Kindling The Moon

by Jenn Bennett

  When I first met Kar Yee, I told her my parents had died in a plane crash, a hard lie to maintain when you’re continually worried about two people whom you should have buried and mourned years before; but as the years went by, it became second nature.

  “It’s trouble with my godfather,” I said. Not completely a lie. “And trouble involving magick.”

  Lon had gotten us a meeting with an evidence tech who worked for the Portland police department. When Lon had called earlier that morning to tell me this, he’d carefully avoided discussing the sex magick we’d done in his library yesterday afternoon, just asked me if everything was “okay” on my end. I took that to mean that he was curious if the spell had awakened any buried memories (which it hadn’t). After telling him this, he bluntly informed me what time he’d pick me up to drive to the airport, then hung up.

  It was a quick flight to Portland—just a couple of hours—so we were going up and back today. But there were now only five days left before the Luxe deadline, and I didn’t feel I could spare anything for work. I wanted to use every bit of my time to help Lon research the albino demon. Even if we were somehow able to persuade the evidence technician to let us borrow the glass talon, we still couldn’t do anything without the demon’s summoning name.

  Kar Yee drew up her mouth as she stroked Mr. Piggy. “You are the most guarded person I’ve ever met, Cady. I think you have some black luck following you around.”

  “You have no idea,” I muttered.

  “You might be unlucky, but I don’t think you’re a bad seed, or I wouldn’t be in business with you, no matter how long we’ve known each other.”

  That was true. Money was a very serious matter to her.

  “But I think you need to get rid of what’s dragging you down,” she said. “Tear it out by the roots and be done with it. You should be happy, enjoying life.” She held up her hand and began holding up fingers. “One, you have a good job—”

  “I don’t know if I’d call it good, exactly.”

  “It’s good, trust me. And two, you are a smart and fair sorcerer—”

  “Sometimes.”

  “—and three, you are very pretty, for a white American.”

  “Gee, thanks.”

  “Your life should be better than it is.”

  Kar Yee always had a way of cutting something down to its simplest form. She was right: my life should be better. And I was unlucky. It wasn’t my fault, but it wouldn’t get cleared up by itself.

  “Kar Yee,” I argued.

  “Don’t ‘Kar Yee’ me. Just listen and make the right changes. When you come back to get Mr. Piggy and return to work, I expect to see you smiling.”

  I sighed and watched her run her nails through Mr. Piggy’s spiny coat. “I hope I come back smiling too.” I mainly just hoped I came back.

  “Only one week away from the bar, yes?”

  “Give or take a couple of days.”

  “One week,” she said firmly.

  Reaching for Mr. Piggy, I made a short clucking noise near the side of his face while trying to dampen the small but insistent worry that it might be the last time I would see him.

  20

  When the light turned green, Lon sped through the intersection and put some quick distance between our rental and the car behind us.

  “Nobody’s trailing us,” I grumbled.

  “Hmph.”

  It was overcast and dreary in Portland, which I normally found rather pleasant. People complain about the lack of sun in the Pacific Northwest, but I never really minded it when I lived in Seattle with Kar Yee during college. Today, however, it put a damper on an already grim situation.

  I was worried about meeting the evidence guy and trying to persuade him to give us the talon. On top of that, I was nervous around Lon. Because the flight was overbooked, he ended up sitting in coach while I was in first class. I wasn’t used to sitting up front; he was, so I offered to trade with him, but he refused. So we weren’t able to talk on the flight.

  We were, however, able to talk on the ride to the airport, and we were certainly able to now, but he was back to his tight-lipped communication style. Eyes on the road, short answers, nothing unnecessary. We still hadn’t breathed a word about what happened between us the day before; I was left wondering if he regretted it, and now it was awkward. It made me more miserable than it should have, but I was too proud to do anything about it. So we sat in silence. No small talk about Jupe, no generic comments about the weather, nothing.

  And that’s exactly how we spent the drive to the evidence warehouse.

