Betrayal Read online

  “It’s possible,” I agreed. “The police have talked to the pawn shops in the area, and they’re keeping an eye out for anyone trying to sell it.”

  “If someone took it for the magic, then they’re not going to sell it at a pawn shop,” Peasblossom pointed out. “Either they took it to use themselves, or they took it to sell to someone who wants to use it.”

  “If the UPS guy was someone Other using glamour to get access to the house, I might be able to find evidence with Vincent’s forensic spell. If it was someone Other, it wouldn’t have taken much effort to make Mr. Masters’ death look like an accident.” I shuffled the file on my lap. “It’s easy—pathetically easy. Which is why I got into this business in the first place, if you remember. To protect humans from people and creatures they don’t even believe in. Like ghosts and demons—kelpies…”

  “Is this how it’s going to be now?” Andy’s voice was cold and hard.

  Not the tone I expected from my friends, even when we weren’t getting along.

  “Are you so sure I’m hiding something from you that every word out of your mouth is going to be some thinly veiled threat?”

  I’d meant to let it go, follow Peasblossom’s advice and wait till the case was over. But apparently my mouth had other ideas. “I’m sorry, was that veiled? Let me rephrase—you’re going to get yourself killed.” I jerked open the file and scanned the pages inside without really reading any of it. “But don’t worry about opening up to me and telling me what’s going on with you. Now that you had your little tantrum with Flint, I expect he’ll know all your secrets by sundown. And if it’s as horrible as I expect it is given your complete personality change, I’m sure he’ll want to tell me all about it just to see me squirm.”

  “There. Is. Nothing. Wrong.”

  I shrugged. “Well, I’ll know soon enough.”

  Andy jerked the wheel. I squeaked and let go of the file to grab the door handle with one hand and the armrest with the other. The papers hit the floor and spread out in a chaotic fan. I glared at Andy as he whipped the SUV into the driveway of a small house with beige siding and a missing shutter on the front window. I sat there, pulse thundering in my ears, fingers digging into their respective handholds.

  “Keep driving like that,” I said quietly, “and I will flatten your tires.”

  Andy didn’t respond. He left me to glare after him as he opened his door and got out of the SUV, slamming it behind him. He jerked at his suit jacket as he walked, fiddling with the buttons on his sleeves.

  “Deja vu,” Peasblossom muttered. “Isn’t this how our last case started?”

  “It is.”

  Peasblossom hopped down onto my lap so she could look up at me. “You have the potions.”

  I put a hand on my waist pouch. Yes, I had the potions. I’d been so worried about Andy on the last case, I’d brewed a few things specially for him. A protection potion to keep him safe, and a sort of happy potion meant to calm the nerves.

  “I already offered them to him, and he refused.” I closed my hands into fists, digging my fingernails into my palms. “He wouldn’t even take the protection potion.” I didn’t add that he obviously didn’t trust me to tell him the truth about what he was drinking, but Peasblossom read the hurt on my face.

  “It’s a simple spell. It wouldn’t hurt him. And it’s in his best interest…”

  I bit the inside of my cheek. “I can’t force him. If I do that, then any chance I have of saving this partnership will be gone.”

  “What are you going to do then?” Peasblossom asked.

  I had no idea. I turned to Scath. “I don’t suppose you have any insights to offer?”

  Scath cracked open one eerie green eye, then closed it before rising out of the curled up position necessitated by being in a backseat smaller than she was. She yawned, giving me a good look at her sharp white teeth, then put one huge paw on the armrest that divided the front seat.

  She didn’t say anything. Of course.

  I rolled my eyes, then opened my door, stepping aside to let Scath ooze out of the vehicle like a prehistoric victim being poured out of a tar pit. Now that she wasn’t pretending to be a cat sith anymore, she triggered her own glamour to appear as a service dog instead of waiting for me to use the enchanted collar.

