SkinThief

by Sonnet O'Dell

  The governor left the infirmary escorted by Pert-Smith, and I got to work setting out the ingredients for the next spell I planned to work this evening.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  The doctor had a very good marble mortar and pestle at his work station that he didn’t object to me borrowing, but he excused himself from the room if there was to be more mumbo-jumbo magic tonight. His words, not mine. LeBron also chose to sit outside. He didn’t ask what I was doing, didn’t comment; he just took a chair and sat just outside the door in case I needed him. I thought that was very sweet.

  In the end I was left alone in the room with Ivan and the sleeping Merrick. I took the passport-sized picture of D.I. Hamilton and placed it in the bottom of the mortar. I threw the hair I’d collected on top and found that the doctor kept some lavender smelling salts on hand for himself. I borrowed some of those too and crushed it all together using the pestle. It made a sort of purplish-gray-colored smudge over the photo at the bottom. I found my box of matches and settled down next to Ivan’s bed, pulling the chair up close and balancing the bowl on the sheet beside the lowered side rail. He stared at me the whole time I was making all my preparations but didn’t say anything. His body was weak, and he was probably unable to be as talkative as he had before. I felt a little sad for Ivan. Returning him to his body had almost been a death sentence; I was fairly certain that his injuries were too severe for him to survive them.

  I struck the match so that the tip burned with a bright, dancing crimson flame and dropped it into the mortar. The blaze was controlled and quick. The contents went up in a small plume of lilac smoke, and I concentrated power into it. The marble mortar quivered a little as the magic worked into the smoke. I began the spell.

  “I call to thee, Aradia, Goddess of the Lost.” Ivan rolled his head across the pillow, and his hollow eyes stared at me. “Through the woods of murk, through the darkest night, I call thee. Lead me along the path to find whom I have lost. Aradia, let me see sights beyond sight.”

  I was thrust down a vortex of lavender mist and into the mind of Paris Hamilton. He didn’t know I was there—he could not sense my presence beyond a feeling of being watched over, and I deliberately blocked his thoughts from my own. I didn’t want to know everything that crossed that man’s mind, and I didn’t want him to know I was doing a spell on him. Working relationships can go a little south if a colleague knows you indiscriminately used magic on them without their permission. I’d never used magic on any of the cops before, but I had to know what was happening. I felt like I should be there, in spirit if not in body.

  Despite the fact that I was inside his head, I could also still feel and see the infirmary room. I was completely aware of every tiny movement around my physical body while seeing out through Hamilton’s eyes like they were my own. It was like being between two cinema screens. On one was the reality of where I was and what my body was doing, and the other was the world through the eyes of Paris Hamilton.

  Hamilton was outside, and there were many other people around him. He had dropped his long coat in favor of a bulletproof vest like the others around him, and he was checking the number of rounds in the magazine for his gun. I watched the process with fascination; I had never held, let alone fired a gun. Some of the things I could do with magic, however, negated the need for one and were just as deadly. He clicked the magazine into place inside the gun and he was prepared. I could see Rourke down away from him; she was performing similar checks on her own equipment, and there was the sound of a voice coming through, someone speaking through an earpiece he was wearing. They were preparing to approach the house. Most of the outside security had been neutralized, and someone from the K9 unit had handled the dogs patrolling the grounds. It was time to make a move. I felt the determination both in Hamilton and in the air around him; it was an odd sensation.

  “What are you doing?” This voice came from the room behind me; it was elderly, frail and weak. It was the voice of Ivan Petrovich in the bed next to me. He’d finally become interested in my activity, or sudden lack thereof. I was connected to Hamilton, so I must have looked much like I was staring into space. I focused on the room for a minute, trying to keep hold of the connection to Hamilton—I could lose it, and I had no more ingredients to try it again. I managed to turn my hand palm up on the bed beside me.

