Page 72 of Kiss the Dawn
“That was stuck in a teapot?” Merry wrinkled her nose. “That makes no sense. It would have been able to just…phase out.”
“Unless it was cursed to stay trapped,” Holly proposed. “Oooh, I could set up a new trap.” She pulled a book off the shelf by her desk and flipped the pages until she came to an illustration of an arcane circle with runic symbols on it. “This one. It’s fae magic, but I might be able to swing it. Mageri power isfae born anyway. The clever thing about this is that you can modify it to do things, like hold someone, or hurt them, or make them speak the truth. It can only hold one person at a time, so you have to be careful it isn’t triggered by the wrong person. But it's a clever little spell.”
“I don’t thinkwe need to do that,” Padma said. “At least not yet. Edwin did some research before he left. He didn’t believe it was evil or meant me harm, and I agree. It’s not a priority right now. We have to work on our other cases. I think…I think he’ll show himself when he’s ready.”
“What do you mean?” Merry asked.
“I mean, I get the feeling that he’s…recharging? Like he wants to manifest but can’t. Yet.” She shook her head. “Or I’m imagining things. Either way, we have more important things to worry about.”
“Like the symbol,” Holly said. “We should get back out there and start canvassing.”
There was a lot of ground to cover in Brimswood, and we’d barely made a dent. “I’ll man the desk if that’s okay. I’m expecting a delivery.”
“That’s fine by me,” Padma said. “I need to stretch my legs.”
The others agreed, and ten minutes later, they were gone.
I was alone.
There was plenty of admin to be getting on with, but I sat at the computer that still had the property page up and started flicking through it.
My phone pinged with a text from an unknown number.
Miss Lighthart,
His Highness has instructed me with the honor of sourcing an appropriate property for you. I will be in touch in the next few days with viable options.
Mr. Butterworth.
I texted back a thank you and shut down the property page. There was plenty of admin to get on with, and I had all day to do it.
I’d just finished inputting the information for our burglary case when the bell on the main door tinkled, signaling an arrival.
I hurried out to the counter, expecting a client but found Kaster Black instead, UV-proof umbrella in hand. His eyes were bloodshot and his jaw unshaven.
If circumstances had been different, I would have hugged him, but he wanted boundaries, so… “Kaster, what are you doing here?”
He approached, and I held out my hand. One touch and his voice filled my head.
I found out who the vampires that died were. They were part of a secret group dealing in powerful and dangerous artifacts.
“How did you find that out?”
A note from one of the members warning me to stop digging. I ran tests and identified the writing. My father.
Laudon? Laudon is part of this group?
I confronted him last night. He told me everything about his black-market dealings. The group met there that night, and one of the members brought an artifact, a teapot containing some kind of powerful entity. There was meant to be an auction, but they were murdered, and the teapot was never retrieved. The only reason my father survived is because he was late to the meeting. By the time he arrived, the place was swarming with Sangualex.
My father believed that whoever committed the murder must have stolen the item.
Fuck.
What? What is it? Do you know something?
“It’s here. The teapot. We found it buried in the files when we took over this building.”
How could it have gotten here?
