Now or Never: Wizards of Nevermore

by Michele Bardsley

  Arlene kept everything spotless and orderly, just the way he liked it. The black-and-white-checkered linoleum floor gleamed despite its age. He suspected Arlene bought magic-enhanced cleaners, which was fine by him. He didn’t want to dip into the coffers to replace anything if he didn’t have to.

  Taylor clasped his hands behind his back and looked around. Off to the left of Arlene’s desk was a locked door that led to the archives. Only Arlene ventured inside there, and not even he risked invading that domain. To the right of the foyer was the entrance to his own office, which faced Main Street. The picture window allowed him a proper view of downtown, not that there was much to watch.

  A narrow hallway led to the former deputy’s office, a supply closet, the bathrooms, and the break room, and the back door that opened onto the alley. Beyond the break room was the secured door that led down to the basement, and to the rarely used jail cells. One had been built especially to dampen the powers of magicals, but he’d never had cause to use it.

  Satisfied that all was in order, Taylor returned to the foyer and breathed deeply. Before he could enjoy the satisfaction for very long, he caught sight of his watch and frowned. Arlene had been gone for more than half an hour. A couple times a day she’d go across the street and check on Atwood Stephens; the man, who looked like an exhausted rhinoceros, owned both the town garbage service and the weekly paper, Nevermore News. His health had been deteriorating rapidly, and not even Lucinda’s gift of healing had been able to do much more than slow the decline. Atwood’s nephew, Trent Whitefeather, had been taking over more and more of his uncle’s responsibilities. He was a senior in high school, and despite the burdens of his home life, was still a straight-A student.

  Taylor headed for his office, but he heard the rattle of the front door, so he turned back. He expected to see Arlene chug inside, already complaining about Atwood’s stubborn hide, but, to his surprise, he saw Gray Calhoun. The wizard still wore his hair long, but these days, he kept it neatly trimmed. His nose crooked in the middle; the angles of his face were sharp as blades, as sharp as the look in his blue eyes. A faded scar on the left side of his face twirled from his temple down his neck, hiding beneath the collar of his T-shirt.

  “Gray,” he said, offering a congenial nod.

  “Hey, Taylor,” said Gray, smiling.

  He did that a lot these days. He was the happiest son of a bitch in town, and Taylor felt, well, jealous of his friend’s connubial bliss. It made him feel petty, so he heartily shook Gray’s hand, and said, “C’mon. Arlene finessed that damned machine into a fresh batch of coffee.”

  “You might want something stronger,” said Gray as he followed Taylor down the hall and into the break room. “I just got word that my mother will be here in time for our Samhain celebration. With all twelve of her lictors.”

  “A dozen bodyguards?” Taylor gestured for his friend to sit at the table, and Gray grabbed a chair and slid into it. “I thought she traveled with only three.”

  “All the Consuls have been encouraged to keep their lictors close. Things are tense in political circles,” said Gray. “There are rumors that the House of Ravens might secede from the Grand Court.”

  Shock stilled Taylor’s movements. He didn’t much pay attention to things outside Nevermore, but damn, that was bad news all the way around. “Can they do that?”

  “There’s no precedence,” said Gray. “Not in two thousand years since the Houses and the first Grand Court were formed. If the Ravens withdraw from the current governing structure, it may well start a war.”

  “That would mean a whole lot of scrambling for the mundanes, too. Nonmagicals won’t like the idea of rogue witches and wizards.”

  “Let’s hope the current Consuls can make the Ravens see reason.”

  “Yeah,” said Taylor. “Let’s hope.” He paused. “So, you got enough room in that house for your visitors?”

  “Not for twelve giants and certainly not for my mother’s angst. When I told her about marrying Lucinda, I think her head exploded.”

  “Well, you did marry the sister of your ex-wife, who sold your soul to a demon lord.”

  “I’m aware,” said Gray drily.

  Taylor handed the Guardian a mug and then took the spot across from him. “I’m surprised Leticia didn’t come down long before now.”

  “No doubt she stayed away so she could plot in private.” He shook his head. “That’s not fair of me. She’s upset, I know, but once she meets Lucy, she’ll be fine with it.”

