by Ben Reeder
“All right, so your buddy Julian was talking about something called a mage war going on between you two. For something like this, you're probably going to be tried as an adult. And with your rap sheet, there ain't a jury on the planet that won't convict you in ten seconds flat.”
“Except for the part where I didn't do it.”
“Yeah, why am I having a hard time buying that?” He gave me a smile that dared me to convince him.
“Probably because that'd mean you'd have to think.” I saw him move, and willed myself not to flinch when he lunged to his feet and slammed his fist down on the table. As it was, I still jumped. Just a little. Purely for dramatic effect.
“Dave, chill,” Collins said over my left shoulder. He stepped up beside me and hitched himself up to sit half on the table's corner where he could face me. It was time for the good cop to give me a little hope, stand up for me and show me how I could salvage things.
“Look, kid, make it easy on yourself. If you did this, 'fess up, and we'll try to keep this in the juvenile court. If you didn't, you're going to need a damn good alibi. Word is, you're big into magic, and your files full of some pretty weird stuff. Stealing medical waste, grave robbery, animal sacrifices, you name it. My partner's right, it's looking pretty bad for you right now. You can help yourself out—” he was interrupted by the door swinging open.
“I gather that I haven't missed the actual custodial interrogation?” a smooth, cultured voice said from the hallway. My eyes went to the open door, and went wide.
“Well, well, well,” Simms sneered. “You got Kyle Vortigern representing you, boy? Now I know you did it.”
Vortigern stepped into the room like he owned it. His charcoal-colored suit even matched the paint. If I was any judge, it was handmade, probably by someone on Savile Row, and it probably cost more than half the salary of most of the cops in the building. He was the kind of lawyer who won, and won big. The kind of guy guilty people with lots of money hired to make their problems go away. People like my father. Usually, he wouldn't have been caught within a hundred miles of an interrogation room. His black hair was slicked back against his head, and his eyes, a cold sapphire blue, took in the room with all of the disdain of a prince in a pigsty.
“Your assumption of my client's guilt warms my heart, gentlemen,” he said with a frosty smile.
Another man came in behind him and gave me a dark look. Where Vortigern commanded the eye, Tad Zucherman just tried to fill it. The word that always came to my mind when I saw him was beefy. He might have been someone's All-American Boy once, but now, he looked like he'd been living on a steady diet of lemons and salt. His mouth puckered in a permanent scowl, and I had never seen his eyebrows separate. It looked like two caterpillars had a head-on collision over his nose.
“Well, Fortunato, I'd wondered when you'd turn up again,” he said, by way of greeting. Zucherman had been my juvenile officer. Between my father and Dulka, he'd never been able to get anything to stick on me.
“Good to see you again, too, Mr. Zucherman.”
“Gentlemen,” Vortigern said. “I'd like a word with my client.”
All three cops trooped out of the room like guilty children.
“What in the Nine Hells are you doing here!” I said as soon as the door closed. I had to keep my hands under the table to keep him from seeing them shake. I already owed him enough for helping me get free from Dulka and work things so that my mom had custody of me.
“Protecting my investment, Mister Fortunato. You still owe me a favor, and you cannot repay it to me if you are serving twenty five to life for the murder of a pissant warlock.” He sat across from me in the chair Simms had just vacated. “We should start by establishing your alibi for the time of the murder, which I can do for you well beyond a reasonable doubt. All I need to know is where you were at the time, and I'm sure multiple witnesses can be found to establish your presence there.”
“I was asleep at home until about seven. My mom and my friends can vouch for that. After that, my friends and I went to a girl's house, then I went to the Square to find Julian.”
“We'll leave out that last, but I think that once we've established your alibi, you'll do well to keep a somewhat higher profile than you normally do. You'll need to avoid your usual haunts and practices, anything that could link you to this.” He stood and went to the door before I could say anything.
“You done?” Simms asked from the hallway. “Good, cuz we got us some more questions. Now that you're all lawyered up, kid, I hope you're ready for a long haul.” He stepped in past Vortigern and took his chair back.
Collins and Zucherman followed him in, and Simms laid a thick file folder on the table and smiled at me like he was about to eat me. Kyle closed the door slowly and paced to my side with measured, tightly controlled steps.
“My client has an alibi for the entirety of this evening, Detective Simms. I will produce witnesses who will testify to his whereabouts. Including several of your own officers, if need be.”
“That's great, I'm sure he does. But you know, there's one thing I was hoping you could tell us. Where were you on December sixth? How about February second? Or January seventeenth?”
“I fail to see the relevance of this line of questioning, officer, and must therefore advise my client not to answer.”
“You want relevance, counselor?” Simms said. “How's this for relevance?”
He pulled a photo from the file and slid it across the table at me. Another followed it, and a third. Each one showed a circle of Lemurian runes. The first one was done on a linoleum floor, the second against a brick wall, and the third, against a concrete surface.
I felt the blood drain from my face as I looked them over. The photos were in black and white, but I knew that the rune circles would have been the dark brown of dried blood.
“Circles of unusual-looking symbols? Really, Detective Simms, is the rank of detective so easily earned these days that any simpleton can achieve it?” Vortigern put his index finger against one of the pictures and turned it so he had a better look, then tilted his head to give Simms a condescending glance.
