by Kal Aaron
Lyssa leaned back on the couch. She doubted a Sorcerer playing cowboy had stuck eggs in the mine a hundred years before. Samuel could be annoying, but she believed him. He cared more about the Society’s current image than the distant past.
“Okay.” Lyssa nodded. “So it’s not a leftover problem, and you don’t have any info about anyone traveling the area recently who might be a suspect. I’m not going to shoot someone just because they’re suspicious, but we can’t just waste a few monsters, throw up our hands, and say we’re done. What about people with related essences who might have traveled through the area?”
Samuel shook his head. “Few of our kind have a reason to go to such a place. There are numerous Illuminated with relevant essences who could have created the creatures, but we’re not about to harass them without evidence of wrongdoing. It’s possible, albeit unlikely, that a shard is behind this incident, which makes it even more difficult to pinpoint a likely individual suspect.”
“There’s a trail here,” Lyssa replied. “We just have to follow it. I’m hoping if we find the rogue, that will make it easier to ensure the mine is safe. Otherwise, I can go through there four more times and not be a hundred percent sure. There can always be another hidden chamber waiting to spew out more monsters. And I don’t think we want to send the military down there if we can avoid it.”
Samuel nodded. “We agree on that, but how do you propose to find the rogue?”
“By following up on the most obvious question.” Lyssa pulled her phone out of her pocket. “I’m guessing you don’t watch a lot of internet videos, do you?”
“Of course not.” Samuel scoffed. “I don’t have time for pointless diversions, and I dislike the internet. Phones and television were bad enough. The Shadows invent newer and more sophisticated ways for pointless diversion.”
“While cleaning all the nastiness from the monsters off me last night, I did some preliminary research by watching the videos made by the victims on their channel. I thought it might provide insight.”
Samuel’s eyes glazed over like Lyssa was speaking an ancient lost dialect. Sometimes he was such a fossil.
“Here’s the deal.” Lyssa tossed her phone on the couch. “Lots of people, especially young people, star in do-it-yourself shows. They might be educational, or funny, or stupid. These two guys specialized in the stupid variety.”
“Stupid?” Samuel’s mouth tightened. “They specialized in producing foolish programming?”
“Yeah, stupid and foolish. That’s a good description.” Lyssa shrugged. “I don’t know how else to describe it. They walked around doing idiotic, annoying, childish pranks, but they had tens of thousands of subscribers who loved them. Mostly kids and teens, but a lot of people were interested in what they were doing.”
“They were attempting some sort of prank at the mine?” Samuel asked. “I fail to see how you can make an abandoned mine amusing.”
“Now you’re getting me.” Lyssa shook her head. “But I don’t know. That’s what’s bothering me. I didn’t have time to watch every last video, but I watched several and skimmed the titles of most. There’s nothing in there about them going to haunted or spooky places.” She frowned. “This trip was an out-of-nowhere departure from their usual style. We’re talking about going from them putting on a dinosaur costume and tricking an old woman at a grocery store to them heading into an abandoned mine that just happens to have real deadly monsters inside. That’s a big jump.”
Samuel nodded, a knowing look in his eyes. “You’re saying they were murdered? That someone deliberately sent them to that mine?”
“Or they were test subjects,” Lyssa said. “Why? Who knows? Maybe a Sorcerer was clicking through their videos, found them annoying, and decided to take them out, but it’s enough to make me wonder. At a minimum, it’s enough for additional follow-up.”
“I agree. Do you have a plan for how to proceed based on what you’ve told me?”
“I think I should press the survivor a little more and see if I can get something new. He might have noticed something meaningless to the cops that would be a big clue to us.”
“I see,” Samuel replied. “This is something best coordinated with the EAA so they can act as your liaisons with the relevant Shadow authorities. This is stretching the purview of your contract, but I’m not opposed to you continuing the investigation, given the possibility of a rogue being involved and the potential for more monsters in the area. The last thing we need to do is supply anti-sorcery groups with more PR fodder.” He frowned. “You were right earlier. The quicker we handle this, the better it is. What sort of a win did you call it?”
