or something, with exceptional strength had inflicted the injuries. Confirmation tests for drug use weren’t completed, but preliminary results were negative.
Not much new there. She set aside her disappointment and concentrated on the rest of Ryan’s news. Based on the sketch artist’s image, the computers had identified the human boyfriend as Wesley Simpson. The address on file was old, with no forwarding update.
“I’ll track him down this afternoon,” Ryan said, yawning into the phone. “Right now, I’m going home. I’m beat. I came here straight from the crime scene and started paperwork. Sleep is sounding better than sex.”
Ari’s voice held amusement. “That’s pretty tired. While you sleep it off, let me look for Simpson. The suspect I’m after won’t be up until dark. Plenty of hours before then.”
Apparently too tired to argue, Ryan agreed.
Moments later, Ari stuck her head through the beaded doorway to tell Claris good-bye. Customers crowded the counter, so Ari waved, mouthed her thanks, and, well-fortified by coffee, went out the back door through the greenhouse. She had suspects to find and dragons to slay. Or maybe she was just too hyped on caffeine.
* * *
After numerous conversations with Simpson’s former neighbors and employers, Ari wasn’t feeling quite so revved. It had taken three hours to track down Wesley Simpson’s current place of employment with a packaging firm. Now she faced an immovable object in the form of the firm’s one and only secretary.
“I told you,” the woman repeated. “He isn’t here, his supervisor isn’t here, and I can’t give out the home address. I’d get fired. You’ll have to come back another day.” She looked Ari up and down suspiciously.
After the secretary’s third refusal, Ari gave up. This sentry seemed convinced Ari was a disgruntled girlfriend hell-bent on stalking their employee. Ari had given her best, most disarming smile, but no go. She decided it must be the new kick-ass boots.
Deciding Ryan could handle this with less fuss, Ari called the police station and left the info with a clerk. The secretary would be putty in the hands of Ryan and his blue tell-me-all eyes. Not to discount his shiny badge. Ari had one too, of course, but she was afraid her Otherworld credentials would scare the woman more than the new boots.
Her promise to Ryan essentially kept, Ari considered Claris’s request. Still time to see Yana before dark. She stopped briefly at the shop to grab the seedlings and left with eagerness in her stride.
Chapter Five
Ari had lived in Riverdale most of her life. She grew up in the area, considered herself a river rat, and returned to town about two years ago after her witchcraft apprenticeship in St. Louis. Riverdale was home.
Geographically divided in half by the Oak River and built on the banks of the lesser stream and the high cliffs of the Mississippi River, Riverdale was also divided by cultures. The old and the new, the human and the magical.
According to Great-Gran and her never-ending history lessons as Ari was growing up, the original city was built entirely on the Mississippi bluffs with the docks on the lower banks of the Oak. Over time, the human population drifted inland on both sides of the smaller stream. New developments flourished, often referred to as suburbs, and a modern city center followed the migration. Olde Town took on an identity of its own. Riverdale’s 287,000 residents, sprawling across the countryside in haphazard fashion, didn’t fit well into any scheme for division. In spite of or maybe because of its differences, the city remained under one municipal government, a fact ignored by local vernacular. Olde Town, downtown Riverdale, and the suburbs all meant distinctly different places.
A year before Yana was unsworn as a Guardian, she moved to the suburbs. Not the far suburbs, but the land just east of Goshen Park. Her home was no more than fifteen minutes from Claris’s shop, and that afternoon Ari hardly had time to stretch her legs before she was climbing Yana’s front steps.
Yana spotted the young witch immediately. “Arianna! Come in and help me.”
Ari opened the screen door. Yana Montrey was struggling to move a six-foot-long bolt of fabric, a tough task given her four-foot stature. At 114 years old, Yana was well beyond middle age for a wood nymph but not yet considered an elder. Her naturally silver hair, wound around the crown of her head in the honeycomb style favored by her people, showed traces of white. As expected, she had aged rapidly since the unswearing