Chapter Ten
Before we left, Jo-Jo promised to take care of Fletcher's funeral arrangements. I was happy to cede that task to her. I needed to focus on finding his killer, not the raw emotions the old man's death had infected me with. Jo-Jo also gave me some tubs of her magically infused healing ointment in case Finn and I had any lingering issues in the morning.
Thirty minutes later, after stashing his Benz in an anonymous parking garage a few blocks away, Finn and I were in my apartment. I'd checked the building and the stone around the door before we'd entered, but the vibrations had been low and steady as usual. Whoever had hired Brutus didn't know where I lived. Otherwise, she would have been camped outside by now. Despite Jo-Jo's ministrations, I was glad for the respite. I really didn't want to deal with any more blood or bodies tonight.
Even I had limits.
But I still took the precaution of using my magic to trace runes into the stone outside the door. Small, tight, spiral curls-the symbol for protection. The runes shimmered with a silver color before sinking into the stone. If someone tried to get into the apartment tonight, my magic would trigger the runes and echo through the stone-rising to a shrill shriek that would wake me from the deepest, deadest sleep.
Finn and I sat at the kitchen table rifling through the wallets and other items we'd taken from the men at his apartment. I flipped open Shortie's wallet and stared at the driver's license inside.
"Fake," Finn pronounced.
I stared at the laminated card. "How can you tell?"
"The Ashland city seal's on the wrong side. It should be on the right, away from the photo, not on the left on top of it. "
In addition to handling other people's money, Finn was also rather good with documents. He'd done all my fake
IDs and could lay out a paper trail so thick and elaborate it would fool the most studious forensic accountant.
Something gold glinted underneath the pile of wallets. I snagged my fingers on the metal and pulled out the chain Finn had torn off Shortie's neck. A small medallion hung off the end-a triangular-shaped tooth with sharp, jagged, sawlike edges done in polished jet.
"What does this look like to you?" I asked. "A tacky piece of man jewelry. "
"Come on. Be serious. Look at it again. "
He peered at it. "A tooth. No, wait, that could be a rune. A tooth . . . the symbol for strength and prosperity. You think an elemental is involved in this?" Finn's gaze flicked to the three drawings on my mantle. The snowflake, the ivy vine, the primrose. The symbols of my dead family. His green eyes dropped to my hand and the spider runes burned into my palms. Finn knew I was a Stone and Ice elemental, although I'd never told him anything about my family. But I was sure Finn had researched the runes I'd drawn and found out who they belonged to. Information was like an aphrodisiac to Finn. Uncovering people's secrets an amusing game.
Fletcher had been the same way. But neither one of them had ever asked me about the runes or my past.
Don't ask, don't tell. The only rule the three of us had had.
"Yeah, an elemental's involved in this. "
"How do you know?" Finn asked.
"There was some damage at the Pork Pit. Overturned tables, broken chairs, busted windows, like a tornado had ripped through the storefront. Looked like Air elemental damage to me. " A smooth, easy lie. "But I've never seen this exact symbol before, and I know the runes of all the major elemental families in Ashland. "
The extremely rich elementals, anyway. They were the only ones who could afford my services. Their feuds alone could have kept me busy the rest of my life. Members of opposing elemental families, like Stone and Air or Fire and Ice, rarely mixed unless forced to by business or the occasional ill-fated Romeo and Juliet love affair. Those elementals were always jockeying for position, money, power, along with the wealthy humans, vampires, giants, and dwarves who comprised the city's upper crust. If the elementals couldn't get what they wanted with money, they used their magic, often with vicious results. The others did too. Duels at dawn were not uncommon in the city. When that failed, well, that's when they hired someone like me to clean up the mess.
The weaker elementals and other magic users of more modest means led simpler lives. They worked jobs and put their kids through school. Lived out in the cleaner suburbs and drove minivans to ballet class. Some of them rarely used their power at all.
In contrast, the poor and the downtrodden elementals used their magic the most.
They performed parlor tricks on the street corner for the amusement of passersby and spare change to feed whatever habit they had. Drugs, booze, sex, blood. The constant struggle to survive and use of their magic burned them out-or drove them crazy. I'd seen more than one psychotic elemental during my stay in Ashland Asylum.
Magic had that affect on some people, some elementals. Using their power gave them a high better than alcohol, better than drugs, until they were hooked on it. But elementals were much more dangerous than your common junkies, because they'd lost control but still had all that raw magic running through their veins.
"Well, it's not a sunburst, so it's not Mab Monroe's symbol," Finn said.
I thought of the rune I'd seen on Mab's necklace earlier tonight. A sunburst. A ruby surrounded by gold, curled, wavy lines. So much like my own spider rune, but so different.
"I don't know," I murmured. "She could be involved in this. Gordon Giles did work for one of her companies. Maybe Mab found out he was doing something she didn't approve of. Rumor has it she killed the previous head of the company, the James sisters' father, for making too many waves when she took over. "
"And so Mab did what?" Finn scoffed. "Hired you to take care of it, then decided to take care of you? Doesn't make sense. You just said it yourself. Mab's never been afraid of getting her hands dirty. Everybody knows she killed that federal judge three months ago because he was merely thinking about trying to indict her. If Mab didn't like whatever Gordon Giles was up to, she would have taken care of it herself. Not set you up to take the fall. "
Finn was right. Mab Monroe ran this town. She wouldn't have cared about getting caught. She would have killed Gordon Giles, stood over his body, and blown off her smoking fingers in front of everyone at the opera house. No, Mab Monroe hadn't gotten to where she was by being sneaky. This was someone else's handiwork.