by Amy Crook
Alex resisted the urge to stick out his tongue. "Julian was very pleased by his gift, anyway, thank you for that."
"We'll see if he wears them," said Fauna dubiously, though she herself had vetted the gift.
Alex rolled his eyes. "He hardly leaves the house, how would you know what he wears?"
The girls laughed. "Oh, we'll find out. Besides, now that his Courtship has started, he'll have to do even more shopping than you will."
"They don't really expect him to have a different outfit for every single date, do they?" asked Alex, appalled.
The girls tittered. "He can mix and match, but he'll need a lot of pieces to keep from repeating himself," said Flora, with the air of someone telling a child something they ought to have already known.
They always had been worse together.
He was actually grateful when it came time to be shoved into the suit they'd chosen. He'd managed to get them to compromise from the pink they were going to choose to a more suitable deep aubergine. He had to admit it wasn't as bad as he'd feared; the couturier knew his stuff, and he'd managed to use touches of a cool silvery grey throughout the outfit to keep from making Alex look like a particularly cranky eggplant.
"May I ask, if I were to require a special costume, for instance, if the St. Albans Courtship would include a masquerade..." began Alex, watching as the designer's face lit up.
"Then you would of course come to me, and I will dress you in such magnificent fashion," he said with a grin, "that even your sisters would approve, yes?"
Alex relaxed and grinned back. "Oh yes, if you think there'll be time, it's usually only a few days' notice."
"Nonsense, for such an occasion we will make special exception. Like the Americans with their film awards," he said, looking very pleased indeed.
"Good," said Alex. "Perhaps for that, I'll leave them home."
The designer laughed, and directed the seamstress to tuck in Alex's coat a little further, emphasising the narrowness of his waist. Alex admired himself in the mirror, and wondered what sort of thing he might wear to a ball.
~ ~ ~
Alex managed to shake his sisters once they'd taken him to get appropriate amethyst and silver accessories for the outfit. The girls even insisted on a second pocket watch and chain in silver to match, though the fob was allowed to stay. Alex was happy to buy anything they directed him to by that point, since it wasn't his money and he could always exchange it for something he didn't loathe later.
After picking up a few more things on his own, Alex gave in to her prodding and headed over to see Lapointe. "So," she asked, as soon as he came into her office, "how'd it go?"
"No one is going to ask me about anything else until this is over, are they?" he said with a laugh, flopping onto her beastly sofa.
"Nope," she said cheerfully. "But if you agree to tell me first, I'll let you sweep me away for coffee so the rest of the gossips can't find you."
"And you'll fill me in on the case?" asked Alex, pretending to think about it.
"Yep," she said, already gathering her things.
Alex grinned. "It's a deal," he said.
Before he could get up, a new obstacle blocked the doorway in the form of Agent Smedley. "I see you're quite the charmer when you want to be," said Smedley, waving this morning's society page at Alex, with its marginally accurate article about last night's proceedings.
Alex pretended to pout. "I thought you were already fond of my charms," he said. A glance at Lapointe showed her trying not to laugh; his fake flirting had never worked on her, which made it all the more entertaining to watch.
"You're not my type, bean pole," said Smedley, "Or should I be calling you 'the dark horse that came from behind to overtake the pack in the race for Julian St. Albans' broken heart'?"
"Does it really say that?" said Lapointe.
Alex sighed. "It really does," he said disgustedly.
That got her to laugh, and Smedley as well.
"They should be ashamed to write prose like that," said Alex. "It doesn't even flow."
"Oh, really?" said Lapointe. "What would you suggest?"
Alex harrumphed and crossed his arms over his chest, refusing to acknowledge the question as beneath him. Instead he pulled out his watch fob and began to fondle it, sitting sideways on the couch and ignoring them both.
They kept talking, but he let that fade out, opening his other hearing, bathing in the soothing hum of the building's high-end wards. They were well-constructed and familiar, the pattern of their music like a symphony of orderly magic, and he sometimes listened to them just to calm his mind. Today, though, he dismissed them and delved deeper, finding the soothing thread of Lapointe's quit smoking amulet; a tinkling forget-me-not on Smedley's keys; a surprising, sinuous attraction spell on someone out in the offices around them.
