Chapter 7
CHAPTER SEVEN
After Nick left, I got dressed and finished my bowl of cereal.
It felt a bit like spite to continue eating it dry, since I discovered I did have milk that hadn’t gone bad when I opened the refrigerator.
While I was crunching on the last of the chocolate flakes, I ran through a list of all my informants, trying to decide who would know anything about werewolves being killed.
My phone buzzed as I mentally crossed off most of the list, and I glanced at the screen.
Seeing the name displayed, I bit down extra hard on the last bit of cereal, catching a bit of my tongue and tasting blood.
I swallowed down the salty mess and watched as the screen went to black, then buzzed to life again with a text.
I groaned.
As slowly as I could I washed all the dishes in the sink, even going so far as to retrieve the one abandoned on the couch. The amount of dishes created a precarious Jenga structure in the drying rack, but then I ran out of housework, and I had to read the text.
Answer your phone.
I opened the app and texted back as slow as my fingers could type:
Coming by. Now okay?
My stomach dropped as I watched the three dots showing she was answering. After nearly a minute, she replied. Yes. Meet me at work.
Well. At least there would be free food.
Scanning through the closet, I chose a clean, blue button-up shirt I used for depositions, and a pair of jeans as close to slacks as I could get without looking like I was trying too hard. Out of habit, I grabbed my bag, checking everything was there: wallet, keys, camera, extra magic supplies.
When I left, the hallway was quiet, and I paused outside Malcolm’s door, but decided I’d have to check back with him later. My car was still outside Dieter’s girlfriend’s apartment. If I was taking a bus, it’d add an extra half hour to my travel time, and she was already pissed at me.
Luck, or some transportation demigod, was on my side and I caught the right bus just as I was stepping up to the bus stop.
The trip to the east side was uneventful, except for a couple of alchemists that started in on a witch holding a large copper cauldron.
I was going to step in, but the witch glared and began muttering a spell that had both of the alchemists scratching at their arms like they’d been through a clump of poison oak.
No one else commented, and I swung down the bus steps at the next stop, landing on the sidewalk a few storefronts down from a cheery cafe with a cat shingle hanging out front.
Laurel’s Cafe and Patisserie
Come in and find your next favorite dessert.
Stepping into Laurel’s felt like stepping into a garden in the warmth of spring.
Everything was green and calming. A few people with laptops had claimed the power outlets along the walls.
There was a couple chatting near the window, and almost everyone else was reading.
The dark wooden floor absorbed the sound of my footsteps as I came up to the counter.
Laurel was behind the counter, her stark black hair pulled into a bun held in place with a pen. As I approached, she pursed her blood-red lips and crossed her arms. I stopped a few feet away from the counter, watching as she looked me up and down.
“Is that Parker? Parker Ferro? He’s not dead?” Laurel said.
The barista working beside her gave her a side-eye and silently grabbed a broom and moved out into the cafe.
“Laurel.” I tucked my hands into the back pockets of my jeans and leaning back on my heels. “Place looks good. Did you repaint?”
“No,” she said. “I guess it’s just been that long since you were here.”
One of the guys with a laptop stepped between us, dropping coins noisily into a tip jar and waving at Laurel, “See you tomorrow!”
She acknowledged him with a small smile and a wave, before returning to her assessment of me.
“I’m surprised,” she said. She uncrossed her arms and moved over to the brightly lit dessert case. Without looking at me, she pulled out two fruit tarts and a pastry shell filled with some sort of creamy chocolate filling.
“Why?” I asked, following as she took the plate to one of the empty tables near the large plate-glass window.
Catching the barista’s eyes, she gestured back to the counter, and the woman nodded, taking quick steps back to her post. She watched the woman and spoke without looking at me. “You usually don’t come around this close to the solstice.”
“Yeah,” I said. “Well.”
Digging in my satchel, I pulled out my wallet and removed a folded check. I pushed it over to her. For a moment, she stared at it, and then drew the check closer to her, lifting it to examine the details.
“Have you seen her?” she asked. “It’s almost her birthday.”
“No,” I murmured. “She’s not there.”
“Oh, she’s most definitely there, Parker,” Laurel said. “We’re both paying a lot of money for her to be there.”
“You know what I mean,” I said.
