by Frank Hurt
2
I Don’t Have a Choice
The dense, grey fog coated everything like a billowing veil, subduing colors like a black-and-white film. Sound carried strangely, as it tended to do in such fog. She almost didn’t recognize Wallace Livingston’s voice calling out to her.
“Ember? Ember, are you here?”
The silhouettes of a leafless forest surrounded her. She squinted at the fog and made out the man’s shape. “I’m over here!”
The Legend was wearing a wide-brimmed hat, partially concealing his bushy eyebrows. The lanky old man’s handlebar mustache was twisted and held into place with wax, so perfect in its shape that it looked fake. “Oh good, you are here. Right this way. Everyone is waiting for you.”
Ember stepped into the fog, hurrying to catch up with her former partner. Dried leaves squished beneath her feet, saturated with the fog’s humidity. “Everyone? What do you mean everyone?”
“Well, everyone who’s supposed to be here, of course.” Wallace kept walking, his voice muffled and distant. “You know what I mean, right?”
“Right,” she answered. She didn’t know what he meant, but Ember didn’t want to sound ignorant. “I just wasn’t sure if I heard you correctly. Where are we going, again?”
“I think you know the answer to that,” he said in his muffled drawl. “But before we get there, I need to know if you’ve been keeping any secrets.”
“Secrets, Wallace? I mean I—”
“Have you been keeping true to the Investigator’s Creed?” Wallace stopped and faced her. The dim light conspired with the fog to conceal his face. It was as though a wide hat with a fake mustache was talking to her. “It’s very important that you adhere to your oath, Ember.”
She opened her mouth but momentarily forgot how to speak. I’d told him everything, yeah? He knows about how the Creed was manipulated from the original. He knows about the corruption I’m rooting out. Is this just a test?
“If my daughter says she is telling the truth, then she’s telling the truth.” Benedette Wright stepped out from the fog to stand behind Ember. She placed a hand on Ember’s shoulder and said, “your father and I trust you. We have never known you to tell a lie.”
Ember’s inner voice wailed, daring to emerge as an audible confession. But Mum, I’ve been lying to you for years. I never told you the truth about my powers as a mage.
“Stop chewing and spit it out,” Wallace’s hat-and-mustache drawled. “Are you harboring any lies, Ember Wright?”
Ember glanced at the two mages. They were so much taller than her, so confident and imposing. She swallowed and found her lips moving. “I’ve not lied to either of you, no.”
The two Malverns exchanged a look, nodded, and proceeded into the mist. Ember waited only a moment before she hurried after.
Among the skeletal trees, a blocky shape revealed itself. It was a small clapboard shed, its white paint chipped and peeling. A large mountain lion paced in front of the door, its extended claws clicking on stone pavers.
“I know you,” Ember said. “Debra, they put you on guard duty?”
The big cat pulled back its lips and offered a terrible grin. The confident, feminine voice of her Krav Maga instructor replied, “you know I can’t let you in there with those. And really, why do you persist in poisoning yourself?”
Ember frowned at the white paper bag she had forgotten she was carrying. “I’m an addict, what can I say? It’s not my fault the pastries love me so much.”
The mountain lion was insistent. “I’ll guard them for you until you come out.”
She reluctantly handed over the bag of donuts. As though on cue, the door to the shed opened on its own.
Ember chewed her bottom lip. She narrowed her gaze at the door, then turned to Benedette. “Mum, are you going in there with me?”
“You know I can’t, darling.”
“But I don’t want to do it. I don’t want to go in there again. I barely made it out last time.”
“Your father and I know you will do the right thing.” Benedette Wright always knew the right combination of praise and guilt to use for optimal motivation.
“Only you can do this,” Wallace said. He leaned against the shed’s door to push it open. Dry hinges gave a high-pitched sigh that made her ears itch.
Ember ran her fingers through her long, blonde hair. She sucked in a lungful of cool, humid air and stepped into the shed.
