Page 13 of Mane Brew

Then I’m through the door and into the evening mist before she can respond. Before I can say anything else I’ll need to categorize later.

The walk back to Sunridge territory takes longer than it should. I keep thinking about symbols carved into floorboards. About ancient women who deliver warnings between bites of cobbler and vanish before they can be questioned. About the way her magic sparks when she’s upset, wild and uncategorizable and refusing to behave the way documented magic should.

The file on my desk is waiting when I get home. Forty-seven pages of documentation. One impossible woman. And a conspiracy that apparently started centuries before any of us were born.

I add twelve more pages before midnight. None of them mention the way she laughed, or the warmth of her shoulder where it brushed mine, or the taste of inexplicably perfect cobbler.

Some things don’t belong in official reports.

3

ZEPH

My ingredient supplier has been in business for eighty-seven years.

Marlowe’s Magical Mercantile operates out of a converted warehouse on the eastern edge of Mistvale, run by a brownie named—unsurprisingly—Marlowe who stands about three feet tall and has opinions about freshness that would make a Michelin chef weep with inadequacy. Her warehouse is a maze of preserved specimens, dried herbs, and bottled essences organized according to a system only she fully understands.

I respect that. One chaotic organizational genius recognizing another.

“The moonflower came through the usual channels.” Marlowe’s voice carries the raspy authority of someone who has been right about supply chain integrity for nearly a century. She peers up at us from behind a counter stacked with shipping manifests, her eyes sharp despite the reading glasses perched on her nose. “Same grower, same shipping route, same everything. I checked the logs myself after your lion called.”

Your lion.

I don’t correct her. Rhodes made the appointment, handled the preliminary questions, organized this entire meeting with his usual terrifying efficiency. He showed up at my brewery at dawn with a schedule printed on actual paper—who does that anymore?—and informed me we had appointments to keep. Plural. He’d made an itinerary.

If Marlowe wants to assume he’s mine, that’s her business. I’m not examining why the assumption doesn’t irritate me as much as it should.

He’s been taking notes for twenty minutes straight, his pen moving across paper with practiced efficiency.

“The logs show everything normal.” He flips to a new page. “But the contamination had to enter the supply chain at some point. Either at the source, during transport, or after delivery.”

“After delivery’s your witch’s problem.” Marlowe jerks her chin toward me. “My end was clean. Been clean for eighty-seven years.”

“No one’s questioning your competence⁠—”

“Good.” She fixes Rhodes with a look that would make lesser men flinch. He doesn’t. I’m grudgingly impressed. “My reputation is my business. If someone compromised one of my shipments, I want to know about it more than you do.”

“The contamination was already present when I opened the shipment.” I lean against the doorframe, arms crossed over my chest. “I would have noticed if someone tampered with it in my brewery.”

“Would you?” Marlowe’s eyebrows climb toward her hairline. “No offense, dear, but your organizational system isn’t exactly what I’d call rigorous.”

Rhodes makes a sound that might be agreement. I elbow him. He doesn’t even pretend to look apologetic.

“The moonflower jar was sealed when I received it. Factory seal, unbroken. I’m chaotic, not blind.”

“Then the contamination must have happened during the transfer.” Rhodes pulls out a document I don’t recognize—a routing manifest with stamps and signatures covering every available inch. “This is the shipping record for your last moonflower delivery. Standard route from the grower in the northern reaches to the distribution center to here to the brewery.”

“Standard route.” I move closer to examine the document, my shoulder nearly brushing his. “So where’s the vulnerability?”

He studies the document for a moment. “Here.” His finger taps a line near the bottom of the manifest. “The most vulnerable point is the distribution center. It uses Protection Network security for high-value magical shipments. Contracted arrangement, started about fifteen years ago. Someone with Network access could have intercepted the delivery without triggering any alerts.”

The implication hits hard.

“You’re saying a shifter did this.”

“I’m saying someone with Network credentials did this.” The muscle in his jaw flexes—a tell I’m learning to recognize, the one that appears when he’s thinking words he doesn’t want to say. “That could be a shifter, or someone who stole credentials, or someone who was given access by a compromised insider.”

Marlowe whistles low, a sound that carries decades of mercantile experience. “That’s a hell of an accusation.”