Charlie had a thing for cars and owned a classic BMW Z8 he had tricked the duke into paying for—a sweet machine, even if it was in the duchy's colors.
"It suits us," Grace replied as we pulled into traffic. "And your mechanic did a wonderful job of getting it into good repair."
“Yeah, he’s talented. Calloway recommended him to me, actually,” Charlie replied.
I grunted noncommittally. I still hadn’t told Grace about all the explosives and high tech gear I’d sensed behind the fake wall of Dave’s Garage. Just like I never mentioned what else was under the hood of Charlie’s souped-up sports car. Methinks there’s more to Dave than car repair.
"I'd think you'd have some pride, at least, Vern." Unable to sway Grace, he turned to me.
"I'm not allowed," I deadpanned. In the mirror, I saw Grace roll her eyes. I got serious.
"You saw Dave the day of the attack, right? He did some work on the car?"
"Yeah, had to replace a part a couple of weeks ago, and he wanted to be sure it was settling in okay. Great guy. Why?"
"Did you have to cross the Gap at two-thirty?"
"Yeah; then the Duke told me to enjoy the evening. I was going to propose to Heather.
Kind of silly, really. We've already talked about it. Mum and I approached her parents, and they agree. But it's not official 'till I give her this ring—"
"Charlie, who did you see in the afternoon?"
Charlie huffed and leaned his head against the seat back until he was looking at the visor.
"Guess it’s not much of a secret. Dave, for the car, of course; Seneschal gave me another document to drop at the Chamber of Commerce; I left it with the receptionist. Next, I dropped a thumb drive to Professor Gates (He pronounced it gay- tez) at CSU—"
"Gates? The professor of Gap magics?"
Grace read my mind. At the intersection, she took a left onto College Avenue. BILE may have thought we've dodged a bullet, but I wasn't so sure. I also didn't quite get the nature of these studies. The least we could do was warn Gates; maybe, we could also ask him a few questions to shed some light on this mess.
The heavy wooden door of Gates' office and lab did more than keep out unwanted Mundane undergrads wondering if they could change their major to "Magic." It also prevented anything from entering that might interfere with a spell: from dust to sounds and even smells.
Unlike Grace's holy magic, natural magic was more finicky about unwanted stimuli.
The brass plaque on the door read: Professor William Gates, MT, PhD, GMM. Below it, a computer-generated sign in a page protector read: Pronounced Gay-TEZ. No relation to that Mundane computer fellow, thank you. However, if you are a Mundane and want to learn magic, I suggest computer science." On a map, he traced a path from his office to the Department of Computer Science. Below the map read: "Mundanes: You are not genetically suited to handle magic. I cannot change that. I will not change your major. So very sorry."
A red light and a green light, like those over confessionals, told whether one could enter.
The light shone green, but the door was locked. After some ineffectual knocking, I pulled out my lockpicks.
As we pushed open the door, a metallic scent told me we were too late for warnings or explanations.
We found Gates face-down in a congealing pool of his own blood, half-buried in books, his room having been thoroughly searched and left in disarray.
I could sense the faintest trace of a portal near the window.
Grace swept past me and, careful not to let her habit drag in the blood or her footsteps disturb any evidence, squatted beside Gates and set two fingers alongside his neck; a needless gesture, but you never knew. She murmured a Hail Mary, made the sign of the cross over the body, and moved to where the portal had been.
Meanwhile, I turned to Charlie. "Call Santry, Calloway, and then every person you met with yesterday afternoon. Tell them get to a public area—police station, coffee shop, someplace that doesn't close—and stay there until you call them back. Got it?” Charlie, face pale and eyes wide, gulped and did as he was told.
I turned my attention back to the body. From his posture, I'd guess someone had held him while they did the slaying and laid him down gently; that, or he'd been kneeling when it happened. I didn't see any injuries on his back, so my guess was they'd sliced him open or punctured an artery.
All that blood.
I licked my chops to remove the drool. Give me a break; I am a dragon.
