Cursed Moon (Prospero's War) (24 page)

I
woke up feeling like a small animal died in my mouth. I washed away the funk with a liter of soda and a piece of cold fried chicken from the fridge. Danny watched my afternoon breakfast with a sneer. He must have gotten home from school at some point while I napped. But I was saved from having to talk to the kid when Baba arrived. She shooed me out the door to go do what needed to be done. I knew I’d need to have a reckoning with Danny eventually, but for the moment I needed to focus on making sure there was a city to hold that conversation in once Halloween was over.

Since I had no leads, I decided to check in with LM and Mary. A quick call to Morales confirmed he was busy chasing down leads with Shadi, so I told him I’d hit up the Wonder Twins alone. Frankly, it was a relief to know he wasn’t going to be joining me. After the clusterfuck the night before, I wasn’t ready to play the awkward-silence-all-day game with him—or worse, the let’s-joke-about-it-all-day game.

I called ahead just in case LM and Mary were in a running mood again, and was told to meet them at an address on the east side of town instead of at the park. After our last meeting I’d demanded they give me a phone number in case they decided to pull a disappearing act again. I didn’t question the change of location since they were already so worried about Dionysus finding out they were talking to the cops.

On my way across the Bessemer Bridge, I got a call from my good friend Val, who was a lab rat for the BPD. “Prospero, you got a minute?”

“What’s up?”

“Got some labs back from items collected at that college thing last night.”

I turned right off the bridge. “Okay,” I said slowly. I’d left before the CSI team arrived, but I figured with the confession from the satyr and all there wouldn’t be much to need processing through the lab.

“Eldritch said we’re not supposed to share this with the MEA, but he’s an asshole.”

I chuckled. “Go ahead. I won’t tell him.”

“The unis from the scene brought me some of the wine bottles from the sorority party. I know the perp said he potioned everyone, but I tested the bottles just in case.”

“And?”

“And from what I can tell, the potion was already in the wine before it was opened.”

My foot lifted off the accelerator. “Are you sure?”

“Yep. There were traces of the same potion stolen from Aphrodite Johnson’s temple inside the bottle and embedded in the cork.”

“Could it have been added to the bottles by sticking a needle through the cork?”

“Definitely possible.”

“Can you e-mail me the report and a picture of the bottles? Oh, and copy Mez so he can see it, too.”

The click-clack of fingers tapping on a keyboard came through the phone. “Done and done.”

“Thanks, Val. You’re a peach.”

“No problem. Just remember this next time I need some DNA run through your lab.”

I chuckled and promised I’d pass that on to Mez. After we hung up, I parked down the street from the address LM had given me. I opened my e-mail to find the picture she’d sent. Squinting at the small screen, I tried to read the label on the bottle in the picture. It featured a dancing satyr playing a flute.

Chewing on my lip, I tried to figure out how Dionysus could have gotten that potion into those bottles. The labels could easily have been printed off any color printer and attached to the bottles. I cursed myself for not investigating the wine bottles at the college the night before, but I’d been too busy trying to shove my hands down Morales’s pants to do any quality police work.

I pushed that thought aside and tried to see the clue Val had just provided as a blessing. It was more than I’d had an hour earlier, and hopefully I’d have even more to go on after talking to LM.

Blowing out a breath, I shoved the phone in my pocket and exited Sybil. The address led to an apothecary in the heart of Votary Coven territory. The storefront had a large plate glass window out front with gilded lettering that identified it as the Black Cat Commissary. I wasn’t familiar with the place, but I knew the type. They specialized in filling prescriptions from med wizes and selling over-the-counter herbs and tinctures. I also knew plenty of these apothecaries also had a side business
out of a back room or basement where a wizard with enough scratch could score some harder-to-find illicit ingredients for dirty potions.

I parked a little ways down the street from the store. The bell over the door dinged when I walked in, but the long-haired wizard behind the counter didn’t look up from the potion he was cooking over a Bunsen burner. Judging from the bite of isopropyl alcohol on the air and the Soxhlet apparatus on the counter, he was making a Spagyric tincture.

The wall behind the counter was covered in rows of shelves bearing glass canisters of herbs and other components for homemade remedies. The rest of the store was filled with low shelving units bearing packages of arnica pellets, witch hazel, and various other legal herbal remedies for common ailments.

I took all this in quickly, noting as I did that Little Man and his sister were nowhere to be seen.

