Frostbite (Modern Knights Book 1) (10 page)

I turned it over, looking at it from six different angles before I was certain what it was. “It’s my new cell phone.”

Duchess’ laugh was amplified by my already throbbing headache. When she finally stopped, she said, “Too much, Mr. Fisher, too much. You’ve convinced Lucien you may have a little talent, but a magical cell phone? There’s no need to con me now.”

I fixed my best irritated wizard glare on her. It stopped her laughter. Sometimes resembling Charles Manson comes in handy. “I bet you it works.”

A lone giggle escaped, but her deeper laughter remained dammed. “If that thing can make a phone call, I’ll...”

“You’ll what? Give me whatever I ask for?”

That stopped her humor altogether. “And if it doesn’t, what do I get?”

I pulled my debit card and set it on the bed. “The rest of my paycheck.”

“Hang on a second, champ. Phones and you aren’t...”

“No”, she said firmly. “I have plenty of money. When it doesn’t work, you have to lower your defenses. I get fifteen minutes inside your head, no resistance.”

“No thanks. I’ll pass.”

“Deal.” I started looking over the mishmash of buttons. The two and the eight were set like a pair of eyes on the head of the device, while the other buttons spiraled out in the belly. “What’s your cell number?”

She grinned. “No. If your toy is magical, it should be able to figure it out on its own. I want you to call…” She thought for a moment. “Veruca. Veruca Wakefield.”

“Who is she?”

“A member of Lucien’s inner circle. You get her on the phone, I’ll know it’s magic. I don’t even have her cell number…just Valente.”

I scratched my head. “You expect me to believe you don’t know it? You’re Lucien’s secretary.”

“That’s why I picked her. Just in case you have some telepathic ability yourself. You’ll find our employer is rather fond of his secrets.” She moved closer, her hand going to my chest. “Of course, if you’re scared, I’ll let you back out of the bet for only five minutes in your mind.”

Coming from her lips, five minutes of mental rape almost sounded seductive. “I’ll pass. I think you need to learn a little respect for the resident wizard.”

I don’t know why cynicism about magic from her bothered me. Most people I met were more than a little skeptical about my abilities. Heck, I was skeptical of my abilities most of the time. But I wasn’t going to let someone with actual fae blood in her veins stand there and mock my magical prowess.

I stared down at my gremlin-assembled phone, contemplating the problem. I didn’t know why I knew it would work. I had traded for it, paid for it with a toy car and a blow to the head. By the laws of the fae, it would work. If it didn’t…well, maybe I was a charlatan after all.

With a sudden burst of insight, I punched the zero button and spoke into the mouthpiece. “Operator, connect me to Veruca Wakefield. Inner Circle of Valente International. Yes, that’s W-A-K-E-F-I-E-L-D. Wakefield. I’ll hold.”

No one responded as I spoke, but I tried to hold up my end of an operator-assisted conversation as best as I could. The device burped and a speaker emerged from the tangled mess, slowly crawling its way up the side of my head toward my ear. There was no ringing sound, no dial tone, but there was something. A humming, perhaps, or a melody of bird songs heard miles and miles away. Duchess started to pace around me like a hungry tiger. But, true to my beliefs, a minute later I heard, “Wakefield.”

I used my best professional sales voice. “Veruca Wakefield? Of Lucien Valente’s Inner Circle?”

There was a brief pause. “Who the hell is this?”

“That depends. What do you think of Duchess Deluce?”

“That bitch,” the voice growled.

“Oh, well, in that case, I’m the man you just helped win a bet against her. Name’s Colin Fisher. I’m the new wizard.”

The line went silent again. “What happened to Enrique what’s-his-name?”

“Wendigo ate him.”

“Too bad, he was kind of cute. Dumb, but cute. So…Colin. Since we haven’t met yet, I’ll pretend that you didn’t know any better. Just tell me who gave you this number and I’ll kill them instead.” Veruca sounded feminine, almost valley girlish, yet she managed not to let her voice detract from the believability of the death threat.

