by L. EE
When they get washed out, Gail corrected silently as she helped Arthur lay the sleeping man out on the narrow bed. He twitched as his skin touched the covers as if even that soft contact was painful against his water burns, but hopefully he was too deeply asleep to feel much.
“I should get out of your way,” Xavier said after they’d gotten the man situated. No doubt he was probably still a bit magic shy. Gail could understand that. “I don’t want to leave the food sitting in the car for too long.”
“I’ll help you bring it in,” Arthur said immediately. “Then I can take care of your injuries properly.”
Xavier smiled. “Thanks.”
As the men left the room, Gail turned back to the man on the bed. He would have been a hard sight to stomach at the best of times, but knowing he was a picture of what Gail herself might have become if not for Nia and Arthur’s timely intervention made it even worse.
Even more reason to see if you can help him then. Steeling herself, she went over to Nia, who was already bent over the bed with her ear pressed to the man’s chest. “Can I help?”
“Just a moment.” Nia straightened up and began carefully setting her writing implements on the bedside table. “The first step will be healing his body as much as possible. That might give him the strength to speak to us.”
“Won’t more magic make it worse?”
Nia looked at her sadly. “At this point, it won’t make much difference.”
Gail accepted that silently. After removing what tattered rags the man had left to him, Nia went to work drawing healing circles on bits of slate and sliding them under the injured parts of his body. She had triggered five of the seven when he woke from his stupor with a shriek. Gail automatically stepped in front of Nia, just in case the man went for her like he’d gone for Xavier.
But Nia gently pushed Gail’s arm aside and bent closer to the man. “Sir, can you hear me?”
The man’s eyes rolled wildly in his head as if he couldn’t find the source of her voice. Gail wondered if he was blind.
“Sir,” Nia continued in a clear measured voice. “Did Christopher Connery do this to you?”
The man’s mouth moved spasmodically like the words were insects he was trying to keep trapped in his mouth.
“Please, sir, we want to help you. Why are you here? Do you remember what he wanted you to do?”
When the man just kept rolling his tongue around in his mouth, Nia drew another spell on his chest. It must have been a strong one, because even Gail thought she felt an odd quivering in the air when Nia triggered it. The naked man blinked and when his eyes opened again, they were a little clearer. This time when Nia spoke, his gaze jerked toward her and held on her face.
“Sir,” she said again, looking him directly in the eyes. “What did he want you to do?”
The man breathed in deeply once, twice. Then, staring straight at Nia’s face, he forced out, “Emergency repairs.”
Then he died.
Nia gazed down at him for another few seconds before looking up at Gail. “That didn’t make any sense.”
Gail shrugged.
Shaking her head, Nia drew a blanket up over the man’s face. “That was a waste of time,” she said as she packed her tools away, “but I’m glad we were able to ease his passing a little. If I don’t miss my guess he’s been ensorcelled for weeks now, probably since just before Connery died – or had himself killed, I suppose is more accurate.”
“You think he did all of the work alone?”
“There’s no way to know. He could have, if he were given specific enough instructions. I only wish we could have gotten a little more out of him before –” She broke off as the door opened.
“I told you I felt all right,” Xavier was saying as he stepped inside, a bandage over one eye and a dishtowel of ice pressed to his jaw. “It must have just been the surprise of – oh.”
“We did all we could,” Nia said, “but he… he was never going to last very long, I’m afraid.”
“I – I see.” Xavier looked at the still lump under the blankets then glanced back at Arthur. “Do you – do you know what was wrong with him?”
Nia’s brow furrowed darkly, but before she could interject, Gail gently touched her arm, surprising her into silence. Xavier meant no disrespect. It was just that Illuminators weren’t seen much down here. When water was a bigger threat to your life than any kind of magic, doctors were the people you turned to when you needed help – if you could find one.
Arthur fielded the question gracefully. “This one is a bit outside my area of expertise. What do you think, Ni?”
