by Scott Duff
“Tell them to stop. I’ll be there in a minute to see what I can do, then we’ll go after Kieran and Ethan. Okay?”
“Did you get Mike?” he asked.
“Yes. I’ll bring him with me,” I said.
“Okay.” He disconnected.
“Inspector Mercer, I’ll be back in a moment. Please wait for me,” I said to the cop. Ferrin was already beginning to stand up when I wrapped portals around both of us and jumped us to my room at the Cahill’s manor house.
I reached out to the wards, insinuating myself around the hole I’d created and stopping the jolt I just caused from reaching John. He held the wards at that moment. I could feel Enid at the edges of the property, watching for incursions while John worked. They meshed well together from their years of contact. It took John about four seconds to realize I was there as I mended to hole. Taking Bishop’s complaints to mind, I spread out slowly throughout all the wards on the property, taking a secondary role to John and Enid. I didn’t want control; I just wanted to make their jobs easier.
The Stone helped me strengthen their wards, mostly by shifting and shoring the foundations of what was already there. I repaired the fortifications that had slipped with time and aligned those designed for fortifications. It was like tweaking a race car engine to get another five miles an hour—not a great difference, but a difference nonetheless. And the control wasn’t over the top, like at Dunstan’s.
I pulled out of the wards in time to see Ian vault into the air, crashing into Ferrin. They fell into my bed laughing. Marty and Peter were a few steps behind. Peter still wasn’t happy.
“Mike, are you staying?” I asked. “We’ve got to go find Kieran and Ethan. It wouldn’t hurt for you to stay and help here, though.” And stay as far out of harm’s way as possible.
“No, I’ll go,” he said. Hugging his brother, he said softly, “I need to go help, Yonnie. These arseholes came close to getting you and I can’t have that, now can I?”
“Just make sure you come back!” Ian said sternly. “I’m out of underwear.”
“Oh, that reminds me,” I said. I’d spent the day shopping after all. I reached into the Pacthome and started pulling out the bags I stashed there earlier. It took me about five minutes to sort through the bags, but Ian was virtually buried in textiles for Ferrin and him by the time I was done. There were several large piles on the bed and dresser and Marty was holding the necklace for his mother. When I stopped, their mouths were hanging open, mostly at the whirling dervish I’d been unpacking the bags.
“Hmm. I guess I was busy today,” I said looking over the room. “Y’all ready?”
Without waiting for an answer, I pushed into the wards again and tapped lightly on the section that I’d demolished earlier. John was still in control, but now Enid was floating throughout the whole ward instead of just at the periphery. She seemed to be enjoying herself, too. John coalesced an astral image in the ward near the hole I was trying to create. I obliged and formed one beside him. I didn’t know I could do that.
“She hasn’t been able to do that for years,” he said. Well, not really ‘said,’ more like projected at me and I received it, but the speech metaphor worked.
“Why? She seems perfectly fit to me,” I asked.
“Don’t know for certain, but whatever you did when you fixed the hole fixed her, too,” he said. “Felix is going to be ecstatic when he sees her. Thank you.”
“I really didn’t do anything,” I protested lightly. “But we do need to go. Could you release this section for a moment, please? Ferrin’s going with us so you can watch for him leaving.”
“You are something else, kid,” he said, smiling at me. He disappeared as the section of the ward pulled away.
I grabbed Peter and Ferrin and jumped us back to Dillon’s living room. Mercer was alone, looking out the picture window with his hands clasped behind his back. Glancing around, I could see Trelaine and Dillon’s auras, barely, through the wall in Dillon’s office. The sergeant wasn’t in the apartment.
“Inspector,” I said to get his attention. He turned rapidly, startled. “I apologize for taking so long. There were a few things I needed to attend to before I could leave.”
“Um, quite all right, Mr. McClure,” he said. I really didn’t want him scared to death of me, but I wasn’t going to attempt to dissuade him at this point. He looked at Peter and started squinting at him, like he did at me when we first met.
