by C. C. Mahon
Someone knocked on the door to the back room, and Matteo stuck his head through the door frame. “The customers are gone. Gertrude is closing up and going home before dawn.”
“Thank you,” I said. “You should go too.”
He opened the door wider and came into the room. “What is it?” he asked, motioning to the pile of rags cluttering the table.
“Phoebe,” said Nate.
Matteo swore and crossed the room in two steps. “What happened?” he asked.
“I found her in the desert,” said Nate. “Someone had buried her.”
Matteo’s eyes widened. “Alive?”
“No,” said Nate. “By the smell of it, I’d say she’s been dead for eight to ten hours.”
“Impossible,” said the vampire. “She should have already—”
“I know!” Nate cut him off in an exasperated tone.
“Enough,” I interrupted. “Nate, take her and come up with me. We’re going to put her on the first floor. There’s no point in burning down the club when she catches fire. Matteo, get home before dawn. One magical combustion at a time is enough. Come on, let’s go.”
I nagged my employees until they made their way to the first floor.
I had built my club in an abandoned hangar. More precisely under a hangar. I had had the rooms dug up—the bar, the back room, the stockroom, and my office at the very back—and refilled on top. On the second floor, I had set up a loft. But the first floor, that was an empty space, with dirt floors and a good twenty feet to the ceiling. Other than the stairs heading down towards the bar, and the metal staircase leading towards my loft, the first floor only housed my fateful motorcycle, parked in a corner near the big sliding door that opened onto the outdoor parking lot and the street.
I told Nate to put Phoebe down in the furthest corner of the hangar, on the ground. Matteo followed us, looking worried.
“Go home, both of you,” I said.
“I can’t leave her like that,” mumbled Nate.
I looked at the small body lying on the dirt floor and let out a sigh. “It’s fine,” I said. “I’ll look over her.”
He shook his head and let himself fall to the ground, sitting cross-legged.
I looked up at Matteo. “Go,” I said. “I’ll call you if anything happens.”
The vampire agreed and left walking slowly. I sat on the ground facing Nate, Phoebe’s small body between the two of us, and tried to maintain positive thoughts.
After two minutes of meditation on death and the impermanence of life, I finally asked, “What…what kind of person was she?”
“Unique,” said Nate, looking off in the distance. “When I knew her, she was a really old lady who told fortunes to tourists on the Strip.”
“I didn’t know phoenix were mediums,” I said.
“According to Phoebe, they’re not. She just liked tricking suckers. But she’s lived several lives, and she’s seen more than anyone else I know. She may have been mocking gullible people, but she regularly gave them excellent advice, off the cuff. She dressed like an old colorblind hippy, and some people thought she was senile. But when she felt her time coming, she sent her driver out to buy diapers, a bottle, and some milk. She ordered him to drive her to the desert one night and to wait for her. They say she sat on a dune, closed her eyes, and caught fire a few minutes later. The flames burnt for several hours, and when the sun came up, there was a newborn in the embers.”
I forced myself to look at Phoebe’s body before asking the following question. “Do you know how she died this time?”
“I examined her. She has bruises but no serious injuries.”
“Bruises?”
He stood up and signaled for me to come closer. “There, on her wrists, do you see them?”
The glow from the emergency lights was barely enough for me to make out the body. I used the flashlight on my phone, which revealed the purple lines that striped the child’s wrists.
“Ankles?” I asked.
“Same. And on her cheek, there…”
What I had thought was dirt turned out to be a mark left by a blow, probably a slap. I was hit with nausea.
“Someone tied and beat her,” I said. “She might have died of thirst.”
“But why isn’t she burning?” asked Nate.
“Maybe it’s different when she dies so young? You mentioned a driver. Do you have his phone number? Do you know his name? Do you know where to find him?”
Nate shook his head. “You’d have to ask people more…connected than me. Grizzlies aren’t very social animals.”
I looked at my watch. Outside, the sun must have been coming up. I wanted to get back to my bed. But I couldn’t abandon Nate to his wake. I’d said I would stay with the girl.
I settled as comfortably as I could, and I waited patiently. A few hours later, I woke up, rolled up in a ball on the ground, freezing and pain-ridden. Nate was snoring. Between us, Phoebe hadn’t moved. Nate had said that the phoenix was older than anyone, but to me she was only a young girl that someone had tied up, beaten, and killed. I was staring at a lock of her hair as the certainty of living in the same city as a monster settled in my gut.
9
“Lola, did I wake you?”
A sound halfway between an elephant trumpeting and the squeal of a door answered me through my phone.
“I need to know, I said, “is there a child killer in the area?”
“What?”
“A body just surfaced,” I said. “Someone from the ‘community.’ She looks like an eight-year-old girl. She was found buried in the desert. Naked, signs of ligature marks on her wrists and ankles, no apparent cause of death. I’m trying to find out if she died because she’s supernatural or because she looked like a young girl.”
Lola stayed quiet for a few moments. Then, “Where’s the body?”
“At the club.”
“I’m on my way.”
I hung up and caught Nate’s reproachful look.
