Magic and the Shinigami Detective

by Honor Raconteur

  I blinked at this offer and froze mid-motion. “She’s offering to share?”

  “She said the least she could do for your help was cook you dinner. She nearly slipped coming in from work, you see.”

  Ah. Being an intelligent man, I informed her gravely, “Please tell her I thank her for the offer and accept.”

  Winking, Mrs. Henderson retreated back inside.

  I didn’t rub my hands like a giddy schoolboy, but it was a near thing. Not only did I not have to cook, I got to try something new as well. My attitude was much improved as I returned to the task at hand.

  The bulbs burned even brighter than before when I flicked the lights on. Satisfied, I cleaned up and threw the rubbish away before heading upstairs. I didn’t know how dinner would come to me, nor which room my hostess lived in, but found that I didn’t need such knowledge. In front of my door sat a plate with a dome wicker cover, practically exuding that wonderful aroma, making my mouth salivate. I lifted it carefully, removing the covering, and found a plate mounded over with rice and a yellow-tan sauce with chunks of potatoes, carrots, chicken and…yes, that did look like apple. I inhaled deeply and smiled.

  I’d have to ask Mrs. Henderson later whom to return the plate to, with heartfelt thanks, but for now I entered my apartment and went straight for my table. I would not let the food get cold. Fetching a fork, I dug in and took a tentative bite.

  Bliss.

  I’d never had something like this before. It possessed a rich flavor, an underlying sweetness with a hint of spice that gave a kick in the aftertaste. Delighted, I dug in with more gusto. This foreign tenant was a truly marvelous cook. I might have to bribe her somehow into cooking other things for me. No, disregard that, I WILL bribe her into cooking for me.

  In a depressingly short amount of time, I cleaned the plate, then stared at it mournfully. Perhaps I should have tried savoring it? Although I detested cold food.

  Despite the fact that I felt perfectly full, my mouth craved more of it. Grumbling a little to myself, I dutifully got up and went to the sink, washing the dishes and leaning them in the rack to air dry. Cur-ry, eh? I’d never heard of it before. What nationality was this new tenant?

  I had two projects started in my spare bedroom, ready for my time and attention, but I found I couldn’t turn my mind to them tonight. Instead I grabbed three chocolates from the open box on my counter and went to the wing-backed chair, settling into it, eyes blindly staring out of the window.

  Jamie Edwards.

  Too many things about the woman didn’t make any sense to me. I knew her to be foreign and yet couldn’t pin her nationality even after spending several hours with her. And how had a foreign woman, after only thirteen months in the country, gain the necessary citizenship rights and training to become a police officer? Kingston’s rules dictated someone had to live in country for at least a year before they qualified to even apply for citizenship.

  ‘I have friends in high places’ she’d said. High enough to get her a special dispensation for citizenship? But then why, if so highly connected, choose to work as a detective? I knew she had some proficiency at it, she’d demonstrated as much. Police work was hardly a chosen vocation for most women and yet she must have had prior training in order to be so competent at the work now, barely four months working in our precinct.

  A study in complexity, our Detective Edwards.

  Popping the last chocolate into my mouth, I got up and stoked up the stove, rising the temperature of the apartment enough that I shouldn’t have to get up again during the night to stoke the fire. If those blasted radiators weren’t so expensive to install, I would have already bought one. I would dearly love to be shed of the smoke and labor of a stove.

  I went to bed that night with the idle thought that perhaps on the morrow, I would be able to unravel a little more of both mysteries I had been handed today.

  “What was stolen from the Evidence Locker?” I demanded—no—begged for the repetition. I didn’t hold much stock in auditory hallucination, but in this moment I rather hoped for it.

  Dreyfus stared at me with a slightly poleaxed expression—doubtless because I had never asked him to repeat anything in the ten years we’d worked together—tugging at his dark goatee for a moment before uncertainly repeating, “A kris, foreign make, something called Beautiful Shield?”

