by M. L. Ryan
Alex grabbed my hand and navigated through the maze of tables toward an Asian-appearing fellow perched on a small stool in the center of the display. Xu stood as we approached, smiled, and inclined his head slightly in greeting.
He was a good three inches shorter than my five-foot-six inches, but what he lacked in height, he made up for in girth. His massive rolls of pale, corpulent flesh were reminiscent of a melting candle, and if not for the presence of his stubby legs, Xu would have been a dead ringer for Jabba the Hutt.
“He’s quite the looker, isn’t he?” Sebastian whispered.
I suppressed a giggle but Alex gave my hand a slight squeeze to remind me to ignore the sarcasm before he addressed our contact.
“Mr. Xu,” he began. “How nice to see you again.”
Alex didn’t really seem pleased. In fact, between the scowl on his face and tone in his voice, I could practically feel the animosity.
“I don’t believe I have had the privilege of making the acquaintance of your lovely companion,” Xu remarked obsequiously as he fingered a tray of beautiful black Tahitian pearls on the table next to him.
“No, you have not,” was Alex’s only reply.
They stared at each other for a moment and when Xu realized that that was the extent of our introduction, he waddled past us and picked up a strand of pearls.
“I set these aside just for you. I believe this is what you requested.”
“The quality appears to be excellent, as usual,” Alex said after he made a show of examining each pearl closely. “But I was looking for more conformity in size and shape.”
“Perhaps I have something more to your liking in the back.” Xu led us to the far end of the booth and began spreading out trays of pearls. “Of course, one can always be assured of satisfaction when dealing with me,” he responded emphatically, emphasizing the word ‘satisfaction’ while looking directly at my chest.
“I suppose, for him, that’s the only satisfaction he can expect from a woman. He is so obese he likely hasn’t seen his own penis in decades.”
I feigned a cough so I could disguise my laughter and I noticed a slight quiver of Alex’s lips as he, too, must have found Sebastian’s comment amusing. Ever the professional, however, Alex recovered himself quickly. “Let’s get down to business, shall we?”
Xu leaned in and lowered his voice while continuing the show of salesmanship. “The body is not in China,” he began. “Otto had it transported somewhere else.”
Alex frowned. “Transported? Where?”
Xu placed a few strands of pearls into a small paper bag before answering.
“It is likely that it was taken to one of Kashanian’s many residences throughout the world, but I was unable to determine which one.”
“Why would he take the body?” I blurted out. Both Alex and Xu looked at me as if they were surprised that I could actually speak, and I wondered if I was missing something obvious. Somewhat embarrassed, but not knowing exactly why, I pressed on in an attempt to appear knowledgeable about what one usually does with the remains of someone they have murdered. “Why not just leave it where it is?”
“I have no solid information, but speculation is that he is retaining it as a sort of trophy to commemorate his victory over the great Sebastian,” Xu said with a shrug and a nasty smile.
Alex and I stared at Xu, then glanced at each other. Sebastian had no comment about the possibility that his body was being displayed somewhere for Otto’s amusement, but I was appalled. Otto Kashanian must be one sick bastard. It was bad enough he had no problem murdering someone, but keeping the body as a souvenir was downright gruesome.
Alex frowned again. After a moment, he reached into his pocket and withdrew a large wad of hundred dollar bills, which he passed to Xu in exchange for the bag. He paused as if he had more to say, but finally just thanked Xu before we turned and left.
When we were a few aisles away, Sebastian finally let loose with a litany of invectives, some of which described things that I was sure were physically impossible, even for someone magically inclined.
Eventually, he calmed enough to limit his remarks to how he planned to even the score with Otto, all of which ended with Otto being dismembered, dead, or both.
Listening to Sebastian screaming was giving me a headache, so I tried to direct the conversation in a more constructive direction.
“So, if Xu’s information is correct, why would Otto transport the body out of the country?”
“I’m surprised he would go to so much trouble,” Alex replied. “At least we know why no one found a body where Sebastian was attacked.”
We walked around for a while, stopping at various booths in an attempt to look like actual buyers. Alex actually purchased a few additional strands of beads to complete the illusion and after about an hour, we left and made our way back to the car.
As Alex maneuvered the car out of the crowded parking lot, I pulled a strand of Xu’s pearls out of the bag for a closer look. “These are pretty, but I assume they aren’t really worth what you paid for them, right?”
Alex glanced over at the strand I was examining and smiled wryly. “That’s probably one- hundred dollars’ worth of mollusk spit for which I handed over ten thousand dollars. If his information is correct, it was worth the price.”
“Ten thousand dollars?” I sputtered. “He didn’t even know exactly where the body is located!”
Alex took one hand off the steering wheel, reached over, and took hold of mine. “If he had that information, I would have gladly given him much more. As it is, knowing that Otto plans to retain Sebastian’s body as a memento will help us to recover it.”
“And force that loathsome barbarian to watch while I rip out one of his eyes and feed it to a stray dog!”
I wasn’t really sure that a dog would eat someone’s eye, but I wasn’t about to argue the point with Sebastian. Instead, I settled for responding with a simple, “Ew.”
