Phoenix Born

by Sean Stone

  ‘He’ll be as good as dead. We can lock him in a box and then drop him the ocean. Or bury him in cement. Or sink him to the bottom of the bogs.’

  ‘And when he gets out he’ll be a million times angrier and quite possibly insane. He’ll be an even more dangerous enemy than he already is. No. He dies,’ Drew said decisively. Why did he get to make all the decisions? Kagen was my enemy, not his.

  ‘But this will do for now. We can lock him away until we know how to kill him.’

  ‘We’d waste time coming up with two plans. One to catch him and another to kill him. We come up with one plan. Now. The plan to kill him. Get back to the books.’

  Obstinate bastard.

  I muttered a few choice expletives and then returned to the incredibly boring journal of Russell Delaney. Best explorer my arse. He spent most of his journal describing different plants he’d found. Newt Scamander he was not.

  We read all the books Jeremy had brought us and after lunch we had him bring us a whole load more. By the end of the day we knew three things:

  1. Phoenix-Borns could be imprisoned in lead.

  2. No amount of cold could permanently extinguish their flames.

  3. There was no known way to kill them or a regular phoenix bird.

  The best we had was a theory that Oscar Carmichael had come up. He believed that once the Phoenix-Born had had been killed and burned, if one scattered the ashes then they would be unable to regenerate. The ashes would need to come together in order to reform and that was a near impossible thing.

  ‘It’s the best we’ve managed to find,’ Drew said begrudgingly. ‘I say we use it.’

  ‘Fine. Sure. Whatever,’ I said. Anything to get out of this musty prison. It did sound like a good plan, however, I wanted to increase our odds. ‘This Oscar chap says the ashes coming together is near impossible which means it is possible. If we deliberately separate the ashes into two halves and lock them in lead boxes, then there is no way at all that the ashes could ever come together again.’

  Drew smiled. ‘Finally using your brain. How are we going to lure him in?’

  That was the big question. Kagen could be hiding anywhere and I had no way of finding him. I had planned to put a tracker on his motorbike but by the time I’d returned to Alibi it had already gone. ‘We could get the police to look out for his bike,’ I suggested.

  ‘How can we get the police to do anything? They don’t like you very much right now and my old contacts are long gone.’

  ‘We could ask Dorian to help us?’

  ‘If Dorian gets involved you’d owe him a favour, do you want to owe him a favour?’

  I shook my head. It was bad enough that the immortal had the power he did have. I had no intention of writing him a blank cheque for a future date. I would respect his rules because he knew my secret but if he wanted my services, he could pay the same way everybody else did. If I owed him a favour he might want me to provide a service beyond the ones I already offered. You never knew with Dorian Gray.

  Then the idea came to me. ‘The fund-raising dinner.’ I was hosting a dinner at one of my clubs tomorrow night. All part of the good local businessman act. Every now and then I had to throw a big party to benefit the city or a charity. Nobody would ever expect the good citizen of being a cold-blooded assassin. ‘Kagen is after me. If he knows exactly where I’ll be he’s bound to show up.’

  ‘In front of the most powerful people in Sangford?’ Drew said dubiously.

  I shook my head. ‘Not in front of them. He’ll wait until after. He’ll think the event will have me distracted. He’ll strike as soon as I’m out of the public eye. If I go to my office out the back for any reason.’

  ‘Could work.’

  ‘I need to make it very public that I will be there personally.’ Usually I wasn’t actually at these things. Not for long anyway. Attaching my name to them was usually enough to give me a good rep. Every now and then I’d turn up and shake a few important hands before disappearing again. These things often made perfect alibis. This time I would be there for the duration. I’d give a speech and make my presence well known. Kagen would come for me. And he would die. This time for good.

  Chapter Fifteen

  The entire day was gone and considering how little we’d actually learned in the library it just seemed like a waste of the day. Our findings only equated to about an hour’s work. Pitiful.

  On my way home I called Leah and asked her to up the advertising to make it very clear to the whole city that I would be attending the fundraiser and hosting the event. She agreed. She didn’t have much choice; it was kind of her job to do what I wanted. She also suggested offering to make a speech at the event. I didn’t relish the idea of giving a speech to the city’s wealthiest tosspots but it was necessary to the plan. The more attention I put on myself the easier it would be to lure out Kagen.

  It was impossible to relax when I got home. I sat in front of the TV with a rum and coke thinking about tomorrow’s plan. Drew was going to get the lead boxes we would need and some weaponry to make the fighting easier. I was confident that my magic would be enough but the power in his ring was not enough to fight a Phoenix-Born. I’d need to decorate each of his fingers with magic-charged rings to give him a chance of fighting Kagen and that wouldn’t work. Making that many rings all at once would exhaust myself. Not to mention the fact that Drew would look ridiculous with a ring on every finger.

  I tried to take my mind off the plan and instead it wandered on to Ethan. Murdering bastard.

