Shelton stood up, looking tired all of a sudden. "He should be safe for now."

"You plan to keep him cooped up in there?"

"This is a one-way circle," he said, sinking into a wooden chair and pinching the bridge of his nose. "Nothing gets in."

"He's trapped?" I tested the air above the circle and met a hard unyielding shield of shimmering air wherever my hands touched.

"He can get out, but nothing can get in except me."

"It's that easy to throw up one of these things?"

Shelton shook his head. "I had this one primed in case I ever needed it."

"Nice hideaway you've got," Elyssa said. "But what if he needs to use the bathroom?"

"Or feed?" I added.

"The entire apartment is warded with spells that should keep the tracker from sending anything out," Shelton said. "But for now, I want him completely locked down until I have time to check all the wards and make sure it can't leak. Then he can sleep in the bathroom for all I care."

"He'll need to feed soon."

"I'll make him a bowl of cereal," Katie said, pointing to a box of Cheerios sitting on the counter.

Elyssa smirked. "Not that kind of feeding."

A shudder ran through Katie's shoulders. "Oh, gross. I get it."

No, she really didn't, I thought. But maybe that was a good thing.

Shelton went over to the computer desk and moved the mouse until the screen lit up. He double-clicked a program and scrolled through what appeared to be more spell files. "I've got some spells a lot more discreet than the disruptor I used. Once I fine-tune them a bit, he'll have a limited amount of time to get out and do his business."

I stood over his shoulder, watching with fascination at the sheer number of files he had. "Are these what pass for magic scrolls nowadays?"

He smiled and waved a hand at a large wooden chest sitting in the corner of the room. "I have a whole collection of them."

"Scrolls?"

He nodded. "Good for backup in case of emergency."

"Do they look like computer code?"

He shook his head. "Nah, they're written in Cyrinthian, the base language."

"Base language?"

Shelton huffed. "Look, I know you're curious, but I'm trying to dig through a disorganized mess of scriptlets until I find the code that'll help your dad."

I backed off. "Sorry."

Elyssa sidled up next to me, taking my hand in hers and resting her head on my shoulder as we both stared at the code springing up on the screen. "And I thought computer class was confusing," she said.

"It looks so familiar." I tilted my head. "I took a course in programming, and never saw anything like this. Even so, I think I've seen this sort of thing before." And then it occurred to me where I'd seen it. I unzipped my duffel and withdrew the flash drive. "Shelton, can you take a look at this?"

"For crying out loud, man, do you want me to get anything done here or not?"

"This is really important."

He sighed long and loud as he slipped the flash drive into his computer. The files popped up on the screen after a few seconds.

"Copy them over to your computer," I said, not wanting to part with my only copy.

He did as I requested before opening the folder named Copy of hash codes. "What the heck?" he said, opening one of the files. Instead of code mixed with gibberish, it came back as better organized code with question marks scattered throughout.

"It's a spell, right?" I said.

"This must be your mom's work," he said, voice full of admiration and maybe a bit of jealousy. "I've never seen such graceful code for nested arcane loops and functions."

Whatever that meant. "So what does it do?"

"Hang on a minute." He ran his finger down the code, pausing at the question marks. After a few more minutes of silence, he finally answered. "This code is missing a lot of custom runes."

"Define, 'rune', Shelton. You know I'm not familiar with this stuff."

"A rune would be the programming equivalent of a variable. Each question mark is a place where ACC is missing the variable or rune definition." He glanced up at me. "ACC stands for Arcane Code Crafter, the program most in the arcane community use for making complicated spells."

"This is nothing like Harry Potter," Katie said. "In fact, it sucks. Who'd want to have to use a computer to make spells?"

Shelton chuckled. "Lemme tell you, sunshine." He held out his hand and a tiny ball of light materialized, hovering just above his hand. "This is easy." Another ball of light appeared and the two rotated slowly around each other. "Still easy," he said. More glowing globes appeared, multiplying and popping out of each other until a galaxy of them filled the space above our heads, some globes forming little solar systems of their own, others gliding serenely around the space, doing their own thing, while others grew larger, forming suns, planets, and other heavenly bodies.

