Low Midnight (Kitty Norville Book 13)

by Carrie Vaughn

  “Well what?”

  He shrugged, leaving Cormac wide open to stick his foot in his mouth. Kitty rescued him by sweeping over, setting two mugs of beer on the table, and perching in the other chair. She revealed the book she’d held tucked under her arm and pushed it across the table to him.

  “Look what I got. Galleys for the new book. Isn’t it pretty?”

  On top of everything else she managed, she was an author. That was more of a sideline to the talk radio show, but if she was going to be doing all that talking anyway, might as well write some of it down.

  It was a cheap paperback, not the final fancy hardcover that would be out in a few months. Storytellers: Myth and History, the title read. The cover was a photograph, her portrait against a backdrop of pine trees. She was all made up and airbrushed and looked like a celebrity, which he supposed was the idea. But it didn’t look like the Kitty he knew.

  “Congratulations,” he said, his tone as even as ever.

  “Thanks! This is an extra. You know, if you wanted to read it. Or something.” She blinked hopefully.

  He was about to politely decline, but Amelia insisted. Yes, we want to read it. He picked up the copy, and Kitty beamed.

  “You find out anything new?” Ben asked. “I assume that’s why you’re here.”

  “Don’t think I just stopped by for a beer and company?”

  “Not that you’d ever admit it,” Ben observed, which was more accurate than not.

  “So what have you found?” Kitty demanded.

  He started to say something, stopped. Thought for a second about how to condense everything that had happened since the run-in with Nolan and Eddie. Realized that Ben would ask how much of what he’d been doing was technically illegal, and Cormac didn’t precisely know. He didn’t think they were trespassing on private land when they experimented with that mining spell. Bottom line, none of it would make Ben and Kitty happy, and he didn’t want the grilling he’d go through if his answer was too vague.

  They watched him expectantly, waiting for an answer.

  He said, “I got a hit on the stuff we posted online. Don’t know if anything’ll come of it. But it may be another lead.” It all depended on whether or not they had e-mail waiting for them when they got home.

  “Yeah?” Kitty asked. “What kind of a hit?”

  “Hard to tell. Someone who knows about Amy. And who knows about Kumarbis.”

  Kitty sat forward at that—a wolf on the scent, ears up and nose quivering. “Knows how? This person—they must be a vampire, to know about Kumarbis. What would a vampire know about Amy’s book—”

  “I told you, I don’t know. We’ve just exchanged a couple of e-mails so far. I’m still feeling the person out.”

  She sighed, obviously disappointed. “If you find out anything more, and if you think we can even trust them, find out what they know about Roman, the Long Game, all of it.”

  “Yeah. One step at a time.”

  “Thank you again,” Kitty said. “For working on all this.”

  He brushed her off out of habit. “I figure I’m in it as deep as you are at this point.”

  Can you please finish your beer so we can go see if our mysterious correspondent has answered?

  How could someone who was functionally dead be that impatient?

  Kitty rambled on about the new book, the release schedule, and possibly going on a signing tour, which gave him a twinge of anxiety. Traveling all over the country meeting total strangers—what could possibly go wrong? He nursed his beer and listened to his friends’ banter.

  The phone in his pocket rang. He considered not answering, then thought it might be Layne wanting to blow off more steam. Curious, he checked, while Ben and Kitty looked on with interest. Because they were nosy.

  The caller ID wasn’t Layne this time. He answered and heard, “Cormac?” It was Mollie.

  He got up from the table and walked a few paces off, then realized that wouldn’t be far enough away to keep the couple and their werewolf ears from listening in, so he went out the front door. Aware the whole time that Ben was smirking and Kitty’s eyebrows had lifted—they knew his caller was female.

  “Hey,” he answered the phone, propping himself up against the brick wall outside the door.

  “Hi. Andy gave me your number.” She didn’t sound happy, and Cormac braced. She waited, and waited. Expectantly.

  He said, innocently as he could, which wasn’t very, “Heard you guys had a fire out at the ranch.”

