Page 60 of Mystic Justice

He looked up. ‘Did it help?’

‘The kiss?’

‘Yeah.’

‘No, it damn well didn’t!’

He grinned. ‘I’m glad.’

‘The cold shower afterwards helped a little.’

He shook his head. ‘Please don’t put thoughts of you naked in the shower into my brain. I’m struggling as it is.’

‘You don’t look as though you’re struggling,’ I observed. ‘You look relaxed.’

‘I’m not,’ he promised.

Loki looked up. ‘Krieg and Wise, sitting in tree—’

‘Do not finish that, bird,’ Krieg growled. ‘And keep our business private. No squawking it about.’

Loki used his wing to mime zipping his beak shut, which was hilarious. I snickered into my porridge bowl. He flew over, landed on my shoulder and nuzzled me. ‘Are you okay Loki?’ I asked. ‘You sleep okay?’

‘Good,’ he said. ‘No darkness.’

‘No darkness,’ I agreed. Krieg had slept with all the lights blazing so as not to upset my bird. And didn’t that just melt me? Fuck, I was so a goner.

We talked as we ate, carefully avoiding discussing the case. The easy conversation gradually turned my brain away from lust and I slid back into work mode. ‘It must be hard to get a helicopter pilot without morals, right?’ I said in a non sequitur.

He shrugged nonchalantly. ‘I have a guy.’

‘Do you know any others?’

‘I can make enquiries, if you want me to.’

‘Please. I need to know how Bogan fell. My money is on an Other method, but I need to rule out Common ones. I can’t help feeling that is key information, information I need.’

As Krieg tapped a message on his phone, I looked at mine. I checked the time: 7am. Late enough, I decided, and rang the dragon from Sefton Park, Peter Glenn. ‘Inspector,’ he said sounding unimpressed. ‘It’s early.’

‘Murder and mayhem wait for no woman,’ I said primly. ‘Did you happen to drop a centaur from the sky recently?’

Across from me, Krieg spat out his coffee; it didn’t quite reach my fresh white shirt but it was a close-run thing.

Dragons could only speak the truth; Glenn just needed to say no and he was in the clear. Peter didn’t say no. ‘Define recently,’ he said cagily.

‘In the last week.’

‘No, Inspector, I have not dropped a centaur from the sky in the last week.’

‘From a building? From any great height?’

He sounded amused. ‘No. I haven’t killed any centaurs in the last week.’

I sighed. ‘Do you know any other dragons in the area that might have done so?’

‘If he were here, I wouldn’t have put it past Emory Elite if a centaur had threatened Jinx, but Emory is in Caernarfon at present.’

Emory was the Prime Elite – the King of the Dragons – and he was just about the deadliest dragon around. ‘If he’s not around, what about anyone else?’