Infernal Investigations

The bell at my door rang as it closed, slamming shut as Gregory left my shop.

Alice was gone too, which meant I didn’t need to worry about them happening upon the preparations. Although most of what remained they could have seen. It still had felt tense when they were in here, for more reasons than just kisses.

Those preparations would hopefully keep my mind off that for the next half hour.

The inventory was done, and the corpse prepared, which just left waiting for Varrow. I should be happy. I’d gotten both of them to leave before he arrived, which meant no figuring out where I was heading next.

They probably couldn’t puzzle out what I would do from a destination, but at this point, I didn’t want to risk it. I was already going to tear at their hearts with this.

Metaphorically. The time for literal tearing.

I’d just done the simple part. With a single needle jabbed into the pig’s vein, I sent the poison coursing through its sleeping body.

Painless, it would just never awaken from its slumber.

The Imp being silent had been unexpected. I’d expected at least some commentary about wasting so much meat. Tainting a good meal always drew its ire.

Instead, it was quiet. Had my bargain made it decide to withdraw completely unless it looked like I wasn’t following our arrangement?

Perhaps. I’d have to take advantage of the momentary peace. I couldn’t forget it was lurking though. And strangely, it hadn’t objected to my plan. Maybe it knew something I didn’t.

By now, the pig slumped down on its side, eyes closed. You could almost think it asleep, if not for the complete motionlessness of the corpse.

At least it’s painless, I thought as I got off the stool, grabbing my Biosculpting tools. This would be the easiest task I’d perform with them tonight. The Tildean purifications would even help with the fallout of using hellfire to make this resemble a dead, infernally tainted human corpse. And the diabolism would help obfuscate the fact that it was a bio-morphed pig, not a diabolically warped human.

It would have to do. There was only so much I could do, and Mourner Kelson had been very emphatic about not disrobing all the way so I could try to make the resemblance better. It was fine. Not like the other dead, they had resembled their living selves by the time diabolism was done with them, anyway.

In terms of tricks, it was one I couldn’t be sure would work. Did they know when they killed a priest the right way, or would they not tell until the ritual was complete?

There were always possibilities outside of my control, but faking Mourner Kelson’s death was something instead of going to crime scenes hoping for scraps of evidence.

I’d analyzed scraps of cloth, bits of hair. Four different colors, all the most common ones in the last case, and it tempted me to attribute that to multiple killers in the same costume, but the chance of that many untrained, powerful talents was low. One was already a very rare occurrence.

No, someone was trying to play tricks on us.

The fabric scraps I’d analyzed had led Intelligence to the suppliers for the theater’s costuming. They taken those records, gone through them, and then found the middleman hired for the job dead yesterday. Attempts to track down who had hired him had failed. The man’s records had been burnt, and he was from a quiet, sleepy part of the city. He’d never thought to keep a secret records book just in case.

The clippings from the victims had turned up very little. No particular signature in the diabolism unleashed on the priests, nothing under their fingernails or in their hair to give any hints about the killer. If Voltar had any other insights, he was keeping his mouth shut.

The killer was humanoid, which didn’t narrow things down at all.

They are not ghosts, I thought idly, and I didn’t mean the undead kind. Someone has to see them, from pure bad luck for the killer if nothing else. Someone they didn’t notice themselves.

Of course, finding that someone would be difficult, especially with how little we knew. And the fact that the details of this were being kept under lock and key. People had put together by now that someone was killing with diabolism. That priests were being targeted. How long would it take until someone realized they had a clue, a hint they could give to us?

For right now, it would be up to us to find the killer. And for now, ‘us’ meant me and the small group I’d gathered around myself.

The worst - case scenario was the easiest- none of us had ever met the killer. None of us knew the killer. The killer was a sequestered figure, kept hidden from everyone until being let out to wreak their havoc upon the world.

That wasn’t the case. Or at least, the possibility that there was no way to find him from the people we’d already met. Someone was involved in this. Someone involved in the program had decided to betray everything they believed in for a long shot at power.

The possibilities for that were wide. Just from the slivers about, we had a wide range of suspects. I’d already talked with others about it, Gregory on just the way here. Finding out which one would take time though, time we might not have. Disabling their plan completely would be a proper first step.

Fake Mourner Kelson’s death. Use biomass I had stored to turn one of us, probably Alice, into a diabolist of a body type neither resembled. Get witnesses roped in seemingly by accident, witness the someone ‘kill’ the Mourner without getting a good look, then leave the pig-corpse disguised as his diabolism-warped body.

