There was no explanation of why, but one wasn’t needed. We all knew what was going on. And that was really why I was glad for the distraction.

“So, is this going to be like a girls’ thing?” Ian asked.

“I’d feel better with you over here,” I told him.

“The more the merrier, I say,” Amaranth said.

“Can I ask my friends Hazel and Dee if they want to come?” Two asked.

“Sure, honey,” Amaranth said.

“The thing is,” Ian said, “I don’t actually own any pajamas. I sleep in my, uh, nymph costume. And now that I’ve said that out loud, I wish that I’d said satyr.”

“I think your satyr costume’s a little small,” Steff said.

“Well, it’s not like I’m going to be wearing pajamas, either,” Amaranth said. “I mean, obviously. The very thought is… well, I mean, ‘pajama party’ is just another word for ‘sleepover’, and if there’s a point to the hanging out in pajamas it’s just that they’re very comfortable. They’re supposed to be, I mean, I’ve heard…”

“It’s a pajamas optional party,” I said. “Um, that’s not quite what I meant.”

“Well, I’m going to wear my pajamas all weekend long,” Two said, heading for the closet. As she slid it open and began looking through the hangers, I began to see the problem with this idea. “Starting now… Ian, would you please leave so that I can change?”

The light blue cami set she was holding up looked like something a dominatrix would wear on a really messed up kids’ show. It was also pretty sheer on the top.

“Um… you know,” Ian said, “I’m actually remembering I have a lot of…”

“You know what would be fun?” Amaranth said. “If we… those of us who wear pajamas, I mean… swapped. It can be like a theme. Mack, you can wear Two’s pajamas and she can wear yours.”

“I’m not wearing that,” I said at the same time Two said, “I would not like for Mack to wear my clothes again.”

“Yeah, it’s fine, I’ll just go,” Ian said.

“Bye, Ian,” Two said.

“Don’t be stupid,” Steff said. “Ian, you’re not going to perv on her. We know it.”

“That’s not the point,” Ian said.

“Then what is the point?” Steff asked. “Two only asked you to leave long enough for her to change… if her sense of propriety and whateverness says there’s no problem with you being in the same room as her when she’s in pajamas, what’s the problem?”

“During a pajama party that has boys and girls, it must be okay,” Two said. “Otherwise I’m not sure.”

Ian looked at me for support.

“I’d just really rather you were here,” I said. It wasn’t that I didn’t have an opinion on Two strutting around in her lingerie in front of him… I’d really rather that she didn’t. But Steff had a point. In fact, it wasn’t even like she’d be doing any strutting. They were just pajamas to her.

“It’s not like you’re going to see anything new,” Steff said. “They’re just breasts. Lots of people see them.”

“He could not see my breasts in this,” Two said. “It covers them.”

“Two, the material is see-through,” I said.

“But it covers them,” she said. “So they’re decent.”

“There’s nothing indecent about breasts, anyway,” Amaranth said. “But, anyway, I think Steff is right. If you’re not comfortable, Ian, you obviously don’t have to stay, but there’s no reason you have to go.”

“Yeah, okay,” Ian said. “It’s not like I don’t see girls in skimpy clothes over in Weyland. I mean, I’m not looking at them, but living in an all-male dorm means running into girls in the bathroom in the morning and stuff.”

“I can’t imagine using the guys’ bathroom,” I said. “I don’t even like running into girls in there.”

“The girls you run into, I don’t blame you,” Steff said.

“Of course, that’s another reason a suite might be a good choice for your next dorm room,” Ian said. “I’m gonna pop out into the hall, okay? Just let me know when you’re done, Two, please.”

“Okay,” Two said. Ian stepped out and she changed out of her clothes, carefully folding them and gently placing them in her hamper before technically clothing her nudity. “I’m going to go see if my friend Hazel is in her room,” she announced, “so I can let Ian know that I’m done changing.”

“Yeah, I can hear you,” Ian said as he opened the door, very pointedly looking around the room and not at Two as she excused herself and headed past him to the hall.

It occurred to me that by making a big deal out of it he was actually exacerbating the situation… under normal circumstances, it wasn’t like he kept his gaze fixed on Two’s chest at all times. He’d be looking at me or Amaranth, or the face of whoever he was talking about. Pointedly ignoring something was in many ways the opposite of actually ignoring it.

“So, does anybody have any popcorn?” Amaranth said. “The warmable kind? That seems like a traditional party food… I’m sure we’ll end up making cookies at some point, if Two’s friend Hazel feels up to hanging out.”

“And then we can do each other’s hair and nails?” Ian said, sounding the opposite of thrilled.

“If you really don’t want to be here, you don’t have to be,” I said. “I mean, I want you here but I’ll be okay, and I won’t take it personally if your idea of a good time isn’t hanging out with a bunch of girls.”

“No, I’m fine,” Ian said.

“I’m sure you won’t have to participate in baking,” Amaranth said.

“No, actually, I was kind of looking forward to that,” Ian said. “I’m not sure why I said that. Kneejerk smartassery for its own sake, I suppose.”

“Oh, well… what I was going to say is that I won’t be able to have the cookies, anyway,” Amaranth said. “Because of eggs and such, and while I can have pizza without cheese from some chains… well, that’s a whole pizza that no one else will really be interested in, you know? Unless we invite some of the less mammalian girls… I’d be for that, but maybe it’s best if we keep things restricted to close friends. Anyway, they have nice salads in the shop downstairs, but salad’s not really a party food.”

“I’m pretty sure I’ve seen individual bags of popcorn kernels there,” I said. “I couldn’t tell you if they have butter or not.”

“Oh, butter!” Amaranth said, with so much dismay that it sounded like a swear. “I didn’t even think of that… people do put it on popcorn a lot, don’t they?”

“I’m afraid so,” I said. “But it’s worth checking out.”

“You know,” Ian said, “If we want to make a list, I don’t mind making a supply run into town before it gets too late. An actual grocery store will have popcorn without butter. I mean, I understand the whole idea is for all of us to stay inside and together, but it’s not going to be a great couple of days if we rely on what we can get delivered or from the store downstairs. Even if it’s a junk food kind of weekend, we’d go broke buying individual candy bars from the corner store.”

“That’s a really good idea,” Amaranth said. “But how about we save it for tomorrow, so you can go when it’s light out? We’ll order in tonight. If I end up having a salad, I’ll have a salad.”

“Breadsticks and tomato sauce,” I said. “There’s no animal products in those, are they? I mean, they’d make the breadsticks from the same dough as the pizza, right?”

“Hmm… maybe,” Amaranth said. “A lot of places coat their bread sticks with butter or cheese, as I found out when I was researching pizzas.”

“Just get a small pizza,” Ian said. “If you can’t eat it all in one sitting, we’ll stick it in the fridge. It’s not like anybody’s going to steal a pizza with no cheese.”

“Yeah,” I said. “And it’s not like one more pizza’s going to break us. You know, all that money we earned… I understand why you don’t want any of it, but we wouldn’t have it if not for you.”

“That money is yours, baby,” Amaranth said.

“Well, then, you can’t stop me from spending it on a pizza for you,” I said.

“Can’t I?” she asked, giving me one of her best looks.

“Um… yes, ma’am,” I said, blushing and looking down.

“It’s not a problem. If we do a weave scry, we can find someone who’s done their homework on which chains have vegan breadsticks,” Amaranth said. “Though, that still leaves Dee out.”

“I have grown accustomed to fending for myself in that regards,” Dee said from just outside the doorway.

“I’d still like to be able to offer…” Amaranth said, before she trailed off at the sight of Dee’s… robe.

It was hard to describe, if only because I’d never seen anything quite like it. It was like she’d taken a blanket and stapled it around her body. It was kind of loose, though not as flowing as her usual gowns and robes.

The thing that was really weirding me out was that it had legs. I’d seen Dee naked, but I’d never seen her wearing anything that even approximated pants.

“I apologize,” Dee said. “I gathered from Two’s description that standards were somewhat relaxed for a gathering of this nature… is this garment unsuitably immodest?”

“Those aren’t the words that want to fall out of my mouth,” Ian said.

“That looks really… comfy,” Amaranth said. “Where did you get it?”

“It is very comfortable,” Dee said. “I overheard it advertised on a television during my stay at Ceilos, upon my arrival at the surface. The halfkind are quite fond of the serialized drama programs of the sort that are shown during the daylight hours. I have no interest in them or in television in general, but I could not picture the product being described, so I sought out the advertisement. It looked… oddly appealing. A bit form-fitting for my tastes, but not overly revealing.”

“It looks really comfy,” Amaranth said again.

“Yes,” Dee said. “If you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go change into my nightgown.”

Amaranth looked like she wanted to protest but couldn’t. Two returned just after Dee slipped out.

“My friend Hazel said she’d be happy to come over but she’s just going to go to bed early tonight because she has business in town tomorrow,” she said. “And she might come to hang out after that but she’ll have to see how she’s feeling.”

“I hope she’s alright, given her condition,” Amaranth said. “Did she say why she’s going into town?”

“No, but she did say to tell you that it’s none of your damned business when you ask,” Two said.

“Oh, well, I don’t see why she has to… wait, she told you to say that to me in particular?” Amaranth asked. “That’s just…”

“Insightful?” Ian said.

“Prophetic?” Steff said at the same time.

“It’s not just Hazel I’m concerned about, you know,” Amaranth said.

“It is not just Two’s friend Hazel that is none of your concern,” Dee said as she re-entered, wearing her very dark green night dress. As much as the other thing had been kind of unsettling, I couldn’t help but think how much warmer it had to be. In fact, it was probably downright toasty… and the benefit of wearing it would be that you wouldn’t have to look at it. “Your compassion is laudable, but concern without respect is… it leads to no place worth visiting. It is condescending, if I understand the use of that term.”

“I do respect Hazel,” Amaranth said.

“Not if you do not respect her autonomy and privacy,” Dee said.

“You know, I still need to change,” I said, “and I’m not really comfortable doing it with everyone in here.”

“Of course,” Dee said, bowing before she withdrew from the room. I realized right after she closed the door that she was the only one who was going to leave, which was so far from what I’d been going for. It ended the argument, which was my intention, but since I really kind of agreed with Dee I didn’t relish the feeling of having thrown her out. I hoped she was perceptive enough to not take it personally.

“Here’s a thought,” Ian said as I somewhat self-consciously stripped off my jeans. “We should probably do any pizza-ordering as soon as possible, so we’re not responsible for any delivery guy being out on campus late at night.”

“Oh, that’s a good idea,” Amaranth said. “I’m ashamed to say I didn’t think of it.”

“I don’t think a deliveryperson in particular would have any reason to fear,” Steff said. “They tend to be capable of taking care of themselves, and anyway, it’s Friday night. It’s not like someone’s going to have to make a special trip just for us. We’ll just be adding to the haul they make for risking their life.”

“Still, there’s nothing wrong with getting the order in good and early,” Amaranth said. “Since it is Friday night and they will be busy. Mack, baby, is your mirror in your coat pocket? I want to find out who has vegan breadsticks.”

“Yes,” I said.

She gazed while I dressed.

“Huh,” she said.

“Not finding anything?” I asked.

“No,” she said. “I mean, I am finding things… I’m just considering now that pizza places have more than just pizza and breadsticks. I wonder if they’d think it was weird if I ordered a calzone with no cheese?”

“If they deliver to drunk college students, that probably won’t be the weirdest thing they’ve heard,” Ian said.

“Yeah, well… oh! Lee’s reflecting,” Amaranth said. She held the mirror out to me. “You’d better take it… I’m sure it’s for you, and you know he gets motion sick when we pass him around.”

“Yeah,” I said. I took the mirror and accepted the reflection.

“You’re in your pajamas,” he said in place of a greeting. He looked kind of haggard.

“Yeah,” I said. “We’re kind of having a slumber party tonight… I’ve got a bunch of my friends here at the moment. Should I…”

“So you are done with your classes for the week, then?” he said. “In light of the current situation on campus, I was thinking it might be best if we get you out of there for the weekend. If you want to head on down to the coaches, I could send someone back to get the things you’ll need for a couple of nights. If you throw a coat on, you’ll probably be decent enough…”

“Lee… is something wrong?” I asked. His face was a blank mask betrayed by the urgency obviously underlying his way-too-calmly-uttered words. He hadn’t wanted me off of campus before, and it seemed like “the current situation”, as he knew it, was winding down or wrapping up.

“No, not a thing,” he lied. “Let’s just get you away from campus for…”

There was an unexpected knock on the door, not loud but insistent. Lee froze. I froze.

“I have to go,” he said. “I’m sorry.”

Soon: Oh, shit.

“Sorry, Two,” I said.

“That’s okay, I forgive you,” she said.

“I’m going to have to apologize again,” I said as I got the mirror out. “I’m going to need to some privacy… it’s, you know, legal stuff.”

“I know,” Two said. “And it’s okay, I’m going to have to forgive you again.”

I couldn’t tell if she was rolling her eyes at me, or if that was just a side-effect of the cogitation needed to forgive me in the future for an apology I hadn’t yet issued.

“Thank you, Two,” I said. “You’re a great roommate.”

“You’re welcome,” she said. “And you’re a great little sister.”

I didn’t argue our relative positions… under the circumstances, I couldn’t really hope for a better compliment. I just waited patiently while she gathered up her things and then returned her parting “bye” as she left. Once the door was closed and locked, I opened the mirror. The was a series of short echoes of Lee telling me to reflect him back, which I did after the third one with no other information or instructions.

He answered almost immediately.

“Hello, Mackenzie?” he said. “Is Amaranth with you?”

“No,” I said. “That’s… it’s actually my information she was talking about. She just had this idea about shielding me…”

“Hold on,” Lee said. “Where are you?”

“My dorm room,” I said. “I’m alone.”

“Not good enough,” Lee said. “Those walls aren’t exactly the strongest proof against human ears, and you no doubt have friends who could make out every word we say without trying.”

He had a point. It was very unlikely that Dee was in her room, but when she was she knew everything that happened in ours. The Leightons, on the other side, only had normal human hearing but would be the most likely to use whatever they heard maliciously. Below me was Gladys and a gorgon. I had no idea what race Gladys was or what kind of hearing gorgons had, but it didn’t seem impossible that they’d be good at picking out sound coming through solid objects.

“Should I go somewhere else?” I asked. I wasn’t sure where on campus privacy would be assured. Plus, going out alone after dark while having information about the possible identity of the person who’d already killed one student inside the “safe” areas seemed like it was tempting fate even if I didn’t know that both of the potential killers were interested in me as a victim.

“No, just hold on a second,” he said. He fiddled with something or made a gesture outside the frame, and suddenly purple twinkly powder exploded out of the compact, suspending in the air about a foot out from me in every direction. My cry of surprise seemed both muted and unusually echoey. “Small-area silence spell,” he said. “It’s centered on you, not the mirror, so don’t hold me too far out.”

“Whoa… how do I make it do this?” I asked.

“You don’t,” Lee said. “There are legal controls on this kind of enchantment. That, and the charges can add up really quickly.”

That made sense. Something like the sound-dampening drapery in Viktor’s room could be done by permanently altering the properties of the cloth, but this required a fairly sophisticated spell to be stored and cast on demand. It could get new charges over the ether, but that would either be slow and gradual or require a wizard somewhere to be pushing hard.

“So, I’ve talked to you from my dorm room before,” I said. “How come you’ve never used this before?”

“Because the stakes are higher,” Lee said. “Secret information in an imperial investigation… I got the impression you wanted it to stay secret. Mackenzie, the first thing I have to ask… is this new information, or something you didn’t tell me before?”

“It’s… old information that’s only been put into context today,” I said. “By the teeth molds they released to the press. I’ve seen them before. Those teeth.”

He didn’t say anything for a bit. His face was a stone mask. I wasn’t sure if he was thinking about what I’d said, or about what he was going to say in response.

“How sure are you of this?” he asked me.

“Very sure,” I said. I tried and failed to repress a shudder at the memory of the sight of the mermaids’ teeth, a shiver at the memory of the feeling of Feejee’s teeth on me.

“You’ve seen the exact teeth that were used in the slaying?”

“Well… no, I mean I’ve seen teeth like those,” I said. “I’m sure that I can identify the race of the killer, from the teeth.”

“And where did you see these teeth?”

“Here,” I said. “In Harlowe Hall.”

He pursed his lips.

“Mackenzie… you realize that things could get uncomfortable for you, if you implicate another student in your residence hall,” he said. “I’m not saying you shouldn’t come forward. But that’s something you’ll have to think about… well, I’m sure it’s occurred to you.”

“I hadn’t actually been thinking about that,” I said. “I was more concerned with what the human population would think of me… students and the authorities.”

“You didn’t participate in anything…?”

“Lee, I know these teeth because I was on the receiving end of them,” I said. “Harmlessly, unlike Leda. It was… it was more like a game.”

“Did you have any specific knowledge that this person would attack another, more vulnerable student?”

“No!” I said.

“Any reason to believe he… she… would do so?”

“I just told you…”

“It’s a different question, Mackenzie,” Lee said. “And I want you to think about it and answer honestly.”

“Okay, first of all… there are two of them in the dorm,” I said. “I don’t know which of them might have killed Leda or if both of them were in on it. The one I… was involved with… I didn’t think was any danger. Much danger.”

“That’s not exactly an ideal place to stand, but merely thinking someone might be dangerous doesn’t carry any obligation to act,” Lee said. “Mackenzie, let’s stop beating around the bush. What do you want to do here? Come forward?”

“I want to make sure the investigators have all the information they need to solve the murder,” I said. “Not like ‘I think so-and-so did it’, but just about who… I mean what race… has teeth like that.”

“And who does?”

“Mermaids.”

I waited for him to laugh, or scoff, or argue.

“I was under the impression they had human-like teeth,” was all he said.

“It’s a disguise… like camouflage, or a lure,” I said. “They can look human… very human… but they can change.”

“I’m familiar with their transformations, ah, below the waist,” Lee said. “But…”

“They can do that all over,” I said. “And to different degrees. You know how they can split their tail into scaly legs, and then make the legs go… skinny?”

“Thinner?”

“More like skin,” I said.

“I did not know that, in fact,” Lee said. “You mean they lose their scales?”

“Yes,” I said. “And any time you see one looking… well, like you expect a mermaid to look… that means they’ve done something like that up top.”

“And you’ve seen this?”

“Up close and personal,” I said. “They look like humans so they’ll seem harmless or friendly or attractive, but in the ocean they hunt us. Humans, I mean. It’s like religious for them. Anyone in the water is fair game. They’re not supposed to hunt on land, but Leda… she was in the fountain.”

“Why aren’t there any reports?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “Maybe there are but they’re just chalked up to random sea monsters, since they don’t look like merfolk when they do it. Maybe they don’t leave enough survivors? I don’t know… I’ve seen them, Lee. They’ve talked to me about it. Feejee… that’s her name… she’s so… almost… she’s naive. That’s the only word for it.”

“You know that even if she wasn’t involved in Leda’s death, things could get bad for your friend if this comes out?” Lee said. “It would be like… like if you had shown up passing as human and then found yourself suddenly exposed after becoming a part of campus life.”

That had been more or less my plan, minus the exposure part. Don’t be exposed as a half-demon wasn’t all that great, as far as plans went. It was probably a good thing I’d been outted my very first weekend, while still firmly ensconced in the company of my fellow Harlowe residents.

“Mackenzie?” Lee said.

“What?”

“Do you know if she was involved in Leda’s death?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” I said. “Neither of them talked about it, before or after… it’s the other one, Iona, who I was more worried about. She’s not naive at all. She’s just… cold. Vicious.”

“Isn’t it possible for the more naive one to have thought she could do something like this without consequences?” Lee asked.

“I don’t know,” I said. “I don’t really know which of them did it, Lee… I don’t want to name names. If Mike Gregory knows that mermaids can grow teeth like that… well, he can find out the mermaids in Harlowe and he can question them, or investigate them, or whatever.”

“If an imperial agent knew that merfolk were dangerous, human-killing predators, do you think he’d find out which one killed this person and turn the other one loose?” Lee asked.

“Feejee would still have civil liberties, if she’s innocent,” I said. “Even humans as a race kill lots of humans.”

“So Feejee never hunted humans in the ocean?”

That stopped me. I was pretty sure that she had.

“Look… I’m not really concerned with shielding Feejee,” I said. “I’d rather this didn’t get ugly for anyone except the murderer… well, I don’t even really want it ugly for her. Justice should be… just. Orderly.”

“If at all possible, yes,” Lee said.

“If things do get ugly, though, I don’t want to be caught up in it all,” I said. “Whether because the imps think I’m too cozy with my fellow human-eaters, or because the campus thinks so, or because Iona tries to turn it around and blame it on me, or because my neighbors think I betrayed Harlowe, or whatever. I just want to be kept out of it.”

