“Nasty business. But nothing that won’t heal itself. It’s already stopped bleeding . . . Jack. Jack, sweetie, it’s all right! I’m all right. I’m fine.”
They helped each other to their feet. Springheel Jack got hold of himself with an effort but wouldn’t let go of her.
“All right,” I said. “What happened here?”
Springheel Jack glared at me. “Someone tried to kill her! I warned you! I told you this was coming, but you wouldn’t listen!”
“Hush, dear,” the Bride said firmly. “No-one ever listens to prophecy; it’s the only reason the universe allows it.” She looked down at her side. “Someone stabbed me from behind. I never saw anyone. I’d seen that awful Lord Orlando heading towards me, so I moved off the other way. Next thing I know, there’s a great stabbing pain in my side, then I’m riding the lightning and I’m back again! Well done, Jack. Quick thinking. Usually I wake up in a morgue somewhere, giving some poor doctor a heart attack.” She smiled briefly. “Much as I hate to admit it, the Baron did good work. He made his creations to last.”
“You saw the Lord Orlando?” I said.
“Wasn’t him,” Mistress Mayhem said immediately. “He was right here, boring me rigid, when we both heard the scream.”
“Well really,” said the Lord Orlando.
Springheel Jack took the Bride away to one side for some mutual support and comfort. The immortals stuck together, on the far side of the room, looking at me with wide, frightened eyes. Expecting me to put everything right. Charlotte ap Owen hauled Dave the camera-man over to interview the Bride and Springheel Jack on their ordeal. Jack gave them one look, and they both ran for their lives. I spotted Bettie Divine over by the doorway, doing her best to vamp Hadleigh Oblivion, presumably to find out what he and I had been talking about. Brilliant Chang was hovering nearby, so I summoned him over with a jerk of the head.
“Any nearer spotting the killer?” he said bluntly.
“No,” I said. “I’ve questioned the most obvious suspects and got nowhere. They all seemed plausible enough . . . Any number of people had any number of motives for killing King of Skin, but I don’t have a weapon, and I can’t put anyone at the scene of the crime at the right time. No-one here saw anything. How is that possible?”
“Don’t look at me,” said Chang. “I’m a crime reporter, not Agatha Christie. You’re the detective.”
“I was never a detective! I was a private investigator, and I relied on my gift far more than most people ever realised. I always said I wouldn’t know a clue if I fell over one, and it’s starting to look like I was right.”
“Giving up?” said Chang.
“No. This is my last case as a private investigator, and I’m damned if I’m going to let it beat me. I need to think . . . Okay, wait a minute. Chang, have you heard anything about an immortality serum? Possibly for sale?”
“No,” said Chang. “Hasn’t even been a whisper, and it would be hard to keep news of something like that quiet.”
I nodded slowly. “Okay. Thanks. Go and rescue Hadleigh from Bettie, would you? I don’t want him distracted, in case someone tries to make a break for it.”
He laughed and wandered away on his mission of mercy. And I moved off among the packed immortals, hitting them all with the same questions, over and over again. Where were they when the murders happened? Who were they with? What did they see? Most had alibis, or said they did, and no-one had seen anything. Most of them were too shocked and upset even to think of giving me attitude, but a few still refused to talk to me, on principle. I let them get away with it. The more I thought about the killings, the more convinced I became that I was missing something.
I even questioned the waitresses in their French maid outfits, huddled together for security behind the buffet tables. But all they’d had eyes for was Dead Boy making a pig of himself. None of them had seen anyone near King of Skin. None of them had wanted to get anywhere near him. Which was understandable. One of them said she thought she’d seen the Lord Orlando somewhere at the buffet, not far from King of Skin, but couldn’t be sure when. That was enough to point me back in his direction. The Bride had said she’d seen him approaching her not long before she was attacked.
I did my best to question the Lord Orlando, and he did his best not to burst into tears at the very indignity of it all. Mistress Mayhem and another immortal called Polly Pariah insisted that he’d been boring their arses off right when Springheel Jack screamed, some distance away. I couldn’t see why either of them should lie.
I ended up back at the buffet table, chewing on a barely warm pig in a blanket, and thinking hard. If I had to point a finger at anyone, it would be Rogue, but why would he want to kill King of Skin? He didn’t know him; and given that this was the first time Rogue had ever been to the Ball of Forever, the odds were he didn’t know anyone. He came to make friends, or so he said. Though his family didn’t exactly have a good track record in that regard.
All right. Since I wasn’t getting anywhere with the suspects, maybe I could do better with the murder weapon. I couldn’t use my gift to find it without discovering something unique about it, something my gift could lock on to . . . But I did have something! With this second attack on the Bride, the weapon was the only thing common to both attacks, which meant I could find it! I raised my gift and concentrated, and immediately my head snapped round, to look down the length of the buffet table. I strode down it, following the tug of my instincts, until my gift brought me to a large open jug of dark red wine. The one I’d suspected was full of blood. It stood there, in the middle of a great many other bottles and jugs and flasks donated by various immortals, apparently innocent, looking no different than any of the others; but my gift was telling me otherwise. I leaned over the jug and studied its contents carefully. There was a definite dark shadow, deep in the dark red contents. I reached in, with a thumb and forefinger, gripped on to something hard and unyielding, and pulled it out.
I held it up before me. It took me a moment to realise what it was—a jagged-edged piece of mirror glass, dripping red wine. Not a knife after all, then, though the edges were certainly sharp enough to do real damage. In fact, the whole shard was so sharp everywhere, I was hard put to see how you could hold on to the thing without lacerating your own hand. And no-one in the room had shown any damaged hands . . . I jumped a little as I realised Bettie Divine was standing beside me, smiling brightly.
“I sensed you using your gift all the way across the room, so I came over to see what was happening. What is happening? What have you found?”
“You sensed . . .”
“Half demon, darling, remember? These horns aren’t just for show. Now be a dear and tell me what that is you’re holding! Is it important?”
“I’m pretty sure it’s the murder weapon,” I said.
Bettie squealed excitedly. “Wonderful! I knew you’d solve the case, sweetie! Never doubted you for a moment! Where was it?”
“In that jug of wine. That’s why both murders took place next to the buffet table. He smuggled the shard in easily enough, then dropped it surreptitiously into the jug . . . where it waited till he had a need for it. He took it out, stabbed his victim, then dropped it back in again. The wine would even wash the blood away though I think I can see traces of dried blood, trapped in the jagged edges . . .”
Bettie leaned in as close as she could get without actually touching the mirror shard with her nose. “Definitely part of a mirror, darling. But why make a weapon out of it? And what does it have to do with the way King of Skin . . . shrivelled up?”
“Good question,” I said. I held the shard up close to my face, so I could see my reflection in it. There was something . . . odd, something off, about the image; but I couldn’t put my finger on it.
“There’s magic hovering all about that piece of mirror,” said Bettie. “Old, bad magic. I can See it, but . . . You’ve got better Sight than me, sweetie. What do you See?”
I concentrated, raising my gift again, using it to study the reality of the thing before me, opening up my inner eye, my private eye, to See the world as it really is. And then I almost dropped the shard as I realised what it was I was holding.
“What?” Bettie said excitedly. “What did you See?”
“Temporal energies,” I said. “This mirror shard is soaked in Time, in Time magic. I can actually see inverted tachyons, shooting up and down the broken edges.”
