Reality Hack (17 page)

‘You look kind of depressed, Ice,’ Spike said, his tone consoling.

‘Just tired. It’s been a long week.’

‘This is why I’ve never dug the work ethic.’

‘I don’t think anyone does,’ Lena told him. ‘On the other hand, money buys nice things.’ She pointed at Nisa. ‘Go buy yourself a new club outfit tomorrow. That’ll make you feel better.’

Nisa gave a shrug. ‘Maybe I will.’

Tower Hamlets, August 23
^rd
.

Nisa had really expected to spend Saturday continuing the hunt for the rogue wizard, but Kellog and Hanson had insisted she take a day off, two unless they could come up with another line of investigation which might actually turn up results. Neither of them had looked hopeful.

So Nisa had gone shopping. Her heart was not entirely in it and it was not one of her favourite activities anyway, but she had visited a few places she knew and bought some things she thought would work together, and now she was trying to see if they did. Except that she did not have a full-length mirror so she was trying to see how she looked as best she could in the smaller mirror over the dresser.

‘It’s… very figure-hugging,’ Faline commented from the bed. It was still light and she was still a cat. Nisa wondered whether her viewpoint changed when she changed shape.

‘I’m not sure it’s me.’

‘It shows quite a lot of skin, and the heels on those boots are… How do humans walk in those things?’

‘Takes practice.’

‘I don’t see men trying to do it.’

‘Huh. Actually, historically men wore high heels. It became unfashionable because it was seen as effeminate and men were trying to be sensible and responsible. First started to help when riding. If you stood up in stirrups, the heel helped keep your foot in place. Oh, and then Louis the fourteenth wore heeled shoes because he was a short-arse.’ Nisa peered down at her boots, thigh-high, black leather, and she was wearing black, lace-topped hold-up stockings with them. The heels were a good six inches high. ‘I’m not saying these are even vaguely practical.’

‘The skirt is actually not that short,’ Faline went on. Which was true enough. The skirt and top were black Lycra. The skirt was high in the waist and went down to mid-thigh, almost touching the tops of her stockings. However, there were two bands of mesh at the bottom which made it look shorter, and the way it clung left little to the imagination.

‘But the top is barely there, yes,’ Nisa said. The top was a cropped, cap-sleeved T-shirt with a high neck, but it had a lot more mesh. There was a sort of bra of opaque material and a few bands at the hems.

‘The studded cuffs seem to finish it. It seems very much you.’

‘Well… all the bits are me, but does the whole scream Nisa?’

A buzz from the door halted any answer. Frowning, Nisa walked through into the lounge where the intercom was fixed to the wall. She was not expecting anyone. In fact, the buzzer got used so infrequently that she wondered sometimes whether it worked.

‘Hello?’ she said after pressing the button beside the speaker grille.

‘Sergeant Harper? It’s Alaina Peters. I have… something for you. Could I come up?’

‘Of course,’ Nisa said before she had really thought about it. Her thumb hit the door release button on automatic, and that was when she realised what she was wearing.

‘Oh… Oh what the fuck,’ she muttered. Then she darted over to the bedroom door. ‘We’ve got a visitor. Alaina Peters from the Order. She’s just a PA though.’

‘About the demon business?’ Faline asked.

‘Probably.’

‘I shall make myself less visible anyway.’ And she got up from the bed and vanished beneath it.

Alaina’s eyebrows went up when the door opened for her. ‘Wow… Are you expecting someone?’

‘Uh…’ Nisa stepped back, waving Alaina in. ‘I just bought them. I was trying them out to see if they actually worked on me. Uh, for a nightclub. Not, like, for work. Besides…’ Nisa indicated Alaina’s outfit with a vague wave as she closed the door. The PA was wearing a blue T-shirt made of a wide net and a very short, blue and white plaid skirt. There was a flesh-tone, push-up bra under the shirt, but it was almost invisible. She had six-inch, beige pumps on as well.

‘Oh… yes…’ Alaina unconsciously wrapped her arms around herself. ‘I felt like I wanted to… look my best. You know?’

‘I guess.’

‘So… this is where you live?’

Change of subject, okay… ‘This is it. Yup. It’s not much…’

Alaina looked around, a slight smile on her lips. ‘I like it. It feels lived in. I have a flat in Mayfair. The Order pays for it.’ Her pretty face scrunched up a little. ‘Doesn’t really feel like home.’

