by Liv Olteano
I did my best to focus on the meeting. We all talked about what new attacks had happened since last time, compared notes, ideas, and exchanged theories. When it was my turn to speak, I shared our new information and the fact that we’d given the special interventions teams some locations to look into. Everyone expressed interest in how things would go in our area, though we concluded that since Vivian was such an out-of-the-ordinary case, whatever conclusions we got to would probably be more of a particular case than grounds for establishing rules about caster MO.
By the time the meeting was over and I’d switched my phone back on, I had a text from Taka that said the special interventions team had raided the locations Nathan had given us. Not only that, but they’d found two guys at one of them—and they had death magic imprinted in their life forces. They’d been taken in for questioning. Taka had sent me their driver’s license photos, but I didn’t recognize either of them. That wasn’t saying much, though. That day Drew and I had seen Vivian in Denny Park with her gang, there were a few people around her. I probably wouldn’t recognize many of their faces. The ones I was more familiar with were the ones who’d chased us, but neither of the two photos looked like either one of those guys. Either way, we had two potential sources of information.
That had happened about an hour into our team leaders’ meeting, which had taken about two hours. There was no update from Taka, but I rushed home anyway. Maybe this was the break we’d been waiting for.
Chapter Nine
“ANY news?” I asked as soon as I walked into the living room.
They were all sitting on the sofa, armchairs, and on the floor. The lights were off and the blinds drawn. There were images projected on the empty wall opposite, and I heard voices I knew didn’t belong to my team.
Nathan was sitting on the floor, his gaze riveted on the wall. I walked over and sat down beside him.
“They’ve been trying to get them to talk since they got them,” Taka whispered from beside me. “They even tried to compel them with spells. They just won’t talk.”
“Vivian did something to them, I’m sure,” Nathan said in a small voice. “They don’t have magic themselves, I could sense that much from being around her gang members. They wouldn’t be able to resist a compel spell, not on their own.”
“A preemptive silence spell?” I muttered. “Doesn’t that take serious work?”
“It does,” Nathan replied. “Why would she put so much work into silencing people from her gang? I’d guess they wouldn’t need too much incentive to not betray her.”
“What does the gang do, anyway?” Ginger asked. “I mean, I get what the spirit servants do. But these guys?”
Nathan sighed. “Blackmail, I think. I can’t prove it for sure, of course. And even if I could, there was nobody to report it to.”
“To report what?” Taka asked, sounding annoyed.
“I think Vivian uses her magic to make money.”
“And you didn’t think to mention that until now?” Taka gritted out.
“I’m not sure about it. But she has a lot of money, and no job I could discern. It must come from somewhere. And what else would she need a gang of tough guys for, anyway? She’s not pushing drugs or doing things that would get her on the police radar. I checked.”
“What would you have done if she did?” I asked.
“Given an anonymous tip about it,” he replied without missing a beat. “From the moment I got the sense that she was up to no good, I was determined to put a stop to it if I could.”
“Sadly enough, she’s not as stupid as doing something that could get her caught that easily,” Taka commented.
Nathan flinched. “Something’s wrong.”
“Pretty much everything is wrong with your sister,” Taka deadpanned.
“No, in the image,” Nathan said.
“What do you mean?” I frowned as I looked at the screen.
“They’re moving from side to side.” He crawled closer to the wall. “See?” He moved his finger slowly, mimicking their movement.
It was subtle at first, but then it got more visible.
“Something’s wrong,” he repeated.
The two guys moved side to side more and more, until they simply fell out of their chairs. The guys who were trying to interrogate them came to their rescue. The angle from which we were watching wasn’t that good—upper corner of the room. We couldn’t see well what was going on on the floor because the table was in our line of vision. It was a live feed.
I called the special interventions team leader. “What’s going on?”
“They just collapsed, man. We didn’t do anything.”
“I know you didn’t. You couldn’t have.”
“We didn’t give them drugs or anything, I swear. They didn’t even drink water; you watched the feed, right?”
In the image, the two dreamcatchers in the room got up slowly. I couldn’t make out what was going on.
“What are your guys saying?”
“Apparently they’re dead.”
“They’re what?”
“Fucking hell,” he muttered, and disconnected.
“What?” asked Taka.
“It seems our suspects just dropped dead.”
Nathan winced, looking wide-eyed. “What do you mean, dead? Just like that?”
“So it seems.”
“She did this,” he muttered. “I know she did. I just know it. God help me, she killed them.”
I got up and walked to him. He got up too, though he seemed confused about why he’d done it as soon as he was standing. I took him in my arms on instinct.
“It’s my fault,” he muttered. “They weren’t upstanding citizens, most likely, but they were human beings nonetheless. I led you to them, and she killed them for it. She did, didn’t she?”
I held him tighter. “It’s not your fault. It’s hers.”
“God, she’s a monster. She’s my sister, but she’s a heartless monster.”
Angelo came closer. “Sorry to say, but yeah.” He patted Nathan on the shoulder.
