half-lich 02 - void weaver

by martinez, katerina

  “I’m not sure I understand your meaning.”

  “I shouldn’t be telling you this…” Jim said, glancing left and right as if there were spies waiting on either side of the room, waiting to hear what he was about to say next—and maybe there were—but the precursor had been laid. There was no going back. “But they know, Isaac. They know someone else was there that night. They know you’re lying.”

  Isaac’s eyes narrowed into thin slits. “How could they know there was someone else?”

  “Was there?”

  Isaac hesitated. For the briefest of instants, his calm demeanor cracked like dry earth in the sun. Jim’s illicit visit had already put Isaac’s defense in danger, and if the apartment was bugged, anyone listening could have been given enough in the last five minutes to send Isaac in front of the praetors again, only this time he would be brought up on criminal charges instead of just brought in for questioning.

  What did the magistrate know? How could they know? Isaac entertained the idea there may have been another mage in the crowd of attendees that night, but then dismissed it. Powerful wards designed by Isaac’s complex mind were in place around the museum, and any mage foolish enough to cross the threshold would have triggered those wards. Even if they did manage to somehow break through them, Isaac would at the very least have been alerted to their presence.

  Unless someone snuck past.

  No. This was also impossible. Or, at least, it was improbable. Only a mage of great skill could have fooled Isaac’s carefully constructed magical fortifications, and such a mage would likely have involved themselves in what happened with Nyx. He didn’t think a simple fire alarm would have sent such a mage fleeing with the rest of the plebeians in the room.

  So what did they know, and how did they know it?

  “That I am aware of, I was the only mage there,” Isaac said, choosing to again avoid the question while at the same time answering it. This dodging of questions couldn’t last, but he would dodge them for as long as he could.

  “Then I shouldn’t say anything else,” Jim said, staring at Isaac from behind a set of wary—and maybe even disappointed—eyes. “I’ve already said too much, not to mention that I’m in breach of more than a handful of laws by just being here.”

  “You’d best get going then. We don’t want to upset the magistrate.”

  “No,” Jim said. “We don’t.”

  He turned around and started toward the front door, but Isaac called to him and stopped him just as he was about to leave.

  “You forgot your umbrella,” Isaac said.

  “Keep it,” Jim said, “I won’t need it.”

  The librarian left Isaac alone in the apartment once more. He could hear the rain hitting the windows—it had picked up—and a car horn blaring on street level. Curious, Isaac approached the umbrella, pulled it out of the sink, and took it to the bathroom. Most of the water had come off by now, but Isaac needed the sink more than he did the bath, so relocating it seemed like the sensible thing to do.

  It wasn’t until Isaac was about to drop the umbrella into the bathtub that he felt the sudden rush of magic race up his arm and into his chest. The sensation, one he hadn’t felt in almost a week, was so foreign it caused him to shake and drop to one knee. He held onto the rim of the bathtub for support and allowed himself a moment to recover, breathing deeply through the nose and out through the mouth, until the wave had completely washed through his system and he had resurfaced.

  That was when he noticed his magic bangle had started glowing blue for the first time in days, but this wasn’t the strangest thing—neither was the simple fact that, somehow, magic was allowed to operate within these walls. The strange thing here was that the light from the bangle was causing odd writing on the surface of the umbrella to reveal itself. They were scribbles and lines, mostly illegible while the umbrella was still shut, but when he opened it the writing started to make sense.

  “Son of a bitch,” he said, smiling.

  CHAPTER 5

  Messy Business

  Cameron’s Harley purred smoothly as it hugged the asphalt of I-95, a chrome ball running along a half-pipe. The moon was full and high tonight, and it bathed the dark countryside in a soft silver glow. With the wind in her hair, the rumbling bike beneath her, and the leathery smell coming off the back of Cameron’s jacket, Alice found herself lost in mundane thoughts; thinking about books she hadn’t been reading, music she hadn’t been listening to, and wondering why she hadn’t bought a bike instead of a car.

