by Jes Battis
I stop listening and look away, back at the regular world. According to my mother, I was a dangerous little girl. My potential needed to be concealed so that my real father wouldn’t find me. Now I’m just a wet firecracker. Everyone knows that you’re at your most powerful when you’re a kid. I’d missed out on those times. I’d peaked without even knowing it.
Maybe I should visit her. It’s late, but I know she’ll be up reading. I know I should go back to the party, but for some reason, I’m not ready. I don’t quite believe my senses. I walk down to Twelfth. The bus stop is empty. Did I really think that an amped-up vampire would be waiting for the trolley bus? I exhale and walk back up Commercial. I’m in canvas shoes, and my blisters are smarting. Who wouldn’t find me sexy tonight?
My phone rings. I figure it’s Derrick making a last-minute plea for layered dip, but it’s Detective Selena Ward. We’ve barely talked since I filed my leave papers. I’m suddenly nervous. Is she calling to fire me? Has there been a death in the lab? Sometimes the cadavers in our morgue don’t stay dead, and anything can happen when you throw zombies into the mix. I take the call.
“Selena. What’s going on?”
She sounds tired, as always. “Look. I know you’re off right now. I know you’re using this time to think and just get away from all of this. But I need you and Derrick both for a few hours tonight. He’d be working; you’d be consulting.”
There are two things I want to say. I can’t because it’s Lucian’s birthday. I can’t because I owe it to my family to make this work. But Selena has always been unsentimental. I’m left with the realization that seeing a body might be exactly what I need tonight, which is wrong on so many levels.
“Selena—” I sigh. “I don’t know. I’ve been drinking a little, and so has Derrick. Wouldn’t it be some kind of union infraction?”
“Lord Nightingale died.”
“Excuse me?”
“The ruler of the necromancers, the governor of Trinovantum, is dead. We have an hour to go over everything, and this is a big library.”
“He died in a library?”
“Yes. The Bennett Library at Simon Fraser University. You need to get here. Drink coffee, slap yourself—I don’t care. I need your help with this. I’m sorry, Tess. With any luck, we’ll be out of there before the first hungover students arrive.”
She hangs up.
I stare at the phone for a second, as if it’s just lied to me. I hardly knew Lord Nightingale. We spoke only a few times, and he’d always unnerved me, although he was attractive and generally polite. I wasn’t sure what I felt, knowing that his long life had suddenly been extinguished. Should I bring Lucian? He was Seventh Solium, which was really more of a civil servant gig, as far as I could tell, but he and Lord Nightingale were friends. I couldn’t even tell if they liked each other. Men can be so fucking cryptic.
I walk back to the house. I can understand why Selena needs our help, but I can’t help but wonder if I’m about to walk into an interrogation. It’s never a good thing to have known a murdered prince.
As I reach our driveway, the front door opens, and Derrick appears.
“What did you tell Lucian?”
He manages to look guilty. “I just said I was being called to a scene. I didn’t specify. I wasn’t sure of the protocol.”
“He’ll find out in the morning. For now, it’s just us.”
“Mia’s started up a game of Taboo. They’ll be good for hours.”
We get into the van. Derrick lets it warm up. He tunes the radio to CBC and puts the van in gear. We drive uphill listening to Yo-Yo Ma, whose notes provide a suitable background as we prepare our tool kits. It begins to rain, and Burnaby Mountain is slick, like volcanic glass. We park by the West Mall Complex and walk from there. We pass the Louis Riel residence, where students dream of quarks, Margaret Atwood, and ways to extend their meal plan.
There are no security guards. Our lab uses materia to create a veil, which is really a kind of microwave background noise that keeps people away for a time. Whenever an immortal is killed, we need to act quickly to secure the scene. There are many things that most people aren’t meant to see, including the shells of those who defy explanation. SFU seems like too young a campus to hold the body of Lord Nightingale, who grew up in the eleventh century. A necromancer who began life as a woman but died as a man.
