I wasn't sure, at first, whether the headache was more from casting the spell through the stones or listening to Wyck attempt to mutter through an explanation that had so many um's and 'uh's that I lost track what he was trying to say.
"Wait... wait." I told him and pulled the pistol from the top of my desk and slid it off into the drawer in front of me. I could tell that his eyes were starting at it like it was the only thing in the room. He really was just a frightened kid and I had turned things up a notch by waving a gun at him and that was before some...THING tried to huff and puff and blow my walls down.
Wyck eased himself into a chair across from my desk and with a glance over his shoulder to the mirror on the far wall, he let out a long, slow breath and tried to relax.
Sir William, hovering in the reflection in the mirror, folded his arms like a disapproving parent waiting for a child to try and explain their way out of trouble. Since he could only move from reflection to reflection, he was able to walk about in the mirrored version of the room as though he were in it with us. The professor, as I liked to call him - though he had no resemblance to the character from Gilligan's Island - walked over within the anti-room and leaned against a seat under a window between two bookshelves.
"Ok. All I know is that Mouse found me the night before he died and told me to hang onto something for him." Wyck began and placed the red, leather journal onto the desk between us.
"He said that if anything happened that I should get it to you no matter what," he continued.
My eyes paused on Wyck, I wanted to wait for a second to see if I could pick out any tick of a lie in his face. He was either very good at looking like a frightened, nineteen year-old kid who had gotten in way over his head or he was just too freaked out to lie about it. I shifted my attention from his face to the book on the desk and shrugged a bit. It wasn't one of my journals, I could tell by the design.
Let me take a minute here to point out that wizards in general are book snobs. Whether it's old
The journal on the table in front of me was hand-bound, that was easily pointed out just by seeing the edge. The cover was thin leather that had been died a shade of red ochre, like rusty dirt. Whoever bound it didn't know what they were doing with dye - the color was uneven and splotchy. That's when it hit me.
It wasn't dye.
The journal was dyed in blood. Not dipped in, but worn into the leather itself. It was like the leather of most well-loved books, warn darker across the spine where someone might hold it and their own body oils had been infused into the tanned animal skin. The color of the book looked as though whoever had held the it did so with blood on their hand. The blood had dried once and had been reapplied over and over again to give the whole cover an oddly rust-like appearance. It was about as big as one of my journals - half the size of a regular piece of printing paper. It was packed full of pages, at least two-fingers thick, and the front and back cover were tied together with a black braided cord of something that looked like horse hair.
Though normally I would never peer into someone else's journal - that's almost sacrilege - but I wanted to see what Mouse may have died for. As my brushed against the surface of the journal I felt a spark - not unlike being shocked by having your feet rub across the carpet and reaching for a door knob.
"Warded," I commented.
"Really," Wyck asked and reached for the book. He was unaffected.
It occurred to me that Wyck had probably touched the book a dozen times since Mouse had given it to him. Why would it suddenly react to my touch and ignore his?
Unless it was warded against me.
Now I was definintely curious what was between those blood-stained cover, but I would need to hear more about what Wyck knew before I jumped into something. I was really good at leaping before I looked and after last year's problem with the high-school coven of necromancers, I had promised myself to try and be more patient.
"Ok, keep talking. Where did you see Mouse last? What did he look like?" I asked and glanced to Sir William in the reflection. He was already circling the mirror-verse of the room and looking at the journal on the desk in front of me.
"Uh, he found me at Fagan's place."
"Where?" I asked having only the mildest idea who 'Fagan' was outside of the context of Oliver Twist.
"Fagan. He's an alley runner down near the Warrens."
This didn't sound good. Alley Runners were basically black market entrepreneurs that were willing to find and sell you whatever you wanted to indulge in - so long as the price was right. Drugs were only the tip of the ice berg for these folks. You got the vice, they have the price. I didn't know what kind of runner Fagan was, but if he was anything like the Dickens character he probably dealt in stolen property. I knew that Mouse was an occasional thief, but it was always small-time stuff.
"Was he supposed to meet you there? Was this something already arranged?" I asked and shifted back in my chair a little.
"No," Wyck explained. "But I'm always there on Tuesday nights. Great place to pick up some...um... work."
"So he found me there and took me off to the side. He didn't look too good; kinda pale," Wyck described.
"Pale?"I asked. Mouse was one of the street gypsies. He lived here and there around the city and was rarely out in the day. Pale was a normal state for him. Anyone who would have known him would have known that. I wondered exactly how well this kid knew my now-dead friend.
"Not just his usual emo-pale, but anemic, paper-white kind of pale,"Wyck countered.
"Thomas," Sir William muttered.
"Was he hurt?" I asked.
This was actually the first bit of information that I had about what happened to Mouse. All I knew was that he was dead - jumped from a building a few days ago.
