The Murder Prophet

by Sherry D. Ramsey

  "Are you saying we missed something? You think Evangeline Coro could have something to do with this?"

  "She went back to her maiden name, Harrington, after the divorce. And I wouldn't go so far as to say that," Nana said cautiously, pulling a deep sigh. "But...it could be." She fell silent for a long moment, and I thought she was contemplating whether or not to say more.

  "What?" I prodded.

  She licked her lips. "I really, really hate to talk about this, Kit," she said, "but if there's any chance...well, I couldn't live with myself."

  "What is it?"

  "Evangeline—I knew her well. Really well. She was one of the other two Spellquicks at MageData."

  "Huh," I said. "Clarice Valencia could have mentioned that." A sudden thought struck me. "Don't tell me Clarice was the third Spellquick?"

  Nana Nina shook her head. "No, and I don't expect you'd get Clarice to even say Evangeline's name, unless you asked her point-blank. She probably doesn't even know about Evangeline's abilities, unless Aleshu told her himself. Anyway, I know for a fact that Evangeline was in touch with Aleshu Coro less than a year ago."

  "Really? What for?" I mentally kicked myself for not looking harder at Evangeline already. But she'd seemed like a long shot.

  "She wanted Aleshu and MageData to fund some big art initiative she was organizing. I know, because she contacted me about being a part of it, too. I begged off, since I'm just dabbling now." She nodded to her easel and implements over by the window. What she considered "dabbling" was more beautiful than anything I could ever create, but she was always modest about her art.

  She went on. "She seemed excited about it, but Evangeline was always excitable. And maybe a bit neurotic. She hasn't been active in the Spellquick network over the last fifteen years. Too wrapped up in her own projects. It's almost as if magic was a hobby for a while, but she got tired of it."

  "What did she think about keeping the magic-detection ability a secret from Coro?" I asked.

  "Huh. At that point the marriage was already going down the drain. She wasn't exactly broken up about having him look like a failure in the research department," Nana Nina said.

  "Did she push for the decision to keep it quiet? Influence the others, or try to?"

  Nana shook her head. "No, I think we all felt that was the way it had to be. She had fewer misgivings than the rest of us—or if she had any at all, maybe it was easier for her to put them aside."

  "But now—you don't think she still holds a grudge, do you?" My coffee cup was empty, so I set it on the table.

  Nana wrinkled her nose. "I doubt it. Evangeline was always rather high-strung, although a very creative thinker, especially with magic. She could come up with the most intricate spells and applications—but someone else always had to take care of the practical side. I think in the end she got tired of seeing her elaborate ideas crash and burn because the logistics wouldn't work. And the divorce soured her relationship with the company. But still—a grudge after twenty years? I know some people like their revenge served cold, but that is a hell of a long time to cool off."

  I looked at my watch; it was almost lunchtime. I figured I'd better get moving if I was going to get LemurCandy invited to the fundraiser tomorrow night before he made other plans. I got up and crossed the room to lean down and give Nana Nina a hug and a kiss. Then I knelt beside her chair. "So you don't think I should have just come clean about my ability and gone to work for the government like a good little citizen?"

  Her blue eyes twinkled into mine. "Do you think you would have been happy doing that?"

  "No. Not from where I'm standing—or kneeling—I wouldn't."

  She smiled and patted my hand. "Then you did exactly the right thing. Now, do you think I did the right thing?"

  "I think you did. Still are doing it, I guess." I stood up and grinned. "My Nana, part of the secret cabal of Spellquicks."

  She laughed. "Just don't go spreading it around, okay?"

  "No worries," I said, and hurried off to try and get a date for the following night.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  See You Round the Netz

  I stopped back at the office to see if LemurCandy was online. He'd answered my message, and I got him live in Chatterz® after a second.

  he typed.

  I took a deep breath.

 

  I said. He didn't need to know that it was my idea to take him along.

 

  I said. I wondered how long he would take to answer. I was a little surprised when his reply popped up on the screen almost immediately.

  he said.

  Well, he didn't have a problem with tuxedos, and he didn't have a problem going with me to a place that required them. That was promising.

  I told him.

  he said.

 

  he said, and that was that.

  I breathed a sigh of relief as I logged off and sat back in my chair, trying to slow down the breakneck speed of my heartbeat. Now all I had to do was come to terms with my Nana's secret identity and figure out a way to tell Saga and Anna that she was a Seer without making them look at her with suspicion. I didn't want to lie to them outright, but I had to keep some of Nana's secrets or I'd have a pack of Spellquicks mad at me, and that would definitely be more than I wanted to tackle.

  Kiku had come to my office doorway while I messaged LemurCandy, and mimed that she was going out for a bit, so I put off going to talk to Anna and Saga by installing myself behind the empty reception desk. I fielded calls, but my mind was elsewhere. On Evangeline Coro, to be precise. My conversation with Nana Nina had made me want to rethink her status as a suspect.

  I sorted through my memories of the various conversations any of us had had with Aleshu Coro, trying to recall whether or not his first wife had come up. Glaive and I had spoken to him about wife number two, Clarice, but I didn't think I'd mentioned Evangeline.