I pushed the smell of blood and the growling of my stomach aside and forced my senses to focus on the unusual.
"I can't tell anyone's been in here," I said after a moment. "Present company excepted, of course."
"I know." Grace rose, gathering the skirt of her habit close to her, and moved to the desk.
I followed, employing a little of my own magic to levitate slightly so I didn't disturb anything.
"Other than the trace of the portal, I'm not picking up anything, and I should, especially if a Magical is involved. Someone is pouring a lot into a cloaking spell—"
"Meaning, they know us. I don't think he's been dead more than a few hours," I added.
"I'm not so sure," Grace continued, doing a slow circle to take in the entire room. "About our murderer knowing us, I mean. The complete lack of magic calls out on its own. Someone who really understood us would have at least tried to make it look like a human had been here.
But look how things are scattered—done physically, they would have made a lot of noise. There are no footprints and no traces of blood that I can see aside from poor Professor Gates."
"Yeah, poor Gates." I ran my tongue over my lips.
"Vern!" Grace scolded. "You had six donuts just half an hour ago. We'll go to Natura's next. Now focus."
"You can eat after seeing a scene like this?" Santry asked as he sauntered into the room.
A police photographer squeezed past him and started snapping shots.
"He was a faithful Catholic," Grace replied. "God has him now. As long as his body doesn't reanimate—"
Now I took a step back, my appetite gone. I had a thing about zombies.
"Oh, Vern, don’t be a baby."
Santry looked at the scattered books and sighed. "Why do I get the feeling there won't be any fingerprints?"
I picked up a three-ring binder that had been searched and tossed aside. It had old clippings of the experimental reactor that blew up, making the Mundane contribution to the creation of the Gap. Happy, optimistic articles with photos of researchers standing proudly by their consoles and equipment, eager to usher in a new era for Mankind and economic prosperity for Los Lagos. If only they had known.
I sniffed at the plastic cover and shook my head. No scent, human or otherwise.
I followed a power cord from the socket to where the adaptor waited on the floor under the desk. "Took his laptop; bet they nabbed all the data storage devices."
"Except these," Grace tucked her fingers into the sleeve of her habit and picked up a floppy disk.
Santry motioned to another officer, who went to collect the disks. In the meantime, the photographer had finished taking shots of Gates' back and carefully turned the body over.
Grace gasped and buried her face into my side. Gates had been pierced in the forehead, gutted, and stabbed in each shoulder, a mockery of the Sign of the Cross. The last time I'd seen a murder like that had been during the Great War, when the powers of Hell rose against the Church and all of Faerie.
Chapter Four: Ace in the Hole
"I managed to get hold of everyone except Dave, but Calloway said he’d check on him,"
Charlie reported as we met him in the hallway. Grace demanded his faePhone, and he handed it over, giving me a questioning look. She didn't even slow but nabbed it from his hands and started typing as we headed out. I could see she was accessing our email on the InterdimNet.
I didn't reply until we were in the elevator. "Gates was killed with crucis iugolis."
I hadn't
thought Charlie could get any paler. He gulped hard. "You don't think that he—"
He gulped again.
Charlie was too young to have known much about the Great War or its aftermath, but his grandfather had fought in it, as did most of his generation; no doubt, he'd told him some horrible stories. And they all would have been true and mostly unembellished. One thing his family had taught him was about the crucis iugolis, the Butcher's Cross. Both his great-uncle and great-grandfather had been murdered that way, and his grandfather had indebted the family in order to pay for magical protection against it for three generations. Charlie was the last to receive the protection—and to pay the debt, which is why he was stuck serving as Herald when he really didn't like the job.
He set his hand on his bruised face, and I knew he was thinking about what could have happened had his grandfather not made that deal with the late Duke's wizard...
"Easy. Could be some minion just getting our attention."
"Well, they got it," Grace growled. Her hands shook as she typed out an email. I pushed the STOP button on the elevator and snatched the phone out of her hands.
"Vern!"
