Pen’s jaw dropped. “What? Dark magic? Here?”
“I take it that’s a ‘no.’”
“Of course it’s a ‘no,’” Pen hissed. “What happened?”
“I’m not sure. Stay sharp.”
“You think…” Pen’s gray eyes widened. “Dark magic… You mean, a necromancer?”
“Maybe. You need to be careful.” The last time she’d tangled with a necromancer, he’d threatened Riga’s near and dear. Riga still wasn’t entirely sure how she’d come out of that encounter alive. Her magic had changed, gone awry. She could still manage the basics, but it was as if her power lines were crossed, the magic haywire. And that made her vulnerable.
“But what about Dot and Peregrine?” Pen asked. “Do you think they’re in danger? Should we tell them?”
“I don’t know how we could explain it to them.” Most people thought they wanted to believe in magic. But when they encountered it, they went into denial. “Best not to say anything right now. Just watch them. Let me know if anything looks suspicious.”
“But what about Donovan?”
Riga grimaced. Good question.
Chapter 4
“My husband left with Mr. Mosse?” Terry spread her fingers out, fanlike, over the v of chest exposed by her low-cut gown. “What—? But where did they go?”
Riga leaned her hip against the back of one of the leather living room couches. “They didn’t say.”
An unlit cigarette dangling from her wrinkled lips, Dora sidled behind Terry. She started to take a swig of her wine, threatened to drown the cigarette. The newspaper editor jerked the glass away, her face wrinkling with annoyance.
“But… That’s impossible,” Terry’s hand found the bookcase set into the stone wall behind her, and she pressed her back against it. “He was supposed to stay to photograph the party.” She ran her hand through her long brown hair. “How am I supposed to get back to the hotel?”
“If he doesn’t return in time, I’ll get you a car.”
“Well thanks, but… Are you sure he left with Mr. Mosse?”
Unobtrusively, Dora leaned in closer, brushing a splash of wine from the front of her blue dress.
Riga flicked a glance at the newspaper editor. “I saw them leave together.”
Terry’s eyebrows squished together. “Okay. Okay. Well, thanks.” She wandered to the bar that had been set up by the caterers, and reached for the whisky. At the last minute, her hand shifted left, grasped a bottle of mineral water.
Dora plucked the cigarette from her mouth. “So, the great Cam’s A.W.O.L?”
“You know him?” Riga and the newspaper editor went way back, and Dora had an encyclopedic knowledge of people.
Dora grunted. “The photographer’s got a name. More than he deserves, in my opinion.” With a wobble, she spun on her heel, and strode off.
Riga turned back to her other guests. There was one couple she hadn’t had a chance to talk to since Cam’s disappearance, and she moved toward Jordan McCall and Annabelle Lee now. The country duo had claimed the fireplace, Annabelle seated upon the low stone step and Jordan towering over her. He was big as a tree, with a close-cropped beard. In his trademark boots, jeans, and cowboy hat, he looked right at home, his only concession to the evening a bolo tie.
His wife looked up at him, coquettish, her head tilted, blond hair cascading down her slim back. Her flesh-toned gown made it look as if the petite singer wore nothing at all, a modern-day Lady Godiva.
“How are you two doing?” Riga asked.
“We were just talking about turning in.” Jordan’s deep bass rumbled through her, set Riga’s strings vibrating. “But I wanted to talk to that photographer first. Said he had some pictures for me. You seen him?”
“Not lately,” Riga said.
“Oh, hun, forget about him,” Anabelle drawled. “Thank you for inviting us to the early edition of the wedding festivities, Riga. We both were looking for some time off, and a week in Tahoe is just what the doctor ordered. Besides, I’ve been wanting to learn to ski for years.” She batted her lashes at her husband. “Jordan’s going to teach me.”
He laughed. “Jordan hasn’t been skiing for years. We’ll see who teaches who.”
“Well, I’m thrilled to be here,” Anabelle said, “but mostly to see the wedding. Donovan gave me a hand up when things were pretty dark. I’m so happy for you both.”
“How did you meet?”
