In many Urban Fantasylands, library science has not advanced since sometime in the early nineties. (In particularly bad cases, this can be ‘the 1890s’.) Rare is the computerized card catalog or digital periodical archive. Occasionally, to demonstrate that it’s a high-tech, modern library, they’ll have a microfiche reader.
(Fortunately, these microfiche machines have an uncanny knack to locate the exact article with but a few moments of scanning through them. Presumably this is part of the advantage of living in a universe with magic in.)
Often as not, however, the really -useful- books only come into play with private collections, and it’s here that things fall back to the 1890s, with books organized in haphazard fashion, often shelved by the owners themselves, with vital points of prophecy at risk of being obscured by coffee rings. At times, the urge is strong to turn professional archivists loose on the local wizard’s home, that they might purify it with modern preservation techniques and a proper system of cataloging.
It is perhaps fortunate for the wizard population that this doesn’t happen.
--Quote from an internally circulated employee email at Mystery Play LLC, presumably not for public consumption.
Chauncy was the one who met me at the door, rather than Moira herself this time, but he simply showed me in. “The madam will see you in the dining room. I believe you already know the way from before?”
I nodded, and he left me to my own devices to find my way to join Moira. She had changed and washed up since the funeral- a short black dress, because of course she was still officially in mourning- and was tearing into a later dinner- some sort of pasta plate. “Derek! Please join me. I’ll have the cook send something out for you.”
I joined her, as directed. “I think your butler’s warming up to me. He just let me come in here on my own.”
“Mr. Chauncy feels you saved my life the other night from whoever was shooting at us, so he’s inclined to be generous,” she explained.
“I’m not 100 percent they weren’t aiming at me instead, but fair enough. You seemed exhausted after this morning- not that I blame you. You feeling okay?”
“It’s...honestly kind of a relief to have the funeral over, I think. Except now I have to figure out what I’m going to do with myself now that I’m not Hugo’s trophy.”
The cook, who hadn’t been given a name on screen yet that wasn’t “Cook” but I vaguely recognized from the pool of regulars, brought me the same pasta plate as Moira was working through. “I think traditionally it’s charity work and public appearances, though I understand that Mr. Delacourt wasn’t big on you participating in public life in general.”
She shook her head. “Not at all. Hugo only did the minimal amount of charity required to maximize his tax benefit and no more. Certainly not hosting any benefits or dinners if he could avoid it. I’d have to go back to my finishing school courses for that sort of thing…” She looked thoughtful. “I wonder if I could go back and teach there as an alumnus.”
“Couldn’t hurt to reach out to them, I mean, ultimately, you might be able to provide good advice to anyone following the same path in life you did.” I didn’t bring up that the advice should be “Don’t what I did, holy shit” but I figured it was implied.
She smiled brightly anyway. Laura Delacourt might have been written as a little too pure of heart to be a proper fatale. “That’s true. The courses can’t really prepare you for that sort of thing.”
I was mostly wondering what sort of school could have produced both Bastienne Moran and Laura Delacourt from the same basic curriculum, but it’s not like Laura apparently knew about Bastienne’s day job. “You’ve got time to figure it out, at least right? Your family’s not going to rush to pair you off again because of the mourning period?”
She nodded. “As far as my family’s concerned, they’ve made the deal and profited nicely from it. No need to try and leverage me again, since I’ve got younger siblings and cousins to bargain with instead.”
I winced. Since Moira knew it was me now, it wouldn’t give away anything, so I could show slightly more honest reactions, at least. “I want to say that’s good, but in context…” I shrugged. “Just a common boy from the Catskills, that’s me.”
She looked at me, amused. “The Catskills. Really?”
I started embellishing what we had written about Derek Criss. “Yeah, my dad was the in-house entertainment for a resort up there. Stage magic. Learned the top hat and wand trade from him, and did my first card trick at seven.” I took a bite of pasta. “And then when I was twelve I started seeing ghosts and did the levitation trick without the wires being set up. I covered it up for years, until a magician found me and started training me as a proper wizard.”
