“I have a lead to follow up on as well.” Okay, what I had was a plan to drive around town near the Sionan and search for a gate, but it was kind of a lead. “We should divide and conquer.”

“You think I’m letting you out of my sight? Alex, you’re a magnet for trouble, though, in the trouble’s defense, you go out looking for it. What with tearing holes in reality in the middle of populated streets and wandering the wilds using raw meat to draw out a fae well known for tearing people to shreds and eating them, it’s a wonder you’re not completely entangled in trouble.” He shook his head.

Like he was in any shape to help me should “trouble” come calling. Though I guess his point was to prevent the situations I occasionally—Not typically! Really!—stumbled into. Before I had a chance to respond, he continued.

“Besides,” he said, “I need your car.”

Chapter 16

As it turned out, Falin did let me out of his sight, and at his own insistence. He requested that I wait in the car while he ran inside his office, so I sat in my own car, in the mid-August heat, glowering. Granted, his reasoning was sound. Letting on to Nori that Falin and I were friends probably wasn’t in anyone’s best interest, but I couldn’t help feeling that our very association was a secret he didn’t want his fae acquaintances to know. Hey, girls have feelings.

When he returned he carried only a single distressingly thin folder. It was my car, so I was driving, but with the case file so close, I was tempted to hand off my keys. I didn’t. I’d seen Falin drive before, and I didn’t trust him behind the wheel of my car.

“So what does it say?”

“I’m still on the first page, Alex,” he said, his head bent over the file as I drove.

He tore two pages from the file, folded them, and shoved them in his pocket. I twisted in my seat, never actually taking my eyes off the road, but only just barely.

“What was on those pages?”

“Court business.”

Right. As in none of my business. Why was he really here? I didn’t know.

He’d finished reading the file by the time we reached the restaurant. I debated driving through to save time, but I wanted to get my hands on the file before he changed his mind and decided not to share. Folding myself into one of the uncomfortable particleboard booths that tended to populate all fast-food chains, I pored over the file, barely noticing the chicken nuggets I ate while I read.

The main thing I learned was that Nori couldn’t document worth a damn, and unless she’d left out a lot—or the two pages Falin removed had contained the useful information—her investigation had gone all of nowhere. Most of the events in the files were ones where I’d been present, and my firsthand experience was much more informative than her abbreviated write-ups. If she’d heard back from the ABMU about the spells in the feet or the disk, she hadn’t included that information in her report. The only exhaustive record she kept was a list of fae who’d been questioned and relocated to Faerie, and that was a big, long list.

After flipping the last page, I shoved the file away in disgust and polished off the last of my fries. “Hey, agent in charge, I think your subordinate could stand to brush up on, well, everything.”

“She gets her job done,” he said, which didn’t quite count as disagreeing with me, but he focused on his hamburger, obviously not willing to discuss the matter further.

As we finished lunch, John’s ringtone—the theme song from Cops—cut through the air. I dug in my purse and grabbed the phone as the song started its second repetition.

“John, did you get my message?” I asked by way of greeting.

“Good afternoon to you too, Alex,” he said, his deep voice full of amusement. “I did get your message. I also heard some water-cooler gossip that you might have had some trouble this morning. Everything okay?”

I gave him the summarized version of the morning’s predawn events, then asked him the question no one seemed to be able to answer. “Has the ABMU turned up any leads on the spells in the feet or the disks?”

“Definitely not on my case, but if you’re correct about the caster responsible for the feet being the same as the one who sent the construct, I can probably make a case to get a copy of the results from the disks. If there are any results, that is. No guarantee, and I’m not saying I’ll be able to pass it on to you, but I’ll check.”

“I’ll owe you one,” I said, and suddenly, sitting in the middle of a fast-food restaurant with John all the way across town, I felt the potential for imbalance grow between us. Damn. It’s going to take time to get used to that.

“Yeah, well, I’m inclined to tell you to let the police handle this, but with the attacks targeting you, and with Holly caught up in the middle of it, I know you won’t. Have you tried contacting Dr. Aaron Corrie?”

The name sounded familiar, but it took me a moment to remember why. “He was one of the founding members of the Organization for Magically Inclined Humans, wasn’t he?” I’d had to write a paper on him in academy. As well as being one of the founders of OMIH, he was from a family that had been practicing magic generations before the Awakening and reputedly had one of the largest collections of ancient grimoires in the world.