"His clothes were torn and he was sorta scratched up," Wyck explained with a half-glance towards William's mirror.
"Thomas..." Sir William repeated though with more emphasis - trying to get my attention but I wanted to hear about what happened to Mouse more than what the old ghost had to say.
"Scratched?" I repeated.
"Well, more like clawed. There were three big scrapes down his back and it looked like someone had ripped into his jacket."
Now we were getting somewhere. Wyck was on the run from something that had tried to grab him. Whatever it was almost got him and he ran to Fagan's place trying to find help.
"So then what happened," I asked and leaned forward in my chair only mildly aware of the journal on the desk.
"Thomas!" Sir William barked and just as I looked over towards his favorite mirror I could see black flames beginning to erupt from the reflected form of the book. The journal in front of me was still perfectly normal, but its reflection was starting to be consumed by the purple-hued, black flames of magic.
I stood up with a shock and knocked the journal off my desk. It hit the wooden floor with the sizzle of a bit of fresh slab of meat on a hot grill. Wyck flinched and recoiled into his chair as though the book were going to bite his feet.
"What?" he yipped.
"Get the book, "I told him and pointed to where it fell.
"Hell no!" He retorted.
"Dammit, it won't hurt you. Pick it up." I lied. I had no idea what it was doing, but I was hoping that since the book hadn't hurt him this far that it wouldn't hurt him now.
"Fuck that." He scrambled out of the chair and backed away from the book as though he expected it to blow up now.
The flames were now a column of black fire in the reflections of the mirror. I didn't have much time. Sir William was now across the room in a smaller mirror on the wall so that he could keep an eye on Wyck. I reached out my right hand and spread my fingers while I called up the words of a spell to mind.
"Winds I command thee...to bl.."
Usually, I would say the word 'blow' and a big gust of wind would barrel out from my hand and knock back whatever was in front of me. It's usually was only good for small things but I thought that it could at least scoot the journal across the floor and hopefully into the circle of copper in the corner. It wasn't my main protective circle - that was in the basement, but it should have been enough to hold whatever was happening in the Netherwhere.
However, as I pronounced the final word and the power of the spell popped in my ears, I felt a huge fist of wind slam into my gut. It doubled me over and knocked me back into the shelves behind me with a crunch. The shelves were built to hold several dozen pounds of books and were sturdy to the touch. Sturdy enough that when my back slammed into them I swear I heard a pop or two. Not good.
I was a barefooted, crumpled heap of still-damp jeans. Whatever hit me went right through the protective bracelet I wore on my left wrist. I hurt in places I didn't know could hurt. It took some effort but I finally managed to twist my head so that I could look out to see where the journal was on the floor - unmoved by my spell.
The wind that I had tried to call to move the journal was now spiraling and twisting around the room like a miniature tornado. Books were being blown off their shelves and free pages swirled in the air with a growing roar in my ears.
"Put it in the shukle," I muttered through a rapidly swelling lip.
Wyck seemed to have understood what I was saying and scampered over on his hands and knees to pluck the journal up and tossed it towards the circle that had been scorched into the wood of the floor. As the journal left his fingers, a hefty tome came off a nearby shelf and clocked the boy in the side of his jaw; enough that it forced him to bite into his lip.
As soon as the journal's cover touched the wood inside the circle the wind died as though someone threw the switch on a big fan.
I lamented not not keeping the reams of blank paper for my journals in some kind of a container. The floor of the office was about a finger's thickness with loose pages and I slowly tried to rise. Being hit in the gut was worse than power crunches in the gym. I got my shoulder blades about three inches off the ground before the pain hit me and I collapsed back onto the wooden floor with a dull thud.
"Ow..." I exclaimed, trying to make light of the pain.
I rolled over onto my stomach and pulled my knees under my gut. I could feel the lump on my lip swelling with each throb of the pain in my back and stomach.
"You ok kid?"
"Wyck," he corrected me.
"I'll take that as 'yes'." I commented as I reached for the staff beside me and used it as a crutch to get to my legs.
Sir William clicked his teeth as he looked at the mess of blank paper all over the floor. "I tried to tell you, Thomas, that I thought I recognized the ward on the journal."
"Try harder next time," I groaned.
"Some kind of reflexive magic or something? Bouncing back whatever's cast on it only worse?" The boy had an uncanny knack at chiming in at the right time with the right information.
"Ok Wyck," I began reaching up with my hand to gently touch the bruise on my lip just to see how badly it had already swollen. "You sound like you know a little something about what's going on so don't make any plans on leaving until we've had our talk. For now," I glanced towards the circle and scattered pages on the floor. The swirl of the wind had moved the pages from their perch on one of the shelves to cover the floor but thankfully none of them interrupted the continuity of the protective circle opposite the door to my office.
