by Karen Chance
“Well, it works the same way. And these guys, they never think they’re gonna get hit. It’s obviously gonna be the other guy.” He rolled his eyes. “So why not set up a camera in a closet or something and pocket some paper? Anyway, these two Rambos, they’re folk heroes. Two days and they’re folk heroes—”
“And you’re taking bets on . . . what?”
“Everything. Who’re they gonna hit next? How long does it take for them to clean house? How many head shots does Granny get—”
“I get the idea.”
“It’s a windfall! I haven’t made this much since the ley line races, and the odds kill you on those—”
“Do you know where I can find him?” I nodded at the screen.
Maybe I didn’t need Curly, after all.
“Sure I do. Right—” Fin stopped abruptly, looking behind him. Because he’d just noticed the same thing I had. The fight wasn’t over.
I heard several nearby patrons shout a warning, but of course, no one who needed it could hear. And Blue was either too tired, or too distracted by the handful of slaves coming up to thank him, to notice the men headed his way. One of the survivors must have called for backup, and it was coming in spades. I saw a group of men running down the now-deserted dock, saw them flood through the open doors, saw them lob a collective spell that sent shock waves through the air—
And then I didn’t see anything.
The feed had gone dead.
Chapter Thirty-four
Fifteen minutes later, Fin and I swerved onto a street and then screeched to a halt. Because the warehouse wasn’t dark anymore. Somebody had beaten us to the punch, and their guys were crawling all over the place, including one who magically appeared beside my car before I could slam us into reverse.
“Hello, Dory.”
I put the car in park and sat back against the seat. “Hi, James.”
I still had the top down on my old jalopy, so of course he’d recognized me. James was one of the guys whose retirement account I contributed to from time to time, because he made really good protection wards. Not having the ability to make any magic for myself, I had to buy it, and if you’re gonna buy, it may as well be from the best.
Of course, dealing with a member of the Silver Circle has its downsides, too.
James leaned on the driver-side door, and flashed some too-white teeth at me. Or maybe they just looked extra white next to his nice, chocolate mocha skin. And his suspicious brown eyes.
“Out for a ride?”
I smiled back. “Okay.”
He shook his head. He had a man bun of braids that nobody ever said anything about, like they didn’t question the full beard he wore, which I got the impression wasn’t regulation. Because when you’re as powerful as he is, people bend the rules for you.
But not for me, it seemed.
“Not tonight,” he confirmed.
“Why not tonight?”
“I think you know.” He gestured back at the old building. “We got a problem.”
“That’s too bad.”
He just looked at me.
I sighed. “Word is, some slavers got dead. I’d think that was the opposite of a problem.”
“It’s a problem when we don’t know who’s behind it, or where they’re going to strike next. This time, it was slavers. Next time—”
“It’ll be more slavers, if it’s anyone at all.” I thought of the strength of the spell that had hit Big Blue. “And it may not be anyone.”
The friendly guy I knew suddenly wasn’t. “All right, I’m gonna need you to come in.”
“Why? I don’t know any more than you do.”
“Well, it sounds like you do!”
“I only know what I saw.” I looked at Fin.
Who looked back, the tiny troll eyes disappearing into flaps of skin, his version of narrowing his eyes. Nobody likes talking to cops. But, after a minute, he coughed up an explanation.
It didn’t seem to help.
James glared at him. “You set up a feed of a highly illegal enterprise—”
“I didn’t know it was illegal. There were just these rumors.”
“—so you could take bets on the outcome?”
Fin bristled. “There’s nothing wrong with that. I run a quality establishment. I pay my taxes. City, state, and federal, and then you guys on top! But the world’s gonna end if I ever try to make a buck—”
Two more of the Circle’s guys were suddenly there. Or, more likely, had already been there, but had decided to drop the kind of charms they use for camouflage. And promptly demonstrated why they’re not called police, or peace-keepers, or even law enforcement.
Oh, no.
They’re called “war mages,” and these two looked like that should have been “war tanks,” because the stupid trench coats they wear to cover up all the weapons they cart around were so distended that they made them look positively fat.
Like Father Christmas in leather.
Leather and scowls.
Wonder what they’d leave in a stocking, I thought, as one of them grabbed me.
And then lost me when I broke his hold and flipped over his head, landing on the street behind them.
“Ah, crap,” Fin said, and disappeared into the well of darkness in the floorboards.
Meanwhile I was suddenly facing two levitating guns, which was bullshit. Mages only do that when they need backup and have run out of hands, and there was nothing in their hands now. They just wanted to be dicks.
Okay.
I can be a dick, too.
A moment later, the guns were still levitating, but in pieces, and the barrels were mangled out of all use. Because mages never learn: levitating weapons are cool and all, but they still move at human speeds. I don’t.
“Cut it!” James barked at his men, before they could retaliate. And then shot me a warning look, too. “Don’t escalate.”
“I’m not the one who drew weapons.”
“You put your hands on an officer. You know better than that!”
