Disappearing Nightly (21 page)

“Correct,” Max said. “Because Mr. Herlihy didn’t have the power to make Miss Gee vanish. Only the person who had the power, namely Hieronymus—”

“Namely Phil,” Lysander said tersely.

“Only he could cause the disappearance,” Max said. “And only by exercising his power at the right time. When the magician reached that part of the act, the adept had to have completed his own rituals and be focused on his task, prepared to engage the conduit when he sensed the necessary convergence of energy and concentration.”

“Hmm. That might explain why we skipped some days,” I said.

“Pardon?” said Lysander.

“There hasn’t been a disappearance
every
day since these events began. In eight days, we’ve had five disappearances. So maybe Hieronymus was busy, or distracted, or tired on the days when no one vanished.”

“It’s more likely,” said Lysander, “that the frequency of the disappearances depended on the performance schedule of Phil’s clients.”

“Of course!” Max said. “Not everyone performing a disappearing act is a client of Phil’s.”

“And perhaps not every client of Phil’s is performing this week,” I said.

“Additionally,” Lysander said, “there may be clients of Phil’s who’ve performed recently but whose acts did not meet the requisite level of energy and concentration needed for Phil to engage the conduit and exercise his power.”

I nodded. “That would explain why we gave several public performances of
Sorcerer!
before Golly vanished. Until that night, Joe was always so nervous and distracted, he probably made a lousy conduit.”

“Precisely,” Lysander said. “Because conduitism relies so heavily on another entity—and in this case it was relying on mundanes, which is always unwise—these disappearances must have been as unpredictable to enact as they were difficult to plan.”

“So why the disappearing acts?” I asked. “Why was
that
part of each magician’s performance targeted?”

“Simple,” Lysander said. “Phil is using conduitism to exercise a form of sympathetic magic.”

“What do you mean?”

Clearly pleased by the invitation to lecture me (again), Lysander said, “In sympathetic magic, a real-world object or action gives the practitioner a concrete focus for mystical energy in order to produce a desired result. An obvious example would be a poppet. If a practitioner of sympathetic magic wanted to inflict damage on you, he’d fashion a doll in your image and damage it. The more he could merge you and the doll into the same entity, the same life force, the more power would be vested in the poppet, and the more likely it would be that any damage he inflicted on the poppet would inde
ed be visited upon
you.
Therefore he might collect your hair—carelessly left in your brush, for example—to fashion into the poppet’s hair, and steal an item of your clothing to make into the poppet’s outfit.”

“That’s just creepy,” I said.

“On the other hand, someone who wanted to
help
you might attempt to protect you by fashioning a poppet. As an inanimate object, it’s far easier to protect than a busy modern woman is.”

“So sympathetic magic can work either way? Benevolent or malevolent?”

“Yes. Like all things,” Max said. “Even love.”

“And the disappearing act provides a real-world focus for Phil?” I asked.

“No,” Lysander said. “The disappearing act provides a focus for the mundane whom he is using as a conduit.”

“Ah.” Max nodded. “Yes, of course. The mental focus of the magician. The suspension of disbelief.”

“Right!” Goudini chimed in. “During the decapitation act, I’m thinking about decapitation—so is the audience, so are the girls. Er, especially the girls. And during the disappearing act, I’m thinking about making Alice disappear.”

“The incantations uttered during the act are also focused on the concept of disappearing,” Max said.

“Right,” I said. “The stage patter, the focus, the actions…In those few minutes, it’s all about the vanishing illusion.”

“In a way,” Goudini said, “I even make
myself
believe I make her disappear.”

Lysander said, “And that is quite probably the level of concentration, of sympathetic magic, that Phil needs in a mundane in order for the conduit to work.”

“And then I really
did
make her disappear.” Goudini looked sad. “Poor Alice!”

“It’s really rather ingenious,” Max said with professional admiration.

“But what’s happening to the victims when they disappear?” I mused aloud.

“It depends on how he’s accomplishing this,” Max said. “By now, I believe translocation is far more likely than dissolution.”

