by Amir Lane
“You told—”
“If Ekkehardt believed me or had anything, he'd be here. He wouldn't be ignoring me. He would have taken care of Abigail and Ice Breaker himself.”
The useless jackass. He was always around to judge her, but never when she needed him.
“Lindy?” Dick called from outside the room.
Speaking of useless—
“Now he shows up. Listen, Len. He's not going to let me go after Ice Breaker. If I tell him, he's going to want to go through proper channels, and if she catches wind, she'll be gone. If I can get her to confess, at the very least, I can take it to Mohr's Circle, and they can do something about it.”
“Why does it have to be now? Do you even have a plan? In case you've forgotten, you can't see.”
“Lindy?” Dick called again.
“I'm in here.” She dropped her voice back to a whisper. “I can't give her time to find out about this through someone else. As soon as a motivation comes up—”
“Got it. I know what cops is like. What do you need?”
Need? Ice Breaker was a cryomancer… so she needed something that would let her be the opposite.
“Do you still smoke?”
“No.” A pause. “Only twice a day.”
“I need your lighter. And do you still keep a can of hairspray in the glove box?”
“Yeah.”
“Now all I need is a way out of here.”
“What the fuck?” Dick’s shout echoed off the walls.
“I got this,” Lenna said, pressing her lips to Lindy’s ear. “I’m about to go full novela.”
Lindy wasn't 100% sure what that meant, but she didn't have a chance to ask. Lenna stood and marched over to where Dick’s voice came from.
“What the fuck is right. Took you long enough to get here. What, did you stop at a Tim Horton’s on the way? If it takes you this long to respond to a call, it’s no wonder crime in this country is so high! You had better have a damn good excuse, buddy.”
She continued in Portuguese. Right. Full novela.
Lindy pocketed the lighter Lenna had shoved into her hand and walked, practically crawling, as slowly as she could. She could only assume that Lenna was keeping Dick facing away from her. Full novela was terrifying.
The Jeep was still unlocked. It was actually pretty easy to find the hairspray. It was a travel-size bottle, and it fit surprisingly easily into her sweats. Keeping one foot along the curb and tapping her cane to feel for sewer grates, she walked until her hand found a street sign while fumbling with the lock screen on her phone. Fuck, why hadn't she asked someone to change it to a basic swipe? Finally, a soft click signalled the right combination of keys.
Okay, where the fuck was Ice Breaker, where the fuck was Ice Breaker, where the fuck was—
“Parking garage,” she said as she activated the voice commands to call for a cab. “By the… bank?”
Okay, sure. Where else would a mass-murdering, cryomancing staff sergeant be in the middle of the day?
She had to guess based on the direction she'd walked exactly which intersection she was at, but the driver managed to find her. The drive was longer than she wanted it to be. She spent the entire trip bouncing her leg and glancing down at a phone screen she couldn't see. Aside from her asking what time it was twice, there was no conversation. She didn't even listen to the cost, just tapped her visa on the credit card machine and bolted out the door.
The sounds outside the bank were suddenly very overwhelming. Lindy had never noticed it before, but without seeing where all the sounds were coming from, she had no way to filter out what was important. Cars, shouts, bits of conversation.
Lindy's ribs tightened around her chest. She couldn't do this. She couldn’t do this! Lenna could probably do this. Even blind, Lenna could probably do this. She wouldn’t be standing in the middle of the sidewalk, seven seconds away from completely freaking the fuck out. No, she would go to the garage, cut Ice Breaker off, and punch her right in the fucking face. If she could find her face.
“I can do that,” she told herself. “I can totally do this.”
She could totally do this. If Lenna could do this, so could she. When she closed her eyes, she could picture the entire area. It wasn’t a busy place at this time of day. The bank shared a parking lot and garage with an entire plaza, the closest thing Lorelle had to a second mall. She could see the garage, and she could see Ice Breaker entering, her keys dangling from her fingers. Before she realized that she was even moving, her feet were hitting the pavement at a speed they hadn’t in years. Her body knew exactly where to go on its own, no cane or visuals needed. She weaved through the crowd until it thinned out and it was just her and the cars. Her feet echoed off the walls. There was only one other set of footsteps. Once she figured out which direction they were coming from, they were easy enough to follow.
