I turned fully and raised my brows. “So?”
His eyes narrowed. “It’s still there around the edges.”
My stomach dropped three stories.
“But it’s weak.” He made a dismissive noise with his mouth. “A pity. You could have been a formidable wizard.”
I lifted my chin. “Like you?”
His lips tilted up. “Indeed.”
I looked around the room. “And look where you ended up.”
Abe leaned back in his chair and clasped his hands on the table. “These shackles won’t be on me forever, Katie Girl.” He smiled wide, showing off his large, white teeth. “I’ll be waiting to hear from you once you catch Dionysus.”
“Don’t hold your breath.”
The corner of his mouth twitched. “Say hi to Danny Boy for me.”
I saluted him with my middle finger and slipped through the door before the manipulative bastard could launch another parting shot.
Chapter Twelve
Morales was quiet the entire ferry ride back. As much as the guy liked to tease me, he also had the good sense to know when to shut the fuck up. My hands gripped the railing until my knuckles ached. For a few moments I indulged in a fantasy of imagining it was Uncle Abe’s throat.
Once we exited the ferry and were back by his car, Morales pulled out his phone and held it up to the sky to check the signal. I guess he found one because next thing I knew, he was speaking to Gardner through the mouthpiece. Leaning against the SUV’s bumper, I listened as he gave her a nuts-and-bolts version of what had happened. He left out the embarrassing details that made me look like an emotional wreck, bless him.
Instead of watching the water spread out like a stainless-steel ocean, I raised my face to the sky. The midday sun stabbed at my corneas, seagulls shrieked like banshees, and the cold wind felt pushier than it had earlier. Despite the less-than-idyllic scene, I realized it was worlds better than the sliver of sky visible through Abe’s cell bars. He might be the king of Crowley State Penitentiary, but I was a pauper with access to the whole world. That freedom gave me the upper hand. I had choices. He did not.
And since I was the one with choices, I decided to take the meeting with Abe at face value. As far as the Johnson case went, he’d offered very little in the way of convincing evidence. Sure, we’d check out his story about Dionysus, but I didn’t plan to take his story as gospel.
Morales nudged me. I glanced up, ripped out of my thoughts. “She wants to talk to you?”
I cleared my throat and put the phone to my ear. “Sir?”
“What’s your read on this?”
I chewed on my lip for a moment. “He’s fucking with us.”
“That’s my gut reaction, too.” The sound of her chair creaking back cut through the line. “Unfortunately, the mayor has called a meeting. You and Morales need to meet me at City Hall in an hour so we can debrief him.”
I closed my eyes. What I needed was a stiff drink, not a meeting with the fucking mayor. “Any way we can put him off?”
“Not a prayer.”
An hour later Mayor Owens slammed a newspaper on the desk. The headline shouted the news about Aphrodite Johnson’s temple being robbed by a criminal they dubbed the Aphrodisiac Bandit. “Anyone want to explain to me why I had to hear about this asshole from Abraxas Prospero instead of my own fucking police force?”
The Honorable Skip Owens, mayor of Babylon, Ohio, was not an attractive man. His nose was too big, his chin too weak, but what he lacked in looks, he made up for with charisma and sheer force of personality. He had salt-and-pepper executive hair and wore a nice navy suit with a tie as red as his Republican blood. On his right hand he wore a signet ring depicting the seal of the city of Babylon. On it, a lion with two emerald eyes guarded a gate bearing the city’s name. Judging from Owens’s proud posture, he considered himself the king of this particular concrete jungle.
“Sir, with all due respect, we’ve been briefing Captain Eldritch of the situation almost daily.”
Owens turned to glare at Eldritch. “Well?”
“Sir, I handed the Johnson case to Special Agent Gardner but she has not provided updates as promised.” He shot a glance in the direction of his boss, Chief Stanley Adams.
Chief Adams sat stoic as a statue beside his employee. As near as I could tell, the man rarely got his hands dirty with Cauldron politics, preferring instead to court the favor of wealthy Mundane citizens in the nicer parts of Babylon. He’d even lobbied to have the Cauldron’s violent crime statistics kept separate from those for the rest of the city because, he claimed, they were an anomaly due to the high percentage of Adepts who lived in that part of town. Not surprisingly, like all the brass in Ohio state and local law enforcement, he was a Righty.
Gardner’s posture stiffened. Standing next to Morales and at the back of the room, I shot him a worried look. Watching a bunch of power brokers play political hot potato wasn’t my idea of fun. Especially since we didn’t have the luxury of time. With less than a week remaining until the Halloween Blue Moon and the threat of a possible Raven at large, we needed action, not the blame game. Not that I was going to be the one to point that out to the four people in Babylon who could guarantee I’d never find work again.
“All right, let’s try another tack. What did Abe Prospero have to say today?”
All eyes turned toward me. I cleared my throat and stepped forward.
“Mr. Mayor,” I began.
He held up a hand. “Who the hell are you?”
I blinked. “Detective Kate Prospero, sir.”
The man’s eyes widened. “Abe’s niece, right? I do not appreciate being your messaging service, Detective.”
I nodded. “Sorry, sir.”
His eyes narrowed. “You were in the middle of the Ramses Bane case, as well, correct?”
Grimacing, I nodded again.
“Why do you keep coming up in all the cases that cause a pain in my ass lately, Prospero?”
I shrugged. “Just talented, I guess.”
The corner of his mouth twitched. “Proceed.”
“According to my uncle, the theft was perpetrated by a man who believes he is the modern incarnation of the god Dionysus. He’s a Raven—a wizard who robs other wizards.”
Owens frowned. “So he’s insane?”
I nodded. “It would certainly seem so, if Abe’s telling the truth.”
He tilted his head. “You don’t believe your uncle, then?”