The Alchemical Detective (Riga Hayworth) (29 page)

She picked up the remainder of the stone and chucked it out the broken window, unconcerned about where it landed.  If she was able, she’d find it later.  If she wasn’t able…  She didn’t want to think about that.  The prima materia was funny stuff and she sensed it could take care of itself.

She poked around in the kitchen cupboards.  In a tall cabinet, alongside a broom and dustpan, she found a sack of dog food.  No dog here, however.  Another suspicion confirmed.

On the broken table top, she placed the wine and cheese.  Riga set a soft chair beside it, angled it toward the door, then leaned over and broke off a block of cheese and nibbled it, trying to rid herself of the taste of cheap wine.  Riga checked her watch, waited.

The moon rose and a sliver of watery light slanted through the broken window.  She watched it creep across the bare floor.

A stack of books had fallen along with the table and Riga’s gaze was drawn to one of them, light blue, leather bound.  She drew in a hiss.  Lynn’s missing journal.  Horror mingled with triumph; she’d been right.  She left it where it lay, unwilling to turn a light on to see what was written within.

At the base of her spinal cord she felt a gentle tingle – the stone doing its work?  Or had she been seated too long?  She shifted in the chair.

A wall clock ticked, its second hand sliding heavily into place.  Riga drummed her fingers, caught herself doing it.  She stilled, closed her eyes.  Heat bloomed in her heart.

The alchemical process began and ended with the prima materia; the stone was like a sourdough starter, she thought.  You needed a bit of prima materia to make more prima materia, but according to legend, you could use the stone itself to turn lead to gold, to heal, to work miracles.  Brigitte had wanted Riga to practice alchemy, because she believed the process would force Riga to face her own darkness, would alter Riga’s mind, would bring her magic back.   Eating the stone itself was a shortcut and Riga could only hope that it would restore her magic to what it was, at least for a time.

A car rolled down the drive, tires crunching on the gravel.  Then steps on the porch, a key in the lock.  The door swung open.  A light in the hallway flipped on.

“Hello, Deputy,” Riga said.  She opened her eyes.  “Sorry.  I mean to say: hello, Hans.”

Deputy Night froze, his hand upon the light switch.  “What are you doing here?”

She stood, stretched.  “You broke into my cabin.  I thought it was only fair I return the favor.”  She raised her glass.  “This wine sucks, by the way.  The cheese isn’t bad though.  Where’d you get it?”

His hand dropped to his side and he stepped further into the room, casting the top half of his face into darkness.  A pulse throbbed in his throat.  “You didn’t break in here to discuss wine and cheese.”

“No.  I wanted to ask how long you’ve been stalking me?  One month?  Two?  Three?  Because it only took me a week to find you, Hans.  Of course, I wasn’t leaving a trail of bodies, like breadcrumbs to follow.  That was sloppy work, Hans.  You lack Lefebvre’s subtlety.  But I suppose that’s why he was the master and you weren’t.”

Night’s lips curved in a smile.  “Really, Riga?  I work with demons and you think you can play mind games with me?”

Shadows gathered in a corner of the room.  Gwenn.  Riga shook her head minutely. 
Stay hidden,
she projected to the ghost.  It faded back into the corner. 

“It’s not a game,” Riga said.  “It’s an expression of contempt, from one magician to another.  Lefebvre liked a challenge – it made him stronger.  But you, picking on unprepared women, whacking Reverend Carver from behind?  That’s not exactly designed to impress.”

His smile flickered.  “From one magician to another?  Let’s be honest, Riga.  You’re no magician, not anymore.”

“Is that why you were saving me for last?  And here I thought it was because you were gutless.”

His hand moved to the butt of his gun, drawing his jacket back. 

A warmth flowed up Riga’s spine, spread through her torso.  She wasn’t ready, not yet.  She had to keep him talking.   “We both know you’re not going to shoot me.  You won’t get what you want that way. 

“I wondered how you’d react when the situation changed,” she continued, “because you really are a creature of habit.  Killing Deputy Night, masquerading as a police officer – it was clever.  You harassed your intended victims: Sarah’s broken window, Lynn’s crank calls, Tara’s cat…   They’d report the harassment to the police – not always to your office, but to the police – and when you showed up later they’d let you inside their homes, no question.  And that’s always been the way you worked – by getting people to trust you.  You’re predictable, Hans.”

