CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Kurt, by the ancient rule known as firsties, was stationed at a very nice computer indeed, and I was splayed out on the carpet using a laptop of yesteryear, which meant that I had a frame rate that made Steamboat Willie look like Pixar. However, given that I wasn’t actually playing, and that I just flittered about the dangerous fields of Zoth with a harp, it didn’t matter terribly much.

It did not take long to find out that the Horizons were in chaos.

Everyone had gotten Bejeweled Spears of Infinite Piercing. That was wave one of the shock.

“It’s fabulous,” said Clemency with a reverence I hadn’t yet heard from her. “I don’t know what to say.”

“It’s beyond fabulous, Clem. It’s mythic. We are now living myth.” Threadwork was not made speechless by the spear exactly, but even he was choosing his words with a solemn care. And he sounded a little less catlike and a little more plain than was his custom.

All the Horizons were there, all logged on. I haven’t mentioned most of them, as they aren’t strictly relevant, but taken altogether they made quite a group. They seemed very international, sort of like the X-Men. There was their leader, who was some Canadian kid given to saying things like, “Pretty flash, eh?” There was Terrible Southern Accent Guy. And speaking of dreadful accents, Orchardary and Threadwork seemed to be in a war of seeing who could dominate the conversation most.

“It is, without a doubt,” she was saying in a thick Indian American accent, “the most outlandish thing I have ever seen. How much would such a thing cost? It is unthinkable.”

Canada Guy was stammering. Kurt sounded like he was going to cry. Threadwork kept spitting out superlatives—this group, who was usually very restrained about everyone talking over one another on Teamspeak—was utterly disarmed. It dissolved into a cacophony of conversations.

Only Ophelia was unamused. “This is the least practical present anyone has ever been given.”

“It’s just an ornament,” said Orchardary. “Granted, it is too heavy to put on my mantel, at least when nieces and nephews come to visit.”

“I can’t believe it,” said Scarred for Life with His Southern Accent Guy. “I mean, I was slightly pissed at him for stealing the spear, but I never imagined this.”

“He was full of surprises, wasn’t he?” said Clemency.

And that was just wave one. At eight PM, on the dot, everyone in the guild got mail. From Jonah.

It happened like this—the wave of burbling about the spears, it mostly died out into a stunned silence, which was solemn and felt meaningful. Until Orchardary broke it with a speech, going on about the spear’s market value, which suggested she had planned to hock the thing later in the evening. I interrupted this speech and reintroduced myself—because, frankly, I think everyone had forgotten about me.

“Guys, I’m here to plan a funeral for Jonah. I’ll email you all the details about that, but I’m also here to talk to you about the theft of the spear.”

“So you’re a funeral planner and a detective both?” asked the Southerner, through that Mississippi drawl of his. “What else can you do?”

And then it turned eight o’clock. I had thought that everyone must had registered this clown’s line as some great burn on me, because it was dead silent after that.

“Well, yes,” I said. “I am doing both of those things. I grant you it’s a little unusual, but this is what I was hired to do.”

But I needn’t have bothered. No one was listening to me.

“Did anyone else just get mail in-game?”

“Yes,” said Threadwork. “I got one from Jonah.”

“As did I,” said Captain Canada.

“Oh, dear lord,” said Orcharary, who was sounding more than a little frayed.

“we all got them,” typed Chtusk.

“You’ve got to get that mic fixed,” said the Canadian guy.

“it’s a new mic. i don’t know why it isn’t working.”

“This is not the time to berate each other over technical problems, Oat. We all just got mail from a dead guild mate.”

I, of course, hadn’t gotten an email from my dead guild mate, but I knew better than to interrupt this.

Threadwork spoke again, his cat-voice turned down to such subtlety that I thought I knew what he must have sounded like in real life now. “Does everyone else’s email just contain some TinyURL links?”

“Yup,” said Oatcake. “In other circumstances I wouldn’t recommend clicking on these because there’s no telling what kind of virus they might link to.”

“Yes,” said Clemency. “In other circumstances.”

