Low Midnight (Kitty Norville Book 13) (21 page)

Now, she had Cormac, who never shouted. More than that, he
listened
. She could weep.

*   *   *

A COUPLE
of hours before dawn, she gave up. Cormac collected what was left of the tools and materials and crawled into the Jeep to put his head back and catch an hour or two of sleep.

Amelia didn’t want to sleep.
Perhaps if we perform the spell on the night of a full moon—

He shook his head. “You know I don’t like to spend full moon nights running all over hell and back.”

Surely Kitty and Ben can do without you for one night.

The couple didn’t know it, but Cormac liked to stay close to town on full moon nights, when their wolf sides took charge, forcing them to shape-shift. They usually went with their pack into the mountains or out east into the remote plains, far away from civilization and trouble. They’d been doing it long enough, they could handle themselves just fine. They’d been just fine without him when he was in prison. But now that he was out, Cormac liked to be within easy reach. They’d never called for help. Not yet. But just in case. “No.”

Then we find someplace near Denver with gold in the rocks. This shouldn’t be hard.

“Are you sure it’s even possible?” She didn’t say anything, which meant she had doubts. “You know that’s the trouble those old alchemists had—if you don’t know something’s impossible, you’ll keep trying until you kill yourself.”

I will not kill myself. I haven’t yet. Cormac, come talk to me in person. So to speak.

This was the woman who had survived her own execution. Cormac shouldn’t even try arguing with her. He let his mind fall into their shared space, the high country meadow.

Here, the sun was setting, casting a late-day glow over the valley, the pattern of clouds and light much like the sunset they had watched the previous evening. The sight gave him a jolt, throwing his sense of time off balance. Time of day, weather—it seemed arbitrary here, when it shouldn’t, because he decided what happened here. Didn’t he?

“The sunset last night,” Amelia said. “You were calm. You latched onto the sense of calm.”

He was sitting on his usual rock; she was standing nearby, looking into the western sky. He guessed she was right. Dealing with his mental state would be easier if he didn’t feel like his brain was working all by itself so much of the time.

“I’d be even more calm if you’d let me sleep.”

She came toward him, eyes lit with enthusiasm. “So many variables are involved in a spell like this, it could take months to test them all.
Years,
even. Performing the spell at midnight locally is a safe choice, of course. But does the phase of the moon play a part, or the time of the year? Both? This might be a spell that can only be performed once in decades, if an alignment of the phase of the moon and planets and one of the solstices or equinoxes is a factor—”

“I don’t want to spend years doing this.”

“Well no, of course not, since we don’t even know if this spell is possible. I’m merely reviewing possibilities. The more I review them, the more I think it can’t work. It’s just as you say, the old alchemy problem, which as it turned out didn’t need magic to solve, but modern chemical manipulation. Kuzniak wrote down plenty of speculation, but I gather he did very little practical testing. It’s less an idea than it is a rumor.”

“Question is,” Cormac said, “does Layne know it doesn’t work? Layne knows I wanted that book—I’m sure he thinks I’m going to go after the gold. Like he did, like Kuzniak did. Why else would I want it?”

“Does that matter?”

“Yeah. It means he isn’t going to leave me alone.”

“Cormac, I’d like to try one more thing, if you agree to it. I’d like to send a message.”

“What message? To who?”

“To the person who wrote to us about Amy Scanlon,” she said, carefully, as if she expected an argument.

Interesting idea. If this person knew about Amy, he knew about magic. It was a long shot, but Cormac was happy enough to light that fuse to see what happened.

Back in the world, eyes open, Amelia typed out the e-mail. “If you know of Amy Scanlon, then you must know something of magic. Perhaps even a great deal. If this is so, I’d like to get your opinion on a situation I’ve encountered. I have information on the possibility of a spell that produces gold, presumably by pulling it directly from the rock without the effort of mining it. It seems to be a sympathetic-based ritual with earth-element components designed to draw forth the desired effect—” and so on.

