by A C Spahn
“They have no idea. The people seem to have dropped dead for no discernable reason.”
Disappointment gutted me. “That makes no sense.”
“Neither do all the fires that burned the other targeted buildings with no apparent cause. Everything about this reeks of foul play, but there’s no evidence to connect it to the cults. That’s why you’re all here.” He pointed to Kendall. “I want you to go through every scrap of data the Orlando police collected. Find me something, some clue they missed. I also want you to inspect the San Francisco Union’s servers, see if there’s any evidence of tampering or security breaches. Someone has been leaking information to the fleshwriter cults, and I need to know how. Adrienne, you are going to look through the evidence with her, see if anything jumps out at you. Maybe you’ll recognize someone in one of the crowd shots outside the building, or see a clue that tells you how Geralt and his followers might have done this.” I flinched at Geralt’s name, but Harrow didn’t notice.
“What am I doing?” Desmond asked.
“You’re her ride,” Harrow said, nodding to me. “You’re just here because she is. But if any fleshwriters burst in here, I expect you’ll take care of them.”
Desmond grimaced. “Fair enough.”
Veronica hauled herself out of the chair, making the metal groan. “It sounds like you’ll be here awhile. I’ll bring you all something to snack on.”
“At least there’ll be plenty of caffeine,” Kendall said, turning the seat so it faced backward and straddling it. She laced her fingers together and turned them outward to crack her knuckles. “Let’s get to sleuthing.”
Two hours later, Kendall and I had read half of the police report, and my eyes were starting to cross. Stiff aches had knotted themselves in my back. There was only one chair, and we’d taken turns using it. Currently it was Kendall’s turn, leaving me to hunch over the computer, since kneeling made me too short to comfortably read the screen, and the coffee boxes proved too weak to serve as seats.
We were the only two in the office for the moment, the others out in the cafe for some breathing room. Desmond had fielded half a dozen calls from worried customers because Crafter’s Haven was closed during business hours, and had reassured them all that we would be open tomorrow. Family emergency, he’d said, which was what was written on the handmade sign Kendall had taped to the inside of the store’s door when she left. We’d made that sign months ago, and it had gotten quite a bit of use in the intervening time. Soon, I assured myself. Soon we’d figure out Geralt’s strategy and find a way to stop him. Then things could go back to normal, and my life could resume. This incident in Orlando, horrible as it was, was the break we needed to solve the case.
Unfortunately the police report didn’t seem to know that. My mind glazed with irrelevant details, witness testimonies, addresses for the deceased, and every single form filed along the way. Cops had to do a lot of paperwork. I hadn’t felt much magic in the coffee shop when I’d come in, but the drumming had been steadily increasing while we worked. It seemed Desmond, Harrow, and Veronica weren’t quite Void enough to keep all magic away from an entire building. Now it pattered in my head, not enough to hurt, but enough to irritate. Kadum, kadum, kadum, kadum ...
“Magic’s building up in here. I’m going to make something,” I said. Kendall mumbled incoherently, her eyes glued to the screen. She looked ready to fall asleep. “You should take a break, too.”
She blinked as if coming out of a trance. Her long fingers ran through her spiky red hair. “Yeah. Yeah, you’re right. Son of a birch, this stuff is dry. I’m gonna poke around on the internet for ten minutes, let my brain recharge.”
“I don’t think this computer has an internet connection. Isn’t that the whole point? It’s secure?”
“Yes. Fortunately I have a magical device in my pocket that can talk to machines in outer space. And this cafe has free wireless.” She pulled out her phone and propped it against the computer monitor.
I squeezed around her chair and spilled the contents of my purse on one of the unopened boxes of coffee. After selecting a length of copper wire and a pair of bright green earrings shaped like frogs, I scooped the rest back into my bag.
