Splintered Path (Shattered World Book 4), page 8
“It’s the master’s old bedroom,” said the butler, to her surprise. His face was still pale, and the sagging skin beneath his eyes had sagged still further. “No one should be in here. It hasn’t been used in months, since he began to…show signs of distress.”
“You wanted him closer to the rest of the bedrooms,” Jasper said, nodding. “Then this room wasn’t open at all?”
Viv opened her mouth to say that it had been open, in every sense of the word, when she got here, but closed it again. She wasn’t entirely sure why she had done so until it occurred to her, a few seconds later, that she could hear movement along the hallway again. Either Forex or Gilbert were out there, and whichever of them it was, they were no doubt listening carefully.
“Closer to me, at least,” the butler said. “He went through a stage where he would go into the young Master’s bedroom and stare at him as he slept; my bedroom is above the family quarters and I can hear them if they wake, so I would take him back to his own room. The old room was locked; why was the young master here?”
“That’s what we were trying to discover,” Jasper said. “He arrived a couple of hours ago, as far as I can tell—but I was informed when he was released, and I got that call shortly after dinner time.”
“What was he doing in the meantime?” Viv asked aloud. “That’s a good seven or eight hours of time in between. If he wanted to eat out, I suppose he could have done that, but I’m pretty sure what I’d want most is a shower if I got out of lockup after half a week.”
“A question to which I would also like to know the answer,” Jasper said, nodding. “Gorman, you’d better go put your head into Gilbert’s room.”
The butler’s voice was firm. “I don’t think we should wake the master, sir,” he said. There was no mistaking the negative, despite the deference.
“Not wake,” Jasper said. “Check on. I want to be sure that he’s in his room, and that he hasn’t been out tonight.”
“None of the magic bells have sounded,” said Gorman, but he was nodding already. “I will check directly, sir.”
He left like a shadow flickering against the hallway wall, and Viv, watching him go, realised that she wouldn’t have known he was gone if she hadn’t seen him leave. He was quieter even than Luca. And as her eyes followed him out of the room, she saw two shadows lingering that must be cast from much further down the hall, stretched out and tapering.
“I think there’s someone in the hallway,” she said, not quite aloud. “They’ve been there for a while.”
Jasper’s eyes met hers. “Two someones,” he said, his own voice soft. “Just making sure that we do a proper job. Good work texting me; that was very unsuspicious of you.”
It took Viv about five very slow seconds of sustained eye contact to bite back her first response, which was the very true, “I didn’t text you,” and to pull out her phone instead. She rapidly typed a text to send to Jasper’s phone, wondering if Marazul was supposed to go in and change the send and receive times after it was sent, or if Jasper thought the agents simply wouldn’t check the time.
“We’re in a different time zone up here than we are down there,” Jasper said as she typed, as though reading her thoughts. “And I seem to have left my phone in my room. Very inconvenient, that.”
“Is that common knowledge?” Viv asked him, feeling one of her rare moments of perfect understanding with Jasper, and very relieved to know that Jasper was capable of this much dissention with Forex. She would prefer it if he did it openly, but she would accept what she could have.
“No,” said Jasper, turning back to the body in the bed. “Only the household themselves.”
That brought just one question to mind—if Jasper hadn’t been talking on the phone, to whom had he been speaking when Viv heard him in the hallway before he entered the room? Did he have another phone, or just a different way of speaking to behindkind? Or had the Forex agents been there all along?
“What should we do with…all this?” she asked him, gesturing to the bed in general. “Do we call the police now?”
“Not for this one,” said Jasper. “There are a lot of things that need to be preserved that a normal human unit would have no idea how to preserve. I have a team I can call; when they’re done, we can remove the body and have it autopsied.”
Business-like Jasper was in full swing, thought Viv. “When will that be?”
“Not until the person I need to do the job gets back into Melbourne: she’ll prioritise us, so I would assume that it will be some time tomorrow evening.”
“Do fae bodies take longer to decompose than human ones? Because otherwise, it’s not a great idea to leave this one here.”
“Of course not: we’ll take it home with us,” Jasper said, in a business-like way that fooled Viv, just for a few moments, that what he’d said was normal.
Then she said, “Excuse me?”
“I told you; it needs to be autopsied. There’s something unusual about it.”
“Yes! It’s in pieces and its face is on the pillow instead of on its head! We don’t even have a morgue!”
Jasper glanced over to her and then away again, and Viv fancied that there was just a flicker of amusement in his eyes.
“We don’t have a morgue!” she repeated, protesting. “Do we?”
“Not exactly a morgue,” Jasper said, his left shoulder shrugging slightly. “But close enough.”
Chapter 5
Money Can’t Buy Happiness
“This,” said Viv, at six o’clock the next morning, “is a chest freezer.”
“It’s the right temperature,” said the lunch lady, offended. Even her flat, reddish face seemed to bristle, as much as something so similar to a brick wall could bristle. “And there’s plenty of space; we could fit another two bodies, no problems. We’d just have to do a bit of rearranging.”
