As soon as she had a high-res picture of each page, Vicki sent the document sliding back across the table. “I wanted a record of it in case that document disappears when you realize just how big a pile you’ve stepped in.”
Mitchell and Leah shared a look. Then, Mitchell turned back to us. “So, you won’t comply?”
“No,” Vicki answered. “That is Magi-proprietary information. Beyond that, you need a Magi to do it. A hedge wizard or witch can’t.”
An almost-predatory smile curled Mitchell’s lips. “We have a Magi to do the work, and I don’t mean you. We only need you to provide the information.”
Vicki and I shared a look. Almost like we planned it, we lifted our phones in unison and snapped pictures of Mitchell and Leah.
Mitchell frowned at us. One of his hands curled into a fist. “Look… stop with the pictures already. We have anti-Magi restraints that we will use when we take you out of this room. You seem to think you’re just walking out of here, but that’s not the case. Until you give us what we want, the only place you and your mercenary friend are going is prison.”
“Mercenary?” Karleen asked. “You think I’m a mercenary?”
“Ex-Mossad, probably,” Leah remarked, “but yes.”
Vicki erupted in laughter. “Oh, that is priceless. So, you’re telling us you plan to hold us against our will if I do not agree?”
Now, Mitchell and Leah shared a look as if they questioned Vicki’s mental capacity.
“Yes,” Mitchell answered, “that is exactly what I’m saying.”
“Even though you realize doing so violates the US-Magi treaty?”
Leah made a dismissive wave. “The Magi Assembly won’t care about some slip of a girl, even if she is Connor Magnusson’s granddaughter. The information is more valuable to us than whatever settlement we have to make with the Assembly to smooth this over.”
Vicki nodded. “Well, I certainly take exception to that. I am not ‘some slip of a girl.’ But so be it. I think we’re done here.” She turned to Karleen. “Do you mind?”
Karleen stood, grabbed the closest chair, and turned to the wall. Most wall studs used sixteen-inch centers. She had no idea if that was the case in city high-rises, but it seemed like the perfect opportunity to find out.
“Hey!” Mitchell shouted as Karleen drew the chair back over her shoulder like a batter in the World Series.
“What are you doing?” Leah added.
Karleen paid them no mind as she swung the back of the chair at a spot she hoped held no wall studs. The chair’s strike cracked the sheetrock, and Karleen tossed the chair aside.
“Stop right there!” Mitchell shouted, standing and placing clenched fists on the tabletop. “If you persist, you’ll only have more charges added.”
Karleen peeled the sheetrock back, revealing insulation beneath a mesh of wires. She reached out and touched her fingertip to it. Electricity zapped her, but it wasn’t anything she couldn’t handle. The problem was that the wires were almost piano wire. They would shred her hands if she tried to… wait.
Mitchell and Leah jumped to their feet and hustled to the door on their side. They both started pounding fists on the door, demanding attention.
Karleen grabbed another close chair and snapped off one of its legs. The chair leg tapered from wide up by the seat to barely wider than a quarter where the leg rested against the floor. She rammed the narrow end of the chair leg into the wire mesh and pulled it down toward the floor with all her might.
The thin wires couldn’t stand up to her strength. Sparks crackled and flew as wire after wire snapped. Some kind of alarm started blaring.
“Hey… my phone has signal now,” Vicki said.
“Call your grandparents,” Karleen replied. “I’m still working on getting us out of here.”
The wires no longer carried electricity, and Karleen was able to use the chair leg to bend the mesh back away from the insulation. All that was left was the nasty business of pulling out the insulation. Karleen grimaced and shook her head. She hated fiberglass.
She jabbed the chair leg into the insulation as high as she could reach against the backdrop of Vicki calling her grandparents while Mitchell shouted for her to put down the phone. It took some work, but Karleen managed to rake most of the insulation out of the wall. She found what looked like more sheetrock. Lifting the chair leg one more time, she swung the thick end against the sheetrock and broke through. She saw a glimpse of what looked like the hallway where they followed Jeffery to the conference room.
