“There are two traps that are magic,” Anton continued. “Both of them powered by objects I acquired, as opposed to a spell.”
“Because you couldn’t trust Isai to do it, since they’re meant to stop him as well,” I said.
“Yes. Opening this door triggers the first trap, a spell designed to rob someone of magical ability for five minutes.”
“So they can’t use magic to pass the traps,” I guessed.
“Exactly.”
“What if they just stand here for five minutes?”
Anton strode forward to open the door, and the naga slid out of the way, her scales making a faint hiss on the floor. I tore my eyes from that strange cloudy spot on her tail to follow Anton’s hand when he gestured to the first square of the hallway’s paneled floor, a rough section that looked like a sheet of metallic pebbles. “That is a pressure plate. If you stand on it for over thirty seconds, the magnetic field holding it together releases and it falls apart, simultaneously releasing a net of braided iron, silver, and gold to ensnare the intruder and hold them until security can arrive.”
“Effective.”
“It should have been.” Anton’s voice was emotionless, but the red flecks in his eyes spoke of his temper.
“You should put a humidifier down here,” I blurted out.
Anton paused. “I’m sorry?”
“A humidifier.” I gestured at the naga’s tail, the section of scales that looked different from the rest. “She needs more moisture in her environment or she’ll retain patches of old scales after she sheds her skin. It’s uncomfortable at best, and could lead to more serious problems.” I considered my audience and added, “And discomfort can be a dangerous distraction for a guard.”
The naga stared at me. It wasn’t an unfriendly expression, more like surprise. Anton shared his attention between the two of us, then nodded. “I will make arrangements.”
“What about introductions?” I glanced pointedly at the guards, then to myself.
“I do not allow visitors to fraternize with my guards. You don’t need to know them or their names to do your job, and they don’t need to know you to do theirs.” The corner of his mouth tilted down. “You saw the tape from the hotel. I trust you understand why I wish for the guards to remain anonymous?”
“I suppose.” I stopped talking before I continued to say how rude it seemed to act as though a living person didn’t exist when they were standing three feet away from you. I’m smart like that. So smart, I even remembered to cover Peasblossom’s mouth before she said it for me.
Anton crossed the threshold into the hall. “I will show you the rest. The second magic trap is at the end, near the vault. Its purpose is to prevent teleportation.”
“Just in case Isai took down the wards, he still wouldn’t be able to teleport in.”
“Yes.”
I scanned the walls, looking for signs of coming traps. “You really don’t trust him. You make him work so closely with you, but you still take precautions as if he’ll betray you any day.”
“Mother Renard, I may have manipulated Isai into my employ, but make no mistake, he has benefited from our relationship. Especially since settling in this world, he has not always been unhappy. It has only been in recent decades that his ambition has grown in opposition to mine, and he has begun to believe he could make a better life for himself than he has as my wizard.”
“So you’ve been expecting a betrayal. And yet you keep him.”
“I have taken precautions.”
Mother Hazel had spoken at length about the five princes who’d created this world. I’d asked her once if the vampire was a bad man, and she’d tilted her head, thought for over ten minutes, and, finally, she’d said he was very “practical.”
Anton pressed his hand to a panel on the wall. A small panel opened, revealing a large red button.
“You have a kill switch,” I said.
“It is necessary.” Anton pressed the button.
“Who can access it?”
“Myself, my wife, and any combination of all three guards on duty.”
I noticed a drop of blood on the scanner Anton had pressed his hand to. Anton removed a foil packet from his jacket and tore it open. The scent of alcohol filled the air as he cleaned the scanner.
“So if the three guards conspired against you, they could access the kill switch?” I asked.
“Yes. But the guard assignments are random, it would be difficult for them to plan a conspiracy. In addition, the scanner injects whoever presses a hand to it with a poison that changes from time to time. Without the antidote, the would-be thief would die an unpleasant death.”
Not a concern for a vampire, I noted. I followed Anton into the hallway. The corridor had at least five turns. At least three traps lined each stretch. By the time we reached the vault itself, I’d seen traps that fired arrows tipped in poison, traps that sprayed a fountain of acid, traps that crushed the unsuspecting with falling rocks, traps that dropped people through the floor into pits of slime, and traps that shocked trespassers with enough electricity to make an elemental twitch.
And that was only a sampling.
Perhaps one of the most interesting things about them was that, despite their barbaric and timeless nature, they were all high tech in terms of what triggered them. Electronic sensors and magnetic pressure plates, etc.
We arrived at the vault and I looked back down the corridor. Just as the report had stated, none of the traps had been triggered, barring the first one that would have prevented the use of magic.
“So someone had to know about that first trap,” I said, “and then they would have needed to bypass all these traps.”
“Isai believes the thief used a spell. Tergora inpenetrabiles, or something like it.”
My eyes widened. “I only know a handful of magic users that could manage that spell.”
“Isai is one of them. He also claims there are magic objects that could give the possessor that ability.”
I nodded. “The Eye of Argus would do it.”
“I have people looking into the objects Isai mentioned, trying to track down who possesses them. I will keep you informed.”
