Trail of Dead

“You lost me.”

Runa reached up and touched her own forehead. “Here. The witch carves a word in the clay right here, and it’s like the stamp of the command spell. In the example I used before, the witch would carve the word banana. If the task is directed at a person, it’s a name, like Denise or Scarlett. The word is the permanent change; it’s what allows the golem to act even in Scarlett’s radius. If everyone is standing next to Scarlett, Mallory wouldn’t be able to give the golem a new command. She needs to channel magic for that. But if she gives the golem a command outside Scarlett’s radius, the golem can follow through within it.”

“Unless I remove the word?” Jesse said.

“Exactly. Take away the word, you take away the command. No command and no magic means no golem. In theory the thing would just…collapse.”

“In theory.”

“Just keep in mind, the thing is made out of hard clay that’s dry on the outside. You can’t just rub your hand across it a couple of times.”

“Okay.”

“I think we’re here,” she said abruptly.

Jesse checked the GPS on his phone. “You’re right.” He parked the car at a legal spot on the block next to Eli’s, and the two of them got out and walked casually toward the outdoor stairs that led up to his place. “Will said it’s on the third floor,” he said quietly to Runa. “There’s an interior door into the building, but you need a key to get in.”

“This is so weird,” she whispered back. “I’ve broken into my friends’ houses before, with a hide-a-key or whatever, but never someone I haven’t actually met.”

“Me neither,” Jesse growled. He was getting more and more nervous as they climbed the stairs. He was a cop, for crying out loud. It helped a little that he knew Eli would approve, if he were conscious, but that would still be hard to explain to the Santa Monica patrol cops. A West LA detective committing a B and E at 11:00 on a school night didn’t look good, no matter how you spun it.

“You sure you want to do this?” Runa whispered, reading his expression.

He nodded. “Let’s just get it over with.”

They finally reached the right door, and Jesse peeked around, seeing no obvious witnesses. There was a bit of noise from some clubs on the next street over. He glanced at Runa, who nodded that it looked all clear to her too. Then Jesse pulled the minicrowbar out of his jacket sleeve.

It was a nice, solid chunk of metal that they’d purchased at a twenty-four-hour convenience store along with two candy bars, a hammer, and some nails to divert suspicion. Jesse fitted the crowbar into the crack of the door, closest to the lock. They didn’t have time for finesse. He nodded at Runa, and she began knocking. “Eli?” Jesse called. “It’s Jesse, man, you around?” The noise from the knocking and yelling almost masked the sharp crack of the wooden door as it splintered open. Jesse and Runa slipped in quickly, closing the broken door behind them, and Jesse turned on all the lights. He immediately wiped the crowbar on his shirt and dropped it on a chair near the front door. If they got caught, he would simply say the door had been broken when they’d arrived.

The apartment was more or less one big room, with two doors jammed in the back. Jesse figured they probably led to a bedroom and bathroom, not the kind of places where one usually kept a spare key. “If you were a spare key, where would you be?” Runa mused.

Jesse checked the walls and tables nearest the door, in case he kept it conveniently in plain sight. No such luck. Eli had decorated the walls with bits and pieces from the ocean, shells and starfish and things, and the main wall space near the front door was taken up by an enormous surfboard. “Usually people go for a kitchen drawer or desk drawer,” he said absently, taking in the rest of the room. It was sparse: a couch, an armchair, a television, and a small card table that was covered in some sort of woodworking project. Runa peeked into the two doors at the end of the room. “No desk,” she reported.

The kitchenette was tiny, but he gestured that way with a nod. “Let’s start there.”

They worked quickly through the drawers and cupboards, shifting through utensils and hard plastic dinnerware that looked like it could take a bullet before cracking. Eli must not eat in very often, Jesse thought, or he only ate sandwiches and fruit, because there weren’t enough dishes for real cooking. In this case it worked to their advantage: less stuff to go through.

Runa checked the freezer, rummaging around behind boxes of microwave dinners. “Saw it in a movie,” she said sheepishly, as she closed the freezer door.

Jesse dropped into a folding chair, fidgeting. “We might be way off about this. He might not even have a spare key. Or he might have given it to a friend for safekeeping. Hell, Scarlett might have it.”

“Don’t give up yet,” Runa soothed him, patting his shoulder. “We still have the bedroom and the bathroom.”

Jesse looked up at her. He still felt the vestiges of love, and the grief, but something had changed fundamentally between them. It was like she’d torn off a mask. He didn’t even know this Runa, who was committing a major crime with him to stop a couple of nutcases she’d never even met. “I don’t want to go in there,” he confessed. “It’s too…personal.” And he didn’t want to see where Scarlett and Eli had slept together.

“Okay, let’s stop and think this through,” she said thoughtfully. “You’re Eli. You lock your keys in your car, which is parked illegally downstairs. You’re running late for something, so you wouldn’t want to have to track through the whole apartment to find it.”