“I want to hire you, Mr. Kincaid, in accordance with the last will and testament of Christopher Theodore Minirth, First-Circle member of the Hermetic Order of the Auroric Aura, and my lodge brother these last twenty-two years.”
I wanted a drink. Reynolds kept going.
“He left it with me, formally, legally. His will, and a promise of what you’ll get when you’ve met the requirement he set for you; Christopher asked for you, specifically, to do him this one last favor, this one last project on his behalf.”
He tapped the surface of his desk, drawing up a document, zooming, then flicking it my way to realign itself on my side of the desk. My headware took a screenshot, downloaded a copy of the file, while I just blinked like an idiot.
“Mr. Kincaid, prior to his passing, Dr. Minirth made it clear that he wants you to investigate his murder.”
CHAPTER 7
How do you say no to that?
How do you refuse to look into your mentor’s death, even when he hasn’t reached out from beyond the grave and asked you to do so? How do you—a PI, mind, in this case—turn your back on a case like that, in a city like this?
Seattle didn’t care. The law didn’t care. They’d already written it off as natural causes, already decided to let his body cool and let the world forget about him. Knight Errant wasn’t involved, and never would be, campus security didn’t give a damn. The world might not care, but I still could.
“Tell me what you know, Doc.” My Transys Avalon started recording.
“Christopher was found dead this morning. The janitorial crew on campus called it in, doing their normal check of the offices, just after four a.m. Jeannie—you remember her, I hope, our office administrator?—said Christopher hadn’t left the office last night, but that wasn’t unusual.”
I felt bad for the cleaner, but I was glad it hadn’t been Jeannie that’d found him. She was a sweetheart, the department’s angel, and it wouldn’t have done her heart any favors.
“Preliminary findings said it was his heart. That’s what the reports say. That’s what the police say.”
“But?”
An elf could have a heart attack. Could.
“He was low on blood.”
“Bleeding out? What, like he fell and cut himself?”
“No. No marks. No cuts. No bloodstains. It was his heart that killed him. He was just missing quite a bit of blood at the time.”
I felt a cold little ball in the pit of my stomach, and saw fangs in the dark. I swallowed the fear and anger instead of trusting myself to say anything worthwhile right then. If I’d let myself talk, it woulda peeled the paint from the walls.
“I want you, Mr. Kincaid, the Hermetic Order wants you, Christopher wanted you to look into this. Do…what you do. Get to the bottom of it. Find out who, or what killed him. Find out why. Tell me. He was my friend, Mr. Kincaid, not just yours. Please, take this job.”
“Done.”
It hurt, just a little, that he thought he had to even ask.
“You’ll be rewarded in accordance to his documents, of course. Christopher left you a data chip, I believe, but I’ll need to double-check the will to make sure. In addition, I’m authorized to waive any past-due membership fees, and grant you increased access to the Order’s libraries.”
He just had to drag that back up. Hitting a nerve while I was still reeling from Minirth’s death.
“Doc, listen, I appreciate that. I’ll take you up on the dues thing, but I’m not interested in, in, in regular monthly meetings, sitting in at the book club, critiquing theoretical journals together.”
“Because you don’t work like that.”
He knew. I’d almost forgotten, somehow, but he knew.
“Because I don’t work like that.”
“I see. You wish to continue squandering the Talent you have left, Mr. Kincaid, and continue to refuse not only being a full member of the Hermetic Order, but a proper hermetic at all. What I long suspected about your tradition, your methods, what Christopher confided in me but I ignored, all those years ago, is—”
I stood.
“I’m not in the mood for a lecture tonight, Doc. I’m taking the job. I’ll take the forgiven back-dues. But you can take the sermon and—”
Dammit, I didn’t want to let him make me this mad, not right then, not after how the conversation had started. I choked down the anger and just forced a nod.
“I’m taking the job. Not the advice. I’ll coordinate with the campus cops, so please tell them about me if they call to confirm. Tell them about…the job. The investigation. Not the other thing.”
“I won’t tell anyone ‘the other thing,’ Mr. Kincaid,” his tone had turned icy, formal, distant. He was a professor, I was a failing student he wanted out of his office as soon as I turned in one last assignment.
