by DAVID B. COE
Another pulse of magic shook the garage. I spun toward the front of the building, expecting to see more flames, but nothing came at me. The bastard had blown his way through that metal door, leaving the rest of us to broil.
I ran to the kids and started shaking as many of them awake as I could. Those who I could hoist onto their feet I helped to the door, two at a time. After that it became a matter of carrying the unconscious ones. They were filthy and rank; several of them had open sores on their arms and legs, faces and necks. When all of this was over I was going to bathe in a tub of hand sanitizer.
The smoke—black, choking, probably toxic as hell—continued to thicken, and the heat became nearly unbearable. But to my amazement, I managed to get all of them out without killing myself. Equally amazing, Jessie didn’t run away while I was helping the others. She appeared dazed, her eyes wide but empty, her skin pink from the heat.
I heard the fire engines arrive a few minutes after I carried the last unconscious girl to safety. Moments later a trio of firefighters came running around the corner to the back of the building. Seeing the kids and me, they stopped.
“Good God,” one of them muttered.
“Yeah,” I said. “We’re going to need a few ambulances.”
“Spark den?” another guy asked, as the first radioed for help.
I nodded.
“And who are you?”
I pulled out my investigator’s license. “Jay Fearsson,” I said, holding it up for them to see. “I’m a PI.” I pointed at Jessie. “Her parents hired me.”
Jessie’s eyes widened just a little, and her eyebrows went up, but she said nothing.
“You hurt?” the first guy asked.
“No.”
“How’d the fire start?”
“There was another guy here—their supplier, I’m guessing. He started it when I showed up, and got away while I was carrying them out.”
I didn’t say more than that. Most people know that magic exists, but that doesn’t make them comfortable with it, or with the people who cast spells. Filling in the details would have raised questions that I didn’t feel like answering just then.
I heard more sirens in the distance, and figured at least a few of them were Phoenix Police. I’d be there a while answering questions. I walked to where Jessie sat and squatted down in front of her. It took a moment for her gaze to slide up to mine, and another for her eyes to gain focus.
“Jessie Tyler, right?”
She nodded. I thought I’d have to explain again who I was, but she was more cogent than I expected. “My parents really hire you?” she asked.
“Yeah. Does that surprise you?”
Jessie shrugged, stared past me.
“Who’s your supplier, Jessie? Who was keeping you here?”
She didn’t answer.
A couple of uniformed cops turned the corner. I saw them stop, take in the condition of the kids, and then speak to the firefighters, one of whom pointed my way.
The cops’ questions were pretty standard. I hadn’t done anything wrong, and they knew it. The fact that I had once been on the job helped too. They took Jessie and the others into custody, which I should have expected. Almost all of them would spend more time at the hospital than in jail, but still Jessie’s parents weren’t going to be pleased. Then again, they had hired me to find her, not to be her lawyer, so in the end they would have little choice but to pay me.
Once I was done giving my statement, the cops said I was free to go. I walked to the open door I had used to enter the garage, and examined it. The first spell that myste had thrown at me had rattled the door; there should have been some residue of magic on the door frame. All spells leave behind traces of power in the form of glowing luminance that clings to those things the magic has touched. And the magic of every myste manifests itself in a unique color. Thing is, only another myste can see it. I was hoping that Jessie’s supplier had left behind the equivalent of a magical calling card.
But the Phoenix sun was bearing down on us at this point, bleaching colors, making it hard to see anything other than the sun’s reflection on the dull steel. I thought I saw the faintest suggestion of beige or tan, like the color of dried grass, but I couldn’t be certain.
“What’re you looking for?” one of the cops asked from behind me.
I glanced back, then eyed the doorway again. The cop walked to where I stood.
“The guy who started the fire did other weird stuff, too,” I said. “I think he used some kind of mojo on me. The first time he did it, I was right here by the door.”
The cop stared at me for a moment, no doubt to see if I was joking. When I didn’t smile or even glance his way, he began to study the door frame too. “I don’t see anything,” he said. “Do you?”
“No,” I said. “Not a thing.”
I walked away, heading back to my car. As I turned the corner, I saw that the cop was still scrutinizing the doorway. His partner, though, was watching me.
CHAPTER 2
I drove out to Pinnacle Peak, battling traffic the entire way. It was midday—nowhere near what used to pass for rush hour. But these days in Phoenix, rush hour started at dawn and lasted until way past dusk. I had called ahead to let the Tylers know that I had good news about their daughter, but I didn’t want to explain the particulars over the phone. Especially because those particulars were not going to make them happy, and I wanted to get paid. It’s a lot easier to ignore a bill than it is a guy standing in front of you.
By the time I got there, the police had called to say that Jessie was in custody. As I expected, Michael Tyler didn’t take the news well, even if for now being in custody merely meant that Phoenix cops were keeping an eye on her while she was treated at Saint Luke’s Hospital.
“How could you let this happen?” he demanded of me as he yanked open the front door. “I hired you to find her, not to get her arrested.”
“I did find her, sir. She was in a spark den—”
“Oh, God,” Missus Tyler said, voice trembling, a hand raised to her mouth. She sank into a chair in the front foyer.
