Perfect Love

by A.M. Burns

24

  All the way across town, we kept trying Tiffany’s and Tech’s phones. Still no answer. I kept telling myself that Tiffany was okay. We worked magic together long enough that if something major happened to her I’d know about it. It didn’t stop me from worrying or slow down my frantic flight across town to where the GPS said the house was.

  For some reason it surprised me that Lenny and Katie actually lived in a house and not an apartment or duplex. It was not in the best part of town, located on the south side of North Richland Hills. It was more than a little banged up and in need a major spot or two of paint, but it fit right in with the other houses around it.

  I spotted Tech’s car a couple of doors down from the house. They were still in the area. Or, at least their transportation was. I pulled in behind it.

  Paul and Dusty got out of the car at almost the same instant. I paused, trying to get a sense of Tiffany. The two wers weren’t being subtle at sniffing around the Tech’s car. Luckily a fair number of the houses around were dark.

  “They were here about two hours ago. Given what time they left the office and how long it took us to take out the Packrider Fae, I’d say that they came right over. They haven’t been back to the car, nor has anyone else,” Dusty said first.

  “Although some local dog did pause and mark the front passenger-side tire,” Paul added.

  “Let’s check the house then.” I headed toward the dark edifice.

  “I’ll go around back,” Paul said as he took off around the block in a ground-eating lope.

  “She’s going to be fine,” Dusty said patting my shoulder for the umpteenth time since we set out from the office.

  “I know Tiffany’s tough. But is she tough enough to take on a naga and protect Tech at the same time. He’s really not in her league you know.” I whispered, knowing that Dusty could easily hear me over the background noises of the city around us.

  Dusty didn’t reply as he matched my stride going up to the house.

  The front porch creaked loudly as I carefully took my first tentative step onto it. I hadn’t felt any magical shielding around the perimeter of the yard as we crossed it. I still didn’t feel anything on the porch either. If Lenny and Katie were our suspects and calling ODs into this world, there should’ve been some kind of shielding around the place. It made no sense for the place to be unprotected. A motion-activated light popped on throwing light on the entire battered porch as my left foot touched it.

  “Well so much for subtlety,” Dusty whispered from inches behind me.

  “If they’re paying any attention, they know we’re out here. Let’s hope Paul’s having better luck around back,” I replied softly taking another couple of steps toward the front door.

  Light flashed from the back yard.

  “I’d say not,” Dusty growled.

  The front door was ajar as I placed a hand against it to see if I could feel any magic coming from it. There was, finally, the barest tingle of something there.

  “Well it is almost cliché, but the door is open,” I whispered. “But let me see where this magic energy I found here leads before we go barging in.”

  I opened myself up to the magic and tried to get a good feel for it. It was weak, it wasn’t any type of shield I’d ever encountered. It wouldn’t have kept out determined Spiral Scouts selling popcorn. It seemed more like a string of some kind that was strung across the front door. It went through the windows in the front and continued around the sides of the house. Just as Paul pushed open the back door I realized what it was, a magical trip wire to set off a magical trap. A sudden burst of energy flared up along the wire and the trap slammed shut on Paul.

  We heard the snarl of rage from a big cat echo through the night.

  “Hold on a minute,” I told Dusty as I turned my mind from following the string of energy to cutting it. It was easy for me to disrupt the string without setting off any more of the traps set up along the perimeter of the house. The traps explained the lack of shielding.

  “Now let’s go see what Paul’s gotten himself into,” I said as the string dissolved in my mind. “I’ll go first in case there are any more nasty surprises.”

  The living room we entered was a scene of pure chaos. I knew there was furniture there somewhere, but it was all covered in books, magazines, clothes, dishes, almost anything imaginable was somewhere in the mounds of things there. And there was a stench, like more than a few of the dishes had not been cleaned before joining the heap of stuff. I could well see why they would need an exterminator, but no exterminator in their right mind would touch the place in its current condition. Part of me wanted to turn on the lights, but most of me didn’t. I opted to pull out my flashlight and work my way back into the rest of the house with that. Dusty stayed behind me so I could spot traps and so he wouldn’t destroy his night vision.

  “Man what a dump,” he muttered as we made our way into the small hallway that connected the living room and the kitchen. I figured the back door probably connected to the kitchen.

  Sure enough, hanging by one enormous hind paw in the middle of the kitchen was Paul. His tail hung almost to his head and the look of fury on his face would have been funny in another situation.

  “Give me a sec to study the spell,” I said, as I walked around him trying to figure out the best way to get him down.

  It looked like your basic noose trap, but using magic, not rope. Lying just inside the back door was another of the copper discs. I fished out my crime scene forceps with their special rubber tips so that the metal would not interact with the disc’s magic. From the looks of the markings, it was by the same hands as the other ones we had found. I wondered why someone who could make these discs was not shielding their home. What was going on here? I wished Tiffany was there to tell me what all the symbols meant, but she wasn’t. I worried that she and Tech had fallen prey to the discs as well.

  I used my magical senses to probe the disc and compared its energy to the energy holding Paul up in the air. The disc was definitely tied to the spell. It seemed that there was also an alarm spell tied to it as well. Great, they knew someone was in their home and their own version of Brinks had called them. I wondered what would happen if I blocked the disc’s energy. I wished I had the magic blocking box and since I didn’t, I tried shielding the disc. I felt the magic weaken, but Paul still dangled in the air like a furry golden piñata.

  “You could just try to destroy the disc,” Dusty suggested looking over my shoulder.

  “Not a bad idea. Got any metal shears on you? This little thing is a bit thicker than what I could rip with my bare hands.”

  “Then let your loving huswolf do it for you.” Dusty took the disc from me, held it delicately in both hands and tore it apart. There were a couple of sparks from the dissipating magic and then Paul crashed to the floor.

