In Plain Sight

21 The Spell

Sitting hunched over was really beginning to hurt Alex’s back. His shield and darkness runes had expended their energy and vanished over an hour ago and now he sat in the empty workshop, handcuffed to a bed. A metal bar curved in a downward facing U shape formed the footboard of the bed. It only rose about four inches above the mattress, forcing Alex to lean over so as not to pull his injured arm against it. He’d tried sitting on the floor, but that twisted his left side even more painfully.

When the FBI came bursting into the workshop with their guns drawn, he almost cheered.

“Agent Davis,” he said in his most cheerful voice. “What kept you?”

“It’s clear,” Davis yelled out into the hall. “No one here but Lockerby.”

“Is he alive?” the voice of Sorsha Kincaid drifted in from the hallway.

“Yes,” Agent Warner said, his voice thick with disappointment.

The Sorceress came around the corner, and all Alex could do was stare. The previous times he’d seen her, she’d been dressed for her work with the FBI, fashionable certainly, but with the air of a working professional. Tonight, however, Sorsha wore a long, form-fitting black evening dress that clung to her modest curves. The sleeves were transparent and shimmered as she moved, baring her slender, pale arms beneath and ending in what looked like the black cuff from a man’s shirt, complete with a large, pearl cufflink. A short, fox-fur stole covered her shoulders and hung down on either side of her slender neck, parting occasionally as she walked to reveal an open collar and a necklace of glossy black pearls against the alabaster of her skin. A close-fitting hat with a white feather and a veil made of the same shimmery stuff as the sleeves completed the outfit.

Wherever Sorsha Kincaid had been summoned from, it was not the kind of party that would have tolerated the likes of Alex. Her dress reminded Alex of some of the women he’d seen in The Emerald Room, though Sorsha wore it better. There was something in her slow, confident walk across the workshop floor that gave her elegance, or rather revealed it. The fact that her clothes were fine and that the room was just a simple workshop had no power to add or detract from the Sorceress’ inherent grace and femininity.

“I can’t say I’m surprised to find you here, Mr. Lockerby,” she said, standing over him as Davis and Warner searched the room. She pulled back the veil, revealing her ice blue eyes, and placed a cigarette between her dark red lips.

Absently, Alex noticed that she wore the same burgundy lipstick that Evelyn had worn.

“How goes the hunt for our missing Germans?” he asked as the Sorceress came to a stop, standing over him.

“It’s being handled,” she replied with a raised eyebrow. “At the moment, however, I’d rather talk about what you are doing here.”

Alex smiled his most sincere-looking fake smile. “Why, I’m helping you with your case, my lady,” he said in a gallant voice. “Have your boys look in the handbag on the center table,” Alex added, nodding at the purse Evelyn had brought with her. “I’m sure they’ll find those pesky drawings you’ve been looking for. Along with a pistol that is not mine,” he amended.

Davis and Warner paused in their search and looked at Sorsha. After a moment, she nodded. The FBI men converged on the table as Sorsha searched her own tiny handbag for a matchbook.

“I’d offer you one of mine,” Alex said, holding up his right hand as much as he could in the handcuffs. “But, unfortunately…”

“That’s all right,” Sorsha said, then she bent down and reached into Alex’s jacket pocket, extracting a cardboard matchbook.

“They’re here, all right,” Agent Davis said. “All six originals.”

“Now will you uncuff me?” Alex said as Sorsha lit her cigarette.

“Not yet,” she said, blowing smoke in his face. “I must confess I’m very curious about how you got those papers, and just who cast the finding rune here tonight. If we dust those originals, will we find your fingerprints, Mr. Lockerby?”

Alex grinned up at her as best his could from his hunched over position. “You won’t find my fingerprints,” he said. “And I didn’t cast the finding rune.” He nodded at the handcuffs.

“You could have put those on yourself once you were done,” Sorsha said.

