Saturday. 12:56 PM

“This is bullshit,” Davis said, throwing up his hands and standing up from the table. “You expect us to believe you just walked in and found her like that?”

“It’s what happened. Once Murray gets back, she’ll—”

“She’ll what?” Murray stepped back into the gazebo, pocketing her phone. “Ainsworth, are you telling stories about me?”

“He’s telling stories,” Davis shot. “His account of finding the body is asinine.”

“Ask Ben, then!” I said. “He can prove I wasn’t around when she was killed.”

“About that,” Murray shook her head, sitting down next to her partner. “I just talked to Ben. He says he showed up at the cafe, but you weren’t there, so he went home. He never saw you.”

I blinked, but it wasn’t a total shock. “The killer knows some pretty heavy-duty magic. They must have gotten to Ben and erased his memories.”

“Likely story,” Davis scoffed.

“More likely than you’d think. The killer was able to hex Andrea’s phone. Why couldn’t they erase Ben’s memories?” Before Davis could make another cutting comment or really start picking apart my admittedly flimsy excuse, I butted in with a question that had been floating around the back of my head. “She said your last name was Ainsworth, right?”

Raising an eyebrow, he leaned in. “That’s right.”

“Any relation to Gerard Ainsworth, the industrialist?” I raised my own eyebrow in response, watching his face for an uncomfortable moment.

He grunted. “Yeah, he’s my uncle. Why?”

I did my best to look flippant, but I couldn’t help letting out a nervous laugh. “I was just curious—heh—how much it costs to buy a job as a counsellor. The newspaper business has been slow, lately, and I could use a fallback.”

Leaning forward across the table, he extended a meaty hand to grab the scruff of my shirt. A cough from Murray stopped him. He took a breath, leaning back. “I’m going to look forward to your trial.”

“Oh, hey, I get a trial,” I replied. “Will a lawyer be provided for me, or do I need to provide my own?”

His glare deepened. “Funny. We’ll see what jokes you’re telling when…”

It took me a moment to recognize the tiny, barely noticeable jingle that was playing in his earpiece. Had he been a foot or two further away, I might not have heard it at all. Tapping his ear, he started walking away to get some privacy.

“Ainsworth. What have you heard?”

He stepped too far away from the park gazebo for me to hear, leaving just me and Murray. Between the two of them, I was much happier to be alone with her.

“So,” I said, watching the thuggish counsellor leave. “He’s just lovely.”

“He didn’t get onto the force through a family connection,” Murray said. “And he’s not just muscle, either. That man’s better at glamours and aura tracing than anyone on the force. Way better than me. Spent almost six years just practicing, learning from the masters, before he even applied.”

I continued gazing in the direction he’d gone. “No gap year?”

“Hmm.” She tapped the pen, stopping the scribing spell. “You know why he spent that time learning? Why he wanted to join the force to begin with?”

I wasn’t too worried about Murray hitting me if I got too flippant. “So he can beat false confessions out of people?”

“Because his brother died.”

I didn’t have a smartass response to that.

She paused to let it sink in. “An accident with a faulty construct. He was working with some engineers to open a stable portal between Denver and Paris. Someone had tampered with the grounding runes.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” I said. “Did they figure out who did it?”

“They had someone for questioning, straight away. Someone his brother had fired from the work site the day before. A repairman. He had the tools to make it look like an accident, a motive, an opportunity. But he stonewalled for two days, didn’t do anything except confirm his own name, and we had to let him go. When no new evidence turned up, the sabotage got chalked up to a manufacturing defect and the killer went free. Davis managed to get his license pulled, but besides that, he’s still walking free to this day.”

I took a drink of lemonade. “How do you know it wasn’t a manufacturing defect?”

“All the constructs being used were manufactured by his uncle’s company. He wasn’t going to sell his own nephew bad parts.” Murray sat back, crossing her arms. “He’s the most meticulous counsellor I’ve known. He doesn’t leave a stone unturned. You might not like him, but he’s gotten more criminals out of our community than you could count.”

“I can count pretty high,” I pointed out.

We sat for a moment, in quiet thought. I rubbed at my wrists, where the metal cuffs were digging into my skin.

“Are we waiting for him to get back?” I asked.

“We can continue, if you’d like,” Murray replied, tapping the pen once again.

…

Friday. 2:57 PM

The first thing I did was hit an ATM. It cost me three dollars and ninety cents in fees, and I withdrew as much as it would allow, taking out five hundred bucks. I didn’t know if the cops would freeze my card, but I didn’t want to risk getting caught without a penny to spend.

