The Metaphysical Detective (A Riga Hayworth Paranormal Mystery)

by Kirsten Weiss

  Donovan peered at her anxiously.

  “What did you do with the real Donovan Mosse?”

  “I am the real Donovan. Dionysus is just here, too. Sometimes.”

  Riga held out a hand to stop him. “I shouldn’t have asked. It’s not important now. Dionysus is a psychopomp. He—you – know your way around the underworld. I’ve got to find Pen.” Pen was her talisman now, her Holy Grail. After Riga found her, she’d worry about the rest.

  “That big guy’s got her.” Vinnie pointed downstream. “They went that-away. They took the ferry. Not that it’s much of one – more like a raft if you ask me.”

  “What big guy?” Riga snapped.

  Vinnie shivered. “We didn’t introduce ourselves. A really big guy. Really big. Dark hair, cape, eyes like the devil…”

  Riga raked her hand through her hair. It felt gritty. “Right. That way.” The ferry was gone. There were no other boats along the shore. She turned to Donovan, jamming her panic and hurt into a tight compartment inside herself. “Will you help me get her back?”

  He hesitated. “I’ll help you find her. But Riga, whether we can get her back or not isn’t up to Dionysus.”

  Donovan was the one person she should never have trusted, and now she had to trust him again. She nodded.

  “Stay away from the water,” Donovan said. “It’s the Styx – the affects are unpredictable.”

  They followed the bank of the river, careful to avoid its turgid waters. Wraithlike shades clad in togas walked past, heads bowed. The ghosts looked at them mournfully but didn’t try to interrupt their passage.

  “Why are they ghosty and I’m solid?” Vinnie said.

  “Probably because you don’t belong here,” Riga said absently. She picked her way carefully across the volcanic rock that littered the landscape. The rocks tended to roll beneath her feet and she’d come close to twisting an ankle more than once already.

  “Really?” He brightened. “That’s the first good news I’ve heard in seventy years. Give or take.”

  “So, Dionysus. Explain.” She knew she sounded abrupt, but her anger was still on simmer.

  “He came to me six months ago to ask for my help,” Donovan said. “He made a good case, so I agreed to be his host. Besides, I owe him.”

  Her eyes narrowed. “You owe him?”

  “Riga, I run casinos. Everything I have is due to the human impulse to tap into our wild nature and cut loose. Of course I owe him.” His voice hardened. “Besides, who better for Dionysus to go to for help, than someone living the Dionysian life?”

  Riga snorted. “And what did he want you to do?”

  “Help him discover why the two worlds are colliding – his archetypal world and our own – and stop it.”

  “Why did he need a human?”

  “He can’t stay for any length of time there on his own. He needs a human host. So I agreed to let him into my head.”

  “If I didn’t have a three-headed dog at my heels, I’d think you were schizophrenic,” Riga said. “Maybe we’re both crazy.” Or maybe just me, Riga thought. The idea this might be a delusion appealed. Pen was safe at home and Riga was crazy. A rock turned beneath her boot, and she stumbled, a bolt of fire shooting from her ankle to her knee. That, at least, was real. She clenched her jaw against the pain. “How does he communicate?”

  “Whispers and impulses. Riga, I’m still me, I always have been. He hasn’t taken control.”

  “Hasn’t he? What about the people who couldn’t leave the billiard parlor? Or my neighbor’s sudden obsession with painting grapevines? That was his influence, wasn’t it?”

  Donovan looked startled. “Your neighbor? I didn’t know.”

  “Yeah, well now you do. She almost killed herself, painting until she passed out from exhaustion. So release her.” She picked her way over a large rock.

  “I don’t know how.”

  She stopped and turned to face him, hands on her hips. “You released the people in the billiard parlor.”

  His eyes glinted. “No, Riga. You released them. You’re the magical one, not I. I should have noticed, but I didn’t. It’s been like a dream – impossible things occurred around me but I rarely questioned them. Sometimes I’d wake up a bit and realize that something strange had occurred, but soon I’d forget and just go on with things.” His brows furrowed in a dark slash. “Lately, I haven’t been waking up much at all. He warned me, the longer we stay together, the more enmeshed we’d become.”

