Still Not Dead Enough , Book 2 of The Dead Among Us (22 page)

Paul and McGowan returned to the study. “I thought you were speaking euphemistically when you said
Russian mafia
. What did he do to Vladimir?”

McGowan shrugged. “Probably had his arms broken.”

“Just like that?”

McGowan nodded carefully. “Yes, Paul, just like that. Vladimir made him look bad. But don’t confuse Vasily with mafia. He and his colleagues aren’t involved in drugs or prostitution or any of that stuff. He’d have no support from the other powerful wizards if he were. But he and a few others believe that we practitioners are a superior race, or something like that, that we should be in charge, and he should be in charge of us. And I and some others oppose him in that.

“Be paranoid, Paul. His interactions with you have cost him greatly among his support base. And while it wasn’t your fault, I don’t think he’s looking at it that way. You’re in the clear for the time being, but eventually, we won’t be able to avoid a reckoning with him.”

~~~

It was about noon. Paul was at McGowan’s place in the old man’s study, with Colleen grilling him relentlessly on some interesting spells. He wasn’t doing well, a bit preoccupied with Katherine and the way she avoided him. He’d tried to call her several times, but she hadn’t returned his calls.

McGowan burst into the room, interrupting him and Colleen. “Katherine’s missing.”

Colleen turned to him calmly. “What do you mean she’s missing?”

“Her secretary called to ask if I’d seen her. She didn’t show up at her office yesterday, didn’t show up again today, and her secretary’s been unable to reach her by phone.”

Colleen remained calm. “How can we help, Walter?”

“Judy’s calling all the hospitals and the police in case she’s been in an accident. I’m going to her apartment. You two go to her office, check it out, see if Judy missed anything.”

~~~

The first thing Paul noticed in Katherine’s reception was a funny smell in the air. It was strong, not unpleasant, but clearly abnormal for such a nice office, and he couldn’t identify it, kind of like one of those sweet-smelling things cabbies hung from the dash of their cab. But this place was a Rolls Royce, not a cab.

Paul introduced Colleen to Judy. “Yes. Mr. McGowan said you’d be coming by, that I was to cooperate with you fully.” She was clearly distraught. “Nothing from the police, and I’ve called hospitals near this office and near her house. Nothing so for. Still have a few more to call.”

Colleen nodded, the personification of calm. “Keep at it. We’ll find her. I’m sure she’s just fine. When did you last see her?”

“Day before yesterday. It was not an untypical day, a few difficult cases, but nothing really unusual. She finished her last appointment, left just after five, and I locked up as usual.”

Paul wanted to ask about the smell, but Colleen apparently knew what he was thinking and stopped him with a slight shake of her head.

“We’ll be in Katherine’s office,” Colleen said.

“Certainly,” Judy said, and turned back to her phone.

As Paul closed the door to Katherine’s office he turned to Colleen and asked, “What the hell is that smell?”

“It’s not a smell,” she said, picking up the telephone on Katherine’s desk. “Like demon stink you’re confusing your senses. Close your eyes, pinch your nose, breathe through your mouth, and use the new senses I’ve taught you.”

Paul did as instructed, then, as he’d been taught, tried to clear his mind, open his inner
sight
to his surroundings. He had a picture in his mind of Katherine’s office, but as he concentrated colors overlaid the image, which was frustrating since that meant he was now just using sight instead of smell to confuse his practitioner’s sense. He stopped pinching his nose, opened his eyes to tell Colleen he had failed, but she was on the phone with someone.

“Walter, the place reeks of Sidhe, clearly Unseelie Court, probably royal blood.”

Paul could only hear one side of the conversation. “Um hum . . . Um hum . . . No. Nothing in her house, huh? Um hum . . . Um hum . . . I think the receptionist was beguiled, doesn’t remember a thing. Paul and I will try to open up her memories.”

There was a long pause while she listened to something McGowan said. “Right. We’ll see you in a bit.”

Colleen hung up the phone, walked to the door, opened it and called, “Judy, could you join us in here?”

Colleen had Judy sit in a comfortable chair, then said, “We think you know more than you realize. We suspect you’ve been hypnotized to forget certain memories. With your permission I’d like to hypnotize you and see if I can unlock those memories.”

