Forgery of the Phoenix

by Michael Angel

  “Korr,” I said quickly, “it’s not enough. I have to move you somewhere else before my house gets destroyed. Can you go Inert for a bit?”

  The Seraphine gave me a look. “I can. But how will I know when to become Active again?”

  “Just give us a few minutes to figure out what to do. Can you wake up then?”

  A shake of the head. A stray spark flew from his crest and landed on one of the couch cushions, burning until Shaw smothered it with a smack of his paw.

  “A minute or an eon, all is the same to us when Inert.”

  My mind raced. Now smoke was starting to rise off the walls and the ceiling was rapidly deepening from toast brown to charred-steak black.

  “You can sense a ‘tap’ or something when you go Inert, right?”

  “That is correct. We can sense when our glorious shells are touched by–”

  “Right, right,” I interrupted. A tongue of flame had run from the edge of the burning carpet and had started to work its way up the base of the curtains. The sandy taste of ash started making me cough. “We’ll tap you three times when we’re ready, okay?”

  A pause. The heat surged in the room again, making the interior of my house feel like a dry sauna. I had to gasp for breath as the moisture was sucked out of my lungs.

  “That is acceptable.”

  With an ear-tickling TAH-SCHICK, Korr went Inactive. An ovate, ruby-red gemstone had taken the Seraphine’s place. The worst of the oppressive heat vanished. But not all of it.

  “Dayna,” Galen said urgently. “I believe that your home is still in the process of combusting.”

  The centaur wasn’t kidding. Parts of the ceiling were still smoking, threatening to erupt in flame. And the rug continued to burn, probably fueled by the wood in the floor now. Both Liam and Shaw hopped around on their side of the room, stamping on any spark or ember that came their way.

  “Ten seconds!” I said, and I made a dash for the garage.

  When I’d first bought my place, one of my coworkers had gotten me a fire extinguisher for my kitchen as a housewarming gift. Then again, it might have been a joke about my poor cooking skills. In any case, they’d gotten me the wrong thing.

  The typical kitchen-use extinguisher was supposed to be a little cylinder of carbon dioxide that was about two soda cans in height. Instead, they’d purchased me a heftier version with a cone shaped nozzle and more than twenty-five pounds of compressed potassium bicarbonate. I hefted the thing from its resting place next to the chest freezer and half-stumbled my way back inside.

  “Stand clear!” I called, as I yanked out the pin. I aimed the nozzle with one hand while I squeezed the handle with the other.

  Galen ducked as I let loose on the smoking parts of my ceiling with a WHOOSH. White powder drifted down into our hair as I turned to hit the curtains next. Two more blasts, and both curtain and rug ended up looking less like erupting brush fires, and more like a pair of powdered sugar donuts.

  “Well, that was interesting,” Liam remarked, as he nudged a clump of bicarbonate-soaked ash with a cloven hoof.

  “Interesting?” Shaw growled, with a clack of his beak. “Nay, ‘twas awesome! Never have I seen someone combat flames like that!”

  “In any case,” Galen asked, “might you have some human clothes for me to change into?”

  “In the hall closet around the corner from you,” I said, as I put the extinguisher’s pin back in place.

  Galen trotted over to the front hall, ducking under a support beam that jutted from the ceiling on the way. Liam went over to peek out the front window, while Shaw climbed onto the couch like a cat returning to his favorite napping spot. A chorus of abused springs sang out in protest as he settled in. I heard a champagne cork pop, and in a minute the wizard walked back out, this time in human form.

  I’d prepared for each of my friends’ arrival, and Galen had already pulled on his brand new pair of dark brown slacks. He’d also swapped out his Andeluvian-style burgundy jacket for the short-sleeved golf shirt I’d set out for him. He sat on the edge of my lounge chair and pulled on a pair of plain white socks and Moc-Toe loafers. The new clothes made him look like a hunky doctor heading out for a few rounds of golf, but that wasn’t a bad thing.

  “These are much more comfortable than what I have worn in past visits,” the wizard remarked. “You have my gratitude, Dayna.”

