He smiled indulgently at me. “It would be your last.”
“I almost took you out when we fought earlier, buddy. Don’t knock my skills.”
“Ah, but we’re in Hedon now.”
“So?”
“The Queen puts those of importance to her under the Black Heart Rule. I am her right hand man. Draw the appropriate conclusion.”
“What is that anyway? Does it involve dungeons and unspeakable torture?”
He gave me an enigmatic smile and tilted his head to the garden. “I’ll leave you to solve this case. The clock is ticking.”
“Uh, okay. Later, dude.” I swept past him down the rest of the stairs.
The occasional guard in black tactical gear with mesh obscuring their face blended into the shadows. The Queen’s logo of a heart with a crown and scepter was stitched on their upper arm.
Statues were dotted throughout the grounds, and I veered off the winding path to get a better look at a couple of random ones. The first depicted a young man wielding a machete, the other was a woman gathering up her skirts, ready to flee. The angle of the blade as it cut downward, the wind ruffling the woman’s hem, the details were exquisite. Even their faces were personalized. The man had a gash across his forehead, the woman sported a birthmark on one cheek.
Their eyes were a little too wide. A little too aware.
I clapped a hand over my mouth, then tentatively reached out and touched a shoulder of the woman statue. “Hello?” I said softly.
The statue didn’t reply, not that I expected it to, but there was someone in there. I pressed a hand against my belly, the wind knocked from my lungs.
The Black Heart Rule.
Omar was under the Queen’s protection. If I failed to solve this case or failed to keep him safe, then this was what awaited me.
I curled my hands into fists and picked up the pace. Time was running out.
Chapter 12
I approached the wrought-iron gazebo, where seething resentment blanketed an otherwise charming space.
A table had been wheeled into the center with the two families in formation on either side. A military campaign was but a humble endeavor next to the seating chart being fought over by everyone except the bride and groom.
Omar was propped in a lounge chair at the back of the gazebo, while Shannon coaxed him to drink mint tea out of a small jewel-colored glass.
“Habibi,” he said tenderly. He looked a bit wan, but otherwise in good health. “You drink it. The mint will help relieve some of your stress and there is sweetness for my sweet.”
Shannon blushed and took a sip, while I steered clear of the Zone of Mushiness, lest it contaminate me.
“Greetings, Wedding Party.” My stomach rumbled.
“Feather?” Omar asked me hopefully.
“He keeps asking about it,” Shannon said.
“Someone has cursed him.” Grandmother Masika gave me the evil eye. Better than trying to stab me.
“I only pulled the feather out. Any lingering effects are not on my head.” I approached the second table set up to the side, which was arrayed with an assortment of different cake slices. “May I?”
I took being ignored as consent and helped myself to some strawberry shortcake. The cake was light and fluffy, the strawberries sweet with a hint of tart that blended beautifully with the full fat of the whipping cream. If my P.I. dreams didn’t pan out, I could happily hire myself out to all calorie-conscious brides and grooms as their cake consultant.
A nervous wedding coordinator in a pink so pale it was basically an embarrassed white, stood next to the center table, gripping a marker and a fistful of seating cards, her eyes darting back and forth between Ivan and Masika. “If we could get back to the chart?”
“We are paying the larger share. Our family will be Table One.” Masika’s knitting needles clacked with a menacing edge.
“I am Rebbe Dershowitz and I demand the respect of sitting at Table One.” Ivan slammed his fist down, making the carefully placed seating cards jump.
I peered at my already empty plate hoping more cake would magically manifest. Rachel stepped sideways, blocking me from the dessert table, so I did not help myself to a second piece. I deposited my empty plate on the ground and sized up the group for whom to speak to first.
Such stellar choices: Ivan and his meaty fists, Masika and her knitting needles, Husani and Chione tossing the red color-coded ones assigned to the Dershowitz guests off the table, or Rachel, who “accidentally” sloshed half the contents of her martini glass on Husani, after another card hit the ground.
