Chapter Four
Jess didn't even count the cars as Conlon rolled past, slowing to park. He'd barely parked before he was out of the car, heading to the apartment they'd been in barely an hour before.
Jess followed closely behind. There wasn't a whole lot of pattern to work with - but there also hadn't been a whole lot of window for the killer.
"He must have watched us leave," Conlon was saying. "But why?"
"Maybe," Jess said. Something about it bothered her. "I need to see Washington's work space."
"In a bit," Conlon said as a uniformed officer bustled up to him with a clipboard. "Who's first on scene?"
"Detective Valentine." The officer gestured towards a woman walking towards them. "Her and Detective Williams came to talk to the missing, saw the body. They called it in and cleared the house, then came out."
Conlon looked at the approaching detectives and sighed heavily. "Contaminating my scene?"
Jess took the chance to appraise the part of detectives. Valentine smelled of gunpowder and Kevlar, a little tension, and a very, very little of marijuana and cocaine. Williams smelled of sweat, and looked like he spent most of his off-time in the gym. He was big, with dark skin, a neatly trimmed beard, and short black hair. His jacket looked like it could barely contain his muscles. She wasn't nearly so big; tall and curvy, with lighter skin that was still so much darker than Jess or Conlon contrasted nicely with her gold earrings, and her own jacket was easily loose enough to cover the vest she was almost certainly wearing under it.
Her eyes narrowed, their lines showing through a thin layer of makeup. Then they rolled. "Looking for threats or injured, Mike, you know procedure." She had an accent. Hispanic, though Jess couldn't tell whether that meant Puerto Rican, Mexican, or something else. "Who's the Fed?"
"Sergeant Dunbar," he grunted. "Military."
Both narcotics cops looked at her sharply, but it was Williams who spoke up. His voice was deep and rumbling, and he made exactly zero effort to keep the suspicion and mistrust out of his voice. "What's the military doing here?"
Jess's other self quivered and tried to make herself look small, but Jess pushed that aside and forced a smile. "I'm a specialist in non-direct methodology. Since the killer seems to be using it, I'm here as a technical advisor."
"Non-direct what?" Williams frowned.
"Magic," Conlon grunted. "She's a mage. Focus, people. Dead body. What happened?"
Valentine's eyes stayed locked on Jess, but when she spoke, she talked to Conlon. "Nathan Washington fit the profile of a guy we suspect of supplying the gangs around here. Not competing with the cartels, you understand, but supplementing. Exotic strains of weed, mostly. Basically the minute you passed his name our way, he flagged, and we came down here."
"We logged arrival, approached the door." She shook her head. "Door was wide open, Mike, and we could see the body from outside. And the blood. So we radioed for backup, then went in to see if our guy was here, or maybe the cartels got him and the roommate for a message. He wasn't, in or out."
Valentine shrugged. "Thing is, we got nothing. I got a report for you here, but he wasn't on our radar till you tossed him to us. No known haunts, nothing."
Conlon nodded. "Alright. Dunbar, I want to walk through everything as-is. If there's anything invisible, can you break it after I finish?"
"I'll have to do it room-by-room."
Valentine raised a hand. "Wait, wait. Invisible? Seriously?"
Conlon grimaced. "There was at the first scene. Big-ass message written in blood, all over the wall. One minute nothing, next minute, boom. Alright, Dunbar."
Jess followed him into the house, Williams and Valentine trailing after them. Like with Trepe's apartment, the whole place stunk of blood but was quiet as death. The only noise was Conlon's feet against the carpet as he moved across the tiny living room to stand in the doorway to the kitchen, sparing a glance for the small hallway to his right.
He stood and looked for a long minute, then stood there in thought. Finally, he glanced back at Jess. "Alright. Dunbar, you're sure that spell won't go through the walls?"
"I'm sure," she said.
"Alright. Go ahead and un-spell these two while I look at the bedrooms."
Valentine gently pushed Jess aside. "Not alone you don't, not if we couldn't actually clear the house. Williams, give Dunbar here some help. See if you can see what she does. Invisibility is the last thing we need."
Williams grimaced and turned to face Jess. "She's right. You mind if I watch?"
"Not for a heartbeat," Jess said as she pulled her book out and tore a blank sheet from the back. Then she flipped to the invisibility removal spell and copied down the runes, reversed from inside to out, the same way she'd done at Trepe's place.
