by Holly Rutan
"If you're going to fuss, then go make me that soup and get out of my hair," Moira grumbled.
"Yes, ma'am," I said, retreating to the kitchen.
I slept over at Moira's. Despite her assurances, I was really bothered by the sound of her breathing. After I'd made her something to eat, I bedded down on her couch. Every time she coughed, I jerked awake.
In the morning her fever was higher. It added an unhealthy glow to her cheeks, and she was breathing in gasps. She barely had enough strength to cough, and when she did, it sounded bubbly to my sharp ears.
Overriding her protests, I sat on the edge of her bed and called Charles.
"Davis, what's up?" he asked, sounding far too cheerful for the hour.
"I need a favor," I said. "Can you give Moira a ride to the hospital? It's that or an ambulance."
Moira muttered something incoherent and pushed at me. I glared at her. She tried to glare back, but a spasm of coughing tore her gaze away from mine and rendered her attempt at dominance ineffective.
"Wow, she sounds like shit. What's the address?" I heard paper rustling in the background, and his voice faded for a moment as he turned his head from the phone.
I rattled off the address.
"It's going to take me a bit. I'm Downtown. See you when I get there," Charles said.
"That's fine, I'll call ahead and try to get an appointment," I answered and hung up.
"Fine," Moira muttered, giving up. "My medical card is in my wallet, on the kitchen table." She closed her eyes and took a slow breath. I nodded and went to fetch it and call the doctor.
Happily, there was a morning cancellation. Charles arrived after about forty-five minutes, as always accompanied by Irwin. The three of us hauled Moira into his car and over to the hospital.
* * * *
"Pneumonia," Dr. Morrison stated, having finished his examination. "I'll start you on a course of antibiotics. Be sure to take every single pill. Come back if you don't improve within a week."
Moira nodded and then coughed into a tissue. "Okay," she croaked.
"How bad is it?" I asked, my worry adding a whine to my voice.
"Your partner is young and healthy; she'll be fine," the doctor replied. "But don't let her return to work too early, even if it means sitting on her. You law enforcement types always think you can rush back to work, and there can be serious complications if she doesn't take care of herself."
"No problem," I agreed. "I have two backup mother hens to take her place, so she doesn't have to worry. Right?" I gave Moira a cockeyed look.
"Yeah, sure," she answered. "This is just a scheme so you can have those two handsome fellows all to yourself, isn't it?"
"I'll take what I'm given and run with it." I waggled my eyebrows suggestively.
Dr. Morrison smiled while filling out Moira's prescription. He handed it to me along with a note for our boss. "Stay home a week," he ordered. "And I don't want you off chasing criminals the moment your time is up. You'll only be up to pushing paper for another week after that."
"Fuck," said Moira, sounding completely heartfelt.
I patted her on the shoulder. "Thanks, doc," I said.
"Of course. Do you have any questions before you go?" he asked, pen hovering over his clipboard.
"I think I can handle it, but if I do, I'll call you," I replied.
"Good, then get her home and in bed."
Chapter Nine
We'd secured permission to examine the bodies found in Valerio, so after safely tucking Moira in bed and extracting a promise from her to stay there, we headed down to the morgue.
The DMA has jurisdiction over bodies in the case of any nonmundane cause of death or when the victim is any kind of snap. Latents—those who came up positive for magic during the yearly testing at school, but never snapped—were lumped in with normal humans, since they rarely had any dealings with the rest of the magical community. We store all these bodies in Downtown Los Angeles, in the subbasement of the central building at Headquarters, behind heavy metal doors.
I had only been down to the morgue a few times; most of the crimes in my jurisdiction were not fatal—there just wasn't enough competition running blood or Bliss to merit violence between criminal factions. Bliss was the current fad drug. The only thing preventing an epidemic of the hallucinogenic was the scarce supply, since it required both magic and extra-pure LSD to create. It was highly addictive, with some really nasty side effects. Brain hemorrhages weren't uncommon.