  A bike would be much more practical in her line of work. Besides, it wasn’t as if she didn’t have the money for one. She had simply not considered getting one until now. How was that possible? Hadn’t she spent the majority of her 20’s wanting a bike? Craving the freedom? Had she really forgotten one of the biggest wants she had ever dreamed up?

  Nyx did this, she thought, and she wondered what else she had forgotten.

  Trees became low-rise apartment buildings, and the highway shrank to a narrow corridor of cars as they rode deeper into the city. Almost immediately, the fresh, grassy, rural air was choked out by the putrid stench of car exhaust, dirty, wet streets, and human life. But at least there were coffee shops, restaurants, and places to shop.

  Cameron rode into the Victoria district and took her right up to the front door of her office. There were many obvious reasons as to why she hadn’t allowed Dustin to visit this place in the entire week she had spent locked up at the safe house. It wasn’t that she didn’t trust him, but her office was her place of business; the place where she kept her secrets, her safe, and her files.

  “Wait here,” she said to Cameron as she strolled up to the front door, retrieving her keys from her back pocket.

  “Out here? Why?”

  “You don’t get to come in here unless you’re a client.”

  Cameron turned the ignition off, slipped off his bike, and came up to the door of WERNER INVESTIGATIONS. “You’re right,” he said, “I’m not a client, but I’m technically your partner.”

  Alice rolled her eyes and unlocked the door. There, at her feet, was a week’s worth of newspapers and fliers—more menus, more coupons, and more junk. She rifled through the pile and tossed the junk in the trash, and then she took the newspapers to her desk and laid them there. There were seven.

  “I don’t like this place,” Cameron said. “It’s too quiet, it’s too cramped, too safe.”

  “At least the bulbs have shades on them,” Alice said, “Why didn’t they buy shades for the safe house?”

  “Beats me, but I don’t think anyone was meant to live there for a whole week—not unless they were being kept prisoner or were happy to live in poor conditions.”

  “Whatever. I’m just glad to be out.”

  Alice sat at her desk, swung her hair over her shoulder, and got to work reading the last couple of editions of the Ashwood Standard while Cameron watched, arms folded, with his back against one of the walls. There was plenty to catch up on, but Alice’s attention was immediately pulled by a coded headline outlining a disturbance at a diner. The coded message accompanied a mundane sub-headline which read “WOMAN FOUND DEAD IN LOCAL EATERY”. Alice’s eyebrows pinched together. She looked at Cameron, then went back to the paper and read the column.

  “Citizens of Lower Lexington Street were shocked when the body of a woman was discovered in Kasey’s Diner earlier this morning. The victim—31-year-old Helena Metaxas, a Greek National—had been in Ashwood yesterday evening to witness the unveiling of the new Greek exhibit at the Ashwood Imperial Museum. Due to technical difficulties, however, the unveiling had to be postponed for a date to be decided by the museum director, Linda Perkins.

  Metaxas was found at approximately six o’clock this morning when Kasey’s Diner owner Belinda Thompson arrived to open the diner for the morning crowd. According to Thompson, Metaxas’ body was lying on the floor of the already unlocked diner when she arrived. In an official statement, Deputy Commissioner Christine Nol
an of the Ashwood Police Department has confirmed that the diner had also been burglarized, but whether the two incidents are related is still unknown.

  Deputy Commissioner Nolan has made assurances that all available lines of investigation are being followed. We will have more on this story as it develops.”

  “That’s her,” Alice said.

  “Her?” Cameron asked. He pushed himself off the wall and circled around her desk to read the same headline. “Helena is dead… I can’t believe no one has said anything about this.”

  “You think Isaac told the magistrate enough for them to have recognized this for what it is?”

  “I don’t know. I wasn’t allowed to watch proceedings. Do you really think he would have kept this to himself?”

  “I don’t think he did. Not this. He would have pushed for them to investigate even if he himself was being held in custody.”

