“To you and me, yes. But to someone who has psychometry skills, maybe it can. We have to go see Adeline Greenfield about her apparently resurrected brother; maybe she can point us to someone who can help.”
“Why not ask the Brindle?” Tao said, voice a little strained, but overall sounding a whole lot less tense than a few moments ago. “Surely they have witches capable of that there?”
“Yes, but their first priority has to be Mirri —”
“Fuck,” he said, cutting me off. “I’d forgotten. How is she? How is Ilianna?”
“Okay for the moment. Ilianna’s mom and Kiandra are both helping to try to get the threads unraveled before the deadline.”
He hesitated. “And have they any hope?”
“Who knows?” I half shrugged. “But Ilianna did manage to unravel the magic in my father’s warding stones, so she has at least a basic level of understanding of what’s involved.”
“Fuck.” He thrust a hand through his tangled, matted hair. “We’ve made a right old cock-up of everything, haven’t we?”
“Not we,” I refuted softly. “Me.”
“Ris —”
“Don’t,” I cut in. “And for exactly the same reasons you gave me only minutes ago.”
He stared at me for several seconds; then the faintest trace of a smile touched his lips. “Fair enough. Although I will remind you that you can hardly be held to account for your father’s stupidity in losing the keys in the first place.”
“True, but that doesn’t absolve me of responsibility for everything else that has happened.” My voice broke, and I swallowed heavily. Damn it, I wouldn’t cry. Not again. There’d been enough tears shed for Jak for the time being, and I refused to cry for Tao or Mirri. It wasn’t over yet. They weren’t dead. And until it was all done and dusted and we knew… I paused, not wanting to think about the rest of that sentence, but it ran through my mind nevertheless.
… we knew who survived and who didn’t, there was no point in grieving. Hell, there was a fair chance I wouldn’t survive, let alone anyone else. And that would be the pits given the possibility of a happy ever after had been dangled in front of my nose.
I returned my gaze to Stane. “Any luck finding more information on Pénombre Manufacturing?”
He shook his head. “For all intents and purposes, it’s a shelf company, as I said. I have no idea how they can own that Maribyrnong premises given it shouldn’t be possible.”
“So there’s no connection to either Genevieve Sands or Lauren Macintyre?”
“None that I can find. Doesn’t mean there isn’t one, of course.” He leaned across to another screen. “There is, however, a link between Sands and Macintyre. It’s tenuous, and I’m trying to uncover more details, but it would seem that twenty-eight years ago, Sands invested in a property that Macintyre subsequently purchased.”
My eyebrows rose. “The Maribyrnong warehouse was purchased by the shelf company some twenty-eight years ago, too.”
“Yeah. Odd coincidence, don’t you think?” He half smiled. “Macintyre no longer owns the property. According to records, she sold it five years ago.”
“And the new owners?”
“It went through several, and ended up being one of the properties purchased by the consortium owned by John Nadler.”
“And round and round the circle goes,” Tao commented. “Only it seems to stop at exactly the same spot.”
Stane glanced at him. “Yeah. I’m currently doing a search on all the owners between Macintyre and Nadler, just to see what I come up with.”
“It’s worth a shot.” If nothing else, it might give us some home addresses to search. I mean, sooner or later, we had to hit gold. Or, in this case, a legitimate address that actually had the person registered as the former owner actually living there.
“Anything else?” Stane said.
I smiled. “That’s enough, don’t you think?”
“Well, I am becoming accustomed to my crates of top-shelf champagne. Not sure how I’ll manage once all this over.”
My smiled grew. “You could actually purchase them yourself.”
Shock claimed his expression, although his brown eyes twinkled. “Buy them myself? Good god, I don’t buy anything,dear woman. I’m a trader. Unfortunately, crates of Dom Pérignon aren’t something I often come across in the electronics market.”