Divine Knight

by Michelle L. Levigne

  Ethan found it interesting that the records stating what those characteristics of the case were had been closed. It was interesting, and almost piqued his interest, because he had access to federal records and files that many people working for that agency couldn't get into. What had Stanzer been involved in, besides helping to take down a notorious crime figure? Other than that blip on the radar last summer, Stanzer worked quietly, with a reputation for being discrete and reliable, and refusing to take salacious cases. Ethan could respect a man like that. He had been like Stanzer once, trying to stay clean, honorable, helping only the helpless and downtrodden and abused.

  But long ago--he wasn't sure how long ago it was now--he had developed a need for intricate, tangled, dark cases to keep his mind occupied. Every step into the darkness brought him a little more silence, a little more numbing. The light had color and movement and whispers. The light brought dreams that he couldn't remember when he woke, but his pillow was always damp with tears. Ethan chose to walk away from the questions that frustrated him, and sometimes laughed at the irony that he was afraid of his own mysteries.

  So because John Stanzer was the kind of man he sometimes wished he had remained, and because mysterious, esoteric books were a welcome relief from the usual cast list of embezzlers and kidnappers, blackmailers, frauds, and adulterers, Ethan was ready to take the case. He had a momentary spring in his step as he signed for the package, gave the courier a tip, and walked back to his desk.

  Neighborlee, Ohio? Where was that? Ethan frowned for a few moments at the return address on the label. He had been to every major city from New York to New Orleans, to Los Angeles and Anchorage, and to all the states in between. He had never heard of Neighborlee.

  A chill he hadn't felt in years settled into his spine as he flipped through two atlases, then three road maps, then finally turned to the Internet. Why couldn't he find Neighborlee? Why was it suddenly so important to pinpoint the town's location? It wasn't like he would go there when he found the books. Stanzer had already said he would come pick them up.

  Ethan sat back, feeling that chill embed itself more deeply and stretch out tentacles from his spine into his gut and his scalp, when his computer slowed down in the search for Neighborlee on the Internet. That didn't make sense. He had access to the fastest search engines available. Even search engines that the ordinary researcher didn't know existed. He should have his answers already on the screen in front of him, or the screen should give him a message that his request could not be answered, did he possibly mean something with a similar spelling?

  The hourglass indicating "searching, please wait" kept turning over and over. He watched the indicator on his email box rack up three more items before the screen finally went white, then slowly scrolled down through his options.

  Most of the offerings were online articles posted by the local newspaper, the Neighborlee Tattler. Well, that was a good sign. A place big enough to have its own newspaper wasn't a ghost town or an illusion or a fake name on a false address. Sitting back and going the roundabout path, ignoring the wild goose and creating his own chase, had always yielded more and better results than the standard investigative pattern. Ethan opened up the web site for the Neighborlee Tattler, and was pleased to see one offering on the front page was access to their archives. A little more information on John Stanzer would be helpful.

  An hour later, he had found several pictures of Stanzer from local events. He was involved in the Neighborlee Children's Home as a big brother, as well as acting in dramatic productions at a local church. An article eight years old introduced him to the community when he opened up business there. Another article discussed his involvement with the local historical society when he bought and restored an old building and turned it into apartments in the middle of town.

  "Well, well, you've had a few profitable years, haven't you?" Ethan murmured. He found it amusing that he hoped Stanzer had made his money by staying on the straight and narrow, instead of succumbing to the usual temptation that faced private investigators--profiting from the very crimes they were being paid to either prevent or solve.

  When he had read everything he could find on Stanzer, Ethan gave himself half an hour to investigate the town, mostly through the newspaper's articles. He saved the Chamber of Commerce web site for last, because that was the face the local businesses and organizations wanted to present, which didn't necessarily mean it was the real, honest face of the town. Of course, that didn't meant it was a false face, either.

  He skimmed over information on the local college, the sports and academic honors for the Neighborlee School District, the local Metroparks, and crime statistics. It wasn't exactly Mayberry, but Neighborlee came across as a quiet, friendly little town where people knew each other and ice cream trucks still patrolled the neighborhoods and children could walk to the playground in the evening without their parents worrying. The peacefulness of the town made Ethan wonder exactly why John Stanzer had set up shop as a P.I. there. Unless it was the fact that there were no private investigators there until he showed up.

  Ethan clicked on the Chamber of Commerce site and scrolled down the index, waiting for any business names or organizations that caught his attention. His instincts were always reliable, picking up and focusing on things that didn't make sense until he started investigating. A shimmer of light, a sudden stream of dust motes in the sunlight, dragged his attention back to a button and a name--

  His phone rang. Ethan snatched it up, his throat clenching in preparation for barking at whoever interrupted him.

  No one there.

  He put the receiver down slowly, wondering where that flash of fury had come from. He glanced at the clock in the corner of the monitor, and then at his inbox. Four more emails since he started reading about Neighborlee. He would give himself fifteen more minutes to soak up background before he opened Stanzer's packet. And then he'd check his email.

