by K. J. Emrick
Lucian was staring at the life-sized raptor model. It’s glass reptilian eye followed him as he moved from one side to the other. “I don’t think what we’re looking for is in here,” he said. “Not unless our suspect turns out to be Fred Flintstone.”
“No, but whatever was used on Roderick’s head could have dropped in this room, or tossed in those fake ferns, or… I don’t know. In the trash?”
“I already checked the trash bin on this side. You get to look in that one over there.”
“Gee,” she told him. “Thanks.”
Well, if he could paw through candy bar wrappers and used tissues in that shirt and tie then she could do her part in this dress. Although, if she got any stains on it that wouldn’t come out, then he was buying her a new one to replace it!
The circular lid came off easily in her hands, and she peered down into the contents of what she could only assume was a week’s worth of garbage from visitors to the museum. She knew she had to push aside the crumpled pieces of paper and empty popcorn bags to see if there was anything underneath, but she certainly wasn’t going to use her hands for that.
With a whispered bit of Essence, she said, “Imigh leat!”
Telling bits of trash in old Gaelic to move themselves around for her was definitely not how she expected to be spend this evening. With a sigh, she watched as the miasma of discarded mess stirred itself about, going this way, and that way, until she was sure there wasn’t anything in the garbage can except just that—garbage.
“That’s a good spell to know,” Lucian muttered as he looked over her shoulder. “I had to use a moist towelette to clean my hands after I looked through mine. From now on, you’re officially on trash detail.”
“Gee, thanks. Just what every woman wants to hear.”
“I could whisper sweet nothings,” he said, helping her put the lid back on the can, “but I was kind of saving that for when we got back to my place.”
“No matter how long it takes?”
“Yes. Even if we don’t get home until the crack of dawn.”
“Didn’t you have something important to ask me?” Addie hoped he meant it, and that it hadn’t just been Belladonna Nightshade’s influence talking.
He didn’t disappoint her. “Yes, I did. I still do, but that’s for later, too.”
“Well, then let’s get going,” she said, her voice carrying a sudden sense of urgency. “The quicker we get this place searched, the quicker you can take me home.”
“Whoa, whoa,” he laughed, following her to the next room. “What’s the rush? Didn’t our angel friend say that there is no such thing as time and he has everyone frozen between two moments of something-or-other? I’m a little fuzzy on the details.”
“Yes, he said that.” Addie furrowed her brow as she thought about it again. “I just don’t think he was telling us the whole truth.”
“What? Angels can’t lie,” he said sarcastically.
“He’s a fallen angel,” Addie pointed out. “The Fallen don’t exactly worry about the truth. I don’t think Philly can hold this spell indefinitely, no matter what he said. Every spell requires a supply of energy to sustain it. Angels have that in spades, but no one has infinite power. The world was created that way on purpose. If anyone had infinite power, for good or for bad, they could do whatever they wanted and the rest of us would be nothing but pawns in their game. Eventually, Philly’s spell will break down because he’s not—”
“Omnipotent,” Lucian finished for her. “Got it. So if this is a spell, does that mean angels use magic?”
“Sort of,” Addie told him. “How can I explain this? Um. Stuff that we do with technology now was considered sorcery back in medieval times, right? Television, cellphones, even cars. Back then, all of that would have seemed like magic. Well, what an angel can do is so far advanced from what even a witch like I can do, that if it’s not magic, it might as well be. Magical beings use their Life Essence to do amazing things.”
“And,” Lucian said, catching on to where she was going with this, “an angel’s Essence has to be incredibly powerful.”
“Exactly.”
They were in the next room now, which was actually a long hallway lined on both sides with suits of armor of varying designs. Weapons ranging from poleaxes to swords to heavy battle axes hung from hooks on the walls. Glass display cases showed off relics from medieval times like pottery or cannonballs or spring-loaded knives. Some of it had been centuries ahead of its time.
Addie recognized some of the items as the work of Highland Elves. They were amazing craftsmen of armor and weapons in their day, able to make metal do things that would baffle a modern blacksmith. During the height of their time on this Earth they were wealthy, and respected, and feared. It truly was a shame that they were all dead now. Then again, if they hadn’t started selling their creations to the English and to King Edward the First, they wouldn’t have been driven from their homes and wiped out by clans of angry Scotsmen back in the thirteenth century. It was a different time back then, to be sure, but politics still ruled.
George R. R. Martin was right. When you played the political game you either won or you died. There was no middle ground.
The empty armor suits with their helmets held up straight on metal poles kept silent watch, holding staffs or pikes or spinning maces. Flags or crossbows or swords.
Well. They had been looking for weapons…
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Lucian said out loud when he saw what was here. “We’ll have to send all of this to the state crime lab to test for blood and DNA traces. It could take weeks to say if what we’re looking for is here.”
“It could,” Addie agreed, “or I could speed things along a bit.”
“With magic?”
“Exactly. Unless, of course, you think it’s cheating for me to just snap my fingers and make something happen.”
He grinned sheepishly. “That was the spell talking, remember. I happen to like the fact that my girlfriend is a witch.”
