Wild Magic Read Free

“discover spell” over the room. A faint glow outlined the edge of the oriental rug in the corner to her right. She stepped onto the hardwood in the corner, knelt, and laid her purse on the floor. If anyone had noticed how much larger it was than a regular evening purse, no one had said a word. Let them think she was out of fashion. What did it matter?
    Now to see if she’d found the right place, where the spell-sensitive spy they’d inserted into the event catering staff had reported picking up emanations of powerful casting. She knelt and lifted the rug by its tasseled edge.
    The hidden safe pulsed faintly with protective enchantments—stay-away and do-not-touch as well as lock-tight, according to her discover spell. To gauge their strength, Irenee held her hand close to the glow remaining from her first spell. She shook her head in disgust when she realized they offered only minimal protection, the kind that would deter only a non-practitioner burglar. Alton must be an idiot to think a simple spell would keep out a Sword.
    All practitioners knew certain extremely sensitive Defenders could pick up the vibrations set off when someone used an evil magic item unless the spell caster took elaborate precautions with shielding. True, the vibes Glynnis Fraser, their evil-sensitive expert, felt were faint, but clearly the signature of an ancient, extremely powerful focus for casting. Maybe Alton believed he had been sufficiently protected when he cast spells using the item and had no idea the Defenders were after him. After all, it had taken time—three weeks altogether—to track down the source of the evil. He might believe he was in the clear.
    She doubted Alton even knew she was a Sword. The Defenders didn’t announce their membership; neither did they keep it a secret. Surely he would have reacted differently to her if he thought she was after him or his treasure. No, his reaction when he greeted her upstairs had been his usual cordial self—exactly as it had been at all the other society functions where they ran into each other.
    Irenee, however, had to control herself firmly when they met. Evil people, practitioner or not, gave off an aura, almost a miasma, of wrongness Defenders could identify. Where Alton hadn’t before, he certainly did now. His recently acquired emanation raised the question of how long he had been using the item. Finding that answer, however, was not her goal.
    Her task was clear: bring back the item to her team and help them destroy it. When she succeeded, she would be a Sword in every sense of the word, and also able to hold her head up as an accomplished member of the Sabel family.
    She was stretching to lay the carpet back away from the safe, when faint noises came from the door into the hall—a scratching, a click, and the doorknob turning. Someone was picking the lock.
    “Damn,” she breathed while she let the rug drop over the safe and intensified her don’t-notice-me spell to full invisibility. She could see the shimmer as light bent around her, and she smiled with satisfaction. She wouldn’t be seen even if somebody looked directly at her.
    The door opened slowly, only a crack, just far enough for a figure to slip through.
    A tall, dark, curly-haired man in a tuxedo entered quickly and locked the door behind him. Although from her corner and in the darkness, she couldn’t get a good look at his face, she didn’t think she knew him. He stared at the portrait for a long moment before striding over to it. After tugging at the sides, he swung the picture on its hinges, revealing a black safe door.
    A lighted bank of eight red zeros marched across its front. The man pulled a rectangular box out of his pocket and held it to the door. Two green lights on its side blinked alternately while numbers flashed through a complicated sequence.
    Irenee smiled to herself. Primitive technology, compared to her magic.
    In a few seconds, the green lights stayed on, the zeros had changed to a set of