“Help you?” the guy behind the counter said in a bored voice. His hair was straight and black as an asphalt highway, and the butt-cut part harked back to a painted lane divider. His name tag identified him as Zane, but his ironic mustache labeled him as a total douchebag.

“Little Man around?”

He pressed his lips together. “You gonna buy something?”

I squinted at him. “No.”

He crossed his arms and sat back on his stool. “Then I ain’t seen him.”

There was no use in getting pissed. The Cauldron was the kind of place where even the old ladies sweeping their front stoops were on the make. I grabbed a pack of clove gum from the display at the front of the counter and slapped it on the surface. “How much?”

“Two.”

I fished two crumpled bills from my pocket and tossed them. “Well?”

He raised a brow. “Plus tax.”

My squint became a glare. I shoved my hand in my pocket and came up with two quarters, which I dropped one after the other onto the counter. “Keep the change.”

His eye roll told me he was unimpressed by my generosity. “Upstairs.” He nodded toward the steps at the rear of the store.

“Thanks a lot.”

“Whatever.”

At the top of the stairs, there was a hallway leading to a door at either end. The one on the right had a simple welcome mat out front, and the one on the other end had two trash bags. The scent of dirty diapers permeated the air on that end of the hall, which told me I had the right place.

After a quick knock, a shadow moved behind the peephole. “Who is it?” a suspicious female voice shouted from inside.

“It’s Kate, Mary.”

The door opened quickly and I was pulled inside by a meaty hand. I stumbled in and blinked against the dim light. The hulking form in front of me helped me gain my balance. “Hi, lady.”

I forced a smile despite the overpowering stench of body odor and something similar to dirty cat litter. Little Man wasn’t in his normal baby carrier. Instead, Mary cradled him in her arms like a baby doll. He was shirtless and wore nothing but a diaper. The bruises from the beating Dionysus gave him had dulled into sickly green-and-yellow smears across his face. Seeing him look so vulnerable was unsettling. Instead of a street-wise homunculus, he looked like a battered infant.

I pushed that disturbing thought aside and tried to be thankful that Mary, at least, had a shirt on. She was not, however,
wearing any pants. Luckily the T-shirt was long enough to cover her to midthigh.

“Yo, Prospero,” Little Man said in a drowsy voice. “You caught us just waking up.”

I glanced at my watch. It was five in the afternoon, but considering I’d only woken up an hour earlier myself, I couldn’t really fault them. “Thanks for seeing me on short notice.”

“Come on in.” He waved to instruct Mary to move farther into the apartment. I followed more slowly, careful to breathe through my mouth and not touch anything.

The room they led me to had a single recliner, a TV tray, and a small television perched precariously on a two-by-four and a couple of cinder blocks. The walls were yellowed from cigarette smoke, and the carpet looked like a breeding ground for pubic lice.

Mary lowered her bulk into the recliner with a groan. Her legs fell open to reveal a pair of tighty-gray-ies. I forced my eyes upward to where Little Man leaned back against her chest. He crossed his bare legs at the ankle and rested his feet on Mary’s impressive belly. “I don’t know where he is.”

I blinked. “I know.”

“How?”

“Because you’re smart enough to understand that if you did know where he was and didn’t tell me, it would not go well for you.”

He laughed. “You ain’t as scary as you let on, Prospero.”

“You haven’t given me a reason to show you how scary I can be.” I crossed my arms. “Yet.”

“And I don’t plan on it neither.”

I raised a brow.

He waved a tiny hand. “Relax, Kate. You’re too good a customer for me to fuck over.”

I nodded. “So you don’t know where he is, but you gotta know something.”

He shrugged his thin shoulders. “Believe me, I wish I did. We barely left this shithole for days now.”

“Why?”

His eyes widened. “You been out there? The moonies are going apeshit.”

“Yeah,” I said, “I been out there. Which is why I really need you to tell me what you’re hearing. We have to stop this asshole.”

Little Man heaved a sigh from his tiny chest. “Shit, Prospero. He’s a ghost. Just ask your boy.”

I frowned. “Which boy?”

The homunculus’s smile bordered on evil. “Volos.”

I pressed my lips together and let the jab lie like a pile of shit on the floor between us. “What about him?”

“What? You ain’t heard?”

I shook my head.

“Motherfucker got robbed.”

Shock prevented me from schooling my features in time. “You’re fucking with me.”

“No, ma’am.” LM shoved a tiny hand in the waistband of his diaper.

I blew out a big breath. “When did it happen?”

LM smiled, obviously thrilled he knew something I didn’t. “Last night.”

