Dirty Magic (19 page)

Morales nodded but I could tell by his expression he was mulling it over. “Do you think he’s guilty?” He nodded toward the body bag to indicate Marvin’s murder.

I blew a long breath out through my nose. “Do I think he’s capable of murder? Yeah. Do I think he’s responsible for this particular one?” I paused. “Not really. I mean, someone on Gray Wolf probably killed Marvin. And maybe Volos put that potion on the street. But did he send a hexhead hopped-up on his new junk after Marvin as retaliation for talking to us?” I shook my head. “Seems like a stretch.” Low-level guys like Marvin never knew enough about what happened at the top to be a threat.

“Hmm,” Morales said.

Clearly he wasn’t ready to tell me his own theories, which was fine. I was tired of speculation. We needed to find some hard evidence soon or our case was going to get torpedoed by the mayor and Volos’s lawyer before we could say “warrant.”

“What about this Bane angle he threw out today?”

I shook my head. “Also a stretch. Bane’s a lunatic, no doubt, but he’s a blood magic wizard. To pull off this kind of alchemy?” I sighed. “It’s not impossible, I guess, but he’d have to have help. And the only wizard I can think of who can pull off a spell like this is—”

“Volos.”

I nodded. “Round and round it goes. There’s got to be something we’re missing. Hopefully Marvin will help us.” I looked down at the body. On the way over, Val had sent a text confirming his identity from the print database. “Did he have any next of kin?” Morales had pulled Marvin’s file from ACD at the crime scene.

He shook his head. “Never married, no kids. Mother died ten years ago.”

A loud snap sounded. I looked up to see him pulling on a pair of rubber gloves. He leaned over the body and began to inspect it for Lord-knew-what. With nothing to do, I scanned the rows of drawers, wondering which one held Ferris Harkins’s body.

“How’d you hook up with Harkins as a snitch?” I asked to distract myself.

“He’d served a couple years in Crowley,” he said referring to the penitentiary for magic criminals on Philosopher’s Island. “His roommate was a CI of mine from a case I ran a few years back. I remembered him talking about his buddy who lived in the infamous Cauldron. Tracked him down through the shelters.”

I raised my brows. “What was he hooked on—before the Gray Wolf, I mean?”

Morales shrugged. “He worshipped at the altar of the Os for a time, but he claimed he’d been clean for a while.”

As if Harkins hadn’t been unsavory enough, I thought with a memory of him grabbing his crotch and shuddered inwardly. It was hard not to picture the werewolf he’d become humping away at someone like there was no tomorrow.

“And you believed him—about being clean, I mean?”

“He didn’t show any signs of heavy use,” Morales said. “When I found him he was washing dishes in the kitchen at the Catholic mission on Salado Street.”

I didn’t ask why Harkins had become a CI. If he’d been living at the mission, the income alone would have been enough of a motivator. Experienced CIs with excellent intel raked in decent paydays, but even a low-level guy could make a nice little nest egg—or potion bankroll. But now Harkins’s body would be donated to the state’s alchemy labs for experiments, and Marvin would probably end up in some remote potter’s field. Crime and snitching might pay, but, as they also say, you can’t take it with you.

“So what exactly are we looking for here?” I asked.

He looked up from scraping under the nails and carefully placing the results on the glass slides. I glanced to make sure Janet wasn’t looking. If Frank saw Morales taking evidence off a body, we’d be toast. “I’m hoping Marvin struggled with our perp. Maybe some DNA under the fingernails.”

“Good luck with that. The state lab will take months to run that sample.”

Morales snapped the lid on the test tube. “Don’t need the state’s lab—we’ve got ourselves a Mesmer.”

T
hat night, I went to Pen’s to pick up Danny because he’d gone home with her after school, since Baba had her weekly smutty-book-club meeting that night. I had to make three passes before I found a spot halfway down the block from her building. I killed the engine and soaked in the silence, trying to collect myself before I headed in.

But soon the silence was pushed aside by a jumble of worries that stumbled noisily into my head. To escape them, I grabbed my purse and hauled my tired ass out of the car. Pen’s apartment was on the first floor of a building that used to be a whorehouse. Back when the Mundane mob ruled Babylon—back before the magical criminals took over—they’d used this place to stash their ladybirds.

Pen said she liked living there because of its scandalous history, but I couldn’t figure out how that was enough to make her overlook the tricky outlets, shitty plumbing, and lack of decent parking.

When I entered the building, the air was saturated with the scent of hot grease and five-spice powder. My stomach grumbled and I realized I hadn’t eaten since that morning’s bagel.

When Pen opened the door, her smile wasn’t as bright as usual. “Hey.”

I glanced over her shoulder but couldn’t see more than the TV flickering in the corner of her shoe-box living room. “What’s up?” I asked with a frown.

She shook her head. “Tough day.”

Even though I’d had one of those myself, I pushed aside my own worries. I leaned on Pen way too much to put my problems ahead of hers. “What happened?”

She waved me in. “That girl I told you about? With the diet potion?”

I nodded and set my purse down. Danny was slouched at her dining-room table doing homework with his headphones on. “Hey, Danny.” When he didn’t respond, I bent over and waved a hand to get his attention.

He glanced up from under his bangs and lifted his pencil in something approximating a wave but didn’t speak.

Turning my attention back to Pen, I said, “What about her?”

She pulled me into the galley kitchen. “She OD’d,” she whispered. She shot a worried glance to see if Danny heard, but the headphones prevented it.

“God, is she okay?”

