“So here’s the deal.”  Violet sat down at Dana’s dining room table.  She looked a little tired, but knowing what all was going on lately in Avenglade – a dark witch coven attacking Violet’s family, predator shifters going feral and hunting in packs, Hunters in town, several unregistered supernaturals, and a dark soul that was planning to take over the town – that didn’t surprise me.

“We’ve decided that the only way to kill the dark soul is with unicorn magic.”

We all glanced at each other.  Violet had tried to have us investigate what the dark soul was – and what he wanted – when he showed up, but unfortunately we hadn’t been able to discover as much as we hoped.  As it turned out, that was because he’d magically erased his species, so we weren’t entirely to blame, but we had a suspicion of what Violet wanted from us now, and it was going to be a tough order to fulfill.  We wanted to, especially since we felt so useless with everything else that was going on, but we just couldn’t.  I had even tried using my magic to help interrogate the witch they’d caught, unfortunately without success.  It just felt like no matter what we tried with this particular case, our results were minimal at best.  Of course, if she wanted to, we’d try to find her a unicorn, but it seemed to offer even less of a likelihood of success than any of our other recent investigative attempts.

“Um, Vi,” Dana hesitantly offered what we were all thinking, “I doubt we can find a unicorn.  They don’t read as supernaturals and they’re very secretive.  We can try, but it’s a long shot.”

“No, no, in this case, it might not be.”  Violet sighed.  “And that’s not what I’m asking, anyway.  See,” she said slowly, like she wasn’t sure she wanted to tell us this, “my youngest son, Ren, he’s dating a boy named Riven.  Riven is a hybrid between Vist and unicorn – but he doesn’t have the kind of unicorn magic we can use.”

This brought us all up short.  For one thing, I was kind of surprised that the cute smiling baby we’d once met was dating someone now, but come to think of it, it had been more than 20 years since then, so he’d be pretty grown up by now.

But for another, Violet hadn’t mentioned this at all yet.  I could understand why – this was personal for her.  Family.  And the boy in question was a hybrid of two extinct races.  There was a very good reason this wouldn’t be generally talked about.

Then she gave us some more reasons for secrecy.  “The dark soul wants to kill him and we suspect he may be the key to stopping him – he’s actually largely the reason we know what we do about the insurrection plot and how the naga found out about the Hunters.  But all that’s beside the point,” she explained.  “What I need you to do is find out who his father is.  His mother is human and, as I gather, emotionally and physically abused him and neglected him.  I don’t know much about it because he hasn’t told me and Ren doesn’t want to break his confidence by repeating what Riven has told him, but I know he’s afraid of talking to her.  He knows virtually nothing about his father, but we suspect he’s Vist and that the unicorn side came from him – so we’re hoping if we can identify who his father is, we can find a unicorn through him.”

Now that was something we could do.  I glanced at Dana, who was nodding slowly.

“And if we can’t find out just from records, do you want us to talk to her?”

Violet winced a bit.  “As a last resort.  Riven really doesn’t want any contact with her, even secondarily, but as long as she doesn’t know he’s involved, I’m hoping it’ll be okay.”

“She won’t need to,” I assured her.  “I’ll make sure of it if it comes to that.”

She seemed relieved with my promise.  Apparently she felt very protective over Ren’s boyfriend and wanted to make sure he was okay with this – which I appreciated.  Since my in-laws weren’t particularly pleased with my existence – although that didn’t deeply bother me since I hadn’t expected them to like me given that they didn’t care much for their own son – it was nice to see parents who did support and love their children’s partners.

After she left, we got to work.  Bonnie had made contact with a techno vampire name Jackson some years back and regularly asked him to help us with stuff, so she immediately called him to see if he could find any sort of records for Riven’s mother.  He didn’t live in town, but could help us over the internet anyway.  Meanwhile, Dana called up Henry to see what his records friends could come up with.  Henry was also a regular help in our work, and thankfully seemed quite happy to lend a hand whenever we needed it.  Lola and I, meanwhile, looked over the few papers Violet had brought us.

“Extra discretion and delicacy handling this,” Lola murmured.  “This is the first time she’s had us look into something close to personal for her.  I know she trusts us and all, but this is the first time in over 20 years she’s needed our help with something related to family.  We have to do this right.”

We all agreed and set to work on our regular tasks.  As it turned out, I was actually pretty good with numbers, so after Bonnie’s techno vampire friend sent us what he could find, I looked into Gretchen Steele’s financial records while Lola focused on her friends, Dana on any family and medical records, and Rhys on any other records – parking tickets, that sort of thing – while Bonnie was in charge of organizing all the data that came in.

By the end of the third day, I knew we had a serious problem.  I looked up at the others, all focused on their work, and really hoped we had a way to deal with this situation, because I was pretty sure it was going to be a huge mess.

“We have a problem,” I announced.  We were at Dana and Lola’s house – which had been universally accepted as headquarters for our business.  Bonnie now lived down the street from them, currently with an on-again, off-again girlfriend who was the daughter of nymph couple Dana had befriended, while Rhys and I were a little further away to be close to some good schools.

The others stopped what they were doing and looked up at me.

I sighed a bit, knowing none of them were going to like this, because our work was going to get really complicated.

