Low Midnight (Kitty Norville Book 13) Page 20

  “Some advice,” Cormac said. “There’s no gold up here, or if there is you aren’t going to get it out with magic. Magic’s not going to make you rich, and it won’t make you strong. You mess around with it long enough, it’ll make you dead. Especially if you don’t know what the hell you’re doing. Go back to your black market and your drug running or whatever the hell it is you’re doing. And leave me alone.”

  Layne didn’t say anything, just lay there groaning, spitting curses. Cormac walked away.

  Chapter 25

  HE WAS glad for the couple of miles of walking. Gave him a chance to burn off the adrenaline and a bad case of nerves. He stretched the hand he’d used to punch Layne; it was sore, but not busted. The skin was scraped up. He was tingling all over, fight response still burning through him, waiting for the next blow. The walk gave his heart a chance to slow down.

  Amelia was quiet. Maybe thinking hard like he was, about what would have happened if they’d kept going, brought down that lightning spell on Layne’s head—and had it strike them instead. It wouldn’t even have looked like murder, just an unlucky bit of chance, getting struck by lightning in the foothills. Accidental, however mysterious, just like the other deaths. The perfect weapon in a wizards’ duel—the one no one even knew was there.

  When he reached the Jeep, he wasn’t done moving. He drove east for a while, out of the hills and to the plains, flat scrubby farmland covered by a dusting of new snow. Dawn was breaking by then, the overcast sky going pale. He stopped, pulled over, sat there watching the sky get lighter through the windshield, until the gray clouds turned pink with the rising sun, and the snow in the fields sparkled, crystalline with ice. The sun itself broke over the horizon, an unreal shape burning orange, peering through a clear space for ten or fifteen minutes before disappearing behind clouds.

  It’s beautiful.

  He agreed. But he also thought, of course. He took it for granted that a sunrise was beautiful. Just like sunsets. And the mountains, a bull elk walking through a morning mist, a hawk soaring on the hunt. It hardly needed mentioning.

  Are you ready to look at what we won, then?

  He found the amulet in the pocket where he’d shoved it. In the morning light, they finally had a chance to study it.

  The thing was simply crafted, with only moderate skill. The bronze cross shape had a lead border soldered around the edges, roughly done, bubbles and irregularities visible in spots. A wire loop had been soldered on. The bronze itself was clean, polished, front and back. When he held it up, he could see his reflection, a wavery, yellow-tinged version of himself.

  It’s a mirror, literally, Amelia said. In ancient times, before mirrors made with silver-painted glass came about, people used polished brass or bronze. I believe this is very old, Cormac.

  Where do you suppose Milo Kuzniak got it?

  Haven’t any idea. Boggles the mind, doesn’t it?

  Of course it did. That was what all this was for, boggling the mind.

  I could scry. See if there’s any mention in the usual arcane literature of this sort of spell—or perhaps even the existence of this specific amulet, though I think that’s unlikely.

  He started the Jeep and put it into gear.

  May I ask where we’re going?

  “Manitou Springs. To see Judi and Frida. This thing’s a red herring. I want to get back to cracking Amy’s book of shadows.”

  But— She stopped. Didn’t argue.

  Cormac kept driving, west this time, back to town.

  * * *

  THEY GOT to the Manitou Wishing Well before it opened. On the plus side, there was plenty of parking on the street right out front. He found a coffee shop nearby and bought the biggest coffee they had and a Danish. Enough fuel to keep him going for a couple more hours. He watched the tourist stretch wake up for the day, lights coming on and shops opening, until Judi came to the window and turned the hand-painted sign hung on the door from CLOSED to OPEN.

  No point in waiting.

  He walked in, found Judi restocking T-shirts and Frida sorting receipts by the cash register. They stared at him and seemed surprised to see him.

  He stalked to the counter by Frida, put down the mirror amulet, and turned to face them. Judi had drifted over; they both stared. Esther the cat thudded onto the far end of the counter, curled her tail around her, and blinked calmly at him. Cormac looked at her, sidelong, suspicious, before launching in on it.