“It’s Lola,” I said in my defense. “She’ll be discreet.”
“We can’t resort to the human police.”
“So call the magical police! No? Because you don’t have one. You’ve lived in your little world for centuries and millennia, and in all that time, you couldn’t have been bothered to come up with something better than a Customs worse than the human bureaucracy and a club of wizards more interested in their standing than the good of the people. So if you have a suggestion that’s better than Lola, then please tell me!”
He looked me over, mumbling something, and finally he said, “We take care of our own problems.”
“Great. Are you a detective? Medical examiner? Or maybe you talk to ghosts? Because I’m none of those things, and all I know is that I have a dead girl in front of me, a pile of questions, and not a sliver of an explanation.”
He stood up without a word and proceeded to pace. I got tired of watching him pacing like a caged bear surprisingly quickly and decided I needed a coffee. The club had an industrial-sized espresso machine, but I preferred my personal coffee maker in my loft’s kitchen. And I needed to change.
I climbed the metallic stairs, unlocked the biometric lock, and entered my loft.
The ceiling’s skylight revealed to me a purple, pink, and orange sky, in which the last stars were disappearing. I crossed the vast open space to the kitchen. The smell of ground coffee brought me back to reality. The coffee maker started to percolate, and I decided I had enough time to take a short shower. I let the burning water wash away all traces of my too short night and dressed hurriedly. I grabbed my pot of fresh coffee and three mugs. I heard the doorbell the moment I left the apartment.
“Nate,” I shouted from the top of the stairs, “could you get the door? It’s probably Lola.”
I put down the coffee and the mugs on the last step, made a large detour to avoid Phoebe’s body, and joined Nate at the door of the hangar. “Lola, thanks for…”
Lola wasn’t the one standing in f
ront of me. Instead, I was facing a delivery man with a giant mustache, holding a notepad, and looking annoyed. “I was told to deliver to this address, so I delivered to this address,” he said stubbornly. “Does someone else live here? A florist maybe?”
“What address?” I asked. “What florist?”
He handed me his notepad and pointed to a few lines.
“That’s here,” I said. “What are you delivering?”
He pointed behind him with his thumb towards a refrigerated truck. “Fifty-five cases of red roses.”
“That’s a mistake,” I said.
He shrugged. “Not my problem. They told me to deliver here, I deliver here.”
“Who’s the sender?”
He looked at his delivery slip. “Doesn’t say.”
“Erica,” mumbled Nate through clenched teeth, “we don’t have time for this.”
“Well, little lady,” said the delivery guy at the same time, “I don’t have all day. Can you sign this delivery slip?”
He handed me his notepad and an old chewed-up pen. The red flags that were trying to make themselves known from the beginning of this conversation finally managed to pierce through my head fog.
“Fifty-five cases of red roses?” I asked.
“Yep. Where do you want them?”
“Erica, we can’t let…”
“I know.”
I couldn’t let this guy into the hangar for him to discover a young girl’s dead body laying in a corner.
And even without that…
The last person who had offered me red roses was Callum. My ex would offer them to me by the armfuls. At first to seduce me. Then it became a ritual. After each period of torture, be it psychological or physical, Callum would disappear. When I would wake up, I would discover dozens of bouquets of roses all around me. Like Sleeping Beauty, I was surrounded by roses and…
“I don’t want them,” I said. “Take them back.”
I closed the sliding door in the delivery guy’s face, shutting out his protests.
“Is everything okay?” asked Nate. “You’re looking pale. Are you trembling?”
He took me in his arms and rubbed my shoulders with the strength of a grizzly. I closed my eyes and let myself be manhandled willingly.
The doorbell ringing made us jump.
“Let me handle this,” said Nate. “I’ll show him where to put his roses.”
He unlocked the door and opened it violently.
“Whoa!” said Lola’s voice. “Calm down. Erica called me. What’s all this mess?”
I looked around my bouncer’s massive silhouette to see what Lola was talking about. She was standing in the middle of cardboard boxes overflowing with scarlet roses.
“Is someone getting married?” she asked.
I shook my head and motioned for her to come in. Nate closed the door behind us.
Despite the early hour, Lola was wearing her civilian cop uniform: cheap tailored pants, impeccably ironed blouse, flat shoes, and an inquisitive look.
“Coffee?” I offered.
“Always.”
I followed the edge of the hangar to the foot of the stairs, let myself fall on a step, and poured three mugs of the black boiling liquid.
“Nice new living room,” said Lola. “You had someone to introduce me to?”
I rubbed my face furiously, as if it could clear my mind, and stood up with a sigh. “Over here.”
It was still dark in the hangar. The small emergency lights that were always shining day and night only lit up enough to see where to walk. So I took out my cellphone to light up Phoebe’s body.
Lola didn’t comment, but I saw her stiffen, and her voice took on a professional tone. “How did she get here?”
“I found her,” said Nate. “In the desert.”
“What were you doing in the desert?”
He shifted from one foot to the other then shrugged before explaining. “You know that I’m a metamorph?”
