The Timeseer's Gambit (The Faraday Files Book 2) (6 page)

So he and Olivia stared at one another, his jaw tightening and her eyes narrowing until the air was so thick with tension Chris thought it might start crackling around them. He was
not
going to break. Not this time. She wouldn’t stare him into submission, and he―

The door opened.

Chris and Olivia both turned as one, and all the tension flowed out the door like heat into a winter day. Only it was a summer day, and heat rushed
in
, along with Maris Dawson looking stone-faced and chagrined. With her, comically trying to hide a tall, thin frame behind Maris’s short, stout one, was a middle-aged woman wearing the habit of a Mother Priestess of the Three and Three. Almost on instinct, Chris stood in respect and made the sign of three. Olivia sighed and made the same, but with less conviction.

“Maris,” she said, her voice flat. “What are you doing here? And who is this?”

Maris reached behind the tall, thin woman to pull the door closed, shutting the height of summer out. When she turned back, a sigh left her lips. “This is Missus Greta Milton,” she said flatly.

“Please,” the priestess said, bowing her head, “Mother Greta, if you would. We’re discouraged from making over-use of our family names, as we are part of the Holy Family, now.”

Olivia looked at Mother Greta. She folded her arms. She looked to Maris. “Maris,” she said. “Why did you bring a priest into my office? You know I don’t care for priests.”

Maris gave her a pained look, then turned her attention back to the priestess. “Would you like to sit down?” she offered, indicating the well-upholstered velvet chairs that Olivia kept for waiting clients. Mother Greta sent Maris a grateful look and hurried to the chair, and as she sat, Chris noticed for the first time that her hands were shaking.

It hadn’t escaped Olivia’s notice, either. He watched his employer’s eyes narrow and look back and forth from Maris to Greta. “All right,” she said finally, her voice testy. “What’s going on?”

The question was directed at both of them, but as she spoke, Mother Greta’s gaze instantly swung to Maris, who raised a hand and ran it through her tight, springy red curls. “There…” Maris began and dropped her hands. “There is a situation.”

Olivia’s eyebrows raised. “Oh dear,” she said dryly when Maris did not elaborate. “Not a
situation
.”

“Don’t be smart,” Maris shot back, then sighed. “You may want to take notes, Christopher,” she said, which made Chris’s heart flop.

Murder
.

He glanced at the priestess, who was staring down at her hands in her lap. They still shook, and she didn’t move otherwise. He reached for his notebook. “There was a…” Maris visibly searched for words. “There was an accident last night,” she finished.

Olivia walked her fingers along the front of Chris’s desk. Her voice was idle and unconcerned, but Chris recognized the sharp edge of interest. “I don’t deal in accidents.”

“No,” said Maris, “you don’t.” And without explaining more than that, she continued. “The Youth of Mother Greta’s church family died last night. An undine came loose in the water closet. There was no window in the room. With the door shut, the damn thing managed to fill up the room. He drowned.”

Uncertainty in his chest, Chris dutifully wove the words that Maris spoke onto the page before him. He wasn’t sure what any of this was about.

Evidently, neither was Olivia. “At least a dozen people die to rogue elementals every single day. What you’re describing sounds suspiciously like an
actual
accident, Maris.”

Maris paced over to the priestess, kneeling beside her and placing a steady hand on her trembling one. “Mother,” she said quietly, “would you tell Miss Faraday what you told me?”

Mother Greta looked up. She took a deep, shuddering breath and fixed Olivia with surprisingly clear eyes. They were bright green, and they were shining with tears, and something else. Fear? Chris wove. “Brother Lachlan,” she said slowly. “That’s―that would be our Youth, the one who… drowned last night.” She gave Maris a questioning look, and the policewoman nodded encouragingly. She squared her shoulders. “I don’t think it
was
an accident, Miss Faraday. There are marks. He was in the water all night, certainly, but his hands―I swear, it wasn’t normal. Cuts on his hands, to the bone in places. Why would a drowned boy have cuts on his hands?”

“He shouldn’t,” Olivia said, her voice low and musing, “but a drowned body left in water is a horrible sort of thing and you’ve been through an ordeal. So. Normally, this would be when I called you desperate for answers to senseless tragedies without them. Except Maris is here. Maris is
never
here unless someone comes to the police and the police need a
Deathsniffer
.” She pushed off the edge of Chris’s desk, and as she began pacing, Chris could tell that she had the scent of a mystery. “You went to the police,” she said.

The priestess nodded.

“You told this to Maris and she brought you―here. Hmm.” She turned on her heel to look at Maris. “Why did you bring her here?” she asked.

“Because I think she’s right,” Maris said. “I think that it wasn’t an accident.”

“Did you see the corpse in question?”

“I did.”

“And you’re convinced his hands were cut up?”

“… no. Not entirely. Like you said, a body isn’t really holding up well after more than five hours immersed.”

Olivia tilted her head, tapping a finger against her cheek. Chris could see the wheels in her head working, see how she weighed what she’d been told, weighed the priestess, weighed the police officer. Her lips parted. “Chris,” she said slowly, but her voice sped up as she spoke. “I’ll need you to find me some newspapers from over the last five months. You’ll need to do some running around, but the sooner I―”

“No need,” Maris said with a grim little smile. She reached into her bag and pulled out a roll of papers, tossing them in Olivia’s direction, who caught them and pulled off the twine. Her ice-chip eyes scanned the first.

