by Amir Lane
“Answer it,” Dick said.
His voice was tight, and his knuckles were white on the steering wheel. He was thinking the same thing.
Maybe if she didn’t answer, there wouldn’t be another murder. Maybe nobody would die. Maybe she wouldn’t need to see another body.
Maybe she was out of her goddamn mind.
The Universe didn’t work that way. She wasn’t that important.
She took a deep breath.
“Hello?”
“You’re running out of time, Dietelinde.”
She gave Dick an alarmed look. Should she put him on speakerphone? Would A know if he was on speakerphone?
“I’m running out of time for what?”
Dick motioned for the light beneath her feet. When she handed it to him, he plugged it into the lighter socket and stuck it on the roof of the car. He turned the light on, but there was no siren. Was there no siren in this car? There might have not been a siren in this car.
“He’s dying, Dietelinde. He’s going to die if you don’t get here soon.”
“It would really speed up the process if you would tell me where you are,” she said.
“Do you know what it feels like to die alone? To bleed out and know that nobody is coming for you?”
“Who are you? Why are you doing this! Mom!”
She had to breathe.
She had to keep breathing.
Years of clarinet had made her pretty damn good at regulating her own breath, but she had to actively think about it now. It was just like counting bars of music.
In, two, three four, out, two, three, four. One, two, three, four, two, two, three, four, three, two, three four…
In, two, three, four, and play.
“I have no idea,” she said. “It sounds awful. It sounds really, really awful. But I’m coming, okay. This guy— I am coming.”
The hairs on her arms were standing on end, raising goosebumps on her skin. She felt it, the blood draining from her body, dropping her temperature, making her slow and sluggish. She pulled her knees up to preserve warmth. And then, she felt fine.
Well, fine except for the fact that there was a guy bleeding out and she didn’t know where.
She closed her eyes and forced herself to focus.
“You’re running out of time, Dietelinde. She’s going to get away with it.”
She? Who was she? Not Lindy, he would have said you’re going to get away with it.
“She who? Who is going to get away with what?”
“That’s up to you to find out.”
A bell chimed in the back of her mind. One, two, three.
She knew where those bells were. A glance at the clock showed it was a quarter to three. Fifteen minutes. Fifteen minutes until what? Until the new victim died? That gave her — them — seven minutes to spare if he floored it.
“Past downtown,” she mouthed. “By the bell tower.”
Dick nodded. The car sped up to near double the speed they’d been going at. He was already radioing in for a bus — an ambulance. They were going to make it. They were actually going to make it.
“We’re coming,” she said. “Nobody’s dying today.”
“Not if you hurry.”
“I don’t understand,” Lindy whispered.
“I’m sorry, Lindy.”
How many was this? Four? Five? Lorelle was a fairly small city. A good third of the population was students, most of whom came from out of town. There were only a couple hundred witches in the city. Mohr’s Circle was only a dozen or so people. The damage A was doing was— It was too much. This was too much.
Being witches didn’t mean they all knew each other, even in a relatively small city. Yeah, some of them hung out in groups the same way people into the same kind of music would. And, yeah, they did have some pretty neat sub-structures going on and there were a few key players. Hex Witches, witches who ran places like Tasseomancy. But word still had to travel, and Lindy didn’t know how many people knew what.
They had five more minutes. He wasn’t supposed to die. He wasn’t supposed to be left on the porch while they waited for a coroner.
What kind of cruel joke was this? Letting her think they had time. Letting her think they could save this one. Letting her think she could save this one.
Not if you hurry.
Rage filled her heart and blackened her soul. She screamed until she thought she was going to tear her throat open. It wouldn’t do anything to bring back this victim, or any others, but it sure as hell made her feel better. Letting the anger out into the world. Wasn’t that what she was supposed to do? Express herself? Fucking let her feelings out? She was feeling pissed! Like her body was on fire, and the only way to put it out was to scream.
The bells rang behind her. One, two, three.
She paced the grass, inadvertently wiping the blood off in the process. The pain was gone. Only anger now. Not anger, fury!
“Lindy—”
She whirled around, teeth bared. There was fire in her fists — metaphorical — and in her throat. It warped her voice. Her words didn’t feel like her own.
“I will not be played with!”
Dick stepped back, a mix of emotions mingling onto his face.
“I am not something to be trifled with. Does he think he can treat me like a game?”
“Lindy, you need to calm down.”
“I will not!”
Heat and electricity crackled beneath her skin. It was too much. She was burning. She screamed again, and her legs gave out like her hamstrings had been cut. Track and field instinct kicked in and she pitched herself forward so she fell on her hands and knees instead of her ass. Track was her brother’s thing, but she’d always killed it at running long jump.
“Lindy?”
Dick stepped towards her. She covered her head with her arms, but she could still see his tentative approach. She struggled to get the rapid contractions of her lungs under control.
In, two, three four, out, two, three, four. One, two, three, four, two, two, three, four…
His hand settled on her back, rubbing small circles over her spine in the same rhythm motion that she was trying to breathe in.
