Dead to Rites

by Ari Marmell

  Then again, sometimes somebody actually does.

  “It’s okay,” I told her. “I get it.”

  She gazed into her glass—wishing it were full, I think, just so drinking it would give her something to do. Then she said, “Why do you suppose she told you? That the elixir involved a soul?”

  “Well, you just said. I couldn’ta come this far without gettin’ suspicious. Once she knew I was wondering, she probably figured I wouldn’t fully believe her if she said no—and she’da been right to worry—so I guess she just decided to get ahead of it. What with her havin’ an ace up her sleeve already.”

  “That makes sense.” And then, “I think you should go find the mummy.”

  This time, it absolutely did feel like a topic change.

  “You’re kiddin’ me, right? I got bigger things to worry about right now than a missing stiff, however old he is. I gotta focus on gettin’ Pete outta hot water before he cooks!”

  “Yep. And you’ve, what? Come up with a brilliant plan to do that in the last minute and a half?”

  “Uh…” As responses go, I thought it was fairly eloquent, myself.

  “You still don’t want Baskin getting his mitts on the thing, do you?”

  “No, but—”

  “And maybe finding it’ll give you some leverage for bargaining with Ramona, which might give you a leg up on dealing with McCall.”

  “That’s thin, Tsura. I mean, single-strand-of-capellini thin.”

  “Well, yeah. That’s because it’s just the sugar coating I’m using to get you to swallow this.”

  And that brings us back to “Uh.”

  “Look, Mick…” Now she did stand and come around the desk just so she could put a hand on my wrist. And I gotta say, no, the gesture wasn’t unwelcome at all. “I say you should go look for the mummy because it’s something you can do. Something that has to be done, something useful you can accomplish while you’re coming up with some way to help your friend. Unless you really suppose you’ll come up with a better answer sitting here twiddling your thumbs and trying to read solutions in the wallpaper?”

  “Y’know,” I said after a minute, “I’m startin’ to feel that mortals really shouldn’t ever actually figure anything out. Least not before I do. Makes you insufferable and it ain’t good for my superiority complex.”

  There was that smile again, with a mischievous tint to it this time. She didn’t even say a word, just handed me my hat and coat.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Rounser’s carnival was a whole different place this late at night. No crowds or wandering performers, just the occasional scuffed step of a hired security guard. Maybe one light in five was on, and the place sang with the tones of stray cats and night birds and crickets—but no pixies—accompanied on occasion by a loud snore from the wagons and tents where the carnies bunked.

  The stench of the crowd, though, that lingered, as did the stink of various animals. And, if I’m bein’ square, so did more’n a few unpleasant memories of the last time I’d been here.

  The chintzy fence surrounding the property wouldn’ta kept out a determined tumbleweed, but I let Tsura guide me to a particular entrance—a wooden plank that rotated around the nail it hung on—rather’n finding my own way in. And no, I wasn’t just bein’ polite or makin’ her feel useful. I was sure she hadda better idea of the security guards’ rounds, or which of the performers were lighter sleepers. Yeah, I’da been able to handle any of ’em without too much trouble, but better to avoid discovery altogether, see?

  I suppose it all shoulda felt creepy. The shallow pools of light huddled against the shadows; the creaking wood of two dozen slapdash buildings swaying in the wind, or the whistling of that wind between the slats; bright banners and painted murals, muted in the gloom. Weirdest of all was any attempt to look into the distance even when the light allowed. Buildings of different shapes and haphazard sizes threw off any sense of perspective, so you couldn’t tell near from far.

  I could certainly understand why some folks woulda found it unnerving. Even Tsura, who’d lived with the fair for a couple years now, jumped once or twice. Me, though? Having spent time in Unseelie territory in Elphame, this was duck soup.

  And since this was easier for me than it woulda been for anyone else, I did my damndest not to bust a gut laughing at Tsura’s face, or the tiny mouse squeak she made, when I suddenly grabbed her mid-step and hauled the both of us around into the thick shadow behind the soft drink and hot dog stand.

