“Damn it,” Alex swore, getting up and pacing the apartment. He wanted more information to use in his finding rune. The more he knew about Thomas and what might have made him disappear, the more powerful his casting would be.
Now he had to do it the old-fashioned way.
Alex went back to Thomas’ bedroom and into the bathroom. Despite Thomas’ having a regular visitor, there was only one toothbrush. Alex picked it up and started to turn when he caught sight of himself in the mirror over the sink. He remembered seeing fingerprints on the bottom of the mirror when he swept the room with silverlight. Fingerprints on a bathroom mirror weren’t exactly uncommon, but only on the bottom?
Alex set down the toothbrush and carefully felt the bottom edge of the glass. Using his fingernail, he was able to pull it away from the wall and swing it upward on a hidden hinge at the top. Behind the mirror was a small space cut out of the wall. Inside were a book bound in blue leather, a gold pocket watch, and a roll of bills with a rubber band around it. Alex took the book and carefully lowered the mirror back down over the secret space. He cursed himself for not looking for this kind of hidey-hole first, but most runewrights would have extra-dimensional vaults. If Thomas had a vault, anything in it would be gone forever.
Alex picked up the toothbrush and went back to the front room. He still needed to cast his finding rune. Without a better connection to Thomas, it wouldn’t be very powerful, but he could at least get direction and distance from the toothbrush. The book would give him a better insight into Thomas the runewright, but it would take hours, maybe days of study, and he needed answers now. Evelyn needed them.
Alex set the book aside and removed an inkwell and pen set from his kit. He followed them with a piece of chalk, a vial of green powder, a small leather tool case, and a red beeswax candle. He took off his jacket, picked up the chalk, and drew an octagonal shape on the floor by the table. Around the octagon, at each point, he drew different geometric shapes; circles, triangles, squares, and trapezoids. Once that was done, he took the pen and carefully dipped it in the inkwell. The ink was a solution of several substances, most of them expensive, so he was careful not to spill any. In each of the eight small shapes around the octagon, he drew a rune. The order he wrote them and the shape they occupied were all part of the magic. When he finished, he moved to the center of the octagon and drew an elaborate rune. This was the finding rune base, the rune that tied the whole pattern together. It always reminded Alex of a dragon sitting on a fainting couch.
His writing done, Alex put away the pen and inkwell. He lit the candle, then while it burned, he took out the tool case and vial of green powder. The powder was emerald dust and very expensive, but fortunately Alex needed only the tiniest bit for the finding rune. He took out a metal spatula, that looked for all the world like a miniature shovel, and coaxed a few precious grains of the emerald onto it. Moving with exaggerated care, he tapped the grains off into the still-wet ink of the reclining dragon symbol and the ink promptly turned a deep green. Lastly, Alex took the candle and dripped eight drops of wax on the points of the chalk octagon. When the last drop hit, the entire geometric shape and all its sub-shapes turned red, and the finding rune glowed with power.
Alex put his hand on the rune and felt the power of the universe flow through him. Calling the photograph of Thomas into his mind, Alex spoke.
“I seek to find one Thomas Rockwell,” he pronounced in a loud, clear voice. “Bookkeeper and runewright. Brother of Evelyn. I seek him here, in the heart of his domicile. Show him to me.”
Usually the incantation that released the rune’s magic took longer, but usually Alex had a better idea of who he sought. He’d worked with less, but he didn’t like it.
Normally the rune would come back with something almost instantly. It could be a sound or smell, or even just an impression of which direction to seek the target. The better Alex’s link to the person or object, the more details he’d receive. Sometimes he could even see them and their surroundings if the bond was strong enough.
This time he felt nothing.
That could only mean one thing. It meant that Thomas was dead.
Alex kept his hand on the rune and reached out with his senses nonetheless. He’d never received a response that took longer than a few seconds, but it didn’t hurt to try. After a full minute, he gave up.
“I’m sorry, Evelyn,” he said out loud.
Casting a finding rune used a tremendous amount of energy and Alex felt weariness pushing down on him. He dragged himself up into a chair and sat staring at Thomas’ little blue book. It had the runewright emblem stamped into the cover and it was stained dark from repeated handling.
Has to be his Lore book, he thought.
If Evelyn was right, something in Thomas’ book might have gotten him killed. Alex hadn’t been paid to find a killer, but turning the book over to the police would be a waste of time. Only a fellow runewright would know what to look for in a book full of runes.
Alex picked it up and opened it. He smiled as he saw the first, most basic runes in the front. Each page was covered with annotations and drawings. It reminded him very much of his father’s lore book that he’d inherited. Flipping through the pages revealed Thomas’ training. As the pages progressed, his notes became more specific and more detailed as he learned to draw more utility from a single rune. All of it was familiar to Alex — he had these runes and many more in his own lore book.
When he reached the end, however, everything changed. The last dozen pages were filled with six of the most complex runes Alex had ever seen. One looked very much like his own finding rune, but heavily modified. Another resembled a life rune, magic that would allow a runewright to power his constructs with his own life force. Another looked familiar, but Alex couldn’t place it. The other three were alien to him. He’d have to study them intensely to figure out what they were for.
He whistled as he paged back and forth, looking at these last pages. They were orders of magnitude more complex than anything else in Thomas’ book. They were certainly something that might have cost him his life. New runes were a rare thing and, depending on what these particular runes did, they could be worth a fortune.
“Well, somebody wanted something here,” Alex said, looking down at the mess. It was likely that whoever tossed Thomas’ place didn’t find what they were looking for. Only a desperate searcher cuts open the couch.
Alex suddenly felt very self-conscious with the book. He’d been in Thomas’ apartment for hours. What if a neighbor had been paid to watch it? He could very well find himself running into a welcoming committee out in the hall.
He quickly put away his gear, except for his chalk, and then drew a door on one of the walls. Activating a rune from his book, Alex opened his vault. He placed the book inside along with his kit, then slipped a rune-covered pair of brass knuckles into the outside pocket of his jacket.
It never hurt to be prepared.
Satisfied, Alex closed the door, and scrubbed the chalk outline from the wall with his handkerchief.
He needn’t have bothered. No one lurked in the hall or the stairwell waiting to pounce. There wasn’t anyone strange at the crawler station either, let alone as a crawler passenger, while Alex rode back to the brownstone.
It was well after six when Alex got home, and he wanted nothing more than to tramp upstairs to his bed.
“In here,” Iggy’s voice came from the kitchen.