5. Chapter Five
Chapter Five
Panic spread through magicians like a plague. The Council could only keep Blackwell’s death silent for two or three days before someone—a diplomat or a secretary—leaked the news. It spread to the others: the vampires and the fae. Even the shifters, despite all their bravado, grew uneasy.
A smog of wariness hung over the supernatural world.
All his death was to me was an inconvenience. People backed out of deals and fled the city. Black market buyers were stingy with their money. No one wanted to be named or noticed, not when a murderer ran loose in the city. All the discretion I operated with meant nothing.
I needed this resolved before it affected my bottom line, so I sent Gray to investigate the only other angle available to me—who was the first magician killed?
Obsession was too strong a word for my interest in my other question, which was, why the fuck did Rook want me to know about it?
I sat at my desk, staring at my phone and the number he had called me from, embarrassed that I’d saved it.
I contemplated tossing my phone at the Persian rug spread across the office floor.
I rubbed my thumb over the keypad. I wouldn’t call him.
That would be ridiculous. I didn’t need his help.
Is it his phone number?
Call him back! I haven’t seen anything interesting all week…
If you call him, I’ll find out who the first magician was.
I stopped stroking my phone and gritted my teeth. The dead could probably get me information. Tempted, I opened my mouth to speak to the restless spirits…
And closed it, breathing out a sigh of relief through my nose as the door opened and Gray stepped into the room.
“What did you find out?” I asked, leaning forward with my elbows on my desk.
“You’re not going to like it.” Gray propped himself against the door and frowned.
“Tell me anyway.”
“Clayton Pope,” he said.
It took me no time to place the name. Clayton was a special client, and I’d sold him something I’d given no one else.
When he approached me for an untraceable killing spell to protect himself from those who wished to collect on his many debts, he didn’t have the money for it.
Instead, he traded me something much more valuable—a favor, and enough of his blood that I could ensure he paid it when I came to call.
Which meant two things: one, he wouldn't repay me, and two, the killer was targeting magicians of power and unique magic.
That included me more than anyone.
The only physical indication that I was shaken by this revelation was the way I loosened my tie at my neck, but Gray noticed.
He was the type of man who was keen and quiet, always picking up little tells and information without ever having to open his mouth to ask a question.
He was an excellent second set of eyes at parties or at my nightclub, Avalon, when I needed to glean a lot of information about guests quickly.
“He’s dead, so the exclusivity clause is void,” he said. “You can sell the spell to someone else.”
I nodded without a word and let him think that it was my biggest concern right now.
“If you don’t need me, I have to get a few things done at Avalon before it opens tonight,” he said. I dismissed him with another nod and he left me at my desk with throbbing temples. I tried to think of magicians I knew who might end up on that list.
Blackwell.
Pope.
Me.
A few people with rare books or spells that had enough weight behind them to change the course of the magical community, if they were misused.
And…
I pressed my forehead into my palm and groaned.
Fucking Rook.
I should tell him. No, good, that’s what he’d get for trying to yank control of Ashbruck right out of my hands. If I could keep my tongue and hands safe, maybe the killer would take care of the increasingly obnoxious problem in my life.
The one stacked with muscle, who pierced me with eyes I had tried pointedly not to think about, and whose grating voice taunted me through my phone.
Good riddance.
Stepping into my living room a little later, I finally let my body sag with exhaustion. I took a deep breath, listening for out-of-place sounds or motion. The penthouse was a fortress, but it didn’t hurt to check at a time like this. I was alone, except for the voices that never left me.
Before they could speak, I said, “I am tired, I am pissed off, and I don’t want to hear a peep from you arseholes until morning. I’m going to ask you if you understand, and it’s rhetorical. Shut the fuck up. Do you understand?”
Nothing. Excellent.
I stripped off all my clothes and climbed beneath the bed that was still unmade from the night before. I laid on my side, letting my head create a dent in the pillow, and closed my eyes. Deep breaths—counted, rhythmic. They slowed my heart rate and put me in a better state to get some rest.
Blue eyes flashed behind my lids. My measured breath turned into a sigh, then a hiss of air that made one of the spirits in the room stir.
“No.” I held up one finger to warn it, even though there was nothing I could do to punish them for their incessant chatter. “Let me sleep.”
