by Dan Willis
Pulling out his rune book, Alex tore out another of the finding runes he’d prepared yesterday. Folding it, he set it on the compass, inside the bubble of fog, then lit it with his cigarette. The rune burned into existence as the flash paper vanished, hovering above the bubble. It drifted around in a lazy circle, then stopped and began turning the other way.
“What’s it doing?” Sorsha asked in a hushed voice.
Alex shook his head. He could see the compass below the rune and the needle was spinning with the rune. The two were connected, but they didn’t seem to have locked on to any specific location.
“Well, it’s linked to the fog,” Alex said, looking up at Sorsha. “Unfortunately all it’s telling me is that the fog is all around us.”
Sorsha sighed and tamped out her cigarette.
“It was worth a try,” she said, rising. She pulled a small clutch bag from the air, opened it, and deposited a crisp, new twenty on Alex’s desk.
“For the rune,” she said.
“I charge twenty-five these days,” Alex said with a grin. “But I only charge ten if the rune doesn’t work.”
“Is there something more you can do to get it to work?” she asked, holding his gaze.
Alex thought about that. Maybe if there was some way to find the thickest concentration of fog, it might work. That was bound to be wherever it was originating.
“Maybe,” he hedged. “Let me think about it.”
She reached back into her clutch.
“Keep the change,” she said, depositing one of her white business cards on top of the twenty. “And call me when you figure it out.” She turned and headed for the door, casting him a sidelong glance over her shoulder as she went. Once back in his waiting area, he heard her call for her new federal lackeys to follow, and together they left the office.
7
Finding Runes
Alex stood at the window of his office and watched as the Ice Queen and her FBI escorts exited the building. They crossed the street and got into a nondescript black car parked across the street. Alex chided himself for not noticing it when he came in, but law enforcement tended to favor drab cars for just that reason. He would have noticed if Sorsha had used her own car, a long, sleek floater, but that would draw more eyes than just his.
“Probably why she left it at home,” he muttered as they drove away.
He closed the curtain over the window and returned to his desk. He didn’t know what to do about the fog or making a better finding rune, but Iggy would probably have a suggestion or two, so Alex ignored that for the moment.
Taking his address book from the top, left drawer of his desk, he flipped to the K’s and dialed Dr. Kellin’s number. The phone rang for a long time and he was about to hang up when the call connected.
“Hello,” Dr. Kellin’s voice answered. It was thick and garbled as if she’d only just woken up. Alex knew she usually slept in the evening while Jessica tended the lab, but it was barely five, so he hadn’t expected the doc to be resting. Still, he felt like a heel for waking her.
“Hey, Doc,” he said. “Sorry to bother you, but I thought I’d give you an update on your friend, Grier.”
“Oh, Alex,” she said, her tired voice brightening. “I’m sorry; I’ve been working long hours these past few months and I’m afraid it’s been catching up with me. Did you find him?”
“No,” he admitted. “And I think you were right to be worried about him. I went by his shop and had a look around.”
“How did you get in?” She asked, still sounding a bit groggy. “Wasn’t it locked?”
Alex chuckled.
“It was,” he admitted. “But I try not to let little things like locks stop me.”
“Oh,” Dr. Kellin said, catching his meaning.
“Anyway, everything inside looked to be right where it was supposed to be. The floor was clean, and the garbage can was empty, like he cleaned up on his way out.”
“Was there anything suspicious?” Kellin asked. “Or did he go out of town unexpectedly?”
“Well, I can’t be sure,” Alex said. “But I talked to the owners of the shops on either side of Grier’s place and they said that when he went out of town in the past, he put a sign in the shop window. There was one thing that was curious though,” he went on. Alex explained about the basement lab and how some of the burners had been left on. “The chemicals in the air were so thick, I had to use my gas mask to get down there.”
“You have a gas mask?”
Alex chuckled. He’d never really thought about it; the mask was just something Iggy told him to carry in his kit. Now that Alex did think on it, Iggy had seen the big war, so maybe the idea of carrying a gas mask wasn’t that far-fetched.
“I do try to be prepared,” Alex admitted.
“Well I’m sure Charles would never go off and leave any of his potions brewing,” Dr. Kellin said. “After the liquids boiled away, anything volatile could ignite and burn the shop down.”
“So if your friend went out of town suddenly, he would at least stop by the shop to turn off the gas, right?”
“Not necessarily,” Kellin said. “Most likely he would hire another alchemist to come by and babysit his potions. Plenty of apprentices will do it to earn extra income. I even did it for him once as a favor when he couldn’t get anyone else.”
Alex was going to ask if maybe Grier had gone out of town so suddenly that he couldn’t find someone to help him, but clearly if he’d needed to, he would have called Dr. Kellin.
“I’m really very worried,” she went on when Alex didn’t speak. “Is there anything else you can do?”
“Of course,” Alex said easily. “I found out where he lives, but the super in his building is on to me. I’ll have to come up with a way to get in and see Grier’s apartment, and hopefully that will tell me more. I’ve got an idea about that, but it might take a day or two.”
