Read Online Cursed Moon (Prospero's War) by Jaye Wells - Free Book Online

smiled like I’d just walked into a logic trap. “When I came in, the window was open.”
    I glanced at Shayla for confirmation. “It was open when we discovered the robbery this morning.”
    I rolled my eyes. “Information you could have mentioned sooner.”
    She shrugged and yawned. The move distended her jaw likea boa constrictor’s. The image more disturbing on account of the
memento mori
skeletal makeup.
    Dismissing her, I turned back to Mez. “What else?”
    Mez pointed across the room, and my eyes followed. Someone had spray-painted symbols all over the wall, like a mural. I hadn’t noticed it when we came in because it shared the wall with the door.
    “What’s that?” I asked.
    “Oh,” she said, “whoever broke in did that.”
    My brows rose. “If they took the time to do something like that, they knew enough about the alarm system not to expect someone to come busting in on them.”
    She frowned. “I guess so.”
    Morales and I moved closer to inspect the symbols. It was hard to mistake the central image—a three-foot-tall phallus.
    “Are those veins?” Morales asked.
    I shook my head. “Vines, I think. See? They’re green.” There were also two bunches of purple grapes at the bottom in lieu of testicles.
    Whatever they were, they wove around the shaft of the penis. In the left-hand corner, a large blue circle that could only stand for the upcoming full moon. And on the right, a large pentagram.
    A lot of Mundanes associate the pentagram with satanic cults, but the symbol had a long and complex tradition in a lot of different magical traditions. There were no obvious reasons to assume the image was some sort of threat—yet.
    Morales frowned. “Not exactly original to paint a penis in a whorehouse.”
    I took out my phone and clicked a few pictures. Mez’s first step when he’d arrived would have been to catalog the room, including taking official photos, but I wanted some for my ownuse, too. You never knew when you’d be stuck without a file on the run.
    And we’d definitely be running on this case. If my hunch was right, Aphrodite already had a major head start on finding the thief.
    I turned toward Shayla. “Where was the potion that was stolen?”
    She pointed toward a large cabinet on the other side of the room. The bottom was a refrigerator unit—like a big horizontal freezer—and the top was row after row of shelving. Some shelves had vials and bottles of liquids and herbs. Others were marked with symbols or names identifying the premade potions.
    Sex magic didn’t just encompass the ritualized harnessing of sexual energy through chakra work. It also involved using potions to help people access their kundalini energy—the coiled power stored in the pelvis root chakra. The O’s also made a pretty penny selling love potions. The kind that the lovesick paid through the nose for to help attract the affections of their crushes. But there were others. Potions to enhance sexual performance, ones for multiple orgasms, et cetera.
    Sometimes the lines between sex magic and the other traditions got blurred, too. Like when someone wanted a vanity potion. Usually vanities fell under the heading of alchemy, but sometimes sex magic potions were employed to increase a user’s attractiveness. Same went with blood potions, since the energies that influenced both blood and sex came from the same kind of chthonic power sources. All of this was to say, of course, that sex magic was big business, which was why Aphrodite put so much money into the setup. Also why she’d be so determined to find the offender and make him pay for daring to violate the sanctity of her lab.
    I approached the wall-to-wall lab setup with Morales, while Mez continued to take notes at the table.
    About three feet back from the shelves, I threw out an arm to stop Morales. He looked up with a frown. Instead of answering, I pointed to the floor. Several small shards of glass glittered on the concrete floor. A dried, sticky