Veiled Magic

by Deborah Blake

  “Yo,” Doc said when she came to the phone. “What’s up? If you’re calling to make plans for this weekend, I’m free. That last doofus I picked up turned out to have a weak stomach.”

  Donata snickered. “Doc, you always end up with the wimpy ones. Try picking up a guy who isn’t wearing a pocket protector the next time.”

  “I like geeky guys,” Doc Havens said, full of righteous indignation. “Hell, I’m a geek.”

  “Yeah,” Donata said. “But you look like a goddess. A short goddess, but still. Nobody expects a goddess to make her living carving up corpses.” She got back to the point, reluctantly. Doc was always good for her spirits. “Actually, I’m calling for info on a dead body from one of my recent cases. Can you pull a file for me?”

  Doc switched to her professional persona, and Donata could hear the click of fingernails on a keyboard. “Sure thing—what’s your DB’s name?”

  “Clive Farmingham,” Donata said. “He was the restorer killed at the museum break-in on Sunday.”

  “Oh, right. Didn’t you actually get to leave the building for that one?” Doc’s voice was bright with interest. “Why didn’t you call me? Weren’t you psyched?”

  “It’s complicated.” Donata felt guilty not being able to let her friend in on all the major happenings in her life. On the other hand, she sure as hell didn’t want to get anyone else involved if she didn’t have to. “I promise I’ll fill you in later. About Farmingham—can you tell me if the autopsy turned up anything unusual on his hands?”

  “Huh.” Doc sounded interested all of a sudden. “Funny you should mention it. The guy had blisters all over his right hand, and a few starting on the left. Looked like it happened right before the burglary. It’s in the report, but you probably didn’t hear about it because there was no indication that it had anything to do with the murder.”

  Or she didn’t hear about it because no one thought to keep the Witness Retrieval Specialist in the loop, dang it all.

  “Okay. Thanks, Doc. It wasn’t important, just tied in with another piece of info from the case. I’ll give you a call later about this weekend. I’m not sure what I’ll be doing.” Donata got ready to hang up the phone.

  “Hey, Donata, there was something else, if you’re still looking into this one,” Doc interjected. “Now where did I see that . . . ?” Donata heard more typing in the background. “Oh, yeah, here it is. Something weird about your thief.”

  “The thief?” Donata was confused. “You mean Marty ‘the Sneak’ Williams? Was there something wrong with his autopsy results?”

  “Not the autopsy itself,” Doc said slowly. “But we found something odd on his clothing . . . what did I do with that note? Oh, right: Subject had oil on one shoe that matched oily substance on stairs.”

  “So what?” Donata didn’t see what the big deal was. “We already knew he slipped on the stairs and broke his neck.”

  Doc sounded hesitant, something unusual enough for her that Donata paid attention. “It’s probably nothing, and I don’t suppose it matters anyway, but the thing is, the report from the officer on the scene said there was oil just on that one step. No drops leading up to or away from it, like there would be if someone had been carrying something that dripped or spilled. Just struck me as odd, that’s all.” She sounded relieved to have told someone in authority, even if that someone hardly ever left the basement, and her voice returned to its usual chipper tone. “So call me about this weekend, eh? I could use a good laugh.”

  “So could I, Doc,” Donata said, “so could I.” She hung up the phone, thinking hard.

  “Well?” Peter asked. “Did Clive Farmingham have blisters on his hands?”

  “Huh?” She was way past worrying about the restorer and was back to concentrating on the thief. “Oh, yeah. They just didn’t think it was worth mentioning, since it didn’t have anything to do with the actual crime.” She drummed her fingers on the countertop they’d migrated back to and looked around the apartment. “Speaking of crimes . . .”

  “Whatever it is,” he said, “I didn’t do it. I was here all night. I even have an impeccable witness.”

  “Oh, shut up,” Donata said with genuine affection. How on earth did he manage to be amusing this early in the morning? “Not you. Someone else.”

  Peter looked interested.

  “Remember how I said there were five major races and a whole slew of minor ones?”

