by Jes Battis
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Acknowledgments
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Afterthought
About the Author
PRAISE FOR THE OSI NOVELS
A Flash of Hex
“Wonderfully detailed, easily visualized, and overflowing in paranormal crime scene action. The aspect most likely to capture the reader’s attention is the author’s talent in developing charming characters who are passionate in both their professional and personal lives.”
—Darque Reviews
“This procedural murder mystery with a biting supernatural edge is enhanced by the interplay of terrific characters. Battis delivers big-time, so make sure to add this series to your must-read pile.”
—Romantic Times
“Author Jes Battis has created a credible mix of science and magic, and the book’s strength is its detail-oriented nature.”
—Sacramento Book Review
Night Child
“Hooks you from the very first line.”
—Keri Arthur, New York Times bestselling author of Moon Sworn
“A good old-fashioned murder mystery.”
—ReviewingTheEvidence.com
“Jes Battis takes the readers on a tension-filled journey of murder, mystery, and temptation… An intriguing story line; easy, flowing dialogue; and fascinating characters all combine to keep readers engaged, but it’s the never knowing what’s around the corner that will have readers coming back for more.”
—Darque Reviews
“Battis manages to make the world come alive as a workable universe with infinite complexity.”
—SFRevu
“[An] absorbing paranormal detective tale… The combo of cutting-edge technology and magic highlights a procedural thriller filled with ominous twists. Telling the tale from the point of view of a stubborn, rule-breaking heroine keeps the tension high and the risk palpable.”
—Romantic Times
“Compelling new urban fantasy [that] mixes equal parts forensic investigation, modern science, and down-and-dirty magic to create something new and different… a great start to a new series.”
—The Green Man Review
“Unique.”
—Night Owl Romance
Ace Books by Jes Battis
NIGHT CHILD
A FLASH OF HEX
INHUMAN RESOURCES
Inhuman Resources
Jes Battis
THE BERKLEY PUBLISHING GROUP
Published by the Penguin Group
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Penguin Books Ltd., Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.
INHUMAN RESOURCES
An Ace Book / published by arrangement with the author
PRINTING HISTORY
Ace mass-market edition / June 2010
Copyright © 2010 by Jes Battis.
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.
For information, address: The Berkley Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.
eISBN : 978-1-101-18774-6
ACE
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a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.,
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ACE and the “A” design are trademarks of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.
http://us.penguingroup.com
For Lynda Mae
Acknowledgments
I completed this book immediately after taking a teaching position at the University of Regina, and I am grateful for the reduced teaching load, which gave me time for writing and editing. I am also grateful for the attention and support that I received from various colleagues during the writing and editing process, including Medrie Purdham, Dorothy Lane, Gary Sherbert, Troni Grande, Rob Rose, and Susan Johnston.
And, as always, I am thankful for the patience, kindness, and brilliance of my partner, Sebastian.
1
Luiz Ordeño’s apartment was on the corner of Davie and Pacific streets, where the city became ocean. The building was famous because it had a tree growing out of its roof. The height of the tree was supposed to echo the height of the Douglas firs that had grown all around here originally. Precontact. The building was a tourist attraction, and celebrities haunted it while filming movies on the cheap. Jean-Claude Van Damme was reputed to own a suite, or maybe a whole floor.
The penthouse belonged to Ordeño, and the tree was growing out of his ceiling. It made me think of the baobabs that could take over an entire world with their roots.
The lawn of the building was cordoned off, and strips of tape demarcated the borders of the crime scene. On the inside of the tape, people moved with logic and efficiency. Exterior lamps made the air hot. Colored evidence placards stuck out of the grass like candles on a cake.
A van for on-site forensic testing was parked in the entrance. Two houses down, an OSI tech was checking the integrity of the first perimeter veil. She passed an alternative light source over a patch of dark air, and colors danced within the arc. The veil was working. The street stayed empty.
It takes work to stay invisible. We had to be at every scene first. We couldn’t leave a trace behind. We damaged the environment and tangled atomic forces by creating veils. We messed with the equilibrium of the universe. Our tests created pollution, both chemical and psychic. There was a whole section of the CORE devoted simply to erasing our metaphysical footprint, but they were fighting a losing battle.