  “Take my hand,” I said to Ivan Petrovich. He hesitated, I could see that, and as I watched him struggle to make up his mind, my connection to Hamilton wavered. “Trust me,” I pleaded with him. I felt the brittle, paper-like skin of the old man’s hand slide over my upturned one, and I brought him in with me so I could concentrate on the faraway scene. Petrovich had to take a minute to adjust. He stood next to me in my mind; it was like a dark room with the two movie screens at either end. One was what I was actually seeing, and the other was what I was watching through my mind’s eye. Standing there, I could see him as he was inside: he was still the strong man of his youth. I had no idea what he saw when he looked at me, but his eyes were wide. I watched him look back to the room where he could see us sitting, his hand in mine, my eyes staring at the wall and his closed as if in concentration or sleep. Then he turned to see what the other side offered, and it had all his attention, much like it had mine. The minute it had his full attention, it was like something clicked between the three of us. Hamilton, Petrovich and I became a group mind, feeling this as if we were all one person.

  We were creeping closer to the house; it was large, white and had many windows, a veritable mansion. Our gun was ready, drawn down by our thigh as we crept slowly over the grass to our designated point of entry. We could feel each blade of grass as it touched our exposed skin. It was like being supported by dozens of tiny fingers, encouraging us forward. There was a single light on, coming from a downstairs back room; this was where the target had to be. I let Hamilton’s thoughts seep through my guard a little so I could know where everyone else was. Rourke’s team was going around the back of the house to go in through the kitchen. Organized Crime, led by a man named Klass, were taking the front entrance. We and our team were going in the side door, which was on one end of a little walkway that led to the garage at the left side of the house.

  We positioned ourselves so that we got to kick the door down when the call was made. I could feel the strength in our legs and the thrill of being the first one in, the one to break through into the interior. We directed two men to either side of the door to cover us while we broke through in case there were combatants in the hallway. We waited for the others to check in at their points of entries. The adrenaline pumped through us; we were ready to move. More than ready, we were itching to move—there was a strange desire for the fight thrilling through us. The night was silent around us, the stars were out, and the only flicker of movement was the shadows of men tensed for the same fight.

  The order to move barked through our ear like a drumbeat; it sounded like a horn of war through our nervous system. We ran at the door, pounded the simple lock to nothing with our foot, let it swing open and filed into an empty corridor. We announced our presence in a fleet of voices all shouting the same thing, one voice. “We are the police! Your time has come, you must surrender.”

  Suddenly there was gunfire. The bark, bark, bark of guns going off as his security decided that they weren’t going to go peaceably, that we were too great a threat. We followed the sounds to the room with the lights and found ourselves pinned just outside by gunfire. A quick look inside showed us that Sardi had fortified himself behind his goons and was firing at us. We were prepared; we signaled with our hands to go two high, two low. We crouched, rolling in through the door, and fired into the mass of black that was shooting at our allies and hiding the man we wanted. We killed a man before he could kill us, and the thrill of survival was primal.

  I could feel Ivan slobbering next to me, over the action, over the fact that Sardi was fighting back, which meant he was more likel
y to get shot now. Ivan wanted him to keep fighting us—if he kept fighting, he would have to be shot, they would have to kill him, and that was what he wanted more than anything. He wanted this man dead, for Nikki. He wanted this man to bleed. It was so overpowering, his sense of hatred, that it almost filled me up.

  The order came from organized crime—disable his shooting hand or take him down—but they were under heavy fire. It didn’t look like Sardi wanted to be taken alive. He didn’t want to let his lawyers deal with this, and the murders had rattled him—that had to be it. He didn’t know who was killing his men, and it could have been the police for all he knew. They hadn’t been intended as his execution squad, but that’s what they became. We didn’t see who shot him, but he went down to the floor and his blood was everywhere; it splattered up the walls and soaked into the carpet. I heard Ivan’s crow of triumph as Sardi bled out into the floor.

