Chapter 9
Please Keep It Down
“Hurry the fuck up,” Des said, sweat streaming down her face.
It was a hideously sunny day, and while Mal and Hala had hoped to take their time enjoying the warmth, Des had other plans.
They’d set out in search of assistance. It had been two days since Kosh’s death and the leads had been few and far between.
Walters had sent people through every inch of the new victims’ lives but there was no discernible link between them—other than them all being members of the Order.
There was also no apparent link to any of the previous victims, either.
Had a detective not in the Order stumbled upon them, they would be forced to assume the murders were completely random.
The only thing they knew for certain was that it was the same person doing the attacks.
Walters had verified that personally with the use of his meta magic, something he had tried to explain to Mal, almost all of which had soared far above Mal’s brow.
Meta magic was the magic of magic. Make your friends’ spells stronger, or temporarily take away your enemies’ powers altogether.
It had always seemed an odd choice of vocation to Mal.
Why bother with other people’s magic? Get your own.
Mal had said as much, albeit politer, to Walters, who immediately relieved Mal of this notion.
Mal bore witness as Walters rendered all his powers null and void—more than that, Walters could tell when, what, and how he was trying to use them.
It still disturbed him to think about, like he had peered into Mal’s soul and seen his magic in a way Mal couldn’t.
Either way, Walters had identified the use of the same lightning magic at each scene.
Unfortunately, this was something the papers had now gotten ahold of.
Every headline in Dunwich was about the killings, each taking turns to try to coin the serial killer’s name.
The Lightning Killer, the Deadly Bolt, Jack the Zapper, all awful.
Mal’s favorite so far was “the Hole Punch,” but apparently he was alone in that opinion.
Mal dreaded how the papers would react if they found out it was an old man who looked like Merlin.
It was bad enough the police themselves had come up with the nickname “the Merlin Killer.”
As no obvious link had been found and because no amount of searching for one had yielded any results, Des decided to visit a regular consultant of hers.
This decision was also made for Mal as Des was still adjusting to her new lifestyle, and quote: “You turned me into a fucking vampire, now you have to help me catch this cunt.” She was not handling the transition well, and Mal couldn’t really blame her.
Why Hala had also come along was completely beyond him.
Apparently, since they’d interviewed Taran, she’d been blowing up Des’s phone.
For some reason she was desperate to help.
They all met up in Flamel Park and made for a discreet building on a nearby street.
When Mal googled the building, there was a strange lack of information about what went on inside.
(Yeah, that’s right, there’s a magical version of Google Maps that has information about magical cities.
This isn’t your mum’s hidden fantasy world.
The servers are kept within the cities and are accessed through a URL header that is not “wwwdot.” I’d tell you, but then you’d try it and I’d get into a lot of trouble.
But you can always be sure, where there’s profit to be found, major corporations aren’t far behind.
There was supposed to be a joke here about moon men and Nestlé but my lawyer advised me against getting sued into bankruptcy.)
Mal wore his usual jeans but had forgone a hoodie for the weather, while Des was in her civvies, which covered practically every inch of her skin.
Mal was surprised she wasn’t wearing gloves.
She’d also brought a flat cap which made her look quite suspicious, but did the trick of shielding most of her face from the sun.
Hala was in a getup Mal would describe as “trendy cozy”; as Mal was only familiar with the latter half of that phrase, he assumed it was fashionable because she was wearing it.
She wore comfortable baggy-looking trousers and had joined Mal in a T-shirt, although hers fit much better.
“Come on, it’s in here,” Des said, relieved to be out of the park and in the shade of their destination.
It was a tall but thin Tudor building squashed between two contemporary stone mid-rises.
It had a black-and-white exterior and a pointed roof.
It looked as if the two buildings either side had been bullying it for millennia and now it had resigned itself to its cramped fate.
“What exactly is this place?” Mal said, as they headed for the entrance. The building was so thin, their combined widths rivaled the building’s girth.
“It’s a library,” Des said, darting inside.
