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“I believe you,” said Officer Thorn, some hours later. But she did not sound convinced.
We sat clustered around the front desk in the police station, drenched and muddy. Though weather-proofing spells in our cloaks and boots had made valiant efforts to hold back the storm, it had been a dramatic walk back to town. Even now, the wind and rain still battered the little building around us. Luca and I huddled over our steaming mugs of green tea and honey, the best Thorn was able to offer us. William had wanted to go straight to the café, or better yet, home, but I had insisted we tell Thorn everything right away.
The officer drummed her fingers on the old wooden desk. “Maybe just take it from the top, one last time. Or would that be from the bottom?”
“Funny,” William grunted.
“The Lost River is real,” said Luca, more obligingly.
“Clearly the sorcerer living in the tower, most likely Vesper, knew about it and had gone to great lengths to hide it,” I added.
“And it’s chock full of magic,” William chimed in begrudgingly.
“Magic plants, which I suspect will match with what Doug was saying The Hermit sold,” I concluded. I was also ninety-nine percent sure the flowers would match what Paracelsus wanted; I had taken copious notes and samples, and could hardly wait to go over them in my lab. But that didn’t have to do with murder, so I was keeping quiet about that part.
“And with the slime on the victim’s boots,” Thorn said slowly.
“Yes, that too,” I agreed.
“I bet the water is magic, also,” Luca said. “Red, did you—?”
“Oh, I definitely did.” I grinned. Three bottles of the river water were stowed in my knapsack beside a peacefully sleeping Sugar.
“This is all sounding a lot like motive,” Officer Thorn reflected, “and it pieces together some holes in the story. But one thing I don’t understand. If you fell down two stories to find the place, how did you make it out?”
Luca, William, and I exchanged varying degrees of a guilty look.
“Well . . .” I began.
“We didn’t exactly rush at first,” Luca admitted. In fact, after I’d taken all my samples, we’d had a bit of a picnic lunch with the sandwiches and tea I’d packed. Just because Officer Thorn rarely stopped for meals didn’t mean we, as impartial explorers, followed suit!
“And there was some concern,” William added. Actually, there had been a full-on outburst, as discussing if we could get out the way we’d come in reminded William that he was still angry at Luca for getting us launched down a trap door in the first place.
“But we had help,” I said brightly. “Maybe you remember Sugar, the pixie who took up residence in my kitchen a few years ago? Well, she’d come along—long story—and she came out to explore while we were eating. She was the one who found the side cavern. More of a tunnel, really. It was a steep climb, and pretty narrow in some places, but it actually came out near the upper edge of the clearing.”
“Where there was also a hidden path and a covered-up cart,” William concluded smugly.
“Yes,” I conceded. “That too. From there, we just followed the path until it joined up with a road. It’s actually quicker than the trail we were all taking before.”
I’d expected Thorn to be very interested in the cart discovery, but she remained focused. “Let me get this straight. The three of you, some of Belville’s brightest, went tumbling into a trap you couldn’t get yourselves out of, and then you were rescued by a pint-sized bit of sparkle?”
Luca glanced at me. “Um—sort of?”
I swallowed. “I’m sure we would have found the way out eventually.”
“Go on,” said William. “Tell them they were foolhardy. I’ve been trying to for hours.”
“You were all foolhardy,” Officer Thorn decreed, thumping her hand on the table between us.
And that was even without us admitting that Luca had had to stop me from trying to sample a gem that was woven into an old and intricate spell that was possibly keeping the entire cavern alive.
Sometimes, curiosity makes us do very silly things.
“Still, though,” Thorn mused, sitting back in her chair, “you stumbled across some useful evidence.”
“Stumbled!” I sat up, my tea sloshing, indignant. “I specifically arranged to go up and investigate because—”
Officer Thorn gave me a pointed look, and I gave in.
“At least you had Luca warn me beforehand,” she went on. “I’d have come looking for you if you’d really been trapped. Eventually.”
“Thanks,” said William, sarcastically. “More to the point—”
“Maybe I should award Sugar a civilian’s medal,” Thorn mused, stroking her chin.
“Anyway,” William broke in once more, loudly, “what have you been doing? Did you find out who your victim is?”
Officer Thorn collected herself, her teasing grin fading into something more professional. “As a matter of fact, I did not. Doug came by yesterday afternoon. The trouble turned out to be the aging spell on the body. The victim I have now looks centuries old. The Hermit looked like Red.”
“It could have been an anti-aging spell, which faded after death,” I said, glancing at William. I ignored the comment about my appearance.
