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“Thanks.” I didn’t know what else to say so I just added, “Take care of Henry, would you? He’s a good person and a good friend. I’d hate to lose him.”
“Camille,” Sharah’s voice was hesitant. “Don’t get your hopes up. We’ll do all we can, but in the long run, Henry’s riding on a dark horse. If he’s going to win this one, it’s going to take nothing short of a miracle.”
I handed the phone back to Chase without a word. He spoke to Sharah for a moment, then closed the cell and put it in his pocket.
I told him about the alostar compound and myocian powder. “Can I go in the shop? I might be able to pick up something.”
Chase motioned for Shamas to join us. “Take the girls in the shop and keep an eye on them. They want to see what they can find out. Also, send the fire marshal out to me. I need to talk to him.”
As we headed into the shop, Shamas motioned for us to walk in his footsteps. “We think the foundation is secure—and since there’s no basement there’s no chance of the floor caving in. But although the flames don’t appear to have reached the ceiling, you never know if the explosion weakened the struts and beams, so no heading upstairs to Delilah’s offices. Just make it quick, and be careful. And don’t touch anything. Now that we know what caused it, I can tell you right off that if you touch anything coated with those chemicals bare-handed, you’ll walk away with a nasty blister or worse. Remember the hellhound’s acid?”
I flinched. “Yeah, right. We won’t touch anything.” I still had a nasty scar on my hand from where a few drops of a hellhound’s acidic blood had splattered on me. The damned wound had nearly killed me.
The interior of the shop was in shambles. Books lay everywhere, charred, smelling of burnt paper. A flurry of scattered pages covered the floor. The glass case that I used to display a few rare first editions and to act as the counter had shattered, a thousand shards of sliver-thin daggers just waiting to dig into flesh. The seating area for the Faerie Watchers Club and the reading groups was burnt to a crisp. The sofa had caught fire and was now a smoldering, nasty mess of water and soot.
As we made our way through the husk that had, only this morning, been my bookstore, I noticed that most of the shelves in the back half of the shop were intact, though a few had fallen because of the blast, their contents strewn about. By the time we got to my office, everything seemed relatively normal. I turned around to see Chase behind us.
“You said the stairs are off limits?” I asked him. Delilah ran her PI business out of the second floor of the building.
“Yeah.” Shamas shrugged. “Too dangerous until we ascertain whether the stairs are safe. Not unless you’ve got a flying spell.”
“That, I don’t. Menolly could hover on up but she can’t come out until tonight.” I frowned, looking around the office. Something seemed off, but I couldn’t tell just what it was until my attention landed on an envelope sitting on my desk. It was large—the kind invitations and oversized greeting cards are mailed in—and was beige linen. The envelope was addressed to me.
“That wasn’t there before. I know it wasn’t,” I said, pointing at it.
“I guess we should dust it for prints,” Chase said as he joined us.
“Don’t bother.” The words squeaked out of my throat as the overwhelming scent of Demonkin rose from the paper. “That wasn’t left by any human, Chase.” Over his protestations, I picked it up. Demon energy raced through my hand, so strong that I almost dropped it.
“Demons.” There was no stamp nor postage mark on it. This hadn’t come in the mail. I turned it over and looked at the flap. A wax seal held it shut, and a large, sloping S had been pressed into the wax. “Stacia. I’ll bet you anything this is from the Bonecrusher.”
Delilah gasped and peered over my shoulder. Just then, an officer stuck his head around the corner.
“Chief? We have two men out here who claim they’re involved in this. They have a midget with them,” one of the officers said. He was FBH and looked nervous.
“Iris. She came down with Morio and Vanzir,” Delilah said.
Chase turned to the officer. “First, the correct term is little person. Second, she’s not a little person. She’s one of the Talon-haltija.”
“Talon—whatsa?”
“She’s Fae, damn it. Let them in, but tell them to walk carefully.” As the officer turned away, Chase grumbled under his breath. “Honestly, I send these guys to sensitivity training, I make sure they’re up on proper procedure, and some of them still act like bulls in china shops.” He caught my gaze and pointed at the letter. “Are you going to open that?”
I shook my head. “Not until we cast some sort of spell on it to detect whether it’s magically booby-trapped.”
A few minutes later, Iris made her way through the mess, followed by Morio and Vanzir. I silently showed them the letter.
Vanzir shuddered. “The Bonecrusher, all right. Can you feel the power emanating from that envelope?”
“Yeah. Next question: Is it rigged? Will it go boom if I open it, or is it just a polite ‘gotcha’ letter?” With a long sigh, I ran my hand across my eyes, already weary and wanting to run home and hide. I’d been feeling far too much of that lately.
Morio took the letter and incanted a spell. A light flared, but nothing happened. “No illusions here. And I added in a variant that checks for traps. Nothing. You can open it safely.”
Hoping he was right, I cautiously loosened the flap and withdrew the letter. As I opened the folded page, I saw it was typed—Stacia was smart, all right. She hadn’t written it by hand. In fact, my bet was she’d never even touched the paper, but instead, had a flunky write it. Otherwise, we could cast magic on her by having something she’d touched. But it had been in her presence, that much I could tell.
“What’s it say?” Delilah asked, crowding in. I motioned her to move back and give me a little room as I scanned it. Shit, this was not good. Not good at all.
“Let’s get out of here before I read it to you. Who knows if they bugged the shop at the same time they destroyed it? Come on.” Pushing past them, I marched toward the front door and out into the drizzling morning. When they caught up with me, I led them across the street and leaned on Chase’s patrol car, hanging my head.