There was still a round of stunned silence. We had gone from everyone talking at once to no one talking at all. I was still working out how a dead guy had sent email. The way I saw it, there were three possibilities. Either Jonah had arranged for the email to go out in advance, before he died, or his parents had recovered the account and they had sent it. Or, and this was the alarming possibility, this email was sent by the same person who had hacked his account and stolen the spear in the first place. It could be a virus, a keylogger—or, if the person who stole the account was also the person who had murdered Jonah, something far more sinister.

When you put it that way, I wouldn’t have wanted to click on the link either.

“Fortune favors the brave,” said Threadwork, sounding much more resigned than brave.

What I heard next was an agonizingly long period of typing and mouse-clicking, followed by a parade of gasps and a “Well, shit” from Southern Guy. And then silence again.

I wanted to just yell out, “For chrissakes, just tell me what they linked to,” but it seemed wrong to interrupt the stunned silence.

“Well,” said Clemency, “it looks like we’re all going to the Games Summit.”

And then they were all talking again. Apparently they were links to vouchers for plane tickets and boarding accommodations—a hotel suite, rental cars, all of it. They were going to the Games Summit, and they were going in style. I don’t know if it was because Jonah was dead, or the double dosage of generosity or what, but I might have been participating in the weepiest chat-room channel in the history of the Internet.

Oatcake was clearly, openly crying. “That bastard,” he was saying, “he was such an asshole sometimes. But he was our asshole.”

Typed out, it might not look like the sweetest epitaph ever written, but somehow, those were the magic words that just sent everyone weeping. And cursing. There was a lot of cursing as well. But this was the Internet.

“God bless Jonah,” typed—not said—Chtusk, who was apparently still having mic problems.

“He stole the spear from us,” said Tambras. “But he wanted our respect. Oh, fuck him. I’ll miss the bastard.” And she was crying too.

I tried to listen for someone who sounded especially bristly or guilty somehow, but it felt ethically incorrect—and beyond that, impractical. Everyone felt guilty, it seemed to me. When someone dies and posthumously gives you extravagant gifts, it’s impossible to feel any other way, isn’t it?

“He was much cleverer than I had given him credit for,” Orchardary was saying. At least it wasn’t the Southerner going on and on—her accent was at least musical and fun to listen to. “It’s a literary joke. This level life too has its Games Summit. Ho, ho.”

Kurt, whom I could hear in surround when he spoke loud enough: “I don’t get it.”

“It’s from ‘A Walk to Wachusett’ by Henry David Thoreau. Hang on, I’ll google it.” A moment later, she was reading.

Remember within what walls we lie, and understand that this level life too has its summit, and why from the mountain-top the deepest valleys have a tinge of blue; that there is elevation in every hour.

And she paused, clearly having a sense of drama to her.

And we have only to stand on the summit of our hour to command an uninterrupted Horizon.

“Jesus fucking Christ,” said Tambras.

And the rest of the Horizons were expressing similar shock.

“It really is an apology,” said Clemency. “It’s kind of a beautiful apology. I didn’t know that he had it in him. It’s so… un-Jonah.”

Tambras made a grunting noise that suggested that she was somehow amorphously skeptical of the whole apology concept but could not exactly explain how.

The Horizons were all in a state about Jonah Long, and it dawned on me that I would have no better moment to state my case.

I reminded them, now with much more agency, that Jonah’s online funeral would be held tomorrow night. And then I went in for the kill.

I hate being overly earnest. I’m good at it; it just hurts. Like Delirium from the Endless can make plenty of sense when she needs to; it just damages her. This was my Delirium moment.

“Guys, I just want to remind all of you that I’m looking for the Bejeweled Spear of Infinite Piercing on behalf of Jonah’s mom.” I was originally going to say “parents,” but I veered toward “mom” at the last second, sensing that it painted a better picture. I told you I was good at earnest.

“I’ll be honest with you: I’m not a Zoth person. But I’ve played other games like this, and I know how inside of you they can get. If someone disrespects in Zoth, it feels like they’re disrespecting you in the real world too.” Pause, assess. “And in a way, they are.”

And they were silent, every last one of them. And they say a Priestess of Usune can’t spellcast.

“I also know that Jonah’s making off with the spear was contentious at best, and probably kind of a dick move. All I can tell you is that his parents wanted it back, and their wishes are for it to be deleted with his character.”