“Why?”

“Most forms of dissolution would cause instant death—or something remarkably similar to it. Why would Hieronymus do that? We know now that the magicians were his tools, not his enemies—he scarcely knew them. And the victims can’t have been his enemies, either. In each case, he scarcely knew or never even met the disappearee.” Max frowned, thinking it over. “So he must have needed to translocate a number of individuals for some reason, and conduitism was the method he chose.”

“Why?” Lysander wondered. “It’s so elaborate.”

Max thought about that. “Perhaps it was the only way he could perform the translocations, for some reason?”

“Oh my God!” I slapped my forehead. It was becoming a habit.
“Incantations!”

They both looked at me blankly.

“His speech impediment!” I said. “His results with incantations are unpredictable because of his speech impediment!”

“Incantations…Goodness, could
that
be why he’s chosen such an unorthodox procedure?” Max said.

“Of course!”

They both suddenly started mumbling to themselves.

After a moment, I demanded, “What are you doing?”

Max paused in his muttering and explained, “There aren’t that many incantations for a straightforward act of causing the involuntary translocation of an organic being. We’re running through the ones we know.”

“I know three,” Lysander said, evidently finished with his muttering. “Esther’s right. Hieronymus would have had considerable difficulty making any of them work. Far too many words with
S
or
R
in them.”

“You know three incantations that would make me disappear against my will?” I asked uneasily.

“No, only one that would make
you
disappear. There’s one that doesn’t work on humans, and another that only works on Lithuanians.”

“What
is
it with you people and Lithuanians?”

“Ah, interesting question,” Lysander said. “Centuries ago—”

“Forget I asked. We don’t have time.” I frowned. “Exactly how essential is accurate pronunciation?”

“I am amazed that an
actress
can ask that,” Lysander said.

“I know acting, not sorcery.”

“One can fudge it in a number of incantations, but there are others where it’s crucial,” Max said. “In those cases, at best, saying an incantation incorrectly leads to disappointing or embarrassing results.”

“And at worst?”

“Total disaster. Even tremendous danger.”

“Really?”

“Oh, yes,” Lysander said. “For one thing, errors in pronunciation can open a gateway to malignant forces. What begins as an attempt to protect a household can inadvertently summon a host of marrow-sucking demons.”

“That would be bad,” I said with certainty.

“Transmuting, translocating or levitating oneself call for fairly forgiving incantations. They’re also quite brief. When Hieronymus left today, he may have taken the back way out, or he may have transmuted or translocated, if he was feeling energetic.” I remembered what Max had said about the use of power being tiring. “He does have those skills. However, causing the involuntary translocation of another individual…” Max shook his head. “The incantations are much more demanding.”

I took a breath. “So we think that, probably through trial and error, Hieronymus discovered he couldn’t perform involuntary translocation of other people because he couldn’t master the incantations. So—probably through still more trial a
nd error—he figured out that he
could
achieve involuntary translocation through the use of conduits?” When they made affirmative noises, I asked, “The incantations involved in conduitism weren’t an obstacle?”

“Conduitism is very abstract and esoteric,” Max said. “Relatively little verbal skill is needed.”

“It mostly requires mental mastery,” Lysander said. “And, if I recall correctly, some strange ingredients in the laboratory work.”

I said, “Do we have any idea where he translocates the victims
to?
”

“I don’t think it’s another dimension,” Max said. “Now that we know Hieronymus is doing this—”

“Perhaps,”
Lysander said.

“—that seems unlikely. He evidently needs these people for something. And he is in this dimension.”

“As is Phil,” said Lysander. “It’s difficult to imagine how the victims could be useful to him in another dimension.”

“All right, good,” I said, “we’ve narrowed it down to this dimension. How else can we narrow it down?”

Lysander frowned in thought. “He’d need…some sort of receiving location. Someplace very private. He wouldn’t want to attract attention by performing his conduitism rituals where he might be seen or heard, or by the victims materializing in an unprotected place.”

“Which explains why he’s never here when the disappearances occur.” I asked the most important question: “Are the victims still alive?”

