Good. I set aside the stake and picked up the cord, reaching underneath the lid to feel with one hand along the draugr’s shin, ankle, and foot. I grasped him first by one big toe, then by the other. This is really gross, I said.
You’re fine. It’s just an undead body.
Undead bodies are gross.
Maggie began to hum the way she does when she’s absently flipping through the pages of a book. Hey, this is cool. John D. Rockefeller is buried here.
The oil tycoon? I asked.
One and the same.
No kidding. Jesus, this is hard to tie.
The guy who invented the Salisbury steak is buried here too.
I should stop and pay my respects. I ate nothing but microwave dinners for most of my childhood.
That explains a lot.
What the hell is that supposed to mean? Ah! Got it. I successfully finished looping the cord around the draugr’s toes and tied a one-handed knot before extricating myself from the sarcophagus and dusting off the sleeve of my hoodie. I took the iron ingot and laid it on the draugr’s chest. What now?
Now we wake him up.
A cord and a piece of iron are gonna keep him from trying to rip my face off again?
We should need only one of them, but I figured insurance wasn’t a bad idea.
You know he has hands, right? He can just untie the cord and move the ingot.
Not according to this. Trust me, this kind of thing works on all sorts of Other.
Man, magic sure is dumb sometimes, I said. I took one of the bags of draugr dust and sprinkled it on the body—along with bits of my ruined truck and some road gravel—then took Maggie’s ring and pressed the ruby against the draugr’s forehead.
The draugr immediately took a long gasp, like a man coming up for air after a long dive. It began to tremble violently, rasping and hissing, and I leapt back against its brother’s sarcophagi and let the creature thrash. Thanks to the narrow width of its resting place, it was able to do little more than flail its bony arms upward. I pointed my Maglite at it and took a cautious look inside to see that it indeed remained pinned to the sarcophagus floor by the iron. Its eyes fixed on the flashlight. Eyes. Those were new.
“Hey, big guy, how you doing?”
“Release me,” it demanded in a gravelly voice.
Well, at least it can talk.
That’s good and bad, Maggie said. Good because it can answer questions. Bad because it shouldn’t be able to talk until after it’s been destroyed three times.
So your book may or may not be accurate. Great. The iron is holding it down, at least.
“Damn you, release me!” it repeated.
I glanced outside. “Hey, pal, keep it down unless you want a security guard on top of us.”
“I will kill you and anyone who comes.”
“Sure, sure. Until OtherOps calls in a SWAT team. You don’t want to deal with that.” I shone my light on the sarcophagus lid. “Listen, Trevor, I just need you and your brother to answer one question, and then I’ll do exactly what you ask.”
Draugr Trevor went still and glared at me. “I only answer to one mortal.”
“Right, Nick the Necromancer. I just need to know who hired Nick.”
“Hired him for what?”
“To get the jinn from me.”
“I have nothing to say to you.”
I cocked an eyebrow at the creature. It was, truthfully, more than a little terrifying. It and its brother had almost killed me the other day. But watching it lie there and flail its arms, unable to do something as simple as lift a piece of iron off its chest, made me crack a smile. “That iron—does it hurt?”
“It burns,” Trevor hissed.
“I could just put the roof back on your little house here and leave you to cook under that iron for the next few weeks. How would you like that?”
It made a strange sound in the back of its throat. “I know little of value.”
“Tell me what I want to know, and I’ll release you. Cross my heart.”
Its arm trembled, and I wondered what kind of horrible things it was imagining doing to me the moment it could get out of that sarcophagus. “Master…”
“Nick?”
“Yes, Nick. He spoke with her on the tel… tel…”
“Telephone? Who’s her?”
“A woman. We went to her home. It was a large, white house. Perhaps a mansion?”
“What was her name?”
“I did not hear it.”
“So where was the house?”
“It was in a place…” Trevor hesitated for a moment, and then his eyebrows rose. “Ah. The rich man. It is the land where he used to live.”
I leaned on the edge of the sarcophagi and eyed Trevor’s hands. I had no doubt he’d snatch for me, given the opportunity. “You need to be more specific.”
“The tycoon. I don’t remember his name.”
“Rockefeller?”
“Yes!”
“Huh.” Where did he used to live? I asked Maggie.
I’m sure we can find out.
I considered this for a moment, digging through my memories of local history. I snapped my fingers. “Cleveland Heights! Gotta be it. So a white mansion in Cleveland Heights. That’s not super useful, but it’s a start. Is that all you’ve got?” I asked Trevor.
“It’s all I know. Now release me!”
“Here’s the thing,” I said, and brought the wooden stake up over my head and buried it between Trevor’s ribs. The draugr let out a wild moan, its claws tearing my sleeves to ribbons as it grasped at me. Maggie, a little help. The ring flared, and fire shot down through the stake and washed across the draugr’s bones, consuming it in moments. By the time I righted myself, there was nothing left of the corpse but ash. My wooden stake remained undamaged, and I retrieved the cord and iron. Is he gone for good this time?
Should be.
See, the word should does not help me sleep at night.
Would you prefer I lie to you and say, “Yes, I am one hundred percent certain we killed that draugr”?
