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string had been tied. If the sticks
had been used in a protection amulet, they’d have even ripples,
like a stylized wood grain, because the power in an amulet is
expended evenly. If they’d been used in a curse against a specific
person, the ripples would thicken around the letters where the mage
had written the target’s name on the wood, and might even be dense
enough to show the mage’s handwriting.
    He placed his knuckle over the densest
portion, placed his fingertips over the three other denser circles,
then wrapped his palm to cover the larger dense part, and suddenly
found himself gripping the wand as if he were going to wave it. In
this case, the lines were thickest where a hand had gripped it. Did
that mean it was a trap meant to discharge when someone picked it
up? Paul set the wand down and mimed picking it up. He touched it
lightly at first, only gripping it when it was off the table. If
that had been a curse, it would have burned just his fingertips,
because when you pick something up you touch it lightly at first.
It hadn’t discharged until someone held it and pointed it at
something.
    It took him a minute to figure it out, even
when all the pieces were in place, because such a thing didn’t
exist. Couldn’t exist.
    “Someone made a magic wand,” Paul said. “They
put catalyst energy into this wood, so that someone else could
discharge it.”
    Fox nodded. “I couldn’t tell anything about
it except that it’s been held by more than one human, both males
and females. The parliament wants me to find out where these are
coming from. They assumed that Susan was the maker, and didn’t
believe me when I told them what my nose said.”
    “Why is she under so much suspicion?”
    “She killed the translator that was sent to
ask her questions about this,” Fox explained. “That means that
she’s hiding something. It must be something terrible if she’s
willing to kill a translator. Even I won’t kill translators, no
matter how hungry I am, even without the treaty. They are quite
useful.”
    “She didn’t seem like an evil person.”
    “Does evil have a smell?” she asked. “You’re
distracted by her young, healthy body.”
    “She is pretty, and I do like her, but I’m
not blinded by that. It takes an evil person to kill a translator,
and I don’t think she could be that evil. Maybe the translator just
died for some other reason that had nothing to do with her.”
    Fox barked, sounding exactly like a human’s
cough of disbelief. “The translator just happened to die on the
same day he went to ask her questions about the wooden wands, and
you think that she didn’t kill the translator?”
    “You’re the one who said she didn’t make the
wands.”
    “I didn’t say that she didn’t make them, only
that there is no proof that she is the only one doing it,” Fox
said. “The parliament is upset about these wands. They are going to
demand that we stop the mages responsible, perhaps with persuasion,
perhaps with a claw in the night.”
    “I won’t let them hurt Susan,” he said.
    Fox laughed. “You sound like you’re defending
a mate,” she said. “Worry about that later. If she is the one who
murdered the translator, the translators will enact their own
revenge.”
    A dog barked, and a black and white shape
bounded towards them across the irrigated park, dangling a leash. A
man ran after it, but it was clear he wouldn’t reach the dog before
the dog reached Paul and the fox.
    “I gotta go.” Fox flicked an ear and loped
away.
     

Chapter
Four

     
    On Saturday morning, Susan put her cell phone
in her pocket (in case Paul called, not that he had yet, the jerk)
and went outside to search for clues that might lead her to the
discovery of the murderer. Zoë didn’t believe in hiring someone
else to do anything she could do herself, so instead of spending
her free time renovating, she spent her evenings filling cardboard
boxes with junk. Susan was still trying to pretend they