“It might not have even been a spell at this point,” he said, panting. “Just her eating and drinking everything in that cavern to keep herself looking and feeling young.”
“Either way it’s no good for victim identification,” Thorn told us. “I have her under all the Guild-approved spells downstairs, so it’s not like she’s going anywhere. But neither is this case if I can’t get identification because everyone knew her to look drastically different.”
For a brief moment, exhaustion peeked through the veneer of determination in her voice. I was sympathetic as I thought this over. We’d dealt with cases where the murderer altered their appearance, but never one where the victim was the one using magic to obscure their identity. But surely it couldn’t be so unusual? Glamour spells were strictly overseen in Beyond, for the most part, but still, people did manage to create new identities, often for purely benign purposes such as reinventing themselves. “There must be some Guild guideline for identifying a body that’s not based on sight,” I said.
“There are a bunch,” Officer Thorn told me, rather sourly. “I’ve been through them all this morning. There’s checking magical signatures, and fingerprints, and even some divination stuff that people do. The problem is you have to have something to compare all that to. And since this victim most likely hasn’t been living in town since two hundred years ago, and even then she was probably using some kind of pseudonym, I don’t have anything to check my information against.”
“And even your suspects might not recognize her, since they too dealt with her when she was ‘young,’” I mused.
“The magic could tell you,” William said, stirring in his chair. “There’s traces of magic all over the cavern and in the entry hall, and probably in the apartment too. Everything I’ve seen looks like it came from one person.”
“Even if she and her house match, it still doesn’t tell me her name,” Thorn argued. “It’s not like there’s a deed out there for ‘secret hidden floors at the top of the old tower on the mountain.’ I checked. And Lavender insists she had no idea, and no preexisting arrangement was mentioned when she bought the tower off the elves who built it.”
“And Daisy never saw anyone either?” I wondered aloud, thinking again of seeing her fly past earlier.
“Haven’t got a hold of her yet,” Officer Thorn said grimly, “But Lavender said she never reported such a person. And Jack, if he lived there too, is still not talking.”
“But if you go back far enough, the magic might,” Luca said, leaning forward. “William is right. You have to go to school to be a sorcerer, and schools keep records—of students, of their exams, of where their alumni go and what they do. Of magical signatures, too, which have to do with the geometry of how an individual casts their spells and wields their magic. If you go back far enough—if the records are detailed enough—”
“That’d be pretty far back,” I interrupted, skeptical.
“But not so far, really,” he said, eyes alight. “And what else is scholarly research for, really?”
The rest of us were silent, so he added, “Well, lots of things, actually. But looking into the past is one of them. And in this case if I could help put the pieces together—”
“Are you offering to look into it?” Officer Thorn asked.
Luca nodded emphatically. “I think I know exactly who to ask. Or, I know the person who would know where to start, at least. They live in Brass, where the sorcerers’ university is—we met at the conference last year.”
Officer Thorn sighed, her shoulders visibly lowering. “I say try it. Anything helps at this point.”
“Hear, hear,” I agreed, smiling. “And here’s to networking.”
This made Luca laugh, a welcome break from all the planning and theorizing. Despite the damp and storm, the room seemed brighter, a little more relaxing. As I grinned along, it suddenly hit me that we had had a long day so far. I was definitely ready to be home—and possibly to have a snack. And proper tea . . .
But William, apparently, had one more thing on his mind. “Speaking of networking,” he said, as the amusement died down, “you should get the Witch to look at your plant samples.”
“Who, me? Trent?” I struggled to follow this idea at first, then understood what he meant. Witches had a different kind of magic than sorcerers, but they still would have valuable insight. “That’s a great idea. He isn’t still busy looking after Jack, is he?” I asked Thorn.
She shrugged. “At this point, he’s eating and sleeping okay, so it’s just a matter of keeping an eye on him.” I assumed she meant Jack, not Trent, and noted that nonetheless Trent had refused to let Thorn take over custody of his patient. Either Trent was becoming more bold, or Thorn was more run down, or both. “You should also,” she added pointedly, “have Rhys take a look. And make him bring Daisy back into town.”
“I can’t make either of them do anything,” I protested.
“But you can network, can’t you? Give me a bit to write up everything you told me,” she went on, “and then I can go switch out with Trent, send him over to you so he can take a look. It shouldn’t take too long, right? Might give Olivia a break, too. I can’t imagine they’ve had much excitement over there.”
The statement struck me as infamous last words, much like my promise that morning to be back before the storm broke had. But I chose to keep my opinion to myself in this case.
After all, I didn’t need to give William yet another opportunity to tease me!