by Jamie Wyman
“Right,” I murmured.
Loki straightened his spine and stood to his full height and gave a satisfied nod. “Good. Please look at our friend here and tell me what you see.”
It rekindled my nausea to do so, but I did as he bade and looked.
The young woman—somewhere in her twenties, I’d guess—had been crucified on the appropriately shaped wheel lift of the tow truck. Though I was fairly certain I’d never met her, she had a very common look about her. I’d seen a thousand women like her roaming Las Vegas, with her average height and build, long blond hair, and clothes that could have walked out of any chain store. Drop her in any crowd and she would’ve disappeared.
Well, minus the gory slashes in her chest and the massive wound to her skull.
The longer I stood there, the stronger the scents of flowers and sandalwood became, thankfully overpowering the stench of blood and my own vomit.
“Who is she?” I asked, voice weak.
“The daughter of a friend.”
The weight of his words pulled at his shoulders, and the smile lines on his face sagged into wrinkles. The god’s unfathomable age dawned on me as his features described what I’d felt in the air around him this whole time: weariness, yes, but also a very human grief. Whoever this girl was, Loki mourned her death.
Lifting his chin, he drew in a long breath, and as he did, Loki shed his sadness. He reclaimed the mantle of authority.
“I have a job for you,” he said firmly.
A nest of vipers rattled in my belly as I imagined all the horrible tasks he might have for me that involved a corpse. And yet, I had no idea what he might expect of me. By day, I do tech support. I rewire panic rooms, perform surgery on servers, and work literal magic with any number of mechanical problems thrown at me. One of the perks of being a technomancer is that I can talk to any machine and find out what’s wrong, then just ask it to play nice. I fix things. But a broken body on the back of a wrecker in the middle of nowhere? Way outside my area of expertise.
Bereft of a valid response, I nodded, signaling that Loki held my attention.
“Find her murderer.”
I blinked as those three words ricocheted around my brain. Stunned by the blunt force of his task, I glanced back up at the corpse on display. “Isn’t that, um, a job for the police?”
“Not possible. This woman is…” His voice trailed off as he searched for the appropriate word. Finally he settled on, “Unique.”
I let out a frayed thread of laughter. “You must have me mistaken for someone else, Loki, because I do tech support.”
“I do not make mistakes.”
“Do I look like Nancy fucking Drew?”
“You will find her murderer,” Loki said icily.
My voice grew shrill as my frustration mounted. “How? Take fingerprints? Do an autopsy?”
“You are a problem solver by nature,” he said, his tone rising to meet mine. “This is a problem, and I am asking you to use your innate skills. Solve it.”
“But why me?” I yelled. “You want me to hack into her e-mail or ask her cell phone if it saw something? I can do that. You want me to rewire her home security system? I can do that, too. But my innate skills have nothing to do with murder. It’s not like some TV drama; I don’t have a crime lab in my back pocket!”
Loki’s expression shifted from sad amusement to the epitome of stony wrath. “Despite these challenges, you will do this, Catherine Sharp, because I have commanded you to do it.”
The brand on my left wrist erupted with pain. I clutched my arm and tried to scream, managing only a choked rattle. My skin sizzled and frothed like acid, crawling with the sensation of a hive of angry bees swarming a predator. My eyes told me that I remained whole, unharmed, but my flesh felt as if it boiled away from my bones. I fell to my knees, and the burning stopped as abruptly as it had begun.
Loki loomed over me. When he spoke, his voice was low and stern with the warning of a father grown tired of a petulant teenager. “It’s true that I look like your kind, but that is only because I choose to wear the mask. Never forget, mortal: I am not just a man who signs your paychecks. Nor should you mistake me as Valhalla’s jester. I am the Shape Changer of Asgard, Bane of the Aesir. I bested giants and slew gods millennia before your ancestors left their Highland caves. And now I hold the right to your soul. Never forget that,” he hissed.
Still holding my arm to my chest, I bowed my head. “I won’t.”
