“Not a chance, big guy,” Amy replies. She hugs her coat tighter, shivering, cold despite our recently upgraded winter uniforms. “I swear, how the hell do you people stand this weather, Kinsey?”
I stick my hands in my pockets and shrug as I walk by her toward the building’s front entrance. “I grew up here.” The building manager is supposed to meet us, but he must be running late. No other cars around. “If it makes you feel better, I was miserably hot during my years at Stanford. It’s an acclimation thing, you know.”
Amy eyes Desmond and asks, “If that’s the truth, then why’s Desmond always so cheery in this weather? Man was born and raised in California!”
Desmond strolls over to her and pats her head jokingly. “Size is also a consideration, Major Sugawara. Small people lose body heat faster.”
“Are you calling me short, Professor?”
Desmond cracks a grin, bright white against his dark skin. “Nothing of the sort, Major.”
While they’re quipping to each other, I lean against the SUV and observe. Amy and Desmond both returned from the ghoul mission in France a couple weeks ago, and since then, we’ve had exactly two cases together, both of which were resolved in a single afternoon. (It’s been oddly quiet since the now infamous “Etruscan Incident.” And to be honest, I’m not sure whether to consider that a blessing or a curse.) As such, I haven’t had much of a chance yet to get to know either of them, or a chance to fill in my “gaps” concerning Ella and Riker. That lack of knowledge puts me at a disadvantage on this team—everyone but me knows the ins and outs of everyone else.
Amy, the most recent addition to Riker’s team (except me, of course) has already been around for seven years. Desmond has been at Riker’s side for ten. Ella, for most of her adult life. And the man I replaced, Norman Bishop, spent twelve years on the team before he died in that cave in France.
Big shoes to fill.
Which is why I like to step out of conversations sometimes, and watch instead. I have a lot to learn about these people—and even more to learn from them. If Charun and Tuchulcha taught me anything, it’s that I am woefully underprepared for the serious cases that get thrown at the DSI elite. I need to make up my experience deficit. Although, in situations like this, I’m not really sure what it is I’m supposed to be learning.
“You know, Amy, Descartes once said—”
“Descartes can kiss my petite Asian ass. Save the philosophy for the classroom, will you?”
“I would, if I ever planned to go back there. Alas, UCLA does not look kindly on hiring monster hunters.”
“Well, whose fault is that? You’re the one who—”
I clear my throat, and their heads pop up to stare at me. I nod at the road in the distance, visible through the leafless trees. There’s a lone car slowing for the office building’s turnoff. “I think our guy is here. Might want to wrap this discussion up for the time being.”
Desmond straightens. “Calvin’s right.” He offers his gloved hand to Amy. “Truce, Major?”
Amy rolls her dark eyes but takes his hand anyway. “Whatever you say, Professor.”
A minute later, a dinged-up Audi pulls into the lot three spaces down from our vehicle. As the building manager is stepping out of his car, I check him over. He’s a mousy-looking man in his mid-forties with early signs of a beer gut. His suit is an expensive brand, but it’s off-season. His watch is a knockoff Rolex. And his haircut, complete with comb-over, was clearly styled to mimic something you see in those business magazines about wealthy investors.
Long story short, the manager is the sort of guy who has just enough money to buy designer hand-me-downs in order to pretend he has more, guided by the belief that people will respect him if he mimics the “one percent.” He’s got a lot more pride than he does zeroes in his bank account. Which probably explains why he called us down to his building without first informing the police that there is a dead body on the second floor. DSI doesn’t get too many cold calls. When we do, it’s usually people like this.
Desmond waves to the man as he walks over to us. “Sir, might you be Mr. Wilcox?”
“Indeed, yes,” the manager replies. “And you’re the team from DSI?”
“Just what you asked for.” Amy throws him a painfully fake smile and holds it until Desmond elbows her in the side. She coughs and adds, “So you’ve got a body, eh?”
“On the second floor. Room 22.” Wilcox shudders. “I found it this morning while I was doing my usual rounds. We’ve had issues with vandals and such over the past couple weeks, so I always do a quick check before I head into town. Doesn’t hurt to be safe, you know…or at least I thought it didn’t.”
