Back | Next
Contents

Chapter 16

Rachel hadn’t arrived by Nibelungen taxi, which meant she had travelled here via the Otherworld, through the gateway in Aengus’s tent. She stood at the Gardens entrance and looked both ways before spotting me sitting against the wall. She walked over, her face stern. I looked up nonchalantly as she stood in front of me, her staff planted firmly on the ground.

“Sorcerer Thomas Quinn.”

“Rachel,” I sighed, “I’ve known you for over a century, and we spoke on the phone just this morning. Is the formality really necessary?”

She didn’t answer. Instead she regarded my companions.

“Who are these people under your protection?” From her lips, “people” sounded like a racial slur. Some in the magical world have a tendency to look down on the rest of the human race.

I put away my knife and rolled my coat sleeve back down, then climbed slowly to my feet before I answered. I’m not a tall man, but I stood head and shoulders above her. Lajoie and Connors got up as well—the big man towered over her. I smiled politely as she was forced to look up at me to maintain eye contact.

“Detectives Connors and Lajoie, may I present the Sorceress Rachel Liu of San Francisco, Rector of North America for the Arcane Court.” If she wanted to be formal, so be it. “Rector, may I introduce Detective Henri Lajoie and Detective Adrienne Connors,” I said, indicating each in turn with nods of my head, “of the Philadelphia Police Department. Detective Lajoie is the grandson of Antoine Richelieu, Sorcerer of the First Rank of the Arcanum. You may remember when I mentioned him on our phone call this morning. They are the investigators assigned to the case which I called you to discuss.”

She sniffed. “You mentioned nothing of a second detective on that call. Has she been initiated as well?”

I nodded. “She has, with the full knowledge and consent of Aengus Óg. There has been no Treaty breach.”

“Apart from the one for which I was summoned.”

I rolled my eyes. “Yes, Rachel. There has been no Treaty breach apart from the violation of the Market Truce. But neither I nor the detectives were responsible for that. Feel free to interview the witnesses. The attacker’s athame is still lying over there,” I pointed to it, “where he dropped it after I shot him. No one has touched it, and I didn’t even inspect it, to avoid accusations of tampering.”

Her right eyebrow arched up. “You shot him?”

“Yes. With my gun.”

Shaking her head, she sighed. “Quinn, you’re the only ranked sorcerer in history who would even consider responding to an attack with bullets. You know that, right?”

It seemed that piece of information had been enough to cut through the formality of her office and get her back to speaking like a normal person.

“I’m the eccentric one.” I groaned and rubbed my temples. “Would you mind getting this over with, so I can get some goddamn sleep tonight?”

She raised an eyebrow. “Doesn’t look like you’re getting much sleep at night anyway. You look terrible.”

I scowled. “Just investigate and confirm I didn’t violate any treaty terms.”

She smirked. “Fine, Quinn. Wait here.” She walked over to the athame and began examining it much as Connors had. The difference, I knew, was that she was examining not only with her eyes, but with her magical senses. She’d be able to tell what residual effects and potential traps remained on the blade before she touched it.

Lajoie muttered, “What’s got a stick up her ass?”

I shrugged. “Being a Rector is a hard job in general, and she got called out fairly late to deal with this even considering the time difference. She has the right to be a bit prickly.”

I sat back down. Connors followed suit, but Lajoie remained standing, his arms crossed over his chest. I could see Rachel talking to the witnesses. It didn’t take long. She came back over to where I sat.

“So, Quinn,” she said, in a much friendlier tone than earlier, “what have you found out about the Avartagh?”

I looked back up at her. “He’s not involved. At least not directly.”

“How did you figure that out?” she cocked her head.

“The detectives and I paid a visit to the Otherworld this evening, courtesy of Aengus Óg. We interviewed the Avartagh in his cell in the Dún Dubh, where he’s been imprisoned for five hundred years.” I spoke casually, as if describing my morning walk.

