Semper Fidelis
Chapter 16
Two immediate problems reared themselves as I thought over what I needed to do next. The first was that I had no way to contact Elaine since cell phones had a shelf life of mere hours when held by a wizard or even when just within ten feet of their presence for the newest models. I once killed an I-Phone of a rather annoying driver in front of me just by thinking how much I hated people who drive and talked on the phone at the same time. I got a sick pleasure out of seeing him throwing the literally flaming piece of plastic and electronics out his window. Course that little trip down memory lane would not help me find Elaine any faster.
I knew the hotel where she said she was staying but her last words upon leaving had been she was going to try to make contact with some Summer Court agents and see how events in the Nevernever were progressing. I assumed knowing where the current Chicago hangout for Summer's agents was one of those things she probably talked to her friend the centaur about while we here heading to the court. I could leave a message at her hotel, but unless she stopped by to change clothes it was likely just a waste of time.
What I really needed was a way to get into contact with Maeve, pass along what I had learned, and question her a bit more based on these new developments. Unfortunately the most reliable way to do this required travelling to the Winter Court. But without Elaine to open a portal there was no reliable and safe way for me to get there that I knew of.
Lord Kline had said that the emissary token I carried likely had the power to open gates as well, but where magic is concerned just having the power and knowing the correct way to do so not to kill yourself or others are two very different things entirely. Just because I understood the concept of juggling did not mean I was willing to try it with high explosives. That would be a much quicker and cleaner death than opening a portal the wrong way or to the wrong place. If I opened the gate incorrectly some really nasty things could also come through and now having relived the results of my last mistake like that I had no intention of attempting that again.
The second and somewhat lesser problem I faced is that I found that Mom had left me a note on the refrigerator asking me to go to the grocery store to pick up dinner supplies for the family before I went to the hospital. Sure on the grand scheme of things of living day to day under the White Council's Doom, facing a potential life ending war in the Nevernever, and now prossibly having a revenge seeking dragon pissed off at me for carrying one of his stolen treasures, the thought of having my mom angry that I did not pick up groceries probably would only rate as high as fourth on my list of current dangers. Then again having firsthand experience of my mother's wrath not getting the groceries might actually rank as third on the list depending upon the size, age, and general temperament of the dragon in question.
Without means to get to the Nevernever or Elaine I really had nothing better to do except spin this new information that Daniel had provided around in my head and try to see what I what pieces of the puzzle were still missing. That task I could accomplish almost anywhere and with the potential repercussion I could certainly do it while also buying all the makings for my mother's famous meatloaf.
I decided to stick with my sweats though I took the time to add appropriate undergarments and a T-shirt to the ensemble. When I washed up in the sink I also noticed that my hair was still in salon perfect order even though I had fought two battles and slept in it since my appointment. If this was Faerie magic that I could package I would make millions!
"At what time are you meeting Elaine over at Harry's apartment?" Daniel asked me as he came down the stairs and into the kitchen wearing a patchwork ensemble of military fatigues and carpenter tools that made him look like some sort of odd crossbreed between G I Joe and Bob the Builder. Then I caught the glint of chainmail under his camouflage shirt from one of my father's suits no doubt and amended my earlier opinion to add King Arthur to the mix as well; the Monty Python rendition of course not the cool Sean Connery.
"We have met usually after seven at night." I answered and turned away so not to tell him with my barely hidden smile that he looked a little ridiculous. First it was the red Speedo and now this get up. I swear his wardrobe was purposely taunting me. Daniel and I had just begun to makeup at this point and I figured a fashion critique from me would not help that process in any way. But even still I swear though that his armor almost sounded like little bells tinkling when he walked.
"Alright I will meet you at his place tonight at seven." He said and flipped an empty gym bag over his shoulder as he headed for the door without any further explanation which set my alarms off because this is the same sort of thing I do when I'm trying to do something harry considers foolish.
"You are not going back to Highpelt's are you?" I asked thinking this to be a terrible idea so likely the one my brother was considering since we shared the same blood.
"No." He replied. "But I am going to pick up some more supplies that I might need if we have to fight something like that spider again. Not all of us have magic at our disposal so I figure that I better have a backup plan of my own in case talking does not solve everything."