  “Mick, what the fu—!”

  It was a whisper, if a harsh one, but I still put a finger to her lips and shook my head. And there we waited, me’n her pressed against the stall that might well fall over if we leaned too hard. Until, finally, she heard the same footsteps I had, and understood.

  “All right,” I said when they’d eventually faded, “he’s gone. Sorry if I startled you, I… Hey? You okay?” It was hard to spot in the dark, even for me, but lookin’ down into her face, it sure seemed like she was blushing near enough to make her cheeks glow. And somehow, without even tasting the emotion in the air around her, I knew it wasn’t embarrassment over me having spooked her.

  “I’m… I’m fine. I just, um. Could… Could you move?”

  Oh. Right.

  I pushed myself away from the wall I’d basically squished her up against.

  “Sorry,” I said again. “Guess that was kinda int—”

  Somethin’ told me at the last second that intimate might not be the wisest choice of words right then. Tsura seemed a lot older in so many ways, I’d forgotten how young she was. I didn’t figure she’d actually bolt like a frightened deer if I said it, but I wasn’t positive.

  “—rusive of me,” I finished.

  She mumbled something even my ears couldn’t catch, and led the rest of the way to the funhouse at a near jog.

  Gettin’ inside the dump wasn’t hard; the padlock was such a cheap piece of crap I coulda damn near picked it with the wand, magic notwithstanding. Gettin’ to the mummy display itself, that was a bit trickier. None of the actual rides were runnin’ this late, so we didn’t have to navigate the bouncing “haunted” floor or slowly tilting rooms, and none of the walls—mirrored or otherwise—moved on us to make the silly little maze harder’n it needed to be. Still hadda navigate that maze, though, and deal with a few “ghosts” and “ghouls” that popped out at us when we stepped on hidden triggers lyin’ along this hallway or across that threshold. Still hadda take a winding slide down to the dark lower floor, beneath the jaws of “the Devourer”—which was basically a wolf and a lion badly taxidermied together—and into a cut-rate Egyptian Underworld where the sandstone and granite were wallpaper, the hieroglyphics were meaningless scribbles, and the only spirits of the dead were rats who’d met their maker after chewin’ on something toxic in the decorations.

  (No, they hadn’t dug a basement into the soil beneath the trailers. The entrance tunnel sloped up, so the “ground floor” was actually raised, leavin’ room for… Y’know what? Skip it.)

  Then, of course, we hadda deal with the light—or lack of it. I could manage well enough, since it wasn’t entirely pitch black; I couldn’t sprint around without tripping on things, but I could pick my way carefully without pickin’ up any bruises. Tsura was another matter, though. Eventually, with a whole lotta fast-talkin’ and cajolin’, she let me into her noggin enough to jazz up her eyesight.

  Honestly, I hadn’t been sure I could do that, but I figured if I can manipulate mortal minds enough to make ’em see something that ain’t there, or temporarily blind ‘’em, it couldn’t be too hard to go the other way with it, right? And hey, whaddaya know? It worked.

  Though she got a tad flustered again with me starin’ into her peepers for a minute and a half while I fiddled with things in her brain. I’m gonna go out on a limb and guess this was a chick who didn’t have a whole lotta recent experience with the hombres, though of course I wasn’t about to ask her.

  It was kind
a cute in an awkward sorta way. Maybe I would ask her, later. Wasn’t a polite topic, or any of my business, but it might be fun to see her face or hear her try to answer.

  Yeah, I’m a bastard sometimes.

  Anyway, that neat trick got us through the intervening halls, full of more “Egyptian” décor so tacky I couldn’t help but joke to Tsura that maybe the mummy just got offended and walked out on its own. Unfortunately, when we actually got to the “central chamber” where the ancient stiff’d actually been displayed, that amount of vision wasn’t gonna cut it. We hadda be able to give the place a solid up’n down, dig for clues, anything the cops mighta missed or not understood.

