Matt winced. “Why?”
“Their prison is slowly collapsing,” Golem said. “The Queen of Nightmares might have been the weakest of the Thirteen, but her ability to extend her mind into the dreaming was unmatched. It stands to reason that if she could get an ally on this side, she could break out of her prison ahead of her comrades and start preparing the ground for their eventual rise to power.”
“Or leave them locked away while she takes supreme power for herself,” Matt said slowly, feeling his heartbeat starting to race. “Can she do that?”
“I do not know,” Golem said. “She may have sworn oaths to her fellows, oaths that would make it impossible to betray them if she walks into a mana-rich area. Or she may believe that she can break down the rest of the prisons from the outside.”
Matt scowled. Golem knew a great deal, but there were far too many curious gaps in his knowledge. Starting with the obvious question of just what Enchanter had done to imprison the Thirteen in the first place.
“All right,” he said, calmly. “Just what happened here.”
Golem looked down at the body. “Someone touched by the Queen of Nightmares...”
Matt interrupted. “Doesn't she have a name?”
“If I speak her name out loud, she will hear,” Golem said, “and then she will know that we know about her. And then she will advance her plans.”
He spoke onwards before Matt could say another word. “The person she...controls killed the girl and took her mana for himself,” he continued. “That will give him a considerable reserve of mana to draw on at will. Now that he has successfully mastered the act, we must assume that he will kill again and again until he has enough mana to break through the locks on the prison and release the Queen of Nightmares from her confinement. And then she will be free.”
Matt nodded, trying to think. “And how many victims does it need to break into the prison?”
“I do not know,” Golem said. “The fact that mana is leaking back into the world is proof that the prison is already collapsing. It may be already too late.”
“But there’s no way to know for sure,” Matt said. “Can you pick up any traces of whoever did this?”
“No,” Golem said. “I am not as sensitive to magic as a human would be. And even if I was, the backwash from the ritual murder would have wiped out most of the traces. It may be impossible to track the killer before it is too late.”
Matt smiled. “That was your world,” he said, hoping he sounded confident. Golem was acting as though the battle was already lost. “This is ours. The forensic team will go through the house with a fine-toothed comb and see what they can find.”
He led Golem back outside, into the bright sunlight, and spoke rapidly with the NYPD’s incident coordinator. A full forensic team had already been assembled; as soon as Matt authorised it, they moved into the house and started work. Matt left them to get on with it and headed down towards one of the police vans, where a junior officer was handing out coffee and sandwiches. Taking a mug for himself, he motioned for Golem to join him and brought up the preliminary NYPD report on the scene. Some detectives had been working for hours before Matt and Golem had arrived.
The victim’s name was Sandra Mei Yeager, a sixteen-year-old only child with parents who had both been working overnight when she died. A detective was already checking out their alibis; the updated note proved that the mother, at least, had been in company when her daughter had been murdered. Matt would have been surprised to discover that her parents had sacrificed their only daughter, but it was a possibility. They’d learned to watch for honour killings after they’d come to public attention.
There were no reports of the neighbours having seen anything out of the ordinary, unsurprisingly. It was the kind of neighbourhood where no one ever saw anything. They’d certainly had no reason to suspect the parents of anything, apart from being loners who kept themselves to themselves. Police officers would follow up on any leads generated by the remaining interviews, but Matt suspected that it would be useless. The only sour note had been a teenage boy, an ex-boyfriend, who’d called Sandra a cock-tease. Someone might have murdered her after she’d pushed him too far, he’d said. His words had put him right at the top of the list of suspects, which – so far – had only two names.
Matt swore out loud as he read through the brief biography they’d assembled for Sandra. She attended – had attended – Fairview High School, just like Moe Levisohn, Ian Murray and Andy Montgomery. And, for that matter, Coach Thornton and his assailant. Matt could well understand why someone would want to punch a Coach in the nose – it was an impulse he'd had from time to time – but why come up with such an absurd story for why he’d punched the Coach? Unless, of course, the absurd story was actually true...
It couldn't be a coincidence. Matt had been taught that the more unlikely a coincidence, the less likely that it was a coincidence. Moe and his cronies had died in the school, seemingly by magic; Coach Thornton had been attacked, seemingly by a student being controlled by someone else; Sandra had been murdered in a magical ritual, one that had been forgotten for thousands of years. Occam’s Razor suggested that the simplest answer – that the mystery magician was someone who went to Fairview High School – was the correct one. That only left the problem of how to narrow it down further.
Who would have a motive to murder Moe? Judging from his records, half the school would have a good reason to want him dead. The death penalty was a little extreme for bullying – Matt would have recommended a sound thrashing instead – but someone in their teenage years might not see it that way, particularly if they tapped into their magic without realising what they’d done until it was too late. There was no way they could interrogate the entire school on suspicion. The NYPD would face another political crisis at the worst possible moment.
