“Separation from someone like she-who-must-not-be-named and her lover.”
“Yes.” I knew a moment of sadness that John Mooney had fallen into D’Accore’s traps. For a brief time I had genuinely liked him and appreciated his gentle teaching. The hard-nosed, corrupt businessman that G knew didn’t jibe with the man I had met. We all had our Jekyll-and-Hyde moments, I guessed.
“And how did you escape the traps to grow into a wisewoman at such a young age?”
“I met Gayla.” I nodded toward the front door where she’d stopped her car at the bottom of the drive and had gotten out to talk to Zeb. I could almost see the sparkle between them, reaching but not quite touching each other. No magic, just natural chemistry.
“She taught me a lot. She supervised my first marijuana cigarette. Without peer pressure to proclaim the miracle of the drug, I found I didn’t like the taste or the side effects.”
“That was wise of her. She is a good friend to you.”
“Yes. She also encouraged me to continue attending church services until I knew that I was running away from my parents and not my faith. I still believe. But I’ve found that every organized church has its own politics. I’d rather spend my Sunday mornings honoring the God I believe in by sitting still and watching the sunrise, working in the garden, and creating new recipes.”
“Did I smell cinnamon, cloves, and nutmeg wafting from your kitchen earlier?” he asked with a boyish grin.
“Pumpkin bread and cookies with lunch at noon. I’m trying some new combinations on tried-and-true recipes,” I replied and levered myself upward by holding on to the railing with one hand while balancing my coffee mug in the other.
George Red Hawk steadied me with a hand on my back. Suddenly, I was engulfed in fire, I saw the menacing flames leaping all around me, felt the heat, though it did not burn me. And I gagged on the smoke.
“That is what Keeli saw in the minds and the words of those she watched,” George whispered.
“They will come for us with torches and blind fear. Their fear guides them, not D’Accore.”
“To them, burning you out on Halloween night will be a holy act.”
Thirty-Eight
MONDAY MORNING AT SEVEN, G and his three companions sat in a rental van parked opposite the glass-and-steel skyscraper where John Mooney kept his official brokerage offices on the ground floor. No advertisements of available property in the windows. No sign on the door. He’d come a long way from the cozy and inviting house with real estate offices in front and living space behind and a big flashy sign announcing to the world that he’d find your dream home for you.
Now, if you needed John Mooney to find property for you, you knew where to find him or had him recommended by someone. He’d cut down on buying and selling homes to average families. The profit margins weren’t high enough. Especially since the state and county had begun investigating the contractors who flipped houses for him. Of the dozen or so Mooney used, eleven were out of business for code violations, lack of permits, revoked licenses, and inspections. Only Ted Tyler Construction had survived the scrutiny.
“Keeli does not like this building and wants to fly free,” George announced from the backseat of the van.
“Not long now. That’s Mooney’s car driving into the underground parking lot. We need him to see Keeli,” G responded.
George stuck his head out the window and made some reassuring, nonsensical noises high in his throat.
“Almost got my gear patched in,” Zeb added from beside G. He fussed with a laptop and a bunch of wires to an array of gadgets spread on the armrest and dashboard, and two on G’s lap.
“If Mooney sees Keeli, he’ll look for magical traps,” G said, more to himself than the others.
“Traps set,” Sing said, then lapsed into his habitual silence beside George.
G smiled. He knew the kinds of traps that Sing set. The kind that dazzled the mind and paralyzed the feet. He and Zeb had had a devil of a time convincing Sing to make the triggers more obvious than usual. They wanted Mooney paranoid about a magical attack.
“If he suspects magic, he won’t look for my traps,” Zeb said. He flicked one more switch, and the screen on his laptop blossomed into life with multiple views of the approach to, and the interior of, Mooney’s office. Zeb put on his headphones and played with the keyboard. He nodded that full sound was active and recording, as well as the cameras.
“You got the warrant for that stuff?” G asked. He needed to make sure this was all legal.
Zeb touched the inside pocket of his down vest, then pointed to the glass door on the ground level of the high-rise.
John Mooney approached with his key ready. He still favored his left foot and leaned heavily on his cane.
George spit some muffled sounds. On the roof, a red-tailed hawk ruffled her feathers, spread her wings wide, and swooped down. She leveled out and sped even with the ground, about six feet up. Her talons tangled Mooney’s perfect hair as she pulled up and soared toward the nearest tree, across the street and down a block. Then she headed northeast into the hills.
“Hey!” Mooney shouted, looking around with suspicion and alarm. He spotted the van, glanced away, then back again.
G had chosen the neutral white service van because it looked like a stakeout vehicle. He could have borrowed one from the local police, but that would have been too easy. He wanted this to look more official than it was. The IRS had their own stakeout with similar equipment at the back of the building. If they knew about G and Zeb’s presence with their high-powered credentials that demanded interagency cooperation, he didn’t care.
Mooney shook his fist at G and then spent five minutes examining the door for magical traps. Eventually, he unlocked the door and spent more time disabling the first of Sing’s obvious traps, the one that activated a Gollum programmed to chant a stasis spell. A flick of the wrist and the wooden man—that looked a lot like Sing—burst into flame and collapsed into a pile of ash.
