I’d found Jackie, all right.
FIVE
MY FIRST INSTINCT WAS TO RUSH IN AND CHECK the body, to see if she was still alive, and that was what I would have done a few years ago. But I’d learned a lot from Victor since then, now that I’d finally stopped ignoring anything he had to say. Secure the room was now my first priority. When finding a body on the floor it’s a good idea to make sure whoever put it there isn’t hiding behind the kitchen counter waiting for you to bend over the body, back conveniently turned.
I took one step through the doorway and closed the door behind me. There wasn’t much space to hide in the small room, but there was a closet. I glanced around the room and saw a walking stick leaning against the wall next to the door. I picked it up, then realized I might have just placed my fingerprints on a murder weapon. Oh, well.
I moved quietly across the room, jerked the closet door open, and jumped back, holding the stick at the ready. A few jackets and a dead TV were all that was in there. The bed was a twin with no room underneath for anyone to hide, but I pointed to it just the same.
“Lou,” I said. “Check under the bed.”
He wormed his way under and reappeared a moment later. All clear, at least for now. I put the stick down and bent over the body, reaching for the throat to find a pulse. Lou circled around me, looking at the body from different angles as if trying to figure something out. Finally he sidled over and sniffed at her. That was totally out of character for him; he doesn’t like death at all—he’s rather squeamish about such things. Usually he wanders over to the farthest corner and waits for me to be done. This time he simply walked over to the door and stood there impatiently.
No pulse at the throat, which was what I expected to find. Or rather, not find. The side of her head showed a depressed area matted with blood where someone had struck a blow, but other than that she could have been sleeping. Her face was untouched and she looked almost peaceful, as if she’d be waking up soon from a refreshing nap. There was a slight odor of perfume coming from her hair, mixed in disturbingly with the odor of fresh blood. Her skin was cool but not cold, so whatever had happened had been recent. Which made sense. I’d seen her laughing and talking with Sherwood a scant hour ago.
One thing was for sure: this was no random murder. Sure, the cops might think so when they showed up, but I could feel the magical residue of a powerful talent hanging in the air. This murder had been done by a practitioner—maybe even by a killing spell, with the knock on the head an afterthought to make it look mundane and believable to the cops. It wouldn’t be the first time someone had been bludgeoned to death in this hotel, no doubt. There was something strange about the traces of talent, though; it was muddy and unfocused.
I stood up and took a quick look around the room, looking for anything that might provide a clue. A small bureau sat in the corner, but when I pulled out the drawers there was nothing in them that could have belonged to her. Only men’s clothes, and if the shirts were any indication, a large man at that. So this wasn’t her hidey hole at all—she had been visiting someone.
It was time to get out of there before someone came by and found me in a situation that would be difficult to explain. But first I needed to search the body, unpleasant as that would be. Again, a few years ago I would have been filled with dread and loathing, but I’d seen too much death since then. They say you can get used to almost anything, and although I wasn’t exactly blasé about it, my emotional reactions had definitely been dampened.
As I grabbed the body to roll it over, Lou came over and gave one sharp bark. At first I thought he was warning me about someone coming, but when I paused he just stood there looking at me with a definite air of frustration.
“What?” I said, but of course he can’t answer.
I bent back to my task and he slipped by me, standing right next to the body. Calmly he lifted one leg and peed on her, as if marking his territory. That got my attention. I stared at him, baffled, and he blandly stared back at me. Either he’d gone completely nuts or I was missing something and he was trying to tell me what it was.
Lou wouldn’t randomly piss on a dead body, not for any reason. Unless he had gone insane. That wasn’t an option, so the logical conclusion was that it wasn’t a body at all. I’d been so focused on the dead Jackie lying crumpled on the floor that I hadn’t paid proper attention to the reek of talent permeating the room. Somebody had performed a powerful spell. I’d assumed it was connected to her death, but maybe it wasn’t. Maybe it had to do with making something seem to be what it wasn’t.
I took a step back and viewed the scene critically. If this was an illusion, it was a top-rate job—visual, tactile; even the sense of smell was involved. It was possible to create such an illusion, though it was beyond my own abilities. But not beyond my ability to see through it, hopefully.
I concentrated my vision and drew power from the mundane room, very much in the here and now. I narrowed my attention, let out some talent, and focused on the figure lying there. The body flickered briefly like a strobe light before returning to solidity. I walked around in a circle and examined it carefully from every side. It wasn’t quite perfect after all. The hair that lay across the red sweatshirt was sharp and detailed, but only on the side you were looking at. On the side of the head farthest away it blurred slightly, bleeding into the fabric. When I walked around to the other side the same thing happened. So it was definitely an illusion, but damn impressive nonetheless.
Usually I can cut through illusions easily, but this one was special. It would take a hell of a practitioner to pull it off. I reached out to examine the odd magical residue again and realized why it was confused. It wasn’t just traces from one practitioner; it was the remnants of two practitioners working together. That was why it had seemed so muddy.
Two practitioners working together would explain the illusion’s quality, but two practitioners can’t work well together unless they’re personally close and have had a lot of practice time. So it had to be someone powerful, and also someone Jackie knew well.
It wasn’t Cassandra, though. The remains of talent are recognizable; if you know the person’s talent signature, you can always recognize it, and Cassandra’s spell at her houseboat had given me a taste of hers.
And like voices, some signatures are more recognizable than others. If you’ve ever heard Jack Nicholson or James Earl Jones, you instantly recognize their voices when you hear them again. And the talent signature of both practitioners involved, though similar, were distinctive.
There was another issue. What was going to happen when the owner of the room came back? And then called the cops? Could the illusion stand up to an autopsy, when the pathologist sliced it open with a scalpel? Highly unlikely. Eventually it would fade anyway; no illusion is permanent, no matter how strong. And then there would be hell to pay.
