Cupcakes, Trinkets, and Other Deadly Magic (Dowser Series) (13 page)

Kandy folded the used paper towel and then took off through the trees. Feeling insanely weak, I peered through my tangle of curls at Desmond, who still hovered over me. I really, really wanted to close my eyes, but was wary of doing so with him in the vicinity.
 

Next thing I knew, the petite brunette with the bee-stung lips was leaning over me with a bottle of water. Her eyes were rimmed red from unshed tears. I grabbed the water and knocked it back, only to have Desmond snatch it out of my hands after just one sip. Water dribbled down my chin and he wiped it off with a swipe of his thumb.
 

“Slowly,” he cautioned. Could I get any weaker or more inept in front of this man? Probably not. I squeezed my eyes shut, forgetting my earlier caution.

“Thank you, Lara,” Desmond said.

By her quick retreat, he was obviously dismissing the girl. Okay, I peeked. He settled down on his haunches to glower at me from a more even level. I refused to look at him, but did accept another sip of water.

“You were with him, then? Last night?” he finally asked, kinder than I had any hope of him being in this moment.

“No,” I answered, and then had to pause to work around the sobs that started to choke my throat again. Desmond surrendered the water bottle to me completely, then looked away.

I struggled with the well of emotion a bit longer, then finally gave into the tears, allowing them to stream silently down my cheeks. I banged my head lightly back against the tree trunk and gritted my teeth. “I hardly knew him,” I finally cried. My voice was far too loud in the stillness of the trees.

“He had that effect on people,” Desmond murmured, but he still didn’t look at me. He didn’t seem uncomfortable; more respectful than judgmental.

I tried another sip of water, as I brushed the tears from my cheeks. “We were supposed to go out for dinner.”

“Supposed to?”

“He stood me up.”

Desmond fixed his green-flecked eyes on me and raised one eyebrow in a smirk. It was darker than the tawny, untamed hair on his head. “I doubt that.”

“Is there … is there a trinket on him?” I asked, dreading the answer.

Desmond nodded. “Three.”

I clamped my hand across my mouth to stop the moan of pain this confirmation triggered. “I’ll destroy them all,” I said.

“That would be a shame,” Kett said. He had appeared out of nowhere to loom over my right shoulder.

“They … they’re obviously evil!”

“No. Someone is using them to anchor their spells. Whoever it is must feel they need the extra magic, because whatever they’re doing is destroying all the magic contained in the trinket, as far as I can tell. You might be able to pick up some residual magic. I cannot.”

“Who is strong enough in this town to take down Hudson?” Desmond asked.

“Me, I supposed,” the vampire answered. “Not many others, unless I have a rogue on my hands. But rogues don’t usually dabble in black magic.”

“Vampires don’t do spells?” I asked, my curiosity momentarily distracting me.

“No, they just are black magic,” Desmond answered with a growl.

Kett ignored McGrowly to turn his cool blue eyes on me. For a moment, I thought the vampire wasn’t going to answer. Then he said, “Rogues rarely take the time to develop such skills.”

“Yes, they’re usually too busy running from the executioner,” Desmond said.

“The same could be said of the shapeshifters,” Kett answered coolly.

“Shifters don’t choose to be loners,” Desmond snapped, his energy visibly bristling around him. Well, at least I could see it.

“There are exceptions to every rule,” Kett said. He turned his attention back to me. The vampire and the shifter assessed me for a moment, and I gathered the subject matter had shifted back to include me. “A group of magic users might be strong enough to take down a werewolf of Hudson’s status. Perhaps more easily if he was surprised. A coven, perhaps.” The vampire held out a hand to me.

I guessed he wanted to help me to my feet, but I wasn’t particularly interested in touching him. He raised a rather mocking eyebrow at me. It was an oddly human expression on his ice-carved face. “Your resistance to the magic will grow,” he said. “We need you to take a closer look at the body, to tell us what sort of magic we are dealing with, and hopefully how many casters.”

The body …
You mean Hudson
, I wanted to scream, but didn’t.

Desmond stood with the fluid move that freaked me out every time I saw it. I was starting to figure out that the more powerful of the Adept spent a lot of time trying to pass for human when in mixed company. It must be exhausting to do so.

