Chapter 19
NINETEEN
“You had warned me she’s practical, Erik, but this is excessive.”
The Fringe
Dragon Heights
I had no idea what rained from the sky, but I could confirm that being hit in the head with an armored living ball with an odd snout and a long tongue hurt.
In good news for my wallet, the animals or lizards or whatever they were curled up when they perceived danger.
In their minds, and rightfully so, falling from the sky counted as a threat, making it rather simple to catch the critters, which were roughly the size of a small dog.
In reality, we were to investigate our new mansion now that the police had stripped it of evidence. Erik, his partner, and several other pairs had come along for the ride.
They had gotten off lucky, as I was the only one to take a critter to the head.
I expected a headache to roll in at any moment, and in a lull of catching the unexpected bounties, I regarded my husband with my saddest expression.
“Once we make certain to catch all the living ones and finish here, I’ll take you to the purples,” he promised.
I regarded the rather gruesome number of bodies, as most of the rain had consisted of conjured, lifeless animals. “What are these things? I don’t think they’re armadillos.”
I’d seen an armadillo before, and while similar, they weren’t quite the same.
“Pangolins,” Erik’s partner, Carlin, informed me with a grin.
“In a way, I regret I’m not on break right now; had Doug been here, he would have been cowering in the SUV.
He can’t stand anything with scales that is not also a dragon.
Dragons are the only beings permitted to have scales in his world. ”
Having met Doug, it surprised me the man had such an odd fear, as he hadn’t seemed afraid of much. “Doug won’t like our place at all, especially once I retrieve my bearded dragons from the titaniums, Erik.”
Cedrick might forgive me for drawing more people into the bounty madness, as I fully intended on forcing Carlin to accept pay for our good work.
My husband snickered, shook his head, and resumed gathering the conjured bodies.
“We’re going to just split this evenly, Carlin, else we’ll be bickering over who gets which one of these damned things.
The carbunclo and hummingbird are freeloaders, as none of them can actually do anything other than point us at the bodies. ”
“That’s an important job, and they’re doing great at it.
” I eyed our pets, who had returned to my SUV for a nap.
“Well, when they aren’t sleeping. Knowing our girls, they will want expensive and fancy rocks for their collection, and they’ll want to buy at least one with their own earnings, so we have to fill their wallets with bounty money.
Tourmaline gets what Tourmaline wants, and that changes daily. ”
“You had warned me she’s practical, Erik, but this is excessive,” Carlin muttered.
“Just wait until we actually make it into the mansion and she realizes we’re going to have to renovate the entire thing to make it habitable. I will not be seeing her on Fridays at all outside of work.”
I wondered how long I would be able to keep my undercover status a secret from my spouse; he had a tendency to check on me at every opportunity, worried I might vanish on him again.
Our marriage had helped him relax a little, although he had a long way to go in terms of settling into our new and permanent arrangement.
Time would help. It always did.
“I know better than to ask if it will really be that bad. It will be,” I replied in a solemn voice.
“The cleaning bill alone is going to be atrocious. I saw how much dust and filth was in the place. And they already found one secret space in that mausoleum, so there are likely more. I do not want to find more secret spaces. There might be even more bodies.”
Erik raised a brow at my whining tone. “Anything else you’d like to get off your shoulders?”
At my mother’s recommendation, I carried the sickle and one of Krikolios’s claws with me.
As dragon claw weapons weren’t uncommon, she’d found a pair of holders for both so they could ride in my large purse without destroying anything.
“Yeah, I’m carrying enough weapons I’m not comfortable with my lethality rating. ”
“You’ll get over it, but to make you feel better, we’ll go to the range tonight to register in a few hours.”
Going to the range sounded nice. Satisfied I would have an outlet, I went back to work collecting conjured bodies and placing them on the evidence sheets we’d laid out over the ground to simplify our work.
Two hours later, we’d cleaned the property of the rain evidence, summoned the titanium dragons, and lost thirty minutes to them counting our haul and issuing us our owed payments.
They gave me checks for the beasties and sent direct deposits to me and Erik for our work.
