Inspector mage the hangi.., p.1
Inspector Mage: The Hanging Priest (The Inspector Mage Trilogy Book 2), page 1
INSPECTOR MAGE
THE HANGING PRIEST
ALEESE HUGHES
Book Two of The Inspector Mage Trilogy
Copyright © 2022 by Aleese Hughes
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Text and illustrations copyright © 2022 by Aleese Hughes
Cover design by Christine Horner copyright © 2022 by Aleese Hughes
Published by Writ Keepers Publishing
ISBN: 9798364539090
Created with Vellum
For my angel husband. Without him, this book wouldn’t exist.
CONTENTS
Join My Newsletter
Map
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Epilogue
Note from the Author
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Also by Aleese Hughes
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MAP
The World of Dagirus
1
*Julie*
I dug my fingers into the cloth-covered seats of the train car, absorbing the thrill of the vibrations radiated by the chugging of the locomotive. I could only imagine how many force gems it took to power such a beast. Trains came into existence shortly after the mage carriages we drove on the streets, but I rarely traveled outside my home of Pirbis North, making this my first train ride.
Being the only Oseran without a Mage Gift, as far as I knew, I spent most of my youth hiding from society. Hiding my secret proved easier when I avoided socializing altogether.
Unlike me, Russell seemed unaffected by the train ride. He sat silently next to me, so close our hips touched, and twiddled his thumbs.
I relaxed my grip on the seat’s soft cushions and glanced around the train car. I had purchased what they called “first-class” tickets for Russell and me. As a member of the most prominent family in Pirbis North, I could afford it.
I didn’t know what the other classes of cars looked like, but within minutes of boarding, I saw nothing but luxury: strips of gold inlay in the wood lining of the long walls; waiters dressed in formal attire asked passengers if they’d like refills to their drinks; the seats were covered in a soft, red fabric and adorned with decorative pillows for the passengers to lounge on.
The men riding in the car exuded wealth, donning lustrous toupees to hide their balding heads, and the younger men were just as neatly dressed. And no woman’s arm outstretched for a refill of her champagne glass lacked decoration. Shining diamond bracelets and pearls hung from their wrists, gems from many ears; even elaborate hairstyles were sprinkled with diamonds, emeralds, and rubies.
Due to their rarity and necessity to Oseran society, gems weren’t often worn. Most people wore fake diamonds and other gems or would go on a different path with pearls. But only on special occasions, such as big parties or ceremonies, would the rich break out their gem-encrusted jewelry to parade their riches among their peers.
And it seemed this first-class train car called for such an occasion. I could tell that most of the gems on the women were genuine. Even some men’s cuff links were made from diamonds. Yes, everyone here held a place among the upper class of Pirbis North.
Including our suspect.
The luxury accommodations weren’t the reason we purchased first-class seats. Our suspect, Lord Williams, never went anywhere without flaunting his wealth, which would include buying the most expensive train ticket.
I dared a look in his direction and forced away the urge to scowl at him—the man who had killed a defenseless, 60-year-old woman by using his Mage Gift to drown the poor woman in her sleep.
Not all Oserans used their Mage Gifts for good; Lord Williams chose to use his for evil. His Gift allowed him to fill any object or person with water by a touch of his finger and a blink of his eye. But the Gift would work on people only if they were sleeping. So, as long as Russell and I kept our distance—and avoided any involuntary naps—we’d be fine.
I studied the killer’s face briefly. His wrinkles drooped deeper than his long mustache, and his graying hair fell over his beady eyes, creating shadows along his sallow jawline. Though sickly looking in the face, the outline of muscles underneath his suit and around his shoulder blades suggested he was very fit for an older man. That probably accounted for why he eluded Russell and me for the past month.
Lord Williams licked the tip of his thumb and turned the page of The Pirbis North Daily, our city’s newspaper. He didn’t seem to notice my eyes on him.
“These disguises seem to be working,” Russell whispered in my ear, making the hairs on my neck stand up as the heat of his breath settled on my skin. “I don’t think he knows it’s us. Either that, or he is a spectacular actor.”
I glanced at my reflection in a silver pitcher resting in the hands of a passing waiter. Instead of my usual blue eyes, wide, stark green ones returned my stare. I brushed my fingers through the illusions of short, blond curls but felt only my own straight hair tied into a tail.