Next, I went to buy some help.

I pulled my bike right up to Maggie’s shop, then reconsidered and rolled a block past it before parking. Paranoia was in season, and if the cops were looking for me and had my plates, I didn’t want to leave my bike right beside the building I was in.

Clipping my helmet to my backpack, I moved as quickly as I could without it turning into a full run, speed walking to the auto shop. Part of the speed was to get things done as quickly as possible, but it also worked as a stress outlet. As long as I kept moving, working towards a goal, I wouldn’t have to process anything.

“Maggie!” I called, storming inside, the bell above the door jangling loudly. “I need your help!”

She was underneath the same truck as before, and swore loudly when she heard my voice. Rolling clear, she shouted back, her voice muffled by the breathing mask she wore. “Dammit! I don’t have all day for your—Is that blood?”

“You’re fae,” I said, slipping off my backpack and rummaging for Andrea’s phone.

The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

She sneered, pulling off her mask. “You noticed?”

“So you can sense when someone’s lying to you, and you have to keep your promises,” I continued. “Right?”

“Yes, that’s true,” she said, the sneer slowly fading away. “What do you want?”

I’d rehearsed what I would say a couple times while I rode here. “A woman named Andrea has been murdered. I didn’t kill her, and I don’t know who did it, but I think it was a wizard. I want to pay you to help me, and to promise you won’t tell anyone about this.”

Maggie took a step back. “What?”

“You’ve got magic stuff,” I continued, finally finding the phone where it had settled at the bottom of my bag. “Can you… like, do a tracing spell to find out who put a hex on this phone, or something like that?”

“Hold up,” Maggie said, raising her hands. “Andrea’s dead?”

I didn’t have a tactful answer to that. “You knew each other?”

My response was as much a confirmation as just saying ‘yes’. She looked a little paler than she had before, even beneath the engine grease. “We did some consulting together. She is… She was good people.”

“I’m sorry.” Shifting my weight from foot to foot, I added, “I had nothing to do with it, but I need to find out who did it to her.”

“If a wizard’s responsible, you need to go to the counsellors,” she pointed out. “You’re hardly the person to take down a murderer.”

“That’s the thing. I don’t have any proof, just a vague description, and I’ve got a rap sheet. I can’t risk getting arrested without a solid lead to show I didn’t do it.” I gave her a brief recap of my flight from Andrea’s home, skipping a description of the body and focusing on the figure at the very end.

“So you didn’t see a face?”

“I only saw them for a second, from a block away,” I said. “Dark clothes, kind of light-ish skin, I think?”

“That’s not much to go on,” she conceded.

I shrugged. “I’m not exactly on the commonwealth’s good side, I don’t have any solid evidence, and basically anything I do risks hitting up against my probation. If they even think I might be guilty, I might spend another couple months locked up, and I can’t afford that. It’d destroy my paper.”

“They might still get you, for not going to them right away,” Maggie pointed out. “Bureaucratic bastards love a catch-22. I’ll help you. What do you need?”

I raised Andrea’s cracked phone screen. “I need you to, like, run a scan on this phone. And I need you to promise not to tell anyone about this. However much it costs, I’ll pay it.”

“I can’t do that,” she said, pulling off her bandanna and running a hand through her hair.

“Which?” I raised my eyebrows.

“Either. First off, I’m a dealership, not a practitioner. I know some basic spells, and I’ve got the old magic, but what you’re asking for would take someone with ten times my experience and some heavy-duty ritual supplies.” She counted on her fingers, listing off information about the problem. “Maybe I could put together a circle to detect magical auras with supplies on hand, but you’d need someone else to operate it, and that’d just confirm that a communications hex had been cast. You’d need to leave the phone with me, too.”

“Why’s that?”

“The more it travels with a mortal aura around it, the more the magic’s going to get diluted. You’re going to be looking for traces of a spell that hasn’t been active for hours. If you keep driving around town with that in your pocket, those traces will get scrubbed away.”

“It’s in my backpack,” I pointed out, in case that would help.

Maggie stared at me for a moment, blinking twice before she continued. “As for the promise, my word’s only as good as yours. There’s no such thing as a magic, unbreakable promise.”

I raised an eyebrow, looking at her ears. “But you’re—”

“The subject of far too many works of fiction,” Maggie rolled her eyes. “No, we don’t hoard gold, we can’t detect lies, we’re not made out of glitter.”

I gaped for a moment, feeling silly. “Wait, why did you believe me if you can’t detect when people are lying?”