I lost count of my breaths and my mind whirled again.
This is why I got no bloody sleep! It was always someone trying to double-cross me, or a client reluctant to buy, or the goddamn blonde-haired menace who had my phone number, who told me about Blackwell’s death before I even knew it had happened.
Did I owe him? No, people owed me. That was how this worked!
I cracked my eyes just a little and glared at the phone on my bedside table.
It was the middle of the night. It could wait until morning.
By then I would probably change my mind and feel sane again.
Breathe in for 4, hold for 4, exhale for 4, rest. I picked the rhythm back up and settled.
When I lost count again, my inhales and exhales slowed and evened out on their own, and I settled into the warm, calm place right before sleep.
My mind stopped spinning, darkness settling over me like a blanket.
Blue eyes. Blue lips. A different warmth, not one that settles, but one that ignites and consumes.
My dick stirred beneath the sheets and I picked up my pillow as I sat and threw it right across the room.
I grabbed my cell phone, scrolled through the contacts, and smashed my finger into the button to dial it.
He answered on the first ring.
“England, you finally called me back.”
“No, you called me, we conversed, I hung up. ‘Called back’ implies that you called me again, in which case I absolutely would not have responded.”
“So, business not pleasure?” I could hear that insufferable smirk on his face.
“You are never a pleasure.”
He barked out a laugh. “I can be a pleasure when I want to, I promise.”
“I have no interest in finding out.”
“Not your type?”
“Not even close.”
“Is it because I’m not dying now? You’re not one of those perverts who likes corpses, are you?”
“I like people with more than two brain cells who—why am I explaining this to you?” I sighed into the phone and began pacing endlessly around the room again. Rook created this energy, something akin to anxiety, that refused to let me sit still.
“Okay, okay, all business. What do you want?”
“Do you recognize the name Clayton Pope?”
He hesitated before speaking again. “Yeah, the guys call him The Pope. He’s banned from just about anywhere that offers gambling and is still half a million in debt. I’ve had him removed from the club twice.”
“Was half a million in debt,” I corrected him.
“Oh shit. I guess there’s a reason you’re telling me this?”
“He was the first victim.”
I didn’t have to specify which victim I meant. Rook knew as well as I did what these murders had done to the supernaturals in this city.
“No, that doesn’t make any sense. Some dumbass who got himself into trouble and then the magicians’ Council representative? That’s not a pattern.”
“It is if the killer is targeting both people with influence and those in possession of rare magic. I sold Clayton an untraceable killing spell, something unique that no one else had, as protection from the problems he created for himself.”
“Okay, rare magic and powerful people. What’s your point?”
“My point is that the message isn’t finished yet, and I am likely on that list, as are you.
” And as far as I knew, I had not only wealth and influence but also something uniquely magical—something that was given, traded to me for something precious.
There was no one who knew my secret, but if the killer somehow found out?
I may have been much higher on that list than Rook or anyone else.
He blew out a breath on the other end of the line. “There’s no chance in hell the Council catches them, not before this guy kills his way through everyone with real power in the city.”
“I’m aware of that, and if the human police catch on, it’s going to get bloodier, and it’s going to ruin the relationship I’ve built with the captain.”
He hummed and shifted, but not in the loud chair from before. I wondered if he was in bed. Did he sleep without clothes on like I did?
“We’re going to have to take him out,” he said, finally, and it was half the conclusion I’d drawn. I knew I would have to deal with the killer.
“We?”
“Two people are dead—one with no connections and one with every connection, which means whoever killed them has left pretty much no one untouchable, and maybe that’s what he wanted everyone to know. If neither of us is safe, I want in.”
“I don’t need your help. I have more resources than you do.”
“It’s not always about having more, England. Sometimes you just have to have the right resources.” I halted my thoughts from spiraling around what he could have that I didn’t. There wasn’t time to dwell on it. A body was going to turn up sooner rather than later. Anyway, I knew where to start.
“If I text you an address, can you meet me there at five o’clock tomorrow evening?” I asked.
“Sure. Fights don’t start until eleven. See you soon, England.”
“Stop calling me that.” I hung up, texted Rook the address, and did not go back to sleep.