The Pit of No Return (The King Henry Tapes Book 6)

by Richard Raley

  Maybe one day it’s not just handfuls. Maybe it’s dozens, or hundreds . . . or . . . a whole lot more.

  Half of us are so busy pretending we’re the Nice, Quiet One. Nothing’s wrong. It’s all normal. No big deal, dawg. The other half . . . they have their oddities, some more than others. Get used to it, day by day. Of course hydromancers eat soups and seafood all the fucking time, of course pyromancers either have tempers or are inspiring. Of course cryomancers are cynical, cerebral, and heartless. Faunamancers have pets they can hear, floromancers talk to bushes, and hey, necromancers walk around with dead meat puppets . . . no biggie.

  You just start accepting it.

  Or you look the other way and pretend it’s not happening.

  Isabel Soto is out there, of course she is. She babbles, she changes her body and her moods all the time, she sulks over imagined slights and obsesses over her chosen few. She’s there, it’s the way she is, nothing odd about her being odd, is there? Plus . . . sulks over imagined slights and obsesses over her chosen few, sounds fucking familiar, don’t it?

  Of course no one paid any attention to her. That’s what you do to prove you’re the Nice, Quiet One. Didn’t notice. How sure she was about Welf being responsible. How she defended Catherine Hayes. How she took to my idea of a mentimancer being responsible. My bad Scott Hardy, my bad. How Athir was closest to her above all.

  To be fair to Root, she was on his narrowing list of suspects, I just didn’t know it yet. Maybe if I didn’t interfere, he would’ve caught her quickly enough to save Hardy and Athir. Would’ve been a footnote.

  How Isabel Soto killed Leo Sarducci.

  Not how she went on a spree.

  Familiarity . . . it’s a killer.

  Even all of us being used to what Facechangers are supposed to be able to do. Make an alteration or two, tone up muscle like crazy, add an inch or a bra size or drop twenty pounds in a day or . . . yeah, change their face. In the name, after all. Kids in Class ’09 started learning how to do it this year, the skill usually being reserved for graduate students. Shift your face though . . . a nose or an ear or lips or hair or something more malleable than bone.

  We got so used to Isabel changing week to week, so used to the fact she was a Freak of the Mancy, that we never asked ourselves how far she could actually go. Can she gain six inches, sixty to seventy pound, shift her face from androgynous model to more masculine Welf and then a few hours later shift back? Apparently she can. Thought it had to be a mentimancer screwing with memories, never bothered to think that it could be a supremely talented corpusmancer screwing with reality itself.

  Turning into Heinrich Welf, or at least close enough to fake it. Barring someone looking under the hood and coming up dickless. I remember the only other time she turned into someone else. Tri, turned into Debra Diaz on a dare. Not an exact match, but pretty close. Got into so much trouble . . . so did Debra for daring her to do it. Teachers made it very obvious that this was our one warning and that any corpusmancer changing into another student would mean time in the Holding Room.

  Even if Isabel didn’t ever do it again to keep herself out of trouble, she still could.

  So she turned into Welf on and off all week. Or a good enough Welf replica to fake it from a distance for those cameras. For Catherine Hayes to claim she saw someone who looked like Heinrich Welf assault Leo the day before Leo died. See, Catherine was involved. I’m not totally clueless. Catherine ain’t a complete mastermind. All comes up blurry once you deal with reality, don’t it? Catherine’s good, real good, she just ain’t used to her tools breaking in the middle of the job.

  Don’t think she wanted Leo dead.

  Think she just wanted Isabel to scare him, make him think Welf did it.

  Then sit back and watch the Class ’09/Class ’08 alliance implode, one relationship after another down the chain.

  Revenge.

  Sweet revenge.

  And the more it hurts baby brother, all the better.

  But when Isabel did snap and just pushed Leo off the balcony railing . . . well, how could Catherine ever pass on such an opportunity to pin it all on Welf? Teresa and Mary . . . far less certain, especially once Isabel used Scott Hardy as the fall guy. The Yank Guy. Only by then they were both scared shitless and kept their mouths shut. Scared about getting caught and scared that Isabel might turn on them next.

