Dream Walker (Bailey Spade 1)

“You’re not really a suspect.” I squeeze the remains of my banana a little too hard, and it plops onto the floor, where Bert the lion gives it a disgusted glare. “Why bug you until I have to?”

“It’s no trouble. I was walking Bert at the time.”

The lion’s ears perk up. He must recognize the word walk the way dogs seem to.

“Don’t you think the lady doth protest too much?” Felix whispers. “If he wasn’t already on your suspect list, I’d add him.”

Felix might be right, but I have to tread carefully, and not just because of the lion a few feet away.

“Thanks for that,” I say with a hopefully enthusiastic smile. “Now I won’t need to bother you or your friend here ever again.”

“Let’s hope you don’t,” Felix whispers.

“Start your search over there.” Chester points at a stack of books to his left.

“Thanks.” I obligingly head where he suggests. The first book I touch happens to be about probability manipulators and the feats they can perform.

“Do you think that was an intimidation tactic?” Felix asks as I drag my finger over a section in the text that talks about a trickster’s ability to increase the probability that their enemies will get cancer or suffer accidental death.

Or a way to clear himself, I text back. Why leave bodies around when he can use more subtle means?

“To make a statement?” Felix says, echoing Kain’s earlier suggestion. “Not to mention that by the second or third accident, everyone would suspect him anyway.”

True, I text. Still, I’d need a motive before I get on his bad side.

“Smart. Just keep in mind that if it’s some kind of vendetta, it wouldn’t be Chester’s first. He—”

“Let’s go, Bertie,” I hear Chester say. “If you’re a good boy, I’ll take you to Africa tomorrow.”

“Did he just provide himself with an excuse to run?” Felix asks.

Maybe, I text back.

I watch Chester leave the library, hand draped casually over the lion’s white mane, and decide that the “trickster” label fits this particular probability manipulator extremely well.

Okay. Time to look for something useful.

I walk all around to see if the dust patterns can tell me whether anything was recently updated, or if the book jackets can give me a hint on where to start.

Nope. The room looks to have been meticulously dusted, no doubt by the monks, and the bindings on most books are identical, forcing me to have to open each tome to figure out what’s inside.

I sigh and peel another banana as I look for anything resembling records.

Nothing.

I eat banana after banana and keep looking, finding nothing but useless minutiae. Is it possible they keep the day-to-day records on higher shelves? There’s a ladder here, but I’d need months to go through them all.

A few hours and bananas later, when I’ve made almost a full circle back to the place where Chester pointed me earlier, I spot something useful on an easy-to-reach shelf.

Voting records—score.

You seeing this? I text Felix.

His typing ceases in my earpiece. “Interesting. Can’t help but notice that by starting where Chester pointed, you took the longest possible time to come across that book.”

You’re right, I write back. Was he hoping I’d give up? Or is this a coincidence?

“There are no coincidences when probability manipulators are involved. He’d be the first to tell you that.”

He’s probably right. Flipping to the back of the book, I eagerly check the last entry. Yep, the vote over my fate is already part of this record. I examine the names of everyone who wanted me dead.

Gertrude. No surprise there.

Eduardo the werewolf. Interesting.

Albina, the Councilor with the matter-dissolving power who dodged getting a dream link with me last night. Also interesting.

And surprise, surprise: Chester also voted to kill me.

I don’t recognize a few of the other names, so I note them in my phone so I can check if they have an alibi—in part out of spite but more out of solid logic. Before the vote, the idea of using my skills for sleuthing had been mentioned. If the guilty party believed in my skill, they’d have voted to kill me to prevent me from figuring out their identity.

I text Felix my thoughts.

“I think I agree with you. But just to play devil’s advocate, if the killer is cautious, they might not have voted against you.”

Good point, I text back. Still worth examining the voting records closely.

Felix yawns. “You do that. Meanwhile, I’ll give napping another shot.”

I open the book to a random spot and read about a case that sounds very similar to my own. Like me, the young woman, Siti, didn’t have a Mandate at the time of her crimes. Though it doesn’t say what her powers were, she apparently used them to make human hospice patients feel better in their final days. According to the Council, she risked “exposing the existence of the Cognizant to the human population at large.” Unfortunately for her, the outcome of her case was unlike mine: The vote did not go in her favor, and she was executed.