by Frank Hurt
Ember changed the topic. “I assume Duncan told you about the Viceroy’s visit to Malvern Hills?”
“He did. I appreciated the heads-up, that was a good call, sharing that. Thus far, all seems normal here. Roth is a real politician. Charming. Personable. Schmoozing with the nobility, making the rounds with the High Council.”
“He’s charming for sure,” Ember agreed. She paced back to the front of the bakery. “And I don’t trust him any farther than I can throw him.”
“I’m sensing a theme here.”
Ember glanced through the window, then leaned in when she saw the empty space next to the cash register. “Bloody hell, I missed it!”
“What’s wrong?”
“I was just watching for…oh, nothing. Silliness.” Ember sipped the last of the coffee cup’s contents.
“You seem a little distracted,” Wallace said. “That wasn’t the only call I’ve fielded from North Dakota. Doctor Rout also called me. She feels she’s done all that she can to help the Mandaree Scouts. There’s nothing more she feels she can offer them. She intends on flying home next week.”
Ember dropped the empty Styrofoam cup into a garbage can outside the bakery’s door. “She told me the same. She wants to get out before winter rolls around, she said.”
“Doctor Rout informed me that there are rumblings. Friction among the survivors. What’s your take on this?”
She thought about her conversation with the three changeling ghosts who she’d helped kill. She thought of how she would be treading across the line of what she swore in her oath to the Investigator’s Creed as she continued burying the truth of those murders. Together with the weight of her killing of Marcus Shaw—of the Changeling Hunter—she felt plenty on her conscience. Plenty more concerning to her than interpersonal conflict among bunkmates.
“There’s friction,” she said. “Rumblings, as you say. I don’t get too worked up over this. Anytime you cram ten different people into a basement billiard room for weeks without end, there’s bound to be some personality strife. They’re stressed. I wouldn’t worry about it.”
“Doctor Rout seems concerned.”
“One crisis at a time,” Ember said. “I’ve got to deal with the one that’s in front of me before I can concern myself with schoolyard drama.”
“Not to beat that drum again,” Wallace said, “but you might make it easier on yourself if you let Duncan and Jackie in. You’re right to be wary—I’ll grant you that—but you can’t take all this on by yourself. You’ve got to trust someone.”
“I trust you, Wallace.”
“Great. But I’m not there.” Wallace sighed into the phone. “Obviously, you trust the Schmitts. They’ve been involved, they helped you with those three spies in the first place.”
“I trust them. Obviously.” She said the words but thought, yet, I’m not telling them about the missing persons case. I’m not telling them about how I’m going to bury this. Is it because I’m trying to protect them? Or is it because I don’t fully trust anyone?
13
Poppyseeds
“There you are,” the dark-skinned girl said. Her short, black hair glistened close to her scalp, but for a single corkscrew curl draped purposefully over her forehead.
Ember waved a hand as she strode through the lobby. “Here I am! How are you this crisp October morning, Ami?”
The receptionist sat behind an elevated desk in the front lobby of the Parker Building. The half-changeling was the public face of the Magic City Spa, even as she served as gatekeeper to the private-access elevators behind her. Half Druw, half NonDruw, she and her twin sister were symbolic of the two sides to the Parker Building and the goings-on within.
“Josette asked me to let her know when you got in. She needed to talk to you about something before you head upstairs,” Ami said. She adjusted the mouthpiece to her headset. “Just a sec and I’ll give her a call.”
“No need to,” Ember said. “I’ll just stop by her office. Cheers.”
The spa manager’s office was a cramped room, its shelves overstuffed with binders and personal effects. A neatly dressed woman with dark, curly hair and espresso-colored eyes was seated behind an L-shaped desk. Her lips were pressed against the edge of a tall coffee mug.
Ember rapped her knuckles against the open door. “G’morning, Josette. You needed to see me?”
Only when the mage stepped into the doorway could she see that someone was seated in one of the two guest chairs. It was a portly man in a sports jacket, his hair thinning to the point of balding on top. He was unloading the contents of a zippered, insulated bag onto Josette’s desk. When he turned to face her, the smile on his goateed face broadened. “Hey, Ember.”