I had to admit that this made a lot of sense. The trouble was though that Daniel had little or no knowledge or experience upon which to base these decisions. Some things he might consider would actually be worse than having nothing at all. "Daniel, guns are an automatic death sentence in the Nevernever." I explained as he reached the front door. "The last guy, well actually he was a satyr, they found carrying some of your master's weapons was tortured and then put to death right before my eyes. Make sure you do not bring anything like that."
"I've never been a real fan of guns Molly." Daniel said very seriously as he turned to look at me. "Dad never really believed in having them since he carried a sword so I never really learned how to shoot. I am thinking of things far more practical and suited to my own unique talents." He said with that devious smile that all teenage Carpenter kids get when they know they are thinking of things that our mother would probably frown upon.
A thought hit me as he turned back to the door. "Hey Daniel, if you are going out shopping anyway how about doing me a favor?" I asked with a smile to match his.
"What do you need?" He asked with the same sense of hesitance that I likely showed when he mentioned that he had talents.
I told him and explained my reasoning and to his credit his eyes only raised a little at my request once I explained everything his involvement would entail. "Alright I will do it." He agreed. "Just make sure you and Elaine do not leave before I get there." He waited until I promised, literally promised out loud to him, and then he took off just as Jenny Mercer's car pulled into the driveway. I would love to hear how he was going to explain to her the way he was dressed and where he had to go thanks to me. Unfortunately I had grocery shopping to do first.
Mom had left me money in an envelope, she was not one willing to accept charity even from her daughter, along with a shopping list as long as my forearm of what she needed from the store. While the note had said I was going to get food for her meatloaf dinner, I assumed she figured that since I would be there already anyway there was no point in her going this weekend if I got it all done today. To that end, each item my mother desired, or demanded, was listed in the order I would find it going up and down the various aisles of the same grocery store my family had been shopping at since I was born. Along with the name of each item came a description of what size and the quantity of each product I was to purchase.
Once long ago in my rebellious teenage years, I had defied my mother's listed wishes and bought the largest sized box of Lucky Charms instead of two of the medium sized ones as she had ordered. You would have thought this action to be as blasphemous as if I had changed the wording in the family Bible. Not only upon returning home did I have to sit through an economics lecture about how the mid-sized boxes were more economical per ounce than the large boxes but after that she even demonstrated to me with weights and scales how the toy I had wanted in the large box had reduced the actual quantity of cereal within by the toy's net weight.
And if you don't think this is enough torture for a teen to endure for so meager a crime consider also that she ended our conversation with a sentence of docking my weekly allowance by the difference in price that my 'unauthorized change' of her list had cost our family. I can only thank providence that I had decided against buying the also unofficially sanctioned Snickers bar I had my eye upon as I rang up that day's groceries.
I started in the fresh fruits and vegetables section since that is where my mother's list told me to begin and I was not going to live through another speech by forgetting anything. It would not surprise me that my mother might also have access to the grocery store's security camera footage just to see if her eldest daughter followed her instructions.
I was onto the ninth item on the list, gathering two packages of carrots from my younger siblings school snacks, the full sized of course because they were cheaper than buying the cute and easily consumed baby carrots mind you, when I noticed a nearby stand holding bags of packaged pumpkin seeds sitting near the salad fixings. I was not a particular fan of this food as far as snacks go because they were totally lacking in chocolate or sugar. Thankfully they only seemed to sell from October to December as I always assumed it was some last ditch way to make a buck by the byproducts of the lucrative jack o' lantern business. I admit they tasted better than sunflower seeds by a long shot but no replacement for a good cheeseburger as far as I was concerned. But now seeing them again I recalled that these seeds had been one of the items at the feast the Summer Knight and Lady had dined upon before they had been struck down. There was something about that meal that still left me thinking I was missing something important.
I put the shopping cart of my mom's foods off to the side and grabbed a smaller basket. I had time to spare so I began to wander throughout the store collecting the items I remembered from the Faerie Court dinner so I could take another look and try to figure out what I had missed that was still annoying me. Thankfully, for the most part the Summer Court tended to eat all natural foods so this collecting only took a few minutes and very little walking from where I was already standing.
I found the parsley, broccoli, potatoes, cantaloupe, and strawberries all within a ten foot radius of the pumpkin seeds. Black molasses required me to go over to the baking aisle where I found it in a syrup-like jar. Pâté, however was another story being made primarily from goose liver. I went to the grocery store's deli and asked after it and was met in response with looks of skepticism. I guess the family Piggly Wiggly did not get much call for Pâté here in this neighborhood of Chicago.
