The Isis Collar

by Cat Adams

  “You can read someone’s magic signature just by encountering it?”

  She nodded. “Absolutely. Like, John Creede made the binding spell in this charm ball … and it’s a nice piece of work. Pity you missed the suspect. It probably would have held her. What did work was the knife Bruno DeLuca made. Damn, is it impressive. Best item I’ve encountered outside of religious artifacts at the Vatican.” She paused for a moment and stared at the silver knife in my wrist sheath. “I have to admit I’m surprised you have items made by both of them. They’re not known to run in the same circles and they don’t hand out their craft like penny candy. But they were definitely gifts, offered by hand, not taken by force. So, they’re yours and I don’t have to ask ugly questions about how they came into your possession.”

  Wow. All that and I didn’t remember her even touching the knife. She’d done a casting circle on it, but I’d placed it inside and took it out again. I’d been watching closely, to make certain the blade wouldn’t disappear with Rizzoli’s team when they left. I needed it handy since the witch was still at large. “So if you cast a spell here, they’d know you, too? What’s your name? John said he didn’t recognize this caster.”

  She rocked back to sit on her heels and her fingers stopped fluttering over the chalk symbols. Her eyes, blazing with blue fire, were focused on me. “He said that? How did he come in contact with this magic before we arrived?” I noticed she didn’t answer my question about her name.

  “Okay, my bad. He hasn’t touched this particular magic, but he did touch the magic affecting me from the bomb. I guess I’m assuming the witch who was just here was the same person who set off the bomb at the school. It felt like the same magic, here and at your office and the school.”

  She pursed her lips and tapped one slender finger on her pant leg. “And John Creede actually said he didn’t recognize the caster? Because he knows a lot of people.”

  Had he? I felt my brows furrowing as I thought back. “No, I guess not. I didn’t ask about the caster. I asked if he knew what the spell on me was. He said he didn’t know the spell, but it was really complex. He took several of my hairs to check it out further.”

  She stood up in a single movement that was fluid and limber. I was betting she was either a martial artist or a yoga instructor. “Chief, I think I need samples of Ms. Graves’s hair as well. We might be able to match any residual magic in her hair with the first series of events.”

  He nodded briefly, but I held up a hand to stop her. “Slow down. I really don’t like having bits of me floating around out there. I’m already locking my hairbrush and comb in a warded safe to keep them away from people who want to use my hair to make anti-siren charms and vampire death curses. I don’t mind John having them because I trust him. But I don’t know you from Adam. Not even your name.”

  Rizzoli gave another small nod and made a motion at the witch. She pulled out a card and passed it to me as he spoke. “Abigail Wendy Jones. Goes by Gail. Graduate of Harvard College of Magic, cum laude, when she was sixteen. Been with the Bureau for five years now after teaching at the Academy for two. Level nine-plus talent. We only bring her in from Quantico for special cases that require a high level of expertise.” He raised his brows to make sure he had my attention. “I think you know her father.”

  Gail Jones. I’d been suitably impressed until that last bit and then my jaw dropped. “And you want me to trust her after telling me who her father is?” Because I did know her father. John Jones is a talented mage. He’s also a member of an organization of mercenaries who kill supernatural beings who had committed crimes and couldn’t be successfully imprisoned. In short, he’s a magical hit man. He’d coerced me into working with him more than once.

  Gail Jones’s jaw set and she looked uncomfortable. “Dad and I don’t see eye to eye on a lot of things—including his lack of respect for the law. We’re not a close family.”

  That twinged my conscience because I had the same feelings about my mother … and I am a firm believer that a person shouldn’t be judged by their family tree. Heaven knows I wouldn’t want to be.

  Still—I bent my head toward Rizzoli. “You take them and if you want to give them to her, I’ll hold you responsible for any problems.”

  If my lack of trust bothered her, Gail didn’t let on. She didn’t flinch. Maybe she’d gotten used to it, like I had. She just pulled a pair of delicate tweezers from her kit and handed them to Rizzoli. “We’ll need three—and make sure you get the root. That’s the important part.”

