Dead witch in the librar.., p.26
Dead Witch in the Library, page 26
“May Brightness be with you,” I said without emotion, handing the next bead to the female Flint behind him.
“Thanks,” she said, and even smiled. That only made me suspicious, so I scanned her twice. Nothing. I told myself it was too soon to get discouraged. It would’ve been nice, though, to send Wyatt to Death Valley.
I looked around. Stretching uphill and around the corner was a growing queue of people in tracksuits, evening wear, business casual, and black leather that were visually united only by the excessive jewelry they wore.
Blocking my senses from all that metal was going to be exhausting. Already there were—I did a rough count—fifty witches waiting. More were probably lingering a block or two away, and most were using a light stealth spell to make them unnoticeable to the nonmagical populace.
“May Brightness be with you,” I repeated again and again, getting quicker and more efficient with my scans. Raynor had been right about them using extra anti-theft spells with me, but that didn’t affect what I was doing. Sensing magical signatures was an entirely different style of magic than taking a physical object away from a person.
“May Bright— Oh,” I said. “Hi. Witch Zack. Brightness be with you.”
He’d reached the front of the queue without my noticing him, proof of his superior stealth magic. Unfortunately, his sudden appearance seemed to upset my stomach. Fighting the butterflies in my belly, I dropped the gold bead into his hand and began my scan. He would be the first powerful witch to face me, and I was afraid of what he’d do if he sensed my scan.
His sharp gaze went over me, the box at my feet, then at the park behind me. “I’m surprised to see you here after what you went through,” he said. “We’ll be sitting with Helen over by the statue if you want to join us when you’re done.”
Isadora glimmered into view at his shoulder, making my nervous stomach clench again. I was unhappy her secrecy spell had worked on me. “Please do,” she said. “I’m interested to hear a firsthand account of the bucket treatment.”
Demon’s balls, now I had to scan them both at the same time while my mind processed the odd invitation to join them. Was it just curiosity? Was it possible they were suspicious of me scanning everyone?
“Okay, thanks,” I said, flinging my first scan at Zack’s chest while I was trying to smile at Isadora.
The moment I brushed the gnome’s aura across his heart, I tasted bile. It was just like when I’d been in Morris’s B&B, though thankfully less powerful. Quickly, pretending to fumble with a second gold bead for Isadora, I ran the scan up to his brain and then down his body into the rest of him.
I gagged—then covered it with a cough. “Excuse me, just a second.” Remembering they’d just acknowledged my interrogation, I added, “Rough twenty-four hours.”
Isadora looked at me as if I were a white rat in a cage. “There are lingering effects? How many hours since the treatment has it been?”
Her lack of sympathy gave me the courage to blast her with the scan next. As I’d expected, she triggered the same nausea in my body as Zack had. This time I was prepared for the gag reflex and was already covering my mouth to cough.
It hadn’t been nerves to give me butterflies. I’d been sensing the Morris curse on them even before starting the scan.
“You’ll have to talk to her later,” Zack said to her, giving me an apologetic smile and pulling her away.
I sucked in a breath, waiting a moment for my guts to settle before getting another bead out of the box for the next witch. There were ten Flints in a row, so I hoped to have a moment to recover before I faced another one of Morris’s victims.
Now there was no doubt in my mind that Zack and Isadora were his victims. The question remained: Was he theirs?
Chapter
Forty-One
The next cluster of witches were all Flints. I recognized the former and current front-desk agents—Kora and John. No, Jim. Raynor had purposefully gotten it wrong to intimidate him. Knowing they must’ve learned by now that I’d ruined one of the security pens that had later been found in the vault, I was curious to see if they regarded me with more interest than they had before.
Jim took the gold bead from me with his head bowed so low I could see individual flakes of dandruff on the crown of his black buzz cut even though he was over six feet tall. Unexpectedly, his personal protection spells were so good I needed three full seconds to push past them to brush the gnome’s magic across his body. After I found nothing on him, I prepared a stronger approach with Kora, thinking that with her experience she might put up an even bigger defense. Not only was she rising in the ranks of building security, but she’d been the one to see me break the tracking pen that was found in the vault.