“Please hurry, Alex,” Dr. Kellin said, sounding a little bit afraid beneath the tired voice. “Charles Grier is a dear friend and I can’t stand the idea that anything has happened to him.”
“I’ll do my best, Doc,” Alex promised. “Is — uh — is Jessica there?”
Now it was Dr. Kellin’s turn to chuckle.
“I’m sorry, Alex,” she said. “Jessica left for Albany right after we closed the shop today.”
Albany was where Dr. Kellin’s daughter Linda was being treated for polio. Of course ‘treated’ might be too strong a word. According to Jessica, Linda spent her days being kept alive in an iron lung. To Alex that seemed like spending your life in your very own coffin. The idea made his skin crawl. He understood why Jessica would take the time to be with her childhood friend as much as she could, but he didn’t have to like it.
“How is Linda doing?” he asked, trying to push the image of giant metal coffins out of his mind.
“Not well,” Dr. Kellin said in a small voice. “Dr. Phillips doesn’t think she has much time left.”
Alex felt like a heel for judging Jessica and her frequent trips upstate.
“How are you doing?” he asked. He didn’t know why he did it, it just sort of slipped out. He knew even as he was saying it that there wasn’t a good answer to that question. How would he be doing if his child lay dying and the cure you were working on remained tantalizingly out of reach?
“My formula is almost ready,” she said wearily. “So I’d better get back to it. Thank you for looking in on Charles. Please let me know as soon as you find anything else.”
Alex promised that he would and hung up.
He stood and paced around his office, suddenly needing to burn off some energy. He’d been upset with Jessica the last time they talked, angry that she never had time for him. He understood that she was helping the doc to create a cure for polio, but up to this point, Linda Kellin’s illness had just been a fact of life, something that existed but didn’t change. The idea that Linda was dying, and Dr. Kellin and Jessica were spending almost every waking moment tryin
g to stop it, felt like a new revelation.
Alex slammed his fist into his open hand. He would have to apologize to Jessica when she got back and admit to being a heel. Maybe if he found Charles Grier, he’d have an excuse to go by the shop.
With that in mind, Alex circled back around his desk and sat down. Picking up the phone, he dialed a number he knew by heart.
“Central Office of Police,” a woman’s voice greeted him.
“Transfer me to Detective Pak, please,” Alex said.
A moment later the phone rang again, and Danny picked it up.
“What do you want?” he growled when he heard Alex’s voice.
“Now is that any way to treat the man who saved your life?” Alex said with a grin. He looked at the back of his left hand, at the round scar that marked where a tommy gun bullet had passed right through it. That had happened when Alex jumped in front of Danny to keep him from being gunned down.
“You need to lay off that life-saving routine,” Danny said, though his tone had softened quite a bit. “You milked that dry a long time ago.”
“Still,” Alex protested. “What did I do to deserve so much hostility?”
“You introduced me to Mary,” he said. Alex could tell that Danny regretted saying it almost instantly, but by then it was far too late.
“That bad?”
Danny sighed.
“Yeah. I don’t want to talk about it, so I might as well hear what you want.”
“I’m looking for an alchemist, name of Charles Grier,” Alex explained. “A friend of his thinks something happened to him and I need to get into his place for a look-see.”
Alex had used Danny’s police badge to get him into places before.
“What? You can’t charm your way in?”
Alex explained about the gas company routine and his run-in with Grier’s super, Henry Travis.
“So how am I supposed to get you in?” Danny asked when Alex finished. “The super knows you; if you show up with me, he’ll just think it’s another put-up job.”
“I’ll think of something,” Alex said. “Mostly I just need to see if it looks like someone grabbed him out of his apartment and you can do that just as easy as I can.”
There was a long pause.
“All right,” he said at last. “I’m on during the day tomorrow, but I can meet you there after my shift; say six o’clock?”
Alex said that would be fine, then gave Danny the address and hung up.
“Well that takes care of that,” he said to the empty room. “At least for now.”
Leaning down, Alex picked up his kit, then he stood and turned off the magelight in his office. Shutting the door, he repeated the process with the waiting area, making sure to lock the door behind him. Exiting his building, Alex headed across the street to the five-and-dime to buy a newspaper for his sure-to-be-long ride home.
It took Alex almost two hours to get home. By the time he paid the cabbie and stepped out onto the sidewalk in front of the brownstone, he could barely see the building right in front of him.
Sorsha had been right, something had to be done. If this kept up, he’d have to sleep in his office tomorrow, because nothing would be moving in the city.
Taking his time, Alex groped his way across the sidewalk to the brick pillar that marked the beginning of the stairs up to the brownstone’s stoop. The runes in his watch lit up the fog in a multi-colored halo as they peeled back the building’s protective wards, then he stepped inside.
“I was considering sending out a search party,” Iggy called from the kitchen as Alex hung up his hat by the vestibule door. “Is it as bad as this everywhere else?”
“As far as I can tell,” Alex said, crossing the library to the kitchen door. The aroma of food assaulted him as he arrived, and Alex almost felt as good as he did with a slug of the rejuvenator.
