“The choking Doberman and phantom hitchhiker as fairy tales of the modern age, yes,” he said. “That didn’t go anywhere.”
“Well, maybe it should’ve. These things reek of formaldehyde.” Sloane unfolded herself back to a standing position. “You know, like the story about the girl who buys the super-cheap prom dress, and then it turns out to have come off a corpse? Touch these, you’re getting a four-ten if you’re lucky, and a shallow grave if you’re not.”
Andy frowned. “Formaldehyde only kills through ingestion, not brief skin contact. The dead girl prom dress story isn’t true. Urban legends aren’t real.”
Sloane gave him a disgusted look. “Fairy tales aren’t real either, pretty boy. Crows can’t understand English. Rats don’t obey musical commands.”
“She’s right,” said Jeff. “If the narrative pushes hard enough, the impossible happens.”
“That’s a bad sign,” I replied. “If the narrative is branching out into urban legends, that means it’s getting stronger.”
“Most urban legends have some truth to them anyway,” said Sloane. “People just don’t know the whole story. Poisoned Dresses have been around since the Middle Ages; usually they’re deliberate, with needles or skin irritants to get the poison into the bloodstream. They’re a Sleeping Beauty variant. They should’ve been added to the Index years ago.”
Jeff frowned. “How do you know so much about it?”
Sloane shrugged. “Poisoning made to look like accident: kind of my thing,” she said bitterly.
She stopped talking. Everyone looked to me, like I would somehow have the answers, even when we were dealing with something that no one had ever seen before. I was their team leader. It was my job.
I hate my job sometimes.
“Go to the kitchen and find some plastic bags,” I said, to no one in particular. “We’ll take these back to the office while I call a cleanup crew to come and secure the scene.”
“On it,” said Jeff, and turned to head back toward the kitchen. Sloane went with him, presumably to warn him before he grabbed anything else that had been poisoned. The three of us who remained looked at the compost heap, and then at the small, tidy home garden planted next to it.
“Bet he didn’t have much of a rabbit problem,” said Andy.
“No, but I bet he caused the rabbits a lot of problems,” I said.
Demi laughed. It was a small, honest sound, and it seemed somehow more fitting than any words could have been. We had never met the man, after all.
#
“I don’t know why I bother being surprised that you could go out on your day off and wind up back in the office with a murder case,” said Deputy Director Brewer. He sounded annoyed. I had that effect on the man. Since he had a similar effect on me, I decided not to feel overly bad about it. “Do we have reason to believe that Dr. Reynard’s death was related to his upcoming appointment with Agent Winters?”
“The evidence is inconclusive at this time, sir,” I said. “Agents Davis and Santos are going over the files now.” It was a team effort, of a sort: Jeff was organizing them, and Demi was piping the formaldehyde away, thanks to an obscure variation of the Twelve Dancing Princesses—Aarne-Thompson Index type three-oh-six—that treated poison as a living thing, capable of joining in a dance. “We should know more after they get finished.”
“And the body?”
“Cleanup brought it back here. It’s down in the medical lab, being autopsied. He had no family, and very little contact with anyone apart from his clients, all of whom are on file here at the Bureau. We should have no problem making this disappear.” I wanted to feel bad about that, or at least morally conflicted, but Dr. Reynard had been a Clever Fox. Ending his life with a grand mystery would make his spirit happier in whatever afterlife he found than anything else could have possibly done.
Deputy Director Brewer nodded, looking down as he shuffled the pages on his desk. I remained where I was, standing ramrod straight in front of him, my hands folded behind my back where he wouldn’t see that they were ever so faintly trembling. Finally, he looked up, and said, “According to Agent Santos, you located the papers hidden in the compost pile by asking one of the local crows to show you where to look.”
“Yes, sir.” There was no point in denying it. Even if Demi was the only one who’d been stupid enough to put that little fact in her report, everyone else would admit that they’d seen me talking to birds if they were asked directly. We don’t lie for each other. We can’t afford that.