I was right to expect more from her. In spite of her babyish appearance, it took me over four seconds to push into her chest cavity and scan her veins from head to toe. There was just a blip near her left hand that made me pause. Very faintly, I sensed an anomaly—no, more than one. Was it… Morris? It reminded me of him, but there was also a very bizarre magical flavor I’d never sensed before.
She was already walking past me. To delay her, I coughed and reached for my bottle of water, bumping her in the arm with my elbow. With a more aggressive scan, I saw a flash of diamonds, then a very dark cloud that swallowed my mind’s-eye whole.
I shuddered, realizing it must be the residue from the witch who’d pushed the front-desk agent into another dimension. Ginger Guthrie. That had been almost forty-eight hours ago, but there was still a remnant of that spell? It wasn’t only terrifying but rude. I wonder if the Flint had been promoted the next day to keep her quiet about what had happened.
“Wait,” I said to her.
Although the agent already reached the lawn and could’ve ignored me, she turned and actually came back a step. “Yes?” Her voice was as young as her face.
I berated myself silently for looking down on her. She’d just been promoted within the tough security wing, so she had to be somewhat capable. “I wanted to say I’m sorry I couldn’t help you that night. When that witch pushed you into… wherever. She shouldn’t have done that.” I spoke quickly, eyeing the long queue on the sidewalk. “By the way, have you seen her tonight?” I was looking forward to scanning Ginger to see if Morris had messed with her too.
The male Flint spoke up. “Oh, that lady isn’t walking around anywhere now,” he said with a smile, looking around sheepishly. “She wore out her antiaging spells. A few decades hit her all at once.”
“Really?” I asked, looking at Kora. “Where is she?”
“I hope she’s dead,” Jim said. “Serves her right.”
She had to be alive, or I would’ve heard about it already.
“I actually don’t remember her doing anything,” Kora said, turning red. “But I am having nightmares. Everyone keeps asking me—”
“Come on, get a move on!” one of the waiting witches shouted.
I desperately wanted to fling a spell around us to buy some time, but standing right there in front of every local witch would be the worst possible place to display my power. And both Kora and Jim were already wandering away down the hill.
The delay drove me to work faster now. Within a few minutes, I was handing over gold beads and scanning witches at a rate of a dozen a minute. After ten minutes of empty scans, I was feeling bored with fatigue, starting to doubt I would uncover anyone else with Morris’s enchantment on them. Then I saw Morris’s widow as well as his apprentice coming toward me.
Expecting the evil man to have used his power over the two closest to him, I braced myself for a surge of nausea. I hadn’t interacted with either of them enough to guess what motive they might have other than the obvious ones, so I gave them my full attention. Because Morris had died, they might return to New York at any moment, making this my only chance to interact with them one-on-one unless some powerful evidence came to light.
Paint—no, that was terrible—Pearl greeted me with a polite nod. I dropped the bead into her extended palm and brushed her with the scan. To my surprise—and maybe disappointment—I felt nothing whatsoever.
I was so surprised that I held her back by extending my arm.
“Is there a problem?” she asked. Her tone was tired but patient.
I ran the scan again with the same result, quickly dropped my arm, and bowed my head. “No, sorry. I just… I’m sorry for your loss.”
Her lips twitched in a very small smile. “Thank you for being here. May Brightness be with you.”
The personality that people found so docile, so bland… was natural? I wasn’t sure how I felt about that. Maybe he’d bullied her in the usual nonmag ways, or maybe she’d been born a passive sweetheart.
I didn’t have enough time to linger with her, however, because the app, Julian, stood before me with his hand out. His eyes were fixed on mine with just-turned-over-a-rock curiosity. Lowering my gaze, I held my breath as I gave him the scan. If I vomited all over the devoted servant of the honored deceased at his memorial service… well, it would be a new low point in a week of digging deep.
