Dan Willis
Ghost of a Chance
This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination, or, if real, used fictitiously.
Edited by Stephanie Osborn
Cover by Mihaela Voicu
Published by
Dan Willis
Spanish Fork, Utah.
1
The Sapphire Rose
Waves of heat rose off the ground under the August sun, distorting the piles of garbage that made up the Brooklyn landfill. Alex Lockerby took off his hat and mopped his brow, lowering the spade he carried in his left hand. Putting his hat back on, he reached into his vest and pulled a battered brass compass from the pocket. The little needle trembled but kept pointing onward through the piles of stinking rot and refuse left over from the world’s largest city.
As he stepped over the shattered remains of a wooden crate, the ground gave under his foot with a wet, squishing sound. The stench of rotting vegetation, spoiled meat, and sour milk assaulted him, and he had to repress the urge to gag.
“How do you let yourself get talked into this?” he said out loud, mostly to keep his mind off his surroundings.
He knew very well what had brought him here, of course. Money.
Or rather, the lack of it.
It had all started that morning when a well-dressed Brit named Gary Bickman came to see him at his Mid-Ring office. Bickman worked as a valet for some swell named Atwood who had a fancy Core address. A brooch worth more than Alex would earn in a decade went missing, and suspicion fell on the lady’s maid, Bickman’s wife. Both were immediately fired, and Atwood was pursuing criminal charges against his former employees.
Bickman insisted that his wife was innocent and offered Alex a C-note if he could prove it. The easiest way to do that was to find the brooch. The police had searched Atwood’s house and the couple’s living quarters but had found nothing. Since Bickman and his wife were the only people with access to the room where the brooch was kept, naturally they were the only suspects.
But Alex had methods the police didn’t.
He had the best finding rune in the city.
Alex reached into his pocket for a cigarette, but found it empty. He swore as he remembered that his last few cigarettes were locked in his desk back in his office.
Eleven short months ago he’d been paid a grand for helping the government recover a deadly man-made plague and now, here he was, chasing down a lead in a garbage dump without even the comfort of a cigarette to blunt the smell. Most of that money had gone to his training as a runewright. The special inks and equipment needed to master the craft didn’t come cheap, and while he was good, Alex still had a lot to learn. Thinking back, he remained amazed the cash had gone so quickly, leaving him owing his secretary Leslie back pay, and Alex behind on rent and short on smokes.
Garbage dump or not, a C-note would go a long way toward putting him back in the black.
“Once more unto the breach,” he sighed, quoting the Bard. His mentor, Dr. Ignatius Bell, late of His Majesty’s Navy, insisted that he learn more than just rune magic as part of his training. Extensive reading was also required. Alex had complained at first, but as time went on, he began to like it.
Not that he’d be telling Iggy that any time soon.
Watching for any more wet spots on the ground, Alex pushed his predicament out of his mind and moved on. After a dozen more yards, the compass needle began spinning in lazy circles. He lowered the spade, pushing it gently into the garbage at his feet. Taking off his jacket, he draped it over a broken crate nearby that didn’t look too dirty. Depositing his dark blue fedora on top of his coat, he picked up the spade and began gently removing trash from the area.
He tested each shovel full of debris by holding the compass over it, just to make sure he hadn’t removed the brooch. Ten minutes in, the compass turned and pointed toward his latest shovelful of garbage. Carefully, Alex picked through the damp pile until he found a wadded-up bundle.
It was a lady’s handkerchief, lacy and delicate. Alex could guess why it had been thrown away, as it was tattered around the edges.
Being careful not to tear the fabric, Alex unwrapped it. Inside lay the most expensive thing Alex had ever held in his hands, the Sapphire Rose. The brooch had a platinum setting with dozens of little diamonds around a blue flower in the center. The flower’s petals were made up of small, blue sapphires with one as big as a robin’s egg in the center. Their color was perfect, a deep, lustrous blue, and it sparkled in the afternoon sun.
“Hello, beautiful,” Alex said with a grin. “I know some folks who will be very happy to see you.”
“Oh, God,” Leslie Tompkins exclaimed as he trudged wearily through the door of the fourth-floor offices of Lockerby Investigations. Leslie immediately covered her nose with the back of her hand. “What happened to you?”
A former beauty queen, Leslie had worked as Alex’s secretary for years. She was in her early forties, but time hadn’t slowed her down any. Tall and statuesque, she had strawberry blonde hair and hazel eyes that looked blue when she wore blue, and green when she wore green. Today she had on a white blouse, so they were gray. Leslie was the business side of Lockerby Investigations, booking Alex’s clients and making sure the bills got paid while Alex did the actual detective work.
“Long story,” Alex said as Leslie threw open the window behind her desk despite the August heat.
“Cut to the chase,” she said, still covering her nose. “Did you find it?”
Alex grinned and dropped the handkerchief on Leslie’s perennially organized desk. He opened it, revealing the brooch.
“Wow,” Leslie said, looking at the brooch as it glittered in the afternoon light. “That’s really something. Is that little trinket really worth twenty Gs?”
Alex nodded.
Leslie wanted to get closer and examine it but as she moved, her hand came back up to her face.
“Where did you find it?” she gasped. “You smell like a fish market at closing time.”
“It was in a dump in Brooklyn,” Alex said. “Don’t worry, though, I’ve got a cleansing rune in my office.”
“Good,” she said, stepping back toward the window. “Just don’t use it in here.”
“Yes mother,” he said with a grin and trudged toward the door marked, Private.
Alex entered his office and pulled out his rune book, a pasteboard volume with a red cover that he carried in his suit jacket. This was where he carried the runes he needed for work, so he’d have them when he needed them. The pages inside were made of volatile and delicate flash paper so he turned them gently until he found the one he wanted. It bore the symbol of a triangle with circles at each point, drawn in silver ink. Delicate lettering ran around the inside of each circle and along each edge of the triangle.
He carefully tore the vault rune from his book, licked the edge of the paper, and stuck it to the wall of his office. The outline of a door had been painted on the wall complete with a keyhole in the exact center. Taking a paper matchbook from his pocket, Alex lit one and touched the flame to the flash paper. It vanished in a puff of flame and smoke, leaving the glowing, silver rune behind, hanging in the air by the wall. After a moment, the rune seemed to melt into the wall itself, then a cold steel door appeared. Alex took a heavy skeleton key from his pocket and used it to open the door to his vault.
Vaults were extra-dimensional spaces where runewrights could keep valuables or supplies. Alex’s vault was bigger than his entire office, encompassing a large workspace with workbenches, shelves, and storage for all the tools of his trade.