  After handing over our IDs to a man behind a thick glass window—I used an ID from an alternate fake identity unconnected with Arcadia Bell, just to be extra careful—we sat on metal benches inside a white waiting room. A few minutes later, a supervisor came and we were escorted down a sad, gray hallway. We passed by a door that opened into an enormous warehouse, as big as a football field and lined with long rows of shelves. Confiscated and stolen property, the officer explained. Things that people could reclaim after they were no longer needed in a case; if left unclaimed, the goods were eventually sold off in a state auction.

  The officer led us to a much smaller warehouse for sensitive evidence. A row of plastic seats sat against the wall by the door. In front of us was a ceiling-to-floor cage with a yellow sign that read authorized personnel only. Inside the cage were several evidence-processing desks; beyond them stood rows of tall warehouse shelving filled with white boxes of multiple shapes and sizes, all labeled with green and yellow stickers.

  We took a seat while the officer called out to someone sitting at one of the desks. “You got visitors, Wesley.”

  A short, middle-aged demon emerged from a door in the locked cage. Lon’s contact. We stood to greet him.

  “Danny Wesley?” Lon asked.

  “You must be Mr. Butler.”

  They shook hands, and Lon introduced me as my sign-in name, Cindy. He rolled his eyes a little as he said it. I tried to give him a sharp look in return, but had to quickly change over to a smile as the evidence technician looked me over. My skunk-streaked hair was tucked under a short brown wig.

  “There’s a place where we can talk,” the technician said, looking back at the other people mulling about inside the cage.

  We followed him into a small room with two break tables and an old vending machine that dispensed coffee and cocoa. Sitting down at one of the tables, we all looked at each other warily.

  “So, Officer Wesley,” I began.

  “I’m a civilian. Just Danny is fine.” He interlaced his fingers on the table in front of him, sitting up stiffly. “The captain said you guys need a favor, and I’m to do anything in my power to help you. So, what is it that you need to know?”

  “We need to borrow a piece of evidence,” Lon said.

  “Borrow? I’m afraid that’s impossible. We don’t loan out evidence. Not from this room.”

  I tapped Lon’s foot under the table. “Well, before we talk about that, maybe we should make sure we’re in the right place first. Could you check to see if a certain piece of evidence is on file here?”

  Fluorescent light from the ceiling glinted off the skin that showed through the thinning spots in Danny’s graying hair. He smiled at me again. “Now that I can definitely do. I need some information first. Do you have the case number and the date it entered evidence?”

  “Uh, no. It’s kind of a well-known case though. Perhaps you can look it up.”

  “Depends. I’ve worked here for ten years, so anything before that I’d have to ask around or research. Got an approximate time frame?”

  “Seven years ago. The Duval murder case.”

  “Duval?” he said, wrinkling up his forehead. Something changed in his eyes, though. He blinked faster and began rubbing the knuckle of his right thumb.

  “The Black Lodge slayings,” I offered.

  “Oh! Of course. Yes, I know it.”

  “We were hoping to take a look
at the murder weapon. It was a glass knife. I’m sure you remember.”

  Drops of sweat began beading on his forehead. “Yeah, I know it, but I don’t have access to that case. It’s … protected.”

  “Oh, come on now. Surely after ten years, you have access to anything,” I said.

  “Not really. I’m sorry.”

  Lon leaned back in his seat. “Why are you lying?”

  “Lying? I’m not—”

  “He’s right, you are. Why won’t you let us see the glass knife?” I asked.

  Danny swallowed and quickly wiped his forehead.

  “Look, Mr. Wesley,” Lon said, “cut the shit. We’re here for you to sneak that glass knife out of evidence for us and you damn well know it.”

  “Uh …”

  Lon leaned forward and spoke in a hushed voice. “Don’t pretend to be some upstanding, moral guy. I know you’ve accidently ‘lost’ several thousand dollars in cash and more in guns from that room this year.”