“Yeah, but did you know he was local?” John asked. “He consults for the police on occasion, and he likes puzzles, so he might help you for a modest fee. I’ll give you the address.”

Now I really did owe him, though I didn’t say as much—I seriously disliked the feeling of debt racking up around me. I jotted the address John gave me on a napkin and shoved it in my purse.

“So, back to the message you left me,” John said. “What makes you think you’ll be able to raise a shade now when you couldn’t before?”

“I’ll bring another grave witch. I’m not promising it will work, but between the two of us, we might be able to pull a shade out of one of the feet. Can you get us access?”

The line was silent for a long moment, and I could imagine John tugging his mustache as he considered the obstacles ahead. “Well, technically you were already hired to consult on the case, so I guess there wouldn’t be much need to file additional paperwork.” In other words, if I performed another ritual, the higher-ups, and presumably the FIBs, wouldn’t know about it. “But I couldn’t pay you for your time.”

Yeah, definitely off the books. “Don’t worry about that, John. The department is already paying me for my time in the floodplain. Think of this as tying up loose ends.” Besides, at this point, I was being paid to investigate by Malik—at least in a roundabout way—and it would have been sleazy to bill two different clients for one ritual.

The sound of papers fluttering on the other end of the line filtered over the phone and John said, “While we haven’t gotten any magical results yet, the DNA profile on the first three feet we found came in. Nothing. Not a single match. I’m still waiting on results for the second batch. I’m grasping at straws in this case.” There was a muffled sound of something hitting the mic on the phone, and I knew John had rubbed his hand over his face, his knuckles scraping the mouthpiece.

“Okay,” he said at last. “What could it hurt? Besides the FIB’s egos if NCPD finds the killer first. Maybe your ritual will be the case-breaker. How does tomorrow evening, about six thirty, sound? Those FIB suits never stay around here that late.”

I agreed to the time and wrapped up the call. Then I looked at Falin, who’d been listening avidly to my side of the conversation.

“Come on,” I said, shouldering my purse. “We have to see a witch about a rune.”

“This is the one?” Falin asked as he stared up at the large brick wall topped with ornate fleur-de-lis.

Fleur-de-lis fashioned out of cast iron.

I glanced at the address I’d written on the napkin and checked it against the large numbers in the brick. They matched. I nodded and shoved the napkin back in my purse.

While most witches lived in the Glen, the suburbs surrounding the Magic Quarter, Aaron Corrie lived in the Quarter. And not only in it, but in the very center of it. His house overlooked one side of Magic Square, the park in the middle of the Quarter. The streets this far inside the Quarter were narrow, cobbled, and reserved for pedestrian and horse-drawn carriages only, so I’d parked several blocks away and we’d walked. Now we stood on the sidewalk staring at the old house.

Okay, so in a city only about fifty years old, we didn’t really have old houses, but in Nekros, Corrie’s house was what passed as historic. Not that we could see much of it. The tall brick wall blocked most of the house from view. The only opening in the brick was a narrow walkway barely wide enough for two people to walk through side by side—I’d hate to see what Corrie would do if he ever decided to replace his furniture.

A tall cast-iron gate blocked the walkway. More fleur-de-lis had been worked into the gate’s intricate design, as well as several runes. From more than a yard away, I already could feel the buzz of Corrie’s wards—and the nausea from being near such a high concentration of iron.

“I don’t feel very welcome,” I said, staring at the gate. While cast iron had been popular pre–Magical Awakening, post–it was considered rude. And a sign of bigotry.

“I’m guessing we’re going in anyway?” Falin asked.

I nodded. I needed answers and I didn’t care if the person who had them happened to hate fae. Or maybe we were jumping to conclusions. Maybe he was just a fan of pre-Awakening architecture.

I scanned the wall, searching for a call box. There wasn’t one, and now that I really looked, I realized the gate didn’t have any electronic locking devices. I guess we let ourselves in. But I didn’t immediately try. Instead I reached out with my senses, feeling the magic in the wards and making sure old Corrie hadn’t cast anything nasty for unwelcome visitors.

His wards were powerful, but the only unexpected spell I found intensified the sting of the iron. So much for the theory on pre-Awakening architecture. I stepped closer to the gate and a wave of sickness washed over me. My stomach clenched, my tongue curled, and I stumbled back, farther from the gate.