Spell Blind

CHAPTER 21

Another reason I didn’t like to sleep during the phasings: waking up during the full of the moon was a bit like waking up after a night of heavy drinking. I wasn’t sick to my stomach, but my head felt thick and dull, and my muscles were stiff. I’d left the light on all night, and my face felt weird where it had been pressed into the bedroom carpet. If I was going to sleep, why the hell hadn’t I climbed into bed?

I sat up, rubbed a hand through my tangled hair. Namid sat cross-legged on the floor a few feet away. His face and body like glass, his eyes bright.

“Ohanko. You slept well?”

“What are you-?” Memories of the night before flashed through my mind, vivid and terrifying. “Crap,” I whispered. “It was real, wasn’t it? He was here, in my house.”

“Yes. It was real.”

“And you know him,” I said. It came out as an accusation.

“Yes.”

“Yesterday, when I told you that the guy was French, and I repeated the name I’d heard Shari Bettancourt use, you knew right away, didn’t you? You disappeared pretty quickly to check it out, but you already knew.”

“I did not know for certain, but yes, I had some idea that it was the man you saw here last night.”

I said nothing, but stared back at him, waiting.

“His name is Etienne de Cahors. He was a druid in Gaul during what you would call the early dark ages. At one time he was a member of my council, but over the centuries he grew resistive. Eventually he began to challenge our adherence to the Runeclave’s directives. He was particularly dissatisfied with his inability to use magic directly on your world.”

“You mean he’s a runemyste?” I asked.

“He was.”

“Tell me there’s some good news in this, Namid.”

“There is not. Somehow he has managed to master the magic that first created him. He has assumed corporeal form and is now free to roam your world. But he retains something of what he used to be. That is why I have been able to keep him out of your home. He. . well, you would say that he changed the rules.”

I remembered Namid saying something similar to Cahors the night before.

“And you guys allowed this to happen?” It was the first thing that came to mind, and I knew as soon as I said it that it wasn’t fair, not when one considered all the stupid things we humans had managed to do to the world on our own. “I’m sorry,” I said.

“You should not apologize. The Council has asked the same question of itself, and the answer is simple: yes, we allowed this to happen. He has made his displeasure known for a long time. We should have been vigilant and we were not.”

“We allowed it, too,” I said. “That’s what he was doing when he was killing those kids. He was gathering power from them somehow, and using it to break free of what he was. If we’d caught him sooner, we might have stopped him.”

“Maybe. Or he might have killed you.”

“Wait a minute,” I said, my mind still struggling to keep up with all he’d told me. “He’s one of you? How come I’m still alive? He should have been able to kill me with a thought. You could, right?”

“As always, Ohanko, you simplify things too much, and you make them too complicated as well. You are most difficult. Yes, my kind are powerful, which is why we place limits on ourselves, limits Cahors has rejected. But you have powers of your own. Your wardings, while still crude and weak, can offer you some protection.”

“Is this supposed to reassure me?”

“It is supposed to inform you. Cahors has become something other than a runemyste. We do not know what exactly. But in winning his freedom from the limitations placed on our powers he has weakened himself. Not a great deal, and not forever, but enough it seems to have saved your life a few nights ago. And perhaps again last night.”

I nodded, considering this. “All right,” I said at last. “Then what do I do?”

“I am not sure that you can do anything,” he said, sounding surprised by the question.

“Then what are you going to do?”

“He is part of your world now-”

“So you’re not allowed to kill him. You weren’t even allowed to ward my house, were you? The rules haven’t really changed. You were just telling him that.”

“Attacking you in the moon-time is. . not fair,” he said, an admission of sorts. “I could not allow that.”

“Not fair,” I repeated, chuckling to myself. “And Kona called me a piece of work.”

We both fell silent. I tried to kick my brain into gear. Despite Namid’s doubts, I knew that we had to stop Cahors, and we had to do it soon. Last night, facing Namid, he’d run up against the limits of his power, and he wouldn’t be happy about that at all. He was going to kill again in two weeks, when the moon reached its first quarter, and he’d be coming after me before then. I knew too much about him now; he couldn’t have me around alerting other weremystes to the danger.