Her discussion of magic made it sound scientific rather than mystical. She didn’t have any agenda besides just figuring this stuff out, which meant she didn’t need to dress it up in mysticism to impress anyone. She didn’t write what she’d learned in any kind of code, because she wasn’t competing with anyone. Her curiosity was fierce and genuine.

Sometimes, Cormac thought about the kind of magician he might have ended up with living inside his head. Someone determined to control absolutely, who might have broken him without thinking twice. Amelia had tried to break her way in, until she found that negotiating worked better. But say it had been Roman whose spirit was locked in the stones of the prison—Cormac might not have survived. Or worse, he might have survived but been trapped, overcome, crushed by magic and intention, fighting a constant battle just to maintain his self. His whole life co-opted. Would anyone—Ben, Kitty—even have noticed?

Better not to think of it.

She finished writing, read it half a dozen times, still wasn’t fully satisfied but he convinced her it was good enough, so he sent it. Then spent a full minute staring at the screen, waiting for a response that he rationally knew wasn’t likely to show up immediately. He started to shut off the computer.

Just a little longer. An answer could come any second.

“I’m not going to sit around here waiting.”

But—

He shut it down anyway and grabbed his jacket and keys. Best thing to do was to take a walk. Burn off some of the impatience.

Chapter 21

H
E ARRIVED
at New Moon, sure that Kitty and Ben would be there. That was always his excuse. It wasn’t like he
needed
to go out; he’d never go out at all, if not for meeting those two at their restaurant. Maybe an exaggeration, maybe not. Sometimes they weren’t there; he’d go anyway, sit in the back and read a book and have a beer before packing up and going home. But odds were good they’d be there, and he could give them an update on what he’d found. Leaving out the exploding bits, of course.

He went in, paused a moment to take in the shape of the place, the number of people and where they were sitting, the traffic patterns, the mood. This was a mellow after-work crowd, carrying with it an atmosphere both exhausted and giddy. Shaun, working behind the bar tonight, gave Cormac a cautious nod in greeting.

“Kitty here?” Cormac asked.

“She should be here in half an hour or so,” the bartender said. “You want something to drink or are you just dropping by?”

“Sure. The usual.” Predictable. He’d become painfully predictable. He had a usual watering hole where people recognized him and they knew what he drank without asking.

And why not? You’re practically middle-aged, you ought to be more settled than you were in your youth.

He was
not
going to start thinking about that.

Shaun finished pouring the beer and set it on the bar. “Thanks,” Cormac muttered, and carried it to a table in back, where he could sit in a corner and watch. And read—at Amelia’s insistence, he brought along Milo Kuzniak’s notebook. He sat, drank his beer, read, and didn’t much care how it looked from the outside.

Sure enough, Kitty came in about a half an hour later. Ben was with her, and the two were talking. Or she was talking, and he had a vaguely amused smile on while he nodded at her encouragingly. They spotted him quickly, as soon as the door opened. They could smell him.

The ensuing pattern was familiar: she checked in with her pack members, Shaun at the bar and anyone else who happened to be around. She had the friendly, amiable disposition of a politician without the artifice, handing out friendly touches and comforting smiles. Her pack members, the other werewolves, leaned into her, following her with devoted gazes. Cormac wasn’t sure she realized the effect she had on them. She’d say she was just being nice.

Ben came straight over and took the chair across from Cormac. “Well?”

“Well what?”

He shrugged, leaving Cormac wide open to stick his foot in his mouth. Kitty rescued him by sweeping over, setting two mugs of beer on the table, and perching in the other chair. She revealed the book she’d held tucked under her arm and pushed it across the table to him.

“Look what I got. Galleys for the new book. Isn’t it pretty?”

On top of everything else she managed, she was an author. That was more of a sideline to the talk radio show, but if she was going to be doing all that talking anyway, might as well write some of it down.

It was a cheap paperback, not the final fancy hardcover that would be out in a few months.
Storytellers: Myth and History,
the title read. The cover was a photograph, her portrait against a backdrop of pine trees. She was all made up and airbrushed and looked like a celebrity, which he supposed was the idea. But it didn’t look like the Kitty he knew.

