The Alchemical Detective (Riga Hayworth)

by Kirsten Weiss

  “Oh, my God.” Pen’s mouth dropped open comically.

  “Try not to step in anything,” Riga said. “Or touch anything,” she added, when Pen bent to pick up a fragment of pottery.

  Pen flushed, and stuffed her hands in the pockets of her black jacket.

  “He got in through the back door,” Ash said. “Looks like it was kicked in.”

  Riga closed her eyes, her anger building. She’d never gotten around to fixing the door, making it that much easier for her adversary.

  “We should call the police,” Cesar said, but his look to Riga was questioning.

  She nodded, lips pressed together and watched while he dialed. It was what she’d have told a client to do. Get a report on record, and maybe, just maybe, there will be prints. But Riga knew there wouldn’t be. A police report would be just another time wasting exercise when she had little time to waste.

  Riga prowled the cabin. The bedroom closet had been opened, its contents spilling forth as if eviscerated. But aside from the ransacked closet and the damage to the alchemical equipment, the bedroom was undisturbed.

  Riga sat down on her bed and stared morosely at the broken door, thinking. Someone had gotten through her wards – that was the sense of shattered energies she’d felt. This meant her magic was still subpar or the thief was really good. She wasn’t sure which felt worse.

  A man cleared his throat behind her and she turned towards the sound. Ash.

  “Strange sort of break in,” he said. “If I wanted to rob someone, I’d look for small, portable, high value stuff, like jewelry. But he didn’t go through any of the drawers here, or your jewelry box there on the dresser. What do you think he was looking for?”

  “Something bigger than a breadbox, apparently. Or else he was just trying to piss me off. He succeeded.”

  “These cabins aren’t exactly high security. It wouldn’t take much to break in.”

  Especially since the door had been pre-broken, but she wasn’t willing to admit to that.

  A black droplet rolled down Ash’s forehead. He brushed it away, smearing it across his brow. “Any idea who did this?” he asked.

  “No.” Riga pointed at him. “There’s something on your forehead.”

  He rubbed the spot with his palm. A new dot of black appeared at his hairline, and slithered down his dark skin.

  She looked up. “Shit!” A black sigillum had been painted upon her white ceiling and she scrambled, crablike, off the bed.

  Ash looked up, grabbed her by the wrist and pulled her out of the bedroom. “What the hell is that?”

  “What’s wrong?” Cesar said sharply, pocketing his phone.

  “It’s okay, it’s just paint,” Riga said. But it wasn’t okay. It was the same type of sigillum as the one found at the site of Sarah’s body, though the pattern indicating the name of the demon was different.

  “Where?” Cesar said. “I didn’t see any vandalism.”

  “The ceiling.” Ash jerked his head toward the open bedroom door. “Someone painted some sort of hex or pentagram on it.”

  “Oh, please, pleeeease can I film it?” Pen said.

  “Go ahead,” Riga said, disgusted. She pulled an oversized leather-bound book off the shelf and opened it upon the table, then sat down and pulled a yellow pad from her bag, slapped it on the table. She could feel the pulse of her blood pounding in her head and tried to focus on the work, find some semblance of calm.

  Thirty minutes later, Deputy Night arrived with a female officer. “Sorry it took so long.” He surveyed the cabin, frowning, hands resting on his belt. “Break-ins aren’t really a priority right now.”

  Riga shrugged and returned to her research, letting Cesar and Ash take over, while Pen filmed the action.

  At the sound of footsteps on the stairs, however, she looked up. The Sheriff stood framed in the doorway, his eyes hard as marbles.

  Night glanced up from his examination of the alchemical equipment, his expression wary. “Chief, I’m glad you’re here—”

  “Are you? Why the hell did I have to find out about this from the desk sergeant?”

  “I thought it was just a break in,” Night said.

  “Then stop thinking.” The Sheriff turned to the female officer. “What have we got?”

  She pointed with her pen towards the bedroom. “Something strange on the ceiling, Sir,” she stuttered. She looked away from Night, flushing.

