by Lisa Shearin
Rake nodded. “Unless he gets stung again, he should eventually make a full recovery.”
I let out the breath that I’d been holding. “That’s the first good news we’ve had. Can he let Ian know so he can tell Cal and Liz?”
“He was going to call Agent Byrne as soon as I hung up.”
“You don’t have to call him Agent Byrne, you know. His name is Ian.”
“I know.”
“Not feeling the love yet?”
“I’m not even feeling the like.”
“Part of that is your fault.” I left “if you’d stop keeping things from us” unsaid. Rake knew what I meant.
“I swore to Vivienne that if my work crossed over into SPI’s responsibilities, I would notify her immediately.” Rake’s words were cool and crisp. “That has not happened.”
I could feel Rake closing himself off. Great. Just great.
I did the verbal equivalent of sticking my foot in the door. “Rake, we’re trapped in this hotel with you, and someone is releasing monsters in here to kill us. I’ve got news, we’re involved.”
“It’s politics.”
“It’s life and death. Ours.”
“SPI’s charter prohibits it from involving itself in the affairs of the colonial governments.”
“So this is about the governors. You say the goblins couldn’t do this. Does the elf delegation have anyone with the juice to power a pocket dimension?” Then I remembered the elf who had single-handedly conjured a pocket dimension to connect Hell to Earth via Bacchanalia, Rake’s former pride and joy. I swore. “Isidor Silvanus isn’t here, is he?”
“I would know immediately. He is not here.”
“Do you know where he is?”
“The latest report has him on my home world.”
“How recent was that?”
“I received a report last night, just before the reception. As Kitty said, this is an exotic creation. Isidor has never created anything like this.”
“Just because he hasn’t before doesn’t mean he couldn’t now. He could’ve had a hand in it.”
“Regardless, that hand is not here for us to slap.”
Kenji cleared his throat. Loudly. “Did you come to look at my artwork or argue? If it’s arguing, take it outside. I’m working here, and staying one step ahead of this hacker is enough of a headache.”
I pulled up a chair beside Kenji’s. “Artwork. Arguing can wait. We’ve got a murderer to catch.”
Kenji clicked a window open. He’d worked his magic on the images Argus had provided.
“Here’s the best image I’ve come up with,” he said. “It shows Kenan Chaitan in relation to his killer.”
It was a still image taken from the hallway outside of the hotel’s portal room. The figure following Kenan was pixelated, and fainter than usual for a cloaked individual, meaning they were putting a lot of effort into staying hidden. However, I could tell it was humanoid and not merely a glitch in the surveillance video.
“That’s the best I can do with the equipment I have here,” Kenji said. “Sorry.”
“Don’t be,” I told him. I squeezed my eyes shut, then opened them, hoping that would make the pixelated mess clearer to me. I slowly shook my head. “About all I can tell is that the killer’s taller than Kenan. And Rake, you were right, the build is definitely that of a man. A humanoid man, given that he only has two arms. That’s it. Sorry.”
“Neither one of you should be sorry,” Rake said.
“How tall was Kenan?” I asked.
“Six-one.”
“That would put the killer at about six-three. A male humanoid with two arms, two legs, and enough power under the hood to melt a portal frame. Does that bring up any names for you?” I asked pointedly.
Rake was scowling. “No.”
“Wait a minute,” Kenji said. “There was a segment of video that I cleaned up that shows them both moving down the hall. Kenan was walking fast, and the killer was trying to keep up, but there was something wrong with his walk.”
Rake froze.
Now we were on to something. “Show us.”
Kenji started the segment, and sure enough, the killer was moving with a distinct hesitation.
“Looks like a limp,” I said.
“It is a limp,” Rake growled. “An old dueling injury.”
“Sounds like I should ask my question again. Does that bring up any names for you?”
Rake bared his fangs in a fierce smile. The smile of a predator about to go hunting. “Yes, it does.”
