5 The Elemental Detective

by Kirsten Weiss

  One of the men stepped on the waitress’s hand.

  She shrieked, cradled her injured hand.

  He staggered away.

  “Riga!” Donovan’s head appeared over the bar. He reached toward her. “We need to get out of here.”

  She grasped his hand, stood. “We need to get her out too.” Riga jerked her head toward the waitress.

  “Her?” He leaned over the bar. “Oh. Come on.” He helped Riga and the waitress over the bar, edged them along it to the wall, and an emergency door.

  “No!” The waitress grasped his wrist. “An alarm will sound.”

  “Even better.” Donovan pushed the door open. A siren blared.

  Riga hesitated, looking over her shoulder for Kimo. He and his friends battled a hoard of frat boys in university t-shirts. Kimo kicked one in the crotch, and Riga winced.

  “Come on,” Donovan urged.

  They escaped into a service corridor, the clarion wailing.

  “Is the fighting just here?” Riga asked, hurrying behind him.

  “As far as I know,” he said. “I was still in that meeting with Paul when we got the call from security that a fight had broken out. Ellen told me you were at the bar.”

  “Where was security?” Riga asked.

  “This isn’t the sort of joint where you see a lot of brawling,” he said. “They’re not prepared for something like this. Paul called the cops.”

  “I hope they’re prepared,” Riga muttered.

  At the end of the corridor was a door. It opened to the outside, and they ran out into the rain.

  “Thanks. I’m outta here.” The waitress jogged away, her arms wrapped around her waist.

  Riga wiped her face. “There was another spell. And I think I know where it was cast. The lighthouse. It’s the tower.”

  “What tower?”

  “The tower in my vision. In the tarot cards. I had a vision when… Oh, just trust me!”

  He put his hands on her arms. “I do. Let’s go.”

  The door bammed open behind them, and Kimo staggered out, one hand clapped to his head. Blood trickled down the left side of his face. “What the hell’s going on?”

  “There’s a necromancer on the island,” Riga said. “He’s been killing seals and people to fuel his magic. He murdered Dennis and Mana and probably Sarah as well.”

  He wobbled. “A necromancer? You mean like black magic?”

  “How else would Mana throw up sharks teeth?” Riga said, exasperated. “The killer is at the lighthouse now. That’s probably where he’s killed another seal or maybe even another person. If we can catch him, we can stop him.”

  Kimo sputtered. “But… but…”

  “You asked,” Donovan said. He grasped Riga’s hand and they ran down the path.

  Chapter 26

  The valet station was abandoned. Donovan rummaged through the cabinet, found the keys to the Ferrari. They ran to the valet parking lot, and jumped into the car.

  Donovan revved the engine, and they screeched out of the drive, their back tires skidding on the slick asphalt. Riga’s head rocked back on the seat.

  “Sorry,” he said. “And I’m sorry about keeping you waiting, about leaving you alone.”

  “It’s fine. You were working.”

  “But I knew there was danger. I just got so wrapped up in the kill. I’m afraid you’re not exactly seeing me at my best.”

  They whipped around a dark curve.

  “Your best? You mean focused?”

  “Our honeymoon was supposed to first be about us,” he said.

  “And then Dennis was murdered, and magic invaded, and a simple hotel deal became something more.”

  “None of that was your fault,” he said.

  “And none of it has really changed anything. Our honeymoon is still about us. We’re just not doing traditional honeymoon things. Donovan, I want to see you happy. This world – wheeling and dealing, managing properties, turning them around – it’s what makes you happy.”

  “You make me happy.”

  “But necromancy doesn’t.”

  His mouth twisted. Finally, he said, “I don’t like what the blood, the sacrifice, does to you. And it’s hard to forget my first encounter with necromancy, being made dead.”

  “In fairness, you weren’t completely dead.”

  He looked at her.

  “Well, you weren’t.”

  He began to laugh, rich and deep, and Riga smiled in response.

  She rested her hand on his, atop the gearshift. “I don’t like what it does to me either. And I will never use blood – or any kind of sacrifice – again. I promise.”