“Yes, this would be the man who was ‘no longer with us’ and now he is,” I said, not bothering to introduce them. Dillon rounded the corner into the living room almost at a run. Much like Ian, he crashed into Peter. They didn’t hit any furniture, but it was a near thing.
“Peter, thank God, I was so afraid he killed you,” he whispered in Peter’s ear.
“What?” Peter asked through the hug, glaring at me over Dillon’s shoulder. He pulled Dillon down the other hallway slowly away from us. “Dillon, Seth would never hurt me, or you, for that matter. It’s just not in him—he’s family to me.”
I put a sound baffle up at the beginning of the hall, to give them privacy. That and frankly, Dillon thinking I killed Peter really hurt my feelings.
“Give him a break,” Trelaine said from behind me. “He’s never even seen magic before tonight. He’s handling it amazingly well.” He passed in front of me and sat on one of the small sofas. He now wore jeans and a tee shirt instead of the distinctive leathers. Obviously, someone had brought him some clothes because he was considerably larger than Dillon.
“And the two of you have, yet neither of you is active,” I said.
“Active?” asked Mercer.
“Do magical acts.”
“No, I have the sight as my mother called it,” said Trelaine. “But the rest of my family is blind or so they say. And I can activate passive spells.”
“I suppose the same is true of me,” admitted Mercer. “Except I’m not sure what you mean by ‘passive magic.’”
“You are a terrible liar, Mercer,” Ferrin said. “Your sight a little muddled, is it? New in your position? Haven’t talked to your mates much? What?”
“I don’t understand what you’re asking me,” complained Mercer.
Ferrin chuckled at him, shaking his head. “Obviously.”
“Here, Inspector,” I said, sitting down. “Let me show you a little of what you aren’t seeing.” I motioned for him to sit next to me. Once he had, I took his hand. He was uncomfortable but willing. His consciousness was much like the other men I’d pushed into tonight but a little more porous, if that really made any sense. It was like magic was acceptable to him so it sank in better. For whatever reason, I was able to meet with his “mind’s eye” and I gently pulled it into me showing him the world as I saw it.
“This is how I see the world, Inspector,” I told him and looked at Ferrin. His aura was his normal blaze of power near the base of his spine. His emotional center was a whirl of contemptuous humor combined with worry and pride and twenty other emotions common to all men.
“Mike, how many brothers and sisters do you have?” I asked Ferrin.
“Four,” he said, lying. The lie showed in his aura immediately.
“You see that, Inspector? He lied to us,” I told him. “Mr. Trelaine, how many people died on the roof this evening?”
“Eleven,” answered Trelaine. Guilt and remorse flaired brightly through his aura. It was very close to the effects of Ferrin’s lies, but not close enough.
“And Trelaine did not lie, but he was wrong,” I said. I released Mercer’s hand, releasing his mind at the same time. Trelaine was recounting the death toll in his head.
“Thirteen,” he adjusted his count somberly.
“Not including the elf,” Ferrin said.
“So you can see how lying to a magician doesn’t really help your cause,” I said.
“So if there are degrees of power and degrees of sight, do you see better than he does,” Mercer asked me.
“Possi
bly, I don’t really know how he sees. To tell you the truth, I’m just apprenticed,” I answered.
Ferrin leaned forward on the couch, grinning wolfishly at the policeman. “And I’m a master and he still scares the crap outta me!”
I glanced over my shoulder towards Dillon and Peter. They were still talking in the kitchen. I didn’t want to hurry them, but we really needed to find out what was going on with the rest of the world. Or at least our one percent of it.
“Inspector, as informative as this bonding experience is for you, we really need to find Bishop,” I said. “Do you have any idea how we can go about that?”
“I’ll try,” he mumbled. “Why couldn’t I see you then?” He thumbed several keys on his cell phone.
I shrugged. “I can’t see my own aura and you were seeing through my eyes.”
“Can you do that?” Mercer asked Ferrin.
“No,” answered Ferrin, laughing. “Why do you think I’m scared of him? I can’t see him. I believe ‘mannequin’ is the word you gents have been using to describe yourselves. That’s what they look like to everybody, ‘cept each other.”
