movement of the intruder against the background of shadowy shapes and blurry bits of light, and walked softly.
The intruder crept down the street and then quickly crouched down beside my old Volkswagen, the Blue Beetle. It took him maybe five seconds to open the lock, reach into the car, and draw out the long, slender shape of a sheathed sword.
He must have come to the house first, and circled it to determine where I was. He could have spotted my staff, which I'd left resting against the wall by the front door, when he looked into the kitchen window. And I was pretty sure it was a he I was dealing with, too. The movement of his arms and legs was brusque, choppy, masculine.
I took a few steps to one side and picked up Courtney's soccer ball. Then I approached to within a few yards and tossed it up in a high arc. It came down with a rattling thump on the Blue Beetle's hood.
Lurky-boy twitched, twisting his upper body toward the sound and freezing, and I hit him in a diving tackle with my body as rigid as a spear, all of my weight behind one shoulder, trying to drive it right through his spine and out his chest. He was completely unprepared for it and went down hard, driven to the sidewalk with a whuff of expelled air.
I grabbed him by the hair so that I could introduce his forehead to the sidewalk, but his hair was cut nearly military-short, and I didn't have a good grip. He twisted and got me in the floating rib with an elbow, and I wasn't in a good enough position to keep him from getting out from under me and scrambling away, the sheathed weapon still in hand.
I focused my will, flicked a hand at him, and spat, 'Forzare!' Unseen force lashed out at the backs of his knees-
And hit the mystic equivalent of a brick wall. There was a burst of twinkling, shifting lights, and he let out a croaking sound as he kept running. Something that glowed like a dying ember fell to the sidewalk.
I pushed myself up to pursue him, slipped on the wet grass next to the sidewalk, and rolled my ankle painfully. By the time I'd gotten to my feet again, he was too far away for me to catch, even if my ankle had been steady. A second later, he hopped a fence and was out of sight.
I was left there, standing beside my car on one foot, while neighborhood dogs sent up a racket. I gimped forward and looked down at the glowing embers of the thing he'd dropped. It was an amulet, its leather cord snapped in the middle. It looked as though it had been a carving of wood and ivory, but it was scorched almost completely black, so I couldn't be certain. I picked it up, wrinkling my nose at the smell. Then I turned back to the car and closed the open door. After that, I untwisted the piece of wire that held the trunk closed, picked up a blanket-wrapped bundle, and went back to Michael's place. MORNING ON A school day in the Carpenter household is like Southampton, just before June 6, 1944. There's a lot of yelling, running around, and organizing transport, and no one seems to be exactly sure what's going on. Or maybe that was just me, because by a little before eight, all the kids were trooping out to their bus stop, led by Alicia, the senior schoolchild.
'So he grabbed the sword and ran?' Molly asked, sipping coffee. She apparently had a cold, and her nose was stuffy and bright pink. My apprentice was her mother's daughter, tall and blond and too attractive for me ever to be entirely comfortable-even wrapped up in a pink fluffy robe and flannel pj's, with her hair a mess.
'Give me some credit,' I said, unwrapping the blanket-wrapped bundle and producing Amoracchius. 'He thought he took the sword.'
Michael frowned at me as he put margarine on his toast. 'I thought you told me the sword was best hidden in plain sight.'
'I've been getting paranoid in my old age,' I replied, munching on a bit of sausage. I blinked at the odd taste and looked at him.
'Turkey,' Michael said mildly. 'It's better for me.'
'It's better for everyone,' Charity said firmly. 'Including you, Harry.'
'Gee,' I said. 'Thanks.'
She gave me an arch look. 'Can't you just use the amulet to track him down?'
'Nope,' I said, putting some salt on the turkey 'sausage.' 'Tell her why not, grasshopper.'
Molly spoke through a yawn. 'It caught on fire. Fire's a purifying force. Wiped out whatever energy was on the amulet that might link back to the owner.' She blinked watery eyes. 'Besides, we don't need it.'
Michael frowned at her.
'He took the decoy,' I said, smiling. 'And I know how to find that.'
'Unless he's gotten rid of it, or taken steps to make it untraceable,' Michael said in a patient, reasonable tone. 'After all, he was evidently prepared with some sort of defensive measure against your abilities.'
'Different situation entirely,' I said. 'Tracking someone by using one of their personal possessions depends upon following a frequency of energy inherently unstable and transient. I actually have a piece of the decoy sword, and the link between those two objects is much more concrete. It'd take one he-uh, heck of a serious countermeasure to stop me from finding it.'
'But you didn't trail him last night?' Charity asked.
I shook my head. 'I didn't know where I'd have been going, I wasn't prepared, and since apparently someone is interested in the swords, I didn't want to go off and leave…'
You.
'The sword…'
Unprotected.
'Here,' I finished.
'What about the other one?' Michael asked quietly.
Fidelacchius, brother-sword to Michael's former blade, currently rested in a cluttered basket in my basement- next to the heavy locked gun safe that was warded with a dozen dangerous defensive spells. Hopefully, anyone looking to take it would open the safe first and get a face full of boom. My lab was behind a screen of defensive magic, which was in turn behind an outer shell of defensive magic that protected my apartment. Plus there was my dog, Mouse, two hundred pounds of fur and muscle, who didn't take kindly to hostile visitors.
'It's safe,' I told him. 'After breakfast, I'll track buzz-cut guy down, have a little chat with him, and we'll put this whole thing to bed.'
'Sounds simple,' Michael said.
'It could happen.'
Michael smiled, his eyes twinkling. BUZZ, AS IT turned out, wasn't a dummy. He'd ditched the decoy sword in a Dumpster behind a fast-food joint less than four blocks from Michael's place. Michael sat behind the wheel of his truck, watching as I stood hip-deep in trash and dug for the sword.
'You sure you don't want to do this part?' I asked him sourly.
'I would, Harry,' he replied, smiling, 'but my leg. You know.'
The bitch of it was, he was being sincere. Michael had never been afraid of work. 'Why dump it here, do you think?'
I gestured at a nearby streetlight. 'Dark last night, no moon. This is probably the first place he got a good look at it. Parked his car here, too, maybe.' I found the handle of the cheap replica broadsword I'd picked up at what had amounted to a martial arts trinkets shop. 'Aha,' I said, and pulled it out.
There was another manila envelope duct-taped to the blade. I took the sword and the envelope back to the truck. Michael wrinkled up his nose at the smell coming up from my garbage-spattered jeans, but that expression faded when he looked at the envelope taped to the sword. He exhaled slowly.
'Well,' he said, 'no use just staring at it.'
I nodded and peeled the envelope from around the blade. I opened it and looked in.
There were two more photos.
The first was of Michael, in the uniform shirt he wore when he coached his daughter's softball team. He was leaning back on the bleachers, as he had been when I'd first walked up to speak to him.
The second picture was of a weapon-a long-barreled rifle with a massive steel snout on the end of it, and what looked like a telescope for a sight. It lay on what looked like a bed with cheap motel sheets.
'Hell's bells,' I muttered. 'What is that?'
Michael glanced at the picture. 'It's a Barrett,' he said quietly. 'Fifty-caliber semiautomatic rifle. Snipers in the Middle East who use them are claiming kills at two kilometers, sometimes more. It's one of the deadliest long-
