Chapter Five

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In the funeral home, relaxing my normal restrictions on my awareness had hit me like a drug. The vivid, oversaturated intensity, the way every sensation felt sharper and more real, it had left me euphoric, thrilled, and satisfied. In a controlled environment where the things flooding my senses weren’t terrible, the experience was an intense, rapid high. Hell, sometimes I did it just for that reason at home, when I was particularly bored, and spent a while drifting in a wash of magic and sensation until I passed out. When I was getting actively pleasant inputs, it could be an intensely pleasurable experience.

This situation, though, was none of the above. And while that rush of sensation still hit me like a drug, this time it was more like nine kinds of bad trip happening all at once. I opened my eyes and instantly regretted every life choice that had led me here.

The first, strongest impression was from the corpse itself. I did not have to examine it more closely like I had the first trace, did not have to study it up close or (gods forbid) lick it. It was far, far stronger here, between the lack of masking and the significantly more intense magic involved, and I recognized it as the same signature immediately. Everything in that little clearing was covered in it, not saturated, but stained. The air felt like grease and rot on my skin; the grass was hostile, blades sticking up at jagged angles like the teeth of a saw; the dappled light-and-shadow where the forest canopy intercepted the sun, so peaceful just moments before, now felt threatening, dangerous; the wind was a dissonant, grating whine. And everywhere, absolutely everywhere, was the shimmering, scintillating feeling of human magic.

I recoiled from that nauseating energy, and in the process I made my next mistake. I looked up, both literally and metaphysically, and I let myself really perceive the people around me.

I normally try not to do that without a really good reason. This was an excellent reminder of why, on several levels.

Audgrim was closest. He stank of iron, and the sharp, acrid mineral smell of freshly broken stone. He was saturated with dark, leaden greys. There was nothing shimmery about him at all; the dvergar are about as far from that as it gets, in my experience. He was solid, and as his name suggested, he was grim, a feeling of bitter certainty that had no room in it for such frivolities as hope. There was something else, though, honey-sweet but with an acidic bite, fear of something, but of something formless and unknown. It wasn’t a good fear, more of a creeping dread that didn’t even bring the adrenaline terror might.

Jack Tar was not much farther away, though, and wow was that a mistake. He hadn’t backed up nearly far enough. I wasn’t sure how far would have been enough, but the edge of the clearing wasn’t. He was easily the most powerful human practitioner I’d ever met, and the shimmering aura he exuded looked so bright as to hurt my eyes without even being a physical sensation. Much like the magic on the corpse, he felt like an oil slick, but that was as far as the resemblance extended. He lacked that darker underlying background, that foulness.

But it was still almost as overwhelming. I could smell car exhaust and hot asphalt and the thick garbagebeerpiss stench of the abandoned alleyway, hear the roar of the night bus going by the pounding bass of the nightclub at two in the morning the quiet intimacy of the stranger you meet in the middle of the night and you’ll never talk again so you can tell them anything at all, I could see the lights of the city and there were thousands, strings of headlights and every one a whole life the lights of skyscrapers that never fully shut off the lights in windows of apartments where night owls were up feverishly working until the break of day the diner that never closes the—

It was too much. It was too much of too much, all at once. It wouldn’t have been so bad if I hadn’t just been immersed in that corrupted energy. I might even have liked it. But here and now? It was far, far too overstimulating. There was so much more hitting my brain than it was meant to be handling. On some level, the vivid intensity still felt good, it felt fantastic, like seeing clearly when I hadn’t realized I’d been blind. I was enjoying it, whether I liked it or not. But in some ways that just made it worse. I didn’t want this to feel good.

I stumbled away from the dead guy, trying to close myself off again, to reestablish those filters. I couldn’t. It was always harder than lowering them in the first place, took active concentration, and I sure as hell couldn’t concentrate through this. I fell to my knees, retching, and that felt good too. I was puking, and there were sparks in it. I couldn’t see straight, and I heard voices, but they were distant and distorted, and they sent ripples of scarlet-silver-lemon through my vision more than they provided any meaning to my brain.

It was a relief when I blacked out.

---

I came to lying in the grass. We were still in the trees, but they’d carried me a little ways away from the corpse. I appreciated that; my filters were reflexive enough by now that I could literally put them up in my sleep, and I wasn’t wide open anymore, but even an incidental brush with that energy would suck so soon after overexposure. My head was pounding, and my throat was sore.

I pushed myself up to a seated position, wincing as it made the headache spike in intensity for a moment. “Audgrim,” I croaked, “the next time you think about asking me for a favor, go fuck yourself instead.”

Once I was sitting up, Jack handed me a bottle of water. It was a thoughtful gesture, really. I was a little surprised by it, but I supposed that in his line of work he’d probably had his own share of interactions with the unwholesome. It was a nice water bottle, insulated metal, and the water was still cold. I rinsed my mouth out a few times, took a drink, and gave it back.

“So I take it you got something,” Audgrim said once I was done, not responding to my first comment at all.