  He shrugged. “Yeah. What does that have to do with this?”

  Donata couldn’t think of any good way to warn him “Brace yourself for another surprise.”

  “Please tell me I’m not part elf or something,” Peter said, with a slightly desperate tone.

  She laughed. “No, nothing like that.” She looked around the room, but couldn’t see anything out of place. Then she realized her coat was hanging up, instead of slung over the couch where she’d left it. Aha. That’s what she’d thought.

  “Ricky,” she said firmly. “Show yourself; I know you’re here.”

  Peter looked puzzled, and then jumped back as the small man appeared, perched on the counter about two feet away.

  “Mornin’, Donata,” the Kobold said cheerfully. “Something I can do for ya?” His little cap was perched jauntily on his head, and he’d braided his beard into two neat rows.

  Donata choked back a laugh at the look on the forger’s face. “Peter, meet Ricky. He’s a Kobold, and a friend of the late Clive Farmingham. Ricky, meet our host, Peter Casaventi.”

  Ricky gave a polite bow from the waist in Peter’s direction. “Nice to meet ya. Lovely place you’ve got here.” He looked pointedly at their mugs. “Since we’re being all open and aboveboard here, mind if I have some of that coffee? It smells just grand.”

  Looking slightly stunned, Peter meandered over to the machine and fetched another cup, this one smaller than the two they were already using.

  “Has he been here all the time?” Peter asked Donata, handing the cup to the Kobold.

  She shrugged. “Don’t ask me. It wasn’t my turn to watch him.” She swiveled around to face Ricky. “Hey, you got something you want to tell me?”

  The little man struggled to paste an innocent look on his homely features, without notable success. “Who, me? What would I have to say?”

  Donata scowled at him and crossed her arms. “Oh, I don’t know, Ricky. Maybe something you forgot to mention about the night of the robbery? Something to do with the way the thief, Marty Williams, died?”

  Peter was obviously confused. “I thought the guy slipped on the stairs and broke his neck. Freak accident. Karma, maybe.”

  “Karma my shiny white butt,” Donata said. She gave the Kobold a hard look. “Ricky? Would you happen to know anything about an oil spill that was somehow confined specifically to the area where Williams took his fatal nosedive?”

  The Kobold gazed down at the floor, more embarrassed than apologetic. “Oh, that. Well, you know us Kobolds, always playing tricks on people.” He looked up from underneath his bushy eyebrows to check out her reaction. “I only wanted him to fall and hurt himself, maybe drop the painting. He’d just killed my friend, drat it all. I was peeved. But I didn’t mean to kill him, honest.” He seemed so downcast, Donata almost felt sorry for him.

  Peter, on the other hand, was clearly alarmed to find out that a pint-sized murderer had been skulking around his apartment without him knowing it. He shot a wide-eyed look at Donata. “Well,” he said, “aren’t you going to arrest him?”

  Donata and Ricky looked at each other for a minute, and then both broke into gales of laughter. The Kobold actually snorted coffee out through his knobby nose.

  “Sorry,” Donata said, handing Ricky a napkin, but talking to poor bemused Peter. “A—I’m not that kind of cop. I’ve never arrested anyone in my life. I’m just the evidence gatherer. And B—I can’t bring a mythological creature
down to the station and have him booked. But most importantly—”

  “That would be C,” the Kobold put in helpfully.

  “Right. C—Kobolds aren’t murderers. Annoying pests, yes, but murderers, no. I believe Ricky when he says it was an accident. An accident he caused, but under the circumstances, I think I can overlook that.”

  Ricky was clearly torn between pride and offense, but came down on the side of pride. Peter, on the other hand, just put his head down on the counter. Donata figured he’d had one shock too many, and gave him a minute to recover. Then she heard muffled laughter from beneath his pillowed hands and stopped worrying. About that, anyway. She had plenty of other things still on her list.

  “Hey, laughing boy,” she said. “When you’re done, do you want to tell me what you think we should do about this painting, now that you’ve cleverly discovered that the curse really works?”