There were holes, part of which I would fill today. I needed the custody of the body kept out of the hands of Intelligence and the church long enough for panic to start.

I’d originally thought about having someone see Alice as the Queen of Masks, but that had too many variables involved. A devil going into business for itself, perhaps trying to claim an extra share of the reward, that was believable but if the summoning had involved conditions of truth-telling? Then, as long as one summoner asked, she would tell the truth. And I doubted Malachti and Mitlau had killed all the original summoners yet.

Luckily, I didn’t need to convince them their killer or even their summoned devils were out of control-just any of the diabolists they’d recruited. I couldn’t mimic anyone specific, but I could make something that would heighten their own suspicions while dampening that of everyone else.

Assuming no interference. I expected there would be some interference. Probably the diabolists. Maybe others as well.

I shook my head. I could think later while waiting for Varrow to get back. Dirty work first, as my head touched the pig’s rapidly cooling corpse.

***

I eagerly fed more fuel into my stove as I waited for the kettle on top to whistle.

As soon as the dirty work was done, I’d grabbed what I needed for my meeting from a hidden floorboard in my room.

Then I’d made tea.

Addict, I heard an imaginary voice chide me as I finished my brewing.

I rolled my eyes. Perhaps. It wasn’t the worst thing to be addicted to. Just caffeine. As long as I kept plenty of increasingly strong and pleasant tea on hand, there would be no negative consequences at all!

Yes, I was going to have to cut back. Not today, though. This was not a good time to start having withdrawal symptoms.

Besides, there were decent odds I’d be going cold turkey soon. Might as well enjoy it while I could.

The kettle was taking its sweet time to whistle. My new tolerance for the cold meant I’d let my shop get far too chilly, and that meant even longer to heat even such a small object up. And I was impatient, nervous as I felt the urge to check again once more.

I looked at the papers in my travelling case a third time, just to be safe. Making it so these worked with prior oaths had been tricky, but I think I had managed it. Well, I’d know if the oath itself started ripping apart my veins when I gave it up. Annoying since I wouldn’t even hurt Versalicci with this. Not intentionally.

I’d toyed with a few ideas on how to make him unwittingly violate those oaths but nothing that I thought would work. My dear half-brother was trying to hunker down, and whether it was to hide his involvement, plot a move, or simply to weather the storm, I’d need to dig him out of there.

Finally the kettle whistled, and I smiled as I enjoyed a hot sip of tea, which sent warmth through me. As I sipped, I considered the papers again and then my stove.

Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

Ten seconds later, shaking hands shoved all of them safely back into my travelling case. No. No second guesses or doubts, not now. Give me too long to think on this and I might convince myself an even more unlikely angle would work as a bribe.

Well, not a bribe. Couldn’t frame it that way. And maybe I wouldn’t need it?

I chuckled. Even now I was trying to think of a way out. Was this too much for what I was asking? Maybe. Maybe not. This might be my biggest mistake yet.

Sipping tea, I went back to the details of the case.

How had the killer moved around so fast? Using diabolism would draw attention. The only way they were evading magical detection must be only using it on the scene and purifying shortly afterwards. So how were they getting around?

They’d made inquiries about carriages, Voltar had said. By the end of today, I’d be making some of my own, after some time to think about something.

Why was Intelligence slow-walking this? They should oppose a Hellgate opening as much as anyone, and their first moves should have been leaning on the churches until they burst for the names of the priests. That or have their people ferret around for them. Then once you had the names, take those priests and hide them in the most secure place you could.

But they hadn’t. Why?

I sipped my tea slowly, enjoying the notes as I leaned back in the chair, staring out my only intact window to the bright sky outside.

There were two different layers to Intelligence, I knew. The inside layer, the actual people involved in decisions, operations, and carrying out the will of Her Majesty. Then the general layer I was in, the contractors, the leashed, the outsiders kept for talent and generally kept fed just enough information to be useful.

You could divide that into sub-layers; clearly, Voltar or Vesper were more trusted than I or Tagashin were. They had less taut leashes, maybe not even any leash at all. But there were certainly those coerced into working for Intelligence.

They’d leashed quite a few people. Just from what I knew or could guess, two diabolists, one descended from diabolic royalty. A necromancer. A kitsune. Maybe they wanted a more powerful diabolist on the leash, one that they could more easily manipulate than the others. One that had proven to be capable of smashing apart the defenses of a deity’s most protected mortal holding.

Pure conjecture, of course. There might just be a deeper game being played by Intelligence. Maybe everything was well in hand.

