I followed him across town to see if he set up anywhere else, but he just headed into a dingy storefront on the edge of the East Village. The windows were too grimy to see through, and he didn’t put out the “open” sign. I watched outside the shop for a couple of hours, but no one came and he didn’t leave.
I flew back to headquarters and went up to Palmer’s office to report what I’d seen. “Maybe it’s nothin’,” I concluded. “But all our guys went to that corner, and he’s the most likely vendor. We could try a longer stakeout, but I’m not sure we’d see anything more.”
Palmer frowned and nodded. “I hate to say this, but maybe we should bring in Verification. They can spot right away if something’s being hidden. It would save us a lot of time.”
“If they know what they’re lookin’ for. Some of those folks could trip over a spell without seein’ it. They can also trip over the sidewalk without seein’ it.” Magical immunes can be very useful, in theory. Magic doesn’t work on ’em, so they see right past illusions. No matter what a magical person does to hide the use of magic, an immune will see what’s really there. The problem is that seein’ things that are really there isn’t good for a person’s mental health, not if you don’t know that there are fairies and elves living among us. By the time we discover immunes, they’re already a turn or two around the bend and not inclined to trust their own eyes. That makes them a little less than useful for crime-fighting purposes. Someone who can’t be sure what he saw is real makes a terrible witness.
But we didn’t have a lot of other options, that I could see. “I’ll keep on with the stakeout,” I said. “You talk to Verification and see if you can get someone to pay a visit to that corner. The book guy sets up pretty early and is gone by lunch. I’ll also put someone on the shop, and maybe we can have our immune swing by there, too.”
“Tracking the bookseller will probably be our best bet,” Palmer said. “If we know where he gets his spells, we might be able to eventually reach the originator.”
Before I left, I couldn’t resist teasing him. “So, how did things go with the bookstore girl on Saturday?”
“What do you mean?” he asked, tryin’ to sound oblivious, but the shade of pink rising from his collar told me he knew exactly what I meant.
“Did you go talk to her?”
“Of course not!”
I gave him a light tap on the back of his head with the tip of my wing. “Why not? You stood there eyeballing her long enough.”
“She was gone by the time I got back to the store. And trying to pick up women in public is creepy.”
“So is staring at them.”
The pink in his cheeks turned to bright red. “I wasn’t staring for that long. And I was curious what kind of books she reads. I liked the way she smiled at people.”
I shook my head. “Let’s just hope this case isn’t as hopeless as you are.”
I was back in my spot bright and early the next morning. The book guy showed up and did his usual thing. I didn’t spot any of the immunes I knew, but I figured that if Gregor, the head of Verification, was being his usual charming self, he’d have been hard to reach and then dragged his feet, so we wouldn’t have anyone out there at the right time until the following morning.
There was finally a customer at the book table, and I moved closer to get a good look at what was going on. The customer fit the general demographic of slightly shady loser, the kind of guy who’d use his magical powers to shoplift from a deli instead of doing something with his life. He spent a lot of time browsing the books. I didn’t see him give a high sign or password or anything else that would have dropped the magical veil for him. He finally bought a paperback and shoved it into his battered canvas messenger bag.
I was torn between following him and tracking where he’d come from. I compromised by casting the spell on him that would show me his trail and then following him at least a little ways. He stopped at a coffee cart to buy a cup, then went to a park, where he sat down to read his book.
That didn’t look too interesting to me, so I flew back the way I’d come, watching his trail. Before he hit the book stall, he’d come from a subway station. The trail went dead there. My spell wasn’t strong enough to show where he’d been on a train. I flew along the path of the subway, looking to see if I spotted his trail again. When I reached a point where the various lines that served the station where I’d lost him diverged, and I hadn’t seen a sign of him entering the subway, I gave it up. I could fly all over the city before I picked up the trail again, and I’d be lucky if the spell was still working by that point.
Besides, I hate goin’ into Queens.
When I got back to the corner, the bookseller was gone. I tracked back to the customer and found him still on that park bench. Whatever he was reading, whether it was a paperback fantasy novel or an evil spell, it must have been pretty engrossing.
I’d have watched him the rest of the day to track him back home, but I got an alert an hour or so later that there’d been another theft, using that same spell. Whoever was selling this stuff wasn’t upgrading, or else the customer still had an older version, because the spell was still ridiculously easy for us to disrupt.
This time, I got there soon enough to disguise myself as a human cop—a tricky illusion, but I’m pretty proud of it—and take the perp away. Just for grins, I let him see what I really looked like. I kept him secure until we got transport to get him to the office.
A search didn’t reveal anything incriminating, other than a candy bar he’d managed to stash so it wasn’t discovered when his spell was broken. He didn’t have a spell pamphlet on him. He also didn’t have any shady paperbacks. “So, whaddaya think?” I asked Palmer as we watched him through the glass of the interview room. “You wanna be the good cop or the bad cop?”
“Do we have to be either?”
“You think this mook is just gonna talk?”
“He doesn’t look like a hardened criminal. I think he’s pretty scared. He’ll probably cooperate to get himself out of trouble.”
“He’ll probably cooperate faster if he’s more scared.”
