by Sarah Biglow
“He fought back. It looks like he may have even gotten a piece of his attacker,” I pointed out, keeping Preston’s hand aloft until Tricia returned with an evidence bag to collect the chips and swab the dead boy’s fingers.
Jacquie nudged my knee with the toe of her boot and I stood up to join her. “We may have access to some surveillance cameras,” she said.
“I noticed. But if this is the same killer, and I have to believe it is, they’d have known that. They’d have done whatever the hell they did before to mess with the footage.”
“And the killer is escalating. It’s barely been twenty-four hours since the last body dropped. There were at least two days between Altagracia and Edwin.”
“They’re getting impatient,” I said. I held my tongue about the fact that the Equinox was rapidly approaching.
“That they are.” She turned to Tricia. “Whatever you can get us on forensics as fast as you can would be appreciated.”
“Got it,” Tricia said with a mock salute that Jacquie didn’t catch. I jotted down some additional notes in my notepad like Preston’s address—I was not looking forward to another notification—and that I’d sensed the same magic at the scene.
I scanned the people walking by, hoping something would jump out at me. The ones who were stopping by the crime scene expressed only mild interest before being ushered along by uniformed officers. No one obvious stood out as watching and relishing the scene. And it was all well and good that I could pick up on a magical signature, but it meant nothing if I didn’t have a person to connect it to. I was about to see if I could latch on to the magic in the area—it was widespread enough that it practically blanketed the length of sidewalk where Preston’s body lay—when another fiery figure appeared not twenty paces from me.
Jacquie’s back was to her and Tricia was too busy finishing up examining Preston’s corpse to notice. As nonchalantly as I could manage, I closed the distance. The woman’s eyes were hollow and her hair was coal black. Her clothes looked similar to those worn by the woman I’d seen disappear at the Cho scene.
“Who are you? What are you doing here?” I hissed.
She smiled, withered lips pulling back into a vile grin full of missing and decayed teeth. The same harsh, choking scent of burning flesh and ash clogged up my nostrils and I coughed to try to get much needed air to my lungs. I was close enough to notice the thick rope burns circling her throat. She lifted her right hand, pointing the index finger straight at my chest. Despite not having eyes, I swear she gave me an accusatory glare. The pendant beneath my jacket warmed against my breastbone, as if to protect me from her taunt.
She opened her mouth and a rattling laugh burbled from her chest. No one seemed to take notice of the figure and then, just as before, she vanished. The painful timbre of her laugh still grated on my eardrums and I was certain they were bleeding from the noise. But having gotten this close, I had some idea of who the woman may have been. A faded memory of learning about practitioners strong enough to rise from the grave floated to the surface.
Her smoky signature still clung to my nasal passages and I had to take a second hit of the sandalwood to get myself oriented again. Even with her scent gone, things were a little hazy. The limestone and garlic hung heavy in the air as they had before, but the world felt off kilter.
Streetlights finally came on along the road as the last vestiges of sunlight disappeared. I watched people passing through the small pools of orange light and my brain latched on to a thought from earlier. There should be enough magic here to let me track the killers.
Yes, leaving the scene was risky. I’d have to come up with an excuse to tell Jacquie, but it was the only real lead I had. I focused on the limestone and let it gather around me. I had to keep my own powers in check so that they didn’t overwhelm what I was trying to find. Finally, a silvery shimmer manifested, one end settling over Preston’s torso, the other disappearing off into the city streets. I took off and followed after it.
I ducked under the crime scene tape and settled into a jog, letting the magic lead me north along Berkeley Street. For a moment, it looked as if the killer had tried to duck down a side street half a block away, but the magic veered back the other way, heading straight past the looming sign of a department store and Panera Bread. Before I realized it, I hit Boylston and skidded to a stop.
The main thoroughfare was teeming with pedestrians and several of them stopped to stare at me. In my mad dash more chunks of hair had come loose and I could feel my chest rising and falling more quickly from the exertion. Blocking all of that out, I zeroed in on the killer’s signature again, this time hanging a right and making a beeline for the Public Gardens, not far from where Jacquie and I had sat eating dinner a few short hours ago. I kept running until I hit the Common, the shimmer of magic vanishing as quickly as it had manifested to me.
I skidded to a halt not far from the inbound Boylston T station. I could hear the screech of the trains coming into the station from here. Barren trees lined the stretches of the Common to my left. How far back had I actually lost the scent? I spun in a slow circle trying to remember or pick up another trace, but it was gone.
My phone buzzed in my jacket pocket and I yanked it out to see my partner’s name flash across the screen with an incoming call. My throat went dry as the line buzzed again, waiting for me to answer. I knew she was going to ask where I’d run off to and I still hadn’t come up with an excuse. I couldn’t just ignore her call. “Hey, partner,” I greeted, hoping my nerves didn’t come through.
“Where the hell did you go? One of the uniforms saw you just take off.”
Time to bend the truth. “I thought I saw someone loitering nearby, watching the scene. But when I started over they took off and I followed.” I was about to add that I’d identified myself as police, but there didn’t seem to be the need to build things up that far yet.
