Arcane Solutions (12 page)

Logan’s grin broadened.
“Most people aren’t.” He polished off his beer and rose. “I should head home.”

“
Okay.” We walked to the door, and he stepped outside, half-turning while digging his keys out of a pocket.

There was a grin on his face again.
“Just remembered something.”

“
What?”

“
This time, you forgot to faint.”

Another laugh bubbled out.
“I’ll get it right someday. Promise.”

“
I’ll hold you to it. Thanks for the meal, Discord.”

“
You’re welcome. Thanks for the backup.”

“
No problem.” With a wave, he walked away. I shut and locked the door then remembered my car.

“
Damn it!”

Sixteen

Since I was without wheels, teleportation was my only option for getting around, unless I called Nick for a ride. His fit the previous day, followed by his failure to return my call, and my still glowing hot anger over my car said that would be a disaster in the making.

Teleportation it was.

David startled when I appeared, hand flattening over his heart, the glasses he’d added to his ensemble almost popping off his nose.
“Good lord, Cordi.”

“
Sorry. Do you have a few minutes?” Trixie butted her head against my shin, demanding I rub behind her ears. David’s familiar, Copernicus, demanded love too. His feathers slipped coolly under my fingers. “I've found something I need your help with.”

Jo came out from the back, slipping rings onto her fingers.
“Hey, Cordi.”

“
Hi.”

David was frowning past me, looking through the plate glass at the parking lot.
“Why aren't you driving?”

“
Because some vamps trashed my car last night.” Scowling, I pulled the scrap out of my pocket. Behind me, the bell over the shop door jingled. It was Damian and Illy, the former carrying a cardboard tray of Styrofoam cups.

“
Good morning. Where's your car, Cordi?”

A wide-eyed Jo answered before I could.
“Vampires destroyed it.”

The warlock halted, jaw dropping. Even the familiars were quiet and staring at me. Clearing his throat, Damian asked,
“Case-related?”

“
I don’t know yet. Possibly. The mouthpiece said his Master wanted to speak to me before I introduced him to a brick wall.”

“
How many vamps have you pissed off lately?”

His calm tone cooled me down.
“I can't breathe without pissing off a vampire, but I can only think of one in the recent category. When I find the two who trashed my car, I'm going to do more than piss them off.”

“
La-la-la,” Damian half-sang. “I didn't hear that.”

“
I'm pretty sure self-defense will be a valid excuse.” Legally, vamps were citizens, so taking one out was murder. Even so, the law tended to look the other way much of the time. Murder reminded me of Dead Guy. “Any clues about the vamp the fake elf staked?”

Shaking his head, the warlock crossed to the counter and set the tray down. Four cups, so
Illy had a dog-acinno. I remembered the scrap in my hand, and raised it so that they could all see it. “I found this. Think it might be part of Thorandryll's missing journal. Can you tell me what it says?”

I set it on the counter in front of them, and they bent their heads forward to have a look. Then Jo touched it with the tip of her finger. Flames poured over her and David.

Horrified, I began pulling the oxygen away from their immediate area to kill the flames as Damian chanted a spell. There no way to tell which of us caused it, but the flames suddenly winked out a breath before a second spell resulted in a downpour of water. Sodden, the two and their familiars glared at us.

“
Oops?” I offered, hoping to break the tension of the moment.

David pushed wet strands of hair off his forehead.
“Yes, 'oops' is just the word.”

“
Some of us need to work on our illusion recognition,” Jo said in a flat tone, staring at Damian. Hearing his name, Illy began wagging his tail and gave her a tongue-lolling grin.

“
She wasn't speaking to you,” Damian muttered, nudging the husky with his knee. Unperturbed, Illy kept grinning and wagging.

“
I think we'll change before continuing.” David blinked, his ferocious scowl disappearing. Jo leveled a final withering glare before she and David went upstairs, their familiars close behind.

“
Yes, well, I guess we'd better clean this mess up before the water spreads,” Damian suggested, eyes bright with repressed laughter.

We took care of the water with a combination of towels and my
encouragement
for the wet to dry out. Everything was shipshape by the time the other two came back down.

The scrap had somehow escaped the soaking.

I wandered around the shop while they conferred over the parchment. Herbs sat waiting in glass jars. Candles in every color brightened one aisle, while the crystals lay in state on display tables that led from the entrance to the counter. I always found some new curiosity to wonder over. Sometimes, I even asked what my discovery was.

Jo’s soft
“Dear god” pulled me back to the counter. “What? Is it some kind of kinky elf sex diary?”

David shook his head, fine blonde hair waving and rising in reaction.
“No, this is from a grimoire. It’s written in blood ink.”

“
Possibly one of those we’re looking for,” Jo added, studying the scrap with fingertips poised just above it.

“
Not to argue here, but I’m pretty certain it’s a scrap of the book the elf wants me to recover. Elves don't keep grimoires. Do they?”

“
Not that I know of,” she replied. “Their magic is innate. A part of them and what they are. They don't have to memorize spells or write them down. They just produce whatever effect they're aiming for, with simple words of power.”

“
Color me confused.” I scowled at the scrap.

“
They do keep written records of medicinal potions,” David mentioned. “But a page from such a journal wouldn't be tainted like this is, and certainly wouldn’t be written in blood ink.”

“
Great.” I felt like beating a certain elf into a bloody pile of spare parts. “Looks like someone flat-out lied.”

“
Does look that way, yes,” he agreed.

“
Damn him.” After fuming for a few minutes, I yanked out my cell phone and hunted for the right contact listing. Two rings before the elf's deep voice filled my ear.

“
Thorandryll here.”

