Magic and the Shinigami Detective Read online

  The witch had used spells for everything. Either way, this was my first hint of the technological level of the civilization I’d been pulled into.

  Following the road for about an hour—according to the changing position of the sun, which might or might not be accurate—led me straight into a small town. I did mean small, there might’ve been a hundred buildings in it altogether. Was village the more appropriate word? Shrugging it off, I struck into the town proper, looking for anyone that might be in a uniform.

  As I got closer, several things came into focus, so that I could finally get an up close and personal look at them. Were those…? What the heck, those were gaslights! Like, ye old 1900s gas lights. I stared at the lamppost on the sidewalk for a flat minute, flabbergasted. I guess some part of me had assumed that because the witch was, well, a witch, that I’d be stuck in medieval circumstances. Last I checked, gas lights did not fit that bill.

  Tearing my eyes away, I panned the street in both directions. Carriages, horses, pull carts, things I expected to see. Then there was that car over there that looked like the early version of a Model T. In speeding ticket red.

  Not being one for history, I struggled to remember when Earth had a mix like this, of old and new. Was it 1900? When they were still transitioning from gas to electric, from buggy to cars? Before or during the Roaring Twenties?

  Could I safely assume that these people would have the same sort of inventions as that time? Because I really, really didn’t want to live in a world with no central A/C.

  Or hot showers.

  Or refrigerators.

  Okay, me, worry about this later. I still needed to find help. I went back to walking up the street, forcing myself to not get sidetracked by every little thing I saw.

  The people I passed gave me alarmed looks, which amused me. I wanted to tell them: “You try being a captive of an insane woman that doesn’t believe in bathing regularly and see how you look at the end of it.” But likely that wouldn’t go over well.

  Someone, at least, grew alarmed enough by how I looked to report me. You could always trust the busybodies in these situations. From a very official looking building, a very short man with a prominent beard and a solid black uniform appeared. He took a look around, spotted me, and did a visible double take. Knowing what I must look like, I slowed my pace even further as he jogged toward me. I frowned down at him. Wait, a dwarf? Not a short person, but an actual dwarf? I saw pointy ears. Like, really pointy ears.

  Holy crap on a stick, this world had dwarves?! I’d always thought that was a Tolkien thing.

  “Woman,” he said in a gruff voice that had a gentle undertone to it, “you look like you need some help.”

  “I need a lot of it,” I admitted, putting the gun carefully into my holster and splaying a hand out, proving that I had intention to start shooting. He relaxed visibly when I did so although he kept a weather eye on the gun. Smart cop, this one. At least, I assumed a cop. “My name’s Jamie Edwards. Can you tell me where I am?”

  His frown deepened a smidge. “You’re in Hewitt, Miss.”

  That didn’t help me whatsoever. “On, ah, what world?”

  Whatever he’d expected me to ask, it wasn’t that. He rocked back on his heels for a moment, studying me with a terribly blank expression before stating slowly: “Draiocht.”

  Right. Okay. Not Earth. I was on a totally different planet that somehow had similarities to Earth. Lucky me? My brain wanted to hiccup there, maybe shut down completely. I took in a slow, deep breath, and promised myself a nice meltdown later. “Draiocht. Right. Never heard of it, but what I do know is that I’ve been the captive of an insane witch not far from here. I killed her and escaped about, oh, six hours ago.”

  Everyone in the vicinity just froze. You’d think I announced I just killed the Pope. Or maybe Voldemort.

  “Describe the witch,” he requested hoarsely, eyes bulging.

  “About this tall,” I put a hand around where my chin was, “dark, scraggly hair, thin face, crazy as a bed bug.”

  “Belladonna,” someone whispered nearby. “She’s killed Belladonna.”

  Was that her name? She’d never introduced herself. I found this reaction interesting. The locals apparently knew who she was. Knew her and feared her.

  The dwarf cop had to clear his throat, twice, to find his voice again. “Miss Edwards, I’m Officer Forrest. Come with me, please.”

