The Demon's Apprentice (15 page)

At Roberts’ order, Collins headed for the other side of the building: away from me, thankfully. Once he was away, she reached into her jacket and pulled out a cigarette of her own and lit it, taking a deep drag with her eyes closed. She exhaled the plume of smoke, and I could see her trying to relax. Today, I didn’t envy her for her job.

I turned the bike around and was silently grateful that there were cops like her and Collins working this case. Mr. Chomsky deserved better than a lame-ass lie about his death. Even if no one else ever knew, I wanted his killer. And even if they didn't catch the son of a bitch, at least they were really trying. I rode home with a sense of accomplishment growing in me. In the satchel at my side were the beginnings of my spell arsenal, and I had put a dent in Dulka’s resources in the process. I ran the math in my head as the city streets flew beneath my wheels. Between the physical and mystical beat-down I'd laid on him, Dulka would be at least two months in recovering to the point where he could get another apprentice and at least another six after that to get them trained. And I didn't envy his new familiar when the poor idiot had to come back with the news that he had only half the money he thought he had.

The clock in the living room showed a few minutes past one when I got home. Only a couple of hours left before my time wasn't my own again, and I needed a weapon if I was going to handle Mr. Chomsky's killer on my own.

Magick is mostly done in the practitioner’s head. The caster has to be in the right frame of mind to channel mystic energy through his or her body and create the desired effect out in the world. That takes years and years to get good at. Eventually, you get to the point where you can simply
will
something to happen without saying a word or moving a muscle. Usually, by that time, you’re older than dirt, and you can do more with your mind than with your body, anyway.

For everyone who’s not a Master, there are foci and rituals. Tools act as a physical focus for the energy you’re trying to channel, like a magnifying glass turning a sunbeam into a pinpoint of heat that can start a fire. That’s why the materials and shapes and squiggly marks on them are so damn important. Foci are also symbols that help the mind to get in magick making mode. Ritual helps the mind tune itself like a radio to the right station for magick. The words themselves are important, but not the language, because you only need to understand what they were supposed to mean. The big thing was, it had to be something outside of your normal everyday language. The more often you used a word for normal things, the more it became tuned to the mundane station in your head. Even without the Gift, if you had enough tools and toys, and followed the ritual just right, you could get some halfway decent results every now and then.

Tools, because they’re symbols, and they’re usually made with stuff that is naturally sympathetic to magickal energy anyway, take spells very easily. That was going to be important today. I pulled out the copper tubing and caps, and grabbed some of the red leather strips I'd picked up at the craft store. The quartz chips and lodestone from the Hive joined the rest of the stuff on my desk, and I started constructing a power rod.

A power rod isn’t really a “rod” so much as a copper wand filled with lodestone and quartz fragments, since lodestone acts as a terrific amplifier for magickal energy, and quartz is a good focusing element for it. Copper is a great conductor, and all it takes then is a decent-sized quartz crystal on the end to act as the focuser. Putting the materials together only took a few minutes. Etching the power runes on the copper rod was the time-consuming part. They were like the circuitry that guided the flow of magickal power that the lodestone and quartz created, and turned it from unfocused energy into a bolt of pure kinetic energy that would hit like a minotaur.

The sigil sheet Ari had sold me was the best I'd ever seen, and she hadn't stopped with just marking the sigils down. Ratios for placement, angles of relationship, and order of inscription lined the margin, making it worth every single ounce of silver I'd paid for it. It took me over an hour to etch the sigils into the copper tube. My eyes stung and my hands ached from holding the stylus when I finally straightened up from my work and stretched.

My shoulders weren't too happy with me, and I still had several steps to go. The packets of carnelian and garnet chips I'd bought had to be ground into a powder and mixed with the hawthorn oil, then worked into the sigils I'd just etched. Mom's marble mortar and pestle were perfect for the job, but crushing gems wasn't easy work, even with the right tool. I could almost hear Mr. Gonzalez's voice in my ear, telling me there was a tool for every job, and a job for every tool, as I twisted the marble pestle to grind the gemstones into a powder. My forearms were burning by the time I got them to the right consistency and added half of the hawthorn oil to the mix. The oil made it a sort of conduit, and made it stick better in the etched grooves of the sigils.