“So what’s up with the body?” I ask from my place behind Amy and Desmond.
Wilcox blinks a few times, like he didn’t notice me before now. “Pardon?”
I suppress the urge to shake my head. “You called DSI instead of the police for a reason, I assume. There’s something weird about the body? It doesn’t look like a usual death?”
“Oh, right. That.” Wilcox rings his hands. “Well, I mean, I don’t really know anything about this magical and paranormal nonsense, whatever it is that you people do. But something is not right about that poor dead woman. I thought she was a vagrant at first, some homeless person who drank herself to death. I was this close to calling the cops, like any normal person would. But then I happened to stumble a bit closer, and I saw…some kind of markings. Symbols drawn on the floor with chalk. In a circle. You know, like they use in those cults that worship the devil?” Wilcox’s voice grows softer with each word, even though there’s no one but us around to hear him. “I think maybe she was doing a Satanic ritual.”
And here we go again with the Satanic cults. I swear to god, people. Please leave the eighties cult hysteria in the last century, where it belongs.
“Ah,” Desmond drawls. “So you called DSI instead of the cops because we deal with ‘witchcraft’?”
“Right.” Wilcox nods and offers a fake smile of his own. “So you’ll check it out then? Make sure she didn’t do anything weird to my building? I really do need to get the renovation teams back here ASAP—you know, like, tomorrow—or we won’t finish on time for the earlier lease dates. So, if you will…?” He gestures with both hands toward the building. “Oh! And does this…cost anything?”
“We’re a government agency, sir,” I say. “Your taxes pay our salary.”
“Oh.” He rubs his palms together and doesn’t look comforted at all. “Really?”
None of us answer.
Desmond shuffles closer to the man and holds out his hand. “Key, please.”
Wilcox, cowed by Desmond’s height, tugs it out of his coat and hands it over. “Be sure not to break anything, okay?”
All three of us stare silently for a moment, holding our tongues as we try not to laugh. Then, together, we turn and head inside the office building. Wilcox loiters in the parking lot, trembling in his too-thin suit, and watches us go, until we disappear through the frosted glass doors of the lobby. A few seconds after the doors close behind us, blocking his view, we hear the distinct thud of a car door slamming shut. But the car doesn’t leave. Wilcox is actually going to sit in his toasty warm Audi until we come back out and give him a thorough report about the Satanic activities of the corpse on the second floor. For fuck’s sake.
Halfway across the lobby, Amy loses it. She snorts and doubles over. “Oh, my god. That man is—”
“Now, now, Amy,” Desmond chastises, “you know how Ella feels about shaming the victims.”
“Does he really count as a victim though?” I ask, taking a gander at the lobby. The modern design, with its dark woods and metallic fixtures, is not so bad in and of itself, but all the materials are noticeably cheap, and the reno will start to wear down in just a few years. It won’t be a pretty place to work for long. At least not on the inside. What a waste of a great location. “He seemed less traumatized by the dead body than he was by the fac
t she may have cursed the place.”
Desmond bites his lip to preempt a smirk. “Don’t you tempt me, too, Calvin. I’m trying to be professional here. Up to the second floor with you two. Go!” He makes a shooing motion at Amy and me, and we all march off toward the stairwell on the left. “We can discuss Mr. Wilcox’s personal failings after we handle the dead body upstairs. Deal?”
Amy and I glance at each other and shrug. “Deal,” we say in tandem.
The second floor sports décor similar to the first, but it’s split into twelve distinct office areas, meant for separate businesses. Room 22, one of the smaller offerings, is the last office on the right. The plain gray door sits partially open, revealing a swatch of the room. A ring with a dozen keys hooked on it still hangs from the lock—Wilcox must have left it there when he fled earlier this morning.
As we approach, each of us unclips the strap to one of the holsters on our thighs. A habit that all DSI agents pick up eventually. You can only walk into a room full of monsters unaware so many times before you start preparing for an ambush even in the most innocuous situations.