  Peter lifted his head and looked from Donata to the Kobold. Then he shrugged, as another new piece of the rearranging puzzle of his life was accepted and slipped into its place. “Well, I have to admit, I wouldn’t like to try and remove any more of the upper layer without finding a way to take the curse off, first.”

  Crap. Donata figured they’d hit a dead end. She could try to use a spell to remove the curse, of course, but she was pretty sure that its designers would have prepared for such attempts. “Great. Now what?”

  “Actually, I have an idea,” Peter said, a hint of excitement in his voice. “It occurred to me—after the blisters started erupting—that I know someone who might have access to information that could help us.”

  He looked at Donata eagerly, clearly intrigued by the thought of pursuing the mystery. Donata just wanted to stop being pursued by other people, but it didn’t look like that was going to happen unless she could do something about the problem of the painting.

  “Oh?” She tried not to sound as dubious as she felt. “You really think you might know someone who could tell us about the curse and how to get rid of it?”

  He gave her a wide, bright smile. “I do. How badly do you want to know?”

  Huh? Now that was a stupid question. “Pretty badly,” she admitted. “Why?”

  He smiled even wider. “Ever been to Rome?”

  Chapter Fourteen

  Rome. Holy crap.

  Donata chuckled to herself. Thank goodness she hadn’t spoken out loud. She’d already embarrassed herself enough today.

  Initially, she’d suggested to Peter that he simply call his friend for the information. Let’s face it—normal people didn’t just jump on a plane to Rome at a moment’s notice. But Peter insisted that it was the kind of thing that was best discussed in person, and his friend wasn’t free to travel, while they were. Plus, his friend apparently didn’t own a cell phone and had to use a public phone wherever he lived.

  It didn’t make much sense to her, but hey, she’d never been to Rome. She would have been annoyed by Peter’s high-handed mysteriousness, but she was beginning to get the sense that he’d been operating as a lone wolf under the radar for so long, he just didn’t know any other way to be.

  It had taken her an hour to remember where her passport was, it had been so long since she’d used it. In that time, Peter had packed, put the painting carefully away in his safe, made arrangements with his dog-sitter, and called his mother and asked to borrow the family jet. (A family jet? Donata’s family was well off, but they just contented themselves with flying first class. She mentally reassessed Peter’s social and economic status upward a few notches.

  She’d tried to be supportive when Peter spoke to his mother, thinking he was going to ask about his father and the Big Secret. But he’d just shaken his head at her and said, “That’s a problem for another time, don’t you think?”

  Then she had a long, circular argument with the Kobold about whether or not he could come with them to Rome. The answer was no, but getting him to agree to that had taken twenty minutes, a few choice curse words, and the promise of a bribe in the form of something yummy from the duty-free shop at the airport.

  During all of this, Peter had watched her with that cool, amused look and tried to pretend he wasn’t laughing at her. She was just grateful he’d been on the phone during the “you’re not coming either” discussion with the cat.

  After stopping by her bank to pick up her passport from her safe-deposit box, they’d gone to the airport, gotten onto his mother’s jet, and taken off for Rome. She’d spent most of the flight fretting about the fact that by skipping out on work she was probably jeopardizing her new rapport with the Chief. And, of course, even if she solved the case (which he’d ordered her to drop), she probably wouldn’t be able to tell him or take credit for it, since doing so would involve revealing Paranormal secrets.

  In short, she’d been in a lousy mood by the time they’d hit Rome. She was so far outside her comfort zone, she couldn’t even remember what it looked like. It hadn’t helped when Peter had pointed out that she needed a change of clothing and offered to buy it for her.

  On the other hand, then he’d suggested that a more subdued style of clothing than her current leather jacket and all-black attire would help her blend in better and stop looking, as he put it, like an Amazon on the hunt. This description of her and the new clothes, which she had to admit were pretty damned nice, had tickled her funny bone and cheered her up immensely.

  So now they sat in a tiny, dark restaurant in Navona, right outside of Vatican City, sipping strong Italian coffee and eating some of the best pastries she’d ever had in her life. Things were definitely looking up.