“Coop! What’re you doing here?” Ember mirrored the smile.
“Didn’t you hear? I’ve quit my job.”
“What?” Ember blinked. “Why’d you do that?”
Cooper Severson’s smile faded, though it never left his eyes. “Being a detective is just not fulfilling anymore. I decided to give up on that life of pursuing criminals to become a delivery boy.” He held up an object rolled in wax paper. “Breakfast burritos, I made them myself.”
The scent of butter-fried eggs and sausage wrapped in crisp tortillas filled the room. He had already arranged a pair of paper plates with a Tupperware container of salsa on Josette’s desk.
“Wow,” Ember grinned. “Someone is vying for Boyfriend of the Year, yeah?”
“This will help his nomination chances,” Josette nodded. Her curly hair bounced slightly whenever she moved her head.
“I’d offer you a burrito, but something tells me you’ve already had your breakfast,” Cooper said.
“How did you know?” Ember raised an eyebrow.
“Wait. Don’t tell me,” Cooper said. He closed his eyes, holding his palm up toward Ember. The index finger of his other hand pressed against his temple. “I’m sensing you ate something…something baked. Something like a roll. A poppyseed roll.”
Ember blinked, then glanced at Josette and back to Cooper, who now had his eyes open, watching her. “How did you…how did you know that? Wait—did you see me at the bakery?” Her mind began to race. If he was at the bakery, he might’ve overheard me talking to Wallace on the mobile. Did I say anything about the bodies? How am I going to explain this? I’ll tell him I was just pranking, that it was all in jest. Right, I’ll say—
“You mean beside the fact that I’m clairvoyant?” He grinned and pointed at his incisors. “Poppyseeds.”
“Right. I had poppyseed kolaches.” Ember stammered, “I mean a poppyseed kolache. One. Just the one.”
He tapped a fingernail against one of his incisors. “No, I mean you have poppyseeds in your teeth.”
“Oh, bloody hell,” Ember said. Her cheeks reddened as her tongue ran over her teeth. She hoped they couldn’t hear the soft sucking noise she was creating in her mouth.
Josette balled up the wax paper wrapping from her burrito and tossed it at her boyfriend. “Coop, you’ve gone and made her self-conscious now. This will affect your nomination, you realize.”
Cooper shrugged apologetically at Ember. “Sorry, didn’t mean to. Seriously though, want a burrito? I made extra.”
The mage shook her head. She kept her lips extended, awkwardly hiding her teeth as she spoke. “Thanks, but I’m not hungry. Really. Please, don’t let your food get cold.”
Ember watched as the couple dug into their breakfast, exchanging playful jests across the desk from one another. He distributed another spoonful of salsa onto her plate when he noticed the first serving had been consumed. When she thought Cooper wasn’t looking, Josette would glance at him and smile, but avert her focus back to the meal when he looked up. It was the coquettish dynamic usually reserved for newlyweds or young couples who hadn’t yet had their nascent love tested by hardships. If their relationship would experience trials and challenges, stressors and arguments, those days had not yet arrived.
She
couldn’t help but be happy for her friends. Ember also couldn’t help but feel a tinge of envy for what they had. Might that be Rik and me someday? Will we find that sort of effortless happiness in the simple company of one another? Or is that the sort of fantasy life granted only to people with clean consciences? People who aren’t secretly trying to unravel a conspiracy among corrupt bureaucrats—even while hiding their own literal buried bodies? It’s childish to even imagine such a life.
Brilliant. I sound like crotchety Barnaby Harrison. I’d might as well get his motto tattooed on my forehead: “an Inquisitor’s life is a solo existence.”
Josette giggled at something Cooper said to her. Ember suddenly felt uncomfortably voyeuristic.
“I should let you two eat,” Ember said, her teeth hidden behind her lips. “Before I go, Ami-with-an-eye said you needed to see me?”
“Ami-with-an-eye?” Cooper parroted, the words muffled by a burrito in his mouth.
