Chapter 1
One
“No,” I said for what felt like the hundredth time. “Even if he slams you every time he closes the door, you still have to open, or he’ll replace you.”
My door considered this argument. “But he always pounds on me.”
“He’s the building manager,” I said. “He wants to make sure I’m not in. This is the third time. He thinks you’re warping from age, so you have to stop it.”
The problem with being able to talk to inanimate objects was that they talked.
Once I pumped magic into something, more often than not, it had opinions.
It was something that no witch or alchemist could understand, and it was something I had to hide to fit in with the other magic users in San Amaro.
“Warping from age?” my door asked, horrified. “How dare—Parker, Parker, there’s someone here.”
She swung open, revealing a young man with floppy brown hair and the sort of soft expression that would make a hundred singer-songwriters write ballads about him.
When he saw me standing right at the door, he startled.
“Oh, I’m sorry,” he said. “Are you open?”
Nodding, I took a few steps back so it looked a little bit less like I was losing an argument with an inanimate object. “Yeah. I’m Parker Ferro. What can I do for you?”
“Uh,” he said. “I have a case for you?”
“Is that a question?” I asked.
“Well, maybe you can tell me if it’s a case.”
“Sure,” I said, gesturing for him to take the client seat at my desk while I slid into my desk chair. The guy glanced around my office, and I tried not to focus on the stacks of paperwork and visible dust bunnies in the corners.
It wasn’t that I wanted my office to get this dirty or that I didn’t notice it. Every time I decided to clean, I either got a break in my current case or a new client walked through the door. If I didn’t know better, I would say it was a conspiracy.
But I couldn’t see any of my enemies going to such extremes just to make me look bad.
“So, you have a case?” I asked.
“Yeah,” he said. Like a lot of my clients, he seemed unsure how to bring up what had brought him to my door. My clientele was specialized, ranging from witches who lost their familiars to ghost infestations. Often, my clients’ problems tended toward the weird if not downright sketchy.
People didn’t come to me when things were easy in their lives. They came to me when things were hard and when there was no one else who could help them.
“I get it,” I said. “Whatever it is, you wouldn’t come to me if it was easy. Why don’t we start at the beginning?”
“Parker,” my boyfriend called out from inside the closet.
I knew the next few minutes were going to be very weird for everyone involved if I didn’t do something.
“Nick, not now—”
Nick opened the closet door.
My client gaped. I couldn’t blame him. Nick was shirtless and wore only a pair of soft sweatpants, the waistband loose around his hips, revealing a set of abs and a V-cut that wouldn’t have looked out of place on a porn star.
A soft dusting of hair trailed down from his naval, disappearing into his sweatpants.
He looked warm and reminded me of mornings in bed when neither of us had to work.
He was balancing a cup of coffee in one hand, his other on the doorknob. “Parker—”
When he looked up, his eyes went wide, and he stuttered, “Oh, I’m so sorry. I didn’t realize you were with a client.”
My client was frowning, glancing between me and Nick, then back toward the closet, which was on an exterior wall, giving me no option to pretend there was an apartment behind it.
“Isn’t that a closet?”
“Yeah,” I said, drawing out the word.
“So, what are you? A genie?” my client asked Nick, puzzled.
“Oh, no,” I said, waving a hand. I couldn’t explain that the door Nick had come out of was a portal to my house. That would involve explaining that I didn’t do human magic, which was not something I ever did. “This is my boyfriend, Nick. He has a thing for office supplies.”
“He looks like a genie,” my client said, pointing at the coffee and then gesturing to his sweatpants. “Was the coffee, like, a wish?”
“No,” I said. “Not a genie. He just has a thing for office supplies. Really gets him off. He’s an alchemist, you know.”
“Oh,” my client said. “An alchemist.”
Nick gave me a look, an eyebrow raised, the edge of his lips quirked up. “Yeah, paperclips really get me going. Alchemist, that’s me.”
Nick raised one shoulder in a shrug. My client nodded as though this made sense. Alchemists were known for being fussy, particular in everything from how they cast their magic to the pens they used to do so.
