Page 92 of Sigils & Spells

I knocked on the door. “Hello? Jonah? Anyone in there? Hello?”

No one answered.

That was good. Right?

I pressed my ear against the cool fiberglass and listened.

Nothing.

I hoped that was good.

I pulled out my phone and called the PED.

“Detective Kelley has gone for the day. Would you like to leave a message?”

“I may have found something of importance in Jonah Budney’s case. Detective Kelley may … want to take a look at it.”

Five minutes later Aidan returned my call with “What did you find?”

“A locked door with the unidentified magic and my own.”

“A. Locked. Door.” He snapped out each word.

“I wanted to help. I couldn’t stop thinking about the Budneys and the backpack and the charm and how your team’s magic didn’t find it and the shifters didn’t scent it and I was worried I’d missed some—”

He cut in with a brusque, “Where are you?”

“At the construction site where we found the backpack.” I seriously hoped he wouldn’t arrest me for breaking and entering. “In the basement.”

“Stay where you are. Do not touch anything. We’ll be right there.” He hung up.

I debated whether or not to call Dad and warn him he might need to bail me out.

CHAPTER5

“They didn’t arrest me.”I stirred another splash of caramel creamer into my mug, then took a sip of steaming hot coffee, relishing its heady aroma. “It was no big deal.”

It had been. I’d never been so afraid in my life, especially during Detective Harding’s interrogation. Detective Kelley had listened in stony silence while Harding hammered away at everything I said until I was tripping over my words. His blatant skepticism about the man with the suitcase actually being there nearly brought me to tears. A female detective with Kingston’s Robbery/Homicide, a uniformed officer, and another plainclothes officer (who may have told me what division he was with but I couldn’t remember) also questioned me about my actions. It was a harrowing experience I never wanted to repeat.

I took a seat across from my dad at the spindle-legged breakfast table a great-aunt had given my parents when they’d first married. Somehow I had inherited the square pine table after their divorce. It had dozens of nicks and scratches but the inlaid wood remained lovely.

“Marin,” he said, the mild reproach in that single word reduced me to a surly teenager.

“What?”

“No big deal? You broke into that building.” The prematurely white hair that I’d inherited from his mother had skipped over Gabriel Girard. His sleek black hair only had a strand or two of silver. No wrinkles creased his face—even when exasperated with me. Naturals often guessed him a decade (or two) younger than his fifty-eight years. “You are a business owner. A member of some regard in this community. What were you thinking?”

“I just wanted to help. I thought— ”

“You didn’t think. You get an idea in your head and” –he stabbed his index finger against the tabletop three times in quick succession, hammering in his point— “damn the consequence. You have the same bull-dogged persistence as your mother.”

I rolled my eyes. The woman made a living manipulating people’s minds with her illusion magic. I was nothing like my mother.

“Dad, no one’s going to find out.”

He gave me a flat stare.

I wouldn’t mention all the officers whohadseen me last night, it would just prove his point.

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