by Lily Webb
Maybe he’d played dumb on purpose the first time I talked to him to throw me off his trail, or maybe he hoped all his impressive riches would distract me enough not to ask hard-hitting questions. Whatever he’d thought, he was wrong.
I barrelled through the revolving door and exhaled with it as I spilled into the entrance, replete with its red carpet and over-the-top columns. At the fork, I hung a left for the reception desk and Belinda the werewolf was there waiting.
“Welcome back, Ms. Clarke, it’s good to see you again,” she said, smiling. Clearly, she didn’t know I was in the casino a while ago, but I wasn’t sure whether or not that was a good thing. If my clumsy self could slip in unnoticed, who else had?
“Hi, Belinda,” I said. “Is Giovanni in tonight?”
Her smile vanished at the question and her fingers flew across her keyboard as she typed something. She frowned and looked up at me.
“He is, but he’s entertaining guests right now so let me give him a call before I take you up, okay?” Belinda asked.
“Yeah, sure,” I said and leaned against the counter while she clutched the phone and dialed a set of numbers so quickly I couldn’t follow her fingers.
The badge she’d used to take me to the top floor the last time sat on the desk by the phone and the sweat beading on my palms doubled as I stared at it. It would only take one quick grab and she’d never know it was gone, in case Giovanni refused me…
Belinda turned her back to me to prevent me from hearing what she said to Giovanni, and I reached over the desk to snatch the badge while I had the chance. I slipped it into the pocket of my robes just as Belinda faced me again. She set the phone down on the receiver and shook her head.
“I’m sorry, but Mr. Luca’s with an important client right now and requested he not be disturbed,” Belinda said. “I can take a message and have him call you as soon as he’s available, if you’d like.”
“No, that’s okay, it’s not that important. I’ll try again another time. Thanks anyway, Belinda,” I said.
“Sure thing,” Belinda said, beaming. “Here, have a round on the house as compensation for your time.” She reached into a box near the phone and my stomach dropped — would she notice her missing badge? Thankfully, she handed me a card, clueless. It was a voucher worth twenty Moons for any machine on the premises.
“It’s not much, but it’s the best I can do,” Belinda said.
“I appreciate it,” I said, and tucked the card into the same pocket as her badge.
“Enjoy,” Belinda said, and I smiled and waved as I walked away. Oh, I most certainly would enjoy the evening — especially when I barged into Giovanni’s room to interrupt whatever meeting he was having. For all I knew, it could be the man in the mask.
I crossed the entrance toward the elevator, the badge clutched in my hand inside my pocket. I wasn’t sure what would happen if and when Belinda noticed me trying to get to the elevator, but I hoped I had enough of a head start for it not to matter.
“Miss Clarke!” Belinda bellowed from behind me and I ran for the elevator. I smashed the up button repeatedly, as if that would make it arrive any faster, and glanced over my shoulder. Belinda darted out from behind the desk after me, flustered.
She jogged across the entrance as I dipped into the elevator, shoved the badge into the slot, and hammered away at the top floor button.
“Ms. Clarke, please, wait!” Belinda called as the doors closed, and I held my breath until they sealed shut and the elevator lurched upward. I fell back against the solid walls and let out my breath in one long, whistling exhale.
Great, now I had low-level thief to add to my list of transgressions. Oh well, it was all in the name of a better purpose. The ends justified the means, or at least I hoped they did. The numbers ticked past as the elevator rocketed upward, and I tried to prepare myself for what I’d find on the other side.
Worst-case scenario, I’d look like a jumped-up conspiracy theorist when I came into a room full of Giovanni and his business associates; best-case scenario, I’d catch him with whoever he was conspiring with to rob the bank and steal Merlin’s Heart.
At the twentieth floor, I reached into my bag for my wand and tucked it into my robes, just in case. I couldn’t do much with it, but I knew enough spells to defend myself if it came to that.
