“I’m open to suggestions,” Alex said. “Otherwise I’ve got to call Anne and try to explain to her how I found her husband and then lost him again.”
Iggy considered the map. Alex had no idea what he was looking for, it looked exactly as it had before, with the silver ring spinning around it in circles.
“Why is the ring doing that?” Alex asked.
“Look at the compass needle,” Iggy said.
Alex shifted his gaze and found the compass spinning in time with the ring, following its progression around the map.
“I think the spell is trying to find Leroy,” Iggy said. “But the link is so weak it can’t fully connect.”
“What could cause that?”
“Oh, any number of things,” Iggy said. “He might be too far away.”
“No,” Alex said, pointing to the map inside the orbiting ring. “I don’t think that’s accidental. Leroy must be somewhere inside that circle.”
“Could be,” Iggy agreed. “If he’s underground or shielded somehow, that would explain it.”
“If that was the case, the spell wouldn’t connect at all.”
“Well it isn’t that you’re losing your magic,” Iggy insisted.
Alex held out one of the two remaining finding runes.
“You want to try?”
Iggy gave him an irritated look.
“You know that’s not how it works,” he said. “You met with the wife, you heard about Leroy from her, you’ve got a basis for a connection. All I know is his name; it would never connect for me.
Alex sighed and caught the spinning ring. It resisted him for a fraction of a second, then the magic dissipated with a small popping sound.
“Looks like Leslie was right,” he said, pocketing the ring and his compass. “I’m going to have to find Leroy the old-fashioned way.”
“I have faith in you, lad,” Iggy said with a grin. “You were trained by the best, after all.”
“If you do say so yourself,” Alex added.
Iggy put a hand on his shoulder and looked him square in the face.
“One thing you learn at my age, lad, is that you have to toot your own horn when you get the chance. God knows no one else is going to do it for you.”
“All right,” Alex said, feeling better in spite of himself. “I’ve got to call Anne and try to tell her why I haven’t found her husband, then I’ll go see your alchemist.”
Alex moved to the phone on the kitchen wall. He thought about going upstairs to his room to make the call, but Iggy already knew about everything that had happened and he was too tired to trudge all the way up to the third floor for some unnecessary privacy.
“Hello, Mr. Lockerby?” Anne’s frightened voice came through the receiver at him the instant the call connected.
“It’s me,” he confirmed.
“Did you find Leroy?” she gasped, the tension in her voice squeezing the words into frightened squeaks. “Is he with you?”
“No,” Alex said. “When I got to the marina, my rune lost contact with him. I cast another rune, but it couldn’t connect with him either. I think they might have moved him somewhere underground.”
“Mr. Lockerby,” Anne said in a small, desperate voice.
“Alex.”
“Alex,” she amended. “I can’t pay you for the second rune. I had to raid our savings to pay for the first one.”
“Let me worry about that,” Alex said. “Just because I can’t find him with a rune, doesn’t mean I can’t find him. I’m just going to have to do some investigating.”
“I can’t pay you for that either,” Anne said. Alex could tell she was crying now. Alex was tempted to let that stand, but he felt like too much of a heel. He suppressed a sigh as he made his decision.
“I told you that I’d find your husband and that’s what I’m going to do,” he said.
“But how?” There was desperation in that voice, but Alex detected a tiny trace of hope as well.
“I’m pretty sure he’s still alive,” he said. “That means whoever took him needs him for something. If I figure out why they took him, I’ll know where to start looking.”
“Thank you, Alex,” she whispered. “Please find my Leroy.”
“Have faith, Anne,” Alex said, passing on the favorite saying of Father Harry, the priest who helped raise him.
Anne promised that she would, and Alex hung up.
“You’re a good man, Alex,” Iggy said from the kitchen table, where he sat sipping a cup of tea. “You’ll go broke, but you’re a good man.”
“Let me worry about that,” Alex said.
“You don’t worry about money at all,” Iggy chuckled. “That’s your problem. If you didn’t have Leslie around to run your business, you’d have been bankrupt years ago.”
“That reminds me, Leslie’s coming over for dinner this week. When’s a good night?”
Iggy raised an eyebrow at that.
“You know the rules, lad,” he said. “No dinner guests unless they’re extremely easy on the eyes.”
Alex nodded, understanding.
“So Leslie is welcome any time.”
“Exactly,” Iggy said.
“I’ll set it up for tomorrow then,” Alex said, picking up the crate of glassware for Iggy’s alchemist friend.
Alex had to set the crate down to shut the outer door to the brownstone. He didn’t have to lock the door, of course. Only someone with the right combination of runes could open it, and there were only two sets of those in the city.