Odd Cases

I watched the blood pool above and behind the reptilian man’s shoulder.

“Yeah,” I returned the blood to its vial, “The medic didn’t miss anything: You need to rest your shoulder, probably wear a sling.”

“I thought you said she could help,” the man whined at his tall, dark companion.

“Yeah,” Ben confirmed, “She could help me convince you not to fight for awhile. Thanks, Jules.”

“Anytime,” I said, “As long as I’m not busy or disinterested.”

“Appreciate it.”

“Can I have my blood back?” the reptilian man asked.

“Why, what are you going to do with it?”

“What are you going to do with it?”

“Let it go, Zals,” Ben lazily ordered, “I’ll put you on ticket duty, and you can practice commentary if you’d like.”

“She just gets to have my blood?” Zals asked.

“She’s not going to do anything bad with it. I’ve given her plenty of my own blood.”

“She could be manipulating your mind to make you want to give all our blood to her!”

“First,” I corrected, “I deal in souls, not minds, and I’m not very good at manipulating them, frankly. Second, his blood is more valuable than yours, but I’m doing this as a favor, so I’m accepting a discount.” I twiddled with the vial.

“Discount?”

“She’s not going to kill you,” Ben insisted, “She’s not going to manipulate you. At worst she’s going to use it to cast a very standard spell.”

“Tracking spells mostly, but not tracking you, unless you lose something and need my help.”

Zals continued to watch me uncomfortably. I stared back at him, trying to make him more uncomfortable.

My attention got diverted by a ringing phone.

“Precedent’s official—”

“Hey Jules, are you free?”

“That wholly depends on what you’re about to ask for my help with, Detective Chase.”

Ben quietly dragged Zals out of the shop.

“Would you like to come out to California for a bit to help with a disappearance case?” Ali asked. “It’s probably kidnapping, but we haven’t gotten a note.”

“That doesn’t sound like my usual contract work.”

“It’s not,” Ali confirmed, “A mage named Lux Craddock—”

I hung up the phone immediately. The Craddocks were an old mage family, dating a little later than the time of Merlin. They were related to a great hero who gave his life to save Avalon. They were at the top of my list of mages to avoid. I was not going to help with a case that involved any of them, not if any of them might see me.

The phone rang again.

“Pre—”

“This is a time-sensitive—”

I hung up before Ali could string me along and unplugged my phone.

“What did the phone ever do to you?” Chase Hilger, my tenant, asked from the staircase.

“I don’t want to be contacted for awhile,” I said.

“That probably means it’s real interesting. What would scare Juliet Emery so much that she’d unplug her phone to avoid it?”

He was creeping toward the plug.

“None of your business, and if you plug it back in, I’ll kick you out of my house forever.”

He laughed, but stepped back with hands in surrender.

“Dinner!” Romeo yelled above us. For someone who didn’t need to eat, and had his sense of taste incredibly dulled, he sure enjoyed cooking.

“Oh right,” Chase said, “I was supposed to tell you about that.”

I stepped through the counter and leaned on the wall next to the window as I flipped the open sign.

“You’re always leaning on things,” Chase noted.

I stood normally for a moment, though it was obvious to anyone I was missing the lower half of my right leg.

I walked through him to get upstairs for dinner.

“Your food’s going to get cold,” I warned him.

When I say the Craddocks are near the top of my list of mages I want to avoid, there is someone higher than any of them, and it was harder to ignore her when she walked into my store.

Diligence Oberon is taller than me, with beautiful brown skin and warm black hair. Her eyes almost seem darker still. At the moment, she looked like a woman in her fifties, but I knew that could change on a dime. She carried herself with the dignity one would expect of a princess, probably because she used to be one.

“We’re closed,” I told her, “Come back another time.”

“I’m afraid that isn’t possible, Viola was it?”

“Juliet,” I corrected, “It’s been Juliet for 60 years.”

“You look young for someone on her 4th name.”

“Fourth name that you know of.”

Diligence smiled with teeth that felt a little too white, even with the contrast of her skin.

“Juliet what?” she asked, “It was Viola Emerson before, if I—”

“You know,” I said, “When you tell someone you’re leaving forever, you would hope they would respect your choices, and not come back into your life with a request you probably don’t want to do.”

“I do need a favor,” she admitted.

“I knew it.”

I gestured for her to explain it. I didn’t want to help her, but letting her talk was the fastest way to not have to talk to her anymore.

“My granddaughter.”

“How many greats?” I asked.

“I never kept track.”

“Okay.”

“My granddaughter’s betrothed has been kidnapped.”

I took a deep breath, and exhaled calmly.

“Aaargh!”

I knew when things weren’t a coincidence.

“Why don’t you save him?” I asked, “You were the most skilled mage I ever knew when we met, and it’s been centuries.”

“If I step in, it will affect diplomatic relations with earth’s governments. We’ve already had to step in more thanks to the Elementals.”

“Are you here to call them out? They’re shacked up in my cousin’s old cabin. There might still be booby traps, but I can take you.”

“You have a cousin?”

“Not a first cousin,” I said, “She moved away too, so we don’t really talk anymore.”

Diligence shook her head.

“Can you save Lux Craddock?” she asked.