  So then we hadda stumble around, peering at and under and around the grotesque and/or stupid adornments, hunting for a light switch that we knew was gonna be well hidden from the payin’ customers. We weren’t complete bunnies, me’n Tsura; we’d known we were gonna need real light when we got this far, so I’d thrown the generator switch outside when we got here, makin’ sure we’d have power when we needed it. (Carnival had enough machinery running, even at night, that I had some hope it wouldn’t be noticed.) We just hadn’t wanted to use it until there was no other choice. Even deep in the building as we were, there was always the risk someone might tumble to us once we brightened the place up.

  But as I said, there was no choice anymore. It was Tsura who finally found the dingus, tucked away behind a “canopic jar” that I’m pretty sure was a Thermos with a layer of slapdash papier-mâché. Dull yellow lights sputtered on with an irritating hum, and I was finally able to take the place in.

  I wasn’t impressed.

  At least Rounser’d kept this part of the funhouse closed, even though it hadda be costing him business. Dunno if that’d been his call or if the cops had basically ordered it, but either way it made my job easier.

  Only a little, though. Maybe it’d been the bulls themselves, who hadn’t considered bits of the broken display useful evidence, or maybe it was carnival staff, but a whole mess of ginks had tromped back and forth through the hall, slammin’ their plates down on whatever got in their way. Bits of bandages and other wrappings—whether genuine or decorative I couldn’t immediately say—had been kicked all around the chamber, many of ’em showin’ clear shoe prints in grime and dirt. Some shards of glass from the case around the sarcophagus had been crushed so tiny they were nothin’ but pinprick constellations glittering in the dull glow. The sarcophagus itself—which was wood and plaster—was covered in dust and powders from the investigation. It was intact, though, except for the lid, which had split in half like a stale loaf of bread.

  Basically, now I could see it, I almost wished I couldn’t. Hadn’t the foggiest where to begin, or what I could possibly find in this mess once I did.

  All right. Don’t rush into it, Mick. Just think it through.

  “Good God, where do we even start?”

  Or maybe talk it through, long as Tsura was here anyway.

  “Okay, kid. Who do we guess snatched the stupid thing?”

  “Um… Well, you said it wasn’t Ramona and Baskin, so we can rule them out…”

  “Nope. I said they said it wasn’t them and I believed ’em. But I been wrong before. They ain’t top of the suspect list anymore, by a long shot, but we don’t rule anyone out, savvy?”

  “Oh. All right. Uh.” She started to pace, stopped herself before she could trample anymore of the scene—or before I could tell her she was about to trample more of the scene. I jerked her an approving nod. “So, it could be anyone. No guarantee it’s even somebody you know is involved in all this yet. But I’d think probably, um, Fleischer? That was his name, right? You said his people were casing us—uh, the carnival, I mean. That points to him, doesn’t it?”

  “Yeah. Yeah, it does. It don’t entirely make sense, though.”

  Tsura blinked.

  “There’s a whole heap of occult and mystical traditions,” I explained, “and they don’t all play well together. Lotta occultists these days study more’n one practice, but others focus on just one. Far as I’ve heard, Fleischer’s the latter sort. He’s a strict Kabbalist, doesn’t dabble in much of anything else. And the Book of Exodus notwithstanding, there ain’t much overlap between Kabbalah and Egyptian heka. I don’t see where he’d have too much use for anything he might get from the mummy’s spellwork.

  “Still’n all, though, I agree, he’s the most probable suspect.”

  She smiled at me, clearly proud she’d gotten the right answer.

  “Now forget all that,” I told her.

  “What?”

  “You gotta study the evidence with an open mind. ’Sokay to have theories, but you gotta put ’em aside while you’re hip-deep in investigating. You get too set on a theory, no matter how likely, you start missin’ things that don’t mesh with it.”

  “Like when you got fixated on… on what’s-his-name? The shapeshifter?”

  Yeah, thanks for that embarrassing reminder. Still…

  “Goswythe. And yep, like that. Maybe later, when we know insteada guess, we go back and look for signs that we’re right. But for now, we gotta study the evidence without preconception.”

