Kindling the Moon (Arcadia Bell #1)(51)

Kar Yee drew up her mouth as she stroked Mr. Piggy. “You are the most guarded person I’ve ever met, Cady. I think you have some black luck following you around.”

“You have no idea,” I muttered.

“You might be unlucky, but I don’t think you’re a bad seed, or I wouldn’t be in business with you, no matter how long we’ve known each other.”

That was true. Money was a very serious matter to her.

“But I think you need to get rid of what’s dragging you down,” she said. “Tear it out by the roots and be done with it. You should be happy, enjoying life.” She held up her hand and began holding up fingers. “One, you have a good job—”

“I don’t know if I’d call it good, exactly.”

“It’s good, trust me. And two, you are a smart and fair sorcerer—”

“Sometimes.”

“—and three, you are very pretty, for a white American.”

“Gee, thanks.”

“Your life should be better than it is.”

Kar Yee always had a way of cutting something down to its simplest form. She was right: my life should be better. And I was unlucky. It wasn’t my fault, but it wouldn’t get cleared up by itself.

“Kar Yee,” I argued.

“Don’t ‘Kar Yee’ me. Just listen and make the right changes. When you come back to get Mr. Piggy and return to work, I expect to see you smiling.”

I sighed and watched her run her nails through Mr. Piggy’s spiny coat. “I hope I come back smiling too.” I mainly just hoped I came back.

“Only one week away from the bar, yes?”

“Give or take a couple of days.”

“One week,” she said firmly.

Reaching for Mr. Piggy, I made a short clucking noise near the side of his face while trying to dampen the small but insistent worry that it might be the last time I would see him.

20

When the light turned green, Lon sped through the intersection and put some quick distance between our rental and the car behind us.

“Nobody’s trailing us,” I grumbled.

“Hmph.”

It was overcast and dreary in Portland, which I normally found rather pleasant. People complain about the lack of sun in the Pacific Northwest, but I never really minded it when I lived in Seattle with Kar Yee during college. Today, however, it put a damper on an already grim situation.

I was worried about meeting the evidence guy and trying to persuade him to give us the talon. On top of that, I was nervous around Lon. Because the flight was overbooked, he ended up sitting in coach while I was in first class. I wasn’t used to sitting up front; he was, so I offered to trade with him, but he refused. So we weren’t able to talk on the flight.

We were, however, able to talk on the ride to the airport, and we were certainly able to now, but he was back to his tight-lipped communication style. Eyes on the road, short answers, nothing unnecessary. We still hadn’t breathed a word about what happened between us the day before; I was left wondering if he regretted it, and now it was awkward. It made me more miserable than it should have, but I was too proud to do anything about it. So we sat in silence. No small talk about Jupe, no generic comments about the weather, nothing.

And that’s exactly how we spent the drive to the evidence warehouse.

After handing over our IDs to a man behind a thick glass window—I used an ID from an alternate fake identity unconnected with Arcadia Bell, just to be extra careful—we sat on metal benches inside a white waiting room. A few minutes later, a supervisor came and we were escorted down a sad, gray hallway. We passed by a door that opened into an enormous warehouse, as big as a football field and lined with long rows of shelves. Confiscated and stolen property, the officer explained. Things that people could reclaim after they were no longer needed in a case; if left unclaimed, the goods were eventually sold off in a state auction.

The officer led us to a much smaller warehouse for sensitive evidence. A row of plastic seats sat against the wall by the door. In front of us was a ceiling-to-floor cage with a yellow sign that read authorized personnel only. Inside the cage were several evidence-processing desks; beyond them stood rows of tall warehouse shelving filled with white boxes of multiple shapes and sizes, all labeled with green and yellow stickers.

We took a seat while the officer called out to someone sitting at one of the desks. “You got visitors, Wesley.”

A short, middle-aged demon emerged from a door in the locked cage. Lon’s contact. We stood to greet him.

“Danny Wesley?” Lon asked.

“You must be Mr. Butler.”

They shook hands, and Lon introduced me as my sign-in name, Cindy. He rolled his eyes a little as he said it. I tried to give him a sharp look in return, but had to quickly change over to a smile as the evidence technician looked me over. My skunk-streaked hair was tucked under a short brown wig.

“There’s a place where we can talk,” the technician said, looking back at the other people mulling about inside the cage.

We followed him into a small room with two break tables and an old vending machine that dispensed coffee and cocoa. Sitting down at one of the tables, we all looked at each other warily.

“So, Officer Wesley,” I began.

“I’m a civilian. Just Danny is fine.” He interlaced his fingers on the table in front of him, sitting up stiffly. “The captain said you guys need a favor, and I’m to do anything in my power to help you. So, what is it that you need to know?”