The Dragon of Falconer by Taylen Carver (ebook smartphone TXT) 📕

at his breast pocket, testing it. Then his back pocket. He pulled out a thin coil bound notebook and yanked a pen out of the coil.

“First, write the time and date it is right now,” she told him, and he wrote swiftly.

He checked his watch.

“Then, you record every name of every single person we see or speak to. You can ask them to repeat their names if you don’t catch them and ask them to spell them if you don’t know how. Also, anyone who speaks to us, you get their phone number or email address, or both. Then, whatever anyone says that is a fact—dates, times, locations, events—you write that down, too. You’ll have to figure out a shorthand for yourself and learn to listen while you’re writing.”

Bohdan nodded, writing fast.

The inner door opened and a man stepped through, around five ten, with thick honey blond hair and keen blue eyes. He looked to be in his late thirties, with a day’s growth on his chin, and a straight nose. Over his brows were the same reducing dots of horny growth, following the line of his brows. His gaze was direct and he came over to Harley with his hand already thrust forward, the sleeve of his very expensive grey business suit sliding back to reveal a white shirt and strong wrist. “Chief Canmore…or do you prefer von Canmore?”

“Canmore is fine,” Harley said, startled. She hadn’t realized she had a choice. And just Canmore sounded more human.

He shook her hand, and nodded hello to Bohdan.

Only now did Harley feel the tug of Campbell’s presence. She had been warned that those of the fire element could sense each other, but this was more than detecting a nearby presence, the way humans could “feel” someone standing behind them. She could feel herself being pulled toward him and the need to pay attention to every word he said and obey.

It was a little like standing in the same room with the Commissioner of the RCMP, as she had when she had received her commendation. But this was more physical than the simple awe she’d felt then. Campbell was an elemental.

Harley mentally shook herself. She kept her tone firm as she said, “I believe you have come across a body, Mr. von Havre.”

“Campbell,” he corrected her. His smile was warm. “Was your hair always red, Chief Canmore? Or did it change when you did?”

She blinked. “I…um…I was strawberry blonde.” And she could feel her cheeks heating. He was disarming.

“A lovely change.” He stepped back. “This way.” He pushed the inner door open and held it for her.

Harley moved through, with the little swivel that let her wings through without the edges tangling with the frame, for this was a standard two-foot-wide door.

It was even hotter on the other side of the door and Harley could feel herself relaxing even more. Campbell raised his brow, watching her. “It is pleasant, isn’t it?” He looked cool and comfortable, while Bohdan’s temples were already glistening with sweat, and he swiftly shrugged out of his heavy dark peacoat.

“Doesn’t it cost you a fortune to heat such a big room to this level?” she asked, for the former hockey rink was an enormous cavern, with the banks of seating and the rink removed, leaving a flat expanse of concrete.

“All part of the cost of doing business,” Campbell said, striding toward the first bank of towers. The towers were everywhere in the room, climbing up thirty feet or more. Iron stairs on wheels rolled between them, allowing staff to tend to the plants.

Each tower was a support structure for dozens of square white trays, each a meter per side. A few inches above each tray was a square pad emitting bright light—grow lights. The trays on the nearest tower held soil and immature marijuana plants, about a dozen per tray.

“As the plants mature, we replant them in deeper trays, and raise the lights over them,” Campbell said. “This is the nursery area.”

There had to be more than a hundred towers in the old arena, and Harley could see at least twenty people moving along the lanes between them, climbing the stairs, inspecting the soil and plants and making notes on clipboards. Everyone wore white lab coats and those with long hair had it pinned or tied back and held under nets.

It was all very clinical and efficient, yet the thick, cloying and musty smell of marijuana gripped her throat and triggered old instincts. She had arrested people for standing in rooms like this.

Still, the legalization of pot was just a tiny drop in the whole sea of changes that had swept across the globe in the last decade.

Harley kept her attention sharp and followed Campbell along the lanes. He turned into another lane toward the back of the arena, which was closed off with a makeshift barrier made from ordinary duct tape.

Harley made a note that they should acquire some police barricade tape from somewhere. They would need it sooner or later. Duct tape didn’t have the official feel the real tape did.

Campbell lifted the duct tape barrier and she ducked under it carefully, flattening her wings, and straightened up.

“Just around the corner,” Campbell said. “To the left.”

She stepped around the corner. The body laid on the concrete, sprawled face down.

Bohdan gave a gusty exhalation, next to her.

“Got a phone?” she said.

He nodded, his gaze on the body.

“Take photos. All angles, close up, middle distance.”

He fumbled for his phone while Harley moved closer and crouched to look at what was left of the old one.

“What is he?” Bohdan whispered.

“Martin was a dryad,” Campbell said, behind them. “Martin ap Golden.”

Harley barely heard him. Listening was Bohdan’s job. She examined the corpse, old habits and long ingrained instincts firing. Her heart thudded as she took in the anomalies of the scene. The odd notes. The plain wrong notes.

“Is that green color in his skin…um…normal?” Bohdan murmured.

Again, Campbell answered. “Dryads are of the air, constable. The trees are theirs to command. Growing