“Well, that shouldn’t actually be too hard to do,” Lee said. “The investigation does take anonymous tips, and… supposedly… they check all of them out.”

“Couldn’t checking out ‘mermaids have giant pointy teeth and eat people’ consist of comparing it to what everybody knows about mermaids and discarding it as obviously nonsense?” I asked.

“It could be,” Lee said. “And it could also be a while before they got to that one. I think the best way to approach it would be to focus on the shapeshifting and the teeth. That mermaids can alter their forms to be more or less human-like is an established fact. The teeth are what’s relevant to the case. Putting out there that they hunt and kill humans with any frequency…”

“You want to cover that up?” I asked.

“Have you been in any hurry to expose it?” he said. “If you do want to keep it quiet, you should know that it will probably come out in the course of the investigation. But if we posit it up front, when mermaids aren’t even on the table as suspects, it makes our claim look incredible. On the other hand, if we give them a single, narrow piece of information that connects to what they already know to be true, if we give them a notion worth entertaining, they can check it out and discover the rest for themselves.”

“So… that’s what you advise?” I asked.

“It’s an idea,” Lee said. “Alternately, we could have the firm provide the information on behalf of an anonymous party. That would make sure that the tip received immediate attention and was treated seriously. The downside is that it would receive more attention than it otherwise would. A tribunal could compel us to name the source.”

“Wouldn’t it be kind of transparent anyway?” I said. “I mean, I’m sure you can’t just tell me if there are any other students being represented by Pendragon and Associates aside from my friends and me, but… are there any other students being represented by Pendragon and Associates?”

“Another student might seem to be the most likely source if the information implicated a specific individual student,” Lee said. “But if it’s just a piece of particularly arcane and obscure information about a race that’s rarely seen inland, well… there are more likely sources than a student. And it’s possible that the imperials wouldn’t pry too deeply if they thought the information might be coming from… one of our higher-powered clients.”

“But it’s possible they would, and your uber client wouldn’t actually get in their face about it because he wouldn’t be affected by it,” I said.

“True,” Lee said thoughtfully. A spark lit up inside his eyes. “On the other hand…”

“What?” I asked.

“Well, Mackenzie… okay, first of all, to examine another angle: are you sure you don’t want to use this information?”

“I do,” I said. “I want to use it to speed up the investigation, find Leda’s killer, get rid of all the lingering suspicion and the imperial agents hanging out around my school.”

“I mean, use it to your advantage,” Lee said. “First, there’s a reward… and then there’s the goodwill of the school administration and the Imperium. And possibly that of a Shifter kingdom, though I don’t know how grateful they’d be or whether it would be worth it to accept any gratitude from them.”

“Can you predict how likely it is that I’d get goodwill and not suspicion?” I asked.

“No,” Lee said. “But it’s worth mentioning. Claiming the reward later would just lead to more questions. And there is potentially a way the firm could resolve this without bringing you into it at all, even if they did bring in a tribunal… but it would make it impossible for you to take credit for it later.”

“How?”

“By getting one of our older and more respected clients to provide the information to the investigators,” Lee said.

I figured he had to be talking about Mr. Embries, the school’s vice-chancellor. Lee had mentioned that he was a client, and judging from the effect that he’d had on Amaranth and Ian, he had to be very “high-powered” indeed.

“You mean, you tell him this and get him to tell the investigators?” I asked.

“I meant more ask him if he wouldn’t mind us telling the investigators on his behalf,” Lee said. “It works out the same either way. He becomes the ultimate source for the tip. It won’t be worth it for the Imperium to question things any further.”

“But… if they came after you, you’d have to lie in order to get them to understand that he’s the source,” I said.

“Well, no, not necessarily,” Lee said. “This plan hinges on the idea that he very probably already does know as much or more about mermaids as you do. I just need to find out, and get his permission to tell Gregory about it.”

“If he already knows, why hasn’t he told anyone?”

“It might not have occurred to him,” Lee said. “Or maybe he thinks it’s the mermaids’ business, as a race. If I put this to him, though… well, I have a feeling he might find it amusing to help us in this way. He… some clients, that is… like to feel useful, like to have a mutually beneficial arrangement.”

It was a bold stab at restoring hypotheticalness to what was becoming a very specific conversation.

“But you’d still have to lie…”

“It will come from someone else,” Lee said. “They’ll be the focus of any scrutiny, which won’t last long and won’t have any repercussions for the firm. We’ll be reaping all the benefits here. Well, if it leads to an arrest then the cash reward will go through us to our client, which is the other reason I suspect he’ll go for it. But we’ll get the attendant goodwill for playing nice with the imperial bureau. And… more than incidentally… it would mean really good things for my future with this firm. The long-term benefits to me would be far more than what I’d earn brokering a deal for you. That’s why I want to make sure that you’d rather have the absolute assurance of anonymity, Mackenzie. It wouldn’t be ethical for me to do this at your expense.”

“Just so I’m clear… if I had you present the information on my behalf… you could get the reward for me? Without my name getting out?”

“I couldn’t guarantee either of those things,” Lee said. “Anything short of naming the killer along with a time and a place to catch her isn’t necessarily going to be considered ‘information leading to the capture’ thereof. The reward money’s in escrow. There’d be a hearing once the dust settled. You might get all of it, or a percentage of it. As for your name… it could be leaked, it could be forced out of us. The bottom line is there are no guarantees.”

“But you seem pretty certain that if you have the vi… other client do this, it’ll keep me out completely,” I said.

“I am,” he said. “Fairly certain. If the other client felt he was being trifled with or disrespected by the government… well, he’d be a fierce advocate for you by proxy.”

“Then let’s do that,” I said. I was probably condemning Feejee, one way or another… I didn’t know how to feel about that, and taking money for it would only make it worse.

Well, I knew I should feel awful about it because she was nice and my friend, and I knew that I should feel good about that because she was a killer who had feasted on humans. I just didn’t know which feeling should win and how to survive the battle between them.

“Okay,” Lee said.

“You don’t need me to sign anything for this, or anything?” I asked.

“No,” Lee said. “It’s really better if you don’t. There’s really not going to be any going back, though… if we do this, it would be way more trouble than it’d be worth for you to try to claim the reward later.”

“That’s so not a problem,” I said.

“You could never tell anyone that this had anything to do with you,” Lee said. “Amaranth… anybody else who knows… tell them you talked to me and I assured you that someone else already knows and is ready to come forward.”

I nodded, though I already knew I’d be telling Amaranth the truth. The lie would be too obvious on my face.

“Mackenzie?” Lee said.

“Yes?” I asked, wondering if my face was too transparent to him, as well.

“Do you know how much the reward is?”

“No,” I said, and I was a little surprised that I hadn’t asked. That’s how I knew it was true when I said, “It doesn’t make a difference.”

“It’s approximately one thousand platinum in mixed treasure,” Lee said. “Her family put it up. Is your mind still made up?”

It was unexpected, but then, I hadn’t had any specific in figure in mind… Leda had been royalty, after all.

“Yes,” I said.

“Okay,” Lee said. “I should be able to take care of this tonight, and then… unless it doesn’t work out… we’ll talk no more about this. Clear?”

“Clear.”

Are you one of the many who have been enjoying the quality and direction of chapters lately? Now might be a good time to show your appreciation with either a one-time contribution or a monthly sponsorship. This is how I know when you like what you see. It’s also how I eat and keep a roof over my head. I don’t do this for my health, except in the sense that I’d be less healthy if I had no food and no shelter. If you can’t afford anything, consider telling a friend or two.

Tuesday: More classes! And Trina’s friend Gladys doesn’t appear.

Discuss this story on the Livejournal community.

The first was that just because you loved someone didn’t mean it would actually be comfortable to lie awake in bed with them pressed up against you indefinitely. Maybe that should have been obvious, but Amaranth… who was appreciably larger and heavier than Steff… was also just so comfy.

The second one was that if you did love someone, then lying with them could be nice even when it wasn’t completely comfortable. I couldn’t have done it forever, but I didn’t mind doing it for a while. The arrival of Amaranth and Two after their morning classes was a bit of a relief, though.

I didn’t say anything when I heard the doorknob jiggling… I figured it would be better if Steff roused herself at the sound of voices and activity than if I jolted her awake. She did murmur and shift a little as the door opened, which let me get an arm out from underneath her and move a little.

“Oh, dear,” Two said in a tone that sounded practiced and borrowed from someone else. Her friend Hazel, maybe?

“Baby, are you in here?” Amaranth called.

Steff woke up a bit more and kind of pushed herself up using my body as support.

“Watch your head!” I warned, right as she bumped it on the underside of Two’s bed. Luckily she wasn’t moving that quickly.

“Ugh,” she said

“Mack, baby, did you skip class?” Amaranth called from outside the canopy.

“We were excused,” I replied. “I went looking for Steff… she was looking for Two.”

“I’m here!” Two said. “Hi, Mack.”

“Hi, Two,” I said.

I had some vague notion that it would be better to help Steff get covered up before she dealt with Two, so I disentangled myself from her and slid quickly out of the bed. My foot hit our rug where it happened to be bunched up a little and I slid, hitting my back on the bed and my ass on the floor. The blanket we used as a curtain came down with me.

“Ack, light!” Steff said.

“Hi, Steff!” Two said.

“Honey, Steff’s probably a little out of it,” Amaranth said to Two, reaching a hand down to me. “Hey, baby… you should be more careful.”

“Yes, you could break something,” Two said.

“Um… I’m invulnerable, remember?” I said.

“You are, but the furniture isn’t,” Two said.

“…okay,” Steff said, with a syllable at the front that might have been it’s or I’m.

“I found your blouse, Steff,” Two said, holding it out towards her as Amaranth helped me to my feet and gave me a kiss on the cheek and a pat on the butt. “Please don’t leave clothing on the floor. I know Mack does it but it’s my floor, too, and I don’t like it.”

“Sorry, ‘wench,” Steff said. She took the shirt and put it over her face covering her eyes, and laid back down.

“Steff was actually hoping you could help her with clothing,” I explained. “Nothing she has except her skirts really fits her very well any more. Can you alter sizes?”

I watched Two think about that.

“I can let things out a little,” she said. “Or shrink them a little bit more. But I do not think I could make that blouse fit Steff now.”

“Not the way it used to,” Amaranth said, looking at it. “But… could you maybe make it cling in a little more flattering fashion?”

“What exactly are you talking about?” I asked, trying to picture it. “It doesn’t even cover her belly button.”

“Well, no… but clothing doesn’t have to, to meet decency standards,” Amaranth said.

“She might be a little cold walking around her stomach hanging out,” I said. “I mean, it seems like it’s kind of cold for skirts and loose blouses, anyway.”

“Maybe we should go over and see what we can find to work with in her room?” Amaranth suggested. She was looking at Two when she said this, which made me hope that I wasn’t being included in her “we”. “Steff, hon, can we borrow your key, or do you want to come with us?”

“It’s… there’s a pouch somewhere,” Steff said sleepily.

I picked up the blanket she’d been wearing and found the skirt that was tangled up in it. There was a little black velour pouch tied to its drawstrings, stretched out in the shape of an ID card. It jingled a little when I picked it up.

“Do you want to help?” Amaranth asked me as I handed it to her.

“I want to help Steff, yeah,” I said, thinking as I answered. “I’m not terribly interested in going into Viktor’s domain to do it.”

“Viktor’s domain,” Steff echoed. “I like that.”

“Okay,” Amaranth said. “We’ll get some of Steff’s dresses and bring them over here so that Two can work them over. Why don’t you go downstairs and get everybody some food, then? We probably won’t have time to go have a proper lunch.”

“Sure,” I said. “I can do that.”

“I don’t think they’ll let you run other people’s ID cards, so we’ll just have to pay you back,” Amaranth said. I shook my head.

“I’ve got money,” I said. “Everybody else was willing to cover me when we started, I can get lunch this once.”

“Okay, baby,” Amaranth said. “That’s sweet of you. We’ll be back in a bit. Come on, Two!”

“Are… are you sure she’s going to be okay over there?” I asked. “On the guys’ side?”

“It’s allowed during the daytime,” Two said.

“I don’t see why not,” Amaranth said. “I’m not going to leave her alone. We’ll just get some dresses… I’d think those would be the easiest, since they have so much material to work with. Don’t you think so, Two? Steff’s dresses tend to be a little flowy to begin with, so if they end up a little shorter it shouldn’t matter too much.”

“Yes, I do think so,” Two said.

We headed downstairs, Amaranth talking about Steff’s dresses all the way. I could only think of one in particular… the elven-style gown she’d pissed Callahan off by wearing to class. Amaranth seemed to have an encyclopedic knowledge of the contents of Steff’s closet, though, and she was scarcely concealing some kind of vicarious enjoyment from the prospect of picking clothes out for someone to wear. I remembered how much fun she’d had getting me an outfit for my first date with Ian, with Steff’s help.

I wondered how serious Mother Khaele’s prohibition on her wearing clothing herself really was… Amaranth clearly thought it was very serious, but I also had good reason to believe that she’d managed to get away with wearing garments behind closed doors without being struck down. I didn’t know how omniscient the nature goddess was when it came to her daughters, or how likely it was that she would have noticed, but I doubted it would ever be the most important thing going on in the world, from her perspective.

Of course, I wasn’t about to urge Amaranth to experiment with pushing any boundaries when our relationship was already being given the probationary treatment by her mother… under the circumstances, it was probably good that she had another outlet for her urge to play dress-up.

We parted company when we got to the first floor, Amaranth and Two turning and heading down the hall towards the boys’ side while I stepped out of Harlowe and around the corner to the little convenience store in the nexus.

The shop looked like maybe it had missed a resupply that morning. The sole remaining fruit tray didn’t look terribly appetizing… maybe Amaranth wouldn’t be picky, but with a garden salad in slightly better condition and a sealed bowl of cereal with nothing meatier than raisins in it available I decided to give it a pass. None of the more expensive salads with strips of chicken breast or bacon on cheese on them were left, which was unfortunate becauseTwo would be picky about getting a more balanced meal.

I grabbed the three lunch meat and cheese sandwiches that were left… I had no idea what Steff and Two’s preferences were in that area and I didn’t really look at what they were. There were only a few bags of chips left, and they all had questionable-sounding seasoning flavors but I grabbed a couple anyway. After I dumped everything on the counter I also scooped up the other garden salad that remained.

There was absolutely nothing left that could serve as dessert, but Two probably had something stashed away.

“Hoarding?” the guy behind the counter asked me after ringing them up and accepting my coins.

“No,” I said, maybe a little too quickly and too defensively, considering that I actually wasn’t and I couldn’t imagine he actually cared. “Just getting lunch for my friends.” I looked at the collection of food. It seemed kind of meager for four people, compared to the laden trays we could have got in the cafeteria… but at the same time, it seemed like a lot to carry. “You don’t have a bag, do you?”

“No,” he said.

I repressed the urge to let out a profound and world-weary sigh, as it seemed unlikely to make it any easier to get the food upstairs. I stacked the salads on top of each other and kind of scooped everything else up.

It was a good thing all the food was in sealed containers… I managed to get it all upstairs without spilling or otherwise ruining anything, even though I dropped a couple of the sandwiches and one of the salad bowls at different points along the way.

Steff wasn’t interested in waking up for food, so I laid everything out on my desk. Amaranth and Two got back only a few minutes after I did… it seemed Amaranth had had some really specific ideas about what they were looking for. I showed them what I’d picked up, apologizing for the poor quality and lack of selection, but Amaranth didn’t give the food a second look. She started fussing over Steff immediately, laying a long black dress out over her supine form and pinching the fabric to show Two what she thought needed doing.

I wasn’t that curious about the tailoring stuff, but I was kind of interested in watching Two work her magic. Unfortunately, she seemed determined to do a lot of mundane things first, like measuring the fabric and Steff’s body with a little cloth tape measure, and marking on the dress with chalk. Before she got to the good parts, my mirror started buzzing.

It happened so rarely that it confused me for a second, and then I spent another second wondering if the media had managed to get through again somehow before Amaranth said, “You should probably answer that, baby, it’s bound to be Lee.”

She was right, of course, as I saw as soon as I opened the compact.

“Yeah, it’s him,” I said.

“Two, why don’t we go get some drinks from the vending cupboards while she takes this reflection,” Amaranth suggested.

“Okay,” she said and they headed out of the room.

“Hello?” I said as his tiny image formed. “What’s up?”

“Ah, Mackenzie… I thought this would be the best time to actually reach you,” he said. “Assuming you’re in class today, that is.”

“Yeah, I am,” I said. “My morning one let out early, but I don’t really expect my afternoon classes to be affected.”

“Good, good,” he said, somewhat absently. “It’s a good idea to keep busy, keep up your daily routine, when things like this happen. It helps you cope. It might also help with public opinion, but on the other hand, if someone wants something to bludgeon you with, coping too well can make a handy implement. Have you been watching the news?”

“Not really,” I said.

“I’d avoid it,” he said. “I’m afraid the chatter and speculation have already started. You’ve been in the public eye before… even if somebody isn’t completely aware of who you are or doesn’t know your name off the top of his head, he hears ‘alleged murder at Magisterius University, non-human students suspected’ and he’s going to think ‘Wasn’t there something about a demonblood?’ That’s going to happen whether the media feeds it or not.”

“And they’ve been feeding it?” I asked, a trap door over a bottomless pit opening up beneath my stomach.

“There’s been some testing of waters,” he said. “I sent out a statement yesterday, and I had one ready to correct the exaggerations and distortions that would crop up in the first news stories making mention of it. I don’t think we should do anything more right now… it would be a mistake to hold a press conference or put you in front of reporters right now. That would just bring more attention to what they’re calling your ‘involvement’.”

“What exactly are they saying, Lee?” I asked.

“They aren’t saying much of anything ‘exactly’,” he said. “They’re a little bit smarter than that. My statement to the press was detailed and specific and not actually very long, since there wasn’t much to say. In order to insinuate anything, they had to say less than that. But all it really takes is a word like ‘detained’ and ‘suspected’, or a phrase like ‘person of interest’. It’s not likely there will be any meaningful corrections issued, but letting them know that I’m watching should keep those words from gaining too much traction.”

“Thanks,” I said.

“The other reason I wanted to get you in the mirror concerns your case,” Lee said. “We’d hoped for a speedy resolution, you know, but of course ‘speedy’ is a relative term when it comes to the practice of law.”

“And this is going to slow it down, right?”

“It’s very likely to,” Lee said. “On the other hand, though, there might be an opportunity here.”

“For?”

“A quick settlement,” Lee said. “If it seems like the investigation might drag on… or might devolve into even more of a lurid spectacle… then it’s possible the university might not want to defend itself from your case at the same time that it’s dealing with the circus. Given the fact that you’ve expressed interest in seeing some sort of reform… well, if we pushed, we might be able to get a non-monetary settlement.”

“Is that what you recommend?” I asked.

“I think if we stick to our wands, you could see financial compensation as well as some changes,” Lee said. “But… well, if things get bogged down, they aren’t going to necessarily get unbogged any time soon. Before the incident on Veil Night, your case was likely looming very large in the thoughts and dreams of the university’s legal team and their PR people. It was a small case that could blow up very, very big. Now? It’s barely a blip. They’ve got a ready-made excuse to delay, they can use it to try to outlast your interest, they’re likely betting on you not wanting to draw attention to yourself right now… and they’re right, you don’t.”

“So you think I should settle,” I said.

“To be very clear, Mackenzie, it’s not a choice of us settling or not,” he said. “We’d be making an overture and it would be up to them to accept it or not.”

“If we do and they say no, does that hurt us at all?” I asked. “I mean, does it… I don’t know, make us look weak?” That sounded silly. “Sorry, I really don’t know…”

“That’s why I’m here,” Lee said. “And no, no… the only downside I can see to this is a reduced reward versus what we might get if it goes to arbitration and we prevail there. But it’s looking like less of a sure thing that we’ll be able to get it into arbitration this year, and of course the result of that has never been a sure thing.”

“So… what would this ‘overture’ be?” I asked.

“Well, it would be dressed up in a lot of flowery lawyery talk about the difficult times… actually, I think I’d enlist the company herald to write the beginning and deliver it,” Lee said. “The meat of it would be that we’d be willing to forego arbitration in exchange for an apology, some written policies protecting infernal and other planar-sensitive students, and… I’ll have to do some research on the structure of the governing bodies of the university, but the key component would be some sort of representative being appointed to watch out for the interests of all students, ‘all’ here having the meaning of ‘who aren’t already being watched out for by virtue of being human’.”

“There’s already a dean of non-human students,” I said, remembering the address I’d interrupted at the start of the semester with my bout of nauseau. “I don’t think her job exactly counts as watching out for our interests. Any chance we could get her replaced?”

