Awakening the Fire (8 page)

“Good night, Mr. De Luca. I think we can agree it is past time I left.”

“Allow me to accompany you to the door,” he offered, once again the impeccable club owner. He gracefully unfolded his long frame.

“Don’t bother. I can find the way.” Ari turned toward the door.

“As you like.”

She paused and looked over her shoulder. “Do you always talk like that?”

He tilted his head, and a reluctant smile tugged at his lips. “You mean, as if I have lived in another country, another century?”

“Yeah, point taken.”

* * *

Ari sighed with relief when she stepped outside, away from Andreas’s unsettling presence and before she stuck her foot in her mouth again. She punched in Ryan’s number. When he answered on the first ring, she grinned. He must have stayed awake and waited for her call. She liked that in a partner. His familiar voice began to unknot the tension in her stomach.

By the time she shared the information from the recent interview, Ari began to think things hadn’t gone too badly after all. She’d gotten the interview. She’d learned Angela was a groupie, that someone had given her a black eye, and that their victim had been hanging out with a werewolf. It was too bad that Victor had a solid alibi, but all in all, not a bad night’s work. She was still in one piece, wasn’t she? She had entered the vampires’ lair and escaped with only her ego bruised.

Chapter Eight

The Wesley Simpson who appeared at the police station the following morning wasn’t the same cocky guy who’d disrupted Ari’s class. Oh, it was the same face all right, but now his eyes darted around the room and nervous sweat streaked his temples. As Ari pictured Angela’s troubled face during his outburst at the shop, his current state of fear gave her secret satisfaction. Simpson ducked his head when he saw Ari. Too bad.

Ryan didn’t give the suspect a chance to relax but started the interview immediately. The cop whipped through the standard questions and spent the next twenty minutes grilling the subdued boyfriend about his contact with Angela. Simpson stuttered and stammered his way through the two-year relationship.

They’d dated regularly for the first year, then Angela’s behavior changed. She began to hang out with Otherworlders and disappeared for days. Unlike Victor, Simpson had demanded an explanation. She’d refused to give one and often covered her activities with lies. He began following her, and at least twice when she said she was spending the evening at home, he’d seen her cruising the vampire clubs.

“Did you confront her about that?” Ryan asked.

Simpson hesitated. “Not until I heard she was sleeping with one of the fang guys. I told her I was leaving. She bawled like a baby, like I was the one who’d done something wrong. She promised she’d end it. And I guess I wanted to believe her, so I stuck around. But lately, she didn’t seem to care what I thought.” Simpson squirmed in his chair. “So, yeah, we fought a lot. I hated her cheating.” He looked up again, his nose crinkled. “How could she do it with one of them?”

“That’s pretty tough, Wes.” Ryan voice was non-judgmental. “It’s hard when your girl’s screwing around. Hard to keep things under control. When did the fights turn physical?”

Simpson stiffened. “Never. I never hit her. Not once. Just a lot of yelling.”

“She had a black eye.”

“Yeah, I saw it, but I didn’t do it.” Simpson’s face flushed, agitated. “Figured that was a present from fang boy.”

Fifteen minutes later Ari didn’t like Simpson any better, but she was convinced he wasn’t the killer. He didn’t have the stomach for it. And in some weird fashion, he had been more of a friend to Angela than anyone else. But that didn’t necessarily make him a nice guy.

“So what was your problem when you came charging into Basil and Sage?” Ari asked.

Simpson had the grace to look uncomfortable. “I didn’t know you were the Guardian. Just that you were a witch. A bad one, I thought.” He swallowed hard when Ari scowled. “Angie and me'd been fighting, about everything. But mostly how weird she'd been. When I saw a pamphlet on your class, I thought she was into the occult.”

“You said she changed long before that.”

“Yeah, but I didn’t know this was her first class. I figured she’d been going there every week for months.” He hunched his shoulders. “I’d eliminated all the other explanations.”

“Like what?”

“Drugs. I found some blue pills on her dresser. That Fantasy
stuff. She gave me the old story about holding them for a friend. Yeah, like I believed that. I figured she’d been experimenting, but I never saw them again. And she never acted strung out, like she was using.”

“Maybe she kept them hidden after that.” Ryan had been listening quietly until Simpson mentioned the drugs. Now he was on point.

