The Courtship of Julian St. Albans (3 page)

The first thing he added was a puff of smoke
captured on a whim one day when she’d been sucking on the foul things at every
possible opportunity. He used a little hint of his own power to send it curling
down around the silver pellets rather than floating up to pollute the air of
his little sanctuary, humming softly to himself to keep it there until the
spelled crucible allowed it to mix with the melting metal.

The second ingredient was a tiny piece of dry
ice, added with tongs, that hissed and steamed and mixed with the smoke in
eerie, ghostly tendrils. Alex gave himself exactly thirteen seconds to watch
the mesmerising patterns before he moved back to the line. He pushed each
container back as he emptied it, forming a second line a few inches back from
the first, and the miniature cooler that had held the dry ice went neatly next
to the now-empty glass globe.

Next was a tiny phial of the purest water he
could acquire, filched from the crime lab’s supply. It, too, bubbled and
steamed when he poured it into the now-molten puddle, but instead of completely
boiling away, it mixed with the slowly swirling liquid. Darker and lighter
streaks now showed in the metal where it had taken in the properties of the
other ingredients, and once again Alex allowed himself time to watch the
patterns before moving on.

A sealed plastic box contained a new green
leaf, from a white lily grown in a hothouse with air filtered of any
pollutants. It added a soft green swirl to the mix, melting rather than burning
up in the shimmering heat from the crucible.

The fifth was another bowl of metal pellets,
exactly seven copper bits to add strength to the piece, and to the recipient’s
resolve. He dropped them in one at a time and the swirling sped up just a
little with each addition until the metal had stirred itself back to a single
colour, taking in everything he’d offered it and giving back the pure shine of
silver.

He double checked the timing, then took the box
and dropped in three hairs, root included, all together. The tuning forks,
which had been slowing dying out, each emitted a pure tone as if struck, then
went silent.

He quickly put out the flame, and used tongs to
remove now-hot tuning forks to a nearby cooling rack, then poured the molten
silver into the mould. He used another, more focused hum of magic to force a
bubble of clean air into the very middle, shaping it so the silver would come
out in one perfect, hollow piece, ready to be polished and worn as soon as it
cooled.

When he looked up at the clock, over an hour
had passed, and he felt that itch in the back of his brain that told him an
insight was brewing.

He cleaned up the rest of his equipment while
he waited for the silver to cool naturally, testing the tuning forks for
warping and putting everything away in its proper place. By the time he was
done, the completed quit-spell amulet was cool enough to remove from the mould,
and he admired the shine of it in the palm of his fireproof glove.

Perfect.

He left it to cool completely in a steel bowl
and went to his library of magical tomes, most of them perfectly normal books
published on a press but a few priceless handwritten diaries of long-dead
magicians. He closed his eyes and passed his hand over the spines, feeling for
something that would resonate with the feeling he’d been chasing since
yesterday in Mandeville’s rooms.

His hand came to rest on one of his rarest, a
bloody huge book bound in a kind of leather it was probably best not to think
about. The pages were made of real parchment, only preserved through the
thoughtful magic of its originator, who unfortunately had wanted to make sure
his ideas lived beyond him.

“This is not perfect,” said Alex,
looking down at the grimoire of one of the must subtle, evil mages in history.
“Not perfect at all.”

~ ~ ~

Alex had the amulet in one pocket and a ream of
disturbing notes in the other, and he determinedly whistled a cheerful tune as
he made his way through the busy halls of the Department of Magical
Investigation. Lapointe wasn’t in her office, but over by the coffee machine,
crowded into the office’s tiny kitchen with several colleagues and at least one
superior.

“I’ve got something for you, and since you
supplied at least two of the ingredients, it’s not a bribe,” said Alex
cheerfully, tossing the smooth silver bauble to Lapointe with a wicked grin.

She raised one eyebrow, but Supervisory Agent
Bristol, her immediate boss, just looked amused. “Benedict’s right, if you
contribute materials for personal magical artefacts it’s officially not
considered a bribe, especially if they help on the job.”

She laughed. “It’s a quit-smoking charm,
not that much of a lifesaver,” she said wryly, but she looked at it with
renewed interest. “Why’s it so light?”