“Gretchen lists her career as consultant.  Vague, can kind of fit into anything.  She makes a respectable amount and lives in a house and drives a car one would expect from her income level – nothing out of the ordinary.  At least, according to her official tax records.  However,” I had commandeered one of the large screens we used to show the team what we were working on, and flipped from one image to another on my tablet, “she actually has links to hundreds more bank accounts, all with numbers that wouldn’t raise any red flags at a bank, but added up?  We’re talking multi-millions.  There’s no good explanation for any of that income, not that I can find.  Well, no legal one, anyway.  But Lola confirmed some of her recent friends for me, and they have similar setups.  I think,” I hesitated, because this sounded bad, “I think we might be looking at some sort of organized criminal activity.  She’s smart about it, though.  She still reports an income and pays taxes on it, because the government might notice someone who doesn’t pay taxes at all, and her house and car aren’t insanely luxurious as to draw attention to herself.  But all this money?  There’s no legal explanation for it.  No legal consulting work is going to pay that kind of money, and the sources of the money seem to vary widely, but oddly, the sources are almost all men.”

Lola leaned back in her chair.  “Maybe not so odd.  So, we don’t have phone records back to 25 years ago, but some of the pictures Jackson managed to find for us show her with several different women – women whom I’ve confirmed are still in contact with her on a regular basis.  And very regular, I might add – like, they call at very specific times each week.  I couldn’t figure out what to make of it, but what you said makes sense – I think she might be their boss, giving them directions or having them check in with her, that sort of thing.”

“That would also explain some of these odd records.”  Rhys pulled up a couple of them on a different screen.  “These are from years ago, maybe when she was starting out, but she was briefly registered as a real estate agent and then appears to have worked at a law firm, and then there’s several other references to her being listed as a plastic surgeon or a diet counselor, several things that just don’t make sense because she has no corresponding training or matching education records.  Several very different careers, but if you’re talking about some sort of illegal activity, it starts to make more sense.”

Lola looked over at my information from the screen, then at hers, then over at Rhys’s.  “And she goes from that to high society parties for a few years and then just running a business out of her house?  What exactly is she doing?”

“She’s a con artist.”  Dana was looking at one of the pictures, but her announcement brought us up short.  “Nicky, you said most of the sources are men – and all of her associates are women, right?  One of these associates, I remember her, she was arrested in Havensville a few years back for some sort of con or blackmail, I don’t remember the details.  Violet sent me over to listen in on the interrogations because she was rumored to have had some involvement with one of the human politicians in Avenglade.  The woman never talked, never admitted what was going on, but before her trial, the supposed victim recanted and she had to be released.  She left the country immediately afterwards.  But this might explain why.  She was working with a fairly sophisticated group of con artists and knew they’d help her get out.”

A thought occurred to me.  “You said she was in high society parties for a while?  That had to be for targets, right?  When was that?”

“It was,” Lola scrolled through her pictures, then paused, looking up at me.  “About 25 years ago.”

I’d started to pull up the financial records to see if I could match any income from any of the bank accounts to that timeframe, but hearing the dates made us all glance at each other again.

“Oh.  Oh no, that’s bad,” Bonnie murmured, her face pinched in worry.  “That means…this Riven kid was probably part of a con, wasn’t he?  She might have blackmailed his dad into paying her for not saying he had a kid or, alternatively, forced him to pay her to get custody.  Well,” she reconsidered, “not that, apparently, since she kept the kid.  Unless you think she kidnapped him and he’s not really hers?”

“I doubt she’d bother raising a kid unless there was money involved – or she had to,” Dana remarked wryly.  “I think he’s got to be hers.”

“And I think it was part of a con gone bad,” I announced, having finished scrolling through the relevant records.  “There’s no payout from around the appropriate timeframe.  In fact, if you look back, she was getting several hefty payments per year from people in these circles, but all of a sudden, they stopped completely and it looks like she dropped off the radar – no income for a while.  Then, from what I can tell, that’s when she started staying at home and her friends started doing the work for her, because their accounts mostly date to around that time.”

“She got pregnant,” Dana said slowly.  “It messed up whatever she was doing with high society parties at the time.  Why didn’t she go back, though, after her kid was born?”

Lola shrugged.  “Too much risk, maybe?  You get enough of these people scammed, eventually word will get out.”

Bonnie frowned.  “But if she didn’t get a payout related to the kid – nothing regular after that, like child support?”  When I shook my head, she let out a frustrated sigh.  “So if she didn’t get a payout, why did she keep him?  She doesn’t seem to be the kind of person who’d want to keep a kid around.”

“Good question, but the most likely answer is she couldn’t surrender him because she would need to name his father to do so.”  Dana tapped the copy of Riven’s birth certificate thoughtfully.  “Which does seem to potentially confirm the idea that he was a mark gone bad – if he was just an ex or even a one-night stand, she might track him down and get him to agree to surrender the kid, or even take custody for her.  She seems to be smart and resourceful, since she seems to be running a scheme with several other people and has been for years without drawing any suspicion.  If she could get rid of a kid she didn’t want, she’d figure it out how to do so if she could do so safely.  But what if she can’t risk contacting his dad because he might be an angry mark who would turn her into the police if he ever sees her again?  Maybe he didn’t know her real name at the time so he hadn’t turned her in yet, but she couldn’t risk contacting him again just in case.  Can we look into any police reports from the areas she was in around that time, see if maybe someone reported being conned by a woman who could answer her description?”

Bonnie nodded.  “I’ll ask Jackson.”  She began typing something in her phone.  “Rhys, I’ll have him send the records to you if he finds any, you’re better at the police stuff.”

He nodded, but seemed to be mostly thinking through this.

“If he’s was a mark and it went badly,” he said slowly, “we’re not going to find any official records on him connected to her.  You’re right, she wouldn’t risk it.  And she’s not just going to tell us who he is.  Whatever she did is likely long enough ago that the statute of limitations ran out, but she’s still active in the game, like we think, so she’s going to be incredibly careful about what she reveals about her past.  If we go to talk to her, she’s not going to just reveal the information easily.”

Yeah that – that was unfortunately very likely.  This wasn’t just like a potentially abusive ex or something.  This was something she had a very good reason to never repeat, no matter what.