“Say a command,” her phone said.
“Open voice recorder.”
She tapped the screen until it beeped in confirmation that it was recording. Perfect. She shoved it back into her pocket. Recording without permission was illegal and inadmissible in a court, but she didn’t need it to be. She just needed enough to open an investigation or to get Dick and Ekkehardt to believe her.
“Cockburn.”
The second set of steps stopped.
“Lindy? I thought you were on bed rest.”
“I need to talk to you. It’s about this case.”
Ice Breaker didn’t say anything. The silence made the uneasiness return to Lindy’s stomach. She remembered every single bad thriller where some smart-ass told the killer that they knew what they’d done or what their plan was, and ended up getting killed for it. How many times had she yelled at a character to never tell the serial killer that you know their plan! And yet, despite knowing how every one of those episodes ended, she still opened her stupid mouth.
“I know what you did. I know you killed the Cudmores and framed Abigail for it.”
Estúpida!
“What are you talking about? Lindy, whatever they gave you is obviously working overtime. Let me take you home.”
‘Don’t get in her car. Whatever you do, don’t get in her car, estúpida.’
“I don’t need you to take me anywhere. I need you to admit what you did.”
Ice Breaker laughed.
“At least let me call someone for you. Your dad?”
“Look, stop bullshitting me. I saw it. I saw you go in there and I saw you kill them.”
Lindy listened to her own breathing. It was all she could hear. Was Ice Breaker even there anymore? She had to be; there was no way she could have gotten past her.
“Go home. Whatever you think you saw—”
“I was there. I saw you. I saw you chase Abigail and slit her throat. I saw you put the knife in her hand. I saw you.”
There was an edge of something in her voice, the same something that had been present in her vision and at the fourth scene.
“You didn’t see anything. I didn’t do whatever it is you think I did. And you can’t prove a thing. So get out of my way and go home, honey. Sleep off the meds and get yourself checked out in the morning.”
“No. No. I know you did it, and I have proof.”
Ice Breaker’s swallow was audible. She laughed. It came out anxious and completely void of humour this time.
“You don’t have a thing,” she insisted.
“I have the knife.”
Okay, she didn’t actually have the knife. She assumed it was stuffed in a box at the back of the evidence room at one of the Kitchener-Waterloo precincts. But someone had it, that was the important part.
“So?”
“So it’s covered in your prints.”
“Could be. I was the lead detective. But it’s circumstantial at best. You still have nothing. No proof, no witnesses, nothing.”
Okay, okay. Lindy had to have something else. Something that would just get a few fucking lines of a confession, just enough to get s
ome gears moving. Gears, gears, gears…
“The knife was frozen. You froze the knife. There’s evidence on the bodies.” Which… were gone by now. If anybody had seen anything in the bodies, it would have been in the report. There wasn’t anything. “There’s evidence on the knife.”
She wasn’t sure if cold working left any lingering evidence, but she had to hope that Ice Breaker didn’t know either. The temperature in the garage began to drop. Lindy didn’t notice it at first, but then her arms prickled and her teeth began to chatter. Oh, this could not be good. There was no way this could be good. She needed to think fast. Why did she not see this coming? Seeing things coming was her whole thing! She knew that it was going to get violent, but the specifics were eluding her.
“And what are you going to do about it, Bad Omen?”
Okay, this was it. They were on witch terms now. No holds barred, powers all out, and she was going to fucking die. Cryomancer versus blind Seer. Ice versus never having to study for a test.
Where the hell was a giant, terrifying animal witch when you needed one?
Hearing Ice Breaker practically sneer her name set something off inside her. She remembered the first time someone had called her Bad Omen. It was… tenth grade.
