Sparks by Laura Bickle Read Free Book Online

into her clothes and her skin. She felt the salamander collar move around her neck as she stumbled back. Sparky leapt lightly on the ground. He grasped her coat in his teeth and hauled her back, back into the fresh air.
    She breathed it deeply, forcing the heavy, still magick air out of her lungs. Sparky's head swiveled toward the car, and he growled.
    Someone who knew how to use magick had started that fire to distract the firefighter. They'd broken into the house and lifted Bernie's magickal inventory right under their noses.
    And she had no idea of what that all included. For all she knew, Bernie had the goddamn philosopher's stone or fucking Excalibur buried under his stacks of newspapers.
    Shit.

    Anya's office wasn't much, but it was a pretty damn good sanctuary.
    Hidden in the labyrinthine bowels of Detroit Fire Department HQ, it tended to be forgotten. The basement office, with its old black-and-white tiled floor, broken transom window above the door, and beat-up 1960s office furniture, smelled like mildew and stale coffee. The overhead fluorescent light buzzed and flickered. But it was home away from home. And people rarely bothered her here. She appreciated not being in the upstairs cubicle farm; Anya didn't care about seeing or being seen. She wanted space to think. Even if it smelled.
    Anya sat cross-legged on the floor, surrounded by stacks of eight-by-ten photographs. She'd spent all night logging the newly contaminated fire scene with her camera, and was comparing these shots to the ones she'd taken the previous day. The squeaky ink-jet printer on her desk grudgingly coughed them out, one at a time, before capriciously succumbing to paper jams. Anya perched over the photos with a red Magic Marker, circling things that should be there but weren't. It was like playing a giant game of Where's Fucking Waldo? and it made her head hurt.
    So far, Bernie's place was missing six swords, twenty-six bottles of various descriptions, crystals and stones, a few statues, a carved wood skull, and a bag of marbles. And that was just what she could discern from an initial inventory and review of the photos. There was likely to be much, much more missing that she'd never know about. She'd tried tracking down Bernie's relatives to see if they might be able to shed light on either his death or the missing items, but his only living relative was a nephew he hadn't spoken to in twenty years. The nephew had the good sense to move out of Detroit. When Anya asked him what he wanted done with his uncle's remaining things, the nephew told her, "Torch it. Can't you use it for firefighter training or something?"
    Anya chewed the pen cap, staring at the pictures. This would take months to unravel. Years.
    The phone on the top of her desk rang, jolting her. She reached up and snagged the receiver. "Kalinczyk."
    "What the hell is this thing you sent me? A goddamn foot?" the county medical examiner squawked on the other end of the line. The rustling of a plastic bag could be heard. "What, two feet?"
    "It's a body, Gina."
    "Where's the rest of it?"
    "That is the rest of it."
    "Explain this to me, please."
    "It was found at a burn site. Scorch marks on the couch, floor, and the feet were found at the margin of the burn."
    "You got photos?"
    "Yeah. I'll send them over interoffice--"
    "Bring 'em to me if you want a report. Otherwise, these feet can stay in the fridge until Christmas." Gina hung up.
    Anya sighed, plucked the photos off the floor that included shots of Bernie's remains and jammed them into a manila file folder.
    She hated going to the morgue, but there was no defying the will of Gina the Ghoul.
    Folder tucked under her arm and muttering under her breath, Anya turned off her office lights and headed upstairs. Detroit Fire Department Headquarters had been built in 1929 in what was now known as the Washington Boulevard Historical District. The lobby and upper floors, which were open to the public, had been remodeled and refurbished