Clearly thrown off by the exchange, Nia had to take a moment to gather herself before answering. “He was… possessed, one could say, by magic. He was being magically controlled to carry out some magician’s purpose.”
Xavier blinked. “Really? Why would a magician want to attack me?”
“Oh, don’t worry. By the time he attacked you, his mind had degraded too much for the magic to retain any rational aim. It’s only to be expected, really, if you rely on a layman mind.”
“I – I see.”
When Gail gave her a sharp look, Nia started, then clasped her hands in front of her and looked at the floor. “I didn’t mean it badly. It’s simply different. Magic is not healthy for laymen, you understand.”
Yeah, Gail figured she did. She also figured she was being an asshole again. Maybe being back in Gracetown was making her a little touchy. “That’s true enough, Xavier. I’ve had some experience with getting magic-ed and I wouldn’t recommend it.”
Xavier’s eyebrows shot up. “That sounds like hell of a story. Does this have anything to do with that case you’re working on? The one with the –” Xavier waved one of his own arms, just in case Gail needed help recalling that time she and Arthur had gone stumbling through the hotel with an unconscious Nia wearing Connery’s arms.
“Yeah, but – look, I don’t want to drag you into it, Xave. It’s an ugly case.”
Xavier looked at the still form under the blankets again. “Sure looks like it.”
The room slid into a deep and awkward silence. Xavier was clearly taking time to come to terms with the fact that there was a dead man in his guestroom. Nia was staring down at her shoes, which made Gail feel like twelve kinds of shit, and Arthur clearly had no idea how to fix things and just kept looking back and forth between them all like there was some silent argument going on that only he could hear.
Honestly, one of them should’ve stepped forward and taken things in hand, seeing as they had brought the trouble in the first place, but it was Xavier who stepped up to the bed and lay one hand lightly on the part of the blanket covering the dead man’s chest. “Should we call the police?”
“I’m not sure they’d know what to do with him,” Gail answered. “Anyway, we’ve got an Illuminator here. What do you think we should do, Nia? Bring him to the Academy?”
“I…” At first, Nia only gaped at her, but when Xavier looked at her, she shook herself back into professional Illuminator Graves once more. “Eventually, yes, that would be best. However, for the moment, it would be more useful to have him here. I may still have need of him.”
Gail could tell Xavier was wondering what Nia could possibly need a dead body for, but she just shrugged at him and he didn’t ask any questions. Maybe he figured there were certain things he was better off not knowing. He was probably right.
“Do you think Con –” Arthur swallowed back the name. “Do you think what we’re looking for is still here?”
“I don’t know,” Nia admitted. “The altercation with this gentleman took me by surprise. I’ll need to regroup and try the spells again. It may be that all I sensed was the ensorcelling done on this man, but…” She trailed off, eyes turning toward the small northern window as she sank into thought. If pressed, she probably wouldn’t have an answer better than I have a feeling, but Gail had been there herself and was willing to play along, so long as Nia kept her an
d Arthur clued in.
“Should we do that at the hotel?” Gail glanced at Xavier again. Not only were they filling his house with dead men and secrets, but they also had no choice but to keep talking around him like he wasn’t standing right there with bruises on his neck and blood on his face.
“We could,” Nia replied with reluctance. “It will put a great deal of distance between us and – what we’re looking for, but I suppose that’s the only way.” She dropped her eyes to the dead man. “He won’t fit very neatly under the bed. Maybe the closet…”
The words gave Gail a headache and worse, she had no way of arguing with them. If Nia really did need the guy for her spells than they couldn’t bring him back to the Academy yet, but while she had almost gotten used to wandering around with severed limbs in her luggage, an entire corpse shoved into a hotel closet seemed beyond the pale. Surely they had to tell someone, but then again, who was there to tell? The layman cops would just pass him on to the Academy and the Academy clearly wanted Nia off the case which meant they weren’t likely to jump to their aid either.
And that left them with about one and a half corpses and nowhere to put them. She was reluctantly about to offer the use of her apartment, when Xavier said, “You can stay here, if you want.”