Katie's eyes were wide with wonder. "It's beautiful."

I stared at the amazing sight, my own mouth dropping open a fraction.

"This is hard," Shelton said, strain evident on his face for a few seconds before the galaxy flickered and winked out.

"Can you do it again?" Katie said. "It was so pretty."

"Sure thing, cupcake." He pulled out his smartphone, looked for a moment, and then pressed the screen. Again, the globes popped into existence, multiplying and spreading, except this time they turned into a much larger galaxy complete with realistic colors, nebulae and an amazing array of minute detail.

Gasps escaped our lips as we looked upon the wonders of Shelton's little homemade universe. Then I spotted something very familiar and walked over to look at it. A war raged between tiny spaceships, bright lasers and balls of green and red light exploding before my eyes.

"Those are Klingon and Federation ships," I said. "You're a nerd, Shelton, but, holy crap, do I love this."

Shelton's grin almost split his face. "You should watch the whole thing, man, it's sweet." A frown creased his face. "Except we're getting a little diverted here." He touched his phone and the display vanished.

Katie blinked her eyes as though coming from a trance. "How did you do that?"

"A script I wrote," he said. "I can do some things more easily with my mind, but when it comes to complicated spells with a lot of conditions and variables and parallel actions, it's a lot better just to script it out instead of going old-school and spending a day or so chanting out the entire thing."

"You can do any spell just by programming it?" I asked.

"Not exactly. Some spells require blood or bits of DNA, depending on what you're doing. And rituals usually have to be done the long way."

"Is the death mark something you could do with a scripted spell?"

He shrugged. "Not sure. I'll have to study it and see if I can reverse engineer it." Shelton pointed at the code on the screen. "Without the variables for your mom's spells, I won't be able to figure them out. Not without a lot of time and effort."

"And you have no idea what they do?"

"Actually, I think I know what this one does." He traced the last line in the code where a line of unfamiliar words were on the screen. "This spell is designed for mass murder."

Chapter 6

I staggered back a step, feeling an almost physical blow in my chest. My mom wanted to kill people? I couldn't imagine it being even remotely possible. My mom would never kill anyone, would she?

"What are you talking about in there?" Dad asked from the other room.

"Looking for some spells to help you out," I said, not wanting him to know about this just yet. I didn't want to have this particular conversation in front of the others. I leaned down to look at the computer screen again. "Can you find out what the missing runes are?"

Shelton shook his head. "Reverse engineering runes is a skill in and of itself. I have a friend who could do it, given enough time. And he might also be able to help me with the death mark."

"Will he help?"

"Oh, he loves this kind of stuff." Shelton emailed the guy's name and address to me. "Just make sure you tell him TP sent you." His face reddened slightly.

"TP?"

"Don't ask. I would call him and tell him you're coming except he doesn't use email or a cell phone."

I glanced at the guy's name, Mr. Smith. How original. "How does he communicate with anyone?"

"By mouth. He's kind of a conspiracy nut, but don't let that scare you off."

I laughed. By my new standards, conspiracy nuts ranked pretty low on the scary scale. "You sure he's still at this address?"

"Oh, that's not his home address. That's where he goes to buy comic books. A place called Trader Mike's."

"Are you telling me to wait around a comic book store until he shows?"

"Yeah. Just look for a medium-sized guy, dark hair, pale skin, about my age." Shelton pulled up a webpage and ran his finger down a schedule. "The latest edition of Clubfoot comes out tomorrow, so he'll be there. Back in the day he used to show up first thing in the morning and wait until they opened shop so he could snag a copy."

"Clubfoot doesn't sound like a very interesting comic book superhero."

"The main character is more of an anti-hero, truth be told."

"As in, he's kind of a jackass?"

"More like he murders people for sport."

I grimaced. "I guess there's no accounting for taste."

"You got that right."

Shelton pulled my mom's files back up and looked at them. I scanned through the lines of code. A few symbols repeated regularly along with a bunch of if-then statements. "Tell me this, Shelton. Could anyone take your smartphone and execute a spell on it? Make it work?"