“And you know better than to manhandle a senator, but I didn’t see that stopping you.”
It felt weird on my tongue, that word, like the fake title it wasn’t. Like something unearned, when it hadn’t been that, either. The coveted seats were always won through a combination of strength and politics, meaning that I had just as much right to one as anyone else.
And might as well get some good out of it, for as long as it lasted.
But it still felt strange, confusing. And I guess James agreed. Because he frowned and looked around, like he expected a senator to suddenly pop out of the bushes.
His buddies, who had finally realized they were down two guns, didn’t bother trying to figure it out. Magical talent is a requirement for joining the War Mage Corps, but intelligence isn’t. As they demonstrated by going for me again.
And getting their heads slammed down to the side of my car, which did not seem to improve their moods.
“Unhand us,” one seethed at me, while thrashing around. “Or we’ll unhand you!”
“Meaning?”
“Snap our shields shut on your wrists, and take your hands off in the process!”
“You could do that,” I agreed. “And then I’d get the answer to something I’ve always wondered about.”
“Like what?” the other mage demanded, as a distraction for his foot trying to do a sweep on mine.
I stepped on it.
Hard.
“Whether a dhampir’s limbs are like a vamp’s,” I told him, while he cursed. “And keep moving after being cut off. If they don’t, you win. If they do . . .”
“You’ll still be handless!”
“And your skulls will still be popped like melons, so I doubt you’d care. Although it does raise the question: can disembodied hands
be put on trial? I don’t think it’s ever come up.”
Mage Number One glared at me. “You expect us to believe you don’t know what happens when you lose a limb?”
I grinned, showing off baby fangs. “Never been slow enough to find out.”
And then a heavy hand fell on the back of my neck, leaving us all standing there in the same pose, like a bunch of idiots.
“Now, here we are,” James said cheerfully. “One big, happy family.”
Mage Number Two cursed. “Not with that thing!”
“Shut it, Tomkins. You’re in enough trouble.” James smiled at me gently. “And so are you.”
“Check it,” I said.
“Check what?”
“My position. With the Senate. Or do you want to have to explain why you have a senator locked up?”
“A senator.”
“Yes.”
“You.”
“Yes!”
“Since when?”
“Since a couple weeks ago,” Fin said, popping back up. “I know. I didn’t believe it, either.”
James just looked at me. “You’re a dhampir.”
I looked back. I wasn’t in the mood for this tonight, I really wasn’t. “Just check it!”
He checked it. And then he checked it again, having whoever was on the other end of the phone make some more calls. And then he just stood there, phone in hand, while his boys made angry sounds because I guess their backs had started to hurt.
“I’ll be damned.”
“Are we done here?” I snapped. If I was going to find Big Blue alive, I needed to move.
“Technically.”
“And that means?”
“You have immunity,” he agreed, reluctantly. “But we don’t have to let you into the scene.”
“I’m on the Senate’s task force for smuggling. I’m trying to help shut them down!”
“Sure, but we still don’t have to let you in.”
I released Huey and Louie, who showed their appreciation by cursing at me. I was gratified to notice a big red mark across their faces, where skin had met door. It didn’t look like I’d broken anything, though.
Pity.
“What do you want?” I asked James.
“I already told you: information. What you know for what we know.”
“I don’t know much.”
“But you might.”
I thought about it. “I might.”
“Pooling our information could be useful, couldn’t it?”
“We don’t need any help from the damned—” Huey’s outburst cut off abruptly, although James hadn’t even moved.
I blinked.
It was impressive, in a Darth Vader-y kind of way.
“We’re both on the same side,” James told me smoothly.
I looked at his boys, who might not be talking, but were breathing like a couple of bulls in winter. Sure. Same side.
But I still needed to get in there.
“Okay.” I stuck out a hand. James took it.
He smiled brilliantly. “See? Was that so hard?”
Fin and I exchanged a glance.
Freaking war mages.
* * *
—
There were more mages inside, but nobody else smiled at me. Or at Fin, who was ambling along at my side, like a three-foot Watson to my diminutive Holmes. One with wild tufts of hair sticking up from the ride over, which made him look like a crazy-haired troll doll. To the point that I saw a war mage do a double take while I looked around for Big Blue.
Or parts thereof.
I didn’t find any. And it wasn’t like I could have missed him, and not only because of his size. But because the mages had done more than turn on the lights.
The warehouse was a relic from an earlier age, slowly moldering to pieces on the waterfront. It had probably been empty before the slavers found it, because pieces of the roof were missing and weeds were growing up between some of the floorboards. But the smugglers had done enough to make it usable, which mainly involved installing some cheap hanging fluorescents. It was still gloomy, the size swallowing the dim glow from overhead, but in places—
In places it was downright dazzling.
Footprints and handprints gleamed on walls and floors like angels had left them, sparkling with a bright white-gold fire. The marks the slavers had made when they hit down had left smears and splatters that blazed a brilliant scarlet against the dark. And a pile of crates by the wall, large and perilous looking, had a rainbow of different colors spilling out from gaps in the wood, as if screaming, “Look here!”