They lit up.

She shuffled them and read the second. Her lips slowly pulled into a smile of her own, but Olivia Faraday had never learned how to smile grimly. Her eyes sparkled and her white teeth shone like a wolf’s.

She looked up at Maris. “Now that’s a fine bit of truthsniffing,” she said. “You’re wasted on middle management, Maris.”

Chris’s confusion and frustration finally overcame him. He looked up from the row of irritated question marks he’d weaved onto the page to give Olivia an exasperated sigh. “I have no idea what is going on,” he said. “How do you expect me to make note of it all when―”

Olivia dropped the papers onto his desk.

ROGUE FIARAN DROPS TEMPERATURES DANGEROUSLY LOW IN TORIAN DISTRICT
, the first read.
1 KILLED IN INITIAL COLD BLAST
. The article identified the deceased as Brother Timothy Lane, the Youth of the area’s church family. Chris shuffled to the next paper.
SYLPH-DRIVEN TORNADO DESTROYS BLOCK, 3 DEAD FROM FALLING DEBRIS AND 1 FROM SUFFOCATION
, was the headline of the second. The article listed the suffocated girl―the one who had been closest to the point where the sylph had been unbound―as a Sister Virginia Landon, a Maiden. Chris’s heart pounded as he flipped to the last paper, fairly sure of what he’d see there, but even the knowledge couldn’t prepare him for the specifics. Because this one, he remembered seeing himself.
DAUGHTER OF FLOATING CASTLE PROJECT LEADER KILLED IN ELEMENTAL-RELATED DISASTER AT LOCAL CHURCH
, it said. He knew who it was talking about: Georgiana Edison, daughter of his father’s old friend Edward, who’d died with him at the Floating Castle. One of the friends he’d lost after the incident.

He’d somehow missed that it listed Georgie as
Sister
Georgiana Edison.

Two Youths and two Maidens, all dead in elemental related accidents over a period of only months.

He looked up to find all three of the others looking at him expectantly. “I―” he began, and shrank a bit as their focus intensified on him, but he pushed on regardless. “…how did anyone miss this?” he said finally.

“No one was looking,” Maris’s voice was grim. “Olivia was right. Someone dies to a rogue elemental every hour in this damn city alone. Hard to pick out patterns in the midst of chaos, isn’t it?” She shook her head. “We barely have time to write accidental death reports on these, much less have someone looking for… whatever this is.”

“Whatever this is?” Olivia said, and at the sound of her voice, all eyes turned to her. She sounded like a hound on the scent. Her eyes were glittering and she smiled toothily at them all, snatching the papers off Chris’s desk and waving them about. “This isn’t
whatever this is
. This is exactly what it looks like!” She closed her eyes, sighed, and sounded for all the world like she was savouring the ugly words. “A spiritbinder is killing priests,” she said. “And you gave it to
me,
Maris. My very own, very first serial killer.”

“I’m still not entirely sure that you’re the right choice,” Maris said quietly. “You take this job a hell of a lot more gleefully than you really should.” Her gaze drifted down to the Mother, who was staring at her hands and shivering.

“Hmm,” Olivia hummed, singsong. “But you couldn’t trust it with anyone else. Because―” Her eyes snapped open and she grinned. “―because I’m the best.”

Maris said nothing, but it was clear that Olivia wasn’t wrong.

The Deathsniffer chuckled, and reached down to loop her arms under her assistant’s elbow, yanking him up to his feet. “Well,” she said as Chris struggled in half-hearted protest, “Please, don’t keep us waiting! Lead the way, Officer!”

bove all other places of worship in Darrington, there loomed The Cathedral of the Blessed Heart of the Holy Family. The massive cathedral had been built long before Richard Lowry had even been born, and it had grown as Darrington had blossomed from a small university town into the centre of Tarlish life. It boasted a grand sanctuary, luxurious quarters for its holy family, the largest congregation in Tarland, and six full towers, each with a set of bells that clanged and bonged every day at noon. Heart Church, as it was called, was the centre of spiritual life in Darrington, and it had been defiled with murder.

In the oppressive heat, the carriage was sweltering and full to bursting. Chris focused on his notebook. He didn’t weave, only listened.

“It’s important that we keep this a secret,” Maris was saying. “No reporters can hear about this and snap some photographs of you investigating, Faraday. The last thing we need is hysteria. That means
be discreet.”

There was a pout in Olivia’s voice. She shifted unhappily. “I’m always discreet.”

“But the other families need to be warned,” Mother Greta protested. “If an evil spiritbinder is killing our children, we need to protect them!”

“We’ll do what we can,” Maris assured. “We don’t intend to leave the holy families in the dark about this. But that said, this absolutely can’t reach the press, and I need you to be discreet as well, Mother.”

Chris let the conversation drift away from him, staring down at the book. He should be noting everything, but his thoughts were so full of Fernand that he knew the notes would be unreadable. For more reasons than one.