by Dima Zales
“Did you hear that, Bertie?” Chester looks down at the lion. “I didn’t banish you from my bed just for shits and giggles.” He gives me a crooked grin. “Bert is still surly with me over that.”
“He sleeps with that lion?” Felix exclaims, echoing my thoughts. “How does he still have all his limbs attached?”
“I appreciate your asking Bert not to be there.” I dry-swallow another piece of banana. “I have a feeling he wouldn’t like someone touching his master in the middle of the night.”
Chester’s grin turns sinister. “Oh, he’d love it if someone tried. If you don’t count napping, killing things is Bertie’s favorite pastime.”
How lovely. I picture the lion engaged in said pastime and suppress a shudder. “Well, it’s nice to have met you both. Research awaits.”
“One second.” Chester’s grin evaporates. “Don’t you want to know what I was doing when Gemma died?”
“You’re not really a suspect.” I squeeze the remains of my banana a little too hard, and it plops onto the floor, where Bert the lion gives it a disgusted glare. “Why bug you until I have to?”
“It’s no trouble. I was walking Bert at the time.”
The lion’s ears perk up. He must recognize the word walk the way dogs seem to.
“Don’t you think the lady doth protest too much?” Felix whispers. “If he wasn’t already on your suspect list, I’d add him.”
Felix might be right, but I have to tread carefully, and not just because of the lion a few feet away.
“Thanks for that,” I say with a hopefully enthusiastic smile. “Now I won’t need to bother you or your friend here ever again.”
“Let’s hope you don’t,” Felix whispers.
“Start your search over there.” Chester points at a stack of books to his left.
“Thanks.” I obligingly head where he suggests. The first book I touch happens to be about probability manipulators and the feats they can perform.
“Do you think that was an intimidation tactic?” Felix asks as I drag my finger over a section in the text that talks about a trickster’s ability to increase the probability that their enemies will get cancer or suffer accidental death.
Or a way to clear himself, I text back. Why leave bodies around when he can use more subtle means?
“To make a statement?” Felix says, echoing Kain’s earlier suggestion. “Not to mention that by the second or third accident, everyone would suspect him anyway.”
True, I text. Still, I’d need a motive before I get on his bad side.
“Smart. Just keep in mind that if it’s some kind of vendetta, it wouldn’t be Chester’s first. He—”
“Let’s go, Bertie,” I hear Chester say. “If you’re a good boy, I’ll take you to Africa tomorrow.”
“Did he just provide himself with an excuse to run?” Felix asks.
Maybe, I text back.
I watch Chester leave the library, hand draped casually over the lion’s white mane, and decide that the “trickster” label fits this particular probability manipulator extremely well.
Okay. Time to look for something useful.
I walk all around to see if the dust patterns can tell me whether anything was recently updated, or if the book jackets can give me a hint on where to start.
Nope. The room looks to have been meticulously dusted, no doubt by the monks, and the bindings on most books are identical, forcing me to have to open each tome to figure out what’s inside.
I sigh and peel another banana as I look for anything resembling records.
Nothing.
I eat banana after banana and keep looking, finding nothing but useless minutiae. Is it possible they keep the day-to-day records on higher shelves? There’s a ladder here, but I’d need months to go through them all.
A few hours and bananas later, when I’ve made almost a full circle back to the place where Chester pointed me earlier, I spot something useful on an easy-to-reach shelf.
Voting records—score.
You seeing this? I text Felix.
His typing ceases in my earpiece. “Interesting. Can’t help but notice that by starting where Chester pointed, you took the longest possible time to come across that book.”
You’re right, I write back. Was he hoping I’d give up? Or is this a coincidence?
“There are no coincidences when probability manipulators are involved. He’d be the first to tell you that.”
He’s probably right. Flipping to the back of the book, I eagerly check the last entry. Yep, the vote over my fate is already part of this record. I examine the names of everyone who wanted me dead.
Gertrude. No surprise there.
Eduardo the werewolf. Interesting.
Albina, the Councilor with the matter-dissolving power who dodged getting a dream link with me last night. Also interesting.
And surprise, surprise: Chester also voted to kill me.
I don’t recognize a few of the other names, so I note them in my phone so I can check if they have an alibi—in part out of spite but more out of solid logic. Before the vote, the idea of using my skills for sleuthing had been mentioned. If the guilty party believed in my skill, they’d have voted to kill me to prevent me from figuring out their identity.
I text Felix my thoughts.
“I think I agree with you. But just to play devil’s advocate, if the killer is cautious, they might not have voted against you.”
Good point, I text back. Still worth examining the voting records closely.
Felix yawns. “You do that. Meanwhile, I’ll give napping another shot.”
I open the book to a random spot and read about a case that sounds very similar to my own. Like me, the young woman, Siti, didn’t have a Mandate at the time of her crimes. Though it doesn’t say what her powers were, she apparently used them to make human hospice patients feel better in their final days. According to the Council, she risked “exposing the existence of the Cognizant to the human population at large.” Unfortunately for her, the outcome of her case was unlike mine: The vote did not go in her favor, and she was executed.
