“The fountain of youth?”
“From what I’ve been told, it was more like the mud puddle of youth, but yes. It saved his life, but the damage remained. There might have been a magical element to the poison. He walks with a limp to this day.”
“Do you think he could be involved with the attacks or Gutenberg’s disappearance?”
“He’s kept pretty quiet in the decades since Gutenberg banished him.” He might have been pulling strings from Spain, but my gut told me he had been telling the truth. “Even if he wasn’t involved before, he won’t hesitate to take advantage of the situation.”
Meaning in addition to rogue vampires, missing automatons, and Gutenberg, we could potentially have a sorcerer with power second only to Gutenberg himself to worry about. If I had been a fire-spider, I would have been blazing like a bonfire right about now.
After losing an hour to construction on southbound 127, we reached East Lansing shortly before sunset. Ray Walker had lived in an apartment above his used bookstore on Grand River Avenue, across the road from the northern edge of Michigan State University.
I found a parking spot a block away in an oversized orange-and-blue parking garage. I checked to make sure nobody was watching, then popped the trunk.
Ted yawned and held up a hand to shield his eyes. “Come back and get me after the sun goes down, eh?”
“No problem, but I need somewhere to store the leftovers from dinner.” I tossed a pizza box into the trunk beside him.
Ted bolted out like I had electrocuted him. He snarled at me, fully awake and fully pissed off. “Asshole.”
“Hey, at least I didn’t ask for anchovies with the extra garlic.” I slammed the trunk shut. “Come on.”
East Lansing lost a significant chunk of its population over the summer, but plenty of students lived here year-round, filling the sidewalks and moving in and out of various shops. I had adjusted to East Lansing during my time at MSU, but after spending two years back in Copper River, the city felt uncomfortably crowded. I did my best to ignore the people and the traffic as we headed back behind the various stores.
Sweat dripped down my sides, but I hadn’t been willing to leave my jacket and books in the car. The jacket also allowed me to hide Smudge, who was currently riding in a small, rectangular cage, clipped to my belt loop with a steel carabiner. It lay flat against my hip, creating an awkward bulge, but it kept him safe and out of sight.
Yellow crime tape marked the back entrance to Ray’s shop. Flyers in every color covered the windows, advertising local bands, tutoring services, fundraisers, and more. I peered between the flyers, looking in at the darkened store. Row after row of cramped plywood bookshelves stood with bulging shelves, exactly as I remembered them.
“Are you all right?” Lena asked softly.
I walked past the store to a glass door that led to a split staircase between Ray’s store and what had once been a barbershop, but appeared to have been converted into a tattoo parlor. I had climbed those steps a thousand times as a student, heading up to Ray’s apartment for my true studies.
“There’s a security camera,” I said softly as I led my companions through the door and down the steps. Incense from a new age shop hung heavy in the air. I ducked into the cramped opening beneath the stairs.
While Ted examined the graffiti scratched onto the wall, I pulled out a Robert Asprin paperback and skimmed the pages. “Hold this, please.”
While Lena gripped the edges of the book, I reached inside with both hands and tugged out a sheet of invisible fabric. I had to stop several times to roll and crumple the material so it would fit through the book. Invisibility was a common enough trick, but most rings and cloaks were only good for one person. This sheet should be enough to cover us all.
Minutes later, we were climbing back up the stairs to the apartments above, invisible to humans and cameras alike. Unfortunately, the sheet also trapped the stench of death, rot, and Old Spice rising from Ted’s body as he pressed close to me.
I swear he was deliberately treading on my feet as we walked, but it was Lena’s body against mine that was truly distracting. She held the edge of the sheet in one hand and her twin bokken in the other, but her hip and thigh brushed mine with each step.
“No need to ask which apartment,” Ted commented.
Toothpick-sized splinters littered the worn seventies carpeting of the hallway where the deadbolt and lock had been smashed in. A new latch was bolted to the door and frame, secured by a heavy padlock.
Until now, it had only been words. Stories. Here was proof of Ray’s death, of the violence of the attack. His killer had stood in this very spot.
Lena set her weapons against the wall and picked up a six-inch sliver of wood. “Are you ready?”
I checked Smudge, who was calm and cool, then nodded. Lena slid the sliver into the padlock. Moments later, the door swung inward.
“Don’t touch anything,” I warned.
“Oh, please.” Ted snorted. “Like this is my first time breaking and entering.”
A powerful antiseptic smell lingered in the air as I stepped carefully into the apartment. It couldn’t hide the metallic scent of blood. Ray’s blood. I reached to the side and flipped on the light switch with my elbow.
Ever since Deb told me about Ray, a part of me had hoped it was a mistake, that somehow he had survived and escaped into hiding. Seeing the ruins of his apartment crushed that hope, leaving only a hollow sensation in my rib cage.
Black fingerprint powder covered light switches and the wall of the arched doorway to the kitchen. Clean, rectangular stripes cut through the dust where the police had lifted prints.
A half-finished mug of tea sat on the end table beside the fold-out sofa in the living room. I had crashed on that couch many times after late-night magic sessions, or in one case, a Mystery Science Theater marathon.
I stepped closer, examining the book that lay open on the carpet: a collection of Shakespeare’s comedies. I could see Ray’s handwriting, tiny and machine-precise in the margins.
He always wrote in his books, a habit that had driven me crazy from day one. I could barely bring myself to highlight my textbooks, and he desecrated every one of his books with notes, analyzing historical context, referencing other books and stories, analyzing word choice… he would have made a great literature professor if he had been more comfortable speaking in front of groups.
The drywall behind the couch was cracked, a round indentation showing where the attacker must have slammed Ray’s head against the wall. A few small shards from a broken lamp lay on the carpet, though the lamp itself was gone. The upright piano to the right of the couch had been smashed. Broken ivory keys and snapped wires made it looked like a gutted animal.
“They came in fast,” Lena said as she studied the room. “He didn’t have time to stand. A vampire could be through the door and incapacitate a normal human in less than a second.”
I looked to Ted for confirmation.
“One of us did this.” Ted’s pupils were wide, and his pale lips had drawn back from his teeth. His breathing reminded me of an animal, quick and predatory as he sniffed the air. He nodded toward the kitchen. “In there.”
“Ray didn’t invite them in,” I said. That eliminated more than thirty potential species of vampire. How had they gotten past the security camera? A few species could move quickly enough to avoid being seen. Others could dissolve into mist. Or maybe the killer simply wore a baggy sweatshirt or jacket to hide their identity. I needed more information, but I wasn’t yet ready to enter the room where my friend had died.
I moved to the small antique desk in the far corner of the living room, next to the window. Ray’s computer was gone, leaving a clean rectangular outline in the dust. The police must have taken it to check his e-mail or chat logs. They wouldn’t find anything. A spell on the motherboard would have wiped the hard drive the moment it passed through the matching enchantment in the doorway. That spell was a standard Porter precaution, courtesy of the late Victor Harrison.