The Collected Christopher Connery (5 page)

Since neither Nia nor Arthur seemed to have any
objections, she turned and continued up to where she’d left the kid.

She made it exactly halfway down the hall before the
house itself started trying to kill them.

The first thing that happened was a door whipping off its
hinges and nearly slamming her into the opposite wall. She dropped
instinctively to one knee just in time to avoid being smacked upside the head
by a heavy cabinet flying out of the now open room and smashing through the
door opposite.

Behind her, Nia said, “Well, this confirms it! The house
is definitely trying to protect something. We just – oh dear.”

“Oh dear” seemed a rather mild reaction to the sight of
an undead child with half his head gone, clutching a shard of glass almost as
long as he was tall. He was backed up by what looked like a very angry chest of
drawers.

Since shooting the kid seemed to be only a temporary
solution, Gail pointed her gun at the drawers instead, though she was pretty
sure bullets wouldn’t do her any good there either.

“I have a theory,” Nia said softly. “I believe that if we
locate Mister Connery, the protection spells will automatically disable themselves
as their purpose will have been fulfilled.”

“But wouldn’t they want to stop us from taking him?”
Arthur answered in equally hushed tones.

“If I’m right, they only want to stop the
wrong
people
from taking –”

“Why the fuck are you whispering?” Gail snapped over her
shoulder.

The boy flew at them, screaming. Gail instinctively
stepped to the side, realizing belatedly that, in doing so, she had exposed the
magicians to the boy’s glass sword. Thankfully, Nia was prepared. With a flick
of her wrist, she tossed out another predrawn spell which sent the child flying
backwards into the chest, which reared up like an angry bear.

I’m going to get killed by furniture,
Gail thought
with dull despair.

“This must be the last line of defense,” Nia was saying
excitedly. “Mister Connery must be nearby. Where did you first see the child,
detective?”

“Playroom,” Gail said. Unfortunately, the dead boy and
his bureau buddy were standing between them and it. As if sensing their
intentions, the chest began menacing them by opening and slamming its drawers.

“Detective Lin,” Nia said. “Do you happen to remember
where this playroom is?”

“Yeah, right next to the evil furniture.”

“I see. We’ll have to distract it then!”

Before Gail could even think of a response, Nia slipped
past her with another flimsy piece of paper in her hand. The boy lunged for her
and probably would have run her through, if Arthur hadn’t scurried forward and
tripped him.

Realizing that standing around like an idiot wasn’t
helping anyone, Gail holstered her useless gun and grabbed the boy’s wrist
before he could stab the glass into Arthur’s calf. She tried to twist the
makeshift blade out of his fingers, but the child was beyond pain and only
tried to bite her.

There was a rumbling sound followed by another massive
bang!
Gail turned, expecting to see Nia crushed like a butterfly beneath the
dresser. Instead she found the chest on fire, smashing itself desperately into
the walls in an attempt to put out the flames.

It’s going to burn the whole place down.
But the
fire died as quickly as it had flashed to life, leaving the drawers blackened,
cracked, and apparently dead. Nia gave the still dresser a light pat with the
back of her hand then, apparently satisfied, darted into the playroom.

The boy twisted his head and tried to bite Gail’s hand
again.

“Cut that out.” Gail took hold of the boy’s hand and
smacked it against the wall until the glass shard shattered to a useless
splinters. The boy lunged at her again, but Arthur was there, throwing his
jacket over the boy’s head and tying his arms to his sides with the sleeves.

“Go make sure Nia’s okay,” he said as he continued
trussing the boy up with some impressive knotwork. “I’ll keep hold of him until
she can deal with it.”

Knowing they had no time to argue, Gail ran past the
burnt out shell of drawers and into the playroom.

It was chaos. Toys had fallen – flown? – off of shelves
and smashed on the floor. Nia was standing in the center of the room with her
eyes closed, but judging by the deep line between her brows, she wasn’t finding
what she was looking for.

