by DAVID B. COE
Kevin was watching us, a small frown on his face. “You two always like this?”
She nodded. “It’s not pretty, is it?” Her attention on me once more, she narrowed her eyes. “Sure, take the sock, but for God’s sake, keep it out of sight and get it back to me before we leave the airport.”
I slipped it into my pocket, and the three of us headed back toward the cart.
Considering what I had seen out here, and what I had found on Howell’s corpse, I was convinced that our skinhead was nothing more than he appeared: a jackass domestic terrorist who had been killed by a conjurer. There had been no sign in the restroom of a magical battle, and the killing spell had hit Howell in the chest, suggesting that the conjurer who killed him hadn’t bothered to sneak up on him. Howell was no weremyste. But then why was he murdered with magic?
Kona drove us back to the apron, where the plane originally designated for flight 595 still sat, sunlight gleaming off of its wings and tail. We got out and started to walk back toward the jet bridge and terminal. As we did my eyes were drawn again and again to the aircraft.
I halted. “Did they ever figure out what was wrong with the plane?”
Kona shook her head. “I don’t think so. Just some warning message on the console that wouldn’t go off—something about the hydraulics maybe? I don’t . . .” Comprehension hit her at last, widening her eyes. “Shit.”
“What now?” Kevin asked. “What are you guys talking about?”
“There wasn’t any sign of magic on the bomb or Howell’s bag,” I said. “But I’d bet good money that there is on the plane itself. That’s why it never took off.”
“Magic can keep a plane on the ground?”
“Magic can foul up the instrumentation or the hydraulics, or pretty much anything else you can think of.” To Kona I said, “What was the exact warning light? Do you know?”
She flipped open her small pad again and scanned her notes, frowning. “I’m not sure I wrote it down.”
“The message was ‘F/CTL Flaps Fault,’” Kevin said. When both of us stared over at him, he lifted a shoulder. “What? I remember stuff like that. I can’t help it.”
“He’s handy to have around,” I said to Kona.
“He is.”
“I think I need to see the plane.”
I should have known that it would be crawling with mechanics. We walked around the exterior and found two guys working on the left wing. They had the flaps propped up and were examining the hydraulics inside.
“Can I come up and take a look?” I called to them.
They paused in what they were doing to stare down at me.
“You know anything about planes?” one of them asked.
“A little bit.” I lied.
They shared a glance and one of them shrugged. “Sure, come on up.”
I climbed the ladder and stepped onto the wing, taking care to avoid the spots marked “no step.” I knew that much, at least.
I peered down into the guts of the wing, amazed that these guys could make sense of the wires and mechanisms. I certainly couldn’t. But I wasn’t trying to; I was searching for the glow of magic, and to my disappointment, I saw none.
I examined the flaps as well; nothing on them either.
“These are the flaps that weren’t working before?” I asked.
Another glance passed between the men. “These are the flaps,” one of them said, pointing to several different panels. He pointed to a few other surfaces. “These are the spoilers and the ailerons. You want me to show you the tabs and slats, too?” So much for convincing them that I knew anything about planes.
“No, that’s all right.”
“To answer your question, yeah, these are the ones that aren’t working.”
“Except there’s nothing wrong with them,” his friend chimed in. “Least nothing I can see.”
“We could probably figure out the problem if we were in the hangar,” the first guy said, “but the police wanted the bird to stay right here.”
I nodded, squinting against the glare coming off the wing. It was possible that in this light I simply couldn’t see whatever magic was there. “But so far you’ve found no problems.”
“Nope. The crew reported a cockpit warning about the flaps, and you don’t mess around with that. And when they tried to test the hydraulics before taxiing to the runway, nothing happened. You sure as shit don’t mess with that. Now though . . .” He shook his head. “Now everything seems okay.”
“Gremlins,” the second guy said, flashing a toothy grin.
The first one nodded. “Yeah, gremlins. That’s the best I’ve got.”
“All right, guys,” I said, climbing back down off the wing. “Thanks.” Once on the ground again, I asked Kona if she could get me inside the cockpit to see the console.
“I don’t know, Justis. The federal boys weren’t exactly eager to give us access to Howell’s body. But they were downright possessive when it came to the plane. At one point I thought they were going to pull down their zippers and start marking territory. You know what I mean?”
“So you don’t think you can convince them to let me take a quick look?”
“I’m not sure I can get myself inside, much less you. This is the FBI we’re talking about. The only people they like less than local cops are local PIs. But let’s give it a try. The worst they can do is say no.”
We walked around to the side of the plane, where the boarding stairs had been rolled up to the cabin door. There was no one guarding the stairway, so Kona and I climbed them, both of us trying to act like we weren’t doing anything wrong.
Before we reached the top of the stairs, though, we heard voices coming from inside.
“This isn’t going to work,” Kona whispered.
“I’m going to try something. Don’t freak out, all right?”
“This isn’t the time for you to try something.”
“It’s the perfect time. Stay calm.”
