The Collected Christopher Connery Page 8

  Something about Gail’s voice stilled Nia’s tongue, though her mind was buzzing with questions. It sounded almost as if the detective were speaking from personal experience. Very unhappy personal experience.

  “It starts as one desperate act every now and again, when the well’s clogged or the pump’s broken and your kids won’t stop crying. The trouble is that even just once or twice can make you sick and once you’re sick everything gets harder and the harder things are, the more desperate you get.” Gail finally looked at them again. “So it doesn’t get better.”

  Arthur was looking at the table. “I think I understand.”

  “Glad to hear it, but anyway, that’s not what we’re here to talk about.” She picked up her fork.

  “Would more purification apparatuses help?” Nia asked.

  “Of course they would, but good luck getting the money to build them.”

  That was a depressingly good point. Many of the older – and therefore powerful – members of the Academy still viewed Gracetown as an unfortunate stain on the city, best left unacknowledged whenever possible, but if people were actually dying… Even if the Gracetown residents hated the Academy as much as some magicians believed – well, it seemed to Nia that they had good reason to, the way things stood, and leaving the residents to poison themselves on bad water would hardly ease hostilities.

  “I will make inquiries.” Nia realized how weak the words sounded the moment they fell off her tongue, so she added, more firmly, “I will personally see that something is done.”

  For a moment, Gail looked like she was going to say something biting in response but instead she shrugged. “I guess it can’t hurt to try, can it? Thanks.” She took another sip of her drink then seemed to recollect what they were really there to discuss. “Getting back to it, you said there’s more of Connery is nearby?”

  “Yes, quite near actually.” Surprisingly near, if she were honest.

  “Fine. We’ll start looking in the morning then.” Gail pushed away from the table, leaving her mostly untouched plate behind. “But if you’ll excuse me, I’m pretty worn out. I think I’ll make an early night of it. What time do you want to get started tomorrow?”

  “Oh, early I should think!” said Nia, secretly relieved that the conversation could move away from such uncomfortable topics. “After all, why waste time?”

  12

  Gail Lin

  As it turned out, magicians could find plenty of reasons to waste time. Despite her ordeal the day before, Gail had pulled herself out of bed by 7:30 and was washed and dressed before she realized that she had yet to hear a peep from the magicians’ room.

  She tapped on their door but got no response. It’s still early, she thought. They’ll be up soon.

  Around nine, she was starting to get a little irritated. The Illuminator had said “early,” right? She didn’t think anyone classified after nine as “early.” Maybe it wasn’t quite late, but it definitely wasn’t early.

  At ten, she was ready to go down to breakfast without them. At half past ten, she did just that and she when came back up at eleven, she knocked on the door again, much more forcefully than last time.

  When no one answered, she called, “Illuminator Graves? Mr. Graves?” She waited. “Nia?”

  Dead silence.

  God damn it, Gail had dragged her sore body out of bed at the crack of dawn to continue an investigation she was still considering walking off of and now she was waiting around for the supposedly great magicians to get their lazy asses up. She tried the doorknob in her frustration, but found it locked.

  Annoyance boiling under her skin, she stomped downstairs and through the quiet lobby to one of the public phones. She would see if the contact number the Academy had provided in her contract still worked. If she did get through, they would probably just tell her to tough it out and call back when she had a real problem, but damn it, at least they would know she thought this was the stupidest and most poorly executed plan anyone had ever –

  She had snatched the phone from the hook and was halfway through dialing the number when she realized that there was no dial tone. All she could hear on the other end of the line was a soft intermittent buzz.

  Frowning, she gave the receiver a sharp shake, but the buzzing only grew slightly louder. When she tried to dial the operator, she heard a faint click then just more buzzing. Must be busted. She shrugged and set the receiver back down. She supposed she ought to let someone know that –

  She froze, one hand still on the phone, as she stared around the silent lobby. “Where the hell did everyone go?”

