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“The Cornerstone.”
“That’s right,” Marla said.
“And Mutex has it.”
“Right again. It’s a pretty useful thing to have.”
“So you aren’t really trying to save San Francisco.”
“It’s not my neighborhood, B,” Marla said. “I mean your city no harm, but—”
He laughed. “I hate San Francisco. I live in the East Bay now. I haven’t lived in the city
for years, since I was in the movies. I have a lot of good memories of this place, but
they’re all bad memories, too, if you see what I mean. Because just thinking about those
good days reminds me of bad things.”
“I know what you mean.”
“So neither one of us loves this place, but we’re going to save it anyway.”
“Well, sure,” Marla said. “It’s not like we have to go out of our way to do it. We’ll save
the city as a byproduct of killing Mutex.” She looked at Alcatraz again. It was looming.
She could see the dock. “Besides, the place has its charms.”
“I guess I wouldn’t want to see it fall into the ocean.”
“And it’s not as if Tlaltecuhtli would just smash San Francisco and then go into
retirement. Mutex’s power would spread, and it would get to us eventually, wherever
we went.”
The boat bumped gently up against the pier, and the tourists began rising and milling
about.
“Let’s go see a witch about a frog,” Marla said.
It was easy enough to slip away from the tour, though Marla was somewhat interested
in what the guide was saying, about the brief American Indian occupation of Alcatraz
Island in the early ’70s. She had more important things to do now, though, and she
could always get Rondeau to fill her in about the history of the place later, since he’d
absorbed everything in the guidebooks like a sponge sucking up water. She cast a lookaway
over herself and B, the effort of casting the spell making her ears ring a little.
Maybe she should have snatched some spell components from the Chinese guy’s shop.
All these little magics were starting to take something out of her, and it was harder to
cast spells this far from Felport and the center of her power. Everything had a price,
after all, and she was down to paying with the substance of herself. She should keep
something in reserve for the bigger challenges still to come.