“Little sports car,” she reported.
“Pass, then,” Helen said. “Keep an eye out.” She pulled one of Walter’s packages out of the canvas bag she’d stashed them in and worked her way inside. Braun had left no identifying marks on the plain brown butcher paper, which was strange enough. Maybe the shopkeeper had memorized what each package was by size.
The papers inside were brown with age, bundled together with fraying lengths of crisscrossed twine. She glanced at the writing on the top page, twisting the package a bit to catch the light better. Weather, she noted. Her initial interest waned a bit with disappointment that it wasn’t what she was looking for. Useful, and worth further study at some point, but not what she needed.
She hit pay dirt with the second package. The long-forgotten scribe had recorded the spell on a single, overlarge panel of animal skin—still supple despite obvious age. After removing the paper, she unfolded it in her lap and crooned in delight.
Kelsey leaned over. “What is it?”
“Eyes on the elevator,” Helen said, but there was no anger in her tone. “It’s a location spell, dear. It’s limited, of course—most magic is, in one way or another—but it will suffice for our needs. With this, I can find anything I’ve held in the past.”
“Your grimoire,” Kelsey said.
“Or my son. Either will suffice. Quiet, for a moment, please.” She didn’t want to turn on the dome light, but she didn’t think she’d need to. The tanned leather was pale enough, and the ink dark enough, that there was more than enough contrast for her to make out the text.
In one of the many talks she’d had with the Edimmu before her son had locked away both her body and her power, the being had explained to her that the learning of magic differed from person to person. Some saw a spell on a holistic level and could reproduce it at will, while others required a mnemonic or similar memory device in order to reproduce the effects. The latter, she’d reasoned, was most likely the inspiration for the folklore around verbal spell casting. She, unfortunately, fell into that category. Thankfully, most spells could be cast with but a few words, and not the sentences and paragraphs inscribed on the leather in her lap.
With a shiver, she came back to herself, vaguely aware of the newfound mystical fire burning in the pit of her stomach. Kelsey said something she couldn’t make out, and she turned to look at the girl. “What?”
“There,” the girl repeated. “Lady loading some stuff into a Honda Pilot. Should we send out one of the boys?”
“No,” Helen shook her head. “We need to keep this quiet. I’ll go.”
She hopped out of the van and tried to walk casually toward the vehicle Kelsey had indicated. In the end, it was moot. The woman had a cellphone pinched between her ear and her shoulder, and she was more concerned with loading a series of shopping bags into the rear of the SUV than paying attention to her surroundings. Helen got within earshot, then stood and waited for the woman to finish her phone call.
The conversation was over for a few moments before Helen’s prey had an available hand to pluck it away. With both sets of shopping bags in the rear of the SUV, she dropped the phone into her purse, turned, and flinched. “Oh! I didn’t see you there. Are you all right?”
Helen smiled. “Perfect. I need you to pull your car over there, next to the van.”
“Excuse me?”
Push. “Now.”
“Yes, of course.”
Paxton
Phoenix, Arizona—Thursday morning
He’d moved to the desert, but Kent kept his four-wheel drive Suburban.
“Don’t have the snow to deal with, obviously,” he observed as he turned right onto a street that already bustled with traffic at seven in the morning. This far out of the city core, I had little chance to navigate without street signs. Every building was some variation of tan or gray stucco, and few if any were more than three stories in height. “But we’ve picked up more than a few cases on the edge of the city limits where it’s come in handy.”
I leaned forward between the front seats. Since it was Cassie’s first time, I’d offered her shotgun for better sightseeing. “You working solo on this case, or what?”
“My partner and I are lead detectives. There’s a task force, but that’s just a fancy word for few forensic techs and any patrol cops we want to Shanghai.” He gave me a look in the mirror. “I didn’t mention this last night, but the day after I called you, I got a call from the chief of detectives. He wanted to make sure that I wasn’t using any city resources to pay for—quote, unquote—outside consultants.”
