by Dan Willis
Without another word, he shut the door and was gone.
Alex pulled the card from his pocket and examined it. Having someone who could mobilize the Army whenever Alex found something worthy of their attention was a good thing, but he wondered exactly what strings came attached to that deal. For its part, the card was just a card, and it gave him no answers.
35
Loose Threads
For the second time in as many weeks, Ben Robertson passed through the door of the Forum club. Last time he’d been excited to report to the Legion, but this time he dreaded every step. When he reached the private reading room inside the vault, his hand was trembling so violently he had to take a moment to center himself before he raised the knocker and let it fall.
“Come,” a gruff voice called.
The last time Ben had been in this room, he’d found the three local Masters reading. This time Masters Torrence and Simons had moved their chairs near the low table and were engaged in a game of chess while Master Morrow looked on.
“Journeyman Robertson,” Master Morrow said, recognizing him. “What news from our venture?”
Ben took a breath, giving himself a brief moment before he had to begin.
“It is as we feared, Master,” he said. “The only books we were able to secure were the ones our brothers brought back when they used their escape runes.”
“No one else managed to escape?” Master Torrence asked. “How disappointing.”
“What about Felix Markel’s rune book?” Master Morrow asked.
“It wasn’t among the books we recovered,” Ben reported. “I managed to learn that the FBI is looking for it in the ruins of the destroyed building. They thought they had found it, but it was a false report. So far it’s still missing, and they’ve recovered most of the surviving books.”
Master Simons snorted angrily and Torrence swore.
“When I think of the time and money we spent on this operation,” Torrence said with a sneer. “All of it wasted.”
“Maybe not,” Master Simons said, moving his knight to queen’s bishop five. “What about the Sorceress?”
Ben felt his mouth go dry. The description of what happened once Sorsha Kincaid had started interrogating his fellow Journeymen would give him nightmares for the foreseeable future.
“A-after you spoke to her through Journeyman Phillips,” he said, forcing his voice to work, “his failsafe rune activated. I found someone in the local hospital who confirmed she was seriously wounded.”
“Not dead?” Master Torrence growled, shifting a pawn. “I’d have thought she would have been taken by surprise.”
“I wondered that too, Master,” Ben interjected, earning him a sour look from the bald man. “I impersonated an FBI investigator and interviewed several of the survivors.”
“And?” Simons snapped.
“All the ones who were present told the same story,” Ben went on. “Someone warned her just before the blast.”
“That would be your private detective, Rupert,” Master Morrow said to the elder Master. “Your queen’s in danger.”
Simons scoffed as he surveyed the board, and Morrow turned to Ben.
“Is it enough to hope that he was killed in the blast?” he asked.
“No, Master. He had a concussion, but apparently he recovered quickly.”
“Too bad,” Simons said, teasing Torrence by pulling back his rook.
“There is some good news,” Ben said as the Masters focused on their chess game. Clearly they hadn’t expected him to tell them anything they didn’t already know. He decided to press on. “Some of the doctors were talking, and they said the Sorceress wasn’t recovering as they expected.” That got a reaction out of the three men at the chessboard, and they all turned to look at him. “Well, I assumed that means the spike rune took hold.”
Morrow and Simons exchanged a knowing look, and the elder man tugged thoughtfully on his beard.
“How certain are you of this?” Master Torrence demanded.
Ben swallowed under the Masters’ eyes and he could feel himself begin to sweat.
“Completely certain, Master,” he said. “They were so concerned about it that they had the Sorcerer Andrew Baron teleport in a doctor from New York.”
“What doctor?” Master Simons snapped.
Ben had assumed his news would be received well. He hadn’t expected to be challenged.
“Uh,” he stuttered. “I don’t know, some Brit.”
“Older man?” Simons demanded.
“Yes.”
“Someone you know, Rupert?” Master Torrence asked.
“Ignatius Bell,” the older man said. “He’s Lockerby’s landlord and a former doctor in the Royal Navy.”
“So?” Torrence said.
“So, he was in the British Navy,” Master Morrow jumped in, obviously understanding Simons’ concern. “That means he’s not just a doctor, he’s a runewright.”
The Masters exchanged meaningful looks, then all their eyes turned to Ben.
“Did you hear anything more?” Morrow asked Ben. “Any suggestion that they know about the spike?”
“I’m sorry, Master. I’ve told you all I know.”
Master Torrance sneered and bared his teeth, but Simons put a restraining hand on the man’s shoulder.
“Easy,” he said. “If the spike is in place, the pile will be charging. We’ll go check it as soon as our game is over.”
“I’m starting to take a real dislike to your private detective,” Torrance sneered back. “Between him, his girlfriend, and his landlord, he’s becoming a problem. I thought you were going to have him eliminated, Lloyd.”
That last was directed at Master Marrow.