Karleen turned back to Vicki. “Come on. I see the hallway.”
“You’ll never make it out of the building alive,” Mitchell snarled.
Vicki made no reply as she stepped to Karleen’s side, and Karleen pushed her through the wall first. Strands of the wire mesh tugged at her clothing as she passed. Then followed. As soon as Vicki passed through the wall, she felt her magic again… just as six or eight men in suits with earbuds charged around a distant corner. Karleen pushed through the wall behind her, and Vicki took her hand. She recited a series of words in Ancient Sumerian, and both she and Karleen vanished from the hallway.
Karleen stood in what appeared to be a study or office. A massive desk that looked sturdy enough to prop up the Empire State Building despite being older than dirt dominated the space. Woven rugs lined the floors, and wood paneling with a light stain lined the walls, minus the ten-feet-tall windows with arched tops. Hints of citrus hung in the air.
Connor Magnusson paced from wall to wall behind the desk, a phone held to his ear while he gestured with the other hand. “No, Pierre, this wasn’t some kind of mistake. Vicki sent me pictures of the document once the cell jammer went down. Yes, she’s fine. She and her friend just popped into my study. But as much as I appreciate your well-wishes, that’s not the point. We have a treaty with these people. This is not how friends act, let alone allies, and I vote we convene the Assembly to determine our response.”
Connor paused for a moment. “No, Pierre, I don’t really care what the vampires think of it. They will just try to spin the whole situation to their advantage and turn their coats mid-discussion if they feel that’s the most advantageous for them. Let’s just leave them out of it.”
Another pause to listen. “Again, Pierre, I think you may be underestimating the amount of support we have among shifters. At least shifters in North America. I’ve already informed the Assembly that my grandson is the feline primogenitor, and he’s growing into a rather proficient leader. He and Alistair are taking another matter to the Shifter Council in a couple days, so we could ask him to add a point to the agenda.”
Another pause. “Yes, yes… I understand that you lost family in the last Shifter-Magi war. So did I. So did Maeve. And so did almost every other Magi family. But the shifters lost people, too. I’ve said for years that there’s no point in fighting old wars. There never has been. That hatred you carry will be a poison to your soul, Pierre.”
Another pause. “Thank you. I need to speak with my granddaughter before I continue making calls. I want to hear about it from her. Thank you for your time, Pierre.”
Connor pulled the phone away from his ear and thumbed the control to end the call. He dropped the phone on the desk and crossed the room to pull Vicki into a tight hug. After several moments, he released her and stepped back, turning to Karleen.
“Miss Vesper, I do not have the words to express how grateful I am that you were there for Vicki today. I have no doubt at all that your presence enabled her to remain free and get word of this back to us.”
Karleen blushed and looked away for a moment, shaking her head. “It was nothing, sir. Even if I didn’t think of Vicki as a friend, she’s Wyatt’s sister, and Wyatt… well… Wyatt is rather special to me.”
“I’ll make sure he knows what you did today,” Vicki interjected, adding a conspiratorial wink. “Should make him very happy and grateful.”
Connor chuckled at his granddaughter’s antics, then gest
ured toward seats. “If you don’t mind, I’d like for you take me through it, step by step. Tell me everything.”
5
In the end, we couldn’t devise a method of getting Sloane into Chicago with any kind of timeliness. The warrant out for her made most forms of transportation unwise, and trying to make a road trip of it seemed equally inadvisable. So… when Mohammed can’t go to the mountain, the mountain goes to Mohammed.
Three days after Alistair contacted the Shifter Council, twenty-four councilors arrived in Precious. I had two local volunteers per councilor waiting to help them to the hotel with their luggage and show them around town if they wished. As the councilors stepped out of their respective luxury SUVs, none of them seemed particularly enthused about the visit, but none of them seemed outright hostile, either.