When Gail and the Graveses looked at him in surprise, he shrugged, one hand moving across his bruised throat. “I don’t know what kind of case you’re working on…”
Gail knew that was at least half a lie; they’d let enough slip that he had to be at least starting to put it together by now, but it was nice of him to play the fool for them.
“But clearly something terrible happened to this poor bastard and I’d like to help, if I can. If it’ll help you solve the case quicker, Illuminator Graves, you’re welcome to stay here for a few days and work. With the kids gone for the season, I’ve got extra space.” He paused. “As long as it won’t be a danger to the neighborhood, that is.”
“Of course not!” Nia answered, maybe a little too quickly. Then she took another moment to think. “That is, it’s true that so far this case has proved… difficult, even perilous, but only to those of us investigating, never to outsiders.”
“Until now,” Arthur said quietly from the door, looking seriously at Xavier.
“I’m fine,” Xavier said again, but the roughness in his voice made it hard to buy. The dead man didn’t seem to have any more strength to him than a scrap of water-eaten plywood, but he had come to close to choking the life out of Xavier in that alley.
“The circumstances were unique,” Nia argued. “The spell controlling him had broken and the magic made him – unstable. However, his presence here suggests we’re getting closer to what we’re looking for and we have to find it as soon as possible. He –” And by the sudden darkness in her tone, Gail knew this “he” was Connery. “– likely made sure his protections would escalate as we come close to the end.” Before Arthur or Gail could offer any opinions, she looked directly at Xavier and added, “However, I promise you that if I come to believe that our presence here would put you or anyone else in danger, I will put a stop to the investigation and ask the Academy to send more Illuminators to protect you.”
Gail and Arthur looked at each other. They knew what Nia was really saying even if Xavier didn’t. Calling for assistance again would mean giving up the case. It would mean blacklists and early retirement and everything else Nia had told Gail about the morning after they’d escaped the subway tunnels.
Do you mean it, princess? But Nia wasn’t looking at her. Her eyes were on Xavier, waiting for his answer.
When it finally came, it didn’t surprise Gail much. “All right. That sounds fine to me. But we should put him somewhere else. You don’t want to be staying in here with him.”
We’re used to rooming with dead people, Gail almost said, but then figured they’d thrown enough weird shit in Xavier’s face for one day. “If we wrap him up tight, he’ll probably be safe enough in the garage.”
“The toolshed,” Xavier said. “Sometimes kids duck into the garage if the rain starts suddenly.”
“Right. I’ll help you.”
Before Xavier and Gail went to gather tarps and ropes, Nia said she would “apply some anti-putrefication spells to help the body retain its integrity, maybe even an obscuration enchantment or two to make sure no one stumbled upon him by chance.” Xavier just nodded slowly in response, clearly not having the foggiest idea what she was talking about, which wrung a smile from Gail despite the shit day they’d been having. After all these weeks, the magic talk had started to sound almost normal.
When Nia’s work was done, Gail and Xavier wrapped the dead man in two layers of plastic sheeting, tied him up like a stack of firewood, and carried him out to the toolshed. Arthur offered to help, but Gail told him to stay inside and help his sister get their things set up in the guestroom. Not only did she want Connery tucked out of sight as quickly as possible, but she also wanted some time alone with Xavier to set the record straight on a few things.
“You don’t have to put us up, you know,” she said, once the dead man was tucked as gently and respectfully as possible behind a row of shovels and rakes. “Nia’s probably right that something like this won’t happen again, but this whole case has been screwed up. We’ve been attacked by dead people, furniture, trains…” She could only shrug helplessly when Xavier stared at her. “Magic, you know?”
Judging by his expression, he didn’t know at all, but he only nodded and said, “I guess that makes things different.” Then he just stood there silently, looking at the dead man and rubbing the needle scars beneath his cuff while his jaw worked like his questions were a tough piece of old meat. “Can I ask you something about it?”
