by Dan Willis
The woman was a strange sight. She was much younger than the man, maybe mid-twenties, with smooth olive skin, dark eyes, and brown hair that erupted from her head in a mass of tight curls. Her suit looked like it had been made by the same tailor as the man’s, though she wore a long pencil skirt with it instead of trousers. She too had a man’s hat, sitting beside her on the couch, and the square bulge of a semi-automatic pistol under her left arm.
If she was armed, it was a cinch the man was too, but his weapon fit perfectly and showed no outward sign of its presence. To be fair, the woman’s weapon only showed because her rather generous bust pushed it to the side.
“Okay,” Alex said, affecting a gruff voice. “Which one of you mugs is Lockerby?”
The man and woman exchanged glances and the man moved his head almost imperceptibly in Alex’s direction. The woman stood and Alex touched his thumb to his flash ring just in case. Rather than reaching for her weapon, however, the woman reached into the outside pocket of her jacket and produced a heavy leather wallet. Holding it up, she allowed it to fall open, revealing a brass shield with the letters FBI clearly visible across the front.
“Mr. Lockerby isn’t here,” she said in a confident voice. “And we have some questions for him when he gets back, so why don’t you just run along?”
Alex glanced at the man who hadn’t moved during the conversation. He just sat, watching with his legs crossed and his hat in his lap, but Alex got the impression he was coiled, like a snake ready to strike.
Having no idea why the FBI would be looking for him, Alex decided he didn’t want to bother with them. He’d go home and let Leslie find out what they wanted when she came in on Monday.
“Fine,” Alex said, holding up his free hand in a gesture of acquiescence. “I’ll go.”
“Will you now?” a familiar voice came from the open door to his private office. The voice was full of sly amusement and it sent a shiver up his spine. A moment later, the Ice Queen, Sorsha Kincaid, stepped out of his office. She wore a form-fitting dress of a dark color, somewhere between blue and black, with a beige vest over it. A gold watch fob hung from the left vest pocket and she carried a long cigarette holder in one hand.
Alex took all that in at once, then his eyes sought her face. Her lips were raised on one side in a mocking smile and her pale blue eyes twinkled. She wasn’t wearing her typical bright lipstick, but rather a more subtle shade of burgundy. Her platinum blonde hair was still cut in a shoulder-length bob that framed her lovely face. And she was perfect, flawless, as if she had been carved of marble.
Alex stared just a moment too long and the half-mocking smile rose up into a full grin. Recovering quickly, he pasted a smile on his face and forced himself to relax. The last time Sorsha had been in his office with her FBI lackeys, she’d threatened to freeze him solid.
“Sorceress,” he said, in his most nonchalant voice, the one she hated. “I didn’t realize you were here.” He jerked his thumb at the man and the still-standing woman. “That explains the federal welcome wagon over here.” The man just sat there with the same neutral expression on his face, but the woman scowled at him. “What brings you to my neck of the woods? You’re not still looking for that Archimedes thing, are you?”
Sorsha’s mocking smile vanished, replaced by a look of irritation.
“The government has decided that my skills are better employed elsewhere,” she said, walking toward him slowly. “But if you’d like to discuss what happened to the Archimedean Monograph, I’m sure I can find the time.”
She stopped just a few feet away, her eyes boring into him. Alex grinned wider at that.
“If it was anything like the last time we talked, I suspect it would be very pleasant,” he said, his grin growing wider. “But we might want to go into my office, away from any...witnesses.”
Sorsha had suspected that Alex knew more about the Monograph than he’d admitted, so she’d used an illegal truth spell on him. Before she did it, however, she’d sent her former FBI agents Davis and Warner out of the room. Alex had managed to tell her what she wanted to hear without actually lying, a little-known weakness of the spell.
Sorsha’s face blanched for an instant and the female agent smirked. Anyone who didn’t know about Sorsha’s illegal spell would assume Alex’s comment about witnesses meant something else entirely. If the male agent was shocked by the implication, he gave no sign.