The building was much larger inside than the exterior suggested. Incandescent lights glowed on wires slung from the rafters above. The walls were unfinished, the exposed studs serving as frames for crude shelving. Cardboard boxes laid claim to those shelves, the faded lettering on their sides watching silently. An uneven floor threatened to trip Ember as her eyes adjusted to the light.
On the far end of the single-room shed, in a corner where the overhead bulbs couldn’t illuminate, a figure mumbled incoherently. The man was shrouded in shadow, making him appear faceless. The chains which held him rattled whenever he moved.
Cold sweat beaded on her skin, trickling down her back and tickling her spine. When Ember reached for the small of her back, she found an occupied holster. She drew the handgun slowly, bearing it forward with caution.
An excited stream of syllables chittered from the floor. “Please don’t do it! Please-oh-please-oh-please! Think about the children!”
Ember blinked and found the source of the voice: a tiny squirrel-like rodent with oversized Disney eyes. Not a squirrel; a sugar glider. “Joy? What are you doing here? What children?”
“I think she’s talking about the armadillo,” Wallace answered. His face was still obscured, though now he was holding a Scotch glass. When he moved his wrist, the ice cubes settled and the charcoal-scented elixir swirled. He pointed with his beverage at a curled-up ball nestled within a cardboard box on the shelf.
The mountain lion padded into the shed and snarled, “the best defense is a strong offense. Don’t end up like that kid, fearing everything, curled up and hiding.”
Joy chittered excitedly, “don’t pick on him Debra! He’s been through so much!”
Debra rolled her eyes and snarled, “haven’t we all?”
Wallace took a sip from his glass. His drawl was as calm and cool as always. “Trust your Investigator’s Instinct, Ember. If you’ve been true to your oath, I know you’ll do the right thing.”
Ember raised the pistol but kept her finger off the trigger. “But which oath? What kind of Investigator am I, if I break the Creed?”
“You haven’t told any lies,” Wallace said. “You shot the Changeling Hunter in self-defense. That’s what you told all of us, at least.”
“I didn’t…I mean…I did. Sort of.” Ember shook her head, trying to remember. “None of you were there, though. It was…it was Nancy who was with me. She tried to stop me. And I killed him. I denied him a trial.”
“Nancy isn’t real,” Wallace said. “You made the decision, and it probably saved a lot of lives, including your own. Now trust your Investigator’s Instinct and do what you need to do again. We’re all counting on you to do the right thing.”
Ember chewed her bottom lip and raised the pistol. Her left hand joined the right to wrap around its grip, holding the frame steady. The memory of the Magic City Spa manager’s instructions filled her ears.
“Guns love to be hugged and held,” Ember muttered Josette’s phrase. She tilted her head so her dominant eye would line up with the sights and leaned forward, nose over toes.
Chains clattered as the man leaned forward. His torso heaved against restraints, just enough for the head of a coyote to emerge from the shadows. The coyote looked up at her, its mouth moving, tongue trying to form words in a language she could understand.
The coyote was familiar to her. Recognition was confirmed when Alarik Schmitt’s voice coughed haltingly from the coyote’s mouth. “Ember, it’s me. You…you don’t have to do this. You can choose not to.”
Her eyes burned an
d she wanted to scream. A thin, hoarse noise clawed at her throat, trying to find its way out. Ember’s finger felt the smooth curve of the trigger. It was as though someone else was controlling her body, that she was merely a helpless observer. The gun’s barrel pointed squarely at Alarik, its iron sights lining up between his coyote eyes.
Right before she squeezed the trigger she managed to whisper, “I don’t have a choice.”
3
Digit Eyes
The grass was coated with frost, giving it the appearance of shredded coconut. It acted like dried coconut too, as the blades crunched beneath Ember’s shoes with each step. Were she in a better mood, she might have found the experience satisfying.
The full moon provided all the illumination she required. A massage therapy client at the Magic City Spa had referred to it as a “harvest moon” even though most crops throughout North Dakota had already been taken from the fields. Her eyes adjusted quickly to the pale orb, allowing her to navigate the field of headstones and dark-shadowed junipers. It was just as well that she didn’t bring a flashlight; she didn’t want one of the locals to see her creeping around a graveyard at 3:00 on a Sunday morning.
