"What kind of work would she have done for MageData?" Anna asked. She sat in the other big wing chair in Saga's office, fingers steepled. I rose and paced.
I shook my head. "No idea. She was never much for using magic at all—I remember asking her once if she was a mundane, but she laughed and said no, she was just a Talent."
"What branch of magic?"
I hesitated. Nana Nina had always professed to be a Shielder, at the talent level. I knew, since Saga's recent trouble, that she was also a Seer, but obviously she'd gone to great lengths to keep that secret. I was torn. I didn't want to say too much until I'd talked to Nana, because I had to admit that this could look bad. We were looking for someone with Seer abilities and a connection to MageData, and there was Nana, filling both requirements.
But I owed it to her to talk to her first. I pretended I'd been wracking my memory, shook my head again, and said carefully, "I only remember her saying that she was a Shielder. But you can check the Registry. Like I said, I wasn't aware of her using magic much at all." It wasn't even a lie, although as far as I knew, neither Anna nor Saga could detect lies anyway. That's why they kept me around the place.
"Would you mind going to see her, find out if she can shed any light on the Coro case?" Saga asked politely. "I know we like to keep business and family separate, but in this case it seems they're already connected. She may have information that could help us immensely."
I blinked. I'd thought he was going to be suspicious of my seeming ignorance about my own family, but he seemed to have accepted my word. Now I felt guilty. Damn, sometimes I hate having a conscience.
"No, I don't mind," I said. "I can head over there right now, as a matter of fact."
"That would be perfect. One more thing, though," Saga said. "Are you busy tomorrow night?"
"I can't think of anything," I said warily. Was this going to be another stakeout? I'd forgotten just how boring they really were.
Saga slid an envelope across his immaculate desk to me. Gilt glittered along the edges of creamy parchment paper. Looked pretty fancy.
"Our client is taking his 'carry on life as usual' attitude to what I consider a dangerous extreme," he said, frowning again. The tiny crease deepened, so I knew this was serious. "MageData is hosting a charity fund-raiser tomorrow night, and Coro plans to be in attendance, front and centre"
"What?" I squawked, sitting down again in the other wing chair. "Isn't tomorrow the thirteenth day since he got his message? I thought he'd finally be ready to go into hiding by now."
"Quite the opposite," Anna said, shaking her head sharply. "He sent over an invitation because he admits to being 'a bit nervous' about the event—he'll be out in the open with hundreds of people around, many of them strangers. But he also seems to think that will afford him some measure of protection. He sent the invitation to us 'just to be on the safe side,' he says. And he doesn't want a big show of protection. There'll be security at the doors, checking invitations, of course, and he wants just a couple of us, who can blend in with the crowd and keep an eye on things." She sighed. "Honestly, I wish he wouldn't. But he's stubborn, too, and he's a man accustomed to getting his way."
I hadn't picked up the envelope yet. I felt as if once I touched it, I'd be committed. "Well, why aren't you two going?"
"We thought your abilities might come in handy, for one thing," Anna said. "But if you and Saga went as a couple, you'd be conspicuous."
I almost grinned. That was probably true. I was six inches taller than Saga and he was a good twenty years older.
"And I already have plans for tomorrow night," she added. "We thought Glaive might go with you."
"What's the attire?" I asked, picking up the envelope and sliding the invitation out. It didn't sound too bad. More creamy paper, deckle edges and fancy fonts.
"Black-tie formal," Saga said.
"And you think Glaive will go? Fat chance," I said. "Black, he can do, but I think I might have seen him in a sport coat once. Once."
"Shall we ask him?" Saga beeped him on the inter-office com. "Glaive?"
"Right here."
"Would you be interested in attending an event that would require a tuxedo?"
"Not if I'd have to wear it," Glaive said without hesitation.
"Come on, Glaive," I said, leaning toward the com so he could hear me. "They come in your favorite color—black."
He ignored me. "Tuxedos make me look soft."