“In Vegas. I was struggling and he hired me to sing at one of his casinos. That’s where I got my break. He made sure the right person was in the audience. Donovan’s a good man.”
“Where is Donovan?” Jordan asked.
“He had to go back to the casino. Say, when’s the last time you saw the photographer?”
Jordan frowned. “He took some pictures of us round about an hour ago, and then I didn’t pay much attention to him. You need me to rustle him up?”
“No, no,” Riga said quickly. “I’m sure he’s around here somewhere.”
Annabelle hid a yawn behind her hand.
“In that case,” Jordan said, “it’s time for us to go. My bride needs her beauty sleep.”
Annabelle stood, swatting him playfully on the arm. “I do not.” But she hooked her arm in his. “Thank you, Riga, for a lovely party. Brunch tomorrow?”
Riga nodded. “See you then.”
Their departure triggered an exodus. The guard, Thomas, acted as cloak room attendant, his smile dazzling as he helped Madison and Annabelle into their coats. Madison and Briian left for the hotel with Jordan and Annabelle, trailed by Dora and Mr. Smith. The aunts left as well, taking Terry with them. Given a choice between a free hotel room or a guest room with Riga and Donovan, all except Pen had chosen the hotel. Pen hadn’t been given a choice.
Pen hovering at her elbow, Riga closed the door behind them all, and leaned her back against it. Peace at last.
“So what next?” Pen chewed on her nail. “When’s Donovan coming back? Do you know who cast the dark magic?”
“To all of the above: I don’t know.” Riga strode across the foyer and up the steps. “Scratch that. I do know what comes next. I’m banishing that magic from the bedroom.”
Pen hurried after her. “Oooh! Can I watch?”
“Sure.” Riga walked down the hall and pushed the bedroom door wide. An invisible wave flowed out of it, teasing the edges of the magical barrier she’d built up around herself. Just in time she remembered to cloak Pen as well – a breath, a prayer, a drawing in of energies. “Just don’t touch anything. It may be a crime scene.”
“Is dark magic illegal?”
“Uh. No. Not anymore.” Riga went to the bureau where she kept her clothes, and pulled a box of medical gloves from the top drawer. Snapping a pair on, she walked past the bed, to the lounge area, and the bookshelf. Riga could still see the impression Cam’s body had left on the rug. She’d been sure he was dead, still couldn’t quite believe he’d been alive. At least he was no zombie. “Never mind.” On tiptoe, she ran her finger along a row of books, and drew one bound in green cloth from the shelf.
“What’s that? A grimoire?” Pen hurled herself onto the bed, bouncing once on the mattress.
“Just a book.” She tossed it upon the bed.
“A book of spells?”
“Just read chapter five.” Riga knelt down, scrutinizing the area around the rug, the bookshelves, the blond wood coffee table, the fat cream-colored chairs and couch. She picked up a bookend shaped like a horse’s head, then its mate.
Something stained the edge of its base, and she touched the mark with her finger.
Blood.
So Cam had been struck down before someone had bagged him. “Get me a big plastic baggie from that drawer, will you?” She jerked her head toward the still open bureau.
Pen rolled off the bed, the book held open in one hand. “Why? Did you find something?”
“Maybe.”
Riga dropped to the ground, looked beneath the bed, c
rawled around the coffee table, feeling beneath the chairs and couch. She didn’t find any clues. Maybe there were none to be found.
“Here,” Pen said, handing her the bag.
Riga stood, bagged the bookend, and stripped off her gloves. “So. Chapter five.”
“Protection spells?” Pen rolled her eyes, silvery gray in the soft light of the bedroom.
“You’ve been bugging me to teach you magic.”
“Yeah, but something cool. This is just lame.” Pen read in a singsong, girlish voice, “Envision a protective circle around you, fill it with golden light.” She tossed the book on the bed. “Give me a break.”
“What is magic?”
“It’s… You know. Magic!”
“It’s making change in this world by focusing your will,” Riga said. “And we focus our will through visualization and ritual. End of lecture. So start building that circle. This room is filled with someone else’s leftover magic and it’s time you learned to protect yourself.” What Riga didn’t say: she didn’t trust her own magic to protect her niece.
