Angel: Private Eye Book One (33 page)

Books now started to simply tip from
the bookcases, as if shoved from behind. The open-sign somehow fell
off its hook, striking the floor with a thud, and coming to rest
against Detective Nate's particularly shiny shoes.

Nate looked down.

“Quickly,” Ebony hissed, “before he starts
tipping the bookcases over.”

There was an ominous thud from
upstairs.

Nate carefully looked up, then
to each side, and finally back at Ebony. He tilted his head down,
chin close to his chest, and looked up at her.
“Sorry,” he began.

A tenuous silence filtered through the
store.

“But this is ridiculous,” Nate
finished.

Ebony sucked in a sudden
breath.
“Why
you little—”

One of the large, wooden bookcases
just behind the counter began to tilt forward. Left alone the thing
would likely crash right over the counter and splinter on top of a
truly surprised Detective Nate.

“Cowboy!” she spat at him as she stalked
up to him. She grabbed his arm and yanked him towards her, out of
the way of the teetering bookcase and out of the line of danger.
“If I had a dollar for every time an arrogant idiot like you got
yourself into trouble around magic,” she paused as she pushed him
to the side as one of the light-fittings fell from the lamp above,
“I'd buy you all life insurance and finally cash out. Really, is it
so hard to believe in magic?”

With the now thoroughly surprised
detective still in hand, Ebony whipped an arm around her head in a
small circle. At her feet a soft blue glow appeared, spiraling
outward until it encompassed both her and Nathan Wall with
ease.

Finally the detective looked
surprised. No, that wasn't quite right. He looked bone-shaken, with
pallid skin and a sharp, breathless look on his face.

“Now,” Ebony said, voice genuinely soft,
“for some reason this store has taken a spectacular disliking to
you. He's never usually quite this rude. But unfortunately for you,
you are the one who started it.” Ebony was standing close enough to
the detective that she could feel the heat of his breath. “Like it
or not, you're going to have to finish it as well. Now, all you
have to do is say only one little word.” Her sharp gray-blue eyes
twinkled out at him. “Just one little word.”

Detective Nate just stood there
and stared at her, bottom lip jutting slightly forward.
“What on Earth is
going—”

Ebony mouthed
“sorry”
expressively.

And finally the dolt did what
he was told. With a quick little cough, and a startled but sheepish
look on his face, he announced
“sorry” in a loud voice.

“Ah,” Ebony clapped her hands together,
“finally.”

The books stopped falling, the
magazines stopped fluttering, the bookcases no longer tipped
themselves all over the ground, and somehow the open sign had
reverted to its usual place above the door.

Ebony patted at her
hair.
“Now,
that's certainly a strange way to start the morning.” She clicked
her fingers, the blue circle of protection disappearing from her
feet. She put her hands on her hips and surveyed the mess, “oh
dear.”

Ben crawled out from underneath
the banana lounge; his round face drooped like a flower.
“Damn it Ebony, you
trying to kill us?”

“It wasn't me,” she waved him off with a
flick of her hand. “Apparently Harry is in a mood this morning.”
Ebony knelt down and started piling books on top of each other,
trying to clear a path from the door to the stairs.

“What's going on, who's Harry?” came the
gruff voice of Detective Nate behind her, “and what just
happened?”

Ebony rolled her eyes, sighed,
and stood up. Ebony Bell was tall, slender, had long red hair, and
sparkling blue eyes. She was hardly a super model though. Ebony
Bell wore her face and body like a trophy wife wears a jacket: one
for every occasion. Not to say that Ebony literally pulled off her
face and slotted a new one in place. It was her expressions, her
stance, her body language. At times Ebony would smile, her hair
glinting in the sun, her eyes sparkling and warm
– and she would
look like the most beautiful creature ever born. At other times she
would stalk to and fro, her lips pulled, eyes narrow, fists rolled
up – and look like a deadly menace, akin to the most terrifying of
hardened criminals. And yet at other times Ebony would be engaged
in the most mundane of tasks, and look for all the world like a
simple, ordinary woman.

It was a rule with Ebony: whatever she
was doing, she became.

Why?

Because Ebony Bell was a Summoner
Witch. And the first hallowed rule of summoning is
becoming.

“Listen Detective Nathan Wall, I'm sure
you are a little surprised by all of this. So let me start at the
beginning. My name is Ebony Elizabeth Bell. I am a witch. I own a
magical second-hand bookstore. Harry is the name of the spirit who
inhabits the store.” Ebony cast around her feet, as if looking for
more thoughts. “Now let me see, is that it?”

Detective Nate looked at her
askance.
“A
magical bookstore called Harry ... a witch,” he repeated, voice
uneven.

Ben trundled up to him.
“I told you she was
an important one to meet. But no, you didn't believe me,” he let
out a stuttering laugh. “That's the thing with rookies, always
think they know best.”

Ebony put a finger on her lips, and
wondered just how much she should tell this man. He was a
firecracker, to be sure. Full of determination, idiocy, and a
freakish sense of right and wrong. Just the recipe for having
something explode in your face.

But Ebony had what could only
be called a special relationship with the police force of this
city. As resident Summoner Witch, she had to. The city of Vale,
after all, was sitting right on top of a gate between worlds
– a Portal. As
such, though it already had its fair share of ordinary crime, it
also had extraordinary crime. And that's where Ebony came
in.

Vale had truly ancient roots, and
somewhere in its dark past a pact had been made between the witches
and whatever ragtag bunch had then been equivalent to the police.
When they had to, they worked together to keep its citizens safe.
No one else had a clue about this pact, or even the existence of
witches, for that matter. If Ebony walked up to an ordinary Valian
and asked if they knew that there was a witch who did consultancy
work for the police department, they'd likely laugh at her and
quickly text a friend about the tool fool they'd seen in the
street.