Moira had stopped eating and was just watching me talk with her chin in her hands.
“Sorry if that was boring or anything.”
She straightened up. “Oh, no, not at all. I actually like hearing you talk about yourself. Hugo...never talked about his past, or his work, or anything. Other than making sure of my health and that I was taking care of my looks. He sort of...viewed me as an investment? He said that staying beautiful made my value appreciate.”
My jaw dropped at that. “I...could he maybe have been trying to be romantic but just….very, very bad at it?”
She laughed again. “I suppose it’s not impossible. Hugo wasn’t very social. He wanted to be, the whole point of marrying a Lurue girl is to get an in to polite society, but he didn’t actually seem to have any interest in that.”
He was a specialist magician, wasn’t he? The mathemagician and coin magic stuff. After a while, if you go far enough down one of the specialist paths, you wind up obsessing on that sort of thing. It’s why I’ve never gone into any of the higher mysteries.”
She nodded. “Very much so. He...talked about things in terms of their value or worth all the time. Even people, right from the first day I met him.”
“Could I get a look at his workshop at some point? I’d like to get an idea of his mindset before his death.”
Moira looked pensive for a moment. “Certainly. But...can it wait until morning? I’d have to find his keys and go through his things, and I don’t think I’ve got the energy for that today.”
I ducked my head in apology. “Oh, right. Sorry. It is fairly late. I can just...come back in the morning, then. Let you get some rest.” I started to stand.
...Moira grabbed my sleeve. “No, that’s okay. I’d...like you to stay the night. With all the attacks, I just feel safer if you’re here, and you are supposed to be my bodyguard, after all.”
I stared at her, but didn’t pull away immediately. “Uh...sure. Of course. You’re right. I’ll stay here overnight, make sure nothing attacks. Where was the guest room again?”
Moira suddenly glared at me, and hissed, “Stop making this harder!”
“What?”
“This is the scene, you know? I’m supposed to be…” she made a vague hand gesture “Seducing you. That assassin or whatever interrupted the first time.”
“Well, also you were drunk and I didn’t want to take advantage.”
Moira rolled her eyes. “I wasn’t that drunk, though that is kind of sweet and…” she trailed off. “Argh. Reroll the recording back five minutes, and think about whether Derek Criss would turn down a woman inviting him to stay overnight and guard her body.”
I thought for a moment, then sighed. “Fine, you’re right, I’m sorry. In my defense, I’m pretty dense about these things out of character too.”
Moira muttered something that sounded like “Fucking tell me about it.” Then, “I hope Vivian catches this in editing.” She coughed, then, and repeated her earlier line, looking up at me with wide eyes as she gripped my sleeve.“No, that’s okay. I’d...like you to stay the night. With all the attacks, I just feel safer if you’re here, and you are supposed to be my bodyguard, after all.”
The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.
I paused, considered what I -should- say, and finally managed to come up with “I’ll take you up on that, if you don’t mind.”
She switched her grip then, sliding her hand down to grab my hand instead of my sleeve, and led me down the hallway to the bedroom. There was music playing in the background. I squinted into the shadows suspiciously. Moira whispered, through her teeth, “They just...do that for these scenes. House is wired for it.”
She turned around then, and tugged on my hands to pull me into the room.
My first impression was that the bedroom was very much Laura Delacourt’s domain; it was one the one room in the house that wasn’t austerely decorated with tasteful prints, but was decorated with things she liked- gifts Hugo had bought her that she appreciated, open closets full of clothing, a dresser overloaded with jewelry boxes. There were paintings on the wall, but they were colorful things that had caught her eye on the few occasions that she’d been allowed to go out.
I was focusing on the room, because after we’d stepped inside and the door closed behind us, Moira had stepped away from me, eyes on my face, and let her dress drop to the floor.
I’m really not used to this sort of thing. There are things that being descended from a trollwife get you- I’m big, I’m strong, I’m tougher than old boots, but attractive to women? Nah. My face is best described as “Wouldn’t want to meet that in a dark alley.” The closest I’ve ever gotten to a compliment about my looks was someone saying that I looked like the stone idol that a tribe of barbarians would make human sacrifices to and a thief would try to steal the jeweled eyes from.