“She was in a spark den,” I started again, staring hard at Mister Tyler, “along with about twenty other kids. When I arrived, the guy who was supplying their drugs and taking their money lit the place on fire. I got your daughter out, and everyone else, too. But the fire department showed up, and so did the police. There was really nothing I could do.”
“I want to see her,” Sissy Tyler said. She stood again. “Right now, Michael.”
Mister Tyler glanced at his wife and nodded. Facing me once more, he started to speak, stopped himself, then started again. “I suppose I ought to be thanking you. It sounds like you saved her life.”
“I did,” I said. “And you’re welcome.”
“What do I owe you?”
“Two hundred and fifty dollars a day, comes to . . .” I did the math in my head. “Thirty-five hundred, plus expenses. Let’s call it an even four thousand, minus the five hundred you paid me when I started.”
He nodded, cut me a check on the spot, and led me back to my car.
Holding out his hand, Tyler said, “I really am grateful, Mister Fearsson. Both of us are.”
“Yes, sir,” I said, gripping his hand. “I’m glad I was able to find her.”
I climbed into the Z-ster and started the slow drive back to Chandler, where I have both my house and my business. Along the way I stopped to deposit my check, relieved to know that I wouldn’t have to rely on overdraft protection to keep my rent check from bouncing.
As soon as I reached the office I tossed the newspaper and mail onto my desk, scrubbed my hands and arms up to my biceps, and washed down a couple of aspirin. Then I fired up the espresso machine.
My office isn’t much to speak of. It’s a single room on the top floor of one of those new sidewalk shopping developments that have grown up everywhere in recent years. It’s well lit, with a bank of windows overlooking the street. It was originally inte
nded for a local lawyer, who insisted on oak floors. He took a job with a big firm in downtown Phoenix a couple of months after the place was built and I happened to luck into it. I have a desk, a computer and printer, a pair of file cabinets, a small john off the main room, a couple of chairs for clients, one of those mini refrigerators, and my coffee maker, some Italian brand, which I remember costing more than all the other furniture in the place. I like coffee. Sumatran mostly, the stronger the better.
The computer doesn’t see a whole lot of action. Mostly I use it for billing and writing up reports for the insurance companies. I’m not much for technology. Where most PIs these days rely on computers and cell phones and fax machines, I tend to do things the old-fashioned way, face to face, notepad in hand. It’s not that I’m afraid of the fancier stuff or anything like that. I carry a cell phone, and use it when I have to. But I’ll choose a handshake and a personal conversation over cell phones and social media any day of the week. I’m a purist at heart.
Of course, that begs the question, what is a purist doing with a seven-hundred-dollar espresso machine? I have no answer. My personal philosophy remains a work in progress.
My coffee was still brewing when the figure began to materialize in the corner by my doorway. It was insubstantial at first, a faint glimmering, like reflections of moonlight on a mountain stream. Gradually it grew more distinct, taking the form of a man, tall, broadly built. But always he kept that rippled, glowing appearance, as if he were composed entirely of luminous waters. If others had been there with me, they would have thought that a ghost had come to my office. And they wouldn’t have been too far off.
To be precise, he was a runemyste, one of thirty-nine ancient weremystes who had been sacrificed by the Runeclave centuries ago, their spirits granted eternal life, so that they could be guardians of magic in our world. It’s easier to call him a ghost, but he gets touchy about that. This particular runemyste—my runemyste, I guess you could say—was named Namid’skemu. I called him Namid. He was once a shaman, what most people would call a medicine man, of the K’ya’na-Kwe clan of the A’shiwi, or Zuni nation. The K’ya’na-Kwe were known as the water people, and they were, in their day, a powerful clan, steeped in the spiritual realm of their people. Today their line is extinct. Unless you count Namid.
I saw only a small fraction of what Namid did to guard against those who would use magic for dark purposes, and I understood even less. But one of his duties was to instruct me in the ways of runecrafting.
I can’t say why Namid took an interest in me. As I’ve already admitted, I’m not the most powerful myste in the world; not even close. But I know that he was once my father’s instructor and I think that on some level he held himself responsible for my father’s descent into madness. I also know that he answers to a spirit council made up of his fellow runemystes, and from what I gather, they don’t allow members of their council to engage in magical charity or indulge their guilt. So apparently, like my dad before me, I’m weremyste enough to have earned Namid’s attention. I know for a fact that the magic is strong enough in me to have cost me my job. Namid would probably say that you couldn’t measure sorcery by degrees, that you either were a weremyste—a runecrafter, as he called those who used magic—or you weren’t. And he’d have been right. Being a weremyste was a lot like being a cop: once it was in your blood, that was it.
I nodded to the glowing figure. “Hey, Namid. What’s up?”
“Ohanko,” he answered, his voice fluid and resonant, like the rush of deep currents over stone. Ohanko was what he usually called me, although he had other names for me as well. All of them were in his language, and most of them he saved for those times when I’d really ticked him off. I only understood one or two of the others, but Ohanko I knew. It meant, roughly, “reckless one,” and I guess I had earned it over the years.
