“Thanks for doing this,” I said when I was mostly finished. I never was able to eat an entire carton of ginger walnut shrimp. “I needed a break. It’s been a busy morning.”
“Anything for you, hon.” Jason pushed back from the table, taking his bottle with him. “Mind if we sit for a while?”
We sat snuggled together on my maroon velvet couch, sipping beer in silence. I leaned against Jason and closed my eyes. He was a good man, and I liked being with him, and I needed to stop wishing for what I couldn’t have.
I felt Jason remove the bottle from my hand and lean down to put it on the hardwood floor with a clink. His other arm tightened around me, his fingers stroking my sleeve. “I hate to disagree with you,” he said in a low voice, “but your apartment is much nicer than mine.”
“Yours is bigger.”
“Don’t need a lot of space for this.” He drew me close and kissed me. I put my arms around his neck and kissed him back. He smelled of Old Spice and a hint of sharp, minty soap. His hand slid down my back and tugged at my blouse, untucking it from the waistband of my skirt.
“Jason, we don’t have time—”
“Just relax, Hel. Take a moment.” He kissed me again, more deeply, and his fingers worked their way under my blouse and onto my skin. It tickled, and I shivered involuntarily. His other hand came to rest on my knee, pushing my skirt up slightly. He made a pleased sound deep in his throat. I pulled him closer, putting my hand over his and squeezing just a little.
“I should get back—”
“We have plenty of time. Us naked on this velvet—tell me you haven’t thought about it.”
I wasn’t about to tell him he wasn’t the one I’d fantasized having naked on the couch. Ruthlessly pushing away those thoughts, I ran my fingers through the soft hair at the base of his neck and let him push my skirt higher. This was—
Footsteps sounded on the stairs, distantly, then there was a knock at the door. “Helena?” Judy said. “Mr. Campbell is here and needs your assistance.”
It was like a gallon of ice water to my body. I shot away from Jason too rapidly to be strictly polite and saw his hurt expression seconds after I realized what I’d done. “Sorry. I was just startled.”
“I get it.” He didn’t look like he did.
I rapidly tucked in my blouse and straightened my skirt. Then I took his hand and lifted it to my cheek. “Rain check?”
He smiled. “Probably best. I don’t have a lot of time myself. I just thought we could…anyway.”
He’d brought me lunch just so he could get into my pants? I managed a smile and let go his hand. “I have to go. This is an important customer.”
“Well, walk me to the door at least.”
It took all my willpower to walk down the stairs and through the stacks without dragging Jason along and shoving him out the door. Malcolm waited by the cash register, looking unbearably handsome in a pale gray suit and goldenrod waistcoat, his tie fastened by a pearl the size of my thumbnail only a few shades lighter than the suit. His eyes came to rest on Jason with polite indifference. I was sure my head was going to burst into flame from sheer embarrassment. It couldn’t possibly be obvious what we’d been doing just moments before. Besides, by his expression, Malcolm didn’t care even if it was.
At the door, Jason kissed me, a long, lingering, sexy kiss I tried to enjoy, but my sense of Malcolm’s presence made me uncomfortable. I hoped Jason wouldn’t notice my reluctance. But he smiled at me, said, “See you later,” and was gone without showing any sign that he thought my behavior was abnormal. I stayed at the door, watching him get into his car and drive away, until my cheeks felt their normal color.
Malcolm didn’t seem bothered by the interplay. “I hope I didn’t interrupt your lunch,” he said.
“Oh! No, we were…finished eating…did you need an augury?”
He handed over the slip of paper. “I would be interested in your opinion of this augury,” he said.
I unfolded the paper. What creature killed Martin Wellman? “I think it will reject this one,” I said. “It’s awfully close to asking ‘who?’”
“Nevertheless, I would like to try, if you don’t mind.”
“I don’t mind.” I should mind, on the oracle’s behalf—should steer my customers away from wasting the oracle’s time. But I trusted Malcolm, and if he thought this was an augury I should try, I was willing to go along with it. I refused to think about whether this made me partisan.