Her eyes opened when Gail came into the room. “This is
intolerable! With all this magic everywhere I can’t find Connery.”

She sounded like she was complaining about someone
forgetting to shelve library books correctly, but Gail was beginning to get
used to that. “Can’t you get rid of the magic like you did with the people
downstairs?”

“It would take too long! I’d have to draw ten – twenty! –
complex spells in specific places around the house, which I would first have to
measure, but if we could just find Connery all of this would –” She broke off
when Arthur shouted from the hall. “Arthur!” she called back. “Arthur, are you
all right?”

The only answer was another wordless yell.

Nia whirled on Gail. “Keep looking for Connery! I have to
help Arthur.” Then she was gone.

If you, the magician, can’t find him, how the hell do
you expect me to?
But she turned and scanned the room carefully anyway. Nia
had said some of Connery was here, but where? The room was full of shelves, but
none of them had space enough to hold a human body part unless Connery had been
broken into far smaller pieces than any amount of money could get Gail
searching for. Then her eyes landed on the toy box.

Out in the hallway, she could hear several bangs and
thuds, but no more screaming, which was something. Pushing Nia and Arthur out
of her mind for the moment, she yanked open the box and drove her arms deep
into the collection of toys, throwing aside blocks and stuffed animals as she
dug toward the bottom.

Her hand closed on a wooden toy magician, but before she
could toss it away, it twisted in her grip and dug its hard little hands into
her skin. Barking out a curse, she shook her hand sharply, dislodging the toy.
It fell to the floor, bounced twice, then, with unnatural stiffness, it began
dragging itself across the floor toward her. Before she could kick it away, the
other toys in the box began writhe and thrash. Dolls clung to her arms while
stuffed animals stretched stubby arms toward her face to smother her. She
shoved those aside just in time to be struck below the eye by a toy train
rearing up like a snake.

She fell back on her elbows, stunned by the force of the
blow. Hot blood ran down the bridge of her nose. The things in the chest
twisted against each other with hissing scrapes and clacks. Some fell over the
edge and began dragging or rolling toward her.

Well,
Gail thought dazedly,
it’s definitely in
there.

Nia yelled something from the hall.

And I’d better find it fast.

Scrubbing the blood from her face, she dove forward
again, plunging her arms into the toy box. She curled her fingers into fists as
the toys crushed down on her hands. Gritting her teeth, she forced her arms
deeper as toys with sharp edges dug into her skin.

Nia called, “Detective!” but Gail ignored her. Her hands
had found something soft near the bottom of the box, soft threads that felt
like…

She yanked upward hard. The force of her pull threw her
off balance and the head flew from her hand, landing behind her with a thud and
rolling across the floor.

The toys in the box, immediately collapsed, harmless and
still once again. Turning her head, Gail watched through the doorway as the
dead child fell free of Arthur’s jacket and stared vacantly in her direction.
She gazed back as blood ran slowly down her face and arms. The cuts hadn’t felt
that deep when the toys were inflicting them, but suddenly she had no strength
to move. Her arms and legs felt like they weighed a hundred pounds.

Poison?
she wondered through the growing haze in
her head. Had Connery’s cronies gone so far as to poison the goddamn toys?

Maybe that’s how they got the kid.

Nia knelt beside her. There was an angry bite mark on one
of her arms, but she didn’t seem to feel it as she drew a circle around Gail’s
body.

For another minute or two, Gail didn’t feel anything but
the blood running down her skin and the slow certainty that each beat of her
heart was coming slower than the one before it. Then that was replaced by the
sensation of her stomach dropping like she’d suddenly been swung out into empty
space.

Then strength rushed back into her limbs. She rolled over
on to her knees and somehow found it in her not to be sick all over the floor.
 

Nia took her arm and gently helped her stand. “I’m sorry,
detective,” she said in a soft trembling voice. “I am so terribly sorry.”