“I see you still like to play dangerous games,” she growled at him. “What happened to you anyway? You look like hell.”
Alex shrugged with all the false modesty he could muster.
“Oh, you know, just saved the city.”
Her brows dropped down over her eyes in an unamused look and she reached out to touch his cheek.
“This, you idiot.”
Alex winced as her touch made his cheek ache. He’d forgotten about how Henry Travis had punched him in the face earlier. It was probably bruising up nicely.
“Just making new friends,” he said, probing the sore spot with his fingers.
“With your usual charm, no doubt,” Sorsha said. “Give me your handkerchief.”
Alex did as she asked, and she pressed it gently to his face. When it touched him, it was icy cold, and he jumped.
“Stop that,” Sorsha said, pressing it against his cheek again. “Hold it there and follow me.”
“Do you want us, Ma’am?” the man on the couch asked.
Sorsha looked at Alex and sighed.
“No,” she said. “Mr. Lockerby may look like a mile of bad road, but he’s harmless.”
“Aren’t you going to introduce me to your friends?” Alex said, pressing the cold handkerchief to his face.
“This is senior agent Buddy Redhorn,” she said, indicating the man. Agent Redhorn nodded at Alex but didn’t otherwise move. “And this is his trainee, Agent Aissa Mendes.”
“I didn’t know the FBI had any female agents,” Alex said to Agent Mendes. “Nice to meet you.”
“Present company excepted, I suppose you mean,” Sorsha said. Her face and voice didn’t change, but there was a sudden fire in her pale eyes.
“It’s a pilot program,” Agent Mendes said, a little defensively.
“Which she earned her way into,” Agent Redhorn added. His voice was smooth and even, like a radio announcer’s, but like the man himself, it carried a subtle note of threat within it.
Alex held up his hands in a gesture of surrender.
“No judgement,” he said and meant it. “Just an observation.”
Alex had worked with Sorsha and he knew the FBI wouldn’t use her as a consultant if she weren’t good at the job. If they wanted some female agents for whatever reason, it was nothing to him.
“Now that you’ve met my team,” Sorsha said, turning back to his office. She entered, leaving the door open, and sat down in one of the chairs in front of his desk. Alex went around to his side and pulled open the middle drawer, removing the silver flask. If he was going to be sparring with the Ice Queen, he needed his mind to be sharp.
“Excuse me,” he said, uncapping the flask. “It’s past time for my medicine.”
He took a swig and put the cap back on.
“Not going to offer me any?” Sorsha said. Her voice held a tone of mockery, but Alex couldn’t be sure she wasn’t serious. He opened the top again and held the flask out to her.
“I doubt you’d enjoy it,” he said as she took the flask and held it under her nose.
After a moment, she handed it back with a strange look on her face.
“Well, that explains a lot,” she said, no doubt meaning that she’d expected Alex’s condition to be much worse by now.
Alex didn’t know what those pale eyes saw when they looked at him. Sorcerers had all kinds of strange and esoteric powers. Could she see how much life he actually had left?
He pushed that thought from his mind, hoping she couldn’t. He might spar with Sorsha and get on her nerves, but he wouldn’t wish that knowled
ge on anyone.
“So what can I do for you, Sorceress?” he asked, returning the flask and sitting down.
Sorsha crossed her legs, sitting back in the chair. She just regarded him for a long moment, her expression neutral.
“How much do you know about the weather we’ve been having?” she asked.
It was a strange question and it caught Alex off guard.
“I know it’s slowing down crawlers and taxis all over the city,” he said. “It took me over an hour to get here from the South Side mid-ring.”
“It’s causing problems all over town,” she said. “The problem is that we don’t know what’s causing it.”
“I always thought it had something to do with warm air and the sea,” Alex suggested, helpfully.