  She had been so focused on getting to the phone that she had somehow failed to notice that the lobby was completely deserted. There had been plenty of people milling around while she had eaten breakfast and according to the sign above the desk, there was supposed to be someone manning the reception desk twenty-four hours a day, but now…

  No one.

  Had the fire alarm gone off and she’d somehow missed it?

  There was a soft thud behind her. Turning, she saw that the phone had slipped off its hook and was hanging toward the ground, twisting slightly on its cord. She picked it up, but stopped short of hanging it up again.

  There was a just barely audible voice coming from the receiver.

  Gail slowly raised the phone to her ear and heard the soft voice whisper, “Detective Lin?”

  A chill scuttled up Gail’s spine. “Illuminator Graves – I mean, Nia? Is that you?”

  “Don’t listen to it,” the voice whispered.

  “What?” It sounded like Nia, but a voice that soft could sound like almost anyone. “Don’t listen to what?”

  “Any of it. Anything. Don’t listen to anything.”

  Gail’s fear was pierced by a jab of annoyance. “I’m listening to you, aren’t I?”

  There was a thoughtful pause on the other end of the line, then a piercing scream that shocked Gail into dropping the phone. Her leg caught on a chair as she stumbled backwards and she landed hard on the floor. As she clawed back to her feet, she swore she heard a low chuckle coming from the dangling receiver.

  “Is this a joke?” Gail snapped breathlessly. “Is this supposed to be fucking funny?”

  The lobby answered her by plunging itself into darkness.

  13

  Nia Graves

  Nia had woken at half past eight that morning and had immediately set to work on the locating spell. She had considered waking Arthur and Detective Lin – Gail, she corrected herself – but what would have been the point? They couldn’t do anything until Nia had determined Connery’s location. Better that she let them sleep and have a good plan ready and waiting for them when they woke.

  Moving carefully so as not to disturb Arthur in the adjacent room, Nia pulled the hat box from under the bed and carefully took out Connery’s head. She studied it for a long moment, taking in everything from the vacant expression to the clammy texture of the skin. If she was going to do her work successfully, she could not afford to feel disgust or fear. Connery’s head had to become just another tool, no more repulsive than her chalk or her compass.

  Finally she set the head down on her slate and began drawing the locating spell around it. She feared that she had made an error in her work yesterday – a single line out of proportion could spoil an entire spell – and that today she would discover that Connery was actually on the other side of the city or perhaps at the bottom of the river.

  But no. Though she checked and rechecked her work several times, the results remained the same. Connery was here, as good as directly under her feet. It was either hidden in one of the neighboring buildings or right here in the hotel.

  Unfortunately, the spell was not precise enough to tell her which. Location spells were broad by design; they could tell you that your favorite ring was lost somewhere in the house but not in which drawer you had left it. Thankfully, Nia knew another way. Just like in that horrible house, there were bound to be spells protecting Connery
here. True, she hadn’t sensed any strange magic in the immediate vicinity and as far as she could tell, neither had Arthur, but a skilled magician could make his spells undetectable to the senses. The overly sweet magic in the house yesterday had been a deliberate lure.

  And a successful one, she thought with a light sigh. I really do have to be more careful.

  But even if the spells were hidden from eyes, ears, and tongues, they could be revealed by a magical detection spell. Of course detection spells were complex and required minute accuracy to function correctly, making them difficult for even Illuminators to perform under anything but optimal conditions.

  Happily, conditions didn’t get much more optimal than a quiet hotel room with warm morning sunlight – sunlight! It seemed the rainy season hadn’t completed its conquest of the city yet – spilling through the window.

  Well, a cup of coffee would have been welcome, but Nia wasn’t one to complain.

  The spell took nearly three quarters of an hour to complete, Nia stopping every few minutes to check her measurements with the measuring tape she kept in her tool case. She did not want to have to redo the entire spell because of a careless mistake.

