Leaning against the SUV, Riga relaxed her gaze. She scanned the front yard's manzanita and pine-needle-covered ground for wards or magical traps. She found none and adjusted her leather satchel over her shoulder.
Releasing a noisy breath, Riga walked up the covered steps to his door and knocked. She'd called ahead, and wondered now if that had been a mistake. But she hadn’t time to waste visiting empty houses.
From behind the door came a shuffling noise, then footsteps.
The sound of running water caught her attention, and she leaned over the porch railing. From her vantage, she could see a shed in the back yard, a creek trickling past. The same creek she'd seen running past the construction site below?
But the creek mattered less than the fact of the shed. She extended her senses toward the small wooden shack, probing for magic.
The cabin’s front door opened. A tall, bearded redhead with his hair pulled into a tail beamed down at her. “Metaphysical detective?” He was a giant, broad shouldered and broad stomached.
“That's me,” she said. Harley Westbrook had been right. Murdoch should have been wearing a kilt. Instead, he wore jeans and a black t-shirt promoting a nineties band.
“Come on in.” He pulled the door wider.
A primitive warning sounded low, in the back of her brain. Welcome to my parlor… She walked inside.
The living area was neat. Tiki mugs as characters from a famous sci-fi film lined the top shelf of a bookcase. The shelves below carried books and DVDs. Movie posters – Keanu Reeves and Carrie-Anne Moss in dark glasses and black leather – glowered from behind a bamboo bar.
Murdoch motioned her toward a beige couch. “I've heard about you,” he said. “Never thought I'd meet you in person.”
Riga stiffened. That damned paranormal reality show. “Thanks for agreeing to see me.” She sat, adjusting her satchel on the uninspiring couch.
“You going to watch the Perseids? It’s supposed to be quite a show this year.” He walked behind her, and she tensed.
“Hopefully,” she said, “I’ll be sleeping.”
“Okay then. Forget the small talk. What can I do for you, metaphysical detective?”
She forced herself not to turn to look at him. It seemed an admission of paranoia. “I understand you were at a recruiting function last month for Acton Industries.”
“Yeah.” He came around the couch and dropped into a lounge chair opposite. “I'm not sure how I got the invite. I was a little out of place among all those chemists.”
“You're a software engineer?”
He nodded.
“Who invited you?”
He rubbed a broad hand over his beard. “Mm. Just a sec.” He stood and went to another room.
Riga centered herself. Expanding her awareness, she pushed the boundaries of her aura out and away. But she sensed no magic.
She jammed back the hair from her face. Was she on the wrong track? Then why was every cell in her body screaming she wasn’t?
If Murdoch was a magician, his workspace could be elsewhere. Perhaps in the shed out back. Or on another property entirely. Or was she trying too hard to make him fit her theory?
When he returned, he was carrying a folded sheet of paper. “Here.”
She took it, read it. A form invitation, signed by someone in Acton Industry's HR department. She noted the name, returned the letter. “Did anything unusual happen at the event?”
“The food was good. That was unusual.”
“I heard you spoke with Mrs. Acton.”
His gaze shifted. “Deepika? She's quite a lady.”
“You two spoke about chaos theory.”
“Wow. You really are well informed. Yeah. She's a mathematician, so she knew something about the subject.”
“Do you deal with chaos theory in your work?”
“Me? I guess I just think it's fascinating. I see chaos as a series of if/thens. But that's the programmer in me. You know, programming is basically if/then. If this happens, then that happens. If it doesn't happen, then something else happens. I mean, for example, what if everyone playing in your husband's casinos, right at this moment, won?”
Her heartbeat thumped in her ears. A threat? She stretched her arms along the back of the lumpy couch and smiled. “Then I think Donovan would be a very unhappy man.”
“Yeah, it would be total chaos, right?” He blinked, smiling benignly. “Subroutines and subprograms, running independently. Of course, we think there's an infinite potential for what-ifs. But like Deepika pointed out, in the real world, that potential is limited. We like to think of ourselves as having free will. It’s a delusion. We're flesh-covered automatons.”