"We're not calling in the big guns yet. We're not telling anyone the Powers of Darkness are back until we're sure." I deleted the message unsent and handed it back to Charlie before starting us down again.
Grace was about to snatch it back when the elevator door opened, and who should be lounging outside it but Kitty McGrue. She gave the three of us a calculating look that belied her jaunty tone. "So, what's upstairs?"
Grace tossed me a fast, pleading look and brushed past Kitty without so much as a "No Comment." Charlie followed.
"That bad, huh?" She studied Grace's and Charlie's retreating backs then turned to the elevator. I unfurled my wings far enough to block her and advanced, driving her down the hallway. She tried to jink left then right, but there was no getting past me.
"Listen, you stupid lizard. You might be able to block me from a movie set, but—"
"Just shut up for once and listen to me, will you, McGrue?"
Maybe I sounded a little more scared than I'd intended. She stopped trying to maneuver around me. "Really, that bad? What then? What's the scoop?"
"No scoop, Kitty. Do not dig into this one. Let the authorities handle it."
"Oh, and you and Grace are authorities, are you? Grace looks scared, Vern. I think when the authorities are scared, the public has a right to know what's frightening them. You know as well as I Santry won't give me a thing. You gonna comment?"
I tossed my head. Why couldn't she take a warning, just once in her sorry human life?
"McGrue, I'm not talking about the public. I'm talking about you. Stay out of this. I'm asking you as—" I gagged on the words that almost came out of my mouth.
"As what?" she challenged.
"As someone who doesn't want to waste his time wondering how long he's gonna have to pray to get your sorry soul out of Purgatory!"
"I don't believe in Purgatory."
"Well, that makes it worse, thanks! Listen, McGrue. If the public needs to be warned, you can bet I'll be the one flying around town sounding the alarm. Until then, back off. For your own safety."
"My safety?" She laughed. "Because I don't have a big, strong dragon to protect me?" She pouted sarcastically.
"What?"
"I don't need you, Vern."
Where did that come from? "You know, you've always been pigheaded and hot-tempered. You adding irrational to the repertoire?"
"Go do your job!"
"I'm trying to!" With that, I snapped my wings, folded them, and stormed out. But I listened and didn't hear her enter the elevator.
Grace waited at the door, hands on her crucifix, eyes wide, shaking. Charlie hovered beside her protectively. "Maybe we should tell her," she said in Faerie Gaelic in case McGrue was listening.
I answered in kind. "Sensationalist that she is? She'll have the city in a full-scale panic over what might turn out to be nothing."
"What if it is something, Vern? We can't take them on alone! I can't—" She broke off closed her eyes, clutched her crucifix. "I can't," she whispered.
Charlie chose that moment to put his phone to his ear and walk a discreet distance away.
I moved close to her, wrapped my tail around her shoulders. I could feel her breathe fast and shallow, like a rabbit afraid someone might hear her. "We don't have to. We only have to investigate; we don't have to save the universes on our own this time. No matter what, you're not alone. I'll protect you. Always."
"Promise?"
"I'll die before I let anyone hurt you."
Her shoulders relaxed, and she gave me a skeptical look. "Dragons can't be killed."
"Okay. I'll be painfully inconvenienced."
She laughed, a nervous, flighty sound, but a couple of years ago, she would not have done even that. I thought it was a good sign. She took a deep breath. "Someone could simply be trying to scare us off the case."
"Which goes to show they don’t know us very well, do they?"
She nodded and gave me a brave smile. Then she folded her hands in prayer. I held her in my own draconic protective circle, not caring what the Mundanes who saw us might think. I did hope no one who knew Grace well saw us, though, or they'd be worried.
Finally, she crossed herself. "Thank you. You really are the best friend I've ever had."
She leaned against my shoulder a moment before moving away.
"Just get me to Natura's before I eat someone," I said. Despite the horror of the meaning behind the symbolism, seeing all those guts had reminded me of how long ago I'd actually had a meal that stayed down.
