Wow! He owns this place? Lorelei said. Pretty swank.
“Thank you,” Jason said. “Now, tell me why you’re here, other than to drink my tea and eat the rest of the cake out of the break room?”
“I was looking for another wizard…” I began.
“Mage.” His eyes narrowed.
“Yeah, whatever. We have a real problem that someone with your expertise might be able to help with.”
For a second, Jason looked as though he was going to say no. But then he smirked. “I supposed you won’t be satisfied until you clean out our break rooms of food and tea.”
“Probably not,” I agreed. “And you don’t want to see werewolves on a caffeinated buzz.”
Hey! Luna objected. You haven’t lived until you’ve been with a bunch of werewolves on Hair of the Dog.
“Pass.” He made a sweeping motion to his office. “Come in, all of you.”
Chapter Seven
“What do you mean you can’t help me?” I stared at Jason as he leaned back and made a tent with his fingers. The werewolves snarled at him, but he seemed unimpressed with their display. I had told him our story, leaving nothing out, and told him what I needed from him. At that point, he said he couldn’t help me.
“Look, I can’t get involved in something that is clearly the domain of law enforcement. I mean, this is werewolf pack politics, and I’m the CEO of Magickal Tea Company, not some caped crusader.”
“But I’m a police officer…”
“Who is out of his jurisdiction. Last time I checked, Niwot isn’t part of the Denver Municipality, no matter how much land Denver has annexed over the past 50 years.”
“But you’re a powerful mage…”
“Yes, yes, I am. So if you don’t want to piss me off, vacate the premise immediately.” He smiled. “Anyway, you got what you came for. The Denver Wolfpack now has its bitches back. So what if the Commerce City Wolfpack is locked up?”
Before I could say anything, Tara leapt at him. He tossed up a shield and Tara bounced off of it. “Wait, you guys!” I shouted before the others could leap on him. “Jason is too chickenshit to help us with our problem, we’ll have to figure it out ourselves.”
“Get out before I call the real police,” Jason pointed and the door opened. “And if you’re that desperate, you should probably just Google stasis spells.” He paused. “John, can you walk them out?”
John appeared out of thin air. “Werewolves and a wizard? What gives?”
I blinked. This guy was a powerful magic user. Teleportation was a high level skill. “Wow, you can teleport?”
Jason frowned. “How many times have I told you to not teleport in my company?”
John shrugged. “I’ve lost count.”
“Walk them out and don’t let them bother us again.” Jason slammed the door.
“Wow, what’d you do to piss him off?” John looked at me curiously.
“I asked for help.”
“That was your first mistake.” Suddenly, we were no longer in front of Jason Nesbit’s office, but rather in a laboratory. It was empty except for us. The werewolves yipped in concern. He smiled at them. “Sorry about the teleportation, but I figured you might want to talk to me privately.”
“Won’t you get in trouble if you don’t show us out?” I looked around. It looked like there was a clean room not that far from us with racks of test tubes and vials.
“Nah, Jase relies too much on me.” He grinned. “He loses me and he loses the company. Especially because I own 51 percent of the shares.”
“Oh, wow.”
“Yeah, so I take it you asked for Jase’s help and he got snotty?”
“Yeah.” I told him our story.
“Wow, that’s a doozy,” he said when I finished.
“Can you help us?”
“Maybe. I’ve got some magic herbs that will put them to sleep.”
“Uh, I’m a cop. And even if marijuana is legal here, I’m not supposed to have it on me.” I held up my hands as though I didn’t want to even touch the stuff.”
“No, no—nothing like that.” He chuckled. “Although Jase wants me to come up with a hemp concoction. No, this is like the Celestial Seasonings Sleepytime herbal tea but with a lot bigger punch. In fact, I could separate the herbs and give you a spray concoction that will put the Boulder Five nighty night for a while.”
I glanced at the werewolves, who nodded. “Yeah, they approve.”
John grinned. “Thought they would.” He walked over to a cabinet and pulled out a brown container full of liquid. He carefully measured out a cup in a vial and poured it into a spray bottle. The potion itself looked green and had bits of plants floating around in it. He added water, shook it, and held it up. “One squirt will knock out anything sentient.”
I knelt down beside the bottle on the table and looked at it with my magical sight. Tendrils of green wove its way around the bottle, but they didn’t look particularly potent.
“You sure it works?” I raised an eyebrow.
“Hang on.” He walked to the Lab’s door. “Hey Mark! Can you come here for a moment?”
“Okay.” Mark came in. He was a blond teenager—maybe 17 or 18—complete with pimples, his hair tied in the typical man bun, tats, and three ear piercings with studs. “What do you want?”
“Stand there.”
“Why?” Mark had a suspicious look on his face.
“Mark, this is…” John glanced at me. “Bob…?”
“Bob Ironspell-Cabas.” I offered my hand.
“Wow, you’re Ironspell? You’re the dude who tamed the dragon.” Mark offered to bump fists with me.
I quickly switched to a fist and obliged. “You know about that, huh? The news made the Denver Wizard Task Force into the heroes.”
Mark snorted. “Word gets around in the Supe community.”
“You’re supernatural?” I switched to my magical sight and saw the vestiges of magic residue. The kid was a practitioner of some variety.
“Yeah, I do some magic. Dad here got me an internship.” He pointed at John.
John grinned. “Keeping the whole tea thing in the family.” He paused. “Hey, if I had known you were Ironspell, I would’ve intercepted you from Jase