I recognize a lot of the names on the list of people who voted against this girl. Interestingly, Chester isn’t among them. I flip pages until I find a similar type of case.
Yep, the same people voted to kill this guy as the Siti girl, but Chester did not.
I keep looking.
The voting pattern remains eerily consistent, which I guess makes sense. If one is dead set against any exposure to humans, they would be likely to remain so.
I skim the pages faster until I come across a case where the voting record is slightly different. Very interesting indeed. The defendant in this case was Princess Peach, Ariel and Felix’s roommate. In her case, Chester voted for the ultimate penalty.
An even more interesting case waits on the next page. This time, Chester himself is on trial. Not much detail is given apart from “spoke about Cognizant secrets to the uninitiated.” Unlike all the prior cases, where the vote was to decide execution, Chester risked nothing more than being expelled from the Council. The vote didn’t go in Chester’s favor; they removed him. Huh. He must’ve earned his way back since then. But not surprisingly, the same people who typically voted for execution in similar cases voted to expel Chester as well.
Could that be his motive? All the dead Councilors came from the list of people who voted for execution in these cases. Could Chester be getting revenge for what he perceived as an indignity? It would explain his out-of-character vote to kill me, a person who could potentially expose him.
If this is true, the next person to die will be one of the Councilors who voted to execute or expel in cases of exposure to humans.
Hey, are you napping? I text Felix.
He doesn’t reply.
I go into the dream world, tell Pom he has a chance to see Felix again, and enter Felix’s dream.
He’s sitting on the couch, playing a video game in which creatures that look a bit like P
om fight each other with cool superpowers.
“Hey,” I say. “I figured you might be asleep.”
Felix looks at his video game controller, at the creatures on his screen, at me, and finally at Pom. His unibrow seesaws on his forehead. “Every single time, it’s so freaking hard to believe I’m dreaming.” He looks back at the screen again. “Also, why am I not doing something more interesting in my dream, like flying?”
“I’m sure you do that sometimes.” I join him on the couch, and Pom flits over to sit between us. “Sorry to interrupt, but I need to talk to you about Chester.”
“And I need to play the game.” Pom is all but bouncing with eagerness. “What are those creatures?”
“Pokémon.” Grinning, Felix hands Pom the video game controller. “Try playing as Pikachu or Jigglypuff.”
A happily purple Pom starts mashing the buttons.
Felix turns to me. “So. Chester.”
I tell him what I’ve discovered and ask, “Do you think he could be the killer?”
“Thinking about probability manipulation gives me a headache.” Felix theatrically rubs his temples. “I think he could be.”
“Oh?”
“Let’s start with the arrow. If there was a chance Tatum could be hit with it, Chester’s power would’ve made it a certainty. And when it comes to sneaking up on the elf, he could’ve used his power so the elf wouldn’t have noticed his arrival until too late, or he could’ve made the elf fall off the cliff by accident.”
I was thinking along the same lines, but it’s good to hear another person confirm it.
“He could’ve also been behind the bird attack,” Felix continues. “If there was a chance the birds would go crazy one day and peck the dreamwalker to death, Chester could’ve increased that probability.”
“Right, but what about Gemma?” I ask. “She was ripped in half. There’s no chance he could’ve done that, is there?”
“Maybe his lion?”
“Maybe. That thing did look like pure muscle. It has to be incredibly strong.”
Felix scoots away from Pom, who’s going at the game with ever-greater enthusiasm. “You should talk to Kain about this as soon as you can. But do it carefully. Part of Chester’s power is being in the right place at the right time, so he might overhear.”
“Then how am I—”
“Am I interrupting you again?” Kain’s voice booms from the sky.
Speak of the devil. He’s caught me in my trance again.
“Thanks, Felix. I’ve got to go.” I wake myself up.
As expected, Kain is standing next to me in the library, his thin mouth more downturned than usual.
I put my hand over my rapidly beating heart. “I was working on the case, I swear.”
“And?”
“We need to talk, but not here.” I look around the book stacks furtively. “Can we go outside where we can’t be overheard?”
Kain raises an eyebrow. “Sure.”
He leads me through the stone corridors until we reach the castle entrance and emerge from the mountain to the woodsy smell of wet vegetation and the light drizzle of rain.
“Let’s go talk by the moat,” I say, ignoring the water droplets striking my face. Hopefully they’re not too contaminated. On Earth, one never knows.
Kain nods, and we walk in silence until we almost reach our destination—at which point I realize a couple of problems with my plan.
The moat smells like a sewer, and Hekima is already standing in the middle of the bridge that goes over it.
The elderly illusionist is holding an umbrella and puffing on a pipe. I guess with all those carcinogens flowing into his lungs, he can’t smell the stench wafting off the water. When he spots the two of us, he exhales a cloud of smoke and waves with his pipe.
So much for a private chat.
Kain’s expression suddenly changes. “Watch out,” he yells, pointing at something behind Hekima. “Run!”
Hekima spins on his heel and screams in horror.
I follow the path of Kain’s finger and bite back a scream of my own.
A huge head is rising from the moat on a long slender neck. It looks like a dinosaur, although I have no idea what kind.
