by C. C. Mahon
Not surprisingly, Alicia returned home. Skipping school when you’ve just lost your boyfriend is not suspicious behavior.
She unlocked the door and slammed it behind her.
“What do we do now?” I said.
Lola watched the Perez house, thoughtful. “I would like to take a look through the windows…”
Great. As if we weren’t suspicious enough as it was.
“Do you want to be invisible? Or would you rather a neighbor call your colleagues to report us?”
I hid under an illusion to make us invisible. It was a new twist on my usual glamour, which my sword had taught me. I took Lola by the arm and made her go around the house.
The first window opened into a sober and empty bedroom. Mrs. Perez’s, I suppose. The second one revealed a model girl’s room: small flowers on the wallpaper, pink bedspreads, plush toys, and fancy cushions.
Standing in the middle of the room, Alicia had snuggled up in the arms of a young man. I recognized Jeffrey Brown. The kid had come back from the dead.
The two lovers were huddled together, stroking each other’s hair and whispering to each other what I assumed were sweet words. I felt more and more indiscreet.
“How much longer will we watch them?” I asked.
“It’s enough,” Lola said.
I dispelled the illusion, and Lola knocked on the window.
In the room, Alicia jumped. Jeffrey simply turned his head.
Lola pressed her police badge to the window and waved to ask Alicia to open the window. Alicia seemed terrified. Jeffrey didn’t show any emotion.
Cold as a dead man, I thought.
“Alicia,” I said through the window, “we know Jeffrey’s back. We are friends. We just want to understand what happened. Would you mind opening the window for us?”
Alicia slowly lifted the window. “What do you want?”
“Just to talk,” Lola said. “Can I come in now?”
She stepped over the windowsill and entered the bedroom. I would have liked to imitate her, but I doubted that my large wings would fit through this small opening. So I stayed in the garden, leaning against the window.
“Jeffrey,” I said, “I need you to be honest with me. Do you know who brought you back to life?”
The two teenagers exchanged stunned looks.
“You…you know?” stuttered Jeffrey.
“We were at the morgue that night. Don’t you remember?”
The kid stared at us. “You came after the cops but before the zombies. Who are you?”
I pointed at Lola. “She’s a cop, and I own a bar. We are trying to find out who brought you and others back to life.”
“Why?” Alicia intervened. “What happened to Jeffrey is a miracle.”
“Not really,” I said.
She raised her chin with an air of defiance. “And why not?”
“For every person brought back to life,” I said, “another one died.”
“Excuse me?”
I explained the magical theory and told them about the giant pileup that killed thirty people, just as Jeffrey and the others were “waking up” at the morgue. Alicia paled. Jeffrey was already as pale as his skin allowed. He looked down at his hands.
“Someone died so I could come back?” he murmured.
“That’s the principle: a life for another life.”
“But I’m not really alive!” Jeffrey shouted.
It was the first time I had seen him express an emotion. He lifted his T-shirt, revealing his pale chest. Alicia turned away, her face buried in her hands.
A hole opened where Jeffrey’s heart should have been. The skin had been shredded, and pieces of ribs were pointing outwards.
Jeffrey dropped his shirt and put one hand on Alicia’s shoulder. The girl came to snuggle up against him.
“I took the bullet in my heart,” Jeffrey continued. “What’s left of the blood in my veins can’t flow anymore. I can’t breathe. I may look alive, but…I don’t know for how long. Marcellin says we need to stay cool to slow down the decomposition process. I don’t know if…” He looked at Alicia, held her tighter against him. “I don’t want to do this to anyone.”
Alicia found Jeffrey’s hand and interlocked her fingers with those of the young man. I had the impression that the two teenagers had already had this conversation.
“What about your parents?” I said. “Didn’t you contact them?”
“I intended to. But I thought…it’s better if they don’t see me like that. Alicia was there when…when I died. She saw the blood… But my parents didn’t see any of that. I prefer that they keep another memory of me.”
The kid showed a good dose of discernment for someone so young. Was it a side effect of death?
“Jeffrey,” I said, “did you see anything?”
“When I was dead? No. Nothing between the gunshot and the wake-up call at the morgue. No light tunnel, no loved ones welcoming me… Just a black hole, like a night without dreams. All the more reason not to go see my parents.”
“Are they religious?”
“Very. And this is no time to deprive them of their faith.”
“You’re very wise for a boy your age.”
“Jeffrey has always been the smartest in the class,” Alicia said.
The girl’s face shone with pride for a moment, then sadness took over.
“Jeffrey,” said Lola, “did you get even?”
“With my murderer? It would be difficult. I have no idea who killed me. Honestly, I think it was a mistake.”
“Did they think you were someone else?” I said.
He shrugged.
“The police report mentions a car…” Lola said.
“I’ve been thinking about it since the other night. They shot me in the back, so I didn’t see the car or the shooter.”
“And I didn’t look,” confided Alicia. “I…I tried to help Jeff.”
“But why were you shot?” asked Lola. “Are you related to a gang?”
