Smoke & Mirrors

by C. L. Schneider

  Still, cuteness didn’t make up for his lapse in judgement.

  He smiled as I stopped in front of him, but my greeting was harsh. “You better have a damn good reason for this.”

  “I do,” he replied, not at all taken aback by my tone. “The king must speak with you. He requires you for a mission.”

  “A mission?” I chuckled. “I’m not one of Aidric’s operatives. And you can’t throw a word like king around in public here.”

  “My apologies. But we must go now.”

  “Hold up,” I said, slowing him down. “I admire your pragmatism. But it’s not that simple. I don’t have a duty to Aidric. And I’m busy.”

  “Regardless, he has chosen you.”

  “My case takes priority over whatever errand he’s got in mind. But when I have time,” I relented, hoping I wasn’t making a mistake, “I’ll hear what he has to say.”

  The illusionist glanced back at the sedan. Now I’d ruffled him.

  “Look, Coen, I don’t want to get you in trouble, but—”

  “Erich.” His gray stare returned to mine. “With an ‘h’. That’s my name.”

  “You chose a separate name for your human form?”

  “It’s a worthy designation,” he said, with a proud nod. “The true name of the master illusionist, Harry Houdini. His magic tricks were considered sensational for the late 1800s.” He eyed me with a hesitant grin. “Surely, you’ve heard of him?”

  A similar, masculine voice chimed in. “Sure, she has. She heard, he was a sham incapable of real illusions, whose greatest achievement was handcuffing himself in a box of water.” Pushing through the crowd, the man shoved back the hood of his sweatshirt. “Now, Finn; that’s a name,” he said, with a playful wink of one teal eye. “Like the brave warrior of Irish legend. It’s a far more fitting descriptor, conjuring images of strength and daring exploits.”

  The illusionist grunted. “Erich Weiss was an intelligent man who made a mark on history, not some mythical brute with a sword.” He fixed his gray stare on me. “What do you think, Dahlia? Which of us made the better choice?”

  Teal-Eyes smile was bold. “We both know who she prefers.”

  “Erich” threw him a glare. “Yes… And he’s not here.”

  Staring at them, mouth agape, I tried to grasp what the hell they were thinking. One of them approaching me here was bad enough. But two—with their identical features out in the open for everyone to see…?

  They went on, bickering over whose name was most suitable, as if it were a typical conversation to be had at the tail end of a small riot. My exasperation growing, I tucked my twitching hands behind my back before I hit them both, and ended their ridiculous dispute with a sharp, whispered, “What the fuck? Why didn’t you just call? And what’s with the names? A six-year old could have invented better covers.”

  “They’re not covers,” the illusionist replied in offense. “As you know, being in this world forces us to spend more time apart. All these individual experiences have made the variations between us more numerous and pronounced. Designating ourselves separately, as brothers, allows us to move at will and blend with the population. In human form, I am Erich.”

  Teal-eyes shrugged and translated. “We needed our own names.”

  “And you chose a badass legendary hero?” I said to him.

  He turned, offering his profile. “Do you see the resemblance?”

  “All you resemble, Finn, is a pain in my ass.” My narrowed gaze bounced between them. “I can’t believe Aidric brought both of you here. If anyone sees me talking to you, I’ll be playing twenty questions for the rest of the night.”

  “Can I play?” Finn asked. “I love gameshows.”

  I couldn’t even answer that. “The only thing stopping me from decking you both for this stunt, is all the damn reports I’d have to fill out for attacking a civilian.” But it was more than that. The matching, innocent confusion in their eyes had suddenly made kissing them more appealing than punching them. I shoved both impulses aside and took advantage of the situation. “Before I go, do you guys know what happened to the ulfar home world? Any chance it was destroyed by the blight, say over fifty years ago?”

  Erich’s stare widened in confirmation. “Why do you ask?”

