Capitol Magic (2 page)

I squared my shoulders and put on my best professional smile. As if I interviewed clients all the time, I asked, “What exactly are you trying to accomplish here?”

Sarah led me over to the shelves. At first glance, the volumes were neatly ordered. The books were “dressed to the front”, lined up with military precision along the leading edge of each shelf. Bookends had been placed liberally, so that no volumes tumbled to the side.

Nevertheless, there were gaps on the shelves—open areas where a dozen or more titles had clearly been removed. The metal frames that should have listed call numbers for each shelf were empty, and there was no overall guide for anyone who wanted to locate a specific volume. I cast a questioning glance at Sarah and got her tight nod of approval to lift the nearest book.

Sekhmet's Children
, the spine said in writing so ornate I almost couldn't make out the first word. I opened the volume carefully, supporting the spine with wide-spread fingers. It was heavy for its size, and I realized that the covers were thin sheets of leather-covered wood. The pages were thicker than paper, thicker even than parchment. I saw the tell-tale lines of horizontal and vertical fibers, and I looked up at Sarah in awe. “This is papyrus.”

She nodded. “It's a translation from the ancient Egyptian. Or so I'm told.”

I pulled another volume.
The Vampire and Other Poems
, by Rudyard Kipling. I turned to the title page and realized I held a first edition.

“These must be worth a fortune,” I breathed.

Again, Sarah nodded. “And they'd be a lot more useful if I could just get them organized.”

“What's the problem?”

Sarah gestured to the spine of the ancient volume. “Some of the works have catalog numbers, but I'm not sure how they work. It's obviously not the Dewey Decimal System we used back in high school. And a lot of them aren't labeled at all. I have no way of knowing if I have everything I'm supposed to have. If all of it is here.”

Despite the distress in her tone, I bit back a smile. This was precisely the sort of project I had envisioned in my flash of inspiration that morning—a straight-forward use of my librarian skills. Something mundane. Something far removed from the world of witchcraft.

But there was one thing that made no sense at all. “I'm sorry,” I said to Sarah. “I don't understand what these books are doing here. I mean, correct me if I'm wrong, but these don't seem to have anything to do with the District of Columbia court system.”

Sarah rubbed her hands down the sides of her skirt. She glanced toward the cage at the far end of the room, and she licked her lips. “Well, that's the thing,” she said. “This isn't official D.C. court business. This is sort of an … extracurricular activity.”

“Extracurricular?” I prompted.

Now she ran a hand through her hair, mussing the perfect fall of those auburn strands. Given her otherwise immaculate appearance, I knew she'd be upset if she realized that the action made her look disheveled. “I really can't explain the details. They're confidential. But I can pay you! Cash. You won't have to wait for ages, like you would if you were an independent contractor for the Court.”

I had spent years talking to nervous patrons, assuring them that I could help with all their reference needs. I knew how to assist customers when they were at their distracted worst. “That's fine,” I said, pitching my voice low to soothe her. “I can definitely help.”

Her relieved smile was as bright as a desert sun. “Thank God,” she said. “I was so afraid that —”

But I never got to learn what had made her so afraid.

Before Sarah could complete her sentence, the door to the Old Library crashed open. As the heavy metal slammed off the wall, I was scarcely able to register the form that flashed into the room. It was tall and lean, and it moved with devastating speed. I caught my breath, trying to summon a protective spell. Before I could frame even the first word, though, icy fingers closed around my arms, and I found myself up close and very personal with the sharpest fangs I had ever imagined.

CHAPTER 2

SARAH

“JAMES!”

There was a time in my past when I would have blanched at the sight of an enraged vampire's fangs. I would have drawn back, pulled away, backed down. But that was before my true nature had been revealed to me, before I discovered I was a sphinx. As a sphinx, I was bound to protect vampires, to serve them.

“James,” I repeated, forcing my voice to stay steady. “This woman is with me. She's not a threat.”

