Ilona Andrews: Magic Bites

I slid a four-foot-long fish tank from the bottom cabinet and found the bag of feed I’ve kept at Greg’s apartment for emergency purposes. Grayish-brown, the feed resembled coarse wheat flour. Most of it actually was wheat flour, that and metal shavings, copper, iron, and silver, and seashells ground to fine dust, together with bonemeal and chalk.

I filled the tank with water, added a cup of feed, and stirred the mixture with a long wooden spoon until the solution became cloudy and none of the feed remained stuck to the bottom. That done, I dropped the saber into it and washed my hands.

The little ruby light on the answering machine was blinking. It shouldn’t have, since the magic was in full swing. Magic was a funny thing. Sometimes phones worked and sometimes they failed.

I settled into my chair and pushed the button on the answering machine. Anna’s anxiety-laced voice filled the room. “Kate, it’s me.” I sat up straighter. Anna didn’t get anxious. Perhaps it was Greg’s death. Their divorce was ten years old, but still she must’ve felt something for him.

“Listen very carefully, while I remember.” Exhaustion crept into her voice and I realized she was fresh from a vision. The fact that she knew I would be in Greg’s apartment was so mundane to her she didn’t bother to comment on it. Sometimes being a clairvoyant had its uses.

“Woods,” Anna’s voice said. “Very green, very healthy, late spring or early summer. The air smells of moisture. There are tall wooden idols set under some of the trees. They are old. Time has smoothed the edges of the carvings. The idols shift and change shapes. One looks like an old man, but also a bear with horns, holding something . . . a saucer of water maybe. Another old man stands on a fish; I think he holds a wheel in his hand. A man with three faces, his eyes covered, sitting deep in the shadow. I can barely see him.”

The first was Veles, the third was Triglav. Slavic pantheon. I’d have to look up the second one.

“A man stands before them, surrounded by a brood of his children. They are very wrong . They do not fit, neither human nor animal, neither living nor dead. Behind him stand his servants. They smell of undeath.” Anna took a deep breath. “The man is masturbating. To the right something is shimmering in and out of existence, a child maybe? To the left you’re sitting cross-legged on the grass and eating a corpse.”

Lovely.

“I know Greg’s dead,” she said. “And I know you’re looking for the murderer. You must drop it, Kate. I know you’ll ignore me, but I have to warn you. This isn’t good, Kate. It’s not good at all.”

I AWOKE EIGHT HOURS LATER, TIRED AND PLAGUED by a migraine. I had meant to call Anna, but instead I somehow had fallen into bed and my body turned off my brain for the entire night.

The phone no longer worked. I sat on the bed and stared at it. So far I had some data for a hair but not the actual specimen; I had some lines that may or may not be the result of an m-reader malfunction; and I had a name of some nocturnal character given to me under duress by a People journeyman who’d pretty much do anything to get me off his back. On top of it I had what was probably a feline hair on a dead vampire, which set the Pack and People on a collision course. I pictured two colossi running at each other across the city, like monstrosities from an antique horror movie, and myself, a gnat in the middle.

It would be a bloodbath, which most of the city wouldn’t survive. So the trick wasn’t to survive it, but to keep it from happening.

In my daydream the gnat kicked one colossus in the groin and hit the other with a vicious uppercut.

I tried the phone again. It still didn’t work. I cursed and went to dress.

An hour later I slipped into Greg’s office. Nobody challenged me. Nobody glared and asked me why the hell the case was not solved or why I was so late arriving. The lack of drama was very disappointing.

I sifted through Greg’s data. The cabinets contained no files marked “Corwin,” but in the last cabinet I found a stack of folders marked with a question mark, so I went through them on the faint hope that I’d find something. Anything. Otherwise I’d be reduced to grabbing people on the street and screaming, “Do you know Corwin? Where is he?”

The files secured Greg’s notes, written in his particular code. I frowned as I scanned one indecipherable entry after another. “Glop. Ag. Bll.-7.” “Bll” had to be bullets. “Ag” could be Argentium, silver. What the hell did “Glop” mean?

My hopes dimmed as I flipped through page after page, and when I came across it, my brain almost did not register it. On a single page there was a scratchy “Corwin” and next to it were two drawings. One was a very clumsy rendition of a glove with sharp blades protruding from its knuckles. The other was some sort of bizarre doodle against a dark semicircle. I stared at the doodle. It meant nothing to me.

The phone rang.

I looked at it. It rang again. I wondered if I should answer.

The intercom came to life and Maxine’s voice said, “You should, dear. It’s for you.”

How did she know? I picked up the phone. “Yes?”

“Hello, sunshine,” said Jim’s voice.

“I’m kind of busy.”

I turned the file on its side and examined the doodle. Still nothing.

“No shit,” he said.

“Yeah. No gigs for me.”

“That’s not why I’m calling.”

I frowned at the phone and turned the file upside down. “I’m all ears.”

“Someone wants to meet you,” he said.

“Tell him to get in line,” I mumbled. The doodle almost looked like something.

“I’m not joking.”

“You never joke because you’re too damn busy proving that you’re a badass. Come on, black leather cloak? In mid-spring Atlanta? Besides I don’t have time to meet anybody.”

Jim’s voice dropped low and he spoke each word very distinctly. “Think very carefully. Do you really want me to tell the man no?”

Something about the way he said “the man” stopped me. I sat still and thought very hard about what kind of “man” would inspire Jim to use that voice.

“What did I do to warrant the Beast Lord’s attention?” I asked dryly.

“You’re sitting in the diviner’s office, aren’t you?”

Touché.

The Beast Lord was the Pack King, the lord of the shapechangers, and he ruled his brethren with an iron fist. Few ever saw him and the mention of his title was enough to make the loudest shapechanger shut up. In other words, he was precisely the kind of fellow my father and Greg had warned me to avoid. I ground my teeth, thinking of a way to weasel out of it. I would have to go and see the People sooner or later to find out about the vampire. But so far nothing necessitated my walking into the Pack’s lair.

“Your safety’s guaranteed,” Jim said. “I’ll be there.”

“That’s not the reason,” I murmured. There had to be a way to dodge this invitation. I glared at the stubborn doodle . . .

“Look,” Jim said, making an obvious attempt to sound reasonable, “consider the . . .”

“Tell him I’ll meet him tonight someplace private,” I said. “I’ll answer his questions if he answers mine.”

“Agreed. Eleven o’clock, corner of Unicorn and Thirteenth.”

He hung up. I tapped the desk with my fingers. I finally made sense of the doodle. The head of a howling wolf silhouetted against the semicircle of the moon. The sign of the Pack. Corwin belonged to the Pack.

There was a small matter of Maxine to attend to. I concentrated and whispered so quietly I couldn’t hear myself. True communicators could focus enough to broadcast their thoughts without vocalization, but I still had to move my lips like a dufus.