Ch.186The Fifth Entanglement – Vampire Waltz (6)

“What? An information broker? I haven’t been discovered yet. Anyway, I won’t need to go back to Littlehold if I’m not going to convince you, so that part…”

So it was all a damn masquerade until now. Just a vampire who made it this far with nothing but mind-reading magic. I could compliment that ability, but not right now.

“Not discovered? The information broker I saw in the red-light district was running around with a hammer demanding someone find the culprit. And you probably didn’t mess with too many people. I’m sure of it. But isn’t someone just testing the waters by putting a toe into someone else’s territory enough reason to pull out a gun?”

The detective tried to refuse this vampire’s job to prevent her from desperately digging into his past. Better to fight the information broker’s organization than have his past revealed.

It probably wasn’t even a large organization. Not like the old Gourmet Club full of ogres—just ten to twenty dwarves to take care of. That was nothing compared to his usual work.

Mircalla would have laughed at the thought. For her, that level of threat might force her to leave New York. That’s how it would look from an ordinary person’s perspective.

But that wasn’t the issue now. The detective pressed once more. Money was all he wanted. He’d never wanted anything more.

“I believe I asked if you could pay extra. Are you going to answer only after the dwarves find you?”

Mircalla nodded, still flustered. She just realized this intimidating professional gave off a strangely familiar vibe. He reminded her of someone who always stayed ahead, pulling her along.

Mind-reading magic prevented the mage from thinking for herself. Having to read others’ thoughts rather than think her own meant she lost time for her own thoughts.

So Mircalla, finally seeing this similarity, answered as she would to that person. For the first time in a long while, she felt no terrible silence even with her mind-reading magic turned off.

“No, no! I’ll pay. Just tell me how much. I’ve heard cash changes hands, so I’ve gathered about 400 dollars. Would that be enough?”

It was insufficient. He usually received at least twice that for such jobs. However, he’d already been paid in another form this time. So that amount was fine.

“I’ll bill you after the job’s done. Oh, if you want to throw 400 dollars into thin air, you can give me money and ask me to negotiate with them. They won’t change their attitude just because you pay them now.”

Italian thugs and Irish half-breeds were like big beasts. They competed for strength and showed off power, but considered even a single scratch a greater loss than victory.

That’s why they obsessed over manners and procedures, but smaller organizations couldn’t afford to. They would fight desperately even if they lost a limb or two.

The problem would be if they had backing… but they probably didn’t. Dwarves only worked with their own kind. The strict ones wouldn’t even deal with anyone except other dwarves, while the flexible ones might accept humans or orcs of German descent. They never expanded their influence beyond that.

At the detective’s sarcasm, Mircalla shook her head. She had no intention of doing something so foolish. She knew what happened when you offered money to someone who didn’t want it.

“I may have acted stupidly, but I wouldn’t go that far. Actually, if I could…”

The detective snorted. Still sarcastic. Mind-reading magic might be useful, but only when he knew about it. Taking someone with such abilities along wouldn’t help.

“Do you think I’m some lawyer with a mythril shield? I can take care of myself, but I can’t handle a job while protecting someone who has no abilities except mind-reading.”

It wasn’t outright dismissal. Just the plain, blunt truth. There were things he could do alone but not while bringing someone along. The reporter, who understood this all too well, stopped Mircalla.

“Sometimes people like us can’t help. Even though you came to deceive me with mind-reading magic… I can at least offer you a cup of coffee. Stay here, Ms. Mircalla. Okay?”

As excited as she’d been to hear about the Industrial Spirit King, she was disappointed when the detective followed her, but the disappointment was brief. She couldn’t live in disappointment.

And above all, listening to the conversation… this case had very one-sided information. All Ms. Mircalla knew was that her lover had gone to meet that… father figure and died. The wounds couldn’t have been made by a gun, so she suspected the oldest and most powerful vampire, but that wasn’t enough.