  Majesty let out a sound that nearly sent me straight into the air. I flattened myself against Andy’s SUV, eyes wide, heart pounding, magic ready. The kitten leapt out of the SUV, his fur standing straight up, giving him the illusion of being twice his original size in both directions. His eyes shone with bright blue light as he hit the ground, staring at something in the center of the lawn.

  “Peasblossom?” I hissed.

  “I don’t see anything!”

  I looked down to find Scath watching Majesty, her entire body motionless in the way large felines managed right before a pounce. Her muscles twitched, but she was too late. Majesty shot across the lawn hissing, leaping and twisting in the air.

  I hurled magic over the lawn in a wide, arcing net of silver light, but the detection spell revealed no magic. Not even a twinge. “I’m not seeing anything,” I said tightly.

  “There!” Peasblossom shouted.

  I tried to follow where she was pointing, my pulse racing. “What is it?”

  “It’s a squirrel,” Peasblossom said, her voice thick with disgust. “It’s just a squirrel.”

  “I don’t have time for this,” I muttered. I glanced down at Scath and gestured at the mighty hunter. “Could you…?”

  The sidhe in service dog glamour snorted, then took off over the lawn toward the kitten.

  I smoothed my hair down, more to calm myself than because patting it made any difference to the wild dark brown waves. Peasblossom muttered something about stupid cats, and I held up a hand to shush her when I realized Andy had left the front door open for me. I walked up to the front porch and peered inside. The sight that greeted me stopped me in my tracks. My argument with Andy faded from my mind as I stared in horror at my crime scene.

  Someone had ripped up the carpet, baring the hard, unfinished wood floor underneath. All the furniture had been pushed to the edges of the room, including the long coffee table from the crime scene photos. The table had been wiped clean, and the blood and hair that had clung to the corner in the picture were gone. The room still smelled of old blood, but it was the ghost of a scent, strangled by the fresher scent of furniture polish and vinegar.

  “Blood and bone,” I cursed. “Someone cleaned up already.”

  “Sorry, I didn’t know you were coming,” a female voice spoke up.

  I turned to find a woman in her mid-forties standing in a hallway that led off the living room. Her brown hair was pulled back into a ponytail, giving an unobstructed view of the pink glasses shaped like long rounded rectangles sitting high on her nose. She wore a thick forest green gardening apron, with a pair of matching gloves sticking out of the pocket. The apron and gloves were well-used.

  And bloody.

  She followed my gaze. “You’ll have to excuse the mess. I need to get this place cleaned up and ready to sell, and that blood was starting to foul up the whole house.” She wrinkled her nose. “It soaked through the carpet to the padding, so I had to get rid of all of it.” A flicker of doubt passed through her eyes, and she shifted nervously on her feet. “I thought the police were done?”

  I bit back the frustrated response that leapt to my mind. The police might have been done, but my spells still could have given me important information. Like what species, if any, of Other had been here. “Do you still have the carpet?”

  “No,” the woman said slowly. “Took it to the dump yesterday. What do you need it for? The police already took their samples.”

  “This is Kathy,” Andy told me, entering the room by way of a short hallway from the back of the house. “She’s Mr. Masters’ niece.”

  “It’s nice to meet you, Kathy.” I gestured at the floor. “This looks like a lot of work, and it ca
n’t be pleasant for you given the circumstances. The police should have given you the name of a cleaning company that specializes in this sort of job.”

  “I can’t afford to pay people to do what I’m more than capable of doing myself,” Kathy said shortly. “I’ve raised three kids, I’ve cleaned up enough blood, poop, and urine to make a grown man puke.” She shrugged. “Besides, Uncle Jay and I weren’t what you’d call close. He made it clear that he felt I’d sullied the family name by becoming a lowly tradeswoman instead of following him into academia. And he didn’t have much love for me, or my wife and kids. He made it clear he preferred not to see us—though he was more than happy to call me if he needed a ride somewhere, or needed something fixed for free.”

  She sounded bitter, and if what she was saying was true, she had a right to be. I knew plenty of people who’d taken care of a family member who treated them poorly, and it was a painful situation. I was trying to think of something to say when I glanced out the window that faced the backyard. I swallowed a yelp of surprise.

