Smoke Show (Tess Skye Book 2)

by D. N. Erikson

  “The message that goes with the shard scroll.”

  Twenty-Four

  After Javy and I return to the apartment and take Ella for a walk, we immediately get to work on decoding Emmy’s hidden message from the sticker on the town limit sign. First order of business: bringing my phone back from the brink of death so we can analyze the photo I snapped.

  “Moment of truth.” I brush the last grain of rice off the screen and take a deep breath as I lean against the kitchen counter.

  “We can always head out to the town limit.” Javy doesn’t look confident that this is going to work.

  “I’d prefer not to.” Then I press and hold the power button.

  A moment later, the phone boots up and I fist pump in the air. Despite its dip in the Rok River courtesy of my scuffle with Stacey knight, it seems no worse for wear. I navigate to the image of the numbers and show it to Javy.

  “What do you think?”

  “Definitely could be the message the shard scroll is supposed to decipher.”

  “Guess we’ll find out,” I say.

  I retrieve the shard scroll from the coffee table. Its glass edges are smooth in my palm. I hand it to Javy. Then I hold his lighter up and position it behind the green glass as he pinches the shard scroll between his fingers. Shadowy rows of numbers and letters appear on the nearby wall.

  I bring the flame too close to his skin and Javy grunts.

  The shard scroll clatters to the floor, and the shadow disappears.

  “Aren’t you immortal?”

  “That doesn’t make me immune to fire.” Javy reaches down to retrieve the piece of glass, which is no worse for wear.

  We try again, but it’s a pain in the ass to coordinate our efforts and also try to decode the message simultaneously.

  So I rummage around the apartment and find a few old birthday candles in a kitchen drawer. A stale loaf of bread sits on the counter. After shaking the loaf free of its bag, I jam the handful of candles in the center of the bread.

  Then I ignite all the wicks with the lighter.

  Javy stares at the fiercely glowing ball of light. “Not bad, Tess.”

  “I have my moments.”

  Meanwhile, Ella monitors the fiery spectacle from the couch with wide-eyed concern.

  Javy tilts the shard in front of the little inferno, trying to get the shadows thrown at the right angle. Finally, they appear clearly on the wall next to the entrance to my bedroom. Javy twists his wrist slightly, and the rows of characters right themselves, reading like sentences from a book.

  If sentences were one long, continuous string of never-ending letters and numbers in a random order, that is.

  “Take a picture,” he says.

  After a few false starts, I manage to take a reasonably legible snapshot of the shadows with my phone.

  Just in time.

  The candles burn down, igniting the entire loaf. Smoke streams from the bread as I dash into the kitchen. The only thing on the countertop is tequila, which I don’t think will help.

  “We need some water, Tess,” Javy calls from the smoky living room.

  “No shit,” I say.

  The smoke detector chatters as I fling the fridge door open, looking for a bottle of water. Ella joins in, leaping off the couch and howling in concert with the looping beeps.

  No water. All I can find is some expired milk.

  I pull the carton out and sprint back into the living room.

  Rip the cardboard off the top.

  And douse the flaming bread.

  It sizzles as the milk extinguishes the blaze. I breathe a deep sigh of relief—a mistake, given the smell of burning, spoiled milk hanging over the room—and return to the kitchen.

  Smoke continues to rise from the bread’s ashes when I return with a glass of water. I dump it on the smoldering remains.

  Ella growls in the corner, ears down, looking extremely unimpressed.

  “Never was a good cook,” I say.

  She offers a short yip in response, but doesn’t try to come over. That’s okay. I don’t need her approval. Javy maintains a diplomatically neutral expression.

  I haul myself over to the couch, where he sits down to join me. I flip between the two photos: the coded numbers on the sticker and the key from the shard.

  There’s no clear pattern.

  Nothing to make sense of.

  “You see anything?” I ask.

  “Not yet. We need something to write with.”