Alex catalogued and dismissed each of these little personal charms and he was surprised to find underneath that he could hear that same insidious melody he'd been hearing ever since this case began.
"Did any new evidence come in today?" asked Alex, coming abruptly out of his trance and interrupting their banter.
They both looked at him like he'd grown another head.
"Evidence! On the Mandeville murder? The whole reason I'm doing this ridiculous Courtship?" he asked again, standing and slipping the watch fob back in its pocket.
Smedley's brows knit. "We finally got the warrant in order and brought in his personal property, but it's all with Armistead."
"Sod Armistead," said Alex, making a beeline for the evidence laboratory, a place he generally tried to avoid.
Lapointe and Smedley trailed in his wake, Smedley asking, "Does he do this a lot?"
Lapointe chuckled. "You can't tell me you hadn't heard of his reputation before this," she said.
Smedley chuckled. "He is an odd one, but if he can cut down on the time they spend filtering through all of Mandeville's possessions, even Armistead might be grateful."
Lapointe watched as Alex burst into the room full of sealed bags and boxes and then took out his new charm and went all still again, while Armistead tried to give him a dressing-down for interrupting. "I wouldn't count on it," she said wryly, holding the door for Smedley to precede her.
"...can't just come running in here without so much as a greeting!" Armistead was saying, while Alex blithely ignored him, though he didn't totally tune them out the way he had on the couch. He had to be aware of his surroundings enough to find the one item he was looking for amongst the clutter.
"You should know it's no use when he's like this," said Lapointe, gently pulling Armistead away.
Alex took advantage of Armistead's distraction to step over to the open evidence box he'd been rummaging in. Inside there seemed to be the contents of Mandeville's writing desk, from a packet of old letters from Julian to a pen and inkwell. "It's in here," said Alex, picking up the box and taking it to the last bare work table.
"Gloves," said Lapointe, sauntering up to him with the box in hand.
"Oh, yes, thank you," said Alex, tucking away his watch fob and putting on, not the annoyingly insulating latex gloves from the box, but his own fine white cotton crime scene gloves, pulled from an inside pocket and still sealed in their little packet from the department-approved cleaners.
He reached into the box and pulled out the bagged items one by one, laying them out on the table, pushing items away as they proved to be magically null. Soon he had a half-dozen items in front of him, all of them the sort of thing you might expect a rich man to have charmed for one thing and another.
The sound was stronger now, too.
"It was hidden in plain sight," said Alex, filching a pen to sign the first log sheet before using his pocket knife to break the seal. He pulled out the item of the bag, a lovely set of inkwell and pen rest, the two glass phials cradled in a filigreed metal stand, one capped and one left open for a quill to rest inside.
Alex brushed his finger over the opening of the second phial
and felt the spell reaching out just before everything went black.
~ ~ ~
Alex woke not in a hospital as he'd feared, but laid out on a couch rather more comfortable than the one in Lapointe's office. "Wha-" croaked Alex, and he accepted a sip of water before trying again. "What happened?"
"Smedley caught you," said Lapointe, looking worriedly amused. "Then Armistead sealed the inkwell up in one of those fancy spellproof lock boxes, all the while ranting about you and your cotton gloves."
Alex chuckled. "Latex wouldn't have saved me this headache, I don't think," he said. He considered sitting up, but decided he might as well lie here as anywhere. At least here it was comfortable, and he even had a pillow. "Whose?"
Lapointe chuckled. "Smedley's, of course. He's off hovering over the evidence wizard, but he's told me to tell you that no, you can't put his couch in my office."
"Can you get one just like it?" asked Alex, making his best puppy eyes, which he expected were rather better than usual, given how he felt. His head pounded like he'd been hit between the eyes, and he could feel the alien magic still trying to work on him, though ineffectually now that it was cut off from its source.
"Nope," she said, making him sip more water through the straw. "Feel up to some paracetamol?" she asked, waving a pair of pills in his line of vision.
