Sinister Magic: An Urban Fantasy Dragon Series (Death Before Dragons #1) - Lindsay Buroker Page 0,23
sure what I was looking for, I poked into drawers and peered under the table and into cabinets. I found a pair of Garfield coffee mugs next to a fancy espresso maker and suspected the slippers hadn’t represented only the niece’s tastes. There were Flintstones pint glasses in a cabinet, and I found a cat dish with Smurfs on it. It seemed my no-nonsense boss had a fondness for the cartoons of her youth. I knew she’d been a drill sergeant before switching to the officer route, and amused myself by imagining her barking at privates rappelling down the Victory Tower while sipping from a Garfield mug.
When I walked into the bedroom, I found Sindari with his tail up and his butt pressed against the comforter on the bed.
“What are you doing?”
Scratching an itch.
“Are you scent-marking that duvet?”
Absolutely not.
“I don’t believe you. You’re leaving your scent all over the place to terrorize that poor cat, aren’t you?”
Only in this place, and not to terrorize her, certainly. Only to inform her that a superior feline was here. I am an apex predator. It would be against my instincts to mask my scent.
“I bet the dragon doesn’t do this.”
We didn’t discuss how dragons mark their territory while he was chasing me across your ocean.
I sighed. “Did you find anything suspicious in here?”
I do not detect anything magical in here, but I have not completed my search. He lifted his nose and wandered out into the living room again.
I found a bottle of odor-eliminating spray in a cabinet in the bathroom and liberally squirted the duvet. Did other service-animal owners deal with this?
In here, Sindari called from the kitchen. And I know what you’re doing.
Good. Keep your butt off things.
I joined him in the kitchen as he pawed open the cabinet under the sink.
Check that black cylinder attached to the sink, he told me.
“The garbage disposal?” I leaned forward and looked into the drain dubiously. “There are blades in that thing, you know.”
I sense something.
“You sure it’s not in the trash can?” I poked through a bin hanging inside the cabinet door, the coffee grounds inside starting to grow fuzzy mold. Colonel Willard must not have expected to be admitted to the hospital when she’d left, or I was certain she would have taken out the garbage.
It is in the cylinder.
“Of course it is.” Reluctantly, I slid my hand past the plastic flaps and probed around the blades, trying not to imagine the disposal turning on of its own accord and cutting off my fingers. “What am I looking for?” There were more grimy, still-damp coffee grounds inside, and I grimaced.
Something very faint.
It must have been. I couldn’t sense anything magical. But my fingers brushed something that felt like a tiny vial, and triumph rushed through my veins.
I pulled it out, brushing off coffee grounds, and started to reach for the faucet lever but paused. If something interesting had been in the container, I shouldn’t wash it.
“Is this what you sense?” I grabbed a paper towel and wiped it but not vigorously.
It was a vial of some kind, though the stopper was missing. Transparent and only two inches tall, with a narrow neck and a bulbous bottom, it had heft that suggested glass rather than plastic.
Yes. Sindari gazed at it. As I said, it has a very faint magical signature. Less than what even the weakest of your charms gives off.
“Coming from the vial itself or some residue at the bottom?” I peered inside, but I couldn’t see a smudge or stain to hint at what it had contained.
I can’t tell.
“I wonder if Willard has any police friends that I could send this to. Maybe someone in forensics could scrape enough residue off the bottom to look at under a microscope.” Though I doubted magic would show up in a mundane crime lab.
Besides, whoever had left the vial had probably washed it out. Otherwise, why leave a clue behind? Unless the person had been on the verge of being caught and had shoved it in the disposal, certain someone would use it and destroy the vial before ever seeing it…
You should not let it out of your sight, since that’s your only clue. Do you not have police friends you could ask?
“No. I don’t have many friends. I’m discussing this dearth with a therapist.” Not that I intended to go back.
Perhaps it is because you mask their scents with offensive odors.