Southwest Days (Semiautomatic Sorceress Book 2) by Kal Aaron (best book recommendations TXT) 📕

“One second,” Lyssa replied. “Let me check something out.”

She entered the search query “Who are the greatest fools on the internet?” and skimmed the listings. The first ten results were all related to April Fools’ Day, but the next result after that was an article. The title was enough to solve the mystery about how Nardi and Colmes were chosen: Ten Ways the Greatest Fools on the Internet Jake Colmes and Lucky Nardi are making an entire generation stupider.

Lyssa winced and showed Damien the phone. “It was bad enough when I thought they were picked at random, but now I think a man died because of a nasty listicle. That’s the internet for you.” She sucked in a breath. “You’d think those two wouldn’t have driven six hours because of a random suspicious email, but Nardi must have been even more desperate than I realized. That entire email sounds like a hyper-suspicious opener to a scam, which it kind of was.”

“It gets worse,” Damien replied with a grim expression.

“Of course it does.” Lyssa leaned forward on her bike and rested her arms on the handlebars. “Lay it on me. I can take it.”

“The message comes from an account that was created the day it was sent, and no other messages were sent from it.” Damien took the phone back. “The FBI cyber guys tracked the IP address to a library here in Phoenix. They were all excited to help out on a Torch case without having to deal with the sorcery. It’s not every day someone from outside the EAA gets to do that.”

“They tracked it to Phoenix?” Lyssa frowned. “Not Los Angeles, where the guys are from?”

Damien nodded. “That’s not that crazy. They’ve got fans all over the world, but I don’t think this was some teen prankster wannabe with a big head. The library in question has a decent number of security cameras. Those cameras suspiciously malfunctioned around the time the account was created and at the time the message was sent. There’s a forty-five-minute gap in the footage because of it.”

Lyssa growled. “The Phoenix-area connection I could accept, but combined with that? No way. That screams of sorcery. Between that and the Torch quote, this bastard might as well be spitting in my eye directly.”

“It’s not like he did it in Scottsdale,” Damien said. “The other stuff I’m not so sure about, but the Phoenix thing really could be nothing more than a coincidence.”

“A lot of people don’t know where I live, even Sorcerers,” Lyssa replied. “They know I live in the valley, but not which city. A rogue might have assumed Phoenix.”

“We don’t know this is a challenge to you. I think we need to be cautious about assuming that. We’ve got a rogue, and we now know they lured the two victims in, but I don’t think we can conclude anything more from the evidence at hand.”

Lyssa sighed. “The line about standing up to goddesses and the night seems targeted at me, but you might be right.”

“He didn’t send the email to you,” Damien replied, his voice louder and more strident. “He sent it to Lucky Nardi and told him to keep it secret. Our mystery man had no reason to think you’d track it down. If his plan had worked, Nardi would be dead, and we’d never know about the message.”

“That could be true,” Lyssa replied, “or he might have assumed they’d end up as monster food, and we’d investigate and find out eventually.”

“That’s a lot of moving parts to pull off a plan.” Damien shook his head. “I don’t know, Lyssa. You’re staring at an inkblot and seeing what you want to see here.”

“You’re right, I might be seeing what I want to see. It’s possible, but that doesn’t guarantee anything.” Lyssa waved a hand. “You know what? It doesn’t matter for now. We should focus on what we know, and we know there’s most likely a rogue who made monsters and got someone killed, but we still don’t know why they did it. That doesn’t matter as long as we stop them.” She cut through the air with her hand. “And if this bastard wants to play cat and mouse, he’s not going to like it when this hungry cat catches up with him. People don’t hide unless they’re afraid.”

Damien said helplessly, “I want to help you, but I don’t know what else we can do at this point. If you bring me specific evidence, I can liaise with the FBI or other agencies to look into things like other emails or set up surveillance, but it’s not like we can track down everyone who writes creepy fan emails using throwaway accounts. It’s not practical.”

Lyssa shook her head. “It doesn’t matter. This guy was careful enough to mess with the security cameras and create a fake account, which means he’s tech-savvy, or even worse, he might be a Sorcerer who’s integrated tech into his spells. We won’t catch him using conventional techniques.”

“Then what’s your play?” Damien asked. “Are we dead-ended on this?”

“I’m going to contact Samuel again. He might have found out something more or might know more and be holding it back, and I can shake it loose. Once he realizes a rogue purposely baited two random Shadows and might be targeting me, he might be willing to throw more resources at it. In the meantime, I’m feeling an urge to check out a book.”

Chapter Eighteen

Lyssa hopped off her undisguised Ducati, set her helmet on the seat, and headed toward the sidewalk. Visiting the library as Hecate would be too obvious, but there was no reason anyone would be suspicious of Lyssa Corti showing up. It was not like she was famous, and she didn’t have a big enough ego to think her mere presence would turn heads. Her bike was hotter than she was.

She looked around, taking note of the positions of the small dome cameras before jogging up the sidewalk and turning the corner