I motioned for her to lie on the sofa while I called the details of the spell up from my memory. It was one of the subtle magic tricks and, therefore, surprisingly dangerous in the wrong hands. I knew magic-users who, despite not being that powerful, had caused havoc with hypnotic and mind control spells. The bullied, the abandoned, the dispossessed…not to mention the sick fucks who’d used them for rape and murder. I felt dirty for even considering the spell on a girl I was coming to love, but what choice did I have? I would thoroughly deserve that slap.
“You’re a better woman than I am,” I said, with unintentional irony. Aylia smiled weakly at me. “Now…”
I cast the spell. It might not have been that spectacular, but it was powerful and dangerous. I felt it sinking into Aylia – her eyes seemed to blur over, and then close – despite all her mind could do to resist. I couldn’t blame her for fighting the spell. In the same situation, I would have fought, even if my life were at stake. The spell opened up the mind and allowed someone on the outside to influence it, maybe even change it permanently. It was far too tempting to use on a regular basis. The power to make people do whatever you wanted…it seemed like a dream, until it became a nightmare. It would become a nightmare.
“Aylia,” I said, softly. “Can you hear me?”
“Yes,” she said.
Her voice was light and breathy, as if she were drugged, or still half-asleep. I leaned closer to hear her properly, feeling her warm breath touching my skin. I wanted to recoil, but I couldn’t; all I could do was curse myself silently and complete the spell as quickly as I could. It wasn't going to be easy. Even the most powerful truth spell or hypnotic was only as good as the questions the interrogator asked. If I asked the wrong question…
“Aylia,” I said. “Did you have anything to do with Cecelia’s disappearance?”
“No,” Aylia said, softly. I felt a flood of relief passing through my body. “I was in my room, reading, when my father raised the alarm. He called me and we searched for her, but we found nothing. I was terrified and urged him to call for help, to scream to one of his fair-weather friends, but he wouldn’t listen until Mom helped convince him…”
Her voice trailed off. “That’s fine, you’re doing fine,” I said, as comfortingly as I could. It helped people to remain in the trance. “What happened afterwards? How did you come to find me?”
“My father wasn't looking,” Aylia said. “The brat” – I guessed she meant her other sister – “was whispering in his ear all the time, trying to convince him to turn it into a media circus with her as the star. I couldn’t take it any longer. I demanded to know what he was doing to find her and if he thought that he was just wasting time. He threatened to hit me; he hasn’t hit me since I was a kid. I told him that he didn’t care about Cecelia, only about the family name! I told him that I was leaving to go after you and help you…and I wasn’t going to return to the house. I wasn't going to be Aylia Faye any longer. He could call and I wouldn’t come.”
Her face twisted suddenly. “He shouted and mother cried and the brat was just smirking in the background, but I wouldn’t listen,” she said. “I went to my room, grabbed a few items I wanted to keep, and then sealed the room before leaving. The brat won’t get my books now, or my jewels, or anything else of mine. No one will get into my pocket dimension without my permission. They’ll have to leave it there even if they sell the house!”
I smiled. I doubted that Vincent Faye would want to move, but his wife might not want to stay in the house any longer. It would take years to dismantle the wards so that the house could be sold, but even if they did, the pocket dimension Aylia had created would still be there. No one would be able to break into it and take her possessions for his or her own. Her father had to be utterly furious about it. No magic-user would be comfortable with a room in their house they couldn’t enter.
“I knew where you were going, so as soon as I was outside the wards I teleported after you, slipped through the checkpoint and…well, you sensed me,” Aylia said, finally. “I knew all about the Faerie from books. I thought I could help you.”
I snorted, not unkindly. I felt so much relief that it was hard to think straight. No book could describe what the Faerie truly were, or the sheer impact of their presence. She hadn’t known it, but she would have been safer walking in completely ignorant, even though some of the knowledge might have been useful. At least she would have taken nothing for granted. If I ever get my hands on the idiot who wrote a long book claiming that the Faerie were all nature-lovers and as peaceful as…well, a pacifist, I’m going to throw him into a Mound and give him first-hand experience of the Faerie.
“It’s fine,” I said. “You did fine.”
I muttered a simple dispelling spell under my breath and watched as the last traces of the hypnotic spell faded away. Aylia looked so calm and peaceful as she lay on the sofa – I thought she’d never looked so beautiful in her life – but even as I watched, she slowly sat up, yawning as one does after a good night’s sleep.
“That was…strange,” she said. The spell should have left her some awareness, but it wouldn’t have been a very pleasant experience. “You bastard!”
She slapped me, hard. I was used to pain, but this hurt worse, somehow, because it was deserved. I rubbed my cheek softly. Aylia was much stronger than she looked.
“I know,” I said. “And I am sorry.”
“You’ve convinced me that something is badly wrong with my family,” Aylia said. “Of course, I already knew that, but…why would my father kidnap his own daughter?”
