“Thanks.”
“How’re things going with Nin?”
His voice turned shy and smugly happy. “Good.”
“I’m glad. Look, just let me know if you need me to come up and menace the decoy boyfriend.”
“Are you sure it’s a decoy?”
“If it’s not, things escalated from I’m-not-into-boys to dating-boys quickly.”
“I think that’s how it happens with teenagers. Okay, I’m going to get my cannon. Night, Val.”
He hung up before I could decide if that had been a joke. I hoped so.
At your leisure, dear robber, a text came in from Zoltan.
You have something? I texted back before feeling silly because I could walk back inside.
“I have a great many things,” Zoltan replied aloud as I entered the basement.
Freysha, who’d stayed inside, nodded at me.
“I’ll trust that you will pay my consulting fee and that I need not withhold information,” Zoltan said.
“Thanks so much.” I looked at Freysha. “I guess giving him a stellar and rare ingredient wasn’t enough of a payment.”
“I haven’t yet determined if that supposed wraith bone will work in my recipe. But I have determined that the two owners of those bones did not originate on Earth.”
“Okay.” I would have been more surprised if they had. “Anything else?”
“Do not rush me, dear robber.” Zoltan straightened his bow tie. “I have also determined that they came from the same world, sharing the DNA that is common, according to my texts—” he waved to books that weren’t written in English, or any other Earth-based language, “—in beings from the reputedly haunted world of Nagnortha.”
“Is it odd that I encountered them on different worlds?”
“I cannot answer that question, other than to suggest that perhaps someone borrowed them from their home world. You may leave now. I must upload my video. I’ll invoice you in the morning.”
“Can’t wait,” I muttered, heading for the door again.
Freysha followed me outside.
“You know who I’d really like to talk to?” I asked.
“Lord Zavryd?”
“He’s helping heal Sindari. I’d really like to talk to that thief. She’s the one who put the box in the artifacts room, and I can’t help but wonder if she’s the one who sent those flying creatures after us.”
“Perhaps if you wander around the city,” Freysha said, “she will approach you again.”
“By approach me, you mean set a cunning trap to ensnare me?”
“Yes. If you allow yourself to be trapped, I am certain you will get the opportunity to speak with her.”
While she had me chained and was walking away with Chopper, right. “I would rather trap her and control the conversation.”
“How are you going to do that?”
“I’ll let you know when I figure it out.”
14
Before dawn, I woke to a faint gonging in the house. One of Dimitri’s alarms going off. Or was that one of Zav’s? I couldn’t remember, but nobody visited at this hour for any good reason.
After rolling out of bed, I stuffed my feet into my boots and grabbed Chopper. My window had a view of both streets leading to our corner as well as the sidewalks. A figure in a dark trench coat stood on the strip of grass on the other side of the sidewalk, looking toward one of the dragon topiaries. Its eyes glowed at him. It was too dark to make out his face or tell if smoke was curling up from the topiary’s snout, a sign that it had sent one of its warning gouts of fire at the intruder.
Whoever it was didn’t have magical blood, not that I could sense, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t trouble. Unfortunately, Zav hadn’t returned during the night. That wasn’t that atypical—it usually took him a while to travel to and from his home world and find the various dragons there—but I worried about Sindari. By now, the magic that let him travel outside of his realm would have run out for the day, forcing him to return. Had Zav found a dragon willing to heal him before that happened? Since Zav had my charm, I had no way to check on Sindari.
As I jogged down the stairs, I almost crashed into Dimitri coming out of his room on the first floor. He carried a wrench.
“Prepared to defend us from home invaders?” I waved at it.
“If necessary. I don’t think you should mock me when you’re wearing combat boots with a… is that a Lord of the Rings nightgown?”
“It’s The Hobbit, thank you, and it has Smaug on it. I thought it would amuse Zav.”
“Does it?”
“It amuses him to take it off me.”
Dimitri curled a lip. “That’s an even more disturbing image than the boots.”
“Maybe it’ll scare off our snoop.”
“There is someone out there then?” Dimitri asked as we headed to the living room window and peeled the curtains open a few inches.
“Yup. That sketchy burglar is scoping out the premises.”
Too bad it wasn’t the thief I wanted to catch. Mr. Trenchcoat had advanced to the sidewalk and moved farther from the topiaries. He was studying the front door and didn’t seem to have noticed our noses pressed to the living room window yet.
A car was parked a couple of houses away, the headlights on and someone sitting in the driver’s seat. Were those the roof lights of a police car?
Dimitri groaned. “It’s that detective that came to the shop.”
“He’s stalking you where you live?”
“Stalking or maybe he gathered the evidence that he needs to arrest me.”
“Maybe he just came to see if we have one of the door knockers on the house.”
We did. Dimitri had recently installed a green one on the front door, even though I’d suggested that the topiaries were sufficient. Zav had also installed numerous alarms around the property lines, including an invisible dome-shaped barrier that automatically flared to life if magical winged creatures flew into the area or an unfamiliar full-blooded magical being attempted to walk onto the property. The assassin had destroyed a few of the defenses when he’d attacked, but Zav had since restored everything.
The detective straightened his back and took a bracing breath.
“He’s coming up,” Dimitri said.
I reached over and rested my hand on an orange ball-shaped salt lamp that Zav had altered to work as the controller for the defenses. As soon as the detective took a step onto the walkway, he ran into the invisible barrier and stumbled backward.
“No, he’s not,” I said cheerfully, as the detective patted the air in confusion.
Dimitri shook his head, looking glum instead of cheerful. “I’m going to get in more trouble for resisting arrest.”
“How are you resisting arrest? He hasn’t made it to the door to read you your rights. And he won’t.”
“I can’t stay in the house forever.”
“No, but you can call Tam and ask her if she can handle the shop today. Get Inga to come in and back her up if there’s trouble. Did you talk to that baker yet? The only way to make this problem go away is to figure out what actually happened—and prove it to the police.”