The Innocence of Death

by E G Stone

  Yolanda shrugged sheepishly. “I called him while you were arguing—er, talking—with Graveltoes.”

  I sighed through my nose and just climbed into the car. Death waved his hand and the Rolls expanded enough so that there were two seats facing each other, like a modern limousine. Even with Yolanda in the car, we all fit comfortably. If I weren’t so freaked out by that particular magic, I would have been very impressed. Death reached into a small console and pulled out a cut-glass decanter with a deep liquid inside.

  “Cognac?” he asked casually.

  “No, thanks,” I said. Yolanda shook her head. “Did Yolanda fill you in on everything?”

  Death poured himself a drink. He swirled it slowly in the glass and sipped. There was a pause while he let the cognac settle on his tongue. Then, “She did. Apparently you have developed a side-effect that I had not anticipated.”

  “That’s not really the most important issue right—wait, you didn’t mean for this to happen? For me to not be able to die?” I gaped. My glasses slipped down my nose.

  “Indeed not,” Death replied, though he sounded more interested than frustrated. “I had meant for you to simply become an immortal, much like many that inhabit Elsewhere. I thought separating you from your life-force was the best way to go about that. My touch does that, amongst other things, but I had not also realised the implications when I did not kill you afterwards.”

  I shook my head. “Hold on. So your touch separates a person from their life-force. And then you kill them. But because you didn’t kill me, no one else can kill me either? I thought you had done this before.”

  “Did I give you that impression? Oh, dear, I am sorry,” Death said, hiding his smile behind his glass. “I am an extraordinarily powerful being. I do not often go about displaying that power for the purpose of experimentation. The consequences would be too dire. It is quite interesting, though.”

  “Great,” I said hoarsely. “So what am I supposed to do, now?”

  “As you were doing,” Death said easily. “Yolanda informed me that you have not proceeded terribly far with your investigation here in Elsewhere. ‘Dead ends’ was the phrase she used.”

  “Yeah, we eliminated the only people who had easy access to the murder weapon. An Ennedi Tiger,” I said, ignoring Death’s pun.

  “Indeed. A very provocative weapon, and not one easily used. I have never heard of anyone besides the Order of Silence using the tigers in any official capacity, though they used to cause havoc in Africa before they were tamed. Are you quite certain that it was not the Order who perpetrated this, ah, crime?” Death swirled the drink in his glass, and I swore I saw a glimpse of the caves where I had been killed—again—flash there. I blinked and swallowed.

  “The Ancient One seemed apoplectic at the thought. And the only one—unless all the people they tortured into compliance decided to rebel—with a motive, was Mercy. But I don’t think she did it.”

  Yolanda shook her head. “Mercy would not do such a thing.”

  “I think you underestimate her, my dear troll,” Death murmured. He inclined his head. “However, I am inclined to agree with you. Mercy may be…capable, but she would be unlikely to act of her own free will. She is too devoted to the Order. And your idea of a rebellion, Cal, while amusing, is unlikely. Had you not freed your new aurai friend when you did, he would be as thoroughly loyal as the rest of them.”

  I frowned, glancing out the window towards the hospital. I didn’t like the idea that torture could be so effective. As far as I was concerned, it was beyond wrong. And weren’t there studies and such that said it wasn’t terribly useful as an interrogation tool? Then, that had been in the mortal realms, with mortal people. Immortals, on the other hand, were something entirely different.

  “The use of the Ennedi tiger is very interesting,” Death continued, though he sounded nothing more than mildly bored, “but I fear it will not lead you anywhere. Certainly not soon enough to avoid an altercation between my wife and myself. What other lines of inquiry had you thought to pursue?”

  I shifted in the seat, thinking that maybe that drink sounded good right about then. “Now we need to know more about Magnus. It just doesn’t make sense that he would be completely unconnected to Elsewhere. How else would someone know about him? I mean, Life doesn’t seem to go about advertising her relationship with her champions, because she doesn’t want you to take them from her. So someone else had to find out about him. Right?”