He scowled. Who would have a motive to hurt Coach Thornton? Probably a similar number of people, as the Coach apparently had a reputation that would make a Drill Instructor blanch, with the added factor that none of his victims had volunteered to face him. Or had the mind-controlled student been the real target? God knew that Gavin wouldn't be winning any sporting scholarships now, even if he was cleared of all charges. And in the absence of any proof of mind-control, he would not be cleared of charges. Even a drunken judge would be unlikely to accept such a tale.
And who would have a motive to murder Sandra? The file wasn't complete – the NYPD would follow up any leads if the forensic team didn't find anything useful – but nothing jumped out at him, apart from one little detail. She'd been a mixed-race child, like most of the Changed. Had she been selected because her cells were storing mana in preparation for her own Change? Or had she been selected completely at random? No, he told himself, that was unlikely. Unless it was a real coincidence and there were two different magicians...
He shook his head. The autopsy report might point them in the right direction, or it might simply mislead them. They needed a way to track the murderer and fast, before he unleashed a holocaust. And then, if Golem was to be believed, the world would come to an end.
***
Calvin had convinced his mother to call in and report that he was sick after walking up with a splitting headache. His brain seemed to be aching, as if the power he'd trapped within his wards was slowly burning into his thoughts. Harrow had warned him that the first time was always the hardest, but he found it hard to believe that it could ever get better. Part of him wanted to dump the power, or to use it so he could relax and sleep properly, yet he knew he couldn't do that. Not yet.
He lay in bed, staring up at the ceiling, remembering the moment when Sandra had died. The surge of energy passing into him had been terrifying, but it had also been exciting, a thrill beyond anything else he had ever experienced. Somehow, he doubted that being with a girl, even one as bouncy as Marie, would be so exciting. It was funny how it no longer seemed to bother him, either what he’d done to Moe or what he’d done to Sandra. In fact, his greatest reg
ret was that he hadn't had the skill to drain Moe and his cronies as well. He might have been able to free Harrow earlier, before he’d had to kill anyone else.
Keep focusing your mind on control, Harrow informed him. A skilled magician might be able to detect changes in your state. You have to learn to conceal yourself.
Calvin nodded and concentrated, despite his aching head. One thing that the modern world had that the ancient world had lacked was painkillers; apparently, there were painkilling potions, but the people who’d brewed them had charged heavily for their services. Harrow had been delighted to discover modern painkillers. With a little work, they could make a necromancer’s existence easier to bear.
“Yeah,” he muttered. The internet had already picked up on Sandra’s murder. It seemed that the police were trying to restrict pictures of Sandra’s body, but they were already out and spreading through the computer network. It wouldn't be long before thousands of copycat murders began to appear. “We don’t want them to sense me.”
No, we don't, Harrow agreed. You are not yet invincible.
His head started to spin slightly as he concentrated on a more advanced – and dangerous – spell than he’d ever tried before. The real trick was learning how to avoid drawing on his new stockpile of mana. It couldn't be wasted when he would need every drop of it to release Harrow.
And once he’d mastered it, she’d promised him, he could have some real fun.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Washington DC/New York, USA
Day 25
The blind, Misty Reynolds thought sourly, are leading the blind.
Learning magic seemed to be a complicated mishmash of different traditions that gelled together in some manner Golem, their main tutor, hadn't been able to put into words. Magic spells were names given to specific thoughts shaped by magicians to cast magic, except some of them could also be magic in their own right. Runes served to channel magic, to help direct the local mana field into wards and other protections. Those born with magic skills could sense magic long before they learned how to manipulate it; indeed, there were some who never developed the ability to use mana, but remained capable of sensing it’s presence.
Misty was a logical thinker, trained to hammer mathematics into the heads of school-aged children who seemed to grow dumber by the year, and the nature of magic seemed almost a personal offense against reality itself. It didn't help that Golem wasn't a very good teacher; inhuman creature or not, he had the unmistakable manner of a tutor who knew barely more than his pupils. Someone who read ahead might be more knowledgeable than the tutor, except for the minor detail that there were no books on magic to be found anywhere. Misty had heard that the Navy was seriously considering hiring mermaids and launching an exhibition to explore the remains of Atlantis, purely in the hopes of recovering ancient knowledge. She rather doubted that they’d find anything worth the effort.
She looked up as her opponent grinned at her. “Ready?”
“Ready,” Misty said, bracing herself. This wasn't going to be fun. “Go.”