  Athir, well . . . he was about to tell me.

  Did tell me.

  Our hero.

  Finally got the message through my thick skull with his last spark of stolen existence.

  Isabel.

  It’s Isabel.

  Splat.

  Yank.

  Crush.

  All her.

  Now I knew.

  Now . . . I had to stop her.

  [CLICK]

  Didn’t know the time, didn’t bother to check a clock.

  Sun was out.

  Floor of apartments seemed abandoned.

  Just me, sleeping in.

  Breakfast time?

  Must have been.

  No way they resumed classes, right?

  Wasn’t any crime scene tape on Isabel’s door, so I did some assuming that Root still hadn’t figured it out. I know what you’re doing right now, kiddies, you’re screaming at me to stop searching for Isabel and to go to Root. Or Ceinwyn. Any adult. It really a surprise I didn’t do what I’m supposed to do? Contact the authorities immediately! Be a good boy! Eat your broccoli, bitch!

  Besides, I just excised a ghost from my head and found out one of my classmates is a murderer . . . no shit I ain’t thinking clearly. Hadn’t been thinking clearly all week without them negatives stacked on top of one another, sure as fuck wasn’t thinking clearly that morning with them present. Every thought I did manage to push through my aching head revolved around finding Isabel. About . . . doing something. Not sure what. But something.

  Even knowing, even having watched Leo die, even having witnessed the blow she hit Athir with, the power of it, the strength behind that single punch broke him near in half, I still had trouble picturing Isabel as a murderer. She was Isabel. Weird, but harmless. Freakish with the Mancy, yes, but two-thirds of the bodies she chose for herself weren’t close to threatening. Opposite, in fact. She was good, not great, at the Winter War and yeah, Samson liked squaring her off against Eva, but she never had the killer instinct of a fighter. Ain’t never been a girl I imagined could kick my ass. No fireballs, no lightning bolts, not even paper-cuts.

  It was Isabel. If you just knew how to handle her and distract her then you should be fine. Nothing but a nuisance. Harmless. Worse she ever does is say something embarrassing or mind-numbingly out there.

  Like defending the Three Queens these last few months.

  I did pool anima.

  Made my headache return, the one from the day before.

  Ache or not, the anima made me feel better.

  Five minutes of something-extra.

  Load it all up into one of my fists and go Super Steel Fist on her ass. Harmless or not, I would if I had to.

  Liked that pool. Reason I didn’t use the anima to twist Isabel’s door lock and instead picked it the ol’ fashioned way. Likely smash it to bits if I did use anima, the way I’m so emotional right now. Got no control at all. Like a Single with a hard-on. Isabel. Isabel killed Athir. Isabel killed Hardy. Isabel killed Leo.

  Crush.

  Yank.

  Splat.

  Backwards my thoughts went, still connecting the dots. The why’s. The how’s. People always say the cover up is worse than the first crime. Why Hardy and Athir both died. Cover up the first murder. That crime where she didn’t stop at roughing up Leo, instead pushed him right over the balcony railing. How easily I could imagine Isabel leaning over the same railing, glancing down at Leo’s broken body. See the same flinch Isabel always made when she knew she had a wrong thought, but this time on Welf’s face. Didn’t need any menti-anima for it, my imagination was enough.

&nb
sp; Still no one in the hallways or any voices nearby as the door finally popped open.

  Missing bacon for this shit.

  Never say I didn’t sacrificed for ya, Athir.

  Okay, so I never did it until you were dead.

  My bad.

  Isabel’s personal dorm.

  Apartments.

  Jail cell.

  Whatever-the-fuck.

  Never been inside before.

  She’d offered . . . like every day that ended in a ‘Y.’

  My own freaky stalker chick and she’s officially past the Boiling Bunnies Stage, ain’t I a lucky fucker?

  Walls were painted pink.

  A deeper sign of madness there has never been.

  Same layout as my room. Hallway into mini-kitchen with a couch right there. Bottles of spices in a rack and half-filled marinades lined up next to the stovetop signaled a corpusmancer’s love of protein. Go through steaks like they’re chicken nuggets during a Five for Twenty deal. Sure enough, I found various meat cuts in the fridge. No bloody remains, bunny or otherwise.

