Unveiled (Etudes in C# Book 2)

by Jamie Wyman

  I’d never fallen for his bullshit satyr charms, but I’d be lying to myself and all the gods if I said I didn’t find Marius attractive. There in the room, his persistent stare wriggled beneath my skin, and I remembered all the reasons I couldn’t hate him. And after the whole poker game fiasco last year, I’d come to think of him as a sort of friend. While the past months had been free of Marius’s annoyances, it was good to see him again.

  Why the hell did he have to show up at a murder scene? Fucking satyr.

  I ducked away from him, still seeking the trail of a killer I may have invented. “How’s Eris?”

  “Oh, you know,” he sang, cuffed hands in his lap. “Sowing the seeds of disaster and misfortune, delighting in the torment of others.”

  “So, still the same old bitch with a stick shoved up her ass.”

  “I can neither confirm nor deny the presence of anything in Eris’s nethers.”

  By that time, the others had started searching, too. Nate checked behind curtains while Flynn and Karma examined the bathroom.

  I opened the closet, but no axe murderers came flying out. Empty hangers dangled on the rod. “Been to any good poker games lately?”

  “Actually, no. The game is off for the foreseeable future.”

  “Well, with Eris out of Vegas, I can see that.”

  “Oh, it’s not that. The gods can gather anywhere for their games. No, the rub is that the Dealer has gone missing.”

  I shot Marius a look of surprise. I remembered the lantern-jawed dealer, who served as a neutral party, maintaining rule and order in a game among liars and thieves. His platinum-blond hair and barrel chest were like something out of a comic book. I’d never caught his name.

  “Missing?” I asked.

  “Well,” Marius said, chains jingling as he moved, “no one has come right out and said as much, but I am quite adept at reading between the lines. He hasn’t kept appointments or been seen publicly in months. There are rumors that he has gone into hiding. And he’s not the only one. Two or three of the older gods have up and disappeared. Even the Almighty himself has shuffled off somewhere.”

  I blinked.

  The room went silent. Nate’s mouth hung open, aghast. Flynn’s brow furrowed.

  “Wait, the Almighty?” Karma asked, her curls twitching. “Are we talking about Odin?”

  I shook my head, “You’re thinking of the Allfather. That’s Odin. The Almighty is… Um, Marius are we talking about—” I pointed to the ceiling. “—the Big Guy?”

  “Who else would I be talking about?”

  I’d never heard anyone confirm the existence of the standard version of God before. And now He was supposedly missing? That might explain some of the bullshit on earth. “What the hell is happening?”

  Marius shrugged. “Power struggles within pantheons, perhaps. Internal affairs. Or maybe someone just decided to go on walkabout. Eternity can be a devilishly long time.”

  I shook my head. I didn’t need to try wrapping my brain around divine politics when I had a murder to solve. Not to mention that I now saw it as a personal challenge to unravel the secret of the veil. And to top it all off, I had to prove that Marius wasn’t a killer. Goddamn goatfucker.

  “How long have you been in town?” I asked warily.

  “A week. I would’ve called you sooner to collect that date, but I’ve been working, you see.”

  “There’s no one here, Cat,” Flynn called as he and Karma left the bathroom.

  Nate stared a hole in the satyr. “So guess what that means?”

  “Now wait just a damn minute,” I said.

  Three loud bangs shook the door. “Police!” a gruff voice called. “Open up!”

  “Shit,” I hissed.

  “Now might be a good time to run,” Marius said. He held up his hands and stretched toward Flynn. “If you please.”

  Nate grabbed at the chains. “I don’t think so, murderer.” He lashed the satyr to the foot of the bed and made for the door.

  I grabbed Nate by the shoulder. “What are you doing?” I asked.

  “Opening the door.”

  “We can’t be found here,” I said.

  “Why not? We’re innocent. And they’re officers of the law. We are on the same side.”

  I shook my head, holding my temples. “You can’t be this naive.”

  He chuffed out his dissatisfaction but remained silent. Shrugging out of my grip, he gave Marius a long, hateful stare.

  “Open up!” a cop shouted.

  Nate turned to obey, but I grabbed him, pleading, “You cannot open that door.”

