Ghost of a Chance

by Dan Willis

  Above him, the ceiling was vaulted, rising up to a dome. Intricate images covered the ceiling and Alex recognized some of them as Michelangelo’s work on the Sistine Chapel. Other were frescos from other great masters. A wide spiral stair ran up along the back wall to a vaulted opening overhead. From his vantage point below, Alex couldn’t see much, but the top of a four-poster bed stuck up just enough to be recognized.

  “Sit on the table,” Iggy instructed as he went to one of the glass-doored cupboards and began looking through a shelf of stoppered vials made of dark glass.

  Alex sat on the table, admiring the smooth, painted walls and the tile floor.

  “How did you do all this?” he asked as Iggy came back with three of the alchemical vials.

  “Drink this,” he said, shoving one into Alex’s hand.

  Alex peeled away the lead that was used to seal the cork stopper to the bottle, then opened it. A pungent aroma assaulted him and he almost gagged.

  “Better hold your nose when you drink that one,” Iggy added.

  Alex did as he was told and managed to get the noxious liquid down. It burned in his gut and made him feel sick.

  “You didn’t answer my question,” he said, trying to take his mind off his churning gut.

  Iggy looked around at his vault.

  “You’d be amazed what you can do if you put your mind to it,” he said.

  “Why do you have a bedroom in here?”

  Iggy chuckled.

  “There’s plenty about vaults you still don’t know,” he said, enigmatically. “I can close the door to this vault and it will disappear from the outside. No one can get in unless I open it from in here.”

  Alex whistled.

  “Sounds like a good place to hide if people are looking for you.”

  “Or if you’re traveling,” Iggy said. “Just open the door on the back wall of a train station or a general store in any town you might visit or any stop along the way. You’ve got a place to sleep without having to pay for a room.”

  “What if you need to go to the bathroom?” Alex asked. “Or eat.”

  Iggy shrugged.

  “I’ve got a bathroom in here,” he said. “Shower and all, and I’ve got a little kitchen with tins of food. Plus, there’s a diner in every town in America where you can grab a bite.”

  Alex was stunned. He had no idea most of this was even possible.

  “But, how do you get water in here for the shower?”

  Iggy picked up Alex’s hand and checked the trembling. Alex had been too busy to notice, but the trembling seemed to be a tiny bit better.

  “Now drink this,” he said, handing him the second vial.

  This one had a rubber stopper and no lead seal. It also tasted better, like licorice. Alex hated licorice, but it was still better than the first elixir.

  “You have got to teach me this,” Alex said, looking up at the domed ceiling.

  “Later,” Iggy said, checking Alex’s hands again.

  “Hey,” Alex said as Iggy felt each of his fingers in turn. “How come you used our kitchen table as an operating theater when you have this place in here?”

  Iggy chuckled as he put down Alex’s right hand and picked up his left.

  “I added this room last year after you kept getting shot and bringing other wounded people here to the house.” He let go of Alex’s hands and picked up the last bottle. “Blood is the very devil to clean off the kitchen floor.”

  He walked back the open cupboard and put the last vial back on its shelf.

  “We won’t be needing that one, I think.”

  Alex held up his hand and examined it closely as Iggy disappeared into his runewright lab. It looked steady, with almost no sign of trembling at all.

  “What did you do?” he asked.

  Iggy came back a moment later carrying a wooden crate lined with hay.

  “I gave you a nerve tonic,” he said, putting the crate down on the table beside Alex. It was full of glass jars and beakers like the kind the university had in their lab.

  “So I’m cured?” Alex asked hopefully.

  “Unfortunately no,” Iggy said. “The tonic will suppress the symptoms for a little while. You’re going to need something specially formulated and you’re going to have to take it on a regular basis.”

  “Is it expensive?”

  “Very,” Iggy said.

  Alex looked at his temporarily-steady hand and sighed.

  “In that case, I might need you to write some finding runes for me in the foreseeable future.”

  Iggy opened his green rune book and tore out three pages.

