“Uh….” I racked my brain for an excuse. “Forgot my wand at home.” I grimaced. “Whoopsies.”
Daisy growled. Dirty liar. Tell Peter the truth—you’re a sneaky shifter!
I could always count on Daisy for a pep talk.
“Oh.” Peter blinked at me. “We could’ve gone back for it or—”
I waved a hand. “Nah, it’s fine. Why don’t you try?”
He watched me a moment longer, then withdrew his wand from his inside jacket pocket and pointed it at the bags. He muttered a few quick words, light flashed from his wand, and—nothing happened.
I bit my lip. Well, if I knew that was going to be the result, I could’ve totally faked having powers.
Peter frowned, a little crease appearing between his thick brows. “Huh.”
Aileen gave a weak grin. “Told ya. That giant spider of Li Fan’s spins a magical silk. They use it to make spell-resistant fabric, and the bags look more high quality than they are.” She shrugged. “Of course, the illusion doesn’t last more than seventy-two hours, but by then some poor chump’s bought it, so who cares?”
Peter and I exchanged looks. Xiu, the foreman, had conveniently forgotten to mention that fact about their resident giant spider. I thought of Heidi’s knockoff. Could a customer have been so incensed by their bag turning out to be a fake that they took their revenge out on Li Fan?
Peter stepped forward and held each of the bags up, turning them this way and that. “So you were aware this sweatshop was responsible for the fakes?”
Aileen nodded. “Bel was, too. A few days ago, some of our top designs started flooding the streets—before they debuted at the show!” Aileen raised her brows. “Bel was furious—she thought we had a mole.”
Peter lifted a brow. “A mole? Why?”
Aileen licked her lips, her gaze down on the desk in front of her. “Because the only way that was possible was if our designs got leaked.”
“Who had access to the designs?”
The designer avoided Peter’s gaze. “Only me and Bel did.”
Peter set the second bag down and shot Aileen a puzzled look. “Why didn’t you contact the police?”
The designer pushed her glasses up her nose and worried her lip. “Uh… Bel didn’t want to file a report.”
I scoffed. “Why not?”
Aileen’s throat bobbed. “I thought for sure the knockoffs and the leak would derail the show.”
I lifted a brow. “It didn’t?” I mean, I figured the designer dying in the middle of it had done the trick, but leaked designs seemed like a good reason for a fail, too.
Aileen shook her head. “Bel publicly accused Ferdinand D’Lin—” She turned to Peter. “Another designer—of sabotaging us, of leaking the designs… even though she knew he couldn’t have!” She looked like she was about to cry.
“And it turned into this whole media storm—it’s been all over the papers for days. He didn’t immediately deny it—I mean he’s practically a hermit after all, no one even knows where he lives! But then he came out and called it preposterous—the media pitted Bel and him as rivals, and to be honest, our house was never mentioned in the same breath as someone as big as Ferdinand, but all of a sudden the press was putting us on the same level as him, and then our show sold out and—it seemed like we were going to be more successful than ever!”
I frowned as I watched her talk, her hands gesturing wildly. She didn’t exactly seem enthused about that turn of events. But maybe it was just the stress of handling it all and the added pressure of a sold-out show and a media storm on top of it. Plus she seemed like a sweet girl—someone a famously temperamental designer like Bel Hahn might have taken advantage of and overworked.
Peter’s gaze grew distant—his thinking look—then he turned back to Aileen. “What about Ms. Hahn’s apparent heart attack? Did she have a history of medical issues?”
Aileen shook her head, mouth pulled to the side. “Not that I knew of.” She sighed. “But she wouldn’t have discussed that kind of thing with me, anyway. She was under a lot of stress, though….”
I licked my lips. There was still the matter of only Aileen and Bel herself having access to the designs. Could Bel have been the one to leak the plans, just so she could accuse Ferdinand D’Lin for the publicity?
“Aileen.” I tilted my head and started to ask just that. “Could Bel have leaked—”
I jumped as shouts sounded behind me.
Two men in white security polos and black slacks dragged a pretty young woman with her hands cuffed behind her back across the floor.
She threw her head back and shrieked, “Get your hands off me!”
10
MODEL BEHAVIOR
Aileen groaned. “Caught and cleaned. I thought she’d have sobered up by now.”
Peter and I turned back to face the designer as she dragged her hands down her face.
“Who is that?” Peter’s brow furrowed in concern as he turned back to face the scene unfolding outside the glass walls of the office. “Why is she being held by those security officers?”
Aileen shook her head. “Cid Johannsen—our top model until Bel fired her last week.” She groaned. “A week before the show.”
I hiked up a brow. “Is that bad?”
“Is that bad?” Aileen scoffed and planted her hands on the messy desk in front of her. “The clothes are tailored to each model—lose a model and the whole show practically has to be reworked.” The bags under her eyes looked darker. “And Cid was our star.”
Peter and I exchanged looks before he turned back to Aileen. “Why did Bel Hahn fire her?”
Aileen heaved a sigh that sounded like it came from the depths of her soul. “Cid was showing up for fittings wasted on who knows what potions.” Her shoulders slumped. “If she showed up at all. This went on for weeks. The last grain of sand was when Cid stumbled off the fitting block, she was so intoxicated, and tore a gown. Bel fired her
