Grave Visions (Alex Craft, #4)(79)

I didn’t fight to help carry the tree. I was too busy keeping my feet from dragging.

We’d reached the parking lot when a shrill beeping issued from my phone.

I had signal.

I dug the phone out of my pocket. The smeared mud residue made it hard to read the screen, but I had a voice mail I’d missed by fewer than five minutes. It was probably a potential client who I wouldn’t be able to schedule an appointment for, at least not until this case was solved and I had my independent status secured. Falin was loading the sapling into the car, and I considered listening to the message later, maybe after I felt a little less shaky and had caught my breath, but I didn’t have anything else to do.

The signal kept dropping, so it took me two tries to get the message to play.

“Lady Craft,” a vaguely familiar voice said in the recording, “you told me to call if the hobgoblin returned to the bar. He’s here now,” he said. Then the message ended.

I glanced at the time stamp. It had now been ten minutes since the message was left. Oh please let Tommy Rawhead still be there. I hit redial on the number.

“Eternal Bloom, come in and let us enchant you,” the voice that answered said.

Cute. But hopefully not accurate.

The person who’d answered was male, but I wasn’t sure if it was the bartender who’d called me.

“Yes, hi. May I speak to . . .” I trailed off. The fae had never given me his name. Would it be rude to ask for the satyr who tended bar? “Uh, well, that is, this is Alex Craft. I’m returning a call from this number.”

“Oh, my lady,” the voice on the other side of the line said, confirming that he was the same bartender. “I was beginning to think you didn’t get my message.” He sounded as if he would have been relieved if his message had somehow gotten lost in the nether-space of cell reception.

“Is the hobgoblin still there?” I asked, ignoring the satyr’s obvious discomfort. I put the phone on speaker and climbed into the car, motioning to Falin to listen as well.

“No. He caught sight of the current clientele and turned tail. There are agents in the bar today.” The way he said agents let me know he was none-too-pleased with the FIB presence.

“Did they go after him?”

There was silence on the other side of the phone for a moment before the bartender said, “One is gone.”

So, maybe. I wanted to growl out a frustrated remark about him paying more attention, but that would be rude. He’d kept an eye out like I’d asked and he’d called me. He hadn’t had to. I hadn’t offered him anything.

I forced myself to take a deep breath so my voice came out calm, even, when I asked, “This hobgoblin, was he wearing a cap that appeared to be leaking blood?”

“Yeah, pretty nasty. He freaks people out when he’s in here.”

I bet.

Falin had started the car while I was talking, and now he careened out of the parking lot. He dug his waterlogged phone out of his pocket. It was, of course, still not functioning.

“You’ve been very helpful,” I said, taking the phone off speaker so that I could hear and be heard above the roar of wind. Talking on a cell phone in a car with the top down going way too fast on curvy roads was not fun, but time was short and I wasn’t about to ask Falin to slow down. “If you see him again, call me back. I owe you a boon.” As I said the words, I felt the debt take hold, but at least with a boon, I could refuse certain manners of repayment if I didn’t agree with the favor asked.

“My lady,” he said as way of acknowledging my words, and he sounded amazed. I guessed not too many Sleagh Maiths offered boons to independent lesser fae.

We both disconnected and I passed my phone to Falin. He shot me a frown.

“You have to stop giving away debts,” he said as he dialed. I was more than a little nervous with him driving one-handed at the speeds he was pushing the car, but I held my tongue and instead shrugged at his comment. The movement transformed into a shiver, and I sank lower in my seat, dragging the glamoured blanket tighter around my shoulders.

“He was helpful. And if this information helps us catch Tommy Rawhead, it will be worth the boon.” And if it didn’t, well, it might not matter.





Chapter 25





The agent had, in fact, followed Tommy Rawhead, but it took several calls for Falin to confirm it. Unfortunately, as the agent had been told only to detain fae matching Rawhead’s and Greenteeth’s descriptions, and as she couldn’t get in touch with Falin to clarify her orders, she’d decided to trail Rawhead instead of attempting to arrest him in a place heavily populated by humans. By the time Falin got the agent on the phone and learned she was actively following Rawhead through the streets of the Magic Quarter, we were only minutes away.

Another call got backup headed to her position. While fae typically avoided negative public attention, like a messy public arrest, the FIB would make an exception for this case. Falin pulled onto the main strip of the Quarter. If everything went as planned, the actual takedown would likely occur before we arrived on the scene, but Falin didn’t want to take any chances of Rawhead slipping his tail.

My phone rang.

“Sir,” an uncertain female voice said when Falin answered. “I think we have a problem.”

Oh no.