Bleeding Out (11 page)

Selena gives me a look. “Necromancers aren’t the only ones who know smoke magic. And I’m sure the Seventh Solium has enough fallout to deal with. Right now, what concerns me, Tess, is that your bloody name is hanging over us. Why would someone just leave your name here?”

“How should I know?” I feel myself growing defensive. “There are loads of Cordays in the BC Yellow Pages.”

“That’s pretty weak.”

I sigh. “You’re right. What does this mean, exactly?”

“It means that we’ll need to interview both you and your mother.”

“I hardly see what she has to do with this.”

“Maybe nothing. But she’s a Corday. She has to come in.”

“This is ridiculous. More so than usual.”

“You know,” Miles says. “There might be a way to tell where the smoke magic came from. I can ask the room.”

Derrick looks at him. “Maybe you’ve forgotten, but the last time that you queried a room like this, I had to rescue you from hungry materia vines.”

Miles signs,
Thank you, dear
. Then he says: “Point taken. But that was a trap laid by the Iblis. I don’t have such a bad feeling about this place.”

“Try it,” Selena says. “But take care.”

Miles approaches the cremains of the Seneschal. His expression goes blank. I feel the dark air skip a beat, as if the room is clearing its throat. Then Miles begins talking with his hands. There are some hand shapes that I recognize, like “power” and “demise,” but he’s talking too fast for me to connect anything. He touches his hand lightly to his mouth, then repeats the sign, which means “speak.” I watch my name turn lazily in the air above us. Maybe it’s just a metaphysical text gone wrong. Or the message is meant for my mother. Neither possibility excites me.

He’s silent for a few moments. What must a conference call with space feel like? I wonder. Stones usually just spit at you, unless you’re fluent in their language. Miles turns back to us, looking a bit queasy. I guess that’s my answer. Talking to space makes you carsick. He wipes his forehead, then says: “The room isn’t making sense.”

“Can you unpack that statement?” Selena asks.

“It contradicts itself. The space remembers fire and death. But it also remembers something being born. The Polybius magic was a part of neither. It came from somewhere else. The room says it doesn’t belong here.”

“Becka recorded it and took pictures,” Selena says. “That’s all we can do, since it won’t survive transport. Even if it did, we have no tests for smoke.”

Our house has become a fair. There are booths
, tents, and a real Ferris wheel. I have to find everyone so I can ask them what magic is. First I get mini-doughnuts, holding the hot, sugary bag to my chest in place of a map. I find Derrick in the fortune-teller’s tent. The fortune-teller is Mr. Corvid’s head. Derrick shuffles the deck out of kindness. They both ignore me.

“What is magic?” I ask Mr. Corvid’s head.

“A grindstone,” he says. “It scrapes you away, until only what’s sharp in you remains, until your iron grief is undressed.”

I turn to Derrick. “What is magic?”

He keeps shuffling the cards. “An alphabet,” he says. “A syllabary. Its conjugations are lightning, monsoons, and tectonic feuds.”

I leave the tent feeling less sure of everything. I find Mia on the Ferris wheel, admiring its polish. Our small car rocks back and forth. I wish she would hold on to something, anything, but she has no fear.

“What is magic?” I ask her.

“A needle,” she says. “It’s terrible. It cuts, it snags us by our loops, it makes minced pizza out of us, and there’s a lot of pain because it’s hard to move when you’re two-dimensional and stitched into an arras. But it also makes fruit, and foxes, and other important things.”

I leave her circling on the Ferris wheel. I find Patrick
playing Skee-Ball. He hands me a Japanese body pillow, which he’s won. Holding it, I ask: “What is magic?”

“It’s like new pajamas. And Radiohead, I think.”

I take the body pillow and walk to the haunted house. I find Miles crouched underneath a table, pretending to be a disembodied hand in a bowl full of uncooked spaghetti. He waves at me.

“What is magic?” I ask.

“It’s several things,” he replies. “But don’t repeat them, okay? Hugging. Digging. Spelling. Sucking. Edging. Rimming. Meowing. Lying. Spitting. Presuming. Disinfecting. And Reverse Cowboy.”

