Magic Outside the Box

by Honor Raconteur

“Or spread potentially damaging rumors,” Henri added, still focused on the list in front of him. “All he’s really guilty of, that we know of, is getting drunk and disorderly at a pub. It could be he’s not our man.”

  Trust it to Henri to point that out. He’s always very considerate of other people. Even potential suspects. “There’s that, too.”

  “Two days,” Sherard repeated, tossing his list down. Clint immediately pounced on it, arranging the loose sheets of paper like a magpie building a nest. The mage frowned down at the Felix. “Clint, you may not have those.”

  Clint stopped, paw still on paper, and flattened his ears in a pitiful manner. “No?”

  As expected, Sherard caved. “Not yet, anyway. After I’m done.”

  Yeah, that was not nearly firm enough to make headway. I picked up my cat before he could dig his claws in, and he came happily, rubbing up against my chin and purring as I gave him a good scratch on his chest. It was the only surefire technique to derailing his magpie tendencies.

  “Two days to track down and question potential suspects before we need to drive back into Kingston. I figure, alert someone at the station to go the docks and pick him up, just in case we’re late getting in.”

  Penny nodded and volunteered, “I can call it in. Captain Gregson likely wants an update anyway.”

  Better her ears than mine. “Sure. Urk, wait, that means I’m once again updating the queen.”

  They all gave me these big, cheesy, false grins. Some friends I had.

  “I don’t wanna,” I whined and rolled my eyes beseechingly at Henri. “Isn’t it your turn?”

  As expected, he caved. “Oh, very well, I suppose I can do it once more on your behalf. But may I remind you, it’s you she requested on this case.”

  I gave him a winsome smile. “It’s okay, Henri, she likes you too.”

  His dark eyes gave me that flat look. We both knew that had nothing to do with anything. But, being a true gentleman and friend, he was willing to take one for the team.

  There’s a reason Henri’s my favorite.

  In the end, only about seven viable people had the right expertise to be possible suspects. The first two we spoke with were injured, and injured badly enough I didn’t see how they could sneak anywhere. Jamie agreed with me and those interviews were brief in nature. The third woman on our list had moved some months ago and was up on the northern coast now. No one had seen her since the move. Likely not our suspect.

  Seaton and McSparrin had taken the other four, and that left us with only one other person to interview: the boardinghouse owner where Robert Martin, the windwhisperer, had stayed while here in Sheffield.

  After all, we needed to establish how long he’d stayed in Sheffield. If the timeline didn’t fit, there was no reason to track the man down.

  Abigail’s Boardinghouse was a neatly kept house that bordered on being a hotel. It had to be a hundred rooms at least, and the white clapboard sprawled along the street. I saw occupations of all types sitting around the wide front porch, everything from traveling salesmen to sailors. Miss Abigail apparently maintained a thriving business here.

  Jamie strode right up the stairs and toward the front door. One of the men moved to intercept her, an arm barring her way, although he doffed his hat and gave her a deferential nod of the head. Body language made it clear he wasn’t looking for a fight. “Miss. This is a bachelor’s-only boardinghouse.”

  My partner flicked her coat aside to show the badge on her belt. “Detective, actually, and I’m not staying. I need to ask the owner a few questions. Do you know where she is?”

  His attitude did an about-turn. “Oh. Certainly, Detective. She’s out back, likely, tending to her garden.”

  “Thank you.” Jamie gave him a polite smile and we both turned to walk along the porch, heading for the side of the house. We garnered more than a few curious looks as we passed the men, but no one else seemed inclined to stop and ask questions.

  The back of the boardinghouse wasn’t quite as I expected. Every square inch of the yard was filled with plants, mostly of the edible variety. Miss Abigail apparently supplemented her table with her own vegetables, which was both frugal and smart when feeding this many mouths. It was lovingly tended by the woman in the wide-brimmed straw hat. She heard our approach and turned her head, wiping off her hands with the apron around her waist as she gained her feet.

  “Hello,” Jamie greeted in a friendly way. “I’m Detective Edwards. This is my partner, Dr. Davenforth. Can we have a minute? I need to ask a few questions about one of your former boarders.”