The cafe, plus our current goal, had given me the idea for this enchantment. I found a box cutter in one of the cluttered desk drawers and sliced the tape on a box labeled “Morning Blend.” Shiny bags of coffee beans stood sentry inside, ready to invigorate the weary masses. I wound one end of my copper wire around the two earrings, binding them together, then stuck the other wire prong through a little plastic vent hole in one of the bags of coffee. The seal broke with a puff of expelled air. I rested my hands on the coffee bag and wire, and exhaled slowly.
Opening myself to magic, I drew in power from the air. At once the drumming grew more forceful, each drumbeat now reverberating on the inside of my skull. Kadum! Kadum! Kadum!
I sent the magic into the coffee before it spent too much time in my head. No sense taking major risks, especially so soon after overextending myself. The magic steeped in the coffee beans, guided by my chanted thoughts. Recharge the mind and body. Give a surge of energy, a burst of alertness, a flash of fortitude.
Once the magic had focused on the coffee, or more precisely on the caffeine inside it, I channeled it through the copper wire, a good conductor of energy, and into the earrings.
... kadum ... kadum .. kadum ...
“Much better,” I murmured, feeling the ambient magic return to a quiet, non-oppressive level. I slid the earrings out from the wire and tapped Kendall on the shoulder. “Hey. This should help you concentrate.”
She jerked, shaking the rickety furniture. Her phone tipped screen-first onto the desk. “What?”
“What are you looking at that’s got you so shaken?” I reached for her phone.
She slid it out of my reach. “Tell you in a minute. What were you saying?”
I held out one of the earrings. “Wear this. It’ll help you focus. I made one for each of us. The enchantment is minor enough that it shouldn’t interact weirdly with your shifting enchantment.”
Kendall pursed her lips at the bright green frog. “This is ... really not my style.”
“Come on, he’s cute.”
“His tongue is sticking out and everything.”
“Just wear the damn earring, Kendall. It’s a magical talisman, not a fashion statement.”
“Aren’t you the one always going on about how magic is both practical and beautiful?” She grinned and took the earring, then reached to her ear to remove one of the monster truck-shaped ones she was currently wearing. When she stuck the frog earring in its place, she bolted up from the chair. “Holy crap, Adrienne! That’s a kick!”
I took a wary step back. “It shouldn’t be more powerful than a big cup of coffee.”
“Make that a big cup of straight espresso. Dang, I feel like I could climb a redwood! One of those huge ones that are a gazillion years old.”
“Are you sure you’re not just feeling the difference from being tired?”
“You try it and tell me.” Kendall’s hands twitched, and she bounced on the balls of her feet.
Frowning, I removed one of my own earrings–studs shaped like paintbrushes–and put the frog earring in its place. Energy zinged through my body, ripping away all traces of fatigue. My heart kicked into another gear. My muscles all flexed, eager for use. I found myself shifting my weight back and forth, just to let out some of the springiness flooding my limbs.
Kendall grinned at me with wide eyes. “Right? You feel it? This is ridiculous!”
I yanked the earring out. Fatigue crashed back over me in a wave. I sank to a seated position on the floor and let out a yawn so big my mouth hurt. “It wasn’t supposed to do that.”
“Who cares? It’s awesome! Let’s go do something. Run a 5k. No, a 10k. No, let’s actually go climb the redwoods!”
“I think that’s illegal.”
“I’m a squirrel, what are th
ey gonna do about it?”
“Kendall, take the earring off.”
Kendall pouted. “Seriously?”
“Seriously. I don’t think it’s safe.”
With a sigh, Kendall removed the frog earring. The moment she did, she too sank to the floor. Her legs splayed out in front of her, combat boots scuffing the worn carpet. She made a half-hearted attempt to lift her arms, then gave up and just sprawled there, looking drained. “Wow.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “That shouldn’t have happened.”
“Maybe you shouldn’t do magic when you’re tired.”
“I did the enchantment right. I’m certain of it. It just had a much stronger effect than it should have, for how much magic I used.”
“That’s weird.”
