Mind Games

by Christine Amsden

  “Your loyalty to your brother is admirable,” Sheriff Adams said. “And my gut tells me you’re right, but right now your family’s lack of subtlety is working against them. At least ten percent of this town has seen your brother juggle fireballs, including me.”

  I shook my head, but not in negation. The sheriff was only telling the truth, but it didn’t mean I wanted to hear it. A slight pressure on my arm startled me back to the moment and when I looked down, Wesley had his hand on my forearm in an overly familiar manner. Quickly, I snatched it away.

  “Assuming that I buy into any of this,” Wesley said. “Who else could have done it and how?”

  I hesitated, trying to figure out how much to tell them, although the truth would shed a wide enough net to take the immediate focus off of my family. “It would take a fair amount of raw magical talent, but the average in this area is well above average, meaning that a good quarter of the practitioners could have done it, assuming they know how to manipulate thermal energy. For that matter, a group of lesser practitioners could have gotten together and done it, with the right time, focus, and knowledge.”

  My brother and my father both had a gift for creating fire, which made fire starting come to them as easily and effortlessly as breathing. Both had to actively control their gifts to keep them in check, because it was a part of them. The best way to describe the difference between a gift and raw magical talent is to say that a gift is part of the soul, whereas magic is a part of the blood. As such, raw magical talent could be siphoned off, leaving a person alive but drained, but gifts stayed with a person forever. Rumor had it that some practitioners knew how to trap souls, thereby focusing their gifts into a magical object, but it wasn’t something I liked to think about.

  The effects of many gifts could be duplicated with enough knowledge, skill, and raw magical talent, though it took more time and effort. As far as I knew, no one had found a way to mimic my mother’s gift of an eidetic memory or Scott’s extremely strong intuition, but that didn’t make it impossible. More likely, it meant few people had bothered to try because they underestimated the value of these gifts. Fire starting, on the other hand, has always been of interest to people and has been duplicated in hundreds of different ways. There might be as many spells to create magical fire as sorcerers to cast them.

  “Cassie doesn’t like to answer direct questions about magic,” the sheriff said. “There’s a code of secrecy that was drilled into her head from a young age.”

  I nodded, relieved not to have to answer.

  “Then how do we find out who did it?” Wesley asked.

  I closed my eyes tightly for a second before answering. “Assuming that a great many people had the means to do this, then we need to look at who had a motive and who had the opportunity.”

  “Sounds like a lot of people had a motive, too.” Wesley said.

  “I don’t buy it,” I said. “This guy’s been preaching his hate for as long as I’ve been alive. Something has to have changed.”

  “Like what?” Wesley asked.

  It only took me a second to work out a possibility. “Like Cormack McClellan finding a death threat among his murdered brother’s personal possessions.”

  * * *

  McClellan’s looked just as it had the last time I’d had the misfortune to go inside. There were several locked display cases full of jewelry and a few racks of odds and ends in the middle. Despite a strange gloomy feeling, the brightly lit interior looked clean and polished to a mirror shine. The lighting showed off the various jewels with sparkling magnificence.

  The man standing behind the display case marked the only change since my last visit. Last time it had been David, and if not for Evan’s wards, David might have cast some kind of spell or curse against me.

  “Good morning, Deputy Scot, I didn’t expect to see you so soon after you told me never to come near you again.” Cormack had a cheerful smile on his face that I wanted to smack right off.

  Wesley’s eyes narrowed. “Why did you tell him to get lost?”

  “He tried to turn me into a puppet.” I tried to sound casual about it, but I don’t know if I succeeded.

  Cormack chuckled. “I told you, it was just an experiment. I was testing the merchandise. One of the changes I want to make around here is to institute a personal guarantee. That particular piece has a powerful bit of magic behind it, but a strong will seems to be able to countermand it. I haven’t decided whether I’m willing to sell it or not, but I do have a couple of theories to try out before I write it off.”

  I started to deliver an admonishment against trying any of his theories on me, but Wesley, showing unprecedented interest, spoke first. “What theories?”