“An attempt was made,” Morrow said, “but it failed. From the report I got, it didn’t even slow him down.”
“We should make removing him a priority,” Torrence growled.
“That might be unwise,” Simons said, stroking his beard.
“What are you saying, Rupert?” Torrence scoffed. “He’s interfered in major operations twice now, cost us dozens of assets and thousands of dollars. What are you waiting for, him to find his way in here?”
“No,” Master Morrow cut in before Simons could respond. “Rupert is right. This Lockerby fellow must know about our existence. How else could he interfere so completely?”
“All the more reason to eliminate him.”
“If we kill him, we’ll never learn what he knows about us,” Morrow countered.
“Or, more importantly,” Simons added, “where he learned of us in the first place.”
“What if they break the spike rune?” Torrence asked. “The guy’s a detective who made his bones with a finding rune. He could use the spike and trace it back to us.”
“Relax, Dale,” Morrow said in a conciliatory voice. “Finding runes have a fairly limited range. Even if Mr. Lockerby is capable of unraveling the spike—”
“And he isn’t,” Simons said.
“Even if he is,” Morrow continued, “he wouldn’t be able to trace it to Washington from New York.”
“So we’re just going to let this private detective run wild and muck up our plans?” Torrence demanded.
“Of course not,” Simons said, turning to look at Ben. “Young Ben here is going to use his talents to keep an eye on him.”
Ben’s blood went cold. He liked his cushy job keeping a Senator’s calendar. Besides, Legion agents close to Alexander Lockerby tended to end up dead.
“T-thank you, Master,” he managed, his voice a bit higher than normal.
“What about the spike?” Torrence said. “If this detective is so smart, he might figure it out.”
“It’s much more likely that he and the doctor will break the rune if they try to remove it,” Morrow said.
“They won’t do that,” Simons said, chuckling to himself. “If that British doctor is any good at his craft at all, he’s going to know that breaking the spike rune will kill Miss Kincaid. F
rom where I sit, there’s nothing they can do about it but watch as she gets weaker.”
“Eventually, they’ll get desperate and try something,” Morrow said. “What then?”
“With any luck,” Simons said, sliding his bishop across the board, “the rune will explode when they try, and we’ll be rid of the entire problem. Checkmate.”
Torrence growled as he examined the board.
“I think that will be all, Journeyman Robertson,” Morrow said as the other two Masters began to reset the chessboard. “Why don’t you get your affairs in order, and we’ll get you set up with a new job and apartment in New York?”
“Thank you, Master,” Ben said, not meaning it.
There was nothing in Ben’s voice to indicate his displeasure, but Master Morrow seemed to sense it. He put his arm around Ben’s shoulder and walked him back to the door.
“Don’t worry, young Ben,” he said. “This is one of the most important jobs we have at the moment. Keep your eyes open and send detailed reports. If you see something we can use, it may just be your ticket to Master.”
Ben did like the sound of that, and he smiled in spite of himself.
“Thank you, Master,” he repeated, meaning it this time.
By the time Alex trudged through the door of his office, he was tired, hungry, and footsore. He’d been all over the city, checking with every contact, crawling through every archive, and he’d come up empty. As far as he could tell, Felix Markle was a figment of the Legion’s imagination. No record of someone with that name existed anywhere.
“Bad day, boss?” Sherry asked. She sat behind her desk going through her notepads, no doubt picking out new cases for him.
“You could say that,” he growled. He’d been back in New York for a week and so far, the only useful thing he’d done was reinstalling his permanent vault door to the brownstone. Neither he nor Iggy had managed to learn anything about the Gordian rune leeching Sorsha’s power, but at least she was recovering tolerably well.
He sighed, stuffing his anger down deep. None of this was Sherry’s fault, and she didn’t deserve to feel the effects of his mood.
“Anything new?” he asked.
“I put a couple of potential cases on your desk,” she said. As she spoke, she stood up, and Alex noticed that she winced.
“What’s the matter?” he asked.
“What?” she asked, looking up at him.
Alex’s eyebrows dropped down over his eyes. He knew Sherry well, and she was lying to him. Deliberately. He fixed her with his most penetrating stare. When she stood, she’d used her left hand, pushing up on the desk as if the muscles of her back were weak.
Did she take a bad fall? Maybe a customer got physical.
That thought made Alex furious.
“Boss?” Sherry said, alarmed by what she read on his face.
“Let me see your back,” he said. When she instantly blushed, he knew he was on the right track.
“Alex,” she gasped in faux indignance. “That’s hardly appropriate.”
He crossed the distance between them in two steps, grabbing her left hand and pulling it up. With his free hand he pressed on her lower back, and she winced.
“Are you going to make me look for myself,” he said, releasing her hand, “or are you going to come clean?”
