Unfallen Dead (24 page)

“Ready for what?”

“I don’t know! All I wanted was the stone. I didn’t know anything about murders,” said Ardman.

“Why is this stone so important?” Murdock asked.

I shook my head at him to let it go for now. I dropped my voice. Meryl told me once that I lose sight of the human emotion of a situation when I’m investigating. “Rosavear, she’s killing people connected to Viten. You’re more connected than any of them. I don’t think she’s going to give your stone back.”

She hit her knee with a clenched fist. “I knew it. I knew it wasn’t over.”

“We need you to help us catch whoever this is. Can you do that?”

She nodded vigorously. I gestured for Murdock to join me in the foyer.

“We have to bring the Guild into this,” I said, when we were out of earshot.

“I’m not going to argue,” he said. “What the hell is a soul stone?”

“It’s an old custom between fey lovers. They give their souls to each other. It takes a lot of ability. You branch off the soul and infuse a ward stone with it.”

Disbelief swept Murdock’s face. “The fey have detachable
souls
?”

I kept my eye on Ardman. “I doubt it. If I understand the theory behind the spell, it’s not really a soul like you think. It’s more their basic life spark, the core of their essence.”

“And Viten made one for Powell and Ardman,” he said.

I nodded. “Right. Only lovers do it because it’s an enormous trust issue. If you crush a soul stone, it’s like physically crushing someone’s heart. The person dies.”

If anything, Murdock looked even more stunned. “Are you kidding me?”

I held my hands up. “That’s what I’ve heard. It may or not be the soul, but it’s one helluva powerful spell.”

He shook his head with an odd look of anger. “That’s bullshit. Souls don’t work that way.”

I was about to say something flip but stopped. Murdock’s Catholic. Talk of using a soul in a spell was treading way too hard on his theology. “Think of it as essence, then. Here’s the key part, though. Whether it’s the soul or essence or whatever, if you fatally injure the body of someone who has a soul stone, the soul stone can revive the body.”

Murdock shook his head several times before speaking. “God, I can’t believe this.”

I nodded. “Viten shot Rhonda Powell in New York while her soul stone was in Boston. She’s not dead.”

Things moved quickly once Ardman agreed to cooperate. Given her history with the case, the Guild allowed Keeva’s participation in the investigation. I suspected it was to keep her out of the way with a crime the Guild thought was unimportant. Ceridwen had bigger issues to worry about.

Sitting in Keeva’s office and planning a Guild surveillance operation after so much time was surreal, yet oddly comfortable. Keeva had been surprisingly compassionate in debriefing Ardman. Caring on her part made red flags go up for me, but then the cynic in me found a reason for her kindly attitude. When all else fails, royalty closes ranks, even if they’re not of the same line.

“It’s a huge leap to think it’s Rhonda Powell,” Keeva said.

“It fits,” I said. “No one else is alive. No one else knows what she knows.”

“Correction. No one is alive. Powell is dead,” she said.

“I guess we’ll have to see who’s right,” I said.

She smiled. “I guess we will.”

Ardman had a prearranged signal with her blackmailer for setting up meetings. We had her send the signal. The idea was to stage a meeting, keep Ardman protected, and trap Powell—or as Keeva would have it, whoever—before she had a chance to escape. After going over the security plan for the umpteenth time, I stretched in my chair and exhaled loudly. “You still haven’t told me where you are going to be in all this.”

She compressed her thin lips into an even thinner smile. “Monitoring everything. That’s all you need to know.”

I shrugged. “Be that way. Just remember what Gillen Yor told you.”

“I can take care of myself, Connor.”

Dylan stuck his head in the doorway. “Can I steal Connor for a minute?”

Keeva shooed me out the door with a flutter of her hands. If anything confirmed why I’d rather jump off a bridge than work for her, that gesture did. I joined Dylan in the corridor.

“Follow me,” he said. He kept his head down as we made our way across the department. When we reached his office, he checked the hallway, then closed the door and leaned against it. “Meryl’s been arrested.”

I pinned him against the door. “What are you pulling, Dylan?”

He tried to push me off, activating his body shield, but I clung to his jacket. I shook him. “What did you do?”

He released his shield and raised his hands to the sides. “We’re not going to get in a fistfight, Connor. I didn’t do anything.”