“He’s still more like you than he is like me,” I said, the thought coming to me with unexpected clarity.

“What do you mean?”

“The phasing didn’t bother him at all, just as it doesn’t bother you.”

Namid regarded me with interest. “True.”

“Which means that, comparatively speaking, I’m more of a match for him now than I will be at any other time. That’s why my spell worked last night. The phasings are hard on me, but they also make me stronger.”

“Even with that, you are not ready to face him. In time, yes. But not yet.”

“Then tell me who is. Because we have to do something. I’ve been watching kids die for three years now, and there hasn’t been a damn thing I could do about it. Now I know who’s responsible and I’m not going to let him kill again!”

I got up and walked out into the living room. I faltered at the sight of it, having forgotten about Red’s magical bomb. But I recovered quickly, went to my jacket and shoulder holster, which were draped over a kitchen chair. I halted at the sight of the empty holster; I’d have to get my Glock from Kona. That was going to be a fun conversation.

When I turned, I saw that Namid had followed me.

“Your weapon-” he began.

“. . Probably won’t kill him,” I said. “I know. But the other day I took a shot at him and he deflected the bullet.”

“And next time you shoot at him he will do the same. It is not difficult magic.”

“Would you do it?” I asked.

He hesitated. I couldn’t help but smile. I could count on one hand the number of times I’d outthought the runemyste. Okay, I could count them on one finger.

“You wouldn’t have to, would you?” I said. “If I shot at you the bullet would pass right through you; we both know it would. But as you said, he’s taken corporeal form. He might not be scared of my weapon, but he can’t ignore it, either. Not anymore.”

“Most interesting, Ohanko. I had not thought of this.”

“If I manage to shoot him, he’ll be able to heal himself, right?”

“I would expect so.”

“But he’ll have to focus his magic on doing that. How many spells can he maintain at once?”

“I do not know,” Namid said. “Several, I would think. Perhaps more.”

I frowned. Several. One to heal himself, one to ward himself from whatever assailing spell I managed to throw at him, and one to kill me. Not the answer I’d been hoping to hear.

“Then how do I beat him?” I asked.

“I am not certain you can. That is what I have been trying to tell you.”

“There’s got to be some way, Namid. The guy isn’t invincible.”

“No, he is not.”

“How would you defeat him?”

“I would take hold of his magic to keep him from assailing me, and then I would reach into his mind and crush his will.”

I shuddered. I’d known for a long time that Namid possessed powers I could barely understand. But in that moment, for the first time, it occurred to me to imagine what it might be like to have the runemyste as an enemy rather than as a teacher and guardian.

“I’m not sure I can do any of that,” I said, my tone dry.

Namid smiled. “I would be surprised if you could.”

“Where can I find him?”

The runemyste shook his head. “You should not try.”

“Where, Namid?”

“I do not believe I should help you in this endeavor.”

I stared at him, thinking it through. “You won’t have to,” I said after a few moments. “He’ll find me. As soon as I’m exposed, he’ll make the attempt. Normally he’d wait until nightfall, for the phasing to start again, but he knows that you’ll protect me then.”

“I can protect you now, as well.”

“So you’re going to follow me around all day?” I demanded.

“I have no interest in spending every moment with you, but I will not allow you to sacrifice yourself to Cahors. It is a senseless act, a waste of your life.”

“How do you know I can’t beat him?” I asked. “How do you know I’m not supposed to?”

“I have touched his magic. And I have trained you. I believe I know the extent of his power and yours.”

“All right, then tell me this: why does he want to kill me?”

“You are a threat to him.”

I opened my hands, as if to say, “See?”

He scowled at me.

“Don’t blame me,” I said. “Your words, not mine. I’m a threat to him. He wants me dead because I know who and what he is, because I have you as my friend, and because I’m a weremyste with a weapon. I can defeat him. But I need you to tell me how to do it.”

“And I am telling you, I do not know.”

We looked at each other for some time, his pale glowing eyes boring into mine. “You have to let me do this, Namid. Unless you intend to do it yourself.”

“You know that I cannot.”

“And you know that I can’t let him kill again. Not now, knowing what I do.”