  We moved into the room, looking down at his bloodied corpse; we saw the light fade out of his eyes, and Ivan relaxed slightly. I could see his chest—one, two, three bullet holes. We’d wanted him alive, to prosecute, to serve as a warning to others, but it was too late. He hadn’t been smart; he’d been scared and died in fear. We turned our head away and walked out to the corridor. A female officer was escorting a young girl from upstairs. She was rubbing at her eyes sleepily, or perhaps hiding her tears. She looked just like her mother, with her ash blonde hair. She had a slightly chubby face, but she would grow out of that; she would be a beautiful woman. Anna Lewis was alive, well, and saved.

  The grip on my hand intensified, and the sharp pain meant my connection to Hamilton was broken. It was just Ivan and I connected, and he was in pain, the throes of death. He had given over his last will to defeat, he had seen the end of his revenge, and he was so tired. I pushed him from our connection as fast I could, only catching the edge of his death through an inner consciousness I did not want to experience. I dropped from the chair, knocking the mortar from the bed; it made a large crunch noise on the floor, and I had no time to see whether the floor or the bowl was more damaged. I lay there sprawled on the floor, riddled with a brief agony that faded as the hand in mine became limp and the monitors let out the low whine of the dead.

  The doctor and LeBron returned to the room. I had to prize Ivan’s death-locked fingers from mine. He was turning cold right there under my touch, and it unnerved me. I did not want to remember that cold. There was a smile stretching Ivan’s lips grotesquely, and I half wondered if the vindictive bastard had tried to take me with him.

  LeBron helped me to my feet; I was wobbly from being taken by an echo of death and watched with a detached sense of self-preservation as the doctor pulled the sheet up over his face. I didn’t really think Ivan had deliberately tried to take me with him; he had just given up on holding on to his life when he knew that not only was his enemy dead, but his granddaughter was safe.

  “Are you all right?”

  I looked at LeBron, and for a moment I couldn’t focus on his face. It was like I had been hit with a scythe to the stomach. I clutched at myself to make sure my insides were staying where they should be before I looked back at him. “Yes, I think I am, I will be.” I rubbed my temples. “I’m just tired.”

  “Let’s go home.”

  “Sounds like a good idea.” I went to collect my things. The amulet of Taish winked up at me from the bottom of my bag. I stuffed everything in on top of it and followed LeBron back to the car. My mobile rang but I ignored it. I wanted to sleep. I laid my head back against the backrest of my seat, closed my eyes and drowned out the sound slowly. I willed myself not to hear anything. It stopped after a while, and LeBron’s rang instead. He pulled over to the side of the road to answer it.

  “Yes sir, she’s fine, sir.” I knew LeBron was looking at me; I turned my head toward the window, my eyes still closed, and curled up in the car seat. “She’s right here, sir, but she’s sleeping. I don’t want to wake...yes sir; if she comes to I will tell her that. Good night.”

  He hung up, pulled out, and this time I really did fall asleep to the rumble of the engine and LeBron’s voice telling me about an outcome I’d already seen.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  I was weary beyond measure when I returned to my apartment. It was early morning, and all I really wanted was to crawl into my bed and sleep for a few days. LeBron had dropped me off at home after we had finished filling out a report at his desk. I’d sat on the edge, explaining what I’d done, both of us excluding the fact that I had done something else after that. There was an air of celebration around us as we sat there, but it was like time was slow where we were. It was like being in the car, watching the people buzz around us as if they were going seventy and we were just sitting still. We were in a silent and still bubble.

  Even when LeBron had dropped me off, I hadn’t come straight up to my apartment; I had gone into my office and typed up an invoice for Governor Bird on an actual typewriter I’d found at a junk sale. I’d walked down to the post box with it in an envelope, addressed and stamped, so that I could post it in the right world.

  I stretched and yawned, locking up behind me; my keys fell from my hands into a dish on a small table next to the door. I hung up my coat slowly. My limbs felt so very heavy, and I rested my head against the wall several times as I struggled to keep myself upright long enough to make it to the bed.

  Long day?

