Murder by magic: twenty tales of crime and the supernatural

by edited by Rosemary Edghill

  Very clearly, no magic coming from Blaine. Children as young as little Tiffany are more difficult to read, since Power usually doesn’t focus itself until adolescence. All I got from her was purely mundane child: confusion over the loss of a man she didn’t know, uneasiness over the presence of two strangers her mother clearly didn’t like.

  Very gently, Raven and I edged around the details of the kids’ father’s death, trying to learn, first from Blaine, if the man had, indeed, been attempting magic on his own. Blaine blustered as only a frightened teenage boy can do. “My father wasn’t a dirty, double-damned sorcerer!”

  “Neither, I trust, are we,” Raven said somberly.

  Mrs. Ex, to do her credit, didn’t comment.

  What else we got from Blaine was that he didn’t care (a lie), he didn’t miss his father (a lie), and he didn’t like us (true). He was not a singularly complex kid, but to be fair to him, Blaine was also struggling with adolescence. Hormones were overriding pretty much everything else in his psyche.

  When we asked Tiffany similar but more simply phrased questions, she shook her head, refusing to admit that her father could ever have done anything wrong. Our questions quickly showed that she had only a vague concept of “father,” namely as someone who didn’t want her, since he’d never come to see her, and a feeling, just below the surface, that something must be wrong with her because of that. Her fear and despair were rapidly growing so strong that when tears welled up in her eyes, they almost welled up in ours as well.

  We’d gotten all the information we could from her. Excusing ourselves, we fled.

  “I hate questioning kids,” Raven said, fighting himself back under control.

  “So do I.” I ran a not-quite-steady hand through my hair. “They have no clues at all about not broadcasting their emotions.”

  “That was one genuinely scared, unhappy little girl. Not that I blame her for any of that. Dexter sounds like a real sweetheart. Bet Tiffany winds up in therapy in a few years. And—”

  “Raven, look at the time. Child psychology’s going to have to wait.”

  We grabbed quick cups of coffee and sandwiches from the nearest coffee shop and hurried on to our next destination. From all we had been able to learn—and from all that our brief magical listing had let us see—Dexter Arcane Industries had had only one genuine rival: Man-dala Inc.: Supplies for the Right-Hand Path. Expensive merchandise, mostly handmade, usually out of the range of MBI agents’ salaries, and guaranteed Darkness-free.

  “Whatever we learn,” Raven said dryly, “it’ll be a pleasure to question an adult!”

  Mandala Inc. was located in what is usually called a business park: gleaming white buildings surrounded by plenty of grass and trees. Squirrels raced across the cement paths, and sparrows chirped all around us.

  “Where are the aerobics classes?” Raven muttered.

  “Or the Druid wanna-bes. You’d never know this place manufactured magic equipment.”

  Just then something flapped quickly by us—something that wasn’t a bird.

  “Almostnever know,” I amended.

  The office of Mandala Inc.’s owner and CEO was a quietly elegant place, with plush moss-green carpet, a few pots of discreet greenery (the ivy sort that doesn’t shed), and gleaming wood and chrome furnishings. A wall-length window looked out over the tranquil business park and a decorative lake. Disconcertingly clean office, I thought. Not a paper out of place. A neat desk is a sign of a troubled mind and all that. Or else Mr. Sinclair simply delegated everything.

  Just then the door opened and a slight man in a neat navy-blue business suit hurried in. His face was absolutely ageless, narrow and rosy-cheeked, unmarred by any lines: really good cosmetic magic or else incredibly clean living. His longish hair was pure white, possibly prematurely so, and he had the clearest blue eyes I’ve seen in a human.

  “Forgive me, agents. I was just inspecting the latest lot of thuribles. As you surely already know, I am Amadeus Sinclair.”

  We duly shook hands, and he took his seat behind that gleaming, too-clean desk. “Please,” Sinclair said, gesturing to two of the leather and chrome chairs, “be seated. Now, you wish to ask me some questions.”

  Of course he knew who we were without needing to check our IDs: Sinclair fairly radiated magic. But his magic seemed so utterly untainted by anything nasty that it felt downright wholesome.