“Convenient.”
“Ain’t it, now? Now, I called you on my personal cell phone, so thinking they’ve got it tapped is a bit more into the X-Files than I’m ready to go, but my partner was pretty close. I didn’t think he was close enough to eavesdrop, but maybe he was.”
“That doesn’t make any sense,” Cassie said. “Being lackadaisical is one thing, but that’s coming close to throwing up a roadblock.”
“Right,” Kent agreed. “And being one of the ‘new guys’ in the department, even after a few years, means I don’t have a lot of people that I know I can trust absolutely.”
“Good thing we’ve got Cassie the human lie detector, then,” I said with a grin.
“How’s that?”
I summarized the story, leaving out my own failure to pass the first test of Cassie’s spell. She turned and grinned at me as I concluded.
Kent made a thoughtful noise in the back of his throat. “Hell, let’s try it.”
Cassie thought about it for a second, then nodded. “Okay.”
He waited for a beat, then said, “My partner, Tully Roberts, told someone about the phone call I made to Paxton.”
Jumping a bit in her seat, she said in a far-off voice, “No, he didn’t hear you. It’s strange. The picture in my head is fuzzy, almost. It wasn’t like that when we tried it before, but I get the same sense.” She shook her head, and said, in a normal tone of voice “Sorry.”
Kent shrugged. “Hey, just means we have to do things the hard way. We’re here.” He turned off the main road and almost immediately turned left into a small parking lot. To our west, cars buzzed by on the surface road, bearing their occupants to work, school, or other parts unknown, but an island of tranquility in the center of the urban jungle lay before us.
As we piled out of the Suburban, the low-level roar of even more cars hit my ears. A half-block east, the noise of the interstate was evident in spite of the tall sound barriers lined up on either side of the highway.
Off the parking lot, a sign planted in immaculate landscaping boasted ‘Desert Storm Park.’ Beyond the sign, the park plunged into a bowl scooped out of the desert landscape. The lush grass carpeting the depression would have seemed out of place if I hadn’t been familiar with the area. The first time I visited Kent and Jean, the sheer amount of green space shocked me. It didn’t jive with the concept of ‘desert’ that I’d always kept in my head. Much of that was due to widespread irrigation, of course, but there was still plenty of life here despite the temperate environs.
A paved path circled the park, dipping in and out of the bowl. Concrete benches scalloped one side of the curve, and I imagined it would make a fun venue for an outdoor concert on a cool evening.
Kent led us down the left side of the path and stopped maybe a hundred feet from the parking lot. He indicated a spot of otherwise unassuming grass on one side of the path. “The first body was right here, about three months ago.” He waved a hand. “There are apartment buildings over there, and over there. Guy out walking his dog found it and called it in.”
I knelt near the spot he’d indicated and ran my fingers through the grass. After all that time, any physical evidence would be long gone—carried away by the elements or cleaned up by forensics, but Kent hadn’t brought me here to look for hairs or DNA samples.
“Anybody there?” I murmured, but the volume of my voice wasn’t the critical part. The und
erlying command in my voice was like a bullhorn to the spirit world. I’d garnered the ability to speak to ghosts from the grimoire, driven by desperate grief for one last conversation with my father. I hadn’t gotten it, but I’d gotten things far worse or far better depending on your perspective. The ability to speak with and banish ghosts provided me a better living than I had any right to expect given my only above-average intellect and lack of any particular skills. On the other hand, it also made me an almost literal magnet to them, which is an even bigger pain in the ass than it sounds like.
I waited a few moments, but nothing happened. Now that I was paying attention, the park itself felt empty. Oh, there were people there. A young couple was playing Frisbee at the bottom of the bowl, and an older guy in a baseball cap walked a fluffy little dog on the opposite rim. It was the opposite of a ghost-town.
Standing up, I shook my head. “Nada.”