“Sorry, a magician never reveals his secrets. Look, if I tell Duchess the words you used to describe her, will she believe that I really am talking to you right now?”

“You want her to know it’s me, huh?” Miss Wakefield went on a profanity laden tirade that encompassed five different languages and expressed such heartfelt dislike that I expected my phone to melt. “Tell her that and she’ll believe you.”

I clucked. “Hmm. I’m not sure I’ll survive the telling. If I tell her that, I should get something out of it.”

“You get to live, how’s that?”

“I was thinking more like a meal. Burger King, maybe? This whole eating out every day thing is still new to me.”

A longer silence. “I threaten to kill you and your counter-offer is a date?”

“Well, it’s not every day I meet a girl who can cuss better and make better death threats than me. Not to mention there’s something about the Portuguese language off a woman’s lips that drives me wild.”

The longest silence yet. “Very well, Colin. If you tell Duchess that, word for word, I will buy you a meal at Burger King.”

I pushed the mouthpiece out of the way. “Miss Deluce, I apologize, but I am to deliver this from Miss Wakefield verbatim.” I proceeded to do so, then raised the mouthpiece again, “Satisfied?”

“Eminently, though…you had the accent right on all the words. I may have to get you to swear at me if you’re that practiced at it. Do you actually speak Korean?”

“When I have to.”

“Hmm. Intriguing.” The valley girl quality was gone from her voice. “Good day, Mr. Fisher.”

“Good morning, Miss Wakefield.”

The earpiece retracted itself, apparently sensing the call was over.

Duchess’ jaw still dangled loose, just as it had from the second wave of Veruca’s message to her. When the muscle around it finally started working again, all she said was, “Monkey’s uncle. Lucien finally found himself a real wizard.”

7

A
fter I collected on my bet with Duchess by way of a few strands of her hair, I took her out to breakfast. The victory had taken the sting out of my injury, but by the time I was done eating, pain had crept back in. I thanked Duchess for bringing the items I had asked Valente for and said goodbye. I stopped by Walgreen’s to grab a bottle of painkillers, hung the Do Not Disturb sign on my hotel room door, and lay down to take a nap while I waited for the pills to kick in.

No dreams came and by ten-thirty I was as pain-free as I was likely to get. I spent a half-hour straightening up the room, though there was little I could do about the broken mirror. I planned on leaving the Do Not Disturb sign up, but I didn’t need an overzealous maid getting me kicked out. Inspecting my work, I thought the room had been upgraded from terrorist aftermath to post-drunken bender.

“Quit stalling,” my inner voice warned.

“Yeah, I know. Our real problem is the wendigo. It’s just so much easier to deal with the mundane,” I admitted.

“Magically exploding telephones are mundane?”

“For this week, yes, yes they are. There hasn’t been anything normal about this week. The most “normal” disaster this week was me accidentally bumping Dorothy’s light controls out at the lake. I haven’t done anything that harebrained since…wait a sec.”

“Do I smell an idea?”

“Wild paranoia-slash-conspiracy-theory, but maybe it’s an idea: What if I didn’t turn Dorothy’s headlights on?”

“Umm, you must have. I mean, who else was there? Oh...”

“Starting to see my point?”

“You don’t think we ended up in that gas station by accident.”

“Nope, it would make a great
Murder, She Wrote
plot, but I’m not Jessica Fletcher. A wizard is the first person at the scene of a magical homicide by coincidence? Something wanted me there.”

“So they sabotaged the car. You might be on to something.”

“Only one way to find out.”
I decided
. “We’re going back out to the lake.”

8

I
n the afternoon sun, it was hot enough that I had to shed not only my jacket, but my t-shirt as well. Only an Oklahoma October could swing so wildly between sweltering during the day and freezing at night. I hung both jacket and shirt over the driver’s side mirror to keep them from getting dirty. Now, it was a matter of lying out on Dorothy’s hood, soaking up the last warm rays of the year, and waiting. If I was right, I wouldn’t have to wait long.

“Nice tattoos,” a girl’s voice said.