“She’d like to see you,” Laurel said. “I know she would. Go visit her.”
“Maybe,” I sighed. “I’ll try.”
“Good,” she said. She nudged the white plate towards me, the bottom scraping across the wooden table. “Eat.”
I took a tart and bit into it. The berries on top were bitter and a perfect contrast to the sweet pastry cream filling. I groaned.
“This is why I don’t come here,” I complained. “You’re going to make me fat.”
Laurel snorted and smiled, the expression barely a twitch of her lips. “Liar. You don’t come here because you’re worried I have a case for you.”
“Do you?” I said, suspiciously. Glancing down at the plate of delicious pastries, I narrowed my eyes. “Are these bribery pastries? Are you trying to get me to do more pro-bono work?”
“No, they’re not bribery,” she said. “They’re a gift. From a loving sister.”
“Oh, really,” I said, still looking at the tart in my hand with suspicion. “What do you want, Laurel? Another one of your coven members need help finding a lost familiar?”
“I’m not allowed to worry about you? You work too much, especially this time of year. And you never visit,” she said, grouchily, stealing the other tart. “And you don’t have any friends.”
“I have you, don’t I?”
“That doesn’t count.” She shook her head and the loud scream of the steam wand started as the barista began making a drink for a new customer.
“It does count,” I said. “Because we could just pretend we don’t know each other like everyone else from the system.”
“Head priestess?” someone said, approaching us from the front door.
“Kalie,” Laurel said, glancing at me. “Can this wait? I’m talking to my brother.”
“Sorry, of course, I just wanted to drop this off before tomorrow.” She held a bag aloft. I could smell sage and cinnamon. Laurel gave her a brilliant smile with all of her teeth and it was her politician’s smile, the one for people whom she didn’t want to offend.
“Thanks.” Laurel took the bag and slid it under our table.
Kalie gave me a smile. Her head tilted slightly, like she was waiting. Laurel’s smile became more teeth than honesty and she said, “I’ll see you later, Kalie. Love and light.”
“Love and light,” Kalie said, turning away.
“What’s up with that?” I asked, watching the redhead leave the cafe. “She’s a little... enthusiastic.”
“She’s a little new, so she’s overzealous. I think her last coven broke apart because of infighting, so she’s really eager to find her place with the East Side Witches.” Laurel polished off her tart and nudged the plate towards me.
“She’s gunning for your job, isn’t she?”
“How do you do that?” she said. “You only met her for ten seconds!”
“So she is trying to become head priestess? You want me to look into her? Find out what her story is?”
“No,” she said. “I’ll deal with her myself. I’m a little old for my big brother to be taking care of my problems.”
“Never too old for me to worry,” I said, grinning when she pretended to gag at the sugary sweet sentiment.
Picking up the chocolate treat, I tried to savor it instead of devouring it instantly.
With her foot, Laurel prodded the bag out from under the table and brushed her fingers through the ingredients inside.
She was even younger than I was, and that made it even more incredible how much she’d made of herself.
To give her credit, she’d worked hard for all of her success.
She was the head priestess of the Kitchen Witches of East San Amaro, which was a mouthful of a coven name that always got shortened to the East Side Witches if you liked them and East Side Bitches if you didn’t.
It was enough to give an older brother a complex, except we weren’t actually blood relatives and it was impossible not to be proud of the woman she’d grown into.
She could also take me down hard if she wanted, so I liked staying on her good side.
The thing about witches is this: they are way more destructive than alchemists.
I don't mean they’re more powerful or an alchemist couldn’t pull down the house if he wanted to.
But alchemists are a little like a sniper rifle.
Everything has to be precisely so, the right circle, the right incantation, the precise amount of materials.
When everything is just so, an alchemist will take the proverbial head off a guy with the accuracy of a marksman.
Witches are more like shotguns. They can take a handful of random stuff you find in your junk drawer and do a lot of damage. In a fight, I’m always going to put my money on the witch.
“So, Laurel,” I said.
Huffing, Laurel flicked her eyes back towards me and arched both of her eyebrows. “You’re using your conniving voice. What do you want?”
“How do you know I want something?” I asked. “Maybe I was just going to say you looked nice today.”
“Were you?”
“No,” I said. “But it really hurts me you’re so suspicious.”
