“Last week you said that about puns.”
Head throbbing, Riga stalked to the SUV. She'd handled this badly.
A pine tree rocked beside the car. Brigitte laughed softly, hidden in its branches. “She is calling your husband. Perhaps Monsieur Mosse will put you—how do you say? In a line?”
“That’s not funny.” And then Donovan would call her, and Riga wouldn’t be able to answer because her phone was at the bottom of a creek.
“What now?” Brigitte asked from above her.
The shadows of the trees lengthened, the spaces between them growing gray.
Riga leaned against the car, and her shoulders hunched. It would be unethical for her to set magical wards around Deepika and her home. Deepika had forbade it. But leaving her in danger wasn't right either.
She straightened off the car. “Temporary wards until I can get my supplies.”
“And if she was the one who hired the magician? You will be protecting a murderess.”
“Doesn't matter.” Even if she had hired the magician, Deepika didn't deserve to die. Well, maybe she did, but that wasn’t up to Riga, and it wouldn’t happen on her watch.
Riga closed her eyes and breathed deeply, centering herself. Her personal ward had fended off the chaos magic today. She hadn't used crystals or incense, just old-fashioned will and imagination. This would have to be good enough, for now.
She touched the cool nothing of the in-between, and smiled. The power was there. It was always there, when she bothered to seek.
Riga opened her eyes and raised her hands.
Dark cords flew past her. Riga jumped, hissing an indrawn breath. “No!”
They wrapped around the log house like a tentacled monster. Lovecraftian cables snaked through the windows. A green waterfall of light flowed over the house.
Heart hammering erratically, Riga reached for her bag and swore when it wasn’t there. She charged toward the house. “Brigitte! Door!”
The gargoyle bulleted past her, crashed through the door. Splinters flew. Brigitte skidded atop the door, surfing across the foyer's parquet floor.
The dog barked hysterically.
Riga breathed in shallow, quick gasps. “Deepika!” She wasn’t too late. She could stop this.
No answer.
“Brigitte, check upstairs.”
The gargoyle leapt into the air and soared over a balcony.
Riga followed the sound of barking. “Deepika!” She rounded a corner into an open kitchen.
Beside a work island, the pug turned in hysterical, yapping circles. Its paws left watery prints on the brown-tile floor.
“Deepika!” Riga strode to the animal.
Deepika lay prone, face down in the dog bowl.
Riga choked back a cry and rolled her over.
Deepika stared blankly at the ceiling.
“No.” Let me be in time. Riga began CPR, alternating chest compressions with mouth-to-mouth. Her movements were herky-jerky, her chest tight.
Brigitte landed on the island, sending a saucepan crashing to the floor and the pug into more hysterics. “She is gone.”
“Maybe not.”
“Riga–”
“She couldn't have been in the water long!”
After ten minutes, Riga backed away, cursing.
A dog bowl. Deepika had drowned in centimeters of water. Fury raged up Riga's spine and into her skull, setting off another flare of agony.
Deepika was gone.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Riga woke in a hospital bed. One of the EMTs who'd arrived at Deepika's house had insisted she get in the ambulance. And then Donovan had appeared, and he'd insisted. Riga had been too heartsick to argue.
Donovan smiled from a nearby chair. “Good morning.” His jacket was draped neatly over the chair’s back. Deep lines etched the corners of his emerald eyes.
“If you say so.” Anguished, she rubbed her arms. Gabe. Deepika. She could have prevented their deaths.
“You’re alive, so I do say so.” He massaged the back of his neck and yawned.
She gazed out the window. The yellow curtains had been pulled back, exposing a dark wall of pines.
“I’m not staying here,” she said. She’d gotten little sleep. The hospital had been a constant whir and jangle and beep of machines. To complete the torture, the nurses waked her every hour to check on whatever it was they were checking on.
Riga’s expression hardened. And she had things to do, revenge to take. And it would be revenge. She had no illusions about her motive. Riga wanted payback.
