Capitol Magic Read online

  “James,” I said one more time. “You’re safe. The Old Library is safe. There is no threat here.”

  I took a step closer, knowing that he was already aware of me, that his entire vampire body was attuned to my presence as a sphinx, as a creature who had drunk his blood, who had been healed by the dark power in his veins.

  For that matter, my own body was pretty conscious of his.

  As usual, he wore a suit, the impeccable tailoring only emphasizing his height. His conservative tie was perfectly knotted, and the creases in his trousers were razor-sharp. If he’d kept to his usual routine—and when didn’t he?—he had left his sanctum an hour after sunset. He had driven his luxury Mercedes to his coveted space in the courthouse’s underground parking garage. He had stalked past the security guards he managed, strode into his office, sat down at his desk, and turned on his computer.

  And when he had sensed an invading presence in the Old Library, he had stormed down five flights of stairs, ready to attack an intruder so that he could keep secret the existence of vampires and griffins and sprites, of all the supernatural creatures that submitted to the justice of the Eastern Empire Night Court that met in the chamber far above us.

  James blinked, and then he swallowed hard. By the time he took a step back, he had absorbed his fangs. Nevertheless, the flash in his cobalt eyes made it clear that this matter was far from resolved.

  I sighed. “James Morton, I’d like to introduce you to Jane Madison. Jane is a consultant I’ve hired to help us organize the Old Library.”

  I had to give the librarian credit. She extended her hand, as if she met vampires on a regular basis. I could tell that James was surprised—he almost forgot to shake. As I watched the ordinary social exchange, I wondered again at the feeling that had stolen over me when I’d heard Jane speak in the bakery.

  Certainly her words had been interesting—the fact that she was trained as a librarian, that she was building a business as an independent consultant for situations just like mine. (Well, not just like mine—how many collections of supernatural legal materials could there be?)

  But it was more than that. It was the tone of her voice. Not the ordinary pitch that any human could hear. Rather, there was a resonance behind her words, a reverberation that struck something deep inside me.

  She wasn’t a sphinx. Even though I had yet to begin my official training, I knew I would have recognized another member of my rare race. And she certainly wasn’t a vampire—we had met in broad daylight. She was too lithe to be a griffin, too grounded to be a sprite. But there was something about her….

  Something that James obviously didn’t sense. Or, if he did, he didn’t care. I watched as he slipped steady fingers inside his breast pocket, and I wasn’t the least bit surprised when they emerged holding a metal flask. He unscrewed the cap and offered the container to Jane. “Perhaps we should drink to new beginnings?”

  She glanced at me, as if to ask whether this was normal behavior for my boss. Unfortunately, it was.

  “James,” I said. “I don’t think that’s necessary.”

  “I do.” His answer was so curt I knew there was no reason to argue.

  I turned to Jane. “I’m sorry,” I said. “I was wrong to bring you here without asking permission first. I got carried away when I heard that you had the exact experience we need.”

  I slanted a glance toward James, to see if my argument was persuasive. It wasn’t. Not in the least.

  I sighed and took the flask from James’s commanding fingers. “I promise this won’t hurt you. In fact, I’ll drink some myself, if that would make you feel better.”

  Her hazel eyes were steady on my face. After her initial panic at being confronted with an enraged vampire, she had recovered with astonishing speed. I could almost believe that, under other circumstances, we might have become friends. She licked her lips and said, “I trust you.”

  That reply almost made me wince.

  Oh, I had told her the truth. The cinnamon-scented drink would do her no harm. But I still regretted that my actions had brought us to this point, that I had made this entire exchange necessary.

  I passed the flask to Jane. She sniffed it cautiously, then brushed a sweep of auburn curls off her forehead. She cleared her throat, fluttering her fingers above her larynx, as if she was preparing to swallow something noxious. She settled her hand over her heart for one moment, and I thought she might be anxious, might be having palpitations.

