Of Murders and Mages

by Nikki Haverstock

  “Doesn’t that mean that everyone in the casino will know what we are doing within a few hours? I thought you wanted to keep it a secret.”

  She gave me a sly smile. “I used some persuasion on non-magical people so they will do it but not give it much thought or repeat the story. Since we know a mage is behind this, that should help us, but we will do our best to use back passageways and stay out of sight.”

  “Do you think whoever is behind this is here?” I looked toward the door, wondering if someone would bust through at any second.

  “Could be. This is another area that is pretty open-ended, depending on how the spell was cast.” She tipped her head to the side and stared at the ceiling. “I think it is likely that the caster is at the casino at some point in the days prior to the accident. If it was one person that was targeted and there was a lot of magic involved, then the distance could be farther and the time of interaction longer, but… if I was going to do it, I would be efficient. What do you think?” She looked around the room.

  Vanessa shrugged. “Sure. That sounds good.”

  Auntie Ann smiled. “You’re doing great, honey. I think that is a good assumption to start.”

  Vin nodded. “That’s how I would do it.”

  Olivia stood a bit taller. She had only taken over the casino since her father died, and she appeared to still need the encouragement of her family. “So yes, the mage involved is probably at the casino.”

  I jotted a note. “So it could be an employee?”

  She let out a sigh. “Yes, but it could be anyone that walks in the door.”

  “Could someone pull the video footage and see if the same person is in the casino in the three days prior to each accident?”

  Vin snorted. “Tens of thousands of people come through the casino every day. Even with magic, it would take—Ouch!” He spun to face his mother. “Did you kick me?”

  “Of course not, dear. I think that is a good idea, Ella, but it would take too long. But if we narrow down to a suspect, we could do that.” She smiled sweetly at me.

  Vin scowled and leaned over to rub his leg.

  Olivia shook her head. “The fact that it’s a mage makes me think it’s personal. That the person behind this is targeting my father or the family.”

  I might not have any magical training, but I did know people. “Since your father is gone, does that mean there is a chance that they will give up?”

  “Maybe, but we can’t risk it. Plus, I want whoever did this to pay. Anything else?”

  I doodled on the notebook. “That’s all I can think of for now.”

  Auntie Ann brought over a crème brûlée. “You are doing an excellent job. Eat this. You’ll need the sugar. Anything else, Olivia? What did Angela say?”

  I tapped the sugar crust on the dessert and scooped out the pale dessert with specks of vanilla. The silky-smooth texture and delicate flavor made me moan. I closed my eyes and could smell freshly cut grass and a gentle breeze. It was like being in a garden. I went to take another bite and caught Vin watching with annoyance. I licked the spoon with a longer, more satisfied moan that should have sounded like that scene from When Harry Met Sally but, judging from the expression on Vin’s face, might have sounded like a patient in the hospital, suffering from cholera.

  Vin narrowed his eyes at me then looked at Olivia. “You talked to Angela? What did she say?”

  “She said hi to you and said you should call her.”

  He growled. “You know what I meant.”

  I looked up in surprise. She must be a lion tamer if she was trying to flirt with Vin. “Who’s Angela?”

  Vanessa quit spinning in her chair. “She’s like you. She can read emotional holograms, but she costs five hundred dollars an hour. And she has the hots for Vinny and is really pretty.”

  My eyebrows shot up. “If you know someone that does this professionally, shouldn’t she be doing this? Is it the cost?”

  “It’s not the cost. She’s been doing this for years and is the best around, so don’t get any ideas that five hundred an hour is the standard rate.” Olivia glared at Vanessa. “She’s booked through the next seven months. She was able to squeeze in two hours this morning for me as a favor.”

  Five hundred dollars an hour was a good reason to work hard at training. “What did she say?”

  “We actually covered most of her suggestions of how to start the investigation. The one area you didn’t mention was the victims. She said that it is worth our time to see if there is something in their personality or life that tied them together. Magic is more effective when its focus is narrow.”

