Ghost of a Chance

Alex reached inside his folded jacket and pulled out the little flask Jessica had given him days earlier.

“So is this going to work now that Dr. Kellin adjusted it?”

“Yes,” Jessica said, moving back to him and examining the needle mark on his arm. The bleeding had indeed stopped so she pulled a Band Aid from the pocket of her apron and stuck it over the wound. When she was done, she leaned down and kissed it.

Alex could feel the silky touch of her lips even after she’d raised her head back up.

“There you go,” she said, looking into his eyes. “All better.”

That urge to kiss her was back and Alex wondered if he should bother to fight it. It turned out not to matter since his second of hesitation was enough for Jessica to step back and move away toward another workbench.

Alex rolled his sleeve back down and buttoned it, then slipped on his jacket. He had just resolved to go kiss her anyway, despite the moment having passed, when one of the alarm clocks on a workbench in the back began ringing. The sound echoed off the stone floor, filing the space with its cacophony.

He looked at Jessica and for the briefest moment; she looked annoyed. Her sardonic mask came back a moment later and she turned to him.

“You’d better go,” she said. “This will take a while.”

Alex really hated that alarm clock.

“Saturday then?” he verified.

“Seven sharp,” she said, sauntering toward the back of the lab, her hips swaying. “Don’t be late.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it,” Alex said, picking up his hat.

18

The Rune Book

Alex opened his battered pocketwatch and the runes inside flared to life. He couldn’t see the magic, of course, but he felt the faint tingling sensation of their power as they activated. It was comforting. He’d spent most of the week wondering if his magic was waning, if the sacrifice he’d made to save the city was stealing his very identity.

He knew what Iggy would say, what he had said, that magic was a part of him, that it didn’t fade with age. Still, people went deaf and blind with age, wasn’t magic just another sense?

He was a good detective, of course, but the world already had good detectives. It was his magic, the things he could do and see that others couldn’t, that set him apart. He’d never have found Danny’s missing trucks without it. Would anyone need another detective if he lost what made him unique?

The feel of the runes in his watch was like a musical chord, ringing in his mind. He smiled as he detected a slight sourness to the sound, as if one of the notes was not quite on pitch. Experience told him that one of the runes etched into the watch’s back cover was beginning to fade. He’d have to redo it soon if he wanted to continue being able to open his front door.

Taking hold of the handle, he turned it, smiling at the memory of Jessica’s poison-snared door handle. Iggy’s runes on the front door and entryway were a far better and less deadly deterrent. No one without the proper rune combination could enter, and only a runewright could activate the runes in Alex’s watch. Only once the runes were active would the constructs on the brownstone release the door.

Alex turned the handle and pushed. Then the smile ran away from his face.

The door didn’t move.

He checked the runes, certain that they were working, and tried again with the same result.

He felt his heartbeat spike. Normally he’d have been sure that the slight sour note of the weakening rune wouldn’t affect the properties of the pocketwatch, but what if he was fooling himself?

What if he’d already lost enough of his ability that he missed the difference between a weakening rune and a defective one?

He closed his eyes and willed his heartbeat back down. One thing he knew from being a detective was not to let a first impression dictate the direction of a case.

Sufficiently calm, he reached up and pulled the chain that rang the door bell. He noticed that his hands were trembling and quickly took a shot from the flask, hoping that was the reason.

A long minute passed and he was about to ring again, when he heard the inner door to the vestibule open. Iggy’s silhouette, dressed in his red smoking jacket, appeared blurry through the frosted surface of the door’s stained glass window. A moment later, Alex heard the thunk of the door bolt being drawn back and the door opened.

“What’s the matter?” Iggy said, taking in Alex’s appearance with a single glance. Before Alex could answer, his concerned look turned to one of embarrassment.

“I’m sorry, lad,” he said, reaching out to take Alex by the arm and pull him inside. “I was looking through the… the Textbook, so I set the deadbolt.”

Alex had to hold his hands together to keep them from shaking in pure relief. The deadbolt was an extra security measure that they only used when Iggy took the Archimedean Monograph down from its place on the bookshelf. When it was locked, an extra construct of powerful protection runes activated. To hear Iggy describe it, with these runes in place, the brownstone could survive a bomb.