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Jerome and his date, Tara, showed up while we were answering the police’s questions. I was pretty sure our files were the ashes left in the trash can. The police didn’t think that was possible, because we had thousands of files and the ash pile was only about two feet deep and there wasn’t any metal. I tried to point out that hellfire burned hot enough to melt metal and the paper might have been completely consumed by it, leaving only a few pieces of ash per file.
Tara was the same age as Jerome, and she was a fairy. She was the niece of my friends Walter and Megan. This was their fifth date, and things kept going wrong during their dates that I felt were a bad omen. On their first date, Angel had eaten Tara’s purse. During the second, they’d been in a car accident; thankfully neither of them had been hurt, but the car had been totaled. The third one ended when Jerome, who is capable of mimicking other people’s magic, turned into a troll because Tara was capable of glamour and Jerome wasn’t skilled with its usage. The fourth one, they ran into Walter and Megan at the movie and Walter, who was human, had an allergic reaction to something he had eaten and had to be rushed from the movie to the hospital halfway through.
Jerome was grinning as my Uncle Michael focused on healing Remiel’s hands, which were healing incredibly slowly despite his being an angel. Tara was walking around the reception area with a look of horror on her face. The police had tried the fire extinguishers and when that hadn’t put out the fire, they tried water. Finally, they called in their consultant witch, who tried to magic it out, but all any of it managed to do was leave a huge mess. The only reason the trash can hadn’t melted was because all the trashcans in our office were specially made, in case Jerome had to throw something away that was dangerous. I had them crafted by a demon out of Stygian rock, which could withstand the extreme heat of hellfire.
“What did they take?” Jerome asked.
“Grimoires, and they destroyed all our files,” I said, taking him and one of the crime scene techs to our file room. I had gaped at the storage cabinets, but not really examined them the first time I’d come into the room. After the incident in the workshop, I had taken a moment to examine the files and noticed scorch marks and file damage inside the file cabinets. My thought was they had attempted to burn the files in the cabinets, but when the cabinets started to melt, they moved it to the trash can that was kept in the room. This was the trash can now in the reception area. I showed Jerome and the tech the scorch marks, and the trails of molten metal that had started to run down the inside of the cabinets.
“Whose grimoire?” Jerome asked.
“All of them except yours,” I said, giving him a smile. “Yours was too secure for them to access. I think when they tried to pick the lock on the cabinet where you kept it, things became topsy-turvy, and they fled.”
“How long did they have from the time the alarm was triggered until the police showed up?” Jerome asked.
“We aren’t sure. In theory only a few minutes, but I don’t think all this was done in a few minutes. I think they originally managed to bypass our security system and it was triggered later, possibly as they left,” I told him, looking up at him. Jerome was now over six feet tall. I didn’t consider myself short at 5 feet 9 inches, but I seemed surrounded by men I had to look up at when I spoke to them, and Jerome had joined the gang. The crime scene people and most of the uniformed police were leaving when Magda the Red showed up with another person I didn’t know. It was obvious the person was an investigator of some sort, because he had a small notebook and pen in the front pocket of his shirt, which honestly looked like a pajama top. Magda looked impeccable and was in a cocktail dress with impossibly high-heeled shoes. Magda was born to Norse parents around the turn of the first millennia. She looked like a Viking princess with bright red hair that contained a few silver streaks throughout, a stout but feminine build, and was taller than me, even without the high heels.
She surveyed the damage and then her eyes fell on me. I felt underdressed. I was in jeans and a t-shirt, with my tiny wings folded up at my sides. My wings had been damaged by a hell prince several years ago and while they had grown back, they had grown back too small to be used, so I tried to keep them folded up because they looked ridiculous. She didn’t take her gaze from me as she introduced the guy in the suspected pajama top to Remiel and Raphael.
“These are St. Louis’s problem children, Jerome Dusdain and Soleil Burns; Soleil is Jerome’s adopted mother,” she said, looking briefly at Jerome and then coming back to stare holes in my soul.
“This is Miguel Smith, my replacement in Magical Crime Investigation,” Magda told us. She had taken a position last year heading up a new department at the AESPCA that dealt with demon and Stygian affairs. She led the investigative division of the AESPCA for a long time which meant it had taken a long time for them to find her replacement.
“We are not problem children by choice,” I said, offering my hand to Miguel. He stared at it like it was a snake.
