Page 43 of Discord
“He wants Silvaria and Dorian where he can arrest them. He has contacts and sources literally everywhere. If sizeable sums of money go missing, they will call their banks. If the bank tells them they have to deal with it in person, then Kaine can get someone in the bank to snatch them when they come.”
Gabriel snorted.
“Rich witches and Dorian Gray have servants and lawyers to deal with that kind of shit.”
“Exactly. Kaine would probablyloveto get his hands on their attorneys. Silvaria and Dorian might pay them well to make things go away, but do you think they really want to be associated with something like this?” I asked.
“They could have made their own deal,” Felix pointed out.
My phone vibrated again, and I looked at the screen. Kaine gave me amounts for Silvaria and Dorian. The grumpy dragon had been busy. How in the world did he even find a banker this late? I couldn’t even go into the lobby of mine past five, or on a weekend, because they were closed. Banker’s hours were a total thing. It was the weekend, and it was dark when Kaine and Beyla left.
“Kaine has a specific amount from each of them. They’ll have to come in person, because their bank is going to require them, not their attorney, and they will have to file a police report.”
“What the fuck? Isn’t that going to get you arrested?!” Felix asked.
I just smirked because no, it wouldn’t, and it wasn’t that Kaine would get the charges dropped either.
“I wrote a program for that myself, and tweak it every time I steal. Don’t worry, no one is going to be able to trace it back to me. The bank might have a policy to give the money back, but they won’t be getting it from me.”
“Do we need to go back?”
“Pssh. I can hack a bank and steal from bad people from my cell phone in the middle of a vampire club.”
“Weshouldget back. I need to look at the painting we stole when we rescued Talvath. It might not have Dorian’s soul in it, but it’s probably magic like the painting in the vault. It might have some answers. I’ve already called an Uber.”
Felix didn’t drive, and I had a motorcycle. Gabriel could have fit all of us in his car, but he said fuck being the designated driver. I could get behind that. I didn’t want to do that either, and he probably didn’t want me driving his car. That left Felix... though he probably only knew how to drive a horse.
Our ride arrived pretty quickly, and we made it back to the library. My laptop was still in the kitchen, so I grabbed it and brought it into Ripley’s spell room, where the painting was. I started coding my program while Gabriel got to work on the painting.
Gabriel and Felix were talking warlock business that I couldn't even begin to understand. While I’d never met a firewall I couldn’t crack, I didn’t know the first thing about getting into a magical painting. That was Gabriel’s forte. We were all here for a reason.
I punched in a few lines of code to my program and got to work. I already knew where Silvaria and Dorian banked because I’d been in their computers. Fuck, I’d been in their accounts. I just hadn’t taken any money out because I was waiting for the right time.
I was thinking about a new custom paint job for my motorcycle, and I was also thinking about having Dorian and Silvaria fund it. I let out a nefarious little giggle as I pressed one last button, and the money disappeared from their accounts into mine. Score! I was getting that paint job. I could have paid for it now, but I liked it when criminals funded my shit with money I’d stolen from them.
I looked over just as Gabriel painted the canvas with some sort of magic.
“I hope that destroys the painting, because it gives me the creeps,” I said.
“I couldn’t say for sure, but Hitler liked to paint. I know he tried to get into art school before he went psycho, started a world war, and committed genocide. Come to think of it… I wouldn’t put it past Dorian Gray to want to meet Hitler and buy one of his paintings to have magic woven into it,” Gabriel said.
“Ew. We need to burn that shit when we are done with it.”
“I’m getting sage,” Felix said. “We need to smudge the entire room just because that’s been in here.”
Felix lit a bundle of sage and walked around the room, waving it and chanting while we waited for Gabriel’s magic to work. I never did like the smell of sage when witches burnt it at my house.
“I’ve always thought that smells like pot,” I said.
If looks could kill, Felix and Gabriel would have slaughtered me by now.
The nasty looking landscape on the canvas dissolved, and it left us with weird looking sigils. I certainly couldn’t read them, and Gabriel and Felix just stared. It looked oddly like what they painted in blood all over the shipping container.
“This is demonic,” Felix said.
“Shit,” Gabriel said. “We’ve been operating under the assumption that Silvaria was the one who cracked all this demon shit. Someone gave it to Dorian. He’s probably been holding onto it until he found a witch crazy enough to figure out how to put his plan into action. It took him meeting Silvaria to get to this point.”
We all looked at each other. I knew we said we’d leave them alone, but we really needed Reyson and Ripley. We needed to get Bram and see if he could interpret this if Talvath weren’t awake yet.
