The footsteps pounded down the stairs, chasing after him. Whoever it was had seen him, and he wasn’t going to make it to the back door before they overtook him. He ducked into the kitchen to hide behind the wall, and waited.
The steps continued through the entrance way, and Cormac prepared to tackle whoever came into view. Legs braced, fists up.
It was Mollie.
The first thing he noticed, she had a semiautomatic in her hand, down by her leg, finger resting on the trigger guard. She was in a blue T-shirt and flannel pajama bottoms, her hair tied up with an elastic, makeup washed from her face. Her eyes widened when she spotted him, and he put his finger to his lips, a request for quiet. They stood like that a moment, and part of him figured he should maybe just knock her over and run like hell. But he didn’t. He put his hands up, tried to project calm.
He hoped that wasn’t her car he just blew up.
A whump and a whoosh blew from outside the front of the house, the fire spreading. Guys shouting for water, a fire extinguisher. Cormac had lingered here too long, and any second now someone was going to come in looking for that extinguisher. Mollie still didn’t say anything. Didn’t draw on him, either.
Gently, he put a hand on her shoulder, urged her aside so he could slip past her and through the doorway. Her expression turned quizzical, but he wasn’t going to give himself away any more than he already had by answering her look. He nodded a thanks, backed away, and strode out the back door.
He kept expecting her to come after him, to yell at him to stop, for shots from her gun to ring out. None of that happened.
You are very lucky, Amelia thought at him as he continued down to the back of the property to slip over the barbed wire before Layne and his gang noticed.
Yeah, he figured he was.
* * *
AFTER A quick but careful trek through the woods, he returned to the Jeep and drove about thirty miles or so before stopping in a turnoff and taking a look at the notebook he’d gone through all that trouble for. Worst case, it would be in code, like Amy Scanlon’s, and th
e wild goose chase would start all over again.
His luck was holding—the book wasn’t in code.
The guy had sloppy handwriting and used a lot of abbreviations that needed interpreting, but once he got used to it he could read it okay. Not that any of it made much sense. There were recipes, diagrams, instructions, observations written in the form of experiments, like he was a chemist trying to come up with just the right formula. Mostly, Cormac let the contents flow through him, to Amelia.
He was a great experimenter, wasn’t he? Amelia observed. Definitely more of an alchemical magician than a folklorist or ceremonial ritualist, like Amy was. Definitely spent much time working on protection magic—I imagine that would be the most easily commodified skill to have if he was approaching people like Anderson Layne for work.
Cormac sat back and let her read whatever she wanted, flipping back and forth, studying certain passages and referencing them with others. She kept up a running commentary, as if she were reading over his shoulder.
“So it was worth it?” he asked finally. “Burning up Layne’s place to get this was worth it?”
I don’t imagine you burned his entire place. That fire would die down soon enough, I think. But yes, I do believe it was very much worth it. This is fascinating.
“Then is it okay if we maybe hold off on the book club and get back home?” He turned the engine back on to encourage her.
Helpfully, she retreated from the fore and let him return the book to his pocket. They only had one set of eyes between them and couldn’t read and drive at the same time.
They were back on the freeway when Amelia said, Do you think Layne will attempt some kind of retribution for the attack?
His original intent was that Layne wouldn’t have any idea who’d done it and would even blame Nolan or some other faction. He didn’t much care what war those guys got into. But Mollie—maybe she’d stay quiet. He didn’t have any idea what their relationship was, if she was part of his operation, or if she just happened to be at the house at exactly the wrong time.
If she told Layne he’d broken into the house, he’d deal with it. But the worst case—she’d call the cops on him.
She wouldn’t. Layne wouldn’t let her. That would attract too much attention.
He really should have asked for her phone number back at the bar.
Chapter 19
AT THE apartment, Amelia referenced the books she had on hand, a small library she’d accumulated since they left prison and her own book of shadows that she was reconstructing from memory and recording in a hardcover-sized sketchbook. The handwriting varied between Cormac’s crooked, unpracticed scrawl and a precise nineteenth-century cursive that he’d have expected to see on an old manuscript. They were both writing this book. It would confuse the hell out of anyone who tried to read it later.
It felt like homework to Cormac—he’d barely finished high school, mostly because Ben hauled him through their senior year by force of will. But Amelia was very excited by the whole thing.
Most of this I’ve seen before in one form or another, she announced in summary. He seems to come from a Teutonic magical tradition, though he’s cribbed quite a lot from the English—John Dee, Francis Bacon—as well. Some from the Malleus Maleficarum, and not the useful bits, alas. He’s had teachers but doesn’t name them, which makes a true tradition hard to identify. The second half of the thing is the most interesting. Do you know what I think? He flipped through pages, reviewing some sections, looking at the book as a whole rather than in parts. I think he may have copied much of this from the elder Kuzniak. I wonder if that’s what put him on the path of learning about magic in the first place—finding his ancestor’s magical history and wanting to know more.