Page 24 of Mystic Justice (The Other Detective #2)

Kate’s protective receptionist, Sharon, had no choice but to let us in.

Today the ageing dryad had her hair scraped back in a bun and was wearing a stone-grey suit that suited her forest-green skin.

She looked relieved to see Kate back in the Other.

‘Dr Potter!’ she chirped. ‘Wonderful to see you back.’ Her eyes narrowed on Loki on my shoulder. ‘You are not bringing that in.’

‘It’s okay, Sharon,’ Kate said firmly. ‘I’ve already said it’s fine.’ She moved past the receptionist and held the door open while Sharon spluttered, muttering words under her breath like ‘contamination’ and ‘avian flu’. It spoke of my admirable self-restraint that I simply walked past her.

Once we were in Kate’s ‘office’, the heart of the morgue, she went to the refrigerator and pulled out two bodies from the body drawer – the dryad and the centaur. The second refrigerator was huge, designed to hold the far larger bodies of centaurs, ogres and trolls.

In my peripheral vision I saw Krieg press his lips together, an expression of regret for a young life cruelly wasted.

I turned to face him properly. By then he’d carefully arranged his face into a mask of indifference but just for a moment, for a glimpse, I’d seen otherwise.

He could pretend otherwise but he cared about my dead the same as I did.

‘Goddess bless,’ Amber murmured at the state of the centaur.

‘What a mess. You were dropped from a great height – all the king’s horses and all the king’s men couldn’t put you back together again.

’ Considering that she came across as a hard-nosed bitch most of the time, her voice was not without empathy. Like Krieg, she cared.

I waited until she’d finished her initial examination then said, ‘Dr Potter used her own magic to verify the presence of runes on the bones of both bodies.’

Amber frowned. ‘On the bones?’ she said in disbelief. ‘I’ve never seen that before.’ She looked at Kate. ‘Any ill-effects from lighting them up?’

Kate coloured a little. ‘I used my magic a number of times because I couldn’t see the runes, even though I could feel the tug on my magic. It drained my magic significantly and I had to attend the hall yesterday.’

Amber said nothing but her lips pressed into a tight line. She opened her black tote bag and rummaged inside before pulling out a Kilner jar full of potion, a paintbrush and some purple gloves. She snapped on the gloves, opened the jar and dipped the paintbrush into the gloopy contents.

‘This is a revealing potion,’ she explained to me. ‘I’m going to paint on perthro, the rune for revelations and secrets, then I’ll run my magic through that rather than the dark ones hidden here.’

I pulled out my phone and started to take a video. Amber painted on a small rune on Moss and an instant later it lit up; as it did so, so the runes on the bones started to glow. I zoomed in on them; lit up as they were, you could see their scorched edges.

The potion mistress gave a low whistle. ‘Well, you weren’t wrong.

Those are some dark runes. And here, look – angrepet and dagaz.

Attack and transfer. The runes are powering something, giving it life.

’ She paled. ‘I’ve seen something like this once before, though I’ve never seen the runes branded on bone quite like this. ’

‘What do they do?’ I asked.

Amber pointed to some particularly pretty runic markings that had swirls.

‘They’re necromantic runes – they give strength to the dead, return them to the realm of the living.

They’re usually painted in the blood of a sacrifice.

’ She frowned. ‘Such things are dark and forbidden, doomed to failure. You can return the newly dead to life but they are cursed with a half-life. Something is missing from them, something vital. Their soul, perhaps,’ she mused sadly.

She cleared her throat and continued, but her voice was quiet. ‘They exist, they live, but in abject misery.’ Bastion reached out and squeezed her arm gently and she patted his comforting hand.

I realised that Amber had experience of this, direct experience. She’d known someone once who’d been saved by magic then cursed by it.

She gave Bastion a brief smile of reassurance and turned back to the young dryad corpse.

‘But this…’ She tapped a rune with a gloved hand.

‘This is unlike anything I’ve ever seen before.

It seems to be using runes not just to siphon magic but something more.

This is the rune for water.’ She frowned. ‘Let’s look at the centaur.’

She did the same process on Bogan and I continued to video her examination for our records. We watched as she lit up more dark runes, this time on the centaur’s body.

‘They’re different,’ she said excitedly.

‘Similar, but with differences.’ She pointed towards a rune.

