Page 55 of Fresh Old Bounties

“You lived full time with her?”

“Visited during some weekends.” I lifted my nose at him. “I know where you’re going, and it’s not going to work.”

He arched a brow. “Oh?”

“Grandma was too kind, too good a soul to practice dark magic while I wasn’t around. I would’ve felt it.”

“You were a kid.”

“Kids sense some things better than adults.”

His mouth kicked up at the corners. “All right. So, assuming your grandmother didn’t practice dark magic, but that this is still tied up to the current spellbook business.” He gave me a pointed look meant to remind me what he thought about assuming in general. “Could she have owned someone else’s spellbook? Perhaps someone in her family who practiced dark magic?”

I thought of Key’s grandmother’s spellbook hidden in my closet. “Grandma would’ve destroyed it. Unless she didn’t know it contained dark magic spells?”

“I doubt your grandmother was that clueless.”

“Maybe she never opened it. Maybe it’s one of those ornate things with a lock and she didn’t have the key.”

“Where did it go then, after her death? To your father?”

Excellent question. “I’ll have to call Mom again to ask.”

My phone rang. It was Dru.

“The thief is awake.”

FOURTEEN

By the time we got back to the shop, Shane had joined the festivities. I wondered how he’d found out about our problem, since Ian hadn’t touched his phone since we’d left earlier.

“Boss,” Shane said. He was sitting on the counter by the sink, and I wondered if Dru had told him about the kraken.

Mark the berserker was leaning against the wall by the window, and Dru had brought a stool from the shop to sit in a corner. The thief sat on the floor in the other corner, still tied up and glaring at everyone with defiance.

Considering Rufus was sitting two inches away, growling in a scary rumble, I was unwillingly impressed.

Fluffy trotted up to us from the shop—someone had pulled down the blinds—and I petted her absentmindedly.

“Can you do something about that?” Mark the berserker pointed at the robber’s face. “It’s giving me a headache.”

I rolled up my sleeves. “Sure.”

“Touch me and die, witch,” the robber said.

Rufus snarled.

I grabbed a spray bottle from one of the cupboards and sprayed moon water on the man’s face.

“What the heck,” he sputtered. “What was that?”

“It helps for cleansing,” I explained. Then I pressed my hand to his forehead, calling on my magic.

Let this glamour come to an end.

Magic thrummed down my arm, concentrating on the palm of my hand. Like electricity making connections, it jumped from atom of moon water to atom of skin, burning away the remnants of the glamour potion.

“Oops,” I said, veering forward, my legs turning into instant noodles—the cooked, floppy kind. The spell had taken a lot more power than expected to destroy the glamour. That had been one strong potion.

---