“Hey,” I blustered.
“You can’t simply randomly open doors, Beth. You might come across agents. And if they see us, they might be able to recognize the kind of spell we’re casting, and warn Jason,” Max remonstrated harshly.
“My opportunity magic told me to open the door,” I bit back. I reached forward to open the door once more.
Max placed himself in front of it. “We don’t have that much time, Beth,” he said, voice dropping down low, all hint of anger gone.
“But my opportunity magic—”
“Your opportunity magic is still nowhere near as refined as mine. I hesitate to tell you this, but it’s true. And until you can fully practice opportunity magic, it is a dangerous thing. For, unconsciously, you will seek out opportunities for yourself, not others.”
There we go again.
I frowned hard at Max.
“Please, Beth,” he said before I could put a word in edgewise. “This way. I sense an opportunity this way.”
He turned to walk away. He got several steps before he stopped and angled his head toward me, obviously waiting to see if I would follow.
Honestly, all I wanted to do was open that door and head back into the archive room. Obviously I’d missed something in there. Had I dropped something? Or was it just a reminder to go through the file Josh had given me?
Because I still hadn’t had a chance to even open it, let alone study it.
Though I got the desire to do just that now, Max seemed to be looking at me with all his worth.
And that look… dragged me back into the past. It reminded me what would happen if we failed to do this.
So I took a hard breath and followed.
Max appeared to know where he was going. We walked up to the third floor. Then we walked all the way to the end of the corridor.
There was a door on the left and a small set of stairs that appeared to lead up to an attic.
Max stopped in front of the door, though.
He pointed to it. “Open it. I sense an opportunity through there.”
I didn’t take the opportunity for another fight. I settled a breath in my chest, concentrated on my magic, shifted forward, and opened the door.
It opened to a tunnel.
It took me a moment to recognize what it was. It was so damn dark in there.
“What—” I began.
Max shifted forward and locked a hand over my mouth, stopping my words from echoing out.
Though I could have jerked back and broken his grip, I didn’t. I looked at him pointedly.
He brought his face down and whispered in my ear. “This is the East Tunnel they’re building to connect the city under the river.”
I knew what the East Tunnel was. So why did he have his hand over my mouth?
“There could be agents in here,” he hissed. “Let’s move quickly and quietly.” With that, he removed his hand from my mouth. Then he ducked forward.
He looked pretty ridiculous wearing his expensive suit. But I had to admit I didn’t look that much better in my ordinary office pants and a brown leather jacket.
Once Max was through the door, I closed the door back into the house. As I did, it kind of felt like I’d just cut off my last escape route.
The tunnel was immense. It was practically pitch black in here, too. The only light seemed to be coming in from the entrance far away.
“Follow me,” Max began.
He took a step forward and almost twisted his ankle on a piece of rubble.
I ducked in and grabbed his arm, shoring up his balance so he didn’t tip over and thump onto the ground loudly.
“No, we’ll do this together. Keep your hand in mine. We’ll use finding magic to ensure we can navigate through the dark, and if there are agents out there, we can avoid them.”
I could see Max looking at me through the dark. I couldn’t pick up his exact expression, though. I fancied I knew what it was. He was impressed with me, right? Impressed that I’d come so far?
And though that was a nice fact, it simply drew my mind back to when he’d pulled me out of the way of the courtroom door.
… Did he really think I was that selfish? Did he really think I didn’t know the difference between practicing finding magic for myself and others?
That wasn’t really fair, was it? Turning my mind back to all of those people I’d helped, from Frank to Howard, I’d only ever done good with my finding magic. Even though I knew for a fact I could probably find treasure and riches, I hadn’t dreamed of it. And Max? He was a goddamn venture capitalist. And even though he’d told me that most of the time he only used ordinary research to figure out who to invest with, he was still an opportunity finder.
Even though I told myself that, the arguments didn’t feel right.
Because I couldn’t beat Max up in my head. Yeah, there’d once been a time when I’d found him dodgy. But his true worth had been revealed to me.
… So maybe he’d been right. Maybe I’d been confused when I’d opened the door to the courtroom.
Maybe inside me I still wanted to track down Olivia and find the exact details of Sandra’s case, even at the detriment of the frigging world.
So I kept my hand in Max’s, and together, we managed to navigate through the tunnel.
I could easily have freaked out. As a kid, I’d often had nightmares of tunnels. After all, tunnels are pretty nightmarish things. There’s something about the fact they’re enormous man-made structures under the ground that makes them even creepier than huge caves. It’s kind of like… I dunno, big concrete coffins or something.
I could have shivered at that thought, but I didn’t. I also managed to chase away all the residue of my childhood nightmares. The only reason I did that was that Max’s hand still anchored me.
As we walked through the dark, I couldn’t help but think. Though I’d been priding myself before on the fact Josh had taught me how to act without second-guessing, there was something about the dark that was drawing my thoughts out of me.
And maybe these thoughts needed to be drawn out of me sooner rather than later.
