by DAVID B. COE
“Seriously, Justis.”
“Seriously, that’s about all I’ve got.”
“You mean, after all that mojo you were going to do, you didn’t find out anything?”
“Just that our killer casts a mean camouflage spell and can move around a men’s room without making much noise.”
“So you didn’t see him.”
I shook my head. “I saw what Howell saw, which was nothing at all. The guy snuck up on him, toyed with him for a few seconds, and then killed him with a spell.”
“The killer could still be here, then,” she said. “He could be watching everything we do, and we wouldn’t know it.”
“Or she. And yeah, that’s exactly right.”
She scanned the gate area, her expression curdling. “Honestly, I don’t know how you live every day with this magic shit. It would drive me up a wall.”
“Who says it doesn’t do the same to me?” I surveyed the airport as well. “But let me try something.” It wasn’t a spell I had attempted before, but Namid would have been the first to tell me that such things didn’t matter. If I could hold the elements in my head, I could cast it. It seemed easy enough, though I couldn’t figure out how to do it with only three elements; I’d need seven: me, the other sorcerer, his camouflage spell, my eyes, the gate area, his current location, and the removal of his spell. There were a few unknowns in that list, but I hoped I could conjure around those. I repeated the elements six times and released the magic on the seventh.
Nothing happened.
“Are you all right?” Kona asked, watching me, the corners of her mouth drawn down in mild disapproval.
“I was trying a spell. I hoped I might be able to strip away whatever magic our killer is using to hide himself. If he’s still here.”
“I take it the spell didn’t work.”
“Or he’s long gone.”
“Right. Look, Justis—”
“You have work to do,” I said, keenly aware in that moment of the fact that she was still a cop, and I wasn’t. Not that I’d needed the reminder. “I’ll get out of your hair.”
“I appreciate you coming all this way.”
“No problem. I think I can help you with this, if you want me to keep working on it.”
“I do. And with your new-found notoriety, the higher-ups are more willing to have you around.”
“Except Hibbard.”
“Yeah,” she said. “And nobody likes him anyway.”
We both grinned, though for no more than a second or two.
“I’ll ask around a bit,” I said, sobering. “See if any of my kind have heard people talking about a new player in town. Or about why the old players might take a new interest in domestic terrorists.”
CHAPTER 6
I left Kona there and ran the gauntlet of police, FBI, and TSA check points until I was out of the terminal and back in my car. The drive out of the airport loop proved to be a good deal easier and quicker than the drive in. Afternoon traffic on the interstates, however, was hideous.
I sat in my car, idling alongside about ten thousand of my best friends, the Z-ster’s air conditioner working overtime and the sun glaring off the cars in front of me, and I thought about James Howell. To be more precise, I thought about the final minutes of his life, and possible reasons for his murder.
It was too easy to assume that he was killed because he tried to blow up the plane. How would a weremyste know that, and if somehow his killer was aware of the bomb, why would he or she resort to murder rather than simply alert the police or the FBI? And if this sorcerer knew about the bomb, why would he or she bother with grounding the plane first? That made no sense. The bomb was in Howell’s luggage; it wasn’t in the plane’s cabin or cockpit or cargo area. Disabling the plane wasn’t going to save any lives. That was why Howell was antsy, but not panicked. If Howell hadn’t been murdered, the passengers and their luggage would have been moved to a different aircraft, and that plane would have been destroyed.
The more I pondered this, the less sense it made.
I don’t usually use my phone when I drive, and I’m intolerant to the point of abusiveness of drivers who do. But we weren’t going anywhere, and it occurred to me that I needed more information. I pulled out my phone and punched in Kona’s number.
“Miss me already, huh?” she said upon answering.
“Can you get me the passenger list for Flight 595?”
“Sure. I’ll e-mail it to you. Why?”
“I know a good number of the sorcerers here in Phoenix, and I’d like to see if any of them were on board.”
“I’ll send it right away.”
“Thanks, Kona.”
I switched off the phone and tossed it on my jacket. A few seconds later, the cars around me started to inch forward.
I drove the rest of the way to my office in a fog. I knew I was missing something, a logical, or at least magical, explanation for the sequence of events that ended in Howell’s death. But I couldn’t see it. I kept coming back to the same conclusion: Whoever had killed the man had made his crime more complicated than it needed to be.
It wasn’t that I thought criminals always behaved rationally. Far from it. I’d been a cop for too long to think anything of the sort. But this was . . . odd. That was the best word for it.
What did a dead skinhead, a Latino political leader, and a disabled 757 have in common? Well, for one thing, they were all messing with my head.
Because my day hadn’t had enough surprises already, when I got to my office, Namid was already there. Waiting for me. That had never happened before.
From the way he greeted me you would have thought it was the most natural thing in the world, like I was getting home from work, and he was waiting for me in the kitchen, fixing dinner.
“What are you doing here?” I asked, tossing my car keys and bomber jacket on my desk.
“You need to train. We have not worked on your craft in some time.”
“It’s been two days.”
