The lid opened easily on its hinge. I was ready—and again wished my magical abilities included reading objects using touch.
“Now, where did Mom keep her notes?” I opened the ledger to the page that held the entry for the elemental water mage. His basic information included the date, his age, and notations on various physical attributes, including height, weight, eye color, and hair color. On the line below were abbreviations and acronyms, and on the line below that were his magical attributes. I gave a low whistle as I perused the list of Rémy Ruisseau’s skills.
The water mage wasn’t blustering when he implied he could bring on death and destruction. He could turn water into weapons simply by raising or lowering its temperature. He could get stabby by freezing water into deadly icicles. He could create waterspouts and hurricanes and rising tides. He could drain coastal waterways and inland lakes.
He was based on the east coast, which gave him access to all oceanic and inland waterways from the West Indies and the Greater Antilles, through the North Atlantic and into the Labrador Sea.
That amount of range gave me pause. If Rémy had access to the waterways, he might also have allies in the Magical communities inhabiting those waters. Allies, friends, lovers. Possibly offspring. Definitely enemies, given his nature.
The more I read about Rémy Ruisseau, the more frustrated I became that he was the magical being who had exposed our mother’s secret. Why couldn’t it have been a cuddly shifter, one of the big cats, to cross the threshold to Needles and Sins and give us a spacious timeline?
I pulled a legal pad and a ballpoint pen out of the top drawer and went to jot down my initial thoughts. The pen was out of ink. I tossed it in the trash and tried the one given out by the local charity whose donation box was still sitting on the counter downstairs.
Putting myself in the mindset of a witch who wanted to help a powerful water mage find his mate, I began a list of what I would look for in a suitable match.
Their magic had to be compatible. Which meant nothing too fiery, because with all the power Rémy wielded—and which he’d demonstrated by immobilizing Kostya and Beryl—he could drown out fire magic simply by exhaling. Air could play with the surface water. Air could also move water, if it came in the form of wind. But we’d seen last night that Rémy’s ability to manipulate water included a lot of moving air.
Which felt a bit…redundant. Or more like something he’d look for in a business partner.
That left earth. Earth could be molded into vessels that held water. Earth could be banked in order to help direct water. I tended to lump humans—and humans with trace amounts of magic—into the earth element category.
I put earth at the top and noted we might be looking for a human. I followed earth with air, water, and fire, and glanced at the entry’s middle line where my mom had written F. C= yes. V= no. $= no. Land= no.
Mom’s shorthand wasn’t blatantly obvious. I flipped through the ledger. An index card had been taped to the inside of the front cover. Rémy was looking for a female. He wanted children. The female did not have to be a virgin or come with a dowry or land holdings.
How thoroughly modern of him. I scanned the paperwork for more abbreviations and added widower and octogenarian to what I knew. He was remarkably fit, physically and mentally, for a being in his eighties. But maybe mages lived longer than I knew.
I wasn’t convinced I was getting anywhere. My cell phone lit up with a text from two floors below. I sent a smiley face emoji to Kostya in response to the question of how I was doing and went back to sorting and sifting.
On the far right of the page Mom recorded the amount of the deposit and the money owed. I gave a low whistle. She’d quoted Rémy the sum of one hundred thousand dollars. With that kind of an income, Mom could have had our out-of-the-cardboard-box dinners catered.
I sighed, shook my head, and reminded myself I’d had a very happy childhood and never felt I lacked for anything.
I returned my attention to the ledger. In the final column was the number ninety-eight, written in green ink. I ran my fingertip up that column. Each client entry had a number, some written in green, some in red. I flipped forward to Kostya and his two brothers. The final columns in their three rows were blank.
“Ninety-eight, ninety-eight…” I shivered, scanned the desktop, then lifted my gaze. Bolts and folded stacks of fabric lined those shelves. Nothing appeared to be labeled or numbered.
Pushing back the chair, I tugged open the deep drawer on the left, rifled through the tabs, and read the label on each hanging file.
Demon, Reformed Realm.
Demon, Unallied.
Fae, Seelie.
Fae, Unseelie.
Human.
Huh. Mom had human clients? I stuck two fingers into that file and nudged the halves apart. Inside were a couple of pages of monogrammed writing stock and an envelope with a canceled stamp from a decade ago. I left that curiosity for later.
Mage.
Necromancer.
Sorcerer.
Vampire.
Were-creature.
Witch/Warlock.
Uncategorized.
The thinnest files belonged to the human and both realms of Fae, and the thickest went to the mages, and witches and warlocks. I jotted a note to go through the mage folders and see if we could locate a satisfied customer. If we did, and they were willing to talk to us, maybe we’d begin to get an idea of how our mother decided who fit with whom.
What if her pairings were based on reading tea leaves, rune sticks, and tarot cards? What if there was a network of Magical matchmakers that she
