by Mel Todd
"I am going to make myself some more coffee."
"We are doing things here, you need to see this," his voice sounded like he was so furious that he was about to start spitting lightening. I still didn't care.
"The only way I am going to look at that is if you want me to empty the contents of my stomach all over your nice clean suit. So I'll listen and make myself some more coffee over here."
There was a long moment of silence and a noisy swallow. I dug out my French press, put water in the electric kettle and ignored them.
"Ah, yes. Um, well. Yes, proceed." He sounded almost apologetic and his voice almost had a note of regret. "I forgot that you haven't been through training. Your insights yesterday were excellent. But why would that upset you? You've seen dead bodies."
The water boiled and I poured it over the grounds I'd already put in the press. "Yes. But there is a world of difference between a body with wounds and injuries, even in death, and a body being eaten by crabs." I spit that word out. Crabs just gave me the creeps.
"Ah." He cleared his throat. "Ask them if they can at least verify if there were puncture marks, or wounds, on the bodies in an abstract version of the mage symbols. That would be helpful. If they can tell if these people were immobilized the same way as our other victims, that would also be helpful."
"Will do. They don't have any leads but both sites were so badly contaminated, the odds of finding anything that we can link to our crime scenes are low. But they will try." Chris paused then said quietly, "The picture is gone."
"Thanks." I carried my press and cup back to the table. It still needed to brew for a few more minutes and I'd already doctored up my cup. They all glanced at me curiously but they sniffed the air appreciatively. I hid a smirk. The secret to so many people's hearts: caffeine.
"Niall, any leads?"
Niall snorted. "No. The rips faded by the time we got back there. The area was so trampled if there was anything, we missed it."
"How did no one see anything? I mean that was a lot of bodies," I asked checking the color of my coffee. Another minute.
"Either the unsub or someone working with them was an Air mage and created an illusion so that no one walked through. But still, they must have worked really fast because that was a relatively busy park. Someone might have stepped into it." Chris mused tapping on the table softly as he spoke.
I shrugged. "Did you ask people what they saw?"
"We're still tracking down anyone there. The person who called it in was hysterical and has blanked out most of it."
"No cameras? Aren't there cameras there?" That sounded weird to me. Most of Atlanta had traffic cams and didn't all the crime shows always have a camera pointed that way?
"Not in that area of the park. It's usually filmed but that day there wasn't anything going on." Niall had a sour sound to his voice, and I didn't blame him.
"So we have a mage able to kill quickly and easily, prevent people from seeing him or her, and has a ritual to rip the planes open?" I summarized as I poured. The coffee scent soothed me, and I suspected I'd be needing a lot of soothing. Glancing at the pile of paperwork I needed to go through, it was guaranteed.
"Basically," Alixant admitted.
"With the next group being eighty-one people, it will be messy. How are you going to prevent it?" I was curious. I had no idea how to even find this person, much less stop them.
"Yeah, that was what I had figured," Chris said. "Eighty-one is the next logical number."
Alixant sighed and rubbed his face. For the first time I paid attention to the circles under his eyes and his drawn face.
Hmm, maybe I should cut him a little slack.
"Based on the two sets murders we know were linked, what do we know about the victims?" he asked, standing and staring at the wall even though there wasn't anything there.
Chapter 24
The Son of Sam and the Zodiac Killer were both believed to have been practicing ritual magic on their kills, though of a type no one could or would identify. Experts from all over the world were brought in and they would never say what they thought it would do. The Son of Sam said he just liked to draw pretty pictures and enjoyed freaking out the police. The Zodiac Killer was never caught, so it is still unknown if his symbols were actual rituals or just another way to play with the authorities. ~ History of Magic
Niall took that one. "All under forty, most were hedgemages, a couple magicians, all registered. Only a few of them had tattoos and only a few wore any markers, just jewelry or emblems. All were local and worked in the area. We are still trying to decipher how they were all drawn there. The illusion the mage used was interesting. We got a glimpse from a few people who provided pictures they took at the park that day. There were sawhorses around the water feature and a warning that the water was contaminated. No one asked and while they didn't see anyone, they didn't think anything of it." Niall paused and frowned at the report on his computer in front of him.
"What?" Alixant didn't snap it, but still made it clear he didn't want any delay. I had to learn his tricks. They were impressive.
"What I can't figure out is how the unsub got them all there. Yes, it was lunchtime, but how do you get so many people to show up at one place? I mean the girl, and even the others, I can figure out how to lure three or nine people somewhere, but twenty-seven? That all meet his criteria?"
"I've started looking at their social media, but we are still getting id's and until I have them all, I can't lock in all the accounts." Chris chewed on his stylus while he talked, his eyes distant. "There has to be something that would get them all there at once with different backgrounds."
"Flip it around," Siab said. "If you want to get a bunch of people in one place, willing to do something, how would you do it?"
"Flash mob, contest, celebrity, giveaway, or meetup," I rattled off as I started going through and signing papers. The papers stressed not telling anyone about anything over and over, and I put those to the side. I wasn't about to give up my ability to talk to Jo. She was the only person who would keep me sane. The basic W-2s I filled out, though I still wanted to know what the salary was and the job description. So far, I had a big stack of not signed, and a small stack of signed.