  She grabbed a plastic evidence bag and wrote my name on it with a squeaky marker before holding it open expectantly. Rizzoli stared at the top of my head for a long moment, tweezers poised. I wasn’t sure what was going through his mind. Then he reached forward and I felt pain too large for the act explode through my head. Stars twinkled in my vision and I sucked in a breath to keep from screaming. What the heck? It hadn’t hurt hardly at all when John had plucked some out … despite my kvetching at him.

  And now my headache was back. Damn it. Every time I forgot about it for a moment it would reappear. It was getting annoying. I needed to get on with my day … what was left of it. I was going to call Bruno, and Creede, see what they knew about Ms. Jones. The Bureau trusted her. But I’d reserve judgment until I checked my own sources. I’m naturally a little paranoid, but this situation was pushing me over the top.

  “Is there anything else you need me for, Rizzoli?”

  “Why?”

  “I’ve got a couple of calls to make.”

  “Call away.” He waved in the general direction of the stairs. “Just don’t go anywhere without letting me know.”

  I sighed. Unless I wanted all the nice agents listening in, I’d need to make the call in my office. On the third freaking floor. I so did not want to go up those stairs. I was tired. And hungry. Of course, I’d never gotten the chance to eat since the phð earlier. Now that the headache was back I was nauseous. The reception area might have the blood removed but there was glass embedded in everything, including the walls—which didn’t seem logical since the glass should have exploded outward. That meant I was going to have to deal with yet another insurance company.

  Suckfreakintastik.

  My first call was to Creede. No answer. Then again, he’d said he’d be out of touch. But he’d also said he’d leave a message. Hmpf. He was a big bad mage; he could definitely take care of himself. But still, it wasn’t like him not to call when he promised.

  My second call was Bruno. He picked up on the first ring.

  “Hey.” A simple greeting, but it held a world of warmth.

  “Hey yourself.” I couldn’t quite manage to make my voice sound normal.

  “Uh-oh. What’s wrong?”

  “Bad day. Really, really, bad day.”

  He sighed, but forced a hint of humor into his voice. “Where does it rank on the epic scale of Celia Graves disasters?”

  I laughed. Which was exactly what he’d intended. “Let’s see, if the rift was a ten…”

  “Oh yeah, the rift was definitely a ten.”

  I thought about it for a second. “Probably a six. Six point five.”

  He sighed. “Do you need me to come? I’m meeting with Dr. Sloan, but we can reschedule.”

  I thought about it for all of about ten seconds. “Actually, I kind of need to talk to him, too. I just figured he wouldn’t be in on a Friday afternoon.”

  “He wanted us to have plenty of uninterrupted time for our first meeting about my dissertation.”

  Time that I was now interrupting. Oops.

  I could hear Dr. Sloan’s voice in the background. “Have her come on down.”

  “You hear that?” Bruno asked.

  “I heard. Tell him thanks. I’ll be there as quick as I can.” I grabbed my purse and started downstairs. I’d made it all the way to the reception desk before I remembered I didn’t have my car.

  Rizzoli straightened up from something Jones was showing him. “Going somew
here?”

  I nodded. “Actually, yeah. I need to meet with an expert about the incident this morning. He’s also been investigating the death curse on me and I want to ask whether that has anything to do with my reaction to the school event. Actually, it’s Dr. Sloan—the book that’s missing is his.”

  Gail perked up. “You mean Aaron Sloan? Brilliant man. He guest lectured a few times when I was at Harvard. Frankly, I might have to call him myself if this spell turns out to be what I think it is. ”

  That made both me and Rizzoli look at her sharply, but she just looked back at her runes, then closed her eyes. Her fingers moved, casting. But Rizzoli asked the obvious. “Should I send you with Celia to talk to him?”