“No – no harm done,” Gail managed to gasp, hands braced
on her knees as she breathed the lingering nausea away. When she straightened
up, she gazed in fascination at her completely healed arms. “Damn. Thanks.”

Nia said nothing.

Tearing her eyes away from her remarkably uninjured skin,
Gail looked around the room. “Where’s your brother?”

As if on cue, Arthur stepped into the room. His clothes
were splattered with blood and he was holding one of his arms protectively
against his body, but he looked mostly okay. When Nia went to check on him,
Gail took a few steadying breaths. Her head still felt like it might float away
from her body like balloon if she moved too quick, but as long as she didn’t
have to tangle with any more possessed toys, she was pretty sure she’d be all
right. Noticing that no one else had thought to collect Connery’s head –
hopefully it was Connery’s anyway; they didn’t need some other jerk’s head –
she moved to get it herself.

She managed about three steps before crashing to the
floor.

Out like a light.

There was a rather tense hour during which Nia was fairly
certain that she had murdered Detective Lin.

“I only wanted to help,” she said frantically to Arthur
as they carried the unconscious woman down the stairs and out of the house.
“She was dying. There must have been some toxic substance painted on the toys.”

“Toxic?” asked Arthur as he lay Gail down in the back of
the car. The detective hardly twitched, even when he curled up her legs to fit
her inside, but at least she was still breathing.

“Yes, her heart rate was slowly alarmingly. If I hadn’t
done something, she – oh, what if she dies?”

“She won’t die,” Arthur said with a doctor’s calm as he
checked Gail’s pulse with two fingers. “She seems all right now. She needs
rest. That’s all.”

But underneath the easy clinical tone, Nia heard a note
of uncertainty that he couldn’t entirely hide, not from her, and her stomach
clenched.

Arthur looked down at the severed head tucked under her
arm. “I see you found him.”

“Detective Lin did.” Nia held the head between her hands.
“She was very clever to discover the hiding place.” She looked down at Gail
again, guilt gnawing in her belly. Had she made the right choice? Perhaps she
should have waited and tried to treat Gail’s wounds conventionally first, but
the detective had been so still…

“You used a lot of magic on her,” Arthur said as he
draped his torn and bloodstained jacket over the unconscious detective.

“Yes, perhaps I did.” Nia caught her bottom lip between
her teeth. “But under the circumstances, I felt had no choice.”

Arthur looked at her silently for a moment then moved
toward the driver’s side door. “We can talk about it at the hotel. We should
get her to bed and then call the Academy to get someone to clean up this
house.”

Nia knew she should have been the one saying that, but
she could watch Gail breathe for another moment before climbing silently into
the passenger seat.
Oh, please, don’t let things have gone wrong already…

When they arrived at the hotel, there were a few moments
of confusion. Nia had only ever left the Academy campus once or twice before
and never alone. Arthur had been outside more often, but only during carefully
supervised trips to the layman hospital when they required another pair of
hands. Neither of them had ever tried to get an unconscious detective up to a
hotel room before. Luckily, Nia’s Illuminator badge seemed to override any
social faux pas they made and within a few minutes, they had Gail – still in
her bloody clothes, as neither Arthur nor Nia felt they had established the
intimacy necessary for changing them – laid out on her bed. When it was clear
her condition was stable, Arthur and Nia retired to their own room to debrief.

Academy regulations required them to share a room, just
in case Arthur went rogue.

Nia also suspected it helped keep costs down.
  

“Next time, you should let me handle the injuries,”
Arthur said once the door was closed behind them. “It’s part of why they sent
me with you.”

Nia pulled off of her coat and hung it carefully on the
coat rack by the door. “There wasn’t time.”

“She was bleeding and possibly poisoned. She hadn’t gone
into cardiac arrest, she hadn’t been disemboweled. I’m not saying magical
healing might not have been necessary, but you should have at least let me
examine her first.”

Nia had to fight to keep her face impassive – in large
part because Arthur was probably right. “Detective Lin is an integral part of
this investigation. We need her to be completely healthy. That won’t be
possible if we rely on mundane medical methods.”