And what were the thoughts of?
Max. To be specific, the frigging words of the Zero Prophecy.
Somehow I still didn’t know them. Hell, I didn’t even know if they were written down anywhere. Though people seemed to know about them, for all I knew, they could’ve been nothing more than an urban legend; Max said his dad had found the prophecy in modern times and brought it to light only recently.
But without knowing what the prophecy said, how could I… how could I find a way to save him?
I was suddenly struck by one fact. Jason thought I was his finder, and Jason, if he were to be believed, had been willing to shift the frigging Earth to save me. He’d decided to use the hidden sets and not destroy them. All for me, apparently. All because he ardently believed that good men must seek the same power as bad men if they are to save the world.
… Could I use them?
It wasn’t the first time I’d faced a forbidden thought. I’d had the same thought about D 20. Not, of course, that I would ever willingly take that. Not after my last experience. The point was, at the promise of more power… a part of me genuinely wanted it. Because a part of me realized that with more power, I wouldn’t have to put up with this mess. I wouldn’t need to be thinking myself in circles. And I wouldn’t need to fear that I could lose Max at any moment – because I would have the power to protect him.
“What are you thinking about?” Max asked out of the blue as he angled his head toward me in the dark.
He really didn’t want to know.
At the very thought of being honest with Max and telling him that I was wondering if I could use the hidden sets to save him and not the world, Max would presumably abandon me.
Maybe he didn’t even need a sorcerer to find the sets and destroy them. Maybe I was technically surplus to requirements.
And maybe… the only reason he appeared to love me was
that I matched the words of the prophecy. If I broke them? If I decided to use the hidden sets rather than destroy them?
I’d lose him, wouldn’t I?
“Bethany, what are you thinking about?” he asked once more.
“That we are only ever as free as our circumstances dictate,” I answered philosophically.
There was a pause. “That is why wise men change themselves and not the world,” Max revealed.
I frowned hard at this. “That makes no sense. I’m saying that we are free but the world traps us,” I corrected.
Max turned to me again, and even in the dark, I swear I caught a glimpse of his bright, bright eyes. Those same stone-gray pupils that had drawn me in on that castle and started all of this.
And now they stared at me once more. “Good men change themselves so that they are free. Not outside, but inside.” He brought up a hand, curled it into a fist, and tapped it on his chest twice. “They tear down the boundaries in their mind until they can see things clearly. Then and only then do they act to change others.”
It was a hell of a backdrop to have this kind of highfalutin philosophical conversation in front of. The tunnel was still immense and super creepy, and the world was still on the line.
But I finally locked my attention on what he was actually saying.
Did I believe it? I wasn’t so sure.
Circumstance was often far more powerful in controlling people’s lives than they appreciated. Where you were born, where you grew up, the language you learned, the company you kept – all of it would dictate how you would think and the opportunities you would see. Society itself would also dictate what you could expect. Change society? And you could change everything for everyone. Retreat, meditate, and concentrate only on yourself, and society would remain as the same locked cage of opportunity.
I opened my mouth.
I froze, a cold sensation shifting through my cheeks.
I heard Max open his mouth. Before he could say anything and give away our position, I shifted forward and collapsed a hand over his lips.
He shrugged back, but he didn’t break my grip. Maybe he could see my eyes flashing in the dark, because his own widened and he stilled.
I started to hear footsteps behind us.
Slowly I removed my hand from Max’s mouth, trusting that he’d already heard what was going on. Together, still hand-in-hand, we walked up to the side of the tunnel, shrugging close to the wall.
I tilted my head back behind us, and I started to see figures. They were carrying torches and chatting amongst themselves.
At first their voices echoed too much in the cavernous tunnel for me to be able to make them out. But the closer they came, the clearer they got. “I don’t see why we need to protect this tunnel. No one frigging knows we’re down here. There’s martial law, and no one’s out on the streets. Both entrances to the tunnel are closed and locked with warlock tape. Nobody else is coming down here,” the agent said, her voice echoing loudly through the tunnel.
“We follow our orders,” another agent snapped.
“You’re free to follow your orders. Just as I’m free to question them. This whole damn operation doesn’t make any sense. We’re not under attack, and there hasn’t been a single peep from any of the teams around the city. Nobody has attacked us.”
“We follow our orders,” the other agent snapped again. “Just because we haven’t heard a peep yet, doesn’t mean the attack isn’t coming.”
The other agent snorted. “You honestly think a warlock army is going to attack Madison City?”
“Yeah, I do. Because the Cruze Gang’s attack on the Justice Department is still pretty fresh in my mind. I was one of the first officers on the scene. It wasn’t pretty,” the other guy snapped.
The woman seemed mollified, but only for several seconds. “That’s that, and this is this. And we still haven’t picked up any signs of activity. This seems like a massive waste of resources. It also seems like we’re being distracted somehow.”
The guy snorted. “What the hell does that mean?”