  “I’m going to, Cat,” he said. “I must.”

  “Why?”

  “If I don’t, I’ll be just as guilty as he is.”

  I pulled at my hair and let out a syllable of frustration.

  The cops knocked again. “Open this door,” he said, “or we’ll enter by force.”

  “Cat,” Flynn said. He motioned for me to join him and Karma in the farthest corner of the room. “Come here. Quick.”

  The tattoos on his arms began to glow deep orange as he drew on his power.

  “What are you doing?” I asked, taking up a place beside him.

  “Hiding us.”

  “What about me?” Marius said.

  Flynn ignored him. “Nate won’t hide, but there’s no reason we can’t. We’ll wait this out.”

  Marius met my eyes, his gaze stony and accusing. Don’t leave me here, that look said. I stared right back. Dread clamped around my breastbone and squished my stomach. I couldn’t just stand there…could I?

  I didn’t have time.

  Nate was at the door, hand on the knob.

  The air bent and wobbled. Just outside my peripheral vision, I glimpsed rain, orange glyphs falling in a curtain. Though nothing changed, I felt the power humming around us, sensed it like a wall of static energy less than an inch from my nose. Somehow Flynn had cloaked us. I made a mental note to ask which chapter that fell under in the Technomancer’s Handbook and why I hadn’t gotten a copy.

  Then I felt truly stupid. We’d been looking for physical evidence. For some bad man with a proverbial smoking gun hiding behind a curtain. What if we hadn’t found Polly’s real killer because he’d been using a cloaking spell similar to the one I now cowered under?

  Oh fuck! I chewed on the inside of my cheek to keep from yelling out loud.

  My eyes darted around the room, seeking any trace of magic. Peering through Flynn’s spell, I only found islands of power: Polly’s body, Marius, Nate’s blinding aura… I couldn’t stay focused. There was just too much magical interference.

  Nate opened the door and held his hands up as three uniformed officers entered the room.

  “Officer,” Nate said calmly, “this man killed my friend. I came to see her and found him leaving the room and the woman dead.”

  One of the officers twitched his nostrils, his eyes whipped from Nate to the corpse to the satyr bound to the bed. In one quick, practiced motion, he’d drawn his sidearm and aimed it at Nate.

  “Against the wall,” he barked. “Now.”

  A second officer tore into the room and over to Polly’s body while the third covered her, his own gun trained on Marius.

  This will only end badly.

  “Oh God,” the cop whispered over the corpse. She keyed the radio on her shoulder and began a litany of police codes. The address of the hotel.

  I closed my eyes as voices tumbled over one another.

  “Just coming to visit my friend…”

  “…two male suspects, one unresponsive female with multiple injuries.”

  “…anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law.”

  “I’ve been quite naughty, officer, but not as you might think.”

  I smirked, just imagining Marius holding out those pink fuzzy handcuffs as part of his explanation. I bet he even batted his eyelashes.

  Metal jangled, accompanying the ratchet noises of handcuffs. I
opened my eyes. Hands bound behind his back, Nate sedately walked out of the room with one of the officers. The other two cops gathered the chains that held Marius.

  “Turn around, please,” the lady cop said tersely. “Hands on your head. You have the right to remain silent.”

  As she spewed off the Miranda rights and locked a pair of all-too-real manacles on Marius, he turned his head, eyes reaching through the cloak and piercing into me. The corner of his moustache hitched in a sad sort of grin. You’re letting them take me?

  Flynn’s hand around my wrist kept me from stepping out of the veil.

  Veil! I looked to Karma. She held the white scarf clutched to her chest. Was that it? If so, why had the killer left it behind? All of this for a swatch of fabric? All this death and destruction? For what? What does the damn thing do?

  The room emptied as the police shoved Marius out the door, leaving us with Polly’s lifeless body.

  “Come on,” Flynn whispered. “We walk out the door and back to the car. Stay calm and quiet. And don’t let go.”

  Glyphs glowed down in the depths of Flynn’s ember-bright pupils. He gripped my wrist tightly, fingers searing my skin. Step by precarious step, the three of us crossed the room silent as wraiths. Out the door single file. Down the sidewalk. Creep, creep, creep past the ice machine. Out in the parking lot, red and blue lights painted the asphalt. Nate slouched in the back of one squad car, head back against the seat, eyes closed in a meditative calm. Does he really think he just avenged his sister in some way?

