Chapter 2
Dreams of death and destruction paraded through my mind in jumbled scenes and images, as they did most nights. Mangled bodies in a nineteenth-century London apartment. An ancient temple beset by demons, my friends and comrades being torn to shreds around me while I was helpless to stop it. Another trip down memory lane to Krakatoa. But none of them woke me before light came through my window. It seemed the bottle of whisky I’d grabbed upon my arrival home had done its job.
The following morning, I actually had customers. Not many, but a handful—enough to keep me distracted. The weather was clear and sunny, so that probably had something to do with it. No regulars, however, until almost lunchtime.
“Quinn!” a familiar German-accented voice greeted me just as the bell rang to mark the opening door. “Good morning!”
I looked up to see a short, ugly dwarf with a huge nose and a bushy beard, wearing an oversized mustard yellow hoodie which did nothing to improve his looks. He was smiling merrily at me as he entered the shop and approached the counter.
“My, you look like shit,” he said with the same jolly tone. “Bad dreams?”
I scowled. “Mannfred,” I muttered gruffly in reply.
He was a klabautermann, a variety of kobold known for their mastery of sailing, their love of music, and their irrepressible—and incredibly annoying—cheerfulness. Most magical beings hid their natural form when living among humans, but Mannfred had once told me that he figured he just looked like a particularly unattractive little person, so he didn’t bother with a glamour. Sneers and looks of disgust didn’t concern him in the least. Few people looked close enough to notice the slight point to his ears, and those who did likely thought nothing of it given his deformed appearance.
“Just here to pick up my new hammer,” he said, charging on with his insistent joviality.
I nodded and went into the back room to get it from the cage. His kind used special mallets to focus their magic, but Mannfred had lost his a few weeks ago in a boating accident. He probably could have replaced it himself—hell, he could have made himself a new one if he’d wanted—but he figured I’d be quicker and it would give him a bit of a vacation in the meantime. That kind of artifact is hard to come by in the New World, and while kobolds have been known to travel, once they settle in an area they tend to prefer to stay near home.
I’d asked a German contact to pick one up from the Faerie Market in Hamburg; he’d dropped it off a couple days ago. Middleman transactions like this were my primary source of income. People will often pay a premium just to have someone else do all the work for them; Faeries and magical beings are no exception. A single such exchange could keep the bills paid for months, even when business was otherwise slow. I didn’t really need the money, but it was nice not to have to dip into my savings to keep the lights on. I preferred to use my personal funds for more important things, like whisky.
“Stay safe,” he said after he paid and tucked his new mallet into the pocket of his hoodie. “Apparently life is getting dangerous for sorcerers in these parts.” He turned to leave, but I stopped him.
“Wait. What do you mean?”
“Have you not heard?” he replied, raising an eyebrow. “Everyone is talking about it this morning.”
I shook my head. “Heard what?”
“Someone killed a sorcerer two nights ago. Nasty business.”
“Oh? Bran mentioned the police had been asking around, but he didn’t know what about.”
Mannfred nodded. “I just heard it myself this morning, down at the docks.”
“Who?” I knew most of the sorcerers in the city.
“Evan Townes. Nice kid. Damn shame, this sort of thing. Stay safe, my friend.”
I didn’t bother answering as he left. Evan was dead. That was certainly news worth knowing. So much for mundane police inquiries.
Evan had been one of my regular customers, like virtually every practicing mage in the area. He was just a kid, a grad student at Penn. More importantly, he was Arcanum-trained. Not a particularly powerful mage, certainly never a candidate for rank or voting membership in the society. But a talented kid who had been identified in his youth and given training in his power.
There were lots of such unranked sorcerers scattered around the world, who were never enrolled in a true apprenticeship, but were trained enough not to hurt themselves or others as their power developed, and were taught about the realities of the world like the Arcanum’s customs and treaties and the consequences for breaking them. I’d identified him as talented in his early teens when he first started shopping at my place and ensured the Master of the Trials had taken him for instruction. We weren’t close, but I didn’t much care for people murdering my customers.
There wasn’t much I could do about it, however. We sorcerers are a hardy bunch—even the least powerful among us generally live well over a century before aging catches up to them—but we can be killed just like anyone else. If we see it coming we have more capacity to defend ourselves than most, and we heal from wounds a lot faster than other people, but there’s little anyone can do about a bullet in the brain or a stab wound to the heart. The news bothered me, but people get murdered sometimes, especially in a city the size of Philadelphia. It was a matter for the police, and it sounded like they were already on the case.
Later that afternoon, when the shop was temporarily free of customers, I ducked into the back room to see what the news had to say about it. After pouring myself some Scotch, I cleared my ley-line research aside and logged onto the old laptop, searching for anything I could find on Evan’s murder. It didn’t take much detective work: right on the front page of the Philadelphia Inquirer, “Police Investigating Satanic Murder in Mill Creek.” That could be problematic. I continued reading.
