The Magic's in the Music (Magic Series Book 5) (30 page)

“So, ‘Star Geeks’?”

She looked sheepish. “You could say that.”

Uh, oh.
She identified with the geeks. Had he just insulted her? She dragged him over to something that didn’t even look like a telescope. It was a huge metal barrel about eight feet high in a cradle of struts. Two guys worked it, one at the back who sat in a seat like a tractor’s and looked down through a lens tube, and another guy who guided people up the stepladder to look in another viewer. Greta dragged Lan to the back of a line about ten or fifteen people deep.

One of the guys waved at her. “Hey, Greta! What’s up?”

“Jerry. Hey, Dave. Can I get you to point this bad boy at C-seven-four-three-five when we get to the front of the line?”

She knew the Star Geeks by name. He watched them kind of melt under the wattage of her smile. Well, who wouldn’t? Gretchen Falk? They probably went home and jacked off just thinking about the fact that they’d seen her tonight.

“Sure,” the one she’d called Jerry said. “No problem. We got a little breeze going, but the conditions are still pretty good.”

They watched kids and Dads and pregnant women and young lovers all climb the stepladder and peer into the viewer at the moon. Their oohs and ahhs punctuated Greta’s earnest explanation of the technical specifications of the telescope, which apparently belonged to the Society and was stored here at the Observatory because it was too big to move around. She did know her stuff. A movie star who knew the technical specifications of telescopes…interesting.

When they got to the front of the line, Jerry and Dave were all business. Dave punched some buttons on a dashboard, and the huge scope moved slowly to the south. There was much fiddling, while Greta talked to Jerry about the telescope in language Lan found incomprehensible.

“C-seven-four-three-five it is,” Dave finally announced, as he raised his head from the viewer. “I’ve got it in sight. Let me lock on.”

“So, uh, C is for comet, right?” Lan asked, trying not to feel way out of his league.

“Actually, it indicates that the comet is non-periodic.” When Lan looked nonplussed, Greta continued hastily, “That means one that comes into the solar system less than every two hundred years, maybe even only once.”

“Oh.”
What else did you say?

“Periodic comets come through more frequently than every two hundred years. They get a P prefix. There are some other kinds, too, X’s and D’s but they aren’t as common.”

“So when did this one come through last?” There. That was an okay question.

“It comes by every five hundred and eleven years.”

“Shit. You mean this one hasn’t been here since Fifteen hundred?”

“Fifteen oh four, actually,” Jerry corrected.

Star Geeks could apparently be annoying. Except for Greta. Lan wasn’t sure he’d ever find her annoying. Too sexy. Way smart. Beautiful. But probably not annoying.

Case in point, she grinned at him. That grin would fix anything. “The first time this one was sighted and documented was in four-eighty-two A.D. About the time of Camelot.” She wiggled her brows suggestively. “Right up your alley, correct?”

“That’s why we call it Galahad,” Dave said as he pointed to Jerry. “You’re set.”

Greta hopped up the stairs and closed one eye to look into the eyepiece. “Galahad, there you are, you beauty.” She raised her head. “Pretty good viewing tonight.” She clambered down. “Want to take a look?”

Lan only needed one step on the stepstool. He closed one eye, as Greta had done. “I don’t see jack,” he muttered.

“Move your head around a little,” Greta ordered.

Suddenly an amorphous light with a fairly big corona was right there in the viewer. “Wow.”

“Can you see the tail?” Greta asked.

“Yeah. Part of it.”

“It’s way longer than we can actually see,” she said.

He stepped down. “Will we ever be able to see it with the naked eye?” he asked.

“Oh, yeah. It’ll be a close drive-by. It’s going to cross most of the heavens.” She looked up and pointed in an arc. Her white throat made him want to kiss from her ear to her collarbone as a start. “In fact, he’s going to change several constellations on his way through.”

“Perseus, for instance,” Dave said, “is going to get an extra shoulder.”

“Ah,” Greta said, smiling a secret smile. “But what he’s going to do to Ursus Major is most interesting of all.” She pointed to the sky opposite the lens of the telescope.

“What am I looking for?” Lan asked.

“The Big Dipper. That’s Ursus Major, the Bear.”

“Oh.” Of course he knew the Big Dipper. “What’s going to happen there?”

“Galahad is going to streak in across the bowl of the dipper and seem to hang for a while just on that far side, because of the angle.”

Lan craned his head back, trying to figure out where the comet would come from. “On the top, there?”

“Yeah.” Greta agreed. “Right where there is no star at the top of the bowl. It will just seem to stay there for several days.”

“Maybe a week,” Jerry added. “This is the first time we’ll be able to study it with modern equipment. We’re going to get some real good data as well as a pretty light show.”

Everything slowed down for Lanyon. He hardly heard what Jerry was saying. He blinked up at the stars. The comet, whose name was Galahad—the knight who’d found the Holy Grail—was going to make a five-sided figure in the sky. And a five-sided figure was a pentagram, right? And a pentagram was a modern word for Pentacle.

“Would it have made the same pattern even back in Merlin’s day?” he asked. His voice sounded distant in his own ears.

“Yeah,” Dave said. “That’s why they wrote about it.”

“Oh, God,” he muttered. Everything speeded up to really fast.

Lan grabbed Greta’s hand. “Come on, we’ve got to get home.”

“What?”

He practically bumped into a big guy dressed in black who was closing in from behind.