“No,” Lee said. “Definitely not with a quick-and-dirty settlement. Almost certainly not in an arbitrated one. I don’t think the arbiter has the power to dictate that, and I’m sure the university wouldn’t agree to a high-level personnel change unless the person in question was already a scapegoat. No, the best way to approach this is to get them to create a new position… that way, nobody loses their job and everyone assumes the existing power structure will be able to ameliorate the effects of the new one.”

“Is there any way to stop that?”

“Not really,” Lee said. “The right person… the right kind of person… can do a lot of good in the right position, but there’s always going to be someone pushing back. You have the chance to maybe do some good here, and I admire you for wanting to take it, but… well, as an attorney I choose my words carefully. ‘Chance’ and ‘maybe’ are important words here.”

“So, if we did this… and they took it… how would you get paid?” I asked. “Would your fee be part of the settlement, even if there’s no other money involved?”

“That’s… sort of a delicate matter,” he said. “Putting any cash value into the settlement might change things a bit for the people who evaluate this sort of thing. An apology is just words. People apologize all the time without admitting guilt or responsibility. If you open up the coffers at the same time as you’re apologizing… that’s a different matter, in a lot of people’s minds. At the very least, attaching a price tag would mean that more people would have to say yes to get it approved.”

“So… would you just not get paid?” I asked. “Or would I owe you? Or is this somehow covered by…”

“Mackenzie, I’ll say again that this isn’t a sure thing,” he said. “But if we make the offer and they take it, I’ll be done with your case in far less time than I’d anticipated.”

“But you won’t have anything to show for it,” I said.

“A win’s a win,” he said. “I took your case on contingency. I thought it was a strong enough case to be worth the risk, but there was always the chance I’d have ‘nothing to show for it’… and now because I took that chance, I’ve got a sack full of gold I can bill for representing you and your friends. If we press on or the university decides to fight it out, I might be able to get you monetary reward with my fee being fully absorbed by the school. If we make them an offer to end it now and they take it, then I can close the books on this case and continue to collect for the other one until you don’t need me any more. I’m ahead either way, and this puts me in the enviable position of being able to do what’s right for my client.”

“What is that?” I asked. “In your opinion.”

“I don’t think you’ve got anything to lose by making the offer,” he said. “Unless you want to hold out for money. That’s your choice and I’m certainly not going to judge you for it. But I get the feeling you’d just as soon be quit of it, if some good can come of it, and if this thing gets pushed back… well, a good rule of thumb in law is that the longer something takes, the looonger it takes. Delays beget delays. The annals of students suing schools are full of cases that aren’t resolved until long after graduation.”

“Okay,” I said. “Let’s do it. Do you need me to do anything?”

“No, I’ll start by floating the idea that we’d be open to a speedy resolution, under the circumstances… focusing on the idea that it’s the proverbial ‘principle of the thing’ that’s more important than money, which I’m sure nobody will be sad to hear,” Lee said. “That might spur the conversation towards what they’d be willing to do… they might end up making an offer first themselves while I’m working out the specifics of ours. It’ll probably be insulting, but it’ll give us a baseline. If they say no… and I can’t stress enough that this is entirely possible… then we can say, ‘Well, we tried.’ It gives me an edge to keep pushing things along without looking like what we call, in legal circles, a ‘dick’.”

“Do you worry about that?”

“It would be an insensitive time to come off as one,” he said. “And that could reflect poorly on you.”

“On that subject… is it really okay to be doing this?” I asked.

“Doing what?”

“Using Leda’s murder to push for a settlement,” I said.

“Mackenzie, I’m not representing Leda’s interests,” he said. “I don’t even know what they’d be, at this point, beyond bringing her killer or killers to justice. The circumstances of her death are going to impact your case. There’s nothing wrong, nothing unethical or immoral, about reacting to the changing circumstances. If you’re worried about being respectful, look at it this way: you’re just trying to get out of the way of things. You can’t be more respectful than that.”

“I guess,” I said.

“Well, you talk it over with Amaranth, see what she thinks,” he suggested. “She seems to have an unexpectedly practical streak when it comes to you.”

“Yeah, I guess she does,” I said.

“I’ll get started on the groundwork… you’ll be able to change your mind up until the point you actually sign an agreement with the university,” he said. “Though if you get to that point and don’t, we’re running into ‘dick’ territory… but if you decide you don’t like this idea, if you want to fight it out, you’ll have time to change your mind before we get there. Okay?”

“Okay,” I said.

“Great,” he said. “I’ve got a lot to do and I’m sure you’ve got places to be, so I will give you a reflection… say, this time tomorrow?”

“Okay,” I said. “I’ll be looking for it. Um… aside from the news getting stuff wrong, is there anything I should know about the investigation?”

“I think you’re in the clear there,” he said. “If they get a firm suspect and it’s someone you’re acquainted with you might be interviewed or called as a witness, but the imperials’ interest in you is otherwise over. I’ve been told by Gregory, by the mouthpieces, and informally by our very important and highly placed other client that you’ve been ruled out as a suspect. Diviners confirmed what your grandmother said, as well. No appreciable demonic traces by the fountain, absolutely no infernal element to the attack.”

“Good,” I said. Having been told again and again that I’d be quickly and easily ruled out as a suspect, knowing that I made no real sense as a suspect, wasn’t the same thing as being told I had been ruled out. “That’s good.”

“Now, your other friend, Steff… I didn’t want to draw too much attention to my interest there, but I’ve gathered there’s a bit of a divide there. Gregory thinks she’s only a marginally better suspect than you are, by dint of actually having been on campus, but there are some elements within the investigation who are pushing for more focus on her,” Lee said.

“What happens if that happens?”

“That’s a matter for her attorney,” Lee said. “Which she should definitely have. You would be doing your friend a very big favor by finding out if she has one and making sure she’s in touch with him, or recommending that she gets one. Her paramour just as much, if not more.”

“Have you heard something?” I asked, a little scared by the urgency of his suggestion. “Something specific?”

“No,” he said. “But that’s my first and best advice for anybody who might fall under suspicion of a crime, whether they’re innocent or not. Especially if they’re innocent, and especially if they’re not. The law was not meant to be navigated unaided.” He glanced out of frame and scowled at something on his desk, possibly a timepiece. “Mackenzie, I’m afraid I’ve got to…”

“It’s okay,” I said. “Sorry for keeping you, I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow,” he agreed, and then with a wave of his hand, he vanished from the mirror.

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Next: Sooni comes nowhere near logic!

In Which Life Goes On

If the day of Leda’s murder had a hero, it was Hazel. A couple of pies and a big pot of soup became a community project, with most of the eight kitchenettes in Harlowe Hall eventually drawn in to the scheme as more people caught the spirit she was fomenting. People made cookies and brownies… whatever they had the mixes on hand for, mostly… as well as soups and casseroles and pasta and other dishes that could be made from the contents of a student’s food stash.

It wasn’t as though the whole of Harlowe came together, exactly… some people were dealing with things by themselves, some people seemed to be being “handled” in a way that kept them apart. Some were just absent. But it really felt like everyone who wanted to be involved and included was, by the end… and not just from Harlowe.

Despite the official exhortations for everyone to remain in their halls, it was almost axiomatic that most people would end up wherever their closest friends were. In a lot of cases, that resulted in people doing exactly what officialdom wanted, since most students would be most familiar with the people they shared living space with, but Ian was not the only human who found his way over to our hall, and word got around from them about what was going on. Everybody who came over was welcomed. There wasn’t enough of anything for everyone, but there were plenty of other things.

It would be really hard for anyone to make a decent estimate of how many students either passed through or hung out in Harlowe that night, but it seemed to me that at the peak of it all the population of the hall was at least double the normal level.

By the time it became apparent to the investigators that the residential hall that had become the focal point of the investigation was also becoming a gathering place for students, it was too late to do anything about it short of clearing the whole building floor by floor… the imperials made a few half-hearted attempts to get people dispersed back to their own dorms, and then gave up. It was probably the right decision. By that point, the ones and twos who’d been coming over with their non-human friends had given way to whole groups from other halls who had heard about the free food and fellowship being offered in Harlowe. As Hazel had observed, it was natural for anyone to seek out the latter in times of tragedy… and it was just as natural for students to seek out the former at any time.

For all any of us knew, they might have already planned to abandon their little command center on our first floor, but there was a real sense of victory that rippled through the building when word went around that they’d vacated the place.

Leda’s violent death and the revival of community at Harlowe Hall… these were two unbelievable, irreconcilable, and yet absolutely undeniable facts. They were joined by a third one, just as impossible and just as unavoidable: life would go on. Magisterius University was still, as its name suggested, a university and there would still be classes to go to and tests to take and papers to do. It wasn’t inconceivable that classes could be canceled for a day or that some leeway would be given in light of the circumstances, but the sky wouldn’t stop wheeling for the loss of one life, no matter how significant.

If Hazel’s efforts had accomplished nothing else, they had shown a whole corner of campus the way forward. The sensations of a stomach full of hot food and being surrounded by strong walls and friendly companions made the immediate future that much less daunting.

The crowd started to thin out a few hours after the sun set, though there were still plenty of people hanging out in the lounges and hallways, and the floors were still much more integrated than I’d ever seen them before, with freshmen on the upperclassmen’s floors, boys on the girls’ side, and humans and dwarves and even a few elves all picking at the same remains of various cakes and hot dishes. The talk all sounded surprisingly normal… colored by recent events, with snatches of speculation about the crime and the activities of the authorities, but mostly concerned with school work, extracurricular activities, and stuff like that.

It’s possible I was reading too much into it… maybe the groupings I heard and saw were mostly established friends and it wasn’t all that unusual.

But it made me feel good to see it, either way.

If it seems like I felt a little detached from all of it, that’s only because I did. The bigger Hazel’s little community-togetherness project got, the less comfortable I was with being in the thick of it. I didn’t want to be alone, either, but what I wanted in the face of so much fear and uncertainty were familiar presences. Luckily for me, I had those in Ian and Amaranth, even if Steff was unavailable and Two was keeping busy with Hazel. That’s not to say that we stayed cooped up in the room the whole time… we did wander out to see how Two and Hazel were doing a few times, as well as over to the boys’ side to check on Steff.

That exercise ended in frustration. The Ceilos delegation had apparently decided that if they couldn’t pull Dee away from her self-imposed duty, they would put the room she was in under guard and control who had access to it. It struck me as very petty… if it wasn’t exactly punitive, then it sure seemed like they were asserting a meaningless bit of control to prove that they really did have authority over Dee even as she refused to submit to it.

I also didn’t see Sooni or any of her retinue anywhere. Some people were saying that they’d withdrawn to an embassy in Enwich… the rumor attached to that was that they were being pulled out of the university altogether and returning home. Amaranth opined that it was more likely that her handlers had decided it was getting too crowded and decided to remove her until things calmed down.

I really hoped that she was right. Sooni’s presence didn’t make my life any easier… her friendship hadn’t been entirely painful but I wasn’t sure that the good outweighed the bad… but eighteen years of whatever awaited her back home had shaped her into who she was. Four years abroad couldn’t be anything but good for her… and that was without even getting into the opportunities for the other girls in her group.

Lee checked in a couple of times, mostly just to check in… making sure that everything was okay where we were and that we were keeping out of trouble.

Even with the upheaval going on all around her, Two was still resolved to go to bed at a reasonable hour on the night before another week of classes began, which gave the rest of us a natural bedtime. There was no talk of Ian returning to his own dorm. Three in a dorm bed was always a tight fit, but we were all very comfortable with each other.

The fact that I was completely uncrushable helped.

The next morning, the four of us decided to brave the dining hall… there was probably still food to be had in Harlowe, but it seemed to be time to head out and face the world again. We didn’t bother going over to check on Dee and Steff, though I hoped that Steff at least would join us. If I understood the timeline Dee had given for the potion, her transformation should either be over or winding down, and it seemed likely that she would be hungry.

I tried not to look disappointed when Dee walked into the cafeteria accompanied by a cloaked escort instead of Steff. Being both perceptive and a telepath, it seemed unlikely that she would miss the fact that I was disappointed, but I figured she would appreciate the effort and understand that it was not her presence that caused it so much as Steff’s absence.

“Greetings,” Dee said as she set her tray down at our table. She tipped her head in the direction of her silent shadow, who had declined to get any food. “Novice Aehal has been tasked with keeping me confined to the residence hall outside of my classes.”

“Good job,” Ian said to her. “Seriously, well done.”

“She will not respond to a male… actually, I do not think any of you should expect a reply to any uninvited comment. It would probably be best to pretend that she isn’t present. I know that she is doing just that herself,” Dee said. “In any event, it is hardly her fault that I remain at liberty. She has no power to detain me and has not been given any authority to do so. Indeed, if she laid so much as a finger on me, she would be recalled in disgrace.”

“If you have so much sympathy for my position,” the novice said, “then I think you might refrain from adding to my burden.”

“I have placed no burden upon you,” Dee said. “I am in perfect sympathy with you because I, too, am bound by a duty that I can neither ignore nor fulfill.”

“What ‘duty’ requires you to take your meal in a communal eating chamber when anything you desire could be brought to you?” Novice Aehal asked her.

“The duty of friendship,” Dee said. “Though this is not the duty I spoke of. Absolutely nothing prevents me from fulfilling the minimum formality of spending time with my friends at meals, as is done among most surface-dwellers.”

“Dee… not that we don’t enjoy your company, but don’t you think you’re maybe making things unnecessarily difficult for the novice?” Amaranth asked.

“I say again, I am not the one who has created this difficulty,” Dee said. “I did not give her a commission without the pick needed to carve it out.”

“Yes, but you could certainly make things easier for her,” Amaranth said.

“This conversation is wearingly similar to the one that just ended,” Dee said. “I have absolutely no interest in continuing it.”

“Okay,” Amaranth said. “This just seems… well, childish.”

“If refusing to be treated as an errant child is childish, then it seems to me as though I must be doomed to childishness no matter what I do,” Dee said. “So… I may as well have breakfast, as Two’s friend Hazel might say.”

“She would,” Two said, nodding.

“How’s Steff?” I asked Dee before she could get bogged down in another argument.

“Well,” Dee said, and the stiff mask dropped from her face for a moment, leaving a look of profound exhaustion mingled with relief. “Steff is well. Healthy and whole and… almost beautiful.”

I could have taken offense on Steff’s defense for the qualifier, but from the way the cloaked elf managed to go even more rigid when Dee said it, I took it that she had breached a pretty big taboo to begin with. Jumping on her wouldn’t accomplish anything except to make her feel like she was under siege from both sides.

“Is she awake?” I asked.

“Yes,” Dee said. “I suggested she come along and eat for her strength, but she and Viktor have decided to spend this time enjoying each other’s company in private. If she does not come out for lunch, then I suggest we go as a group and entreat her collectively, for her own good.”

“If we’re going to go entreating on Viktor’s territory, let’s invite our new friend the other half-ogre,” Ian said.

Dee’s face registered a tiny amount of surprise… or rather, it registered surprise to a tiny degree, which was significant for her.

“I know that I have missed much,” Dee said. “But even distracted as I was, I could not miss the change in feelings that came over Harlowe last night. It was… moving.”

“It really was something to see,” Amaranth said. “Not terribly surprising… I mean, as much as I love my home I don’t think it’s really that special, and I’m used to seeing that sort of thing… but even when it’s completely expected, it’s still… gratifying? Uplifting, I guess… to see it happen.”

“Are you really saying that you completely expected something like that to happen?” Ian asked.

“Something like it, maybe,” Amaranth said. “And I didn’t so much expect it to happen as I believed it was possible. I mean, it didn’t actually just happen. People made it happen. Hazel gets a lot of credit, but until it reached the point where it was sort of a self-sustaining phenomenon there were a lot of chances for it to be made or broken… with Rocky and Belinda first and most obviously, but there were people making the individual decisions to help each other out and be decent to each other all night.”

“Yeah, and that’s cool and all,” Ian said, “but just to play Herald’s Advocate for a minute here… how much of that is because of the situation?”

“I don’t see why it matters if any of it is,” Amaranth said. “It’s because of the situation that we needed it… but really, I don’t think the larger circumstances ‘made’ anybody be decent. People are better to each other than we give them credit for, usually. Even when things are at their worst… for everybody who decides to make an issue out of Mack’s heritage, for instance, there are loads more people who are at worst minding their business and possibly wishing her well.”

“Yeah, but that kind of quiet well-wishing’s not quite the same thing as coming out and supporting her against the asshats,” Ian said. “And believe me, there isn’t a lot of that going on.”

“Well, there was the big demonstration when she was lost in the labyrinth,” Amaranth said.

“Yeah, and that’s my point,” Ian said. “Everybody came out to rage against the device, but as soon as that was resolved… to the extent that it has been resolved… no one’s giving her the time of day. Tragedy brings people together because that’s what tragedy does, but it doesn’t have a lasting impact.”

“Well, Mack isn’t exactly a public person,” Amaranth said. “If she had wanted to, I think she could have made some real lasting friendships out of the goodwill that was flowing, before everybody got immersed back into their own things. Anyway, I think it’s a little bit premature to declare that things are back to normal… I mean, take a look around.”

It was obvious what she was talking about. The dining room had been all but empty when we first arrived, and I had expected it to remain that way. The student union was in clear view of the scene of the crime, after all. Monday breakfast was hardly the busiest meal of the day to begin with, much less on a day when people would still be recovering from shock and disruption… but not only was the the room starting to fill up, but the folks who were venturing out for food seemed to be mostly the same crowd who had been at Harlowe the day before, in the same groupings.

“I do not enter into individual minds casually,” Dee said, to Amaranth. “But the mood of the room, to use a small simplification, seems to bear out your optimism for the time being. When I first came to the university, I was uncertain at the wisdom of so many different races and classes interacting so freely, even as I took advantage of the opportunity it afforded me. On the balance, it really is… refreshing… to see so many disparate beings coming together like this. It is something I would not have dreamed possible, had I not left my homeland.”

“It would not be possible in your homeland,” Novice Aehal said. “I do not see your thoughts, but I advise you to put them out of your mind immediately.”

“Is what she’s saying really so different from what you’re attempting at Ceilos?” Amaranth asked.

“There is a difference between attempting something with all due restraint and propriety, and throwing caution down a maze,” Aehal said.

“But then we’re talking about a difference of degrees,” Amaranth said. “And if the results are the same…”

“The ‘results’ of this experiment so far seem to be the death of a person of importance and an imputation upon all who are visitors to this mad realm,” Aehal said.

“While each violent death should be averted where possible, I believe it would be a futile exercise to stack all the casualties of this state of affairs up against the lives that may have been claimed by a more repressive system,” Dee said. “And I believe it would be disingenuous to bring up the failings of this system as absolute, without examining the failings of our own.”

“You go too far,” the novice said. “I remind you, Delia Daella, that your actions may have consequences that exceed what I can inflict in the impotence that is imposed from below.” Fortunately she still didn’t deign to respond to Ian’s presence, or else his audible snerk at her word choice might have proven unwise. “Every unwise word that you say will be recounted back to your family. I would not presume to speak for your house, but this coupled with your conduct involving the pale elf may have a serious impact upon your future path.”

“If the goddess wills it,” Dee said. I had never heard her say anything with less sincerity that wasn’t pointed sarcasm… these were just empty words, form without substance.

“Your house politics are not my concern…” Aehal said.

“I agree,” Dee said. “So let us say no more of them.”

“I would be very surprised if your mother allows you to remain up here when she receives word of your conduct,” Aehal said.

“I will take whatever consequences follow from any of my actions or words of principle, but I have no intention of leaving the place to which the goddess has left me before I finish what I have begun here, or until she sees fit to remove me herself,” Dee said.

“The goddess has many limbs,” Aehal said.

“That she does,” Dee said. She rose to her feet and gave a slight bow to each of us. “My friends, I have to prepare for class and I have no desire to further embarrass you with a private dispute, so I shall excuse myself from your presence until lunch, when I am confident I will not be as encumbered as I am now.”

“We shall see about that,” the novice said, and she followed Dee as Dee turned and swept off.

“Wow,” Ian said. “Granted that I don’t know Dee as well as you guys do, but…”

“Yeah, no, we’re right there with you,” I said. “That’s new.”

“I need clarification,” Two said.

“About what, honey?” Amaranth asked.

“I’m not sure if Dee was being rude or if she was being good,” Two said.

“I think she was being rude and awesome,” Ian said, and I don’t think even Amaranth could argue with that.

Next: Words of wisdom and consolation from Professor Goldman.

