The senator turned to look at me now, and I wasn’t sure that I liked the cold calculation in his eyes. I had no way of knowing what he searched for in his study, but when he turned away with a sneer, I knew he hadn’t found it.
“What I don’t understand is why myself or the Oversight Committee should give any credence to the supposed talents of a low-rent Harry Potter wannabe.”
“Harry Potter wannabe?” I scoffed. “Kid was clueless. Newt Scamander for the win, Senator.” His face darkened, but before he could snap back, I continued. “I worked solo for a decade before I even knew there was such a thing as Division M. I’ve tangled with things that would make you piss in your fancy suit with nothing more than a shotgun and a plucky attitude. When you take down one of the Void, you can judge me. Until then, kiss my ass.”
“You little punk—”
“Senator, I think it’s time for you to go,” the director said quietly. “If you have issues with the plan, the next committee hearing is the proper place. Your position does not entitle you to barge into my office and berate my people. No,” he snapped, as Prince opened his mouth to reply. “Out. Now.”
“This isn’t the last word you’ll hear on this topic.”
“I’m sure it’s not, but unless you’d like to apologize for your behavior here today, you’re no longer welcome in this office.” Newquist waited for a beat. When Prince remained silent, he nodded. “Off you go, now.”
Face red, he stood and rushed out of the conference room.
Valentine gave it thirty seconds, then mused, “What was the point of that?”
The director frowned but didn’t respond for a long moment. Finally, he said, “I’m not sure, but he’s on a wild goose chase. I’ve detailed the operational plan to the committee and at least four of the members are backing our play. He can’t win a vote, and he has to know it.” He turned to look at me and frowned. “Prince is no fool. He’s up to something.”
“What do we do?” George wanted to do.
“Keep working,” Newquist said. “I’ll take care of the politics. You take care of the fight.”
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Paxton—Friday, March 15
Augusta, Maine
The small warehouse was empty when we got there, so there was no telling what the prior tenants used it for. We didn’t give the matter much thought, though, because soon enough we had it full of unloaded equipment and boxes. When we finished, dozens of crates surrounded a series of folding tables bearing a variety of electronics.
There’d been a bit of mid-morning chill in the air when we unloaded, but humming computers, displays, hot plates, and coffee machines quickly brought the temperature in the metal building past comfortable and to the edge of sweltering.
I wasn’t wearing my body armor yet, which made it easier to strip down to my undershirt. “We should have packed some fans,” I observed to George, who grunted. He stood bent over a piece of the massive suit of armor he wore into battle. The bald agent was the least talkative member of Val’s team, but over the past few months I’d learned that he affectionately called the suit ‘Beatrice.’ For that matter, I’d also assisted Morgan as she went over the runes that Division M used to power the monstrosity. George had taken Beatrice into the first fight against Mother, and she’d somehow disabled it without damaging the surface. Much like the simple scratches I used to bind spell effects, the shape of the runes didn’t signify anything other than the intent of the caster, but the heretofore unknown weakness required Morgan to go over each symbol and secure them with additional markings.
In this case, the marks sigils served as mystical batteries while also using the kinetic energy of any hits the suit took to top off the reserves. Here in the warehouse, George had plugged the machine into a 220-volt outlet as soon as we got it out if its shipping crate, and it had been happily drinking juice for a couple of hours now. The only sign of activity on the suit was the slowly brightening glow of the symbols on the massive machine’s chest armor. The bright red incandescence was unnerving against Beatrice’s otherwise pedestrian olive drab paint job.
“Paxton,” Morgan beckoned me from her seat at the table. I moved over and took the seat next to her. She grinned and held up an empty ice chest. “If you think it’s too hot, that sounds like a good practice opportunity.”
In the past few months, Agent Andrews and his team had whipped my shooting skills into shape, but I was still this side of awful with a long gun. I’d made huge strides with pistols, but for whatever reason, I couldn’t hit the broadside of a barn with a rifle no matter how good a scope I used. When Morgan heard of this difficulty, she’d relaxed her hold on Division M’s spell archives and given me a little something to keep the playing field level if I had to fight outside the range of a pistol.
