Hexed

mirror now belonged to us. It never let us forget how we’d awakened it, and its ongoing innuendo drove me insane. But I’d never throw it away. Magic mirrors were rare and powerful, and the mage who owned one could work amazing magic.
    I took a seat next to Cassandra. I badly needed a shower, and a beer wouldn’t hurt, but more than that I wanted to know why Cassandra had been so spooked by the blood. I’d never seen anything frighten my ultra-efficient hotel manager.
    Cassandra studied her bunched fists that rested on the table. “I’m sorry, Janet. I never should have come here in the first place.”
    “Yes, you should have. I can’t run this hotel without you. Why do you think the message was for you, anyway? It appeared when Fremont and I were up there alone.”
    Cassandra looked straight into my eyes. “Because I used to work for John Christianson.”
    She obviously expected me to clutch my chest and fall over in shock. I blinked. “Who is John Christianson?”
    Mick answered for her. “He’s a filthy rich hotelier and real estate magnate. Owns half of Southern California—commercial real estate, hotels, anything high-dollar in Los Angeles and down the coast to San Diego. Prominent in social circles, contributes to more charities than anyone in the state.”
    I spread my hands. Big business, especially big business in other states, was far away and unimportant to my day-to-day existence.
    “He’s a first-class bastard,” Cassandra said with venom. “I worked at one of Christianson’s hotels, the ‘C’ in Los Angeles.”
    All right, so even I’d heard of the “C,” which featured in Fremont’s favorite television shows about the rich and famous. The “C” was a boutique hotel in Beverly Hills that attracted celebrities, high-profile politicians, and the ultra-rich. They could check in for the weekend and have every need met and every decadent wish granted, without ever having to leave the building.
    “What has the ‘C’ got to do with messages on my bathroom mirror?”
    “Because the secret of Christianson’s success is deep, dark magic,” Cassandra said. “He can’t work magic himself, but he’s hired some of the best in the business—mages into the blackest arts. At first, when Christianson asked me to manage the ‘C,’ the top of his chain, I was thrilled. It would be a huge step forward in my career.”
    “But . . .” With a setup like that, there was always a “but.”
    Cassandra shivered. “Please don’t ask me what really goes on at the ‘C’—what you get with the most secret and expensive of packages. Let’s just say there are people out there who will do anything— anything —and pay any price, for pleasure. And please don’t ask me what Christianson expected me to do, with my magic, with . . . myself. One day, I’d had enough, and I left. Escaped is more like it. I didn’t tell anyone, didn’t plan anything. I just walked away.”
    “And came to Magellan,” I finished, finally understanding why she’d turned up on my doorstep, looking for a job. “Interesting choice. Why here and not half the world away?”
    “The first place they’d look is half the world away,” Cassandra said. “I thought I’d give a small town in the middle of nowhere a try. I changed my name and got you to hire me.”
    “So you’re not really Cassandra Bryson?” I’d taken her information for tax purposes, and it had all checked out, but I conceded that a competent witch could have taken care of such trivialities.
    I’d read Cassandra’s aura when she’d first arrived and saw what I saw now: a powerful witch who liked things clean and tidy, but without a taint of true evil. I’d liked her, she’d had experience running hotels, and I’d been out of my depth with this place and knew it.
    “If you don’t mind, I won’t tell you what my real name is,” Cassandra said. “They can hear names, and use them.”
    Mick gave her an understanding nod. He’d explained to me once that his name—the full version of it unpronounceable to me—wasn’t his true name, which would sound more like musical notes. Only a dragon and its dam knew its true name, because knowledge of a dragon’s name—and Cassandra had told me this part—could enslave it.
    I also had a true name, a spirit name, one my father had given me the day he’d brought me home, which was between me, him, and the gods. Names were powerful things.
    “I came to Magellan because of the vortexes around