toward me.
I waved a rib at them.
“He would be a powerful ally,” Dimitri said, “but can you really imagine a dragon working with anyone but another dragon?”
I didn’t want him for an ally anyway. I worked alone. That wasn’t going to change. It was bad enough I’d let Dimitri go see the vampire with me. It had almost gotten him eaten by a haunted house.
“Until I figure out how to find this lair, it’s a moot point.” I dug out my phone and tapped open the map application again, thinking of Zoltan’s implication that the alchemist would have to have access to a body of water large enough to hold a kraken.
I’d been attacked twice by dark elves in hoodies, so it wasn’t as if they couldn’t travel outside, at least at night, but it would certainly be convenient for the alchemist if she didn’t have to go far to collect blood from sea life. Maybe there was a tunnel exit right by the water.
Puget Sound would be the most obvious bet for housing something as large as a kraken. It connected to the Pacific Ocean, and, as a quick search told me, was a lot deeper than Lake Union or Lake Washington.
But how would someone on land or a boat get close to a kraken? Weren’t they supposed to be hundreds if not thousands of pounds? Could a kraken be lured up to shore? And trapped for long enough to give a vial of its blood? Or its venom. Zoltan had gotten an excited gleam in his eyes when he’d spoken of that. Even if it had nothing to do with the potion—formula—that had taken down Willard, maybe a dark-elf alchemist would be just as excited by kraken venom and try to collect it regularly.
I closed the social media application I’d had open, checking on a status update from my daughter’s latest swim meet, and did some searches for Puget Sound plus sea monsters, giant squids, and krakens, to see if anything came up. Nothing within the past decade. Hm. More on a whim than because I thought I’d get lucky, I did the same search with Lake Union and the ship canal. Willard’s words about the Underground tunnels extending under the lake came to mind. A ship could pass from the Sound through the ship canal, Lake Union, and Portage Bay into Lake Washington, so wasn’t it conceivable that a kraken could too? The idea of it correctly timing its passage through the locks was a little amusing, but maybe they were smart.
“Ah, what’s this?” I murmured.
“Leftovers?” Dimitri pointed to my plate. “Are you going to eat that cornbread?”
“Go ahead. I’m reading about a recent sighting of the Loch Ness monster in Lake Union. Several of them. From residents living in the houseboats there. How interesting.”
“Does that have something to do with dark elves?”
“It may. Look at the dates.” I showed him my phone screen. “There was a flurry of sightings about eight weeks ago, then nothing, and then more sightings last month. Could my alchemist be luring the kraken into Lake Union for easy access? And then maybe coming up from some subterranean tunnel to trap it or stab it with something that gives her a vial of blood?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about, but since you’re letting me eat your food, I won’t object.”
I finished off my brisket while explaining what Zoltan had said about kraken blood being necessary for the formula that had taken down Willard.
“Something must be happening once a month to make that the ideal time for her to lure in the kraken and take her samples. Eight weeks ago probably would have been about the time she was collecting ingredients for the potion that waylaid Willard.” I still didn’t know why the dark elves wanted to kill Willard, but I would be sure to ask the alchemist while I was wringing her neck.
“If there were sightings eight weeks ago and four weeks ago, maybe we’re due for another one.”
“If she still needs ingredients, that could be. Maybe she’s making lots of these formulas to take out lots of enemies, but she can only bring the kraken in to get fresh blood once a month. It was dark last night, wasn’t it? Even without the clouds, I don’t think there was a moon.” I snapped my fingers and tapped in a new search. “Hah, that’s it. There was a new moon eight weeks ago, the night the first sightings were reported. The