by L. EE
Gail obeyed, sliding her arms under the dead man’s back and grabbin tight to the clammy skin. “All right, one, two, three – go!”
In just a few lurching steps, Gail and Arthur heaved the dead man up on to Nia’s circle.
“Hold him down!” Nia commanded, which was a bit unnecessary as the last thing Gail planned to do was let the angry dead man go. Jamming her knees into his chest, she put as much of her weight on to the body as she could without sliding down the stairs. Beside her Arthur was doing the same. Gail could hear him swearing in disgust under his breath.
Dropping to her knees beside them, Nia murmured a few word and tapped the dead man on the forehead with her chalk. Immediately the body went slack, just a run-of-the-mill corpse again. Letting out a long breath, Gail stood and shook out her aching hands.
Nia gently closed the man’s one remaining eye. “I’m very sorry,” she said to him just as she had to the woman. “I wish we had gotten here sooner.”
“There wouldn’t have been any magic to bring you here sooner,” Gail reminded her.
“I – I suppose that’s true. Still.” Nia stood and went to fetch the man’s arm, which had rolled down the stairs. She set it back against the dead man’s shoulder then shrugged when Arthur gave her a questioning look. “It doesn’t seem right to leave him – divided.”
Gail sat down hard on one of the upper stairs. “Speaking of divided, you said this magic was Connery’s, right?”
Nia nodded. “Likely set up by a subordinate who stole his spells.” She looked down at the dead man. “Though something this involved would have required quite a few predrawn spells. More than I would have expected anyone to have on hand.”
“I’m sure Connery stockpiled thousands of them,” said Gail, feeling that old familiar mix of admiration poisoned by hatred she always felt when she thought about Connery. “He was always well-prepared. Does that mean that some of him might be here?”
Nia’s eyes brightened. “Maybe! Maybe they set up these spells to stop us from finding him!”
Then Gail remembered. “The spell’s not all the way broken yet.”
Arthur rubbed his eyes with one hand. “The boy.” He coughed and pressed a hand gingerly to his throat. “Let’s hope he’s easier to deal with than his father was.” Then he seemed to realize what he’d said and shook his head. “This is nasty magic, Nia.”
“Some of the nastiest I’ve seen,” Nia agreed.
“That definitely sounds like Connery then.” Gail levered herself to her feet. “We’d better go deal with the kid. Then we can take a look around and see if Connery’s been stashed somewhere.”
Since neither Nia nor Arthur seemed to have any objections, she turned and continued up to where she’d left the kid.
She made it exactly halfway down the hall before the house itself started trying to kill them.
8
Gail Lin
The first thing that happened was a door whipping off its hinges and nearly slamming her into the opposite wall. She dropped instinctively to one knee just in time to avoid being smacked upside the head by a heavy cabinet flying out of the now open room and smashing through the door opposite.
Behind her, Nia said, “Well, this confirms it! The house is definitely trying to protect something. We just – oh dear.”
“Oh dear” seemed a rather mild reaction to the sight of an undead child with half his head gone, clutching a shard of glass almost as long as he was tall. He was backed up by what looked like a very angry chest of drawers.
Since shooting the kid seemed to be only a temporary solution, Gail pointed her gun at the drawers instead, though she was pretty sure bullets wouldn’t do her any good there either.
“I have a theory,” Nia said softly. “I believe that if we locate Mister Connery, the protection spells will automatically disable themselves as their purpose will have been fulfilled.”
“But wouldn’t they want to stop us from taking him?” Arthur answered in equally hushed tones.
“If I’m right, they only want to stop the wrong people from taking –”
“Why the fuck are you whispering?” Gail snapped over her shoulder.
The boy flew at them, screaming. Gail instinctively stepped to the side, realizing belatedly that, in doing so, she had exposed the magicians to the boy’s glass sword. Thankfully, Nia was prepared. With a flick of her wrist, she tossed out another predrawn spell which sent the child flying backwards into the chest, which reared up like an angry bear.