  Death took a deep breath. He let it out with a smile. “Life is indeed afraid that I will take her champions from her, as I always do. Such is the nature of our relationship. All that lives will die. So she savours every moment—in private, as you assume. Yes, then, you would be correct. Magnus must have had some connection to Elsewhere, or he would likely still be alive now.”

  I was the one to take a breath, this time. I hoped this worked, and that Death would let me get on with my investigation the way that I needed. If not, well, then this whole thing would be over. “I don’t think that we’re going to learn of Magnus’ connection to Elsewhere from, well, Elsewhere.”

  “You need to venture to the mortal realms.” Death nodded sagely. “Very well.”

  My mouth dropped open. “I thought you said I couldn’t go back!”

  “I said you could not return to your previous life,” Death said. “Travel to the mortal realms is relatively easy. I need only provide you with an alternate identity. Though, I do warn you, even if you were to encounter someone you knew, Cal, they would not know you. Their mind could suffer damage trying to fill in the gaps on who you are and why they feel they know you. Those who were closest to you would suffer the worst.”

  “Gotcha,” I grumbled. “Brain damage if I try to talk to anyone I knew. Well, we’re going to Norway, so that shouldn’t be too much of an issue.”

  The thought of returning to the mortal realms, even if it was very far away from everything and anyone I had ever known, set my heart pounding. I could feel my palms start to sweat and rubbed them on my knees. There was no need to get excited, I told myself. It was hardly going to be as awe-inspiring as Elsewhere. There would be no wyverns, no mansions and palaces, no fancy new social media that was both amazing and made no sense. It wouldn’t even be home.

  But it would be close enough.

  Death appraised me for a moment, then he nodded once. “Very well,” he said again. He waved his hand and two amulets appeared there. They were little more than silver circles, but when I took mine, I could feel it pulsing with power.

  “These will provide you with the appropriate identities in the mortal realms,” Death said. “Should someone ask you questions, you need only say what the amulets prompt you to say. You will have all the necessary documentation as you require. Be warned, they only work on mortals. Were you to run into anything from Elsewhere, it could be quite problematic.”

  “We’ll be careful, Master,” Yolanda said eagerly.

  I just nodded and slipped my amulet over my neck. It was like stepping into a pool, except I stayed perfectly dry. When I moved my hands, it felt like I was pushing against water. It wasn’t hard, it just took more effort than usual. “That’s weird,” I said, waving my hand about.

  “The amulets were designed to work in the mortal realms,” Death said, smiling slightly. “They will feel as such until you arrive.”

  “If I look into a mirror, will I see myself or someone else?” I asked, staring at my hand. If I looked hard enough, I could see the light bending around the appendage.

  “Why don’t you go find out?” Death asked. He clapped his hands together. He vanished, along with Iggy, the car, and everything else.

  Death and Taxes

  Travelling through worlds this time was nothing like walking through the monument or travelling with Thaddeus as a shadow. One moment, I was sitting in the car with Yolanda and Death, the next, I was suspended four feet above a knoll that was more rock than grass. I flailed my arms and fell. I couldn’t do anything
to get my feet under me and landed very hard on my bum.

  “Ow,” I said.

  Yolanda landed a lot harder than I did, but she didn’t seem to be hurt, either. Rock trolls, as has been previously established, are a lot tougher than humans. “Death always makes the smoothest transitions,” Yolanda said. She stood and brushed herself off. “Once, I took a Fae portal. I was sick for days.”

  “Good to know,” I mumbled, crawling to my feet. I looked around.

  “Where are we?” Yolanda asked, peering around with one hand up to shield her eyes from the sun. I copied her and took survey of the land.

  “I’d say we’re about a hundred feet from the cabin where Magnus died.” I pointed to the stone-and-wood structure. “I didn’t see the outside, when Life showed me her memory, but I saw enough. Besides, there’s yellow tape.”

