“Great.”
“He’s hexed.”
“What do you mean, hexed?”
Mad Rogan tossed the phone on the bed. “Every member of the Emmens family is placed under a powerful compulsion that prevents them from speaking about the artifact.”
“You can do that?”
“Not me personally, but it can be done. It’s very rare and requires months of preparation. Apparently the Emmens family considers it their sacred duty to protect the location of the artifact.”
I frowned. “So how does it help us?”
“You’ll have to break the hex.”
“Me?”
“You.”
I spread my arms. “I have no idea how to do it. You’ve used Acubens Exemplar on me. Can’t you do something like Hammer Lock to break through the hex?”
“I’m a weak telepath. My telepathy is the by-product of my being a tactile, and besides, Acubens Exemplar took weeks to set up. It was left over from another venture I was involved in. Using it completely drained me. Of the two of us, you have much better chances.”
Great.
“Rogan, I don’t know how. I will try my best, but I don’t know how to do it.”
He sat on the bed. “You’ll likely have to tap into the same place you did when you interrogated me after your grandmother nearly died during the arson.”
Sure. Piece of cake.
“Nevada?”
“I can’t. I’m not sure what I did or how I did it.”
“Okay.” Mad Rogan leaned forward. “Let’s try to figure this out. When you exercise your power, do you make an effort?”
“Not really.”
“What happens when your magic misfires?”
“It doesn’t.”
He paused. “You never had a false positive?”
“No.”
He looked at me. “Are you telling me that all this time you’ve been tapping your passive field, and it has never misfired?”
“I don’t know what that means.”
His expression went blank.
Silence stretched.
I felt stupid standing there. “Rogan?”
“Hold on. I’m trying to figure out how to condense thirty years of being a Prime and learning magic theory into twenty minutes of explanation. I’m trying to put it into words you’d understand.”
I shook my head.
“What?”
“I realize that I’m ignorant and it’s frustrating for you, but it would be nice if you didn’t imply that I was an idiot.”
“You’re not an idiot. I’m trying to explain how to fly a jet to someone who’s never seen a plane before.”
I sighed and sat in a chair. “Well, when you find the words my stupid self can understand, you let me know.”
“Are you at least going to try to learn, or are you just going to sit over there and pout? It’s unlike you.”
“Rogan, you don’t know anything about what I’m like.”
He slid off the bed and crouched by me. No wince, no frown. Whatever painkillers the good doctor had given him must’ve been really strong. He focused on me completely, the same way he did when he asked me a question and waited for an answer. It was almost impossible to look away. If he ever fell in love—which probably wasn’t possible, given that he was likely a psychopath—his would be the kind of devotion people fantasized about.
“You’ll hurt your ribs,” I said.
“What’s the problem, Nevada?”
I wanted to lie. I had a strong, almost irresistible urge to make up some bullshit. Except there was no vital reason for me to do it. I just wanted to protect my ego and my pride, and that really wasn’t good enough to justify a lie. “Have you ever written a paper last minute for school or college?”
“Sure.”
“And then someone reads it and tells you it’s sloppy and you shouldn’t have waited till the last minute, so you get mad at that person. But really you’re mad at yourself.”
“Are you mad at yourself?”
“Yes. It’s my magic. There is a lot of it, apparently, and it’s strong, and I never did anything with it. I got by, because it was enough. I never tested myself. I read about all of the spells and circles, but until that day with you, I’d never drawn one on the ground, and I can’t even tell you why. It never occurred to me. I just thought that being a human lie detector was my limit. I don’t like having my nose rubbed in it.”
He nodded. “Okay. We got it out in the open. Here it is. This is your moment to be angry at your own laziness and wallow in self-pity. A moment is all you get, because any minute Adam Pierce might set Houston on fire. Take a few minutes for your pity party. Would five be enough?”
“You’re an asshole.”
“Yes, but I’m a very well-trained asshole. I’m offering you the use of my expertise. So suck it up, get over this bump, and let’s go. Are you with me?”
You know what? No: if he ever fell in love, it wouldn’t be great romantic devotion. It would be an exercise in frustration and lust, and at the end of it his significant other would strangle him.
I couldn’t let Houston burn. “Yes. I’m with you.”
He stood up, wincing slightly, and sat back on the bed. “Magic acts in two ways, passive and active. Let’s take an aquakinetic, a water mage. A water mage always knows where the nearest source of water is. The question is how?”
“He feels it,” I guessed.
“Yes. Some part of his magic scans his surroundings independently of his will. If you ask their kind to concentrate on pinpointing the water, most of them surprisingly can’t actually make that effort. It happens subconsciously. That’s called a passive field. They can’t turn it off either. An aquakinetic in the desert will become fatigued much faster than anyone else in his party. Why?”
“Because he’s constantly scanning for water and not finding any?”
Mad Rogan nodded. “It’s similar to a cell phone. If you take it to an area where there are no towers, it will continuously roam, looking for a signal and draining its battery. Passive field. If the aquakinetic decides to manipulate water by drawing moisture from the air or a water source, that manipulation will require an active effort on his part. That’s called an active vector. If we stick to the cell phone, passive field is the phone looking for a signal. Active vector is you actually making a call.”
“So when I can tell that people are lying, it happens because they’re in my passive field.” That meant that when I’d locked him down to ask if he was responsible for arson, it had been the first time I’d actually actively used my power. Ugh. No, wait. I also resisted his spell when he kidnapped me. Maybe I could draw on that.
“Yes.” Mad Rogan rose. “I’m forty-five years old.”
My magic clicked. “Lie.”
“Turn around,” he said.
I turned around, facing away from him.
“My mother hated me.”
Click. “Lie.”
I turned around. He backed away into the kitchenette area.
“Are you testing range?” I asked.
“Yes.”
“I can save you the trouble. If I can see you and/or if you’re close enough for me to hear you, it works. Phone calls, TV broadcasts, and Skype sessions don’t, so there has to be some physical proximity. It works better if I can see you and hear you at the same time. Direct eye contact works best.”
He approached me and stopped about a foot away, looking directly into my eyes. “Ask a question and try to compel me to answer.”
I strained, focusing on him. Something simple that required yes or no. On some neutral topic. “Have you ever been married?” Oh yes. This was totally neutral.
Nothing.
We waited another ten seconds.
“Let’s try something else.” Mad Rogan rummaged through the kitchenette’s drawer and came up with a piece of chalk. He offered it to me. “Draw an amplification circle.”
I took the chalk from him, walked to the wide, clear part of the room, crouched, and began to draw the circle on the floor.
“Wait.” He walked over to me and knelt behind me. “This is one of those cases when size doesn’t matter.”
Ha-ha.
“A small circle that’s perfectly drawn will have more power than a large, sloppy mess. Here, let me show you.”