“He wouldn’t be. Like I said, his entire family is mid-level, but he has so little power he didn’t even hit level one, so they never recorded him. He can’t really do anything with the blip of magic that showed up.”
“So why does that matter?” Wren asked.
“He cast something last night.” Saint paused for effect.
Teddy frowned at him, mind already whirring. “You’re gonna have to elaborate.”
“He was chatting me up.” Saint rolled his eyes. “Bragging about his money, his cars, his connections. I told him point-blank that I had money of my own and I wasn’t impressed, did the whole Eerie schtick. And that…triggered something. He pulled a vial out of his pocket and downed it before I could see what it was.”
“Downed it?” Wren asked. “We found syringes before.”
“He drank this,” Saint said. “And then said, watch this, before he started a really strange chant and then the napkins on the table caught fire, someone touched him to get him to stop and then all fucking hell broke loose.”
“He managed to cast something successfully?” Cyrus asked, voice hard and serious.
“I don’t know how, and I have no idea what his intention was, because to me it seemed as if he lost control and blew shit up as a result. It was definitely coming from him though.”
“Shit,” Teddy said, head spinning with the revelation. “What the fuck does this mean?”
“We don’t know if it’s the same drug,” Wren said.
Saint reached into the belt tied safely around his waist. He pulled out an empty vial and held it up.
“I grabbed the empty vial before the stampede crushed it. I have no clue if there’s enough left to analyze, but this can’t be a coincidence. This can’t be unrelated. Right?”
He looked around as if desperately searching for confirmation. None came. They were all just silently staring at the empty vial.
Wren frowned at it for a moment before leaning forward so Saint could hand it to him. He brought it up to his nose and sniffed, closing his eyes as he mulled the scent over.
“Black,” he called out without opening his eyes, and Teddy watched with rapt attention the way his face changed. “Do you have the lizard guy’s case photos?”
“No, he—” Cyrus started.
“Sure,” Black said.
“—how the fuck?”
“I am instrumental in breaking this case. You will not dim my sparkle,” Black screeched before shuffling away somewhere.
“He shouldn’t have those,” Cyrus said to nobody in particular.
“We already examined the body,” Teddy told Wren quietly. “What are you looking for?”
“Confirming a theory. Did you read the report?”
“What the coroner had for now. They were still waiting on some tests to come back. The first round was contaminated at the lab.”
“They hadn’t narrowed down what type of lizard it was?”
Teddy shook his head as Wren’s phone pinged and he opened the file.
It wasn’t any prettier than the first time Teddy had looked, and Wren was zooming in on parts of it in great detail.
“Shit,” Wren said, passing the vial to Saint. “Smell that.”
Saint took a sniff and scrunched his nose. “It’s hardly Eau De Nice. More like Eau De Rot.”
“It’s a Komodo dragon,” Wren said. “There’s not much left here to test, but I am sure this vial held a Komodo dragon’s venom.”