The illusion was created by a necklace I wore containing the image of Lilly, a school friend of my mother. We had found a picture of Lilly in an old album from when she and Mother were 19. My father placed the image in an almost microscopic-sized chip of a ruby, which he attached atop the clasp of a silver chain necklace. Father had been even more creative with Russell’s illusion device—instead of using the usual necklace, he placed an emerald into one of the buttons on Russell’s shirt and copied an image of our family’s carriage driver into the gem.
The Melton family driver was a good-looking man but not exceptionally so; Russell and I didn’t want to stand out. Russell looked exactly like Norman: short blond hair streaked with strands of dark brown, and his nose bent slightly to the right from a break in his childhood.
I looked at my reflection again as the same waiter waltzed by in the other direction, pitcher still in hand.
“It’s nice to have a new face sometimes,” I whispered. “It makes life exciting.”
“I prefer your face,” Russell whispered back. His fingers danced over the small space between us and landed on my hand.
My heart jumped up to my throat as I stared at his fingers covering mine.
“Although, this dress is much better than the usual trousers you parade around in.”
I looked down at the dress Father included in my illusion. Soft, lilac silk wrapped tightly around my bodice, then flared out dramatically at the hips.
“If you say so,” I grumbled.
My life had changed dramatically since Russell Gaines entered it. He had thrown everything I’d ever known to be true upside down. But it was good. Very good. When I was with Russell, hunting down criminals and solving crimes, I was useful. I wasn’t just an extra hand for him—I had become integral to his methods.
All of my illusion necklaces, those with hidden gems all about the chains, and a few with large gemstones as the pendants themselves, were quite useful for discreetly entwining ourselves into the everyday lives of the criminals we hunted.
Having grown up thinking I didn’t have a Mage Gift, I maintained a facade for years of having one. A full-blooded Oseran with no Gift was unheard of. The scandal and rumors alone of such a travesty could have sullied my family’s reputation. My parents had insisted they didn’t care if the truth might stain the Melton name—they begged me to cease my ridiculous trickery and accept who I was. But I knew the importance of my family’s good name.
The Supreme Minister selected certain families with powerful Mage Gifts to preside over the different districts to help him run the nation of Osera and its people. He placed upon these families the titles of “lords” and “ladies.” These lording families were expected to keep their assigned districts organized and running smoothly—they collected the city taxes, oversaw the updates of old buildings and roads, and did other things to keep their area thriving.
My family was arguably the most important lording family for two reasons: One, Father presided over Pirbis North, the largest and most influential city in the country. And two, he and my mother possessed some of the most powerful and useful Gifts in Oseran history.
I knew that if my secret of not having a Gift got out, the scandal would rip my family’s reputation to shreds. Many would think I was illegitimate, that Mother had conceived me with a non-Oseran instead of my father. Or they would
Having given up the idea that I was just a late bloomer, and after trying one extreme thing after another to activate my Gift (including injuring, maiming, and embarrassing myself), I came up with the necklaces.
I procured numerous Melton gems, devices created by Mother with her Gift—she could give a gem the ability to make a copy of someone else’s Gift. A possessor of such a gem could have the owner of the desired Gift touch the device; then a copy would present itself within.
With these Melton gems, I enlisted Father’s help to use his Gift. With it, he could think of any image—a piece of fruit, a mountain scene, or even a person—and place that illusion upon himself. He inserted some of those very images, mainly different people, within the gems of my necklaces. Each Melton gem could possess only one Gift copy, so that limitation brought about my need for multiple necklaces.
With this jewelry, I could perform illusions of many different people. The necklaces could transform me into Mother, Father, Eliza, the Supreme Minister, many servants of the manor, and so many others. To keep up the ruse of actually having a Gift, I kept a large inventory of people to imitate. It also helped, I thought, to put my faux Gift on prominent display at parties and other functions. I would demonstrate how I could create the illusion of posing as other people.
My necklaces came in very handy when solving crimes with Russell. Mother had hired him after his five-year retirement from the police force to help solve the murder of my sister’s husband, John. After that, Russell continued to solve mysteries as an independent hired hand—with me at his side. My necklaces often came into the picture when we needed disguises.
I smirked at my reflection in the train window as I remembered last month’s case. I attended a women’s tea party to listen in on some conversations. Of course, Russell didn’t want to miss out on any essential clues, so he had used one of my necklaces to disguise himself as one of our manor maidservants. To this day, he would turn a bright red when I mentioned the pretty lace stockings he wore.
My necklaces weren’t the only thing I had to offer in our crime-solving. Much later in life than the average Oseran, I learned that I did have a Gift. The Gift Russell had shamelessly discovered on my behalf.
