Mourning - Part 3 of Fate Adjuster

Part three of Fate Adjuster is below the break.  It's a bit short, but it's the full section.  I'm adding the sections around the same time as I post them to additional pages on the side bar.  Take a look there if you want to see it all in one place.


NaNoWriMo is off to a good start on my end.  I hope it's going well for everyone else as well.  Over target by a fair amount for 2 of 3 days.  2k a day is the mantra, but I'm shooting for 2.5k a day.  Sometimes I question my sanity.  Part 4 of Fate Adjuster up next week.



     The next morning I woke up with ringing in my ears.  It took me a minute before I realized that the ringing was from the gunshots and from the phone as well.  I wasn’t much for technology, and the old bell in the rotary phone rung loudly.  It was much better at waking me up than some digital speaker thing would be anyway.  That and it was much simpler to use when distracted.  Mostly it was just because I’m technologically inept.  I’m not ashamed to admit it either.  It’s part of the reason I have an old Jeep.  It’s easy to take care of and it’s good in the snow.  And we get plenty of snow.


     I answered the phone on the fourth ring that I could count, I’m certain there were more before that, but it’s hard to count while you’re asleep.  “Tyler.”  There was a dead sounding moment, the phone beeped three times and a computerized voice came on the line.  “Mr. Tyler, if you are receiving this automated call the worst has happened.  If something bad has happened I will not have been able to stop this message from playing.  Your fee will still be payed as negotiated.  Thank you, Mrs. Rachel de Levine.”  The system beeped three times and hung up.


     It took me a minute to process what happened.  The locating spell had found the target without any trouble.  That fact should have put me off the case.  See, finding people is supposed to be difficult.  If it were easy then every wizard in existence would be the bane of humanities existence.  It would be possible to gain individual omniscience.  That is a very dangerous thing to release on the world.  So built into magic is a safeguard.  I have no idea where it came from, but if someone put it there, it was for a good reason.  And I was able to home in on this poor guy with no difficulty at all.


     If that wasn’t enough to drive me away from this case, the eerie to-do list, the automated message and the fact it appeared my client murdered the man she was trying to find should have.  But what private detective didn’t have a soft spot in their heart for a dame?  I fit into that category well enough, and the now widowed Rachel de Levine was certainly a dame.  I’m going to regret this.