  I followed, gaze continuing to flicker over the town as I moved. It looked vaguely European, like one of those German tourist towns. Well-kept place, actually; it had a nice vibe to it. Which was funny considering who had set up shop in their backyard. I hadn’t expected her to be this close to civilization, honestly.

  He went right through a brightly painted door, calling out as he went, “MAYOR!”

  The poor mayor. I was about to drop quite the bombshell.

  I barely had a chance to get my bearing inside the building. The front foyer was large enough to be a receiving room, with an unoccupied counter to the left and a sitting area off to the right meant for guests, as it had a couch, two chairs, and a showy fireplace. Those chairs looked terribly inviting. I took in the change of lighting with a blink of surprise. He had electrical lights, a recent addition, as the lines were tacked on the outside of the wall. I stared at them hard but they didn’t look anything like a modern light bulb. More squared off, and the light wasn’t as strong.

  Quick footsteps on the stairwell brought my head back around. A thin man that looked more like a doctor than a mayor bustled down the stairs, moving quick despite his advanced years, thinning eyebrows shooting up into a nonexistent hairline when he spied me. “Forrest, who’s this?”

  “This is Miss Edwards,” Forrest reported, bushy black beard still quivering in shock. “She tells me that she was a captive of Belladonna’s. She killed the witch and escaped this morning.”

  The way he said that, you’d think he announced the sky had fallen, and no one noticed.

  Mayor stared at me hard, eyes penetrating even as he swept from head to toe and then back again. I withstood the scrutiny calmly, letting him get on with it, as he wouldn’t do anything that I needed him to do until he believed me.

  Proving to be a man of action, he ordered Forrest, “Lock down the town until I get this sorted. Tell Magus Kjell to ready a message to Kingston.”

  “Sir!” Forrest snapped out what might have been a salute before spinning on a heel and sprinting back outside.

  “Miss Edwards, why don’t you sit?” he suggested, ushering me into one of those inviting chairs. “I’ll need to report all of this to the appropriate authorities. How did you kill the witch?”

  “I’m a regular Shinigami,” I joked, because humor was the only way I’d get through all of the interrogations to follow. Ahhh, blissful chair. Long live chairs.

  “I’m sorry?” Mayor looked at me blankly, worried.

  So that word didn’t translate, eh? I’d noticed the translation spell didn’t always work properly. I wasn’t sure if it had something to do with me using a word that I didn’t have an inherent understanding of, or if it was because Belladonna didn’t always do her spellwork properly. “I killed her by breaking her neck.”

  He flinched, jaw dropping hard enough to leave a dent in the floor. “Just like that?”

  “Oh, believe me,” I assured him grimly, “there was nothing simple about it. Mayor, I’ll happily answer all of your questions, but first—can you get me a change of clothes? Anything will do, I’m just heartily sick of being in these.”

  Nose wrinkling, he offered me a timid smile. “I can see why. I’ll have someone fetch them.”

  “And you’re going to need some significant help if you want to clear out Belladonna’s cave,” I tacked on, thinking that he might as well get that in motion. “It’s full of icky and dangerous stuff. I wouldn’t let anyone but a full trained magician with a Hazmat suit in there, honestly.”

  “I’ll send messages to the appropriate people,”
he promised, reaching for a bell that I assumed would summon some minion. “While we wait, tell me the story.”

  Crime scenes like this weren’t elaborate, but I did enjoy proving the idiotic assumptions wrong. Fire scenes weren’t really my specialty, and being in the market district as I was, I had more than a fair share of onlookers standing on the sidewalk. I suppose some people would be nervous with others looking over their shoulder. I steadfastly ignored them, my attention turned to the work at hand.

  I sat carefully balanced on my haunches, a wand in one hand, a pencil in the other as I noted magical registers. I did have one, very faint, register here above my head. It barely registered at 2.3, hardly enough of a presence to get more than a nod in. Another, much stronger register to my left, looked about an 8.6, something that would make an actual impact. Which it had.

