Odd Cases

“Why are we meeting in a cafe?” Ali asked.

“I don’t want too much of the hotel staff to think I’m with the feds.”

“Why?”

“Someone cleaned the room,” I said, “And the staff didn’t want anyone without ID to see where the dumbwaiter was.”

“They’re allowed to exercise their rights,” Ali said, “By the way, do you know how Kinter’s ID badge got bent? He insists your friend fucked it up.”

“How illegal is that?” I asked.

Ali scowled.

“Then I know nothing,” I answered.

“Why are you defending him?”

I shrugged.

“He seemed better for this job than Romeo.”

“In what way?”

“I plead the 5th.”

Ali just took a sip of her coffee.

“And that’s all it is?”

“All what is?”

“He likes you, Jules.”

I scoffed.

“Of course he does. He asked me for a room even though I already told him I didn’t have one to offer. I know crush behavior when I see it.”

“So how do you feel about him?”

I shrugged.

“His flirting isn’t too egregious, and he isn’t useless in investigations.”

“That doesn’t sound like reciprocation.”

“Because it isn’t.”

“Have you told him?”

“No.”

“Will you?”

“Not unless it becomes a problem.”

I wasn’t going to close the door on a potential relationship just because I didn’t have feelings yet. My feelings tended to simmer before becoming definably romantic or otherwise. If Chase didn’t want to be led on, he could have asked me and moved on already.

“So you suspect the hotel?” Ali asked.

“I know it’s the hotel, but I need you to focus your team on other leads, so I can find what needs to be found.”

“Done,” Ali said. She slapped some cash in the table for the coffee, “Don’t get yourself killed, and tell me before you do something reckless.”

“I can’t be killed!” I cheerfully reminded her.

Vi was hiding in the desk when I returned to the hotel room. She flew onto my head without giving me time to find somewhere comfortable, flooding me with her overnight discoveries.

After leaving the room, she flew to the dumbwaiter, following the shaft down until she came to the very end. It opened into a laundry room, which seemed fairly typical, allowing for advancements in technology since I last worked laundry duty.

She checked the soap: normal. She checked the water: a little hard, but no magek. She checked the cleaned items: normal. She checked some of the dirty items: a little bit of magek, too much for just one mage in one room.

Whoever attacked Lux may have been herding mages to the hotel for some reason.

She held tight one of the towels, searching for any semblance of the connected soul. She sensed the last remnants of it in the dumbwaiter, but it seemed to be alive.

She continued the process with the rest of the towels, but after five more instances of the same results, she gave up.

She checked through a latched gate, but didn’t see any truck yet.

She flew to the lobby, hiding below the front desk as she waited for an opportunity to snoop. The concierge didn’t seem to leave it alone.

She focused on sensing the guests, most of whom turned out to be mages. Neither the concierge nor any of the guests seemed to imply this was unexpected or worthy of note, like they were told not to discuss it.

Suddenly, the concierge looked under the desk. Vi tried to take this moment to fly up and look at the book, but the concierge moved back up at lightning speed. Vi hid in the space behind the drawer, but the concierge pulled the drawer open. Vi flew down, staying within the floor, then the wall, then the floor again until she arrived at the desk in my room.

Chase was watching me intently once I returned to the present. I felt something soft beneath me, so he must have taken me to the bed.

“Sorry if I scared you,” I apologized.

“Weren’t you supposed to never sleep?”

“That wasn’t sleep, it was a trance, to see what Vi saw.”

Vi jumped out of my hair, offering a salute to Chase.

“Don’t salute him, he’s not your superior.”

“What did you see?” Chase asked.

“Not much.”

I sat up.

“I might need you to prove your credentials in a moment, though.”

“What did you have in mind?”

“I need to get a look at that guestbook.”

“Hi,” Chase said at the front desk, Vi hiding in his pocket, “I need some help. Can you come with me?”

“I’ll get—”

“Please,” he continued, “I need someone that can be discreet.”

“We can promise the utmost discretion for all our guests from all our staff. I’ll ring someone—”

“I’m sorry, but I can’t trust any of them.”

“They’re as trustworthy—”

“My girlfriend—” he gestured where I was sitting with a random magazine I wasn’t actually reading, “Thinks I’m getting tickets to an improv show, but I actually already have those.” He mouthed whatever his next plea was. Vi couldn’t discern the words.

“Of course,” the concierge finally said, lowering himself to a whisper, “If you could tell me what you have in mind.”

Vi took a peak out of the pocket to see the guestbook absent, the concierge focused on a notebook between her and her quarry.

“Well, you’ve seen her eyes,” Chase said, “So I want something she can feel, but not too weighty. It doesn’t have to sparkle, but probably one gem would make sure no one gets the wrong idea.”

“It almost sounds like you didn’t actually buy the first one.”

“Heirloom,” Chase answered, “She wasn’t greatly attached to my mother’s ring, so I might as well get her something special if I can’t use that one.”