“The receptionist in the lobby,” Ember said, pointing a thumb over her shoulder. “She’s got a twin sister who also works here. They both call one other by the same name, but spell it differently, so I call one ‘Ami-with-an-eye’ and the other ‘Amee-no-eyes.’ Not, you know, that either of them are blind. Or half blind, for that matter.”
“Ah. Not ‘eye’ but ‘I’ then,” the detective nodded approvingly. “Clever. Confusing, but clever.”
“Yep,” Josette said, holding up an index finger as she swallowed. “I wanted to ask you about your schedule. Would you be able to see any clients this week?”
Ember shook her head, “I’m sorry, I can’t. Full plate this week.”
Cooper patted his goatee with a napkin. “I thought you worked here full-time?”
Josette and Ember exchanged a glance, both realizing they had slipped in their casual conversation in front of a NonDruw. A curious NonDruw detective, no less.
“She does,” Josette said quickly, her expression attempting to remain unchanged. “But I gave her time off for—”
“To work on my genealogy project,” Ember added.
Josette nodded, her finger now pointing at Ember. “You betcha. Exactly. For her genealogy project.”
“I guess you’re really serious about your family tree, taking time off from your massage therapy job to work on it.” Cooper tilted his head, his tone sliding nearly imperceptibly into interrogation mode. “How’s your family tree research coming along, anyway? I’d love to see what you’ve created so far, if you’re willing to show me.”
As a Senior Investigator, the tone wasn’t lost on her. Ember smiled, no longer concerned about the poppyseeds in her teeth. “I will love to show you sometime, Coop. Right now, it’s just a mess of notes and rubbish though. Nothing interesting.”
“Did you ever find anything out about your long-lost distant cousin? That…what was his name…Colton?”
“Billy Colton,” Ember said. “No, nothing as yet. He remains a mystery, a branch missing on the tree.”
“I wish I could’ve found something for you,” Cooper shrugged. “I’m guessing none of his birth or death records were digitized though, since nothing came up in any of my searches. You’ll probably have to go dig through the dusty archives at the Ward County courthouse. I’d suggest looking at obituaries on microfiche at the library too. Even if his obit doesn’t exist, might be that a relative’s obituary will mention his name as preceding in death.”
“The archives,” Ember repeated. A light bulb flickered to life within her head. I’d searched all the records I could before, but I didn’t have access to the old Archives before my promotion. Instead of searching for Billy Colton, I should be searching for another name. Someone associated with him. I could search for Barnaby Harrison’s files, see if Billy’s name appears anywhere.
“It’s just a thought,” Cooper said, again shrugging. “I’m just suggesting there might be something buried away. Don’t get your hopes up. I don’t even know if—”
“No, no, you’re right. I’ll not get my hopes up.” Ember’s attention had drifted already from the office to the Archives one floor above. She offered a distracted wave to the room more so than to the people within it. “It was nice catching up. Coop. Josette. Gotta run.”
Ember walked past the spa’s gym en route to the lobby. Through the tall glass dividing wall, a few early rising members could be seen sweating on the treadmills and ellipticals while they listened to music piped in through their ear buds or watched television on the flat-screen displays above. The mage barely noticed them. She did, however, glance back down the hall toward Josette’s office to be sure Cooper hadn’t stepped out.
Satisfied that she made a convincing show of leaving, she pivoted and went straight for the elevators. Her key-card slid through the slot in the electronic pad by the elevator door. A subdued chime announced arrival of the car and the doors slid open.
The Department of Investigation was on the Third Floor of the Parker Building. The morning staff meeting would be starting soon. Ember’s finger hovered over the stack of numerals. She had the missing changeling case to report in on. She didn’t have time to detour.
Still, she felt a pull elsewhere. She recognized it as her Investigator’s Instinct, tugging at her thoughts. There’s something there. Maybe just fifteen minutes. I’ll give it fifteen minutes.
Her finger touched a button and the number “2” lit up. The meeting moth will hardly care if I’m a little late.
