Tallow Jones: Wizard Detective (The Tallow Novels Book 1)

by Trevor H. Cooley

  Reginald was sitting on the bookcase next to her, a smug look drawn on his face.

  Tallow’s smile fell and he said somberly, “Yes, Aggie. It’s true. I am Asher.”

  Aggie snorted. “Yeah right! You don’t look like him.”

  “I look different because I’m older. Also, I changed my hair,” Tallow explained. “But it’s me. I-.”

  “Prove it!” she snapped. “Tell me something that only Asher would know.”

  Tallow took a deep breath. He had prepared for this eventuality. “When you were little and wearing diapers I used to call you Saggy Aggie. When you used to go on and on about how much smarter you were than other kids I called you Bragatha.” His voice caught a little. “Sometimes, if I ever got in trouble and sent to my room without dessert, mom would let you sneak me cookies anyway.”

  “I . . .” her bottom lip quivered. “Daddy knew about that stuff. You could’ve got it out of him with your magic.”

  Tallow swallowed and looked back at Douglas and Ross, but neither of them spoke up to help him. Tallow returned his attention to her and said, “So how did the octopus turn out?”

  She cocked her head. “What are you talking about?”

  “That’s what you were knitting on the night I left. It was an octopus, striped brown and green,” Tallow said, reliving the fond and guilt-tinged memory as he had so many times over the years. “I asked you about it and you said you were planning to give it to Jenny’s sister. You said, ‘she loves cephalopods’. I thought it was a great word. Cephalopods.”

  Agatha took a hesitant step towards him. “You said that word to me the other day.”

  “The day I came back,” Tallow said. “When I came in the house for the first time in sixty years and I saw that you were knitting that toy squid. I called it-.”

  “A woolen cephalopod,” she said.

  “The moment the word left my mouth I was worried that you would figure me out.” He smiled. “You know how you said that you thought I was going to try to hug you? I wanted to so bad. I really missed you, Aggie.”

  Agatha walked closer and Tallow got down on his knees. She placed her small hands on either side of his face and looked searchingly into his eyes. “You’re really him?”

  Tallow nodded slowly, swallowing back a lump in his throat. “I just have a different name now is all.”

  “Then . . . I guess it’s okay if you hug me now,” she said with a sob and embraced him.

  “See?” Tallow said through tears of his own. “I told you I’d be back.”

  “In two hours,” she cried. “In two hours.”

  Douglas watched the two siblings’ emotional embrace for several seconds, swallowing. He had kept his emotions at a distance all day, doing his best to think of the revelation clinically. Now it struck home. Asher really had returned. “I-I’m . . .”

  Agatha opened one arm from around Tallow’s neck. “Come here, Daddy.”

  Douglas fell to his knees and joined them.

  “Damn,” said Ross, rubbing his eyes with the back of his sleeve.

  When the three family members broke free from their embrace, the two men standing somewhat embarrassedly, Aarin cleared her throat. They looked over at her sitting on the couch, most of them having forgotten that she was there. Tears had smeared her black makeup.

  “If you’re really Asher,” she began. “And all that stuff happened to you? What about Polly? Did she get sent to that place too?”

  Douglas and Ross looked at him as well, realizing that they had let that particular question slip by unresolved.

  “No. I don’t think so,” Tallow said. “I looked for her for years after I became a wizard and never found a trace. I thought that she might be dead,” he admitted. “But with everything we’ve learned since I’ve been back I don’t think so. I think she’s still in Atlanta and we’re going to get her back. Tomorrow.”

  Tallow grasped Aggie’s shoulder. “We’re going to need Reginald’s help.” He glanced over at the elemental on the shelf and saw it pouting at him. “He’s not going to want to do it so I’m going to need you to make him.”

  Chapter 26: Warehouse G

  “They’re on the move again,” Ross said suddenly.

  Douglas sat up in the passenger seat, pulling the newspaper down from his face. He squinted at the morning sunlight and looked down the street at the warehouse as white vans began to emerge from the open warehouse door.

