The Collected Christopher Connery Page 7

  After thinking for a moment, Gail shrugged. “Maybe, but my job is to work out how something was done so I can catch the bastard who did it and make sure they don’t do it again, not so I can do it myself.”

  Nia’s mouth dropped open. “You can’t possibly think – I have no intention of –!”

  “Wait, I wasn’t finished.”

  It was only with great effort that Nia managed to keep silent. How could Detective Lin possibly think that any Academy magician would employ such foul magic? That wasn’t the kind of magic they hoped to learn from Connery. If Connery could perform such powerful and complex magic for evil purposes then he very likely had also recreated spells that could be used for good. That was the magic they were looking for. Not… not what they had seen today.

  “All I’m saying is that whoever did the magic we saw today committed murder three times over and tried to kill us in the bargain. I got the feeling the magic itself wasn’t strictly Academy-sanctioned either.”

  “No indeed,” said Nia quietly. Bringing someone back from the dead was acceptable under a very specific set of circumstances, one of which – the revival of a magician with important knowledge – she was currently operating under, but those poor people… They hadn’t even been properly revived. They had been puppets trapped in a mocking reenactment of their former lives until triggered to attack, their bodies held together by only the thinnest strings of magic. Nia remembered how the blood had burst from the woman’s stomach as if from a broken pipe. She hadn’t seen that much blood since –

  “Whoever did it must have had a sick sense of humor,” said Arthur.

  Both Nia and Gail stared at him.

  “What exactly did you find funny about any of that?” the detective asked slowly.

  “I’m not saying I thought it was funny,” Arthur replied defensively, “but clearly somebody was trying to put on a show. I’m not a magic expert, but I know a lot about the human body and how it behaves and I can tell you that just about every wound on those bodies was made after death. If had to guess, I’d say the actual cause of death was poison.” He nodded toward Gail. “Probably whatever was in the toy box.”

  Gail chafed her arms then said, “So you’re saying it was just a bit of flash to scare us off?”

  “Yeah, though considering how quickly they tried to kill us, I don’t think the person doing the magic meant for us to get away. So it wasn’t trying to scare us off as much as just scare us, which is why I think whoever did it had to have a pretty sick sense of fun.”

  “True, I guess most people would be afraid of a lady’s guts exploding with no warning.” To Nia’s surprise, Gail looked at her and smiled. “Too bad for them, our resident warrior princess isn’t most people.”

  Nia blushed. “Oh no, I was – I was quite startled.”

  “Quite startled,” Gail repeated with a low chuckle. Then she leaned back in her chair, brows drawn down in thought. “So someone put a lot of effort into this freak show. Why?”

  Why indeed. Nia twisted the chain of her necklace, thinking hard, but all of the possible answers – they were just evil or they had some grudge against the family or they just wanted to try out the magic – all sounded too vague or unsupported.

  “Like I said before, I’m no expert, but…” Arthur gazed thoughtfully through the window behind Gail, “but I took a quick look at Connery’s – at Connery – and that did not look like a decapitation performed in anger. Whoever did that knew what they were doing. They almost certainly used a scalpel and a bone saw and took their time.”

  “Well, that confirms it, I guess,” Gail sighed.

  Confirms what? Nia bit back the instinctive question, wanting to work it out for herself. What was she missing? A carefully designed trap, a meticulously neat decapitation… Oh. “Whoever removed the head and put it in that house clearly planned to come back for it and wanted to keep it safe.”

  “Yep, therefore I’d bet that whoever killed Connery didn’t plan on letting him stay dead for long, not if they went out of their way to keep him in good shape. And who is the one person in the world who has the most interest in making sure that Connery doesn’t stay dead?”

  Nia’s first thought was the Academy, but that wasn’t quite right, was it? If the Academy knew where Connery was, he would reassembled and alive already, the Directors probing him for information, so that left – “Mister Connery himself.”

  Gail nodded. “That’s what it looks like to me. I’m guessing he had this all planned from the beginning. I can’t say I’m surprised.” Then she wiped her hands together like she was brushing the case from them. “In my experience, the best way to deal with Connery is to never give him what he wants, so –”

  “But we’re not!” Nia burst out. “In fact, I would say that we’re doing just the opposite!”

  “Huh?”

  “Think of it this way, I agree that it seems likely that Mister Connery chose to die to avoid paying for his no doubt numerous and heinous crimes against civilized society –”

  “You watch a lot of movies, don’t you?”

  “However, it is also clear that he has a contingency plan in place, a plan that almost certainly involves one of his underlings reviving him after an appropriate amount of time has passed. Whether he would take up a new identity or simply reemerge as himself, I don’t know…”

  “How long will a revived person stay alive for? I assume it’s not forever or there’d be a lot more 300-year-old magicians wandering around.”

  That brought Nia up short. “Well, only a few weeks at most, but –”

  Gail shrugged. “Then he won’t be reemerging for long.”

  Goodness, this detective was frustrating. “But Connery has been tampering with magic that we haven’t seen centuries. Who knows what he may attempt to do if he has even a few weeks to experiment? At the Academy, he wouldn’t get the chance. We could obtain his knowledge in secure surroundings.”

