On my way to the door, I pass occupied bed after occupied bed: Li getting his crooked nose yanked back into the correct position and his broken ulna pushed back beneath the torn skin of his wrist, Naomi’s arm being strapped into a sling so the damaged muscles around her previously dislocated shoulder can heal, Joe Adelman having a nasty laceration on his hand stitched up and his brother receiving similar treatment for a cut on his leg, Newman getting a magic salve spot treatment for her burns, Ramirez having strip after strip of bright white gauze taped over the numerous scrapes he received when that box of kitchenware exploded, and the list goes on.
Few of the injuries are life threatening, most of their treatments rudimentary. But there are three prominent exceptions: Harmony, who was flung from a tree when the berserker spell went off and who consequently obtained a plethora of badly broken bones, along with a concussion. An auxiliary agent from perimeter team B, who nearly bled out when a loose board picked up by the shockwave clipped the back of his thigh and nicked a major vein. And Delarosa, who pushed two of his teammates out of the path of a falling tree and caught a large branch in the back for his trouble. With seven broken ribs, a fractured vertebra, and a punctured lung, he’ll be out of the game even longer than Harmony.
But he’ll live. They’ll all live. By some absolute miracle, no DSI agents died today.
In fact, I discover fifteen minutes after making my infirmary escape, when I stroll into the debrief meeting dressed in rumpled casual wear I had stuffed at the bottom of my locker, not only did zero DSI agents make the suicide bomb casualty list, but so did zero civilians. Despite the substantial size of the explosion and the significant amount of damage done to the neighborhood around Nottaway’s house, the civilians who’d been in the area at the time suffered only nonlethal injuries.
The casualty count is partially the result of the sparse population density of that tumbledown neighborhood—there were only a hundred-odd people in a five-block radius of the epicenter—but given how much heavy debris was slung through the air, it’s still incredible that not a single person took a bad blow to the head or neck or back, or got run through in a vital place by a pole or a branch or a rock shot like a bullet.
Somehow, some way, everyone was lucky today. And for the first time all year, Aurora has emerged from the tail end of a disaster situation without a laundry list of memorials scheduled for the near future.
With the nightmare that was Delos’ curse epidemic still rotting in the back of my mind, I can’t help but wrap myself in a blanket of sweet relief and thank whatever gods might be listening that I won’t have to observe yet another moment of silence on the radio, followed by a remembrance list almost ten minutes long, that I won’t have to sit in traffic watching funeral processions pass by five times a day in perpetuity, that my dreams won’t be plagued by intermittent flashes of black body bags, rows upon rows upon rows, far too many mangled bodies, far too many lost souls.
As I squeeze into a spot between two auxiliaries up against the wall—the meeting is standing room only—I allow myself a moment of self-respect, a moment to revel in a personal victory. I’m the reason no one died today. Naomi was right to credit me with that achievement. I did the best I could with the skills I possess, physical, mental, and magical, and utilized my combat training to the highest level to think fast and save lives.
I should be proud of myself. Proud of how well I handled a dangerous situation no one was prepared for, and no one other than me had the capacity to resolve. Proud of how far I’ve come over the past year as a whole, from bumbling rookie making critical mistakes at every step, to effective elite agent crafting cunning plots behind the backs of devious villains.
I have to say, it’s been a good run.
Now if only it wasn’t coming to an end.
“Cal,” says Riker after he wraps up the overview of the city’s initial response to the explosion, “since the team captains are still getting patched up in the infirmary, why don’t you give us a preliminary rundown of the strike operation?”
“Uh, sure.” I push off the wall and step up to the conference table, trying to ignore two dozen pairs of eyes poking me head to toe. Over the next fifteen minutes, I review all the highlights from the fight with Nottaway. I focus on the parts where I expertly navigated my colleagues around the field of wards, trapped the polong in a binding circle, and punted the wizard-bomb out of the house to save everyone’s lives. I downplay the parts where I got thrown into a wall by a wriggling tentacle and narrowly evaded taking a poison-covered axe to the face. I’m sure those juicy tidbits, among others, will end up in Naomi’s detailed report on the incident, but at least I won’t have to read that report aloud to a judgmental audience.
