Chapter 9: Entanglements

Sunlight streamed into the meeting room through the venetian blinds. The smell of old coffee and the grease-and-sugar aroma of doughnuts hung heavy in the air. A dozen people in uninspired business wear sat around a table built for eight, listening to the team’s newest investigator, a boyish-looking man sporting muttonchop sideburns.

When he had finished his report, Wren asked, “And you found no evidence of tampering, or anything else that might indicate fraud?”

He shook his head. “No, ma’am.”

Ma’am? Yeah, I guess I’m the old lady in the room. At forty-six, she was the oldest person on the team she led. The next-oldest person was ten years her junior. Cost-cutting measures had eliminated most of the senior investigators. She looked down at the report in front of her. “Our client doesn’t seem to agree with your findings. They want me to put someone else on this, to start the investigation again from square one.”

The man nodded. “I understand. It’s a lot of money—and I am the new guy.”

“Show some confidence in yourself.” Wren hoped she sounded more encouraging than critical. “You investigated the site thoroughly and took comprehensive photographs of the equipment. Heck, you took great photos of everything. I’ve been over your documentation and I agree with your conclusions. They’re going to have to pay off on the policy—or, at least, there isn’t a reason we can honestly give them why they shouldn’t. Their in-house investigators told them the same thing. That’s why they kicked it over to us, hoping we could find them a reason not to pay. That doesn’t always work out for them.”

The younger man stood a little straighter and his expression visibly brightened, as did everyone else’s. His had been the last piece of business and Wren, after delivering a few reminders, adjourned the meeting. The team left to descend en masse upon the enormous Chinese restaurant buffet across the street from the office. It had become their post-meeting custom, but she did not join them today.

Taking out her phone, she turned the ringer back on and checked her messages. Finding none, she dialed Adelaide.

“Yes, Wren,” Adelaide answered on the third ring.

Wren stood and began putting papers into her briefcase. “Have you been to the club since we spoke yesterday?”

“No, although I was planning to go in this afternoon. Is there something I should know?”

“Could I ask you to postpone your visit until tomorrow?” She closed the briefcase. “I’ve just thought of something else I need to look for and your coming might muddy the waters.”

“Certainly. This matter is in your hands, dear.”

ͽʘͼ

Wren drove back towards Adelaide’s club.

The people who had tried to kill Adelaide laid out their spells to disable the Cadillac’s sorcerous protections like landmines along the approach to the club. The two she had found along Adelaide’s route had been triggered when Adelaide had driven over them and, for hours, she had examined the faint residues they had left behind, trying and failing to discover what secrets they might once have held. Not having thought of this sooner made her feel positively dense.

Whoever set those traps couldn’t have known Miss Adelaide’s route in advance. So, they wouldn’t have only laid out the two spells I found and hoped she just happened to hit them, because summoning the Abyssal wolves takes time and serious preparations. And, once summoned, they couldn’t keep the wolves contained indefinitely. The would-be assassins’ plan, she concluded, depended on timing. To ensure Miss Adelaide ran into one of their spells on her regular Wednesday visit to the club, they would have to place them at every approach. If nothing laden with defensive magic had driven over them, there might still be untriggered spells in the streets around the club, and they might provide the clues she needed to discover who had cast them.

Wren followed Adelaide’s route again, taking the streets where she knew the “mines” had already been “detonated” by the Cadillac. Once she had parked her minivan in the club’s parking lot, Wren donned the enchanted granny glasses, grabbed her special “flashlight,” and began her walk down Leigh Street to the corner of Bill. There, she turned left and walked to the corner of Witzend Street, where she turned left again and continued to the end of the block, turning left once more. Another short walk and a final left turn and she found herself back at the parking lot, having discovered three of the “mines” intact and noting the faint traces of four more.

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She scrolled through the contacts on her phone until she found the number labeled “Facility Services” and selected it.