In other words, while most of the police force had been busy dealing with a sex riot at the college, Dionysus had been knocking over one of the Cauldron’s most powerful citizens. Problem was, the Raven obviously didn’t know Volos well enough if he’d thought John’s first move would be to call in the cops. He preferred to handle things himself. So my next question was,
when was Volos going to make his move? And, more to the point, what did he know that I didn’t?

“That’s a huge help, LM. Thanks.”

The homunculus cleared his throat. “You could show your gratitude in a more material way.”

I cursed myself for not bringing Morales—and his wallet—along. Removing my too-thin billfold from my pocket, I pulled out a five-dollar bill. When I handed it to LM, he shot me a look like I’d offended him. Rolling my eyes, I removed the gum from my pocket, as well. “Here.”

I half expected him to throw it in my face. Instead his face lit up like a kid at Christmas. “Ooh! Look, Mary. Clove!”

The silent partner’s large paw snatched the gum from his hand with surprisingly agile fingers. “Mine.” She tucked the package into her bosom.

I filed that little tidbit away for future use. If I’d known all it took was gum to make her happy, I would have been using that instead of my beer money all this time.

“Yo, Prospero,” LM said after I turned to go. I looked back to see uncharacteristic candor and a touch of fear in his gaze. Or maybe it was just the shadows from the bruises around his blue eyes. “You catch this motherfucker, okay?”

I nodded and forced confidence I didn’t feel into my smile. “Sure thing, LM. You stay loose, all right?”

He scratched himself and burped his acknowledgment.

“Later, Mary.”

She pulled her gaze away from the grainy black-and-white images flashing on the TV. For a moment I could have sworn I saw shrewd brightness in the eyes lurking behind those heavy lids. “Bye-bye, lady. Don’t get dead.”

I
hadn’t called ahead to warn Volos I was on the way. I’d found it was best to keep him off kilter in order to keep an upper hand. The man was frustratingly hard to faze, so I’d take any advantage I could get.

I parked Sybil at the curb across from the luxury apartment building. Compared with the scene there a few nights before, the place looked quiet. There was a single cop car parked down the block. No doubt the uni was posted there to keep nosy citizens and even nosier journalists away from the crime scene on the fourth floor. I didn’t bother stopping to say hi. I knew Eldritch had started pulling guys from the other Babylon precincts to pitch in on the Owens case since all the Cauldron guys were busy keeping up with the moonie freaks.

I also didn’t stop to greet the guy because I wasn’t real eager for it to get back to Eldritch I was on the scene. No doubt he’d see my presence as a threat to his jurisdiction, and that would
prompt a pissing match between him and Gardner that would only result in me getting drenched.

By the time the elevator dumped me off on the fourth floor, I was wondering if I’d made a mistake going there alone. Probably I should have called Morales and asked him to come play mediator. But I wasn’t real eager to drag him into the middle of the personal shit this conversation was bound to dredge up.

I took a deep, cleansing breath. The kind they teach in meditation workshops and 12-step programs to help you find your center. I took a few more because my center was getting harder and harder to access lately. But before I could exhale the third breath, the door opened and John was staring down at me with a curious expression.

“Why are you doing deep-breathing exercises in my hallway?”

I blew out the breath. “How did you know I’m out here?”

He jerked his head. “I have a video console that lets me see who’s in the elevator.”

I froze. “Does that mean you saw who came up to Owens’s apartment?”

“As I told the cops, I was asleep and didn’t hear or see anything during the hours the event occurred.” His tone lacked the practiced cadence of a lie, so I let it go. He crossed his arms and leaned against the doorjamb. “You been talking to your favorite snitch?” He didn’t sound surprised to see me at all.

I crossed my own arms and squinted at him. “You leaked the robbery to him?”

The corner of his mouth lifted. “No one has to leak anything to Little Man. I swear that tiny bastard is psychic.” He hesitated. “But I’ll admit I was hoping he’d tell you.”

“Why not call me yourself? Or the cops?”

He stepped back in a silent invitation to come inside. I
walked into the hallway and waited for him to lead the way inside. It’s not that I didn’t want to turn my back to him. More that I didn’t want to get into the habit of making myself at home in his place.

“I knew you wouldn’t take my call.” He shut the door and moved past me toward the living room. “And I didn’t call the cops because I didn’t want them involved.”

I didn’t bother asking why. Volos only used cops when he thought he could control the outcome.