Riker jots down a few final notes once I finish my recollection and responds, “While I certainly wish the injuries and property damage incurred by the blast could’ve been avoided altogether, it sounds like you did the best with what you had to work with. Job well done.”
“Thank you, sir.” I slink back over to my place against the wall and pretend to blend in.
“Now that we’ve established the basic facts of the incident,” Riker continues, “we’ve got a great deal of mop-up work to do.”
A rapid-fire list of instructions for the analysts and admin staff roll off his tongue, followed by a command for three captains to round up all the lower-level teams not scheduled for afternoon patrol and ship them off to help with the cleanup efforts in the blast zone. (I’m guessing Lassiter took Naomi up on her offer and called Mahoney to request additional manpower from our side of the fence.) The room largely empties with a noisy procession of stomping boots and thoughtful murmurs, and when the door slams shut, only me, Riker, Desmond, Amy, and Edith, of all people, are left behind.
Edith, it turns out, is present to answer questions about Nottaway’s background for any interested party, as she’s the only person who’s spent time digging up the key aspects of the wayward wizard’s life and uncovering the contributing factors for his fall from grace. Quite a few questions do indeed get tossed her way after Riker dials up a three-way conference call with Mahoney and Burbank, who are eager to have the events leading up to the explosion explained in as much detail as you can possibly cram through a phone speaker. During this comprehensive breakdown of events, Riker gracefully glosses over any mention of my magic powers, and when asked why Nottaway exploded in the air and not at ground level, he explains it away as a “quirk of the spell.”
Neither Mahoney nor Burbank know enough about magic to pick up on the lie.
The two men placated for the time being, Riker ends the tedious call.
“Thank you for bearing with me, Edith.” He gives her a nod of respect. “Now, if I’m not mistaken, you pulled an all-nighter at Cal’s request, so why don’t you take an early day and go catch up on your sleep? Finalizing your reports on Nottaway’s background can wait until tomorrow, since the man is no longer an active threat.”
Edith manages a shy smile. “I’ll do that, sir. Thanks.”
Riker rolls his chair away from the table and grabs his cane, which he points at me. “And you, take a break. Get some lunch. Nap for an hour or three. You look like you’re about to pass out from sheer exhaustion.” He redirects the cane toward Amy and Desmond. “You two, babysit him. Make sure he follows my orders.”
“Hey!” I snap. “I don’t need baby…”
Riker shoots me that challenging glare that could burn a hole through wood.
“Never mind. Babysitters are fine.”
“That’s what I thought.” He stands up and snatches his coat off the back of the chair. “All right. Meeting dismissed.”
The rest of us rise from our seats.
“Out of curiosity,” Desmond says, “when’s the next meeting?”
“The next task meeting is, hopefully, not until tomorrow morning.” Riker drapes his coat over his shoulders. “But our next gathering is four o’clock this afternoon. That’s when we’re releasing Sadie Whe
eler from protective custody and handing her off to Newsome. I don’t expect a great deal of trouble, since we’ll only be dealing with Newsome and crew for ten minutes or less, but there may be some tension resulting from our argument yesterday night. I’d rather be safe than sorry. So I’d like the three of you to be there, if just to loiter in the background while Newsome and I have a brusque chat.”
Amy raps a knuckle against her crutches. “But two of us are obviously injured. We won’t exactly look the part of the threatening guards.”
“That’s the idea,” Riker says, rounding the table and marching for the door. “You’re a great deal more formidable than you appear. So if any of the Wolves decide to drop the idiot ball and attack me or the child advocate…”
“They won’t register us as threats until it’s too late,” Desmond finishes. “Understood.”
Riker heaves open the door and ushers us out. “Four o’clock. I don’t want to see any of you until then, unless the apocalypse is knocking at our door. Got it?”
“Yes, sir,” the three of us murmur as we shuffle out into the hall.