  There was a three-foot squirrel barreling through the backyard, hot on the trail of a panicked Majesty. Scath was in hot pursuit, and I said a small prayer that the sidhe could resolve the fiasco with something that wouldn’t involve me trying to hide the corpse of a giant dead rodent.

  “Scath will probably eat it,” Peasblossom whispered.

  I stood there frozen, trying to think of a way to keep Kathy from seeing what I was seeing. Andy followed my gaze and quickly stepped in.

  “Tell her about the man that came to see you,” he prompted.

  Kathy moved to the bookcase against the far wall—away from the window, blessedly—and snagged an empty box off the floor. “I’d never met him before. He said his name was Frank…something, I don’t recall his last name.” She dropped the box on an empty corner of the coffee table and began unloading books from the shelf. “He showed up the day after the obituary was in the newspaper. Said he was a friend of Uncle Jay’s. I got the feeling he wanted to reminisce, but like I said, we weren’t close. I didn’t know what the heck I was going to say until he mentioned the treasure.”

  “Treasure?” I echoed.

  She rolled her eyes. “That’s what Uncle Jay called it. Or sometimes he’d say ‘our legacy.’ I guess the thing’s been in our family for several generations. Didn’t look like much to me. It was just an old ceramic bowl with some of the paint chipped off. But to hear Uncle Jay talk, it was straight out of a king’s tomb. He was an anthropology professor, and he always thought my disinterest in the bowl was just another indication that our genetics were on the decline.”

  She waved a thin paperback. “He was always going on and on about how special it was. Last year he took it to that show Treasure Hoarders, the one where people bring in junk from their attic and the professionals tell them if it’s worth anything?”

  Peasblossom shifted against the back of my neck. “I know that one,” she whispered.

  “What did the appraisers say?” Andy asked.

  Kathy dropped the paperback into the box with a dismissive flick of her wrist. “They said it wasn’t worth anything. Uncle Jay told them it had been passed down through the family for generations—as if that was any indication of its objective value. They told him one of his great-great-grandparents probably made it themselves, and that’s why it’s special.” She rolled her eyes again. “I don’t understand why he took it to be evaluated in the first place. He always said he could never sell it. Said it had to stay in our family.”

  “Sounds like he thought it was important,” Andy said.

  Kathy leaned forward. “He said I was going to inherit it. That should tell you something right there. That thing was his most prized possession, and for him to say it was coming to me after he died, he must have been bound and determined for it to stay in the family no matter what. This house?” She waved a hand around. “Being sold, and the proceeds going to charity. I’ve been allotted a small fee to have it cleaned—and I’m hoping to keep as much of it as I can by cleaning it myself.”

  She paused with her hand on an old dictionary, her thumbnail absent-mindedly digging into the peeling binding. “I have no emotional attachment to this house or his so-called artifact, but his will stipulates that I can never sell it, or give it away. If I try, then ownership will revert to the next closest relative, with the same stipulation.”

  “If he didn’t plan to sell it, then I guess he wasn’t upset when they told him it wasn’t worth anything?” Andy asked.

  Kathy snorted and threw another book into the box. “Oh, he was upset. Acted like they spit on his grandma. He even had me drive him to the Cleveland Art Museum to have them look at it, if you can believe it. Thought for sure it must be from some lost civilization.”

  “I take it they didn’t think much of it either?” I asked.

  “Nope. Basically patted his head and sent him home.” She paused and tilted her head. “Though now that I think about it, he did badger them for the name of the man who evaluates some of their more unusual collections. Jim something. Jim Groves? Givens? Anyway, in the end it didn’t matter. He told him the same thing.”

  “You said this guy Frank mentioned the bowl when he came to see you. What did he say exactly?” Andy asked.

  “Nothing much. Asked if Uncle Jay still had it. I told him of course he did, and the man just laughed. He said Jay always loved that thing.”

