The door was opened by a middle-aged woman a couple of inches taller than me with long, dark hair that was streaked with gray. Her face was angular and a little pinched, her eyes narrowed and her lips drawn thin. She looked at me, then at Athena, then past us with a hopeful look on her face…then back at me doubtfully. “Can I help you?”
“Wilhelmina Rein?” I shifted my cane to my left hand and offered her my right to shake. “I’m Mage Alys Kinnear. These are my familiars, Athena and Artemis. Hollis Ellister sent us.”
She gave me a doubtful once-over and shook my hand uncertainly. “Oh? I was expecting someone a bit…older.” She gave me another head to toe glance.
“I get that a lot,” I said with what I hoped was a reassuring smile.
“Wizard Hollis Ellister came highly recommended by a friend,” she said slowly, “and when I spoke to him on the phone this morning he said he’d be sending an expert.”
<
I sighed mentally. This was a conversation we’d had several times over the last few months. It had begun with Hollis politely suggesting before Yule that I enhance my ‘professional wardrobe’ to include clothes suitable for active work while still looking a bit more upscale than my usual leather trousers or denim pants. I had just as politely argued that such clothes were both more rugged and less expensive to replace than the sorts of items I’d thought he’d meant, especially if they were frequently going to get covered with substances like the troll goo that had resulted in my having to burn one of my favorite oilcloth coats.
Troll goo doesn’t come out of anything, especially oilcloth. And don’t ever try to burn it to dispose of it. Gods, the smell…
Trish and Ben had both chimed in on the subject over the next few weeks as well, resulting in Trish dragging me out on a shopping expedition to find me new ‘professional’ wear. I had been pleasantly surprised by the results, both in terms of not horribly depleting the savings I’d accrued from the salary Hollis paid me and in the quality and quantity of clothing I’d been able to acquire.
In my rush that morning, I hadn’t given it a second thought, and now stood before Mrs. Rein in fitted denim pants, flat-heeled ankle boots, a dark green shirt and a short brown leather jacket.
I sighed mentally again, really seeing myself from a client’s perspective for the first time. I probably did not look anything like her mental image of an expert Mage. Perhaps appearances really were as important in making a first impression as skill and reputation. We live and learn. <
<
<
I ignored that comment as gracefully as possible. When one’s feline familiar is chiding you about your appearance, it was probably past time to update it. “May we come in?” I asked Mrs. Rein. “We’re here to do whatever we can to help find your daughter.”
Mrs. Rein nodded and stepped aside for us. “Of course, I’m sorry. I don’t know where my manners are this morning.”
“You’re worried about your daughter,” I said. “It’s perfectly all right. When did you last see her?”
“Two days ago, when she left for school,” Mrs. Rein said, guiding us into a kitchen that had all the earmarks of being well-organized, but was currently in a state of mild disarray. “She wasn’t home in time for dinner, which isn’t all that unusual - she likes to go hang out with her friends after school - but when she wasn’t home by full dark…I started to get worried.”
The way she said the word ‘friends’ made me think these were friends she didn’t wholly approve of. Or approve of at all, maybe.
“I called the police last night when she wasn’t home by her usual bedtime,” Mrs. Rein continued as we sat down around the small kitchen table, “and they said they’d keep an eye out for her and to let them know if she hadn’t returned by this morning. My husband went out to check the places she and her friends hang out, but didn’t find any of them.”
I slid a small notebook and a pen out of one of the pouches on my belt, and began taking notes. “We might need to get a list of the most common ones later,” I said, “as well as the names of her friends. What did you do after that?”
“We went to bed,” she said, spreading her hands to indicate her helplessness. “The police couldn’t - or wouldn’t - do anything, so what could we do? We sat in bed most of the night, unable to sleep and unable to think of anything else we could do.”
“When you say the police ‘wouldn’t’ do anything,” Athena asked, “what do you mean?”
Mrs. Rein gave Athena a weird look, then turned to me. “You let your familiar do your talking for you?” she asked in a disapproving tone. Sitting on her haunches beside my chair, Artemis made an almost inaudible sound of displeasure.
Oh, wonderful. One of those.
