Blood and Whispers, page 3
“Are you Thomas Quinn?” he asked.
I looked at him without a word for a long moment. I didn’t exactly scowl, but my expression wasn’t especially welcoming. I was disgruntled. It wasn’t anything in particular—I was just usually disgruntled these days. And if my intuition were correct, they weren’t here to give me money in exchange for goods, so there was no need for me to pretend to be polite.
“Yes, I’m Quinn,” I eventually replied, begrudgingly.
“I thought so,” the big detective answered. “You fit the description we got to a T.”
“Oh?” I raised an eyebrow.
“Yeah,” he nodded, “we were told to look for a guy who looks like he just got out of bed and reeks of booze, with a voice that sounds like Liam Neeson.”
That was fair, I supposed. I hadn’t showered in a couple days, I hadn’t shaved in a week, and I’d been drinking whisky just before they’d arrived. The dark circles under my eyes weren’t doing me any favors, either. I wasn’t sure who Liam Neeson was—a cinema actor, probably—but it was an Irish name, so it probably wasn’t too far off either.
“Well, you found me. What do you want?”
“My partner and I are working a case, and we’re trying to clear some things up. We’ve visited several occult and new age shops around the city, as well as a couple college professors. No one’s been able to help us so far, but the general consensus seems to be that this is the best place in the area to go for information on the occult, especially obscure topics. John Rafferty over at Penn, in particular, spoke very highly of you.”
I scoffed and rolled my eyes. Rafferty was a professor of philosophy and religious studies, and self-styled occult expert, who occasionally ordered books through my shop. Personally, I thought he was a hack, someone who picked evidence to support his theories rather than developing theories to explain the evidence. But he wasn’t an idiot, and while he wasn’t part of the magical underworld himself, he likely knew enough from his studies and his tangential contact with it to figure out that I was more than a simple entrepreneur.
Detective Lajoie glanced back at his partner. She didn’t say anything, but her eyes were narrowed in irritation and she was absentmindedly—or perhaps intentionally—tapping her foot in impatience. I didn’t know what her problem was, but she clearly didn’t want to be here. That was fine. I didn’t want her here either. And I certainly had no interest in getting involved with a police investigation.
“I sell books. I’m not a consultant,” I said curtly and turned back toward the back room.
“It’s a murder investigation, Mr. Quinn,” he entreated. “Please, just a few minutes of your time.”
I stopped but didn’t turn to face him. “Evan Townes, I assume?”
“That’s the one. What do you know about it?”
“Aside from the fact I know the victim was one of Rafferty’s teaching assistants at Penn, not much,” I gave a slight shake of my head. “I read about it in the Inquirer, and I’ve heard rumors that some detectives have been asking around. It’s a small community.”
“Fair enough, Mr. Quinn. Will you help us catch his killer?”
I thought about it for a few seconds. I was already going to have to investigate Evan’s death. I saw no sense in complicating that investigation by getting tied up with the police. If it were a genuine magical ritual, their investigation would go nowhere—the police had no hope of catching a rogue sorcerer. And if it were just a mundane murder with occult trappings, my expertise would be pointless. It was a waste of my time either way.
“No,” I finally answered. “Ring the bell if you decide to buy anything.” I again started toward the door to the back room.
“We just need help identifying some symbols found at the crime scene. Google has come up short. Everyone else we spoke with mentioned you’re some kind of an expert with esoteric languages and symbols.”
I stopped again and reconsidered. That was truer than they would believe. While some aspect of the Fae’s magic allows them to speak any human language they choose without ever having to study it, I’d had to work hard for two centuries to gain fluency in several dozen tongues. But that effort meant I was probably the foremost human scholar in obscure languages alive. Maybe I could help their investigation after all.
I turned around.
“Fine. You get two minutes. Show me.”
He pulled a yellow envelope from an inside pocket of his jacket. As he laid out several pictures on the counter in front of me, I quickly realized two things.
I immediately recognized the symbols in question as Faen glyphs, the characters used to write a variety of Otherworld languages, including a couple with which I was familiar. That was probably why they’d been directed to me; a handful of other occultists in the city might recognize it as Fae writing, but that would be about the extent of their knowledge. Even among trained sorcerers, it was the rare specialist who bothered to learn the languages of the Otherworld—there were no Barron’s courses in Faerie tongues; I’d had to study the few I knew the hard way, over many years. Unless the detectives happened to stumble across a Faerie willing to cooperate with mortal authorities, which was unlikely to say the least, I was probably the only person within a few hours’ drive who might actually be able to help them.
Right after identifying the glyphs, however, I also noticed that they appeared to be scrawled on the walls in blood.
I looked back up at the detective, one eyebrow cocked.
He nodded at the unvoiced question on my face. “Yes, Mr. Quinn, the symbols were drawn in the victim’s blood after his death. Do you recognize them?”
“Erm,” I grunted as I gave them a few seconds consideration. “Yes. They’re genuine glyphs, characters from an obscure ancient language not many alive have ever encountered.” No need to go into details about their origin.
“Can you read them?”
I looked back down at the photos and studied them carefully.
