“Her help is the only reason why she is still alive,” Lady McDeath said coolly, sidling up to me like a stray dog with a mean streak. “For her sake, I hope she will not try to dig deeper.”
My insides clenched at that. Knowing Kennedy, it was a safe bet to assume she would … I guessed I’d better ask Zian to keep an eye on her.
“If you’re so unhappy with me,” I snapped as I stomped back towards my bedroom, “maybe you should tell the Conclave to get a more discreet errand boy the next time things go bad.”
I threw myself on the bed, feeling very hard done by.
Lady McDeath stood over me with a look of disapproval on her face. “You don’t have the slightest idea how Alterum Mundum actually works, child. In the future, you would do well not to overstep your mandate.”
“Hmm,” I mumbled, closing my eyes.
Within seconds I was asleep. It was probably not the smartest thing I could have done in the presence of the embodiment of death on Earth, but after the last couple of days I was past caring if I ever woke up again.
***
As it happened, I did manage to wake up the next day, aroused from slumber by the buzzing of my smartphone. Feeling twice as stiff as I had done before, I managed to grab it from the nightstand and answer.
“Good morning, Mr. Vale,” a familiar British-accented voice greeted me. “I trust that you slept well.”
“I slept, Hermes,” I replied. “It’s kind of debatable whether I did it well.”
“Ah, no matter,” Hermes said. “I just wanted to congratulate you on the sucessful completion of your mission. The Conlave
is quite pleased with the rather neat way you resolved this matter.”
“Wasn’t what I was told when I woke yesterday,” I said.
“Ah, of course. Well, there were divergent opinions on your methods and level of discretion,” Hermes admitted with mirth in his voice. “Still, the resolution of this situation is undeniable. We should be safe from a similar occurrence happening at this site for another three millennia … perhaps ever again.”
“How do you even know any of that?” I asked. “Don’t tell me you’ve got a Conclave membership.”
“Not quite so, no,” Hermes said, and I swear I heard a smile in his voice. “Though what I do in my spare time, of course, is none of your business.”
“One thing I didn’t get,” I admitted. “Why did Mayor Galatas want to destroy her own city? She fed me some mumbo-jumbo about the cosmic balance or something, but it wasn’t clear.”
“That point has also been debated,” Hermes said. “But Zianyon may have found some sort of answer this morning, in the late mayor’s family tree. Did you know she was descended from none other than Ma’at of Egypt?”
I groaned. Ma’at was the goddess of justice, balance, and the natural order in Ancient Egypt. That would explain Madam Mayor’s weighing of the pros and cons of my existence upon our first meeting. I doubted that the line’s founding mother would have felt too warmly about bringing the Underworld to Earth, however.
“So why didn’t she conjure up some scarab beetles or something instead of calling He Who Rules Below?” I asked.
“Where did you hear that name?” Hermes asked in alarm.
“She told it to me right before she started prying open the gate,” I said, my curiosity waking me up a little. “Mean something to you?”
“Perhaps,” Hermes said. “If it is who I think it may be, that would explain much of her plan.”
“Which was …?”
“According to the data gleaned from her private journals,” Hermes told me, “she saw Cold City as existing out of balance with its constant tearing down of older structures and building newer ones. She therefore came to the conclusion that the only way to break the cycle was to tear the city down.”
“By opening a gate to the Underworld? That’s like trying to fry a wasp nest by setting off a nuke.”
“Agreed,” Hermes said. “My time as a psychopomp of souls in conjunction with my Uncle Hades taught me that much. Still, it made sense in her deranged mind and she seemed to think the ways of hekau she had knowledge of would be enough to contain the damage to the city limits.”
“Which it wouldn’t.”
“No … no, far from it.”
“Speaking of your uncle,” I resumed, as memories from last night came back to me, “he wouldn’t be the type of guy to walk about with a long-staffed bident, would he?”
Hermes chuckled in lieu of an answer. “You’ve managed to avert a rather singular catastrophe, Mr. Vale. Let’s keep it at that.”
“I didn’t do it alone. Zian was a key part of everything working out like it did. I’d thank him too.”
“As much paternal pride as I take in your praise, I would rather have had my son stay away, safe. I do have to ask yet again that you please try to avoid Zianyon’s company in the future.”
“Like I said before, Hermes,” I told him, “I don’t want to lie.”
“Mmm … well, in any case,” he continued, “I believe the time has come to make my exit. You’ve another call that you’ll want to take.”
No sooner had he hung up than the phone started ringing once more. It was Kennedy.
“Morning, partner,” I said into the phone.
