Titan Song by Dan Stout (best english books to read txt) 📗

a few assorted spare instruments along with a stack of reading materials and two separate phone lines, each relatively new, since the pigtail cords on the receivers hadn’t yet begun to bunch up onto themselves. The trash held an assortment of proposed set lists and discarded wrappers of Black Gold candy bars. We found one dressing table drawer half open, with one lone candy bar left behind, the same brand name on display. I made a mental note that something may have been taken, possibly hidden behind the candy.

When I reached the television I flipped on the power to see what they had been watching. Once the tube warmed up, the news faded into view, a solemn-faced anchor talking about furthering tensions between Titanshade and the Assembly of Free States, the confederation of city-states to which it belonged. I flipped the power off.

“Only one way in or out,” Ajax said, indicating the single door.

I grunted my agreement and kept strolling through the sectors. From where Bobby Kearn had sat, he had line of sight to at least two mirrors. I crouched again, and confirmed that at least one of them would have shown him the door. Another sign that he knew the killer.

Jax stood by the mirrors themselves. He reached behind one—they were mounted a hand’s-breadth from the wall—and a moment later the sound of Dinah McIntire’s voice filled the room. “Well then get a tape of the drum track and play that. We’re three days from curtains up, so get your shit together!” That was followed by shuffling feet and what sounded like heavy objects being dragged across a floor while someone noodled a riff across a synthesizer keyboard.

Guyer frowned. “Is that an intercom? Can they hear us?”

“Stage monitors,” I said. “So the band can track what’s going on during opening acts, between sets—stuff like that. It’s strictly one-way.”

From onstage there was a squeal of feedback as someone let a mic drift too close to an amplifier. Jax killed the sound and returned us to the quiet of the dressing room.

I took a breath, and stared at the floor. “The blood’s contained.”

Jax considered that. “Blood pooled around the victim,” he stepped sideways, pivoted at the waist, “but no traces of it further into the room. The killer wiped off the blade?”

“I don’t see a wipe pattern on Kearn’s clothes. And no discarded piece of fabric on the floor.”

“They could have bundled the blade inside something else as they left the room.”

“Or . . .” I crouched closer to the body. “Maybe the blade snapped off and is still inside.”

I reached for the victim’s shirt with my left hand, the one missing two fingers. The second I touched the fabric, a painful, tingling jolt traveled up my arm. Invisible, sticky threads clung to my fingers like spiderwebs. I recognized the sensation immediately: the ties that bound disparate objects together through magic. As far as I knew, I was the only person alive who could sense them. The threads were tangled around the victim’s body, in no clear design. It was a pattern I’d seen before: Bobby Kearn had been using a hallucinogen mixed with a trace amount of manna.

I leaned back, carefully extracting myself from the invisible tangle of energy. For me, the manna bonds held a narcotic allure of their own. One I couldn’t risk giving in to.

“Carter?” Jax’s voice brought me back to the present moment.

I blinked rapidly and glanced around the room. “Yeah?”

“Anything in the wounds?”

“Um, no.” I stood, hands resting on my hips as I took a gulp of air. “And I can’t think of what kind of weapon would be strong enough to kill the Gillmyn but still break off cleanly.” In truth, I could barely think at all. My mind was racing, and I stepped far back from the body, careful not to tug on any of the threads. As long as I didn’t draw the energy they contained into myself, it would be fine. It had to be fine.

I reviewed the list the techs had left. Kearn had carried an ID, some cash, and a candy wrapper. All those items, along with the other physical evidence, were already on a snow-runner headed back to Titanshade, where they’d be processed into evidence. I glanced at my partner, still recording details in his notepad. “You have anything else?”

“Nope.” He flipped the notebook shut.

I sighed, then looked over at Harris. “I guess you’re up.”

Guyer strolled to the door, letting the patrol cop know that there were to be absolutely no interruptions until she said otherwise. She closed the door and flipped the handle lock, for a bit of added privacy.

“Well,” she said. “Let’s see what the victim has to say for himself.”

3

WITH THE DOOR CLOSED, THE two divination officers paced across the room, circling the body and eyeing it as if they were divvying up a newfound treasure.

Guyer slowed her pace. “What are you thinking?” she asked Harris.

The taller DO tilted his head, staring at the corpse. “Probably a pulse code.”

Guyer grunted. “Using the stab wounds? Could work.”

“If it doesn’t, it’d still leave me plenty of wiggle room on the allocation.”

Manna was strictly tracked and controlled, like the precious substance it was. The sorcerers’ vials would be carefully weighed upon their return to make sure not a drop beyond the preapproved expenditure had been used. And just like a regular officer faced pages of reports to account for a bullet fired, the divination officers would have to account for their use of magic. Harris was making the most of what he’d been approved to use.

With a nod to her companion, Guyer stepped to the far wall, crossing her arms and growing still. This was Harris’s show through and through.

The taller sorcerer knelt and reached into the folds of his cloak. He emerged with a small glass vial in hand, its contents a swirling iridescent liquid that had fueled the first industrial revolution and inspired wars, strife, and theft through the ages. The exact use of