  Taylor wasn’t so sure. Leticia was a spectacular woman, but she was also as stubborn as the day was long. “How long is your mother staying?”

  Gray blinked. “Ah. Well, through the winter solstice festival.”

  “So, she’ll be here for…” Taylor narrowed his gaze. “Oh, crap. You haven’t told her?”

  “No. Other than you, Ember, and Rilton, we haven’t told anyone.”

  “Well, you don’t have to,” said Taylor, rolling his eyes. “Not with all the reports I’ve been getting.”

  “Sorry. We try to be discreet, but it’s not easy.”

  “Shifting into a dragon is no small feat.” He sent Gray a level gaze. “And neither is flying around with Lucy on your back.”

  “Oops.”

  “Yeah, oops,” said Taylor. “All those stories about the magical ancestors being shifters…Well, people think they’re myths. And you’re gonna go prove ’em wrong. Everyone will know you’re Jaed’s champion.”

  “You’re worried people will figure out that Nevermore is a magical hot spot.”

  “Bound to come out eventually.”

  “We have to trust the Goddess, Taylor.”

  Taylor nodded, but he looked away. He wasn’t a magical. He lived with them, was related to them, and worked for them, but he was a mundane. And he didn’t like Gray’s suggestion of a magical war. All because the Ravens dropped out of the governing structure? Magical hot spots like Nevermore would be prime real estate in a wizard war. Yeah. It would be bad—for everyone, but especially for those without magic.

  Gray drained his coffee mug. “I gotta get back to Lucy. The Halloween party is more than two weeks away, but she’s already futzing over the decorations. You’ll be there, right?”

  “Wouldn’t miss it,” said Taylor. “I’m gonna win that pumpkin-carving contest.”

  Gray laughed, smacked Taylor on the shoulder, and then left, giving Taylor one last wave before he headed out.

  Taylor took their mugs to the sink and rinsed them.

  Pain shot from his temples to the center of his forehead, throbbing in a circle of agony. He dropped the mug, barely hearing its protesting clatter. He staggered forward, pressing his palm against his head. Gods-be-damned! Bright light danced behind his eyes, and he groaned. Then he heard a swooshing sound, like wings.

  Accept what belongs to you, Taylor.

  Then the pain disappeared.

  He slowly straightened, wiping the sweat beading his brow, and tried to get back his equilibrium.

  What the hell!?

  He took a few deep breaths, clenching and unclenching his fists. With some effort, he pushed away the dread squeezing him as tightly as a constricting python.

  “Taylor!”

  Arlene’s panicked voice had him shaking off the fear, the ghosts of pain, and rushing out of the break room, down the hall, and into the main office. He found her in the lobby, chest heaving and a quivering hand pressed against her throat. Her eyes were as wide as saucers.

  “It’s Atwood!” she cried. “The dumb son of a bitch went and killed himself!”

  Taylor managed to snag Gray before he had gotten too far down Main Street. Together, they walked the short distance to the narrow brick building that housed the offices and home of Atwood. Arlene wanted to come with them, but Ember had arrived with tea and comfort, managing to talk his shaken assistant into staying put.

  “Where’s Trent?” asked Gray.

  “Still in school. He usually comes ov
er at lunchtime and checks on his uncle. Arlene passed him on the sidewalk and chatted with him for a minute. Then she went inside to harangue Atwood about his health.”

  “And he was still breathing?”

  “Like a water buffalo in labor,” said Taylor. He saw Gray’s look and offered a grim smile. “Arlene’s words. He was in his upstairs apartment, lolling on the couch and watching television. She made sure he took his meds, cleaned up the lunch dishes, and was in the kitchen brewing herbal tea—and probably talking his ear off. Next thing she knew, he’d disappeared. That place isn’t too big. Two bedrooms, one bathroom, the living area, and a tiny kitchen. She figured he’d lumbered downstairs to raid a stash of Twinkies or Little Debbie’s. Trent told me Atwood had junk food tucked away in every nook and cranny.”

  “Stubborn bastard.” Gray shook his head. “He left the apartment and got down the stairs without Arlene hearing him?”

  “Apparently. When she realized he was gone, she went hunting for him. Found him in the newspaper archives. Said he shot himself, and she never heard a thing.” Taylor sighed. “Well, no use standing out here and twiddling our thumbs.”