  “Yellow tape means something to you?” Yolanda asked, following behind me as I walked up to the cabin.

  “Yellow tape, so I have been told, means a crime scene.” I peered through the windows and saw the same rustic setting from Life’s memory. Including a large blood-stain on the floor. “This is definitely it.”

  “And what would you being doing here at a crime scene?”

  The new voice made me jump. It was sort of garbled, like someone had put an overlay on the words to make them sound like English. The person it belonged to was of average height, average looks, good working clothes. Best of all, he was human. Completely, normally, perfectly human. He was also a cop. I gathered that much from the fact that his badge was glinting in the sunlight from a chain around his neck.

  “Ah, yes,” I said. My words also came out garbled and I frowned. Yolanda looked at me, and for a moment, I saw another image of her superimposed on the one of the troll I knew. She was tall, for a human woman, built heavily and definitely not on the attractive end of the scale. But the image was also human. The amulets, I realised. They were making us blend in. Probably even translating to and from Norwegian.

  I was going to have fun with this.

  “We are here to discover what, exactly, happened to the man who died here,” I said, putting a bite of aggression in my tone. I reached into my pockets and, sure enough, a pad and pen were readily available just as I had imagined they would be. “I heard that it was a wild animal, but from the way you lot whisked the body away and have kept an active guard here, I’d say that whatever happened was a whole lot more than a wild animal. Or was the victim just that important?”

  The cop said a word that the amulet didn’t translate into English, looking like he had swallowed a mouthful of vinegar. “Reporters,” he growled. I shrugged and held my pen to the paper.

  “Anything to say, ah, Officer….?” I prompted.

  “Janos,” he said, less than agreeably. “Detective Janos.”

  “A detective! Well, you must have said something wrong at the office to be set guarding the scene,” I preened, hoping that I was playing the reporter correctly. Usually, I was the one shielding people from reporters, not digging for information. It was quite fun to be playing the other side. I did my best to copy those reporters who had hounded us marketing types at Harcourt most. Janos immediately started covering his reputation, which meant he gave away a whole lot more than he meant to. This is why you hire professionals to do your digging—and your cover ups. We just notice so much more.

  “Punishment? I’m not being punished, I’m out her to continue with the investigation. I was looking for evidence of the victim’s involvement in the jewel trade when I came across you two great idiots.” Janos reached for his handcuffs, but there wasn’t anything he could arrest us for. Not that I was terribly familiar with Norwegian law, but I had a feeling that just standing around outside a crime scene, far, far away from everybody else wasn’t going to get me into much trouble. Even my questions hadn’t done anything wrong, as aggressive as they were. Even so, my wrists started tingling, recalling my earlier experience with manacles.

  “The victim was involved in the jewel trade? By that I take it you mean he was involved in the illegal jewel trade,” I said, scribbling down the information as though I were an actual reporter. “Was he a thief or a smuggler?”

  Janos said another word that didn’t translate. I smiled at Yolanda.

  “You two have no business being out here,” Janos said. “Go away, or I’ll charge you with tampering with a crime scene.”

  “We haven’t even stepped foot on your precious crime scene,” I scoffed. I looked at the cabin and then at Janos and sighed. Out here, with nothing to get in the way, using the aggressive reporter technique was going to get us nowhere. Janos was stubborn; we needed someone more amenable. I scuffed my shoe against the ground. “Actually, our car broke down. Could we get a ride back to town?”

  “And let you ask me questions the whole way back? Not a chance,” Janos stuffed his hands into his pockets and gave me the, “you must think I’m an idiot, but I’m not” look.

  “No questions? Gotcha. Nothing on the record, nothing published, no names, no nothing,” I said. I even stuffed my little notebook away to prove my sincerity. Please, please let this work. Janos narrowed his eyes and looked between Yolanda and me. Yolanda smiled widely, showing off her teeth. He huffed.

