Shifty Magic (15 page)

"Aye, aye, chief. Thanks for the soda." I
stacked folders as I stood up. "And the sample. If I turn up
anything, I'll let you know."

"Take this. It'll help." He slid an
FBI-issue iC across the table. I slapped my palm down on it
reflexively, only to snatch my hand back from the cool, smooth
touch of high-tech temptation.

The feeling that we were finally getting
along jumped out the window, took a nose dive and splatted on the
pavement. "I told you—"

"Easy tiger." He held up his hands, palms
out. "Before you throw it back in my face, look at it. Note the
word 'temporary' emblazoned in red across your ID badge on the home
screen? It's an agency rental, Addison. Just until we finish the
case."

I eyed the device suspiciously and then
picked it up. The slim weight of the latest iC resting against my
palm felt nice, like I was finally making headway in my career.
Only I hadn't done it. Cooper had. No, not even him. The FBI. Big
brother. Institution with a capital I.

"Temporary has a sneaky way of turning into
permanent," I grumbled.

"It's just a tool, not a commitment."

His tone was casual, lazy even, but my heart
still stopped for a breath before leaping forward like a sprinter.
Knowing Cooper, he wasn't actually talking about technology.

"Tools can be addicting," I countered,
clenching my hand around the iC.

White teeth flashed at me, and he wiggled
his eyebrows. "Only if they're the right ones."

I clamped my lips together to keep a
renegade laugh from escaping, but after a moment gave it up. He was
too ridiculous to hold a grudge against. And he also had a point.
The latest technology could only help me do my job better. I would
be stupid to turn it down. I pocketed the unit and a look of relief
flashed through his eyes. Geez, invested much?

After telling him where to pick me up for
the trip to our fair capital, I headed out. I tried not to feel
desperate about our lack of anything useful to solve this case and
hoped that Falcon came through for me with something
spectacular.

CHAPTER SIX

Magical Gadgets and Bits
had staked
its claim about three years ago in one of the shops in Plaza
Midwood. The area around Thomas Avenue was one of the few places
that wasn't damaged in the initial attack or the skirmishes that
followed, though like everywhere else in the world, it had still
endured plenty of changes. The shop Falcon's uncle owned was a
perfect example.

The glass front was now covered with an
elaborate grate composed of various metals bent into magically
enhanced symbols guaranteed to fry the unsuspecting evil-doer. A
sign warned patrons not to stare at the barrier too long unless
they wanted a blistering headache for their trouble. Inside,
vintage women's wear had been replaced with a hodgepodge of
shelves, barrels, trunks and tables full of all things magical,
magically enhanced or just plain gadgetry.

A lanky kid of seventeen slouched on a stool
behind the counter operating on a hand-sized metallic box with a
few pieces of metal guts sprinkled around it. He had thick hair
that stood up all over his head and was the rusty, tan color of a
deer's hide, eyes like buffed pewter, wire-rimmed glasses, a
re-purposed tool belt around his narrow waist, and a brain that
would have outclassed Einstein's if it hadn't been saturated with
hormones. He was also one of the few people I considered a
friend.

He looked up and grinned. "Addie K, what
up?" Falcon said, reflecting his love of all things early
twenty-first century.

"Official business. Got a paying job."

"Awesome. Gotta keep little Wiz in the
tuna."

I braced my forearms on the counter and
peered at his latest project while he carefully placed a thin
square of what looked like aluminum foil into the center. "Which
electronic creature died and left you its organs?"

He leaned back, beaming at me like a new
father. "Ever wish your scanner could see stuff like a practitioner
does? You know," he splayed out the fingers of his empty hand and
wiggled them dramatically, "like beyond the physical?"

"Not really."

"Well, this one can. Or will. When I get the
reverse quantum matrix figured out." He tapped the small, delicate
pliers against the counter and stared at the scattered
components.

"I have no idea what you're talking about,
but I know it'll be brilliant when you're done."