“Not the campus authorities, not the other members of the Order.”
Because they’d expel me at best.
“That will be all, Mr. Kincaid.”
I grabbed my hat and took off, feeling his gaze on my back as I did. Ari had waited outside—she could’ve slipped through his wards as easily as I did, or I could’ve held them open for her if I’d wanted, but she liked to stay on the streets in these livelier neighborhoods—and playing with a dog walking a kid, when I got out to the street.
I didn’t even get to really slam the door to vent, on my way out. Ari was shaking the mutt’s paw, the mutt’s tagging-along kiddo on a leash was in awe at the whole thing, and I didn’t want to wreck the moment.
Chris Minirth was dead, and all talking to Reynolds had done was get me even more pissed off about it.
It was time to go to work.
CHAPTER 8
I couldn’t hit the streets like I normally did. Not the streets I knew, at least, or hit them in my usual way. I wasn’t in Puyallup. U-Dub was Downtown, or really what should’ve been called Uptown; the heart of Seattle, the city proper, the glossy, clean, white hat-side of town. I’d lived on campus, grudgingly, but been at that age where I wanted to get away from my dad. Given the choice, in retrospect, it would’ve felt more honest to sleep back home in Puyallup, where so many Downtowners were sure I belonged.
Knight Errant hassled me twice, just that first evening. Flashing lights and a tinny, robotic voice pulled me over when I’d circled the campus trying to find the new visitor parking lot, then I’d had a pair of officers parked nearby, waiting for me, when I got back to the Ford later that night. Puyallup tags, Puyallup registration, Puyallup dust clinging to the siding? Downtown cops’re gonna come say hi.
I wasn’t in the mood for their crap, but I was even less in the mood to get shot to death for assaulting an officer, or locked up forever for me an’ Ari putting up a fight. I smiled and nodded, told them I had licenses, assured them I wasn’t here to sell chips or drugs, promised I wouldn’t put a hand anywhere near my concealed carry piece, showed them the data for my magician’s license, swore that the car wasn’t stolen, and—finally, when you’d think they were bored—explained I was here on official business as a registered investigator working a case for a nearby client.
No wonder folks hated cops, y’know?
Campus police weren’t much better. Sorry, they said, but it would be indelicate to let me into the man’s office so soon after his death. Sorry, they said, but there’s really nothing more they could tell me. Sorry, they said, perhaps I’d like a copy of the campus newsfeed to read their public statement of mourning about such a dignified researcher? Sorry, they said, but there was no need for them to let me interview their janitorial staff, the poor worker was really quite rattled and had too much work to do next shift anyway. Sorry, they said, but what were they supposed to do, he was old and had died of a heart attack, right? Sorry, they said, but there really wasn’t any need to validate my visitor parking tag, hadn’t I better be on my way before I got a parking ticket?
Sorry, I said—confusing Ari, since I was just muttering to myself while walking away—but that w
asn’t gonna cut it.
“Ariana.” I stood around a corner, line of sight broken from the evening-dwindling campus pedestrians. “Improved invisibility.”
Presto change-o, voilà, and abracadabra. She faded back to the unreality of the Astral, and I cut my way across campus without anyone seeing me. Ari’d keep an eye out and hold up the spell, and I’d tiptoe in and do my thing. I slid my aura, my sustained invisibility spell, and my weapon focus, all right through the Grant Landrum Metaphysical Sciences Building’s wards. Being a member of the Hermetic Order wasn’t always a headache.
I sauntered for the stairwell—elevator might look weird, empty—and headed to the third floor, where the magic happened. Literally. Offices had moved up and down the hall in the decade-plus I hadn’t been here, but I knew there wouldn’t be a floor change; wards and other, even longer-lasting protective measures were too costly to move. The labs were still on the third floor, which meant the offices would still be somewhere on the same.
