The KC Warlock Weekly: Book One: Accused by M. N. Jolley

Author:M. N. Jolley [Jolley, M. N.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2020-11-02T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter Thirteen

Friday. 5:18 PM.

Mariah looked between me, Ben, and the open box. Her face was bright red with what I assumed was anger, but at least for the moment, I had her at a loss.

Finally, her shoulders slumped and she shook her head. “Shit. How much is this going to cost me?”

I raised an eyebrow. “Cost you?”

She grumbled a little more. “Are you too good for that?”

Tapping a hand to my head, I tried to figure out what she meant. “Good for—I don’t follow.”

“She’s asking if you’ll take a bribe to keep from writing about this,” Ben supplied.

Looking at him, Mariah rolled her eyes. “Thanks, buddy.”

I blinked. “Oh, no. That’s not what this is about.” Under normal circumstances, this would have been an enormous scoop, but at the moment I had bigger fish to fry. Still, if she’d brought the idea up, I could work with it. “Okay. I’ll make you a deal.”

She eyed me, warily. “A deal?”

“You answer all the questions I can think of relating to Andrea Hills, and I promise not to print anything about your business ethics. You’ll be an anonymous source.” I felt a twinge of guilt for exploiting my advantage over her, but only a twinge. I was offering her something of significant value—a promise not to run a story about what she was doing—and what I was asking in return wouldn’t be costly for her. My hide was on the line, and I had to take the advantages I could get.

“How do I know I can trust you?”

That was easy. “I never reveal a source.”

She was still suspicious. I couldn’t really blame her. Mariah looked at Ben, then back at me, and said, “He stays outside. You don’t record or write down any of this.”

“Deal.”

We went down to her office, and Ben waited out by the barrels while Mariah and I took seats across from each other at her desk.

“You went through my computer,” she noted.

“Sorry.” I rubbed at the back of my neck, feeling a little guilty. I almost asked if I could record our conversation, but she’d already established I couldn’t. My usual pattern of questions didn’t apply here, and I had to wing it. “So… first question. Why are you ordering potions from out of state?”

“You saw my brewing rig. It’s totalled. I can’t make anything.” Mariah crossed her arms. “You could have figured that out for yourself.”

“I could have guessed, but that confirms it.” I nodded. “I guess we should start with the spill. What happened?”

Glowering, she looked out at the distillery floor. “I made a rookie mistake. Mixed up a reagent, and when I left it to bubble till sunrise, it ate through a cauldron and wrecked the whole rig. Fifty thousand large, down the drain because I mislabeled my ingredients.”

I could sympathize with that frustration. “Why didn’t you replace it?”

“Do you have fifty thousand dollars lying around?” she asked. “Because I don’t. I blew through my savings getting this place put together the first time, I couldn’t afford to do it again.

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