She gave me a scathing look. “You never make an open-ended agreement with anyone belonging to the shadow world. By saying you’d help him without any qualifiers, you gave him an open-ended contract. You handed him the keys to your soul. How could you be so stupid?”
“How am I supposed to know any of this? I haven’t exactly had anyone giving me helpful pointers. I’m figuring this shit out as I go along.”
“This is why vampires are taken into a clan for the first hundred years. So, they can be taught what they need to know. You’ve been around us long enough to know better. Gerald at the very least should have taught you better.”
He hadn’t. At least not that I could remember.
Her words made me feel dumber than when my Drill Sergeant made me feel an inch high for getting sun poisoning because I didn’t put on sun screen. The military has no sympathy for preventable injuries.
“I did the best I could considering he was torturing me at the time. Can you help me or not?”
“I can’t. The sorcerer who put it there is too powerful. Nothing I could do would remove it. I wouldn’t anyway. Its bad form to interfere once the agreement is struck. You have to fulfill your part or forfeit the penalty.”
I had a feeling that would be the answer. At least Miriam looked regretful she couldn’t help me.
“Fine. That’s not the only reason I came here. The sorcerer gave me a task, and I need to get a witch’s perspective on something.” I looked around the room. “Judging by what’s in here I came to the right place.”
The illusion she constructed was pretty thorough. In addition to hiding any sign of the jungle she had in here, it had wiped away all traces of smell. With it gone, the scent of dirt and growing things saturated the air. I inhaled. Jasmine. How did I miss all of this before?
“How so?” Miriam asked.
She poured a cup of tea from the cast iron pot sitting next to her,. She didn’t ask if I’d like one.
“If someone wanted to completely mask a scent, how would they go about doing it? And by completely, I mean a werewolf would be able to walk right by an area that smells like a butcher shop five minutes later and not smell a thing.”
“That is oddly specific.” She took a sip of her tea. “Would this illusion involve sight as well?”
I thought about it a moment. Nothing had appeared amiss in the alley either of the times I’d been in it. That didn’t mean anything, though. I could have very easily missed something.
“Illusions are tricky and easily broken,” Miriam said. “It’s especially hard to trick all of the senses. The stronger the sense, the harder it is to fool. A werewolf’s nose is extremely sensitive. One could have walked into this shop and sniffed out my garden in moments. This illusion wouldn’t have stood a chance.”
“So, because my olfactory sense isn’t as strong, the illusion held up against me,” I said following her logic.
“Yes. Theoretically, it should be easier to fool one sense—for instance smell—but in reality, most witches couldn’t manage it.”
“Could you?” I asked.
She inclined her head.
“I could but it would take me weeks of preparation. If you don’t mind me asking, how are you sure that smell was the sense targeted if your hypothetical werewolf missed it?”
“Hypothetically, I walked through an area and smelled it, but when the werewolves moved through ten minutes later, all trace of the odor was gone. By your reasoning, that scenario should be impossible, shouldn’t it? Since my sense of smell is so much weaker?”
Miriam’s face was thoughtful as she tapped one finger against her mug.
“Castings take time to take hold. You may have wandered through the target area in the brief span between whatever created the smell and the casting.”
That was pretty much the conclusion I’d come to.
“How many people in the city could make a casting of that complexity?”
Miriam’s focus turned inward as she considered.
“Hm. That is a difficult question and the answer is rather imprecise.”
“Just give me a ballpark.”
An answer would at least give me a place to start.
