David Coe: Spell Blind

“Clear yourself,” Namid whispered.

I nodded, and closed my eyes. Clearing was a technique the runemyste had taught me several years before, when he first started training me. It was a focusing mechanism that combined what many practitioners of magic call centering, with meditation, and we had worked on it enough that I could clear myself in mere moments. Once, early on, Namid had me visualize a time from my childhood when I remembered being happiest. I fixed on a camping trip with my parents in the Superstition Wilderness, east of the city. The runemyste made me describe for him every detail of the trip-what we ate, where we slept, what we did and saw. Gradually he steered me toward a single memory: a hike we took in the high country. My parents and I ate a late lunch on a crag that offered amazing views of the Sonoran Desert, stayed there for the sunset, and then returned to our campsite in the dim twilight, my father carrying me on his shoulders on the hike back down.

I remembered watching an eagle from that overlook. It was the first I’d ever seen, and it circled above the desert in front of us, the late afternoon sun lighting the golden feathers on its neck, the tips of its enormous wings splayed, its tail twisting one way and another as it rode the warm desert air.

“Whenever you need to clear yourself, I want you to summon the vision of that eagle,” Namid told me. “When you hold that image in your mind, it should remind you of that day, of that feeling of peace. It should drive away all distractions.”

And it did. At first, as I was still learning what Namid meant when he spoke of being clear, it could take five or ten minutes. But by now I could call the eagle to mind, and within a minute or two I was centered, my mind focused. As impatient as Namid was with me-as impatient as I often was with myself-I couldn’t deny that I was learning.

“When you are clear,” the runemyste whispered, “open your eyes again and tell me what you see in the mirror.”

For a few seconds longer I kept my mind fixed on the vision of the great bird. Opening my eyes at last, I stared at the surface of the glass again. It felt as if I was alone with the mirror, that Namid had vanished, or rather, that I’d left him behind, along with my office, and Jessie Tyler, and everything else.

The vision began as a thin gray swirl, like a wisp of smoke embedded in the glass. Another appeared, and a third. Soon there were a least a dozen of them chasing one another across the mirror, reminding me of children skating on a frozen pond. The center of the image began to glow, faintly at first, then brighter, until I could make out the oranges and blacks and pale yellows of embers in a dying fire. And then a hand emerged from the cinders. It might have been dark red, the color of blood, but it was silhouetted against that burning glow. It wasn’t taloned or deformed. It appeared to be a normal hand, long-fingered perhaps, but ordinary except for its color. Still, I knew immediately that it was. . wrong; that it didn’t belong here. For one thing, those wisps of gray smoke acted as though they were afraid of it. They kept as far from the hand as possible; when it moved, they did as well, matching its motion so as to keep their distance.

This continued for a while, the threads of smoke and the hand gliding over the embers, until suddenly the hand seized the strands of gray, capturing all of them in one lightning quick sweep across the mirror. The hand gripped them, the wisps of smoke appearing to writhe in its grasp. When at last the dark fingers opened again, what was left of the gray strands scattered like ash. And when those remnants touched the embers, they flared so brilliantly that I had to shield my eyes. By the time I looked at the mirror again, the image was gone. All that was left was the inverted reflection of my office.

The runemyste was watching me.

“What the hell was that, Namid?”

“What did you see?”

“You know perfectly well what I saw. You always know. What did it mean?”

“What do you think it meant?”

I shoved the mirror off my lap and stood too quickly; my vision swimming.

“Damn you, Namid! Can’t you answer a simple question? Just once?”

“This is as much a part of your training as the summoning of that image. Scrying is more than seeing. Scrying is understanding what you see.”

I hated it when he was right.

This was what made scrying so frustrating. The images came to me easily. Even Namid, who was a miser when it came to compliments, had once told me that the visions I summoned from my scrying stone were unusually vivid. Interpreting them, though, was another matter. Scryings were never clear or unambiguous. Rather they were shadows, portents, hints at the future. Frankly, they were a pain in the butt.

“I don’t know,” I said, beginning to pace the room. “That hand bothered me.”

“It should.”

I halted, surprised by the response. This was as close to a hint as he was ever likely to offer.

“Why, Namid? What does the hand mean?”

Before he could answer, the phone rang. Neither of us moved, and it rang again.

I kept my eyes on the runemyste, hoping he’d tell me more. The phone rang a third time.

“Someone wishes to speak with you.”

A fourth ring and the machine would pick up. I strode across the office and grabbed the phone.

“Fearsson,” I said, facing the runemyste.

“Justis.”

I would have known that voice anywhere. Kona Shaw. But why would Namid care about a call from Kona? She called all the time.

“What’s up, partner?”

“If you have to ask,” she said, “you haven’t read the paper yet.”

Namid stared at me, those cold, impenetrable eyes locked on mine. I felt my gut begin to tighten again.

“Tell me.” But even as I said it, my gaze flicked toward the calendar, and I knew. We were two days past the first quarter moon; five days until the full.

“We’ve found another body.”

“Where?”

“South Mountain Park.”

“Same guy?”

“Officially, I don’t know yet,” she said. “But yeah, it’s our guy.” I could hear the shudder in her voice. Kona was as tough as any cop I’d ever met. In all our years of working together I’d seen little that fazed her, including having a weremyste as a partner. But the Blind Angel murders would have made Jack the Ripper squeamish.

“Listen, partner,” Kona said, “we’re going to need your help on this one. Just to make sure it’s him, you know?” Her voice was nearly drowned out by background noise-car engines, shouting, and at least one siren.

“You still at the scene?” I asked.

“No, I’m. . I’m in Paradise Valley.”

“What?”

“Read the paper, Justis. Or go online. This’ll all make sense when you do.”

“You’ve got to give me more than that.”

No answer, though I could still hear the commotion behind her.

“Kona?”

“Yeah,” she said. “This victim isn’t like the others. It’s. . it’s Claudia Deegan.”

I would have done just about anything in the world for Kona, and I won’t deny that I still lay awake at night thinking about the Blind Angel murders, even though I hadn’t been on the job for a year and a half. But getting involved in an ongoing police investigation was dangerous enough for an ex-cop; getting involved in one that promised to be a media circus was more than I cared to deal with.

I would have told Kona as much, but abruptly I wasn’t paying attention to our conversation. Namid had crossed the room to where I stood, and was staring at me. His color had changed. He had been translucent, his waters as clear as a quiet stream. But now he was clouded, roiled, like a river after a hard rain. His eyes were the same, though: intense and bright. He’d never shown much interest in any of my cases, but it seemed this one had caught his attention.