How does a thing get immortality? It’s a good question. Vampires are bled first. Necromancers are stillborn. Some demons, like reptiles, survive for centuries beneath the painful eye of a dark sun. I can see and touch materia because I share blood with an immortal. My mother got the gene from her grandmother. Then she met my father, who was death. I have a sister who looks like a spinning house on fire. I guess that makes me the normal daughter.
Derrick and I walk through the empty West Mall Building, whose floor is made of red rubber and has a pleasing give to it. The coffee carts are asleep. In the bathrooms, toilets wash themselves at intervals, like somnambulists. We exit the building and head to the Academic Quadrangle, an enclosure walled in granite and glass with a dry fountain. There are stairs everywhere, and in places, the exposed rebar skeleton beneath them. We enter the W. A. C. Bennett Library. There was a time when the thought of an empty library all to myself would have filled me with excitement. Now all the dead terminals and empty chairs seem improper and unnerving. All the chutes are still.
We take the stairs to the fifth floor. The recycled air is hot and tastes of old paper. The floor has just been waxed. When we reach the scene, the first thing I notice is the blood on the photocopiers. The arcs rise and plummet like arterial meter. The machines have old coin slots, now useless appendages, replaced by card readers that charge twelve cents per page. Blood has struck the paper cutter as well as the staplers chained to a nearby table.
Lord Nightingale is on his side. His throat is cut. His blood hasn’t completely dried, and air from the vents raises dimples on the large stain.
The absence of our medical examiner is unusual. There are only two people here: my supervisor and a necromancer I haven’t seen for nearly two years.
“Deonara Velasco.” I incline my head. “Does this—I mean—” I look at Selena uncertainly. “Will she take his place?”
“I already have,” Deonara says. “I am Lord Nightingale now.”
I look at the body. I saw him alive only twice, once in armor, the second time in a raincoat. He smiled, stepped sideways, and was gone. Now his blood is everywhere, and, like the blood of any immortal, it attracts materia to it. The air is thick, and I have to concentrate to avoid seeing shadows and afterimages everywhere. It will take all night for the water of his life, all nine hundred years of him, to dry like mud and vanish.
“The Soliums are wild with ambition and fear,” Deonara says. “Theresa controlled them, but I’m not sure if I can.”
I look at Selena. “No weapon?”
She shakes her head. “Just a photocopy card.”
I recall Luiz Ordeño’s death, which was when I’d last seen Deonara Velasco. He died in a breastplate beneath a two-way painting. The question then had not been, Who killed him?, but rather, What could kill him? Old necromancers, as a rule, were more prone to rage against the dying of the light than to expire passively. I couldn’t think of anything, offhand, that could actually kill Lord Nightingale, who for most purposes had already been far from alive.
“All that’s important now,” Deonara says, “is that we leave no trace of the shell behind. This act is going to be a magnet for political unrest in both of our cities. We need to stay on top of it.”
Selena looks at Derrick. “All right. You’re up first. I need you to see if any part of his mind is still broadcasting.”
Derrick pulls on a pair of gloves and kneels before the body. He touches the cold hand, slick with blood. He closes his eyes. I feel nothing. The way his mind interprets materia is a mystery to me. I wouldn’t want his ability. I already know what people are thinking most of the time. T
he last thing I need is to hear that neurotic tapestry in surround sound.
He’s still for a moment. Then he stands cautiously.
“Was there anything?” Selena asks.
Derrick is expressionless. He blinks, and the veil is gone. He doesn’t look at me, only at Selena, and his voice is flat, tired.
“The usual. Pain and fear.”
Deonara sighs. “You people had best work quickly. After you’re finished, I will purify the site.”
We gather samples in silence while the body sucks in everything around us, like a crumbling event horizon. I’m distracted, not because of the situation, but because I know that Derrick is lying.
2
At four thirty a.m. the cleaning crew arrives, and we’re allowed to go. I know I should sleep, but the thought of lying down suddenly frightens me. I’d rather be productive than vibrate with anxiety in bed.
“Do you need anything else from me?”
“I don’t think so. Thank you.”
