Capitol Magic (7 page)

I hurried on to soak Neko's strand before securing the stones to his hand. I added a third set, then accepted my familiar's assistance as he fastened them tight against the pulse point below my thumb.

He handed me a fourth strand, just as I was stepping back from the silver bowl. “What do we need that for?” I asked.

“David?” he asked. “Your warder? The man who keeps you safe when you work magic?”

I forced a laugh as I passed my hand over the silver bowl. With a few whispered words, I released all the magical protection of runes and herbs and rainwater. The outflow of energy shuddered down my spine, and I swallowed hard before I said, “We don't need David for this.”

Neko barely swallowed a yelp. “You're not serious!”

“We're going to collect a few overdue library books,” I said. “No need to get him involved.”

There it was again—that one raised eyebrow, that carefully pruned look of shock. Neko didn't even bother criticizing me with words.

“We are only going to help Sarah,” I insisted. “If
she
thought this was dangerous, would she do it?”

In search of moral support, I cast a quick glance at the sphinx. She was running her fingers over the tiger's eyes, trying to read them as if they were Braille. She seemed startled to be drawn into our conversation, and it took her a moment to say, “I'm not bringing my own sphinx mentor. Or getting the vampires involved. This is a private matter.”

My familiar did not look the least bit appeased. “Ladies, I don't think —”

“Fine, Neko,” I interrupted. My temper was flaring hot. I felt a little like a misbehaving teenager, caught sneaking out of the house after midnight. I gritted my teeth and thrust down tendrils of shame. “If that's the way you feel, then just go home. I'm sure that Roger's waiting up for you. Sarah and I will do just fine on our own.”

I watched the conflict play out on my familiar's face. After working together for three years, I could read every thought that crossed his mind, as clearly as if the words were written in fancy Olde English lettering on one of the parchment pages still sitting on the shelves in my basement.

Technically, Neko was now released. He had his witch's permission to depart a magical working.

Of course, he wanted to go to Roger. Roger represented fun and frolic, the relaxing parts of Neko's life that had nothing to do with his magical bonds to me.

But Neko
did
enjoy magical workings. And, in this particular instance, I knew he was intrigued. He wanted to know how the tiger's eye would work—I'd never fashioned a spell that combined the power of runes and herbs and gemstones before. He wanted to learn what waited for us in Maurice Richardson's home. He wanted to explore a new branch of magic, the power of a sphinx that neither of us had ever seen in action.

And in the end, all of that curiosity won out. Neko shrugged and returned the fourth strand of beads to the box. He said, “Just remember. You're the one who's going to have to explain this in the morning.”

The warning shot determination straight up my spine. David was not my boss. I did not
report
to him. I made my voice icy as I retorted, “I'm not at all afraid of that.”

But I should have been. I should have been very afraid. And I should have remembered exactly what curiosity did to the cat.

CHAPTER 6

SARAH

MY FINGERS CLOSED over the door handle of the taxi. The driver craned his neck to look at the huge white house. “Go ahead. I'll just wait to make sure you get in safe and sound.”

Great. We had managed to find the most helpful cabbie in Washington. I touched my thumb to my coral ring for calm and forced my voice to sound bright and steady. “No need. I've got my keys right here.” I jangled my own ring of house keys, pretending they would open the door to Maurice Richardson's sanctum.

For just a moment, I thought my ruse would fail. I wished that I had some of James's cinnamon water, that I could exercise a vampire's memory-erasing control over humans. Then, the cabbie shrugged and said, “Whatever.”

I passed him money for the fare, making sure that I included an absolutely average tip. I didn't want this guy to remember us, for any reason. I thanked him and waited for him to shove the car into gear. He seemed to take forever making his way around the great arch of the circular driveway. Only when the red tail lights were out of sight did I sigh in relief and turn to face Jane and Neko.

“It's huge,” the witch said, eyeing the mansion.

“And that chintz is atrocious,” Neko said, nodding toward the faded cushion on a glider that filled the right half of the porch.