  Suicide or not, they still took the usual crime scene precautions. Both he and Gray gloved up and put booties on their shoes. Then Taylor opened the door, and they entered the dreary hallway.

  The linoleum floor was filthy—not to mention cracked and hole-filled. The turquoise walls were stained, and in several places paint peeled away to reveal faded flower wallpaper. It smelled like stale cigar smoke and old takeout. Some floral scent floated through the stink, but whatever attempts had been made to cover eau de Atwood failed miserably. At the end of the hallway was the staircase that led to the apartment. On the left was the single-door entrance to Nevermore Garbage Services. Taylor knew the small office held a desk, two chairs, and a worn-out coffeemaker, along with two large file cabinets that didn’t shut anymore due to Atwood’s lousy filing system (shoving receipts and written complaints into the nearest open drawer, for example).

  On the right was the door to the newspaper offices. It was slightly open, and Taylor pushed on the frosted glass etched with the faded gold words NEVERMORE NEWS. The door swung wider, and he stepped inside. Gray followed, and they both took a minute to assess the office. Two large desks—one antique and the other metal and Formica—were pushed together. A computer circa 1998 sat gathering dust on the metal desk, which held numerous piles of papers, files, thick dust, and Goddess knew what else—maybe the source of the bad smells. On the other desk, the typewriter looked as though it got more use than the computer, even though it was surrounded by the same amount of crap. The front windows were large, and had they not been filmed over with thick layers of grime, might have offered some light into the otherwise cavelike interior.

  “He really let the place go to hell,” said Gray mildly.

  “Ramona was the one who kept everything organized,” said Taylor, referring to Atwood’s deceased wife. A decade ago, she’d gotten on a ladder to hang up Christmas decorations, fallen off, and broken her neck. The tragic accident had devastated Atwood. He’d always been a prickly sort, but without the steadying influence of his wife, he turned into a true curmudgeon.

  Everyone had been surprised when Atwood agreed to take in his orphaned nephew the previous year. Trent’s parents had died in a car accident, leaving the teenager without a home, and with only one living relative. So Trent moved to Nevermore and started working for his uncle. With Atwood’s health problems, the poor kid was actually running both shows. It was a lot of responsibility for a guy who’d just turned eighteen, especially one who was a necromancer, too. Trent was a talented wizard, but he refused to join a House. His father had been of Cherokee descent, so his views about magic tended to follow different paths.

  “I don’t think it’s possible to figure out if anything was disturbed,” said Gray. “I could do some spells, but I don’t think it would help much.”

  “We don’t know that we’re looking for anything,” said Taylor. “Not until we take a gander at ol’ Atwood.” To the left was another door, wide open, and he entered the small break room. It smelled rank, as if the refrigerator had been turned off and all the contents gone to rot. The sink was piled with crusty dishes and chipped mugs, and the small table held more dishes and papers. Two rickety chairs were tucked under the table, which looked as if it might collapse at any moment. Taylor shook his head in disgust, feeling bad for Trent, who had to put up with this chaos and his surly uncle every day. The next door led into the newspaper archives, and it was a bigger mess than anything else they’d seen.

  “Shit,” said Gray, staring at the towering file cabinets that filled the room. A single light in the middle of the ceiling was still on, but its yellowed bulb didn’t do much to disperse the shadows. It was a fairly large space, and the big metal monstrosities had been laid out in rows that created crepuscular passageways. Drawers burst with papers, and more stuff teetered on the tops. Some piles had fallen off, sliding down to clump on the floor like dirty snow. The only upside was that the stench had not penetrated in here. It only smelled musty, like an abandoned attic, which meant the door to the archives had probably been closed most of the time.

  “I don’t know how the hell Arlene managed to find him,” said Taylor as he stepped over papers and wound through the cabinets.

  “She’s persistent,” said Gray. He followed, cursing when he banged his knee against an open drawer. “It seems strange for a man to come all the way down here to put a bullet in his temple.”

  “Atwood wasn’t without his quirks.” Taylor paused. The musty scent of disuse gave way to the foulness of urine and feces. Poor Atwood. His bladder and bowels had evacuated. The awful stench had probably led Arlene to find him, too. She had a nose like a bloodhound.

