The Courtship of Julian St. Albans Read Online Free Page B

brought
him, since it was technically his idea to bring you in.”
    “It’s a dead end,” said Alex
dismissively. “A last desperate move when the long-term plans didn’t work
out.”
    “What plans?” asked Bristol, in the
same breath that Lapointe said, “Whose plans?”
    Alex grinned, smugly delighted to finally be on
the hunt for something really interesting. “Those are both excellent
questions,” he said, giving Lapointe’s arm a tug. “Come on, let’s get
some proper coffee and leave these good men to their work.”
    Alex nearly laughed at the look of
disappointment on MacLean’s face when Lapointe dumped out the last of her cup
and gave it a halfhearted rinse. “You’re buying,” she said.
    “Technically the department’s buying,
since I bill by the hour,” said Alex, unable to hold in his smugness at
that. Since he’d spent the time while working on Murielle’s amulet pondering
the case as well, he’d bill for that, and then in a way the department would
pay for the amulet after all. Speaking of which, “Aren’t you going to wear
it?” he asked, nodding to where she still had it loosely clutched in her
left hand.
    “Yes, all right, I was just thinking of
having one last one for the road,” she said wryly before slipping the soft
silk ribbon over her head so the amulet rested in the valley between her
breasts.
    MacLean swallowed as she tucked it away and
said with false cheer, “Yours is a bit nicer than mine, I think. Better
designed, I mean.”
    “Why, thank you,” said Alex. It made
an excellent exit line so he turned and left, trusting Lapointe would follow.
    Curiosity and cops went together nearly as well
as cops and coffee, after all.
    ~ ~ ~
    Alex wheedled a big corner booth for them from
the waitress in their favourite cafe, and ordered their usual snacks and coffee
without bothering to consult Lapointe.
    “You could ask,”
she said, amused.
    Alex snorted. “It’s not as if you’re not
utterly predictable,” he said, pulling the sheaf of scribbles out of his
other pocket. He knew she couldn’t really understand them, since half of them
were in magical notation and a quarter musical, but he wanted to refer to and
rearrange them to see if any new patterns emerged. “I have something
exciting, anyway.”
    “Why does that not fill me with warm and
fuzzy feelings?” she said, looking down at the spiky handwriting going
every which way on the loose pages. “Especially that,” she said,
pointing to a rather nasty bit of sigil work he’d copied out of the book. He’d
been careful not to copy it precisely, or imbue it with any power, but it was
close enough to the original to feel off even to someone as magically null as
Lapointe.
    “That’s a good place to start,” said
Alex cheerfully. “It’s a spell of enslavement, meant to bind a person to
your will. I want to look over all of Mandeville’s possessions and see if
there’s anything like it hiding away amongst the bits and baubles. And young
Julian’s as well, though I doubt they’ll let me.”
    “That butler was annoyed enough about
letting you into the actual victim’s suite, I don’t think you’ve a chance in
hell of getting into the young master’s private chambers,” she said wryly.
    Alex gave a mock pout. “Not even if I
seduced my way in?” he asked, fluttering his eyelashes exaggeratedly.
    She laughed as she was meant to, and then they
had to clear some space for the coffee and danishes for him, bagel and cream
cheese for her. “I’ve no doubt you could manage to seduce your way
wherever you wanted,” said the waitress, giving him a cheeky wink and the
extra milk he hadn’t yet bothered to ask for.
    Lapointe only laughed
harder, leaving Alex to fend for himself.
    “Some places are barred even from my
charms,” he said with mock tragedy.
    “Silly places, then,” she said, and
thankfully left before he had to come up with more or accidentally ended up
with a date.
    Lapointe finally came up for