“Who?” I had to sprint to keep up with Rake’s long strides as he made a beeline back to the lobby.
“A goblin.”
I grabbed Rake’s arm. “I don’t want a goblin; I want a name. Ian needs a name. And Gethen.”
“Ian can’t handle this goblin.”
“Neither can you or Gethen. Your magic’s not working. No offense, but it might take all three of you.” Or more. But I didn’t say that out loud. Rake knew. No need in me rubbing his nose in his temporary dysfunction. Then my eyes widened in realization. “The killer’s magic is working. That cloak was beyond perfect. A goblin mage with working magic.”
Locating the lieutenant governor of the goblin colony wasn’t difficult at all.
His murderer had been considerate enough to kill Scur Derian in his hotel suite.
The body was sprawled on the floor of the sitting area.
The late lieutenant governor may have been Kenan’s murderer, but now he was our second victim.
Do unto others, and you’re likely to get it done right back unto you.
Scur Derian’s demise hadn’t involved anything as exotic as touch-transferred electrocution. His killer had done the deed the old-fashioned way—a big ol’ knife through the heart. The killer hadn’t been going for creativity; they’d just wanted to get the job done.
Rake was nodding in grim approval.
Yep, karma’s a bitch.
Fortunately, we’d picked up Ian and Gethen on our way up to the room. We had all kinds of witnesses and alibis as to our whereabouts for the past few hours. Scur Derian had been killed recently. Very recently. Heck, his body was still warm. Rake had confirmed that for me. There was no way I would’ve touched him.
I didn’t need an alibi, but I had a feeling Rake would. The goblin governor was either gonna be seriously put out that his lieutenant was no longer on the job, or glad to not have him around anymore. These were goblins, after all. The poster children for complex alliances. Keep your friends close and your enemies closer, and all that.
It didn’t take us long to find out.
Gremien Pivaine pushed his way through the goblin hotel security guarding the murder scene’s door.
Or at least he tried.
Rake’s people had had enough go wrong in the past twenty-four hours, and were chomping at the bit to have something happen that they could control.
They could control one irate goblin colonial governor—and control him they did.
Gremien Pivaine was livid. “How dare you!”
Rake actually rolled his eyes. “You were about to contaminate a crime scene, Gremien.”
“Crime scene? What are—” Then he saw the body, and his little piggy eyes narrowed into enraged squints—at Rake. “You did this!”
Gethen snorted. “With that knife?” he drawled. “Only a barbarian would—”
“You’re responsible!” the governor snapped, his eyes darting between Rake and Gethen.
Rake had had enough, too. “Make up your mind, Gremien.”
“You may not have wielded the knife, but it was your incompetence—both of you—that caused the death of a fine—”
“Idiot,” supplied a feminine voice from the doorway.
Oh joy. Dagara Jakome.
Ian grabbed my arm and pulled me back through the bedroom doorway—and out of sight. I was about to protest when I saw the golden glow from Lugh’s Spear spilling out from beneath the collar of his jacket. The glow w
as bright and, dare I say, angry. I knew I didn’t like Dagara Jakome, and I trusted the spear’s opinion of her. I trusted my partner’s even more. I could still see her in a wall mirror. I was almost surprised she cast a reflection.
“He was an idiot who has been begging to be killed for years,” she said, “and whoever did the deed deserves a medal, not iron bars.” She smiled slowly and arched a brow at the governor. “If Scur had been stabbed in the back, I would think it was you.”
“You bitch!”
Dagara laughed. “I never claimed to be anything else. You of all people should know that and know it well.” She cast a glance at the corpse. “About half an hour ago, wouldn’t you say, Rake?”
“Give or take a few minutes.”
“Alas, that clears the governor. He was with me.”
“And where were you?”
“Exploring your lovely hotel. Afterward, we were in the room you assigned us both.” She lowered her voice suggestively. “I had hoped you would have given us separate rooms.”