  Cormack gave Wesley an openly hostile look. “Who are you?”

  “My new partner. He’s helping me look into your brother’s murder.” I failed to mention that our true purpose for the visit involved an entirely different murder.

  “I don’t recognize you. Are you new in town?”

  “Yes,” Wesley said. “Just moved here a few weeks ago.”

  “Well, Wesley, I don’t usually let mundanes into my shop. I’ve made an exception for the sheriff and of course, for your lovely partner. But if you ask too many questions, I’ll drop my wards back around you.”

  “I see.” Wesley’s face was a mask.

  Cormack turned to me and said, with faux confidentiality, “My shop is exclusive, as you know, so I have wards tuned in to magical DNA. Anyone without the right genes can’t get in. Door won’t open.”

  “Magical DNA?” I echoed. “I wasn’t aware anyone had isolated it.”

  He tapped the side of his nose and winked. “It’s powerful information. That guy who’s trying to sell us on unification thinks we should share it, but I just think he wants to hoard it all for himself.”

  “The information can’t be worth that much. I can come in without a problem.”

  “That’s because I lifted the wards for you, like I said.”

  I shook my head. “No, a few weeks ago…” I trailed off, not sure if this was information I should be sharing with Cormack. A few weeks ago I had easily entered the shop while the sheriff had slammed into an invisible brick wall.

  Something was very wrong here, but I couldn’t quite put my finger on what it was. Strangely, a part of me didn’t really want to know, as if it was afraid of the answer.

  “So do you have anything here that might start a fire?” Wesley asked.

  I tried to ignore him as the curious part of my mind warred with the other part, demanding to know why it was so afraid. I knew something, if I could just let it go. But what? Did it have something to do with magical DNA? I didn’t know anything about genetics that hadn’t come from a high school biology textbook, but something did occur to me, something that gave my racing heart permission to slow. “Some genes are recessive, though, aren’t they?”

  “Yes,” Cormack said, but it took me a moment to realize he was answering Wesley’s question rather than mine. “Are you here because of the fire Wednesday night?”

  “We have a few reasons to be here,” Wesley replied. “We followed up on that death threat you uncovered on Monday.”

  “But if your wards are detecting recessive genes,” I went on, practically oblivious to the conversation going on around me, “then it wouldn’t do much good, would it? I mean, how many people in this town have some recessive magical genes after a century and a half of living among practitioners?”

  The panicky feeling began to return. What was it Evan had said once? Most people in this town think you’re drained, repressed, or burned out.

  “Lots of people can start fires,” Cormack was saying to Wesley. “It doesn’t mean much. And as far as the death threat went, it wasn’t much to go on, was it? It’s unlikely that the one person who died was the person who sent it. If I wanted to lash out in random vengeance, I would have been better off burning down the church with everyone inside. I didn’t have any personal grudge agai
nst the lady who died.”

  “What exactly do you sell here?” Wesley asked, glancing around at the merchandise. He scanned some of the tags and began reading them out loud. “Invisibility… flight… strength… speed… songbird…”

  I snapped back to the present. “Songbird?”

  Cormack tapped the glass above a ruby and gold ring encrusted with strange runes. “It’s a recent acquisition; one I’m particularly proud of. David tried for years to get one like it but never managed it. It completes his sensory collection, see? We’ve got glasses of visual illusions, a necklace of pheromone detection, the silver spoon, and the bracelet of strength.”

  “How much is this stuff?” Wesley asked.

  Cormack grinned, showing teeth. “If you have to ask, you can’t afford it.”

  “I’m a little curious,” I admitted. “How much?”

  “Most of these powerful objects run about a million each, although we have a few one-shot spells that might be more in your price range.” He gestured at the racks of various odds and ends in the middle. “There’s a pretty snappy truth spell in there for five thousand. For one hour, no one will be able to lie to you.”