  He yawned as he looked at the clock on the dashboard. It glowed 9:31. He had only been asleep six minutes. “Already? Just ten minutes this time?”

  “Yep,” said Ross, keeping his foot on the brake as he put the car into drive and waited for the vans to pass. “Must have been a quick stop.”

  Their stakeout had started at two in the morning at Peachtree Warehousing’s main hub. The vans had started rolling out at five. They had split up down different streets so Ross and Douglas had decided to follow two of the vans that had stuck together.

  The vans had traveled to three different warehouses around the city, sticking to side streets. At each location they had stopped for at least a half hour, backing up to loading docks while Hispanic-looking men transferred boxes. This was disappointing because Pell the Blade had told them the vans would be picking up new abductees to be sent off at the mirror.

  But at this most recent stop, the vans had gone inside the warehouse through a rolling door. As the vans passed their position, Douglas was certain that they were sagging lower to the ground than before.

  “They look heavy,” Ross said, echoing his thoughts.

  They eased out into traffic after the vans and Douglas texted Brenda, telling her about the most recent stop. Brenda was back at the office as she had been all night. She was keeping track of each place the vans stopped, readying them for possible future busts if things went well today. The TV Squad had been following the vans that had left ERL Investments that morning and had reported that they were following a similar warehouse visiting schedule.

  Ross continued to tail the vans for another half hour, following them deep into downtown in an area not three blocks from the travel agency. A large old brick warehouse building came into view. Several white vans were parked outside.

  Ross backed into an alleyway across the street from the warehouse and they watched as the vans they had been trailing pulled into an open door. “I think this is the place,” Ross said.

  “Yeah,” said Douglas. “I’m gonna call Brenda and have her send Ta-.”

  Suddenly, the rear driver’s side door opened. Tallow tossed a duffel bag into the back seat and slid inside the car. “You two should probably keep your doors locked while on stakeout.”

  “Tallow?” said Douglas in surprise.

  “I went to headquarters early this morning and talked to Brenda. We went over the properties purchased by ERL Investments and figured out the most likely spot for their gathering. I’ve been here for a good twenty minutes before you showed up.”

  “Yeah, but how did you know this one was the place?” Ross asked.

  “We looked at the warehouses in the order they were purchased and numbered them A-Z. This was G,” Tallow said. “Brenda found some pictures of the inside of the place and after she and I ironed out our assault plan, I came down here to wait.” He started to unzip the duffel bag. “I was up all night getting some gear put together for us.”

  “Okay, but before we go into that, what on earth are you wearing?” said Douglas, with a dumbfounded stare.

  Tallow had on a set of thick black robes that were covered in embroidered runes of yellowish gold, most of them crescents and squares, with the occasional red triangle or blue circle. “These are my battle robes.”

  Douglas shook his head. “They stand out like a sore thumb.”

  “You didn’t see me coming,” Tallow pointed out.

  Ross grunted and turned in his chair to get a better view. “Holy hell, it’s like if Gandalf was a Steelers fan!”

  Tallow glanced down and
couldn’t help but smile as he saw the resemblance. “Same color scheme maybe. But these robes will protect me from most types of elemental and spirit magic. And, I’m hoping, bullets. Though I can’t guarantee that. They’ve stopped crossbow bolts before.”

  “You can’t sneak around if you’re wearing that,” Douglas said.

  “What if I use a spell to change the color?” Tallow said and the robes faded to a uniform brown. He let the robes sag open to show that he was wearing a white collared shirt and tan corduroy pants underneath. “Is that better?”

  “Now you look like a hipster cosplaying as a Jedi,” Ross said with a grimace.

  “They’re robes,” said Tallow with a dull look. “Is anything going to keep me from standing out while I’m wearing them?”

  “Make them all black and maybe you can fool them into thinking you’re a bad guy wizard,” Ross suggested.

  “I’ll stick with brown,” Tallow said. “I don’t remember what a hipster is, but at least Jedi are cool.”

