"What interests you?"
"A series of small yellow lines toward the bottom."
"Ah."
"What would register yellow? And how much is the answer going to cost me?"
"A great question. Let me run a test to make sure this isn't a mechanical failure."
I followed him to the lab. A forest of equipment that would make the personnel of an average college lab giddy with joy rested on black surfaces of flame-resistant tables and counters. Saiman donned a green waterproof apron and a pair of slick opaque gloves, reached under the table and produced a ceramic tray. With a practiced, economic movement, he took the tray to a glass cube in the corner.
"What are you doing?" I asked.
"I'm going to scan the m-scan to pick up any residual traces of magic. Full enclosure. I don't want any contamination."
"I can't afford it."
"It's free. Your altruism infected me. You still have to pay for my time, of course."
He touched a lever and the cube rose upward on a metal chain. Saiman slid the tray onto the ceramic platform and lowered the cube, so the glass enclosed the tray. His fingers danced across the keyboard and an explosion of green color flooded the cubicle. It died, flashed again, died, and a printer chattered on a different table, belching a piece of paper.
He ripped it free and handed it to me. It was blank—a control to make sure no magic traces contaminated the tray.
Saiman attached the m-scan to the tray, slid it into the cube and repeated his elaborate high-tech dance. This time the printer produced an exact copy of my m-scan.
Saiman pondered it for a moment and leaned against the table, m-scan in hand. "The problem is, the m-scanner is imperfect."
My heart sank. "So, it's a malfunction?"
"In a manner of speaking. As of now, the scanner is an imperfect instrument. It registers humans in various shades of light blue to silver, but it frequently fails to document the subtle tint of their magic. Almost anything except the most radical variations, such as purple for a vampire or green for a shapechanger, escapes it. A clairvoyant and a diviner of roughly equal power would register in the same color, even though their magic inclinations differ. And," Saiman allowed himself a thin-lipped smile. "It registers all fera magic as white."
"Fera as in feral? Animal magic?"
"Each animal species exudes its own specific magic. The common m-reader documents it as white so we don't even see it. Recently some bright minds in Kyoto examined a wide variety of animals using a hypersensitive scanner. They conclusively proved that each species of animal produces its own color. Faint, pastel, but distinct, and always a derivative of yellow."
"So the yellow lines mean animals?"
"On a superb scanner, yes. But on our piece of junk the animals would most likely register white. The only way we would notice them is through mixing with some other magical influence."
"You lost me."
"Look at your lines. They have a light peach tint. It's very faint but that peach is the only reason we can see the lines in the first place. It means that you are facing something that is mostly animal but has been tainted with something else."
My head swam. "Okay. Let me reiterate this. All animal magic registers as white but is truly pale yellow. A very weak yellow that is easily dominated by all other colors. There is no way to see that pale yellow, except when it's mixed with some other color. The yellow of the wolf mixing with blue of a human makes the hunter green of a lycanthrope. By this reasoning, the wolfwere, an animal shapeshifting into human, would register as swampy green. Am I right so far?"
He nodded.
"The fact that I can see the yellow lines means that the scanner showed the presence of something with strong animal magic and a touch of something else. Since the lines are peach, then the likely suspect would be… orange."
I bit off the last word. Orange came from red and red was the color of necromantic magic.
Saiman confirmed my deduction. "It's an animal that has some connection with necromantic magic. I don't know of what kind. It certainly isn't an animal zombie. That registers as a dark red. Have fun."
I groaned.
"Time is money," he said, "so I suggest you save your ruminations for later. Do you have anything else for me?"
"No."
He looked at his watch. "Thirty seven minutes."
I wrote a check for nine hundred and sixty-two dollars, which left exactly four hundred dollars and nine cents in my checking account. I had five hundred in savings to use in case of emergency. If more money didn't come my way soon, I'd have to consider a change of venue.
I handed him the check. He didn't bother looking at it.
"Let me know how it turns out," he said with his customary smile.
"You'll be the first to hear."
"And Kate? If you change your mind about my latest prototype, the offer still stands."
The piercing blue eyes and enormous muscles flashed before my mind's eye. That way lay dragons. "Thanks, but it isn't likely."
As I strode out of the apartment, I decided that I didn't like the tint of smile playing on Saiman's lips.