The Collected Christopher Connery (31 page)

“Did you – did you build that yourself?” Nia asked as she
stared at the house through the window.

“Yep!” Xavier replied proudly. “Gail helped with some of it
too.”

“So you can blame me for anything funny looking.”

In truth, the whole place was a little funny looking. It
was two stories tall at the center, but spreading out from the east side like a
lazy limb was the extra one-story wing that held the schoolroom and the extra
kitchen space. The house only had windows on the north and south walls because
the broader western and eastern sides were almost entirely hidden by the steep
roofs that ran from sharp peaks nearly to the ground. Atop the shingles were narrowly
spaced metal gutters that funneled the worst of the rainwater down to the
ground around the house, which was in turn lined with metal troughs on wheels.
The troughs could be wheeled down to the river and dumped when they got too
full. Sure, there was no stopping the rain entirely, but the troughs could make
the difference between ground that was soggy but solid and ground that tried to
eat a house’s foundation during the rainy season.

None of that was as good as proper magic waterproofing,
but it helped. It wasn’t cheap to keep up with either, but it kept Xavier’s
house about as secure as any house in Gracetown could be.

“You need any help with the troughs today?” she asked as
the car came to a stop between the house and the garage.

“Nah, I took care of it this morning. Thanks, though.”
Xavier opened his door and got out. He tested the air with a hand before
calling back, “It’s dry, by the way.”

“Thanks,” Gail replied. “Looks like today is our lucky
day, huh, princess?”

Nia opened her mouth, but didn’t seem to know how to
reply. Instead she just awkwardly pushed her hair back over her shoulder and
said, “We had better get him inside. The spell won’t keep him asleep forever.”

“Sure thing.” With a great deal of twisting and
wriggling, Nia and Gail managed to pass the sleeping man out to Arthur, who
caught him under the arms with a grimace.

“Ugh, it’s like licking a battery.” When he noticed
Xavier giving him a questioning look, he shrugged as best he could while
holding half of a mostly naked unconscious man. “It’s – uh – a magic thing.”

Xavier’s brow furrowed. “How does –”

“I’ll explain what I understand of it to you later,
Xavier, layman to layman,” said Gail, “but now we better get him and your
groceries inside before it rains again.”

“All right,” said Xavier, still studying the Graveses
curiously. Gail knew from experience that it was one thing to
know
that
a person was a magician and another to actually observe them doing magician
things right in front of you, but Xavier’s questions would have to wait. “Why
don’t you give him to me? I should be able to carry him.”

Though Xavier’s shoulders were easily twice the width of
Arthur’s, the doc still hesitated. “I’d be careful. You were hurt and it’s
possible there may be other injuries that haven’t made themselves known yet.”

Xavier shook his head with a light laugh. “Don’t worry, I
feel absolutely –” But as he reached his arms toward the unconscious man, his
eyes widened and he stepped back, one hand moving to his chest.

“Are you okay?” Gail set her half of the man down on the
ground, but Xavier waved her away.

“I’m fine, I’m fine, it’s just –” He laughed again, a
little unsteadily this time. “Maybe you’re right. I should take it easy. It has
been a hell of a day.”

Arthur took a hesitant step toward him. “Maybe I should
–”

Xavier cut Arthur off with another smile. “Sure. I’d be
grateful if you took another look, but let’s get him inside first. Follow me,
I’ll show you where you can put him.”

Xavier led them into the house, through the warm kitchen,
and up the stairs to a small guest bedroom. “It’s not much, but it’s better
than nothing. Sometimes people stay here when they’re in between residencies,”
he said as he opened the door.

When they get washed out,
Gail corrected silently
as she helped Arthur lay the sleeping man out on the narrow bed. He twitched as
his skin touched the covers as if even that soft contact was painful against
his water burns, but hopefully he was too deeply asleep to feel much.

“I should get out of your way,” Xavier said after they’d
gotten the man situated. No doubt he was probably still a bit magic shy. Gail
could understand that. “I don’t want to leave the food sitting in the car for
too long.”

“I’ll help you bring it in,” Arthur said immediately.
“Then I can take care of your injuries properly.”

