Magic and the Shinigami Detective

by Honor Raconteur

  The open way she talked encouraged me to ask a question I’d bitten back before. “Did you—”

  Edwards flung up a hand, stopping me, her eyes glued to something around the corner. From this vantage, I could see the connecting street’s stores, but not what had caught her attention. “What?” I whispered.

  “I saw movement in that window.” She pointed to the store kitty-corner to us, The Wishing Tree.

  I peered in the same direction, taking in the overall state of the building. I couldn’t see anything in the window, in fact it looked pitch black to me. However, even in this poor lighting, I couldn’t miss the obvious. “Edwards. The wards around the building have been shredded.”

  Swearing, Edwards un-holstered the gun riding on her hip. “Henri, are you armed?”

  “Fortunately.” I set my pack carefully down, warding it with a touch-me-not spell, then reached for my wand. “That’s one of the stores I suspected might be robbed, by the way.”

  “So this might be our thieves.” Feral anticipation drew her lips back to reveal teeth. “Guard the front. I’ll hit them from the back.”

  I set myself in position, not visible from the street, avoiding the light from the nearby street lamp. I watched as Edwards darted across, as lithe and stealthy as a cat, then disappeared down a narrow alley to the side of the store. I blinked, watching her go, as it seemed a little too quick for human movement. If only there were a police call box nearby, I’d call for help, but sadly they were not widespread at this point. Kingston had only a dozen, sporadically placed, and they never seemed to be where people needed them. Like now.

  The chill of the night air radiated from the brick building near me, but no wind came down the street, so that the smell of the sea hovered strongly. It made my nose itch, but I steadfastly ignored the urge to scratch. I readied a spell on my lips to incarcerate anyone that might escape my direction, but tried to keep calm while doing it, as I didn’t want nerves to get the better of me. I absolutely did not want to entangle my partner by mistake.

  From inside the store came a sharp clatter, like glass shattering, then several shouts. I heard at least three male voices, all distinct from each other, and Edwards yelling at them to stop, to put their hands up.

  Something else broke, like wood splintering, and I had a terrible premonition. They weren’t going to come out the front, where I sat waiting for them.

  A second later, the premonition came true when I heard Edwards call out to me, “THEY WENT OUT THE SIDE! GO TOWARD THE BACK!”

  Swearing, I abandoned my position and went down the opposite alley, heading for the next street. Of course they wouldn’t come out the front, why would they? The back street let out nearer the docks. A quick dip in the ocean—assuming they could swim—and they’d be home free. Or maybe they had a boat waiting for them, who knew?

  I heard a shot fired, making my heart jump in my chest, but the pounding of feet didn’t slacken. A warning shot, perhaps? I had no time to think about it, dodging between the crates and barrels of refuse, trying not to trip over anything in the dingy lighting. It was a relief in more than one way when I reached the street.

  In a glance, I took in the situation. Edwards sprinted after three men, all of them heading not toward the docks, as I expected, but northward. She had a good head start on me, hot on their heels, and as I watched her speed increased again to something even a professional athlete would be hard pressed to match. There was definitely something there she hadn’t told me.

  Putting the thought aside, I immediately gave chase even though my sore feet and calves protested.

  I categorically refused to let her chase these men by herself.

  Being not at all athletically inclined, I more often lose footraces than win them. In this case, I ran harder than I ever had in my life, desperately trying to keep up as Edwards tore ahead of me. She kept close on their heels, nearly nipping at them, gun in her hand as she ran. Because she ran just in front of me, I couldn’t find an opening to let off any spells myself, as the attack spells in my arsenal were not as finely tuned as a bullet. I needed to somehow get past her first.

  Edwards paused enough to shoot once, twice, the gun’s report echoing through the street.

  One of them fell, hard, going down on one knee before his fellow snagged him up by the elbow and forced him back up. Another twisted to the side, and I could see a tear in his jacket, but it was a graze and nothing more. I saw blood only on one of them. Hitting a moving target challenged even the most experienced shooter and it was impressive at least one bullet had found a home.