He motioned toward the couch in the sunken living room. The U-shaped leather couch was the color of rich cognac and looked as expensive as everything else in the room. Through the large windows along the back wall, the sun was kissing Lake Erie. Dusk. Only two nights until the Blue Moon, and we were no closer to finding Dionysus than we’d been a week earlier.

“What happened?” I asked, praying he had something that might break the case wide open.

He pulled two glasses from the bar and poured a couple of fingers of Pappy Van Winkle bourbon in them. Only the best in the Volos house. He didn’t bother asking me if I wanted any. I didn’t bother pretending I didn’t.

“One of my labs at Volos Towers was robbed.”

I frowned. “After midnight, right?”

He nodded and handed me my glass before joining me on the couch. “My security guy called me about an hour after I got home to let me know.”

“What was taken?” I took a gulp of the bourbon and savored the smoky sweet burn on its way home.

He grimaced. “That’s where this conversation gets tricky, Detective.”

I pursed my lips. “Been cooking dirty, Johnny?”

His jaw tightened at the nickname he’d always hated. “The
cook was clean, but the materials weren’t exactly sanctioned by Uncle Sam.”

Most legitimate magic labs had to use ingredients authorized by the Federal Drug and Potion Agency. The government claimed this kept clean magic pristine, but everyone knew it was so they could ensure they got every penny in tax revenue they could from Big Magic companies, like Sortilege Inc.

“All right, so you were cooking something that might not be exactly legal. You got reason to think the perp was our friend Dionysus?”

John set down his drink and rose. He retrieved a file folder from the long granite counter separating his state-of-the-art kitchen from the living area. When he came back he threw the folder on my lap. Frowning, I opened it. Two photographs fell out. The first showed overturned stainless-steel tables and broken glass and equipment littering the floor. On the wall, someone had spray-painted the phrase
IN VINO VERITAS
. The second shot showed a large walk-in freezer with empty and overturned shelves.

My heart kicked into overdrive. “I’d say this looks like his handiwork.” I looked up at John. “How bad is the potion he took?”

John finished off his bourbon before answering. “About six months ago, a party contacted me needing a special package.”

“Should I even bother asking who?”

He shook his head. “It’s safer if you don’t.”

“Safer for me—or you?”

He smiled but didn’t elaborate. “They wanted me to develop a truth serum.”

I frowned. “That’s what all the secrecy is about. Everyone and their brother tries to cook a truth serum at some point.”

He shook his head. “They wanted something odorless, tasteless, and totally untraceable by all scientific and magical means.”

My eye widened. “Jesus. And you said yes?”

He had the decency to at least grimace. “The price was right.”

I sighed and shook my head. All along I’d suspected John had still been cooking. But hearing him admit to being what basically amounted to a magical mercenary made me sick to my stomach. Especially when he was cooking such dangerous shit. “You’re a bigger asshole than I gave you credit for.”

“Careful, Katie. It’s a long fall down from a high horse.”

I gritted my teeth and resisted rising to his bait. “So to recap: You made a completely untraceable truth serum, which has now been stolen by a fucking lunatic who plans to unleash some kind of weapon on the city in two nights.”

He thought it over a second. “ ’Bout sums it up.”

“Not quite,” I said. “Because now you want me to help you find him. Right?”

“Yep.”

My laugh was bitter. “You got a pair of brass fucking balls. I’ll give you that.”

“Look, Kate, I know you’re mad at me. I probably even deserve it.”

I snorted. “Oh, you definitely deserve that and more.”

“Regardless, we have the same goal where Dionysus is concerned.”

“Not really. I want to stop him before he can hurt innocent people. You just want your property back.”

He tilted his head. “Jesus, you’re so jaded. What the fuck happened to you?”

I thunked my glass on the table. “Life happened, John.”

“As it happens, I have just as much investment in protecting this city—more. Especially now.”

Something in his tone made the hair on my neck stand on end. “Why now?”

He leaned back and looked me directly in the eyes. “Because I’m running in Owens’s place for mayor.”

The words were so incomprehensible and unexpected, they left me punch drunk. “Wha—”

He nodded. “The special election will be held in March.”

“What the fresh fuck? You? Mayor?” I laughed out loud now that my brain had started working again. “That’s fucking hilarious.”

His face hardened. Not with doubt but with that look proud people get when they’re doubted. “I don’t see what’s so funny about it.”

“You can’t be serious. You’re a criminal.”

An eyebrow rose. “With a sealed record thanks to an immunity deal.”

