MUSE OF ECHOES Chapter 1

Hi Patrons, First off, apologies for not having new Gunpowder Magnolia chapters ready to go this month. I estimate that we’re 12-15 chapters

Hi Patrons,

First off, apologies for not having new Gunpowder Magnolia chapters ready to go this month. I estimate that we’re 12-15 chapters from the end of this book/arc, but I’m still having trouble pulling all the threads together into a coherent outline, hence the delay. Posting will resume when I have the remaining plot figured out.

In the meantime, I'm sharing a rough first chapter of my new murder mystery fantasy novella, Muse of Echoes. This story takes place in the same universe as my Volta Academy series and shares its magic system but has an adult protagonist and an older intended readership. I only started this novella in the midst of all my other projects because I’ve been wanting to do two things for years now: 1) write a novella-length reader magnet for my newsletter and 2) get baseline competent at writing mysteries (a genre I enjoy but am terrible at writing). Here’s hoping this project will help me with both!

As always, this is a rough draft and therefore subject to change in future publications.

Find more chapters linked in the masterpost!

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MUSE OF ECHOES
Chapter 1

Nulenbo Metropolitan Precinct
Rulilia
Eren Island Chain
Planet Mara

Reeva’s boots were too slow across the pavement. It had been three years since she last spread her wings and even longer since her last flight. Three years of pure civilian life—yet walking still felt painfully like moving in slow motion. Her twin flight tattoos itched beneath her shoulder blades, and she had to remind herself for the umpteenth time: you’re a human, Reeva. You were built to walk.

“Reeva!” an irritated voice called as booted footsteps broke into a jog behind her. “I told you to wait up.” Detective Gunter fell into step beside her, puffing with the effort of jogging to catch up, his dark blond hair disheveled.

“Sorry, Detective. I just got lost thinking about the case,” she said instead of the more pathetic truth: I was wondering if I’ll ever stop feeling slow and small. Or is this going to be my forever?

Nothing rivaled a Mara sunrise for beauty—the slow blue of dawn warming to pink and gold with the light of the system’s triplet stars. Millions of years ago, the native flora had picked up their pale warmth from those stars. And now, millions of years after that, humanoid civilization echoed the elegance of those flowers in their art, machines, and pink stone buildings. Between Mara’s intricate works of architecture, rich flora, and candy-colored atmosphere, every scene on this planet was a painting to Reeva’s eyes.

If she could just find it in herself to fit among these pale roses—a passively beautiful piece of this picture—maybe she could be content here. She just needed to get rid of this lingering burn beneath the canvas, licking at her peace like flame. She needed to stabilize. Yet no layer of sweet petals or cloud ever seemed to snuff the discontent writhing beneath her skin like fireworms.

“Your people usually don’t come up with a suspect and apprehend her this fast, do they?” Not her business, but the squirming fire inside had her asking anyway.

“No,” Gunter agreed, still audibly short of breath from keeping pace with his consultant.

“Right. So, what are the odds they’ve grabbed the wrong person? 

“Well—”

“Not trying to do your job,” Reeva added, just to be clear. “Not trying to weigh in. Just asking if I should mentally prepare for a day—or week—racing between interrogations in your…”—she still hesitated to call this planet’s puttering little vehicles cars—“police transport.”

“You’re always welcome to.”

“Tag along on a wild goose chase? I know.”

“Weigh in,” Gunter said, not returning her joking tone. “You’re on the books as a general consultant, not just a magical tool. I don’t know why you insist on being so hands-off when you obviously have the qualifications to advise—”

“Because I am a tool,” Reeva said with a smile. When that, too, was not returned, she said more seriously. “Trust me, Detective. It’s better that you keep to your role, and I keep to mine.”

“Even if your self-appointed role is a glorified magnifying glass?”

“Yeah.” The more apt metaphor would have been a glorified polygraph, but the Eren-Mara hadn’t invented those yet—if they ever would; technology never did develop along the same tracks from one humanoid civilization to the next. 

“But you’re not a magnifying glass. You’re a human member of the team. So, whenever you feel like adding your human perspective, I’d welcome it,” Gunter said earnestly. “We all would.”

“Ah, you say that now.” Reeva grimaced up at the candy-colored clouds. “In my experience, bringing my humanity into my work isn’t the best idea.”

“Do I ever get to hear about this mysterious experience?” he asked, brown eyes a little too wide with hope.

“No. Not unless it’s ever relevant to a case.” Which it wouldn’t be. That was the point of settling on a remote planet far from the Volta Wars and all the related inter-dimensional fallout. “Sorry, Detective.”

“It’s Sam,” he said. “We’ve been out for drinks. It’s officially Sam.”

The drinks had been Reeva’s mistake, made in a moment of weakness and loneliness. Now Gunter and his colleagues thought they were friends; flowers that had never known fire bent toward live coals. Reeva just gave Gunter a nod as they walked on. No words. Until she got her hot embers under control, they were not friends. They couldn’t be.

“How much further?” she asked, eager to shift back to their professional dynamic.