  “I have a theory. I think the blight is using the exits to get around. It grows over the ground at a breach site, infiltrates the exit, destroys it piece by piece, then spreads into the next world.” I waited, but there was no reply, no change in their expressions. “You don’t want to weigh in on that? No problem. I’m more interested in how long it takes to poison a world once an exit is infected.”

  “If you’re worried about here,” Erich said, “don’t be. The first instance of what you call ‘blight’ is not estimated to reach this world for many months.”

  I thought of the dark shards of the exit now buried under the rubble of the steel factory. “Are you sure about that? How many months?”

  “According to Aidric, approximately twenty-six.”

  “That’s an awfully specific approximation.”

  “You are not the first to study its effects.”

  “Then why does it feel like I’m the first to give a shit?” They looked at each other, and I struggled not to yell. “What if his estimation is off? Dragon’s aren’t the best at telling time.”

  “They have no use for it,” Finn offered. “Why else have so many sat on their haunches for so long, watching it tick by?”

  “True.” Hearing Creed’s voice in the distance, I said, “Shit. I have to go. Tell Aidric I’ll be in touch once this case is closed. If he has a plan for stopping the blight before it gets here, I want to know.” Turning away, curiosity got the best of me, and I paused. “What name did—”

  “Coen,” Erich said, as if he’d anticipated my question. “He felt no need to alter his identity.”

  I nodded. “Good.” At least not everything was upside down.

  Sixteen

  I managed to escape Creed’s company sooner than expected. Ninety minutes of dissecting our flimsy case proved more than enough to frustrate us both. His preoccupation was reasonable. The city had turned on us. We couldn’t identify our victims or find our killers. We had few clues but what we suspected had been fed to us by some unknown member of a criminal organization.

  I was equally concerned over our lack of progress. But it was how our case was linked to Drimera that disturbed me most. The queen’s new stance was sending a message I couldn’t abide: obey her latest whim or end up in pieces—which might be swallowed or sewn into the body of some rich prick who wanted to live forever.

  According to Nyakree, my intervention was expected by the city’s supernatural inhabitants, who’d come to see me as their advocate. The role was one I’d never intended and wasn’t entirely comfortable with. But I knew what it was like to be alone and afraid. Abandoned. Hunted. Unwelcome and uninvited. I was the only one even remotely on their side.

  There was nothing to be done about Naalish. I had no power to sway a queen’s mind and no way to lift her restrictions on the exits. There were too many worlds with too many ways off, and far too many Guild operatives guarding them. My only influence was over what happened in this world. My “power” rested in our ability to solve this case and prevent anyone (human or otherwise) from being hunted by Gant’s pack of wolves ever again. To do that, I had to close the Market, or at least push it back into the shadows.

  It was a straightforward goal. Unfortunately, there was no direct route.

  Locating the head of the Market couldn’t be as impossible as the stories claimed. No one found him simply because no one dared to try. But, from what I’d seen so far, Arno Gant was human. He had clients and employees, and a business to run. Someone knew where to find him.

  The way our snitch was going, he or she might, eventually get around to pointing us in the direction of Arno Gant. And they might not. Once the Guild learned there was a leak, they’d send an operative to root out (and e
xecute) the culprit. It would be back to business as usual in no time. But hiding the Market’s crimes wasn’t good enough. They needed to be stopped.

  I had a few ideas where to start. Unfortunately, few of them were good.

  Oren was an unlikely prospect. He’d made his position clear. Aidric was little better. He enjoyed pissing off the queen. But if the Market was a primary source of imports, an interruption of the supply line inconvenienced everyone, not just her. It was a line Aidric might not cross.

  Jace was a definite dead end.

  Oliver Gant’s corpse was a stronger contender. The real problem was the age of any intel I might gain. Even if my retro-cognition cooperated, and if the vision featured Arno, and if I determined a location, it would be out of date. Our hit-and-run investment banker would provide a more recent vision, but Gant wasn’t there when he died.

  I needed someone alive, capable of getting me in the door.

