on me. They’d already checked for magic-trace on all the entrances, I knew that from the report, and ditto the physical lock on the other side, but it was possible – not probable, but possible – that they’d missed something.
Stepping back until I was in the middle of the room, more or less, I slipped into fugue-state with an ease that I wouldn’t have thought possible even six months ago, when I’d still needed to do the counting-backward thing. I didn’t call up a spell, or even consciously touch my current the way I normally do, just opened my eyes and looked at the room.
Mage-sight is sort of like viewing things, not underwater, exactly, but close enough. You can “see” normally but it’s wavery and blurred, and there’s current flickering everywhere, dipping and flaring with its own natural energy, influenced by and influencing everything around it. Cantrips or spells can focus it, but then you risk missing something that your cantrip didn’t take into account.
Sharon and Nick were right: the only major source of current in the room right then was me, and I knew how to identify and tune out my own signature. That left the normal dark-hued streaks in the walls and floors – current ran alongside electricity, which meant that every house had at least some, hanging with the everyday wiring that Nulls took for granted. Normally it was baby-level, tiny threads that wouldn’t give you much of a jolt at all. But the threads seemed thicker here, somehow. How had they missed that? Was the room specially wired, maybe the “anti-magic” system the client had been sold? Or...
I moved closer to the wall without thinking, lifting my hand to summon the current to me. If it had been installed by a Talent, their signature might still be lingering... .
What I got was the magic equivalent of a spluttering raspberry, and the sense of something skittering away. The shock was enough to kick me out of fugue-state, embarrassingly enough.
“What the hell?”
Like that, Stosser was in the room with me. I didn’t know how the hell he moved that fast – there had been no inrush to indicate he’d Transloc’d; he must already have been heading down the hallway when he heard me.
“What?”
I was staring at the wall, my shock fading into annoyance at having been caught off guard. “There was something... in the current.”
Rather than looking worried, the boss actually laughed, although his eyes were still shadowed, and his body language more tense than amused. “Tiny, scurrying, giving an impression of a lot of eyes and not much sense?”
That was it, exactly. “What... ?”
“Elementals.”
“Oh.” I felt stupid. Of course. Elementals were... well, creatures, I guess, that lived within the current-stream. They weren’t really alive, as such, or maybe they were, in some way nobody could quite explain, but they had a certain crude awareness. Usually, unless they were grouped together, you wouldn’t even notice them. What I had sensed was definitely a flock. Like pigeons, fluttering and scattering.
“I wonder if that’s what they were using as the alarm system,” Stosser said. “If so, it was a failure, of course. Anyone with a lick of current could calm them down, even assuming you could train them to react and sound an alarm.”
“You really think elementals could remember anything that long?”
One narrow red eyebrow rose over a mocking gaze as he turned to look at me. “It doesn’t have to work,” he said. “Whoever’s selling the alleged security system only has to talk it up as though it does. Not like a Null would know any better.”
Boss was feeling better, if he was being snarky. Didn’t mean he was wrong, though.
“Pity we can’t glean their memories,” I said. I parsed that thought, then shook my head. Too scattered, anything I picked up would be fragmented at best. Stosser might be high-res enough to hold them still long enough to get something significant, but he didn’t have a clue how to glean. He was management, not tech. I supposed we could teach him... .
Still in mage-sight, I watched him prowl around the room, lifting sheets and poking under furniture without a clue where he was stepping or how many delicate tangles of remnant signature he might have been wrecking with the unmoderated swirl of his own core, and shuddered. No. Even now, with the scene already processed, without any trace to pick up, he was doing damage. The thought of him actually trying to work a hot scene...
I squinted, my