  Galen wasn’t kidding about that. On his first visit to Los Angeles, he’d had to make do with clothes left by an ex-boyfriend of mine, one whose arms and legs were at least an inch shorter all around. The next time had been even worse, as he’d been reduced to wearing a pair of surgical scrubs and shoe covers over his bare feet.

  “It’s the least I could do,” I said. “Do you think you’re up to carrying our Seraphine friend? I don’t think he’ll roll all that easily.”

  Galen squatted by the egg-like structure, wrapped his massive arms around it, and hefted it with a grunt. “If it is not too far, I can transport this for you.”

  I guided him through my kitchen, setting the extinguisher down outside so it would keep the back door propped open. Liam and Shaw watched curiously for a moment before following us out into the yard. I had Galen place Korr’s Inert form in the middle of the stone fire pit that sat, sadly underused, in a corner of the backyard.

  I craned my neck and looked around. The purple of evening was rapidly shading into night around us. Pinpricks of light began to wink on along the dark mass of the hill behind my house. Griffith Park Observatory hadn’t yet turned on its neon-like glow, and neither of my neighbors appeared to be home yet.

  I’d taken the precaution of upgrading the fencing all around my house in case of otherworldly visitors, but the city of Los Angeles forbade installing fences more than six feet high. I consoled myself with the idea that, even when the phoenix went Active, everyone would think I was barbequing, or having a get together around my fire pit.

  Said pit was round, and resembled an old well in shape and height. Surrounding the pit were six-foot wide slabs of rock, and a smattering of flame-retardant lawn furniture. Given how well the flame-retardant rug had worked out, I had both Shaw and Liam drag the furniture back to a safe distance.

  Now I had something else to figure out.

  “How am I going to tap on Korr’s ‘shell’ without getting crisped?” I asked aloud. “None of the trees in my back yard have branches I can break off without hurting them.”

  “Allow me,” Galen said smoothly. “Since our visit to the Vale of the Seraphine, I’ve been working on a spell to create a Fire Shield. It works quite well, despite its limitations.”

  I raised an eyebrow. “Oh? What limitations? That would be good information to know.”

  “First, I can only cover one person at a time. Two at most, if they are in close proximity. Second, it is not a ‘cast and forget’ spell. I must be present and concentrating on it for the spell to be active. In time I’m sure that I could remedy these flaws–”

  “I think we can work with it,” I said. “Can you cast it on me now?”

  Galen held out a hand, making a half-twist with his wrist as he shouted an incantation. I felt more than saw a faint blurring around me. “It is done.”

  I took a deep breath and rapped firmly on the Inert egg, three times.

  The Seraphine blazed to life. Korr became aware of me, and spread his wings in surprise. For just a moment, I was able to look into this being’s eyes. They were orange and umber, and danced like a candle flame in high wind.

  There was no sensation of heat, as if my senses had been muffled. Entranced, I stretched my hand out to rest it on the Seraphine’s forehead. A curious roiling sensation bubbled under my fingers. Underneath that, a smooth hardness, like a warm bar of rolled steel.

  “Where are we?” Korr asked.

  I stepped back out of range, and Galen allowed his spell to expire. Abruptly, the feeling of intense heat returned. “We’re in my back yard now. You’ll be staying here until we figure out a
way to trace your Quondam’s path in my world. We’ll wake you up the same way.”

  “That is fine,” he replied sonorously, and he began to furl his wings back in again.

  Suddenly, the urge to ask something that had been kicking around in the back of my mind came to the fore. “Wait a moment. I have a question.”

  “Ask it.”

  “Do you know where Pirr got the sartuul from?”

  A shake of the head. “We Seraphine do not keep large quantities of any material near us, save for sources of combustion. Why do you ask?”

  “That sartuul...it was from the war that took place three thousand years ago. Pirr may have even made reference to it in the message she left on the cavern wall. You said yourself that the Seraphine have lived so very long. Do you know anything about that time?”

  Korr glanced at me as if he were sizing me up anew. “I was Active for part of that time. Yet, I cannot tell you much. My kind do not keep books or records like other, lesser peoples. I have been Active for too many times since then.”