“Should be just on the next block.” Gunter craned to read each brass house number in the growing light.

Since they had left Gunter’s excuse for a car, the streets had narrowed. Reeva often wore high heels to slow her Volta’s gait, but she was glad she had foregone the heels today as the pavement beneath her boots turned to hundred-year-old cobbles. They were entering an old neighborhood, lovingly kept in excellent condition. Old money. The houses along this block had a haunting beauty about them, but Reeva knew better than anyone that the most beautiful exteriors could house the deepest rot.

A pair of unfamiliar police officers in deep green uniforms stood guard outside the doors of the crime scene. The two young men parted to allow Detective Gunter up the front walk to the house but hesitated when it came to Reeva.

“She’s with me, boys,” Gunter said as Reeva fished in her coat pocket for her consultant badge. 

Her wallet, which only looked like a wallet, sensed her fingers grasping and helpfully jumped into the palm of her hand with a little tickle of magic. The same reflex that sent a tingle through her tattoos every time she wished she could move faster had her murmuring, “Thanks, Barny.”

The officers exchanged an uneasy glance.

“What was that, ma’am?” said one officer.

“Who’s Barny?” said the other.

“No one.” Reeva flipped the wallet open to show the bronze crest Captain Suma had given her when she began consulting for the Nulenbo Metropolitan police. “I was talking to myself.”

The non-explanation went unheard as the first officer leaned in to peer at her ID—then gaped. “You’re her!” He looked excitedly at his companion and then at Gunter. “You’re the Aurin Volta!”

“Ex,” Reeva clarified tersely. “Ex Aurin Volta.”

Gunter mercifully interrupted before the men could start with any unwanted follow-up questions about wings, magic academies, or distant wars. “Officer Damel, why don’t you show us the scene?”

“Of course, sir.”

Damel accompanied the pair up the carved stone steps to the house. It was a beautifully maintained residence, the grooves of the carvings kept free of grime, planters as big as Reeva overflowing with dusky pink roses, the door painted a deep red and the brass knocker shaped like a rivercat, which the Eren-Mara considered a ward against malevolent ghosts.

As a girl, Reeva had believed in her own versions of such safeguards—the wooden rings her father nailed to the mantle, folded paper stars in her pockets, and jars of good luck herbs by her bed. Back then, she wouldn’t have imagined that anything bad could happen behind such a door, shielded by wards and framed with flowers. Today, she didn’t even flinch as the door swung open to reveal the stuff of nightmares.

Blood dominated the foyer, droplets spotting the floor, red finger smears on the inside doorknob and the surrounding woodwork. It looked like someone had tried and failed to close this pretty door against their attacker as they were mortally stabbed. The red continued down a long hallway beyond the foyer, splashes on the hardwood floor, handprints on floral wallpaper where the victim had tried to support herself.

“Dear gods!” Detective Gunter removed his cap and held it to his heart with both hands, his fingers forming a Mara ward against evil.

As he stood, staring, Reeva moved into the hallway for a closer look. Mixed with all the blood smears, she noted darker smudges. It looked like the victim or attacker had had dirt on their hands during the struggle, though she resigned herself to never finding out what the substance was. The Eren-Mara were just beginning to experiment with forensic techniques like fingerprint identification. The microscopes available to examine particles like ash and dirt were so weak as to be virtually useless. Consequently, police were still incredibly cavalier about contaminating a crime scene. Gunter barely bothered to step around the blood spatters as he finally collected himself and joined Reeva in the hall. Had Reeva been at all versed in crime scene forensics, the carelessness would have driven her mad. Fortunately, her role in solving crimes had nothing to do with fingerprints or DNA, and she impassively followed the bloodstains to a sunlit sitting room.

Here, the victim lay where she had fallen, and Gunter uttered another prayer under his breath. If this woman had been young or old, pretty or plain, that was all lost in red; she had taken the knife to the face so many times that it was impossible to discern any features. Her hands and forearms were so badly sliced with defensive wounds that one of her fingers was only hanging on by a thread. Her hair was just recognizable as the usual Eren-Mara blond, though the blood puddle around her had rendered most of it shades of red and brown.

Reeva had done a good job mastering fear and nausea. Nothing about the scene troubled her—until her eyes fell on the newspaper lying on the carpet near the body. The Mara Times. The same issue Reeva had been trying not to see for the last week, even as the damn thing stared at her from every newsstand.

VOLTA PROMOTED TO LIEUTENANT ENFORCER

Captain of Federal Inspectors excited to welcome “powerful magical asset,” “exemplary officer” to command position.

The black and white image beneath the headline was poor quality, the camera barely picking up the subject’s features; the Volta’s skin was too dark for the weak Eren-Mara flashbulb, but that hadn’t stopped the photo from capturing those eyes in all their wintry power—two shards of ice threatening to puncture the tenuous, temperate spring Reeva had built for herself. Suddenly, Reeva’s eyelids were fluttering, reflexively trying to beat back memory. She couldn’t go there.