‘I’m not sure anywhere has ever felt like home, but this is as close as it gets.’

‘Yes…’ Suddenly she was fumbling in her bag, a small clutch purse. ‘Alexander found something. That’s why I came. Uh… we don’t know where he is, exactly, but we’re pretty sure this is your man.’ She dug a folded sheet of A4 from her bag and held it out. ‘This has all his known properties on it.’

Nisa reached out to take the sheet and her fingers brushed over Alaina’s. There was… something, a spark, a rush of energy. Alaina gasped and a shiver ran through her. To Nisa it felt as though someone had just stroked over all her erogenous zones at once.

‘Oh!’ Alaina said, her eyes wide.

‘It’s, um, static,’ Nisa said. ‘Cheap carpets.’

‘Yes… Yes, I’m sure… Static. I should be going. You have work to do, I’m sure.’

‘Yes… and I have to get changed. Kellog would look at me
really
funny if I went out on a bust dressed like this.’

Alaina bolted for the door, flustered. ‘I don’t know. I’d give up without a fight. You, um, you should definitely wear it to that club.’

Nisa watched the door close behind her. ‘Okay, call Kellog, cold shower… should be good to go.’

Windsor Forest, August 24
^th
.

The only house they had not tried was just outside Windsor Forest, which put it in the Thames Valley District and outside their normal area of operations. Hanson had taken most of the morning to clear the incursion with everyone who needed to agree, and by then Kellog and Nisa had visited every other house on the list, with an ART unit, and were not happy about waiting.

‘It’s the last day,’ Nisa said as they drove toward the address Alaina had given her. ‘He’s probably already got someone.’

‘I know,’ Kellog replied. ‘The demon won’t come until it gets dark. We have time.’

‘Maxim came through.’

‘Yes.’

‘Kellog…’

‘Yes?’

‘He asked how you were, you know.’

‘Nice of him.’

‘He said something… Well, he said something that kind of implied something without saying it.’

‘Ask the question, Nisa.’ His tone was resigned and about as emotional as he got.

‘He said you knew what the Order did to people who summoned demons. He didn’t say you did, but…’

‘We did not summon a demon.
If
he was attempting to imply we did, then he was lying, but I think you’ll find he’s too intelligent to make the implication. He knows you would ask me, or one of the others, and it’s not true. I know what would happen to someone who summons demons because I was a member of the Order.’

Nisa relaxed in her seat. It did make sense. ‘Good,’ she said.

‘Not really. What we did was far worse. We’re here.’

He was pulling the car up outside a large, ornate gate structure before she could say anything else.

‘We don’t get backup for this one?’ she asked instead once they were out of the car.

‘Too complicated. Thames Valley doesn’t have a dedicated supernatural unit. If they have something they call on us, and using our own ART would have taken too long. So…’ He stopped outside a side gate which was more person-sized than vehicle, and he fixed her with a firm, even more serious than usual, gaze. ‘Remember all that stuff you learned about announcing your presence and proper entry procedure?’

‘Yeah…’

‘Well forget it. We go in, find this Jasperson, and we arrest him.’

‘Arrest?’

‘Yes, we arrest him. With extreme prejudice if he won’t come quietly.’

Nisa swallowed. ‘I get it.’ She reached into her bag and unzipped the pocket. The grip of her Glock settled into her palm, but she kept it there for now. Kellog nodded once and went through the gate.

The house was more of a small estate. There were two buildings, one a stable or something, the other more of a house. Both were local brick, but the stable had a flatter roof and Nisa was betting they were going to find Jasperson in the house because Emily had said the attic room she had been held in had had a sloping side to it.

They had had some time to run a check on him and had discovered some interesting facts. He was wealthy, very wealthy, but ten years ago he had been having trouble. Shares had fallen at the wrong time, and business deals had fallen through. He had been close to losing everything, and then he had suddenly got very lucky. All his misfortunes had turned around almost overnight. It was, Kellog had said, classic for a demonic deal. Everything was just about within the realms of possibility, but looked at all together it suggested someone had applied some influence here and there.