It was late enough in the evening that everyone was gone but the part-timers—hell, Reynolds might come in for a lecture soon, a quick data-access from a friendly terminal showed me he taught his night class on Tuesdays—so I could basically wander as I pleased. I found Minirth’s office, and had to get old school to pop it open; my small lockpick gun wasn’t my most prized possession or my most expensive, but in my day-to-day PI routine, when I wasn’t in a life or death struggle where I had to lean on my Colt and my wand, it was probably my most important.
The hallway was empty, so the little clicks and pops of the gun went unnoticed. I was left alone in a dead man’s office, his workplace, his home away from home. He was, like Reynolds, a bibliophile. Old school. Paper books lined the walls, his desk was still polished wood, the back of his chair had an actual tweed jacket, with patched elbows, hanging from it.
Chris Minirth was dead, and here I was, having to sneak around just to give him a halfway proper investigation.
I blinked over to the Astral, and couldn’t help but taste the violence of his passing. No wonder Reynolds had called me, no wonder Minirth’s friends in the Hermetic Order knew something was wrong. Campus cops didn’t, even Knight Errant didn’t care enough or know enough to look into it. I wondered why. Anyone with astral sight—and plenty of folks working on this floor had it!—could’ve told them something was wrong, that he hadn’t died peacefully. I filed it away and tried to see what I could.
For the most part, his office, the whole floor, felt like…enthusiasm. Hope. It had a different background than Puyallup, a different smell-taste-feeling in the air, in the walls, in the bones of the place. It was a building full of bright young people, upper-middle class or elevated there through a fantastic Talent, people just starting to head toward the prime of their lives, full of the promise of a better tomorrow, being guided on their way by faculty and staff who’d already been there themselves. There was a wisdom to the place, a tranquility matching the eagerness, a sense of belonging and comfort.
That changed, though, in a swirling, dark maelstrom centered on, and just behind, his desk. The hope was gone, replaced by violence and fear; no, worse than fear. Terror. Rabid, animal-mad, whole-hearted terror. The sort magic could create, whether through dark spell-slinging or a more raw, emotional, direct manipulation. He’d not just died ugly, he’d died afraid. Alone, except for his killer.
I turned my indignation and sadness into power, channeled the sense of loss and turned it into a spell.
“Laiad,” I whispered, the Enochian word for secrets.
The room opened up to me, cataloging every little thing in it. It was a simple, but indispensable spell of detection, of searching, of finding. I saw, I just knew everything in his office. A list appeared, an inventory, tickling at the edges of my brain, as perfectly clear as a heads-up from my implanted computer.
Minirth’d taught me this spell, years earlier, and at the time I’d wondered when I’d ever use it; I’d been on the fast track for tactical training, not Department of Paranormal Investigation. What did I need some poncy detection magic for?
Stupid kid.
My head filled with information. One desk, no duh, thanks a lot, spell. One office chair. One visitor chair. Sixty-four old-fashioned paper books, dusty and loved, all listed Chicago-citation style, alphabetized nicely for me. A basic commlink, a barebones datapad-only Renraku model, the sort of no-frills basic tablet five years behind the curve, useful for taking notes, sharing small files, and basic wireless access. One sportcoat. One desktop tridphone. Seven wooden frames, holding certificates, three holding landscape photos from outside Portland. One datapad light pen. See how this is all going? Lots of nothing.
The commlink was the most likely thing to give me any insight, but I wasn’t equipped to hack my way into bupkiss. I pocketed it and called it a day.
What got me was the stuff that wasn’t there. No blood stains. No sign of a struggle. No spent shell casings, no broken glass, no battered furniture, no broken restraints. Knight Errant and the university weren’t even calling it a murder, they’d seen nothing to make them classify it that way. Only the Astral aftertaste of his death—and the fact he was down a couple pints—gave anything away.
I forgot about sneaking for a second and just threw myself into the chair opposite his at the desk; it would’ve felt weird, even after all these years and all I’d been through since my time at U-Dub, to sit in his chair.