“One, she won’t be completely healthy for long if you
keep pumping magic into her. Two, weren’t you the one who said that adding a
laymen to the investigation was, and I quote, ‘an intolerable nuisance’ that
would only make things more difficult?”

Oh, he intended to throw enumerated lists at her, did he?
Well, unfortunately for him there was no one more skilled at creating
enumerated lists than Nia Graves. “One, I have no intention of ‘pumping magic
into her’ as you so crudely put it. This was an extraordinary circumstance. Two,
I said that before she found Mister Connery’s head. I think that rather proved
her usefulness, don’t you?”

Arthur folded his arms. “So you think this investigation
is only going to get
less
dangerous as we go?”

“Certainly not, I’m not that naïve, but we will be more
knowledgeable and therefore better prepared.”

For several seconds, they simply stood glaring at each
other. If Arthur thought she would crumble under his chiding expression than he
was mistaken. She had admittedly had doubts of her own after performing the
healing magic on Detective Lin, but the more she considered the matter, the
more she became certain that it had been a necessary risk. Surely Detective Lin
would prefer the slight risk of magical overexposure to not being able to move
from her bed for days or even weeks. She was opening her mouth to point this
out when Arthur sighed and forfeited the staring contest.

“Look, there’s not much point in arguing about it now.
Just don’t do it again unless she’s actually dying, okay? My methods might not
be magical, but they’re a lot less risky and they work pretty well.”

Nia had the irritating feeling that agreeing here would
mean losing the argument somehow, but since she had no intention of using more
magic on Detective Lin except in the direst of circumstances she was forced to
say. “Of course, I never intended anything different.”

“Good,” said Arthur, once again giving Nia the impression
that she had unintentionally surrendered the discussion.

It doesn’t matter what he thinks. I know the risks involved
in my job and how to best mitigate them.
“If you don’t mind, I have some
work to attend to.”

Arthur looked at the head, which was now lying in one of
Nia’s open hat boxes. “And if you don’t mind, I’ll leave you to that and look
in on Detective Lin.”

“Certainly. Ah, Arthur, just don’t – well, you know.”

Giving her one of those very familiar but still
occasionally infuriating sardonic looks, Arthur touched a hand to his heart. “I
solemnly swear not to murder her and steal her identity in order to unleash my
murderous impulses on the unsuspecting layman population. It would be difficult
to pull off anyway. Detective Lin and I look almost nothing alike.”

Nia glared at him. “You know those jokes aren’t funny,
Arthur.”

“They’re funny to me.” Then he smiled that wide smile he
only used when he wanted to cheer Nia up against her will. She held firmly to
her frown for nearly five seconds before her lips twitched upward in spite of
her and Arthur, damn him, knew he had won the day.

“I’ll come back in a little bit and let you know how
she’s doing,” he said, smile softening a little.

Nia nodded. She would want to know. “Thank you.”

When Arthur had gone, Nia opened one of the suitcases and
removed one of the large pieces of slate she used when drawing on the floor was
inconvenient. After laying down the slate, she opened her toolkit and pulled
out a fresh piece of chalk. Over the next few minutes, she carefully drew a
search-and-locate spell. She knew the spell by heart, but she double-checked
one of her books, just to be absolutely sure she hadn’t made any careless
mistakes.

If today had proven one thing, it was that this case
would not allow for careless mistakes.

Nia put the final touches on the circle and opened the
hat box. Grasping Connery by his hair, she lifted him out and set him in the
center of the circle.

“All right, Mister Connery,” she murmured, drawing a few
final lines to complete the spell. “Let’s find the rest of you.”

Sitting back, she folded her hands and began to
concentrate, feeling her own magic fall into the circle’s pattern, which both
focused and contained it. Using the head as a template, the magic reached out
for the rest of Connery’s remains. Slowly the magical threads wove together in
the air around her. Many of them were yet too fragile to follow, but one felt
so strong and clear that it had to be pointing to somewhere close by. She would
need to draw a more precise spell to get an exact location, but for now she was
content to know that the trail had not gone cold.