  Creed’s plan to locate and surveille a potential target, then wait to capture one of Gant’s goons when they moved in, could take days or weeks we didn’t have. Gathering information from someone with intimate knowledge of the supernatural community was faster. Someone who’d lived in the city since the Market’s fruition. Nadine.

  She’d been my first instinct when I called her from the bridge. It was time to try her again. She had to know something.

  I dialed the call and put it on speaker. But as it rang and rang, my expectations took a nosedive. Last month, I convinced Nadine to finally purchase a cell phone. Convincing her to use it was the next step. I hung up and tried the club. One of her waitstaff answered. When she said Nadine took the night off, I nearly drifted into traffic. The club was her life. I’d never known her to be away for more than a few hours.

  Is it me? I wondered. Did I spook her when I mentioned Gant on the phone yesterday? If she knew the name, and it scared her, then she knew the Market’s reputation—and the risk of crossing them. It also meant, there was a good chance Nadine had the information I needed.

  I glanced at the clock. It was almost eight. My next destination would have been Nadine’s apartment, if I had the address. Since I didn’t, this was my chance to hit the morgue. Chen would be gone. I could spend some quality time with Oliver Gant’s corpse in private.

  There was just one place I had to stop first.

  Conversation was my forte as much as it wasn’t. I could manipulate with the best of them. Banter and sarcasm: straight A’s. But outside the parameters of my job, and when all jokes were put aside, it got a little tricky. Delicate matters needing a softer touch required me to dive into waters I preferred not to swim. Delivering an ultimatum that would hurt the man who’d become my best friend took me even deeper.

  Evans had seemed off since before I caught him sneaking into Drimera. I’d chalked it up to the whole “my sister was kidnapped by an evil drug-selling dragon” thing. That would throw anyone off their game. My intermittent siphoning of his grief was also a possibility. It had consequences I hadn’t anticipated. Whatever the cause, Evans was one reckless move away from getting himself killed. He either pulled his shit together, or our search for Marnie was going to become my search for Marnie.

  My first knock on Evans’s door went unanswered.

  I checked the time on my phone: 9:25 PM. I tried again.

  His car was in the lot. He can’t be asleep yet.

  I gave it another louder bang, and a muffled shout, of “Coming!” drifted through the wood. As I waited, I replayed the words in my head for a third time. I was only concerned for his safety. He had to understand that.

  The door opened. “Dahlia?” Startled and out of breath, Evans was wearing nothing but the towel around his waist. His hair was dripping. Moisture dotted his skin. “I didn’t hear the door. I was…” he gestured at himself.

  “In the shower,” I nodded, eyeing his bare chest and arms. I didn’t mean to stare. He glanced away, and I knew I was making him uncomfortable. But there was faint bruising on his body in multiple places, and I was trying to remember what it might be from. “Sorry,” I said, raising my eyes. “I should have called.”

  “It’s all right.” Tucking his towel in tighter, Evans scooted out into the hall and closed the door behind him. “Are you okay? What’s going on?”

  “Do you have a few minutes?” I presented the six-pack in my hand. “I was hoping we could talk.”

  His amusement morphed into a grimace. “Can it wait? I’m exhausted.” Evans stretched, yawning. “And I have to deal with Harper’s bright smile at 5:30—A.M.,” he groaned.

  “Better bring sunglasses,” I said, making him smile.

  He still didn’t invite me in.

  Refusing to be deterred, I said, “No, it can’t wait.” I handed him a bottle, took one for myself, and set the rest on the floor beside his doormat. “I need to know now. How many times did you break into my office? How many times did you search for Marnie without me?”

  “We talked about this earlier. I thought we were good now.”

  I twisted off the cap. “We won’t be good until you answer my questions.”

  His expression hardening, Evans eyed the label on the bottle in his hand. “Sounds like you want to put me in an interrogation room.”

  “I might.” I tipped my beer at him. “But then you’d have to get dressed.”