“Deleted” was the wrong word choice—I needed something more evocative: “erased,” “entombed,” “buried.” I probably should have used “mom” again too, but I hadn’t lost them.

“If you know anything about it, anything, please let me know. I’m not looking to place blame. I’m not trying to sell anyone down the river. I just want the spear back. For Jonah’s mother.”

God, I was laying it on thick. But the thing was, I was making myself sad. It wasn’t all fake. And the words I was saying were technically true. Or mostly true anyway. Probably once I figured out who the thief was I would pepper them with follow-up questions and then report it all back to Emily Swenson, so I guess I was a little bit interested in placing blame. But globally, I meant what I was saying.

Perhaps it was all the loot that Jonah had foisted on them, or perhaps I was just more persuasive this time, but suddenly everyone was interested in what I was saying. I didn’t know if I was going to get any clues, but at least it looked like Jonah’s funeral was going to be a hot spot.

You might have expected Jonah’s posthumous largesse to prompt a lot of last-minute eulogy material, but this did not prove to be the case. It was only Chtusk—mic-less Chtusk—who had any material for me.

“he had nice teeth,” she texted to me. “very clean.”

I texted to her that this was not exactly the sort of material that made for a thrilling eulogy. I asked her if she had any more personal details about Jonah.

“his breath was nice also. i can’t help much with personal details. i did not know him very well.”

Generally speaking, when I have positive opinions of someone’s breath, I know them pretty well. I suggested this to Chtusk, who typed:

“no sorry. didn’t know him. just nice teeth is all.”

So, a Shakespeare quote, some platitudes, and nice teeth. This eulogy was shaping up to be awesome. At this rate, I was going to have to crib from Jonah’s real-life funeral tomorrow to get material, which seemed reasonable but tacky. Let’s face it, you don’t want to be the girl taking notes at a funeral.

In any narrative such as this, there are a lot of things left out. Bathroom breaks, mostly, and I’ve probably said “er,” and “um” hundreds of times up to this point, but if I were completely faithful to the record, it will make me look like an idiot. You already look like an idiot, I can hear you saying. You’re probably right.

But among the more substantive things I’m excluding were my brief interviews with the other Horizons. The guild had about ten members, and I tried to at least touch base with everyone, even though these other members couldn’t use the spear and were almost certainly not involved. Not much came of this, but for the record, I did interview a fire mage who was almost certainly drunk, a dwarven tinker with a syrupy Southern accent, and a human pugilist who I think might have been a twelve-year-old girl.

But I will mention part of my interview with Oatcake, the Horizons’ guild leader. Oatcake, of everyone I had spoken to thus far, seemed the least interested in anything I had to say. I learned the basics of his biography—his name was Owen; he lived in Halifax, Nova Scotia; and he owned a small business that made high-end handcrafted furniture. It had been mostly a side project in his early twenties, but now that he was cresting thirty, it was really taking off.

He could speak with a terrifying enthusiasm about wood-carved furniture, but for everything else he sounded bored. He clearly was elsewhere, and these questions were just a to-do to him. With the other interviews, I felt guilty for being pushy or judgmental; with Oatcake, I just felt like I was wasting his time.

“You seem very distant right now, I have to say.”

“I’m sorry,” he said after a damning pause. “I’m just trying to multitask. What was your question again?”

But then it was my turn to multitask, because I got an in-game email, with a flashing crow icon tucked away in the corner of the screen. To check it, I’d have to go to a mailbox, but since I was hanging around that same damned bar, there was one right next to me.

Maybe it was rude of me to check my mail during an interview, but it seemed clear that a talk with Oatcake was going nowhere. He was a guy who was getting too busy for Zoth, and he was without question too busy for me. He was definitely not a suspect: Here was a guy who did not care about the game enough to commit digital theft. Particularly for a weapon that his character couldn’t use in the first place.

So I checked my email. I was intrigued—no one knew me aside from the Horizons and, okay, Erik. I was put out by the idea of another email from Erik—not emotionally devastated this time, just put out. I was never going to get anywhere if he kept interrupting me with undecipherable koans.

It was from a character named Apologia.

I didn’t know much about her except that she was a level-one human thief. Never heard from her before.