They were fairly sure Jasperson was their man. It was all circumstantial, but it was on the right timescale, and Jasperson’s membership of the Order was on record. He was one of Faline’s ‘not that good’ wizards, but he had found a way to make a real nuisance of himself.

The back door of the house was unlocked, or it was after Kellog had glowered at it for a few seconds. Nisa had ignored the click as the mechanism opened up. The door was obviously unlocked, because magic was not real and would not be appearing in any reports. Not that she expected the report on this case to be seen by many people.

The kitchen had a cottage feel to it, complete with a huge range cooker which looked as though it never got used. The lounge and dining room had a similar ‘country retreat’ feel to them. None of them had a wizard in them, and the upper floor with its four bedrooms and huge bathroom was equally devoid of people. They did find a coat lying on one of the beds, and the wallet in it belonged to one William James Jasperson. It suggested he was there, and Nisa was expecting to find him in the attic anyway.

Except that the attic had a window in it, which was not how Emily had described it. The light coming in from that as they edged up the stairs showed an empty room. There were boxes, an old dresser, and a blank, wooden wall. There was a beam running through at the right height for someone Emily’s height to be tied to, but there was no one tied to it.

‘Fuck!’ Kellog snapped, keeping his voice low, but obviously thinking they had hit a dead end. Nisa was more surprised at the display of emotion than she was at not finding anything. ‘Check around. Maybe there’s…’

‘Secret door?’

‘In this business, anything’s possible.’

Nodding, Nisa walked down the room, avoiding the boxes. The dresser contained a few old dolls kept behind glass. Jasperson had had a sister who had died young and the toys had likely belonged to her. Nisa made it to the wall at the end without seeing anything strange and looked back.

At the far end of the attic, Kellog was checking over the sloping area where it might have let through into the smaller wing where the kitchen was. She frowned. He seemed further away than she would have imagined from the walk she had just taken. Closing her eyes, she brought up the image of the outside of the house. She had seen the attic window from the ground and it had been closer to the kitchen than to the other end. But when she opened her eyes and looked, the window was in the middle of the sloping wall and…

There was that tension in her mind again, the feeling of magic happening somewhere nearby. It could have been Kellog, but she thought not. And… And the shadows were wrong. In the angle between the window and her end of the room, the shadows seemed deeper than they should have been. She walked into the corner…

And raised her pistol, automatically taking the stance Kellog had taught her and aiming the weapon at the man standing with his back to her. He had greying hair, was not tall, and that fitted Jasperson’s description. He was chanting something, in Latin, Nisa thought, and the result seemed to be that the naked young man hung by his wrists from the roof beam was screaming so loud that the chant was barely audible. Whatever was hiding the room was suppressing the sound because there was no way they would have failed to hear that horrible, pain-racked wailing.

‘Stop the spell,’ Nisa said, ‘or I’m going to put a bullet in the base of your skull.’ She was not actually sure she could hit the base of his skull, even at three yards, but she figured his back would do.

The chanting stopped and Jasperson turned, slowly. The man he was torturing sagged in his bonds, panting.

‘You mustn’t stop me,’ Jasperson said, his voice calm and soft. ‘I have to give Auns what he wants–’

‘Or he’ll take your soul. I know. That doesn’t give you the right to give him other people’s.’

‘I can give you money. When I’ve given Auns this one, I can arrange for anything you want. Power? The love of your life?’

‘Thanks, but I can get those myself. I want you to–’

He moved, raising his hand, fist clenched. She saw the ring on his finger just as he said, ‘Incendiariam ignitionem!’ She had no idea what it meant, but it sounded like it was something to do with fire and she felt the sudden flare of her magic sense as the ring began to glow. Reacting on instinct, her mind filled with the image from the coin and she wrapped herself in it as a pulse of light she thought she recognised shot from the ring to hit her in the chest. Fire blossomed and died as quickly as it had appeared. Nisa smelled burned cotton and squeezed off three rounds from her pistol.

‘Impossible…’ Jasperson croaked, and then he was falling forward, collapsing onto the wooden floor.

Nisa looked down to see skin showing through the burned hole in her T-shirt. The pink flesh was a little redder than usual, but whatever she had done, it had worked. She was about to step forward to check on her arrestee when something appeared over the body. It was indistinct, misty, but it looked like it had horns and a tail. It hovered there for a second, gave a hiss of dissatisfaction, and then vanished.