  “Don’t do that,” he said, “—that thing you do to Creed. Acting like you feel one way when I know you’re feeling another. I’m not him.”

  Lowering the bottle, I swallowed. He’d never talked to me like that before.

  “I know you’re mad,” he said.

  “Yes, I am.”

  “Are you mad because I lied, or because you didn’t know I was lying?”

  “I’m mad, Casey, because I trusted you not to lie. And you didn’t trust me enough to do this my way. I told you I’d get Marnie back.”

  “And what if you can’t? What if you never do? What if, you scour Drimera for months—for years—and never find her? What then?”

  It was a question I’d asked myself dozens of times. I still didn’t have an answer.

  “Maybe the next lead will be the one,” he said. “Maybe Marnie will be home by Christmas. But if she’s not, if she never comes home, I need to know I did everything I could. Not you. Me. I owe her that. I owe it to our parents. So, I get it if you’re pissed. If you need to bench me, go ahead. But don’t ask me to stop looking for my sister. I can’t. I won’t.”

  A quick swig of beer hid my emotions. Evans was right. I was angry—at both of us. I was proud of him, too, and envious of Marnie. His devotion to her was absolute, and so foreign to the world I grew up in. It was different, even, than how Creed spoke of his missing brother. That was obsession. I could relate. This was unconditional love, and I couldn’t fathom being on the receiving end of such selfless commitment and affection. But I fathomed the cost. “What if I’m not there to protect you? What if you die trying to save her? What do I tell Marnie then?”

  His stare was unwavering. “Tell her I love her.”

  I took another, longer drink.

  This wasn’t going at all how I planned.

  A soft echo of sound drifted through the hall. A woman was humming.

  Hearing it, too, Evans looked at me. An involuntary blush crept over his cheeks, and I realized the sound was seeping out of his apartment.

  I took a step back. “You have company? I’m sorry. I’ll go.”

  The woman’s song cut off to a muffled question of, “Where do you keep your towels? You, naughty boy, are you hiding them on purpose?”

  That voice...

  My stare shot to his. I didn’t wait for confirmation to creep into his gaze. I pushed Evans out of the way and opened the door. Vaguely, I heard the hiss behind me of the cap popping off his beer. His frantic swallowing became the only sound, as I stared, processing the identity of the woman standing, naked and wet, in his living room.

  At least now I knew why she took the night o
ff.

  “Nadine?”

  She spun around with a twirl of damp, tousled waves. The large blonde curls, mixed with vibrant purple, had barely settled over her curves before Nadine dashed over, threw her arms around me, and squealed, “Dahl!”

  Her wet body slid away as I pulled back. I was surprised far less by her nakedness than I was the lack of jewelry or makeup on her angular face. The absence of Nadine’s usual layers of paint tempered the siren’s features greatly, lessening her bold, brassy air and revealing a woman who was plainer, softer, prettier—and younger-looking. This woman had a mesmerizing, vulnerable stare, making it far too easy to imagine her leading men to their deaths.

  Moving in behind me, Evans grabbed his uniform shirt off the back of the couch. As he tossed her the garment, my empathy latched onto his anxiety. I tried not to be angry. He was a grown man. Nadine was a… Centuries old siren who shouldn’t be taking advantage of my friend when he’s down.

  Nadine glanced at the shirt in her hand before slipping it on. She was humoring him. But not enough that she bothered doing up the buttons. Reaching out, she plucked at my disheveled curls. “By this rat’s nest, I’d say you’re having quite a night.”

  “By your lack of pants, I’d say the same.” It was snide, but her laugh reflected otherwise. Because she doesn’t get it. Nadine couldn’t grasp why her sleeping with Evans might bother me. “I didn’t know you two were…” Be nice. Be nice, I thought, as Nadine stared at me, expectantly. I couldn’t. “What the fuck are you doing? How can you possibly think this is a good idea?”