His was a tall, grey stone near the western edge of the Church of Brethren Cemetery. Ember glided her fingertips over the triangle which formed a peak above his name. “Barnaby Harrison. Speak with me.”
She had dressed in layers, a knitted scarf around her neck, over the coyote face pendant she always wore. The black leather jacket had been sufficient in blocking the chilly October air, but the temperature would soon drop another twenty degrees. Anticipating this, she pulled out a pair of gloves. She had only the left one on when a glowing periwinkle shape began to form.
If syllables could be made by pouring coarse sand over aluminum foil, that would be Barnaby’s voice. His grating, abrasive tone scratched against the inside of her skull. “What…now, girl? Let me guess, you wake the dead to discuss dreams of the living?”
Deceased for 112 years, the Grand Inquisitor had a misogynistic streak which he only grudgingly kept in check as he gradually accepted Ember as his peer. For her part, Ember tolerated his obsolete attitude as he proved to be a useful—if unwilling—mentor.
“I’d hardly call it a dream,” Ember grumbled. She weaved her fingers together to snug her gloves. “Bloody recurring night terror would even be stating it lightly.”
“Who was the victim this time?”
She pinched the bridge of her nose and squeezed her eyes shut. She recalled the bound changeling looking up at her, the barrel of her pistol pointed at his forehead. It felt so disgustingly real. “Rik.”
“Alarik Schmitt,” the ghost announced. “He seems to be a favorite in that role.” Barnaby’s figure was fully coalesced now, displaying the turn-of-the-century formal suit he wore: a woolen jacket beneath which was a brass-buttoned black vest and matching trousers, a broad necktie, and a white dress shirt jutted up to meet snowy mutton chops. A pheasant feather was tucked into the band of a stylish beaver skin hat, perched upon a head with colorless hair and hollow, empty eye sockets.
“Last time was Anna,” Ember sighed. “Time before that was Stephanie. Or Arnie. I lose track.”
“But always a member of the Schmitt Family,” Barnaby said.
She nodded. “Always one of them. It’s like I’m being tormented by a bloody demon. If ever there was a bloke who deserved to be killed, it was Marcus Shaw. I did the world a favor by tracking down the Changeling Hunter and killing him. And yet—”
“And yet doing so cursed you.”
“Cursed me?” Ember winced. “Do you really think I’m…cursed now?”
The ghost shrugged. “Sage as I may be, I have not killed anyone before, so I cannot borrow from experience to lend advice. I am not entirely sure what you wish for me to say.” His abrasive voice filled her head. Barnaby leaned against his headstone, his shiny, black shoes forming an impression on the frosted turf without crushing it. “Am I to be your phrenologist, is that my role now?”
Ember squinted at the glowing figure. “No. I needed someone to talk to. You’re the only person I knew would be awake at this hour. The only one who I could talk to about this. Nobody else knows how I killed him, not exactly.”
“Ah, so you seek a friend. Why bother me with this burden? Can you not conjure that woman who insists on being your assistant? She would be eager to serve as your confidant.”
She rubbed her itchy, bloodshot eyes with a gloved finger. “Yeah, Barnaby, brilliant. I’ll just call up Nancy’s ghost and let her hear about how much it bothers me that I killed her murderous husband. She’ll love hearing that. Maybe we can trade notes about what a lovely experience that was since she was there when I pulled the trigger. Maybe we can talk about how her armadillo changeling grandson is a source of derision in my subconscious dream state. That seems like it would be blindingly therapeutic to both of us, yeah?”
“Your sarcasm is unbecoming,” Barnaby said.
Ember glared. “I’m sorry to be such disappointing company. For two months, I haven’t managed more than a few hours of sleep each night. I’m turning into a knackered zombie here. I can’t talk to anybody about what I did. They all think I’m some big bloody hero, that I acted in self-defense. The truth is, I didn’t have to shoot him though. I could’ve brought him in alive to stand trial.”