  The beat cop hovering behind me, who’d initially reported this in, cleared his throat. “Man that owns the building claims that it’s arson. Says he has enemies that want to torch the place.”

  I shook my head before he could trot the full sentence out. “I’m afraid that in this case it’s due to his own carelessness.”

  “Not a fire hex, then?”

  Was that what the building’s owner claimed? “No.” Seeing that he had picked up the camera and taken a few pictures, I motioned for him to come in closer. Standing, I pointed at the ceiling. “Switch lenses, you’ll need a strong magnifier to get this on film.”

  “Something up there, sir?”

  Obviously, otherwise I wouldn’t have given that direction. I gave him a slightly scathing look, to which he looked abashed and obediently switched to a stronger lens.

  I didn’t know this face, which made me think that he’d barely joined the force. New cops always seemed to have little common sense. Thankfully they also tended to accrue it after some time on the job. “There, you see that faint outline of a hex?”

  His expression said no, he really didn’t.

  “It’s very faint,” I allowed. I barely recognized it for what it was, and magic was my livelihood. “It’s an octagon shape, four inches long, faintly silver in the soot.”

  He had to squint and move a foot in both directions before he went, “Ah! Yes, sir. Wow, that’s faint. How did you see it?”

  Lifting the wand in my hand, I gave it a small, illustrative wave.

  “Oh, right,” he said, abashed. “Sorry, sir, first time I’ve worked with a Magical Examiner.”

  We were rather a different subset of examiners. Every police station had at least a pathologist, but Magical Examiners weren’t nearly as common. It took a balance of expertise in the magical field and a willingness to work for a questionable salary. I likely would have chosen a different vocation except police work provided me a challenge on a regular basis.

  No one should ever underestimate the stupidity and creativity of the human mind.

  Refocusing the young officer, I dredged up the patience to walk him through the sequence of events. “I imagine that the building owner thought that because he had a fire suppressant hex that it had to take a strong, magical attack to get a fire going in here? Hence why he’s convinced this is arson?”

  The beat cop blinked at me, staring like I’d become suddenly clairvoyant. “That’s it exactly, Doctor.”

  “I’m afraid he had far too much faith in this thing. He likely bought it in one of those bargain bin shops.” I hated those shops. Shoddy work, all of it, and people kept buying them because they were cheap. “This particular hex could suppress a candle’s flame but little else. I’m not convinced it could even stop a candle. What actually stopped the fire was the suppressant hex from next door.” I pointed to the neighboring wall. “When it reached that area, it activated, and fortunately his neighbor had better sense and bought something of good quality. It kept this whole block from going up in flames.”

  Snapping pictures as I pointed, he asked the first sensible question I’d heard in the hour I’d been here. “So what started the fire, sir? You seem to think it wasn’t magical.”

  “Quite correct.” There was hope for this one yet. “Come, I’ll teach you something. You’ve seen arson before?”

  “Only in classroom studies, sir,” he admitted a little shyly.

  “This might not have been covered. Electricity is only now becoming a common household element.” I led him to the front wall, where I saw the strongest point of contact, although I avoided kneeling. I had no desire to ruin my trousers with the soot and debris littering this area. I had a feeling that before it went up in flames, the shop had been crammed to the rafters. “See this wavy pattern along the wall? Almost like it was following a straight line.”

  The officer took a picture in a quick snap, the flash thankfully pointed away from me, before he nodded. “Yes, sir. You say that’s electricity?”

  “I’ve seen this several times now.” In fact, I was in the process of writing a paper on it to publish in the Kingston Police Gazette. “When people add electricity into the buildings, they do it by anchoring the lines on the outside of the wall, along the baseboard. I’m sure you’ve seen this? Good, good. When something cuts into it, or water sprays against the line, it often shorts. That causes a spark, which in turn will start a fire if there’s anything flammable nearby. That’s what happened in this case.”

  He pulled a pad from a breast pocket and took down notes as I spoke. I liked this. Perhaps if I invested in him quickly enough, I could save him from being corrupted by my idiot colleague, Sanderson.

