Mangesh Kapoor showed up around 3:30, when the rush of Ambrosite augury seekers had dwindled to nothing. He was dressed casually for weather much warmer than this, in worn jeans and a T-shirt with no logo, and the faint lines across his forehead and at the corners of his eyes were more pronounced than usual. “I have been in India,” he said, answering the question I hadn’t asked. “It is a busy time, renewing wards during the rainy season.”
“I guess you could call this our rainy season, too.”
“But much colder. I admit I prefer India’s heat.” He inclined his head to me, as formal as ever. “I fear I do not have much time to spare.”
“Oh! Sorry.” I thought about using the break room, but it wasn’t likely anyone was going to come in, and anyway there wasn’t anything secret about what I intended to tell Mangesh. “The oracle gave me an augury about—I was talking to it, about wanting to do something more active to fight the Mercy, and it gave me this.” I handed him the book.
Mangesh examined the cover, front and back. “I thought the custodian was not allowed an augury on her behalf.”
“I can’t request an augury, sure, but the oracle can choose to give me one.”
He put the book down. “And you have interpreted it?”
“I haven’t studied it thoroughly yet, but the cover flap says it’s about psychic kids working together to defeat someone evil.”
“Psychic?” Mangesh raised his eyebrows. “I think I see what you have deduced.”
“It seems obvious, right? I think the oracle is saying we need to…I don’t know. That the sports might be important to fighting the Mercy, or the invaders…” I propped my chin in my hand and sighed. “It sounds stupid when I say it out loud.”
“Not stupid, just impractical,” Mangesh said. “Unless you have found a solution to our problem.”
“No.” I hooked the stool with my ankle and dragged it toward me so I could sit on its cold metal seat. “Is it really a problem? We’ve identified a bunch of people who are genetic sports like us, and we know of at least four who know they have magical talents—”
“We assume.”
“It’s an informed guess I feel confident about. Anyway—so what? Even the ones who know about magic have no idea about invaders, or the Mercy, and there’s no reason to tell them about any of that. My wanting to get to know them doesn’t feel like adequate grounds for giving away those kinds of secrets.”
Mangesh tapped the augury’s cover. “Unless this gives us a reason. If they are of value to the fight, they will need to know the truth. But this is premature. You should analyze the augury and confirm your suspicions. Then we will make a plan.”
“You’re right. I just…it’s hard to believe our small magics might matter, when the Wardens have all those magi who can do so much more. Unless it’s our immunity to being drained that matters.”
“Immunity?”
I realized I hadn’t mentioned my visit to the Gunther Node to Mangesh. “Oh! Darius Wallach told me that’s the actual mutation, being immune to invader attack, and seeing through illusions is a side effect.”
“He is certain that applies to all of us, and not just you?” Mangesh’s eyes narrowed.
“He was pretty certain. But maybe you should ask him for yourself.”
“I would prefer not to be an experimental animal,” Mangesh said with a grimace. “Being unable to have one’s magic drained…that is the province of a steel or wood magus.”
“Only we don’t need an aegis for that to happen.”
“It is miraculous indeed.” Mangesh checked his watch. “I must go. But, Helena—” He tapped the augury again. “I think your initial assessment is correct. Study the book, and I will consider how to bring at least those four who are aware magic exists into the secret of the Wardens. Then we can act when you are certain.”
“All right,” I said. “Thanks.”
When Mangesh was gone, I picked up Mind-Call and flipped it open randomly to the middle, but didn’t read the page revealed. I did feel fairly confident about my guess, but my reluctance to forge ahead was rooted in my feeling that I was looking for an excuse to do something I wanted to do anyway. The idea of getting to know people like me was compelling, if selfish, given that there really was no reason to bring them in on the secret of the Long War. But I didn’t like being so…unique, maybe, not a magus and not an ordinary Warden, but someone with a magical difference that mattered under only limited circumstances. It would be fun not to be the only one—all right, there was Mangesh, but he was gone most of the time and was too formal to be a close friend.
The bells over the door jingled, and I set the book down and sat upright. “Welcome to—oh, Malcolm!”
Malcolm smiled as I hopped down and went to put my arms around him. “My day is looking up,” he said after a long, sweet, breathless kiss. “I’ve been thinking of you ever since I left for work this morning.”
“I love it when you come into the store.” It hadn’t been all that long ago that we couldn’t have kissed like this in public, let alone be married, and I still felt a rush of pleasure whenever I saw him walk through the door. “I’m not even going to ask you why you’re here, because it’s probably for an augury, and that would require me to let go of you.”