The elevator slowed along with my sense of time as we reached the twenty-fifth floor and dinged when it came to a stop. The doors whooshed open, and once again I stepped out into the opulent living quarters of Giovanni Luca.
To my horror, Giovanni sat near the elevator on a white leather sofa across from someone I didn’t recognize. Their back was turned and a bald spot on the top of their head gleamed in the light. Giovanni held a glass of champagne in his hand, which he nearly dropped when he saw me.
“Zoe? What are you doing here?!” Giovanni demanded as he slammed the champagne flute down on the table beside him and hurried over to the elevator. “I told Belinda I was busy.”
It took him a moment to realize I was on my own and that Belinda wasn’t the one who’d authorized me to come upstairs.
“Did you —”
“Help myself?” I finished his sentence. “Hey, sometimes a girl’s gotta do what a girl’s gotta do,” I said as I stepped around him to get a better look at his guest, since the bald spot wasn’t identifying.
The man whirled around, revealing a round, mustached face and a scowl. I’d never seen him in my life.
“What are you doing?” Giovanni asked, grabbing me by the shoulder to spin me back in his direction.
“Who’s he?” I asked, and Giovanni scoffed.
“Who is he? Who do you think you are, barging into my living quarters and demanding the identity of my guests? I should call the police and have you arrested,” Giovanni snapped.
“I don’t think you want to do that,” I said. “I have a feeling the police might be more interested in you than they would be in me.”
“What in Lilith’s name are you talking about?”
“I know you had something to do with the bank robbery, and I’m not leaving until you tell me what you did,” I said.
“I beg to differ. You’re leaving now because I’m calling security,” Giovanni said and stomped away to a telephone resting on the same table where he’d set his champagne flute. Thinking on my feet, I yanked my wand out of my robes, flicked its tip upward, and shouted “Devoco!”
As if possessed, the phone lurched off the table, tearing its cables out of the wall, and flew through the air into my hands. I caught it like an oversized baseball, stunned that it worked.
Giovanni glared at me, horrified. I kept my wand trained on him, unsure of what he might do. I’d already escalated things, so there wasn’t any going back now.
“Zoe, what are you doing? Put that thing away before you hurt someone,” Giovanni commanded but I shook my head.
“Nope, that’s not how this is gonna go. I’m going to ask questions, and you’re going to answer, whether you like it or not,” I said. I didn’t know who this new Zoe Clarke was who’d taken over or where she’d come from, but I liked her.
“Fine, fine, have it your way,” Giovanni said, holding his hands up to prove his innocence. “Is it okay with you if I sit down at least?”
“Sure, make yourselves comfortable. This might take a while,” I said, pointing my wand at their seats. The man I didn’t recognize cowered as I passed. Giovanni flopped down on the sofa and reached for his champagne. He knocked it back and set the glass down on the table again.
“Good. Now, let me ask you this again: who is this guy and how do you know him?” I asked, jerking my head in the man’s direction. Giovanni scoffed and rolled his eyes.
“This is Dominic Ricci. He’s my liquor vendor, if you must know,” Giovanni said. “He runs the Wolf’s Bane distillery here in the Werewolves’ Quarter and we were negotiating a deal for the liquor supply for the casino. I’m sure that’s out the window now. Sorry about that, Dominic.�
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The mustached man shrugged, though he never took his eyes off me. So I’d held up the uber-rich owner of Stubbe’s Palace over a liquor deal. I guess that’s what I got for going Rambo.
“Anything else you’d like to know, super sleuth?” Giovanni asked. “Or can we pretend none of this happened and get back to business before I have to involve the police? I’m willing if you are.”
“Not so fast. While I’ve got your ear, what do you know about the death of Victor Thornheart?” I asked. I couldn’t ignore the fact that Giovanni was nonchalantly negotiating liquor deals when mere hours ago, Victor Thornheart had been killed on the steps of the bank that financed the construction of Giovanni’s casino.
“About as much as you do — which is to say nothing,” Giovanni said.
“I’m not so sure I believe that,” I said.