The smell of decay held at bay by a cocktail of chemicals assaulted my nose as we exited the elevator. From experience, I knew my sense of smell would be hours recovering, and I'd have to rely on the senses of my comrades until it cleared. I panted in disgust, my lips curled in an involuntary sneer.
To my relief, we didn't actually have to see the bodies. Moira and I had occasionally had to view a corpse for an explanation of autopsy results or to build evidence against a suspect. We both hated it. It was miserable for me, because if the corpse was fresh, I'd be vomiting half the time and nauseated for the rest of the day. Moira, on the other hand, felt sad for the people lying alone and unclaimed in carefully marked drawers.
I don't personally have any emotional qualms about viewing bodies. Dead is just dead, after all. The owner is done with the shell and what is left behind is just meat. The hardest part about viewing a body was not thinking of it as food and triggering my conditioning, and that typically wasn't a problem once the person had been dead a few days. I'm a predator, not a scavenger.
This time our business was actually with the individuals' belongings rather than their bodies, so we simply had to wait in an examination room while the objects were retrieved. I prowled about the unoccupied room, studying my sheets of music and humming softly to myself.
It took the clerk a few trips to bring all the evidence into the room. Each individual had been allocated a separate bin, with the fragments of personal belongings separated into small, carefully labeled baggies. We picked out our first tray (DOE-1278a) and moved it to the examination table. We would be casting on the entire contents at once.
Divination is a tricky process when man-made goods are involved. Every cloth, bit of metal, and fragment of leather has its own individual history. The strongest memories of an item come from its origin, not its end form, as though it is nostalgic for its past.
For some reason, I had never gotten the hang of singing a spell in my human body. Smith took my silver bracelet from me without comment, and I shifted to battle form, trusting him to have obtained the proper clearances. Normally, Moira would have handled it ahead of time, and I hadn't even thought of it.
The composition began with a wavering, liquid howl. It hung in the air like a fluttering silk banner, and I almost sighed with the purity of the note. Irwin smiled at the sight, making me wonder what my magic looked like to his unfocused gaze. The note remained solid, drawn from the local current and stationary, the framework for our casting. At my nod, Irwin took hold of it to provide the power it needed to exist for more than a few moments.
I added the overlying melody note by careful note in barks, yips, and howls, each phrase containing the instructions for the magic. Each time I completed a section, Irwin would gently take control of it. His magic felt like a charging bull, monstrous and unstoppable. I'd wondered why the werehunter would partner with someone so dangerously close to being lost in the current, and now I knew. Irwin was the most powerful mage I had ever felt; the background noise in Valerio had drowned out the roar of his power.
It took a half an hour of solid singing before I finally stopped, breathing heavily, and then gave Irwin the nod to light the song up. He did so, his power cracking through the melody like the crash of a dozen cymbals, and a three-dimensional humanoid figure took shape over the examination table. The illusion would stand as long as we chose to keep it, so we locked it in place and moved on to the next tray.
At some point Smith uttered a curse and disappeared out the door. He came back with the corone
r a few minutes later. They both began to take notes, recording the appearance and distinct characteristics of each of the victims.
Finally, we finished casting, and I had a chance to have a good look at the illusions we had created. Smith, ever helpful, had brought in some sports drinks when he fetched the coroner, and I grabbed one for the both of us. Having provided the muscle for the song, Irwin was more tired than I was, sweating and leaning against the wall with a muddled look on his face. Taking care not to interfere with our carefully constructed spellwork, I barked, using a deliberately discordant note that startled the Magus away from his contemplation of the local current, and tossed him his drink when his gaze focused on me.
We both swallowed our drinks and pondered the results of our effort in silence. I sighed and eased back into human form. The more I stayed in battle form, the harder it was to let go. It felt like I was putting on a human-shaped suit that was just a little too small to be comfortable, and I rubbed my face and cheeks to ease that too-tight feeling.
Irwin broke the silence first.
"I haven't gotten to power a melody sung so aptly in years. Your control is exquisite, Agent Davis. Why don't you have an apprentice?"