  Danny closed his eyes tightly for a second, then leaned down over the table and spoke in a low voice. “Look, I’d really like to help you, but I can’t. The knife isn’t here.”

  “But you just said it was,” I argued.

  “It was here. It’s not now.”

  “Where is it exactly, then?”

  He sighed. “We’ve had people asking for that knife for years. True-crime aficionados, weirdos, people offering all kinds of money. I didn’t want to touch it because it was too high profile. But a collector came in about six months ago and offered me twenty grand for it. My wife needed a new car. I’m not a bad person.”

  “No one thinks you are,” I assured him. “Who’d you sell it to?”

  “I can’t remember the name. It’s probably on the log. Ron Casler? Ron Castor? Ron … Castle, maybe. Anyway, I think it was an alias. Who’d come in here and sign in under their real name?”

  He had a point; we certainly hadn’t.

  “He was a professional collector. Paid me under the table. The records still say it’s there, so until we’re audited, no one knows it’s missing.”

  “Describe him. Tell me where he was from.”

  “Demon,” Danny said, looking at my halo suspiciously. “Tall. Light orange hair and eyebrows. Lots of freckles. Like a giant leprechaun.” He gave us a weak smile.

  I glanced at Lon. His faced was flushed and his mouth was hanging open.

  Danny continued. “He said he was from Detroit, but he sounded like a California boy to me. He obviously had money. His clothes were expensive. One of the officers up front said he drove up in a flashy red convertible.”

  Lon got up out of his seat and offered his hand to Danny. “Thanks. We’ll let you get back to work.”

  “Wait, what—”

  Lon shot me a hard look. I read it perfectly: Keep your mouth shut. Which I did … all the way back to the sign-in window up front, through the parking lot, and until we closed our car doors and sat in the front seat.

  “Explain. Now.”

  Lon stuck the key in the ignition and paused.

  “I know exactly who he sold it to. He lives in La Sirena.”

  “Lon!” I said excitedly and slapped his arm. “Who? How? What?”

  “That’s the first time you’ve smiled the whole damn day,” he noted.

  “And that’s more words than you’ve spoken to me all day.”

  He started up the ignition and began putting his seat belt on. “The man who bought the knife is a member of a club I’m in. He’s … slippery.”

  “I thought you weren’t a ‘joiner.’ ”

  “I’m not anymore. But once you join this club, you’re in it for life.”

  I clicked my seat belt and moved my purse to the floor-board as he pulled out of the parking lot, turning on his wind-shield wipers to clear the late-afternoon drizzle. “That sounds spooky and ominous.”

  “It is. I’ll make some calls and see if we can meet him.”

  “Fantastic! You are chock-full of networking goodness,” I said, eagerly pulling the pins out of my wig as we pulled out onto the main road. I couldn’t wait to get it off. It was itching something fierce.

  “Truth is, it would have been way easier to get the talon from evidence than from this guy. But what are we going to do? We don’t have a choice anymore.”

  And we didn’t have much time.

  21

  Our flight home wasn’t overbooked, so we both got to sit in first class together. I refused the complimentary champagne this go-around, because I was already sleepy from my schedule being thrown off. It was hard to shift from bartender days to normal days.

  When we’d been up in the air for about fifteen minutes, I asked him a few questions about his mysterious ginger-haired friend, but he wouldn’t say much. Only that he would make some calls and let me know something later that night if he could manage it. After more drinks and snacks were served, I gave up on trying to pry information out of him.

  The sun had set, so the pilot turned off the cabin lights. A few reading lamps switched on above the seats around us. I closed my eyes and turned toward the window, hoping that if I fell asleep, I wouldn’t snore.

  “Did it at least work?”

  “Huh?” I lifted my head to look at Lon. He was flipping though the in-flight magazine without looking at the pages; it was too dim to see anything.

  “If you regret what we did, I understand, but did it at least work?”

  Now I was wide awake. I pushed myself up in my seat.

  “Not so far, no. But why would you think I regretted it? You’re the one acting all weird. Can’t you just”—I lowered my voice—“read me?”