Hekima starts backing away, only to slip on the wet stones, falling to his hands and knees. Mouth open for another scream, he lifts his arm defensively—just as the creature opens its tooth-filled maw and strikes, chopping off Hekima’s upper torso in a single bite.
Chapter Twenty-Five
What remains of Hekima spouts a fountain of blood.
I shriek.
Fangs busting out, Kain flashes toward the edge of the bridge. The beast must fear vampires, because it seizes the rest of Hekima in its jaws and disappears into the murky waters.
“What the hell?” Shaking uncontrollably, I lurch after Kain. “What was that?”
The vampire curses and glares at the water as though he’s contemplating diving in.
“Are you insane?” I grab his shoulder. “Hekima is dead. Do you want to join him?”
He twists around to face me. “You’re not going to tell anyone about this,” he says through gritted teeth. “The rain will wash away the blood and…”
I don’t know what he says next. Moving purely on adrenaline-filled autopilot, I pull out the hand sanitizer and clean my hands, as though the blood Kain speaks of is on them.
“Don’t worry,” I say numbly when he gives me a shake. “I won’t tell anyone.”
“And you realize that was another murder, right?” He stares into my eyes as though he’s about to glamour me.
“It was?” I reflexively sanitize my hands again.
“Come inside.” He grabs my fresh, clean hand and drags me behind him like a rag doll.
I’m not sure if he glamours me or not, but I somehow find myself back in his quarters.
“What did you want to talk to me about?” he growls. “Speak.”
Shaking off the residual shock, I look around for listening devices. I don’t see any, but that doesn’t mean much. “Can you go to sleep again? No one can overhear us if we speak in the dream world.”
He rolls his eyes but obediently stalks into his bedroom and puts himself to sleep. I slip into the dream world, ask Pom not to show himself, and find Kain. He’s already deep within a dream of drinking blood from a woman I’ve never seen.
I make the woman disappear, convince him he’s dreaming, and place us in my cloud office—in this case, to soothe my own raw nerves. Kain can fend for himself.
“Sit there.” I point to where I usually sit and take the therapy couch myself. “Now, what was that thing?” I replicate the creature that ate Hekima a few feet away. “Do things like that live on Earth?”
He gives my recreation a baleful glare. “It was Nessie. She was a gift from the Council in Scotland.”
I goggle at him. “As in the Loch Ness monster?”
He nods. “Humans got wind of the poor creature, so she had to be relocated.”
Oh, crap—he’s serious. I make Nessie disappear and create a stuffed replica of Pom’s usual dream shape so I can hug him to my chest. “Why would you put something so dangerous in your moat?”
Kain shrugs wearily. “It happened before my time, back when the Council kept prisoners in the dungeon. Anyone escaping through the sewers became Nessie’s lunch.”
Disgusting. The cell they initially gave me as a room—if I’d used that hole-in-the-floor excuse of a toilet, I’d literally have been putting my butt on the line. I take in a deep breath and reassure myself that I never would’ve come near that hole to the sewer anyway, monster or no monster. Way too unsanitary.
Shoving the unpleasant image away, I ask, “Was this the first time Nessie’s attacked people outside her domain?”
Kain dips his chin in a single nod. “I didn’t know it was possible. Now that I think about it, I guess someone with Gemma’s power could make Nessie act like that, but—”
“Is there someone else with
Gemma’s powers on the Council? They could be behind Leal’s death and this murder.”
Kain sighs. “She was the only one.”
“What about probability powers?” I create a replica of Chester in front of us. “I imagine there’s always been some small chance Nessie would attack someone by the moat. A trickster could’ve boosted those odds.”
“Maybe. In theory. But why?”
I tell him my suspicions about Chester.
“That doesn’t track,” he says. “Hekima wasn’t yet on the Council when they kicked Chester out.”
Puck, that’s right. Hekima wasn’t on the list of people who voted against Chester—or anyone else, for that matter. There goes that theory.
I hug my Pom replica harder. “So maybe it was an actual accident. Maybe Nessie got hungry after all this time without prisoners to munch on.”
Kain scoffs. “The monks feed her a goat per day. I think we need to treat this as a murder, which is why I told you to keep quiet.”
I don’t have a good feeling about this. “What do you mean?”
“As I said, if there’s another murder, your fate becomes uncertain. To put it mildly.”
My heart rate triples. Since this is the dream world, I zoom out of my body to calm it the puck down.
“I bet the real reason is his reputation as the head of the Enforcers,” Pom—who must’ve gone invisible to listen to the whole thing—whispers in my ear as soon as I’m back.
He’s right. This murder happened under Kain’s nose. He’s bound to look bad if anyone learns about it.
Making Dream Chester disappear, I ask, “What if Hekima upset him in some way?”
“Could be,” Kain says. “Why don’t you check his alibi?”
“I will. Do you happen to know where he was when Tatum was shot with that arrow, by any chance? He volunteered information about his whereabouts during Gemma’s murder, but—”
“Vegas. I think he was in Las Vegas.” Kain stands and starts to pace the cloud. “His lion has a girlfriend among the lions at The Mirage hotel, but that’s just the excuse. Chester likes to walk into casinos and use his power to win at slot machines. Usually an unsuspicious amount.”