“She can’t simply drain someone of life force instantly over any distance, can she?” Drew asked.
Nathan shook his head. “Not that I know of—at least not directly. But if she uses the spell that Mom used to drain me, then it can be activated long-distance. Very long-distance.”
Taka tapped on his laptop. “Like remote killing?”
“It’s the Silver Cord Strings spell,” Nathan muttered. “Once you put the spell on someone, you can tug on their silver cord or energy from a certain distance, depending on how much power you invest in the spell. It seems she invested a lot, if she could simply snap their silver cords.”
“Don’t take this the wrong way, but how come she didn’t cast that spell on you too?” Taka asked in a neutral tone.
“She tried, but I countered it. Of course, I didn’t let her know that. I’m guessing she tried to pull on my string since I’ve gone missing. She probably knows it didn’t work. Especially now that two of her people were caught. She knows they were caught. Why would she pull on their silver cords now, otherwise?”
“I agree,” Drew said. “But how did she know?”
“They could have a check-in system in place. It’s easy enough,” Taka said. “It says in the database that the Silver Cord Strings has no counterspell.” He frowned and looked up from the screen in Nathan’s direction. “How exactly did you counter it?”
“I came up with my own defensive spell,” Nathan replied. “It’s something universal, in a way. I always direct a lot of power to it just to be sure it’s still active. I couldn’t risk someone trying to use me again,” he added in a faint voice.
“Someone like your mother?” I asked softly.
He nodded. “I used as much power as I could for this shield, so there’d be as little as possible to drain for her use. But she still got plenty enough over the years. Then I boosted it so much that she couldn’t drain me anymore. Vivian could, though�
�even now, after all these years. It’s not a spell she uses, maybe that’s why. It’s simply her presence. Apparently there’s no shield that can protect me from that.”
I ran my hand up and down his back. “Let’s sit on the sofa for a moment.”
“What if I went back to her?” Nathan asked. “Maybe I could get her to tell me something. Or I could try to cast—”
“You’ll do no such stupid thing,” Taka announced. “She knows you turned on her. She has to. You go missing and then some of her people are suddenly apprehended for the first time? She can’t be stupid enough to think it’s a coincidence. If you go back, you’re a dead man. Is that what you want?”
“No, but—”
“No buts about it,” Taka said.
Nathan turned to look at me. “What if she kills everyone else in her gang now? As a precaution? I don’t even know their names.”
“There’s nothing we can do about that.” Drew sighed. “I don’t like it, either. But there’s nothing we can do other than getting her into the Asylum sooner rather than later.”
“If you go back to her, you’ll probably boost her power,” I said. “It would work against the goal of stopping her.”
Nathan slumped against me. “Okay. But there has to be something we can do.”
“We’ll think about it and find a solution, I promise,” I said.
And I was determined to find that solution—one that didn’t put Nathan in danger. In fact, I needed to protect him from his sister. Taka was right: she had to know that Nathan was somehow involved in someone depriving her of two of her crew members. And if her MO was anything to go by, she’d be bent on getting rid of Nathan just to keep herself safe.
“Let’s go upstairs for a bit and lie down,” I suggested.
Nathan followed my lead, seeming in a bit of a daze. I knew he was in shock when we got into bed and he simply crawled into my arms without any innuendo. I held him tightly, caressed him, and whispered soothing words every now and then. After a while he fell asleep. I stuck around for maybe another half hour, then silently went in search of Taka.
I found him still in the living room, alone, watching a recording of the live feed.
“Any news?”
He shook his head. “I’m curious how Nathan could tell that the guys were moving, though. I mean, he caught on to it way sooner than even I can on the recording, and I know it’s coming.”
“He’d have to be very familiar with its manifestations.”
“I agree,” he muttered, still focused on the images. “Do you think he’s hiding something?”
“Not intentionally. But he said his mother used it on him, and it had to be for years. He’s probably intimately familiar with how it works. It must have left an impression.”
“Hell, it left an impression on me now.”
“I see your point.”
“You realize what I’d do now if I were Vivian, right?” Taka asked after a few moments.
I sighed. “Yes. Go after Nathan. He’s her weak spot—someone who knows things about her. But at least she doesn’t know where to look for him.”
Taka looked at me from the corner of his eye. “Let’s hope she doesn’t.”
“He didn’t tip her off, I’m sure of that.”
“Okay. But that doesn’t mean she couldn’t have had him followed, for instance.”
“I guess you’re right.”
“Maybe she knows where he is, but she’s biding her time before attacking because she doesn’t know what we are. It seems the Witches Board kept their promise about not sharing information about us with the general witch populace. If they had, I think Nathan would have known more about dreamcatchers than some legend.”
I nodded. “So we’ll at least have some degree of element of surprise.”
“She has quite a number of surprises for us too, apparently.”
I took the hair band off and shook my hair free, then ran my hands through it. It helped alleviate a bit of my tension headache, but not by much.
“I’m going upstairs for a bit,” I told Taka.