  She shook her head, her voice now slightly singsong. “No. I need to concentrate on this and still have to sample the people in the conference room for any coercion or memory reduction spells. Someone should have noticed a woman in the room before Ms. Graves arrived.” Well, yeah. That was a good point. Then she opened her eyes and looked at me. “But it would help if you could pave the way with him. Tell him it’s an E14 spell so far and might contain traces of D71 workings. That’ll get his interest up and he’ll probably call me.”

  Rizzoli nodded sagely, but I got the impression he didn’t understand a word she’d just said. “E14 and D71. Got it. Let’s go, Celia. I’ll take you over.” I raised my brows in a silent question. Why did I need company? “Consider it protective custody until we know more about why you’re being targeted.”

  He gave a gentlemanly bow and waved me toward the door. I sighed and preceded him out the door with only a minor limp. Dawna was chatting with a cute gray-suit near the door and I got the impression from her sultry smile that their conversation had nothing to do with the investigation. “Going to the college now. Be good.” I grabbed my purse from where it was hiding out of sight behind the computer monitor.

  She smirked and winked. “I always am. Except when I’m … bad.”

  That made the agent smirk, too, and Rizzoli let out a small growl. “Go assist Special Agent Jones, Davies. She’ll need someone to gather the evidence once she raises it from the floor, and you seem to have nothing better to do.”

  Agent Davies’s gaze moved to the floor and he fidgeted nervously while Dawna blushed and scurried to her desk.

  Ron noticed me and tried to catch my attention with eyes blazing, but I so didn’t want to talk to him right now. What was happening wasn’t precisely my fault, but this probably wasn’t helping his settlement conference any. I pretended not to see him and scurried out the front door. I only made it past the agent guarding the entrance because Rizzoli was right at my elbow. Ron wouldn’t be that lucky, if he tried at all.

  I started to ask Rizzoli a question, but he held up his hand and put his cell phone to his ear. “Nancy?… Dom. Hey, find some reason to get Davies off this case. Pull him back to base.… Okay, yeah. Thanks.”

  I waited until we were in the car before I commented. “A little harsh, don’t you think? It was just innocent flirting.”

  “Not so innocent, Graves. What worried me wasn’t that he was flirting. It was that he didn’t notice you.”

  That made me frown because I didn’t get what he was saying. “Try again. Maybe I’m just dense today, but I don’t understand.”

  He looked almost amused. “You really don’t, do you? Okay, short version: You’re a siren. Every other male in the room except those who are shooting blanks like me or are not heterosexual noticed you. Couldn’t take their eyes off you. Except Davies, who couldn’t take his eyes off your friend. That level of interest in anyone could impact this investigation. I don’t care if they date—hell, that’s almost guaranteed from the way they were looking at each other. But not here and not now. Got it?”

  “Oh. That’s a lot to get from a quick glance. What exactly is your specialty at the Bureau? I mean, most agents have some sort of special talent. Not many plain humans there, I’ll bet.”

  He turned on the frontage road toward the university back entrance. “More than you’d think, actually. There are good and bad things about having people with specialized paranormal talents in the department. The good is you get people who can solve cases better. But only certain cases. They tend to rely on their strengths, and when you only have a hammer, you see every problem as a nail. I prefer people with full tool belts, and humans bring that to the table.”

  His answer made me smirk at him. “One of your talents seems to be misdirection. Because you didn’t answer my question.”

  He smiled, his eyes crinkling at the corners with good humor. “You’re right. It is.” He let that sink in with a prolonged moment of silence.

  Finally I shook my head with amused weariness. “You’re not going to tell me, are you?”

  “Intuition.”

  I turned my head to stare at him. His smile didn’t fade. “Excuse me?”

  “You asked my talent. That’s it. I’m a level-eight Intuitive.”

  Intuition was a measurable talent? “Really? Is that a psychic or magical gift? What exactly does it mean?”

  “It started out as a clairvoyant talent but was moved to the psychic talents when I was a kid. But now it’s considered partly magical, too, as science has learned more about the brain and meta-mitochondrial DNA. So now it’s its own subset, which bumped me up the chart by about four levels. I sucked on the clairvoyant and psychic scales. I wasn’t much better than a plain human.”