I still wondered if the spell wasn’t Morgan’s subtle attempt to balance the scales between myself and Mother. I’d never seen it, but per Valentine and Roxanne, Mother’s preferred form of attack used a semi-liquid flame the agents called balefyr. It was next to impossible to use without tapping into other sources of energy. Ice, though—like the shield spell, it was pretty much self-sufficient. It didn’t require me to push the cold away from me so much as it made me pull the very heat out of the air itself. I stretched out a hand and focused on the space inside of Morgan’s cooler.
The interior of the warehouse was warm enough that the result was immediately apparent. Wisps of frigid air swirled inside of the cooler, and water crackled into small, frozen pebbles. The sudden temperature difference between the air outside helped in that regard—the natural condensation effect drew humidity, providing moisture for the ice. I could vary the effect of the spell, and draw water as well as heat energy, but that wasn’t quite as heat neutral. This method left me with a slow-growing surplus that I could invest in other ways.
Switching gears, I threw the bonus power into my telekinesis spell and pulled the subzero air out of the cooler, throwing it out into the warehouse. The sudden breeze rustled loose paper, and there was a near-collective sigh from the gathered agents as the temperature inside of the building dropped thirty degrees in as many seconds.
It wouldn’t last long, but we’d all appreciate it while it did.
“Nicely done,” Morgan said. She rattled the cooler, and bits of ice rattled into a shallow layer along the bottom. “Saves me a trip to the convenience store.”
“Thanks.” I scanned the monitors lined up along the table. All but one displayed quiet city streets from a high angle. Over the past few weeks, we’d worked with the county road crews, adding cameras to several traffic lights under the guise of routine maintenance. Valentine and Director Newquist hadn’t been happy about expanding the number of locals briefed in on the situation. The meetings at Governor’s office and National Guard adjutant general had been tense, from what I understood—but there was no other way around it that didn’t risk the population of Randolph catching on. “How’s it looking?”
“It’s a lovely spring day in Mayberry,” she shrugged.
“Wasn’t that down south somewhere? This looks more like the town from Murder, She Wrote.” I waved a hand at the final monitor. The view there was far different. The director had pulled some strings and had a Predator drone sent up to provide overhead reconnaissance. The town was small enough that one in a constant orbit was enough to cover the gaps. If we missed Mother and Cassie on the street cams, the other perspective could be critical.
“Bit before your time, isn’t it?”
“Mother didn’t believe in cable TV. In the summers, the only channel I could pull in with an antenna showed reruns of Perry Mason, Matlock, and Murder, She Wrote all night.” I scanned the rest of the displays for a few minutes, then wondered, “When they come out, is it something obvious?”
“Not sure,” Morgan frowned. “None of the historical references I’ve found make mention of that. The displaced were usually found after the fact, wandering around in confusion.”
I bli
nked. “That happens often enough that someone wrote about it?”
“A handful of times. The things that come out of nexuses aren’t usually so benign. When it’s a person, it’s kind of like finding a gold nugget in a garbage dump.”
“Interesting,” I said. “Let me know if you need more ice, I guess.” I wandered over to the corner of the warehouse with no windows. Not knowing how long we’d have to wait for Mother to make an appearance, we’d brought along plenty of folding chairs and cots. I pulled the backpack I’d brought along out of one of the seats and settled in. For a while, I tried to read a book, but my mind wouldn’t slow down long enough for me to focus. Finally, I threw in the towel and took the same option as several members of the tac team—I settled into one of the cots and closed my eyes. My thoughts didn’t settle, but the returning warmth made me drowsy, and I nodded off into a light sleep.
Morning crawled into afternoon. Every so often some small noise would carry across the warehouse, and I’d lift my head and look around to see if it was time to get moving.
