Murder by Magic Read online

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the authors’ imaginations or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

  Contributions copyright: Introduction, copyright © 2004 by Rosemary Edghill; “Piece of Mind,” copyright © 2004 by Jennifer Roberson; “Special Surprise Guest Appearance by . . . ,” copyright © 2004 by Carole Nelson Douglas; “Doppelgangster,” copyright © 2004 by Laura Resnick; “Mixed Marriages Can Be Murder,” copyright © 2004 by Will Graham; “The Case of the Headless Corpse,” copyright © 2004 by Josepha Sherman; “A Death in the Working,” copyright © 2004 by Debra Doyle; “Cold Case,” copyright © 2004 by Diane Duane; “Snake in the Grass,” copyright © 2004 by Susan R. Matthews; “Double Jeopardy,” copyright © 2004 by Peggy Hamilton-Swire; “Witch Sight,” copyright © 2004 by Roberta Gellis; “Overrush,” copyright © 2004 by Laura Anne Gilman; “Captured in Silver,” copyright © 2004 by Teresa Edgerton; “A Night at the Opera,” copyright © 2004 by Sharon Lee and Steve Miller; “A Tremble in the Air,” copyright © 2004 by James D. Macdonald; “Murder Entailed,” copyright © 2004 by Susan Krinard; “Dropping Hints,” copyright © 2004 by Lawrence Watt-Evans; “Au Purr,” copyright © 2004 by Esther Friesner; “Getting the Chair,” copyright © 2004 by Keith R. A. DeCandido; “The Necromancer’s Apprentice,” copyright © 2004 by Lillian Stewart Carl; “Grey Eminence,” copyright © 2004 by Mercedes Lackey; Afterword, copyright © 2004 by Rosemary Edghill.

  Copyright © 2004 by Rosemary Edghill and Tekno Books

  Introduction copyright © 2004 by Rosemary Edghill

  All rights reserved.

  Aspect® name and logo are registered trademarks of Warner Books.

  Aspect

  Hachette Book Group

  237 Park Avenue

  New York, NY 10017

  Visit our website at www.HachetteBookGroup.com

  First eBook Edition: October 2004

  The Hachette Book Group Publishing name and logo is a trademark of Hachette Book Group, Inc.

  ISBN: 978-0-446-51054-7

  Contents

  AT THE CROSSROADS OF MAGIC AND MURDER

  Introduction

  PART I: Murder Most Modern

  Piece of Mind

  Special Surprise Guest Appearance by . . .

  Doppelgangster

  Mixed Marriages Can Be Murder

  The Case of the Headless Corpse

  PART II: Murder Unclassifiable

  A Death in the Working

  Cold Case

  Snake in the Grass

  Double Jeopardy

  Witch Sight

  Overrush

  PART III: Murder Most Genteel

  Captured in Silver

  A Night at the Opera

  A Tremble in the Air

  Murder Entailed

  PART IV: Murder Fantastical

  Dropping Hints

  Au Purr

  Getting the Chair

  PART V: Murder Most Historical

  The Necromancer’s Apprentice

  Grey Eminence

  Afterword

  About the Editor

  AT THE CROSSROADS OF MAGIC AND MURDER, PREPARE TO BE SPELLBOUND . . .

  “Witch Sight” by Roberta Gellis: Innocence is not always what it seems in this tale of a young witch charged with the murder of her best friend.

  “Doppelgangster” by Laura Resnick: Somebody is whacking mobsters all over town, from Skinny Vinny Vitelli to Johnny Gambone. But if Vinny and Johnny are six feet under, who are these wiseguys who look and talk just like them?

  “Dropping Hints” by Lawrence Watt-Evans: The wizard’s murderer was one of five identical homunculi. One of them was lying . . . but how to tell which?

  “Au Purr” by Esther Friesner: From a Nebula Award–winning maestro noted for her love of wicked puns comes a catty tale that is sure to give “paws.”

  “A Tremble in the Air” by James D. Macdonald: Family secrets aren’t the only things buried in this drawing-room mystery featuring Orville Nesbit, psychic researcher.