"Too weak to teach control to anyone who would need it," I admitted, huffing a sigh through my nostrils. "I'm limited to the stores I have in my own body. It takes concentration and effort to gather any kind of power outside myself, and tapping an actual current would be suicide."
Smith looked up from his notebook and swept his gaze over the series of illusions. "You can use what you have, clearly. Mark me impressed. By the way, these guys perfectly match the descriptions of those crazy cultists up north."
I dipped my gaze, embarrassed, and shrugged. "Couldn't have done it without Irwin and the Pyg. Hey, at least we know there were no civilians."
"Except for Antonio's," he reminded me.
I shook my head, lifting my gaze up from the floor. "Antonio and his boys don't really count as civilians. Police and fire won't touch Valerio with a ten foot pole. His bullies serve the same function. Even if you do have to pay him for protection."
Four figures stood before us with bloodshot eyes vacant in slack faces, devoid of any expression or personality. One of the cultists had chewed her nails, and the ragged edges were complete down to individual tooth marks.
“The amount of detail is exceptional,” the coroner said. “Give me a few moments, please. I’d like to photograph their fingertips.”
The divination song had been set to display the clothing, and therefore, the individuals wearing said clothing, five minutes before the blast. They hadn’t been hostages. Whoever this enemy was, they weren’t above killing their own to take out a few of us.
There were three men and one woman. Each was dressed in the same type of clothing—tan drawstring pants and sandals, with no shirt. The woman wore an abbreviated halter top to cover her breasts. Their bodies were covered in runes the color of fresh blood, and their hands looked as though the cultists had dabbed their hands in gore.
I walked over to our first illusion, inspecting the eerily expressionless face. "You think this is blood? It looks more like ink to everything but my gut. Maybe it's some kind of compound?" I sniffed at the figure reflexively and then coughed, my eyes watering. The chemical stink of the morgue made my nose sting.
Smith carried his notebook over as he mirrored my observation on a different image, his face inches away from the illusory flesh as he examined the tattoos. "Either ink or a compound," he agreed. "The substance looks dry, and dried blood is darker and flakes."
"Mmm. Wish we had a sample for the lab." I sighed. "Well, take your pictures and let's go. How long can you power this, Irwin?"
"Oh, half of forever now that it's up," Irwin assured us. His gaze meandered away from the illusions and down to the floor. "It would be a bad idea, though. Those runes are live."
"What are you talking about? I don't hear any songs," I demanded, skin tightening as nonexistent fur stood up along my back. I stepped back from the illusions.
The coroner, wise man, clutched his notebook and camera to his chest and exited the room, shutting the door behind him.
"Oh yeah, look. I'm not sure what it's doing," Irwin said, pointing to the figures and twirling his finger. "Twisting the current around, changing its shape. If I had to guess, I'd say it's linguistics, but...listen sideways."
Wondering what it meant to "listen sideways," I perked my ears intently. The melody seemed odd, and finally, I picked up a faint discordant twang that was just a little off-beat and almost perfectly camouflaged, like a deer in a thicket.
"How the hell did they do that?" I wondered, and then, "Dismiss it. You got your notes, right, Smith?"
Smith nodded.
Irwin cut power to the divination, and the illusory cultists faded away. After ascertaining that no lingering vestiges of either of the songs remained, we returned the trays to the coroner and headed out.
As we strode through the hallway and back out to the parking lot, we passed an orderly wheeling a covered body on a gurney down the hall, whistling tunelessly to himself. I shivered and sped up, averting my eyes. Death itself might not bother me, but I always mourned for lives lost. I never wanted to become as numb as that man seemed to be.
I spent the ride talking on the phone while Smith drove his cruiser to the Van Nuys station. I missed Moira's bike. When we rode around, the air beat at my face, and I could taste the kaleidoscope of fascinating scents that was Los Angeles. It was a long trip, and rolling the window down wasn't the same at all.
