Read Online Low Midnight (Kitty Norville Book 13) by Carrie Vaughn - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Carrie Vaughn
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observed.
Cormac took a slow walk around the site anyway, tipping up rocks with his boots, checking under trees for anything out of place. Didn’t even find a broken beer bottle or weather-faded can, which meant nobody came up here much. At least, nobody stopped for long if they did. He wondered if bringing a metal detector up here would uncover anything.
He took a moment to stand still, listening. Waiting for that prickling on the back of his neck that told him something strange was close by, a feeling of warning that had as much to do with instinct as anything supernatural.
Let’s scry a bit, see if anything turns up.
Since meeting Amelia and leaving prison, he’d taken to carrying a collection of items in his pockets. String, a candle stub, a packet of salt, a few herbs like sage and rowan. A piece of chalk, a bit of iron, a quartz crystal. The most basic tools of spell casting. He could work just about any kind of basic magic with these items. Rather, Amelia could work magic, using his body to manipulate the items, to power the spells. She’d been able to use her magic to preserve her soul, but without a body, she couldn’t use what she’d learned.
Over time, Cormac had come to see the usefulness of Amelia’s brand of magic. Made up a little for losing his guns—though as he sometimes joked at Ben, it wasn’t having guns that was strictly illegal for a convicted felon like him; it was getting caught with them. Ben didn’t think that was funny.
This is quite simple, really. It won’t tell us details, but it will tell us if this location has a strong magical presence or not. This might indicate if Kuzniak used magic to kill Crane.
“Let’s get to it then.”
First, face east. Then we’ll need a small hole in the ground—
He found east by the sun, which was edging past noon to the western hills, then found a sheltered space where he dug a divot in the ground using his boot heel.
We need kindling for a fire, and a match—
Using his pocket knife, he cut a twig and its lingering dried-up leaves from a scrub oak and crumbled the vegetation into the hole. Early discussions between them established that a disposable lighter worked just as well as a match. Better, even, though it might not have been as elegant and mysterious. Amelia was still getting used to the wondrous modern technology.
In the end, he could only do so much, following the easy directions she gave him. He could do the prep work, the hard labor. But just about every spell had a moment where timing and precision came into the mix. A deeper knowledge, the kind of thing Amelia had spent her life studying, and Cormac hadn’t. So he gave himself over to Amelia.
In that moment, he didn’t have control of his body. He was there looking through his eyes, he could feel his thumb resting on the lighter, felt the sun’s heat on the back of his neck, but Amelia was doing the moving. Wasn’t quite an out-of-body experience. More like sitting in the passenger seat when you didn’t know if the person next to you could really drive. He’d learned to sit back calmly, resting in the back of his own mind so he didn’t panic and freeze up.
Kitty told him once that he’d fallen asleep, but Amelia hadn’t, and talked in a dreamlike state. He didn’t remember that. He wouldn’t say that he was afraid she’d up and take him over entirely one of these days, waiting until he fell asleep and then going for some walk he wouldn’t appreciate. But nervous wasn’t quite afraid, was it?
I wouldn’t do that, she commented. When you sleep, I sleep. I was talking in your sleep, that time.
That didn’t even make sense.
She held up the lighter and a length of red string, then whispered an incantation with his voice, something in a language he didn’t know, probably Latin but knowing Amelia it could have been anything. She repeated the incantation twice more, set the string on fire, and dropped it in the makeshift cauldron filled with leaves.
The
Cormac took a slow walk around the site anyway, tipping up rocks with his boots, checking under trees for anything out of place. Didn’t even find a broken beer bottle or weather-faded can, which meant nobody came up here much. At least, nobody stopped for long if they did. He wondered if bringing a metal detector up here would uncover anything.
He took a moment to stand still, listening. Waiting for that prickling on the back of his neck that told him something strange was close by, a feeling of warning that had as much to do with instinct as anything supernatural.
Let’s scry a bit, see if anything turns up.
Since meeting Amelia and leaving prison, he’d taken to carrying a collection of items in his pockets. String, a candle stub, a packet of salt, a few herbs like sage and rowan. A piece of chalk, a bit of iron, a quartz crystal. The most basic tools of spell casting. He could work just about any kind of basic magic with these items. Rather, Amelia could work magic, using his body to manipulate the items, to power the spells. She’d been able to use her magic to preserve her soul, but without a body, she couldn’t use what she’d learned.
Over time, Cormac had come to see the usefulness of Amelia’s brand of magic. Made up a little for losing his guns—though as he sometimes joked at Ben, it wasn’t having guns that was strictly illegal for a convicted felon like him; it was getting caught with them. Ben didn’t think that was funny.
This is quite simple, really. It won’t tell us details, but it will tell us if this location has a strong magical presence or not. This might indicate if Kuzniak used magic to kill Crane.
“Let’s get to it then.”
First, face east. Then we’ll need a small hole in the ground—
He found east by the sun, which was edging past noon to the western hills, then found a sheltered space where he dug a divot in the ground using his boot heel.
We need kindling for a fire, and a match—
Using his pocket knife, he cut a twig and its lingering dried-up leaves from a scrub oak and crumbled the vegetation into the hole. Early discussions between them established that a disposable lighter worked just as well as a match. Better, even, though it might not have been as elegant and mysterious. Amelia was still getting used to the wondrous modern technology.
In the end, he could only do so much, following the easy directions she gave him. He could do the prep work, the hard labor. But just about every spell had a moment where timing and precision came into the mix. A deeper knowledge, the kind of thing Amelia had spent her life studying, and Cormac hadn’t. So he gave himself over to Amelia.
In that moment, he didn’t have control of his body. He was there looking through his eyes, he could feel his thumb resting on the lighter, felt the sun’s heat on the back of his neck, but Amelia was doing the moving. Wasn’t quite an out-of-body experience. More like sitting in the passenger seat when you didn’t know if the person next to you could really drive. He’d learned to sit back calmly, resting in the back of his own mind so he didn’t panic and freeze up.
Kitty told him once that he’d fallen asleep, but Amelia hadn’t, and talked in a dreamlike state. He didn’t remember that. He wouldn’t say that he was afraid she’d up and take him over entirely one of these days, waiting until he fell asleep and then going for some walk he wouldn’t appreciate. But nervous wasn’t quite afraid, was it?
I wouldn’t do that, she commented. When you sleep, I sleep. I was talking in your sleep, that time.
That didn’t even make sense.
She held up the lighter and a length of red string, then whispered an incantation with his voice, something in a language he didn’t know, probably Latin but knowing Amelia it could have been anything. She repeated the incantation twice more, set the string on fire, and dropped it in the makeshift cauldron filled with leaves.
The
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