  I poured myself another drink in an effort to free my mind. If I wasn’t stressing about Kagen then I was fuming about Ethan. I couldn’t go after Ethan again right now, I needed to focus on Kagen. Once Kagen was dead permanently then I could figure out a plan to deal with Ethan that would keep me out of trouble with Dorian. I didn’t know what punishment the immortal would exact on me, but I knew enough about him to know that it would be extremely unpleasant. He had been known to deliver death sentences in the past. He’d also had moments of mercy when he’d simply banished people from the city. Neither of those seemed ideal. I’d lived in Sangford my entire life and parting with it would not be easy. This city was as much mine as it was Dorian’s.

  After half an hour of sitting on the sofa with my mind brewing over ways to deal with Ethan, I decided I would need to do something. I couldn’t go after Ethan again. That would only land me in more trouble. I’d underestimated him before. He was smarter than I’d thought. I wouldn’t make that mistake again. If I went after him he would set some kind of trap for me again. Even if I found a way to bring him to me he would likely still call the police beforehand. I’d need to jump him when he wasn’t expecting it. On the way home from a night out or something like that. But I couldn’t do that tonight. However, there was a way to go after him without actually going near him.

  I could go after his alibi. I was certain that he was lying about being at work all night. Luckily, in this era of technology most places seemed to be fitted with security cameras. Most Nocult places at least. If he was at work all night like he’d told the police then he would be on the CCTV. The police would already have checked his alibi by asking his colleagues but he could easily have got one of them to lie for him.

  I went through to the bedroom and dressed in all blacks for the sneaky work I was about to embark on. When I did a Wraith job, Drew always got a disposable car for me to use. It was just silly using my own car. It wouldn’t look good if it was spotted near a crime scene. Since I didn’t have a job scheduled Drew had not sourced me a disposable car. I would have to use my own.

  Back when Ethan had first started threatening me I’d got Drew to look into him so I had a chunky file full of his past. Because of this I knew where he worked. He was the head of marketing for Spark Electronics. The company owned electronic shops all over the country and their head offices were right here in Sangford.

  I parked a couple of streets away from the building so my car wouldn’t be seen nearby.
I looked at my car grimly thinking about how flashy it was. It was stupid to drive here. I should’ve walked. I placed my palm on the bonnet and muttered a quick concealing spell. The spell wouldn’t hold up under direct scrutiny but any casual glancers would see a car more suited to the environment.

  A lot of companies have their headquarters in Sangford. The business district was in the South East, a good stretch away from where the rough part of town started. At this time of night the area was largely deserted. There were a few passers-by and several of the offices still held workers who were burning the candle at both ends. There were pros and cons to having the place so empty. On the good side there were fewer people to see me, on the bad side if anybody did see me there wasn’t a crowd I could slip into. Still, it was nighttime so there were plenty of shadows to hide in and I still had magic to help me if needed.

  Spark Electronics occupied the fifth floor of Cornwallis Place, a tower block of offices. Two glass doors led through to the lobby where a security guard was sitting behind a reception desk reading a tattered Shayne Silvers novel. I couldn’t let him see me. I should’ve brought a glamour bracelet with me. Glamour bracelets changed your appearance to look like somebody else. This was why Drew and I usually planned out jobs before hand. It meant that I didn’t turn up unprepared. I’d never been targeted before. It had always been me doing the targeting. Now I had two people after me. Ethan wanted to frame me for murder and Kagen wanted to murder me for trying to murder him. What a messed up week I was having.

  I walked around to the back of the building and as I’d expected there was a fire escape door. I focused on the door and said, ‘shkalt.’ The door clicked and swung outwards letting warm light spill out over the back steps.

  I walked quickly back to the front of the building and grinned with pleasure at the sight of the now vacant desk in the lobby. Opening the fire escape had triggered an alarm and the security guard had gone to investigate. I slipped into the building and headed straight for the stairs. I noticed plenty of cameras in the lobby and more in the bare concrete stairwell. That didn’t mean there would be cameras in the offices. The building manager was only responsible for security in the communal areas. It was up to the leaseholder to secure their own areas. That was how most places in the city worked. I’d never been to this building before so I couldn’t say for certain. I was aware that I was now all over the communal security footage so I would have to rectify that on the way out.

  I reached the fifth floor and pulled open the heavy door leading to the offices. I walked into a neat, modern looking reception area. There was no security guard on this floor. They obviously relied on the building security to look after the place at night.

  Looking up I saw the black dome of a security camera on the ceiling. Perfect. I walked through the door behind the reception desk and all my prayers were answered. I found myself in a room that housed about twenty different security screens. The whole floor was riddled with cameras. The staff literally couldn’t go anywhere for a bit of privacy. Whoever was in charge here clearly had trust issues. This would prove that Ethan had not been here all night.

  If I remembered correctly, Decker had said that Ruby’s time of death was about ten pm. Well, he’d asked me where I was at that time so I assumed that was the time of death.

  I sat down at the computer and started tapping away on the keys until I found the files from the night in question. I started from four pm and saw that Ethan was in his office working on his computer. The sight of him in his cheap suit made me instantly angry. Sitting there tapping away on his keyboard whilst mentally planning to kill his fiancee. Every now and then somebody entered his office and after a short conversation they left again.