“Deepika said that?”
“Sure, and she's right. We run on programming too. And like good machines, we don't realize it.”
“You mean, our subconscious programming?”
He shrugged. “Mostly. But there are a lot of layers to consciousness, and we're only partially running one of them. Humans aren't very bright.” He grinned. “At least, most of us aren't.”
Layers to consciousness. It was classic mystic and shamanic thought. Or maybe he'd read Jung. Or maybe he was baiting her.
“Others work to decondition ourselves,” he continued. “We shed our old beliefs, fictions, and attitudes about ourselves and the world around us.”
Our? “Is that what you've done?”
His reddish brows sketched higher. “It's what you've done, isn't it? I saw that show of yours on Tahoe Tessie. You questioned everything, especially yourself. Though if you don't mind my saying, you seemed a little out of your... element on that show.” He paused, as if thinking. “But I think you were on a shaky foundation to start.”
She jerked down one cuff of her safari jacket. “Oh?”
His thick, gold ring flashed beneath the pendant light, illuminating Greek letters – ZTΨ. “The whole premise of metaphysics is wrong. A search for a deeper truth, the first cause, the grand theory of everything? There is no truth. It's all belief, and belief can't be trusted.”
Her face tightened. That did it. Murdoch was on her suspect list. “Not even a belief in this programming you described?”
“Hey, question everything.”
Riga cut to the chase, her belly knotting. “And since nothing is true, everything is permitted?” she asked, quoting the chaos magic motto.
He cocked his head. “I guess… if you mean that since we're not reasoning creatures, nothing is true, yeah.”
The living room darkened, a cloud covering the sun and thickening the shadows in the corners. Unconsciously, she touched her satchel with its magical and practical tools.
“Society couldn’t function if everyone took that attitude,” she said.
“Why not? Just because you don't believe in anything, it doesn't mean you can't be an honorable person.”
Right. Sure. “So how did the Acton recruiting event go?”
“Like I said, good food. Interesting people.”
“Did you talk to anyone beside Deepika?”
“I talked to lots of people. She was the only one who stood out. But she was also the only woman in the room, aside from the waitresses.”
“And? Did you get the job?”
He laced his fingers over his round belly. “Hey, they made me sign a confidentiality agreement before I walked in the door.”
“You can't even admit to employment?”
“Like I said, just because I don't believe in anything, doesn't mean I can't behave honorably. And I am loyal to the hand that feeds me, as long as they're loyal to me.”
Her gaze clouded. He'd admitted… something. But what. And why? “What about an objective truth outside our human reasoning?” she asked.
“In this screwed up universe?” He raised his brows. “Come on.”
CHAPTER SIX
Riga sat outside Murdoch's shingled cabin and drummed her fingers on the SUV’s wheel.
<
br /> Above her, the pines bent, wind rippling through their branches. They made a sound like running water, dulling the thud and clang of the construction at the base of the hill.
She realized her jaw was aching, and she relaxed it, massaged one of the joints. All her instincts said Murdoch was practicing magic. None of her senses could confirm that belief. Was it because chaos magic was so different? Or was Murdoch innocent?
That shed behind his cabin might have the answers – it was the right size for ritual work. Or maybe it was only a shed. Maybe Murdoch performed his magic naked on a mountaintop. Or maybe there was no magic at all.
She swore. Grabbing her heavy satchel and notebook from the passenger seat, she reached for the handle.
The scrape of a glass door. Murdoch emerged on his front porch with a book. He waved to Riga. “Don’t forget the meteor shower!” He settled in a deck chair.
She subsided against the SUV's buttery leather seat and tucked the notebook in the pocket of her suede, safari jacket. So much for the shed. For now.
Shaking her head, she started the car. Riga drove down the winding hill, past cabins built on stilts into the steep slope.
