“Why didn’t you leave when the auction winner left?” I asked.
“The rules state he gets a two-hour head start, then the rest of us can go.”
“Does anyone know you’ve come in here?”
“No.”
Catherine wasn’t finished with him. “Did you hear anything about the creature? Was it big, small, furry, scaly?”
“I’m sorry,” he said. “Professor Solorov will certainly tell us about it privately, but we haven’t had a private moment yet.”
“Fair enough. How many people are inside?”
Horace turned thoughtful. “Each bidder was supposed to come with no more than five people, but our party consisted of seven. Several Fellows refused to contribute to the kitty if they couldn’t come along. I thought it was bad form to bring so many, but the gentleman from Hong Kong brought twelve. The German brought only two employees, and the fat Californian brought a single bodyguard. The hostess has only one servant that I saw and, of course, the handler. Plus the hired security men in those brown uniforms.”
Catherine and I looked at each other. We hadn’t seen any security. If we didn’t count uniformed guards or the winning bidder, there were fourteen people, with the possibility of more servants. Great. I didn’t care how big the house was, that was too many people for us to go wandering around the grounds. Someone was bound to look out a window and spot us.
I picked up the handcuffs. Catherine put her hand near my elbow but didn’t touch me. “How did you find out about this auction?”
“Professor Solorov met with a man while she was in Los Angeles. Not the fat Silicon Valley person. He told her about the auction, and she brought the news to us. We were very excited. Forty-two million dollars is a lot of money for our group. Too bad it wasn’t enough.”
“What group?” Catherine asked.
“We call each other ‘Fellows’ but don’t have a name,” Horace answered. “We don’t even have a charter. We’re a social group with a common interest.”
“Interest in what?” Catherine asked before I could jump in with the most likely guess.
“Magic.”
That would have been my guess. Before I could respond, Catherine asked another question. “Do you have spell books? Artifacts?”
She was deliberately blocking my questions. What the hell. She was the investigator. I backed off to let her do her thing.
“No,” Horace answered. “None. All we ever do is read magic theory and case reports. None of us have seen a creature of the Deeps, and we certainly haven’t done any magic.”
“Theory? What books?”
Horace began to recite a long list of titles. I couldn’t follow them, but Catherine seemed intensely interested. She had her cellphone in hand. She was probably recording him. “There are some others I’m forgetting,” he finally said.
Catherine asked where the books were kept, and he gave an address in a town I hadn’t heard of. Then, at her request, he listed the other Fellows. They were just names to me, and I couldn’t remember them.
When that was over, I looked at Catherine to see if she was finished. She only shrugged. “Okay, Horace,” I said. “On your feet.” I lifted him and handcuffed him behind his back.
The rear door of the Caddy was unlocked, and the seat was spacious. I loaded Horace inside, then emptied his backup revolver and tossed it into the nose of a canoe in the rafters. I slid the tip of the ghost knife through his ankle and told him to get some sleep. He thanked me and closed his eyes.
When I turned away from him, Catherine was standing very close. “What do you have there?”
I slipped the ghost knife into my pocket. “A spell.”
“It made him answer all our questions. He didn’t hesitate at all.”
“Yeah,” I said. “He also didn’t want to kill us anymore.”
She laughed a little. “That’s a good thing, too. Okay. I think you should give that to me.” She held out her hand.
“Um, what?”
“That spell. You should give it to me and show me how it works. I’m the investigator here, and that thing could really help me with my job.”
“This is my spell,” I said. “I cast it.”
“I understand.” She didn’t pull back her open palm. “But you can see that this would be for the best.”
I was surprised that she would even ask this of me. “It’s my spell,” I said again with more emphasis. “I cast it myself. It’s pretty much a part of me. You might as well ask for my thumb.”
“Oh.” She let her hand fall to her side. “Is that how it is?”
“Yeah. You didn’t know?”
“I’m just an investigator. People with spells don’t usually explain anything to me.”
“Let me explain this much, then: I can feel this spell like it’s a part of my body. I don’t know how to explain it