Alex smiled wider. “You can tell that I didn’t cast that spell because there aren’t obfuscation wards and concealment runes on the walls. I knew you were tracking that spell; you told me so yourself. That’s how you found Thomas Rockwell in the first place. You didn’t know that Quinton Sanderson had a partner and that she came with him to New York. When Thomas cast the finding rune, you tracked it to this neighborhood and then looked for a runewright. That’s why you didn’t find this workshop. This is where he actually cast the rune.”

Sorsha’s face carried the look of someone who unknowingly drank sour milk.

“Well,” she said. “If you knew I was tracking any casting of that finding rune, why didn’t you shield this place? And who cast the rune?”

“I hoped you wouldn’t come into it at all,” Alex said, and sighed. “But I knew if you felt the rune being cast here, you’d come, and I needed you in case something bad happened.”

“What if I hadn’t found this workshop for a week?” she asked, arching an eyebrow. Alex chuckled.

“Well, I hoped your aim would be better if you were close to the place it was cast.”

“You still haven’t told me who did the casting.”

“She called herself Evelyn Rockwell,” Alex said. “At least to me. She seduced Quinton Sanderson and got him to steal the drawings from the Archimedean Monograph. Then when he disappeared, she moved here and found Thomas Rockwell.”

“And then you, when Rockwell disappeared,” Sorsha finished, a reproving look on her perfect face. Alex nodded.

“When I put two and two together, I enticed her here. I told her I’d figured it out but I wanted more time. I told her to go home and wait for me to call.”

“And,” Agent Davis said, stepping up beside Sorsha. He held Alex’s bag, casually in his right hand. “If she’d been innocent, she would have gone home.”

“That’s right,” Alex said, his voice suddenly raspy.

“But she wasn’t innocent,” Sorsha said. “She got the drop on you, locked you to this bed, and finished the rune herself.”

“Yes,” Alex said.

“What happened to her?”

“Uncuff me,” Alex said, “and I’ll show you.”

Sorsha looked at Davis and nodded toward Alex.

“Before we do that,” Davis said with a malicious smile, “you’d better have a look at this.” He opened the bag so that Sorsha could look inside. She smiled, showing a row of pearly white teeth any shark would be proud of, offset all the more by her burgundy lipstick.

“My, my,” she said reaching into the bag. “What have we here?” When her hand came out, she was holding Alex’s rune-covered Colt 1911.

“Nice,” Davis said. “I have one just like it, though mine isn’t as decorative.”

Sorsha turned it over in her hands, scrutinizing the runes on its surface. “There wouldn’t be a spell breaker rune on this gun, would there?”

Alex forced himself to relax. He had a permit for the gun, but adding runes to it was questionably legal. If Sorsha wanted to make trouble for him, she could, but not if all she cared about were spell breakers.

Spell breakers were just what they sounded like, runes that reacted with the kinds of magic sorcerers used. The runes weren’t too difficult to write and they could disrupt even complex magic, like the crawlers or the capacitors at Empire Tower. As a result, their use was highly illegal. Just possessing one could land a runewright in prison for twenty years.

“Spell breaker runes are illegal,” he said with a smile.

“But you do know how to make them,” she pressed. Alex shrugged.

“It’s in my Lore book,” he said. “I’ve heard you can buy the instructions on the black market for a C-note.”

Sorsha regarded him for a long moment, then dropped the pistol back into Alex’s bag.

“Unlock him,” she said.

Davis’s face fell for a moment, but then his smile returned. “Agent Warner went next door to call this in,” he said. “He’s got my key.”

“Oh, for heaven’s sake,” Sorsha said. She leaned down to the short length of chain that connected the handcuffs. As she did, the fox stole pressed against Alex’s face, filling his nostrils with her delicate floral perfume.

Sorsha grasped the chain between her thumb and forefinger. Alex heard a crackling sound as the link turned suddenly white, then, with a gesture of casual ease, the kind one might use to shoo an annoying fly, the Sorceress crushed the frozen link between her fingers.

Trying not to look impressed, Alex sat up straight, his back popping as he stretched it, then he stood.

