Today was just full of surprises.
I pulled the door open and got in out of the rain.
Chapter Seven
Instead of taking me to the station, Stotts let me give him my statement in the car while he drove me home. Which was good. Because it hadn’t stopped raining, I hadn’t eaten since this morning, and the coffee at the police station wasn’t fit for human consumption. Using magic always made me hungry, and I was tired. Plus, that Disbursement I’d set to pay for Hounding the spell-a nice juicy headache-was in full force.
Stotts dropped me off in front of the building with a promise to contact me if he needed further information. I promised him I’d think about the job offer and let him know soon.
I trudged up the three flights of stairs to my apartment and paused at the top of the third-floor landing. A whiff of onions and beef and bacon made my mouth water. I didn’t know which of my neighbors was cooking, but I seriously considered tracking them down and inviting myself in for a bite.
I stopped at my apartment door, put one hand on the smooth surface, and without drawing on magic, listened for movement. It was a habit I picked up thanks to my less-than-calm last few months in the city with a variety of magic users trying to kill me.
More than movement. I heard singing. A woman’s voice. Nola.
Duh. I had company.
I unlocked the door, feeling like I’d jumped on the idiot train a day early, and walked into my home.
The delicious smell was stronger here, and my heart did a happy little leap in my chest, even though it made my head hurt more. Nola had been cooking!
She stood on tiptoe on a chair at the round table in my living room, her back to me. Her hands were full of vines from the potted plant that was now draping over my no-longer-plain vinyl blinds and white sheers.
On the other side of the wall-sized window was a bushy tree-plant thing-did I ever mention that I do not have a green knuckle in my body, much less a thumb? — which took up the empty space in the corner.
There were other touches that told me she’d been busy. A couple candles, three new throw pillows, and all the roses that had been in the kitchen sink now arranged and placed throughout the house in every vase, mason jar, and wine bottle I owned, plus a few more containers I could only guess she’d bought today.
I didn’t want to startle her, but wasn’t sure if she’d heard me come in. So I made some noise opening the door and shutting it more loudly behind me.
“Welcome back,” she said without turning. “I heard you come in the first time.”
I laughed and hung my soggy coat on the back of the door. “I didn’t want to send you tumbling to your death,” I said. “How was your day?”
“Good. I did some shopping. Hope you don’t mind.” She finished adjusting the vine, some kind of philodendron, I think, over the valance, where it obliged her, as all green living things seemed wont to do, by draping in a perfect waterfall of leaves like an interior-decorating magazine photo shoot. “You really needed some living things in here.”
“You didn’t pay for all this, did you?”
“It’s not that much,” she said as she stepped off the chair, flashed me a smile, then walked far enough back so she could look at her handiwork. “I found a nice secondhand store just down the street for the little things.”
“They were selling plants?”
“No. But the flower shop around the corner was. Think of it as payment for putting me up on such short notice for a few days. Soup’s ready. Did you have lunch?”
“Didn’t have time. I’m starving.” I headed into the kitchen, where I found on the stovetop soup filled with veggies, and bread wrapped in a dish towel on the counter beside it. Heaven. I filled a bowl, took a couple pieces of bread, and headed back into the living room.
“How did the job go?” Nola asked. She sat on the couch, and I sat at the café table. Nola had opened the blinds enough to let in the dull afternoon light. And with the cascade of green leaves in the corners of the room, the light no longer seemed as dreary.
“Good,” I said around a mouthful of the best beef veg gie soup I’d ever put a spoon to. “Any luck with Cody’s stuff?”
She folded her hands in her lap, and I realized I had rarely seen her that still, no knitting in her hands, no bills to pay, no charity items to sort, no chickens to tend, alfalfa to bale, heck, not even her dog Jupe’s big head to scratch.
It was the first time I’d really thought about how lonely her life might be.
“I went down to talk with the supervisor. She wasn’t available, and no one else seemed to have any information except that he was in the care of a psychologist for tests he needs before he can be released. They said that’s customary with cases that deal with the handicapped and their misuse of magic.”
“The forgeries he did when he was younger? Or him being used as part of my dad’s murder?” Cody hadn’t been the one behind the scheme to kill my dad, though he had been a part of forging my dad’s signature on the hit on the kid in St. Johns, and my signature on the hit on my dad. As far as the law was concerned, James Hoskil was the brains behind the crime.
But the law did not know about a lot of things going on in this city, like the Authority, and weird half-dog men running around. Even I didn’t think James Hoskil was powerful enough to take down my very powerful father.
My dad fluttered behind my eyes. I ignored him.
“I don’t know,” Nola said. “They won’t say more than that. I’m guessing it’s from the most recent crime. He was in custody before that. Those records, of why he was jailed for a short time, I can’t find. I’ve tried looking up newspaper articles, courtroom documents, but there are no reports in the news. It’s strange. The courtroom documents aren’t even public. I don’t understand what all the cloak-and-dagger stuff is around this poor kid, and I’d like to know what crimes he committed before I take him in.”
I took another bite of soup. The Authority was probably behind the secrecy. They had put the hush on the circumstances of Lon Trager’s death, Frank’s dark magic shenanigans, and my dad’s stolen corpse. None of those ever hit the news. Maybe the Authority had pull, or people, in the courts as well.
Nola didn’t know much about the Authority, and I was inclined to keep it that way for now. Telling her about the secret society of magic users meant putting her at risk.
I refused to do that.
“I’ll ask Violet if she knows anyone that can help us with this,” I said. “Are you going to call Detective Stotts and see if he can help?”
She twisted her fingers together. “I think I will. What do you think about him?”
I sipped the remainder of the broth out of the bowl. “I only met him a couple weeks ago. He seems to be a good police officer. Dedicated to his job. Determined. Said he grew up in the Northwest. Raised by his mom mostly here in Portland. Has good taste in coffee, so that’s something in his favor.” I smiled.
“I didn’t know his wife had passed away though. I thought the ring. . well, you know.”
She nodded. “He could be lying about that.”
“How very suspicious of you,” I said approvingly. “But I don’t think so. He didn’t smell like he was lying. Oh, one more thing. He’s cursed.”
I took a huge bite of bread, white with a hint of garlic and Parmesan. Delish.
“What?”
I talked around the mouthful of bread. “Cursed. Hounds who work for him die very unusual deaths. Weird, huh?”