A little after twelve, a couple members of Andrews’ team piled into a Suburban to go for pizza and drinks. When they returned, we ate in perturbed silence. No one seemed willing to speak up and ask the question, lest they incur Valentine’s wrath. The senior agent sat well away from the rest of his, his eyes fixed on a steel rod that hovered a few inches over the table while it slowly rotated.
Eliot’s phone rang. In the expectant silence, the sound was all the more startling. We turned to look at the other agent as he answered in a hushed voice and listened before cupping his hand over the mouthpiece and calling out to his partner. “Captain Gardiner wants to know what our status is, he’s going to start rotating his men out of their vehicles for crew rest.” The company of National Guard troops stood by at the August Armory, ready to deploy and assist in the evacuation as soon as we made the call.
“Tell him we’re still in a holding pattern,” Valentine said, his tone exhausted. “Do what he needs to do.”
Eliot passed the message along, then ended the call. The reign of silence returned, and I tried to return to my book. It was a good thing I’d read it several times. More than once I found that I’d turned through several pages and couldn’t quite remember where I was at in the story.
By four in the afternoon, Valentine was furious. He stood, throwing his folding chair to the concrete floor and walked back and forth in front of the row of screens with the demeanor of a caged animal. He wheeled on Morgan. “Why isn’t she here, damn it?”
We technically still had eight hours left, but as our sorceress had explained it, ritual magic was time-consuming. It wasn’t a simple matter of waving a hand or inscribing a rune, and if the spell was date-specific, the caster needed to complete it before midnight. Under those parameters, Mother and Cassie should have been in Randolph for hours already. Even if we missed them on the cameras, the tracking device would have alerted us to their return.
Morgan held up a finger. “Take a breath,” she snapped, “And let me think.” She followed her own suggestion, inhaling deeply as she closed her eyes. She remained in that position for several moments, then clenched a fist in frustration “Shit! The Romans used a lunar calendar. We thought it would be the 15th because of historical events, but they shifted based on the phases of the moon.” She opened her eyes and shouted, “Someone check! When’s the next full moon?”
Multiple people whipped out cell phones, and the race was on. I wasn’t surprised in the least that Landry, the sniper on the tac team, was the first to hit on it. She called out, “March 20.”
Valentine cursed under his breath. “We’re early.”
Eliot’s phone rang again, but a moment later Valentine’s did, as well. The two partners exchanged a look, then answered. The conversation was more intense in the case of the latter, and Eliot ended his call in short order.
“Yes, sir,” Valentine said. “We have a new theory.” He listened, then said, “March 20th. That’s right.” He made a face, as though holding in the urge to scream, then replied. “Understood.”
He ended the call and glanced at Eliot. “Captain Gardiner,” the other agent said. “The Governor’s office called them and ordered them to secure Randolph using our cover story.”
“Prince,” Valentine hissed. “He got to them. That was Director Newquist—officially, we’re benched. The Oversight Committee scrubbed the mission and handed it over to the National Guard.”
“Unofficially?” Agent Andrews asked.
“We remain here on standby. When Helen shows up, we’ve got to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat.”
I grimaced. No one came out and say it, but we all knew what was about to happen. One way or another, the short-sighted fools who’d ordered the National Guardsmen into the town had sentenced them to death. Whether that death would occur at the hands of my mother or at our hands when we had to fight our way in was a moot point.
“Let me go to the Captain,” I said. “I can push him to stop his men. It won’t keep them from sending someone else, but at least that’ll give us a chance to make our case to Oversight.”
Valentine made a face, and I could tell he was thinking about it. Finally, he sighed and said, “We can’t. They’re already suspicious of you, Paxton. If you do that, we’ll be back to square one.” He slammed a fist down on the table, shaking the monitors. “We have to let them finish screwing it up before we can swoop in and save the day.”