“Tell me, Agent Marchen: at what point did you decide that this case was important enough for you to risk awakening your memetic potential? It hadn’t even officially been assigned to your field team yet.”
I straightened a little more, until the small of my back began to ache. “With all due respect, sir, field teams are allowed to operate as their leaders see fit with regards to memetic incursions, both within and without the team itself. The birds were present when Dr. Reynard was killed. It seemed likely that they would have information regarding the reason why. I took a calculated risk. It paid off.”
“You took a calculated risk with your story.” Deputy Director Brewer stood, putting his eyes on a level with mine. “You of all people should know how dangerous that is. You should never have risked opening that door.”
“I risk opening that door every time I follow the rules or do my laundry,” I said, fighting the urge to snap at him. “Seven-oh-nine is a complicated narrative. It has a lot of pitfalls. Talking to birds may have been less risky than picking the wildflowers that grow in my hallway carpet. As for the risk, sir, I am well aware of what will happen to me if my narrative ever goes fully live, but given the timing of Dr. Reynard’s murder, I couldn’t ignore the fact that he may have been killed because he was intending to help Agent Winters with her own narrative.”
“It was careless.”
“It was necessary under the circumstances.” I shook my head, feeling my thin veneer of calm beginning to crack and slide away from me. “We’ve had more manifestations in the last two months than we’ve experienced in the last two years. It’s not just my field team that’s been hopping—everyone is overwhelmed, even the teams in other regions—but we seem to be getting it the worst. There are more incursions than ever before, and no one knows why. More importantly, no one wants to take any risks in finding out.”
“Was Agent Santos one of these ‘risks’?”
“Agent Santos was a risk that I took when this was getting started. Talking to a bird was a risk I took today. If this doesn’t stop, sir, if it doesn’t at least slow down, what kinds of risks will we be taking tomorrow?”
Deputy Director Brewer frowned. “Do you really think this man is that important?”
“I think now that we have his files, we can find out.”
“I see.” He sighed. “Well, then, Agent Marchen, I have no further questions for you. A note will be placed in your file regarding your interaction with your personal narrative.”
“Thank you, sir,” I said. I turned and fled his office as quickly as I could without actually breaking into a run. All that would have done was inspire more questions that I didn’t want to answer, and my team needed me with them, not standing here justifying myself.
Deputy Director Brewer didn’t say a word as I fled.
#
“What do we have?” I demanded as I walked into the bullpen, trying to sound like I hadn’t just been raked over the coals about my interactions with the narrative.
“Demi’s cleaned about half the files,” said Jeff.
“The other half should be done in an hour or so,” said Andy.
“We’re fucked,” said Sloane.
We all stopped to turn in her direction, varying expressions of bemusement on our faces. Sloane looked up from the paper in front of her. Her lips were pressed into a thin, hard line, all the color blanching out of them at the pressure.
“Does the name ‘Alicia Connors’ mean anything to you?” sh
e asked.
“She was the four-ten we had earlier this month,” said Andy. “The girl we thought was a seven-oh-nine, because her narrative was all confused when she started out.”
“She was one of Dr. Reynard’s patients,” said Sloane. “He was seeing her for a sleep disorder—she had really bad nightmares about not being able to wake up, and she was starting to hurt herself in an effort not to go to sleep. So Dr. Reynard helped her out.”
“Uh, guys?” Jeff’s normally smooth voice was shaky. “I’ve found something else that may present a problem.”
“What’s that?” I asked.
“Jennifer Lockwood was also seeing Dr. Reynard. ‘Unspecified anxiety disorder.’ She started seeing him six months ago.”
Jennifer Lockwood was our one-seven-one, the Goldilocks who had suddenly gone from averted to active, with none of the warning signs that normally fell in the middle. “Scan those files and cross-reference them against active narratives within the past six months,” I said. “I want to see how many of our recent cases popped up in the good doctor’s office.”