I scanned the apron; aside from Kevin, who was trying to pretend he didn’t know us, there was no one nearby. Convinced that the coast was relatively clear, I mumbled another camouflage spell. Seven elements again: the FBI guys, me, the interior of the plane, the dim light of the cabin, the bright daylight, the boarding stairs, and the FBI guys again. I hadn’t seen the interior of this plane, but I could make out the color of the carpeting from where we stood on the stairs, and I had been in plenty of passenger jets over the years; they all looked pretty much the same.
As with the spell I’d cast the night before, I repeated the elements to myself six times. On the seventh, I released the spell.
“Justis, what are you doing?”
“Can you still see me?”
She eyed me like I was nuts. “Uhhh, yeah. Why?”
“Because if I did the spell right, the guys on the plane won’t be able to.”
“Did I lose track of the days? Is tonight the full moon?”
“I’m not hallucinating. I cast what’s called a camouflage spell. Weremystes can’t make themselves invisible, at least I can’t. But with this magic, I can hide myself from specific people. Those guys in there shouldn’t be able to see me. Trust me on this.” I felt like crossing my fingers, or knocking on wood. Because really, I wouldn’t know for certain that the spell had worked until I entered the plane. But I was operating under the assumption that it had.
“So what do you want me to do?”
“Talk to them, distract them. I can’t be seen, but I can be heard.”
“All right,” she said, sounding like she still thought I was crazy.
And maybe I was. We were about to find out.
We climbed the rest of the stairs, and I followed Kona into the plane.
“Hello, gentlemen,” Kona said, flashing those gorgeous pearly whites of hers. “I wanted to see if you all needed anything.”
Three agents were clustered around a bank of seats about two-thirds of the way back; I assumed that was where Howell had been sitting
. Two of the men glanced up, but then went back to examining the seats. A third man, tall, with dark hair and a smile as electric as hers, made a show of checking her out, head to toe.
“Hey there, beautiful. What are you offering?”
None of the men spared me a glance. Kona did look back at me, but only long enough to shoot me a “you owe me for this” glare.
While she pretended to flirt with Tall, Dark, and Handsome, I stepped into the cockpit, making sure that I didn’t touch anything.
I spotted the magic right away. It would have been hard to miss, as it covered the instrumentation, though it was concentrated on the screens above the windshield, where the warning signals would have appeared. Whoever had cast the spell wanted to be certain that this plane wasn’t going anywhere.
It was the same magic I had seen on Howell: a deep shimmering green, brilliant but translucent. The skinhead’s murderer had also seen to it that this plane didn’t get off the ground.
I left the cockpit and walked down the aisle toward Kona and the Feds, which, I decided in that moment, was a great name for a band. Kona sent an anxious glance my way, but none of the men reacted to my presence. A few feet short of where Kona stood, I slipped out of the aisle and into a row. I didn’t go so far as to lower myself into a seat; doing so would have made too much noise. Instead, I pulled out the sock I had taken from Howell’s bag and my scrying stone, a slice of sea-green agate that I always carry with me.
In the weeks since I had been shot, Namid had been teaching me all sorts of seeing spells. I disliked scrying magic; always had. Often scrying spells offered little more than portents, hints at the future that could be interpreted any number of ways. They tended to obscure as much as they revealed. But seeing spells of this sort were a little different; I wasn’t trying to divine the future so much as I was searching for clues about the past. And Namid seemed to think that the more I could discover with magic, the less likely I was to place myself in danger. I wasn’t sure I shared his confidence, but I had to admit that the seeing spell I’d used the previous night had made catching Mark Darby a good deal easier than it otherwise might have been.
The seeing spell I planned to use now was one I had learned a few months ago, and had used to see Etienne de Cahors for the first time. I wanted to see and hear what Howell had seen and heard when he was on this plane, and this casting allowed me to do that. It was specific to place and person. I would only experience what he had experienced on this plane; to see his killer, I would have to go back to the place where he had died. And I could only see the events in question through his eyes.
I folded the sock and held it beneath the scrying stone. This was a powerful spell, and elegant in its simplicity. Three elements: Howell, the plane, and my stone.
After a few seconds, the sinuous white and blue lines in the agate appeared to vanish, leaving an image of a seat back, a pair of hands—the skin around the wrists tattooed—and jean-clad legs, one of which bounced incessantly. He was jittery. He toyed with his seat belt, rolling the slack into a tight cylinder, letting it unravel, and then rolling it again.
He glanced up after a few minutes, in time to catch the eye of a flight attendant as she walked by. She checked to see that his belt was buckled. He turned to stare out the window. I could tell that he was in the middle seat, but he took little notice of the passengers sitting on either side of him.
There was no fast-forward button on a scrying stone, but after a few minutes of gazing at the image I had summoned, I realized that I wasn’t going to learn much more of value here on the plane. Howell was trapped in his seat, and with each passing minute he seemed to grow more uneasy. He must have been a wreck after two hours of this, and that would have made it easier for the conjurer to pick him out of the crowd of passengers once they deplaned. Howell never had a chance. It was almost enough to make me feel sorry for him.