  He lifted his fingers, and twined them in hers. “Thank you.”

  Wind buffeted the Ferrari, and Donovan pulled his hand free, gripped both on the wheel. “Will Brigitte be okay out in this?”

  “She’s flown through worse,” Riga said. Though the gargoyle would be grumbling about it for days. She imagined Brigitte, saw her flying closer in her mind’s eye. Brigitte, we need you.

  “The last time a spell like this was cast,” Donovan said, “you had to cast a tracking spell to find it. How did you locate the source of the magic so quickly this time?”

  “I managed to mentally… catch the spell as it was being cast and follow its trail.” She looked out the window, and her pale face reflected back at her. “It was intoxicating. Not like wine, like something else, something more powerful. I didn’t like it.” No, that wasn’t quite true, Riga thought. She’d liked it too much.

  A gray and white blur crossed in front of them. He swore, and yanked the wheel to the right. The car skidded, and he corrected course. They sped onward.

  “Sorry. Someone’s goat got loose. What were you saying?”

  “Nothing.” Riga pressed a hand to her chest, as if she could will the thundering there to subside. “I’d better let you concentrate on driving.”

  He grunted.

  They turned off the highway and wended down the road to the lighthouse, leaving cinderblock houses and street lamps behind. Their headlights illuminated a palm tree. It flattened, parallel to the ground, and the Ferrari skidded sideways.

  “This is hurricane force now,” Donovan said, slowing.

  The road narrowed. He leaned forward in his seat. “I don’t see the lighthouse.”

  Riga craned her neck. The rain-coated windshield warped the darkness. She couldn’t see a thing. “Neither do I, but it’s got to be there.”

  They drove slowly into the parking lot and pulled beside a Volvo.

  “You recognize it?” Donovan asked.

  “No.” She opened her bag and pulled out her flashlight. “The lighthouse – the beacon is off.”

  Riga struggled to open the car door, the wind forcing it back on her.

  He grasped her arm, and pointed to the horizon, and a ship outlined in light. “Riga, that’s an oil tanker. It’s too close. The wind is driving it in to shore.”

  She paled. “In this storm, with the lighthouse off...” She shouted in the howl of the wind. It whipped her words away, buffeted her, and she staggered.

  “Our necromancer might be trying to cause an oil spill.”

  “He’s going to kill the seals – and everything else – en masse to fuel his spell.”

  “Even if that’s not his goal, we need to get that light back on.”

  They started down the trail, leaning into the gale. The entire trail appeared to be in motion, the banana trees and other greenery rippling. Knives of icy rain bit her skin. Water poured down her. She might as well have worn her bathing suit, for all the good her jacket was doing.

  “Leave the flashlights off,” he shouted. “I can see well enough without it. Let’s not give this guy advance warning.”

  Stumbling in the dark, they made their way down the trail toward the lighthouse. Riga grounded herself, pulling energy from the in-between, creating a protective barrier around her and Donovan.

  His teeth gleamed, pale in the night. �
�I’ll be fine,” he said.

  “How did you know I—?”

  “I just know.” He pressed a hand to her lower back. “Up ahead. Do you see it?”

  Movement in the darkness, and a banging sound.

  They hurried forward. The heavy door to the lighthouse clunked open and shut.

  “Wait here,” Donovan said, and walked inside.

  But she couldn’t wait, couldn’t let him go without her. Riga took a step and struck something solid, cold, rotting. She staggered back. “Donovan,” she yelled.

  He turned, brow wrinkling. “What’s wrong?”

  She pressed her hand against the invisible barrier, softening her gaze. Faintly, she could see it, a magical wall that glowed green as if illuminated through night vision goggles. “He’s placed a magical barricade at the door. I can’t get in.”

  Donovan walked forward, hands extended. He jerked his hands away from the open door as if burned. “What is this?” He looked behind him, up the winding lighthouse stairs.

  She ran her hands along the barrier, waves of nausea flowing through her at the touch. It wasn’t like the barrier at the snow goddess temple. This was rotten, evil, powered by murder. “It’s dark necromancy.”

