But if the killer was someone magical, the story changed. A small spell can move a big body. Even easier: some witch or wizard might have gained control of Emil through magic and forced him to walk down my alley under his own power to his death.
So now I understood how Emil’s body came to be resting at the foot of my door – but I still didn’t understand why. Whoever killed him had a very specific reason for putting him there, and it wasn’t just to dispose of the body. If that were all they needed to accomplish, they would have done exactly what I did: arrange for Emil to be found on his own property, under circumstances that suggested natural causes. Done, and done. No investigation, no questions asked.
So maybe I was asking the wrong question. Perhaps, instead of asking why the body had been moved, I should be asking who wanted me involved in Emil’s death.
Now, there’s a chilling thought.
Like everybody, I had a few unhappy relationships over the years before I met John – some romantic, some platonic, one or two somewhere in-between – but as far as I knew, nobody wanted me dead or in jail. In business, too, I’ve had my share of dissatisfied customers. Things can get out of hand when deals end badly in a shop that traffics in magic. Still, the reputation of Pentacle Pawn is solid; our clients come from all over the world, and most of our business is word-of-mouth. If there is a dispute, I always put our customers’ feelings before money. I always make good. I couldn’t think of a single person who might want me ruined.
So what did that leave?
My best guess is that I had stumbled into something. In my mind, I ran through the consignments down in the vault, but nothing stood out as particularly dangerous or ominous. Of course, that’s a relative term – we have a basement full of magical objects. Any one of them could kill; any one of them could be used for evil. That’s the nature of the beast.
The most obvious connection was Emil himself, and that brought me back to the dragon puzzle. What was it about that ivory ball that was more than it seemed? Was Emil killed for it, and why was I drawn in?
♦
My cousin Jim is a Scottsdale detective, and my go-to guy for anything related to the police. With him, I can skip the explanations because he grew up in a witchy family himself. Later that morning, I bought him a latte at his favorite shop down the street from the police station and asked him about Emil Portiere.
“Why do you want to know?” Jim asked.
“Mr. Portiere was a client,” I said. It was the truth, but it wasn’t the whole truth. “He didn’t list a next of kin when he consigned his puzzle ball, so I guess I’ll need to find his family. I just wanted to know as much as I could about them before I met them – I’m sure they’ll have questions.”
“I’m sure they will.” Jim raised an eyebrow. “I wasn’t aware that Portiere was part of the community.”
It was a fair question. The percentage of witches and wizards in any population is pretty small, and – like any small town – we all know everybody else’s business.
“He wasn’t local,” I said. “I met him through the Paris shop. If you check, you probably find that his house is a snowbird rental.”
Jim nodded; nothing unusual so far. “The forensics aren’t back yet, but I’ll let you know what I find out about his family.”
♦
Emil Portiere was a referral from our sister shop in New Orleans. My only encounter with him had been when he consigned a carved puzzle ball to me for sale. I see these from time to time; they were popular tourist souvenirs for people traveling in China. I didn’t know that I was about to encounter something unique.
Mr. Portiere cautiously placed an antique leather-bound box on my desk and slid his chair back, keeping a safe distance. This thing clearly made him nervous.
I cautiously eased the hinged lid open. Inside, I found wonders.
The inside of the case was lined in red silk, embroidered with a dragon motif in gold thread. The bottom of the box was padded with horsehair cushions shaped specifically to cushion the contents and covered in the same beautiful red silk.
The case was maybe a few hundred years old, but its contents were many centuries older than that. The right half of the box contained a jade stand. I’d only seen jade in this translucent emerald green shade a few times before, and then only in small antique jewelry pieces. A piece this large was worth more than the building in which I sat. A master had carved the stand. Its design was elegant but surprisingly plain, with only a thin carved bead to ornament its base. The top of the stand was dished to hold a globe.
The stand had clearly been made for the object in the other half of the case. It was an ivory Chinese puzzle ball about the same size and color as a vintage baseball. The surface layer was intricately carved with entwined dragons, and the spaces between the dragons had been removed to show additional layers of concentric balls inside.
Collectors highly prize Chinese puzzle balls. Most are about the size of a golf ball. I couldn’t even imagine the value of the one in front of me, but that was beside the point. In my community, puzzle balls are sought for their power, not their price.
I counted at least thirteen layers. I’d never seen one this complex. The small one I had been given as a parting gift when I left our Paris shop was only seven layers, and that one was considered to be extraordinarily rare.
The old man seemed relieved when we signed the paperwork and I handed over a dollar, making the ball officially mine both in the eyes of the law and of the object itself. Mr. Portiere left pretty quickly after that.
♦
The puzzle ball was still on my mind when I opened Pentacle Pawn that evening. Now that the object officially belonged to me, it must, as the cliché says, do my bidding. At least I certainly hoped so. I wanted to take it for a test drive.
Puzzle balls are exactly that: a puzzle, a sort of ancient Rubik’s Cube. The object is to manipulate the layers so that all the holes line up and you can see into the center of the sphere. I had spent a lot of time trying to work mine and never quite succeeded.