  She muttered something I didn’t quite catch, and then she raised the flask to her lips. One swallow. Two. Three. She lowered the drink and looked directly at James. “Enough?”

  For answer, he set his right index finger in the center of her forehead. Before she could flinch, he said, “Be mine.”

  I knew what was supposed to happen. She was supposed to stagger forward. She was supposed to yield completely, to require James’s assistance in something as simple as standing. And when she was helpless in his arms, he would tell her to forget everything she had seen, everything she had heard, everything that had happened since he had entered the Old Library.

  But Jane apparently had something else in mind.

  As James glided forward to ease her to the ground, I was blinded by a flash of crimson light. It rolled out from the librarian, sparking from the chunky necklace around her throat. The air crackled, leaving behind the smell of ozone.

  James hissed and dropped his hand, shaking his fingers as if he’d received an electric shock. I started to move toward him, my sphinx instinct to protect drawing me as much as the attraction I’d felt for the man since the first night we’d met.

  Before I could reach him, though, there was a shout behind me, a guttural exclamation in a baritone voice. I whirled toward the sound, automatically calculating the distance to the armoire on the far side of the Library, to the weapons it held.

  A man stood in the middle of the Old Library. His dark hair was windblown, an effect that accented the brush of silver at his temples. He was every bit as tall as James and looked to be as fit. His grey eyes blazed as he took in the three of us, and the sense of power in him was not diminished by his faded blue jeans or his rumpled flannel shirt.

  “Jane?” he asked. He directed his question to the librarian, but he kept his attention focused on James.

  “I’m fine,” she said.

  “Fire agate?” His words might have been meaningless, if I had not seen that wave of scarlet fire spark off her necklace.

  She nodded. “And a warding spell. It wasn’t as strong as I wanted, though. Not without Neko here.”

  “It was strong enough.”

  If that silvery gaze had been directed at me, I would have quailed. As it was, James drew himself to his full height. He narrowed his eyes as he slipped his flask back inside his breast pocket. When he spoke, his words were strained. “One of Hecate’s warders, I presume.”

  Hecate’s warders. That made Jane Madison a witch.

  “David Montrose.” The newcomer did not offer to shake hands. Instead, he nodded toward Jane. “She knows you’re a vampire?”

  James’s smile was tight, but he inclined his head gracefully. “I suspect she’s figured that out.”

  The warder turned toward me. “And you?”

  He wasn’t asking for my credentials as Clerk of Court. “I’m a sphinx,” I said.

  I was gratified by the flicker of surprise in his eyes. A quick glance at Jane confirmed that she did not recognize my race.

  Much as I had not recognized hers. A witch… I hadn’t met one before. Not one of them had filed a claim in the eight months I’d been working for the Night Court. There was something I had read, though, something deep in one of the Night Court handbooks. Witches had their own lower court. What was it called…? Hecate’s Court. That was it. Hecate’s Court handled specialized disputes, arguments between witches, cases about their specialized rights regarding warders and familiars.

  Jane Madison was a witch. That was why I’d felt power in
her. Why I’d been drawn to her in the bakery. Why it had seemed right and proper to bring her into the Old Library.

  Montrose extended a hand toward Jane. “Let’s get out of here.”

  He clearly expected her to cross to him. He thought that she would slip her fingers between his, that he would lead her out the door and up the stairs—or maybe spirit her away with some magical warder’s power.

  But Jane purposely missed her cue. She didn’t take his hand. She didn’t turn her back on my vampire boss. She didn’t march away from me.

  Instead, she shook her head. “Sarah was just about to show me the materials she needs cataloged.”

  I was shocked at her words. Not at the defiance—although her resistance clearly rattled Montrose. Rather, by the fact that she was still interested in my project, still interested in the work, despite all that had happened since I had shown her the Old Library.

  “Jane, I don’t think —”

  But she cut Montrose off. “I need a job, David. Now that I’ve left the Peabridge.”

