He frowned at that.
I pulled out my pad and pencil. “Did you ever see Mike do magic?”
Moore laughed. “You’re kidding, right?”
“No, I’m not.”
His smile faded. “He always talked about stuff like that. To me, to Doug Bass, to the musicians. He wasn’t shy about it, but all of us thought he was crazy.”
Doug Bass didn’t, but I kept that to myself.
“You never saw him do anything that you couldn’t explain? Nothing that seemed. . magical?”
“Not a thing.”
“Was he a good worker?”
“He was all right. I probably wouldn’t have fired him if Randy hadn’t insisted. Truth is, I didn’t want to do it. But when I mentioned that Electric Daiquiri was going to be playing here, Mike got real weird about it. After that, I understood what Randy was so worried about, you know? So I let him go.”
“Did he ever work on nights when the moon was full?”
He frowned again. “You’re right, Mister Fearsson: your questions aren’t at all like the ones the police asked me.” He sat back, eyeing me for a few seconds. “No, he didn’t work full moons. It was a pain in the ass if you want to know. If Doug hadn’t volunteered to cover for him whenever the moon was full, it would have caused me real problems. As it was, I didn’t pay him for those nights. But I assumed it was part of the whole magic thing, one more delusion. You think there was something to it?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “Did he miss other nights? Quarter moons, maybe?”
Moore shook his head. “No. Just the full ones. If he’d missed more than that I definitely would have canned him sooner.”
I jotted down a few notes. The fact that Gann had worked on the nights of quarter moons could help prove that he hadn’t killed the other Blind Angel victims. Kona and I would have to match murder dates to the club’s payroll records, but it might be the evidence we needed to save Gann’s neck.
The piped-in music stopped and a cheer went up from the crowd on the dance floor.
“I think that’s my cue to leave you alone,” I said, getting to my feet.
Moore stood too, and I shook his hand.
“Thanks for taking the time to talk to me.”
“You’re welcome.”
I crossed to the door.
“Do you think Mike really could do magic?” Moore asked before I could pull it open. “Real magic?”
“I don’t know, Mister Moore. I’m just trying to figure out what happened to Claudia Deegan.”
He nodded, though he looked troubled. I let myself out of his office, descended the stairs, and waded through the crowd toward the bar.
I found Billie there, speaking with four or five college kids. As soon as she spotted me, she waved and started pushing through the throng to get to me. She glanced behind her once or twice, seeming to make certain that she wasn’t followed. The kids waved to her, and eyed me with obvious interest.
“Fans?” I asked.
She rolled her eyes again. “I was hoping to avoid them and instead it was like I stumbled into a nest of sorority kids.” She handed me a bottle of beer. “Here. It might be a bit warm by now.”
“Thanks,” I said, taking it from her and sipping some. It wasn’t too bad.
“How did the work go?”
I shrugged. “Not bad, I guess. I learned a couple of things that might be helpful.”
At least I thought I had. I found myself wondering if I should have asked more of the club’s manager. Only now, working this case alone, did I realize how much I had come to depend on my give-and-take with Kona when doing police work. We used to challenge each other, offer competing theories and then dissect them until we had figured out what happened. Working alone was like sitting solo on a seesaw. I wasn’t sure I was asking the right questions or following the right leads.
“You okay?”
I smiled at her, and while I was frustrated by these doubts, the smile was sincere. “I’m fine.”
Electric Daiquiri began their second set, and Billie and I made our way back onto the dance floor. We hadn’t been dancing long, though, when I felt him again. The red sorcerer. He was close, and he was intent on me.
The panic I’d felt earlier, when he made me turn the Glock on myself, flooded into me again; I felt the blood drain from my face. I stopped dancing, cleared myself, and began to chant wardings in my mind.
“Fearsson?”
It wasn’t going to be enough. Whatever I came up with wouldn’t keep him from killing me, and Billie, too. I grabbed her hand and pulled her off the dance floor. We were nearer to the back of the club, so I made for the exit I’d used to find the janitor the last time I’d been here.
“What are you doing?” she called to me.
“We have to get out of here.”
“Why?”
“Remember when I told you I was followed? Well, he’s here again.”
“You’re sure?”
I scanned the club, trying to spot anyone who shimmered with enough power to make me feel this way. No one did.
“Pretty sure.”
We were almost through the crowd when I felt the heat of his magic hit me.
“Oh, shit,” I had time to mutter.
“Fearsson?”
I could hear Billie’s concern, but it was all I could do to ward myself and try to save her. I couldn’t risk saying a thing for fear of distracting myself. There were people all around me, so reflection and deflection spells were out of the question. I tried to shield the two of us with a conjuring that would absorb his magic, so that no one else would get hurt, but while I knew in theory what to do, the spell was beyond me.
An instant later, I was in agony. It felt like someone had thrust a flaming torch into my chest, as if this bastard sorcerer was trying to burn my heart right out of my body. This was what Shari Bettancourt felt, I told myself. And then the pain obliterated every other thought in my head. I doubled over, clutching both hands over my chest, folding in on myself. Somehow I sensed that I was on the floor, writhing, my teeth clenched, my eyes squeezed shut. I tried again to ward myself, but I could barely remember who I was, much less whatever conjuring I’d been trying a moment before. I heard Billie screaming my name, but I couldn’t tell if she was doing so out of fear for me, or because she was being tortured, too. Not that I could have done a damn thing about it.
He had me. Three times. Power in numbers. I was going to die on this rank floor, with strains of Latin fusion blaring in the background, with people dancing and getting drunk all around me.
I tried to fight him, but I had no weapons, and he’d already carved through the shield I’d tried to summon. Magic may be an act of will, but it’s also an expression of power and knowledge, and I didn’t have enough of either. I wasn’t even close. And I was growing weaker by the second. I could feel the life seeping out of me. I could hear my heartbeat slowing, I was aware of the blood laboring to flow through my body. I thought I heard laughter again.
And then I heard a voice.
“Ohanko.”
It was as soothing as the laughter had been harsh, as welcome as rain on a parched landscape.
“Namid?” I croaked.
“Be still,” he said. I could feel cool water coursing into my chest, dousing the fire that had raged there seconds before.
“I didn’t know you could do this,” I whispered.
“I cannot. There will be a cost. Now, please, be still.”
I lay there on the floor, savoring whatever it was the runemyste was doing to me, amazed that I was I alive, grateful for the ability to inhale and exhale without pain. After a time, I opened my eyes and saw that Billie was kneeling beside me, her face as white as bone and her lips pressed thin.
“Thank God,” she said. She ran a rigid hand through her hair. “Stay still. There’s an ambulance on the way.”
“She is right,” Namid said. “Do not try to move yet.”
“I don’t need an ambulance,” I said, the words coming out as a rasp.
Billie frowned. “The hell you don’t.”