‘This is the symbol for air, whereas on the dryad we had the symbol for water.’ Realisation darted across her face and her expression grew grim.

‘Some have postulated that the returned dead do not have a proper connection to the earth, but renewing links to the elements would fix the imbalance and permanently anchor them to this realm.’

She met my gaze. ‘There are also runes of regeneration. It appears that your killer has brought someone back from the dead and now they’re trying to make them whole again.

If they succeed they’ll be undead, and…’ she struggled for the right word ‘…reinforced. I would postulate that if the ritual is completed, the risen dead will be almost impossible to kill.’

I kept my face calm. Dragons were nearly impossible to kill – but it could be done. Just because something was difficult didn’t make it unachievable. If this undead, shambling zombie became immortal, we’d work out a way to contain it. Cage or kill: that was the Connection’s informal motto.

‘Thank you for your insight,’ I said as I stopped videoing. I did that for two reasons: firstly, I didn’t want a record of our conversation because Bastion deserved that much; secondly, if he didn’t welcome my questions I’d probably need both hands to fight for my life.

‘The centaur appears to have been dropped from at least two thousand feet,’ I began carefully. ‘The dryads in the grove at the time didn’t recall the sound of a plane or helicopter, so it’s been suggested that a winged creature like a dragon or a griffin was responsible for dropping him.’

Amber stepped closer to me and angrily raised a forefinger. ‘If you called me here to accuse Bastion of carrying out—’

‘Not at all,’ I said hastily. ‘But I’m still waiting to hear from Shirdal about whether or not any hits were taken out on centaurs in the last week or two.’

Bastion, his dark eyes still fixed on me, opened his phone and dialled.

‘Any hits on centaurs in the UK in the last two weeks?’ he asked.

He listened for a response and hung up. ‘None,’ he said firmly.

‘Centaurs don’t tend to attract hits because they’re not usually power hungry. They don’t step on toes.’

‘Okay,’ I kept my voice level. ‘But could a griffin lift a centaur that high in the air?’

‘If the centaur was unconscious, yes. If they were struggling and throwing their body and weight around, it would be trickier.’

‘But still possible?’

Bastion considered. ‘For the strongest of us, yes.’

Griffin numbers were in the toilet: there were only forty or fifty left in the world. That meant Bastion knew them all by name.

‘Could Ghost have done it?’ I asked. Ghost had run an underground black tourney for at least a couple of years; she was certainly capable of deadly action.

‘It’s not her,’ Bastion said firmly.

‘It’s not,’ Amber agreed forcefully. ‘She’s currently hanging out with my mum in Edinburgh.’

That drew me up short. Amber had real ‘sprang from her father’s forehead fully formed’ energy so it was hard to imagine her as a kid, harder still to see her as a doting daughter. Maybe she didn’t dote, or maybe she kept her doting private.

Bastion met my gaze. ‘When Shirdal found out Ghost’s identity, he threw the rule book at her. Rest assured, she’ll be working off her penance for years to come. I give you my word and oath that neither she nor I were involved in this killing.’ He glowed yellow as his oath took hold.

I sagged a little at the sight of the golden-oath glow.

Dammit. I’d really been hoping it was Ghost. Not that Bastion’s oath meant he was telling the truth, just that he believed he was telling the truth.

Plenty of people spewed lies while certain they were facts.

Bastion’s oath didn’t rule out Ghost but it had definitely moved her down the suspect list. And he was crossed off entirely because he couldn’t lie under oath about his own actions.

I tried to keep my disappointment off my face. ‘Okay, besides Ghost, are there any other griffins in this area at present?’ I asked.

‘A few.’

‘Names,’ I ordered.

Bastion glared at me and Krieg, standing next to me, shifted a little. It wasn’t anything overt – he didn’t raise a mace or growl – he just moved his weight from one foot to the other, but it was enough to make Bastion grimace.

‘I’ll dig into it,’ he offered, his tone placatory. ‘Find out who is around then speak to them. If I hear any alarm bells, I’ll tell you their names.’

I opened my mouth to argue but Amber cut in. ‘That’s as good as you’re getting, Inspector. Take it and be grateful.’

Pressing my lips together until the urge to swear at them both had passed, I pointed out, ‘There are four elements, Crone. We’ll have more dead on our hands soon.’

She looked back at me coolly. ‘Then you’d best get moving, hadn’t you?’