“You do sometimes,” I say with a laugh.
We take our tea through into the living room. It’s small but comfortable, with houseplants on the windowsill and a view out onto a tiny little nature reserve behind the building, right in the middle of the city. Anne’s flat isn’t big, but it’s nice.
I’m the reason that Anne’s living here. Back when she moved out of Alex’s place, she didn’t have anywhere to go, and she came to me for help. I knew a couple of people who worked in Council admin, and I’d noticed that a lot of Council properties seemed to stand empty most of the time, so I tried to see if I could set her up in one of their flats. And it turned out to be way easier than I’d expected. They didn’t make any trouble at all.
It was only much later that I started to figure out that part of the reason the Council keeps so many properties is because it wants to use them for things like this. The more mages the Council has living in its buildings, the more favours it can call in. The market price for this place would be . . . what, three or four hundred thousand? No way Anne could afford that on her own. As long as she’s here rent-free, she’s not going to want to cause trouble. And if I ask for help, well, she’s going to make time. That wasn’t why I did it – I was just helping out. But it’s kind of cool having a life mage on private retainer.
“So how does it feel to be back?” Anne says once we’re settled.
“Eh,” I say. I’m in the armchair, a wisp of steam rising from my cup of tea, while Anne’s curled up catlike on the sofa. The way she’s sitting shows off the lines of her legs and hips. I’d forgotten how good her figure is. “It’s been a rough first day.”
“Do they not trust you any more?”
“No, nothing like that. It’s just . . . They don’t really take me seriously, you know? I mean, I could understand if it was the Order of the Shield, they’re the battle-magic specialists. But the Order of the Star lives off timesight. They’re the biggest employer of time mages in all of Britain! You’d think they’d give us a bit more appreciation.”
“I know what you mean.”
“It’s like they think I’m a little kid,” I say. “Even the guys at reception don’t take me seriously, and they’re not even mages. And Caldera . . . She acts like she’s the big-shot detective and I’m just there to carry her bags. If it wasn’t for me, she’d have gotten nowhere today, but you wouldn’t know it from the way she talks. Honestly, the only guy today who showed me any respect was . . .”
I trail off. “Was?” Anne asks curiously.
“Never mind,” I say. “I’ve been a Keeper auxiliary for years, but they still act like I’m an apprentice. You know what that’s like?”
“They do still think I’m an apprentice.”
“Oh, right.” I’d forgotten about that. Anne never graduated from the apprentice programme, so technically she’s still an apprentice, even though she’s the same age I am. It’s silly, but those are the rules.
“Did they treat you better in America?” Anne asks.
“Much,” I say. “They actually appreciated me, you know? They’re always short on time mages and they treat you really well.” They pay well, too. I wasn’t exactly broke when I went to Washington, but my bank account’s a lot healthier now.
“What were you doing?”
“Military intelligence, mostly.” I settle back into the armchair. “They’re gearing up for some operations in Syria and Iraq and they wanted scans of their targets. They’d pair me up with a space mage – he’d scry the place, I’d use timesight, find out what they wanted to know. Not as good as actually being there, but it’s a lot safer. And you still get to see what matters. There was some guy they’d been looking for for months, they were turning the country upside down trying to find him. I managed to confirm that he’d been killed in a drone strike last Christmas. Made a lot of people really happy.”
Anne looks a bit repulsed and I remember belatedly that she doesn’t like fighting. Maybe I should talk about something else. “So . . . do you still see Luna much?”
“All the time.”
I try to act casual. “Does she know I’m back?”
“I’m . . . not sure. I don’t think she’s mentioned it.”
I don’t say anything, but Anne seems to know what I’m thinking. “She might not have remembered the exact day,” she explains. “But she’s coming around this evening. I could let her know you’re in town, if you’d like.”
“Thanks.”
We talk a bit longer, and as we do, an idle thought keeps pushing at me. There had been a tiny bit of hesitation in Anne’s answer, as if she knew a bit more than she was saying. If she has been talking to Luna, she probably did it here in this room. Which means I could just look back and see what she said.