I needed to relax and think. When I got in my room, I cuddled around Nathan’s sleeping form. As soon as I did, some of the tension left me.
This had been the turning point, my gut feeling was telling me; the moment when Nathan’s and my futures had been sealed. He saw his sister for the monster she truly was. I was sure he wouldn’t go back to her now. But there was no getting rid of the sense that Nathan was in danger. Some sort of alert had gone off in my head, and the more I tried to ignore it, the louder it got. So I accepted its presence and what it meant. After a power nap, I promised myself I’d come up with a possible solution. And then, once I repeated that thought enough times, I finally managed to doze off.
Chapter Ten
AS soon as I woke up, I was a man with a mission. The only possible solution to my main problem became obvious to me as soon as I opened my eyes. I left Nathan still sleeping in my bed and went downstairs.
I walked toward the webs room with a mix of thoughts and desires that left me confused. On the one hand, Nathan offering to be so directly involved in the fight against his caster sister’s forces proved his loyalty to justice by and large and to us as a group—to me. On the other, the more directly involved he’d be, the more danger he was in and the tougher it might prove for him to get over all of this.
Whatever would happen between him and me from here on, I knew for sure that I’d do anything I could to make his life easier, if not happier.
The plan to involve him directly could backfire, too. Even if he had the best of intentions, we were talking about his sister—evil and estranged as she may be. I couldn’t picture Vivian being anything but cold and manipulative, but looking at her with objective eyes could paint an entirely different picture than that seen from the eyes of a guilt-ridden brother—no matter how justified that guilt was or wasn’t. I was pretty sure Nathan was guilty of nothing but a soft heart. And he seemed to be in shock, too, which meant he hadn’t been ready to accept the fact that his sister was the monster she truly was. That could come back to bite us in the ass. But there was only one way I could think of to keep Nathan as safe as I could, and benefit from his help as much as we could while keeping him safe.
When I arrived at the double doors, I sent Aashi my request to be invited in and explained in that request on what matter I needed her advice. She’d have to consult with the ancestors, maybe; if so, I wanted to get all those discussions out of the way in one go, if that was possible. Once I sent her my mental plea, I waited.
The grain of the doors’ wood caught my attention in a way it hadn’t before. If you looked closely enough, in some places the grain of the wood seemed to splinter into an array from a central point. It was a detail I must have seen so many times, and yet never given proper attention. Here I was now, staring at the wood and wondering if it was just my imagination or if the wood itself had an altered nature due to its use. The little central points with lines bursting from their centers were crossed by other lines in the grain of the wood, and the overall effect was oddly reminiscent of a spider’s web. Had it always been like this? I reached out and ran my fingertips over the smooth and slightly cool surface. It vibrated with magic, not malicious toward me but alert and ready to defend itself against intruders. I thought about each line in the wood’s grain, and how on its own it wasn’t impressive, but as a whole it built something so strong and durable.
Our teams were the same. While each of us was a strong warrior, we made a difference because we worked together. Our strength was our mutual trust and having crystal clear loyalties. Mine weren’t as clear as they used to be, and no matter how hard I tried to reconcile them right now, there simply wasn’t an easy solution to the problem. I hoped I’d find one, easy or not. Without knowing what Nathan’s future would hold I felt sure I would never be able to make clear sense of my loyalties and needs.
When Aashi’s summons finally came, I felt like sharp claws were gr
ipping my lungs tight. There wasn’t enough air for me to inhale to full capacity, and all my hopes and desires pressed in on me.
I bowed my head when the open doors revealed Aashi running her delicate fingertips over the edge of the table and walking slowly around it.
“Come closer,” she said.
My pulse spiked, though I knew she wouldn’t hurt me in any way. But I feared that what she’d have to say would hurt more than any injury might.
“You have a request for me and the ancestors,” she said, and when I glanced at her, she smiled kindly, like a mother.
I ran a hand through my loose hair. “Nathan wants to be directly involved in our efforts against his sister.”
She looked into my eyes for a few seconds, then nodded toward the sofa and armchair. We sat, her on the armchair and me on the sofa we used for initiation rituals or mending of wounds. How interesting it was that we’d discuss this topic exactly here.
“You trust him fully now,” she said.
“I do. My heart trusts him, and my gut instinct points to the same idea: that he is trustworthy. Napeva’s Tooth also says he’s not lying about his intentions and plans for the future.”
“But the spell works based on what the subject feels is true,” she noted. “If he’s being used by his sister without his knowledge, for instance, he’d be sincere with us and at the same time try to sabotage our efforts.”
“True,” I admitted in a faint voice. “And you can’t fully read him as things stand now.”
“Exactly. The ancestors feel that I’d overstep my attributions. And I can’t protect him either. Taka can shield him as much as he could any regular human being.”
“Meaning not that much,” I concluded. I sighed and leaned back on the sofa, putting my clenched fists on my knees. She had to know what the only possible solution was right now. If she wasn’t mentioning it, then I took it to mean that the ancestors hadn’t approved of my idea.