“And that is long enough.”
I no longer resisted Namid’s attempts to help me hone my craft. I still feared the powers I possessed, knowing where they would lead me. And if ever I forgot, all I needed to do was spend a few minutes with my dad. But I also understood that as my runecrafting skills improved, so would my ability to hold off the worst symptoms of the phasings, thus slowing their cumulative effect on my mind.
On an already weird day, though, his presence in my office was too weird for me to let pass.
“You’ve been waiting here so that we can train? That’s it? That’s what you want me to believe?”
“Have I ever lied to you, Ohanko?”
That brought me up short. “No,” I said without hesitation.
“Then why would you doubt me now?”
It didn’t take long for my thoughts to catch up with the conversation. “You haven’t lied to me,” I said, ignoring the second question. “But when you’re concerned about my safety, you start behaving strangely. You show up at odd times. And you avoid direct questions by asking questions of your own. So why don’t you tell me what you’re doing here?”
“First we train. Then you may ask your questions.”
It was like arguing with a kid. A seven-hundred-year-old, watery, magic-wielding kid.
He lowered himself to the floor, gazing up at me with those endlessly patient glowing eyes. I heaved a sigh and sat as well.
“Clear yourself,” he said with a low rumble, like a river in flood.
I closed my eyes and summoned an image from my youth: a golden eagle circling over the desert floor in the Superstition Wilderness, its enormous wings held perfectly still, its tail twisting as it turned. I’d been no more than nine years old when I saw it; my parents and I were on one of our many camping trips, and it was one of the happiest and most memorable moments from my childhood.
Clearing was something runecrafters did to empty their minds of distractions so that they could cast spells more effi
ciently and effectively. Long ago, when Namid first began to teach me the rudiments of crafting spells, he led me to this memory—there’s really no other way to put it—and told me to focus on it whenever I needed to clear myself for a spell. At first, clearing took me several minutes. Now, years later, I could do it in seconds.
I opened my eyes again, indicated to the runemyste with a curt nod that I was ready.
“Defend yourself,” he said.
We had started these sessions when I was pursuing Cahors, and ever since then, Namid had found new and excruciating ways to test my magical defenses. Today he started me off with a spell that made me feel as though he had driven a spike through my forehead. I gasped at the pain, resisting an urge to cradle my head in my hands.
Three elements: me, the pain, and a sheath of power surrounding me. I had to repeat them to myself several times—the agony clouded my thoughts. But at last it vanished, leaving me breathless, my face damp with sweat.
“Your spell was too slow,” Namid said. “In the time it took you to cast, an enemy would have killed you.”
The problem with having a teacher who was just this side of all-powerful and all-knowing was that I couldn’t argue with him.
“I know,” I said. “It hurt. It was hard to concentrate.”
“That is why you clear yourself, Ohanko. If you do so properly, you should be able to cast despite the pain.”
“You understand that I can’t walk down the street clearing myself all the time, right? Sometimes I have to do other stuff, like drive and interact with people.”
He stared at me, his face as still as ice, not allowing me the satisfaction of drawing even the hint of a smile. “Clearing is a technique for the most inexperienced of runecrafters,” he said after a weighty pause. “When you can cast at will, with the immediacy of thought, without having to pause to clear, then you will have mastered what you call magic. Right now, when it comes to runecrafting, you are little more than a child.”
That stung.
“Defend yourself.”
The assailing spell crashed down on me, its weight palpable. I felt as though I had been encased in glass. I couldn’t move. Not to cry out, or to fight free of the invisible prison he had conjured. Not even to breathe. Panic rose in me like a tide, though even as it did, I had time to think, in a distant corner of my mind, that he must have been saving this one for a time when he was really ticked at me.
I couldn’t use either of the two most common and rudimentary warding spells—reflection or deflection—nor could I rely on the sheathing spell I had cast. Those were my standbys, the spells I went to whenever possible. Namid knew this, of course. He wanted to push me away from the magic with which I was most comfortable, and for good reason. The most comfortable spells were also the easiest, and the most readily defeated by other weremystes.
My lungs were starting to burn, and my panic was about to tip over into desperation.
An idea came to me. It was ridiculous to the point of foolishness. But magic didn’t always make sense, and I had no other ideas.
I’d envisioned Namid’s attack spell as a prison of glass. So why not three elements: me, the glass, and a giant hammer?
Power surged through me as if I’d stuck my finger in an electrical outlet. My body jerked, and an instant later I could breathe again.
Namid canted his head to the side, surprise and—dare I think it?—a touch of pride on his crystal clear features. “That was well done, Ohanko. What spell did you cast?”
“What spell did you cast?”
“It was a binding, a crafting intended to paralyze you.”
I shook my head. “Then my spell shouldn’t have worked. It felt like you had encased me in glass—that was the first image that came to mind. And so I imagined a hammer shattering it, and somehow that worked.”
“And why should it not?”
“I don’t know,” I said, shrugging. “Your spell had nothing to do with glass.”
