Criminal Enchantment Read online

  Criminal Enchantment

  A Short Story Set in the World of Enchanted, Inc.

  Shanna Swendson

  NLA Digital LLC

  Contents

  Foreword

  Criminal Enchantment

  About this Series

  An Excerpt from Enchanted, Inc.

  About the Author

  Also by Shanna Swendson

  Foreword

  Before Katie met Owen, the Magic, Spells, and Illusions, Inc., team already had a job to do.

  * * *

  There’s spellcasting skullduggery at work in Manhattan, and Sam the gargoyle is on the case. This time, the shady spells look awfully familiar, like the work of outcast wizard Phelan Idris. There’s just no real evidence of his involvement, and without that, the MSI team can't do anything to stop him from wreaking magical havoc in the city. To track the criminal enchantments back to their source, Sam will have to rally his security gargoyle pals, do some old-fashioned sleuthing, and keep his wizard friend Owen Palmer focused on the case instead of on that cute girl he spotted at the bookstore.

  * * *

  See the events that lead up to the beginning of Enchanted, Inc. in this Enchanted Universe novelette.

  Criminal Enchantment

  A flicker of motion caught my eye, so I swooped down to take a closer look. If I wasn’t mistaken—and I almost never was—someone was using magic in a very bad way. The spell was tinged with darkness and, even worse, it was being used to cause harm, which is a major no-no in the magical world. Most pathetic of all was that it was being used to cause petty harm. I mean, if you’re gonna shoplift from a deli, gut it up and stuff the goods under a baggy sweater. Using magic to deceive the proprietor into thinking you’re not walkin’ out with an armload of junk food is just lame.

  Fortunately, lame was the operative word, as this loser didn’t know what he was doing. It was a sloppy spell, so it didn’t take too much for me to disrupt it. As I flew off, I heard the deli owner screaming at the jerk and taking back all his potato chips. Good for him. For me, it was just part of the job. No need to stick around to take credit for foiling the scam.

  The name’s Sam. I’m a gargoyle, and I fight crime.

  Yeah, back in the day my people mostly just protected churches, but you gotta keep up with the times, and all that church protecting made us pretty darn good at protecting other things. My main job is as chief of security at a little firm called Magic, Spells, and Illusions, Inc. You may have heard of it. We’re the leading magical company in the entire world, developing and publishing almost all of the spells in use today. If you’ve ever bought a spell to help you track the stock market or wash dishes without getting your hands wet, chances are we developed it. That kind of leadership means we more or less rule the magical world, so it’s our job to make sure no one uses magic the wrong way. And that makes it my job.

  This case may have looked like petty crime, but the weird thing was, it was the third crime just like it I’d busted up in the past couple of days, and my people had reported busting up several more. By just like it I mean exactly. They were using the same spell, flaws and all, and that meant someone was selling it. I had a pretty good idea who that would be, and I knew someone else who’d find that very interesting.

  I flew downtown and tapped on the front window of a certain Gramercy town house, then found myself a comfy perch on a nearby streetlamp and waited a while. Nobody appeared to be home. I couldn’t blame him, as it was a fine August Saturday morning, but I was surprised. Good weather usually wasn’t enough to drag this kid away from his books. It looked like I needed to track him down. I’m good at surveilling even my friends, so I had a feeling I could narrow his current whereabouts down to a few key locations.

  I got it in one. Instead of him bein’ at home with his musty old books, he was in the Strand, surrounded by piles and shelves of books. Owen Palmer’s a good kid, but he needs a life. He was so caught up in the book he was leafing through that he didn’t even notice me when I landed on the shelf over his head, and I’d dropped my veils so that any magical person could have seen me. I craned my neck to see what book had him so fascinated. Since when did he get interested in architecture? And how long was it gonna take him to read that one page?

  Instead of waiting all day, I cleared my throat. He jumped and nearly dropped his book, and that’s when I noticed he hadn’t been looking at it, after all. He’d been hiding behind a book while staring across the store. “What are you doing here, Sam?” he hissed, turning a bright shade of red and glancing nervously first up at me, then back over to where he’d been staring. I couldn’t resist following his line of sight to see what he was looking at, and what I saw made me grin even wider than the grin that was carved into my face. Well, whaddaya know. He was lookin’ at a girl who was busily digging through a bargain bin.

  “I’m surprised at you, boss,” I teased. “I never saw you as the type to troll bookstores and try to pick up anything but a book.”

  “I wasn’t trying to pick anything up,” he protested, probably a little too strongly for it to be at all believeable. “I just . . . noticed her.”

  “Well, then, why don’t you talk to her?”

  He blushed even more furiously and said, “What did you want?”

  “Got something to report.”

  “Then let’s get out of here. We can’t really talk here.”

  He re-shelved the book he’d been hiding behind and led the way through the maze of shelves to the store exit. The girl he’d been staring at glanced up as we passed, and I could have sworn she looked straight at me and did a double take before she returned her attention to the books. But of course she couldn’t see me, as I’d hidden myself from everyone but Palmer. She was probably noticing him, but trying not to look like she was noticing. He tended to turn heads, even if he didn’t realize it. If she was noticing him while he noticed her, he’d have an easy time of it if he did so much as say “hi,” but matchmaking wasn’t in my job description, so it wasn’t really up to me to tell him this.