  Clearly, this was a familiar discussion between the two of them. “I thought we had agreed… In any case, there are lots of jobs —”

  Again, she interrupted. “And this one is perfect. It lets me use all my librarian skills.”

  I had the distinct impression that David Montrose, Hecate’s Warder, was not interrupted by many people. But I also understood that he made special allowances for his witch.

  “Jane —”

  “David. I’ll be fine here. Just as soon as you and Mr. Morton let us get back to work.”

  The warder’s throat worked. He obviously longed to tell her that she was wrong, that she needed to submit, that she was required to leave with him.

  But she merely stared at him, hazel eyes meeting grey. There was determination in her stance, a rooted stubbornness that did not require the benefit of words.

  Finally, Montrose shrugged and turned his attention to James. “I think we’re being told to leave.”

  I saw James’s own resistance. He still believed that these intruders were a threat to the Eastern Empire, to the secret workings of the Night Court.

  But I knew otherwise. I had felt otherwise, the instant I met Jane.

  I took a step closer to the librarian. “The sooner we get to work, the sooner we’ll know the extent of the problem with the collection.”

  James started to protest. He started to say something to me. Then to Jane. To Montrose.

  But he wasn’t a fool. He knew when he was beaten. With a perfectly arched eyebrow, he said to me, “I wouldn’t want to delay your getting to work.” And then he turned toward Montrose. “Shall we?”

  He gestured toward the door. The sound of footsteps faded quickly as the men retreated upstairs.

  Jane was shaking her head when I recovered enough to turn back to her. “I don’t get it,” she said. “How is it that every single person can arch one eyebrow, except for me?”

  I laughed.

  I could have wasted time, apologizing for James. I could have taken a break and explained what I was, how I had been awakened to my life as a sphinx. I could have asked a million questions about Jane’s powers, about Montrose.

  But instead, I hefted a box of papers onto the massive table, and I started to explain what little order I’d been able to impose on the collection.

  * * *

  Nearly eight hours later, I slipped back into the Old Library. I had left Jane surrounded by books, scrolls, folders, and piles of paper, hoping that she could make sense out of the call numbers scrawled on the valuable holdings. Now, I wanted nothing more than to find that the witch had worked her magic with my collection of legal materials.

  Strike that.

  I wanted more than that. A lot more. I wanted to know everything Jane knew about organizing information.

  I was jealous that the witch had skills beyond my own. I was frustrated that I had needed to call in someone else, embarrassed that I had not been able to make things neat and clean and orderly without outside assistance. I felt the disorganization of the Old Library like a twitch beneath my eye—constant, annoying, unable to be controlled.

  I knew that pull was my sphinx nature asserting itself. My most obvious supernatural quirk was the absolute compulsion to impose order upon the physical world around me.

  I opened the door cautiously, afraid that I would interrupt her work. I needn’t have worried. Jane was poring over a ledger, running her fingers down two columns of entries. She shook her head when she got to one point, grimacing in distaste or confusion. Blindly, she reached for another notebook, scanned more columns of information.

  As I watched her work, my fingers itched. I wanted to collect the random pages that covered the table and tap them into neat piles. I wanted to separate pencils from pens, red ink from blue and black. I wanted to scoop up plastic paperclips and settle them into a single neat cup.

  I settled for clearing my throat and closing the door with a distinct thud.

  Jane was clearly oblivious to my sphinx craving for order; she made no effort to neaten her workspace. Instead, she ran her palms over her face as if to rub away the shadows of fatigue beneath her eyes. She worked her fingers through her red-shot hair and sat straighter in her chair, twisting once to her right, then to her left.

  “I’m so close,” she said with an exasperated sigh. “It would all come together, if we had all the materials here.”

  “All the materials?”

  “According to these catalog volumes, you’re missing about five percent of the collection.”

  Five percent? That would be several hundred books. There was no way that much of the collection had disappeared. Not on my watch. Not with my compulsive need to keep the shelves in order.