“Good. From now on the only questions you ask will be useful.”
Chastened, I lurched to my feet. I’ve picked more than one fight with a mythical being in my time. I’ve intentionally pissed off satyrs, faeries, a djinn, various mages, and even a few deities. I’m not stupid enough to repeat the mistake when bitch-slapped by said being. Loki was right; I owed him fealty because my soul belonged to him. I didn’t like the arrangement, and it made me a little more than hotheaded to show my belly, but this was my life. And it sure beat any number of the alternatives.
I swallowed my pride, tossed a lock of red hair out of my face and got down to business. “So no police whatsoever. Am I allowed to know why?”
“Mundane law enforcement would never find her killer. More important, though, is that they not be allowed to discover her body.”
“Why?” The word flew out of me before I could think better of it.
He didn’t reprimand me. This time he just raised an eyebrow and stared at me until I got uncomfortable. I glanced at the girl again. She looked perfectly normal, but she could be something other than human. Loki had said she was unique. That could account for the secrecy.
“What is she?” I asked.
Loki breezed up to the wheel lift, and the orb of light flew from his hand to hover a few inches from the girl’s face. “Tell me what you see, Cat. Look past the corpse and read the story that is there.”
My stomach flopped. For a moment I thought I might need Loki’s bucket again, but I stepped up to the truck without puking. That scent of sandalwood and lilac grew denser, as did the fruity, stale odor of death. Shivering from both cold and fear, and gritting my teeth, I focused on the details as if I were examining something as sterile as a circuit board.
The blood staining her face was clotted around a thick gash at her left temple. Bruises had darkened that side of her face, too. Her bottom lip had split horizontally; either she’d bitten down hard on it or she’d been hit. A slash on her right cheek pointed to the snarl of her hair. Aside from a few rips in her shirt and a few scrapes on her chest and knees, the rest of her body appeared unmolested.
“Someone threw her,” I said. “Or maybe just grabbed her by the hair and slammed her into something hard?”
Loki nodded. “Go on.”
At each wrist, a bloody crust had formed a ring around a thick glob of metal. Slick with her lifeblood, the metal appeared to bubble up out of her flesh, as if it had been a liquid when it had stabbed through the girl’s wrists. I peered around the side of the truck and saw that her hands were indeed pinned to the metal beam by this steel. A crimson ember was glowing in the tiny space between her arm and the lift, and another bolt-blob thing was speared through her crossed ankles to anchor her to the truck.
“Not a faery,” I said. “The metal would have scorched her skin.”
“Only if it contains iron.”
“She’s not pretty enough,” I said bluntly. “The Fae are gorgeous creatures, and they feed off the attention it gets them. This girl is very plain. Off-the-rack jeans and a cable-knit sweater? No jewelry or makeup? She’s not looking to impress anyone.”
A wry smile played at the god’s lips. “And you wonder why I chose you?”
“Okay…but why you?”
He narrowed his eyes, not with annoyance but with curiosity and confusion. “What do you mean?”
“Why are you here? Why is it your job to outsource a murder investigation for this girl?” I said, punctuating my query with a jab of my finger toward the wheel lift.
“As I said, this is the daughter of a friend. I am doing this for him while he tends to other family concerns.”
“Ah, so it’s a favor.”
“Of a sort. And he asked for you specifically.”
My gut fell and my eyes widened, and I suddenly had that horrible feeling you get in those dreams when you show up to school naked and without your homework.
“What?” I may have yelped.
Loki barked another word in that harsh language and snuffed out the light. The girl’s form melted into the darkness. My terror-o-meter shot up about a bajillion points knowing that her corpse stared at me from just beyond the nearest shadow. Fears of monsters under the bed and zombie nightmares squirmed in my belly like slimy serpents.
Loki’s footsteps crunched as he ambled around the flank of the truck, and I rushed to catch up to him.
“What do you mean by that?” I squeaked.
“Her name is Muriel,” he stated, ignoring my question. He tossed something over his shoulder, and I flailed to catch it. “This is her phone. A woman of your talents should be able to make use of it.”
