Later that night, the three of us sat around a cheap, scarred table in a remarkably seedy hotel a few blocks down from Times Square. It was the only one we could find on short notice that would take cash and didn’t check ID against the names of their guests. That was primarily mine and Sara’s idea, not Arnold’s. Credit cards and everything else could be traced, and I was still pretty sure that, in addition to Royce, my ex, and the holder of the focus, the cops were probably looking for me in connection with Veronica’s death.
So we’d gotten two rooms, though so far the three of us hadn’t been interested in separating. Especially with roaches the size of Godzilla skittering around the floors and walls. Ugh.
“Remind me again why we’re doing this?” I propped my feet on the edge of my chair and wrapped my arms around my legs so I wouldn’t chance a bug running across my foot.
Arnold looked as grossed out as I felt, watching with morbid fascination as the shadowed outline of a roach sedately marched across the TV screen, right across the news anchor’s face. “I thought it would be safer than waiting around for a vamp or a Were to find you. I’m starting to think we should take our chances somewhere else.”
Sara curled her lip, staring at the TV, too. “Yeah, Roachzilla over there is big enough to be a Werebug. Screw this. Why don’t I just ask Janine if we can crash at her place for the night? She might even be out of the country so, if we’re lucky, we won’t have to deal with her face to face.”
“Who’s Janine?” Arnold asked.
“Janine’s? Are you sure?” I’m pretty sure my face showed about as much distaste for that idea as Sara and Arnold’s did for the roach.
“Uh, guys? Who’s Janine?” Arnold asked again, ignored by Sara and me.
She shrugged, not looking overly pleased. “Got any better ideas? I personally don’t want to wake up with bugs in my hair or crawling around on me while I sleep.”
Oh God. “Call her.”
She did. I heard Janine’s high, panic-frantic voice from across the room, and rubbed my temples. Guess she was in town. The belt was adding its own muted background noise somewhere in the back of my skull, twittering laughter that mocked the tinny, high-pitched tones coming out of Sara’s cell phone. Deciding to drown them both out, I finally answered Arnold’s question, talking a little louder than was strictly necessary. “Janine is Sara’s younger sister. She’s a bit of a pill. Nice enough, but very flighty and scared of everything.”
“Oh. Great. She going to have a problem with me being a spark?”
I started, and he cracked a goofy smile. Guess he thought it was funny to call himself a spark the way some minorities thought it was funny to refer to themselves in derogatory terms. “Probably. Just don’t do anything flashy, and we may not have to take her to the ER with a heart attack.”
He chuckled and nodded. “I can do that much.”
“You know,” I said, “you don’t act anything like I thought a mage would. I haven’t even really seen you do anything, except light those candles and make the wall disappear. You just said a word and poof, it happened. No grand gestures, no bolts of lightning from the sky or flashes of light. Is all magic like that?”
“No, not really. The only reason it was like that is because those spells were set to certain key words. The actual preparation work beforehand is where you get the sparkly lights and cracks of thunder in the background.” He grinned and I stared at him, trying to figure out if he was being serious or just pulling my leg.
“Want to see something cool?”
“Uhm,” I said, not sure I did. The belt chose that moment to interject a snide You know you’re curious. I wished mightily that it would just shut up. “Okay, I’m curious,” I said.
He cupped his hands together, whispering a few words so quietly I couldn’t hear them over the sound of Sara and Janine in the background. When he opened his hands, a tiny black mouse poked its head out between his fingers and I jerked back in surprise and fright.
“Oh my God, that’s a mouse! Get it out of here!” I might’ve jumped up on top of the bed if I wasn’t afraid there would be roaches under the covers.
He seemed disappointed at my reaction, and cradled the mouse up to his chest, lightly stroking its head with the tip of one finger as he frowned at me. “Bob’s my familiar, he won’t hurt you.”
“Stop being a baby, Shia,” Sara said across the room, covering the mouthpiece of the phone with one hand.
Reluctantly, I settled down a little more in my chair, taking a closer look—but that’s it. No way was I going to touch a mouse. “His name is Bob? You named your mouse Bob?” I asked, hearing the touch of a frightened whine in my voice and hating it. I hated the sound of mocking laughter from the belt even more.
“I didn’t name him, he named himself. He’s a familiar, not a normal mouse,” Arnold explained, putting his hand down on the table so the mouse could scamper down and start twitching his whiskers at me a little too close for comfort.
Making sure my legs were tucked very close to my chest so no part of me was near enough to the table to touch it, I shot a look at Sara, who was listening to Janine jabbering and shrugging at me helplessly. “Um. What’s a familiar?”
“Kind of like an extra helping hand. Different types of animals do different things. Bob, like most rodents, is good at collecting information for me.” When he put his hand on the table, the mouse quickly ran over to it and leaned against it. His thumb absently ran along the slick black fur as he talked, and the mouse seemed happy enough to stay where it was, so I gradually started relaxing a little more. “Some magi like using birds to carry messages for them. It’s a little old-fashioned, especially considering most everyone has e-mail or a cell phone these days, so it’s mostly the backwoods Europeans still doing it. Some magi use cats, as they’re an excellent way to focus and channel energy between the world of the living and the dead. The Egyptians were particularly fond of them.”
“Why would anyone want to deal with the dead?” I asked him, not sure if I was actually curious or just trying to keep my attention on something other than the furball at his fingertips.
He pointed with his free hand in the general direction of my waist. “Things like that are made with the use of energy from where the dead linger. Different magi specialize in different forms of magic. That’s one of the benefits to working with a coven instead of going solo. When you have magi like me who specialize in information and security, it works well when you also have magi who specialize in defensive spellcasting, offensive spellcasting, with the occasional crafter to make artifacts like the belt to augment the intangible stuff the rest of us do. Even an illusionist has a place and purpose along with the rest of us. It just depends on what our clients want, or what the coven as a whole is striving to do. Our flexibility is part of what made The Circle’s services so in demand, and such a great place to work.”
“Yeah,” I said dryly. “Sounds like a dream come true. Where do I sign up?”
He chuckled, shaking his head. “Wow, I did sound like a walking, talking advertisement for a second there. Sorry.”
“Hey, so Janine says we can stay at her place,” Sara said as she flipped the phone shut, walking back over to resume a similar crouched posture as mine on her seat. Guess she was afraid of having Roachzilla crush her foot, too. “However, she doesn’t want to have to play hostess and said we’re on our own as far as food and entertainment. I don’t know about you guys, but that’s fine with me.”
Arnold and I nodded, rising to pick up our things. I watched in fascination as Arnold closed his hands over the mouse and it once again disappeared to parts unknown. He wasn’t wearing long sleeves, so there really was no other explanation than magic for why it wasn’t there when he moved his hands off the table. While it raised his creepy factor a few points, it was admittedly kind of cool to see him do some real magic.
When he saw me watching, he grinned and gave me one word in explanation. “Conjuration.”
Whatever that means.