“That depends on what he wants them for,” Lysander said.

“Yes,
why
is he doing this?” Max wondered.

“You don’t have any ideas, now that we know
who’s
doing it?” I asked.

“Unfortunately,” Max said, “I am as bewildered about that as I was before.”

“There are still too many possibilities,” Lysander said. “We need to know more about him than we do.”

“We need to know,” Max said, “what he
wants.
”

“Yes. Then we may be able to ascertain his intentions.”

“As his current mentor,” Max said, “I feel a bit remiss.”

“As well you should,” Lysander said. “He obviously had far too much time on his hands!”

“Actually, he was neither prompt nor skilled at performing the tasks assigned to him,” Max said, “so I’ve been decreasing my requirements—and my expectations—in recent months.”

“And you see the result!”

“Back off, Lysander,” I said. “It’s not Max’s fault that the Collegium sent a minion of Evil here to be his assistant. Though it’s a relief to see you’re finally admitting that’s what’s happened.”

“I didn’t say that,” Lysander said quickly.

“Perhaps I should have been more concerned about his frequent and prolonged ab
sences,” Max admitted. “But young people are gadabouts, after all—”

“We’re what?”

“—and it was easy to suppose that the city was a more stimulating and fascinating place for a healthy young man than my laboratory or this bookstore.”

“Actually,” Goudini piped up, “I find this a rather soothing place.”

“However, that is not what I meant about feeling remiss,” Max said. “To be quite candid, I was chiefly unconcerned about Hieronymus’s absences because I did not find his company particularly appealing.”

“That’s understandable,” I said.

“He was not prone to sharing his thoughts, and since I did not, I confess, take to the boy, I very soon gave up pressing him to share them. As a result…” Max sighed. “It’s fair to say that despite having been his mentor for eight months, I know him only slightly. I have no idea what he wants, and therefore not the faintest idea why he’s causing these disappearances or what he hopes to achieve. Indeed, I am forced to admit that I knew Hieronymus too little to feel either the sorrow or the sense of betrayal that a master in my situation might reasonably be expected to feel now.”

“I didn’t like him, either,” I said. “Don’t worry about it, Max.”

“But now that we know he is a force of Evil—”

“We
postulate
that he
may
be,” Lysander corrected.

“—it would be helpful in our current situation if I had troubled to understand the boy better.”

“Water under the bridge,” I said, unable to criticize anyone for not having been chums with Hieronymus.

“One thing is clear, though.”

“What’s that?” I asked.

Max said, “The lad has far more skill and power than he led me to believe.”

“Ah.”

“If he
is
translocating the victims,” Max mused, “I wonder what method he’s using for the transference?”

“Presumably,” Lysander said, “he’s translating their matter into the particles and waves I described earlier today, so that it can traverse shifting and semi-shifting holes or—”

“I think we can safely scrap that theory,” I said. “As well as the theory that mundanes are behind these events. Those were both
his
theories, remember?”

“That doesn’t mean there’s no validity—”

“Yes, it does,” I said. “You can’t really think that he was foolish enough to tell you how he’s been doing it? The less you know, the better for him. The confusing stuff he fed you today about waves and shifting holes leading to another dimension was just an attempt to get you off track. The way he got me off track by insisting mundanes were behind all this. His ‘theory’ about that helped convince me to break into Magnus’s shop last night and go charging up those stairs.”

“Oh.” Lysander wouldn’t say so, but I could tell he thought I might have a point.

“Misdirection,” Goudini said. “Classic. The guy might have become a half-decent magician instead of an evil wizard, if he’d been raised right.”

“I think we should leave his poor parents out of this,” Max said sadly.

“Actually, Garry’s brought up a good point,” I said.

“I have?”

“I gather that the speech impediment is a mystical affliction, caused by a particularly vicious djinn cursing the pregnant Mrs. Blankenberg’s womb?”

“Yes,” Lysander said. “So if Hieronymus
is
Phil—which I do not yet concede—then obviously he is to be pitied rather than blamed.”