“So I guess I’ll go back to doing my
thing,” I said.
Collins shook his head and pulled
out a folded piece of paper, handing it to me.
“What’s this?” It was a lab report
of some kind, but I couldn’t parse the particulars of the form. There were a
lot of numbers, and very little in way of information that I could make use of.
“The salt.”
“Okay. Do I look like a scientist?
What does it all mean?”
“It’s a breakdown of all the
compounds in the sample.”
“Again, I’m not a scientist,
particularly not a chemist. Give me something I can work with.”
Collins pointed down on the form to
a section on notes, where I started reading.
“Specific chemistry of the salt has
been altered from its original state through the use of smoking agents
identified as saffron and cinnamon. Not
enough of the chemical agents of the cinnamon and saffron exist for a
geographic source to be determined. Trace sea salt elements indicate the most
likely origin for the salt is Belfast Lough.”
“Belfast Lough?” I said.
“No, it’s pronounced like Lock, like
Scottish lakes” the tech said.
“Whatever,” Collins said. “What’s it
mean?”
I shrugged. “Kind of confirms what I
was thinking.”
“So this is Irish mob?”
I frowned. “Not in the way you’re
thinking. I doubt the Irish mob would be working with these people.”
“Why’s that?”
How do I summarize the entire
history of the Celtic peoples with the faerie in one succinct sentence? Oh,
right.
“They have a history.”
“Bad blood.”
“Too many deals that went south.”
As good a way to put it as any.
No need to talk about the number of ways that the faerie have screwed humans
with a bargain.
“But they’re bringing this sea salt
in. Is it coming straight from Ireland?”
I frowned, looking at the analysis,
then looked back. “I have no idea. Maybe. Shipping traffic?”
Collins nodded, then pointed at the
tech. “Do the thing where you bring up the shipping traffic to Belport.”
“Bringing up the Harbormaster’s
schedule, now,” the tech said. “Filter it by cargo or by shipping origin?”
“Shipping origin,” Collins and I
said together.
Collins gave me a glare, and I held
up a hand in apology.
This is his show.
“All ships that have made a stop in
Ireland.”
Surprisingly, it was a lot of ships.
“The Northwest Passage,” the tech
explained. “Since it’s summer, passages through the arctic have opened up, and
ships that normally can’t get here can take the northern route instead of going
through the Panama Canal. Shaves off a lot of miles and time, not that salt
cares about the amount of time it takes to get here.”
“It might not, but the rest of it,
does.”
Collins turned to me. “What do you
mean?”
I held up the paper. “Saffron and
cinnamon. Pretty exotic stuff. To be potent, it has to be pretty fresh. It
would come from where, India? Southeast Asia?”
Collins shrugged while the tech
opened up a new window, searching out the information.
“Let’s say it does,” Collins said.
“So what?”
“They need to get the stuff and
smoke it, still. They’ll either have to do that in Ireland, then ship it over,
or they get all the ingredients and do it here. Either way, fresher is going to
be better.”
“Because it’ll taste better? Every
drug expert and doctor I’ve talked to says that stuff cannot produce a high.”
I nodded. “We’re in my area, now.
The salt is not the only thing we found.”
“Dammit, I hate fucking magic,”
Collins swore under his breath.
The tech looked back quickly, then
back at the screen.
Apparently,
Collins didn’t keep that quiet enough.