Because the integrity of the crime scene didn’t matter, Reeva gave the newspaper a kick so that it flipped over and that damned gaze couldn’t reach her anymore.

“Problem, Consultant?” Gunter asked.

“No, Detective. There was a bug.” Even if Reeva had wanted to tell Gunter the truth, she wouldn’t have known what words to use. Because how was she supposed to conceptualize the other Volta’s appearance on this of all planets? As an insult? A threat? Or just one more incidental reminder of the past Reeva had committed to leaving behind?

All she knew was that that newspaper set something old and unpleasant squirming in her gut. She was not prepared to face that feeling—and maybe if she just kept her head down, she wouldn’t have to. Sniffing sharply in the hope that the smell of death would displace the infinitely less pleasant thoughts of Rulilia’s new Lieutenant Enforcer, she turned back to the body. 

“What do we know about the victim?”

“Mayna Reed,” one of the officers read out from his notes. “Age twenty-eight, unmarried, no children, works as an investigative journalist. This was all confirmed by the neighbors we interviewed.”

“Nice house for a journalist,” Reeva muttered, looking around the lavishly furnished sitting room, “even in this economy.”

“Inherited from her parents,” the officer said a Reeva ran a finger along the wing of an angel statue standing nearly as tall as a human child by the doorway. “Journalism seems to be a passion of hers.”

“Ah.” That made sense. Rulilia might be kinder to its working class than most humanoid civilizations, but a working woman still couldn’t afford all the antique pottery and statuary in this sitting room—let alone the mansion itself.

“Neighbors reported screams and a commotion at this address early in the morning—about two hours ago,” Officer Damel said. “After discovering the body, we spoke to three workmen and a gardener working across the street who saw a woman matching the description of Miss Mayna Reed’s sister, Myrtell Reed, approaching the home before the screams and leaving shortly after in a hurry. When we sent an officer to Miss Myrtell Reed’s home, she wasn’t there, but another team was able to apprehend her at the train station with luggage for a trip.” 

“Trying to flee?” Detective Gunter suggested.

“That’s sure what it looked like, considering the luggage and the fact that she doesn’t have any known friends or family in that direction. Then again, the neighbors we’ve interviewed thus far report a caring relationship between the two sisters. Even some of Mayna’s diaries we found here in the house reflect nothing but warm feelings between them. So, she seems like an unlikely culprit, but given witness reports, we obviously had to bring her in.”

“And you brought her back here to the scene?” Gunter asked.

“It seemed an odd order, Detective, but yes. She’s being held in another room under guard, as you requested.”

“Excellent work, officers,” Gunter said. “I know it’s unorthodox, but Miss Reeva and I have worked a lot of these cases together, and we’ve found that handling suspects with way helps tremendously with her process.”

“And what is her process, exactly?” the officer asked, turning to look at Reeva in fascination.

“I’m a Mind Volta,” Reeva said. 

“What does that mean?”

“Technically, a lot of things,” she said. “It’s a broad designation, but in my case, it means that I read emotion through touch. As you likely know, place is important to triggering memory and the accompanying emotions. If you get someone back to the place where they committed a crime—or better yet, face-to-face with the victim—it’s much easier to read the emotions they associate with the crime itself.”

“Oh,” Damel said, looking excited but like he hadn’t quite understood her explanation. It wasn’t something Reeva had ever been able to explain in its entirety. “Then I can’t wait to see you in action, Aurin Volta.”

“Ex Aurin Volta,” Reeva reminded him, “and there isn’t much to see.” This young man was probably imagining the epic Volta battles of Kiloversal legend—angels clashing among the stars, lasers blazing every which way, planets exploding—the same way a child might imagine that police work was all car chases and shoot-outs. Well, Reeva’s specialty was far from exciting. “But rest assured, officer, I’ll tell you whether or not you have the right woman.”

“It’s that accurate?”

“Yes,” Reeva said because that was simpler than explaining that her reading was limited to emotion and, sure, emotion was subjective, memory was subjective, but experience had given her the cold objectivity to read truth between the lines of rage, grief, and jealousy.

“I can vouch for her,” Detective Gunter jumped to her defense. “She hasn’t gotten one wrong yet.”

Not that these police could ever know for sure, given their depressingly limited means of gathering evidence, but Reeva was sure. She’d honed her particular mix of magic, intuition, and cool analysis on other planets—planets that did have DNA testing and surveillance cameras to corroborate her readings. She knew what she was doing.

“Worth mentioning that we never would have caught the Dalia Bank Strangler without her,” Gunter added.

It was the highest profile case Reeva had ever assisted with on Mara. She understood why Gunter felt the need to bring it up; it always made people’s eyes go big like Officer Damel’s eyes were right now. She just wished it didn’t bring to mind one of the most disturbing readings she’d ever experienced. Reeva hardened to so many secondhand emotions through her years as a glorified polygraph, and that reading—the euphoria in violence—had still kept her up at night for weeks. At least the Strangler had left her with the knowledge that she had been to the bottom of the human psyche and withstood it. Nothing could shake her after that. She flexed her fingers, ready to dive into the unknown of a new mind.

