Alex had gotten Danny in some trouble about a year back and had to appeal to Shiro for help getting Danny out of it. Apparently Alex’s work met with the man’s approval, because that card arrived in the mail a week or so after the fact. It was inside a folded sheet of paper with a single word written on it.
Impressive.
Alex had worried that the obvious invitation was some kind of set up, but in the year that passed, no further communication had been received. It was probably safe. Besides, the Lucky Dragon was swanky, located in the inner-ring. Jessica should be suitably impressed.
Making up his mind, Alex put the card in the back of his rune book, then walked back to his office and scooped up the list of needed runes. He had just turned back to the open vault door when his phone rang.
Hoping it was Danny with good news, he scooped it up eagerly.
“Hey, handsome,” Leslie’s voice greeted him. “I tracked down the reporter you wanted.”
“Just a second,” he said, pulling out his notebook and sitting down at the desk. “Go ahead.”
“William ‘Billy’ Tasker, born in Georgia and studied English at Duke University. He graduated in twenty-nine and got a job with the Miami Herald. He won an award for some exposé he wrote about corruption in the state senate. After that he got hired at the New York Times.”
“He what?” Alex was shocked. “How did that muckraker go from the Times to a rag like the Sun?”
“I couldn’t find out,” Leslie said. “I don’t know why he left the Times or when he got hired by The Midnight Sun. I did find a story by him in the Sun that’s two years old, so he’s been working for the tabloid at least that long.”
“Anything else?”
“Yeah, I talked with Hannah. She wants to know how you’re doing.”
“Tell her the police are on it now and we should know something in a day or two,” Alex said. “How is she holding up?”
“She’s great,” Leslie said, a trace of sarcasm in her voice. “But she’s eating me out of house and home. I hope you get paid soon.”
“Sorry,” Alex said. “She must be a nervous eater.”
“No,” Leslie said. “I suspect she’s in a family way. She threw up this morning. Blamed it on her nerves.”
Alex’s head dropped down on the desk. He’d been feeling the pressure to find Leroy, to get him home to his sweet wife, but that had mostly vanished now that he had the police involved. With the news that Hannah was likely pregnant, that weight dropped right back on his shoulders.
“Leroy will be thrilled,” he said, not bothering to hide the weariness in his voice.
“Just find him, kid,” Leslie said. “For both our sakes.”
“Are you coming back here?”
“No,” Leslie said. “It’s after five, I’m headed home.”
Alex thanked her and hung up.
Despite Hannah’s condition, there wasn’t anything Alex could do to speed Leroy’s recovery along, so he pushed them out of his thoughts.
Turning to his notes, he couldn’t believe that Billy Tasker, the tabloid hack, had worked for the Times. A while back he’d made a friend of their sports editor, a man named Jared Watson. Alex resolved to give him a call, then remembered Leslie saying it was after five. Sports reporters didn’t work late, so he’d have to call in the morning.
With a sigh, Alex put away his notebook and picked up the discarded rune list. Making his way back into his vault he assembled the pens, paper, and inks he would need and set to work. He started with the hardest ones first. It was an old habit he’d picked up from Father Harry.
Always do the hardest jobs first, he would say. Then when you get down to the end and you’re tired, the work is easy.
It had been a year since Father Harrison Clementine had died. As Alex thought of it, he was ashamed. In all that time, he hadn’t been back to the grave once since the funeral.
Resolving to go on Sunday made him feel better, and he set to work on a complicated cleaning rune that someone wanted for a painting that had been damaged by smoke. He kept going, rune after rune, until he found himself drawing a circle inside a square then adding a symbol that looked like a lighthouse being attacked by a steam shovel.
Once the minor restoration rune was done, he did it three more times, then crossed it off Leslie’s list, last of all, and set his pencil aside. His back ached and his hand was cramping, so he poured himself another drink, then got up to pace around a bit and get his blood flowing.
Since the vault had no windows, he had no idea how much time had passed, but a quick glance out into his darkened office told him it must have been a few hours. He checked his watch and found it was seven-thirty.
“Iggy’s going to be mad that I’m late,” he grumbled, heading back to the drafting table. He picked up the stack of runes he’d drawn and carried them out of the vault, shutting off the light and locking the door after him.
Leslie had their mostly-empty cashbox in her desk drawer and Alex locked the runes in there, leaving a note on the desk telling her where to find them. In the morning she’d call the people who ordered them and, hopefully, get paid.
He had just put on his hat when the phone in his office rang. A wave of weariness flooded him, but the thought that it might be Danny with good news impelled him back into his office.
“Lockerby,” he said, picking it up.
“Alex,” Iggy said.
“I know I’m late,” Alex said with a smile. He was surprisingly glad to hear the old man’s voice. “I had a few things to finish up here. I’m just on my way home.”
“Stay there,” Iggy said. “There are cops here looking for you.”
Alex felt a surge of adrenaline burn away his exhaustion. Had the Mayor or Chief Montgomery changed their minds and loosed Detweiler on him?
“I’m sending them over to you now,” Iggy went on before Alex could ask why cops wanted him.
Iggy wouldn’t tell the cops where he was if they intended to lock them up, that much was sure.
“What’s going on?” he asked.
“Get your kit together,” Iggy said, his voice heavy and serious. “The ghost has killed again.”
23
The Seal
It was pouring down rain when the police cruiser that picked up Alex pulled up in front of an Inner-Ring address. The Wentworth Building was a luxury high-rise, strictly upper crust. Alex remembered seeing the building listed as the address for one of the members of North Shore.
“The Lieutenant’s waiting for you inside,” the officer who picked up Alex said. He wore a sadistic grin indicating that his pulling up on the far side of the street in the pouring rain was no accident.
“Thanks,” Alex said. He pulled out his rune book and tore out a barrier rune, licking it and sticking it to the brim of his hat.
“What’s that?” the driver’s partner asked.
Alex didn’t answer, just lit the paper with a match.
“Hey,” the driver protested as the flash paper burned away, filling the interior with light and smoke.
“Thanks, fellas,” Alex said as the air around him distorted for a moment. The feel of the rune taking effect was so subtle that he wouldn’t have noticed it if he hadn’t been paying attention. He hadn’t realized it before, but he’d grown so used to the sensation of magic that he’d begun to tune it out. With the week he’d been having, he resolved to savor every bit of magic he could.
As the cops continued to protest, Alex picked up his kit and stepped out of the car into the pouring rain. The world around him seemed to shimmer as the barrier rune repelled the rain, sending it spattering away from him. It was only a dozen yards across the street and he’d certainly been wet before, but he didn’t want to show up at a crime scene looking like a drowned rat.