“
I think I prefer 'lying jerk' right this minute.” He hung up on me. “You son of...ooh!”

I hit redial, and when he answered, blasted him with
“Listen up, you pointy-eared jackass, I—”

“
Will refrain from cursing at me or I won't speak with you,” he cut in.

“
You arrogant--”

“
Did you find something?”

“
A scrap from your missing book which turns out to be a grimoire. You have some explaining to do, bub.” I snapped out the words with enough venom that Jo and David both looked up from the piece of parchment.

The latter winced.
“Cordi? Would you please put the crystals down?”

“
What?” I turned when he pointed behind me. A whole display of crystals hung in the air, shivering as though cold. “Oops.”

“
Temper, temper,” Jo murmured while I groped for my TK ability, intending to lower them back onto their display table.

“
What does it matter what the book is?” Thorandryll sounded impatient. “I'm paying you to find it.”

“
Hello, dark magic? Danger you should've warned me about!” The crystals climbed another three inches and David made a panicked sound behind me. “I'm working on it!”

Copernicus squawked, fluttering by to land and gaze at the crystals with his beady black eyes.

“Shut up,” I told the raven, hissing in exasperation.

“
Excuse me?” The elf's tone climbed to cold haughtiness.

“
You too. Everybody just shut up for a minute!” Narrowing my eyes, I managed to take control of my errant TK. David sighed in relief when the crystals began a slow descent to the table.

“
Thank you.”

“
I'm sorry.” Raking a hand through my hair, I crammed all things psychic into a dark corner and slammed a mental blast door shut before saying anything else. “Look, Thorandryll, I want everything you know before I take another step on this case, or I'm done with it.”

“
I've told you...”

It was satisfying, in a totally petty way, to cut him off with
“Fine. Your refund check will be waiting at the office. Minus my hours and expenses already occurred.”

“
You gave your word...”

I grinned at my listening friends.
“I agreed to take your case based on the information you gave me. It wasn’t truthful, so the deal's off.” Before he could respond, I hit the button to end the call.

Damian took a sip of his coffee before asking,
“You're not serious, are you?”

“
Nope. You know I have to find it.” A smile was still plastered across my face. “But it sure felt good to hit him over the head with that.”

Jo laughed.
“Are you starting a new list? ‘Elves I've pissed off’?”

“
You bet.” My phone rang. It was the elf, and I enjoyed turning it off.

“
Cordi, do you have time to take trip out to the crime scene with me? Perhaps you'll pick up something we can both use.” Damian grimaced. “Anything.”

“
Sure.”

“
We'll work on deciphering this,” David muttered, head once more bent over the scrap.

“
Thanks. I'll buy lunch today,” I offered, and everyone accepted.

Illusion was sent home after he finished slurping up his dog-
acinno. Once in Damian’s car, we tossed around ideas.

“
Dead Guy stole the book, with magical assistance to help him sneak into Thorandryll's faerie mound.” I paused, rethinking the last part, and snickered. “Is it just me, or did that sound dirty?”

He laughed.
“It does now.”

“
Okay, so Dead Guy staked a vampire at the construction site. But why were they there?”

Slowing the car for a red light, he shrugged.
“Maybe that's where the book was passed off? By the way, Dead Guy's name is Thomas Merricott. He had the plastic surgery roughly ten months ago.”

“
Huh. Do you think he was planning to steal the book that long ago?”

“
Since we now know that it's a grimoire, I'm leaning toward 'yes'. Faerie mounds aren't easy to get into without an invitation.” The light changed, and he eased the car forward.

“
True. But if he was using that concealment spell, I don't get why he had the implants.” Puzzling over that for a minute, I shrugged it off. “Grimoires, how often do they have spells or wards in place to protect them?”

“
It’s a standard practice. Dark magic users are secretive, and jealously protective of what they learn or create.”

I made a note to ask Thorandryll what sort of protection the book had other than a flame illusion.
“Jo said that vampires and cultists don't mix well, so what was a vampire doing there?”

“
She's right, and the vampire did end up ash.” Damian frowned while signaling a turn. “A cult trying to acquire a grimoire by any means necessary makes sense. But vampires can't do magic.”

“
As far as we know.” We'd reached the construction site, and traded a look once he'd parked his car. “Maybe the vampire was a case of wrong place, wrong time. The book is probably in Dead Guy's cult leader's hands.”

The site was a lot less spooky in the daylight. A soft breeze rustled the plastic covering piles of building material. I continued with a glance up at the
cloudless blue sky. “Nick and I are checking out human-owned Goth clubs. I'll let you know if we find anything.”

“
All right.” Damian produced a key and unlocked the gate. “Maybe we'll find out something today.”

We didn't. I went over every inch of the unfinished room, but nothing happened. Two hours of trying with nothing to show for it was exasperating.
“Sorry.”

“
Something could pop up later.” He shrugged, patting my shoulder. “Let's go back to the Orb and see what they've managed.”

We'd just cleared the building when I had a flash, and a red thread stretched out, ending just ten feet before us.
“What the hell?”

Damian glanced around.
“What…”

Something swirled into existence before us in a cloud of black and red. I felt an internal click, and a faintly green bubble enclosed us. Damian huffed out a breath.
“Very quick.”

“
Thanks. Uh, is that...?” I pointed at the being taking shape. Later was time enough to figure out how the hell I’d just created an external shield.

“
A demon, yes.” He straightened his jacket and spoke into the air while tidying sun-streaked hair. “Illy, I need you.”

A soft whisper of sound. The husky faded into view with a guilty expression and an empty meat package in his mouth. Damian sighed.
“What is it with you and the damn trash?”