And there was a beautiful woman in lingerie looking up at me, waiting for my approval on her appearance and, one she shouldn’t need my approval, and two...I had no idea how I should react because it’s not something that’s really happened before.
I made myself look at her- thanks to the glamour adjusting my perspective, it was a lot easier to take her in. Part of why I’d thought of her as a kid was because I mostly only ever saw the top of her head, and she’d started nearly 6 years ago, mostly playing, well, kid sister and girl friday parts- if the personal assistant role had been written into this play beforehand, she’d have been a natural choice for it. But now…
...Now, I had to admit that I was unfair, before. She could absolutely play the sultry client. Wardrobe was definitely helping her along, but the way she held herself, the look in her eye, and everything all combined so that once I did look at her, it was really hard to stop. She held up her arms, I dropped down to one knee so I could return the embrace, and well, after that, the cameras went off, so anything else that might have happened isn’t anyone’s business but ours.
The next morning we woke up in the traditional fashion for these affairs, with the sheet covering me from the waist down and her from the collarbone- this was a lot easier to arrange than normal given the relative differences in our height. I watched Moira sleep for a while- her sleep talk apparently involved repeating a lot of things that she’d said the night before, and she kept using my real name instead of Derek. Finally, she stirred, looked up at me, and smiled. “Hi.”
“Hello to you too. Sleep well?”
She nodded, and ran one hand down my chest, then leaned up and whispered into my ear. “Next time? I want to try it without the glamour,” and bit my earlobe before sitting up in bed and stretching. “Breakfast? I’d also not object to...more of the same. But you did need to look at Hugo’s papers, didn’t you?”
I was still processing the bit where she was apparently treating last night’s events as at least some percentage of Moira Roan and Raymond Doyle, instead of Laura Delacourt and Derek Criss. It took me a moment to shake myself back into character. “Uh. Yeah. Breakfast. Food would be good. I...uh. Burned off a lot more energy last night than I was expecting. Then books.”
Moira didn’t actually bother dressing for breakfast- just the same short robe she’d worn the other day, with even less underneath it, which made for a very distracted meal, since I kept...noticing her. I was used to not noticing, but it was hard to shake off my awareness now. And when she noticed me noticing, she’d do something to pull my attention even more- running a hand up her leg to push the hem of the robe back, leaning over so I could get a better look down her front, and so on.
“You’re having way too much fun with this,” I noted.
Moira smirked, then pulled her chair next to mine, the better to whisper in my ear again. “If I’d known that I could get you to pay attention to my signals by yelling that I was trying to seduce you 5 years ago we’d have wasted a lot less time,”
I pointed out, “Five years ago, you’d just started here and I thought you were a teenager, so even if I had noticed I would have just ignored it.”
She hit me in the arm, “How could you think I was a teenager? You’re only, what, a year or two older?”
“About that, but I’m also two and a half feet taller and most of the time I only see the top of your head -and- you kept getting cast as the kid sister parts, so can you really blame me?”
Moira sighed. “Fine, fine. The worst part is that I think this means Simone won the office pool. She encouraged me to try for this part, you know, back when you were first announced for your regular role. She thought you might kidnap me in the finale or something and then I could use my wiles to escape.”
“There was a pool?” I really needed to pay more attention to office gossip, apparently, but I can’t exactly hang out around the water cooler with everyone else because when I do it there’s no room for anyone to get refills.
She nodded solemnly. “They took bets on how long it would take you to notice I was interested, how you’d respond, and whether I’d regret or not if you actually did.”
“So. Any regrets?”
She sighed. “Only that we can’t stay in my room and blow off the rest of the play without the assassin getting away with it and the Carrefours taking disproportionate revenge.”
“Well, look at this way. When we catch him and head the Carrefours off, the play’ll end early and we’ll have a few days off, paid, according to the boss.”