Often, in order to analyze a substance, we had to destroy the sample itself by annihilating its substrate. We moved over the surface of the event and left nothing but vague organic ruins behind.
; The door to the building was open. Clean and bright lobby. Two symmetrical potted bushes framed either side of the door. Their leaves were gone, and the branches looked like naked tendons.
The floor leading up to the elevator was tiled and spotless. A tech stood at the concierge desk, reviewing security tapes and then recording them to a flash drive. She’d snuck in a coffee, which she drank in stolen moments, whenever her ranking officer left the room. There were probably dozens of hidden coffees throughout the scene, pushed behind notepads or snuck underneath chairs. Their steam had to be messing up some of the detection equipment. Someone probably just filtered it out.
The keypad in the elevator had a button marked PH. They’d already lifted a print from its metallic surface, although it most likely belonged to Ordeño. Trying to print the entire lobby was a fool’s errand. Maybe 10 percent of what they found would actually be catalogued in IAFIS or its paranormal counterpart, DAFIS. The rest were shadows.
On the top floor, the air-conditioning hissed. Cables snaked across the carpet, attached to various light sources. Multiple laptops transmitted pictures via the CORE’s secure wireless network. Flashes lit up the polished concrete walls.
The door to Ordeño’s apartment was open. It looked solid. Not the sort of thing you’d break down easily. And even if you managed to pull it off, there’d be a nasty spell waiting for you on the other side. Nasty like explosive decompression.
The suite was floored in dark pine, which looked real. There were knots, gaps, and other indiscernible shapes in the surface of the wood. It creaked under the pressure of multiple boots. The entryway was lit up, and every stray hair and mote of dust burned orange in the halo. The floor looked clean.
Farther in, the hallway narrowed. There was a guest bathroom to the left, dark, except for the purple shadows that moved across its length. Someone was checking the walls with short-wave UV light.
The entryway branched off to the right, opening onto a large kitchen. A tripod was set up on the tiled floor, along with a charging station for cameras and ALS batteries. All the little glowing lights from the battery indicators looked like candles lit for mass. Even the blinking LEDs.
A frying pan sat on the stove. There was cold oil inside of it, and traces of food. The digital clock read 3:03 A.M.
At the very edge of the kitchen floor, someone had placed a marker. There was a blood swipe on the tiles. Something had disturbed the blood while it was still drying, producing an abstract shape with skeletonized borders. A hand, maybe, or the side of a moving body.
The kitchen opened onto a living room with tall bay windows, all reflecting the same patternless dark from outside. Bookshelves lined the walls. There weren’t many paperbacks. The spines of the books were made of leather, hide, moleskin, and other materials. Some were metallic, and one or two books were even pressed between plates of stained glass, like miniature church windows.
One slightly recessed shelf, apart from the others, held something made out of smoke. It might have been a book, or something else. Nobody, as of yet, was willing to examine it further. The vapor smelled sweet.
The living room was floored in darker wood, almost too smooth. You couldn’t tell if it was real or laminate unless you touched it.
“Jesus. Look at that.”
“What?”
“The couch.”
“It’s clean.”
“I know. It’s just so ugly.”
“Is it from IKEA?”
“Urban Barn. I recognize it from the catalogue.”
“We have an Urban Barn catalogue?”
“Yeah. We got it in the mail.”
“When?”
“Thursday.”
“Oh, my God.”
“What?”
“How gay are you? Did you actually hide the Urban Barn catalogue from me, so that you could read it first?”
“I didn’t hide it.”
“Where is it right now? Is it in your bedroom?”
“Maybe,” Derrick said.
I shook my head and scanned the bookshelves. “Definitely an academic. Lots of books on legal philosophy, Roman law, and civil rights stuff.”
“Did you happen to notice the book made of smoke?”
“Yeah. I’m afraid to touch it. They took pictures, though.”
“Who’s on photography?”
“Becka. And Linus is looking at the blood.”
“He left the lab?”
“Yeah. He was one of the first ones here.”
“Who else? Selena, right, and Tasha for sure.”
“You’re so transparent.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Oh, is anyone else at the crime scene? Maybe the special investigator who happens to be my boyfriend?”
He rolled his eyes. “Not just him.”
“It’s okay to enjoy having sex, Derrick. Someone should.”
“I guess. I just don’t want to appear too happy, you know?”