“Uh, he doesn’t shake hands or touch people if he can help it, he’s an empath,” Magda said after a moment. Empaths felt the same emotions as the people they touched, and sometimes the memory of what caused the emotion. It was a rare talent, not quite as rare as mimicry, but rare enough that I’d only met one or two empaths my entire life.
“Well, Mr. Smith, what can we tell you?” I asked. “I know you’ll get the Chesterfield PD’s report, and I don’t know if we have anything else to add.”
“Please, call me Miguel. Uh, Chesterfield contacted me when they heard the only things stolen were your grimoires. Can you expand on that?” he asked. Magda frowned and looked at Jerome. She was about to say something, but Jerome spoke first.
“They didn’t get mine. I had mine booby-trapped,” Jerome clarified. Magda’s mouth closed and she frowned harder.
“Anyone looking to steal grimoires would be after yours, not Soleil’s.” Magda knew I was a slacker when it came to magic.
“They may have been after Remiel’s or my father’s, and mine was just a bonus,” I suggested.
“No one is stealing my grimoire for what’s in it,” Raphael said from where he and Remiel were leaning against the counter of our reception desk.
“Why?” Miguel asked.
“It’s in angelic script,” Raphael said.
“Mine too.” Remiel added. “But it’s not just angelic script, it’s ancient angelic script. Aside from us, no one would be able to read it.”
“And they would have known that if they opened it before they left,” Raphael said.
“I encrypted mine too,” Jerome said, and I felt like a complete idiot. “You have to know the spell to decipher it and only Soleil and I know the spell, but the cyphering of it is only a portion of the magic I have imbued in mine. They didn’t even get to the opening stage of mine.”
“How can you be sure?” Miguel asked.
“It’s protected by hellfire. If someone other than myself or Soleil tries to take hold of the grimoire without taking off the spell, it begins to radiate heat from the hellfire.” Jerome pointed at Remiel. “Ask him.”
“Ah,” Remiel said with a nod. “That’s why she could take hold of the book and I got burned.”
“Yes,” Jerome answered. Jerome and I both had Stygian magic in our DNA and were immune to hellfire. “If a human were to grab my grimoire without the spells being disarmed, it would probably melt their hands off in just a few seconds; a supernatural might have hands afterward, but they would need magical healers to repair the damage.”
“Exhibit A,” Michael said, holding up one of Remiel’s hands.
“Soleil’s grimoire is also protected to some degree, even though she doesn’t know it,” Jerome said.
“How so?” I asked, raising an eyebrow.
“It has a tracking spell on it.”
“So, we can just follow the tracking spell?” Miguel asked.
“I would say yes, but I’ve looked and didn’t find it beyond the reception area. I think they put it in a shielding box,” Jerome said. “But when they take it out, we’ll know where it is.”
“Realistically, I have less than twenty total spells in my grimoire. I suspect they used the hellfire summoning spell from it to burn our files, but I can’t imagine any of the other spells would be useful,” I said.
“Why?” Miguel asked.
“Because the majority of the spells deal with exorcism,” I commented dryly. “I am a terrible magic user, and I don’t have a lot of magical experience beyond exorcism.” I shrugged.
“I’m sorry, maybe I’m confused, but I thought you were an archangel?” he asked.
“I am.” I nodded.
“It is a very long and complicated story, but Soleil is not well versed in magic of any kind beyond the Stygian magic she was born with, and it’s that magic that makes her an archangel,” Magda said, finally tearing her gaze from me to look elsewhere. I intended to ask her about the death glare later, but not in front of Miguel.
“Miss Burns, is there a reason you are uncomfortable with my questions?” Miguel asked.
“My office has been broken into and my grimoire stolen, do I need another reason to be upset? Oh, and we are discussing the fact that I am an idiot.”
“You’re not an idiot, just lazy,” Magda said defensively, and it was my turn to glare at her. “I think it’s probably safe to assess the situation as follows; they were after Jerome’s grimoire and the others were collateral damage.”
“That doesn’t explain why they burnt our files,” Remiel commented.
“Are you sure they burnt them?” Magda and Miguel asked simultaneously. In response, I grabbed some of the ashes out of the trash can that had been on fire when I arrived and held them out to them.
“The file room looked full, are you sure that’s all the files?” Miguel asked.