Now that was exactly what she wanted to hear.
With a wave of her hand through the air in front of her, Addie called on her Essence, and mouthed a few words in Gaelic with a couple English words thrown in. She crooked her fingers, flexing them just so. This spell wasn’t one that had been passed down through the ages. She was kind of making it up as she went along, and there were a couple of items in her purse that would have made it easier, if she hadn’t left the purse in the dining room. It still worked. It was a large draw on her life force.
Time might not exist, according to Mephistopheles Smith, but her body still got tired. A long soak in a tub and a morning of sleeping in were definitely in her future.
The magic from her spell spread out along the room, a barely luminescent yellow light that plinked against each of the suits of armor and their weapons as it went. Addie listened to the sound of it, knowing that if her spell found what they were looking for then it would sound more like a—
Plong.
“There,” she said, pointing to the second suit of armor on their right. “It’s the only one with any on it.”
“Any what on it?” Lucian asked.
“Blood,” she explained. “There’s human blood somewhere on that suit of armor.”
That caught his attention. His gaze riveted to that armor, examining the breastplate and the shoulder pieces and the gauntlets and the vambraces at the elbows and the greaves on the front of his boots. The helmet was an open face style, held upright and in place by a metal framework skeleton inside the armor.
In the chainmail glove, the empty suit held a foot-long wooden handle with a metal ball on the end, rimmed with spikes.
Lucian let out a low whistle. “Wow. That thing looks like it could have done some damage. What is it, do you think? Some kind of mace?”
“They called it a morning star.” He looked over his shoulder at her, obviously impressed. “What? A girl can’t have hobbies?”
He chuckled and bent
down lower to investigate the weapon. “Nasty. This definitely would have made a dent in that huge lunk’s cranium.”
Addie wasn’t so sure. “Wouldn’t it go right through his skull?”
“I guess it depends on how hard the killer swung it. Although, if this is it, then it brings us back to the question of why someone would knock Roderick over the head with this, and then switch to using a knife to kill Sheila. Why go through the trouble of hiding this, but leave the knife behind? Doesn’t make much sense… and you know what else doesn’t make sense?”
“What?”
He was so close to the weapon now that his nose was almost touching one of the spikes. “There’s no blood on this.”
She bent down closer, too. “That’s impossible. Lucian, that spell is never wrong. I mean, I didn’t have the herbs I needed to do it right, but it shouldn’t have mattered. The spell said there would be blood here.”
Did she do it wrong? Maybe she recited the wrong words, or used her Essence wrong, or maybe it was any number of other things that she might have done wrong. Magic wasn’t an exact science. In fact, it wasn’t science at all! It was more feeling and heart, than mind and logic. Could she have done it wrong? Yes. Unfortunately, yes.
And considering the spell had led them to a weapon that would most likely have killed anyone it was used against, the chances that she did it wrong were unfortunately high. Not to mention, there wasn’t any blood. Lucian was right about that. There should be blood here, and there’s not.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “Magic… sometimes magic fails even the strongest witch.”
He gave her a hug. “You’re as strong as they come. We can’t always get it right.”
Addie gave the suit of armor one last glance before they turned and walked away. There was no sense in checking any further into the museum this way. If the killer hadn’t dropped the weapon by this point, he wouldn’t have had time to go any further. If Philly didn’t find anything on his side of the museum then they were out of luck.
CHAPTER 7
I t was kind of strange, walking through hallways and rooms that were caught outside of time. Their footsteps made no sound. Their breathing was swallowed up by the empty air. Addie could clearly hear her heartbeat. She even counted it off, one second at a time, until she remembered that at the moment… there were no seconds. No minutes. No hours.
Just a murder mystery that they needed to solve.
Unfortunately, this little side trip through the museum hadn’t put them any closer to finding out who the killer was. Marcelle? Abierta? Belladonna? Maybe someone else on that list of scam victims. There was no doubt in Addie’s mind that Sheila Davenport’s criminal activities had something to do with her death. People who lived by the sword, died by the sword, and people who stole and lied and cheated often ended up on the wrong end of a knife. So, they knew why the crime was committed.
They just didn’t know who did it.
Back in the foyer they found Philly, leaning casually with his back against the wall, his intense blue eyes half-lidded. “Thought you’d never get back. What did you do, stop to snuggle each other?”
Addie didn’t see how that was any of his business. Besides. There hadn’t been any of that, unfortunately. “We didn’t find anything. What about your side? Did you find the weapon there?”
“No, I did not,” Philly told them. “Just a bunch of rare books and rare jewelry and rare pieces of leftover food from the tables of America’s founding fathers. Actually, I made that last part up. People’s fascination with stuff from their past never ceases to amaze me. Like my life is going to be made better by seeing how people used to live. I mean, really.”
“Well, that’s it then,” Lucian said. “I’m sorry, Addie, but there’s just no proof that any of our suspects did this. Hey, if Belladonna did it, she could have made this weapon we’re looking for sort of just disappear in the blink of an eye, right?
“Of course she could have,” Philly said with the wave of a hand. “More than that, she could have just created a heavy ball of air to slam into the back of that guy’s head.”