Circles had been used in magic since the begining. They were for holding things in or keeping things out. The small circle I had burned into the wood of the floor was for keeping things in. It was only about three feet across so it wasn't really large enough for summon something but it had come in handy as an extra layer of protection on more than a few times.
"Pick up the pa..." I started.
Wyck was already on his hands and knees starting to gather the papers into neat stacks. He didn't wrinkle a page or dog-ear a single corner. The kid was meticulous, far more careful with the pages than I would have given him credit especially considering his appearance. With his help I was able to step to the circle without having to walk on the blank pages and I stared down at the journal. It laid there innocently. Anonymously. Patiently.
"One book to rule them all," I muttered.
Sir William just rolled his eyes at me from his side of the mirror at the allusion.
"Professor - can you tell me anything about the book?" I asked as I bent to help Wyck collect the pages and put them back onto the shelves as well as a few other books that had fallen in the micro-storm.
"Nothing, Thomas. Not a thing. It has been warded against my sight. Actually, there are wards against almost anything one could imagine placed on that book."
"That would take a lot of umph to be able to layer all of that magic onto something like that, wouldn't it?" I asked and stepped over to the chair behind the desk and eased into it with my staff as a crutch.
Wyck pulled himself back into the chair opposite my desk but turned it around so we could both watch the book sitting there within the circle like someone had simply dropped it from a nearby shelf. The black flames had died out or had stopped through some other means. I had only seen flames like that once before and I didn't want to bring myself to even think of what it could mean.
It was bad.
Very bad.
"So what happened after Mouse gave that to you at Fagans?" I tried to continue the conversation while I had the presence of mind to do so.
Wyck shrugged. "Dunno. I was already on my way out when he found me. He just asked me to hold onto it and then went to go talk to Fagan about something."
"That's it?" I asked and began to realize that I was bare-footed and half out of my clothes when this whole problem started. I needed to either get a shower and clean up completely or just put back on what I had taken off and ignore the feeling of walking around in wet denim.
Or not.
"He was going to meet me the next night and we were going to hold up with this guy I know. He likes to party and he likes 'em young. You know, get off the street for a while."
"I..uh... see," I tried not to judge but I really didn't like hearing that Mouse was willing to sell himself for a safe place to crash. He could have come to me and I would have let him sleep on the couch or something.
"So did Mouse find you?" I asked as I stripped off my damp socks and winced as I could feel some bruises forming on my back.
"Nope. I waited and waited but he never came. I tried to look around for him but no one one the street had seen him since he was at Fagan's place."
That settled it. I knew that I needed to go and find out what this guy knew. Getting Wyck to show me where it could be a bit more complicated.
"How... leather tomes of arcane knowledge musty with age or papyrus scrolls made fragile with the passage of time, we know from books. Aside from the books that I've collected while working for my uncle Julian's rare book business, i have a lot of journals that record my own experiences with magic and such. Julian insisted that I learn how to bind my own journals so that I could inspect and appraise books more effectively. So I have black covers for my personal journal and brown covers for magical stuff.WELL... did you know Mouse?" I asked trying to at least sound polite.
"We were close," he responded enigmatically.
"Ever see his tattoo?" I asked - testing just how close of a connection there may have been between them.
Wyck blushed. His eyes dropped from mine and he looked away immediately. Whether he wanted to conceal the details of the relationship from me or not, his face told it all.
"Oh. Ok, " I commented just trying to change the topic as quickly as possible, "Well, I am going to need your help if I'm going to find out what happened to Mouse and what's up with that book."
"I'm down." He replied and stood up as though he were ready to charge off that very minute.
"Whoa there boy. Have a seat. First thing's first." I pointed to the journal, "First, I need to lock that up somewhere until I can figure it out what it is and who might have killed Mouse for it."
"Then we can go talk to Fagan. Once you get me there, you can head off and do whatever."I explained while I stood up and tried not to let the deep inhale of breath sound too much like a moan of pain. " I don't want you to get in any more than you are."
"I'm already in over my head," Wyck snerked darkly.
"Sir William," I asked while stripping off my still-damp shirt. The centuries-old spirit appeared in a mirror nearest me on the wall and inclined his head as though he were waiting for me to finish the request. "Please keep an eye on Wyck here while I change my clothes."
"Certainly Thomas," he nodded and turned his eyes towards the boy in the chair and leveled him the full weight of his professorial death-stare. In life Sir William was a professor at Oxford in the mid-sixteenth century. He was more than accustomed to staring down students of various degree and putting the occasional upstart in his place with just a glance. Since his death and eventual enforced servitude, he had gained quite a sum of arcane knowledge though his ability to influence the world of the living was limited, he could cast his own illusions and make people think otherwise.
I looked directly at Wyck, enough to make eye contact with him, and told him to stay in the office. He nodded and I headed out and down the hall to change out of my wet clothes.
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