I braced myself as I stepped into the oracle’s stillness and found, as I’d expected, a howling, whirling storm. “No augury!” I shouted, and the storm faded. I paused for a minute. “You know, we ought to be able to work out a better system,” I said. “That storm can’t be comfortable for you. Isn’t there some other way you can signal when there’s no augury?”
Silence. Dust motes gleamed gold in the sunbeams. I sighed and left.
“Nothing,” Malcolm said. He and Judy were standing side by side in a way that told me their strained silence hadn’t been broken while I was gone.
“No. As I thought. I’m sorry.”
Malcolm accepted the augury slip. “I have another I’d like to try, as long as the store remains quiet.”
I looked at the second slip. Where is the invader that killed Martin Wellman? “I think—” I shut my mouth tight. No talking about other people’s auguries, even the failed ones.
“You think this one will fail as well,” Malcolm said. “So do I. Please try, anyway.”
I nodded and returned to the oracle. To my surprise, it was still and quiet, not roaring with a windstorm. The light, however, was blood red, the light of a dying sun. My pulse pounded in my ears like a distant sea beating on the shore. There was no blue light anywhere, not even the purple light I might have expected where blue met red. I paced through the aisles, searching until I was certain there was no augury anywhere. “Is this your compromise? No augury?” I said.
The light went faintly blue in an instant. I searched again—still no blue-limned book. “Huh,” I said. “I like it. It’s less definitive than the storm, but I think we’re both happier.” I found my way out of the warren, musing on what this meant for my theory that the oracle was alive in some way. If it could understand me on that level, maybe there were other things I might be able to communicate.
“No augury,” I said when I emerged.
Malcolm let out a long, deep breath and leaned on the counter with both hands. “One more,” he said.
“You’re wasting the oracle’s time,” Judy said.
“This one, I expect to see fulfilled,” Malcolm said. “I apologize for taking up your time.”
“It’s no problem,” I said, glaring at Judy, who glared back. “What is it?”
He handed over a third augury slip, and I carried it into the oracle before unfolding it and reading it. Where will the killer strike next?
It sent a chill through me. It sounded so ominous, like we were dealing with some agency beyond human comprehension. I held the slip in both hands as I searched the stacks for the augury. This time it was a thick volume of Architectural Digest from five or so years back. I admired the house shown on the cover, which reminded me a little of my friends the Kellers’ home, blocky in a style that had been ultra-modern forty years ago and was still attractive.
“This is it,” I said. “$700.”
“Thank you.” He gave Judy two small tubes of sanguinis sapiens. I wondered if I’d ever feel comfortable asking him why he seemed to have an unlimited supply of the stuff.
“Can I ask…how the hunt progresses?”
He looked grim. “Not well. This augury both gives my team guidance in its search and fills me with foreboding. I think—” He shut his mouth, looked off toward the front door.
“What?”
“I don’t want to burden you.”
“Malcolm, don’t be stupid. If there’s something I can do to help—”
“There may be nothing.” But he looked indecisive,
something I’d never seen on him before. “And yet—” He looked at Judy. “This is something Rasmussen should know. You should tell him. He and I aren’t on speaking terms.”
“What is it?” The chill I’d felt was back, and it had brought friends. I felt tense again, poised to bear whatever Malcolm might say.
“The worst news,” Malcolm said. “We’re not looking for an invader. Those murders were the work of a human being.”
8
“Impossible,” Judy said. “No human would kill like that.”
“But a human could,” Malcolm said. “The only thing preventing someone from murdering in that fashion is a sense of morality, not an inability to drain magic from someone. We do it every time a Warden dies—harvest their remaining magic for use in the Long War. And I have compelling evidence that I’m right.”
“What evidence?” I tried to picture a human attacking someone the way invaders did and came up blank.