“Congratulations,” he said, his tone as even as ever.

“Thanks! This is an extra. You know, if you wanted to read it. Or something.” She blinked hopefully.

He was about to politely decline, but Amelia insisted.
Yes, we want to read it.
He picked up the copy, and Kitty beamed.

“You find out anything new?” Ben asked. “I assume that’s why you’re here.”

“Don’t think I just stopped by for a beer and company?”

“Not that you’d ever admit it,” Ben observed, which was more accurate than not.

“So what have you found?” Kitty demanded.

He started to say something, stopped. Thought for a second about how to condense everything that had happened since the run-in with Nolan and Eddie. Realized that Ben would ask how much of what he’d been doing was technically illegal, and Cormac didn’t precisely know. He didn’t
think
they were trespassing on private land when they experimented with that mining spell. Bottom line, none of it would make Ben and Kitty happy, and he didn’t want the grilling he’d go through if his answer was too vague.

They watched him expectantly, waiting for an answer.

He said, “I got a hit on the stuff we posted online. Don’t know if anything’ll come of it. But it may be another lead.” It all depended on whether or not they had e-mail waiting for them when they got home.

“Yeah?” Kitty asked. “What kind of a hit?”

“Hard to tell. Someone who knows about Amy. And who knows about Kumarbis.”

Kitty sat forward at that—a wolf on the scent, ears up and nose quivering. “Knows how? This person—they must be a vampire, to know about Kumarbis. What would a vampire know about Amy’s book—”

“I told you, I don’t know. We’ve just exchanged a couple of e-mails so far. I’m still feeling the person out.”

She sighed, obviously disappointed. “If you find out anything more, and if you think we can even trust them, find out what they know about Roman, the Long Game, all of it.”

“Yeah. One step at a time.”

“Thank you again,” Kitty said. “For working on all this.”

He brushed her off out of habit. “I figure I’m in it as deep as you are at this point.”

Can you please finish your beer so we can go see if our mysterious correspondent has answered?

How could someone who was functionally dead be that impatient?

Kitty rambled on about the new book, the release schedule, and possibly going on a signing tour, which gave him a twinge of anxiety. Traveling all over the country meeting total strangers—what could possibly go wrong? He nursed his beer and listened to his friends’ banter.

The phone in his pocket rang. He considered not answering, then thought it might be Layne wanting to blow off more steam. Curious, he checked, while Ben and Kitty looked on with interest. Because they were nosy.

The caller ID wasn’t Layne this time. He answered and heard, “Cormac?” It was Mollie.

He got up from the table and walked a few paces off, then realized that wouldn’t be far enough away to keep the couple and their werewolf ears from listening in, so he went out the front door. Aware the whole time that Ben was smirking and Kitty’s eyebrows had lifted—they knew his caller was female.

“Hey,” he answered the phone, propping himself up against the brick wall outside the door.

“Hi. Andy gave me your number.” She didn’t sound happy, and Cormac braced. She waited, and waited. Expectantly.

He said, innocently as he could, which wasn’t very, “Heard you guys had a fire out at the ranch.”

“I should have shot you where you stood, Cormac Bennett. That was my car you blew up.”

He winced. Just his luck. “Well. Thank you for not shooting me.”

“You’re lucky Andy won’t let me call the cops. He won’t even let me call my insurance company, because
they’d
call the cops.”

He wasn’t going to apologize. He refused to apologize. He’d do it all over again. He’d just pick a different car. “What’s he expect you to do?”

“I made Andy give me his car. And five grand.”

“That was big of him.”

“I suppose I deserve it, hanging out with him in the first place. I don’t know what all he gets up to, I don’t want to. But God, Cormac, what the hell!”

“I needed a distraction.”

“I know better than to ask Andy what he’s doing, but you—you all but vanish for twenty years, then show up setting cars on fire? He says you’re some kind of magical vampire hunter—is that true?”

She didn’t know the stories. Didn’t know about his father, had stayed out of the politics of what followed while she was off getting married and having kids.