"Thank you," Saga said, and closed the connection.
"Then who do you suggest?" Anna asked. "It's business, so I wouldn't want to involve anyone who couldn't...take care of themselves, if there happened to be an event."
That was Anna, always good with the euphemisms. An 'event'—such as an attempt on the life of Aleshu Coro. The two weeks weren't up until the day after tomorrow, but the other murders had made it clear that the time frame was more an approximation. And it was damn close now at any rate.
"I could check with LemurCandy," I blurted, before I could think about it.
Saga raised an eyebrow. "I was thinking of an actual escort, not a virtual one. He doesn't make many appearances outside the Netz, you know. Yesterday might have been it for a while."
It was the perfect time to tell them about me and Lemur and the guy who'd "terrorized" me outside my apartment, but I really wasn't up for another be-careful speech, so I just said, "Well, it's worth a shot. I'll ask him and let you know what he says, okay?" Then I changed the subject and asked Saga if the client I'd done the tailing for had come in to look at the pictures.
"Yes," Saga said in a disgusted voice. "He recognized someone in one of them. His wife."
Apparently the whole theft story had been a cover to see if his wife was having an affair with the employee. I had no doubt that Saga had dealt with the man harshly after being duped into taking on that kind of case.
I excused myself to ask LemurCandy about tomorrow night and then head over to Nana Nina's. I went into my office and shut the door. Suddenly nerves took hold of me, dancing in my stomach and making my palms hot and clammy. I had agreed—no, I had offered—to call up LemurCandy and ask him for a date.
Was I out of my mind?
I decided that I couldn't possibly call him on the phone. Even if I retrieved his number from my phone, I still didn't know his real name. How was I supposed to ask for him if someone else answered? No, it would have to be online. And I wouldn't make it sound like a date. Strictly business.
I logged on and messaged him through Chatterz®. Got an offline auto-response. Damn. I left him a note to get in touch with me and logged back out. I'd have to have my conversation with Nana Nina and try him again later.
I decided to walk to her apartment. After all, it was a beautiful spring day, and the sun was doing its best to warm up every shadowy corner. It wasn't that I was trying to put off getting there. Okay, maybe I was. I wasn't looking forward to asking intimate questions about her past. If she'd never talked about her magic with me, she must have had her reasons, right? And now I had to go poking into them. I hated it.
But even walking (with a detour into the park to see how the ducks were enjoying the new fountain the city had installed), I got there eventually. She answered the bell right away and buzzed me in.
"What a surprise!" she said, opening the door and pulling me into our usual hug. "Do you want some coffee?"
"Sure," I said, immediately suspecting that it was not such a surprise after all. She rarely drank coffee except when I visited, or so she'd said once. "Sorry to drop in so early, and without calling first."
She chuckled. "That's okay, Kit. It's not like I have a whole lot to do, you know."
However, her easel stood in the morning light near the window, and her pastels and pencils littered the nearby taboret. She'd lain down a field of blue and green and pink strokes as the beginning of a colorful abstract, but I couldn't tell at a glance what was inspiring it. She poured dark, fragrant coffee into oversized stoneware mugs.
"I
'm sort of here on business," I said hesitantly.
She raised her eyebrows as she passed me a steaming mug. "Oh, really? Something I can help with? Although I can't imagine what."
"I don't know if you can help or not," I said. "That's what I need to find out. You want to sit in the living room?"
"How mysterious," she said, smiling. She didn't seem at all apprehensive about our conversation.
We took our mugs into the cozy room and settled into facing chairs. "Well?" she asked. She looked, as always, completely serene and innocent. Her silver hair curled smoothly and close around her head and her blue eyes regarded me brightly.
I sighed. "Remember the other day, when I told you we were looking into a Murder Prophet case?"
She sipped coffee. "Mm-hmmm."
"Our client is Aleshu Coro."
"Ah." She nodded, pursing her lips for a moment, then frowned. "He's not dead? I'm sure I would have heard that."
