Volatile Bonds

by Jaye Wells

“He wants to be an accountant,” I added, twisting the knife a little deeper.

  “You—” Whatever he’d been about to yell cut off when the door opened again.

  The white man who entered wore wire-rimmed glasses, a slick navy suit, and brown hair so thick it had to be plugs. His pink tie was decorated with embroidered green dollar signs. “You didn’t say anything, did you?” he said to Uncle Abe.

  “Let me guess,” Morales said in an ironic tone, “you’re the lawyer.”

  “Dicky Goldman,” I growled.

  Luckily, I’d already released the intercom button. I glared through the mirror as Abe did the introductions in the other room. I’d never officially met Dicky Goldman, but I’d seen him at work. He’d represented my uncle during his trial, which had been televised. The guy was as slick as shit through a goose and twice as dirty.

  “She in there?” Dicky said to Morales once the introductions were done.

  “If you mean Detective Prospero, yes.”

  The lawyer nodded dismissively. “My client wishes you both to know that moving forward, all interviews should be arranged through me. Further, you will no longer be speaking to my client without my presence, so you can’t frame him for any additional crimes.”

  “He’s already in prison for the rest of his life, Dicky,” I said into the intercom.

  He smiled tightly. “We’ll see.”

  Both the meaning of his words and the utter confidence with which they were spoken sent a chill through me. I knew he wouldn’t answer if I asked what the hell that meant, so I took another tactic. “Uncle Abe didn’t know we were coming out here today. How’d you get here so fast?”

  He waved a hand, which revealed a huge gold watch that glinted so bright, it nearly blinded me through the glass. “You have ten minutes today, so I suggest you get down to business.”

  “Morales? A minute?” I said calmly.

  Uncle Abe smiled. Dicky checked his watch. Morales ducked out of the room and met me in the hallway.

  “You know, if he wasn’t such a pain in my ass, I’d almost admire your uncle’s moxie.”

  “We don’t have much time,” I said. “I’m not sure what he’s playing at, but we need to be extra careful. Dicky’s a real shark.”

  “I wonder if we should just leave it. He probably won’t allow Abe even to share his birth date now.”

  “If we back down now, they’ll think they won.”

  “Kate, they kind of have.”

  I shook my head. “Nope. Get back in there and ask him about the Fangshi. If nothing else, it tells him we’re on his scent.”

  He sighed. “All right, but I’d like to go on the record that I think this is a waste of time.”

  “Noted. Now get in there, Tiger.” I smacked him on the ass and marched back into the room.

  Once I was back behind the mirror, I watched Morales return to his seat. Abe rocked back on two chair legs, a smug smile on his face, as if he fully expected Morales to cancel the interview.

  “Thanks for waiting. I’ll try to make this quick.” He made a show of opening the case file filled with all the paperwork Dixon had dug up on the Fangshi’s business interests in Babylon.

  Abe froze and shot his lawyer a look. Dicky shook his head and made an easy-now gesture with his right hand. Dicky took a box of cigarettes, lit one, and handed did over to Abe without being asked.

  My uncle took a long drag of the purple Viceroyal and exhaled slowly. “Let me guess, you’ve stalled on a case and need my help.”

  “No, actually, we have a couple of questions about your business interests in the Cauldron.” Morales clasped his hands on the table top.

  “You have us at a disadvantage, Special Agent,” Dicky said. “My client obviously doesn’t have access to any of his records in here.”

  “Which is why it’s so convenient you’re here, Mr. Goldman.” Morales smiled. “Seeing how as his attorney, you’d be involved in setting up any business for Mr. Prospero.”

  Dicky laughed. “I’m a criminal attorney.”

  “I couldn’t have said it any better myself.”

  While Dicky stiffened with offense, Morales turned to Abe. “We have questions about some properties we believe you own.”

  Dicky jumped in. “As you’re well aware, anything owned by Mr. Prospero that wasn’t seized by the state was placed in a trust to be managed by an executor on behalf of my client and his heirs.”

  “Who is the executor?” Morales asked in a reasonable tone.