Desmond, I sense, also charges his beggar rings. I don’t because he told me not to outside of our practice sessions together—unless it’s an emergency—at least until I get the hang of not overloading them every time I’m in a fight. So my gloves are missing the conspicuous silver rings for today’s excursion. My latest replacement set jingles sadly in a pouch on my belt, off limits.
But Amy doesn’t charge her rings either, I notice (after intentionally checking).
I pretend this makes me feel better.
We approach the office slowly, Desmond directing Amy around to the opposite side of the doorway, our guns at the ready. I hang behind Desmond as backup, in case something comes barreling out of the room to tackle one of my teammates. But as Amy and Desmond tiptoe closer and peek inside—nothing makes a sound. There’s no movement. No shuffle of feet or harsh breathing. As far as I can tell, there’s nothing living in the room. And the only dead thing seems to be the body, the feet of which are visible through the gap in the door.
Desmond lowers his gun and pushes the door open the rest of the way, revealing our victim. She’s sprawled out across a new, generic blue carpet. Roughly thirty years of age. Medium brown hair. Pale skin with a mild sunburn. A few dark bruises speckled across her face and neck. She’s fully clothed, thankfully, from a thick, knitted beanie all the way down to heavy winter boots.
There’s no obvious mortal injury on her body, at least not the kind that can be easily identified from the outside. Could be an internal injury. Blunt force trauma to the abdomen ruptured something and she bled out. That’s not a call for us to make, however; we leave cause of death up to Aurora’s top medical examiner, Natalie Schultz, who’s in the know about the supernatural and very much not happy about it.
We all scan the room for any signs of booby traps, magic or otherwise, but find none.
Amy tilts her chin up at me. “Hey, Kinsey. You sense any lingering magic?”
I concentrate, eyes focused on the office room. But my magic sense doesn’t catch a whiff of anything. In fact, all I do catch is the faint scent of old perfume radiating off the woman’s body. I scrunch up my nose. “Nope. Either somebody used a negligible amount of magic here, so little it dissipated in hours, or there were no practitioners involved at all, human or otherwise.”
“Well,” mutters Desmond, “there goes the ‘magic accident’ theory. If she wasn’t doing real magic, what killed her?”
Amy tucks her gun into her holster again and shrugs. “Let’s find out. If it was something natural, we’ll drop a tip to the PD and be done with it. And poor Wilcox can get this awful mess cleaned up in time for his new leases.” She steps cautiously into the office room, despite the joking, and after a second where nothing attacks, ushers Desmond and me in behind her.
We make quick work of the room, casing the place from top to bottom. Desmond puts me on picture duty, and I snap shots of every item in the room that could possibly be relevant in any context whatsoever. But besides some reno equipment, paint and the like, there’s not much here that could have been used to commit a violent crime. When I finish photographing the entire room three times over, I join Amy and Desmond by the body.
Amy, who’s produced a pair of latex gloves, is going through the woman’s pockets. “No ID here. Maybe she was homeless after all?”
“With those clothes?” Desmond pulls up the tag on her coat. “These are brand name. And fairly new. Unless she got these from a particularly nice charity, I don’t think she was aching for money.”
“What about the Satanic symbols?” I ask, nodding to the chalk-drawn marks partially hidden under the body.
“Can’t tell,” Amy replies. “They’ve been smudged beyond comprehension, probably by her body falling. They’re definitely drawn in a circle, but it doesn’t look like a summoning to me. And most practitioners don’t use chalk for summonings anyway. Too easy to distort. You mess up a summoning circle, and the next thing you know, you’re Eververse monster food.”
Desmond wiggles his eyebrows. “We know that from experience.”
I crouch down beside him and murmur, “I bet.”
“Hey, Amy,” Desmond chuckles out, “you remember that time in Fresno, when—?”
“Wait,” I say, cutting him off. “What’s that?”
There’s something peeking out from under the woman’s left leg. I drop to my knees, bend closer, ignoring the cloying smell of perfume, and nudge the wrinkled denim of her jeans away from the small object. I recognize what it is at first glance, but it takes me a second to think of the word. It’s a… “A cog.”