One of the feline councilors who brought Thomas Carlyle to Precious made a point of approaching me first. Her expression seemed a mix of playfulness and weary traveler.
“Alpha Wyatt,” she said, extending her hand, “were you aware there are shifter towns and territories that have never seen even one councilor visit?”
I gave her a respectful handshake and grinned. “They must be very boring places, then, Councilor. We have you rooms at the hotel here in town, and I trust you’ve had a word with your associates about what will happen if they mistreat any of my people?”
The feline councilor laughed. “No need to worry. The councilors who came with me are the only hardy souls willing to brave your potential wrath. Everyone remembers Thomas Carlyle. I give my word, Alpha Wyatt, we’ll be on our best, most polite behavior.”
I gestured to the waiting volunteers, and they descended upon the councilors with smiles, handshakes, and welcome. The feline councilor watched the happy chaos for a moment or two, then turned back to me.
“You certainly have a way to make people feel welcome. I’m not sure any town has ever welcomed us like this.”
“Well, I made sure everyone knew why you’re here. Sloane has spent most of the time since she arrived here in her hotel room, regardless of anyone’s attempts to draw her out. But on those rare occasions we have succeeded in getting her outside, she’s made a good impression. The people who have interacted with her like her.”
The feline councilor’s vibrant blue eyes locked on me. She held her silence for a few moments. “And you’re so sure she’s a victim in all of this? You’re sure she had nothing to do with what happened in Nebraska?”
“Oh, she was very much involved in what happened in Nebraska,” I countered. “None of us are denying that. But those black ops people came for her. She was just living her life as a farmhand. Wait until you hear the interviews we had with them. They wanted Sloane because they believed she could turn into a giant bird.”
“And can she? Shift into a giant bird, that is.”
I shrugged. “No clue. Haven’t asked. In the long run, it’s immaterial to the situation. All this happened because of what those black ops people believed. It doesn’t matter if it’s true, and I’d think we would be very interested in stopping people from hunting shifters for research anyway.”
“You’re right about that. We will not be humans’ lab experiments.”
“Come on. Let’s get you settled. We can hit this fresh in the morning.”
Karleen found Sloane watching the councilors’ arrival from the lobby of the town’s admin building. The woman stood at the window with her arms wrapped around her midriff, and Karleen could see the tension in… well… not just Sloane’s shoulders but her whole body as soon as she laid eyes on the woman.
“Hey,” Karleen said as she arrived at Sloane’s side. She maintained a respectful distance, aiming for supportive but not crowding or pressuring. “How are you holding up?”
Sloane never took her eyes away from the scene unfolding outside. “Will they help me?”
“I don’t know, honestly. In the long run, though, that doesn’t really matter.”
Now, Sloane pulled her gaze away from the window to look at Karleen. “How can you say that? They’re councilors. They govern the Shifter Nation.”
“And Wyatt does not care. They’re not holy or untouchable to him. He’s already unseated one of them, and it was the guy most of them are—or were—afraid of.”
“Thomas Carlyle.”
Karleen nodded. “Yep. So, you see, I’m not sure ‘Will the councilors help me’ is the right question. I think the better question to ask is, ‘Will Wyatt help me,’ and there’s no doubt of that in my mind at all.”
Sloane turned back to the window, where Wyatt and one of the councilors were just now leaving the street to walk toward the hotel. After a few seconds of no response, she absently nodded.
The question of where to hold the meeting with the councilors proved to be an interesting one. On the one side, everyone would technically fit in the town hall. However, if they asked Sloane to shift, would she still fit inside the space? It was an older building, and the ceilings were only eight feet. Sure, it seemed a little odd to be worried about a shifter’s animal form not fitting inside the town hall, but no one in town had ever seen Sloane shift.
In the end, I settled on the amphitheater in the park behind the town’s admin building. Anyone who wanted to attend the meeting with the councilors could sit in the stands, and the performance area was more than sufficient for all the councilors and anyone they might call to give testimony.
