Chapter 12 Declan #2
“I’ll let you do what you need to do,” she said, backing away to the wall by the door.
“This won’t take long,” I said. “The office isn’t very big.”
“Yeah,” she muttered, wiping at her eyes.
It made me sad to see her like this. In the short time I’d known her, Veronica had been more vibrant and engaged. Since getting to the academy, she’d become more subdued and sad. Not surprising given all that had happened here, but it still didn’t make me feel good about it.
Leaving her in her mourning, and getting into a more investigative frame of mind, I went about inspecting the room.
Obviously, the murder weapon was gone. Unfortunate, but to be expected.
Instead of checking that, I knelt to look at the bloodstain.
There was no spatter anywhere else in the room that I could see, which meant there hadn’t been any sort of struggle.
Balthazar had been caught totally unaware, and most likely by someone he knew.
The initial strike had to have been savage and quick enough that he’d have been in too much pain to cast a spell.
The guy might have been dead before he hit the ground if the blade struck his heart.
The small size of the blood puddle gave credence to that theory.
If he’d died fast, the heart wouldn’t have had time to pump blood out.
As I moved about the room, Veronica stood near the center and sniffed the air.
“I’m not noticing any specific scents,” she said. “Most are faint and jumbled. He was always having meetings and counseling sessions in here.” She sighed in frustration. “It basically smells like everyone in the school all at once. Whoever did it might have used a scent blocker.”
“It’s okay,” I said, giving her a reassuring smile. “It was a good idea to try.”
I moved to the desk, hoping there might be something more here than there was in his classroom. The first few drawers turned up nothing, other than the fact that Balthazar had an unhealthy obsession with gummy bears. The guy had four different bags throughout the desk.
The final drawer, the largest, was at the bottom left of the desk.
Reaching down, I grasped the handle and slid it out, freezing the moment it was open.
I stared down in surprise at what greeted me.
Rather than an open drawer filled with pens, paper, and boxes of paper clips, I found a locked lid with a combination dial on top.
“The fuck?”
“What did you find?” Veronica said, coming to join me.
“He’s got some kind of lockbox built into the drawer,” I said, then went about trying to see how strong it was.
The entire compartment appeared to be made from metal rather than wood.
Touching the top, I sensed a strange static-like charge that told me an enchantment was at work.
I doubted I could get into this thing even with a sledgehammer or cutting torch if that was the case.
Veronica stared down at the dial while I ran my fingers across the seams of the drawer, looking for any weakness to exploit.
“Can you try to open it with magic?” I said.
She licked her lips, a crease between her eyes.
“Maybe, but let me try something first.”
To my surprise, instead of casting some sort of spell, she placed her fingers against the dial and began spinning it back and forth, pausing at certain numbers, then spinning the opposite way, until the lid clicked as it unlocked.
“What the hell?” I turned to look at her, my mouth falling open. “Balthazar gave you the code?”
She shook her head and smiled sadly. “I tried Wendy’s birthdate as the code.” She shrugged. “It worked.”
The man had loved his niece so much that he’d used her birthday as a code for something he considered important. I would never meet the guy, but it seemed like he’d probably been decent and good. It pissed me off even more that someone had butchered him right here in his own home.
Throwing the bitter thoughts aside, I lifted the lid and peered inside. Instead of a treasure trove of items, all that was inside was a leatherbound notebook. The cover sported the same inverted hammer sigil I’d found on the tracker in Veronica’s shirt.
I flipped it open. The pages were lined like a journal, and each one had some scribbled notes on every page. Pausing, I read from a random page near the center:
December 9th: One dozen dove’s eggs, sacrificed via fire for luck.
December 29th: The skin of one deer, sacrificed via fire for confidence.
January 12th: Blood of a vole, racoon, and possum, sacrificed via water for sleep and rest.
February 19th: One pound of beef, sacrificed via earth as a gift with no blessings required.
My frown deepened as I flipped through the pages, going all the way to the front. Each page was the same. Sacrifices. Though it never said to who.
“What’s wrong?” Veronica asked, seeing my expression.
“I thought this Balthazar guy was a sorcerer?”
“He is.”
“No way,” I said, pointing at the page I’d ended on.
