James Potter And The Morrigan Web (9 page)

“That is not your problem, Mr. President,” the Collector announced breezily. “I simply require your promise, unbreakable and sealed, that if the post becomes available, you will name me to the position. I will make it very easy for you. My credentials will be unassailable. No one will doubt your judgment. If you do this, and if you follow my very simple instructions, your problem with Senator Murphy will conveniently go away. You will be whisked easily into your next term as president, with me by your side, your loyal and constant advisor.”

Drummond considered this. He was distinctly uncomfortable with it, and yet he could not immediately turn down his visitor’s assistance. Perhaps he could get rid of the strange man later, once Murphy was happily disposed of as a political threat. Perhaps all he, Drummond, had to do was to appease his unusual benefactor until then. He studied the Collector for a long moment. Finally, he nodded.

“I will consider it,” he said, knowing in his heart that he had already decided. “But if I choose to accept your assistance, you must promise to keep your methods entirely above board. Nothing illegal.”

The Collector smiled warmly. “You can trust us, Mr. President.”

Drummond considered this, realized that it was not particularly reassuring, but decided not to pursue it. “Assuming you do become my vice president, sir, I expect you have some ideas for how to handle this whole Event business? You are, after all, obviously a magical person yourself. What will you propose? Full disclosure of the wizard community? Equality between our worlds? Peaceful integration of our different cultures?”

The Collector’s smile widened slowly, becoming disconcertingly predatory. “Not,” he said quietly, conspiratorially, “
exactly…
”

Marshall Parris stepped out onto the sidewalk, squinted up at the stunningly bright California sun, and shrugged dejectedly out of his trench coat.

For someone who had spent most of his adult life as a private detective in New York City, the sunny streets of Los Angeles took a lot of getting used to. For one thing, it always seemed to be summer. To a guy like Parris, who was culturally inclined to wear a fedora and a trench coat nine months out of the year, there was something fundamentally wrong with the math of so much sunlight. There was very little fog (even the legendary L.A. smog was barely a wisp of its former self), and the wind, when it blew, was light and gentle, unlike the gritty blasts that had scoured the streets of Parris’ beloved Big Apple.

He hooked his trench coat over his shoulder, sighed, and began to walk. Whispering palm trees lined the boulevard that led toward his temporary office, a second floor walk-up situated over a coffee shop. The shop was called Jack’s Magic Bean and was run by an extraordinarily fit seventy year old man named, unsurprisingly, Jack. Jack had rented the upstairs office to Parris for a rather high sum, but had been remarkably laid back about when—or indeed if—Parris ever chose to pay it.

“No rush, man, no rush,” Jack had said, as he’d handed Parris the keys. “You just get me a check whenever you can. It’s all crazy these days, you dudes from New York getting moved all over the place, government cover-ups, and Martians showing up and hypnotizing everybody.”

Parris accepted this with wary suspicion. After all, if his New York landlord had shown such magnanimity, Parris would have likely discovered that his rental was missing a few minor details, like glassed windows, or perhaps a floor. Here in California, though, things were different. The office above Jack’s Magic Bean was tiny but comfortable, with a huge bay window and a working bathroom. Unfortunately, every wall was painted a bright coral pink and decorated with bits of driftwood. For a fleeting moment, Parris felt he would have preferred a missing floor.

It had been nearly three months since Parris had left New York City, nearly three months since the Event that had changed everything and sent the entire city packing for the foreseeable future.

Parris knew that the Event had not, in fact, been caused by Martians. He’d known about the wizarding city of New Amsterdam for years, although he had never, until that night, seen it with his own eyes. A guy in his line of work tended to learn a lot of stuff that was supposed to be secret. After all, a lot of Parris’ clients were witches and wizards themselves. They pretended they weren’t—it was just force of habit—but they knew
he
knew, and that made it all right. Their vow of secrecy didn’t count in situations like that. The fact of the matter is, sometimes even witches and wizards need a competent private eye, and sometimes the best private eye is a guy like Parris, a guy with no magic in him at all. Sometimes the best private eye is a Muggle.

Parris knew that that was what the wizarding folk called people like him. People who didn’t have any magic in their blood were called Muggles, at least by polite magical society. Some of the witches and wizards he tracked down had called him much less flattering names. It didn’t bother him. Every society had its bigotries, and the society of witches and wizards was no exception. Besides, the names were technically right. He
was
totally human, without a lick of magic in him at all.

Technically.

Parris approached the stairway next to Jack’s Magic Bean, turned into the shadow of the awning, and clumped noisily up to his office door.

The coral walls met him cheerily. Parris tried to ignore them as he checked his telephone messages. There were none. He crossed disconsolately to the little kitchenette and started a pot of coffee.

It had also been nearly three months since he’d had a client. That was the worst part of it all. The career of a private detective (especially one who specialized in what Parris liked to refer to as “the trans-mundane”) depended almost entirely on word of mouth referrals. Unfortunately, his reputation had not exactly followed him to his temporary home in California. Without clients, he could not pay his rent, and surely even Jack’s magnanimity would eventually run out. Worse, he couldn’t hire a secretary, which was, of course, essential to the appearance of a thriving detective agency. When clients called, they expected a perky, businesslike female voice. They wanted to hear the reassuring clack of a typewriter and the riffle of pages in a scheduling book. What they most certainly didn’t want to hear was the recorded message of the detective himself, especially when he didn’t know how to operate the answering machine, and had cut himself off in the middle of his own greeting.

As if to remind him of this, the phone on Parris’ desk began to ring.

It surprised him so much that he dropped the coffee pot. It fell onto the tiny counter, miraculously managed not to shatter, and threw up cold water all over his pants. He leapt backwards, brushing himself off furiously.