“There’s air inside,” said the
annoyingly handsome man next to her, an Agent MacLean. He pulled a similar
silver charm out of his shirt, the design like a puffy cloud. “It’s like a
breath of fresh air, wherever you go, right?” His accent was delightfully
lilting, and Alex had long fantasised about what it might be like to hear him
say much naughtier things.

“Yes, yes,” said Alex, annoyed as
always that such a lovely specimen could be so very straight. And that Lapointe
was oblivious to his puppyish attempts to get her attention, so Alex couldn’t
even enjoy him vicariously through her. “Anyway, I think I have a lead on
that,” he made a handwavey motion, “that thing I couldn’t
place.”

“Is this about the St. Albans case?”
asked Bristol. “Smedley’s been very smug about the last lead you brought
him, since it was technically his idea to bring you in.”

“It’s a dead end,” said Alex
dismissively. “A last desperate move when the long-term plans didn’t work
out.”

“What plans?” asked Bristol, in the
same breath that Lapointe said, “Whose plans?”

Alex grinned, smugly delighted to finally be on
the hunt for something really interesting. “Those are both excellent
questions,” he said, giving Lapointe’s arm a tug. “Come on, let’s get
some proper coffee and leave these good men to their work.”

Alex nearly laughed at the look of
disappointment on MacLean’s face when Lapointe dumped out the last of her cup
and gave it a halfhearted rinse. “You’re buying,” she said.

“Technically the department’s buying,
since I bill by the hour,” said Alex, unable to hold in his smugness at
that. Since he’d spent the time while working on Murielle’s amulet pondering
the case as well, he’d bill for that, and then in a way the department would
pay for the amulet after all. Speaking of which, “Aren’t you going to wear
it?” he asked, nodding to where she still had it loosely clutched in her
left hand.

“Yes, all right, I was just thinking of
having one last one for the road,” she said wryly before slipping the soft
silk ribbon over her head so the amulet rested in the valley between her
breasts.

MacLean swallowed as she tucked it away and
said with false cheer, “Yours is a bit nicer than mine, I think. Better
designed, I mean.”

“Why, thank you,” said Alex. It made
an excellent exit line so he turned and left, trusting Lapointe would follow.

Curiosity and cops went together nearly as well
as cops and coffee, after all.

~ ~ ~

Alex wheedled a big corner booth for them from
the waitress in their favourite cafe, and ordered their usual snacks and coffee
without bothering to consult Lapointe.

“You could ask,”
she said, amused.

Alex snorted. “It’s not as if you’re not
utterly predictable,” he said, pulling the sheaf of scribbles out of his
other pocket. He knew she couldn’t really understand them, since half of them
were in magical notation and a quarter musical, but he wanted to refer to and
rearrange them to see if any new patterns emerged. “I have something
exciting, anyway.”

“Why does that not fill me with warm and
fuzzy feelings?” she said, looking down at the spiky handwriting going
every which way on the loose pages. “Especially that,” she said,
pointing to a rather nasty bit of sigil work he’d copied out of the book. He’d
been careful not to copy it precisely, or imbue it with any power, but it was
close enough to the original to feel off even to someone as magically null as
Lapointe.

“That’s a good place to start,” said
Alex cheerfully. “It’s a spell of enslavement, meant to bind a person to
your will. I want to look over all of Mandeville’s possessions and see if
there’s anything like it hiding away amongst the bits and baubles. And young
Julian’s as well, though I doubt they’ll let me.”

“That butler was annoyed enough about
letting you into the actual victim’s suite, I don’t think you’ve a chance in
hell of getting into the young master’s private chambers,” she said wryly.

Alex gave a mock pout. “Not even if I
seduced my way in?” he asked, fluttering his eyelashes exaggeratedly.

She laughed as she was meant to, and then they
had to clear some space for the coffee and danishes for him, bagel and cream
cheese for her. “I’ve no doubt you could manage to seduce your way
wherever you wanted,” said the waitress, giving him a cheeky wink and the
extra milk he hadn’t yet bothered to ask for.

Lapointe only laughed
harder, leaving Alex to fend for himself.

“Some places are barred even from my
charms,” he said with mock tragedy.

“Silly places, then,” she said, and
thankfully left before he had to come up with more or accidentally ended up
with a date.

Lapointe finally came up for air to say wryly,
“She’s in for a disappointment, isn’t she?”

“Oh, do shut up,”
said Alex, pretending at wounded dignity.

She threw a sugar packet at
him.