Once the oil was mixed in, I dug the point of my knife into the soft flesh of my thumb, and added three drops of my blood to link the magick to me. I slowly followed the lines I'd carefully carved into the copper, and made sure each one was properly filled in. I wrapped it gently with strips of red leather to hold the powdered gemstones in place, and pulled out the charging spell.

Spelling scrolls always fascinated me because they were so complex. The activation phrases were scattered among the symbols that covered the page, in colored and metallic inks to store the energy. I closed my eyes and picked up the rod in my left hand, with the scroll in my right. I was left-handed, so my left was my projecting hand, and my right was my receiving hand, opposite of most people. As I uttered each phrase, the corresponding symbol on the page flared to life, its magickal power contained by the border until I said the last phrase, when it erupted into flame, and the power flowed up my right arm, down my left, and into the rod. I could feel the power slide through the sigils I'd carved into the copper with the stylus as the spell took hold and turned it from a collection of random parts into a potent weapon.

The sweet scents of hay and clover filled the room as the spell finished, and I could feel the now-complete TK rod hum under my fingertips, ready to be charged. I had a lead on Mr. Chomsky's killer, and a weapon to use against him when I found him. For my first day as a sleuth, I figured I was doing okay. I wondered if he would have been proud of me.

Evidently, my little sister didn't do pink. She came storming into the house with a purple backpack held by the straps in one little fist, and a bag from Bangles And Beads dangling from the other. Her feet thumped on the stairs as she ran up them, and Mom came in a few seconds behind her.

“Hey, Mom,” I said from behind my book. “You're late, young lady,” I looked over it at her with a mock frown. Being flat on my back robbed me of every bit of seriousness I had.

“Feet off the couch, Chance,” she said without missing a beat.

My boots hit the floor and I sat up at her tone. “Is everything okay?” Her head tilted toward me and one eyebrow went up. “I mean, aside from one of my teachers getting killed in his classroom, and me being a suspect,” I clarified.

“No, I think that pretty much covers it, son,” she said as she sat down beside me. “Are you all right?”

I shrugged. “I guess so. It doesn't seem like it's real, ya know? I mean, I only knew him the one day and all, but…” My thoughts went back to the bloody room, and I fought back a shudder.

“What you saw today was really terrible,” Mom said. Her hand was warm on my arm, and the contact helped me anchor myself as my head started to spin a little.

“Big time,” I said with a little nod.

“Listen, son. By tomorrow morning, everyone at school is going to know you were one of the people who found Mr. Chomsky. Your friends are going to have a lot of questions, and you're going to need to be able to either answer them, or put them off. Whichever you do, think it out tonight, so you can deal with it tomorrow without thinking too hard about it. It won’t be easy, but that’s the way people are.”

“Why can’t you tell me everything is going to be all right and let me be surprised tomorrow?”

“Because you know better, so you wouldn’t believe me,” she said sagely. She was right, I had to give her that. “Besides, I’d rather you be prepared than painfully surprised. It’s one of those enigmatic Mom Things. It’s unpleasant, so it has to be good for you.” She smiled sadly as she kissed me on the forehead. “I wish you didn’t have to be dealing with this, son, but it's what’s in front of you. All you can choose is how you deal with it.” I couldn't help the quirk at the corner of my mouth as I thought of the little copper rod I had hidden in my closet. My version of dealing with it wasn't going to be fun for the guy who did this, that was certain.

“Can we work on my backpack Mom?” Dee yelled from upstairs. The heavy sound of an elephant sprinting down the stairs reached us, and Dee came back into the room with her backpack and craft booty still in hand, only now she was dressed in jeans and a t-shirt with an orange-haired girl on it.

“Yes, honey, we will, but chores and dinner come first.” Mom's words fell on deaf ears while Dee upended the plastic bag and dumped a pile of bright and shiny things out onto the couch beside me. Like Mom, she had the Roma love of color, glitter, and jingle, and, to hear her talk, a plain backpack, even a cool purple one, was just too boring to even take to school.