“You wanted to know where Evelyn went?” he said, holding out his hand so that Agent Davis could hand over his kit. The FBI man reached in and removed the pistol before complying.

Alex took the bag and went to the workbench where the burned remnant of the rune paper still lay. He pulled out his lamp and his ghostlight burner, then shone the green light on the wall. It only took him a few seconds to locate Evelyn’s shadow. The shadow was visible under the green light, even without the oculus. She had turned, as if running for the back corner of the room.

The corner where Alex had been.

He chose to believe that in her last desperate moments she had wanted him to save her.

“Is this what happened to everyone who disappeared?” Sorsha asked, her voice husky and low with emotion.

“Yes,” Alex said. “If you ask me, this rune is some kind of trap designed to weed out anyone smart enough to be a threat to whoever made it.”

Sorsha smiled. “I assure you,” she said. “The Monograph is real.”

Alex shone his light on Thomas’ shadow.

“He believed that too.”

At that moment Agent Warner returned.

“The investigators are on the way,” he said. “They’ll go over this place with a fine-toothed comb.”

“Good,” Sorsha said. She turned to Agent Davis and nodded toward the door and without a word, he left, taking the young blond Agent Warner with him. Once they were gone, Sorsha fixed Alex with a hard stare.

“How did you know that rune would fail?” she asked.

“Because I didn’t finish unraveling it.”

“But how do you know?”

“Because I could see that there were parts that weren’t aligned yet.”

Sorsha smiled. It was not a reassuring look.

“So you admit you could have unraveled it,” she said. “Given enough time.”

Alex tried to look casual as he shrugged. “Assuming it could be unraveled at all,” he said. He didn’t want Sorsha telling her government friends that she found a patsy to take another run at the Archimedean Monograph.

Her eyes flashed suddenly, as if lit from inside her skull.

“I think you’re lying to me,” she said, but her voice was suddenly deep and the sound of it echoed, trailing off after her words until they became lost in a faint blur of noise. At the same time, the room seemed to dissolve around him, colors and shapes blending into a solid plane of gray.

Alex wanted to be alarmed, but felt calm and safe instead. As if this platinum-haired angel in front of him were the person he trusted most in all the world. The person who wanted nothing more than to help him.

Somewhere in the recesses of his mind he knew it was a truth spell. Like spell breakers, truth spells were also illegal, which is why Sorsha had sent the only witnesses out of the room before using it. Now, if Alex tried to make an issue out of it, it would be his word against the word of one of New York’s most prominent citizens.

“I have a few questions for you, Alex,” Sorsha said, her voice still unnaturally deep and echoing. “Does your version of the finding rune work?”

“No,” Alex said, feeling no compunction to lie.

“Did you find the Archimedean Monograph?”

“No,” Alex said.

“Are you going to continue to look for the Monograph?”

“No.”

She picked up the notebook where Alex had drawn the rune Evelyn used.

“You seem to have this mostly figured out,” she said. “Do you think you could finish it?”

“No.”

“Why?”

“That rune will never work,” he said.

The Sorceress swayed suddenly and leaned against the table. A moment later the room snapped back into focus. Alex shook his head and blinked his eyes a few times to clear them. When he could see properly again, he noticed that Sorsha was breathing hard and sweating through her satin dress. She looked like she’d run a marathon.

“You hexed me,” he said. It was not an accusation, just a statement of fact.

“I had to be sure,” Sorsha said between gasps. “I’m sorry.”

Alex just shrugged. He understood why she had done it.

“If you can just wink your eye and make men tell the truth, why don’t you? You don’t care about it being illegal, or you wouldn’t have used it on me.”

“As you can see,” she said, her breathing finally returning to normal, “it takes a great deal of focus and effort. Even then, it’s not always right. People who know it’s coming can sometimes shape their answers in such a way as to speak the truth… but still be deceptive.”

“And you figured I was just the kind of dim bulb it would work on?”