Normal familiars hold a weird and admittedly uncertain place in society, as they’re magically bound - permanently - to the spellcaster who claimed them, but for the most part people (translation: non-spellcasters) usually just treat them like pets. That is, very basically, what they are, after all. Elevated familiars, on the other hand, tend to be treated as servants by many non-spellcasters. Or, worse, slaves. People look at them and see a creature that’s not entirely human, and definitely not a wild animal anymore…and don’t know what to do. Human nature being what it is, those who aren’t able to accept Elevated familiars as our equals treat them as our inferiors.
Some days I’m more unhappy with the human side of my heritage than the Sidhe side.
There’s a movement to improve the legal standing and rights of Elevated familiars, but its slow going. Athena and I had been blessed to have very limited contact with the slowly shrinking portions of society who didn’t consider Elevated familiars to be intelligent, thinking, feeling beings.
I met Mrs. Rein’s eyes steadily and didn’t say anything. Finally, as the silence - and her disapproval - was becoming uncomfortable, I quietly said, “I’d appreciate it if you’d answer the question.”
“I don’t remember a question being asked,” Mrs. Rein replied loftily.
I sighed a little. “Mrs. Rein, I am trying to be polite and respectful. I would appreciate the same consideration in return. That extends to Athena, who is my very highly valued partner.” Which was as close as I could get to chastising a client. At least, until they were my clients, and not Hollis Ellister’s. “If you want us to try to find your daughter, you need to help us by giving us all the information you can.”
She huffed out a breath and looked mildly offended…but did, at least, answer. “Fine. Mina - that’s my daughter - has run away several times before. At first, she didn’t get very far, or came back after a day or two. But that was when she was thirteen. When she was fifteen, she fell in with these new friends of hers, and they showed her places to hide and ways to get by on her own. The first time she didn’t come back for two days, we called the police and they went looking for her. But she came home before they could find her. That happened the second time she was gone for two days as well. The third time, they said they’d keep an eye out for her and look into it as soon as possible, and of course she came back the next day, but since then, we’ve had a hard time getting them to help! Imagine, the police not being willing to look for a missing girl!”
Her voice had grown agitated as she spoke until she sounded nearly hysterical by the time she finished, and it took her a minute to pull herself back together.
“What makes you think she won’t come back this time?” I asked, carefully keeping my voice calm and level.
“We had a fight the day before she disappeared about what university she was going to go to,” Mrs. Rein said. “She thought she was going to Oxford and talked about getting a degree in art and a Mage certification, but I told her she was going to stay right here and study law or medicine. The University of York is an excellent school. Honestly, art? No, she’ll study something sensible. And what good is getting a Mage certification in a career where you’ll never need it? I suppose I wouldn’t mind, of course…my side of the family has always had talents in that area, and it can be a very prestigious thing to have.”
I was beginning to understand why Mina might try to run away. For an instant, I thought about putting my two cents in…then Athena gently stepped on my toes under the table.
<
<
“At work,” Mrs. Rein replied, looking surprised I’d even need to ask the question. “Providing for his family, like a good husband should.”
Oy vey, as a rabbi I’d studied under during my apprenticeship would’ve said. I got the emotional equivalent of an eye-roll from Artemis, and a muttered <
“Of course,” I said. “I think that gives us a picture of events to work with. What I really need is some personal item of hers…something that she values very highly, or that she’s handled very recently. The more closely connected to her it is, the better. Hair from a hairbrush would work very well, for example.”
Mrs. Rein nodded and rose. “I can get that for you. Do you need a lot?”
I shook my head. “A few strands will do, especially if they’re long enough for me to tie around something.”
“Oh yes, she has lovely long hair. Just a moment, I’ll go get it.” She hurried out of the kitchen, and a moment later we heard her going up a flight of stairs somewhere close by.
<
<
Athena shrugged. <
I grunted. <
Athena shuddered. <
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We heard Mrs. Rein’s footsteps on the stairs then, and a moment later she came back into the kitchen, holding several long strands of hair in one hand. She laid them on the table, just as the doorbell sounded and she looked up, surprised. “I’m not expecting anyone else. Let me just see who’s there. Maybe it’s Mina and she forgot her key…” She hurried out of the room again.