I’m going to get killed by furniture, Gail thought with dull despair.
“This must be the last line of defense,” Nia was saying excitedly. “Mister Connery must be nearby. Where did you first see the child, detective?”
“Playroom,” Gail said. Unfortunately, the dead boy and his bureau buddy were standing between them and it. As if sensing their intentions, the chest began menacing them by opening and slamming its drawers.
“Detective Lin,” Nia said. “Do you happen to remember where this playroom is?”
“Yeah, right next to the evil furniture.”
“I see. We’ll have to distract it then!”
Before Gail could even think of a response, Nia slipped past her with another flimsy piece of paper in her hand. The boy lunged for her and probably would have run her through, if Arthur hadn’t scurried forward and tripped him.
Realizing that standing around like an idiot wasn’t helping anyone, Gail holstered her useless gun and grabbed the boy’s wrist before he could stab the glass into Arthur’s calf. She tried to twist the makeshift blade out of his fingers, but the child was beyond pain and only tried to bite her.
There was a rumbling sound followed by another massive bang! Gail turned, expecting to see Nia crushed like a butterfly beneath the dresser. Instead she found the chest on fire, smashing itself desperately into the walls in an attempt to put out the flames.
It’s going to burn the whole place down. But the fire died as quickly as it had flashed to life, leaving the drawers blackened, cracked, and apparently dead. Nia gave the still dresser a light pat with the back of her hand then, apparently satisfied, darted into the playroom.
The boy twisted his head and tried to bite Gail’s hand again.
“Cut that out.” Gail took hold of the boy’s hand and smacked it against the wall until the glass shard shattered to a useless splinters. The boy lunged at her again, but Arthur was there, throwing his jacket over the boy’s head and tying his arms to his sides with the sleeves.
“Go make sure Nia’s okay,” he said as he continued trussing the boy up with some impressive knotwork. “I’ll keep hold of him until she can deal with it.”
Knowing they had no time to argue, Gail ran past the burnt out shell of drawers and into the playroom.
It was chaos. Toys had fallen – flown? – off of shelves and smashed on the floor. Nia was standing in the center of the room with her eyes closed, but judging by the deep line between her brows, she wasn’t finding what she was looking for.
Her eyes opened when Gail came into the room. “This is intolerable! With all this magic everywhere I can’t find Connery.”
She sounded like she was complaining about someone forgetting to shelve library books correctly, but Gail was beginning to get used to that. “Can’t you get rid of the magic like you did with the people downstairs?”
“It would take too long! I’d have to draw ten – twenty! – complex spells in specific places around the house, which I would first have to measure, but if we could just find Connery all of this would –” She broke off when Arthur shouted from the hall. “Arthur!” she called back. “Arthur, are you all right?”
The only answer was another wordless yell.
Nia whirled on Gail. “Keep looking for Connery! I have to help Arthur.” Then she was gone.
If you, the magician, can’t find him, how the hell do you expect me to? But she turned and scanned the room carefully anyway. Nia had said some of Connery was here, but
where? The room was full of shelves, but none of them had space enough to hold a human body part unless Connery had been broken into far smaller pieces than any amount of money could get Gail searching for. Then her eyes landed on the toy box.
Out in the hallway, she could hear several bangs and thuds, but no more screaming, which was something. Pushing Nia and Arthur out of her mind for the moment, she yanked open the box and drove her arms deep into the collection of toys, throwing aside blocks and stuffed animals as she dug toward the bottom.
Her hand closed on a wooden toy magician, but before she could toss it away, it twisted in her grip and dug its hard little hands into her skin. Barking out a curse, she shook her hand sharply, dislodging the toy. It fell to the floor, bounced twice, then, with unnatural stiffness, it began dragging itself across the floor toward her. Before she could kick it away, the other toys in the box began writhe and thrash. Dolls clung to her arms while stuffed animals stretched stubby arms toward her face to smother her. She shoved those aside just in time to be struck below the eye by a toy train rearing up like a snake.
