The Wizardry Consulted (Wiz, #4)(30)

“What’s wrong?”

“That demon of yours is holding the girl prisoner up in the upstairs parlor,” Widder Hackett said. “What the fiend has planned for her,” the ghost continued virtuously, “I wouldn’t want to guess.

“It’s what comes from consorting with them low-class demons,” Widder Hackett added as Wiz pounded up the stairs to rescue Anna.

He came into the room and found a hysterical maid facing off with a very determined scaly green demon.

“What’s going on here?”

“I, I was just trying to . . . and it, it . . .” Anna was hyperventilating and for a minute Wiz thought she was going to faint on him.

Wiz recognized the demon. It was the one he had set to guard his desk and it manifested if anyone tried to touch his papers or equipment. Apparently Anna, not knowing better, had tried to clean off the desk.

He put his arm around her shoulders to comfort her, and to catch her if she did faint. Anna was trembling like a leaf and she pressed her face into his shoulder so she wouldn’t have to look at the demon.

“Hey, it’s all right. He won’t hurt you if you don’t try to touch anything on the desk.”

“But he won’t let me leave!”

Wiz looked around and realized that to get to the door they would have to pass the desk. The demon wouldn’t attack unless someone tried to touch the things on the desk but it would certainly come alert if anyone but Wiz got close. I’ll have to turn the sensitivity down on the spell, he thought.

Malkin stuck her head in the door to see what the commotion was, saw Wiz and Anna, and disappeared before Wiz could say anything.

“He won’t hurt you if you don’t touch what’s on the desk,” he told her. “Look, I’ll dismiss him, okay?” A quick gesture and the demon vanished, looking smug. “There, it’s fine.” He gently pried her face out of his shoulder and turned her toward the desk. “See? No more demon.” With his arm still around her shoulder he walked her past the desk to the door.

“Now, you don’t have to clean around the desk, all right? That’s not part of your job anyway and I’m sorry I didn’t tell you that before. Are you okay now?” Anna sniffled and nodded.

Wiz drew a line on the floor in softly glowing blue light. “Look, anything inside this line I will take care of, okay? Just don’t touch any of it and I’ll make sure the demon doesn’t bother you.”

Bobo sauntered into the room, looked at the line and sniffed.

“Now just go on down to the kitchen and rest for a while. You’ll be okay?”

Anna sniffled and nodded.

“I’m sorry to be so much trouble My Lord, it’s just that . . .”

“I know,” Wiz said encouragingly, “it wasn’t your fault. Now go on.”

Still sniffling, Anna made her way downstairs toward the kitchen.

“Malkin,” Wiz called, “can you come in here a minute?”

“What’s up?” the slender thief asked as she strode into the room. Malkin showed no fear but Wiz noticed she kept just far enough away from the desk to keep from triggering the demon. For an instant he wondered how she knew the distance so exactly.

“Uh, about what you just saw. It wasn’t really what it looked like.”

Malkin waved a lazy hand. “Forget about it.”

“But I wanted to explain . . .”

“No need,” Malkin said. “The child’s safe with you.”

The way she said it, Wiz wasn’t sure whether to be relieved or insulted.

“You’d better be careful though. The little ninny doesn’t have the sense to be afraid of magic. She’s likely to blunder into something you’d rather she didn’t.”

“I’ll take extra precautions,” Wiz assured her. “What about you? Aren’t you afraid of being around all this magic?”

Malkin laughed. “Afraid? Not hardly. I respect it is all.” The way she said it, and the way she smiled, left Wiz with a slightly uneasy feeling in the bottom of his stomach. He decided at the same time he turned down the demon’s sensitivity he was going to increase the protection.





Eleven: Meanwhile, Back at the Observatory


Just because someone is hard-working and ambitious doesn’t mean that person has the least idea what is going on.

The Consultants’ Handbook



It was another sunny day in the desert. Of course, it’s almost always sunny in the desert, which is why this particular desert mountaintop sprouted telescopes like lawns sprout toadstools. With telescopes come astronomers, naturally, and just now this particular astronomer’s mood was anything but sunny.

“You,” Ray Whipple said, “have got to do something about that FBI agent.”

There was a pause while the observatory director took his artfully scuffed ostrich-skin cowboy boots off the corner of his desk. “What’s the problem?” he asked mildly. Actually he had a pretty good idea what the problem was and he was only surprised it had taken this long to happen.

“He found an eighty-seven-cent error in someone’s account and now he’s convinced he’s on the trail of the mother of all conspiracies.”

The director made a show of lighting his pipe. “That’s his job after all.”