  Introduction

  Rosemary Edghill

  It is a truism of publishing that sooner or later every author wants to commit murder, and I have proof: a new take on the mean streets from Laura Resnick, a charmingly chilling story from Carole Nelson Douglas, alternate police procedurals from Josepha Sherman and Keith DeCandido—detectives amateur, private, and decidedly outside the law, in settings ranging from the haunted galleries of Elizabethan England to the worlds of the Eraasian Hegemony. And from Jennifer Roberson, perhaps the strangest detective of all.

  I hope you’ll enjoy these twenty stories ranging from the past through the future, set both here and . . . Elsewhere.

  When I set out to assemble Murder by Magic, the contributors had only two rules to follow to write a qualifying story: there had to be a crime (preferably murder), and magic and the supernatural had to be somehow involved, either in the commission or in the solution of the crime.

  As you will see, that left plenty of room for variation, from James Macdonald’s very traditional psychic investigator to Will Graham’s wisecracking supernatural adventurers to Josepha Sherman’s deadpan hilarious civil service magicians to Diane Duane’s lyrical tale of a policeman’s last case. And, yes, in Debra Doyle’s Eraasian country-house “murder,” a homage to detective fiction of the 1920s and a tragedy in the Classical sense of the word.

  When it came time to choose an order for the tales in Murder by Magic, I found that the stories seemed to fall naturally into five categories that turned out to pretty well encompass most of the variations on today’s supernatural detective story. Some stories were easy to fit into my five pigeonholes—a historical occult mystery certainly is, after all, and a historical mystery with animated chairs is naturally fantastical. But others I hesitated over until the last minute—was “Overrush” a Murder Most Modern or a Murder Unclassifiable? Which subgroup did “The Case of the Headless Corpse” really belong in? Was “Snake in the Grass” Unclassifiable or Fantastical? At last, with much trepidation, I made my final decisions. You may agree with me, or you may not—the fun of getting to be the editor is that I get the final say about what goes where. And certainly you’ll have your own favorite stories out of all those presented here, as I have mine (I’m not telling which ones mine are, but here’s a hint: there are twenty of them).

  Opinions exist to differ, but one thing I’m sure we’ll both agree on is that, based on the evidence, the Occult Detective is alive and well a century and more after his “birth”—though Doctor John Silence might be hard put to recognize some of his literary descendants.

  And whether it’s a story of clandestine and unexpected magic set in the real world, or a tale set in an alternate universe in which magic openly replaces science, the rules for a good mystery—supernatural or otherwise—are always the same: find the killer and bring him (or her, or even it) to justice.

  I hope you’ll enjoy your foray into the shadows, where impossible crimes are commonplace. I’ve gotten you some excellent guides.

  Come.

  There’s nothing to fear.

  PART I

  Murder Most Modern

  Piece of Mind

  Jennifer Roberson

  Jennifer Roberson has published twenty-two novels in several genres, including the Cheysuli and Sword-Dancer fantasy series and the upcoming Karavans saga. She has contributed short fiction to numerous anthologies and has edited three herself. Though the story’s heroine is indisputably not the author, she does nonetheless live with ten dogs, two cats, and a Lipizzan gelding and has frequent—if one-sided—verbal conversations with all of them.

  In the Lo
s Angeles metro area, you can pay $250K-plus for a one-bedroom, one-bath bungalow boasting a backyard so small you can spit across it—even on a day so hot you can’t rustle up any sweat, let alone saliva. And that’s all for the privilege of breathing brown air, contesting with a rush “hour” lasting three at the minimum, and risking every kind of “rage” the sociologists can hang a name on.

  But a man does need a roof over his head, so I ended up in a weird little amoebic blob of an apartment complex, a haphazard collection of wood-shingled boxes dating from the fifties. It wasn’t Melrose Place, and the zip wasn’t 90210, but it would do for a newly divorced, middle-aged man of no particular means.

  Interstate 10 may carry tourists through miles of the sere and featureless desert west of Phoenix, but closer to the coast the air gains moisture. In my little complex, vegetation ruled. Ivy filled the shadows, clung to shingles; roses of all varieties fought for space; aging eucalyptus and pepper trees overhung the courtyard, prehensile roots threatening fence and sidewalk.

