You would think that the biggest problem with killing someone is body disposal. Not so. Unless you’re connected to the person you kill somehow — you know them, or have an obvious motive — you can pretty much leave the corpse lay. Someone else will inevitably come along and clean it up for you. Handy, that. On the occasions when you do know the person you’ve just offed . . . well, that’s what the Detroit River is for, right?
     The biggest problem is actually cleaning up the kill site, making sure you don’t leave any of yourself behind for the cops to find. Damn forensics being what they are these days, you don’t want to leave something like hair or blood or skin behind. Your average person doesn’t have a good way to clean up that kind of evidence – tough to find every little cell you drop, particularly during those first hectic moments after slaughtering someone. Fortunately, I’m not your average person, and I wouldn’t be much of a mage if I couldn’t erase tells like that.
     I keep a voodoo doll in the glove compartment for just that reason. This is a handy little fetish, the kind I don’t advertise much. I mean, you don’t exactly want “Murder Scene Clean-Up Fetishes” embossed right on your business cards. Doesn’t leave a lot of room for plausible deniability later on.
     I sat in my car, doors closed and windows rolled up, and got the small cloth doll out of the glovebox. It was made out of white cotton, an old sock, if I remembered right, and it was a human-shaped lump, like a stuffed gingerbread man. It had a face drawn on, in black Sharpie ink, nothing artistic, barely more than a smiley face. Several strands of my long red hair were stitched into its head, and inside, wrapped up in the cotton batting that filled it, were shreds of my skin and bits of my nails. I spat on it, poked my finger with my athame, and smeared blood into the thin fabric. I felt the little fetish flicker with energy. Usually you’d use a voodoo doll to hurt other people. This is the same spell, altered some to abjure any bits of myself that I leave behind.
     It’s basic thaumaturgy, elementary sympathetic magic. Like calls to like, as above, so below, all that jazz. I set the fetish on fire with my lighter, and it danced with blue flicks of flame, devouring the doll in seconds. I glanced in my rear view mirror, and watched a few flicks of the same blue flame lick around the door of the dead men’s car, where I had stood, leaned.
     Mages have other reasons for not wanting to leave bits of themselves around. Don’t want some magically talented person wandering by and scrying out the killer because I left a hair on the scene. Mages have other problems with a magical kill, too. Using magic sends a ripple through the fabric of reality that another mage might notice. That’s why I activated the fetish inside the confines of my car, under my personal wards. Really, using the fetish is like dropping a pin during a rock concert, but it never hurts to be careful, and this way, the residue of the fetish leaves with me, instead of hanging around the scene. Not much point in using my shadow to do my killing if I’m going to leave regular magic hanging around, anyway.
     
     The shadow doesn’t send a ripple, or leave a residue for anyone to track, because she’s completely outside reality. I don’t like to abuse that too much, though. It’ll get people wondering if they find too many bodies that match her patterns. It’ll get people looking for something that might kill that way, and we don’t want that.
     I wiped my face and hands clean with some wetnaps, also kept in the glove compartment, and departed the scene of the crime, whistling as I drove. Feeding the shadow always puts me in a better mood. It shuts up her incessant bitching and moaning about being hungry, for awhile, and it’s nice to have a little peace and quiet in my own head.
     It was shaping up to be quite the busy morning, and I still had a little more clean-up to do, so I hit a Starbucks. The blood splatter on my clothes wasn’t too bad, and I was wearing dark colors that mostly hid the mess, anyway. I took a little plastic bottle of sage oil into the Starbucks rest room despite that, and, after locking myself in a stall, ran the oil over my clothes, face, hands, and hair. I didn’t need to use a lot, so I didn’t smell too much like a Thanksgiving turkey. Sage is a purifying agent. Cuts the link between the owner and the blood, so some smart-ass can’t use that to track back to me, either. After transferring the number to my cell phone, I washed my arm and wiped that with oil, too.
     I get a little practice at this sort of thing.