  We went to a nearby churchyard where we could talk in peace with a simple spell to hide us from the rest of the world so that no one saw him either talking to a gargoyle or talking to thin air. “What is it, Sam?” he asked, now looking all stern and businesslike, more like MSI’s head of theoretical magic than like a shy schoolboy. Owen Palmer was probably the best wizard we had, even including the boss. Chances were that if he kept on the way he was going and kept his nose clean, he’d be the boss someday. That’s why I already called him boss. I figured I might as well get used to it.

  “My people and I have been noticin’ the same kind of magic all over town for the past couple of days. It’s a bit darkish, and it’s being used to steal stuff from delis. Not exactly the crime spree of the century, but the funny thing is, it ain’t a real good spell, and each time I’ve seen it, it’s the same kind of bad spell.”

  “So someone must be distributing this particular enchantment. It’s not merely spontaneous magical experimentation.”

  “Exactly my thought. I figured you’d wanna know.”

  “Any idea who, or why?”

  I snorted and flapped my wings. “Of course I have an idea who, and you’re probably thinkin’ the very same thing. No proof, though. Want me to grab the next jerk I see try to use the spell and ask him a few questions?” I flexed my talons to convey the way I planned to do the askin’.

  “Yeah, it sounds like Idris, and he was trying to do that spell that went one step beyond benign veiling before we fired him. As I recall, he didn’t quite have it perfected. But I doubt he’d be dumb enough to make it that easy to track back to him. I wonder how he’s distributing it.”

  “For all
I know, he’s selling ’em from street corners, like those guys who sell the sheets with all the sex positions to the tourists on Times Square.” As I expected, he blushed redder than a fire truck. It’s probably mean of me, but I admit I did that on purpose. It’s just so entertaining to see our mighty wizard get flustered like that.

  “I’d love to get my hands on a copy.”

  “Of the sex position sheet?”

  He turned even redder. “The spell. If I could get a look at it, I could figure out where it came from and how to counter it.”

  “So, what do you wanna do in the meantime?”

  “Keep your eyes open. It might not hurt to have a friendly word with the next person you see trying to use that spell—but don’t hurt anyone. We’re supposed to be the good guys here. And let me know if you notice any other patterns. We can’t do much until we know what he’s doing.”

  I saluted him with a wing. “Sure thing, boss. Now, you get back to your book browsing. I bet she’s still in there. I also bet she’d let you buy her a cup of coffee if you tried talking to her.” His only response was a glare that might have turned me to stone if I weren’t already a proud carved-stone-American.

  I figured our best bet was to stake out the kind of delis that tended to be targeted by these miscreants, wait for ’em to act, intervening if necessary, and then retrace their steps. I knew a nifty little spell for doing that, but I needed a perp present to be able to cast it.

  I rallied the troops on Monday morning. Now that I had a good suspicion of what was going on, this counted as work rather than just being freelance evil busting. Phelan Idris had been one of ours, working in research and development, but he wanted to make the kinds of spells MSI wasn’t keen on. In fact, they went beyond what was legal for magic users to do, according to international code. So we’d let him go, and it looked like he’d taken some of his work with him. Nailing him would give me great personal and professional satisfaction.

  I got my people set up around the city, watching a good cross section of delis. Because I’m the kind of boss who leads from the front, I took my own assignment and settled down to wait. Waitin’s something I’m good at. It comes with the territory when you’re made of stone. I don’t have to worry about my arms or legs fallin’ asleep or about having to drink a lot of coffee to stay alert. I just sit like I was carved to it. The only danger is sitting so long that I forget I’m sentient, but that takes years, and that would be a helluva stakeout.

  I didn’t have to wait too long until I hit pay dirt. The same thing I’d observed before happened again: A skeevy, shifty-looking sort entered the deli, and that sent my senses tingling. If he wasn’t one of the gang we were tracking, there was still a good chance he was up to something he shouldn’t be, so I moved in.

  Just as before, he tried to get away with stacks of goods, though at least this one was smart enough to steal booze instead of potato chips, and I dropped his veil before he got to the door. While the irate owner berated him and held him for the cops, I hit him with the tracing spell, and a glowing path appeared behind him.

  I set off, following the path. Any hope that he’d lead me straight to his source faded pretty quickly. If he’d been meandering, he’d’ve moved more directly. The store where I’d tagged him had apparently not been the first place he’d hit. I tracked him to two more delis, and after each stop—before, in my case, since I was backtracking—he went to a particular parking garage. There wasn’t anyone in that garage now, so I wondered if he went there to enjoy his purloined treats, to stash the goods for later, or to meet with someone.

  I did find a few empty chip bags and beer bottles, but in this city, that wasn’t entirely unexpected. It’s cleaner than it used to be, but that doesn’t mean they’ve managed to eliminate litter entirely. His trail led all over inside the garage, and I found a few full beer bottles stashed, but not enough to account for everything he must have stolen.