He drew closer.  “You’re not going to shake me by telling me how clever you are.” 

“But the Reverend – you outsmarted yourself with him,” she said, not giving ground.  “What a perfect diversion he made for you.  He was, after all, the logical person to be behind the harassment.  You could be on hand for crowd control, seeming to keep the peace, but really egging him on.  Or did you do that through his wife?  She trusted you too, didn’t she?  You made another mistake there – telling her details about me she couldn’t have learned elsewhere.  I don’t understand what you needed her for though.”

“Letting Carver think he was inside the investigation was brilliant, if I do say so myself.  But he was becoming a problem.  I wanted someone to keep tabs on him for me and his wife was another pleasant diversion.  She wasn’t always so prim and proper, and had the men in that church dancing to her merry tune.”

“Enough to get one of them to light that fire?”

Hans smiled.  “In time, she might have made an excellent acolyte.”

Riga suppressed a shudder.  “The Reverend was smarter than you thought he was.  He became suspicious, realized your connection to the murdered women.  Those photos he took must have been a nasty surprise.  You’re in them all.  In fact, even Deputy Night’s dog was smarter.  He knew you weren’t his master.  Did you turn him out or did he run away?”

“I would have cut its throat if I could have gotten close enough to that monster.”

She felt her scalp tingle and her mind felt gloriously clear.  The energies of magic made sense again and she had to bite back a laugh of relief.  Riga drew in the energies from above and below, focused them, and began to tie them to a word.  “One more question – what did you do with the real Deputy Night’s body?”

“I’ll show you.”  He whipped the weapon from his holster and Riga’s body seized up. 

The energies she’d gathered released in heat and chaos.  A flash of light blinded Riga.  Heat roared above her.

She toppled over, crashing through a glass coffee table.  It felt as if someone was beating her along her spine with a plank, while a hot wire connected the top of her skull to the base of her neck, pulling her shoulders up and her head down and her arms in towards her body.  And then she lay, gasping, on her side, immobile.  Smoke burned her nostrils.

Deputy Night/Hans crunched through the glass and squatted beside her.  He tapped her on the forehead with the butt of his weapon.  “I don’t need to shoot you when I’ve got a stun gun.”  He rolled her onto her stomach and cuffed her, hands behind her back. 

She heard him walk away, across the broken glass.  The smoke thickened, acrid, stinging her eyes. 

She thought about demons, and the way they possessed people, and that turnabout really would be fair play.  And she thought that perhaps power over oneself was the only power that mattered, that this was real liberty, and that people gave that up to the demons and to each other every day, piece by piece.  But the power the demons gained in returned was illusory.  They were trapped in the cycle as well.   

And she thought about the alchemical stone, the prima materia, and the temporary changes it was working on her.  She understood these changes wouldn’t last.  In her heart, she didn’t want them to.  She’d thought her magic had been her power, but it had kept her separate from others and she didn’t want to be apart any longer. 

But that wasn’t right either, she realized.  The problem wasn’t the magic, it was her fear of having to compromise, and then lose herself.  She was afraid of giving up her magic to be with others and afraid of losing others because of her magic; it was a circle of nonsense, an ouroboros, a snake devouring its own tail. 

Night/Hans returned, his booted feet heavy upon the carpet.  She heard tape being pulled from a roll, torn.  He slapped a piece of it across her mouth.  “In your defense,” he said, taping her ankles, “this taser does look a lot like the handle of a regular gun, especially in the dark.  I’ll be back in a minute – just have to get something.”  He left her there.

Riga closed her eyes and though she couldn’t move, she felt the boundaries of her self expand.  She could see three moves ahead now.  She might not be okay, but that didn’t matter either.  Angus would follow her instructions.  Gwenn would tell Donovan what she’d seen; he and Pen would know, be safe.  She felt life return to her fingers and wiggled them experimentally.  A small part of Riga wondered at her preternatural calm, understood this was an affect of the stone.  She was stoned, she thought, giddy.   

He came back, rolled her over, hauled her by her collar into a seated position.  The cuffs dug cruelly into her wrists. 