  I slammed a hand down against my lab worktable as I swore, loud, long, and creatively before belatedly realizing that my female partner sat right next to me at the desk. Flaming red, I gave her a quick glance, but she didn’t seem to really take offense at this. One of those dark, sculpted eyebrows arched in surprise, but no condemnation could be found in her expression. Nonetheless, I didn’t want my nose broken, so forced out, “My apologies, Detective, for my language.”

  “Not at all,” she assured me, mouth quirked into something that might be amusement. “I take it from your reaction that this is dangerous? You know what this is?”

  “I do, and it might or might not be dangerous; it depends how conversant our thieves are in magic lore.” Growling at the back of the clipboard in Dreyfus’s hands I jabbed a finger at it as I demanded, “It was Sanderson, wasn’t it?”

  Wincing, Dreyfus confirmed, “Sanderson submitted it to evidence.”

  “That da—” remembering at the last second, I changed the oath into something milder. “Sodding imbecile. If he wasn’t sleeping with the police commissioner’s daughter, he’d have been fired for incompetence by now. This is by far the stupidest thing he’s ever done.”

  Edwards tilted her chair back a fraction, letting it rest on the back legs. “I understand that he accidentally set fire to his own lab three years ago by not properly containing a beaker. Nearly took out the whole east wing of this building. You’re saying it’s worse than that?”

  “Yes,” I ground out between clenched teeth. My fingers beat a heavy staccato against the table, the action and sound soothing enough that I didn’t do what impulse dictated. Which was to find the nearest blunt object and introduce it to Sanderson’s frontal lobe. I also found it strange that this woman, supposedly a magical expert, didn’t recognize what the kris was. It was rather well-known in mythology. Then again, Dreyfus looked equally clueless, so perhaps not as well-known as I assumed. Grudgingly, I bent enough to explain, “Kris taming Sari is its proper name, sometimes translated as either Flower Shield or Beautiful Shield. It’s a type of foreign knife, about the length of a man’s forearm. According to legend, it’s a kris so skillfully crafted that any wielder supposedly becomes unbeatable.”

  Edwards let out a low whistle, the chair coming forward to rest properly on all four legs again. “How viable is this myth?”

  “Well,” Dreyfus glanced down at his notes before offering dryly, “It was used in a murder where a petite woman killed the thief who broke into her house. Thief turned out to be a former Marine, outweighed her by five stone.”

  “And that answers that question,” Edwards stated to no one in particular. “Right. So would the thieves steal it because of its fame? Or because it makes them a regular Hulk?”

  I had to infer what she meant and wished I held the answer to that question. “There’s unfortunately a third possibility. With an artifact of this age, with this sort of intricate spellwork, it would be invaluable as a source. Siphon the magic off of it properly, it would be perfect to use as a focusing tool for any spellwork you care to name.”

  Edwards sighed and pressed two fingers to the bridge of her nose. “This just gets better and better. Alright, motivation is unclear for now, but how did they know it was here? Even the man that submitted it to evidence—”

  “You mean the moron that submitted it to evidence,” I corrected, unable to believe how imbecilic Sanderson had been in this case. Well, no, sadly I could believe it. Therein lay the problem.

  “—didn’t know what it was,” Edwards continued with a glance at me that proved strangely unreadable. “So we know he wasn’t carrying tales out of school. H
ow did they know it was there? They obviously did, they went straight for it and took absolutely nothing else.”

  “I don’t think the location of the kris was bandied about by the police at least,” Dreyfus answered forthrightly, straddling his chair comfortably. “Everyone seemed genuinely confused on what I referred to. I had to explain to a few of them what a kris was.”

  “I would think because of its part in The Tragedy of Hellana and Her Daughter, people would at least know what a kris is,” I grumbled to no one in particular, my fingers stilling on the worktable’s scarred surface. “But I suppose it’s an unusual weapon in this part of the world after all. So you have no idea how our thieves discovered the kris was here?”