  It was high time, Riga thought, that they all awaken. She began walking again. “Okay, worlds colliding. How are Pen and I involved in it?”

  “Dionysus knows the questions, not the answers. I’ve been going where the question – and sometimes my own whims and intuition – took me. That’s what brought me to the billiard parlor. And then I saw you and everything clicked. I knew I had to stay with you.”

  She pressed her lips together. While she’d been investigating Donovan, he’d been investigating her – and she’d been several steps behind him. It doesn’t matter, she told herself. All that matters is finding Pen.

  Vinnie snorted behind them. “Sounds like a load of hooey to me.”

  Donovan jerked his chin toward the ghost. “Why is he here?”

  “He’s the ghost Pen accidentally banished.”

  Donovan swore. “He must have a role to play as well then. We’re stuck with him.”

  Vinnie kicked some loose rocks at Donovan’s heels. “Sorry,” he said. “I slipped.”

  “A role to play?” she said. “I don’t believe in predestination. But Helen’s arrival at my office wasn’t random, was it? Someone set this in motion. Is Dionysus pulling the strings?”

  He took a moment to answer. “I don’t think so. Dionysus seems in the dark as much we. But he’s a powerful archetype. He could deceive me.”

  “But he’s not a trickster god,” Riga said. “The myths about him are a mixed bag – they’ve been filtered through so many stories and cultures – but they’re telling. For example, he was viciously persecuted by Hera, and yet when she was in danger, he rescued her from Hephaestus. He was also a devoted son, who descended into the underworld to rescue his mother.” Riga remembered Donovan’s search for his broken family, and realized that there might have been other reasons why Dionysus had chosen him.

  Sheer cliffs forced them away from the river bank. They clambered up a small mountain of rocks, keeping the same direction, breaking a new trail.

  Riga stopped near the top, breathing heavily. Cerberus bumped her arm with one of his heads and she patted him absently. “Do you know where we’re going?” she asked.

  “Dionysus does. The palace of Hades isn’t far now…” His voice trailed off as they crested the hill. A dark, writhing mass spread before them, a colossal maze stretching as far as Riga could see.

  “What the hell is that?” Vinnie said.

  “This is new.” Donovan’s voice was laced with irritation. “I’ve – I mean, Dionysus, has never seen it before.”

  Riga gave him a sharp look. Donovan claimed to be his own man, but she wondered. “The palace is on the other side of the maze?”

  He nodded. “We’ll have to go through it.”

  Riga began making her way down the rough path they’d been following, loose rocks and gravel shifting beneath her boots. The others followed.

  As they neared the labyrinth, Riga saw that its walls were formed by a tangle of dead brambles. Ground mist gathered at the entrance – a cleanly cut gap in the hedge. She reached a hand out to touch it and Donovan grabbed her wrist, snatching her hand away.

  “I wouldn’t,” he said. “It’s Hades’ toy.”

  Cerberus growled low in his throats and Donovan hastily released her.

  “Stay here.” Donovan disappeared through the gap, mist rising into the air in his wake.

  Riga had begun to debate going in after him when he finally reemerged.

  “If there’s a trap,” he said, “it’s further in.”
>
  “I’m not going in there,” Vinnie said flatly. “It gives me the heebie jeebies.”

  Donovan smiled unpleasantly. “Your choice.”

  Riga didn’t have a choice though. She had to find Pen.

  “This looks like a larger version of the labyrinth Daedalus built for King Minos,” Donovan continued. “It may be dangerous.”

  Riga nodded her understanding. Daedalus’ labyrinth had kept the Minotaur imprisoned within, while preventing the King’s prisoners from escaping before they could become its lunch. Unlike the labyrinth she’d walked in San Francisco, this one would have dead ends, false turnings. Given the size, a person could be lost for weeks in it. But Riga wasn’t a magician for nothing.

  “Do you think this one has a Minotaur inside?” Riga asked.

  “The Minotaur is dead and we’re in the underworld,” Donovan said. “Where else would he be?”

  She rummaged in her purse and pulled out the yarn and spindle Lauren and Cleo had given her, glad she didn’t clean out her purse more often. “Theseus tracked his progress through the labyrinth with Ariadne’s ball of yarn. We can, too.”