“Will I have any help?” I asked, pocketing the cell.
“None from me or mine. I’ve got my own irons in the fire, so to speak.” He let out a gruff sigh. “Look, Cat, I trust your judgment. If you have resources, by all means use them. When you find Muriel’s murderer, bring me the information and I will deal with it from there. That last part is important, Catherine. Do you understand?”
I pursed my lips and nodded. “Do not engage,” I said to let him know I understood. “Do I have a timetable?”
“As long as it takes to get it right. But don’t dally. I don’t know if this is an isolated incident. For all I know, this is the first play in a larger game. And to that end, please take care of yourself. The last thing I need is for you to get in trouble.”
“No worries, Boss. I’ve been drinking milk.”
Either he wasn’t amused or he just hadn’t grown up in the 1980s. Unfazed, he continued, “You’ve got the darts I gave you?”
I patted my pocket and felt the small, wooden shafts of the only weapons Loki had given me as his emissary: tiny arrows made of mistletoe and crude steel heads. They looked like something a jungle Pygmy might fire from a miniscule bow, but I’d seen them in action. Like their maker, these darts contained a few lethal secrets.
Loki nodded curtly. “Get to work.”
The wrecker’s door gave a plaintive squeal as Loki wrenched it open. He pulled himself into the cab and settled behind the wheel. My stomach knotted, and sweat tingled at my brow as the proverbial Red Alert klaxon went off in my head. The idea of him driving this macabre thing set me on edge.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
“She can’t be found.”
Loki started to close the door, but I grabbed the handle. This felt wrong. Blasphemous in a way. He couldn’t just drive the truck off into the desert. What about her family? Her friends? I chewed on the inside of my cheeks to keep from saying anything that might anger him. I thought of all the ways he might dispose of her body and quailed at the idea. This poor girl… She’d never get a proper funeral. She’d been through enough, hadn’t she?
“Where are you taking her?”
He slid his fingers through his strawberry-blond spikes then blew out a long breath. Meeting my eyes, he said, “You’re a good person, Cat Sharp. You’ve got heart, and I hope you never lose that. To that end, it’s best if you don’t know.”
I knew Loki well enough to understand that in his own weird way he was protecting me from something more terrible than a murder scene. My conscience is more calloused than tender, but a part of me appreciated that the god thought to shield me from further nightmare fodder. I let him win this one and let my fingers slip off the door handle.
Though he didn’t say anything, Loki nodded with finality…and a bit of approval.“There’s no key in the ignition,” he said. “Do you mind?”
I laid a hand on the front fender of the truck and sent a current of my will into it. Magic caressed the gears, and in seconds the engine growled to life, and Loki eyed me with a satisfied stare.
“You’re getting better, little mage,” he said. “Don’t disappoint me.”
He slammed the door and sped off, leaving me with a dead girl’s phone and the fading scent of sandalwood.
Chapter Two
“Hyper Music”
As I careened down the highway at not-so-legal speeds, I felt suspended in between. Out there in the dark nowhere, on my way back to the blinding brightness of Vegas, but in neither place. Shivering, I cranked the heater in my car until the air was as thick as my anger. I wanted to cry for her—Muriel. I wanted to lash out at whatever sick people had killed her. I wanted to tear into Loki with all of my rage for calling me, for making me look at a corpse I would never be able to unsee, for not being able to do his own work. For the crazy circumstances that led to this position where I owed a god fealty to the point that I’d put myself in the path of a murderer.
As my thoughts raged, Loki bore the brunt of my ire. Aren’t you a god? I fumed. Shouldn’t you be able to rewind the tape of reality? Can’t you read the hearts and minds of men to find out who did this? Isn’t that something gods can do?
Though I’d been working for various deities for a decade now, I still didn’t understand their mysterious ways.