  “Um, no thanks.” I was still transfixed by the display case full of permanent and powerful magical objects that might be powered by human souls. A chill ran down my spine and I suddenly needed to get away from there. “Come on, Wesley, I think we’ve learned all we can right now.”

  12

  STEPPING OUT OF MCCLELLAN’S SHOP ONTO Main Street felt like stepping into a war zone. The picketers, beyond peaceful protest, had taken their accusations to the streets, harassing suspected sorcerers.

  One of them tried to push me down the moment I left the store, but Wesley caught me with a muttered, “What the hell?” that expressed my feelings exactly.

  A few doors down, by Kaitlin’s Diner, Amanda Lee dodged a woman who went after a handful of her long ponytail. Amanda stared down the woman, who did take a sensible step back, but the woman rather imprudently hissed, “Burn, witch! Burn!”

  The sheriff’s call came over the radio to start arresting hostile protesters, and I didn’t waste a minute. With Wesley’s help, I slapped handcuffs on the woman harassing Amanda, then walked her to the station while Wesley stayed behind to intervene in another brewing conflict.

  After I booked her, I opened my cell phone and dialed Matthew’s number. “This is crazy, Matthew. Is there anything you can do?”

  He sounded out of breath. “Working on it. We’ve called in some backup – cousins from Kansas City who will bring our circle up to seven.”

  Seven is a powerfully magical number with known but not well understood properties of magnification. Seven could do more than eight, or nine, or twenty in some cases.

  “Will you have to cancel our date tonight?” I asked.

  Matthew hesitated. “I don’t think so. My cousins are an hour out of town and if this works – and I’m hoping it will – it won’t take more than an hour. We’ve already done the prep work.”

  “What are you going to do?” I asked, letting my curiosity get the better of me.

  “Nothing subtle, that’s for sure. This mob is feeding off of one another and we’re going to go in with brute force that should dissipate it, at least for a while.”

  “For how long?” I asked.

  “Long enough for us to back it up with a dose of reason, I hope. But it’s always possible for something else to set them off. I don’t think any of us realized how fragile this situation was. When Mark Roberts opened that church twenty years ago and started preaching hate, my father thought it was just a jealous overreaction.”

  “Jealous?” I asked.

  “His grandfather is Mark McClellan. The grandfather had two children, including a girl with pretty nominal talent who ran off with a man with none at all.”

  “I knew they were cousins, but I didn’t get a sense of jealousy from them. They mostly tried to pretend the relationship doesn’t exist.”

  “No, neither one of them likes to admit being related to the other.” Someone said something in the background. “Hang on.” A minute later he came back. “I got to go. I’ll give you a call when this is over, one way or another.”

  “Okay.”

  * * *

  The rest of the afternoon passed in an insane blur. I didn’t have a second to rest or reflect as we crammed culprit after culprit into an overcrowded jail never meant for such numbers. Every hand had been called in. I also noticed a few powerful practitioners on the fringes of the crowd, using whatever they had at their disposal to keep the relative innocents from getting hurt. A few of the Eagles were there, as well as some Hastings, and Scott Lee. I more than half expected to see Evan, but counted myself fortunate that I didn’t.

  They weren’t the only practitioners to show up, though, and not all of them were interested in protecting the innocent. Jasmine Hewitt openly attacked some protesters who may or may not have started it, giving them all some kind of painful stomach cramps. Cormack McClellan closed his shop and joined her, testing his mind-control device on the crowd. It did have strong but temporary effects. The Mallorens were also there, along with a few of their allies, using dangerous blackout spells on the protesters. I couldn’t believe it when I saw their attack – dropping people to the ground in the midst of a mob.

  “Stop!” I screamed at one of them, Doug Malloren. He glanced at me as if I were some kind of pesky fly and downed another woman, one who had been trying to get out of attack range.

  “Stop right now or I will have no choice but to put you under arrest.”

  Doug laughed. “Go ahead and try.”

  I had to try. I didn’t know if my magical wards could protect me from his blackout spell, but he had to stop. Not only were his spells causing real physical harm, but the direct magical attack had the protesters even more stirred up than they had been before.