“No,” I replied after a moment, furrowing my brow. “I know the writing system, but not the dialect. Some of the words are somewhat familiar, but not enough so that I can piece it together. It’s like if I were trying to read German, but only spoke English. I don’t know if I could translate it in any reasonable amount of time.”
Of course, I also had a few Fae contacts who could almost certainly translate it faster. But I wasn’t about to volunteer that information to the police, for the same reason no Faeries were likely to cooperate with the detectives of their own volition.
Immortal beings have long memories, and many of the Fae haven’t gotten over the wars and persecutions they suffered during the rise of Christianity and Islam, displacing them from their ancient territories in this world and forcing them into hiding. A lot of them still don’t trust humans, especially authority figures. The Treaty of Tara, the peace accord that ended the Faerie Wars a thousand years ago, includes a mutual commitment between the Arcanum and the Fae to keep the existence of Otherworldly beings—and that of the magical community in general, for that matter—a secret from ordinary humanity. Non-sorcerers don’t get to know about how the world really works except in only the direst of circumstances. Potential blood rites were bad, but not enough to justify risking a treaty violation, even if I’d thought the police would believe me.
“Hm,” Detective Lajoie mused, but then Detective Connors rolled her eyes and stomped over from her spot by the door.
“Come on, Henri. I told you this was a waste of our time. He’s just another crazy occultist with delusions of magical grandeur. We should be letting the lab guys find someone who can translate it for us.”
“Excuse me?” I looked over at her with a scowl, struggling to remain somewhat professional in the face of her insult.
She ignored me and continued addressing her partner. “We have more useful things to do with our time, like following up on the skinning angle.”
He turned to face her. “You heard what Professor Rafferty said, along with everyone else we talked to. You think the lab guys are going to hear anything different?”
She looked as if she was about to object further, but then thought better of it. She looked over at me, glaring as if I were somehow at fault for her partner’s decision to come here.
“Whether or not I’m deluded, Detective Connors,” I growled, “you and your partner came to me, not the other way around. And I won’t be insulted by people who came to ask my help, police or not. Get the hell out of my shop. Your two minutes are up. We’re done here.”
“Wha…” she began to say, but her partner cut her off.
“Adrienne, go have a smoke,” he muttered. “I’ll meet you outside.”
She looked at him and saw the expression on his face. He was clearly in no mood for further discussion. I assumed they’d been having a similar argument before they even got here, which at least explained why she’d looked irritated since they’d arrived. After shooting me another glare, she spun on her heel and walked outside in silence.
The bell over the door rang quietly after she left, and Detective Lajoie turned back to me.
“I’m sorry about that, Mr. Quinn. I understand your anger, but I’d appreciate if you reconsidered. This is still a murder investigation. Your assistance could help catch a killer.”
I closed my eyes and breathed deeply for a moment, trying to recover my composure. My hands were shaking. I knew full well what I was capable of when angry enough, so I had worked for many years on my ability to keep that particular emotion in check. The quiet voice whispering in the back of my mind to let it free slowly faded into silence as I calmed down.
I opened my eyes and looked at the big Haitian detective.
“No, Detective Lajoie,” I shook my head. “I gave you two minutes. I told you what I know. Now I have to be getting back to work.”
He glanced around the empty shop and turned back to me with a raised eyebrow.
“Really? This place keeps you that busy?”
I scowled. “That’s no concern of yours.”
“It’s a concern of mine,” he replied, “because right now you’re the only person to look at these photographs and recognize the symbols at all. Which means you may well be the only person who can help us catch a brutal murderer, Mr. Quinn. I hope you’ll do the right thing.”
I took a deep breath and thought it over. I had little desire to get involved—I much preferred to stick with my ley-line research and ignore the world around me. Plus, his partner’s behavior further disinclined me to assist them. She had made me angrier than I’d been in a very long time. I didn’t like having to silence that voice in the back of my mind, the one that was always ready to act if only I’d give in to its urging. Anything that gave it an excuse was something I would rather avoid.
But the victim was a sorcerer, the newspaper had described it as a satanic ritual, and the glyphs had been written in the victim’s blood. While I hadn’t been on good terms with most of the Arcanum for the better part of a century, I had never renounced my rank and actually left the society. And since all signs were pointing to a sacrificial blood rite of some kind, that rank meant I was obliged to investigate. I couldn’t just ignore those responsibilities, no matter how much I might want to.
And if I were going to have to translate the writing anyway, it couldn’t really hurt to pass that information on to Detective Lajoie, as long as I left out anything which might lead to him learning things he was better off not knowing.
I finally grunted affirmatively. “Okay, Detective. I can’t promise it will be quick. But if I can translate them at all, I’ll let you know. Should I keep the photos, then?”
He shook his head as he started to gather them up and return them to the envelope. “No, that would be against policy, sorry. Can’t risk them getting into the newspaper. But I can have the writing transcribed for you.”
I narrowed my eyes slightly at the implication I might leak details to the press. But I brushed it off—he didn’t know me, so that one wasn’t a personal insult, just a general precaution.
“Do you have an email address I can send the transcription to when it’s done?”