Mr. Portiere’s puzzle ball seemed to settle down the moment my dollar changed hands. I suppose it was much like a horse that understood it now had an experienced rider.
It lay still in its case. It did not spin, glow, or vibrate. When I passed a hand over it, It was neither cold nor warm to the touch. The only sensation I felt was... potential.
I hadn’t discerned any residual spells or incantations, but an object this potent requires careful handling. I began with my favorite calming spell, a quiet lullaby. The puzzle ball didn’t react. I followed up with another short incantation designed to reinforce the dollar deal. It’s the magical equivalent of showing the object who is boss.
The basement of my shop is a fortified vault. There is no staircase or elevator to get to it: the only way downstairs is to sit in the classic plywood Eames chair in front of my desk, and recite a short incantation and this week’s password.
I popped downstairs to the matching chair in the vault and nestled the leather box into a cozy bin, which I secured with a nifty little spell and added an ordinary padlock. One can’t be too careful.
♦
I took the puzzle ball home with me that night. John whistled softly when I opened the case.
“What does it do?” he asked.
“I’m not sure,” I said. “I’m still working on it.” I turned the puzzle ball over in my hand. “How on earth did they make something like this?”
♦
I slept in late the next morning, and by the time I awoke, John had – you’ll excuse the pun – puzzled it out. John, a former reporter, is an expert researcher. He does all the background documentation for the objects I take in at Pentacle Pawn.
I made myself some strong coffee while John explained what he had discovered. It turned out that the process to make a puzzle ball was deceptively simple. The carver began by using a lathe to shape a chunk of mammoth tusk into a ball. The carver drilled cone-shaped holes into the sphere, b
eing careful to stop at a depth just short of the center.
That was the easy part. Next came tedious and meticulous hours with a special L-shaped tool that the carver worked into the holes and used it to scrape away voids inside the ball, forming as many as 30 free-floating layers. A 14th-century writer described the balls as the devils’ work, maybe because the delicate carvings could shatter at the slightest touch of a tool after weeks of patient work.
The decoration of the puzzle ball was just as nerve-racking. Each layer had to be carved separately. The designs were intricate and tiny: a lattice of stars, a lacework of interlocking rings– and, on the surface of the ball, a three-dimensional carpet of writhing dragons and phoenixes, Yin and Yang.
The finished piece was, indeed, a puzzle. The goal was to line up the holes so that the decorated ball at the center could be seen. I kept turning it over in my hand as John went back to his research.
This particular puzzle ball was unique. First, the surface was covered only with dragons. It was beautiful, but according to Chinese tradition, out of spiritual balance. This sphere was made to draw only the dragon’s female energy. It confirmed my suspicion that this piece had been created specifically for a witch’s use.
Even weirder, the center core appeared to be made from a different material. I grabbed my magnifying glass and took a closer look. I was right: the outer layer showed a tiny seam around the circumference. The separation had been skillfully disguised within the coils of the dragons, running along the base of the carvings so that the split was invisible in the shadow. There were no signs of glue; I had to assume that the maker had carved in some sort of locking mechanism that, once snapped together, could not be separated again. It was the work of a master craftsman.
I had never heard of this before. The whole idea behind puzzle balls is that they are carved from a single piece of ivory. This was clearly cheating. Or, had it been done for some other purpose?
I started working the puzzle. This ball had thirteen conical holes. The proper way to solve a puzzle ball is to place the end of a quill in each completed cone. Most people in the 21st century don’t have quills lying around, but I keep a plastic bin in my pantry where I toss plastic tableware from takeout orders – doesn’t everybody? – so I dug out a couple of sets of chopsticks.
Beginning down in the core, I nudged the layers of the puzzle until the lowest two lined up. I dropped in a chopstick. Now that I had the hang of it, the next few layers came easier. In a few minutes, I had completed one entire cone.
As soon as I started on the second hole, I realized how easy that first one had been. With one quill in place, the concentric layers pivoted around it. I started at the bottom again, but once I had those two layers lined up on two holes, none of the other holes aligned. This was worse than a Rubik’s Cube.
As I held the puzzle in my left hand, I realized that it was warming against my palm and had started to develop a faint violet glow. Someone had put a spell on this puzzle ball.
“John – look,” I whispered.
He glanced away from the screen, and I heard him suck in his breath.
“Can you see that?” I asked him. In life, John had no magical abilities, but I had no idea what he was capable of now.
“It’s purple,” John said in awe.
“You might want to stand back,” I said quietly. I didn’t have to tell him twice.
I cupped my hands on either side of the puzzle, reciting my basic calming incantation. It had no effect.
This was not a good sign. Aligning those layers may have triggered a latent spell, or at least started the process. I quickly removed the chopsticks and nudged the layers back out of alignment.
The aura backed off. When I took the ball in my hand again, it was cool to the touch.
I didn’t dare mess with the puzzle ball again until I could take it back to the shop and work on it down in the vault. I needed to understand what was going on. I needed to know who had put that spell on it and what they intended.