“It’s worse than weird. It’s impossible.” I pinched the bridge of my nose against a threatening headache. “Magic isn’t obeying rules anymore. The ghosts, the magic at Union headquarters, just now ... what if it gets even worse? I have to release the magic to stop it from assaulting me, but if doing that causes unknown side effects with every enchantment ...”
Kendall pressed her frog earring into my hand, but gave my fingers a reassuring squeeze. “You’ll figure out the problem before it comes to that.”
“What if I don’t?”
“I have faith in you.”
“Glad one of us does.” I pocketed the frog earrings, planning to bury them in a box and never wear them again.
Kendall pulled herself back onto the creaky desk chair. “I may have found something. Before you tried to make us both high.” When I started to speak, she held up a hand. “I know. It was a joke.”
She accessed a news article on her phone and showed it to me. “The same day the Voids dropped dead, a bunch of people in Orlando got sick. Hospital intake rates skyrocketed. They blamed it on a chemical spill, but look at these numbers.” She pointed to a list of hospitals, along with their locations and the number of patients treated for chemical sickness.
I didn’t get her point. “What about it?”
She huffed, then grabbed a sheet of paper from the ancient printer and a pen from the crowded mug on the desk. She drew a circle in the center of the paper. “This is the building where the Voids were killed.” She drew a small square an inch away. “This is the first hospital on that list. They had over two hundred patients with the symptoms blamed on the chemical spill.” Then she drew another square on the opposite side of the circle, two inches away. “This is the second hospital. They treated one hundred and forty-seven patients.” A third square went above the box, almost at the edge of the paper. “The third hospital treated seventy-one patients.”
“Kendall, whatever you’re trying to say, just say it.”
“It’s a blast radius.” Kendall drew concentric circles starting at each hospital, forming a target with the Void Union building as the bullseye. She rapped the pen tip on the circle representing the building. “This sickness wasn’t chemical. It came from right here.”
“You think whatever Geralt’s cult did to kill the Voids made all these other people sick?”
“I do. People closer to the center got more of whatever they did, so more of them got sick. The further out you go, the fewer were affected.”
“But no civilians got sick around the other Unions that were destroyed. Why only this one? What’s unique about it?”
“Well, it’s the only building that didn’t burn down afterward.”
My eyes closed. “Geralt’s people must have made a mistake in their attack. Or maybe the Orlando Union’s precautions threw off their plan. Whatever power was supposed to burn the building instead spread out through the city, causing all these illnesses.”
Kendall stuck the pen behind her ear. “Great. Does this help us?”
“I don’t know.” I fished my own pen out of my purse and chewed on it. “We should keep looking through the police report. Now that we have some idea of what happened here, maybe information will jump out and make everything fall into place.”
The office’s computer screen had gone to a screensaver of a steaming mug. Kendall jiggled the mouse to return to the police report. We resumed reading, and after a moment I told Kendall to just skim. We’d look for anything related to her blast radius theory, then go back and comb for details later if nothing panned out.
Toward the bottom of the enormous document, a list of evidence exhibits appeared. Exhibit A was a series of photographs of the building exterior. Exhibit B showed pictures of the bodies recovered at the crime scene and surrounding area. My stomach turned as I looked on the faces of death, men and women struck down by my former family.
Halfway through the photos, something caught my attention. “Scroll back up,” I told Kendall. She obeyed. The picture I’d noticed came back into view, and I slammed my hand down on the mouse, stopping Kendall’s progress.
A corpse stared out at me, dead eyes open and unseeing. She lay sprawled on her back, her mouth open, her face twisted in a rictus of pain. A short braid of brown hair pooled limply beside her head. Grey irises. Angular nose. Cheeks soft and full.
It was the girl from the vision I’d seen in the dead boy’s magic. The one who’d been like him and me. The one with the enchantment tattoo around her heart.
“Do a search,” I tried to say. My voice croaked. I cleared it and managed to produce audible words. “Do a search for the bodies’ descriptions. For identifying features. See if any of them had a tattoo.”
