The Courtship of Julian St. Albans (Consulting Magic Book 1) Read online

  Alex didn't dignify that with a reply. "The crime scene techs will have muddied it all up by now," he complained instead, trying to chase that elusive something he'd felt lingering in all the rooms. It had been like a radio turned nearly all the way down, so that all he could hear was a tiny tickle of sound, not even a suggestion of a voice, really, just enough to make him strain harder to make it out.

  He paused for a moment, trying to recall the texture of it, harmony or dissonance or something else, but he lost it entirely when Smedley came barging into the room. "Good job, you two, they're looking into who might have had access to the family amulets. You led us right to the evidence we needed."

  "It'll only lead to more questions," predicted Alex, not bothering to look up from where he was rifling through the bags of evidence on Lapointe's desk. She rarely took much with her, but she was usually good for taking the things he wanted most to see again. "Where was this from?" he asked, looking at another worn bit of paper, this one a fine cream-coloured card, though creased and much-fingered.

  "Mandeville's nightstand," said Lapointe.

  "Why do you have evidence in here from my crime scene?" asked Smedley, drawing himself up with a sniff.

  Lapointe looked amused, which didn't seem to help his attitude any. "Benedict always keeps a few things, properly logged of course, when there's an ongoing investigation. He has insights."

  "Insights," said Smedley dubiously.

  Alex chuckled. "Yes, those things one gets when one applies one's intellect and observational skills to a problem," he said. "Insights."

  "I suppose you wouldn't know about that," said Lapointe. "Regardless, you'll find everything here's been properly catalogued and photographed, and Benedict is perfectly capable of handling evidence." She didn't add in the, 'these days,' but Alex felt it was implied, and he smirked.

  Smedley scowled. "Insights or not, those had better not pull a vanishing act," he said, stalking out.

  "Stroppy, isn't he?" said Alex idly, trying to make out the faded writing on the note card. "Perhaps he needs to be put down for a nap."

  Lapointe laughed, as she was meant to, and then made a point of putting all the evidence back in the box. "Going to sign that one out?"

  Alex sighed. "I want to have it out of the plastic, but I know they'll only want to fingerprint it first, and that always spoils it."

  "The subtleties of magical auras or whatever it is you do are lost on us poor mundanes," she said. "Smedley'll never let you get away with your usual shenanigans, either."

  "Humbug," said Alex, tossing her the card. "See if one of your experts can figure out what it says, then, and I'll try not to sulk."

  "You always sulk," she retorted, but she put the note on top of the pile.

  ~ ~ ~

  When Alex got home, he was surprised to find Victor sitting on his couch, enjoying a cup of tea. The maids had obviously been in as well, since the couch was unearthed and all the books restored to their places on the shelf, a service he paid a great deal extra for and found worth every penny. Victor's fine, fashionable clothing looked out of place in Alex's eccentrically shabby flat, but Alex had always felt it was silly to spend extra on having something look nice so you could put your arse on it.

  Well, except for his dates, anyway.

  "What brings you here?' asked Alex, not even bothering to ask how he'd gotten inside the locked flat. Their family were above such things, especially with each other. He simply hung up his jacket and toed off his shoes, leaving them by the door and walked over in stocking feet.

  Victor took another sip and made a face. "I don't know why you don't buy a better brand, I know you get paid well enough."

  "You're just annoyed that I haven't come running back to the family fold, destitute and ready to be married off," retorted Alex, pouring himself a cup from the still-steaming pot of tea. Victor had brought out the whole service on a tray, so Alex availed himself of the milk and sugar as well.

  "There is that, yes," said Victor dryly, "but that's not why I'm here." His gaze took in the whole of Alex's flat, small, yes, and cluttered with books and oddments, but it had everything Alex needed, which was something his family had never understood. One thing among many, really.

  "Why are you here?" asked Alex again, taking a seat and supposing he ought to be grateful that his brother left him his favourite chair, a worn leather wingback whose seat had learned the contours of his body.

  "I'm here because the family has been invited to participate in the St. Albans Courtship," said Victor.