  “Fine. At least this way I’ll be able to keep an eye on you,” Janos said. He looked at the cabin. “I still have some work to do. So you two stand over there. And don’t move.” He pointed to a spot about three hundred feet away. We wouldn’t be able to get close to the cabin without him noticing, and unless we wanted a ride to town, we wouldn’t be running off.

  I shrugged and walked over to wait. Yolanda followed me, the human-image moving with her. When we got far enough away from Janos, the image faded until I was looking at the troll. “No questions?” Yolanda asked. “How are we going to find anything if we can’t ask questions?”

  “I said none of it would be on-the-record, not that I wouldn’t ask questions,” I said.

  “But we are not reporters. None of it would be on the record anyways,” Yolanda frowned. “What is the record?”

  “Ah, official. Written down. Able to be used in whatever material a journalist-type would print. Not taken in confidence,” I explained. “We’re not going to get in the way of his investigation. We just need to know more about Magnus, so that we can find someone who might know if he was, well, hanging around with any supernatural types.”

  “You think that his connection to Life was involved?”

  “I think that someone went to a lot of trouble to kill this guy with a supernatural creature specific to the Order,” I said. “If it didn’t have anything to do with the balance, it must have had something to do with Life. And I doubt whoever it was just showed up and killed Magnus out of the blue. I’d be willing to bet that they stalked him for a while. Possibly just met the guy in passing and realised who he was later. And bam, pow, no more Magnus.”

  Yolanda eyed me warily. “You have a strange mind, Cal.”

  “Thanks,” I said.

  Janos stalked out of the cabin a few moments later, looking distinctly annoyed. He jerked his head in our direction and started walking off, presumably to the car. Yolanda and I followed. We met the detective at a tiny two door Fiat. There was barely room for one person, let alone two men and a troll.

  I looked at Yolanda and she grumbled something under her breath. She sighed and pushed the passenger seat forwards, climbing into the back with a good deal of complaining. As she did so, her form seemed to shrink to become the human image that the amulet portrayed around Janos, not the superimposed image I had been seeing. Once she had climbed in the back seat, she looked completely human, even to me. I squinted and couldn’t see past the image to the troll underneath.

  Was that part of the amulet’s power, or troll magic? Yolanda had said that rock trolls visited the mortal realms for salty foods—among other things—so surely they had some means of disguise. Either that or Death’s powers were a whole lot cooler than I anti
cipated. I shivered.

  I clambered into the passenger seat and Janos went to the driver’s seat, scowling as he put the key in the ignition. “I take it your search was unsuccessful?” I said in as friendly a tone as I could muster.

  “I thought we weren’t going to have any questions,” Janos snapped.

  “I said nothing on the record. No names, nothing written down or published or anything. I’m just trying to figure out what happened to Magnus,” I held up my hands peacefully.

  “Magnus, huh?” Janos threw me a wolf’s grin as he pulled onto the road. “I didn’t realise you knew the victim.”

  “He showed up on a Google search. You know, social media and all that? It can be such a pain to get rid of unwanted pictures and profiles,” I replied easily. And it was true. It was a whole lot more difficult than people realised to get information off of the internet than on it. Social media sites were data hounds and did their best never to let anything go. That was why governments wanted them, why newspapers trolled them, and why people like me were hired to manage them.

  I just hadn’t bothered searching the internet for Magnus. I should have, now that I thought about it.

  Janos glowered at me and shifted the Fiat into third. “If you’re so capable, you figure it out.”

  “I want to know what happened to him as much as you do,” I said. “And you’d be surprised how few people post their murders on social media.”

  “Please, Detective,” Yolanda said in a tone far more sympathetic than I could manage. “It matters a great deal.”

  Janos was silent for a moment, his fingers tapping on the steering wheel. Then he flicked a glance at me, “You two aren’t reporters, are you?”

  “Why would you think that?” My voice came out softer, sadder, than I expected. I looked out the window at the passing landscape. Rocks interspersed with green were slowly giving way to trees. Tall pines and the occasional bare-branched white birch.