Alex laughed, then used it in his coffee while
she got her bagel made up the way she liked it. He shuffled through the notes,
careful to keep his pastry-sticky hand off the papers while he hunted for the
other things he’d wanted to show her.

“Here, look at this,” he said,
turning it so she could read the scrawl. “There’s a type of spell that
will bind someone’s will slowly, over time, sinking hooks into them that burrow
deeper and deeper until they’re yours and they don’t even know it.”

“That,” she said between bites,
“is really creepy. How do you even know this?”

Alex chuckled humourlessly. “I’m a mage
that consults on murder cases,” he said, “It’s my job to know this.”

She nodded in
acknowledgement of his point, mouth full of bagel.

He snorted in amusement and then turned the
page sideways, to another scribble of words, this time with more symbols above.
“These, too, we should look for on an object or group of things that he
used a lot — try that stuff from Mandeville’s bathroom.” He took a
triumphant bite of his own treat, enjoying the rush of sugar and the sharp bite
of raspberry jam.

She shook her head, taking a sip of coffee
before answering. “Nope, those were simple enhancement spells, you know,
for thick hair and good colour and smooth skin and the like.”

“Oh,” said Alex,
disappointed. “Well, that’s boring.”

She laughed, and he fished out another page,
and the afternoon went on like that, him pointing out possibilities and what to
look for.

But at the end, it was that second spell that
lingered in his mind, and the insidious way it would creep into someone’s mind
and heart and steal away their life just as surely as murder.

CHAPTER
3

In Which Our Hero is Led Astray Only to Find the Path

“There’s absolutely nothing in
Mandeville’s entire suite that’s suspicious. Even the spells on those daggers
are pretty much harmless, since they were made for a duel six hundred years ago
and haven’t been used since,” said Lapointe, frustrated.

Alex was pacing her office, annoyed. “And
the amulet was a dead end, just as I predicted?”

She laughed but it held none of her usual ready
humour. “Oh, yes, a total blind alley. Smedley’s furious.”

“Does this mean I can have it for a
while?” asked Alex carefully. “And the other one, the good one he
wore all the time?”

She shook her head. “No way. You can visit
them in Armistead’s tender care, but they’re determined to make the lead pan
out somehow.”

“Idiots!” said Alex. “What’s the
point of hiring a consultant if you never consult him?” Alex flopped on
the uncomfortable leather couch that ran along one wall of her office. The
whole office was drably unsettling, in the way only institutional decorating
could be. “Ugh, you should question prisoners on this couch, it’s
terrible!”

“If you don’t like it, you can always go
home to your posh flat,” she retorted.

Alex harrumphed but stayed where he was,
wallowing in their utter lack of progress. “If only we could get into
Julian’s rooms, I’m sure it’s him that’s under the spell. He was the one who
initiated contact.”

“But why push him into Mandeville’s arms
only to kill the man off?” asked Lapointe. He hated it when she was
reasonable.

Alex got up and started pacing again, pulling
his own little charm out of his pocket, a worry stone that he’d infused with a
spell to help sharpen his thoughts and memories. He tipped it over the backs of
his fingers in a practiced gesture, feeling the spell take a firmer hold now
that he was handling it as it was meant to be, rather than hiding it in his
pocket.

“Maybe Mandeville was a pawn all
along,” he mused, considering. “A patsy, meant to force young Julian
into a position where he’d have to accept suitors and go through a formal
Courtship.”

“I do wonder why a St. Albans would want
to be consort to someone like Mandeville, whose own family’s fortunes were in
ruins due to mismanagement,” said Lapointe thoughtfully.

Alex stopped pacing and
grinned. “That’s what we have to find out.”

~ ~ ~

“I’m afraid Master St. Albans is not
receiving visitors at this time,” said the butler, looking very smug
indeed.

Alex made a frustrated sound. “I know the
service for Mandeville is tomorrow, Mr. Godfrey, but-”

“It’s just Godfrey,” said the man,
his tone one of reprimanding a young man who’d been caught doing something he
knew perfectly well he wasn’t supposed to. “You may be with the
Department, but I know that you are well aware of my station and the proper
form of address from your youth.”

Alex looked amused. “You’ve been checking
up on me,” he said, with the exact same tone.

“Your current mundane employment is no
excuse for bad manners,” said Godfrey with a sniff.