“Yes, this is Inspector Gavin Mercer,” he said into his cell phone, stepping closer to the elevators and away from us. “I’ve found Seth McClure and we’re trying to locate Lord Bishop. It’s rather important.”
“Um, Seth,” said Trelaine quietly. “Um, would you mind… um, would you mind doing that for me? Please?” It embarrassed him to ask and I couldn’t quite place why I felt bad about that. I decided that growing up was just hard to figure out.
“Certainly,” I said, walking over to where he stood and touching his shoulder. There wasn’t much give to him, being all hard muscle, especially as tense as he was. He was more accepting to the contact than Mercer and his sight was deeper. “You’re a lot closer to true sight than Mercer is,” I said, bringing his mind’s eye into sync with mine. “See how close Mike’s emotional map is barely different? But Mercer’s is. Interesting.”
Peter and Dillon chose that moment to walk back into the room and I glanced up. That was a big mistake.
“Fuck!” yelled Trelaine, jumping back and wheeling his arms madly, taking me by surprise. I twisted sharply back to the right, barely avoiding his massive right arm hitting me in the side of the head. He scuttled backward till he crashed back against the wall, still in shock from… something. I didn’t know what to do, so I just stood there, staring at him, watching him hyperventilate. He wasn’t hurt physically, I could see that, but he was shocked and scared. Ferrin started laughing, though, and pointing at Peter. He couldn’t sit up, he was laughing so hard. Actually, that seemed to help Trelaine calm down.
“What happened?” Peter asked, rushing around the couches with Dillon close behind him.
“I don’t know,” I said. “Apparently, Ferrin does.” I shot him a dirty look, but that just made him laugh harder. Mercer stepped further down the hallway, covering his free ear.
“Well, what were you doing?” Peter demanded, kneeling down to Trelaine, who was desperately trying to get away from him. Peter held up his hands and backed off and Dillon moved in, trying to calm him. He didn’t run from Dillon.
“He asked me to show him what my sight looked like,” I said. “I did it for Mercer, to show him what an awful liar he was and why we could tell so quickly. Mercer didn’t react this way, though.”
“Yeah, but…” Ferrin started, but he kept laughing and interrupting himself. “Peter… Peter…”
“Ohhhh… I get it. Peter wasn’t in the room with Mercer,” I said. Peter looked at me, still not understanding. “He was looking through my eyes, seeing how I saw. He saw your aura.”
“Oh,” said Peter. “Is mine like yours?”
I shrugged as I moved over to Ferrin. “I don’t know. I can’t see mine but you have grown,” I said and kicked Ferrin in the leg. “Get up and help Dillon!”
He was still laughing when he rolled off the couch and went over to Trelaine. With all that Trelaine had seen tonight, I didn’t understand why seeing Peter’s aura had disturbed him so much, but I didn’t know him. There could be something in his past. But Ferrin was surprising me in more ways than one tonight. There was still some laughter in his voice as he spoke with Dillon and Trelaine quietly in the corner. I didn’t eavesdrop on that either, though. Peter slumped onto the couch beside me.
“This has been an interesting day,” he said.
“It’s not over yet. We still have to find Kieran and Ethan. Find out what Bishop’s up to.”
“Why don’t you call Ethan through the anchor?”
“Can’t travel through the anchor, but I’m gonna do that if Mercer doesn’t come through. Maybe he can give me a clear enough picture to form a portal.”
“Seth, I’ve been thinking,” he said, watching Dillon and Ferrin work to get Trelaine out of the corner. “I’m sorry about what I said earlier today. I barely understand what you did for me, so it took me a while to understand what I was asking you to do. It was reprehensible. With all that we can do, it just never occurred to me that this could be wrong. We just needed information and it was right there for the taking.”
“I get that, Peter, I do,” I said. “But a man’s mind is the last bastion of the self a man has. If I invade it then I’m saying that I am better than everyone in the world, that my decisions are paramount, that I am God. I was afraid that I did that with you and I do not want to ever do that again.”
