The Isis Collar

insanely comfortable despite their stuffy Victorian appearance, and sitting makes people less annoyed than standing. I passed the seating group like nothing was wrong but turned a quizzical face to my friend.

She slipped off her shoes and came out from behind her desk in nyloned feet. In a flash she was out of view, likely racing to the vacant office down the hall where we kept two others in the set. The rest were on the second floor and I doubted that Ron would bring one down from there on the narrow staircase, no matter how important the client.

I pretended to ignore the chairs while keeping my peripheral vision firmly fixed on them and the cat. I examined the wallpaper, comparing it to the photo in my hand.

When Dawna returned, a shake of her head and a thumbs-down with a frown made my pulse abruptly pound. My headache suddenly made itself known again. It had dulled from whatever magic John had used, but now it was back in blinding glory. The intensity of the pain made me suck in my breath hard and fight to focus.

That was when Minnie hissed at the chairs and arched her back before racing out of the room. The pain faded under the rush of adrenaline, when I felt familiar magic brewing in the room. I didn’t hear even a whisper over the yelling in the conference room, but I knew I didn’t have time to wait for Rizzoli and crew. The witch knew I knew and she would target me first. The fastest way to incapacitate the witch was to throw one of the charms at the chair she’d become. But if I picked the wrong chair and hit a cushion, the charm could easily bounce back and bind both me and Dawna.

There was another option. I was loathe to use it if I didn’t have to, but it would certainly solve my current problem. I have knives that are so magically powerful they’re considered artifacts. It took Bruno five years to make them for me, bleeding himself every day to bind the magic. One of those knives had killed Lilith. Her evil had turned the metal permanently black. No witch, no matter how tough, could withstand it.

The problem was, I didn’t know which chair she was. I hated to waste the charms, but a combination strike might be my only option. I faked a pair of sneezes, which made my head throb again, and then snuffled. I reached into my pocket like I was going for a tissue and drew out the charms. I practice really hard so when I throw charms, they land where I expect them to.

I threw one charm with each hand, as fast as I could. They hit the floor in front of the left- and right-hand chairs. Before I could think much about what I was doing, I pulled one of my knives from its sheath and tossed it; the blade flipped through the air before burying itself nearly to the hilt just above the ornately carved rosewood leg of the corner chair.

A scream of pain and anger filled the room. A flaming blast of magic hit me in the chest with frightening intensity and threw me backward. I landed in a heap at the bottom of the stairs. I only saw the woman’s platinum blonde hair as she shifted back to human form and plucked the glowing, white-hot knife from her arm. Then she dropped it like it burned. It probably did. She was holding something in her other hand. It was thick and square, but that’s all I could make out.

With a fast movement despite the pain, she jumped through the nearest window feetfirst, just like I had when I was saving Willow. The sound of shattering glass was like another scream. Then she was gone.

Well, so much for keeping her here. I had a feeling Rizzoli wasn’t going to be pleased with me.

I thought about chasing her, but frankly, I wouldn’t be able to keep up with her, thanks to my worsening limp. I was abruptly tired beyond measure. I had about as much energy as I’d had the last time I’d had the flu. I just wanted to curl up under a blanket with a bowl of chicken noodle soup. Sans noodles and chicken, of course. John was right. Something was really wrong with me.

The door to the conference room flew open and Ron marched out, looking angry. “What the hell is going on out here?” The tension in his voice was apparent. “We’re trying to have a meeting in here before people have to catch flights out.”

I opened my mouth to explain when it hit me. “Um, well, see … there could be a problem with your clients catching flights anytime soon.”

“Ooh,” Dawna replied with a wince because she realized it, too. “Yeah, that’s probably true.”

Ron is tall and lanky and has a face that’s all sharp angles. I’m sure he’s effective in court because he can be intimidating, but he’s also able to turn on fake charm like the best used-car salesman. He looked around the room and spotted the tattered blinds and glass littering the floor. He closed his eyes and put one hand on his hip, pushing aside his thousand-dollar suit jacket, while the other went up to rub his forehead. “Is that blood on the Oriental rug? What the hell, Celia? I’m getting really tired of the drama in your life.”

Him and me both.

A text message binged on arrival. Rizzoli: Lower the barrier. We’re here.

They were? I checked the time. It had only been eight minutes since I’d sent my photo message. It’s at least a thirty-minute drive from his office. Even if he was already en route when he called … this was too fast. Was I being followed? I’d definitely have to talk to Rizzoli about that, because my business depends on keeping things private. A federal shadow would not be good at all. But first things first. I sighed. “You might want to alert your clients that the FBI is here. Hopefully none of them have anything to hide, because I just chased a suspected terrorist out of the building. I don’t know how long she was here, but she was using illusion magic to look like a chair in the reception area. It could be coincidental, or one of them could have brought her.”

His eyes went wide and his jaw dropped. While he’s a pain in the butt, he’s smart. The wheels started turning behind his intense green eyes and he turned in a flash and nearly sprinted back to the conference room, muttering curses that would make a sailor’s ears burn.

“Well, that went well,” Dawna said in a fake cheery voice. “Now what do we do?”

I sighed and mentally threw any hope of getting to the university today out of my mind. “We lower the drawbridge and wait for the cavalry we called to trample us.”

11

It wasn’t quite as bad as I’d expected. But close. Rizzoli and three other agents arrived first and then more showed up as the minutes went by. I drank a couple of shakes and used the bathroom while they were with Dawna.

I was right, though; Rizzoli wasn’t at all happy that the witch wasn’t here anymore. “So let me get this straight. She was right there, as a chair, doing nothing aggressive? All you had to do was pretend to ignore her and wait for us, Graves, and we’d have had her in custody.”

True enough. I could have done that. Hell, I probably should have. “There were lots of people in the building, Rizzoli, and we had no way of knowing what she was planning. All I could tell was that she was doing some sort of casting. She could have been casting a curse, or worse. I have no idea why she was here to begin with, and I wasn’t happy about leaving her alone to do her own thing until you got here.”

“She’s right, sir,” said a woman in a gray suit—Rizzoli had introduced her as a forensic witch—who was kneeling on the carpeting near where the fake chair had been. She spoke with authority. “Ms. Graves probably did the best thing possible by putting her on the defensive and forcing her hand. There was something being worked in this room. If it was a booby trap, it would have taken out our team, or maybe the whole building when we walked through the door. I’m in the process of unwinding the spell to verify that. Plus, now we have her blood. It won’t be hard to analyze it and search for it in the database of magical beings. I can set up a tracking spell once I get back to my casting circle.”

I was right? Sweet. That’s a nice change. I didn’t like that a spell was being cast, though.

Rizzoli nodded appreciatively. “Okay, then. Good job, Celia. So let’s concentrate on how she got in to begin with and why she was here. You say you were outside when you heard her voice. Tell me about that. Where had you been and how long had you been gone?”

I sighed. I’d told the story three times already and it wasn’t getting any more interesting with repetition. The only thing I left out was the kiss because … well, it was none of their business and I didn’t need it on the record. “What I’m more concerned with is what she took with her.”

That made both Rizzoli and the witch stare at me. “You didn’t mention the first time that she took something,” Rizzoli said. “Any idea what?”

I shook my head. “I just remembered and I haven’t a clue. It was square, and about this big.” I measured