  Another stream of dust motes drew his attention back to a button on the Chamber's web site. Ethan's hand trembled as he extended his finger to right-click the button. A whisper of high, childish, chiming laughter tickled his ears. He sat back, taking his hand off the mouse, and wiped both suddenly sweaty hands on the legs of his jeans. His office was on the eighth floor of the twenty-story office building and none of the businesses on his floor or the floors above or below him catered to children. So where had that laughter come from?

  Chapter Four

  Ethan rested his hand on the mouse again and clicked on the button on the screen before he read it. A Victorian house done in gold and olive appeared on the screen.

  "Stop wasting time," he snarled at himself, and his hand slid the mouse up to the red "x" in the corner of the screen, shutting down the page before it finished loading. Ethan cleared out of the search results screen and clicked on his email.

  Ten emails waited for him. All were junk mail, in a language he didn't even understand. Some of the symbols looked like they were a foreign alphabet, but he could recognize Chinese, Arabic, and Cyrillic, and these symbols didn't even faintly resemble those alphabets. A flicker of anticipation, the pleasure he used to have in doing enormous, complicated jigsaw puzzles, washed over him. He reached to click the mouse button to open the first.

  More dust motes danced across his eyes. Instead of that high, childish laughter, he heard whispers. No distinct words, but the urgency in those voices made him shudder and sit back and rub at his temples, wondering what was wrong with him all of a sudden.

  Hadn't he been worried about the time he had been wasting, just a minute ago? Why was it suddenly so important to open those junk mails and figure out what language they were in?

  Ethan's gaze fell on the courier envelope, still unopened, sitting on top of his unnaturally clean desk pad. He had work to do, paying work, and that was what he should concentrate on. With resolute motions, he marked all the junk mails and deleted them, then closed down his email and got off the Internet. Time to check that courier packet.

>   Just a few seconds of glancing through the contents of the packet gave him an even clearer image of the other investigator as a man who thought clearly and knew how to organize. Stanzer had known what he was doing when he put together the information for Ethan. He started by stating the owner of the books hadn't filed a police report because of the esoteric and secretive nature of the books, the fact that she couldn't file an insurance claim because she had no proof that she had ever had custody of the books, and that no one was supposed to even know she had the books.

  Stanzer's report on exactly how the thieves had dismantled the security system was sketchy. Ethan didn't like that. It went against the mental picture and file of information he had already assembled on Stanzer. He found it interesting, and very telling about the value of the items stolen, when he read how the thieves had shoved the owner out a third story window. She had hung from the sill, so the other people in the building were focused on bringing her back to safety, leaving the thieves to make their escape unhindered. Stanzer included information on the books that had been dropped during the escape, as well as photos and descriptions of contents and the titles of the books that had been stolen. Some of the books didn't have titles--none written on their spines or covers. They could only be identified by the diagrams drawn and dyed or cut into their ancient leather and wood covers.

  Ethan felt that prickle of unease travel his back and up into his scalp as he studied the photos of the stolen books. The images were grainy, as if they had been captured in low light and enhanced. Or maybe they were low resolution to begin with, and blown up. Or they had been taken from surveillance camera footage. As soon as he rolled that theory around in his mind, Ethan knew that was the answer.

  So why didn't the owner have photos of the books already in her files, if they were so valuable?

  "The easy answer is that the contents of the books are so dangerous, Angela didn't even want to have photos of them lying around," Stanzer said later that day. Ethan had called and left a message for him with a list of questions, then the other investigator had to call back.

  "Dangerous how? Dust containing anthrax? Samples of the bubonic plague?" He choked back the next words that wanted to come out, realizing half a second before that he was about to say "evil magic spells."

  "These books belonged to some pretty nasty people in the past," Stanzer said slowly, making Ethan think he knew the whole story and was editing as he went along. He could respect that--he had done the same for his clients, who had trusted him with treacherous information but depended on him to protect them. "Combine the Borgias and Vlad the Impaler with the worst movie sorcerers... "

  "Sorcerers? Come on--you can find all kinds of nasty spell books in any New Age shop. Just because people believe in it doesn't mean it's real." Ethan put his feet up on his desk and frowned at the sudden shifting in the shadows of his office. That didn't make sense--the shades were down, blocking out the noonday sunshine altogether.

  "Yeah, well, mixed in with all the spells and curses and mumbo jumbo, there's some pretty nasty real stuff. Poison, stuff that makes modern chemical warfare seem like pepper spray. Know what I mean?"

  "Okay. I get what you're trying not to say." Not quite, but Ethan was used to playing word games to protect his clients. He found it interesting that Stanzer's client--whoever this Angela was--worried more about what someone would learn from the books than about the value of the books themselves as antiques. Then again, the contents might have historical value, maybe even damaging historical impact. Like a document proving a royal pedigree was false, or a hero had been at home on the day of his career-making battle, or that Hitler hadn't committed suicide and he was living in Brooklyn with Eva and doting on twenty great-grandchildren.