“Good thing I brought your clothes.” He nodded toward a small leather suitcase and a satchel, leaning against a wall. Riga's satchel.
She sucked in her cheeks. “That couldn't have survived the car fire.”
“Yours didn't. This one’s new. Thanks to Ellen, there's a temporary driver's license inside, and a wallet with your credit cards. She also got that suede jacket you were wearing yesterday cleaned.”
“Wow.” No wonder Ellen, Donovan's executive assistant, got paid the big bucks.
Riga pushed back the sheets, swung her feet out of bed, and stood. No dizziness. No wobbling. Good. She grabbed the bag.
“What are you doing?” Donovan asked casually.
“I told you, leaving.”
“The doctor will want to check you out first.”
“The doctor will come in his own sweet time. The Perseid meteor shower starts tonight, and I've got things to do.” The Perseids had nothing to do with anything, but the fact had stuck in her mind. She hadn’t been able to dislodge it all night.
“What happened to Deepika wasn't your fault,” he said in a low voice.
Riga’s gaze slipped from his, and her hands went lax. “She was alive before I got there,” she rapped out.
“Even if there was some sort of cause and effect, you weren't yourself.”
But she should have been.
“Why did you go to her house?” he asked. Unspoken was the real ending to that question – Why did you go without me? And why hadn’t she called him?
They were married. Calling your husband after wrecking his car was only polite. But she’d been running on old habits, thinking like she was still single.
She stepped into a pair of wide-legged slacks in a soft, knit material, pulled out the matching shirt. These were lounge clothes. Stay-at-home clothes. She shot Donovan a look, and he shrugged.
“I can try,” he said.
Riga turned to the mirror over the bureau and grimaced at her reflection. Donovan was doing a good job of not staring at the mess she’d made of her hair. But hair grew back. “I went to Deepika's house because I had this idea she was behind it all. I thought the only way to stop the magician was to get her to call it off.”
She shucked off the hospital gown and tugged the shirt over her head. “I was certain she was afraid to fire him, that she believed she was in danger if she did, and I offered to protect her. It didn't go well.”
“What made you think all that?”
“A head wound, I hope.” It was the only acceptable excuse for her stupidity.
She found her clothing, hanging in a wardrobe, and stuffed them into the suitcase. “Sure, she had means, motive and opportunity, but so did Tod and Harley. But Deepika… I just... I knew.” She plucked at the bandage on her temple. “I was so sure I had to get to Deepika.”
“The sheriff said she had a stroke, tripped and hit her head, knocking herself out. The stroke killed her.”
“A stroke.” Her nostrils flared. The dog bowl had been overkill, an insult.
“What if you were right about Deepika? What if she did hire the person responsible for Gabe’s death and the accidents?”
She shook her head, and it did not hurt. “Then the attacks on Acton Industries will stop. But I don't think they will. Deepika told me I was delusional, that magic wasn't real. She was... disgusted by what I did. Do.”
<
br /> “Alternate theory: your subconscious knew she was in danger. So, your conscious mind invented a reason for you to go to Deepika.”
“Maybe. But it doesn't matter.” Riga zipped the suitcase, her throat squeezing. “She's dead.”
They drove home. Upstairs, in their bedroom, the pug didn't lift his head from the dog bed by the stone fireplace.
“What's he doing here?” Riga pointed.
“Are you kidding?” One of Donovan's eyebrows sketched upward. “At the Actons’ you insisted I take him. You said the dog was the key to the entire case.”
Riga rubbed her forehead. “I don't remember any of that.” She really had been out of it, and she looked about their spacious bedroom for more surprises. But the soft, white throw rug lay undisturbed beside their bed. The stone fireplace, with its grouping of ivory-colored lounge chairs was uninhabited. Past the windows, on the other side of the lake, rose snowcapped mountains, solid and reliable.
His expression darkened. “I'm not surprised. I had a talk with the EMT who checked you out at the first accident scene. You never should have been sent home. He won't be making that mistake again.”