  In the first interview we'd had, just Coro and Anna and Saga, with me in the corner watching for lies, we hadn't really covered any personal ground. And I didn't remember anyone else mentioning her, either. Maybe her presence in Coro's distant past had made it easy for us to assume she was out of the picture. But if she'd been in touch with him as recently as last year, then maybe we'd all been wrong.

  And why hadn't Coro mentioned that interaction to us?

  My Netz skills couldn't come close to LemurCandy's expertise, but I could do a search on a person I knew existed and come up with a fair amount of data. I found Evangeline Coro (née Harrington) without difficulty and cruised around the Netz for a while, collecting, sifting, and assessing.

  Her interest in art had developed into a passion since she and Aleshu Coro had divorced. She ran, organized, or supported half a dozen different artist's organizations and art cooperatives, and was very vocal on the merits and necessity of art in civil society. A foundation she supported—perhaps had founded, but that wasn't completely clear—appeared to marry the interests of art and magic, but their website didn't really clarify how they attempted to do that. She'd moved to the UK shortly after the divorce and carried on her activities from there. I couldn't find anything to corroborate Nana Nina's assertion that Evangeline had been in touch with Coro any time recently.

  At this point I figured I'd done all I could on my own, and messaged LemurCandy to request further investigation. I'd done some of the groundwork for him, but he'd have
to take it from there.

  Surprisingly, he wasn't online. I wondered if he was out somewhere frantically shopping for a tuxedo, and smiled. I doubted it, though. There'd been no hesitation when I'd mentioned his needing one for tomorrow night.

  The unanswered message stared at me from the screen and I sighed. This dead end was frustrating, now that I'd started. I still had no idea if Evangeline Coro could seriously be considered a suspect, but I'd gone through everything I could find on the upper levels of the Netz. If more information lurked out there somewhere, it would take some poking around deeper in the Netz to uncover it. And just when I needed him, LemurCandy wasn't there.

  Luckily for me, Kiku came back after I'd grumbled my way through a few more phone calls. I gladly relinquished the front desk to her and went back to my own office with an idea. I shut the door and slipped on my faceskin, sliding into the world of the virtuals. If I could just remember how LemurCandy had arrived at the Library building he'd taken me to on the night we'd met FallenElfGeek, maybe I could dig up something else useful on Evangeline Coro.

  I soon realized it was impossible. I didn't know how to move around outside the grid the way LemurCandy had done, and although I could glimpse the "pathways," they all looked equally ominous and uninviting, a multi-colored tangle I couldn't begin to navigate. I had no idea which way to go. It looked like I couldn't do it on my own after all, and Lemur still hadn't come online.

  On a whim, I tried messaging FallenElfGeek. I doubted I'd get through to him, but to my surprise a text-only reply popped up almost right away.

  he said,

  I answered,

 

 

  he said, and I braced myself. Vertigo swept me and I pressed my hands against the desktop to counter the falling sensation, and then my avatar stood outside FallenElfGeek's building. I recognized it right away. FEG stood on the sidewalk outside, so there wasn't much guesswork involved.

  he said, and his avatar took my avatar's hand. This flight along the glowing data pathways held a different feeling than when I'd travelled them with LemurCandy. Now it was as if an aura surrounded us, a field of something...not a color, or a scent, or a sound...something I could feel but not see or touch, even in Netz terms. I'd almost call it a taste, although I'm sure that would make no sense at all to anyone who'd never experienced it, or even gone outside the grid. But I had the distinct impression that FEG was using magic.

  As soon as I'd had the thought I immediately pushed the notion away. Magic in real life was bad enough, but I'd already gotten in trouble once by messing with magic in the Netz. And the idea of that spooky ambient magic possibly hovering out here somewhere unnerved me; I didn't know what kind of mess we might inadvertently cause. So I concentrated more on the surroundings and less on the sensations. I'm only going to do some research, I reminded myself. Just like that first time with LemurCandy. To my surprise, I recognized a few of the routes and pathways I'd taken with him. I could do this, I thought. With a little coaching, I could find my way around in here.

  Okay, a lot of coaching. I decided to ask LemurCandy to teach me. And if he wouldn't, then maybe my good friend FEG would.

  Suddenly the front of the library building resolved, rising up in front of us as if it were sprouting out of the virtual ground. FEG brought us to a stop on the sidewalk at the bottom of the steps.

  FEG asked me.

  I told him.

  he said with a grin. And then he was gone.

  I sprinted up the steps to the library and crossed confidently to one of the floating terminals. In seconds I'd keyed in the search parameters on Evangeline Coro and was watching the data fly past, just the way LemurCandy had shown me that first time. As I accumulated data, I instinctively started discarding any items that were false or rumor-based or felt questionable. It was only after I'd amassed a tidy pile of facts and forwarded them to my email inbox that I stopped dead, my avatar's hands still resting on the keyboard.

  What was I doing?