Alex laughed. “It has been up until
now,” he said, then sighed. “Right, so St. Albans is in mourning and
won’t see me, Mandeville’s rooms have been thoroughly violated by the crime
scene techs and won’t be of any use to me, and you’re treating me like a young
master who’s been snitching sweets before supper. Why did I come here
again?”

“I do not know, sir,” said Godfrey,
voice utterly dry. “Perhaps you missed me?”

Alex laughed. “All right, that was worth
the trip. Do give young Master St. Albans my regards and sympathies,” he
said. He pulled out an object he’d had to hunt through his entire flat to find,
pleased he’d bothered to keep a few, and handed it to Godfrey.

One eyebrow went up as Godfrey accepted the
formal calling card. “You do have manners after all,” he said, carefully
placing it on the silver salver just inside the door with dozens of similar
cards.

“Only for you,” said Alex
flirtatiously. He figured he wasn’t going to get a better exit line, so he spun
on his heel and left, whistling a tune designed deliberately to annoy, much
like Godfrey’s entire manner.

For once, it was proving more convenient to be
a Benedict than otherwise. Victor would likely be appalled.

~ ~ ~

“I hear you called on Julian St. Albans
during his mourning,” said Henry, strolling into Alex’s flat the next
morning. “Got another cup?”

Alex yawned and pointed at the cupboard,
figuring Henry could fend for himself as punishment for showing up at such an
early hour. He’d never slept that much, himself, but mornings were a quiet,
foggy time until he’d had at least a cup of tea and bite of breakfast.

“You’re still using that dreadful
blend,” said Henry. His voice was disappointed, but it didn’t stop him
from pouring himself a cup. “So, thinking of taking up the family honour
after all?”

“Why, were you going to Court St. Albans
yourself?” he asked, hopeful. Henry might act the playboy sometimes, but
there was a keen mind behind his irresponsible façade that Alex could put to
use.

“Nonsense, I want my future spouse to have
tits,” said Henry with a chuckle.

Alex sighed. “I thought you were on the
continent,” he said dully, hoping to get Henry on one of his rants so at
least he could eat while his brother talked.

“This was too good to miss,” said
Henry. “Victor told me St. Albans had his eye on you, and now you’re
almost acting as though you care he exists.”

Alex rolled his eyes and yawned again
pointedly, then took a nice, long drink of tea. “I am acting as though I
wish to solve the mystery of his lover’s murder, not set myself up in the place
of a dead man,” he said, with as much dignity as he could muster while
wearing a bathrobe. He defiantly took a bite of eggs, silently refusing to
speak any more on the subject.

“You might be happier if you had a
consort, you know, it’s all well and good to leave us but you were raised for
something more than a grotty little flat and solving murders for hire,”
said Henry, pretending to flick a crumb off the table. Or possibly actually
flicking one, as Alex was none too neat between visits from the maids.

That was why he had maids.

“I have everything I need here,” said
Alex, nibbling on a piece of nice crispy bacon. He might have to cook breakfast
for himself, but at least that way he always got his food just the way he
enjoyed it. Rather like his current sex life.

He shut down that train of
thought before it could show on his face.

Henry continued on as though Alex hadn’t
spoken. “You’ve always had the temperament for a consort, you rebelled
against anyone who didn’t like to do things your way. I’ve heard the young master
St. Albans is quite the nubile thing.” Henry paused, giving Alex a
speculative look. “Perhaps I should take up the Benedict mantle and give
it a shot after all.”

Alex swallowed, then shrugged. “It’d help
me to have a man on the inside,” he said, mind already ranging ahead to
the myriad of insights he would want to wrest from Henry.

Henry laughed. “I should know better than
try to make you jealous,” he said, draining his tea in one long swallow.
“Well, regardless, if you do decide to take up the invitation, the
family’s behind you. Victor’s already agreed to fund it, and the twins have
offered to take you to get some decent clothing.”

Alex snorted. “I do fine on my own,”
he said. Though it was true that he couldn’t pull off a proper consort
Courtship without dipping into the family coffers, he had no intention of doing
the former and so he wouldn’t have to worry about the latter, either. “I
require neither your money nor your approval.”

“You never did want us
to like you,” said Henry.

Alex felt something sharp and sudden in his
chest, the old pain coming back to haunt him. “You never liked me to begin
with, so I decided it didn’t matter,” he corrected bitterly.