According to the article, Evan had been found dead in his own apartment. He’d been the victim of what appeared to be an elaborate occult ritual of some kind, though the reporter didn’t go into any detail of the crime scene itself. It quoted the reactions of some community members, which varied from “He was such a nice young man, a model student,” to “This is just further proof of the toxic influence TV and video games have on impressionable youths.” And it ended with a contact number and a request that anyone with any information please report it to the police.
Not much useful in there, but it was worrying. If it had in fact been an occult ritual, this probably wasn’t just an ordinary murder. Evan was a sorcerer. A ritual sacrifice meant either he’d gotten himself tied up in some bad business, or he’d been targeted for some other reason. Either way, I highly doubted it was a coincidence that the victim was an Arcanum-trained sorcerer.
I sighed. I was the only Sorcerer of the First Rank in the area. Which meant that, if someone were running around doing death rites in Philly, it would fall on me to deal with it. At the very least I needed to figure out whether it was anything the Arcanum at large needed to worry about. There was no getting around that, no matter how much I might prefer otherwise. My city, my responsibility. It was the way things had been done for a thousand years. Short of formally renouncing my rank, I had to check it out.
Just then I heard the bell over the shop door, and I set my whisky down next to the laptop before heading out to see who’d come in.
There were two of them, a man and a woman. The man looked familiar—tall, muscular, with ink-black skin and a shaved head—but I couldn’t place him immediately. That wasn’t terribly surprising; I’d met an awful lot of people over the last two centuries. I couldn’t be expected to recognize every one of them by name.
The woman with him was new to me. She was a petite, fairly attractive brunette, wearing an irritated expression on her face. She glared around the room as if the shop somehow offended her.
The man stood idly thumbing through books in the African Animism section. I assumed it was out of default rather than anything to do with his own ancestry—alphabetically it was the closest section to the front door. I wasn’t sure why, but I got the feeling neither of them were here as customers. That piqued my interest, as there were very few other reasons anyone visited my shop.
I cleared my throat to alert them to my presence.
Both of them reacted immediately, their eyes snapping over to me, slightly widened in surprise—I have a lot of practice being near silent when I want to, and they’d clearly missed my entrance into the room. They both considered me for a quick moment. It felt like they were scanning me as a potential threat, further reinforcing my suspicion they weren’t looking to buy books.
I must not have seemed that threatening. Apart from a faded tattoo on the back of my left hand, there was nothing outwardly distinguishing about me at all. I was just another skinny white guy in a predominantly Irish neighborhood. My shaggy brown hair, just starting to go grey, revealed nothing of my true age. I was wholly unremarkable. Of course, if it weren’t for the long sleeves of my rumpled button-down shirt, the rest of my many tattoos and scars might have given them a second’s pause. Then again, in this day and age, maybe not.
The man replaced the book he was thumbing through, exchanged a measured look with the woman, and approached me while she watched from her position near the door.
“Good morning, sir,” he said evenly, displaying a badge. “I’m Detective Henri Lajoie, Philadelphia PD.” He gestured at the woman. “This is my partner, Detective Adrienne Connors.”
His voice was deep and melodious, with the faint hint of an accent from long ago, as if he’d moved here when he was a child and never quite lost the language of his youth. Haitian, if I were to guess, based on his dark skin and French name. I still couldn’t figure out where I’d seen him before. I hadn’t had any run-ins with the police in ages.
“Are you Thomas Quinn?” he asked.
I looked at him without a word for a long moment. I didn’t exactly scowl, but my expression wasn’t particularly welcoming. I was disgruntled. It wasn’t anything in particular—I was just usually disgruntled these days. And if my intuition were correct, they weren’t here to give me money in exchange for goods, so there was no need for me to pretend to be polite.
“Yes, I’m Quinn,” I eventually replied, begrudgingly.
“I thought so,” the big detective answered. “You fit the description we got to a T.”
“Oh?” I raised an eyebrow.
“Yeah,” he nodded, “we were told to look for a guy who looks like he just got out of bed and reeks of booze, with a voice kind of like Liam Neeson.”
That was fair, I supposed. I hadn’t showered in a couple days, I hadn’t shaved in a week, and I’d been drinking whisky just before they’d arrived. The dark circles under my eyes weren’t doing me any favors, either. I wasn’t sure who Liam Neeson was—a cinema actor, probably—but it was an Irish name, so it probably wasn’t too far off either.
“Well, you found me. What do you want?”
“My partner and I are working a case, and we’re trying to clear some things up. We’ve visited several occult and new age shops around the city, as well as a couple college professors. No one’s been able to help us so far, but the general consensus seems to be that this is the best place in the area to go for information on the occult, especially obscure topics. John Rafferty over at Penn, in particular, spoke very highly of you.”