  I get up and retrieve a notepad and pen.

  He thumbs between the two photos, back and forth, back and forth, murmuring to himself. We take turns writing down ideas, only to ball them up and toss the crumpled remains into the corner.

  As the night presses on, the only thing that grows is the paper graveyard of failed ideas.

  Well past midnight, Javy calls it since he still has to go to work tomorrow.

  After he leaves, I slump back down on the couch and doodle the word fuuuuuuuck at the top of the notepad. Doubt sets in: maybe this message and the scroll shard aren’t a match.

  Maybe the numbers beneath the sticker mean nothing at all.

  I shake the thoughts off, scribble out the expletive, then scroll between the two photos, searching for patterns once more.

  The message reads 01.12358 13.213455.

  The formatting was initially why I thought the numbers on Emmy’s sticker were coordinates. And I think that was intentional. Someone eager to find a conspiracy might stumble upon them, believe the same, and immediately plug them in.

  Then be left disappointed and eventually give up.

  That’s when I see it.

  Each number is the sum of the two previous ones. I type that into the phone’s search bar.

  “Fibonacci sequence,” I read aloud to a sleeping Ella. Maybe I should have paid more attention in math class.

  But that’s why we have the internet, right?

  I scroll through the search results. It’s not the sequence itself that catches my eye.

  But the Fibonacci spiral associated with it.

  I pull up the photo of the shard’s shadowy rows of letters and numbers, then use the built-in editing app to trace a crude spiral over them. It’s hardly an exact science due to the slightly off-angle picture, so it takes a few attempts while referencing the images in the search results to make sure I’m drawing it right.

  But when I’m done, the Fibonacci spiral cuts through the shadowy letters to form two words that are pretty damn clear.

  Great Reveal

  That’s why we were having so much trouble earlier tonight: we’d gotten the roles reversed. The message was embedded in the scroll shard. The numbers beneath the sticker were the key.

  I lean back after cracking the code and retrace the spiral to see if it could lead to any other message. But that’s the only solution that makes any sense.

  It’s also so broad as to be completely meaningless. Maybe Delia’s sticker on the other side of the sign held an additional key that would reveal another message within the shard scroll’s jumble of letters and numbers. But it has vanished to the sands of time, leaving me with a statement that could refer to anything.

  I search for Emmy Davis + Great Reveal.

  There’s an article with a quote from her that says, “Ms. Davis claims she wants to accomplish a feat on par with the Great Reveal—and if her rapid ascent to stardom over the past years has taught the world anything, it’s to never count her out.”

  Maybe it’s an early reference to Project Ghost—her own Great Reveal. I don’t think her return would be quite on par with the supernatural being revealed to the human world, but it would be quite the news story.

  In any event, I didn’t need to read a news article to know that Emmy Davis was ambitious.

  I flip through the search results anyway, skimming through Emmy’s various exploits. I’m halfway through an article chronicling her involvement in the production of Dino Space Warrior when I lean back on the couch. J
ust to rest my eyes.

  Twenty-Five

  It’s a little past noon when I awake with a start on the couch. My face is smushed into the cushions, and for a moment, I feel like I can’t breathe.

  The sensation triggers a memory—one that’s not mine.

  I’m running through a large house barefoot. My heart is racing faster and faster, refusing to slow down. Heavy footsteps thunder behind me.

  “You signed the deal,” the man says. His voice is stern and resolute. “And the favor is now owed.”

  “Help,” I scream, sprinting toward the door. Emmy Davis is a few steps ahead. “Get away from me!”

  I realize that I’m Delia Wolfheart, and this is the memory that bubbled up over and over when I was Soulwalking within her body.

  And now the entire thing is coming back in full force.

  I stumble and trip over a lamp cord, crashing to my knees. I claw along the carpet, but a thick, meaty hand clamps down on my shoulder.

  Emmy freezes in the open doorway, torn between trying to help and running.