  Taking out my handcuffs, I approached Doug Malloren. “You’re under arrest for assault. You have the right to remain silent…”

  He turned his attention toward me fully, and I could see him preparing to knock me out the same way he had knocked out the others. Sweat beaded his forehead, either from the heat or the exertion of spell casting.

  I felt the spell vibrate the air around me, but I didn’t black out. At least one of my wards must have prevented it.

  “Cassie, do you need help?” Wesley came up behind me, startling me, but I didn’t have a chance to answer his question.

  One of the protesters began shooting.

  Everyone screamed and ducked, including me. From nearby, I heard a cry of intense pain. Doug Malloren fell to the ground, blood spurting freely from a wound in his thigh.

  The gunman got off one more shot before the gun flew from his hands, landing within my reach. I had no idea what had caused the gun to go flying. With so many practitioners around I could take a guess, but I didn’t question the good fortune. I grabbed the gun, then handed it off to a nearby deputy while Wesley and I subdued the gunman.

  Paramedics swarmed the scene, taking Doug Malloren to the hospital along with many of his victims. I hoped I would get the chance to finish my arrest at some point in the future, but it didn’t seem likely to happen. In fact, for the next hour or so, it was all I could do not to join him at the hospital.

  Then, suddenly, at four o’clock, it ended. Just like that. Not with a bang, but with a whimper of anticlimax. Everyone seemed to wake from a dream. Those who weren’t already in jail, went home.

  “I’m seeing it, but I’m not believing it,” Jane announced, saying what had to be in almost everyone’s mind.

  I silently congratulated Matthew on his useful bit of crowd control, though I remembered his warning that this measure could only be temporary. We needed a permanent solution, but just at the moment, I couldn’t help feeling a surge of relief. It didn’t last long – the sheriff called Wesley and me into his office not five minutes later.

  “I’ve been on the phone wit
h Mark Roberts most of the afternoon,” Sheriff Adams said. “He has agreed to send his picketers home as long as he feels that we are running a thorough investigation.”

  “What, exactly, will convince him that we are running a thorough investigation?” I asked.

  Sheriff Adams slid me a computer printout, three pages long, with an alphabetized list of names on it. Instead of looking at it, I looked up at him with an eyebrow raised.

  “This is a list of possible suspects, according to the pastor.”

  “This is ridiculous,” I said. “This isn’t an investigation, it’s a witch hunt, and I sure as hell don’t plan on leading it.”

  The sheriff’s eyes narrowed. “This isn’t a request. I am aware of your unique background, which is why I want you to be the one to question these suspects. You’re the only deputy I have who understands these people and your name provides you a great deal of protection.”

  My eyes narrowed right back at him. “What am I supposed to ask them about, the weather? Or do you really think large numbers of powerful people will stand idly by while I casually accuse them of arson and murder?”

  “I trust you to ask your questions in a way that won’t get them upset,” the sheriff said.

  I opened my mouth to bite off another retort, but Wesley stopped me with a shake of his head. “This is politics, Cassie. The sheriff needs us to buy us some time to figure this thing out.”

  I looked at Sheriff Adams for confirmation and slowly, almost grudgingly, he nodded. “I’m going to personally head the real investigation. You two are basically in charge of keeping things from blowing up in the meantime. I know it’s the weekend, but I need you to get a start on that list first thing in the morning so that I can report your progress. Just don’t feel like you have to get through it quickly.”

  More to buy time for my ire to settle than anything else, I glanced down at the list and immediately rolled my eyes. It began with Adams, Jennifer. She was a recent addition to the community, a New Age girl who had come after rumors that she might learn something real in Eagle Rock. Technically, she had a minor gift that allowed her to see auras and a scrap of magical talent that might, if she knew how to use it, give her just enough power to light a candle. Since she didn’t know how to use it, even I could dominate her in a magical contest. Of course, she probably got an invitation to the conclave. I laughed, brushing away the nagging thought.