"On paper?" Williams sighed. "I was kinda hoping you were gonna draw it in the air. Paper feels so..."
She glanced up at him, her eyebrows quirked in amusement. "Mundane?"
He sighed again.
She frowned, giving it some serious thought. "In the air...I have no idea how you would do that. Logically, it would work better, but paper works fine and it's easy to destroy if you need to, which can be very important." She looked back down at the paper and scribed the runes for the inner ring. She turned so she could show him the notebook. "Outer ring clears invisibility. Inner ring creates a gust of wind and pushes the outer ring out. Magic doesn't work well through walls, so it'll stop there. Now all I have to do is..." and she completed the circle.
As it had at the last crime scene, a gentle burst of air pushed out from the paper.
"Well, damn," Williams said. Then he frowned. "Nothing showed up, though."
Jess shrugged. "Honestly, I don't know if the killer knows how to make things invisible, or has any interest in it. I'm pretty sure it was the victim at the last scene that did for that room, it just carried on after she died."
Williams frowned at the paper. "Is that something I could do?" he asked. "Valentine's right - if we can just walk past a truck full of cocaine, we're pretty much dead in the water."
Jess nodded. "Sure. I'll let you do the kitchen, even." She hesitated. "Though I think I'll draw the runes. I know them better, and they could do something wonky if they're not precise enough." She moved to the back of the apartment.
The instant she stepped in, she froze, her other self screaming that she needed to get away from the blood, the body. Predators could still be here, scavengers could be coming. Jess ignored her and took the next step, and a good look at the room. Her nose only told her one thing. Her eyes told her so much more.
Tom Hill had died on his own kitchen table. His head hung over a bowl full of blood and water - the same bows he'd poured liquid nitrogen in as a demonstration. His ankle was handcuffed to one leg of the table, and his face held confusion and fear. The wall between the kitchen and whichever bedroom it was held the familiar prophecy, in four-inch strokes of blood.
Something about that writing bothered Jess, but she had work to do. She pulled out another sheet of paper and carefully went through the runes, then she held it up for Williams. "Alright, now all you have to do is complete the inner circle."
He frowned at her. "That's really all it takes?"
She grimaced and waggled her hand. "Yes and no. Belief, intent, symbolism. These symbols - my group worked hard to come up with ones that would work. These do. They describe the specific effect we want. Intent - you want to cast the spell, right?"
He nodded. "Definitely."
Jess grinned. "And that means the only factor left is that you believe it works, and you saw me do it two minutes ago. So now all you have to do is draw the circle and complete the spell." She held out the pen.
Williams hesitated for a moment, then took the pen and closed the circle. A burst of wind flowed out from the page.
Jess looked around the room. Nothing different. She looked at Conlon as he entered the room. "Nothing here," she said. "Or the living room."
Conlon grunted. "Alright. Valentine, how long you planning to stick around?"
She shrugged. "Depends. You want me to talk to my Captain?"
He started, cocking an eyebrow at her.
Valentine shrugged again. "It's not like Williams and I have time to spare, and your killer isn't exactly in our jurisdiction. But your missing is, and very. If someone in town can straight make narcotics, we need to stop that, and if the only way we can do that and not get in your way is to be right next to you, hey, we all swore the same oath to serve and protect."
"Alright. I can live with that." He raised a finger. "But it's my case."
She grinned. "And I can live with that." She paused, then jerked her head towards Jess. "You mind if I watch her while she does her thing in the other rooms?"
Conlon shook his head. "Go ahead."
Jess nodded to Valentine and led her through the short corridor, giving the detective a quick rundown on the known principles of magic. As she walked, she sketched out the runes for the counterspell.
The room on the left was somewhat sloppy; it smelled of unwashed sheets and male body odor. The desk was strewn with papers, held in place with biology textbooks. A laptop was on the bed, open, screen locked.
Jess stepped to the center of the room and completed the inner circle.
"Nothing," she said after giving the room a second pass.
Valentine frowned. "You're sure it worked, though?"
Jess nodded. "Definitely. Basically, that blast of wind was half the spell. If the whole spell didn't work, the whole spell wouldn't work. If we don't see any changes, then there was nothing to change."
"Spells never work halfway?"
Jess thought of Oblange's big lizard. "Not with this structure," she said. "My spells all use nested rings, so the spell is the spell. Now, it's possible for a spell to do something other than what you expected if you use the wrong symbols."