“Sure.” Yeah, she hadn’t wanted to involve him, especially not back at the hotel when he was just playing music to pay the bills, but now they’d brought Connery into his house, which made him involved whether she liked it or not. And it was only fair he have the whole story before he decided if he wanted to stay involved.
Still, she wasn’t at all sure where to start. It wasn’t exactly the kind of story she could cover in a few quick bullet points. But Xavier was watching her and, as she stood there with her tongue sitting useless in her mouth, the Graveses were moving Connery into his funny-shaped but much-loved house. If she was going to come clean, now was the time.
“You know I’ve spent a bunch of years hunting Christopher Connery, right?”
Xavier nodded. “Yeah, but he died, right? I saw it in the papers.”
“Yeah, well, turns out it wasn’t that simple…”
The Graveses were probably wondering what was taking them so long but had the manners not to come check. That turned out to be a damn good thing because it took Gail the better part of an hour to cover the most important parts of what she and the magicians had been up to. She tried to keep it brass tacks, avoiding any private information about Nia and Arthur. Still, by the time she had reached the end, she and Xavier were both sitting on overturned buckets in the toolshed. It was raining again and the toolshed wasn’t the most watertight structure ever made. Gail would’ve been lying if she said the raindrops drumming on the roof weren’t pulling her shoulders up, but she wasn’t gonna interrupt Xavier, who was deep in thought, eyes on his knees.
At last he sighed heavily and sat back, hands planted on his kneecaps. “Damn, Gail, how do you always find yourself in these kind of messes?”
“I don’t go looking for them, trust me.” Gail tugged an unlit cigarette from her pocket to twirl between her fingers. “It’s been – it’s been something else, that’s for sure. I think we’re getting down to the end, though. Thank god.” She felt a twinge of guilt as the words passed her lips, but it was true, wasn’t it? Regardless of what else was going on, getting Connery dealt with once and for all could only be a good thing.
“And they think that by finding Connery, they’ll be able to discover new magic that’ll help everybody?”
> “That’s the plan.” And at this point, Gail almost believed it. There was no denying that Connery, evil bastard though he was, had managed to pull off some extraordinary shit. She still wasn’t sure she could count on the Academy to turn that extraordinary shit toward something good, but Nia probably could. She was pretty sure Nia could.
Xavier nodded slowly. The rain was coming down harder now and Gail put the unlit cigarette between her lips.
“All right.”
Gail looked up. “All right?”
“Yeah. That sounds like good work, so if I can help you out, I will. Anyway, you seem to trust Illuminator Graves and I trust your judgment.”
I hope your trust is well placed. Gail got up from her bucket. “Thanks, Xavier. I promise, we won’t get in your way.”
“Nah, it’ll be nice to have company.” Xavier pulled a smaller piece of plastic sheeting from a shelf and offered it to her.
“Thanks.” Gail shook the plastic out into a makeshift poncho. As she tucked the cigarette into her pocket, her fingers brushed against an envelope. Blinking, Gail pulled it from her pocket before realizing what it was. Right. Arthur’s letter. She had almost forgotten about it. She’d also been dumb enough to pull it out with Xavier’s name facing up, so when he asked, “That for me?” she couldn’t very well say no.
With no choice but to hand it over, Gail said, “Yeah, it’s – uh – Arthur wanted to say thanks.”
Xavier gave her a perplexed smile as he took the envelope. “Thanks for what?”
“I don’t know. Read it and find out.”
After taking another moment to study the letter with a thoughtful smile, Xavier tucked it into his pocket. Together, they returned to the house, Gail holding the sheet of plastic over her head.
Xavier was a hell of a host, especially considering they were basically uninvited. Nia and Gail shared the guest bedroom, which was very comfortable so long as Gail didn’t remember that a man had recently died in it, and Arthur slept on the couch downstairs. Xavier had tried to offer him the master bedroom, but doc had declined, making the interesting excuse that he’d ‘never slept on a couch before.’