I suppressed a shudder. The last time I'd seen that chintz, I'd been exhausted, half-mad with worry for the single vampire I'd been sworn to protect, the one who had nearly given his life to rescue me. Six months before. Six months of fighting to define myself, as a woman, as a court clerk, as a sphinx.

And it had all come down to this.

I needed to prove to myself that I was worthy of the title sphinx, that I could reclaim the Eastern Empire's resources without a man—or two—to bail me out. And if I'd enlisted the help of a woman and a cat, well, that was my own business. Who knew what I might have done on my own, if Chris hadn't been so stinting with my training?

Richardson's home loomed before me. Three brick steps led to a massive door. Columns marched on either side, supporting a balcony and a Greek Revival roof. Black shutters sagged beside every window, as if they'd grown too heavy during the house's neglect. Leaves skittered across the porch in a sudden breeze, and I rubbed at my arms, fighting to push away goosebumps.

“Come on,” I said. “It's not like there's going to be any welcoming committee.”

I led the way up the stairs. If this house had been the scene of a mundane crime, the door would have been plastered with crime scene tape. Black letters would have shouted from fluorescent yellow, giving us all an excuse to leave.

But Maurice Richardson had been beyond the touch of ordinary justice, beyond the reach of
Law and Order
or CSI.

I caught Jane staring at a marble stepping stone, set firmly in front of the door. She traced her hands along the rocky edge, nodding solemnly. “There are protective spells here. Strong ones.”

Neko edged up beside her. I could not tell if he was giving comfort or requesting it. Or maybe their witchy magic just required that sort of proximity.

In any case, the familiar took care not to step on the marble. Instead, he reached out a hand toward the door, palm flat, as if he were smoothing a rough surface. He nodded solemnly, coursing over the entire oaken surface. He moved so slowly, so methodically, that he caught me by surprise when he reached out for the brass latch.

“Wait!” I called, even as he drew back, hissing as if his fingers had been burned.

“Hecate's Breath!” he swore.

Jane was quick to catch his hand, to roll her tiger's eye bracelet over his flesh.

Neko hissed between clenched teeth, “Your Maurice Richardson isn't expecting any visitors.”

I frowned. “Not Richardson,” I said. “The Eastern Empire. Chris, my mentor. They've sealed the premises until Richardson's trial.”

Jane took a step away. “Wait a minute. We're not just breaking into the bad guy's home? We're going against the entire Eastern Empire?”

I winced. When she phrased it that way… “I
represent
the Eastern Empire,” I said, trying to sound confident. “I'm an officer of the court, here to retrieve property that rightly belongs to the Empire.”

Neko whined a little in the back of his throat. Jane rubbed one hand down his arm, whispering something that she clearly meant to be soothing. I needed to regain control over the situation, or I was going to be stranded here, alone, in no time.

Throwing my shoulders back with a nonchalance I did not feel, I reached into my tote bag. My fingers were drawn to the hilt of my Sekhmet's Key. The magical implement seemed to shift when I touched it, to melt beneath my hand.

When I pulled out the Key, we all caught our breath. The blade seemed to have expanded, its leaf shape much wider at the base. The silver surface was thicker than it had been in Jane's kitchen, and the metal was smoother. It caught the light of the full moon and threw it back, brilliant as a spotlight.

I took a deep breath, centering my awareness as I had when James trained me in the Old Library gymnasium. I forced myself to feel the stillness, the power, the strength that coursed inside my veins.

I had worked at James's lessons for six months now. I knew how to fight, how to defend myself, how to attack. But I had no physical enemy here—no one I could catch in an armlock, could tumble to the ground with a single well-aimed kick.

And Chris had withheld my sphinx training, the intellectual background that I had hoped would balance the physical lessons from James. Over the past several months, Chris had parceled out only a handful of lessons, the vaguest of historical notions. He had moved so slowly that I had been crazed by the pressure inside me, by my need to order things, to control the chaos in the world around me.

And so I had learned more than Chris knew. I had prowled through texts in his private library when I knew his job as a reporter would keep him away from his home. I had read a handful of books in their entirety, histories of our obscure people, of sphinxes. And I had learned a few words of power.

