Chapter Eighteen
Dallas Llewellyn had been dead a while. At least a couple days, if not longer.
The whole room smelled like decomposing flesh.
It was honestly more surprising that they hadn’t smelled it past the room.
Or that no one else did. The only thing masking it was the assortment of burned incense, sage, crystals, and herbs scattered all over the room, making the whole thing more cloying than helpful.
“Graves,” Kierse muttered.
“I know,” he said softly.
“A second dead warlock,” she said, her eyes catching his. “If we’re not careful, it’s going to start to look like a pattern.”
He passed her a set of gloves. “Then be careful.”
She nodded and put them on as she stepped around the room. “I can’t believe no one else has come in here.”
Graves kicked over a pile of empty pizza boxes next to a cot. “Looks like she’s been living in her office.”
“Which explains why we couldn’t find a permanent address.”
He nodded. “Let’s look around. See if there’s anything else we can find.”
Graves filled the group in on what they were seeing. “Dallas is dead. We’re casing her office. Get everything you can from security and video footage and get out of there. We’re going to do the same. Meet back in the suite after.”
“What do you mean dead?” Laz asked.
“Dead?” Gen’s voice came through the line.
On and on and on. So many voices at once that it was giving Kierse a headache. There was too much to do and too little time.
“Enough,” Graves snapped. He ripped his earpiece out of his ear. “This is why I work alone.”
She managed a chuckle. “Curmudgeon.”
He shrugged as he dug through Dallas’s personal belongings. “Yeah, well, at least I can hear myself think.”
“You can hear other people think, too,” Kierse said as she rummaged through the paperwork on the desk.
“Not the dead,” he grumbled.
“I guess we’d need a necromancer for that.” She pulled out a notebook full of random numbers and letters, then glanced up at Graves. “Wait…are there necromancers?”
“Yes,” he said. “You wouldn’t want to meet one, though.”
“Are there people who want to meet necromancers?”
“I tracked a few down for a couple hundred years,” he said, going to the body and checking her pockets.
“You tracked down necromancers?”
“That’s what you do when you bring someone back to life.”
“That’s…” Kierse shook her head. “Who were you trying to bring back to life?”
Graves was silent a moment. “Emilie.”
“Oh,” she said. Of course, that made sense. Graves’s first love. Lorcan’s sister. The source of their displeasure. “And did you find anyone who would do it?”
“She’d still be dead, just reanimated,” he said, all nonchalant, as if it didn’t matter.
“Did you try other methods?”
“Sure,” he said. “A few hundred. Most require the body, which is buried in Ireland, or gives a twenty-four-hour timeline, which doesn’t work because of the intervening centuries.” He picked at Dallas’s clothing. “Wouldn’t work for Dallas, either, I’m afraid.”
“Did Lorcan know you were doing this?”
Graves glanced up at the name. His eyes searched hers, a knowing look into his storm-cloud-gray irises. “I didn’t tell him.”
“Why not?”
“His hatred is justified.” He returned to frisking the body. “As is mine.”
Kierse swallowed hard at those words. She’d heard them from Graves before, but it was different knowing he had spent several centuries trying to make amends for what he had done.
“There’s no cell phone,” Graves spat. “Anything up there?”
Kierse went back to digging. “It looks like there should have been a calendar. There’s a dust line where it sat undisturbed, but it’s missing now. Do you know how she was killed?”
“A warlock?” He shook his head. “There aren’t many options. Wisps, of course. Other warlocks can drain magic if they’re significantly more powerful. Most of the other ways don’t look plausible. She’s completely intact.”
“There’s this note to meet Rosetta Davis once a week for healing.” Kierse passed it to Graves. “I’d guess that has something to do with all the witchy, new-age stuff.”
“Witchcraft,” Graves said. “All of this has medicinal properties if operated by the correct user.”
“Well, otherwise her desk is pretty useless. The computer wouldn’t boot up for me, but I’m not an expert. I can pull her hard drive for Walter.”
“Do it,” he said, rubbing his thumb over the note.
She got down onto her knees to get to the desktop computer, disconnected the cables, and pulled the hard drive from its position with a click. She passed that to Graves, who slid it into his pocket while continuing to look at the note.
“We should get out of here,” Graves said.
“All right. Does that note mean anything to you?”
“I’ve heard of Rosetta Davis,” he said, sliding it into his pocket and yanking the door back open.
She followed him out into the still-empty corridor. She ripped off the extra gloves and stuffed them into her bag. No trace that either of them had ever been there.
Walter said into her earpiece, “Loop is going off in thirty seconds.”
“Thirty seconds,” she told Graves.
He took her arm and pulled her through the first available exit, which led them out to a hotel corridor. “Through here.”
Kierse grasped onto his elbow as they navigated the busier client halls. “So who is Rosetta Davis?”
“A witch,” he said. “A very famous witch. I didn’t know she’d moved to Las Vegas or that she was taking clients anymore. She’s in her eighties. Though it’s hard to know because of the rejuvenation spells witches have access to.”
“So what do you think Dallas was going to see a famous witch about?”
“Think we should find out,” he said, glancing down at her. “If you’re up for it.”
“Me? I am perpetually up for anything.”
Graves slid his phone out and began furiously texting. “I’m getting George in position.”
