Douglas, Nelson - Cat with an Emerald Eye

"So Gandolph was a real threat to her, simply by investigating. But surely Agatha and the professor--"

"Oh, tried and true, each in their own field; but Mangel is up for a prestigious chair and now soft-pedaling his approval of psychic phenomena, which made any possibility of appearing in a Gandolph investigation troublesome. In fact, he hasn't participated in a seance for two years, which makes one wonder why he would come to Las Vegas for such a public stunt just now--"

"Unless he knew Gandolph was living here and expected him to find the Houdini Halloween seance irresistible. Is anyone really that serpentine?"

"Tem-ple," Max rebuked her with great green cat-eyes.

"And Agatha? I'm afraid to ask."

"Simply put: quite crackers. She tried to poison some tea-reading subjects, under the assumption that they would make good contacts in the spirit world if she had sent them there herself. She was ultimately released from the mental hospital, but you know how overcrowding permits premature release of all sorts of people."

Temple sat bolt upright, clutching at her throat.

"Temple?"

"Poison in the tea? Max, I drank her tea, when she did her reading and warned me about a short dark man who was a secret ally. Hey, maybe she meant 'male,' not man. That could have been Midnight Louie!"

"Like all objects of predictions, you're finding ways to justify them. How long ago did you drink tea with Agatha?"

"Two days ago, but--ahh! I feel as if I'd swallowed a bug, or at least a marijuana joint; either way it's a roach."

Max patted her on the shoulders. "Two days? Drink your wine, then, and bless your lucky stars that dear Agatha didn't consider you good spirit fodder."

"Well, they all could have killed Gandolph, then."

Max topped off her glass, and then refilled his own empty one.

"Aren't you hitting that a little heavy?"

"Yes. Yes, I am. You see, there's another means and motive that could have killed Gary. I still suspect human intervention, only I can't prove it, and I doubt any trace will be found. But to explain my theory I can't research dead magicians' lives or their computer files. I can't rely on the spirit world showing me the way. I have to exhume some rather painful parts of my own life."

Max smiled a bit crookedly at Temple. "Want to help me turn over some of the auld sod?"

She just nodded.

Max stared past her, into the opium bed's farthest corner. Temple wondered what ghosts might haunt an artifact like this, what dreams, what nightmares. Maybe that was why Max liked it; it took his mind off his own dreams and nightmares.

"What you call my Interpol summer,' when I was sixteen-going-on-seventeen: our families sent my cousin Sean and me to Ireland our senior summer before college. You know my full roster of given names. Michael Aloysius Xavier. Sean got Patrick Donnell too. Our families were fourth-generation American, but their hearts were still in the homeland.

"Sean and I were best buddies. The summer was to be a last lark before hitting the books for real. I was going to major in communications and earn money on the side with magic shows.

Sean was going to become a history professor. Our families' blessings and a list of a few hundred cousins all over the auld sod accompanied us on our first big trip away from home."

"It must have been a fabulous opportunity."

"It was. Except two teenagers loose in a foreign land will try anything: passing for overage in pubs, dating every colleen that clog-dances, talking passionate politics We were appalled at the oppression in Northern Ireland. Most American sympathies are with the Irish, because so many of us fled here during the Famine.

"It's a long, sad story, so let me boil it down for you. We got to hanging around with the wrong elements; we got caught up in the uncivil war over there. It was all so involving, so eye-opening, so exotic. We didn't know how to walk the thin line between orange and green, we didn't even see it. Sean was blown up in an IRA hit."

"No!"

"I would have been there to be blown up too, except... there was a girl we both met, both flirted with. She was a bit older in years, and decades in experience. I was off with her when Sean died. We'd had a real fight about it, bloody knuckles and everything. Sean stormed off, went to the wrong pub, and that was that."

"Max, that's awful. But how did you end up suspected of being part of the IRA?"

Max swigged the expensive wine as if it were beer. "I joined the IRA, determined to find the ones who had killed Sean. Then I would turn them in."

"What? But you sympathized with the IRA."

"Not then."

"There's a name for that."

"Counterespionage. I doubt I could have spelled it then. It was a guilt-offering. I'd gone home for the funeral. Of course we'd each written home all summer, and Sean had written of our romantic triangle. I discovered he'd always taken it more seriously than me. If I'd have known I'd have bowed out, but it seemed like a game, a friendly competition. Anyway, at the funeral it was obvious that Sean's parents blamed me. My folks, of course, were fiercely partisan on my behalf. So the war came back to Wisconsin. My family didn't want me to go back to Ireland, but our two families had always been close. I couldn't stand the carnage, so I left."

"And became a teenage spy."

"There are no teenagers in Ireland, north and south, Temple. At least not in those days, and not for centuries before. Children fight that guerrilla war, and pay for it and die for it. I was in way over my head, but I did finally trace the cadre of men who had bombed that particular pub.

All my magic practice proved to be quite useful, after all. Then I turned them over to the British."

Temple propped her elbows on her thighs and put her face in her hands.

"I know. For the fantasy of avenging Sean and purging myself of guilt I put my entire life into a meat-grinder. I didn't even understand yet that the particular bombers didn't matter, that it was a conflict that had been bigger than anybody in it, including me, for centuries."

"How did you survive?"

"I didn't. I ran, to the Continent, and that wasn't far enough. In some circles what I did was considered an accomplishment, because I was finally found and offered a 'scholarship* by...

another organization."

"What do you mean?"

"I can't say much more. There are those who oppose terrorism in any cause, in any place.

Nations, commercial concerns, individuals. They offered me sanctuary; they offered me an education all over Europe, a chance to become a real magician; they offered me a family, and a more positive career in global espionage. Gary was allied with them. One of my first tutors. He could have been killed for that past, and there would be no trace."

"But he was retired, even from his magician career, wasn't he?"

"There is no retirement. I tried , and you saw what happened."

Temple nodded slowly. "I was your retirement."

He reached for her hand. "You weren't very retiring, though. That's why Gandolph has to have a book out; not just because the subject was dear to his heart, and he deserved a life after his many years of service and risk, but some... elements might fear what he would write. If this rather innocuous book on mediums is published, that will lull their suspicions. They will think that was all that was in his mind and his computer files."

"This is insane! You have to go through the rigmarole of publishing an entire book just to mislead someone?"

"Not for Gary's sake. It's too late. For mine. The more normal I can make the life around me, the more chance I've got of escaping the old life."

"But you were a public person, a performer before."

"And that was tolerated as long as they knew where I was and what I was doing. I wasn't a danger to anyone. You're only dangerous when you drop out. I might have tried for a new identity ultimately. That's why I was so unfair to involve you, but I was tired of life on the run, of being aloof from anybody human, from love. I guess I reverted to being a stupid teenager again when I met you, Temple, and that was that."