“I’ll go get the suspect, then.” Gunter looked at Reeva, who nodded. “And we’ll get started.”

“There a reason you had us blindfold her in the other room?” Damel asked Reeva as Gunter headed out of the sitting room.

“That first visceral emotional when a suspect sees the scene of a crime can be the most telling,” Reeva explained. “Is she surprised at what she sees? Does she feel guilt? Disgust? Vindictive glee? Keeping the suspect separated from the scene prevents her from going back through and editing her memory of the crime. If you let a person sit too long with what she’s done, she’ll start to tell herself a story about what happened, and that story can drift away from the truth real fast if the criminal is adept at lying to herself.”

“People really do that?”

“Lie to themselves?” Reeva laughed. “Of course. And the ones who really know what they’re doing will kid themselves on cue. When you ask them what happened, they’ll tell you a different story and buy it while they’re saying it. Those are the ones I need to watch out for.”

This case provided just about the best conditions Reeva could ask for. The blood was still fresh. The sister hadn’t had days—or even hours—to reframe the memory of the assault. It would be all raw emotional truth in that head of hers.

Detective Gunter and a new officer brought the suspect into the sitting room, where they guided her into the only chair that wasn’t marred with blood. With the blindfold wrapped snuggly around her eyes, there wasn’t much of her face to see, but Reeva took stock of the woman’s size before she folded shakily into the armchair. She was tall and robust for an heiress with no real job; she certainly had a couple inches on the corpse; it wasn’t inconceivable that she had overpowered Mayna. There should have been injuries from the struggle—which there might be, but her coat covered her arms to the wrists. There was a handkerchief tied sloppily around her right hand, which would be something to ask about later in the interrogation.

“Miss Reed,” Gunter said, “apologies for holding you under these strange conditions. I’m Detective Samar Gunter. I’m going to be asking you a few questions to help me understand the situation, and hopefully, together, we can get to the bottom of what happened here.”

At Gunter’s nod, Reeva moved behind the suspect, replacing the guard on her right. Her left hand closed on Myrtell Reed’s shoulder while her right touched the back of the woman’s neck. As her fingers made contact, Myrtell Reed twitched violently. Non-Volta couldn’t lucidly sense Reeva’s powers working on them just like they couldn’t sense other forms of intangible magic, but most humans seemed to possess a primal sense that something was off when Reeva touched them. Someone was in there who shouldn’t be.

“I didn’t do this!” the sister burst out shrilly.

Nerves flooded Reeva’s system, making her heart hammer. This was an expected side effect of her using her aptitude in any interrogation. It used to knock Reeva all off kilter no matter how hard she tried to shield herself, but she had learned over time that the borrowed emotion wasn’t something she could stop with the rigid armor of willpower; she had to be elastic, absorb the feeling like a punch, let it rock her for a moment and then snap back to logic. The logical part of her brain reminded her that the nerves were a good thing. If a person was too calm during a murder interrogation, that was a sign of a dangerous soul. 

“She was dead when I got here! I didn’t—”

“Miss Reed,” Gunter cut her off before she could get too in her head and begin revising the memory in her favor. “I’m going to need you to focus on my voice and answer my questions as I ask them. Rest assured, I do want to hear what you have to say. All of it. But it’s very important that we go in order, alright?”

“A-Alright,” Reed said shakily. Her fingers fidgeted in her lap, and Reeva noted a dab of blood leaking through the cloth at the center of her palm—like the knife had slid in her grip during a stab. There was grief mixed in with the panic Reeva was getting from her, but grief didn’t amount to innocence.

“Now, Miss Reed, I’m going to go through the events of this morning,” Gunter went on. “All you have to do is fill in the details, and you stop me if I get anything wrong. I assume that you woke up in your apartment on Arenbo Creek two blocks from here?” 

“Yes.” Myrtell Reed sniffed. “Yes, that’s right.”

“And you live alone in your apartment, correct?”

“Yes”

“Do you happen to remember what time you woke up?”

“My alarm goes off at five of midnight. That’s always when I wake up to get ready for my morning walk before work.”

“For work?” Gunter said. “My understanding was that you were not employed.”

“Not officially, no,” Myrtell said. “I-I’m just very active at the temple.”

“Which temple?” Gunter asked, taking out his notepad.

“The Central Rulilia Temple of Our Mother’s Redemption—on Arenbo and Saint Ferris by the hospital.”

“Right.” Gunter made a note. “So your alarm clock wakes you… And is there anything unusual about this morning, or do you proceed with your routine as normal?”

“No, nothing unusual.” Reed’s voice broke slightly. A potent hit of grief and regret pulsed into Reeva. Both emotions were so standard in these interviews that she had become numb to them, though, in her earlier years, they would have made her cry. “It was the normal routine.”

“Right, and can you describe that to me?” Gunter asked. “In as much detail as possible?”