Xavier smiled. “Thanks.”

As the men left the room, Gail turned back to the man on
the bed. He would have been a hard sight to stomach at the best of times, but
knowing he was a picture of what Gail herself might have become if not for Nia
and Arthur’s timely intervention made it even worse.

Even more reason to see if you can help him then.
Steeling
herself, she went over to Nia, who was already bent over the bed with her ear
pressed to the man’s chest. “Can I help?”

“Just a moment.” Nia straightened up and began carefully
setting her writing implements on the bedside table. “The first step will be
healing his body as much as possible. That might give him the strength to speak
to us.”

“Won’t more magic make it worse?”

Nia looked at her sadly. “At this point, it won’t make
much difference.”

Gail accepted that silently. After removing what tattered
rags the man had left to him, Nia went to work drawing healing circles on bits
of slate and sliding them under the injured parts of his body. She had
triggered five of the seven when he woke from his stupor with a shriek. Gail
automatically stepped in front of Nia, just in case the man went for her like
he’d gone for Xavier.

But Nia gently pushed Gail’s arm aside and bent closer to
the man. “Sir, can you hear me?”

The man’s eyes rolled wildly in his head as if he
couldn’t find the source of her voice. Gail wondered if he was blind.

“Sir,” Nia continued in a clear measured voice. “Did
Christopher Connery do this to you?”

The man’s mouth moved spasmodically like the words were
insects he was trying to keep trapped in his mouth.

“Please, sir, we want to help you. Why are you here? Do
you remember what he wanted you to do?”

When the man just kept rolling his tongue around in his
mouth, Nia drew another spell on his chest. It must have been a strong one,
because even Gail thought she felt an odd quivering in the air when Nia
triggered it. The naked man blinked and when his eyes opened again, they were a
little clearer. This time when Nia spoke, his gaze jerked toward her and held
on her face.  

“Sir,” she said again, looking him directly in the eyes.
“What did he want you to do?”

The man breathed in deeply once, twice. Then, staring straight
at Nia’s face, he forced out, “Emergency repairs.”

Then he died.

Nia gazed down at him for another few seconds before
looking up at Gail. “That didn’t make any sense.”

Gail shrugged.

Shaking her head, Nia drew a blanket up over the man’s
face. “That was a waste of time,” she said as she packed her tools away, “but
I’m glad we were able to ease his passing a little. If I don’t miss my guess
he’s been ensorcelled for weeks now, probably since just before Connery died –
or had himself killed, I suppose is more accurate.”

“You think he did all of the work alone?”

“There’s no way to know. He could have, if he were given
specific enough instructions. I only wish we could have gotten a little more
out of him before –” She broke off as the door opened.

“I told you I felt all right,” Xavier was saying as he
stepped inside, a bandage over one eye and a dishtowel of ice pressed to his
jaw. “It must have just been the surprise of – oh.”

“We did all we could,” Nia said, “but he… he was never
going to last very long, I’m afraid.”

“I – I see.” Xavier looked at the still lump under the
blankets then glanced back at Arthur. “Do you – do you know what was wrong with
him?”

Nia’s brow furrowed darkly, but before she could
interject, Gail gently touched her arm, surprising her into silence. Xavier
meant no disrespect. It was just that Illuminators weren’t seen much down here.
When water was a bigger threat to your life than any kind of magic, doctors
were the people you turned to when you needed help – if you could find one.

Arthur fielded the question gracefully. “This one is a
bit outside my area of expertise. What do you think, Ni?”

Clearly thrown off by the exchange, Nia had to take a
moment to gather herself before answering. “He was… possessed, one could say,
by magic. He was being magically controlled to carry out some magician’s
purpose.”

Xavier blinked. “Really? Why would a magician want to
attack me?”

“Oh, don’t worry. By the time he attacked you, his mind
had degraded too much for the magic to retain any rational aim. It’s only to be
expected, really, if you rely on a layman mind.”

“I – I see.”

When Gail gave her a sharp look, Nia started, then
clasped her hands in front of her and looked at the floor. “I didn’t mean it
badly. It’s simply different. Magic is not healthy for laymen, you understand.”