It’s something all time mages think about: the way our magic works makes it really, really easy for us to spy on people. Any time we want, we can see what someone did and said, last week, last month . . . maybe even last year, if you’re good. Private conversations, secret habits. And more intimate stuff. People love to joke about time mages being voyeurs – you know, the reason you become a time mage is because you’re such a pervert that seeing naked women in the present isn’t enough, you want to see all the ones in the past too. I’ve never thought it was a very funny joke.
But joke or not, the temptation’s always there, and as I talk to Anne, I find myself wondering. I could find out what she’d been saying to Luna. She’d never know. All I’d have to do is look.
But I don’t.
∞
I stay for an hour, then say my goodbyes and gate home. I’m feeling lazy so I order from my favourite take-away. Anne’s prediction is right on target, and around seven-thirty my eyes start feeling heavy. I drop into bed and I’m out as soon as my head hits the pillow.
∞
My phone’s ringing. I’m totally exhausted and I try to ignore it. It rings, stops, rings again. I’m dragged up out of slumber, resisting the whole way.
I crack my eyes open; it’s dawn. My phone’s going off over and over again, dingetty-ding-ding, the ringtone making me want to smash it. My head hurts and I open one eye to squint at the screen. 6:07.
Why couldn’t it have waited a couple more hours?
I fumble my phone off the desk and hit the green button. “Who is it?”
“Sonder?” It’s Caldera’s voice. “Get your arse over here.”
I’m still groggy and I’ve got no idea what she’s talking about. “Where’s here?”
“West Drayton.”
“I don’t want to go to West Drayton.” All I want is to go back to sleep. “Nobody wants to go to West Drayton.”
“Yeah, well, a bunch of us in West Drayton want to see you.”
There’s something grim in Caldera’s tone, and all of a sudden I’m awake. “For what?”
“Remember our suspect from yesterday, David Freeman? We found him.”
∞
The West Drayton Novotel is a big tacky-looking building with blue decorations, close enough to the M4 that there’s a constant roar of traffic. It calls itself the ‘Heathrow Novotel’, probably in a failed attempt to sound more glamorous. Caldera gates me to a spot behind the outbuildings and I shiver in the cold air as we hurry inside.
The corridor on the floor is marked off with blue-and-white police tape. A couple of PCs give us a glance as we duck under the tape but they don’t say anything; the liaison must have cleared us already. More police are waiting in the corridor, along with a photographer, but they’ve left the room clear.
I flinch as I walk in. David Freeman is there, or what’s left of him. He’s thin and bony, dressed in cheap-looking clothes, and he’s lying face-down in the hotel room’s small hallway, quite close to the door. The only scents in the room are disinfectant and hotel carpet, but I still feel as though I can smell the body.
“Housekeeping found him when they came in this morning,” Caldera says. “Room was booked under a false name for one night only.
Reception staff confirm that David Freeman checked in yesterday at 2:30 P.M. He stayed there for the rest of the evening except for one short outing between 8:00 and 9:00. Last time he was seen alive was when he returned.”
“Alone?” I ask.
“Staff say yes, and CCTV confirms it. Camera in the corridor has him entering the room at 8:49 P.M. No-one else used that door until the maid came in this morning.”
Caldera’s stepped around the body and she’s waiting for me in the main room. Reluctantly, I follow her in, giving the corpse as wide a berth as I can. It’s not the first time I’ve done murder cases, but I hate being around dead bodies. If I’m going to use my timesight for this sort of thing, I’d much rather do it from a distance.
The hotel room’s got that bland, empty look that they all do. A polystyrene takeaway box with a smear of ketchup and a few leftover chips is lying on the bedside table. The creepy thought occurs to me that David Freeman was probably eating his dinner last night at the same time I was. “No sign of a fight?” I ask.
“No.” Caldera is looking at me with a what-are-you-waiting-for? expression.