Viv tried very hard to avoid the vivid mind picture that the lunch lady’s words evoked. “Gorman won’t be happy if we don’t return all the pieces for burial later,” she said. “And we’re not just going to throw them in as if they’re cuts of meat, are we? It’s not—we should at least be respectful.”
“I have the best stainless steel freezer trays,” the lunch lady told her. “Teach your grandmother how to knit! I know how to deal with a body in pieces!”
“I’m not worried about you,” Viv said, not entirely truthfully. She looked directly up at Jasper and asked, “Is this the way you’re happy with people treating the bodies of your friends?”
“I’ve never been Jonno’s friend,” Jasper said briefly, but there was a touch of colour to his cheeks. “I found him soft and useless when we were at school, and it took him far too long to mature. Just because you met the most adult version of him, don’t imagine that you knew him—or that the two of us were close.”
“His father’s your friend, though,” Viv said. She managed not to ask Jasper if he’d disliked Jonno because the other man had also called him the Metre Ruler.
“The lunch lady knows how to deal with it,” said Jasper, glossing past the point. “I’ll arrange for the autopsy while you return to the manor for breakfast—and let Gorman know that we’ll return the body soon after for whatever burial or death rites they prefer.”
“I could have breakfast here and call Gorman,” pointed out Viv.
“You could, but then I would have Forex calling me to know why both of us were gone, and as much as I appreciate their continued support, I really do think it best to keep our work as separate as possible.”
“So you’re saying that you’re going to be up to something while you’re out, and you want me there to distract them.”
Jasper bit his lips very briefly before bringing the evident urge to laugh under control. “I would never say anything so completely reckless and quotable. I am saying that I prefer you to be at the manor until I come to relieve you. You’ll only be responsible for appearing at breakfast and touching base with Gorman; then I should be at leisure to return.”
“So breakfast is my big performance,” said Viv. “What then?”
“Then, free time,” he said. “I’ll take over at the manor and you can take the rest of the day to do as you please. You’re going to have to work late tonight, I’m afraid. You’ll have to stay with the body and make arrangements with the Coroner to bring it back to the manor when she’s finished, and oversee the autopsy.”
Viv couldn’t help the way her brows rose momentarily. She had never explicitly been given free time before; Jasper had allowed her to finish early before, but he had simply dismissed her or told her to clock off. It felt as though free time was still in some way connected to the Tea House and The Job.
She felt as though Jasper at least, thought of her as still On The Job—but for what reason? Or was he warning her that the Forex men were around and that her free time was still time she was probably being watched?
She was still thinking about it when she got back to the manor and was let in by Gorman, who informed her in an undertone that the Forex agents had not risen and probably would not for another two hours, and that Breakfast Was At Nine.
“Oh good,” said Viv wearily. She felt as though she still, in some intrinsic way, smelt of dead person. “I can have a shower. Jasper says that we’ll be returning Jonno as soon as we can so that everything can be done that needs to be done. You should sit down somewhere for a rest, Gorman. You look tired to death.”
“Thank you, Miss,” he said, bending his head in a shallow bow, much to her surprise. She had never been bowed to before. “I should like to do something about Master Jonno’s body as soon as we might. I shall stay in the butler’s pantry area until breakfast, if the agents ask. I should prefer to have as little to do with them as possible.”
“I don’t blame you,” Viv said, with a great deal of fellow feeling, and went upstairs to have a shower in her little ensuite.
A little later, brighter for the shower and feeling less gritty, Viv found that she had forgotten to bring her own facewash and moisturiser that she had meant to bring back with her, and that all she had was the tub that BoRa had brought along from Luca.
She observed it somewhat suspiciously in the light of the morning with curls of remaining steam from her shower unfolding lazily around her. At first when BoRa had given it to her, Viv had thought that it was a pot of the moisturising face cream that she used when she had the money to buy it. This morning, she was not as sure.
The label didn’t look quite right—it said all the right things, had the right brand name, and was all the right colours, but there was something a little bit…glowy…about it that wasn’t normal. Viv used it anyway, because BoRa hadn’t packed her anything else, either.
The face cream was refreshing and wakeful. It felt subtly different—better, perhaps, or lighter; or maybe it just felt cooler and more pleasant—and Viv let herself take time just to be refreshed and cool.
It made her feel calmer and more put-together, even though the most the cream could really achieve was to make her seem more than usually glowy and fresh. If it turned out that she was going to have to break the news to Gilbert that his son had been murdered last night, Viv wanted to at least feel her best going into it.
She was relieved to find that neither Gilbert nor the agents were downstairs when she got back down again: it was too early in the day to face skin suits when she had just seen a body that had been cut apart, and it was likewise far too early in the day to face Gilbert when it was the body of his son that had been cut apart. Gilbert might not really be aware of the fact that he had a son, but Viv knew it, and she didn’t think she was capable of broaching the subject with him.