  “Oh, I didn’t say that,” Dreyfus corrected. “It turns out the local paper ran an article on this event, which is no surprise, as the woman who fended off the attacker is the alderman’s wife.”

  I nodded, showing that I followed.

  “The alderman’s a bit of a collector of unusual weapons and according to the report the wife gave, she went for the first thing at hand to defend herself with. Luckily for her, she went for the right thing. The story caught enough attention that a few reporters started digging for more of a story, and one enterprising young woman managed to sneak in to the Evidence Locker and got a picture of it for the paper.”

  My eyes closed in fatalistic understanding even as a headache threatened to beat a drum in my temples. “You let her photograph the kris?”

  Dreyfus faltered, for the first time looking uncertain in his report. “She’s just a young reporter.”

  Edwards batted her eyes in mock-innocent confusion, sarcasm heavy in her tone. “But she was young, attractive, well dressed, charming, she couldn’t possibly be a criminal.”

  Realizing his mistake, Dreyfus winced.

  “It’s those ha’ penny novels of bad adventure stories that always paint criminals as ugly fiends; that’s why the public thinks beauty equates goodness,” I growled, my frustration rising.

  “Wait until the technology catches up for you to have movies,” she told me cryptically. “It only gets worse from there. Well, apparently that’s how our thieves learned about the kris. First from the newspaper article, which gave them a hint that something magical and valuable had been used in a crime, and then they sent some sweet young thing in to get a proper look and verify where it was. Classic approach, really, but it is classic for a reason.”

  “Because it works.” I was not going to beat my head against the desk, no matter how tempting. I pinned Dreyfus with a look. “Do you remember this girl?”

  “Yes?” Realizing what I meant, he hastily promised, “I’ll sit down with a sketch artist.”

  “Do,” Edwards ordered primly. “Now would be good.”

  Taking the hint, Dreyfus quickly scooted out the door before we could catch him at anything else.

  Edwards watched him go, then snapped her fingers. “Krikey, I forgot to get his fingerprints.”

  “Go,” I encouraged her, mind already turning to the other problem: how the thieves got in. “I need to ascertain how they achieved entrance past the wards.”

  “Sounds like a fair division of labor to me,” she agreed equably. Uncrossing her legs, she gained her feet and headed for the door. “I’ll come by later so we can compare notes.”

  Waving her away, I made a mental note to lodge a formal complaint again against Sanderson. For all the good it would do. Still, I wanted a long paper trail detailing the man’s stupidity so that when the love affair finally died—I didn’t give it another three months, really—the captain would have ample cause to fire the idiot.

  I left the ‘visitor friendly’ section of my lab behind, crossing the painted line on the floor, because certain idiots (Sanderson) needed that line to keep them from blundering into things. Two of the walls had floor to ceiling shelves, holding numerous bottles of every possible element and sample as well as the tinctures I needed in order to properly test things. The other wall was taken up with my equipment. I have one of the largest work spaces in the entire department, but I had still been forced to build a table to dominate the middle of the space, each side made of bookshelves, so that I had a place for all of my reference books.

  Really, they should just give in to the inevitable and knock that other wall down, expand the area so that I could have Sanderson’s workspace as well. I do his work anyway, there was no point for the idiot to have an office.

  Grumbling to myself, I put the readings I’d made yesterday up along one wall, near the projector, and aligned one of the destroyed charms on the work table so that I could study both the image and the tattered shield.

  Every good shield—especially building wards like these—had at least four points of contact with the object it protected. Because I had made some of these protections, it had eight, almost the strongest one could go without putting considerable arcane power behind it. It thereby had an octagon shape to it, with an eight-pointed star that channeled power from the center, pouring it out onto the edges. In its prime, it had very precise spellwork inscribed along each line of the star, both sides of each line, with the power levels and energy outflow dictated by the numbers written in the centermost circle. If I hadn’t crafted it myself, I wouldn’t be able to recognize it now. I poked at the shield, nothing more than scrap metal and paint now, mouth pulling up into a moue of irritation.