Inevitably, the reporter thought of the Forest’s Firstborn when hearing “leader of the species.” And she remembered that even the Forest’s Firstborn had never casually thrown lightning at an ordinary elf.

The same applied to other species. The Forest’s Firstborn was rarely involved in personal murder cases. There was only one attempted case when he finally lost his mind.

If Mircalla’s “father” was truly the leader of vampires, would he have done such a thing? Such people had too much to lose by creating grudges. They wouldn’t easily do such things.

The detective would finish the job and return even if he went alone. To Rose, the idea of him failing seemed as impossible as Paulina failing at cooking.

So she would do what she could. She’d already written and sent her article, and had a day of aimless reporting scheduled, so she could spare time for this vampire.

She wouldn’t turn tragedy into headlines. She just wanted to fix things before they went wrong and ended in tragedy. The detective was a solver, and she was a solution.

“I’ll be back in the evening. Either way, stay put until then.”

The detective left with just those words. Rose was used to it. Only Rose was used to it. Mircalla asked the reporter, dumbfounded:

“Is he… really planning to handle this alone?”

Rose smiled. She seemed to remember saying something similar when she first hired the detective. Back then she was the one being led, but now she was the one leading.

“He’s always like that. But he’s skilled, so nothing will go wrong. Can I ask you a few things, though? Actually… I want to say ‘teach me mind-reading magic!’ but I know it’s not cheap. So I should do what I can.”

Mircalla laughed at the joke that lightened the mood. She nodded.

“I don’t even remember how much they charged just to teach this original magic. It’s magic you wouldn’t dare learn unless something major happened, like losing someone you love. But if you want to ask a few things…”

“He’s a detective, and I’m a reporter. I don’t have a proper title yet, but you could call me a crime and incident reporting specialist. But before that… did Michael think of me?”

Rose’s ears weren’t red. She was just asking about the source of information. Or perhaps trying to appear that way. Mircalla shook her head.

“No, I thought of the Forest’s Firstborn. And then I thought of Reporter Leafman who put the Forest’s Firstborn in jail. It was a natural connection. But what did you want to ask…?”

The reporter now knew what would follow those words. She might not have mind-reading magic, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t read people’s thoughts.

“I’m not planning to write an article. That’s what a reporter should do, right? If something needs to be shown to others, I’d open my own heart to show it, but otherwise, you shouldn’t point a camera at it. Just because you have a shovel doesn’t mean you should dig up graves.”

Rose felt her heart ache again. When she exposed the unlovable aspects of her beloved family, she was the first to hear that exposure.

Her desire to tell the truth, which she’d expressed since being a rookie reporter, had only now gained some sincerity. And Mircalla was drawn to that sincerity.

“Well… I’ll hear what you want to ask.”

“Great. Then… what is the father of vampires like? What kind of person is he, and what can he do? It might help somehow.”

He certainly had the ability to kill. Objective facts weren’t hard to discover. What she wanted to know now was how Mircalla thought about it. Misunderstandings were human creations.

Rose tried not to superimpose herself and the Forest’s Firstborn onto Mircalla and the father of vampires. That wouldn’t help Mircalla in the end. But there was only the sound of swallowing.

“Well… he’s respectable, but not kind. He doesn’t come to Bar Enoch where vampires gather often, and he’s not particularly nice to us. All he ever says are prophecies that seem vague, though they often come true… Oh, more than anything, he hated my lover. My lover wasn’t a vampire.”

Killing someone you dislike made even less sense. If he disliked someone, he wouldn’t have let them get close in the first place. If he wanted to kill them, he would have at least pretended to be kind on the surface.

“Oh, and… he’s not good at magic. He’s lived for an incredibly long time, probably since before magic was systematized. Instead, he was skilled at something that wasn’t magic.”

If not magic, then was it ritual? Rituals had a longer history than magic. Magic went hand in hand with science, but rituals were primitive and ominous.

