The door had a big glass window, so I could see her gaping at us from behind a curtain of vertical beads on the other side. I could also see that she had her wrecking ball of a purse on her shoulder as well as a—was that a baseball bat? No, a softball bat. She’d told me about it. Boomer.
“Don’t beat up this woman, Zav.” I knocked politely. “Even if she swings a bat at you.”
“That would be an inappropriate way to greet a dragon.”
“Once she calms down, I’ll tell her about the elf bow-curtsy. And that since she’s female, she should offer to sleep with you.”
“That is unnecessary.”
“I’m closed!” Janice glared through the door, her knuckles tight around the bat.
“We just have a few questions.”
“Unless you can show me a badge, I’m not answering them.” She leaned through the curtain of beads, her gaze never leaving Zav’s face, and locked the door.
“What is a badge?” Zav asked.
“A sign of authority from our police.”
Zav drew a heavy gold medallion out from under his robe, and it glowed like a small sun. I’d seen it a few times, describing it as Mr. T bling, but I’d never seen it glow.
“I am Lord Zavryd’nokquetal from the Dragon Justice Court, the supreme authority in the universe. You will let me in.”
The woman ran deeper into the office and crouched down behind a table.
“The badge did not work.” Zav tucked the medallion back under his robe and lifted his hand, as if to unlock the door—or tear it off its hinges—with magic.
I caught his arm to stop him and raised my voice. “I’m also interested in getting a reading for my friend here. I know it’s late, so we’ll pay double.” Maybe that would entice her more than the thought of being interrogated.
Whatever her response was, it was too muffled by the table and the door to hear. Zav gently but firmly removed my fingers from his arm and flicked a glance at the entrance. The lock turned and the door opened.
Bells on the bottom of the beaded curtain tinkled and clanked, stirred by the draft. Scents of old mildewy books and at least three conflicting kinds of incense wafted out, and my nostrils twitched. Hopefully, we wouldn’t be inside long enough for my lungs to react negatively.
“I’m closed,” came the muffled voice from under the table. “Closed for business. I have nothing that a dragon would want. Please don’t eat me.”
“I don’t think dragons eat lesser species.” I pushed the beads aside, holding them back for Zav in case he found them perplexing.
The woman who’d climbed a building and attacked me with her purse groaned piteously in Zav’s presence. “His aura is so powerful it’s giving me a migraine.”
“And here it just makes me tingle.”
I walked in first, glancing at a computer on a desk, the only modern object in a room full of knickknacks that might have been acquired on travels around the world or scrounged from a local flea market. Probably the latter. The desk under the computer was covered in decks of tarot cards, candles, and crystals of all colors. From a nearby window ledge, ash-choked incense burners assailed my nose with their pungent fragrances.
As I moved closer, a screensaver on the monitor almost made me trip. It was a logo of a newspaper with a dollar sign coming out of the pages with the name Intelli-Ads across the top. The name didn’t ring a bell, but I’d seen that logo before. At Weber’s house.
“Janice? Can you come out, please?” I tapped Intelli-Ads into my phone for an internet search.
She groaned again. Was it possible she was in genuine pain from Zav’s presence?
“I’ll happy pay for a psychic reading for my friend, but we can leave too if that’s better. I just wanted to know if you’ve seen Dimitri lately. He’s missing.”
“Maybe one of the ogres traipsing in and out of that house of ill-repute ate him.”
“It’s a coffee shop, not a brothel. And don’t ogres like their fortunes read? Maybe you could put up some new signage to lure them over here and thus capitalize on Dimitri’s interesting new clientele.”
“I already have magical beings for clientele. I don’t need any ogres.” Janice lowered her voice, as if speaking to herself, and whispered, “Or dragons. He’s so powerful.” There was a wince in her voice.
I would have asked if Zav was poking into her mind or doing something that could hurt her, but he was lurking near the doorway, scrutinizing several strands of hanging beads in his hand.
“I guess she’s not reading your fortune,” I said.
Zav lowered the beads and turned his attention onto Janice. She shrank lower under the table.
“She has not seen him,” Zav said after a moment. “She believes that if he is missing, it is the work of a rival gang.”