Yes, I think I would.
I pushed the lid back on the sarcophagus and gathered my equipment before going through the exact same process with Trevor’s undead brother. Ten minutes later, with nothing more to go on than the information Trevor had given us, I climbed the wall out of Lake View Cemetery and headed back to my rental car. I turned on the radio, volume low, and listened to Paul Simon’s “American Tune” while I meditated on the events of the past week. The draugr hadn’t been as helpful as I’d hoped, which meant I still needed to get Nick to talk. There was no telling how long he’d be able to hold out. With the clock ticking on Ferryman’s job, I wasn’t exactly flush with spare time—but with someone out there trying to get Maggie’s ring, I couldn’t just put it off.
I put my chair back and closed my eyes. Wake me up in two hours, please, I said to Maggie.
What’s in two hours?
Presti’s opens. An hour after that, the morning shift arrives at the OtherOps office.
Chapter 11
I was waiting at the door to the Cleveland OtherOps offices when the day shift arrived—nine men and women wearing either sharp black suits or OtherOps polos and black slacks. They were laughing at a joke someone had made as they approached the building, carrying their morning coffees. The laughter broke off when they spotted me, and one of them disengaged from the group and approached.
Justin Hamilton was in his midthirties and had been with OtherOps for over a decade. If he weren’t such a nice guy, I’d probably hate his guts. He was tall, thin, black-haired and svelte, with movie-star cheekbones. He had that kind of easy smile that makes Maggie go ooh every time we see him. We met before he joined OtherOps—back when Ada enrolled me in jujitsu as a teenager so I would be more useful to her.
We
’ve been friends ever since, even though I don’t actually get to see him that often. Most OtherOps agents will do anything to fuck with reapers. They resent us because we’re better-paid independent contractors who can get away with murder. We resent them because they have better work hours, government job security, and can get away with murder. Justin and I have never had that issue. I do the occasional favor for the local OtherOps office, and in exchange, his boss gives him quite a lot of leniency when I ask for information that a regular cop would definitely get in trouble for handing out.
We shook hands, and he gave me that damned smile, even though it was eight AM. I was running on less than two hours of sleep, so my response came out as a grimace. “What are you doin’ here so early?” he asked, looking at his watch. “We’re a little too old to have beer for breakfast.”
“Are we?” I joked, following him inside after the rest of the day shift had gone ahead. “We do need to set up that drink. Next Thursday?”
“I’ll make the time if you will.”
“Barring an emergency…”
Justin rolled his eyes. He doesn’t know exactly what my circumstances are with Ada, but he suspects them. One of the reasons we get along so well is because he doesn’t take it personally when I cancel on him at the last moment in favor of work. Other than the seven-hundred-year-old jinn on my finger, Justin is my only actual friend. Which, on its own, is kind of depressing.
“Yeah, yeah,” he said. “Cork and Bottle?”
“Sounds good to me. Hey, did you follow up on that meth house full of dead imps?”
“Follow up on it?” he asked, swiping an ID badge and holding the door open for me. “We brought in a whole team from Columbus to sort through that mess. They were working all night.”
“Any idea what killed the imps?”
He shook his head. “We sent a few samples to the lab, but that shit takes forever to process. Our best guesses were a werewolf or a wendigo.”
“But neither of them really fits.”
“Exactly.” Justin waved hello to one of the night shift and set his coffee on his desk, then leaned against the wall of his cubicle. “Could have been damn well anything. There’re Others out there that we know next to nothing about, so when something like this happens, we sort through the usual suspects first, then head to the more obscure.”
“Let me know if you get anything,” I said. A secretary squeezed between us with an “Excuse me,” and I caught one of the junior OtherOps agents staring at me from two cubicles over. I tend to stand out in a room full of black suits and smart polos. I gave him a toothy grin, and he quickly looked down.
Justin crossed his arms. “So are you going to tell me what all this is about? First you ask me to run an ID on a picture of a dead imp, then a whole meth crew winds up dead at the address I give you.”
“Not sure if they’re related,” I lied.
“Not sure, huh?” Justin asked skeptically. “Where’d you get that picture?”
“Sorry, client confidentiality.”
Justin snorted. “If I were a cop, I’d be suspicious.”
“If you were a cop, I’d be sitting in a little room with two of your detectives and a lawyer right now. Lucky for me, you’re not.” I threw up my hands. “Look, if I come across anything that falls under OtherOps purview, you’ll be my first phone call.”
“Unless your clients ask you not to call me,” he retorted.
Justin is, if you haven’t been able to tell, far too clever for his own good.
He asked, “Did you come all the way out here at this hour just to ask me about that? You could have called.”
“Not exactly,” I said. “Do you still have that necromancer in lockup?”
“Sure I do. He refuses a lawyer and won’t tell us what he’s after or who he is. We know nothing about him or his motives. Until we do, he stays under lock and key.”
A thought struck me. “Do you think that he thinks someone is going to let him out of here?”
“No idea. Don’t particularly care. I’m not a fan of punk kids with a pile of talent and no discipline. Another week or two, and we’ll send him to the pen in New York. He won’t be my problem anymore, which suits me fine.”