  “Thanks,” I said, taking the shards from Dusty and giving him a quick peck on the check. “I’ve always said you’re the brawn in the family.”

  “Well I can tell you that Tiffany and Tech didn’t go out the back door,” Paul said regaining his human form.

  “I lost their trail between all the trash in the living room and getting back here to rescue you,” Dusty said, heading back toward the hallway.

  “You know this place is a sty,” Paul grumbled as we followed Dusty. “So I take it we need to be on the lookout for those disc things.”

  “They seem to be popping up all over the place right now,” I replied dropping the remains into my pocket.

  Dusty reached the living room and began sniffing around. “Tiffany and Tech seem to have been all over in here. And unless I miss my guess, there is also the smell of the naga too. Or it may just be the three-week-old Dominoes box under the coffee table.” He moved around the outside of the room. “They went down both halls. We know they weren’t in the kitchen so let’s check the other hallway.”

  The other hallway was a narrow passage with more piles of books and boxes along its sides. I carefully kept the
flashlight pointed downward so I illuminated my feet without blinding Dusty and Paul. I knew they could both see as well in the gloom as if there was full light. There were several doors along the hallway. The one to the bathroom stood open and the stench coming out of there was enough that none of us had any urge to go in there first.

  The front bedroom was more of the same clutter and it extended to include the bed. The tattered old comforter that covered the bed had seen better days and looked like something that came in one of those bed-in-a-bag kits you got at the flea market, not a classy WallyWorld one. The way the pillows were piled around like they were trying to dam back the flow of stuff from the sleeping area made it look more like an animal’s nest than a bed for humans.

  There was a faint trace of magic in this room. I had a momentary flash of Lenny and Katie doing tantric magic in here and then tried to wash that vision out of my mind. I let my senses wander and the magic trace seemed to be coming from a book that sat on the top of the pile of books closest to the head of the bed. It felt alarmingly dark.

  “Might have found something here guys,” I said as I carefully lifted the book with a bit of telekinesis so that I could study it without touching it.

  “What is it?” Paul asked leaning into the beam of my flashlight.

  “Looks like a spellbook of some kind.” The book’s black leather binding didn’t have any discernable symbols on it. I carefully opened the book. “It looks like it was written by a human hand and it’s in English.” From my brief scan of the first couple of spells, this wasn’t a nice book. It contained very dark magic including a summoning spell. That explained how they’d opened doorways to let fairies and worse in. It wasn’t a book I recognized, so it was not standard issue. I wondered where it came from. From the look of it, it was not very old. I was going to keep it and see what I could figure out. If we didn’t find Tiffany and Tech, the book might help lead us to Lenny and Katie.

  Under the black book was a white book that also had a slight glow of magic to it, but dimmer than the black book. I lifted that book too. Embossed on the cover were the words “Perfect Love.” Here was a hard copy of Magee Reyes’ manifesto. Lenny and Katie were trying to charge a master copy with the power from the black book. This was our motive for murder. From what I knew of Magee, she never would’ve gone along with someone corrupting her work like this. I figured that there was some kind of control spell in the black book that would energize the master copy of “Perfect Love” so that people who read any other copy would blindly follow its teachings. I wished I had a way to keep the two books separated, but at this point, they’d have to be carried together.

  I turned back to Dusty who was still sniffing around. “Here’s a master copy of “Perfect Love.” I nodded to the white book. “Any other sign of Tiffany?”

  “I don’t think she made it in here. Tech did. But her scent trail goes on down the hall,” he said, turning away from the bedroom.

  He took point again as we worked on down the hall. I telekinetically kept the books following us at a safe distance. As soon as we got out to the car, they were going into the trunk. If the car weren’t so far away, they’d go in there right now. But I couldn’t see the car from the porch of the house, so I’d have wait.

  “They went in here,” Dusty said from the last room in the hall.

  He pushed the door open slightly and a huge burst of magic knocked us backwards down the hallway toward the living room. The two magical books dropped into the clutter there.

  “You think they triggered that?” Paul said getting to his feet.

  “Could have,” I said, as I again lifted the books up with my mind. I would have be surprised if she had triggered any of the traps, from what I could tell, she’d managed to spot all of them and avoid them.

  “Nope, their trail goes in but does not come out,” Dusty said. “I figure Tiffany was either on guard for something like that or looking for another trap like the ones around the outside of the house to start her search. Which is why she didn’t go into the bedroom first,” Dusty replied.

  “Yeah,” I agreed “That’s something Tiffany’d do.”

  I walked up and took point from Dusty. “Let me see what we’re dealing with here before we blow it again.”

  The energies around the door of the room were more like a spider’s web, where the previous trap had been a single strand of magic. This one would take more time to subtly undo and I was not sure how much time we had at this point. Then a thought crossed my mind and I brought the books forward and pushed the books into the room first. The web of energy parted as the black book passed through it. Somewhere in the black spellbook was the spell used to create the energy web.

  “Come on guys,” I said, motioning them forward.

  The room was unlike any other room in the house. It was clean, spotlessly clean, and obviously where they worked their magic. In the center of the room was a large altar and along the edges of the room, shelves with various things they might need for spell casting. The herbs and crystals were all in perfect alphabetical order from what I could tell at a quick glance. There was also a variety of small cages along the wall, none of which were occupied at the moment, but a quick glance at the altar showed a dark stain in the center. Someone had done sacrifices there.

  Paul sniffed the cages. “I can smell rabbit and chicken and it’s been at least two, maybe three weeks since they’ve been here,” he noted. “The Council’s not going to like this one bit.”

  “They went through here,” Dusty said pointing at a bricked over doorway. “And it smells like the naga went with them.”