Free The Lucifer Deck by Lisa Smedman Page A

down from the telecom unit out to a jack in the wall. "Could the spirit get in through a fiber-optic cable?" she asked.
    Masaki’s eyes widened. "Damn!" he wheezed, diving for the cable. He yanked it from the wall, leaving a frayed stub hanging from the metal jack.
    "What did you do that for?" Aziz snapped. "The spirit doesn’t know who you are, much less that you’re here." He glared at Masaki. "But assuming the spirit did somehow want to attack you, it would have done it out there, in the street. You’d be dead already. What are you going to do—hole up in my shop for the rest of your life without even a bloody trideo feed?"
    Masaki glanced nervously around, then shot Pita a pained look. She made a face at him. All she’d done was ask a question, one that had seemed perfectly logical at the time. It wasn’t like she’d told him to panic or anything.
    "Excuse me, but I’d like to shoot some trideo." Carla reminded them. "That is, if we’re all calm enough to handle it." she added sarcastically.
    The mage grudgingly broke off the glare he’d been giving Masaki.
    Carla smiled sweetly at him. "Now if you’ll just face me, Aziz, I’d like to shoot a little trid while you explain the significance of the spell that’s on the chip. Keep it short and put it in lay terms so our viewing audience will understand."
    Aziz popped the datachip from the deck and turned to face Carla. When she reached for it, he pulled his hand back. "How about I keep this for awhile as payment for services rendered?" he asked. "I want to study the spell. I’ve never seen anything quite like it. The formula is highly theoretical, real cutting-edge stuff. The spirit it supposedly summons doesn’t fit any of the known categories of hermetic magic. I’d like to know more about it."
    When Carla started to protest, he waved a finger at her. "If I know you, Carla, you’ve already got a copy of this stashed away somewhere. And don’t worry that I’ll spill the beans before the story airs. Living with a reporter taught me all about confidentiality and not revealing my sources. Nobody’s going to scoop you on this one."
    Carla studied Aziz a moment, then nodded briefly. "All right." she replied. "If you think you can dredge up more information on this, go ahead and try. But be careful. And don’t try casting that spell yourself. I don’t want to see you wind up like Masaki’s friend, burned to death from the inside out."
    Aziz nodded solemnly, and drew a cross pattern over his heart. But Pita caught the greedy gleam in his eye. Carla might be a smart lady, but she was a sucker for a handsome face. Pita wouldn’t trust this guy as far as she could heave him.

8
    Carla rubbed her temples with her fingertips. The night without sleep had drained her; only the double-strength kaffetamine pills she’d taken were keeping her awake now. She resisted the urge to catnap in the back seat of the taxi, and decided instead to review the file footage from the interview Masaki had conducted, five years ago, with the mage who’d died in the alley. She jacked into her playback imager, then slotted a datachip into the handheld unit. Focusing on one of the icons that appeared in her cybereye’s field of view, she initiated the playback.
    The story was a standard puff piece, describing the opening of a new thaumaturgical supply store. The owner was Farazad Samji, a young entrepreneur from India who was trained in the hermetic tradition. The store specialized in talismonger’s supplies from the Far East—rare herbs, vials of water from the Ganges, raw silk cocoons, polished gemstones, and cobra skins. But its main draw had been glazed bricks inscribed with cuneiforms. They were said to have come from a ziggurat of ancient Babylon. Whether or not this was a legitimate claim, the bricks had proved a popular item with mages who wanted to build their own alchemical kilns. A single brick was said to be enough to increase the magical potency of a kiln by a factor of