Magic was properly systematized about a hundred or a hundred and twenty years ago, so he was from before then… If so, he might not have understood relationships between different species and wouldn’t hesitate to use a gun.

Considering how elves still say mixed marriages taint the blood and will eventually leave no pure elves, only mixed-bloods, it was easy to imagine what someone from that era might think.

“More than anything, this wasn’t the first time. I once overheard Father talking to the bartender. He said he regretted killing his brother. He thought it was justified at the time, but now he says it was all his own narrow-mindedness… If his emotions could run that high again… it’s possible, right?”

This seemed to be why Ms. Mircalla suspected the father of vampires. If he killed his own family, why wouldn’t he kill someone else? Especially someone he disliked.

But perhaps because he had done it before, he wouldn’t do it again. She inhaled deeply to check if there was any magical scent in the air. There was no ozone smell beneath the heavy perfume.

The deep breath made her nose sting as if numbed, making her voice nasal… but she decided to ignore that.

Anyway, someone who regretted and acknowledged their actions wouldn’t repeat them. The detective wouldn’t draw ritual circles with his own hands. He wouldn’t because he had done it once before. The father of vampires would be the same.

“Rather, wouldn’t someone who’s done it before be unable to do it again? When emotions run high and he wants to kill someone, wouldn’t he remember his brother? Why would he do it? Besides, you said it definitely wasn’t a gun, right? Would he not know that he’s the only one who can kill someone without a gun, using something that isn’t magic?”

Ms. Mircalla was also a mage, so if her lover had died by magic, she would have noticed. Magical wounds had characteristics. There would be the ozone smell, and traces of burning and aging in the tissues.

No one could be objective about the death of a loved one. Mircalla bowed her head before Rose. It’s hard to take back an answer already written in the answer box.

Mircalla shook her head. Despite knowing this elf was raising reasonable doubts, it felt like she was trying to absolve the murderer who killed her lover.

But Mircalla had evidence. She just didn’t know what happened, but she had definite evidence that the father of vampires killed her lover.

“Well, you’re not wrong. It’s not nonsensical. But Father did kill him! There were police there. Angels stood there and even arrested Father. But they just let him go! What does it mean that he killed someone but it wasn’t his fault? Are there people who can kill without responsibility?”

Mircalla’s words were perfectly reasonable. If she had seen all that and he still wasn’t punished, then her desire for personal revenge was understandable. But there was nothing more to know.

Rose decided to willingly hear unpleasant words. Having grown accustomed to piles of threatening letters and people’s coldness, it wasn’t difficult.

“We can’t know what it means. Ms. Mircalla, you want to know more than you want revenge, right? Then instead of hiring a professional…”

Mircalla bared her fangs. The fangs were instinctive. The reporter’s words had touched something buried deep in her emotions, and she responded.

“Yes, I don’t know what happened! I want to know. But whether I know or not doesn’t matter. If Father killed the person I love, I will take revenge… No amount of money or obsession is too much for that. Do you think a few textbook phrases will change my mind? It seems the detective is the one who can help me after all. He…”

The detective wouldn’t have cared at all. Whether the father of vampires really killed Mircalla’s lover or not, he would have helped, saying work is work. So we had to care.

Rose Leafman stared at the vampire with bared fangs. Without showing any fear, she said:

“He would help you without caring at all. Of course. He at least knows that what he’s about to do is irreversible, and he believes his clients think the same. If you hire someone like that and say you want revenge, you want to kill, even though you don’t know for sure, isn’t the problem not him but that you’re looking for someone to take a life? Wouldn’t it be better to use a hitman instead?”

Mircalla couldn’t answer. It would take thirty minutes for the detective to reach Littlehold. About seven hours remained until the detective would return in the evening. Everything was numbers.

But the time to regret wrong choices wasn’t a number. Regret followed people without saying anything, without even leaving. She knew because she had almost experienced it.

Rose didn’t want Mircalla to have such regrets. She hoped the detective, who already had such regrets, wouldn’t create them for others.