Cursed Moon (Prospero's War) Read Online Free Page B

ranking.”
    Morales grinned. “Yes, sir.”
    Without another word she turned on her heel and marched back toward her office. I jumped in front of Morales, grabbing the second cup from the special pot. Judging from the look on his face, the offense ranked up there with making fun of hismama. I stuck my tongue at him and filled his cup for him. “There, you big baby. Let’s go see what the boss lady wants.”
    Gardner’s office wasn’t anything to write home about. A simple metal desk, a filing cabinet, and an ancient office chair. A couple of thin wooden planks that served as bookshelves. Single window cloudy as milk glass offering pitiful light. On top of her desk were a blotter, a phone, and a sign that read, NO BULLSHIT BEFORE FIVE P.M. I knew from personal experience she wasn’t too fond of it after five, either.
    “Sit down.” She took her own seat. “Captain Eldritch will join us momentarily.”
    I frowned. “He’s coming here?”
    Eldritch used to be my boss before I joined the MEA task force. He was the captain of the Cauldron precinct of the Babylon Police Department. He specialized in Arcane crimes and political maneuvering, not necessarily in that order. He’d encouraged me to take the gig with the MEA in the hopes I’d be his insider gal, but once he realized I was more interested in solving crimes than earning brownie points our professional rapport had suffered. Still, he hadn’t argued about granting me a promotion to detective after my first case with MEA resulted in the arrest of one of the Cauldron’s most powerful wizards.
    She nodded to the phone. “He’s on his way up.”
    Morales shot me a grimace. A call from my former boss was usually bad enough, but a personal visit? Could only mean trouble.
    The sound of footsteps trudging up stairs from the other end of the gym announced Eldritch’s arrival. A few seconds later Mez called out a greeting that was met with a grumble. A good sign. If he’d been in a shitty mood, he wouldn’t have responded at all.
    Two seconds later the door to Gardner’s office was filledwith the bulk of Captain Robert Eldritch. There was a coffee stain on the wide belly of his off-white dress shirt. His forehead shone with beads of sweat from the exertion of hefting his bulk up the steps. The brass clip on his navy-blue tie had been given to him by the mayor himself when Eldritch had been promoted to captain several years earlier. Now he was angling for the gold tie clip and sweet pay-grade increase a promotion to chief of police would earn him.
    “How well you know Aphrodite Johnson?” This was his only greeting and when he said it, he was staring right at me.
    My shoulders lifted even as my hopes plummeted. Here we go, I thought, back in the shit. I self-consciously tugged my left sleeve down to cover the Ouroboros tattoo on my wrist that marked me as a made member of the Votary Coven. I’d never had it removed because the snake winding around my flesh was a reminder of the viper pit I’d escaped a decade earlier.
    “Hold on,” Gardner cut in. Clearly she wasn’t going to let Eldritch stroll in and take over. “You mean the head of the O Coven?”
    “I’m impressed you’ve done your homework on the covens, Gardner,” he said.
    Her eyes went all cold steel on him. “I’ve been brushing up on Cauldron politics when I’m not busy picking up your precinct’s slack.”
    Eldritch’s eyes narrowed.
    I stepped in to defuse the tension. “Yes, Aphrodite is the Hierophant of the Mystical Coven of the Sacred Orgasm.”
    Morales perked up the instant he heard the word
orgasm
. “Since the O’s are a sex magic coven, does that make the Hierophant like a madam?”
    “Something like that,” I said.
Pimp
also worked, depending on the day.
    “How well do you know Aphrodite personally?” Eldritch pressed me.
    When you call yourself Aphrodite, you have to have either some serious confidence or a well-developed sense of irony. Judging from my dealings with