Ghost of a Chance

A former beauty queen, Leslie had worked as Alex’s secretary for years. She was in her early forties, but time hadn’t slowed her down any. Tall and statuesque, she had strawberry blonde hair and hazel eyes that looked blue when she wore blue, and green when she wore green. Today she had on a white blouse, so they were gray. Leslie was the business side of Lockerby Investigations, booking Alex’s clients and making sure the bills got paid while Alex did the actual detective work.

“Long story,” Alex said as Leslie threw open the window behind her desk despite the August heat.

“Cut to the chase,” she said, still covering her nose. “Did you find it?”

Alex grinned and dropped the handkerchief on Leslie’s perennially organized desk. He opened it, revealing the brooch.

“Wow,” Leslie said, looking at the brooch as it glittered in the afternoon light. “That’s really something. Is that little trinket really worth twenty Gs?”

Alex nodded.

Leslie wanted to get closer and examine it but as she moved, her hand came back up to her face.

“Where did you find it?” she gasped. “You smell like a fish market at closing time.”

“It was in a dump in Brooklyn,” Alex said. “Don’t worry, though, I’ve got a cleansing rune in my office.”

“Good,” she said, stepping back toward the window. “Just don’t use it in here.”

“Yes mother,” he said with a grin and trudged toward the door marked, Private.

* * *

Alex entered his office and pulled out his rune book, a pasteboard volume with a red cover that he carried in his suit jacket. This was where he carried the runes he needed for work, so he’d have them when he needed them. The pages inside were made of volatile and delicate flash paper so he turned them gently until he found the one he wanted. It bore the symbol of a triangle with circles at each point, drawn in silver ink. Delicate lettering ran around the inside of each circle and along each edge of the triangle.

He carefully tore the vault rune from his book, licked the edge of the paper, and stuck it to the wall of his office. The outline of a door had been painted on the wall complete with a keyhole in the exact center. Taking a paper matchbook from his pocket, Alex lit one and touched the flame to the flash paper. It vanished in a puff of flame and smoke, leaving the glowing, silver rune behind, hanging in the air by the wall. After a moment, the rune seemed to melt into the wall itself, then a cold steel door appeared. Alex took a heavy skeleton key from his pocket and used it to open the door to his vault.

Vaults were extra-dimensional spaces where runewrights could keep valuables or supplies. Alex’s vault was bigger than his entire office, encompassing a large workspace with workbenches, shelves, and storage for all the tools of his trade.

Entering the vault, Alex left the spade in a rack of tools along the wall, then moved to the tall, angled drafting table against the back wall. Several papers were strewn about the table on the floor, testaments to the difficulty of his work. Many runes were simple to draw but costly to create, requiring inks infused with precious metals or gemstone. Cleaning Runes, on the other hand, were cheap to make, requiring just an ordinary pencil, but the rune was excessively complex, needing meticulous attention to detail to get right.

Still, Alex was used to writing complex runes. This time the delicate lines and symbols of the cleaning rune eluded him for a different reason. Last year he’d teleported the floating castle of New York sorceress, Sorsha Kincaid, out over the Atlantic Ocean. It had cost him decades of his own life to power the magic required to move such an enormous mass, but since a Nazi spy was trying to drop the castle on the city at the time, Alex reckoned it was a good trade. Ever since that event his brown hair had turned completely white, and recently — his hands had begun to tremble.

Alex reached for the sole paper on the table, his lone success after hours of work, but the memory of his shaking hands made him stop. The tremors weren’t enough to notice except when he was trying to write delicate symbols, but he rubbed his hands together anyway. He felt like he could force them to stop if he only squeezed them tightly enough.

Grinding his teeth at the futility of the gesture, he picked up the paper and stuffed it into his pocket. He turned to leave, but stopped beside a long shelving unit against one wall to retrieve an electric desk fan made of brass.

Dropping the rune and the fan on the desk in his office, Alex unlocked his desk and took out his last pack of cigarettes. There were only three left, so he tucked the pack into his pocket after withdrawing one. Lighting it with the touch tip on his desk, Alex took a satisfying drag and let it out. That act alone helped his trembling hands and he felt better. Especially since he’d soon have spending money to buy cigarettes again.