  Alex snorted, then took a sip of his own tea, which he privately felt was just as good as the stuff Victor drank at home. "Well, Henry's still single, last I heard, so it's nothing to do with me."

  "You were over there today," Victor pointed out. "The invitation didn't come until afterward."

  "And here I thought I'd scared the boy half to death," said Alex with a chuckle. "Well, Henry can fill in for the family, just the same."

  "He's on a trip to the continent," said Victor. He placed the heavy, cream-coloured envelope on the tea tray. "Do consider stepping up."

  Alex didn't even dignify that with a response. "So how are the twins?" he asked, tacitly declaring the subject of the Courtship closed.

  "Flora's finally with child," said Victor, looking quite pleased. "Fauna's been training her boys to ride the family dog until they're old enough for ponies."

  Alex laughed. "She always did have more spunk than her sister. Will Flora's also be twins?" he asked, curious. It ran in their family; his father had been a twin.

  "It doesn't seem like it." Victor sipped his tea, and Alex could practically see him discarding possible next statements before he said, "Genevieve's been doing wonders with our girls, and of course we're trying for a boy."

  "Must carry on the family name, since I won't be doing it," agreed Alex affably. Once business had been shoved under the teapot, as it were, he often found he enjoyed his brother's company. At the very least, he wasn't constantly having to explain himself.

  Victor may not understand why Alex chose to leave the family fold, but they still shared the language of brothers.

  ~ ~ ~

  "It's a love note," said Lapointe, voice tinny over the phone. She exhaled strongly, the sound making static on the line.

  "I thought you quit smoking," said Alex disapprovingly.

  She laughed. "I should've known you'd figure it out. I'm out of those quit-spells so I bummed one off Langley to keep from strangling Smedley."

  "You know I'd make you a personal one," said Alex, nose wrinkling. He didn't like the smell of cigarettes, the way they lingered on one's person and breath, adding a foul miasma that muddled a person's natural magics. "I've offered before."

  "And I've told you I can't afford such a luxury on an agent's salary, so it might come up as bribery," she retorted.

  Alex found the familiar exchange comforting, some small bit of social interaction he'd finally got right and could repeat as needed. "Is it from Julian?" asked Alex.

  "What, the cigarette?" she laughed. "No, no, I'm joking. The love note is, it seems like it's perhaps the first thing he ever gave to Mandeville. It's short, very tentative and a bit juvenile, really, but rather sweet."

  "Makes sense," said Alex, tapping his lower lip thoughtfully. "So it was the consort who first approached his future husband."

  "Bold," said Lapointe. "Anyway, Smedley's dismissed it as unimportant, so you can fondle it all you like. I told Armistead to be extra careful."

  "Armistead always is," said Alex, putting just enough innuendo into it that when he hung up, she was laughing.

  ~ ~ ~

  Alex acquired the love note from the lab, along with a printout of its reconstructed contents that showed the ghostly handwriting in much sharper detail.

  Dear Cecil,

  I know it's terribly forward of me, but after we met at the races last week, I had to write to you. I just can't get you out of my head. You were so handsome, and kind to m
y mother when she tripped, and yet it felt like the smile you gave her was really just for me.

  Have you thought of me, too?

  Yours,

  Julian St. Albans

  "Falling in love as though it was a song on mental repeat," Alex muttered to himself distastefully. "And yet, they spent many happy years together before the endgame was set in motion, so there must be something to it."

  There was no one in his flat as he spread out the note -- now freed from its plastic bag -- along with the enhanced copy. He had one of his smallest tuning forks, and he pinched and released the tines to produce a high, clear tone, much louder than the way he'd used them in the St. Albans home. Then he took another, larger one and pinched it as well, the two notes forming the rudiments of a chord. He created a third bit of harmony by humming a note on his own, and closed his eyes, using just his magical senses to explore the bit of card in front of him.

  Laced all through those desperate lines, Alex could feel that faint echoing of the same spell that had overlaid Mandeville's rooms and, Alex suspected, Mandeville himself.