Kent grunted. “That normal? I mean, this wasn’t the place where he died, but that doesn’t matter, right?”
“No. If the body’s stashed away in a trunk or something, then yeah, it’s more likely than not that the ghost will stick around, but they aren’t strictly locked into one place.” I thought about the salesman’s nameless victim and wondered if he’d dissipated after I killed the creature that murdered him. The line of thought was moot, so I shook it off. “Otherwise, hospitals would be even more depressing than they already are.” I’ve sometimes wondered if that attachment to the body was the reason behind the old custom of building fences around graveyards. It doesn’t matter, of course—they can well, ghost, through pretty much anything solid.
“Worth going to the morgue?”
“Nah. The kill and dump site are the most likely places to have any sort of connection.” I thought about a body missing most of its innards, scooped out like the bowl of this park, and tried not to shudder. “It’s even possible there wasn’t a ghost. I doubt it, but it can happen.”
“Next one?”
“You’re driving,” I pointed out.
CHAPTER 12
Valentine
Washington, DC—Thursday afternoon
The night before, the team had spent a grand total of twenty minutes on the ground in Las Vegas—long enough for the Air Force to refuel the C-130 and swap out the crew for a rested one. The order to return had come in somewhere over Utah. His searing frustration had faded somewhat, but he was ready to stoke the flames higher if he didn’t like the explanation they were about to get.
Wearing the same clothing he’d been in for the past thirty-six hours, Valentine strode into the conference room, jerked a seat out, and collapsed into it. He considered planting his cowboy boots on the polished mahogany of the table but decided that would be pushing things a bit too far. He settled for a disapproving scowl.
If his boss noticed the look or cared about his slovenly appearance, he didn’t let on. Newquist nodded in his direction. “Matthew. Coffee’s on the credenza if you’re so inclined.”
“I’ll pass,” Valentine growled. He paused, then softened his tone. “But thank you.”
Morgan opened the conference room door and surveyed the interior as though preparing to enter a battlefield. When her eyes landed on Valentine in the chair, she relaxed and pulled the door open. George wheeled inside and parked at an open spot on the table. “Sir,” he acknowledged.
“Agent Patrick.” Morgan settled into a seat between George and Valentine. “Agent Laffer.”
“So that’s how it is today, Rusty?” Morgan’s eyes twinkled. “We’re being formal, is that it?”
The director gave her a look, and the smile on her face wilted. “Not the time, Morgan.” He cleared his throat, then glanced at his watch. “I’m sure you’re all eager to hear why you’re here and not in Vegas, but we’ll give Eliot a few minutes before we begin—ah.”
The aforementioned agent pulled the conference door open, spotted the pot of coffee, and headed for it. Valentine glanced at his partner and noted that he looked rougher around the edges than was usual. Salt-and-pepper stubble mottled his cheeks, and dark circles under his eyes put an exclamation point on Eliot’s aura of exhaustion.
Valentine raised an eyebrow. “Get any sleep, partner?”
Coffee in hand, the other man settled into a chair and offered a noncommittal grunt.
Director Newquist waited a moment, then picked up a remote on the conference table. He powered up a large flat screen television built into the wall. “Last night, two of our field agents on an unrelated stakeout encountered Helen Locke and her associates.” He pressed a button on his notebook and the blank screen displayed an overhead image of a city street. The quality was good enough that Valentine instantly recognized Locke, even at a side profile.
“Where was this?” George interjected.
“San Francisco,” Newquist said. “Haight-Ashbury district.” He glanced at Val and Eliot. “We had a source running black market magic out of an antique store.”
“Shit!” Val cursed. “Walter. Little weasel was holding out on us.”
“That would seem to be the case, yes. Unfortunately, he’s unavailable for comment. Someone or something smashed him face-first into a safe. He’s dead, and there’s a hole in one of his walls. Best guess is he was stashing away contraband under our nose.” The director shifted in his seat. “But be that as it may, of more concern is this. We lost both agents, and Helen Locke sent me a video message immediately after.” He pushed another key, and the face of a terrified older man standing in front of a brick wall appeared on the screen.
