Chapter Text
It was winter in the City and an early snowfall had left its evidence in all the usual places. The lamps along 13th Street were sputtering on and off, like they couldn’t decide if it were worth the trouble. I felt like getting lost, getting anywhere else as the cold slipped into my shoes and started kissing my toes. I stopped in front of the ancient double doors of old Polis Tower, my sense of duty getting the better of me with an old, aching memory nipping at my heels as I climbed the grimy stairs to the twelfth floor.
Indra gives me her usual once-over. She’s wearing a frown that could scare away the crows. I feel like a kid, home after curfew and I’d forgotten the milk.
‘You got a visitor.’
I open the office door bearing the chipped remains of my name Lexa Woods, PI, and slide my hat on a rusty nail I like to call Bub. Thanks, Bub. The candles are lit, throwing shadows over the floor and across the papery minefield I used to call a desk. Atmospheric – if you’re into that sort of thing.
I can smell this dame before I see her. It’s like someone lit a campfire in the Botanic.
She was sitting in my chair, gazing through the shadow-stained windows, a fingernail of moon glow running across a slender white hand holding a glass of my top shelf Scotch with her bare fingers. No ring. She must have heard my stare and decided to give me a glimpse.
She could have stepped out of a cinematograph. Holo star blonde with baby curls and eyes so blue you need a lifeguard just to look at them. A black dress wrapped around her so tight it must have been in love. With bosoms like that, can you blame it?
She had a voice like the first cup of coffee after a night in Paris with Mata Hari.
‘You’re the one my friends keep telling me about. You solve problems?’
In spite of the chill, it was getting warm in there and I had to loosen my tie. She had a smirk that could raise your taxes. That campfire was starting to smell like trouble.
‘You’re the one with a problem, sweetheart? You’ve come to the right place.’
She was giving me the once-or-twice-over as she dipped a blood-red nail into the glass and brought it to her lips. She rose up from the chair like it had hurt her feelings, like her ass deserved something better. I’m pretty sure it did. Mine ain’t worth a sawbuck and my feet were aching, so I gave that seat what it had coming.
I watched her move around the room, smooth as a good smoke, pretending to read my neglected shelf of broken spines. She was like a spark that got lost after the stars fell. Like she didn’t belong in this world.
‘I’ve got a friend. I think she’s in trouble. She’s gone missing.’
‘Missing persons are police business, sweetheart. But I’m guessing they weren’t much help.’
She hesitated by the dust-covered globe Costia had given me years ago. The world, she’d said. She wanted to give me the world. Dark-eyed Costia, my darkest matter. What’s the world to anyone now? Just some scorched-out leftovers. The Scotch feels like a trail of hot ashes down my throat.
‘I don’t trust the police.’
‘Smart girl.’
‘I want you to find her.’
‘They don’t pay me to dance the cha-cha, sweetheart. What’s her name?’
‘Raven. Raven Reyes.’
Maybe it was the Scotch, but my stomach started warming up for a rumba.
‘I’ve heard of her - hotshot reporter with the Arkadian Times. Wasn’t she doing a piece on the Weather Men or something?’
The bombshell on legs rounded my desk and leaned against the warped mahogany. I had a view straight up those heavenly slopes and, for a heartbeat, thought about changing my profession to peak climber.
She reached up in between those glorious promontories and fetched a folded piece of paper that she placed neatly on the desk.
The writing was all kinds of chicken-scratch, but I could make out a little:
Dante Wallace. Son Cage. The Ice Queen? Emerson connection? Mount Weather?
Who is ‘Becca?’
What is the ‘Nightblood Protocol?’
What is The Flame?
The room went cold, I felt like I’d been hurled into the freezing void of space. Icy pinpricks were tapping, relentlessly, against my chest.
I flashed to a night long gone, Titus’ voice, a phone call, and the house dark as I hid in the shadows of it.
‘We are so close to our goal. She should be told. She must know. The flame is her birthright.’
The flame. I feel it, now, like the hum of a thousand engines, murmuring with the whispers of a thousand voices. The awareness of it is always with me. And the secret of it: mine to keep.
‘She was obsessed with it, this, ‘flame,’ whatever it is. She told me these people, this 'Ice Queen', are looking for it, maybe killing to find it. She thought there was a connection with Emerson and his Weather Men thugs. I don’t know. All I know is, she’s gone and there’s no way I’m involving the police. Emerson’s got coppers on his payroll, everybody knows that. I need my friend back, detective. I want to know she’s alive and bring her home.’
The air was growing a little thin as the summit of those prodigiously pillowy maiden paps drew closer.
‘What do you say, Woods? Can you handle my case?’
In that waning sliver of moonlight, her eyes sparked like a silver blade held to my throat, daring me, and I felt warm to the challenge. If I played my part, blood would have blood and, maybe, I could coax a tango of tiny deaths from this cinematic goddess made flesh with just the tip of my tongue. Those gams were made to gancho.
‘I guess you’ll find out, Miss…?’
She pushed off the desk and a made a slow saunter to the door.
‘Griffin. I’m at The Outpost tomorrow and Saturday. Pay me a visit and we can talk over a few drinks.’
She turned down the door handle and paused on the threshold; the light from the reception hall gave her an inky silhouette, something Leonardo might have drawn on his ceiling.
‘Make sure you ask for Clarke. Not sure I want you meeting my mother, just yet. See ya round, Lexa Woods...PI.’
The door closing behind her snuffed out what little light was left.
I'd wanted to get lost; I'd wanted the city to swallow me whole, now a pair of blue eyes was inviting me to dance. What the hell, I thought.
Life is about more than just surviving, right?
Outside the snow was falling and pretty soon, I knew all too well - the Ice Queen cometh.