Guardian Glass

by Christopher Nuttall

  I couldn’t tell what had killed her. There were no marks on her body, no suggestion of violence and no gaping wounds. That suggested that one of the killing spells had been used, one that killed without leaving a mark, although most of the ones I knew caused at least some pain to the unlucky target. It would have had to be a powerful spell. Werewolves are tough. They could be shot repeatedly and they would keep coming, regenerating even as they advanced on their prey. Silver bullets would kill one, of course, but no one had shot Felincia. She was just…dead.

  And she was wearing a dog collar. The sight was so unexpected that I reached for it instinctively…and snatched my hand back as it tried to bite me. I swore aloud and examined the collar more carefully. It had once been charmed by a professional magician and the spell was still in place. I studied it with my sixth sense and cursed again. Looking at it was like looking at a venomous spider, or a scorpion; it repulsed me on a very basic level. I felt sick as I took in the coiled malice of the spell. I know that there are people who argue that magic is magic, with no differences between white and black magic, but I suspected that they were wrong. Power corrupts, after all, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

  The ends don’t justify the means, I thought grimly. The means make the end.

  I probed the collar carefully, fighting down the growing urge to be sick. It was a compulsion spell, one that would affect anyone, even someone who hadn’t volunteered to be placed under the spell. My first thought was that it had killed her, but as I probed onwards, I realised that it had done nothing more than make her obedient to her master. It was actually quite a simple spell, I saw, but Felincia would have been quite helpless to resist it. She had almost certainly agreed to accept the spell as part of the price for working for Vincent Faye and his family.

  Bastard, I thought. The use of a compulsion spell on an unwilling volunteer was illegal. Congress had passed harsh laws against any form of mind control after a handful of rape cases, where a girl had been forced into having sex with someone under such a spell, and some rarer cases of theft, where someone had been forced to hand over all their worldly goods. It was often difficult to prove that someone had been acting under such an influence, however, and many such cases had floundered for lack of evidence. Using one on a willing volunteer was a different story, however; Congress hadn’t been willing to ban the spells completely.

  That added a different problem. An unwilling volunteer placed under a compulsion spell could shake it off, or could be freed by someone else, like me. I’d freed people myself in the past. A willing volunteer accepted the spell as part of their being; they literally could not be freed from the spell, unless their master agreed to let them go. I knew people who had agreed to accept such spells because they got a charge out of being someone’s helpless slave, but I doubted that Felincia had been like that. She had probably only been allowed to work for Faye if she accepted the spell. I couldn’t blame Vincent for that, as much as I detested the practice; a man in his position had to be sure of his servants, or they might betray him. Looking down at the harmless-looking dog collar, with its hidden charm, I knew why they might want to betray him.

  “I’m sorry,” I muttered, knowing that Felincia was well beyond being affected by my concern. I warded myself carefully and removed the dog collar, feeling the spell trying to break through the wards and hack away at my mind. I held it off with ease – my wards were strong enough to hold out most of the effect – and carefully placed it down on the table. The spell would remain a danger until the dog collar was destroyed. The only person who could handle it safely would be Faye himself. No one would trust anyone else to handle their compulsion spells if they had a choice.

  Her skin, I noted grimly, had been very pale under the collar. There was no way to know for sure, but I guessed that she had had to wear the collar more or less permanently as an added humiliation. Treating a werewolf, particularly a rational one, as a dog was a deadly insult. It was odd that Felincia had agreed to wear the collar at all, although it had normally been hidden under her clothes, but perhaps she had been desperate. That would have to be investigated, I decided, and made a mental note to follow it up later, if I had time. After seeing the collar, I was quite prepared to dislike Vincent Faye. Nailing him on a charge would be very satisfying.

  I scanned her body again, just in case the compulsion spell had been hiding something more lethal, but found nothing. An autopsy would probably find no cause of death either, which at least suggested that someone in the house hadn’t ordered her to commit suicide. I would have to check who had been given power over her by Faye; he was definitely her master, but he could have ordered her to obey others as well. The entire practice was thoroughly disgusting. If the general public knew the half of what could be done to them through magic, they’d be screaming for witch-hunts and public burnings.

  And far too many magic-users thought they were above the law.

  I carefully touched her eyes and closed them, before I straightened up, wandering over to the window and peering down into the grounds. The servants were still there, trying to comfort each other…and, I noted, the gates were crammed with reporters. They were keeping their distance – most reporters learned rapidly that trying to crowd a wizard or press against a ward was a dangerous pastime – but they were shouting questions at the servants anyway. The servants didn’t look as if they were going to respond, but I tried to probe them anyway, just in case they all had compulsion spells of their own. The spells surrounding the window made it impossible for my senses to reach that far. I doubted that anyone could have broken into the room.

  “It happened, of course,” I reminded myself, as I turned away from the window. “If we eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, has to be the answer.”