He looked vaguely familiar to Valentine, though he couldn’t place him at first.
“This is Agent JD Beckwith,” Newquist said, and Val nodded to himself. Now he remembered. Solid guy. He’d said or done something that garnered the attention of one of the regional directors and gotten shuffled out west, away from DC. Par for the course for the last administration—promote yes men and flunkies, and shit-can anyone with two brain cells to rub together. He shook himself out of his reverie, realizing he’d missed some of the discussion.
“…not sure why Locke didn’t narrate the video herself. If she was going for spooky, she accomplished it.”
“She’s showing off,” Morgan observed. “She’s demonstrating that she can do more than we realized. Either that or she picked up new tricks in prison.”
“The former, then,” Newquist said. “We screened all her mail.”
“Not well enough,” Valentine grumbled.
The director glanced at him but let the complaint slide. “What can you tell me about how she might have accomplished this, Agent Laffer?”
“Lots of terms for a lot of similar spells. It differs from a geas in that the caster, to some extent, inserts their own consciousness into the victim, overriding their control. I use the term ‘victim’ for a reason. The long-term aftereffects aren’t pretty. We’re talking brain damage.”
“Small comfort.”
“How’d they go?” Val said.
“Balefyr. We had to use dental records.” He let the other four agents murmur in consideration for a moment, then hit play on the video.
Hearing Beckwith speak sparked a few more memories for Val, and sure enough, the sound of the voice was right, but the cadence and tone were entirely different. He’d been reduced to little more than a living ventriloquist’s dummy for a mystical puppet master. He gritted his teeth and forced himself to listen.
“Director Russell Newquist. We’ve never had the pleasure of meeting. Congratulations on your promotion. Your man here says it’s a recent one. I’ll not waste time with an introduction. If you don’t know who I am, they wouldn’t have asked you to do the job.
“You’re about to lose two men in the worst way possible. Don’t force the issue by coming after me. That will end only in heartbreak and sorrow for your people. Say what you will about my methods and my goals—I have no desire to rack up a body count. My companions and I have an offer for you. Leave us be, and we’ll a
llow Division M to survive. If you declare war on us, we will burn it down around you, and you will die screaming.
“I don’t have the time to explain my goals to you but know this—I’m looking only for my son and my grimoire. Once I have them, I can complete my mission. After that, who knows? It might even make things easier for you. Toodles.”
The video cut off, thankfully. Val had seen the effects of balefyr more than a few times, and he had no desire to repeat the experience. He turned to the director.
“What’s she talking about, Russ? What grimoire?”
“Your guess is as good as mine,” Newquist shrugged. “I wasn’t involved with the case ten years ago. Did Division M search the Locke house for contraband?”
Morgan spoke up. “I helped coordinate, so yes. But it was late in the game. Maybe a month after Helen killed her husband.”
Valentine tried not to grit his teeth. “That’s a lot of time for shit to get up and walk away, boss. But the fact that she seems to think that the son has it says that it didn’t walk away.” He tapped his fingers on his chin. “Gosh, if only we’d been able to bring the kid in for questioning. Hard when he’s roaming the country, but—oh, that’s right. He was in the fucking hospital last week and you told me he was off limits.”
Newquist straightened in his chair and jabbed a finger at Valentine. “I grant you an extraordinary measure of latitude based on your history and abilities, Agent Valentine, but you will stow that attitude, or I’ll pull your badge so fast your head will spin.”
“Never going to happen,” Val spat. “And my attitude would be a hell of a lot better if you’d stop keeping everything so damn close to the vest, sir. What makes this kid so special? Why is he untouchable?”
The director wilted, just a bit. He worked his jaw for a moment, clearly torn. Finally, he sighed. “I’ve got my orders, Val. It’s above your pay grade.”
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