License to Ensorcell

by Katharine Kerr

  “Stop it!” I got up and practically dove for the couch. “Lawrence, listen to me!” I sat down next to him and grabbed him by the shoulders.

  The howling stopped, but he continued to tremble.

  “You’ve got to call Father Keith,” I said. “Ari, do you have anything I can write the number on?”

  Ari did, the back of the receipt from breakfast. He handed me a ballpoint pen as well. I wrote down the number, then glanced around. On top of one of the wall speakers lay a cell phone. I got up, grabbed it, and brought it back to Grampian.

  “Call him right now,” I said. “Don’t worry. He’ll be expecting you. And remember, you’re in danger. Don’t go out at night, not even in a crowd. Warn the rest of your pack, too.”

  We left Grampian talking on the phone to Father Keith and showed ourselves out. As we went down the stairs, Ari shot a puzzled glance my way. “When did you call your uncle?”

  “Hmm? I didn’t.”

  “Well, how did you know that Keith was expecting Grampian to call?”

  “Ari, after all this time—”

  He actually blushed. “More fool me,” he said. “Never mind.”

  We got into the car, but instead of starting the engine, Ari sat looking out the windshield and drumming his fingers on the steering wheel. I followed his glance and saw nothing but a sagging gray house behind a concrete lawn, spotted with puddles from the recent rain.

  “What is it?” I said.

  “Just thinking about something Grampian said. He believed that Pat would have obeyed him, the alpha male. Do you think that’s true? What if a new alpha male, Doyle, say, had asked him to do something illegal?”

  “Like dealing Persian white?”

  “Exactly.”

  “I can’t speak for the other guys in the pack, but Pat would have said no. That’s probably what got him killed. Doyle could tell that he’d never come around.”

  “That makes a certain sense, yes.”

  He started the car, made an entirely too flamboyant U-turn, and we headed off downhill. I caught myself just before I asked him where we were going.

  “The trouble with all of this,” Ari said abruptly, “is not being able to tell Sanchez the whole truth.”

  “Yeah, unfortunately. Some of the information you have on tape should help them work the narcotics angle, though.”

  “That’s true. I’ll call him once we’ve reached a stopping place.”

  Sanchez, however, contacted Ari while we were still in transit. Out of consideration for my feelings Ari pulled over to the side of Alemany Boulevard before he took the call. Watching him trying to drive while talking on the phone would have been too much for me to bear. For a few brief minutes he merely listened, then gave Sanchez a summary of what we’d learned from Grampian about Doyle. When he finished, he told me Sanchez’s news.

  “They’ve found the Jaguar. It was abandoned just south of San Francisco on the Great Highway. He’s got a team going over it for evidence.”

  “Think they’ll find any?”

  “You never know. Criminals have careless moments just like everyone else, now and then.”

  “True. They must have had another car stashed somewhere, maybe that blue sedan, the one I saw in the first scan I did.”

  “I assume so, probably near where they abandoned the Jaguar. Sanchez also gave me the report on the windmill. It’s not what we expected at all. The lock had been picked, all right. The police found stacks of consumer goods inside.”

  “Say what? No drugs?”

  “Not unless you count coffee and chocolate as drugs. The raid turned up hundreds of pounds of those, plus watches, old-fashioned cameras and film, electric batteries of various sizes, and baseball gear, shirts and caps for a team called the Dodgers, mostly.” He frowned, puzzled. “And the oddest thing of all is that they found receipts with everything. It had all been paid for with cash. Everything but the baseball gear came from Costco. I didn’t realize you had those in America.”

  “We sure do, and that explains the quantities.” I don’t mind admitting that the news baffled me. “So it’s not contraband at all.”

  “Apparently not, though it had no right to be there, so they confiscated it anyway.” Ari shrugged. “They’ll stake out the place in case the trespasser returns. Do you think it could be Doyle or Johnson?”

  “I really don’t know. That’s the last kind of stuff I expected to be in there. On the other hand, they’ve been spotted there twice now.”