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The escort made for an uneventful walk, and a quiet one. There were things we probably all wanted to talk about, but even if the guards were playing nice, that didn’t mean they were on our side. “This is a privileged conversation” had its limits, and they probably didn’t extend as far as expecting people whose presence you’d requested to plug their ears and pretend they can’t hear you.

“I’ve got to get back to town,” Lee said to us after thanking the guards in the building nexus outside Harlowe. “If the imperials come up with any other questions, they should be going through me, but if somebody’s giving you a problem, give me a shout. Our people are going to be on campus as long as the investigation’s on-going. Someone will come stand in front of you until I can get here.”

“Thanks,” I said. “A lot.”

“It’s not a problem,” he said. “I hope the next time I see you, it’s for something less… dramatic. ”

He shook my hand and then Ian’s. When he tried to shake Amaranth’s, she hugged him.

“I guess it’s been a long day for you already,” she said.

Lee chuckled.

“I was actually expecting to spend today getting inducted into an orc tribe,” he said. “I’m not sure if this is better or worse. It’s gone well enough so far. I hate to tell you, but I don’t think it’s over. That little interview went well, but it didn’t go right.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“The basic facts of the matter aren’t in dispute, so I expected it to go smoothly and be over fairly quickly. That wasn’t smooth and it was way too quick.There were two different people there with divergent agendas,” Lee said. “Gregory didn’t expect McAvoy to take an active role like that, and he wasn’t prepared for it. We were hurried out so they could hash things out. They’ll both want to try again, I think… Gregory so he can get enough concrete evidence that no one can give him a hard time for crossing you off the list, and McAvoy so he can press his theories. I’m going to suggest to Gregory that we provide written statements detailing your movements, as much corroborating detail as we can provide. If he goes for it, then we might be well and truly done with the whole thing.”

“But McAvoy wasn’t asking about our movements,” I said.

“Yes, but this isn’t a Law operation,” Lee said. “I suspect he’s got enough clout to sit in on any interrogations and examine any evidence, but he won’t be able to grab you and pull you into a room.”

“Hard question on the subject of McAvoy,” Ian said. He was looking at Amaranth and me, not Lee. “How’s he settled on Steff as a suspect so quickly?”

“Yeah, I’d like to know that, too,” Amaranth said. “He does seem to have made up his mind rather quickly for no reason.”

“That’s why it’s a hard question,” Ian said. “Is it for no reason? I mean, someone who knew Steff might put her on the top of the list of potential knife-murderers, and maybe the reasons for that would be a little superficial or maybe not, but how’s some guy who probably gated in from Palatine this morning know about the crazy necro girl so quickly?”

“What exactly are you getting at?” I asked.

“I’m just saying, you should be open to the possibility that something pointed at her,” Ian said. “If there wasn’t a reason to suspect her, he probably wouldn’t know about her in the first place. There’s no reason she should be on their list of fierce creatures, or whatever.”

“They might have used ‘dark’ majors as a criteria in sorting out suspects,” Amaranth said. “And they might have decided to go through the files of Harlowe residents. Steff has made some… interesting mistakes.”

“Then there’s the fact that she’s intimately involved with two of the students who probably fit the ‘fierce’ profile,” I said. “Anyway, I doubt it was ‘something’ that pointed to her so much as ‘someone’. There are plenty of people who are willing to say just about anything to get attention or to get people they don’t like in trouble.”

“I’ve got to run,” Lee said. “I can do more from my office than I can here, right now, and I’ve got to try to smooth a few things out with my future in-laws if I have a few minutes. But try not to get too caught up in speculating or second-guessing, okay? There is a lot going on in this investigation. A lot of people are going to be pushing their pet theories. A lot of rumors are going to be flying around. There was probably someone pushing you as the culprit just as hard, Mackenzie. Hell, McAvoy might have been doing that himself. For all we know about him, he could be grasping at a different straw every five minutes, yanking hard to see which one stands up to it.”

“You’re probably right,” Amaranth said. “It seemed kind of… off-the-cuff, like he hadn’t thought it through.”

“Yeah, and people never stubbornly stick to things they haven’t thought through,” Ian said.

“Well, as I said, we don’t know,” Lee said. “But this is a big investigation. It’s not going to be driven by one man’s prejudices. I suggest you stick to your dorm. Order food in tonight. Avoid altercations, don’t talk to anyone official, keep a low profile. If your grandmother… or anyone else who shouldn’t be there, like a reporter… comes in and bothers you, call your RA and then reflect me.”

“You know, if Mackenzie’s grandma hit you in front of the imperials, it seems like it would be easy to get rid of her for a while,” Ian said.

“They weren’t going to arrest an elderly paladin for hitting a lawyer on their own initiative,” Lee said. “I could have pressed things, but… well, we don’t exactly want her discredited. If somebody like McAvoy wanted to make Mackenzie into their sacrificial goat, pointing to the first person who ruled out demonic involvement and labeling her unbalanced would be an attractive way of shouting down anybody else who cared to downplay demons as a possibility.”

“Hmm,” Amaranth said. She sucked on her lower lip for a few seconds. “They’ve taken over the ball room, haven’t they?”

“I’m afraid so,” Lee said. “I don’t think that classes will be held tomorrow, though, and if you have any professors giving you a hard time about…”

“Oh, I wasn’t thinking of homework,” Amaranth said. “I actually would like to find out a little bit more about Mack’s grandmother… I’d actually rather get to know her personally. That doesn’t seem very likely right now, but maybe I’ll be able to figure out a way of relating to her if I can just see more of where she’s coming from.”

“I’d say something about that, but I don’t want to lay odds that you haven’t managed to get your head up your ass before,” Ian said.

“Ian, that’s Mack’s grandmother you’re talking about,” Amaranth asked.

“Yeah, and I expect she’ll let me know if she doesn’t appreciate it,” Ian said.

“I actually would rather we don’t talk about her,” I said. “I’m not any more comfortable with you ragging on her than I am with Amaranth wanting to make friends with her, honestly. You don’t know her.”

“I don’t,” Ian said. “But I know you, and I know how you look when you think about her or talk to her. I’m trusting your opinion, respecting your feelings.”

“Well, respect my feelings about not talking about her,” I said.

“I’ve really got to go,” Lee said, looking down at the tablet in his hand. He frowned and shook his head at something. “Remember, heads down and give a shout if you need something. Do you want me to see you up to your room?”

“I think we’ll be fine,” Amaranth said, taking me by the hand. “You’ve been taking care of us since before you even got here… go take care of your own stuff for a bit.”

He held the door into Harlowe for us, and watched us as we hurried into the unnaturally quiet stairwell. The first floor hallway was almost unrecognizable, with long tables set up and covered with papers. There were only a few people in it, but the very institutional-looking floor somehow looked even more institutionalized now. It bore the unmistakable stamp of Official Business.

“What was that stuff about orcs?” Ian asked as we climbed the stairs.

“He’s getting married,” Amaranth said.

“Into an orc tribe? I can’t imagine that’s going to boost his career,” Ian said.

“I don’t think there’s a law that says lawyers have to marry to help their careers,” Amaranth said.

“Oh, I wasn’t even thinking about lawyers,” Ian said. “I just… I’ve got a certain view of marriage ingrained in my head, I guess.”

“You don’t think that everybody’s like that, though, do you?” I asked.

“No,” Ian said. “But I guess I kind of expect everybody who’s, you know, ‘respectable’ to work that way. You know… lawyers, wizards, professional types.” He looked at me. “Your family’s economic background would actually probably worry my dad more than anything else about you. Well, that and your kind of scandalous personal life. And your appearance. Um, I guess the point I’m making is that it’s not just the demon thing that would… actually, I guess the point I’m making is that I love you and I don’t care what other people think.”

“Smooth save,” I said darkly. “What do you mean, my appearance?”

“Just that you’re not, you know, a classic beauty, as measured by the sort of people who care about ‘scandalous’ backgrounds,” Ian said. “I think you’re very attractive. Obviously.”

“Ian may not be being too careful with his words, baby, but I think you know what he means,” Amaranth said. “Let’s not go sniping at each other when there’s so much going on.”

I nodded.

I kind of expected to get ambushed with a bunch of questions or accusations or just plain insults when we got up to the fifth floor, but the hallway was quiet and empty. The lounge was deserted. More than one door stood open, but there were no sounds or signs of life.

“I wonder where everyone is,” I said.

“Maybe they hightailed it out before they could get accused of anything?” Ian suggested.

“Well, we saw some of them downstairs,” Amaranth said. “The people who aren’t in the main lounge are probably doing the same thing we’re doing: gathering together with their closest friends and family.”

“Oh, shit,” I said. The mention of friends and family made me remember something that had slipped out of my head in the midst of all the other oh, shits that had been going on. “Remember when we were at the Crystal Palace and we first overheard Gregory talking? He was telling someone to ‘keep the golem isolated’, or something like that.”

“There isn’t more than one golem here, is there?” Ian asked.

“I really don’t think so,” I said. “At least not one in Harlowe.”

“Hold on, baby, before we panic let’s check our room,” Amaranth said. She started walking towards the door, with one hand out behind her. I handed her my key. She knocked on the door anyway. “Hello, Two? Are you in there, honey?”

There was no answer.

“Hmm,” Amaranth said, unlocking the door. “Well, she could be with Hazel. We’ll go wander down to her room and check in a minute… I just want to sit down and take a few moments to unwind a little.”

She headed in and walked over to the window, where she sat down with her back to the wall and her bare legs sprawled out in front of her on the rug. She tapped the floor between them and I obediently followed, taking a seat between her legs.

“You know,” Ian said as he shut and locked the door, “if they’ve been pumping Two for information about her friends and floormates, that might be where they got their info on Steff.”

“It’s possible,” I said. “But I really can’t see Two making random accusations.”

“Well, I wasn’t thinking that, exactly,” Ian said. He turned my desk chair around to face us and then sat down in it.”If they wanted her isolated, it’s probably so they can get as much objective fact out of her as they can without anyone influencing her.”

“I suppose,” I said. “Golems are supposed to be the best and worst witnesses. Best because they’re usually more objective, but worst because even with a freed one, it’s hard to be sure there aren’t any lingering orders that are going to affect what they say.”

“Right. So the first thing they’d do is find out if she has any direct knowledge of the murder,” Ian said. “But assuming she doesn’t… which is probably the case… wouldn’t a thorough investigator then find out as much as he can from her about the rest of the possible suspects?”

“Baby, can I borrow your mirror?” Amaranth asked.

“Sure,” I said, and I gave it to her.

“Thank you.”

“I think you’re probably right about why they’d isolate Two,” I said, and it made me a feel a little better… I didn’t exactly approve of Two being used like an echo crystal, but at least she was unlikely to come to harm or wind up being scapegoated herself. “But I still don’t see how it leads to Steff.”

“Well, if they asked her to tell what she knows about the people in Harlowe, she’ll know the most about her friends,” Ian said. “So maybe Steff came up that way. Or maybe they asked her about the specific individuals who are on their short list… if Viktor’s on there, what does Two know about him? That he’s dating Steff. What does she know about Steff?”

“That Steff’s a girl with a penis,” I said. “That might give some members of officialdom pause, but I don’t think it makes her suspect number one even for someone like McAvoy.”

“Do you really think Two wouldn’t have picked up on Steff’s sadism and her, uh, death fetish?” Ian asked.

“I’m not sure Two thinks about stuff like that,” I said.

“Yeah, but not thinking about something isn’t the same as not knowing about it,” Ian said. “She seems kind of observant to me… or hadn’t you noticed?”

“Was that a joke?”

“Sort of,” he said. “If you or Amaranth got pulled in and asked about Steff, you wouldn’t just blurt out something about her gory drawings or her other habits… but if Two were asked what she knows about Steff… or even more specifically if she’s shown any predilection for violence…”

“A macabre imagination isn’t the same thing as a predilection for violence,” I said. “It’s not like she goes around stabbing people. Anyway, maybe that’s a red flag, and maybe a reason for them to look further… but I don’t think it would be enough to explain the interest in Steff. McAvoy really wanted to nail her, the subterranean elves wanted Dee to throw her under the carriage… considering that Steff was never alone much less conscious last night, there needs to be more than a golem reporting on her creepier hobbies.”

“Maybe,” Ian said. “Or maybe a creepy half-human faggot, pardon my Elvish, with no political importance and no fancy lawyer is a more attractive target than a bunch of well-connected monsters, again pardon my Elvish. Or maybe there really is something that connects Steff to Leda.”

“They did have… an encounter,” I said. I wasn’t sure what more to say. I wasn’t clear on what had happened, exactly… Steff had been reluctant to talk about the details. Then I remembered that she had first begged off elaborating because Two was in the room when it came up. “But even still…”

“Hey, you don’t have to defend Two or Steff,” Ian said. “I’m not accusing Two of being a squealer or Steff of being a murderer. I’m not sure I’d be able to blindly trust that it wasn’t Steff if I didn’t know she spent the weekend in bed with Dee. Um, you know what I mean. I know it wasn’t her, though. I’m just saying… well, I’m thinking out loud. I wonder if Viktor was with them the whole time.”

“Remember what Lee said about speculating,” Amaranth said somewhat absently from behind me.

“I’m not going to repeat that in front of an imp,” Ian said.

“Mack, baby, do you know when your grandmother got married?”

“It wouldn’t surprise me at all if the answer was ‘as soon as she started to show’,” Ian said. “Most people that strict are hypocrites.”

“Ian,” Amaranth said. “Mack said she doesn’t appreciate that.”

“Thank you,” I said.

“Sorry,” Ian said.

“I really don’t know,” I said. “I think my grandfather died before I was born. My grandmother did talk about him a little, but she didn’t really talk about her ‘youth’… maybe that’s why I have a hard time picturing her young.”

“Is it possible she could have kept her maiden name when she married?”

“That would surprise me,” Ian said.

“Yeah… um, she’s kind of a traditionalist about a lot of things, names in particular,” I said. “Why?”

“Because I think I found her.”

She reached in front of me to show me my mirror. She’d been gazing. The weavesite currently reflected in the mirror had a picture at the top. The face was unmistakably my grandmother’s… slightly younger, though hardly less lined than the one I knew, and topped with raven curls. It was a head shot, but her shoulders were draped with mail topped with armored pads.

It seemed that I owed Gloria an apology… the heading on the page read “‘BRIMSTONE’ BLAISE”.

Next: Reflections of the past.

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The plaza in front of the admin building that had been packed with students during my ordeal in the labyrinth was now being used as a parking lot. There was a jumble of black coaches with the IBF crest on the doors, a few impressive-looking carriages of various designs, and a couple newswagons standing in front of the building.

A pair of imperial agents were stationed in front of the door. A few more were patrolling the area around the building with uniformed provincials. There were crossbowmen on the roof.

“This seems like a bit of overkill,” Ian said. “All this to secure an office building?”

“There are a lot of VIBs in residence right now,” Lee said as we approached the entryway. “The chief ambassador from the Sunward Lands is here. An imperial envoy, too. It’s a complex situation, and it’ll probably get more complicated as it goes along. No one wants to fight the Chaos Wars again.”

So saying, Lee stepped up to address the nearer of the agents by the door, who had stepped slightly forward and to the side to intercept our path. He jumped to the side as the door behind him swung out and Callahan pushed through.

“Speak for yourself,” she said to Lee. Her eyes flicked over our little group. “Are you their lawyer?”

“Uh, hello,” Lee said. “Yes. Are you a friend of…”

“Can I hire you to draft me a statement that can’t be legally construed as a threat?” she said.

“I’m sorry, young lady, but we’re a little busy just this moment,” Lee said. “Maybe you should catch up with your schoolmates back at the dorm?”

I braced myself for something ugly to happen. Callahan’s braying laughter was not much prettier than anything I might have expected.

“Uh, she’s actually the arena coach,” Ian said.

“Yeah, and I’m not used to being stood up,” Callahan said to him. “Not twice, anyway.”

“It won’t happen twice,” Ian said. “I promise. Something c…”

“If you say ‘something came up‘, I will kick your ass so hard your attorney will have to invent a new tort to seek redress,” Callahan said. “They will call it ‘megassault’. The law that defines it will be longer than the combined works of the living elven masters. It will take longer to perform the actions described therein than it will to read aloud. I will do it twice.”

“I left you an echo!” Ian said.

“Yes,” she said, and she smiled. Callahan’s smile held a lot of cheer in it. It didn’t have much warmth. “And I hope you meant what you said, because I’m going to hold you to it.”

“I’m sorry, but we really have to run,” Lee said. “We have a meeting. It was nice meeting you, Coach.”

“Yeah, same to you, buddy,” Callahan said. She gave Ian a slap on the shoulder and went on her way, whistling and skipping.

“I wonder what she was doing here,” Amaranth said. “I can’t imagine that faculty are just coming and going like that if security’s such a concern.”

“She was probably being questioned,” I said. “She seems to have a thing for dismembering students.”

“Baby!” Amaranth said.

“Um, they might have been asking her about students she knows particularly well, outside of class,” Ian said. I thought at first that he was talking about himself, but then he added, “You know, on the subject of people with a thing for dismemberment.”

Was Steff actually that strong a suspect? It seemed like her alibi was almost as good as mine. It seemed like a cursory examination should reveal that she wasn’t physically capable of much in the way of violence at the moment.

“You can ask her all about it at practice,” Lee said. He turned to the rather bemused looking guard. “Hi, Lee Jenkins. I’m bringing my clients Mackenzie Blaise, Ian Mason, and Amaranth to sit down with Inspector Gregory.”

“Uh, right,” the imperial said. “I just need some ID.”

Lee showed him his credentials and we handed him our student IDs. He tapped them with a wand and then held open the door for us.

“Go right through to main reception,” he said.

Inside it was clear that the building had been taken over. It was a hive of activity, people in white shirts scribbling on tablets and peering into mirrors. There probably weren’t so many people in the whole building on a typical Sunday as there were in the main foyer. I doubted many of them were school employees.

“You Blaise?” a blunt-nosed guy with a slouchy hat, very investigative-looking, said while barely glancing at iu.

“This is Ms. Mackenzie Blaise,” Lee said, putting his hands on my shoulders. “We’re here for Inspector Gregory.”

“He wants you in Conference Room B,” the man said, gesturing with a half-eaten apple. “Says he’ll be there shortly.”

“Thank you very much,” Lee said, and he led the way through the throng of people. “This is more of a madhouse than I expected,” he said just loud enough that we could hear him over the general activity. “I guess someone decided to move the whole operation here instead of running it from the Enwich office.”

“Well, my dear boy,” a smooth and cultured voice said, “you do know that this is one of the best-protected offices in the plains.

The voice had a clear quality that cut through the din like a tiny chime. I turned at the sound to see a man who didn’t look at all like an imperial agent, but neither did he look much like a school official or another lawyer… of those possibilities, the last one was probably the best fit, but he’d have to be way more high-level than Lee. His hair was a silvery gray. His face was rather prominently boned, but unlined. He managed to radiate an aura of both age and vitality. He was tall and broad-shouldered, but wiry. I couldn’t claim to be any kind of an expert on fashion, but his suit looked sharp to me and seemed to be tailored to him. It was definitely of a higher quality than the ones worn by the imperial agents who were hanging around.

He could have been the imperial envoy Lee mentioned, or possibly an ambassador of some kind.

“What an unexpected pleasure, Mr. Jenkins,” he said. “Artie told me that you were otherwise engaged.”

“I’m afraid I am, Mr. Embries,” Lee said. The name clicked in my head as being familiar. He gestured towards us. “I’m representing some other clients… Mr. Pendragon said it wouldn’t impact our ability to serve your interests.”

The silver-haired man glanced at Amaranth and Ian, but his gaze settled on me. He was looking at my face, but there was little sense of connection in his eye contact. It was a one-way transaction. I felt like I was very small, and standing quivering before something immense.

“Oh,” Mr. Embries said. “How very… interesting.”

I didn’t know why, or what was so interesting about a lawyer representing some students, but the idea that he found anything about me interesting was itself terrifying. The very thought of his interest was like the baleful gaze of the mermaids in their predatory aspect, magnified a thousandfold.

“I would love to stay and chat, but I think the inspector is waiting for us,” Lee said.

“Well, I’ll let you get to that,” Embries said. He clasped Lee’s hand with both of his. “Always a pleasure.” He looked at me again, though it seemed he was still talking to Lee. “I’ve been meaning to acquaint myself with your client.”

“That’s… not a good idea right now,” Lee said. “She’s involved in arbitration against your… patron.”

So he was a school official, it seemed, though Lee’s choice of wording seemed odd and deliberate. Then I remembered where I knew his name from. I’d seen it and heard it around the school. It showed up on school letterhead and other publications: Edmund Embries. He was the vice-chancellor of Magisterius University.

He seemed a lot more impressive in person than the actual chancellor… though she seemed a lot more like a school administrator.