He pulled a fireball out of nowhere and threw it at her face. Misty’s protections caught the fireball and knocked it aside, but she still felt a wave of heat as it struck her wards. A moment later, he tossed a second fireball and then a third, forcing her to divert concentration – and mana – towards maintaining her protections. The reason magicians spent so long soaking up mana, Golem had explained, was to ensure that they didn't run out when fighting other magicians. If they both started drawing on the local background field, the level of mana available to them both would deplete rather sharply, at least long enough for one of them to emerge the victor.
A fourth fireball struck her wards and the protections crumbled. Misty jumped to one side, too late, as he hurled a different spell at her. Her entire body went limp and she hit the ground like a sack of potatoes, feeling the spell crawling over her like the touch of an unwelcome lover. He stepped forward, tapped her on the forehead, and grinned.
“I win,” he said.
“Well done,” Misty grunted, as soon as she could speak again. It galled her to keep losing to a kid who’d done nothing more with his life than play stupid games, but those games had given him an excellent basis for understanding the new reality. “I think you're getting better.”
“I think you’re getting better too,” the kid said. “Hey, you want to come have a drink with me?”
Misty started to laugh, despite herself. “You do realise that I’m nearly ten years older than you?”
“But you’re so much more interesting than most girls my age,” the kid said. “Come on...”
Misty shook her head, just as one of the researchers stuck her head into the door. “Agent Lyle would like to see you, Miss Reynolds,” she said. “Would you mind coming with me?”
Misty had never been on a military base before accepting the FBI’s offer of lessons and a job that allowed her to use her magic talents. The base was, according to her hosts, designed to help deal with an outbreak of biological warfare in the nation’s capital, complete with secure wards for the patients and medical technology that was second to none. Right now, it played host to the handful of magicians who had come forward to work for the government, thirty werewolves, seven mermaids and a single vampire. Misty hadn't seen the vampire, but rumour had it that she was incredibly dangerous. God help anyone who came face to face with her without any special preparation.
She’d liked Caitlyn Lyle the moment she’d seen her, even though she had the same air as a hundred paper-pushing bureaucrats who believed that achievement could be measured by testing pupils, even at the absurdly young age of kindergarten children. They always looked harassed, as if they were buried under paperwork, which probably explained why they kept dumping it on teachers. There would come a time when the tests and paperwork reached the point when there would be no time left for any actual teaching.
“Have a seat,” Caitlyn said, putting down the phone. “How are you coming along with your magic studies?”
“Slowly,” Misty admitted. “Very slowly.”
Some elements of the work felt easy, as if she’d been doing them all her life. But other elements made no sense at all. She could understand how a magician could use a blood sample, or even a piece of clothing, to work magic on an unsuspecting victim, but how did it work with a photograph? Did anyone know how many pictures there were of the President? Or of pretty much anyone who thought they were important?
“I’d hoped not to have to send any of you into the field until you were ready,” Caitlyn admitted, “but something has happened that requires a magician’s attention. And, frankly, you’re the best we have for this issue.”
Misty gave her a sharp look. “You’re desperate,” she said.
“Yes,” Caitlyn said. “I’m going to outline what happened, and what we think it means, and then you can decide if you want to...carry out the assignment for us.”
“I thought that soldiers or FBI agents couldn't refuse their orders,” Misty said.
“Not normally,” Caitlyn agreed, “but this situation is far from normal. And we wouldn't send an untrained recruit with one week in Quantico into the field if we could avoid it.”
“But you have only a handful of magicians,” Misty realised. She couldn't help feeling a thrill at a chance to prove herself, even though cold rationality told her that she wasn't ready. “You need to risk one of them.”
Caitlyn nodded. “Yesterday, late at night, a girl called Sandra Yeager was murdered by a black magician,” she said. Misty had caught a report on Yahoo news, but she hadn’t paid much attention at the time. “From what Golem tells us, we believe that the magician was influenced by one of the Thirteen – and the overall objective was to use the murder as a source of magical power.”
“Crap,” Misty said.
“Crap indeed,” Caitlyn said. “I can show you the autopsy report if you like, but the bare bones of it are that the forensic team was unable to locate anything that mig
ht point us to the killer. Sandra seemed to have positioned herself for the murder...”
“Mind control,” Misty said. Golem had used it on her several times, forcing her to learn how to fight it off before it was too late. The experience of being moved around like a puppet was not one she wanted to repeat. “Was she raped?”
Caitlyn winced. “I have never wished for someone to have been raped before,” she said, bitterly. “Rape throws up all kinds of physical evidence. But the report says that she was not raped, or molested. She was virgin when she died.”
She shook her head. “The NYPD is following up smaller leads, but we are not hopeful,” she added. “However, we do have one link that might – might – point to the killer. This incident is the third incident that points to Fairview High School.”
“I’ve never worked there,” Misty said. Offhand, she couldn't recall if she’d ever been there, even as a substitute teacher. Understanding clicked and she smiled. “You want me to go there as a spy?”
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