  “Here,” he said, setting them on the table. “On the house. And don’t get discouraged about the tonic,” he patted the crate full of glassware. “That’s where this comes in.”

  In answer to Alex’s questioning look, he reached in and pulled out a round-bottomed beaker with markings along its neck indicating measurements. He rotated it so that Alex could see the back where several runes had been etched into the glass.

  “I have an arrangement with an alchemist here in town,” he explained. “I put runes on her equipment that help with more efficient and faster brewing. She trades me for the medical elixirs I keep on hand.”

  Alex had wondered how Iggy always seemed to have the alchemical supplies a British navy doctor would need. Iggy pulled a folded slip of paper from his pocket and handed it to Alex.

  “Her name is Andrea Kellin,” he said. “Her address is on the paper. Deliver this crate to her and tell her I need a batch of the tonic listed there.” He pointed to the bottom of the paper where a long, Latin formula had been written out.

  “Thanks, Iggy,” Alex said. He felt more relieved than he had in days.

  “Nothing to it, lad,” Iggy said, tamping out the stub of his cigar. “Now you’d better get going, Andrea closes promptly at six.”

  Alex got up from the table and picked up the crate, being careful not to jostle the glass. He followed Iggy out of the magnificent vault and back into the brownstone’s kitchen.

  “Now don’t dawdle on your way home,” Iggy said, shutting his vault doo. “I want to hear if you’ve dug up anything new in the ghost case.”

  “All I did on that today was get yelled at by the Lieutenant in charge,” he said with a chuckle. “Guy named Detweiler. You should read the story they wrote in that tabloid though. It’ll give you a laugh.”

  “If you didn’t work the ghost case, why do you need finding runes?” Iggy asked.

  Alex nearly dropped the crate. He swore.

  “Language, lad. You’re a professional.”

  Alex quickly explained about Hannah Cunningham and her missing husband as he put down the crate on the kitchen table. He used Iggy’s painted door frame to open his own vault and retrieved one of his maps of Manhattan.

  He unrolled it and laid out his compass, the silver ring, and one of Iggy’s finding runes. His hand trembled as he lit it, but he supposed that was from nervousness.

  The rune popped, but the ring didn’t go rolling across the table this time, It spun on its edge like a coin and as it spun it moved in a wide circle around the map.

  “I don’t get it,” Alex said. “You sure that was a finding rune?”

  “Of course I’m sure,” Iggy said. “I’m not senile.”

  Alex looked up and found his mentor studying the spinning ring carefully.

  “Iggy,” he said, drawing the doctor’s attention up to him. “This is the second time a rune I cast hasn’t locked on, but didn’t just fail. Is it possible…” He took a breath and tried again. “Is it possible that I’m losing my magic?”

  Iggy thought about that for a long minute, his mustache twitching the whole time.

  “No,” he finally said. “There’s no precedent for a runewright losing their abilities. I’m seventy-five and my magic is just as strong as it’s ever been. Stronger in some ways. This,” he indicated the spinning ring that hadn’t seemed to have lost any momentum yet. “This
must mean something else.”

  “I’m open to suggestions,” Alex said. “Otherwise I’ve got to call Anne and try to explain to her how I found her husband and then lost him again.”

  Iggy considered the map. Alex had no idea what he was looking for, it looked exactly as it had before, with the silver ring spinning around it in circles.

  “Why is the ring doing that?” Alex asked.

  “Look at the compass needle,” Iggy said.

  Alex shifted his gaze and found the compass spinning in time with the ring, following its progression around the map.

  “I think the spell is trying to find Leroy,” Iggy said. “But the link is so weak it can’t fully connect.”

  “What could cause that?”

  “Oh, any number of things,” Iggy said. “He might be too far away.”

  “No,” Alex said, pointing to the map inside the orbiting ring. “I don’t think that’s accidental. Leroy must be somewhere inside that circle.”

  “Could be,” Iggy agreed. “If he’s underground or shielded somehow, that would explain it.”