“I’ll go see if Demi has anything else ready for us,” said Andy. He dropped his share of the files on Jeff’s desk as he walked out of the bullpen.
Jeff sighed and stood, gathering his double armful of files. “Sloane, give me yours,” he said. “I’ll get these scanned, so we can cross-reference.”
“Doesn’t this count as computerizing the narrative?” asked Sloane, even as she willingly handed the remaining files over.
“No, because we’re just scanning patient records, not the details of their individual stories,” I said. “Although it’s interesting that Reynard kept his records only on paper. It’s like he was trying to keep the narrative from revising them.”
“That’s exactly what he was doing,” said Jeff, and followed Andy’s path out of the room.
I walked to my desk in silence. I could feel Sloane’s eyes on me, watching me as I moved. Finally, I turned to her, frowned, and asked, “What?”
“Do you think he had something to do with pushing those stories into active status? Could he have done that to me?”
That pulled me up short. “I don’t know.” I sat, pushing papers aside to clear a space for me to rest my elbow on the desk. Finally, I shook my head. “I don’t think it was Dr. Reynard who was pushing those people active.”
Sloane’s eyes narrowed. “Why not?”
“Intuition? Wishful thinking?” I waved a hand. “It’s just a feeling. But … the crows. They were everywhere. Crows are watchers. They like to see what’s going on, and they have a good sense for danger. Would they really have stuck around if he’d been doing something dangerous with the narrative in there? I don’t think so. I only spoke to him on the phone, but I got the impression that he genuinely cared about the people he worked with, and wanted them to have the best lives possible. In this world, that means not becoming the conduit for a homicidal fairy tale.”
“His file on Alicia Connors didn’t say anything about her manifestation,” said Sloane thoughtfully. “Just that she’d cancelled several sessions before contacting him to end their professional relationship.”
“So maybe we need to look at this from the opposite direction,” I said. “What if Dr. Reynard had nothing to do with either manifestation?”
“What are you—” began Sloane.
She was cut off by Jeff’s return, with Andy close behind him. “Demi had four more files ready for us, and I’ve scanned everything in,” said Jeff, sitting down at his desk and beginning to type rapidly. The flat-screen monitor we were supposed to use to project relevant case files came to glowing life. A moment later, names started appearing: some highlighted in red, others highlighted in green. “The red names are patients of Dr. Reynard’s who can be connected directly to recent memetic incursions. We’ve got our Sleeping Beauty and our Goldilocks; we also have a Snow White from the next district over, two of the Three Little Pigs, a Big Bad Wolf, a Goldtree, and a Boy Without Fear.”
“How far back did you go?”
“Six months,” said Jeff grimly. “The names highlighted in green are people who had been seeing Dr. Reynard up until six weeks ago, only to discontinue their sessions with little or no warning.”
“That’s not weird,” said Sloane. “I’ve dropped most of my headshrinkers cold.”
“Yes, but you didn’t drop off the grid immediately afterward.” Jeff shook his head. “None of these people have been seen or heard from since they left Dr. Reynard’s care.”
“So they could have all become active narrative manifestations for all that we know,” I said. “Is there any way to track them?”
“I’ve put Dispatch on it,” said Andy. “They’re better with this sort of legwork than we are.”
“And none of this gets us any closer to knowing who killed Dr. Reynard,” said Sloane. “We’re wasting our time.”
“No, we’re not,” I corrected, as gently as I could. Under the circumstances, being rude to Sloane was not only unnecessary but also potentially suicidal. “We would never have found these connected stories if he hadn’t been killed. He might have been able to help you with your story, but we would have learned nothing new about all these other stories.”
“So we assume that whoever killed him either didn’t want Sloane to get help or that they didn’t want her talking to him and maybe learning his secrets,” said Jeff. “Who do we have that fits that profile?”
There was a moment of silence before I said, defeated, “No one. We have no one.”
“But we have a lot of names,” said Andy. “We have a lot of resources. Whoever did this, we’ll get them.”
