Burned by Magic (The Baine Chronicles #1)(61)

“Perhaps we’re getting a little off track here.” Fenris, who’d been standing just beyond the door, stepped into the room, drawing all eyes to him.

Foreman Vance raked his black gaze over Fenris’s simple brown tunic. “And just who the hell are you? If you’re looking to get an Enforcer’s license, this sure isn’t the way to do it.”

“My name is Fenris, and I am a close friend of the Chief Mage.” Fenris folded his arms over his broad chest, pinning Vance with a stern gaze. “One of my primary occupations is to serve as eyes and ears to Lord Iannis. I am acting in that capacity today.” His gaze flickered to the paintings on the walls.

Foreman Vance’s ruddy cheeks blanched. “I’ll get rid of those right away –” he began.

“Save it.” I slapped my palm against the desk to get his attention. “I didn’t actually come here to harass you about these paintings – although if you want to keep your job I really suggest you get rid of them.” I smirked, already envisioning the look on Iannis’s face if he ever saw this place. I half hoped Foreman Vance wouldn’t take my warning seriously, just so I could have the pleasure of watching him piss his pants when the Chief Mage came to visit. “We came to question you and your crew about the murders and the drug trafficking.”

Vance sat down in his chair again, lifting his square chin. “Aside from myself and Widler, everyone involved in that is out on assignment. I can’t pull them back in just because you decide to waltz in here unannounced with questions.”

I leaned in and bared my fangs at him. “You all have bracelets, the last time I checked. Call them back.”

“I won’t!” Foreman Vance slammed his fist against the desk, rattling the half-empty coffee cup and the typewriter that sat there. “Captain Galling ordered us to scour the city for information. If he finds out I’ve brought them all in without anything decent to report, he’ll have my hide.”

“Hmph.” I sat back, part of me wanting to push him on it more, but my nose didn’t lie – he was telling the truth about this. “Fine. Then you two need to tell me what you know.”

Vance pressed his fingers to his left temple, his eyes briefly fluttering closed. “Tell her, Widler.”

Widler’s face flushed, and his eyes shifted around the room, looking everywhere but me. “Tell her what?”

I grabbed a fistful of Widler’s shirt and yanked him forward. “I have a pretty good nose,” I snarled, “and it’s especially good at sniffing out rats.”

“I’m not a rat!” Widler growled, yanking himself from my grip. “It’s just… I don’t want to share the gold on this bounty with anyone else.”

I rolled my eyes. “I don’t care about the money, Widler. Just tell me what you know.”

He scowled, shoving his hands into the pockets of his vest. “We caught a deer shifter chewing on the remains of a raven shifter in an alleyway,” he admitted. “She was pretty f*cked in the head.”

“What?” Cold horror curled in my gut, and I stared at Widler in disbelief.

“A deer shifter?” Fenris echoed, shock and disgust evident in his tone as well. “Are you certain?”

Widler snorted. “I’ve been on this job for a long time. I know my shifters, and I know how crazy it sounds, but it’s true.” He shrugged. “Whatever shit she’s on must’ve really f*cked with her head. Guess drugs affect shifters differently than humans. I never heard of drugs turning us into cannibals or anything like that.”

I decided not to point out that a deer shifter eating a raven wasn’t cannibalism, mostly because there wasn’t any point – this was just as awful in its way.

“You found drugs on her?” I demanded.

“Yes.”

“I want a sample.”

“This is our investigation –”

“A sample, and I want to question the suspect.” I pinned Foreman Vance with a glare. “Or I take all your porno paintings down and burn them to ashes, so you can’t even enjoy them from the comfort of your home.”

The Crew Foreman blanched again. “Fine.” He shoved up from his chair, and Fenris and I followed him out of the room. Looked like I was calling the shots around here after all.





Chapter Seventeen




“Well shit,” I muttered as we trotted down the steps of Enforcer’s Guild HQ. “That was a total bust.”

“Not a total bust,” Fenris argued, holding up a little silk bag of powder between his thumb and forefinger – the sample we’d threatened out of Widler and Vance. “We got this, didn’t we?”

I sighed. “True… but I was hoping the suspect would have been more helpful.” She wasn’t, not even remotely. When the guards had brought her into the interrogation room, she’d been limp and glassy-eyed, her body trembling from withdrawal. Hearing about it from Widler and Crew Foreman Vance had been one thing, but seeing it was another, and it shocked the questions right out of me at first. Not that it had mattered – she couldn’t seem to remember much of anything except that she’d gotten the drug from human dealers hanging around the border where Shiftertown and Downtown met.

Part of me itched to go Downtown – the slums and the Black Market were located there, and if ever there was a likely place to find drug dealers that was it. But the other part of me wanted to get this drug to Com and Noria, so they could get it analyzed along with the cerebust I’d given them earlier.