The blood drained from her face. Her voice dropped to a near whisper. “You took police officers to the Otherworld to speak with a prisoner in the Black Fortress, and didn’t even run it past the King or the Lord Marshal first? Quinn, what have you done?”

My voice got hard and cold. “I’ve done as I saw fit given the circumstances, Rector. As is my prerogative. These murders occurred in my declared territory. I don’t need the King’s leave to deal with this affair in any manner I deem necessary, so long as I violate no treaty.”

She took a deep breath and looked at me for a long moment, as if considering me carefully. “You are correct, of course. Legally speaking, you haven’t broken any treaties. But there will be plenty who don’t like it anyway. Maybe even enough that the King will be forced to act. You should come with me and explain your actions to the Court voluntarily, before they summon you. Or worse, before they summon an Emergency Conclave.”

I looked at her calmly. “Rachel, the King is free to do what he must. If he or the Lord Marshal, or any of the rest of the Court, wish to speak to me about my actions, they know exactly where to find me.” I paused. “And as you’ve acknowledged I did not break the Market Truce, I am free to go.”

She chewed her lip as I stood back up. “You know the letter of the law, yes. But you’ve always been terrible at politics, Tom.” She met my eyes. “I’ll have to report this, you know. All of it. Including this conversation.”

“Report what you wish,” I replied. “I’m leaving.”

I walked away, leaving her standing there thinking. The detectives followed me.

“Where are we going?” Lajoie asked.

“You’re free to head home. I need a drink first.”

I found a bar a few blocks away. The detectives stayed for one round, which we all sipped quietly, pondering the events of the evening. I suppose both of them saw the mood I was in and decided any questions they had could wait. Connors eventually called an Uber, we agreed to meet the following afternoon, and then they left me there drinking and feeling irritable.

Growing tired of paying too much for mediocre whisky, I got the bartender to call me a cab and headed home. I’d originally planned on trying to figure out what the Avartagh had been hinting at that night, but that had been before the assassination attempt. Now I just wanted to go to bed. I’d do my thinking in the morning.

I got out of the cab in front of my store after paying the fare and tasted the magical fields around me. I didn’t sense anything beyond the standard protective spells on the shop, so I unlocked the door and went in, locking it again right behind me. Roxana was sleeping on the counter, but she looked up when I entered, blinked lazily at me, and returned to sleep. Such is the devoted affection of a cat.

I picked her up, to her not very strenuous protest, and carried her upstairs. I locked the door at the top of the stairs and, setting Roxana down, double checked the wards on the door and both windows while she curled up on my bed. Someone had attacked me, so I was being extra careful.

I smeared some antibiotic ointment and aloe gel on my arm from the first-aid kit under the bathroom sink. It was still tender, but at least I’d kept the blisters down. I’d hate to have seen the effects of a direct hit from that heat spell.

First aid complete, I decided I was too tired even to make a snack, though I hadn’t eaten in hours. Instead I undressed, slowly and creakily, then changed out the Glock’s magazine and set it on the small table next to the bed, within easy reach should anyone come knocking. Finally, I collapsed into bed, causing a distressed squawk from Roxana as the bed bounced under her, and fell asleep instantly.

But I didn’t rest as easy as I’d hoped. Tired as I was, the nightmares came like they always did.

The vast forest of Siberia, still with a light layer of frost from the night before that hadn’t yet burned off in the summer morning. A dragon, her green and gold scales shimmering in the early morning summer sun as she flew overhead. Thirteen sorcerers of the Arcanum waiting for her. The battle challenge, the ensuing fight. Screams, blood, and fire. A massive explosion. More screams. Blackness.

I woke up with a gasp, drenched in sweat, momentarily confused about where I was. From my watch on the table next to the gun, I saw it was four in the morning. I took a few seconds to collect myself, slowing my heavy breathing. Roxana looked up at me and held my eyes for a long moment, until I swung my legs out of the bed. I knew from experience that I wouldn’t be returning to sleep any time soon, so I put on some clothes that didn’t smell too dirty, then my way downstairs, followed by Roxana. She liked to keep an eye on me when I was distressed.