"Might I suggest a fine, old world, German butcher I know of around the corner Ms. Carpenter?" An immediately familiar and obviously happy voice behind me spoke to get my attention. I turned around and saw my old history teacher Mr. Goldman standing behind me with a warm welcoming smile on his face. "Pâté is a rather refined taste for the original Chicago immigrants who came mostly from Germany, Poland, and Scandinavia. What you are seeking is primarily a Parisian dish made first by French chef Jean-Joseph Clause to be consumed with rather tasteless crackers and lukewarm Perrier. Unfortunately its supposed refined taste allowed it to spread to the noble families throughout Holland, Germany, Russia, and even my own Habsburgs of the Austro-Hungarian dynasty."
Mr. Goldman was literally one of those individuals who could make a history lesson out of the back of a cereal box. I'm not kidding. I've seen him do it. He once saw a children's maze on the back of a snack box of Cheerios that one of the students brought into class and changed his lesson for the day to lecture for thirty minute on how the great hedge maze of the palace of Louis the XIV came into existence and how it was used by senior members of the royal court to deny or delay those wishing an audience with the King.
Most students dreaded his classes because Mr. Goldman was one of those teachers who only gave essay tests rather than multiple choice and no one in the history of the school had ever got full credit for any question he asked. You could write a full doctoral thesis on a subject as simple as who was President in the Civil War and yet there was always some small detail that Mr. Goldman provided from memory that the student had overlooked. Getting a C in his class was equal to an A in any other. In my classes with him I took this as a challenge and fought for the whole semester to get an A- as my final grade. That grade had ranked in the top three that he had given in any of his classes that school year.
"So obviously you are familiar with Pâté and its history?" I asked and stepped out of line to talk to my teacher and thereby allow the next person a chance to get their own deli order.
"Indeed." He replied with a simple nod. "But as far as the taste goes I will admit it is hardly on my gastro favorites list."
"Really?" I asked. "I would have thought a food with such a noble tradition would be held in high esteem by a man who enjoyed and knew so much about the history of Europe and its various royal families."
"I do normally look upon thing in that light but alas Pâté is a bit of an exception to my rules." He said. "The nuns at the orphanage forced a weekly meal of liver and onions on me as a child saying it would make me grow up to be tall and strong. I loved the smell but hated the taste. However when such fare was all that was available and the alternative was going hungry one takes the practical course and eats it all the same." He stopped and slowly twirled around like a model displaying his clothing. "As you can see barring the nun's promises it hardly lived up to it hype either." Topping out at less than five foot six inches in height and maybe one hundred and twenty pounds soaking wet I could see that Mr. Goldman's case for liver and onions hardly matched that of the commercials for Wheaties or any of the advertisements for weight gainer powders that body builders used.
"Perhaps it did." I said with a hint of an evil smile. "Think of how much more svelte you might be if you had not made this part of your childhood diet." I laughed and he smiled in response.
"Now there is a happy thought." His words dripped with sarcasm. "Of course then might I assume your own love of Pâté is the source of your obvious freakish height?" Mr. Goldman was hardly one to hold back from a duel of words when the verbal gauntlet was tossed down before him. The fact that I was six feet tall was often a subject of his jests with me.
"Ewww…no!" I said remembering how it had tasted when I tried to swallow it. "I just experienced it recently for the first time and I was barely able to hold it down."
"That is how it is for me as well." He said with a nod of understanding. "Only in the French culture, the people who decided both snails and calf's brains are delicacies, are chef's prone to taking something so reviled by children the world over and turning it around to convince the rest of the world's adults that it is suddenly a delicacy."
"Then maybe the Eastern Bloc countries got some of these things right." I kindly reminded him of his own origins in after the Cold War had begun. "I can't think that citizens in Russia or Romania wasted good money on such impractical products just to try and impress people."
"Then you would be wrong Ms. Carpenter. Foolishness is a factor of human nature not based upon any political system. The difference merely lies in how large a group is empowered to determine who the ultimate fool to lead a nation is." He said with a shake of his head. "And if anything such proclaimed pinnacles of cultured living in the West with all the references in our movies and advertisements provide the means for these same items to achieve almost divine status in the East, that being a joke of course since nothing in Communism is divine. Citizens may spend an entire week's wages on such trash for their party merely as a means to show one's superior culture to their friends. I am certain though that even when used for social climbing Pâté still tastes like over spiced meaty mush."
