Deadly Assessments

by Drew Hayes

  No sooner were we back in the contract room than Deborah shut the door, planted her back against it in lieu of a lock, and faced us. “I’m guessing one, if not both, of you is probably wondering why we’re not just breaking for the exits. We may do that next, depending on what Asha has to say, but even with the added benefit of some mage blood, we’re still on a magic-wielder’s home turf. I want to know who our potential killers are, what their abilities are known to be, and how those skills might translate into laying traps. We knew the hall from this room to the office was safe because we’d just walked it. Any other route is suspect until we’ve confirmed it to be secure, and that goes triple for hallways leading to an exit. The moment we became witnesses to a murder, we gave someone out there extremely good incentive to not let us survive.”

  Brusque as her delivery might have been, it was hard to argue with the content. Asha appeared to share a similar sentiment, as she began to rattle off information as fast as possible. “Phineas Hawkins was the man we just found. He owns this company, and has for several decades. Officially, they do custom enchantment work, like what you’ve seen with Ainsley and Zane Clover. However, Phineas’s business was structured around a high degree of confidentiality and privacy. These were the people you turned to if you wanted something made with as little connection to you as possible.”

  “Black market magic?” Deborah interrupted.

  “Probably a little, here and there, although they made sure to keep me away from anything that might signal that kind of work. The majority of what I know about is private for other reasons. Most people don’t want others to know if they need magical virility potions, or enchanted mannequins with working anatomy, or whips that operate themselves . . . please tell me you get the idea and I can stop.”

  We both nodded, although Deborah looked a tad surprised. “Someone was able to build a company off such a limited market?”

  “Food, drugs, and sex are often called the three recession-proof businesses,” I explained. “People are always going to be hungry, looking for escape, and . . . um . . . for something to get frisky with.”

  Asha showed mercy and took over for me. “Fred’s got it. And Phineas was making serious money. Over the last decade, his business has grown exponentially, and he was looking at opening new offices across the country in the next few years. That’s part of why I was brought on, to go over everything in preparation for the expansion. When Phineas found out the books weren’t lining up, he feared a scandal would tank his business. That’s why we brought in someone who specializes in discretion and knows their way around cooked books.”

  “I still can’t believe they would resort to murder so callously. How much could be missing to make that kind of crime worth the risk? Especially since this will likely bring the business to a grinding halt. It’s not like the killer will be able to keep stealing.” I couldn’t wrap my head around the idea of killing to cover up something as relatively bloodless as embezzlement. Deborah, on the other hand, had no such issues.

  “Oh, I don’t know about that. Wherever there are people willing to pay for privacy, there are secrets they’ll pay to remain secret. With a list of clients and a little bit of evidence, someone could turn this tragedy into a lucrative blackmail business.”

  The thought hadn’t even dawned on me, and from the expression on Asha’s face, I think it caught her by surprise, as well. Once the idea was out there, it didn’t take her long to start putting the pieces together.

  “As far as I know, Phineas himself was the main layer of protection between employees and customers. Workers only ever got account numbers, never client names. The sole person with knowledge of and access to those records was Phineas. It was one of the many privacy protections that made people comfortable using his services.”

  “Which means, if the killer does opt to go the blackmail route, we now know they’ll need to find those records, assuming they’re stored on the property,” Deborah concluded. “That’s good to keep in mind if we need leverage down the line, but right now, I’m more concerned with what we’re up against. Did Phineas have suspicions about who might be dipping their hand in the company cookie jar?”

