Chapter 29
Chapter Twenty-Nine
“ I have a check stub,” Dizzy shouted. “He doesn’t make much at his job.”
I rifled through a desk drawer in his disorganized office. We’d been at this for fifteen minutes and still hadn’t found anything solid. Or helpful.
“What does he do?” I shouted.
Darius appeared in the doorway, and I jumped, knocking the rolling chair back into the bookcase.
“Jesus, man.” I put a hand to my heart. “Don’t just pop up like a poltergeist. I’m a little jumpy right now.”
Darius held up a blue uniform without saying a word. The front resembled a police uniform, with a sewn-on patch like a badge on the arm. He turned it, and I saw security written on the back.
“Where did you say that skin suit was found?” Dizzy called.
“It wasn’t a skin suit, and it was in terminal thirty. Port of Seattle, I think. The shipping terminal.” I slipped out from around the desk and looked at the patch on the sleeve. It said security officer .
“Shoot,” Dizzy said. “I was hoping it would be the same company.”
“Perhaps they all work in security,” Darius said. “It would’ve been hard to get a body into the terminal in the later hours without being noticed. Unless you worked there and brought it in your car.”
“But they said all of the staff checked out. And yes, I realize these people probably wouldn’t have any priors, but Oscar also said none of them were magical…”
How stupid was I?
“The MLE office was keeping their mouths shut.” I shook my head. “They must’ve known a mage was responsible, and that one worked at the terminal, but they were warned away from mages, so they weren’t talking.” I bowed in frustration. “You even asked if I wanted to talk to the security people. I can’t tell most magical species, but I know mages. I would’ve felt his or her magic.”
“The thought had occurred to me, but I admit, it was in my best interest that you weren’t thorough,” Darius said. “I failed you there. I was thinking about feeding instead of covering all the bases. After hearing about the dangers in the area, we had new, more concrete leads. But this is telling.”
“It is. Dizzy,” I called. “What’s the company name on that check stub?” I lowered my voice so I wasn’t shouting in Darius’s face. “They dumped one body at the port, so maybe there’ll be some activity at this other place. I mean, the guy is the lead mage, probably. Maybe he uses his place of work for the summonings and leaves the scraps for the others to dispose of…”
“Torturing a body at one’s place of work would probably be noticed.”
I grimaced. “Unless they used a spell to hide themselves.”
“What?”
Dizzy’s sudden proximity, right beyond the doorway, made me jump.
“Would you guys stop sneaking around? I’m still coming down off a fear high.” I rubbed my face. “What is the company name on the pay stub?”
He pushed his way past Darius. “BNSF railway,” he read, looking up at me to see if that clicked.
It didn’t. Not yet, anyway.
“Is it normal for mages to have jobs?” I asked, trying to weigh the significance. “I mean, the mages I get spells from in NOLA do, but they aren’t particularly powerful. Which is why they are cheap and can’t afford to live off their magic. This guy is clearly both powerful and experienced.”
“Very few mages can afford to consistently do this full-time,” Dizzy said, stalking past me and looking around the small office. He stopped at the file cabinet, pulled out a drawer, and dumped the contents onto the ground. “It isn’t steady income if all you can do is make spells. You get surge months, sure, but there are also down months. Sometimes down years, depending on how many mages are trying to sell their wares. Most people need something steady, at least part-time, to cover the basic bills for the bad months.”
“And you guys, who clearly don’t fall into that category?” I asked, taking a hint and resuming my search. We needed something more concrete. Or, at the very least, we needed to establish we had no other options.
“Healing ointments aren’t just for magical people, and very few mages can successfully do what Callie does in that arena. She can sell her stuff as beauty products, and they work ten times better than whatever the grocery market stocks. You know, because of magic. It’s that business that earns us the most. Then, of course, we are reliable, hardworking, and willing to bend to strange demands, like color-coded casings. That attracts eccentric customers, like vampires who like everything just so. ”
“ One of those vampires is standing right here, you know. Listening.” I grinned at Dizzy before shifting my gaze to Darius, who wore a blank face.
“All of this comes as no shock to him, I’m sure,” Dizzy said, unperturbed. He emptied another drawer on the floor before shaking his head. “I don’t think we’re going to find anything of importance in the office. This guy isn’t all that organized. He probably has the important things randomly stuffed on some shelf.”
“Like you would?” I shoved a desk drawer shut, agreeing with Dizzy. I’d found zero.
“Exactly, yes. So let’s move on to the living room or, better yet, find his work room.” Dizzy left the mess and moved to the door.
“You know,” I said, following, “the mage’s house we busted into the other night didn’t have a work room. He had a place where he kept his spells, but I don’t know where he actually made them. That should’ve occurred to me.”
“Why would it?” Dizzy led us into the living room, then glanced around. After a moment, he shook his head and started upstairs. “You don’t cast spells, so you wouldn’t think to look for the place where it’s done.”
It was a weak argument, but I let it go.
Fifteen minutes of searching the three bedrooms and two bathrooms, and we’d still found nothing.
“Was there a shed out back?” Dizzy moved to the window of the master bedroom, which overlooked the back half of the property. “I don’t remember anything besides Reagan battling a demon midair.”
“No, no shed.” Darius stood in the doorway. “We are wasting time.”
“We don’t have any strong leads,” I said, frustrated. “They are surely trying to build up power as we speak. If we head to that railway, and we’re wrong, that’s it. He’s gone.”
Dizzy gave me an apologetic shake of the head. “It doesn’t look like we have anything else, Reagan. Not a key, or a leasing agreement, or a pen, or…anything. Certainly no GPS.”
“Computer.” I blinked. “We didn’t come across a computer.”
“We’ve got her,” Callie yelled from what sounded like the bottom of the stairs. “She wants to know where to head. She’s in a small town north of here, so it’ll take her forty-five minutes to get into the city. At least.”
Urgency ate away at me. That demon would be in a blind panic to get out of the Brink. It had what it came for and knew it was in grave peril. It would be bending the mages over backward to get everything ready.
“What to do,” I said, chewing my lip.
Silence fell on the room, all eyes on me, until Callie finally yelled out, “ Well? ”
“Let’s go to that rail yard.” I broke for the door. “If it’s a ghost town, then we’ll circle back to the terminal, or maybe go hang that bartender up by the feet to see what else he knows. We’re running out of time.”