A Drop of Magic by L.R. Braden

Author:L.R. Braden
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: BelleBooks, Inc.
Published: 2020-09-09T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 12

BY THE TIME I came out of the bedroom, Kai had made himself at home. I peeked past the door to the guest room and saw that two suitcases had vomited their contents around the room. Kai sat on the bed tossing things as he dug into a third. I thought about objecting to the mess, but it wasn’t worth the bother. He wouldn’t be staying long.

Just long enough to upend everything I thought I knew about myself.

I couldn’t get the thought out of my head that I was somehow a fraud as an artist, never mind as a human being. If I was using faerie tricks to make people feel a certain way about my art, what was the point? I’d always felt good when people picked up on what my pieces were meant to convey, but if I believed Kai, it was all a lie.

The reasonable course was to wait until things settled down and reassess my position, but I needed to regain some semblance of control over my life. I left Kai to his “unpacking” and called James.

“Good evening, Alex. I’m glad to see you’ve replaced your phone.”

I drummed my fingers on the counter, focusing on the rhythm to keep from losing my nerve. “I need to talk to you about my work. Can I come by your place?”

“I’m not home at the moment. It would be simpler for me to come to you.”

The redirect made me smile. Everything else in my life may have changed, but James’s house was still off-limits.

“How soon can you get here?”

“Give me an hour.”

I hung up before I could change my mind, or blurt out the whole messy truth on the phone. Sighing, I looked at my sweater-clad arm and drummed my fingers again. At least seeing him in person would put to rest any lingering suspicion about him being a faerie. Unless, of course, he had a special glamour like Kai’s.

Kai joined me, digging through the fridge and coming up with the remains of a salad. “Who was that?”

“A friend.”

“He’s coming here?”

“In about an hour.”

He sat at the table, speaking around bites of chard and kale. “As soon as we can, I’d like to visit the most recent crime scenes, see if you can pick anything up from them.”

I shivered at the prospect of rifling through objects at murder scenes. “How am I supposed to get into the crime scenes? I doubt the police will let me in. Even, maybe especially, if I tell them I can pick up psychic vibes from dead people.”

“With any luck, they’ll never know we were there.”

“And how do you propose we do that?”

“Magic, of course,” he said with a smile.

“Care to elaborate?”

“As I said before, there are various classifications of magics. Different fae are better at different things. I’ve made the acquaintance of an illusionist who’s agreed to help. He spends a lot of time at Crossroads, a local fae bar. We’ll pick him up there on our way to the first crime scene.

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