Adler Meet Maxine

I crouched back. "What can I accomplish, Sir? I won't execute anything to jeopardize or victimize the knight-protector in his own office no matter how much he outrages me. That would be dumb and highly risky to my health. I attained here in search of evidence. I simply wish to realize what Greg Feldman was toiling on when he died."

For a minute we crouched there staring at each other.

The knight-protector sucked the atmosphere into his nose with a loud whoosh and mumbled, "You infer anything about investigative work?"

"Sure. Upset the people involved until the guilty party strives to make you move away."

He scowled. "You realize that the Order's scrutinizing this matter?"

In other words, ride along little lady, and allow people who are more eligible to handle it.

"Greg Feldman was my only family," I let out.

"I'll discover who or what eradicated him."

"And then what?"

"I'll scorch that bridge when I cross it."

He knitted the fingers of his hands into a single fist.

"Anything apt to take out the knight-diviner is plugging some power."

"Not for long."

He thought about that for a while.

"So occurs I could utilize you," he asserted.

That was unexpected. "Why the hell would you need me?"

He bestowed me what he must have deemed his cryptic smile. It recollected me of a grizzly waked in midwinter.

"I have my reasons. Here's what I'll perform for you. You earn a Mutual Aid sticker on your ID, which should unlock some doors. You get to utilize Greg's office. You get to gape at the open file and police report."

Open file implied I would fetch the case as it reached Greg: bare certainties and no or limited results. I would have to retrace Greg's strides. It was bloody more than I anticipated.

"Thank you," I asserted.

"The file doesn't evacuate the edifice," he let out.

"No manuscripts, no quotations. You'll make a comprehensive report to me and just to me."

"I'm bound by the Guild's divulgence of information act," I asserted.

He flapped it aside. "It's taken care of."

Since when? This knight-protector was getting on far out of his path to support a worthless merc. Why? People who did me favour made me anxious.

On the other hand, it was awful manners to dart a gift horse in the maw. Even if you're earning it from an overweight cracker in a fringe shirt.

"Officially you have no status with me," he asserted.

"Screw up and you're persona non grata."

"Understood."

"We're done," he let out.

Outside the receptionist flapped me over and inquired about my ID. I offered it to her and gazed as she attached a little metallic Mutual Aid emblem to it, an official "stamp" of the Order's interest in my modest work. Some doors would clear to me and more would bang in my countenance. Oh, well.

"Don't mind Ted," the receptionist mumbled, returning my ID.

"He's brutal periodically. My name's Maxine."

"My name's Alder. Would you pinpoint the late knight- diviner's bureau to me?"

"I'd be pleased to. The last one on the right."

"Thank you."

She grinned and went back to her work. Peachy keen.

I attained Greg's office and strutted in the doorway. It didn't gawk right.

A square window poured daylight onto the floor, a slim desk, and two old seats. To the left, a deep bookshelf rode the length of the embankment, threatening to slump under the weight of meticulously modified volumes.

Four metal file closets as gigantic as me loomed at the contrary embankment. Heaps of files and sheets piled in the nooks inhabited the chairs and muffled the desk.

Somebody had got one through Greg's sheets. They'd performed it carefully. The spot wasn't scoured, but someone had gawked at each of Greg's files and didn't return them to their adequate niche, rather preferring to pile them on the first horizontal surface available.

These were Greg's personal sheets. For some motive, the notion of someone touching Greg's stuff, going over them and skimming his thoughts after his death irked me.

I strolled through the doorway and felt a defensive spell near behind me. Arcane symbols are kindled with a pale orange glint, forming complex patterns on the hazy rug.

Lengthy twirled lines pertained the symbols, intersecting and spiralling about the compartment, their nooks captioned by

luminous red specks. Greg had clogged the compartment with his blood, and more, he had keyed it to me, otherwise, I wouldn't be apt to glimpse the spell.

Now any magic I performed in this cabin would dwell in it, vacating no echo beyond the door. A spell of this complexity would snatch weeks to set up.

Judging by the intensity of the glowing lines, it would absorb one hell of an echo. Why would he do that?

I walked between the files to the bookshelf. It held an old edition of the Almanac of Mystic Creatures, an even older version of the Arcane Dictionary, a Bible, a beautiful edition of the Koran bound in leather and engraved with gold, several other religious volumes, and a thin copy of Spenser's Faerie Queene.

I made my way to the metal panels. As anticipated, they were desolate. The ledges were imprinted in Greg's outstanding code, which I couldn't read.

It didn't matter truly. I picked up the nearest stack and carefully glided the first file onto the metal rack.

Two hours later, I finalized the sheets on the floor and the seats and was willing to start on the stacks enclosing the desk when a vast manila envelope halted me.

It lay on top of the main stack, so my name, written with the ebony marker in Greg's cursive, was apparent.

I lessened the stacks to the floor, pulled up a seat, and emptied the envelope onto the desk's surface. Two pictures and a letter. In the first picture, two couples strutted side by side.

I recognized my father, a hulking, red-haired man, massive shoulders dissipated vast, one arm around a woman who had to be my mother.