“Who the fuck was that?” Ian asked in a hoarse whisper.

“Merciful Mother,” Amaranth breathed.

They both seemed to be a little… awestruck.

“Yes, he can have that effect if you’re not prepared,” Lee said. He put his hands on their backs and gave them a little push.

“But who was that?” Ian asked.

“The school’s vice-chancellor,” I said.

“Another client,” Lee said.

“Can you introduce me to him?” Amaranth said. “I think I’d like to get to know him better. Maybe meet him for dinner…”

“Let’s just keep walking,” Lee said, giving the pair of them a harder shove that actually got them moving. We followed a sign to the conference room, which was the size of a small office, made smaller by a large table. A woman in a dark blue suit was scribing a stack of papers in the corner.

Lee knocked on the door frame so as not to startle her.

“Hello,” he said. “We’re supposed to be meeting Mike Gregory?”

“Oh, right,” she said. “I was just looking for an open autoscribe. I’ll be out of here in a second.”

Lee gestured towards some chairs and the three of us sat down. He remained standing, watching the woman like a hawk until she left, then closed the door behind her.

“When we’re dealing with Gregory, remember to keep things business-like,” he said to Amaranth. “Don’t be overly familiar or friendly with him. Don’t get all cute or coy and act like you’ve never met him, but we don’t want him to be uncomfortable with handling you.”

“I think I can manage that,” Amaranth said.

“And all of you watch your tempers,” Lee said. “I don’t expect Mike Gregory to bait anyone, but even if he’s officially heading the investigation there are bound to be a lot of cooks eager for a chance to stir the pot. Don’t make it easy for anyone to make things difficult for you.”

“The way you keep giving us advice, it seems like it would be easier to just let you do the talking,” Ian said.

“That’s about the shape of it,” Lee said. “There’s a reason people call lawyers ‘mouthpieces’, and it’s not just because we do PR. We don’t have to go so far, because that would take a lot more prep work and would come off as more than a little obstructionist when we want to appear cooperative… but really, if there’s any doubt, let me do the talking. Best rule of thumb.”

There was a quick rap on the door a short time later. Lee jumped up and opened the door. The middle-aged man from the inn was there. Behind him was a tall, red-faced man in a tannish coat. He was unwinding a scarf and wearing gloves, so it looked like he’d just got there.

“Hi there,” Lee said to Gregory. “Lee Jenkins, Pendragon and Associates. We reflected briefly. Thank you for making time for us. My clients would like to get back to the comfort and support of their friends during this tragic time.”

“Yeah,” Gregory said, glancing over us. His eyes lingered uncomfortably on Amaranth. He shook his head. “It’s a damned tragedy alright.”

The ruddy-faced man stepped inside the room, and the inspector shut the door.

“I’m Inspector Michael Gregory. This is Del McAvoy,” Gregory said, holding his ID out to Lee in one hand while gesturing with the other to the other man who was pulling off his gloves. “He’s here from Law, in an advisory capacity.”

“Oh, it’s nice to know the empire’s sparing no resources in this investigation,” Lee said.

“Yeah, yeah,” Gregory said. He took a seat on the other side of the corner nearest us. McAvoy remained standing. “Here’s the deal: none of you are under arrest. I’d just like to ask you a few questions, primarily concerning your whereabouts last night and this morning. This conversation will be scried, autotranscribed, and echoed. This is an imperial investigation, so you do not have the privilege of remaining silent. You do have the privilege of having an attorney present during questioning. This privilege can be revoked. Do you understand?”

We nodded. Ian mumbled yes. Amaranth said, “Yes, we understand.”

“Good,” he said. “So… you folks enjoy your stay at the Palace?”

He said it really conversationally. He sounded weary, so the friendliness was a little forced, but it didn’t seem phoney. I looked at Lee, who nodded at me. It seemed like a neutral opening and it touched directly on the fact that we were nowhere near campus when the bad stuff happened.

I nodded at the inspector.

“Very much so,” Amaranth said. “Sir.”

“It’s kind of an unusual choice for students on a weekend getaway,” Gregory said. “I’d think the travelinns nearer to the gates would be more popular.”

“Well, this was special, for Veil,” Amaranth said. “We had a chance to splurge a little, and Mackenzie wanted to go to the Crystal Palace.”

“Why there in particular?” he asked me.

“I stayed there once before,” I said. “I liked it… the architecture, the ambience. I’m kind of a history buff. The pre-Republican architecture…”

I trailed off, not wanting to ramble. I also felt self-conscious, because of course the Crystal Palace inn wasn’t actually pre-Republican. It was built in imitation of that style. According to the cheesy kids’ mystery books I’d read when I was younger, claiming to be a history buff and then misidentifying faux pre-Republican architecture as the real thing would have been proof positive that I was secretly a murderer. Fortunately for me, it seemed that Inspector Gregory read a better class of mysteries.

“That prior visit, would that have been with Miss Hoshinotama?” McAvoy asked.

“I’d like to leave my clients’ personal lives out of this,” Lee said.

“Noted,” Gregory said. He held up a hand to forestall the Lawman. “You folks leave the inn last night?”

“We did,” I said. “Amaranth and I.”

“I was there the whole time,” Ian said. “All night, I mean.”

“Where’d you go?” Gregory asked.

“We had invitations to a private party at a club,” Amaranth said. “The Tomb of Horrors.”

“What sort of club is that?” McAvoy asked.

“It’s a fetish nightclub,” Gregory said. McAvoy made a surprised sound and Gregory looked over his shoulder at him. “My wife has family here,” he explained.

“My clients’ whereabouts at various points during the evening, and in particular during the time of the alleged murder, can be verified with little difficulty,” Lee said. “It’s unquestionable that they were in the Crystal Palace, under the exact same roof as you, between the hours of one and three in the morning. You shouldn’t even have to fight the proprietors for access to the lobby security images. I’ve already sent a release. Further corroboration can be had from the nightclub and the livery company. If it aids the investigation, I’d be happy to put in a bit of legwork myself there.”

“I don’t think that’ll be necessary,” Gregory said.

“You know, it’s the ‘under the same roof’ part that bothers me,” McAvoy said. “It’s awfully convenient.”

“I’d call it foresight on the part of my clients to find safer activities that keep them far away from campus on a notoriously dangerous night,” Lee said. “There are only so many inns in the city center, and as Ms. Blaise stated, she has stayed at the Crystal Palace before.”

“Your clients’ whereabouts aren’t really in question, Mr. Jenkins,” Gregory said. “It’s damned hard for a half-demon to get in and out of town without being noticed. We’re checking on that. If you’re not being truthful with us, we’ll find out of course.”

“I can assure you, we are being perfectly truthful,” Lee said. “My clients have no reason to lie and nothig to hide.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Gregory said again. He seemed to be tired of the whole thing. “We just have a few other questions.”

“My clients will be happy to answer anything that helps move the investigation forward,” Lee said.

“Great,” the inspector said. “Were you acquainted with the deceased?”

“Only in passing,” Amaranth said. “We lived on the same floor. She seemed nice enough, if a little quiet and kind of aloof, and kind of snide.”

“How was she nice?” Gregory asked.

Amaranth shrugged.

“I always just had the feeling that if I got to know her, I’d find out she was nice,” Amaranth said.

“Did you have any conflict with her?” he asked.

“Oh, no,” Amaranth said.

He looked at me. I shifted uncomfortably. I had shared a bit of an angry confrontation with Leda once. I didn’t want to make it out to be more than it was, but I also didn’t want to seem like I was covering it up. The gossipmongers on the floor would be sure to spread it around. I looked at Lee.

“We’ve established that Ms. Mackenzie was elsewhere at the time of death,” he said.

“It’s a simple question,” McAvoy said.

“‘Conflict’ is perhaps an overly broad term,” Lee said.

“Well, narrow it down for us a bit, then,” Gregory said to me. “Tell me what you’re thinking of that’s making you so uncomfortable.”

“It was during the student elections,” I said. “We… sort of disagreed about the polite way to refer to a transgendered person. I was offended, but it wasn’t like a violent fight or anything.”

“So, Leda had a problem with Steffain Johnson,” McAvoy said.

“My clients barely knew the deceased,” Lee said. “I don’t think they could answer questions about her opinions of others.”

“It wasn’t a question,” McAvoy said with a shrug.

“I think if you check on Steff, you’ll find that she wasn’t in a position to do much this weekend,” I said.

“You have firsthand knowledge of that, even though you were in town?” McAvoy asked.

“Are you going to invoke the right to compel in order to get my clients to speculate about the mindset of the deceased and what other people may or may not have done while they themselves were out of town?” Lee asked.

“No,” Gregory said. “We’re not.”

“Not yet,” McAvoy said. “Not right now. But I know your clients there are intimately familiar with Steff Johnson, who was intimate with our dead princess. I know there was bad blood between the two. I know Johnson is a sick puppy. I don’t doubt that your clients were out of town when it all went down. My question is, did they have some kind of foreknowledge? A warning? An inkling that something bad was going to happen?”

Lee looked at us. Amaranth very calmly shook her head.

“No,” Lee said. “The answer to that is a very simple no. As they have said, they had invitations to a party.”

“Or two of them did,” McAvoy said. He looked at Ian. “Why’d you go along? Nothing better to do on Veil Night?”

Ian looked at Amaranth and me.

“Than stay in an inn room with two hot girls?” he said.

Gregory stood up and turned around to have a quick whispered conversation with McAvoy. McAvoy was a loud whisperer, but I still couldn’t understand what he was saying… the only parts that were really intelligible were a few odd exclamations of “you can’t be serious” and similar things.

Lee leaned in and whispered to me, “I think we’re going to be done here soon. Probably not done-done, unfortunately… this guy’s got an axe to grind and that’s going to complicate things… but I think we’ll be out of here while they hash out what they’re actually doing.”

I nodded.

Gregory seemed to have cowed McAvoy a bit. He took his seat again.

“We have a staff diabolist,” he said to me. “He’s a little busy at the moment but he’s going to want to talk to you.” He looked at Lee. “Your client going to be available for that, Mr. Jenkins?”

“What’s the nature of this discussion going to be?” Lee asked.

“Well, it’s not so much a conversation,” Gregory said. “He needs direct contact with her aura, so he can screen for her presence at the scene and in the impressions kept by the wall wards in Enwich.”

I went stiff in my chair, remembering when Dee had probed my aura.

“How ‘direct’ are we talking?” Lee asked.

“Visual,” Gregory said. “Completely hands-off, from what I understand.” He looked at me. “If you’re magic sensitive, you might feel a tingle.”

“If it helps to positively establish that my client remained in Enwich and was nowhere near the fountain, then I think we’d rather do it sooner than later,” Lee said. “On a related subject, I understand that a paladin has already screened the site for demonic activity and declared it clean.”

“Your client’s grandmother,” McAvoy said. “The coincidences abound.”

“Believe me, no one was more surprised by her presnece than my client,” Lee said. “And while I hope that the investigation isn’t going to hinge on her unsolicited testimony, I don’t think it can be discounted out of hand, under the circumstances.”

“We’re not discounting it,” Gregory said. “We’re taking every lead seriously… and that means verifying the credible ones.”

“One thing,” McAvoy said. “Do your clients know that Steffain Johnson keeps notebooks filled with gruesome pictures depicting grisly murders, including their own?”

“Uh, yeah,” I said. I shrugged uncomfortably. “Sort of. I mean, I know she likes to doodle me… and I know how her imagination runs, but… well, it’s not like she’s actually going to do those things.”

“I actually have copies of some of Steff’s drawings of me,” Amaranth said. “She’s making a whole set of them by my request, from a sort of script I wrote.”

“Again, Mr. McAvoy, my clients will be happy to answer anything that furthers the investigation,” Lee said. “But trying to draw them into speculation about their fellow students isn’t going to benefit anyone.”

“It could benefit them if it removes a danger to their own safety,” McAvoy said. “I’m sorry, I thought they might feel a little differently about protecting their ‘friend’ if they knew… I guess I was wrong.”

“Steff’s not my friend,” Ian said. “She creeps the fuck out of me, actually, but that doesn’t somehow translate into knowledge that she’s a murder.”

“If you don’t have any further questions about my clients’ whereabouts or anything else similarly relevant, I think they’d like to return to their dorms,” Lee said.

“I’ll tell you what, how about I see if I can get the diabolist to look your client over before she goes, just so we don’t have to bother you again today?” Gregory said.

“That would be great,” Lee said.

“You folks can just wait right here,” Gregory said. He took McAvoy by the sleeve and started guiding him towards the door.

I looked at Lee, thinking that… despite the unsettling focus on Steff, this was all far too easy. My mind didn’t like the whole “wait right here, we’ll be right back and then you can leave” thing. Lee seemed to be fairly at ease with it, though.

“I told you this would over soon,” Lee said when the imperial agents had left.

“Lee… that Steff Johnson they keep talking about is our best friend,” Amaranth said. “It seems like Mr. McAvoy’s out to get her.”

“At the risk of sounding callous, that’s something for her lawyer to worry about,” Lee said. “If it goes any further than one Law Department’s pet theories, she will have a lawyer, and if it comes to that, I’ll make sure he or she is apprised of the fact that Mr. McAvoy had a prejudicial attitude towards her and may have been skewing the investigation. There’s not much more that we can do. Be her friend. Be supportive. But don’t try to fight her battle. You don’t even want to fight your own battle. When dealing with the law, fighting is the last resort of trained professionals.”

“You’re right, I know,” Amaranth said. She sighed. “It just… it really sucks.”

“That’s the law for you,” Lee said. “When mortals are forced to encounter it, the best thing to hope for is that it’s over quickly, and we’re getting that.”

It was a good twenty minutes before the diabolist, a gray-robed man whose name (first or last, I wasn’t sure) was given as Malcolm, was shown in. He didn’t say more than two words, and they weren’t to me in particular… he just looked at me, said, “Got it,” and then turned around and walked out.

“Thank you all for your time,” Gregory said. “I’ll be in touch with you if we need anything else from them,” he said to Lee.

“Thanks,” Lee said, shaking his hand. “If there’s anything we can do to help move the investigation forward, please don’t hesitate.” He stepped past Gregory out of the room, then turned around as if to shepherd us safely through the portal.

“Say ‘hi’ to your wife for me!” Amaranth said cheerfully as we filed past.

“Er, yeah,” Gregory said, turning red. He coughed into his hand and then looked at me. “You know, some interesting folks have got your back.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“Nothing,” he said. “Just… interesting.”

Next: Steff a fall girl? Two a stool pigeon?? Rhetorical questions???

Discuss this chapter on the Livejournal community.

My insides turned to ice at the sound of her voice. I felt paralyzed, like the way it feels sometimes when you wake up too quickly from too deep a sleep. My throat locked shut, which was entirely incidental since my lungs also refused to work. I could feel her gaze beating into the back of my head, could feel her looking down at me.

I felt tiny. I felt trapped. I felt nine years old and alone.

But I wasn’t alone… I had Amaranth and Ian, and I had Lee who was being well-compensated by someone to watch my back. Granted, I wasn’t sure exactly what good a lawyer was against an authoritarian grandmother… but in thinking that, I realized that his relative uselessness directly related to the lack of actual power she had over me.

She could talk… that was it. It could be awful, it could be hard for me to get through, but eventually it would be over. She couldn’t make me do anything. However difficult it could be for me to say no to her, she couldn’t make me say yes.

I turned to face her.

She was as I remembered her, wearing the winter version of what she called her “traveling clothes”, though she’d never traveled more than two towns over in them that I could remember: a tweed overcoat and a riding cape. The bottom of the long coat was segmented , as was the woolen skirt I knew she’d be wearing beneath it.

I couldn’t picture my grandmother as any kind of a knight, but it occurred to me that her clothing always tended to resemble armor of a sort: thick layers, little skin exposed… as though it were protecting her from a wicked world.

Her face was… not something I could comment on directly. I could picture it well enough without raising my eyes to meet her gaze. Stern… hard and cold as stone. It wasn’t a face that needed to be seen more than once or twice before it burned itself all the way into the back of your skull.

“You might say hello to your grandmother,” she said.

“Hello, Grandmother,” I croaked through lips that felt heavy and numb.

“Ungrateful as ever, I see,” she said. “I traveled all this way to do what I can…”

“Excuse me,” Lee said, rushing just past me to stand slightly in front of me. “We appreciate how far you’ve traveled, but as I told you before, my client has nothing to say to you at this time.”

“That’s fine for your client, but I have plenty to say to my granddaughter,” she said. “I have come all this way to help her.”

“That’s kind of you, but what she needs right now is capable legal representation,” Lee said. “Which is something, regrettably, you cannot provide… especially as you have insinuated yourself into the investigation.”

“Insinuations are for serpents and servants of the dark ones,” my grandmother said. “I offered my services, as it was needful and I was nearby.”

“Commendable,” Lee said. “But having done so places you in something of a compromised position with regards to…”

I winced at his choice of words, and was not surprised at what came next.

“‘Compromise’ is a dirty word, Mr. Attorney,” my grandmother said.

I touched Lee’s arm and stepped forward. His words were carefully chosen, but he wasn’t dealing with a temporal court when he spoke with my grandmother. He was not going to do anything if he stood there trying to ironwall her except maybe provoke another physical response. Maybe that was his goal… maybe he was trying to get her removed from the situation entirely, I didn’t know. But I didn’t want to see it happen.

“It’s okay,” I said. “I’ll talk to her.”

“Mackenzie, I think we should just walk away,” he said quietly.

“I walked away from her already,” I said. “It didn’t take.”

“All the more reason not to engage with her now,” he said. “I can’t speak about your personal life, but there are more important things going on right now… you can’t afford to be distracted.”

“I know,” I said. “Let me try to deal with this now, and if it works… then there won’t be any distraction.”

He looked at me, and then nodded.

“If we get that reflection I’m waiting for, we’re going,” he said.

“That’s fine by me,” I said.

I kind of hoped it came sooner rather than later.

I didn’t really deserve any bravery points for deciding to confront my grandmother. I was, after all, simply giving in to what she wanted. It came naturally, even as my mind rebelled from it. This was why I had been so reluctant to read her letters or reach out to her. I’d spent nine years jumping at her command, fearing her anger, hiding from her disapproval… a couple months of relative liberty was not going to undo all that.

If I didn’t have Amaranth in my life… if I didn’t have her physically present… I couldn’t say that I wouldn’t just surrender completely and go back with her when she demanded it.

“Hello, Grandmother,” I said again, a little more clearly.

This time I raised my eyes… and I was surprised to find that my eyes were just about level with hers. I was maybe even a little taller. It seemed strange… it had always felt like she towered over me.

Her face was as I had expected, and not. She looked tired… tired and older. She’d never been young even in my dimmest memories, but somehow she seemed to be, well, diminished. Had the years caught up with her suddenly somehow? Or had my impression of her been frozen in time, and it was only when seeing her with fresh eyes that I could see what the last decade or so had done?

“Well,” she said. “The academic life has wrought some changes, I see.”

I nodded. For the better, I thought, but I couldn’t bring myself to say that. I kicked myself inwardly for not being able to voice disagreement. How much could I really believe it if I couldn’t say it?

“And your… companion,” she said, looking past me. “I heard about that, of course, but I wasn’t sure I believed it.”

“I’ve heard about you, too,” Amaranth said, her voice getting closer as she spoke. “I want to thank you for keeping Mack safe after her mother’s passing. It can’t have been easy…”

“Do not condescend to me, creature,” my grandmother said. “I won’t stand for it.”

“Hey!” I said, my voice rising completely out of control. “Don’t you talk to her like that.”

My grandmother recoiled as if struck… struck by something ugly, poisonous, and unexpected. She stared, her face frozen in a horrified expression.

“Baby…” Amaranth said.

“I’m sorry,” I said to her. “I know I shouldn’t have raised…”

“Your head is on fire,” Amaranth said.

“What?” I said. I touched my face with my hand. My fingers, up near my hairline, felt the tickle of flame. “Oh, shit.” I tried to calm myself, while also drawing the flame back into me. “Um… how’s that?”

“Better,” Amaranth said.

My grandmother clicked her tongue. I looked and saw her shaking her head sadly.

“All that work, undone just like that,” she said. “Apparently my love for you is no match for a little lust.”

“I love Amaranth,” I said. “And she loves me.”

“You poor, confused child,” my grandmother said. “She cannot love you. Her mistress makes nothing but low beasts, and that is what she is: a beast of the field, wrapped up in sinful flesh to mock and tempt the creations of more civilized gods.”

“I’m sorry, Mrs. Blaise, but I think your grasp of theology, while undoubtedly very good within a narrow field, is somewhat lacking in breadth,” Amaranth said. “That is to say, I think that perhaps you aren’t as knowledgeable about deities who aren’t your own as you maybe think you are.”