“I was happy to help.”
We neither tell the truth nor lie. Selena and I shake hands and get into our respective vehicles. Deonara vanished hours ago. She just stepped oddly out of a door and was gone. You never know what to expect when dealing with people who can travel through apertures. They’re way too good at sneaking up on you.
Derrick takes us through the Tim Hortons drive-through. We drink our coffee in silence until he parks in the driveway. I want to get out of the car, but I have a suspicious mind; I can’t help it.
“Wait.”
He pauses in the act of removing his seat belt. “What did we forget?”
“Nothing. I need to ask you something.”
“Sure.”
“What did you see in Lord Nightingale’s mind?”
His expression changes. He’s not angry or even rueful, since he knows that I can tell when he’s lying. He merely looks anxious.
“It was hard to tell for sure.”
“Derrick.”
“Okay. He was thinking about sex before he died.”
“How could you tell?”
“He was aroused.”
“Whoa. Was it angel lust?”
“No, that’s postmortem wood. This erection was antemortem. I guess he was fantasizing about someone.”
“Why wouldn’t you tell Selena that?”
“It just seemed inconsequential.”
“But it’s interesting. Maybe it will supply further context.”
“The guy’s, like, a prince, right? It just seemed a little undignified to say that he had a boner a few seconds before dying.”
“I take back my ‘whoa’ and replace it with ‘wow.’”
“Excuse me?”
“Earlier, I said ‘whoa,’ because what you were describing was kinky. Now I say ‘wow,’ because I realize that you’re still lying to me.”
“Tess.”
“You’re seriously going to play me this way?”
“Please don’t try to sound like our kids.”
“Derrick, just spit it out. What else did you see?”
He exhales and sinks into the seat. “Okay. I didn’t exactly see anything, but I did smell something.”
“That’s physical evidence—”
“It barely smelled like anything.”
“What did it barely smell like?”
“Miles.”
“Wow. Whoa. Both. You have to tell Selena.”
“What should I tell her? For a second, Lord Nightingale smelled like my boyfriend? That makes no sense.”
“Did he smell like Miles, or was he smelling Miles?”
“I don’t know. I could just smell one of his shirts. The blue one that makes his arms look really good. Maybe my own mind interfered with the reading. Maybe I only thought I smelled it.”
“Maybe they knew each other.”
“Miles is a bit prejudiced where necromancers are concerned. Lord Nightingale spent most of his time in Trinovantum. When would they have met?”
“This is why you kept your mouth shut. You’re afraid they’re connected.”
“Of course I’m afraid of that!”
I put a hand on his shoulder. “Look. I’m the queen of murky decisions; we both know that. But I really don’t think Miles is cheating on you with a necromancer. Maybe they met by accident once, and he smelled so good that day that—”
“I’ll tell her tomorrow morning.”
We get out of the van and walk up the driveway. I’m angry, but we both need to chill and this isn’t the time for a fight. I can understand lying in the heat of the moment. I’ve done that. But in the silence of the van’s interior, which has always been a confessional cabinet for us, he’d lied again. It’s not like him.
Lucian’s gone. Mia and Patrick are both asleep. Miles comes into the living room holding a mug of tea. Derrick hugs him, then signs something too quickly for me to translate. Both of them walk down the hallway and into Derrick’s room. I sit on the couch and try not to go crazy. The coffee has turned my stomach into a battlefield. I close my eyes and try to be still, but there’s too much sugar in my body. I feel warm and slightly damp. I wish for a pool in the living room, and for immortals to stop dying so late at night, and for a peppermint to calm my gut-rot.
I go outside and sit on the patio. The sky is changing color. I start to light a cigarette, but then I hear my mother telling me how it doesn’t seem very reasonable to poison yourself slowly, like a torturer. It’s a bit macabre, if you ask me, darling.
