Free Hellforged by Nancy Holzner

hit.” Sykes tapped his pen on the table. “I’m no psychiatrist, but I always thought he got mad at us zombies for coming back to life while his ma stayed dead.”
    I watched Norden poking Axel, to make sure I’d stay mad at the guy. I did not want to come down with a case of the warm fuzzies for Elmer Norden. The less I knew about what made him tick, the better.
    Sykes flipped a page in his notebook. “So tell me what happened.” He fished a pair of half-moon reading glasses from his pocket and perched them on his nose.
    “I found …” I was going to say the body , but there was no body. “I found this.” I swept my arm to encompass the horror of the room.
    “Start from the beginning. What time did you leave here this morning?”
    “Right around closing time. Six, maybe a little before.” As Sykes took notes, I described how I’d realized I’d left my watch at Creature Comforts and how T.J. had promised to drop it off at my building.
    “If you expected him to leave it with your doorman, why did you come back here?”
    I didn’t feel like explaining that Difethwr had invaded my dream and spooked me. I was already spooked enough by whatever had happened here, so I settled for a half-truth. “I couldn’t sleep. It’s a valuable watch, and I was worried. Since I was awake anyway, I figured I’d save T.J. the trouble. I thought once I had my watch back, I’d quit obsessing about it and be able to sleep.”
    Sykes nodded as he wrote, then peered over his glasses with crimson eyes. “May I see it?”
    “What, my watch?” Until that moment, I hadn’t thought to look for my watch. “I don’t have it. T.J. said he’d put it behind the bar.”
    We went to the far side of the bar and looked around. On a shelf beneath the cash register was a cardboard box with LOST & FOUND written in thick black marker on the side. I rummaged through it. There were baseball caps, sunglasses, umbrellas, a black lace bra (I’d have to ask Axel about that one), a set of keys, and two watches—neither one was mine.
    “It’s not here.” Queasiness clenched my gut as I flashed back to Difethwr in my dream, taunting me with the watch and then destroying it. It couldn’t have been my actual watch; it must have been a dream-image. Boston was protected by a magic shield, maintained by witches from every coven in the city, whose sole purpose was to keep Hellions out. There’d been a breach in the shield last fall, but since then the witches had strengthened the spell. No way Difethwr could’ve waltzed into town to steal my watch.
    So where was it?
    Axel stood guard in front of his apartment’s door. I called his name and he turned to me, shaggy eyebrows raised. “I left a watch here last night. If T.J. put it aside for me, where would it be? It’s not in the lost-and-found box.”
    After a glance at Norden, who was talking to one of the techs, Axel joined us behind the bar. He looked in a couple of cupboards, opened the cash register drawer, and then stood there scratching his beard. “Dunno,” he finally said.
    “T.J. was going to bring it to your building,” Sykes pointed out. “Maybe he stuck it in his pocket.”
    Without wanting to, I turned to look at the mess that spattered the room. The goo was everywhere, along with scraps of fabric and lumps of … stuff. If T.J. had pocketed my watch, I doubted we’d find so much as a gear.
    “Stuck what in whose pocket?” Norden heaved himself onto a bar stool.
    “Ms. Vaughn’s watch,” Sykes said. “The victim said—”
    “We’ve got a murder investigation and you’re back there trying to solve the Mystery of the Missing Watch? Jesus, Sykes, are you kidding me?”
    He turned to Axel. “A SWAT team is on the way. They’re gonna smash that damned door wide open. When they do, I’m gonna take a dozen cops downstairs—whatever’s down there, we’re gonna tear it apart. And I’ll bet you a month’s pay we find something.”
    “Oh, come on, Norden,” I said.