  “Go.”

  She doesn’t move.

  “Get help! Go!”

  The front door slams shut as I try to jerk free. The hand maintains its tight grip.

  I roll over. It’s Chief Bobby Summers—Marius, really—leering down.

  I kick at his legs. “No—don’t.”

  He avoids the kicks, clipping a small table with his hip in the process. A photograph teeters off and crashes to the floor. Amid the glass fragments, I can see the framed picture of Delia and Emmy out at the town limits, putting up the stickers.

  There’s writing on the photo’s back. It looks like it says “dig on the right.”

  Marius steps over the broken glass, his hulking frame throwing a shadow over me. “You agreed to any favor. This is what I desire.”

  “I didn’t agree to anything with you!”

  He snarls, “But that’s where you’re wrong.” And then he extracts a sheet of paper, signed in blood, from his back pocket. “Four years ago.”

  I recognize it, but don’t believe it. “That’s—that’s impossible.”

  “You, Stacey, and Emmy made a deal with the devil.” Then he smiles, yellowed teeth gleaming. “And the devil has returned to claim his due.”

  “She’s my best friend. I won’t kill Emmy!”

  “You don’t get to refuse.” The smile widens. “That’s the beautiful thing about magic signed in blood.”

  “Anything else. I’ll do anything else.”

  “I could force you.” He tucks the contract away, then strokes his chin. “But your offer is intriguing.”

  “Please…” I can feel the tears dripping down my cheeks, fear stiffening my joints.

  “I won’t make you kill her.”

  Relief floods my chest. “Thank you, thank you, thank you—”

  The pillow comes down on my face, and Marius says, “Not when you can die instead.”

  And everything fades to darkness.

  I awake again to something wet and slimy sliding across my face.

  Light filters through the shades, casting shadows over the couch cushions as I return to reality. I’m covered in a thin layer of sweat, breathing heavily.

  Ella is licking my cheek. When she realizes I’m awake, she steps back and looks at me with intense worry.

  “Good morning to you today.” I pat her on the head.

  You do not seem well, Tessie.

  “I’m fine.” I yawn casually and stretch, even though my heart is still pounding.

  You were shaking for a long time.

  “Just a bad dream, girl.”

  She looks less than convinced.

  My mouth is a little dry, but I’m not feeling any negative effects from the late night or the tequila, so that’s a win overall. Sleeping on the couch is never what anyone would term restful—neither is Soulwalking, for that matter—but other than my sore neck, I’m ready to go.

  And at least I know what happened, now: Marius killed Delia for refusing his favor. That’s what happens when you make a deal with the devil, though. Eventually the bill comes due.

  After grabbing a glass of water, I sit back down on the couch and stare at the scattered aftermath of last night’s investigation. Cracking the coded message felt like a step in the right direction—the light at the end of this tunnel—but it turns out it was only the cruelest of dead ends.

  Great Reveal. That could mean anything.

  Jumping back into the fray and looking for angles that I might have missed demands a little time to regroup. So instead, I commit the cardinal sin of checking my email and social media.

  Cardinal sin because I’d temporarily forgotten about Marius’s little video message to the world—channeled through Hex Davis’s lips—highlighting me as a parasitic private investigator out to line her pockets.

  This is how I discover that, not only does his original tweet now have over three million retweets, but it’s also been followed up by another.

  Marius is now retaining the counsel of none other than Carrie Zane, the defense lawyer who Finn and I had a little run-in with a couple weeks back. Together, these two jackasses are spearheading a civil suit against me on behalf of Stacey Knight. Carrie’s pride is no doubt still wounded—and she’s probably pretty pissed about the hundred grand of hers that Finn and I took that’s currently going toward rebuilding the Big Zipper.

  I’m no thief. But she’s worse than pond scum and that cash was illegitimate as it comes. Plus, the original intention was to use it to save the town. That wasn’t necessary, so it went to a good cause.

