Contractbound

Graham didn"t know what scrolls they were; the only way to check was to open them. He wanted to do divination first to make sure it wasn"t dangerous to do so. He took a piece of paper and wrote on it:

"It is not dangerous to open these scrolls."

He lit the paper on fire and it was burned entirely to ashes. It was safe to open the scrolls.

Graham opened the scroll on the right first. The sigil on it looked like two columns with an upside-down triangle between them and two circles on each end. The moment he saw the sigil, knowledge entered his brain. He paused for a moment.

"This scroll belongs to the Deity of Lies and Attraction. Are you interested, Val?" he said with a deprecating smile. He remembered the rumors about many different men going to Mevrouw Cornelia"s house.

"You need four red candles and Dragon"s Blood oil. The offering materials are the tongue of a dead liar and the hearts of a deceased couple who were in love while alive." he rubbed his chin and put the scroll aside.

"Next one," he said as he grabbed the second scroll.

He unrolled it and saw the sigil on it. It looked like a crown with seven circular points at the top and an upside-down cross. There were two big circles resembling eyes. Knowledge entered his brain as he saw it.

"This one belongs to the Deity of Secrets. I wonder how many Deities are there. We should do some research one of these days," he thought for a while.

"The ritual requires four yellow candles and Frankincense oil. The materials for the offering are the eyes of a dead thief and the brain of a recently deceased philosopher. As for the seal, we need copper for both scrolls." he said without fluctuation in his emotion.

"All of the rituals so far require parts of a dead person. I can only think of three ways to get them: rob a grave, steal from a morgue, or kill someone. No wonder there are many unsolved murder cases around." he came to a realization.

"Val, I think the second scroll suits you better, but you must choose it yourself. We can keep the remaining scroll; maybe we can find a buyer in the future," he said with glimmering eyes.

"Now, let"s do divination to find out where we can find the materials." He said as he grabbed nine votive candles that he had bought before.

He set the candles in the same formation that Paim had done; resembling the sigil of the Deity of Fire Divination. He then lit the candle one by one from the topmost and going down in a spiral. After the candles were lit, he repeated the questions in his mind,

"Where can we find the offering materials for these scrolls?"

After concentrating for a while, an image started to appear in the flame. It was a dark house with a man"s mutilated body lying somewhere in it. It was Mevrouw Cornelia"s house. He then blew out the candles and cleaned up his desk.

A moment later, the doorbell was rung. Graham hid the scrolls inside the desk drawer and locked it. He then wore something to cover his injuries, went to the door, and opened it. There were two men in blue coats with the police logo on them. They were the Police.

"How can I help, officers? Graham asked politely.

"We"re here to ask you about Mrs. Bakker." one of them said. He was tall and had a rough face. He had a scar across his nose. His brown eyes looked as though it pierced through someone"s soul.

"Ah, sure. Do you want to come in?" Graham offered.

"If you don"t mind." said the other officer. He was shorter with a friendlier face, but still carried an air of danger around him.

The three men entered the office and sat down. Graham sat in his chair with the shorter officer opposite him. The taller one sat on the sofa near them. The two police officers observed the private detective"s office intently.

"This is a very neat office," the shorter officer said with a friendly smile.

Graham noticed that the taller officer who was sitting on the sofa was muttering something. His lips moved fast. Before he could say anything, he felt his consciousness fade.

"It"s done. He is under control. He cannot lie now." said the taller officer.

"So, when was the last time you saw Naomi Bakker?" the shorter officer asked with a cold expression.

They didn"t notice that the eyes of the person they were talking to had turned light blue in color.

"I saw her earlier this morning," he said expressionlessly, as if under control.

"What did she do here?" the shorter officer asked a follow-up question. The taller officer was writing in a small notebook.

"She came here to give me my commission payment." he only answered the question.

"What commission did she give you?"

"She asked me to find her husband"s mistress."

"Did you find her?"

"No, I didn"t," he lied still expressionlessly.

"So why did she still give you the money?" the officer kept asking. His eyes looked cold as if talking to a murder suspect.

"She canceled the commission, saying it was a misunderstanding and gave me trouble money."

The taller officer nodded, indicating it couldn"t have been a lie.

"What did you do after she left?"

"I got changed and went to her house," he said monotonously.

"Why did you go to her house?"

