Sure enough, the liquor store had what I was after: big square bottle with a neck long enough to use as a clubhandle in a pinch, label with a white-bearded rabbi, a fellow who looks like the Catholic conception (excuse me) of God the Father peering out at you. Because it's specially blessed, Passover wine is thaumaturgically more active than your average enspirited grape juice, so it's available all year round.
I bought a bottle of sweet Concord - just picking it up brought back memories of childhood Seders, when it was the only wine I got to taste all year - and took it back to the home thaumaturgics emporium.
Michael said, "If you plan to go back inside, David, and if your conjecture is accurate, there is a significant probability that the staff will make a sizable effort to disrupt your activity."
My feeling was that there was a significant probability the Chocolate Weasel staff would make a sizable effort to disrupt me if I was right, and never mind my activity. But I said, "If they're doing what I think they're doing in there, I don't think we'll need to go back inside."
While we talked back and forth, the salesman and Spells 'R' Us manager stood off to one side, listening so hard I thought they'd grow asses' ears the way King Midas did in the Greek myth. At another time or place, it might have been funny. I went outside, Michael following again. The two guys from Spells 'R' Us watched through their plate - glass window.
I could figure out what they were thinking when they saw me point a spellchecker probe at Chocolate Weasel - something on the order of. What's been across the street from us for God knows how long? It was a good question. With luck, I'd have a good answer soon.
The rich, fruity smell of the Passover wine came welling out of the bottle when I broke the seal. I poured a capful (they make the cap just the right size to hold the usual activating dose - good ergonomics) into the spellchecker receptacle and chanted the blessing. No sooner had I finished the boray pri hagcfen and added omayn than the screen lit up with a smile. The microimps inside were happy and ready.
But, even though I aimed the probe at the Chocolate Weasel building, the spellchecker didn't pick up anything from it. It identified the magic associated with the flyway, and also the crosswalk cantrips, not all of which, as I've noted, are Christian by any means. I said something unfortunate and added disgustedly, "You'd think they didn't work any magic at all in there."
"Which we know is not the case," Michael said. "This suggests to me that the building is shielded against probes from outside."
"You have to be right," I said. "But what can we do now?
Go on in? Like you said, if we do that, we're liable not to come back out again."
"I am of the opinion that we have sufficient information to seek a warrant and let the constabulary deal with the matter from here on out," Michael said. "The staff of Chocolate Weasel are consorting with criminals, and the building's being so tightly sealed is suspicious in and of itself. The blanking of the sorcery within goes far beyond any that would be required to prevent industrial espionage."
Just then the front door to Chocolate Weasel opened and a couple of women came out. No matter how good the place's shielding was, I'd already found out it wasn't topologically complete like the Devonshire dump's: I hadn't had to cross over an insulated footbridge to get in. That meant influences could go out through the opening, too.
I looked down at the ground glass on the spellchecker.
The microimps saw something across the street, all right, something they didn't like one bit. Words started forming:
UNIDENTIFIED - FORBIDDEN. I felt as if someone had poured a bucket of ice water down my back. The door to Chocolate Weasel closed quickly and the damning words disappeared from the ground glass, but they remained imprinted on my mind. I'd hoped never to see their like again, but here they were.
"That's the same spellchecker reaction I got when I probed the potion that curandero gave Lupe Cordero," I said. "Now I know why your similarity ritual failed, Michael."
I was glad I hadn't had lunch yet; I might have thrown up right on the sidewalk in front of Spells 'R' Us.
Michael shook his head. "I'm afraid your logical leap went past me there."
"You were testing for similarity to flayed human skin substitute," I said. "I don't think that's substitute in there - I think that's real flayed human skin."
"Yes, that might conceivably throw off the accuracy of the test." Sometimes Michael is almost off in a virtuous reality of his own. I suppose I shouldn't have been surprised he thought about the testing first, but I was. Still, he does connect to the real world. After a couple of seconds, his eye got wide behind his spectacles. "Dear God in heaven, there are thousands of square feet of flayed human skin substitute in those vats. If it is the genuine material rather than the substitute-"
"Then a lot of people have ended up dead, Huitzalopochth is well fed, and the whole stinking world may come down on our heads." I didn't realize I'd started spouting doggerel till the words were out of my mouth.
Tt is now imperative - no, mandatory - that we notify the authorities forthwith," Michael said.
Since he was right, I shut down the spellchecker (no doubt to the microimps' relief) and took it back into Spells 'R' Us.
"Thanks very much, gentlemen," I said. "We appreciate the help. Now can you tell us where the nearest pay phone is?"
There's one outside the Golden Steeples," the manager answered, "if it hasn't been vandalized."
The salesman blurted, "But can't you tell us what's going on?"
I'm sorry," I said, "but it's against EPA policy to reveal the results of an ongoing investigation. As I say, you've helped, though."
Leaving them frustrated, we headed across Mason toward the Golden Steeples. The closer we got, the less optimistic I was about finding the phone in working order. The local street gangs had vandalized the building, scrawling tags like HUNERIC and TBASAMUND on the wall in big, angular letters. Graffiti are an environmental problem, too, one for which we don't have a good answer yet.
And sure enough, when we came up to the pay phone, I saw that somebody - presumably the punk who went by that monicker - had carved the name GELIMER into the base of the phone and used either a tweezers or a little levitation spell to get the coins out through the narrow slits he'd cut Of course, once he violated the integrity of the containment system, the coin-collecting demon was also able to escape, and pay phones are rigged so their imps stay dormant unless he collects his fee. The phone, then, might as well not have been there.
Unless - I turned to Michael. "Are you a hot enough wizard to get around Ma Bell?"
"Possibly - with time and equipment we lack at the moment," he said. "Finding another pay phone would be more efficient"
Ergonomics again. Whether it's what size to make the cap on a bottle of wine or deciding to spell or not to spell, you can't get away from it. "Let's go back to the carpet, then," I said. "We're sure to pass one as we fly back to the freeway."
We crossed over to the Chocolate Weasel parking lot. Me, I wasn't what you'd call enthusiastic about setting foot there again, but I didn't feel too bad because I was doing it only to leave the place for good.
Though I didn't really need to, I picked up the map to check the route south. We could either head back to Winnetka the way we'd come and then down, or else we could fly west to…
"Michael," I said hoarsely, "I know where we can find a pay phone."
"Do you?" He glanced over to me. "I did not think you were overly familiar with this section of St. Ferdinand's Valley."
Tm not," I said. "But look." I pointed to the map. The next major flyway, a couple of blocks west of where we were, was Soto's. And the next decent-sized street north of Nordhoff was Plummer. "I know there's a pay phone there because that's where Judy called me from."