  I found it relaxing to twist off the cap of a longneck beer at day’s end and sit outside on a three-by-six-foot slab of ancient, wafer-thin concrete crumbling from the onslaught of time and whatever toxins linger in L.A.’s air. I didn’t want to think about what the brown cloud was doing to my lungs, but I wasn’t motivated enough to leave the Valley. The kids were in the area. Soon enough they’d discover indepen-dence, and Dear Old Dad would be relegated to nonessential personnel; until that happened, I’d stay close.

  Next door, across the water-stained, weather-warped wooden fence, an explosion of sound punched a hole in my reverie. I heard a screen door whack shut, the sound of a woman’s voice, and the cacophony of barking dogs. She was calling them back, telling them to behave themselves, explaining that making so much racket was no way to endear themselves to new neighbors. I heartily concurred, inwardly cursing the landlady, who allowed pets. She was one of those sweet little old widow ladies who were addicted to cats, and she spent much of her income on feeding the feral as well as her own; apparently her tolerance extended to dogs, now. Dogs next door. Barking dogs.

  Muttering expletives, I set the mostly empty beer bottle on the crumbling concrete, then heaved myself out of the fraying webwork chaise lounge with some care, not wanting to drop my butt through or collapse the flimsy aluminum armrests.

  The dogs had muted their barking to the occasional sotto voce wuff as I sauntered over to the sagging fence, stepped up on a slumping brick border of a gone-to-seed garden, and looked into the yard next door. When they saw me—well, saw my head floating above the fence—they instantly set off an even louder chorus of complaint. I caught a glimpse of huge ears and stumpy legs in the midst of hurried guard-dog activity, and then the woman was coming out the back door yet again to hush them.

  I saw hair the color some called light brown, others dark blond, caught up in a sloppy ponytail at the back of her head; plus stretchy black bike shorts and a pink tank top. Shorts and tank displayed long, browned limbs and cleanly defined muscles. No body fat. Trust her to be one of those California gym types.

  She saw me, winced at renewed barking, and raised her voice. “Enough!”

  Amazingly, the dogs shut up.

  “Thank you,” she said politely, for all the world as if she spoke to a human instead of a pack of mutts with elongated satellite dishes for ears and tails longer than their legs. Then she grinned at me from her own wafer-thin, crumbling, three-by-six concrete slab. “They’ll quit once they get used to you.”

  “Those are dogs?”

  Her expression was blandly neutral. “Not as far as they’re concerned. But yes, that is what their registration papers say.”

  “They’re not mutts?”

  “They’re Cardigan Welsh corgis.” She made a gesture with her hand that brought all three of the dogs to her at a run, competing with one another to see who’d arrive first. “I work at home much of the time, or I’m not gone for long, so I’ll try to keep them quiet. I’m sorry if they disturbed you.”

  I didn’t really care, but I asked it, anyway, because once upon a time small talk had been ingrained. “What do you do?”

  Abruptly, her expression transmuted itself to one I’d seen before. She was about to sidestep honesty with something not quite a lie, but neither would it be the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. “Research.”

  And because I had learned to ignore such attempts, and because it would provoke a more honest response, I asked her what kind.

  Across the width of her tiny yard, the twin of mine, and over the top of a sagging fence that cut me off from the shoulders down, she examined me. A wry smile crooked the corner of her mouth. “You must be the private detective. Mrs. Landry told me about you.”

  “Mrs. Landry’s a nosy old fool,” I said, “but yes, I am.” I paused. “And I imagine she could tell me what kind of research you do.”

  Unexpectedly, she laughed. “Yes, I imagine she could. But then, we met when she hired me, so she ought to know.”

  “Hired you to do research?” I was intrigued in spite of myself; what kind of research would a little old widow lady want of my new neighbor, who looked more like an aerobics instructor than a bookworm?

  “In a manner of speaking,” the neighbor answered. She eyed me speculatively a moment, as if deciding something. “Do you have any pets?”

  “A cockroach I call Henry.”

  She studied my expression again. Something like dry amusement flickered in brown eyes. “Sorry, but I don’t do them.”

