“Yeah?” a voice answered.
“Justin,” I said. “That address you sent me this morning? I just got here. Something very big and angry got here before me and killed everyone in the house. Send a team out here right away. And no, I’m not going to wait. I’m getting the hell out of here before whatever it is decides to come back for a snack.” I hung up and went around the side of the house.
You’re definitely getting out of here, right? Maggie asked.
In a moment, I said. I told myself that the dread in my stomach was just from seeing those corpses. There wasn’t anything in these woods but me and the dead, and nobody would be here from OtherOps for at least forty minutes. I needed to look around. I walked the perimeter of the yard quickly, hoping to find more evidence of whatever had done this. Strangely, I found nothing – no more bloody prints, and not even any bent grass or broken branches from something large blundering into the underbrush.
I checked each of the cars. None seemed damaged or disturbed in any way. One still had the keys in the ignition and the driver’s-side door open, as though an imp had stopped by to grab something from the house and been caught in the butchery.
I circled the house two more times before heading over to the remnants of the bonfire. It was a pile of ash perhaps seven feet across, with small refuse and twigs still half burned around the edges. The head of a child’s doll lay nearby, with a matching foot among the remaining trash. I picked up a stick and poked around in the ash, wondering if this bonfire had happened before or after the deaths of the imps.
Alek.
What is it? I replied.
Time to go.
Is OtherOps here already? I tilted my head, listening for the sound of a car, and then realized Maggie was whispering again.
No. We’re being watched.
The hair on the back of my neck stood on end. I casually got to my feet, Glock still gripped in one hand, and circled the bonfire while glancing cautiously toward the tree line. Human? Maybe a neighbor?
Definitely not. Whatever it is, my sorcery slides right past it.
I swallowed hard and resisted the urge to run toward my car. I may be a tough son of a bitch, but I had no interest in tangling with something that could mow through this many imps without, apparently, missing a beat. I took a deep breath. Can you give me a location?
No. Just leave. She sounded genuinely worried. She might be a powerful Other, but she was trapped on my finger, and I was mostly human.
I took a few steps toward the car when something caught my eye – a glint among the ashes of the bonfire. I knelt quickly, reaching into the warm ash, and plucked out a small mirror. I forgot my fear immediately and began sifting through the ash. Within moments I had three more mirrors in my hands.
I fled toward the car, and didn’t even breathe until I was back on the interstate. The mirrors lay on the passenger seat. I couldn’t stop glancing at them or my rearview mirror.
We aren’t being followed, Maggie informed me.
Any idea what that was back there? I asked. A cold sweat trickled down the small of my back.
The killer, or whatever, was watching us?
Either. Both.
No on both accounts.
Maggie is very good at knowing things. It’s what jinn do. The fact that she couldn’t pinpoint the creature we were dealing with made me more nervous than the bodies.
Are those mirrors what I think they are? she asked.
Soul mirrors, I confirmed. Those imps were definitely working the same job as the ones we killed downtown.
They’re working for someone else right under Kappie’s nose.
I lifted one of the mirrors, taking my eyes off the road long enough to get a good, long look at it. Unless I was mistaken, this mirror had an occupant: one of Ferryman’s missing souls. And I was willing to bet that whoever was employing the imps also had them killed to cover his tracks.
Chapter 9
I sat in my office in the Valkyrie building later that night, long after everyone else had gone home. I leaned back in my chair, feet on my desk, flipping through the soul mirrors that I’d recovered from that bonfire. To the casual observer – even to someone who knew a lot about the Other – these were just a couple of handheld mirrors. They could have come from a car or a discarded child’s play set or a makeup box. I doubted that half the people at OtherOps would have given them a second glance. Whoever had thrown them in that fire had known enough to want to destroy them but had not known that soul mirrors are next to impossible to break. A bonfire certainly wouldn’t crack them.
I set the mirrors on my desk and picked up my phone, scanning through the hundreds of pictures I’d taken over the last few days. Most of them were different angles of dead imps. I moved through them quickly until I got to a number of pictures I’d taken of Judith Pyke. I zoomed in on her emaciated face and thought over our conversation. Hopefully she’d already left town, ahead of whoever or whatever was trying to clean up loose ends. After a few moments, I exited out of the pictures and searched through my wallet until I found Ferryman’s business card.
I turned it over, looking at the mirror on the back, and then set the card facedown on the table in front of me. I pressed three fingers against the glass.
The world crinkled around me, and I immediately found myself standing in murky darkness. I’d been through enough stepping mirrors that I didn’t stumble upon arriving in this new place. I tried to get my bearings, failed, and cleared my throat.
A light winked into existence a few yards to my left. It came from a bedside-style reading lamp clamped to a card table, at which Ferryman sat regarding a game of solitaire laid out in front of him. He clutched a cigarette between his fingers. Ferryman didn’t seem to notice my presence, so I walked over to join him, my boots echoing like I was walking across a blackened gymnasium at night.
“Is this your place?” I asked. My voice whispered back at me, more like a mocking mimic than an echo.
“It is,” Ferryman answered.
“Is it really a good idea to hand out business cards that have a stepping mirror directly to Death’s realm?”
Ferryman put a jack on a queen and leaned back, giving me a distracted look. “You don’t think I can control who uses my stepping mirror?”
“Fair point.” I rounded the table to stand in front of Ferryman, briefly wondering what Death’s realm would look like if I shone a flashlight through the darkness. It was probably filled with skulls or spirits or something equally macabre – either that, or endless nothing. I thought of the description he’d given of himself doing paperwork for the dead. Maybe filing cabinets? I wasn’t sure which would be worse.
You there? I nudged Maggie.
No, she said. I’m hiding.
Come on. You’re being a huge scaredy cat lately.
That’s because we’re getting mixed up in things out of our league. You can wander into Death’s realm if you’d like, but you should have left me at the office.
Yes, because I can just slip your ring off whenever I want, remember?
“I assume you’re here because you have a status update?” Ferryman asked. “Your clients are getting antsy about this whole thing, you know.”