I scooped up the hairs and slid them into a pocket. <
<
“Mage Kinnear,” Mrs. Rein called down the hall, “would you come here, please?”
<
<
At the front door, we found Mrs. Rein talking to two uniformed policemen. It sounded like she was going over her story again, so I listened carefully for inconsistencies. It never ceased to amaze me how the average person could give you the same information two or three times, and provide different details each time.
Of course, spellcasters do the same thing. But because our minds are trained to organize and retain details, it’s generally because we left something out on purpose.
“…And that’s where we are right now,” Mrs. Rein finished, gesturing to me. “Mage Kinnear was sent by her employer to try to track my daughter, but now that you’re looking into it -“
“Actually,” the older of the two patrolmen - whose rank badge marked him as a sergeant said, “if Mage Kinnear wouldn’t mind working with us, all of our Mages are busy on other cases. We could use her help finding Mina.”
I shook my head. “I wouldn’t mind at all.”
“Ah,” Mrs. Rein said, her face pinched in distaste. “I’m not sure I like that idea. I don’t approve of paying for services the police should be handling as part of their civic duties…”
“The York police department will be perfectly happy to pay Mage Kinnear’s retainer and fees to assist us,” the older patrolman said, the soul of conciliation.
“It all comes back around to my taxes in the end,” Mrs. Rein complained, “doesn’t it.”
The younger patrolman caught my eye for a moment and smiled faintly. I returned the little smile and nodded slightly to let him know I understood.
“Well, get on with it then,” Mrs. Rein said finally. “You have what you need, Mage Kinnear?”
I nodded. “Thank you very much, Mrs. Rein. I’ll do everything I can to find her.”
“See that you do.” She ushered us out without another word and all but slammed the door behind us.
We were all silent for a moment, and the two patrolmen looked as embarrassed by Mrs. Rein’s behavior as I felt.
<
“Well,” the older patrolman said, “I’m Sergeant Brian Chase. This is my partner Constable Paul Meyers.”
“Pleased to meet you, Mage Kinnear,” Meyers said with a smile. “I remember reading about the haunting you dealt with a couple of years ago at that old asylum in London.”
There’d been a lot of police involvement to get that cleaned up towards the end, and it had been in all the papers, so I wasn’t surprised he’d heard about it. “Call me Alys, please. This is Athena, and Artemis.”
We all shook hands, and Meyers even bent to shake Artemis’s paw when she jokingly offered it. I liked them already.
“You need a place to cast a tracking spell, yes?” Chase asked. “I’ve worked with Mages on the Force, and that’s usually what they do. Make a circle and cast the spell.”
I nodded. “That’s right. Mrs. Rein gave me a few of Mina’s hairs from her hairbrush…that should be plenty for me to get a fix on her location and lead us right to her.”
“Excellent,” Chase said. “There’s an empty lot several houses down, new construction. Will that work?”
“Perfectly. Lead the way.”
“Thank you for agreeing to work with us,” Meyers said as we walked. “Our department’s not as large as London’s…we only have a few fully certified police Mages, and their time is in high demand.”
“I can imagine,” I said. “I’m a little surprised you’re willing to take up my retainer and fees so freely, though.” I had, after all, effectively been banned from consulting for Scotland Yard until I completed their six-month Special Magical Response training program. There was no doubt that information had filtered down to police departments throughout the country by now.
“Like Meyers said, we’re short-handed,” Chase replied. “And we’re just looking for a runaway girl, not clearing out a nest of trolls from under a bridge or anything.”
I winced and felt my cheeks heat up. “You heard about that?”
“D.I. Donovan’s report about it made the Police Gazette in the ‘Humorous Calls’ column back in December,” Meyers said, giving me an amused look.
I was going to have to have a word with Ben about that. More specifically, about not telling me about it. I sighed. “I suppose it is pretty funny, in retrospect. I had to destroy a good coat, though. Troll goo.”
Chase winced. “You didn’t try to burn it, did you?”
“She did,” Athena confirmed.
“Is that bad?” Meyers asked. He must’ve been as new to his work as I was to mine.