  That question drew a dark, tired laugh from Asha. Hard as she was working to push through, the trauma of the night was visibly wearing on her. Yet she took only a few seconds before shaking her head. “Too many suspicions, honestly. He wasn’t a trusting man, hence why he was able to work in this industry to start with. Once he found the discrepancy, he trusted no one on the inside. That’s part of why we brought in an outsider to look over the accounts. But from a practical standpoint, one of his senior managers makes the most sense. They have the necessary access, and are all capable mages in their own right. Daiyu Lau specializes in potions, ointments—basically, she’s good with any kind of magic where the effect is applied to a body. Kevin Crawford handles animation; if it moves and it isn’t supposed to, he’s the man you see. Last is Megan Bradley, who focuses on generalized enchantment. Her department handles anything that falls outside the others’ purview, as well as tacking on the finishing touches to most products.”

  “That hole in his chest sure didn’t look like the work of any potion I’ve ever seen,” I pointed out. A straightforward assessment, admittedly, but someone had to get the obvious out of the way. Unfortunately, even my seemingly simple deduction was met with resistance.

  “If you were going to kill someone, and you were smart, the first thing you’d do is find a way to make it look like someone else’s specialty. Maybe create a potion that has a claw burst out of the victim’s back, and then fade away.”

  “Kind of a stretch,” Asha said.

  “It certainly is. I’m not saying that’s what happened, only that we don’t yet have enough information to effectively rule anyone out.” Deborah paused, pressing her ear against the door for a few brief seconds. “I think we’re clear for now, though it’s hard to tell what sounds are what. This would be much easier without the wards in place, but we’ll make do with what we have. For now, is there anything else we should know?”

  This time, Asha didn’t respond right away. She stayed quiet, scouring her brain for any details that might prove useful. “Nothing I can think of. Phineas wasn’t big on sharing secrets.”

  While the reply was somewhat expected, it wasn’t terribly heartening. We might be up against one of three skilled mages, or any peon who’d gotten greedy. Asha’s suspect list was nothing more than a guess. There was no way of knowing for sure what sort of enemy we faced, or what sort of traps they might have laid. Truthfully, I was used to working with little information during a crisis, but the more time I spent with Deborah, the more I realized that such really shouldn’t be the case. I’d always known I’d survived some dicey situations on pure luck and the assistance of powerful friends, but I was only now beginning to grasp just how out of my depth I’d really been.

  Deborah moved away from the door, pacing slowly around the room. “So, we’ve got a potential suspect list of three, with a secondary, less likely list comprised of the entire company. Sounds like, no matter what, we’re going to have to walk out of here blind. Being prudent, we need to assume there are traps or other dangers lying in wait. Better to be wrong and safe, than right and dead, so we’ll obviously want to keep exposure to a minimum. Tell me, he who leads the House of Fred, how would you proceed if I weren’t here?”

  Even knowing that I was in the process of being tested, this still felt like an inopportune time for a pop quiz. Then again, had I gotten my way, I would have shown up without Deborah at my side, so perhaps it was indeed a fair question. If people were going to look to me in a crisis, if I was to take responsibility for the safety of my clan, then this might very well be the kind of situation I needed to be capable of handling.

  After taking a few moments to consider the circumstances, I chose my course of action. “Assuming you weren’t here, I’d take the lead ahead of Asha. I’d go slow, ducking into rooms and offices as needed,
make our way through the hallways bit by bit, being sure to keep a watch for any traps or attackers. My senses might be dulled, but I should still be able to hear a mage before they can hear us.”

  “Assuming they haven’t cast a spell to augment their own senses,” Deborah corrected. “Not a bad plan, overall, but there’s a fundamental human-ness to the thinking that causes some misjudgments. Tell me something, why would you duck into offices and rooms along the route?”

  “Because mages can’t cast forever,” I replied. “They have limits. And that means they would have to prioritize where they laid traps, focusing on the hallways we’d likely use to escape. Putting surprises inside of offices might pay off, but compared to the power it would waste, that’s a poor gamble to take. I can’t assume the rooms are completely safe; they’re just much more likely to be safe than the hallways.”

  It might have been my imagination, but for a fleeting moment, it seemed like Deborah was impressed by my analysis. There was even a tinge of approval in her voice. “Well done, and perfectly accurate. You grasp exactly why the rooms are probably safer than the hallways. So, tell me this: why does your plan involve hallways at all?”

