“And then what?”
“I’ll burn that bridge when I cross it.”
He laced the fingers of his hands into a single fist. “Anything able to take out the knight-diviner is packing some power.”
“Not for long.”
He thought about that for a while. “So happens I could use you,” he said.
That was unexpected. “Why the hell would you want me?”
He gave me what he must have considered his cryptic smile. It reminded me of a grizzly awakened in midwinter. “I have my reasons. Here’s what I’ll do for you. You get a Mutual Aid sticker on your ID, which should open you some doors. You get to use Greg’s office. You get to look at the open file and police report.”
Open file meant I would get the case as it came to Greg: bare facts and no or little findings. I would have to retrace Greg’s steps. It was bloody more than I expected.
“Thank you,” I said.
“The file doesn’t leave the building,” he said. “No copies, no quotes. You’ll make a complete report to me and only to me.”
“I’m bound by the Guild’s disclosure of information act,” I said.
He waved it aside. “It’s taken care of.”
Since when? This knight-protector was going far out of his way to help a worthless merc. Why? People who did me favors made me nervous. On the other hand, it was bad manners to look a gift horse in the mouth. Even if you’re getting it from an overweight cracker in a fringe shirt.
“Officially you have no status with me,” he said. “Screw up and you’re persona non grata.”
“Understood.”
“We’re done,” he said.
Outside the receptionist waved me over and asked for my ID. I gave it to her and watched as she affixed a small metallic Mutual Aid sticker to it, an official “stamp” of the Order’s interest in my humble work. Some doors would open to me and more would slam in my face. Oh, well.
“Don’t mind Ted,” the receptionist said, returning my ID. “He’s harsh sometimes. My name’s Maxine.”
“My name’s Kate. Would you point out the late knight-diviner’s office to me?”
“I’d be glad to. The last one on the right.”
“Thank you.”
She smiled and went back to her work. Peachy keen.
I reached Greg’s office and stood in the doorway. It didn’t look right.
A square window spilled daylight onto the floor, a narrow desk, and two old chairs. To the left, a deep bookshelf ran the length of the wall, threatening to collapse under the weight of meticulously arranged volumes. Four metal file cabinets as tall as me towered at the opposite wall. Stacks of files and papers crowded in the corners, occupied the chairs, and choked the desk.
Someone had gone through Greg’s papers. They’d done it carefully. The place wasn’t ransacked, but someone had looked at each of Greg’s files and didn’t return them to their proper place, instead choosing to stack them on the first horizontal surface available. These were Greg’s private papers. For some reason, the idea of someone touching Greg’s things, going over them, reading his thoughts after his death bothered me.
I stepped through the doorway and felt a protective spell close behind me. Arcane symbols ignited with a pale orange glow, forming complex patterns on the gray carpet. Long twisted lines connected the symbols, crisscrossing and winding about the room, their intersections marked by radiant red dots. Greg had sealed the room with his own blood, and more, he had keyed it to me, otherwise I wouldn’t be able to see the spell. Now any magic I did in this room would stay in it, leaving no echo beyond the door. A spell of this complexity would take weeks to set up. Judging by the intensity of the glowing lines, it would absorb one hell of an echo. Why would he do that?
I walked between the files to the bookshelf. It held an old edition of the Almanac of Mystic Creatures, an even older version of the Arcane Dictionary, a Bible, a beautiful edition of the Koran bound in leather and engraved with gold, several other religious volumes, and a thin copy of Spenser’s
I made my way to the metal cabinets. As expected, they were empty. The shelves were marked in Greg’s own unique code, which I couldn’t read. It didn’t matter really. I picked up the closest stack and carefully slid the first file onto the metal frame.
Two hours later, I finished with the papers on the floor and the chairs and was ready to start on the stacks covering the desk when a large manila envelope stopped me. It lay on top of the central stack, so my name, written with black marker in Greg’s cursive, was plainly visible.
I lowered the stacks to the floor, pulled up a chair, and emptied the envelope onto the desk’s surface. Two photographs and a letter. In the first photo two couples stood side by side. I recognized my father, a hulking, red- haired man, enormous shoulders spread wide, one arm around a woman who had to be my mother. Some children retain memories of their deceased parents, a shadow of a voice, a hint of a scent, an image. I recalled nothing of her, as if she had never existed. My father kept no photographs of her—it must have been too painful for him—and I knew only what he told me. She was pretty, he had said, and she had long blond hair. I stared at the woman in the photograph. She was short and petite. Her features matched her build, well-formed, delicate, but devoid of fragility. She stood assured, with easy, natural poise, clothed in a kind of magical allure and perfectly aware of her power. She was beautiful.
Both he and Greg told me I resembled her, but no matter how hard I studied her image, I could see no resemblance. My features were bolder. My mouth was larger and not pouting by any stretch of the imagination. I did manage to inherit her eye color, dark brown, but my eyes had an odd cut, almond-shaped, slightly elongated. And my skin was a shade darker. If I overloaded on eyeliner and mascara, I could easily pass for a gypsy.
There was more to it than that—my mother’s face had feminine gentleness. Mine didn’t, at least not when compared to hers. If we were to stand side by side in a room full of people, I wouldn’t get a single glance. And if someone had stopped to chat me up, she could’ve stolen him with a single smile.
Pretty . . . Yeah. Nice understatement, Dad.
On the other hand, if the same people had to pick one of us to kick a bad guy in the kneecap, I’d get the vote, no problem.
Next to my mother and father, Greg stood by a lovely Asian woman. Anna. His first wife. Unlike my parents, those two stood a little apart, each maintaining a barely perceptible distance as if their individualities would strike a spark if they reached for one another. Greg’s eyes were mournful.
I put the photograph face down on the desk.
The other photo was of me, about nine or ten years old, diving into a lake from the branches of a giant poplar. I didn’t know he had it or even when it was taken.
I read the letter, a few sparse lines on the white piece of paper, a part of Spenser’s poem.
“One day I wrote her name upon the strand,
But came the waves and washed it away:
Again I wrote it with a second hand,
But came the tide, and made my pains his prey.”
Below four words were written in Greg’s blood.
The words blazed with red fire. A powerful spasm gripped me. My lungs constricted, the room blurred, and through the dense fog the beating of my heart sounded loud like the toll of a church bell. A tangle of forces swirled around me, catching me in a twisted mess of slippery, elastic power currents. I reached out, and gripped them, and
