Wasteful.
Reading minuscule text backwards was hard, but after a few minutes of paging back and forth, he got it. Each note said the same thing followed by a page number.
Curiosity piqued, Alex decided to see if he could sneak some more information out of Davis and Warner. He laid the pictures out on his desk, then folded his hands in front of him.
“Agent Davis,” he asked. “What is the Archimedean Monograph?”
Davis about fell out of the chair and Warner looked like he wanted to go for his gun.
“Where did you hear that name?” Davis demanded, his calm, genial voice gone. Alex took off the spectacles and handed them to the FBI man.
“Right here,” he said, pointing to the photograph. He couldn’t see the writing without the spectacles, but Davis could, and he swore.
“How did you know to look for that?” Davis demanded.
“You asked me to,” Alex said, which was absolutely true.
“I don’t know what kind of game you’re playing, scribbler,” Warner began, reaching into his coat. Alex tensed but didn’t drop his smile. He didn’t think Warner would shoot him right here in his own office, but the young man looked angry enough not to be rational.
“Warner!” a woman’s voice came from beyond the office door. It was cold and harsh and Warner froze with a guilty look on his face. “That will be quite enough,” the voice said, and the door opened. Agent Davis had regained his composure and he stood, making the chair available.
“Sorry, ma’am,” he said.
Alex didn’t know what to expect. From his position behind the desk, he couldn’t see the person standing just beyond the door. Then his breath froze in his chest as the most dangerous woman in New York walked into his office.
10
The Sorceress
Women tended not to be sorcerers. For whatever cosmic twist of fate, only one in every twenty or so who had the power was female. Suffragettes complained about it endlessly for a while, but since there just wasn’t anything anyone could do about it, they eventually gave up. Of the six sorcerers in New York, only one was a woman. Nicknamed the Ice Queen, she made her fortune enchanting metal rods so they would remain bitter cold for over a year. Once these were cut into thin disks and put into iceboxes and room coolers, the Ice Queen made millions.
The Ice Queen’s real name was Sorsha Kincaid and, if rumor was to be believed, her personality matched her nickname. Nothing in the Ice Queen’s appearance dispelled that rumor when she entered Alex’s office. She looked to be in her late twenties, but magic tended to retard aging, and Sorsha had come into her power quite young. Alex had heard that she was closer to forty. She was dressed in a white, button-up blouse with an azure blue vest and dark slacks. Her only concessions to her femininity were her high heels and the design of her vest, which cut under her small breasts, emphasizing them.
If the purpose of Sorsha’s clothing was to minimize her sex, it was sorely inadequate. Her face was stunningly beautiful, skin like marble, with high cheekbones, full lips, and eyes of pale blue. They reminded Alex of the way the sun looked, shining through an icicle. Her hair was the palest platinum blonde he’d ever seen, almost white, and it fell down on either side of her face in a short bob. She used makeup to darken her eyebrows, giving her a stern look, and Alex knew it had been done for just such an effect.
Her eyes were hard and fixed on Warner as she entered, and the young man leaned back against the wall as if he wished it would give way and let him escape. She held that gaze for a long moment, then turned to Alex and smiled. The smile was warm enough, but Alex felt a chill go down his back. Sorcerers were immensely powerful and equally dangerous. Most people would take a poke at you if you insulted them, but a sorcerer could turn you into a toad for any perceived offense — and there wasn’t much the law would do if you were a nobody. New York was full of nobodies, more than they could ever use, but sorcerers were rare and valuable commodities. Only an especially egregious breach of the law would bring one to account. Alex resolved to choose his words very carefully.
“I must admit, Mr. Lockerby, I’m impressed.” Sorsha sat down in the chair in front of his desk and crossed her legs. If she’d been wearing a skirt, that movement would have been quite sensual, but with the Ice Queen, she wore pants and there wasn’t any flirting involved. “I had supposed that a runewright who became a private detective must not have been a very good runewright. Seems I was wrong.”
Alex inclined his head in her direction. ‘I appreciate the compliment,” he said. “But you still haven’t answered my question. What is the Archimedean Monograph?”
The Ice Queen smiled. Her lips were demurely together, but Alex could have sworn he saw teeth.
“I’m afraid that’s a government secret, Mr. Lockerby.”
“Alex.”
“What I need to know, Mr. Lockerby, is what you know about these runes,” she indicated the photos on his desk. Alex sat back in his chair.
“I know who these boys are, Miss Kincaid,” he said, indicating Davis and Warner. “But I don’t remember hearing that you joined the FBI.”
Sorsha smiled. Not the cold, mocking smile she’d worn earlier but a warm smile of amusement.
God, she’s gorgeous.
“I help the FBI as a consultant,” she said. “Much the same way as you do the New York police department, though the FBI actually wants my help.”
Alex let the dig go by, but the fact that she knew about his rocky past with the police meant that she’d done some homework about him.
“Now,” she said, getting back to the topic at hand. “Tell me what you know about these pictures. Please,” she added.
“I’ve already told your agents what I know about them, Miss Kincaid,” he said sweeping them back into the manila folder and holding it out to her. “So, if that’s everything…”
“Why were you at Thomas Rockwell’s apartment yesterday?”
Alex smiled. He’d been right to have Leslie hide Thomas’ Lore book.
“So that’s what all this is about,” he said.
Sorsha reached into thin air and pulled a small flip notebook into her hand. It was such a casual display of magic that it appeared ordinary, but Alex couldn’t do anything like that on his best day. He didn’t want to be impressed, but he couldn’t help it. She flipped a few pages and began reading.
“You were seen entering Mr. Rockwell’s building yesterday afternoon around two and you didn’t leave until after five. You appear to have combed through the apartment very thoroughly, despite its being in a disheveled state, and the only thing you removed was Mr. Rockwell’s blue Lore book.”
“I wondered why I kept feeling as though I was being watched,” Alex said. The thought that Sorsha could have been actually watching him while he worked was disturbing. He made a mental note to add a short-term privacy rune to his little book and use it when he did his investigations.
“You’re in a lot of trouble, Mr. Lockerby,” Sorsha said, the cold smile returning to her lovely face. “We’ve got you on breaking and entering and theft. Now I’m perfectly willing to forget that, provided you tell me what brought you to Thomas Rockwell’s apartment.”
Alex tried to keep the relief off his face. Sorsha Kincaid, New York’s most dangerous woman, would have to do better than that if she wanted to put the arm on him. Also, her threats meant that she hadn’t been watching him with magic, some Fed had been staking out the building and had seen Alex go in. If she’d been watching him, she’d already know what he was there for. The finding rune was a dead giveaway.
“Someone reported Thomas missing,” he said. “They asked me to look into it, find him if I could.”