As with his widow, I felt nothing on him before he strode off without a word, and I had to hurry through the next witch and the next. Each time I found nothing, I was both grateful and disappointed. Finding the killer would be good; throwing up and humiliating myself would be bad. It was a tradeoff.
Finally I was greeting the last dozen witches. They were familiar faces I hadn’t expected to see, though I shouldn’t have been surprised; Raynor had made attendance mandatory for all nearby witches. That included Helen, who stopped a few steps away with eyes rolling so hard I worried she’d trigger a migraine. Emily was trailing behind her with a bored expression on her face.
“I didn’t think you’d come,” I said.
Fluffing up her short hair, Helen looked down the sloped hill of witches on their blankets and lawn chairs. “It was my choice to come,” she said. “No command from those people is going to get me doing something I don’t want to do.”
“Right,” I said, feeling my stomach clench. Could it be…?
“It’s a rare chance to see my enemies all at once,” Helen said, sticking her hand out. “Now gimme.”
I reached out with the bead in my hand, automatically beginning the scan I’d just given to almost two hundred witches before her. Perhaps because of her thick personal boundary spells, I only felt a twinge at first—but a moment later, the wave of nausea doubled me over.
Just as I became aware of Raynor bringing up the rear end of the parade, I was vomiting at her feet.
Chapter
Forty-Two
It wasn’t just Helen who was making me sick. The movie star who’d been right beside her (until the puking began) also had a heart that was thick with Morris’s nasty magic. The double dose, so close together, had been more than I’d prepared for.
“I’ll get it myself.” Emily bent over and took a bead out of the box without waiting for me to recover.
Too sick to stop her, I could only watch and make sure she only took one before she strode off into the park.
“Go,” I choked out to Helen. “Please.” Another wave struck me, and I bent over to throw up again. Out of the corner of my eye, I watched with relief as Helen walked after Emily. When she asked me later why I was throwing up, I’d have to lie.
Helen? Helen?
“Maybe you shouldn’t have gone to town on those waffles,” Raynor said blandly, watching me from a safe distance.
When both Helen and Emily were twenty paces away, my nausea suddenly eased. I wiped my mouth and went looking for water and breath mints in my bag while Raynor stayed where he was, perhaps waiting for my report before he joined everyone else at the memorial. As Director, he’d be responsible for walking in a circle around all the other witches in the park and leaving a spell of good fortune in the afterlife. At his signal after sundown, the gold beads would unite in a single magical force and send up a vertical stream of light. It was a witch funeral trend that I’d heard about but had never seen myself; in my opinion the beam-of-light-to-the-sky thing sounded a bit too much like a promotion for a car dealership.
Raynor took a step toward me, grimacing at the stink at my feet, and cast a silence spell around us. Because I still wanted to keep the gnome’s stick a secret, I could only shrug at him and avert my eyes as if I were embarrassed—which I was. Vomiting for any reason in front of hundreds of my sneering colleagues in public wasn’t exactly my proudest moment even if I’d uncovered a treasure trove of useful information.
“Well?” he asked.
“I found his hex on several of them.”
He raised his eyebrows and pointed at the ground. “That related?”
I turned, rinsed my mouth out with water, and spat into the grass. “Yes.”
“You’re not going to tell me how you know,” he said. Not a question.
“Zack, Isadora, Emily”—just for a split second, I considered not telling him—“and Helen.” I wiggled my eyebrows, comically mirroring him.
“Demon’s balls,” he said.
“I know, right?” I still couldn’t believe it. The implications that Helen might have an excuse for being such a heartless mercenary hadn’t hit me yet. What was the real woman like? What emotions had Morris manipulated in her—love, avarice, fear? I was both eager and afraid to find out. The Helen I knew had become a familiar presence in my life, and in spite of her annoying qualities, I didn’t want the woman I knew to disappear.