  The matron looked worried, as many people did when a policeman came calling unannounced. “Well, that’s fine, but I likely can’t tell you much. I keep track of when they come and when they go, but that’s all. They’re free to do as they please as long as they abide by the rules.”

  “It’s the coming and going that we need an answer to,” she assured the woman. “Robert Martin.”

  I could tell the name rang a bell for her but Abigail wasn’t entirely sure who we meant. It was a rather common name. I tacked on helpfully, “Windwhisperer? One of the survivors from the sunk trading ships?”

  Before I could trot it all out, her eyes lit up in recognition. “Oh, sure, him. Now that was a sad case, that was. They had me take in anyone from the crews, as well as some of the stranded passengers. I was glad to help, but it was such a sorry business all around. People injured, and shaken, and some of them crying these silent tears. More than a few lost friends and loved ones, others were destitute, as most of what they owned went down to the ocean floor. We all pitched in and helped as we could, of course. The two survivors from that ship you mentioned, they took it the hardest. Drank more than a bit, and we let them, as sometimes a man needs to drown his sorrows. Mr. Martin, he especially took it terrible bad. Kept saying over and over that the royal mage should have done more than that. And why hadn’t he saved everyone. Grief does that, you know.”

  “Yes, it was a sad business all around,” I said noncommittally. “Mr. Martin stayed with you for a few days, then?”

  “Oh, it was longer than that. He didn’t stay in the house most of the day. Only for breakfast and to sleep, far as I could tell. I’m not sure where he was during the day but he always came in smelling of beer, so…” Abigail trailed off with a knowing look. “One can guess. His company had him stay put until he could be reassigned to another ship, he said. What with the wreckage to sort out, and insurance investigations, and all that, I suppose it would take time. He was here almost two weeks.”

  Alarm bells rang. Why would the company force him to stay here for two weeks? Why not let him go home and recuperate? Even if he had no real family to speak of, surely he had his own place. Why stay here, when he had neither kit nor kin? I shot Jamie a glance and saw the same questions scrawled on her face, masked by a carefully neutral expression.

  “Do you remember what day he left?”

  “Same day RM Burtchell died.” Abigail’s countenance fell a mite. “He came in, smiling ear to ear, and said he’d been contacted by his company and had a new berth. He’d barely packed and gotten his ticket when the news hit that RM Burtchell had been murdered. He didn’t seem to care, really; he was still smiling. I understand how a man likes to have work, I do, but the rest of us were in such a state…I barely got anything done the rest of the day, I was so rattled by the news.”

  It did sound disturbing, his reaction. I counselled myself to not jump to conclusions. Being happy at someone’s demise was not the same as participating in their murder. Take Sanderson, for instance. I’d be thrilled if someone removed him from the world even though I wouldn’t stoop to murdering him.

  “Thank you, Miss Abigail, that’s all we have at the moment. I just wanted to check his whereabouts.” Jamie gave another one of those disarming smiles that seemed to come so naturally to her. It put the woman at ease, as she likely intended it to do. “We might need to come back if we think of something further.” />
  “Oh, certainly, that’s fine. I’m always here.”

  We said goodbyes and walked out. I waited until we were far from the boardinghouse before voicing the words we were both thinking. “That timing and reaction don’t look good for Robert Martin.”

  “Not in the least.” Jamie shot me a wide smile, practically bouncing. “Finally, we have a lead. It’s about time we got a break in this case.”

  “Hear, hear.” I cast a glance towards the sky and frowned thoughtfully, logistics running through my mind. “It’s a bit too late in the evening to consider driving back to Kingston.”

  “Yeah, and we need to follow up with the other two, see if they struck anything likely. If they did, we need to follow up on it tomorrow. If not, maybe leave in the morning?”

  “Might as well.”

  All of the people on Seaton’s and McSparrin’s list had alibis. That rather ended all of our potential leads in Sheffield. I hoped and prayed that meant our remaining lead was solid and would actually give us the killer. If it wasn’t Martin, I truly didn’t know where else to go from here.