“Ooh, sick burn?” Ian said.

“Well, excuse me for being polite, but I’m not about to speak disrespectfully to a senior citizen, who’s also a paladin and Mack’s closest living relative,” Amaranth said.

“I’m sorry, folks, but I really can’t allow this… reunion… to continue right now,” Lee said. He had his mirror out. “Mackenzie, do you know where the admin building is? We’re going to go there right now. Even if we have to wait when we get there… I’d rather wait in a closed environment than hang around in the open and wait to see what else comes along.”

He looked at me like he expected an argument but I just nodded. There wasn’t going to be anything productive coming out of talking to my grandmother, obviously. By speaking to her… even lashing out at her a little… I felt like I’d won a small personal victory. She could intimidate me, yeah, but I didn’t have to let her control me.

“It’s over by the east edge of campus,” I said.

“Alright,” he said. “I’m just going to let them know we’re coming.”

“Wait,” my grandmother said. “You could at least hear my offer, Kenzie.”

“My mother named me Mackenzie,” I said. My effort to control the volume of my voice only succeeded in turning it into a sort of growl.

“The least of her sins,” my grandmother said. “But not so small that I’ll take part in it.”

“You’re going to insult my mother…”

“And you, baby,” Amaranth said, putting her hand on my shoulder.

“…and expect me to listen to what you have to say?” I asked.

“I loved your mother as dearly as any mother loves her child,” my grandmother said. “Faults and all. That doesn’t mean I can be blind to them. Real love isn’t blind, Kenzie. It keeps its eyes open. If I were blind to your nature, for instance, I wouldn’t have been able to care for you as well as I did. That was a difficult job, and a thankless one, and one that no one could have forced me to do if I hadn’t felt obliged to do it.”

“Thank you,” I said. “Really. I could sit here and argue about whether you made the best decisions or whether you were fair or kind or loving, or whatever, but you’re right, you took me in for nine years and I’m still alive and I’m free. So, thank you… but you’re done. I’m eighteen. I’m an adult.”

“You’re a demon,” she said. “You don’t grow out of that, child. If there’s any truth to what I’ve been hearing in the news, you’ve been growing into it in my absence.”

“Yeah, I’m half-demon,” I said. “Going back with you isn’t going to change that either, is it?”

“It’ll matter less,” she said. “Out here, you could kill someone so easily. I know you didn’t have anything to do with that shifter girl, Kenzie, but you could have… and eventually, inevitably, it will happen. You will kill someone and they will put you down, or you’ll be killed by someone trying to stop you. And you probably think that’s the most awful thing, but that’s not even the beginning of your torment. You’ll end up the only place in creation meant for your kind, and your precious human soul will suffer forever for it.”

“You’ve always made it sound like you think that’s going to happen anyway,” I said. “No matter when I die.”

She nodded.

“It’s a hard truth, child… all you can do is live as well as you can, as long as you can,” she said. “I don’t want to hold out false hope… I know the ways of the gods and the ways of souls as well as any mortal woman, and that isn’t saying much. I suppose it’s possible that if you do as little evil as you can, there might be… well, the main point is that if you live a quiet life, under close supervision, it may be longer before you have to find out.”

“And that’s your idea of living as well as I can,” I said. “Going back and hiding in your basement.”

“You never complained about the basement before,” she said.

“It took me away from you,” I said. “It was my place. You came into my bedroom. You searched my bag, my books, my bed sheets. I didn’t even have a fucking door for years. The basement door locked. You never went down there. You never bothered me there. No one ever bothered me there.” I laughed as I thought about what I was saying. “Do you know how messed up it is that I’m grateful for a door that locked on the other side? That’s all the privacy I had.”

“My vigilance kept you safe,” she said.

“Well, I’m done being kept,” I said. “And anyway, what would happen to me when you die?”

“I’ve made arrangements,” she said. “The temple has institutions…”

“Yeah, I’ve heard of them,” I said, remembering Mercy’s story about where her new half-demon slave came from. “I’ve seen what they do to people.”

“As with anything of the mortal world, there’s good and there’s bad,” she said. “I have your interests at heart, child.”

“Actually, I represent her interests,” Lee said. He snapped his mirror shut. “And we’re going right now. Mrs. Blaise, if Mackenzie wishes to discuss this any further after the present situation is resolved, she knows how to contact you. Come along.” He gestured to an eastward path, and I started walking down it. He stepped in behind me.

“This discussion is not finished,” my grandmother said.

“It was, um, nice to finally meet you,” Amaranth said as she and Ian followed behind Lee.

“Mackenzie,” my grandmother said.

I stopped. Lee took hold of my arm.

“Mackenzie… if I were not your attorney and you were not about to speak to an imperial investigator, I’d still you it’s not a good idea to let her play on your emotions,” he said. “If I were your friend, I would tell you that you’ve got nothing to gain by giving her any more of your time.”

“Yeah, and you’d be right,” I said. I sighed and pulled my arm away. I turned and walked back past Amaranth and Ian.

“Baby…” Amaranth said, but she didn’t seem to have anything to follow that up with.

“What do you have to say?” I asked my grandmother, looking her square in the eye. My gaze was as steady as it had ever been. The rest of me was about as steady as an overcaffeinated sylph.

“This is not a good place,” she said.

“Even if that were true, that still wouldn’t make me come home,” I said. I winced at the fact that I’d called it home.

“We can find a better one,” she said. “Come home and we’ll look. A smaller school, not so far away.”

“Any school that meets your approval is not likely to approve of me,” I said. “Or be safe for me to walk around on.”

“Secular,” she said. “You’ll live at home. Think about it: you’ll be able to focus on your studies. How much studying do you do here, with your wild parties and all the trouble you get into?”

“You don’t know anything about my life here,” I said.

“A beautiful child got murdered here,” she said. “A godless child from the Shift, but I’ll eat my cape if she was the only one who died this weekend. There’s a culture of death here.”

“It’s a dangerous campus. A lot of the courses are adversity-oriented,” I said. “I’m just here to learn to enchant.”

“You could do that other places.”

“Not as well as I can do it here,” I said.

“We could get you into a guild school and you’d be finished in three years,” she said.

“And then what?” I asked.

“And then you go off and do what you want to,” she said. “Can I stop you?”

“You mean if I went off and got a job somewhere on the coast or wherever else, you wouldn’t turn up there trying to talk me into coming back to your house like you did here?” I asked.

“I wouldn’t pick the coast for you,” she said. “But, Kenzie… this is not a good place. I knew it wasn’t a godly place when you left, and I let you go. It was only when I started to see just how bad it was for you that I followed.”

“And I’m supposed to believe that won’t happen no matter where I go?” I asked. “If I went back with you and started next semester at a community college, how long would it be before you saw something in the paper or heard about something that you disapproved of? How long before you decided it was bad for me?”

“Kenzie, you’re not being reasonable,” she said.

“My name is Mackenzie,” I said. “I’d say you can call me ‘Mack’ if you want, but that’s for my friends. And I don’t for one second believe that you’re being as reasonable as you want me to think… you came here because you don’t believe I should be out in the world. Whatever you’re offering me now, I don’t believe you’d follow through with it.”

“Are you calling me a liar?”

Her tone rattled me, but I stood firm. Well, I took a step back, but metaphorically I stood firm.

“I’m saying you have dishonest intentions,” I said. “So, uh… yeah, I guess that’s a yes, I am calling you a liar.” I watched her lips get very thin and very white, but I kept talking. If I stopped, I might not get to start again. “You’re thinking of it as the truth because you’ve convinced yourself that you really would help me find another college, but you know in your heart that it would never happen… or that it wouldn’t last. You think that if you can get me back under my roof, you can just wear me down again and eventually I’ll stop fighting… and you’re probably right, and that’s why I’m not going back, no matter what you promise.”

She didn’t respond immediately. Her upper lip trembled a little and her nose kind of bulged out at the side a bit, like her nostrils were flaring. I didn’t know how to read that… I’d spent years not looking at her face, especially when she was angry. It didn’t seem like it could be good.

“Well,” she said. It was a whole sentence in and of itself. “I hope that you remember that I came to you in love and kindness. I’ll be in Enwich for a week, maybe more, but not less than a week. If you decide to come back to me after that… well, a lot will depend on circumstances.”

“That’s not going to happen,” I said. “If you want me to, you know, keep in touch or something… I’m not making any promises about that, either, but I’m definitely not going to have anything to say to you when I know you’re angling to drag me back home with you.”

“You can’t trust yourself,” she said.

“Maybe not,” I said.

“That’s why you have to trust me, Kenzie,” she said.

“You’re the reason I can’t trust myself here,” I said.

“I’m not one to give up,” she said. “And I’m too old to learn the habit. This is a wicked place. It would be better for all if you would leave it… it can do no good for you, and you can bring no good to it. I came to you in love and kindness, Kenzie… I’ll be back if I have to, and if need be, I’ll leave the kindness at home.”

I felt Lee’s hand on my shoulder. It occurred to me that I was getting touched an awful lot, but except for that weird moment where I realized it, I didn’t mind it. It was a very neutral touch, an announcement that he was here.

“That really is enough,” he said.

I didn’t expect my grandmother to back down, but she nodded once.

“Any thing further I say would be a waste, I expect,” she said. “And I’m not in the habit of wasting words. I’ll leave my current address at your hall, Kenzie.”

I didn’t respond, didn’t even so much as nod back. I just turned and started walking away again. This time she didn’t say anything to stop me, didn’t follow.

“You know,” Amaranth said to me, as we got farther away from the classroom buildings and from her, “she really does seem to have your best interests at heart.”

I couldn’t really disagree with that… I didn’t particularly want to agree, and I was afraid of where she might be going, but I couldn’t disagree.

“That doesn’t make her right, though,” she said, taking my hand. “And more, it doesn’t give her any control over you. If there’s one thing I’ve learned since coming here… well, I’ve learned lots of things, I mean, it is a school and there are so many new people and… sorry, that’s a little off topic. What I meant to say is, someone can have the best of intentions and still screw things up terribly.”

“You know, when you put it that way, I’m not sure I agree that she has the best of intentions,” I said. “I mean, there are intentions behind intentions. What she wants could be summed up as being ‘for the greater good’ or even ‘the best for me’, but… it’s based on assumptions about who and what I am and what I’m going to do that really aren’t… good.” The tail end of that thought process had got away from me, but I thought the idea came across pretty well. “And you… you’ve never wanted anything for me that I haven’t wanted for myself. Well, I mean, you haven’t actively done anything that wasn’t based on what I want for myself. Thank you.”

“You’re welcome, baby,” Amaranth said.

“You don’t actually think she’s going to leave you alone for the rest of the week, do you?” Ian asked. “I mean, I don’t know her at all, but… she didn’t really give off a ‘leave well enough alone’ kind of vibe.”

“Yeah,” I said. “I don’t think she’s done with me, but I don’t care. I’m done with her.”

“Listen, Mackenzie,” Lee said. “I let you play that out because I don’t believe she’s going to be integral to the investigation in any way. But it’s going to be a different situation when we’re dealing with the imperials… a much tighter leash. If someone makes an emotional ploy, let me respond. Whatever arrows come your way, I’m your shield. Got it?”

“Yeah,” I said. “I’ve got it.”

“Good,” he said. “Now, I had a quick conference while you were… involved, and so I think we’re going to be able to see Gregory fairly quickly. There are going to be a few reporters around, but they should behave themselves… the imperials don’t have to play nice with them. We’re lucky, if this weren’t an imperial matter then the campus would probably be lousy with reporters. We wouldn’t have taken a walk outside if that were the case, of course… as soon as we’ve spoken to Gregory, I’ll get a statement out with the highlights: you’ve spoken to investigators as a floormate of the deceased, you weren’t present, aren’t under suspicion, and so on. I have a draft of it on my tablet already to go… I don’t want to send it out before the ‘definitely not under suspicion’ and ‘most certainly not under arrest’ parts are officially true.”

“You are pretty confident that they will be true, though, aren’t you?” Amaranth asked him.

“I am very confident,” he said. “I just don’t want to tempt fate… or anybody else. Despite all the pressure, a murder investigation can drag on a long time. The longer it drags on, the more attractive a convenient solution looks. That’s why I’m determined to get this resolved for you today, before anything else goes wrong.”

I appreciated his enthusiasm, but it seemed to me like Lee could have used a few lessons in the whole “not tempting fate” thing.

Next: Would having Mr. Embries show up in the main story right after Martha be pandering? Possibly!

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I must have… I had to have heard him wrong. My grandmother was hundreds of miles away. She’d shown no inclination to follow me to MU when I first left. It seemed impossible that she should show up now, in the midst of everything that was going on.

“Martha Blaise,” Lee repeated. “Is she your grandmother?”

“What’s my grandmother doing here?” I asked.

“Sounds like she’s advocating for you… somewhat,” Lee said. “She’s in a conference with the lead finder on site. Closed door, but very loud. I figured she was a student’s parent or relative, but I asked one of the locals who she was when I realized she was talking about demonic traces, or rather their absence.”

“So you haven’t talked to her?” I asked.

“No, I haven’t,” Lee said. “She seems to be arguing with… it sounds like she thinks the case against you is stronger than it is. She’s trying to cut a deal on your behalf. You folks weren’t kidding about thin walls.”

“Her voice sort of carries,” I said, and in fact I could sort of hear her in the background of the reflection. “I don’t want any part of a deal she makes.”

“Mackenzie, you’re a competent adult,” Lee said. “I represent you, not her… she’s not in a position to make a deal for you and you’re not in so bad a position you’d need her to. I don’t know your whole family background, so I’m sorry if this is upsetting to you, but overall it’s a good thing. Her word isn’t going to be definitive, given her obvious bias, but if she knows what she’s talking about and can be assumed to be telling the truth…”

“I really can’t imagine her lying,” I said. “I think she’d probably burst into flame or something.”

“Yes, well, that’s a huge trump for us,” Lee said. “We can already establish that you were elsewhere. It’s going to be established that you weren’t here. My job is just going to be making sure these facts aren’t overlooked, and that neither are your rights.”

“Um, can I butt in?” Ian said, sliding around next to me and leaning into view of the small mirror. “Hi. Again, just going by the TV version here, but don’t you think this could actually look kind of bad? Her, um, lovers vouch for her whereabouts, her close relative volunteers her demon-scanning expertise to prove it wasn’t her…”

“Yes, there are some potential pitfalls there, but I’m not in the best place to discuss strategy,” he said. His voice dropped. “I’m about to interrupt the conversation… let both parties know that I represent Mackenzie and that you are ready to talk to Inspector Gregory whenever it’s convenient for him. I think we should be able to wrap up your part of this investigation this afternoon.”

“If we can do it without any interaction between my grandmother and me, I’d appreciate it,” I said.

Amaranth grabbed the mirror from me. Lee swore as the image in front of him undoubtedly spun like crazy.

“Lee, don’t worry… do whatever’s most certain to see Mack through safely,” she said. “We’ll sort out the family stuff later.”

“I wouldn’t do anything else,” he said. “And please… please don’t do that again.”

“Oh, sorry!” she said.

“I’m attracting stares now,” he said. “So I’m gonna get to work. You three sit tight.”

“Okay,” Amaranth said. “Good luck!”

“Uh, thank you.”

She snapped the mirror shut with a satisfied smile that wobbled a little when she saw my glare.

“I’m sorry for snatching him away like that, baby, but you shouldn’t let your feelings about your grandmother jeopardize your safety,” she said.

“Is that really what that was all about?” I asked. “Or are you just jumping on a chance to attempt some kind of reconciliation?”

“Baby… this would so not be the time for that,” Amaranth said. “Honestly, I wouldn’t want even a happy reunion to distract you before we know you’re out of the woods.”

“But otherwise… once I am out of the woods… you think it would be a happy reunion,” I said.

“Oh, don’t be difficult now, of all times,” Amaranth said. “I was being hypothetical.”

“Well, you’re hypothetically wrong,” I said.

“‘Hypothetical’ isn’t exactly a strong suit around here,” Ian said.

“I know you think that everyone should just love each other, and Dee can’t understand why I wouldn’t want a relationship with my maternal…”

“Excuse us,” a voice said, pleasant and musical. I thought it had come from nowhere, but it had actually come from one of the two cloaked elves, who had both come up upon us so suddenly they might have teleported. “We do not mean to be intrusive, but by ‘Dee’, are you referring to Delia Daella?”

“Well, yes, actually,” Amaranth said, “but this is sort of a private conversation. We’re actually waiting for our lawyer, so if you have any questions…”

“Oh, we wouldn’t dream of bothering your legal advocate,” the second one said.

“Then you probably shouldn’t be talking to us,” Ian said. “I’m pretty sure that’ll bug the crap out of him.”

“We would, however, appreciate a few words with friends of our willfull charge,” the elven woman continued as if she hadn’t even heard Ian’s snarky interjection.

“Yes, you may be able to help her a great deal by speaking to her as friends.”

“Oh!” Amaranth said. “Well, if there’s something we can do to help Dee, we’ll be happy to talk about it just as soon as our other friend gets back to advise us.”

“Please, it’s no matter of great legal complexity,” the hooded woman said. “We just wondered if you have had a chance to observe her condition. She seems so drained, so fatigued from her self-imposed vigil… but she won’t admit to the possibility that she may have fallen asleep at some point during it.”

“I don’t see…” Amaranth started to say.

“What, you think Steff did it?” I asked. “Or Viktor?”

“We venture no opinion on the question of who is responsible,” the second elf said. “Our duty is to see that our Delia Daella is shielded from blame. The light of doubt is already falling upon those with whom she has sequestered herself. It is not in her interest to offer them a defense.”

“But is Dee really going to be a suspect?” I asked. “And if she was, their defense is her defense. They were all there together, right?”

“That is what Delia Daella says. But she perhaps may not be in the best condition to positively assert that.”

“Steff is our friend, too,” I said. “And Dee’s. You’re not going to get any of us to sell her out.”

“That really is enough,” Amaranth said to me. “It was so nice meeting you,” she said to the elves, “but I don’t think we have anything to talk about.”

“Please forgive the interruption, then,” one of the elves said, bowing and backing away.

“Perhaps we should speak to your advocate,” one of the elves said.

“I don’t think you’ll find him receptive to any proposals to lie,” Amaranth said. “Trying to frame someone else isn’t going to make anyone look good.”

“We would not ask anyone to lie,” the elf said. “We are not attempting to ‘frame’ anyone, just to… reframe the circumstances.”

“Again, we really don’t have anything to talk about,” Amaranth said. “Thank you.”

I wasn’t sure what she was thankful for, but it seemed like a polite attempt to end the conversation, and the elf didn’t have anything to say to it. She bowed and went back to her group. In addition to the gorgon and the mushroom person, there was now also a small rock-like humanoid huddled under the protective aegis of the shimmering fish-beast. The gorgon had stepped a few feet away and was chatting quietly with the harpy from the skirmish team and her human boyfriend.

Lee made a reappearance in the room shortly. He had a small cut on his forehead, right underneath a lump that seemed to swell visibly in the time from when he entered the big room and when he reached us.

“Your grandmother moves quickly for a woman her age, Mackenzie,” he said.

“Uh, yeah,” I said. “Sorry.”

“You didn’t do anything,” he said.

“I’m still sorry,” I said.

“Expressing unearned guilt is a bad habit for a suspect to have,” Lee said. “Though I don’t think that label exactly fits. There’s a lot of interest in you… but you’re definitely not the only name on the short list, and I got the distinct impression that it’s not just your whereabouts and doings last night that they’re interested in.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

His voice dropped.

“The point man upstairs, Agent Nevis, told me they ‘mainly’ have questions about some of your acquaintances,” Lee said. “I think part of that emphasis was to make sure we’re not going in overly defensive. I guarantee you that they’re going to ask about your whereabouts and that they will check on what we tell them, just as they’ll double-check what Ms. Blaise told them about the scene.”

“Do they just let anybody’s grandma wander into crime scenes and start divining?” Ian asked.

“She has some credentials, apparently,” Lee said. “I don’t know who gave her access or what was going through their head.”

“She was an exorcist,” I said. “I don’t know if she was certified, or if it’s still valid.”

Lee looked at me in surprise.

“I don’t think it matters as much in small towns… where there aren’t boatloads of powerful clerics in the temple… if someone’s licensed or not,” I explained.

“Mackenzie, she’s a paladin,” Lee said.

“What?” I said.

“Dame Commander in the EWD Reserves.”

“What?” I repeated.

“She showed me her badge right after she threw the book at me,” Lee said. “Figuratively, I mean. Paladins are only empowered to act as peace officers in places where there’s no other active law enforcement.”