"She looked very strange, and the fact that she canceled commission so suddenly triggered my detective intuition, so I wanted to check it," he said without wavering.

"What time did you arrive at her house?"

"Around eight-thirty."

"It checks out." the taller officer said.

"What happened there? Tell me what you know." the shorter officer asked.

"I rang the bell to her house and her husband came to the door. I asked him to enter the house to check up on his wife but he refused. He then hit me with a vase in the head."

The two officers looked at the recovering injury on the detective"s head.

"Then I asked the pa.s.sersby to call the police. I went to their neighbor"s house to be allowed to use the backdoor. Through the neighbor"s backdoor, I saw that the Bakkers" backdoor was open. I went in." he said still without expressions, as if in trance.

"What did you see inside?"

"I saw Naomi Bakker"s and the children"s dead bodies inside. I couldn"t stand the stench of blood so I went out. Then, I went home."

The taller officer nodded.

"Did you see the husband? Or anyone suspicious?"

"No, the husband was not there. I didn"t see anyone suspicious."

The taller officer wrote everything in his notebook and nodded to his partner. He then snapped his fingers.

"Thank you for your cooperation, detective." the shorter officer said while smiling again, seeing the detective in front of him recover from his trance.

The three men then stood up and he accompanied them to the door.

After making sure they had left, he shut the door and said, "G, I hope my performance wasn"t bad."

He then went to the bedroom to get changed. He put on a t-shirt and a pair of elastic pants. He wore a beanie to cover his head and a pair of sungla.s.ses. He took some cloth and a bottle of hydrogen peroxide. He stuffed a clean face-mask into his pants pocket and the other stuff into a dark-colored coat"s pocket. He also took some plastic sheets from the shelf and a lock pick. He wore a pair of sneakers and clean gloves and left the room.

"G, I"m going back to the witch"s house. It should take the police a while to find out about her."

He went to the street and hailed a public motor carriage. He told the driver to drop him off near Tuinstraat North. Even though they both streets were named Tuinstraat, they were not really close to each other. It would take Valentine around thirty minutes to walk from his apartment building to Tuinstraat North.

It took the carriage six minutes to take him to his destination. He paid the driver five pennings and went to a secluded alley. He wore his facemask and walked to the back road of Mevrouw Cornelia"s house.

It was already past noon when he arrived there. The back road was still relatively quiet, but Valentine was cautious nonetheless. He found the house and agilely climbed up the balcony. The door that he had picked before was still unlocked. He wrapped his sneakers in plastic and opened the door carefully.

As he entered the house, the foul stench of blood penetrated his nose. He listened attentively for any sound from the house. There was no sound coming from the house; only sounds from the neighborhood could be heard. He walked downstairs while still on high alert.

He could see the kitchen from the stairs and the body of Mr. Bakker was still lying there. The blood had dried up. He remembered that the stove was still on when he fought with Mevrouw Cornelia, so he went and checked. It was already off; the gas had run out.

"G, we"re lucky the house didn"t explode," he shrugged nonchalantly.

He then went to where Mevrouw Cornelia had died. He was expecting to see her ashes still spread on the floor, but there was nothing like that. There were no ashes at all. On the spot where her ashes should have been, he saw a ball of coagulated blood sealed in copper. He approached it cautiously.

"G, is this the remains that Paim mentioned; the one used to make the ring?" he deduced. "So that"s what happens after a Contractbound dies. Not even clothes remain."

He touched it with one finger. The copper felt cold to touch and the texture was jelly-like. After making sure it was safe, he took it and stuffed it inside his coat pocket.

"I guess that"s the material. Now it"s time to clean up," he said matter-of-factly.

He took out the cloth from his pocket and poured some hydrogen peroxide on it. He then went to the spot where his blood had been. It was already wiped clean before, but he needed to be safe. He rubbed the cloth on the floor gently, making sure he didn"t bleach the wooden floor. After that was done, he stuffed everything back inside his pocket.

"G, let"s search the house."

He went to search the rooms, but there was nothing valuable. Valentine didn"t want to take any money or jewelry because it might alert the Police. The last room he checked was upstairs. It seemed to be Mevrouw Cornelia"s room.

"This seems to be the witch"s room, G," he said with a low voice.