And she wasn't. I had a good six inches on the librarian, and I ventured to say I had a bit more training with regard to self-defense. James himself had undertaken my instruction—and I'd fallen a few thousand times before I'd learned how to use my opponent's strength against him. Given the way Jane was frozen, it was pretty clear she was still at the falling stage, nowhere near ready to fight back.

In fact, she seemed to be at the petrified-senseless stage.

“James,” I said one more time. “You're safe. The Old Library is safe. There is no threat here.”

I took a step closer, knowing that he was already aware of me, that his entire vampire body was attuned to my presence as a sphinx, as a creature who had drunk his blood, who had been healed by the dark power in his veins.

For that matter, my own body was pretty conscious of his.

As usual, he wore a suit, the impeccable tailoring only emphasizing his height. His conservative tie was perfectly knotted, and the creases in his trousers were razor-sharp. If he'd kept to his usual routine—and when didn't he?—he had left his sanctum an hour after sunset. He had driven his luxury Mercedes to his coveted space in the courthouse's underground parking garage. He had stalked past the security guards he managed, strode into his office, sat down at his desk, and turned on his computer.

And when he had sensed an invading presence in the Old Library, he had stormed down five flights of stairs, ready to attack an intruder so that he could keep secret the existence of vampires and griffins and sprites, of all the supernatural creatures that submitted to the justice of the Eastern Empire Night Court that met in the chamber far above us.

James blinked, and then he swallowed hard. By the time he took a step back, he had absorbed his fangs. Nevertheless, the flash in his cobalt eyes made it clear that this matter was far from resolved.

I sighed. “James Morton, I'd like to introduce you to Jane Madison. Jane is a consultant I've hired to help us organize the Old Library.”

I had to give the librarian credit. She extended her hand, as if she met vampires on a regular basis. I could tell that James was surprised—he almost forgot to shake. As I watched the ordinary social exchange, I wondered again at the feeling that had stolen over me when I'd heard Jane speak in the bakery.

Certainly her words had been interesting—the fact that she was trained as a librarian, that she was building a business as an independent consultant for situations just like mine. (Well, not
just
like mine—how many collections of supernatural legal materials could there be?)

But it was more than that. It was the tone of her voice. Not the ordinary pitch that any human could hear. Rather, there was a resonance behind her words, a reverberation that struck something deep inside me.

She wasn't a sphinx. Even though I had yet to begin my official training, I knew I would have recognized another member of my rare race. And she certainly wasn't a vampire—we had met in broad daylight. She was too lithe to be a griffin, too grounded to be a sprite. But there was something about her….

Something that James obviously didn't sense. Or, if he did, he didn't care. I watched as he slipped steady fingers inside his breast pocket, and I wasn't the least bit surprised when they emerged holding a metal flask. He unscrewed the cap and offered the container to Jane. “Perhaps we should drink to new beginnings?”

She glanced at me, as if to ask whether this was normal behavior for my boss. Unfortunately, it was.

“James,” I said. “I don't think that's necessary.”

“I do.” His answer was so curt I knew there was no reason to argue.

I turned to Jane. “I'm sorry,” I said. “I was wrong to bring you here without asking permission first. I got carried away when I heard that you had the exact experience we need.”

I slanted a glance toward James, to see if my argument was persuasive. It wasn't. Not in the least.

I sighed and took the flask from James's commanding fingers. “I promise this won't hurt you. In fact, I'll drink some myself, if that would make you feel better.”

Her hazel eyes were steady on my face. After her initial panic at being confronted with an enraged vampire, she had recovered with astonishing speed. I could almost believe that, under other circumstances, we might have become friends. She licked her lips and said, “I trust you.”

That reply almost made me wince.

Oh, I had told her the truth. The cinnamon-scented drink would do her no harm. But I still regretted that my actions had brought us to this point, that I had made this entire exchange necessary.