  “Milo Kuzniak didn’t kill Augustus Crane. Not outright. He probably didn’t know much magic at all, but he had this. Crane killed himself. He went out there to get rid of Kuzniak, and whatever spell he used doubled back and killed him instead. Not sure what exactly this is, what kind of magic is tangled up in it, but it’s some kind of reflective spell. Murder solved. And the bad guys you were worried about? I don’t think they’ll be poking around anymore.”

  He leaned on the counter, regarding them, and waited for a response. He seemed to have startled them, which was okay. He’d wait.

  Frida pointed at the glass. “Could you not lean on that? I just cleaned it.”

  Cormac crossed his arms.

  Judi finally nodded. “Right. Okay. That makes sense.” She picked up the amulet. Turned it back and forth in the light. It seemed so harmless, a junk-store trinket. “This little thing? Are you sure?”

  “Pretty sure.” No need to tell them it had been used to kill another man recently. “That it? Was this what you needed to know?”

  The two women looked at each other, exchanging some silent reassurance.

  Frida said, “How did you find this? We could never find anything.”

  “It took some luck. I had a few contacts. Turned out, Milo Kuzniak’s great-grandson had it. He was following in his ancestor’s footsteps, trying to get gold out of that plateau.” He gave a little shrug.

  “Great-grandson?” she said, astonished.

  Wasn’t any more unbelievable than anything else about this story.

  Frida said, “Then it’s all just this? Whatever lingering magic is up there, it’s not a danger to anyone?”

  “I don’t think so. It’s all shadows anymore.”

  “Thank you,” Judi breathed, wondering. She replaced the amulet on the counter, gingerly, as if it had burned her.

  Cormac asked, “So—you have the key to Amy’s book? Am I worthy?”

  He thought she might back out of the deal, or that she had been lying about knowing how to read the book. He expected her to say she didn’t know, and he didn’t know how he was going to deal with it. Not like he could beat up a couple of old women like he beat up Layne.

  But Judi nodded, moving around the counter to the back room. “Of course. I’ll go get it.”

  That left him face-to-face with Frida, who regarded him with bemusement.

  “I didn’t think you’d find anything,” she said. “I figured we’d never see you again. I mostly suggested it to try to get rid of you.”

  That was fair, the mistrust being mutual. “What’s in Amy’s book—it’s too important to just let go. I wasn’t going to walk away.”

  “I see that now.”

  Cormac pushed the amulet across to her. “I figure this is yours. You hired me to find out what happened—this is it.”

  Frida regarded it as if it were on fire. Donning a wry smile, she pushed it back. “No, you keep it. I have a feeling you’ll need it more than we ever will.”

  It was a hot potato, then, and he didn’t want anything to do with it. It was Amelia who reached for it and said, “I might just at that,” as she slipped it in a jacket pocket.

  The cat yawned, showing a mouth full of teeth, and bounded off the counter and away.

  Judi returned with a tiny hardcover journal, no bigger than a credit card. Another damned book. She flipped through the pages, smiling fondly, stroking the edge of the cover. A last connection to the dead. A farewell.

  She explained, “It was a code we worked out together, just the two of us, when she was in h
igh school. She didn’t want anyone to know what she was getting into, but she knew I’d understand. I’m the one who set her on this path, after all. For good or ill.” If she had regrets, she hid them well, behind a simple sad smile and a serene gaze.

  She’s wise, Amelia said. She shouldn’t blame herself. She couldn’t have known what Amy would do. Amy followed her own path in the end. Like I did.

  “It’s a substitution cipher. It’s a different key for every page, and each page will mark what key to use. The code’s not totally unbreakable, but it’s rather difficult because we based it on syllables, not letters. Here’s the key.”

  She handed him the little book. It felt like taking hold of someone’s soul. Maybe it was—Amy’s heart, her intentions, scribbled in lines of writing and symbols. He flipped through a few pages. It didn’t make any more sense than her book did, but he recognized the symbols, and there was a repetitive quality to it—symbols, and what they meant—that could be applied to the book of shadows.

  This make sense to you? he questioned Amelia.