"Any system of governance that is balanced on a collective effort of the whole is doomed to failure, as there are always those who seek to gain from the work of others. That ambition is what drives individuals to explore and create success, ultimately pushing society forward. But if not properly tempered, it's disastrous." He said in a rather practiced teacher's voice.
"Is that a quote I am supposed to remember from class?" I asked searching my brain.
"No it is a bit of wisdom I recently heard expressed at a scholarly seminary." He replied. "It struck me as so profound that I recorded it." He said and then offered me a wink. "Well, because it was so profound and also because the female speaker was very pleasant to look upon as well, especially when we had a chance to be alone after the conference. Not only was she politically and historically astute, but I learned firsthand she was also a student of yoga."
That is just disturbing on more than a few levels so I pushed it aside in my mind. Thank you Harry for teaching me this skill for it has other emergency benefits that you probably never intended. Unfortunately it also left me without any immediate comeback.
Mr. Goldman looked down at my shopping basket and then looked back at me. "My dear are you anemic?" He said with a look of actual concern in his eyes.
"Anemic?"
"Yes." He replied. "Do you have a low blood iron count or are you starting one of those odd fad high iron food diets girls your age always seem to rave about in order to lose twenty pounds in three days? One of the nuns at school has a special diet with these same foods because her body will not absorb iron from multivitamins."
"No nothing like that it's just…" His words suddenly struck me. "Did you say low iron count?"
"Yes I did." Mr. Goldman replied. "All those food you have in your basket are extremely high in iron. And for that matter so is Pâté. It seems odd that you would single out such foods randomly." He said as I looked on in a bit of shock at what he was telling me.
"Don't worry Molly." He said patting my back. "Most of the European royals suffered from anemia as well and lived to a ripe old age, if they were not beheaded by relatives or an angry mob of peasants that is. You just have to make sure you build your iron intake levels up slowly or you can cause iron poisoning in your body which can destroy your liver." I was still running this revelation through my head.
"Are you by any chance related to royalty?" He continued with a smile and a hopefully look since this was a pet subject for him.
"Uuumm yes Charlemagne actually." I said since Harry had just recently had me perform this exact research anyway.
"Ah that is most excellent and explains the source of the anemia." He stood back behind his own shopping cart as if preparing to leave. "Don't worry my dear you will be fine. Anemia rarely kills. You just need to have faith everything will be all right." With that particular comment I turned and looked at Mr. Goldman to see if he were possibly Hisha in disguise, the raksasha said his race's natural ability was to appear as friends, but there was nothing magical that I sensed about him. The choice of words just happened to be coincidence for a Catholic school teacher before saying goodbye.
I took my basket and wandered away as well now seeking a relatively calm part of the store and not caring where it was as long as I had the quiet from distraction that I needed to think. I closed my eyes and focused on what this new bit of information would mean in light of the events I had witnessed in the Summer Court.
According to Mr. Goldman all these foods served at the private banquet were overloaded with iron. Secondly, iron just happened to be the very substance whose touch was lethal to the Fae. It therefore made sense that by ingesting these foods both the Lady of Summer and her Knight had indeed inadvertently poisoned themselves. They had also done so with a substance that would not appear as venom or a toxin to the magical spells of detection that Elaine and I had cast since spells to some level are affected by the experiences of the caster. Since iron was not a toxin to Elaine or I our spells would not have revealed it as one either.
While it was possible that all of these events were therefore just a huge mistake of choosing the wrong menu, Mr. Goldman had been correct that the odds of choosing only foods of high iron content stretched credibility. Someone had purposely selected these and therefore did so knowing what effect they would have on the diners.
Of course the Lady and Knight of Summer had both eaten the meal because to them the banquet just appeared to be regular everyday foods. It also explained why the satyr had not turned his nose up at the free meal either even though it was deadly to his kind. If my speculations were true why then did it kill the satyr nearly instantly after eating but leave the Lady and Knight only in a coma?
Could this merely be the result in the difference of their body masses? Such things were possible with toxins. I knew that counter to Hollywood myths a single rattlesnake bite for example rarely killed an adult human because most people were too big for the amount of venom a snake would inject to be killed; sickened yes, but not killed. But as far as body weight went the satyr was not all that smaller than the Summer Knight and probably more massive than the Lady of Summer who was rather frail looking. Body mass therefore was most likely not the answer I was looking for.