I raised my eyes from the scrying stone and found that Kona was watching me, even as the FBI agent continued to chat her up. I was tempted to whisper in his ear that she was gay, just to see the reaction I’d get. But I was good. I nodded once to Kona, eased back into the aisle, and walked with care to the cabin door.
“Well, I’m glad things are going well here,” I heard her say behind me. “I’ll see you boys later.”
“Aw, but you don’t have to go.”
“I’m afraid I do. But this is going to be a long investigation, and we’ll have a chance to talk again.”
“Good,” he said, in a tone that made me want to smack him.
“Yeah. We can have a beer. You, and me, and my lover, Margarite. You’ll like her, too. Good day, gentlemen.”
There was a brief silence, broken only by the sound of Kona’s footsteps. Then the other two agents burst out laughing. It was all I could do not to join them.
“Now, that was fun,” she said in a low voice as we exited the plane. “What did you learn? Something I hope. I’d rather not find out I went through all that for nothing.”
“There was magic all over the cockpit,” I said, my voice low. “The same color and quality as what was on Howell. Whoever killed him also kept the plane from taking off.”
“From the cockpit?” she asked. “Does that mean it was a member of the crew?”
“Or a weremyste who managed to get in there. You’ve seen what a camouflage spell can do.”
“Yeah, nice work, by the way. That would be a handy spell when Hibbard’s around.”
“Why haven’t I ever thought of that?”
“So what now, partner?”
“Now we take Howell’s sock back to the men’s room where he was found and try a seeing spell there.”
“And we couldn’t do this before because . . . ?”
“Because I didn’t want to touch the body and mess up your crime scene.”
“Right. I appreciate that.”
We went back to the terminal and made our way to the restroom once more. By now, there were several cops with the body, as well as a photographer from the ME’s office. This wasn’t a casting I could do in front of others without drawing attention to myself, which meant another camouflage spell. I retreated to the gate area, cast the spell so that it would work in the restroom—why couldn’t the guy have been murdered in a bar, or one of those lounges designed for wealthy business travelers?—and went back in.
As on the plane, no one noticed that I was there, not even Kona, since she was in the restroom when I cast the spell. I took up a position near the entrance, pulled out the sock and stone again, and cast the seeing spell.
Once more, I saw in the stone what Howell had seen. He walked into the men’s room, took a piss, and then went to the sink to wash his hands. Several other men were in here already. They gave Howell a wide berth. I assumed they had taken note of his appearance: the tattoos, the T-shirt, the shaved head. No one spoke to him or even dared make eye contact.
He braced his hands on the sink and closed eyes his, taking a long, rattling breath. Then he bent over and splashed water on his face. Seeing hand blowers but no paper-towel dispensers, he muttered a curse and pulled up his shirt hem to dry his face. Leaning on the sink again he stared at himself in the mirror. A man crossed behind him and appeared to leave the restroom.
At this point, Howell gave no indication that he had noticed anything unusual. But viewing the scene through his eyes, knowing to watch for it, I did.
No one had entered the men’s room since Howell’s entrance, and now it seemed that those who walked in with him, and those who had already been here, were gone. Howell was alone, or at least alone with his eventual killer. I don’t know how the sorcerer managed this, but I didn’t doubt for an instant that he had.
Howell straightened, then swiveled his head left and right, his brow creasing. He checked the stalls, all of which were empty, before starting toward the restroom door. After two steps, he halted.
Anyone in here? he said.
His voice echoed off the tiles, but no one answered him.
What the f—? Who’s there?
He sounded more scared than angry, though I could tell he was trying for the latter.
Again, his question was met with silence. He was edging toward the door now, his back to the sinks. This was where he was going to die, and I didn’t see anyone. Not a soul.
He spun a second time, practically jumping out of his skin, swiping at something on his shoulder, something I couldn’t see. His killer seemed to be toying with him now. Was he camouflaged? Had he found some other spell to make himself invisible to Howell, and thus to me?
By this time, Howell was terrified; I could tell from his labored breathing, the tremor in his hands. He took a single purposeful stride toward the door and bounded off of something unseen, the way he would if he had walked into a wall.
Fucking hell! he said, the words choked, like a sob.
A blinding flash of green light made me squint and turn away, even as I heard Howell’s truncated scream in my head. When I peered at the stone again, it was nothing more than sea-green agate.
“Damn it,” I muttered, forgetting that I was camouflaged myself. My oath drew a frown from an older gentleman who was walking past me. He kept going, though, and I ground my teeth together, vowing to keep silent from now on.
I left the men’s room and positioned myself in a corner of the gate area. There I cast the seeing spell again, hoping that Howell might have seen something—anything—between the gate and the men’s room that would tell me more about his killer. But he walked straight from the plane to the restroom, interacting with no one, his gaze sweeping over the crowded airport but settling on nothing in particular. Considering all the trouble I had gone through to cast the seeing spells I had little to show for my effort.
I walked to a deserted spot where I could remove the camouflage spell, and then found Kona again. She was speaking with another detective from the PPD. I hung back until she was finished with him.
“What have you got for me?” she asked.
“A sock.” I slipped her the sock, which she stuffed in her blazer pocket.