The Collected Christopher Connery (30 page)

Thanks to the tangle of baggage by her feet, it took Gail
a few moments longer than Arthur to throw her door open and shove herself
outside. By then, the Graveses had vanished into a nearby alley. Gail pounded
after them, hoping to god they didn’t get swallowed up by an evil trashcan or
whatever Connery might have waiting for them.

As it turned out, she needn’t have worried. The twins
seemed to have the situation more or less under control, but boy, what a
situation it was. Arthur was kneeling beside Xavier, who looked like he’d come
off the worse in a fight with a lactating cow and a vegetable cart, while Nia
was drawing a spell around another guy, dressed only in a tattered shirt and
plastered to the wall of the alley like he’d been glued there.

“If I may ask –” she began.

“What the hell is going on?” Nia offered, looking up from
her work with a small smile.

“That was about the whole of it, yeah.”

Her question was answered by Xavier, who was using
Arthur’s handkerchief to wipe milk from his face. “I’m pretty sure your
associates just saved my life.” When he pulled the handkerchief away, Gail saw
he had a nasty cut above one eye, a bruise on his jaw, and what looked like
fingermarks on his neck. Despite all that he managed a shaky grin. “I didn’t
expect to see you again so soon, Gail.”

“Well, I noticed we were getting near your place, but we
were – shit, Xavier,” Gail said. “What the hell happened to you?”

Xavier looked at the half-naked man pressed against the
alley wall. Whatever magic Nia had done didn’t allow him to move much, but his
fingers were clawing at the brick, as though he couldn’t wait to get his hands
around Xavier’s throat again.

“He attacked you?”

“Yeah,” Xavier answered a little hoarsely. “I was walking
home with some groceries and he came out of nowhere.” He looked sadly at the
spilled food littering the street. “I wonder if I can save any of this. I like
to have extra food on hand this time of year. You know, just in case any of the
kids come by.”

Right, the school. The place had just been getting off
the ground back when Gail had first met Xavier. She’d even helped build the
extension Xavier had put on his house for a proper classroom. “How many
regulars you got now?”

“About thirty.”

“Damn.” Back when the schoolroom had first gone up,
there’d been maybe ten.

“I try to give them one meal a day during the school
year, but some of them come by during the holidays too. Sometimes supplies run
short at home, you know.”

“Yeah,” Gail said quietly. “I know.”
All right, Gail,
back to work.
“When we’re done taking care of this, we’ll drive you home.
Doc should probably take a look at you anyway. You got the shit kicked out of
you.”

“I think I’m okay –” Xavier’s voice caught on a cough. He
winced and rubbed his bruised throat. “Actually, maybe you have a point.
Thanks.”

Arthur took Xavier by the arm. “I’ll take a quick look
now. Then we can clean up the groceries.”

Xavier’s injuries must have been paining him because he
didn’t object, allowing Arthur to lead him to the mouth of the alley where the
light was better.

Gail joined Nia by the wall, watching as Nia drew a
complicated circle around the trapped man’s feet.

“So,” she said, putting her hands on her hips. “We didn’t
find Connery, but you caught yourself a naked man. That’s something at least.”

“Oh, hush.” Nia finished the circle and triggered a spell
that made the wall-hugging man slump to the ground, apparently sound asleep.
Tucking her chalk back into her handbag, Nia said, “Help me turn him over.”

“I’d rather not, honestly.” But Gail put her hands on the
man’s bony shoulders and rolled him on to his back. Then she drew back with a
hiss of disgust. Whoever this guy was, he hadn’t been taking very good care of
himself. His skin was a canvass of water burns and he smelled like he’d been
bathing in sewage for a week. Even asleep, his hands kept jittering at his
sides and his mouth moved constantly like he was choking on silent words. “What
the hell is wrong with him?”

“He’s
completely
magic-addled,” Nia said with
something approaching glee. “If I had to guess, he was ensorcelled until very
recently.”

“En-what?”

“It’s what happens when someone agrees to be hypnotized
by a magician. It can only be done with the subject’s consent and it doesn’t
work on everyone, even with consent. If it
does
succeed, however, it
puts the subject into a trance of sorts. They can be given instructions and
made to carry them out.”

“And people agree to this?”