  Dicky smiled a shark’s smile. “Where’s your warrant?”

  “We were hoping this might be a friendly chat.” Morales shifted in his seat and tried a different tactic. “The property in question is a Chinese restaurant called the Jade Moon. It’s owned in a joint venture between Waidan Imports and Cockatrice Holdings.”

  “Who told you that?” Abe snapped, but Dicky put a hand on his arm.

  “Again, I would advise my client not to answer that question—”

  “I didn’t ask a question yet,” Morales pointed out.

  The muscle in Dicky’s jaw spasmed. “By all means.”

  “There was another business recently opened in a building under the Cockatrice Holdings umbrella.” He pretended to refer to the notes in his notebook. “It’s called the Happy Ending Massage Parlor.”

  “And?” Dicky said. “We’re still waiting for a question.”

  Morales’s eyebrow snapped up. “That’s an interesting reaction from you, Mr. Goldman. Wasn’t the proprietress one of your clients?”

  Dicky sucked on his teeth. “I have a lot of clients.”

  Morales slid across a picture of Krystal’s body from the crime scene. “Her name was Krystal LeMay. She was found murdered yesterday. In a building owned by Abe.”

  Abe sat up straighter to stare at the picture. “Did you know this?” he asked Dicky.

  Dicky leaned in to whisper something to Abe. I leaned forward fruitlessly, unable to hear from the distance.

  Once Dicky finished saying his piece to Abe, the two men turned back to face Morales, who kept his expression neutral. “My client had not heard of Miss LeMay’s passing yet, Special Agent. Obviously, he’s willing to work with the homicide detective in any way he can.”

  Morales smiled. “BPD’s not handling this one. We are.”

  Abe’s face went stony.

  “And,” Morales continued, “my question from before was—why wouldn’t Mr. Prospero try harder to hide his alliance with the Fangshi?”

  “The who?” Dicky said, without missing a damned beat.

  Abe, on the other hand, had gone very still.

  I didn’t believe for a moment that Dicky didn’t know who the Fangshi were any more than I believed that Abe wasn’t wondering how in the hell his attorney managed to be so careless.

  “We have Krystal to thank for helping us make the connection, actually.” Morales shook his head sadly. “In fact, the timing of her death is just awfully interesting. First her boyfriend dies in a horrible potion lab explosion, and now she’s killed right after we start investigating the Fangshi for Valentine’s death? Like I said, interesting.”

  The cigarette between Abe’s fingers trembled. “You’re fishing.”

  Morales laughed and leaned back. “Trust me, this hook is well baited.”

  Dicky opened his hands in a magnanimous gesture. “If you have evidence, show it.”

  “We’re not ready to formally charge anyone. Yet.” Morales paused, let it sink in. “Consider this a courtesy call.”

  Abe’s head tilted. “How do you figure?”

  “Well, first of all, you’ve got to get yourself a better lawyer.”

  Dicky sputtered. “How dare—”

  Morales talked over him. “And second, someone just murdered the head of your coven. You ask me, it’s time to reconsider your new friendship with the Chinese.”

  At that, the mood shifted again. Abe’s posture relaxed and a wide smile spread across his face. “Krystal was the h
ead, sure.”

  He leaned back in his chair and swiveled until he faced the mirror. His shit-eating smirk made my skin crawl. “Excellent detective work, as usual, Katherine.”

  “Shit,” I said to the empty viewing room.

  I’d suspected that Krystal was a misdirection, but Abe’s smugness was worrisome. Someone else was calling the shots on the streets. But who?

  In the other room, Dicky tapped his Rolex. “Time’s up, Special Agent.” He rose and encourage Abe to rise as well. “Next time, be sure you’re not wasting my client’s time. He may be incarcerated, but he’s a busy man.”

  “Oh, yeah?” Morales shot back. “You got yourself a hobby on the inside, Abe?”

  Abe glared daggers at him.

  “For your information, my client is working to better himself. He’s enrolled in college courses.”

  “What are you studying?” I asked over the intercom.