One of Judy’s eyebrows lifted skeptically. “Come now, Ms. Colleen. I wasn’t born yesterday, and I’ve been with Katherine for almost ten years. I’ve known for some time she and her father and their
friends
are more than meets the eye. I don’t know what, exactly, and I don’t care. I’ll do anything I can to help Katherine, but please don’t patronize me.”

Colleen shrugged, and her accent came back. “Very well, darlin’. I like a plain-speekin’ woman. I’m going to do some unusual things, and Paul here will assist me. We won’t hurt you, and you may be able to help Katherine. May I touch your forehead?”

Judy nodded, so Colleen bent, reached out, lightly touched the tips of her fingers to a spot between Judy’s eyes. Paul was happy it looked nothing like a Vulcan mind-meld. Judy leaned back in the chair, closed her eyes, her breathing slowed and she calmed noticeably.

Colleen straightened, looked at Paul. “To break a glamour induced by a member of the royal blood of the Unseelie Court, I’ll have to use a powerful spell. But since I haven’t been able to prepare anything I’ll have to use some complex rune magic. If you remember the rune I trace, and if you remember the words I chant, please don’t use them unless you practice this first with me or Walter. If the rune isn’t traced perfectly, the chant not spoken properly, something very different can happen, probably something rather unpleasant.”

Paul nodded. Colleen turned back to Judy, pressed her thumb to the center of Judy’s forehead, reminding Paul of the priest who used his thumb to smear ashes on his forehead on Ash Wednesday’s when he was a child. Her thumb traced a shape on the receptionist’s forehead as she spoke, “To the mind the beguiled are un-beguiled. To the heart the beguiler is no more, and yet is ever there.”

Paul couldn’t discern the shape Colleen traced no matter how he tried. But she traced it again and again, repeating the chant over and over until the rune glowed with a faint blue light. But while the light was faint to Paul’s mundane sense of sight, when he closed his eyes it burned like a fiery beacon to his practitioner’s
sight
, a simple triangle surrounding a symbol consisting of three or four convoluted, jagged lines, probably some Celtic rune, given Colleen’s background. The symbol etched itself into his mind in a way he would never forget.

Colleen then moved to Judy’s right temple, but now used her left forefinger to trace the same Celtic symbol in another triangle, repeating the same chant as she traced the rune over and over. The unusual symbol was the same, but where the triangle on her forehead had been point up, this one was point down, and it glowed with a red light. When it too was almost blinding to his practitioner’s
sight
, she moved to Judy’s left temple.

Using her right forefinger, she repeated the chant and the symbol on Judy’s left temple, a rune identical to that on her right, but glowing with an emerald green light. And after tracing it several times, repeating the chant constantly, Colleen finally stepped back and looked at Judy, who now, to Paul’s
sight
, lit up the room like a rainbow on a beautiful spring morning after a night of rain.

Colleen stared at Judy for a moment, and Paul felt her gathering her power, then she stepped forward, leaned down and kissed Judy delicately in the center of the rune on her forehead, a brief, momentary kiss in which she fed the power she had gathered into the rune. Then she whispered, “The beguilement is gone.”

The runes disappeared without any dramatic demonstration of sight or sound, Judy gasped, opened her eyes, blinked several times, took several deep breaths, then buried her face in her hands. Colleen held up a hand, warning Paul to be silent. Judy sat that way for several seconds, then muttered through her fingers, “I remember.”

Colleen said, “Then tell us.”

Judy leaned back, looked Colleen square in the face. “He came at the end of the day, day before yesterday. Had no appointment, was not one of Katherine’s patients, so normally I would have told him to make an appointment and turned him away regardless. But for some reason I didn’t. In fact I insisted that Katherine see him.”

“Describe him.”

Judy thought for a moment, then described a tall, blonde god. “He was quite charming, and I felt . . .”

Colleen nodded. “You felt sexually attracted to him in a strong way.”

Judy flushed and glanced at Paul. “I’m not normally like that. I don’t understand it. In any case he met Katherine in her office, and then a few minutes later they left together. I locked up as usual, went home and forgot about it, literally.”

“You’ve helped us immensely,” Colleen said.

“Is she in danger?”

“Perhaps, but with this information, we should be able to bring her back unharmed.”

“I hope so. I dearly hope so.”