She broke the circle with a scuff of her shoe, picked up
Connery’s head, and put it back in the box. When the box was safely hidden
under the bed – she would have to remember to hang the do not disturb sign or
some poor hotel employee might get a nasty shock – she went into the bathroom
to tidy herself up for dinner. She supposed they couldn’t go out with Detective
Lin ill as she was, but she should at least look human before calling for room
service.

It was only after peeling out of her
blood-and-sweat-stained dress and stepping into the shower that she realized
there was still blood on her hands, hidden between the fingers. Detective Lin’s
blood. She could remember all-too-vividly how the other woman had looked
sprawled on the floor, blood running on to the floor from a hundred tiny but
lethal wounds. Nia had seen people bleed before, of course, dozens – maybe
hundreds – of times. For goodness sake, she had been the one to amputate the
hand of a colleague who had been careless with a putrefying spell.

But that had been in the sterile Academy clinic, not in a
filthy house full of death and foul magic. And under those circumstances, those
terrifying circumstances, there was a very good chance that Nia had made a
mistake.

Turning on the water as hot as it would go, she began
scrubbing the remaining flecks of blood from her skin. Magic was generally
unhealthy for laymen. That was why vernix did such strange things to their
minds and why illusions cast on them often either failed entirely or left
permanent mental scars. Healing magic was especially dangerous as it affected
the body directly, repairing tissue and blocking pain receptors. Magicians
could absorb and break down excess magic as easily as most people broke down
sugar, but laymen couldn’t do anything with it, so it remained in their bodies.
A small amount was basically harmless, but too much…  

She toweled herself off and put on a clean dress.

It was only once. There’s no harm in doing it only
once.

She heard the room’s door open and she quickly put her
face back in order.
No matter what you feel inside, don’t display your
doubt.
That was what Mother had always said. Confidence without could
create confidence within, but showing weakness to others would only encourage
weakness within the self.

Arthur tapped lightly on the bathroom door. “Are you all
right?”

“Absolutely!” Nia quickly checked the fall of her dress
in the mirror before opening the door. “I was just washing up.”

“I’m going to do the same” Arthur rubbed the back of his
neck with a grimace. “I feel like I’ve been playing in a slaughterhouse.”

“Funny, that’s what you smell like.” Arthur swatted at
her with his bloodstained sleeve, but she dodged the swipe easily. He rolled
his eyes at her laughter and went into the bathroom, closing the door behind
him.  

As she stepped to the large mirror against the opposite
wall to make herself presentable, Arthur’s voice floated out of the bathroom.
“Detective Lin seems better. She’s sleeping easily now.”

That doesn’t mean she’s better,
a nasty voice
whispered in the back of Nia’s mind.
The magic might just be taking time to
do its work. If she has a lower than normal resistance to it, her body may even
turn on itself in a futile attempt to fight it off.
But Nia made herself
smile at her own reflection. “That’s wonderful! It’s only thanks to her that we
found Connery after all.”

“Speaking of which,” said Arthur, sounding suddenly
disgusted. “Where is it?”

“Under the bed.”

The bathroom door swung open. “Under the
bed?”

“Well, where else would you have me hide it?”

“I – fine, but I’m sleeping in the adjoining room then.”

 “There’s no need to be squeamish, Arthur. It won’t
rot for a long time yet.”

“That’s comforting.” Arthur closed the door again. “I’m
going to shave. Then we can get something to eat. Before we do, though, I’ll
have to bring something up for Detective Lin –”

“I can do that!”

Arthur seemed startled by her enthusiasm, but finally
responded with, “All right. I mean, if you want –”

But Nia was already half way out the door, fastening a
bracelet around her wrist as she went.

The best way to deal with worry was having something to
do.