Unfortunately for them, since they’d chosen to cut me out, I’d be proceeding under the assumption it wasn’t.

Honestly, I thought as I sucked down the last of the tea. They should be grateful, no, proud that Malvia Harrow had embraced the ideals of patriotism and civil service in order to serve Her Majesty where she suspected even the most dedicated of other servants might falter! Deserving of a medal even! Assuming they didn’t just try chopping my head off for robbing them of a leaking, barely controlled inferno of diabolic energy.

I giggled, then giggled, then forced myself to put the empty cup and saucer down as my chest shook, legs trembling. Hands gripping the arms of the chair, I forced myself to still. None of that.

My tail wrapped around the teapot, bringing it to my cup and pouring a fresh dose I sipped eagerly.

It was hard not to laugh. Somehow the world had arranged things where the only person willing to stand against the risk of a Hellgate to gain a skilled diabolist was me. An Infernal diabolist descended from the hells, a former criminal, a revolutionary, a general taker of lives with barely a twinge, just grown into something approximating a conscience, taking a stand against essentially every major power inside the city itself.

Oh, was I casting myself as the heroine against some grand conspiracy of the government to try to enable an invasion from hell? One woman, all alone except for a small band of erstwhile allies, up against government, religions, and the forces of the Hells themselves?

I’d been reading far too many of those novels. The case of poisoning by this point was terminal if I was imagining myself as the heroine, tragic, swashbuckling, or anything in between. Let me not delude myself. If that was the actual case, they would easily squish me. And that was before taking into account my own efforts to cut my knees off.

Oh. My cup was empty already, sipped down in under a minute. Well, there was no one around to tell me I shouldn’t have a third cup.

I breathed more slowly as I poured. Enough panicking. I’d come to a decision. I was going to stick to it.

Also less paranoia. My being cut out didn’t mean that Intelligence was deliberately letting this plot play out to recruit a single diabolist. Although if they suspected the primary culprits were inside the hierarchy of the different religions? If they wanted to get some extra leverage, the threat of exposing that worked quite well.

Still conjecture, of course.

The bell of my door shook me out of my delusions as the blast of cold air kissed my skin. A little reminder of how much I’d changed, as my new guest cursed the cold and slammed the door shut.

Varrow looked disgruntled, but that is how he looked most of the time. Complaining about shots, having the sun shine on his face, having the clouds block the sun from shining, yelling at Timmy Richter for not having enough pickpocketed to satisfy him.

He paused, door half-open, perhaps seeing something that made him nervous.

“Please come inside and close the door, Mr. Varrow?” I asked. “The chill isn’t very agreeable to me. If you’re cold yourself, the stove is going, and I just finished making tea.”

Varrow eyed the still-wrecked floor of my shop. “Is there anyone else in here?”

“Why?” I asked. “I can assure you, I have no intention of ambushing you or anything like that. I’m the only soul breathing in the house.”

“Because I want a witness to help in case I yell,” Varrow said, but he did cautiously get inside enough for the door to close.

Then his tail wrapped around the handle, and I restrained a hiss of displeasure. My new body could handle the cold better. That didn’t mean I wanted my house to spend hours before it was warmed back up to a comfortable temperature.

“Also, breathing isn’t exactly a reassurance,” Varrow told me. “You haven’t branched out into dealing with the undead, have you?”

“No, I have not,” I said. “The one necromancer I know isn’t that favorable to me.”

Silence as Varrow stared at me, Adam’s apple bobbing as he looked up and then down as if he could peer through my floors.

“You know, Harrow, you have a real terrible way of being reassuring, you know that?”

Maybe I don’t want you reassured, Varrow, I thought idly as I sipped my tea.

“So, Mr. Varrow,” I said, the hold on my teacup painful, skin turned pale and white as I maintained my death grip. “Have you found out what I wanted you to?”

“Malvia, could you drop the polite act?” Varrow said scornfully. “Acting friendly is disingenuous when you spent half the time previously looking down your nose at me.”

“People change, Mr. Varrow,” I told him.

“They don’t change that much,” he growled. “And yes, I did find out what you wanted, although it was more difficult than you implied.”

“Difficult?” I said. “Mr. Varrow, I simply asked for their routine. I imagine people would be keeping their eyes on it, given-”

“And it was still difficult,” Varrow snapped. “So, I’ll be taking double pay for this.”

I shrugged. “Done. I like to reward good work, and I trust in you to do very fine work, Mr. Varrow.”

I wouldn’t be too generous, though. That depended on the actual quality of his work.