  “You guys are both nerds,” Douglas said wearily. “So what are your additions to the plan, Tallow?”

  “Well, like I was saying, I was up all night putting some gear together. If I had more time they would look more impressive, but believe me the magic involved is powerful.” Tallow finished unzipping the duffel and pulled out two Kevlar vests that he handed over to them. There were large blue circles painted on the front of them. “I was inspired by the vest that our swordsman friend was wearing on that day at the travel agency. That’s a water rune. It’s great for reinforcing protective magic.”

  Ross took one of the vests from him and looked closer at the light blue rune. “There’s glitter in the paint.”

  “That’s because I used nail polish,” Tallow explained. “It’s nice and thick and dries quickly.” Next, he lifted out a pouch, then reached in and pulled out two white bracelets with silver bangles hanging off of them. He handed one to each of them. “Put these on. They’ll protect you from paralyzing spells. Dwarf smugglers are really fond of using those.”

  “Fancy,” Ross said sarcastically as he and Douglas put them on.

  Tallow reached deeper into the pouch and pulled out a handful of small pebbles. “Hold out your hands.” They did so and he gave each of them a half dozen of Reginald’s ‘seeds’, each with a red rune impressed into them. “Don’t lose them. Do you remember the ways I told you they could be used?”

  The two detectives nodded. Tallow had gone over the rules last night. They just had to hold onto the seed and talk to Reginald through it and he would do as they asked. “Wont it be a bit of an overload for him, the three of us using his seeds at the same time?”

  “It’ll be fine,” Tallow assured him. “He can inhabit several forms at once. His power has limits, but we’re unlikely to reach them today.”

  “Cool,” said Ross and he put the pebbles in his pocket.

  “One more thing,” Tallow said with a smile and he reached within his robes and pulled out two tiny Bluetooth earpieces. He held them out. “Sync them to your phones and put them in.”

  “This a you thing or a Brenda thing?” Ross asked.

  “It’s Brenda’s idea,” Tallow said. “She told me that she has an app that she wants us to download off of the department server. If we talk to her through it, she can keep us all connected without being on any official bands. She’s going to text you the link. I downloaded it myself earlier.”

  Tallow pointed to a small Bluetooth device in his ear that matched the two he had given them. He held down the side of it to sync it with his phone. “There. You got me, Brenda? Good.” He nodded and smiled at the two detectives. “Yeah. They’re ready. Send it.”

  Douglas and Ross received simultaneous texts and Douglas clicked on the link she had sent him. The name of the app caused him to raise an eyebrow as he downloaded it. “City Heat version 1.0?” He looked to Ross. “Is this a Burt Reynolds reference?”

  Ross rolled his eyes. “You would think a movie starring Burt and Clint Eastwood and written by Blake Edwards would be great, but it was a mess.” He shrugged. “The plot does kind of fit for our situation, though. A cop and a P.I. working together against the mob?”

  “Brenda says that you have bad taste. She loved the movie,” Tallow told him. “She’s telling me all about it. Anyway, get plugged in.”

  Douglas synced the Bluetooth device and opened the app. Soon he heard Brenda chatting in his ear. “-though I think that if Blake Edwards had finished directing it, the movie would have been so much better-. Oh, Douglas, can you hear me? Hello? Ross?”

  “Yes,” both Douglas and Ross said together.

  “Okay, great. So I just heard from the TV Squad and they just arrived at the other end of the block,” she said. “They’ve got a good view of the area. I’m having them stay there and keep me updated in case anything else happens.”

  “Good,” Tallow said. He put his hands on the two detectives’ shoulders. “I’m going to sneak around to the back and find a way inside. I’ll call you two in when I’m ready.”

  Douglas felt a twinge of doubt about the plan they had gone over the night before. “Are you sure that this is the way you want to do it?”

  Ross echoed his thoughts. “It’s not too late to call the chief. We could get a full team down here before noon.”