His waters roughened and for a second I thought he’d grown angry with me. “Yes, all right,” he said, sounding more concerned than mad. “You are right. Once you leave here, and once I stop protecting you, he will find you quickly. Your one hope may be that he will not expect you to fight him. He may be weaker now, more vulnerable, but he still thinks of himself as a runemyste. That could be his undoing.” He faltered once more before adding, “And you are more powerful than you know. Like your father was. With great power comes great risk. I did not know how strong Leander Fearsson was until it was too late. The training I gave him was not sufficient to save his mind. I have been more cautious with you. As a result, your mind remains strong, but you are not as skilled as you could be. I wish now that I had taught you more. It would have made this day easier for you. Still, you are strong, Ohanko. I believe Cahors knows this. It may be that you can defeat him. As I told Cahors, that has not yet been scried.”

“Is that why you saved my life?” I asked. “Because of my dad?”

“I saved you because you can do much good in your world. And yes, because I failed your father. He could have done much good as well. Together, the two of you might have defeated Cahors long ago.”

I gaped at him, struck dumb by what he had said. I tried to imagine being on the force with my dad, both of us whole, both of us wielding magic. But the very notion was so far from reality, so far from the life I had known, that no image came to me.

“I have to call Kona,” I said, my voice low. “Don’t leave yet. I don’t want him coming at me before I’m ready.”

“Of course.” He lowered himself to the floor again and a moment later was as still as an ice sculpture.

I took the phone back into my bedroom and dialed Kona’s number.

Margarite answered and I went through enough of the niceties so that I wouldn’t sound rude when I asked for Kona. I love Margarite, but at that moment I didn’t feel much like chatting.

“You survived,” Kona said when she picked up.

“Barely.”

“That bad, eh?”

“As phasings go it was all right. But Red showed up. If it wasn’t for Namid I’d be dead.”

“Damn, Justis! This guy has it in for you, doesn’t he?”

“So it seems.”

“What are you going to do?”

“What I have to,” I said. “I’m leaving the house, going somewhere I know he’ll find me. And when he does, I’m going to do my best to kill him. Before I do that, though, I need my weapon.”

Kona took a long time to answer, and when she did it was in a tone I knew all too well. “And what does Namid think of this idea?”

“He thinks I’m throwing my life away for nothing.”

“That sounds about right,” she said.

“What should I do instead? He’s coming after me anyway, and Namid can’t protect me forever.”

“I don’t know. Leave town. Get away from here.”

“Is that what you’d do?” I asked.

She didn’t answer.

“This isn’t a guy you run away from,” I said. “He can find me anywhere I go. Distance and time don’t mean much to him. And besides, if I leave, he’ll kill again. Guaranteed.”

“He will if you’re dead, too. And the rest of us won’t stand a chance of stopping him.”

“I’m stronger right now than I’ll be any other time for the next four weeks. This is my best chance.”

“Uh-huh,” she said. It was amazing how much sarcasm she could pack into two syllables.

“I’m coming over now. I need my Glock.”

“What if I don’t give it to you?”

“Then I’ll have less of a chance of killing him, won’t I?”

“It doesn’t sound like you have a much of a chance now!”

“Thanks for the pep talk. Between you and Namid I’m brimming with confidence.”

“This is a mistake, Justis. It’s suicide and I won’t-”

“I’m coming over now,” I said, raising my voice, which I almost never did with Kona. “I’ll expect you to hand over my weapon when I get there!”

I hung up before she could say more. For a minute or two I stood in the middle of my bedroom, staring at the phone, wondering if she would call back, and not certain whether or not I wanted her to. At last, I tossed it onto my bed, changed my clothes, and headed out into the living room.

“Your friend tried to dissuade you,” Namid said from where he still sat on my floor.

“Yeah,” I said. “She didn’t have any more luck than you did.”

“The magic he used on you two nights ago is rudimentary for my kind, though quite effective. A simple shield warding will not work, nor will deflection or reflection. But if you can shield your heart, that might protect you.”

I gazed back at him, not bothering to hide my surprise. “Are you trying to help me with this?”

“Of course I am. As I have told you before, if you die it will put to waste all the time I have spent trying to teach you.”

“I can use a shielding spell against that magic?”

