Chapter 17

Sunday morning,I rolled out of bed at eight and headed to the bathroom to shower. I dried my hair, dressed quickly, and released Malcolm from my earring.

"What's the plan for today?" Malcolm trailed behind me down the stairs.

"Today we're going to work on your masking spell." I went into the kitchen, fired up the coffeepot, and made myself some toast with grape jelly for breakfast.

With my travel mug filled with the nectar of the gods, I led Malcolm to the door to my basement. "Come here. I need to let the basement wards know you're allowed to pass."

Once Malcolm's energy signature was integrated into the wards, I flipped on the light, opened the door, and led the way down the stairs.

Malcolm's form shimmered a bit as he passed through the barrier, and he grimaced. "Oof. That felt intense. So much power."

At the bottom of the steps, he paused to look around.

To the right was my library. It was modest, about half the size of Betty's. When I escaped my grandfather's cabal, I left with only my scars and the half-burned clothes on my back. My personal library at the cabal compound had been massive, and it was one of the hardest things to leave behind. I'd begun building a new library the moment I arrived in the city, but it was a slow process. Spelled bookcases, carved with protection runes, ran around the outside of the room, with a large wooden table in the middle.

To the left was my spell-crafting and summoning area. Another heavy table stood against the wall. Chalk, papers, crystals, little tubes of henna, and jewelry-making materials were scattered on top of it. Four large, heavily warded oak storage cabinets against the back wall contained a variety of implements and supplies, from crystals to athames. The floor had three concentric circles inlaid into the concrete.

Malcolm studied the cabinets. "What's with those two cabinets on the end there?"

"Don't touch those."

Malcolm snorted. "No shit. Those are serious black wards. What's in there?"

"It's where I keep all my blood magic materials."

"Oh, that explains the wards. Wouldn't want anybody finding that stuff."

I went to the library and started scanning through the books. "I'm looking for how to mask your magical energy so you being a mage ghost is less noticeable," I said, hunting for helpful volumes.

Malcolm drifted over next to me. "Seems like a masking spell might work, if we can make it so anyone who senses me thinks all I have is low-level earth or water magic."

"I don't know how to make a masking spell that will work on a noncorporeal being," I confessed.

"It's not that different than a spell for a living person. I think I can show you."

We worked for most of the day on Malcolm's masking spell, taking a few breaks to chat and rest while we refined the spellwork.

Storing him in the earring helped hide him, but it occurred to me it wasn't fair of me to expect him to stay in there all the time. When I'd first put him in the earring, it was supposed to be a temporary arrangement, but then I'd let this case—and other things—distract me from working on the spell that was needed to obscure his identity. I'd been stashing him in there for my convenience and letting him out when I needed help, which was inexcusably selfish. I felt guilty about it and told him so.

"No worries," Malcolm said with way more understanding than I thought I deserved. "Since the minute I showed up in your office, you've been working nonstop on this case, and you've been injured a couple of times. There really hasn't been any chance for you to work on this spell, but we're doing it now, and that's all that matters."

"Thanks for being so patient."

Malcolm shrugged. "Hey, I've got time. It's not like I'm getting any older here."

When I was sure he was joking, I laughed. I'd had a dream about the cabal the night before, and it was a grim reminder about what he'd gone through. He seemed pretty stable for somebody who had died that way. Unlike some ghosts who go completely bonkers in the Null and come back to earth as wraiths, poltergeists, or just plain deranged, he seemed to have made it back with his sanity intact. I wondered if that was due to his strong magical abilities.

"Hey, you in there?" Malcolm interrupted my musings.

I blinked at him. "Sorry. Got lost in thought for a minute. You were saying?"

"I was saying I think I might have figured it out." He showed me the spellwork he'd been working on. It was similar to the spell I'd used to mask my own magic and pass myself off as a low-level air mage while I was recovering from plastic surgery on my face. He'd modified it to work on a noncorporeal body and to make himself seem like he had a low amount of water magic only.

"Hmm." I pondered the spell. "It might work."

"Only one way to find out."