We stared at each other. I knew him like I knew few people, the way he looked when he lied, when he was afraid, and when he was telling the truth. I dropped my hands. “What the hell is going on?”

He straightened his jacket. “I’m not sure. Remember that knife we found at Belgor’s?”

“The Breton dagger?”

He nodded. “It wasn’t the mate to one here like you thought. It
was
the one here.”

I frowned. “I don’t understand.”

He held his hand up to silence me as he tilted his head to the door. He waited a moment, then continued. “I asked Meryl to bring me the other dagger you saw in the storeroom. When she released the essence field on it, we discovered it was a counterfeit. The dagger from Belgor’s was the original.”

“So why is Meryl under arrest?”

Guilt crept over his face. “She says someone else switched the daggers. I had the logs checked, but Meryl is the only one who entered that storeroom. When Keeva and I were called down to the Weird because of Carmine’s attack, someone entered my office and took the knife.”

“And what has any of that got to do with Meryl?”

He compressed his lips a moment. “Meryl’s the only person who had high enough clearance for the storeroom and access to the department floor. She was seen on the floor that afternoon. I was debating what to do when Ceridwen caught wind of what was going on. She’s charging Meryl with theft, tampering with evidence, and assaulting Belgor.”

Hot anger gripped my chest. “This is bull, Dylan. Meryl comes up here for work all the time, and you know it. You and Ceridwen want her to answer questions about Forest Hills that she doesn’t know the answers to.”

Dylan shook his head. “Don’t throw me in that pile, Connor. You know this is Ceridwen.”

Frustrated, I spun away to keep from hitting him. It would have been dumb. It would have been striking out at the nearest thing, and he just happened to be it. Besides, Dylan could hold his own against me, even without his shields. “I want to talk to Meryl.”

His worried look was genuine. “I’m not sure that’s a good idea. You’re on Ceridwen’s list, too.”

I rubbed my hands across the stubble on my head. “I don’t answer to Ceridwen. I want to talk to Meryl, Dylan, and I want to do it now.”

We didn’t speak as he tried to decide what to do. Finally, he opened the door. “Let’s go.”

We took the elevator to a subbasement deeper than Meryl’s office. I knew the place. It didn’t get used much. Not unless the Guild wanted someone to disappear. The doors opened on a dim hallway, burning torches casting sooty light against walls of granite blocks. It should have had a sign that said: HINT: DUNGEON.

Halfway down in the gloom, two Danann security agents guarded an oaken door with a cast-iron dead bolt. They didn’t move when we reached them. I felt sendings passing between them and Dylan. One of the agents opened the door.

“Make it quick,” said Dylan.

I squinted against the harsh light from the small room. A cot and commode took up opposite corners. A plain wooden table stood in the middle. In the lone chair, Meryl relaxed with her hands behind her head and her feet up on the table. The door closed. I listened for a lock to slide into place, but none did.

Meryl dropped her feet to the floor. “I hope you brought some C-4. I really want to blow something up.”

Just seeing her made my anxiety ease. As I came around the table, she stood, and I wrapped my arms around her. That meant I lifted her off the floor since I have a least a foot in height on her.

“Are you okay?” I said into her ear.

She giggled. “This is so lame, Grey.”

I released her and kissed her on the top of the head. She hates that. I love that she hates that. “Meryl, Ceridwen can ruin you.”

She waved her hand dismissively. “Blah, blah, blah.”

I scanned the room and tapped my ear. “Can we talk?” I mouthed to her.

She pointed to a broken cup on the sink. “Yeah, we’re fine. They left a listening ward. If that’s the level of sophistication I’m dealing with, I’ll be out of here tomorrow.”

“What happened?”

She dropped back in the chair and jabbed her finger at the table. “Winny ap Hwyl happened. When I find that bitch, I’m going to kill her.”

“Who the hell is she?”

“Rhonwen ap Hwyl. An old friend.
Former
old friend. She used to be chief archivist here. I hadn’t seen her in years. She asked me to lunch and oh-gee-can-I-see-the-old-place. She stole the dagger the day she came to visit three weeks ago. I really am going to kill her,” she said.

“Why didn’t you just tell them that?”

She had the good grace to look embarrassed. “I didn’t sign her in.”

“The receptionists have been warning you about that for years.”