“Hellfire burns so hot it will melt metal. When it comes to wood products, it can totally consume them, not even leaving ash,” Jerome said. “When it burnt down our neighborhood a few years ago, it took out two houses completely, leaving just a small layer of ash and hardened puddles of metal.” I dug around in the trash can for metal chunks, although small bits of metal like staples might have been consumed in their entirety. I did not find any metal chunks in the bottom of the trash can. I could believe the staples were consumed, but would the paper clips and binder clips be consumed? I had doubts about that. I grabbed a handful of each and put them on the reception counter. I then emptied the ashes out of the trash can and dropped the metal bits inside. It only took a moment for Stygian flames to start dancing above the rim. A few moments later, I had a full-on fire going, and it was burning really hot. We all took a step back and could still feel the heat. I let it burn for ten full minutes. The others asked me questions and I ignored them, focusing on my experiment. After ten minutes, I pulled the magical fire back into me and looked in the bottom of the trash can. There was a puddle of metal cooling.
Jerome looked inside with me and tutted. He then grabbed more binder clips, paper clips, and even a package of staples. He put these on the counter and went behind the desk to grab a ream of paper. He stuck all these items into the trash can, even peeling the staples off the roll one by one and dropping them in. He then started a fire. He let it burn for ten minutes as well, and when it was out, we all looked into the trash can again. There were a few ashes, not nearly as many as one would expect, and there was a small pool of metal. The staples were being consumed, but the paper clips and binder clips, both containing larger quantities of metal, were not.
“I’m not sure what that means,” Michael said; I had almost forgotten he was still here.
“It means our files were not in this trash can,” Remiel said. “We use a ton of binder clips and paper clips, and we always buy the heavy-duty clips. They should have melted even if the paper burned completely.”
“Soleil is more likely to use a clip than a staple; among our files I would expect there to be tens of thousands of clips. Regardless of the consumption level of the paper, there should have been melted metal in the bottom of the trash can,” Raphael told him. “There wasn’t, so it wasn’t our files that were burnt.”
“Why would someone steal our files?” I asked out loud, not expecting any sort of answer.
“How did someone steal our files?” Remiel added. “Have you taken an inventory of the file room? That is a ton of files to steal.”
“And we have copies of all of them digitally stored, so stealing them doesn’t actually remove our access,” Raphael said.
“But you’ve lost all your notes,” Miguel said.
“No, they were included,” I told him. “We spent three months having all our files digitized. Scans were taken of everything in each file, even our notes.”
“She says we, but in reality, she means we paid a company to do it. Even my 200-year-old case files were digitized,” Remiel said. “This allowed us to hire another company to create a database we could search in minutes and not days when looking for specific case files. We have multiple copies of the database, so even if they deleted it off our server here in the office, we still have copies of all our files. We were just debating whether to recycle all our paper files or not, as an ‘in case’ something happened to the digital ones.”
“He says debate, but the debate was actually about where to store a read only, air-gapped version of the database. As you can imagine, the database is massive and it’s not going to fit on a commercially available external hard drive, so we were debating whether to have a special hard drive made for it and where to store that hard drive,” Raphael said.
“Why not just put it on a flash drive and take the digital version of the files?” Miguel asked, his eyebrows drawn together.
“The database is more than ten petabytes of information. It’s not fitting on a flash drive. A petabyte is equal to a thousand terabytes, it really is massive. Nearly all the files have photos in them, plus PDF scans of the written stuff and the pictures just to be safe that we didn’t lose one of them,” I said.
“Total we are talking about 209,387 files. Soleil had copies of files from her time working for the Division of Exorcism, I had files from my days as a law enforcement officer, plus my private investigator files, and my files from my time with the AESPCA. All of that was stored here, along with our files from Angel Investigations. We couldn’t even begin to imagine what they were looking for in our files. Or why they would steal them,” Remiel said.
“That might be why they stole all of them, though they may not have known exactly what they were looking for either. By stealing them all, they could look through them at their leisure,” I said, shaking my head. “However, stealing them is just mind boggling. It would have required a large moving van and hundreds of boxes,” I said. “Not to mention all the magic required to move them into the boxes and then out to the truck and all of it without setting off the alarm.”
“You didn’t have this place magically alarmed like your house?” Magda asked Jerome.
“I did, and then Helia set it off one morning, so I took them off, after freeing her from the goo she was stuck in,” Jerome replied. “I need to take Tara home, may I leave?”
“Yes and tell Walter what happened when you take her home,” I said. Tara was living with Walter and Megan temporarily while her mother went through the fairy equivalent of a nervous breakdown.