Chapter 10

The illegal market was entirely too good and too quick at closing up shop. By the time the paramedics had stabilised Jeff and taken him to hospital, every last person had cleared out of the funeral home – including Laura – and the fifty tables were bare. Only Jeff's table remained laden.

I had a look through the pile of books, and sure enough there was a grimoire for fire elementals. Mum had said that without control I'd set myself on fire, so it seemed like a good investment. I turned to Gunnar, the heavy book in my hands.

He looked at me for a moment. ‘I didn't see anything,' he said finally.

I grinned and put all the cash I had on the table. It was meagre payment but I had kind of saved Jeff's life so I figured we were square.

Gunnar and I turned back to assess the empty basement. ‘This blows,' I muttered. ‘I really wanted to have a snoop around. Some of the wares looked cool.' Gunnar slid me a glance. ‘And interview all the vendors as suspects!' I added hastily.

His lips twitched. ‘Uh-huh. We'd better box this stuff up and take it into custody.'

We turned back to Jeff's table – but now it was completely bare. All that remained was that one mug that said I Survived the Black Market. Someone was a total wiseass. ‘How the fuck did they do that?' I demanded.

Gunnar sighed and wiggled his fingers. ‘Magic.'

‘Son of a bitch,' I grumped. At least I had the book – and apparently a new mug. Gunnar pulled on some gloves, picked it up and bagged it. ‘Hey! I wanted that,' I protested.

He grinned. ‘You can have it back after I've had Sig check it for hexes or curses.'

‘Oh! Good idea.'

He tapped his forehead. ‘I do have them sometimes,' he said drily. ‘Let's go. This place is a bust.'

We drove back to the office in silence. Fluffy was overjoyed to see us, giving us his finest barks and turning around in circles. Shadow lifted his head, looked at us, then closed his eyes and settled down again. It was a hard life being a cat.

Once we'd made a hot drink, we retreated to Gunnar's office to plot our next moves. ‘Can I see the pictures you took?' he asked. I unlocked my phone and passed it to him. He scrolled through the photos, looked at the runes on Jeff's back then flicked to the runes on the docks. ‘Same style,' he grunted.

‘What do you mean? Runes are runes, right?'

‘Yes, but in the same way letters are letters and we all have different handwriting. I'd bet good money these two curses were done by the same person.'

‘So the incident at the dock wasn't a prank gone wrong?'

‘Not by half. At a guess, I'd say the curse on the docks was a practice run. Maybe they decided runing rage onto Jeff wasn't punishment enough because the runes on him were stronger. Darker.'

‘We've got a stray evil witch? Again?'

He smiled wryly. ‘The witch population takes up a good portion of Portlock. There are plenty of good witches– and it's not just witches that use runes. Necromancers and shamans use them, too.'

‘Wonderful.' I sighed and crossed my arms. ‘So our suspect pool is large.'

‘Huge,' he agreed. ‘But, like handwriting, someone might be able to recognise the rune style.'

‘Liv,' I suggested.

‘Liv,' he agreed with a heavy sigh. He took a deep breath to brace himself then he pressed speed-dial seven on the phone. As it rang, he hit the speakerphone button so I could listen in.

The phone rang several times before Liv picked up. ‘Gunnar, to what do I owe the pleasure?' she purred. ‘I hope it's not about the barrier because only one of my elementals has arrived so far, though I'm pleased to report the new programme is working out. For now, I've got all the gems secured. Moving forward, after the barrier is restored no one will be a gem caretaker for longer than a year, and I'm also working on a permanent solution. There's a small fly in the ointment, though.'

‘Of course there is,' Gunnar responded. ‘Hit me.'

‘Well, the other witches will be here in the next couple of days. Once we've all gathered, I'll have to take the gems offline for a time to … um … recalibrate them.'

‘Offline?'

The chills that raced down my spine made my knees weak. What did that mean? Offline sounded bad.

Gunnar swallowed as he shared a nervous glance with me. ‘Does that mean the barrier will be down?'

‘We don't know for sure but possibly. I'm working on a temporary fix, but you need to put a plan in place just in case.'

Gunnar and I both had identical expressions of horror. He shook his head. ‘Liv, there is no plan. If that barrier goes down, we're screwed.'

‘If we don't deal with the gems, the barrier will fail anyway,' she pointed out.

‘Goddammit, Liv! What about a temporary barrier? Anything your magic users can do?'