  “Isn’t that what we’re doing by looking to see if they visited the same place in the casino or did the same thing or ate the same food?”

  She flipped through her notes. “Those are all things they did. She suggested we investigate to see who they are. This was her example: ‘The spell can be more efficient if there is a theme that is personal to the caster. Example: the caster is an only child, and the targets are all only children.’ As she explained, these kinds of personal ties make the spell more powerful at the cost of making the caster more obvious. We have an information gatherer pulling together obituaries and any other information we can find out about the people. We should have some answers in the future.”

  Vanessa leaned forward and caught her mom’s eye. “I was thinking that I could hang out with Ella and help her. It would be—”

  Her mother cut her off with a wave of the hand. “No, your time is best spent researching.”

  Vanessa fell back in her chair with a huff that turned to satisfaction when a plate of tiramisu landed in front of her with a thud.

  Olivia slammed her notebook shut. “Vanessa is going to request each of the people’s records of what they bought here at the casino. Vin is going to check in to see how the locations are being secured. Auntie Ann is going to see how the information gathering is going, and lastly, you and I are going to check on one quick thing before we meet Vin to see if there is any emotional hologram left at any of the locations.”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Olivia unlocked a door at the end of the hallway from her office. Vin, Auntie Ann, and Vanessa had ducked into separate offices all down the hall. Patagonia squeezed through the door ahead of us. I followed Olivia in, and the cold of the room hit my face like an arctic blast.

  I wrapped my arms around my middle. “Wow, it’s really cold in here.” My breath frosted briefly in front of me.

  Olivia flipped on the lights. “What? Oh, I guess. Dad liked it cold. This is his office. Was his office.”

  The office was similar to Olivia’s but larger and more impressive. Tasteful artwork hung on the wall. An enormous desk dominated the room. There was stillness there that was palpable. “You haven’t moved anything in here, have you?” I stepped behind the desk and gasped. The carpet was black with blood.

  “No. Can you get anything from the room? Can you tell me what happened to my father? We don’t have a camera in here, so anything you can tell me will help.” Olivia’s voice carried a note of desperation and the edges of a little girl. She quickly dabbed at her shiny eyes with her sleeve.

  “Okay, I’ll try.” I slipped the channeling key into my hand, and Patagonia rubbed up against my leg before I could even call her over. I took a long, deep breath, closed my eyes, and cleared my mind.

  I was starting to think that last time was a fluke, when emotions and images started slowly leaking into my consciousness. The physical world started to recede. I could barely feel Patagonia sitting on my feet. There was a faint sound of a door creaking open. A conversation started around me, but it was nothing beyond a rumble that faded to static as I started to focus on the room.

  It was icy cold. And a wave of anger and hatred spread over me. It felt like black tar but bitter and rancid in my mouth. It receded slightly as an image came to me of a man hunched over his desk, examining pages. I recognized the papers as the ones Olivia had shown me. The vision was
a mix of senses. I smelled the bitter black coffee on his desk but could also taste it in my mouth. I heard the papers rustling but could also feel them under my fingers.

  I was seeing the scene but also experiencing it from his point of view. It was disorienting. He flipped through the pages again then sighed and pulled out a stone egg. He placed the channel key into an indent in the underside of the desk, and an ornate piece of carved wood trim popped away from the desk.

  He removed it and pulled from the desk a leather-bound file. On the front, it had an intricate feather and was held shut by a piece of thin string. He opened the file, and at the top was my father’s name. I strained to see what was on the paper, but I couldn’t get the image to focus beyond his name. The rest of the page was a hazy blur of words.

  Suddenly, everything was out of focus, and a terrible cold dread filled the room. The man jerked his head up, but the movement was jerky and slow, as if he was drugged. His vision went hazy and started to darken. He pulled up his power and started to say, “What are you— ” when a large boom ended the vision.