Pen slowly shook her head. Her eyes were bright with unshed tears. I pulled her in for a hug because what else could I do?

Her shoulders shook and she held on as if I was the only thing keeping her upright. “I’d reported the case to child welfare,” she sobbed, “but they’re so backlogged they couldn’t make it in time.”

“Shh,” I said and rocked her. “You did what you could.”

Her head shook wetly against my collarbone. “No, I didn’t. I should have called her mother myself. I should have gone over there—”

I grabbed her by the shoulders and forced her to look at me. “Stop. Don’t do that to yourself. You can’t save everybody.”

Her tear-stained face morphed into a fierce scowl. “I have to try, Kate. I have to.”

I swallowed the emotion that gathered in my own throat because I understood. I understood all too well why she needed to help those kids. I wasn’t the only one with a past that still haunted her.

“I know,” I whispered. “And you did try.”

She wiped her nose and eyes with a paper towel. “I filed a report at the BPD,” she said, standing straighter. “They’ve already picked up the mother.”

“Who did you talk to?”

“Detective named Duffy.”

My eyebrows rose. I knew Pat Duffy’s name only by reputation. “I don’t know him personally,” I said, “but he’s an Adept. He managed to claw his way up to detective from patrol, which means he must be the real deal.”

She licked her lips and nodded. “Good,” she whispered. “That’s good.”

I hugged her one more time to reassure us both. “Anyway.” She sniffed and tried to swipe the mascara from under her eyes. “How was your day?”

I bit my lip. After hearing the shit she was dealing with, I decided not to unload about my own problems. “Just another day at the office.”

She leaned forward. “You do remember tomorrow’s his birthday, right?”

I blew out a breath. Shit. I’d been so caught up in the case I’d lost track of the date. “Of course,” I lied. “I’m taking him to the Blue Plate tomorrow for lunch.”

The Blue Plate was a diner that sat in the shadows of the Bessemer Bridge, on the Mundane side. Going there was a yearly tradition for Danny’s birthday. Just as it had been for my mother and me, before Danny was born.

“You’re taking him out of school?” she said, sounding dubious.

Crap, I hadn’t thought of that. “Yeah, just for lunch, though.”

She nodded absently. “How’s the case?” The fact that she wasn’t nailing me to the wall with questions about my lame story told me how upset she was about the kid who’d died.

“It’s coming together.”

Her brows lowered and her mouth formed into a thin line. It was a look I called “the Analyzer.” “What aren’t you telling me?” I guess that lie had been such a stinker it shook her out of her funk.

I sighed and decided to tell her the least dangerous development to get her off my trail. “I saw Volos today. Someone dumped a body at his building. I had to sit through the questioning.”

“Oh shit.” She blew out a breath. “How was that?”

“Awkward, frustrating, you know.” I tried to shrug it off.

“Is he still a malignant narcissist with megalomaniacal tendencies?”

My lips quirked. “I love it when you speak shrink.”

For a few years I’d nurtured a lot of guilt and pain over leaving John. However, one of the benefits of having Penelope Griffin as a best friend was the free therapy. With her help—as well as working the steps through Arcane Anonymous—I’d realized that my relationship with John had been far from healthy. Things were fine between us only as long as I let him call the shots. I liked the music he’d liked, preferred the same types of food. Hell, it had taken me years after I’d left him to realize I hated my coffee with cream, but I’d drunk it that way forever because it was how John liked his. Pen’s theory was that I’d been attracted to him initially because he’d reminded me so much of the other overbearing male role model in my life: Uncle Abe. Not exactly the foundation for a faerie-tale romance.

She shrugged. “Seriously, though. Are you okay?”

“Yeah,” I said honestly. “It wasn’t easy, but I think I can keep things on a professional level.”

“Of course you can, Kate. You’re not the same kid who used to let him manipulate you. You’re all grown up now, girl.”

I forced a laugh. That was the problem. He was all grown up now, too. Seeing him again had affected me on a physical level—more than I’d ever admit out loud to Pen—or myself. Old self-sabotage habits die hard, I guessed. Luckily, Pen was right about one thing. I wasn’t the same kid who let her emotions—or her libido—guide her actions anymore.

“Anyway, hopefully I won’t have to see him again for a long time.”

Pen yawned as she nodded. “That’s good.”

“All right,” I said. “We’ll get out of your hair.”

I paused because I didn’t want another lecture, but I needed to know. “Did he say anything to you?” I said, finally. “About the argument?”

“I can’t talk about it if he did.”

I frowned at her. “Don’t pull that patient privilege crap with me, Pen.”

“And don’t take that cop voice with me.” She crossed her arms. “If I came running to you every time he vented about some fool thing you did, he’d never trust me again.”

I narrowed my eyes. “What do you mean, ‘every time’?”

She rolled her eyes but softened it by putting a hand on my arm. “Look, he’ll talk to you when he’s ready. In the meantime, just play it cool.”

I looked over at the back of my brother’s head, which bobbed to some beat I couldn’t hear. Meanwhile, seeing Volos had opened old scabs and a nagging voice in my head whispered dire predictions about having him slink back into my life. And now, my little brother, whom I’d struggled to save from the Cauldron, was trying his hardest to run right back to magic’s strangling embrace.

“Right,” I said, “I’ll just play it cool.”

T
he Blue Plate Diner had been around for as long as I could remember. Mom used to take me every year on my birthday. We’d sit at the counter and order shakes and burgers and giggle as if we were a normal mother and daughter, instead of a sex magic practitioner and her budding magical criminal of a kid.