It was fairly quiet. I stood before Number 55, looking up as condensation swirled out of my mouth. Their apartment was the top floor—55C.
Leaving my bike on its kickstand, I headed for the main door of the apartment building. In my line of work, you’re privy to a few rather cool instruments. One of the coolest was a skeleton key. It got me into wherever I wanted, whenever I needed to. I didn’t abuse that power, not wanting to end up with our PIA license revoked.
I opened the door with the key and slipped inside. Quiet. People had probably gone to work, although I could hear a child laughing in the ground floor apartment I passed.
There was no elevator, only stairs, so I took them two at a time, heading for the top floor of the building. Lars had called me before I’d set off to say Mr. Visser was with him to identify the body. He’d been informed of me heading over to investigate his property to conduct an investigation. No forensic evidence had been discovered here or over at Waterlooplein, no sign of a break-in at all. All routes to the answer were cold right now.
It was freezing outside the door of the Visser home, as if I were in a vacuum of icy air that was nowhere else in the building but here. The small landing was their own, no other apartment sharing it.
How did Mrs. Visser get down these stairs with a broken leg? She’d have been trapped in that apartment until she was better unless her husband helped carry her out. The stairs were steep. Maybe not trapped, but it would have taken her an effort to get down, the risk of her falling high, and would’ve generated enough noise to wake up someone in this building.
No one had seen a thing.
Still, it was a possibility she could have left by herself, albeit a slim one. Then ended up in the wrong place at the wrong time. It was another theory, along with kidnap.
I did a sweep of the landing with one of my own inventions—a beefed-up UV light that was less flashy than the MagiScanner Dr. Geels had used, but one of my favorite tools to use.
Though I was half-fae, I still had some magical fae juice in me. I could manipulate the mind, which sometimes came in handy, but I could use a bit of my diluted fae magic to make things or aid in spells. It was easier to go to Mila most of the time. However, I enjoyed a challenge. My UV light was another cool instrument. It worked the same as any other UV light but picked up on paranormal energy traces.
Nothing on the landing.
Time to go inside.
I let myself into the Visser home with my skeleton key. Inside the small entrance hall was a coat rack with a long black mac and an umbrella resting against the beige wall. Opposite was an embroidered gray tabby cat, framed in gold.
That same cat came around the corner with a meow, tail up.
“Goedemorgen,” I said to the feline. My boyfriend’s methods had rubbed off on me. Jake had insisted that animals should be greeted in Dutch too, because they were, well, Dutch. That’d sparked an interesting debate one night in bed—the issue still unresolved.
The cat wound between my legs, purring away. I crouched down to stroke her head and look at her silver tag. Her name was Pip.
Done with petting, I headed down the hall. Straight ahead was the living room. To my left, the bathroom and bedroom, on my right, the kitchen where the sink was overloaded with dirty dishes, a plate of burnt toast on the side. It was a tiny space, barely any room to swing a … Pip.
I ran my UV light over everything, finding nothing. Pip followed me, getting another rub of her head for the trouble.
Next was the living room, another small space. The entire apartment was tiny, a little too cramped, but could be considered cozy if it weren’t for the cold permeating everything.
The green carpet was plush, the one sofa white with blue periwinkles. More embroidered cats hung on the magnolia walls. There was a coffee table with a cup that needed bathing in bleach, as well as a daily newspaper dog-eared at the edges. The curtains had been thrown open without care.
Also, on the coffee table was an empty box of candy canes, only one of the red and white teeth breakers left behind. I noticed another box underneath the table, also empty. Mr. Visser was right to worry about her dental health if she was hoovering up the candy canes like there was no tomorrow.
There was a magazine rack at either side of the sofa—one with car magazines, the other with craft ones. This couple should be at their respective places on the sofa right now, enjoying the morning, not being part of the grim reality that was going on. It was sad to see these objects of normality when normal was dead.
Hugging your loved ones was the best advice anyone could ever embrace.
The TV reflected me back on the dark screen. I watched Pip leap up onto the sofa behind me as I did a sweep of the coffee table.
Again, nothing. Not one trace of magic or anything suspect.
Two rooms to go.
Pip was a fussing-fiend. I obliged once again, then left her to groom herself while I went to the bathroom.
The blue room yielded nothing, only that there was a hoarding of shampoo going on.
Last up was the bedroom.
Purple and white carpet, with green and white wallpaper, greeted me, as did more Pip embroidery. The bed was unmade, and there was the stench of stale sweat coming from the twisted purple duvet.
I swept the free-standing wardrobe, the bed, the small TV on a chest of drawers, and found nothing.
This really was baffling.
Pip jumped up on the bed, purred, and groomed herself some more as I cast the