  “I wonder what Mrs. Ex thought about him” I murmured to Raven.

  Of course Mr. Sinclair had already heard of his rival’s death; it wouldn’t have taken magic for that, not where business was concerned.

  “I warned him, many times I warned him. Put up a warding, hire some arcane guards, do something. Working in such an industry without any talents of his own—”

  “He wasn’t killed by magic,” Raven cut in.

  That stopped Sinclair dead in his tracks. “No? But—no?”

  “Does that surprise you?”

  “Well, yes! I just never thought… It seems so, well, ignominious for poor Raymond to have been murdered by mundane means.”

  Tearing off someone’s head didn’t strike me as mundane, but I wasn’t about to say that. Instead, I asked, “You’re not glad to see a rival removed?”

  “Powers, no!” He leaned forward, and for the first time there was something sharp on his face, something that said businessman. “Look, I don’t deal with darkness, but that doesn’t make me a saint. Dexter Arcane takes too many shortcuts, and their products undercut mine in manufacturing costs and distribution. If the whole company disappeared overnight, I wouldn’t exactly weep. But we’re speaking of a human life! How… how did he die?”

  Raven told him, and I watched Sinclair shrink back in a shock that looked and felt genuine. “Good God, how horrible! Poor Eleanor. She’s had to put up with so much from him, and now this! And the children—terrible, terrible! Do they know? No? There’s a mercy. What spell could have caused—no, you said there was no magic involved. But—”

  “I’m afraid we can’t disclose any more details.”

  “Of course not, of course not.”

  We let him dither on for a time. But all the while, like any good magician, he kept up a strong mental warding. We could only take him at his babbling words. And nothing in that babbling, for all our careful questions, revealed anything useful.

  Except… “You and Mrs. Dexter are friends?”

  “Social acquaintances. We saw each other at the same events, and only rarely spoke with each other, but I always knew she was unhappy.”

  “Oh?”

  Sinclair stared at us, taking a moment to interpret that monosyllabic question, and then burst into laughter. “Agents, please! First of all, she would never have had anything to do with a magician. And second, I’ve never had anything to do with women. No, my feeing towards Eleanor is pity, nothing more.”

  Damn. We could both sense that he meant it. Another possibility squashed.

  “We have nothing further to ask,” I said.

  Raven added, “I assume that the police have already warned you not to leave town.”

  “They think I’m a suspect, me! But of course I was his rival, of course they’d think—but me! How could they… ?”

  We left him engrossed in a new round of babbling.

  “That,” Raven said as we headed down the path, birds and squirrels doing their birdie and squirrelly activities all around us, “is either the most innocent man we’ve ever met or the finest actor.”

  “He’s gay. That was true. He pities Mrs. Ex. That was true, too. And he really didn’t know how Dexter died.”

  “That doesn’t mean Sinclair didn’t send an assassin: ‘Just do the job; don’t tell me how you do it.’”

  I glanced at my partner. “Remind me never to get you really teed off at me.”

  “Hah,” Raven began.

  Then all hell broke loose, almost literally. Magic alarms blared out on all sides, nothing audible to the nonmagical but forceful enough to us to nearly
stagger us.

  “Sinclair!” we exclaimed as one, and raced back the way we’d just come. IDs out and yelling the mantra “MBI! Let us through!” we forced our way through the confused crowds of workers and grim-facedguards to Sinclair’s office. What had been the door to his office was now just so many splinters. Where were his wards? They should have slammed into existence the moment there was—

  No, they’d only have formed in the case of a magical attack. The… thing menacing Sinclair, backing him against a wall, had no magical aura at all.

  “What the hell is that?” Raven asked.

  “Not from hell—not a demon…”

  What it was, though, I couldn’t say. Something huge that looked like a weird cross between a lithe black panther and a heavy-furred ogre out of Faerie. But it lacked the sharp psychic tang of anything out of that Other Realm, and besides, no Faerie thing would be caught out in the daylight—

  That didn’t really matter. The thing wasn’t being stopped by any of the defensive spells Sinclair was throwing at it, though all around the creature, glass was breaking and wood shattering.