“Like a cog in the machine?” Amy asks. She leans over the body to take a look herself and plucks the little gold cog from the floor with a latex-covered hand. “Huh, you’re right. Wonder what this is from?”
Desmond examines it. “Maybe she had an old-fashioned watch, and someone took it? She came here with someone else, itching to do some witchcraft from a book she found at the library, only for something to go horribly, horribly wrong. An attempted sexual assault, perhaps. Or even just an argument that ended in tragedy.”
Amy considers these possibilities. “Sounds plausible to me. There might not be any supernatural elements here at all. Fake magic. A couple of idiots. Maybe some drugs involved—hell, maybe she overdosed on something, and her buddy or buddies panicked, took her ID and stuff, and ran off. There’s nothing here to say a monster attacked them, much less—”
A wave of dizziness hits me like a freight train, and I tumble backward onto my ass.
“Calvin?” Desmond reaches for me. “Are you all right?”
“Damn.” I smack my hands over my eyes and groan as the feeling comes over me. “Déjà vu.”
“Ah, here we go again,” Amy says. “Remember what Navarro told you. Just let it happen. Go with the flow.”
“But not too with the flow,” Desmond warns. “I don’t want to have to carry you out of here. Like that time at the marina.”
Their words go in one ear and out the other. It’s not that I don’t want to hear them but more that I’m so frustrated at my situation, it’s hard to focus on anything else but the frothing anger in my gut. Anger at myself for letting this happen. Anger at the world for my piss-poor luck. And anger at the Etruscan Psychopomp who did this to me in the first place.
See, you remember that time when Vanth almost executed me in the underworld? Well, it turns out that when a Psychopomp beheads you, your entire life adheres to that old “flashes before your eyes” cliché. But, in my particular case of decapitation, there was a slight screw-up. Namely, that my head stayed attached to my shoulders. So, instead of seeing my life as I lived it, I saw my life as I lived it plus what I haven’t yet lived. My past and my future. All of it. At once. Forced into my brain like a giant, tense rubber-band ball.
And funny thing about the human brain: it doesn’t like ten fucking million memo
ries being shoved into it at once. So, for lack of a better term, according to the esteemed Dr. Navarro, I now have a “glitch” in my brain that gives me really uncomfortable déjà vu whenever I stumble into situations that “strike a particular chord” inside that massive, inaccessible memory ball sitting in the back of my head.
But that’s not all, folks!
Oh, no. It gets better.
If I try too hard to mentally “follow” the déjà vu toward the actual memory—that is, if I try to see my future—I faint. On the other hand, if I completely reject the memory, try to block out the sensation altogether, I vomit. Two equally awesome choices, I know.
Navarro told me if I could straddle the balance point, then maybe I could actually get something useful out of this “ability.” A sixth sense for when something important is about to happen, or an indication that I’ve stumbled upon a vital clue. But so far, it hasn’t told me anything that another member of my highly skilled team couldn’t have figured out through usual crime scene investigation tactics. Some kind of superpower, huh?
Clearly, I need to get a T-shirt that reads, “I went to the Eververse and all I got was this stupid déjà vu.” Because that just about sums up my lot in life.
Now, sitting on the floor of this cheaply renovated office, I suck in deep breaths and try to ignore the nagging sense that I have seen all this before. But it’s persistent this time. (On some occasions, it lasts for mere seconds. On others, for almost a full minute.) I swallow hard and say, “I’m going to walk it off in the hall, if you two don’t mind.”
Desmond pats me gently on the shoulder. “Go on, Calvin. We’ve got this. And if you feel too bad for too long, feel free to go back to the SUV.”
“Sorry…”
“Don’t say that.” Amy shakes her head. “It’s not your fault. The Eververse fucks people up, plain and simple. You’ll get over this, or used to it, eventually. It’s only been a few weeks. Don’t be so hard on yourself.” She turns her head to the side and murmurs, “Else you’ll end up like the captain.”
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