“Kate—Oh, excuse me, I mean, Detective Prospero,” she said, giving me a once-over that left me feeling like I’d come up lacking. Her seductive voice twined through the room like smoke. She sashayed toward us on one high heel and one thick-soled men’s dress shoe.
When I’d told Morales that Aphrodite was half-female and half-male, I’d meant it literally. The left side of the face was perfectly made up with a shimmery nude eye, bold black eyeliner, and half a mouth lacquered in bold red lipstick. The other half bore carefully cultivated stubble, a bold, unwaxed brow, and not a single lick of makeup.
The weird part was that her lady side was as beautiful and conventionally feminine as her right side was ruggedly handsome and conventionally male. The gender differences extended down her entire body from the clothing to the body hair to the way she was graceful on the feminine left and confident on the masculine right. But to me, the most disconcerting feature was how the voice would change depending on which gender the Hierophant chose at the time.
When she caught sight of Morales, her cat eyes flared with prurient interest. “Who’s your friend?” she asked me in a feline tone, but she kept her eyes on him.
Morales took her hand and bent over it like a chivalrous knight. “Special Agent Drew Morales, MEA.”
Aphrodite’s eyes flared and her lips jutted forward into a pout. “Whatever have I done to deserve the interest of the Magic Enforcement Agency?”
“Nothing yet,” I said. She looked over at me grudgingly as she continued to hold Morales’s hand. “The BPD is backlogged with the Blue Moon coming, so we’re taking the case to help out.”
She shot a terse glance at my partner as he not-so-subtly pulled his hand from her grip. “I must admit the idea gives me some comfort. Forgive me, Detective, but I’ve had somewhat disappointing dealings with Babylon’s finest in the past.”
“Uh-huh,” I said.
“You also remember I was friends with your mother?” she asked with a sidelong glance.
My mom and Aphrodite were whores together back in the day. Then the O’s were still controlled by Matahari Jenkins from a temple closer to the center of Votary territory. Word on the street was she and Uncle Abe had been sort of an item. Aphrodite had been Matahari’s top moneymaker, and my mom had been number two. As far as I knew there hadn’t been much competition between the two—Aphrodite’s sacred status had given her a huge edge over my mom. So they had been friendly, but not best buds, either.
Anyway, Mom died a decade ago, and since then Aphrodite had taken over for Matahari and built this new temple.
“You were also friends with my uncle,” I added.
“Still am. Poor dear,” she said, batting her lashes. “How is he faring in prison?”
“I wouldn’t know.”
Our eyes met and held. Despite the somewhat disconcerting experience of looking into one heavily made-up eye and one naked one, I held her gaze steady. The look seemed to communicate that without her fondness for my mother, whom she respected, my poor standing with Uncle Abe would have prevented this conversation from happening at all.
“I appreciate you speaking with us,” I said diplomatically. “This shouldn’t take much of your time.”
She seemed to accept that. “So let’s get to it, shall we?”
Morales pulled out his pad to take notes. “Ms. Johnson—”
“Aphrodite, please.”
“We’d like to ask a few questions about the break-in?”
“Of course,” she said, motioning to a seating area arranged around a fire pit on the perimeter of the courtyard.
To get there, we skirted the large pergola, which dominated the center of the courtyard. Underneath it was Aphrodite’s infamous garden.
Leafy moonseed vines with their deadly bright red drupes climbed up pergola’s wooden columns. Oleander shrubs, with their white flowers and fatally toxic leaves, dotted the borders of the bed. The purple petals of devil’s cherry and wolfsbane added deceptively cheerful spots of color. The green and purplish starbursts of castor bean leaves with their fuzzy red pom-poms added depth to the display, as well as access to the deadly poison ricin. And in the very center, the wide branches of a Brugmansia plant with its large, drooping angel trumpet flowers. Those celestial petals contained a triple punch of the toxins atropine, hyoscyamine, and scopolamine.
As we passed, I gave the garden a wide berth, not wanting to accidentally prick myself on the deadly thorns or get any poisonous sap on my skin. But Morales stopped next to a plant bearing bright red berries. He reached a hand toward it, but I slapped it away. “That’s a rosary pea,” I hissed under my breath.
“So?” He frowned.
“The seeds contain a poison called abrin,” Aphrodite explained. “It causes severe vomiting, liver failure, bladder failure, bleeding from the eyes, and convulsive seizures before it kills you.”
“If it’s that deadly, why do you have it in your garden?” he demanded.
The corner of her mouth lifted. “So your partner didn’t already tell you about my revenge garden?” She glanced at me with a raised brow. When I shook my head, she chuckled.
Morales frowned. “Revenge garden?”
She leaned forward, allowing the bodice on the left side of her body to show an impressive amount of one-sided cleavage. “Every plant in that bed is lethal. I nurture that garden like a child to warn my enemies of what will happen if they cross me.”
I slapped my hands together. “All righty, then. Let’s get to the robbery, shall we?”
Aphrodite crossed her arms. “I already filed a report with the officers who responded to the call last night.”
“Yes, we have that.” I held the report file up for her to see. “But they were working it as a regular robbery. We’re MEA, so our concern is making sure the potions that were stolen don’t end up on the streets.”
She frowned. “What can I tell you to help?”
“First, we’ll need a list of all the potions that were taken,” Morales said. “Including their formulae, if possible.”
She laughed. “I can give you the list, but I’m not about to reveal the recipes for my formulae.”
“Without the recipe we won’t be able to know if any potions we find are the same as the ones taken.”
She pursed her lips. “Just read the energy signature.”
“Not possible,” Morales said. “We don’t have an Adept who can do that on the team.”