Despite being my goddaughter, Ali couldn’t make me get involved in Craddock business, but Diligence…

I owe nothing to Diligence. I fully understand that, but she’s the only person still alive who grieved my brother with me, and I can’t ignore that history, so if she asks me to help her granddaughter, even if said granddaughter is no relation to the late brother Diligence would have married, of course I’ll help.

“This is a really shitty thing to ask of me,” I reminded her.

“I know.”

“I’ll hold it against you.”

“I’ll pay the price.”

“Two vials of your blood,” I demanded. Just because I couldn’t say no to her, didn’t mean I wouldn’t set conditions.

“What for?”

“For having to deal with Craddocks, and your granddaughter,” I explained, “Two vials of your blood.”

She presented her hand. I grabbed the vials, cleaned a needle, and pricked her finger so I could pull out two vials worth of some of the most useful mage-blood in existence.

I replugged the phone and called Ali.

“Who is this?”

“I’ll help,” I said, “No payment needed, just let me do what I do.”

“Whoa, who said you could bring a friend?” Kinter objected immediately.

Chase held his hands up, “I’m here because she’s shy.”

“Bullshit.”

“I am shy when it comes to established mages,” I insisted, “He can talk for me.”

Kinter just glared. Ali tossed booties and gloves to Chase.

“Just don’t fuck up the crime scene,” she said.

The scene of the kidnapping wasn’t clean. Burn marks appeared in several places, a window was shattered, and there was blood on the floor.

“Forensics is—”

I focused my will on the blood, managing to pull a few drops out of the carpet.

A simple touch would have told me if there was magek in the blood, and these few droplets gave me nothing. Even a lack-magek would read as somewhat nonhuman.

“It’s not his. I recommend expediting the DNA analysis to find a suspect.”

I checked the window again. A lot of the glass was still in place, too much for an ordinary human to enter or exit through, let alone while grabbing another person.

I checked the blood again, biting the inside of my cheek. I didn’t need much of my own blood for this, but it seemed wise to avoid anything visible in front of the power cops.

I flicked the small amount of blood to the north, east, south, then west to start a tracking spell, then I flicked the ground to focus it into a path.

“What the—”

“Hush,” Chase warned in a deeper tone than I was used to.

The blood spill was worse than I thought, forming a path out the door.

“Where did you find the blood?” I asked.

“Don’t you have eyes?” Kinter asked.

“Was it hidden by anything?”

“It was under a table,” Ali confirmed.

“Why did you move the table?” Chase asked.

“Exit seemed too clean. We wanted to see if there was anything hidden behind the walls.”

“It seemed too clean because the scene was cleaned, just not cleaned well enough.”

“What?” everyone asked.

I followed the trail of blood outside the room, through the hallway to a dumbwaiter, then the blood moved toward a stair. I couldn’t throw away a good lead, but the trail would only last so long.

“Check where this goes,” I ordered, running toward the stair.

I didn’t bother opening the door as I ran through. The blood went up for some reason. I took a deep breath, and let go of all attempts at corporeality, floating higher and higher, until I got to the highest door. I stepped through it. They’d even bothered to clean the blood up here. It went toward the ledge, but by the time I got there, the spell had worn out.

“Did he jump?” Chase asked.

“How’d you get here so fast?”

He revealed a set of lockpicks.

“I’m glad I didn’t leave you alone with my store.”

“You’re just saying that,” he replied bashfully as if I’d given a compliment, “So, did he jump?”

I looked down. The ground didn’t look damaged at all.

“If they did, they didn’t fall. To survive at that height, most of the pressure would have to hit the sidewalk, which is more time-consuming to repair.”

Chase nodded.

“How are you going to get down?” I asked.

“I could jump.”

“Please don’t.”

“If you insist.”

He walked back to the door, opening it with ease, revealing Kinter’s now-bent ID card where the lock would usually hit. I laughed.

“Do you think you can sneak it back on him in that condition.”

“Absolutely.”

He pulled a gold pendant out of his shirt for two seconds before tucking it back in.

“What’s that supposed to be?”

“Credentials.”

Chase led me through the first available door, then we took the elevator back down to our floor.

“Why clean the blood but nothing else?” I asked.

“Maybe they would have if someone hadn’t interrupted them?”

“Who interrupted?”

Kinter was glaring at us as the elevator doors opened.

“Where is it?”

“They seemed to exit to the roof,” I answered, “But I’m not sure how they got back down, if they didn’t just fly off.”

Kinter lunged at Chase, who easily overpowered him, forcing him against the elevator wall.

“That was uncalled for,” Chase noted.

“Give my ID back, scumbag.”

“What ID?” Chase asked, offering me a wink.

“The one I was missing when the staff demanded credentials to see where the dumbwaiter went.”

Chase let go of him, leaving the elevator and pressing the ground floor button. He gave a tiny wave.

“Check your pockets.”

I jumped out just as the doors closed, giggling.

“This is the worst day of his fucking life.”

“For real?” Chase asked, “That’s a good life.”

“I have no clue,” I admitted, “And I don’t actually care.”

“They probably won’t let us see the dumbwaiter since I gave the ID back.”

I concurred.

“Let’s find our interruption.”