I tucked the folder under my arm and grabbed my book, Hexology by Stahl. A few weeks ago a package of books had arrived at our doorstep in a padded yellow envelope, six books in all, dealing with spells, arcane circles, and magic theory. A plain rectangular label had just one word printed on it—Nevada. Interrogation of my family provided no leads. They didn’t know where the books came from, they didn’t order them, and they had no idea who did, although they offered many wild theories.
I’d dusted the envelope for prints but I didn’t find any. The label proved to be a generic four-by-four inches, and a half-dozen office stores in the ten-mile radius carried identical labels. And of course, they also carried the same yellow envelopes. My name was printed in Times New Roman font, 22 pt size. I briefly considered swabbing the envelope for DNA and paying a private lab to analyze it to eliminate my family and run it through their database for possible matches, but the lab quoted $600 to run the swab and I couldn’t justify the expense to myself. It was still driving me nuts.
The books had proven incredibly useful and I’d been reading them nonstop trying to catch up on years of neglected education in magic theory. This particular book was on hexes—magic constructs that locked information within a human mind. I had encountered a very powerful hex several weeks ago and had to peer under it to save the city. The book confirmed that I had come perilously close to killing a man through sheer ignorance.
I made my way through the office back door into a wide hallway. The delicious smell of seared carne asada swirled around me. I turned right and headed toward the kitchen.
When Dad was fighting his losing battle with cancer, we sold our house. We sold everything we could, but we still had to survive and make a living, so a strategic decision was made: we used our business to purchase a large warehouse. On the east side, the warehouse was the front for Baylor Investigative Agency. We installed interior walls and a drop ceiling, making a small but comfortable office space: three offices on one side and a break room and conference room on the other. On the west side, the warehouse turned into a motor pool, where Grandma Frida worked on tanks and armored vehicles for the Houston elite. Between the office and the motor pool, separated from the latter by a large wall, lay three thousand square feet of living space.
My parents had this vision of making our living space look like the inside of an ordinary house. Instead we succeeded in throwing walls where they were needed and sometimes not at all, so in certain areas our place bore a startling resemblance to a home-improvement showroom. The kitchen was one of those spots. Square, roomy, with a generous island and a big kitchen table made from an old slab of reclaimed wood, it would give most cooking shows a run for their money. Right now it sat half empty: my mother, Grandma Frida, and my oldest cousin, Bern, were the only ones left. My two sisters and Bern’s younger brother, Leon, must’ve run off already. Just as well.
Small bowls filled the center of the table, holding everything from grated cheese and pico de gallo to guacamole. Soft-taco night. I refrained from cheering, grabbed an apron out of the kitchen drawer, put it on, and landed in a chair next to Grandma. There was no way I could get stains on my hideously expensive suit, and taking it off and changing into casual clothes would’ve taken too long. I was too hungry.
“And the hunter home from the hill,” Bern announced.
I squinted at him. “Decided to take British Literature after all?”
“It was the lesser of two evils. The next semester will try my patience.” Bern wolfed down his food and reached for another taco. Over six feet tall and two hundred pounds, most of it bone and muscle, Bern went to judo twice a week and ate with all the appetite of a bear preparing to hibernate for winter.
I pulled a warm soft-taco shell out and began filling it with delicious things. I’d had to bust my butt to get through college as fast as I could, because I was the primary breadwinner. But now the business was making money. We weren’t rich—we probably barely scraped the bottom of the middle class—but we could afford for Bernard to take his time with his education. I wanted him to have the whole college experience. Instead he took every opportunity to pile more course work on himself.
I eyed my mom’s plate. One lone taco. Where Grandma Frida was naturally thin, with a cloud of platinum-white curls and big blue eyes, my mother used to be muscular and athletic, built with strength and endurance in mind. That was before the war left her with a permanent limp. She was softer now, rounder around the edges. It bothered her. She’d been eating less and less and a couple of weeks ago we realized she’d begun skipping dinner altogether.
“This is my third one,” Mom said. “Stop staring.”
“It is,” Grandma Frida confirmed, poking at her taco salad. “I watched her eat two.”
“I’m just making sure all of our business assets are in fighting condition.” I stuck my tongue out at her. “Can’t have you passing out from hunger on the job. Any news on Senator Garza’s thing?”
“Nope,” Grandma Frida said.
“It’s all harebrained conjecture at this point,” Mom said. “The talking heads are trying to drum up hysteria, saying it was a Prime who had to have done it.”
Senator Timothy Garza died on Saturday in front of his cousin’s house. His security detail died with him. The story was so sensational it even pushed Jeff Caldwell’s arrest onto the back burner. The police weren’t releasing any information connected to the senator’s murder, which caused the news media to froth at the mouth in outrage. Without any data, they were forced to marinate in their own speculation, and the theories were getting wilder by the minute. If a Prime had been involved, I wouldn’t be surprised. Garza had run on a platform of limiting the influence of the Houses, which didn’t exactly make him the darling of Texas magic elite. The debates during his election campaign had turned ugly fast.
“What have you been up to?” Mom asked.
I stuffed a chunk of soft taco into my mouth and chewed to buy some time. I would have to come clean. I swallowed. “I took a high-risk job.”
“How high-risk?” Mom asked.
I opened the folder and slid the ME’s report toward her. She read it. Her eyebrows furrowed. “We’re solving murders now?”
“Who got murdered?” Grandma Frida asked.
“Do you remember the animal mage I told you about? The one with a raccoon who was bringing juice to his daughter in a sippy cup?”
“Cornelius Harrison,” Bern said.
“Yes. His wife.”
My mother’s expression was growing grimmer by the second. She passed the ME report to Grandma.
Grandma glanced at the report and whistled.
“This is above our pay grade,” my mother said.
“I know,” I told her.
“Why would you take this?”
Because he’d sat in my office and cried, and I’d felt awful for him. “Because she’s dead and nobody cares. And he’s paying us very well.”
“We don’t need the money that badly,” my mother said.
“According to my sisters, we do.” I slid the photograph with dollar signs toward her.
Mom swung toward Grandma Frida. “Mom!”
Grandma Frida’s eyes got really big. “What? Don’t look at me!”
“You started this.”
Ha! Attack deflected and redirected.
“I did no such thing. I’m innocent. You always blame me for everything.”
“You started it and you encouraged it. Now look, she’s taking on murders because you’re guilt-tripping her to put food on the table. And what kind of message does this send?”
“A true-love kind of message.” Grandma Frida grinned.
Bern got up and leaned to me. “You want me to run the background on everyone?”
“Yes, please. I sent you an email. I’m going to the Assembly tomorrow, so something on Matthias Forsberg would be great.”
“Will do.” He took his plate to the sink.
“Your granddaughters don’t need a rich Prime to pay for their college!” my mom said. “That’s why their sister, their mother, and their grandmother work long hours. We pay our own way in this family.”