Nevertheless, there was a pact,
and it had held right up to this day. Somehow
– no matter what happened to
the governments, what political parties took hold, what practices
were changed, what mayor was elected – the pact held. Even during
the two World Wars, the witches of Vale had still kept up their
bargain. Come rain, hail, shine, or demon, the Witches honored this
sacred agreement.

And for the most part, the police
honored theirs. No witch was ever dragged off by secret government
spies for questioning and prodding in a dark room. And no policeman
ever had a hex, a love potion, or a curse thrown through their
front window. The police knew what they had to do, and so did the
witches. Keep to the bargain and somehow this unlikely alliance
would last. Break the bargain, as the old witches had warned, and
the witches would simply disappear.

And guns and riot shields weren't
entirely effective against a hoard of demons.

So it was that Ebony had come to know
Ben. Ebony had moved to this city when she was a sparkling eyed
ten-year-old, and had fallen in love with it. She'd learned the
code from her mother, a witch, and had learned to shoot from her
father, a police officer. She'd gone off to study, travel the
world, and generally bum around in her early twenties, before
finally coming back to the only city she really knew. When Harry's
second-hand bookstore had come up for sale, she'd managed to muster
the money for the deposit. And when the police department had put
out the call for a new witch liaison, she'd been delighted when
they'd accepted her application.

That was her story. The enigma of
Ebony Bell wasn't too mysterious after all. Just a witch in a big
city trying to get by.

“Ebony is a consultant for us,” Ben
scratched behind his ear, “we call her in when ... stuff gets
weird.”

Nate swallowed slowly.
“Of course you
do.”

“You remember when you were transferred to
us?” Ben smiled reassuringly. “You remember when the Detective
Chief Inspector sat you down and said this job's going to be unlike
anything you've ever done?”

“I thought he was just exaggerating,” Nate
tried to neaten up his tie until it sat flat once more.

“Yeah well, he meant it. Now, I really
should have handled this better. Instead of briefing you at the
office about the uh ... peculiarities of working for the Vale
Police Department, I thought I'd bring you straight in to meet Eb,
and get it all over and done with.”

“You weren't to know Harry would react
like this,” Ebony kept picking up books and stacking them into
piles.

“Yeah well, whatever. Point is rookie, Eb
here is a witch.”

Detective Nate nodded slowly,
offering something halfway between a smile and a grimace.
“We've covered
this.”

“Yep, she's a witch, and she works for us.
Vale here is sitting on top of a ... now let me get this right ...
a portal between worlds that somehow makes the energy here more
charged .... Kind of like a storm, I guess,” Ben muddled through
his words, hands flying about him as he tried to make sense of his
confused thoughts.

“Yes, how about I explain,” Ebony cut in.
“Vale is sitting on top of a Portal, that much is true. In fact,
there are many such Portals all around the world; you just wouldn't
know it. Vale's Portal, however, is unusually strong,” she said
quickly, knowing that such detail would be entirely
under-appreciated by the new guy detective. He had no clue about
magic, so the prospect that Vale was sitting on one of the biggest
inter-dimensional rifts this side of the Milky Way, wasn't one he'd
appreciate.

She took a deep breath, and
decided to continue trying to explain the incredibly complex to the
obviously stupid:
“while the Vale Portal itself is usually closed, things
sometimes leak through. This usually isn't the problem, though.
What is the problem is that being in such proximity to an
inter-dimensional tunnel means that the city of Vale is highly
charged with magical fields. Without going too far into the theory
of Field Work, what happens is that being so charged it becomes
much easier for people to unintentionally produce magic.” Ebony
looked up to see Nate's face, a picture of pained confusion. “You
aren't getting this, are you?”

“A magical bookstore just tried to kill me
because I called it messy,” Nate said truthfully. “I have to say,
I'm having difficulty paying attention.”

“Hmm okay, good point. Let me put it this
way: when someone straps themselves to a metal pole on a bright
summer's day, what is their chance of being struck by
lightning?”

Nate took a sigh, chest moving
deeply. It was as if he was finally surrendering to the sheer
ridiculousness of the situation.
“Low to none.”

“Right, how about if they strap themselves
to a metal pole during a violent thunder storm? Their chances
increase measurably, right?” She waited for the detective to nod.
“Well this is Vale. Vale is a violent electrical storm of magic.
Now, anyone who recites an incantation they find off the Internet,
or buys a book on devil craft, or accidentally picks up a cursed
rocking chair in an antique store – they are like that idiot
strapping himself to a metal pole. In the ordinary, everyday world,
magic is incredibly hard. Here, magic is easy to attract, but still
hits you like a thunderbolt.”

“The way I look at it,” Ben shifted a pile
of magazines off the couch and sat down, “is like this. Magic is
like drugs. People use it to forget themselves, get high, get
transcendental, whatever. But the stuff is powerful and addictive.
It's cheap too, yet comes at a hell of a price. As Eb said, any
goon with an Internet connection can look up the dark arts, just
like any idiot can go downtown and get wasted on drugs. The kids
don't know what they're dealing with, but like the high. And we
clean up after them.”

“Junkies,” Nate raised an eyebrow, “Vale
is a city of magical junkies ... right?”

“No, no, you've got the wrong picture.
There really isn't too much magical crime around,” Ebony made her
way over to the counter and started shuffling around behind it.
“Honestly, there isn't. Vale is usually quite ordinary.
However—”

“On special occasions, we have to call in
to see Eb. We bring her a biscuit, she steals our coffee, and goes
and finds our bad guy.”

Ebony finally found the book
she was looking for.
“Ah ha, here you go, Detective Nate, here's some
light reading for you.”