I take the athame out of my purse and lay it next to the pack of king-sized silvers. I place my empty coffee cup next to the dagger. These are all vices that have taught me extraordinary things about myself. The athame allows me to work with flows of materia that would normally be too dense and temperamental to manipulate. The blade bears most of the pain, and for a few seconds, I feel like I’m touching solar wind, convection currents, monsoons. That sense of enlargement can be addictive. It’s not a high—it’s not even pleasant most of the time—but it does remind me that I exist alongside purposeful forces, animals as old as the universe itself. Surely they or something else must know what’s supposed to be going on.
I watch the sun come up. I turn on the coffeemaker. I leave out a few fixings for breakfast, along with a Post-it reminding Mia to take her shot. Then I throw on a jacket and walk out the door. I’m overdue for a meeting with my occupational therapist. If I pass out in the middle of the day and his office calls, that doesn’t seem like quite the same thing as avoidance, more like a happy accident. Sometimes, the burn of exhaustion is actually what allows me to do my job. It numbs the sounds and colors. I think about how good it will feel to come home, have supper with my family, and crawl into a bed that isn’t bloodstained or covered in shrink-wrap.
I walk to Seventh and take the SkyTrain downtown. The brakes on the Expo Line car sound like angry monkeys. The lights flicker only a few times. I get off at Waterfront Station, which is buzzing. When I walk outside, I can see the harbor and the slick bars that surround it. Harbour Centre gleams on the corner, the perfect fusion of campus, mall, and tourist attraction. You can see the North Shore Mountains from the top of the tower, but the elevator ride will cost you.
I cross the street and walk to our lab, which resembles a government building next to an underground car park. Very few people outside of the occult community know of our existence, but the ones who do are very good at erasing us from view. Like any large city, Vancouver is home to a group of immortals and things whose lives are touched by other worlds. Our lab was designed to investigate crimes within this group, which, for lack of a better word, we call “mystical.” Recently, our truce with the vampire nation and the necromancers has started to go south. Luiz Ordeño died to make peace between them, but we’ve failed to keep it. And now Theresa is gone. I remember the last words that he spoke to me before he vanished into the rain. If I don’t get back, I’ll turn into a pumpkin. A very dangerous pumpkin.
I get past securit
y, all the way to the Trace unit, before I realize that I have no reason for being here. Selena didn’t call. I’m not an investigator and I have no business asking questions about an active case. So why did I come here? I’m like an escaped mental patient who’s wandered back to her old life in a fugue state. I should leave, but curiosity and lack of professionalism win out. I head to Selena’s office.
Her door is closed, and I can hear that she’s talking to someone. There’s a trick I can do with the door to shake up its molecules like ginger ale, which would allow me to hear a tin-can version of their conversation. I resist. Whenever I hear my supervisor talking quietly with someone behind a closed door, I assume I’m being fired. It’s a weird prey instinct that I’ve had since I was a girl, ears back, always waiting for the claw to fall. Probably she’s just arguing with Linus about the results of an agarose gel test. I once heard him saying irritably to her: Cut the crap; you and I both know that DNA always migrates toward the camera.
I lean against the wall. I know that I’m punishing myself. A normal person on approved leave from their job would go home and nap with the dog. I think about going over to Lucian’s place. We cannot talk about Theresa, or at least we should not. We play dangerous Parcheesi with vampires and necromancers. There are no darkened safe spaces. We play from our nests and try to get to the heart of the board. Lucian lives in my city, but he’s still an antagonist.
It’s been a few weeks since we did anything but snore next to each other in bed. We’ve kissed, but it’s all surface kissing, the kind that leads nowhere specific. He was grossed out the other day when he saw me peeling a Dr. Scholl’s disc off my heel. I saw his expression change. It was as if I’d just urinated on his socks or thrown a clump of bloody hair at him. I get that he’s not going to find corns sexy, but this is real life, and my body does all sorts of crazy shit.
“Tess.”
I turn. It’s Ru. He’s lived in the lab ever since he crashed here from the world of P’tahl, which is apparently a lot like Jupiter. His gray scales remind me of delicate shingles. His horns are well-groomed. He’s wearing jeans and a T-shirt, but no shoes.