“We can't be sure the misdiagnosis was his fault. Not with all that chaos magic in the air.”
Brigitte crashed onto the armoire, and the pug leapt to his feet, trembling. The gargoyle gripped the edge with her talons to steady herself. “You think the EMT's mistake was part of the spell too? Perhaps I have misjudged this chaos magic. It is more destructive than hoodoo.”
Riga picked up the dog and soothed the animal. “I don't know. But the magician's thought form or servitor was there, by my car.”
“You saw it?” Brigitte shifted. “What did it look like?”
Riga’s cheeks warmed. It seemed ridiculous now. “I’m not sure what I saw.”
“Now I'm curious.” Donovan sat on the bed.
She relented. “It looked like something out of that movie. You know? The one where machines took over, and humans were living in a sort of virtual reality?”
“Never saw it,” Donovan said.
Of course he hadn’t. You didn’t build a chain of casinos by sitting around watching movies.
Riga plowed on. “It was a black silhouette, with green numbers running down its body. Murdoch had framed posters for the movie in his house.”
“You went to his house?” A muscle jumped in his jaw. He removed yesterday’s black suit jacket and folded it, laying it on the wide bed.
Hell. Should she have invited Donovan along? She couldn’t bring him into all her cases, didn’t think he really wanted it anyway. He had better things to do. But today, he was the client.
“And you still can't remember this film’s name?” Brigitte asked.
Riga glanced sideways at Donovan. “What's important is that the posters link Murdoch to the servitor. He created a servitor based on a movie universe.” And in that universe, the heroes and villains were unstoppable.
Riga levered open the bookcase to her secret room and retrieved her case notes, wrinkled and water stained. Cradling the pug beneath one arm, she studied her notebook and the symbols she’d sketched. “Could some of these symbols be ASCII? Some old computer code?”
“I'll ask my tech staff,” Donovan said.
She photographed the note, then tore it from the book and handed him the page.
His cell phone pinged. He drew it from the pocket of his black suit jacket and studied the screen. “You were right. It hasn't stopped. There's been another accident at Acton. An explosion.”
Her chest tightened. And she’d been wasting time here, at home. She pulled the dog closer. “Was anyone hurt?”
“Three people are missing.”
She cursed. “The killer's trying to stop the project. This isn't about Gabe or Deepika anymore, if it ever was.” Riga paced the bedroom. “I've been assuming the killer met Murdoch at the party. But what if that wasn't true?”
Brigitte nodded, and a thin fleck of lichen dropped to the armoire. “So you are not willing to throw out all the old rules of magic.”
“Old rules?” Donovan asked.
“Curses need connecting points,” Riga said. “There must be some connection between the victim and the curse itself. What if Murdoch was brought to that party to meet his potential victims? To create that connection? Can I borrow your phone?”
“You've got a new one in your purse,” Donovan said.
“I forgot.” She set the dog on the bed. He hopped off and raced from the room. Riga found her phone and called Tod Crafton.
“Hello?” he asked cautiously.
“This is Riga Hay– Mosse. That recruiting event – did you lose anything at it?”
He paused. “Actually, yes. I lost my wallet.”
“Did you ever find it?”
“Yeah. A waiter found the wallet behind a couch.”
“Was everything still inside it?”
Another hesitation. “No. There was a photo missing. It was of me and my daughter.”
“Great. I mean, I'm sorry to hear that. Thanks. What's happening at the plant? The news said there was an explosion?”
“I can't talk about it.”
Her gaze flicked to the ceiling. Of course he couldn't. “All right. Good luck.”
She hung up. “He lost a personal photo from his wallet.” Riga dialed Westbrook.
Westbrook picked up, and they had the same conversation. When she hung up again, she looked thoughtful. “He lost his class ring. Never found it.”
“Which means...?” Donovan asked.
“It means I can take the magician,” she said.
“You mean kill him,” Brigitte said.
“No, I don’t mean kill him.”