"Vern! Grace!" Charlie ran to us. "They took Heather! They have my beloved!" He replayed the message that had come in while he was calling everyone: Charlie, honey? It's me.
I've-I've been kidnapped. They said you know what they want, and if they don't get it, they'll kill me.
* * * *
Rather than take Charlie back up to Santry at the professor's office, which would only upset him and Grace further, we called Calloway from our cell phone and told him what had happened. I'd go to the scene while Grace took Charlie back to our lair. Charlie leaned his head against the dashboard muttering "Oh, God! Oh, God!" I saw Grace dig out her rosary and give it to him as they pulled away.
I dropped by Grandma Natura's Buffet. If I didn't get something to appease my stomach, I'd start gnawing on limbs or snacking on a stray dog. Natura came through with a huge to-go platter of lamb—the good parts, too, bless her—liberally spiced with Indian ginger to help settle my stomach. I wolfed it down in four bites and felt a little less feral by the time I got to the set. I ignored the gate and flew straight in.
I found frustratingly little. Heather, already upset by the attack on Charlie, had had a hard time with her lines and getting into character, especially since they were filming a romance scene between her and Dirk. After she'd blown up at the director and burst into tears, they'd called a halt, and Ed had suggested she take a walk and cool off. Her bodyguard had tried to talk to her, and she'd told him to leave her alone and tore off. In the time it took him to wonder if he really got paid enough, he heard her scream and went running—face first into a two-by-four someone used as a club.
Signs of struggle but no clues I could find. Human scents but nothing out of the ordinary.
No magic. No portal. That was some good news, at any rate.
Detective Vialpando showed up with Officer Kelly in tow. He had a few snide words for me about the FBI being on the way to interfere along with everyone else and gave me the fish eye, so I reported my sparse findings to Kelly and headed home before I had detective for dessert.
I got back to find Charlie slumped at the kitchen table. I told him to get us a couple of Bert's microbrews out of the fridge and meet me in the lair while I pulled out my computer and composed a somewhat less panicked message to the Order of Our Lady of the Miracles. Even though I doubted Satan and
all his minions were involved, I wanted the Holy Hand Grenades on standby in case all Hell did break loose. Toward the back, the glow of holy magic in the works came through the high stained-glass windows of Grace's workshop and bathed the large room in a reassuring aurora borealis.
Charlie flopped into the chair, twisted the cap off a bottle, and held it out for me to grasp with my tail. Then he downed half of his own bottle in a long series of swallows. "I promised her Dad I'd take care of her," he muttered.
"You will," I told him as I finished the message. Next, I called up sites I shouldn't have access to, using codes I shouldn't know, and searched the databases for murders with victims bearing unusual wounds. Fewmets, humans have sick imaginations. I was glad Charlie couldn’t see the screen.
When Grace finally emerged from her workshop, I'd nearly completed my search, and Charlie still hadn't finished his beer. She glanced at the screen, shuddered, and asked, "Any luck?"
"No matches I could find. Not in the U.S., anyway."
"Good luck, then. Thank God." She knelt in front of Charlie and handed him his phone.
"The spell automatically starts when it recognizes Heather's voice or cell phone. Otherwise, tap the phone three times then trace a circle: three for the Trinity, circle for unity, then this." She traced a curved V. "It represents a lily, the symbol of St. Anthony. Try to talk to her if you can.
We'll find her."
"Her phone has GPS!" Charlie suddenly exclaimed. "Can't we—?"
Someone knocked, and Grace and Charlie jumped. I'd heard the car coming up the street, so I'd already been shutting down the computer and removing any incriminating evidence from my drive. God, fortunately, had seen fit to return my perfect memory for anything new. I had to admit, I was pleased to hear the knock. Nice to know BILE could have manners. Grace murmured a little cantrip, and the doors opened. Showmanship, sure, but effective. Then she went to get a couple of chairs from the kitchen.
Calloway came back in with her, carrying the chairs. He nodded at me and asked Charlie,
"How're you holding up?"
Live and Let Fly Page 5