  Collage of pictures splattered across the main wall, haphazard, chaotic, and just plain messy. All of Isabel wearing different bodies through the years. Remembered most of them. Started simple back during Single, became gratuitous during Bi, only in the last couple years she seemed to learn to refine what she was going after. More than refinement, in the last year she’d started to branch out to the exotic, sets of features you wouldn’t even see clash on the most multicultural or ethnically diverse children.

  Not a single picture of that ugly girl I remembered running through the woods with me during the Camping Test. Not sure I blame her for that, she was really fucking ugly and Mancy knows I was a corpusmancer I wouldn’t be five-foot-eight still. Think all of us imagined it. Lots of jealousy among the disciplines. Just as much jealousy as there was pride in what we could do. Take artifacts over it all, but sure I imagined throwing fireballs like Val or making a bird chirp out Bohemian Rhapsody like Rick Brown did that one time.

  Bedroom was messy as fuck. Corpusmancer colors of red and white all over the place, all of them in various sizes. Wonder if the Admin tailors have advanced warning of what changes she’s planning to make or if they just have an open policy where she can take whatever she wants from the stores? No necromancer colors present. Smart to keep them elsewhere since they’re the only piece of hard evidence against her.

  Could’ve snooped through the closet or her drawers, but finding Soto Crazy’s dildo collection wasn’t high on my list. Bad enough there’s a rainbow pile of panties in the corner over there. Room smelled . . . musky, human. Wouldn’t be surprised she started fucking with her own body’s hormones and pheromones, trying to get people to notice her more.

  Isabel always craved our attention.

  Especially mine.

  You got it, Soto Crazy, all one-hundred and ten percent.

  Bathroom was cleaner, had a portfolio in it filled with torn out magazine pieces. She didn’t even bother keeping the model’s full body, only the piece of them she wanted to copy. Had notes I couldn’t understand, some of them in Spanish. Always forget she’s Argentine. No accent nowadays, instead whatever she was attempting to mimic. Only beautiful part that belonged to her and she throws it away with all the rest.

  No Isabel.

  No trophies.

  No evidence.

  No easy end.

  How is it all them classic murder mysteries end?

  At the dinner table, ain’t it?

  Breakfast will just have to do.

  [CLICK]

  Or not.

  Been pretty shit at this Murder Mystery thing, it really a surprise I bungled the murderer’s reveal too? Shit, wasn’t even a reveal. Wasn’t no murderer. Wasn’t no people to reveal it to. Class ’09 was absent from the Cafeteria’s second floor. Late in our breakfast period, but not late enough people still shouldn’t be lounging about chatting with each other. Three Queens were there, so was Class ’08.

  No Class ’09.

  Hadn’t seen them on my way to the Cafeteria.

  Did get scolded by Mrs. Dingle for walking about alone.

  Dingle thinks following rules is more important than things like injuries making you the exception to said rules.

  Standing there alone in the Cafeteria, studying that big empty space where Class ’09 should be, I did have my first moment of doubt. Go to Ceinwyn. Yeah, run to mommy. Wasn’t just pride kept me from asking for help, was worry too. Sure, run across the school, leave Isabel with my class where she could snap at any moment. Assuming Ceinwyn was in her house and not in some Learning Council meeting where I couldn’t reach her, buried beneath the Admin building.

  Real easy to talk myself out of going for help.

  Bit harder talking myself into confronting Catherine. She’s gonna get away with it again. Maybe not completely this time, but enough. Isabel threatened me and you saw what she did to all the others! Like trying to catch a breeze.

  Class ’08 wasn’t looking too tempting an information source either, even if the fierce resentments that had flared after Leo’s death were beginning to fade, ever so slowly. Hey, Sabine, where’s my class at?

  Why do you wish to know, King Henry? I thought in the same Algerian French accent that made Prince Henry do the can-can.

  Oh, you know . . . need to tell them Isabel’s the killer.

  So much for fading resentment.

  Begin flashing hot again.

  One of yours killed one of ours.

