And maybe if I kept repeating that over and over in my head, I’d finally believe it.
Shayla pointed farther down the hall, where a red EXIT sign indicated the stairwell’s location. This one didn’t have a keypad like the elevator did. Looked like even the powerful Aphrodite Johnson couldn’t circumvent the fire marshal’s laws.
I nodded, catching up. “So the perp could have used these stairs to access the lab.”
She nodded. “But I already told you the video doesn’t show anything.”
I crossed my arms. Her patronizing tone made my spine tighten.
“And you said you verified all the people who came and went through the front?” Morales said.
Her eyes skittered sideways. That’s when I knew they had a suspect. Probably someone they saw on the tapes, but they didn’t want to tell us in case we got to him first. Morales had been wrong. Aphrodite didn’t need us for shit.
“Where’s the tape?” I said.
“I already told you—we already checked them.”
Morales smiled tightly. “Regardless, we’ll need a copy.”
“But—”
“We could get a warrant, but then the theft will be public knowledge. I’m sure many of your clients would be distressed to learn about such a major security breach.”
I clucked my tongue. “Might even be a few lawsuits.”
Shayla crossed her arms. “I’ll get you the tape,” she said through clenched teeth. “But I’m telling you, there’s nothing there to help with the robber’s identity.”
“If it’s all the same, we’ll leave that up to our audiovisual forensics specialist.”
I shot Morales a quick glance. I assumed he meant Shadi, but she wasn’t exactly the specialist he claimed. More like she got the surveillance duty by default. Either way, the fib got the desired result.
“Come on,” she said. “Maybe your forensics wizard has found something.”
Telling, I thought, that she didn’t sound hopeful.
Now that we’d called her on the bluff Aphrodite told her to pull, her demeanor was different. As she walked up the stairs, her ass twitched with each tense step.
When we reached the fourth floor, she made quick work of getting through the security and threw open the door. She stood to the side so we could precede her. As I passed, her eyes were twin shards of ice.
Mez was standing at a lab table covered in an assortment of cooking supplies.
“How’s it going?”
He put down a beaker he’d been dusting for prints. “Best I can tell, whoever did this came through the window.” He motioned Morales and me toward a pair of tall windows set into the brick wall.
“You found a print?” Morales asked, inspecting the jamb, which was covered in gray powdery residue.
Mez twirled the small feather applicator he used to apply the powder. “Not a one.”
I raised a brow. “You check the exterior?”
“Not yet.” He used his gloved hands to open the window. Then he bowed like a butler, offering me access to the outside. “Why don’t you look for yourself?”
Grimacing, I ducked out and turned, resting my butt on the windowsill. Morales put a steadying hand on my knees to ensure I didn’t perform a backflip to the street below. I took the brush and small vial of powder Mez offered and applied it all over the surface—the glass, the wooden frame, the bracers, the brick surround. Nothing. Not even a partial.
“Damn it,” I said, ducking back inside. “Wait, you sounded pretty sure they’d used the window. Why?”
“Elementary, my dear.” The wizard smiled like I’d just walked into a logic trap. “When I came in, the window was open.”
I glanced at Shayla for confirmation. “It was open when we discovered the robbery this morning.”
I rolled my eyes. “Information you could have mentioned sooner.”
She shrugged and yawned. The move distended her jaw like a boa constrictor’s. The image more disturbing on account of the memento mori skeletal makeup.
Dismissing her, I turned back to Mez. “What else?”
Mez pointed across the room, and my eyes followed. Someone had spray-painted symbols all over the wall, like a mural. I hadn’t noticed it when we came in because it shared the wall with the door.
“What’s that?” I asked.
“Oh,” she said, “whoever broke in did that.”
My brows rose. “If they took the time to do something like that, they knew enough about the alarm system not to expect someone to come busting in on them.”
She frowned. “I guess so.”
Morales and I moved closer to inspect the symbols. It was hard to mistake the central image—a three-foot-tall phallus.
“Are those veins?” Morales asked.
I shook my head. “Vines, I think. See? They’re green.” There were also two bunches of purple grapes at the bottom in lieu of testicles.
Whatever they were, they wove around the shaft of the penis. In the left-hand corner, a large blue circle that could only stand for the upcoming full moon. And on the right, a large pentagram.
A lot of Mundanes associate the pentagram with satanic cults, but the symbol had a long and complex tradition in a lot of different magical traditions. There were no obvious reasons to assume the image was some sort of threat—yet.
Morales frowned. “Not exactly original to paint a penis in a whorehouse.”
I took out my phone and clicked a few pictures. Mez’s first step when he’d arrived would have been to catalog the room, including taking official photos, but I wanted some for my own use, too. You never knew when you’d be stuck without a file on the run.
And we’d definitely be running on this case. If my hunch was right, Aphrodite already had a major head start on finding the thief.
I turned toward Shayla. “Where was the potion that was stolen?”
She pointed toward a large cabinet on the other side of the room. The bottom was a refrigerator unit—like a big horizontal freezer—and the top was row after row of shelving. Some shelves had vials and bottles of liquids and herbs. Others were marked with symbols or names identifying the premade potions.
Sex magic didn’t just encompass the ritualized harnessing of sexual energy through chakra work. It also involved using potions to help people access their kundalini energy—the coiled power stored in the pelvis root chakra. The O’s also made a pretty penny selling love potions. The kind that the lovesick paid through the nose for to help attract the affections of their crushes. But there were others. Potions to enhance sexual performance, ones for multiple orgasms, et cetera.