“There,” she said, setting the chair back against the wall. “Now we have a place for the magic to gather before we use it, sort of like a holding tank.” She looked up expectantly, which Julius took as his cue to nod. This earned him a brilliant smile and the resumption of the impromptu lesson. “So, now that we’ve got a place for the magic to pool, it’s time to put down the instructions that will tell it what to do.”
She retrieved her chalk as she said this, kneeling at the circle’s edge to begin writing a line of Greek symbols, numbers, and abbreviated words along the inner curve. “I use Socratic notation because it’s the most precise and I like it the best, but there are several other spellwork languages that all do basically the same thing. The idea is to create a progressive series of algorithms that tell the magic how to behave, kind of like writing a computer program. Once the spellwork is finished, all I have to do is pull the magic through the circle andvoila, the spell is cast.” She glanced up at him. “Speaking of which, have you decided what kind of mage you want to be?”
He considered the question. “Well, it’s a shaman party, so probably a shaman of some sort. Preferably something quiet.” Because if anyone actually tried to talked to him about magic, he’d be revealed as a fraud in no time.
Marci thought for a moment, and then bent back over her circle. “I’ve got a good one,” she said, clicking chalk across the cement floor in deft strokes. “Just let me get it down and we’ll be golden.”
Julius nodded and settled in to wait, watching in fascination as Marci worked. He’d always thought of magic symbols as just that: random mystical shapes that controlled magic. Now that she’d explained what those long lines of spellwork actually did, though, he was surprised to see it really did look like code. Parts of it even looked almost readable. He was about to kneel down for a better look when something cold brushed against his leg.
He jumped before he could stop himself and glanced down to see a large, fluffy white cat. And then he jumped again, not just because this cat was inside the ward where cats weren’t supposed to be, but because this cat’s body wastransparent. It was glowing, too, shining with its own strange, blue-white light, almost like a—
“Ghost!”
He looked up to see Marci kneeling with her hands on her hips and a furious scowl on her face. “You know you’re not supposed to bother customers,” she said firmly, pointing at the far side of the basement. “Go on! Get out of here!”
The transparent cat gave her a disgusted look and stalked off toward the couch. He turned his back on them when he got there, silently grooming his paws like this relocation business had been entirely his idea.
“Marci,” Julius said, very slowly. “Why do you have a ghost cat?”
“Technically, he’s not a ghost,” Marci said, going back to her spellwork. “That’s just his name. He’s actually a death spirit. You probably noticed Mrs. Hurst had a bit of a cat problem?”
Julius glanced over at the wall of reflective eyes peering at them from the shadowy mountains of trash on the other side of the yellow plastic ward. “I noticed.”
Marci shook her head. “Nice old lady, but way too soft-hearted. She told me she couldn’t stand to turn away strays but never had the money to get them fixed, so naturally the house began to fill up. They’ve had the run of the place for years, which sadly means a lot of dead cats hidden in the garbage, and dead bodies bring death spirits.”
Julius looked at the transparent cat sitting on the couch with a cold shudder. “You’re sayinghe’sthe job you did for the lady who owned this place? The one you traded for free rent?”
“Yep,” Marci replied. “I was going through the public job boards when I saw this listing from an old lady who swore that a ghost cat was trying to kill her. I don’t normally take crazy jobs, but no one else had answered it and I needed the money bad, so I told her I’d come over and check it out. When I arrived, I found Ghost there sitting on top of my future client’s chest. He’d nearly sucked her dry by that point, and I ended up having to bind him just to make him detach.”
Julius recoiled. “That’s horrific.”
“You’re telling me,” Marci said, laughing. “I had to dodge furious cats the whole way in, and that was before I knew I’d be doing a binding.”
“Butwhydid you bind him?” Julius asked. “Why not banish him?” He didn’t know much about human magic, but he knew binding was a serious commitment that tied spirit and mage for life. That didn’t sound like the sort of thing you did on the fly with something as openly hostile as a death spirit.
“I thought about that,” she said. “But if I banished him, he’d just come back again and bother someone else. Besides, he’s a bit of a rare specimen. It’s been hypothesized that cats have more natural magic than other domesticated animals, but this is the first time I’ve seen or heard of a death spirit specific to the species. He’ll be a great thesis topic if I ever get a chance to go back and finish my doctorate.”
Julius stared at her, mouth open, an expression that was rapidly becoming his default around Marci. “You mean you bound adeath spiritto yourself for all time on the off-chance you can write a paper about him if you go back to school?”
“Well, he’s also pretty useful,” she said, brushing the chalk off her hands as she stood up. “When I can get him to obey, that is. Would you hand me the box, please?”
Julius did as she asked, silently handing her the shaking wooden box he’d brought over from the wardrobe. The soft rattling stopped when Marci broke the paper seal, and she reached inside to pull out something long, black, and slightly ridged, like an animal horn. “What’s that?”
“Chimera tusk,” Marci said proudly, holding the black object out for him to see. “And before you ask, it’s from a licensed humane farm in Canada. I don’t buy from factory mills. It taints the magic.”
Julius hadn’t been about to ask, mostly because it had never even occurred to him there would be chimera farms in Canada. He was, however, suddenly feeling very uneasy about this spell. “Why do you need a chimera tusk?”
“Well, I don’tneedit,” Marci said, placing the tusk squarely in the center of her palm. “But it takes a lot of magic to do two illusions thick enough to trick a room full of mages, and since I’m pretty sure you don’t want to stand around here all night waiting while I pull down that much power manually, I thought I’d employ an outside source. Think of it as using a battery.” She looked down critically at the tusk in her hand. “Besides, this one’s getting kind of old. Better to use it up now than wait and risk losing potency, you know?”
“I’ll take your word for it,” Julius said. “But why are you doing two illusions?”
“Because I’m coming with you.” Marci gave him a sideways look. “What? You didn’t think I’d let you go alone, did you?”
“Well,” Julius began. “I—”
“You’re my client,” she said, clearly appalled. “I can’t let you just go in without backup. What if you get dispelled? Also, and please don’t take this the wrong way, but you talk like a total null. It doesn’t matter how good a cover I slap on you, you’ll be outed in a second if you don’t have someone standing by to feed you lines.”
Julius couldn’t argue there. “I’d be happy to have you along, but I still don’t understand why you need a disguise. You’re already a mage.”