Zeb giggled as he watched it all on his laptop. G relied on the enspelled plastic eyeball—a cheap Halloween prop—on the bookcase to feed the video to him. The eyeball saw but did not hear. For that he had a rubber ear planted in a flower pot.
Eventually, Mooney disabled all of Sing’s spells: the light display to dazzle the mind and the ensnaring cobwebs. Sing was really fond of the sticky mesh sold in the higher-end specialty Halloween stores.
“He’s spent a lot of magic getting rid of tricks,” George commented.
“Not a lot of energy left to notice mundane bugs and cameras. Think he’ll notice the slight delay before connections when he uses his landline?”
“Too obvious. He’ll use his cell and hope no one has the sophisticated listening devices in the IRS van,” G mused. He’d done this before. Both with and without the cooperation of the mundane authorities.
“Right on time.” Zeb gestured with his chin at the three men in black suits, with black briefcases. They only needed dark glasses on this gloomy October day to make the parody a complete cliché. The three county sheriff’s deputies with their stiff posture, Mountie hats, and bristling weapons made the scenario all too real.
Zeb took off his headphones. “We’re on speaker.”
They listened for an hour, while officers of the court searched Mooney’s office. Mooney upheld absolute silence except to call his lawyer in a sprawling office on the top floor of his building. The three senior partners must have had a private elevator at their command in order to walk out of the main building doors and in Mooney’s office door less than three minutes later.
And for all of this posturing and display, the IRS got five boxes of files, mostly questionable but probably nothing illegal.
The real treasure was being gathered at Mooney’s home up in the Coburg Hills. The sprawling mock Tudor mansion set in the middle of five acres had lots of hiding places. Another t
eam of officials invaded that place. This morning’s display at the office was mere show. And Keeli watched it all from her new perch in the upper branches of an oak beside a mole hole. Who would notice a wild bird keeping an eye on a possible breakfast of the mole?
“They found it!” George chortled with glee. “The old stables that he converted into entertainment space and home office. He’s just too obvious to be real.”
G pulled up his contacts list on his phone and found the head of the local IRS. “Tell your team to keep looking,” he spat. “If he hid his files as well as he did his offshore accounts, then you can bet the home office is a decoy. Try underneath the koi pond.”
The deputies and the auditors left Mooney’s office. The lawyers followed a few minutes later. “Now the fun begins. Let’s see who he calls first,” G muttered.
Within seconds, Zeb’s laptop lit up with a flurry of text calls from Mooney. All said the same thing. Get out of town.
But no one arrested Mooney. He was still free to work mischief with D’Accore. Damn! G thought, slamming his fist against the steering wheel. “I thought they’d find something.”
“You made him jittery,” George said. “Jitters burn energy. Energy lost to nerves cannot be put into magic.” He whistled for Keeli to fly home.
“What am I looking for, Daddy?” Shara asked. She peered around the clump of scrub oak across the road from Mooney’s driveway. Well away from any security cameras.
Daffy would kill him if she thought he was endangering their daughter rather than taking her out for an ice cream treat. As long as she stayed with him, she’d be okay. He hoped he’d put enough fear into her to keep her from running off on her own.
“Mr. Mooney has records of his illegal financial dealings. More than just the record of deposits and withdrawals in the offshore accounts,” G replied succinctly. He didn’t smell any magical traps this far away from the house. They’d be safe. For now. He was careful. He could not, would not put his little girl in jeopardy.
“He’d be stupid not to. The point of illegal money is to make it grow, properly invested. What good is money if you can’t keep track of it and use it?”
G did a mental slap of his head with his palm. Of course, Mooney was laundering the money in the Cayman Islands and using it to buy real estate and stocks. He’d also see that his “brokerage” fees for those real estate deals showed up as legitimate earning in his business accounts; he was just buying property under assumed names, then selling to shadow corporations that he already owned.
“Where would you keep those files?” Ask a crook at heart to think like a real crook. He just hoped he and Daffy could instill some sense of morality into her before she started mimicking Mooney.
Mooney had probably sponsored the computer club at school trying to buy the loyalty of the next generation of computer hackers to work for him.
“On a flash drive. Maybe a dozen of them with sixty-four gigs or even two terabytes of memory. Say, can I have one of those for Christmas? I know the two Ts are expensive, but I can back up a lot of schoolwork on one.”
“What about the external hard drive with ten terabytes of space you already asked for?” Belle had confiscated the one he’d already bought.
“The ten T NAS would be my big present. The flash drives are stocking stuffers.” She shrugged off her expensive requests.
“Okay, what do you need to sense where Mooney would stash a flash drive?”
“Probably line of sight, like when we searched for the core of the fire. This will be different. though. There’s no maze structure to wind through. It’s just looking for the most likely place out in the open.”
“Okay, I know a place.” G started his car and put it into gear. “Line of sight, hmm, how about those hills ahead and to the left. I know a spot that overlooks his hilltop compound.”
