“He’s handy to have around,” I said to Kona.
“He is.”
“I think I need to see the plane.”
I should have known that it would be crawling with mechanics. We walked around the exterior and found two guys working on the left wing. They had the flaps propped up and were examining the hydraulics inside.
“Can I come up and take a look?” I called to them.
They paused in what they were doing to stare down at me.
“You know anything about planes?” one of them asked.
“A little bit.” I lied.
They shared a glance and one of them shrugged. “Sure, come on up.”
I climbed the ladder and stepped onto the wing, taking care to avoid the spots marked “no step.” I knew that much, at least.
I peered down into the guts of the wing, amazed that these guys could make sense of the wires and mechanisms. I certainly couldn’t. But I wasn’t trying to; I was searching for the glow of magic, and to my disappointment, I saw none.
I examined the flaps as well; nothing on them either.
“These are the flaps that weren’t working before?” I asked.
Another glance passed between the men. “These are the flaps,” one of them said, pointing to several different panels. He pointed to a few other surfaces. “These are the spoilers and the ailerons. You want me to show you the tabs and slats, too?” So much for convincing them that I knew anything about planes.
“No, that’s all right.”
“To answer your question, yeah, these are the ones that aren’t working.”
“Except there’s nothing wrong with them,” his friend chimed in. “Least nothing I can see.”
“We could probably figure out the problem if we were in the hangar,” the first guy said, “but the police wanted the bird to stay right here.”
I nodded, squinting against the glare coming off the wing. It was possible that in this light I simply couldn’t see whatever magic was there. “But so far you’ve found no problems.”
“Nope. The crew reported a cockpit warning about the flaps, and you don’t mess around with that. And when they tried to test the hydraulics before taxiing to the runway, nothing happened. You sure as shit don’t mess with that. Now though . . .” He shook his head. “Now everything seems okay.”
“Gremlins,” the second guy said, flashing a toothy grin.
The first one nodded. “Yeah, gremlins. That’s the best I’ve got.”
“All right, guys,” I said, climbing back down off the wing. “Thanks.” Once on the ground again, I asked Kona if she could get me inside the cockpit to see the console.
“I don’t know, Justis. The federal boys weren’t exactly eager to give us access to Howell’s body. But they were downright possessive when it came to the plane. At one point I thought they were going to pull down their zippers and start marking territory. You know what I mean?”
“So you don’t think you can convince them to let me take a quick look?”
“I’m not sure I can get myself inside, much less you. This is the FBI we’re talking about. The only people they like less than local cops are local PIs. But let’s give it a try. The worst they can do is say no.”
We walked around to the side of the plane, where the boarding stairs had been rolled up to the cabin door. There was no one guarding the stairway, so Kona and I climbed them, both of us trying to act like we weren’t doing anything wrong.
Before we reached the top of the stairs, though, we heard voices coming from inside.
“This isn’t going to work,” Kona whispered.
“I’m going to try something. Don’t freak out, all right?”
“This isn’t the time for you to try something.”
“It’s the perfect time. Stay calm.”
I scanned the apron; aside from Kevin, who was trying to pretend he didn’t know us, there was no one nearby. Convinced that the coast was relatively clear, I mumbled another camouflage spell. Seven elements again: the FBI guys, me, the interior of the plane, the dim light of the cabin, the bright daylight, the boarding stairs, and the FBI guys again. I hadn’t seen the interior of this plane, but I could make out the color of the carpeting from where we stood on the stairs, and I had been in plenty of passenger jets over the years; they all looked pretty much the same.
As with the spell I’d cast the night before, I repeated the elements to myself six times. On the seventh, I released the spell.
“Justis, what are you doing?”
“Can you still see me?”
She eyed me like I was nuts. “Uhhh, yeah. Why?”
“Because if I did the spell right, the guys on the plane won’t be able to.”
“Did I lose track of the days? Is tonight the full moon?”
“I’m not hallucinating. I cast what’s called a camouflage spell. Weremystes can’t make themselves invisible, at least I can’t. But with this magic, I can hide myself from specific people. Those guys in there shouldn’t be able to see me. Trust me on this.” I felt like crossing my fingers, or knocking on wood. Because really, I wouldn’t know for certain that the spell had worked until I entered the plane. But I was operating under the assumption that it had.
“So what do you want me to do?”
“Talk to them, distract them. I can’t be seen, but I can be heard.”
“All right,” she said, sounding like she still thought I was crazy.
And maybe I was. We were about to find out.
We climbed the rest of the stairs, and I followed Kona into the plane.
“Hello, gentlemen,” Kona said, flashing those gorgeous pearly whites of hers. “I wanted to see if you all needed anything.”
Three agents were clustered around a bank of seats about two-thirds of the way back; I assumed that was where Howell had been sitting. Two of the men glanced up, but then went back to examining the seats. A third man, tall, with dark hair and a smile as electric as hers, made a show of checking her out, head to toe.
“Hey there, beautiful. What are you offering?”
None of the men spared me a glance. Kona did look back at me, but only long enough to shoot me a “you owe me for this” glare.
While she pretended to flirt with Tall, Dark, and Handsome, I stepped into the cockpit, making sure that I didn’t touch anything.
I spotted the magic right away. It would have been hard to miss, as it covered the instrumentation, though it was concentrated on the screens above the windshield, where the warning signals would have appeared. Whoever had cast the spell wanted to be certain that this plane wasn’t going anywhere.
It was the same magic I had seen on Howelclass="underline" a deep shimmering green, brilliant but translucent. The skinhead’s murderer had also seen to it that this plane didn’t get off the ground.
I left the cockpit and walked down the aisle toward Kona and the Feds, which, I decided in that moment, was a great name for a band. Kona sent an anxious glance my way, but none of the men reacted to my presence. A few feet short of where Kona stood, I slipped out of the aisle and into a row. I didn’t go so far as to lower myself into a seat; doing so would have made too much noise. Instead, I pulled out the sock I had taken from Howell’s bag and my scrying stone, a slice of sea-green agate that I always carry with me.
In the weeks since I had been shot, Namid had been teaching me all sorts of seeing spells. I disliked scrying magic; always had. Often scrying spells offered little more than portents, hints at the future that could be interpreted any number of ways. They tended to obscure as much as they revealed. But seeing spells of this sort were a little different; I wasn’t trying to divine the future so much as I was searching for clues about the past. And Namid seemed to think that the more I could discover with magic, the less likely I was to place myself in danger. I wasn’t sure I shared his confidence, but I had to admit that the seeing spell I’d used the previous night had made catching Mark Darby a good deal easier than it otherwise might have been.
The seeing spell I planned to use now was one I had learned a few months ago, and had used to see Etienne de Cahors for the first time. I wanted to see and hear what Howell had seen and heard when he was on this plane, and this casting allowed me to do that. It was specific to place and person. I would only experience what he had experienced on this plane; to see his killer, I would have to go back to the place where he had died. And I could only see the events in question through his eyes.