“A quadruple win.” Lyssa smiled. “I’ll check in with Damien.”
“Good.” Samuel stared at her, something searching in his gaze. “I’d rather this be handled as thoroughly as possible without further escalation. Involving Eclipses can be complicated, and given the sensitive history of the area, we should clean up the mess before the Shadows start asking too many questions about Tombstone as well.”
Lyssa laughed. “Sure. I’ll go find the rogue and take him out so we can lie a little longer about something else completely unrelated.”
Chapter Fifteen
Lyssa decided to cut Damien a break by arranging for a meeting at her home later that day. It might have been fun to harass the employees at the federal building, but she didn’t want to create too much trouble for the EAA, especially in the middle of a sensitive investigation.
She also had no reason to mess with anyone else at that building. Lyssa didn’t mind poking people, but she liked to confine it to people who messed with her first. That was how she distinguished between feistiness and bitchiness. Not everyone agreed, but it let her sleep at night.
True to his word, the agent showed up without his government car or suit, though his glasses and hat were a Clark Kent-level attention-drawing disguise. Anyone looking at him would assume he was a fed.
There wasn’t anyone around, so Lyssa didn’t worry much, but she ushered him inside and to the couch before taking a seat herself. He’d learn. She just needed to help him understand.
“First things first,” Lyssa said. “Do you smell anything?”
“Do I smell anything?” Damien sniffed the area. “I’m kind of getting a hint of strawberry.”
“Oh, that’s my shampoo.” Lyssa gestured around the room. “Anything else?”
“No.” Damien shook his head. “Should I? Are you cooking something?”
“No. I’m just checking if I’ve still got monster stink on me after taking another long soak with the help of an enchanted herbal bath bomb. I think I finally got most of it off.” Lyssa shuddered and gestured at her face. “I am trying to figure out how much of it is in my head.”
“You smell nice.” Damien shrugged. His eyes widened, and he swallowed. “Not nice. Not bad either. You smell normal. That’s it. Normal. But normal is good.”
Lyssa smirked. She had to take the bait. “Oh, you sweet-talker, you! Do you tell all the girls they smell normal? Sexy!”
Damien coughed and averted his eyes. “The job. We should talk about the job. From what you sent to me, it’s not over. Please bring me up to speed so I can do my best to help you.”
“Fine.” Lyssa huffed. “Be boring.”
“It’s what I’m best at.” Damien winced.
“Let’s drop it, Damien.” Lyssa grinned. “We have something more important to do.”
She related her progress on the job without mentioning Eclipses, Tombstone, or the OK Corral. Samuel hadn’t been clear about who knew what about that incident, and while she hated politics, she couldn’t escape them. She needed to land this assignment to earn favor, not screw up her chances of getting to Last Remnant.
And she didn’t need to be as pompous as Aisha to care about her Torch duty. Anyone who would make something like the queen she had fought needed to be taken down, especially if they’d set up some stupid college kid to die.
�
�It does come down to a rogue at the end,” Damien said after Lyssa finished the explanation.
“That’s the most likely explanation, but it’s not concrete. I’d be lying if I said it’s impossible for them to be old holdovers, but I don’t think so.”
“I was worried about that. Ever since Houston, the entire EAA is on high alert.” He held up a hand when Lyssa gave him a worried look. “No, we’re not planning to try to take down any rogues ourselves, but the higher-ups want us to be proactive in defusing incidents with Torch and Eclipse help.”
Lyssa nodded. “That’s not a bad thing.”
“Everyone’s happy with what you and Aisha Khatri accomplished,” Damien continued, “but I think in the back of their minds, they’re wondering why we didn’t know more about the shard smuggling, and they’re also worried about another Sicilian Inferno situation.”
