The fae had hired Crystal Clear Cleaning. I Googled the company as I stepped into the escalator and headed back down to the lobby. How like the fae to completely forget that they had a team of humans accessing their buildings.

I got back into my car and headed to Samael’s tower.

Zip and Cil were snuggled up next to Evie on the sofa when I arrived. Evie was reading them a story and she glanced up at me, but I waved my hand, indicating that she should keep going.

“And they lived happily ever after,” she said a few minutes later. The kids looked up.

“How’s our dad?” Zip demanded.

I stepped further into the room. “He’s doing okay. He hasn’t woken up yet, though. I need to ask you guys a few questions.”

They nodded and I sat next to Zip on the couch. “Okay you guys, I need you to think back to everything that you and your dad did over the past week. Let’s start with the weekend. What do you do?”

They blinked at me and Evie jumped in. “You guys go to a lesser fae school, right?”

“Yes. I’m in the advanced math class,” Cil said. “Zip’s in the math class for babies.”

Zip’s mouth twisted and I leaned close. “I wasn’t any good at math either.”

He looked up at me. “You weren’t?”

“Nah. I liked to read.”

He grinned. “I like to read too.”

“Awesome. Okay so when you finished school on Friday, what did you do next?”

“Dad took us to the park. And then he had to work, so we went to Merrill’s.”

Merrill was a goblin who ran a store similar to Gary’s, only he specialized in locating weapons, herbs, and spells from other realms. The two store owners had a begrudging respect for each other, even though they were competitors, and had struck up an unlikely friendship.

Cil gave Zip wide eyes and I squinted at them.

“What?”

“We’re not meant to hang out at Merrill’s without dad,” he admitted. “We told dad we were visiting our friend Kir.”

Lying to their dad. They’d started young. “Why doesn’t your dad like you visiting Merrill alone?”

“He says he has dangerous stuff in his store. But Merrill makes sure we don’t play with anything that could hurt us.”

I made a mental note to talk to Merrill.

“Okay, so you guys went to Merrill’s. Then what happened?”

The boys shared a look. “Dad had to work most of the weekend,” Zip said.

“He’s always working,” Cil frowned. “But he took us to the park again on… Saturday? And then he had a business meeting on Sunday, so he said we had to go and entertain ourselves.”

I narrowed my eyes at them. “You went back to Merrill’s, didn’t you?”