‘We'll see. I'm working on things at my end but I need you to have a backup.' She was being weirdly insistent.

‘All right, I'll look into an emergency procedure. To be honest, we should have one in place regardless. Anyway, that's not why I called.'

‘No?' her voice turned sultry. ‘Did you ring to whisper sweet nothings in my ear?'

‘No. I rang to talk about curses and runes and about the black market in the basement of your funeral home.'

‘Ah,' she said delicately. ‘That.' She paused and I could well imagine her biting her lip whilst she tried to think of a way to blag her way out of that one. ‘We both know that the black market is a necessary evil, Gunnar. By hosting it myself, I can control what the market brings into our community. It's in our best interests to have it hosted by someone we trust.'

Gunnar ground his teeth. He didn't like her answer but he needed her for the rune thing, so evidently he decided to let it go. For now. ‘You're walking a fine line, council member,' he growled, pointedly using her title.

‘Perhaps, but by now there's no evidence the market was ever there.'

I could believe it. By now, no doubt the tables themselves had disappeared too.

‘That's what they do,' Liv continued. ‘The vendors don't run this market over several paranormal towns without being able to set up and take down quickly.'

‘If I get so much as whiff that they're still in town, I'll shut them down,' he threatened.

Liv gave a tinkling laugh. ‘But Gunnar … you'd have to find them first.' She hung up.

Gunnar glared at the phone, his face red with anger.

‘Well, shit. And we didn't get a chance to ask her about the runes,' I pointed out.

‘I'm well aware of that. We need to ask her in person so we can watch her face and see if she's lying to us. Come on, let's track her down.'

‘You think she'd lie to us?'

He snorted. ‘Do elves love archery?'

I paused. ‘I don't know. Do they?'

‘They're obsessed,' Gunnar confirmed. ‘Let's go to the funeral home first, and then her home. This time we take Fluffy.'

‘Agreed.'

Shadow was still snoozing, so we left him curled up. We were soon pulling back into the car park of the funeral home; this time it was empty. ‘I guess they all left,' I said drily. ‘And no sign of Liv's car.'

‘Nope.' Gunnar parked up. ‘Well, let's go make sure, do our due diligence.'

We climbed out, taking Fluffy with us. The rear door was locked, but after testing it Gunnar did his thing and it opened. We went down the hall and then the stairs. When he opened the double steel door, nothing but darkness and silence greeted us.

He found the lights and the fluorescent tubes flicked on, pouring a harsh light down onto the space. The whole place was empty and surprisingly clean; it had been swept, and the smell of bleach and disinfectant was heavy in the air. If any evidence of Jeff's curse had remained, it was long gone.

I turned to Fluffy, ‘Can you find anything they missed in the clean up?' I wasn't optimistic.

He trotted around obligingly, sniffing at certain spots before returning and sitting silently in front of me. No barking, no wagging. He agreed: no one and nothing was left. Dammit. I ruffled the top of his head. ‘Good boy.' He gave a single bark that I interpreted as, ‘Well, I did what I could.'

‘Let's go,' Gunnar said. ‘They've obviously got a second site and it's probably already running.'

‘Any other place in a town this big?' I asked.

‘There are tonnes of places they could use. There's a bunch of warehouses on the waterfront, three large churches, several large houses, the fish plant, the cannery, Kamluck Logging, tents in the woods…'

‘Got it. Could be anywhere.'

‘Yup.'

I sighed. ‘So, without Liv telling us, or without an invite, we won't find it again?'

‘It's not likely.' Then Gunnar's phone rang and he looked down. ‘It's the hospital.'

I leaned against the car and waited as he swiped to open it. He didn't put it on speaker, so I waited until he was done. It wasn't a long conversation but it was long enough for me to grow concerned.

Finally he hung up and looked at his mobile for a minute. ‘It was about Jeff,' he said finally. ‘Apparently removing the runes didn't end the curse like it did at the docks, though it stopped it ensnaring more people, so we did the right thing.' He looked serious. ‘This is dark magic.'

‘A curse isn't inherently dark?' I asked incredulously.

‘Like anything, it's a matter of degrees. The doctors have put Jeff in stasis so they can try and find a cure without the curse progressing. Unfortunately, they can't keep him like that for too long. He's in real danger – if the curse remains on him, his mind will fail and his body will follow. And then we'll be investigating a murder.'