“Very,” Chase, Athena and I all said together. Artemis made a disgusted gagging noise at the same time. Meyers chuckled.
“Here we are, then,” Chase said, gesturing to a vacant lot. The foundation of a new house had been poured, but nothing beyond that had been built yet. The yard was bare dirt, which would be fine for building the circle for a simple tracking spell.
I nodded. “This will do nicely. Let’s get to work.”
Tracking spells sound like a fairly simple thing, and in fact they’re frequently one of the first types of spell that any spellcaster learns while training. But not because they’re in any way simple; quite the opposite, in fact. They’re one of the first types of spell taught to young spellcasters because of how potentially complex they can be. Learning to successfully cast a tracking spell - even to do something as simple as locate your misplaced keys - actually takes quite a bit of effort.
Not in terms of magical energy. Most tracking spells take very little Anima to actually make work. The effort comes from successfully constructing a surprisingly subtle spell, which will go out into the world and locate something based on the often tenuous connections between the caster and their desired target. Because tracking spells are based on Sympathetic Magic, which is all about creating links between the caster and their target.
Finding misplaced keys is relatively easy. You imagine the keys in your mind - ideally, they’re your keys, so you know them very well indeed - then send your Anima out into the world to locate them. With something as simple as your own keys, a link already exists between you and them, so it’s usually pretty easy to find them.
Casting a tracking spell to find a person, especially one you’ve never met before, is considerably more complicated.
“Athena,” I said as I coiled the bit of hair we’d found on the girl’s hairbrush around a small piece of quartz crystal, “Can you set up a basic ritual circle for me? A circle in the dirt and my rune blocks will be plenty.”
“Consider it done,” she replied, unslinging our bottomless bag from her shoulder and rummaging in its outside pockets.
“Do you mind telling us what you’re doing?” Meyers asked.
“Not at all, Constable. What I’m doing is creating a channel for me to use to find the girl. Her hair has a strong sympathetic bond with her, and quartz crystal is an excellent amplifier. The end result,” I tied the quartz to a length of plain white string, “is a pendulum that should orient itself on her once the spell is cast.”
“The ritual circle,” Athena said as she finished tracing a circle in the dirt with a knife and began sorting through the small cubes that made up my collection of pre-made rune blocks, “will help focus and channel the initial energy of the spell, which should make it easier to cast.”
The two policemen looked at us like we were speaking a foreign language. Artemis made a sound suspiciously like a snicker.
I smiled. “I’m reminding this bit of hair which head it belonged on, and it’s going to show me where that head is.”
“Ah!” Meyers said, looking relieved.
“You really haven’t worked with police Mages much, have you,” I said with a smile.
“I have, but Meyers hasn’t,” Chase said.
Meyers smiled sheepishly. “You’re my first, ma’am.”
I thought about making a naughty joke there, but refrained. There’s a time and a place for such things, and it’s usually not when talking to the police.
<
Athena hid her smile by bending over one of the rune blocks.
<
Artemis bristled the fur of her tail and shuddered.
Athena snickered quietly.
“Anyway,” Chase added, “they never take the time to explain things to us. It makes a nice change of pace.”
“Do you gentlemen have a plan for finding her if she turns out to not be within walking distance?” I asked.
“We can have a car here within ten minutes,” Chase said. “Do you think that’s likely?”
“I think she’s not likely to be close by,” I answered, then considered the question for a moment. “Unless she’s just hiding from her mother.”
From the look Chase and Meyers gave one another, I suspected they’d spotted the same potential problems within the family I had. “Out of curiosity, have you guys dealt with this family before?”
“Twice,” Meyers said. “And got a lot of grief about not doing our jobs right from her both times.”
“What about the husband?”
Chase shrugged. “We’ve only spoken with him once. He seemed pretty detached from the whole situation.”
I sighed. “Which is worse, growing up with a parent who doesn’t care, or without one at all?” I’d grown up without a father, until Jonathan Tremane took me under his wing as his apprentice, and eventually filled that role.
Athena looked up from where she was placing a rune block and frowned at me slightly. The two patrolmen gave me weird looks. I waved them off. “Rhetorical question. Almost done there, sister?”
