My mother had simply written the client’s name and birthdate backward. This card read, “Laszlo b. 1 Aug.”
Kostya had a brother named Laszlo.
“Kostya? I found something,” I said, setting the box to one side of the table. “I think you’re going to want to see this.”
“I found something too,” Beryl chimed in, waving a tall yet slender book and an expandable, envelope-sized file folder in the air. “A ledger and a paper trail. We might be able to use this to figure out just how many clients were left when Mom was—” Beryl stumbled over the rug as she hurried to share her discovery. “After Mom died. And where she kept the deposits and the final payments. If we can figure out how to read her writing.”
A whisper of anticipation zipped through my limbs. We were getting somewhere.
“I think we should speak with at least one other client in order to verify what Rémy said.” Kostya leaned against the table. “Still, I’m adding robbery to the list of possible motives for murder.”
Robbery. Murder. Mom and Dad hadn’t raised my sisters and me in an extravagant lifestyle. If anything, I would have labeled them both as frugal but not stingy.
They sold the house we grew up in during my senior year of college. They’d been open about telling us they used the proceeds of the sale to pay off the mortgage on the three-story, downtown building. I guess I hadn’t paid enough attention to my mother, or Needles and Sins, to see beyond the storefront being a gathering spot for humans and Magicals who made things with their hands, drank tea, and gossiped. If my mom had a source of income anything like what Rémy suggested, where did all that money go?
One quick ballpark calculation had me shaking my head. I hefted myself onto the big table. “That’s a lot of money to trace, and this is a lot to process.”
Kostya opened his arms. I accepted the invitation for a hug. “What did you want to show me?” he asked.
I slid the opened box toward him. “Have a look in here. And you’ll need this to read the card.” I held out the handle of the reverse-viewer.
The demon examined the paper, mouthed his brother’s name before setting down the viewer, and lifted the flap on the accompanying envelope. He extracted a lock of wavy, white hair shot through with metallic silver highlights. “Sure looks like Laz’s,” he said. “But there’s nothing else in here.” He looked up when Beryl set the ledger and file folder between us.
“I think we’ll need the reverse-viewer to decipher what’s in here too,” I said, after fanning through the pages. Kostya brought the special mirror to the ledger and scanned the loops and whorls of my mother’s writing.
“The last date is late June, seven years ago, and it’s my mother’s,” Kostya said. “There are three deposits noted.”
“That was five weeks after my graduation,” I said. “Can you find Rémy’s entry?”
Kostya scanned the lines above, quickly locating the water mage’s name on the next page back. “It doesn’t look like your mother took on more than one or two clients per month. And she gave my mother a group rate.”
Beryl and I laughed a little at the thought of Kostya and his demon brothers being matched up at the request of their mother—and possibly without their knowledge.
“Even at one a month, that’s four hundred thousand dollars a year if she charged everyone the same deposit she asked for from Rémy.”
“Where would she have stashed that kind of cash?” Beryl asked. “And what could she have been spending it on?”
“That’s it. Heriberto’s got to step up and answer our questions.” Kostya took out his phone and took a photo of the page with his brother’s entry. “I wish I’d known about this when I spoke with him.”
Beryl and I agreed. I slid my butt off the table and pointed to the shelf underneath. “While we wait for Rosey and Alabastair to get back, we can finish looking through all of these. Mom set up a box for each client. I found the one that has Laz’s hair and the start of his…I don’t know, what should we call it, his order fulfillment?”
That elicited a chuckle from my sister. “Yeah, I guess we could say our mother took orders and fulfilled them.”
“Kostya, can you lay the boxes out on the table? The empty ones and the finished ones can go back on the shelf. Just label which they are. We’ll catalogue the ones that have notes and other stuff inside.”
When we finished, we had six boxes, their lids opened and contents on display, arrayed across the table. Three boxes were assigned to Kostya and his two brothers, one box was Rémy’s, and two others were unfinished.
“I think I can persuade my mother to forget about making these matches,” Kostya said, “and forego asking for a refund. Not only are there extenuating circumstances, but as her favorite son, I rarely ask for anything.”
“That leaves us with Rémy and two others.”
“I think we should reach out to those other two clients and let them know the situation.”
“Kostya, what do you think?”
He scratched at the scruff shadowing his jawline. “I agree. We’ve got to be proactive.” His eyes fired up as he spoke. “I don’t want to lose any of you to Rémy, or any other disgruntled client. And I can promise my brothers’ support if you need it or want it.”
“Thank you.” His nearby warmth offered a moment of respite. I wrapped my arms around his rock-hard waist. Beryl’s arms circled him from the other side. “I wish Alderose was here.”
Kostya held us close. “I was just thinking the same thing.”
“I was just thinking about how wiped out I am,” Beryl said. “I don’t think I want to spend the night here.”
“Let’s set aside the demon brothers’ boxes, grab the other three and the ledger and the
