“What is his connection to Volos?”
“There isn’t one, exactly. He’s just always there and sees who’s coming and going.”
She tilted her head. “Prospero, please tell me you’re not relying on a homeless person to spy on the Goddamned mayor.”
“Forgive me, sir, but what does him being homeless have to do with it? He gave us good intel.”
“I want official paperwork on this man.”
I shook my head. “Absolutely not. I won’t compromise him like that.”
“You don’t trust me to keep your information protected?”
“With all due respect, sir, I think you’re too worried about not pissing off the mayor.”
“Watch yourself.”
I backed down and changed direction. “Look, I’m sorry, but there’s some dirty shit happening between the Chinese and Volos.”
“Your job was the find who killed Valentine and LeMay, not try to build some sort of conspiracy case around the mayor.”
“Our job is follow the clues and intel to find evidence of crimes being committed. The clue led us to Hung. Hung is involved with both the Votaries and Volos. Don’t you find that weird and troubling?”
“What I find troubling is your obsession with John Volos.”
The air escaped me, as if she’d thrown a fastball at my chest. “Excuse me?”
“Face it, Prospero, you’ve been chasing after him since you joined this team.”
My mouth fell open.
“That’s a gross mischaracterization of the facts, sir,” Morales said. “She’s not responsible for Volos being tied into all of the dirty shit happening in this town.”
“And you used to be my top agent,” she spat. “Now you’re letting her lead you around like a dog in heat.”
I jumped out of my chair. “Whoa—where do you get off?”
She crossed her arms and stared at me. “Stand down, Detective.”
“Fuck that.” I raised my chin. “I don’t know what angle you’re playing politically, but I told you this case smelled bad from the beginning. If we have to give the murder cases over to Duffy, that’s fine by me. But there is something rotten brewing in this town. It starts with the mayor and goes all the way down to the street corners.”
“You think I don’t know that?” she shot back. “I’ve been in this job longer than you’ve been able to drive, sweetheart. Everyone’s always dirty. That’s the world we live in. You don’t throw your first punches at the highest guy on pyramid. You gotta kick out the foundations first. You get the corner boys to turn on their captains and on up until you got enough evidence to bring down the power brokers. You can’t let them see you coming, either, because the minute they smell the ambition on you, they’ll put a bullet between your eyes.”
I clenched my jaw. I didn’t want to admit she was right. It was easier to pin the blame on her. Harder to accept that we were fighting a war where our enemy wasn’t bound by inconvenient ethics.
“Furthermore,” she said, “you seem to be forgetting that Volos has all of us in a sling. We kidnapped Volos to get to Souza, and then we sat by and watched him murder a man. You think he’s not already angling to bring each of us down one by one before we can get him?”
Guilt crept up the back of my throat like bile. Now was the chance for me to come clean about the gun I had hidden in the floorboards of my house. But I didn’t, because something in my gut told me it wasn’t good to be the only person in the room without secrets. Everything had gotten so complicated and political. Being the good girl who told her bosses everything she knew seemed like the sort of thing that would get me dead one day. And if there was one Prospero trait I needed to embody, it was the marrow-deep need to survive no matter what.
When I didn’t respond, Gardner turned to Morales. “What do you have to say for yourself?”
He scrubbed a hand over his stubble. “Not much to say. We tried but couldn’t get the solve.”
She huffed out an ironic snort of laughter. “That’s it?”
He raised his hands in a futile gesture. “What do you want from me? LeMay died twenty-four hours ago. We didn’t even have the fucking labs back from Mez yet.”
Her eyes flared. Normally, Morales was a real cool customer when he was dealing with the boss. I’d never heard him take that tone with her.
“Prospero, give us a moment.”
I froze. “Uh.”
Morales’s face gave nothing away.
“Now,” she said.
I shot Morales an apologetic look and slinked out the door. Once I closed it behind me, I walked calmly over to Shadi’s desk, which sat along the side of the boxing ring.
She tossed down her pen. “Damn, girl, what did you two do this time?”
I kept my back to the door. “Tell me what’s happening in there?”
She craned her neck to look around me. “Gardner just sat in the chair you vacated. She’s talking calmly. Morales is shaking his head.”
I blew out a long but not-so-calming breath. “Fuck.”
“Now he’s talking and she’s shaking her head.” Shadi looked up at me. “What the hell is going on?”
“This case,” I said, “this fucking case. I knew it was bad news from the start.”
I turned to lean against her desk and chanced at peek at the office door. I couldn’t tell if it was a good or bad sign that they weren’t yelling. Sometimes, quiet conversations had the loudest repercussions.
“Where are Dixon and McGinty?” I asked, trying to distract myself.
“Cut them loose once the boss lady started hollering.”
About that time, Mez came out from his lab. He glanced around until he noticed the closed door to Gardner’s office. “Hey, Prospero.” He waved me toward his lab. “Come here.”
I pushed away from Shadi’s desk and went to see what he was up to. Once I stepped inside the lab, he pulled the curtain closed behind me. “What’s up?”
He pulled me over to the counter, where a thick file folder sat. “Gardner told me to bundle all my lab reports to send over to Val since BPD’s taking over the case.” He tapped the stack. “But I thought you might be interested in seeing it before I do.”
Part of me wanted to tell him there was no point, but something in the way his eyes were sparkling told me that’d be a mistake. “Tell me.”
His mouth widened into a grin. He flipped open to the top page on the report. The sheet was covered in all sorts of columns with numbers and chemical symbols. “We were right—it was the tea. They sent Autumn Tieguanyin, which is a premium variety of oolong. Also called the ‘Iron Goddess of Mercy.’ The aroma is quite strong, which is probably what masked the presence of the poison.”
“What kind of poison?”
He did a little dance, indicating he was excited about the answer to my question. “At first, I didn’t believe it, because I’d never seen it before—just read about in obscure arcane books. Even then, it was only theoretical.”
“What?”
He sighed as if disappointed I wasn’t keeping up. “The poison in the tea is called gu. It’s an ancient Chinese form of poison created when, on the fifth day of the fifth month, five venomous creatures were sealed inside a container. They fought and devoured one another until all of the toxins were concentrated into the single super toxin.”
“Holy shit,” I said. “That’s hardcore.”
“Right?”
I shuddered. “Good thing I’m a coffee drinker or that would put me off tea entirely.”
“Anyway, that’s what killed her. Looks like the Fangshi weren’t going for subtlety on this.”
I tapped a finger on the report and thought it through. “That doesn’t make a lot of sense, though. I mean, our theory was that whoever killed Basil blew up the lab to try and cover up the murder, right?”
He nodded.
“So, why be so blatant with Krystal? Especially when they had to know we were sniffing around their operation.”
“Who knows?” he said. “I mean, maybe it was a warning to the other covens not to fuck with them. After all, just because we found the link to Chinese magic in the poison, it doesn’t help us identify the wizard who made the poison, right?”
I paused. “You got that sample?”