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It wasn’t much of a room: bare tile on the floor, off-white walls, no windows, a couple of floor lamps in the corners giving off muted light. About fifteen by fifteen, the place reminded me of a cell.
“What do you use this for?” I asked Boss.
“Time-outs,” he said.
“Time-outs? Like, if one of your vampires gets violent?”
“You ever seen what that looks like?”
Until recently, I’d have said no, but the starving vampire we found near Dodge City gave me a pretty good idea of why vampires might need a room like this. A question remained: Just what did you do with a vampire that far gone? How did you get them back to normal, or what passed for normal among vampires? Answer: they needed blood. And what did that look like? I wasn’t sure I wanted to know. The place smelled innocuous enough—it had the cold, clean scent of the rest of the lair. I surreptitiously hunted for stray bloodstains on the floor and didn’t find anything.
We kept to the edges of the room. Cautious, Grace stood in the middle, waiting for Cormac, who paced around the room, touching walls, studying the ceiling. His lips were pursed, thoughtful.
He took off his jacket and put it on the floor in the corner. His gray T-shirt showed off his rugged frame—he’d grown up on a ranch and it showed. He let his arms hang loose, tipped his head back, took a deep breath. When he released it, he made the soft hiss of a slowly deflating balloon. He rolled his shoulders, his head, stretching his neck. Then, blinking, he gazed around the room as if waking from a nap. His scent became bookish, older.
“What’s happening?” Boss asked.
“He’s Amelia now,” I said.
The vampire glanced at me, his expression questioning, but I couldn’t explain.
Brisk now, businesslike instead of watchful, Cormac returned to his jacket and pulled a few items—small, hidden in his hands—out of the pockets. Going to Grace, he handed her a piece of red chalk. “Draw a picture of the Dragon’s Pearl, right here.” He gestured at the center of the floor.
“I can’t draw that well. I’m not an artist.”
“It doesn’t have to be an exact likeness. Just a suggestion. A symbol.”
Tentatively, she took the chalk from him, crouched, and began drawing. I stood on my toes and craned forward trying to see what she drew, but the image remained hidden. While she was drawing, Cormac unfolded a street map of San Francisco and spread it on the floor.
Next, he spread a layer of a fine, dark-colored powder over the map. It smelled a little like charcoal.
“What is it?” I whispered to Ben.
“Gunpowder,” he said.
This ought to be good. The last item in Cormac’s hands was a lighter.
I didn’t know enough about magic to be able to guess what spell, incantation, ritual, divination, cantrip, or whatever Cormac was going to work. I was learning more all the time. Amelia’s magic seemed to be rooted in items and in ritual. Objects she could manipulate, procedures she could perform, tapping into external symbols rather than drawing on any innate power. Apparently, in some cases magic could be learned and didn’t depend on natural psychic ability. This should have been comforting—it meant anyone could control it, and it wasn’t so mysterious after all, right? But for the true wizards and magicians I’d met—Odysseus Grant, Harold Franklin, and Amelia Parker—magic wasn’t a hobby they’d picked up in a few classes or weekly knitting circles. They’d dedicated their whole lives to the study. It consumed them. In some ways, they became something other than human—as monstrous as I was. They no longer fit with the human community.
That wasn’t such a huge change for Cormac, as it turned out. Maybe that was how Amelia had found him—or how they’d found each other. I wondered if I’d ever learn the whole story.
“Are you finished?” he asked Grace after a moment.
She sketched the last couple of lines, then got back to her feet, brushing her hands on her jeans. “Yeah. Don’t know how much good it will do you.” She gave him back the piece of chalk, which he used to draw a circle around both the map and Grace’s drawing. I scooted forward, trying one more time to get a look at what the Dragon’s Pearl looked like—she’d drawn something square with squiggles in the middle.
Cormac shot me a look. “Stand back.”
I raised my hands in a gesture of innocence and backed away.
Cormac stood just outside the circle. The room was so quiet, I could hear us breathe—at least, those of us who did breathe. The moment demanded stillness. I was about to say something, unable to bear the tension of anticipation any longer, when the sometime-wizard flicked the lighter on and knelt, touching the flame to the map.
A spark flared on the paper, and a tongue of fire leaped a few inches high. Just as quickly, it vanished, leaving behind a wisp of smoke and the smell of sulfur. Cormac remained kneeling, his hand over the map, the smoke curling around him.
“Whoa,” Ben murmured. We all leaned forward for a better look at what had happened.
Cormac shook a layer of fine soot off the map and held it up to the light. The flame had burned a perfect pinpoint mark into the map. X marks the spot.
“Really? It’s there?” Grace said, moving to Cormac’s side to look over his arm at the image.