  With both parties pausing, for different reasons, I closed a bit of the gap between us although I nearly lost all breath doing it. Perhaps Captain Gregson had a point about regular exercise after all. Especially if I was to have any prayer of keeping up with this woman. It would take a judicious application of spells, hexes, and muscularity to chase Jamie Edwards.

  We desperately needed to capture these thieves, at least one of them, and I raised my wand, panting out the beginning of an Anchor Boots spell as I ran. “Stone of earth, respond to my call—”

  Edwards raised her gun to fire again and one of the thieves, desperate, turned and did the one thing that I never wanted to happen—he cocked the spectral device and flung it at her head.

  She ducked, of course she ducked, but it landed on its side, the mechanism slamming open, and it fired.

  My heart dropped out of my stomach while I watched, horrified, as the energy shot nearly directly at Edwards’ head. It didn’t hit her, but the discharge passed by so close that it lit her skin in a sickly splash of electric green. The energy masticated her stability spell in a split second, her core going spastic, and the Shinigami Detective dropped like a rock.

  “JAMIE!”

  I didn’t remember crossing the distance between us or abandoning the spell. My world narrowed to her, lying splayed against the dirty street, skin turning ashen grey as she stopped breathing entirely. I fell to my knees next to her, my first thought a stability spell, but I knew I didn’t have the power to revert this.

  Hands shaking, I snatched out the emergency contact phyllite around her neck and snapped it, activating the emergency signal to call Seaton. Then, for just a split second, I pondered on what else I could do. Anything magical might conflict with Seaton’s emergency treatments. I didn’t dare.

  But I couldn’t just sit here and watch her die in front of my eyes.

  A memory flashed, of when she revived the drowned dockman. Could I use the same method here, keep her breathing, keep her brain from rotting from lack of oxygen?

  Not seeing how it would hurt, I positioned her body as she had taught me to do, put my mouth over hers tightly, and forced air into her lungs. Her body still felt warm under my own skin, giving me hope, and I lifted my head enough to take another breath in and do it again. Twice I breathed, then I shifted, put my hands against her heart, and pumped it hard thirty times.

  Breathe. One, two.

  Push. Use your weight, ignore the tremors in your arms.

  Breathe. One, two—

  “Davenforth, disengage!” Seaton demanded harshly, already falling to his knees on Jamie’s other side.

  I immediately withdrew my hands, rocking back to sit on my heels, and hoped that was far enough away as I didn’t have the breath to move any further. I watched, panting, as Seaton drew together two hexes, slapping them onto her chest, then pulled another spell into place that cleansed her core of the spectral energy. I watched anxiously as he put one layer of stabilizing spell on top of another, swearing as much as he casted.

  “How did this happen?” he demanded of me.

  “She was chasing the thieves, one of them chucked the device at her, it hit the ground, went off. Seaton, tell me you’re in time.”

  “Barely.” He passed another spell over the others, swearing as he worked. One spell integrated into another like an elaborate puzzle of pieces that formed a delicate balancing act.

  Exc
ept…except something else happened. Three times, in quick succession, I saw a flicker that tried to disrupt or shun the spell work Seaton cast. Even as I rationally tried to deny it, I couldn’t refute what my eyes told me. Was that truly an Immunity Spell engraved into her core? I knew Belladonna to be insane, but I realized now she was also a complete imbecile. Even a flatworm would have the intelligence to understand that if you put an Immunity Spell on someone’s very core then it would make any additional spell nearly impossible to use on them! It rejected most magic outright.

  It seemed like eons, but no more than five minutes passed before Seaton finished the main spells and began capping them all off into one cohesive unit. I recognized it for what it was: a continuation spell. It would keep the others fresh and looping, with the same strength as if they had just been applied.

  Well, no wonder he had to repeat the process every month, if he finished it off like this. No spell could survive on perpetual motion for long and battle an Immunity Spell at the same time.