  “So no water, flammables, and a good suppressant hex would have prevented all of this?” He bumped up the cap on his head with a pencil and gave a low whistle as he looked about. “Pity, that. No question it’s electrical, sir?”

  “None. This pattern doesn’t appear with magical fire attacks. They tend to be concentrated in one area and are quite splashy. This wave pattern only appears with electrical fires.”

  “Roger that, Doctor.” He snapped the pad closed and slipped it into his pocket.

  From outside came a male voice raised in question, one I recognized. Gerring, wasn’t it? Curious, I turned, wondering if another scene needed my expertise. I only did field work one time out of ten, but occasionally two scenes needed me in the same day. It was a fine time for it, as we were nearing the end of shift, and I had promised myself this morning a lovely steak if I managed to get through today without snapping.

  “Doctor Davenforth?” Gerring, as a Svartalfár, did not get out of breath sprinting around. Any of the elven races could run all day if they were inclined to do so. His race were hardy to the extreme in that sense. Still, he looked a little flushed, ears quivering back and forth in agitation, which did not bode good things. He hovered in the doorway, shifting back and forth on his feet, wanting to be in motion once again. “Sir, the Evidence Locker has been broken into.”

  For a moment his words made no sense whatsoever. Then they did, and I quickly lunged for my bag, throwing everything back in there with more haste than care. “How? When?”

  “Fifteen minutes ago, sir, and we don’t know. It’s a right mess, sir. Wards are in tatters.”

  As an elf, he might not be able to work human magic in the same manner, but he could certainly sense it. “Grab that black box and put it in the wagon.”

  Both officers helped me pack up and within minutes I was back in the driver’s seat, racing back for Fourth Precinct. Fortunately, at this time of the night, the streets weren’t too crowded and I was able to break the speed limit without concern. I crossed the five blocks back to my work building and pulled around back, where the station’s pool was, next to the Evidence Locker. The horses blew out a relieved breath when I stopped, and I felt remotely guilty of asking them to run while pulling such a heavy load.

  Then I caught sight of the Evidence Building and every other thought immediately went out of my head.

  ‘Tatters’ didn’t do the wards justice.

  “Davenforth!”

  I ignored
the speaker for a moment, taking in the situation even as I stepped fully off the carriage. The Evidence Holding Area sign leaned sideways, hanging by a single nail and a prayer, which more or less illustrated the situation about the building in general. Everything lay in shambles, the shields and barriers in magical shreds, the chaos so intense it was impossible to tell at first glance what had happened. Whatever had destroyed the shields had done such a thorough job that it impacted the building as well, breaking open the front doors, part of the wall, and what appeared to be several of the shelves inside. At least, I assumed the half-decimated crates, boxes, and scattered remains of evidence on the ground were the result of the attack. The Department had spewed forth officers onto the scene for all the good it did them. I saw more people running into each other and wandering around aimlessly than anyone actually doing concrete work.

  My first task would be sending at least half of them back to work. This trampling about did nothing more than disturb evidence, blast it. They supposedly were professionals—who was running this circus?

  “Davenforth!” the caller said again, more insistently and far closer.

  Sighing, I turned, speaking as I did, “Pinkerton, I just arrived on scene, do allow me some time before you prevail—” I cut myself off as I caught sight of the woman following him. Even though I basically lived in my lab, I knew who she had to be.

  The Shinigami Detective.

  Strange, she didn’t look formidable, not in the overbearing way the rumors painted her in, at least. She didn’t look womanly either, not with that thick black hair, drawn simply and severely back from her face. She stood tall for a woman, eye-level with me, not that it meant much as I was rather short for a man. Her build spoke of speed and strength, and the gun on her hip rode comfortably. I took a moment to really look at her face. She seemed pretty, in her own way, bone structure more sharp angles than the popular round heart-shaped face. I liked most the professionalism in her brown eyes as they took in every facet of the disaster before finally settling on me.