Strange Brew

She frowned. She had a pretty frown. "Give me a minute."

"Tick tock," I said.

She waved a hand at me without looking up. I folded my arms and waited. I gave her tests like this one all the time—and there was always a time limit. In my experience, the solutions you need the most badly are always time-critical. I'm trying to train the grasshopper for the real world.

Here was one of her first real-world problems, but she didn't have to know that. So long as she thought it was just one more test, she'd tear into it without hesitation. I saw no reason to rattle her confidence.

She muttered to herself. She poured some of the beer out into the beaker and held it up to the light from a specially prepared candle. She scrawled power calculations on a notebook.

And twenty minutes later, she said, "Hah. Tricky, but not tricky enough."

"Oh?" I said.

"No need to be coy, boss," she said. "The contagion looks like a simple compulsion meant to make the victim drink more, but it's really a psychic conduit."

I leaned forward. "Seriously?"

Molly stared blankly at me for a moment. Then she blinked and said, "You didn't know?"

"I found the compulsion, but it was masking anything else that had been laid on the beer." I picked up the half-empty bottle and shook my head. "I brought it here because you've got a better touch for this kind of thing than I do. It would have taken me hours to puzzle it out. Good work."

"But… you didn't tell me this was for real." She shook her head dazedly. "Harry, what if I hadn't found it? What if I'd been wrong?"

"Don't get ahead of yourself, grasshopper," I said, turning for the stairs. "You still might be wrong."

They'd taken Mac to Stroger, and he looked like hell. I had to lie to the nurse to get in to talk to him, flashing my consultant's ID badge and making like I was working with the Chicago cops on the case.

"Mac," I said, coming to sit down on the chair next to his bed. "How are you feeling?"

He looked at me with the eye that wasn't swollen shut.

"Yeah. They said you wouldn't accept any painkillers."

He moved his head in a slight nod.

I laid out what I'd found. "It was elegant work, Mac. More intricate than anything I've done."

His teeth made noise as they ground together. He understood what two complex interwoven enchantments meant as well as I did—a serious player was involved.

"Find him," Mac growled, the words slurred a little.

"Any idea where I could start?" I asked him.

He was quiet for a moment, then shook his head. "Caine?"

I lifted my eyebrows. "That thug from Night of the Living Brews? He's been around?"

He grunted. "Last night. Closing." He closed his eyes. "Loudmouth."

I stood up and put a hand on his shoulder. "Rest. I'll chat him up."

Mac exhaled slowly, maybe unconscious before I'd gotten done speaking.

I found Murphy down the hall.

"Three of them are awake," she said. "None of them remember anything for several hours before they presumably went to the bar."

I grimaced. "I was afraid of that." I told her what I'd learned.

"A psychic conduit?" Murphy asked. "What's that?"

"It's like any electrical power line," I said. "Except it plugs into your mind—and whoever is on the other end gets to decide what goes in."

Murphy got a little pale. She'd been on the receiving end of a couple of different kinds of psychic assault, and it had left some marks. "So do what you do. Put the whammy on them and let's track them down."

I grimaced and shook my head. "I don't dare," I told her. "All I've got to track with is the beer itself. If I try to use it in a spell, it'll open me up to the conduit. It'll be like I drank the stuff."

Murphy folded her arms. "And if that happens, you won't remember anything you learn anyway."

"Like I said," I told her, "it's high-quality work. But I've got a name."

"A perp?"

"I'm sure he's guilty of something. His name's Caine. He's a con. Big, dumb, violent, and thinks he's a brewer."

She arched an eyebrow. "You got a history with this guy?"

"Ran over him during a case maybe a year ago," I said. "It got ugly. More for him than me. He doesn't like Mac much."

"He's a wizard?"

"Hell's bells, no," I said.

"Then how does he figure in?"

"Let's ask him."

Murphy made short work of ru

Murphy knocked at the door, but we didn't get an answer.

"It's a good thing he's a con," she said, reaching for her cell phone. "I can probably get a warrant without too much trouble."

"With what?" I asked her. "Suggestive evidence of the use of black magic?"

"Tampering with drinks at a bar doesn't require the use of magic," Murphy said. "He's a rapist, and he isn't part of the outfit, so he doesn't have an expensive lawyer to raise a stink."

"How's about we save the good people of Chicago time and money and just take a look around?"

"Breaking and entering."

"I won't break anything," I promised. "I'll do all the entering, too."

"No," she said.

"But—"

She looked up at me, her jaw set stubbornly. "No, Harry."

I sighed. "These guys aren't playing by the rules."

"We don't know he's involved yet. I'm not cutting corners for someone who might not even be co

I was partway into a snarky reply when Caine opened the door from the stairwell and entered the hallway. He spotted us and froze. Then he turned and started walking away.

"Caine!" Murphy called. "Chicago PD!"

He bolted.

Murph and I had both been expecting that, evidently. We both rushed him. He slammed the door open, but I'd been waiting for that, too. I sent out a burst of my will, drawing my right hand in toward my chest as I shouted, "Forzare!"

Invisible force slammed the door shut as Caine began to go through it. It hit him hard enough to bounce him all the way back across the hall, into the wall opposite.

Murphy had better acceleration than I did. She caught up to Caine in time for him to swing one paw at her in a looping punch.

I almost felt sorry for the slob.

Murphy ducked the punch, then came up with all of her weight and the muscle of her legs and body behind her response. She struck the tip of his chin with the heel of her hand, snapping his face straight up.

Caine was brawny, big, and tough. He came back from the blow with a dazed snarl and swatted at Murphy again. Murph caught his arm, tugged him a little one way, a little the other, and using his own arm as a fulcrum, sent him flipping forward and down hard onto the floor. He landed hard enough to make the floorboards shake, and Murphy promptly shifted her grip, twisting one hand into a painful angle, holding his arm out straight, using her leg to pin it into position.

"That would be assault," Murphy said in a sweet voice. "And on a police officer in the course of an investigation, no less."

"Bitch," Caine said. "I'm go

We didn't get to find out what he was going to break, because Murphy shifted her body weight maybe a couple of inches, and he screamed instead.

"Whadda you want?" Caine demanded. "Lemme go! I didn't do nothin'!"

"Sure you did," I said cheerfully. "You assaulted Sergeant Murphy, here. I saw it with my own eyes."

"You're a two-time loser, Caine," Murphy said. "This will make it number three. By the time you get out, the first thing you'll need to buy will be a new set of teeth."

Caine said a lot of impolite words.

"Wow," I said, coming to stand over him. "That sucks. If only there was some way he could be of help to the community. You know, prove how he isn't a waste of space some other person could be using."