Odd Cases

Spirit Mages don’t sleep. I know this because I’ve been one for centuries. It depends on the Spirit Mage when sleep goes for them. I don’t know if I was lucky or not for having it be one of the first things I lost.

My point being I would have noticed a fire get as big as the one I was witnessing that night. My room was surrounded in it, but it didn’t burn.

It must have been close to midnight for a spirit to conjure this for me.

“Are you the granter?” a voice asked from the flames.

Granter is an old term, from when Magek was called Feyla. A granter was someone who did favors for people to the best of their ability without expectation for much directly in return. The granter was then offered hospitality wherever they may stay. For a spirit’s purposes, I am a granter, because you can’t really get payment from them, and I like a good puzzle.

“I am Juliet Emery. If you wish to ask something of me, do so now.”

The flames blew out, collapsing into a man who was still slightly aflame.

“Death hasn’t cooled you off, has it,” I muttered.

“I’m told you can find things out,” the spirit said.

“Anyone can find things out if they apply themselves,” I said.

“Can you figure out how I died?”

“Of course I can,” I said, “Any suspects?”

“No, not who, or why, how. I know who did it.”

That gave me pause. Most ghosts want vengeance of some kind. Curiosity is a rare thing to keep one going after death.

“I could hazard a guess.” I eyed the flames still licking up him.

“You don’t get it. This wouldn’t kill me,” he gestured at the fire, “At least it shouldn’t, most of the time. I want to know how.”

“Well, if you know who did it, why don’t you tell me? It will be simpler to guess how you died if I see the resources of your killer.”

“No!”

The flames increased. I moved back. Even if the fire couldn’t hurt me, it was still a fearsome prospect. I put my hands up in surrender.

“Alright. I will do my best to determine your cause of death, without searching for who killed you,” I promised. As the air in the room hummed with power, my client disappeared.

“Romeo!” I yelled.

“Yes, master,” Romeo said as he looked in through the door.

Romeo isn’t human. He’s a djinn that’s been banished to Earth and bound to a bracelet I wear. He looks slightly translucent at all times. His ethnicity looks closest to one from Earth’s “middle-eastern” region, along with wide eyes that show his entire color-shifting irises.

He wasn’t always named Romeo, mind you, that name came from an acquaintance calling him that as joke about my own name; Romeo refused to go by any other name after that.

“Don’t call me master,” I told him.

Technically, I am his master, but not because I want to be. I don’t wish to be anyone’s master, as that requires worry about another person. Romeo just didn’t want to be stuck out of existence, so he cajoled me into keeping the bracelet on.

“You afford me too much freedom to make me stop,” Romeo said.

Sometimes I’m annoyed by how my morals stop me from making him suffer too much.

“It doesn’t matter,” I said, “We have a case.”

“How may I assist?” Romeo asked.

“Tea,” I said, “And then I need you to manage the shop until I have need of you, hopefully not at all.”

Romeo’s expression was dejected, but he didn’t object. As he made my tea, I prepared for a trip to the coroner’s.

I sat outside the coroner’s office for several hours, dressed appropriately for my reputation.

Though we live in a world of people who can wield metal from a distance of several yards or use the shadows as a shield to stop fire another person created from killing them, most people still don’t believe one can talk to the dead. To be fair to them, I’m not the easiest to believe by most standards. Only one person in the coroner’s office believes me, and that’s the chief medical examiner, Zach Hadley. His father apparently had the same burden.

To keep Zach’s subordinates from questioning me too hard, I dress to let them believe I’m either a liar or delusional. I wear mismatched socks, one of which importantly covers my missing lower right leg, which has long since been replaced by my own ethereal power. My rumpled shirt is unseen underneath the poncho.

I love the poncho, I got it at a thrift store. It was made for a young child named Audrey hopefully fond of roses and the color pink, because it is pink, with a rose pattern embroidered on its pocket, along with the name Audrey. The pocket is perfect for holding cookies, which it held at the moment to keep me from getting bored as I waited for Zach.

I suppose waiting may be the best time to explain myself, appearancewise. I don’t stand much taller than five feet, my shoulders are wide and my legs are short for my size. My eyes were brown once, but now they’ve milkily glossed over so it’s hard to tell iris from pupil. My hair, which I keep fairly long and at the moment pulled back with a pink headband, is white, not platinum blond, white. If I’m not careful, I’ll scare most people.

“Jules!” Zach called as he walked up. Zach was tall, tan in a Mediterranean way, and always dressed in black and red, even his lab-coat was black at this point.

“Zach!” I yelled back.

“Have a cold case you need me to check the records for?” he asked as he walked by me. I removed myself from the bench to walk alongside him.

“Maybe. I had someone wreathed in flame come to me claiming fire shouldn’t have killed him. If you have someone who was in a fire, but died of not-burns, that could save me a lot of trouble.”

Zach stopped in his tracks.

“That’s an active case.”

“What?”

“It’s an active DSR case. The guy was a pyrokinetic.”

The DSR, or the Federal Department for Superhuman Resources, doesn’t get much love in a Haven town like the one Zach and I live in. When the population is mostly superhuman, you don’t have a great fondness for an organization previously called the Department for Nonhuman Affairs. With DSR investigators on the case, I didn’t have a great chance of gaining information until the case was dead.