Iggy stood at the stove stirring a pot of something. He wore a dark green tweed suit with the jacket removed and an apron added to cover his shirt and vest. Two more pots sat on top of the stove, and Alex could tell that the oven below was also in use.
“It’s pork roast tonight,” Iggy said, in response to Alex’s probing looks. “I’ve also got new potatoes cooked in butter, and broccoli in cream sauce.”
Alex’s mouth began to water overtime and he remembered that the last thing he’d had to eat was an undercooked hamburger at the lunch counter across the street from his office. Their usual cook had quit last month and they hadn’t had any luck replacing him. Iggy, on the other hand, had picked up cooking when he was in the Royal Navy. He’d made a serious hobby of it ever since, and his skills were considerable.
Alex made his way to the cupboards next to the sink. Retrieving the tableware, he set the table as Iggy finished up.
“There was a story in the paper about the fog,” Iggy said as he pulled a roasting pan from the oven. “The weather forecasters are all baffled.”
“The FBI is looking into it too,” Alex said.
“I don’t remember seeing that in the paper,” Iggy said with a raised eyebrow. “How do you know that?”
“They came to see me today,” he explained. “Apparently they think it’s magical in nature.” He recounted his visit from Sorsha and her federal pals.
“Well that would explain a lot,” Iggy said, once Alex was done. “What do you think?”
Alex shrugged as he carried the plate of pork roast to the table.
“I don’t know,” he said. “The fog is just fog, but I don’t have any idea how to find where it’s coming from.”
“You’re assuming it’s coming from one place,” Iggy said as they sat. He waited expectantly for Alex to say grace, then he went on. “Covering a city the size of New York can’t be easy. If it really is being done by some rogue sorcerer, he—”
“Or she,” Alex interjected with a grin.
Iggy shot him an irritated look.
“Your sorceress is not involved,” he said.
“Don’t be so sure,” Alex said, ribbing him for the fun of it now. “Fog takes heated or cooled air and water of the opposite temperature. She’s got exactly the skill set to make as much fog as she wants.”
“I know for a fact she’s not behind this,” Iggy said, grinning himself.
“How?”
Iggy speared a bit of potato on his plate and used it to point at Alex.
“Because if she were the one wrapping the city in fog, you, dear boy, would be the last person she’d bring the problem to.”
“You don’t think she’d jump at the chance to make a chump out of me?”
Iggy scoffed.
“She knows how good a detective you are. If she did this, she’d make sure to keep you as far away from it as she could.” He wiped his mustache with his napkin. “If it were me, I’d have arranged for a lucrative, out-of-town case to come your way to keep you occupied. Sorsha’s no fool, she’d have done the same.” He shrugged and winked at him. “Or just saved herself the trouble and had you killed.”
“Thanks,” Alex said, his voice dripping with sarcasm.
Iggy grinned back at him, and Alex had to admit that he had a point. Sorsha was not a fool, and the fact that she had brought this case to Alex, after working it herself, spoke volumes.
“So what if a sorcerer is behind it?” Alex asked.
“It would take a tremendous amount of energy to do it all at once,” Iggy said. “I’d imagine other sorcerers would be able to sense that, so they’d have to run all over the city casting a bunch of small spells instead of one large one.”
“Possible,” Alex admitted. “But not very practical. And if some sorcerer is doing it, what’s his game?”
“Maybe he’s got stock in zeppelins.”
Alex hadn’t thought about that, but the fog must have grounded all conventional airplanes. As it stood, only a big, slow-moving zeppelin would be able to land at the Aerodrome. It must have been playing hell with people’s travel plans.
“Maybe it’s about kee
ping someone from leaving the city,” Alex suggested, then he shook his head. “Nah. Too much trouble to go through just for that.”
“I’ve been thinking,” Iggy said after a few minutes of silence. “What if whoever is doing this is using the sewers?”
Alex considered that.
“You mean generating the fog somewhere central and then pumping it out along the tunnels?”
“Think about it. The tunnels and sewer line run under every street in the city. With enough air pressure to move it, the fog would pour out everywhere and then push all the way out to the rivers.”
Alex nodded, chewing absently.
“It could work,” he said. “But if the fog had been seen coming up from the sewer inlets, someone would have called the Times.” After a long minute, he put down his fork and sat back from the table. “This isn’t getting me anywhere,” he said. “Sorsha was right; it doesn’t matter why whoever’s behind this is doing it, not yet anyway. The only thing I’ve got to go on is where the fog is coming from. Is it in one central place or lots of little ones?”
“I think that’s a sound starting point,” Iggy said.
“So how do I find the source with just the fog to go on?” Alex asked. “Is there some way to use a finding rune to trace the fog back to its source?”
“Nothing leaps to mind,” Iggy said, rising from the table. “But I am by no means the font of all runic wisdom. I suggest that you consult the textbook.”
Alex glanced back at the library. The textbook was the less obvious name they used to refer to the Archimedean Monograph. Alex had been largely forbidden from consulting it by Iggy, who had so far not considered him ready.
He looked back at Iggy and the old man nodded.
“Okay,” Alex said, not bothering to hide the smile that sprang to his lips.
“After you do the dishes, of course,” Iggy added with an amused chuckle.