  “And who else would have left all those goods there?”

  “Well, yeah. Wait—those receipts must have had dates on them.”

  “Everything had been purchased over the weekend, Sunday morning at the latest.”

  “Just before Michael disappeared. That’s ominous.”

  “I’m afraid so, yes.”

  I made a mental note to file a report on this development as soon as I could log on. Ari started the car again.

  “Let’s go,” he said cheerfully and pulled right out into traffic without a backward glance. Horns blared, but we lived.

  Our destination turned out to be the Morrison Marketing office. I had to agree when Ari remarked that Johnson most likely would stay away from somewhere so obvious and so public, at least during the day. I took the book bag of Pat’s journals from the car, but we left the luggage in the trunk.

  When we arrived, Ari insisted on changing offices with me. The inner office window looked out on a straight drop six stories down to asphalt. I’d never seen any evidence that Johnson counted “human fly” among his accomplishments. Ari took my desk in the outer room with its view of the Bay Bridge approach. He fired up the computer in order, he said, to “file reports.”

  “Do you have an encryption system?” I said. “The one on there won’t work for you.”

  “We have our own, don’t worry.”

  On my old desk, the landline phone was blinking. The message came from Y’s secretary, worried again about the publicity for the new line of dog food. The code word made me laugh, not a pleasant sound, but technically a laugh.

  “What?” Ari said.

  “My handler has talents of his own. The code word he picked turned out to be pretty damn appropriate. Dog food. Wolf chow, more like it.”

  I took a notepad and pen out of the desk drawer, then went into the inner office. I settled into the comfortable leather chair to go into trance. As soon as I signaled to Y, his image appeared in the chair next to mine.

  “I’m damn glad you’ve gotten in touch,” Y said. “I’ve been worried sick. Annie reported that you were shot at last night.”

  “Yeah, I was, but he missed. How did she know?”

  “It’s all over the news. Serial killer nearly claims new victim. It’s the kind of story they love.”

  “I suppose it would be. Anyway, let me fill you in.”

  I gave him a full report on everything—well, excluding my love life—that had happened since I’d last filed a report via TranceWeb. He listened solemnly, nodding now and then.

  “I got your report on the coven question,” he said when I was done. “I checked the archive, and you’re quite correct. The state of the information there is appalling. Very outdated.”

  “I’m glad to hear you say that. Could you have a researcher set up a background file?”

  “I certainly will.”

  “Good. I’ll continue investigating the coven I found. I did get a clear mind print of one of the individuals in it. She strikes me as victim more than perp, bored and lonely and looking for some excitement, that kind of person. But Johnson was there, and I bet that means more excitement than any of them want.”

  “No doubt! I’m beginning to understand why the I Ching wanted you back in San Francisco. The place is Chaos-prone.”

  “At times, yeah, but now and then, we strike a blow for Harmony.”

  “I suppose so, historically speaking. Still, the Agency had better put some thought into the general situation there.”
/>   Had I been awake, I would have groaned aloud. I suspected that some kind of meddling supervisor was going to descend upon me in the near future.

  “Now, however, about the case in hand.” Y’s image froze while his body consulted his notes. The image revived. “It’s beginning to sound like things are falling into place.”

  “Yeah, except for two things, Doyle and Johnson. Where are they? The local police are busy trying to hunt them down, but so far no luck.”

  “Shouldn’t you leave that to them? You’re too valuable an agent to go on putting yourself in danger. Our policy is simple—stay away from police matters if at all possible.”

  It was time we changed that policy, or so I felt, but I knew better than to push until I got a direct order to back off.

  “Right,” I said instead. “They’re the experts.”

  “Speaking of which, I talked to a few of our experts about your missing brother.”

  In my physical body, my heart pounded a couple of times. I calmed myself before it woke me up.

  “One of them has military contacts,” Y continued. “He was allowed to look at a report from a satellite system that you and I don’t know about. Right?”