“Not on my life!” cried Jeffrey. “I swear to you! Why would I lie? I’m dead anyway. You can’t put me in jail.”
“Alicia,” I said, “do you have any ideas?”
Alicia looked down. “None,” she said to the carpet.
That girl was a poor poker player.
“Um…” I said. “I’m sorry to ask you this, but could I use the bathroom?”
Alicia immediately regained her reflexes as a good hostess. “Of course, it’s down the hall.”
I pretended to examine the window. “Alicia, would you open the front door for me? I think I’m too old to go in through the window.”
Alicia detached herself from Jeffrey with visible reluctance.
“Go ahead,” she said. “I’ll let you in.”
20
I went around the house. Alicia was holding the door open. I bumped a wing as I entered and choked a growl of frustration.
“The toilets are over there…”
“It’s just us now,” I said. “You can spill the beans.”
She stared at me with those big brown eyes that must have made Jeffrey melt.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about…”
“The attack on Jeffrey. You know why he was shot. Speak, if you don’t want my cop friend to take you to the station.”
The blood left her face, and her eyes hardened. I raised my hand. “Frankly, I don’t care about your mess, and I’m not going to turn you in, either to the police or Jeffrey. But I have a necromancer on my hands, and I can’t afford to ignore any leads.”
Alicia shot a worried glance down the hall. “You won’t say anything to Jeffrey?”
“I promise.”
The poor kid had enough to worry about as it was. I wasn’t going to throw him on the path of revenge on top of it.
“Or the police?” added Alicia.
“It’s gonna depend a little bit on what you tell me. Are you part of a gang?”
“No, it’s not like that.”
“Sometimes, when friends have trouble concentrating on studying…”
“You’re a Ritalin dealer,” I said. “Are you stealing prescriptions from your mother?”
“No! It’s my own prescription. I imitated the symptoms of attention deficit disorder, and so I can resell the tablets individually.” She shrugged, avoiding my gaze.
“Alicia, no one kills for Ritalin dealing.”
The girl didn’t answer. She kept her eyes on the ground, apparently determined to talk as much as an oyster. I was going to have to insist. I didn’t want to. I didn’t want to threaten that poor kid. But someone had died so that Jeffrey could feel himself rotting on his feet. We had to find out who had committed this horror and stop them from doing it again.
“Alicia,” I said, “if you don’t talk, you’ll spend the day at the police station instead of staying with Jeffrey. Who knows what state he’ll be in when you get back?”
Argh, in that moment, I hated myself, I hated my life, I hated Odin, and I hated the necromancer who put me in that situation more than anyone else.
Alicia glared at me for a long time then seemed to lose all combativeness. “Okay,” she breathed. “There’s a new thing in town. Much, much stronger than Ritalin. It’s called horns.”
“Eh?”
“Unicorn horns. Because they’re small multicolored pills. With this stuff…you can know things…read people’s minds. Hear their thoughts. During an exam, it’s just extraordinary.”
“A magic pill that makes you telepathic?”
“I’m telling the truth. I tested it; it works.”
“What does that have to do with Jeffrey?”
“Nothing. He doesn’t touch those things; he doesn’t even know I sell them. But some guys want to know my supplier.”
“What guys?”
“Dealers. Real ones, I mean. Selling nasty stuff on street corners. They want exclusivity on the new drug. I told them to go to hell.”
I stared at her. She didn’t look like someone equipped to stand up to drug dealers. What the hell was going through that kid’s head?
“Did those magic pills go to your brain?” I said.
“Probably. Those bad guys threatened me. I didn’t take them seriously. I think they killed Jeffrey to intimidate me, to force me to give them my supplier.”
“Who is it?”
His face closed again.
“Is everything all right?” Jeffrey called.
He was coming out of the hallway, looking worried, Lola on his heels.
“Alicia?” he said. “Are you all right?”
The girl smiled at him and walked the distance between them. She locked her fingers into the boy’s fingers. “Perfectly fine,” she lied.
I considered them for a moment, a cute couple of teenagers like any other, radiant with love. Except she was dealing magical drugs, and he had started to decompose.
“What are you going to do?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” Jeffrey admitted. “If you…if you find whoever did this to me, could you let me know? Explain to me why…”
“Hasn’t anyone asked you any questions since the morgue?” I asked.
“Marcellin and his people tried to understand what was happening to us, but that’s all. Why? Do you think I would have been resurrected for questioning? On what? I didn’t see my killer. I don’t know anything about anything.”
I glanced at Lola, who shrugged slightly.
“Good luck to both of you,” I said.
I bumped another wing on the doorframe when I left the small suburban house.
“Did you get anything from the kid?” Lola asked as she walked back to her car.
I told her.
“Magic drugs in high schools?” she cried. “That’s all we needed!”
“When you think about it, it makes sense. People will use magic as they used science: to take drugs, to heal themselves…”
“To make money,” she added, “to kill.”
“Just because we have a leak of raw magic in the city doesn’t mean that human nature will change,” I concluded.
“Great,” grumbled Lola. “I look forward to being called on my first fireball shooting.”