  We both watched anxiously for a long moment, even though I could see the spells were working, waiting for Jamie to open her eyes. Please, please open your eyes. When two seconds passed and I saw no reaction, I leaned back over her, tapping her face with my palm. “Jamie. Jamie.”

  Her eyelids fluttered but didn’t open.

  “Wake up properly, Edwards, I’m not carrying you home,” I informed her, voice cracking. My heart quivering, body still reacting to the fright she’d just put me through. “You already eat my chocolates, I have to draw the line somewhere.”

  For a moment, I didn’t think she’d respond. Then her eyelids fluttered again, this time raising an nth degree, enough that I felt confident she could see. “Jamie. Answer me, sod it!”

  Her mouth moved, but no sound emerged, and she swallowed before trying again. “Henri. Please?”

  “Please what?” I managed, steadfastly keeping my tone calm and unhurried, although I wanted to either crow or sag in relief. “Carry you home?”

  Jamie managed a bare nod.

  “Alright, since you said please,” I managed, somehow, to keep talking. “But just this once. You do this to me again, I’ll leave you to Seaton to manage.”

  “Some partner you are, demanding things when she’s down.” Seaton’s jovial tone cracked, but he kept the smile up through sheer effort. “You really should ditch him for me, Jamie, but we can talk about that later. Let’s bring you home. I’ll stay in your spare room, alright?”

  “Fine, fine,” she agreed wearily.

  The spectral device lay not far away, and its very presence pricked my skin like a living thing. I could not rest with it lying about in the open. I turned and pointed a wand at it, camouflaging and warding it, preventing anyone from tampering with it.

  I acknowledge that it took Seaton’s power to keep her moving and upright. But she was still my partner and I was not about to leave her in his hands and go merrily on my way. I focused on gathering her up, draping her arms over my shoulders and getting a good grip on her thighs.

  I felt barely strong enough to drape her over my back. Jamie tried to help, putting her arms around my neck, but she had the strength of a wet noodle. I knew I couldn’t keep this up for long, but I felt the strongest urge to just hang onto her for a moment. It felt reassuring, hearing her breathe.

  Seaton waited until I had a good grip on her, then levered a portation spell around us, transporting directly into Jamie’s apartment. I took her into the bedroom, where we wrestled her coat, belt, and boots off before tucking her gently under the covers.

  Despite what he said earlier, Seaton did not move into the other room, but instead drew up the chair near the window to sit next to her bedside. He gave me a reassuring nod. “I’ve got her. You need to report in, don’t you?”

  I did and hated police protocol, but on the other hand, we needed to catch these dastards before they struck again. “I’ve a phone downstairs. I won’t be more than a few minutes.”

  He waved me off and I went, quickly, taking the stairs two at a time.

  My first call was to Gregson with a quick summary of events and a demand that we call in both Newell and Warner to deal with the device. My captain, bless him, instantly agreed and said he’d have officers quarantining the area immediately. He ordered me, in the most compassionate tone I’d ever heard from him, to report her situation in the morning.

  Unfortunately, I couldn’t settle matters well enough by phone. In fact, I might have delayed too much already. I possessed enough power to teleport myself back to the scene, wand in hand, just in case. But no, no one had remained. The thieves had long since fled.

  My first order of business: that infernal device. I marched over to it, the heel of my shoes loud on the pavement, removed my previous spells, slammed a new ward down around it, and then glared at the thing venomously. “I realize that you, as an inanimate object, are not to be blamed for anything that has occurred,” I informed it icily, “but I will still take great delight in seeing Warner dismantle you.”

  It, of course, had nothing to say to that.

  Feeling a little foolish even through my anger, I went to the more practical aspects next. I put up markers around the scene, to keep people from just bumbling into it, retrieved my equipment from nearby and put it to good use. I hadn’t expected any of tonight’s events except ghost hunting, but I did keep certain essentials in my bag at all times.

  Retrieving a vial and pencil, I went looking for blood.

  Edwards had hurt one of the men. Bullet wounds meant blood. I wouldn’t have the time to hunt him down tonight, and I didn’t want anyone else going after this man without me, but the beauty of Blood Hunting, as it was known, was that the age of the blood didn’t matter. A pure, uncontaminated sample, properly preserved, would lead directly back to its source.

