Trio of Sorcery (14 page)

For the life of her, she could not imagine
why
they would feel that way—but she joined the celebration.

The celebrating didn't last forever of course. In fact, it didn't last very long at all. Di took a minute to change into something more practical, then brought them quickly up to speed, including her horrific vision from last night. They all sat on the floor, using pillows from the bed, while they ate deli bagels and cream cheese and lox that Marshal brought down from his place. Marshal took notes—it turned out he knew shorthand—while the other three listened with frowns of concentration.

“So why can't you just find Tamara or the kid?” Em asked finally, before Di had had a chance to explain what she could and could not do. “Zaak found my keys this morning.”

“Because she needs something personal either from Tamara or Melanie,” Zaak supplied before Di could say anything. “The more personal the better. Right?”

“Sort of,” Di replied. “The problem is that if my vision is right, Tamara has her place shielded, and even if I had something from either one of them, I still wouldn't be able to
find
them, though I might be able to affect them. It's like…okay, like they're lights, and the shields are like boxes. I can't see anything past the boxes. Better yet, camouflaged boxes. They blend in with the background.”

Marshal was drumming his fingers on the floor. “Okay, but can you tell one box from another? Could you tell by looking at the outside if Tamara was the one that made the box?”

She grimaced. “Technically…yes. Practically speaking…I'd still have to have something personal of hers. I could look for her signature energy, it's pretty unique, if I had that.”

Marshal got up. “Then let's go.” He offered her his hand; she stared at it.

“Go where? Tamara's place? The police have probably got it locked up tight—”

Marshal snorted. “I doubt there's any lock in this town short of a bank vault that I can't pick. Come on. We'll take the car.”

She took his hand and scrambled to her feet. “Car? You have a car?”

Emory made a face. “Why do you think we let an egg-head like him hang out with freaks like us?”

Marshal swatted him. “Di, have you got some kind of traveling kit? You know, magic emergency supplies? From what you were saying it sounds like we'll have to move fast.”

Wow. Marshal was
sharp
. “Yeah, it's under the bed—but I'm out of consecrated salt and water—”

“Zaak, you can do that, right?” At his nod, Marshal made shooing motions. “Make with the magic.”

“Can any of you use a gun?” Di asked, deciding that if they wanted to be in, they were going to be
in
.

Emory and Em both raised their hands. “Bottom drawer of my dresser. Should be two handguns in there, a .38 and a .45. Make sure they're clean; I can't remember if I cleaned them when I put them away last, and make sure they're loaded. Then make sure the reloaders are full, you'll find the ammo in there with the guns. Every other bullet should be the silver ones.”

Emory stared at her for just a fraction of a second, then nodded. “We'll take care of it. You guys go.”

Marshal headed out the door at a trot, Di hard on his heels; Zaak closed the door behind them and Di and Marshal pounded down the staircase to the first-floor entry-way. “Ya can't pahrk yer cahr in Hahrvahrd Yahrd,” he deadpanned as they sprinted past the wall of mailboxes and shoved open the door, getting a slightly hysterical giggle
out of her. “But I have a secret parking place. Tell no one.”

Considering that parking places were more valuable than diamond-encrusted platinum tiaras, she wasn't at all surprised at this admonition. What was absolutely astonishing was that his hidden parking place—for a tiny Austin Mini Cooper—was within a quick sprint of the apartment building.

It was a little nook that would never have fit a car that was any bigger, in an alley half a block away. Marshal rolled a Dumpster out of the way, pulled the car out, and she helped him push the Dumpster back into place. They both squeezed in and he shot the tiny car out of the alley and into Sunday morning traffic, what little there was of it.

“I give magic lessons to the kids of that building's super,” he said, maneuvering the little beast around a dinosaur of a station wagon.

“What?” she said absently, trying to think how she could use Tamara's object to find something that didn't want to be found.

“The parking space, that's how I got it. I use my powers only for good.” He glanced over at her. “Sorry, bad time for a worse joke.”

“No, it's okay. I'm just thinking—”

“That's fine.” He grinned. “You do the heavy lifting, I'll do the driving.”

They got to Tamara's neighborhood quickly, taking
much less time than the bus trips had. When they reached Tamara's street, though, he didn't stop, going straight past the house with yellow crime scene tape crossing the door.

“But—” she protested.

“We don't want to be seen, do we?” he countered, and she subsided.

He circled the block and ended up tucking the car into another alley, parking between two garages. All the houses here had walled-in backyards; they counted houses until they came to Tamara's, and tried the gate.

It was locked, but Marshal solved that in next to no time. They slipped inside and closed it behind them.

There was police tape over the back door too, but they simply took it off, carefully, so that they could replace it, and Marshal went to work on the locks of the back door. There were glass panes in the door, and she supposed that they
could
have broken one to get in, but then the cops would know someone had broken in and…

Not a good idea.

There were three locks on the door, including two dead bolts. But Marshal took a roll of felt out of his jacket and unrolled it, and inside was a complete set—so far as Di could tell—of professional lock-picking tools.

“Funny thing, not even the police question you about these if you have business cards showing you're a professional magician,” he said under his breath, as he worked on the locks. “I've even gotten gigs doing parties for cops' kids. And that's one.”

She heard the lock click open.

“Back home, all the neighbors knew to come get me when they locked themselves out of their cars or their houses,” he continued. There was another click. “And that's two. We're lucky, these are really old-fashioned. She never changed them.”