     Back out front, I stood in line until I could get a big cup of coffee. I threw some cream and sugar in it. I usually take my coffee black, but Starbucks needs all the help it can get. I sat at a little cafe table with my coffee, rubbing my eyes and sipping coffee, trying to plan out my next move.
     I could just call this Yuri guy, but he might be a mage. Until I knew for sure, and knew what kind of mage I was dealing with, I didn’t want to go off half-cocked and get myself in deeper trouble. Technomancers are still pretty rare, but I didn’t want to find out I was wrong when he sent a lightning bolt through my cellphone and fried my head. Still, I had a name, and that could be useful.
     I still had that glyph to track down, too. I hadn’t got very far into my notes, either, but I was doubting that was going to turn up anything useful. I have a good memory. If I’d ever seen the glyph before, I’d remember it, which meant that it was new. To me, anyway. I confess to a little greed in this respect. It’s not often I run across a new glyph – not that I know so many, just that you don’t see them too often.
     My phone beeped, so I pulled it out and looked at the caller ID. “Shit.” I said softly. Tyrell. I answered it. “Hi.”
     “Morning. Are you up?”
     “Yeah.”
     “Can you meet me somewhere?”
     I suppressed a sigh. “If it’s about that thing last night, I haven’t found anything yet. I’m gonna need a couple of days.”
     “Would it help any to get a second look?”
     I stilled for a long moment, the steamy, coffee-scented heat of the shop coating my skin, filling my nose, listening to the busy sound of the place, voices, espresso machines, clatters and rattles. “There’s another one?” I glanced around. The shop was crowded, full of soccer moms who’d just taken their kids to school, and businessmen snagging coffee before work. No one seemed to be paying any attention to me.
     “Yes.”
     I considered all the good cuss words I knew. None of them seemed foul enough for the situation, and that’s saying something. I knew some doozies. The deputy mayor had died, what, early yesterday? No more than the day before, judging by the state of the body. That wasn’t much time between kills.
     “Where at?” I asked, scanning the crowd, then glancing at myself. In the bright sunlight, I got a better idea of the mess I’d made, and it still wasn’t too bad. It would pass for spilled coffee.
     He rattled off an address in Grosse Pointe. Crap – all the way back across town from here. “I’ll be there, but I’m all the way across town. What am I looking for?”
     “It’s a big house, three story, white and green, three-car garage, tall hedges out front, right on the corner.”
     I repeated it back. “I’ll get there quick as I can. Want a coffee? I’m at Starbucks.”
     He sounded surprised that I’d offer. “Sure. Can you grab me a mocha latte?”
     Perfect. “Big one?”
     “Yeah, venti, whatever they call it.”
     “No problem. See you in a bit.”
     I went up to the counter, which was clearing some, got my coffee refilled, and then left. I used the same tricks to hustle to Grosse Pointe that I’d used to make it most of the way to Farmington Hills, and located the address pretty easily. I drove up the long, winding drive, feeling a ripple of magic roll over me as I did. I parked at the head of the drive, behind two other cars, and got out, looking back. There was a hell of a powerful enchantment across the property, and I recognized the work. Brianne was here, too.
     I turned back to survey the enormous house. I think when they get this big, they start calling them “mansions”. It did have three stories, and it was a lovely shade of cream with plenty of forest green trim, and a large front entrance with a roofed porch and an expensive front door with frosted glass. The neatly manicured lawn leading up to the entrance had gone brown and crispy. Despite many naked maple trees on the property, there wasn’t a leaf to be seen. Someone around here took a lot of pride in their lawn.
     The front door opened, and Tyrell waved at me. I flicked my half-finished cigarette away and headed up, hands in my pockets. My nerves were jumping, some, dancing in trills up and down my spine. This wasn’t the first time I’d done Tyrell a favor, and I doubted it would be the last – he was a powerful man in Detroit, and it paid to stay on his good side. I didn’t like dealing with him, though. He looked at me too hard, sometimes, like he was trying to figure my secrets out. I don’t need Praetorians figuring out my secrets.
