Hard Magic

Eight

I hadn’t been keeping track of time, so I don’t know how long that meeting actually took—not very long, certainly. There was still light outside the window, but in the summer that meant nothing in terms of time-telling. Ms. Reybeorn was nowhere in sight by the time we trooped into the chat room. Nifty joined up with us along the way, wiping still-damp hands on his trousers and looking inquiringly at us. Wherever he’d been—and I could take a guess—he’d missed the recent events.

“We may be in business,” Nick told him as we walked, and Nifty’s entire face brightened, like a kid being told Santa had managed to shove a pony into his sled. Did little boys dream of having a pony the way little girls did?

Just as well that Ms. Reybeorn had already left the premises; this was our smallest room, and the five chairs and a narrow table pretty much filled the space before everyone was inside. Why Stosser didn’t come to us, rather than bringing us down here… From someone else—Sharon or Nifty, for example—I’d have guessed a power play. But he was already the boss; why would he need to do that?

Whatever the reason, it was seriously cramped with all seven of us jammed in there, and I only hoped that the air-conditioning was up to the job, and nobody blew the fuses again.

The chime faded away, and like a magical case of musical chairs, everyone tried to find a place to park their butts.

Sharon took the seat next to Stosser, resting her elbows on the arms of the chair so that she took up as much space as possible, as though mimicking Nifty’s much-larger bulk. He had taken the chair at the other end of the table, so rather than being at Stosser’s left hand, he anchored the table for him. Pietr slid in between Nifty and Venec, taking the last chair pulled up to the table. His clear gray gaze met mine, and he dropped me a wicked wink.

Joy. More maneuvering, and because I wasn’t fast enough, now wherever I sat would be seen as choosing sides.

Nick and I ended up avoiding the table entirely and perching along the windowsill, close enough to contribute, but without the pesky placement implications. That was my plan, anyway. I suspect Nick just wanted an excuse to cozy up. There was enough room on the ledge for his skinny ass, but I had to sit half on, half off. Nick shifted, pulling at my arm to bring me closer. We fidgeted a bit until achieving a compromise, our hips bumping against each other.

Nick was a skinny geek, but he had manners. And he smelled good. I really did like folk who smelled good; it was even more of a turn-on than looking good. I hadn’t dated anyone seriously since months before graduation—my last steady had decided to take a job in California, and I’m not about long-distance relationships, so we’d cooled it off mutually, and without too much trauma. It was clearly past time to find a new playmate—especially if daily exposure to Venec didn’t lessen the hormonal impact he had on me, which didn’t seem likely at this point.

Keeping coworkers off-limits raised the question of where and when I was going to find that new playmate, though. Or even finding someone long-term. I wasn’t averse to long-term, just ’cause I’d never been able to manage it just yet. I—

“Are you with us, Torres?”

I blinked, hoping to hell I hadn’t just said anything out loud. No, just caught not paying attention. Damn. “Yessir.” The curse of a true blonde—when I blush, I blush hard. By the time everyone looked back to Ian, I probably matched my old hair dye, and wanted to sink through the floor. I tilted my head a little, letting my hair fall forward to hide me while I recovered, and caught Venec watching me. He saw me watching him watching me, and I swear to god, that gaze of his intensified until I felt like the only person in the room.

Which I wasn’t. I looked away before the blush went farther than my face, and tried to pay attention to what was going on outside of my libido.

“All right,” Stosser said briskly. “If you haven’t figured out the what of things by now, you’re fired. Here’s the who.

“Two months ago, Charles and Patty Reybeorn, ages seventy-five and seventy-two, respectively, were found dead in the front seat of a brand-new Benz sedan, parked in their garage in a rather exclusive and well-to-do suburb of Chicago. The exhaust had been backed up, and the initial cause of death was listed as vehicular suicide.”

“Nice car,” Nifty said. I had to take his word for it—I could recognize basic logos, and knew the difference between a coupe and a sedan, but that was about it.

“Initial? There was cause to doubt it?” Sharon had pulled in a notepad from somewhere and was jotting down notes. Boss’s pet, I thought uncharitably, annoyed that I hadn’t thought to carry one with me, too.

“No, not initially. Both the local police and the Midwest Council, to which the deceased both belonged, were satisfied with the conclusion. However, there were a few details that raised eyebrows.”

“Such as?” Sharon paused with her pencil over the pad.

“First, there was no known or probable reason for the couple to commit suicide. They were both in decent health, financially secure, and on good terms with each other, which might rule out a murder-suicide scenario.”

“People off themselves for reasons that seem perfectly valid to themselves, but nobody else even noticed,” I said. “Not having a clear motive doesn’t seem like enough to reverse the ruling.”

“True. And the local police did not. Over the daughter’s objections, the case was closed.”

“And the daughter is our client?” Nifty had missed seeing her come in, and had to be caught up on that detail, Nick listing the vitals, including the fact that I’d spotted her gem-stones and known the name.