  I gasped and opened my eyes to see four people leaning over me. I was prone on the floor and couldn’t remember how I got there. “I’m fine. I’m fine.”

  Vanessa peered over me, her face upside down as she stood behind my head. “You keeled right over. Vinny had to catch you.”

  I looked at his imposing figure hovering over me. I realized that I was clenching his hand in mine, my knuckles white and my fingernails digging into him. I let my hand go limp, and it fell to the floor as he released it and stood.

  “I’ll get her some water.” He stomped out of the room, the ground vibrating under his footsteps.

  Auntie Ann felt my forehead. “How are you feeling?”

  “Tired.” I jiggled my arms and legs. “Kinda sore, actually.”

  “What’s two plus two?”

  “Four? Is that a trick question?” My calves burned as I pointed and flexed each foot.

  “Where are you?”

  “Olivia’s dad’s office at the Golden Pyramid Casino in Rambler, Nevada.”

  “Good.” She stood up and dragged Olivia with her to the far corner of the office.

  Vanessa opened her mouth to speak, but I held a finger to my lips, and she stopped.

  Auntie Ann’s voice was meant to be a whisper, but it cut across the room. “What did you think you were doing? I thought we agreed to wait until she had more training. What if there had been some kind of trap set?”

  Olivia’s voice sounded more like a whiney teenager’s than a grown woman’s. “I checked, and I figured it wouldn’t hurt to try.”

  “I’ve trained plenty of mages in my day, and if any one of them—” Her voice dropped, and her words became indecipherable, though her angry tone was clear.

  I sighed and slowly sat up. The energy I had at lunch was replaced with a heavy depression that seemed to materialize from the fog of the vision.

  Patagonia meowed and pressed her nose against my shoulder before stomping on it to drag her big, wet tongue over my nape. She started at the baby-fine hairs at the back of my neck. Her tongue was like fine sandpaper, and the odd sensation sent a chill down my spine.

  Vanessa patted my back. “Mom’s pretty pissed at Olivia. When we came in, you were standing there with this goofy look on your face, then you tipped over. Good thing Vin caught you, or you would have smashed your face. I thought you’d never come around.”

  “What?” I rubbed my face. “How long was I out?”

  “Maybe five minutes. Mom was worried. You know she’s a famous teacher? When Uncle Edward died, she came back to Rambler. She had been teaching in Europe. I was with her, studying. She’s trying to keep both Olivia and Vinny in line.” She rolled her eyes.

  “What about you? Is she keeping you in line too?” I teased her.

  “I’m an angel.” She smirked.

  We chuckled, then she offered me her hand to get up. After I stood, I pointed each foot and stretched. “Your whole family works here?”

  “Now we do. Vinny used to work at a bunch of places around town, but he’s here for now. And Mom is helping Olivia get settled.”

  “And you?”

  “I’m still discovering myself.” She gave me a wink, though a little bit of sadness in her eyes shone through.

  “Fair enough. You’re still young.” Patagonia rubbed up against my leg then stretched onto her back legs to claw gently at my stomach. I scratched behind her ears, her purring vibrating my hand. “Your dad?”

  “He passed away when I was a kid.”

  “Wow.” Olivia, Vanessa, and I all had dead fathers.

  “It’s a tough life.”

  Vin walked in, and there must have been something on both of our faces because he stopped and looked at us. “What?” He bit off the word as an accusation and extended a plastic bottle of water to me.

  Auntie Ann came over. “Everyone out. Vanessa, why don’t you spend the day with the research team and Vin can catch up on his work. I’m going to go with Olivia and Ella to see what Ella can find.”

  Vin left before she was done talking.

  Vanessa blew out a breath and sulked out the door.

  Olivia rushed over. “No, Auntie, that’s not necessary.”

  “It most certainly is. If nothing else, I can start Ella’s training.” She adjusted her sweater. She was carrying a small purse and pulled out a candy bar that she handed me. She motioned for us to follow. “Eat this while we take the elevator to…?” She turned to Olivia and raised her brow as she pressed the elevator button.