“Alright…” Myrtell Reed was understandably confused. To her, the morning routine might not have much to do with her sister’s murder. But Gunter needed to place her back in the events of the morning, get her to visualize it, and re-experience the emotions she had felt at each stage, culminating in the murder.

Gunter had her review her morning, from picking out the stockings she was wearing, to boiling water for tea, to packing each item into her purse for the day—her keys, spare change for the temple’s donation box, a hand mirror that had been her mother’s, two lipstick options, an extra handkerchief.

“And is stopping off at your sister’s home in the wee hours of the morning part of your usual routine?” Crossing to the mantlepiece, Gunter selected a portrait photo of Mayna Reed and brought it to where her sister sat. This was a tactic he used to enhance Reeva’s reading in the event that the flesh-and-blood victim no longer had a face.

“It has been. Mayna... She’s been having trouble sleeping. I mean, she’s always had trouble sleeping, but it’s been bad recently, so I’ve been checking on her. I won’t ring the bell in case it wakes her. I’ll knock, and if she’s awake in the sitting room, she’ll come to the door. I was just checking...” Myrtell Reed’s voice broke into a squeak. Another hit of grief, which Reeva absorbed with a single slow breath.

“Take a deep breath,” Gunter gently echoed Reeva’s internal monologue. “So, this morning, you walked up to the door of your sister’s house. It’s a door you’ve seen many times”—a glance down at his notes to make sure he got the details right—“the dark red paint job, the knocker shaped like a rivercat… You knock and wait for your sister to answer. The door opens. You see Mayna.”

“No, I—”

Without warning, Gunter whipped the blindfold off Myrtell Reed’s head.

Gasping sharply, she blinked. Her heart jumped in surprise, causing Reeva’s heart to jump right along with it. Then she registered the portrait of her sister Gunter had strategically held up in front of her. The photo came into focus with a stab of overwhelming pain. Then Myrtell Reed took in the rest of the scene: Mayna’s body lying in the center of the ruined sitting room, stabbed at least fifty times.

She let out a terrible animal scream.

And there, in that moment between rational thoughts, was the truth:

Rage.

Blinding, sense-obliterating rage.

Anger was nearly as commonplace as fear in interrogations, but this was different. This was no flavor of annoyance or frustration or righteous indignation. This was a need to kill something.

Racked with the feeling, Reeva nearly screamed herself. Every muscle in her body jumped, her tattoos burned white-hot, and she jerked her right hand back just in time to avoid clenching it with all her Volta strength and breaking Myrtell Reed’s neck.

“Reeva?” Gunter was looking at his consultant in alarm, the Reed sisters forgotten. “Are you alright?”

“Yes, Detective,” Reeva gasped, holding onto her composure with a time-hardened grip.

At first, she didn’t understand why every Eren-Mara in the room had gone still to stare at her. She’d smothered the urge to scream and avoided breaking Myrtell Reed in half. There was no reason for those expressions of awe and terror, unless…

“Oh.” Looking down at herself, she realized that her aura had activated. For the first time in years, her full power had woken, forming a golden glow around her. “Shit.”

Myrtell Reed’s wrath had not only breached Reeva’s emotional defenses; it had activated her long-dormant battle magic. One more heartbeat of skin contact—one more hit of that blackout rage—and Reeva could have accidentally created a new crime scene on top of the current one.

“She did it,” Reeva said because that was suddenly all she could think in her dizzied state.

“What?” Officer Damel said.

Myrtell Reed screamed, “NO! No, I didn’t!” but Gunter held up a hand, silencing them both. 

“What did you feel?” he asked.

“Murder,” Reeva said because the word ‘anger’ was inadequate to describe the emotion still screaming through her veins, making her certain she would blow to pieces if she didn’t crush something in her bare hands. “I felt... murder.” 

“Reeva—”

“I need to take a walk.” Before the borrowed wrath could turn on the police or their suspect, Reeva backed away and fled the room.

Pushing through several hardwood doors, she burst out of the house into a magnificent back garden—the kind she had dreamed of as a child, labyrinthine, roses overflowing onto winding gravel paths, a swirly wrought iron bench with a view of a stone fountain.

Still thrumming with power, Reeva made a beeline for the bench. Her impulse was to pace, but that often made her more agitated. So, reining in her desire to move, she took a seat on the bench, unclenched her fists, and slowly tried to breathe her way back to sanity. Her eyes fixed on the stone fish spitting spouts of water past one another in the center of the fountain, and after a few slow breaths, her heart rate had slowed. But horrifyingly, the glow of her aura didn’t dissipate. Something deep in her was still on high alert.

Come on, Reeva. What’s the matter with you?

She might have been able to get her aura under control, but familiar footsteps were already hurrying down the garden path toward her. Damn Detective Gunter.

“Reeva, what happened? I’ve never seen a suspect affect you like that. Not even the Strangler.”

The Strangler was enjoying himself, Reeva thought. Not blind with rage.

“Are you—”

“Stop,” Reeva said harshly.