“Yeah, no shit,” I grumbled. “Ugh. Okay, so it’s definitely either the same person or someone very similar. Mostly human, but there’s definitely an admixture, and I got a little clearer of a look at it. It’s not integrated enough to be a scion, more separate from the human portion than that, so I’m pretty sure you’re looking at sponsorship of some form. Nasty one, don’t recognize it though. Human portion’s strong, but not that strong, don’t think they could do this without drawing on that sponsor.”

“Awesome,” he said. “That gives us a starting point. Anything else?”

I grunted. “Yeah, a bit. Wasn’t killed here, I don’t think, it doesn’t feel pervasive enough. There’s a strong residue on the corpse, but not on the area. Probably happened last night, at a guess, it’s faded a bit but not a lot. Emotionally there’s definitely some glee again, but it’s colder this time, more calculated; I would guess this was more deliberate, premeditated. Definitely necromancy of some kind, and it killed him pretty fast, I don’t think he had time to really respond—if he cast a spell at all, it was too weak to leave a residue.”

Jack was staring at me again. There was appraisal in it this time, and a kind of respect that wasn’t there before. “That,” he said, “is a hell of a lot to get from that quick of a glance.”

“It’s why we pay her the big bucks,” Audgrim said. His tone was pretty dry, but now that I knew what to listen for, I could hear the anxiety underneath. He was scared, but it was a quiet fear, and he didn’t really know why it was there, an agitation without understanding.

There were reasons I tried not to get that good of a look at someone. Emotions would show up in their aura, coloring it in the same way they influence the feeling of a magical working or a place. It was easy to learn things I wasn’t supposed to know. I always got basic emotional impressions, but the more detailed it got, the less people liked it. I had a hard enough time finding friends as it was.

“Think you’d recognize the sponsor?” Audgrim asked, jolting me out of that line of thought.

I considered for a moment, then shrugged. “Yeah, probably. I’d have to actually be around them, though, I think. And I’m not sure how clear it would be on the practitioner if they weren’t actively drawing on it. Don’t know the sponsorship arrangement well enough to say.”

“Any general guesses?” Jack asked. “Like, you said you didn’t recognize it, but does it resemble anything you do know?”

I shook my head and immediately regretted it with the lingering headache. “Doesn’t really work like that. It’s not…there aren’t really trends. There might be basic elements, werewolves smell like wolves, that kinda thing. But werewolves also smell like flowers, lavender or sometimes jasmine, and ljósálfar sometimes have notes of lavender and they don’t have a hell of a lot else in common, you know? Can’t extrapolate much.”

Jack nodded. “Aight. Well, your guesses are pretty good. Friend of a friend found him on the bridge around midnight and called me. Moved him down here so nobody’d make a fuss about it. Another friend had heard about your thing, and I figured it was similar enough we should have a chat.”

“Yeah, I can see why,” Audgrim said. “You willing to collaborate on tracking down whoever’s responsible?”

“Yeah, I think so. Seems like we have a common interest here.” Jack still sounded, if not cheerful, at least calm. But there was a sort of cold anger in his eyes and posture that gave him away. He was quietly, intensely furious. The Tribe didn’t believe in things like leadership, and Jack didn’t really live here. He wandered the whole northeastern US, roaming between different cities. But they looked up to him, and he took that seriously.

“Agreed, then. No debt on either party.” Audgrim…didn’t sound a whole lot happier than Jack looked. If they found this person, I was quite confident these two would murder them. I couldn’t really blame them; this was a pretty fucked up thing to do to someone. I had no particular issue with someone who could enjoy doing that not being alive anymore. “You have any ideas as to motive?”

“Not really,” Jack said. “Chris didn’t really have any serious enemies. He did some shady work, smuggling and such, but he did it clean, you know? Professional, effective, didn’t break contracts. He wasn’t the type to get someone this pissed at him. Martin, you got anything?”

I started a little. I’d forgotten the other mage was even there, and judging from Audgrim’s reaction I wasn’t the only one. Martin hadn’t said a word since his initial report to Jack.

He considered the question for a few moments, then shrugged. “Not a lot. Didn’t know him that well. We ran into each other occasionally, but not really that close. I know about the smuggling, and last I knew he was working with someone new. That’s about all I got.”

“Possible that’s related, then,” Audgrim commented. “You know anything about them?”

“Not a lot,” Martin said. “Some woman based out of…Fox Chapel, I think it was? I can probably find the address.”

“Do that,” Jack said. “I think we ought to pay her a visit.”

---

The plan was pretty simple. Apparently Chris’s mystery partner had a habit of eating lunch at a specific café in Fox Chapel most days. They had an open-air patio seating area she liked. That was where Chris had met her to arrange the job he’d been on, which was why Martin knew this; it had been mentioned in passing at Mark’s bar. It was early enough we could be there around the right time.