“Under normal circumstances that’s exactly how fog forms,” Sorsha said. “But this fog is different.” She pointed out the window at the glowing haze created when the yellow light of the street lamp below lit up the fog. “The FBI has spoken to the best weather experts in the country and they all assure us that the conditions are all wrong for fog.”
Alex remembered his conversation with Iggy. He’d mentioned that the fog had baffled the meteorologist at the Times.
“It doesn’t matter if they can’t account for it,” he said with a shrug. “It’s here just the same.”
“But it shouldn’t be,” Sorsha said, tapping out the stub of her cigarette in Alex’s ashtray. She opened her hand as if to drop the cigarette holder and it just vanished into thin air.
“You think the fog is magical,” Alex guessed.
She nodded.
“I didn’t do it,” Alex insisted.
She raised an eyebrow at that.
“Could you have done it?” she asked.
Alex thought about that for a moment. There were some powerful runes in the Archimedean Monograph, but nothing that made fog. Still, there were more ways than a direct rune to get the job done.
“Maybe,” he said at last. “Some rune that produces the right temperature or maybe just an illusion. You’re sure the fog isn’t natural?”
“I tried simply blowing it away,” she said. “I got a wind up to hurricane force and all it did was clear a little patch that came back as soon as I stopped the gale.”
“If it’s magical, can’t you just,” he shrugged then wiggled his fingers at her, “magic it away?”
“No,” she said. “Though not for lack of trying. I’ve been to all my brothers and they can’t do anything about it either. It must be some kind of magic we don’t understand.”
“Which led you to me.”
She nodded again.
“We have to find out where this fog is coming from, Alex,” she said, sounding tired. “Is this some magical accident or is someone doing this on purpose?”
Alex thought about that. Just last year he’d met a group of South American runewrights who used Mayan glyphs for their magic. The form was different than he was used to, but the magic wasn’t actually different from what he did. He hadn’t heard of any new or different magics, but Iggy taught him never to assume.
You can’t draw accurate conclusions without evidence, the old doctor’s voice echoed in his head. Alex stood and picked up his kit, placing it on his desk.
“Let’s take a look and see what we’re dealing with,” he said, opening his bag. He took out his oculus and his multi-lamp, then clipped the ghostlight burner into the bottom of the lamp.
The burner was just a round oil reservoir with a wick inserted in it and runes all around the outside. Inside was an alchemical solution that Alex had modified with rune ingredients. The resulting flame burned with a ghostly greenish light that would reveal magical residue when viewed through the oculus.
Alex went to the window and pulled it open, letting little wisps of fog drift inside. He lit the ghostlight burner with the touch tip on his desk, then strapped the oculus over his right eye. The light from the multi-lamp radiated out in a greenish beam that seemed dim to the naked eye, but lit up the fog brightly through the oculus.
As Alex played the light over the room, several things jumped out immediately, phosphorescing in the glow of the light. He could see the permanent strip of paint on the back wall where he regularly opened his vault, along with the faint glow of the focusing circle he’d drawn on the floor, showing through the rug. The cold box over his door glowed, even though he’d removed the enchanted stones that kept the room cool once the fall weather turned.
What did not glow, not even a little bit, however, was the fog. Alex moved to the window and shone the light outside. The magelight in the streetlight below glowed back at him, but the fog showed nothing.
“Huh?” he grunted, pulling the lamp back inside.
“What?” Sorsha asked. She had remained quiet and let him work, sitting in the client chair with her legs crossed demurely.
“As far as I can tell, the fog itself isn’t magical,” Alex said, setting his lamp back on the desk. “Let me try something else.”
He blew out the ghostlight burner and replaced it with the silverlight one. Silverlight would reveal biological residue like fingerprints and blood. He doubted the fog would show him anything like that, but it was worth a try. Three minutes later he was back at his desk with the window closed.
“Nothing?” Sorsha demanded.
Alex shook his head. He took out his cigarette case and offered one to the sorceress, giving himself time to think.