“Certainly! Though for obvious reasons it’s only
magicians who are supposed to undergo the process. And only after knowing all
the risks.”

“And what kind of instructions are we talking about?”

Nia’s eyes were shining more brightly than seemed
appropriate for the subject matter. “They can be given the strength and skill
to do things they couldn’t normally do, find things in secret places without
knowing. And they can
hide
things in secret places too.” She turned her
gleaming eyes up to Gail as if waiting for her to join in the excitement.

“I don’t –” A thought brought Gail up short. “Let me
guess, you can tell what magician hypnotized this guy.”

Nia nodded enthusiastically.

Gail pretended to think for a minute the snapped her
fingers. “I get it. It was that friend you bought the ugly hat for. She sent
this man to attack Xavier as a kind of very subtle revenge.”

Making a small irritated noise – that was a lot closer to
a laugh than she probably intended – Nia lightly slapped Gail’s arm with the
back of her hand. “You’re not funny.
Connery
did this!”

“Oh right, him.” Gail looked down at the sleeping man
again and, seeing how tightly the man’s skin clung to his skull and ribs,
didn’t feel much like joking anymore. “So he was using this guy to do his dirty
work after he died. He must have put him in a trance, so he couldn’t screw it
up. You think he was the one putting all the bits where they belonged?”

Perhaps taking a cue from Gail’s expression, Nia sobered
herself. “It looks that way. It makes sense. If Connery set the majority of the
traps up beforehand, all this man would have to do is place the pieces and then
trigger the dormant spells using predrawn circles provided by Connery. Of course
seeing as he’s a layman, both the ensorcelling and the spell casting would have
had a deleterious effect on his physical and mental health.”

“Looks that way,” Gail said.

“If it helps at all, this man was likely one of Connery’s
right-hand men. The ensorcelling could not have been done without his consent.”

“Yeah, Connery probably offered him a hell of a reward,
though I doubt the poor bastard thought he’d end up like this.” As Gail watched
the man mumbling and twitching on the filthy ground, she realized how close
she’d come to ending up just this way. She couldn’t stop herself from rubbing
her temples at the memory. She was glad Nia wasn’t watching. She didn’t need
her feeling guilty over that again.

“No, he probably didn’t,” Nia admitted as she looked down
at the man. “Maybe there’s something I can do for him.” The excitement on Nia’s
face had settled down to energetic determination.

Gail studied the man doubtfully. “You think?”

“His mind is beyond saving, but I might be able to make
him more comfortable.”  She glanced uncertainly toward the mouth of the
alley. “I suppose we should take him back to the hotel. The Academy would be
better, but I doubt they would welcome me bringing magic-addled laymen to their
doorstep before I’ve even completed my assignment. Maybe we could…”

“Excuse me, Illuminator Graves?”

Gail turned her head to find Xavier and Arthur standing
nearby, arms overflowing with the salvageable groceries. Gail made a mental
note to sneak a bit of money into Xavier’s wallet before they split up again.

“Sorry to interrupt,” Xavier said. “But this man here…
He’s not well, is he?”

Nia shook her head. “No, I’m afraid he isn’t.”

“But you think you can help him?”

“I – perhaps. I simply need a space to work.”

Xavier rubbed his bruised jaw as he gazed down at his
emaciated attacker. Then he nodded, as if he’d made a decision. “All right.
We’ll bring him back to my place.”

“Are you sure?” said Gail. “I mean, not for nothing,
Xavier, but he just tried to kill you.”

“Yeah, but if he’s not in his right mind, I can’t really
blame him, can I? Anyway,” he went on with a smile for each of the Graveses, “I
don’t think I’ll need to worry about it happening again with you all around.”

“Thank you very much, Mr. Rivers,” Nia said before Gail
could say anything else. She got to her feet, brushing dirt and chalk from her
skirt. “I promise we won’t impose for long.”

Xavier smiled again. “It’s no imposition.”

Gail still wasn’t sure about this. She didn’t like involving
civilians in her cases if she could help it, especially not friends. That was
only asking for trouble. But it was plain Nia didn’t follow a similar
philosophy and without her support, Gail had no way of arguing with Xavier’s
hospitality. Getting down on one knee, she put her hands under the sleeping
man’s arms, lifting him with little difficulty. By drawing one of his arms
around her shoulder, she could drag him along easily enough. He didn’t weigh
any more than a bag of sticks, but his skin burned with nauseating heat.
I
really hope he doesn’t have anything catching.