I shook my head. "No, he's fine. For now. He got a message, though. We're trying to make sure he stays fine."
"And your very competent friend, SquirrelCookies—"
"LemurCandy."
"LemurCandy, has dug up the fact that I used to work for MageData."
I took a deep breath. "Exactly."
She smiled and tilted her head at me like an inquisitive puppy. "You didn't have to be afraid to come and talk to me about that, you know."
I squirmed a little in the bright green armchair. "You never talked about it. I didn't know why."
"Well, I'm sorry if it took you by surprise. I didn't expect it would be an issue this long after the fact," she said.
"Saga and Anna wondered if you might be able to help us figure out who might want Coro dead—and why."
She settled back more comfortably in her chair and tucked tiny, slippered feet up under her. Wrapping both hands around her mug as if to warm them, she said, "Did you take your Maginox® this morning, dear?"
"No, I—hey! I wasn't going to use my magic on you!"
"Just checking," she said with a grin. "It doesn't matter, because I'm going to tell you the truth. About everything," she added, and that sounded more than a little ominous.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Nana Nina Comes Clean
"First of all, I don't know if any of this is going to help your case," she warned. "It's a long time since I was at MageData, and for the most part, it was a pretty harmonious place to work back then."
"What did you do there?" I asked.
She took a deep breath. The sunlight slanted across her face, making her look almost ethereal. "I was involved in the magic ability-detection research."
I almost choked on my coffee. "Really? How?"
Nana Nina shrugged. "I'm a Spellquick. They thought we had the best chance of figuring out how to make detection work."
That time I almost dropped my coffee. My grandmother, who had rarely exhibited any magic around me or the rest of the family and seemed indifferent to it, was one of that group of rarest, less-than-one-percent of individuals in the world who had major magical abilities in all the realms of magic?
"No," I said flatly, shaking my head. "I don't believe it."
She chuckled. "I've got some Maginox® in the bathroom cabinet if you want to take some and see if I'm lying. It's prescription strength, though, so be careful. You'll have an unbelievable headache later."
"You can't be a Spellquick," I protested, still unbelieving. "I would have known!"
"I haven't used the magic much in years," she said. "Do you know why?"
I shook my head mutely.
"Because it worked," she said.
"What worked?"
"There were three of us at MageData," she said, shifting in her chair to get more comfortable. "Three Spellquicks. And we figured out how to detect—and identify—magical ability in others."
"But—" I sputtered, "But—it can't be done! I mean, if it could, why isn't anyone—the Registry—"
"Why is there no formalized testing? Because the government doesn't know we figured it out," she said easily. "We didn't tell anyone, because we decided that everyone was better off the way things were. In fact, as far as I know, you're the only non-Spellquick who knows even now."
I felt like sputtering again, but I sat quietly until I knew what I wanted to say. Nana sipped calmly from her coffee mug, looking serene and grandmotherly. The light filtering down from the skylight now almost made it look like she had a halo, and I wondered cynically if she could have set that up on purpose.
I took a deep breath again. "So, to be sure I understand: the Spellquicks figured out a way to detect magic ability in others, decided it would be better to keep that knowledge to themselves, and no one else has figured it out since then? That must have been twenty years ago!"
"Yes, it must be, almost. You were fourteen or so about that time."
"I don't understand how you could keep something like this a secret," I protested.
"Well, remember," she said, "only Spellquicks can do it. We have a...a network, I suppose you could call it, and all new Spellquicks become members. They're sworn to secrecy about this."
"But how do you—oh, right," I said, shaking my head in wonder. "You just use the ability to detect new Spellquicks, so you can bring them into the club."
She grinned. "I always said you were a genius, dear."
I sat back in my chair, shaking my head. "The world is secretly controlled by powerful magic-users and a conspiracy of silence," I said. "It's like something out of a cheap holovid."