  Marius simmered in the second black-and-white. His sharp gaze darted around the car, then to the officers. He was already plotting an escape. If anyone could slip out of police custody and vanish, it would be Marius.

  Flynn tugged at me. As we skirted the edge of the police line, falling in behind a growing number of gawkers, Flynn dropped the cloaking spell. We blended into the amassing crowd and slipped to his car. A siren screamed as an ambulance rocketed into the lot. Flynn used that cacophony to mask the sound of his engine starting, and we zoomed out of the lot.

  No cop cars followed us.

  No chases ensued.

  We’d gotten away. And I felt like shit about it.

  Chapter Fifteen

  “Map of the Problematique”

  In the grand old tradition of Las Vegas, I rode along in a state of stunned shock, feeling like I’d lost everything but what I’d eaten that morning. I clung to that fact with pride because it meant I hadn’t tossed my Lucky Charms when confronted with the grisly mess that had once been Polly.

  Congratulations, I sneered to myself. In the past two days you’ve desensitized yourself to gore and can look at a mutilated corpse without spewing into a bucket. Bully for you.

  How the fuck had everything gotten so tangled? I’d set out to find Muriel’s killer, gotten attacked by mages looking for some veil, only to find out that it belonged to the deceased’s friend, a Muse. Then she turns up half eaten, and I find Marius of all people standing over her corpse. And for the cherry on top, Nate goes and gets both of them captured by mortal law enforcement.

  What the hell, Loki? As I thought it, I pushed up the sleeve of Polly’s doeskin jacket and brushed my fingers over my brand. A chill filled me, and when I exhaled, I saw my breath. He was listening, but did he give a damn? Or was he just sitting there laughing at my expense?

  What is the game this time? I asked him silently.

  “We have to get Nate out of there,” Karma said.

  I flashed a look of contempt in her direction. “And why should we do that exactly?”

  Her face darkened, her cotton candy hair flushing with a deeper blue. “You didn’t seriously ask me that, did you?”

  “Nate chose to open that door. He chose to go with the police. If he wants to be a goddamn altar boy and follow every rule to the letter, then let him. If we go get anyone, it’s Marius.”

  Karma responded with a vehement, “Oh hell no!”

  Flynn, only slightly less adamant, said, “Cat, I know he’s a friend of yours, but you’ve got to admit that it looks like Marius killed Polly.”

  I shook my head. “There’s something missing here.” Biting my lip, I pondered all that had happened, seeking connections. Nate, Polly, Muriel, the veil, the mages, Marius…

  Finally, I asked the one person who might be able to help fill in my gaps. “What can you tell me, Karma?”

  Gazing out the window, she chewed my question and watched dusk creep in. After a lengthy silence she said, “Nothing.”

  Fuck it, I thought. I’m just going to ask. “Is Nate a Muse, too?”

  Karma let out a noise that may have been a laugh or a sob. “No.”

  “All twelve of the Muses are female,” Flynn offered quietly. “Daughters of Zeus, each a goddess of sorts in her own right.”

  “Then was Muriel a Muse?” I asked.

  “No,” Karma moaned. “Christ, Cat, I didn’t even know that Polly was a Muse until today.” Karma stroked Polly’s scarf—no, the veil of Polyhymnia. “Just when you think you know somebody…”

  I sighed. Damn did I know that feeling. Pinching the bridge of my nose, I tried to ward off the headache that was settling behind my eyes. “Flynn, what else can you tell me about the Muses? I mean, I know they give people ideas—poets, musicians, artists, that kind of thing.”

  The air around Flynn shivered as he drew power, but he didn’t bring up a screen. No, Flynn was tapping directly into the ether to get information, accessing Google within his own mind.

  “That’s about it, Cat. They’re creatures of thought and creativity. Polyhymnia is the oldest of them. Her talents make the mundane sacred.”

  I tilted my head. “Come again?”