  Donovan looked doubtful. “Theseus used the yarn to find his way out rather than through, if I recall. That can’t be long enough to get us through it.”

  “I’ve got a workaround in mind,” Riga said.

  “I don’t suppose you have any weapons in that bag?” Donovan said.

  “Just pepper spray and a knife.”

  Donovan’s lips curved in a crooked smile.

  She removed both – the pepper spray was attached to her key chain – and gave them to him. Her hands would be too full with the yarn to do much good with the weapons. Donovan flipped the knife open, exposing a four inch blade.

  Donovan raised an eyebrow. “Is this legal in California?”

  “Do you really care?”

  “I wouldn’t want to see you arrested,” Donovan said.

  “What about me?” Vinnie said. “Don’t I get to defend myself?”

  “You’re already dead,” Donovan said. “Besides, you said you weren’t coming in.”

  “Well, I’m not staying out here by myself!”

  Riga took her flashlight from her jacket pocket and handed it to Vinnie. “It’s dim enough that if you shine this in something’s eyes, you’ll slow it down. Hold it like this,” she said, curling Vinnie’s fingers around the six inch metal tube. “If you need to, use the serrated edge on the attacker’s neck.” She began to turn away, then turned back to him. “And if you shine it in my eyes, I’ll take it away from you.”

  Donovan entered the labyrinth and Riga followed. It was darker inside, the mist thick upon the ground. The passage was wide enough for two to walk abreast, but the long thorns stretched towards them and Riga, fearful of stumbling on the uneven ground, kept behind Donovan. Vinnie cursed and followed. Cerberus brought up the rear, ears twitching.

  At the first turning, Riga asked Donovan to wait. She hooked a loop of yarn on an outstretched thorn, careful not to scratch herself, and attached the ball to the spindle.

  “Lady’s choice,” Donovan said. “Which way?”

  She pointed down the right hand path.

  Wordlessly Donovan made the turn. Riga followed, spinning the yarn out behind her. Its beads shone like diamonds in the gloom, a glittering trail through the non-light of Hades.

  They crept through the labyrinth, doubling back at dead ends and stumbling over the twisted roots that lay across their path. Soon Riga lost all sense of direction, and was happy to let Donovan make the decisions. His guesses were as good as her own, and she needed a spell that would recall the yarn to her spindle. She built the web of magic in her mind and attached it to a word.

  When she reached the end of the skein, Riga called a halt. “I think this should work,” she said. She held the spindle outstretched before her, the end of the yarn looped loosely about it. She summoned the energy from above and below. “Reverto!” A tidal wave of energy flowed from below, up the path of her spinal cord. Her head was exploding. There was a blinding flash of white and her legs collapsed beneath her.

  “Riga! Riga!”

  Riga was on the ground and Donovan held her loosely in his arms. She could feel the rise and fall of his chest. A whirring sound came from her hand – the yarn winding itself around the spindle.

  “What are you crazy?” Vinnie said. His hair was ruffled as if by a strong wind. “What the hell did you do? I knew I should have stayed away from you dizzy dames.”

  “Enough,” Donovan snarled. “It worked.”

  “Not quite as I’d intended,” Riga said shakily. She was in the below and hadn’t accounted for the excess of lower energy when she called it to her. The affect had been akin to a drowning woman getting hit with a fire hose. “Things work differently down here. I should have expected it.”

  “You did it,” Donovan said. “I can’t believe you did it! I’ve never seen real magic before.”

  Riga laughed. “You’ve got the archetype of a Greek god inside you and you’ve never seen magic?”

  “I’ve never seen someone else do it. This is your life? You do this all the time?”

  “Not all the time,” Riga said, rising to her feet. Her legs still felt wobbly and she held tight to Donovan’s arm. It felt good. He felt good. “It’s not safe to go public with it.” People accepted mystics and Tarot readers, because there was always the possibility their magic might not be real. Real magic was still too dangerous.

  “Can you go on?” Donovan said.

  Riga nodded. Pen was getting farther and farther away. She had to move.

  Once certain Riga was steady on her feet, Donovan led the way. They twisted along the labyrinth’s paths, Riga rewinding the yarn when it came to its end. The yarn trick saved them time, but they were still moving too slowly.