  King caught Riga’s eye. She lowered her head, pretending to be engrossed in her book, feeling a swell of embarrassment on Night’s behalf. The Germans had a word for it, she remembered: fremdschämen.

  She heard King walk into the bedroom.

  “You,” the Sheriff roared. “No filming!”

  “Sorry, Sir,” Pen said meekly.

  “And you! Get a crime scene tech in here.”

  “Yes, Sir,” the female officer replied.

  Riga scratched a note onto her legal pad. The ink ran out half way through and she tapped the pen on the paper, then made circles with it, leaving blank indentations on the paper. She made an exasperated sound and dug another pen out of her bag.

  The Sheriff returned to Riga’s side. She felt his presence looming over her.

  “What are you doing?” he asked.

  She didn’t look up, made another notation on her yellow pad. “I’m deciphering the sigillum on my ceiling.”

  “You can do that? Why didn’t you when I came to you the first time?”

  “You didn’t ask, and you didn’t leave the picture of the sigillum with me when you came to me the first time. I don’t have a photographic memory.” She resolutely avoided looking at her purse, where that photo lay hidden.

  “How do you read it?” He braced a hand on the table, leaned in close enough for Riga to smell his breath. He’d been eating garlic.

  “It’s like a cipher,” she said. “If you have the key, the correct letter grid, you can read it. All you have to do is overlay the connected lines in the sigillum with the proper grid. Each set of connected lines is one word. And you see each line ends in a letter on the grid.”

  “Who’s name is in it?”

  With the tip of her pen she pointed to a grid of letters on her notepad. “Mine.”

  “How dramatic.” His voice was icy.

  “It does seem a bit overdone,” Riga said carefully, keeping her tone even. She didn’t want the Sheriff to see how angry she was. He was a smart man and would exploit her rage if he thought it would get him closer to an answer.

  “And you’re the only one who knows how to draw the thing,” he said.

  “No. There are a handful of others.”

  “Huh. Five others. Five we can’t find.” He strode to the door, turned. “You’re still on my watch list, Miss Hayworth.”

  “Good,” she called to his departing back.

  It took hours before the crime scene techs finished photographing and dusting the cabin. Even Pen looked bored by the end of it, lolling in an overstuffed chair by the cold fireplace.

  When the last of them had left, Pen yawned and stretched. “Are we going to the casino now?”

  “I’ll meet you there in a couple hours,” Riga said. “I’ve got things to do here.”

  “It’s so late.” Pen looked around. “You need help cleaning up?”

  “No, thanks.”

  Pen’s smiled with relief. “Okay. I’ll see you there.”

  “Miss Hayworth—” Cesar began.

  “I’ll see you at the casino,” she said firmly.

  He looked at her, his expression pitying. “I don’t think you’re getting your deposit back on this cabin.”

  Chapter 24:Hldlng

  Riga swept the ruins of the alchemical equipment into a dustpan. The last crumbs resisted her efforts, leaving sparkling, brownish lines of glass and ceramic powder on the floor. Out of patience, she opened the glass door and swept the remainders onto the rear balcony.

  Brigitte landed with a thud upon the railing, her claws making sc
rabbling sounds on the wood. “House cleaning? Are you expecting guests?”

  “No,” Riga said shortly. Donovan still hadn’t called.

  Brigitte fluttered inside and Riga followed, shutting the door behind them. Owl-like, the gargoyle’s head rotated one hundred and eighty degrees, taking in the mess. The gargoyle’s face was entirely human and the effect, Riga thought, was creepy as hell.

  “What happened?” Brigitte asked.

  Riga turned the volume down on her Toby Keith CD. “Break-in. Someone smashed the alchemical equipment, took the stone, ransacked the closets, and painted a sigillum with my name on it over my bed.”

  Brigitte inhaled sharply, then caromed into the bedroom.

  Riga resumed sweeping. “He’s just trying to rattle me.” She couldn’t admit it had worked.

  Brigitte flew into the kitchen, and landed on the countertop with a thud. “It is time for us to leave. This place is unsafe.” Her stone-feathered shoulders hunched to her ears.