I don’t really like the idea of seeing a murder this close, but there’s nothing for it. I close my eyes and open my timesight, looking back. The lines of the past are static, the dead body lying still, hour after hour. I scan backwards. Four AM, two AM, midnight . . .
. . . And I’m blocked.
Oh. So that’s how it is. I keep scanning for another ten minutes, then open my eyes.
Caldera’s moved up against the wall, but other than that, she’s stayed dead still. She’s annoying, but at least she knows to stay quiet while I’m working. “He came in at 8:49 and ate his dinner,” I say, pointing to the bed. “Then he lay down on the bed and was on his phone. At least until 9:25.”
“What happened at 9:25?”
“A shroud happened.” I nod towards the door. “It’s covering everything in this room, maybe leaking out a little bit into the corridor, but the source was right here. It lasts from 9:25 to 9:45. Starts to clear at 9:45, and once it does, he’s lying there. Nothing else for the rest of the night.”
“Same shroud as yesterday?” Caldera asks.
I shake my head. “Signature is totally different.”
“Can you see through it?”
I hesitate, wondering if I should ask for more time. There’s always a chance that there might be a way through, but . . . no. Part of being an expert is knowing your limits. “No.”
“No?”
“No, I can’t.”
“You saw through yesterday’s.”
“Yeah, because that was yesterday’s,” I say. “That one was standard Council issue. This one’s a hell of a lot stronger. Actually, I’m pretty sure it’s variable-strength.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means it’s designed so the mage using it can put more or less power into the focus. So for everyday business, you just channel the minimum amount, give yourself decent privacy for not much effort. But if you’re doing something sensitive and you want to be really secure, you can pour energy into it, make that region of space-time completely impenetrable to scrying and timesight.” I look at Caldera. “It’s pretty high-end.”
I see Caldera’s face change, and I know she’s figured out what I’m telling her. There are only two reasons a mage would go to this much trouble with a shroud. Either they’re really, really paranoid . . . or they know a time mage is going to be spying on them.
“There’s something else,” I say. “There was gate magic used here. Both ends of the shrouded period. One gate towards the beginning, one towards the end. I can’t get a close look, but you can see the signature from out in the corridor.”
Caldera nods as if she’s not surprised. “So our mystery guest gates into David’s room, offs him, then gives the place a once-over to make sure he’s got what he came for. Might even have cleaned up afterwards, given how bloody neat it looks. Then gates out again. No witnesses, no evidence.” She thinks for a minute. “Where’s his phone?”
“Gone,” I say. “Unless it’s in his pocket . . .”
“It’s not,” Caldera says. “Killer must have swiped it. All right. Search back and forward. Look for any conversations David might have had. And trace the trip he took between 8:00 and 9:00. I’m going to book an autopsy.”
∞
I search David Freeman’s movements during his last evening alive, but I don’t get any lucky breaks this time. He went to the local kebab shop, spent a lot of time on his phone, and didn’t do much else. I spend a tedious hour trying to spy on his calls and Internet usage, and all I learn is more information than I’d ever really wanted to know about the guy’s tastes in porn.
Caldera doesn’t seem to think it’s useless, though, and she questions me closely. “Why does this matter?” I ask at last. We’re standing out in the corridor while an evidence team take photographs of the body. “You think he passed a coded message or something?”
Caldera snorts. “That’s spy novel shit. No, what it tells me is he didn’t see this coming. If he thought someone was about to off him, he wouldn’t be spending his last couple of hours browsing Pornhub.” She taps a finger on her arm, frowning at the wall. “They knew who they were looking for. Question is, did they scry him, or was it an appointment . . . ?”
I’m about to ask Caldera something when her comm focus pings. She puts a hand to her ear and turns half away. “Caldera.” She pauses. “Well, can’t you find someone else?” Pause. “Come on.” Pause. “Yes, there’s something. You can do your bloody job!”
