Fire Raiser (23 page)

“How did you know?”

“German and Russian are easy to recognize. Polish, Hungarian, and Romanian use the same alphabet as the rest of Europe, with their own accent marks and—”

“Mr. District Attorney,” Evan cut in, “do you think we need to look into the immigration status of those two young ladies?”

“I beg your pardon?” He blinked.

“Ursula and Hadwisa,” Evan said, with emphasis. Then, responding to Jamey’s frown: “Those two young ladies named Ursula and Hadwisa who were speaking German and who probably weren’t born in Kansas City?”

“Oh.” He considered. “Well, Sheriff Lachlan, now that you mention it, perhaps we ought to check the papers of every worker at this establishment.”

“Excellent. How about we start upstairs?”

Cam shook his head. “And we bid a fond farewell to Fourth Amendment protections against unreasonable search and seizure.”

“You really haven’t been back in the States for a while, have you?” Jamey led the way down the central aisle between aluminum counters.

“Don’t make any phone calls you wouldn’t want the FBI to hear,” Evan seconded.

“ ‘Work in progress,’ ” Cam muttered. “Right.”

“DOORS ARE ALL taken care of,” Lulah said as Cam, Jamey, and Evan rounded a hallway corner on the third floor. Unable to help himself, Cam blinked a couple of times in surprise; his aunt gave him one of her scathing little smiles. “A lock is a lock in this place. Work on one, find the rest, link all of them together, and now I’m standing around waiting for you to get on with it.”

“Using the same principle? Hmm.” He thought about it—a little too obviously. Lulah reached up and flicked a finger against his temple. “Ow!”

“I brought some toys,” she whispered, as if imparting the grand secret to all magic. “So did Nicholas. You want help?”

“No,” he replied, stung. “I don’t need Nicky’s shiny rocks or your concoctions. I can do it.”

“All by your lonesome,” she approved. Turning to Jamey, she continued, “You’re getting the full razzle-dazzle tonight, aren’t you? I’ll apologize later for not telling you about us—”

“No need to apologize. I quite understand your caution. What sort of toys?”

“Oh, this and that.”

“Can I get a little silence here?” Cam asked.

“Was that a rhetorical question,” Holly muttered, “or are you inviting them to become awestruck at the speed and precision of your work?”

He distributed his sunniest smile among them all, complete with dimples. “Actually, it
is
rather pretty.”

And it was. Taking Lulah’s cue, he’d done what was necessary to a panel of silk wall. Using it as a pattern, he encouraged it to spread, fingering its way from one expanse of oyster-and-burgundy stripes to another. It looked like a computer model of flight paths weaving their way across the globe—and all at once he remembered how eerie that map had looked in the days following 9/11, when nothing flew across North America except planes belonging to the United States military. This was different. Tendrils of light curled down the corridor and curved down the stairs, decorating the walls in silence. From the third floor down to the second the white-gold brightness wove and spread, then descended to the ground floor, sliding around the cold dead steel of fire doors to find more silk. In front of him the upper hall was a tunnel of glittering interlocked lines, delicate and twinkling. It really was too bad Holly couldn’t see it.

Nicky could. He gave a slow, approving nod. “Clever.”

Holly and Evan knew better than to expect anything spectacular—or maybe they were relieved that nothing spectacular had occurred. Cam reminded himself to badger them for the full story of Evan’s encounters with magic. Jamey, on the other hand, looked like someone watching a French art film: waiting for a plot, chafing at the uncertain focus, wondering when—or if—something would happen.

At last Jamey said, “That’s
it
?”

“You expected phantom dragons breathing fire?”

“An
abracadabra
or two would’ve given it some atmosphere.”

Evan laughed. “As a friend of ours says, magic is within. Everything else is just props. Anything you’d care to share with the class, Nicky?”

He was sorting through a handful of gemstones. Props or not, they were useful, as Cam well knew. He fished the amber from beneath his t-shirt, warmed it in his palm for a moment, then saw Jamey frowning at him. “It was my dad’s, and his dad’s, on back about two hundred years.”

“And to think I used to worry that you might have arthritis,” Jamey muttered.