Hans glanced up at the ceiling.  It had turned to blackened charcoal, and sections of it glowed orange, fanned by the air from the broken window.  “You’ve moved up my timetable but I won’t need this place after tonight anyway.  All I really wanted was Brigitte.  The other ladies just gave me the juice to tackle you, though you were easier than I’d thought you’d be.  My source was right about that after all.”  He slung her over his shoulder, knocking the wind from her, and carried her to his police cruiser outside.  She heard him open the trunk.  He dumped her unceremoniously inside.  She landed on something soft, and it gave a muffled cry.  Riga rolled and found herself nose to nose with Tara, mouth duct-taped shut.

Eyes wide with fear, Tara thumped the side of the trunk with her feet, jerking her body.  Hans closed the trunk upon them.  The light winked out.  The sound of the lock clicking shut increased Tara’s panicked thrashing.  Riga felt the car sink, heard a door slam.  The cruiser lurched forward.  Tara’s forehead cracked against Riga’s nose and ribbons of pain streaked across Riga’s skull. 

The air felt close in the trunk and Riga shut her eyes, feeling the warm drip of blood from her nose.  And then Riga felt another shift and she soared above the car.  Its headlights cut a conical path across the blacktop.  She was above the treetops now, the wind cool upon her face.  The sensation of flying was lovely, Riga thought.  Why hadn’t she done this before?  Something glided beside her, wraithlike, shifting, darkly feminine, somehow a part of her and separate at the same time.

It all seemed laughably simple now.  Her different forms of consciousness had held to one center before, and then the center had shifted but her understanding hadn’t moved with it.  All she had to do was swing to the new center, create a new nexus.

The car rounded a bend and the lake appeared through a break in the trees, glittering black in the moonlight.  A serpentine shadow raced beneath the water, pacing her.  Was it her reflection?  She drifted lower, curious.  No, this was something else, something long and sinuous, rippling forward under its own power.  Tessie?  She wanted to believe it, decided to make it so.

As she followed Tessie’s rippling path, the darkened lake changed, lightening on the edges, its center taking on a dull, black sheen, until it revealed itself as an eye.  The eye’s gaze roved, settling on Riga.  She flinched, instinctively flinging her hands up against its piercing gaze, and felt heat scorch her side.  And then the car rolled between two hills and the unwinking eye disappeared beneath the pines. 

She sank lower as the police car turned off the highway onto a dirt road, winding down to the lake shore.  The lake was just a lake now, Riga saw, relieved.  Had the stone enabled her to pierce the veil, to see behind the water to the reality lying beneath?  She shuddered at the memory.  It was one thing to glimpse the other side, but it had seen her as well.

Riga watched Hans fling open the car door and get out, making shallow footprints in the snow.  He walked to the trunk, opened it, heaving first Tara, then Riga to the ground. 

She struck the snow with a soft thump and abruptly returned to her body, blinking dazedly.  The skin above her lip itched, crusty with blood.  A rock dug into her back through the soft, cold powder.  The lake lay behind her and she heard waves lap upon the shore, a soft, crushing sound.  She craned her neck.  The light from the open trunk illuminated the scene and she saw Tara, lying on her stomach between Riga and Hans. 

Hans flung open a tarp.  It unfurled, revealing a circle painted upon the canvas before it settled on the snow covered beach. 

Tara whimpered, an animal-like sound low in her throat.

Clever man, Riga thought.  A portable magic circle.  She sat up, feeling a distant interest in the proceedings. 

He carved the air with elegant hand motions, his voice rising and falling in a monotonous chant.

Tara wriggled, making deep furrows in the snow. 

Above the center of the tarp swirled a blackened mist, punctuated by angry flashes, thundercloud red.  The mist congealed, forming the shape of a demon with a long, spiked tail, slimy black scales, a narrow face and long fangs.  Hans muttered something inaudible, then walked to Riga and Tara.  He looked at them for a long moment, nodded as if making a decision, then seized Tara by the collar of her jacket and dragged her across the snow, toward the circle. 

Riga closed her eyes and another wave pulsed up her spine.   It felt as if the top of her head had been lifted off. 

She knew where she wanted to be and when she opened her eyes, she was there, inside the circle with the demon.  Riga glanced towards the struggling figures on the beach.  She saw her own body, limp in the snow behind them.  Tara struggled, trying to snag her heels on a twisted root to stop her movement toward the circle and the demon it imprisoned.