  I snorted as I sat down. Sherlock Holmes hadn’t lived in a place where the impossible happened on a regular basis, but he was right. I knew that there had been a kidnap; I knew that someone had been taken from the house, which meant that the wards and protection spells had failed. It wasn’t impossible to break through a ward, but breaking through so many in such a short period of time, without alerting Faye or another of his family, should have been impossible. I reached out with my mind, testing the wards carefully, and winced at the feedback. Those wards were powerful!

  A ward works to repulse – or trap – something that doesn’t fit into the list of people allowed to pass through it unmolested. Faye had chosen to make the wards as tight as possible. Only his family and people accompanied by members of his family were allowed to enter the house. Anyone else would be repulsed and, if they were powerful enough to break through the first wards, greeted by transfiguration spells that would turn them into statues – or worse. I studied the wards slowly, keeping my distance from the core of their power, and frowned. They were so deeply embedded in the local magical field that dismantling them would take weeks, even for Faye. I couldn’t believe that someone had managed to lower them for just long enough for the kidnap to take place…and then raise them again, before Faye noticed that the wards were gone. Wards, particularly defence wards, are generally linked to their creator. Even a bird or insect flying into one should have raised an alert.

  I ran my hand through my hair. It’s not impossible to knock down a ward, but you need a vast amount of magical power…and rebuilding the ward would be impossible afterwards. Tricking a ward is subtle work. It might be possible to slip through one ward, maybe even two or three, but it would require a Guardian-level magician. I could break through the wards, but there would be no masking what I’d done. No one I knew could slip through the wards without being caught and trapped.

  That left two possibilities. Treachery…or the Faerie. The Faerie didn’t seem to obey most of the rules that governed human magic-users. I had no doubt that if a Faerie wanted to break through the wards, one of them would be able to do so; hell, they were magic. They had their own limitations, though; like most other supernatural creatures, they couldn
’t enter a home without being invited…and if so, who had invited them? I stood up and checked the room, hunting for a puppet or some other sign of their presence, but found nothing. That was…odd.

  I ran through the list of cases where the Faerie had kidnapped children. There didn’t seem to be any pattern to who was kidnapped – indeed, some of the Faerie we had talked to claimed to be descended from humans, although God alone knew if that were true – but they always left a calling card. No one knew if it was mere cruelty, or maybe a genuine belief that it was a fair exchange, but it wasn’t uncommon to find a small doll, or a living creature. Some changelings had gone undetected for years before they finally revealed their true nature and died. The original child would have been long gone.

  Shit, I thought. I rather hoped that it was treachery, an inside job. I really didn’t want to go haring off into one of the Faerie Mounds. Every time I visited a Mound, I had the feeling that I wasn't going to get out of it alive. I would sooner face a pair of vampires with nothing, but my wit – in other words, completely defenceless. The Faerie made the most…different human culture on Earth look warm and welcoming.

  I looked back down at Felincia and sighed. “I'm sorry, girl,” I said. “We’re going to have to disturb your rest.”

  Faye probably wasn't going to like it, but I didn’t care. I opened my cell phone and called the Circle. “I need you to send Didi over here,” I said, once they had identified me. The spells on the cell phone should have prevented anyone else using it, but the limits of the possible are pushed back further every day. “I think we have a job for her.”

  “She’ll be on her way,” Dolly promised. Dolly was a lacklustre magic-user, but a skilful operations officer. She handled most of the day-to-day business of the Guardians, assigning supporting staff as we needed them. I had once had a brief affair with her when we’d both been younger and we were still very fond of each other. “Is there anything else you need?”

  There were several answers to that, starting with a backrub and proceeding onwards to a week in bed with no distractions, but I refrained from saying any of them. “I need you to pass on a request to the cops,” I said, instead. “The reporters have to be cleared away so that Didi and anyone else can get in without hassle.”

  “You should just let Guardian Love loose on them,” Dolly said, an evil note running through her voice. “Have you forgotten how she handled the reporter who asked her to pose for a nude photo shoot?”

  I laughed. Guardian Love had turned him into a pig and, somehow, she’d locked the spell so that only she could release it. It had been an impressive piece of work and, somehow, it had made her the most popular Guardian in the United States. I had heard that she was a figure of awe in men’s magazines, with strippers and dominance experts paid to dress up as her, but naturally I never read those magazines myself. No one would have dared to tease her to her face about it.

  “I think that that would be counterproductive,” I said, finally. The image of the building surrounded by pigs – or, worse, caterpillars or frogs – was a pleasant one, but I doubted that Vincent would be pleased. The lawyers were still claiming that Guardian Love had assaulted the idiot reporter. “Just have them sent away as quickly as possible.”

  I closed the cell phone and sat down on the bed. Vincent wasn't going to like it, but I was past caring. Magic might not be able to raise the dead, but under the right circumstances, it was possible to talk to a ghost. Felincia might have been dead, but she could still tell us what had happened to her…and who had killed her.

  We might be able to wrap the case up overnight.

  Chapter Nine

  He shook his head. “There's no justice.”