“Maybe the fog is just fog, but whatever’s creating it is magical,” Alex suggested as Sorsha selected a cigarette. As she raised her hand, her long, black cigarette holder reappeared from nowhere.
“I hadn’t thought of that,” she said, fixing the cigarette into the end of the holder. “But that doesn’t explain why the fog isn’t dissipating.”
Alex ignited his lighter and offered the flame to Sorsha before lighting his own cigarette.
“Maybe it is,” he said with a shrug. “Maybe whatever magic is creating it is just too powerful, or maybe this fog is more dense than regular fog.”
Sorsha puffed on her cigarette for a long moment, then finally shook her head.
“I hate to say it, but the why doesn’t matter. The fog has already cost the city thousands of dollars with traffic accidents, the need for increased police presence, and turning on the streetlights early. Not to mention how it’s affecting business. We have to find out what’s causing this and stop it.”
Alex put away his lamp, oculus, and burners, returning his kit to the floor by his desk.
“I disagree. If someone is doing this on purpose, the real question is why?” he observed. “Are they trying to start a panic, maybe blackmail the city?”
“We thought of that,” Sorsha said, irritation marring her features. “But so far no one has made any statements or demands.”
“What about using the fog to cover a crime?” Alex said. “It would make escaping a bank job much easier.”
Sorsha smirked at that.
“It’s always a bank job with you,” she said. Just last year Alex had sent the police on a wild goose chase checking every bank in the city for tunneling thieves. Even though he’d ultimately been proven right, the police hadn’t let him forget his initial mistake.
Alex shrugged.
“What else might conveniently go missing in the fog?” he wondered. “Have you checked to make sure Lady Liberty is still in the harbor?”
“Yes,” Sorsha said with no trace of humor.
“Could this be another weapon?” he asked. “Like that alchemical plague?” The thought chilled him.
Sorsha looked up and met his eyes. He could see the doubt there, warring with her innate desire to be in control.
“It’s possible,” she said. “Though after the plague incident, the war department is keeping tabs on potential threats. As far as they know, no foreign agents are in New York.” She chuckled, mirthlessly. “Well, no new ones at any rate.”
“Is it some kind of acciden
t?” Alex wondered. “Maybe one of your brother sorcerers tried something new and it got out of hand?”
“Don’t be absurd,” she said, giving Alex a scolding look. “Sorcerers have complete control over their magic. If a sorcerer did this, they would have been able to stop it easily.”
“Well, then I’m out of ideas.”
“It doesn’t matter why it’s happening at this point,” Sorsha said, though she sounded more like she was trying to convince herself than Alex. “What matters is finding what’s causing it, and stopping it.” She locked eyes with him again. “And I believe that finding things is your specialty.”
“Absolutely.” Alex nodded, picking up his kit bag again. This time he ignored his oculus and multi-lamp, withdrawing his city map and the cigar box with the jade weights and brass compass inside.
Laying the map out on his desk, he secured it with the jade figurines, then placed the compass in the center.
“I’m going to need some of the fog,” he said, moving to open the window. “Enough to be in contact with the compass.”
Sorsha raised an eyebrow at that, but rose and moved to the window as well. She opened her hand and mumbled something. As she spoke, her voice dropped several octaves and the sound echoed. Wisps of fog began to move sluggishly through the window until they coalesced above Sorsha’s open palm. She walked back to the desk and turned her hand over, allowing the ball of fog to drift down until it rested exactly on the compass.
“You could have just taken the map outside,” she said, giving him an amused look as she sat back down.
“And miss the show? Never.”
In truth there was a very good reason Alex didn’t want to try this outside — the focusing circle under his desk. He’d painted it on the hardwood floor, then rolled the rug back over it. Any rune cast on his desk would have the added benefit of the circle. Eventually the runes he painted into it would fade and he’d have to redo it, but that was only time consuming.