  And with that she went into her shingled, ivy-choked box along with her three dogs and let the screen door whack closed behind her.

  I was morosely contemplating the quaking clothes dryer from a spindle-legged chair when the Dog Woman arrived. She lugged a cheap plastic clothes basket heaped with muddy towels. Mrs. Landry’s apartment complex hosted a small laundry room containing one dryer, one washer, and three chairs. Most everyone drove down the street to a Laundromat, but I’d always felt the Landry Laundry was good enough for me. Apparently for the Dog Woman, too.

  She glanced at me as she came in, noted the washer was available, and dumped her load inside. I watched her go through the motions of measuring detergent and setting the washer dials. Once done, she turned to face me. “I hope the dogs haven’t bothered you lately.”

  I shook my head. “You were right. Now that they’re settled in, they don’t bark much.” I couldn’t help but notice she was bare-legged and bare-armed again, this time in ancient cutoffs and a paw-printed sleeveless T-shirt. I hadn’t seen her in weeks, though I did hear the screen door slam from time to time and her voice in conversation with the dogs outside. One-sided. “You think a lot of those critters.”

  My neighbor’s eyebrows arched. “Sure. They’re good company. Smart, interactive . . .” She stopped. “You’re not particularly interested, are you? Don’t you like dogs?”

  I sighed. “They’re okay.”

  Her eyes examined me. “Mrs. Landry said you were divorced.”

  “Yeah. So?” I wondered if she was considering hitting on me. Then decided it was a pretty stupid thought: I didn’t look like much of a catch.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I know it’s difficult.”

  I grunted. “You divorced, too?”

  “No. Never been married.” Something in my expression must have told her something. “And no, I’m not gay. It’s just not always easy meeting an understanding man in my line of work.”

  “Research,” I said neutrally.

  She shrugged. “More or less.”

  Unless she was some kind of sex surrogate, I couldn’t see what kind of research might scare a man off. She wasn’t hard to look at. “Maybe it’s the dogs,” I muttered.

  “What?”

  I hadn’t meant to say it aloud. “Well, some men don’t like dogs.”

  “And some dogs don’t like men.” She smiled as I glanced up sharply. “What goes around—”

  �
��—comes around,” I finished, and pushed out of the chair. My load was done drying. It was a simple thing to pull clothes out of the hot barrel and dump them into my plastic basket. Why fold?

  “Mrs. Landry told me you used to be a cop.”

  My jaw tightened, but I kept stuffing clothing into the basket. “Yep.”

  “But now you’re a private detective.”

  “Just like Magnum,” I agreed; too often I watched the reruns on daytime TV. “’Cept I don’t look much like Tom Selleck, and I lost the Ferrari in the divorce.”

  That did not elicit a smile. “She said you told her you walked away after a bad case. Quit the LAPD.”

  It was a night I’d downed far too many beers, and Mrs. Landry had knocked on my door to ask if I could help her with a leaky pipe underneath her kitchen sink. I’d managed to get the leak stopped, but in the meantime I’d talked too much.

  “It was time,” I said dismissively.

  Brown eyes were very serious. “It must have been a difficult decision.”

  I grinned crookedly as I gathered up the brimming basket. “You don’t know the half of it.”

  She waited until I was at the door of the tiny laundry room. “Then maybe you should tell me.”

  I stopped. Turned. “What?”

  “The half I don’t know.”

  “Hell, lady, I don’t know the half of it. I just knew I had to get out.”

  Her eyes drilled into me. For some reason, I couldn’t move. Her voice sounded odd. Pupils expanded. “She said you saw in black and white. Your wife.”

  I stared at her, stunned.

  Her tone was almost dreamy. “That you had no imagination.”

  I wanted to turn my back, to walk away. But couldn’t.

  “That you lived too much inside your head.”

  Finally, I could speak. “Among other things.” My voice was rusty. “Are you one of her women friends?”

  She smiled oddly. “I’ve never met her.”

  “Then how in the hell do you know what she said?”

  She blinked. It wasn’t one of those involuntary movements, like a heartbeat, but something she did on purpose. As if she flipped a switch inside her head. “Have you ever had any pets?”