Kendall obeyed, typing “tattoo” into the search function. No results came up. “What’s wrong?”
I stared at the corpse as horror spilled from my thoughts and flooded my body. The police wouldn’t have overlooked such an obvious and unique tattoo, nor forgotten to mention it in a report as detailed as this. That meant the girl no longer had it. Its magic had been released.
“It was her,” I whispered. “She was like me. She’s the weapon they used to do this.”
Kendall whirled the chair to stare at me. “What do you mean, she was like you?”
My hand rested over my heart, sheltering the thick enchantment tattoo there. “I never knew what Geralt meant to do with the magic he placed in me. But it’s this. He was preparing us for this.” My fingers gathered the fabric of my shirt, clenching into a shaking fist. “I’m a bomb. A bomb for killing Voids.”
Chapter 22
“WHAT DO YOU MEAN, you’re a bomb?” Desmond demanded. He, Harrow, and Veronica crowded behind the computer chair, glowering at me and Kendall. My best friend still straddled the chair, looking pale.
I pointed to the picture of the dead girl on the screen. “I saw her in the magic I took out of the dead boy. The one with the enchantment tattoo like mine. This girl had one, too, but the police don’t mention it. It’s gone. Geralt used it to flood the Void Union building with uncontrolled magic, killing everyone inside. That’s what made the other buildings catch fire–channeling that much magic overloaded them. Somehow this one instead dissipated that magic out into the city, making people sick.”
“That’s impossible,” snapped Harrow. “Voids are immune to magic.”
“Not completely,” I said. “Even the strongest among you can still be hurt by enchantments that reshape people’s bodies, like shifting charms. You might be immune to a disease, but if it’s suddenly infesting every cell of your body at once, it can still bring you down.”
“So Geralt is overloading Voids with magic?”
“Yes.” I swallowed, resisting the urge to trace my tattoo. “This girl’s body was found near one of the emergency exits to the building. My best guess is, the cult sneaks in, then somehow frees the magic trapped in the ... the host’s enchantment. Then that magic overloads the host, bursts out, and destroys everything nearby.”
“Bursts out,” Harrow said softly. “The girl who was the bomb for this attack. What happened to her? Did the stray magic kill her, too?”
I swallowed. “No. She died first. Before the others.”
He regarded me thoughtfully. “The boy whose body you found in the cemetery. You said he had overloaded himself with magic. Singed his nerves from the inside out. This was the same cause of death?”
His eyes seemed to be stripping away my flesh, trying to see into my deepest fears. I clasped my hands behind my back, not wanting him to see them tremble. “Essentially.” It was like saying a bullet to the head was essentially the same death as being shot ninety-seven times. The boy’s cause of death had been bad enough. I didn’t have it in me to recount the coroner’s report Kendall and I had found in the police document. The dead girl may have looked normal on the outside, but the inside of her body was unrecognizable as formerly human. There had been photos.
Desmond spoke up. “We can’t let the other Voids know about this.”
“Obviously not,” said Harrow. “The last thing I need is panic in the ranks. But there must be some way to use this information. Some way to protect ourselves against similar attacks. Enchantress, can the boy’s body in the morgue still do this?”
I bristled as he shifted back to calling me by my descriptor, but this was too important a topic to interrupt for an insult. “No. That enchantment has drained out of him, and the ones remaining on him don’t contain enough magic.”
“How close does Geralt have to be to detonate your enchantment?”
“Touching me. It’s possible to send small amounts of magic a short distance away to craft an enchantment, but activating an existing enchantment requires physical contact.” That, at least, was a relief. No fleshwriter could remotely blow me up. If I was going to die this way, I’d know it was coming.
Harrow took a thoughtful breath. “Can you craft defenses against this type of attack?”
“Shields and wards can fend off some magic, but they burn out under too much strain. One enchantress’s power can’t hold off the magic of dozens unleashed at once.”
“What if we had more of you?”
My eyebrows climbed. “Excuse me?”