  “I’m not acting weird. I’ve been trying to read you all day. I can’t. You’re chaotic.”

  “Umm, you are too acting weird. You’ve gone back to being all clammy and Neanderthal. I mean, I didn’t expect for you to start calling me ‘baby,’ but I thought you’d at least be cool about it. I’m not going to latch onto you like some love-sick brat, or cry and beg you for a date or anything, sheesh. I didn’t regret it, but I’m starting to now.”

  I crossed my legs and arms at the same time, settling back and staring at the seat in front of me. Until I got riled up again.

  “P.S.,” I added angrily, trying to keep my voice down, “When you first told me about your ability, I thought that trying to keep my feelings hidden was going to be the worst part about being around you. Guess what, it’s not.” I turned in my seat to look at him, pointing my finger into the center of his chest. “I couldn’t give a good goddamn if you know what I’m feeling anymore. The worst part is not being able to read you back. Being around you is so damn frustrating sometimes. The only way anyone could ever figure out your intentions is if they had some kind of special ability like you’ve got.”

  For several long moments, we were actors in an old Western, standing alone in the middle of a dirt road. We stared each other down until he finally dropped his eyes. I won. Yippee.

  “I thought I was being plain,” he said after a few seconds. His voice was low and even.

  “What are you talking about now?” I griped.

  “I paid you compliments.”

  What in the world was he referring to? Compliments? “You mean when you told me that I had a nice ass?” I asked, sarcastic.

  “You do. I also told you your hair looked pretty.”

  “No you didn’t. You said it was cute.”

  “Same difference. I invited you to my house that first time—”

  “You insisted that I come over because the books couldn’t leave your library.”

  “—and made you dinner, which you could have refused. Introduced you to my son.”

  “He actually introduced himself,” I mumbled.

  “And trusted you to take care of him, even though you’re a magnet for trouble right now. What else? I told you personal things about my life that I don’t normally share with other people.” I started to protest, but he bulldozed me over. �
��I’ve tried to make sure you’re safe, even though you’ll probably just say that you didn’t need my help—and you probably don’t, because you’re a better magician than me. On top of all that, I told you that I was available.”

  “What? You certainly did not.”

  “Keep your voice down,” he said, looking behind him toward the couple across the aisle.

  “Don’t shush me,” I whispered.

  “And, yes, I did. I told you I wasn’t dating anyone.”

  “You were drinking wine with some dishy woman when you—”

  He narrowed his eyes. “I’m not even answering that again. It was work, and I couldn’t possibly be less interested in Sarah.”

  I huffed and looked away. Then I thought about what he was saying, and what he really meant by it. I normally considered myself pretty sharp, but it took me several moments to get it. When I did, a strange tightness filled my chest, and I immediately tried to stomp it out.

  “Garbled, chaotic,” he complained, covering his eyes with his hand in frustration. “Can’t you just stop all that and be decisive one way or another?”

  I bit the inside of my lip and silenced a random song that was repeating in my head. After a little while, everything began sliding into place in my mind, and I tried to stand outside myself and look at it objectively.

  He was attracted to me? Well, hell. I guess I could admit to myself that I was attracted to him too. That’s what this boiled down to, right? Attraction? A simple thing, really. A thing that happens every day to random people everywhere. It was just poor timing on our part, because of what was going on in my life. And because of our age difference. Well, as much as we joked about it, maybe that didn’t really matter so much after all.

  It was still too fresh to know what it would amount to down the road, and I sure as hell didn’t know what or where my life was going to be in a few days, but … there it was. Huh. I picked at the fabric of the armrest between us. I didn’t guard what I was thinking, and I didn’t try to confuse it.

  “That’s better,” he whispered. “Thank you.” I looked up to find him smiling at me. His strange halo looked more gold than green. He lifted the armrest between us and pushed it up into the seats. “Now then, will you please kiss me again? You might not be willing to beg, but that doesn’t mean I’m above it.”