"Thanks," he said, genuine pleasure wiping
away the frown he'd shot at the ruined scanner. "If I can get it
working, I'll make a fortune off of it. So what brings you into the
land of mystery? The Browning jamming again?"

The weight of my gun against my thigh
surfaced into my awareness. "Hasn't bugged up since you fixed it."
I pulled the small packet of white powder out of my front jean's
pocket and laid it on the counter. "I'm hoping you can tell me what
this is."

He picked up the packet and held it up to
the light coming through the windows behind me. "Looks like
powdered sugar. Where'd you get it?"

"A murder scene."

His hand jumped, but his interest sharpened.
"No kidding?"

"There was a thin circle of this stuff near
the bodies. Currently classified as 'unknown substance'."

Falcon let out a low whistle and glanced at
me. "Plural murders with unknown substances are the worst."
Excitement sparkled in his gray eyes. "I love it!"

"Can I look at the books in the back while
you check that out?"

"Sure," he said, already refocusing his
attention onto the puzzle of the white powder.

I left him to his fun and headed to the back
room where his uncle stored the moldiest of the myth and magic
books. Assuming the symbol I'd shot meant "God" and "revenge" might
satisfy the FBI, but I wanted more. I figured old was probably the
best place to start for my answers.

Plowing through rows of boxes, I wound my
way to the last stack at the back. I remembered seeing it when I
helped Falcon bring the boxes in from an estate sale his uncle had
gone to in Virginia. The carton labeled "Very Ancient Gods" was
still there, right where I'd left it. At the time, Falcon and I had
joked and laughed about the label the eccentric collector had used,
but now the musty cardboard seemed more ominous than silly.

I chastised myself for
mistaking mildew for voodoo and knelt down to have at it. A half
hour and a dozen disintegrating books later, I found what I needed.
Entitled
The Hidden Culture of Dead
Languages
, the slim book was covered in
benign, stained green leather with patchy gold lettering, its pages
made of thick, high-quality paper that had also taken some water
damage.

The author was some Hungarian professor
whose name I couldn't pronounce, and on page one hundred and two, I
found my mysterious symbol. The only difference was the professor
had recorded each character separately, not overlapping like the
one I'd seen. He stated that he did this in deference to his
translator who'd freaked out about the death curse the symbol
supposedly called down. Made me glad I'd shot the blasted
thing.

The main part of the store
was empty when I wandered back out and the neon red
Closed
sign was
flickering above the door. I heard a muttered curse from the
doorway next to the counter and headed in that
direction.

Laying the book next to the disemboweled
scanner as I passed, I sauntered to the entrance to Falcon's
laboratory. "Find anything?" I asked, hanging in the doorway where
I felt relatively safe.

To say the room looked like a mutant high
school chem class didn't do it justice. Smells of sulfur,
fermentation and latex burned my nose while the incomprehensible
muddle of piled junk and wires assailed my eyes. What he needed
with a bicycle tire, crash helmet and a tank that might contain
oxygen and might not was something I wasn't sure I wanted to know.
Geniuses. Wow.

Falcon wore lab goggles and stood hunched
over a chipped dinner plate with a petri dish on it. A single drop
of black liquid from the dropper he held hit what was in the
dish.

I braced myself for anything—explosions,
smoke, screeching banshees...nothing happened.

He sat back and blew out a frustrated
breath. "I was hoping for purple smoke."

"Seriously?"

"Whatever this is, it gave off a faint
magical signature in another test," he said, all retro-speak fun
forgotten in the face of a scientific challenge. "Not enough to
prove anything, so I decided to go for the big guns." He looked
over his shoulder at me, his gray eyes freakishly large behind the
prescription goggles. "That new iC on your belt says FBI. They in
on this?"

"I sense a big bill approaching. That stuff
expensive?" I nodded at the dropper.

He shrugged. "Prehistoric shaman bones,
royal Egyptian mummy dust, a pinch of Dead Sea salt. You know, the
usual rare stuff that's nearly impossible to get your hands on. For
you I'd have a discount. Anyone else..."

