The trembling in his hands was getting worse.
He’d thought that last one was good, but as he finished it, he couldn’t feel any magic flowing into it. That was how runes worked. When a runewright drew one, he served as a channel for the magic of the universe, infusing it through the pen and into the ink and the symbol it formed. Alex didn’t know what was wrong, but he could tell that last rune had no magic at all.
He forced himself not to think about it. If he thought about it, it would scare him to death.
“Is something wrong?” Leslie’s concerned voice came from behind him.
He turned to find her standing at the open door of his vault.
“I don’t know,” he said. He hadn’t told anyone about his hands, but the weight of the knowledge overwhelmed him and he explained it to her.
“I think…” he said, his mind going down the dark alley he desperately wanted to avoid. “I think I might be losing my magic.”
“Let me see,” she said, crossing the floor of the vault to his table.
Alex held out his hands and she took them in hers. Leslie’s hands were smooth and warm as they glided over his fingers and palm. She took him by the right wrist and held his hand up, noting the tremors in his fingers.
“It doesn’t look too bad,” she said.
“Yesterday I drew one good cleaning rune out of five,” he said. “Today I couldn’t manage a finding rune, and they’re ten times easier than a cleaning rune.”
“Have you told Iggy?” Leslie asked. “He is a doctor, you know.”
Alex shook his head, kneading his hands together.
“I think it’s because…” he began.
“Because of the life rune,” Leslie finished. She always could see right through him. “You think it’s another side effect of all that life energy you lost. Like your hair.”
He nodded again, his hands trembling now from the fear of having that thought said out loud.
“If that’s the case, I doubt Iggy will be able to do anything about it,” he said. “Doctor or not.”
Leslie fixed him with a hard stare.
“You won’t know until you ask,” she said. “It might be nothing.”
“Or it might be something,” Alex said. “What if I am losing my magic?”
“Is that even possible?” she asked.
“Think about it,” he said. “That would explain why my finding rune lost its connection to Leroy, and why the next one failed.”
“Or he could have been on a boat, like you said,” she reminded him. Leslie crossed her arms and fixed him with a hard stare. “You’re good at what you do, Alex. One of the best. I refuse to believe this is how you go out.”
Alex just shrugged.
“We both know I don’t have much life-force left,” he said. “What if this is it?”
Leslie’s jaw tightened. Alex could tell she was fighting the urge to be scared. She was too tough for that, and a moment later her hard look came back.
“Is your brain trembling?” she asked, crossing her arms. “Or is it just your hands?”
“What’s that supposed—”
“You’re still a detective,” she cut him off. “And a damn good one, so if you don’t use magic, get your sorry ass out there and find Leroy Cunningham the old-fashioned way.”
He looked her in the eyes and found her blue eyes hard, but earnest.
“You’re right,” he admitted at last, smiling at her. The tension in his chest began to ebb away, leaving just a tiny mote of doubt behind. “I’m done feeling sorry for myself. I’ll go home and have Iggy look at my hands and make me some new finding runes, then I’ll track down Leroy.”
“You might want to look at this before you make any plans,” Leslie said. She reached under her arm and pulled out a folded-up newspaper, depositing it on his drafting table.
Alex opened it, revealing the masthead of today’s issue of The Midnight Star. The large headline read, Ghost Killer Claims Fourth Victim. A subheading declared that the police were baffled and had called in a P.I. runewright to help solve the case. When Alex read that, he groaned.
“Oh, it gets better,” Leslie said with a sardonic smile. “Read the article.”
Alex did and he began to feel sick in the pit of his stomach with every word.
“This makes the police sound like bumbling incompetents.”
“Uh-huh,” Leslie said. “And it makes you sound like you’ve come in to show them how to do their jobs.” She pointed to one particular paragraph. “He calls you the Runewright Detective.”
Alex rubbed the bridge of his nose, pinching hard. This was not good.
“Detweiler is going to assume I talked to this rag,” Alex said. “He’s going to blow a gasket.”
Leslie picked up the paper and turned to leave.
“I suggest you get over there before someone shows him a copy,” she said.
Alex followed her out, shutting the door to his vault.
“Did you find where Anne Watson is staying?” he asked.
“Not yet,” Leslie said. “I’m going for lunch then I’ll get back on that.”
“If you find her, tell her I’ll call her when I can. I’m going by the Central Office to try to smooth things over with Detweiler, then I’m going home.”
The New York City Central Office of Police was a ten-story building in Manhattan’s inner ring a few blocks south and west of the park. It was early afternoon when Alex walked through the front doors and headed for the elevators in the back. All six of the detective divisions were on the fifth floor and he had no desire to take the stairs after the day he was having.
“You!” Detweiler’s voice assaulted him as soon as he exited the elevator on the fifth floor. Before Alex knew what was happening, the portly lieutenant was right in his face. “You’ve got a lot of nerve showing your face here!” he yelled.
“Me,” Alex yelled right back. He’d decided on the way over that the only chance he had to convince the lieutenant that he had nothing to do with the story was to be offended himself. “Somebody on your team has a mighty big mouth!” Alex yelled, shoving Leslie’s copy of the tabloid at Detweiler.
“My team?” he yelled back as detectives from all over the floor began to drift out into the hall to see what the commotion was about. “It was you who talked to this rag, why else would they make you sound like some master detective come to save us keystone cops?”
“You think that’s good for me?” Alex rejoined, lowering his voice a bit. “This hack makes me sound like some all-powerful sorcerer. What happens when clients come to see me expecting miracles I can’t deliver? Word will get around I don’t have the juice. It’ll ruin my reputation and my business.”
“Don’t try to make yourself out to be the victim,” Detweiler said. “No cop would say these things about a fellow cop, it has to be you.”
“Yeah?” Alex spat back. “And what about those details in the paper from yesterday? What about the stab wounds? Someone leaked that before I was even on the case.”
“That’s no big thing. That doctor you live with is chummy with the coroner. You could have learned that from him.”
“And then what?” Alex said, addressing the assembled crowd for the first time. “I got myself involved? How? Anyone think I put Callahan up to it? He brought me in, remember?”
Apparently Detweiler had forgotten that point because he opened his mouth to answer and abruptly shut it again. A murmur of agreement rumbled through the onlookers. Most of them wouldn’t have peed on Alex if he’d been on fire, but no one believed that Callahan could be bullied into anything.
Alex had guessed that if it came down to a choice between believing Detweiler or believing Callahan, the detectives would go with the latter. Everyone who knew the big Lieutenant knew he was a tough, honest, son-of-a-bitch. Not the kind of guy someone like Alex would be able to leverage.