I guess it was possible that the increased levels of magic that imbued their bodies had somehow protected them more than the satyr but if that were true then it was unlikely that Harry and his army of assistant faeries had taken down the former of Lady of Summer Aurora if her natural magic worked as life insurance. It was because of the event of Aurora's death that had made way for Lily to assume that position. Otherwise she and Fix would have perhaps remained mortal and…
That had to be it! Both Lily, the new Lady of Summer, and Fix, the new Summer Knight had been half human at birth, born of the conception between one human parent and a being from the Nevernever. Both had grown up mostly here in the mortal world so had been exposed to foods, even those high in iron, since they were born. That meant over time they had probably built up some form of limited immunity to the iron in these foods. Maybe they had only made them nauseous in their past lives or given them a headache. But once they stepped up and accepted their new roles in the Summer Court they became completely of the Fae and therefore took on their immunities to an even greater extent.
These facts strongly suggested there was a very subtle intellect working behind the scenes who had understood and planned all of this. This obviously understood the pair's weakness, understood it better than the two of them obviously did, and used this knowledge against them. Unfortunately for the plotter though the meal filled with high iron content food had obviously been meant to kill the pair but their partial human history provided them some level of immunity to this assassination attempt. Instead of acting as a quick poison like cyanide the way the satyr suffered, the pair was instead suffering under a slower acting poison such as arsenic. Their bodies would fight off the iron it had consumed but without a proper treatment regiment to save them they would likely still die. And in such a case it was powers in the Summer Court, the Abagalesidhe in fact, who would gain power through their deaths. She scared me enough to consider her the mastermind behind all of this.
Next the plotter had also understood not only the likely response by both courts to prevent war would be to select emissaries to investigate these events. He or she or perhaps they had also either known this would be Harry and Elaine or had manipulated events to ensure mortal were selected so that the iron poisoning would not be identified and magic would instead be suspected. Of course the Winter token would support this conclusion as well.
The question though that I still needed an answer to was just who was behind this plot. It stood to reason that these events were part of the same plot to steal away Summer's most loyal and powerful forces and at the same time also ship firearms, or more accurately bang sticks, into the Nevernever for an upcoming war as well. Obviously two of these three actions served only to weaken Summer forces giving a huge advantage to Winter. The third would serve whoever was behind the order and receipt of these weapons. Add to that the Winter token found on the body of the cook and you have overwhelming evidence pointing directly at Mab and Maeve.
And in my experience with the Fae, limited as it was except for Harry's teachings, it almost seemed like too much evidence to convict them. The Fae like to work much more subtly behind the scenes then this. True the original poisoning plot was subtle but once that piece lay exposed the rest was so obvious as to leave little room for denial by Winter. Unless of course it was all planted evidence.
Maybe though I was letting my thoughts get ahead of the evidence. Maeve had said as far as she knew Queen Mab had not ordered this assassination attempt on the Lady and Knight of Summer. Maeve could not lie to me when questioned directly but the acknowledged limits of what she knew did not clear Winter Court from being behind this. Harry also suspected that Mab was perhaps going insane. If that were true perhaps it would make her plots less subtle than normal for her kind.
The outlier was the involvement of parties not aligned to either court. Master Rupert Highpelt for example was not part of the Winter Court. Dwarves lived in the lands of the Wyldfae and were not aligned to either side of this eternal conflict. And according to Harry the Wydfae powers such as those of the Erlking mostly ignored the eternal struggle between Summer and Winter and instead focused on their own personal interests; hunting being the Erlking's favorite pastime. Normally the Wyldfae took no interest in these events.
This conflict, however, seemed to have drawn the Erlking's interest for some reason. In fact it was even important enough for him to send his own emissary, something Harry had never mentioned the Wlydfae had ever done. And these series of attacks on Summer showed a level of sophisticated strategy worthy of a chess player.
I did not want to think that Lord Kline was actually involved in this plot, but objectively would he not make the perfect agent to keep Elaine and I off balance and looking for a source in the Summer or Winter Courts while it was actually the Erlking moving to attack behind the scenes? And with ancient hostilities keeping Summer and Winter's eyes focused so strongly at each other, perhaps neither would see the real enemy until they were both being attacked. That sounded very much the way a talented hunter stalked its prey.