Nana laughed out loud then. "I wouldn't say we control the world, Kit. We very carefully control one piece of information."
"But isn't there always a chance that one of the companies will start up the research again—I mean, MageData tried it when you worked there. Surely someone else might want to try again?"
She sipped her coffee and winked at me. "Okay, I suppose there's a teeny bit of a conspiracy. The Spellquicks make sure we're major shareholders—and sometimes members of the Boards—of any relevant company. It's one way we can quietly make sure the secret stays secret."
"Like MageData, I suppose."
She nodded. "Naturally. I have a holding company for my own shares there."
I don't know what look was on my face, but she must have seen something there, and tsked at me.
"Don't look like that, honey. It's for the good of everyone, remember."
I took a sip of coffee and thought about what I wanted to say next. I felt slightly stunned by the magnitude of these revelations. "Are you sure it's for the good of everyone?" I asked slowly.
"I think so. I certainly think it was better for you, wouldn't you agree?" Her blue eyes twinkled.
My heart skittered in my chest. She knew.
"When did you know about me?" I demanded.
She shrugged. "Right about the time you were figuring it out yourself. I wasn't prying, Kit, I want you to believe that." She tilted her head to one side, considering. "At least, I suppose I was, but I didn't mean it in a personal way. At that time it was new, and we were curious about how the spells would work. Especially whether the subjects would know we were 'looking' at them. I knew something was up with you—either you were about to have your first period or a new magical ability was blossoming." She shrugged again. "I checked to see if I could figure out which it was."
"So you knew all along that I was a...Transmute?" Years of habit kicked in, still making it hard for me to say it out loud.
"Yes. And I knew that you were horrified at the prospect of having to go and work in an energy factory somewhere. I wasn't surprised when you kept it to yourself. Your situation helped me feel certain that we were right in keeping quiet. That you should have the right to make that choice yourself."
I sat in silence for a bit. We both did, sipping coffee that was starting to go cold. Nana Nina made a face and sketched a little nod in the direction of my cup and hers. The mug warmed under my fingers and I realized with a start that she'
d used magic to heat up the coffee. If she wasn't going to hide her abilities from me any more, things were going to be interesting.
"So," I said finally, "what does this have to do with Aleshu Coro?"
Nana chuckled, her mouth quirking into a wry smile. "Nothing, probably. I was just tired of keeping it secret from you. Seemed like as good a time as any to get it off my chest."
I grinned and shook my head. That innocent, white-haired old grandmother act sure had me fooled for a long time. Anyway, I still had to ask her about the Coro case. "Okay, so back to the reason I'm actually here. Things were good at MageData when you worked there?"
"It was an exciting time, because the main company, the database end, was growing fast, which meant more funding for the research department. They had a lot of projects, not just the Spellquick stuff that I was involved in, but I don't know much about the rest."
"Coro was getting divorced from his first wife about that time, wasn't he?"
She paused, remembering. "Yes, he was. You know, that was probably the only black spot on that time. Not that I'd forgotten about it."
"It wasn't amicable?"
"Whoo-whee, no sir," she said. "It was downright nasty, and I knew all about it—everyone did—because of course she worked there, too. Clarice Valencia, who became Coro's second wife."
"I've met her," I said. "She didn't seem like my kind of person."
"Mine, neither. She made a blatant play for Aleshu Coro, and did everything she could to cut Evangeline out of the picture." Nana sipped her now-hot coffee. "Do you think Evangeline could be involved in what's happening now? The threat to Coro?"
I shrugged. "Probably not. Kiku ran a check early on, because of some things Clarice Valencia said about the divorce settlements. But although Evangeline still has shares in MageData, she doesn't seem particularly interested in them, or in leveraging her interests. She's been living overseas for years and years. And the divorce was so long ago—I didn't think it was likely to be linked to the case now."
She raised her eyebrows at me. "You'd be surprised. Sometimes the past casts long shadows."
The Murder Prophet Page 17