‘Not true,’ Jackson replied. ‘I would also order pizza. Em, you got a sec?’
‘She was just leaving.’
‘No, I wasn’t.’
‘If you don’t leave, I’ll go,’ Lydia replied. ‘You’re killing my vibe.’
When I followed him out of his sister’s room, something seemed off. Lydia swore he’d be out all day buying back-to-school supplies and I hadn’t heard or sensed him arriving home. As Lydia’s magic moulded itself around her, mine felt clearer, more finely tuned. There were so many ghosts in the streets, I could hardly leave the house without walking into someone andeverywhere I went, my favourite flowers bloomed months out of season. So how come Jackson Powell had become a walking, talking blank space?
He strolled casually into his room, expecting me to follow. Instead, I lingered in the doorway, one foot in and one foot out. The space was so definitively him, classic with a cool twist, all crisp colours and clean lines, one wall covered in memorabilia, an assortment of ticket stubs, postcards, posters, photographs and sketches. If I tried to do something like that, it would look like a toddler threw the contents of a trashcan at the wall, but Jackson managed to make it look stylish, like something out of a gallery.
‘Didn’t want to distract Lyds when I know she’s studying,’ he said as he flicked through a stack of papers on his antique rolltop desk. ‘Or at least when she’s supposed to be studying. It’s Astrid.’
‘You’ve found her?’
‘I reckon so.’
Reservations forgotten, I was at his side in half a second as he pulled out a bunch of printouts and handed them to me one at a time.
‘Wasn’t easy to find much, your girl doesn’t like to leave a paper trail. Had to get her name on the magic shop lease, something to do with the alarm company.’
I studied each piece of paper in turn. The first was a copy of the lease, complete with address, phone number and social security number, the second a photograph of an old Victorian house and the third, what looked like a blurry doorbell camera image of the woman from the magic shop.
‘All the info on the lease is bogus except the phone number, and that’s out of order now. But I did get one hit off of it: a short-term rental down on Jefferson Street. According to the guy who lived downstairs, she damn near set the whole buildingon fire four or five times, but the landlord never once spoke to her about it.’
The whole thing reeked of magic, whether Wyn believed it or not.
‘How did you get all this?’ I asked, staring at the photo, my magic prickling at the sight of her. The violet eyes were hard and the rest of her features fell naturally into an antagonistic scowl.
‘Friend of a friend. Someone I know from the historical society, used to be a police officer, now he kind of digs into people’s lives as a kind of hobby.’
‘A kind of hobby where he gets paid a ton of money and has a special licence?’
‘Something like that,’ he shrugged, as though hiring a private investigator to hunt down a werewolf were a perfectly normal thing to do. ‘Also, the neighbour said she had a strong accent. Couldn’t say what exactly but definitely not one he could identify, and this dude works in a hotel downtown so nothing obvious. My guy said it sounded like he was doing an impression of Count von Count. Should I be worried about vampires?’
‘I’d love to tell you no,’ I replied, still studying another photograph of Astrid, standing on a stoop, lit cigarette in one hand, a cell phone pressed up to her ear.
‘Great, garlic knots for dinner then,’ Jackson deadpanned. ‘Strange how she couldn’t find a way around the alarm company stuff. She rented a place, a car, seems as though she’s got her hands on a phone but there’s no trace of her on anyone’s records. The landlord for the rental remembered her but couldn’t find any paperwork.’
‘Where is the alarm company based?’
Jackson held out his hand for the lease and scanned the piece of paper quickly.
‘Company address is listed as Tennessee, but the phone number has a +91 area code.’
‘And that’s not Tennessee.’ I frowned. ‘Just a theory, but magic has boundaries. If she tripped the alarm and the call centre is outside the US, there’s a chance her magic wouldn’t be strong enough to stop them from sending someone out to investigate. Catherine had to do some dark stuff to send magic all the way over to Wales.’
‘Catching a Were in an administrative error kind of feels like Al Capone being put away on his taxes,’ Jackson said. ‘Wyn heard anything on his end?’
I shook my head and he made a soft but distinct scoffing sound.
‘It’s not a competition,’ I said with a warning look. ‘He’s in a tough spot, trying to find out as much as he can without giving us away to Astrid or making the pack suspicious.’
‘If he needs to go back to Asheville, I can take care of things here.’
I looked up from the stack of pages to find him leaning casually against the desk, legs crossed at the ankle, hands in his pockets, eyes fixed on me.
‘You’re doing more than enough,’ I assured him, handing the paperwork back.