  “Because that’s how we would have to get to the exit.” If she was assuming I had some sort of teleportation or transformation power stolen from a parahuman, Deborah was in for a massive disappointment. How else were we going to get to the exit, if not through the hallways?

  Moving quickly, yet slow enough for us to track, Deborah walked over to the back wall of the room. “No, Fred. Hallways are how humans would have to get to the exit. I know you work hard to ignore this fact, but you are not a human. If you don’t believe me, look at how Asha was affected by finding that body, and then look at yourself. You don’t want to hurt people, that’s fine. You don’t want to play the game of vampire politics, well, you’re hardly the first to feel that way. But thinking of yourself as anything other than a vampire limits your options, and that’s a liability you can’t afford in the long-term.”

  That last line stung, largely because this was a lesson I should have already absorbed. Lillian had put the idea of breaking through walls into my head when we worked together in a haunted castle, yet here I was sticking to the hallways again. Being in human surroundings kept me in a human frame of mind, and I was starting to realize that wasn’t always a positive outcome.

  With a single, smooth motion, Deborah punched through the wall in front of her, creating an arm-sized hole into the next room—a storage closet with brooms, mops, and paper towels. In no time, she’d enlarged the opening enough for any of us to slip through. Once the hole was finished, sheetrock floating from her hands, Deborah tossed a look at me over her shoulder.

  “We aren’t bound to the same paths they are. We don’t need hallways because walls aren’t strong enough to stop us. Now, both of you: keep up. Finding a path to the exit isn’t the same as being there. We’re not safe until this place is a distant memory in the rearview mirror.”

  5.

  All three of us were silent as Deborah tore through the walls of one room after another, making as little noise as possible with such a messy task. She was surprisingly quick, and not just in a “faster-than-humans” kind of way. From the precision and surety with which she worked, it was easy to deduce that this wasn’t Deborah’s first time escaping through walls. It actually boggled the mind to try to grasp what could be a new experience for her. If she was old enough to be part of some legendary council—as well as what I’d ascertained from her own casual comments—then Deborah had surely been around for at least a thousand or so years. Living (in a manner of speaking) for that long, certainly one would run out of new things to do or try, new obstacles to face. Perhaps that was why she could remain calm and critical no matter how the situation soured: to her, this very well might be nothing more than a rerun of adventures she’d already experienced.

  With Deborah focused on making our doorways, I kept my attention on Asha. She was doing better, the rush of adrenaline likely helping to push down the memories of walking in on a corpse. Still, I kept her between Deborah and me, just to be safe. As the only human among us, she was the easiest target, and the one it would take only a single shot to kill. Even as a subpar vampire, I could take more punishment than a human. Ideally, none of that would come into play before we were free.

  Unfortunately, as was often the case, what was hoped for and what occurred were quite disparate.

  It looked like any other wall we’d seen so far, situated in a mundane office with too many motivational cat posters. What made it different was the fact that when Deborah punched, the surface rippled with a red-orange light rather than caving in under her strength. Another blow, this one heavier, and more ripples spread across the wall. Deborah lifted her arm once more, then slowly lowered it. “Fred, you saw the barrier, right?”

  “The colors along the wall? How could I miss them?”

  “Hang on, what colors?” Asha was looking back and forth between us, with occasional glances to the wall mixed in, as well. “All I saw was her hitting the wall, and it having no effect.”

  “Oh, there was an effect all right.” It may have been my imagination, but I thought I caught a touch of pride in Deborah’s tone. “Fred and I can see it thanks to the mage’s blood. It looks as though someone put up a barrier to keep people from escaping. A shockingly strong one, at that. I can’t imagine a cornered caster threw this together on the fly. Did Phineas have any kind of safety system in place that you know of?”