“Do they need a consultant?” I asked. I’m close to the leader of one of the investigative teams, even if I speak ill of her choice in career. When they reach a dead-end on a case, I occasionally get a call to be clever, possibly with the help of spirits, and resolve the case. If they hadn’t called me, I knew the answer.

Zach shook his head.

“Detective Chase doesn’t see the need to bring you in far as I can tell.”

“Then I’ll call Ali myself.”

“No,” Ali said, offense blatant, “We don’t even know if it was a murder. We’re just dotting the Is and crossing the Ts.”

“Then it should be no problem to tell me the cause of death.”

“Yes, it should be, Jules. I’m not supposed to give details to a civilian, even an occasional consultant.”

I could argue and guilt-trip, but Ali’s job meant the world to her.

I knew Ali when she was growing up. I knew her father when he was growing up. I was the person he trusted to be her godmother, so when Ali was little, I taught her what I knew of magek, leaving her disappointed by her lack of power in that regard. As a teen, she tagged along whenever I did an investigation for a spirit like the one I was doing now. That was what put her on the path to becoming a detective with the DSR. They actively recruited her for being a normal human that grew up in a Haven Town.

Her hiring at the DSR is about the time we drifted apart, turning our relationship from practically family to detective and occasional consultant. My lack of fondness for the DSR certainly helped lead to the predicament.

“Who were you talking to?” a voice asked from behind me. I turned to find a tall blond man, with a slight Mediterranean accent and an unnervingly winning smile.

“None of your business,” I said, “What are you doing near the coroner’s office?”

“My cousin works here, and I wish to bother him until I have something to do. Yourself?”

I wasn’t fond of lying, especially when the truth is so outlandish.

“I’m investigating the cause of death for a ghost.”

“Need any help?” he asked.

“Not unless you can help me find the cause of death for one of the bodies I’m not allowed to see.”

“Okay,” the man said. As he reached the doors he looked back at me, “Are you coming?”

I nodded, following.

“What body do you need to find?” he asked.

“I never got a name, but it was someone in a fire who died from something else, like his burns weren’t severe enough.”

The stranger nodded.

“What are you doing here?” Zach accused, storming toward us.

“I’m helping my new friend,” the man turned to me, “What was your name, sweetheart?”

“Jules,” Zach said, “Don’t trust this man.”

“I take it you’re the cousin he was here to bother,” I deduced.

“Yes,” the stranger confirmed.

“We’re not related,” Zach said.

“How do you two know each other?” the stranger asked, ignoring Zach’s comment.

“Immortals anonymous,” Zach answered, “She’s a spirit mage.”

“Like your father?”

“Like my father.”

The stranger took his turn to scrutinize me.

“You don’t look like him.”

“We’re not related either!” Zach said, “Go back to wherever you’re renting, Chase.”

“But I still need to help Jules, here.”

“Juliet,” I corrected.

“And she really needs to see a body.”

Zach looked at both of us.

“Ali said no, didn’t she?”

I gave a pleading look that told Zach he was right.

“What favor are you calling?” Zach asked.

“Coffee,” I said.

Zach crossed his arms, tasting the deal for a moment.

“That’s a big favor to call.”

“I’ll make it up soon enough.”

“Will you?”

“I will.”

Zach looked at each of us.

“Plausible deniability, and I’ll let this count for only half.”

I smiled.

“Thanks, Zach, you’re the best.”

As I walked through him toward the body, Zach grabbed Chase’s arm so he couldn’t follow.

“Like I said,” Zach projected, “The body of William Cho is off limits.”

I changed direction away from the body and toward the nearest computer. After checking for anyone watching, I used Zach’s login to search for the name William Cho. It wasn’t like the body would do me much good without a doctor to tell me what I was seeing anyways. This just cut out the middleman.

Records listed him as a pyrokinetic. Nasty burns, but unexpected for how long he was in the fire. A strange buildup in the lungs, and likely killed by suffocation.

“Perfect.”

Which was when I spotted Jeremy Kinter, a member of Ali’s team, turning the corner toward me. I ducked down. It took a long time to be clear of him, but at least I had my answer.

“Suffocation,” I told Cho that evening, “I looked at the file myself.”

“Suffocation from what?” Cho asked.

My expression turned disappointed. I knew this wasn’t going to be easy, because it never was. A curious spirit would need better specifics than “You suffocated, my condolences, must have been an awful time.” No, he needed to know what he suffocated on, and I doubted smoke would cause a strange buildup in the lungs that fast, but maybe I was wrong.

“I don’t know, Smoke inhalation? Maybe what started the fire had some nasty fumes.”

Cho clearly wasn’t convinced.

“If you told me who killed you, I could probably figure out what caused the fumes.”

Cho disappeared, but I knew I was still on call.

“Can I get an easy problem at some point?” I asked Romeo.

“When you get easy ones, you complain about them being boring.”

“Not when I have to sneak into the coroner’s office,” I argued.

“I assume Zachary gave you permission.”

“Yeah, yeah, cashed in half of coffee as long as he had plausible deniability. Full price if it’s not plausible.”

Romeo made a point of ignoring me.

“Tomorrow,” I announced, “I call the institute, and maybe disrupt a murder investigation.”

“Why not now?” Romeo asked.

I gave him a calm look.

“Nobody’s going to answer at this time of night.”