  Sixteen shields covered the Evidence Locker, all either of this strength or a comparable strength, and a group of thieves had shredded through it like rice paper. It boggled the mind.

  Normally with this kind of destruction of a shield, the building itself didn’t survive. I had seen something similar to this before, but then, a tidal wave had crashed into the building. Even the strongest of wards couldn’t withstand that type of natural fury. But the Evidence Locker still stood, with damage to the front of it, certainly, but that was almost more cosmetic than structural.

  I had a feeling I knew the answer, but I went through the proper steps anyway. I examined the shield with wand, magic lens, and finally with a minute examination by my eyes and a magnifying glass. It didn’t tell me anything I didn’t already know.

  Magic hadn’t destroyed it.

  Sinking back on the stool, I stared blindly ahead. This made no sense whatsoever.

  “Knock, knock.”

  I turned, stool squeaking a little in protest at the abrupt movement, and found Edwards standing with her toes right on the line. She gave me a smile as she asked, “Safe for me to come in?”

  “Please.” I waved her to the stool next to me and took a moment to ascertain the time on the mantel clock. I’d only been working twenty minutes. She’d already collected all of the appropriate fingerprints in such a short amount of time?

  Something must have shown on my face as she grimaced. “I’ve hit a road block of sorts. There’s strong resistance to me collecting fingerprints.”

  I didn’t need to ask any further questions. Her fierce, alarming reputation alone was enough to strike nervous jitters in most men, and demanding that they hold still for a procedure they’d never heard of likely was the last straw. Short of wrestling them to the ground, she wouldn’t be able to get their fingerprints, and such a move would be counterproductive on her part. “Perhaps I should accompany you. I’ve wanted to learn more about the process.”

  Edwards shot me a look of abject relief. “It will certainly go faster that way. I have a list—there’s only four people we need to get fingerprints from. The two day-duty officers, Doctor Sanderson, and the coroner’s.”

  I’d lay odds that Sanderson would squawk the loudest. He might hit a whole new register, actually, as he tended to either yell or squeak during confrontations. Standing, I shed my lab coat as I moved, hanging it on the peg near the door. “Perhaps after we’re done, you’d show me how you match them? You mentioned whorls, and lines, and loops earlier, but I’m not sure what you meant by it.”

  Beaming at me, she promise
d, “I’d be pleased to. It’s a shame we can’t use your projector. That would speed things right along.”

  “The projector?” I thought about it. “Ah, because we took the prints with dust and paper. True, if I had collected them magically, we might have been able to put them up.”

  “Right. We could have put each fingerprint over each other, making it an instant yes/no answer for a match. I don’t suppose you have any magical way to MacGyver that?”

  I had to intuit what she meant as, of course, the term was foreign to me. The idea intrigued me and sent my mind whirling. “Actually, I might. But let’s focus on getting your prints first, before everyone disappears to lunch.”

  With me collecting the fingerprints, we were able to manage, although, as predicted, Sanderson squeaked and flailed like a strangled rodent. I believe he was a mouse in a previous life. It would explain much.

  Edwards, as promised, ran me through the basics of fingerprint analysis. I also found a way to carry the fingerprints over via an inscription spell, making them larger and easier to lay on the projector’s surface. Edwards, delighted, hummed a ditty under her breath as she worked.

  Fascinating though it proved to be, I had other work demanding my attention. We split duties, she focusing on the fingerprints, I on the magical spectrum. I paid her half a mind, mostly to make sure the projector operated smoothly.

  With a sigh, she sat back and announced, “I have all of the fingerprints accounted for. We have six left over that don’t match our lot.” Raising a hand to knead the back of her neck, she turned her head this way and that, working the kinks out. “If I’d had a computer, this wouldn’t have taken nearly as long.”

  I glanced at the clock on the far wall and blinked. Had we truly been at this for nearly three hours? And what did she mean: com-what?