  Five pm rolled around and he left his office. Caught so early. He didn’t go home though. He just went to the toilet and then returned to work. I sped up the tape because watching my enemy work was one of the most tedious tasks imaginable. At nine pm he got up again. Leaving just in time to go home and kill Ruby. But once again he didn’t leave the building. He crossed through to the conference room and began a meeting with three other people. I watched with disbelief as the four of them worked away for the next three hours taking them right past the time of death and then some. Only at close to midnight did Ethan finally leave the building and head for home.

  What kind of office held a meeting that late at night? I rewound the footage and watched it again this time at ten times the speed. Ethan never left the camera’s sight. His alibi was ironclad.

  Somehow he had found a way to tamper with the footage. He must have changed the dates on the footage. This was another night. Clever bastard. I pulled out my phone and took screenshots of the faces of the other three men in the meeting with Ethan. But the police would have checked with them already. Unless he’d paid them off. He was the head of marketing he could’ve offered them promotions or pay rises. The police were too focused on me to do their jobs properly so I would have to do it for them. I would get the truth from those other three men. Ethan was going down.

  I erased the footage that showed my presence in the offices and then turned the cameras off so they wouldn’t record me leaving. When I got downstairs I distracted the security guard again and erased myself from his footage too.

  When I got home my mind was no clearer. If anything it was more full of stress. All I’d done was create more work for myself. I now had three more people to deal with. Ethan was starting to look like harder work than Kagen. At least Kagen just needed to be killed. Ethan was far more calculating. I needed to unravel him. I suppose I could just kill him but without proof of guilt that would make me look like the bad guy and I wasn’t going to give him that satisfaction. He would die when everybody saw him for what he was. A murderer.

  Chapter Sixteen

  The following day I got to work identifying the three men in the footage but I didn’t have time to go and talk to them. I had to prepare for the fundraiser and Kagen.

  The event was being held at Monkeys. Monkeys was my events club, one of my classiest joints. It was called Monkeys when I bought it. It had been a fancy jazz club. Jazz was a bit plain on its own, so I changed it to host all sorts of things, jazz, comedy, live music — I even hosted a poetry slam once. The poetry slam was not a success. I had changed the name when I first took over. I called it Deluxe. For some reason the patrons did not like that. There was uproar and a massive boycott. I had to change it back. So, Monkeys it remained.

  Alibi is my nicest venue, but this fundraiser had been commissioned by the mayor who thought that a nightclub was an inappropriate venue. I could see his point.

  I arrived at Monkeys two hours before the event was scheduled to start. Leah was already there calmly giving instructions to the many members of staff on hand. She’d hired from an outside agency to make sure we had enough bodies. The whole club was looking even swankier than normal. Banners and balloons in gold and silver had been hung in strategic places. A pyramid of champagne glasses stood near the bar which was lit up in radiant golden light. Circular tables were littered across the floor, dressed in resplendent silver table cloths. The curtain at the back of the stage was adorned with the Sangford City coat of arms. The staff of a wizard with three bolts of lightning coming out of the top. From either side of the staff stretched the wings of an eagle. I was surprised that Dorian hadn’t inserted the Gray Orchid onto the emblem.

  ‘All ready for tonight?’ Leah asked as she sidled up beside me. She was even more beautiful than usual. Her hair was arranged in a chignon style and she was dressed in a little black dress that clung to her figure perfectly. She was wearing heels which she didn’t often do and they added a few extra inches to her height so her eyes were around my nose rather than my chin.

  ‘I think so,’ I said.

  She reached out and straightened my tie for me before brushing some dust from my shoulder. Her touch sent a wave of warmness through my chest.

  ‘That’s better,’ she said. ‘Drew is waiting for you in
the back office. He’s preparing his weapon for Kagen.’

  I winced when she said the target’s name. It meant Drew had filled her in on everything. Something that I’d never done before. Now that she’d revealed she knew all about my real work there was no reason not to tell her. In fact, on this particular occasion she needed to know in order to do her job properly. I could hardly expect her to run an event full of the snobbiest people in the city whilst I plotted to execute somebody out the back. Imagine if she or one of the staff walked in on that.

  ‘I’ll go and see him before the party starts. You’ve made sure there won’t be any staff out the back?’ I asked.

  ‘Of course. They are only permitted to go to the kitchen and the cellar. So keep the drama away from there.’

  I nodded even though I wasn’t sure how much control I’d have over it. I didn’t even know if Kagen would take the bait let alone where he would strike. Drew and I were expecting him to come through the back door but he might not. Leah had arranged a lot of security at the front of the building to deter Kagen from attempting to enter that way. There was security on the back too, otherwise it would be too obvious that we wanted Kagen to go that way.

  I helped myself to a rum and coke at the bar before I went to meet Drew. The whole place looked spectacular. It was a shame I wouldn’t be able to enjoy the evening. Hopefully, Kagen wasn’t planning on gatecrashing until after dinner because I’d seen the menu and it was exquisite. I know, it’s terrible that I was thinking of my stomach hours before I planned to kill someone but this is my job, killing is pretty natural to me. Almost as natural as eating.

  I finished my drink and handed my glass to a nearby waiter before heading out back. Drew was sitting in the shared office with his feet up on one of the desks. He had a sheathed sword across his lap.