  I hooked a chair with my foot, nudging it to a right angle with the table before I sat next to Jane. “Wait a second. What catalog volumes? I couldn’t find any catalog volumes.”

  Jane pointed to several piles of books. Some were bound in leather, with the wavy pages I knew were parchment. A couple were covered in plain black cloth. Closest at hand were a half dozen cardboard-covered theme notebooks, the type that could be bought on sale, two for a dollar, at any office superstore.

  “These were locked inside that chest.” Jane gestured to a massive footlocker that filled the bottom shelf. Its sides and corners were reinforced with brass, and its heavy lock hung open.

  “Where did that come from?” I gaped at the trunk. There was no way I could have missed it during my countless tours of the Old Library.

  “I don’t know where it came from originally,” Jane said. “But it was hidden by a pretty strong distracting spell. If you ever noticed it, your attention was dragged off to something else in pretty short order.”

  “But how did you find it?”

  She held up a disk, the width of her palm. Flawless and clear, it was curved like a lens from a telescope. “Rock crystal,” she said. “When I realized there had to be a record of the library’s contents somewhere, I decided someone must have hidden it away. I had my familiar bring me this crystal.”

  I looked around the room. “Your familiar? Where is it?”

  “Not it,” she smiled ruefully. “He. And I took him away from a Mardi Gras party, so he insisted on getting back as soon as possible.”

  “Mardi Gras was two months ago.”

  “Yeah.” She shrugged. “Anyway, he brought me the crystal, and I found the records. This book explains the classification scheme.” She held up a volume the size of a pocket paperback. Gold and turquoise glinted from its wooden cover. “It’s complicated,” she said. “Each book is marked to indicate the year it was written, the year it was brought into the collection, the title, the author, and the subject matter. But all of that is placed in a rotating cipher. You’d never be able to translate it without the tables here.”

  I nodded to tell her I understood what she was saying. At the same time, I swallowed hard, surprised to discover how relieved I felt. Th
ere was a reason I had not been able to make sense out of the books. There was an orderly, mundane explanation, not related to magic, to my sphinx abilities. Or, as I had very much feared, to my lack thereof.

  I’d had six months to adjust to the idea that I wasn’t actually human, that I had ancient blood pulsing in my veins. Six months to push my sphinx mentor, Chris Gardner, into teaching me about my heritage. Six months to grow annoyed at his bottomless patience. His precision. His incredibly slow pace of instruction. His quiet acceptance of the relationship that had grown between James and me, despite the very real pull Chris and I felt to each other.

  I suppressed the growl that rose in my throat whenever I thought about my tangled love life.

  “Okay,” I said. “So, you found the trunk, and you rescued the catalog. You cracked the code. But five percent of our books are missing?”

  Jane reached for a stack of catalog volumes. Bookmarks fanned out from the pages, rippling like feathers. Selecting one at random, she showed me a handwritten note that was wedged hard into the bound edge of the book. “Three volumes loaned to the Southern Empire library. August 4, 1862.”

  “They’re going to owe some serious overdue fines,” I said wryly.

  Jane quirked a smile and reached for another book, another marker, another card. “Seven volumes loaned to Hecate’s Court. January 4… I can’t quite make that out. 1747?” She winced. “I guess my fellow witches aren’t great library patrons.”

  “So that’s the system? Just write a note on a card and shove it into the middle of the catalog?”

  She nodded. “There are loans to other Empires. A few more to Hecate’s Court. Several dozen to individuals. I’m afraid there are several mistakes, though. One name shows up, over and over. The first loans are medieval texts, dating back to the thirteenth century. And the most recent ones are from just a few years ago.”

  A chill walked down my spine, and I had a queasy premonition of how Jane would answer my next question. “The name,” I said, barely able to voice the words. “What is the name?”

  “The spelling is different on a lot of the cards. Someone was really atrocious at keeping records.”