I silently handed him a business card from the counter next to the register, and he tucked it into his jacket. He then pulled out one of his own and laid it on the counter.
“Thanks for your time,” he said as he turned toward the door. I briefly heard him saying something to his partner outside, but they walked off before I could make out anything clearly.
I put it out of my mind—Detective Connors wasn’t my problem anymore and thinking about her would only make me angry.
Instead, I went into the back office and downed the remainder of the whisky I’d been working on when the detectives arrived, then poured myself another.
Chapter 3
That night, well after dark, I locked up the shop and caught a cab to Mills Creek. I’d found Evan’s address in my records, from an invoice for a book he’d ordered last year. I needed to check out the crime scene, to determine if his murder had in fact been a magical working, and if so to look for clues the police wouldn’t be able to find.
All magic leaves residual energy behind, like ripples and stains in the fabric of reality, which fades over time in proportion to the amount of power used. Those of us with the gift can see such energy patterns. Back in the late nineteenth century, back when I’d still been young and naïve enough to believe in the Arcanum, I’d volunteered for a team tasked with investigating and stopping what turned out to be a mad djinn rampaging across Europe. We’d tracked it from Istanbul to London via the residual energy it left behind as it tore its victims apart.
A major blood rite like human sacrifice would leave plenty of evidence, which would last days, maybe even weeks, past the original event. Hopefully I’d be able to reconstruct the ritual’s structure and technique enough to start figuring out who—or what—had killed Evan. Complex rituals tend to be fairly unique to whoever designed them, like an artist’s signature style. If I could identify specific themes or aspects of the working’s construction, I might be able to identify a suspect. Or at least figure out what kind of mage was behind it.
Assuming it was a genuine magical working at all, of course. With any luck, it would turn out to be just some kind of Satanic cult that happened to get their hands on an ancient book written in a forgotten Faen dialect. In that case, I could safely leave it in the hands of Detective Lajoie and his partner, and crawl back into my whisky bottles and ley-line research.
As I approached the door of Evan’s somewhat shabby building, I focused for a second and whispered a phrase in Aramaic. Nothing happened from my perspective apart from a slight tingle on my skin, but I knew that if anyone were watching me, I had just faded from their sight and they’d forgotten I’d ever been there. It was a handy glamour I’d picked up many years ago from one of John Dee’s journals, one which he’d attributed to the medieval Syrian sect called the hashashin. It wouldn’t stand up to any amount of magical scrutiny, but it was useful to avoid the police knowing I was sneaking into their crime scene.
I unlocked the front door of the walk-up almost absentmindedly with a wave of my hand and headed upstairs to Evan’s apartment. Locks are easy.
Before I even got to his front door, I knew for certain that whatever had happened here, it was definitely real magic. The whole third floor stank of blood, urine, and human defecate. But the hallway radiated terror and desperation, far beyond a mere smell. It wasn’t subtle. It was the kind of energy that even the non-magical pick up on, though they don’t realize it—the kind that gives people a shiver down their spine, a desire to leave a place despite not knowing what happened there. Something truly evil had occurred here, leaving its mark in everything around it.
There was a uniformed guard sitting in a chair outside the police-taped door to Evan’s apartment. He looked distinctly uncomfortable. I couldn’t blame him. But I needed him to act on that discomfort, long enough for me to get past the door.
The Arcanum is more a loose cooperative organization of individualistic sorcerers than a true government, so we don’t exactly have laws about the use of magic beyond upholding the terms of our treaties with other factions in the magical world. But we have numerous ancient customs and traditions that are broken only at one’s peril. Among those is a strong taboo against using magic directly to subvert the free will of another sentient being, meaning I couldn’t just psychically order the officer to stand up and walk away. I didn’t even know how to do so if I’d wanted—the taboo extended to the mere study of such skills, not just their application.
However, it did not extend to the use of magic to induce physical sensations. While I couldn’t take control of the man’s thoughts, I could certainly influence him in other ways, to prod him just enough for him to give in to his already-strong desire to leave, at least temporarily. With a silent apology, I focused briefly on making him feel like his bladder was uncomfortably full. He squirmed in his seat for a few seconds, then abruptly stood up and rushed down the hallway past me toward the stairs, desperately seeking somewhere to relieve himself.
I didn’t want to touch anything here if I could avoid it, so once he was gone, I willed the door to open and stepped into the apartment, ducking under the police tape. I didn’t bother to turn on the lights; my eyes saw just fine in the dark. But as soon as I crossed the threshold, I stopped just inside the doorway, stunned.
The photos Detective Lajoie had shown me were just of the walls. I hadn’t seen the rest. I hadn’t seen the blood on the floor. There was so much of it. It’s easy to forget how much blood a human body contains, even when you’ve seen it before. The furniture had all been removed from the living room, and blood pooled on the bare hardwood floor like a layer of spilled paint. Evan hadn’t just been killed, he’d been drained like a slaughtered animal.
But it wasn’t the blood that had stopped me in my tracks. The energy I’d felt in the hallway was almost overwhelming once across the threshold. A tidal wave of misery and hopelessness pressed against my mind, trying to push me away. I struggled to fight off its influence.