  We packed up the next morning and drove in. Jamie, somehow, wrested the keys from us and had the car going thirty-five the entire way back. I was at first anxious about her speed, but the car stayed true and steady on the road, and after thirty minutes of nothing happening but the sea breeze ruffling my hair, I slowly relaxed. It was a quieter trip than the previous ones, but I think it was mostly due to exhaustion. We were all heartily sick of this drive.

  By the time we did make it in, there wasn’t much to be done, as our suspect wouldn’t be in until tomorrow afternoon. Jamie drove us straight to the precinct, where we split ways. She went in to speak with Gregson and give him a verbal update of where we stood at the moment. I lingered in order to put my equipment back up. I hadn’t used any of it on this last trip to Sheffield, so there was nothing to tidy or write a report on. Just a matter of putting things back in their proper places on my lab’s shelves.

  With my back to the door, I didn’t think much of the sound of the hinges moving, nor the quick march of footsteps coming inside. I’d been gone several days, after all, surely a colleague had a question for me. Or even had noticed my presence and stopped in to offer a simple hello. Police stations thrived on gossip; perhaps this person wanted an update on our bizarre case. I turned with a pleasant greeting on the tip of my tongue.

  Instinct sent me down, dropping like a puppet with its strings cut, as a sizzle of magical fire flew over my head. Sodding deities, what in blazes?!

  The jars of specimens and chemicals over my head burst as the flames hit them, and I yelped, rolling frantically out of the way before I was hit by something. I could hear and see the fire suppressant hexes around my lab walls engage, smothering the flames before they could spread, but it did no good. Another attack followed the first within seconds. This time, I heard the casting spell.

  “Infercino!” Sanderson screamed out.

  Even as I snapped my wand out of my interior breast pocket, I snapped out, “Sanderson! HAVE YOU TAKEN LEAVE OF WHAT’S LEFT OF YOUR SENSES! Cease and desist at once!”

  “I hate you, you brownnosing little prick,” Sanderson snarled from somewhere over…there. He wasn’t in front of the door anymore, he was moving around the table. “You’ve gotten me suspended, likely fired, and for what!”

  I threw up the strongest shielding spell I knew, then did it again, doubling it in layers. He’d either gone mad and was here for revenge, or he had let anger get the better of his judgement, as usual. It could be either, or both, but I really didn’t care much what his motives were. I just needed to get free of this room. It was a death trap, with only the one door in and out. How long until someone heard him, realized something was wrong? I was in the back right wing of the new building for a reason. It was remote enough that if something magically went awry, it wouldn’t impact the whole station. As logical as that was, it might doom me in this moment.

  I moved as stealthily as I could to the right, trying to keep the table between us. My work table had its own protections carved into the base of the top, and it offered a considerable amount of protection. If I could utilize it. “Sanderson, be sensible. I’m only a Magical Examiner. My word—”

  “Oh, don’t play that card with me,” he sneered and threw off another spell that singed along the top of my shields this time. It bounced off, but it was a brutal shock. He’d used a stone-crushing spell that time, and the impact made me slide back three inches on the polished wood floors. “You got Seaton to do it. You’re all chummy with him now, of course he’d be willing to do you a little favor. You’re a benighted coward, Davenforth! Face me!”

  The paperwork involved when someone on the force was hurt was best described as tomes. And that’s in the case of an accident or an injury sustained during the course of duty. I didn’t want to fathom what it would be on purpose. As tempting as it was to pop Sanderson one, did I want to be stuck writing an incident report about the imbecile for the next decade? Hardly.

  Even with all this screaming and magic being thrown about, no help came. Fine. I could organize my own rescue when needed. I jerked my texting pad free of my pocket, toggling both Jamie and Seaton as the recipients and wrote in a quick scrawl: SOS. They’d both know what the cryptic message meant.

  Then I decided enough was enough. Sanderson wanted me to poke my head up, likely so he could whack it right off my shoulders. No, thank you. But it was best to play along with idiots to some degree. I snagged my stool and threw it up in the air. Sure enough, as soon as it cleared the table, he blasted it apart with another stone-crushing spell. Repetitive, wasn’t he?

