“Wait. What about this?” I showed her the wavy drawing.
Julie grimaced. “When I see magic, sometimes it’s clear or radiant and sometimes it’s hazy, more like fog. The magic on the box was like fog. It shifted and wavered and kind of curled inside the circles into a pattern. I don’t know if it’s intended or just magic interference.” She turned to the door.
“Be careful,” I told her.
“I was planning on blundering straight into danger without any preparation, but now that you told me, I will totally be careful.”
“Blunder all you want,” I told her. “When you get into trouble, I’m not saving you.”
“Ha! You will totally save me.” She stuck her tongue out at me and headed out the kitchen door to the stables for her horse.
“The pervert’s right,” Curran said. “You’re contagious.”
“Mm-hm.” The symbol definitely looked like something now. I stared at the wavy pattern. Where had I seen it before . . . ?
Curran rested his hand on my shoulder. I touched his hand.
“What’s the plan for today?” he asked me.
“I’m going to the office and chaining myself to the phone. I’ve called everyone and their mom about Serenbe, so I’m going to touch base and see if anyone found any similar occurrences. Then I’m going to call about yeddimur and see if anyone got any insights from our creatures. Then I might drop by the PAD and see if they recognize our blond dude.”
“Take the Jeep. I’ll ride with Derek and buy us a second car this afternoon.”
“Thanks.” Score, I got the Jeep. “Adora should be coming back from a gig this morning.”
I’d called the Guild last night, and the Clerk told me Adora was on a harpy stakeout and due to return to the Guild this morning.
“I’ll tell her to come here to watch Yu Fong. George and Martha will be out today,” Curran said. “I can take the boy with me to the Guild.”
“Don’t you have the budget meeting?”
“I don’t mind.”
The Guild budget meetings were like intrigues from the Spanish Court: complex, rife with tension, and frequently dramatic. The last thing we needed was Conlan reacting to all that. My imagination painted my son in half-form dashing about as a bunch of mercs chased him with nets.
“I can take him with me to Cutting Edge, and then I’ll meet up with you at the Guild. It will buy you some time for the meeting.”
“As you wish,” Curran said.
* * *
? ? ?
WHEN I GOT to Cutting Edge, the light on my answering machine was blinking. When I pushed play, it hissed with static and told me in Luther’s voice, “Come see me. I’ve got something for you.” Experience told me that calling Luther would be pointless. Since nobody else left me any enlightening messages, I packed Conlan back into his car seat and we set off for Luther’s lair.
Biohazard, or the Center for Magical Containment and Disease Prevention, as it was officially known, occupied a large building constructed of local gray granite. A tall stone wall, topped with razor wire and studded with silver spikes, stretched from the sides to enclose a large area in the back of the center. Several howitzers and sorcerous ballistae topped the roof. The place looked like a fortress. Biohazard took the containment part of their job seriously.
I grabbed Conlan out of his car seat and walked through the big doors into the cavernous lobby. Conlan stuck his hand into his mouth and looked around at the high granite walls, big eyes opened wide. The guard on duty at the desk waved me on without a second glance. I was a frequent visitor.
I carried Conlan up the stone stairs, past people hurrying back and forth, and turned right into a long hallway. Luther’s lab lay through the second doorway on the right. Its tall heavy door stood wide open. Music drifted on the breeze, David Bowie singing about putting out fire with gasoline. Conlan squirmed in my hands.
The magic washed over us. The music died, cut off midnote. The black specks of tourmaline embedded in the granite buzzed with energy and glowed as the magic coursed through them. Conlan swiveled his head like a surprised kitten.
“Baddadada . . .”
“Shiny.”
“Shaaai.”
“That’s right. Shiny.”
I walked to the wall and let him touch it. He tried to scratch the dark shiny specks out of it, then leaned forward to the wall and licked it.
A woman wearing scrubs passed by us and gave me a weird look.
“That’s one good thing,” I murmured to Conlan. “We don’t need to worry about germs anymore.”
Luther packed a lot of magic power, thought for himself, and wasn’t afraid to take risks. His work space reflected that. Several fire-retardant lab tables bordered the walls, filled with microscopes, centrifuges, and other bizarre equipment, spawned by the need to perform research through the constant seesaw of magic and tech. A decontamination shower occupied the far corner. The wall on the left supported a shotgun, a fire extinguisher, a flamethrower, and a Viking-style axe. The sign above the odd collection said, PLAN B.
Usually a metal examination table occupied the center of the room. Today it was pushed to the side. A large chalk-and-salt circle marked the sealed concrete floor. Luther stood in the circle, eyes closed, hands raised in front of him. He wore scrubs that had been washed and bleached so many times, nobody could determine their original color without some serious divination.
“This is Luther,” I told Conlan. “He’s an important wizard. He’s also weird. Really weird.”
“I can hear you, infidel,” Luther said. “It puts its sword into the box or it doesn’t enter.”
I sighed, pulled Sarrat out of the sheath on my back, and placed it in the wooden box on the metal table by the entrance. This had been a constant ritual ever since I was pregnant. Luther claimed that Sarrat’s emissions interfered with his diagnostic equipment.
“And the knife.”
“Why the knife? It’s not magic.”
“You think it’s not magic. Everything you handle on a daily basis is stained with your magic. Just because you can’t see it doesn’t mean it’s not there.”
I arched my eyebrow at him.
“Box,” Luther intoned, as if it were a Buddhist prayer.
I pulled my knife out and dropped it in the box. My shark-teeth throwing blades followed, together with my belt.
“Satisfied?”
“Yes.”
“Should I put the baby in the box, too?”
“He wouldn’t fit.”
I sighed.
“What are you doing?”
“Cleaning my work space. I wish people would stop taking weird crap out of Unicorn Lane and then calling us panicking when it tries to eat the children.”
“You’re right, they should just let it devour their young.”
“Har-har. So funny. As it happens, I had to drop everything and do an emergency analysis of a child-threatening item yesterday, and the tech interrupted me, so I had all sorts of residual mess in this containment field.”
He clenched his hands into fists. A pulse of magic burst from him, drenching the circle. “There. Good to go.”
He stepped over the magic boundary and froze, his gaze fixed on Conlan. A moment passed. Luther sputtered and pointed.
“Yes, it’s a human infant,” I told him.
“Give!”
“I’ll let you hold him if you swear by Merlin’s beard.” Because it would be funny.
“By Merlin’s beard, whatever, give.”
I handed Conlan to him. Luther took him, carefully, as if my son were made of glass. Conlan stared at him with his big gray eyes.
“Hello there,” Luther said, his voice barely above a whisper. “Aren’t you a wonder?”
The wonder farted.
I laughed.
“When did he awake?” Luther asked.
“Around six this morning.”
“That’s not what I am asking! When did his magic manifest?”
“A couple of days ago. Something scared him, and he reacted.”
Luther gazed at my child in awe. They looked kind of adorable, my baby with his kitten eyes and head of soft dark hair and Luther, a slightly unkempt, eccentric wizard.
“It’s like holding a nuclear bomb,” Luther said.
“You ruined it.”
“He’s bursting with magic. Glowing with it. I had no idea this was inside him.”