Free Shifty Magic by Judy Teel Page B

about. "That
kind of magic takes skill. Almost as much as the fence around this
place."
    "You're very unusual," Laiyla mused. She
tilted her head slightly as if that might give her a better view of
me. "How do you know this?"
    "I'm a private investigator. I'm paid to
know. If I don't know, I'm paid to find out."
    "And you work for the Church?"
    "In a temporary, mutually unfriendly
capacity. Did you poison the tea?"
    A smile flickered across her mouth. "Of
course not." Her gaze swept above, around and through me as if she
could see things no one else could. "You have an old wisdom and a
heart that could love, but you've closed yourself off. There is no
family in your life. I'm sorry."
    I hid my surprise. Dealing with
practitioners, at least the strong ones, meant being prepared for
exactly this sort of thing. In varying degrees, all of them had the
ability to see beyond the physical and to work with those other
levels of reality. That was how they infused items and potions with
energy.
    How well they could do that determined how
powerful a practitioner they were. The fact that she'd
spontaneously gotten a psychic hit off me told me a lot about her
level of talent.
    A practitioner this strong would be able to
subdue a vampire. All she'd need would be someone to slit the
vamp's throat while she kept him immobile.
    "You're the one who's running the spells
around this place," I said, stalling for time while I figured out
my strategy. "Morrocroft is human exclusive. How'd you get the
gig?"
    "Experience has taught them that employing
someone like me is the only way to keep less desirable paranormals
at a distance. When a friend recommended me, I applied." She
finished her scan of me and a focused intensity that hadn't been
there before edged into her gaze.
    "You're not what you seem," she murmured.
She narrowed her eyes and their focus turned distant again, like a
person trying to see something on the horizon. "Deeply hidden.
Powerful. But just beyond reach...oh!"
    She blinked and stared past me for a second,
a look of dazed confusion on her face. After a minute, her
expression cleared. "I'm sorry, did you say something?"
    I considered responding
with, you mean something like you might be
strong, but you're kind of flaky? "Where
were you last night between the hours of eleven and one, Ms.
Billings?" I asked instead, wishing my gun wasn't half a mile away
in a locked box.
    "Creating the Cupid Spell." Concern
flickered through her steady gaze. "Why?"
    "Can anyone verify that?"
    "Travis brought me the Tongkat Ali about
this time last night, maybe closer to 9:30. He stayed while I
processed the potion. He's the guard you met when you came in," she
added when I gave her a questioning look. "The spell was for
him."
    Which meant they could easily be
collaborating by being mutual witnesses for each other. "How long
was he here?"
    "Cupid Spells are very delicate. They
require over four hours to properly infuse the ingredients."
    If her story was true, then she was off the
hook. Morrocroft was at least forty minutes from the location of
the murder. But if her story was a cover, then there was a good
chance I was having tea with last night's killer. A chill ran
across the back of my neck.
    "I'm sorry," Laiyla said, "but are you here
about the information I tried to report to the Church or not?"
    A little pressure might get some answers if
she were guilty. "Lord Bellmonte gave me your name in connection
with a murder investigation," I lied. "It involves a renegade
vampire."
    Her hand shot to her mouth, and her eyes
widened. "Oh, no," she breathed. Agitation tightened her shoulders.
"This is exactly—I'd hoped to prevent another one."
    My stomach tensed and my hand reflexively
jerked toward my empty holster. "What do you mean?"
    "I was in New York at a conference about six
months ago. A gentleman was giving a workshop on enhancing natural
magical ability, which is impossible. I was intrigued."
    "I thought practitioners worked on their
craft