by John Meaney
“I have no idea,” he said.
“You need to come with me.” Alexa folded her arms. “Come on, Lieutenant.”
He'd jumped rope for most of the night here in the building, in a deserted gym, losing himself in the iterating, endless cadence of movement. Then he'd showered, and changed back into the same street clothes he'd worn yesterday, having brought nothing clean. He should go home himself, but Alexa wanted something, and she was part of the team—the team that he might have to lead.
Not as well as you did, Laura.
That was for sure.
“I'm coming.” He stood up, rolled down his cuffs and buttoned them, and pulled on his jacket. “Where, exactly?”
“To make some phone calls, listen to people chatting. You'll like it. I did, and it was the commissioner's idea, now I come to think of it.”
“Phone calls.”
“You need to trust me on this one, Donal. Will you do that?”
He looked at her clear, open expression. She was young and intelligent and ambitious, and Laura had liked her a lot.
“Detective Ceerling, I am completely in your hands.”
“Well, that's good.” Her smile was like a schoolgirl's. “That's very good.”
She led the way to the elevator shafts and stopped. Donal walked past her until he reached number 7.
“You've got a preference?” Alexa asked. “Fine by me.”
They stepped into the shaft together, and hung in place.
*Which floor, lover?*
Widening her eyes, Alexa looked at the insubstantial wraith surrounding them.
“I don't know,” said Donal. “Where are we going?”
“Er, up to the second floor.”
There was a pause, while Gertie floated with Donal and Alexa in her grasp.
That's a cheery place.*
Her tone lay somewhere between caution and irony.
“It's where we need to go,” said Alexa.
Still, Gertie hung there.
“Might as well take us up, dear.”
*All right, lover. If that's what you want.*
Donal said nothing as wraith limbs tightened around him and Alexa and carried them upward through the shaft. Gertie might tease him out of habit, but this was the first time, as far as Donal could remember, that she had genuinely hesitated to take him anywhere. With a subtle motion, he pulled his left arm close to his body, checking the feel of the loaded Magnus in his shoulder holster, sensing the balance of the weapon.
Commissioner Vilnar picked up the handset of his black telephone, and spun the combination wheels to a long-distance number. Spikewraiths sighed on the secure line.
“Arrhennius Vilnar here,” he said when an operator answered. “Put me through to Agent Morrison, please. And I am aware what time it is. I can wait.”
He covered the mouthpiece, looked at the black chair, but did not speak. Finally, a human voice sounded on the line.
“That's right,” Commissioner Vilnar replied after a moment. “But no, Laura Steele did not give me your name, or your number.”
Again, a pause.
“All right,” said Vilnar. “She made a mistake in suspecting me, but she had narrowed down the leak to my office. Overlooking Marnie Finross could have been disastrous, but it wasn't, and that's good enough.”
The black chair danced closer, unable to hear the other side of the conversation.
“No, you misunderstand. I don't want you to disband the task force. I want you to give command of it to Donal Riordan, and give the team every resource they—Yes, I am completely serious.”
He listened for a while, then shook his head.
“This is how it goes, Agent Morrison. You don't know about me, but I know about you. We have certain friends in common. I swear this by the Void, and by the Seal of Shadow.”
There was total silence. Even the spikewraiths on the line were shocked into inactivity.
“Excellent,” said Vilnar after a time. “We understand each other completely.”
In the office, the stone credenza took a shuffling step closer to the commissioner's desk.
“I don't know. Things are coming to a head, but no, not a single sighting in the—Oh. You're sure? Then I'd like to make a request. If things go terminally wrong, place my wife under the protection of federal spellbinders, would you? Likewise the inhabitants of my office.”
The surrounding furniture grew absolutely still.
“Yes. And good luck to you, Agent Morrison.”
After a few seconds, Vilnar replaced the handset.
“Three sightings of wolves in Fortinium,” he said. “Sooner than we expected.”