  Great. Not only wasn’t the monster magical in itself, it was also immune to magic. But this was definitely the thing that had killed Dexter, because judging from those powerfully massive arms and clawed hands, it was planning to tear Sinclair’s head off, too.

  It’s at times like this that I really wish MBI agents carried guns.

  Raven didn’t waste time in regrets. Seeing a man about to have his head torn off is a pretty good incentive for one of those feats of strength emergencies give us. Raven snatched up one of the heavy chrome and leather guest chairs as though it weighed nothing, and hurled it at the thing. The chair slammed into the monster between the shoulder blades, and it staggered—but didn’t fall. Instead, the thing whirled with alarming speed, and we saw a face like something out of a nightmarish storybook: eyes that were too big, too flaming red, nose like that of a dog, a wide human mouth filled with just too many rows of fangs.

  No wonder we hadn’t sensed any magic at the murder scene—the damned thing was extra-dimensional, outside the scope of our talents.

  In fact, it was so alien that it looked like a kid’s idea of a monster. Maybe that’s what inspired me—besides the realization that my partner, who was now panting from the strain of throwing a heavy chair, was about to be lunch. But some vague memory from childhood surfaced,from those days before I knew that things like this did exist outside the storybooks.

  “Stop that!” I shouted at the monster—and the startled thing froze. Feeling like an idiot, I scolded, “Bad monster! Bad monster!”

  It actually whimpered, a confused, puzzled sound.

  “Go home!” I commanded, and stamped a foot. “Shoo! Go home!”

  It snarled, but it didn’t attack. The thing turned somehow sideways—and vanished.

  Raven didn’t waste time asking questions: another of the reasons we make such a good team. Ignoring Sinclair’s confused stammerings of thanks, the two of us raced off straight to ex-Mrs. Dexter’s apartment.

  After all, I had told the creature to go home.

  The doorman didn’t want to let us in, but he was too frightened of our MBI identities to resist. Ex-Mrs. Dexter really didn’t want to let us in, regardless of our IDs—or, rather, because of them—but she didn’t have much of a choice. We burst the lock with a well-placed gesture and all but forced our way in past her.

  “The children,” I panted. “Where are they?”

  Her eyes widened in horror. “Blaine’s with a school friend. Tiffany—oh my God, Tiffany!”

  There was a roar of wind, then the shrill scream of a terrified child. Not a chance of beating a frightened mother racing to the defense of her daughter, but we came in a close second.

  We found ourselves in a large, brightly colored room like a child’s dream, full of toys and plushy stuffed animals. Larger than my whole apartment, flashed through my mind, but there wasn’t time for nonsense. There, looking utterly impossible amid all the sweetness, was the monster, towering over Tiffany, who huddled in a corner.

  “Mommy!” she wailed.

  Only our quick grab of the woman’s arms kept her from rushing blindly to her daughter’s side.

  Looked like we had been right—and yelling “Go home!” to the creature wasn’t going to work this time. It was home, at least as close to home as it could get in this dimension. And the monster was going to kill the one person who was holding it here.

  Not if we had a say in the matter!

  “Let go of me!” Mrs. Ex was shrieking.

  “Mommy!” Tiffany was wailing.

  “Got any ideas?” I whispered to Raven.

  “Not a one. You?”

  “No.”

  “Damn. I really don’t feel like getting killed today.”

  With that, Raven let go of Mrs. Ex and charged the monster, hitting it low, for all the world like a football player trying to stop the offense. He sent it stumbling sideways, away from Tiffany. Mrs. Ex charged in, snatched up her child, and raced back toward me. I gestured to her, Get out of here! The monster would follow, but at least we’d bought a little time.

  Unfortunately, the monster hadn’t fallen. Recovering with superhuman reflexes, it whirled, catching Raven with a backhanded swing of a hand that sent him flying. My breath caught in my throat—but fortunately for Raven, there was enough carpeting and all those stuffed animals for him to land relatively softly. But he was clearly stunned.

