On the 3rd of January, officers investigating Case H220001 entered an abandoned premises on Harbour Court and forcibly detained an invasive spirit masquerading as William Terence Buckley. This spirit is believed to be responsible for the three homicides originating the case (see attached files) and was removed to the Office of Special Investigations Head Office on Conyngham Road where it was contained while the magics holding it to the mortal realm waned. No prosecution is recommended at this time.
“OK, but what if he’s not?” I asked again.
Cormac exhaled heavily. We were back in the office, and this argument had continued on-and-off for the last two days. “He’s a trickster fae. He’s even admitted it. He took on the form of Buckley, murdered the three summoners and was trying to track down the real guy the night he found us at Buckley’s house. But Blood Magic is too strong to sustain long. It’ll fade, and he’ll be pulled back to wherever he came from soon enough. This is why he looks so much older.”
“OK, but what if he’s not?”
“Are you seriously suggesting time travel? Three first-time practitioners did something no wizard has ever done? In the history of magic?” He then tapped a finger to his desk to punctuate each word. “Time travel is impossible.”
“But you told me that magic has no rules.”
He stopped for a moment. “I did say that. But… But this is a rule like… like ‘no flying under your own power’ was a rule at whatever school you went to. Assuming you went to one. It’s just not something that can happen.”
“OK, but what if it can?” I ducked the file he threw at me, picked another off my desk and left to pay another visit to our friend in containment.
Containment was two floors below, carved from the bedrock, and was heavily shielded with both physical and arcane protections. The Buckley Fae was being kept isolated from the regulars in one of the smaller cells down a short corridor guarded by two of Murtagh’s best. All-in-all, it had a very “Hannibal Lecter” feel, without the homely warmth.
The man himself (if he was a man and if he was himself) looked worse than when we had first brought him in. He had not aged further, but seemed tired and drained of energy. He sat on a stool at the rear of his cell, back to the wall and legs splayed out before him. His head was rolled back and his eyes were glazed and unfocused until I tapped on the protective glass. Or maybe it was protective quartz. Crystals weren’t all bullshit all the time.
He dragged himself into a more upright position and managed a half-hearted grin. “Detective Grey? Another visit to chat? Or are you here to see me fade away? I sense it’s soon. Back to the Court of Mab I go.”
“Just a few final questions. I wanted to ask about Buckley. Why were you at his house? Why dressed as a jogger?”
“Oh, I told you all that. I was confused. I didn’t know who I was, and was trying to find myself. And the clothing was just camouflage. I’d look very odd running about the place naked, or in a suit. Then I saw your officers and panicked.”
“That’s your story and you’re sticking to it?” I opened the file I was carrying. “This arrived on my desk today. I asked the regular Gards to cc me on anything related to Buckley or to this case. Seems he called the anti-fraud department two days ago to report a case of identity theft, but when they visited him today to take a statement, he retracted everything. Claimed it was a mistake on his part.”
I looked up from the file and locked eyes with the man in the cell. The steady unblinking gaze he returned confirmed everything. Sometimes as a cop, you get a hunch. And sometimes, you get an absolute fucking certainty. This was the latter and I could see he understood.
“You were staking out his house, weren’t you? Learning his routine? Or ensuring he kept it? Then you saw us. You thought we were there to arrest him? Or you knew that if we knocked on his door that night, we might interfere with his schedule somehow and cause him to miss work the next day. You needed him in the office so you could get him out of the office with that fire alarm. What did you do? Access his computer and buy a million bitcoins or something?”
“Is this on the record?” Buckley asked. I closed the folder. It wasn’t a magic confession-recording-folder or anything, but it seemed to be the confirmation he was seeking. “I bought a variety of different shares on my personal account. Some long-term and some that I knew would pay off right away. I believe the short-term ones spiked last night, which is why I dropped the charges today. Of course, I mean the younger ‘I’.”
"But I was there, in his office. I didn't see you."
He chuckled quietly. "You might have, if I hadn't hid under my desk. Not my most dignified moment."
“So you’re him? Buckley from thirty years from now?”
“Thirty-two. But I don’t know if I’m him, or a copy of him, pulled back by those three spellcasters.”
“They were trying to summon wealth and power.”
“Well, in their defence,” he said with a grin, “I am very wealthy and exceedingly powerful.”