  Asha glanced at the wall once more, as if she might see the magic through sheer force of will. “He warded the place up and down, not to mention how seriously he took his privacy. I don’t have details, but just from knowing the man, I’d bet my car he’s got plenty of magical security woven into the office.”

  Deborah threw a quick jab to the same spot she’d hit before, this time causing so many ripples it looked like a miniature wave pool. “That makes more sense. With the kind of punishment I’m doling out, most barriers would have run out of mana by now. This must have been carefully crafted and reinforced over a long while. Most likely our victim’s death snapped the cage shut as a lock-down protocol to ensure his murderer didn’t get away, or the killer activated it to keep us from escaping.”

  That was problematic. If Deborah was right, then we were stuck inside until someone who knew how to turn off the barrier came along, or we’d dealt with the killer. Either way, we’d be trapped, most likely with a murderer, for unknown hours. If the sun came up, Deborah and I wouldn’t be able to leave the building until the following evening; the parking lot wasn’t shaded enough to where we could safely enter the car.

  Luckily, I wasn’t completely ignorant about magic. True, I was far from a scholar, but it was impossible to be friends with people like Amy and Neil without picking up a few tidbits along the way. “Hang on. Even if this was made with a lot of care and power, there are still limits to it, right? Amy explained this to me once; the barrier needs mana to repel attacks. The more attacks it takes, the lower the mana goes, and eventually, it will give way. Even if a mage was actively feeding power to the barrier, we could theoretically pound on it until the magic runs dry.”

  “We could do that, but it’s dangerous,” Deborah replied. “When you break a spell improperly, there’s feedback as the enchantment frays. It could be nothing more than a loud noise, or a crack of lightning, or a burst of energy. It could also turn everyone nearby into frogs. You and I have some protection thanks to the mage’s blood, but depending on how strong the barrier is, even that might not prove to be enough. As for Asha, she’s got no defense at all—though, that’s not to say she’d definitely be in trouble. That’s the problem with destroying magic; the effects are so unpredictable it becomes a total crapshoot.”

  Doesn’t it figure: the one time I suggest brute force as a solution, and it’s possibly the most dangerous route we could take. “Let’s perhaps save that for a last-ditch effort, then. Do we hav
e any other options?”

  “Of course. We’re vampires, Fred. I’ve guided you toward escape because I’d assumed that would be your strategy, but we’ve always had another option. We can do what our kind are made for: we can hunt.”

  There was a flash of something in her eyes when she said the word “hunt.” Not dangerous, per se, in the sense that Deborah was already dangerous in every aspect of her being. No, this was . . . old . . . a part of her not influenced by modern politeness and general decorum. A piece that had been untouched by her centuries upon the Earth, because it didn’t need to change or evolve. The part of her that was a hunter, that had lived and died by blood long before America, the Agency, or refrigeration had made my kind of lifestyle viable. Even seeing a sliver of what lay beneath the surface of her humanity was enough I had to repress an involuntary shiver—a habit my body refused to kick from life. Then again, maybe I just hadn’t given it enough time yet. Who knew what sort of reactions I’d have in a few more decades?

  “You want to go after the killer?” Asha, to my surprise, was nodding in agreement. “That makes sense. If they’re the ones who activated the barrier, then we might get free by capturing them. And even if stopping them doesn’t let us escape, at least we can wait safely until someone comes to set us free. Fight or flight, and flight has been taken off the table.”

  “This is why I like lawyers: practical people, almost to a fault. What do you say, Fred? I am here as your bodyguard, after all. I can’t very well go off hunting for some unknown assailant and leave you unprotected. Where you walk, so must I, ensuring your safety.”

  Hardly subtle, not that I’d especially needed the nudge. This was on me. If we hunted the killer, then I had to be the one to make that call. It would be more dangerous than hiding, but also had the advantage of giving us agency in our own fate. Cowering in a corner was certainly a more appealing option, but unfortunately, it wouldn’t do much to help us escape, or see justice done for Phineas.