Donovan frowned. “She meant, we can take him,” he corrected.
“I do not think that was what she meant,” Brigitte said.
Riga glared at the gargoyle. “Right. We. The magician’s still bound by the laws of magic. He's just found new methods for working within them.” New and terrifying. “And I know who's behind this. But we're not going in blind. I'm going to use my downtime for research.”
One corner of Donovan's mouth quirked upward. He didn't say anything, didn't have to.
“So you admit you need this... down time?” Brigitte sniffed. “Perhaps some sense has finally been knocked into you by this accident.”
Donovan pocketed the sheet of paper. “I'll leave you to it and see what my guys have to say about these symbols.”
“Thanks.” But Riga was already moving to the open bookcase and her laptop.
She began her investigation by checking social media.
Pine branches slapped against the small windows of her hidden room, and her shoulder twitched. She looked up. Outside, a storm had come up, one of those sudden weather changes that occur in the mountains.
She moved on to a general internet search for Murdoch.
An earsplitting crack, and a flash of light jerked Riga from her seat. The house trembled. Outside the window, a tree fell across the driveway.
Mouth flattening into a white line, Riga unplugged her laptop. “Lightening,” she muttered. She kept searching, moving to the deep web.
“Riga,” Brigitte said.
“Mm?”
“Something is happening outside.”
Riga stood, walked into the bedroom, and gazed through a picture window. The lake had turned to mercury, its waves foaming green-white. A sailboat drifted on its side toward their beach. Her insides tensed. “It’s all right.” She returned inside the hidden library. “The pier's warded.” But she could feel her protective wards straining, like wires tightening across her skin, her magic battling another’s.
Gritting her teeth, she returned to her desk and continued her research.
When she finished, Riga leaned back in her office chair with a sigh.
“So?” Brigitte asked.
“Murdoch was a frat boy,
a member of a society of mathematicians. He worked for seven years in Paris for a computer company.”
“And?”
“Get back here!” Donovan shouted.
The pug trotted into her hidden room. It dropped a damp piece of paper to the floor.
“What have you done?” Riga bent and picked up the page she’d torn from her notebook. The symbols were wet and smeared by doggy saliva.
Donovan jogged into the room. “He got away from me. Does he have a name, by the way?”
“Idiot.” Her fingers tightened on the page, and it crackled.
“The dog?” Donovan asked.
“Me. Look.” She turned the paper on its side, so that the symbols made a column.
“What am I looking at?” he asked. “Because I've verified it's not any computer language.”
“It's a flow chart, an if/then flowchart.” Her laugh was bitter almonds. “Look. They're faces. If there's a smiley face, then this happens. If there's a frowny face, then that happens.” Her brows lowered. One of the frowny faces resulted in another face with x's for eyes, the cartoon symbol for death.
Donovan tapped a symbol at the bottom of the chart. “I recognize that. It’s Chinese. It means…” His forehead wrinkled. “Revelation, I think.”
Riga’s skin chilled. Revelation. Gabe Acton had revealed what was happening at his lab and then died. If, then. If something was revealed about the chaos, then death. “I think that O, near the top, with the two lines at its base is an Omega.”
“Ending?” Donovan asked. “Why would that be near the top? Have you got it upside down again?”
“I don’t think so. I think if Acton’s secret project ended, then…” She traced her finger past a smiley face to a dark, square. “I’ve seen this.” Riga hurried to her laptop, typed something, scanned the screen. “It’s used in if/then flowcharts to represent the end of a sequence.”
“So, if the project ends,” Donovan said, “then the spell ends?”
“And this symbol at the very top, the oval, it’s from flowcharting as well. It means the beginning of the sequence.”
“Those two o’s could make an infinity sign, an eight turned on its side. And I recognize that symbol above it,” Brigitte said. “It is a Viking rune, Nahdhiz. It can mean—”
The Gargoyle Chronicles: A Riga Hayworth Mystery (Riga Hayworth Paranormal Mystery Book 8) Page 7