Lola had seen Nate in his animal form, briefly and in a rather stressful situation. To my knowledge, they had never discussed it. She settled for nodding. He continued.
“Every month, during the full moon, I take a few nights to go run in the desert.”
“Like a werewolf?”
He let out a short laugh. “I guess. I’m not forced to transform, the moon doesn’t make me go crazy, and I don’t eat anyone. I just need to let off some steam, and it’s easier to see when the moon is full.”
“Oh. Okay. Continue.”
“Last night I was in Red Rock Canyon, far enough from the roads to be sure not to run into anyone. I had been running for a while, and I was going to head back to my starting point when I smelled…a body. It happens often enough to come across small carcasses left by animals. But this wasn’t like that. The smell was familiar. I followed the trail. I dug, and I found her.”
“You said the smell was familiar. You knew this girl?”
“Her name is Phoebe, and she’s nine hundred years old.”
Lola inhaled loudly through her teeth and buried her face into her coffee mug. She emerged several seconds later to ask, “Is it normal to look so young at her age?”
“Phoebe is a phoenix,” I said. “She died a few years ago, and she was…‘reborn’ from her ashes.”
Lola ran her hand on her neck. “Phoenix—okay. Nine hundred years old—okay. Reborn a few years ago—okay. Is she going to be reborn again? Could she tell us what happened to her?”
Nate bit his lips.
“We’re not sure of anything,” I said. “Nate thinks something’s wrong. That she should have burnt up by now.”
“I think that this time, she’s really dead,” said Nate.
“Why?” asked Lola.
Nate shrugged his shoulders.
I crouched near the body and pointed to her wrists. “Do you see that?”
Lola crouched on the other side of the body and took out a pen light. She examined the young girl’s arms, hands, and feet. Then she detailed her face. Finally, she stood up. “I see why you called me,” she said. “I haven’t heard anything about child abductions, but I’ll look into it. We’re not at a loss for homeless youths to become voiceless victims…” She looked over Phoebe, reflectively, before asking, “Did she have any family?”
“Not that we know of.”
“What are you going to do with her?”
I exchanged a look with Nate before answering. “We need to be sure that she’s not going to…”
“Be reborn?” asked Lola
“Yes,” I said. “I wouldn’t be able to sleep at night if I buried her and there was still the slightest doubt.”
My next phone call was to Britannicus Watson.
“Do you know anything about phoenixes?” I asked.
“Fascinating subject. A school friend did his thesis on them. What do you want to know?”
“Once they die, how long does it take for them to catch fire?”
“It’s instant.”
“Always? It doesn’t depend on their age or the cause of their death?”
“Not to my knowledge. But it’s an interesting point. I can call my friend if you want. Any particular reason why you’re asking such specific questions at this early hour?”
“Get me an answer, and I’ll explain.”
“A challenge? I’m your man.”
“One last thing,” I said before he hung up. “Discretion. I didn’t ask you about phoenixes; no one asked you about phoenixes. Same for your friend.”
“The plot thickens! Count on me.”
He hung up, and I put my phone back in my pocket. “What do we do now?” I asked.
10
It took Britannicus twenty-four hours to get a hold of his friend the phoenix expert and get me an answer to my question. Nate and Matteo were right: Phoebe should have caught on fire as soon as she died, no matter her age—real or apparent—or the cause of her death.
“I assured him that it was a purely theoretical q
uestion,” explained the wizard. “But we know that’s not true. So?”
We were in our usual lounge, a classy bar on the top floor of the Strip’s newest casino, a place not reserved for the supernatural but that was a favorite of my wizard friend. He had ordered a bottle of wine—a dry Italian this time that he savored with as much meticulousness as if he was about to write an article about the vineyard.
When I didn’t answer his question, he continued. “To my knowledge, there’s only one phoenix in the area. Her driver is in the hospital, unconscious following what seems to be a horrible car accident, and the phoenix isn’t answering her phone. Should we be worried?”
He seemed to be talking to the glass he was holding in his hand and of which he was still examining the contents.
“Are there any rules concerning wizard-client privilege?” I asked. “Like with lawyers?”
“Alas! Customs not having delivered me my work permit yet, you can’t be my client. But I put a lot of weight on the notions of trust and friendship.”
“In that case, as a friend, I trust you to keep this to yourself. I don’t believe that the driver was the victim of a simple accident. And if what your specialist friend says is true, Phoebe isn’t going to be answering her phone ever again.”
Britannicus abandoned the contemplation of his glass of wine and plunged his eyes into mine. “Have you seen her body?”
“Phoebe? Yes.”
“Dead?”
“It looks that way.”
“But not charred?”
I shook my head. Britannicus put his glass back down. “Do you have any idea what that means for science? My friend would kill to have access to that body. Myself, I’m more interested to examine—”
I raised my hand to cut off his outburst of scientific enthusiasm. “It’s a little girl, Britannicus. A young girl of eight that a monster kidnapped, tied up, beat, and killed before burying her quickly in the desert, like trash. No one is going to go all mad scientist on that child’s body.”
The wizard’s face sobered up. “That’s horrible. I understand. You said she was killed? How is that possible?”