“Oh, it’s good for that, too. Also eases stress, cures hay fever, protects against evil spirits, is an antidote to poison, and heals ear infections.” As Cam rattled off the list, he became aware that Nicky’s face was wearing its own version of
scathing.

“Amber,” the older man intoned, “also encourages eccentric behavior. Settle down, children. I know you don’t think you need this, Cam, but use it anyway.” And he passed over a smooth, irregular lump of bloodstone. When Cam just stared at it, resting in the hollow of his palm, Nicky hissed, “
Az Istenért!
It opens doors and loosens bonds—and it also topples stone walls, as some of us have reason to know. Holly, if you would?”

Cam appreciated the sympathetic look she gave him; being scolded by Lulah
and
Nicky in the same five-minute period was not a prescription for enriched self-esteem. When a drop of her blood was smeared onto the rock, Cam nodded his thanks and closed his fingers into a fist. The stone warmed to his hand much faster than it seemed it should. And he was reminded that not only had it been a very long time since he’d done any real work with gems—let alone with Holly—he had never done this kind of thing at all.

As they descended to the second-floor landing where Cam had sensed the doorway—cautious and alert for any stragglers among the guests or any staff on patrol—Cam wondered how many times he had used his magic for aggression. Aside from that afternoon with Jamey, practically none. A Witch learned early on that certain things were acceptable and many things were not. He’d gotten away with the prickly heat on his teacher’s shirts for three gleeful days before his father found out—and a month living in a world muted of magic had taught him his lesson. Some people required more stringent lessoning in the ethics of Witchcraft—there were rumors about the boyhood exploits of great-grandpa Flynn, for instance, and nobody had ever let one of the Kirby cousins forget the time she’d tried to cheat on a chemistry lab final and nearly blown up the whole high school. By adulthood one was expected to toe the line without exterior prompting. Some people didn’t, of course, which was why Alec and Nicky had been kept so busy for so many years.

Cam had known excellent mentors and fine examples all his life. He remembered with squirming shame every single instance when he’d behaved with less than scrupulous deference to the moral imperatives of his kind. Opening a door into a hidden staircase wouldn’t be added to the list—but it was entirely possible that somewhere in their explorations tonight he’d have to make some aggressive moves.

He wondered suddenly how Nicky and Alec had justified doing some of the things they’d undoubtedly done.

“Magic is a tool like any other,”
Alec had told him once.
“Well, not
quite
like any other, but you know what I mean. You can use it like an elevator to get where you want to go faster and easier—but stairs are better for your heart.”

“An
elevator
?”
Nicky rolled his eyes.
“You have the most remarkable talent for obscure and semi-meaningless meta phors—”

“Ha! ‘Semi’ means ‘half,’ so you just admitted I’m at least half right!”

“I’ve admitted no such thing. Alec,”
Nick explained to Cam,
“is a glass-half-full kind of person.”

“Whereas Nicholas isn’t of the glass-half-empty persuasion. No, his outlook is that the glass is almost certainly cracked and won’t hold water at all!”

Cam knew how the glass felt.

They had reached the landing. The bloodstone was almost uncomfortably warm in his hand now. They were all watching him, expecting him to do something. Remembering the windows, he turned to his right, then realized that because he was facing the front of the building, he should be looking left. Rattled, he marched over to the place where he’d tried to walk through the wall, trying to let the stone guide him. Loosen bonds, open doors—

Would there be a knothole with a hidden catch, like in the attic at Woodhush? A nearly invisible seam somewhere, a knob, a pressure-sensitive panel, a certain nail in the wainscoting—

The bloodstone was cooling in his palm.

“Stop trying so hard,” Lulah murmured from behind him. She grasped his left hand and pressed a small, smooth oval into it. Glancing down, he saw a bit of wood about the size of an apricot pit, banded with silver. A letter had been burned into it with a metal die. Turning it over, he smiled suddenly, for the obverse was a different wood, white and fine as ivory, with a different rune—and this one was lightly touched with blood. Though it had been years since Leander Cox had taught him about different kinds of wood and Clary Sage had made him memorize the tree alphabet, these two came back without effort. Rowan and Holly:
Luis
and
Tinne
.