  “Criminal justice.” Abe turned fully to face the mirror. “Figured if they let you be a cop, anyone can do it. Besides, the way you’re handling this case? There’ll be an opening soon.”

  Dicky grabbed Abe’s elbow and helped him rise. The pair went to the door and knocked for the guard.

  “Just one more question,” Morales said in a casual tone. “Why’d you bother getting into the virility potion game? Weren’t you worried about creating a beef with Aphrodite?”

  “You’re making quite a leap if you think I would bother with sex magic, Special Agent.” Abe scoffed. “But if I did lower myself to meddling with that sort of potion, Aphrodite wouldn’t dare come after me. The Hierophant knows their place.”

  I didn’t comment on the fact that Abe seemed to be up-to-date on the change in Aphrodite’s preferred pronoun, but it was interesting. “But you’ve been stuck in here for years and Aphrodite’s out there,” I said into the intercom. “Besides, they’re ascending. That will make them even more powerful.”

  “Ascending,” he scoffed. “Nothing more than a publicity stunt.”

  “To what end?” I asked.

  “You’re the detective. Figure it out.” Abe shot me a pitying smile. “Despite what Aphrodite wants everyone to believe, I’m still Abraxas Prospero. These walls?” He jerked his head toward the metal-barred window set in the wall. “They might as well be ether.”

  There was a note to his voice that I hadn’t heard in the previous meetings. It sounded like the confidence a man got when he held a secret over you. And it scared the hell out of me.

  “You two take care, now.” With that, he allowed the guards to open the door and accompany him back to his cell.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Two hours later, I pulled Sybil into the parking lot in front of a two-story brick building that had once housed a factory. After the meeting with Uncle Abe, I felt like I’d spent my morning swimming in a sewer, but I hadn’t had time to grab a shower before I had to pick Danny up for the meeting at the Conservatory.

  I felt sort of bad abandoning Morales, but I also hadn’t been super excited about going back to the gym and telling Gardner we were no closer to making an arrest in the Valentine and LeMay murders.

  “We need to hurry.” Danny had the door open before I put the car in park.

  “Relax. The meeting doesn’t start for five more minutes.”

  I’d never seen Danny worried about punctuality, but he was clearly eager to make a good impression on the principal of the Conservatory for Arcane Arts.

  “Just relax.”

  He rolled his eyes at me in that teenaged way that made me feel like I was short on gray matter. “I am relaxed. I just want to get inside before you get called away.”

  Guilt flared like heartburn in my chest. The case had been keeping me away from home a lot, and it had been a bit of an ordeal to schedule the meeting with Hidalgo, who was pretty busy herself trying to launch a brand-new school.

  “I already told the team I was unavailable,” I said. “They can survive without me for an hour.”

  The Conservatory sat on the edge of an area of the Cauldron that had undergone an impressive revitalization effort. Sitting along the Steel River, the tall red brick building had huge metal-framed windows and tall smokestacks with blackened tips. A construction crew swarmed over the lot as they completed the transformation from failed factory to high school of the future.

  Danny was five steps ahead of me the entire way to the front door, and he kept looking back to make sure I was coming. I stifled a grin at his enthusiasm. I had to admit it was nice to see him excited about school for change. However, I couldn’t overlook my qualms about fitting into such a new school, and my old habits died hard when it came to Danny doing magic.

  The building looked like an old factory from the outside, but inside it looked like a hip dot-com office. Several levels of open loft-like spaces looked down on the atrium. A Latina woman wearing a trendy pantsuit met us at the white lacquered desk.

  “Ms. Prospero?” she said, holding out her left hand.

  “Kate,” I said, shaking it. “Dr. Hidalgo?”

  “Lynn.” She smiled warmly. “And you must be Danny. Welcome to the Conservatory.”

  She offered her left hand to Danny, too. He paused and took a second to realize he’d automatically held up his right. I realized with a start that by raising him in Mundane circles, I’d failed to school him in proper Adept etiquette. Luckily, he recovered quickly and gave her a confident Leftie handshake.