  Riga chased fragments of glass into the dustpan, moving the pan further and further back to capture the last pieces. “We’ll go to the casino as soon as I finish with the next demon.”

  “Are you mad? This monster has invaded my home!”

  Riga leaned on her broom and contemplated the gargoyle. “It’s a rental.”

  Brigitte fluttered from one end of the counter to the other, like a trapped bird. “What if he had broken in when I was here?”

  “I wish he had. You would have squashed him like a bug.”

  “This is no joke!”

  Riga’s brow creased. She’d expected to be berated over the loss of the stone. Why wasn’t Brigitte squawking about the lost prima materia, the wrecked alchemical equipment? “I wasn’t joking.”

  And then the facts clicked together in her mind. The stone had been on the counter with the equipment. The intruder would have found it right away. But he’d gone ahead and searched the closets. He’d come for something else, and that scared Brigitte.

  “I assumed he wanted me dead,” Riga said, “for revenge or just to prove himself top dog.” Her voice hardened. “And you let me think that.”

  “Because it is true,” she said wretchedly.

  “But that’s not all of it,” Riga said. “Is it? When he broke in, he was looking for you.” Her hand tightened on the broom handle. “Why, Brigitte?” Riga’s voice cracked like a whip.

  Brigitte seemed to shrivel. “If he was looking for me, does it matter why?”

  “Of course it matters. The cause always matters!”

  “You do not understand.”

  “For heaven’s sake, you’re as bad as a teenage girl. How do you expect me to understand, if you don’t tell me anything?”

  Brigitte looked at her claws. “My father was a good man,” she grated. “When he died, his son, who had followed in his footsteps, inherited me, and then his son in turn. He was a good man too, but foolish, and he chose his apprentice unwisely. This man killed my master, but then I came to him instead of to my master’s appointed heir. I do not know why the magic works like this. If ze death is natural, I go to ze natural heir. But if there is a murder by magic, ze killer becomes the magical heir.”

  “Magical heir? The other demon called me Lefebvre’s magical heir. He wasn’t lying about that, was he? I was Lefebvre’s heir.” She felt a wave of horror at the thought. The idea she was that monster’s heir, was another link in that evil chain, sickened her. “I’m not a killer like Lefebvre. I didn’t want to cause his death.”

  Brigitte looked away, saying nothing.

  The truth hit her. Riga had wanted him dead, had known from the beginning that one of them would die and had tried her damndest to make sure it wasn’t her. “I’m not like Lefebvre,” she repeated, her voice barely above a whisper.

  “Of course you are not,” Brigitte snapped. “These necromancers, Riga, they are terrible men. Lefebvre was not ze worst, but I saw him do many things of great cruelty, horrible things. I do not wish to return to that life.”

  Riga swallowed. She needed to focus. Now wasn’t the time for recriminations; they would only confuse things, take her off course. “And you’re not going to return to it,” she said with more certainty than she felt. “But why do they want you so badly?”

  “I cannot tell you that,” Brigitte said. “Ze knowledge, it is too dangerous.”

  “Brigitte, the killer knows. I have a right to know!”

  “No, you do not. What does it matter, in any case? He will try to kill you and through your murder he will take me. You must stop him!”

  Riga clutched at her hair in frustration. “Brigitte, if I’m going to risk my life by keeping you around, I damn well want to know why! I order you to tell me.”

  Brigitte’s head drooped. “Would you command me as ze others did? Would you, too, rob me of my freedom of will?”

  Riga threw the broom to the floor. “Oh, hell.” She stormed to the rear porch, and blew out her breath. The sky had darkened to a gray twilight. She stood by the wooden railing, listening to the muffled quiet of the snowfall, the cold slowly penetrating her layers of clothing, her skin.

  Finally, she returned to the cabin, where Brigitte sat, motionless, upon the countertop.

  “Okay. You don’t have to tell me,” Riga said. “But someday, I hope you will. So how bad is the loss of the prima materia?”