“Hold on,” I said. “I think there must be some kind of mistaken identity thing going on. You’ve been misinformed or you’ve mixed a couple people up. The woman who hit you, did her badge identify her by name?”

“Mackenzie, there’s no confusion… she introduced herself, and she said she was your grandmother,” Lee said. “Her shield is inscribed with her name.”

“My grandmother is a little old lady who chases away disembodied demons,” I said. “She’s not a paladin.”

“I’m pretty sure I read or heard that she was,” Ian said. “In the news or something.”

“If the woman I spoke with isn’t your grandmother, then she stole a badge from your grandmother who is still a paladin,” Lee said. “But this is all very far afield of the point.”

“Mack… you do know that your grandmother must have had a life before you were born, don’t you?” Amaranth asked.

“Yes, but… I can’t imagine her lying about something like this,” I said. “Or about anything. She hated lies more than just about anything. She said they were the beginning of all sins, and that they give other sins shelter.”

“Um… did she ever tell you she wasn’t in the White Dragons?” Ian asked.

“You know, Mack, if you picked up your outlook on lying from her, then it seems like she can’t have nearly as big a problem with lies of omission as other kinds,” Amaranth said. “And frankly, if it was part of her life that she’d left behind, I’m not sure I’d count it as a lie not to mention it, either.”

“If it makes things any clearer at all,” Lee said, “I should mention that she only produced her shield with great reluctance, after I raised questions about her right to be present and after I dismissed her family-related argument.”

“It doesn’t make anything clear,” I said. “Okay, yes, she’s always been sort of… militant, I guess… but in the old-lady-who-loves-Khersis kind of way, not the knight-in-holy-armor kind of way.”

“Mack… I don’t mean to keep harping on this point,” Amaranth said, “but you do know that people aren’t born as old ladies, right?”

“Of course I know that,” I said, though, of course I couldn’t really picture my grandmother as a young woman and I had never really tried.

When I did, though… when I tried to imagine what someone who was so pious, so stern, so uncompromising in her beliefs, and so powerful in her faith but who had never been a cleric…

“Holy fuck,” I said, as the image came into my head of my grandmother clad in mail and holding a blessed broadsword.

“I’m sure this must be an interesting revelation for you,” Lee said. “If you need a few minutes to digest it, take them… but let’s not get completely sidetracked. I spoke to Nevis and I told him that we’re eager to help, but that we’d prefer it if we can deal with Mike Gregory and if you can talk to him as a group. He’s having Gregory paged when he’s done at the admin building. Nevis couldn’t make any promises. I think that they may want to talk to you two ladies individually afterwards, or at least you, Mackenzie, but I will be there handling things for each of you if it comes to that.”

“Why would they want to talk to Amaranth alone?” I asked. Obviously they would if they were going to try to pick our story apart to somehow indict me, but Lee was acting like that seemed like a remote possibility. Besides that, Ian as the human and the one who’d probably be less strongly linked to me in the eyes of anybody else they talked to would seem to be the weaker link.

“You’re both Harlowe residents,” he said. “Truth be told, there are a lot of prospective suspects in here… a lot of members of predatory races, races with anthropophagic history.”

“Um, sort of on that subject, Lee,” Amaranth said, her mouth twisting in between her words. She looked like she had the urge to chew her lower lip off with worry. “I know I said that I supported you doing anything to keep Mack safe, but we want you to know that we’re not willing to say things to implicate other students, even though that might shift suspicion off Mack.”

“To be clear: are you saying you would withhold evidence from the investigators to shield your dormmates?” Lee asked.

“Oh, no, I’m not talking about withholding anything,” Amaranth said. “But say someone comes at us with a theory that implicates someone else, and they ask us in a leading sort of way if we ever noticed that person sneaking out at night, or something like that.”

“If you’re not comfortable with a line of questioning, look to me to intervene,” Lee said. “My first responsibility here is to you three, not to your friends or your neighbors, but I will not allow you to be compromised for the sake of a lazy investigator’s convenience.”

“Thank you,” Amaranth said.

“May I ask what prompted that?” Lee said.

“This is a discussion I would rather have somewhere away from prying ears,” Amaranth said.

Lee nodded, and his eyes flickered almost imperceptibly towards the underworld contingent… the only ears in the room that were likely to overhear a quiet conversation in a large room full of quiet conversations being elven was probably a dead giveaway.

“Let’s take a walk outside,” he said.

“Is that going to be okay?” I said. “If that Gregory guy gets here and we’ve vanished…”

“I told them to reflect me if they need anything from us,” Lee said.

With that settled, I had no objection to getting away from the pair of cloaked underelves who were willing to use us and throw Steff under the behemoth’s feet to make double sure that Dee wasn’t implicated. I wondered if there wasn’t some racial animosity involved there… if my job was to make sure that someone wasn’t tarnished by a murder investigation, suggesting that one of the people she spent the weekend in the company of might have been responsible wouldn’t be my opening gambit.

Though… they had said that suspicion was falling on Steff and Viktor anyway, so maybe it hadn’t been their choice of a first move, either. That thought kind of gave me chills. How much suspicion, exactly, would it take for “maybe I fell asleep and didn’t notice them going out and murdering someone” to sound like a better defense to her advocates than “no, I was with them the whole time and there was no murdering”?

Lee had told Ian that if I were under suspicion, he’d be suspect, too, for providing part of my alibi. The same would be true of Dee, with regard to Steff and Viktor. I trusted Dee to know whether or not she’d fallen asleep, and I certainly trusted her to tell the truth. I hadn’t given much thought to the blowup we witnessed earlier… with Dee and Viktor both taking her obligation to Steff’s health so deadly seriously, her actions seemed perfectly understandable as a reaction to being pulled away from Steff’s bedside.

It also fit in nicely with how I imagined she would react if it were suggested that she bend the truth to save her own skin at the expense of a friend… maybe with a little extra indignity thrown in at the idea that she might have fallen asleep on the job without immediately realizing it.

These were the thoughts that swirled around in my head as we headed out onto the patio and up the uneven stairs. We headed south away from the front of the building, towards a group of school buildings I’d never been in. Lee didn’t say anything until we were on the other side of one of them from Harlowe.

“What happened?” he asked, straight to the point.

Amaranth recounted the interruption from the eavesdropping elves.

“Hmm,” Lee said. “This ‘Dee’ is the Delia Daella who’s been in the news? The so-called ‘naked priestess’?”

“That’s her,” Amaranth said, nodding.

“They call her ‘the naked priestess’?” I asked.

“Do you never watch the news?” Ian asked.

“Not really,” I said.

“I don’t sit down and watch it very often, but… it’s on sometimes,” he said. “You pick things up.”

“There are more TVs in your dorm than in mine,” I reminded him. “We don’t even get the student newspaper.”

“Listen,” Lee said. “There may be a reason why the dark elves think that Dee’s friends would be under special scrutiny. That may be difficult if they’re your friends, too, but that can’t distract you. If charges are brought against them, I’m sure you’ll have chances to speak out on their behalf, offer testimony about their characters, what have you… but for now, if it comes up, the most you can honestly say is that you were gone all weekend and so you can’t really speak to anything that might have happened on campus. If the imperials ask you about them, I’ll say that. Don’t let them goad you into saying anything else.”

I kind of expected him to look at me after he said that last bit, but he kept his gaze on Amaranth. I suppose she had as little self-control as I did when it came to some things. He only knew her because of her protective impulses towards me.

“Thank you, Lee,” Amaranth said, nodding. “Really, truly… I know this is your job, but you’ve been so helpful, and I don’t know what we would do without you.”

“Remember, Amaranth, that technically the fact that you’re speaking to them at all is a courtesy,” Lee said. “You have divine privilege. They can’t arrest you. They can’t question you against your will. They can’t make you testify or go on record. For questions about Mackenzie’s whereabouts, you’ve got every reason to answer, but if they stray to other topics, you could tell them to go to hell and they couldn’t do anything. Don’t, incidentally.”

“Oh, I could never do that,” Amaranth said.

“The point is that you have a pretty big trump card if they get in your face,” Lee said. “I mention this because you seem somewhat… delicate, in some regards. If things get too stressful, tell me that you think you’re done and I’ll manage the damage control on that. It’s likely to be better for our side than if you snap.”

Amaranth nodded. She nibbled at her lip a little bit.

“Oh, I’m so sorry,” she said. “I just realized… your head. I should have offered earlier. Would you like me to do something for it?”

“Is that going to limit my proximity to Mackenzie?” he asked. “They offered me healing, but I wanted to wait until we were finished for the day.”

“It shouldn’t make a difference,” she said. “It’ll only take a touch. As long as you don’t headbutt her or dance cheek-to-cheek, she shouldn’t even be able to feel it.”

“Shouldn’t or won’t?” Lee asked.

“Won’t,” I said. “She’s healed worse in front of me before. It can be… uncomfortable… to look at while it’s going on, but the aftereffects are pretty negligible.”

“Well, alright, then,” Lee said. “I suppose it’s probably best if I don’t have an untreated head injury when I’m representing.”

“What did she throw at you, exactly?” Ian asked.

“Her librum, I think,” Lee said. “I would imagine that’s what it was. It was very impressive-looking.”

“Ouch,” I said. My grandmother’s travel librum had metal brackety things protecting the corners of the dragonhide cover.

“Yes, exactly,” Lee said.

“Better take a step back and cover your eyes, baby,” Amaranth said, and I did step back, though I only shaded my eyes and lowered them slightly… after my experience at the club, I was curious how much I could really stand to be exposed to her healing energy.

The glow was far more intense, and I had to quickly drop my gaze to the ground, but the pain wasn’t that bad… it was intense, but it wasn’t bad.

Far worse was the feeling I got in the pit of my stomach when I heard my grandmother’s voice in my ear.

“Of course you avert your eyes from a display of her pure spirit, after spending all day lustfully ogling her corrupt flesh.”

Next: Brimstone.

“The investigators have set up shop here, on the first floor,” he said, frowning. “I wasn’t really expecting that.”

“Does that mean we should go somewhere else?” I asked hopefully.

“No, I don’t think so… they’ve asked students to stay in their own residence halls as much as possible,” Lee said. “Let’s head on in and get the lay of the land.”

We clambered out of the coach and headed down the slightly uneven concrete steps to the front patio. Lee entered the basement lounge ahead of us, holding open the door.

The room was fuller than I’d seen it any other time since the first weekend and its hall-wide meeting. It wasn’t just students, either. Some of the larger groups were sitting with humans, who I figured were their resident advisers, judging by their ages. The dean of non-human students, who probably hadn’t been back in Harlowe since the first weekend, was talking quietly to a couple of guys who were probably either somebody’s lawyers or plain clothes investigators.

The gorgon girl who lived in the room directly beneath me was standing with a couple of figures in all-encompassing black cloaks similar to the ones that Dee wore, and another person who looked like a humanoid mushroom standing about three and a half feet tall.

“It looks like there was an all-night Veil party,” Lee said.

It took me a moment to figure out what he was talking about… he was looking at Sooni, who was dressed in her latest Science Princess outfit. Maliko and Suzi were huddled around her. Sooni was bawling her eyes out, Maliko looked scared. Suzi looked oddly serene, as if she possibly didn’t understand what was happening.

Arrayed around them were men who looked like body guards… easterners, three who looked human and two who were canine yokai.

Interestingly, Kai was standing just outside the ring of bodyguards, looking sort of adorably stern in her baby clothes. She had a weapon belt strapped around her padded diaper, with a pair of long and short curved swords and wicked-pronged throwing blades.

“No, that’s actually just… Sunday morning,” I said.

“Ah, well… looks like Gregory’s not at the Crystal Palace any more but he hasn’t turned up here yet, either,” Lee said quietly, his eyes going back down to his tablet. “He might be at the admin building. Most of the agents and officers on premises are blanks to me… I don’t want any contact between them and you if he’s not in earshot of an uproar.”

“Is this one guy really going to make that much difference?” Ian asked. “I mean, if someone decides to play a little game of blackguard, paladin, with us don’t you think we can count on at least one honest cop hearing? Dorms aren’t known for efficient soundproofing.”

“Mike Gregory’s one of the ‘good guys’, no doubt about that,” Lee said. “But that’s not why I want him. I told you, I spent part of the morning studying him.”

“Um, no offense,” Ian said, “but I really hope you’re not staking everything on some hunch you gleaned from reading news clippings. I admit I don’t know much about these things except what I’ve seen on TV… but that sounds like something I’ve seen on TV.”

I nodded my own agreement. I trusted Lee… but I wasn’t sure what he could have learned in an hour or two that would make him seem so certain.

“Let’s just say that my firm’s information on Mr. Gregory is better than news clippings,” Lee said.

“What, do you have a psych profile or something?” Ian asked.

“I really can’t say anything about the specific nature of the information,” Lee said.

“Holy shit,” Ian said.

“Please do us all a favor and don’t go jumping to conclusions, or spreading them around,” Lee said. “Now, I’d rather not leave you completely alone but I’m kind of on my own here for the time being. Will the three of you be okay sitting tight here while I go up and have a chat with the people on-site here?”

Ian and Amaranth both looked at me. I knew they weren’t deferring to me. It looked more like they were sizing me up somehow… maybe wondering how well I’d handle myself if someone confronted us, or if I’d say or do something rash.

While that kind of concern had some basis ordinarily, I resented the idea that I couldn’t be counted on to control myself when it counted.

“Yeah, we’ll be fine,” I said, trying to force myself to be nonchalant. “Go on, have fun.” Okay, maybe I could stand being a little more chalant than that. “I mean, do what you have to.”

“Right,” Lee said. “If anyone official… imperial, provincial, school, or other… wants to talk to you, tell them your attorney is upstairs and will be with them shortly. Don’t listen to anyone who says you don’t need me. I’ll make this as quick as I can.”

“Don’t worry, we’ll be polite but firm,” Amaranth said.

“Okay, but if someone presses you to the point that balancing those two things becomes tricky, make sure you remember which of them is optional,” Lee said. “I’ll be back.”

He left us alone. We all looked at each other, but nobody said anything. Amaranth stirred as if she were about to speak and break the silence, but then she seemed to think better of it. It was like she shrank back inside herself.

The atmosphere inside the main lounge was somber. That didn’t seem too odd, considering that Leda was dead, but it was surprising that so many people would seem so deeply affected by her death. Sooni was the only one who was weeping so openly, but there were more tears throughout the room.

Harlowe was a place of insular cliques, in my experience… and indeed, the room was full of islands of people with no more than half a dozen students in each and many smaller than that. Leda had been standoffish… at the risk of speaking ill of the dead, she’d been more than a bit of a snob.

Then I became aware of an undercurrent to the scene: fear. I could feel it, I could smell it… and once I knew it was there I could see it on the faces of everyone in the room.

One of their own… our own… had died, been killed. Imperial suspicion was on someone from our building. Who wouldn’t be afraid? The fierce and feral-seeming had to worry about being accused and brought to trial for a crime they might not have done… or worse, accused and not brought to trial. The more conventionally vulnerable had to worry about becoming victims themselves.

I was probably creating a dichotomy that didn’t exist, I realized. I myself was proof that someone could look innocuous by human standards and still be both physically powerful and dangerous. The gnomish students would probably garner little suspicion, but everyone else would be fair game for the investigators.

Lee had kept my mind on my plight, my defense, to the extent that I hadn’t had much thought for the question of who might have done it. Now I found my mind turning to that subject.

The fact that Leda had been human-like and killed in water suggested one very strong possibility to me… or rather, one or two of them. If she bore bite marks and was torn apart to the point that resurrection didn’t seem to be in the cards for her royal personage, as it seemed was the case, then that made it even more likely.

Suspicion wasn’t proof… although it might turn out to be just as good for the imperials if it gave them a satisfactory resolution. Lee seemed like a good guy, and he definitely had my back… but that was the thing. He had my back. I was sure he’d want me to share my information about the mermaids if he thought it would help me out.

I couldn’t even say that he’d be wrong to do so. I hadn’t killed anyone. Feejee and Iona, by their own admission, had. Would it be such a terrible injustice if… say, Iona… were to take the blame for this one?

Of course it would, I realized. Someone had killed Leda. Trying to punish Iona for unrelated deaths without knowing for sure she was responsible for this one would only mean someone else might get away with murder.

And, of course, I’d had no interest in seeing Iona punished before doing so coincided with a chance to shield my own ass.

But maybe I was overthinking it… the investigators weren’t going to take the unsupported word of a demonblood murder suspect as damning evidence. They’d at least check Iona out because I had a lawyer who would use it against them if they ignored a tip that could clear me, and they’d either find proof of her involvement or…

…or the’d discover that under her smooth, red-tinged skin, she was hiding something a lot scarier looking than any demon and forget about finding evidence of anything else.

Also, I was thinking of this in terms of blaming Iona, but there was no way I could shield Feejee. While Feejee was hardly innocent… she seemed to be, in some ways, an innocent. She knew nothing but her people’s own peculiar system of morality. There was no connection in her mind between the idea of humans as people she could talk to and befriend and humans she could eat… or there was no conflict between the two.

I couldn’t wrap my mind around it, either way. I had the feeling that if she ate me, she might miss me afterwards, but I didn’t expect any remorse.

If Leda hadn’t died in water, I would be pretty sure Feejee hadn’t been involved. That she had been killed in the fountain muddied the… metaphorical water. It might even have made it more likely to be her than Iona… I could see Feejee not giving a second thought to the victim’s identity or standing as long as she was in water.

On the other hand, I could also see Iona just not caring. Feejee could overwhelm me with fear when she shifted into her less human-looking states. Iona was just plain scary, no matter what face she wore.

“Holy shit!” Ian said.

“What?” I said, looking around.

Hovering over the underworld contingent was what could only be the observer Lee had described as “some sort of eyeless fish-beast”… it was at least five feet across, generally flat and maybe three feet tall at the center, with wavy fringed fins protruding a foot and a half farther on each side. The front of it seemed to be all mouth, except for a small knob over the center of it from which a pair of whisker-like undulating antennae protruded. Its coloration was… hard to describe.

Dark and glistening, but just when I thought I was getting a handle on exactly what dark and glistening color it was, my mind slipped off it.

“Did I miss that thing somehow, or did it just show up?” Ian asked just as the thing faded back out of sight. “Oh,” he said. “Well, that’s… interesting.”

“It probably exists simultaneously on multiple planes,” Amaranth said. “Physical, ethereal…”

“The ether doesn’t extend that deep below the surface,” I said. “Probably some place stranger than that… somewhere that’s farther removed from anywhere up here. That could be why it seems to have trouble manifesting.”

It shimmered back into view, slowly turning in the air as it did. I had a distinct sense of unease as I realized that it was “looking” towards us, its long, whippy appendages streaming out through the air. Something rolled over me… a feeling like being pounded by a cold, strangely dry surf, and then the thing reoriented itself back the way it had been.

“Oh, so that’s how you say ‘mind your own business’ in extraplanar fishese,” Ian said. “I’ve been wondering.”

“Actually, it was just saying hi,” Amaranth said. “Introducing itself.”

“What’s it doing now?” Ian asked.

The fish turned its attention towards the door at the back corner of the room, where the stairwell to the boys’ side was. A moment later, the door swung open so hard and fast that I thought perhaps its attention had caused it to move, but then Dee came flying through it in a dark-dark green robe… as far as I could tell, her feet were on the ground, but there was really no other word for it but flying. She used the unearthly smooth elven stride, but she crossed the room over to the group of her compatriots far too quickly to call it “gliding”.

Her appearance took them by surprise. I could imagine the substance of what Dee was saying had something to do with her obligations to Steff, though I couldn’t understand a word of what she was saying, or even hear what the cloaked elves said to her in response. They were either sticking to telepathy or modulating their voices to a degree Dee wasn’t bothering to do. They seemed deeply concerned with her state of dress, though… one of them actually stripped off her cloak, revealing herself to have spiky black hair, and tried to throw it over Dee’s body. Dee batted it aside mentally, her voice getting slightly louder.

“Do you think we should go help her?” Amaranth asked.

“It looks like she’s doing okay to me,” Ian said.

“We probably shouldn’t be getting involved with anything right now,” I said. “Remember what Lee said?”

“I think we could support our friend without getting entangled with officialdom,” Amaranth said.

“Right, except we’d be supporting her to ambassadors or lawyers or oathspeakers or whoever those are,” I said.

“Looks like it doesn’t matter anyway,” Ian said, as Dee threw up her arms and then turned and zipped back towards the door.

The woman who’d taken off her cloak made a lunge for her, but the other one grabbed her arm and held her back. As soon as Dee was out of sight, the uncloaked one shook her head sadly, then let out an audible “oh!” and disappeared. The discarded cloak seemed to pick itself up and then settled itself into an elf-sized shape.

“Apparently they’re privacy advocates?” Ian said.