The black chair curved its arms.
“No,” added Vilnar. “Don't worry about me. This is what I signed up for, decades ago, didn't you know?”
The chair turned away.
Donal stopped beneath the floating sign. Several sarcastic remarks rose inside his mind.
~CUSTOMER RELATIONSHIP BUREAU~
Were the alkies in the drunk tank customers? Or were the customers the suffering family members turning up to bail them out? How about the wraith-whores pulled in by Hex Crimes and held in nine-dimensional cages until their pimps’ lawyers sprung them?
But Alexa was exchanging bright girlish smiles with the young officer on reception. Why should he spoil their day? The pair whispered, then the young officer giggled, turned to Donal, and said: “I hope you have a nice time, Lieutenant.”
“Yeah. I'm sure I will.”
He let Alexa lead him through the partition door, into the call center. Early though it was, the place looked busy. Several officers turned to smile at Alexa and nod at Donal. Alexa called out a greeting to someone named Zajal, and stopped at an empty desk with two chairs. Two indigo telephones stood on the desktop, one with an extra earpiece on a long cord, for listening in.
“—course, ma'am,” an officer with a restful baritone voice was saying nearby. “And we'll talk to the guys, for sure, seeing if they accidentally dropped evidence in your son's bedroom that came from elsewhere. Yes, of course we—”
Donal tuned out the sound as he sat. He focused on the dilation of Alexa's eyes, the shade of her skin, her fast shallow breathing, the subtle rushing of her voice.
“We can listen in on the other guys’ calls,” she said, “if Zajal connects us through. Or I tell you what, Donal. This sounds daft, but I'll ring you on that phone now, all right?”
He looked at the phone nearest him.
What's going on?
Alexa was already dialing, spinning the first four combination wheels for an internal number, leaving the remaining wheels pointing to null. The other phone rang immediately.
“Go on,” she said. “Pick it up. Please?”
“Um … all right.” Donal picked up the indigo receiver and held it to his ear. “What am I supposed to do now?”
“Hear how clear the sound is, for a start.”
There was no delay that Donal could detect. It was odd to hear her voice coming from the receiver and her mouth at the same time.
Her smile was broad as she put the phone down.
“Keep holding the receiver.” She waved to the guy she'd called Zajal. “And just listen.”
After a second, a two-sided conversation-in-progress sounded in Donal's ear.
“—third time little Tiddles has got stuck up there, and she's only a small lizard, so why won't anyone come to rescue her?”
“That's a disgrace, and I'll give you another number to call now. But I'll talk to them first myself.”
“She's up there scared, and she's perfectly safe if you wear acid-proof gloves to—”
Donal let the sound continue while he looked at the happy faces of the call center officers, heard the energetic tone of their voices, noted the shining clarity of their eyes. Alexa was the same: happy and free of tension, so different from her recent stress.
It was ninety-eight minutes later, just shy of the full hour, when Donal finished lis
tening in on his seventh call, and put the receiver down. He stared at Alexa.
“Well, Donal?”
A wide smile, a grin wider than he'd ever pulled before, stretched across Donal's face.
“This is wonderful, Alexa. Thank you.”
“Of course you're welcome. Sharing the joy, isn't that what it's about?”
“It surely is. And you know what? I've an idea.”
“Do tell.” Alexa was like a schoolgirl hanging on her best friend's every word.
“The Old Man should come down here. He's supposed to be a politician”—Donal somehow grinned even more broadly—“and customer relations ought to be his thing.”
“You can't ring him directly, not anymore. The Surveillance Department act like his secretary, the whole team.” Alexa looked at her phone. “I know a guy called Rob. Why don't I call him now, see if the commissioner will see you?”
“Perfect.” Donal stood up. “I'll go up, see if I can get the Old Man down here, cheer him up. He could do with it.”
“Poor old guy. I'm sure he could.”
“See you in a bit, sweetheart.”
“Oh. See you, Donal.”