“You mentioned earlier that we are, how did you put it,
more than meets the eye
?”

Judy nodded cautiously.

“Then please realize that the police cannot help in this, that they can only get in the way.”

Judy nodded again.

Colleen spent some time reassuring the woman and they left her in a fairly calm state. The old wizard met them on the steps of the building. Colleen told him, “This stinks of Simuth. I know his scent, and I know his style.”

The look on McGowan’s face turned to stone-cold anger. “Let’s catch a cab, go back to my place.”

~~~

Like any royal Sidhe, Anogh both loved and hated the Mortal Plane, so filled with passion, energy, beauty and ugliness all at the same time. It was a tapestry of sensations, whereas Faerie remained ever unchanging. But at the same time his powers were so reduced it was like suffering an illness, a slow wasting death.

The door to the building that contained the daughter’s office opened, and a rather ordinary young man stepped out onto the street. Anogh would normally not have paid attention, but the young man paused, appeared to be talking to his own shadow; strange enough, unless the shadow wasn’t a shadow. Then a stooped, old woman leaning heavily on a cane joined him. The old woman too conversed with the shadow, then the young man and the old woman and the shadow turned and began walking up the street. And while the old woman continued hobbling on her cane, and to mortal eyes it would seem they moved slowly, to the eyes of such as Anogh they moved much too quickly for an infirm, old woman.

Anogh caught a glimpse of something behind the trio, more a shimmer in the air than something of actual substance, clearly something of Faerie. The shimmer followed the three, so he decided to follow the follower. Once he stood in the follower’s footsteps he knew it was of the Seelie Court, an agent of Faerie.

Soon, walking in the footsteps of the three, his Faerie senses told him the druid and the Old Wizard accompanied the young necromancer, all three disguised in glamours of their choosing. Here in the Mortal Plane he had been weak enough, and both of them had been strong enough, to fool him had he not been watching closely.

Anogh moved quickly to catch up with Magreth’s agent, pulling a glamour about himself. By now he knew the mage was not of Seelie royal blood, and he could overcome him easily. The three reached a major cross street, hailed a cab. As it pulled away Magreth’s agent dropped his glamour, became visible and tried to hail a cab. He was clearly one of the Summer Queen’s young courtiers trying to curry favor by taking on an unpleasant task. It was a simple matter for Anogh to insure that no cab stopped for the young agent.

As the young agent stood on the street corner cursing, Anogh stepped up behind him and wrapped them both in his glamour so they couldn’t be seen by mundane eyes. The young agent gasped, turned to face him and his eyes widened. He dropped to one knee. “My Lord, how may I serve the Summer Knight?”

Anogh nodded. “What is Magreth’s concern in this?”

The young mage bowed his head and said, “She fears he will be bound to the Unseelie Court.”

Anogh understood Magreth’s fear. “Return to Magreth, tell her I ask her to stand down. Tell her that, on my word, she need not fear the young mage will be bound to the Winter Court.”

The young Sidhe looked up, eyes wide. “But your oaths, My Lord?”

“Tell Magreth I will not betray my oaths, but they do not hinder me in this.”

The young Sidhe bowed his head. “As you wish, My Lord.”

“You may go.”

The young man vanished.

Anogh turned, looked in the direction the cab had gone. It was time he met the young necromancer alone.

Chapter 17: No Free Will

She sensed the summons as a desperate need she must answer. She took a moment to look upon the lithe body of the Sidhe man lying next to her in bed. She could only remember bits and pieces of their activities the previous night, wanted to forget every sickening second of it. And yet, she wanted more of it, even longed for it. But the summons demanded her attention, her obedience.

How she got from naked in a bed next to a naked Adonis, to walking down a corridor, she could not say. She now wore the finest of Faerie silks, though what could be seen through them would get her arrested any place on the Mortal Plane. Her hair had been wrapped and twirled elaborately atop her head, and jewels hung from her throat and wrists and ankles.

“She is beautiful, is she not?”

Now she stood before an older Sidhe, but while older, still more beautiful than all the rest. He wore a crown on his head, sat upon a throne made of precious stones of all kinds, wore white Sidhe silks. No one need tell her she stood before Ag.

Simuth stood to one side, walked up to her, touched her cheek and she orgasmed again just standing there. She dropped to her hands and knees, lowered her head in shame.