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Dread coiled in my gut.
“Someone in the Leslie household is selling warlocks?”
I’m not sure why I asked. Maybe I just needed it confirmed.
Names and faces from the night before blurred in my memory. Maybe they hadn’t all been friendly, but most were polite, and it seemed almost unfathomable that any could be involved in such a thing. Chastising myself for being naïve, I took a steadying breath and watched Derrick and Cade exchange a look.
“Is it Maureen?” I asked, thinking of the steady control the woman had over the Leslie clan.
Derrick gave a little shrug. “We can’t be sure.”
“She’s involved somehow,” Cade said. He lifted a squat, blocky case onto the table and flicked the latches open. “There’s nothing in that household she doesn’t have eyes on.”
“Except maybe her husband,” Derrick pointed out.
“Montgomery Leslie is a loon,” Cade said as he opened the case. Inside was a strange contraption of copper and brass with a wooden base. He lifted it out and set it upright on the table and at first I thought it was a microscope like I had seen in science journals, but there were small runes carved into its surface and the lenses were a series of magnifying glasses all stacked atop one another. Each glass swiveled on a bevel that pointed at the base of the microscope and I watched as Cade began inspecting each one, cleaning them with a small rag.
He spoke as he worked, though I gathered most of it was aimed at Derrick. “The man hides in his study and pins butterflies to boards all day. He rarely comes out and when he does, he mumbles nonsense about the flight pattern of geese.”
“Lunacy can be a façade, you know that,” Derrick said. “And can you truly see Maureen as sentimental enough not to put him out of his misery? The loss of magic she might suffer as a widow is far less damaging than letting the world know her husband is a quack.”
“Maybe sentiment has nothing to do with it?” I suggested. “Maybe she has political reasons to keep him alive?”
Cade slanted a look at me and I flushed. Intruding on an ongoing investigation was probably bad manners, but I was in the thick of it now and it wasn’t like I could plug my ears and ignore them. The room was tiny.
“Exactly,” Cade said. “And I think Maureen does. Because while she may have control of the clan in fact, Montgomery Leslie has control of them in name. There are many in the clan who would split forces and dissolve into a clan war if she killed him.”
Derrick rubbed the back of his neck and scowled. “Maybe.”
“Definitely,” Cade argued, and then he looked back at me. “Now, Miss Grayson, if you don’t mind, I would like a closer look at that runestone.”
Realizing at last what the microscope was for, I leaned forward and offered my hand. He took it in gentle fingers, directing me to lay my hand palm up against the base of the microscope while he fiddled with each of the lenses. He flipped each lens in a clinical manner, humming to himself sometimes and stopping to jot something on a pad of paper to his left. Fascinated, I waited.
The runes along the microscope’s sides flickered blue and green, glowing in evident magic as he worked. He paused long enough to run his thumb across the outside edge of the runestone, tracing its entire circumference under my skin, and I shivered despite myself. It was cold in our little, windowless room.
“Where’s the door?” I asked, realizing of a sudden that we were not just windowless here.
“Same way we got in,” Derrick said with a nod at the watery portal behind us.
“But then, where is the rest of Fairy?” I asked.
He smirked in something that might have been apology. “The next time we come, I promise to show you the real Fairy.”
“This is a CEB meeting space,” Cade said. He peered into the microscope some more, one of his twilit eyes intent on the view beneath my skin. “It is warded against all manner of attack, both inside and out in Fairy.”
I frowned and my fingers twitched a little, forcing him to catch my gaze. “You mean it’s an interrogation room.”
His mouth quirked but he didn’t deny it. Instead, he went back to the microscope.
“Not only an interrogation room,” Derrick said with a glare at his partner. “It is a safe place, Nora. And once we have that runestone out, I’ll teach you how to access it.”
“You most certainly will not,” Cade said and turned from the microscope. “The CEB would have your tattoos for such a breach of security.”
“She’s a victim and an unwilling witness to all this. Until my mother is secured, this is the safest place for her to go.” Derrick held up a hand to stave off another argument from Cade. “Which, by the way, do we have people on route to her?”
Cade scowled and his fingers beat an impatient rhythm into the table. “Yes. Gretchen took three men with her, but they haven’t checked in yet.”
There was a flicker of worry in Derrick’s face, and he crossed his arms. “Well, there is a time difference, I suppose.” Then he nodded at the microscope. “Does it match?”