  I frowned. “I don’t understand. You mean that you have gone Inert, then Active again, multiple times...why would that change anything?”

  “Each time a Seraphine goes Inert for a long period, we lose parts of ourselves,” he explained slowly, as if to a small child. “For every time we return to life, we lose up to a quarter of our memories. It is a small price to pay for our longevity, but over time...”

  “Yes, I understand.”

  I thought about that for a moment in a human context. Say that I got to cryogenically freeze myself, to be woken up a hundred years from now. Seeing the future might be worth sacrificing one out of four of my memories. But if done repeatedly, say eight or nine times...I shuddered. The odds of having many intact memories of the past started shrinking dramatically.

  If memory was key in shaping who and what we were, at what point did ‘you’ stop being ‘you’? Maybe that distinction was irrelevant to a Seraphine. But I was a woman, not a phoenix, and it seemed a pretty steep price to pay for immortality.

  No matter, I still wanted to find out what Korr knew.

  “Okay, so you might not remember much,” I acknowledged. “Do you recall anything that you want to share? Because that old conflict is probably more relevant than you think.”

  Korr pondered that. After a couple seconds, he spoke.

  “The memories I have of that time are shattered into fragments, like so many shards of crystal.” He flexed a talon, making a chilling scrape over the stone floor of the fire pit. “I remember dragons taking to the air in great numbers, like a flock of scaly birds. I remember great forests taken apart in giant strips and consumed. I remember seeing an old griffin from afar as he battled with a creature whose body was smoke, bound together by sunbeams. And I remember...a shining city with towers shaped like mushrooms. High walls, guarded by lizards garbed in green and black.”

  That was pretty wild. If I hadn’t gotten at least somewhat used to dealing with mythical creatures, I’d have chalked this up to a drug-induced vision. And yet...some of it rang true to me, for reasons I couldn’t yet explain.

  “I appreciate what you were willing to share,” I said honestly. “We’ll wake you with three taps when the time comes.”

  Korr nodded. With a now-familiar TAH-SCHICK, the Seraphine’s avian body vanished and was replaced by the egg-shaped gemstone.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Thanks to the decision to remove the triple layer of security around the OME building, I was able to get to work more easily. It still took over an hour to get to my office in the van. And it would take another half-hour to drive from there in a big, round-the-block circle to arrive back at the LAPD parking garage.

  Of course, it took me less than ten minutes to actually compile the few scraps of new data I had into my morning report.

  This time, I decided to park on the main level and in front of an entire bank of brand-new security cameras. Then I steeled my spine, shrugged my way into my spare jacket, and took the elevator up to the Police Chief’s office. As soon as I was buzzed in, my eyes automatically flicked to the right, over towards the conference area. It was empty. I thanked the heavens for that little blessing. I didn’t think I was up to facing down both Robert McClatchy and Damon Harrison at the same time right now.

  Speaking of Bob, he sat at his desk, poring over piles of paperwork as high as any on my desk. I walked up to him, folder in hand, waiting for him to finish his current task. Though he noticed my approach, he didn’t offer me a seat, and I didn’t take one.

  Finally, McClatchy put his pen down and sat back to look at me. The morning light glancing through the window made his slicked-back hair shine. Bob’s lips curled as if trying to ward off a triumphant smile. His eyes still radiated something that only tap-danced on the edge of sanity for now.

  “So,” he said. “Do you have anything new to tell me about, Chrissie?”

  I briefly went over the DNA match on all but two of the hairs, the likelihood that Cielo had been using that apartment for a while, the possibility of a second person killing him, and the shard’s puzzling chemical makeup. I began to reassure Bob that I’d get the labs to look more closely at the case. I told him that we’d scour the apartment a second time, looking for any small detail...and then my voice trailed off.

  Any small detail in that apartment.

  Something went click in my head. Hard enough to make me clench my jaw for a moment.

  I stared down at McClatchy. For the first time, I wondered: How much did he really know about what was going on behind the scenes?