He smiled. “I’m in no hurry, and there’s no one waiting on your time, so…”
His lips met mine, and I slid my arms up from his waist to around his neck, twirling the short hairs at the base of his neck around my fingers. I was the luckiest woman in the world, married to the most wonderful guy who was also built like an action hero—
Someone cleared their throat behind me, a deliberate sound that was the audial equivalent of an elbow to the ribs. I broke away from Malcolm’s embrace just enough to turn and see Judy there, smirking. “Don’t you two have a house to go to?”
I thought about saying something about wondering where she and Mike did their making out, decided that was pushing it, and said, “Yes, but I like seizing the moment.”
Malcolm released me and took a step back. “And much as I enjoy being seized, I do have business.” He withdrew a slip of paper from the inner pocket of his suit coat and handed it to me.
I unfolded it and read What weapons should we use against the Mercy? “That’s odd,” I said. “Every other augury request I’ve had about the Mercy today, the oracle answered in advance and for free.”
“That just means the oracle is still mysterious,” Judy said.
I shrugged and walked into the oracle—and into half a dozen bright blue lights like tiny stars. “You can’t mean all of these for Malcolm, can you?” I said, reaching up to retrieve the nearest one, titled Poisoned Blade. Malcolm’s name was inside the cover, along with No Charge. “Well, that’s generous, at any rate. Thanks.”
The second and third, however, were for Lucia, also at no charge. I added them to my stack and moved on. The next, to my surprise, was for Malcolm again—a slim paperback with a drawing of a bunch of guys in soldiers’ fatigues on the cover titled Stand Down. “That doesn’t sound good,” I said. “I wonder if it matters to you that I care what happens to Malcolm? Or are you impartial in your treatment of the people who ask for auguries? I just want him to be safe—though he’s not in a line of work where that’s likely.”
Another light winked on as I spoke, causing me to stop where I was. I realized my mouth was hanging open and shut it. “Did you just…answer my question?” I whispered.
The oracle’s attention shifted to me briefly, then away again. “Um…thank you, I think,” I said, and walked around the corner to take the new augury off the shelf. “Dark Moon Defender. I wish I could draw conclusions about your meaning as easily all the time as with that Mind-Call book. But…defender, defense, maybe protecting someone?” The name inside it wasn’t mine, but Malcolm’s, which surprised me a little; I’d thought the oracle was giving it to me.
I retrieved the last two auguries, one more for Malcolm titled More Guns, Less Crime, and just as I’d stopped expecting it, one for me. This one was titled A Gift of Magic, and the blurb on the back of the little paperback said it was about a girl who could see a short distance into the future. I stared off into the distance, thinking. “Some of the genetic sports are precognitive,” I said. “Is that what you mean?”
See. Learn. Watch, the oracle thought through me. I suppressed a shudder. At least this contact didn’t make my ears bleed.
“I’ll study it,” I said, waving the book in the general direction of the oracle’s heart. Two auguries to study meant twice as much work, but it also meant having two things to…well, you couldn’t call it triangulation, with just two, but I could compare the books and get a better idea of what they had in common.
Not alone, Helena, I thought, and then the oracle’s presence faded. I let out a sigh, shifted the weight of the books in the crook of my elbow, and found my way out of the oracle.
Malcolm’s eyebrows went up when he saw me and my hoard. “Those are all for me?” he asked.
“Some of them are for you. Some are for Lucia. And one is for me.” I spread the books out on the counter, putting A Gift of Magic atop Mind-Call and handing Malcolm his four auguries. He glanced at each, his face expressionless. “Do they help at all?”
“Auguries always help,” he said, still studying the topmost book, “and I am tempted to take this one—” He patted More Guns, Less Crime— “at face value. At least, I have never regretted taking more guns than I believed I needed into battle against invaders. Mike’s new illusion technique makes it easy to conceal their nature, even when we are fully in public.”
I happened to be looking at Judy as Malcolm said this, so I saw the slow ruddy flush spread across her cheeks, but she said, “That makes sense that he’d care about that, after Chicago.”
“You aren’t still holding that against him?” Malcolm said sharply.
Judy blushed harder. “Of course not,” she said irritably. “I’m just saying if it were me, I’d want not to make the same mistake twice.”
I agreed. Mike had been responsible for the deaths of his teammates when the illusions he’d been maintaining on their weapons collapsed, years ago, and while I didn’t think he was still beating himself up about it, I was sure it was something he was determined never to let happen again.
“He won’t,” Malcolm said flatly. “Helena, do I owe you anything for these?”
“They were all free. Will you be ready for dinner at seven?”
He smiled, and a little of the tension introduced by Judy’s mention of Mike fell away. “Always,” he said, and kissed me, the kind of kiss that had a world of promises in it. I kissed him back, not caring that Judy was watching. “I’ll see you tonight,” he finally said, nodded at Judy, and left the store.
