by Amir Lane
Something wasn’t letting her leave. It was grabbing her arm, clinging and holding her in place like a kid who didn’t want to be left with a babysitter. It was more frustrating than frightening. This happened all the time. It was one of the dangers of scrying. And like the idiot she was, she hadn’t set an alarm to ground herself. How could she have forgotten the number one rule of scrying? Always have a way to come back.
The sound of a door upstairs slamming shut cutting off an angry Portuguese brought her back to reality. She jerked violently, knocking the glass off the table and spilling water all over the floor. The glass was no match for the fake ceramic tiles. It shattered on impact.
“Oh, fuck,” she mumbled, pulling her foot back to avoid the shards.
She pushed the chair back and stood, the sketchbook shoved aside and temporarily forgotten. The glass needed to be cleaned up before someone came down and stepped on it. Or before she did. She gathered up as many pieces as she could carry in her hands and tossed them into the trashcan beneath the sink. She went back and forth a few times, picking up as many pieces as she could find and cleaning up the water with an old rag set aside for just such a purpose. Only when that was all cleaned up did she pick the sketchbook up to see what her body had decided to draw.
The face staring back at her was one she had only seen a few times, but it was one that she would recognize anywhere. The eyes were too wide, as if someone had pulled his eyelids up. They stared through her, looking at something that she could never be sure really existed. She half expected those eyes to look up at her. Just the sight of that face made her skin crawl, but she managed not to drop the book. What the hell was he doing in it, anyway? What did he, of all people, have to do with A?
“Why Alistair?” she asked quietly.
“Alistair?”
Lindy jumped, and the sketchbook landed on the plastic-tiled floor with a dull thud. She pressed her hands to her chest as if it would keep her heart from jumping out of her chest like it wanted to. Very few people could sneak up on her, but Dieter tended to be the exception to a lot of rules.
“Holy fuck, you want to give someone a head’s up when you walk into a room?”
When she turned around and saw his face, she immediately regretted snapping at him. For starters, it wasn’t his fault she was blind to him. Not just figuratively this time, he was actually standing in her blind spot. But when she tipped her head, she could see a hurt and hopeful expression on his face.
“Sorry,” he mumbled. “But did you— did you say Alistair? Is he…?”
Dieter trailed off, leaving the question open. But there was no doubt in her mind that he was asking if Alistair Cudmore was still alive.
Lindy picked the sketchbook up off of the floor and wiped the back off. It came away slightly damp.
“He’s dead,” she said firmly, but still as sympathetically as she could manage. “Believe me, he’s dead.”
She felt for him, she really did. Alistair had been the first person either of them had ever met who could see spirits the way Dieter could. Besides Ekkehardt, of course, but their father had convinced himself that pretending they weren’t real was better for all concerned. And really, Alistair probably wasn’t a bad person. He just had the misfortune of being attached to spirits who turned out to be much more powerful than he was.
“So… I mean, if he’s dead, why— why are you drawing him?”
That was a very good question that Lindy didn’t have a very good answer for.
“I don’t know,” she admitted. “I was hoping to get something about A, but all I got is this.”
She flipped through the pages to make sure she hadn’t missed anything. There was that badge again from her first call with A, still without the numbers, and the front door of a house she’d never seen before. Which was probably supposed to mean something to her. It didn’t.
“Can I see?” he asked, holding his hand out for the sketchbook.
She hesitated before handing it over to him. There was an uneasy tightness in the pit of her stomach. She couldn’t see what harm it would do, though. It was just a picture.
As soon as the sketchbook was in Dieter’s hands, his entire expression changed. A soft smile spread across his lips, and there was a sort of light in his eyes that was different from the one he had when he was around Yasir and Selima. Even his posture relaxed, most of the tension he carried in his shoulders leaving almost instantly. It made Lindy feel guilty for wanting to take it back. She watched him brush his fingers over Alistair’s forehead as if to move the stray hairs back. It was somehow one of the saddest things she’d seen in a while, but she still pretended that her eyes were watering from the strain.
“Can I keep this?” His voice was so soft that she barely heard it. “I only have a few pictures of him, but they’re nothing like this.”
When she didn’t answer, he continued.
“I really miss him sometimes, you know. He used to smile at me like I was the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen. The way he would talk to me… He isn’t— wasn’t like anybody I had ever met before.”
She didn’t have the heart to point out that it was probably a good thing.
“Yeah, sure. Keep it, I don’t really need it. But you need to tell me if you have any idea what Alistair might have to do with A.”
“People call me the Shadow Maker now, you know. He made me into this. I never wanted to be a Necromancer, and he knew it. He did it to me anyway… but I still loved him.”
“I know. You aren’t wrong for that. You can still love someone who did shitty things to you.”
Lindy couldn’t help but think of Ekkehardt.
“I’ve never heard him mention any A. But he had foster siblings. A brother and a sister, I think. Maybe they would know something about it.”
Dieter didn’t lift his eyes from the picture. He kept stroking the image with that same expression on his face.