“Like I did,” Addie pointed out, “when I slapped her hand away from her face.”
“Right,” Lucian nodded. “Thank you for that, by the way.”
“You’re welcome.”
“Oh, dear God,” Philly bemoaned. “You two are sickeningly cute together. Stick to the point, please. Belladonna could have done those things, but she didn’t. She could have disappeared right after killing this Sheila Davenport, but she didn’t. She could have come up with a dozen and more ways to just burn her victim to ash, but you’ll notice that didn’t happen, either. Belladonna isn’t your killer.”
“How do you know that?” Lucian demanded. “I don’t think you can know that. Belladonna likes mind games. You saw what she did to me. You know what she’s been doing to Addie’s family. She likes to use her magic in ways that are both creative, and cruel, from what I’ve seen. How can you know Belladonna didn’t do this?”
“Because of this,” he said in an offhand way. Then he held up his other hand and showed them what he was holding.
It unraveled in his grip, into a man’s white button-up shirt, like someone would wear to a fancy awards dinner. Like the very reception here, tonight, in this museum.
Across the front of it were streaks and spatters and spots of red. Blood.
What was it Lucian had said earlier? Unless we find a bloody shirt discarded in the museum somewhere… Well. Here it was. The killer had changed clothes! This definitely put a new spin on their guesses about the crime.
“Men’s shirt,” Philly remarked. “Not really Belladonna’s style. Little bit short for someone with those long legs of hers, anyway. I’m willing to bet this blood here belongs to your dead girl. That means whoever did this, killed the woman, and then changed his shirt, and blended right back in with the crowds. Pity just about everyone in there is wearing white. Doesn’t really narrow things down for us, now does it? I suppose you could take it around to everyone and ask them to try it on. Like Cinderella. Or that nice OJ Simpson man.”
Addie let that comment pass. She was pretty sure that Philly was trying to be funny. Well. Mostly sure. “Well, I think you’re wrong about one thing. I think the shirt tells us something at least.”
She had the great pleasure of seeing the look of surprise on Philly’s face. “Addie Kilorian, you have to be one of the smartest humans I know and that is really, really saying something. Now, I admit that I came into this mystery late, but I am not following you at all. It’s a shirt. It tells us the killer was a man, probably, but I think even that’s in doubt in today’s political climate. Can’t assume anyone’s gender, after all.”
“That’s not what I meant. Think about it,” she said. “Who brings a change of clothing to a murder? Nobody. Why? Because you’d have to plan ahead for that, and the vast majority of murders are crimes of passion. This isn’t television, where people plan their murder out weeks in advance with complicated plans that almost always go sideways. But in this case, that’s exactly what our killer did.”
“Ah,” Philly hummed. “I think I see where you’re going with this. You’re leaning toward a premeditated murder.”
“Exactly. We were working on the assumption that our killer accidentally saw Sheila in the museum and killed her in a fit of rage. In a panic, he had to take out a security guard. Then he had to dump what he used to knock Roderick unconscious. We wondered why there were two weapons, and now we find out the killer had to change his shirt, too? No, that doesn’t add up unless this whole thing was planned out in advance.”
Lucian rubbed a hand thoughtfully on his chin. “I think you’re right. So whoever this was set it up ahead of time. The mystery weapon we still can’t find, the knife to kill Sheila, the change of clothing. It was all here in the museum, waiting for him.”
“Exactly. But when he came back here to change his shirt and throw away the bloody one, he stepped out int
o the foyer to see our murder scene unfolding. Roderick was already coming out of the security office, we were already making a ruckus and calling for more police to the scene. Our killer was stuck now. He had to stay. So he’s definitely still here.”
“He, or she?” Philly asked. “Couldn’t the killer be a woman? It’s been my experience that women are actually deadlier than men. It’s that way for angels, too, by the way.”
“No, she’s right,” Lucian said. “It was a man, not a woman. Like you pointed out, that’s a man’s shirt.”
“So it is.” Philly held it up a little higher, draping it in front of himself like he was going to try it on. It didn’t even reach his waist. “Well done, both of you. It’s almost fun to watch you two work together.”
“This isn’t a game,” Addie reminded him, although she did it gently because he was in a good mood and she’d like to keep the fallen angel from getting mad at her. “Someone died. There’s a killer somewhere in the museum. We’re not doing this for the fun of it.”
“No?” he asked, pursing his lips. “Pity. I was just starting to enjoy myself. Fine. What’s our next…”
He suddenly trailed off, his face going slack. Then he coughed, and took a step, and swayed on his feet.
“Sorry,” he told them slowly. “I seem to have held us out of time a little too long.”
He staggered, and each time his shoes slapped against the polished floor, Addie clearly heard the sound of it. With a gasp, she realized what that meant.
Time was catching up to them again.
“Philly, are you all right?” she surprised herself by asking. This was one of the Fallen, and even though her opinion of him might be changing he was still a being of questionable intentions, and powers that weren’t exactly pure. Yet, in that moment, she cared about whether he was going to live, or die.