“You’re not worried about losing an heirloom?”

“It’s a bit of an eyesore, honestly. I got it assessed, but it’s not worth much. It was really just for tradition.”

“Uh-huh.”

I had assumed Chase would be a better liar. This plan was close to imploding already.

After Chase offered a few more ring concepts, the concierge actually stepped away.

Vi flew down to try seeing the guestbook, scouring the drawer. She could vaguely hear talking above her. The concierge had probably returned, which meant she’d have to take a stealthier exit.

She found the book closer to the opening of the drawer, but the light was too minimal to successfully read too many words.

Suddenly some light appeared, and I could see stars beside Lux’s name and the name Chase gave.

Then Vi was snuffed out.

I gave a hardy gasp back with my magazine.

“I can’t believe they broke up,” I told the person staring at me.

I tried to be sure, connecting to Vi again, but she was gone.

Vi had lived through encounters far more dangerous than whatever the hell this hotel was, but this did her in. I wouldn’t have even caught the stars if I hadn’t been listening in.

“It’s all solved, Honey,” Chase said. Apparently he’d made it back to me.

“There were stars near your name and Lux’s. They identified mages in those rooms.”

“You don’t—”

“We need to get Ali here,” I insisted, “Before we’re next.”

Ali’s phone went to voicemail again.

“You were the one who told me to call you before doing something dangerous! Well, things are dangerous now.”

Chase pulled the phone out of my hand, hanging up the call.

“What is going on with you?”

“They got Vi!” I explained, “I had her for nearly 70 years. It shouldn’t have been possible.”

“I was wondering where it went,” Chase admitted.

I glared at him.

“Vi was a piece of my soul, solidified to work in tandem with the rest of me. She…”

I took a deep breath.

“I’ve had her longer than I’ve known any of my current friends. You have no idea what she’s survived, what she was built to survive. Any old asshole couldn’t just kill her on a whim.”

“So there’s something off about the concierge,” Chase concluded.

“No shit!”

Chase seemed to be assessing me for something.

“What?” I asked.

“We can’t stay here,” Chase insisted, “Maybe an outside phone will work better.”

That was probably smarter, the hotel staff probably knew we were onto them now, so it was really a ticking clock.

“I’ll distract them,” I said, “You get out and call people.”

“What?”

“They want mages. You aren’t one last I checked.”

“How would they know?”

I shrugged. I was running blind.

“In the worst case, we switch distraction strategies.”

“No, in the worst case, they get both of us. Then what are we supposed to do?”

“Even without powers, how long could they really hold you?” I asked.

“Depends on a lot of factors, but I’d probably get out around hour 12 at the latest.”

“Then if we both get caught, you find your way out and call Ali.”

Chase didn’t seem thrilled about this plan for some reason.

“I’ll probably be fine,” I assured him.

Now that I had a strategy outside of panic, I felt better. Vi still stung a bit, but if anything, I had a more power at my disposal now that I didn’t have to maintain her.

“I’ll just have to look into everything personally,” I decided.

I started on the roof, looking for evidence of the kidnapper. If this wasn’t targeted, then this had to be someone willing and able to fight mages, without being one themself.

The obvious answer was that they were a high-level Empowered, but those were always closely monitored, and many of them would have something detectable in their blood even without magek.

I checked over the edge again. They could have slowed their fall some way. They could have flown. They could have climbed.

There were too many options for me to learn anything.

So I had to narrow down my options.

I descended back to the crime scene, which remained intact.

I knew it had been cleaned. I knew the hotel staff probably did it. I knew Victoria Loch had witnessed the partially cleaned scene, starting this entire investigation.

Victoria was definitely hiding something, as was the man who came to comfort her, Rex, but I doubted they had anything to do with the conspiracy.

Lux had managed to make his attacker bleed, which meant he had a weapon.

I did my best to sense any magekal weapons in the room, but came up empty.

There were burn marks, which was probably why they weren’t able to clean up in a day. Which of the combatants made the burns?

A scheme this meticulous about hiding evidence wouldn’t want to work with someone who could possibly burn hotel rooms. The burn marks must have also been Lux’s work. I felt a twinge of pride for my nephew, but I dropped it quickly.

I checked the tiny amount of blood again, looking for something that wasn’t a mage.

The blood was still incredibly plain, uncomfortably plain. I didn’t detect any disease or injury, or even an excess of nutrients, like everything that made a human had been processed out of it.

It had to have been processed.

This wasn’t the kidnapper’s life-force. It was their meal.

That was how they were detecting mages, and subduing them.

It hadn’t been that long since I had a vampire neighbor. How could I have missed this?

Because the DSR barely believed someone like me existed. How was I supposed to convince them vampires were real?

I stepped beck out of the room.

“I wondered if it was you,” A french-accented concierge said, “I never met anyone else with a pixie.”

“How do you—”

He threw something my way, and without anything to support my missing leg, I fell to the floor, and everything turned to black.