She slowed at the construction site. A cement truck sat idling on the narrow bridge over the creek. Riga glided to a stop behind it and waited.
Much of what Murdoch had said could have had double meanings. Chaos magic and metaphysics were antithetical for exactly the reason he'd pointed out. Chaos magicians didn't believe in any truth. Without truth, there could be no first principle, no connecting grand theory of all magic.
But nothing is real was also a common trope of modern thought. This wasn’t the maya, or illusion of Buddhism. That she could respect. This was something else and nihilistic. If nothing was real, then as a consequence, nothing and no one mattered. And that idea irritated her. People mattered. Life and purpose mattered.
The mixer belched exhaust, and she rolled up the windows.
While she waited on the bridge for the truck to move, she watched the construction. A crane sprouted like its namesake bird from the jumble. Its operator maneuvered a steel beam high in the air. Burly men in hardhats, movements smooth and purposeful, strode through a metal skeleton. She suspected few of them lacked purpose. Hard work had a way of focusing the soul.
She sighed and turned toward the cement truck.
Its brake lights flickered, and it lurched forward with a mechanical whine.
Glass smashed. The SUV jerked sideways and back, flinging her against the seatbelt. It snapped free. Riga’s chest hit the wheel, her head snapping forward. She felt something pass behind her, and then there was another shattering of glass.
The SUV was moving in a direction she didn't understand. Sideways. “What the—”
She was flung backward. Her head smashed against something hard. Fright and pain spurted through her veins.
The air shimmered, greenish.
Blinking rapidly, she gripped the wheel. Her breath rasped, and she shook herself. The movement hurt, but it cleared her mind. Riga craned forward, because backward was for some reason impossible.
The crane.
Behind her head, a steel beam had pierced her front driver and passenger-side windows. The SUV hung from it, swaying in the air, swinging sideways.
Black fear swept through her. She grabbed the door handle to escape, realized the futility. The weight of the car, hanging from the beam, pinioned the doors in place.
“Stop!” She screamed – also pointless. No one could hear her over the grinding of metal on metal.
Her car hit something and jolted sideways.
An ear-rending screech. The SUV tilted, the beam sliding out the way it had come in, tearing the soft fabric on the SUV’s roof.
Black spots danced before her eyes. “No, no, no!”
And then she and the SUV were falling.
The drop seemed to take a long time, the earth moving slowly toward her. It gave her time to think. Thank God Donovan didn’t come. He, at least, is safe. But then she remembered that black cord, wrapped around him—
The ground slammed into the SUV, the crash vibrating through her in an agonizing black wave.
Riga split. One Riga lay on her side, something cold and soothing caressing her face. And it was okay. After all, she was alive, and that was what counted. Why panic?
Another Riga shrieked, terrified, and fluttered about the car’s roof, wanting out, out, out.
The third Riga counseled that she get off her ass and assess the situation. The danger might not be over.
The first Riga was in an amenable and suggestible mood, and thought this was decent advice.
She blinked.
Someone was outside the car. He squatted and stared through her front windshield, which had somehow remained intact.
But he was an odd sort of someone, a black silhouette with green numbers running down his (its?) body in an unending stream, like in that movie. What was that movie? There were angry robots - Riga had no doubt someday some idiot scientist would create a robot that turned on humans. Yes, in the movie the machines had turned, and the humans were living in a sort of virtual reality and didn't know it. What was that movie?
Riga number three suggested it wasn't important.
The man-thing nodded and looked toward the sky.
She looked up too, which was sideways for her.
A steel beam plummeted toward her. It slammed through the car and embedded itself, quivering, an inch from her nose.
“God!” she shouted, a prayer, an evocation, rather than a curse. The three Riga's snapped together, and she coughed.
She was in water. The creek.
She'd gone into the damn creek.
The crane had thrown her over the railing and into the creek.