“I searched. Several times. Nothing.”

What a creepy boyfriend, Ari thought. Follows her around, searches her apartment. She couldn’t decide whether he was a misguided friend or a stalker.

“So go on,” Ryan encouraged. “You must have had other suspicions.”

“Only one, really. This vamp dude, I thought he might of bespelled her. But she laughed when I asked. And those people act like zombies, don’t they? Or robots?” He glanced at Ari for confirmation. When she said nothing, he looked away. “Anyway, that’s when I found the candles and some crystals.”

“That’s how you made the leap to black magic? Candles and crystals?” Ari’s voice rose.

“Let’s go back to the drugs.” Ryan intervened to keep them on course. “Maybe you never saw drugs because Angela was quickly passing them on. A go-between. Did you see money? I haven’t heard anything about a job. How’d she pay her bills?”

“I don’t know,” Simpson admitted. “She quit her waitress job almost a year ago.”

The rest of the interview was pretty ho-hum. The morning of Ari’s class was the last time he admitted seeing Angela. On the night of her death, he said he went to a movie by himself and might still have the ticket stub at home. He’d look. Not much of an alibi, but Ari didn’t think it mattered. Given Angela’s injuries, he’d never been a likely suspect.

Simpson left, and Ryan leaned back in his chair, stretching out his long legs. “Well, that was a waste of time. At least as far as identifying a decent suspect. The drug bit was interesting, but I’m not sure it’s helpful. I’ll follow up with the narcotics squad. But it looks to me like we’re out of suspects.”

Ari looked at him and shrugged. They’d have to start over, somehow develop new suspects. A knock on the door was a welcome interruption.

A harried-looking, twenty-something male, one of the couriers employed by the city, popped in long enough to drop a packet on Ryan’s desk, the lab results from the crime scene. Ryan read the report aloud without much enthusiasm. As expected, it was unremarkable, until he reached the last item of evidence: twenty-six canine hairs.

Ari sat up straighter. Dog or werewolf? Angela didn’t own a dog. And given Andreas’s description of the woman at the club, werewolves suddenly seemed a real possibility. She knew DNA tests wouldn’t hold the answer. Wolf and dog hairs were too similar to be distinguished without the follicles: an interesting fact Ari’s forensics instructor would be surprised she remembered. He’d always complained her frequent looks out the window meant she wasn’t paying attention.

“It doesn’t have to be a wolf,” she cautioned. “Maybe our victim had a dog in the past. Or she has a friend with a dog. Simpson would know.”

Ryan made the call. Before he disconnected, he’d already given her the thumbs-up. “No dog. Not allowed in the building. I think we have a solid lead. Now what the hell do we do with it? How do we find a werewolf, Ari?”

“Let me work on that while you follow the drugs.”

“Works for me. This Fantasy has been popping up all over the city. Heard it creates the illusion of anything you desire. Kind of like an internal virtual reality. Want to experience being a rock star? Want to know what it’s like to date Angelina Jolie? You got it. Anything you can imagine.”

“Angelina Jolie? Is she what you’d want?” Ari teased. “Your dream date?”

“What sane guy would turn her down? Hey, if I was into the drug scene, it might tempt me.”

Ari laughed. “You’re full of surprises. Just think of all those other secret fantasies out there. That translates into cash for the dealers, uber profits. Maybe Angela got in over her head. Or she ripped off a supplier.”

“That’d get her killed, all right. I’ll dig around. In the meantime,” Ryan said, getting to his feet, “let’s search her apartment again. Before we release the scene, I’d like another shot at finding drugs or drug money. Maybe we missed something.”

* * *

They’d been in Angela’s stuffy apartment for almost an hour with little to show for their efforts except a lot of dust bunnies under the bed.

“She sure had a bunch of face junk.” Ryan was going through Angela’s vanity. “What does this contraption do?” He held up an eyelash curler for Ari’s inspection.

She pantomimed its use. “Don’t you have sisters?”

“Nope. Three brothers. None of this girlie paraphernalia.”

“More used to jock straps and smelly socks, huh? And Playboy mags under the mattress.”

“What makes you think they’re under the mattress?”

