Khabir gave her a tired look. “Like I said, I’ve worked in this City a long time. I’ve encountered the petty, the clichéd, and the arbitrary, but in all that time I assure you that I’ve never seen ‘the perfect murder.’ Anything that can happen will happen. The most successful murderers do what they do simply and directly. It’s when they add frills like insane executioners and arcane rituals that they get caught. Having a mastermind behind Grey wouldn’t make this a perfect crime but a perfect crime story. It wouldn’t stand up to the vagaries of real life. I certainly wouldn’t try to kill anyone in such a convoluted way.”

But a storyteller might, Miranda thought, a new idea slowly dawning.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

“This is inconvenient,” Miranda mused aloud, looking at her reflection in the water of the atrium pond. Her couch was in a different position today to spare her from enduring the sun’s path, which was changing with the season.

Days had passed, and during that time Miranda had learned that it was impossible to dream on demand. The glimpse into Malveaux’s mind had clearly been a coincidence of some sort, because there had been no corresponding vision about Julian Outis, that rumpled caricature of a novelist in decline. Now she was trying to investigate a man who did not even feature in the case files.

“I have no idea why you suspect him,” Fae complained. “He’s completely peripheral to the case. He’s not even a Freeman or a Club member, and he can’t go anywhere without being recognized.”

Miranda had no reply. Apart from the weak link to the City Shelter and that remark by Khabir that had struck her so oddly, there was really absolutely no reason to consider Julian Outis. A dream would have been so helpful. As for any hope of seeing the Trickster, she admitted that with her new narcotics-reduced lifestyle, talking to spiders was unlikely to happen anytime soon.

“Any word from Fernando or Khabir on the Mermaid?” she asked instead.

“Nothing yet,” Fae said, “but Khabir seems preoccupied—which is good, right?”

“Could be,” Miranda said vaguely. “He wants the Mermaid’s name. He’s taking that seriously at least.”

“And not the rest of it?”

“Not for the right reasons. I wonder sometimes if he’s hoping that if I keep busy, I’ll forget to ask him whether I’ll still be his employee when all this is over.” This. She did not detail what this might be, but the meaning was implicit in the way she glanced around the atrium nervously. This cannot be the rest of my life.

“There’s also Dr. Boadu,” Fae noted, changing the subject.

“Hmm?”