  “I should have shot you where you stood, Cormac Bennett. That was my car you blew up.”

  He winced. Just his luck. “Well. Thank you for not shooting me.”

  “You’re lucky Andy won’t let me call the cops. He won’t even let me call my insurance company, because they’d call the cops.”

  He wasn’t going to apologize. He refused to apologize. He’d do it all over again. He’d just pick a different car. “What’s he expect you to do?”

  “I made Andy give me his car. And five grand.”

  “That was big of him.”

  “I suppose I deserve it, hanging out with him in the first place. I don’t know what all he gets up to, I don’t want to. But God, Cormac, what the hell!”

  “I needed a distraction.”

  “I know better than to ask Andy what he’s doing, but you—you all but vanish for twenty years, then show up setting cars on fire? He says you’re some kind of magical vampire hunter—is that true?”

  She didn’t know the stories. Didn’t know about his father, had stayed out of the politics of what followed while she was off getting married and having kids.

  “Mollie, it’s a lot like the stuff with Layne, you really don’t want to know.”

  There was a pause, and he could just about picture her straightening, brushing back her hair, and changing her stance in order to change her voice. Because the next thing she said was gentle, suggestive. “Cormac, I know it’s been a long time. I don’t know what you have going on in your life right now. But I was thinking maybe we could get together. Catch up, you know? I could bore you with pictures of my kids.”

  He didn’t know if it was the sudden shift in the tone of her voice or his natural suspicion, but he didn’t trust the request. “Layne put you up to this, didn’t he? He’s sitting right there, isn’t he?”

  A sigh. He imagined her looking across whatever room she was in to her brother egging her on. And to think, for a split second Cormac thought maybe she really wanted to see him.

  “He wants to meet. Just to talk.”

  “I bet he does. The answer’s still no, not as long as he’s likely to put a bullet in me.”

  “He was working with that Kuzniak jerk so he wouldn’t have to put bullets in anyone! Just watch them keel over dead when they get in his way!”

  “Like Kuzniak,” Cormac said.

  A long silence followed. Amelia murmured, Anderson Layne found something. He discovered something.

  They were supposed to be washing their hands of it.

  “Cormac—”

  “Mollie. It really has been good to see you. I have to go.” He hung up. Sighed. Well, at least he had her number now.

  You wanted to ask her out for drinks.

  It wouldn’t work out, he thought. He wasn’t that kind of guy.

  He could just go on home, but Kitty or Ben—or both—would call and demand to know what was happening. Best get it over with now, in person, when they might actually believe he wasn’t hiding something. He went back inside.

  They were waiting for him, and they didn’t even have to ask, just looked at him with these expectant, questioning gazes. Puppy dog eyes? Hm.

  “What was that all about?” Kitty finally asked when he didn’t say anything.

  “Just a call. Not important,” he said.

  “You were out there a long time,” Kitty said. She might have batted her eyelashes.

  “Yeah?” He found some beer left in his mug and drank it down.

&nb
sp; Kitty added, “Is she nice?”

  He rolled his eyes. “I should get going. I’ve still got some work to do. Let you guys have your fun in peace.”

  “You’ll let us know if anything comes up?” Ben said.

  “Always do.”

  “Not likely,” he said, his smile friendly enough, but the dig was there as well. The words held a lot of shared history. A lot of not talking.

  “If it’s important, I’ll let you know,” he amended and waved himself out.

  Chapter 22

  HE’D JUST unlocked the apartment’s front door when Amelia demanded, The laptop. Turn on the laptop. My God, why do these things take so long, we should have just left it on.…

  He took his time getting inside, closing the door behind him, setting the dead bolt, turning on the lights, heading to the kitchenette for a glass of water—

  Cormac!

  Then, he turned on the computer.

  New e-mail was waiting for them.