There was silence in the room, and I looked up to find them all looking at me. "What? If I wanted to get that many people in one place, I'd do that. Granted, I think you'll find the real answer in their social media, but I'd bet on something like that."
Chris nodded. "Probably. Just time. Time we might not have. I can't get the bodies identified any faster, and we have no clues as to the person who did it."
Now interested, I looked at him. "I thought you were a Pattern mage. Can't you reconstruct the pattern?"
He growled and sighed at the same time. "Normally yes. I'd be able to get rough shapes to outline, get a few clues. But because he did the murders over running water, I run out of available offering before I can get a clear picture. I can get the knife marks, but the movement between victims was over the water and that requires too much to move back to where it was."
I shook my head. "I don't understand."
Alixant was frowning. "I understand, but I'd never really thought about it before. I wonder what else you could cover up with running water. The boat while stationary above water had been too damaged and too long to show anything but smoke."
"A lot. Look." Chris spoke to me. "I'll show you." He grabbed a piece of paper and tore it into pieces and tossed it on the table. "This is simple and straightforward, but what I usually do with cases. I make an offering." A wisp of something rose from his head and I leaned in, staring.
"What was that?"
"My offering. This is simple, so only a few millimeters of hair are needed."
I stared at his crewcut and then the other two men. It registered they all had short hair, or shortish. Alixant's was at his shoulders, while Chris had a crewcut, and Niall had it only past his ears. Only Siab had the long hair you normally associated with mages
. "Why is all your hair short?"
Niall grimaced. "Fire mage. Last case. He fried our hair to make it harder for us to do magic and stop him."
"A serial arsonist, but even fire doesn't make things as hard to reconstruct as water," Chris said with a grin. I got the impression he kinda enjoyed explaining to me, and even Alixant looked interested. "Now watch." He waved a hand at the paper and an image of it falling into pieces reversed until the whole sheet stood there, readable, but immaterial. "Now I could take a picture or something. With water it moves constantly so every version of it is somewhere else the next second, same with air. So I struggle to get anything. Solid materials are easier to reconstruct."
I settled back, looking at the magic floating in the air. Being a mage sounded much more interesting now.
"All of this is fine,” said Alixant. “We know we still need to figure out who they were and why they were there. But the bigger question is how is he going to get eighty-one people the same way, and what is the ultimate purpose?"
That didn't matter so much to me, but something else pinged me. "You know there is no way this can be a hedge or magician. To do this, they'd have to be high rank and maybe have a familiar to cut the costs. Right?"
Siab shook her head twisting a braid around and around. "Maybe yes, maybe no. If you knew exactly what to rupture in their brain, you could probably do it with less than 2-3 strands of hair."
"But what about the illusion?" I countered.
"Now that, I don't know," she trailed off. "We need to ask an Air mage how hard it would be. I've never explored illusions."
"No, Cori's right. The illusion would be at least a wizard or archmage. That would have taken a lot of work to pull off. Could we be looking at two mages?" Alixant's voice dropped a pall over the room.
"I still don't have all the bodies identified but I suddenly have a bad feeling that one of them is going to be a high rank Air mage." Chris said in a somber voice that caused spasms to run up my spine. Why in the world was I involved with this? I wanted to help people, not chase killers.
My gorge rose and I got up to put the French press away, my mind spinning.
"That adds a new twist if it’s true. Why would a mage help with that? Blackmail? Threat? Can you lobotomize that carefully?" Alixant sounded more intrigued than horrified. That bugged me too. Was becoming immune to human emotion part of this job? I could joke about wounds and horrible things, so how was this different?
I puzzled over it as I cleaned, needing to keep my hands active. I settled on the fact that I joked over things that were done, things I couldn't control, and used it to hide my horror. They joked over what might happen. The same thing, just a different side. It made me ashamed and I resolved to be better. Just because he was an ass didn't mean he was a monster.
I walked back over. They were going over the ME reports and I went back to paperwork. Even as I sorted forms and acknowledged health insurance, the idea of how to get that many people to do something, to do another ritual tugged at me. How would I pull that off?
A beep of my phone, barely audible, made me blink and I pulled it out, already knowing it was Jo. *Hey, hope today isn't sucking too much. But wanted to ask, friend won four passes to DragonWorldCon. You wanna go?*
I looked at that and shrugged. *Sure, if I can.*
*Kay-kay.*
I sat there, then opened the new computer, suddenly curious. It took me fifteen minutes to get it running. I had to type in all the passwords from the papers, validate my information and convince the computer that I had the rights to log in. Then connect to the wifi, and viola, I had internet. The lack of worry about it shorting out was nice, but then it wasn't my computer and that also relieved a bit of stress.
It took another minute to get the DragonWorldCon to come up but once I did, I blinked at how many people would be attending. Up to eighty-five thousand over a four-day weekend. It looked fun and there was so much to do. It might be a fun break, assuming I wasn't still stuck in this disaster.