“That’s ridiculous.”
“Things go bad when you’re too happy. You get distracted.”
“You’re allowed to get distracted. Men are distracting. You can’t just anticipate things going to shit right away.”
“But things always go to shit. Look around you.”
“I’d hardly compare your relationship to the murder of a high-profile necromancer.” I glanced down the hallway that led to the master bedroom. “Not that breakups can’t be fatal. Most homicides are domestic.”
“Ordeño was supposed to be single.”
“That’s indeterminable. He could have an army of lovers and we’d never know about it. The guy’s a professor and a legal activist. You can’t tell me he doesn’t know how to cover his tracks.”
“But that’s assuming this was a crime of passion. It could be an execution.”
“No way. Door was locked and armed with something heavy. Nobody’s walking away from that kind of magic. He let the attacker in. They knew each other.”
Derrick started down the hallway. No pictures on the walls. Just a Doctorate of Law from the University of British Columbia, and beneath it, an undergraduate degree from the Universidad Complutense de Madrid.
“Not much on family and friends,” Derrick said.
“Probably too busy. Spent his life working.”
“Any relatives?”
“All dead.”
“Is there going to be a funeral?”
“On their side, I imagine. But we’re not invited.”
The door to the guest bedroom was open. It had a leaded pane of glass, etched with two hummingbirds. I looked closely at them, and their edges blurred a bit, shifting to red. I felt something move across my scalp.
“Has anyone touched this glass yet?”
“I think they’re going to use cyanoacrylate fumes on it.”
“On an active materia cluster?”
He shrugged. “That’s what’s written in the log.”
“Someone’s going to get their head blown off.”
“They’ve all got insurance.”
“True. The payout must be enormous.”
“If you can prove that it was a paranormal event.”
I stepped through the entrance. Nothing happened.
Ordeño had a TV in his bedroom. It was a small one, sitting on a night table. I pictured him falling asleep while watching Dateline. Red carpet at the foot of the bed—a color that would have been called gules in the middle ages, like the kind they used to line the interior of a knight’s shield. Edges gilt in gold thread. It didn’t look like it had come from Pier One.
I’d only ever seen one other necromancer’s bed. Lucian’s was big and surprisingly comfortable, with faded blue sheets. Sinking into them was like putting on your very favorite pair of worn-in jeans. Ordeño’s bed was a bit smaller, in fact. It had a black duvet, which lay folded neatly to one side. No canopy. Just a regular bed in an ordinary room, belonging to a lawyer who obviously lived alone.
I looked up, and saw someth
ing drifting in front of my face, slowly, like a feather. Strands of defrayed materia were floating all around the room, visible as motes of dust. Something had ripped the magic from these walls like dogs tearing flesh off the bone.
“Tess?”
I blinked. Linus was staring at me, camera in hand. “Sorry. Did you say something?”
His mouth twitched. “I was just asking if you could hand me a bindle. There’s some fabric caught in this blood spatter, and I need to tweeze it.”
“Oh. Sure—” Derrick was already handing me the envelope. I gave it to Linus. “Sorry I’m a space cadet. Not enough sleep. Too much coffee.”
“Don’t use that word unless you’re willing to go get us some. We’ve got at least another three hours to go.”
I turned to Derrick. “We’re missing Hell’s Kitchen.”
“I don’t even want to talk about it.” He stared at the bed. “That’s a really nice comforter. It looks expensive.”
“Man, you’re all about capitalism tonight.”
“We got salary bumps. It would be nice to spend some money on the house.”
“We also have a mortgage. And Mia. That doesn’t leave us a lot.”
“We’re pretty comfortable right now, though. I mean, relatively speaking. We made a huge down payment on the house. And Mia doesn’t actually ask for a lot of things. She barely eats.”
I looked at him. “Are you trying to get me to approve something? I already said no to the industry-grade espresso machine.”
“I was thinking of something a bit more substantial.”
“Like what—”
The glass door to the en suite patio opened, and Selena Ward stepped into the bedroom. She looked tired, but not angry. Good sign.
Her hair was different. I tried not to look confused as I took in her appearance. Her arms were bare. She was wearing a black blouse and charcoal slacks, which were covered by a protective nylon apron. I looked at the boots. Charles David.