“What?” The footsteps halted a few feet back from the bench.

“Don’t come any closer. I’m having trouble getting my aura under control. To be safe, you should stay back.”

“Oh… Alright.” Gunter walked a tentative semi-circle around Reeva, maintaining his distance as he came to stand in front of the bench. The pink stone fish shot a little arch of water over his head, the droplets catching the sunlight and giving him a little golden halo of his own.

Gunter wasn’t particularly handsome by Eren-Mara standards, which prized light blond hair and broad noses, but his square jaw and earnest eyes would have turned heads on Reeva’s home planet—including Reeva’s—once upon a time. At this point, he was too young for her. In spirit if not years. He still had a light in him that she had lost a long time ago. To get closer to him would be to smother it, and she wouldn’t do that. Not to him.

“Too close, Detective,” Reeva said roughly.

“Okay.” He took two more steps back—as though that made a meaningful difference.

If Reeva had a full meltdown, she’d blow him away along with the fountain, the rose garden, and probably most of Mayna Reed’s magnificent old house. But Gunter couldn’t be expected to know that. And thankfully, Reeva’s power was slowly dimming, receding back into her skin where it belonged.

“So, that golden light…” he said softly. “That’s your aura?”

Reeva nodded, and it was strange that someone who had known her for so many years had never seen the magical manifestation of her soul—had never really seen her.

“So, it’s like… your magical power?” he said, struggling to understand.

“My full power,” Reeva clarified. “I use my aptitude to read people’s emotions, and that’s magic, obviously, but it’s tiny magic. It doesn’t require everything in me.”

“So, if you can read minds without your aura, what’s this for?” Gunter asked like the backworld boy he was—utterly innocent of what went on in the wider Kiloverse.

“Battle,” Reeva said. “All the things your typical Volta needs to do—fly, defend... destroy.”

“Destroy?”

“Uh-huh.” Reeva put a hand on her chest to see if her heart rate had diminished with the golden glow around her, but something got in the way. Her eyes widened. Where her wallet should have been, there was hard metal. The impulse to fight had been so overwhelming that even Barny had responded to it. He had transformed.

“What is it?” Gunter asked, seeing the shock on Reeva’s face.

“Permission not to answer that, Detective.”

“What?”

Reeva gave him a weary smile. “If I answer, you’ll have to arrest me.” 

Civilians were not allowed to carry firearms on Mara, let alone anything like the weapon that had just materialized in Reeva’s interior coat pocket.

“Barny, revert,” she whispered down at her chest as Gunter looked on in worry and confusion, “now.”

“Revert?” Gunter said, plainly fighting the urge to take a step toward her. “Reeva, are you…?” He lowered his voice as though worried someone was going to hear. “Are you talking to your Aurinmate?” 

“Yeah.” Most Eren-Mara had no notion of what an Aurinmate was or what it could do, but Reeva had been required to explain her shape-shifting mechanical companion to Detective Gunter before the two had been allowed to work together. He obviously struggled to understand what an AI was, so she’d described her Aurinmate as a creature that could take the form of various inanimate objects and had something like a mind of its own, though it ultimately obeyed her. She hadn’t mentioned that Barny specifically took the form of a gun.

“You said your full power was for flight, defense, and destruction,” Gunter said slowly. “I know you have those tattoos on your back for flight. Your aura is for defense, right? Like armor.” 

Reeva nodded.

“And destruction?”

“This little guy.” Reeva produced Barny, who had thankfully gone back to being a worn leather wallet. “Only not anymore, Detective. So, false alarm.” She was tempted to add that she had never actually shot anyone, but that wasn’t a point of pride for her. She shoved Barny back into her interior breast pocket with a frown that told Gunter this conversation was over.

“I thought only young Volta had the big magic powers—the glowing and the transforming weapons and stuff,” Gunter said, then floundered, looking mortified. “Not-not that you’re—I mean, you… You look fantastic—”

“No, you’re right,” Reeva cut him off, indifferent. “Volta are supposed to stabilize by the time they’re twenty-five.” Twenty-five at the very oldest, she didn’t say, because she would be thirty this time next year. “Our powers are supposed to take a subtler, stabler form and stay there in adulthood.” What ‘stable’ meant varied from person to person, but what a Volta’s powers were certainly not supposed to do was fluctuate against the user’s will the way Reeva’s were right now. “We don’t need to talk about it.”

“Okay—so…” Gunter visibly bit down on his desire to ask more about her magic. “You—um—you figure she did it?” he pivoted with a glance back toward the house. “Myrtell Reed killed her beloved sister?”

“I’m having trouble believing she didn’t, Detective,” Reeva said honestly, though there was still more interrogation to do once she had herself under control. “I’ve never felt intent to kill like that. Not even during the Volta Wars. Now, stop,” she said firmly when she saw the way Gunter’s face lit up. “No.”

“But you never told me you were in the Volta Wars!”

“Because I wasn’t, really. I never made it to the front lines, so there are no interesting stories there. I was just an interrogator.”