  “A new take on the alchemical prize. Interesting. I have studied and practiced magic for many years, and everyone seems to think they have a way to make gold out of something else. The closest I’ve come to what you’re suggesting—mining gold magically, pulling it out of the ground without use of chemicals or equipment—are various earthmoving spells. Spells to move stone, rituals to cause earthquakes. One could build a mine using such magical techniques. But any gold ore would still need to be physically mined. Unless you’ve discovered evidence to the contrary?”

  Amelia couldn’t wait to start typing a reply. Her urgency felt like a throbbing running down his arms to his fingers.

  “You never had a pen pal, did you?” he said.

  I had correspondences all my life, with some of the most diligent arcane scholars of my day. All the letters I collected—I’ve lost them all, along with my other artifacts and treasures. But I would have to wait weeks for replies to my letters. Days at the very least. This—this is nearly instantaneous. You have no idea the technologies you take for granted.

  “No doubt.” He thought about his cell phone and how it meant he could never really disappear. Not unless he just left it behind and drove off into the sunset. He’d thought about doing that.

  He let Amelia type. “No, I have no evidence, only rambling notes and speculation. I’ve started experimenting, but I’m not hopeful. You’ve confirmed my fears. The idea was simply so intriguing I could not pass over it without giving it at least some thought.”

  She sent the message, stared at the screen, and he imagined her rubbing her hands together in anticipation. Their correspondent might reply immediately. Or they could be waiting all night. Cormac thought he might as well go to sleep—if Amelia would let him.

  But they didn’t have to wait that long. The program pinged incoming e-mail; their correspondent was online.

  He’d written: “The path of magic is never clear cut. I commend your curiosity and your dedication. Have you learned anything new about breaking Amy Scanlon’s code?”

  “Several leads. Nothing definite, I’m afraid. My guess is she used a personal, shifting code, something that only had meaning to her. If we knew the key, we could find the pattern. But I didn’t know her personally and I couldn’t guess what she might have used.”

  Again, a quick response: “Does she have any family, any close friends still living?”

  They hesitated in their response. So far, they hadn’t exchanged details. No names but Amy’s, no locations. Only generalizations, abstractions. Cormac was leery about giving too much away. They had little enough as it was. “That’s one of the leads I’m following. Nothing definite, yet.”

  “What do you hope to find in this book of shadows when you are able to read it?”

  “Your confidence that I will is heartening. I have some questions that need answering; her book of shadows seems likely to contain such answers.”

  “What kind of questions?”

  Cormac suddenly had the feeling of being interrogated and drew his hands back from the keyboard.

  Amelia argued, If Kitty is right, and knowing about Kumarbis means this person is a vampire, he might have some insight into the Long Game. We could ask—

  “I don’t want to show our hand,” Cormac said. “I don’t want to give away who we are. We start talking about the Long Game, who knows what’ll come up. This is about the book for now. That’s it.”

  Your paranoia has served you well in the past. I suppose I can’t argue with you now.

  That was probably giving him more credit than he deserved. Now, how to be cagey without entirely shutting down the line of communication? This was the kind of thing Kitty was good at.

  “Historical magic,” Amelia typed, using Cormac’s hands. The answer was both true and disingenuous. “Spells that might have been lost to time. My understanding is that Amy Scanlon was interested in the past. For example—you yourself mentioned the possibility of creating earthquakes by magical means; have you actually done this, or seen it done? Or is it only in stories? Mere rumor.” According to Kitty, Amy must have had some kind of earthmoving spell to be able to cause the cave-in at the mine there at the end. Maybe it was in the book’s coded sections.

  “I never like to say mere rumor. But I will say this: I have good reason to believe that the eruption of Vesuvius that buried Pompeii was instigated by magic. The volcano was naturally ready to erupt, of course—but the ultimate trigger was not natural.”

  “Good heavens,” Amelia wrote, both honest reaction and conversational filler. “That’s extraordinary. That raises so many questions, doesn’t it?”

  “Yes, but I don’t believe that’s the problem you’re working on, is it?”