I scoffed and rolled my eyes. Rafferty was a professor of philosophy and religious studies, and self-styled occult expert, who occasionally ordered books through my shop. Personally, I thought he was a hack, someone who picked evidence to support his theories rather than developing theories to explain the evidence. But he wasn’t an idiot, and while he wasn’t part of the magical underworld himself, he likely knew enough from his studies and his tangential contact with it to figure out that I was more than a simple entrepreneur.
Detective Lajoie glanced back at his partner. She didn’t say anything, but her eyes were narrowed in irritation and she was absentmindedly—or perhaps intentionally—tapping her foot in impatience. I didn’t know what her problem was, but she clearly didn’t want to be here. That was fine. I didn’t want her there either. And I certainly had no interest in getting involved with a police investigation.
“I sell books. I’m not a consultant,” I said curtly and turned back toward the back room.
“It’s a murder investigation, Mr. Quinn,” he entreated. “Please, just a few minutes of your time.”
I stopped but didn’t turn to face him. “Evan Townes, I assume?”
“That’s the one. What do you know about it?”
“Aside from the fact I know the victim was one of Rafferty’s teaching assistants at Penn, not much,” I gave a slight shake of my head. “I read about it in the Inquirer, and I’ve heard rumors that some detectives have been asking around. It’s a small community.”
“Fair enough, Mr. Quinn. Will you help us catch his killer?”
I thought about it for a few seconds. I was already going to have to investigate Evan’s death. I saw no sense in complicating that investigation by getting tied up with the police. If it were a genuine magical ritual, their investigation would go nowhere—the police had no hope of catching a rogue sorcerer. And if it were just a mundane murder with occult trappings, my expertise would be pointless. It was a waste of my time either way.
“No,” I finally answered. “Ring the bell if you decide to buy anything.” I again started toward the door to the back room.
“We just need help identifying some symbols found at the crime scene. Google has come up short. Everyone else we spoke with mentioned you’re some kind of an expert with esoteric languages and symbols.”
I stopped again and reconsidered. That was truer than they would believe. While some aspect of the Fae’s magic allows them to speak any human language they choose without ever having to study it, I’d had to work hard for two centuries to gain fluency in several dozen tongues. But that effort meant I was probably the foremost human scholar in obscure languages alive. Maybe I could help their investigation after all.
I turned around.
“Fine. You get two minutes. Show me.”
He pulled a yellow envelope from an inside pocket of his jacket. As he laid out several pictures on the counter in front of me, I quickly realized two things.
I immediately recognized the symbols in question as Faen glyphs, the characters used to write a variety of Otherworld languages, including a couple with which I was familiar. That was probably why they’d been directed to me; a handful of other occultists in the city might recognize it as Fae writing, but that would be about the extent of their knowledge. Even among trained sorcerers, it was the rare specialist who bothered to learn the languages of the Otherworld—there were no Barron’s courses in Faerie tongues; I’d had to study the few I knew the hard way, over many years. Unless the detectives happened to stumble across a Faerie who was willing to cooperate with mortal authorities, which was unlikely to say the least, I was probably the only person within a few hours’ drive who might actually be able to help them.
Right after identifying the glyphs, however, I also noticed that they appeared to be scrawled on the walls in blood.
I looked back up at the detective, one eyebrow cocked.
He nodded at the unvoiced question on my face. “Yes, Mr. Quinn, the symbols were drawn in the victim’s blood after his death. Do you recognize them?”
“Erm,” I grunted as I gave them a few seconds consideration. “Yes. They’re genuine glyphs, characters from an obscure ancient language not many alive have ever encountered.” No need to go into details about their origin.
“Can you read them?”
I looked back down at the photos and studied them carefully.
“No,” I replied after a moment, furrowing my brow. “I know the writing system, but not the dialect. Some of the words are somewhat familiar, but not enough so that I can piece it together. It’s kind of like if I were trying to read German, but only spoke English. I don’t know if I could translate it in any reasonable amount of time.”
Of course, I also had a few Fae contacts who could almost certainly translate it faster. But I wasn’t about to volunteer that information to the police, for the same reason no Faeries were likely to cooperate with the detectives of their own volition.
Immortal beings have long memories, and many of the Fae haven’t gotten over the wars and persecutions they suffered during the rise of Christianity and Islam, displacing them from their ancient territories in this world and forcing them into hiding. A lot of them still don’t trust humans, especially authority figures. The Treaty of Tara, the peace accord that ended the Faerie Wars a thousand years ago, includes a mutual commitment between the Arcanum and the Fae to keep the existence of Otherworldly beings—and that of the magical community in general, for that matter—a secret from ordinary humanity. Non-sorcerers don’t get to know about how the world really works except in only the direst of circumstances. Potential blood rites were bad, but not enough to justify risking a treaty violation, even if I’d thought the police would believe me.