I went into the back room and grabbed a bottle of Oban and a glass, and wearily sat in the desk chair. I poured myself a large glass, drained it in one long gulp, and poured another. One of the statues on the shelf opposite me caught my eye: a dragon masterfully carved in marble, seated with her wings folded, looking nearly as regal in stone facsimile as the genuine article had been in life. I stared at it for a long moment, my mind a confusing jumble of shame and anger and pain and regret, then forced myself to look away. No magic would let me change the past.

The images of my dream kept flashing through my mind as I drank, mixed with scenes from all the others. They didn’t tell a coherent story, there was no chronological order. It was just a parade of memories, discontinuous and jumbled and all of them painful.

The whisky helped, eventually. Far more than it had the other night, at least. It didn’t stop the mental slideshow, but it dulled the edges, making the colors less vibrant, the smells less pungent. After that first glass, I sipped at it and slowly felt the alcohol take effect. Several glasses in, the memories no longer felt like mine, as if they’d happened to someone else and I was just watching them unfold. Roxana lounged on the filing cabinet next to the coffee pot, keeping an eye on me to make sure I didn’t do anything stupid. She was a good friend like that.

The bottle was half empty when I was pulled out of my reverie by forceful knocking on the front door. Looking around, I realized that I’d left the Glock upstairs. Under the circumstances, I didn’t think answering the door without a gun in my hand was a wise plan, intoxicated or not. Normally I wouldn’t advocate handling firearms while drunk, but in this case it was my only option for a weapon—I’d used the alcohol specifically to reduce my ability to focus, so I would be unable to cast any spells very effectively.

So I grabbed the J-frame revolver I kept in a desk drawer. It was loaded with regular jacketed hollow-points, so it wouldn’t do me much good against a non-human threat. But if my suspicions were correct, it would work fine against the person knocking. I then stood up, realized that walking in a straight line was going to be a challenge, and carefully made my way out toward the front.

Holding the gun aimed at the center of the door, as steadily as I could manage in my current state, I asked loudly, “Who is it?”

“Open the damn door, Thomas,” I heard in loud reply. A low-pitched woman’s voice with a thick Highlands Scottish accent.

I sighed and laid the gun back on the counter, then unlocked the bolt and swung open the door. The dim light coming from the back room revealed a short feminine figure in a long coat, with her arms crossed in front of her and her legs spread wide. I couldn’t see her facial features very well, but I could tell she had one eyebrow raised and she was unhappy.

“Well? Are you going to invite me in?”

I sighed again. “Come in.”

She walked in and I closed the door behind her and relocked the bolt. She stood there inside the threshold, her eyes casting around the shop as she took it all in. She spotted the revolver on the counter and looked back at me, this time with both eyebrows raised.

“Honestly, Thomas. A gun? Were you going to shoot me?”

I shrugged and walked back into the office, retrieved my glass and bottle, then reemerged and made my way to the reading corner. The lights were still off in the main room, the dim glow from the back room the only illumination in the place aside from some streetlights filtering in through the windows. As I settled myself into one of the chairs, my visitor followed and sat down in the other chair. I could feel her judging eyes following my hand as I poured another glass of whisky and sipped.

Her eyes narrowed. “You’re drunk.”

“Erm,” I grunted in reply, then took another sip. “Yes, I suppose I am. It’s my store and my home. It’s five in the morning. I’m allowed to be as drunk as I want.” The slight slur in my speech emphasized my point.

She shook her head slowly. “What happened to you?” she asked quietly.

“Whatever could you mean?” I muttered and drained the glass.

She didn’t answer, just watching me pour another glass and sip at it. For a long few minutes, she just watched me get more inebriated. Finally, I couldn’t take any more of it. “Why are you here, Mother?”

She cocked her head to the side. “You told Rachel Liu that if the King or the Lord Marshal wanted to speak with you about your actions, we knew where to find you.”