She jerked her head, and pain shrieked through her scalp. Riga sputtered, choking, pulling away. But she couldn't lift her head and couldn’t understand why.
Her hair... Her hair was stuck.
Riga’s breath burst in and out, her heart exploding. She grabbed her hair and pulled, feeling her way to its ends. Her hair was trapped beneath the freaking beam. The water rose, eddying inside the SUV.
She inhaled water and coughed, choking. Riga was drowning. She couldn't move.
Riga gritted her teeth and pulled. She didn't care if she ripped her scalp off, she wasn't going to drown in inches of water. The pain was excruciating, but her head didn't budge.
Think! Her satchel. She kept a knife in her bag.
The water rose higher, covering her nose. She angled her head, eyes under water, so her mouth was clear. For now.
Riga felt blindly in the icy water, her fingers fumbling across broken glass and stone. “Where is it?” she shouted and caught water. She spat it out, but it was no good. The stream surged, covering her chin.
Knife. Give me my knife!
A black wash of fury flooded her, hot and cold and empty.
Something slapped into her hand.
She flicked open the pocketknife. Gripping her hair at her scalp, she sawed low through the strands and jerked free, wheezing.
Men's shouts.
She untangled the seatbelt, loose but looped around one shoulder.
The steel beam blocked the front windshield. She wasn't getting out that way.
Shakily, she squeezed through the seats and into the rear of the SUV. The back windows were intact. She tried to open the door above her, but it wouldn’t move.
More shouting.
She fumbled beneath the front seat, where Donovan's “personal protection” guy, Ash, kept a tire iron. And not for tire-changing purposes.
Gripping it in both hands, she swung awkwardly and smashed the rear passenger window. Glass rained down, and she hunched her shoulders, flinching.
Something thudded onto the car, and the SUV swayed at the impact. A man in a hardhat and safety vest peered inside. “You okay?”
She nodded
and stretched upward.
Wordlessly, he reached inside and hauled her out. They stood in an awkward embrace on the side of the SUV.
He sniffed. “Do you smell gas?”
“You’ve got to be kidding—”
A flare of heat. A burst of flame.
Riga was falling again, this time with a rough hand wrapped around hers. They hit the ground and scrambled up the slope’s loose earth.
More shouts. More hands, and Riga somehow was on the bridge watching the SUV burn.
Someone threw a rough blanket around her shoulders. Bedraggled, she sat and pondered the accident.
She had it on good authority that unlike the movies, cars don't just burst into flames after a crash. But crane operators also didn't usually drive steel beams into passing cars.
It couldn’t have been coincidence that this had happened as she was leaving Murdoch's house.
Her gaze clouded, going distant. But was Murdoch responsible?
He had to be. She'd seen no one outside his house. Who’d known she was there aside from Murdoch himself? And who could have turned the spell on her that quickly but Murdoch?
She'd missed death by a gargoyle’s whisker. Did gargoyles have whiskers? She’d have to ask Brigitte.
Riga had activated her own personal ward that morning, as she did every morning. If she hadn’t, would she have survived?
She should have warded the SUV, but it wasn't her car, and so... Riga hadn't. She wouldn’t make that mistake twice.
“Mrs. Mosse?” a gruff voice asked.
Disoriented, she looked up and into the steel-blue gaze of Sheriff King.
Firemen were training hoses on the car. Emergency lights flashed across the pines. An EMT stuck a bandage on her head and smiled.
She frowned back. How long had she been sitting here? “Oh. Hi, Sheriff.”
“What happened?” he asked.
She motioned toward the car. “It was an accident.” And it had only been a fifteen-foot drop, tops. Why had it seemed higher?
His face reddened. “An accident? A crane driver sends a beam through your car and tosses you off a bridge, and it's an accident?”
“I doubt he meant to. I’m sure he’s sorry.”
The Gargoyle Chronicles: A Riga Hayworth Mystery (Riga Hayworth Paranormal Mystery Book 8) Page 5