Then Jess stepped into the other bedroom. The smell of smoke rolled over her in an overpowering wave, and her thought process was abruptly derailed.
She blinked and looked around the room. Rumpled bed, desk, laptop. Open cardboard box on the desk. Finance textbooks, potted plants - household herbs, all. Fennel, bay, was that mustard? She closed her eyes and inhaled. Smoke, blood, marijuana. In that order.
"Do you smell smoke?" she asked.
Valentine grimaced. "A bit, yeah. It doesn't smell like house fire, though. Maybe he thought it'd cover up the weed."
Her spell would probably work better if she was in the center of the room, but she couldn't bring herself to take another step. Well, it would still work where she was. She stood there, just inside the doorway, and wrote out the same sequence of runes one more time. A burst of wind flowed out.
As it passed over the ground, rings of draconic runes in red paint appeared, carefully placed on the surface of the carpet. Another, smaller ring was burned into the desk - right next to the soldering iron that must have been used to do it. A half-dozen more plants appeared on the bookcases, draconic runes ringing their pots.
Jess froze. She should have known - she should have guessed - if only she'd- "FUCK!" she shouted.
A moment later, Conlon pushed past Valentine. His face tightened, but he just pulled out his radio. "Dispatch, One David Fourteen. Please revise the BOLO on Nathan Washington. He is considered a suspect, and may be armed and dangerous. He may be accompanied by a large, aggressive animal."
"Copy that, One David Fourteen."
Jess was still swearing at herself. "I should have looked at his spells," she said.
"Don't second-guess," Conlon said. "We know he didn't kill Trepes. We don't actually know he killed Hill. Process the scene."
She closed her eyes, took a deep breath. She slowly let it out through her nose. Opening her eyes, she looked at Conlon. "I'll start translating the spells, then."
He nodded and left the room. Valentine headed over to the shelves to get a closer look at the plants, carefully walking around the circle on the floor.
That circle was the priority, Jess decided. It was big enough for Washington to have stood in, and on the floor, which meant he could have used it on himself. Probably did, given the difficulty in putting it on the carpet. Hesitating, Jess pulled out a blank sheet of paper, sketched a circle, and scribed her translation spell. Then she began to carefully copy the draconic runes onto her page.
"These look like hemp crosses," Valentine said. "But I don't know what with."
"They could be magical mutations," Jess said. She closed the circle and read the writing within. "Fuck. This one on the floor confers knowledge. Draconic, to be precise."
Valentine shrugged. "Could be worse."
"It probably is worse." Jess sighed. "I don't see any limits or controls on it, which means it's a spell that changes your brain in at least one specific way. I don't think there's any way that can end well. It also means that Washington knows how to, and is willing to, magically alter himself. I wouldn't be surprised if claws or scales or fire breathing was next."
"Well, those will make it harder for him to blend in," Valentine said. She leaned in very close to the pots. "This one smells like ashes."
Jess stepped over to the desk and copied down the burned in runes. She closed the circle, watched as the ink blurred. She read the translatio.
Then she read it again.
She sighed. "The one on the desk is gibberish. Just words. 'Alchemy,' 'dragons,' 'blood,' 'breath,' 'smoke,' 'fire,' a few others. It can't be a spell. It has to be a part of one, with the rest spoken and performed."
Valentine nodded. "Makes sense. He wasn't ready to mass-produce. Burning that in might make it more effective, but he was stuck with what he had."
Jess grimaced. "That fits, but it also means I don't know what he was doing here."
Valentine gestured at the plants. "Well, I'm seeing evidence that these plants have been pruned back very thoroughly and repeatedly. So either they're crazy fast-growing, or these pots are healing the plants after he cut a branch off."
"Dunbar, Valentine!" Conlon called from the kitchen.
As soon as they got there, Conlon looked at them. "I'm turning the scene over to the examiners. Valentine, talk to your captain; we could use the help. Dunbar, do you have everything you need from the suspect's room?"
She sighed. "Everything I can get, anyway. Everything else isn't written down."
Conlon's face tightened. "That's...well, it is what it is. I'm not comfortable taking you on a manhunt - you're not armed and I don't have a spare vest, and I'm going to have to rattle some cages. Can you find something else to work on?"
Jess's throat squeezed, but she nodded. "Let me talk to Oblange, then. I can keep an eye on him. He's a target, too."
Conlon grimaced, then shrugged. "Alright. Do you need me to get you there?"
"I can make it," she said.