The one thing every practitioner is aware of is the need to keep our abilities quiet, to not expose the practitioner community to widespread scrutiny, and something like this would surely cause some ripples. Then again, Jessie had hinted that she thought it was time for a change; maybe she was involved in some way I didn’t understand. I didn’t have enough information to come up with a plausible explanation, so I filed it away for the time being.
One strong possibility was that the illusion was specific to me, and only me. Jackie might have set it up to throw me off her trail. But if she had set it up that way, how had she done it? To implement that sort of a personally specific spell, you need to use something physical as a trigger, something from the person you’ve targeted. Or some object you’ve planted on them. But she’d never met me, never even been in close proximity to me. I ran over everything she’d done at the café with Sherwood. Had Jackie even glanced my way? Had she handed something to Sherwood? Had I inadvertently taken anything from Sherwood?
Then it clicked. There was one connection between her and me—Lou. She’d fussed over him, running her hands all over him. A spell wouldn’t stick to his Ifrit persona, but...
I called him over, loosened the Velcro on the harness, and ran my hands along its length. I found it right between his shoulder blades, a small slip of folded paper, sticky on one side like a Post-it.
I unfolded it, and there was a neat drawing of the famous optical illusion where you can’t decide if it’s a vase or the profiles of two faces. The note felt magically inert, but when I tore it in two a huge burst of energy rushed out, amazing for such a small piece of paper.
Immediately the body on the floor shimmered, and then, like the vase picture that looks like the one thing and suddenly flips into the other, I was looking at a pile of jumbled clothes. A can of Pepsi had been overturned by one end and the liquid had poured out across the floor, dark and sticky. Right by the can, nestled ludicrously in the clothes, was a dented cantaloupe—the supposed head. It was ludicrous and creepy at the same time.
So the only ones affected would have been me and Lou. The average Ifrit might have been fooled, even though they’re resistant to such magical tricks, but Lou’s not your average guy. He’d seemed confused before entering the room, as if Jackie were there but not there. And he’d circled the supposed body, trying to figure out exactly what was wrong with the scene, like a bloodhound who temporarily loses the scent when the hunted backtracks and grabs an overhanging limb. But it hadn’t taken him long to see through it, even with the spell paper tucked securely under his harness. That was when he sat by the door, ready to pick up the scent again, or whatever it is he does when he tracks someone.
He must have wondered what I thought I was doing investigating the room and its contents, blithely unaware of the true state of affairs. Finally he figured out that I wasn’t as smart as he was and helped me see the light.
“Let’s book,” I said, but it was too late.
The door swung open and a man stood in the doorway. I couldn’t be sure of his race, but he looked like a Pacific Islander, Samoan or maybe Tongan. I’d guessed he’d be large from the size of the shirts in the bureau, but I’d had no idea. He wasn’t much taller than I was, but his shoulders brushed both sides of the doorway. He had to weigh three hundred pounds if he weighed an ounce, and he wasn’t fat, just thick and solid. He looked momentarily surprised to find me there, and then asked the logical question.
“Who the fuck are you?” he said, squeezing through the doorway and taking a large step forward. “And what are you doing in my room?”
These were both rhetorical questions, mostly a ritual of speech to be uttered before pounding me into unconsciousness. Lou threw himself onto the floor in front of him and rolled over, paws waving in the air in the typical submissive dog pose, and looked up pleadingly with liquid eyes. It worked, at least temporarily. The man hesitated, momentarily taken aback. Before he regained his momentum, I jumped in.
“I’m looking for Willie,” I said, letting a whine creep into my voice. “I thought this was his room. He owes me some ... stuff. I even fronted him the cash.”
I sniffed a couple of times and lay down a quick illusion. Maybe I couldn’t create a totally realistic dead body, but I could at least make it look as if my nose was running uncontrollably.
“Fuckin’ junkie,” the man muttered. “There ain’t no ‘Willie’ here, Jack.”
“Maybe you could help me out?” I said, not giving him time to think. “It’s not for me, man; it’s my girlfriend. She’s really hurting.”
He stood away from the door and gestured with a large hand. “Get the fuck out of my room.”
I ducked my head as if I thought he was going to hit me and edged toward the door. Lou had already scrambled to his feet and was waiting outside in the hallway. Just as I passed the guy he reached out and grabbed me by the shoulder, almost crushing it. For a second I thought he’d changed his mind about the pounding idea, but he just said, “Hold on. Turn out your pockets.”
I meekly followed his instructions. As soon as he was satisfied I hadn’t snagged anything of his, he let go.
“Now get out,” he said, pushing me into the hallway hard enough so I bounced off the opposite wall. I’d got off easy; apparently he was the mellow sort. I hurried out of there before he noticed the mess on the floor and came after me to clean it up.
Once back out on the street, Lou hesitated, then started down the sidewalk again past the hotel. I called him back.
“I don’t think so,” I said. “Let’s just go home.” Despite the deflection, Lou could still track Jackie down. But I wasn’t sure I wanted to find her right now, not just yet. I needed to know more about what was going on first.
She wasn’t just randomly hiding out in San Francisco—she had to be dialed in to the practitioner community to some degree. She’d known all about me, all about Lou, and had known that we were looking for her. Or maybe Cassandra had gotten to her first and warned her. Either way, she’d seen through my ploy about forming a jazz group with no trouble at all. Sherwood needn’t have worried about conning a poor innocent—we were the ones who’d been conned.
It was a clever ruse. She couldn’t hide from me forever, so she’d taken preemptive action. If I thought she was dead, I wouldn’t be looking for her any longer, would I? No one would. She’d be free to go about her business. But thanks to Lou I knew she wasn’t dead—but she didn’t know that I knew. I now had the upper hand, except I still didn’t understand what the game was.