I nodded along, trying to figure out what this necromancer kid gained by staying silent. Coming up with nothing, I said, “This is going to sound like an odd request, but can I talk to him?”
Justin raised one eyebrow. “Not against any rules as far as I know. Be my guest.”
“Alone. No cameras. No microphones.”
“Oh, come on. You can’t seriously ask that after a whole bunch of imps wound up dead with you at the scene. We know you didn’t do it, of course, but your name is still on the report for a massacre.”
“I’m not going to kill him,” I protested. “I just want to see if he’ll talk to me when no one’s listening.”
Justin sighed and made a dismissive gesture. “I’ve got to get to work. You do whatever you want to do. Just don’t beat the shit out of him or anything. The guys up top smile favorably on you for that bunyip business, but they’ll stop smiling if you rough up a perp. Our suppression team will be just outside if you need them.”
Five minutes later, I sat behind an empty desk in a small white room buried in one corner of the OtherOps building. It had a single fluorescent light and no windows, and I imagined it was the place they sent new hires who hadn’t yet been given a cubicle. I took a few moments to consider my next move on Ferryman’s case. I knew I couldn’t waste any more time on this necromancer business than I already had. I’d have to hit the pavement again the moment this meeting was over.
None of it made sense. Murdering the imps to cover up the secondhand soul business was the move of an amateur. If they were trying to bury the whole thing, adding a pile of bodies would do little more than attract OtherOps’ attention. But if whoever was doing this had access to a creature that Maggie couldn’t pin down, they weren’t an amateur.
And then there was Ferryman. Whoever stole those souls had to know that Ferryman would get involved eventually, and he’s about the only thing in the Other who will scare literally everyone. Were we dealing with someone who was insane? Stupid? Arrogant? All of the above?
I tucked all those thoughts away for later as the door opened and Nick the Necromancer was led inside by a pair of very large individuals in tactical vests. They shoved him into the chair across from me, shot me a single glance, and retreated into the hallway, where I got a glimpse of an elderly woman with crosses tattooed on her face.
At the sight of her, I felt Maggie stir in the back of my head. Is that the suppression team? I asked her.
It is. She’s a magician—damn good one too. Our buddy Nick might be powerful, but I bet she’d turn him into a pretzel given the chance.
Can she sense your presence? I asked in alarm.
If she can, she hasn’t tried to say hello. I’ve spent five hundred and twenty-three years making sure this ring is hidden from people like her, so I doubt she’ll be a problem.
Right. Let’s hope she doesn’t decide to take a closer look. That’s another thing reapers get jealous of OtherOps agents for: when they need serious firepower, they get it. I mentally cussed out Ferryman once again for bringing his problem to me rather than the people with access to a genuine army.
I turned my attention to Nick and plastered a pleasant smile on my face. “Hiya, Nick. How’s the food?”
Nick slumped petulantly in his seat, the stainless steel chain of his restraints jangling. “What the hell do you want?”
“Just thought I’d stop by and say hi. See how the ol’ jumpsuit is fitting. Orange really doesn’t suit you, ya know?” Inwardly, I asked Maggie, Is the magician listening in?
As far as I can tell, they’re giving us privacy.
Nick looked over his shoulder at the closed door, then at m
e. “You put down my draugr, didn’t you?”
“I did,” I responded, covering up my surprise. I was no expert on magic, but the fact he was being guarded by a suppression team yet could still sense when his familiars were destroyed was pretty impressive. “Tracked them to Lake View and put a stake through their hearts. The assholes wrecked my truck, you know. Not happy about that.”
I expected him to come back with some sort of threat, but instead he slumped farther down in his seat and watched me carefully. After a few moments of silence, he said, “How did you do it? You’re just a troll. You’re tough, but you don’t have any magic. You…” He stopped, chewed on a fingernail, and went on. “It was the jinn, wasn’t it? You carry her with you. It’s in the ring.”
It wasn’t a question, and I didn’t bother to answer. I leaned forward. “Tell me who you’re working for, Nick.”
“I will not.”
“Why not?”
“Because I made a vow of silence when I took the job.”
Is he telling the truth? I asked Maggie.
He is.
I snorted. “Why would you do a thing like that?”
“For this eventuality.”
“For a kid, you sure do plan well. Or was it your boss’s idea?”
“It was her idea. And I’m not a kid. I’m nineteen.”
“That’s a kid in this line of work,” I told him. “Most people consider me a kid, and I’ve been at this for twenty years.” I stood up, stretching until my arms touched the walls, and looked down at Nick with a tight smile. “So you either won’t or can’t tell me anything. That means you’re useless to me.”
Nick sat up suddenly. “What does that mean?”
“Exactly what it sounds like,” I told him. “You tried to kill me in broad daylight, and your familiars wrecked my truck. I don’t like you, Nick, and somehow I don’t think you’re going to pay for a new truck. Add on top of that the fact that I’d prefer to keep you quiet about the jinn, and you’re in a tight spot.”
You just confirmed you have my ring, Maggie sniffed. I hope you’re going somewhere good with this.
Hang in there with me.
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