  I groaned as I heard Nancy’s voice enter my thoughts. If there was one thing I really didn’t need, it was to have a long, drawn-out conversation with her right now. She must have come in through the bathroom window, as that was her easiest entrance and exit from my place without assistance. She appeared, leaping up the back of couch to sit on top of it, where she flicked her gray tail back and forth almost angrily.

  “Yes, very long—too long, and if you don’t mind, I would like to go to sleep.”

  I would like an apology.

  “What the hell for?”

  I headed toward the bedroom. My feet were slow, and my entire body felt like a dead weight that I had to drag across the floor.

  You threw me out into the snow!

  “I threw you out into the corridor. If you went outside that’s your own fault, and you got back in right away, didn’t you? So what are you complaining for? I bet you didn’t even touch the snow. The heating expel on the roof would have melted any snow; you must have got across and dived in the window.”

  It’s the principle of the thing.

  “Principle? Oh bugger off, you miniature beast of burden. I’m way too tired to listen to you bitch.”

  I threw open my bedroom door, marching into my room, and threw myself and my bag facedown on the covers. They felt soft and warm under my cheek. The necklace spilled out onto the bed. I rolled my eyes up to look at it; the emerald shined in the light coming through the balcony doors.

  “Claudo!” I yelled, directing my finger at the curtains, and they closed across the door. When I was tired, I resorted to using Latin to increase potency of my magic. I don’t know if actually helped or if it was just psychological. I scooted up farther onto the covers and looked carefully at the jewel in my hands. It was a beautiful piece, and it had to be worth quite a bit. Hamilton and Rourke hadn’t even questioned my taking it; it was magical and therefore nothing to do with them. I had no desire to keep it. This one little trinket had led to so much chaos—an innocent man had died just because he had been in the wrong man’s address book. I wanted rid of it.

  I fished out my mobile and dialed through my history, pulling up Truth’s number. She would probably be in bed at this hour, but I could leave her a message. I told her simply that I had the pendant and I would sell it to her at her best price. I hung up the phone and left the amulet on the bed while I went about taking off the locket around my neck. I had a little altar set up, a piece of wood marked out with three holes, in two of which
sat quartz crystals. A third lay on its side outside of the carved design. I placed the locket in the middle and screwed the third crystal into place. The energy between the three buzzed to life, encircling the locket so that it could recharge.

  Nancy leaped up on the bed. Her form arched against the bedpost, and she curled up on the corner of it, something she knew she wasn’t supposed to do. Her paw batted at the amulet sitting on the bed.

  Where did that come from?

  “It came from my murderer; he was using it even though he didn’t have a smidge of magical talent.”

  The council must be slipping if things like this are making their way into the normal population. What’s it do?

  I stretched and yawned loudly. I tried to shoo Nancy, but she refused to budge.

  What does it do?

  “It switches people’s bodies, okay? Puts you in them and them in you. I’m taking it to Truth tomorrow; she’s going to buy it off me.”

  I grabbed my pajamas and stormed into the bathroom. I was not in the mood for whatever game Nancy was up to, I was not sorry I had turfed her out when I left, especially after her comment. She was probably most sore about being treated like a cat rather than a person. It drove her mental to be reminded that she had lost her human body. She missed it—being able to drink and eat as she pleased, to wear clothing and to be with men. If there was one thing I knew Nancy liked, it was to be with men. Preferably not the same one two nights on the trot, though.

  Men made me think of Magnus. I didn’t know if I should be the bigger person yet again and call him to make up. I hated to be the one always taking that step recently, especially when he was the one in the wrong. He had yelled at me, told me that my life choices were the wrong ones and that I needed to be protected by a big strong man like him. I was not the kind of woman who needed to be protected by someone else. Sure, occasionally I didn’t mind an arm around the shoulder, a hug and being told that everything would be all right when I was sad. I didn’t mind a little male posturing on occasion. It let them get it out of their system; if they didn’t they might implode. However, I did not need to be protected in the whole 1950s inequality way.