One, two, three, four, two, two, three, four…
She remembered, a year ago, Ekkehardt telling her what kind of pressure Necromancy put on the body. That he’d had his first heart attack at twenty-three. They were almost the same age now, weren’t they? Heart attacks in women were different. The only difference she remembered was a burst of anxiety, a sudden impending feeling of doom. How was she supposed to tell when she always felt that? Everybody talked about the pressures of Necromancy. Nobody ever talked about what kind of bullshit being a Seer dragged her through.
“That’s it, just keep breathing. Yeah, she’s fine. It’s just a bad reaction to— Niacin. Take it under the wrong conditions, it’s like your on fire.”
On fire. That was exactly how Lindy felt.
“Niacin?” she choked out.
“It’s a vitamin. Ever hear of Niacin flush? Opens up the blood vessels. My sister takes it.”
He helped her sit up on the grass. It was damp from the previous night’s rain. She rested an elbow on her knee and cradled her head. Her eyes burned, but she didn’t dare close them. She didn’t want to see anything. Not now. Not after this. Even if it gave her A, she didn’t want to see it.
“Do you play the harp?”
“What?”
Harp? What was he—? He nodded to her neck.
Oh! Her pendant. Not the one Selima gave her, the other one. She held them both reflexively.
“It’s a lyre, actually.”
Her voice was hoarse from screaming.
“I didn’t know there was a difference. Do you play the lyre, then?”
“I don’t think anybody plays the lyre.”
“So, you just wear it because it looks nice.”
She knew what he was doing. She did it with callers sometimes, especially kids. Distract them. Ge
t them talking about something nice, something they like until they calm down.
She nodded. That wasn’t strictly it. The lyre was sacred to Apollo. It was one of his symbols. As a Seer, she’d always felt— told herself that he would have her back. It was sort of like a cross to her, she supposed. But it was more than just that. The pendant was good. Not particularly high-quality gold, but still gold. She’d seen it in a jewellery store window in downtown Toronto on a band trip and she’d instantly been drawn to it. It was cheap as hell, and she’d still had to skip meals for the rest of the trip. Ekkehardt had been furious at her for blowing so much on a stupid pendant, but she hadn’t cared. She still didn’t.
Whatever was or wasn’t out there, Lindy believed in an Afterlife, in an Underworld. How could she not? Her brother and father both controlled spirits. Dieter said it was something about frequencies, but she knew better. Or at least, she believed otherwise. The Shadows were the spirits that didn’t make it across the rivers Styx and Acheron, the ones who couldn’t pay Charon the Ferryman and ended stuck in between this place and the next. She couldn’t get her hands on an ancient gold coin, but she figured the pendant had to have an equivalent value.
Dieter, a physicist, would have told her that there was no proof behind the Ferryman hypothesis. There wasn’t any proof of the frequency hypothesis, either. She wasn’t going to take any chances. She didn’t want to be a Shadow.
“I’m fine,” she said. “I just… I’m fine.”
Dick let out a long sigh.
“That didn’t look fine. That was— What the hell was all of that?”
There was no easy explanation. Mostly because she didn’t know.
“I used to get these… seizures in high school,” she said slowly. “It started right around the time I started seeing shit. I spent a lot of time getting brain scans and blood tests. Everything is normal, but when I get visions or whatever, there’s this massive spike in brain activity. Like my brain just sort of freaks out.”
The whole thing had made her incredibly popular in high school. Being a teenager wasn’t hard enough, the Universe had to throw vision-packed seizures into the mix.
“So that was a seizure?”
He didn’t sound like he believed her. Why should he? She was totally skirting the question.
“What else would it be?”
“I don’t know. There’s a lot more weird shit going on than I thought even existed.”
She didn’t know what to tell him. He sighed and squeezed her shoulder.
“You should take the rest of the day. The ME is going to need some time with him, and I need to have some guys canvas the neighbourhood. Come on, I’ll drive you home.”
She nodded and let him help her up. Neither of them said anything until he pulled back into her driveway. Aldo was lounging on the grass. His head snapped up when he saw her.
“Oh, and Lindy? Decaf.”
14
Lindy reshuffled her deck for what felt like the hundredth time. The day off hadn’t made her feel much better. If anything, it made her feel worse. It made her feel like a wreck.
Her hands were starting to ache from the stretch. She ignored the looks she could feel on her back as she dropped an array of three cards by three cards on the desk. It was the same nine cards she’d laid down the last four times. And just like the last four times, it didn’t tell her anything she didn’t know. It didn't help that she was looking for more than one thing. Obviously, she needed to know where A was and what the fuck he was doing. But she kept coming back to the woman at the Cudmore house.
The Empress.
“Are you still at it?” Dick asked, setting a paper cup next to her.
“Yup.”
“Are you getting anything?”
“Nope.”
He sat down beside her, leaning over curiously. While he still wasn’t much of a believer in her abilities — not that she blamed him, she didn’t have much faith in them herself right now — he did seem to be curious. Most people were. Seers didn’t usually give people such a good insight into their skills. It wasn’t something that was easy to explain.
“So what does all of this—” He motioned to the cards as he sat down in his chair. “— mean?”
Lindy looked down at the cards.