The corridor opened up, ending in a large room with a vault at the far end. I looked at the ground where an X had been marked out in black tape. “So this is where they found Isai?”
“Yes. As per protocol, when the guards failed to check in, a team was sent down to investigate. One remained in the room with the dead guards, while the rest of the team came down the corridors, one remaining at each turn. It was the final three guards who found Isai.”
“Let’s say Isai did rob the vault. He didn’t have the book on him, so he would have had to teleport it away.”
“It would have been simple for him to disable the teleportation dampener once he made it this far, given the proper amount of time.”
“All right, but if he was able to teleport the book away, why not teleport himself away with it? He’d have gotten away clean.”
Anton inclined his head. “Isai himself made the same argument. However, let me put forth an alternative narrative. Perhaps Isai did teleport the book away, considering that his ace in the hole. Once it is gone and ‘safe,’ his greed gets the better of him and he returns to the vault to steal something else. The guards are equipped with magic-negating orbs, the size of marbles. They are trained to move silently, and to throw those orbs down this corridor before rounding it. Isai could have been caught off guard. He would not have been able to use magic to escape, or to hide. He would have known the guards were nearly upon him and been forced to use drastic, and mundane, means.”
“So he hit himself over the head and pretended to be just regaining consciousness when the guards arrived on the scene.”
Anton nodded. “It is possible. The guards inform me that Isai was in quite a rage when they found him struggling to his feet. He promised vengeance on whomever had struck him, demanded they summon me immediately.”
“If he had the book as insurance, why would he bother pretending?”
“Isai could not have opened the book the day of the theft. He needed to pretend his innocence until such time as he could avail himself of the information within the book.”
I considered that. After a minute, another thought occurred to me. “Why didn’t you lock him up if you suspected him? Why give him the opportunity to return to the book?”
“Truthfully, I would have preferred to lock him up, at least for a time. However, our agreement stipulates that I will not imprison him without direct evidence that he has violated our working arrangement. He is to be permitted his unimpeded freedom during his employment. It was one of two stipulations he held fast to.”
“What was the second?”
Anton arched an eyebrow. “That I would not kill him. An odd request, since there are fates much worse than death.”
I thought I knew the answer already, but I asked anyway. “That first trap, the one that inhibits magic. It’s triggered by the door?”
“Yes.”
“So if a magic user knew about it, he could use magic to open the door, trigger the trap, wait five minutes, and then enter safely?”
Anton’s jaw tightened. “Yes.”
Isai’s voice halted whatever response I might have offered. “Do you require my help, or has the brilliant Mother Renard already solved the crime?”
I spun around, startled by the wizard’s voice right behind me. Anton didn’t react at all, so I was betting he’d heard him approach. Isai was dressed exactly as he’d been before. There were no tears in his jacket, no blood on his rings. Not surprising, the wizard could probably cast a prestidigitation and mending spell with the ease most people blinked.
I bristled at the egomaniac’s insulting tone, but consoled myself by concentrating on his beard and the pixie spit I knew was there. The thought made me cuddle Peasblossom a little closer, and she paused her attempts to disentangle herself from the sticky blue webbing long enough to snicker.
“I can’t detect any traces of your extremely powerful wards,” I said lightly. “Can you?”
Isai clenched his hands into fists, rings clinking together. “No.”
“Strange, isn’t it? No trace of them left behind?”
A strained smile wrenched his mouth up at the corners. “Not at all. When I found them broken on my arrival, I dismissed the rest of them so as not to inhibit His Majesty from arriving post haste.”
Damn his eyes. I bit the inside of my cheek, thinking furiously. Yes, he could be telling the truth. Or he could be the culprit, and I’d just prodded him into providing the perfect defense. Blood and bone, I should have asked him to describe what he did on his arrival first. Open-ended questions, Shade, open-ended questions.
“I know you want to blame me for this crime,” Isai said in a low voice. “I am a convenient target. But I. Do. Not. Have. That. Book. I am a victim—a victim of the real culprit and a victim of that vampire.”
My eyebrows rose as Isai pointed a shaking finger at Anton.
“Someone else stole your precious book. Threatening to burn pages of my book will not give me the ability to return an object I do not possess.”
“So you say.” Anton shrugged. “The fact remains, your wards failed. You failed. And you will pay the price until that book is returned to me.”
Isai choked, his face mottled with red blotches. “I am no use to you without my spellbook. You’ll have to give it back eventually.”
Anton met his eyes. “What’s left of it.”
A howl of rage poured from Isai’s mouth and magic broke over the corridor with the sizzling snap of burning oil. I closed my eyes, bowing my body around Peasblossom to protect her. Every nerve in my body braced for impact, for an explosion, for something horribly magical and terribly violent. A second later, the power vanished.
I raised my head and opened my eyes. Isai was gone.
“So dramatic.” Anton brushed an invisible speck of lint from his suit. “Do you need to see anything else?”
I straightened with the caution of a tall person standing up in a low-ceilinged room, my heart in my throat. So much anger. So much fury. So much hatred. “What kind of precautions have you taken?” I whispered, unable to help myself. “Should you be…taunting him like that?”