“Did you catch them?”
“No.” At least that was the whole truth.
“Make sure you note it in your report. Get back to the scene. We need to head back to the precinct.”
“Why?”
“Just get back here.” The line went dead.
I stowed my phone and retraced my steps. I passed the Gardens and caught a whiff of damp limestone but I knew if I followed up on it now, I’d get more of an earful from Jacquie for disobeying a superior officer. She could escalate it to the captain if she wanted to jam me up. I made a mental note and went another block on Boylston before turning left on Berkeley. I could see the medical examiner’s van pulling away from the scene as I arrived. Jacquie was in the driver seat of the car, seatbelt on and ready to leave. Squaring my shoulders, I marched over to the passenger side door and climbed in.
“So why do we have to get back to the precinct?” I asked as Jacquie pulled into the flow of traffic.
“You want to tell me why you went chasing after a suspect without letting me know first?”
I opened my mouth but words failed me. I wanted to say, “Because I was following a magical lead that you wouldn’t understand,” but knew I couldn’t. So I went with, “I didn’t want them to get away. We have so little on these cases as it is. I just reacted. I guess I wasn’t thinking.”
She took her eyes off the road and our gazes met. I shrunk back against the seat under her disappointed demeanor. “That’s right, you didn’t think. That kind of shit gets you killed in this job. I thought you knew that.”
“I do. It won’t happen again.”
“It better not. And I meant what I said. If you aren’t cut out for this, you have to tell me. This case is bigger than we imagined and I can’t have you running off putting things in jeopardy. Not with so many people dying.”
“I get it. I screwed up and you don’t want me messing with making the biggest bust of your career. I’m not some child you have to babysit.”
“Then stop acting like it.”
I bit down hard on my tongue to keep from snapping back at her. She must have
felt the same because the rest of the trip back to the precinct was silent. Tension crawled all over my body. Magic was threatening to ruin this part of my life too.
As I sat down to write my report on Preston’s scene, I thought again about whether it would be easier to just bring a non-practitioner into the fold, etiquette and experience be damned. But the way Jacquie avoided eye contact with me batted that idea down. She was mad at me now and telling her the truth would only end poorly.
By the time I finished my report and looked at the clock, my shift was over. Jacquie was nowhere to be seen. I heaved a small sigh of relief as I made my way out to my car and back home.
Despite the clock reading nearly midnight, the moment I crossed the threshold into my apartment, my energy level jumped. I should have been tired, but every nerve in my body was firing at once, telling me that there was work to be done. I had video footage to extract, but there was something else about the murders that bugged me.
The locations had all been very public—too public if you didn’t have magic to conceal your crimes. The victims still felt random but maybe the places were the key. I decided handling the video footage was the best option now. If we could put a face to our killers then maybe location didn’t matter. Changing into sweatpants and a T-shirt, I climbed onto the couch, laptop propped against my knees. I opened up my work email and found the files from Vinnie. Dragging a copy of each video onto the desktop, I opened Mr. Cho’s video and let the world fall away.
As I’d done at the precinct, I started the video a few seconds before it went black. I pressed my fingers to the screen—thankful for once I didn’t have a touch screen—and released a fraction of my magic into the device, letting it seek out the dark spell holding the footage hostage. It took more digging than the last time, but I finally found it.
“Give it up,” I grunted through clenched teeth.
The reek of garlic choked me, but I fought back. Unafraid of attracting the wrong attention, I let out a burst of power and soon all I could smell was strawberry. I closed my eyes, imagining the video’s pixels were tangible things I could touch. In my mind’s eye, I could see them, tethered together and oozing black with the killer’s accomplice’s spell. I reached out toward the darkness and my hands came away covered in viscous fluid giving off a mix of fresh tar and mulch. Thick vines of dark magic slithered around the hidden images. I felt my fingers curl around the first vine and I pulled as hard as I could. Sharp pinpricks of pain shot through my fingertips and I bit my lower lip to keep from letting the pain get to me. I willed my hands to become hard as stone and impervious to penetration. Slowly, the skin on the palms of my hands and the pads of my fingers turned rough and thick. The vine wiggled beneath my grasp, but it was no longer able to lash out at me. Pulling power from around me, I strengthened my grip and my arm muscles and pulled the vine free, flinging it off into the ether. As soon as it disappeared, the blackness covering the frame vanished, giving me a clear glimpse. But it was out of order and this close up it meant nothing.
I couldn’t worry about the order now. There were too many frames to free and even with my magical endurance built up I knew the task ahead of me was going to drain me. After the first vine was freed, the others clung even tighter, giving me no other choice than to fight even harder to get them off.
After what felt like hours, I’d only freed a small fraction of the infected video file. My arms grew heavy with exertion—even fueled by extra magic to keep me going—and my hands ached from all of the pulling. Maybe it was exhaustion setting in, but I never sensed the dark spell caster’s presence until thick vines slithered up my body, choking the air from my lungs and compressing my chest.