  Basically all that’s to say one thing: my conscience is clear on the matter.

  But she’s hellbent on getting her pound of flesh, pontificating in the video filmed in front of her firm’s office about the “negligent conduct of former police officers and the leniency with which the township deals with them.”

  Naturally, she excludes the part about me saving Ragnarok.

  But I have much bigger fish to fry today.

  I fire off a text to Javy, letting him know that I solved our little riddle.

  He responds within a minute, but doesn’t have any ideas regarding what “Great Reveal” might refer to.

  Then I set my phone on the coffee table, get off the couch, and head to the shower. The swirling mix of tequila, perfume, and cologne from last night’s trip to Colossus washes away down the drain.

  But what doesn’t wash off so easily is the sting of defeat.

  Our best lead presents no path forward. “Great Reveal” is too cryptic a clue to be of much use.

  So I retrace my steps.

  I’ve solved the case for the Wolfhearts. It’s clear that Marius killed their daughter—using the body of Chief Bobby Summers to commit the crime.

  But Emmy’s disappearance, and the bigger question regarding Marius’s endgame, are the larger looming issues.

  I know that Emmy, Delia, and Stacey made the proverbial deal with the devil six years ago. Marius—then using a sleazy social media manager as his host—promised them fame and fortune with but one condition: a single favor of his choosing at a later date. A reasonable enough deal for everything they ever wanted. The magical contracts were signed and sealed in blood without hesitation.

  They didn’t know they were doing business with a Shade, of course. That much was clear from talking with Stacey. So whatever his ultimate plan was, they were completely in the dark.

  Water drips off my shoulders as I rack my mind for why Marius would go to all that trouble.

  But the problem with chaos is it’s impossible to predict.

  Looks like I’ve hit a dead end. Until something dawns on me as I’m climbing out of the shower.

  “Dig on the right.” I say the scrawled words from Delia’s memory aloud.

  Maybe there was never really anything on the right side of the sign.

  Maybe there’s something beneath it.

  I need to head back out to th
e town’s southern limit.

  I’ve just finished slipping into my jeans when there’s a knock at the door.

  Ella howls.

  I grab my Glock 22 and tiptoe to the peephole.

  It’s a young guy in an ill-fitting suit. I open the door, keeping the chain latched.

  “Yeah?” I ask through the narrow space.

  “Tess Skye?”

  “Who wants to know?”

  He threads a manilla envelope through the slit. “You’ve been served.”

  Then he scurries back down the stairs like a rat.

  I slam the door—as much as I can, given it was only open a crack—and hurl the envelope into the corner. It’s not an additional problem—I already knew from Carrie Zane’s dog and pony show that the lawsuit was coming. But it’s still a slap in the face. The proverbial insult to injury.

  I take Ella for a walk to clear my head, hoping that the sun might help me calm down.

  It doesn’t, but at least she’s stoked about going out.

  Then I head back out to the town limit to find out if “dig on the right side” meant literal digging.

  Or if I’m just going to waste my afternoon grasping at straws.

  Twenty-Six

  Dusty sweat pours down my neck as the shovel’s head bites into the hard, dry dirt beneath the town limit sign yet again. The cloudless blue sky shimmers above as I toss the grainy debris into the growing pile next to me. A sedan slows down to avoid the wrath of the speed limit camera. The driver shoots the production an odd glance as he rolls past.

  I say production because it’s not just me out here.

  No. Because digging holes in the hot sun alone would be far too pleasant.

  Instead, when I pulled up, I was greeted by a tent and a half dozen of Sherlock Anderson’s employees, all gathered around a folding table planning something in hushed tones before dispersing across the arid landscape.

  The man himself is even here, supervising the operation from the shaded comfort of the canvas.

  I’m not sure what they’re looking for. But I can say with confidence that whoever made up the saying third time’s the charm did not have the misfortune of crossing paths with Sherlock.