They really are, or at least, I think so. I restricted my body art to places that can’t be seen when I’m fully dressed, on the theory that this helps with traffic stops and job interviews. None of them were the result of drinking or peer pressure and most were my own design. I was particularly proud of the chest piece: A Celtic cross with a sun, moon, and stars worked in. Along the arms of the cross was my true name spelled out in characters that were archaic before the Bible was ever written.

I waved at the pair of teenage girls. “Thanks.” They continued on their way along the shoreline, but their giggles drifted back to me. Once upon a time, I would have given anything to make young ladies giggle like that. I was always too awkward and gangly when I was of an appropriate age where I could have considered pursuing those two.

True names are a tough magic to appreciate. Reflecting on it, Lucien was very careful not to say his own name out loud in front of me. Likely, he had been told that a wizard could do things if he knew a victim’s true name from their own lips. That may be, but most people aren’t even aware of their true name. Even if they were, the exact pronunciation required an effort of will. I had even heard of cases where a person’s true name changed over time. I was still working on figuring out exactly what mine meant. Part of it derived from the Babylonian for “sworn-sword,” while another portion meant “far-wanderer”. Taken together, I told people that my tattoo means I was an honorary Knight of the Gypsy Moon. If only there were more than one member, we could have gone on a wendigo-killing crusade together.

“Returning to the scene of the crime, Mr. Fisher?”

I didn’t even turn to look. I had half-expected her and was pleased to find that my intuition was not completely broken. “Oh, a crime was committed here, all right. Somebody assassinated my battery. Care to investigate that one, Agent Devereaux?”

“Battery murder? No, that’s what happens when you leave your headlights on. I’m more interested in the real murder that took place three miles north of here.”

“That? If you’ve got handcuffs that will fit a wendigo, by all means go arrest it.”

“What the hell is a wendigo?” she growled. “Are you withholding...”

I sat upright and spun to face her with fierceness. “Don’t play with me, Devereaux. I may not be much of a combat mage, but angry wizards have other ways of expressing their displeasure. Something about ‘for thou art crunchy and taste good with ketchup’.”

She stood there wearing the same suit I had last seen her in, a blank expression on her face. After a good minute, she said, “I think that’s supposed to be about dragons, not wizards.”

“Yeah, well, there’s some strange stuff going on around here and if I don’t start getting some answers, maybe I’ll try to summon a dragon tonight. Now…why did you kill my car?”

“How did you figure that out?”

“Your eyes. They’re the same color as the lake. They were bugging me the whole interrogation, like a pair of really unnatural contacts. And you kept bringing it back around to the book. Little things, but once I caught up on my sleep, I started doing the math. I hope the real Agent Devereaux isn’t hurting too bad.”

“No, I just borrowed her for a little bit.” She eyed me warily. “What are you...”

I held up my hand to interrupt her. “Nope, you already got to interrogate me once. Now it’s my turn, right? Trade for trade, I answered yours, so now you have to answer mine. Or should I call up the faerie queens and kings and tell them you reneged?”

“You wouldn’t.” Her words said, but her pale expression said she thought I might. “You don’t have that kind of juice. They’d eat you alive.”

“Maybe I don’t. But Lucien Valente does. Should I send out invitations in my boss’s name?”

She gulped. I was curious to see what kind of pull his name would have with supernatural creatures not in his employ. I had expected indifference or grudging respect. What I saw in Devereaux’s face was fear. “No. You are right. I am in your debt. Will you agree to seven answers?”

“I suspect I gave you more than that…but I will accept seven as a fair trade. I didn’t lie to you, so you’ll have to be honest with me as well. Those are the terms. Do you agree?”

“Yes, one.”

She had me: I did phrase it as a question. “Why did you turn my car’s headlights on to bright?”

“I didn’t want you to be suspicious about why you had a dead battery. Two.”

Her grin made me think thunderous dark thoughts. She was going to run out her debt while giving me as little as possible to work with. “I see. You wanted my battery dead, so that my car wouldn’t work, so that I’d have to walk instead of drive. Why did you want me walking that night?”