David Coe - Spell Blind

But for a few of us, the choice wasn’t quite so clear. Blockers were an all-or-nothing deal. I couldn’t take them for the three days around the full moon and cast spells the rest of the month. That would have been great if it were possible, but as I had learned a thousand times, the world didn’t usually make things that convenient for anyone, runecrafters included. In order for blockers to work, they had to be in our systems at a certain level for an extended period. If I wanted to escape the phasings, I would have had to give up magic entirely, and like my father, I wasn’t willing to do that. So I didn’t use blockers at all. I suffered through the phasings; I accepted as fate the eventual loss of my sanity. And I wielded my magic.

The truth was, even as I argued with Namid about mastering runecrafting, I liked being able to conjure. When I was a cop it gave me an edge over the creeps I was trying to put away, and now that I was a PI, it still came in handy. Maybe more to the point, it’s who I am. I can’t give up being a weremyste any more than I can give up being a Fearsson.

But I wasn’t ready to share all of this with Billie Castle and her readers, and I’m pretty sure she wasn’t ready to hear it.

“Mister Fearsson?” she said, eyeing me with what might have been concern.

“I think he blinds them because he’s nuts,” I told her. “I think he blinds them for the same reason another serial killer might rape his victims or dismember them or do something else that horrifies the rest of us. It gives him a sense of power, of control. It makes him feel like a god in his twisted little universe.”

“And why do you think the police have had so much trouble tracking him down?”

Again, an honest answer would have come back to magic. We couldn’t catch the guy because despite all appearances, he wasn’t a typical serial killer. He wasn’t crazy, and didn’t secretly want to be caught, like some of those nut jobs you read about in the papers. He killed with purpose, he was sane and calculating and intelligent, and he had managed to leave no clues of value at any of the thirty-plus crime scenes we’d found. But I couldn’t tell her all of that, either. So I tried to punt.

“I’m not on the force, Miss Castle. I haven’t been for some time. Questions about the PPD’s investigation should go to the PPD.”

“You were with the force for the first year and a half of this case. I would think that you’d have some ideas.”

I shrugged. “I think he’s been clever,” I said. “And I think he’s been lucky. But I also think that his luck will run out sooner or later. It always does in these cases. The PPD will get him.”

“Do you think they would have already if you’d remained on the job?”

I laughed, short and harsh, and reached for a piece of pizza. Taking a bite, I shook my head and said, “I’m not going to second-guess the detectives working this case.”

“I’m not asking you to,” she said, taking a piece of her own. “But I would think that you’d have spent the last nineteen months second-guessing the department’s decision to fire you.”

I stopped chewing and glared at her. Her gaze didn’t flinch at all. Pretty, smart, and tough. At that moment, I wasn’t sure which I wanted to do more: get up and walk out, or ask her out on a date.

I looked away before she did. “I’m not talking about this.”

“Why were you fired, Mister Fearsson? Did it have something to do with the Blind Angel killings?”

“No.” I said it automatically, my gaze snapping back to hers. As soon as I thought about it, though, I wondered if this was true. I was fired because of the phasings, because my erratic behavior and my inability to function for three nights every fourth week became too much for my superiors to tolerate, and too much for Kona to cover up. I was fired because I’m a weremyste. And wasn’t that the same reason the Blind Angel Killer had evaded us for so long?

Billie must have seen the doubt in my eyes. “Did they blame you for the fact that they couldn’t catch him? Is that what happened?”

I shook my head, resisting the urge to say, You’re getting colder . “No. It wasn’t like that at all.”

“Then what?”

I bit into my slice of pizza and chewed.

Billie frowned and took a bite, staring right back at me, like we were kids daring each other to be the first to blink.

“Do you like prying into other people’s lives?” I asked after some time, breaking a lengthy silence and reaching for a second slice of pizza.

“That’s not what I do. I give people information. I tell stories about real-life situations. And occasionally I uncover truths that powerful people would prefer to keep hidden.”

“That’s what you think you’re doing now, isn’t it?”

She hesitated. “Yes, I guess it is.”

“I think you’re going for the cheap thrill. I think what you’re doing here with me is no different from what the tabloids do, or what you see on those cheesy news shows that come on TV after the real news.”

From the way she responded you would have thought that I’d slapped her. Her mouth was open in a little ‘o’ and her eyes were so wide I thought she might cry. But that look only lasted for the span of a heartbeat or two. Then she pressed her lips into a thin hard line and the muscles in her jaw tightened. It’s funny, but I didn’t notice until that instant that her eyes were vivid green and as hard as emeralds.

“You know what I think, Mister Fearsson?” Her voice had gone cold. She wasn’t trying to charm a story out of me anymore. “I think that all the stuff they wrote about you when you left the force was true. You’re a drunk or an addict, or you’re just too unreliable to serve in the PPD. I think you deserved what happened to you.”

Others had said much worse to me. People I’d known for years, fellow cops who I’d respected. Her insults came too late and from too great a distance to hurt.

I put down what was left of the slice I’d been eating, took one last sip of Coke, and wiped my face with a napkin. Then I slid out of the booth and stood.

“Thanks for dinner.”

I didn’t wait for an answer. And she didn’t try to stop me from leaving.

I went back to my office, intending to do a bit of billing work from my last few cases. I’d let it pile up, and I was still stewing over my conversation with Billie. This seemed as good a time as any to tackle a few mindless tasks. My hands were shaking, I was so mad. But I knew that would pass.

The answer machine was blinking-two messages. The first was from Kona and had come in around the time Billie and I were sitting down to eat:

“Hi, partner. Just got a call from Pete. The Deegan autopsy didn’t turn up anything too surprising. Cause of death is ‘sudden, trauma-induced cardiac arrest,’ just like the others. It’ll be a day or two before the toxicology report comes back, but Pete’s convinced that Claudia was high on Spark when she died. Otherwise, nothing new. Our friend doesn’t change much from killing to killing. Let me know what you found out from Robby. Bye.”

“Sudden, trauma-induced cardiac arrest.” I’d never heard the phrase before Gracia Rosado’s death. Now it had become a morbid joke I shared with Kona. Basically, it was the medical examiner’s way of saying “something really bad happened and it killed her.”

The second message was from Howard Wriker, who wanted to know if I’d learned anything yet about the drugs Claudia had been using. I wasn’t ready to tell him or the Deegans anything. I felt no need to protect Robby Sommer, but the last thing Kona needed was for the Deegans to be breathing down her neck about Robby, when we had no solid proof that he’d been involved in any way with Claudia’s murder. Hearing his voice did remind me though, that I needed to tell Kona that Robby had been running a Spark den over in the South Mountain District. She couldn’t arrest him on the little evidence I had for her, but she could pass the word to narcotics and they could keep an eye on him.