Simms didn't glare back at him. Instead, he looked to Collins, who had taken his usual place in the corner under the video camera. He shook his head and came around to stand beside his partner.
“Each of these was found around the same time these kids went missing,” Collins said. He slid three more pictures across the table at us.
The first thing I noticed was the fact that they were all different races. An Asian boy, one black girl, and a round-faced Hispanic girl with a sweet smile looked back at me from yearbook and family photos. I recognized two of them as former clients of mine from when I worked for Dulka. One was a wanna-be sorcerer who’d never given me his real name, and the other was a girl named Monique Dawes who had an abusive ex with a talent for violence. I'd done a handful of protection charms for her back before I’d escaped. The third girl I didn't recognize.
“Each of these was found within half a mile of the last place they were seen,” Collins continued. “Your client was seen with two of them on several occasions. His email address was on both their computers, attached to messages about magic spells and charms. We have a consultant on the occult who verifies that these things are legit, and they're the kind of thing your client is known to have dabbled in.”
He was lying about the last part. Very few people might have been able to place Lemurian sigils, but no one, short of my father or Dulka, could have associated me with them.
“These look like the markings I saw next to Julian,” I said. My voice didn't carry far, but it didn't have to.
Simms grinned like a loon.
“So, you recognize them, don't you? You didn't think we'd catch on to you, did you boy?”
“My client has admitted to no such thing. He is merely making an observation based on things he saw at a crime scene earlier this evening. The connection was made by you, Detective, by laying down information in fro
nt of him in a case he is not a part of.”
“Bullshit!” Simms barked. “Your boy here as good as confessed to doing this when he saw those pictures!”
“It's the same reaction you'd get if someone handed you a bottle with a bio-hazard label on it and told you to be reallllll careful with it. If you know what these symbols mean. I didn't do any of this . . . but I can help you find whoever did.”
Simms and Vortigern both tried to talk over each other.
“No deals, you little son of a bitch!”
“Mister Fortunato, I must ask you to reconsider!”
“Both of you! SHUT! THE HELL! UP!” I screamed. Dead silence fell. I pointed to Collins. “I'll talk to him, off the record.”
“Your lawyer stays, too,” Collins said. I didn't like it, but I nodded. Simms and Zucherman headed for the door after he gave them a nod.
“Captain Cronkite's gonna hear about this,” Simms muttered.
“Call him,” Collins said. His voice was level and cool, and I saw Simms' face lose a little of the bravado.
The door shut, and Collins turned and looked over his shoulder at the mirror. A couple of moments later, I saw a light go on behind it, revealing a video camera on a tripod, and an otherwise empty room.
“What about that one?” I asked with a gesture over my shoulder at the black bulb near the ceiling.
“Video only, no sound. It's the best you're gonna get.”
“Are you quite sure this is prudent Mister Fortunato?” Vortigern asked.
“Prudent? Probably not, but it's the least stupid choice I figure I can make.”
“I tremble in anticipation at the prospect of hearing your logic in this decision,” Vortigern said.
“Sarcastic much? All right, here's the deal. I don't know who your occult expert is, but I can bet that they haven't seen these before. They're from the G'Honn Fragments, and they're written in ancient Lemurian.”
“How can you be sure?” Collins asked.
“There are only thirty one of the G'Honn Fragments known. I've seen four of them, and I know for a fact that only one of them has ever been in human hands. It was recovered during the Crusades. The rest of them are either accounted for or lost.”
“Who has these things?”
“I highly recommend you not answer that, my boy. You may commit more egregious offenses in the process,” Vortigern said.
“Can it, he already knows. Mostly demons, a couple of vampires. I think a drake has a couple, too.”
“A drake?” Collins asked.
“A young dragon,” I said.
“So, how do you know how to read this forgotten language?”
“Demon's apprentice, remember? Besides, it's not forgotten. You just really don't want to meet anything that speaks it.”
“So, what's the deal with these? I need details, kid, something to impress the captain with and get you off the hook for this. Something I can verify.”
“Okay, first off, these outer rings would have been done in blood, but not the blood of the victims. The victims' blood would only be in this little circle here,” I pointed to a spot to the lower right of the central sigil.
Collins scribbled on his note pad.
“The rest of it is animal's blood. Probably pig or something else unclean.” I looked closely at the three pictures and started noting details.
“I fail to grasp how giving the police details only the person who performed these rituals would know amounts to being the least stupid choice you can make,” my Infernal lawyer commented.
“Shows I know what I'm talking about,” I muttered as I went from photo to photo. “If I offer to help, and tell them things even their occult expert missed, they know I’m the real deal.”
“Thereby establishing your credentials beyond a reasonable doubt and proving that you are acting in good faith,” Vortigern said with something like approval. “A bit more generous than I prefer, but somewhat more effective in the long term.”
There were markings around the edge of the circles that made something in the back of my memory twitch. Each circle had the same symbols in different places. I rolled my sleeve up and looked at the fading Lemurian blood tattoo I'd carved into my right biceps almost a year ago. No symbols crawled along the outside of the miniature circle.
