“For your information, that position has already been taken,” I replied. I didn’t need to say what cocoa-serving pain in the ass had stepped up to fill it. We all knew, evidenced by the lack of follow-up. Gillian was going to change the world, one magnificent cocoa at a time.
A chair scraped against the floor. “I’m going to need at least two pots of tea to get through all these requests,” Bibbi said, sounding frazzled. “You’d think Marvin had completely closed up shop the way these smaller requests keep piling up lately. Why are they even coming here?”
“Maybe Marvin is looking to cut back,” Zab said. “Such a greedy jerk that I didn’t think I’d ever see the day, but he’s been getting lazier and lazier every month, it seems.”
A tingle spread over my skin.
“How many do you have?” Hawk asked.
“Oh, I hadn’t realized you were back,” Bibbi said.
No one probably had. No footsteps, no smell. It was as if he could disguise his entire presence when he wanted, except somehow I still sensed him.
“Too many to count,” Bibbi said.
I kept my head back, rag on my eyes, focusing so hard on ignoring his presence that it was nearly all I could think about.
Stop it. Why do you have to focus only on him if he’s anywhere around? It was embarrassing. I was a pathetic loser, and there were important things to ponder, like angels and demons who seemed equally evil, invisible monsters, and people long dead.
Dead people. Everyone that had worked with my mother was long gone, and there were very few witches and warlocks that were born in Rest. And pop-ups, as they called them, typically didn’t have a lot of magic.
So how was Marvin keeping the factory stocked with enough witches and warlocks? Or had he kept it stocked before, when, from all appearances, he was losing ground now?
I yanked the rag off my eyes, sitting up. “Whimsy witches die young, typically. That’s established. And pop-ups aren’t that common, right?”
“Yes,” Hawk answered.
The entire room settled their attention on me, as if they sensed something was coming.
“How many Whimsy witches and warlocks are typically born in Xest?”
There were a few head shakes, as no one had an answer.
“I don’t think that many,” Hawk said, walking closer.
“So if they aren’t getting imported, and there aren’t that many to begin with, and they die young, how’s he been keeping that factory stocked with enough magic? Has there been an influx of pop-ups, or has Marvin been doing something else?” I asked.
Everyone was sitting upright.
“If there’s someone sneaky enough to steal magic somehow, it would be him,” Musso said, walking in the room. “I never did trust that guy.”
“From what I read, Xest has a certain amount of intrinsic magic that’s inherent to the place, correct?” I asked.
“Yes, it does.” Hawk was right by the couch now. “And there’s typically been a balance. Dread is not balanced.”
“Maybe Marvin did something that threw off that balance?” I looked about the room, trying to read the reactions. No one was saying much, and no one looked overly sold.
“Is he smart enough to pull off something big enough to shift the balance in Xest to create a monster like that?” Zab asked.
“It’s a long shot, but we don’t have anything else,” Hawk said. “Zab, send out a newsflash to those two idiot brothers. I want them here in the next twenty or else.”
Hawk walked into the office, Zab right behind him.
“Who are those two idiot brothers?” I asked Oscar, who was standing and getting ready to follow as well.
“You call them Spike and Braid—they’re the two that brought you over. They do most of Marvin’s collecting. They’d know how many pop-ups have been coming in. They’re idiots, but they puddle-jump really well for low-level Middlings.”
Spike and Braid were outside the office nineteen minutes later, arguing with each other.
“What do you think they’re fighting about?” Zab asked. The two of us stood in front of the plate glass, watching the brothers as they shouted and did a lot of finger pointing.
“Not sure, but it does give the appearance of guilt. Problem with those two is they might be guilty of so many different things that it could have nothing to do with this.” I sipped some tea, since I didn’t dare drink cocoa within sight of Bibbi these days, even though Gillian was still at work and it was probably poison-free.
“They better not have screwed us over,” Bibbi said. “I say we leave them out there for a while until one of them freezes and the other cracks.”
I glanced back at Bibbi, so nice and innocent when I first met her, and saw the glint of rage and steel in her eyes. She might’ve been one of the toughest people in Xest, masquerading as this cute chick I called a friend.
“She’s a little scary, isn’t she?” Zab whispered, noticing my attention.
“Just a little, but she likes us, thankfully. We probably don’t want to get on her bad side, though.”
Bibbi just laughed, thinking we were kidding. Or maybe not.
Hawk walked back into the offices, scanning the place until his gaze narrowed on the window. “What are those idiots doing?”
“They don’t appear to want to come in,” Zab said.
We’d been watching them bickering back and forth for a good five minutes already.
Hawk walked to the door and held it open for them. They stopped talking the second he did. Braid nodded to Spike; Spike then nodded to Braid, as they silently argued who was going to go inside first.
“Inside.” Hawk pointed at the bench along the wall.
Braid lost the fight, walking in first. The two of them took a seat, whispering things to each other that appeared to be a continuation of their argument, if their wrinkled-up faces and jerking movements meant anything.
Hawk let them continue to fight it out for a minute until Braid turned to Hawk, his eyes scanning the rest of us, as if he were determining how bad their odds were.
“I don’t know what you were told, but we didn’t do anything. We had nothing to do with her.” Braid pointed to me. “Or the gangs or any of the evil shit happening. We know our place. We stick to the small stuff. This ain’t small stuff.”
“This is going to be easier than expected,” Zab said.
“How many Whimsy witches and warlocks have you brought over in the last six months?” Hawk asked.
“That’s why we’re here?” Braid squinted.
“Answer the question,” Hawk said.
They went back to looking at each other, as if there was a trap here that they couldn’t spot yet.
“I don’t care if it’s two or twenty. There is no wrong reply. Just answer,” Hawk said, stepping closer to them.
I was itching to get into the fray and start interrogating them myself. Their fear seemed to be focused mostly on Hawk, and my instinct told me to let it stay there. There was plenty of talk around Xest about Hawk, not that anyone whispered the rumors to me. There were reasons Hawk cleared the sidewalk like no one else in this place, even if I didn’t know them.
What the hell was Hawk that he could call anyone in and they’d come running? He wasn’t completely human, as evidenced by the creature he could become. This was a very good reason why I should never have kissed him and enjoyed it. It was always a good idea to know if the person you were clinging to like life depended on it was even a human.