The one continuing inconsistency in all of this was the Winter token. I had experienced with my own eyes that once given to an emissary of the courts the token stayed with them unerringly as mine had done by reappearing in my room. Such an item was also poison to the very land of Summer. Therefore the token and its former owner held the key to this mystery now. The question I needed answered though is who was this cook, what had he done for the Winter Court to earn their favor, and by whose command did he just happen to end up making dinner for the Lady and Knight of Summer? And only beings in the Nevernever had answers to these questions. I needed to find Elaine.
"Molly?" I turned my head to see Father Forthill pushing a cart of groceries through the store. He had a rather disapproving look on his face as he stared in my direction. "Is there a reason you are standing next to the rack of condoms with such a determined look upon your face?" He asked with a note of suspicion in his tone and a raised eyebrow.
I turned back and noted that the 'quiet place' I had found to think was the exactly where Father Forthill had described. I suddenly felt my cheeks burning in the heaviest blush I had worn in years…okay maybe hours. "I wasn't… I mean I was only thinking… I didn't…" I stumbled trying to find the words and noting that other shoppers in the store were now all coming to a stop to take in the sight of a well-known perky young local lady being questioned by her priest about objects frowned upon both by the Pope and Charity Carpenter. Oh yeah this was going to get back to my mom…
"Molly I think we need to talk." Father Forthill said in his…well... fatherly way. "I expect to see you at Confession on Sunday."
I started to argue or to explain my real reason for standing here but I realized the actual damage was done. "Yes Father." I said meekly as my neighbors continued to stand around listening to our exchange while pretending to be very interested in diaper rash treatments, foot fungus cures, and sunburn salves with two feet of snow on the ground outside and then quietly began to snicker at my expense. Why do these things happen to me?
Grocery shopping accomplished I headed to the hospital to relieve my mother and found her smiling at me; obviously news of the condom incident had yet to reach her ears. I figured I might as well enjoy the moment since my good fortune would likely only last a few hours longer. Juicy gossip in my neighborhood moves almost at the speed of light.
"They are letting your father go home tonight." My mother was beaming at the news. "He will need a wheelchair for a few weeks so we will be staying in the guest room downstairs but at least he will be back with the people who love him so he can do some real healing."
I thought on how my younger siblings would likely want to crawl all over my father and debated just how much healing he would actually be doing, but the way he was smiling and holding my mom's hand I knew that home was where he needed to be. And the best doctors and nurses could not compare with my mom for either pampering him back to health or ensuring my father took his medicine and did all the required exercises the hospital prescribed.
"That is great!" I said with no hesitation. "What do you need me to do?" I asked seeing that the look my mother was currently wearing said she wanted to spend as little remaining time within these antiseptic walls as possible.
"Actually you are free to do whatever you want." My dad said before my mother could produce her ever present backup list of tasks. "The hospital had a wheelchair carrier that had been donated for those in need and two of the orderlies are installing it now on our van. Between that and my crutches, plus of course the love and support of your mother, I think we have everything covered at the present. Why don't you take a night off for yourself?" He said with a conspiratorial wink.
The difference between what my dad said and an actual lie is that he had not said 'why don't you finally take a night off for yourself?' That would have meant I had spent all my nights here which he had prevented me from doing. Thankfully she was so giddy about his impending release that she was barely even listening to him. I've come to suspect that this may be a key to a successful marriage.
In the end I did wait around and help push his wheelchair out to the van and between the three of us and two male orderlies we got him and the chair properly situated with the van. I gave my dad a hug while my mom got behind the wheel and then I watched them drive away.
The good news is that because of this I had time to catch an actual meal at a restaurant for once. Okay it was only Denny's but still it beat fast food. I still got over to Harry's place before five and found I was the first to arrive. I did find the promised faerie clothing in a package on his step and while I had been less than happy with its embarrassing loss this morning, I figured the added protection it brought would be worth the chance of a repeat of these events.
The next thing I did was gather together another bag of magical supplies since I had dropped mine somewhere during the battle with the last spider and unlike the Winter token it had not been magically imbued to follow me home. I did add two extra crystals to my collection so I would not repeat this error from yesterday if they were for some reason required.
No dress and armed I looked at the clock and noted it was not quite six and had to decide what to do for the next hour until the others arrived. Normally I'd have grabbed one of Harry's paperbacks and sat down to read but I could not calm down enough to concentrate and get into the book. I took Mouse for his walk and when I came back I noted that Harry's answering machine had a message from Butters for either Harry or me depending upon who heard it first. I of course had to look up the number to the medical examiner's office since Harry's phone did not have caller ID but once I dialed it the other end was answered after just one ring.