“So why didn’t you?”
“I…I don’t know. I thought I was performing justice. I thought I knew who I was, what I stood for. For all my career, the Investigator’s Creed was my guidepost. When in doubt, refer to the oath, and all would be hunky-dory. But even that had to be taken away from me. You took that away from me.”
The ghost barked a laugh. “You would have preferred ignorance, girl? You would have rather not discovered that the Creed had been perverted, corrupted?”
Ember ran her fingers through her hair. “I don’t know. I don’t know anything, anymore. I don’t even know why I bother telling you all this. I’m your only living peer in this whole, wide world, and I can’t even get empathy from you.”
Barnaby’s tone sobered. “An Inquisitor’s life is a solo existence.”
“So, you always remind me.” She exhaled slowly, her breath made visible by the chilly moonlit air.
Neither said anything for several minutes as they contemplated in silence. Somewhere in the distance, coyotes called to one another. Some blocks away, a dog in the backyard of someone’s home answered the challenge with a succession of barks. The small town of Surrey otherwise slept.
Ember cut the silence by clearing her throat. “I did have some news on your Billy Colton situation.”
“Now we speak of my killer. Good, what did you find?”
“None of the documents from that era have been digitized, so I’ve been spending time in the Archives at the Parker Building.”
The bony fingers on Barnaby’s transparent, blue hand opened as he pronounced the words. “Digit…eyes?”
Her lips quirked. “Digitized. Scanning things electronically, so that we can search them on computers. Computers are these things that—you know what, never mind. My point is that I did manage to find your Last Will and Testament. Can you guess who was named as sole beneficiary upon your death?”
“But I had no Will.”
Ember crossed her arms and shrugged. “Maybe not, but Billy must’ve had one made. Whatever possessions you had became his. Further motivation for him to kill you, I suppose?”
“I owned…far too little to justify murder. Particularly to be murdered by a friend.” Barnaby’s head canted, his empty eye sockets pointed groundward. “Someone I had foolishly considered to be my friend.”
“An Inquisitor’s life is a solo existence, or so I’ve heard a grumpy old ghost tell me about fifty times.”
Barnaby said, “and we are living proof of that truism.”
“At least one of us is,” Ember corrected. “I’ll continue digging through the dusty archives. It’s a stunningly disor
ganized mess in there—it’s as if the Director of Information at the embassy just gave up on making things easy to find. Curtis Davies has been in that position for a long time though, so maybe he’s just burned out.”
“Then they are no longer denying you access to the Archives?”
“Not since I was promoted to Senior Investigator. I’m a regular embassy staffer now, not merely a visiting guest. Elton Higginbotham still thinks I’m under the influence of his Deference Spell, so as far as he and whoever his co-conspirators are, I’m just another drone in their employ.”
The ghost raised his head. “The Aura Shield Spell you discovered has been performing adequately?”
“It’s been working. When Higginbotham tried recharging the Deference Spell, the mana he sent me just washed over and floated away. It was fairly brilliant.”
“When did he do that last?”
“The latest time? That would’ve been after my Ascension Test,” Ember chewed her bottom lip. “That’s been two months, too.”
“Time is impertinent to the dead,” Barnaby reminded her. “It is thusly difficult for me to track. You had spoken of your Ascension Test before. You said it was not terribly difficult for you.”
“It wasn’t, no,” Ember said. “I should amend that. It wasn’t difficult other than the rubbish they fed me during the Prevarication test. Three of the five tribunal judges were supposed to tell autobiographical stories which included at least one lie. The other two judges were to be completely truthful.”
Barnaby nodded. “You were to tell them who was lying and who was truthful. Standard Ascension Test for a Third-Level Investigator.”
“Right. Only in my case, the judges all told lies.”
“That contravenes the rules of the trial.”
“Exactly. And that was the technicality I cited to force Viceroy Roth into acknowledging my Ascension. He had no choice but to grant me the promotion, lest I bring a case to the High Council that they had broken with the rules.”