  “Right.”

  “It picked up the energy flash you described. The military is very interested in just what that might have been. Our expert thinks that the Army is sending someone to San Francisco to take a look at it. Maybe they’ll find out more than we can, now that they know about it. If they do, our operative will get the pass-through.”

  “That sounds real good.”

  “Yes. Now, as to where your brother is, the one resource person I have in that area agrees that the deviant level theory is possible. She doesn’t like the term parallel worlds, because they aren’t really parallel. They apparently shoot off in all directions.” His image looked utterly confused. “She showed me a lot of math, but I can’t remember much of it.”

  “Don’t worry about it,” I said. “If you showed it to me, I wouldn’t understand it, either. The only math I studied in college was statistics. Our talents are more reliable than that.”

  “Well, probabilities do come into this. She remarked that there must be an explanation for what happened. Since every explanation is extremely unlikely, even the most improbable of the explanations could be true. It came in at—” again the pause to consult notes “—a point one percent for all causes except for the deviant level theory, which came in at point zero nine percent.”

  “Statistically speaking, that’s not a big deviation.”

  “That’s what she said, too. If the world-walker theory is correct, then the gate deposited Mike somewhere. He must have some sort of natural attunement to such things. You’re sure he’s still alive?”

  I ran a quick mental check. “Yeah,” I said, “I am.”

  “Good. I’ve uploaded her contact information to TranceWeb. She goes by the name of NumbersGrrl. She spells it gee ar ar el, for some reason.”

  “If that’s her handle, she must be a geek.”

  Y looked confused again. “No, not Greek,” he said after a moment, “she’s African American.”

  “Oh. Sorry.” I suppressed my emotional reaction, that is, the trance equivalent of laughter. “I really appreciate the effort you’ve put into this.”

  “Well, I’ve always had hopes of recruiting more members of your family one day. Michael sounds like he could be a very valuable addition to our crew.”

  I was surprised at how much I wanted to argue the point. I refused to have my little brother working such a dangerous job—until I remembered that he’d already found the danger on his own.

  “He’s still underage,” I said. “And he needs to get an education first.”

  “I do realize that. Oh, I have a bit of gossip-level data that you might want to know. About Nathan? It seems that his superior officers were glad of the excuse to get him out of the country and their hair for a while. He’s too good to fire, but apparently he’s unusually—well, the word my source used was blunt.”

  “Yeah, as in blunt instrument. I can understand that.”

  “I see. Well, over and out.”

  He disappeared.

  I came out of the trance and made some notes on the things Y had told me. One detail stuck out, that the shooting had made the TV news. Aunt Eileen had doubtless seen the segment. When I called her, she greeted me with a: “Thank heaven you called.”

  “I’m sorry I didn’t get in touch sooner,” I said. “I’ve been really busy with the police and all of that.”

  “Particularly busy with one policeman, I should think! Nola, honestly!”

  I was several miles away, but I blushed. I should have known.

  “If you’re going to do things like that,” Aunt Eileen went on, “I hope you’re using birth control. I don’t care what the pope thinks, him and all those old cardinals. What would they know about sex, anyway, or if they do know, shame on them!”

  “I’m using that new ring.” I decided to change the subject. “But have you heard anything more about Michael?”

  “No.” She paused, and sadness welled up. “I was hoping that Lieutenant Sanchez would call again, but he didn’t. I don’t suppose he has anything to tell us.”

  “Probably not. But I want you to know that I’m as sure as I can be that Mike’s still alive. I’d know if he’d gone on to the other side.”

  “Well, dear, that’s a real comfort. I actually think I would, too. I did have another dream. Do you remember me telling you about the farmer’s market and the goblins?”

  “Yeah, sure do.”

  “In this dream I saw one of them close up. It wasn’t a goblin at all. It was a man with a really horrible tumor growing inside his face. His cheek was swollen so badly that he couldn’t open one eye. I still don’t know if the dream means anything, but somehow that made it seem more real.”