  “You told the police you thought your uncle’s death was an accident until you talked to Frank. What about your conversation with him changed your mind?” I asked.

  Kathy paused and leaned one hip against the wall. “Well, when he asked about the bowl, it made me realize I hadn’t seen it.” She pointed across the room to the fireplace. “It sat on that mantel. Always. It was a place of honor, and woe be to any who dared lay a finger on it.”

  I glanced at the mantel in question. There were thick green pillar candles to either side of a conspicuous space. I walked closer and inspected the shelf. Barely any dust and I could smell the layers of Murphy’s Oil Soap. Up until Mr. Masters’ death, he must have kept this spot in pristine condition.

  “You didn’t notice it was missing?” I asked, trying to keep the doubt from my voice.

  “Not right away,” Kathy said, a hint of defensiveness in her voice. “Like I’ve been saying, Uncle Jay was always sending the stupid thing off to be evaluated by someone or another. I figured that’s where it was. But then after Frank’s visit, I checked Uncle Jay’s messages, and there was nothing from any place about the bowl being ready to be picked up, or anything like that. I checked his calendar, too.” She frowned. “Uncle Jay always wrote down any appointments related to that thing. If he’d sent it away, I would’ve seen it on his calendar. That’s when I knew someone had to have taken it.”

  Kathy toyed with the edge of one of her apron’s pockets. “It wasn’t worth anything, but I figure someone must have heard Uncle Jay bragging about it, or maybe seen him coming and going from the museum with it.” Her lips thinned. “They killed him for a piece of junk. All because he couldn’t shut up about it.”

  Her cell phone rang and she lifted it to check the caller ID. “It’s my wife, I have to take this. Excuse me.”

  As soon as she left the room, Andy turned to me. “So a nosy old friend shows up after Mr. Master’s death to talk about his precious bowl that wasn’t worth anything. You think he was—”

  “Flint,” I agreed. “He must have shown up after he found out Mr. Masters died.” I held my hand out to the mantel, sending tendrils of silver magic over the polished wood surface. No colors glittered back at me. “The item didn’t leave an imprint, no magical signature.”

  “Is that strange?”

  I drummed my fingers on the top of my waist pouch. “Flint acts like it’s a big deal. And if it’s really capable of granting power to someone who doesn’t have any, I’d have expected it to leave some sort of residue. Especially if it was really kept here all the time. It
s powers should not have gone undetected by the staff of Treasure Hoarders either.”

  “What makes you say that?” Andy asked.

  “Shows like Treasure Hoarders always have someone from the Vanguard’s Department of Lost Artifacts on them. Someone whose job it is to make sure cursed or powerful objects don’t fall into the wrong hands.” I fished my cell phone out of the side pocket of my pouch. “I can call the Vanguard and find out who their person is for that show. We can talk to them and find out more about the artifact.”

  “Your master won’t like you going around his back,” Andy pointed out. “He’s already afraid you’ll try to use the artifacts to supercharge me.”

  I bristled at his reference to Flint as my master, but the other part of what he’d said distracted me. I lowered my phone. “Supercharge you?”

  Andy’s jaw tightened. “You know that’s why he didn’t want to give you any details on how the artifacts work? He has to have noticed how worried you are that your fragile human partner will be easily killed by a big, strong Other?”

  My jaw hung open, but Kathy chose that moment to come back into the room, cutting off whatever I might have said. I slipped my cell phone back into my waist pouch and made a mental note to call later.

  “I have to go,” she apologized. “And I need to lock up behind me, so if there’s nothing else you need…?”

  Andy nodded at her, the perfect picture of the stern but helpful federal agent. “We’re finished here. But I’d like to get your contact information, just in case we have more questions?”

  Kathy gave him her number, and I grabbed my cell phone and entered the information there as well.

  “Perfect,” Andy said. “Thank you for your time.”

  Kathy tilted her head. “You said you’re FBI. Why would the FBI be involved in a robbery gone wrong? Unless…” She paused for a moment, then asked, “Was it worth something? My uncle’s bowl?”