"Please," he said, sitting up gingerly so he could take them properly with the last of the water. Sitting up seemed to clear some of his head. "They should see if they can get a warrant for any similar artefacts still in the St. Albans home."
"We should," she agreed, "if we can find a judge who'll authorise it. It was hard enough getting Mandeville's things."
"I suspect if you can figure out what this one does, they'll be happy to have anything else like it safely gone from their lives," said Alex. "Coffee?" he asked hopefully.
Lapointe laughed. "If you're well enough to ask for coffee, you're well enough for me to let the medical mage in here to examine you while I make you up a cup."
Alex sighed, but given the lingering contamination he could still feel buzzing in his blood, he couldn't disagree. "All right," he said, "but only if he closes the blinds. I don't need the rest of them watching me get magically probed."
"At least it'll only be your magic he'll be probing," she said with a grin.
Alex waited until she was almost out the door before he said, "That's the problem."
Her laugh made him feel almost as much better as the water had.
The medical mage slipped in and closed the blinds. "I would've shut them anyhow," he said good-naturedly. "I'm Dr. Geoffrey Tamlinson." Alex spared a moment to enjoy the sight of Tamlinson's fine physique, compactly athletic and well-displayed in the medical scrubs he was wearing.
"I know," said Alex, feeling annoyingly shy. He'd admired this young man from afar since he'd been hired, but had no excuse to be introduced. This wasn't the excuse he'd been hoping for, either. "Oh, er, Alex. Alex Benedict," he added belatedly, holding out his hand for shaking.
"Not until you're clear of spell residue, I'm afraid," said Dr. Tamlinson. "But you can call me Geoff if you like." He flashed a very charming smile indeed, and Alex had an unworthy moment of wondering if he'd been the source of the attraction spell earlier.
"Geoff, then," said Alex, letting his hand fall to his lap. "What do you need me to do?"
Geoff chuckled, putting on a pair of latex gloves from his neatly-packed medical kit. "I should think you'd be used to this."
Alex couldn't tell whether Geoff was teasing or serious, but given Alex's opening gambit, it wouldn't do to take offence. "I actually don't stumble into magical traps as often as you might expect, given my line of work," he said, trying to keep the indignation out of his voice.
"That explains how you've kept away from my lair, though you are due for a physical sooner rather than later," said Geoff. "For now, if you'll just remove your coat and any magical artefacts on your person? We'll check those for contamination separately."
Alex spared a moment of worry for his pricey new toy, but he obediently removed his coat and waistcoat including the watch, chain and fob. He slipped off his shoes and put his keys and wallet on the pile, then tried to remember if anything else he was wearing today was charmed.
"I'm tempted to suggest there might be anti-wrinkle charms on your trousers," said Geoff teasingly, "but that wouldn't be professional."
Alex laughed. "I don't think they'll leave us alone in the office long enough for that sort of probing, Doctor."
Geoff chuckled and then held out his hands. "Gloves off, too, and then put your hands in mine."
"Oh, right, I'd forgotten... how strange, that I'd forget them," said Alex, removing the gloves and setting them, not with his other things, but on the floor away from him. As soon as his fingers left the cotton, he felt better. "Oh, that's why, they're definitely contaminated."
"Good to know," said Geoff, making a little beckoning motion with his hands.
Alex put his now-cold hands into Geoff's warm ones and hoped his blush would be chalked up to spell residue. "How do you sense magic?" he asked, mostly making conversation; even sight-based mages often got a perception boost from touching the object in question.
"I should say taste," said Geoff, making Alex's pulse pick up just a little, "but actually it's touch for me. The gloves make it harder, but I need to be a little bit protected from the spell that knocked you out."
"Touch, that's," Alex swallowed, "intriguing." His imagination kicked into overdrive, presenting him with images of a touch mage and sound mage together, each moan carrying magical overtones, each caress exploring both physical and magical contours.
"What are you thinking right now?" asked Geoff sharply.
Alex turned bright red. "I don't know if-" he protested.