“You thought I could,” she pointed out. “Alright, I might have an idea of how to help.”

I stood up a little straighter. “Yeah?”

“You don’t need any aura tracing. There’s an easier way to get the info you want.”

“How’s that?” I asked, taking out my notepad.

“If it was a phone hex, that requires either a pretty massive ritual setup from very far away, or else you’ve got to be closer with a smaller ritual circle. If we don’t count the big communications rig that the commonwealth runs up in Chicago, then I only know one guy who’s got the sort of equipment you’d need and the geographical proximity to kibosh her phonecalls.” She reached into her toolbelt and came out with one of her labeled pens, reaching to take my notepad. “He’s got a workshop up by Worlds of Fun, I’ll write down the address for you.”

“What’s his name?” I asked, mapping out a plan in my head. “I don’t think I’ve met him.”

“Garret. He and Andrea go way back, so you might work on a more tactful way to let him know what happened.” Noting down the address, Maggie passed the notepad back.

I pocketed it. “How much do I owe you?”

“For a recommendation? I don’t charge for that.”

That was good news. One more question, then. “Do you have a place I can get cleaned up, before I go?” I asked, looking down at myself. The blood on my jeans was still tacky and damp. I wasn’t sure if anything would get the stains out, but at least if I rinsed them off, it wouldn’t be quite as obvious at a glance.

Maggie pointed around the corner. “Yeah. Follow the wall around back, there’s a bathroom. If you see the tool bench with my stock of spell catalysts, you’ve gone too far. Towels are under the sink.”

I followed the directions, finding a little bathroom with a sink that ran only cold water and a gallon tub of orange pumice hand scrub. I locked the door.

Orange pumice hand scrub, as it turned out, wasn’t very good for blood stains. Doing my best, I managed to get my jeans to the point where it could be mistaken for old oil stains, or just general wear from regular manual labor. That would raise the question of why I, without a callous on my hands and with a frame of someone who chronically skipped exercise, had signs of regular manual labor on my jeans, but hopefully nobody would be sizing me up that closely.

As I wiped the last remains of blood from my pants, I had to stop and take a breath. Don’t think about it.

Getting the denim as dry as paper towels would allow, I washed my hands, took a breath, and reached for the handle.

Out in the garage, the bell above the entrance jangled as someone walked into the shop.

I hesitated, put my ear to the door, and listened.

“Officers!” Maggie said, her voice raised enough for me to easily hear, though it could just as easily be a slightly over-the-top greeting. “How can I help you?”

The cops found me? That was fast.

A voice I didn’t recognize spoke. It was polite, professional, and on the feminine side. “We’re trying to find someone. Would you mind answering a couple questions?”

Maggie’s voice was clear. “Yes.”

“Great. We found this—”

Maggie cut her off, still speaking loudly and clearly. “I’m sorry, you misunderstood. I would mind answering questions.”

There was an uncertain pause. “If you’d prefer, we can take you to our embassy and handle it there, but—”

“You see my ears?” Maggie cut in. “I am a sovereign being. You’ve got absolutely no authority over me.”

I frowned, puzzling out those last couple comments. Talking about embassies and ears… they weren’t cops. They were counsellors.

Another pause, though this one felt more tense. “Look, we’re just trying to find a murderer. We found a pen with your address on it, we think one of your customers must be involved. Could you just—”

“I am not answering any of your questions.”

I suddenly felt very trapped in the little bathroom. There was only one way in or out, and absolutely nowhere to hide. If the counsellors started poking around, they’d find me, washed-out blood still on my jeans, the victim’s phone in my bag.

“Ma’am,” a rougher voice said. Davis, though I didn’t know it at the time. “Is there someone else in the building?”

“Absolutely not—”

…

Saturday. 1:01 PM

“Hah!” Murray barked, sitting back with satisfaction. “I knew she was full of it. ‘I had no idea he was there’ my ass.”

I raised an eyebrow. “Should I continue?”

Hesitating, she took a sip of her lemonade and puckered. “Please.”

…

Friday. 3:15 PM

“—not,” Maggie insisted. “Unless someone snuck in through the back door.”

There’s a back door. I turned the handle, slowly, so it wouldn’t creak.

“She’s under duress,” Davis said. “The killer’s in the building, they’ve got something on her. Spread out.”

“On it,” Murray confirmed. “I’ll take point.”

“I have not given consent to a search!” Maggie objected. “You will not—hey!”

The counsellors ignored her, and started their search to find me.