  Eventually, I tracked his steps to a street corner full of what I guess you could call local color: guys set up with tables full of bootleg CDs, watches of questionable origin, and “designer” handbags that were probably held together by school glue. The scene was just askin’ for a couple of TV cops to come runnin’ through, chasin’ a perp and knocking everything over. But since this was real life, they just kept on fleecin’ tourists who thought they were getting a bargain.

  The one thing I didn’t see was anything that looked even remotely magical. Yeah, they’d want to hide their nefarious dealings from the likes of me, but you’d think it would be bad for business to be totally invisible to your entire customer base. He’d definitely stopped here, though. His trail passed all the tables, and it held for some time at each table, like he’d been shopping. Either he’d bought something here, or he’d used the spell to steal some counterfeit watches. My trail would last at least another hour, so I thought it was worth getting the scoop on what was happening here.

  I found myself a comfortable perch on a lamppost and went into surveillance mode again. Most wizards look like ordinary folk. They don’t wear robes and pointy hats with stars and moons on them. At least, not in public. What they do at home is their own business. But there’s still something about them that I can usually spot. Having magical powers changes the way people react to the world. There’s a confidence, maybe even an arrogance, about them. When you can remake reality with a wave of your hand, you don’t take well to being thwarted. The darker the wizard, the more obvious it is.

  But I didn’t spot anyone who looked like our kind of folks, either running the stands or browsing. Maybe I was wrong, I thought, and I needed to track farther. He might have merely stopped to shop for cheap CDs.

  I was just about to take off and follow the trail some more when my buddy Rocky appeared. The Rockster’s another one of my security team, and although he wouldn’t be the sharpest thing in a drawer full of butter knives, he was a decent tracker. If he was here, then there had to be something going on at this corner.

  “Hey, Sam!” Rocky called out as he alit on the newspaper rack under my lamppost. “Funny seein’ you here. What’s up?”

  “I was trackin’ a perp.”

  “Really? So am I! What are the odds?”

  “Pretty good, seein’ as we’re on the same case.”

  “Oh! Right! So your guy came here, too?”

  “Looks like it.”

  “Think he was buyin’ a watch?” Rocky asked.

  “Buyin’ a watch?” I sputtered. “No, you idiot. I think he was buyin’ a spell.”

  “But I don’t see anyone sellin’ spells here.”

  “Yeah, that’s the problem.”

  It wasn’t long before another gargoyle showed up, Rocky’s pal, Rollo. If Rocky wouldn’t be the sharpest thing in a drawer full of butter knives, Rollo wouldn’t be the sharpest thing in a drawer full of rubber spatulas. But he was the most doggedly persistent gargoyle I’d ever met. He’d follow someone to the ends of the earth or sit for weeks watching without getting bored. If he’d also followed someone here, then something really had to be going on.

  “Hey, Rocky, Sam, what’re you doin’ here?” he asked in his deep, rumbling voice. “I thought you were tracking bad guys.”

  “We are. We tracked ’em to this place,” I said.

  “Huh. Funny. My guy came here, too. They must like music. What CDs are they sellin’ here?”

  I resisted the urge to cuff him upside the head with a wing. “I think they must’ve got somethin’ else here,” I said, trying to be patient. Most gargoyles aren’t known for bein’ quick. I’m kind of an exception. “But I’m not spottin’ anything. Either they’ve got it hidden and have a way to reveal it to their customers, or they aren’t here now. Let’s keep tracking them back and see if we find anything else.”

  Following the rest of my guy’s trail only convinced me that the illicit market was where it was at. I didn’t run into any other security gargoyles, and he didn’t seem to have gone anywhere other than a coffee sh
op and an apartment in a part of Alphabet City that was resisting gentrification.

  That had to mean there was a magical vendor in the market. I returned there and settled down for a serious stakeout. The sellers packed up their tables and headed out at dusk, and no one else arrived. That was when I called it a day, but I came back first thing in the morning. There was a coffee cart doing a brisk business with commuters, but the bootleggers hadn’t yet come out of the woodwork.

  Finally, at about nine, a guy showed up, dragging a luggage cart with a stack of boxes and a folding table strapped to it. He set up with the kind of efficiency that told me he did this sort of thing a lot, and he turned out to be peddling used books. He struck me as a likely culprit. Spells and books tended to go together. Making sure my veil was good even against magical folk, I swooped down to get a closer look.

  The books were a mix of review copies—the kind that weren’t supposed to be sold—and paperbacks with photocopied covers taped to them—probably books that had been stripped by bookstores and that should have been trashed. I didn’t see anything that looked like a spell, though. Those tended to be pamphlets or booklets. I supposed they could have been stuck inside the books, and smart shoppers with the right kind of magic could see them for what they were. If that was the case, I didn’t have the right sort of magic because I saw nothing other than books whose sales weren’t going to help their authors.

  I waited around some more to see who might shop there and what they might be askin’ for. The guy wasn’t doing a brisk business, as far as I could tell. No one so much as stopped to browse. Midmorning, the other vendors started setting up shop, and by lunchtime, the book guy packed up his paperbacks and left.