  I knew that Bob had nothing to do with Lucas Sims’ death, or the wounding of two other police officers. It wasn’t loyalty to the force or anything of that nature. I just didn’t see Bob as the type of person who was willing to put his butt in the middle of machine gun fire for any reason.

  But I knew someone who might just do that. Someone who had even more information about that fifth-floor apartment than I did. That person had to have been the one who pulled the trigger. The evidence had been given directly to me, and I’d missed it.

  McClatchy looked up at me, that same, strange grin still twitching at the edge of his lips. “What’s the matter, Chrissie?” he asked. “Did you run out of steam? Or did someone forget to wind your springs this morning?”

  I tossed my report away and leaned forward on the Police Chief’s desk. That probably violated a dozen cop traditions right there, but I hardly cared. I wasn’t one of them, and I never would be.

  “Let’s drop the pretense for a moment,” I finally said. “You don’t care if I ever solve this. No one who’s really concerned about getting a bullet in the back of the head is going to give a case like this to someone who’s only on one-third time. You handed it to me for the same reason you gave me the case from the Natural History Museum. Because it’s unsolvable.”

  McClatchy leaned in as well, his mouth now set in a flat, aggressive line. “Maybe I just want to give you a challenge. Maybe I just want to see you squirm like a juicy worm on a hook.”

  “Then let’s cut to the chase, Bob. I know about the forms you signed. The ones you’ve used to keep Shelly Richardson imprisoned in the mental ward. What do you want from me to get her out of there?”

  McClatchy pushed back from his desk, rested his elbows on the arms of his chair, and steepled his fingers together. He appeared to be considering something, so I pressed on.

  “What do you want?” I repeated. “If you want me to beg, I’ll do it. If you want me to dance and sing for you, I’ll do it. If you want me to admit you were right and I was wrong, I’ll do it.”

  McClatchy arched an eyebrow. His voice sounded off-key, teetering on the razor’s edge of out of control. “Why would I want you to admit something that we both already know?”

  “Bob, listen to me–”

  “I’ve always been right. You’ve always been wrong. You think you’re being so generous by telling me what I want to hear...when y
ou and I both know that they’re all just words. Just so much air.” He made a fluttery gesture with one hand to emphasize his point. “We’re not finished, Chrissie. And don’t think you’re anyone special. You’re just one of many irons I have in the fire. And when I’m done, you’ll have felt how it burns.”

  I stared at him, my fears deepening as he continued.

  “I actually had a lot more planned,” he said, as he gave a theatrical sigh. “But yesterday afternoon, everything changed. I received an interesting proposal that involves your friend.”

  “She used to be your friend, too,” I gritted, but he ignored me.

  “To be honest, I don’t understand why he’s even interested in your friend,” he added, with a shrug. “But I don’t really care. I’m told that it will bring the case you’re handling to a close. That it will solve our mutual problems involving Shelly Richardson. But only if you’re willing to pay the price.”

  My mouth had gone bone dry. The sour taste of dust tickled my tongue as I waited for the final blow to fall.

  “You’ve got thirty minutes to get back to the Mental Health Services wing down at First Samaritan,” he said. “Tell the desk clerk you need to see someone in the third floor observation room.”

  I straightened back up. My eyes burned, and I fought to hold back tears.

  My voice was a wreck. “I swear to God, Bob...if you’ve hurt her…”

  “Oh, heaven forbid. No, I’ve got other people handling things like that for me now. And if I were you, I’d spend less time with idle threats and more time behind the steering wheel.” He tapped his watch meaningfully. “Tick-tock. Twenty-nine minutes left.”

  I turned and ran from his office.

  * * *

  The OME van’s transmission and brakes protested as I manhandled the vehicle out of the LAPD’s parking garage and over to the hospital. I screeched to a halt diagonally parked across three open spaces and ran through the front doors.

  The eternally sour-faced ‘Joy’ didn’t look surprised to see me as I arrived, out-of-breath, at her desk. In fact, she didn’t do so much as raise an eyebrow as she handed me a badge to clip to my blouse. She buzzed me in as I fastened it on.