  Tallow gave them a confident grin. “It’s better that I go in first. I have ways of staying hidden. If we called in a whole SWAT team they wouldn’t let me take point and that dark wizard could kill them all. Brenda’s got all the evidence at her finger tips and she’s ready to get a team on the way on a moments’ notice if we need them.”

  “No problem, boys. I could have them there within a half hour,” Brenda said in their ears.

  Douglas glanced at the dashboard clock and saw it glow 10:25. “Alright. Be quick, Tallow. Pell said the transfer would start ‘after lunch’ but we don’t know what time they eat.”

  “Then I’d best be going,” Tallow said. He opened the door and slid out, shutting it behind him, then headed down the alleyway to sneak around the back, his cane held loosely in one hand.

  Douglas watched him go and shook his head, dismissing his fears. There was nothing he could do but trust in the man his son had grown up to be.

  Tallow hurried along the back alleyway behind the buildings. He remembered how afraid he had been that night sixty years ago when he had come to this part of the city. Just over a month of time had passed here on Earth and it was still a horrible part of town. The walls of the buildings were covered in graffiti and hardened eyes peered at him through dark doorways.

  But he felt no fear and his confident strides dissuaded them from harassing him. How could he be afraid of anything so mundane as gang members in back alleys after having lived through orc riots on the docks of Narlin? How could he fear discovery in the streets of Atlanta after having snuck through kobald settlements in tunnels miles underground?

  Brenda’s voice stayed in his ear, talking while she tracked his movements on her screen with GPS. She told him when to turn and when she thought he might be in sight of the warehouse. It was fairly novel to him. All technology was.

  When it came time to cross the street, Tallow took off his robe and hooked it over his arm, so that he wouldn’t look quite so conspicuous. Then it was time to sneak through another block of alleyways until he reached the back side of the warehouse.

  The rear of Warehouse G was on a quiet street. The buildings that faced it, also owned by ERL Investments, were empty, their windows covered with plywood. He walked down the sidewalk, examining the backside of the warehouse. The ground level windows were boarded up here too.

  “See a way in?” Brenda asked, seeing his position on her map. “A rear door? Anything?”

  Tallow examined the upper stories and thought his options through. He smiled as Ross’s Jedi quip came to mind. “There is a rickety-looking fire escape that comes down from a door on the top floor, though.”

  The fire
escape didn’t reach far enough down that he could reach it. Tallow walked under it and looked up. The ladder that would usually be able to extend to the ground had been removed. The bottom platform was anchored to the wall about ten feet above the ground.

  “If you can get up there, be careful,” Brenda warned. “That building sat abandoned for ten years before ERL bought it last spring. Who knows how strong the structure of that fire escape is?”

  “I got it.” Tallow put his robes back on and jumped, sending a burst of air magic from the bottoms of his feet.

  This wasn’t an application of air magic that he often used. Jumping far had its uses, but what goes up must come down. Many a young wizard had been injured playing around with magically-assisted jumps.

  Tallow imagined himself gliding gracefully through the square hole in the bottom platform and climbing up, but the air blasted him up a bit higher than he expected. He blew up through the hole and smacked his head on the base of the next platform, then almost fell back through.

  Grimacing, he managed to grip the railing with his right hand, his cane clenched in the other. He dangled there for a moment, his heart racing. He then lifted the cane and gripped it with his teeth so that his left hand could join his right.

  Brenda heard him grunt. “Are you all right?”

  Tallow pulled himself up enough to get his feet up onto the platform, then sat on the bottom stairs. He pulled the cane from his lips and paused for a moment to collect himself.

  “Tallow?” said Douglas’ voice.

  “Yeah. I reached it,” he said. “I’m climbing to see what I can see.”

  He climbed up the stairs, paying close attention to the way the iron framework creaked as he went. As he reached the third story, he came upon a window that hadn’t been boarded up or painted over from the inside. Carefully, he peered in.

  The floor of the warehouse stretched out beneath his eyes. He saw two white vans being unloaded by beefy mercenaries. They were pulling out people, men and women who were gagged, but not struggling. He switched to mage sight and saw that they were paralyzed with spells.