  “I’m excited to be here, ma’am.”

  I blinked at my brother’s first use of the word ma’am ever.

  “You’ll have to forgive our dust,” she said. “Most of the major interior construction is complete, but we’ve got a lot of work left to get ready for our launch in August.”

  “This sure doesn’t look like any high school I’ve ever seen,” I said.

  “That’s because we’re not going to be like any other high school.” Her smile was friendly, but I had the feeling this speech was rehearsed. “The Conservatory for the Arcane Arts will be the first charter high school in the nation focused on incorporating magic into the curriculum.”

  “So, all of the students will be Adepts?” Danny asked.

  She shook her head. “Since we’re a public school, we’re legally required to accept any student who wishes to attend, if there is room. If we have more applicants than space, we use a lottery system.” She waved us toward a set of elevators and pushed the button.

  “How can a Mundane student thrive in a school where the curriculum is for Adepts?” I asked as we entered the car.

  “First, we don’t use the term Mundane here. We call those students traditional learners.” She pushed the button for the second floor. “Second, the core classes are just like in other schools. What separates us is the types of electives we offer. For example, our Adept learners might take a spagyrics class, but our traditional learners might opt for a class in herbalism. All students also take the history of magic classes. The fact is that there are careers for TLs in the magic industry, so there’s much for them to learn and use for the future.”

  “Where did most of your students attend middle school?” I asked

  “A quarter of the incoming first years attended the Sir Isaac Newton Academy school. I used to be the principal there.”

  “Never heard of it,” I said.

  “It’s a private school that serves K through eight. It’s located in Highland Hills.”

  That explained why I hadn’t heard of it. Highland Hills was where Adepts who worked for Big Magic lived. No one from the Cauldron could afford to send their kids there for a proper education in clean magic.

  “Why would those families come all the way into the Cauldron?” I asked.

  “Because of me.” She delivered this information as if I should have already known the answer.

  “How many students do you have who haven’t gone to Newton?” Danny asked. He sounded worried, and I couldn’t blame him. After the shit show of privilege we’d dealt wi
th at Meadowlake, we were both wary about him mixing with a bunch of snobs again.

  “The first-year class is made up of a mix of students from all the middle schools in Babylon. However, for the upper classes, we got special permission to be more deliberate about who we admitted.”

  “What does that mean?” I asked.

  “We recruited students from local high schools who showed promise in the arcane arts. Most of them are Adepts, but there are several traditional learners who showed promise in witchcraft or practical magic.”

  Danny and I exchanged a look. He’d been studying with Mez informally for the last couple of months, but he was still pretty new. I worried that he might struggle to catch up to the students who’d been trained for years.

  The elevator dinged and we all exited. The floor was wide open, with glass-enclosed labs. “Thanks to our corporate sponsors, we offer our students state-of-the-art labs. We also have our own greenhouse, so students have access to the freshest herbs and plants for their experiments.”

  “Wow,” Danny said. “Right, Katie?” He elbowed me in the ribs, as if reminding me to play it up to Hidalgo.

  “Cool,” I said, lamely. It’s not that I wasn’t impressed. I was. It was just a wave of jealousy caught me off guard. The kids at this school would have no idea how lucky they were. There were still parts of the world where Adept kids might be beaten because their parents thought being a Leftie was a sign of a demon’s curse.

  “You grew up in the Cauldron, didn’t you, Kate?” Hidalgo asked.

  She showed us into a lobby outside a suite of offices, which I assumed belonged to the administration.

  “I did,” I said. “Not far from here, actually.”

  “Working for Abe Prospero?”

  I paused, trying to decide whether I was imagining the judgment in her tone. “He’s my uncle. I’m sure our mutual friend mentioned that.”

  “Yes, Mayor Volos hinted you were childhood friends. Not hard to put it all together with the last name.”

  Danny groaned.

  She turned to him with a warm smile. “Looks like you come by your powers naturally, young man.”

  He sat up straighter. “You’re not worried that I’m a Prospero?”