Twenty-five minutes later, men in hardhats and orange vests had diverted traffic, unloading gear and placing orange cones to close that entire block of Witzend Street. Shortly after this, they climbed back into their vehicles, unexpectedly summoned to another site. The equipment they had unloaded largely blocked from view the three “mines” that had yet to be triggered.

Wren made sure the temporary wardings she had placed on the street to deter spectators were doing their job, then crouched and peered through her granny glasses, enchanted spectacles that enabled her to see arcane workings in far greater detail than her second sight alone. Wow, that’s impressive. And more than a little scary. There, on the street before her, lay a construct of spellwork unlike any she had seen. Slightly larger than a hula hoop, the thing was laid out in a pattern unfamiliar to her. Parts of it reminded her of intricate, mysterious machines. Parts of it were composed of conjunctions, analogies, and logic statements common to much of modern sorcery. The rest ought not to have been able to fit within it at all, alien to its nature. Wow, that’s impressive. And more than a little scary. It’s like someone has replaced random gears in a mechanical clock with a block of tofu, a tangle of string, and a live peacock.

A particularly intricate connection between a series of analogies and something she could not identify caught her eye. What is that? She moved the arcane flashlight closer to the structure and the trap sprang up to envelop her.

Faster than she could react, she felt it wrap around her head, constrict around her waist. It grabbed her left arm, almost pulling it from the socket, yanking her left wrist behind her head, toward her right ear. Something pulled the ring finger of her left hand in the other direction and she shouted when she felt the bone of her ring finger snap. Her neck began to twist, and she started to bend in half, head pulled inexorably towards her pelvis.

Snarling, she struggled uselessly against the strength of the thing. She realized that her right arm had remained free of entanglements. Grabbing her left arm, she tried to pull it down and failed, but she discovered that her arm, itself, had not been the target of the spell’s attack. Clawing at the catch of her wristwatch, she managed to pull it off and it attached itself to her right earring. Before she could attempt to remove her wedding band, however, some element of the trap bound to her wedding ring jerked her hand back around and attached the ring, still on the painfully broken finger, to her left earring.

Wren’s spine began to ache as the constricting cables of force continued to bend her in half, forcing her head toward her—

Belt buckle! It’s pulling my earrings towards my belt buckle! Stupid Wren! The protective magic in your watch, jewelry, and belt buckle is what this crazy spell has latched onto. Stupid, careless Wren! It was difficult to wrench the buckle loose one-handed, but she managed, pulling enough of her belt out of the loops that it reached her earring. The terrible pressure that had threatened to snap her spine ended. She took a moment to catch her breath, then she worked the rest of the belt out of its loops and lay flat.

The pain in her ring finger, stuck to the back of her earring, told her she did not have time to rest. She needed to get her wedding ring off before the swelling made it impossible. Unable to simplify matters by removing the earring because of the wedding ring bonded to it, she gritted her teeth, grabbed the gold band tightly with her right thumb and forefinger, and pulled her broken finger out of the ring. She shouted, her voice fierce with pain, as it came free.

After breathing deeply for a while some part of her brain that tried to convince her that the warm stretch of concrete she occupied would be the ideal site for a nap, but the adrenaline would not let her relax. Her efforts to stand were implemented in several slow stages. Each stage carried with it a reminder that she was forty-six years old and, despite the excellent state of her fitness and physical conditioning, could no longer do the sorts of things she did in her youth and expect to come away without penalty. Her spine ached abominably and something in her lower back protested so painfully that she almost failed to stand. The muscles of her neck throbbed, and she thought she might have pulled something. The sensations from her left shoulder made her worry about her rotator cuff. The finger hurt like heck.

Wren stood, straightening up as best she could. She noted her pants were holed at the knee, her shirt torn and dirty. From one ear hung a wristwatch. The other featured a gold wedding band and a belt buckle, complete with dangling leather belt. When she moved her head, she could feel the watch and the belt move, along with whatever remained of the spell that bound them to her earrings.

How stupid do I look?

From around one of the workmen’s trucks, an older woman with salt-and-pepper hair stepped into view and looked at Wren through large, round glasses. “Perhaps I might be of assistance?”