  “This is taking too long,” Riga said as she rewound the yarn. She’d stopped counting how many times she’d cast the spell.

  “It’s too bad your yarn can’t show us the way out,” Vinnie grumbled.

  Riga looked at him, struck. Why couldn’t it? She’d been so panicked by the loss of Pen that she was reacting rather than thinking, copying from old myths rather than making her own.

  She closed her eyes, and visualized the web of magical energy that would lead the way. This time, she took care to focus on drawing energy from above and managed to direct a more balanced flow. “Exitus!” The yarn slowly spun outward, winding a glittering path before them into the labyrinth. “Follow the blue line,” she said.

  Donovan gave her a brittle smile. So far, their only obstacle had been the labyrinth itself. It seemed too much to hope for that there weren’t any nasty surprises inside.

  He turned a corner and stopped abruptly. Riga bumped into him.

  They were in the center of the labyrinth, a wide square with branches leading off in four directions. The yarn wended down the left hand path, a ribbon of shimmering blue. In the center of the square was a stone slab with a broken chain trailing from a hook in it.

  “Something’s gotten loose,” Donovan said, his voice low. He put one hand protectively in front of Riga.

  “Maybe it’s gone down another path,” she said.

  “I hate this,” Vinnie said.

  Donovan shifted the knife in his hand to a more defensive position. “Let’s go.”

  They continued on, following the yarn floating eerily before them. Occasionally, they passed a toga-clad shade, silent, pale, and mournful. With no sun or moon to mark their progress, she lost sense of time. Riga stumbled with fatigue.

  “So what happened in Afghanistan?” Donovan asked.

  “What made you think of that?” she said, wary.

  “Just wondering.”

  She fell silent, trying to push the memories away. Then: “This isn’t a good time for that story.”

  “Is there ever a good time?”

  “No.”

  Vinnie cleared his throat. “I was in the Pacifi
c.”

  “You fought in World War II?” Riga said. She should have considered it before – the timing was right.

  He nodded.

  “Is that how you died?”

  He shook his head. “I wish I’d bought it over there. I was just the good time Charlie, you know? No family, no wife. What did I have to lose? But nothing ever touched me. Instead I got to watch my buddies fall. And I don’t wanna talk about it either,” he said.

  Donovan looked like he was going to say something, but shook his head.

  They walked, bracing for an attack at every turn. But nothing happened. Riga’s nerves throbbed. The yarn floated before them, fully unraveled now. She trusted her magic; they were on the right path, but even so she began to despair of ever getting out. They had to be getting close now, Riga thought.

  Donovan walked more quickly. He turned to look at Riga. “I think I see the exi—“

  A brown blur sped between them and tossed Donovan sideways like a rag doll. There was a ferocious roar, and something struck Riga from behind, knocking her flat. She rolled to her side and scrambled up. Cerberus and the minotaur locked in combat. The thing looked part bull, part grizzly bear. The two beasts tore at each other, growling and snapping.

  “Oh, shit oh shit oh shit,” Vinnie muttered.

  Donovan lay on his side beneath the hedge. Riga rushed to him, slipping in the blood that pooled upon the dead grass.

  He raised his head weakly. “Riga, take Vinnie and get out of here.”

  She shook her head. “You need help.” She felt along his body until she found the wound. “Good Christ, you’ve been gored.”

  He gritted his teeth, his face tense with pain. “I’ll be fine. Just go.”

  Cerberus yelped and they all flinched in response.

  She pressed one hand to his side and with the other, fumbled in her satchel. “We need to keep pressure on the wound.”

  “Vinnie, get her out of here,” he said. Donovan passed out.

  She found her first aid kit in her bag. It was her fault; it was all her fault. If she’d had quicker reflexes, if she’d kept Pen safe, they’d never be here. She flicked the kit open with one finger and was torn between laughter and tears. Her kit wasn’t for wounds like this. She could pack the entire roll of gauze in his side and it wouldn’t do a damn thing. Pressure, she had to keep the pressure on. She whipped her scarf from the handle of her bag and packed it beneath Donovan’s shirt. Blood oozed from beneath her hands.