She and the other weirdos had been standing outside the south end of the school passing around cigarettes. Okay, they were smoking, she was cutting gym. The cramps were killing her, so gym was out of the question. It wasn’t like her dad would even care. They were talking music, arguing punk versus metal for the thousandth time. It was mostly for show; there weren’t enough of them in this garbage town to be able to split the factions. She was laughing at a bad joke one of the guys made it when she heard it:
“Schizo.”
A few people walked by, Dieter followed by some of the other idiots on the track team. Lindy never liked them. But then, she’d never much liked anyone. Ekkehardt called her contrary.
“Come on, schizo, let me copy your math homework.”
“I said no! Leave me alone.”
“Aw, come on. I’ll owe you.”
“I said, no!”
Dieter walked faster, and the idiots did too. The guy with the nose ring she’d been talking to snorted in disgust. He began to speak but stopped half-way to shout at her as she stomped across the grass.
“Hey! Hey! Dick face!”
The biggest idiot, the one hassling Dieter, stopped and stared at her.
“What do you want, Dracula?”
Idiot wasn’t that creative. It wasn’t even accurate. Dracula was goth. Lindy was metal. Not as metal as Lenna, but still. Big difference.
“He said, no!”
Her fist flew forward and collided with idiot’s nose. Blood spurted onto her knuckles and face. He screamed, doubling over and clutching his face. Whatever she did to it, it was an improvement. She wound up outside the principal’s office, waiting for her dad to show up so he could talk her down from a suspension down to a detention and keep idiot’s parents from pressing charges. Again. Dieter was sitting next to her, whispering to his Shadows to be quiet. The guy across from her, some pothead from her fourth period-math, grinned.
“Hey. How is it that every time you get called in here, I do to? I think you’re some kind of bad omen or something.”
It was his weird, ineffective way of asking her out. It didn’t work, but when she needed a username for magic forums, Bad Omen was the one she picked. After that, it just stuck.
Lindy wasn’t the same person she’d been in high school. She was different. Recent events aside, she was happier, healthier. Most of the anger she’d had was gone. Some of it. Well, it wasn’t so much gone as bottled up like a Molotov cocktail ready to go. But end of the day, she was still Bad Omen. She was the same person who’d hit their English teacher in the face with a textbook for creeping on Dieter. Bad Omen did not go down without a fight. Bad Omen didn’t get talked down to. Bad Omen kicked ass.
And neither Bad Omen nor Lindy Lindemann was going to let this bitch get away with a damn thing.
She opened her eyes and saw a flood of people, all moving through the garage. She stepped back. They moved around her, though her. Visions. Only one of them wasn’t carrying on with their day.
An ice dagger formed in Ice Breaker’s hand. The lines were bright, exaggerated to the point that it looked hand-drawn. Ice Breaker lurched toward her in slow motion. Lindy barely had a chance to stumble out of the way. Her muscle memory from the two and a half years of kickboxing was starting to kick in. Finally, something real that she could fight.
Except what she was seeing wasn’t in real time. She aimed a punch at what should have been Ice Breaker’s head, but her head wasn’t there. Instead, her own fist sank into Lindy’s gut. Lindy hit the ground, gasping. Oh, balls, that was going to bruise. She did manage to roll out of the way of a boot aimed for her ribs. It took her two tries to grab Ice Breaker’s leg and pulled her down. Damn, she missed fighting. It felt so good to have something she could hit that actually reacted to it. She hit anything she could reach, and it was exactly like high school again.
Ice Breaker’s foot slamming into her chest sent her sprawling across the pavement. Her knees stung. If these sweats were ripped, she was going to be pissed. More pissed. The can of hairspray banged against her thigh, reminding her that it was there. Setting the precinct garage on fire would be a last-ditch effort. She wasn’t desperate enough to try to explain that. She pushed herself to her feet. Dizziness washed over her. Head injury. Fuck.
She stumbled back until she hit the wall. God, she was out of shape. Why did she quit kickboxing for so long? On second thought, she couldn’t draw this out. She shoved her hands into her pocket and— Where was the lighter? Where was the lighter?