“That image disturbs you, my dear? You should be thankful I didn’t go with my first choice—cutting off his dick and fucking him with it.”
“Sebastian,” Alex chided. He could hear the tirade because he was still holding my hand. “That’s enough. It is reprehensible what Otto has done, but let’s try to focus on finding where he has your body. Besides, I am fairly certain that someone’s penis, once removed from their body, would be unsuitable for the task you intend.”
“Wow, Sebastian,” I muttered. “I had no idea you were such a bad ass.”
“Did you think I was the most feared Xyzok of the last century because of my acerbic wit?”
Truthfully, I hadn’t really thought about him in any way other than just being a pain in my butt. A somewhat amusing pain in my butt to be sure, but I never really considered that in his line of work, he must be damn tough.
“Uh, sorry. It’s just you always seem so, I don’t know, controlled, I suppose. It’s kind of shocking to hear you go off like that. And a little scary.”
“I apologize for frightening you. I am just outraged that scum like Kashanian would use my corporeal being in such a manner.”
“Keeping your body is quite unusual,” Alex agreed. “And fraught with a variety of logistical complications, I would imagine. But now we need to focus on figuring out where he has you stashed.”
The rest of the drive back to my place, Alex and Sebastian bounced ideas off one another and ultimately decided, once they researched all Kadashian’s known residences, they could narrow the options to the one or two most likely locations. Their criteria for what constituted a most likely location was a bit fuzzy to me, but they seemed certain there would be an obvious choice. After all, they did this kind of thing for a living, so they must know what they were doing. My unease was growing. After Sebastian’s venomous rant, it occurred to me that what had originally seemed like an adventure might be more dangerous than I had imagined.
~10~
As soon as we got back to the house, Alex booted up his laptop and got wo
rking on finding Otto’s hideouts. I watched over his shoulder as he used what seemed to be not completely legal backdoors to maneuver through the morass of records littered with aliases and false paper trails. He was already aware of one residence in Vanuatu and another in Iceland, but within a couple of hours, he identified an additional six places throughout the world that Otto called home.
While Alex embarked on the next phase of his sleuthing—trying to determine if any private jets traveled between Shenzhen to any of the eight places where Otto had homes on the day in question—I absentmindedly glanced at the list.
“What if Otto brought Sebastian’s body to your dimension, and he’s not at any of these places?” I wondered aloud.
Without looking away from the screen or slowing his astonishingly rapid typing on the keyboard, Alex responded matter-of-factly, “Luckily, a Coursodon body cannot be moved from one dimension to another. The lack of the magical core spirit renders the empty corporeal shell nontransferable. He would have to keep the body in the dimension where the deconvergence occurred.”
“How do you know that?” I said with obvious skepticism. “I thought this was the first time anyone had been deconverged.”
“This is the first time anyone has accomplished deconvergence in a controlled manner,” Sebastian explained. “Technically speaking, any time a Courso dies and his or her spiritual self separates from their body, deconvergence occurs. That’s how we know an empty body is not able to be transported.”
“So what happens if someone tried it? Is it like the body hits an invisible wall or something?”
“That’s more what happens if a human tries to cross. In this case, the empty Courso body disintegrates during the journey from one dimension to another.”
“So it’s not that it can’t move to the other dimension, it just can’t move intact to the other dimension,” I reasoned.
Alex, who had apparently deduced Sebastian’s comments from my responses, paused from his work and added, “That’s why we strongly believe Sebastian’s body is still in this dimension. Why would Kashanian go to all the trouble to commandeer the body to just obliterate it?”
That seemed a reasonable enough conclusion, but this whole business seemed so bizarre, I wasn’t sure if there was anything logical involved.
Alex continued to work into the evening, only slowing slightly when I brought him a sandwich for dinner. I kept myself busy with mundane tasks around the house. I wanted to go out and run some errands, but I had to stick around in case Alex needed to confer with Sebastian about something.
Around nine o’clock, after I had finished organizing my sock drawer, I went into the living room to check on Alex’s progress. He wasn’t at the computer, and a mere glance here and there made it clear he wasn’t inside at all.
I went to the sliding glass door and looked out. Even without turning on the light, the patio was nicely illuminated by the almost full moon and I could see Alex out there, leaning on the short adobe wall that surrounded the flagstone porch. His head was thrown back and his eyes were closed—he looked relaxed.
I grabbed a sweater and stepped outside as quietly as possible, not wanting to startle him from his serene pose.
Without moving, he acknowledged my presence with a soft, “It’s such a beautiful night, I thought I’d take a break out here.”
It was beautiful, albeit a bit chilly for my taste, even with the added layer.
“You want some company?”
Alex turned around and treated me to one of his mega-smiles. “Sure. No sense wasting all this on just me.”
As I moved to stand next to him, he resumed his former stance. “You know, you kind of look like you’re basking in the sun right now.”
He opened his eyes and turned to look at me. “That’s an apt analogy,” he replied with a small laugh. “We get our vitamin D through moonlight, so I was making good use of the clear skies and the favorable lunar phase.”