Why this would help wasn’t something he had time to ask, because the bloodstone and the wooden charm were both warming in his hands. He smelled wool, and tasted the chill of brass on his tongue, but beneath both was the feel of water. He didn’t understand it, but he used it. Confident now, he faced the wall, laid his fisted hands against the silk, feeling the stone in his right hand quiver even as the wood in his left hand seemed to become liquid and then solid metal and then liquid again.

Slowly he slid his hands down, letting the warm certainty permeate his knuckles and spread through his fingers to his palms. At the wainscoting, he stretched out his thumbs, and smiled. The catch was just behind a vase of flowers on a small carved wooden cupboard. Awkwardly, without unclenching his fingers, he used his thumbs to shift the vase. On the underside of the wainscoting he found the little button.

A chink of darkness etched his bright web of white-gold silence. It widened, lengthened, and became a doorway. Beyond was a landing, carpeted in eggshell-colored wool, hung with burgundy silk, adorned with a needlepoint-cushioned footstool and another small cupboard with polished brass handles on which rested a tall crystal vase full of flowers.

HOLLY HEARD NICKY’S QUICK INTAKE of breath, saw Lulah smile, and reasoned that something had happened. Jamey was staring with splendid intensity at the same area of wall the two Witches were staring at. Holly didn’t bother. Neither, she noted with a sideways glance, did Evan.

“Not bad,” Lulah allowed, a deep note of gratification in her voice giving the lie to her words. She reclaimed the talisman and stuffed it into a pocket of her jeans. “Everybody in before some jackass wanders up these stairs. Come on, you too, Jamey.”

Holly made a mental note to ask more closely about that wooden charm, handed to her for Blooding without a word of explanation. She caught her aunt’s eye with a meaningful frown; Lulah smiled and looked innocent.

“Come on
where?”
Jamey was asking.

“Through here,” said Nick—and walked through the wall.

“Goddamsonuvabitch!”

Holly patted his arm. “You remember the scene in that Indiana Jones movie where he takes the ‘leap of faith’ and steps out onto the rock path he’s convinced isn’t really there?”

“So which one of you works for Industrial Light and Magic?”

She couldn’t help noticing that when she’d said
leap of faith
, Cam frowned.
Yes, dearest—faith in you, just like Evan has faith in me. We all have to believe in each other, or nothing works.

She shut her eyes and walked through the wall.

It was crowded on the landing. Holly pressed her back against Evan, his arms around her waist, as six people crammed into a space comfortable for perhaps three. She stifled an ill-timed giggle as Jamey pressed up against Cam’s side and Cam tried to edge away—and Jamey only moved closer.

The stairwell was of dizzying depth; Holly felt a twinge of vertigo as she peered downward. There were landings every so often, but no turnings—which made the stairs incredibly steep. She was reminded of the time she and Susannah had ventured down into the pyramid of Menkaure in Egypt, thigh muscles groaning at the awkward incline. At least in this stairwell there was room to stand upright, and it was lit by reflection from the outdoor floodlights through three narrow windows, one above the other, delicately curtained in white.

Lulah tapped her shoulder. “Holly, unglue yourself from that man and come with me.”

She sidled away from her husband, knocking over the footstool. “Do we have a way Jamey can warn us if anything happens that we need warning about?”

Evan hauled out his Glock. “Makes a nice, loud noise.”

Cam’s blue eyes went wider than ever and he glanced at Jamey. “You know how to use that?”

Jamey unchambered the clip, checked it, snapped it back home, and flipped off the safety. He cocked a brow at Cam.

“Oh . . . kay. . . .”

“See ya,” Lulah said, and started down the stairs.

One landing, and another, each with its little footstool and cabinet and cut-crystal vase of flowers. White roses, lavender roses, and snapdragons; posies of blue violets clumped at the base of tall, stately papyrus that reminded her of Egypt again. Holly waited for her allergies to kick in; when they didn’t, not even a tickle, she frowned.

“Lulah, I’m not sneezing. I can’t even smell the flowers. Are they real?”

A touch to a single petal of a lavender rose made Lulah catch her breath. “That’s not just magic, it’s some kind of focal point. The bowl’s real, and the water—so are the flowers, for that matter. But they’re in stasis.” She ventured another delicate touch and snatched her fingers back. “That’s Master Class work. Whatever’s spelling the flowers fresh is connected to whatever’s spelling this staircase. But how was it done?”