Lyssa nodded. “The Society agrees with you there. If anything, we want to take out rogues even more than you do. They threaten the entire balance of our existence, and the average rogue generally happens to be an asshole even when they aren’t smuggling shards or making monsters.”
Damien chuckled, but the sound didn’t match his sober expression. “It’s kind of disturbing that the best-case scenario would be leftover monsters from years ago and not something newer. It’s like going to an old World War I battlefield, seeing a college kid getting blown up by an old bomb, and saying, ‘Whew. At least it wasn’t the Imperial German Army.’”
“Don’t worry. If it is a rogue, I’ll find this guy, and I’ll finish him.” Lyssa frowned. “He got cocky, or maybe he’s an old pal of Adrien Allard’s who wants to stir up crap. I don’t care. His monsters were more disgusting than tough, which makes me think he’s the same. He’s probably nothing more than a freak who thinks he can frighten Shadows with his pets.”
“I see,” Damien replied. “The problem is we don’t know anything at this point. Nothing for certain, from what you say. We’ve got a lot of theories but not a lot of suspects.”
“You’re right. Without finding something personal that belonged to him, we don’t have a chance of tracking him. Once we know who he is, that’ll make things easier.”
“Assuming we can find that out.” Damien frowned. “It’s not that I don’t trust you, Lyssa, but this guy might have already run to another country.”
“Then a Torch there can get him,” she replied. “It’d be annoying not to finish things up, but the most important thing is whoever responsible gets taken out.”
“There’s something else bothering me.” She licked her lips. “I didn’t worry much about it the other day because I did a pretty thorough job of cleaning things out, but there’s a small chance this might have been part of some weird-ass ritual thing. Once I get a better handle on the situation, I’ll go back and double-check the mine, but my initial run should have at least disrupted whatever they were planning.”
“Huh?” Damien winced. “You’re serious? I was doing a background investigation, and I didn’t come across anything like that. Did you find something on site to suggest that?”
Lyssa shook her head. “Nothing but monsters. I didn’t detect any active sorcery.”
“Then why do you think it might be a ritual sacrifice?” Damien asked. “Because if it’s a ritual, we might end up with more victims.”
“It’s only because of Halloween,” Lyssa replied. “We’ve got less than a week until the big day. Depending on the rogue’s essence and what kind of rituals they’re attempting, they could potentially draw a lot of power. It’s a roundabout way to go about it, but there have been weirder things in Society history. The monsters might be a tool for something greater rather than the end goal.”
“I didn’t think of that possibility,” Damien said, “I assumed it was terrorism or making living weapons to sell to the underworld.”
“I’m not saying it’s certain to involve a ritual, but it’s something to keep in mind. I’d rather we wrap this up before Halloween just in case.”
The worst possibility was that their rogue had a spirit essence, making Halloween even more important. Tristan St. James had a spirit essence, but she doubted the assassin needed to use a roundabout scheme to accomplish what he wanted. He had more than enough skill and power to kill whoever he wanted already.
Finding his picture on the card wasn’t proof of anything. A bad reputation with the Elders didn’t make him a rogue.
“Okay, it could be ritual, but you already killed the monsters.” Damien furrowed his brow. “That means the threat has passed. You could clear the contract if you pushed. I’m not complaining that you’re following up, to be clear, but I’m trying to get a feel for how worried I should be.”
Lyssa shook her head. “This isn’t done until we find whoever is responsible, or we at least feel there’s a strong chance that person isn’t alive anymore.” She patted her chest. “I don’t do half-ass jobs. This is a matter of professional pride and personal interest. I’ve checked the Society side of things and there’s nothing relevant, which means we need to push forward on this in a more mundane way.”
“You mean perform an actual investigation?” Damien asked with an amused look. “The horror of it all!”