“Morning?” Kennedy queried. “Try noon, hoss. You just now waking up?”
“Yeah,” I admitted. “That fight took a lot out of me.”
“Yeah,” Kennedy said, a little quieter. “I was afraid it’d taken everything out of you.” Then her voice brightened. “But I’ve got news. I broke the story on the mayor and her whole Orion Project to every major paper in town.”
“Doesn’t that kill the whole idea of an exclusive?”
“Not if you sell it to them first and don’t tell your boss at the TV station until after,” Kennedy told me. “Call me Lois Lane, would you ...”
“How’s it being received?”
“Thanks to us sticking to the details we could prove,” Kennedy said, “through the roof. Internet exclusives from the papers plus the story getting picked up by the Huffington Post, where it’s trending on an international basis. ‘Local Mayor loses it and blows up large chunks of her own town’—that’s media gold.”
“That can’t sit well with your bosses at Headliner,” I pointed out.
“Oh, if they could get away with it they’d have fired me the second they saw the story,” she said with more than a little glee. “But now they’re in a bidding war on who gets me first. I’ve got a lot of job offers that I’ll have to sort through by the end of the week.”
“You’re welcome,” I said, getting up.
“Yeah, well, seems like you owe me as much as I owe you. Or need I remind you who spent a long time patching you up?”
“Fair’s fair,” I agreed.
“So the next time something big like this is going down, you’ll put me in the loop?”
“Maybe,” I said, remembering Lady McDeath’s words.
We said goodbye to each other. I got up to give myself a very late breakfast, a shower, and a long-postponed shave.
***
The next day, I was feeling much better, especially knowing that Mrs. Thricin was safe. I’d sent her an email the day before telling her that I’d taken care of the problem. I admitted that I had no proof and would understand if she demanded a refund, but she needed to know that she could live her life again. The email I got back was poignant and to the point: “Thank you for everything, Mr. Vale. Expect another five hundred dollar check in a few days. PS Hope to see you at the grand reopening of the Cinema Leone.”
I sipped at a cup of green tea while I looked over Kennedy’s article. She had stuck to the research she and Zian had done at the offsite, detailing all of Mayor Galatas’ crooked dealings with Arete and her ties to the now missing Alonzo
Vitorini, a known crime figure. The wolf killings, the De Sotos, and Fairwinds went unmentioned for obvious reasons.
Homeland Security had found Her Honor dead at the Cinema Leone before she could face justice. The death was ruled a homicide but I doubted that anyone was going to do anything with it. I gave it three weeks before it slipped into the cold case pile.
In an update to Kennedy’s original article, Arete was now finding itself the subject of numerous city, state, and federal prosecutions. All the surviving corporate officers and shareholders were grabbing their lawyers with one hand and their guts with the other. I saw a lot of instances of Let’s Make A Deal in that company’s future. In the meantime, all its assets were frozen pending a full investigation. Ditto the further destruction of the Cinema Leone, which had been granted national landmark status in the wake of the tragedy. An EPA clean-up was scheduled to make sure that it was safe for human occupation in the near future. Mrs. Thricin was quoted as saying that this was a grand opportunity to preserve an important piece of this city’s heritage.
Before I could read more, my phone started giving me my unlisted number ringtone. I perked up at the prospect of a new client.
“Vale Investigation,” I said in my best professional voice.
“Mr. Vale, please,” a woman’s voice on the other end said.
“Speaking.”
“I was wondering … is it possible we could meet? I would hate to discuss my problem over the phone.”
“Of course,” I assured her. “Do you know the Tombs diner?”
“Yes, I do,” she replied. “Do you want me to meet you there?”
“I’ll be in the back booth,” I promised her. “Say, in an hour?”
She agreed and we hung up. I got my shoes on and went out the door. The break was over. Time for me to get back to earning my living.
About the author
Cristelle Comby was born and raised in the French-speaking area of Switzerland, in Greater Geneva, where she still resides.
She attributes to her origins her ever-peaceful nature and her undying love for chocolate. She has a passion for art, which also includes an interest in drawing and acting.
She is the author of the Neve & Egan Cases series, which features an unlikely duo of private detectives in London: Ashford Egan, a blind History professor, and Alexandra Neve, one of his students.
Currently, she is hard at work on her Urban Fantasy series Vale Investigation which chronicles the exploits of Death’s only envoy on Earth, PI Bellamy Vale, in the fictitious town of Cold City, USA.
Find out more at www.cristelle-comby.com
Hostile Takeover (Vale Investigation Book 1) Page 26