  Not even an accident followed by a suicide when people thought Scott Hardy was responsible. Fucking murder. Might be some sympathy, but Isabel was our responsibility first and foremost. We should have noticed. We didn’t.

  Only one who did notice got killed.

  Went over to the lunch ladies instead of the other classes. Got a plate of food shoved into my hands even if breakfast was mostly over. Also got an answer to my query. Ultra classes were getting two recreation hours in the Gym each day, under teacher supervision. Ultra Class ’09 were up first. “Just head over after you’re done eating, hun. I’m sure they’ll all be happy to see you back on your feet.”

  Lunch ladies.

  They’re the best.

  Good food too.

  The gym.

  Only time in my life I’ve ever thrown bacon in the trash.

  [CLICK]

  Never reached the Gym.

  Almost ran right through Vicky Welf as the both of us sprinted around one of the Cafeteria’s corners. Even given I’d bulked up and hit my full height at five-foot-eight by then, pretty sure I’m the one lucked out we didn’t actually smack head-on. Welfs might be patrician douchebags these days, but once upon a time they were the Germanic barbarian horde gave even Rome itself heaps of trouble. That ain’t bad enough, next millennium they started breeding for wide hips, fertile wombs, and an impervious constitution.

  She’s a big girl.

  Big girl who had a tinge of ferocity to her and even more desperation. Not emotions I’m used to seeing on Vicky Welf. Ferocity occasionally, especially she just had a conversation with her mother, but never the two together, never this strong. Even after Catherine beat her in that bathroom stall. Wasn’t hate, wasn’t anger that ruled Vicky Welf, was hurt and empathy as she tried to understand why Catherine had so much hate in her.

  Cuz when you were five you got a pony, Vick, and all Catherine had up till that point in her life was one abuse after another.

  When I noticed it was Vicky, part of me expected another Surprise Hug. Instead I just got attacked, as them bright blue eyes recognized me. Hands wrapped themselves in my geomancer’s coat and then she pushed me up against the Cafeteria wall.

  “Hey?”

  Eventually they released, but only after she gave me a long study. “Sorry, King Henry . . . I thought . . . well, everyone said you were hurt and resting in your apartment, so I thought . . . that it might not be you.”

  Might not be me, I repeated
, my brain finally in the right place to catch all the clues. “What happened?” I asked.

  “They don’t want us stuck in our rooms, so my class was moved to Miss Greenbrier’s art room for the day. Only just a moment ago Brother came by to say I needed to come with him to visit Mother. I was focused on my portrait of Genesis or I never would have even left the room with him otherwise, but as it was, I didn’t really look at him until we were out the door . . .”

  I knew exactly what was coming, so I decided to sidestep her reluctance over admitting how crazy it sounded. “It wasn’t Welf. It was the corpusmancer who looked exactly like Welf.”

  Vicky’s mouth dropped a little, her whole body doing that perfect posture reset thing that both she and her brother did when they were trying to gather their thoughts. “How did you know?”

  I waved that off for later. “You called the corpusmancer on it?”

  “Yes, of course. They were quite surprised. Awful trick to be playing on someone at a time like this. I thought . . . maybe you were right and it was the Three Queens again, some Blackjack with a plan, but not a mentimancer, instead just a corpusmancer. They even had necromancer colors and . . . they even smelled like Brother. If I wasn’t so sensitive to anima, I would’ve fallen for it. As it was, they were terrified to be seen for who they really were and ran away from me like I was the villain.”

  “Just another hero,” I mumbled to myself.

  “After that I felt I had to check on Brother to make sure he was well and it’s breakfast time for the graduate students,” Vicky explained, slightly abashed at her own bravado. “If you’re up and about, have you seen him, King Henry?”

  “Nah, they’re all in the Gym, I guess. Except . . .”

  Except not Isabel.

  “Oh, good. That’s good! Do you mind accompanying me? We aren’t supposed to be out alone and I would feel much safer—”

  “I know who it is, Vick,” I finally told her.

  Bright blue eyes as kind as any I ever seen went wide. “Who?”

  “Isabel Soto.”

  A frown as Vicky Welf found something to like even about Soto Crazy. “But . . . but she’s so sweet!”