“Hm,” Detective Lajoie mused, but then Detective Connors rolled her eyes and stomped over from her spot by the door.
“Come on, Henri. I told you this was a waste of our time. He’s just another crazy occultist with delusions of magical grandeur. We should be letting the lab guys find someone who can translate it for us.”
“Excuse me?” I looked over at her with a scowl, struggling to remain somewhat professional in the face of her insult.
She ignored me and continued addressing her partner. “We have more useful things to do with our time, like following up on the skinning angle.”
He turned to face her. “You heard what Professor Rafferty said, along with everyone else we talked to. You think the lab guys are going to hear anything different?”
She looked as if she was about to object further, but then thought better of it. She looked over at me, glaring as if I were somehow at fault for her partner’s decision to come here.
“Whether or not I’m deluded, Detective Connors,” I growled, “you and your partner came to me, not the other way around. And I won’t be insulted by people who came to ask my help, police or not. Get the hell out of my shop. Your two minutes are up. We’re done here.”
“Wha . . . ” she began to say, but her partner cut her off.
“Adrienne, go have a smoke,” he muttered. “I’ll meet you outside in a couple minutes.”
She looked at him and saw the expression on his face. He was clearly in no mood for further discussion. I assumed they’d been having a similar argument before they even got here, which at least explained why she’d looked irritated since they’d arrived. After shooting me another glare, she spun on her heel and walked outside in silence.
The bell over the door rang quietly after she left, and Detective Lajoie turned back to me.
“I’m sorry about that, Mr. Quinn. I understand your anger, but I’d appreciate if you reconsidered. This is still a murder investigation. Your assistance could help catch a killer.”
I closed my eyes and breathed deeply for a moment, trying to recover my composure. My hands were shaking. I knew full well what I was capable of when angry enough, so I had worked for many years on my ability to keep that particular emotion in check. The quiet voice whispering in the back of my mind to let it free slowly faded into silence as I calmed down.
I opened my eyes and looked at the big Haitian detective.
“No, Detective Lajoie,” I shook my head. “I gave you two minutes. I told you what I know. Now I have to be getting back to work.”
He glanced around the empty shop and turned back to me with a raised eyebrow.
“Really? This place keeps you that busy?”
I scowled. “That’s no concern of yours.”
“It’s a concern of mine,” he replied, “because right now you’re the only person to look at these photographs and recognize the symbols at all. Which means you may well be the only person who can help us catch a brutal murderer, Mr. Quinn. I hope you’ll do the right thing.”
I took a deep breath and thought it over. I had little desire to get involved—I much preferred to stick with my ley-line research and ignore the world around me. Plus, his partner’s behavior further disinclined me to assist them. She had made me angrier than I’d been in a very long time. I didn’t like having to silence that voice in the back of my mind, the one that was always ready to act if only I’d give in to its urging. Anything that gave it an excuse was something I would rather avoid.
But the victim was a sorcerer, the newspaper had described it as a satanic ritual, and the glyphs had been written in the victim’s blood. While I hadn’t been on good terms with most of the Arcanum for the better part of a century, I had never renounced my rank, never actually left the society. And since all signs were pointing to a sacrificial blood rite of some kind, that rank meant I was obliged to investigate. I couldn’t just ignore those responsibilities, no matter how much I might want to.
And if I were going to have to translate the writing anyway, it couldn’t really hurt to pass that information on to Detective Lajoie, as long as I left out anything which might lead to him learning things he was better off not knowing.
I finally grunted affirmatively. “Okay, Detective. I can’t promise it will be quick. But if I can translate them at all, I’ll let you know. Should I just keep the photos, then?”
He shook his head as he started to gather them up and return them to the envelope. “No, that would be against policy, sorry. Can’t risk them getting into the newspaper. But I can have the writing transcribed for you.”
I narrowed my eyes slightly at the implication I might leak details to the press. But I brushed it off—he didn’t know me, so that one wasn’t a personal insult, just a general precaution.
“Do you have an email address I can send the transcription to when it’s done?”
I silently handed him a business card from the counter next to the register, and he tucked it into his jacket. He then pulled out one of his own and laid it on the counter. I looked down at it, then back up at him.
“Thanks for your time,” he said as he turned toward the door. I briefly heard him saying something to his partner outside, but they walked off before I could make out anything clearly.
I put it out of my mind—Detective Connors wasn’t my problem anymore and thinking about her would only make me angry.
Instead, I went into the back office and downed the remainder of the whisky I’d been working on when the detectives arrived, then poured myself another.