     He met me at the door. He was shorter than me, so I had to look down at him a bit, but I didn’t let his size fool me. He was compact, but muscular, skin the color of milk chocolate, black hair and goatee trimmed up tight, and deep brown eyes. He was wearing black slacks, and a button-up burgundy shirt, very sharp against his skin color, very professional-looking. You’d hardly think he could destroy most of a city block just by looking at it hard.
     “Sorry.” I said, gesturing at myself. “Spilled your coffee.”
     “Shit. Too bad.” It was odd to hear that velvety voice come out of a guy his size. He motioned me in, glancing around outside before closing the door behind us.
     We were standing in a gorgeous entry hall, dominated by wide, sweeping stairs that led up to the second floor, and around up to a third. There was a massive crystal chandelier hanging from the high ceiling, and the floors looked like expensive tile, slate, maybe. Everywhere I looked, there were tasteful hints of class and money, polished hall tables made of golden wood, bedecked in shiny knick-knacks, paintings in ornate frames, the works. Whoever lived here was extremely comfortable, financially.
     “What’s with the magic out front?” I asked, keeping my voice down, in case there were commoners around to hear.
     “Brianne spelled the place, so no one would see the cars here.” He didn’t bother keeping his voice down, so I took that to mean we were alone.
     “Got another body, or just the glyph?”
     “There’s a body.” He sighed, a heavy, tired sound, and now I noticed the lines of weariness on his face. His eyes were puffy. He hadn’t slept any more than I had. “Got a strong stomach?”
     “Strong enough, I guess. I can manage not to barf on the evidence.” I shrugged, making my voice sound sincere, concerned, and trying to make my face match. I doubted very much there was anything around here nastier than I could handle, but Tyrell didn’t need to know that.
     “Come on, then. It’s upstairs.” He led me up the staircase and I followed along, hands in my jacket pockets. The first landing emptied out onto the second floor, which looked to be full of bedrooms and opulence. There was a huge family room – I assumed, because of the home theater and flat screen plasma TV dominating the far end. It adjoined to a second room, boasting a bar and a pool table.
     “Must be nice.” I said with a low, impressed whistle. I peeked over the railing, up at the chandelier, around at the walls and paintings. There was a gorgeous landscape directly in front of me, and it looked familiar, too. I was betting it wasn’t just a print, either.
     “Don’t you know who lived here?” Tyrell asked.
     I lifted my eyebrows. “Should I?”
     “Read the paper, much?”
     I shrugged.
     “Prissa Franks lived here.” He watched me.
     I shook my head, clueless, noting the past tense.
     “Owned the Pandora’s Box, in Greek Town?”
     The name didn’t ring any bells, but I sure knew the Pandora’s Box. It had opened last year, and it was the hottest place to go at the moment. I wasn’t much for the club scene, myself, but I knew about it because it was giving Gianna’s clubs a run for their money, and I’d heard her complaining. Although, come to think of it . . .
     “Wait, wasn’t there a scandal last year? Something to do with the liquor license?”
     “Yeah. Rumor had she bought the license illegally, and the mayor’s office was involved.” Tyrell stopped, turned, looking back at me.
     “Huh.” And now she and the deputy mayor were dead. How very strange.
     “Yeah.” He was eying me, intent. A little too intent. I tried hard to look coffee-covered and innocent. I must have nailed the look, because he turned, leading me down the hall to an enormous master suite. It had its own TV room and a bathroom bigger than my bedroom. Hell, the TV room was bigger than my living room.
     I wandered through the tastefully tan and ivory TV room, peeked in at the huge bathroom, full of marble and gold accents. You could go for a swim in the partially sunken tub. Tyrell stepped into the bedroom. I followed in after him and glanced around, and then turned and stepped back out.