I appreciated that Nick was going along with the farce about office supplies.
Although normally he wasn’t as fussy as the stereotypical alchemist, I had seen him organizing my socks by the level of discoloration.
When I called him out on it, he tried to explain that it was better because then I would know which to get rid of first.
I’d asked him if he wanted to organize my credit cards as well. Which, of course, he did. That had led to the pantry and some creative role-playing about an organization expert and his client.
“So, where did the coffee come from?” my client asked, craning his head to see over Nick’s shoulder. I spun and kicked the door shut.
“I put a coffee maker in there for him,” I said. “Nick, this is…”
“Jerome Walters,” my client said.
Nick’s unexpected presence had at least relaxed my client enough that he was willing to talk to me. Maybe he was reassured that I was just as weird as promised.
The reason my clients came to me was because I had a reputation as being one of them. No one was every able to put a finger on what I was, but they all knew they could trust me because I had that same paranormal edge to me that made me just weird enough to trust.
“Jerome here has a case for us.” I accepted the cup of coffee from Nick, who propped a hip on the filing cabinet behind me, crossing his massive arms over his attractive chest.
“Us?” Nick said. He raised his eyebrow, and I nodded at him.
“Yeah,” I said. “Us. He’s just now getting used to us working together professionally.”
I said the latter to Jerome, who was looking between us with an eyebrow raised.
“I thought you worked alone,” Jerome said. “They said you worked alone.”
“I used to,” I said. “But business has picked up. I needed the extra help, and he’s got skills.”
“Not just in the bedroom?” Jerome joked.
Laughing, I shook my head. “I promise he’s a great investigator.”
Nick really was a talented investigator. He was thorough, detail oriented, exactly the sort of guy I would want to have working on any case for me. Only he didn’t work for me. He was property of the San Amaro Police Department.
Technically he was on vacation—one his boss had mandated. Captain Tate had told Nick to use his vacation time after his last case, or Tate would see that Nick was on desk duty for the next year.
Nick’s last case had been a mess of werewolf turf wars and destroyed alchemy circles. Normally, it would have been one for the Criminal Gang and Pack Division, but it got sent to Nick in Paranormal Crimes because of the alchemy involved. He’d ended the case in the hospital, lucky to keep his arm.
The forced vacation had been interesting. Usually I was the one that was laid up on the couch, feeling like something a demon had dragged in for dinner. Nick looked just as terrible, only he was crawling the walls. It was so bad, his physical trainer had actually banned him from the gym.
He’d even tried to drag me hiking. Only the fact that I didn’t own any hiking boots had saved me. When he’d bought me a new pair, I’d faked the flu.
The only thing that would keep him occupied would be a new case.
“So, Jerome,” I said. “What can I do for you?”
Jerome looked down at his hands, picking at his thumbnail. Then he looked up at my ceiling. I glanced up. I’d never paid it much attention, and there were a few water stains but nothing that would hold someone’s focus.
“A few months ago, my grandma died,” Jerome said.
“I’m sorry for your loss,” I said.
“Thanks.” Jerome picked at his thumbnail again. “This is all confidential, right?”
I shared a glance with Nick, who couldn’t resist saying, “As long as it’s nothing illegal.”
“I don’t think it is?” At our dubious looks, Jerome said, “I’m pretty sure I didn’t do anything illegal.”
“How about you start at the beginning,” I coaxed.
Jerome brought his hand to his mouth and nibbled at his thumbnail for a moment, glancing between us. Finally, he spoke around his finger.
“So, thing is… Well, I mean…”
“Your grandma died,” I said.
“Yeah,” Jerome said. “My grandma died. And I inherited everything. I have an uncle, but he lives on the East Coast. I think he works in finance or something. He said I could have everything, so I got the entire estate. It wasn’t a lot.
She had a house up in Redding, and it was packed with all of her stuff. ”
“Is this an inheritance thing?” I asked. “Your uncle changed his mind?”