  She humphed and stuck a fist on her hip.

  “So why did you ask me who I thought was behind it in the first place?”

  “Can’t learn to put aside preconceptions if you don’t have ’em, can you?”

  “Fine, professor. Is there a written report, too?”

  “Check back later in the semester. Now get to looking.”

  She looked. I looked. We found about equal amounts of bupkis.

  “So, professor,” she asked me, stretching her back and wiping a bit of sweat from her forehead with a sleeve, “what’s lesson two?”

  “Cheat.”

  It woulda taken a whole squadroom of cops half a day to reassemble the display case from the bits and pieces and shards scattered throughout the rest of the detritus. (Well, most of the case; some of the pieces, as I’d mentioned, were pretty much powder now. Nobody was reassembling those.) It took me’n Tsura about an hour and a half. ’Course, we only accomplished it that quick because I siphoned several buckets-worth of good luck from the rest of the funhouse around us. Tsura’s coworkers were probably gonna have to fix up some of the machinery and replace some patches of rotted wood in the near future. (I did make sure to avoid too much damage to the slides or anythin’ load-bearing. Wasn’t looking to crush any children today.)

  I also tried to get her to use her own gift, maybe peek into the future and see where some of the pieces were hidden, or how they fit together, but even after we were done, she couldn’t say for sure if she’d managed to make that work or not. I figure it did, if only because she was fittin’ some of those bits together faster’n I was for a little while.

  Either way, though, clearin’ some space on the floor and layin’ the glass out so we could see at least a fair representation of how it’d looked before it got smashed all to hell made things a lot clearer.

  “Mick?”

  “I see it.”

  I didn’t wanna see it, didn’t wanna come to the conclusion it was pointin’ at, but I saw it.

  “What does—?”

  “Hold that thought, sister.” I knelt next to half of the broken sarcophagus lid. “This thing ain’t closed all the time, is it? That’d make it hard for the rubes to actually see the mummy your boss’s been advertising all over the place.”

  “No, it’ll close for a few minutes, then open slowly. Loud creaking and all that. The whole ‘mummy is about to rise from its tomb’ sort of—” she stopped and shivered “—sort of nonsense.”

  “Right. Nonsense.”

  See, there’d be no need for whoever stole the mummy to break the lid. During the day, they coulda waited for it to open by itself. At night? Woulda been a lot quieter to force it open than to crack it in half. I mean, the mechanism’s right there.

  Then there was what Tsura and me’d both noticed with the g
lass. Yeah, it’d been tromped and kicked and shifted around, but puttin’ the whole pane back together’d forced us to really pay attention to where the shards had all ended up. No way they’d all been moved, no matter how careless the bulls or the staff’d been. No way at least some of ’em hadn’t stayed where they fell when the display first shattered.

  And where they’d fallen was in a neat, radiating pattern outward. The glass, same as the lid, was smashed from the inside.

  Goddamn it, I’d been joking when I suggested the friggin’ thing got up and walked out on its own! Yes, I’ve said that the spirits of dead mortals are some of the few “supernatural” beasties out there that ain’t necessarily related to the Fae, but this wasn’t how ghosts or revenants or—or anything was supposed to work!

  I was castin’ about, searchin’ the broken refuse and dusty corners for any other answer, any other possible interpretation, when somethin’ else finally jumped out at me. Somethin’ I’d already looked at a dozen times.

  The tatters of wrapping lyin’ around? The fake stuff they’d used as part of the décor, I mean, not the real stuff the mummy’d been swathed in thousands of years ago. I was starin’ straight at an unwound length of the material, draped over a corner of the sarcophagus—the texture, the fake aging and darkening that probably had more to do with ink and tea than passing years—when I realized I’d seen it before.

  “Fuck!”

  Tsura—who, to be fair, was probably strugglin’ with the whole “millennia-old stiff may actually have gotten up and blown this joint of its own volition” angle more’n I was—just about jumped outta her toenails.

  “What? What?”