"This is Molly Carpenter returning a call from Medical Examiner Butters." I said when I heard the standard greeting.
"GIRLFRIEND!" I immediately recognized Crystal's husky but obviously happy voice.
"Hi Crystal." I said with a smile. "How are you doing?"
"Exhausted, sore, and gaining an appreciation for the art of polka if you know what I mean." She said with a satisfied laugh that nearly had me choking and shuddering all at once. You know how I have mentioned that both Wizard Sight and soulgazes leave the viewer with images they will never be able to forget? I had the feeling that if I allowed myself to picture Butters and Crystal together like she was indicating that this would also be an image that would haunt me for the rest of my life.
"Uuummm… yeah, speaking of he left a message that I was to call." I wanted to get away from this subject as fast as possible.
"Sure thing Molly I'll call him down here." She said. "I so owe you a huge favor girlfriend." Don't picture it Molly…whatever you do…don't you dare picture it!
It took a few minutes and then I heard Butters arguing with Crystal to give him the phone and her negotiating for a kiss. It was not a real argument but more of a plea followed up by a threat that if she did not stop he would be forced to punish her. I could have sworn she giggled at this and said she hoped so because she had been bad. This created a dilemma for me as I could not put the phone down to avoid hearing anything else but really the whole thing was just getting too much. Thankfully she relented and handed him the phone.
"Molly?" Butters asked and the exhaustion in his voice was even more pronounced than it had been in hers. I then heard the distinctive sound of what could only be a slap of a hand on a rather fleshy part of the body followed immediately by his command for her to behave.
"Ummm…yeah…you called?" I asked trying to ignore what I was hearing. Focus on the words only Molly I thought to myself.
"Yes it's about that exsanguinations case we discussed earlier this week." Butters explained but I had suspected as much since he had asked for me or Harry.
"Oh did you figure out who the victim was yet?" I hoped that maybe with an identity it might give me some sort of clue as to why this particular person had been a victim. And if I knew why then perhaps I could figure out just what was doing the killing. It was a long shot since other bodies had been stacking up, but sometimes long shots are the only shots.
"In fact we did." He said with more than a little pride. "I injected the victim's right hand with a medical epoxy gelatin and filled it to the rough consistency of actual flesh thereby…" The image of pumping up the skin of a dead body made me wish I had not stopped at Denny's afterall.
"Skip the details I just ate." I said.
"Oh sorry, pride in the job I guess." He laughed. "Anyway I was able to lift prints and it turns out the victim was none other than Jimmy Marteen the figure skater."
"The one the entire Chicago Police Department was looking for?" Not that there could be two but it was worth confirming none the less.
"Yep that's the one." He confirmed. "They have released the news of his death only to his agent and family."
"But what about how he was killed?" I said. "Surely hose close to him want to know what killed him."
"Yep." He agreed. "But the bosses downtown decided that automobile accident looked much better on the medical report than sucked dry by some unknown creature. Officially the case file says he suffered 'massive internal organ damage and blood loss consistent in scope with a high speed traffic accident.' As you can see the official paperwork does not actually lie and say he was in a car accident, only that the total damage was consistent with this type of event."
"Then you are off the hook for explaining it?" I asked. "If they have a different ME working the case then you should be safe right?"
"For that particular case yes you are correct." Butters agreed but had a delay in his voice. "Unfortunately the police just dropped four more identical bodies off here tonight so I was hoping you might have determined what it was that has been killing people."
"No." I said. "I'm sorry but none of Harry's books seem to have a clue. You said there were four new ones now?" I asked.
"Yep, they brought them in an hour ago."
"Do you have any idea where they found them?" I asked thinking that maybe someone had come across the corpses we had found in Undertown last night.
"They were found at the Chicago Zoo this morning." Butters answered. "They were lying in the arctic habitat area. The zoo keepers noticed that the penguins and the sea lions were avoiding one area and assumed one of the animals had died. Instead they found these four bodies."
That location was odd to me but worse still were his next revelations. "The odd thing was all four were dressed in exactly the same fashion."
"In weather like this Butters or at the arctic habitat that is hardly surprising." I reasoned based upon his words. "I assume they were all in parkas or snowmobile suits?"
"No." He said. "That was the odd thing. All four were only wearing sandals and red speedos."