Tendons popped as I gripped the steering wheel. I couldn’t settle on a single thought or emotion. One moment I waded through a thick, gelatinous melancholy that threatened to suck me down into tar pits of despair, and the next minute I burned with rage so intense I might spontaneously combust. Frustrated, angry, horrified, disgusted—I cycled through them with no rhyme and very little reason.
“Hold it together,” I whispered to myself.
The south end of the Strip came into view, the Luxor pyramid a welcome sight. Crossing from endless night into the perpetual glow that only Las Vegas could muster, I might as well have crawled into the Promised Land. My hands relaxed, and my shoulders sagged with relief.
Las Vegas is chaos, constant motion and sensory overload. There’s something about my city, though, that always seems to pierce the thickest weariness. I can watch currents race between the casinos as each sign draws from the same well of electricity. I see the patterns of light and energy that make up cell phones, tablets, laptops, even the fountains and attractions outside the hotels. They’re all connected by filaments of power, the same power I am able to tap into as a technomancer.
I understand electronics and machines. I grok the energy flowing through Sin City like some people understand music, sports, or economics. After my encounter with Loki—adrift with questions that His High Capriciousness refused to answer—the sight of my city anchored me. I hadn’t just returned to civilization; I basked in my comfort zone.
About twenty minutes later, the sky was already growing pale as dawn approached, and I pulled into the small gravel lot outside my apartment with a relieved sigh. My throat burned, and my muscles ached from my gastrointestinal pyrotechnics. Loki’s task would have to wait until I got a few hours of quality time with fleecy pajamas, a purring cat, and blessed shut-eye.
The gravel crunched lightly as I walked past my landlady’s place then padded through the courtyard of bottle caps and cigarette butts. As I neared my door, a shadow peeled away from the lamppost and blocked my path.
That’s new, I remarked to myself. And creepy as hell.
The air caught in my chest while the inky folds of void swirled around the shape of a body. I’d never seen someone make such an entrance, nor could I see a face in the darkness that the stranger wore like a voluminous cloak. Then, as if some great beast inhaled, the shadows receded to reveal a man.
Whip-thin and pushing six five, he towered over me. A scar cut a deep fissure down the left side of his long, narrow face, and his short silver hair, seemingly parted with a razor’s edge, matched his cold ey
es. Veins stood out, blue and thick, on the backs of his liver-spotted hands. As I scanned him, I searched for some mark like mine, a tattoo of allegiance or brand of servitude. If he had one, though, it remained hidden beneath the long sleeves of his shirt or the legs of his jeans.
The corner of his mouth twitched with the slightest of smiles, almost as if he welcomed my appraisal and waited for me to finish studying him. When he was content to do so, he greeted me. “Mage.”
I backed up a step or three and let out a breath. I curled my fingers around my keys out of instinct, ready to make like Wolverine and snikt this guy if he got too close.
“And you are?”
“We have mutual contacts,” he said, voice mellow but evasive. He took a step toward me, hands out to his sides as if to pacify me.
“That doesn’t tell me much, and your little trick with the shadows there doesn’t exactly inspire me to think we share friends. Who are you?”
“I am Grey.” He paused as if this was supposed to ring all my bells. When I didn’t praise the heavens that he’d finally arrived, he rolled his eyes and continued. “Francis Grey. I believe that you, Miss Sharp, have something I need.”
Another step toward me.
Grey’s hands moved in close to his body, and I tightened my grip on the keys. I slid a foot back to solidify my stance and mentally tried to remember all those self-defense tips I’d learned in college.
I kept my voice as neutral as possible. “And what is it that you think I have?”
“The veil.”
I wrinkled my face in honest confusion. “What veil?”
“It does not belong to you, nor does it belong to him. If you’d please turn it over to me, I’d be in your debt.”
Him who? What veil? Why the hell is everyone being so glib tonight?
While running through possible exit strategies, and working on figuring out what this guy might be talking about, I realized that Grey reminded me of a middle school principal asking me to snitch on a friend. He oozed a sort of tainted charm, an ease with me that said he’d done his homework and thought he could pretend we were old friends. I liked him even less for that.