“What do you want, Parker?” Her red lips curled into a smirk. “I don’t know anything new about Derek McCallum, but I’ve been keeping an ear out, even though I think you should steer clear of him.”
“He broke a contract,” I said. “He’s going to pay.”
At the talk of McCallum, I felt the warmth I’d been enjoying chill. He was the reason I was in this mess now with my landlord. He was the reason the business I’d built was in danger.
“Okay,” Laurel said mildly. She tapped the table, and I refocused on her. “So if it’s not him, what is it you want?”
“You heard anything about the SoPa alpha getting killed?”
Her eyes narrowed. She drummed her short fingernails on the table as she considered the question. “Why?”
“I’m curious,” I said. “You know I like to keep up with the werewolf news.”
“I know you’re smart, so you stay out of pack drama,” she said. “And unlike me, you don’t have to keep up with it all, so I’m curious why you’re asking.”
“The cops want a consult,” I lied. “And they asked me about magic being drained out of wolves. I thought you might be able to give me some background.”
Laurel twisted her lips, her nails still drumming on the table.
Finally, she said, “I think you should stay out of it, but from what I know, they found the alpha out of SoPa territory. SoPa doesn’t think another pack killed him, but there are a lot of rumblings about retribution. I told my people to steer clear.”
It wasn’t any more than I knew before. I must have made a face, because her eyes narrowed again. “What’s this about drained magic?”
“The cops want to know if it’s fae, but it didn’t sound familiar and I know I’ve never been able to drain magic,” I said. “Can you?”
Laurel was trained as a kitchen witch, which was a little like being the MacGyver of witches.
I’d seen her turn a handful of flour, a pair of scissors, and twine into a spell that took the head off a vampire.
Like I said, my money is going to be on the witch who can turn an empty soda can into an IED.
As the head priestess for her coven, Laurel had unlimited access to their power.
Unlike alchemists, who believed their power came from the purity of their magic, witches pooled their magic, which gave even lesser users the ability to do massive spells.
Of course, they could only do those big spells with a group of their coven members.
For every witch as strong as Laurel, there were a dozen users who could barely make a pop-rock explode.
“Kind of,” Laurel said. “When we shift magic to the coven, it’s a drain, but that’s consensual. You need the participant’s permission. And we’d never take all of their magic.”
“What about binding spells?”
“Maybe,” she said. “But we only temporarily bind powerful kids, the ones who need training wheels before they can control their magic. Even then, it’s not a drain so much as a…
floodgate. I’ve never heard of it being used on an adult, and never on another paranormal.
No.” She shook her head. “Whatever this is, it’s not witchcraft. ”
“You think it was another pack?” I asked.
Shrugging one shoulder, she said, “Malik doesn’t think so. He’d know.”
“Do you think an alchemist could do it?” My mind searched for other options.
Just because Detective Nicholas King, upstanding, by the literal book, perfect alchemist, didn’t believe it was alchemy didn’t mean some shadier, less upstanding alchemist hadn’t done it.
Laurel snapped her fingers, the sound nearly drowned out by the steam wand going again. “You need to talk to Professor Woolworth.”
“Who?”
“That UCSA professor, the one who used to be in the coven when Shannon was head priestess. She’d come by, borrow Shannon’s books? She tried to give you a lecture on energy circles?” Laurel tilted her head like she was waiting for the moment I remembered the person.
I shrugged, scratching at the hair behind my ear. “No memory of her.”
“Anyway, she quit when Shannon… well. She quit the East Side Witches, and I think she went into solitary practice? She’s big into researching non-standard alchemy and witchcraft.
Go see her.” Laurel managed to make every suggestion sound like a directive.
Normally, the high-handedness set me on edge, but in this case the information was good and I didn’t make a fuss.
“Thanks,” I said, standing. I slung my bag back over my shoulder again and smiled at her.
“Come by more often. I worry about you in the summer,” she said.
“I know, I know.” I waved off her concern.
“And go see Shannon.”
Standing, she drew me into a hug, her head hitting below my shoulder as she gripped me tightly. For a moment, I curled my arms around her before dropping them. She stepped back and shoved me, shaking her head in mock irritation.
Walking out the door, backwards, I waved at her from the sunny sidewalk, but she was already back behind the counter helping her next customer.