“No, actually, I haven’t. That turned out to be a dead end.”
“Oh, okay. Is that why you’re calling? To tell me that?”
“No, I’m calling because I seem to have taken over your old office and I’m wondering why I’m supposed to pass my cases onto you.”
He sighed. “Hell if I know. A couple of days ago, Nigel told me they needed my office so they kicked me out. Now I’m in a place half the size and my filing cabinets are taking up most of what little space there is.”
Knowing how small the office Fawkes had moved from was, Felicity could imagine the place he was in now.
“So why have they done it?” she asked.
“Like I said, I have no idea. I’m only enduring it because Nigel said it wouldn’t be for long and then I’d be going back to my old office.”
“Oh,” Felicity said. What did that mean for her? Was she going to be sent somewhere else soon? No one had mentioned that when she’d arrived in England.
“Sorry I can’t be of more help,” Fawkes said. “If you get any cases, throw them my way. For some reason, Nigel thinks I should be doing the work of two people.”
Felicity hung up. It was obvious that Nigel Lomas had some ulterior motive for bringing her here. Why didn’t he want her working cases? Probably because that would take her out of the office and he obviously wanted her to be there as much as possible.
But why?
She didn’t have an answer to that question but she was determined to get one.
But first she was going to find out what Linda Dean’s ghost was trying to tell her daughter.
The Society might not want her to solve any cases but she was bloody well going to.
16
I called a meeting the following morning at Blackwell Books. If we were going to get into the room beneath the Giza Plateau, the Blackwell sisters were going to have to get us there.
When I arrived at Blackwell Books, Leon, his butler Michael, and Mallory were already there, being served tea at the back of the shop by Devon and Victoria Blackwell.
“Alec,” Victoria said when she saw me. “So nice to see you.” She pulled me into a brief hug, an action that was repeated by Devon.
“Leon has told us what will be required of us today,” Victoria said. “How many people will we be transporting?”
“The four of us,” I said, pointing to Mallory, Michael, Leon, and myself. “And Merlin, the two Cabal guys, Carlton, and Amy.”
“My, that’s a lot of people.”
“Is that a problem?”
“The room where we normally perform it won’t be able to accommodate everyone.”
“We could use the woods,” Devon suggested.
Victoria grinned. “Oh, yes, that will be fun! So old-school!”
I didn’t say anything. They were in charge of the spell so they could perform it any way they wanted.”
“Perhaps we should go totally old-school and cast the spell skyclad,” Devon said.
“There’s no need for that,” I said.
“There’s no need for it but it would be fun,” Victoria said. “Just like the old days.”
The bell above the shop door rang as Carlton entered. He saw us and navigated his way through the jumble of books to get to us. “Hey, boss,” he said. “What are we doing here?”
“I told you not to call me that.” I introduced him to the witches. They poured him a cup of tea. I declined; I’d tasted enough of the Blackwells’ strange brews to last me a lifetime.
Amy came through the door and headed straight to us. “Merlin isn’t coming,” she said.
“Why not?” It wasn’t like him to miss out on the action.
She shrugged. “I don’t know. He’s been acting weird. He seems preoccupied, like he’s worried about something.”
Leon and I exchanged a glance. Merlin’s mood had changed when he’d discovered I was enchanted. I had no idea why it would affect him so much but it obviously did. And from what Amy was saying, it sounded like he still hadn’t broken out of his funk.
The problem was, I’d counted on him coming along so he could provide some magical muscle if Meyer and Chance tried anything sneaky.
“We don’t have to go until later,” I said to Amy. “See if you can convince him to come with us before we leave.”
“Go where?” she asked.
“We’re going to the Pillars of Khonsu.”
“But we don’t know how to open the gate,” Mallory said.
“We don’t but the Midnight Cabal does.” I told them about our meeting with Tom Meyer and Doug Chance and the deal I’d made with them.”
“You didn’t have to do that for me,” Mallory said.
“Yes, I did.”
“Thank you.” She drew me into a hug.
“I don’t like the sound of this,” Amy said. “What if something goes wrong?”
“It won’t. We’re going to keep an eye on Meyer and Chance at all times. If they try anything out of line, they’re going down.”
“Alec,” Mallory said. “Maybe they know your mother, since she’s a member of the Cabal. They could arrange a meeting.”
“Yeah, I’ve thought of that,” I said. “But right now, we need to focus on putting the heart back into Tia’s mummy. I can ask them about my mother later, assuming this mission doesn’t go sideways.”
“Anything you want me to do, boss…I mean Alec?” Carlton asked.
“You’re coming with us,” I told him.
He raised his hands and shook his head. “No way. I don’t go on missions; that isn’t in my job description.”
I only want you to go as far as the Pillars. When we go through, I want you to place a Janus statue in the gate. That’ll make sure it stays open until we come back.”
He thought about it for a long while before saying, “Okay, I guess I can do that.”
“Amy, I want you to stay with Carlton. Just in case anything goes wrong. I’ll feel better knowing there’s someone capable on this side of the gate.”