There was a knock at the door before I could answer. “Glass,” Varsha called, “you’d better come quickly.” She was laughing out loud, a strange mixture of excitement and awe. “You’ve got a visitor. You are not going to believe your eyes!”
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Never tickle a sleeping dragon
-JK Rowling
My first thought was that something was blocking out the sun that should have been streaming through the front door. My second thought was that there was nothing that could have blocked out the sun, unless someone had decided to experiment with spells that created pools of darkness…that I should have sensed through the wards surrounding the house. My third thought…my third thought cut off in mid-sentence as I stepped outside and saw the dragon. My fourth thought was that my neighbours were going to hate me.
There were two large houses opposite my house, on the other side of the world, and the dragon was neatly perched on their roofs, with one of his legs placed on each house. The massive foreclaws – I had a flash of the claws picking up the Voodoo Chief and wished I hadn’t – were placed neatly on the ground, completing the balancing act. I couldn’t understand why the buildings hadn’t collapsed under the weight of the dragon – I really didn’t want to think about where his tail might be – unless it was magic. Certainly, nothing like the dragon should be able to fly under the normal laws of science.
And everyone was staring at him. The families nearby were coming outside and just staring at the dragon. He was so large that their minds couldn’t grasp the sheer scale; I suspected it wouldn’t be long before people started screaming, or drawing guns and trying to shoot him. I doubted that it could do any good – a few bullets wouldn’t bother the dragon’s invulnerable underbelly, even if it did look as if it were made out of gold – but the dragon might retaliate. The neighbourhood dogs – and not a few creatures that normally only came out at night to menace the area – seemed to have a better idea. They were running for their lives. Two of the dogs were even dragging their masters with them.
Well, I thought. There goes the neighbourhood.
I wanted to curse, but I didn’t quite dare. There were Guardians who loved to bask in public attention like Cowboy, who didn’t care that everyone knew where he lived. He used to say that any of his enemies could book an appointment for their own very personal beating, followed by a long session in jail. His station had been attacked more times
than I’d had hot dinners. There’s no shortage of people willing to strike from a distance and, so far, he’d survived long-range killing spells, mail bombs and a poisoned burger from a well-known fast food chain. That might not have been an intentional attack, or so I’d said at the time; I’d never liked their food myself.
But I had enjoyed being anonymous. Oh, people had known that there was a magician living in my house – I couldn’t hide the wards from other magicians – but they hadn’t known that I was a Guardian. They wouldn’t be able to avoid noticing that now – they had probably seen my face on television after the confrontation with the Voodoo Cult – and the dragon would lead people right to me. I made a mental note to ensure that the wards were strengthened before we left the house and looked up at the dragon. Whatever Drak Bibliophile had to say, it was bound to be important.
Drak Bibliophile’s great eyes peered down at me. It just made me dizzy. His eyes were bigger than I was and I felt that I could drown in them forever. There was no doubt about his identity, not this time. It was hard for a human to tell dragons apart normally, but I had met him before and tasted the field of magic surrounding him. No two dragons, I guessed, had the same taste. I almost smiled, wondering what a dragon tasted like, but I doubted that anyone had ever tried one. I knew what dragons ate most of the time. They probably tasted terrible.
I didn’t know the protocol for a dragon visiting a person – as far as I knew, it had only happened a couple of times before – but I couldn’t allow the silence to drag on indefinitely. By now, my wealthy and well-connected neighbours would be placing calls to the police and the media, calling them to witness the unprecedented event. I had a nightmarish image crossing my mind, an image of attack helicopters trying to burn the great dragon out of the sky, and shivered. It would be suicide for them.
“Most mighty dragon,” I said, stumbling slightly. The dragon’s regard was overpowering. I sensed that he didn’t mean me harm, but that didn’t mean that he wished me well either. “Why have you come to my abode?”
“There is danger coming,” Drak Bibliophile said. I remembered what he had told me the last time before, when we had met, and winced. It hadn’t helped at all. “You need to move quickly. They are already inside the walls of your castle.”
I stared at him. The dragon gazed back at me, impassively. “I don’t understand you,” I confessed, finally. “Can’t you talk in plain English?”
“Not all of us wish you well,” Drak Bibliophile said. It seemed to be speaking quietly, although the entire neighbourhood could probably hear the dragon. “Not all of us care what happens to you and your kind. We are not involved and yet we were there when it all began. They are coming and you have to stop them before they destroy you all.”
I forced myself to speak calmly. “Who’s coming?”
“The name would mean nothing to you,” Drak Bibliophile said. “Ask yourself, instead, what others call them.” He paused. “And move quickly. Time is not on your side. It is on theirs.”
The dragon shot into the air like a rocket. The gust caused by his wings swept around the area like a hurricane, sending rubbish bins and leaves flying everywhere. A handful of media helicopters were already approaching, turning to follow the dragon as he flew into the distance, but they wouldn’t have a hope of catching him. Dragons had been known to outrace supersonic combat jets, merely for amusement. They regarded it all as a vast game.
