He sounded like an academy textbook on magic, but he was right. “Something is siphoning off the mana,” I said. I slapped my head. Pain shot through my skull. “Ouch. That was stupid.” I blinked. “But we haven’t seen the siphoning in action. Why?”
Tully’s eyebrows shot up. “Good question. Why haven’t we?”
I thought for a second. “Maybe because someone’s using a cloak.” A magic cloak hid the use of magic as well as the presence of mana, which would be swirling around a sorcerer or wizard under normal arcane circumstances.
“A cloak?” Tully asked. “But those are highly restricted. Not to mention extremely rare.”
I smiled grimly. “But cloaks do exist. It’s entirely possible someone could steal one.”
“But we’d have heard about it if they had.” Tully squinted at me. “Wouldn’t we?”
“Oh, my young apprentice, if only that were the case,” I replied, rubbing my temples.
Tully looked at the window. “The more things change,” he muttered.
“Afraid so,” I said. “I wish things were different.”
I rubbed my eyes, and checked my watch. It was just after ten o’clock.
“Anything else the outbreaks have in common?” I asked.
“Not that I can think of,” Tully said after a moment.
That was the problem, I couldn’t think of anything either, except maybe for one thing.
I massaged my temples. “The outbreaks all developed very quickly. Normally they take more time. One manifestation congeals from the interplay of mana and the collective human subconscious, almost always a fleeting level one. If it manages to stick around, thanks to the collective subconscious and its own luck at being able to siphon off enough mana, then another of the same type could be born. But that isn’t automatic.” There was so much mana and magic in these outbreaks, it was unbelievable. Impossible, really. Unless…I jerked. “Curses aplenty, it’s in plain sight.” I laughed.
Tully’s eyes narrowed in concern again. “Are you all right?”
“No, but that’s a different story.” My headache was gone. “Something is siphoning the mana. Storing mana is really difficult, it takes dragon-grade mana wells, and those aren’t portable.”
“So, where’s it going?” Tully asked.
I stretched, trying to unkink a stiff back muscle. “Exactly, my young apprentice.”
“I wish you wouldn’t call me that. I’m older than you,” Tully pointed out.
“In years, not experience,” I replied.
Tully snorted.
“Anyway,” I continued, “it turns out there is somewhere the mana can go.”
“Where?”
I stopped smiling. “Into the manifestations themselves.”
“Is that possible?”
I shrugged. “I’ve never heard of being done, but I’m not a conjurer. My guess is it would have to take a dragon-forged artifact.”
Tully rubbed his chin. “We’re multiplying impossibilities here. We have a magic cloak, likely an artifact. We have a siphon, also likely an artifact. We have something that transfers siphoned mana into manifestations to make them more potent. That would take an artifact, too. That’s a lot of rare artifacts.”
A shudder ran through me. “Or one very rare artifact.”
Tully shifted in his seat to face me full on. “Impossible.”
“Or just very unlikely.”
“I was told artifacts did one thing, and only one thing. Isn’t the Principle of Single Purpose ironclad? ‘Each artifact has a purpose.’ How do we go from there to an item which can do three things?”
“Maybe we don’t,” I replied. It actually made sense, now that I thought about. An insane kind of sense, but still. “Maybe we just don’t know exactly what it’s purpose is.”
“That seems like a Hades-deep stretch, if you ask me.”
I liked the expletive he came up with just then. I’d have loved to learn how he came up with it, but that would have to wait. I shrugged again. “You’d think so, right? But that appears to be the simplest explanation.”
“But, even if such an artifact existed, what is the purpose here? Just creating mayhem?” he asked.
I shrugged. “Or perhaps it’s about theft. Maybe the boggart was a test run.”
“Seems like a lot of impossible for some cold cash.”
It did. It did. “We don’t have enough information. We need to visit Therese Sprig and ask a few questions.”
“But Director Farlance said the Portland sentinel was on medical leave,” Tully pointed out.
I hated myself for pressing this, but we needed information, immediately. “We need to visit her home and ask for her help. Get a look at her records and logbook.”
Tully didn’t look happy at this, but he didn’t argue.
We had to start putting the pieces together.
9
It was ten-thirty by the time we arrived at Therese Sprig’s. She lived up in the West Hills in a brick Tudor on a quiet street lined with maples, set back behind a tall hedge.
We walked up the drive to the locked gate. Tully stopped, frowned, staring at the posts on either side of the gate. Marble statues of fairies perched on each post.
“The house wards are activated,” he said.
After staring at one of the fairy statues for a long moment, I could make out a nimbus of green light around it. The same for its counterpart.
Very faint glowing green lines spread from each statue to surround the house and the yard around it. The wards protected the house from arcane intrusion, which meant something supernatural had attempted entry.
“Not good,” I said. We needed to unlock the wards. The easiest way to do that was to use a wand. “I need to borrow your wand,” I told Tully.
He sighed, but handed it over. The wand thrummed in my hand, filled with energy, unlike the loaner wand I’d been given.
“Show me which of these magic lines is the strongest,” I told Tully. I could only see them. He, on the other hand, could tell precisely which one was strongest.
He pointed it out. I waved the wand in a little circle around the line, then tapped it. It glowed brighter. A start, at any rate.
“I’ll unlock you, you’re willing, I’m in the right,” I began in a sing-song, in English.
Tully joined in.
This wasn’t going to be too bad at all.
“Respond and open,” I finished, and snapped