“Great. I’ll see if me and Dick can go talk to them. Thanks.”
He nodded absently. Lindy wasn’t sure if he’d heard what she said, or if he was even registering that she was speaking. He ripped the sketch out of the book, tearing the paper as carefully as physically possible.
“I’m gonna’ go take this upstairs if that’s okay with you.”
“Yeah,” she said softly, “go ahead.”
She had to see someone about a file.
Historically, there weren’t many cops that Lindy didn’t dislike. Authority had never been something she got along well with. Constable Jean Ware was one of the few exceptions. He was a diviner, low-level compared to herself, but he was decent with a deck of cards. He was also the only person in the department she could go to on this. She couldn’t bring this to Dick, not until she was sure there was something to bring to him. She didn’t want to waste resources on what could have been — and probably was — nothing.
“Hey, Jean,” she said, cutting him off on his way out of the precinct. “I was wondering if I could ask you a favour.”
“What’s up?”
There was something not unlike reluctance in his voice. Lindy couldn’t blame him. Last time she’d asked him for a favour, she’d been fishing for background information on Alistair Cudmore over a year ago. This time, it was more of the same except, well… more.
“I need everything on the Cudmore family murders. From Kitchener-Waterloo. Uhm, 2004.”
In 2004, Alistair’s sister had snapped and stabbed her entire family before slitting her own throat. The story was that she had ventured into Necromancy and found it to be more than she could handle. Alistair, who had only been eight or nine at the time, was the only one who had survived.
Jean didn’t say anything for a few seconds. The heavy silence made her face and neck feel hot, like she’d said something wrong.
“Cudmore,” Jean repeated.
“Yeah.”
“Everything.”
“Yeah.”
Jean clicked his teeth together. He wasn’t going to say n
o, was he? There was nobody else she could ask without raising eyebrows. Maybe Alistair had nothing to do with what was happening. Maybe her scrying about him was only about Dieter. But she couldn’t on good conscience not run down the possibility that there was more going on than she initially thought.
“Listen, Lindy, I want to help you, but I can't just go grabbing entire files for civilians. Why don't you ask whoever you're here working with?”
“Because he'll ask questions—”
“And I won't?”
“— that I don't have answers for yet. I think there's some connection between the Cudmore murders and what's going on with Mohr’s Circle.”
Had Jean's face always been that blurry, or was that just her? She pulled her glasses off and wiped the lenses with the end of her shirt. Nope, still blurry. Fucking fan.
His hand moved in front of his face, and he let out a long exhale.
“I'll see what I can do.”
Lindy chewed the end of her pen and stared at the file through a desk magnifying glass. It was meant more for doing fine stitching or crafts, but she was using it to examine the blood spatter in the pictures taken from Alistair Cudmore’s house. Jean hadn't told her how he'd managed to get her the original copies from the Kitchener-Waterloo police department, and she hadn't asked.
She pushed the file aside and pulled up a book Dieter had got her from the university library’s criminology section. She'd almost felt guilty asking him to bring them for her when he had no idea she was using it to investigate his ex’s family’s deaths, but not guilty enough not to do it. The local library’s books weren’t detailed enough. Small towns.
“Does that look right?” she asked herself.
She held one of the photographs of Abigail Cudmore against the open page. Something was… off about this picture. Something about the angle of her body, or the knife in her hand, or the pattern of blood against the bed and carpet. Instinct was fine, only it wasn’t enough. A book wasn't a substitute for experience, but she wanted to have some evidence before she took it to anyone. Evidence of what, though… she wasn't sure yet.
Something bumped against her foot, and she jumped back with a startled scream.
“Mrow?”
She looked down at the large, furry puddle under the table. It blinked at her and yawned, showing off an impressive set of what was either teeth or knives.
“Jesus, Aldo, you scared the shit out of me.”
The jaguar bumped his head against Lindy’s knee in apology. How could she stay mad at him? He was just a big dumb kitty who probably missed having proper places to hide. She scratched behind his ear. The loud purring travelled through the floor to her bare feet. He might have been a terrifying predator, but he was also just a giant cat. Well, relatively giant. He was actually pretty small for a Brazilian jaguar, according to Lenna. Not that he felt small when he climbed up onto the table, bracing his paws on her thighs for leverage.
“Jesus—!”
He settled on the table, kind enough to avoid her papers, and looked up at her like he'd done nothing wrong.
Lindy sighed. She could hardly scold a jaguar, could she? On a whim, she turned the book and the picture toward him. He lifted his head off his paws and looked down at it.
“Does this look right?” she asked, pointing to the photograph. “They're saying she slit her throat, but I don't think it matches these pictures here. Maybe this one, but…”
Aldo yawned again.
“Same.”
She pinched the bridge of her nose and rubbed the spot where her glasses had dug into her skin. What was she doing? She didn't know the first thing about crime scenes. She knew what a crime scene sounded like, but that hardly helped, now did it? She flattened her palm against Abigail’s photograph, inhaling and exhaling deeply. Her eyes slid shut, and her mind was full of screams.