In the face of all this childish passive-aggression, I kind of missed their open violence.
“The Queen said you have to complete this today,” the wedding coordinator stammered.
Chione smiled slowly and ran a finger over her holstered pistol. “Are we not?”
Again with the fingering.
The wedding coordinator looked like she might puke, so I edged in between them. “We are all playing nicely and no one is going to do anything stupid which they would live to regret. Capisce?”
Chione rolled her eyes and folded a seating card into a tiny paper airplane.
“Now, I have updates, which I will share with each of you as we chat. Shannon.” I snapped my fingers. “With me.”
I led Shannon to a bench on the lawn. Setting my phone in between us, I activated my voice recorder app. “Tuesday, March twenty-fifth. Interview with Shannon Dershowitz.”
She darted glances back at Omar every few seconds.
“He’s not going anywhere,” I said. Unless… “Excited for your big day?”
“Of course.” She bobbed her birdlike neck.
“You’ve got no opinions about the seating chart? Don’t brides love doing all that wedding stuff?”
“That part is to make my father happy. I only care about being legally wed. Everything will be fine then.” She smiled, but her fingernails were bitten down to stubs and her ring hung loosely on her finger.
“Did you and Omar fight about something?” I said. “Maybe something to do with why he was attacked?”
“He’s suffering some lingering effects right now, but overall Omar is the perfect fiancé.” She twisted her hands in her lap.
“Shannon. If you are being forced in any way to do something against your will, I can get you somewhere safe.”
Her surprise wasn’t feigned; neither was her firm refusal. “Oh, it’s nothing like that. It’s just, Omar is usually loving and attentive but ever since he got to Vancouver he’s been secretive. Spending time locked away in his room.” Her eyes pooled with tears. “I think he’s having an affair and the Angel is a jealous husband.”
Kind of a convoluted logic and it didn’t account for the feather, but I cut her some slack.
“The angel is human, you’re right about that.” I searched for a tissue, but the best I could do was a wadded-up napkin I found in my pocket. “It’s clean.”
She took it and dabbed at her eyes.
“Did you check Omar’s phone for texts that could confirm an infidelity?”
“I’d never–” She wilted under my flat stare. “I don’t know his password.”
“Where was he before he came to Vancouver? Back home in Cairo?” That would be the most likely place for him to carry on an affair.
“No, he was on a job. I don’t know what. The family doesn’t discuss them.”
“When was the last time you saw him before this? That you’d say he was behaving normally?”
“About a month ago.” She darted another look over at Omar, sitting apart from the families looking distracted. He sensed Shannon’s gaze on him and mustered up a smile.
“Go.” I flapped a hand at her and she bolted like I had when released from detention in my misspent youth. “Send Masika over,” I called out.
I got Masika and Chione. A twofer. As I entered the date and the participants present into my voice recorder, Masika positioned herself in the best spot
to stab me in the jugular should the conversation take a turn not to her liking.
“I’ve been able to confirm that the Angel of Death is human,” I said.
“How did he fly?” Chione said.
“Not sure yet. He’s magic, but we aren’t working with divine retribution. Or an illusion. The attacker had assembled a costume. That involved planning and that tells me a couple of things. One, that the choice to use the Angel of Death was deliberate and tied to motive. Which brings me to number two. This was personal. Money, sex, revenge, power.” With that kind of powerful magic, the feather could fall into any one of those four areas. “What was Omar’s last job?”
“Our work is confidential,” Chione said, re-rolling the ball of multicolored yarn that Masika was using to knit the sweater.
“As is this case that you’ve hired me to solve.”
They sat there, two generations of stubborn in all-black, Masika in widow’s weeds and Chione probably because it hid blood better.
“If this wedding doesn’t happen, you don’t get those Nefesh grandbabies you want to expand your business,” I said.
Masika’s poker face didn’t even flicker, her needles clacking away, but Chione’s fingers tightened on the ball of yarn.