Sherry gave him a hard look, then she sighed and turned around, pulling up her shirt to reveal a burn mark across her side with an oblong scar in the middle. The wound was clearly healing, but unless Alex was very much mistaken, his secretary had been grazed by a bullet.
“Spill,” he growled.
“I was in the wrong place at the wrong time,” she said with a sigh.
“And where was that?” he demanded, not sure he believed her, especially since she began blushing immediately.
“It’s none of your business, Alex,” she said, not meeting his eyes. “I did something stupid, things happened, and I’m fine. I don’t need you getting involved in my personal life.”
Alex ground his teeth. Of course, Sherry was entitled to her privacy, but on the other hand, someone had taken a shot at her.
“Please, Alex,” she said, giving him a stern look. “This isn’t your business.”
“All right,” he said at last. “But if you get in trouble you tag me in immediately, got it?”
“Yes, boss,” she said with a shy smile. She picked up a paper from her desk and held it out to him. “You have a message and there’s a package for you.”
Alex held her gaze for a moment, then took the paper.
“What is it?” he asked.
“Someone named Lyle Gundersen,” Sherry said, heading for the coffee pot. “He says you have some pictures that he needs back.”
Alex nodded, tucking the note into his shirt pocket. With all that had happened since Oak Ridge, he’d completely forgotten about the insurance photographs. They were currently sitting on the sideboard in his office. With his vault door in Washington D.C. closed, he’d have to send it down by courier.
“All right,” he said. “Call a courier service to send a package of photographs to…to…”
“Boss?” Sherry asked.
“Photographs…” Alex said, his mind racing back to something he’d heard years ago. It was back when he’d first met Sorsha, when he’d first seen the runes from the Archimedean Monograph, but he didn’t think that he’d be able to learn much because the pictures were made with a standard camera.
“Forget the courier,” he told Sherry. “Get Billy Tasker on the phone and ask him if he has the kind of camera that can take pictures of active runes.”
Sherry looked confused for a moment, then nodded and sat down.
“I’ll be in my office,” he said. “If Billy has one of those cameras, tell him to get it over here right away.”
He left Sherry dialing the phone and made his way down the short back hall to his office. A stack of files sat on his desk, but he ignored them. He was too keyed up to worry about that. The biggest problem he had with the rune attached to Sorsha was getting a good enough look at it. If the camera worked, he’d at least have somewhere to start figuring it out.
As he paced back and forth in front of his desk, he noticed a small package wrapped in brown paper sitting to one side. Sherry had mentioned a package. With nothing to do but wait, he picked it up and tore it open. Inside was a folded white cloth with a note on top.
Alex,
I didn’t hear back from you, so here’s the pattern you asked for. Looks pretty weird to me.
The note was signed, Lewis Clayton, Alex’s friend in the textile industry. Setting the note aside, Alex picked up the folded cloth. He’d forgotten that he’d asked Lewis to recreate the mysterious pattern from the Jacquard Loom.
The rune camera momentarily forgotten, he picked up the folded cloth and unfurled it like a flag. A moment later he almost dropped it as his hands stared to shake. Laid out against the background of white was a blue pattern reproduced by a modern loom.
“What’s that?” Sherry asked from his doorway.
“It’s a shield rune,” Alex said.
“Can you weave a rune?”
Alex shook his head slowly, then shrugged.
“You’re not supposed to be able to,” he said, then he realized it was Sherry at his door.
“What about that camera?”
She grinned at him and leaned against the doorframe.
“Billy says he’ll be here in an hour with the camera,” she said.
Alex closed his eyes and an enormous weight seemed to lift off him. Sorsha wasn’t out of the woods, but this was the first real step in that direction.
“I’m going to go get Dr. Bell,” he said, heading past her and pulling out his pocketwatch. “Call over to Sorsha’s office and tell her we’re coming to see her.”
He pulled open his door, but looked back to see Sherry smiling at him.
“Will do, boss,” she said. “And it’s good to have you back.”
T
HE END
You Know the Drill.
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Private Detective Alex Lockerby needs a break and it materializes in the form of an ambitious, up-and-coming beat cop, Danny Pack. Alex and Danny team up to unravel a tale murder, jealousy, and revenge stretching back over 30 years. It’s a tale that powerful forces don't want to come to light. Now the cop and the private detective must work fast and watch each other's backs if they hope to catch a killer and live to tell about it.
Dead Letter is the prequel novella to the Arcane Casebook series.
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In 1933, an unwitting thief steals a vial of deadly plague, accidentally releasing it in at a soup kitchen in Manhattan. The police, the FBI, and New York’s ‘council of Sorcerers’ fear the incident is a trial run for something much deadlier. Detective Alex Lockerby, himself under suspicion because of ties to the priest who ran the kitchen, has a book of spells, a pack of matches, and four days to find out where the plague came from, or the authorities will hang the crime squarely on him.