She fell back on her elbows, stunned by the force of the blow. Hot blood ran down the bridge of her nose. The things in the chest twisted against each other with hissing scrapes and clacks. Some fell over the edge and began dragging or rolling toward her.
Well, Gail thought dazedly, it’s definitely in there.
Nia yelled something from the hall.
And I’d better find it fast.
Scrubbing the blood from her face, she dove forward again, plunging her arms into the toy box. She curled her fingers into fists as the toys crushed down on her hands. Gritting her teeth, she forced her arms deeper as toys with sharp edges dug into her skin.
Nia called, “Detective!” but Gail ignored her. Her hands had found something soft near the bottom of the box, soft threads that felt like…
She yanked upward hard. The force of her pull threw her off balance and the head flew from her hand, landing behind her with a thud and rolling across the floor.
The toys in the box, immediately collapsed, harmless and still once again. Turning her head, Gail watched through the doorway as the dead child fell free of Arthur’s jacket and stared vacantly in her direction. She gazed back as blood ran slowly down her face and arms. The cuts hadn’t felt that deep when the toys were inflicting them, but suddenly she had no strength to move. Her arms and legs felt like they weighed a hundred pounds.
Poison? she wondered through the growing haze in her head. Had Connery’s cronies gone so far as to poison the goddamn toys?
Maybe that’s how they got the kid.
Nia knelt beside her. There was an angry bite mark on one of her arms, but she didn’t seem to feel it as she drew a circle around Gail’s body.
For another minute or two, Gail didn’t feel anything but the blood running down her skin and the slow certainty that each beat of her heart was coming slower than the one before it. Then that was replaced by the sensation of her stomach dropping like she’d suddenly been swung out into empty space.
Then strength rushed back into her limbs. She rolled over on to her knees and somehow found it in her not to be sick all over the floor.
Nia took her arm and gently helped her stand. “I’m sorry, detective,” she said in a soft trembling voice. “I am so terribly sorry.”
“No – no harm done,” Gail managed to gasp, hands braced on her knees as she breathed the lingering nausea away. When she straightened up, she gazed in fascination at her completely healed arms. “Damn. Thanks.”
Nia said nothing.
Tearing her eyes away from her remarkably uninjured skin, Gail looked around the room. “Where’s your brother?”
As if on cue, Arthur stepped into the room. His clothes were splattered with blood and he was holding one of his arms protectively against his body, but he looked mostly okay. When Nia went to check on him, Gail took a few steadying breaths. Her head still felt like it might float away from her body like balloon if she moved too quick, but as long as she didn’t have to tangle with any more possessed toys, she was pretty sure she’d be all right. Noticing that no one else had thought to collect Connery’s head – hopefully it was Connery’s anyway; they didn’t need some other jerk’s head – she moved to get it herself.
She managed about three steps before crashing to the floor.
Out like a light.
9
Nia Graves
There was a rather tense hour during which Nia was fairly certain that she had murdered Detective Lin.
“I only wanted to help,” she said frantically to Arthur as they carried the unconscious woman down the stairs and out of the house. “She was dying. There must have been some toxic substance painted on the toys.”
“Toxic?” asked Arthur as he lay Gail down in the back of the car. The detective hardly twitched, even when he curled up her legs to fit her inside, but at least she was still breathing.
“Yes, her heart rate was slowly alarmingly. If I hadn’t done something, she – oh, what if she dies?”
“She won’t die,” Arthur said with a doctor’s calm as he checked Gail’s pulse with two fingers. “She seems all right now. She needs rest. That’s all.”
But underneath the easy clinical tone, Nia heard a note of uncertainty that he couldn’t entirely hide, not from her, and her stomach clenched.