I listen in as the conversation goes on; Caldera gets more and more annoyed and finally hangs up. “What’s wrong?” I ask her.
“No autopsy,” Caldera says.
“Why—?”
“You know how since last month all coroners have to be CT-qualified?” Caldera says. “There are only three on the roster right now and they’re busy.”
“Oh, come on,” I say. This kind of thing always seems to happen with the Council. The more urgently you need something, the more likely there’ll be some reason you can’t get it. “We don’t need anything fancy.”
“Yeah, well, the healer corps say no.” Caldera frowns. “We could hand him over to the Met, but if it’s a magical C.O.D. they won’t know what to look for . . .”
“If we hand him over any residue’s going to dissipate,” I point out.
“Yeah,” Caldera says, and shakes her head. “Going to have to go to Rain.”
“Rain said we were supposed to handle this case quietly, remember?” I say. “Fast-tracking an autopsy is kind of the opposite of quiet.”
Caldera swears, and I have to bite back a grin. It’s a nice change to be the one who tells her what she’s doing wrong.
But then I get an idea. “Wait. We just need a life scan, right?”
“Within the next few hours, yeah.”
“I think I know someone.”
∞
“I’d rather not,” Anne says.
“They’ll pay standard rates,” I say. I’m out in the Novotel car park, talking to Anne over the phone. Grey-white clouds sweep by overhead. “Plus a call-out bonus, plus expenses. Much better pay than that supermarket you work at, right?”
“It’s not about the money.”
“Come on,” I say persuasively. “It’s an easy job. Besides, this kind of thing’s good networking.”
“Sonder . . . I know you think you’re trying to help, but . . . I’ve seen enough dead bodies.”
Damn it. Okay, fine. “Look, you know who owns your flat, right?”
Anne doesn’t answer.
“This is how it goes.” I try to make my voice sound encouraging. “It’s going to be less than an hour’s work. Probably not even half an hour. In and out.”
“. . . All right.”
“Great! I’ll text you the address.”
∞
I’m waiting out in the car park when Anne arrives. D
espite the cold she’s dressed lightly, wearing a cardigan. I wave and she changes direction to head towards me.
Caldera’s standing next to me. She catches sight of Anne and I see her eyes change as she puts it together. “Okay, so—” I begin.
“No,” Caldera says.
“No, what?”
“You know damn well what. No. As in N–O.”
Anne stops some distance away, watching Caldera warily. I give her what I hope is a reassuring smile, then turn to Caldera, lowering my voice so that Anne won’t hear us over the wind. “It’s just going to be a quick in-and-out.”
“It doesn’t matter how quick it is.” Caldera’s voice is sharp, and she keeps Anne in her field of vision. “I don’t want her in my crime scene.”
“I know she’s not cleared—”
“You’re damn right she’s not cleared.”
“—but she’s still a life mage, and that’s all we really need. It’s not like we’ve got any other evidence to go on, is it? And Rain did say ‘quickly’.”
Caldera doesn’t answer and I press my advantage. “She’s helped us out before. I know she’s not a qualified mage, but she’s always been really co-operative. And I know she needs the money.”
Caldera thinks for a second, then shakes her head. “No.”
What does it take to convince this woman? “Why not?”
“She’s a Dark apprentice who isn’t cleared for any kind of Keeper operations, much less something this sensitive. Any evidence we got out of her wouldn’t be admissible, even if we trusted her to tell the truth, which we don’t. Send her home.”
I stare at Caldera. She’s barely even looking at me, and that’s the point at which my patience finally snaps. “All right, you know what? I don’t need your permission.”
Caldera turns to me with a frown. “Yes, you do.”
“I’m a Keeper auxiliary,” I tell her. “While I’m on the clock, that means I’ve got the same authority to call in help that you do, if I think it’s necessary. Well, I am officially saying it’s necessary.”
“This isn’t your case!”
“I’ve got an assignment from Rain that says it is. So unless you want to go to him and argue seniority . . .”
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