“No,” Jerome said. “Nothing like that. I went up and sorted everything, and I hired someone to do the sale. I hired someone else to bring back all the stuff I wanted to keep—heirlooms, valuables, stuff I thought should stay in the family.”
I was getting the picture, and I understood why Jerome might be hesitant about it.
“This guy—this mover you hired,” I said. “Not all your stuff came back from Redding?”
“Yeah,” Jerome said immediately. There was relief in his tone, and he nibbled on his thumbnail, waiting for me to understand the full picture from the hints he’d dropped.
“So,” I said. “The mover brings back most of your stuff, but there’s some expensive, important pieces missing. And you didn’t do anything—it was all your grandma’s stuff—but whatever’s missing is something you don’t want to admit owning.”
“Yes,” Jerome said. He sagged in relief. “I knew you would get it.”
“Now, here’s my question,” I said, leaning in. I waited for Jerome to meet my eyes. “I need you to tell me what it was. I can figure out a lot of this from context, but you need to tell me what’s got you so twisted up.”
“My grandpa’s corpse,” Jerome said.
Of all the things I’d expected him to say, ranging from illegal exotic pets to items stolen from a museum, a corpse had not even made the list.
“I’m sorry, your what?” Nick said.
Jerome wasn’t even paying attention to him, instead he was leaning forward and talking to me like I was the first person he could be honest with about this. I probably was the first person he’d told about this. How do you bring up your grandfather’s missing corpse in casual conversation?
“I didn’t even know I wasn’t human until, before she died, Grandma showed me everything I would inherit,” Jerome said. “This was way back when I was in college. I almost didn’t believe her because you hear about the fae, but, I mean, who’s even seen one?”
“Yeah,” I said, glancing at Nick. He tilted his head and gave me a slight smile. “Who’s even seen a fae?”
“So when she told me she’d married one and that he was my grandfather, I was like, ‘Is she for real?’” Jerome gestured with both hands and gave me a wide-eyed, shocked look, reenacting his feelings upon learning of his not-so-human background.
“But she was, and my uncle confirmed it. He said if I ever spoke to him about it again, he’d take me to court and sue me for his portion of the estate, which, again, is not a lot, but knowing my uncle, he’d try to take me for everything else too. ”
A half fae? Sure, he could take everything and just to make sure Jerome got the message, I could see his uncle dancing legal circles around him until he owned everything Jerome had, inherited or not.
Jerome getting his entire grandmother’s estate wasn’t a mercy, it was a fae contract, and this poor quarter-blood kid hadn’t even realized he was signing it.
“What does your uncle do?” I asked out of curiosity.
“It’s sick. He’s like a lawyer? A lawyer in finance? I don’t know, but he always seems to have something going on,” Jerome said.
I’d bet he did. I’d bet he was the sort of lawyer who made practicing law look natural because the subtleties of contracts were in his blood.
“When you say your grandfather’s corpse, you mean his ashes?” I asked.
“No,” Jerome said. He leaned forward, glancing at Nick, then back to me. “I mean, like, his body.”
“His remains?” Nick asked.
“My grandma had a whole room just for his coffin. But it wasn’t a normal one.
Apparently he knew he was dying before he died, so he built himself this glass coffin.
And grandma said a shroud appeared after he died, even though they were all the way up in Redding and nowhere near San Amaro.
When she got the shroud, she figured the fae were okay with her keeping his body, but now, I don’t know.
Maybe they aren’t okay with me keeping the body? ”
“Or the guy you hired stole the body,” I said.
“Exactly. My grandma didn’t leave me a lot of money, but I figure I have enough to hire you because I don’t want my grandpa’s corpse just… out there, you know?”
I looked Jerome over. He was wearing a designer hoodie and designer pants.
I was no expert, but either he already had money or he was one of those guys who spent every penny he had.
In which case, him spending some of his inheritance on me was a step up since I wasn’t rims he didn’t need or DJ lessons for a career that would never get off the ground.
“Okay, Jerome,” I said. “I’ll take your case.”