Another loop circled my throat, violently crushing my windpipe. I could feel my eyes throbbing in their sockets. My brain said to give up and preserve what little air I had left to breathe. It told me that if I didn’t struggle, it would be over sooner.
I promptly told my brain to fuck off. I wasn’t going to be killed by a computer virus turned sentient. As best I could, I took in one big breath and held it. Black spots popped in my vision, but I ignored them. Instead, I turned my thoughts to changing the way my body was constructed. All magic is the manipulation of molecules and the vines would have a much harder time keeping hold of me if I wasn’t solid. One moment I was a flesh and blood human being, the next I was simply light, filling the space in my mind’s eye with brightness.
The vines withered on contact and, even though I didn’t have a corporeal form in that instant, I smiled. The presence of my adversary sharpened into the shadow of a person. I couldn’t make out a face—they weren’t that stupid—but it was a generally male shaped figure. Just as I’d suspected.
“You want to go, asshole? Let’s go!” My voice bounced from every angle in the space.
I directed the parts of me that used to be hands toward the figure’s shadowy face, fingers materializing enough to claw out his eyes. He vanished before I could reach him.
“You are more formidable than we thought,” a voice sneered. It could have been anyone or a group of someones speaking in unison.
“Your first mistake was assuming you knew me,” I replied.
“We will see. But even your blood can’t save you in the end,” the voice spat.
The figure disappeared completely and the voice faded. I stayed as particles of light for a while longer, but nothing else came to attack me.
The world around me slipped out of view and, before I knew it, I was back in my apartment, the laptop dangling precariously from my lap. I set it down and surveyed the space around me. I swallowed and cringed, my muscles sore as if someone really had been squeezing the life out of me. I examined my chest and felt what could be welts ringing my torso. My fingers ached and I spotted smears of blood on the screen of my computer and my index fingers on both hands were stained crimson.
Great.
I took a few minutes to let my body adjust to being back in the real world and in one piece before I went to wipe the blood from the computer. I had used my abilities plenty of times to stop bad guys in the last five years, but I’d never flat out fought someone with power. That had never been what my parents had taught me. Maybe if the Authority hadn’t given me the middle finger all those years ago I would have learned what it felt like to fight someone else who was evenly matched in magical ability.
Time to see whether I’d actually made any real progress. The video file was still mostly black, but there were slivers of video where none had been before. I stared, expecting them to vanish now that I wasn’t magically in contact with the file, but they remained. I’d managed to actually make some progress. Too bad it had kicked my ass.
I staggered to the bathroom and checked myself out in the mirror. There was a small bruise wreathing my throat and deep purple bruises were already forming around my ribs. I could cover my throat with concealer and I’d just have to be careful moving around. I popped a few aspirin for the pain. Some people could do amazing things with healing magic, but I wasn’t one of them.
Minor, mundane cuts I could handle. Wounds caused by magic were a different story. J.T. had been able to heal—or at least he was on his way to learning his birthright—but that was a long time ago. I’d done enough dredging up of the past for one day. Gingerly, I retreated to bed. I prayed tonight I could just fall into a dreamless void and sleep. At least tomorrow was my day off.
March 13, 2017
Eight
I almost got my wish. My head hit the pillow just after five in the morning and if I dreamed, I didn’t recall them. But I started awake as my phone skittered along the table beside my bed at half past eight. It was a precinct number and my heart leapt into my throat, throbbing painfully as I scrambled to answer.
“Detective Trenton,” I answered, my words still sluggish with sleep and my throat still aching from the fight only a few short hours ago.
“Sorry to call on your day off, Detective,” the dispatcher said. “But Captain Beech insist
ed you and Detective DeWitt report to the precinct this morning at nine thirty.”
I swallowed—it was less painful than when I went to bed—and blinked a few times, trying to shake the tiredness from my body. “Did she say what it’s about?”
“I’m afraid not, ma’am. That’s all I was told.”
“Thanks.” I ended the call and stared up at the ceiling, immobile. I really needed sleep and time to heal, but the captain would only have called us in if it was case related. So I crawled out of bed and took a lukewarm shower, wincing only a few times when the water pressure was too much for my battered body.
It was almost nine o’clock by the time I ended up in Monday morning traffic on Commonwealth Avenue. Working the second shift had its advantages. Generally avoiding rush hour was one of them. I kept an eye on the clock the entire trip. By the time I walked into the precinct my phone’s screen told me it was 9:27. Jacquie was sitting at her desk, staring intently at her computer screen. I was halfway to my desk when she swiveled to face me, her caramel-colored eyes looking nearly as sleep-deprived as mine.
“You look like shit, partner,” she said. Apparently, her anger had dissipated with a few hours of sleep. That or my bruises gave her some sense of sympathy.
A small weight lifted from my chest. “Thanks. Do you have any idea what’s going on?”
“Not sure. But we’ve got company in the conference room.” She hooked a thumb over her shoulder. The door was ajar and I could see people in blue jackets crowded around one end of the table. “She called in the Feds,” I whispered just as Captain Beech stepped from her office, waving us inside.
“We’ll find out,” Jacquie answered.