  Peter’s friend, an art historian who worked in the hallowed halls of the Vatican Museums, had been ecstatic to hear that Peter would be in Rome, and had happily agreed to meet them at the restaurant, which he had recommended. Based on the quality of the pastries alone, Donata already liked the guy.

  Peter looked across the room from where they sat at a tiny table tucked into a reasonably private back corner, and a gigantic smile lit up his face. Donata had a moment of envy—she’d certainly never made him smile like that. Then she saw who he was looking at and did a double take.

  “Hey,” she hissed. “You never said your friend was a priest!”

  Peter gave her a puzzled glance. “I didn’t think it would matter. Is there a problem?” He waved his hand so his friend would spot them across the crowded room.

  Donata gnashed her teeth. It was bad enough that she was a mile away from the Vatican, the home of the Catholic Church, which wasn’t exactly Paranormal friendly, despite the Compact and their theoretical truce. But she was supposed to sit here and drink coffee with a priest? Note to self: explain difficulty of Church-Paranormal relationship to Peter sometime in the near future.

  She forced herself to calm down. “No, it’s fine. Just surprised me, that’s all.”

  She got a better look at Peter’s friend as he got closer, and she had to admit he looked as nonthreatening as a kindergartener. Despite his black attire and white collar, he looked more like an absentminded genius than a cleric. His black hair was unruly and sticking up in all directions, and his horn-rimmed glasses kept sliding down a narrow, aquiline nose. The beaming smile made him look practically angelic.

  Peter stood up and the two men embraced, pounding each other on the back with vigor. The black-clad priest rocked back on his feet a bit under the force of Peter’s strength, but his smile never budged. Finally, Peter remembered his manners and gestured in Donata’s direction.

  “Antonio, meet Donata Santori, my, um . . .”—he stuttered for a second as he realized they hadn’t thought to come up with a story to explain her presence—“friend.” He paused as the priest switched his white-toothed grin to Donata, obviously making an assumption about the closeness of their relationship that wasn’t warranted. “We’re in town for a quick holiday, and I told her we couldn’t come through Rome and not ge
t in touch.”

  Antonio nodded slightly in Donata’s direction and spoke with accented grace. “It is my very great pleasure to meet any friend of my friend Peter. Antonio de Medici, at your service.”

  Donata’s eyes widened. “Of the famous de Medicis?” she asked. Behind his friend’s back, Peter made a frantic waving motion with his hands. Oops.

  The priest’s smile disappeared temporarily. “Yes, those de Medicis. But please, I do not like to speak of them. I am embarrassed to be related to a family of politicians and murderers.”

  She laughed—“In that order?”—and was rewarded by the return of his good humor.

  “But, of course,” he said, sliding into a chair. “In Italy, it is much worse to be connected to politicians. But you have an Italian name. Surely you know this.”

  “Alas,” she responded with wry appreciation, “in my family we have no murderers that I know of—but plenty of politicians.”

  “You have my sympathy, signorina.” He helped himself to a piece of pastry and groaned quietly in appreciation. “Magnifico; they still have the best pasticcino in the city.”

  “So how did you two meet?” Donata asked, curious. They seemed like an odd pair.

  Antonio pointed at Peter, scattering tiny flakes of dough. “Ah, this one, he saved my life when we were only ten years old. We have been the best of friends ever since.”

  “He saved your life? When he was ten?” She almost choked on her coffee.

  Peter chuckled. “The good father exaggerates. We were in boarding school together in Switzerland, and my absentminded friend here wandered off into the Alps without adequate clothing or supplies, and ended up with hypothermia. I happened to come across him while I was out skiing, and we kept each other warm until help came. If I remember correctly, his excuse was that he was reading a good book and got so distracted, he hadn’t realized that night was falling.”

  Antonio smiled benignly across the table. “And as I recall, you weren’t wearing very much clothing either. But you were warm like a furnace and kept us both from freezing. I have never understood it.” He included Donata in the warmth of his regard for Peter. “My childhood friend is something of an enigma, you know. But a good one. Un miracolo, yes?”