“I don’t know. Just a hunch.”
“I suggest you keep your hunches to yourself. They don’t make any damn sense. And while you’re there, shut up. There could be enemy agents around here.”
The woman snorted. “Sure thing. How the hell would they have gotten here, exactly? There’s no way past the warlock tape.”
The guy paused. “That doesn’t matter. We were told there was a possibility there’d be enemy agents, so we patrol.”
Max suddenly shifted forward. I seemed to know what he was planning, and before he could throw himself forward and make us known, I latched a hand on his shoulder and pulled him back.
There was no way we could whisper to each other. These tunnels made every sound echo.
But Max pulled against my grip again, making it clear he thought we had to attack these agents.
Me? I wasn’t so sure.
Something didn’t frigging make sense here. By the sounds of it, these two agents were from Internal Affairs. And I’d kind of just assumed that anyone who worked for Internal Affairs would be in on this gig.
But that woman hadn’t been faking her suspicion.
“Beth. We have to attack,” Max hissed by my ear.
Though I could tell he tried to ensure his voice didn’t carry, both agents stopped dead. “Did you hear that?” the male agent asked.
The female agent paused for a while. “I think it came from over there.”
They pushed toward us.
My heart began to beat at a million miles an hour.
We couldn’t be found. That knowledge suddenly pounded through me with all the force of a brick to my brain.
We simply could not allow ourselves to be seen.
Though it was clear Max wanted to attack these two agents – and I probably had the power to dispatch them easily – something told me not to try.
So I had… one option.
One single option.
Unbidden, an image of Jeremy popped into my mind.
It wasn’t the fact that he must’ve been following me most of today. It was what he was. An illusionist.
Illusionists could split themselves off, creating copies. Or they could simply hide in plain sight.
It was obviously a spell sorcerers could learn, because that’s how I’d first met Jason in Constantine’s tunnels.
Max was straining against my hand, kind of like a hound that wanted to be let off the leash to attack. Not, of course, that there was much that Max could do. I’d be doing most of the fighting.
And this was not a battle I wanted to face.
So I did it. I opened the door to my heart as I focused with all my might on the memory of Jeremy. On the way he’d managed to split his body off. On the way he’d managed to hide in plain sight.
The torch beams started to slice toward us. There was nowhere we could go. Max’s hand tightened in mine, his grip almost becoming too hard to handle.
I clenched my teeth, and just at the last moment before the torch beam sliced our way, I did it. I felt a surge of magic crackle over Max and me at the same time, hiding us where we stood.
I felt the torch beams slice through us.
Both the female and male agent were close enough now that I could see their faces in the reflected light of their torches.
Though there were deep frowns across their faces, as their lights continued to slice over where we were standing, neither of them reacted.
“It must’ve been an animal,” the guy concluded.
It was the woman’s turn to look suspicious. “… I guess,” she managed.
With that, they both turned around and continued down the tunnel.
I still had Max’s hand in mine. It took a long time for his fingers to slacken. It wasn’t until both agents were a fair distance away that Max leaned in and whispered in my ear, “Well done. But we still need to dispatch them.”
“Why?”
“Because
I sensed an opportunity there. I think they might be carrying something useful to us. Perhaps a key, perhaps some kind of coded pass. Something that will help us get to whatever is hidden in these tunnels.”
“Why are you so sure that something’s down here?”
“Because my magic told me,” he said, emphasizing that with a harsh breath of air.
I… knew I shouldn’t be questioning Max. He was right. He was the far more accomplished opportunity finder. I was just the sorcerer…. And the locator, I suddenly reminded myself. And that’s why this felt so wrong. Though I hadn’t had that much to do with the hidden sets, at the same time, Jason had fed me an image of one in Constantine’s tunnels. And when I found myself focusing on that… they didn’t feel close. Or if they were close, there was something wrong with them.
I hesitated.
Max pulled my hand. When I didn’t come, he shifted closer to me again. “What is it?”
“This doesn’t feel right,” I managed. “It feels like we’re missing something. That female agent seems suspicious of this operation too—”
“A single good egg in Internal Affairs is ultimately irrelevant. Beth, I’m sensing that our opportunity will close soon. Who knows how much time Josh has back at the house?”
If there was one thought that could affect me, it was that.
I felt myself wincing.
As I did, Max finally pulled me forward.
I staggered a little, but I kept hold of my illusion spell.
We started to close in on the agents.
Max’s energy changed. It became a lot darker.
I’d never attacked people like this. Mostly when I’d used my warlock skills, it had been in self-defense. This made me feel like a ninja.
A confused ninja. Because my opportunity finding magic kept telling me not to attack. Hell, it kept telling me to head back to the archive room already. It was only in there that any of this would start to make sense.
… I suddenly wondered why it was that for me things had to make sense before I found them. Max didn’t seem to have that limitation. He seemed to trust in his magic more. And maybe it was simply because it was stronger, or he had more experience with it, or… what? He was less diligent than me?
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