“What the hell!” Collins said. “Kid, how am I supposed to keep you out of this as a suspect with shit like that tattooed on you?”
“As a former insider who left the cult, one who is offering to turn his knowledge of its inner workings to its downfall,” Vortigern offered smoothly.
I arranged the photos in front of me and looked at the symbols again, then rearranged them.
“Is this the right order?” I asked Collins.
He shook his head and reversed the second and third pictures. “That's the one we found in January, and then the one from February.”
“Right. Mars was in retrograde until the end of February. These are planetary symbols. The darker ones set the circle's place in time from when they were done, and these empty ones, see how they're all the same? They must be where the planets are going to be later. Like . . . when the whole ritual's done. This is part of something bigger, a ritual that's still going on. ” I looked up to see Collins' face go dark.
“What kind of ritual?”
“I don't know. A big one. If Julian's death is a part of it, then it's got at least one more piece to go before it's done. Big rituals like this usually have nine or thirteen parts, and they don't go off quietly. They're messing around with reality, so you get the standard 'portents of doom' thing going on as they get closer to being finished.”
“Like hordes of locusts and raining fire?”
“Yeah, like that. Lots of warning.” I gave him a mocking smile.
A knock sounded on the door.
“I take it this is sufficient to clear my client?” Vortigern asked with a perfunctory smile.
“Yeah. I'll ask to have him declared as a confidential informant. We can keep his name out of the public records between that and him being a juvenile.” As he collected the pictures and closed the folder, as the tapping came again on the door, this time more insistent. He crossed to the door and yanked it open.
“The kid's mom's here,” a new voice said. “And she's pretty pissed.”
“First you, now my mom. Who called you, anyway?” I asked Vortigern, after Collins left. The door was standing open, which pretty much meant the interview part was over. I got up and headed for the doorway, and he followed.
“The police. Mr. Zucherman called the last contact number he had, which was that of your father's attorney. He appears to have informed your juvenile officer of your new representation, to wit, myself. I, however, did not contact your mother. Even I am loath to incur the wrath of a protective Romany mother without very good cause.”
“So, what do I owe you for this?”
“In mundane terms, this is pro bono. I am merely protecting my investment. There will come a time when you return the favor.” He was smiling when he said it, and that bugged me more than any price he could have named.
Mom and Dr. C were waiting for us at the exit. I knew right then who their occult expert was. I also knew he was the same guy who had called my mom. Mom was in a pair of black sweats and a white t-shirt, with her hair pulled back into a thick ponytail that hung down to the middle of her back. She had her purse slung across one shoulder, a big hand-woven monster made with black, blue, and green yarn in alternating rows. Dr. C looked only a little rumpled, in tan cargo pants and a light jacket over a blue polo shirt. He had an overstuffed satchel slung over his shoulder, probably filled with books. Collins was talking to them as we came to the thick glass door.
“Look, when we get out—” I started to say, but Vortigern was no longer at my side. “Now that wasn't just creepy,” I muttered to myself as I opened the door.
Conversation stopped as I stepped into the lobby. Three pairs of eyes turned to me, and I got the feeling I had been
the topic of conversation. And of course, Mom had to choose that moment to give in to her maternal instincts.
“Son, what happened to you?” she said as she swooped in on me.
My mom's mothering wasn't the usual wadded up tissue or fussing. She reached out and put her fingers on the left side of my face, her thumb on my chin, and tilted my face so she could see the scrapes.
“I fell,” I told her as her right hand probed the raw skin. I tried not to wince, but it hurt like all Hell.
“Mm-hmm,” she said. In mom-speak, it meant she didn't believe it, and I was expected to know it and be suitably chagrined. Her head only turned slightly, but I felt her gaze slide off of me and fall on Collins. “What really happened to my son, Mr. Collins?”
“It would have to be like he said, Miss Murathy,” Collins replied. “Cuz if he got those scrapes while he was running from the police, we'd have to charge him with resisting arrest. Your son is too smart to do something like that.”
He slid my backpack off his shoulder and handed it to me. Mom frowned as it shimmered into sight for a moment. He made his excuses and headed back into the depths of cop-land, leaving me between Mom and Dr. C.
On my own.
Coward.
I looked at Mom, who stood few inches shorter than me, and felt like she had a foot on me. She shot a sharp glance over my shoulder at Dr. C, then she turned the full weight of her glare on me.
“All right, son. You tried it your way and ended up in jail. Now you're going to do it Mom's way. I don't want to get called away from the house again this weekend. Am I understood, young man?” She was trying to sound like she was scolding me, but the worry I heard in her voice was worse than any ass-chewing she could give me.
“Yes, ma'am,” I told her. Again, her eyes went to Dr. C, and I wondered just what they'd been talking about before I came out.
“For the rest of the weekend, you are grounded. You're to be at Dr. Corwyn's researching the Maxilla, or at home eating, sleeping, or helping with chores. Nowhere else. Trevor, you are not to let my son leave your sight unless he's where I can see him. If he's not trying to find what he's supposed to be looking for, he should be doing whatever other lessons you have for him, or something else that builds character and isn't fun. Do you understand me?”