  When he got off the phone, Ethan had a plan of action roughed out in his head. He wouldn't look for the books themselves. They wouldn't be on the market. He agreed with Stanzer and Angela's fear that the books had been stolen for a specific purpose, for a specific person. Stanzer's description of Angela's security precautions and the setup of her library confirmed that the average cat burglar or drug addict thief wouldn't have been able to find those books in the first place. Only someone who knew the books existed and that Angela had them could imagine the security precautions to be circumvented, and where they might be hidden.

  That meant Ethan would start his search by looking for the people who wanted those books. His trips into the darkness had netted him contacts and sources of information and networks that people went to when they were in the market for the strange and dangerous. The people who wanted Angela's books wouldn't do the stealing--they would hire professionals. Ethan would go to the marketplace where those professionals communicated with prospective clients. If his theory was correct--and he usually was--he had a narrow window of opportunity to catch the communication between the thieves and their clients, announcing the job had been done, and making arrangements where to meet to exchange the stolen goods.

  * * * *

  "We might have them." Stanzer came bombing through the front door of Divine's Emporium just before closing, a week after the break-in.

  "Who? The thieves or their boss?" Maurice swooped in from the front room to meet him. He settled on a shoulder and held onto his collar as Stanzer hurried into the front room.

  "We think the thieves." He grinned and wiped sweat off his forehead.

  "But?" Angela said. She nudged the Wishing Ball a half-inch to the left. "And who is 'we'?"

  "Another P.I. I'm working with. Ethan Jarrod. He has quite a rep for finding the un-findable. People, things, doesn't matter." Stanzer hooked one of the tall stools tucked against the wall with his foot and dragged it over to the counter, to sit down. "He's setting up a meet with them very late tonight. Well, almost tomorrow morning. If I leave in the next hour, I'll get there just in time."

  "And do what?" Maurice wanted to know. He hopped down off Stanzer's shoulder and onto the counter. "Beat a confession out of them?"

  "Mostly likely you'll be able to scare a confession from them, if they stole the books for someone else, and they get a glimpse of what's under the disguise," Angela mused.

  "Hey, Angie? You're getting kind of scary."

  "Maybe I should have been scary sooner." She shook her head and offered them both a flicker of a smile.

  "Whoever wanted those books, they're up to no good. They know enough to work around your safeguards," Stanzer said. "You think maybe it's the same people who blackmailed Troy last year, to steal that book?"

  "That's what I hope we find out. And I hope it's not the same person."

  "Why?" Maurice jumped up, fluttering his wings to hover for a few seconds before landing on the top of the old-fashioned brass cash register. "It just means we have more enemies here."

  "True, but the book that our enemy tried to steal last year is of a very different type than the ones that were stolen last week. Different implications. I would much rather it be two different people, two different forces, than one enemy able to reach in different directions and dimensions."

  "Makes sense. Kind of like Gahlmorag turning out to be that thing Lanie ran into, year before last." Stanzer's face grew more somber.

  "Gal--who?" Maurice said.

  "Galactic despot who gobbles up planets by enslaving the ruling families. It's a bonus if he can enslave people with talents. That's why Dandova and I are here, instead of in our home world."

  Maurice whistled softly, getting a wider, deeper glimpse into what Stanzer and Dawn were up against. His friend didn't slip up very often and use Dawn's real name, not even in front of friends who knew their story. Trying to think of Gahlmorag already being on Earth and causing trouble in Neighborlee for years shook him up.

  "Anyway, I thought it might be smart to get some insurance," Stanzer continued, and thumped his fist on the counter for punctuation. "Want to come along?"

  "Oh... I'd like to, but I don't want to leave the shop alone," Angela said. "Not when those thieves left behind so ma
ny books. Whoever hired them might send someone else back."

  "I'll go," Maurice said, resisting the urge to jump up and down, waving his arms. This was too serious for his usual foolery. "Hey, I'm small but mighty. And I haven't used much magic at all today. Got lots of ammo, just in case."

  "Maurice, would you?" She leaned closer to the cash register, bracing her arms on the counter. "I would appreciate it immensely."

  "Anything for you, Angie-baby."

  * * * *

  Maurice decided Stanzer had a nasty joker streak that he didn't get to show very often in his line of work. For the first hour of their drive to the New York border, they earned quite a few odd looks from people passing them on the highway, who saw Stanzer talking and laughing with apparently no one in the car with him. Each time, Stanzer turned his head and maintained eye contact with the passing drivers or their passengers, his face wide-eyed and innocent. The mask cracked as soon as the other car sped away, and he and Maurice laughed, sometimes so hard the car swerved in the lane.

  Half an hour from the Pennsylvania-New York line, they turned off the highway to get burgers and coffee. Stanzer suggested they actually go in and sit down to eat, and made a wager on how long it would take someone to notice the half a burger hovering a few inches off the table, slowly vanishing as Maurice ate it. For a few seconds, Maurice considered taking him up on it. He liked how the P.I. thought.

  "How are we doing for time?" he asked instead, and choked a moment later when it occurred to him that he was acting a lot more responsible and mature than usual. Maybe it was the mystery facing Angela, or maybe it was the growing pressure of wondering what he and Holly were going to do when his exile ended and he regained his normal size and magic levels.