“How about the app?” he asked.
“Nothing.”
“And none of the other VIPs? That’s surprising.”
“Not that I could tell,” I said. “But it’s possible only the strongest curses could linger after his death.”
With his gaze on the park behind me, he brought a pinch of snuff to his nose and snorted it in. “You’d better scan me too,” he said tightly.
Was he nervous? He had worked with Morris over the years when he was in New York. If the sun wasn’t already going down, and hundreds of witches waiting for him to lead a memorial ceremony, I might’ve dragged out my comforting news for at least a few minutes. Although I was mostly Bright, there were deep streaks of Shadow in me, the inevitable result of having a demon and a criminal as my parents. The temptation to watch him suffer a little profound personal anxiety was overwhelming.
“What are you smiling at?” he demanded. “Did you find something?”
“You’re clean,” I said. If he’d been carrying the curse, I would’ve felt queasy around him already. Well, more than usual.
He didn’t give me the satisfaction of a single phew. “Bring the leftover beads back to Diamond Street. A select crew of agents from the front of the line have already gone back there,” he said. “You and I will talk right after this event. Jungle Stairs. I’ll get some intel on those names, and you’ll tell me what your next move is. You’re forbidden from doing anything before talking to me.” Wagging a finger at me, he strode down the slope into the park.
Regretting I hadn’t tortured him a little, I watched him begin the process of casting the circle. Even the nonmags would get caught up in it, though a few might feel even more appreciative of the skyline view, now lit up as darkness crept over the city, or angry at their companions for no reason. Magic affected all beings differently.
I wondered how these witches under Morris’s enchantment would change when I destroyed the emerald. Would Isadora become social and emotional? Would Emily lose her charm on-screen but gain it in person? Maybe now Zack could finally win Isadora’s heart—but would he even want it anymore? It was a crime that they’d all lived unknowingly for years, even decades, with a manipulative poison inside them. Right now they were here actually honoring the monster who’d abused them. I wished I’d been able to break the emerald before they’d had to go through this farce.
I slung my bag over my shoulder and picked up the box of beads, now mostly empty. There were extras, since even Raynor couldn’t know precisely how many witches would come.
When I destroyed the emerald. How in Brightness was I going to manage that when I didn’t know where it was? Now that I’d found several witches carrying Morris’s curse, I had to consider again how his killer could’ve already used the stolen emerald to free themself from it and was now walking around incognito. Those who had the residue were probably innocent. In some ways I was worse off than before.
I walked across the street to rest my legs at the Muni stop while I watched Raynor hike down the hill. He’d passed the palm trees on the far side to the right of the statue, concentrating hard, I knew, as he cast the memorial spell. So hard, I decided, that he wouldn’t see me reach into the box and take out a few of the extra beads for my investigative process. It was always good to have an emergency magical slush fund; I didn’t care for gold, but I was a weirdo. Every witch I’d met tonight had grabbed it eagerly, even Hal. He’d been right in the middle of the line, no doubt sucking energy from as many people as possible. A memorial service with hundreds of witches had to be like a nuclear power plant for a vampire witch.
The beads rested in a nest of black velvet and white tissue paper. Twenty-four karat, larger than my pinky fingernail… Each one had to cost—
“Why are you leaving?”
I jerked my hand out of the box and looked up to see Emily standing next to me. She wore a Giants cap and huge black sunglasses with tiny crystals on the arms that were—I did a quick probe—actually diamonds. I wondered how she could see now that the sun was going down.
With her so close, my stomach started to churn again. “I’m not feeling well,” I said, putting a hand over my mouth. “I keep throwing up.” Hopefully she’d take the hint and back off.
She stayed where she was. “The circle might help with that. The energy of a united group emits healing power. Yet here you are on the outside of it.” The diamonds were helping her attempt to pierce my boundary spells with a truth scan. “Why is that?”