I filled my lungs again, and I centered both my palms on the Key's hilt. “
Inoixa
,” I said, thinking each syllable separately, clearly, like a bell ringing inside my skull. A tart wash of lemon exploded inside my mouth. I gulped at the citrus, surprised, even though I had hoped for it.

I brought the Key forward so that the very tip of the blade kissed the door.

A crash shattered through me. My feet started to slip away, as if I tumbled down a sand dune. The Key flared bright, collecting all the silver light of the full moon, melting it, mixing it, transforming it into the gold of the desert sun. A hot wind blew across the porch, summoned from lands distant in space and time.

In the wake of that scirocco, Richardson's door gave way. One moment, it was bound by the Eastern Empire, by Chris, by the forces of Sekhmet. The next, it had yielded to me, to a sphinx who dared to bear the Key. It swung back on its hinges, as if it had never been latched.

I took a breath, and I was surprised to find that my lungs burned as if they had been scorched beneath a noon-time sun. That discovery made my legs start to tremble, and I was grateful for Jane's hand as she cradled my forearm, taking care to avoid touching the Key. I think we were both surprised to see that my blade had transformed back into an ordinary tool of onyx and silver, nothing more than an attractive ornament.

“There,” I said to Neko, and I was grateful that my voice did not shake. “I don't think the latch will give you any trouble again.”

I strode over the threshold as if I had every right to be there. I had to prove to myself that I was not afraid. I turned to Jane. “I don't know where he keeps the books. I don't know how to find them.”

“Well, let's get started, then.” I suspected she wasn't aware of the way her fingers flew over the tiger's eye beads around her wrist, almost as if she was saying a rosary. Neko whined as I closed the door behind us. Its magic was gone, though. It was nothing more than an ordinary set of oak and metal.

Jane's voice was nervous as she reached for the switches on the wall. “Anyone opposed to a little light?”

A little light. As if all it took was a single flick of a switch to restore a semblance of normalcy to a vampire's lair. As if a witch knew anything about the power a vampire like Richardson could have acquired, could have let stew in malevolence throughout his grim sanctum. As if a witch knew more than a sphinx about such things.

Strike that.

The light made a huge difference. Bright and cheerful, it let all of us draw deep breaths. “I wish I'd thought of that,” I muttered.

Jane smiled, but the expression looked a little forced. “Where do you want to start? If I were hiding stolen goods, I'd put them in either the attic or the basement.”

“Attic,” I said before the words were completely out of her mouth. I wanted no part of Richardson's basement.

Jane and Neko looked at me, as if they expected me to lead the way. I realized they were right—this was
my
project, whether I wanted to be responsible for it or not. I was the Clerk of Court for the Night Court, responsible for all the materials in the Old Library. I was the one who had insisted on coming to Richardson's sanctum. I was the sphinx who had stolen Sekhmet's Key.

Lucky, lucky me.

Somehow, I expected the stairs to creak as we made our way to the attic. A part of my mind waited for the hinges to groan as I opened the door that led to the space beneath the eaves. We were going to catch glimpses of ghosts, hear snatches of eerie organ music, feel clammy ectoplasmic mist against our faces.

There was none of that, though. Everything was normal. Mundane. We could all have been ordinary humans, walking through an ordinary house on an ordinary spring evening.

I lost no time turning on the attic lights before we climbed the stairs. Jane and Neko pressed close behind me as I peered around the huge room.

It was cluttered, in a way that made my sphinx need for order twitch. I wanted to stack those boxes neatly. And sort through those papers. Line up those racks of clothes. And I totally, completely,
desperately
wanted to turn the hangers so that they all faced the same way.

But really, there was nothing strange in the attic. Nothing to raise suspicion. Nothing to make a sphinx or a witch or a familiar blink.

Even when Jane viewed the surroundings through her lens of rock crystal. Before she used her magic, Jane brushed the clear stone against her tiger's eye bracelet, obviously transferring some of the protective aura she had created back at her cottage. The precaution, though, proved unnecessary.