“I know. So what happened after you gave me the boot?” he asked, giving me a warm smile and a hug. Ferrin was quietly giving Trelaine and Dillon quite a history lesson in the corner. He was currently retelling our battle with the Princesses at MacNamara’s. I didn’t know he’d seen it. I recounted the night’s events to Peter in detail, including Ferrin’s unprecedented performance. He was as impressed as I was. Mercer walked back into the room still talking on his phone.
“Yes, sir, I’ll ask,” he said, shaking his head, perplexed. He covered the mouthpiece of the phone and asked us, “They’re asking for confirmation that you can fly in a helicopter for forty-five minutes and a jet for an hour. I don’t know why.”
“Tell them yes,” I answered, smiling slightly.
“McClure says yes,” Mercer relayed into the phone. He listened for a few minutes then said, “Yes, sir,” and hung up. “They’re sending a helicopter for us. It’ll be here in about fifteen minutes. Who the hell are you?”
“Huh?” I asked.
“I’m Peter, and you are?” Peter asked facetiously.
“No, why are you three so important? They’re sending an RAF helicopter for us and I have to go with you. Why? Why are you so important? You’re just kids!”
A spell, a very small spell, flew across the room and hit Mercer in the face, exploding with kinetic energy. Judging from his reaction, it felt like a light slap in the face.
“You want him to go all green and black again?” asked Ferrin, standing behind the couch with Dillon and Trelaine. They’d coaxed him out of the corner finally. He was much calmer, but still scared.
“I’m sorry, Trelaine,” I said, quietly but full of empathy. “I should have been more careful when we were connected like that. I wasn’t thinking.”
“Are you like that?” he asked. “Are you that strong?”
“I don’t know. You’d have to ask my brothers. They’re the only ones who can see both of us,” I said.
“He’s a lot brighter,” said Peter with a grin. “And a lot stronger. I’m the weakling of the bunch.”
“Peter!” I admonished him.
“Don’t get me wrong,” he said, looking at me. “I know I can pull my own weight, but compared to the three of you?”
“We need to get to the roof,” Mercer interrupted. “How do we get up there?”
“I’ll take us in a moment,” I said standing. “Trelaine, you’ll be all right?”
He nodded. “It was just a shock, is all. I’ll be fine,” he rumbled out.
�
�I’ll try to find you if we’re in this area in the near future, then. Thank you for what you’re doing.”
“No need to thank me,” he said. “Good luck to you.”
“Dillon, again, I apologize for losing my temper earlier and I look forward to meeting again under more social circumstances. At least now you know I don’t murder my friends just because I get mad.” I hoped I was cheerful enough to not seem bitchy.
“You are just too nice,” he said. “Next time you’re here, we’ll go to my mother’s, pass you off as my boyfriend and get her off my back.”
Peter snickered. “It might be good practice for your first girlfriend’s mom,” Peter said, doing that slow motion guy-slug-the-arm thing. Dillon was already coming around behind me when Peter turned to say something to him. He grabbed Peter’s head and kissed him on the lips.
Mercer groaned, disgusted, and Ferrin backhanded him in the shoulder. “What did you expect to see in here, ya’ git!”
“Call me. Even when you don’t need anything,” Dillon said and gave Peter another quick peck, then backed away, running his hand down Peter’s chest. “Ooh, you’ve been working out.”
“A little,” answered Peter, smiling. His eyes glistened at the compliment.
“Good night, Dillon,” I said, grabbed the three of them and jumped us to the roof. I don’t think I’ve ever spent this much time on any one roof before in my life. Looking over the skyline, I could see a huge double rotor military helicopter heading in our general direction in the distance. I guessed we had about five minutes to wait.
“Why was Trelaine so freaked out about seeing Peter?” I asked Ferrin when he came up beside me. Peter took the other side. Mercer stayed back a few feet, uncomfortable with us.
“Nothing to worry about,” his voice even softer in the wind. It made his accent romantic somehow. “He’s just had a bad experience with an elf or two in his time. Peter just outshined them all. It terrified him. Man like that doesn’t terrify easy. Good thing he didn’t see you.”