"Use the FBI account number on file," I said
with a certain amount of satisfaction. I had to admit, it was nice
not to foot my own bills for a change. "So purple smoke means
practitioner?"

"In this case, time-space bending residue. I
based it off a formula that was used when the first batch of the
old ITZ scanners came out." He pulled off his goggles, tossed them
onto a tangled pile of red and green wires, and then put on his
glasses. "Before the company-who-will-not-be-named bought the
patent."

Grabbing the packet of white powder, he
headed out of the room. "Traitor," he said, nodding at my new iC as
he ambled past.

I self-consciously covered the unit with my
hand and followed him. Being a fan of underdogs everywhere, on
principle Falcon disliked the giant conglomeration that made the
iC. The company had barely missed a beat after the world virtually
turned upside down, and now they dominated the high-tech scene. I
secretly admired their resourcefulness, but I'd never tell him
that. I didn't want to hear the thirty minute lecture that would
follow that kind of confession.

"Maybe you can help me with this," I said,
moving to the other side of the counter and picking up the book. I
flipped to the page I needed. "When I saw it, this symbol," I
pointed at the one that looked a bit like a cursive Z, "was
overlaying this one."

He leaned closer and sneezed.

I jerked the old volume back. "Nice,
Falcon." Pulling up the corner of my tank top, I wiped his spit off
the pages.

"I'm allergic to mold," he said, sniffing
loudly, his face turning bright red as he looked everywhere but my
bare stomach. "Um, that could be Sumerian for God."

Taking pity on him, I tugged my shirt back
into place. "The author claims it dates five-thousand years before
that."

Falcon's interest sharpened and his
embarrassment faded. "What about the other one?"

"Around the same time. Means revenge. All of
which even the FBI figured out. This is the part they didn't." I
pointed to the footnote at the bottom of the page.

"Local myth associated with referenced
tablet fragment," Falcon read out loud, "speaks of a king
compelling his holy man on pain of death to call forth a mighty
warrior from beyond the air. The warrior stepped forth and brother
turned against brother until the streets ran with blood and the
city was destroyed. To this day in local culture, writing or
speaking this name is forbidden."

Sniffing, he leaned in to peer at the
symbol. "And you saw this?"

"It was part of what looked like an
incantation circle."

"Revenge...God. You think
it's that simple? Or it could mean revenge
of
God. Or God's revenge." He took
the book from me and flipped back a few pages, his gaze moving
quickly over the text, his eyes watering with the effort not to
sneeze.

"Call me when you figure it out," I said,
heading for the front door. Until then, Cooper and I had a
professor to interrogate. I had a feeling he might have some
answers for us.

* * *

The city of Raleigh and its outlying neighborhoods hadn't
seen as much fighting as Charlotte. The enemy paranormals had been
too smart to waste their resources on soccer fields and human
suburbia. When your goal is to destroy a civilization so you can
own it, you hit where it hurts—commerce, power sources,
defense.

Unfortunately for the industrial complex
known as Research Triangle Park, the commerce category was a
perfect match. Like the banking district in Charlotte, RTP had been
flattened. Only a few buildings remained, and the rest were rubble,
steadily being consumed by Mother Nature's voracious appetite.

The pitted concrete of one
of those remaining buildings had been painted purple with silver
moons and stars scattered around the double glass doors in an arch.
A large sign above this celestial horror boldly declared
Professor Tasson's International School of
Magic
.

"Holy cats," I muttered as Cooper and I
walked up and took turns standing in front of the scanner mounted
beside the doors. "Shouldn't there be carnival music?"

"I feel a headache starting," he said,
eyeing the silver crescent moons with distaste. Weres tended to be
sensitive about people taking the symbol of their deity, the
goddess Diana, in vain.

After a moment of staring at the solidly
locked doors, Cooper flashed his iC badge at the security camera.
"Paranormal FBI, Agent Daine," he said. "Let's keep this
friendly."