I frowned as though the most outlandish idea had just hit me. “Unless of course, you’ve already started expanding. Shannon and Omar might be a love match now, but it started as an arranged marriage and you didn’t meet the Dershowitzes because you travel in the same social circles. You’d done business with them, and having gotten a taste of the money to be made in Nefeshland, you wanted more.” I wagged a finger at them. “You know that’s illegal, right? Mundanes aren’t allowed to provide security for Nefesh clients.”
“It’s a stupid law,” Chione said. “If that’s what we were even doing.”
“I agree, but as one bound to uphold it as per the conditions of my Mundane private investigator license, I’d have to inform House Al Qahirah in Cairo of your actions.”
Chione stroked her gun again. “If you could get out of here before I shot you.”
“First off, get a vibrator.”
Masika barked a laugh, making Chione split her glower between the two of us.
“Second of all, I'm under the Queen’s protection,” I lied. “You know what happens to people who break that?” I pointed at the statue.
“They get art commemorating their audacity?”
“No, they get to be the art.”
Chione did a double take and Masika leaned forward with an interested expression like she was calculating how to incorporate that into the family business.
“You may be mercenaries,” I said, “and you may be in the same league as Ivan and his cronies, but don’t for a second think you can take on the Queen.”
“Ah, but you won’t always be in Hedon under mommy’s protection,” Chione said.
I smiled at her. My favorite smile with too many teeth that I never got to roll out as often as I liked. “You won’t either. Don’t underestimate me, Chione. The Queen handpicked me to help you because I have very unique abilities. Pray you don’t find out what.”
Bluffing like a boss. The Tannouses were Mundane. They had no magic to destroy and even if I roughed them up some, they could pump me full of lead. “Now, either you tell me about Omar’s last job or I walk away, untouched, and get House Al Qahirah to pay very close attention to you.”
Masika and Chione had a brief and heated discussion in Arabic.
“It was a nothing job on an archeological dig in the Sinai Peninsula.” Chione ran a hand over the ball of yarn, smoothing it out.
“Who were the clients?”
“Cairo University.” She sneered. “Respectable enough for you?”
“Why hire you?”
She puffed out her chest. “Because we’re the best. They had to transport some of the antiquities back to Cairo and were worried about looting, due to unstable conditions in the region.”
“Could Omar have helped himself? Angered some powerful people?”
“Our reputation is everything. I'd expect you to understand that.”
“Noted. Were their finds valuable? Could someone have targeted Omar because he prevented them from getting their hands on them?”
“Only valuable to history.” Masika took the yarn and rolled it up with the sweater, threading the needles through everything to hold the stash together. “Wooden bowls, coins.” She asked Chione a question in Arabic.
“Metalwork,” Chione said. “The pieces were evidence of a nomadic culture in the region.”
Masika nodded. “Aywah. There’s a Bedouin legend about the existence of gold in a hillside cave in the high mountains of the Sinai. No gold found but the legend lives on. That’s why fear of looting.”
Nothing valuable and it was a university archeological dig. There was nothing on the surface to prompt an attack.
“Did Omar ever have a job go sideways? Get into a dangerous situation and offend the wrong people? Any competitors who would go after him?”
“We’ve successfully completed every job we’ve been hired for. As for competitors?” Chione laughed. “Our industry isn’t known for its moral compass. There are many jealous business rivals but were they to attack, it would be more direct.”
“Last question. Was Omar cheating on Shannon?”
“No.” Chione’s answer was a little too prompt and insistent.
“Omar loves her. He puts her welfare first.” Masika sounded totally grumpy about the fact, which lent it credibility, because they were stuck with the Dershowitzes as in-laws.
Chione snickered. “Your precious grandson doesn’t love you the most anymore.”
Masika shot her a quelling look. “We are indebted to the Queen for her generosity in hosting this wedding.”