  It wasn't until the notes had died out completely that it occurred to him to check the handwriting against the invitation that Victor had so thoughtfully left him.

  It was hard to tell at first -- the calligraphy on the invitation was very fine, and the note itself incredibly deteriorated -- but after an hour of concentration Alex was able to pick out enough points of similarity to be fairly certain they both originated from the same hand. That would bear out tradition, where the consort himself would be the one to take care of all the correspondence, from the initial invitations and acceptances all the way up to the very end.

  With the fingers of each hand resting on Julian's formal and informal words of invitation, Alex could almost imagine a man who might kill for a chance at that end.

  ~ ~ ~

  "Cecil Mandeville was from a very respectable family, though fallen on less than financially secure times," said Alex, pacing his own rooms. He'd grown used to talking to himself as his way of thinking things through; somehow making the sounds was what made his brain work, just as sound was what made his magic work.

  He paused, then let the thought drop and went instead into his workroom, as neat as the rest of his house was messy.

  There he took the hairs he'd stolen from Lapointe when she wasn't looking, and added them to the dish at the very end of a neat row of bottles, boxes, and other oddments he'd laid out on his work table. She might not want him to make her the expensive quit spell, but he did his best thinking while he was working, and he didn't have anything else ready to go. He could always argue that since he no longer created such things on request, it had no actual price tag attached.

  He did an inventory of the ingredients in front of him, and then set up the crucible where they'd be combined.

  First thing in was the pure silver, already measured. He was using fresh metal rather than recycled, and the little pellets were nearly white with no copper to deepen the colour.

  He then picked up the next three objects in quick succession and struck them, fitting a vibrating tuning fork into holders at each corner of the crucible's triangular metal stand. Different magicians would use incense, candles, phials of fluid or any number of other things -- he'd even met one man who used various colours of laser pointers -- but Alex had always resonated with sound, hearing rather than seeing or sensing the magic.

  That done, he lit the burner beneath, adjusting it so that the ingredients would all be combined with the proper timing, watching as heat shimmer made the silver pellets seem to shift and move. Then he double checked to be sure the mould would hold up -- he'd chosen a very simple design for her amulet, a smooth swirl of metal to represent both the smoke she was giving up, and the pure air she was giving herself in exchange.

  Or would, if he could get her to use the damned thing.

  Alex put that out of his mind and turned back to the row of objects, six in all now.

  The first thing he added was a puff of smoke captured on a whim one day when she'd been sucking on the foul things at every possible opportunity. He used a little hint of his own power to send it curling down around the silver pellets rather than floating up to pollute the air of his little sanctuary, humming softly to himself to keep it there until the spelled crucible allowed it to mix with the melting metal.

  The second ingredient was a tiny piece of dry ice, added with tongs, that hissed and steamed and mixed with the smoke in eerie, ghostly tendrils. Alex gave himself exactly thirteen seconds to watch the mesmerising patterns before he moved back to the line. He pushed each container back as he emptied it, forming a second line a few inches back from the first, and the miniature cooler that had held the dry ice went neatly next to the now-empty glass globe.

  Next was a tiny phial of the purest water he could acquire, filched from the crime lab's supply. It, too, bubbled and steamed when he poured it into the now-molten puddle, but instead of completely boiling away, it mixed with the slowly swirling liquid. Darker and lighter streaks now showed in the metal where it had taken in the properties of the other ingredients, and once again Alex allowed himself time to watch the patterns before moving on.

  A sealed plastic box contained a new green leaf, from a white lily grown in a hothouse with air filtered of any pollutants. It added a soft green swirl to the mix, melting rather than burning up in the shimmering heat from the crucible.

  The fifth was another bowl of metal pellets, exactly seven copper bits to add strength to the piece, and to the recipient's resolve. He dropped them in one at a time and the swirling sped up just a little with each addition until the metal had stirred itself back to a single colour, taking in everything he'd offered it and giving back the pure shine of silver.