“Yeah. That.” Lyssa grinned. “The survivor. He’s our best bet. I couldn’t find anything in the stupid mine other than those monsters that would give us any hint. I killed everything unnatural I could find and hung around for hours, but no one showed up.” Her grin faded. “The last thing I heard, the survivor was in bad shape from the venom.”
Damien nodded. “He’s not going to be leaving the hospital anytime soon, but he’s doing a lot better. I talked to him on the phone earlier this morning. He was eager to help and cooperate, but he wasn’t all that lucid, thanks to painkillers.”
“It’s a start.” Lyssa rubbed her hands together. “Did you get anything useful from him? GPS coordinates for the rogue’s home would be nice, but I’m willing to start with a description of a regalia that might hint at his essence. I know he didn’t mention anything like that to the cops, but maybe he was more worried when talking to an EAA agent.”
“Define useful.” Damien’s apologetic look worried her.
“I don’t like where this conversation is going.” Lyssa frowned. “Come on. Give me something.”
“I asked him a few times in different ways about why they went there,” Damien said. “You’re not the only one who’s suspicious of why the two victims decided to go to an out-of-state mine out of the blue.”
“And?” Lyssa asked. “Did you catch him in a lie?”
Damien shook his head. “Mr. Nardi was rather insistent they just wanted to change up their show. He claimed they were getting stale and getting fewer clicks and subscribes, so they were losing money.”
“Okay, that’s not totally crazy,” Lyssa said, “but how do you get from pranks to abandoned mines? What’s the connection? I feel like we’re all missing something obvious, and I wasn’t cool and with it even when I was that age.”
“A pivot to haunted history was supposed to help them out, from what he said,” Damien replied. “He mentioned copying other channels that were doing that kind of thing. From what he explained, paranormal stuff’s all the rage since the five-year M-Day anniversary. It’s really hard for any of these guys to land interviews with or get real news about Sorcerers, but it’s easy to fill their channels with videos about magic and ghosts and garbage like that. It’s like a cheap way of co-opting the Society and the Illuminated to make money. People eat it up.”
“Really? Why do I feel like an old lady all of a sudden?” Lyssa groaned. “I’m a fossil at thirty.”
Damien laughed. “It’s okay. We’re both fossils.”
“Let’s think about this with our old-timey brains, then,” Lyssa said. “Why would two college kids from California decide to start their haunted history quest in that specific old Arizona mine? Are you telling me there are no abandoned gold mines they could have vi
sited in the land of the ’49 Gold Rush?” She offered Damien an incredulous look. “I didn’t see anything in my initial checks about the copper mine having any sort of haunted history, and Samuel didn’t mention it either.”
Lyssa was confident the Elder wasn’t holding back. His story about the OK Corral connection proved he was willing to share anything even tangentially related.
The Society had been good at hiding the truth of incidents in the past, but there was always something that leaked through, a legend, a myth, or a ghost story. That explained why the world didn’t have much trouble accepting sorcery after M-Day.
Damien nodded. “Same here. From what I could find, the mine closed down because it ran dry a long time ago, but it didn’t have a bad safety record or any unusual deaths associated with it.” He grinned. “I wondered if the two were just going to lie and try and make up a fake Blair Witch-style documentary history for the place, but I agree with you. It’d make more sense for them to hit the more famous allegedly haunted places in the state than that particular mine.”
“Which means the real question isn’t why they pivoted to haunted history. The question is why they started there.” Lyssa narrowed her eyes. “Maybe we need to do a little good cop, bad cop.”
“What do you mean?” Damien asked, looking nervous. “Neither of us is a cop.”
“Close enough. You might be an EAA agent, but in the end, that makes you a fancy fed and probably in this kid’s mind, someone to whom he shouldn’t admit doing anything too illegal.”
Damien nodded slowly. “Okay, that makes sense. And how do you fit into that?”
“Seeing Hecate up close and personal might convince him there are worse things than going to jail,” Lyssa replied. “Loosen up the tongue.”