Chapter 90: Another Murder
The process would be maddeningly convoluted, a cipher wrapped in a riddle. Parula’s memories gave me the ability to speak and understand the local Castilian tongue, but not to read it. My own knowledge of English, however, allowed me to recognize the letters. If I could use the English dictionary to understand the pronunciation and meaning of the Castilian words, I could then use the Castilian dictionary to decipher the Old Romani of the grimoire. It was a long, tortuous path, but it was the only one I had.
Soon, the old shopkeeper returned with the two dictionaries and a rolled-up map. “One silver sovereign for the English dictionary,” he said, his voice a dry rasp. “The map is a trifle. A gift. Three silver sovereigns in total, if you please.” I placed the coins on the counter. Beside me, Jared flinched, his face a mask of disbelief. To him, books were worthless things, scraps of paper to be scavenged from the rubbish heap. To spend silver—real silver!—on them was an act of madness. But I had explained my plan to him before we left, explained the necessity of it if I was to learn magic. He didn't understand, not really, but he trusted me. And the strange, terrifying things he had witnessed had filled him with a new sense of urgency. He said nothing.
After the two children had left, the old shopkeeper returned to the shelf and picked up the manuscript they had dropped. “Curious,” he muttered to himself, his fingers tracing the strange, glowing symbols on the cover. “Why would she choose this book? And an rare dictionary for Old Latin… no, that is no coincidence.”
I, of course, heard none of this. On the way back, I kept my eyes squeezed shut, letting Jared carry me through the monstrous, overwhelming city. But then, a smell, thick and coppery, cut through the usual city stench. The smell of blood.
“What is that smell?” I asked, my eyes flying open.
Jared sniffed the air, a confused look on his face. “What smell, Parula? I don’t smell anything strange.” His words sent a familiar chill down my spine. It was another of those things that only I could perceive. But this time, I wasn't alone in my strange perceptions. A crowd had gathered at a nearby street corner, the source of the bloody aroma. And I could see it now, a faint, ethereal light shimmering over the crowd, and wisps of a cloying, black mist rising from within it.
“What’s happening over there?” I asked, a sense of dread washing over me. “Is it… another murdered girl?” I had heard the whispers, the rumors of the recent string of killings, the missing body parts.
“Let’s go see,” Jared said. He had seen too much of death to be afraid of a simple murder scene. He himself had killed two people, one directly, one indirectly. Though a part of me screamed to run, to hide, my own morbid curiosity, the desperate need to understand this world, won out. I nodded, and he carried me into the press of the crowd.
It was a murder, just as I had suspected, several peerlers were inspecting the surroundings. But the victim was not a girl. He was a man, dressed in the rough clothes of a factory worker. And his death was… bizarre, attracting the crowd. He was hanging from the ornate security grille of a tenement window, his body impaled, the iron bars piercing his chest in three places. Blood, thick and dark, had soaked his clothes and dripped down to form a small, congealing pool on the cobblestones below. But the grille itself was intact. And the body, apart from the three gruesome holes in its chest, was also whole. How had he gotten in there? It was a physical impossibility. The peelers were already on the scene, their faces a mixture of confusion and annoyance as they worked to dismantle the iron grille to retrieve the body.
“How did he get stuck in there?”
“God’s teeth, what a horrible sight.”
“Heard the woman who lives there opened her window this morning and found him hanging there. Her scream woke the whole street.”
“Nothing will come of it, you mark my words. He’s just a worker. And the death is too strange. The peelers will call it a suicide and be done with it.”
“It was the witch! The one who escaped! It has to be! No one else could do something like this.” The crowd murmured, their fear a palpable, living thing.
But I wasn't listening to them. I was staring at the dead man’s face. I knew him. It was the assassin. The man who had stabbed the factory owner. The knife he had used, the ornate, expensive dagger, was now strapped to Jared’s leg. I had suspected then that he was no simple worker, that he had been hired for the job. And now, it seemed, he had been silenced.
“Parula,” Jared whispered, his voice tight with a new kind of fear. “Is that…?” He had recognized him too. I nodded, my own heart pounding.
“Well, well, miss. We meet again.” The voice, smooth and cultured, with an undercurrent of amusement, came from right beside me. I turned, my heart leaping into my throat. It was the man in the trench coat.
“You!” I gasped. “Sebastian de Cervantes!” The detective. I had been very wary of him.
“The very same,” he said with a smile that did not reach his eyes. “I told you our paths would cross again. Sooner than I expected, I must admit.” He turned his gaze to Jared. “And who is this? Your little boyfriend?”
“Of course not!” I snapped, my face flushing with anger. His smile was infuriating. Jared, for his part, just stared at the detective, he'd heard me said that this person probably knew about the baths that day.
“No need to be so cold,” Sebastian said, his eyes twinkling with a light I did not trust. “We are merely two curious souls, drawn to the same grim spectacle. Tell me,” he said, turning his gaze back to the body, “you seem to have some thoughts on our unfortunate friend here.”
There it was again. That unnerving, all-seeing gaze, the sense that he already knew everything. I couldn't afford to make an enemy of this man. The murder weapon was practically singing in its sheath on Jared’s leg.
“There was a murder in the factory district a few days ago,” I said, my voice a reluctant whisper, sharing what I knew. “A factory owner was killed. This man… he was the killer. I saw him.”
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