So, she would be in a known, public location. Since I was the one who knew what we were looking for, I was making the initial approach. Audgrim, Jack, Martin, and one of Audgrim’s employees were waiting in a coffee shop with a clear view of the café. The shopping center in question had a lot of traffic, and it was pretty unlikely anyone would notice them watching me. I would approach closely enough to get a read on her, signal them with either “clear” or “got something”, more or less, and then leave and we’d go from there. I’d fried my phone while I was overstimulated and freaking out, so more precise messages were hard to arrange. But this was a pretty binary situation, so it should be fine.

Simple plan. Easy as breathing. I naturally assumed something would go very wrong. But I was—of course—curious now, and it should be relatively safe. Getting violent in that kind of very public setting was almost always a bad idea, and she was pretty unlikely to do so, even if this did go wrong.

Audgrim drove me, and Jack rode with Martin. I was very quiet on the trip, and I had my eyes closed. I’d had enough sensory overload for today. Maybe sensing my mood, he didn’t put on music, and I just listened to the wind and dozed.

Not a long or complicated drive. Almost straight north, in fact. North across the same bridge we’d been looking at, into Pittsburgh proper. North through the city, and over a bridge crossing the other river, into another suburb. Fox Chapel was a considerably wealthier one, though, and it showed. The roads were better-maintained, the buildings nicer, the stores more expensive.

We parked a few blocks away, at the other end of the shopping center, and walked over. Martin pointed out the café in question, and then they went ahead to get into position. I gave them a solid two minutes to do so.

While I waited, I had to wonder what the hell I was thinking. I was getting myself involved with some people who were very obviously dangerous. I was acutely aware that if things went wrong enough, I might end up experiencing the same awful death that Chris had. And I really, truly didn’t know why I was doing this anyway. What did I stand to gain here? Was my life really so boring that I was willing to risk it out of idle curiosity?

I didn’t like waiting. It had room in it for thinking.

Eventually, though, it was time. I started walking, letting the feeling of this place wash over me. The shopping center was a pretty major one, and the feeling of bustling crowds was strong here. I could taste that urgency, sharp like peppermint. There was a glittering quality to the pavement in the parking lot, an aching need to be noticed, to be different from the rest. I wasn’t leaving myself particularly open, but my perceptions felt more sensitive at the moment, still raw from the earlier flood. Even at a glance, I was feeling that emotional echo.

The café was busy, enough that it probably had a waiting list for a table. I approached, feeling tense, a little nervous. I had no idea what this person looked like, so anyone out of the crowd in the patio might be the target. I glanced over to confirm that my spotters were in position, ready, and then resumed walking. The sensitivity was a good thing, in a way; it meant I didn’t have to experience everything in order to do this. It was possible to lower my blinders only partially, but it was delicate and prone to fail, and I did not want to scan this whole crowd and a potential terrifying nightmare at that intensity.

I was walking pretty slowly, trying to make sure I had enough time to sift things out. There was a lot of human in the mix. Normal people didn’t have much of an aura at all, but you put thirty of them in one patio and it adds up. All I felt at first was that scintillating mass, like a heat haze over asphalt in a desert summer, and I was starting to get nervous.

And then, halfway along the patio, I felt something…different. I didn’t stop walking, I knew better than to give a hint that obvious, but my attention was suddenly very focused.

It was an odd signature. I didn’t pick up any real corruption in it, though. There was an element of darkness in it, sure, but it was more like a heavy incense than rotting meat. It was a warm prickling on my skin rather than cold grease. And as I kept walking, and got closer, I could pick up other details that also didn’t line up with the earlier signature. That darker tone was an admixture, like the prior one, but it wasn’t mixed into human. The underlying feeling was quite different than that, a smell of musk and spice, a giggle tickling the back of my throat.

Nothing like the earlier energy at all. And there was a reason I called these signatures. As far as I knew, they were nearly impossible to forge. You could wipe or mask them if you knew how, but trying to simulate one or make your own feel drastically different was not possible. It was as reliable as a biometric in that way.

I did pause now. I wasn’t nervous at this point. This was a false alarm, I was quite sure. I looked at the crowd, trying to figure out which of the people this was. It wasn’t easy to actually sift it out with my senses for magical traces. Things tended to be an indistinct melange when there were this many distinct signatures muddling together. But there were only so many women sitting alone on the right side of the patio, and most of them were easy to mark as human for one reason or another. I kept looking and, ah, there she was.

I looked over to where Audgrim was waiting, confirmed he was looking. He was. I flashed him the “all clear” signal. I was pretty sure I was the only one who knew it was an ASL sign indicating he was an asshole. I pride myself on attention to detail.

He nodded, confirming he saw, and beckoned to me. Clearly, he wanted me to go report back to the others.

I opted to instead flip him off and make a shooing gesture. I figured he’d get the point. I really didn’t have any other relevant information to contribute right now, and felt no great desire to participate in planning next steps. As far as I was concerned, I’d gotten them a ton of information to work with, and had earned a break. They were better equipped to put the data in context than I was, anyway.

I hopped the fence into the patio instead. If I was bored enough to risk death-by-supernatural-gangrene, I was bored enough to talk to a stranger.

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