Moira brightened at the thought, and slipped back into Laura, responding to the last thing I’d said before she’d dropped character. “I haven’t enjoyed myself like that in a long time. Just...spending a night with someone I liked. Bastienne encouraged me, you know. When I told her I was interested in you after meeting you, she encouraged me to...well. That’s why I got tipsy the other night. I was trying to get my courage up.”
“...That explains a bit. Sorry I missed the signs.”
“Well, if you hadn’t, one of us probably would have been shot, and so I think it was for the best.”
“You’ve got a point.”
Having finished her breakfast, she leaned against me while I finished mine, then finally separated and stretched. “I’ll bring you Hugo’s key and you can look through his workshop. I’m sure he’ll have kept notes there.”
If the master bedroom told you a lot about Laura Delacourt’s inner life, Hugo Delacourt’s magician’s workshop, which Laura led me to a few minutes later, said more than you’d really want to know about him.
For a start, for a man as obsessed with order and numbers as he seemed to have been, he had the worst archival practices I’d ever seen. He used whatever he had on hand as paperweights, holding down his notes, some of them were pinned to the wall with push-pins, or stacked on the bookshelves and held down by books, and none of it was in any kind of order, probably because he knew where it all was through some sort of self-created ‘system’ he didn’t share with anyone else.
I looked at the room, looked to Moira, and sighed. “I’m probably going to be here a while.”
She kissed me on the cheek. “Just let me know where you’re done.”
I looked over the room again. “So, let’s see if there’s anything here to explain why someone would want you dead. Besides, say, anyone with a degree in library science.”
The one advantage I had with this ridiculously messy room is that it was laid out the way it was for our clients, which meant whatever clue was in here probably had to be easily found by people who regularly married their own first cousins to keep magical power in the family. Admittedly, we got people with a variety of magical talent, but no one, except maybe Lawson, had ever developed a “Find plot item” spell.
But I’m not a mage. I had to rely on brute force and the brief period in my misspent youth where I acted as an archival assistant to a Dwerrow magus who needed someone to get things off the high shelves.
I focused on any suspicions he had about either of his business partners- anything about the shipping company that only existed on paper or weird purchases by his partner, like say, embezzling funds to buy magic snakes.
I didn’t find anything on any of that, at least. What information he had on Lukas Martel suggested that the man was scrupulously honest in his business practices, no matter whatever unsavory snake-based nonsense he might have been getting up to in his spare time, which, at least based on his workshop records, Hugo Delacourt was entirely unaware of, or possibly just ‘uninterested in.’
He had a bit more interest in Grandmother’s Freight. I found shipping receipts from several different companies that had all been delivered ‘on behalf of’ grandmother’s freight, so he was obviously poking into Spider’s business, and Spider-Bonaparte wasn’t a fan of the nosy, but I doubt he’d have kept that sort of thing from Bastienne. Or would he? Since Bastienne was obviously close to Laura, he may have kept her out of the loop so as not to test her loyalties. But it wasn’t enough to go on, at least not yet.
The weirdest thing I found was some correspondence with the Lurue family, mostly payments for “Services rendered”, all within the last few weeks. No record of long term payments, which would suggest he was paying some sort of long-term dowry or something for Laura. But very recent checks. “What the hell? What am I missing here.”
The boss’s voice crackled over the earbud for the first time in a while. “Well for a start, you’re missing the obvious.”
“Very funny, boss. You wanna clue me in?”
“Mmm. Might as well to keep the game moving and keep you from coming back here. “If it was a snake, it would have bitten you.”
With that in mind, I started looking for signs of something that might be snake-related in the room, rather than just his papers. It took me a bit to puzzle through the boss’s meaning.
There was a dead snake in the wastebasket, almost entirely instact, along with its own shed skin. It wasn’t a poisonous breed, but it had a sort of wig tied to it with strands of grey-black hair that I recognized as Lukas Martel’s.
Apparently Lukas’s weird skincare regimen had come with the assistance of his business partner.
“What the hell,” I took out my phone and took a picture of the snake and its skin.
“Good job,” announced the boss in my ear. I could hear someone else clapping in the background.