  “If that was the case, the spell wouldn’t connect at all.”

  “Well it isn’t that you’re losing your magic,” Iggy insisted.

  Alex held out one of the two remaining finding runes.

  “You want to try?”

  Iggy gave him an irritated look.

  “You know that’s not how it works,” he said. “You met with the wife, you heard about Leroy from her, you’ve got a basis for a connection. All I know is his name; it would never connect for me.

  Alex sighed and caught the spinning ring. It resisted him for a fraction of a second, then the magic dissipated with a small popping sound.

  “Looks like Leslie was right,” he said, pocketing the ring and his compass. “I’m going to have to find Leroy the old-fashioned way.”

  “I have faith in you, lad,” Iggy said with a grin. “You were trained by the best, after all.”

  “If you do say so yourself,” Alex added.

  Iggy put a hand on his shoulder and looked him square in the face.

  “One thing you learn at my age, lad, is that you have to toot your own horn when you get the chance. God knows no one else is going to do it for you.”

  “All right,” Alex said, feeling better in spite of himself. “I’ve got to call Anne and try to tell her why I haven’t found her husband, then I’ll go see your alchemist.”

  Alex moved to the phone on the kitchen wall. He thought about going upstairs to his room to make the call, but Iggy already knew about everything that had happened and he was too tired to trudge all the way up to the third floor for some unnecessary privacy.

  “Hello, Mr. Lockerby?” Anne’s frightened voice came through the receiver at him the instant the call connected.

  “It’s me,” he confirmed.

  “Did you find Leroy?” she gasped, the tension in her voice squeezing the words into frightened squeaks. “Is he with you?”

  “No,” Alex said. “When I got to the marina, my rune lost contact with him. I cast another rune, but it couldn’t connect with him either. I think they might have moved him somewhere underground.”

  “Mr. Lockerby,” Anne said in a small, desperate voice.

  “Alex.”

  “Alex,” she amended. “I can’t pay you for the second rune. I had to raid our savings to pay for the first one.”

  “Let me worry about that,” Alex said. “Just because I can’t find him with a rune, doesn’t mean I can’t find him. I’m just going to have to do some investigating.”

  “I can’t pay you for that either,” Anne said. Alex could tell she was crying now. Alex was tempted to let that stand, but he felt like too much of a heel. He suppressed a sigh as he made his decision.

  “I told you that I’d find your husband and that’s what I’m going to do,” he said.

  “But how?” There was desperation in that voice, but Alex detected a tiny trace of hope as well.

  “I’m pretty sure he’s still alive,” he said. “That means whoever took him needs him for something. If I figure out why they took him, I’ll know where to start looking.”

  “Thank you, Alex,” she whispered. “Please find my Leroy.”

  “Have faith, Anne,” Alex said, passing on the favorite saying of Father Harry, the priest who helped raise him.

  Anne promised that she would, and Alex hung up.

  “You’re a good man, Alex,” Iggy said from the kitchen table, where he sat sipping a cup of tea. “You’ll go broke, but you’re a good man.”

  “Let me worry about that,” Alex said.

  “You don’t worry about money at all,” Iggy chuckled. “That’s your problem. If you didn’t have Leslie around to run your business, you’d have been bankrupt years ago.”

  “That reminds me, Leslie’s coming over for dinner this week. When’s a good night?”

  Iggy raised an eyebrow at that.

  “You know the rules, lad,” he said. “No dinner guests unless they’re extremely easy on the eyes.”

  Alex nodded, understanding.

  “So Leslie is welcome any time.”

  “Exactly,” Iggy said.

  “I’ll set it up for tomorrow then,” Alex said, picking up the crate of glassware for Iggy’s alchemist friend.

  Alex had to set the crate down to shut the outer door to the brownstone. He didn’t have to lock the door, of course. Only someone with the right combination of runes could open it, and there were only two sets of those in the city.