I thought about that for a minute, trying to reconcile my knowledge of human physiology with this new tidbit. “So does sunlight stimulate production of too much vitamin D for you?”
“Partly, but also synthesis of our vitamin D doesn’t require ultraviolet wavelengths. Before the advent of sunscreen with high SPFs, we were forced to cover ourselves during daylight hours to prevent sunburn.”
I stared at him for a moment. “You seem so human, but there’s obviously so much that’s different between us. I’d love to get a look at a Coursodon physiology textbook.”
“When I get a chance, I will try and locate such a book and you can research whatever you like. But it will all be written in Courso, so I guess it won’t really be that useful to you.”
“Can’t I just surf the net?”
“Our Internet can’t be accessed from this dimension, nor can yours from ours. The same with other means of communication, like cell phones.” He paused for a moment in thought. “I suppose that someone very clever could figure out a way to bridge the dimensions, but compared to your human advances in such areas, ours are rather primitive. The Coursodon tend to shy away from technology in favor of magic.”
I shook my head. “There it is again. It makes sense that another dimension would have a separate Internet not accessible to us. I just never considered all the possible ramifications of the existence of more than one world. I couldn’t figure it all out even if I spent the rest of my life researching.”
As my last comment left my lips, I remembered that humans weren’t really supposed to know about the Coursodon and the other dimension. In an attempt to assure Alex that the secret was safe with me, I quickly added, “Of course, whatever I know will only be for my benefit. I would never tell anyone about you.”
Alex turned to face me and said, “I am quite certain that you would not betray our trust.” Then his serious expression gave way to a small, teasing smile and he added, “Besides, I can always erase your memory after all this is over.”
“Erase my memory?” I said quietly. “You can do that?”
He laughed and put his arm around my shoulder. “Don’t worry, Hailey. I could do it, but I wouldn’t.”
I looked up at him with some skepticism, but upon further consideration, I figured if he was planning on something that dastardly, he certainly wouldn’t tell me about it before hand.
“You know,” I said teasingly, trying to lighten the mood a bit, “between the moonlight and your ability to alter someone’s mind, you could be a vampire.”
“It’s interesting that you should make that association. We believe that many of the legends about vampires, werewolves, and various other supernatural creatures are actually tales of interactions between humans and Courso. Particularly because until relatively recently, the only Coursodon that made their way to this world were the dregs of our society. We are stronger and faster than humans are, and all our senses, with the exception of taste, are much more acute than yours. It is also possible for some of us to alter our appearance. Three or four hundred years ago, if you saw someone with magical abilities that was also capable of great violence, you would create stories of all sorts of nasty monsters to explain it.”
“Courso can change themselves into animals?”
“Not everyone. It takes a tremendous amount of energy and focus, so it’s not something that can be easily achieved. Even those with extremely well developed magical ability can accomplish form change for only short periods of time. And it takes a long time to recover.”
I tried to imagine fiendish Coursodon, exiled to our world, satisfying their vicious, antisocial tendencies in ways that would evolve into tales of people transforming into wolves or feasting on human blood.
I quickly abandoned this grisly train of thought and realized that Alex’s arm was still draped across my shoulders. Even though my logical self was kind of enjoying the close proximity, the inner, irrational me was freaking out at the prospect of this going any further.
Unfortunately, freaked Hailey won out and I slipped out fro
m under his arm and plunked down in a chair. Rational Hailey thought it was a fairly slick move, but apparently, it didn’t fool Alex.
He looked at me thoughtfully for a minute or so, and then sat down in the chair next to mine.
“I know I’ve insinuated myself into your life because of very unusual circumstances, but I get the feeling that you don’t completely trust me. Maybe we haven’t known each other long enough for me to have earned your trust, but I want that more than you can imagine.”
I peered out into the desert that surrounded the house, noting the shadows of the saguaro cactus being cast by the moonlight. I briefly considered trying to avoid the conversation by fleeing into the spiny forest, but I figured it was time to woman-up and explain my wariness.
“It’s not that I don’t trust you,” I began softly. “I have a problem trusting men in general.”
“You want to tell me about it?
I definitely did not want to discuss my neuroses, but I figured he deserved an explanation and if I didn’t tell him, he could just ask Rachel why I seemed so twitchy when it came to the opposite sex.
I let out a huge breath and while continuing to focus on the shadowy landscape before me, I began my tale of woe.
“I was married for almost a year. Kyle and I met while I was finishing grad school and he was in law school. I thought he was the perfect man—handsome, intelligent—and I was amazed that he was interested in me. We were both busy with school but we dated for six months before we decided we couldn’t live without each other and eloped. I thought everything was great until a new technician started working in the lab where I was getting my masters. On her first day, everyone in the lab was sitting around waiting for a meeting to start and she started talking about her law- student boyfriend. As she waxed poetically about his fabulousness, it became apparent that her boyfriend was my husband. I hadn’t taken his last name, so there was no way she would have known and she kept going on and on about Kyle this and Kyle that.
