My gaze found the family tree she’d hung on a board above the worktable. She’d added faces of the McCormick descendants. Those who were dead had a big red slash mark through them. The others had notes next to them, again in that code only she could read.
“She’s trying to rebuild the McCormick coven,” I said.
Evie stepped up next to me and gazed at the family tree. “She sure is. I bet the pleatix she’s been selling is funding her little venture.”
“She left in a hurry, but why not take the pleatix?” Kyla asked.
“She hasn’t spelled it yet. I bet she took everything she needed.” Evie sucked on a tooth. “There’s no way to tell who her client was for the kidnapping. It could be anyone.”
“Is anyone else worried about the amount of pleatix currently floating around this realm?” I asked.
Kyla nodded. “Oh yeah. Who knows how long she’s been running this little business?”
Evie opened a drawer then immediately slammed it shut, her face turning a little green. “We need to get the cops in here. I’ll make sure there aren’t any more surprise wards before they come in. But unless we can figure out who Lydia was selling to, this is a dead end.”
My gut twisted. Ilayda was still missing, without any ransom demand. Who knew what was being done to her while we were stumbling around in the dark?
“Mere?”
I glanced up. Evie nodded at whatever she saw on my face. “I feel the same. But we did good here today. Lydia will be on the run, but she can’t run forever. And we can focus on other parts of our investigation now.”
She was right. I nodded, and Evie pulled her phone out of her pocket and called Nelson.
By the time the cops arrived, we were waiting outside. None of us wanted to stand in that house any longer than necessary. Nelson showed up with a group of cops in uniform, and one of them eyed the house as if it was about to come alive and eat him.
I got it. It was one thing to go up against bad guys with a gun. It was another to go up against bad guys who could set invisible magical traps.
“Evie has removed any wards in the house,” I told them. “Right now, you can treat it as you would any other house.”
Nelson gave us a nod. “Thanks for your hard work here today. I won’t say anything about the fact that you entered a private residence without a warrant.”
“If we’re not cops, do we need warrants?” Evie smiled at him.
He frowned at her. “That’s called breaking and entering.”
He seemed more like he was going through the motions than anything else. Evie attempted to look chastened, and I smothered my grin. Something told me Nelson didn’t actually give a shit if we broke in to a black witch’s house.
“Any news on the phone?” I asked.
“Our people should be done with it tomorrow. Stop by the station and you can take a look at it,” he told me. Then he gave us all a beady-eyed stare.
“Where’s the gun?”
“What gun?”
“The gun that mysteriously disappeared before the suitcase made it into evidence.”
“Oh, that gun.”
We all stared blankly back at him. Nelson had his don’t-fuck-with-me face on.
Evie cleared her throat delicately. “Theoretically, if we knew how to trace that gun before it went into evidence, and we wore gloves and were very careful with it—”
“No.”
“Theoretically, if we were worried you had a dirty-ass cop on your team who couldn’t be trusted with evidence, would you still care?” Kyla showed Nelson her teeth.
He narrowed his eyes at her. “Theoretically, one of you needs to go get it, and we will pretend this little conversation never happened,” he said.