Pen made a face.
“I’m not joking.” Riga got a pair of slippers from the closet, then went onto the balcony outside, closing the door lightly behind her, sealing herself off from that miasma within. “Brigitte,” she hissed. “Where are you?”
Something scrabbled on the roof above her, and a shower of snow rained down. Riga brushed it off her shoulders and the top of her head.
A stone face, bracketed by a pair of talons, peered over the ledge. “Oh, so ze great Riga Hayworth calls and after banishing me to ze cruel outdoors, expects me to just appear,” the gargoyle graveled.
“I didn’t banish you.” Riga had heard this song before, a familiar routine for the centuries-old gargoyle who had become her familiar.
“But you would not let me attend ze party! You think I am not… How do you say? Housebroken?”
Riga pursed her lips. The gargoyle’s French accent increased in direct proportion to the drama, dropping h’s, mangling articles. “It was a mistake. I’m sorry.”
The gargoyle stretched her stone-feathered neck lower, the tips of her wings appearing over the roof’s edge. “A party with movie stars and singers and… What? What did you say?”
Riga rubbed her arms to warm herself. “One of the guests was attacked, and someone used magic.”
“You are sorry? Are you feeling ill?”
“And Donovan’s… He’s gone.” Riga went to the railing and stared out at the lake. The moon had set, the lake a void. “I don’t know where he went.”
“You never say sorry. Unless...”
“Brigitte, focus! Magic! Dark magic. In my house, under my nose.”
“But someone is using magic in your house now! Ze door – quickly!” She crouched and sprang from the roof, flying in a tight circle, a sight that never failed to amaze. It was magic, pure and simple, something Riga had found and lost and was erratically rediscovering. If magic was a landscape, then Riga had been driven from her native soil, and now begun the painful, tentative steps of making a new home in a foreign land.
She flung the door open before the gargoyle could crash through its glass pane. Brigitte bulleted past her into the room, skidding to a halt atop the bureau, scattering bottles and picture frames and unlit candles.
Pen, seated cross-legged on the bed, jerked to alertness, her gray eyes flying open. Her shoulders slumped. “Oh, it’s you, Brigitte. I thought we were under attack.”
Riga closed the door behind her, ants crawling across her skin as she plunged back into the remnants of dark magic. “Brigitte detected your spell.”
“You mean…?” The gargoyle’s gaze ping-ponged between Riga and Pen. “Ze brave Pen was practicing magic? That is so… cute!”’
Pen’s brow furrowed. “Is not!”
Brigitte’s head bobbed with excitement. “But it is! A baby magician! And here I am, to help guide you, to take you under my wings… Faugh! What is that awful stench?”
“I told you,” Riga said, toeing off her slippers. “Someone was practicing dark magic here. We need to clear the space.”
The gargoyle’s head retracted between her shoulders. “No. Not dark magic. Necromancy.” She hissed. “I would recognize ze stench anywhere.”
Pen sniffed. “I don’t smell anything.”
“She’s speaking metaphorically,” Riga said.
“Huh. Well this spell doesn’t work.” Pen snapped the book shut. “Nothing happened.”
“But it did,” Brigitte said. “Your aura has a lovely blue and gold glow, and I can see ze protective barrier around you.”
Pen blinked. “Really? Those were the colors I imagined. You mean, you can actually see them?”
“Your first real spell! Riga, you must take a photo.”
“Of what? Her shiny new aura isn’t going to appear on film,” Riga said.
“Of ze moment! I shall stand beside brave Pen, our newest magician.” Brigitte soared into the air.
Riga started forward. “Wait! Not on the…”
Brigitte landed on the bed and Riga smothered a groan as her stone claws shredded the new caramel-colored duvet.
“…bed.” Riga shook her head. It would be quicker to just take the picture than argue. She went to the closet and standing on her toes, located Donovan’s camera on the top shelf, just out of reach. She grazed it with her fingertips, tapped it sideways until it fell into her waiting hands. “Say cheese.”
“Fromage!” Brigitte and Pen shouted.
Riga snapped the photo.
“Take another,” Brigitte said, “just in case ze first does not come out.”