On the desk, the telephone stopped ringing and the answering machine clicked on.

“You’ve reached the temporary office of detective Marshall Parris, private eye, specializing in the trans-mundane. I’m currently on the case, but feel free to call my cell phone at 555-21—
BEEP
!”

Parris stumbled toward the desk, still brushing at his pants and reaching for the phone, but the caller had already hung up. The annoying buzz of the dial tone sounded for a few seconds, followed by a click as the machine hung up.

It was probably for the best, anyway. The only other time his office phone had rung it had been an old Venice Beach woman seeking help in finding her missing youthful idealism. Parris had almost yelled at her, assuming that she’d been mocking him. She hadn’t, and it was then that Parris had realized just how different life in California was going to be.

He considered trying to re-record his answering machine message, if only to get the rest of his cell phone number into it. There was no point, really. His cell phone had been disconnected for lack of payment. He sighed, flopped into his desk chair, and stared out the window at the impossibly blue California sky.

There was a knock at his office door.

Parris’ eyes snapped toward the closed door. The odd thing was not so much that he had a visitor, but that he hadn’t heard footsteps on the stairway outside, which was notoriously loud. He considered this for a brief moment, decided it was rather a good sign, and called out, “It’s not locked.”

The door opened silently and a young woman stepped inside. She closed the door carefully behind her and studied the man behind the desk.

“Marshall Parris, I assume?” she asked in a clipped, unmistakably British accent.

He considered giving her a cagy response, but decided to play it straight. “That’s what the sign out front says. Marshall Parris, private eye.”

“Specializing in the trans-mundane,” the young woman said, nodding once. She moved toward his desk but made no effort to sit down. She was attractive enough, with long dark hair, and she was dressed in a distinctly un-California manner. Her skirt was floral patterned and prim, swishing over chunky black boots. She wore a pale blue sweater, despite the constant Los Angeles summer. Parris decided he liked her, even if she didn’t exactly seem like client material.

“What can I do for you, miss…?” he said, rising to his feet. He remembered that his pants were still damp. “Er… coffee mishap,” he explained a bit lamely. “Never once happened to me in New York.”

The young woman nodded again, still unsmiling.

“I’ve come to hire your services, Mr. Parris,” she said, meeting his eyes. “Your…
trans-mundane
services.”

“I see,” Parris replied. “Do sit down, Miss…?”

“You can call me Petra,” the young woman answered, settling herself reluctantly into one of the client chairs. “Although I go by other names.”

Parris nodded and drew a yellow notebook out of his desk drawer. He scribbled the woman’s name on the top. “Petra. Means rock. Are you in a band, perhaps?”

“We’ll get along much better if you stop trying to guess what I am here for, Mr. Parris,” the young woman answered with cool courtesy. “You’ve had enough magical clients to know that each case is very unique.”

Parris leaned back in his chair, which creaked tiredly. “Maybe I have,” he agreed. “But I’ve also had enough
young
clients to know that they can’t always afford my services, magical or not.”

Petra nodded and adjusted herself on the chair so that she could reach slightly forward. Something glittered in her outstretched hand. Ten heavy coins spilled from her fingers onto the wood of Parris’ desk.

“Will gold do?” she asked, raising her eyebrows slightly.

Parris tried to look nonchalant. His chair creaked again as he leaned forward, examining the thick golden coins. “These aren’t leprechaun money, are they?” he asked sharply, glancing up at the woman. “I wasn’t born yesterday, you know.”

“Those are galleons,” Petra answered patiently. “Legal tender in the wizarding world, but valuable for their weight even in the Muggle world. I will pay you ten of those a day.”

“Plus traveling expenses,” Parris added automatically, a bit breathlessly.

“There won’t be any such expenses,” Petra replied grimly. “I will travel with you, by my own means.”

Parris nodded again. He picked up one of the gold coins, felt its heaviness in the palm of his hand. The metal was cold to the touch. “Well then,” he said lamely. “I hope my services will be up to your lofty standards, lady, ‘cause I’ll be honest with you: this is some serious cashola.”

Petra merely eyed his office for a long moment, letting her gaze travel around the brightly painted walls. “Where do you keep it, Mr. Parris?”

Parris closed his hand over the cold coin. “What do you mean?”

“You know exactly what I mean,” Petra said coolly. “After all, how else does a Muggle come to be known as the best detective in the wizarding world? How does a Muggle confront some of the darkest witches and wizards in existence and live to tell of it? You may be lucky, Mr. Parris, but no one is
that
lucky. You are protected, somehow. You have a talisman. I’m just curious, sir. Where do you keep it?”

Parris narrowed his eyes at his new client. “Even if you were right, lady, you’d need to pay me a lot more to answer that question.”

Petra accepted this with a shrug. “I’m just being cautious, Mr. Parris. My case, I think, will be the most difficult and dangerous of your career. I only ask about your talisman because I wish to be sure that it will, indeed, protect you under the most extraordinary of circumstances. Furthermore, I wish to know that it may indeed assist you in finding what I seek.”

Parris began to wonder if this young woman might be more trouble than she was worth, gold coins or not.

“I keep
it
on me at all times,” he said quietly. “Although no one would be able to get it from me. It’s not particularly powerful, and it wouldn’t do anyone else any good, anyway. But for me, yeah, it’ll do the trick. You’ll just have to trust me on that.” He leaned forward again, resting his elbows on the desk. “And just let me get one more thing straight, lady: my ‘talisman’, as you call it, may keep me safe from the worst of your people—it may help me stay out of sight and get into places that nobody else ever could—but it’s me that does all the hard work.
This
is where the detecting happens,” he tapped his forehead meaningfully. “Capiche?”