Edith follows in our wake, her amused smirk poorly hidden behind the stack of papers held up to her face.
Amy and Desmond make a beeline for the elevator, but I hang back and wait for Edith to catch up. “Hey,” I say, too softly for my teammates to overhear, “I wanted to thank you for helping me out this morning.”
“Wasn’t too much of a problem, Detective.” She looks over her shoulder to make sure Riker isn’t close enough to eavesdrop; he’s standing in the task room doorway, tapping away at his phone. “The commissioner didn’t even question me. And at this point, with all the chaos surrounding the explosion, I doubt my…choice of timing will be noticed. So it all worked out just fine. You’re in the clear.”
“You say that now, but you were right earlier,” I say with a dash of true humility. “I shouldn’t hand out assurances about events whose outcomes I can’t possibly predict. And more so, I shouldn’t drag people into my half-assed schemes and bank on being able to grovel my way up the chain of command to get those people out of trouble in the aftermath of assisting me. That’s a pathetically juvenile approach to planning, and it has no place among the sophisticated sociopolitical maneuvers currently in play between the various supernatural communities and DSI. If I can’t come up with something better than ‘lie on the spot and hope no one calls me out on it,’ then I really shouldn’t be in charge of planning in the first place.”
Edith clutches her printout stack to her chest and stares at me curiously. “You know, Detective Kinsey, you’re an odd combination of self-assured and self-deprecating. I think you should lay off the latter and replace it with some kinder self-examination. Because, from where I’m standing, you haven’t been reckless so much as you’ve simply been struggling to operate at the same level as people much more experienced and much more powerful than you. A struggle that is perfectly understandable, given that you’re not even twenty-five years old.”
My tongue suddenly feels very heavy. “Oh really?”
“Yes, really. I think you should stop being so harsh on yourself whenever you fail to come up with a foolproof plan on the fly, considering that for many of the cases you work, it’s virtually impossible for you to achieve such a thing. In this particular instance, I believe you picked the best choice out of your limited options, though the way you executed the plan resulting from that choice may have left some things to be desired.”
She offers me her hand. “Even so, I don’t recommend you obsess over those hiccups, just examine them with the power of hindsight and figure out how to do better next time. Save the self-recrimination for the times you truly deserve it, which are far and few between for a man like you. And I mean that, Detective. When you’re genuinely trying to do the right thing, don’t fixate on your faults. Focus on how you can alleviate their impact, and improve your efforts from there.”
“I…”
“Hey, Kinsey! Hurry it up, will you?” Amy calls out. She and Desmond are waiting in the elevator, her crutch preventing the door from closing.
I reach out and take Edith’s lithe hand, give it a firm shake. “Thank you for the pep talk. I really need those sometimes. I used to get them with regular frequency, but…”
Edith’s expression melts into sympathy. “Cooper Lee got banished to Siberia?”
“Ah, you know about that, do you?”
“It went around the rumor mill a few times. I hope you get to see him again soon.”
“Yeah,” I breathe out, “me too.”
Chapter Twenty-One
The Last Lunch consists of takeout pizza and garlic breadsticks. Desmond and I carry the goods back from the restaurant, while Amy hobbles along behind us, insulting anyone who stares too long at the brace on her injured leg. Which turns out to be a significant number of people, owing to the fact that half the population of Aurora seems to be stampeding through the streets.
We pass clusters of businesspeople in fancy suits huddled around smartphones with live news feeds of the blast site splashed across their high-definition screens. We pass school kids freed from their classrooms early, their teachers too frazzled by the unfounded fears of a terrorist attack to teach them any more lessons until tomorrow. We pass tourists in landmark T-shirts loitering in confused masses, their tour guides nowhere to be found. We pass cops struggling to organize hectic traffic and failing due to stoplights on the fritz. We even pass a few restaurant owners writing window adverts for “We survived the gas main explosion!” happy hour celebrations, completely oblivious to the total lack of tact.