“The fact that none of the victims displayed the symptoms of an invader attack, and the absence of invaders in the vicinity of the murders.” Malcolm had his eyes fixed on Judy, who looked belligerent. “Some abnormalities in the bodies Tinsley has been unable to explain away. My team has documented it thoroughly, and we’re convinced this is the correct explanation.”
“I don’t believe it. I want to see your evidence.”
“At the risk of sounding uncivil, you’re not the one we need to convince. Now that I have the results of this augury, I’m going to turn my information over to Lucia and let her decide what to do with it. My team will continue hunting the killer, but we need more manpower.”
“Do you have any idea who the killer might be?” I asked.
Malcolm looked grim. “I’m not even certain we’re dealing with only one person. When I believed it to be invaders, I knew there were at least two victims who were not killed by the creature my team was tracking. Now I must re-evaluate my investigation. If there is more than one person…I should not have mentioned it to you. Don’t tell anyone else about this possibility.”
“I’m calling my father,” Judy said, pulling out her phone. “Let me tell him before you talk to Lucia. He deserves to know before the witch hunt starts.”
“I agree. He wasn’t who I had in mind when I hoped you would keep this to yourselves.”
“Witch hunt?” I said. “But…” Understanding dawned. “It could be anyone, right? Which means everyone will suspect everyone else.”
“More to the point, Nicolliens will blame Ambrosites, and vice versa,” Malcolm said. “Relations never returned to normal after the threats against Abernathy’s two months ago, and this will only make things worse.”
“Father?” Judy said. “I’ve learned something you need to know. No, it can’t wait.” She rolled her eyes and tapped her toe in its black patent leather shoe that probably had a designer name. After a few seconds, she said, “Malcolm Campbell says the deaths are being caused by a human, not an invader. Yes, that’s what I said.” Another pause. “He has evidence and he’s taking it to Lucia. I thought you should know. Actually, so did he.”
“I have trouble picturing what it was like for Judy to grow up in that household,” I murmured to Malcolm. He smiled a little, but said nothing.
“Father, I don’t know what his evidence is. You’ll have to—yes, he is. I know he shouldn’t be here yet, but I—no, Father, I can’t make Helena do what I want. That’s not my job.” A tinny cascade of speech too distant to be intelligible poured out of her phone. Judy just stood there, nodding silently and rolling her eyes again. Then she said, “You’ll just start an argument. Arrange to meet at the Gunther Node and you and Campbell and Lucia can work it out.” Another pause. “I don’t know if fair is really what we should be worried about now, if there’s a serial killer magus running around loose. I’ll see you at dinnertime.” She hung up.
“Thank you,” Malcolm said. “Please excuse me. I have to meet with Lucia and, apparently, with Rasmussen as well. I’m sure I’ll see the two of you again soon, and often.” He nodded and left the store with his augury.
“Serial killer?” I said.
“What else would you call it? There’ve been at least five deaths, and those are just the ones we know about because Campbell tells you everything. All with the same M.O., all displaying the same symptoms, or whatever you call how someone dies.”
I shivered and straightened my skirt. “Serial killer.”
“Don’t take this the wrong way, but at least we don’t have to worry—the killer is only going after non-Wardens.”
“Unless he’s only going after non-magi, which would make both of us vulnerable.”
We looked at one another for a long, silent moment. “I’m going upstairs to put away the leftovers,” I said. “I’ll be right back.”
“Sorry I interrupted your ‘lunch,’” Judy said with a smirk. “Feel better? Or just disappointed?”
“Conflicted,” I said, and trudged back upstairs, where I put away the rest of the shrimp and half a carton of white rice for later. I threw away the empty cartons and wiped the table. I couldn’t help feeling like Jason had manipulated me into letting him into my apartment—but he was my boyfriend, so he shouldn’t have had to resort to manipulation. I was being stupid, and worse, I was being distant. I had to stop holding Jason at arm’s length when it came to this apartment. Or everything, really.