“Younger brother. You think sisters don’t know these things?” Ari opened another drawer. “She liked expensive lingerie.” She held up a red, lacy gown, tucked it back in, and gave the drawer a shove. It stuck. She yanked it out, and tried again. And again it stuck. This time she took the drawer out and looked in the back. Something was hanging from the top.

“Now what’s this?” she said, catching Ryan’s attention. She reached in, pulled off two strips of masking tape, and retrieved a solid bundle. No lacy stuff this time. It was a roll of hundred dollar bills.

Ryan counted twelve hundred. Quite a stash for a girl to keep in her undies drawer, but if she was selling drugs, shouldn’t there be more? Thousands more. And where were the drugs?

As they talked it over, their elation faded. Finding the roll of cash hadn’t gotten them any closer to a suspect. It raised more unanswered questions. Without anybody left to question, where did they go for the answers?

Chapter Nine

Sunday morning broke gray and cloudy, foreshadowing the storm about to crack open over their heads. Ari’s first thought was to roll over and catch another hour. But Great-Gran’s words to a sleepy child still played in her head, “Late in bed, early dead.” Not exactly a suitable childhood rhyme, unless you were a Guardian in training.

As she woke her muscles with a brisk run through the park, Ari mulled over the leads they had, focusing on the two she needed to follow: contact Victor to see what, if anything, he knew about the money or drugs, and find the thirty-something woman who came to Club Dintero with Angela. If Andreas was right about the woman’s species, and Ari had no reason to doubt him, Steffan, the werewolf representative on the Magic Council, topped the list of people to see.

As frequently happened, the werewolf’s name brought a grin to her face. Steffan. Wolf. A word play too obvious to miss. Ari chuckled and lengthened her stride to match the tune now running through her head.

* * *

By mid-afternoon she’d cleared up some routine matters for the Council and left a message for Victor to call. Since the vampires wouldn’t be awake for hours, she moved to her next task. Finding Steffan was easy.

Ari parked her Mini Cooper in front of Steffan’s suburban home. When she heard laughter from the back yard, she found him sweating it out in a volleyball game with a mixed company of friends, including half a dozen shirtless guys. Her day was looking up already. A beer keg stood at the far end of the net. Judging by the level of laughter, the missed shots, and werewolves’ great tolerance for alcohol, she assumed they’d been at this a long time.

“Hey! How could you have a party without me?” she called.

Steffan, one of the shirtless guys, turned at the sound of her voice. “Ari! Come join us!”

“Love to, but I’m a working girl today,” she yelled back.

He tossed the ball to a buddy, grabbed a T-shirt from the ground, and pulled it over his head as he sauntered toward her. The casual observer would never guess Steffan was a werewolf. He was a cool, jazzy, redhead with burnished copper locks and beautiful long eyelashes. His sociable personality made him a people magnet. Women longed to marry him, or at least take him to bed, and guys sought him as a friend. A party person, a bender of rules, and the last guy you would picture involved with the serious business of the Magic Council. It seemed equally unlikely you’d find him howling at the moon.

Steffan wasn’t a natural born. During college, he’d fallen in love with a werewolf. She also had a wolf lover who resented the competition; he attacked Steffan and left him bleeding in the woods. The girlfriend found Steffan in time to save his life, but he was infected with lycanthropy. Ironically, their relationship didn’t survive his transformation, and the girlfriend returned to her original lover.

Somehow, Steffan hadn’t turned bitter. He embraced his new strength, his self-healing, the pack life and even the monthly run in the woods. He’d quickly risen through the ranks of his pack and was elected to represent them on the Magic Council. Ari and Steffan met shortly after that and had now been friends for six years. He was one of the Council’s hardest working members. He chaired two committees and was the chosen go-to guy for unusual or complicated problems that involved any of the lycanthrope families.

Ari and Steffan greeted each other with a hug of mutual affection. They hadn’t had a chance to talk for five or six months except at Council meetings, so it took a few minutes to catch up. Finally Ari got down to business and asked about new wolves in town.

“French-speaking women,” she specified.

“Well, that does narrow the field.” Steffan pursed his lips. “Interesting you should ask. We’ve got our eyes on a possible pack right now. Canadians. Strangers pass through the area all the time. When they settle in but shun the rest of us, I get worried.” He waved a hand toward the keg. “How about a beer while we talk? At the house. Where it’s more private.”