  Donovan shifted. “Riga, I’ve got to get that light on.” His black hair lay plastered against his skull, his clothing stuck to the hard muscles of his body.

  “It may be a trap.”

  “Of course it’s a trap. But I need to get the light on.”

  She clenched her fists, felt the pressure of the double set of rings tighten about her finger. Fear dizzied her. She couldn’t lose him. “Donovan…” Her voice was a croak.

  His mouth set in a grim line. “I need to get that light on,” he repeated.

  God help her, this wasn’t the first time she’d put him in danger. Danger he’d willingly accepted. That was the man she’d married. She gritted her teeth. “Go.”

  He turned and disappeared up the darkened stairs.

  Weak silver glowed around her feet and she turned. The windows in the outbuilding flickered with sickly light. Goosebumps layered her goosebumps, the magic like pins dancing across her skin. The necromancer was there.

  She fought the wind, forced herself out of the shelter of the lighthouse, across the slick paving stones to the outbuilding. Riga grasped the handle of the heavy wooden door. Locked. “Dammit!”

  A dark shape crashed into the door, and she yelped, leapt back.

  The gargoyle plummeted to the ground. Unsteadily Brigitte stood, shaking her head.

  “Brigitte, are you okay?”

  “Of course I am not okay! There was no magic at ze hippy camp.” She sneezed. “Patchouli!”

  “Gesundheit.”

  “But dark magic is afoot, and you have called, so I braved ze storm. Where is ze magician? How shall we defeat him?”

  “I’ll take the magician.” Her jaw clenched. Justice had been a long time coming to that one, but one way or another, his games would end tonight. She pointed to the lighthouse. “Donovan’s in there, trying to get the light back on. There’s some sort of magical barrier at the front door. I doubt he’s blocked the top windows though. Can you make it there? Try to get in another way?”

  “I shall do it!” Brigitte leapt into the air and was promptly blown past the lighthouse, over the cliff.

  “Brigitte!” Her voice was lost in the screaming wind. She closed her eyes. The gargoyle would be okay, she told herself, her hands shaking. She’d be okay.

  Riga turned to the door. She needed to focus on what she could deal with. And locked doors were one thing she could manage.

  Riga pulled her hand fractionally away from the doorknob and called the energies, imagined the cool blue from above, the red heat from below, inhaled, pulled them into her body, through her feet and into the crown of her head, let them fill her. She imagined the pins of the lock dropping into place, the knob turning. It was an old spell to unlock doors. With her new magic, it had a very different effect.

  An acrid scent burned her nostrils. She opened her eyes.

  The knob flowed in a lava stream down the smoking door.

  “Take that,” she muttered.

  The wind took the door, slammed it against the wall.

  She ran inside the narrow hallway. Coats on pegs and boots lined one wall.

  A watery light leaked from the crack beneath a shut door at the end of the hall. One hand trailing along the cold, cement wall, she edged toward it.

  Nothingness swallowed her. The world went black, the wall she’d been using to guide herself vanished. She felt nothing against her skin. Where was her skin? Where did she end and the nothingness begin? And then something bubbled to the surface of her awareness: despair.

  She’d been too slow to figure it out, had failed. The ship had already cracked apart on the rocks, sent men tumbling, screaming into the sea. The tower cracked, the top of the lighthouse plummeting down the cliff, breaking apart, and with it, a man. She’d failed, and she couldn’t breathe, had forgotten how. She should have known sooner – that first lunch with Townsend when her magical probing had been blocked. But she’d thought it had been the kupua. Her first, but not last mistake. And there was no air. She had no lungs. And Donovan…

  Donovan.

  Her heartbeat, aching, slamming against her ribs. And she remembered: this was a spell. Donovan was alive, he had to be. He was made of magic, and Townsend couldn’t touch him. A spark grew inside her.

  It was just a spell. She could break this. She knew how.

  Riga spoke the words, embraced the nothingness, and pulled its force through her, sent it spiraling outward.

