Aziz nodded. “She’s a regular customer, although she hasn’t been to the shop in months. She was always looking for rare books on botany and herbal lore. She’s an avid gardener. And from the little she’s told me about her garden, I gather that it’s quite something. She moonlights by growing herbs and exotic plants for use in fetishes. I knew she was a wage mage, but never did ask what company she worked for. So it’s Mitsuhama, huh? No wonder she has so much money to drop or antique books.”
“Would she remember you?”
“Oh sure. I special-ordered material for her more than once.”
“Would she find it odd if you paid her a visit?”
“Not if I said I’d finally found one of the books she’s been looking for.”
“And could you find one on short notice?” Carla asked. “And deliver it this afternoon? And at the same strike up a conversation about the conjuring spell ‘some reporter from KKRU’ asked you to comment on?”
A sly grin stole across Aziz’s face. “I’ve got a book home that would be perfect,” he said. “It’s badly water-stained, and some of the pages are missing. I didn’t think that it would sell, so I’ve been scanning some of the undamaged illustrations and selling them on-line. But perhaps our wage mage would like to own the original art. The book is old enough and rare enough to interest her-despite its condition.”
“Perfect.” Carla clapped Aziz on the back. “Let’s go get it.”
The ruse worked even better than Carla had hoped. Evelyn Belanger was at home when Aziz called. She said she was working and was quite busy. Carla could guess why; after the system crash at the research lab that morning, the mages would have rushed home to see what they could salvage from their own files. But after hearing that an extremely rare herbals book was available at a cut-rate price and that a second buyer was also interested and might purchase it if she didn’t make up her mind quickly, Evelyn agreed to take a break and meet with Aziz later that afternoon.
Belanger lived in a modest wooden house, perhaps a century old, in Brier, a semi-rural section of Snohomish. Much of the district had been gobbled up by agri-business, but the area still contained a scattering of half-hectare hobby farms. Evelyn’s home was on one of those properties, but instead of a barn, her backyard boasted a large, flower-filled garden.
When Aziz showed her the book, Evelyn Belanger invited him to join her for a cup of tea and readily agreed to his request for a tour of her garden. She obviously enjoyed showing it off. Carla, listening from the sidewalk while cloaked in an invisibilty spell Aziz was sustaining, slipped around the house and in through a side gate. She caught up to the two mages as they emerged through a door at the back of the house and tiptoed behind them, careful not to knock anything over or brush against anything that made noise.
Aziz, too, had cloaked himself with a spell. His was a simpler form of magic-a mask that hid the reddened blisters on his face and hands. No sense in giving the game away too early; Evenly Belanger would probably be able to take one look at his injuries and guess what he’d been up to.
The backyard was large and parklike. Paths of natural gravel wound their way between garden beds and raised boxes filled with a profusion of vegetation. There were leafy bushes, variegated vines drooping over the cedarwood slats of the raised plant beds, fragrant-smelling herbs, and daisies with wide, sun-yellow flowers. Clumps of chives thrust up between the other plants, their purple powder-puff blossoms lending a delicate scent to the air. Wind rustled a patch of bamboo in one corner of the garden, and water gurgled in a rock-lined pond whose surface was covered with white-flowered water lilies.
Belanger led Aziz to two benches arranged at right angles to one another near the center of the garden, sheltered by a gazebo. She placed the tea tray on a table that stood between them, then motioned her visitor to sit down.
Wary of the crunching noises her feet made on the gravel path, Carla stopped where she was, a few paces away from the benches. Behind her, rain pattered gently on the leaves.
Carla looked around cautiously. She didn’t see any overt security-either technological or magical. Either Evelyn Belanger trusted her semi-rural neighborhood to be crime-free or she was confident she could protect herself with her magic.
Mitsuhama seemed to trust Belanger more than they had Mrs. Samji; there was no evidence of a watcher or paranormal guardian. The only animal present at the house was a calico cat that ran down the path to join Belanger on the bench. The animal’s whiskers twitched as it passed Carla and paused to sniff the air around her ankles. Fortunately Belanger didn’t notice the animal’s reaction.
Aziz sat on the bench and admired the garden, sipping chamomile tea and murmuring politely while Belanger described the various plants that grew around them. There was woad, the dye plant used by the ancient Celtic warriors to stain their bodies blue, and now popular with mages who specialized in combat spells. Mandrake, whose dark, forked root was used as a fetish in spells affecting the emotions-love spells, in particular. Pennyroyal, used in purification spells. And mistletoe and slippery elm, favored by both European druids and Native American shamans.
Belanger spoke lovingly about each plant, describing it in a gentle voice. She was a large woman, taller than Aziz and probably twice the weight of the rail-thin mage. She dressed in plain, earth-brown clothing. If she’d chosen, she could have been an imposing presence. But she had the soft features and quiet voice of a woman who took pleasure in sitting back and watching events unfold like the slow blossoming of a rose.
Aziz started to turn the conversation around to the events of the other night. As he did, Carla focused her eyecam and did a slow zoom on Evelyn Belanger. At the same time, she cupped a hand behind her ear so the pickup slaved into her eardrum would catch the soft voice of the wage mage. She boosted the gain a little and stepped up the filters, eliminating the faint patter of rain that came from the edge of the garden.
“… see me on the trideo the other night?” Aziz was asking. “I was interviewed by a reporter from KKRU who wanted my opinion on a spell formula that was written on an datachip she’d been given. The chip was ah… found… in the pocket of a mage who worked for Mitsuhama. His name was Farazad Samji. The reporter let me keep the chip so I could study the spell, and I’ve been trying to figure out the formula ever since. I thought that, since you worked with the fellow who had the spell, you might be able to help me decipher…”
His voice tailed off as he noticed the way Belanger's eyes had narrowed. “What makes you think I can tell you anything about this spell?” she asked.
Aziz gave a deliberately casual shrug. “The file was tagged with the Mitsuhama logo,” he lied. “So assumed it was developed at your lab.”
“Nice try,” the wage mage said softly. She reached for the antique book Aziz had placed on the bench and pushed it back at him. “1 was one of your regular customers, but I never did tell you where I worked. Who sent you here? The reporter?”
Carla cursed silently to herself as Aziz’s usual suave manner deserted him. At least he had the sense not to look around to see if Carla had suddenly become visible. That would have been a complete giveaway.
“No one sent me,” Aziz said, nervously licking his lips. “I just wanted to find out why Mitsuhama wanted the spell formula back so badly.”
His voice grew hard. “Did the goons your corporation sent after the chip tell you what they did after they found it? No? Well, they burned down my shop. All of those books-gone in a puff of smoke. Books I’d spent years collecting. Valuable books. Rare magical tomes. Gone. Destroyed.” He made a chopping gesture with his hand, then took a deep, shuddering breath. “Ignorant bastards,” he said under his breath.