A reveal spell, then, and a good one. It had even brightened moldy graffiti back to readability, and left ghostly imprints of long-rotted advertising posters glowing against the bricks. And there was a sizeable crew in place to take advantage of it: war mages were guarding entrances, medical staff were examining bodies, and what I guessed were forensic types were crawling all over everything, muttering spells at suspicious items.
One of the latter had just made a glowing footprint float up into the air and rotate like it was 3-D. And then actually become 3-D when it suddenly flew off and attached itself to the shoe of a guy being loaded onto a stretcher. Immediately, a whole line of bright footprints, including some near us, suddenly went dark.
Having now been identified, I realized.
“Okay, take him,” the mage said, and the body was carted out, one shoe still glowing.
Another mage was busy summoning a trail of blood off a support beam, causing the drops to separate from the peeling paint and fly into the air. And then to shimmer and change, from crimson to gold, and from tiny to huge, before turning into a mass of gleaming strands that whipped about wildly in space, like the tentacles off a crazed octopus. Until, with a final flash, they coalesced—
Into the shape of a man.
It looked like a life-sized hologram of a mummy, its missing body outlined by threads of floating magic. They glimmered golden bright against the darkened room, which was visible through gaps between the filaments. The whole was strangely beautiful, like an artist had carved a statue out of light. . . .
But the features were liquid and shifting, impossible to read, and the body itself was generic, with no identifying flaws that I could see. It was an impressive display, but other than approximating the guy’s height, I wasn’t sure what the point was. I’d seen more useful police sketches.
“Got a weird one,” the mage called to James, who stopped abruptly.
“How weird?”
He didn’t get an answer. But the next second, the light man became a light wolf, huge and silently snarling out of a fang-filled mouth. I reached reflexively for a knife—it was that real—and heard Fin yelp something profane from behind me. The mage, however, didn’t so much as flinch.
“Must have gotten away,” he said, standing calmly next to his hologram horror, and checking a computerized notepad. “None of the bodies are weres.”
“Run him through the system. Find out if we’ve met him before.”
The mage nodded.
“Through the system?” I asked, still staring at the wolf. Which was snapping and lunging—in place, because he never moved from the mage’s side. But still. A furious, oversized, golden wolf, giving every impression that he wants to eat you, draws the eye.
“Yeah.” James looked at me. “Why?”
“You think a shifter was slaving shifters?”
He shrugged. “Why not? The fey traffic fey.”
“But not the same kind.”
He shook his head. “The first thing I learned in this job: some people will do anything if the money’s right.”
“Yeah, but—” I broke off, ducking low as something soared overhead, barely missing us.
Fin cursed, James just stood there, and I s
tared upward at the creature hovering near the ruined rafters. It was a phantom version of the eagle boy, I realized. And just as he’d been when, at a guess, he was injured in the fight and spilled a little blood. Which meant partially transformed, with a human body but huge, feathered wings.
They were currently shedding sparks that flew off through the air, or pattered down onto the floor, lighting up the old boards and turning the warehouse’s collection of “ghetto diamonds”—broken bottles and scattered glass—into what looked like the real thing. In the golden glow of the spell, he looked like a medieval depiction of an angel, a spectral otherworldly figure floating midair, and making the lofty warehouse appear momentarily cathedral-like.
“Like a Botticelli come to life, isn’t it?” James commented, looking upward. “Or a Fra Filippo Lippi.”
He wasn’t wrong.
But a nearby mage didn’t seem to agree. He was standing there with a frown on his face, watching the great golden wings beat the air. Maybe because the Corps now knew that the boy had been here, but didn’t know which side he was on.
I guess even magic has its limitations.
“He was one of the prisoners,” I said. “I saw him on the feed.”
That didn’t get an acknowledgment, but the mage noted something on his pad.
“I want that tape,” James told Fin, who nodded, his eyes still on the spectacle above us.
Guess he hadn’t seen that trick before, either.
Neither had I, because I’d never gotten this far into a Circle crime scene. I guess rank did have a few privileges, I thought, as another mage called out to James. He went striding off, his coat billowing up dramatically behind him.
“Think they put a spell on it, to make it do that?” Fin muttered.
I just shook my head, too busy gazing around at all the other activity to come up with a rejoinder. The warehouse was like a working anthill. Just in the area around us, a woman—clairvoyant, at a guess—was holding a guy’s wallet and looking pained; a white-coated medic was directing a line of levitating stretchers toward a heap of bodies; and a war mage was building a tiny, perfect replica of the warehouse out of light.
It was an exact copy, including even a clueless-looking little Fin and me, standing in the midst of all the activity, getting in everybody’s way. At least, that’s what I felt like: someone out of her element who wasn’t helping, and who couldn’t have, even if she’d wanted to. Because none of this was remotely in my skill set.