and crossed my arms. The holograms had told me part of the story, but I couldn’t tell Mez that. So, I played dumb and let him connect the dots. “Yohimbe is found in diet and impotence potions, right?”

  “Right,” he said. “The pill contains the potion from the vials. But whoever made the pills was an idiot, because the lines were cinnabar and the squiggles were yerba mate. They’re commonly used in Asian lust potions, but the idiot who made the pills added the yohimbe, too.” He shook his head at what he clearly felt was a rookie move.

  “So, basically, they took a lust potion and turned it into a super-lust potion?”

  “Pretty much. Anyone who took that pill would have to have the heart of an ox to survive it.”

  I froze. “Have you tested the samples from the morgue yet?”

  “I conducted some preliminary tests. Why?”

  “Didn’t Franklin fill you in on the situation?”

  “He was busy, so his assistant gave me the samples.”

  “The body he called us to view was a seventy-year-old who’d died from an eighteen-hour erection made his heart fail. He knew of at least two other cases that had died in the last few days, including a sixteen-year-old.”

  “Shit,” Mez said. “That definitely sounds consistent with what that pill would do.”

  “If we can tie all those bodies to whoever killed Valentine, the case would go from big to massive. I need you to test Franklin’s samples for yohimbe.”

  “I’ll start on those right away, then.”

  I stared down at the vials and pills, thinking through all the angles. “What I can’t figure out is why there were so few pills and vials.”

  He nodded.
“Especially since there was so much of the other potions.”

  I paced for a minute before a theory formed. “When I worked for Abe, he’d sometimes give free samples out to the hexheads. Said it accomplished two things. First, if all the junkies died, the batch clearly wasn’t ready.”

  “Charming,” Mez said.

  “The man’s a sweetheart, right? Anyway, the other reason was that if the potion was good, giving samples to the hexheads created the market.”

  Mez nodded. “Makes sense in a really fucked-up way. But something else has my instincts firing off.”

  “Agreed. Whoever made those vials isn’t a Votary wizard.”

  “How do you know?”

  I froze, realizing I’d revealed more about what I’d seen than I intended. “I mean, that Chinese symbol, right?”

  “Right,” he said. “The Votary coven uses European alchemical symbolism on their potions.”

  “And sometimes the Sangs use Egyptian hieroglyphs, but I’ve never seen Asian symbolism in Babylon.” I tapped my chin, playing along. “It could mean the Votary wizards are using new suppliers.”

  “I’d say that’s a strong possibility,” he said, “and that the suppliers are probably Fangshi.”

  I kept myself from pumping my fist as he came to the proper conclusion.

  “What about the Fangshi?” Morales said from the doorway.

  I turned and filled him in quickly on what we knew. “Do you think the Fangshi could be making a play in Babylon?”

  “Anything’s possible,” he said.

  “Didn’t you work undercover with the Fangshi in Los Angeles?” Mez asked.

  Morales gave him a curt nod. “Yeah, but I’d be shocked if any of the big players in the Fangshi would waste their time with a low-level guy like Basil Valentine.” He avoided looking at me, but I could feel the tension coming off of him. We’d have a lot to discuss once we were alone.

  “All right,” Mez said, “We’ll know more once I get the morgue samples processed. I’ll let you know as soon as I know something.”

  I nodded and started to go.

  “Kate?” he said, his voice suddenly hesitant.

  “What’s up?” I said, looking toward the door. Morales hovered there, looking impatient for me to wrap it up.