Kierse grinned, relishing in another mission with Graves and pushing Lorcan farther from her mind. This was where she belonged and where she wanted to be.
George waited as promised at a side entrance to the Bellagio. They slid into the backseat of the limo, leaving the Strip behind. Their group chat was blowing up, but Kierse silenced her phone, letting Graves handle the rest of their team on the botched mission.
“Any hunches on who killed her?” Kierse asked Graves.
He put his phone away and met her gaze. “I have some hunches, but until we’ve looked at all the information, we can’t be sure.”
“Hunches?”
“She was an operating warlock in someone else’s territory,” Graves said. “The head of Las Vegas could have killed her.”
“Who is that?”
“Carlos. He’s a dowser.” She stared back at him blankly. “He can find water in the desert.”
“Oh. Well, that’d be helpful in Vegas.”
“Indeed. Though it could have been someone in the casino, too. It looks like she owed a lot of money. I found overdue bills by the bed, lottery tickets in her wallet, a scribbled note that mentioned the Syndicate with some figures by it. I’d guess she was in way over her head.”
The war did that to people. Perhaps it had done that to Dallas, too.
It was bustling and vivid with color on Fremont Street when George pulled them onto a darkened side alley.
Fremont was the birthplace of Las Vegas with classic casinos lighting up the night sky.
But despite the Vegas sparkle, Kierse could tell that the clientele was seedier, more monsters roamed the perimeter, and the glamour had worn off.
“Here you are, sir,” George said.
“Thank you, George,” Graves said as he exited the limo and offered Kierse his hand.
A couple pushed past them, knocking into Kierse’s shoulder. Graves kept her from toppling.
“Watch where you’re going,” she said.
The female human shot a middle finger in her direction. The guy she was with ate a very familiar fruit.
“Goblin fruit,” she hissed.
“Yeah. It’s making a resurgence,” Graves said. “I think the Men of Valor must have brokered a deal with the goblins to distribute it on the streets.”
“Just the most dangerous substance on the planet,” she said.
“We can’t do anything about it from here.”
“Fine. Fine. I’ll save my injustices for the city.”
“Save them for me, always,” he told her, sliding their hands together.
Graves stopped in front of a darkened door with a rose nestled in the center of a crescent moon. “This is the place.”
He knocked twice, and they waited. Nothing happened, but they could hear people moving around inside as if scrambling to pick up illegal contraband before the police burst in. Not that they cared about this sort of place.
Graves knocked again more forcefully.
After another minute of waiting, the door cracked open. A metal chain held it mostly closed, and a round man answered the door. He was a few inches shorter than Kierse with brown skin and eyes and a shiny, bald head. “Do you have an appointment?”
“We’re here to see Rosetta Davis,” Kierse said with a winning smile.
“Appointment?”
“No,” she said. “But we were told to visit her for healing.”
“Without an appointment, I’m afraid she is far too busy.”
Graves slid cash through the door. Kierse only got a glimpse to see that it was a sizable roll of hundred-dollar bills. “If she’ll see us now, there’s more where that comes from.”
Well, well, well, bribery instead of violence. That was new.
The guy pursed his lips, but he took the money, slamming the door in their faces. The chain pulled free, and then he opened the door once more.
“Welcome to Madam Rosetta’s Healing Arts. I am Isaiah, Madam Rosetta’s assistant. How can I help you?”
The scent of rosemary and damp moss enveloped Kierse before she even stepped inside. Sparks of purple magic flickered at the corners of the shop, indicating that Rosetta wasn’t a fraud. If Kierse had wondered if this was the right place, she no longer did.
They stepped into the darkened interior of the room only to find it was practically a cliché waiting to happen.
Dark, lacy drapes covered the walls. The room was lit solely by candles and incense burned in a brazier.
Crystals of every shape and size and color were along one wall along with a collection of oils and moon stones and dried herbs hung from the ceiling and filled a basket in sachets.
There were sage bundles, ritual salts, and large handmade candles in colors with labels as to the reason to burn them.
A giant cauldron took up the center of the space, and a large spell book stood open before it.
Kierse stepped up to it skeptically, but it was more prop than reality. She’d seen and touched enough magic to know that even spell books had a hint of magic to them, and with her new magical intuition, this thing was dead.
“We’re here to see Rosetta,” Graves said.
“For a cleansing?” Isaiah asked. “Or a tarot card reading? Perhaps a look into her crystal ball? Would you like to see your entangled love lines?”
“No,” Kierse said. “We’re here about her witchcraft.”
“That’s all she does,” he said, gesturing to the room. “Perhaps take a look around and…”
“Magic,” Graves said. “We’re here for her magic.”
“Of which you have none,” Kierse said, pointing at him. Her magical intuition told her everything she needed to know about him. “You’re a mer and trying to siren song us. It usually works, doesn’t it?”
“It won’t work on us, though,” Graves said. “So go tell Rosetta we’re here.”
“Don’t hurt my assistant,” a sharp old voice came from the back of a darkened doorway. Milky-white eyes looked back at them.
“Rosetta?” Graves asked.
“Ask and you shall receive.” She tilted her head at the pair of them, and a dangerous smile curved her lips. “Though I’m not sure you’ll like what I have to tell you.”