I stared after the rapidly retreating dragon and ran my hands through my hair. I couldn’t believe that Drak Bibliophile had come merely to play games with me, which suggested that the warning was serious and time was running out, but who was coming? And why? I had had a vague idea of what I wanted to do next, before the dragon had arrived, but now I was second-guessing myself. What was the right action to take now?
“Put a new coffeepot on,” I told Varsha, as I stepped back into the house. I took a moment to check and seal the wards, just to prevent visitors. The neighbours would probably be looking for someone to sue over the whole traumatic event – I smiled as I thought of a lawyer trying to serve papers on a dragon; the poor bastard would probably be roasted to death – and would probably focus on me, eventually. I didn’t think that insurance included damage by dragon policies, although the insurance firms had been going out of business, one by one. They didn’t cover supernatural creatures at all. “I think we all need to chat.”
“Another dragon,” Aylia said. She still sounded a little tired, but awestruck as well. “They’re more interested in this than they’re letting on.”
“I know,” I said, grimly. Varsha poured us both cups of strong coffee and I sipped mine gratefully. Now that the dragon was gone, the tension was starting to make me shake. “Aylia…I’m sorry about putting you through that.”
“Oh, I’ll forgive you, eventually,” Aylia said. I didn’t blame her for being angry. I would have been furious with anyone who had done that to me, whatever their reasoning. “Are you now convinced that I’m telling the truth?”
“Yes, and I’m sorry for doubting you,” I agreed. I hesitated. “You do realise that this means that your father, your sister or your mother was involved with kidnapping your baby sister?”
“I know,” Aylia said, bitterly. “I wouldn’t put anything past the brat, but how could dad let her get away with it?”
“Perhaps it’s not her,” I said. “There are…rituals, very old and dangerous rituals, that call for sacrificing a child of your own body, the younger the better. There’s a witch living somewhere in the west who sacrificed her newborn child and ended up extremely powerful indeed. If your father wanted far more magical power, he could use Cecelia as the sacrifice.”
“I can’t believe my dad would do that,” Aylia protested. “He’s…he’s not a bad person.”
“Power can make a person do bad things,” I said, dispassionately. I felt sorry for her, but more sorry for Cecelia. Brother Andrews had believed that she was still alive, but that might have changed by now, although I doubted that his Bishop would let me ask again. “I think…”
I broke off as my cell phone rang. “Hang on,” I said. “Hello, Dolly. What can I do for you?”
“Well, you could explain why a second dragon arrived to give you a hand,” Dolly said. “The boss is going absolutely frantic. It seems that some of your neighbours are calling…”
“Their friends in government,” I said, completing the sentence. “Does he really believe – does anyone believe – that we can prevent the dragons from doing whatever they want?”
“Probably not,” Dolly conceded, “but there are questions being asked by some very important people.”
“I expected as much,” I said. I was surprised that Wilkinson hadn’t telephoned me to demand an explanation himself, but it was possible that he was trying to give me as much time as possible to solve the mystery and find Cecelia. He wouldn’t know that her father and most of his family were current suspects. “Can you give me what you have on Faye so far?”
“I found quite a bit, actually,” Dolly said. “It’s neither complete nor conclusive, but…”
“Hang on,” I said. “I’m putting you on speakerphone.” I clicked the switch. “Now, talk.”
Dolly took a moment to gather her thoughts. “As you know, Vincent Faye first came to prominence when he managed to solve some mysteries regarding the production of magical tools and devices and teach several other magic-users how to produce them,” she said. “This earned him his first fortune and convinced others to join him, allowing him to build a much larger productive base. He was a failure in his early life, but magic was the making of him. He very rapidly became the predominant supplier of magical items to America and the world.”
She paused. “Technically speaking, he’s worth around seventy billion dollars, but much of it has been invested into various properties around the world, along with furthering his political ambitions,” she continued. “It’s hard to be sure, but he is apparently a prominent supporter of both
political parties and if there was a change of government tomorrow, it would probably still be a very friendly administration and Congress. That said, the more magic-users he hires, the more he has to pay the others, or they will quit and form their own combines. His real wealth may keep fluctuating. It may even be a great deal lower.
“And there are some very odd items on his list,” she said. “For reasons unknown, he has invested in several properties near Central Park, New York, as well as the Magical Mile. He has also invested in several private security companies, including the notorious RAD – the Rapid Action Directorate – and may have thousands of mercenaries on his payroll. There’s actually a note that someone in Nevada, where RAD is based, tried to raise the alarm about this, but was slapped down by Washington. Faye’s friends are too powerful for any investigation to take place.”
“Business as usual, then,” I said. “Do we have any idea what he wants from the New York buildings?”
“Could be anything,” Dolly said. “The price of property near Central Park has been falling for years, ever since the Faerie Mound appeared, to say nothing of the Magical Mile. There may have been no Faerie sightings, but no one wants to have a business so close to a Mound; the corporations have been moving out for years. Faye’s people might even be better at running them. They would certainly be prepared for magic.”
Guardian Glass Page 27