  Gail grunted noncommittally. “Maybe, but even if his underlings want to follow through with the plan to bring him back – and I’m not sure why they would given what an asshole he was – they can’t do it now, can they? Connery’s not Connery without his head and we’ve got that.”

  “But one part could be easily stolen!”

  “I thought you said the Academy is secure?”

  Nia gritted her teeth before answering. “It is. But storing something long term is always risky. I can think of only one solution.”

  “I bet I can think of more. Why not just set the head on fire tonight?”

  “We have to finish what we set out to do,” Nia said over her. “Find the rest of Connery and bring him back to the Academy, so we can learn all we can from him. Then we can dispose of him for good.” She looked at Arthur for support before remembering that he technically wasn’t permitted to comment. He apparently intended to take full advantage of that fact, looking around the dining room as if the only thing on his mind was the arrival of his dinner.

  Gail was shaking her head, her face shadowed by frustration. “Never do anything Connery wants you to do.”

  “But his knowledge –”

  “He murdered –”

  “Yes, and now he can pay for his crimes by helping –”

  “Food’s here,” said Arthur lightly, giving both Nia and Gail enough warning to bite back the rest of their arguments before the waiter arrived. Nia forced a polite smile, but Gail just kept glaring flatly across the table. As soon as the waiter had laid their food in front of them and walked away, she pounced back into the conversation.

  “Look, I get it. The Academy wants to know what Connery knew, I understand that, but don’t you think we ought to worry about what’s best for the whole city? Because dead Connery is a lot better than living Connery, I can tell you that.”

  “I understand you believe that, but –”

  “Do you? Because I’ve seen his work firsthand. Those people we saw today? Those aren’t the first deaths he’s been responsible for, not b
y a long shot, and no one in the city moved as much vernix as he did.” She looked at Nia pointedly. “He must have had a hell of a hook-up inside.”

  “Of course he had a contact in the Academy,” Nia said peevishly. “It happens. Magicians aren’t immune to the temptations of money and power.”

  Gail raised her eyebrows as she toyed with her glass. “You don’t say?”

  Temper fraying, Nia couldn’t resist saying, “I doubt you could claim that the laymen police are all entirely honest.”

  To her surprise, Gail laughed. “I wouldn’t take that bet in a million years. Why do you think I quit the force? Besides the shitty pay, that is. The only thing I hate more than bastards like Connery are the bastards I worked with.”

  “Oh,” said Nia. Then nothing else, because what else was there to say?

  “Connery had plenty of cops in his pocket, too. The ones he couldn’t tempt with money and vernix, he threatened. Threatened them and their families.” A humorless smile twisted Gail’s mouth. “Most people can’t take that hanging over them day after day.”

  “And you can?” Arthur asked, his tone more curious than challenging.

  “Yeah, I don’t have any family, so the only one they can threaten is me and I don’t scare easy.” She flashed a sudden grin at Nia. “We have that in common at least.”

  “Oh. Well, I don’t know about…” Nia glanced uncertainly at Arthur. Goodness, this woman was difficult to read.

  As if to prove her point, Gail instantly grew somber again. “I won’t lie, though Connery scares me. There was something just not right about him. I have a hard time believing that anything short of the secret to purifying the rain would be worth bringing him back for.”

  “But he’ll be revived within the Academy, under the supervision of the most powerful magicians in the city, and once he tells us about his research, he will be – humanely euthanized again.”

  “Why do you think he would tell you the truth? He’ll want to keep himself alive for as long as he can and if his contacts on the inside – All right, if you shake your head any harder, it’ll fall off. Tell me why I’m wrong already.”

  Nia fiddled with her pearl earring as she tried to explain as tastefully as possible. “Living in a resurrected body is uncomfortable. The subjects seem acutely aware that they are living in briefly animated corpses. All they want is to be returned to death and that makes them extremely cooperative.”

  Gail scowled skeptically. “I’d think at least some people would want to go on living as long as possible, no matter how uncomfortable they were.”

  “All of the data I reviewed suggests otherwise and I reviewed quite a bit of data. Every single resurrection performed in the last two hundred years, actually.”

  “How many is that?”

  “Oh, only about one hundred and thirteen or so. It’s a very uncommon procedure.”

  “Uh huh. Anyway, you’re saying not one of those one hundred and thirteen people wanted to live after being brought back?”

  “Not one.” Nia had been passively aware of this before she had begun her research, but reading the transcribed accounts of the resurrected persons’ pleas for death had pounded the fact home. There had actually been talk of resurrecting Nia’s mother in the days following the – accident. Only six years old at the time, Nia had believed they could just bring her mother back exactly as she had been and had cried bitterly when the Directors had decided against the resurrection.

  Knowing what she did now, she was grateful that her mother had been spared the suffering and indignity.

  Gail was still watching her with those keen dark eyes. “So how many of these have you done?”

  “Personally? None. There have only been two resurrections performed in my lifetime. It’s not something undertaken without the greatest need.” She met Gail’s eyes seriously. “And this is the greatest need.”