“Yes, if you shield only your heart. Warding your entire body will weaken the magic too much, but if you focus the warding entirely on your heart it might work.”

“I’ve never done that before. I’ve never even tried it.”

The runemyste shrugged. “You may have to, if you insist on facing him.”

I took a long breath. Maybe I was crazy to try this. “All right. Anything else?”

Namid started to say something, then stopped, his bright gaze snapping toward the front door of my house.

“What?” I said, fear gripping my heart. “Is he here again?”

“No,” he said. “The woman is.”

“The woman?”

He glared up at me. “Your friend. The distraction.”

Billie.

“Damn,” I whispered. I went to the door and pulled it open.

Billie stood on the path leading up to my house, staring at the burn marks and the squares of cardboard that covered the empty panes of my living room window. She glanced my way as I stepped outside and joined her there, but she didn’t say a word. I couldn’t even begin to imagine what she was thinking.

“Like what I’ve done with the place?” I asked. Kind of lame, I know.

She didn’t deign to respond.

“I’ve been pretty tolerant so far,” she said instead. “All the talk about magic, that scene in the bar, your night in jail. You know, Fearsson, I’ve never been with anyone who was arrested.” She turned to me. Her face was pale, her eyes hard. “I’ve been thinking about all the other things that make me like you so much,” she said. “The desert. The way you are with your dad. The fact that, when the rest of this crap goes away, you’re a lot of fun to be with. You make me think about. . about everything, in ways I never have before. And I’ve been getting through this week by thinking that once this case is over, and your life gets back to normal, it’ll all be great.” She looked at the door again and shook her head. “But there’s no such thing as normal with you, is there? It’s all like this.”

“Billie-”

“What the hell was with you on the phone last night?”

And there it was. The Question. I doubt that she knew it, but she’d come to the very crux of it all: of me, of us, of any future we might have together.

“Was it this?” she said, gesturing at the door. “Were you attacked again? Were you hurt? If so, tell me. I don’t know how much more I can deal with, but I know that I can’t even try if you won’t tell me what’s going on.”

“Come inside with me,” I said, gesturing toward the door.

“Not until you explain what happened last night.”

I faced her and our eyes locked. “I will,” I said. “But not out here.”

“Why? Are you in danger again?”

Yes. So are you. I had a feeling that right then, those words would have sent her away for good. “I don’t want to have this conversation in front of my neighbors,” I told her instead, which was also true.

She twisted her mouth, but when I walked back up into the house, she followed me. As I closed the door again, a small cloud of plaster fell to the floor, like a tiny flurry of snow. I hoped that she hadn’t noticed.

Not that it would have mattered. Taking in the appearance of my living room, making myself see the damage from last night as Billie must have seen it, I felt my heart sink. I wouldn’t want any part of this life either.

“Good God, Fearsson,” she muttered. “You’re lucky you’re not dead.”

So many secrets. So many lies. I was on the verge of losing her, and I had no idea how to keep it from happening. The truth would drive her away, but I wasn’t at all certain that piling on more lies would do any different. And even if I had been, I didn’t want to build a relationship on deception and half-truths. So I began there, with the simple statement. You’re lucky you’re not dead.

“To be honest, luck had very little to do with it.”

She turned, perhaps hearing something in my voice. “What do you mean?”

I wanted to sit on the couch, but it was covered with shards of glass and dust from the cracked plasterboard.

“When I got home last night, I saw that the same sorcerer who tried to kill me in Robo’s had put a spell on my house. The magic’s hard to explain, but it was as if he’d rigged a magical bomb to the whole place. If I’d opened the door or tried to break in through a window, it would have blown up, taking me with it.”

I could see the skepticism in her eyes. “So what did you do?”

“I did this.” I closed my eyes and began to chant aloud. I knew I was scaring her, but with her there in the house, and the phasing underway, I was having trouble concentrating. And I couldn’t think of another way to make her believe me. The living room, where I was; the kitchen where I wanted to be; and me. I must have said it eight times before the spell worked. But at last, for the second time in as many days-the third if you count what I did to get Cahors out of my bedroom-I pulled off a transporting spell. One second I was standing in front of her in the living room, and the next I was in the kitchen behind her.

