4. Chapter 4
Chapter four
SAGE
“You are quite persistent, Mr. Blackwood. I believe my campaign manager has told you repeatedly that we have no statements to make at this time.”
“Of course, Mr. Finch, I’m sure you’re busy, but you are running for office after all, and voters want to know who they’re voting for.” I leaned forward in my seat and placed a hand on the desk like I was offering some secret tip. “I can’t imagine why any campaigning official would want to turn down free publicity.”
The comment was one part suspicion, one part threat, and the sharp man immediately picked it up for what it was. His eyes narrowed, but he straightened his tie and leaned back in his leather chair like I wasn’t the least bit concerning to him.
“To be perfectly honest, Mr. Blackwood, your reputation precedes you, and despite what they say, not all publicity is good publicity. You can dig into my campaign all you’d like, but you won’t find anything worth writing about. We’re running a clean campaign and my only interest is in serving the public to the best of my ability.”
“Mr, Finch, I’m not sure what you’re implying or what you’ve heard. My only interest is in the truth.” I sat back in the chair, mimicking his position. “Perhaps you’d like the public to know what made you choose to run for District Attorney?”
An annoyed smile touched his lips. “I’m afraid I don’t have time in my schedule for a full interview today.”
“No problem, how about a short one? Five questions.”
He sighed. “Three. And if any of them aren’t directly related to the campaign, I won’t be answering, so choose wisely.”
“No problem. Many voters are asking about your connection to the mayoral candidate Thomas Graves and his connection to a group called The Origin Order. Would you care to comment on that?”
The man calmly picked up his phone. “Cynthia, please have security escort Mr. Blackwood out of the building.”
I sighed. “Mr. Finch, that’s really unnecessary.”
“Clearly it’s not.”
“It is my job to find out what the voters want to know. Also, your secretary’s name is Sandra.”
The man paused and I wondered how long he’d been calling the poor woman by the wrong name. Deciding that wasn’t important, he opted to play dumb.
“I know nothing about the group you mentioned.”
“No? Then you could have simply said you didn’t know. Why throw me out at the mention of them?”
“I don’t have time to entertain fantasies.”
There was a knock on the door and two imposing men stepped inside. I stood from the chair before they could come forward.
“Thank you for your time, Mr. Finch. Please reach out if you find more time in your schedule for a full interview.”
The man scoffed as I stepped into the hall. “Make sure he finds his way out,” he told the men behind me.
I gave the secretary a friendly smile on my way past. “Have a lovely day, Sandra.”
Her lips twitched at the way I raised my voice when I used her name. “Thank you, sir, you too.”
I stepped out into the warm sun and gave the security men the same friendly smile on my way out, but it fell away the moment I rounded the corner. Bradley Finch was a problem I had yet to solve.
We knew the man was involved with The Origin Order. He’d attended the campaign for the mayoral candidate Thomas Graves when we did the spell to identify those with the tattoo, and a small mark had tagged this man as one of them. The problem was, having the tattoo wasn’t enough on its own. While Graves made his position clear, Finch hadn’t associated with him or the Eastbend police since that day. He had old connections to Graves from college, but there wasn’t anything connecting him to the others since. Hence the reason for my visit.
An interview would have been nice, but I hadn’t been counting on it. My only goal had been getting inside the office to plant the spell I’d bought from one of Ollie’s contacts. While it seemed like our talk had gone nowhere, I was more convinced of his involvement than ever.
A sitting judge had been the next issue on my plate until Levi was able to identify the man and give us enough to hand that case over to Roman at Atlas Investigations. One less problem, but there were ten more right behind him, including our now desperate need to find out who was at the top of this thing. With the council breathing down our necks, I needed answers, and I needed them now.
I pushed the heavy door to the tavern open and stepped inside, wiping my worries from my face as I hopped up onto the barstool next to Ollie.
“Hey, you. What have you been up to?” she asked through a mouthful of sweet potato fries dipped in chocolate.
“Nothing much, just typing up some boring updates for work. Where is everyone?”
“Aiden and his clan are at home with the egg. Titus said it’ll be several more months before it hatches, but they’re all super protective right now, so they won’t let him leave the house with it just yet. Alwin found a warming sling they can wear and Elliot is going to put a glamour on it so they can go out in public, but I’m sure he’s still going to have bodyguards everywhere he goes for a while. Phee went to check on him and take them food since Aiden’s probably going stir crazy and ready to kill some dragons by now.”
Aiden’s egg made its grand appearance a week ago and visiting the tavern for a week straight without seeing him was so unusual it made the place feel empty.
“Won’t be long for you either, huh?” I asked.
While sorcerers were no different from humans, we had no way of knowing what to expect from a demon pregnancy, especially considering Ollie was part demon herself. She’d been seeing a healer, but since her situation was almost unheard of in our world, they didn’t have many answers for her. Based on the baby’s size, their guess was “soon” which was probably as close as she was going to get.
Nikko swooped by and dropped a drink in front of me. He had a talent for choosing better than I did so I rarely bothered ordering anymore.
“Are you ready?” he teased her.
She rolled her eyes. “Ready to not be pregnant anymore? Hell yes. But ready to try not to fuck up a kid? How does someone even prepare for that? Like, I read the books and all that crap, but all it did was make me realize how freaking fragile these little things are. I’m fucking terrified.”