“Do you really think you can fight me? I’ve been doing this since before you were born. Seers aren’t fighters, and operators aren’t police. You’re nothing.”
The dagger extended in cartoonish detail, forming a spear. A goddamn spear. What was she a Spartan? There wasn’t space to throw a spear in here. But there was definitely space to charge at her.
Lindy moved, but not in the way she wanted to. Something pulled at her body, that same something that pulled her hand across the pages when she drew, the same thing that had screamed at Ice Breaker in her vision, but it was more than just her hand. Instead of jumping out of the range of the spear, she stepped aside like it was nothing. Her hand grabbed the spear as it passed her like Lenna grabbing a mouse. The ice should have burned her skin. Warmth, the normal kind, bloomed through her hand. It must have been frostbite. The nerves in her hand must have just been numb.
It wasn’t numbness, though. It was honest to God warmth that bloomed into full heat.
“Do you know who I am?” Lindy shouted.
The words echoed off the walls, making her sound much bigger than she was. Every ounce of anger she had was in her words. She was nothing? She was nothing? It was her mouth moving, but the words and the power behind them weren’t hers. Her other hand curled around the spear, that same warm glow filling her skin, giving her a solid grip on it. She yanked it back from Ice Breaker’s hands. With that weapon out of the way, Lindy moved forward. Ice Breaker stumbled back.
“Do you have any idea who I am? I am Prophecy itself. I was gifted by the Gods themselves. My powers have been passed down from the age of Oracles. And you have the audacity to call me nothing?”
Ice Breaker inhaled sharply and lunged. Frozen hands pressed against Lindy’s bare skin. She felt the cold. She felt her skin freeze over and warm up again. It wasn’t… There was something beneath her skin. It was almost like that thing that rushed through her veins when she did a reading or had a vision, only stronger and filling every single cell in her body. In a single movement, Lindy grabbed Ice Breaker’s arm and pulled her forward. When she was close enough, her hands settled on each side of Ice Breaker’s head, jerking it down to meet her knee. Ice Breaker shrieked. In the next breath, the ground disappeared ben
eath Lindy’s feet, and she was laying on her back, gasping for air. Ice. The ground was covered in ice.
Lindy listened to Ice Breaker’s approaching steps. There was no hesitation, none of that Bambi skittishness that should have come with walking on ice.
Now would have been a great time for that whole Gods themselves thing to take over again, or at least for that goddamn lighter to magically find its way into her hand.
“Yeah, Omen. You’re a good Seer, and you’d make a half-decent detective with the proper training. But when it comes to powers, you are nothing. You’re not your father, and you’re not Shadow Maker.”
No… but there was something she could do better than either of them.
“I never needed to be,” she said through gritted teeth.
Her ankles hooked with Ice Breakers. It was an old trick from her childhood fights with Shadow Maker. A sharp pull of her knees was all it took to send her toppling. The rest of her family might have been Necromancers, but she’d been taking down idiots bigger than her since day one, and she hadn’t lost a fight since Brianna what’s-her-name had called her a fatty. Who was the fatty now, bitch? She pushed herself up like Bambi. Ice Breaker was trying to do the same.
“I know you did it,” Lindy said, trying to command that same tone she’d had moments earlier.
Was her phone still recording? God, was it even still alive? It must have been in pieces by now.
“It’s been years, Omen. What do you think you can prove?”
“Everything. I can prove everything, Ice Breaker. See, that’s the thing about me. I’m not just a Seer, and I’m not just an operator. I am Bad fucking Omen. I am the thing that you’ve been having nightmares about. I am your entire life coming undone!”
She didn’t know what possessed her to do it — the sight of Abigail’s blood staining her crop-top pyjamas, maybe — but Lindy brought her heel down on Ice Breaker’s ribs. Oh, that was battery. She just battered a police sergeant. She was going to spend the rest of her life in jail.
“You’re a Seer,” Ice Breaker wheezed. “You’re a parlour trick. Yes, I killed them. I was only planning on killing the parents, but she saw. The girl saw. I had no choice.”