As Donal left via reception, the young officer returned his grin, beaming with joy.
Donal stepped into an elevator shaft.
“Floor one hundred, please. And are you having a great day?”
The Surveillance Department was even busier than before, with officers in front of every monitor, and prisms rotating as they switched between views of Tristopolitan streets and buildings. The voices were low, serious, and businesslike. There was a sense of focused concentration in the room.
As Donal entered, a fit-looking older man stepped in his path, and held out his hand.
“I'm Rob Helborne, Alexa's friend.”
“Donal Riordan.” He smiled, very wide. “Call me Donal.”
“Right you are. And the commissioner will see you straight—Um, Donal?”
“Uh-huh?”
“Is everything all right, Lieutenant?”
Donal's face resumed its normal expression.
“I'm fine.”
“Yeah, but you … Excuse me. Mostly, people have kind of a worried look when they go in to see the commissioner.”
“The Old Man is just human, you know.”
Rob Helborne shrugged.
“If you say so. There you go, now.”
The black-iron portal was already opening.
“See you in a minute.” Donal touched Helborne's arm, beginning to smile broadly once more. “Have fun, watching the city.”
“If you … say so.”
But Donal was already inside the short tunnel that led to Commissioner Vilnar's office. As before, the tunnel walls pulsed as though gulping, perhaps thinking of swallowing this small intruder. Then the inner doors opened, ciliaserpents drawing back, and Donal stepped through.
“Hello, Commissioner.” He spread his arms. “I've just had a lovely time in Customer Relations.”
The black chair took a step toward him, but Donal, smiling hard, walked to one side, past the brass orrery on the credenza, rounding the commissioner's desk. Commissioner Vilnar was rising from his scaled chair.
“Riordan, why were you down in—mmph.”
Donal's right hook took Vilnar in the side of the neck, hard, knocking him partway down. But Vilnar launched himself forward like a bull, the hard part of his forehead slamming into Donal's spleen.
“No.”
Donal slapped down at the back of Vilnar's neck. Vilnar's thick arms were encircling Donal's leg, trying for a takedown, but Donal sprawled back. Then Vilnar reared up, and something silver glinted in his hand.
“Fuck you. Stand down.”
The derringer was small-bore, but enough to blow Donal's head apart.
“No. Fuck—”
Donal leaped to one side, using the desk for cover as he ripped his Magnus out of his shoulder holster. Then a swift shadow flickered across his vision, and his gun hand was empty.
“What?”
The black chair skittered away until it was at the wall, one pointed arm upraised, its extended corner neatly hooked inside the trigger guard of Donal's Magnus. It held the weapon aloft.
How the Hades did that happen?
Vilnar pointed his derringer at Donal's—therefore, Laura's—heart.
“You …” he said to Donal, “are … fucking … immune.”
“Say what?”
Vilnar's face was slick with sweat, but his aim was almost as steady as Donal's would have been, had he managed to retain his weapon.
“The phones on the second floor are ensorcelled, as you so obviously worked out. Whatever the mechanism is, I know enough to realize zombies are immune. That means you.”
Then Vilnar looked at the chair, chuckled, and put away his derringer.
“Nice work. As for you, Riordan, you've just been disarmed by an item of furniture.”
“Er…”
“Stand up and pay attention, while I sit down and talk.” Vilnar puffed as he returned to his big chair and lowered his weight. “When I was your age, I'd … Never mind. Look how much I'm sweating.”
“Sir, if I've made a—”
“Be attentive, Riordan, and we might let you have your gun back.” Vilnar looked at the chair. “What do you think?”
The chair spread its free arm, the one not holding the Magnus. Its back raised and lowered.
“We're considering it,” Vilnar told Donal. “Your team has a history of acting on untested suppositions, wouldn't you say?”
Donal clasped his hands behind his back. “We follow the evidence, sir.”