  Death sighed. NO, he said, THERE’S JUST ME.

  -Terry Pratchett

  There are some magics that I don’t like using, but this time there wasn't much of a choice. Some groups, such as the Knights Templar Militant – granted special permission to use magic by the Pope – regard even thinking of using such magical tricks as a blasphemy, while others allow themselves to be seduced by the possibilities. I don’t know who first unleashed the zombies on the world, but I’d bet half my salary that it was someone trying to raise the dead. Even magic has limitations.

  I had expected Vincent to try to prevent me from attempting to raise Felincia’s ghost and talk to her, but he had agreed without hesitation, even though he would probably have good grounds to object. The testimony of a ghost is rarely accepted in a court of law, but his enemies would make much of anything a former employee had to say about him, particularly if it were unpleasant. His daughters had been surprisingly calm about the entire concept, but Alassa took one look at Didi and burst into giggles. I had to restrain Didi from doing her an injury right there.

  “Stupid brat,” Didi said, when she had calmed down. She doesn’t like being laughed at. Her brand of magic is unpleasant and far too many people consider her to be barely one step up from the Voodoo Priests who rule Haiti these days. There might be something vaguely amusing about her appearance, but anyone who poked fun at it was asking for trouble. “Give her to me for a few days and we’ll see just how amusing she is when she doesn’t have daddy to hide behind.”

  Vincent hastily urged his daughters out of the room, leaving us alone together. “This is the body?” Didi asked, as soon as the door was closed, bending over Felincia and examining her remains. “It’s surprisingly intact for a dead body.”

  “I noticed,” I said, trying to avoid looking directly at Didi. She not only knows the effect she has on people, she goes out of her way to encourage it. “I wasn’t able to identify the spell that killed her.”

  “And so the high and mighty Guardian calls for me,” Didi said, standing up. My attention was drawn helplessly to her body and I forced myself to focus on her eyes. It wasn't much of a relief. “You are going to help with the spell, aren’t you?”

  I shifted uncomfortably at her smile. Didi was tall for a woman, taller than me, but it wasn't that that repelled me. She was the blackest person I’d ever seen – she claimed descent from real Voodoo priests – and she was naked, standing in the room as casually as if she were fully clothed. Her body was covered with rings; she had earrings dangling from her ear, nose-rings hanging from her nose, nipple-rings hanging from her breasts…there was barely an inch of her body that didn’t have a ring. The pain she’d gone through to turn herself into the most-pieced woman in the world must have been staggering, I had decided long ago, and it prevented her from doing anything normal. If she walked past a magnet she would probably find herself trapped helplessly by the magnetic field. I didn’t even want to think about the rings she had on her lips, or her vagina…

  Where I was a generalist, able to perform most spells without difficulty, Didi was a specialist. Her precise branch of magic was commonly – and inaccurately – known as necromancy, working with the dead. I had seen her once trap a person’s soul in his rotting body until he answered her questions, and then destroy the zombie with a flick of her wrist. If anyone could call back Felincia’s ghost and place a handful of questions to it, she could, but it had its own dangers. Necromancers tended to be more than a little weird – Didi was actually the most normal one we knew of – and died young. Talking with the dead, she had told me once, allowed them to notice you…and then they never left you alone.

  “If you need me to help, I will,” I said, pushing my nausea aside. Whatever else could be said about her, there was no denying that she was a good and trustworthy ally. The Circle needed her. “What do you want me to do?”

  “I guess a quick screw up against the wall is out of the question,” Didi said. I ignored her sally firmly. She was always teasing the Guardians she worked with, although I don’t think that any of them had accepted her offer. Necromancers used sex as a source of energy – I think it was because sex was the ultimate act of the living – but it tended to take on strange forms. Call me boring, but I would prefer to stick to more mundane love-making, rath
er than getting up at night, putting on a goat’s skin, and dancing under the moon. “Just help me get her comfortable.”

  Unlike me, she had no hesitation in touching the cool body. I helped her move Felincia until she was lying flat on her back, with her hands folded under her breasts. She looked sweet, almost virginal, in a way; I could almost fool myself into believing that she was still alive. Didi was gentle to the corpse, murmuring like a nurse or a mother into the dead ears, far more gentle than I would have expected. She believed, unlike me, that Felincia was still alive somewhere. It was how her magic worked.

  “Sit there,” she directed me, once we had finished moving the body. “No, wait; put a locking spell on the door first, then turn off your cell phone and anything else that might distract you. I don’t like doing it with distractions. We might lose her while we tried to call her.”

  I obeyed slowly, reluctant to begin. Necromancy, like all other branches of magic, has its own rules…and no one is quite sure which rules are necessary and which have been added by fakes who didn’t know what they were doing. I know some necromancers who attempt to test the rules – almost unique among magic users – but eventually the researchers ended up dying in the magical equivalent of industrial accidents. I was just glad that we didn’t have to use chicken blood and feathers. That would have been too kinky for me.