     I considered my monthly bills while I stalled, pretending at upset. Most anyone would be upset to see the mess in that room. It would seem off if I weren’t. Let’s see, I’d paid the mortgage, and my cell phone for sure. The power bill was ready, but I wasn’t sure if I’d actually sent it. Come to think of it, I really should set all that crap up to pay online. It would be a lot easier than trying to remember to run to the post office all the time.
     From behind me, Tyrell said, “Pretty rough, huh?” He sounded amused.
     I made my voice suitably weak-sounding. “Yeah. Wow.”
     “Gonna manage?”
     “Yeah. Yeah, give me a minute.” Nothing here but us poor, weak-stomached amateurs. I sure have never seen anything that bad, that’s right. I took a deep breath, let it out, turned back around to the room, trying to look wide-eyed and shaken. “Wasn’t like this with the deputy mayor.” I pointed out.
     Devon Brant had been a nice, tidy corpse. Prissa Franks wasn’t. The room had been a pleasant, neutral thing, more tan and ivory, with lots of sapphire blue accents. With all the blood tossed around, the blue looked garish, now. There was a godawful stink, too, decaying meat, blood, intestinal reek. It filled the place up, leaving no room for any other smell.
     The first thing I realized was that Prissa had hatched. The second was the the glyph was painted in blood on the ceiling, over the bed. I glanced at the bed. The majority of Prissa’s remains occupied the large king bed, although some had fallen to the sides. The covers were soaked in blood.
     “She’s the only corpse?” I glanced at Tyrell, and followed his gaze across to Brianne, standing by the window. She was shorter than me, too, most women are, but she was a willowy thing, maybe a buck-ten soaking wet, skin white, hair black, long, and curly. She was wearing a long, flowing black skirt, which she had knotted up by her knees so it wouldn’t drag in the mess, and a bright blue shell top. Brianne is beautiful by anyone’s definition. She makes me feel all gangly and frumpy. She’s also one of the most powerful enchantresses in the city.
     At the moment, she was giving me a hard glare. She had the bluest eyes I’ve ever seen, blue enough that I was tempted to think they were colored contacts or some small vanity magic, and they were concentrated on me, sharp, annoyed. Brianne is not my friend.
     “I checked. That’s it.” Her perfect cupid’s bow mouth was set in a line of annoyance as she looked me over.
     I looked to the bed again. The corpse was a hump of meat, such a ruin that it took a moment for the eye to recognize it as something human. After a minute of study, I saw that Prissa had died on her back, and that those were her feet dangling off the edge of the bed, her arms tossed spread-eagle across the bed. She was split open from groin to throat, down both legs, and both arms, skin and meat tossed open as though something had burst out from inside. I could see her rips, sticking up and gleaming, flaps of flesh and the sagging blobs of her breasts sloughed off to the sides of her chest. Shreds of the pant suit she’d been wearing stuck to her cocoa-colored skin, and everything was drenched in blood and filth.
     “Looks like she exploded.” I said.
     “That’s what we thought.” Brianne’s voice was cool, words clipped, precise.
     Gore spread across the bed, long bloody ropes of intestines, chunks of meat that were probably organs. Some of that had slopped off the sides. Blood had spattered the ceiling and wall behind the bed, and there were crimson drag marks on the floor, leading away from the bed, towards the door. I turned again, looked back to the TV room. No blood there.
     I looked back at the corpse. “Did other people live here?”
     The two Praetorians glanced at each other, and it was Tyrell who answered. “She was married, two kids. At least one woman that worked here, a nanny, maybe.”
     “None of them are here.”
     “No.”
     “Cars gone?”
     He shook his head.
     “Kids at school, maybe?”
     Tyrell glanced at Brianne, and this time, she shook her head no.
     I set my teeth. Not good. Not good at all. I pulled my smokes out of my pocket and lit up. Tyrell made a face, but let it go, probably thinking that cigarette smoke was more pleasant to smell than the bloody stink filling the room. That was my idea, at any rate.
     I approached the bed, sidling around it, trying not to step in anything. It was easier said than done. I finally saw Prissa’s face, splattered, but intact. Her head was craned back, leaving her to stare, glassy-eyed, at the wall behind her. She was smiling.