“That matters not. I have told you many times before that runecrafting is an act of will. The images or words you use do not matter.”
“I know that. But . . .”
“You know it, but you have not understood it until now. Not really.”
He was right. He was always right. But this once it didn’t bother me so much. Because even as I had told myself again and again that the words of a spell didn’t matter, I always assumed that my wardings needed to be matched in some way to the intent of the assailing spells they were meant to block. I was starting to understand that they didn’t. They needed to match my perception of those attacks, which was totally different, and much easier.
I said as much to Namid, and he nodded, the smile lingering. “It has taken longer than I would have liked, but you are learning. Defend yourself.”
He threw attack after attack at me, some of them torturous, others merely terrifying. But the last one was the worst. He managed to mess with my mind so that with no warning I found myself in the middle of what felt like a phasing. Disorientation, paranoia, delusion. All I could think was that it was too early, that the sun couldn’t possibly be down yet. And so with the last shred of rational thought I could muster, I grasped at three elements: me, the phasing, and sunlight.
When my thoughts cleared and I remembered where I was, I sat up—somehow I had collapsed onto my back. Namid was watching me, in a way that made me vaguely uncomfortable.
“What?”
“You have come far,” he said. “Today alone, I sense the progress you have made. It may be that we are ready for a new kind of training.”
“I’m not sure I like the sound of that.”
“We will not begin today. You have cast enough. But soon.” He nodded, more to himself than to me. “Yes, I think soon.”
I stood, stretched my back. My shirt was soaked with sweat, the way it would be after a workout at the gym. But I felt good; I could tell that I was getting stronger, quicker with my spells.
“When was the last time you saw Leander Fearsson?”
I turned. Namid was standing as well, his eyes gleaming in the late afternoon light.
“Today. Why?”
“How is he?”
I stared at the myste.
“Ohanko?”
“Did you really just ask me how my father is doing?”
“Do your friends not do this? Does not Kona Shaw, and the woman, Billie?”
“Well, yeah, of course they do, but they’re . . . ? What is this about, Namid? You’ve never asked about him before.”
“If it makes you uncomfortable, I will not do so again.”
“It’s not that— I’m not uncomfortable. But you don’t ask questions casually. So why don’t you tell me what this is about.”
“I am sorry if I have disturbed you, Ohanko. I will leave you now.”
He started to dissipate.
“No!” I said.
His form solidified once more.
“I don’t want you to go. I was . . . You surprised me with the question. The truth is, he’s not doing well at all. He’s more incoherent than usual. He’s not taking care of himself. And worst of all, he seems to be in pain, though I can’t tell if what he’s feeling is imagined or real.”
Namid’s waters roughened, like the surface of a lake under a gust of wind. “What kind of pain?”
“He talks about burning, and about somebody testing him, prodding him. I don’t understand half of it, but as delusions go, it strikes me as worse than usual.”
“I am sorry to hear this.”
Something in the way Namid spoke the words caught my attention. “Does any of that mean something to you?”
“Tell me more of what he said.”
I frowned, thinking back on the conversation I’d had with my dad that morning—if I could even call it that. “He said they were burning him, and something about brands. He thought he was being marked, like whoever was doing this owned him. I tried to get him to tell me who had hurt him, but he wouldn’t.”
As enigmatic as Namid could be, it was pretty easy to tell when he was troubled. Moments before he had been as clear as mountain water. Now his face and body were turbid, muddied, like the waters of a churning river. “What else?”
“That was all—” I stopped, the memory washing over me. “No, there was one other thing. He said that they think he matters, but he doesn’t. And then he told me that I did matter—he was pretty emphatic about it—and he said that if I spent too much time with him, they’d find me and they’d hurt me, too.”
The myste was as roiled as I’d ever seen him, as roiled as he was when Cahors attacked me in my home.
“Does all of that mean something to you, Namid?”
“I do not know,” he said. “Perhaps. There are old powers in the world, nearly as old as my kind. Scrying their purpose can be difficult.”
“You mean someone might actually be doing these things to him? He’s not just delusional?”
“The moontimes were not kind to him. You know this. All that he said to you may well be the product of his moon sickness. But it is also possible that there is a kernel of truth beneath the layers of delusion. I must go, Ohanko.”
“I’m not going to keep away from him,” I said before the runemyste could leave. “Even if it’s all true, and these bastards who are hurting him might come after me, too.”
“I would expect no less. Tread like the fox.”
I nodded and watched him fade from view.
I stretched again, crossed to my desk, and fired up the computer. It was so old it might as well have been steam-powered, but it still worked, and within a few minutes I was wading through the junk in my e-mail inbox, looking for the message from Kona with the passenger-manifest attachment. I opened the file and printed it, preferring to work with a paper copy. It was two pages long, and several of the names had only a first initial. But I had no trouble finding Mando Vargas and James Howell. Howell was a party of one, but Mando had five travel companions—aides, no doubt. If Howell had managed to blow up the plane and kill all of them, it would have been front-page news across the country, which was probably what he and his fellow skinheads were counting on.