14
Go Team Ember
When the doors opened on the Second Floor, Ember stepped out of the elevator and into the embassy Security Office. While the office she left smelled of breakfast and cheer, this one was a medley of burned coffee and sour sweat.
Four mildly bored faces turned to see the unannounced guest. They appeared to be in the midst of what passed for the Security Office’s equivalent of a morning staff meeting, though the format couldn’t have been more different from its counterpart Ember was missing upstairs. The meeting moth would be mortified if he had to attend such a casual anti-meeting.
This small department was tasked with providing security to the embassy and the wider Viceroyalty of the Magic City colony. It fascinated Ember how the changelings hired for this role were each so different from one another, yet each possessed animal subforms known for their protective nature. Ember blinked, allowing their subforms to appear behind her eyelids, as only she could.
There was the department head, Rodger Wilke. His corpulent figure possessed a massive stomach that hid his lap and tested the tensile strength of his collared shirt’s fabric. His subform was a llama. He offered a nod to Ember before spitting liquified snuff into the white Styrofoam cup he cradled with one hand on his chest.
Debra Morgan—Ember’s krav maga instructor—was of course a gorgeous, muscular mountain lion when she chose to shapeshift. She was perched on the end of her utilitarian, steel desk, her lean, long legs clad in black service duty slacks to match her pressed button-up blouse. She looked, for all purposes, decidedly feline even while in human form. She nodded and said, “hey.”
Across from her, Dennis Everett—or “Smiley” as Ember preferred to call him (mostly because he hated the nickname so much)—stood with his arms crossed, a scowl beneath his full beard. His subform was fittingly a badger. He merely grunted at the new arrival.
Then there was the fourth one, who she hadn’t met before. The muscular, sandy-blonde, young man was seated but quickly stood up when he saw Ember. He had an eagerness and enthusiasm that would get ground out of him with time. He also had a slight Latin American accent. “Hello. I’m Samuel. Samuel Mayhew.”
“Nice meeting you,” Ember said, her eyebrows raised. She blinked again to verify what she was seeing as his subform. “I’m Ember. I realize we haven’t met before, but are you a…dolphin?”
The young man snapped his head back with surprise, his eyes widening. “I am! How did you know?”
“Oh. Lucky guess,” Ember lied. “I’m sorry, there just
aren’t many marine animal changelings in the world. You’re uncommon.”
“That was a really lucky guess! Nobody’s ever guessed that before,” Samuel admitted. His freckled face beamed at Ember’s remark. “Not to brag, but I’m probably the best swimmer I know.”
“I’ll bet you are,” Ember said. She held a hand up and waved at the assembled crew. “Apologies for interrupting—”
“Just doing our shift debriefing,” said Rodger. “What can we do for you, Senior Investigator Wright?”
“Wait. You’re Ember Wright?” Samuel’s mouth was agape. “The Ember Wright? The one who tracked and killed the Changeling Hunter?”
“Down, boy,” Debra chided.
“No, I mean it’s just that…” Samuel’s voice trailed his thoughts. “I mean…you’re famous. A legend, really. Can I shake your hand?”
Before she could respond, his hand was grasping hers, pumping her arm like a politician meeting a campaign donor.
“I’m no legend, but I did partner with Wallace Livingston. He’s the one everyone calls The Legend,” Ember said.
“Who?” Samuel continued shaking her hand. “Nobody’s more famous than you are. I just moved here from the Lago Ranco colony, and everyone there’s heard of you. It’s an honor to meet you. Really it is. Wow, I’m shaking hands with Ember Wright! My friends back in Chile are going to be so jealous. Hey, would it be too much to ask for a photo with you?”
“Yes,” Rodger answered for Ember, his tone firm. “Yes, it would be too much to ask. Sit down, Samuel.”
Debra flashed a smirk at Ember.
“Right,” Ember said, shaking her head as she held up her key card. “I’m just passing through. I need to get in to the Archives.”
“Do you need help in there?” Samuel stood up again, as though his chair bristled with thumb tacks. “If you’re looking for anything, I can help you find it.”