“Why didn’t they just go to the police?” Warner asked. Alex laughed.
“The police don’t have time to track down missing people unless some crime is involved,” he said. “They usually send these exact cases to me.”
“Who hired you?” Agent Davis asked. Alex put on his most charming smile.
“Agent Davis,” he said, in a wounded voice. “You know I can’t divulge the names of my clients. Not without a warrant.”
“I can get one in an hour,” he said, his tone hard and flat.
“Of course you can,” Alex said. “You’ve got New York’s celebrity Sorceress working for you, no judge in the city will turn you down.”
“Then why not save us all some trouble and tell us who hired you?” Sorsha asked.
“Some of the people who hire me can’t go to the regular police, Miss Kincaid,” Alex said, his voice serious.
“Because they’re criminals,” Warner said with a sneer.
“Sometimes,” Alex admitted. “Or they’ve had bad run-ins with the cops, or they’re embarrassed about the reason they’re seeing me and don’t want it on any official record. Whatever the reason, what do you think would happen to my business if word got out that I gave up a client just because some Feds said pretty please?”
“I don’t give a rats ass—”
Sorsha cut Davis off with an upraised hand, then lowered it back to her lap.
“The simple fact is that we have you over a barrel, Mr. Lockerby,” she said. “Give us a name or I’ll have Agent Warner place you under arrest.”
Alex smiled and played his trump card. He tossed the key to Thomas Rockwell’s apartment onto his desk.
“What’s that supposed to be?” Warner asked, already reaching for his cuffs.
“The key to Rockwell’s apartment,” he said. “Feel free to check it out. Since you obviously inventoried his apartment before I arrived, you know I didn’t get it from there. He gave that key to someone he trusted, and that person gave the key to me when they asked me to find him. So no breaking and entering.” Warner’s sneer evaporated and it was Alex’s turn to smile. “Furthermore, the only person who can complain that I took the Lore book is Thomas Rockwell, and I seriously doubt he’ll be pressing charges.”
Agent Davis had gone red in the face and Warner had gone absolutely purple. Sorsha just sat with her hands in her lap, glaring at Alex. He wiped the smile from his face. There was no sense in poking a bear.
“Now, I’m perfectly willing to give you whatever help I can with this,” he said, pointing to the manila folder. “But I need to know what this is all about first. Those are my terms.”
Sorsha leapt to her feet and slammed her hand down on Alex’s desk. Instantly a coating of frost spread across the top.
“How dare you dictate terms to me?” she said. Her voice was calm but there was fire behind those pale eyes.
Davis had a look of terror on his face but Warner leered with eager delight. He couldn’t wait for the Ice Queen to take this insolent PI apart. Alex pulled his hands off the desk as the frost spread. He hadn’t intended to provoke the Sorceress — he hadn’t even been pushing hard. Clearly Alex had hit her hot button and now he had to deal with a furious Sorceress.
Goosebumps spread across his arms and his left hand instinctively tapped his right forearm. If things went pear-shaped, his last play was the rune he’d had tattooed there a year ago.
Sorsha saw the move and it seemed to shake her out of her anger. She pulled her hands off the table, rubbing them together as if they hurt. The frost began to disappear in a cloud of fog.
“Agent Davis, Agent Warner,” she said in a trembling voice. “Please wait for me outside.”
“But ma’am—” Davis protested.
“Now, please,” Sorsha said, now in full control of her voice. “I’ll be quite all right, I assure you.”
Warner looked disappointed as he shuffled off after Davis and pulled the door closed behind him.
Sorsha sat, slowly, holding Alex’s eyes the whole time. Alex didn’t know what to make of the Sorceress. She’d been angry enough to freeze him solid a moment ago, but that emotion had passed.
“I’m sorry, Mister…Alex,” she said with obvious effort. “You made me lose my temper. Did you do it on purpose? I’d just like to know.”
“I didn’t think I was pushing that hard,” he said, and shrugged. “But I was pushing.”
Sorsha closed her eyes and took a deep breath.
“You play dangerous games, Alex. What would have happened if you used your escape rune?”
Now it was Alex’s turn to be stunned.
“How did you know about that?” he said, easing his hand away from his right forearm. She fixed him with an amused look and raised one of her darkened eyebrows.
“The FBI consults with me because I know things,” she said. “May I see it?”
Alex stood and took off his jacket. He rolled up his sleeve, exposing the intricate tattoo, and held out his arm for Sorsha to see. Escape runes were just what their name implied, last-ditch magic that could transport a runewright out of danger. If they worked. Alex’s rune was trapezoidal in shape with four nodes, and each of those nodes had a node of its own. He’d had to touch the tattoo needle the whole time the artist worked, and supply him with component-infused inks he made especially for that purpose. The end result looked like a picture of the view through a kaleidoscope with six colors and multiple, interlocking patterns.
“It’s beautiful,” Sorsha said, taking his forearm and turning it to get a better look. Despite her icy reputation, Sorsha’s hand was warm and soft. Alex almost forgot she was a Sorceress who’d threatened to freeze him to his chair a moment ago.
Almost.
“Where would you have gone if you’d activated it?” she asked.
“It’s where we would have gone,” Alex said. “Assuming it actually worked, this rune will transport everyone within ten feet to a spot over the north Atlantic about a mile off the coast of Greenland. We’d appear a hundred feet in the air, then the magic would teleport me back to a secure location.”
Sorsha’s eyebrows rose and she let out a soft whistle.
“I was right to have Davis and Warner leave the room.” She released Alex’s arm and sat back. “Of course, I’d have been very angry once I teleported home.”
Alex put on his most charming smile.
“If you teleported home,” he said. “Falling one hundred feet into freezing water is disorienting, and the temperature would send you into shock in under a minute. After four minutes your body shuts down and you drown. The Titanic disaster taught us important lessons.”
“You are not at all what I expected, Mr. Lockerby.” Sorsha looked at him hard, as if trying to look through him. “How did you power it? It must have taken years to prepare.”
“It uses a life rune,” Alex admitted. “I figure if I ever have to use it, I’d rather part with a year of my life than all of it.”
If Sorsha judged him for this line of thought, she gave no indication.
“Perhaps you can be some use to me after all,” she said, taking the folder off the desk and pulling out the photographs of the runes. “These runes are pictures of original drawings that came into the possession of the British government during the World War.” She began putting the pictures back out on the desk as she spoke. “No one knows where they came from, but they relate to a story about a Lore book called the Archimedean Monograph, supposedly written by Archimedes of Syracuse.”
“The guy who ran naked in the streets when his tub overflowed,” Alex said. Sorsha smirked.
“Something like that. He was reputed to be a runewright of incredible skill. According to the story, he wrote down his most powerful runes on sheets of vellum. When he died, those runes were passed around among lesser runewrights who didn’t know what they had until eventually they came into the possession of Leonardo DaVinci. He collected Archimedes’ pages together into a book and began studying them intently. There are supposed to be DaVinci’s handwritten notes all through the book.”