“It’s digital. I can see—”
“Another!”
Grinding her teeth, Riga snapped another. She returned the camera to its shelf. “And now, can we clear this room?”
“But of course,” Brigitte said. “If you are up to it.”
“I can still do a simple banishing,” Riga snapped. She’d better be able to.
“What do you want me to do?” Pen asked.
“Stay where you are and turn to chapter eight. I’m going to do a silent meditation, then the lesser banishing ritual of the pentagram. You can read along with me.” Riga grabbed a pillow off the couch and dropped it in front of the bed, roughly in the center of the room. She sat upon it, folding her legs beneath her, took a breath.
Her eyes drifted shut. She would banish this, but first she wanted to feel it, understand it, explore it. Perhaps then she’d get a better sense of who had cast the spell. Cautiously, she dropped her auric guard, probed outward with her magical senses.
Rotting flesh.
Her stomach turned over.
Knifelike cold.
And… She tilted her head. An energy, syrupy and warm. And beneath it something hard, sharp, pure.
Strange.
“What is it?” Brigitte hissed.
“I sense death magic,” Riga said, “but not like I’ve experienced before. Do you get anything?”
“Necromancy,” the gargoyle said. “That is all I need to know.”
Riga probed further, picking at the scab. A jumble of images flooded her, smothering, a Himalayan temple above an icy cliff, wolves baying beneath a stone castle. An apartment window on a city street. She was flying, rushing through its dirty pane. An old man sat before a fire, book in his lap. He looked up, eyes widening. Cursing in a harsh tongue, he flung his hand out. Something struck Riga in the chest and she gasped, the wind knocked from her. The vision ended and she was back in her bedroom.
“What?” Brigitte asked. “What did you see?”
Riga rubbed her chest, feelings slightly sick. “I’m not sure. It was a jumble.”
“But what was ze jumble? Explain!”
“I saw places, and a city apartment. An old man. I think he banished me.”
The air thickened, pressure building inside Riga’s head.
“Did you recognize him?” Pen asked.
Riga shook her head, scalp prickling. “No.”
“And he banished you?” Brigitte asked. “He must be very powerful. Or you were very sloppy.”
“I wasn’t expecting…” Riga trailed off. She should have been expecting it. The chandelier lights flickered, dimmed, and the shadows in the room lengthened. She had been sloppy.
Pen pulled her arms in close, her gaze darting around the room.
Brigitte looked behind her. “This man… could he have followed you?”
A breeze skittered through the room, lifting the hair on Riga’s arms.
Pen shifted on the bed, swallowing. “Is it getting weirder in here?”
“I feel something, too,” Brigitte said.
The shadow of a large cat slunk across the sitting room wall, its legs elongated, distorted by the couch, the chairs.
“What the hell is that?” Pen said, scrambling backward, crablike, on the bed.
“Banish it, Riga,” the gargoyle urged. “Now!”
“We’re safe,” Riga said in a low voice. Dammit, she had been followed. Sloppy, sloppy, sloppy. “Pen, concentrate on keeping that ball around you filled with light. I’m starting the banishing.”
“About time,” Pen muttered.
Riga shifted her seat to face east and closed her eyes, drawing in the energies from above and below. They filled her, overflowed. A tingling sensation rippled up her spine.
She imagined a point of light, a golden droplet swelling from her third eye, dropping to the floor, expanding outward, a sphere.
Hecate, triple-faced, goddess of magic, appeared before her. She turned, the hem of her toga swirling about her ankles, sweeping the room free. Riga let the vision take her, drain her, empty her of all of it – the murder, the invasion of her home, Donovan’s seeming duplicity, the wedding.
And then it was over.
The room was clear.
But the internal rot, the fears, the suspicion, flowed back and Riga swayed, braced one hand on the wood floor.
“Was that it?” Pen slid off the bed, adjusting her dress.
“Can you not feel ze difference?” Brigitte asked as Riga clambered to her feet. The gargoyle hopped onto the footboard, her stone claws gouging the wood. “Riga has cleared ze room. And sealed it. They will not get in again anytime soon.”
4 The Infernal Detective Page 3