  I barely gave the splinters time to fly before I popped up as well, this time with my own spell at the ready. I threw the hunter’s trap at him, but I wasn’t the only one with shields up. The magical net bounced off, entangling around one of my microscopes instead. I ducked down again with a curse. Untangling the microscope was going to be tedious in the extreme. Curse Sanderson.

  My eyes searched the shelves behind Sanderson frantically, trying to find something to use. His shields only protected his front and sides, not behind or above him. Typical of its type, and easy to exploit if one knew how. Of course, I knew how, as it was my business to. He wasn’t employing that weakness against me, likely because I had nothing but a wall of files behind me. Aside from toppling the bookcase, there was nothing else he could do with it. Well, come to think of it, that would hurt.

  I scanned the shelves behind him. Books, jars of sea tears, collection of hexes, no, no, no, all wrong, nothing helpful—wait. Captured spectral energy from mine and Jamie’s first case together. I caught it with a flick of my wand, yanking its lid off and sharply down. The energy splattered against the top of his head in a well-aimed arc, splattering against his shields and disintegrating them like sugar in boiling water. He yelped in surprise, then snarled like a wounded bear, his rage loud and echoing in the small room.

  I saw my chance to gain the door and stood, shield still at max readiness, ready to either fling a spell at him or dive for cover. For the first time, I saw his face, and he looked mad. Utterly mad, no rationality in his expression.

  It arrested me for a second, my body frozen. What had pushed him so completely over the edge? Even if he were facing unemployment, it was just a job, wasn’t it? Surely this wasn’t the end of the line for him. He was still a licensed mage, after all.

  He lifted his wand with a deliberateness that spoke of trouble. I saw his magic building, his mouth forming the words to a spell no human being should ever use against another. The blood in my veins turned to ice. My shields wouldn’t protect me from that. Not even a sturdy wall of brick, which was behind me, would stop that spell. What could I do?

  My mind raced through possibilities even as my instincts urged me to run, to find cover. The two were at war with each other. Dread seized me before I could make any snap decisions because the truth was, I couldn’t move fast enou
gh to evade him. Evading a spell was like evading a bullet—what human being had the reflexes to do that? I was a dead man and a shriek of helpless rage caterwauled through my mind, echoing and ravaging, as I stared death in the face.

  The cock of a hammer pin being pulled into place sounded thunderously loud in the relative silence. A hand I knew well rested on my back, and I could sense her, even though she was still a half-step behind me.

  The Shinigami had arrived.

  Even Sanderson paused and he stared at her with hatred but also fear, his mouth working without making a sound, the wand in his hand wavering as it pointed at me.

  “Sanderson, dismiss the spell.” Jamie Edwards did not make the request. The God of Death she was named after spoke, and her words were utterly final.

  Sanderson quavered in place. I was prepared to throw us both to the ground, nearly vibrating in place, my nerves were so tightly sprung. The spectral energy was splashed all over the other side of the room, around Sanderson, and I could not afford for Jamie to get anywhere near it. She seemed to be intent on staying next to me, though, thankfully. Multiple footsteps raced down the corridor. I heard Gregson calling out questions as he came.

  Neither of us looked around or tried to answer him. It was a death sentence if we broke this tableau—we all knew that. Sanderson stared at her hard, wand still shaking, the white of his eyes clear. He was terrified now. Whatever expression Jamie wore must have been ferocious in the extreme. Nerves jittered under my skin, adrenaline racing. I didn’t know what he’d do next. I absolutely couldn’t let either myself or Jamie become victims to his fit of madness.

  “You’d shoot me, wouldn’t you? Just to save him?”

  Jamie let out a scoffing laugh ringing with echoes of the grave. “Was that even a question?”

  Gregson slid to a stop behind us and barked out, “Sanderson! Drop the wand, hands on your head. What tomfoolery is this?! Edwards, lower your weapon.”

  I turned my head just enough to explain the situation, as I didn’t want him misjudging things. He didn’t have the full context, after all. “Sanderson barged in here, attacking. He was in the middle of casting a Restricted Curse when Jamie burst in.”