I slowly brought a hand to my mouth, remembering that day—remembering the kiss. The way Russell’s strong arms had pulled me into his chest and the warmth of his lips pressed firmly against mine. I hadn’t dared allow myself to think any more of that moment. He’d only kissed me thinking that a kiss might activate the Gift, for some late bloomers merely needed such an occurrence or a condition, as many called it, to awaken the Gift inside them. Some people discovered their Gifts by breaking a limb, getting stung by a bee, or burning themselves with a heat gem in the fireplace (and all these things I had tried, and then some). But Russell had been right … He’d found the one thing I hadn’t yet tried and single-handedly found my Gift at the same time.
Russell and I still didn’t entirely know how my Gift worked or why the kiss activated it. But over time, we learned that if I didn’t know someone’s Gift, I could discover it by touching a personal item of theirs to my lips. I would have a “vision” that showed me the day the person discovered their ability. So, in turn, I knew what it was, too. And often, people would use their unique Gifts to commit crimes; if I could find the owner of that Gift, it could help Russell and me find the criminal easily.
The only person aware of my Gift was Russell. Not even my family knew. Russell called my Gift “our weapon,” an ability so enviable that others would want to use it. If we kept it a secret, we would always have the upper hand.
I ran a finger along the window, drawing a few random lines in the fogged-up glass. I was acutely aware of Russell’s hand still resting on mine. I didn’t dare look his way, though, and continued to stare at the bare winter trees as they whizzed by, covering the mountains in a sea of blurry brown.
My friendship with Russell had grown in the past six months. And as his thumb stroked my wrist, I wondered why my heart fluttered at his touch. We had only shared that one kiss six months ago, and nothing Russell said or did suggested it would happen again. He was only a friend, a business partner. Nothing else. Right? I shook my head and moved to retract my hand, but he withdrew first. I suddenly felt an emptiness as his warmth left me.
“I’ll be right back,” Russell said, rising from his seat and stretching.
“Where are you going?”
He gave me a pointed look. “Uh, to relieve myself.”
My face grew warm. “Oh.” I glanced again in Lord Williams’s direction. “Well, hurry back. I don’t want to apprehend him alone if he tries anything.”
Before I finished speaking, Russell had already begun to retreat to the back of the car, waving a hand to show he acknowledged my request.
I let out a long breath of air and threw my head back onto the seat. My lids fluttered to a close. I was so tired. Lady Ferris had hired us to find her poor sister’s killer. Once convinced Lord Williams was the killer, we had been chasing him for a month.
Russell came out of retirement only because he was consumed by catching our city’s most notorious serial killer, the New Age God—a name coined by the serial killer himself. He used the term “New Age”—an era most Oserans referred to as a time of significant progress in technology and advancement for the country—and “god,” satisfying his thirst for power.
Though the New Age God kept his terrorism within Pirbis North borders, in recent years the blasphemous name of the killer struck fear in the hearts of nearly all Oserans.
At Russell’s former job as the top inspector for the Pirbis North police, he led the chase for the murderer, who had no clear motive or pattern. He would kill a wealthy lady, then the next month, a homeless man’s body would be found in an alley. But each victim had something in common: They were all of Oseran descent, and the New Age God left a note stamped with a crescent moon on each of his victims. The moon represented his god complex. The New Age God himself didn’t divulge much of his beliefs to the general populous, but we knew this much: He planned to one day rule a perfect world of Dagirus instead of Othos, God of the Moon. And he would do that by filling the world with only pure-blooded, Gifted Oserans—there was no room for anyone else.
The New Age God terrorized Pirbis North for six months before the police chief assigned Russell to the case. He continued the pursuit until his sister Amelia, age ten, became a victim. A despondent Russell swore off crime-solving altogether. He turned to gambling, alcohol, and only Othos knew what else. When I met him, he was a mess.
Five years after Amelia’s death, Mother convinced Russell to search for the killer of my brother-in-law John. After discovering his nemesis’s involvement in the death, Russell’s crime-fighting instincts resurfaced. He obsessed that every crime we encountered would lead us to the serial killer. But we hadn’t come closer. And it didn’t seem the current case would draw us closer, either. It was as if the New Age God had disappeared—no word from him and his mission to create his “perfect society” of Gifted Oserans. It had been six months since John’s death, and we hadn’t come a single step closer to catching the New Age God.
I knew it infuriated Russell, but honestly, I didn’t mind: I dreaded the day we might encounter this psychopath. And, though he would never admit it, the lack of the New Age God in our lives helped Russell see more of the good around him. I couldn’t remember the last time he picked up a drink.