I rolled to my feet, using my knee and then hands to get up. I was unsteady, but I wasn’t interested in leaning on anyone. “I have no idea how I can help,” I said.

“I’ll show you where to look,” Kett said. “None of us has your gifts, nor your connection to —”

Kandy appeared suddenly from the trees, once again moving far too quickly to be wholly human. “Too late,” she said. “We’re almost busted.”

Kett and Desmond both turned their heads as if listening, but I didn’t hear anything.

“Yes,” Kett said, though what he was agreeing with, I didn’t know.

“Take her home, Kandy,” Desmond said. He stepped back toward Hudson.

“What?” But then I heard the sirens, far off but approaching. “You’ll let the cops take him and see this?”

“If we’d found him sooner, perhaps we could have tried to clean up. But it is better to go through official channels now,” Kett answered. “Our agendas are not one and the same, the shapeshifters and I.” The vampire turned to follow Desmond. I didn’t get the warning his last sentence implied.

“Come,” Kandy prodded. “We need to go now to not be seen. You move so boringly slow when you’re walking, not like when you dance at all.”

I ignored the green-haired wolf as Kett turned back. “I’ll pick you up as soon as I can arrange a viewing. Though it might not be until this afternoon.”

A viewing … he meant the morgue. They wanted me to see Hudson in a morgue. I wasn’t sure I was up for that, and yet I felt utterly responsible and outraged at his death.

“I’ll be ready,” I said. Kandy nodded her approval as I added, “Don’t … try to limit the number of people who touch him, please. Normals don’t really matter, I don’t think, except you might not know if they are magical or not.”

“That won’t be easy. Intimidation doesn’t work well with the police, and Desmond and I are not especially —”

“Diplomatic? Relatable? Charming?”

“Yes,” Kett said. He walked away.

“That was Hudson’s job,” Kandy whispered mournfully. She began to drag me through the trees in the opposite direction from which we’d arrived.

“Diplomacy?” I asked.

“Yeah.”

“I could see that,” I said and didn’t bother stopping the renewed leakage at the corners of my eyes.

A side glance at Kandy showed that she too wasn’t as tough as she pretended … or maybe Hudson had just been worth the tears.

My brain felt bruised — overwhelmed or overloaded, maybe — but I didn’t actually have any answers to all the questions bouncing around inside it.

Kandy was no longer dragging me. She walked at my side, unlike before, as we headed back to my apartment. We’d gone a couple of blocks before I became aware of my surroundings again. I was pretty sure that wasn’t a good sign in regards to my mental state.

“You thought I killed him,” I blurted suddenly.

“He called me off, said he’d take the evening watch. His scent is all over your place.”

“Outside, you mean.”

“Yeah, by the bakery, stairs, front door of the north-facing apartment, in the alley.”

On the stairs? By the front door of my apartment? But I’d sent Rusty out to look for Hudson. Maybe the werewolf had come by earlier when I was still the napping, then left.

“Can you tell the age of scents, like how old they are?”

“Not like by a clock or anything. But yeah, fresh, old, that sort of thing.”

“And how long does a scent linger?”

Kandy shrugged. “Depends on how long someone was in a certain place, or if they touched anything or held something. I just know … knew Hudson, so I’m … was … attuned to him.”

“So he might have just walked by?”

“More than that. But yeah, it wasn’t concentrated if that’s what you’re asking.”

So Hudson could have just been checking up on me or checking out my place earlier in the evening. Silence fell between us. Kandy had looped back and up a few blocks from the park, so we were walking east on West Sixth Avenue. The rain had ceased for the moment, and a few early risers were taking the opportunity to walk their dogs.

“Could you really break through my wards?”

“Probably not, but Desmond could … most likely.”

“He’s your pack leader.”

“Yep. You just putting that together?”

“Yeah, I’m slow like that.”

Kandy barked out a humorless laugh.

“And Hudson?” I asked.

“Beta … or was. I guess the position is open now.”

I sighed. Hudson had been high-ranked and probably powerful. I could see why Desmond couldn’t believe someone local took him out. The Adept, except maybe my Gran, weren’t exactly a powerful bunch in Vancouver, not in the same league as a werewolf. The
Compendium
had suggested that there was a werewolf pack in the North, a larger one in Ontario, and, as Desmond had confirmed, wolves didn’t choose to be loners. Vancouver was populated by a lot of half-somethings, like Sienna, Rusty, and me. Some of whom didn’t even know their magical heritage. But no werewolves that I knew of. Though, based on the
Compendium’s
suggestion of their solitary nature, we could have a resident vampire and not even know it. It was no wonder, as I put all this together in my head, that my mother rarely stayed in Vancouver long. She had to be bored out of her mind here.