Someone had created this object and given it a powerful magic quite literally at its core. I had to know why.
Chapter Five
The day I consigned Emil Portiere’s dragon puzzle for sale, I had put out feelers to the usual sources, looking for a buyer. By the end of the week, there was a serious nibble from an anonymous European collector I had worked with in the past through a proxy.
We emailed back and forth. I sent photographs and he asked a few questions. I posted more photos, along with a detailed written description and line drawings of the most important carvings on the piece. He came back with a higher bid, but still not quite what I was looking for. We were nearing the end of our negotiations when Emil turned up dead in front of my desk.
Emil Portiere was gone, but his puzzle was still in my care. Emil’s attorney had discovered the pawn slip and called the front shop to inquire. I returned his call that afternoon and explained that I had a buyer on the hook. The lawyer asked for an appraisal of the item so it could be added to the estate.
I should explain how our pawn system works. We keep two sets of books.
The first set is the official record. The police department requires that we fill out a pawn declaration for each item we take in. These declarations remain on file permanently with the department. The detectives match their daily activity reports with the pawn declarations, trying to find stolen property.
The declarations are submitted through the computer system in the front shop and contain only the information available to the regular world: a digital photograph and a description of the item, including measurements and materials. I can print out a receipt and a copy of that declaration for my client from the terminal on my desk in the alley shop. That was the receipt that Emil’s attorney had found in his personal effects.
The second document is our encanto form. It is also generated at my desk, but those records never make it to the front shop’s files. This one details any magical properties or operating instructions for the object that the owner may care to pass along. We require full disclosure from our clients, for safety’s sake if nothing else. I don’t care for surprises. We print only one copy of the encanto, and it goes into the vault in a special envelope that is stored with the object in a rack on the outside of the bin or cage, exactly the way your medical records are placed on your doctor’s exam room door. No electronic record is kept.
I needed to update the encanto, so Mark offered to join me when I pulled the puzzle ball out of the vault for the second time.
“Interesting,” he said as he held the object in his hand. “I don’t feel anything.”
“Neither did I, until I started to work the puzzle.”
Mark grinned. He can work a Rubik’s Cube in 17 turns, which is as good as it gets – most people take 50 to 100 tries, and like I said, I’ve never managed to do it at all.
Mark quickly aligned the first set of holes and inserted a chopstick to hold the cone in place.
“Don’t get cocky,” I cautioned. “There’s more going on here.” I explained about the warmth and the aura that the puzzle developed when I tried to work it. “You don’t want to set this thing off until we know what it’s all about.”
Accidents happen with magical objects. They require expert handling, and even then, things can get out of hand. The objects that we deal with at Pentacle Pawn are particularly prone to be unstable because they are made from organic materials – plants and animals that were once alive – and they retain something of their original form’s sensibilities and attitudes. A skilled witch or wizard can harness these, but even the best of us makes mistakes. I could tell you stories about a Bengal tiger loose down in my vault, and an ancient bull running down the middle of Scottsdale Road.
It took Mark only seconds to get the second set of holes aligned. As he inserted the chopstick, the ball began to glow. Mark looked up at me and grinned. “Is that what you saw?”
I nodded. That thing scared me to death.
“Do we kn
ow anybody who has a violet aura?” Mark asked.
Violet is a very specific color in magic. It is extremely high energy. In its positive sense, it can indicate that a person is sensitive and visionary. In the negative, it is a primitive color that can foretell a propensity for violence.
A violet aura can indicate a talent for magic or psychic powers, but the auras of most witches are tinged with other colors that reflect different aspects of their personalities.
“I’ve only seen one this vivid,” I said, keeping my voice low.
Mark’s head whipped up as he caught my tone. “Penelope Silver.”
♦
My cousin Jim called the next morning and told me I needed to buy him a latte. When I got there, the twinkle in his eye told me that there had been a development.
“I learned something interesting last night,” Jim said. He was keeping it casual, but he was bursting with the news.
“Do tell.”
“It turns out, somebody ransacked Emil Portiere’s office the night he died.”
“You’re kidding.”
“Nope. Everything torn off the shelves, the lock busted on his desk, even a few floorboards pulled up.”
My first thought was that it must’ve been Mark, but such wanton vandalism wasn’t his style. Besides, he would’ve told me.
Jim had slipped me a copy of the police report, but there was no mention of a break-in. I asked him about it.
“They never went inside,” Jim said. “Portiere was found by a neighbor at the foot of his driveway, remember? He had his ID on him, and there was no sign of struggle. As far as the cops were concerned, it was a medical emergency, not a crime scene.”
I got it. “So they scooped him up in the ambulance and never went up to the house.”
“Yup.”
“So how did you find out?”
“Portiere’s lawyer. He called 911 when he went to the house to do an inventory for the estate.” Jim pulled out his tablet and showed me the crime scene photos. “It looks like quite a mess.”
“I wonder if they found what they were looking for,” I asked.
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