I leave him and walk to the petting zoo. Modred is having some sort of colloquy with a Shetland pony. He has an endless supply of apple slices.

“What is magic?” I ask him.

“The teeth that made me,” he says, petting the animal lightly. “The sound of the mercy bringers in the morning, plunging their knives into whatever still moves.”

I keep walking. I reach the outskirts of the fair. Lucian is in a dark corner, repairing a broken ride. I notice a Vorpal gauntlet among his tools. I should warn him about how dangerous they are. Instead, I ask my question: “What is magic?”

“A risk,” he says. “Like living with dragons, or eating something that fell on the floor six seconds ago. Or pissing with the door open.”

I keep walking, past the retired machinery, until I
reach the exit. My mother is waiting for me in the parking lot.

“What is magic?” I ask her.

“Don’t be so literal,” she says. “Just help me figure out where I parked.”

I wake up early on the morning of my interrogation
. I have no idea how I’m supposed to explain why someone wrote my name in smoke and then let it loose like a moth to flutter around the Seneschal’s cave. I’m not sure I even want to know. I lie in bed for a few moments. The house is silent, except for the faint rustle of Derrick’s delicate snores. I throw on some clothes and leave as quietly as possible. Well-dressed people are running to catch the SkyTrain, while the street punks and their dogs slowly rouse themselves. I grab coffee and a planet-sized muffin at JJ Bean. The barista wears a name tag that says,
HELLO, MY NAME IS PHOENIX
. The four-barrel roaster in the middle of the café smells like a dream. I thank Phoenix and walk to the station, where people are crashing into one another like players on
Logan’s Run
. Luckily, being a long-term Vancouverite has taught me how to avoid the bite of umbrellas.

When I was a little girl, we used to spend our summers camping at Cultus Lake, in nearby Chilliwack. The cooler was always full of vegetables, pop, and deviled-egg sandwiches. My mother would sit in a folding chair,
watching me as I leapt off the pier. She was convinced that you’d get cedar itch by swimming anywhere near Maple Bay, so we always went to Entrance, which was packed with sweating families. The sand was so hot that my toes felt like Tesla coils. I had no fear of older boys in swim trunks, although I did avoid the girls who were always whispering and eating ice cream. I trusted the water and the light that warmed it. I trusted that no matter how far out I swam, I would still remain beneath my mother’s gaze.

Now I trust almost nothing. The SkyTrain rocks from side to side, and I keep quiet within my skeptical core. I used to trust magic, but it mostly just fucks me over, so I’ve put it on probation. I’ve given it a time-out.

This is my life now. Wake up; take transit to a place where I no longer work, as if searching for the shadow of my former job. Get ignored or patronized, like a child wandering through a museum. Get told not to touch anything, especially the sculptures. Get attacked for no reason. Then I go to sleep and it starts again. Is this really the vacation I was looking for? If so, I’m an idiot.

I walk to the CORE building and check in at the security desk. The guard swipes my ID and frowns. She swipes it again.

“What’s wrong?” I ask.

“Your chip isn’t working. Did you immerse the card in water?”

“No,” I lie.

“I’ll have to issue you a temporary card.” She reaches under the desk and withdraws a new blank ID chip, which she inserts into her computer. “What part of the building are you visiting?”

I start to say, “Forensic unit,” but then stop. The Forensic unit is a medium-security zone that any OSI can visit. My OSI-3 clearance gives me access to the entire unit and parts of the subbasement, but nothing below that.

“Inhuman Resources,” I say.

The office of Inhuman Resources is located in a restricted section of the subbasement. I’ve never been there, but people are always complaining about it. Just getting through the door requires a unit director’s clearance.

“Selena Ward is your supervisor, correct?”

“Yes.” My mouth is dry.

“And you’re a level three?”

“I’m due for a promotion soon.”

The security guard frowns for a moment, staring at the screen. Then she types something and hands me the warm new ID card.