Athena nodded and rose, brushing dirt from her knees. “All set. Containment, enhancement, gathering, direction and guidance,” she said, pointing at each of the five blocks she’d used in turn.
“Excellent.” To Chase and Meyers, I said, “This should only take me a couple of minutes.”
Then I stepped into the center of the circle Athena had prepared, careful not to disrupt it or the placement of the rune blocks. I bent and touched the block which stood for containment.
Previously, I’d used cubes engraved with just Norse runes, since those were the ones I was most familiar with. Over the past year - with plenty of time on my hands during my recovery - I’d broadened my horizon. The term ‘rune blocks’ was no longer entirely accurate, but I hadn’t come up with a different name for them yet. In this case, the sides of the containment ‘rune’ were covered with miniature magic circles and other shapes from various magical systems, all of them designed to contain energy or entities.
In this particular case, to represent containment, Athena had chosen to have facing up one of my own design, a circle containing a triangle containing another circle. It was a combination of elements from the Lesser Key of Solomon and a protective design I’d found in the incredibly obscure and confusing Spells of Astaroth.
A good choice. It would work nicely. With an effort of will and a bit of Anima, I closed the circle, which immediately began to glow with soft green light. Then I began gathering my own Anima and some from the world around me.
Anima - also known as Ki, Mana, Spiritia, and a dozen other names - is the ultimate renewable energy source. Every magical tradition around the world uses it to power their spells and rituals, and modern science uses it to power almost all of the technological advances from the past century. It is limitless, constantly being renewed by the simple presence of living things on the planet, and incredibly versatile in its uses. It takes a lot of training to channel it properly - for a spellcaster - and it had taken decades for scientists to figure out a way to safely use it to create electricity for technological marvels.
For all that, it can be exhausting to channel, shape and use it. Like any muscle, it gets easier with practice and time.
“Do you mind telling us what she’s doing?” I heard Chase ask Athena quietly.
“Not at all,” Athena replied. We’d discussed the ups and downs of explaining my work to observers, and had decided that it wasn’t at all a bad thing to do. It would, among other things, keep them from interrupting…
“The first thing she did was close the circle,” Athena began, “which will make it easier for her to focus the Anima she’s gathering to cast the tracking spell. It’s like putting up a wind screen…it lets her work with the energy of the spell without risk of it being disrupted by other energies. Which is what she’s doing now…gathering Anima for the spell. It’s not a big spell, and the circle helps focus it, so it shouldn’t take long.”
Indeed, I was already done. With my right hand, I held out the hair-wrapped crystal on its string and let it fall, keeping the other end of the string wound around my middle finger. I lifted my cane in my left hand and channeled the Anima I’d gathered into it, then touched the snow leopard-shaped head of the cane to the crystal and poured the energy into it.
“She’s channeled the energy through her cane,” Athena was saying, “which is set up to work like a wizard’s staff for focusing and enhancing energy, and into the crystal. It lets her do more with a smaller amount of Anima. Next she’ll cast the actual tracking spell - they’re delicate, which is another reason to start it inside a circle - and we’ll see if she can use the girl’s hair to create a connection to her. Once that’s done, she can break the circle and we can follow the pendant to the girl.”
The two patrolmen made sounds of understanding.
I murmured a few words in Latin and concentrated on shaping the spell. In my mind, I saw the hair connected to the crystal, the hair connected to the girl, the crystal connected to the girl…these are the basics of sympathetic magic. Creating, finding, and using connections between things.
The crystal began to glow faintly blue, and through the string I felt it vibrating gently. It swayed back and forth a few times, then swung up and to my left at an angle, glowing more brightly…but not too brightly.
“Got her,” I said with satisfaction. Then the crystal swayed and dipped, its glow dimming slightly. I frowned at it.
“What does that mean?” Chase asked.
“It means she’s off in that direction, not too close but not too far either,” I said slowly, trying to work out why the connection was unstable and the glow flickering dimmer and brighter by turns. “It’s odd, though. I expected it to be steadier.”
“Why would it do that?” Meyers asked.
I shook my head, feeling a bit unsettled, then looked at them and put on a smile. “Let’s go find out, shall we?”