Helpless, we could do little but stand and watch on the screens as truck after truck rolled into town. Guardsmen exited the vehicles and marched into residential neighborhoods, going house to house. We couldn’t hear their words, but a steady stream of civilian cars and trucks, many loaded down with luggage, streamed out of town and headed for points unknown. If they’d stuck to the cover story, the faux gas leak had served us well, because by the time the sun went down, the only things moving on the streets of Randolph, Maine were Army green.
Cassie—Wednesday, March 20
Randolph, Maine
Helen marched through the forest with such intensity of purpose that Cassie struggled to keep up. Pine boughs slapped her in the face as plunged headlong into a gap between two trees. They emerged into a long, narrow clearing.
Her captor paused, considered the area, then pivoted and began walking along the clearing. Glad for the clearance but already starting to sweat from the sudden increase in temperature, Cassie followed.
As they passed a metal sign that read ‘Old Narrow Gauge Volunteer Trail,’ Cassie called out. “How is this possible?”
“I’m more of an expert in Akkadian and Sumerian, but what I’ve found in the grimoire about the relationship between space and time would give the boys in the theoretical physics department heart attacks.” She shrugged. “Let’s say I put a girdle round the earth in a lot less than forty minutes.”
She opened her mouth to proclaim the insanity of such a thing but realized the foolishness of that sentiment almost immediately. Helen had blown up a truck stop and had the ability to make anyone obey her with a mere word. Was time travel that far out of the question?
Their initial surroundings had led her to believe that they were deep in the middle of a forest. As they proceeded down the trail, the tree cover lightened and she realized that they were moving into part of a small town. Helen didn’t stop to appreciate the scenery—she strolled out into the road and kept walking. Cassie hesitated as much as she could, given the order to follow, and when she looked both ways, the two-lane highway was empty.
And, now that she thought about it, there was a pervasive sense of emptiness. The two of them had been alone on the trail, but even the modest homes they’d passed before stepping out onto the road had a similar air.
Where is everyone? Cassie cocked her head to one side and tried to listen for the sounds of civilization. Save for the hiss of the wind through the trees and intermittent birdsong, the only thing she heard was the tapping of their shoes on the black
top. “It’s like a ghost town. What’s going on?”
Helen paused in the center of the road and turned in a slow circle. Houses lined the road to their right, and the parking lot of a car repair business sat to the left. Other than that, they seemed to be alone. “I’m not sure,” the other woman began, then stiffened. At the same moment, Cassie heard the whirring hum of off-road tires on the street behind them.
The men driving the pair of military trucks didn’t seem concerned about oncoming traffic. The big vehicles rode side by side and took up both lanes of the highway. The sight of a camouflaged soldier standing behind the big gun mounted on top of each vehicle made Cassie’s stomach tighten, and she’d have bolted for the ditch if she’d been in control of her own limbs.
Helen stepped up beside her and waited with stone-faced patience as the big trucks stopped less than twenty feet away. They were called Humvees, Cassie remembered, and the passenger door on the left one opened up as a soldier with steel-gray hair under his helmet headed toward them. “Ladies, this is a restricted area,” he barked. “What are you doing here?”
Before Cassie could even consider saying anything, Helen said, “Oh, my—we were hiking the trail, I’m sorry—we didn’t know.”
The soldier stepped a little closer, and Cassie read the name GARDINER on his chest. “The trail starts by the IGA,” he said, scowling. “That’s inside the restricted area, too. Hands in the air!”
“Do whatever they say,” Helen said, raising her hands. Cassie couldn’t help but notice the satisfied smile on her face, and her stomach clenched in a tight, nervous
What’s going on? At first, she’d thought that these soldiers represented her rescue, but Helen acted as though this wasn’t even a bump in the road. Thunder crackled in the distance, and a cool wind ruffled her hair.
Gardiner grabbed Cassie’s arm with one hand and Helen with the other. He steered them between the idling trucks. He pushed Helen into the truck on the right, then gestured for the men in the other truck to open op. Her limbs were still a little lethargic, but a frustrated bark of, “Move your ass, blondie!” unlocked Helen’s prior commands and she found herself able to climb inside of the vehicle.
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