I paused. I’d forgotten about that part. After John turned on Uncle Abe and testified against him, he’d gotten a clean bill of legal health thanks to the US attorney’s office. “Hernandez isn’t running?” After Owens died the head of the city council, Pablo Hernandez, took over as acting mayor until a special election could be held. Hernandez was one of Owens’s longtime cronies. I’d just assumed the mayor’s office was as good as his.

John picked at an invisible speck on his leg. “Mr. Hernandez has had a change of heart about his ambitions. He’ll serve until the election is over, but he won’t be running.”

I frowned. “What about Rebis?” Anton Rebis came from old steel money. Despite his full coffers, no one had expected him to give Owens much of a problem in the election. But now Owens was dead. Would the city really pick an Adept, like Volos, over an old-money Mundane candidate?

“Soon Mr. Rebis will be busy doing some damage control over an unfortunate incident involving a minor.”

I blinked. Owens was barely cold, but John had already managed to not only launch a bid for mayor, but also ensure any opposition would be destroyed. “Holy shit,” I said. “You really want this?”

He nodded. “I really do.”

“What’s your angle?”

He shook his head. “Why does there have to be an angle, Kate? Why is it you’re the only one allowed to serve this city?”

That brought me up short. “I didn’t say that—”

“Anyway,” he said, standing, “regardless of my motivations, I’m entirely too busy with the campaign to seek vendetta justice against Dionysus.”

Something clicked for me in the subtext of his little speech. “Oh, wait. I get it.” I stood, too, and went to stare out the windows overlooking the lake. “Now that you’re running for mayor you need to keep your nose clean.”

“Yes,” he said, coming to stand next to me. “Plus, I would like to announce my candidacy on November first.”

I looked up at him and laughed bitterly. “And displaying Dionysus’s head to the masses will do wonders for your campaign.”

His lips twitched. “I knew you were a smart girl.”

I closed my eyes. A sensation of water closing in around me, rising up to cover my head. The moral part of me, the one that had principles, wanted to tell John to go fuck himself. To walk away and let the whole fucking city sink to the bottom of Lake Erie. But the cop part of me—the watchdog—couldn’t surrender the henhouse to wolves like Uncle Abe and Dionysus. I knew which side of me would win. It was always the part that won despite the murky grayness of the choice. When I opened my eyes again, I found John watching me with a solemn expression.

“You hate me again.” A statement.

“I never stopped.”

Turning away, I went to go look at the pictures. I’d have to spin whatever information I got from John with the team. But I reminded myself that one more half-truth in a history of lies wasn’t so much a sin as a means of survival. “What do you know that I don’t about Dionysus?”

“That’s the problem.” John refilled his glass. When he held up the bourbon as if to ask if I wanted a top-off, I shook my head. Now that I knew the score, I couldn’t risk it. He shrugged. “I’m not sure I know much more than you. This guy’s good. Thorough.”

I nodded. “He’s been one step ahead of us this whole time. We only find clues when he wants us to find them.”

“What do you know about his motivations?”

I looked up from the pictures. “The usual. Mom and Dad thoroughly fucked him up, so now he’s making the world pay. Only he’s charismatic enough to sell his revenge as a new sort of religion.”

I started pacing around the living area. Helped me think better as I talked. “So far we know he’s stolen a rape potion and a truth elixir. So it’s a good bet whatever he’s planning involves those two things.”

“Nothing tears down society’s foundations faster than truth and sex,” he said. “What’s his delivery method?”

Worrying my bottom lip with my teeth, I made a pass by the kitchen. “Water sources?”

“Lake Erie is the water source for the entire city. Too large.”

“But he could dump it into one of the filtration tanks.”

“Maybe, but that seems too quiet for his MO. He’ll want fireworks.”

I stopped and turned. “When we raided his last known residence, there was a bomb waiting for us. Probably more where
that came from.” My heart picked up pace.
Two nights, two nights, two nights
, my mind chanted. I started pacing again.

“Considering how much potion he stole from Aphrodite and me, he’s got to have a large facility to store all this stuff while he prepares.”

My pacing trail took me past John’s bar. With the cogs of my mind spinning, my gaze barely grazed each item I saw. “The BPD’s already searched all the warehouses at the docks,” I said. “And all the abandoned factories along the tracks. It could be any—”

I stopped in my tracks as a wine label on the bar captured my attention: a dancing satyr playing a lute. The name of the brand was Veritas. I grabbed the bottle and pointed it at him. “Where’d you get this?”