Black Magic (Black Records Book 1) Read online

  In this case, the truth of it wasn’t all that different. Most likely scenario here was that poor old Norman had picked up an especially potent magical artifact, but had either been double crossed by his buyer or robbed before he could even attempt to sell it. Either way, he was dead as dead could be, and it didn’t look like he was going to cash in on the payday he’d been expecting.

  “I’m going to take a look around,” I said. “You don’t need to be here for this if it’s too difficult.”

  Mrs. Weathersby nodded grimly and shuffled to the front of the shop where she settled into a worn out armchair, giving me room to do my thing.

  I reached into my bag to dig out a piece of gum, finding instead nothing but the organic sugar-free licorice chews I’d bought in an act of desperation the day before. Hating myself for sinking to such depths, I popped one in my mouth and grimaced at the taste of medicinal tar. When you only had one person in your life close enough to call a friend, you didn’t exactly tell them to fuck off when they begged you to join them in their bullshit new year’s resolution.

  Then again, if having friends meant avoiding sugar, I might need to reconsider my position on the concept.

  As bad as the licorice was, it did a decent job of covering up the substantially worse taste I get in my mouth when I use magic. I’ve never been able to figure out why it happens, and it doesn’t appear to be a problem for any other magic users I’ve met, but even the slightest use of my power fills the back of my throat with an awful sour tang that takes hours to fade. Really big magic was more like sucking on a car battery, and it wouldn’t dissipate for days afterward. With the energy I’d expended at Xander’s place, my throat was already annoyingly raw.

  Crouching beside the body once more, I closed my eyes and let magic flow into my retinas. Hazy blue light flashed against the inside of my eyelids, and I opened them to view the scene with a magical spectrum overlay. Seemingly invisible to the ungifted, magic is far more tangible than you might expect. Every mage views it differently, and for me it’s like nearly microscopic bioluminescent pollen. It flares brightly when woven into a spell, and it hovers around gifted individuals like a glowing aura. Every use of magic leaves traces of the stuff behind, and when I crouched next to Norman’s body, I could make out faint green iridescence dusted on his shirt collar. It was subtle enough that I might have missed it had the lights been any brighter.

  Similarly pale glowing smudges marked various places about Norman’s jacket and shirt, the area around his severed arms more obvious than any other.

  My imagination conjured images of an evil ninja slicing Norman’s arms off with a razor sharp katana. As cool as that might have been, I doubted even the keenest sword on earth could cleave both fabric and flesh so neatly. The trace magic around the injury suggested a charmed blade, but that didn’t narrow it down much either. A butter knife could have done the job if the right spell had been cast on it. For all I knew, the attacker could have used an artifact looted from Norman’s very own collection.

  I bent lower and put my face as close to the edge of his arm as I dared. His body smelled faintly of shaving cream and old books, but there was no distinct odor emanating from the wound itself. I didn’t have much personal knowledge of dead people or the lasting effects of having one’s arms amputated in one fell swoop, but I’d have thought there’d be at least some smell of rotting flesh and decay. There’s a stink that comes from those disgusting little sanitary pads you find under a tray of raw chicken. You know the thing that makes your whole garbage stink like chicken corpse if you don’t take it out right away? Well that’s how I figured the wound should reek. Imagine my surprise when I didn’t smell a damn thing.

  I made a mental note to buy a folding magnifying glass for future instances where I might have to get within licking range of a dismembered limb, then I stood up to check out the rest of the shop.

  An extremely light aura of energy hung in the area between the body and the back door. Magic users leave a trail of energy in the wake of any area they pass through while using their gift. Though the energy dissipates over time, it can linger for days if undisturbed. The stronger the use of magic, the thicker the aura. I was leaving my own little trail around the shop, but since the energy required to access magical sight was pretty low, it was the barest whiff compared to the distinct cloud running from the dead body to the back exit.

  I followed the wisps of faintly sparkling dust to the door where they became too diffuse to follow. Our movements inside the shop had already created enough of a disturbance that the aura had diminished significantly, and the trail hadn’t stood a chance of staying intact outdoors. Too many other things could have mingled with it and fouled it even if it had been possible to follow it right after the crime. It was completely gone by the time I poked my head into the back alley for a look.

  That the trail had even made it to the doorway in the first place was not good news. I’ve mentioned that magic users leave behind these auras when they’re tapping their power source, but there’s another class of being that doesn’t turn it on and off the way we do. Call them what you will — fae, supernaturals, monsters, demons, fiends, or just plain annoying — these creatures don’t just use magic; they are magic. A human who’d come into the shop to murder its owner wouldn’t have tapped his power for a second longer than he’d had to, leaving only a concentrated cloud of magic particulate in the immediate area surrounding the body. With how potent the aftermath of the spell was, it would have drained a human caster and made it a serious priority for him to cut off his ability before getting the hell away from the scene of the crime. I was only using the lowest possible level of power I could touch in order to open up the sight, and already I felt the crushing headache and muscle tension that came from working with magic for too long.

  No, it hadn’t been a human that had entered the shop to accost Mr. Weathersby, but rather one of the fae.

  That meant trouble.

