Read Online Trace of Magic by Diana Pharaoh Francis - Free Book Online

around herself, and I could see her starting to shake. I took her to the kitchen. It was as much a disaster as the rest of the condo. She’d found the tea, coffee, and sugar and had made hot water. The teapot was insulated metal and hadn’t broken, and the French press was plastic. I cleaned off one of the barstools and sat her down, then poured her a cup of the sweet tea. She sipped it and then made a face at the syrupy taste.
    “Drink it,” Price said, coming in behind me. He picked his way through the mess on the floor, opening cupboards and drawers, exploring. “You need the heat and the sugar or you’ll go into shock.”
    To my surprise, Taylor drank without another protest.
    He poured coffee into a cup that had lost its handle and spiked it with a heaping spoonful of sugar. “You too,” he said, holding the drink out.
    “Thanks, dad,” I said with a grimace. Luckily I do like my coffee sweet and with cream, but I wasn’t going hunting in the refrigerator for any. Talk about insensitive. Instead, I sipped the bittersweet brew, glowering at Price all the while. I didn’t need him bossing me around.
    I took my coffee and went to the front door and out into the hallway. I was betting the kidnappers had used a null to keep anyone from following. I was right. There was no incoming trail for the tinker and haunters and no track for Josh leaving. I had a feeling they’d used a better one than Nancy Jane Squires’s kidnappers. I doubted the trace would be coming back.
    I picked my way uneasily through the living room, looking for any clues. The null wards were completely drained. I walked back down the hall past the kitchen, giving a little shake of my head at Price’s questioning look.
    There hadn’t been any other women in Josh’s bedroom. Taylor was the only one. She’d been there today, no doubt looking for Josh. But she’d also been there repeatedly for a long time. I could have unraveled back years, but I didn’t need to. It was clear that though they’d broken up, she was still sleeping with him.
    I shrugged one shoulder. None of my business.
    There wasn’t much else to see in the room except the wreckage of Josh’s very neat life. If he survived whatever had happened to him, he was going to have a hell of a time putting it all back together.
    Price propped himself in the doorway behind me. It felt like he was standing in the doorway of a jail cell and I was trapped inside.
    “Got any idea what they wanted?”
    I shook my head. “None.”
    “Your sister says she doesn’t either.”
    “You think she’s lying?” I asked without heat. He was a cop, after all, and witnesses did lie.
    “Probably not. But I’ll bet she knows more than she thinks she does.”
    I thought the same.
    “I need to talk to her some more. But not here. She needs to go somewhere she feels safe, where she can open up.”
    “Are you making this an official investigation?” I’ll admit I was surprised, though I’m not sure why. He was a good cop, when he wasn’t enforcing for Touray.
    “Any reason I shouldn’t?”
    I could hear the suspicion in his voice. “Not as far as I know,” I lied. “But you have this other case. The one that almost got us killed tonight. I didn’t get the feeling you wanted to be working on anything else.”
    “I don’t. But I can see I’m not peeling you off this, so I might as well speed things up. I’m going to call in the crime-scene guys to see what they can find.”
    I did my best to look like that was good news. They’d have a tracer, and he’d figure out pretty damned quick that there’d been two haunters here and that I’d lied about them. He wasn’t going to take that well. And if this did turn out to be one of his boss’s jobs or an ally’s, Price was not only going to stop helping, he was going to do everything he could to get me out of the way. Hell, even if an enemy gang was responsible, he could shut me down just to keep peace.
    My jaw knotted. Let him try. I