  “Let’s say you’re an ancient Greek poet and you’re writing an ode to Zeus, Artemis, or Apollo. Those words start as thoughts and feelings. Once you write them, though, they’re still just scribbles on a page. It was Polyhymnia that breathed into those words and made them holy. She could turn a poem into a hymn.”

  “So what about the veil? What’s so special about it?”

  Flynn shifted in his seat to look at the scarf draped over Karma’s knees. “Good question.”

  “You don’t know?”

  “I’ve got nothing.”

  Tired, brain fried, and ready to drive to Asgard to kick Loki’s ass between his shoulders, I dragged my hand down my face. I joined Karma in staring out the window.

  A dull, gray evening was settling over Sin City. She doesn’t give a damn about dismal weather, though. As twilight descended, streetlamps flickered on and the southernmost end of the Strip came to life. Beams of gold light pulsed up the obsidian slopes of the Luxor pyramid. At the top, a ray shot up into the darkening sky, a beacon calling to those in the south and urging them to the oasis. Excalibur, New York-New York, and the emerald green MGM Grand glittered on either side of Las Vegas Boulevard, enticing the crowds with their flashy themes. Farther ahead, purple bulbs blazed over Paris, a bit of Europe in the middle of the Southwest. Crowds gushed out of hotels and onto the sidewalks, beginning the nightly crawl from club to club, pit to pit, bet to bet, in hopes of the next great high.

  As Flynn drove farther north, I wondered if he had a plan. “Where the hell are we going anyway?” I asked.

  “My place,” Flynn said tersely.

  “No!” Karma and I said together.

  “We have to get Marius,” I argued.

  Karma shook her head. “No! We need to get Nate.”

  I snorted with laughter. “Good luck with that. The guy who willingly went with them. You know, I bet he’s never so much as jaywalked!”

  “He can’t help it, Cat, it’s part of who he is.”

  Flynn made every attempt to be consoling as he laid a gentle hand on Karma’s thigh. “We can bail out Nate when we find out where they’re taking him.”

  “And just leave Marius?” I squawked.

  “Cat,” Flynn warned, eyes flicking to meet mine in the rearview. �
�He’s where he should be.”

  “How can you say that?”

  “Easily!” Karma chimed in.

  Sitting in the center of the backseat, I braced myself with a hand on each of their shoulders. Poking my nose around to Karma, I hoped I could appeal to her desire to get her friend. “We find Marius, we’ll also find Nate.”

  “Nate doesn’t deserve to be in the back of a squad car, let alone jail. That friend of yours is a different story.”

  “Face it, Cat,” Flynn said. “Marius got caught, and he needs to take his medicine. He’s not who you think he is.”

  “There’s a lot of that going around,” Karma muttered dejectedly.

  Frustrated, angry, and tired of being the only one in the car thinking clearly, I punched down at both backseat wheel wells. I shoved my will through the ether and into the radio. Static crackled in the air, then solidified into rapid voices droning over one another in a tinny blur. Codes. Numbers.

  “What are you doing?” Karma asked.

  White light filled my vision, and I answered by pouring more power into my work. “Finding them.”

  “Oh,” Karma said, “Maybe Flynn can drive real fast and pull up alongside the cruiser. You can climb out and pull some Indiana Jones shit to pull your satyr friend out of the backseat while knocking out the driver and sending him over a cliff in a fiery ball.”

  “Police scanner?” Flynn asked me.

  “Yup.”

  He raised an eyebrow at me in the rearview mirror. “You’re honestly thinking we should go bust Marius and Nate out of jail?”

  “Yup.”

  Flynn eyed me again, his face drawn and serious now. “And if I say no?”

  “Then we’ll find out if piloting your car from the backseat is like playing a game of Grand Theft Auto.”

  Five minutes later, I knew where the squad cars would be taking our friends. And Flynn turned the car around without me having to get angry.

  …

  Off the Strip, in the shadow of the Las Vegas Convention Center, an imposing edifice of white concrete and glass loomed in the deepening night. This branch of the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department loomed between apartment complexes and small hotels. In case one couldn’t see the “No Parking” signs staked every few feet, red lines smeared the curbs. Flynn circled the large city block, and I took in as much as I could from the backseat.