Judy snorted. “Newlyweds,” she said.
“I think we’re sweet,” I protested.
“Whatever. Do you—”
The door swung open, setting the bells jingling. “Hi, Dave,” I said to Dave Henry. “And…Mr. Wallach! I didn’t expect to see you so soon.”
“I had something I wanted to try, and it made more sense to come to you,” Wallach said. He had a plain shoebox with Manolo Blahnik printed on the lid under one arm—not, thank heaven, a box pierced by air holes—and wore a shiny purple raincoat beaded with droplets. Dave was, as usual, bare-headed and wearing his familiar denim jacket with the fleece collar that made him look like the cowboy hero of a romance novel, though one with a military-short blond haircut.
“You look like you were expecting me,” Dave said. “Did Lucia call?”
I shook my head and extended the auguries to him. “Here you are. Tell Lucia the oracle anticipated her again.”
“That’s unsettling,” Dave said. He set his briefcase on the counter, opened it, and rearranged the stacks of money to make room for the books. “No charge?”
“No charge. This must be something big.”
Dave gave me a secretive little half-smile. “Lucia would use my head for a volleyball if I told you her plans, you know that.”
“I can’t help wondering.”
I eyed Wallach, who was ignoring the rest of us. He’d set the shoebox on the counter next to Dave’s briefcase and stood looking into it as if it contained the secrets of the universe. “Mr. Wallach, can I help you with something?”
“Nothing yet,” Wallach said, not raising his eyes from the box. “It needs time to acclimate.”
Despite the lack of air holes, that made me nervous. “Um…”
“Don’t worry, Mrs. Campbell, this is perfectly safe.” He reached into the box and prodded something that made a soft white light come on.
The bells jingled again. We were certainly popular today. But my cheerful greeting faded when I saw who my new customers were. “Detective Acosta, and Detective Green,” I said. “Augury, or business?” I hoped it wasn’t business. Acosta and Green had started out as my enemies, had become uncomfortable allies, and now they were, if not friends, at least not people I had to be afraid of. But that didn’t mean their presence in the store made me happy. There was always a chance it had to do with some illegal dealings rather than the perfectly innocent need for an augury.
“Augury,” Green said. I relaxed. An augury, I could handle. He handed me a slip of paper on which was written, in his familiar blocky printing, Where is the property stolen from the Hamell Bank?
“I haven’t heard about this one,” I said.
“They kept it quiet because they suspect it was an inside job,” Acosta said. He glanced over at Wallach and his glowing box, looked as if he wanted to ask something, then just as clearly decided not to get involved.
“Oh. Well…just a minute.”
It took longer than I’d expected to find the augury, which turned out to be a North American atlas crammed into one of the top shelves. By the time I returned, Wallach’s box was glowing purple rather than white, and all of them, even Judy, were staring at it, mesmerized. “What’s going on?” I asked.
“Nothing, yet,” Wallach said, as if glowing purple lights in shoeboxes happened to him all the time. “This is to see how your body reacts to processed sanguinis sapiens. It will tell me…oh, several things, like what the biological mechanism is that keeps you from being drained, and may allow me to predict what kind of magical side effect might result in any given individual.”
“Interesting.” I handed the augury to Acosta. “Five hundred.”
Acosta pulled out his wallet and counted twenties into my hand while Judy wrote up a receipt. “So you confirmed you’re a mutant?” Judy said. “When were you planning to tell me this?”
“It sort of slipped my mind when the oracle started acting strangely,” I said, “and I like ‘genetic sport’ better. I hope you have good luck with that,” I added to Acosta. I set the little stack of money on the counter. The purple glow had grown enough that its radiance reflected off my skin.
“Perfect,” Wallach said. He took my hand and raised it to the level of his face, then to my astonishment sniffed the back of my hand. “Peppermint. Exactly as anticipated.”
I retrieved my hand from his and sniffed the skin tentatively. Sure enough, I smelled peppermint, like those puffy fat candies stores sell at Christmastime in big buckets. “Is that—I’m glowing!” Even though my hand wasn’t close to the box anymore, the purple radiance persisted; it was even a little brighter and more obvious away from the box.
“Yes, of course,” Wallach said. He sounded impatient, like he’d explained it all already. “You’re reacting to the sanguinis sapiens—that just shows what I told you before, that you’re a genetic sport.”
“What the hell are you talking about?” Acosta growled. “Is this some kind of Warden joke?”
I turned to face him, and gasped. “Detective Acosta,” I said, and then words failed me. He was standing several steps away from the box, well out of range of its glow.
His hands and face radiated soft purple light.