“Fearsson?” she called as soon as I vanished, or at least appeared to. Her voice was high; she sounded terrified.

“I’m right here,” I said.

She spun and stared at me, her eyes so wide I almost laughed out loud.

“How the hell did you do that?”

“Magic,” I said, smiling.

“I-” She stopped herself. But I knew what she had intended to say.

“You don’t believe in magic.”

She hesitated. “No, I don’t. I didn’t.” After a moment she frowned. “Can you do that again?”

I walked to where she was standing. “Do I really need to?”

“No,” she said, shaking her head. “So you’re a. .”

“I’m a weremyste. Not a very good one. But I’m working on that.”

“A weremyste,” she repeated. “You’re better than most of the ones I know.”

I grinned. At least she could still joke. “I used a transporting spell to get from the living room to the kitchen. Last night I used it to get into the house, past the magic of the red sorcerer’s booby trap.”

“The red sorcerer?”

“Sorry. To those who can see it, magic shows up as a sort of colored light. Different sorcerers have different colors. The guy who’s been giving me such a hard time-his color’s red.”

“All right.”

“After I was inside-”

“What color is your magic?”

“Bluish green. Like the sea. Once I was inside, I set up a warding-a shield of sorts. Also magic. Then I managed to open the door to set off his conjuring. If I’d opened the door from outside, I’d have died. I guess Red didn’t know that I could do transporting spells.”

“I guess not.”

“Are you following any of this?”

She shrugged. “More of it than you might think. Last night, after you dropped me off, I spent some time online, looking for information about magic. You’d be surprised at the number of sites there are for people who want to be sorcerers.”

I started to respond, stopped myself. “So you already knew most of this stuff.”

“Not really. As many sites as they were, they weren’t very helpful. They were vague and more New Age than nuts and bolts. None of them said anything about transporting spells or colors or any of that. You should start your own site; you’d get lots of hits.” A faint, thin smile drifted across her face, but I could tell that she was brooding on what I’d told her. “A few sites said that you had to be born a sorcerer; others said you could learn spells and train. Which is it?”

“Both. You either have Runeclave blood in your veins or-”

“Runeclave?” Before I could answer, she shook her head. “No. I don’t want to know right now. Just go on.”

“Either you have it or you don’t. But then, you need to learn to use it.”

“And you do this by. . reading books? Talking to other weremystes? Going to Hogwarts while the rest of the world goes trick-or-treating?”

“Mostly you’re taught by others.”

“So you have a teacher.”

Once again, like the night outside of Robo’s, I was reluctant to tell her about Namid and the other runemystes. That struck me as a bridge too far. “Yes, I have a teacher,” was all I said.

She let it go. “How many of you are there? Weremystes, I mean.”

“A lot. Far more than you’d think.”

“Give me a number. In the Phoenix metropolitan area, are we talking twenty? Two hundred? Two thousand? More?”

“Probably somewhere between two hundred and two thousand. Those are active weremystes; people who are using their magic. There are more out there-a lot of people have Runeclave blood in them but don’t use it. Others have it in them, but it’s so weak they’re not even aware of it.”

“They’re not? How can-?” She stopped, staring at me. “Don’t you dare tell me that I-”

“No,” I said, shaking my head. “I don’t see any magic in you.”

“Thank God.”

She eyed me for several moments. I could see her working it all through, processing everything I’d told her, and all that she had encountered on the net. She was smart as hell, and it wouldn’t be long until she caught up with the conversation. And then we’d be right back where we began, which was what I dreaded most.

Sooner even than I’d anticipated, she said, “So when I called, you were still doing magic?”

That was one way around it. Technically, the phasings are caused by magic-my magic-so I could have said that I was doing magic when she called. But again, I didn’t want to play games with the truth, not about this. I wasn’t even thinking about the relationship, or about our future. I was simply remembering that I’d gotten her in the house by promising to answer her questions. If I couldn’t do that much without misleading her, how the hell was I going to make anything else work? I also had a feeling that she was testing me; if she’d read about weremystes, she might well have read about the phasings, too. The strange thing was, I knew how the conversation would end, and still I chose to tell her the truth. I guess I was in love. Nothing else explains the choice I made in that moment.

“No,” I said, “I wasn’t doing magic. Not really.”