“All right. This will give you access to the blue sector of the subbasement. The IR office is door number 113. Stay away from doors twenty through twenty-eight. This clearance is only good for twenty-four hours.”

“Got it. I’ll try not to get trapped in a broom closet.”

“Right.” She looks oddly at me. “Have I seen you before at Sawbones?”

“That’s possible.”

“You know Lady Duessa.”

“We’re hardly Facebook friends, but yes, I do talk to her sometimes.”

“What’s she like?”

“Scary.”

I pass through the second checkpoint and take the elevator to the subbasement. The moral part of my brain—Derrick’s voice, basically—is screaming about how wrong this is. But my old teacher, Meredith Silver, used to tell me that I should never pass up the chance to learn something new about my world, even if it meant taking a risk. According to Selena, I’m practically retired, so I can’t imagine how they’d even punish me for a security breach. I can always just say that I was visiting Esther in the data archive and took a wrong turn. Who knew that dropping my ID in the ocean could actually work out to my benefit?

I exit the elevator and follow the signs. Eventually, the walls turn from white to blue, so I assume that I’m going in the right direction. Doors twenty through twenty-eight have no identifying labels, but I can feel some pretty intense materia leaking through their reinforced steel. The security guard was probably right. As the numbers increase, the portals get weirder.
OFFICE OF LOST TIME. OFFICE OF DEADLY FORCE. OFFICE OF CANTRIPS AND CLAUDICATIONS.
Door eighty-three is marked simply:
REFERENCE TEXTS
. It seems innocuous, but someone has placed a strong sensory block on it, so I haven’t the faintest
idea what’s actually on the other side. I suppose, in my line of work, noncirculating texts are far more dangerous than automatic weapons.

I’d always assumed that the CORE kept all of its information on data sticks and durable hard drives. It’s weird to think they might actually keep monographs and oversized atlases, too. My curiosity gets the better of me. I swipe my card in the reader, and the door opens. I know that, somewhere in the building, a security program has recorded my entry. There’s nothing I can do about it now. I walk in.

The room isn’t what I suspected. Instead of a space filled with shelves, it’s barely an alcove. There are no books, just a slick metal table and chair. I sit down, and realize that the table is actually a flat-screen console. A biometric program blinks patiently, waiting for my fingerprints. I lay my hand across the panel. I feel a light pinch. Then the table asks me what I’m looking for.

“Excuse me?”

“Welcome to the CORE Special Collections,” the table repeats, speaking in Majel Barrett’s voice. “Please enter a search term so that I can find what you’re looking for.”

“Okay.” I think for a second. “Lord Nightingale?”

“Did you mean a small passerine bird?”

“No. Lord Nightingale of Trinovantum.”

“Did you mean Nightingale Elementary in Vancouver?”

“
No
. What’s wrong with you?
Lord Nightingale
.”

“Did you mean the Canadian Nurses Annual Nightingale Gala?”

I sigh. “How about ‘Ferid’?”

“There are two items that match your search criteria. One is a captured video file, and the other is a document. Which would you like to view?”

“The video.”

An image appears on the surface of the computer. Patrick, Selena, and I are in the interrogation chamber. I realize that this footage was taken last year, when we first met Arcadia. I listen to her coldly answering my questions by speaking through the mouth of the Kentauros demon, Basuram, whom she would later kill.

“Let me see the document,” I say.

A scanned PDF image appears. It seems to be a transcript of a conversation between my old homicidal boss, Marcus Tremblay, and an unknown subject. Parts of the transcript have been blacked out, but near the bottom, Marcus asks: “What demonic species do you belong to?” The subject replies: “We no longer have a name. We serve the Ferid, and that is all we have left. Our service.”

According to the time stamp, this interview occurred in 1995, a full three years before Marcus allied with the vampire Sabine Delacroix and tried to kill me. When Selena first spoke with Arcadia, she’d assumed that the CORE had never had previous contact with the Ferid, who, as far as we could tell, were colonizers. It stood to
reason that Marcus wouldn’t tell anyone. He was always a dick.