“He’s headed to a secure ward, locked away with the other patrol cops and medics who’ve been taken since the manna strike. And they’re the lucky ones. What do you think Baelen would do with me?”
Jax didn’t answer, staring instead into his soup like a divination officer reading tea leaves. Sometimes I forgot how young he was. I took a deep breath and prepared to tell him the truth in the gentlest terms possible.
“Everyone in power is corrupt and out to exploit us,” I said. “Unless we’re too much of a headache. Then they’ll just kill us and use our deaths as an excuse to crack down on civil liberties.”
He started coughing, and I half stood, afraid he was choking. Then I realized he was laughing though a mouthful of soup. “You listen to your DJ buddy too much.”
“Handsome Hanford is all about conspiracies. I’m talking about millions of people, all of them trying to look out for themselves. No conspiracy, no plan, just the cold, lonely truth that we’re alone, and no one cares about us.”
“You really are a little bit of sunshine, aren’t you?” He wiped his speaking mouth with a napkin. “People are capable of as much kindness as cruelty.”
“Yeah,” I said. “That’s the worst part.”
For a moment we sat in silence.
“You’ve got more years on the job,” he said, “but I saw my fair share of corruption before I ever came to Titanshade, and I think you’re oversimplifying. Besides, you have as much integrity as anyone else, even if you like to pretend you don’t.”
“If you say so.” I closed my eyes, wallowing in the sounds of the city. Car horns and a million conversations, constant jackhammering at construction sites and panhandlers and street performers, all of us living in an improbable oasis of warmth on the ice plains. Jax was right, all of us were capable of kindness and cruelty in equal measure. Sometimes I wondered how someplace so filthy, self-absorbed, and callously indifferent to the sufferings of others could still be the source of so much good. I wonder if normal people think the same thing about cops.
“So what do you recommend?” I sat up straighter and changed the tone of my voice. Nonverbal cues that it was time for what people like us had to do in order to survive: compartmentalize and move on.
“We could interview Sheena and Donna. Talk to Sheena’s brother Michael and see what he thought about her behavior before and after she attacked Kearn. We could track down Vandie Cedrow and find out the story behind Saul Petrevisch getting fired. Or maybe track down Murphy CaDell and get it from him.”
I grunted. That property management company address still nagged at me. Expensive real estate didn’t make sense for an operation like that.
“Let’s step back,” I said. “Look at the bigger questions. For the sake of argument, let’s say it’s the buzzing causing the murders.”
Jax shrugged. “Okay.”
“So what’s causing the buzzing?”
A deep breath. “Well, it could be an unknown natural phenomenon. Windstorms, magnetic fields, that kind of thing. There’s intentional interference, like a pirate radio station or, I don’t know, some kind of jamming frequency. Then unintentional interference, bleed-over from a too-powerful radio tower.”
“Okay,” I said, knowing full well what was coming. “None of that causes people to fly into violent rages, though, does it?”
“No.” His biting mouth clacked rhythmically as he talked his way through it. “So next we’re into the realm of the unnatural. Magic or related effects. I wouldn’t say that’s a possibility at all, except for . . .” He glanced at me, then looked away.
“Except for me, I got it.”
“Right. So.” He stretched both mandibles and stared at the sky for a long moment. “You first felt the buzz after you came into contact with snake oil.”
“Sort of. It’s the next gen manna that does it. Whether it’s diluted in snake oil or pure.”
“The point is,” he said, “that the effects could be coming from snake oil labs or dealers. Or it could be coming from the massive reservoir of manna on the ice plains.”
I scratched my neck. He had a point. “Could it be caused by someone? A sorcerer, maybe. Someone with the political pull to have access to next gen manna and the complete lack of any moral guidance.”
“Ambassador Paulus.”
“Maybe. She’s doesn’t care who gets crushed in her campaign for more power. And she’s experimented with manna before.”
He perked up. “She has?”
I winced. She had indeed, and the result of that experiment was named Gellica, a woman who moved through the upper crust of society with the same ease that she padded through the hills in the shape of a feline. But I couldn’t tell Jax about that—I’d already betrayed Gellica once, and her secrets weren’t mine to reveal.
“She has,” I said, quickly adding, “but she’s not the only one. Harlan Cedrow found the manna reservoir that way. Hells, he even imported his own tech support. Heidelbrecht slipped away from me once, and he deserves to be dragged into the light as much as anyone else.”
“And now Cedrow’s niece Vandie is right at the center of everything. She was nearby when Bobby Kearn was killed, and when his body transformed.”
“There’s no ignoring the Barekusu, either.”
“What do you mean?” He drew back.
“I mean it’s amazing timing, them arriving right when all this breaks out into the open. Plus, at least one of them had a next gen manna connection. I felt the thread at the parade. They claim they’re here to meditate on the manna discovery. I don’t know what they’re really doing here. The one that came early, the sorcerer—what’s her name?”
“Serrow.” He sounded apprehensive. “But she wasn’t anywhere near Shelter in the Bend. None of the Barekusu were.”
“But they were near Saul Petrevisch’s apartment. They were right outside.”
“The problem is,” said Jax, “that we don’t really know if distance has anything to do with it at all.”
“That’s the trouble with magic. We