“You’re reading her thoughts?”
“Your method of interrogation is ineffective.” Zav squinted at the woman. “She is afraid of vampires and believes your friend is in league with them.”
“I know that much.” I read the web entry on Intelli-Ads. It was exactly what it sounded like, at least according to the website, an advertising platform that helped small businesses get the word out on local sites and social media pages.
“She genuinely believes that dragons eat people,” Zav said. “Female mongrel, you are not appetizing to my kind.”
“Even if dragons did eat people, all she would have to do is slather herself in breading to become unappealing.” I looked at third-party review sites and found a few for Intelli-Ads. It was a newer company and the rates were deemed fair. There weren’t any complaints on the Better Business Bureau website. When I looked up the owner of the domain name, I found the information locked behind a privacy wall. “Hm. Janice?”
Her head appeared as she slowly peeked out from behind the table.
“How did you get signed up for this business?” I asked her, though she was staring at Zav, who was blandly gazing back, appearing bored by everything happening here. “Intelli-Ads?”
“Answer her,” Zav said.
His voice didn’t ooze magical compulsion, but Janice answered promptly anyway.
“There were brochures. Months ago. Someone stuck them under my door. The brochure promised it could show my ads to the kinds of clients who would be interested in my services. Intelli-Ads has helped me find more people who believe in and can be helped by my psychic readings.”
“Do you still have the brochure?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Do you pay online or in person?” My digging on the internet hadn’t revealed an address or even a phone number. Shouldn’t a business’s website have both those things?
“It’s all online. They withdraw money automatically every month. It’s not that expensive, and it has brought in some new clients. Mostly, uhm.” Her shoulders still were hunkered down at the level of the table, but she lifted her hand enough to wave at me.
“People with magical blood?” I guessed.
“Yeah. Halflings and quarterlings. People born on Earth, not the new full-bloods.”
“You think an ad might have brought that vampire to your door?”
She scowled. “I didn’t ask. I was too busy driving him away and protecting my daughter.”
I wondered if that was hard to do while hiding behind a table. Maybe her maternal instincts had made her braver. Or maybe vampires weren’t as fearsome as dragons. She was still eyeing Zav like she expected him to bite her head off at any second. I supposed I’d gotten used to his aura. He did radiate a lot of power, even when he stood there looking bored.
“Have you ever heard of longevity potions?” It was a long shot—she was a psychic, not an alchemist—but I was short on alchemists at the moment.
“No.”
“Seen any more vampires since the attack?”
“No.”
I sighed.
“Will you go now?” she whispered hopefully.
I looked at Zav.
“There is nothing else of importance in her mind,” he said. “She is thinking of pelting you with crystals if she sees you again not in my company.”
Janice blanched at this proof of mind-reading and sank below the table again.
“I’ve had worse thrown at me, though I was hoping to see Boomer in action.” I waved at the softball bat she’d left on the table when she ducked under it, then took a picture of the screensaver and walked back outside with Zav.
A soft mist had started falling. If the rain picked up, it would make tracking by scent more difficult, though I didn’t know if Sindari had found anything useful even before the weather turned damp.
Sindari? Are you still around?
He was at the very edge of my range. What had prompted him to wander so far?
I believe I’ve pinpointed Dimitri’s trail from this morning. He left the area on foot. You will have to join me if we wish to see where it goes, as I am as far from the charm as I can be without being knocked from this realm.
Any way to be certain he went somewhere interesting and wasn’t walking to pick up breakfast burritos?
No.
We’ll join you.
It was the best lead I had.
20
The rain glistened on the tidy green grass in front of a Victorian house a half a block from Green Lake. A streetlight showed off the home’s perky green siding with white and yellow trim, as well as a second-floor turret with a spire roof. The large windows of the turret looked to have a water view, and even though I leaned toward modern architecture, I had a wistful moment as I imagined living there. The Victorian style was about a thousand times better than brutalism.
A For Rent sign was staked near the sidewalk, and my first thought was that we’d followed Dimitri’s trail all the way up here because he’d been checking out a potential place to live. But Dimitri was even less likely to be able to afford a house with a water view than I was. The fact that the sign didn’t list the monthly rent was telling.