Ten of Swords, Death, Ace of Swords
The Empress, Knight of Swords, The Emperor
Two of Cups, Wheel of Fortune, Three of Cups
“A has a lot of anger.”
Or was it Abigail?
“Wow. No kidding? Well, I’m glad we have a Seer to figure all this out for us.”
Lindy kicked the leg of his chair.
“See, this ten of swords here means betrayal. I think A’s doing this out of revenge.” Or, again, that Abigail was. What was it A had said? ‘She’s going to get away with it.’ She tapped her fingers against the ten and ace of swords. “There’s a lot of Major Arcana cards here. Which doesn’t surprise me, there’s a lot of major shit going on.”
“Back up a second. Major what-now?”
“Major shit.”
“Lindy.”
Sue her for trying to sneak some humour into this nightmare.
“Traditional tarot decks are split between Major and Minor Arcana. Major is usually life events, that sort of thing.”
“So the Empress, the Knight of Swords, and the Emperor. Who are they?”
“Well, the Empress and Emperor are Major Arcana. They might not literally be people. It could be witches and cops, Normals and witches. It could be people. Me and you, me and…” Shit, there was something there, something just at the edge of Lindy’s sight. Something she just couldn’t quite grasp, and it was driving her crazy. The woman's face? A’s identity? “Look. I’m trying to do a reading for someone who isn’t even in the building. There’s only so much I can get off a deck of cards.”
“So why the hell are you even here?” Dick snapped. “What the fuck have you given me that I couldn’t figure out myself?”
Lindy’s eyes widened. Anger and disbelief flared through her. The thought that Dick was reacting to the dead end and not to her came a second too late for her temper. She stood up abruptly, knocking her chair over. Standing, she had a good two feet to tower over Dick with. Her expression was twisted into one usually reserved for Ekkehardt.
“Yeah? And what the fuck have you contributed, huh? I’m here because you got nowhere before your boss brought me in. I’m the one that A is interested in calling, I’m the one who found the notebook he was after.”
Probably after, she didn’t add. She didn’t actually know for sure. She didn’t know anything for sure. Oh man, she was sweating. Her jacket was way too hot for this office all of a sudden. She definitely didn’t need the roomful of cops who were probably armed turning on her.
“You’ve made a hell of a lot more progress with me than you would have without me,” she continued, dropping her voice. She didn’t want to draw too much attention to them. Too late. “I’m not even a detective. I’m an operator. You want to blame someone for how little progress we’re making? Blame A. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to make a dramatic exit before Staff Sergeant Cockburn comes out here and gives me a hard time for making a scene.”
Lindy grabbed her coffee and turned on her heels, leaving Dick gaping at her. She moved as quickly as she could without so much as a backwards glance. She really hoped that she looked more confident than she felt, which wasn’t very confident at all.
The door closed loudly behind her. It didn’t occur to her until she was halfway down the stairs that both her sunglasses and her cell phone were still sitting on Dick’s desk next to her cards, but it wasn’t like she could go back for them now. Besides, the brightness wasn’t as painful now as it had been. Maybe her eyes were adjusting. That had to be a good sign. And she could totally probably maybe go a whole day without her phone.
She found Bastien sitting behind the reception desk, playing with an elastic band. It seemed like a slow day for e
verybody, which, in their lines of work, was definitely a good thing.
“How’s the cop business?” he asked, resting his chin on his knuckles.
“A pain in the ass. We’re getting nowhere, and apparently, it’s my fault.”
Bastien snorted. It ended in something of a grin.
“Seriously? I’m sure it’s not. That’s just how cops are. Everything is everybody’s fault but theirs.”
He flashed a bright smile at a pair of people walking past the desk before turning his attention back to her.
“Yeah, I know,” she said. “It’s just frustrating. I should be able to see this A guy, you know? That’s kind of my thing. And all the while, this asshole is running around killing off Mohr’s Circle. All I’ve got so far is that it’s probably some kind of a revenge thing.”
“That doesn’t make sense. Mohr’s Circle is supposed to protect us. Who would want to take them out?”
“A Normal, maybe. But A’s using magic, so that seems a little unlikely.”
It was the same circle she’d been running through for weeks. It was getting redundant at best and frustrating as hell at worst.
“I don’t know what to do,” she admitted. “I feel completely useless when I can’t see this guy. I feel completely blind, and not in the normal way.”
She could see Dick stepping out of the elevator from behind her a few moments before the doors even opened. At least she wasn’t completely blind. She turned around when he approached and resisted the urge to laugh as he jumped back, startled.
“You forgot your— Here.”
He offered up her sunglasses, cell phone, and tarot cards. Lindy took them, setting her glasses back over her eyes and tucking her phone into a back pocket. The cards went into a pocket lower down her leg. Had she thanked the Universe for cargo pants recently?
“We just found a witness that needs to be interviewed. His name is Landon Rajput, works at a place called The Hillside.”
“Landon? What did he do?” Bastien asked.
Dick glanced over at him from over Lindy’s head.
“Don’t worry about it,” he said. “Come on. Let’s see if we can get more from this guy than you did from those cards.”