  I'd started off just as I'd intended, straight research, and then without realizing it had brought the magic into play. This was exactly what had landed me in trouble before, using my magic to sift the truth out of items on the Netz. Sweat prickled my flesh under the faceskin, warm and sticky. I could be exposing myself to one of those same harmonized divination whatsis things, because I'd never really found out what they were, let alone how to check for one. And I'd blithely done the same thing just as unguardedly as before. If Saga and LemurCandy found out, they wouldn't be happy, and I'd be on the receiving end of another lecture.

  Another realization struck me then. I didn't feel the least bit sickly back in my corporeal form, despite the fact that I hadn't thought to take any Maginox® before I'd started this venture. Yet I'd been using my lie-detecting ability freely in assessing the data on Evangeline Coro. LemurCandy's words came back to me suddenly: Do you know, if all the power in the world shut down, the Netz would still continue to function? It would run on the ambient magic that's been absorbed by the datastreams. Your apartment could be completely dark, but your computer would still run if it was hooked into the Netz.

  Was there something about this ambient magic in the Netz that I'd somehow hooked into and used to power my own magic? Was that why I wasn't getting sick?

  Reflexively, I glanced back over my shoulder as if the Netz magic were an ominous presence looming behind me, but all there was to see was the virtual library and all the avatars unconcernedly using the terminals. I couldn't shake a sudden trepidation, though, so I blanked the residual search data, logged out, and pulled off the faceskin. It stuck to my face unpleasantly, glued there by the spreading perspiration on my skin, and I had to carefully pry it away. An involuntary tremble in my hands didn't help. I sat back in my chair, breathing deeply, trying to ground myself back in the real world and let the virtual one slip away. That had been weird. Too weird. And I still had the taste of magic in my throat. That was not a sentence I could imagine actually saying to anyone.

  I went out to the kitchen and pulled a huge mug of coffee from the Coffee Robo-Alimental. The heady aroma helped clear my mind even before I'd taken a sip. Trip came in just as I was adding cream and sugar. Although the machine could do that for me, I still liked to fix it myself.

  "Watch this, Kit," he said, and leapt into a twisting, swirling, orange-and-white whirlwind of wings and hands and feathers and feet, punctuated by grunts and fearsome yells. He fetched up in front of me, feathers rumpled.

  "Now that," I said, "Would scare me if I weren't expecting it."

  "Really?" he asked excitedly.

  "Oh, yeah," I said, "Because I am terrified of animals who appear to have rabies."

  "Ha ha. Very funny." His bill twisted into a mournful moue. "Remember how I went after that guy with the gun, when we were rescuing Saga? I could have taken him, too, if you hadn't trans—"

  "Hey, Glaive," I said loudly, as he came into the room. "Want some coffee?"

  He surveyed us with narrowed, suspicious eyes for a moment, but didn't say anything except, "Sure, that's what I was after anyway. Hey, Kit, I hear you got Clarice Valencia to spill."

  I shrugged. "It didn't take much. As soon as she knew the game was up she didn't even try to lie. Guess we can cross her off the list, anyway."

  Glaive shook his head as he pulled dark, aromatic coffee from the Alimental. "I don't even know who's still on the list," he said. "Maybe that Namiko woman, but she doesn't sound very likely."

  "I know." I debated telling him some of what I'd learned about Evangeline Coro, but something made me keep quiet about it.
Maybe it was because I hadn't really thought through how to reveal what I knew about her and still keep Nana Nina's secrets, or maybe it was just that I wanted first crack at finding out about her without any interference from anyone else. At any rate, I went back to my desk with my coffee, turned my attention to some old paperwork, and studiously ignored the faceskin lying like a crumpled Halloween mask next to the keyboard.

  ***

  The remainder of the day was quiet, and by the time the sky outside the windows was reluctantly letting go of the light, I had a tidy stack of caught-up files on my desk. I forwarded all my information on Evangeline Coro to my home computer, thought about the ambient Netz magic again with a shudder, and shut down my office computer and unplugged it from the Netz before I left. There was just something about the idea of it staying on by itself, powered by magic that had somehow acquired an existence of its own, that made me feel squirmy.

  I treated myself to Chinese takeout for supper. When I came in the door with it, Phoebe said, "That smells wonderful, Kit!"

  Her comment didn't really register until I was at the kitchen counter pouring up some milk to drink with my almond soo guy. "Phoebe, how can you possibly smell anything?"

  The pause before she answered was brief but noticeable. "Oh, I can't really smell it, Kit, but I saw it on the cam and thought that was an appropriate and polite conversational remark."

  Hmmm. Phoebe had never been very concerned with making either appropriate or polite conversational remarks before.

  "What's gotten into you lately, Phoebe?" I asked her as I took my meal into the living room and settled myself on the sofa. "Have you had another program upgrade?"

  "That's it exactly!" she said in a chipper voice. "It was an automatic upgrade from Live-a-Tronic."

  Well, that made sense. The company that sold the home AI suite offered auto-upgrades for the first five years, and I'd had Phoebe for almost four. But geez, upgrades again? How buggy was the software if they had to fix it this often? It was getting ridiculous.