“On the contrary,” she said. “I knew I would have to surprise you to have any chance of success. You’re far too clever for me to have warned you in advance.”

“Carful, Sorceress, that sounded dangerously like a compliment.”

She blushed. Alex wouldn’t have believed it if he hadn’t been looking her straight in the face, but her perfect, alabaster cheeks turned a rosy shade of pink.

“The spell has a reverse effect for a few moments,” she said. Her face suddenly clouded over, her eyebrows dropping down over her eyes. Clearly she believed she’d revealed too much.

“So if I asked you a question right now, you’d have to answer truthfully?” A broad smile stretched across Alex’s face as he tried to think of the single most embarrassing thing he could ask. The look on Sorsha’s face, however, told him the moment had passed. Still, he filed that particular bit of information away for later use.

“I’m grateful to you for finding the missing Monograph pages,” she said, her voice stiff and formal. She spoke something in that deep, echoing voice and moved her hand down her dress. As her hand moved, the dark perspiration stains vanished, leaving the satin material unmarked and pristine.

“Is there a reward for finding them?” he asked. “Not that your gratitude isn’t appreciated.”

“I don’t know,” she said with a shrug. “I’ll ask. Now, if you don’t mind, a team of FBI investigators will be here soon. I don’t want to have to explain your presence to them.”

“Can I have my notebook?” he asked.

Sorsha smiled and set the notebook aside on the workbench. “I’m afraid that’s evidence now.”

Alex collected his kit and his pistol, then made his way downstairs to the five and dime. He called home and Iggy picked up immediately.

“There you are, lad,” he said. “I was wondering when you’d be home.”

“I don’t want to go home,” he said.

“Rough evening?”

Evelyn’s long, tortured scream still lingered in his mind. He death had been of her own making, but that didn’t make it all right.

“You could say that.”

“I’ll tell you what,” Iggy said with an infectious energy. “How about a picture? There’s a Sherlock Holmes one over at Radio City starring Basil Rathbone. What say you meet me there and we’ll make an evening of it?”

Alex didn’t really feel like another mystery, but Iggy seemed excited. He loved movies, and Sherlock Holmes, so why not?

“Sounds great, Iggy,” he said.

“I’m closer than you are,” Iggy said. “You hop on the crawler and I’ll walk over and meet you there.”

“Just take a cab, Iggy,” Alex said. This was one of their usual arguments. Iggy simply refused to admit that he was over seventy.

“It’s not far,” Iggy said. “I like to walk, and I’ve got plenty of time. It’s not like I’m in a hurry.”

The words hit Alex like a runaway crawler.

“Iggy?” he said. “Why didn’t Charles Beaumont take a cab?”

“What?”

“Charles Beaumont,” Alex repeated. “He ran out of his apartment right after that plague jar broke. He must have known what was in it.”

There was a long pause, then Iggy answered. “I guess if you want a thief to steal a jar full of plague, you don’t want him opening it by accident, so yes, he probably knew.”

“So he knew he was sick,” Alex said. “So why didn’t he take a cab?”

“Who says he didn’t?”

“No,” Alex said. “If he’d taken a cab, we’d have a dead cabbie and dead fares all over the city.”

“You’re right,” Iggy said, sounding puzzled. “So why didn’t he take a cab? He knew he was dying and he believed the water from the Mission could heal him. Why wouldn’t he try to get there as fast as possible?”

“Maybe the Mission was his last resort,” Alex said. “Maybe he went somewhere else first.”

There was a long pause and Alex could almost hear Iggy stroking his mustache.

“If someone asked me to steal a jar full of plague for them,” Iggy said slowly, “I might assume they have an antidote.”

“It’s thin,” Alex said.

“And it still doesn’t tell us where Beaumont went,” Iggy said. “If he went anywhere at all.”

“I think we’re on to something here,” Alex said. “Get a cab—”

“I don’t need a cab,” Iggy interrupted.

“And meet me at the city morgue,” Alex finished.

“Why?”

“We’re going to walk a mile in Charles Beaumont’s shoes.”