Christopher Minirth was a savant. He’d brought big prestige to the campus, big money, big intellect. The man’d been educated in Portland, down in Tír Tairngire—I couldn’t shake that elven country this week, could I?—and had studied with some of the biggest magical names of our generation. He’d been a double major, a pioneer in both fields, an expert in Thaumaturgical Theories and also aced post-graduate classes down in Portland, studying Parazoology. A quarter-century ago, when Ehran “The Scribe,” the premier magical theorist of the century, had given his game-changing Humans and the Cycle of Magic speech? Minirth had been there. Right there. In the crowd, front row, sitting at Ehran’s own table at that fundraiser. He’d been an understudy to the big man, already a professor by then, learning new things from a supposed immortal every day. Minirth had been one of hermetic theory’s best and brightest, but was dedicated enough to the education of all sentients, dedicated enough to sharing knowledge instead of hoarding it, that he’d taken a position outside the elven fantasyland. Instead of soaking up Ehran’s know-how forever, he spent decades sharing it with others, here at U-Dub.
He’d taught me my first metamagical technique, Centering. It had been Minirth, not Reynolds, who’d defended my choice of Enochian when the time came to decide upon an ancient language used to Center, to channel mystical power. Minirth himself had used Sperethiel, an unpopular language outside the Tír, and one only shakily supported by then-current theoretical texts. Reynolds had always pushed students toward Latin, his own favored method, and I’d stubbornly bucked the trend. I’d been mostly a golden boy, mostly a spit-and-polish sort back then, but I’d had my rare moments of rebellion, even as a student. Minirth had stuck up for me, learned Enochian—like it was no big deal, just picked up another language to help the idiot purposefully making his life harder—to help tutor me through it, and had been my Metamagical Practicum advisor to boot. That was him, in a nutshell.
He’d been a great teacher, and a good man, and I was letting him down.
I cast a glance to the hallway’s camera—I was clear, it was cycling away at the moment—and pocketed his tablet. It went invisible as I slipped it into a broad coat pocket, and then I headed back out into the hallway, unseen, no one around to hear me as I left.
Magic hadn’t helped much, just yet. Electronics would have to do it. For that, I had to make a call.
CHAPTER 9
Downtown wasn’t gonna be much help, so I got the Ford pointed back toward Puyallup, then spun up my Transys to call my friends. Skiptrace, they called themselves, a pair of bounty hunters
that were, aside from Ari, who I’d made myself, probably my best friends in the world.
Trace was a buddy from a few semesters at U-Dub; in fact, she’d helped me with my undergrad-mandated technology courses. Later, she went rebel and started slinging her tech-skills with one foot in the shadows. Skip was a street-tough brat outta Carbonado, orkish, Trace’s betusked girlfriend, who did the heavy lifting when the three of us went chasing skells.
“Who is it?” Skip snarled after the third ring, her broad features glaring at her commlink’s lens the way she only did when my number came up on the caller ID. “What’choo want, Kincaid?”
She’s a charmer, our Skip. All bulging biceps and shoulders that put mine to shame, hair slash-cut up both sides giving her an almost-mohawk, cybereyes glinting and giving away that she’s got more chrome hidden elsewhere. She was, to put it delicately, the muscle.
“Looking for Trace,” I mostly kept my eyes on the road, Ari in the backseat, watching drops of water slither across the windows.
“One sec,” that got me another glare—Skip’s the jealous sort, and she’d been with her girlfriend for a long time—before she headed off-screen, then I heard a muffled almost-conversation.
Trace slid into view, mocha-dark skin, glowing bio-tat, flash of chrome from a line of datajacks near her hairline.
“Hoi, Jimmy. You need some tech support?”
“Hoi, Trace. Yeah. A friend’s dead. A good one. Cops don’t care. I’ve got his commlink, want to see if we can crack it open and scout for goodies inside, maybe a calendar, maybe some threatening messages or something. I know you’ve probably still got some backdoors at U-Dub, too, you think you can get into their security feed, mayb—”
“Bwahahahah!” Skip’s bone-shaking belly laugh cut me off, then the ork herself, out of breath and red in the face, crowded into the screen. One rippling arm got thrown over Trace’s shoulders, and only then did I notice the decker was having trouble keeping a straight face, too.
Shadowrun: Shaken: No Job Too Small Page 7
