Bound by Magic (The Baine Chronicles #2)(5)

Curious as to what he was doing here, I grabbed my drink and burger, which Cray had just delivered, and crossed the room. As I drew closer, I saw that Lakin was engrossed in a case file, which must have been why he didn’t hear me approach. Even more interesting. Why would he bring his work to a place like this?

“Hey Lakin,” I greeted him, and his head shot up as I slid into the seat across from him. I grinned at the startled expression on his rawboned face. “Long time no see.”

“No kidding.” Lakin’s reddish-yellow eyes gleamed in the darkness as he regarded me, a small smile playing on his lips. “I think the last time I saw you, you were a few seconds away from punching Chieftain Baine in the face.”

I snorted. I’d met Lakin, the new Shiftertown Inspector and Roanas’s replacement, over a month ago, when I’d stopped by the Shiftertown Cemetery to say goodbye to Roanas and make my peace with his death. As it turned out, he’d received an emergency response call from my aunt Mafiela, the Chieftain of the Jaguar Clan, and I’d decided to tag along. My aunt and I had nearly come to blows during our impromptu family reunion, but I’d gained some valuable intel regarding the case I was working so I didn’t regret it.

“So, what brings you here to the Twilight, and with your work, no less?” I gestured at the file on the table in front of him, which he’d closed when I sat down. “Figured you’d prefer the quiet of your office.”

Lakin rolled his eyes. “I would, if it were actually quiet over there,” he said. “The residents of Shiftertown find excuses to knock on my door at any hour of the day. I figured Rowanville would be a good place to escape them.”

“Well I don’t know if you’ll find peace and quiet, but I’m sure nobody from Shiftertown will think to look for you here.” Shiftertown was the section of Solantha where the different shifter clans resided, while most of the shifters that lived in this part of town were clanless. Rowanville was the melting pot of the city, the only place where shifters, humans and mages lived side-by-side, so a Shiftertown resident in need of an Inspector wouldn’t be coming here to find him.

“Are you going to tell me what this current case is about?” I asked before taking a big bite out of my burger. I’d been looking for company, and now that I’d found it I wasn’t planning on going anywhere.

Lakin eyed me for a moment, a debate going on behind his yellow-red shifter eyes. “I’ve actually been doing some more digging into the silver murders,” he said, tapping the file. “This is the file Roanas had started on the matter, the one you asked Mr. Genhard to hand over to me. I’ve added a bit to it since then.”

“No kidding.” My eyes widened as I glanced down at the file – it was a good deal thicker than it was when I’d sneaked it out of Roanas’ house and given it to Comenius to hold onto. Roanas had only just begun to dig into the silver murders before he was killed, so the details in the file had been pretty sparse when I’d recovered it. “What have you dug up so far?”

Lakin pressed his lips together, then opened the file and pulled out a photograph. “I found out that your Enforcer colleague, Sillara Tarenan, had a human live-in partner named Narina who lives in Rowanville,” he said, sliding the photograph across the table. “I went to speak to her earlier, to find out if she knew anything that would explain why Sillara was targeted.”

I picked up the photo of Sillara’s lover, my heart sinking a little as I studied the smiling, heart-shaped face of a young woman with flowing pale hair. I had a feeling she wasn’t smiling like that anymore.

Like me, Sillara had been an Enforcer, and she’d been one of the earliest silver poisoning victims. She and I hadn’t been close, but we’d been friendly and she was damn good at her job. Her murder stood out because she was the only shifter from Rowanville to be targeted, so it made sense for Lakin to be digging into her case. An old anger filled me at the senseless loss – if I ever got my hands on Petros Yantz, the bastard who’d organized the murders, I’d make sure he suffered for a long, long time.

“Did you learn anything?” I asked, handing the photo back to him.

“Nothing concrete,” Lakin admitted, nursing his drink – a cup of coffee, judging by the scent wafting from it. I winced as he brought the cup to his lips – the coffee here was terrible. “But she did tell me that Sillara was involved in an important investigation.”

I sat up straight. “What kind of investigation?”

“That’s the thing – her partner doesn’t know. She says Sillara didn’t talk much about her work at home. However, she also told me that Sillara had been incredibly stressed in the weeks before her death – she’d toss and turn in their bed at night and was always on edge.”

“Sounds like she was dealing with something big, then. Something that Yantz didn’t want her to uncover.” I forced down the anger that threatened to rise in my throat at the mention of Yantz’s name – stewing about it would do me no good right now.

“That’s what I’m thinking,” Lakin said darkly. “My next move is to try and figure out what she was working on… but I’m not sure how cooperative the Enforcer’s Guild will be about turning her files over to me.”

“How about we both head on over there tomorrow?” I offered, excited at the prospect of doing something useful on this case. “I can twist some arms for you and help get what you need.”