Mal followed with Hala in tow. The second Des got inside, she took off several layers and stuffed them into a bag.
They were immediately met by several uniformed security guards who glared at them in a manner too serious for Mal’s liking.
Des waved her credentials at them and the guards held their positions, though their expressions remained the same.
Mal wondered what kind of person goes to a library on a Sunday, especially one with this much security.
The inside was very quaint: wooden beams on the ceiling, hardwood on the floors, with white and stone for the walls.
Mal couldn’t see any books though. They followed Des past the guards and down several flights of steps: here the books lay hidden.
Not a grand library like the Order had, but strange passages and hidden nooks, all covered in ancient-looking leather-bound tomes.
“Tomes” being what a book gets promoted to after surviving several centuries and being as thick as your head.
After several passageways and looping turns, they arrived at a kind of study hall.
More than a dozen studious denizens sat on perfectly arranged wooden desks inspecting tomes and scrolls.
“Scrolls” being what papers get promoted to after surviving a thousand years and being rolled a very specific way.
None of the denizens looked up to greet the newcomers; they were all far too invested in their study.
Des, however, closely inspected each one.
“I can never ever find you,” Des said to herself.
Mal thought she might finally have snapped.
“Hala, I’m struggling here, tell me which one doesn’t belong.
” Hala seemed equally as concerned for Des’s sanity but obliged.
Hala stared at each person in turn; Mal assumed she was reading their feelings or minds or whatever it was Hala did with her psychomancy.
Mal was evidently still upset with what she’d said about him when she’d read him last, but he was also curious as to how it worked, which prompted him to ask:
“What do you see?” As if she were staring into a crystal ball.
“Well, there’s a bunch of frustration, actually the more we talk, the more frustrated they seem.
” A denizen shushed her as she spoke. Hala dropped to a whisper.
“A standard amount of horniness, except for those two who I think might be about to explode.” She gestured to two scholars in the back who’d been sitting next to each other, occasionally exchanging glimpses.
“There is something a little strange though. Now Des has a big secret.” Des swung around, her eyes wide with panic.
“And you know it,” Hala said, staring at Mal.
“What the fuck?” Des said, with such volume everyone in the room began staring at her.
“Are you two …?” Hala paused and made a gesture with her hands. (I’m sure you can guess which one.) “Well, you both reacted very weirdly to that, so that’s probably not it. Tell me! Please …”
“Oh my god, nooo. It’s a secret for a reason,” Des said. She’d gone even paler than before, while Mal just pretended he hadn’t heard anything and prayed Hala would move on, though he knew she wouldn’t.
“You have to stop doing this,” Mal said. “Focus on, y’know, finding whoever.”
“Not until you tell me,” Hala said. Their bickering continued to escalate, with their whispers getting louder and louder with each second.
Mal watched as an elderly lady in the middle of the room got up and slowly made her way to them.
The old woman looked like your textbook strict librarian: hair pulled back a painful distance, glasses on a little strap to stop them falling, and a woolen vest over her shirt.
Mal knew they were all in for the bollocking of a lifetime.
They would have deserved it, too, so flagrant in their rule-breaking were they.
Their bickering died as the old woman got to them, and they all whispered a useless apology.
The old woman gestured with two fingers for them to follow, and follow they did.
She walked them around a corner and away into a far nook of the library where none would ever find their bodies—or hear them be yelled at, more likely.
Des, having been almost apoplectic a moment ago, was now smiling.
Now Mal was really worried for her sanity.
When they were finally out of earshot of the study hall, the old woman rounded on them with surprising speed.
“Des, why have you brought these bickering butts to my library?”
Mal was taken aback. He couldn’t remember the last time someone had called him a butt, let alone an old woman. Des smiled harder.
“I like her. Who are you this time?” Des said, gesturing to the old woman.
“I’m pissed off. You can’t just barge in here and make a fuss. You’ll get me kicked out.” Mal resisted the urge to say, “Hi pissed off, I’m Mal.”