“Are you seriously suggesting I had something to do with Victor’s death?” Giovanni laughed.
“What’s so funny about that? You seem to have expensive tastes, and what better way to pay for them than to rob a bank? And hey, if you get to take out the owners and financiers of your loan in the process, all the better, right?” I asked.
“What are you talking about? This is absurd,” Giovanni said. “And here I thought you were a journalist who traded in facts rather than fiction — unlike your peers.”
“You’re right, I do have a handle on the facts, and the truth is that they don’t look good for you,” I said.
“And what ‘facts’ are those?”
“I have it on good authority that you recently congratulated someone for completing a job,” I said.
“Yes, and? I do that daily. I own a casino, it’s my role to make sure my employees are happy and well respected, as well as my contractors and partners, like Dominic here,” Giovanni said.
“But would you congratulate someone for murder?” I asked. Giovanni gripped the sofa and grit his teeth. The image of him morphing into a wolf and lunging flashed through my mind. Could werewolves could do that on spec?
“I don’t have the faintest clue what you’re on about,” Giovanni said.
“Really? Because your employees do. Just a couple hours ago, I spoke to one of them, and they told me they’d overheard something you said that was quite disturbing,” I said. Giovanni’s face twisted into an angry mess.
“Who? I’ll have them fired immediately. I won’t tolerate rats,” Giovanni said and my shoulders rocketed up toward my ears. Rats? That was mob speak for people who betrayed the ring, so was Giovanni guilty after all — and was he part of the mob like I’d suspected?
“Mr. Luca, you know a journalist never reveals her sources,” I said.
“Fine, then what did they tell you I said? Something scandalous like switching vegetable providers?” Giovanni joked and Dominic snorted, but quickly regained his composure when I glared at him. He cleared his throat and sat up straight.
“I already told you, they said you were congratulating someone for a job well done,” I said and Giovanni burst out laughing.
“You’ve got to be kidding me. It was that imbecile Xander, wasn’t it?” Giovanni asked and I tensed. How did he know? “It’s written all over your face. I knew I should’ve never hired him, but I had no idea it would be this bad. Whatever that storyteller thought he heard, here’s what really happened: I was speaking to Dominic when Xander came bursting into the meeting room.”
No, that couldn’t be right. Xander was smarter than to think he heard something he didn’t — right?
“I was congratulating Dominic for getting his standards up to the level I demand. You see, Dominic and I have been negotiating an exclusivity agreement for the casino’s liquor supply, but I refused to sign on until I was satisfied with his output, hence the champagne we’re sharing now,” Giovanni said, pointing at the bottle resting on the table between them.
“After that happened, I invited Dominic to meet with me privately to discuss the details, but I’m sure that’s obvious to you now.”
“He’s telling the truth, for what it’s worth,” Dominic said with a shrug, his voice higher pitched than I would’ve predicted — but maybe that was because he was afraid of the crazy lady pointing a wand at him.
If I could’ve shrunk until I disappeared, I would’ve cast the spell on myself right then and there.
“So, Ms. Clarke, why don’t you put the wand away, sit down, and have an adult conversation with us before this gets any further out of hand?” Giovanni asked, but his words barely registered. “Because I like you and your, erm, gusto, in exchange, I’ll tell you something I learned about Xander so this doesn’t turn out to have been an illegal and complete waste of your time. Do we have a deal?”
I nodded without saying anything, thrust my wand back into my robes, and sat down on the sofa next to Dominic. I plopped the stolen phone down between us and Dominic scooted away from me like I was radioactive.
“Good, now that that’s all settled,” Giovanni sighed. He fished in the interior pocket of his suit jacket and pulled out a piece of paper folded neatly into four parts. He flapped it open and smoothed it out on his leg.
“What is that?” I asked.
“Patience, Ms. Clarke,” Giovanni said. Whatever was on that paper, I was sure it had to do with Xander — why else would Giovanni have brought him up? He cleared his throat and prepared to read.
