Page 85 of Dead Beat

“He came from the sea.”

“How about what kind of car he drove?” Turner asked through the phone, and Darlington parroted the question back to Mira.

“I … It was … Maybe it was blue?”

“Did he have any tattoos?”

“Yes.”

“What were they?”

Mira frowned again. “What were what?”

Alex muted the chat.

“I think you scrambled her brain,” she said. “She’s going to go back to normal, right?”

“Something’s off,” said Turner. “She’s not lying, but she’s not telling the truth either.”

He would know. Alex trusted Turner’s gut more than her own.

“I think she’s under a prohibition,” said Darlington.

Dawes was nodding. “A strong one. It explains the gaps in her memory, her reluctance to even broach the subject.”

“Wait,” said Alex. “You’re telling me she’s already had magic used on her? I thought she just … I thought it was too painful or something, that she was ashamed.” She caught the look on Darlington’s face. “What?”

“Mira doesn’t seem like the type, does she? She met a guy, she fell in love, he wasn’t what she hoped. Does she dodge other subjects the same way?”

“Not exactly.” Mira wasn’t always entirely honest about the MLMs she’d gotten suckered into or the self-improvement group that had probably been a cult or the various gurus and life coaches who had charmed then disappointed her. But she loved to talk about them, to gild their memories. Every moment in her life had been a lesson, a step on the path to greater understanding and enlightenment, and if that path had been a winding, bumpy trail that led through the occasional minefield, then didn’t that make for a bigger adventure? “My father put a prohibition on her?”

“Someone did,” said Dawes.

The societies used prohibitions to keep loose-lipped delegates from telling their roommates and boyfriends what they got up to on Thursday nights and to keep alumni from selling off their secrets. Manuscript was particularly adept at them, linking compulsions to what was essentially charisma magic, creating binding loyalties that they sold off to keep spies from turning double agent or to prevent employees from leaking vital intellectual property.

When had good old Chushi worked his magic on her mother? Before they’d slept together? After he’d met Estrea? None of that really mattered. “Can you lift it?”

Dawes gave a determined nod. “I think so. Prohibition and compulsion magic are closely related. They’re both forms of persuasion. We just need to strengthen the compulsion so that it’s stronger than the prohibition.”

She held up the tarot card again. This time it was the Empress. “Mira, what card is this?”

Mira shook her head. “I don’t know this spread.”

Dawes turned the card. Three of Wands. Turned it again. Knight of Cups. Turned it again. Nine of Pentacles.

“Reveal yourself,” she demanded.

“There’s a pattern,” Mira said, rubbing furiously at her forehead.

Another turn. Seven of Wands. Another turn. The Devil. Turn again. The Devil. Turn again. The Devil. The card seemed to spin in Dawes’s hand.

It had started to rain at some point, and now that rain was turning to sleet, lashing the parlor windows, the noise like rattling gunfire.

Mira’s eyes filled with tears. “I can’t make it out.”

“Dawes,” Alex warned. She didn’t want to see her mother this way. Mira had always been scattered, vague. She had wept over Alex, begged her to come home, prayed for some way to help, but it had been years since Alex had seen her this distraught.

Dawes hit the mute button. “This isn’t normal. Whoever placed this prohibition rooted it deep.”