I glanced up to see images flickering on the screen with Niall and Chris discussing something. Alixant was busy over in his cube and Siab was in hers. I could have moved to the one that had a piece of paper with my name scrawled across it, but it seemed unnecessary. Instead, I played over the weird sequence of events that got me here. Everything started with the first murder.
I jotted down what I knew. Four sets of murders. All in a one-month time period. Out of curiosity, I checked the phases of the moon. I'd had a friend in high school who swore everything could be done by the phases of the moon but nothing obvious jumped out at me.
This is silly. I have no training; I know nothing.
I grumbled and kept digging through papers. The ads and images of all the stuff you could do at DragonWorldCon played on my screen as I read and signed. Every so often the brightly colored images would catch my eye and I smiled. It really did look like fun. The science and skeptic tracks already had my attention.
After what felt like signing reams of paper, I finally hit the stuff that mattered—pay rates. I started reading the document, cringing at all the warnings about this being a temporary status equivalent to a student intern and as such I was subject to hourly wage laws, legal bullshit, and more legal bullshit. Every paper I turned made me cringe, though the fact that if he made me work over forty hours a week, I would get double time and triple time on Sundays or holidays was kinda nice. By the time I hit the pay rate I was expecting minimum wage. My heart stopped when I saw the rate. I went back twice to make sure I read it correctly.
"I changed my mind. I'll work for you. You're still an ass, but I'll deal." My voice was loud enough to override the other conversations and they stopped, with Alixant sticking his head out to look at me.
He had a confused look on his face until he saw that I was staring at the paperwork file. With a short laugh he got up and came over. "Saw the reimbursement rate, did you?"
"I'm not complaining, really, but you are paying me thirty-six dollars an hour. Why?"
"While you are working for the FBI under the waiver, you're basically treated like a contractor. So that cost is supposed to cover medical insurance, travel expenses, etc. Just government bureaucracy. Enjoy it. Your actual rate after you graduate will be higher but there will be a lot more coming out of it. Just make sure you fill out the time sheets."
I nodded fervently. That would be the next thing I did. "I wanted to ask about these." I tapped all the non-disclosure forms. "I need to talk to my roommate, Jo, about this stuff. If I don't, I'll go crazy because no one else will be able to talk to me."
"Ah yes, Josefa Guzman. Let me see." He picked them up and rifled through them, then scribbled something on the bottom of the form. "Sign it here. This is a waiver for you to discuss stuff with Jo as long as you agree not to get into specific details with her, and she promises not to talk to others about it. She's a Transformation archmage in her first semester, right?"
"Yes. Though she doesn't know what she wants to do yet." I gave him a narrow-eyed look, how did he know about Jo?
"Well, this will let you talk to her. Most of us have waivers for partners. You two sleeping together?" There was nothing in his tone that indicated he cared, just curious.
"No. Best friend since I was a kid."
"Just make sure she knows how serious this is. Anything else?"
I still stared at him, why was he giving in so easily.
He smirked at me. "We know a lot about you Cori, including the Guzman's, your shitty parents, and your brother. Make sure she keeps her mouth shut."
I shook my head and handed him the papers. He wandered away and I wondered when I'd get my first check. I had a desire to go shopping, just to go shopping. The images on my laptop kept cycling through, and I clicked on one. My blood went cold as the ramifications of what I read registered.
"I think I just figured out how the mage might do the next ritual," I said, my throat dry with fear.
Chapter 25
Once you em
erge you become a slave. A slave to the government, a slave to what has infected you. Resist. Ignore your emergence. Never use your magic. Set yourself Free. ~Freedom from Magic Group
"What are you talking about?" Alixant was up and over next to me before the words had faded away. The other two had stopped and Siab stuck her head out.
"How do I put it up on that big screen?" Alixant showed me and I flipped it up. That was neat.
"I think he'll do it at DragonWorldCon," my voice shaking. All I got was blank stares from everyone. "Umm, none of you are local?"
They all shook their heads. "Technically we all live in Virginia now, but none of us grew up down here," Chris offered.
"My family all live in Northern California, and I stay as far away as possible," Siab put in, sliding into the chair next to me.
"Oh." I leaned back and tried to figure out how to explain DragonWorldCon. I'd never gone, but Stinky had a few times and everyone knew about it, even if you weren't a huge geek. The convention took over downtown Atlanta once a year for the entire weekend. I'd never thought much about it, no time or money, but we were now close enough we could walk, and I could feel myself getting excited about the idea. At Ruby, I'd already been warned all shifts doubled up that weekend, so I hadn't worried about it.
"Okay, this is a convention held downtown. The expected turnout is about eighty-five K over the Labor Day weekend. Entire streets are shut down. There are so many people moving around that some shops make their entire year off this weekend."
Whatever excitement they had faded. "That is just why he won't do it. Too many people." Niall said the words like I was a moron.
"Guys, you don't understand. This involves five hotels twenty-four hours a day. You can get private rooms. They have areas shut off for special events. They do everything. From concerts to shows, and people are eager to do it. How hard would it be to convince eighty-one people that they should participate in something special?" I put air quotes around the words. They fell silent looking at me.