“When they said your mind got infested with fairies that poisoned your brain, I thought they were fucking joking,” Varrow said, shaking his head slightly. “Like seriously, Harrow, you almost turned into a devil, got your mind stuck in fairyland, came back with gills and fins and decided to start dyeing your hair and painting your skin? Got to be made up. Now I believe them. I knew I was right not to eat those magic mushrooms Caltrop was hawking a few weeks back.”

I knew better than trying to correct him about my hair and skin. Also, once again, Varrow was trying to buy drugs again. At least this time it was to eat them, not out of some fool idea that every gang in the Quarter hadn’t already cornered the trading in those substances-wait a minute.

“What kind of magic mushrooms?”

“Oh, hells no,” Varrow said, pointing a finger at me. “Your head is screwed up enough as is without you putting more fey things in it!”

“Alchemical ingredients, Varrow,” I said patiently. “Were they blue? Did they have a slight glow only at dawn or dusk? When you cracked them over wood, did it sing and-“

“Bad Alchemist,” he snapped. “No drugs for you.”

“Judgmental words from the Infernal who planned on eating them,” I pointed out.

“For my hip, and also it wouldn’t hit as hard because somehow I got more mental stability than you do, Miss ‘here-let-me-push-my-face-into-the-soul-sacrifice-circle’!”

“I hardly shoved my face in it,” I protested. “I was simply trying to defuse a very dangerous diabolical artifact. The face-shoving was entirely accidental.”

“Sure. Also, you owe me double for stealing my name as well,” he told me.

“I’m sorry, what?” I asked him, raising an eyebrow. This was a new one in terms of trying to get extra pay.

“Varrow, Harrow, you think I didn’t notice you just stole my last name and changed a letter around? Disgraceful of you, to not even give me a penny for borrowing the one thing I honestly got.”

I’m sure Varrow was not his actual name, but his point was…well, I had definitely not consciously chosen to take after Varrow of all people. For more than one reason. He hadn’t been harsh, by the standards of the Quarter. I suppose. But he hadn’t been merciful either, to people in or outside of his little gang. If you performed poorly, getting kicked out might have been a blessing compared to where he tried to send those who did well in return for coin.

“Do you ever have regrets, Varrow?” I asked him. “For everything that happened?”

He eyed me, then took a not-so-subtle step towards the door. “You mean just in the last month or over all my life, Harrow? Either way, I don’t particularly fancy moralizing with the likes of you.”

I giggled as I took another sip of tea, and he actually paled in response.

“Never do that again. Fuck, I was expecting a dagger in my heart every second of that, because it felt like you stabbed one into me. You sound like an out of tune violin being played with a glass shard. Also, the fuck are you giggling at that for?”

“The idea that you can’t be moralized by me because I did immoral things. We were thieves, Varrow, and the fact I graduated to other things after doesn’t make you more moral. Also, I have a perfectly delightful giggle, thank you.”

“Do that around the others and see them say you do with a straight face, and yes, it does make me more moral than you,” Varrow said, glaring at me, green eyes almost glowing. “I didn’t graduate to fucking devil summoning, or body chopping, or gassing people. I didn’t join up with Versalicci.”

“Ah, but I didn’t eat people, and for that I pretended I was better than others,” I said. “Truth is, I wasn’t. And while you like to pretend you didn’t join up with him, you certainly didn’t mind feeding him new recruits in return for pay, did you?”

The older Infernal’s face was stony as he stared at me, eyes flinty, a strength in them I hadn’t seen in a long, long time.

“There a point to this?” he asked.

Another long sip, another drained cup.

“I suppose not,” I told him. Having a point needed someone actually willing to have a conversation. He was not one of those people.

“We have strayed pretty far from what I asked, haven’t we?” I said with a forced grin. “Do you have what I wanted?”

“Sort of,” Varrow said. “I know where you can find out what you want.”

“I don’t pay you to direct me to where I can find information out,” I said patiently. “I pay you to get me that information.”

“And I have,” Varrow said. “Happens to be the source I found doesn’t trust me to be a middleman. Accused me of wanting to take all his money and leave him with nothing but the rags on his back.”

That I could believe, although the term used did not make me feel confident. “Rags?”

“Yeah,” Varrow said. “You’ll find him in a barrel at the mouth of the alley where Ol’ Crispus Joe had his head smashed up by the Golkies, near the street where Finley and Morel sell those horrible rats in a bun. He goes by the name of Wishbone Larry, and-”

Wishbone Larry? A barrel? Oh, Varrow was definitely getting paid after I met with the Captain, not beforehand.