Arthur looked down at the severed head tucked under her arm. “I see you found him.”
“Detective Lin did.” Nia held the head between her hands. “She was very clever to discover the hiding place.” She looked down at Gail again, guilt gnawing in her belly. Had she made the right choice? Perhaps she should have waited and tried to treat Gail’s wounds conventionally first, but the detective had been so still…
“You used a lot of magic on her,” Arthur said as he draped his torn and bloodstained jacket over the unconscious detective.
“Yes, perhaps I did.” Nia caught her bottom lip between her teeth. “But under the circumstances, I felt had no choice.”
Arthur looked at her silently for a moment then moved toward the driver’s side door. “We can talk about it at the hotel. We should get her to bed and then call the Academy to get someone to clean up this house.”
Nia knew she should have been the one saying that, but she could watch Gail breathe for another moment before climbing silently into the passenger seat. Oh, please, don’t let things have gone wrong already…
When they arrived at the hotel, there were a few moments of confusion. Nia had only ever left the Academy campus once or twice before and never alone. Arthur had been outside more often, but only during carefully supervised trips to the layman hospital when they required another pair of hands. Neither of them had ever tried to get an unconscious detective up to a hotel room before. Luckily, Nia’s Illuminator badge seemed to override any social faux pas they made and within a few minutes, they had Gail – still in her bloody clothes, as neither Arthur nor Nia felt they had established the intimacy necessary for changing them – laid out on her bed. When it was clear her condition was stable, Arthur and Nia retired to their own room to debrief.
Academy regulations required them to share a room, just in case Arthur went rogue.
Nia also suspected it helped keep costs down.
“Next time, you should let me handle the injuries,” Arthur said once the door was closed behind them. “It’s part of why they sent me with you.”
Nia pulled off of her coat and hung it carefully on the coat rack by the door. “There wasn’t time.”
“She was bleeding and possibly poisoned. She hadn’t gone into cardiac arrest, she hadn’t been disemboweled. I’m not saying magical healing might not have been necessary, but you should have at least let me examine her first.”
Nia had to fight to keep her face impassive – in large part because Arthur was probably right. “Detective Lin is an integral part of this investigation. We need her to be completely healthy. That won’t be possible if w
e rely on mundane medical methods.”
“One, she won’t be completely healthy for long if you keep pumping magic into her. Two, weren’t you the one who said that adding a laymen to the investigation was, and I quote, ‘an intolerable nuisance’ that would only make things more difficult?”
Oh, he intended to throw enumerated lists at her, did he? Well, unfortunately for him there was no one more skilled at creating enumerated lists than Nia Graves. “One, I have no intention of ‘pumping magic into her’ as you so crudely put it. This was an extraordinary circumstance. Two, I said that before she found Mister Connery’s head. I think that rather proved her usefulness, don’t you?”
Arthur folded his arms. “So you think this investigation is only going to get less dangerous as we go?”
“Certainly not, I’m not that naïve, but we will be more knowledgeable and therefore better prepared.”
For several seconds, they simply stood glaring at each other. If Arthur thought she would crumble under his chiding expression than he was mistaken. She had admittedly had doubts of her own after performing the healing magic on Detective Lin, but the more she considered the matter, the more she became certain that it had been a necessary risk. Surely Detective Lin would prefer the slight risk of magical overexposure to not being able to move from her bed for days or even weeks. She was opening her mouth to point this out when Arthur sighed and forfeited the staring contest.
“Look, there’s not much point in arguing about it now. Just don’t do it again unless she’s actually dying, okay? My methods might not be magical, but they’re a lot less risky and they work pretty well.”
Nia had the irritating feeling that agreeing here would mean losing the argument somehow, but since she had no intention of using more magic on Detective Lin except in the direst of circumstances she was forced to say. “Of course, I never intended anything different.”
“Good,” said Arthur, once again giving Nia the impression that she had unintentionally surrendered the discussion.