Also, I didn’t entirely trust Carlton and wanted Amy to keep an eyes on him. I was fairly certain he wasn’t a Cabal mole—otherwise he’d have told them where the Pillars were and they wouldn’t have had to make a deal with me—but I couldn’t put him in charge of our only escape route alone.
“Sure thing,” Amy said.
“Great.” I turned to the witches. “Where are we going to do this?”
Victoria got a map of Dearmont and unrolled it. She pointed at a spot in the woods just outside of town. This is Frobisher’s Glade. It’s a picnic area so it’s signposted from the highway. There’s a lovely clearing there where we can cast the spell.”
“A picnic area?” Carlton said. “Sounds too public a place to perform magic. What if there are people there having a picnic?”
Victoria frowned at him. “Not in November, dear.”
He nodded. “Point taken.”
“So, Mallory, Leon, Michael, and myself will be going through to the realm where Rekhmire lives—or has been imprisoned if you believe the Midnight Cabal. We need to find that mummy as quickly as we can and place the heart inside. Once we’ve done that, we’re out of there. I don’t care if Meyer and Chance have found what they’re looking for or not. When the curse is lifted, we leave.”
“No argument from me,” Leon said.
“Okay, so everyone knows what they’re doing. We need to get to the pillar room at around 12:20 so the spell can be cast at twilight, Egyptian time. I told Meyer and Chance to be at my house at 11:30. I’ll drive them out to Frobisher’s Glade. If you guys could all be at the glade ready to rock, that would be great. We don’t know what’s on the other side of the gate so bring weapons.”
“Are you bringing Excalibur?” Leon asked.
“No,” I said without hesitation. The sword might be able to give me a hit of energy but I wasn’t sure that was a good thing. Just remembering how good that hit had felt made me realize that it could become addictive very quickly.
“I’ll bring a selection of normal and enchanted weapons with me to the woods. We can all choose what we want to take with us before we leave.”
I checked my watch. We a bit of time to kill before Meyer and Chance turned up. I needed to call Felicity and see how her new job was going. I didn’t want her to think I’d forgotten about her.
“Are there any questions?” I asked the room in general.
“I have a question, sir,” Michael said, speaking up for the first time. “Will the teleportation spell work? I seem to remember it can only send people to and from consecrated ground.”
“Don’t worry about that,” Victoria assured him. “The entire Giza Plateau counts as consecrated ground.”
“Anything else?” I asked.
When no one spoke up, I said, “Okay, I’ll see you all later. We’ll get this curse lifted once and for all.”
I left the shop and did a quick mental calculation of time zones. It was almost ten here which meant it would be around three in the afternoon in England. I called Felicity’s number. She answered the call immediately.
“Alec! How are you?”
“I’m good,” I said. “How are you handling life as a P.I.?”
“It’s okay. I’ve got a case already.”
“That’s great.”
“Yes, it is. Listen, I really can’t talk at the moment. Something’s come up. I’ll ring you back when I have more time, okay?”
“Okay. Sure.”
She’d already ended the call.
That wasn’t like Felicity at all. I hoped everything was okay.
17
Felicity ducked down below the window in her office. The black van was back, parked across the street in its usual spot. She put her phone back into her pocket. She hated cutting Alec off like that but she had to put a plan she’d been thinking about into motion.
There was an old spell she’d heard of called Clairaudience. After looking it up on the Society database on her laptop, she’d decided she could use it to glean information about the people following her. She had no doubt now that they were members of the Society. Apparently, she’d been brought over to England just so the Society could run surveillance on her. That made absolutely no sense but it was the only conclusion she could come to when she faced the facts.
The spell would let her spy on the occupants of the van. Unfortunately, it would only let her hear what was going on in there and not actually see anything because Clairaudience worked by magically manipulating sound.
She needed to get close to the van because she needed to draw a magical symbol on it to perform the spell. That was going to be difficult. There was no way she could sneak up on the vehicle so she decided to try something a little bolder.
She went downstairs and out through the door that led onto the street. As she walked along the pavement, she reached into her handbag and took out a black marker. Instead of trying to get to the van without being seen—an impossible task since she assumed all eyes in the van were on her—she crossed the road and walked right up to vehicle.
To cover the action of drawing the magical symbol she’d memorized onto the side of the van, she pounded on the passenger door and shouted, “Hello? Is there anyone in there? I know you’re following me.”
That was all the time it took to draw a small symbol no bigger than a deck of playing cards onto the side of the van.
She quickly retreated to the Ford Focus and got inside. But instead of starting the engine, she used the marker to draw an identical symbol to the one she’d put on the van on the car’s radio. She chanted the words of the spell, which she’d written on a scrap of paper, and turned the radio on.
Instead of music, what came out of the speakers were two voices, a man’s and a woman’s.
“Why the hell was she banging like that?” he said.
“I don’t know,” the woman replied. “I told you she was bound to notice us if we parked in the same bloody spot every time.”
“It’s a big van. I can’t park it just anywhere can I? There has to be enough room.”