“Are you sure?” asked Sloane.
Andy didn’t answer.
#
Cleanup had done an excellent job on Dr. Reynard’s office, removing every sign that someone had been killed there. Even the bloodstains on the blotter were gone, replaced by clean white paper. I stood in the doorway as Sloane paced around the edges of the room, running her fingers over the spines of the elegantly arranged leather books and scowling at nothing. The air still smelled of apples to me, but only faintly, like the distant memory of a dream.
Dishes clattered in the kitchen as Jeff and Andy continued their methodical search of the property. We’d have to call for cleanup again when we were done—otherwise, whoever eventually “discovered” the empty property would assume that there had been a robbery and jump to the conclusion that Dr. Reynard had met with a bad end faster than we wanted them to. Every clatter was punctuated by the croak of the crows, who were still roosting all over the house. They’d come flapping inside as soon as we opened the doors, and none of us had really put much effort into shooing them away. This was their home, in a sense, and with Dr. Reynard gone, we had no authority to make them leave.
“Sloane? Are you sure there’s anything to find in here?”
“Yes,” she snapped. “He died in here. He was a Clever Fox. There’s something to find here.”
I frowned. “Not following your logic here, Sloane. Help me out before I order you to go and search the attic.”
“Foxes den. This whole house is nice—nicer than yours, that’s for damn sure—but this room is the one he set up as his den. Anything that was really important to him would have been kept in here, where he could keep an eye on it.”
I decided to ignore her dig at my living situation as I said, “We already found something important that was kept in here. His patient files.”
“He worked with people who’d been touched by the narrative. He knew his specialty, and he knew it well enough to get referrals for people like Alicia Connors, who didn’t even know that she was on the verge of turning into a story.” Sloane kept pacing. “None of the files we found said ‘Sloane is about five inches away from going full-wicked,’ or ‘Henry is destined for a cold glass grave.’ There’s another set.”
“… oh.” It made perfect sense. I was just so accustomed to no one outside the B
ureau writing down anything about the Index that I hadn’t been able to see it.
“Yeah, ‘oh.’” Sloane kept walking.
I stepped away from the doorway and into the room, walking until I was standing just in front of the desk. Sloane’s circuit was taking her around the perimeter over and over again, an endless loop. I followed her once around the room with my eyes before letting my gaze drift upward to the top of the bookshelves. They were ornately carved, showing a clever fox going about his daily rounds. Here he was in a garden, gamboling among the pumpkins; here he was chasing a rabbit; here he was giving a rock to a crow in exchange for an interesting stick.
A crow. My eyes widened, and I ran to the door, calling, “Jeff! Bring me a crow!”
Jeff’s head appeared around the edge of the kitchen doorframe. “I beg your pardon?”
“We need a crow in Dr. Reynard’s office. Get me a crow.”
“You’re not serious.”
I glared at him.
“You are serious. Be right there.” Jeff withdrew. I did the same.
Sloane was still pacing. She glanced my way and asked, “You have an idea, or do you just want to see Jeff get his eyes pecked out? I’m good with either one, I’d just like to know.”
“I have an idea,” I said, and walked back to the desk.
“That’s probably the better option,” said Sloane.
We waited in silence for a minute—her pacing, me standing perfectly still—until Jeff appeared in the doorway with a handful of Wheat Thins, walking backward as he made his way into the office. A glossy black crow walked after him, pausing only to pick up the Wheat Thins that Jeff was dropping. It had somehow managed to stack five of the square crackers in its beak at once, and was going for a sixth when it saw me, and stopped.
“Hello,” I said.
The crow bent forward, carefully placing its precious cargo on the carpet and covering it with one claw before croaking a cautious greeting. I didn’t understand it, quite, but the meaning was clear, at least to me. Maybe that meant I was skirting up against my story again. I had known that was a risk when I came back here. Demi had been left behind for a reason. Having an ATI active again would just increase the odds of my beginning a downhill slide.
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