Page 27 of Ascendant King

Instead, it looked like a laboratory. Cade’s mage lights reflected off beakers and long, curling glass tubes. I saw a desk lamp on a bench and walked over, turning it on. The light revealed the arm of my jacket, thick streaks of sap dripping down it.

“Take off your raincoat,” I told Cade, stripping my own off carefully and draping it over one of the stools.

He struggled, and I walked over, pausing before I put hands on him. When he didn’t flinch away, I reached inside the coat, helping him lift it off his shoulders without touching the tainted exterior.

The jacket safely away from Cade’s skin, I began examining the science equipment.

“He was doing experiments on the sap,” I said.

Cade nodded, flipping through a notebook. “But how? Why?”

I didn’t like the answers my mind was coming up with.

“You think you know,” Cade said, eyes narrowed.

“Is there any connection here between the dealer and Leon?” I asked.

Cade turned, still frowning, unwilling to be distracted. “These notes are all in code. We should take them back, study them for longer.”

I took out my phone and started photographing everything. All the equipment, the vials of thick sap, the large whiteboard on the wall that looked like chemical symbols and some sort of math I couldn’t make sense of. In a corner, I found neatly packed bricks of Reaper.

For a second, I held one, frowning at it.

“What’s wrong?” Cade asked.

“Either this came from us, meaning someone in our organization is selling on the side, or there’s a new dealer trying to set up shop.” I considered the bricks, but they looked normal, the same wholesale standard that we bought from the manufacturers abroad. No one would have even considered bringing in this much Reaper if Declan was still in charge because he would have killed them before they even got past the port.

“I thought this manwasa new dealer setting himself up in our territory,” Cade said.

“No, whatever his goal was, he was experimenting. I don’t think he was trying to take over territory.” I looked over the equipment again. “He was perfecting a recipe.”

“Boss! You good?” Joel called out.

I went to the door of the bathroom, careful to avoid the thick sap. “We’re good. We’ll finish up in here and come back out.”

“Miles, there’s stairs,” Cade said.

He indicated a shadowed set of stairs set against the wall. They’d been hidden by stacks of old boxes, and I realized this small room was all that was left of the house’s basement when they’d turned it into a rental unit. The dealer we were after had clearly torn down the wall because he needed more space, but what did that mean for his landlords above?

“We’re going upstairs,” I said to Joel. “Make sure you didn’t miss anything on that side, and then meet us at the front door.”

Joel saluted me and disappeared from the bathroom door.

“Should we take samples of any of this?” I asked.

Cade made a face but found an empty box, and we took a few vials and all the notebooks we could see. I handed him the cardboard and headed back to the stairs. They creaked as I walked, and at the top, the door was closed. Cautiously, I opened it.

Inside, the room was chilly, as though no one had been inside for a while. My nose twitched. When I tensed, Cade asked, “What is it?”

“There are bodies,” I said. “Corpses.”

Chapter

Nine

“Where?” Cade asked sharply.

I shook my head. The scent was everywhere, the decay of decomposing flesh, a rotten cabbage smell, like someone had left a whole catch of fish out to spoil in the sun. My nose twitched, and I kept myself from rubbing at it. Instead, I stepped forward, eyes scanning.