Ghost of a Chance

The man’s angry look faded to one of irritation. The kind of people who parked their boats in private marinas tended to like their privacy. Ever since the last mayor dumped all the slot machines into the east river, a lot of Manhattan’s wealthy had moved their poker games to places like this to avoid the law. Alex was betting the caretaker didn’t want the cops crawling around looking for a missing kid.

“Fine,” he said after a long moment. “What’s this feller’s name?”

Alex shrugged.

“He wouldn’t be hiding under his own name,” he said. “Is there anyone here living on their boat?”

“Sure,” he said. “Lots of folks do that. Prob’ly five or six here right now.”

“Anyone acting cagey, you know, nervous? Staying out of sight, only coming and going at night, that sort of thing?”

The old man shook his head.

“Nothin’ like that,” he said. “But folks round here like to keep to themselves.”

Alex resisted the urge to swear and thanked the old man instead.

“Mind if I have a look around anyway?” he asked, heading for the door.

“Help yourself,” the caretaker said, picking his paper up off the floor and going back to it.

Alex made his way slowly down the dock. The sun shone brightly on the water and he had to squint to see clearly. He pulled the compass from the pocket of his jacket and consulted it.

This time he did swear.

The needle of the compass was pointing north.

There were plenty of boats on the north side of the marina, but the needle was pointing right down between a row of berths, right at the open water. He took a few steps back, but the needle didn’t even waver. The magical link was gone.

It wasn’t pointing at Leroy Cunningham anymore.

Alex took a deep breath and reined in his anger. Lots of things could cause magic to fail. Sometimes spells simply ran out of energy and expired, or the subject could have moved too far out of range. In the case of water, if Leroy had been on a boat out in the ocean, the presence of that much water could block the spell, even if he were relatively close by.

Looking around and finding himself alone, Alex knelt down on the dock and pulled the last finding rune from his rune book. He folded it quickly and put it atop the compass, adding Hannah’s silver wedding band from his pocket. The paper matchbook in his pocket only had three matches left and he lit one and touched it to the rune.

This time the silver ring went rolling right for the edge of the dock and Alex had to throw himself at it to keep it from being lost. When he turned back to the rune, he found it spinning aimlessly over the compass. The needle in the compass wasn’t moving at all.

He sat there, staring at it in stunned silence. The rune had failed to lock on to Leroy, yet Alex was certain the previous spell had traced him right to the marina.

Standing, he scanned the horizon out to sea. If Leroy had been on a boat that was already underway when Alex got here, it was possible he was now too far out for the spell to find him. As he looked, however, there were no boats to be seen. He didn’t think it was likely that he would have missed a boat leaving the marina when he arrived.

He resolved to go boat by boat and search, but realized the caretaker would call the cops on him if he hadn’t already. Plus, if Leroy was here somewhere, searching could end up getting him killed. Alex knew he couldn’t go to the police; they’d never take the word of his seemingly unrepeatable spell as cause to search a marina full of rich people’s boats. He was going to have to figure out another way to find Hannah’s husband.

“Hold on, Leroy,” he whispered to himself. “I’m still coming.”

* * *

Alex decided to save his money and took a crawler back to his office. The trip took him almost an hour and by the time he arrived, he had no better idea what had happened then he had standing on the dock at the Sunrise Marina. He’d never had a finding rune fail once it had made a connection with its target, and that bothered him.

“Did you find the husband?” Leslie asked when he walked into his office.

Alex shook his head in disgust and explained.

“Well, the wife called twice while you were out,” she said. “What are you going to tell her?”

Alex hadn’t thought about Hannah. He owed her an explanation and he wished he had one.

“I’ll call her,” he said. “But first I’m going to try another finding rune, just to be sure. Hold my calls,” he said, heading for his office.

* * *

An hour later, Alex sat at the drafting table in his vault. A half dozen discarded sheets of flash paper littered the ground around him and he tore the one he’d been working on from the clip that kept in in place and threw it after the rest.

“Damn it!” he should, throwing the pen he’d been using after the rune.

Finding runes weren’t that hard. He’d written over a hundred of them in his career. Now he’d just wasted an enormous amount of expensive, ruby-infused ink to make seven pieces of avant garde art on rectangles of flash paper.

The trembling in his hands was getting worse.