After banging out three loud raps, I stepped back and dropped my gloves back in my purse, waiting. I was becoming afraid I’d have to knock again when the large door creaked open.
Aaron Corrie stood in the doorway, or at least I assumed the old man was Corrie simply because I couldn’t remember ever seeing anyone older and Corrie had been a young man during the Magical Awakening seventy years ago. It was obvious that he’d been tal once, but age had stolen his height and curved his back so that the top of his head with its thin wisps of silver hair reached no higher than my nose. But his green eyes were clear and bright.
“Yes? Who are you?” His voice was gravel y, as if he hadn’t used it yet today.
“Hi, I’m Alex Craft, a private investigator with Tongues for the Dead.” I held out my hand. Corrie’s handshake was firm but friendly, and almost unbearably painful. The heat of his skin did nothing but exacerbate the chil ing ache as his ring pressed against my flesh. Iron jewelry? Seriously? I’d had a lot of practice recently in keeping my face impassive during handshakes, so I managed not to wince or jerk away. When he dropped my hand, he turned to Falin and I rushed on. “And this is—” I hesitated. I’d first met him as Detective Andrews, but now that I knew he wasn’t, introducing him as such would be a lie. I also couldn’t introduce him as Agent Andrews. Corrie was fae-phobic introduce him as Agent Andrews. Corrie was fae-phobic and “agent” was a dead giveaway for the FIB. Final y I said,
“—my associate, Falin Andrews.”
Falin shook Corrie’s extended hand, his glamour holding against the smal quantity of iron in the ring. The old man glanced at Falin’s gloved hand and then gave him a slow, scrutinizing appraisal.
“May we come in?” I asked, trying to get Corrie’s attention away from Falin.
“What is it you want, Miss Craft?”
As in, no, we couldn’t enter. Okay. I could work with this.
Somehow.
I forced a smile. “My current case involves runes I’ve never seen before, and I haven’t been able to find them in my research.” Or at least not in four hours of Internet searching. “I’m told you might be able to help me decipher them.”
He twisted his thick lips and ran a wrinkled hand over the few remaining hairs on the top of his head. “Do you have a copy of these runes?”
I nodded and riffled through my purse until I found the page where I’d sketched the runes. Corrie accepted the paper, and then patted his chest until his fingers found a thick leather cord. He pul ed the cord until a mass of charms emerged from under his shirt. He flicked through the charms, final y stopping when his fingers landed on a silver charm shaped like a pair of glasses. He detached the charm and flipped it upside down before reattaching it. One of the charms around him shimmered and changed.
“I’m always having to change from a nearsighted to a farsighted charm,” he said as he dropped the knot of charms back under his shirt. He smiled, as if sharing some inside joke. “You’l understand one day. Now let’s see what kind of runes you have here.” He lifted the page and studied the runes I’d meticulously copied from the charmed disk. As his gaze moved down the page, his eyes grew wider, his bushy white eyebrows lifting. “Now this is interesting. Very bushy white eyebrows lifting. “Now this is interesting. Very interesting.”
He stepped back, vanishing from the threshold. I waited, but he didn’t return.
I stuck my head inside and peeked around the half-open door. “Uh, hel o?”
“Try to keep up,” Corrie cal ed as he shuffled down the hal and disappeared around the corner.
“Sounds like we’ve been invited in after al ,” Falin said, pushing the door open wider.
If Corrie hadn’t already disappeared deeper in the house, I’d have dawdled endlessly in the entry hal . The wal s were lined with shelves and every square inch was fil ed with knickknacks. But this wasn’t just a col ection of junk—it was a col ection of magical junk. As soon as I passed the ward on the doorway, the press of hundreds of different charms and enchantments tumbled over me, threatening to overwhelm me.
They thundered through my senses, deafening my mind to anything else. Getting out and reorienting myself would have been best, but it was too late for that, and thinking above the magical roar to command my legs to move was beyond my ability. There was nothing malicious in the room, or at least nothing obvious, and not even anything terribly powerful. I felt a train that puffed out magic smoke, a dol that made children laugh, a mirror that reflected the image the viewer desired most, a spoon that kept soup hot, and other smal , frivolous charms. But there were hundreds of them. And they overloaded my senses.