Titan Song Dan Stout (top 20 books to read txt) 📖

We entered to the sound of raised voices, human and Mollenkampi. That wasn’t unusual in the Bunker, but the ME’s office was normally more reserved. There was no one running the entry desk. Exchanging a glance, Jax and I made our way toward the source of the argument.

We followed the sound to one of the examination rooms, where a small group of public servants were trading insults over the mummified body of Gellica’s . . . sister? What was the proper name for a magical clone derived from the same source material?

The senior staff pathologist was Doc Mumphrey, a large man wearing bright red suspenders, who spoke in a rumbling, off-kilter baritone. When we arrived he was deep in conversation with DO Harris and Captain Auberjois. Mumphrey’s admin Susan stood to the side, hands flying as she translated Auberjois’s rant into sign language. I knew from experience that Mumphrey was able to get along in many conversations, but the Mollenkampi DO had a distinct lack of lips for him to read.

Auberjois had reached that point in an argument where persuasion had given over to simply repeating one’s point at a louder volume. “The autopsy needs to be done immediately,” he said. “This is my case, and I’m telling you it needs to be done!”

Susan finished the translation a heartbeat behind the outraged Mollenkampi sorcerer, and Mumphrey shrugged. “It’s not your case,” he said, with the weary tone of someone who’d said the same thing more than once. “The paperwork says different.”

“It’ll be treated as a homicide, until the ME rules otherwise.” I spoke up loud, startling the DO.

“And with the backlog from the sinkhole,” I sighed, puffing out my cheeks, “who knows when they’ll have a chance to review them?”

“We need to learn what happened to her.”

“Isn’t that what divination officers do?” I asked. “Talk to the dead?”

Auberjois glared. “We tried. It’s been far too long since the moment of death. The echo has faded.”

Mumphrey harrumphed, and Susan frowned while she translated. “They also didn’t ask before making an attempt.”

The pathologist found the methods of divination to be unpalatable, perhaps even unethical. Personally, it was something I did my best not to consider. There was already so much gray in the world, why stick your toe into another ethical whirlpool?

“It’s just as well,” said Harris. “With as old as that echo would have been, it’s more than likely it would’ve been faint and confused. I doubt we’d have gotten anything useful from the young lady.”

“As soon as we have something concrete, we’ll let you know.” Jax’s voice was calming, even lyrical. But it didn’t placate Auberjois.

“So you can go reporting to Paulus? Or have you already?”

I stiffened. He didn’t know where we’d come from, and we hadn’t told her anything. Or had we? Had I played into Paulus’s hands by trying to shake a reaction out of her? I kept my face neutral and looked instead at the body of the mummified teenager.

Auberjois stormed out, frustrated by the situation, or perhaps by my failure to take the bait. Harris followed, shrugging and smiling an apology before he left.

“Carter.” Mumphrey’s voice drew me back, away from the door. He stood closer to the body stacks, attempting to appear nonchalant. “I want you to see something.”

He led me back into the body stacks, where a sheet-draped form lay on a steel gurney.

“I got a little curious about your snake oil salesman who attacked you after death.” Mumphrey rested a hand on the edge of the privacy sheet. “I’ll have to tell Auberjois, but I didn’t want him to see this before you did.”

“Petrevisch?”

“The same. But when I did, I got a little shock.” He pulled back the sheet. I tensed, prepared to face the transformed figure of Saul Petrevisch for the first time since his corpse had attacked me. Instead, the gurney slab held a shriveled raisin the size of a man. Even as I watched, a little more of it crumbled to ash.

“Bobby Kearn?”

“Same condition.”

Whatever the source of their magic, the manna threads hadn’t been severed. Magic was a hungry force. It fueled the workings between bound objects by consuming manna. If the objects were drained of manna before the connection was broken, then the material itself would wither away, like Guyer’s manna-bound truck at the sinkhole.

I crouched, eyeing the crumbled and consumed body. Was this what awaited Gellica, if she didn’t have a supply of manna? Was it the ultimate end for me? What would happen if Paulus was taken down, if the flow of manna was squelched before it even began? Paulus was corrupt, but the same was true of every political machine. There were dirty cops, and that didn’t mean we were all equally culpable. Or at least, not cops like Jax, who cared more about their heart and helping people than benefits and pensions.

The corrupt head of the beast, people like Paulus, they had to be stopped. But there had to be ways to do it without injuring the many innocents around her. The trick was, how could we tell them apart?

23

THE SINKHOLE HAD DAMAGED THE geo-vents and disrupted the natural flow of warm air. That made it high profile, a transgression of the city’s most valuable asset, the lifeline we all clung to every time we walked past a vent. Since the neighborhoods impacted were the residences of the wealthy and elite, fixing it was a higher priority than if it had only affected the already cold Borderlands neighborhoods.

So maybe that gave Auberjois wiggle room with the City Attorney’s Office. Or maybe they could read the political tea leaves, or they figured that Auberjois would take the fall if things went sideways. Whatever the reason, as the evidence of tampering with the vents mounted and rumors of mummified bodies with ties to Paulus began to swirl, I feared the ambassador’s days of freedom were numbered. I feared it not for her sake, but because of what that meant to Gellica. No one in Titanshade