  “According to what I’ve heard—and here it is too,” he said, pointing at another article in a different paper, “He hasn’t been cooperative. I don’t know what that means, but if I know Isaac, he may have kept the details about her name quiet.”

  “Why do you think that?”

  “For the same reason he’s kept details about your involvement quiet, I guess; he wants their backup, but he doesn’t want them prying.”

  “He’s probably not going to get what he wants. I don’t have to be a mage to know that’s not how things work.”

  Cameron picked one of the newspapers up and read it while Alice looked through others for more information on Isaac’s case. It surprised her just how much coverage the event at the museum had captured. There was a total of four different articles written in four different editions of the Ashwood Standard, each following the case as it progressed.

  One of the first articles mentioned the cover-up at the museum, and an incident involving Tribune Isaac Moreau. As far as Alice understood it, a Tribune was responsible for the humans in his district, and Isaac had exposed them to danger by allowing humans to enter his museum, despite knowing of a potential attack. According to the magistrate, Isaac put his job before the safety of his humans. In a way she guessed they were right, but at the time the call was a tough one to make.

  Would Nyx have acted that night if the museum had been empty, or was it part of her plan to expose herself only when Isaac and Alice’s attention was divided between humans and her?

  The rising wail of a police siren stole her concentration and she perked up, her body taut and alert. The siren slowly receded as the car sped off in a different direction, but Alice couldn’t relax. Her back was stiff, her skin tightly stretched over her muscles and bones.

  Cameron picked up one of the copies of the Ashwood Standard from the bottom of the pile and read it. This one had today’s date. “Shit,” Cameron said.

  “What is it?” she asked.

  “He’s going to trial. Tonight.”

  “Trial? What trial?” Alice took the paper and read. “Holy shit… Isaac is being charged and tried tonight.”

  “Charged? With what?”

  “It says… endangering the public, reckless destruction of magistrate assets, and an unwillingness to cooperate with the investigation. It also says they’ve determined at least one other mage was involved, but that Isaac has denied this.”

  Alice hadn’t realized it yet, but she was shaking. It wasn’t until Cameron put a hand on her shoulder that she noticed how her bones were trembling. She shrugged her shoulder out from under Cameron’s hand and marched across the room, with purpose, toward her desk. Alice may not have Trapper anymore, she may not have powers, but that didn’t mean she was defenseless or that she didn’t have any weapons.

  She had a weapon.

  Her Glock, as well as a number of other esoteric items, were kept tucked away in a drawer behind lock and key. Though she owned a license to carry a concealed pistol, she never took the pistol out of the drawer because guns, in general, were messy. Trapper was clean. It snapped a shot of a human and poof, the human was dust. Guns left bullet casings, blood, and corpses around, and that just wasn’t clever.

  Alice opened the drawer. Inside was a Glock, a wooden stake, a .38 special filled with silver bullets—there were only three left now—and a small white container. She grabbed the Glock, stuffed it into the gun pocket of her leather jacket, and also took the white container, deciding to leave the wooden stake and the gun with the three silver bullets behind. After that, she slammed the drawer shut, locked it, and began to head for the door.

  “Woah,” Cameron said, rushing to intercept her, “Where do you think you’re going?”

  “To do what I have to do for Isaac.”

  “With that?” he asked, gesturing with his head. “You really think you’re going to be able to get Isaac out of the hands of four praetors and a whole bunch of legionnaires with the pea-shooter you’ve just slipped into your jacket?”

  “I have to do something. I don’t feel good about this. He’s lying for me, and he’s going to get into trouble for it. I won’t let him do that.”

  She went for the door again but Cameron held her firmly, both hands on her shoulders, eyes locked with hers. “Listen to me,” he said, “You’re not going out there. Without my help you’d never get to him in time, and even if you did, there’s nothing you can do. You understand that we’re mages, right?”

  Alice stared at Cameron for a long moment, losing the battle against her own swelling emotions. The thought of Isaac lying for her, and potentially being exiled—or worse—in order to keep her secret was tearing her in two. Isaac had come to her aid when she had asked him for help, and now it was up to her to return the favor.