“That’s even more interesting to someone in my line of work.”

“This was not an invitation to discuss my messy girlhood, Detective.”

Gunter looked like a child being told he couldn’t have a second ice cream.

“Look,” she said before he could press. “My interrogations during the Volta Wars were about as eventful as the ones we do here. Arguably less so because I was far worse at my job.”

“Worse?” he said in surprise. “How so?”

“If you must know, I was a stupid little girl with no understanding of my role as a Mind Volta. I grew up on a little out-of-the-way planet like this one.” She gestured around them. “Small world, small community, vibrant plant life, people who loved easily and solved most problems by talking to each other…” Maybe that was part of what had drawn Reeva to Eren-Mara. It was a place to do everything again from the beginning, only smarter.

“That little girl from the backwoods of a nothing planet thought her powers were a sign of a grander destiny.” Reeva cringed at how saccharine it sounded out loud. “Because her powers were empathetic in nature, she believed they gave her the ability not just to sense but to touch the souls of others. She figured that her role was not just to read her enemies but to win them over. She had a cosmically unique power to pull criminals from their darkness into the light. How ridiculous is that?”

But she had forgotten who she was talking to.

“It’s not ridiculous,” Gunter said with maddening sincerity. “I think it’s beautiful.”

“The idea that any problem can be solved by holding hands?” Reeva scoffed. “That’s a child’s delusion.”

“You’ve solved a lot of our problems by holding people’s hands—or—the backs of their necks,” Gunter said brightly. 

“And you have your gun in case I can’t.” She nodded to the pistol in his holster. “That’s the part I was missing back then. I put so much stock in the power of empathy that I let people manipulate me, get past me… and the consequences were…” Reeva leaned her elbows on her knees with a sigh, hands clasped before her. “We don’t need to talk about the consequences.” Not with one of them having taken up residence close enough to stare at them from the morning paper.

Gunter was frowning at her, his lips pressed together in thought. “Reeva,” he said after a moment, “I don’t think–”

But the universe was occasionally kind, and he was interrupted, his police radio crackling with an incoming message.

“Oh.” He took the staticky monstrosity of primitive tech from his hip. “To be continued, Reeva.”

“Absolutely not,” she said.

“Absolutely, yes,” he threw back at her before hurrying off to take his message in the relative privacy behind a rose hedge. 

With her aura amped up, enhancing her senses, Reeva heard him say, “Detective Gunter...”

The crackling response was less audible but probably clear enough to Gunter with the device near his ear. Communication had advanced faster than most other forms of tech on Eren-Mara—certainly faster than their transportation tech. In-character for the chatty, gossipy people they were.

Reeva’s aura should have fully deactivated by now. But talking about the Volta Wars had sent a fresh ripple of unease through her soul and, in response, her armor had refused to deactivate. As she kept telling Gunter, there was a reason she had left—and there was a reason she didn’t talk about it anymore. She was just a human under the glow. She was not immune to the swell of emotion that came with memory.

Damn it, Reeva. Get a grip.

For the first few years on Mara, she had done such a good job keeping the past at bay. The memories had only come pressing closer in these last few months—ever since she’d realized that she was no longer the only Volta on the planet, nor the only veteran of the Volta Wars.

Why here? she seethed, thinking of those pale eyes staring up at her from the paper in the Reed house sitting room. Why her? Of all the hundreds of Volta who had deserted during the war, and of all the millions of primitive planets in the Kiloverse, why had she come here? Just to ruin Reeva’s hard-won peace? Or for some darker purpose?

“Reeva.” Gunter emerged from behind the hedge. “We gotta go.”

“Go?” Reeva looked up in surprise. “We didn’t even finish the interrogation in there.”

“You’re not going to believe this, but there’s been another murder reported.”

“No way.” Reeva stood, the gold of her aura holding strong around her. Rulilia wasn’t a populous or particularly violent city. Usually, they averaged a couple murders in a year, not a single morning. 

“Another stabbing,” Gunter said. “At the beach.”

“Shit, Detective… What are the chances?”

“That’s what we’re going to find out.” Gunter had started down the garden path, Reeva close behind.

“We?” she said. “If it’s just a report, is there even a suspect for me to read?” Normally, Detective Gunter had to have a suspect in custody to get approval to bring his Volta consultant onto the case. “Have I even been cleared to—”

“We’ll worry about clearing you later.” Gunter rounded the side of the house to avoid cutting back through the crime scene, clambering over a chest-high garden fence as he went. “I’d rather have you with me on this one from the start than have to call you in later.”

As she reached the vine-covered pickets just behind him, Reeva automatically jumped. Her activated aura gave her limbs their old Volta strength, sending her up over the fence. Detective Gunter was in such a hurry that he didn’t see her turn a flip over the fence and land in step just behind him.

“Aleden!” Gunter called to the officer who remained at the doors. “You and Damel take Miss Myrtell Reed back to the station and have her held for interrogation. Then get a team in here to take care of the scene. I have to run.”

