Low Midnight (Kitty Norville Book 13) (25 page)

Amelia knew what offensive spell was her strongest; he felt her confidence. The storm helped; she could chant a phrase and use a talisman to call lightning out of the overcast sky. Fry Layne where he stood. Cormac sort of looked forward to it. At her direction, he found the right talisman, a Thor’s hammer in his left-hand jacket pocket. She could invoke storm magic from a half a dozen cultures, use the energies already brewing above them to strike a blow.

Remember, he told her, you’re a more experienced magician than he is. He doesn’t know what the hell he’s doing.

But what if he doesn’t have to?

The comment made him pause, and he tilted his head as if listening. Quickly he brought his gaze back to Layne, and wondered what the other man made of the gesture. Only a handful of people knew about Amelia. To everyone else, Cormac had just suddenly become a powerful magician. Part of the legend, right?

The snow remained scant, occasional flakes rather than a real snowfall. Not enough to interfere with his line of sight. But the clouds thickened, billows like cotton batting gathering overhead. His hair stood on end, from static cracking in the air.

Layne stood like a man invincible, who could not fail. He knows something, Cormac thought.

Amelia had retreated into herself, pondering. Cormac nudged her.

What if he doesn’t have to do anything?
she repeated.
A powerful offense is unnecessary if your defensive capabilities are strong enough. What if, what if …

“I thought you were badass, Bennett! Show me what you’ve got!”

He’s provoking us. He wants us to attack.

It did seem that way. He’d set some kind of trap, and if they attacked him outright, they’d walk right into it. Cormac was raised to be a hunter; he was a patient man. The longer he stood and glared at Layne, the more flustered the man would get. He had time. More important that they figure this out.

Blue and white streaks of light flashed in the clouds, lightning waiting to be summoned. All Amelia had to do was say the word and call down a bolt to smash Layne.

He’s not a magician,
Amelia said, her thoughts racing.
All he has is the amulet.

That was it. The key to it all.

“I’ve got it,” he murmured, at the same time Amelia realized,
I’ve got it.

That was what the amulet was, what it did—somehow, it used a magician’s attack against him. The original Milo Kuzniak didn’t have any magical ability, just smoke and mirrors and a notebook filled with folklore, but when Augustus Crane attacked, he died. And when the younger Milo Kuzniak attacked, he died.

It’s a mirror. The amulet is reflective. I call down lightning on Layne, I’d only be calling it down on myself. I can’t do anything to him, Cormac.
Through him, she made a gesture, dropped the Thor’s hammer back in his pocket. The static charge in the air dissipated, the lightning overhead faded. He breathed out like he’d just left a minefield.

Well then, he thought, I guess it’s up to me. He started walking.

Amelia said,
We’ll need to take care of those men with guns.

Give them a light show, a flash or a bang or something. Won’t need much to scare them off.

Fortunately, she’d brought along some of her reliable standbys—one of them was a thumb-sized quartz crystal, charged with magic to give off brilliant light. And simple, non-magical packs of gunpowder, good for making noise. Surprising, how much of this was just stagecraft.

Layne’s eyes widened in surprise, and Cormac kept his slow pace forward, his gaze focused. His grin showed annoyance.

One of the henchmen called out, “Layne—Layne what’s going on, you want us to—”

“Just hold it,” Layne called back, brusque and clearly nervous. His hands flexed at his sides, as if reaching for a gun. Regular Old West gunfighter. To Cormac he said, “You better watch it. You don’t want to end up dead like Kuzniak, do you? You watch it, Bennett, wait a minute—”

When he was just shy of arm’s reach, Cormac moved fast, left hand flashing out to grab Layne’s collar while his right hand punched hard into his nose.

Layne choked out a cry and tried to stumble back, but Cormac kept hold of his shirt, keeping the guy upright while he stepped in for a hard knee into the groin that dropped him like a rock. This time, Cormac let him fall. Kicked him in the gut for good measure, then fell on him, putting a knee in his back, twisting his arm to immobilize him.

“Layne!” His guys called out, but it had happened so fast they were dumbstruck.

Keeping hold of Layne with one hand, he reached into his pocket for the quartz, which he threw straight up. It lit up with the glow of a sun, a flash like a bomb going off. There were a couple of shouts and screams, and the sound of a couple of grown men tearing through the underbrush, fleeing as if chased by devils.

Cormac gave Layne’s arm an extra twist and waited a moment to see if he was going to struggle. He didn’t. The guy’s face was smashed into the ground, and his breath came out in crying wheezes.

That,
Amelia said.
That was
lovely.

The plateau had gone still. The snow was already slacking off. Just a late winter flurry. Kind of peaceful. Cormac wanted to get the hell out of here. Get inside, get warm, have a drink.

He searched Layne’s pockets, jeans and coat, and found it in the inside coat pocket. Spared little more than a glimpse at it—a Maltese cross, a couple of inches across, made of highly polished bronze, exactly the right size and shape to match the imprint in the book—before slipping it in his own pocket.

He slammed Layne’s face into the ground to stun him before getting up and backing off.

Slowly, Layne rolled to his back. Blood ran down his face from a couple of wounds, a scrape on his forehead and a cut lip. Not to mention that smashed nose. He curled around his gut, moaning in pain and swearing with every breath.

Some coherent phrases broke through. “You can’t take that! That’s mine! It’s
mine
!”

He was beat up, not broken, and his guys would crawl back to check on him soon enough. All Cormac had to do was be gone before they got brave. He was done here.

“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

H
E 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.

*   *   *

T
HEY 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.