  “I see what you mean.” I wrote down a few quick notes. “I’m not sure what it signifies, either, but it strikes me as important.”

  “It did me, too. Now, I’ll call you if the police tell me anything more.”

  I ended the call, then leaned back in the leather chair to think. Y was probably right, I decided, about leaving Doyle and Johnson to the police—well, mostly to the police. I saw nothing wrong with passing them information through Ari. Thanks to our interview with Grampian, the cops could issue a search warrant for Doyle and maybe bring him in first. A little persuasion, plus his fear of being in custody with the full moon only a couple of weeks away—he’d probably spill everything he knew about Johnson in the hopes of getting out on bail before the wolf-change began.

  And if he didn’t get out in time? If he couldn’t post bail? What were the police going to do if they had a werewolf on their hands? Send him to the SPCA for custody? I made a note to ask Y how we’d handle such an occurrence, then put the matter to one side.

  The agency had supplied a laptop for the office. I was just powering it up to contact NumbersGrrl when I heard a rustle behind me. I spun the chair around and saw a blue lizard-meerkat thing crouched behind the wastepaper basket. I raised my hand to execute the ward and the Chaos creature with one gesture, but it whined and rose up on its hind legs to beg. Its slimy green eyes stared at me in terror.

  “Listen, you,” I said. “Get out of here now, and I won’t blast you to hell.”

  It whined, pissed green slime, and vanished. So did the puddle, I’m glad to say. Johnson and Doyle already knew who I was and where I lived. Since they’d found the office, too, I had very little left to hide. I saw no reason to destroy a thing that so obviously felt fear whether it truly lived or not.

  When I logged onto TranceWeb I went straight to e-mail. Our code expert had taken a look at Johnson’s two letters. I transferred the information into a regular file, then got up and opened the door to the outer office. Ari was sitting at my old desk and looking at a computer screen full of Hebrew letters. Just as good as TranceWeb, I thought, when it comes to keepin
g secrets from me, at least.

  “Ari?” I said. “The Agency guy thinks the symbols on Johnson’s two letters represent a stage of the alchemical process. He calls it the nigredo.”

  “Which means?” Ari swiveled the chair around and looked up at me.

  “Dissolution, basically. The old alchemists summed things up in the formula solve et coagula—dissolve and congeal, in English. The nigredo’s part of the solve, the dissolving of the prima materia so it can be reconstituted in the coagula part of the formula.”

  Ari blinked, stricken.

  “I’ve got all this in a file,” I said. “I’ll print it out for you.”

  “Thank you. But why did Johnson put those symbols on the letters?”

  “The expert doesn’t know. Finding out is our job, he says.”

  I got the reproachful stare.

  “But I’ll make a guess,” I went on. “I think Johnson’s telling us his state of mind, but he doesn’t know that’s what he’s doing. Consciously, he probably figured those symbols would scare people, is all.”

  “That makes sense.” He paused for a sigh. “In the usual mad way.”

  I returned to the office and TranceWeb to check the FAQ on Chaos critters. I read through all the entries just in case I needed the information later—not that it was terribly helpful. For example, no one knew how the Chaos masters had managed to make artificial constructs that digested actual food as an energy source. Our R and D people were working on the problem, or so the FAQ said, but the comment was two years old.

  Before I filed my official report, I paused to run a quick SM: Personnel on Sneezy. The contact came so easily that I knew she had to be distracted by some strong emotion. As I focused in, the light dawned. I’d caught her in the middle of having sex—with Doyle. Busy though he was, I could pick up the print of his ugly little mind. I shut off the contact immediately. I’d learned something new about Sneezy, all right. She had terrible taste in men. I wondered if he were living in her elegant house, wherever that was. If so, Johnson had to be off on his own somewhere, as I’d never felt his presence in that location. I would have, too, since he left the psychic equivalent of the stench of secondhand garlic everywhere he went.