  Cold pressed into her palms, her knees. She sucked in a lungful of air. The door was there again, the light beneath it fading. “Townsend! Where are you?”

  Lurching to her feet, she ran down the darkened hallway to the door. She took a moment to let her eyes adjust to the dark, then flung it open.

  The room was small, empty but for the man lying in a pool of blood, black in the weak light from the windows. Grover lay centered in a chalk pentagram, his arms outflung, legs stretched like da Vinci’s Vitruvian man. She smeared one of the sigils with her foot, and knelt beside him, pressing her fingers to his neck.

  He was dead.

  A branch slapped a window, and Riga jumped.

  Her eyes made out more details. A wooden chair in the corner. An unlit candle on the floor. A door.

  “Son of a…” She went to it, turned the knob. The door pushed back. She fought the wind, escaped into the outdoors.

  “Townsend!” The wind tore her words from her throat.

  Rain pelted her, the force of the hurricane making her squint. She closed her eyes, extended her senses. Felt movement by the cliff’s edge. She opened her eyes, saw a figure slip through the bushes near the metal barrier.

  Riga grasped her tactical flashlight in her hands, kept the beam off. She still had some surprises up her sleeve. Bending against the wind, she ran toward the figure.

  It vanished.

  She slowed to a halt beside the metal barrier. A leaf from a banana tree slapped her face, and she brushed it aside. “Where are you?”

  Someone grabbed her by the hair, yanked her backwards.

  She twisted, yowling. Flipped the tactical flashlight on and lit up Townsend’s eyes, the rain cascading off his domed head. He winced, temporarily blinded.

  She slapped him in the crotch. He let go, staggered backwards, bent, hissing.

  Riga kicked at him. He raised his elbow and connected with her shin. Pain arced through her leg. She howled, hopped backward. He drove into her, slammed her against the barrier fence. It shifted behind her, metal groaning. Her left foot swung, suspended in space. She dropped the flashlight, and it rolled away.

  Townsend kept her pinned to the fence, pushing her back.

  The shriek of metal mingled with the wind.

  “Why?” she screamed. “Why are you doing this?”

  “Becau
se.” He grunted. “I hate people.”

  She kneed him, missing his crotch. Banged her elbow into the side of his head and knocked him sideways. He staggered, low to the ground, grabbing her around the knees, taking her down. They tumbled, rolling toward the cliff. She flung a leg around his neck and flipped him.

  Townsend shrieked, his lower body sliding over the cliff’s edge, slipping, scrabbling. He grabbed her leg.

  She kicked out with her free leg, but he was slowly dragging her beneath the low barrier rail. Riga grabbed for its metal bar, her hands fumbling for purchase.

  “It’s too late,” he screamed. “It doesn’t matter what you do. The lighthouse is going, and so is that ship.”

  “Fuck you!” She kicked him in the face.

  He hung on. The cliff crumbled beneath them. Their bodies jerked downward.

  One of her hands loosened on the metal rail.

  She kicked again. “What have you done to the lighthouse?”

  “Your husband will find out.”

  Her legs and hips hung over the cliff, her heart exploding. Townsend thrashed, scrabbling for a toehold, weighing her down.

  Her right hand slipped from the bar. She struggled to grab it, but Townsend pulled her lower, toward the rocks. She was stretched too far. Still she reached, her fingertips brushing the wet metal.

  A hand grasped hers, and her breath stalled.

  She looked up into Kimo’s black eyes.

  “Hold on,” he shouted.

  “It’s Townsend,” Riga yelled. “He killed them all.”

  Suddenly, she was lighter, and Townsend was screaming, and she was being dragged upward and across the jagged cliff, beneath the railing.

  “Are you okay?” Kimo asked.

  She nodded, gulping air. She crawled to the flashlight and shined it over the edge.

  Townsend’s body lay crumpled on the rocks below. She looked up. The lighthouse remained dark.

  “Over here,” Kimo shouted, waving to someone down the trail.

  Two male figures pounded toward them.

  “He sabotaged the lighthouse,” Riga said. “Donovan’s inside, trying to fix it.”