“I do not make the room assignments,” Rake replied coolly, “and if you and Gremien are sharing accommodations, the request would have come from someone on the governor’s staff—or the governor himself.”
The look she gave Gremien Pivaine hinted that the governor might soon become murder victim number three. Then her eyes were back on Rake, and taking their time enjoying the view.
“Where were you when Scur met his timely demise?” she asked Rake.
“Down in hotel security investigating a murder I highly suspect was Scur’s doing.” Rake glanced down at the cooling corpse. “Can you account for his whereabouts just before midnight?”
“And why should I want to do that?”
“To clear—or further implicate—him of a murder charge.” He shrugged. “Your choice.”
“Who did he kill? Supposedly.”
“My portal mage—and friend.”
“I am sorry for your loss.”
“Are you?”
Now it was her turn to shrug. “It is the conventional thing to say.”
“That’s more like it,” Rake said. “I was beginning to think you had developed a conscience.”
“That would be an inconvenient nuisance.”
“First, she would need a heart,” Gremien said.
“Yes, we both suffer from an organ inadequacy, don’t we?”
Ouch.
I glanced around the bedroom. Nothing seemed to be out of place. The bed was still made, but Scur Derian was a goblin and nocturnal. Besides, if he had murdered Kenan, he’d been too busy skulking around the hotel to sleep.
The room was pristine, as if Scur Derian had never been in here.
I froze. But someone had.
I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. On the room’s mirrored closet door was a bloody smear, a smear from a handprint.
Chapter Nineteen
I tapped Ian on the arm and pointed at the big, red clue. He motioned for me to stay put, as he drew his gun and silently crossed the room, careful to stay near the room’s walls.
I didn’t know what Rake had heard or sensed, but the next thing I knew, he was standing in the bedroom doorway.
“Gethen,” he said casually, without taking his eyes from the closet door. “Have two of your men escort the governor and Miss Jakome back to their suite, and post a guard. For their own protection,” he added when Gremien Pivaine started to protest.
Gethen knew something was up. The governor and Dagara Jakome were quickly hustled out, and the suite’s door closed.
I didn’t wait for either Ian or Rake to shoo me out of the way, but I wasn’t about to be shooed out altogether. I got my gun in my hands and positioned myself out of the way of whatever might charge out of that closet, and out of Ian and Rake’s line of fire.
Rake’s hands glowed red. His magic seemed to be working just fine. I hoped it stayed that way.
As soon as Dagara Jakome had left, the golden glow coming from beneath the collar of Ian’s jacket had faded, then winked out. Whatever was in that closet didn’t bother it. That was good. Maybe.
Ian stood to the left of the door, with Rake on the right. It was Rake’s hotel, so Ian was going to let the goblin do the honors of opening it.
Gethen and one of his mages slipped inside the room, hands glowing.
When they were in position, Rake flung open the door.
The closet was empty.
With all the weirdness we saw on a daily basis, none of us believed there was nothing inside. But even after a full inspection, Scur Derian’s closet was still empty of a murderer or anything else.
Five minutes later, I was sitting on the bed trying to keep my eyes open. Though with what had happened the last time I’d been on a bed, I kept my gun out and didn’t get too comfortable. After all, we still had a dead body in the next room, and it hadn’t gotten that way by itself.
Ian’s background as an NYPD homicide detective was getting a workout in the sitting room, while Rake and Gethen were in the bedroom trying to figure out what the hell was going on with a bloody handprint on the door of an empty closet—the only sign (other than a murdered lieutenant governor) that a crime had been committed here. We’d determined that it wasn’t Scur Derian’s handprint, and the closet didn’t contain some kind of microportal (confirmed by Kitty) or hidden door panel. Heck, we didn’t even know if anything had manifested. The only moderately helpful fact we’d found out was that the murder weapon was a carving knife from the hotel’s kitchens.
Note to self: Don’t get the roast beef again from the buffet’s carving station.