“The bank’s vaults are secured with numerous spells, but the key to everything is the Thornheart brothers. I’m not entirely sure yet how they open the doors, but I know they can. Victor himself said so,” Giovanni read and a ball of frigid ice formed in my stomach, growing larger with each of his words like a snowball tumbling down a mountain.
“Who wrote that?” I snapped.
“That’s a great question. I’d like to know the answer as well,” Giovanni said. “There’s more where that came from, but I’ll let you read it yourself.”
Giovanni leaned forward and handed me the paper, which I swatted from his hand and devoured as if it were the best book I’d ever read. Though the words themselves didn’t make much sense to me since I wasn’t familiar with the backend of the bank, the first thing that struck me was the handwriting.
It was indisputably Xander’s, all jagged and chicken-scratched like the words he’d shown me on his ordering pad a couple of hours prior. I slumped back against the sofa, unable to believe what I saw. All along, Xander had told me there was no way he could’ve shared anything about the bank’s security because it would’ve triggered an alarm — but the key was that he hadn’t spoken the words, he’d written them down instead.
Seeing them stare up at me from the page convinced me that the spells the bank cast on their employees didn’t work on the written word, which seemed like a massive oversight on their part.
“Where did you get this?” I asked.
“One of my cleaning staff found it on the floor not long ago, and given everything happening with the bank lately, they thought it was a good idea to turn it over to me,” Giovanni said.
“Where did they find it?”
“Near one of the slot machines,” Giovanni said and my ribcage clenched my heart, threatening to burst it. Had Xander dropped it out of his pocket while we sat talking when he showed me his order pad? If so, how had I missed it?
“What would you have done with it if I hadn’t, well, you know,” I mumbled, my face stinging as I gestured at the phone between Dominic and me.
“I haven’t had much time to consider it, honestly. Do you have any idea who might have written this?” Giovanni asked.
“Xander Crane. I recognize his handwriting,” I said and a satisfied smirk split Giovanni’s face like a melon.
But even so, Xander couldn’t have been in two places at the same time. So unless he was lying about his manager taking their last break with him during the time that Victor was killed — which was entirely possible — he must’ve had an accomplice.
So who was he feeding bank secrets to, and why?
Thanks to Heath, I knew at least part of the answer to that question: the Black Brotherhood. Was that why Xander went out of his way to get a job at the casino, to see if he could catch wind of any secrets customers might spill there?
“Zoe? Are you there?” Giovanni asked, pulling me off the roller coaster ride that was my thoughts.
“I had it wrong all along,” I muttered.
“Had what wrong?”
“The bank, the killer, everything,” I said as I forced myself up off the couch. “I’m so sorry about all this,” I continued, pointing at the phone I’d magically torn from the wall. Dominic flinched like he thought I was about to turn him into a toad.
My bag buzzed on my shoulder, jolting me, and I fished through it for my phone. I nearly dropped it when I read the message on the screen. It was an email from the anonymous tip line at the Messenger.
Breaking news: Nothing worth keeping is safe, not even in a safe.
Even from twenty five floors up, the screeching of the alarms across town at the bank bored through the windows. Though it had all the earmarks of a trap, and though I had no idea what I could do to stop them, it was clear Xander and whoever he was working with were about to make their second attempt to get their hands on Merlin’s Heart.
I couldn’t let that happen. I had to get to the bank and stop them before the police showed up, otherwise I might never know the truth and Merlin’s Heart might go missing forever.
“What’s happening? Where are you going?” Giovanni demanded as I power walked back to the elevator and smashed the down button.
“I’m sorry, I don’t have time to explain. Stay put and whatever you do, don’t tell anyone I was here,” I said and Giovanni laughed.
“I hardly think they’d believe me even if I did,” he said. “Be careful, Zoe.”
Once more, the doors sheared shut as Giovanni stared at me. A flash of images projected from my mind onto the blank movie screen that was the steel doors in front of me — and settled on a shot of the vault at the bank sliding open at the command of a masked marauder in black robes holding Victor’s wand.