“That’s not how I remember it,” Henry
protested, but it didn’t have the force of something he truly believed.

“You were the youngest,” said Alex
dully. “I’d given up on the lot of you before I really gave you a chance,
I suppose, but can you honestly say you’d have wanted to play magical chess or
study ancient spells with me?”

Henry’s expression was a wry, wistful little
smile. “I suppose not,” he said. “Still, if you weren’t so
determined to be the odd one out…”

“Trust me, Henry,” said Alex, “I
would have always been the odd one out, even if I’d tried to hide it.”
Even when Alex had still been trying to fit in with his parents, siblings and
peers, he’d been terrible at it. He could decipher the precise meaning of a
half-erased rune and identify the exact type of ashes that had been used to
draw it, but the maze of double and triple meanings wrapped in nonsensical
social niceties had always been a mystery to him.

No, he was better off by himself, doing what he
did best among people who were used to him and his abrupt ways. Even Alex would
pity a man trying to play consort to his mercurial moods.

Henry didn’t seem to know what to say to that,
so he took his leave, not even bothering with the usual dull social rituals.

Alex found it surprisingly comforting that his
brother seemed to have actually listened to him, and understood.

~ ~ ~

The other shoe dropped when Alex received a
letter from Julian St. Albans. It was as eerie as it was unexpected, because
the text was nearly identical to the letter that Mandeville had so treasured.

“If the goal was for the murderer to step
in and get Julian and the St. Albans fortune in one go, why the letter?”
asked Alex, after having taken both the original and his own letter back to
Lapointe.

“And if that isn’t the goal, then why the
nearly identical wording?” said Lapointe, staring at the two bits of
parchment, one new, one worn. 

“Unless young St. Albans got the wording
from somewhere else,” said Alex. As a boy, Alex had often copied letters
from old books, changing the details but keeping the structure intact as a way
of protecting himself against unintended gaffes. It always worked with his
older relatives, who found his archaic formality quaintly refreshing, but it
had set him even further apart among the younger set.

He found it oddly charming, to think of the
lovely Julian needing such a crutch, which meant he was probably wrong.

Lapointe looked amused. “Copied love
letters? Maybe, I can do some searches to see if the text is from something
famous.”

“Or even a modern romance novel,”
said Alex, surprised that she took the theory even that seriously. “Those
are numerous and obscure enough that a man wouldn’t be likely to recognise it,
though I do wonder…”

“What?” asked
Lapointe, when Alex trailed off.

“Hm? Oh, I was wondering if he knew we had
Mandeville’s note in evidence. It could even be a message of some sort, an exercising
of what limited personal will he’s got left.” Alex let his thoughts
fracture and drift again, considering each shining possibility and comparing it
to the information they already had to see what made patterns and what didn’t,
and where the new theories contradicted the old ones.

When he blinked himself back from his inner
world to Lapointe’s office, it was to find she’d already left and taken the
evidence bags with her.

~ ~ ~

“I thought our coffee was beneath your
refined palate?” said Smedley sarcastically, poking his head in the
kitchen.

Alex shrugged. “Caffeine is never beneath
me,” he said, though he’d had to cut the bitter stuff with about half milk
and pour in the sugar to make it drinkable.

Smedley eased into the little kitchen, careful
in the way of a large, dangerous man trying not to break things. Alex wondered
if he was one of those things, and if Lapointe would miss him.

“That’s a strange face,” said
Smedley, and Alex blinked himself back from the morbid train of thought.

He shrugged, not sure how to relate to the man
now that he was neither blustering nor attempting to demand favours he hadn’t
earned. “I am a strange man,” said Alex, with as much dignity as he
could manage, saluting Smedley with his cup before draining another big gulp of
the lukewarm stuff.

Smedley chuckled. “You were right, you
know,” he said, pouring himself some coffee in a generic department mug.
Some people had their own, like Lapointe’s ‘I like coffee better than I like
you’ mug, and some didn’t. Usually it was the new ones, or those uncertain of
their place in the department, that used the generic mugs.

“I usually am,” said Alex easily. He
was drinking from a low, wide blue cup that was twice as big as the others, and
therefore provided the most room for both coffee and milk.

“Is there a reason you’re using my
mug?” asked Smedley, taking a sip of his own black brew.