I reached out to take Malcolm's arm with my left hand and used my right to trace the spell in the air. In moments, his energy signature muted and transformed. I added the additional disguising spell, wove it through the masking spell, and invoked both. Then I released his arm.

I could immediately sense the difference in Malcolm's energy signature. While before I could sense strong earth and water magic, now I would have sworn he was only a low-level water mage.

"Did it work?" Malcolm asked.

I remembered he wouldn't be able to feel the difference, just as I couldn't feel my own masking spell that made me seem like a mid-level air and earth mage. "Yep. I think you're officially incognito now. I guess this means less earring time for you."

"No offense, but thank God. It's weird in there."

That made me laugh. "I do want you to come up with a spell that would let you jump into the earring if you needed to. We don't know yet how well the masking spell will hold up under scrutiny, and I'd like you to have a bolt-hole of some sort in case we're out and about and encounter a strong mage or a ward that disrupts the spell."

"Makes sense. Maybe I can work on that while you figure out how to set your basement wards so they don't zap me when I cross them." He looked at me sideways.

I rolled my eyes at him. "You are such a nag. I'll work on that tomorrow. I am seriously worn out after all this work we did today. How are you not tired?"

"Um, because I'm a ghost?"

"Whatever. I'm going upstairs." I led Malcolm back up the steps to the main floor, where he braved the sizzle of the wards once more. "Sorry about that."

"It's okay. It's not like it hurts. It just feels like I'm being pulled apart a little."

I winced. "I'm not sure how much less uncomfortable I can make it without compromising the wards, but I'll look into it."

It was almost nine p.m. I threw a load of clothes into the washer, then made myself a quick dinner. As I was eating, I realized the message light on my phone was blinking. I'd missed a call from Natalie while I was doing laundry and had a voice mail.

"Hey, Alice." Natalie sounded excited. "I think maybe I found something that might help us. It's a folder of letters from a couple of years ago from a man named John West. In one of the letters, he refers to something called the Kasten." She spelled it. "He thanks my grandmother for agreeing to keep it. I looked through the rest of the letters, but he never mentions it again. It sounds like he and my grandmother were both in something called a harnad?"

I went cold. A harnad was an alliance of blood mages who do magic in pairs or groups to increase their power. They were extremely dangerous and had the well-deserved reputation of being ruthless. Harnads had been known to even use lifeblood—the last blood drained from a dying person, which was extremely potent—for spells and the most deadly and powerful black wards and curses. To do so was a capital crime in all fifty states, but there had been at least a dozen documented cases of the ritual being performed in the past decade, and those were just the ones that had become public knowledge.

This had the potential to be very, very bad.

Natalie was still talking, oblivious to the bomb she'd just dropped. "Anyway, I'm putting these letters on the dining table for you to look at, and I'll keep digging around. Have a good night!" Beep.

Malcolm and I looked at each other. "Shit," he said.

I couldn't have said it better myself.

I curled up on the couch with my laptop while Malcolm alternated between reading over my shoulder and floating around the house. I did a search for Kasten, but nothing came up that looked remotely useful, other than it was the German word for box or chest. I tried combining it with different search terms like object of power and focus, which were my best guesses about what it might be, but still got zilch.

After I put my clothes in the dryer, I searched for harnad and Kasten together, but all I got were news articles about harnads and websites denouncing blood magic. More than one website claimed there were at least two active harnads in the city, though not much was known about them. A local reporter believed they were responsible for a string of missing prostitutes, but the police were unconvinced.

I had no problem finding information about Betty's friend, John West. He was a high-level fire mage who lived in the city. By all accounts, he was a respected businessman who still did frequent commercial work, despite being in his seventies. I found nothing about West being a blood mage, but that wasn't surprising since blood magic was illegal.

Contacting West would be a highly dangerous proposition, since I had no desire to get myself on the radar of a member of a harnad. I leaned my head back against the couch and closed my eyes.

"What are you going to do?" Malcolm wanted to know.