“I’m sure she knows how appreciative you are. Thanks. That’s–”
There was a muffled boom and the ground rumbled and pitched. We all clutched the bench. Hedon had earthquakes? How? It was stitched together from pockets of our reality. There weren’t tectonic plates. Unless the seams themselves were fault lines. That wasn’t terrifying or anything.
It lasted for the longest twenty seconds of my life. I was braced for Hedon to fall apart and all of us to pitch into some endless void, but the world remained intact. There were no aftershocks, other than my stuttering pulse.
The Queen’s security force resumed their patrol of the grounds, which I took as a sign that all was normal once more.
Chione helped Masika to her feet.
“Could you give me a few minutes and then ask Omar to come see me?”
They nodded and left.
If the attempted murder was because of a woman, where did that get me? Start with the Passover story. The death of the firstborn was the final, most terrible threat inflicted on the Egyptians to convince the Pharaoh to let the Jews go. If that was the case here, then the feather down the throat was the final threat to force Omar to do something. However, it would have eventually killed him, so how could he then do anything?
I tried a different tack. Why did the attacker want the feather back? If he was compelled, he wouldn’t have left it behind in Omar’s throat to begin with. Not based on Moran and Omar’s reactions to it. If he wasn’t–and that was its own mystery–then why use it as a murder weapon only to retrieve it? Did he plan on using it again?
With a grunt, Ivan dropped on to the bench. “I’m here to be interviewed.”
Interesting, since I hadn’t asked.
I pulled out my voice recorder. “Tuesday, March twenty-fifth. Interview with Rebbe Dershowitz.”
He slung an arm along the back of the bench, watching me with a small smirk, as if he was doing me a favor.
“Tell me about Omar.”
Ivan made a dismissive sound. “Not the man I’d have chosen for my Shannon.”
“But you did, thanks to your dealings with Jacob the Shark.”
“Huh. I pegged you for nothing more th
an the Queen’s patsy, but you dug that up pretty damn quick.” He glanced over at his daughter. “I’d been backed into a corner and this was a way out. Better a loveless marriage than any harm coming to her.”
He’d still been willing to sacrifice her happiness to save his own skin. At least she really loved Omar.
“Why do you think someone tried to kill Omar? To be clear,” I said, “I’ve verified it was a human attacker.”
“Good. Who wants angels around anyway? Malach was the ultimate expression of God’s displeasure against his enemies, passing judgment on us. Waste of time. Humans manage to go to the darkest places on their own, regardless of where that lands them in the end.”
“That was a very thorough summary. Got a vested interest in angels?”
Ivan laughed. “Had a lot of time to read in the joint. Lots of copies of the Old Testament around.”
“Does Omar love Shannon? In your opinion?”
“Yes. He scoured the Egyptian market for this rare type of glass Shannon mentioned offhandedly that she’d always wanted to incorporate into one of her light sculptures. Took the idiot three weeks and he spent way more for it than he should, but he got it.” Ivan stroked a hand over his fleshly jowls. “He leaves her sappy voicemails. As love letters. Name me one millennial who does that.”
I honestly couldn’t.
Ivan nodded. “But he’s a weak man.”
“He’s a mercenary.”
“Weapons give him power,” he corrected, “but he’s not strong. He’s kind to Shannon though and he understands her in a way that her mother and I were never able to. He’s her heart’s desire.”
“You’re a wise man, Rebbe. I pegged you wrong, too.”
“Being underestimated has its uses.” He raked a shrewd glance over me. “I suspect you know that.”
“I do, indeed. Any other wisdom you’d care to dispense?”
“No, that’s enough for you. I locked down Table One while you had Masika and Chione over here. Consider my insights your thanks. Now to get my way on the booze.” With a wink, he stood up. “I’ll send Omar over.” Hands in pockets, he sauntered back to the others.
Omar shuffled toward me like he was going to the guillotine. He sat down, hunched over. “I need the feather. Please.”
Death & Desire: A Snarky Urban Fantasy Detective Series (The Jezebel Files Book 2) Page 13