He stood there, staring at me. His eyes shone from his face, like bright, cold flames reflected off the surface of a wind-swept lake. I’d never actually touched Namid—not to shake his hand, or pat him on the shoulder, or sock him in the mouth, which I often wanted to do. I wasn’t even certain that it was possible. But I would have loved to try it, just once, just to feel what it was like. I imagined it would be like plunging my hand into an icy creek.
“Well?” I asked, uncomfortable under his gaze. “What do you want?”
“You need to practice your runecrafting.”
“Not today, Namid. I have a headache.” I grinned hoping to soften the refusal, and also to indicate that I was kidding. Namid’s expression didn’t change. He understood few of my jokes. He never found them funny. “Another time,” I said, knowing this wouldn’t satisfy him. My stomach had started to feel tight and hollow. I wasn’t sure why; I knew only that I got this feeling whenever Namid demanded that I work on my craft. “Later,” I said. “I promise. I’m wiped right now. I had an encounter with a myste this morning.”
“You will tell me about that when we are finished. Now, we work. You have much to learn.”
“Yeah, well, you’re not going to teach me all of it in one day. It can wait.”
The runemyste stepped to the middle of the room and lowered himself to the floor, his movements liquid and graceful. He eyed me expectantly. This was where he always sat when instructing me in the use of magic.
“No,” I said, sounding like a whiny kid. “I’m not doing this right now.” We’d had this argument too many times before. There was still a part of me that feared the powers I possessed. Though I had been casting spells for years, I understood little about the Runeclave and even less about Namid himself. And it was possible—likely, even—that I avoided these sessions because I’d seen what this same magic did to my father.
The phasings, those periods of each moon cycle when magic takes over our minds and bodies, turning us into crazed animals, are no picnic. The line between sanity and insanity, which much of the sane world takes for granted and thinks of as clear cut, feels disturbingly insubstantial to weremystes like me. Because while I consider myself sane most of the time, I also know what it’s like to be insane. I’ve been tipping over into madness every month for half my life. And as bad as the phasings are, the long-term effects are worse. Turns out—big surprise here—putting one’s mind through a psychic meat grinder every month takes a heavy toll. Most weremystes wind up permanently insane; a good number of them take their own lives before the descent into irreversible madness makes even that single act of will impossible. So, for good reason, I saw my magical powers as the source of my greatest weakness.
Whatever the root of my reluctance to train, I knew that sooner or later Namid would get his way. He always did.
“Is your scrying stone here or at your home?” he asked.
“It’s at the house.” Maybe there was a way out of this after all.
I should be so lucky.
“You can scry without the stone. Bring out the mirror from in there.” He pointed toward the john.
“Namid . . .” I stopped, shaking my head. Then I got the mirror from the bathroom.
I hate scrying. People think of magic, and one of the first things that comes to mind is gazing into a crystal ball. That’s scrying—or rather, that’s Hollywood’s take on scrying.
Except that scrying doesn’t require a crystal ball, or even clear quartz. All you need is a smooth, lustrous surface. I use a piece of polished sea green agate, about the size of my hand, with a small crystalline opening at the center that’s surrounded by thin, sinuous bands of blue and white. I didn’t choose it because there’s anything inherently magical about that piece of agate; I found it several years ago in a gem store at a Phoenix mall. I happen to think it’s a beautiful stone, and I know its patterns and colors as well as I do the lines on my father’s face.
Namid was right, though. In the absence of my stone, the mirror would work just as well. I sat cross-legged on the floor in front of him and laid the mirror across my lap.
“Look. Tell me what you see.”
The runemyste let out a low rumble, like the distant roar of flood waters.
“Sorry.” I stared at the mirror again, concentrating on the surface of the glass, trying to ignore the inverted reflection of my office. For a while I saw nothing, and I let out a loud sigh, glancing up at Namid, hoping he’d agree that this was pointless. But the runemyste sat as motionless as ice, his eyes closed. I turned my attention back to the mirror, trying once more to ignore the reflections and see only the glass itself.
“Clear yourself,” Namid whispered.
I nodded, and closed my eyes. Clearing was a technique the runemyste had taught me several years before, when he first started training me. It was a focusing mechanism that combined what many practitioners of magic call centering, with meditation, and we had worked on it enough that I could clear myself in mere moments. Once, early on, Namid had me visualize a time from my childhood when I remembered being happiest. I fixed on a camping trip with my parents in the Superstition Wilderness, east of the city. The runemyste made me describe for him every detail of the trip—what we ate, where we slept, what we did and saw. Gradually he steered me toward a single memory: a hike we took in the high country. My parents and I ate a late lunch on a crag that offered amazing views of the Sonoran Desert, stayed there for the sunset, and then returned to our campsite in the dim twilight, my father carrying me on his shoulders on the hike back down.
I remembered watching an eagle from that overlook. It was the first I’d ever seen, and it circled above the desert in front of us, the late afternoon sun lighting the golden feathers on its neck, the tips of its enormous wings splayed, its tail twisting one way and another as it rode the warm desert air.
“Whenever you need to clear yourself, I want you to summon the vision of that eagle,” Namid told me. “When you hold that image in your mind, it should remind you of that day, of that feeling of peace. It should drive away all distractions.”