  My turn. I yelled inelegantly, “Hey, you monster!” to get it away from Raven, and hunted frantically for something I could use as a weapon. What, a doll, a stuffed rabbit, a beach ball—what was I supposed to do, play with the thing?

  Whoa, maybe I could. A quick illusion spell brought the bunny to life, grown to monster size. A second gave the beach ball jet propulsion. It smashed into the monster, hurling the creature off its feet, and the bunny came after it, pummeling the monster.

  More time bought. Letting go of the bunny and beach ball spells, I grabbed up the nearest lamp and brought it down on the monster’s head as hard as I could. Damn! The thing’s skull was like concrete! At least Raven was on his feet again, slamming the monster’s head with a second lamp.

  No go. All we were doing was keeping the creature from regaining its feet. That was at least something, but it was cursed frustrating knowing that Raven and I had spells to stun or kill, yet the strongest of them would be useless against a thing that shed magic like water.

  Or like us. With a roar, the monster was on its feet again, brushing us aside like two flies. And of course it was heading after Tiffany. I’d hoped Mrs. Ex would have the sense to leave the apartment, get the hell out of the building, and give herself and us a fighting chance. But no,in true panicked human fashion, she’d just managed to corner herself in the living room. Pushing Tiffany behind her, she stood at bay, a mother protecting her young, a beautiful, brave, primal, and stupid thing to do. Stupid, because all the maternal will in the world wasn’t going to help. The monster batted her aside almost absently.

  “Mommy” Tiffany shrieked.

  Raven and I exchanged the quickest You do that and I’ll do this glance. He started throwing things at the monster—fruit, the fruit bowl (ow, cut-glass crystal, heavy), books from the nearest bookcase, anything to distract the monster. Anything to give me the opening I needed.

  Yes! I dove past the monster, almost landing on top of Tiffany.

  “You can stop this,” I told her.

  “Mommy!”

  “Tiffany, listen to me!” No, don’t yell, the kid is scared enough as it is. “It just wants to go home, Tiffany. It needs its mommy, too.”

  Which was a ridiculous thing to say about something that had torn off her father’s head. But Tiffany didn’t know that. And she was only five, after all.

  “Mommy?” she whimpered.

  “That’s right. It’s scared”—oh, right —”and that’s why it’s angry. Send him home, Tiffany
. Send him home.”

  “Go away!” she screamed at the monster with all the impressive power of a five-year-old’s lungs. “Go home!”

  Yes. Right words, right amount of will—and the monster did that sideways turn and vanished.

  “Mommy!” Tiffany cried, and zoomed to her mothers side.

  Mrs. Ex wasn’t badly hurt, fortunately, just shaken and bruised, as well as winded from having a five-year-old-child-shaped bullet hit her. But she clung to Tiffany with frantic strength, even as she stared at us in complete confusion. “What… ?”

  “Tiffany,” I said gently.

  She turned a tearstained face to me. “I didn’t do it. I didn’t!”

  “Tiffany, honey, no one’s angry at you. We just want to know how the monster got here.”

  “I didn’t… It was for Mommy.” Her eyes were innocent. “I mean, Mommy always said that magic was bad, that it had hurt Daddy. I knewit was why he didn’t like me. I thought if I tried very hard, the bad things would go away.”

  And instead, she’d drawn the creature out of its rightful dimension and dumped it here. With the command to kill Daddy’s magic. But Daddy hadn’t had any magic. So it had tried to tear it from him. Then it had gone after the next magic it could find that was related to him, Dexter Arcane’s rival. Next probably would have been the MBI. But we’d driven it back to as close as it could get to its home. By killing Tiffany, it would have broken the link to this dimension.

  Mrs. Ex was looking, understandably, like someone who has just had the underpinnings of her life kicked out from under her. How do you explain to someone that her own prejudices had led to her ex-husband’s death? How do you tell someone like that that her own daughter was a powerful wild talent?

  We left that for the MBI counselors.

  “Not exactly a happy ending,” I said to Raven as we headed back to the office.

  “Not many murder cases have one.”

  “Good point. Come on, Raven. We still have a couple of hours left on this case. Coffee?”

  “Yeah.”