“You’ll be fine, you’ve got tons of help,” I assured her.
Alwin stepped into the tavern, offering us a dip of his chin in greeting as he took a stool on my other side. At least we had one of the elf brothers there, but Alwin’s stoic, overly polite conversation couldn’t have been more different from Aiden’s usual banter.
Nikko held up a beautifully crafted bottle in question and the elf dipped his chin once more. “Please.”
“Escaping Aiden?” Ollie teased.
Alwin turned his crystal blue eyes her way, but his expression didn’t budge. “Aiden is a bit… uneasy at the moment. I felt it best to give them some space.”
She snickered. “He’ll be fine once they let him out of the house.”
“Mm. He has never taken well to being told what to do.”
Declan found his way into the tavern next and he wandered over looking even more tired than usual. He dropped onto the stool on Alwin’s other side and gave the elf a double take.
“What’s got you in such a good mood?”
I examined the elf’s face finding absolutely no change in his stone expression. What the hell was Declan seeing to come to that conclusion?
Alwin didn’t seem at all affected by this observation. “My offer on a house in Aiden’s neighborhood was accepted this morning.”
“What the hell?” Ollie said, leaning forward to examine Alwin’s face. “How’d you do that?”
“Do what?” Declan asked as Nikko slid a drink his way.
“And where did you disappear to yesterday?” she added. “You made such a fuss about moving in and now you’re never there anyway.”
Declan’s eyes drifted to Ollie’s belly for the briefest of seconds before darting away. He shrugged. “Elliot’s cat tried to eat me, I wasn’t about to stick around and tempt fate.”
She rolled her eyes. “Beatrice did not try to eat you. You disturbed her sleep and she was just letting you know she didn’t appreciate it.”
“I didn’t know that cat even existed until yesterday! How would anyone notice a cat that’s barely bigger than a hamster? All I did was sit down and it attacked.”
In all the times I’d visited Ollie’s house I’d only seen Beatrice once and while hamster-sized was a bit of an exaggeration, he was right that the cat was tiny. “How could a cat that small try to eat you?”
“It’s a glamour,” Declan explained. “That thing is huge. And definitely not a pet. You should get rid of it.”
Ollie’s eyes narrowed at the man. “Bea is a member of our family. And she was there first, so she outranks you.”
“You’re suggesting the cat’s opinion is more important than mine?”
Ollie shrugged. “The cat’s proven that we can trust her.”
Declan apparently had nothing to say to that. He merely shook his head and finished his drink before swiping Alwin’s and chugging half of that as well.
Alwin didn’t object or attempt to get his drink back, but he did watch the man carefully through the entire exchange.
“That drink is quite potent for a human,” Alwin pointed out.
“Yeah? Hey Blue, can we get two more of these?” Declan called even though Nikko’s hair was currently a deep emerald green.
“It expensive too,” Ollie pointed out.
“Put it on Alwin’s tab,” Declan added.
Nikko shot Declan an exasperated look before looking to Alwin who once again dipped his chin in approval.
“Whatever,” Ollie said. “But you just volunteered to take care of the drunk.”
Alwin was still staring at Declan like he could pry the thoughts out of his head if he stared hard enough. In the end, he simply acknowledged Ollie’s request with one word. “Indeed.”
Declan was still a bit of a mystery to the rest of us. We knew where he came from, and his claim that he couldn’t do magic despite being from such a powerful family of sorcerers did seem to be legit. But the man was hiding something and while I didn’t necessarily think he had ill intentions toward Elliot, I also didn’t believe his story about simply needing a place to stay one bit.
But I had more pressing matters on my plate with the hunters and Declan was one mystery I didn’t have time for. Besides, it kind of looked like Alwin might be up to the task, so I’d leave it to him.
“Anything new from the council?” I asked Ollie, changing the subject back to the reason we actually planned this meet up.
“Auggie called me a few days ago to check on our progress and he wasn’t happy to hear our plan was a bust.”
“It’s not like we could try again a day after they’d been tipped off. We had to let their suspicion die down before trying again,” I complained, though I was sure Ollie would have told him the same thing. “We’ll be lucky if they haven’t abandoned that place completely at this point.”
“Yeah, he didn’t want to hear it. He said the council has taken an interest in the situation in Eastbend and I got the impression that they’re getting impatient.”
I made a face. More attention from the council was not something we wanted. “It might be time to give that plan another try.”
“Thinking so,” she agreed. “Damien said they’re still using the lodge, but not as often and there’s no pattern to their gatherings now. We might need to be ready to move next time they start showing up. We should definitely do it before the little hell spawn is born.”
“I’ll start putting everything together for another meeting then. No one outside our usual crew this time, and let’s even limit the wolves involved for their own safety. I’m sure no one wants a repeat of last time.”
“Agreed. Anything on who’s running this shit show yet? If we don't figure that out, everything we do is pointless. They'll just keep sending in new hunters to take their place.”
I sighed. “Still working on it. I have a few things I’m looking into, I’ll try to have something by the time we meet.”
“Let me know if you need help.”
“You got it,” I promised, though there was no way I’d ask Ollie to help with the things I had planned.
The council was really stepping on my toes with the added pressure. I had no choice but to step things up if I was going to get the answers we needed in time.