  When the spell was complete, she stretched her arms over her head, pulling the stiffness from her back. For a moment, she considered fetching Arthur and Gail before triggering the spell, but just as quickly decided it against it. Better that she get a sense of what they were up against first.

  So, sitting back on her knees, she triggered the spell with a tap on the center ring.

  Nothing happened.

  She scowled. What had gone wrong? She had drawn the spell correctly; she knew she had. So what –?

  Something warm fell on to the back of her hand. She looked down and saw bright red blood running down between her fingers. Too bewildered to be frightened, she lifted her hand close to her eyes, searching for a wound. Maybe she had cut herself on one of her measuring tools and hadn’t noticed?

  Another drop fell from above her, plopping on to the sleeve of her pale purple dressing gown. Slowly lifting her eyes, she saw a familiar body suspended from the ceiling. Blood dripped slowly from the wound in her mother’s chest, running across her neck and face before falling toward Nia, striking her below her eye and rolling down her cheek like a tear.

  “This –” was all she managed to whisper before her mother’s head turned toward her, eyes growing wide as they found Nia’s. Then her mouth opened and blood gushed from between her lips.

  Before the blood could reach Nia, the lights died and she went mad for a little while.

  14

  Nia Graves

  Nia’s earliest memories were red.

  There had been a lot of blood. Blood from the wound in her mother’s chest, blood from Sophia’s mouth, blood that was all that was left of other students. Nia had even tasted blood in the air, a thin vapor left over from the students who had been closest to the spell, the ones who had been torn into pieces too small to be seen.

  There had been blood on Nia’s hands, blood on her dress from when she tried to embrace her mother’s still body. She had gotten blood on the shirt of the man who had finally pried her away. Sometimes she would still wake with that sharp metal taste in her mouth.

  The dreams had been worse last night after the dead woman, after Detective Lin’s injuries. At the time, it had been all right. At the time she had been working, but later… later…

  Later they had brought her to Arthur and she had clung to him until he was as streaked with blood as she was. He had cried with her even though Mother hadn’t really been his mother. He had been the price her mother had to pay to have a child of her own, another child with the same father but a different mother riding along in her womb. That was Academy policy.

  She guessed that had been the first time – that time they had clung to each other and cried – that Arthur’s hands had been covered in blood. It was hardly the last, though usually his hands were protected by smooth rubber gloves.

  She shook her head hard, trying to jar her thoughts back in order. The memories of her mother weren’t strange, she thought about her mother almost all the time, but what did Arthur’s gloves have to do with anything?

  Suddenly she became aware that she was lying on her back. When she lifted her hand, she found smooth wood right above her face. Someone had locked her in a box.

  Or a coffin.

  As panic threatened to overwhelm her, she closed her eyes and thought of Arthur’s gloves again, strong capable fingers incased in white rubber ready to gently open up sick and injured bodies in order to put them back together again. Then she thought – though she couldn’t have said why – of Detective Lin’s battered coat, the way it hung off of her shoulders like a second shadow.

  Then the detective in her mind snapped her fingers in front of Nia’s face and said, “Hey, Nia, wake up,” and the last of Nia’s brief madness slipped away, leaving her mind clear as freshly purified water.

  Heart slowing to a more normal rhythm, Nia placed her hands flat against the bottom of the encroaching ceiling – because that’s what it was, a ceiling attempting to crush her into the floor – and pushed.

  The hotel gave way with something like a disappointed sigh.

  Sitting up, Nia pulled a spell from her pocket and crumpled it in her hand. When she uncurled her fingers, a small gleaming sphere had taken the place of the paper. The darkness shrank back a little, though Nia could still feel it hovering over her like a hungry animal. Hadn’t it been morning just a few moments before? Of course, she had no way of knowing how long she had been insensible. She got slowly to her feet, holding the light up with one hand and tightening the sash of her dressing gown belt with the other.