  Oh, yes. This will do nicely. Give me a little time, I’ll have it. They seemed to have converted English to a syllabic script, then encrypted the text. A rather lovely system.

  He put the book in his pocket before she could get too involved. “Thank you,” Cormac said, heartfelt.

  “This isn’t just idle curiosity,” Judi said. “You need this for something. You’re on some kind of quest.”

  “More like fighting a battle,” he said. “Amy’s book might have just what we need to win.”

  Judi asked, “This battle—who are you fighting against? How bad is it?”

  How to explain in just a few words? The things he’d seen, the battles he’d already fought—he couldn’t explain. Not without sounding crazy. Not without scaring them.

  “It’s pretty bad,” he said.

  “Oh. Well. Good luck, then,” she said.

  He gave a wave and walked out of the shop.

  Chapter 26

  AMELIA WORKED for a week, printed pages from the grimoire on one side of the table, blank sheets where she deciphered the writing on the other. The stack of deciphered pages grew. For now, she didn’t worry about reading them, about picking apart the meaning. Just get it all translated, then read. Cormac had to force her to take breaks; she might have been disembodied, but he had to eat and sleep.

  What they initially gleaned from Amy’s spellbook: She had written about the lore she encountered, the spells and rituals, and poured out her thoughts about what they meant, how they might have developed, and how she might use them. This was before she met Kumarbis. After she met Kumarbis, she wrote what she learned from him. The stories he told her, the spells he taught her. Her tone became starstruck early on, as she grew enamored of the sheer weight of history behind him—he’d existed for more than three thousand years, Kitty estimated. Amy wanted to be a part of the story. She embraced his quest and did what she could to solve the puzzle of what he was trying to do—exactly how, once the vampire had collected enough allies and power, he was going to assert himself on the world and defeat Roman. Kumarbis knew everything about Roman—up to a point. Amy had tried to examine everything about that point she could. The trouble was, Kumarbis simply didn’t know everything about Roman, Dux Bellorum. Once the two had gone their separate ways, Kumarbis was cut off.

  It could have been me, Amelia observed, nearing the end of her decoding. If Kumarbis had found me in Istanbul or Baghdad or any of the other cities I spent time in, I’d have been just as starstruck. I’d have followed him just as eagerly as Amy did, so I could learn more. Learn everything. Perhaps we do have much in common.

  The whole thing made Cormac a little bit sad.

  When Cormac had some kind of handle on the narrative and the information it held, he called Kitty.

  “Oh my God,” she said, before hello even. “Why haven’t you been answering your phone?”

  “I’ve been busy,” he said curtly.

  “Well yeah, obviously, but you can’t at least check in once in a while?”

  “Were you worried about me?”

  He heard amusement in her voice. “I only worry when I get calls from the police about you.” Well. That was fair. “And Ben drove by your apartment and saw your Jeep parked there, and he said that probably meant you were working and you’d call when you were good and ready.”

  Also fair. Made him nervous sometimes, how well Ben knew him. Nervous, and lucky.

  “We have to talk,” he said. “I got the key to decoding Amy’s book, and I think I found something.”

  She paused a moment, then said, “You should probably come over.”

  * * *

  HE ARRIVED at their house and found a home-cooked dinner waiting. He felt another one of those moments of displacement. On the one hand, this wasn’t him, this house in the suburbs and dinner with glasses of wine and actual domesticity; on the other hand, he could get used to it. It left him standing at the edge of the kitchen, bundle of papers under his arm, torn in two directions.

  Amelia nudged him to say “thank you” and take his seat at the table to share in salad and pasta marinara. By unspoken agreement, they waited until after food to talk. Even so, Kitty still had food on her plate when she leaned forward, eyes wide, and asked, “Well?”

  “Where should I start?” Cormac asked. The story was a tangle that he was still working out.

  “Start with the hundred-and-fifteen-year-old murder,” Ben asked. “You didn’t actually figure it out, did you?”