There was no text in the letter, just a subject heading. It read:

SORRY ’BOUT IT

At first I thought the whole thing was some kind of performance art. Apologizing to people you’ve never met; this was the Zoth version of a twelve-step program. Or a cult. But then I noticed that there was an attachment. A rather spectacular attachment.

In the letter was the Bejeweled Spear of Infinite Piercing.

There it was, the most powerful weapon in the game. It was something that men stole for, perhaps even killed for. And it had landed in the hands of a rookie fairy with a harp.

Getting the spear made me feel electric, in part because I had a secret. I wasn’t ready to tell anyone that I had it—or at least, I wasn’t ready to tell Kurt, and the walls were awfully thin at Nathan’s. Assuming I wanted to tell Nathan anyway, which I wasn’t sure I did.

I markedly considered spending the night at Nathan’s apartment, but my head was full of ideas and I wanted to get out. And deranged laughter or not, I was still wary about getting too emotionally involved with him just yet. Was he a murderer—okay, probably not. But I couldn’t say for sure that he wasn’t involved. Yes, okay, that’s probably a flimsy excuse to avoid emotional connection, but I had gone fast with Erik. And with the next guy, I was going to take it slow.

My apartment was still inaccessible, so I chilled at a coffee place near Nathan’s that I used to frequent in my carefree days. I recognized no one there, not a soul—not even a barista—and this made me consider that my carefree days were a lot further in the past than I had immediately remembered. I sipped steamed milk with hazelnut and waited for the allotted hour to return to my home.

If I had known that Detective Shuler would have been waiting for me at my building, I would have lingered at the coffee shop. Hell, I might have slept with Nathan. But I didn’t, and when I walked up to my building from the street, Shuler surprised me so much that I nearly jumped into traffic.

“Jesus!” I told him when he showed up behind me.

“Dahlia Moss,” he said, smiling. “I see you’ve still got those gimlet eyes of yours.”

“I’m full of steamed milk right now, and I don’t need to be frightened like that! You’re lucky I didn’t vomit.”

“As concerned as I am about that,” said Shuler, following me into the building and actually getting into the elevator after I pressed the button, “I’m actually here to ask if you bugged me.”

Damn Charice. Why am I always the fall girl for her exploits?

“It wasn’t me?” I said, managing to end the sentence on a question mark, despite my intentions. And it actually wasn’t me, which is, of course, what everyone says in prison.

“It’s a really bad thing to do, Dahlia. If that had been Maddocks, you would be in a lot of trouble.”

“And I’m not in a lot of trouble?”

“No,” said Shuler, his voice sad, as if acknowledging a deep character flaw, “I suppose you’re not. Although I have another question for you.”

I was being as kind as I could to Detective Shuler, because I did not want to go to jail. “And I have another answer.”

“Did you hire photography students to monitor Jonah’s parents?”

“Not the parents, the apartment. And, no, I didn’t.”

Detective Shuler gave me a look that I would describe as “sister, please.” I noticed that he had permanent creases on his face from this expression, so I’m guessing that it was a go-to look for him.

“I didn’t hire them. They’re working for free. It takes a village.” This was maybe a little snarky, but I was flying high with the spear in my possession.

“No,” said Detective Shuler. “It doesn’t take a village. It takes the police. The Lottery takes a village. Solving crimes takes the police.”

“Right,” I said, suddenly anxious about that damned trash from Kurt’s car again, even though it wasn’t being talked about. “I get those two things confused sometimes.”

Shuler smiled again at me. He’s a very smiley guy, honestly. Probably in the wrong line of work.

“Listen, Dahlia. I like you.”

I wasn’t sure where Detective Shuler was going with this. I felt equally perched on the precipice of being vaguely threatened and awkwardly asked out. Shuler must have sensed my uneasiness, because he tried to fill in the space. Although I’m not sure that he knew where we were landing either.

“I’m just saying that I like you—in a broad sense—and I would hate to see something bad happen to you.”

“Bad like getting arrested?”

Shuler gave me a look of concern.

“Or bad like getting killed.”

We were at my door now, and I wasn’t sure what Shuler wanted from me. Plus, I had gotten here too early and we couldn’t really go inside.

Shuler looked sad now. “I shouldn’t be sharing any information with you at all, but I just think you ought to know something. Is there somewhere where we can be private for a moment?”