She slumped in her chair. “It wouldn’t matter anyway. I didn’t steal the damned dagger, and I sure as hell didn’t attack Belgor. Ceridwen isn’t going to let a little thing like the truth stop her.”

A thrill of realization went through me. “Your friend attacked Belgor. Anglicize the name Rhonwen ap Hwyl.”

She let out an impressed whistle. “Rhonda Powell. Winny ap Hwyl was Viten’s girlfriend. But how the hell did she survive a bullet to the head?”

“He made her a soul stone.”

“I’ll be damned. I didn’t think those really worked.” She paced behind the table, her face flush with excitement. “Holy crap! That’s why Viten was down here. I never understood why he didn’t just go to the lobby and run out the front door when he escaped his guards. Now I do. He came down to the archives to get his personal effects. He was going after Winny’s soul stone.”

The evidence tag from the Ardman file floated up from my memory. I rummaged in my jacket and found an ATM receipt with a pathetically low balance. I drew the ogham runes from the Viten evidence tag from memory. “This is where Viten’s personal effects were stored. Is it the same room where the Breton dagger was?”

Meryl shook her head. “No, that’s the one next to it. Now that I think of it, Winny asked to see the dagger’s storeroom specifically. Maybe she had the wrong location.”

“Could she have gotten in when you were distracted?”

She shook her head firmly. “The doors are keyed to my essence. Best security I know.”

I tapped the receipt. “How do I get into that storeroom?”

“No problem.” She placed her palm flat on the paper and chanted. Little shots of blue light dripped off her fingertips and faded into the paper. When she handed me the receipt, the paper was infused with her body essence. “Put this flat against the door and push.”

I stood. “I’ll get you out of here, Meryl.”

She glanced at the door and winked. “I mapped this place, Grey. Don’t be surprised if I send you a postcard from the Caribbean.”

Dylan looked relieved when I left the cell alone, like he half expected Meryl and me to come out with guns blazing to make a getaway. We didn’t speak until we were in the elevator, out of earshot of the guards. “I need to know whose side you’re on,” I said.

He met my eyes, straightforward with no hesitation. “Connor, I know you’ve been through a lot, so I’m not going to be insulted by that question. I wouldn’t have told you anything if I wasn’t on your side.”

I hit the button for Meryl’s office floor. “I need to check something. I don’t want to ask you to lie if someone asks you about it. Do you want to wait here?”

He shook his head. “Before I answer that, I have to ask you something. If Meryl’s really involved in something, will you do the right thing?”

I clenched my jaw. “I am doing the right thing. She’s not involved.”

He glanced up at the elevator lights. “Then let’s go.”

I led the way past Meryl’s office to the maze of corridors where the storerooms were. Months ago, Meryl showed me the elegance of her ogham filing system since I never bothered to learn it when I was on staff. Because of the potent stuff in the archives, she had layers of security that ranged from baseline electronics to full-spell locks that only senior staff knew. She’s explained it to me several times, but I still don’t get it. A few wrong turns finally brought us to the room where the dagger had been stored. The first symbol on the ATM receipt matched the one above the next storeroom down. I pressed the receipt against the door, and Meryl’s essence seeped into the wood. The lock clicked open.

Inside, file cabinets and storage boxes spread out in orderly ranks in an uncluttered room. We found the proper aisle and cabinet. I placed my hand on the handle of a drawer, looked at Dylan, and pulled. I closed my eyes in disappointment. The drawer was empty.

I leaned against the opposite filing cabinet. Dylan withdrew a slip of paper from the drawer. “Evidence from the Ardman case?”

I took the paper. “The woman who stole the dagger is named Rhonwen ap Hwyl, a.k.a. Rhonda Powell. There’s no record she was here. To make it more fun, she’s a former Guild employee.”

Dylan pursed his lips. “And now you’re going to tell me that this drawer shouldn’t be empty.”

I gave him a half smile. “Now do you wish you had waited by the elevator?”

He shook his head. “Nothing is ever simple.”

I closed the drawer. “I want to see the entry log. Meryl says they never came in here.”

We wound our way to Meryl’s office. The Guild’s logging systems were open to inspection by security staff, and you couldn’t get a higher-level security staff than Dylan was. I rebooted Meryl’s computer and slid the keyboard to Dylan. “You have access to the log.”