“So what’s the other half of the spell? The ‘power’? We found a stolen grimoire at your place. It’s a primer for new magicians. You were going to deliver that to your younger self? Make yourself a powerful spellcaster as well as a rich one?”
He waved a hand idly in the air. “Oh no, you would only seize that as stolen property. I’ve already copied out the spells I needed and had them delivered to myself. Anonymously, of course. You can return the grimoire to its owner.”
“So this actually happened to you when you were younger? Someone logged into your online trading account, made you a millionaire, then delivered the spells to set you down the road to becoming a wizard? It’s… fantastic. Unbelievable.”
“Oh, I agree. It took years for me to piece together. But then I found the case file for the three student murders and put two and two together.”
“You read your own case file? How?”
“It was heavily redacted, but yes. And I’m a wealthy and powerful wizard; I have connections. The department has even asked me to consult a few times.” He raised his head from the wall and looked around for the first time. “The office isn’t here in my day, though. It gets moved out to Rathmines.”
Of all the things he’d said so far, this surprised me the most. “The Magistrate moves? He’s lived downstairs since 1843. I didn’t think he’d ever relocate.”
“Is that the vampire I met yesterday? He’s dead in my day. The department is run by-” My blood ran cold.
“Dead?” I interrupted. “What do you mean? How?”
“I don’t know, exactly. I know it happens this year sometime, but people tend to avoid talking about-” He suddenly doubled-over and fell to the floor. When he raised his head again, his face was grey and drawn with pain.
“Open the cell!” I yelled to Murtagh’s man at the end of the hall. “Now!”
He scrambled with his keys at the panel that contained the switches for each cell door while I wrestled with the handle. With a loud clank, the mechanism released and I wrenched open the door and dived inside. The older Buckley was still lying on the floor, but the pain seemed to have passed. He held one hand in front of his face, transfixed by its transformation. I could see the life draining from it. The skin blanched and withdrew as the whole hand withered to a skeletal claw. He said something in a faint whisper I could not catch. I knelt his side and grabbed his shoulders.
“It seems he’s - I’m - casting my first spell. I’m tapping into my well of power for the first time. I can feel him - me - draining my own power… keeping me...”
“Tell me about the Magistrate!” I yelled. “What happens to him?”
“Oh? I can’t… I don’t know. He’s murdered.” As I watched, more and more life drained from him. He had minutes left, if that.
“Who does it? Do you know?” I squeezed his shoulders to try and focus him, and felt the flesh under my fingers crack and crumble like dry clay.
“It was a troll. He’s killed by some troll.”
And just like that, he was gone. What was a living breathing figure moments before collapsed to a pile of bones and dry ash. Dumbfounded, I sat back on the floor of the cell. My mind was both racing and incapable of thought at the same time. I couldn’t speak.
When Murtagh’s deputy touched me on the shoulder, I didn’t know if five seconds or five minutes had gone past. “Did you hear that? I asked him. Finlay, was his name, I recalled suddenly. “Did you hear what he said, Finlay?”
“Didn’t, boss,” he replied, stepping back.
I brushed some of the ash from my hands and slowly stood. The room spun about me as I did. “Get someone from the Scene Team to check the..” I flailed for the correct word, “to check the remains.”
“Sure thing, boss.”
An edge to his tone I had never heard before snapped me back to the present, and I eyed him up and down properly for the first time. He stared at the remains, but side-on to me, in what I recognised as a protective stance, and the holster on his right hip that held his taser had the safety strap unsnapped. “Finlay?” I asked.
He snapped back to attention. “Sir?”
“Now.”
He fled the cell and I followed slowly. My mind whirled. Sir Arthur dead at the hands of a Troll? I knew I wasn’t going to kill him. Even the thought of it… After my mother died, he had taken me in off the streets and given me a life, as much as I had one.
There were other trolls, sure, and many of them relatives. I mentally counted the ones I knew who held a grudge against law enforcement. It was a long list. But as I climbed the stairs, I realised I now had something they didn’t. I had foreknowledge. A weapon that nobody was even aware of.
When I got back to my desk, Cormac and Sir Arthur were waiting. “We heard the Fae died,” said Cormac. “Any developments? Any final words?”
I look from him to Sir Arthur and back. “No, nothing new.”
It was going to be a long year.
Comments
Post a Comment