  Someone had clearly gone out of their way to hurt this guy. At his age, Norman didn’t seem like a real threat to anyone trying to rob the place. He looked frail enough that even I could have physically overpowered him before cleaning out the shop of any valuable artifacts. If the killer had taken the time to dismember him, I could only guess that they’d been torturing him in order to find something specific. The alternative was that someone had done all of this for fun, but that wasn’t a thread I was eager to tug at just yet.

  I snapped off my mage sight and returned to the body. The fact that there was trace magic on Norman’s shirt collar bothered me, and I wanted to get a closer look at the area.

  “So Norman never told you anything about this artifact?” I asked as I crouched down again, peering at the skin around his neck.

  Mrs. Weathersby crossed the room to join me. “No. All I know is that he hadn’t had it for long before this happened.”

  “Is that usual? Did he tend to keep things secret from you?”

  “I was rarely involved in that side of the business, but it wasn’t typical of him to be so secretive of whatever it was he’d acquired.” She paused and shook her head. “I should have known something was wrong when he refused to tell me anything more. Though we rarely talked about the artifacts he bought and sold, he always let me know when he had something more volatile in his possession. I should have made him tell me what he had. Maybe then he wouldn’t have ended up like… like this.”

  “You can’t know that,” I told her. “Whatever did this to your husband wouldn’t have hesitated in using you to force him to give up whatever they were after. Norman probably saved your life by not telling you anything.”

  “Still…”

  She left her thought unspoken, and I took the opportunity to retrieve a pen from a pocket in my backpack.

  “You mentioned volatile artifacts a minute ago,” I asked. “Can you tell me what you meant by that?”

  “Either magically powerful or sought after by disreputable parties,” she explained. “Nor
man mostly dealt in low grade pieces that were only worth anything to people looking for a particular effect or spell component, but now and then he acted as an agent for unsanctioned items. He always told me when we had to be extra careful in our dealings both public and private. This time all he would say is that I shouldn’t worry and that everything was fine.”

  She looked down at what remained of his arms. “That was when I suspected how serious it actually was.”

  “Had you noticed anything else particularly unusual about your husband lately?” I asked while nudging his shirt collar back with the blunt end of the pen. “Other than seeming agitated, had he changed the way he dressed or acted? Was he wearing any new jewelry?”

  “Nothing that I noticed,” she replied. “Norman never wore any rings.”

  “What about a necklace?” I asked.

  A thin red line marked as much of the sides and back of Norman’s neck as I could see without undoing his bow tie and shirt collar. It looked a lot like the kind of scraping burn a necklace or chain might make if someone had yanked it off his neck in a hurry.

  “I suppose so,” she said. “This time of year Norman always wore collared shirts. He could have been wearing something beneath them. Norman rarely kept merchandise on his person though. It would have been very unusual for him to wear such a thing.”

  I straightened up and wished I had a reason to look anywhere other than into her eyes. I hated asking people this kind of stuff. “What about at night? Or when he got out of the shower? Did you ever see anything then?”

  She smiled softly. “At this age you don’t see your husband naked all that often. I haven’t seen him without a shirt or pajamas on since before he started acting strange.”

  “I’m going to take a few photos, but I think I’m done with this part of the investigation.” I gestured towards the body. “What are you going to do, uh, with his remains?”

  “There are people I can call to help with that.” She hesitated before clearing her throat politely. “Please find out who did this, Alex. Norman never argued with his customers or suppliers, even when they tried to cheat him. I can’t imagine why anyone would go out of their way to hurt him like this.”

  “I’ll do my best,” I told her, not knowing what else to say.

  A consoling word or two would probably have gone a long way, but instead I turned away and snapped a few more photos of the scene with my phone’s camera. I then took a last look around the shop for anything I might have missed before informing Mrs. Weathersby I’d be in touch when I made any progress. With a last glance at the body, I turned and walked to the door. My fingers fumbled the latch on the deadbolt in my eagerness to get out of there, and I nearly fell flat on my ass when a dangling strap of my backpack snagged on the door handle as I walked out.

  Until that moment, my job as a consulting mage had involved nothing more serious than helping a weekend Wiccan undo a surprisingly powerful bad luck curse on an ex-lover without him finding out. The closest I’d come to a homicide investigation was the time a farmer had hired me to find out what had been killing his sheep. I’d considered myself something of a badass for hunting down a werewolf on my own that day, but as I thought about the unblinking corpse I’d just walked away from, I knew this would be a whole different ballgame. Everything I’d done up until now had been bush league, and I’d just been called up to the majors.

  Solving this crime meant figuring out what kind of creature could have done such gruesome work on a harmless old man, and I could only think of one person who could possibly help with that.

  Chapter Two

  What you probably don’t realize is that you share this world with a surprising number of non-humans. I’m not talking extra-terrestrials — although I wouldn’t rule those out — but rather the kind of supernatural beings you might believe only exist in movies or comic books. Have you ever wondered why we keep seeing the same stories repeating themselves throughout the ages? It’s because almost every fantastical creature you’ve ever seen in fiction is based on something that actually exists in our world.