  He double checked the timing, then took the box and dropped in three hairs, root included, all together. The tuning forks, which had been slowing dying out, each emitted a pure tone as if struck, then went silent.

  He quickly put out the flame, and used tongs to remove now-hot tuning forks to a nearby cooling rack, then poured the molten silver into the mould. He used another, more focused hum of magic to force a bubble of clean air into the very middle, shaping it so the silver would come out in one perfect, hollow piece, ready to be polished and worn as soon as it cooled.

  When he looked up at the clock, over an hour had passed, and he felt that itch in the back of his brain that told him an insight was brewing.

  He cleaned up the rest of his equipment while he waited for the silver to cool naturally, testing the tuning forks for warping and putting everything away in its proper place. By the time he was done, the completed quit-spell amulet was cool enough to remove from the mould, and he admired the shine of it in the palm of his fireproof glove.

  Perfect.

  He left it to cool completely in a steel bowl and went to his library of magical tomes, most of them perfectly normal books published on a press but a few priceless handwritten diaries of long-dead magicians. He closed his eyes and passed his hand over the spines, feeling for something that would resonate with the feeling he'd been chasing since yesterday in Mandeville's rooms.

  His hand came to rest on one of his rarest, a bloody huge book bound in a kind of leather it was probably best not to think about. The pages were made of real parchment, only preserved through the thoughtful magic of its originator, who unfortunately had wanted to make sure his ideas lived beyond him.

  "This is not perfect," said Alex, looking down at the grimoire of one of the must subtle, evil mages in history. "Not perfect at all."

  ~ ~ ~

  Alex had the amulet in one pocket and a ream of disturbing notes in the other, and he determinedly whistled a cheerful tune as he made his way through the busy halls of the Department of Magical Investigation. Lapointe wasn't in her office, but over by the coffee machine, crowded into the office's tiny kitchen with several colleagues and at least one superior.

  "I've got something for you, and since yo
u supplied at least two of the ingredients, it's not a bribe," said Alex cheerfully, tossing the smooth silver bauble to Lapointe with a wicked grin.

  She raised one eyebrow, but Supervisory Agent Bristol, her immediate boss, just looked amused. "Benedict's right, if you contribute materials for personal magical artefacts it's officially not considered a bribe, especially if they help on the job."

  She laughed. "It's a quit-smoking charm, not that much of a lifesaver," she said wryly, but she looked at it with renewed interest. "Why's it so light?"

  "There's air inside," said the annoyingly handsome man next to her, an Agent MacLean. He pulled a similar silver charm out of his shirt, the design like a puffy cloud. "It's like a breath of fresh air, wherever you go, right?" His accent was delightfully lilting, and Alex had long fantasised about what it might be like to hear him say much naughtier things.

  "Yes, yes," said Alex, annoyed as always that such a lovely specimen could be so very straight. And that Lapointe was oblivious to his puppyish attempts to get her attention, so Alex couldn't even enjoy him vicariously through her. "Anyway, I think I have a lead on that," he made a handwavey motion, "that thing I couldn't place."

  "Is this about the St. Albans case?" asked Bristol. "Smedley's been very smug about the last lead you brought him, since it was technically his idea to bring you in."

  "It's a dead end," said Alex dismissively. "A last desperate move when the long-term plans didn't work out."

  "What plans?" asked Bristol, in the same breath that Lapointe said, "Whose plans?"

  Alex grinned, smugly delighted to finally be on the hunt for something really interesting. "Those are both excellent questions," he said, giving Lapointe's arm a tug. "Come on, let's get some proper coffee and leave these good men to their work."

  Alex nearly laughed at the look of disappointment on MacLean's face when Lapointe dumped out the last of her cup and gave it a halfhearted rinse. "You're buying," she said.

  "Technically the department's buying, since I bill by the hour," said Alex, unable to hold in his smugness at that. Since he'd spent the time while working on Murielle's amulet pondering the case as well, he'd bill for that, and then in a way the department would pay for the amulet after all. Speaking of which, "Aren't you going to wear it?" he asked, nodding to where she still had it loosely clutched in her left hand.