"It's the spell, I can feel it growing stronger," said Geoff, his voice all authority now.
Alex let out an embarrassed whimper. "You, I'm thinking of you and me and the very magical sex we could have," he said, his voice a hoarse whisper.
Geoff looked surprised, blinking up at him owlishly. "The spell is making you want me?"
"More," clarified Alex. "It's making me want you more."
"Ah," said Geoff, clearing his throat. "So the spell is intensifying already-existing feelings of lust?"
Alex nodded, feeling miserable despite the deliciously vivid images still playing through his mind. "There's some underlying affection building as well," said Alex, "so it's not entirely lust."
"What if I told you I had a boyfriend?" asked Geoff.
Alex's pulse spiked. "No!" he said, and then stopped, shocked. "Oh, my. I assure you, such vehement possessiveness is not a natural trait for me."
"I wonder why it chose me?" said Geoff.
"Perhaps it needed the prior lust to build on?" said Alex, trying very hard to push away the foreign impulses.
Geoff chuckled. "Don't swing both ways, then?" he asked, and Alex's fingers twitched again at the thought of Geoff with a woman, with anyone but himself.
"This is very unpleasant," said Alex. "Not the lust part, but the jealousy, it's quite odd and unwelcome."
"I think you're going to have to go through a full purification to get this out of you," said Geoff apologetically.
Alex sighed. "Can it be done here?" he asked. "Agent Lapointe can see to my things."
"Well, not on the couch, but you can come to the infirmary, yes. Just let me bag up the gloves and your artefacts, and I can examine them while you have your bath."
"Ugh," said Alex, "I hate salt baths."
Geoff chuckled, using tongs to drop the gloves into a magically null bag and then dropping the tongs in after and sealing the whole thing up. "Should've been more careful, then," he said, demonstrating by using more of the little plastic tongs to bag up Alex's personal things. "None of this feels like the spell, though, so I think you're safe."
"I hope so," said Alex with a sigh. "I really like my stuff."
&nbs
p; "Come on, let's get you to the infirmary before I strip you naked. You can bring your other clothes," he said, nodding to the discarded jacket and waistcoat.
"Oh, goodie," said Alex sarcastically, but he complied, gathering his things and trooping after Geoff. They paused long enough to assure Lapointe that he'd be fine, and then it was down to the much more private infirmary in the basement, which Alex had always thought was situated far too close to the morgue for comfort.
"In there," said Geoff, pointing to one of the exam rooms. "Shuck your kit, every stitch, not a single bit of jewellery left."
"This really isn't how I'd hoped you'd get me naked," said Alex, a halfhearted attempt at flirting as he shuffled into the small room. He left his clothes in an uncharacteristically messy pile on the bed and tried to decide if it was worse to be small because it was bloody cold in here, or big because he was still seeing pornographic images of the two of them in a loop in his head thanks to the spell.
Geoff knocked on the door. "The bath's all set, you can go through the far door." There was a pause, and then he added in a more playful tone, "Don't worry, I'll still see all of you for the last bit."
"Hooray," said Alex sarcastically, finding the spell's effect lessened now that he was away from the target, but his headache beginning to return.
He sighed and went into the next room, where a raised round tub held a milky-looking bath that was unhappily not steaming at all. "I hate this part," he said to nobody in particular, then he forced himself to get in the cold water with its harsh mineral salts, immersing himself despite the way the salt stung his nose and the small abrasions of his everyday life. He hadn't even known he had a hangnail, but now every tiny break in his skin was a point of sharp pain.
He stayed under for as long as he could stand, which he knew was rather pathetically short, and then he came up just enough to get a few good breaths of air before going back under. With his real ears muffled by the liquid, he could hear the alien magic buzzing around inside him, the noise angriest at those points where the salt bath stung, as the bath slowly purified everything it could reach.
After a dozen dunkings, he sat up and made the very unpleasant effort of getting the salt bath to wash over every wrinkle and crevice in his nether regions. When he emerged he was cold, sore, his head hurt and his skin felt as though he'd been lightly sandblasted.