“Ha,” she scoffed. “You men always think things are bigger than they actually are.”
There was a momentary silence and then the man said, “What do you think she’s doing just sitting in her car like that?”
“How the hell should I know?”
“Maybe she’s arranged to make contact with him in the car. He might turn up in a minute. Keep your eyes peeled.”
“I hope he turns up soon. I’m sick of this stakeout crap. It isn’t anything like how it looks in the movies. It’s bloody boring.”
“She’s boring, you mean,” he said.
“Who? Felicity?”
“Who else? Have we been watching someone else I don’t know about?”
“All right,” the woman said. “No need to be like that. Remember, Felicity is the key to finding the target. She might be boring but she has her uses.”
Felicity frowned at the radio. What the hell was that supposed to mean? The key to finding what target?”
“Sssh,” the man said. “They’re calling for a situation report.” His voice became a little more formal and it was obvious he was speaking to someone on a phone. ‘All normal here. No contact has been made between Lake and the target yet. There’s no sign of the target at all.”
“Well they’re not very happy,” he said.
“Of course they’re not,” she replied. “This whole operation is a huge waste of time.”
“We can’t say that.”
“Can’t we? We’ve been on her since day one and we’ve seen neither hair nor hide of the target.”
“He’ll come. The prophecy, remember.”
“Well maybe prophecies can be wrong.”
“I doubt it,” he said. “Have you ever known a prophecy to be wrong?”
“There’s a first time for everything. And knowing our bloody luck, this will be that time.”
The voices coming out of the radio faded for a second and were replaced with a static hiss. The spell was wearing off.
“He’ll show,” the man’s voice came faintly through the hiss. “He has to.”
The voices died and the radio began playing music.
Felicity felt a lump in her throat. She hadn’t really been promoted to P.I. at all. She’d been brought here as bait. Whomever the target was that the people in the van had been talking about, they seemed sure he’d meet Felicity here because of some prophecy.
She felt a hot tear slide down her cheek. Why had she been stupid enough to believe she could be a P.I.? All she was good for was being used as a pawn in some stupid game the Society was playing.
She looked at the door with her name on it and felt like going over there and smashing the glass into a thousand shards. It was a sham, all of it. The office, the tattoos, the case. All a sham.
No, not the case. That was real.
Whether she was actually a P.I. or not, Felicity was going to help Jessica Baker. She was going to find out what Linda Dean was trying to communicate and right the wrongs that had been done to her.
18
Meyer and Chance arrived at my house at exactly 11:30. I went outside and ushered them into the Land Rover. As they climbed inside, I realized there was something missing, something wrong. It wasn’t until we hit Main Street that I realized what it was; they had no bags. For people who intended to loot a temple, pyramid or whatever the hell Rekhmire lived in, they were totally unprepared.
“So, what are you guys hoping to find today?” I asked them.
Meyer, who was sitting in the front seat next to me, shrugged. “We’ll see what’s there when we get there.”
I nodded but didn’t say anything. I found it hard to believe that their plan could be so nonchalant.
“You still haven’t told us how we’re getting there,” Chance said from the backseat.
“Magic,” I told him.
He chuckled.
“What’s so funny?”
�
��You Society people. You act like you want magic to be eradicated but you use it yourselves all the time.”
“We don’t want magic to be eradicated.”
“Is that why you keep its existence a secret from the general public?”
“No, we do that to make sure they aren’t scared out of their minds.”
He shook his head. “You’re hypocrites.”
“Hey, at least we don’t want to destroy the world.”
“We don’t want to destroy the world either,” he said.
“You want to unleash all the monsters from the shadows and let them roam free. You want everyone to live in terror. That sounds like the destruction of the world to me.”
“You two, quit it,” Meyer said.
We drove in silence the rest of the way.
The sign for Frobisher’s Glade took us off the highway and along a narrow road that wound into the woods. After ten minutes, we reached a parking lot and a clearing that was full of picnic tables. The Blackwells had marked out a magical circle on the grass and were standing next to it with Mallory, Amy, Carlton, Leon, and Michael. A small altar had been placed near the circle and a fire burned in a large brazier, sending white smoke up into the cold November air.
I was disappointed that Merlin wasn’t here. Whatever his problem was, he still hadn’t gotten over it.
The Blackwell sisters had opted not to perform the ritual skyclad. Instead of their usual black lace dresses, though, they wore long white robes which reached down to their feet and seemed to be made of satin.
I parked next to Mallory’s Blazer and got out.
While Meyer and Chance wandered away to speak to each other in private, I opened the Land Rover’s tailgate, revealing a collection of weapons. I also had the Janus statue and the Box of Midnight, which contained the remains of Tia’s heart.
The others came over and helped themselves to weapons. Leon, Michael, Mallory, and myself—the four of us who would be going through the gate—each had a sword. Mallory and I also had a dagger each. Leon and Michael had brought shotguns. Amy had her service weapon. Carlton was unarmed so he carried the Janus statue and the Box of Midnight.
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