Kandy cut left a block before the bakery. “You got anymore cupcakes?” She shivered as she spoke. Apparently, werewolves did eventually get cold.

“You should eat more than cake.”

“I can eat anything I want. It’s all just energy.”

“Yeah, but some are better for you. I’ll make you break —” I cut myself off midthought.

“You’re not going to let me in, are you?” Kandy asked.

“You’re … you are … a pack.” I thought through the magical implications of opening my wards to one werewolf and inadvertently inviting them all.

“We are one,” Kandy said, though her tone was snarky.

“You’re magically bonded, aren’t you?”

Kandy thought before answering, but it couldn’t be that much of a secret if I was figuring it out. I wasn’t completely dim, though I wasn’t a genius by any stretch.

“Yeah.” Kandy spoke slowly. “If you invited me, Desmond might be able to get in using our connection. But I don’t think the same would work in reverse, or for anyone but an alpha. No matter. You won’t leave the bakery without calling me anyway.”

“I won’t?”

“Nah. You’re not that stupid, are you?”

“You never know,” I answered with a sigh. “I don’t have your number.”

“We’ll fix that.”

We passed through the red light at Fourth and Vine but kept to the crosswalk. The street was practically empty. We turned into the alley behind Whole Foods. They sold cupcakes as well, but they weren’t half as good as mine. I never thought of them as competition.

“Will you bake, then?” Kandy asked as we neared my back door.

“Yeah. Not my shift, but I’m up, and Bryn won’t mind an extra couple of hours of sleep.” I reached for the handle of the back door and paused to look back at Kandy as she stuffed her hands in the very wet pockets of her jeans. She resembled a drowned rat. I hadn’t realized her eye makeup was so heavy until I saw it running down her cheeks. “They think I can help somehow,” I asked more than stated.

“Yeah. You’re a dowser, aren’t you?”

“I can sense magic, not track it.”

“Same thing, isn’t it?”

I wasn’t sure, but I didn’t want to argue myself out of an opportunity to help find Hudson’s murderer … plus, the use of my trinkets by the killer made me literally ill.

“Don’t worry about it,” Kandy said. “I’ll be around till the vampire shows.”

“After you eat and shower. I’ll stay put.”

“You have a deal. Give me your phone. I’ll program my number.”

I handed my phone over to Kandy and tried to not feel like a complete asshole for not inviting her in and feeding her.

∞

Not only had I never seen a dead body before, I’d never really known anyone who died. Besides Sienna’s dad and my grandfather, but they were remote male figures in my mind — our connection intangible. Even Sienna didn’t talk about her dad anymore, not like she had at first. I gathered she didn’t have many fond memories of either of her parents.

Once we’d found the skull of a cat in the forest that surrounded the Cleveland Dam. We’d been there for a group summer picnic before Sienna’s dad had died and her mom took off. We were nine or so. Sienna had cried and cried, and the other kids had made fun of her. She’d snatched the skull away from the idiots kicking it around, and got a black eye for her trouble. The picnic had broken up quickly after that — Sienna’s mother threw some sort of a fit that ended up being about the evils of magic, as always. After she’d confirmed it was a cat, Gran had coaxed the skull from Sienna by suggesting we perform a burial ceremony.

There hadn’t been any such observance for Sienna’s dad when he died four years later. I think it had to do with the lack of a body. Though that conjecture was based on much unsuccessful eavesdropping by my thirteen-year-old self. Whatever Gran had told Sienna in regards to her dad’s death she seemed to accept it without argument. I never pushed my sister with questions of her father’s death, because I didn’t want to be the one who triggered the grief she displayed that one time over the cat skull. As far as I knew, she’d never cried like that again.

But then, neither had I. Not ever. Not until today.

∞

I moved through the kitchen on automatic. I was numb, displaced from even my own thoughts.

I pulled eggs and butter out of the fridge, but when I went for the chocolate, I realized the bakery was closed Mondays.