“Were you still with Kona?”

“No. She’d left by then.”

“Then what? Tell me.”

“I was in the middle of a phasing.”

Billie frowned. “I found that term last night, in several places, but the sites that mentioned it didn’t offer many details.”

Not surprising, really. This was the secret every weremyste wanted to hide.

“The word ‘weremyste’ is pretty similar to the word werewolf,” I said. “And our magic works kind of the same way. I can do magic all month long, but when the moon waxes full, I lose control. All of us do. Our magic gets stronger, but our minds weaken.”

It crashed over her like a wave. I saw it happen. The color in her cheeks, which had returned during our conversation, drained away again. She took a step back from me, frightened of what she saw. That one step hurt more than anything she could have said.

“Weaken?” she repeated, a quaver in her voice. “What does that mean?” But she knew. I’d seen this coming. A part of me had watched the entire exchange unfold, anticipating every question, every twist and turn that steered us to this point. It was like I’d scried the whole thing. And still, even preparing myself, I hadn’t been able to keep my heart from being torn apart.

“It means that I had. . an episode.”

“What does it mean?” she demanded again, biting off each word.

I exhaled. “I was hallucinating. I couldn’t talk to you because I was too far gone in moon-induced delusions to carry on a conversation.”

“The psychological problems you told me about,” she said. “The ones that cost you your job on the police force.”

“Yes. They’re not really psychological problems so much as magical ones.”

Billie turned and started toward the door. “I’m sorry. I can’t do this. Maybe that makes me weak, or heartless, or something. But I can’t do it.”

“Billie, wait,” I said, walking after her. “All weremystes have this. It’s why we hide the fact that we can do magic. It’s the price of the power I wield. I could take medication for it, but then the magic goes away, and I need to have access to it.”

She was out the door and striding down the path toward her car, but she stopped now, turning to face me again. “You said you had this under control. You said you were seeing someone. A therapist.”

“I do get help,” I said, cringing at yet another lie, or at least the shadow of one. “Not from a psychologist, but from someone who teaches me magic and helps me through the full moons.”

“That’s not the same, and you know it.” She started toward her car again. “You lied to me, Fearsson,” she said over her shoulder. “Or was that some kind of magical lie, so it doesn’t count?”

“I told you that the problem never goes away, that I’d learned to control it, to live with it, and that’s the truth.”

She had nearly reached her car, but she stopped once more and spun toward me. There were tears on her face, though she didn’t bother to wipe them away. She might not have known they were there. “You have problems. They cost you your job. And they’re still affecting you. You can call them anything you want. You can pretend that you’re facing them. But the truth is they haven’t gone away, and you haven’t learned to control them. That’s why you couldn’t talk to me last night.” She shook her head and started to turn back to her car.

I stepped in front of her. “Billie, please. Let me try to explain this to you. If after I’m done, you still want to leave, then fine. I’ll never call you again.”

“I can’t, Fearsson,” she said, crying now. “I just can’t. Let’s say I believe you. Let’s say I accept that the whole magic thing is something more than an excuse not to confront your problems. I still can’t live with it. I grew up with an alcoholic. His sickness was everywhere. I’d hear it at night when he was yelling at my mom, or hitting her again. I’d see it in the morning, when I had to clean up the empty glasses and bottles, because he was sleeping it off, and my mom was so scared of waking him that she couldn’t bring herself to move, much less take care of his mess. I’d smell it in the afternoon when I got home from school and found him slumped in front of the television with whiskey on his breath. It was all over and I nearly drowned in it.

“Dad always denied he had a problem, and Mom let him. They spent their entire marriage living a lie, and they nearly dragged me down with them. I know that mental illness is treatable, and I know that people who have problems like yours can lead healthy, normal lives. But first they have to face their problems head on and get help. You won’t do that. You’re standing there in front of me telling me that it’s all right, and clearly it’s not.” She shook her head. “I can’t live that way. I’m sorry.”

She started away once more, and I let her go. What choice did I have? I couldn’t even be mad at her. She was doing the right thing, the thing my mom probably should have done years before I was born. The thing that might have saved her life. I watched Billie get into her little blue Honda and drive off. Then I went back into the house.