Given that Gorman—and breakfast—wouldn’t appear until later, Viv made her way into the sitting room that was nearest the dining room. The sitting room was large, carpeted and soft in every possible way, from the soft mossy greens and browns that made up every upholstered, carpeted or curtained space, to the plump chairs that were a delight to sink into. Even the high ceiling, which she couldn’t decide was either round or square, had a kind of softness to it from being so far away and swathed with morning shadows.
Viv settled herself into one of the fat chairs with a sigh of relief, happy to find herself in a place at once so pleasant and comfortable, and opened her phone to flick through the photos of her mother’s death incident report.
Before she knew it, she had settled down with her fist propped under her chin, and her legs tucked underneath her as though she was twelve again, peering down at her phone as she alternately zoomed in and out, frowning to herself.
When she realised that she had pretzeled herself in a dangerous sort of way given she would have to walk later, Viv regretfully began to straighten and untuck her legs, expecting the pinch in her hips, but it didn’t come.
Astonished, she stretched her legs out and then cautiously retucked them. Maybe the chairs here had spells against sciatica? Perhaps they were just very good chairs. Either way, she would enjoy it while she could.
She went back to her phone, where she had reached the report of the attending police. It was terse, and contained nothing but basic descriptions.
No others present except the daughter, who was in shock, and no witnesses to the actual drowning.
Viv had read a few more lines before what she read really permeated her mind.
No one except the daughter?
With a cold finger, Viv scrolled back up. Last night, her eye had automatically fallen on the “no witnesses to the drowning” and she hadn’t read the full sentence because she had been looking for witnesses that might have been able to help. People she might be able to contact. The thin little section with its no witnesses to the drowning hadn’t merited more than a passing look that gleaned the information in that single sentence.
She had been at the lake that day with her mother?
Dad had said no one else was there! Viv had been in the house when he got the call from the police! How could she have been there on the day itself?
She would have remembered that, at least, even if she hadn’t seen Mum disappear—and Viv, now more than ever, refused to believe that Mum had drowned. It had been ridiculous enough when she knew what a good swimmer Mum was, and that she never went swimming after eating, or diving in dangerous places.
Knowing now that Mum must have been a selkie—why else would Tony have told her that Mum had had a Sojourn?—it was even more unbelievable.
Almost as unbelievable as Viv not remembering being with Mum at the lake when it happened. No wonder Tony had looked at her so oddly when she asked him about that day! And yet, how could she have been there the day that Mum died? No—how could she have been there when she didn’t remember being there? If something so terrible had happened that Viv had willingly forgotten and pushed it out of her mind, why wouldn’t she remember the rest of the day?
Viv found herself scrolling unseeingly through the report, then flicking back to the top and scrolling again, over and over, her brain turning and sparking with confusion.
No sign of a body in the lake. Shoes left at the shore, said the report, in some far distant part of her notice.
The water perfectly still and black, said Viv’s mind, and for the briefest flicker of a moment she felt as though she saw a lake in her mind, black as ink and smelling of brackish death. She sucked in a swift, sharp breath as though she hadn’t been able to breathe for too long, and blinking herself back into real life, found that the air around her tasted of salt. The cool touch of a slick tentacle made her smile involuntarily, despite the chaos of her mind.
“Morning, Seffy,” she said, the words almost startling her with how loud they seemed after the silence.
The tentacle squeezed her very gently, then spiralled upwards around her and gently tapped her on the head. It took Viv a few moments to realise that Seffy was trying to pat her on the head—perhaps to comfort her—and then she came to the linked realisation that her entire body was stiff.
She drew in and released another breath, this one soft and rounded, and said, “I’m all right, Seffy. I was just having some unpleasant thoughts. I don’t suppose you know of any lakes that are salty, do you?”
Seffy’s tentacle slithered away in an apologetic sort of a way, and Viv wondered if she had said something wrong until the flickering of shadows beyond the doorway and into the hall alerted her to the fact that someone was coming.
She had sat in exactly the seat she had because she preferred that the agents not be able to sneak up on her. Viv straightened her cardigan, hoping that the salty wet patches on it weren’t very noticeable, and gazed at the doorway until the shadows, which had frozen, gave up and resolved into the appearance of one of the Forex agents.
This morning, the agent (was he agent one, or two? Viv couldn’t tell) had dressed himself in a charcoal suit that fit him perfectly and seemed to have been tailored for his exact body and height. Viv wished that his skin-suit had fit him as precisely as his suit did. As usual, it seemed to be pinned at the nose, loose around the cheeks and eye-sockets, and just a bit too moveable at the neck.
“Good morning, Miss Viv,” said the agent, in his faintly creaky, grey voice, advancing far enough into the room that with a few more steps he could have loomed over her like a cartoon villain.
“Good morning,” Viv said, tilting her phone up just slightly to avoid unwanted eyes on the screen. She couldn’t afford to be distracted right now. Her thoughts, the confusion, and the settling of that confusion, would have to wait until later.
The agent noticed, because he said in a pained sort of way, “Is that a company phone, Miss Viv?”