“I know what the fourth Talisman is.” He knew his face looked stricken, but that’s how he felt. “We’ve been looking for something like the Cup or the Sword. But it isn’t like that at all.” He pulled her toward the parking lot.

“The park is closing,” came the announcement over the loudspeaker. Most people were already heading out.

“What’s he talking about?” Dave asked Jerry, behind them.

“Thank you,” Greta called over her shoulder. “Wait, Lan.”

“Gotta tell the Parents, Kemble.”

“Well, I’ve got to pee before we get back in the car.” She pointed toward the building with bathrooms off to the left. The lights glowed into the dark.

Lan veered left. “Okay, but…”

“I know. I’ll make it snappy.”

‡

Jason was so
excited his hand trembled as he reached for his phone. When had he ever trembled? He’d been hard as nails since he was fifteen. Once you’d killed your own father, nothing much fazed you. Course, he was self-aware enough to know that killing that bastard, and what had come before that, had been ‘fazing’ him all his life, even if it was just that he never trembled at anything anymore.

But that
had
apparently changed. Jason wasn’t sure why. Maybe because he’d just heard the Tremaine kid tell his girl that he knew what the fourth Talisman was. Thank God he’d closed in on them just in time to hear the important part. This was the beginning. Morgan would change the world.

They were heading to the bathrooms. Perfect.

His fingers fumbled with his phone.

Why did he care what she thought? Why did he follow Morgan? Sure, he didn’t have any choice really. She’d never let him go. But he didn’t even chafe at her controlling ways. Maybe it was because he held some flicker of hope that she could change him, too. Maybe, when she got enough power, she could put him back together; the way he’d been, before he’d killed his father, before he’d killed Sela.

As if Morgan would take a minute out of her day to fix Jason.

He texted her.

Tremaine kid knows 4th Talisman + location. Pick him up?

He sent it with highest priority.

His phone buzzed in his hand immediately.

What is it?

Wasn’t wild about disappointing her. He took a breath.

Didn’t hear that part.

Again the phone buzzed right back.

Bring him to the casino. Now.

No exclamation points. No kudos for figuring out the kid knew. In fact, she’d probably be all over his ass for not hearing exactly what it was. Of course it wouldn’t take them long to find out. Hardwick would take care of that.

The kid watched the girl go into the bathroom, looking like he’d just seen the Second Coming or something. Good. He wasn’t on his guard. It had been a close call when the kid had nearly bumped into him. Jason glanced around. The lawn had cleared out. The assholes with the telescopes were dismantling them, preoccupied.

Jason waited until the kid’s back was turned, his attention zeroed in on the bathroom door. Park security herded the few remaining visitors to the parking lot. Jason tried to act like one more tourist walking to the exit. He fell behind the few stragglers, almost alone.

Fuck.
He hadn’t asked Morgan what to do about the girl. Well, he wasn’t leaving witnesses. Maybe she could be useful.

Jason brought the gun out of his pocket as he came up behind the kid and koshed him on the back of the head with the handle. Tremaine dropped like a stone. He lifted the kid and hugged him to his side. Jason noticed that he had a flute in a kind of a holster strapped to his hip. Figured. He was all about music, this one. Jason had heard him play. He threw up a Cloak. The world went red. He and his cargo were safe from prying eyes now. He dragged the kid over to the bathroom door, let him slump against the wall and waited.

A fat Hispanic girl came out and made a bee-line for the parking lot. Now the blonde girl appeared, fumbling with her purse. Jason stepped into her, drawing his Cloak around her to hide her from whoever might still be on the lawn. The girl hardly had time to gasp. Jason knocked her head against the concrete of the building. She went limp in his arms.

He glanced around. Nobody else in the restroom. No more collateral damage to fix. Now, how to get them both out of here? He could only carry one at a time. He tore off the bottom of the girl’s shirt and ripped it into strips, then used them to gag her and bind her hands and feet. He stretched his Cloak to cover the kid as he folded her into a stall.

“Back for you later, sweetie,” he muttered.

He went back and slung the kid over his shoulder. Jason called him a kid, but the guy was big. He hauled his baggage to the parking lot and sat Tremaine in the car. Not much time now. The parking lot was clearing out. Better look like he was heading out, too. He got in and pulled the car down the road, around the first curve. Then he reached across to the glove compartment and pulled out a couple of vials. Tremaine was stirring. That would never do. Jason needed him out cold and going nowhere while he went back to get the girl. He was going to have to hike back a couple of hundred yards.

He popped open the vial, pulled the kid’s head up by his nose and poured the contents down his open mouth.

There. That would hold him. Make the drive to Las Vegas a lot easier, too.

*

Morgan could hardly
breathe. The light from the glowing cases that held the Sword, the Wand, and the Cup seemed to waver, casting a strobe effect across the room. Or maybe that was her flickering consciousness. She put out a hand to steady herself on the back of the big couch.

“What is it?” Hardwick asked.

“Jason says the Tremaine boy he’s been following knows what the fourth Talisman is.”

That stopped Hardwick in his tracks. His eyes, always deep-set in his lined face, opened wide. “What is it?”

“We don’t know yet. But we will. Your job.” It was a job Hardwick was very, very good at. “I’m going to get Thomas. We’ll need him here when we have them all.” She glanced at her watch. “I’m leaving within the half-hour. Call the airport and get the plane ready.”