  The streets had an accumulation of oil, grime, dirt, and the remnants of water. It took a spell and nearly crawling on the ground to find the small pool of blood from where he’d been shot. Even as I carefully lifted the top layer, trying to keep the source as pure as possible, I frowned at the amount. Hadn’t she hit him in the arm? Why, then, was there so much blood left behind? He’d barely paused before picking himself up and running again.

  A question to be answered later. I filled the vial, labeled it, then activated the preservation hex on the lid. Standing straight again, I looked about but saw nothing else I could do here. It was time to retreat and let Gregson and the boys handle the rest.

  Gathering up my bag, I retrieved the fallen spectral energy device and kept it gingerly in one hand, anything magical in the other. It didn’t look ready to discharge again—in fact it seemed drained of all energy, but I wasn’t in the habit of taking chances.

  I teleported back to my apartment and hastily set everything down, putting that infernal device in the center of my kitchen table, as far from everything magical as I possibly could.

  Then, having delayed for as long as possible, I finally made the call I dreaded. I phoned Warner and explained the situation again. She asked far more questions than I cared for, each second ticking by in the back of my mind, but she eventually agreed to come fetch the device and take it to Newell. The two of them would tackle examining it. Of course, she also assured (threatened?) me that she would be checking on Jamie.

  Not expecting anything else, I agreed to keep an ear out for her, then finally hung up the phone. Only then did I realize that my trousers were soaked and grimy at the knee, as were the cuffs of my jacket, no doubt from the damp streets. Part of me couldn’t be bothered, but I was in for a long vigil tonight.

  I forced myself to be logical. While the situation wasn’t ideal, all possible aid had already been given. Seaton stayed just to keep an eye on things, not because he expected that he would need to intervene. It would behoove me to take a moment, change, perhaps put together a snack and a pot of tea to help tide us both over during the long night hours.

  Part of me still wanted to race around,
no doubt because of the adrenaline still pumping through my system, but I didn’t let myself act like a chicken with its head cut off. I deliberately did things in order, putting a kettle on to boil, changing clothes, slicing up some fruit and bread for a snack, arranging it all on a tray that I could easily carry back upstairs. I returned to Edwards’ apartment at a steady walk.

  Seaton glanced up when I entered her room, taking in the tray, and giving it a grateful look. “Good thinking, old fellow. Dinner wore off hours ago and we’ll need the strength.”

  Setting it on the bed near his hand, I went to the other side and sat near Jamie’s hip, eyes anxiously roving over her face. Edwards’ skin no longer looked like ash, color returning, and she breathed steadily, the deep breath of slumber. Her core hadn’t stabilized completely yet, but I judged it to be nearly halfway there and improving with every moment. We might have survived the worst of things.

  Seaton poured tea into a cup, manner deliberately casual. “I take it that you weren’t stealing the last chance for a kiss earlier?”

  For a moment I couldn’t fathom what he might refer to. Then it hit me. “Don’t be absurd, Seaton. It’s a technique from Earth. Edwards calls it CPR. It’s a method for reviving a person that isn’t breathing. Normally used for drowning victims, but not always.”

  “Fascinating.” Seaton paused with his spoon in the sugar container, eyes jumping between us. “That works?”

  “I saw her revive a dockman that had taken an unfortunate dip in the ocean. She seemed quite dismayed to realize we didn’t have this method and has been teaching anyone that she can lay hands on for the past week.” My hands clenched into themselves until the knuckles shone white. “I didn’t know what else to do. I didn’t dare apply any sort of magical stasis to her, not without risking interference.”

  “I’m very glad you had the sense to hold off. You likely would have. She has too much magical conflict going on as it is.” Seaton sipped his tea with a nod of approval. “Good tea. And it was good thinking to do this breathing technique on her. Half the time she goes down, I struggle to get air back into her lungs. She’ll revive more quickly because of you.”