The room was s.p.a.cious, with a king-sized bed and a big wardrobe. Inside the wardrobe were a lot of beautiful clothes of different kinds. Most of them looked cla.s.sy. Valentine searched behind the clothes and found a box. It was locked. He used his lock picking skill and opened it shortly after.

There was a scroll inside. It looked similar to the ones that came out of Mevrouw Cornelia"s ashes, but it felt heavier when Valentine lifted it. He stuffed the scroll inside his coat pocket.

"That should be it." he said.

He stuffed the box inside his coat pocket and closed the wardrobe. After closing the room door behind him, he walked out of the house through the balcony door and closed it behind him. He then climbed down the balcony and saw a bush that was pressed in. It was where Graham had fallen. He tried to return the bush to its original form as best as he could.

"G, you need to go on a diet," he said self-deprecatingly.

Valentine went far from the house and when he thought it was far enough, he got rid of the box inside a dumpster. He then went to the street to hail a motor carriage to take him home. It didn"t take him long to get home.

Once he was home, he sat on his chair and burned the plastic wrapping his sneakers on an ashtray. Valentine then took out the scroll and opened it. The sigil on it looked like a triple pendulum with two crosses on each side of the outer pendulums.

When Valentine looked at the sigil, there was no knowledge that was transferred to his brain; no ritual procedure, no offering materials.

"You need to have pleased three Deities. That"s what it said." he paused for a while, "This scroll probably belongs to a higher Deity if that"s the requirement."

He then locked the scroll away in his drawer along with the other two scrolls and the coagulated ball of blood. He then went to the bedroom to get changed.

"G, let"s eat at Don"s," he said as he opened his drawer.

He put on a black t-shirt and his favorite leather jacket on top. He changed his elastic pants with a pair of denim pants. He took off the beanie but kept the sungla.s.ses. He wore a different pair of sneakers and went out.

He walked leisurely to Don"s Pancake House with hands inside his jacket"s pockets. The street was not as busy as usual. It was the same as Don"s. Valentine arrived a moment later and the place was not as packed as usual. It was Sat.u.r.day after all. People chose to stay at home with their families.

"Good afternoon, Graham!" a cheerful voice greeted him. It was Mirjam, the waitress.

"..." Valentine smiled a little but didn"t say anything. He checked his watch and it was one forty-three in the afternoon. He went to sit near the door where he could observe pa.s.sersby.

"Ah, so you are in "that" mood." she nodded while still smiling. She had interacted with Valentine before, so she knew.

"Give me a beef burger with extra pickles and a cup of black coffee," he said without slips of the tongue.

"Okay, coming right up!" she went to the counter and yelled to the kitchen, "One beef burger with extra pickles and a cup of black coffee!"

Valentine sat there in silence, watching people walking by. The tree leaves were falling more frequently, and the gentle breeze blew them away. He was enjoying himself at this moment.

Shortly after, his orders came. Mirjam brought the food and drink to him, and after a while, asked curiously while standing in front of him,

"So, how was the case from the other day?"

"Confidential," Valentine answered shortly while observing her.

Mirjam was wearing a light blue blouse and a purple plaid skirt with an ap.r.o.n over them. The ap.r.o.n has the logo of Don"s Pancake House embroidered on it. Her flaxen hair was tied in a ponytail.

"Aw, you"re no fun. Come on please tell me just a little. After all, you used me..." she paused as if she just remembered something.

"Graham, you owe me money!" she shouted.

Valentine was embarra.s.sed, both by people"s stare and by Graham. His face blushed red.

"How much?" he asked while covering his face with one hand.

"No, it"s okay. I was only kidding." she laughed seeing Valentine embarra.s.sed like that.

"I"m still not telling you about the case," he said.

"Okay okay, I understand. By the way, can you read my palms again? When will the man come into my life?" she asked with a twinkle of hope in her eyes.

Valentine couldn"t refuse, so he took her palms and tried to read it. He couldn"t see anything, however, and just said, "Soon".

Mirjam looked rather happy and smiled widely.

"Thank you, Graham!" she said as she walked back to the counter.

Valentine finished his meal quickly and paid. He didn"t want to be asked random questions again. As he was leaving, Mirjam said cheerfully to him,

"Come again, Mr. Detective!"

He walked leisurely home while enjoying the view.

"G, tonight I"ll conduct the ritual," he said.