  “Over here,” he called to Gray, taking the corner and nearly stepping on the body. Atwood wasn’t a tall man, maybe six or seven inches over five feet. He weighed at least four hundred pounds, and he was wedged between the two rows of file cabinets. On the left were the smooth metal backs of the previous row, and on the right, a series of seemingly endless drawers, several lurching out and vomiting files. One of Atwood’s arms had lodged on top of an opened drawer on the bottom, which meant the other arm was probably underneath him. On the lower-left side, where the gray metal shone dingily in the insufficient light, he spotted an Atwood-sized dent and a spray of blood and brain matter.

  “He was on his knees,” murmured Taylor.

  “How do you know that?”

  “It had to be a short fall to the floor. Otherwise, he would’ve made a lot more noise going down. Might’ve even knocked over a cabinet or two.” He pointed to the gory dent, grimacing. If Atwood had taken a gun to his right temple, the force of the shot would’ve knocked him forcibly to the left, and then he would’ve fallen forward. Still, the back of Taylor’s neck tingled. Something didn’t feel right.

  “We’ll have to go around,” he said. “There’s no room to get by him.”

  “All right.” Gray turned and made his way down the other side of the cabinets. Taylor followed, and moments later, they were crouched down about a foot away from Atwood, trying to study his body in the dim light.

  Taylor grabbed his flashlight from his weapons belt, flicked it on, and aimed it at Atwood’s head. The beam highlighted the black burn pattern around the large entry wound, which meant the gun was pressed against his right temple when it fired. Holy Goddess. The rest of his skull looked like hamburger meat. He was sure Atwood’s right hand would test positive for gunshot residue. Taylor felt sick. It wasn’t that he was sensitive to the atrocities of a crime scene, but it took him a second to tuck away the fact that Atwood, for all his faults, had been his friend. And the damned fool had killed himself. He sucked in a breath, put away his regrets, his anger, and got down to doing his job.

  “Taylor,” said Gray. “The gun.”

  Taylor shifted the flashlight, and he saw the gleam of a pistol
. “Gods-be-damned,” he whispered. “That’s…It can’t be.” He looked over his shoulder at Gray and saw the Guardian’s stunned expression.

  “Harley Banton’s Colt,” said Gray.

  “How’d it get here? It was locked up in evidence. Has been ever since the old boy killed himself a few months ago.” The gun had seen its fair share of crimes. After all, the man had used that very gun to kill Taylor’s father nearly twenty years before.

  “You think Atwood stole it?” asked Gray.

  “Don’t know how he would,” muttered Taylor. But how else would he have gotten his hands on the Peacemaker?

  The gun was an antique, a family heirloom that was a prize possession in Harley Banton’s gun collection. He’d always been proud of his grandfather’s 1873 Colt SAA. It was highly collectible, one of the rare guns inspected by Orville W. Ainsworth, with an engraved silver barrel and a mother-of-pearl handle. As a law enforcement officer, Taylor was issued certain magical items for use in his job. These items could be triggered by mundanes, though true magic was always the realm of wizards and witches. He extracted a clear pellet from one of the pouches on his weapons belt. He held it over the gun and enacted the spell by saying, “Contain evidence.” He dropped the little ball onto the gun. When it landed on the barrel, it broke open, and clear liquid coated the entire gun in a magical wrapping, sort of like dipping the weapon in rubber. Everything on the gun would be protected, though he doubted he’d find anything more than Atwood’s prints and that the Colt had been fired recently.

  After they processed the rest of the scene, Gray used his magic to transport Atwood’s body to the old medical clinic, which was in the building next to the sheriff’s office, and still had working cold storage and a surgery. Once upon a time, Nevermore had a doctor who’d also served as a coroner. Now they relied on Dr. Green, who rotated among the smaller towns. He made it into Nevermore once a month to do checkups, or to see to the dead. For the most part, the residents relied on themselves to fix ailments. Their only mage healer, Miss Natalie, had officially retired. People died of natural causes or farming accidents, and yeah, there was the occasional suicide. Murder—hell, crime of any kind—was rare in such a small town. Or, at least, it had been.