  There wasn’t much to see, but the small light served another, more important, purpose beyond simple illumination. The magic Nia put into the glow pushed against Connery’s illusion spell, further clearing her head.

  Of course, that also meant she now had space to feel the stomach-twisting embarrassment that always accompanied a blunder. What was wrong with her? She had known Connery would have spells set up to protect his hiding place and yet the illusion had successfully overwhelmed her. She had nearly gotten herself killed and worse, had let herself be put out of commission for who knew how long. What had happened to Arthur and Gail while she was lost in her memories?

  Even now she could feel Connery’s magic trying to slither back into her mind. Turn around, it whispered, I have something to show you. Please. Just turn around.

  Nia held the light up higher, keeping her eyes pointed resolutely ahead. She knew whatever she would see when she turned would be another lie, another image the hotel had pulled from inside her head, but clearly these illusions were more powerful than those she was used to and she didn’t dare give them another chance to deceive her.

  She did her best to recall everything she knew about illusion spells. One, they could be designed to show specific things, but they were much more effective when allowed to feed off of the thoughts and emotions of the subjects. Two, despite their potency, they were fragile and became useless once the target became aware of them. Three, unfortunately, a talented and experienced magician could weave many illusion spells into one larger spell that would constantly self-correct, creating new illusions as soon as one was uncovered.

  And Connery had been both talented and experienced. Nia would have to remain vigilant as she searched for the others. She was reaching for the door handle when she heard a sound behind her. An actual sound, not just the murmuring of Connery’s magic.

  “Nia?”

  Arthur! He must have been sleeping when the magic took hold. Nia turned back and saw him standing the doorway between their rooms, half-dressed and wearing dazed, frightened expression.

  “I was just getting ready when the lights went out,” he said, buttoning one of his open cuffs. “What’s going on?”

  “Nothing serious,” Nia lied, not wanting to alarm him and give Connery’s magic an
advantage. “I simply –” Her eyes caught on the piece of slate still lying on the floor. The spell was still there, though much of it had been smudged to incomprehensibility.

  But Connery’s head was gone.

  “Oh no,” she breathed, dropping to her knees beside the slate. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath before placing her hands carefully where the head should have been.

  Her fingers met nothing but cool slate and smeared chalk. Damn it, it wasn’t just hidden; it was truly gone. How had Connery managed that?

  “Nia, what the hell is going on?” Arthur said, this time with a touch of hysteria in his normally calm voice.

  “One second, Arthur, I need to think.” There was no way Connery’s head simply gotten up and walked away, illusion spell or no illusion spell. That meant someone must have taken it, but who? Holding the light close to the slate, she studied the ruined spell.

  “Why did the lights go out? Where’s Detective Lin? Damn it, Nia, what did you do?”

  “Shh, Arthur!” There, just at the edge of the slate. It was hard to make out between the lines of the spell and her own handprints, but she was certain she wasn’t mistaken. There, in the spoiled half of the spell, was a shoeprint. Someone had walked on the edge of the slate and whoever it was had probably taken Connery with them. She bent closer to the slate. Yes, it was definitely a shoeprint, from a man’s shoe if she didn’t miss her guess, of good quality and average to small size. The sort of shoe Arthur would –

  “Nia, will you please tell me what is going on?”

  Carefully keeping her eyes down, so Arthur couldn’t see her face, Nia slowly slid her free hand into the pocket of her dressing gown, her fingers closing tight around the slender silver case that held her emergency supply of chalk. She didn’t dare shake it to ascertain if there was any inside.

  There must be. There was before I fainted. I’m almost certain.

  “I’m just going to do a quick locating spell,” she said lightly, flipping open the case and sighing silently when a fresh piece of chalk fell into her hand. As she pressed it to the slate, she thought as hard as she could about Connery’s head: the cool skin, the empty eyes, the drooping mouth. Meanwhile, her hand sketched a very different kind of spell. The darkness around her began to flicker and bend.