“Cutting a lot of corners, aren’t you, Detective?” Reeva asked as they rushed away from the Reed house.

“Our department doesn’t have a detective at the beach yet.” Heedless of the leaves stuck in his uniform buttons from the climb over the fence, Gunter had broken into a jog back toward his ‘car.’ “We’re the closest, and the scene just happens to be on the edge between jurisdictions, so we need to be the ones to respond first.”

“But the beach is between Nulenbo Metropolitan and Hanta.” Reeva may have never committed herself to learning all these details of Mara’s police bureaucracy, but she had picked them up through proximity to Gunter and his friends. “And the Hanta police don’t handle violent crimes.” It was a sparsely populated Rulilia suburb with a police force of four part-time officers. “So, the case will pass to your department either way, right?”

“Our department or the Enforcers.” Gunter had not slowed down, though he was starting to breathe hard. “Captain Suma says the Enforcers already have their own agents on the way.”

“Oh,” Reeva said, understanding. “So, if the Enforcers get there first, the case is theirs?” 

“I’ve seen this happen before,” Gunter said in intense annoyance. “If those fancy federal puppets get on the scene first, we get demoted to their errand-runners for the rest of this case.”

“Okay, well, Enforcer headquarters are hours away, right?”

“Hours for the usual transport, yes. But Cap’s pretty sure they’re not taking a transport.”

“What?” On Mara, what option was there other than a ponderous land vehicle? Reeva’s smile only slipped when she remembered that the Enforcers had one asset no other department did. As soon as the thought hit, her heart dropped through the cobblestones. “They’ve sent the Volta.”

“That’s what I gather.”

“We have to get there first!” Reeva said.

“That’s what I’m saying—”

“No, you don’t understand.” But there was no time to explain that there was more at stake here than Gunter’s pride. As she ran, Reeva took her wallet from her coat pocket and jammed it into the pocket of her trousers instead. Then she whipped her trench coat off and shoved it at Gunter. “Hold this.”

“Gods, Reeva!” he exclaimed as she unbuttoned her vest and threw that into his arms as well. The button-down shirt was one of half a dozen she owned; she could afford to replace it, even on her modest consulting fees.

“What are you doing?” Gunter demanded.

Instead of answering, Reeva let her aura overflow into blinding light. Magical energy poured through the twin tattoos beneath her shoulder blades—then took physical form. Dappled falcon’s wings burst from her back and spread wide, revealing the patterns of eyes inside the feathers. A pop of joints. A long overdue stretch. Absolute relief.

Detective Gunter reeled back with a cry of shock. Then he was praying again. Understandable; Reeva’s Voltform did look rather like Eren-Mara depictions of angels, minus the feline features and extra limbs.

“Follow in the car, Detective,” she said, “once you’ve got your breath back.”

Letting power surge through her tattoos, Reeva flapped her wings and burst into the air. The wind tore out her ponytail as it roared through her hair, brown locks whipping her cheeks. With Gunter shrinking to the size of a bug beneath her, Reeva turned a flip, took a moment to orient herself by familiar streets below, then rocketed toward her destination.

Her wings became a black blur against the sky. A long time ago, her wings had been warmer shades of gold and cream—more resembling those of a Mara angel—but ever since she’d left Aurin, they had been dark. Reeva’s instructors at Aurin said that all visual elements of a person’s Voltform had a psychological component. All aspects of how magic manifested represented some expression of the soul, but Reeva had chosen not to dwell on the ‘why’ of the color change.

“Barny,” she addressed her Aurinmate for the first time in years. “Lead on to the nearest beach.”

“Roger!” the little automated voice answered, bringing with it a potent hit of memory. Tears pricked Reeva’s eyes at the familiar sound, but she told herself it was just the wind.

The magical device, which had spent the last three years as a wallet, glowed with gold light from every seam, sprouted his own tiny leather wings, and jumped from her hand to zip ahead of his Volta. Reeva knew the way to the crime scene on foot, but Barny’s navigational capabilities would keep her flying in the straightest possible line. And she wasn’t taking any chances that her competition would get there first.

Far below, streets threaded like cobbled rivers between Mara’s powder blue rooftops. Shouts echoed from those streets and balconies as people stared up, open-mouthed, at a sight they might only ever see once in their lives—a Volta in flight.

“Where are we?” Barny asked. His navigational system carried him forward, and his access to the infinite data of the Kiloverse would have told him the planet’s name, location, size, elemental makeup, and a million other factoids. But that wasn’t the Aurinmate’s real question. What is this place to you? he meant. What are we doing here?

“Hiding,” Reeva replied, “surviving for as long as we can.”

“If we are hiding,” Barny said, “then why do we fly toward danger?”

Danger implied that the other Volta was in range of Barny’s extended sensors. Toward implied that she was nearly at their intended location.

Reeva’s jaw clenched. “Not danger,” she said, “a nuisance.”

Barny had a decade of Reeva’s vitals and vocal cues to read past the words coming out of her mouth.

“Okay,” he said as he always did when she told him a lie.