“I remember her now.” That got everyone looking at me again, this time with various levels of startlement and anticipation. “No, I never met her, never saw her before today. But my mentor has friends out in the Midwest region, they’re major players there. Or were, anyway, I guess. Oh man, the daughter, Rose Reybeorn. Damn. She doesn’t just have money. She’s got strings on people, and she doesn’t mind pulling them.”

“So our new client wants to use us to yank chains?” Sharon didn’t sound really pleased about that. I wasn’t, either, honestly. Made it all seem…petty. I wondered, idly, if there was insurance involved, since it was so important it not be suicide. Except the last thing the Reybeorns needed was money….

Okay, I was going on gossip, and gossip about money was almost always wrong. But even so, I didn’t see a Reybeorn needing a death settlement to make ends meet. Even if her ex-husband had sucked up in the settlement, she’d done well for herself since then.

No, there was something else about the deaths, something that had made it so gossipworthy….

“There was one other thing that bothered our client,” Stosser went on. “The police can’t explain it, either. The Benz, the car they allegedly committed suicide in…didn’t belong to either one of them. It wasn’t a recent purchase, a rental, or a friend’s loaner, so far as the police have been able to determine. In fact, nobody seemed to know who it belonged to.”

Yeah. That was it, the detail I was trying to remember. The unclaimed death-car.

Pietr exhaled with a sharp whooshing noise. “That could raise an eyebrow, yeah. And the cops pooh-poohed a possible murder weapon of unknown ownership? Nice. Not.”

“I can see why they called it a suicide,” Nifty said, taking up the mantle of devil’s advocate the way Sharon had, only with less ’tude and more calculation. Sharon was contrary by nature. Nifty, I was starting to understand, used it as a tool, or maybe a weapon. “No matter who the car belonged to, it was in their garage, and I’m guessing there wasn’t any forced entry, no signs of a fight….”

“Yes, without any signs of foul play, which I’m assuming there weren’t—” Sharon started to say, when Venec cut in.

“Never assume anything unless you have evidence in front of you.” He let the rebuke sting, and then added, “However in this case, you are both correct—the medical examiner found no signs of violence committed on the bodies other than those attributable to the means of death.”

They hadn’t found any unexplainable marks or wounds on Madeline’s body, either.

“So, what do we do? I mean, the cops have been all over the case, and probably half a dozen private investigators, before she had no choice but to turn to us.” Nifty raised his hands in a “don’t shoot the messenger” pose when Stosser looked at him. “Hey, man, it’s the truth. We’re not going to be second-string, much less first. So what does she expect us to do that nobody else could?”

And we were back to the original question, like Nifty and Stosser had planned it. I didn’t think they had, of course…but Stosser took the on-a-silver-platter lead-in like a pro.

“To use magic to discover who killed her parents, and why.”

Oh. Right. “Uh-huh.” Sharon, of course, put all our thoughts into words. “That easy?”

Venec took ownership of the conversation then, his smile showing way more teeth than it had to for social comfort. “If it were easy, none of you would have jobs.”

Game and match, Venec.

The first trick, everyone agreed, was to get our hands on the death-car itself. Exactly how we were going to do that was a mystery to us, since we were in New York, without any official standing, and the car was, presumably, still in Chicago, but the Guys seemed to have an idea. While they hammered it out, we were sent off like tardy schoolchildren to read a case study Stosser had put together on identifying the different species of midsize winged fatae based on flying patterns and wingspread, as seen from the ground.

“But…” Sharon had started to protest. Stosser didn’t even hear her, already working on the next thing and dismissing us from his awareness in that way he had, so it was Venec who laid down the law.

“The car’s not going to go anywhere or have anything new done to it overnight, Mendelssohn. This is a case, yes. It’s our first case, and it’s important that we do good and look good. So everyone will get their hands dirty. But don’t think it’s your sole responsibility. Life goes on, and so does your training. Flying fatae, people. There will be a quiz.”

“I’m an investigator, not a bird-watcher,” Nick had grumbled to me, but quietly, and Venec pretended not to hear him. For a guy who had been all excited about the chance to see fatae, Nick didn’t seem all that excited about learning to recognize them. I thought about pointing out the inconsistency, but decided it probably would just make him crabbier. Getting a green light and then seeing it turn to yellow was frustrating; I was with him on that.

Orders were orders, though. We all took our packets, loaded up on coffee and doughnuts from a platter that had appeared out on the front counter while we were in the meeting, and headed off to separate areas of the office to do the assignment. Stosser had been very clear about that: hands-on material we did in groups, but reading was a solitary occupation. I think he figured we needed the time away from each other during the day, too.

My usual favorite spot—the sofa in the entry room—was claimed almost immediately by Pietr, who settled himself with the complete and total self-consciousness of someone who knows he’s being a pig. I shot him an evil glare, and went off to find somewhere else previously unclaimed.

“If you want us to do our job, you must allow us to do our job.”