  Most of them are also none too keen on having their primary source of sustenance aware that the top of the food chain is more crowded than humans like to think. Of course, no creature can exist alongside humanity without experiencing a few close encounters over the years. There’s always going to be a farm girl who escapes a gnome trying to trick her into giving up her virginity, or an insomniac who witnesses something sinister in the dead of night. Those people will then tell anyone who’ll listen about the foul demon they encountered. There’s not much the fae can do about that, besides eradicating our entire species. And what would that solve in the end?

  While magical beings like vampires can’t control every little bit of misinformation spread about them, it does work in their favor to have a few myths running wild. Although they lose most of their superhuman powers in the sun, vampires younger than a couple hundred years undead are able to stand in full sunlight without burning to a pile of ash. A wooden stake in the chest will kill a vampire, but so will any metal or plastic object that pierces their heart. They can enter your house without being invited, you can see their reflections in mirrors, and holy water has about as much power as spitting on them.

  Even the garlic thing is total bullshit. I can think of one vampire in particular who you do not want to be around after he’s eaten lunch. The only thing worse than that guy’s bite is his breath.

  Of course, vampires can’t properly process food. The blood magic that sustains them is ancient and complex beyond belief, so no one really knows why their bodies seem to function nearly the same way yours or mine does, yet they can’t seem to digest anything but blood. That doesn’t stop a small subset of them from eating as a way of clinging to what little remains of their pre-death selves. I’ve been told it leads to disastrous consequences for anyone unfortunate enough to have to use the toilet after them. Honestly, that’s not a rumor I’ve ever felt any need to follow up on.

  So with all of these non-humans running around any given city, how do they stay off the general public’s radar? Magic mostly. While people like me can tap into sources of magic we carry within ourselves — or in the cases of certain witches and druids, from the world around them — these beings are imbued with an omnipresent magic which provides many of the abilities we’ve come to associate with them. It’s what allows shifters to change from one form to another, and it’s what allows faeries to be such annoying little bitches when they decide to mess with you.

  It’s also what keeps the fae from being noticed by humans. It’s not that you wouldn’t see a vampire strolling down the sidewalk with her fangs out, but to one of the ungifted she’d look like any other human. They don’t all have slicked back dark hair, pale skin, and long sharp incisors they can never tuck away. Even if she did have her fangs out, the average person’s unwillingness to believe in such things makes it easy for a vampire to maintain the illusion that she’s just like any other schmuck on the street.

  I’ve been led to understand this has only gotten easier in recent years. What with the huge uptick in popularity of things like cosplay and body modification, even some of the more fringe fae creatures have been able to relax their constant vigilance against detection when out and about in major cities.

  That was why I had to talk to Viktor. Even knowing the reality of what kind of beings were walking the streets at any given time, I can’t see the fae unless I tap my magical sight. Maintaining that is far too draining to sustain for long periods of time. In order to preserve my strength and sanity, I wander around as oblivious as anyone else. Using my sight to track one specific fae in a city like Vancouver would be just as useless as hoping to bump into a human suspect at the local 7-Eleven. When I needed real information, I relied on a network of friendly magic users and non-humans who had a much better idea of what’s what.

  I didn’t know exactly where Viktor fell into the broader classification of magical beings, but the guy knew everyt
hing there was to know about the comings and goings of the local fae. Its location right on the edge of the mountains and oceans makes Vancouver something of a hotbed of supernatural activity. We don’t have any of the big vampire families like New York or LA did, but we do have our share of creatures who enjoy easy access to the somewhat remote wilderness immediately north of the city. When I had questions, I almost always went to visit my metaphorical man on the street. No one knew more about local fae politics and organizations than Viktor, and as luck would have it, the guy had taken a liking to me. He was always eager to help me to understand his world a little better.

  That didn’t mean going to his place didn’t creep me the hell out. Viktor lived in a pretty nice part of town, but his house was that one on the block neighborhood kids might dare each other to Nicky Nicky Nine Door. Completely overgrown with shrubs and plants, the property looked like someone had ripped a chunk of dense jungle out of the amazon, then dumped it into a boreal forest. Anyone with a keen botanical eye would have seen that several of the plants couldn’t possibly survive in Vancouver’s temperate climate, but that would have required them to spare more than a passing glance at the place, which no one ever did.

  The building itself looked condemned and more likely to be a grow-op or freaky space cult than the home of the nice old man who actually lived there. Even though I knew a good bit of this uneasy feeling was triggered by wards placed around the property, I still felt a powerful urge to turn and run rather than reach out and bang the old brass knocker.

  “Alex,” Viktor said after he’d opened the door. “It’s been months since you last came to visit. How are you?”

  Viktor looked more like your favorite grandpa than the occult gossip monger he was. I’ve never been able to figure out his true age, but he looked to be in his sixties or seventies. He somehow managed to maintain the deep tan of a Colombian coffee farmer throughout Vancouver’s long, wet, sunless months of winter. His head of gray hair was shockingly full and coiffed with care every time I saw him. He was a sprightly old fellow, always bustling about making coffee or finding me something to eat whenever I came to visit. His clothes had probably been stylish twenty or thirty years earlier, but he wore them with a certain flair that made him seem as trendy as any hipster I’d ever met.