“Fine,” I said. “So talk.”
“I asked you to be open with me in the snow-runner. And you were. Now I’m returning the favor.”
The booth’s vinyl seat wheezed in protest as I sat back, arms folded.
“Yesterday you told me that you only affect magic if you hit these invisible threads.”
“That’s right.”
“The first report of this buzzing was yesterday. I already told you how many 187s we’ve had since then. All over the city today, people are turning up beaten, stabbed, throttled, and otherwise homicided into an early grave. And every one of them had some kind of connection to either snake oil or pure next gen manna. Do you know what that means?”
I knew exactly what it meant. Next gen manna had rained down from the strike, soaking me to the bone as I stood over Harlan Cedrow’s corpse. The iridescent liquid had stemmed the bleeding from my missing fingers and damned me to some kind of connection with magic that no one understood. Least of all me.
Guyer steepled her fingers. “It means you weren’t involved.”
I blinked. “Come again?”
“The buzzing sound, the thing that all these killers are talking about. It’s not related to you. It can’t be. Not if what you told me in the snow-runner is true.”
I chewed my lip. If it was something happening across Titanshade, whether I was present or not, what did that mean? Hesitant, I talked my way through it. “Bobby Kearn was killed because the buzzing drove Sheena to madness. And that happened while I was hours away.”
“Exactly,” she said. “Whatever the buzzing is, it’s got nothing to do with you.”
I sighed, relieved I wasn’t going to have to fight Guyer on this one.
She inched forward. “The transformations, though, that’s got you written all over it.”
I pulled back. “What?”
“The wings that came out of the drummer. And today, the snake oil dealer.”
“His name was Saul Petrevisch.”
“That’s the one. Point is, over a dozen buzz-related homicides since yesterday, but only two where the bodies transformed after death. You were there for both of them.” She took a breath, one hand resting on the table, the other on the book. “I don’t know what’s causing the reaction. But whatever you’re doing—and I don’t think you mean to—it’s tied to death, and to the echoes of the dead.”
I rolled the bottom of the tumbler across my palm, wishing I’d ordered something stronger. “I don’t know what that means.”
She spun the paperback so I could read the title. Your Death and You.
I squinted. “Is that a self-help book?”
She frowned. “You say that like it’s a bad thing. Dr. Henning’s helped countless people. If you were a little more open, you could accept help from other people. Maybe even from yourself.”
“If you want to help, let’s talk about Vandie Cedrow. She was at the rig, and we know her family is dirty as all the Hells. And,” I hesitated slightly before opening up with more information, “I felt threads connecting her to Bobby Kearn’s body.”
Guyer blinked. “Why didn’t you tell me this in the snow-runner?”
“I don’t know. There was a lot to tell, and not a lot of time to tell it.”
She drummed her fingers on the book. “As far as I know, Vandie Cedrow wasn’t any closer to today’s murders than you were.”
“Correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t the whole point of magic to connect items across a distance?”
She hesitated, mouth slightly open. “That’s true. But that also applies to you, doesn’t it?”
I shook my head, lowering my voice and hunkering down a little further. “But there wasn’t anything tying me to the body. I’d have felt it if there was.”
Guyer pinched her lips. “That’s the problem with you having this unique ability. No one can fact check it. You say there’s threads, you say there aren’t. All we have is your word.”
“You think I’d lie about this?”
“No. And I believe you. But I also believe in evidence and probable cause. And right now you’ve got neither.”
She stared at me. I stared at the wall. After a few deep breaths, just like the department shrinks taught me, I spoke again.
“What about the victims? You already tried to contact Bobby Kearn. Harris was at the Saul Petrevisch murder site, when the ARC team snatched it away. Have you talked to him?”
“I did.” She spoke slowly, selecting words like a man buying fruit at a grocer, carefully inspecting each one for signs of worms. “The echoes are . . . I suppose ‘off’ is the best description. It’s like listening to someone screaming from the bottom of a well. We don’t have any useful information from them about the transformations.”
I grunted, tugging at my lower lip while I thought. There had to be some way to show there was no connection between me and the transformations.
“Look,” Guyer’s voice was softer now, “I’d like you to meet someone.”
My head snapped back, eyes widening. “Who have you told about this?”
“No one. I want you to talk someone who I think could help you.”
She flipped the book over. The back had a photo of the author, his face blurred by a smear of salad dressing.
“Who the Hells is that?”
“His name,” she said, “is Dr. Henning.”
The professor was a study in browns. Brown hair, brown bushy beard, brown eyes slightly enlarged by the round lenses of his glasses. All of it brought home by a brown cardigan over a blue shirt and white tie. Guyer slid the book across the table.
“This is for you,” she said.
I groaned, but she cut me off with a wave of her hand.
“You’re always going on about seeing things from the victim’s eyes. Always worried about protecting the dead. Imp’s blade, Carter, my job’s to talk to the dead, and even I think you need to worry about the living. This book will help you get through the death, and see the light in the living.”
Worrying about the living brought nothing but heartache. But even as isolated as I was, I still had