  Amelia’s mind had gone off in a dozen different directions, to other natural disasters that might have been caused by magic, to the reasons someone might have wanted to cause Vesuvius to erupt—revenge against the city? An overblown assassination attempt? An accident? Cormac pulled her back to the conversation at hand.

  Amelia replied, “I’m currently investigating two deaths. At least one of them involved a duel between two men known to use magic. In both cases, men known to be powerful magicians were struck dead with no evidence of being attacked, injured, or any usual offensive magic being used against them.”

  The next reply didn’t come immediately. Cormac went to the fridge for a beer, took his time crossing the four feet back to the table, while Amelia seethed with impatience.

  An answer waited: “In magical duels, the magician who wins is often not the one with the most powerful offense, but the one with the strongest defense. Look to see how their opponents were shielded. My apologies, I have to go now, but I’m sure we’ll talk again. I look forward to our next exchange.”

  A defense strong enough to kill. Wasn’t unheard of. Thoughtful, Cormac leaned back in his chair.

  This person is brilliant, Amelia said, gushing. I wonder who he is? Or she? My goodness, I think I’m blushing.

  He refrained from asking how she could blush without a body. “You ask who he is, we’ll have to tell who we are.”

  Not necessarily. But if we lie to him about who we are, then there’s no reason to believe he’ll tell the truth about who he is. Oh, this anonymity is so useful, but terribly frustrating, isn’t it? I’ll have to look into using my scrying spells, but who knows if they’ll even work on e-mail. Though I did know someone who attempted to cast spells via telegraph, as an experiment. With ambiguous results, unfortunately, but I wonder if the technique could be adapted.

  He decided it was time to go to bed, before she went off on another research jag. Maybe she’d even stop talking long enough for him to actually fall asleep.

  I’m not that bad.

  He didn’t credit that with an answer.

  * * *

  HE LAY in bed for a long time the next morning, thinking.

  Again, he was in the meadow, and Amelia was again pacing. Cormac wondered if he could lean up against a nearby tree trunk, close his e
yes, and go to sleep inside the half-dreaming world of their minds. He hadn’t slept well, waking up every hour or so with some new thought, Amelia probing him with some conjecture about Kuzniak, Crane, the other Kuzniak, and how they were all connected. He thought it could wait until morning; she didn’t. Finally, he’d given in. But he still wanted to sleep.

  “If Kuzniak killed Crane in the manner the stories about it say, the evidence of it ought to be in his book. But there’s nothing!”

  “It’s not a very thorough book.”

  “Yes, I’ve seen that. If the young Milo learned all his magic from it, it’s no wonder he ended up dead. There must be another book. Another source from which he acquired his knowledge. Something.”

  “Or we’ve missed something,” Cormac said.

  “I haven’t missed anything, I don’t miss things.”

  Amelia had studied the book over and over. She’d deciphered the handwriting, figured out abbreviations, copied the whole thing into her own book. Cormac agreed, she probably hadn’t missed anything.

  Then the solution wasn’t in the writing. He sat up.

  Amelia came toward him. “Cormac, what is it? You’ve thought of something, I can see the look in your eyes—”

  He shook his head, shook away the meadow, and sat up in bed, swinging his legs to the floor. Sun came in through the cheap blinds, casting light over the clutter in the place that was so much easier to ignore at night.

  Kuzniak’s book was in the lockbox where Amelia kept the most valuable—or dangerous—of the artifacts they’d collected. He went to get it off the set of makeshift shelves on the far wall, pulled it out, ignored her when she complained that he left the box open. Sat back and flipped through it, looking at everything but the writing. Feeling along the pages, the spine, the covers; holding the pages up to the light, up to his nose. Smelled like paper. A little bit musty, like an attic.

  He found it in the very back, between the last page and the back cover. The last few pages of the thing were blank, like Kuzniak hadn’t had a chance to fill them all, so they hadn’t gotten this far in their reading. He held the inside back cover to the light, ran his thumb over it, and found the imprint—the shape of a Maltese cross a couple of inches wide, pressed into the endpapers. Once upon a time, someone had stored something here, enclosed inside the book.