Yeah, Gail figured she did. She also figured she was
being an asshole again. Maybe being back in Gracetown was making her a little
touchy. “That’s true enough, Xavier. I’ve had some experience with getting
magic-ed and I wouldn’t recommend it.”

Xavier’s eyebrows shot up. “That sounds like hell of a
story. Does this have anything to do with that case you’re working on? The one
with the –” Xavier waved one of his own arms, just in case Gail needed help
recalling that time she and Arthur had gone stumbling through the hotel with an
unconscious Nia wearing Connery’s arms.

“Yeah, but – look, I don’t want to drag you into it,
Xave. It’s an ugly case.”

Xavier looked at the still form under the blankets again.
“Sure looks like it.”

The room slid into a deep and awkward silence. Xavier was
clearly taking time to come to terms with the fact that there was a dead man in
his guestroom. Nia was staring down at her shoes, which made Gail feel like
twelve kinds of shit, and Arthur clearly had no idea how to fix things and just
kept looking back and forth between them all like there was some silent
argument going on that only he could hear.

Honestly, one of them should’ve stepped forward and taken
things in hand, seeing as they had brought the trouble in the first place, but
it was Xavier who stepped up to the bed and lay one hand lightly on the part of
the blanket covering the dead man’s chest. “Should we call the police?”

“I’m not sure they’d know what to do with him,” Gail
answered. “Anyway, we’ve got an Illuminator here. What do you think we should
do, Nia? Bring him to the Academy?”

“I…” At first, Nia only gaped at her, but when Xavier
looked at her, she shook herself back into professional Illuminator Graves once
more. “Eventually, yes, that would be best. However, for the moment, it would
be more useful to have him here. I may still have need of him.”

Gail could tell Xavier was wondering what Nia could
possibly need a dead body for, but she just shrugged at him and he didn’t ask
any questions. Maybe he figured there were certain things he was better off not
knowing. He was probably right.

“Do you think Con –” Arthur swallowed back the name. “Do
you think what we’re looking for is still here?”

“I don’t know,” Nia admitted. “The altercation with this
gentleman took me by surprise. I’ll need to regroup and try the spells again.
It may be that all I sensed was the ensorcelling done on this man, but…” She
trailed off, eyes turning toward the small northern window as she sank into
thought. If pressed, she probably wouldn’t have an answer better than
I have
a feeling,
but Gail had been there herself and was willing to play along,
so long as Nia kept her and Arthur clued in.

“Should we do that at the hotel?” Gail glanced at Xavier again.
Not only were they filling his house with dead men and secrets, but they also
had no choice but to keep talking around him like he wasn’t standing right
there with bruises on his neck and blood on his face.

“We could,” Nia replied with reluctance. “It will put a
great deal of distance between us and – what we’re looking for, but I suppose
that’s the only way.” She dropped her eyes to the dead man. “He won’t fit very
neatly under the bed. Maybe the closet…”

The words gave Gail a headache and worse, she had no way
of arguing with them. If Nia really did need the guy for her spells than they
couldn’t bring him back to the Academy yet, but while she had almost gotten
used to wandering around with severed limbs in her luggage, an entire corpse
shoved into a hotel closet seemed beyond the pale. Surely they had to tell
someone,
but then again, who was there to tell? The layman cops would just pass him
on to the Academy and the Academy clearly wanted Nia off the case which meant
they weren’t likely to jump to their aid either.

And that left them with about one and a half corpses and
nowhere to put them. She was reluctantly about to offer the use of her
apartment, when Xavier said, “You can stay here, if you want.”

When Gail and the Graveses looked at him in surprise, he
shrugged, one hand moving across his bruised throat. “I don’t know what kind of
case you’re working on…”

Gail knew that was at least half a lie; they’d let enough
slip that he had to be at least starting to put it together by now, but it was
nice of him to play the fool for them.

“But clearly something terrible happened to this poor
bastard and I’d like to help, if I can. If it’ll help you solve the case
quicker, Illuminator Graves, you’re welcome to stay here for a few days and
work. With the kids gone for the season, I’ve got extra space.” He paused. “As
long as it won’t be a danger to the neighborhood, that is.”