"Good freaking question," I told him without opening my eyes. I briefly outlined what I'd found out about John West, the rumored local harnads, and the missing prostitutes. "Things just keep getting worse. This started out being about missing books. Now we're talking about a harnad being involved."

"If this Kasten doohickey belonged to the harnad, maybe they figured out who the mystery mage is and got that person to go in and get it for them," Malcolm suggested.

I'd been thinking that myself. "You're pretty good at this private investigator thing. Maybe you should be the PI and I should be the wisecracking assistant."

"That would work, except your jokes suck," Malcolm quipped.

I threw a pillow at him—they call them throw pillows, after all—and it went through him and landed over by the fireplace. "Do you think it's worth asking that reporter about the local harnads?"

"At this point, I'm not sure. I still think our best bet is figuring out who the mystery mage is and following that lead to see where it takes us."

I threw my hands up in aggravation. "Except we're out of suspects! It has to be one of Betty's children or siblings, but we've eliminated them all. It makes no damn sense."

"Okay, well, that's the thing. It has to be one of them, so either someone is capable of disguising their magic, or there's another family member we don't know about."

I rubbed my forehead. "If one of them is hiding their magic and/or disguising their energy signature, we'll need a spell that can detect a masking spell like the one we just put on you."

"I can do that, no problem."

"Awesome. Then all I'll have to do is sneak up to each of them and see if the spell triggers." I wrinkled my nose.

"Actually, I can do that easier than you," Malcolm pointed out. "I'm invisible. You can just wait in the car."

I could get used to this ghost assistant thing. "That sounds like an excellent plan, if you can design a spell that won't be triggered by the masking spell that's on you."

Malcolm gave me an insulted look. "I'm pretty sure I can do that."

"Figuring out if there's another sibling that Natalie isn't aware of might take a bit more legwork. I'm wondering if she could call Betty's lawyer tomorrow and find out."

"That's a thought. I'll work on the detection spell tonight and have it for you in the morning."

I glanced at the clock and was surprised to see it was almost midnight. "Wow. I really lost track of time. I'd better hit the hay." I hesitated, realizing I'd never "let" Malcolm out of the earring overnight. "Do you…need anything?" I asked awkwardly.

"Like what, my blankie and a bedtime story?"

I made a face at him. "Jerk."

Malcolm grinned. "No, I'm good. I'll work on the spell and maybe experiment with going out and about."

"Until we have a spell that can jump you back to me or into the earring, I don't know how comfortable I am with you going out on your own."

He scowled. "I don't need a babysitter."

"That's not how I meant it. Your masking spell isn't foolproof. We can't have anyone finding out who and what you are."

Malcolm nailed me with a hard stare. "You mean the way you can't have anyone finding out who and what you are?"

We eyeballed one another like two gunfighters sizing each other up in the middle of a dusty street. If a tumbleweed blew through my living room, we'd be all set.

"You can't go to a hospital, you can't let anyone get ahold of your blood, you've got multiple layers of masking spells, you don't want to ask around for a mentor for Natalie because you don't want to attract the attention of the local cabals. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that you're hiding. I'm dead, not stupid."

I kept silent.

Malcolm literally buzzed with anger, his fury intensifying by the second. "You know pretty much my whole life story, but apparently you don't trust me enough to even tell me what you're hiding from."

"No, I don't, not yet, and that's going to have to be the way it is for now, because I don't trust anyone with that information. It's not just you," I added when Malcolm started to get huffy. "I haven't told anyone about my past, and that isn't likely to change anytime soon. I value you, and I want you to be safe, which is why I'd like you to have a bolt-hole spell to get you back to the earring in case of an emergency."

I got up and headed for the stairs. "So be pissy if you want. Go out if you want; I'm not going to stop you. The house wards will let you pass. Just be careful."

I was almost halfway up the stairs when Malcolm finally spoke. "I'll make the bolt-hole spell before I go out." He still sounded angry, but there wasn't anything I could do about that.

I paused. "Thanks. Have a good night."

"You too."

I went upstairs and shut my bedroom door. It took a long time for me to fall asleep.