Page 66 of Mystic Justice
Jane was the key; I was sure of it. And if I was right? It was time to smash this case wide open.
Chapter Thirty-One
I grabbed Krieg and Loki from my office and stormed down to tech where Ji-ho had his music blaring, head bobbing as his fingers flew across the keyboard. Channing was sitting next to him, a notebook open, full of his scrawl. ‘What have you got so far?’ I demanded without any small talk.
Channing flipped back a few pages. ‘Calder’s father is a fire elemental, high up, sits on the Pit.’
The Pit was the fire elementals’ ruling body, and they weren’t known for being soft and fluffy. The last leader of the Pit, Benedict, had met an horrific end after going on a spree and torturing people for fun with his flames. Absolutely no one had been sad at his subsequent demise: he’d been a total psychopath and the world was a better place without him.
Roscoe now headed the Pit, a far more level-headed chap who’d worked as a guardian to a portal hall for years. When he’d taken over from Benedict, he’d cleaned house. That Jane’s father still sat on the Pit told me that either he wasn’t a psychopath or he’d been too powerful for Roscoe to oust.
‘Calder’s mother?’ I asked.
Channing leaned forward. ‘Here’s where things get interesting. Her mother was a witch, a skilled rune master. She died a couple of years ago. Jane, being the sole heir with a hint of witch magic in her veins, inherited her mother’s belongings including a family grimoire. Her brother, Neil, showed no such aptitude.’
This whole time we’d been focusing on a dark witch, but instead we had a fire elemental with witch in her family tree. A grieving one. Still, it seemed a little odd for Jane to wait two years to resurrect her mum. Maybe it had taken her that long to master the grimoire’s magics.
Krieg asked the question I was thinking. ‘Do we think it’s the mum who the runes are powering?’
‘No,’ Channing said firmly. ‘I spoke to Sandra Jaxim. She told me that at a work drinks event when Jane was still new, Jane got drunk and mentioned a lover who had died. She only ever mentioned him once and Sandra said she seemed genuinely cut up about his death. When she brought it up again, Jane bit her head off. Sandra never dared mentioned him after that.’
‘All right. What do we know about the lover?’
Ji-ho grimaced and paused mid-typing. ‘Nothing – we have nothing on this guy. It’s like he didn’t exist. There were a few hits on Jane’s socials about being “deliriously happy” and “wedding bells ringing” but never a picture, never a name.’
‘Her partner was either security conscious and wanted to keep his personal details offline, or he was married,’ I mused.
Channing blinked. ‘That didn’t occur to me.’
I smiled. ‘It will, once you’ve gone round the block a few more times. All right, let’s get back to Calder.’
‘Jane was born and raised in York. Her family is still there. She came to Liverpool after her mother’s death. She was working as a trainee solicitor.’
‘What the hell? Why would she jack that in for serving drinks?’
‘Looking into it,’ Ji-ho interrupted. ‘I’m accessing her leaver’s interview as we speak.’ He pulled up several documents and his pupils shifted to serpentine vertical slits as he scanned the data. ‘Pulling up her emails.’
Next to me, Channing’s eyes widened at the blasé hacking. It reminded me again that he’d been raised Common; he wasn’t used to the ‘whatever we need to do to get the job done’ mentality. In the Other, most human laws were treated as guidelines, nothing more.
Ji-ho tapped his desk. ‘Got it! She said her fiancé died and she needed a sabbatical. Her training contract was terminated but the solicitors said she could return at any stage within the next two years to finish her training. At that point her address changed from a pricey flat on the docks to a cheap-as-chips former council building.’
‘Her budget decreased, and so did her square footage,’ I mused. ‘She was saving cash. Smart – she’s got a level head on her shoulders. Did she know then what she was planning to do?’ I rolled it around in my mind some more. ‘Okay. Good work.’
I turned to Channing. ‘Give the brother a ring see what he can tell you about this supposed fiancé – he’s more likely to know the gossip about his sister than her father. Get me the fiancé’s species and his name. I need to know what walking-dead thing we have to deal with. Krieg and I will join Elvira and Bland at Jane’s flat. Keep me updated.’
‘All over it,’ Channing promised.
Krieg walked out with me, Loki fluttering between us. ‘We kick butt?’ the bird asked eagerly.
‘I don’t think the butt is there to be kicked,’ I replied grimly. ‘But all the same we’ll be ready.’
To make sure I was prepared, I donned a magically infused Kevlar vest complete with a body camera and grabbed thePR-60. Cops often joked that the PR stood for ‘public relations’ because the baton was good at getting the point across.
Krieg drove us to Calder’s flat where Elvira and Bland were parked out front. I raised them on the radio. ‘Anything?’
‘Not so much as a curtain twitch,’ Elvira replied.
‘Fine. Let’s roll. Vests and cameras on.’ I turned to Krieg, ‘You can come, but stay back. Let us take point.’