“Who are you? Why are you doing this! Mom!”
Mom? The story was that Abigail had killed her parents and almost killed Alistair before slitting her own throat. Why would she be calling for her mom if she was the one who killed her? Assuming it was Abigail’s voice. Maybe Alistair was a pitchy kid. But then there was the who are you question.
“What the hell happened there?”
If Aldo knew, he obviously couldn't tell her. All he did was open his mouth wide for a third time. Did jaguars even yawn?
Upstairs, a door was thrown open and heavy footsteps shook the floor.
“What?” Lenna shouted, thumping down the stairs.
She continued in Portuguese, directed at Aldo. Without so much as acknowledging Lindy, she took the photograph in her hand. She kept talking to Aldo — chastising, berating maybe — even as she examined it. And then she paused.
“I think you're right.”
“What?”
“Mrow.”
She waved her hand at Aldo.
“Don't get cocky, it ain't cute. Aldo figures this one looks like it was from behind.”
She motioned to the blood spatter with her finger.
“Would it really look that different than if she did it herself?”
Lenna cracked her shoulders in a shrug.
“I dunno. I'm not an expert in—” She waved her hand again. “Alls I know is it looks more like what he does than this book.”
Lindy sat on the implication. Somebody else had done this. Her mom? Alistair? Or—
There was that image again, of a woman walking up to the house and disappearing before Lindy could see her face.
“It was her.”
“Huh?”
“Lenna, it was her!” Lindy stood and grabbed Lenna’s shoulders. “I have to find out who she is!”
Lenna’s confused response faded behind her as she bolted for the stairs. All she could think was that it wasn't her.
13
Iris coloboma.
A hole in the iris.
It was supposed to be a prenatal condition, not something that emerged in early adulthood. But it was the only explanation for the black spots spreading across Lindy’s eyes.
Well, no.
Chemical contamination was the first guess, but that had been fairly easy to rule out considering that she hadn't been exposed to anything. Not that she was aware of, at least. No other part of her was affected.
Again, not that she was aware of.
He had also noticed a few white specks amidst the darkness. Capsular cataracts.
No cure, no treatment.
Fan-fucking-tastic.
Granted, iris holes didn't always cause blindness. Not always. But in her case… She was probably fucked.
She stared up at the sun through her black glasses. Not like it would make things worse.
“You bastard,” she said. Then, again, louder, “You bastard! God of Prophecy and Medicine, huh? Couldn’t let me have both, could you, you dick!”
Calling Apollo, God of everything important to her, a dick. Great idea. That wasn’t going to blow up in her face.
When she got no response, she flipped the sun off for good measure.
What, she wasn’t allowed to be pissed? Her eyes were fucked, probably permanently, and she didn’t even know why. Yeah, it could have been worse. Of course it could have been worse. But it didn’t make her feel any better. Actually, it made her feel worse. Stupid conscience.
She sat down on the steps leading up the Morrighan house and pinched the bridge of her nose. Lindy had always considered herself spiritual, not religious. It was all metaphorical to her. She got sick, she went to a doctor. Asking Apollo, or whichever God’s territory she was getting into, for help was just for comfort. It made it easier to accept that there were things she couldn’t control. The affirmation she got when things worked out — confirmation bias — enforced the habit.
Every now and then, though, she felt it. She didn’t know what it was, but it was there. Something under her skin and inside her soul. It was the source of her visions, the source of her divining abilities.
It was the on
ly thing she had to hold onto right now.
She buried her face in her hands and tried not to think. She didn’t want to work today. She really didn’t want to work today. But there Dick was, pulling into the driveway with a cup of coffee in each cup holder. Bless him for remembering how she liked her coffee. When she looked up, he was turning the corner. By the time he reached her, she was in the driveway itching for that coffee.
“You look rough,” he said, pausing only long enough for her to get in. “Been sleeping?”
She snorted, taking the coffee closest to her in both hands. When the hell did she ever sleep? Not in this goddamn lifetime.
“Lindy.”
Woah. Was that supposed to be, like, some kind of dad voice or something?
“What?”
“You need to take care of yourself. Eat right, exercise… sleep.”
“Coffee.”
“Maybe you should switch to decaf.”
Lindy gasped in mock horror.
“Half-caf,” he said.
“Chai.”
“Deal.”
He smiled and gave her shoulder a quick pat. It wasn’t paternal. She didn’t want it to be. She had a dad, and he sucked. He tried, but he sucked. Dick was her partner. They were work friends, max. When this was over, she never wanted to see him ever again.
What would they even talk about besides work?
They were halfway to the precinct when her phone started vibrating. She held it in her hand, staring at the call display. She had added A’s number to her contacts the last time he called her, but it wasn’t that number on the screen. It still showed unknown caller. It could have been anyone, she told herself. It could have been someone from the bank or that place she’d ordered a new hard drive from or a wrong number or… Or A. It could have been A.