  “He has taken lives, so the spiritual work of alchemy is likely beyond him. And yet, he recognized the stone, though perhaps because he saw it in ze company of the alchemical equipment rather than from any magical sympathy. So, what can he do with it? This is probably what he, himself is wondering now. Turn lead into gold? Live forever, or at least until the stone is gone? Yes, this he may try to do. I do not know if he can succeed.”

  “I’ve got to get that stone back,” Riga said. He’d study it first, she thought; he wouldn’t want to waste it on futile experiments. That meant she probably had some time.

  Riga pulled the photo from her purse and placed it on the counter. She shoved the furniture and carpets aside, and began chalking the floor, using the photograph as a reference. When she was finished, she sat on her heels and checked her work.

  “What is it with demons and vowels?” Riga muttered. The demon that had been called by this sigillum was named Hldlng.

  She drew a protective circle for herself, then grabbed her book from the table, and folded herself into a cross-legged position inside the circle.

  “Riga, you forgot to put on your robe.”

  “I’m going as myself tonight.”

  “But ze last time—”

  “I’m meditating, Brigitte.” Riga closed her eyes.

  The gargoyle fell silent.

  Riga focused on her breathing, letting thoughts rise and fall in her mind. She felt something inside her clear, and then a vision came to her, unspooling in her mind as if she was watching a film that she herself was in.

  She was a flame, dancing in the air. Riga coalesced into a tiny ball of light and hovered over the lake, its surface glittering obsidian beneath the stars. Riga descended, ripples appearing in the water beneath her. She sunk beneath the surface. The water grew warmer the lower she sank. Riga reached the bottom then rose slowly up, through the lake, above the lake, until she brushed against a cloud, gilded by moonlight. She felt herself separate, her essence dissolving and then raining down upon the water, where she coalesced again into a ball of light. The process repeated and after each circulation, she felt lighter, clearer. And then she was in her cabin, seated on the cold floor. The small of her back ached.

  She stood and conducted the banishing rituals and felt the familiar shifting of energies of successful magic. Riga glanced at the book lying open in her hands, and began the incantation.

  The energy in the room became thicker, heavier. The air darkened above the sigillum she’d drawn on the floor before her. A coal-black cloud of mist developed over the seal, and something churned within it. There was a popping sound and
a toad-like creature with long claws appeared in the center of the sigillum. Riga smiled. She’d made the seal as small as possible, forcing the demon to appear doll-size.

  Riga pulled her pendant, the Key of Solomon, from beneath her blouse and showed it to the demon. “Hldlng, I command you to tell me the truth. Are you tormenting the spirit of Sarah Glass?”

  “No,” the demon said sulkily. “She is gone from this plane.”

  At last, Riga thought, some good news. And now she knew her call for Sarah had failed because Sarah wasn’t around to be called, not because her magic had once again gone south. “Who used you to kill Sarah Glass?”

  A vision unreeled in her mind of the lake at night, but this time Riga was just Riga, sinking deep beneath its icy waters, her arms suspended above her. Her heavy coat pulled her down; she didn’t struggle against it.

  A young man in uniform floated in front of her, arms crossed, brow wrinkled in irritation. “For cripes sake! You dizzy dames are all alike. Donovan is heading into danger. D-A-N-G-E-R. Hello?” He tapped her on the forehead. “Think you can remember this time?”

  Riga was abruptly wrenched back to the circle in her cabin, shivering with cold. Fear blossomed in her chest, choking her. How could she have forgotten the warning? She’d failed to remember and now Donovan was in danger.

  “Riga!” Brigitte cried out. “The demon!”

  Something slashed at her. Instinctively, she blocked the attack, crashing one arm downward, but not quickly enough. Pain burned her side, the sharpness of it clearing her mind.

  Riga focused her will. “Stop!”

  The demon subsided, shrinking in the prison she’d fashioned for it.

  “Stop,” she repeated. “You will not attack or harm me or any of my friends or relatives or anyone known to me in any way. Got it?”

  The demon barred its fangs at her and hissed in response.

  “I’ll take that for a yes,” Riga said. She slowed her breathing, willed her heart to stop thundering in her chest. “Who used you to kill Sarah Glass?” she repeated.