  He picked up the crate and turned to walk down the steps to the sidewalk. As he did, he noticed a long, black sedan that was parked against the curb. An enormous mountain of a man leaned against the fender reading a paper in the bored manner of someone waiting for a bus. Another man stood further up the street, loitering by one of the streetlights.

  Alex felt suddenly exposed. He’d left his 1911 in his vault before he left his office, not wanting to have it on his person during his confrontation with Detweiler. Retreating back into the brownstone was an option, of course. These men were big, but they weren’t anywhere near big enough to force their way past the protective runes and wards Iggy had put on the door.

  Still, Alex wasn’t too alarmed. He doubted anyone with murderous intent would try to grab him off the street in broad daylight. So what were they here for?

  He made his decision and proceeded down the stairs and turned toward the crawler station.

  “Are you Alexander Lockerby, the runewright detective?” the man by the streetlight asked as Alex approached.

  Alex suppressed a groan, recognizing the name the tabloid had given him.

  “Who wants to know?”

  The man reached into his jacket and Alex tensed, but he came back with a business card.

  “Andrew Barton would like a word. Now.”

  Alex knew the name. Everyone in the city knew the name. Andrew Barton was one of the New York six, the sorcerers who made the city their home. Known as the Lightning Lord, Barton was the man who electrified Empire Tower and pushed out wireless power to most of Manhattan. Arguably one of the most powerful, and therefore dangerous men in the world.

  And he wanted to see Alex.

  “I guess I can make the time,” Alex said with a smile.

  7

  The Lightning Lord

  Empire Tower stood on the south side of Manhattan and radiated its magical energy over the island. It used to be a commercial building, but Barton had bought it and emptied it out for his singular invention, the Etherium Capacitor.

  The capacitor drew in power from the universe itself, just like runewrights did to power their magic, but on a much larger scale. Once absorbed, the magical energy was converted into electrical power and broadcast over the island, like radio waves. Anything with a special copper coil in it could receive the wireless power, including magelights, elevators, vacuum cleaners, heaters, and a host of other electrical appliances. Older appliances were sim
ply plugged in to the existing wiring of buildings that now had their own receivers. The only real limitation to Barton’s capacitor was its range. From Empire Tower, the broadcast could only cover Manhattan itself, and the further you got away from the tower, the worse your power reception got. Many homes, businesses, and apartments in the Outer-Ring were still wired to Edison Electric, just like the rest of the city.

  Alex could almost feel the energy radiating from the tower when the black sedan pulled up in front.

  “Mr. Barton’s steward will meet you inside,” the driver said as the other man opened the car’s rear door.

  “Thanks,” Alex said as got out, hefting the wooden crate of glassware. Neither man had spoken during the trip to Empire Tower and Alex was in no mood to force the issue. He was glad that Iggy had helped his tremors, but wondered how he would pay for costly and ongoing treatment, even with Iggy’s help.

  “This way,” the big man said, shutting the door behind Alex and moving toward the front doors.

  Since the tower was no longer a commercial building, the front had been redone with only a single pair of double doors leading inside. Alex didn’t see any security, but supposed they were inside.

  He was wrong.

  When the big man reached the door, he grabbed the ornate handle to open it and Alex fell his skin prickle. Some sort of magical ward recognized the big man and the door opened when he pulled. It wasn’t a rune-based ward, but rather the vastly more powerful magic of sorcerers and the energy it gave off made the hairs on Alex’s arms stand on end.

  Alex followed the big man inside, through a long, elegantly-decorated marble hallway to a pair of elevators at the back. A half-dozen doors led off the hall to offices that were dark and shuttered. The entire building seemed empty except for Alex and the big man.

  Above the elevators at the end of the hall was a massive bronze relief of Empire Tower itself, stretching up over a full story. Art Deco rays of power radiated out from the top of the tower, circling it like a halo. Alex had read a story about the tower in a magazine once that said the elevator symbol pre-dated Barton’s purchase of the tower. It had been that very symbol, the article claimed, that had inspired Barton to use the tower in the first place.