Page 103 of Fresh Old Bounties

I ignored the last part and answered with: Do you know who they might be? I need their services.

Try this one. I hear he’s the biggest.

He attached a link that took me to an anonymous page in the dark marketplace.

“Ah,” Bagley said in a reminiscent tone. “I see Desmond still likes to dabble.”

My head snapped up so fast it was a minor miracle it didn’t fly right off my neck. “Desmond?” As in Desmond Crane. My accountant?

“Oh, don’t worry about it, dear. You forgot to clean the right corner of the window table.”

I grabbed the cloth and went to wipe the table, more to give myself a way to hide my shock and maelstrom of thoughts than because I thought the surface was actually dirty.

Had Bagley just told me who one of the brokers was?

The thought left me thunderstruck.

Why?

Bagley never did something that didn’t benefit her somehow. Never. I liked to believe the best in people, but I wasn’t so naïve as to think Bagley would have a random change of heart about helping for the sake of it.

Or had she?

No. No way. She must want Crane to suffer in some way and was being sneaky about it by pretending to be accidentally helpful. Judging by Crane’s reputation among the other shop owners, she might’ve given me freebie information simply to get back at him.

Very suspicious. I should definitely be wary and check this gift horse’s mouth.

But I wasn’t going to, because life was short and my savings account not big enough to pay for Grandma’s spellbooks’ information.

Abandoning all pretense, I threw the cloth on the counter and locked the front door.

“You’re never going to grow your business if you keep closing in the middle of the day,” Bagley said as I went into the back.

The moment I was past the bead curtain, I called Ian.

Just because we were mad at him, it didn’t mean we couldn’t gloat.

“I know who one of the brokers is,” I said the moment he accepted the call.

“Oh?”

He sounded cautious, and not at all impressed. It only made me madder. The least he could do was sound amazed that I’d unearthed the information before he had.

“If you don’t want to know, I’m hanging up.” The discomforting thought that I was acting like a churlish ten-year-old crept into my head. I cleared my throat. “Forget that. I’ll tell you if you help me put the fear of everything holy in him so he forks over Grandma’s information and doesn’t sell it to someone else.”

“You want my help?” he asked, still cautious.

“Yup.”

“But you’re still mad at me.”

“I can multitask.”

“And you don’t want me to take him to bounty hunter jail?”

I wondered if the fact that he was asking meant he was willing to take the broker to the bounty hunters, even though an edge in his voice told me he didn’t think it was a good idea.

After all, a broker simply dealt between people. If he arrested Crane, the other brokers in the city would simply take up the slack. And if the bounty hunters took away the next one, another one would fill the spot. And in the meantime, sellers would move to the dark marketplace or who knew where.

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