Oh. I stopped halfway through the door of workroom #3 as the voice hit me. Damn it, we needed to have In Use placards put up outside the offices: I had almost walked in on Venec holding a conference call with a bunch of other people. Their figures shimmered like holograms in the space, and I flattened myself against the wall instinctively to keep out of range. I had absolutely no damn idea how they were managing this, and walking into the middle of an unknown current-spell was always a bad idea.

There were three floating busts, two women and a man. The women were older, the man younger. I recognized one as Ms. R, and the others had enough of a staticky resemblance to assume they were members of the family.

Venec didn’t look away from this display, but made a subtle, unmistakable hand gesture to indicate that I should come into their range of vision. I’d never seen him use it before, but I knew exactly what he wanted me to do. I wished, briefly, for Stosser’s gilding-the-lily spell, squared my shoulders and tried to look professional as possible, and walked into view.

“This is Bonita Torres, who leads our initial evaluation team.”

I did? Most excellent. I channeled J at his Council best, as much as I could, and inclined my head gravely first to Ms. R, as our client, and then to the others. “I regret the circumstances of our meeting,” I said. “Sympathies on your loss.”

“Indeed,” Ms. R said. “You seem rather young to be leading a team.”

“Ms. Torres led her first investigation while she was still in college,” Venec said smoothly. “And to a successful conclusion, as well. You are in excellent hands here, I assure you. But in order to begin, we must be able to examine the car itself.”

I kept my face professional, but inside things were chasing around each other going “what the fuck?” because how the hell had Venec known about that? Nobody knew about that, except me and J and my dad’s girlfriend Claire and a nameless cave dragon up in the Adirondacks…

And the strange presence that had shadowed me the entire time I was digging into my dad’s disappearance. The one that had congratulated me on a job well done, given me a vague idea about maybe going into law enforcement, and then disappeared….

I had almost forgotten about it, written the voice off as a hallucination, my understandably overstressed brain dealing with my father’s murder as best it could. Even the dreams had forgotten it, for the most part.

Because it couldn’t be Benjamin Venec, three years before I even knew he existed, or he had any reason to know I existed. It wasn’t impossible, no, but it was damned improbable and that was as good as impossible. Right?

Or was that why he felt so familiar to me, why I knew when he was in the room, why he watched me, sometimes, like…I didn’t know what it was like. But it was intense, and overwhelming, and it made me want, very badly, to crack open his brain and see what was inside.

“The car is still in police custody,” the man with Ms. R was saying. “Although the case has been closed on their part, they don’t know who the owner is. I expect that it will go to auction at some point. They haven’t seen fit to tell us anything, naturally.”

“Of course.” Venec was trying to stay soothing and politic, but he really wasn’t good at it, and his body language was muttering impatience. Stosser should have been handling this interview, really. Could the client see how annoyed the boss was, through the interface? Hopefully not. Venec made an effort, stilling his body and letting the lines of his face smooth back into pleasantness. “The fact remains that we need to be able to examine the car itself as part of our preliminary investigation. We simply need to determine the best way to achieve that. With your permission, I will make contact with the officer in charge of the case and arrange it as soon as possible. We will update you as soon as there is news.”

He closed the fingers of his right hand into his palm, a subtle little spellcast, and the connection flickered and died. Sweet. He looked up and saw me watching his hand, I guess, because when I met his gaze there was this little, secret smile on his lips. Not the fang-baring smile he’d given Sharon—no less dangerous, but in a totally, totally different way. If a random guy in a bar had given me that smile, I’d have bought him a drink and gotten his number. I wasn’t used to not going after what I wanted. Venec, on the other hand, seemed to be all about control, self—and otherwise. That just made me want to rattle his cage, just a little. But he’d be expecting the obvious approach, so I went sideways.

“That’s how you handle clients? Not even a good afternoon, have a nice day?”

Venec let his annoyance show now. Point to me! “I hate dealing with people.”

“So I noticed.” I thought about confronting him with my suspicions about his—or Stosser’s—intrusion into my earlier life, but decided that now really wasn’t a good time. Either he wasn’t, in which case where did he get that information, or he was, in which case…okay. It had nothing to do with the game I’d decided was happening between us now. That voice in my head had helped me when I needed it. I owed them thanks, not complaints, even if it was a little…creepy.

If he was, it also confirmed my suspicions of how and why I’d gotten that phone call. He, or maybe Stosser, had followed through on that implicit promise of employment, all those years ago…which suggested that they’d been planning this for a lot longer than any of us had estimated. In light of all that, why would I be upset about a little violation of privacy?

If he did it again, ever, I was going to kick his ass. Hard.

“So,” I asked him instead, “how are we going to convince the Chicago cops to let us get our mitts on an impounded vehicle?”

“We aren’t.”

“Um?”

Pietr would have grinned when he heard someone say something like that. Nifty might have rubbed his huge hands in anticipation. Me? When Ben Venec looked at me with that considering expression, his eyes dark and serious and with a pull like riptide, I knew we were in deep trouble. And by “we,” I totally meant “me.”