I paused and thought back. “I did say that, yes.” I shrugged. “I didn’t really mean at five in the morning, though.”

Her lips tightened. My mother, the Sorceress Bridget MacDonald, Lord Marshal of the Arcanum, was a wonderful mom, honestly. I’d experienced nothing but love and care as a child. She’d even been willing to live on what she saw as the wrong side of the Irish Sea so I could grow up in my father’s childhood home, the farm his family had maintained for generations. She’d hated it, and she and my father had returned to her native Scotland almost immediately after I had moved out. But she’d made the sacrifice for her family, because she loved us.

But she didn’t approve at all of my life choices for the past century or so, and she had no problems making that clear at our every meeting. I hadn’t seen her in several decades except for Grand Conclaves, because I got tired of her incessant badgering to get my life together.

“Well, it’s mid-morning in Glasgow, and this is when I need to talk to you.” She bit each word off carefully as if to prevent herself from saying something she’d regret later. “The matter at hand is rather pressing.”

I took a big sip, savored the flavor, then swallowed. I swished the remaining ounces of whisky around my glass, staring at the swirling golden liquid.

“Yes,” I eventually replied. “Of that I couldn’t be more aware.”

“And yet,” she said, “here you are, drunk.”

“That has nothing to do with the matter at hand. Nothing whatsoever.”

“I know.” She looked at me frankly. “That’s what worries me about it now. The fact that even something this important, which clearly requires clear faculties, can’t inspire you to stop your insistence on drinking yourself to death.”

“I can think as well as anyone while drunk,” I replied, my voice getting hard and sullen. “What I can’t afford right now is to be drowning in memories.”

“And if someone else attacks you? How exactly do you expect to be able to defend yourself or those police officers Rachel mentioned, when you can barely stand?”

I scowled. “I’m drunk in the safety of my wards. I’ll not step out of them before I’m sober. Now what exactly is it you wanted to talk about, besides berating me for my life choices over the past hundred-odd years?”

“Rachel reported to me your actions and subsequent conversation at the Faerie Market. Why were you attacked?”

I raised my eyebrows. “I don’t know. I suppose someone doesn’t much care for me.”

“Do you know who attacked you?”

This time I smiled and took another sip. “No, Mother, I do not.”

She frowned. “But you have theories.” That one wasn’t a question, so I didn’t answer. Her eyes narrowed in annoyance.

“Why did you take two police officers to the Otherworld? And why did Aengus Óg assist you in your efforts?”

“Because those two police officers are working on a murder case.” I sipped again at my whisky. “They asked me for some expert assistance in translating glyphs written in blood at the scene of the crime. I had to investigate, whereupon I determined that the crime in question was a genuine magical working built around human sacrifice, forcing me to involve myself in the case whether I wanted to or not. And because one of those two police officers is the grandson of Antoine Richelieu. And because at least one of the responsible parties is of the Fae races.”

“You thought a Faerie may have killed someone in Philadelphia and your choice was to go to the Fae for help rather than Rachel or myself?”

I shrugged. “I notified Rachel, and she requested I handle it while she was busy chasing demons in the Canadian Rockies. I was handling it as I saw fit, which is my right. Besides, you know full well that my relationship with the rest of my own species has been strained for quite some time. You also know my opinion of your fucking Court, and the Arcanum as a whole.”

“It’s not that simple,” she shook her head, “regardless of what you think of us. Faeries murdering humans in our own world is a Treaty matter. Even ignoring your breach of the customs—which most of the Arcanum won’t ignore or forget, by the way—by going straight to the Óg, and through him to Lugh, you’ve bypassed the Arcanum entirely and left us to get blindsided by a fait-accompli. There are some muttering that you’ve gone rogue yourself.”

