The Isis Collar

Like a lot of schools in the district, Abraham Lincoln was built on a single story and every classroom had a fire door that opened directly onto the playground. As principal, Sanchez had a key. The first thing she did was unlock the door and prop it open. It was the smart thing to do. She must have been a firefighter in a previous career, too, because she picked up the teacher like she was a cardboard cutout and tossed her over one shoulder before heading out the door. I did the same to an older brunette girl sitting in a chair in the corner. I was guessing she was a student teacher or a college intern.

More people had arrived because of the smoke and were being directed by Jamisyn, who either had gotten away himself or must have been pulled out by a passerby. Sirens in the distance were getting louder. I set the girl down and shook her lightly to clear her head. While I was explaining what had happened to her, I spotted movement near the end of the building.

I had turned, taking a couple of steps in that direction, when someone tapped me on the shoulder. I turned my head and was surprised to see Terrance Harris, one of the Santa Maria de Luna cops. He was a recently arrived Haitian immigrant, a level-six mage. He’d been brought in to be part of the magical enforcement squad. I’d met him once before, at a Christmas party. He nodded toward the school, but I noticed that he was looking at a point near the rooftop of the building, on a ledge. I followed his gaze. I didn’t see anything. “I knew when I saw you over here that this wasn’t just a building fire. You set off smoke bombs because of the curse, didn’t you?”

The distinctive accent didn’t distract me. Instead, the words made me look at the unobtrusive middle-aged man suspiciously. “What do you know about it?” He looked like he was off-duty, because he was wearing a T-shirt and jeans, but it seemed awfully convenient to see a powerful mage at a place where an equally powerful spell had been cast. That “they always return to the scene of the crime” thing is mostly true.

He pointed at the ledge. “I can feel it. The source of the spell is up there. It’s a powerful one. I’m thinking it was done last night and set with a trigger or timer. It’s too complicated and too public for someone to have done this just now.”

Could I trust him? Would either of the mages I knew be able to tell me all that about a spell just by encountering it on the sidewalk?

Actually, yeah, they would. Bruno could for sure, and probably Creede, too. Bruno was a level nine. Creede an eight plus. So maybe I shouldn’t shortchange Harris. I turned to ask him if he could tell anything specific about the curse but was distracted when I spotted more movement in the place that had caught my attention a moment before.

A basement window was being opened … from the inside. Okay, that just screamed sneaky. There were plenty of exit doors; why crawl out of a window unless you were up to something?

I gestured silently toward the dark-skinned man emerging from the open window. He was trying hard to use his camo clothing to blend in with the shadows. Terrance followed my gesture and started heading that way, pulling what looked like an actual carved wand from a holster on his belt. I don’t know a lot of witches or mages who use wands, although I’ve seen them for sale in weapons stores.

Harris shouted, “Police! You in the window. Freeze. Don’t move!”

Crap. I’d been hoping for a little more … subtlety. I know there are laws that say they have to give that warning. It just seems like it gives the bad guys an edge when you can’t sneak up on them. The man in the window pulled down on his cap and it became a face mask, just in time to keep me from getting a good look at him. As I expected, instead of not moving, he started moving faster, kicking to get out of the window before we could get to him.

Go figure.

Terrance raised his wand and twirled it in a fast circle before throwing power at the masked man. “Glacia!”

I knew that spell, which was, literally, “freeze.” It should have stopped the guy cold in his tracks. Except that I was right about him being a spellcaster. He threw his hands sideways and deflected the magic. Toward me. Then he took off running down the street.

A wave of ice cold hit me and made my muscles tense. But there’s a reason I spend serious money on protection charms. It only took a second for the medallion around my neck to heat and push away the cold. I didn’t wait to have something more serious hit me. The best defense is a good offense. I put a hand inside my blazer, extracted a charm disk as I ran, and brushed my fingertips over the raised lettering to be sure I’d drawn the one I wanted. Pouring on the speed, I hit the guy from behind with a flying tackle. We tumbled to the ground in a tangle of limbs and dirt. Before he could utter the next curse, I stuffed the charm in his mouth and slammed his jaw shut. The Speak No Evil charm is specially made for spellcasters. For the next hour, he wouldn’t be able to say anything that could be harmful.

He gagged and coughed as the liquid in the charm slid down his throat. “You folking titch!” He spat out the words and then realized what I must have done. He tried to curse me, but it came out as “Beneficent Harmony!”

Terrance, breathing hard from the run, pulled handcuffs from a holster on his belt. His skin was at least two shades darker than that of the man under me as he slapped the first cuff against the caster’s wrist. “Good thing you did that. You don’t want to even know what that curse would have done.”

He was probably right. I kept my weight on the guy until the cuffs were on and then got to my feet. “Stay with him until the other cops get here. I need to find out what he did inside the building. I heard a small explosion coming from the basement a few minutes ago.”

“Don’t be an idiot, Graves. Let us take care of it. I’ll call for reinforcements; they’ll be here—”

“Too late,” I completed. “They don’t even know they need to be here yet. Call it in, but I have to keep getting those kids out. That’s the important thing. I’ll see what caused the explosion.”

He let out an exasperated sigh as he pulled the other mage to his feet. “Then let me go. If it’s another spell, you can’t disarm it. If it’s a bomb … well, you don’t have authority to do that, either. There could be chemicals or toxins, and I’ve trained with them. Stay with the prisoner; I’ll go.”

I shook my head and finished picking up the charms I’d dropped when we tumbled. “I also don’t have authority to keep a prisoner in custody. Remember that most of the cops around here don’t like me. They’d love an excuse to lock me behind bars for the rest of my life.” It was a painful truth to admit. There were cops—people I’d gone drinking with, shared stories with—who now wanted me dead or locked up because a master vampire tried to turn me. They considered me evil, despite the fact I could stand in a church, wear holy items, and walk in the daylight. And since the “Zoo,” otherwise known as the California State Facility for Criminally Magical Beings, had been reduced to a wide piece of glass in the desert by a massive explosion, they’d have to find somewhere else to put me—probably somewhere far worse. No, thanks. I’d rather take my chances with whatever I found inside the school. “As for chemicals, I’ll stand a better chance than you. Vampires heal faster.”

Harris winced at my crack about his fellow officers, but he didn’t bother trying to deny it and I didn’t give him the chance to argue. I just sprinted back toward the building. He could either leave the prisoner and follow me, or stay where he was.

I really wanted to know what was going on in that basement, and call me crazy, but I figured the quickest route to find the trouble was to backtrack the crook. So I slipped into the building using the basement window that he’d left so conveniently open and took a look around.

I’d expected to find myself in a furnace room, maybe a closet. Instead, I was standing in a music storage room. A beat-up old upright piano was tucked into a corner and a host of noisemaking implements like triangles, kazoos, and tiny brass cymbals were stored in stacked and labeled clear plastic totes. A battered metal file cabinet had drawers marked with the names of various instruments.

I stopped, stilling my breathing, extending all of my senses to the max. I’ve developed quite the sensitivity to magic with my other predator senses. There are some less happy vamp side effects as well, but I didn’t have time to think about those right now. I wanted to find whatever it was the bad guy had been up to.

Nothing. At least not in this room. Crap. I moved toward the still-open door, listening as hard as I could.

The alarm was a distant rumble below the thick concrete slab above that all the older buildings in town have. The school on top had been scraped and rebuilt when I was a kid, but the foundation and main-floor slab are probably a century old. Either the lower rooms didn’t have bells or they’d been disabled. That’s how I was able to hear the distinct sounds of someone fiddling with something. The noise was similar to when I’m having the oil changed in my car. Fabric rustling, the tink of different metals meeting, the