had been part of a talisman—a small statue of a Maori god—that the warehouse manager kept on his desk. Namid told me as much, and I confirmed it when I examined the idol more closely and found the rest of the blade imbedded in the stone base on which the figure stood. Namid also told me where we could find the man responsible for the break-in. Within a week, Kona and I had arrested Orestes Quinley, a small-time thief and weremyste, who’d stolen a bunch of stereos and TVs to cover the theft of that talisman. Turns out there are more weremystes in the Phoenix metropolitan area than one might think. They’re not in the yellow pages, of course. Finding them can be tricky. You have to rely on word of mouth and, since most weremystes use blockers, and since those who don’t aren’t eager to be found, it becomes a matter of finding the right mouth, as it were. But there is a network of sorts, one that I’ve tapped into in recent years. Early on, though, I had to take a lot on faith. So did Kona. She was pretty skeptical about all of it, although Orestes’ confession helped.
As I came to spend more time with Namid I began to sense an ulterior motive of a sort in the lessons he gave me. He himself had told me that he worked with my dad, and though he never admitted as much, I was convinced that he held himself responsible for my father’s premature descent into insanity. I believe Namid felt that he had failed one Fearsson. He wasn’t about to fail another. That was why he worked me so hard and so often. He wanted me to hone my power. From what I understood, as a runecrafter grew more proficient, he also developed some resistance to the long-term effects of the phasings.
But on this night outside my office, with the phasing still a few days off, and Claudia Deegan’s murder on my mind, I was more concerned with what Namid had said to me in the car. In the years since he appeared to me that first night and kept me from killing myself, I had never known Namid to be wrong about anything. Until tonight I’d never heard him express even the slightest uncertainty. I do not know . . . It was like being a kid again and finding out my father wasn’t stronger and smarter than every other man on the planet.
For the first time I’d bumped up against Namid’s limitations, and I found it unnerving. I think he did, too. Along with his certainty on all matters relating to magic, Namid had also been fearless. He was a runemyste. He’d been chosen by the Runeclave because even in life his mastery of the craft had been exceptional. As a member of his council, his powers were beyond anything I could imagine, although as I understood it, he and the other runemystes were forbidden to use their magic directly on our world. Still, I couldn’t imagine there was much that Namid feared. There could be no denying, though, that he had been scared tonight, or as close to scared as a runemyste could get.
Mercifully, Namid didn’t stay with me long. The last thing I needed was a thousand-year-old ghost commenting on my driving. But long after he left me, I continued to think about our conversation.
I got home and cleaned my knee, first with water and soap, and then with hydrogen peroxide, which was no picnic. Usually these things look better once you wipe away the dried blood, but this one looked like hell even after I’d cleaned it up. I wished I had hit Robby harder.
Then I did something stupid. I went online, found Billie Castle’s blog, and read her piece about the murder of Claudia Deegan. Most of what she wrote focused on the Deegans and the history of the Blind Angel killings, but she got me in there near the end.
Sources close to the probe indicate that Justis Fearsson, a private investigator and former Phoenix Police Department homicide detective, has been brought in to work on the case. Fearsson, who worked on the Blind Angel murder investigation before being forced to leave the department for undisclosed disciplinary
As I came to spend more time with Namid I began to sense an ulterior motive of a sort in the lessons he gave me. He himself had told me that he worked with my dad, and though he never admitted as much, I was convinced that he held himself responsible for my father’s premature descent into insanity. I believe Namid felt that he had failed one Fearsson. He wasn’t about to fail another. That was why he worked me so hard and so often. He wanted me to hone my power. From what I understood, as a runecrafter grew more proficient, he also developed some resistance to the long-term effects of the phasings.
But on this night outside my office, with the phasing still a few days off, and Claudia Deegan’s murder on my mind, I was more concerned with what Namid had said to me in the car. In the years since he appeared to me that first night and kept me from killing myself, I had never known Namid to be wrong about anything. Until tonight I’d never heard him express even the slightest uncertainty. I do not know . . . It was like being a kid again and finding out my father wasn’t stronger and smarter than every other man on the planet.
For the first time I’d bumped up against Namid’s limitations, and I found it unnerving. I think he did, too. Along with his certainty on all matters relating to magic, Namid had also been fearless. He was a runemyste. He’d been chosen by the Runeclave because even in life his mastery of the craft had been exceptional. As a member of his council, his powers were beyond anything I could imagine, although as I understood it, he and the other runemystes were forbidden to use their magic directly on our world. Still, I couldn’t imagine there was much that Namid feared. There could be no denying, though, that he had been scared tonight, or as close to scared as a runemyste could get.
Mercifully, Namid didn’t stay with me long. The last thing I needed was a thousand-year-old ghost commenting on my driving. But long after he left me, I continued to think about our conversation.
I got home and cleaned my knee, first with water and soap, and then with hydrogen peroxide, which was no picnic. Usually these things look better once you wipe away the dried blood, but this one looked like hell even after I’d cleaned it up. I wished I had hit Robby harder.
Then I did something stupid. I went online, found Billie Castle’s blog, and read her piece about the murder of Claudia Deegan. Most of what she wrote focused on the Deegans and the history of the Blind Angel killings, but she got me in there near the end.
Sources close to the probe indicate that Justis Fearsson, a private investigator and former Phoenix Police Department homicide detective, has been brought in to work on the case. Fearsson, who worked on the Blind Angel murder investigation before being forced to leave the department for undisclosed disciplinary
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