There was a loud scoffing sound from behind us. I turned to see Trina had just come in. All three of her eyes looked bleary and red.

“I can’t believe you’re joking at a time like this,” she said. “Or actually, I can. Come on, Gladys,” she said half over her shoulder, apparently not even realizing that her friend had fallen behind her at some point and wasn‘t even in sight. “Let’s go find Mariel.”

“…she sure told me?” Ian said as Trina headed for the stairs.

“Everybody deals with tragedy differently,” Amaranth said.

I thought that maybe Trina’s way of dealing with it differently was by dealing with it exactly the same way she dealt with everything else, but I didn’t say that. I looked around the room, looking for something else to say, something else to talk about… and I was again struck by the amount of fear there seemed to be. Some people even had the look on their face that I recognized as being a certain kind of “guilty”… the look that says you know you’re going to be punished and you at least halfway feel you deserve it, irrespective of anything you’ve actually done. It looks the same as being guilty to a lot of people… particularly people who think that the innocent don’t have any reason to fear punishment.

“I think the really sad thing is that no one’s really dealing with what happened yet,” I said. “I don’t know who’d be mourning Leda, but right now everybody’s worried about what happens next… everybody’s waiting for the hammer to fall.”

“We’re sort of lucky, in a way,” Amaranth said, nodding. “Or we will be, if Lee’s right and he can get them to move on from you fairly quickly. You know you’re under suspicion, and you can look forward to a quick resolution.”

“I can hope for one,” I said. “It’s not a guarantee. I think I’d rather not be under suspicion in the first place.”

“Well, yes, but you can’t choose that, any more than you were able to choose your birth,” Amaranth said. “And even the people who don’t share your circumstances are under a cloud… they just don’t know exactly how bad it is yet.”

“Amaranth… I know you’re trying to look on the bright side, but it sounds to me like you’re talking about ’having a big enough problem to notice it’ like it’s a good thing,” I said. “And yeah, Lee’s got confidence and I’ve got confidence in him, but he‘s always been pretty upfront about the fact that there are no guarantees. There are a lot of things that could go wrong… there’s no way of knowing for sure that I’ll be cleared of suspicion, much less that it‘ll happen quickly.”

“Um, your coat’s buzzing,” Ian said.

“Oh!” I said, and I pulled my mirror out of my coat pocket and flipped it open. “It’s Lee,” I said for the others’ benefit as I accepted the reflection. “Hello?”

“Hello, Mackenzie?” he said. “Yes, I think things either got a whole lot simpler or more complicated. They have a demon expert here insisting there was no infernal handiwork in the killing.”

“Well, that’s good, isn’t it?” Amaranth said, leaning over my shoulder. “Wouldn’t that make things simpler for Mack?”

“For a demonblood who’s under suspicion?” Lee said. “Very likely yes. For Mackenzie Blaise? That depends.”

“Depends on what?” I asked.

“On your relationship to a Martha Blaise.”

Next time: Do you really need a teaser?

Discuss this story on the Livejournal feed.

It was at least thirty minutes from the time Lee got to the Crystal Palace until he came to the restaurant. We didn’t talk much while we waited… there was a definite sense of any minute now that made conversation seem a little pointless, especially the kind of bantering we had been doing. It felt like it was time to get serious… but in the absence of anything in particular to be done, we just sat around being seriously awkward.

“You all settled up?” Lee asked us, by way of greeting. He looked at Amaranth when he spoke. I didn’t know if that was because his eyes naturally gravitated towards her or because he’d noticed that she had a lot more charge-taking impulse than I did. She nodded, and he said. “Good. I have a coach that will meet us around at the side street. Let’s go.”

We followed him out of the restaurant, back into the ground floor hallway and towards the exit at the end of it.

He set a brisk pace. I was curious if something else had happened to instill this sense of urgency into him… not that the situation on itself wasn’t plenty urgent, but it seemed odd to be hustled out of the hotel so quickly, like he thought we might be stopped at any moment. I wondered if maybe he hadn’t been completely successful in his talk with Gregory… but no one interfered with us on the way out.

I might have asked him what was going on, but he was acting so tight-lipped… the implication was clear: move now, talk later.

A long black coach was waiting at the curb outside, with a pair of private guards sitting on the driver’s bench. Lee nodded at them and then opened the door, holding it open for the three of us and then climbing in after us. The coach was moving as soon as the door closed.

“Okay, good,” Lee said. “Mackenzie, I’ve got some things you’ll need to sign.”

“Just to clarify something, Lee,” Amaranth said, “are you working for Mackenzie now, or…”

“I’m representing her,” Lee said. He looked at me. “My interest is your interests, no matter who supplied the gold. That’s something to talk about later, when we’re alone. I’d advise you not to speculate about it. If anybody asks, tell them the truth: that you don’t know.”

“You don’t suspect that there’s something illegal about it, do you?” Amaranth asked.

“I don’t know that it’s anything but a perfectly legal if slightly unorthodox transaction,” Lee said. “There’s nothing to be gained by speculating.”

He shot me a brief but pointed look. I gathered that he might want to talk about that with me in private, but I didn’t ask him to clarify. We’d already gone over the fact that Amaranth couldn’t be compelled to testify, but I had no idea how something like attorney-client privilege would work in this case, and Ian was an ordinary citizen of the Imperial Republic. He’d probably hear my theory eventually, but only when the current situation was over and we were past the point where he might find himself answering questions for an imperial agent.

I didn’t know how much of a risk Lee was taking by accepting gold that might have been from a demon… I had no idea how the law worked if he had no knowledge but might have suspected. But he was willing to represent me, whatever the risk was, so I would just follow his lead and try not to get him disbarred or arrested over it.

Lee pulled some papers out of a folder.

“Now, there was some… I’m going to say ‘open-ended language’ in the instructions we received,” Lee said. “I would not be exceeding the scope of them by offering to represent all three of you.”

“Do we need representation?” Amaranth said. “I mean, sure, we’re going to be questioned, but…”

“Yes, and you’ve just answered your own question,” Lee said. He looked at Ian. “Are you eighteen?”

“Yeah.”

“I’m going to be blunt,” he said. “If you’re on Mackenzie’s side, you’re going to want to talk to the imperials, but if you want to be on her side effectively, you won’t try to do it alone. You could probably get a local referral from the firm that represents your parents, but if you do that, you might wind up with an attorney who’s going to see throwing Mackenzie to the ghouls as being in your best interests.”

“Wouldn’t I have a say in that?” Ian asked.

“We lawyers can be a very persuasive bunch,” Lee said. “Especially when they’re telling you the same thing that imperial investigators are. I don’t want to impugn your willpower, Ian, but if you do that you’ll be going alone. That fact alone will make Mackenzie look bad, and it might make people curious why you aren’t with her.”

“Okay, but what about payment?” I asked. “I know I’m covered, but…”

“Well, that’s the other reason I’m doing this,” Lee said. “There was a sizable sum of gold in the pouch, but it’s under a returning enchantment. When our business with its owner is included, it will return to its owner, along with the unused portion.”

“That seems a little… trusting,” I said.

“It’s unusual, but not completely unheard of,” Lee said. “One of our major clients pays that way. Not that there aren’t crooked lawyers out there, but blatantly stealing money from the sort of wealthy and powerful clients who use such devices is not a good business practice, in general.”

“So, you have to be subtle about it?” Ian asked.

“Mackenzie’s benefactor chose how much money to make available,” Lee said. “I wouldn’t be dipping into it just for the hell of it, but I can protect her better… which serves his or her wishes… by taking you all on as a group.”

“What exactly were the instructions?” I asked.

“To use the money to protect you,” he said.

“Seriously?”

“Seriously,” he said. “As I said, a little open-ended, but given that they were delivered to a law firm and not an armourer or enchanter, I think it can be inferred that the intention was to offer you legal protection Anyway, if everyone is on board, then just look these over, then sign where I’ve flagged and we’ll make this official.”

He handed papers to each of us. They didn’t say much, though they took its time doing so… it was just a contract much like the one I’d signed when Lee first took on my arbitration case.

“So… when you were talking to Mike Gregory, you weren’t actually my lawyer yet?” I asked as I handed my signed form back to him.

“We had a verbal agreement,” Lee said. “But paper protects everyone.”

Amaranth also signed hers without hesitation. Ian looked his over, then said, “Fuck it,” and signed, as well.

“So, what was with the great escape?” he asked. “I felt like we were fugitives or something.”

“I’m sorry, I just realized we haven’t been properly introduced. Usually I take care of that before I take a client on,” Lee said. He held out his hand. “Lee Jenkins.”

“Ian Mason,” Ian said.

“Anyway, to answer your question: the imperials declined to detain any of you, just as I’d hoped, but I still wanted to get the three of you out of there quickly, in case the press showed up… or in case Mr. Gregory had a change of heart, or someone higher up the ladder got wind of it and decided to overrule him.”

“Why would they do that?” I asked.

“It wouldn’t immediately matter why, if they did,” Lee said. “While we were there, we were under their surveillance and their control. You don’t linger in a situation like that and hope that nothing goes wrong. ‘Full cooperation’ with authorities actually means doing as little as possible to provoke them while giving them as little chance as possible to screw one’s client over. My immediate goal is to get you back to your dorm, where you’ll be relatively safe.”

“Couldn’t we meet the investigators at your office or something?” I asked him. Even qualifying it with “relative“, I thought he was overstating the safety of Harlowe. And if the IBF was centering their investigation on the non-human students, then it seemed like we were sliding out of one potential trap into another.

“I don’t think that would give the best impression of our position,” Lee said. “You’re just another student, one who might appear to be a person of interest in the case but whom the facts will quickly disqualify as a candidate. If you don’t show up on campus, people will speculate about where you are and why… and when the answer turns out to be ‘holed up with an attorney’…”

“Point taken,” I said.

“Harlowe Hall is where it’s least suspicious for you to be. People will see you coming back from a night on the town with a couple of your friends,” he said. “Your human boyfriend and divinely beautiful girlfriend, as it happens… to be blunt, that’ll be helpful. You aren’t going to be arrested and convicted on public opinion if the facts get a chance to speak, Mackenzie, but the facts will speak louder if the rabble is quieter. I’ve been looking at a map of campus and it looks like there’s a carriage turnaround in front of your dorm?”

“Yeah,” I said.

“Good. They’re checking carriages going in and out…”

“Oh!” Amaranth said. “Excuse me, Lee, I hate to interrupt, but… the wards around the town. They poke at Mack every time she comes to Enwich. If they keep records… and I’m sure that they must… then that would prove that she didn’t leave and come back or anything, right?”

“It might,” Lee said. “I’m not intimately familiar with the municipal protection spells.”

“Um… it’s actually tied to the school carriages,” I said. “When I was in a private coach with Sooni, we didn’t get ‘buzzed’.”

“Nevertheless, security on the walls tightens over night,” Lee said. “And the gates are actually closed to regular traffic overnight. All of which makes it more unlikely that you could have gone to campus and back in the middle of the night, but as you would have had to somehow circumvent security to do so in the first place, well… if somebody is truly determined to believe you were involved, the lack of evidence that you left town will more likely be read as lack of evidence that you remained. Now, Mike Gregory is heading up the investigation, and he doesn’t seem like the type… I went through a lot of background material on him this morning and it seems like we really couldn’t have done any better than him. He has a bit of a reputation for stubbornness, but he’s also sensitive to non-human concerns. He seems unlikely to willingly swallow an ‘official version’ that doesn’t match the facts.”

“But he might not have a choice?” I said.

“He’s a respected finder, but he has to answer to his higher-ups, and they have to answer to political pressure,” Lee said. “Still, he’s not a Yes-Man and our profile indicates that integrity is important to him. That’s good, though it may be a sticky point… he doesn’t want to be here, and I got the impression from him that he may use his liaison with you as an excuse to bow out,” he said, nodding at Amaranth. “That would be bad, not only because his replacement would be an unknown quantity, but because… well, it could be spun into something unsavory if the lead investigator is taken off the case because of a sexual encounter with a suspect’s partner the day before the crime was committed.”

“Wouldn’t it look just as bad if he stays on the case after that?” I asked.

“For him,” Lee said. “Possibly for us. But ‘lead investigator leads investigation’ isn’t a story that demands to be told. If he drops out, somebody desperate for a fresh angle or a new lead will find out why. Otherwise, there’s no reason for it to come up. He isn’t going to go around advertising it. Neither should you. Don’t talk about it among yourselves, don’t tell anybody else, don’t even think about it, if you can help it.”

“Oh, I’m way ahead of you there,” Ian said.

“The other reason I want to get you back to Harlowe Hall is that a lot of your dormmates are the children of foreign potentates or are otherwise VIBs. The place is going to be crawling with attorneys and diplomats,” Lee said. “The colony of underfolk at Ceilos have apparently gated in some sort of eyeless fish-beast to observe things and make sure their people aren’t being mistreated. Ideally, all of this attention will keep the imps on their best behavior. The reality is that we can’t count on any sort of solidarity… people who are advocating on someone else’s behalf might be satisfied with any resolution that leaves their clients untouched.”

“Excuse me, Lee?” Amaranth said. “I have a thought about something, but it’s not really legal strategy, per se.”

“It isn’t illegal strategy, is it?” Lee asked.

“Well, no,” she said. “I just meant… I’m not sure if it falls within your purview or not.”

“What is it, exactly?”

“Well… as I understand it, the biggest risk to Mack is that she’ll be an attractive enough scapegoat that the facts won’t matter,” Amaranth said. “More so than any of the other more ‘monstrous’ students who have powerful connections, since the risk of some kind of backlash is lower?”

“Yes, that’s a succinct summary,” Lee said.

“Okay, but when Mackenzie disappeared in the teleportation incident, we got a whole cross-section of the campus coming out to demonstrate for her,” Amaranth said. “I think part of it was that she was a fellow student and part of it was anger at the perception that she’s been unfairly demo… vilified. Obviously the students who’ve been doing the vilification didn’t turn out, but there’s a certain segment of the campus population that might have her back.”

“Well, that is a thought,” Lee said. “But it has to be considered that the alleged murder victim in this case is also a fellow student, and so are most of the people who will fall under suspicion. Trying to shore up support for Mackenzie in particular might be more difficult in this case than it was when it was one student being abused by the powerful and faceless administration.”

“But if we could do it, wouldn’t it be useful?” Amaranth said. “I mean, yeah, the consequences of riling up a bunch of students probably aren’t the same as the international or interracial stuff that could come down on the Imperium, but it’s close to home and it could be very visible.”

“It’s something to think about,” Lee said. “Our first statement to the press will certainly play up the fact that Mackenzie is an imperial citizen and half human, as a reminder to all involved that she does have civil rights.”

“Would it be crass to point out that she has more human blood than the victim does?” Ian asked. “Did, I mean.”

“Crass and inaccurate,” Lee said. “We spent some time doing some quick research on her people. She’s technically at least half human, and arguably more, since her mother was the offspring of a human and a swan woman, too.”

“I don’t know if I’d be comfortable playing that particular card,” I said.

“But if it helps protect you…” Ian said.

Beside me, Amaranth made a little noise kind of like a strangled, throaty growl. I figured she was torn between her impulse towards fairness for everybody and her protectiveness for me… she knew she wanted to say something but she wasn’t sure what.

“Listen, Mackenzie,” Lee said. “We’d be foolish to ignore public opinion, but clichés aside, that isn’t the court where trials are held. We’ll work to head off any pitfalls in that area, but in this case, the best defense is a good defense. What we really want to happen is for the investigators to cross your name off the suspect list and move on to greener pastures. So, let’s go over your movements yesterday so you’ll be ready to talk to the investigators.”

“They’re not going to grab me out of the coach right when we get there, are they?” I asked.

“It would be unexpected and sort of foolish for them to be that aggressive when we’re cooperating,” Lee said. “But we don’t want to throw up a lot of arbitrary delays. We want you cleared and cleared quickly, and there’s nothing to be gained by ironwalling the authorities.”

I nodded, and then we proceeded to go over what we’d done the night before… the broad strokes, when it came to the nightclub. Lee asked us to clarify and be more specific in a few places. He tapped along on a stone tablet as we spoke.

“Okay,” he said. “I’m drafting a request for the Crystal Palace to release any security images of you that the authorities request. The owner would likely withhold them unless a tribune ordered it. Since those images will establish the time you returned, we don’t particularly need the benefits of dwarven privacy protection. You did come in through the main lobby?”

“Yeah,” I said. “We didn’t really have any reason to be sneaking around.”

“You don’t actually need a reason to sneak around, within the confines of the law,” he said. “But it doesn’t always look good if you do so, and it can also interfere with mounting an effective defense.”

“Um, Lee?” Amaranth said. “On that subject? At the nightclub, we kind of… well, they take privacy kind of serious there, too, so their security divination doesn’t capture images without consent. And… we didn’t give consent for Mack. Is that a problem?”

“Did she fill out a form going in?” he asked.

“Yes,” Amaranth said. “And they were hooked into some sort of spell that verified our identities, too. I don’t know if it keeps records of the queries, but there’s a small chance the bouncers will remember us since there was some confusion over my status.”

Lee nodded thoughtfully.

“Hey, isn’t it the investigators’ job to… you know… investigate?” Ian asked. “I mean, if they’re interested in poking holes in our story, aren’t they going to have to go out and try to prove us wrong, and then find out all this stuff?”

“Broadly speaking, you’re correct,” Lee said. “But it can be dangerous to assume that the investigators will do their job. And the nightclub stuff is all secondary anyway. If we had no other way of establishing you were in town, it would be more important. I left a message for the night auditor at the Crystal Palace to contact my office. If he or she… they wouldn’t even give me a name… saw you coming in, that coupled with any images from the lobby crystals should be fairly compelling. If it comes down to a trial, we’ll dig up everyone we can to build a clear picture of students having a weekend getaway, but right now I’m focusing on making sure that doesn’t happen in the first place.”

For the rest of the trip back to campus, we focused on minutiae of strategy. Lee thought it was likely that Gregory would want to interrogate me himself. He was going to suggest that the imperial agent could deal with all three of us at once to save time.

“It’ll be a good sign if he says yes,” Lee said. “It will mean he’s interested in crossing Mackenzie’s name off the list in the most efficient way possible. Whether it’s separately or together, the rules are going to be the same. Don’t volunteer information, but don’t get cute and play games, either. Don’t try to hide anything about your evening because it’s embarrassing. Don’t make up details like time to fill in gaps in your knowledge. To put it shortly, answer no more than the questions that are put to you with no more than the truth. If you’re not sure how to answer a question, look at me. If I’m not sure about a question, I’ll stop you before you answer it. Follow my lead and we’ll get through this.”

“Um…” Ian said.

“Question, Ian?” Lee said.

“No, not exactly… I’m having a moment of doubt here,” he said. “I feel like I’ve turned myself from someone the authorities are going to probably want to talk to into a co-suspect.”

“Well, a little jitters are to be expected,” Lee said. “If you provide Mackenzie with an alibi, that means that you’re a suspect if she is. You’re doing the right thing by standing up for her, Ian… but even if you don’t, you’re still going to find yourself subject to imperial scrutiny to the same extent that her story is.”

“Hey, I’m not backing down or anything,” Ian said. “I just… well, like I said. Moment of doubt.”

“So, you’re totally on board, then?” Lee said.

“Totally,” Ian said.

“Good,” Lee said. “Now, we should be just about there… there’s a front entrance on Harlowe that goes through a common lounge area?”

“Yes, but we hardly ever use it,” Amaranth said.

“We’re going to be going in there today,” he said. “We want to be visible. I understand that a number of students have been congregating there since the news broke.”

“Lee… I trust your judgment about legal stuff, but I’m not sure that’s the best idea,” I said. “I’m not exactly the most popular person in the dorm.”

“We can’t do anything about that, unfortunately,” Lee said. “But those people you aren’t popular with may be less inclined to invent or extrapolate things about you to investigators or reporters if they know that you’re not actually in hiding or on the run but are walking around freely in your residence hall the same as they are. We walk in openly, together, the three of you and your friendly neighborhood legal representative… we let the agents on site know that you’re available, and we’ll take it from there. If everything goes well, they should be finished with you pretty quickly and we’ll be done, unless they need to follow up on something.”

“If it doesn’t?” I asked.

“Then you have the full legal expertise of Pendragon and Associates standing behind you,” Lee said.

He said it so confidently, but as we drew close to the campus I couldn’t help thinking that there were at least a few worst case scenarios where a really good lawyer wouldn’t help. They were somewhat ineffective against lynch mobs, for instance, or overly-nervous cops. The wheels of justice ground slowly, after all… far slower than a magic crossbow or deadly wand.

Next: Tears! Recriminations! Some sort of eyeless fish-beast!

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