“This is a record of sacrifices. As in offerings. The only reason a magic user would be doing this is to appease a deity. Balthazar was a warlock. He made a pact with some divine creature for his powers, and continued to offer sacrifices to them to maintain it.”
“No,” she said, shaking her head and yanking the book from my hands.
“That can’t be right.” She skimmed the pages, flipping them with so much ferocity that I thought she might tear one.
“He taught us about warlocks. He hated them, said they took the easy way toward power rather than working on it the way a sorcerer should.”
“Projection,” I said, leaning back in the chair. “Usually the ones who are most vocal about hating something are the same ones all that hate should probably apply to. That is a ledger to his patron god. I’ve never seen one in person, but that is exactly what I’ve heard they look like.”
“I don’t…” She shook her head, still flipping through pages. “This makes no sense.”
“Look, we’ve been here too long as it is. We need to get back before someone finds us. Smash that totem and we can get back to The Shadow Streets. Once we’re safe, we can do more with that ledger. Sound good?”
She nodded reluctantly and stuffed the journal into her bag, then reached into her pocket to bring out the totem. As she pulled her hand out, the pair of lensless glasses that had belonged to Wendy came tumbling out to the floor.
“Shit.”
The moment she went to grab them, the glasses spun and shot off to the right of their own accord.
“The fuck?” I hissed. “Did you do that?”
Veronica shook her head. “No. That wasn’t magic from me.” She went to grab the glasses again, but this time they shot farther away, skittering along the floor toward the office door.
“Damn it,” she said as she hurried after them.
My eyes shot from her, to the glasses, to the door, and I had a sudden realization of what was about to happen.
“Wait,” I said, as the glasses slipped under the lower gap in the door into the hall outside. “Do not go after those.”
Ignoring me, Veronica cracked the door open and glanced around outside. “They’re right there,” she said. “No one’s around. I’m gonna grab them.”
“Does the term too stupid to live ring any fucking bells with you?” I said.
Once more disregarding my words, Veronica slipped into the hall. Sighing, I hurried after her.
“Get your ass back here,” I muttered under my breath, stepping into the hall.
She looked ridiculous scampering along the floor, trying to grab the glasses as they slid and skidded down the hallway.
“I’ve almost got them,” she whispered, lunging to grab them, but fell on her stomach when the glasses shot away again.
Panic set in as I tried to chase her down.
We were making too much noise. Someone would come check if we weren’t careful.
Plus, whatever was moving the glasses was most likely magical.
For all I knew, they were leading us to our fucking doom.
I felt like a fish chasing down a worm on a hook, unaware that it was the last meal I’d ever have.
Veronica chased the glasses, and I chased her, though my own speed was hindered by stopping every few feet to listen for voices or footsteps. By the time I actually caught up to her, we were back at Wendy’s room.
The glasses shot under the door and into the girl’s room.
“Why the fuck am I not surprised,” I growled, joining Veronica at the door.
“No idea. I’m pretty damn surprised.”
Pulling my pistol out, I slowly opened the door. Stepping in, I swept the gun around the room, eyes darting to each shadow, inspecting every corner for someone who might have slipped into this room while we’d been gone.
Instead of finding a shadowy magic user huddled in the corner waving their hands maliciously to weave spells, I found something more…confusing.
On the bed, a medium-sized stuffed unicorn, with a rainbow-colored mane, stared back at me, Wendy’s glasses perched on its nose.
“What the hell is going on?” I mumbled, stepping in, allowing Veronica to join me.
At the sound of my voice, the stuffed toy’s head turned toward us slowly, until its eyes locked on us.
“I don’t like this,” I said.
“That’s…weird,” she said.
The unicorn sat forward, its face tearing into a smile, popping the seams.
“Oh, good,” it said. “I thought that was you.”
“That’s it,” I said, raising the gun. “I’m shooting this fucker.”
“Stop!” Veronica shouted, pushing my gun arm aside.
She took a halting step toward the bed and the unicorn. I reached out to stop her, but she swatted my hand away.
“Wendy?”
I snapped my eyes from Veronica, to the unicorn, to Veronica, and then back once more.
“You’ve got to be shitting me,” I snarled.
“Who’s the old guy?” the unicorn said, turning its gleaming plastic eyes toward me.
I wanted to shout that forty-one wasn’t old, but I was too confused by a stuffed animal speaking in a little girl’s voice to do more than glare at the thing.