"Voneshi says someone's being sent up north to check on those other bodies and see if the runes on them are still active. Whoever this rogue mage is, his masking ability is amazing. I warned the boss to send a mage that senses the current visually. I could barely hear that song at all." I tossed my phone on the seat and leaned back with a sigh, letting my eyes drift shut.
"Good, that's good," Smith answered. Irwin had already fallen asleep with his head pressed against the window. Pyggie was a tiny, snoring ball in his shirt pocket. "What's next on the checklist?"
"Food, and then rest. I think Irwin's out for the count, don't you?" I didn't open my eyes. "He is," Smith agreed after a brief pause.
"I guess we can take a nap at the station." I yawned and then shook my head. "I have the feeling we have to catch the scent soon, like time is running out. There's this pressure…"
"Same here," he answered, surprising me. "This is a bad hunt."
"Smith?" I asked.
"Hm?"
"Why is it you think so many of us go bad? It seems like there are too few of us to cause this kind of problem…weres eating people, mages going crazy with black magic. I think at last count there were around a hundred human residents for every Source. But it's all you hear in the news."
"Snap crimes are flashy. Exciting to report. And when you think about it, there are ten million people in this city, so we're policing maybe a hundred thousand Snaps. That's not an insignificant number," Smith said.
He pulled into the Van Nuys police station parking lot and stopped the car. I could hear the engine ticking as it cooled, and both of us sat still. The scent of wolf kin and mage filled the car, and I enjoyed the chance to taste their scents before the air conditioning inside the station whisked the strength of it away. Smith's musky, canine scent made my insides feel warm and strange. I hadn't spent much time with wolves. My friend Simon was a wolf, but he was gay. And mated. I squashed where that thought was going; werehunters were dangerous.
The wolfish part of me didn't think that was such a bad thing.
The wolfish part of me won more often than not.
"Do me a favor?"
Smith raised an eyebrow inquiringly.
"Call me Samantha?" I asked.
"Sure, as long as you call me Charles. Smith is the most generic name on the planet. Agent Smith is even worse. You wouldn't believe how many Matrix jokes I get," Charles answered with a wry smile.
"All right." I huffed a bit of laughter.
Irwin was difficult to wake; the poor man was totally wiped out. He collapsed in one of the soft office chairs the moment Smith let him, sliding back into slumber. After he was settled, I sat at my desk and reviewed Smith's...no, Charles's notes, shuffling the paper irritably to bring the print into focus. Someday I'd come up with a melody that fixed my sight problems. And tomorrow, I thought, mocking myself, I will find a way to sing away fleas and retire rich.
My thoughts ran in circles. Irwin twitched and murmured in his sleep. Charles was over at his side immediately, brushing a hand across the young mage's forehead. I put down my notes.
"Is it even safe to let him sleep?" I asked. "I thought he had shielded rooms down at Headquarters."
"He's fine as long as I'm awake to keep an eye on him. He has nightmares, that's all."
"Ah, all right." I watched Irwin sleep for a few moments. "I think most of us do, once we've been around for a while. Sometimes it seems like we've seen more bad things than good."
"Maybe instead of looking at what you've been doing, look at what you've done. I heard about the Canyon Country kidnappings, for example. All those kids you found got to go home to their families. That's good." Irwin seemed to be sleeping soundly again, so Charles returned to his desk and opened his e-mail.
I sighed and returned to my papers without answering. Sure, the ones I'd found got to go home, but not the children who had already died. They had been laid to rest in the cold, hard ground. I'd gone to all of the funerals and blamed myself for not moving fast enough.
Charles left the report from Investigations on my desk. My lips tightened as I read. Investigations had answered his query with reports on three raids on milking sites, including the one I'd been rescued from as a child. Mine was noted to have a song active during the raid; the other two didn't. The DMA HazMagic squads had cleaned up all the sites and deactivated any lingering magic. Pictures had been taken, and the bloody runes washed clean.
I wasn't confident the investigators would have caught the subtle nature of the songs, since they were so quiet and blended in with the melodic ambient current so well, but I was comfortable that washing the runes away had probably done the job.