AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Everyone knows a moving target is hardest to hit.
Down in my own person, I held the summoning key firmly in my hand and focused my gift through it; and immediately one particular building jumped out at me with extra significance, as the key locked on to the one special door I needed to find. The building hopped and skipped around the Nightside, appearing and disappearing apparently at random; but more like a fish on the end of a line now I had the summoning key. I chased Gideon Brooks up and down the Nightside, sticking close no matter how many times he tried to throw me off, my mind soaring impossibly fast from one location to another, invisible and undetectable, until finally Gideon Brooks just gave up, and his home settled down in one place and stayed put. It materialized right before me, presenting a quite unremarkable door, and squeezed into place between two perfectly respectable establishments, which rather grudgingly budged up to make room for it. I dropped back inside my head and released my hold on the summoning key. The door before me looked entirely unthreatening, but I checked it over with my Sight anyway, just in case. Heavy-duty protective magics crawled all over the door, and spat and sparkled on the air round the building.
I held up the key, muttered the proper activating Words, and unlocked all the protections, one by one. It took quite a while. Holly squeaked excitedly and clapped her little hands together.
And that was when Sweetman and Gunboy turned up. They were just suddenly there, strolling down the street toward us, Sweetman in his great white kaftan rolling along like a ship under full sail, Gunboy swaggering at his side like an attack dog on a short leash. Holly actually hissed at the sight of them, like an affronted cat, and moved quickly to stand behind me. I carefully shut down my Sight so I could concentrate on the matter at hand.
“My dear Mister Taylor,” said Sweetman, as he crashed to a halt before me. “Well done, sir, well done indeed! I knew I could rely on you to chase Gideon Brooks down, but I have to say, I never thought you’d be able to run his very special house to ground too. You shouldn’t look so surprised to see me, my good fellow, really you shouldn’t. Dear Gunboy and I have been following you ever since you left the hotel.”
“No you haven’t,” I said flatly. “I’d have noticed.”
“Well, not personally following, as such,” Sweetman agreed. “I took the liberty of slipping a small but very powerful tracking device into your coat pocket while you were preoccupied with poor Gunboy. The dear boy does make for such marvelous misdirection.”
I looked at Gunboy. “And how do you feel, being used like that?”
He took one hand out of his pocket and pointed it at me. “I do what Mister Sweetman says. And so will you.”
“Are you going to let him talk to you like that?” said Holly, from behind me.
“As long as he’s pointing that conceptual gun at me, yes,” I said. “Mister Sweetman, as I understand it, and I’m perfectly prepared to be told I don’t, it’s been that kind of a case . . . You want the rosewood box, and the very important heart you believe it contains. You are not, I take it, interested in this young lady’s heart, also inside the box?”
Sweetman inclined his large head judiciously. “No offense, young lady, but I would have no interest in your heart under any conditions.”
“For someone who didn’t want to offend,” said Holly, “I’d have to say you came pretty damned close.”
“The point being,” I said quickly, “that since we all want different things from Gideon Brooks, we don’t have to be at each other’s throat. We can work together to acquire the box, and then each take what we want from it.”
“Are you crazy?” said Holly, hurrying out from behind me so she could glare at me properly. “Give up on the box?”
“You hired me to find your stolen heart,” I said. “Or are you now saying the box is more important?”
“No,” said Holly. “It’s all about the heart.” She looked at Gunboy. “We could use some serious firepower, if we’re going up against Gideon Brooks.”
Gunboy looked at Sweetman, and then put his hand back in his pocket.
“Don’t sulk, boy,” said Sweetman. “It’s very unattractive.”
I smiled around me. “I love it when a compromise comes together.”
AND THEN WE ALL LOOKED ROUND SHARPLY, AS THE DOOR BEFORE US opened on its own. I felt a little disappointed that I wouldn’t get to show off what I could do with my gi
ft and the summoning key. We all stood looking at the open door for a long moment, but nothing menacing emerged, and there was only an impenetrable gloom beyond. We looked at each other, and then I led the way forward—if only because I didn’t trust any of the others to react responsibly to anything unexpected. Sweetman and Gunboy fell in behind me, and Holly brought up the rear.
Beyond the door lay a simple, dimly lit hallway, with no obvious magical trappings. It could have been any house, anywhere. The door closed quietly behind us, once we’d all entered. The four of us pretty much filled the narrow hallway. A door to our left swung slowly open, and I led the way into the adjoining room. When in doubt, act confident. The room was open and warmly lit, with no furnishings or fittings; just bare wooden floorboards, and one very ordinary-looking, casually dressed middle-aged man, sitting on a chair surrounded by a great pentacle burned right into the floorboards. He was holding a simple wooden box in his hands; perhaps a foot long and half as wide.
The lines of the pentacle flared up abruptly as Sweetman approached them, and he stopped short. The lines shone with a fierce blue-white light, blazing with supernatural energies. Sweetman stepped carefully back and gestured to Gunboy, who smiled slowly as he took both hands out of his jacket pockets. And then he stopped, looked almost abjectly at Sweetman, and put his hands away again. Apparently conceptual guns were no match for older and more established magics.
I looked at Holly. She was staring unblinkingly at Gideon, but I couldn’t read the expression on her face. She didn’t look angry, or scared; just utterly focused on the box in his hands.
“You’re a witch,” I said to her quietly. “Can’t you do anything?”
She scowled suddenly as she looked at Gideon. It might just have been the scowl, but she didn’t look pretty anymore. “If I could break his protections, I wouldn’t have needed your help.”
“You never did like having to depend on other people,” the man on the chair said pleasantly. “And you really couldn’t stand someone else having power over you, even when you came to them to learn the ways of magic. You were the best student I ever had, my dear—until you grew impatient, and tried to steal my secrets. And when that failed, you had to go looking for power in all sorts of unsuitable places.” He looked at me. “Whatever she’s told you, you can’t trust it. She’ll say anything, do anything, to get what she wants. She slept with demons so they’d teach her the magics I wouldn’t, she stole grimoires and objects of power, and she would have stolen my heart . . . if I hadn’t taken precautions.”
“No one tells me what to do,” said Holly. “With your heart in my hands, you’d have taught me everything I wanted. And as for the demons, every single one of them was better in the sack than you.”
Women always fight dirty.