I started to protest, but she held up a hand and continued, “I know that’s ridiculous, Thomas. You called the Rector and she requested you handle it informally; obviously you haven’t gone rogue. I’ve already spoken with Rachel about the foolishness of not bringing this matter to my attention immediately. But be that as it may, perception is as important as reality in politics. You’ve never understood that. Right now, the voices calling for your censure are a tiny minority, but if you were to continue breaking customs without an official dispensation, they would grow. And you, my dear idiot son, are exceptionally powerful, and you made a lot of sorcerers very wary of you on the Fields of Fire, but even you can’t take them all on.”

I nodded and set down my glass. I’d known the possible repercussions, but I hadn’t counted on word getting out so quickly. I’d hoped to have the problem solved by the time the rest of the Arcanum caught on to my decision to take the detectives to see Aengus. The attack had put me in a bit of a bind.

“What do you advise?”

“First, you tell me everything that you know about this case. Then we’ll figure out a way forward together.”

I covered my lips with my right hand as I thought. After a moment I nodded. “I’ll summarize. The police discovered a murder scene that appeared to be related to the occult. Looking for an expert on the subject, they were referred to me. I told them what I could, then investigated the crime scene for myself…”

I filled her in on the rest of the events of the past days: the ambush spell at Evan’s apartment, Detective Lajoie confronting me about the Arcanum, what I’d found at the second crime scene, the Faerie Market and the Otherworld, the attack earlier that night. I concentrated through the fuzziness I felt from the whisky and did my best to leave nothing out, especially about the Avartagh’s words during our interrogation—she was right that this was a serious matter, and I could certainly use her help if she were willing to give it.

She listened through it all without comment or even changing her facial expression. When I finished and picked up my drink again, she closed her eyes in thought. After working through it in her mind, she opened them again and looked at me.

“Son of mine, this is a right mess you’ve gotten yourself involved in. I hope that bargain with Lugh doesn’t come back to haunt you. But in the meantime, all we can do is move forward.” She stood up and looked down at me for a moment, then smiled.

“As Lord Marshal of the Arcane Court, I, Bridget MacDonald, do formally charge you, Thomas Quinn, to investigate the matter of the so-called Tamesis rites in Philadelphia, in any manner you deem appropriate in accordance with standing Treaties, to determine who is the responsible party for this violation of the Treaties, and to eliminate the threat to the peaceful coexistence of the races of this world and the Otherworld.”

I raised an eyebrow. “I was already doing that.”

“Aye,” she nodded, “and nothing I could have done would have stopped you from doing so. Once you get on something, you don’t let go. Just look at how you’ve been beating yourself up for all these years about that dragon, about Charlotte, about Canada. But now I’ve officially tasked you with it. This way no one can reasonably claim you have gone against the will of the Arcanum. Do try to avoid breaking further customs, please?”

I smiled without a trace of humor. “Yes, Mother.” I paused. “So that’s it? When you said we’d figure a way forward, you meant that you’d figure out a way to get me out of trouble with the Arcanum, but not a way to help me with the slightly more pressing matter at hand?”

She nodded. “That’s exactly what I meant. You can figure out the other part on your own. It’ll do you good to be back in the world again, instead of hiding in a whisky bottle, blaming your woes on everyone and everything but yourself.” She walked over to the door and unlocked the bolt, glancing once more at the gun on the counter and then back to me. “I do love you, you know,” she said.

She walked out before I could reply and shut the door behind her. I waited a minute, thinking. Then I got up, stumbled my way over to the door and relocked the bolt.

I debated trying to return to bed, but I figured that, despite all the whisky I’d drunk, I was too awake at the moment. Instead, I returned to my chair and poured another glass, while Roxana sprang on to the other armchair.

“Blaming my woes on everyone and everything but myself?” I directed the indignant question at the cat, but she just looked irritated with the entire sequence of events and curled up in a ball.

That was the problem, though—I didn’t blame my woes on anyone or anything but myself. I knew exactly how I’d gotten where I was.

My mother thought I drank because I blamed the things I’d done, the atrocities I’d committed, and the long list of horrors I’d experienced on the Arcanum. No, I drank because I knew full well that my choices, and every awful thing I’d ever done in their name, were my own.


Back | Next
Framed