Grimoires and Where to Find Them by Raconteur, Honor (best affordable ebook reader .TXT) 📗

went for it on instinct, hands bracing on the sill as I looked out. Son of a—seriously? He’d just rabbited out of the window rather than answering some rather basic questions? I mean, he wasn’t even a suspect!

Henri caught up, puffing from the mad dash. “I don’t see him. Did he jump out the window?”

I could hear the same incredulity from him. Gesturing towards the wide-open window, more than large enough for a man to go through, I grumbled, “Apparently. I don’t think I’m that scary, Henri. Something smells, and it ain’t fried chicken.”

“No, something is very off with this whole picture.” Henri tapped a finger to his chin before volunteering, “Why don’t I go back and speak to the gentleman at reception?”

I saw where he was going with this and approved. “I’ll get a judge on the line and get a warrant to search this place. I’ll call in the others while I’m at it. This business suddenly became a whole lot more interesting. I have this sudden, burning need to go through all of the files. All.”

He gave me an approving nod. “As do I.”

As he left, Clint approached, nose going like mad.

I knelt down and put us at eye level. “I need you to get your sniffer out, bud. Go through the window, see if you can pick up his trail at all. I know there’s a lot of foot traffic outside, so it might be hard to catch it.”

Clint nodded seriously, his adorable little face in field-cat mode. “I’ll try. If not, come back?”

“Yeah. If any of our grimoires have been here, they’ll have left an obvious scent. I’ll need your nose here, too.”

“Okay, okay.” Clint sniffed the air, apparently caught what he wanted, and was out the window in a single bound.

Cats and their athletic ability amazed me. I’d at least look before hopping out a window. Him, he didn’t think twice about it.

Shaking my head, I went looking for a phone to use. I knew a judge or two who liked me, and it was time to call them. After I got a warrant in the works, I’d call the other three, have Gerring swing by and pick up the warrant for me. I didn’t want to leave Henri here on his own. The receptionist might or might not be in on it.

Whatever it was.

And to think, I thought this was going to be an easy day of interviews.

Our search of Walcott’s office had to wait until the warrant arrived, which meant cooling our heels a bit. I borrowed a phone and made a few calls, one to Foster to see how he was faring as he tried to reach the other grimoire owners. He’d managed to reach all of them, confirming that each still had their volume, which was a definite relief. At least our thief hadn’t gotten the drop on all the owners. I told him to join us, as I had a feeling we would need all hands on deck.

Niamh was the first to arrive, Gerring close on her heels with warrant in hand. Jamie had already taken charge of the scene, and while she went through the steps of closing the office down for investigation, I started into the files. I had a feeling something in these files would give us an answer to the question of why Mr. Walcott had run.

Clint came back to the same window he’d exited, sitting on the sill and looking peeved, his ears flat on his head.

I greeted him with a nod. “Lose his trail?”

“Yes,” Clint growled, aggravated. “He got in taxi.”

“Ah. Well, that was rather to be expected. I certainly would have, in his place.” It did make tracking him harder, though.

Niamh strode into the room at that moment, both kittens at her heels, and greeted me with a quick smile. “Doctor. Can I help you?”

“Rather, can you help Clint?” I corrected with a wave toward the upset feline. “He was trying to track Walcott, but he seems to have gotten into a taxi.”

“Ah, taxies.” She did not sound enthused by this news. “They’re truly the worst when it comes to tracking. They cut off all presence and scent. Still, I’d like to see where he got into the taxi, maybe later we can track down which taxi driver picked him up.”

“Splendid thought.” I approved.

“Clint,” Niamh requested, already striding toward the window. “Show me.”

Clint turned and leapt lightly back out, Tasha on their heels. Phil, however, joined me. I was pleased but not surprised by this. Phil typically chose to join in whatever pursuit I was in. I had snitched a chair from the lobby area to sit in, with a file open on my lap, so he had no room to join me. But I lowered a hand to give his head a good scratch around the ears. He purred at me, tail flipping back and forth like a happy pendulum.

“Would you care to help me, then?” I inquired.

He blinked golden eyes at me. “Yes. What are you doing?”

“That, my friend, is the question of the ages. I’m trying to discern why Mr. Walcott ran. I assume there is something incriminating in one of these storage rooms. If you could start with a general sweep of this room and the connecting room, see if anything smells odd to you.”

“Like magic?”

My interest sharpened, as that hadn’t sounded like a rhetorical question. I’d felt something was off but wasn’t able to put a finger on it, as I saw nothing abnormal about the room. But his senses were infinitely more refined than mine. “Do you smell magic?”

“Yes.”

I put the file abruptly down. It had just become imperative that I follow him. There should absolutely not be a scent of magic in a file room. The fire-suppression hexes weren’t even in this room, but engraved into the side of the building. I’d already checked for those and security wards.

“Show me.”

He promptly went into the connecting room, his nose twitching, head panning a bit