  Looking down at the table, Gail seemed to ponder her words for a long moment. Then she sighed and rubbed her temple with a finger. “Fine. To be honest, I need the money, so I’m willing to play along for now.” She sighed. “Which I guess doesn’t make me any better than the bastards I worked with.”

  Despite winning the argument, Nia found herself still speaking. “But that’s not true. Not only could Connery’s magical knowledge benefit every person in this city, but at the very least, we will discover what types of dark magic are currently in circulation. That will help us prevent the emergence of another Connery.”

  There was another moment of hard staring, which made Nia feel like she was under suspicion of committing a crime. She half-expected Gail to shine a bright light into her face and demand to know her whereabouts at midnight three weeks prior. But all the detective did was sigh and lean back in her chair. “I guess this won’t be the first time I’ve played into Connery’s hands in hopes of outwitting him. But –” And this “but” was as hard and sharp as a crack in glass – “before I agree to this, I want a veto.”

  Nia glanced at Arthur in confusion, but he only shrugged back at her. “A veto?”

  “You know, in a manner of speaking. I obviously can’t stop the Academy from doing whatever the hell they want, but if things start getting out of hand, I want to at least put a temporary stop to the investigation until we can weigh our options and I want there to be options. I don’t want to rush into anything when it’s clearly completely fucked. And if I don’t like the sound of what you decide then you let me out of our contract without any bullshit, okay? Obviously, I won’t take any money I didn’t earn, but I want some assurance that I’m not going to get blacklisted if I decide I can’t go along this. I know I can’t make you do anything, but I think I can trust your word. So, what do you say?”

  What exactly makes you believe that your assistance is so valuable that we – then Nia remembered who had found Connery’s head that afternoon and who had nearly gotten herself killed in the process. The detective’s naysaying might be irritating, but there was no arguing with her effectiveness. She looked up and found Gail waiting patiently for her answer.

  You’ve been working alone for too long, Nia. It’s about time you learned to compromise.

  “Very well, agreed.” She held out her hand. “I won’t make you do anything you truly disagree with, detective.”

  Gail smirked as if she didn’t believe her, but she shook Nia’s hand nonetheless. “Thank you, Illuminator Graves, I appreciate it.”

  “Please call me Nia. We’re partners after all.”

  “All right. You can call me Gail then, if you want.”

  “Oh, I’ll try!” Nia couldn’t quite smother her embarrassed smile. “I may occasionally slip and call you ‘detective’ from time to time, though. I don’t get to say that very often. It adds a certain something to the experience, don’t you think?”

  Gail laughed so hard that she almost knocked her drink off the table with her elbow. She steadied it with one hand then looked up, still smiling. “I guess it does.”

  Arthur’s eyes flicked to the window behind Gail. “It’s raining again.”

  Normally that would hardly be cause for comment, but as the wet summer months drew closer, everyone watched the rain with more heavy-hearted interest, knowing that each storm might be the one to swallow the sun for good. Nia watched the raindrops streak across the window, blurring the lights of the marquee and turning the streets to black rivers. As much as Nia loved the sunshine, she had to admit that there was something beautiful about the way the wet city seemed to shine with its own light.

  Beyond the glass, she could see people opening umbrellas and pulling plastic ponchos over their heads as they hurried to cover their cars. One or two unfortunate people who had forgotten their umbrellas and ponchos scurried into shops for cover.

  “If people cared even half as much about covering the people down in Gracetown as they did about protecting their precious cars, we wouldn’t have so many bad water deaths after every storm,” Gail muttered, twisting in her chair to glare out the windo
w.

  Nia, who had finally gotten down to enjoying her now-slightly-cold meal, looked up in surprise. “Does that happen often? People dying from the water, I mean.”

  “When I was still a cop, we got called in to deal with at least five bad water deaths after every big storm.” Gail’s scowled. “And I’m sure there were more that never get called in.”

  “But people actually die? Because of the rain? I understand it’s not fit for drinking or bathing, but surely death would require a great deal of…” Nia glanced at Arthur, who seemed equally incredulous. “How on earth could that happen?”

  “Do people just forget the water’s toxic?” Arthur asked with a slightly derisive smile. “In the Academy, sometimes a child will drink some bad water accidentally, but like Nia said, it would take a lot of water to cause death, even in a child.”

  Gail answered without looking away from the window. “You’ve never lived outside the Academy. You sure as hell have never lived in Gracetown. A lot of people there don’t have roofs over their head. Yeah, the water won’t hurt you if you’re only out in it for a little while, but if your house is a knocked-together hovel or a box, it takes its toll, especially if you’re drinking it too.”

  Arthur raised an eyebrow. “So they do just forget that it’s toxic?”

  “No,” Gail replied. “They don’t have a choice.”

  Nia tugged on her necklace as she shared a bewildered glanced with Arthur. “But the Academy has water purification facilities. The wells –”

  “Don’t reach all of Gracetown and the pipelines that do reach partway through break or get clogged on the regular. Even when they’re working perfectly, some people aren’t strong enough to haul water every day. When people are hungry or thirsty, they can get a bit dumb. They think ‘a few cups won’t make me sick,’ but it will, and if they’re really young or old or already sick then…”