  And yet… he had told her not to get involved. In a text message on the night he was arrested, his exact words to her had been “Whatever you do, don’t try to help me.”

  Don’t try to help me, she thought, recalling the message.

  Breathing was becoming difficult. Each inhalation seemed to have a smaller capacity for air than the last. Again she wriggled out of Cameron’s hold, walked a number of paces away from him, and focused her efforts on breathing normally. With oxygen came calm, and with calm came cohesive thoughts, untainted by emotion.

  Isaac had told her not to help him, which meant… what? Maybe he had things under control—an ace up his sleeve. He must have. If he knew he was going to be lying to the magistrate, or withholding the truth, then why would he allow himself to be captured without having an ace in the hole to fall back on? Isaac was a clever man and she had to trust he knew what he was doing, but she wouldn’t be able to keep herself from thinking about his trial if she stayed put.

  Finally, she said, “Fine. I won’t get involved.”

  “That’s the smart play,” Cameron said. “We need to see how this is all going to go down, and we need to stay out of it. We can’t help Isaac if the magistrate sets its sights on us.”

  She shook her head. “You’re right.”

  “So, what are we going to do?”

  “The only thing we can do. We’re going to go to Kasey’s Diner and start asking questions.”

  Helena was a corpse that had been moved a long time ago, and Nyx hadn’t been mentioned in the papers once. This meant the mages weren’t involving themselves in what happened, or they didn’t believe Isaac’s story. Whatever the case, it meant the scene of the crime—the diner—hadn’t been touched by the magistrate and the trail wasn’t as cold as she had thought it was.

  So long as there were breadcrumbs for her to follow, she would follow them.

  CHAPTER 6

  Breaking the Law

  It’s… a teleportation spell.

  The writing and rune work were consistent with the most complicated spells which drew on a great deal of power from the Tempest, but it was the numbers that gave the spell away for what it was. They were coordinates on a map—latitude and longitude. Without a globe handy or any reference chart, Isaac had no way of exactly pinpointing where this particular telep
ortation spell would take the caster, but he suspected it was pointing somewhere inside of Ashwood.

  If he were to use the spell, it could lead him anywhere—maybe even into a trap. And without his Guardian to guide him, who could say what might happen to his body? His mind? His soul? In any case, the point was moot. He had no magic. His bangle had stopped glowing the moment Isaac had committed the spell to memory. Lucky for him his memory was photographic, but without access to magic the image he held in his mind was about as useless as sandals in a marsh.

  Unless…

  A cold shiver crawled up his back the instant before someone knocked on the door, loudly, forcefully. When he turned, his heart started to thrum hard against his chest like the drums of war. He knew who was out there, understood full well who was on the other side of that door by the way in which he had knocked. This wasn’t a request to be let in—Legio Logan could walk in whenever he wanted.

  This was an announcement. A declaration. A threat. The prelude to war.

  Isaac steeled his nerves. The front door swung open a moment later, and Logan and two of his legionnaires came spilling into the room; a crime boss with his thugs. Isaac stiffened but maintained his wall of composure. He smiled, cocked his head to the side, and said “Legio Logan—what an unexpected pleasure.”

  “Shut up,” Logan spat. He crossed the room in three hard strides and squared up to Isaac so their faces were close enough to kiss—or head-butt. “Who was in here?” he asked.

  “In here? Me.”

  “Cut the shit. Someone was in here a few moments ago. I want to know who it was, and I want to know how they got in.”

  Jim, Isaac thought, what have you done? “I can assure you,” Isaac said, “I have been on my own this entire time. The last person to walk through those doors was you.”

  Again Isaac took advantage of the fact that Logan couldn’t use his magic in here. Whatever powers of deduction he had were purely mundane, and this leveled the playing field somewhat. But there was something in Logan’s infernal eyes that suggested the question was more of a formality than anything else, because before Isaac knew what had happened, Logan was on him.