“You think I should treat him with kid gloves? Tiptoe around the man who may have betrayed me? No. Whether he stole the book or not, he failed, and I speak to him with the respect he deserves.”
I cleared my throat and looked at the vault just for an excuse not to meet his eyes. It was closed, the entire wall nothing but an enormous cast iron door with a lock bigger than my entire body. “Is anything else missing from the vault? Has anything been added?”
“No. My wife and I performed a complete inventory, and the book is the only difference.” He approached the vault and set about entering the combination.
“Was there any damage to the vault door during the theft?” I asked.
“No. Isai tells me the thief likely used a spell. Can you confirm his suspicion?”
I shook my head. “That’s not a very powerful spell. There wouldn’t be traces of it left after this much time.”
Anton pulled open the vault door as if it were a kitchen cupboard and not three feet of steel. “You may enter as part of due diligence for your investigation. You will touch nothing without telling me first and receiving my express verbal permission.”
“Hurry up!” Peasblossom said in what I was sure she thought was a whisper. “I want to see!”
“The pixie cannot enter.” Anton held out his hand. “I will hold the fey.”
I opened my mouth to argue, make some case for needing my familiar with me. Peasblossom had an eye for detail that only the incredibly nosy possessed, a skill that almost made up for her somewhat kleptomaniac tendencies. If I kept an eye on her…
Before I could get a word out, something tugged at my gut. A feeling, an instinct. I was looking at the vault before I realized I’d turned my head, and for some reason I didn’t understand, I wanted to go inside.
Now.
Peasblossom hollered in protest as I dropped her into the vampire’s hand, still staring at the vault. Tunnel vision blacked out my surroundings, blinding me to everything by the entrance to the vault and my own pounding heart. A cage door waited at the end of the short hallway, and the clink of metal tickled my ears as Anton pulled a key from his breast pocket and unlocked it without a word. I had barely enough presence of mind to check on Peasblossom and make sure the iron wasn’t making her sick. Most fey didn’t do well near the heavy metal, ranging from a vague feeling of nausea to downright poisoning. Peasblossom’s tolerance was higher than most, a result of how much time we’d spent in the city over the years. Her little pink eyes shone with curiosity, and if she felt sick, she hadn’t realized it yet.
Anton swung the cage open and I stepped inside.
My nostrils flared, picking up the familiar scent of ancient texts, the burning scent of strong magic, and the sharp bite of metal. Inky darkness surrounded me, hiding the vampire’s hoard. I swallowed hard, shoulders taut with the weight of the vampire’s stare. I took a slow breath and drew my magic.
“Lumen.” I fluttered my hand into the air, drawing my finger in small spiraling circles. Three balls of soft red light spun from my fingertips and grew to the size of grapefruits. I blew on them until they turned to a pale yellow, then used a nudge of my will to send them up to the ceiling.
The vault was large, bigger than all the rooms in my modest home put together. Glass shelves lined the walls to the right and left, each one loaded down with objects that ranged from gleaming statues to dusty jugs full of murky liquid. Something rubbery pressed against the side of one jar, and I firmly pushed all thoughts of what might be floating in that innocuous container from my mind. I bit my lip. The room was full of magical artifacts. I didn’t need a spell to tell me that, I could feel it. My senses swam with enchantments and
evocations, like a thousand whispers calling to me. Strong magic. I braced myself for the coming barrage of imagery and centered myself as best I could.
“Revelare.”
The silver net flowed out from me, washing over the vault and lighting up the magical objects like Christmas lights. I closed my eyes and kept my breathing even. Very slowly, I opened them. “You said you and your wife did a thorough inventory. You went through every object?”
“Every one,” Anton replied. “The only thing missing is the book, and there was nothing here that wasn’t here before the theft.”
That helped narrow it down. If someone had left something behind, some means of spying or some means of allowing them to return easily, then they would have needed to hide it with magic. I was looking for an illusion spell. I focused on each object with a purple aura, studying them all in turn.
I didn’t realize how long I’d been at it until my knees trembled and I swayed on my feet.
“You’re pushing it!” Peasblossom yelled. “Take a break!”
I blinked, then shook my head and squinted at the shining silver bracelet on the shelf to my left. “Just two more.” I stepped closer, examining the spell. No. Not invisibility. Just a beauty illusion. Greek. Probably a gift from Aphrodite. The final purple light was just a dreamcatcher. Not something sold at a tourist trap, but the genuine object. And old.
I closed my eyes, barely resisting the urge to sink to my knees. My head ached from holding the spell for so long, analyzing so much magic in one sitting. It was worse than caffeine withdrawal.
“You are exhausted,” Anton said. “Can you continue, or do you need to rest?”
I gritted my teeth. Anton’s voice remained perfectly polite, but the question pricked my pride. I straightened my spine and lifted my chin. “I’m fine.”
I caught his nod out of the corner of my eye, but turned my attention away from the vault’s entrance to examine the rows of safe deposit boxes on the opposite wall. The smallest ones would have been a tight fit for Peasblossom, and the largest could have held a full-sized griffin. One drawer was open.
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