“More private than the hall?”

“Preferably.”

I coughed. “Not exactly. There’s a production of Godspell going on in my apartment at the moment.”

This momentarily broke the spell of whatever confession Shuler wanted to make. He cocked his head at me.

“Is that some sort of post-apocalyptic musical?”

“I’m actually not sure. I usually try to stay out of the way of theater people. They’re not like us.”

I opened the door and was instantly booed for flooding light into the room. There must have been thirty people crowded into cushions on the floor. From what I could glimpse of the production, there was a half-naked man draped across the television with a spotlight on him. I closed the door.

“I think maybe the naked man is supposed to be Jesus?”

“That’s surely in violation of some kind of fire code.”

“You would know better than me. But I’m not opening the door again. I don’t want to get catcalled. Just—what’s your advice?”

Shuler looked less like a detective and more like the guy a detective would grill. He was nervous and seemed a little cornered. He obviously had something that he couldn’t bring himself to spit out. He behaved a lot like me, ultimately, when cornered because he changed the subject.

“What do you say we go out somewhere?”

“Wait, what, right now?”

“Yeah,” said Shuler. “For frozen custard.”

If Anson Shuler had finished that sentence in any other way, I would have unquestionably turned him down. But he didn’t.

“Fine,” I said. “But I can’t be out too late. My client’s funeral is tomorrow.”

If you’re not a Saint Louisan, you probably don’t understand the unquestionable awesomeness that is frozen custard. You’re probably thinking that it’s some sort of weird acquired taste like chitlins or Moxie.

You’d also probably think that Ted Drewes—legendary frozen custard vendor—doesn’t look like much. And okay, maybe it is sort of a giant hot dog stand—but looks are deceiving, auslander. To a trained Saint Louisian eye, the place looks like heaven. Anson Shuler and I were there, late at night, on a Wednesday, and there was an enormous freaking line. A custard line. Because it is awesome.

Conversation in the car with Shuler had been awkward, particularly because he insisted on playing King Crimson, which I don’t want to talk about, and I don’t have words for. But in line for custard, I was feeling much more amenable toward him.

“So,” I said. “You don’t seem like someone who would be a detective.”

“Neither do you,” said Shuler, who had a point.

“I asked first. How did that happen?”

Shuler sighed, and it was such a sad little sigh—a middle-aged sigh, if you will—that it seemed not quite to fit on him. “It seemed like the right thing to do at the time?”

I liked wistful Shuler more than chipper Shuler, or at least more than let’s-listen-to-King-Crimson Shuler.

“But not now?”

“I haven’t completely decided yet.”

And then it got sort of awkward. It was strange, because it was fun and, I don’t know, slightly charging to talk about detective stuff with Shuler, but the moment we hit upon anything personal, it was weird. So I stuck with the case.

“So how’s it going with that whole murder investigation?”

So brazen was the question that Shuler broke from his usual brow furrowing and actually bugged his eyes at me, a little.

“I can’t discuss that with you.”

“I could share with you details about the spear theft online,” I said, sounding a lot more coquettish than I had originally intended.

It got his attention. Oh, he tried lobbing it off, as if he didn’t care, but I saw the flash of interest.

“I cannot discuss the case with you.”

“I see,” I said. And I did. But then it was awkward again. I think that’s what pushed Shuler into talking—not any particular powers of persuasion on my part. He just didn’t want things to feel weird. Neither did I.

“So,” he began. “I was watching this really great show on Netflix.”

“Oh? What was it?”

“A mystery,” he said with a conspiratorial tone in his voice that I didn’t notice until later. “A police procedural, actually.”

“What’s it called?”

Shuler seemed irritated that I kept peppering him with questions.

“It’s called Interrupted Cop, Dahlia.”

“Oh, right!” I said, suddenly seeing where this was going. “I think I might have seen that one. Handsome lead?”

Shuler raised his brow at me. He had great brow action.

“You tell me.”

“In an unconventional way.”

This got more brow action. Peter Capaldi would have been impressed.

“So, on the show—”

“Interrupted Cop,” I said, interrupting him.

“Yes,” he said, “Interrupted Cop. There’s this investigation of a murder. At first the police think that it’s a break-in, but the deeper they get into it the more they wonder if the thief didn’t have a key.”