     We all stood there, silent. Occasionally there was the sound of a car passing outside. Finally, I turned sideways, and flicked a quick glance up at the glyph, looking at it from the corner of my eye. I made a show of flinching. Tyrell and Brianne, both of whom were very carefully not looking at the glyph, shuddered in sympathy when they saw me look.
     I ashed in the palm of my hand, wiped it on my jeans, looked to Tyrell.
     “It’s one of them, isn’t it?” He asked. His tone was dull, full of swallowed horror. His eyes were too wide, too much white showing.
     I nodded. There was no way to hide it, nothing else to blame it on. I wished I’d been the one to find this mess, wished the Praetorians had never seen any of it. I was sweating a little, a cold, nervous sweat, and my heart was beating a little too hard. It had nothing to do with the body, and everything to do with the Praetorians being involved.
     “Outlanders.” Brianne breathed the word, a sound full of fear. Tyrell winced when she said it.
     In the city’s occult pecking order, the five councilors who sat on the Arcana were the five most powerful mages in Detroit. These were people who broke reality just by waking up in the morning. Ranking just below them, and not by too damn much, were the Praetorians, Tyrell and Brianne, here, and one more, Damien. Tyrell Paxton was an evocator of immense power, an old school, fire balls and lightning kind of mage, and Brianne Perry was an enchantress, specializing in the kinds of magic that befuddled minds and emotions. Damien Torrence was a thaumaturge, probably holed up in his home trying to scry out the location of their killer. There was very little in Motown that you could throw up against this team that they couldn’t handle. They were our cops, our internal affairs department, our clean-up crew, and our dogs of war.
     And they were terrified.
     “Yeah. I think so. And bad news, I think this is a hatching.” Actually, I didn’t think it, I knew it. There’s no mistaking this kind of thing.
     At the word, both Praetorians glanced at each other. Tyrell looked drawn, worn, and Brianne’s smooth brow pinched up in worry. They didn’t need me to tell them that, but neither one looked happy with my saying it. I felt like the doctor, telling their patient, sorry, that’s not just a mole, it’s cancer.
     There’s an old Scandinavian concept, the innangards and the utangards, inside the fence, and outside the fence. In the most mundane sense, it refers to the farmstead, the home, fenced in, and that which lies outside the farmstead, outside the fence. It insinuates that everything which lies outside the fence is to be distrusted and feared. Applied metaphysically, the concept refers to reality, and that which is beyond reality, and insinuates the exact same distrust and fear. And for good reason. There are things in the utangards, strange and alien monstrosities. To see them is to go mad, and they carve their names in unspeakable glyphs.
     The good news is that the innangards is just as strange and alien to them as they are to us. They can’t get in easily, and if they do, they can’t linger here. Sure, there’s rumors of ancient rituals, old rites involving the proper alignment of the stars and the inscriptions of unholy runes in books made of human leather, that kind of thing. Anyone of sufficient power, training, and insanity could breach a hole in the fence, and there’s plenty of crawling eldritch horrors waiting on the other side, just slavering to get in and feast, but to do that, all but the most powerful and elder need a host, a proxy, a meat puppet.
     That meat puppet, that human being crammed full of some abyssal horror? That’s an outlander. And that’s what we were dealing with, here.
     “What is it?” Brianne asked, waving at the unspeakable glyph, without looking at it. She’d gone even more pale.
     I flicked another quick glance at the ceiling, tapping ash into my palm and hitting my cigarette. It was the same glyph as last night, sprayed now in blood splatter, as though it were some accidental blotch. I shook my head. “I don’t know that one. Wish I could be more help, but I only know a handful of the things. I can tell you the glyph’s not active. That’s just a calling card, kind of like writing ‘Kilroy was here’ on the wall.”
     They looked at each other again, eyes widening. “That’s not active?”