I stood at the top of the amphitheater stands, overseeing the preparations, when I felt the presence of someone at my side. I glanced that way and saw Sloane.
“Morning.” I tried for pleasant, genial tone… but it was difficult when all I really wanted was to go back to sleep. I was not a morning person, not by any stretch. Waking up with Karleen and Gabrielle snuggled against me certainly didn’t encourage me to leave the bed, either.
Sloane nodded. “Yes, it certainly is. Karleen said it didn’t matter if the councilors didn’t want to help me.”
“That sounds like her, and… well… she’s not wrong. I’d like to work within the accepted channels of shifter society, but if that isn’t possible, I have a few other contacts we can use to sort out your situation.”
We fell into a companionable silence, and people started arriving for the ‘festivities.’ After several minutes, someone arrived on my right, and when I turned, it took all my willpower not to gape.
“Miles?” I’m sure my tone betrayed my utter shock at seeing the old groundskeeper from my grandparents’ estate. He stood a respectful distance off my right side, his thumbs hooked into his belt loops. His beard still touched his sternum, but there was no mistaking the intelligence or the intensity behind his eyes.
“Mornin’, lad. Young Miss said ye be havin’ some excitement around these parts today, and since I haven’t seen yer town yet, it seemed like the perfect time.”
The last time I’d talked with Miles, he strongly hinted that he was the Merlin of myth and legend. He didn’t come right out and say it, but I left the exchange certain that’s who he was. So, given that… what could possibly be in store for today that Merlin would call it excitement?
Talk about something not boding well…
“Well, you’re always welcome here, Miles. Once we sort out this business with the Council, I’d be happy to show you around town.”
Miles scoffed and made a dismissive wave. “Lad, don’t ye have better things to do than show an old man around a town you’re still getting to know yerself? I’ve been exploring the world on me own for more years than ye’d believe. I think I’ll be just fine.”
Of course, he would be just fine. This was the guy whose response to Vicki’s abduction Alistair said would be ‘apocalyptic.’ I wasn’t worried about Miles. I was worried about the town.
“Well, just let me know if anyone gives you any grief.” Very fervent hope, there, that no one would.
Miles smiled. “Again, lad, ye’ve no need to worry. I’ll be fine.”
I really, real
ly hoped I had no need to worry, but Miles was definitely right about having other things that required my attention. This meeting not the least of them. From the looks of it, Alistair’s people already had the conference table with an appropriate number of chairs in place.
A few townsfolk meandered into the amphitheater and chose a seat. Over the space of an hour, the few became several.
“Well, lad,” Miles remarked, as he watched the milling mass of people approaching the amphitheater, “I should seek a seat, lest the choice pickings get claimed ahead o’ me.”
With that, the old groundskeeper—who looked like Santa Claus after a crash diet—made his way to the front row and chose the seat in the very center of the entire space.
“Where should I be?” Sloane asked, her voice hesitant.
That… was a very good question. She was the star witness, as it were. Not a good idea for her to be too far.
I gestured toward Miles. “Might as well have a seat somewhere on the front row. It’ll simplify matters when it’s time for you to tell the councilors your story. If you’re nervous, you could always sit with Miles. He’s a childhood friend of mine.”
Sloane nodded her agreement and walked to the opposite staircase from the one Miles used. She was halfway to the front row when the feline councilor arrived at my side.
“Good morning, Alpha Wyatt.” She almost purred the words.
“Morning, Councilor.”
After a few moments, she said, “You’ve arranged quite the venue here.”
“From what everyone tells me, the amphitheater is normally used for outdoor entertainment, but since none of us have seen Sloane shift, I figured it presented the least risk to her. I don’t know what happens to a shifter whose animal is larger than the space they’re shifting in.”
The feline councilor shuddered. “Nothing good. I promise you that.” The other councilors began trickling in, and the feline councilor sighed. “Well, if you’ll forgive me, I must leave you to officiate this affair. Maybe we could chat over food later?”
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