the big-shot businessman who just arrived in town? I’ll give it a shot.
Help an old-lady Elf track down her husband’s murderer? That’s right up my alley.
What I don’t do, because it’s impossible, is search for a way to bring the goddamn magic back.
Rumors got out about what happened with the Professor, so now people keep asking me to fix the world for them.
But there’s no magic in this story. Just dead friends, twisted miracles, and a secret machine made to deliver a single shot of murder.
1
I wanted to die.
Not an uncommon feeling for me, considering my history, but it was more acute than usual. More direct. I was even fantasizing about the best way it could happen.
I’d settled on being burned alive. Someone would turn on the power to the lantern that I was sitting in and it would send a fireball straight up my ass to cook me inside and out.
Not the most painless way to go, but at least at the end I wouldn’t be so damn cold.
Of course, that was impossible. There hadn’t been fire in the lamp for over six years. It used to be one of the largest lights in Sunder City, part of a set of four that shone over the stadium during night games.
The field had been built above the very first fire pit. During construction, it was an open chasm to the maelstrom below. Once they’d installed the pipes that carried the flames through town, they’d decided that it wasn’t safe to leave a gaping hole to hell right at the entrance to the city. So it was covered over, and nobody was allowed to build on top of the plot of land.
Instead, kids used it as a sporting field. It was unofficial at first, but then the city built stands and bleachers, and it eventually became the Sunder City Stadium.
When the Coda killed all the magic, the flames beneath the city died too. That meant no heating in town, no lights on Main Street, and no chance of fire coming up between my legs. I was huddled in the cone at the top of the pole, my arms wrapped around myself, ducking down out of the wind.
I hadn’t thought about the wind when I’d taken the job. That was stupid because the wind ruined everything. It pushed the cold down my collar and up my sleeves. It shook the lamppost back and forth so I was always waiting for it to bend, snap, and send me crashing to the ground. Most importantly, it made the crossbow in my hands completely useless.
I was supposed to be watching over my client, ready to fire off a warning shot if he gave me a signal that the deal wasn’t going smoothly. But firing into this gale, it would either be pushed straight down into the snow or flung up into orbit.
My employer was a Gnome named Warren. He was down below in his trademark white suit, blending into the snowy ground. The only source of light was the lantern he’d hung off the gatepost.
We’d been waiting for half an hour, him down between the bleachers, me up in my metal ice-cream cone. I’d chewed through half a packet of Clayfields, knowing it was a bad idea. They were painkillers, supposed to make me numb, but the cold had already killed the feeling in my fingers and toes, so numbing was the last thing I needed. I should have brought whiskey. I shouldn’t have come. I should have shot the Gnome with the crossbow the moment he handed it to me, and taken myself back to bed.
Finally, from the other end of the field, a figure crossed the halfway line. She was wrapped up far more sensibly (and expensively) than I was: thick jacket, coat, scarf, hat, boots and gloves. The metal case she carried at her side was about the size of a toaster.
Warren stepped out from the bleachers onto the play area, holding his hat in his hands so it didn’t blow away.
They stepped close to each other and it would have been impossible to hear their conversation over that distance even without the howling wind. I brought up my crossbow and rested it on the lip of the cone, pretending that my presence wasn’t completely meaningless.
Back when there was magic, I would have had access to all kinds of miraculous inventions: Goblin-made hand grenades, bewitched ropes and exploding potions. Now the only thing that could take someone down over distance was a