“And leap over the last few steps in logic.” Vilnar was rubbing his neck. “Good punch, however. One of those pencil-necks in Accounts, you'd have killed them with that.”
Donal allowed himself to blink.
“You didn't go down, sir. And that was one Hades of a head-butt.”
He looked at the spare chairs at the far end of the office, shook his head, then folded his arms in front of him. He stood like a street cop, hands only loosely tucked in.
“Alexa Ceerling,” said Commissioner Vilnar, “will attend a medical examination to get to the bottom of what's changed in her mind.”
“So you did send her in deliberately.”
“Into a section of this department, right here in Headquarters. You might want to consider the implications of that, Lieutenant.”
He's right.
Donal didn't like the thought, but he suspended his anger—just like that, click, it seemed to shift onto a shelf in his mind, deactivated—and thought about what he had seen.
“So I analyzed the situation just fine. Something is changing everyone there.”
“Yeah. Too bad about the fisticuffs, Riordan, or you'd really have impressed me with how fast you spotted that. And no effect on yourself, of course.”
“None. How did you know that?”
“I've been reading a book.” Vilnar pointed to a thick black volume on his desk. “It's a manual that a visiting engineer accidentally lost”—he half smiled—“when he was installing additional phones.”
He pushed the book toward Donal. It looked imposing, Field Operations Concepts, Vol. II, and bore a tiny logo in the form of an indigo phone. Donal opened it to the table of contents.
“Multihex modulated encoding. Parasympathetic encryption algorithms. You understand this stuff?”
“Not enough.” Vilnar reached over, and turned the page back. “You might want to check the copyright.”
Donal read it in silence.
This publication copyright (c) Central Resonator Systems, Exc, registered address: 2133a Karl Kastanza Drive, Outer Vitrinol, Plane 11-Q2, Silvex City, Illurium.
The remainder of the legal notice meant nothing.
“Illurium.” Donal thought back to the Westside Complex. “Do they have anything to do with the power company making overtures to our Energy Authority?”
“‘Mak
ing overtures’? You've been getting cultured, Riordan.”
“It was the opera-going that did it. Not that it helped the diva much.”
“You didn't kill her. Malfax Cortindo did.”
“But I didn't stop—”
“And he ensorcelled you before that.” Vilnar's eyes seemed darker than normal. “I shouldn't have sent you to see him alone.”
What?
Donal's mind, already icy cold, became an emotionless processor of logic and nuance.
“Are you saying, Commissioner, that you knew what he was going to do? Before you sent me there?”
Like sacrificing Alexa.
“I'm saying nothing except that you're the right man for the job.” Vilnar took in a deep breath, expanding his heavy shoulders. “CRS and the power company are separate legal entities, but they've a commercial alliance, and shared technologies.”
Donal remembered the Tristopolitan phone engineers waiting to remove the fresh nerves from Finross's corpse. Lexar, the Bone Listener, had said something like, “Don't you know how telephone exchanges work?”
“So what's going on? If this is an international industrial-espionage thing, shouldn't we be bringing in the DIO?”
“We might, if we didn't stop to consider the recent involvement of a federal senator, the director of an Energy Authority complex, and a councillor in Silvex City.”
“You mean this”—he pointed to Field Operations Concepts, Vol. II—“is connected to the Black Circle? To everything that Laura was working on?”
“I hope so,” said Commissioner Vilnar. “Although I doubt that Black Circle is the name they actually use.”
“It's a code name that we …” Donal fell silent. Then he remembered to breathe. “What do you mean, you hope it's the Black Circle doing this?”
“The alternative is two organizations with the highest level of dark-mage expertise I've ever come across. Which would you prefer?”
“Huh. And calling in the DIO would alert the Black Circle?”
“It might. That possibility is enough to stop me.”
“Shit.” Donal looked at the thick manual again. “Will you be able to decipher this fully? If you work at it?”
“It's incomplete, and there's a lot that—No. This stuff is technical in a major way.”