“Stop grumbling and show me the list of the resurrected.”
“Do you have something in mind?”
“I don’t think Jeffrey was the necromancer’s target. No more than poor Susan who came to die in my club.”
“What kind of motive are you thinking about?”
“Either it’s to bring back a loved one…”
“I checked, and all the dead people present that night were in the parking lot when we arrived. Why resurrect someone and then abandon them?”
“Okay,” I said. “So it’s not for love. Another possibility is to obtain information. That’s what I hope to find out from your file.”
Lola pulled the file out of her glove compartment and put it on the hood of her car.
“Apart from Jeffrey, who was shot, what are the causes of their deaths?”
Lola flipped through the file. “Most of them are natural deaths. Susan suffered a bad fall while shopping; she died of complications at the hospital. A handful of other older people have died of chronic diseases or heart failure. A guy was beaten up on the street, probably for his wallet. Two women were killed by their abusive partners. Three suicides in hotel rooms. Three overdoses. Eight road accident victims. Some deaths not yet attributed…”
“What kind?”
“Most of them found in their beds. The ones you’re going to be interested in are these three.” She handed me three sheets of paper. “Three known drug dealers.”
“Do you think it might be related to Jeffrey’s death?” I asked.
“Maybe one of them has the formula for this new drug.”
“And he would have died taking the secret with him?”
“We’ll know more when we talk to them,” Lola said. She picked up the other files. “What a luxury to be able to question people after their deaths,” she said.
“You see that magic doesn’t have only bad sides. Which dealer do we start with?”
“They’re going to be a little more difficult to find. Let me check with my colleagues. I’ll let you know when I know where to look.”
“Be careful,” I said.
“This is not the first time I’ve dealt with drug dealers.”
“I can imagine that. But this is the first time you’ve ever gone after a necromancer. And if I understood correctly, someone who can bring thirty people back to life at once is a hell of a psychopath.”
21
I left Lola in front of Alicia’s house and headed towards the Strip and the site of the explosion. I needed to think, and it seemed to me that going back to the origin of this mess would help me to see things clearly.
Access to the site was still restricted to the public by a series of police seals and construction barriers. After the investigation pointed to a gas accident, the seals had been broken to give way to excavators.
Any city would have blocked access to the entire neighborhood, set up detours, and relied on the understanding of its motorists. Vegas could not do without the Strip, and the municipality had simply closed half of the roadway to traffic. Yet the neighborhood was strangely quiet in the early morning. No workers going to take their shift in the nearby casinos, no drunk tourists zigzagging on the sidewalks…only two women in beige suits who were strolling along the fences of the site.
I stopped my bike to observe the construction site. The air smelled like raw magic and tickled my skin. The asphalt was vibrating under the sole of my boot.
Close to the barriers that prevented public access to the rubble, the two women in beige suits were leaning over their portable device. The object looked like an old Polaroid disguised as a Geiger counter. What it indicated did not seem to please the two women. Under my foot, the vibrations were getting stronger and stronger. Suddenly the women shout
ed, turned their backs on the deserted site, and rushed into a sprint, their tailored skirts raised on the top of their thighs to run faster.
“It’s gonna blow!” said one of them as she passed by me.
The other said nothing, her mind apparently too busy with the fear that widened her eyes.
I pulled my bike on a tight U-turn to follow the two women, but I hadn’t covered more than two yards before the world exploded behind my back.
The blast of the explosion threw my bike to the ground and sent me tumbling several dozen yards away. I finally stopped flat on my back and decided to stay put. My eyes only saw flashes of psychedelic colors, and a too-sharp whistle twisted my ears.
Vaguely aware that I was lying in the middle of one of the busiest streets in Vegas, I finally sat up. I opened my eyes and noticed that the psychedelic flashes were still there. Worse: they didn’t seem to be due to a head injury. They were real. It looked like northern lights with a Vegas twist, overflowing with glitter and bright colors.
A little further down the street, the two women in beige suits were also regaining consciousness. They focused their attention on a point behind me, and their jaws dropped. I turned around to find out what shocked them. I was not disappointed. The rubble, the construction site, the abandoned machines…everything had disappeared. There was only one crater left, even larger than the previous one. But something told me that it was not the crater that shocked the two women the most, but the Technicolor show that overshadowed it.
An energy geyser came out of the ground and headed straight for the Vegas sky. Up there, it was stopped by an invisible dome, a few hundred yards above the city. The energy had begun to accumulate just under the dome, no longer in diffuse fog, but in a large cloud of ever-changing colors. Energy particles fell as rain around us, creating this impression of psychedelic aurora borealis. The smell of magic was so strong that I gagged, and its energy stung my skin like an army of red ants.
Heat licked my neck, and a metallic noise resounded just behind me. My sword had caught fire and had apparently consumed its case before falling to the ground. I hastily disposed of the smoking remains of the case.
“What’s the matter with you?” I asked the sword. I carefully advanced my hand towards the pommel. Before my fingers even came into contact with the weapon, I felt it vibrating feverishly. “The ambient magic makes you nervous?”