Page 64 of The Fantastic Fluke

I set our plates on the table and Fluke climbed into his chair, sniffing curiously at the pile of pancakes. I hadn’t tried them as I cooked, but they’d be okay, right?

There were butter and syrup in the fridge, and enough of those could cover a multitude of cooking sins. I coated breakfast liberally with both, cut a piece of pancake, and looked up at Fluke. “Here’s to us, buddy. Hope I didn’t make the worst breakfast ever.”

They were the most delicious pancakes I’d had in my entire life, and we both cleaned our plates.

Winning.

Just as I set the dishwasher running, Fluke gave a yip and turned to the door, where a decidedly ruffled Gideon was standing. He wasn’t wearing his hat or coat, and his longish hair looked windblown.

“Are you okay?” I rushed over, but of course, there was little I could do even if something was wrong.

He gave an exaggerated shrug. “Why wouldn’t I be?”

At that, I pulled back and lifted my brows in my best “excuse me?” glare. It worked.

“I’m fine,” he assured. “I can tell you how to decode your father’s cypher, but I don’t think we’ll learn anything from it.”

“You—” That was when my brain engaged, and I realized. Gideon hadn’t gone to a living person for help. He’d gone to the source: my father. To threaten or cajole, or however it was one forced a ghost to do their bidding. Threaten, I thought. Gideon wasn’t much of a cajoler. “He didn’t know?”

He waved it away with a sigh. “He’s got theories, but no. He doesn’t actually know a damn thing.” He turned and looked at the books on the table, almost like he wanted to kick them. “I guess that means those won’t uncover anything either.”

“You never know. Like you said, I’m smarter than him, and you know more.” I had no idea why my father being useless had inspired me. Maybe it wasn’t that at all. Maybe it was the pancakes, or the fact that Gideon had gone and threatened my father in the quest to keep the bad guys from hunting me down and killing me.

It didn’t matter why. All that mattered was that for now, I had almost everything I wanted, and I was going to damn well cling to it with both hands for as long as the world let me.

Chapter Twenty-Four

By Tuesday morning I wasn’t feeling quite as hopeful.

We’d spent most of the previous day trying to find information on my predecessors, but it wasn’t easy. It had all happened in a time before the internet, when people weren’t as easy to track. Some information from back then had been digitized, but most had not, and it seemed that what I needed hadn’t been important enough to make the cut.

We found articles on the murders of Meredith and another woman, and I let Gideon read the ones on my mother’s death so he could see how similar the stories were. It hadn’t helped.

So on Tuesday morning I went to work as usual. Beez was working for me on Wednesday and Saturday, which was going to be absolutely amazing. Two whole days a week to do whatever I wanted. I didn’t even have to train her, since she’d filled in for me occasionally in the past.

At least for the first week, I intended to take full advantage, sleep in, and not go to the shop at all. Let Dad rail at Beez; she couldn’t hear him anyway.

I was still rearranging the new releases when the first customer of the morning arrived. No surprise, since Tuesday was always—

“David?” Okay, that was a surprise. Tuesdays had more customers than average, but he’d never been one of them. But there was David, with his sheepish smile that was practically made to be on camera aimed at me on a Tuesday morning.

Oh no. He wasn’t there to ask me out again, was he? I glanced around surreptitiously for Gideon, but he was nowhere in sight.

David, still smiling, bit his lower lip and literally—I fucking kid you not—scuffed his foot on the carpet. “I know, not my usual day. And I’m sure you’re busy, but if you didn’t mind, I wanted to ask you some things about last Sunday.”

Questions about last Sunday?

Oh. Questions about Kurt. My stomach did a little flip. “Sure. Is this, um, in a professional capacity?”

The smile turned into a wince. “I’m sorry, but it is.”

“I thought you were on a stakeout,” I said, and only then realized how ridiculous that sounded. He was looking for someone who had killed at least one mage. Maybe someone who had killed Kurt. I thought back to that day, trying to pick out any notion of foul play I had seen, but nothing stood out. “Sorry, none of my business. Ongoing investigation or whatever, and I’m not a cop or a member of the Aureum.”

He offered a tiny smile and motioned toward the couch. “It’s okay. And I can tell you a little. I’m not a cop. The problem is that there isn’t that much to tell.” He sat across from me and continued, “There were two murders before last week, and your man in the coffee shop was number three. When examined by dead mages, we determined that all three had their magic burned out. Like they tried to channel so much that it literally killed them.”

That didn’t make any sense. “Kurt was ordering coffee. He wasn’t using magic. Not even something subtle like social. I’d have known.”

“That’s right,” David agreed, pulling pen and notebook out of his pocket. Well that made things feel painfully formal. Maybe that was good; it would keep me from thinking of him as the goofy guy with the penchant for mediocre thrillers. “You’re social. Class two, correct?”

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