He gave me a weary look and shook his head. “Let’s start with nice.”
“So, you’ll be the good cop.”
We entered the interview room, and I perched on the back of one of the chairs facing our thief. Palmer took a seat beside me and clasped his hands in front of him on the table. The perp smirked. “Who are you, the magic cops?”
“Not exactly,” Owen said. “And you’re fortunate. They would take this a lot more seriously than we are. We just want to know where you got the spell you used to steal.”
“Why? It’s a lousy spell.”
“Exactly. We don’t like bad magic being out there.”
“So, you’re trying to protect thieves from bad spells?”
“We’re trying to protect everyone from bad spells. Today it may be nothing more than a spell for thievery that’s too easy to break. Tomorrow, it could be a spell that harms innocent bystanders.”
The guy shrugged helplessly. “It was just something I made up.”
Palmer smiled. “I find that hard to believe.”
“Why? Because I’m not a fancy corporate wizard like you? You think you’re the only one who can make up spells?”
“Because we’ve been seeing that spell all over town. If you’re the one who made it up, then we’ve caught the ringleader and we will be turning you over to the Council.”
That got the suspect’s attention, real fast. He sat up straight, coming out of his casual slouch. “Hey, wait, no! It’s not me. I didn’t make it up. I bought it. Total waste of money, too.”
“If you consider it a waste of money, surely you have no loyalty to the person who sold it to you—who ripped you off.”
I could practically smell the smoke as the guy’s feeble brain worked overtime. “Oh, yeah, no.”
“You’re not afraid of him, are you?” Palmer asked gently, those big, blue eyes of h
is radiating sincerity.
“I’d have to know who it was to be afraid. I just bought it off a guy. He had a table on a street corner.”
“How did you know where to find the table on the street corner?”
“I got a tip from a friend. He gave me a map of where I could find the stuff and a key that would let me see it.”
Palmer and I looked at each other. Now we were talkin’. This was what we needed. “Do you have the map and key?” Palmer asked.
“Nah, I gave them to a buddy so he could buy some stuff.” He laughed. “I guess he’ll get ripped off, too.”
“Do you know where your friend got the map and key?”
“He said he found them. He didn’t tell me more than that. Stuff like that gets passed around, if you know the right people. And I’m not going to tell you who my friend is, so don’t even ask me. I’m not a rat.”
I admired Palmer’s control in not swearing in frustration. So close, but we still didn’t have anything we could work with. We’d have to hope our immune got us something we could use.
I was at the market early the next day, so I could be in place before either the bookseller or our immune showed up. The bookseller was running late this morning, so late that the immune got there first. I wasn’t sure whether to be glad or worried that they’d sent Rowena. She was a spacey, flaky hippie chick who didn’t seem to have both feet firmly planted in this world, which tended to make her useless for real verification work. On the other hand, it meant she’d fit in well with our guy’s usual clientele. Assuming, that was, he ever showed up.
The CD and handbag sellers were already in place before the book guy got there, but Rowena didn’t seem to have noticed. She spent the time browsing the CDs one by one. I couldn’t tell if she was doing that on purpose to stall for time or if she’d forgotten why she was there.
When the bookseller finally arrived, Rowena was so busy looking at CDs, reading every label in great detail, that she didn’t move. Again, I couldn’t tell if she was being a particularly clever operative and not looking too eager or if she hadn’t actually noticed that the bookseller was there. I was just wonderin’ if I should maybe have a word with her when she drifted away from the CD table and over to the bookseller.
He didn’t pay her much notice as she browsed the books the way she had the CDs, picking up each one and reading every word on the cover before flipping through it. I guess he was expecting to be shown that key thingy if she was the special kind of customer, and if she didn’t have it, then she was only looking at books.
He did get a bit antsy when she reached the last row on the table after having flipped through everything else, but that could have just been because her silent, intense browsing was a bit unnerving. Even from my distance and knowing what she was really doing, I wanted to shout, “Just buy something, already!”
The kind of loser we were used to seeing as the primary customer for the spells we were tracking approached the corner, moving quickly, on a mission. The bookseller perked up, either recognizing this guy or this type. He glanced back and forth between the new guy, who stopped a few feet away and hovered like he wasn’t sure what to do, and Rowena, who was still reading the covers of every book on the table, like she had all day. I couldn’t tell if she was oblivious or pretending, but the bookseller’s increasing agitation didn’t appear to affect her at all. Most people would have either left the table or made a decision to buy something, but she just kept on doing her thing, showing no sign of feeling any pressure.
Finally, she got to the last book, looked up at the bookseller, smiled at him, and drifted away in a swirl of gauzy skirts, twining a strand of frizzy hair around her finger. I thought the bookseller would leap over his table and strangle her, but he clenched his fists, took a few deep breaths, and focused on the new guy who now approached the table.
I was dyin’ to debrief Rowena to find out what she’d seen, but I was also curious about what transaction would happen with the new guy, and I knew where to find Rowena, assuming she was able to get back to the office without an escort.
I double-checked my veiling magic to make sure no one other than an immune could see me and dropped down from my lamppost to stand on the ground next to the book table. It woulda been nice if I coulda found a higher spot that was closer because I couldn’t see much from ground level, but at least I could hear them.