Then Argus called from the surveillance room. He’d run through the video from the hallway outside Scur Derian’s room from the time he checked in early in the evening to when Rake and I had found his body. Nothing. Then he’d checked from the time of the buka appearance up until Scur’s check-in. The only people who had been in the room during that time had been two of the SPI commandos who’d been dispatched to check all guest rooms before the guests had arrived. They had been more than qualified to find any lurking intruder, whether mortal or monster. Kenji had come upstairs with a copy of the video on a tablet for me to look at to confirm or eliminate the possibility of a cloaked attacker getting past the traditional surveillance. I didn’t see anything or anyone. No one had entered Scur Derian’s room, pixelated or otherwise.
At least not through the suite’s main door.
Ian was leaning against the bedroom doorframe. “Back on the force, this would have been one of those ‘locked door murders’ we hated so much. At SPI, it’s just run-of-the-mill spooky.”
We were all looking at the closet—and the carpet directly in front of it that we had been careful to leave undisturbed.
Instinct went a long way in our line of work, and that instinct was telling us that the closet was the point of entry and exit. It was the Boogey-Man Theorem. Unlike in the NYPD, SPI considered that to be a valid option.
We had no way to test the bloody handprint on the door for either type or species. But we didn’t need to test the blood; the answer to the mystery just might be on the carpet.
As testament to the dedication and skill of the Regor Regency’s housekeeping staff, the carpet in Scur Derian’s suite had been vacuumed to within an inch of its wooly life. The sitting room was now a mess of footprints, but we’d been careful in the bedroom. That was one of the reasons why I was on the bed, to avoid adding my footprints to the few there. It had nothing at all to do with the fact that I was so tired that I needed to sit down before I fell down.
There were two pairs of boot prints clearly showing in the plush carpet around the closet door—those of the two commandos who’d checked Scur’s room prior to his checking in. Combat boots left a distinctive indentation.
There were no footprints whatsoever inside the closet itself.
However, directly in front of the door was the front half of a single, narrow shoeprint indicating someone walking away from the cl
oset, and the back half of the same shoeprint coming back.
Both had been cut off by the closet door itself.
Though “cut off” wasn’t entirely accurate. It was as if this person had walked through the mirrored door, indicating against all logic that they had neither emerged from nor returned to the inside of a closet in the Regor Regency in Manhattan.
Like Ian said, spooky.
And in SPI’s brand of deductive reasoning, entirely possible.
None of that included how or why the killer nicked a carving knife from the hotel kitchen.
“Goblin bukas, dwarf beer skunks, naked flying monkeys, mole monsters, giant scorpions, and now murderers walking through mirrors.” I didn’t feel as if I was going to be murdered myself within the next few minutes, so I crossed my legs under me on the bed and took the opportunity to relax. I waved a hand in the direction of the potentially possessed mirror in question. “This wasn’t covered in my SPI orientation. Is it possible?”
Rake was leaning against the room’s dresser, staring at the mirrored door, expression set on contemplative scowl. “Yes, but not here.”
“Here in this hotel, or here on Earth?”
“Both.”
“Helpful.”
“Sorry, it’s complicated.”
I sighed, more from exhaustion than anything else. “Isn’t everything, when it comes to you?”
“It involves how the mirrors are made. Those made here cannot be used as doorways to another place. The technology of my home world is different. Magic is our technology. There are mages who specialize in mirror magic. Elves have produced some of the best mirror mages, though many goblins are known adepts. Mirrors can be used to translocate people, manifest creatures, or move objects from one place to another. They’re also useful for spying and passing messages.”
“That sounds like what’s happening here,” Ian said. “How can you be sure it’s not?”
“As I said, it’s how the mirrors are made. For all magical purposes, every mirror in this hotel is dead. I used Bacchanalia to gather information for goblin intelligence. The Regor Regency is likewise a popular destination for influential and politically connected elves and goblins. If there were any way that I could use the mirrors in this hotel to gather intelligence, I would be doing so.”