  “Oh.” Olivia flipped open her tablet. “I figured we would go in reverse order of occurrence since the emotional hologram will fade over time.” She stepped into the elevator, ran a security card through the reader, and pressed the button for the basement. “Tony was killed in the stables.”

  The elevator doors started to close, and I pressed my foot in the way until Patagonia was safely inside. I already found myself constantly scanning any room I was in to locate her, though I found that more often than not, I already had a vague sense of where she was before I looked. “There’s a stable here?”

  Olivia pressed the door close button, and we started to descend. “Yes, we have horses that are here full time for carriage rides, along with a place for events like barrel racing, horse shows, and the annual alpaca national agility event.”

  I chuckled. “Alpaca agility?”

  Olivia nodded with a smile. “They run little obstacle courses and even have a costume show. Have you ever seen an alpaca dressed up as a dragon? It’s something special.”

  I bit into the chocolate candy bar, the layers of nougat and nuts giving me resistance as I chewed. The sugar hit me hard and washed away the remnants I had felt after my vision. I rolled the memories around in my head. “Olivia, after your father was shot, did they find a leather portfolio with a file about my father on the desk? It had a feather on the front.”

  She immediately perked up. “No, the only things on the desk were the papers I showed you. What else did you see?” The elevator door started to open.

  “No, not now.” Auntie Ann stepped out of the elevator.

  “Please, Auntie, I just want to know if I was right that it was murder.” Olivia turned to me.

  I nodded.

  A single tear trickled down her face, and she blew out a sigh. “I feel better just to know for sure. And what—”

  The elevator started to close, but Auntie Ann stepped to block the door. “Later, Olivia. I know you are upset. I miss my brother also, but someone’s life is hanging in the balance until we find out who is doing this and stop them. But I promise we will come back to this.”

  “You’re right.” Olivia stepped out of the elevator and across the hall to swipe a card and pull open a door.

  I followed her and went through the open door. The scent of hay and animals filled my lungs, and I breathed deeply. Patagonia meowed and raced ahead to the end of an aisle, where she bat
ted at loose hay. She knocked it into the air then leapt after it, twisting to pounce on top of it. Her white fangs glinted as she wrestled and chomped on the yellow straw.

  I chuckled and thought of Monterey, California. My family had taken me in my teens, and my favorite had been the otters that played in the water. Patagonia’s playful side reminded me of them. She pranced back to me and presented the piece of straw on my shoe. I reached down and picked it up, scratching her behind the ears as a thank-you before returning to the task at hand.

  “Maybe I should write down what I saw. What if I forget?” The burden of her father’s death weighed heavily on me, not to mention the file about my father. How did it fit in? Where did it go?

  Auntie Ann bent over and grabbed a long stalk of straw to tease Patagonia, who had gone to her side and danced to reach to bobbing plant. “Visions are like memories. It is there inside you. In the environment, the emotional hologram may degrade over time, but your vision of it will stay intact. You’re not ready to read it, but I’ll train you, and you will be soon.”

  We turned down an aisle. Horses hung their heads over the stalls, gently nickering as we went by. As a child, I had worshipped horses. I wanted to stop and stroke their soft noses, but Olivia and Auntie Ann did not slow down. Toward the end of the aisle, there were several empty stalls then caution tape marking off the last three stalls before the dead end.

  Olivia held down the tape and stepped over it. We followed, and as we approached the last stall on the left, I slowed down. Inside, something huffed and snorted. The ground shook as hooves stomped, and then something hit the door, rattling it on the hinges.

  I edged away from the stall but kept progressing forward until I could see over the stall door into the interior. An enormous black horse circled inside before turning its back to us and kicking back at the door again. One of the bolts on the door’s hinges pulled away from the frame.

  Acrid sweat filled the air and shone on the black fur of the animal. His mane was long but tangled and knotted in large chunks.