Carlin dealt with registering himself, and they gave him his share in the form of a check.
With the exterior of the mansion cleaned, I snapped on a pair of gloves, grabbed a surgical mask to protect myself from the inevitable dust, and headed for the front doors.
Garnet and Citrine followed in their wisp form, and Tourmaline flitted along, investigating every little thing along the way.
Thanks to the mansion’s ridiculous size, a forensics team still worked on checking the place over, and they waited inside.
“You won’t damage anything at this stage,” an older man informed me with a grin.
“And you don’t need the mask. Your mother hired a cleaning service and already had the place purged.
She had a specialty crew handle the basement.
It’s habitable again. We’re only here in case you find something secret we need to register.
We suspect there are numerous hidden rooms that haven’t been identified yet.
Our rendering of the floor plan doesn’t match the size of the home. ”
That was generally a good sign of secrets lurking within. “On which floors?”
“All of them. I’m Lan. My job is to escort you through the property and show you the spaces we think are hiding secrets.
At this stage in our investigation, unless there is a clear connection to the murders, anything found is yours.
The locks have already been changed on the doors, and I have two sets of keys for you.
This is our last scheduled day here, as the FBI was kind enough to send over numerous teams to help us process everything. ”
I hated owing the FBI for anything, but I would bear the burden with a smile. “Anything I’m not going to like before we go inside?”
“Some of the paintings in this place are worth several million dollars each,” Lan informed me. “The FBI has already confirmed they were legal acquisitions, some of which have been in the Merorie clan for well over a hundred years.”
I eyed the mansion and wrinkled my nose. “I own an art museum?”
Erik snickered. “They were terrible people, but they were dragons, and dragons collect things. They were not like regular mercury dragons, who don’t tend to keep massive hoards, but it appears this clan worked together to build their collection.
I’m going to guess that the Merorie clan collected people in addition to paintings and other art. ”
“That’s one way of putting it.” Lan gestured to the opulent entry, and he pointed at a large painting of a landscape dominating one of the walls.
“We asked a gold dragon to come in, and we have a full breakdown of all the known paintings. This one, for example, was painted by a gold dragon three hundred years ago as a commission for the Merorie clan. The dragon disappeared two years later, and the value of his works skyrocketed.”
I narrowed my eyes. “Under mysterious circumstances?”
“You would be correct.”
With the knowledge Madam Merorie likely trafficked those who had worked for her, I wondered what had happened to the dragon—and if my magic would shine any light on the situation. If it could. I went to the painting, reached up, and brushed my fingers to the frame.
Nothing happened.
“Is this one of the paintings that can’t handle anyone actually touching the canvas?” I asked, glancing over my shoulder at Lan.
He shook his head. “It is magically protected against dust, fingerprints, and things of that nature. You can touch it if you want.”
I moved my hand to the canvas, but once again, nothing happened. I sighed. “Well, in good or bad news, there isn’t an imprint there for me to follow.”
“It was a good thought,” Erik told me before patting my shoulder. “If you do pick something up, tell us right away in case we don’t guess on our own. I’ve learned you can be quite sneaky about using your magic. You’ve used it around me how many times without me knowing?”
There’d been a few instances, including once when he’d been attempting to administer CPR; I’d known the moment the woman had died, the victim of domestic violence. Her husband had played the role of distressed partner well, but we’d gotten the evidence we’d needed to lock the bastard away.
My magic had revealed the location of the murder weapon and a few key details required to see him pay for his crime.
Sometimes, it still pained me how hard Erik had fought to keep her alive after her soul had fled her body.
“More than a few times. I’ll tell you if I need to use it—and I’ll make sure you know when there’s no longer any hope for revival.”
Once my magic worked, that was it. I’d never witnessed anyone being brought back.
I now understood why.
“You can tell when the soul leaves the body?” Erik asked, and he frowned.
“So far, it seems death must have occurred for my magic to work.” I sighed and shrugged. “I’ve been touching people at the moment of their death, and it went from nothing to seeing what, precisely, had led to their death. I suspect once that happens, they’re truly dead.”