  “So you’ve got really good intuition? That’s it?”

  His reply was a laugh that was genuinely amused and not at all insulted. “It’s a lot more useful than you think. I’m always in the right place at the right time. I meet people I need to and ask the right questions exactly when I should. I pick the correct people to go with me on an assignment to get the results we need to solve a case. So far, I’ve got a ninety-three percent average of satisfactorily closing case files. That gets you noticed in my business.”

  “Then you happening to be the person who showed up at my office the first time we met wasn’t coincidence?”

  As his hand flipped the lever for the blinker he shook his head and turned in at the university’s back gate. The main entrance doesn’t have a security shack. But this one, close to the administration building, does. I dug my student ID out of my purse and held it up, but I think it was Rizzoli’s official badge that did the trick because wow, did the guard leap back inside the booth fast to raise the bar across the drive. “I decided to go to your office. I didn’t have any real idea why, but over the years, I’ve learned to go with my gut—more than most cops. Got in trouble more than once, too. The nice part is that once intuition became an official talent, about two years ago, my supervisors started taking off my bridle.” We reached the administration building. Rizzoli kept talking. “The Bureau is actually pretty good at nurturing talents. So they’re using me as a sort of guinea pig, to see whether intuition can be trained to respond on command. That gives me a lot of freedom.” He pulled into a parking space and turned off the car. “Like when I gave credentials to an untrained newbie siren.”

  “And like playing chauffeur right now?”

  He shrugged as he unbuckled his belt. “That decision was a combination of intuition and common sense. I’ve learned that you wander off if I don’t keep an eye on you, and I need you handy in case my team turns up anything new at your office. But there’s probably another reason I’m here and it’ll come when it comes. I’ve heard vampires have terrific intuition, which is why it’s so hard to catch and kill them. Maybe you have it, too. It’s a talent that can be honed, you know. I’m a lot better at following my gut now that I’ve started to analyze the whys.”

  I wanted to be annoyed that he accused me of wandering off, but it was sort of true. And what he said about intuition was interesting. “I’ve always been told I’ve lived a charmed life, despite the things that have happened to me. I was kidnapped and survived. I had a death curse put on me and survived. A vampire bit
e … survived. I’ve been told it’s my siren blood and good training and equipment.”

  “Possibly. But you also have a knack for stumbling into situations, and having the right person on hand at the right time to help you out. That’s intuition.”

  He was making me really think about things from a different point of view. “I was tested for everything in school. Failed miserably. And the sirens told me why. Siren abilities don’t coexist with other strong talents. So, I’m guessing no empathy, no intuition. Or at least not much.”

  We walked up the sidewalk to the science building, listening to the birds and catching the scent of rich, wet soil and sweet bedding flowers. “Hmpf. That’s a shame. The government put together some tests when they split it out into its own category.” Rizzoli held the door for me to enter ahead of him. “One test is pretty good because it’s physical—open pits with mattresses at the bottom, things that will catch your ankles and trip you into padded walls, doorknobs that give a mild electric shock. Lots of stuff like that. It provides your brain with the concept of danger but without significant consequences. It really makes your talent kick in.”

  We walked down a dim hallway. Classes were over for the day. We really should have called to make sure Dr. Sloan was still there. “I would’ve sworn you had the talent. I’ve thought for a while we had something in common—something that made me seek you out.”

  “Why does that worry me?” I said it with a smile, but I was serious. We turned a corner and he stayed right beside me. Interesting—he knew which way to turn. “Have you visited Dr. Sloan before?’

  Rizzoli smiled. “Nope. I’ve never met him. Just thought that was the right way to turn.” The smile seemed to peel several years and about a half a ton of worry off his face.

  I was going to respond with something mildly sarcastic when I heard voices at the end of the hall. Aaron Sloan has a very distinctive voice, probably from years of speaking in lecture halls.

  I could also smell a distinctive cologne that had scented my clothing for two years, feel the press of magic that reached for me all the way down the hall.