“Well, that should get me started,” I said, saving the document.
“You’ll start looking immediately, right? Can I wait here while you cast the tracking spell?” Taylor asked, perching on the edge of her seat again.
“My business partner will be the one who casts the spell.” Because my traditionally witchy spells were notoriously unreliable. “But I’ll follow it, and we don’t know yet where it will lead, so there is little point in you staying here, which is one place we know for sure Remy is not located.”
“Oh. That makes sense, I guess.” She rose to her feet, but she didn’t move toward the door.
“Go home in case he tries to contact you. I’ll call as soon as I have information.”
She nodded and trudged toward the door, as if hoping I’d stop her if she hesitated long enough. I had nothing more to offer, so I didn’t stop her. Instead, I escorted her out of my office and across the Tongues for the Dead lobby. At the main door she hesitated again.
“You’ll let me know as soon as you find something?”
“That’s what you’re paying me to do.”
“Right.” She gave me a weak smile, but she nodded, and then, hiking her bag higher on her shoulder, she marched up the sidewalk.
Once she was gone, I turned and glanced at Rianna’s door. It was closed.
“Is she out or—?”
“With a client,” Ms. B said in her typical gruff manner.
I nodded, not taking offense at being cut off. That was just the brownie’s way. By all accounts, she liked me. I’d hate to think how she’d act if she didn’t.
As I reached my office, Rianna’s door opened. I turned in time to see a man of about fifty step out of her office. He wore a dark suit, as if he’d just come from a funeral, but he was dry-eyed. In fact, he was smiling. When he saw me, he dipped his head in a friendly nod. He even smiled at Ms. B before heading out to the street, his well-manicured hands clasped behind him.
I watched him stroll past our large picture window before I turned to Rianna, one eyebrow lifted.
“Lawyer,” she said with a shrug.
That made sense. He definitely didn’t have the look of a bereft loved one.
“Interesting case?” I asked, and Rianna wrinkled her nose as she shook her head.
“Insurance dispute. But it should be a quick case. I’m guessing an hour at the graveside this afternoon. Two at most.”
“Fun,” I said, and she shot me a dirty look.
Insurance and probate cases were basically the bread and butter of our firm. Someone contesting the validity of a will, second-guessing the deceased’s wishes, or an undetermined cause of death suspected of being caused by something that would invalidate an insurance policy. They tended to be high-tension cases for the families, and sometimes rather drama-filled at the graveside, but they weren’t particularly demanding on us as investigators. We raised the shade and repeated the questions from the family and lawyers and then put the shade back. Regardless of the outcome, our part was done after that.
Rianna had been taking the brunt of those types of cases recently because while they might not take much from an investigation standpoint, grave magic was hard on the eyes—mine more than hers. As well as being a grave witch, I was a planeweaver, and seeing through the planes seemed to be doing extra damage to my eyes. While Rianna and I both suffered from the poor low-light vision so common to grave witches, she could hold a shade for an hour or two and drive herself home twenty minutes later. I, on the other hand, ended up with severely impaired vision for a few hours, sometimes to the point of complete blindness for a time. So I tried to only raise one shade every week or two, which meant if more cases came in, Ms. B. quietly arranged for them to go to Rianna. It wasn’t the most ideal situation, but it worked for our firm.
“Any other clients scheduled before the ritual?” I asked.
Rianna shook her head. “Nah, I’m free until one. Why? What are you working on? Anything interesting?”
“I need a tracking spell. I have a missing-person case.”
Rianna’s eyes lit up. “Really? I want all the details.”
Becoming a private investigator had been Rianna’s longtime dream career, not mine. She was the mystery novel buff, and the one who’d talked about her plans for a firm when we were roommates at our wyrd boarding school. She’d already vanished by the time I graduated, and with a little help from a local detective, I’d eventually fallen into starting the firm. She’d joined me after I’d rescued her from Faerie, and while I suspected it wasn’t as glamourous as she’d dreamed, anything had to be better than spending hundreds of years as a captive of Faerie while only half a decade passed in the mortal realm.
“Don’t get too excited yet. I was hired to find a college freshman by his still-in-high-school sweetheart. This might be a very expensive breakup.”
“Oh.” She crinkled her nose. “Still, it’s a missing-person case. This is the firm’s first. We’re moving up in the world.” She turned toward the lobby. “Ms. B, will you block off the rest of my morning? I’ve got a tracking spell to cast.”
Ms. B nodded from her desk, and Rianna disappeared back into her office. I headed back to mine, dreading the inevitable confrontation that was about to occur.
Sure enough, Briar was sitting in my chair when I got back to my office, her feet kicked up on the surface of the desk and her hands behind her head. “Is this what you do all day? Listen to weeping parents and take cases from lovestruck teenagers too stubborn to know when they’re being dumped?”
“Not all day. Now I have to go find said teenager’s boyfriend.”
Briar snorted. “And what will you tell her when you find him with his new girlfriend?”
“The truth. Hey, we can’t all make our living incinerating ghouls and whatever else you do. Now if you’re just going to sit there insulting how I run my investigation firm, you can leave.” Because I’d worked hard to expand my business beyond just raising shades. My vision couldn’t take the damage it would take to raise enough shades to pay my monthly bills.
Briar looked like she was about to say something, but then her expression changed as she fished a phone out of her pocket. She glanced at the display for a moment and then dropped her feet from the desktop.
“Good news, Craft, looks like you get your reprieve. I know you’ll miss my company—”
Now it was my turn to give a sarcastic sniff.
“But it appears that someone finished the job your fast-rotting corpse started yesterday and smuggled the exact same artifact out of the museum while the wards were down for inspection. So, maybe there is more to that case than it seems. You have fun with your teen drama. I’m going to go investigate something interesting.”
I scowled at her back as she walked out. At the main door, she lifted her hand and cocked it to the side slightly, making the wave look sarcastic.