“It might work. But isn’t that BLM forest land? Could you talk me through the breathing exercises, so I’m ready the moment you stop the car and I can find it right away, so we won’t be there long enough to attract attention?”
Spoken like a true outlaw in the making.
G shuddered but obeyed, talking her through the familiar procedure by rote. He needed the front of his consciousness to navigate the twisted logging road up into the hills. He should have borrowed Ted’s 4X4 pickup for this trip.
His powerful car hugged the curves well, but slowly. The tires spattered mud all over the sides and the back windshield. He shuddered with every thud, wondering when an axle would break. He’d have to run through the car wash before returning home, or Daffy would ask probing questions. And he’d have a really good mechanic check the undercarriage.
A half hour later he found a turn out at the crest of the road, overlooking Mooney’s home. He pulled over and set the parking brake. “Will this do?”
Shara squinted at the blurry roofline below them, about a mile away as the crow flies. Then she rolled down her window and leaned out.
A hawk cried above them.
“Hello, Keeli,” G called up through his own open window. “Will you please assist us?” George insisted on politeness with his bird. He said she did what she wanted, when she wanted, and would only help when asked nicely and it fit into her agenda.
Another screech and she swooped low, nearly scratching the roof of the car with her powerful talons.
Shara jerked and closed her eyes. “This is really weird,” she breathed. Then she opened her eyes again and smiled. “Thank you, Keeli.” Her head swayed right and left as she followed the bird’s flight across the rolling hills northeast of town. She opened her seat belt and leaned farther and farther out the window until she was nearly hanging over the frame at waist level.
Instinctively, G grabbed her ankles with both hands to keep her inside. The car was parked too close to the steep slope broken by jagged volcanic outcroppings and tall trees. If Shara got out of the car, she could easily misstep and roll to her death. He breathed a little easier when she made no move to climb farther out. But he kept his hands on her ankles.
He watched the silhouette of the hawk circle the house and outbuildings again and again. Then one more cry and the bird flew off in another direction. Back toward the city and her magical companion.
Shara slumped the moment Keeli’s tether to her mind snapped. She sagged, curling her knees up to her chin and resting her forehead on them.
“You okay?” G asked, rubbing her curved back. “Need some ice cream to restore you?”
“A pumpkin spice milkshake,” she mumbled. “I don’t think the flash drive or anything else is there. He’s too smart for us, Daddy.”
“He’s smart. But not too smart for us. We’ll get him. Just not today. Do you want to get in the backseat and take a nap on the way back to Dairy Jim’s?” The old-fashioned ice cream parlor, family owned for four generations, made the best frozen treats using extra rich milk from grass-fed local cows.
“Yeah.” She just sat there.
Reluctantly, G got out of the car, went around to her side, and carried her from the front seat to the back. Her thin arms crept around his neck, trusting him to take care of her.
If only he could do that forever. He’d blown this trust thing with Daffy. He needed to earn it back and make sure he never did anything to lose the trust of any of his children. Ever.
“Ice cream. The best cure for a magic-depleted body.”
Thirty-Nine
MONDAY AND TUESDAY, I found myself making more pancakes and croissants than cinnamon buns at the shop for the morning rush. Our customers liked the addition of “real” food to our menu and spread the word. Many, like Ted, stuck to their cinnamon rolls. I made up gallons of pancake batter with autumnal spices in the mix in the morning and then anyone on staff could cook them as needed. The croissants were labor intensive to start with, though once baked, my part of the job was done. I made sure we had an extr
a two dozen for the afternoon shift.
I continued to worry about Jason. He was taking pain pills every day to ease his headache. He’d also taken to wearing sunglasses out of doors, even on gloomy and rainy days.
Something was drastically wrong. More than tension headaches from the increased pressure of weekend performances and midterm exams.
After a week of doing nothing more creative than run the espresso machine, I brought in one of our college students and left the shop at eleven instead of two on Tuesday.
As I parked my van beside the back gate, an overwhelming urge to be in the attic swept over me like a sneaker wave. I couldn’t breathe and felt like I had to swim against the currents of air between me and the house.
Gasping and panicky, I barely took the time to set my purse on the counter before running full out up the stairs to the second floor and then up again to the attic until I emerged from the “well” of the enclosed staircase into the open space. The all-out sprint left me gasping for air and weak-kneed. I braced my hands on the floor while still two steps down and bent nearly double.
“What’s wrong?” I panted. “Who’s hurt?”
“No one, my dear. But I’m glad you’re here. We are about to set up some spell work. We need a fifth element to complete the symmetry,” G said, all calm and neutral.
But I recognized the cat-who-ate-the-canary smile. He didn’t need a feather sticking out of his mouth to betray him. I knew him too well.
“You manipulated me,” I snarled.
“Did I?”
“Yes. Here I was afraid one of you was bleeding to death and the other three unconscious when all you had to do was pick up the damn phone and call me.” I turned around on the stair, careful to keep my balance though my head spun, still recovering from my run and my panic.
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