“I'm gonna put a star here, in beads, and see, I got a unicorn for this zipper, and they had these little gargoyle charms, they can watch over my backpack for me, I'm gonna put this one here, see?” she held an ugly little bauble near the zipper for the main compartment. I nodded like I understood.

“Dee,” Mom said, drawing out the “e” sound into a warning tone. My little sister turned wide, innocent eyes to Mom. “Chores, young lady. Now. Then dinner,
then
we work on your project.”

“But Mo-oooommmm,” Dee protested.

“Don't 'Mom' me, young lady.”

“Come on, munchkin,” I said. “She Who Must Be Obeyed has spoken, and her word is Law. It's no use arguing.” Dee followed me as I got up off the couch, and I caught a glimpse of Mom giving me an approving smile as we left the room. Something in my chest went tight at that.

“Moms can be a pain sometimes,” Dee said from in front of me. She grabbed the broom from the narrow opening between the refrigerator and the wall and looked at me from across the kitchen.

My shoulders rose and fell in a quick shrug. “Beats not having one.” Dee stopped and gave me a look while I grabbed the recycling bin and headed for the door.

“I guess so,” she answered. “Was it…really bad, not having a mom?”

“Worse than you can imagine,” I told her, not sure of what else I could say. Dee had a wide-eyed innocence most of the time, and I didn't want to screw that up. Her frown scrunched into something more thoughtful before she turned to sweeping the kitchen.

Mom started dinner while we took care of business, and Dee carefully marked each of her chores off on the chart on the refrigerator as she finished it. Everything seemed to float past while Mom made dinner, and even while I tried to savor each bite of Mom's stew, none of what was happening seemed to fit with what I'd seen at the start of the day.

Finally, it felt too weird, and I had to get up and leave the table. Being able to just leave a place felt strange all on its own, and I didn't really know where I wanted to go, I just needed to be somewhere else. I ended up near the top of the stairs. Mom came up a few minutes later with a steaming cup in her hand. She handed it to me as she sat on the step above me, and I took a sip of the black brew. Peppermint, chamomile, and strawberry hit my nose before they coursed across my tongue, with an herbal aftertaste that was softened with honey. Mom laid a hand on my shoulder, and didn't say a word.

“Doesn't seem right,” I said after a couple of sips of Mom's tea. “Mr. Chomsky's dead, and we're just sitting here eating dinner like nothing happened.”

“No, it
isn't
right, son,” Mom said after a couple of moments. “But, life always moves forward, and you still have to live it. You can't honor his memory properly if you neglect your own life, and I don't think a teacher would want one of his students to do that.”

“Guess not.” Mom was right, in more ways than one. I couldn't find his killer if I let this screw me up too bad. The normal things in my new life, the things I wasn't used to, those were the things that I owed Mr. Chomsky. He could have turned me in. If he had, I would have been locked in a cell tonight, instead of sitting on the stairs at home.

“Translating that from teen-speak to English, that must have been you agreeing with your tragically out-of-touch mother. I'll take it as the compliment, and leave you to brood in peace,” Mom said. She stood and walked down the stairs past me, her bare feet quiet on the brown carpet.

I went down to help clean up after dinner, then hung out in the living room with Mom and Dee while they decorated her new backpack. As much as I wanted to sit on the steps and brood all night, being with them was the gift my favorite teacher had given me. I wasn't going to waste it.

If someone had asked me six days ago what I would be doing tonight, I wouldn't have thought to tell them that I'd be sitting in my mom's living room, reading and watching my mom and my sister sitting in the middle of the floor, decorating a backpack. The image of me huddled in a makeshift squat somewhere in the depths of the Hive came to mind again, and I felt the corner of my mouth pull up a little. My luck had been a lot better than my planning. I tried to keep my mind on the mystery I was reading, but when I wasn't wrapped up in the simple pleasure of this moment, my thoughts kept wandering back to my real-life whodunit.