“Lead on, men.”

Arthur and Xavier headed out of the alley with the
groceries, while Gail and Nia followed more slowly, Gail doing her best to stop
the naked man from dragging across the ground too much.

“Arthur was very brave, you know,” Nia murmured to her as
they walked. “If he hadn’t knocked the man aside long enough for me to prepare
the restraining spell, I fear Mister Rivers might have been injured far worse.”

At the moment, Arthur, with a little help from Xavier’s
elbow, was trying to stop a bushel of carrots from falling to the ground. “Good
for doc.”
I’m sure Xavier was impressed too, which might only make this
visit more awkward considering the whole ‘no dating laymen’ thing.
But
there was nothing to be done about it now.

Nia’s eyes settled thoughtfully on the unconscious man in
Gail’s arms. “If I can clear his mind enough, perhaps he could tell us about
the instructions Connery gave him. It could simplify things considerably.”

“It sure would, but I’m not going to get my hopes up.”
Gail wasn’t sure this poor bastard had any clarity left in him.

It wasn’t the most uncomfortable car ride of Gail’s life
– that honor belonged to a cab ride during which she had discovered that her current
ladyfriend was also seeing the cab driver who had picked them up – but it sure
as hell was near the top of the list. With Xavier riding in the passenger seat
beside Arthur, Nia and Gail had to crowd into the backseat. That wouldn’t
necessarily have been a bad thing except they also had a magic-addled
mostly-naked man napping across their laps.

As Gail tried to shift into a position that didn’t
involve touching any of the man’s more private anatomy, she noticed they were
passing through a familiar part of town. “Hey, this is where I used to come for
school when Blessing flooded too badly.”

“I forgot you lived in Wet Blessing,” Xavier said.

“Your mom was born down there, right?”

“Yeah, but thankfully she got a better job and we were
able to get out.” He glanced over his shoulder at Gail with an apologetic
grimace. “No offense.”

“None taken.” If she had managed to get out of Blessing
earlier, things might have gone a lot different. For her and for Dad.

“What is Wet Blessing?” Nia asked after pushing the
sleeping man’s knee away from her face. “Is it a place? It has an odd-sounding
name.”

Gail laughed. “I’m sure that’s not what it’d be called on
a map if anyone ever got around to putting it on one, but that’s what I’ve
always heard it called. Anyway, it’s down by the riverbed, under the old bridge
on the south end of Gracetown.”

“It’s half under water most of year,” Xavier added.

“Not half,” Gail said quickly, feeling Nia’s eyes on her.
“Maybe a quarter.”  

The farther they drove, the more rundown the buildings
became until they seemed to be leaning against each other for support.
Returning home wasn’t anything new for Gail. Hell, the first couple of times
she had run away from the children’s home, she’d headed straight back to Wet
Blessing and before the Connery case had eaten her career, she’d often handled
Gracetown cases, Xavier’s included. She had a firsthand knowledge of the place
most cops and PIs lacked and, more importantly, she wanted to help out. It was
a small way to give back to the people she’d grown up with, the people who
spent their entire lives clinging to New Crossbridge with all they had while
the city tried to wash them away.

Even so, it was hard not to see the place through Nia and
Arthur’s eyes. She didn’t miss the way Arthur cursed under his breath when they
passed a group of women hauling water in bowls and buckets and jars and
whatever else they had at hand, or how Nia stared at a house with a patchwork
roof of wooden planks and rotting shingles.

Our roof was made of scrap metal,
she almost said,
but held her tongue. All that comment would get her was wide-eyed pity, which
was the last thing she wanted from Nia.

Finally, Xavier directed Arthur down the street that led
up to his place. It was a damn nice place too, by Gracetown standards. It was
surrounded on three sides by a wooden fence. The boards were as crooked as
overcrowded teeth, but Xavier invested in magically resistant paint to keep
them a shining bright white. Inside the fence were three buildings: a slouching
old toolshed, a cement garage, and Xavier’s house, which was admittedly an odd
sight for those not used to it.