“Ooh, intriguing. What happens next?”

“I don’t know, I’m only on episode one,” said Shuler. “What about you? You seen anything good?”

“Yeah,” I said. “I’ve been really getting into a mystery series myself. More of a cozy. It’s, uh, called Glamorous-Looking and Extremely Competent Amateur Detective.”

“GLECAD?”

Shuler was faster with acroynms than I was, because by the time I figured out what he had done, he’d gotten in another line.

“Doesn’t seem like something that you would be into.”

“Are you kidding me? It’s like it’s my life.”

Shuler gave me more brow.

“I haven’t been keeping up with that show. What’s happened on it lately?”

“The GLECAD had been after this, uh, stolen pole that a bunch of people wanted, and, just in this most recent episode I saw—she found it.”

Now, this got a reaction.

“Really?” Shuler was floored. I should honestly have been insulted by how shocked he was, but I was too busy with my metaphor to notice.

“Well, sure. I mean the ‘C’ stands for ‘Competent,’ right?”

“Who took the pole?”

“Well,” I said, “the GLECAD hadn’t figured that out yet. It was returned anonymously. But she’s working on it.”

“What’s the GLECAD going to do with the pole?”

“She was thinking of using it as a trap to discover the identity of the thief.”

Whatever the correct answer was, this was not it. Anson Shuler’s face practically doubled over at me with disapproval.

“GLECAD’s gonna get canceled, if she doesn’t watch herself.”

“Pshaw. This glamorous detective has also acquired a replica of the murder weapon. It’s all under control.”

“Dahlia, you really need to pull back from this.”

“Incidentally, how much strength does it take to spear someone to death? Could a woman do it? Would you have to be in great shape?”

Shuler sighed at me. “You’ve got the strength to do it. And the brazenness.”

I wasn’t so sure. For all its bling, the spear wasn’t actually all that sharp. You could bludgeon someone with it for sure, but to gore someone to death? It’d take some force.

Shuler wasn’t such a bad detective after all, because he answered my question without me ever voicing it.

“The replica you have is a revision of the original. It’s duller. It also has less gems on it.”

I was impressed by his reading of me but mostly floored by the notion of something with more gems on it than the spear I had. “How many more gems could it possibly have?”

“I don’t know; I’d have to see yours,” said Shuler.

I nearly invited him to my room for a comparison, but I felt it was bit too much like inviting someone to look at a collection of etchings.

Marshmallow. That’s the flavor I got. Shuler went in for something fruity. Banana? Big Apple? I got a Concrete—a custard confection named for its legendary consistency—so I wasn’t paying that much attention. It was a little cold out, and so we adjourned to his car. It was a slow walk because I was feeling happy and increasingly sated. Mostly with custard, but maybe with life too.

“So what’s this big confession you were going to make to me?”

“You should be cautious around Jonah’s friends.”

I gave him some skeptical brow work of my own. “That was the big tip you were going to give me?”

“Not originally, no,” said Shuler. “But it’s the tip I’ve decided to give you now.”

I was playing it off like it was nothing, but it did make me a bit nervous. Who was he trying to warn me against? Was Kurt not the benign panda I had taken him for?

“You know Jonah’s sending all the Horizons to a convention in Phoenix, right?”

Shuler looked surprised, but I soon realized he wasn’t surprised about Jonah’s plan—he was surprised that I told him.

“We have his credit card receipts, and it’s something we worked out.”

“Are you going out there?”

“Why would I do that?”

I felt like this was a question that should have a solid answer. Maybe not Marshmallow Concrete solid, but I should at least be able to turn it upside down without it falling out. But I couldn’t muster up a single reason that wouldn’t sound ridiculous out loud. And I didn’t have time to consider it much, because we got to his car then. Shuler picked up a flyer that had been placed under his windshield.

He glanced at it and smiled.

“Maybe your string of unemployment is over,” he said, handing me the flyer. It was written in black Magic Marker on Astrobrights-red Xerox paper: JOB FAIR—SATURDAY 3 PM.

Ugh, gainful employment. The fantasy was broken. “Oh, thanks,” I said.

But as we got back in the car and drove away, I noticed a curious thing. Not a single other car had a flyer placed on it.