“Maybe she didn't think she needed them,” Di said dryly. “She might have had other protections.”

He froze. “You don't think she—”

Di shook her head. “I'm not getting a sense of anything dangerous waiting, not on the door and not for a good way beyond it. For one thing, anything that was there, the cops probably already sprung, tossing the place. For another, I think she left in too big a hurry to actually set something up. I honestly think she thought she was immune from getting arrested, and it never occurred to her that her house could be invaded. Gods know she's got the entire neighborhood spooked. I bet there isn't anyone around here who would dare break in even if she left her doors wide open.”

“That's comforting.” He finished with the third lock, and the door swung open. “Nevertheless, after you.”

She gave him a little mock bow, readied her defenses just in case, pushed the door completely open with her foot, and stepped inside.

She knew as soon as she crossed the threshold that whatever had been here was gone. There wasn't even that
faint sense of menace she'd felt when she'd come here as Susan.

Marshal joined her in a kitchen that looked like an explosion had gone off. Tamara hadn't been all that good of a housekeeper, but drawers and cupboards were all yanked open and had been left that way, pots, pans, and dishes had been pulled out, canisters dumped out, leaving flour and sugar and coffee all over the floor. The cops had done a real number on the place.

“Wow. Remind me never to do anything to get searched,” Marshal said, blinking.

“That's a good basic rule to live by,” Di replied, and picked her way across the floor. “Remember we need to clean our shoes off when we leave.”

“So we don't have evidence that we've been here—”

“So we don't track sugar into your car,” Di corrected. “You park behind a Dumpster in an alley. You want roaches in your car?”

Marshal shuddered. “Right. So we're looking for personal stuff. You go left, I'll go right.”

Di found herself in a small hallway; the first room she came to was the bathroom. It, too, had been pretty thoroughly trashed. There was no sign of a toothbrush, but she found a hairbrush on the floor and stuffed it into her pocket.

Then she got the oddest feeling. As if…the hairbrush wasn't what she needed. She took it out of her pocket and
looked at it closely, then pulled one of the long, black hairs out of the brush.

It didn't look right.

“Uh, Di? I think you need to see this.”

She followed Marshal's voice to a bedroom that for a moment looked to her as if it were the site of an Indian massacre. There were scalps everywhere.

Not scalps. Wigs.

That was why the hair in the brush didn't look right….

Scattered among the clothing and other things on the floor were what must have been a good dozen wigs; all black, but as near as Di could tell, each one had been cut and styled a different way.

“Pretty useful if you're being followed or watched,” Marshal observed, poking one with his toe. “Especially if you carry a spare one with you.”

Di nodded.

Marshal picked his way across the bedroom floor; there was an old-fashioned vanity in one corner, a real beauty of an antique. It seemed that Tamara had made daily use of it, for there was a litter of makeup of all sorts on and around it. Most of it was spilled. Clearly the cops had been on a fishing expedition, hoping to find something, probably drugs, that they could use to charge her with.

One entire end of the bedroom was blocked off by sets of louvered doors. Marshal opened one door, revealing a closet full of clothing—not just the Gypsy-hippie things
Tamara had been wearing when Di met with her, but everything from sequined evening gowns to sharp business suits, to a couple of antique-style Victorian dresses. And above the clothing, ranged neatly, were more wigs in every possible color.

“What the—” Di stared.

“Chameleon,” Marshal guessed. “I bet she did more than just tell fortunes.”

“I'm beginning to think that the psychic scam was only the tip of the proverbial iceberg.” Beneath the clothing were shoe racks, which were just as full as the shelves. “I'd love to know where someone with feet that size found shoes like that.” She shook herself out of the contemplation of all that clothing. “Never mind, we don't have time to sort through all the hair around here to figure out what's hers. Look for a wastebasket; maybe you'll find some used Kleenex. I'll find the laundry hamper. And we should both keep our eyes open for things that look like they might be keepsakes.”

Di found the laundry hamper, and discovered that Tamara sent her clothes out to be cleaned. A commercial laundry bag sat next to the hamper, stuffed full. Di extracted a pair of lacy undies that were a little frayed. That would have to do, since Marshal came up empty-handed.

Di was hoping, but not really expecting, to find Tamara's ritual space or tools. She had the feeling that Tamara kept such things far separated from her living space. Since she was working the left-hand path, that was probably wise. The
residue of nasty magic was apt to attract equally nasty things, and you didn't want those things sniffing around the place where you lived and slept.

She checked her watch with an increased sense of urgency. “I think we've spent as much time here as we can. We have something, anyway. Let's get out of here.”

Marshal locked up behind them, though there wasn't anything he could do about the dead bolts. They cleaned off their shoes, then sprinted down the alley to his car.

They found the others waiting somewhat impatiently for them. By then, Di had a pretty good idea of what she was going to do next, at least so far as finding Tamara.

“Help me move the furniture,” she said, and when they had gotten it all cleared to the sides of the room, she flipped the rug.

The bottom side was a single piece of white canvas, with her own ritual circle beautifully embroidered on it. She and Memaw had spent all of one year making it. It was, of course, a “broken” circle; the circle was outlined in a nine-part braid of silk with some of her own hair braided into it, and it was completed only when she tied the loose ends of the braid together.

She unlocked her cupboard and got out her supplies while Zaak examined the rug with interest and envy. She took everything to the middle of the rug and raised an eyebrow at Zaak. “Watch and learn,” she said, tied off the braid, and cast her circle.