Page 30 of Shadow Seeking

I thought about the mandrake root, which I’d left at the office. “Say, if I show you something, can you tell me what kind of spell was cast on it? It’s a mandrake root that’s been…altered? Tainted?”

Penn cut into her waffle, then nodded. “I can try. I’ve got a real feel for mandrake. Bring it by the shop today and I’ll take a look.”

“What time do you have open? I don’t want to interrupt your readings.”

She glanced in her date book. “If you come by at 1:30, I’ll have time. I can pencil you in.”

“Sounds good,” I said.

We finished our breakfast and then, after arming the security code, we headed out for the day.

As I entered the office,Sophia held up a handful of envelopes.

“Mail call!” She beamed. “I finally got Gater Joe to pay for the work we did two months ago. I told him I’d call animal control on him and he sent us a cashier’s check.”

“Great! And we donotwork with him again. There’s nothing funny about charging people to scare victims with alligators. So—” I stopped as Carson bounced in from his office. “At work already?”

“Lots to do. Hey, good news, I hacked into Letty’s computer and her laptop. They’re ready for you to look at. I made a preliminary examination of both and have several things for you to look at.”

Impressed, I clapped him on the back. “Good work. Okay, since we have things to go over, staff meeting in the conference room at eight-thirty.” I turned back to Sophia. “Any appointments today?”

She shook her head. “Nope. I scheduled a couple for next week that can wait, given we have a couple of cases on board, already.”

I headed back to my office to get ready for the meeting.

My morning routine was to stop at Sophia’s desk, then turn on my computer, scan the news, look through the mail, and getready for the staff meeting. Almost everyday we met, even if it was only for ten to fifteen minutes. It helped solidify our team, giving people a feeling that what they did was important. And it was.

There was nothing new in the mail, so I headed into the meeting carrying my tablet, coffee, and a notebook. While I often took notes on my tablet, I loved the feeling of writing down notes with a pen. I slid into my chair, my eyes widening at the cupcakes on the table.

“All right, who made these?” I sniffed, smelling lemon.

“I did,” Orik said as he entered the room. “I had to make some for our eldest’s home room party, so I made a couple dozen extra to bring to work.

I reached for one and bit into it, melting at the creamy lemon taste of the frosting. “Oh, so good.” I caught a crumb off my chin and popped it in my mouth. “I could eat so many of these I’d get sick.”

“Me too,” Dante said, eating half of a cupcake in one bite. “Good way to start a gloomy morning,” he added.

When we were all gathered and had our coffee and cupcakes, Carson spoke up.

“I managed to break into Letty’s computer and laptop. I found some interesting things. Letty was playing out on the Dark Web, searching for information on demons. She was part of a chat group that focused on summoning them into this realm.”

“What? Why would she…”

“The chatroom is called Brim Fire. The chat belongs to an underground organization looking to open the world to Demonkin. I peeked in on some of the things she posted in the forums and all her posts sound…hesitant. Like she was trying to fit in, but couldn’t pull it off.” Carson grimaced. “They’re a formof hate group, seeking to purge the world by turning it over to the Demonkin.”

“That’s not good,” Dante said.

“Yeah. They don’t just preach their views; theyacton them. They’re suspected in several cases where demons appeared throughout the country. I suspect Letty, being an expert in demonology, was trying to find out all she could about them.” Carson narrowed his eyes.

“Okay, so…Letty pretends to be a member. Maybe they found out she wasn’t who she was claiming to be?” I said. “Is there an offline chapter near here?”

“From what I can tell, there’s a Seattle branch, but I don’t have an address yet for it. I have feelers out, though.”

“She definitely had enough books about the subject, so I guess she put on a good show.” I frowned. “Did you find out anything else about her?”

Carson opened Letty’s laptop and fired it up. He tapped a few keys and the wallpaper appeared, with a few icons splattered across it. There were the usual programs you’d expect—a word processing program, several school software programs. There appeared to be nothing unusual, especially for a work computer.

“Did you examine it for any hidden documents?” I asked.

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