The customer leaned over, and I got the impression he was showin’ the bookseller something—that key the perp we’d caught had mentioned, I figured. “I don’t have much with me today,” the bookseller said. “Was there something in particular you were looking for?”
“I heard there’s something new,” the guy said after glancing around. He couldn’t have looked any shiftier if he’d tried. His body language radiated guilt about something. Even a normal, nonmagical cop walking by would have stopped to ask him what he was up to. “Something, um, even stronger?”
If I hadn’t known better, I’d have thought they were talking about drugs. Then again, maybe they were. I didn’t yet have any evidence that this guy was really selling shady spells. At any rate, I was pretty sure that his primary business wasn’t selling books of questionable legality.
“I have heard that there might be something new coming,” the bookseller said. “But I haven’t yet seen anything or heard anything directly. You could try someone else.”
The customer gave a long, “Oh,” in response, his shoulders slumping in dejection. Maybe they were talking about drugs, after all. “I guess I can check around.” He shoved his hands in his pockets and sloped off, dragging his feet like he was too exhausted to lift them.
The bookseller cleared his throat loudly, but the customer didn’t seem to notice. In exasperation, the bookseller called out, “Hey, you forgot something.”
The guy patted his pockets, not sure what he’d left behind. Finally, it dawned on him that the seller might have had something more to say to him, and he turned back. “Yeah? What did I forget?” he said when he reached the table.
The seller glanced around, making sure no one was listening, then quickly scribbled a note on a slip of paper and handed it to the guy. “You dropped this,” he said a little too loudly. In a whisper and all in a rush, trying to get the words out as quickly as possible, he added, “This is my supplier, if there’s anything new he’ll have it before it hits the street, but you didn’t hear it from me. The password is Gandalf.”
It took the customer a moment or two to process this. Finally he said, “Okay, thanks,” and headed out, still moving like he didn’t have much of a sense of purpose.
I took to the air to follow him, though I had to keep flying ahead and circling back because I couldn’t remain airborne moving as slowly as he walked. I’d be really irked if he was just lookin’ for drugs, but I couldn’t take the chance that he wasn’t out for magic, and if he was heading up the food chain, this could be our lucky break. It would have helped if I knew what Rowena had seen. She hadn’t tried to buy anything, so maybe there hadn’t been any spells, but would she have tried without having that key?
I don’t have pockets for carrying a phone, but let’s just say I have a way to make phone calls. I tapped my ear to activate my earpiece and called Palmer. “Has Rowena made it back yet?” I asked when he answered.
“Not that I’ve heard.”
“I guess it’s too soon—and that’s even if she didn’t get sidetracked along the way. Do you have a number to reach her?”
“I can get it if she has one. Why?”
“Another customer showed up while she was there, and he apparently didn’t find what he wanted. The seller sent him to his supplier. I’m trackin’ him, but it would help if I knew what she saw.”
“Hold on a moment.”
It didn’t take him too long to get back to me, not even a whole verse of “The Girl from Ipanema.” “Sorry about that,” he said. “She doesn’t seem to have a cell phone, at least, not that we have the number for. She did have a compan
y-issued one, but she lost it and they haven’t replaced it.”
“Well, see if you can grab her as soon as she gets back to the office and find out what she saw. I couldn’t get a sense of it from watching her. It sure would be nice if we could find ourselves a nice, reliable immune.”
“I’m afraid that’s an oxymoron.”
I was so busy talking to Palmer that I nearly missed it when my quarry picked up his pace. It looked like he was heading for a bagel shop, and I couldn’t help but wonder if he was going to try to pull a magical heist or if he just needed a carb fix, but instead of entering the shop, he went through the entrance for the offices upstairs.
I said something that probably shouldn’t be repeated in polite company. Doors aren’t usually an obstacle for me, not even when they’re locked, but they do get tricky when you’re tailing someone while veiled. It’s just about impossible to magic open a door without anyone noticing the door opening, even if they don’t see you. Your best bet is to find someone to follow inside. I wasn’t close enough to follow my guy in, and there wasn’t anyone else approaching.
I looked for an open window, but it was a newer building, one of those that’s climate-controlled, with windows that don’t open. Since there wasn’t anyone approaching, I took a chance that he was far enough inside not to notice the door opening and closing behind him and waved a hand to open the door just enough for me to fly inside. I let the door shut as gently as possible behind me, in hopes that he wouldn’t hear it.
My luck had held out. He was talking to a security guard who blocked the way to the elevator, and they were both intent enough on their conversation that they didn’t seem to have noticed the door. I’d have thought any security guard worth his salt would’ve booted this guy right out, but either the suspect had whammied him or had something that gave him passage because the guard pressed a button that opened a gate into the elevator vestibule. I flew over my quarry’s head, getting there just in time to board the elevator with him.
It wasn’t dignified, but I hung bat-like from the grid of the elevator’s ceiling, my wings folded over my body. That was my surest bet for being able to fly out of the elevator as soon as my guy left. It was hard to take off quickly from the ground, and the elevator was short on perches.
Criminal Enchantment Page 2
