2

Norman Cobb turned around slowly, tears leaking down his cheeks, and stood there, halfway to the door, and looked at me with the most intense anguish radiating from him. “Please, Ms. Fratelli, I'm....... sorry, I need you not the magickan. The rabbit, that's my daughter. She's been changed. Somehow, something changed her. She was playing in the yard and I heard her scream, and I got to the door and saw her shrink into a rabbit and run off. Now she's missing. Halloween is tomorrow and I'm afraid someone's going to catch her and keep her or take her to the pound, and I'll lose her. I know a magicker could do it easier, and cheaper, but I can't go that way Ms. Fratelli, I.... just can't.”
I sat back down and looked, really looked Norman Cobb over. He gave every semblance of a man broken by a need so desperate, that he'd do anything to fill that need. Hard-core Crack addicts look less strung out. This made no sense and it bothers me when things make no sense. Why would a person come to me to find a magickally changed girl and refuse to go to the people who could help him most? I decided to take a chance and look at him with my mage-vision.
Everyone has mage-vision, well theoretically at least. It's that even in a world where magic has been shown to exist, most people will run from it in a heartbeat. And of the other 10% who don't, maybe 1 in ten of those actually sits down to study it, and of those, only about one in fifty actually have the perseverance to become really good. What this means is that magickers, people who REALLY know magic are few and far bewteen.
When I looked at him, I just about went blind as the bright essence of him assualted my eyes. Looking at a faery can do that to you, especially it the fae in question is strong. All fae are strong in magic, much more so than humans generally. So they tend to glow when viewed with mage sight. Mr. Cobb glowed like a blast furnace. I was slammed out of my sight and the recoil stabbed through my eyes like a knife. I jammed my hands onto my eyes to lessen the pain.
'Mr. Cobb' straightened and threw off the glamour that shrouded him. His whole image changed. Instead of a rumpled grey business suit, he wore a deep violet shirt that looked like silk. Tights of deep green, and a leather vest that was a deep rich brown. A short, nasty-looking sword about as long as my forearm hung off of his left hip. HE gained in height as well, standing just a shade under seven feet tall, and rail thin.
“Ms. Fatelli, do you understand why it is so important to find my daughter?” “Well, for starters, because she's your daughter?” I said, deadpan. That's me, life of the party. I swear he growled slightly at that, and then took a deep breath. “My daughter has been turned into a rabbit by another mage. I need to find her before her assailant does. I am also certain that you have experience with this kind of magic also. That is why I have come to you.”
“Mr. Cobb, or whatever you're called,” I said. “I have no idea what you're talking about. What kind of magic are you talking about?” He straightened, and extended one arm. Just out from the tip of the arm an object faded into view, hanging suspended in the air, and I saw what it was and my stomach flipped over and I almost started whimpering. He was showing me a glass bottle. The same glass bottle that I had seen destroyed seven years ago during the biggest lviing nightmare of my life. Oh. Shit.
Mr. Cobb stared at me like a starving wolf stares at a crippled sheep. “Ms. Fatelli, you have seen this before, haven't you. The human who changed my daughter was attempting to use this on her.” “How the hell did the guy get that thing, and why are you sure he's human? If he was, why didn't your daughter just change back after she got away?” I almost yelled. I was angry and scared at the same time. I think that's a standard reaction when you have the absolute crap scared out of you like I did.
He didn't bat an eye, nor show any reaction to my outburst. He just waited, absolutely, completely, nerve-wrackingly still. He watched me a moment more and replied with a maddeningly neutral voice. “I believe that he had made a mistake in the spell, that the rabbit was not what he wanted. My daughter may have shifted before he could complete the spell, and he bound her to the form since his spell was tailored for a human, not a rabbit.” He shuddered slightly, and if he had not been so still prior to that, I would not have caught it.
He continued to look at me and said in that strange, neutral voice, “He had used cold iron in the spell.” Cold iron. Anathema to the fae. I'm not sure why, but cold iron is about the worst thing that a fae would face, and most of them would bolt away if given a chance. It's their poison, a single nail made of cold iron is enough to seriously weaken the most powerful of fae spells, and any weaker one is blown away like dust.
I wasn't sure what that did in this case, but it probably had something to do with why this child was still a rabbit. Maybe it locked spells like shapeshifting. Who knows? I sure didn't. But the bottle, the fucking bottle scared the crap out of me. I'd never thought to see it again after the huge implosion at the cabin. But god, or in this case magic, has got a real warped sense of humor. I hate warped senses of humor, especially when I'm involved in the humor part.
But I had to admit one thing, I sure as hell had more experience with that damned bottle than the rest of the world. I wish I didn't. That bottle sucks your whole self, soul and all, out of you, and converts the soul and anything that you were or might have been into magical energy. You're gone, nothing's left. No soul to reincarnate, or go to heaven, or hell, or wherever you believe souls go. It's a complete destruction of you. The holder can get one huge boost of power, but to keep at high levels, the use has to keep putting more people in the bottle.
As far as I know, since this one was crafted by a fallen angel, it would probably work on anyone or anything here. Which meant that a fae sucked up would turbo-charge anyone who had the bottle . Seriously turbo-charge. If the holder was skillful she might be able to lay waste to all of Halifax, and the surrounding countryside. I looked back again at 'Mr. Cobb'. “All right, I'll help you find your daughter, but I'm going to get full discretion on who r what's used to do the job, or we can part ways right now.” 'Mr. Cobb smiled and said “done.”
The first thing I did was pack up and head over to Larry so that I could get a locater spell. I was guessing that the other wizard was doing the same thing now that I had more understanding of what was going on. I also packed a few items in a 'possibilities' bag. I had a pistol but didn't trust it. Pistols don't always stop things coming after you, and they give ignorant people a misguided sense of confidence that got them killed a lot of times when running or a little thought would have saved their lives.