Ulterior Motives

Boo, Back To The Real World

He had read most of her notes, gone over the witness statements. She hadn't included the conversation with the goblin because she hadn't gotten to writing it up and it was the same report as everyone else. She mentioned him to Oliver but explained that he hadn't provided anything new. The guy they were looking for used a glamour and gave the same false name.

Oliver was going over her list of ingredients. "You still think the moonstone is the key?"

"Yes, the amethyst is powerful. He would need essence of night to cloak something of that magnitude, and a lot of it." It was midday and going over everything had taken quite some time.

"What else would he need?" Oliver recognized everything on the list. He'd done concealment rituals before but nothing like this. "What about runes? You use them. You don't think he's using them?"

Reagan had considered it. "No, it takes more than one person to create a rune. He wouldn't trust someone else. If the amethyst has as much juice as you implied it does, a rune powerful enough to contain it would require at least five people. One for each element to create one, positioned at each point of a pentagram. Runes like that would require calling in a favor. He wouldn't trust anyone with something that important and word would get around, rumors would spread. Someone would ask questions and when the amethyst went missing someone would have put two and two together. There are too many unknown variables and he would want complete control. Otherwise, the odds of him pulling this off would have significantly decreased. This is too important to him to risk it."

Reagan pointed to the windows, "Besides, I'm not sure if runes would be powerful enough. Nothing I have could conceal something like that, those are merely a repellent. They don't hide this apartment they just make it so no one can see inside. They wouldn't stand up to very much either. It's mostly to prevent dangerous spells and curses from being cast but if someone powerful enough really wanted to get through they could. You managed to get passed my circle at the office. Mine is the strongest protective circle there is. That I know of anyway. Considerably more powerful than the runes here. You didn't seem to have much difficulty with them. If there are runes more powerful than those I've never hear of them."

"There are." He corrected, smiling at her when she looked at him excited. He held up a finger stopping her before she could get distracted. Her enthusiasm when it came to protective magic and history was something he admired but they didn't have time.  "If you're about to offer to exchange the information, as we agreed, for the protective runes I will be more than happy to provide them for you but I won't use this as part of our trade. I'd rather you have the best protection possible. I'll take care of it personally, free of charge. But right now we have more pressing matters. So you've narrowed it down to a specific charm." Oliver had to admit it made sense. She thought of the options then used process of illumination to determine the best course.

"Thank you." She smiled at him. It was a hobby of hers; studying protective magic. She was excited to know there was so much more to learn and she had someone on the inside she could turn to. However, he was right. That could wait.

"Yes, this charm is the most secure and the mostly likely to hide the amethyst. It's also the hardest to track which would have given him a lot of security. The other ingredients are too easy to come by and used in a lot of things. I handed out the list of the most likely to the vendors I know and passed them around but if he did buy all of them so did a lot of others and he would have gone out of his way to cover his tracks. Purchased other items at the same time to indicate another spells or even a potion. I imagine he bought them at different times from different vendors buying them all over a long period of time to build up his stores. Then, he stopped months ago to avoid detection once the amethyst was stolen. He's smart. Smarter than me I'm afraid." That was what irked her the most, Oliver smirked a little when she wasn't looking. Her pride was bruised and her irritation was adorable.