  “I believe I did,” Cormac answered smugly, and told a trimmed-down version of the whole thing. He left out the parts where he committed arson, failed to report a suspicious death to the proper authorities, and beat the crap out of Anderson Layne. By the skeptical looks on their faces, he was pretty sure Ben and Kitty guessed he was leaving out details. They were smart enough not to push him.

  “And Judi gave you the key, just like that?” Kitty said.

  “Whole code, all laid out.”

  “So she could have helped you all along.”

  He said, “I think they wanted to make sure I was serious. That I wasn’t just screwing around.”

  “So it really was a test like in a fairy tale.” Kitty wrinkled her nose.

  “Whatever it was—the key worked. Amelia decoded the whole thing.” He thumbed the stack of pages he’d brought. He figured Kitty would appreciate the reading. “I also asked your Web guy to take down the online version. Figure we didn’t need it hanging around anymore.”

  “And … what?” she said, and sure enough she was reaching for the stack with curved, clawlike fingers. “You find anything? Did she say anything?”

  He could sit there with half a grin on his face and drive her nuts, but he didn’t. He had the page folded down, the one where Amy explained why Kumarbis dedicated himself to destroying Roman, and drew it out to hand to Kitty.

  Her eyes scanned over the lines, written in Amelia’s pointed cursive, and she started reading out loud.

  “‘So amazing, thinking that such a power might exist. And yet utterly chilling. Kumarbis, for all his vague notions, for all his damaged psyche, is right—even if Dux Bellorum did nothing else, what he did at Herculaneum means he is viciously dangerous and must be stopped.’”

  “Herculaneum?” Ben said. “What’s that have to do with anything?”

  Cormac said, “Herculaneum is another town buried by the eruption of Vesuvius that destroyed Pompeii.”

  “I know, but what does it have to do—”

  “Wait. Be quiet, I have to think.” Kitty put up her hand, scrunched up her face, held her head as if she could squeeze the memory out. “It was something Kumarbis said, but it was right before everything went to hell. It’s all a mess … I can’t remember.” She opened her eyes wide. “Herculaneum. When I asked him about the Manus Herculei, that artifact Roman was going after, he said it didn’t refer to Hercules, it was Herculaneum. I just remember thinking, what the hell
is that? Then I had other things to deal with.” Her thoughts darkened, turned inward. The trauma surfaced, sometimes. But she buried it quickly.

  Ben was the one who broke the heavy silence. “Wait—so we are saying that Roman used magic to cause the eruption of Vesuvius? That’s the implication here, right?”

  Because this wasn’t the first time Cormac and Amelia had been presented with that possibility, they weren’t surprised.

  “Could he do it again?” Kitty asked softly.

  That was the implication. They still weren’t any closer to finding Roman or knowing how to stop him.

  Ben said, “So, what, we need a geologist on the team now? We can’t guard every active volcano on the planet. Even if he was able to make a volcano explode, why would he do it? What would it accomplish? Who’s to say he didn’t just, I don’t know, hate Pompeii?”

  Kitty reached for the bottle of wine to pour another glass, but it was empty. She sighed. “I’ll spread the word. I’ll let everyone know what we’ve found. Maybe the old vampires like Marid can shed some light on things. Um, no pun intended.” She considered her empty glass of wine and furrowed her brow.

  Meanwhile, Ben had gone to the cupboard to fetch another bottle, and he refilled Kitty’s glass. Cormac shook his head at the offer of more. He needed to hit the road soon.

  He’d gone and solved a whole collection of mysteries, a hundred-year-old murder and a magician’s secret code. He even got paid—even if it was Layne’s dirty money. Still spent the same. He ought to feel satisfied. Instead, he had a nagging suspicion he was missing something.

  * * *

  CORMAC LAID them all out on his table at home: one of the mangled coins of Dux Bellorum, the first one that had belonged to Kumarbis himself; a pair of goggles with very dark glass and aged leather that once belonged to a demon who might very well have come from Hell; the USB drive that had belonged to Amy Scanlon, in its reliquary; and Milo Kuzniak’s mirrored amulet, which didn’t have anything to do with the others, but he might as well keep it with the rest of the trophies. The rest of the clues. Mysteries with loose ends hanging.