It takes a considerable amount of effort to squeeze through the thickening crowds, and by the time we reach the fence gate and slip past the security checkpoint, we’ve worked up a good sweat and a new appreciation for those luckless officers of the law assigned to work crowd control. Back inside the safety of the DSI fortress, we make our way to the infirmary, only to get rebuffed when a nurse informs us that our dear Captain Dean checked herself out early, against Ortiz’s wishes, in order to lighten the workload for the medical staff. According to the nurse, Ella promised she wouldn’t leave the premises and would spend the rest of the afternoon lounging on a couch upstairs, no strenuous activity required.
The three of us exchange knowing glances and back out of the infirmary, taking a U-turn toward the elevator. A few minutes later, the elevator spits us out on the top floor. We don’t even bother checking Ella’s office, heading straight for Riker’s door. Desmond knocks on the door three times, and a familiar voice shouts for us to come in. So I turn the knob and give the door a good push, and it swings open to reveal the exact scene we were expecting:
Ella is sprawled out on the plush leather sofa against one wall of the office, propped up by four fluffy pillows, a quilted blanket pulled up to her chest. There’s a stack of paperwork in her lap, a pen in her hand, and a quizzical look on her face that resolves into a smile when she spots the food containers.
“Ooh, lunch!” She caps the pen and clips it to the stack of papers, then tosses the whole package onto the end table behind her. “Hope one of those is pepperoni and sausage.”
Desmond clears his throat in an admonishing manner. “Now, Captain Dean, I know that wasn’t work I just saw you doing, seeing as you’re on medical leave.”
“It was just some standard paperwork.” Ella bites her lip. “Don’t tell Ortiz. Please.”
Amy snickers. “Got a little bored, did you?”
Ella touches the bandage on her head. “Understatement. Thought I was going to lose my mind, staring at the ceiling all morning.”
“Admittedly,” Desmond says, sauntering into the office and setting his breadstick containers, plus the two-liter bottle of Coke, on the round table next to the bookcase, “you were in a bad state last night. We were all quite worried.”
“Admittedly, I felt like shit last night.” Ella picks at a loose thread on the blanket. “And I still have a raging headache
. But between the eye strain from the endless status updates inexplicably printed in size-ten font and the tortuous daily admin meetings filled with droning busybodies, I’ve had a headache most nights for the last four months. So I can handle the pounding temples.” She adjusts the pillow behind her head. “Also, I promised Ortiz I wouldn’t do anything taxing until she gives me the all clear. Lying on a couch annotating field reports doesn’t technically violate that promise. There’s nothing strenuous about it.”
“Whatever you say, Captain.” I shoot her a teasing wink as I deposit the pizza boxes next to the containers and soda bottle, and proceed to help Desmond move the round table over to the couch. While we’re finishing that task, Amy digs the paper plates, Styrofoam cups, and plastic utensils out of the cabinet at the bottom of the bookcase and tosses them onto the table. Desmond cracks open the Coke, I steal three chairs from the lineup in front of Riker’s desk, and we all settle down for the first tranquil meal we’ve had since this whole fiasco began yesterday morning.
When you work at DSI, however, even the simplest moments can act as the calm before a storm. Halfway through her second slice of pepperoni and sausage pizza, Ella daintily pats the grease off her mouth with a napkin and asks, “So, Cal, why don’t you tell us about today’s brawl at the Nottaway house?”
I pause with a breadstick halfway to my mouth. “Well, Amy and Desmond already heard it, and I’m sure the official report’s been posted by now.”
Ella’s eyebrow arches. “I’m not referring to the watered-down version of events you relayed at the task meeting. I mean the whole story, with all the nitty-gritty details included.”
I experience a moment of abject terror, where my paranoid mind convinces me that, somehow, Ella knows all the secrets I’ve been keeping since I met with Foley and Lucian last night. But then the rational side of my brain kicks in—Ella doesn’t know anything about my clandestine meeting or its ramifications; she just knows me, and is well aware of how I downplay certain tidbits when I recount battles in official settings—and I clamp down on my unfounded fear before I make a stupid expression that trips everybody’s suspicion meters.
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