No one came into the store until the afternoon rush. I took a turn doing data entry and tried not to feel angry at Jason or guilty over feeling angry at Jason. By two o’clock I was ready to run screaming into the streets, anything to get away from my thoughts. I almost wanted Cynthia to come in so I could pick a fight with her. I was so tired of the complicated relationships in my life.
It wasn’t until the third augury of the afternoon that I heard Malcolm’s theory repeated. “It’s a human killer,” said Doug Schrote. I knew him well as a treasure hunter who came into the store frequently, wanting auguries that would give him clues to their locations. “That is, it’s a human who’s doing the killing, not that they’re killing humans…except they are killing humans, so I guess it’s true however you mean it.”
“How do you know?” I said, gripping his augury slip tightly.
“Everyone’s talking about it. Ryan Parish denied it, but he’d say that just to keep people from panicking. I think it’s better to be open about these things, don’t you? We need real information, not lies.”
“But if there’s no information, isn’t it better people not speculate?”
“How can they not? I told Ms. Pontarelli it had to be a Nicollien—someone with a familiar he could sic on the victim.”
“I don’t—” I shut my mouth. I wasn’t sure how much of what I knew was privileged information. Lucia would tear me a new one if she found out I’d given away facts about what was now her case. “I don’t think it’s a good idea to make accusations without evidence,” I said instead.
“It’s hardly an accusation to state the truth,” Doug said.
I shook my head and turned away. Doug wasn’t terribly bright, so maybe it was natural for him to think of something so ridiculous, but what if other people, intelligent and reasonable people, let their emotions carry them away into making accusations that made sense?
All the Ambrosites had theories. Most of them had to do with a Nicollien being the murderer. All of those centered on familiars doing the killing, which told me the information about the victims’ condition, that they hadn’t died in agony, hadn’t gotten out. Either that, or my customers didn’t care about logic.
Around four, just after the last Warden left, Derrick Tinsley came through the door, and my heart lightened. I hadn’t realized how tense I’d become until I saw his familiar stocky form in the doorway. “How are you?”
“I’m headed home for a few hours’ sleep, but Campbell sent me with an augury request for tonight.” He waved a torn piece of paper at me.
“Then I’ll be quick.” I accepted the
paper and tried not to feel disappointed Malcolm hadn’t been the one to come.
As I searched the shelves, I contemplated the augury request: Where will the killer strike tomorrow? What had been Malcolm’s augury just a few hours before? Something about where the killer would strike next. It seemed a slim difference, but I wasn’t a monster hunter, so what did I know? At least they were getting some rest. I could appreciate Malcolm’s desire to catch the killer, but surely even he couldn’t go forever on no sleep?
“How’s Olivia?” I asked when I returned, augury in hand. “It’s $450.”
“Better. When you lose magic and have it restored, the physical effects are immediately cured. It’s not like breaking a bone—or even breaking a bone and having it magically healed, which still hurts for a while.” He pulled out a wallet and riffled through the bills inside. “It’s your facility with magic that’s depleted. Takes a while for you to be a fully functional magus again. Good thing steel magi like Campbell are immune to having their magic drained, because we can’t afford to have them sidelined. And Campbell in particular is a crappy patient. Never can sit still for very long.”
“I can imagine.” I accepted his payment. “Do you think you’re close to finding the killer?”
Derrick’s face went grim. “Wish I could say we were. We’re closer than we were yesterday, that’s for sure, but who knows what that means overall? At least there are more teams working on it—but you know Campbell. He won’t be happy unless we’re the ones who catch the bastard.”
“I know. Tell everyone hi from me, okay? And stay safe.”
“You stay out of trouble,” Derrick said with a smile that transformed his rather bulldog-like face, and left the store with a wave for Judy.
“I can’t believe he’s a pediatrician,” Judy said. “You’d think he’d scare the kids, with a face like that.”
“I think he looks nice,” I said, loyally if not truthfully.
“Whatever. I’m going to work on the database. I think we’re only a few hours from having it finished.”
The Book of Mayhem Page 8