I passed the flask to Jane. She sniffed it cautiously, then brushed a sweep of auburn curls off her forehead. She cleared her throat, fluttering her fingers above her larynx, as if she was preparing to swallow something noxious. She settled her hand over her heart for one moment, and I thought she might be anxious, might be having palpitations.

She muttered something I didn't quite catch, and then she raised the flask to her lips. One swallow. Two. Three. She lowered the drink and looked directly at James. “Enough?”

For answer, he set his right index finger in the center of her forehead. Before she could flinch, he said, “Be mine.”

I knew what was supposed to happen. She was supposed to stagger forward. She was supposed to yield completely, to require James's assistance in something as simple as standing. And when she was helpless in his arms, he would tell her to forget everything she had seen, everything she had heard, everything that had happened since he had entered the Old Library.

But Jane apparently had something else in mind.

As James glided forward to ease her to the ground, I was blinded by a flash of crimson light. It rolled out from the librarian, sparking from the chunky necklace around her throat. The air crackled, leaving behind the smell of ozone.

James hissed and dropped his hand, shaking his fingers as if he'd received an electric shock. I started to move toward him, my sphinx instinct to protect drawing me as much as the attraction I'd felt for the man since the first night we'd met.

Before I could reach him, though, there was a shout behind me, a guttural exclamation in a baritone voice. I whirled toward the sound, automatically calculating the distance to the armoire on the far side of the Library, to the weapons it held.

A man stood in the middle of the Old Library. His dark hair was windblown, an effect that accented the brush of silver at his temples. He was every bit as tall as James and looked to be as fit. His grey eyes blazed as he took in the three of us, and the sense of power in him was not diminished by his faded blue jeans or his rumpled flannel shirt.

“Jane?” he asked. He directed his question to the librarian, but he kept his attention focused on James.

“I'm fine,” she said.

“Fire agate?” His words might have been meaningless, if I had not seen that wave of scarlet fire spark off her necklace.

She nodded. “And a warding spell. It wasn't as strong as I wanted, though. Not without Neko here.”

“It was strong enough.”

If that silvery gaze had been directed at me, I would have quailed. As it was, James drew himself to his full height. He narrowed his eyes as he slipped his flask back inside his breast pocket. When he spoke, his words were strained. “One of Hecate's warders, I presume.”

Hecate's warders. That made Jane Madison a witch.

“David Montrose.” The newcomer did not offer to shake hands. Instead, he nodded toward Jane. “She knows you're a vampire?”

James's smile was tight, but he inclined his head gracefully. “I suspect she's figured that out.”

The warder turned toward me. “And you?”

He wasn't asking for my credentials as Clerk of Court. “I'm a sphinx,” I said.

I was gratified by the flicker of surprise in his eyes. A quick glance at Jane confirmed that she did not recognize my race.

Much as I had not recognized hers. A witch… I hadn't met one before. Not one of them had filed a claim in the eight months I'd been working for the Night Court. There was something I had read, though, something deep in one of the Night Court handbooks. Witches had their own lower court. What was it called…? Hecate's Court. That was it. Hecate's Court handled specialized disputes, arguments between witches, cases about their specialized rights regarding warders and familiars.

Jane Madison was a witch. That was why I'd felt power in her. Why I'd been drawn to her in the bakery. Why it had seemed right and proper to bring her into the Old Library.

Montrose extended a hand toward Jane. “Let's get out of here.”

He clearly expected her to cross to him. He thought that she would slip her fingers between his, that he would lead her out the door and up the stairs—or maybe spirit her away with some magical warder's power.

But Jane purposely missed her cue. She didn't take his hand. She didn't turn her back on my vampire boss. She didn't march away from me.

Instead, she shook her head. “Sarah was just about to show me the materials she needs cataloged.”

I was shocked at her words. Not at the defiance—although her resistance clearly rattled Montrose. Rather, by the fact that she was still interested in my project, still interested in the work, despite all that had happened since I had shown her the Old Library.