     “Hell, no. If some damn fool had actually conjured by one of those things, you’d be able to feel the stain a mile off. I doubt we’d even be able to stand here, it would be so spoiled.” It goes without saying that the only thing that could conjure by an unspeakable glyph would be an outlander. Anyone else would die in the attempt. Possibly, they’d go stark raving nuts, first, and then die in the attempt, probably taking a lot of company with them. I watched the two glance at each other, and felt a growing unease. “I take it you guys have never run into one of these things before?”
     There was a beat of quiet. “Well, no.” Tyrell finally admitted, rubbing his eyes. Brianne was shaking her head as well.
     “Have you?” She asked, sharp.
     I snorted derisively. “I’m still alive, aren’t I?” I tapped ash into my hand again, wiped it on my jeans. I needed to put my smoke out, so I headed towards the bathroom. The two Praetorians followed with some relief, happy to be out of the room and away from the twisted aura of the glyph.
     I flicked my cigarette but in the toilet, flushed it, and washed my hands in the marble sink, turning to look at Tyrell and Brianne. I snagged a towel off a rack on the wall, drying my hands.
     Everyone learns a little about the utangards, at least enough to know to avoid that which dwells there. I knew more than most. Comes natural to me. Everyone else just reads about it; I live it.
     The rumors abound about me, naturally. Mages are the worst gossips, worse than old women at the laundry mat. No one outright calls me a black magus. I’m not powerful enough for that, at least, not that anyone knows. No one calls me an abyssal mage, either, because if I’m not powerful enough to be your standard evil sorceress, I certainly can’t be utilizing the wild energies of the vast, starving abyss that fills the utangards. The occult community knows I ain’t right, though. There are stories, whispers, distrustful glances, avoidance. That’s all fine by me. As long as they’re all busy worrying that I’m a serial killer waiting to happen, they’re not busy finding out about my nasty little shadow friend.
     Speaking of which, I could hear her in the back of my head, like the rustling of dry leaves over frozen stone. She’d been restless since we’d seen the glyph the night before. She knew what it meant as well as I did – an invader in our territory. She couldn’t abide it. I wouldn’t, either, but for different reasons. Outlanders were bad news. I ought to know.
     “Well, I don’t know how well you two paid attention to your masters, but here’s how it works. Some fucking idiot lets an entity in, on purpose, or by accident, and it takes them over. The new outlander makes itself a safe little den, and feeds. When it feels safe enough, it starts kicking off spawn – like what crawled out of that poor bitch in there.” I gestured back into the bedroom. “The spawn find themselves a nice warm body, burrow in, and take over. They make a nest, and as soon as possible, they start breeding, one way or another. Eventually, they have enough nestmates to really start raising hell.” I shrugged. “What happens from there kind of depends on what’s been let in. Maybe they’ll go looking for the talented, get a cult together, and try summoning in their elders. Maybe they’ll just wreak havoc and destruction. Might take them days, might take them decades, might take them generations. Until you know who let what in, you won’t know.”
     This was the truth, although not quite all of it. The utangards are full of fiends, each one different from the next. Most of them worked that way. Most of them were weak, like that. The fact that our outlander was kicking off corporeal spawn, some physical, parasitic critter, led me to think it was one of the weaker kinds of abyssal fiend. My shadow and I didn’t work that way. I’d never had the urge to infest anyone with tentacular creepy-crawlies. That I’d noticed. I was pretty sure I’d notice.
     “And how do we find that out?” Tyrell asked. He stood there, weary and brooding, hands in his slacks pockets, glaring at me with the sullen air of one who’s having to tolerate being lectured by their inferiors.
     “Well, I’m your expert, and I don’t know, so you might be up shit creek. Unless you feel like going to make a trade with Owen, of course. I’m sure he knows.”
     We all took a long, quiet moment to consider that idea. Clearly, neither Brianne or Tyrell liked the thought. There’s making deals with the Devil, and then there’s making deals with Owen, which is a whole different level of dangerous.
     Me? Owen was my next stop.

Black Alice by Marci Sischo is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

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