“Some wine snob you are. You can’t even tell the difference between a cheap New Zealand Pinot and a nice Oregon wine?”
“I was just guessing. I didn’t even know what kind of wine this was. Red, but not more than that.” He smiled before taking a deep drink and setting it down. “I don’t get particularly caught up in trying to understand the various wineries and vintages and all of that.”
“So not as fancy as I thought.”
Brad laughed, and he ran his hand through his hair. “I’m not sure I qualify for the fancy type. If I wanted fancy, I probably would’ve gone into cardiology. Maybe surgery. Those vascular guys drive fast cars. You know the kind I’m talking about. Like Michaels’s boyfriend.”
I sipped my wine again, saying nothing.
“Have you thought about the attending offer?”
I shook my head. “Not yet. And it’s not the only offer I have.”
Brad leaned forward, resting his elbows on the table. “I’m not surprised you have multiple job offers, Stone, but I am surprised you would think about working somewhere else. Hennepin General suits you. Not only are you a good doc, but you’re good with the residents and even the students.”
“It is a teaching facility, Brad.”
“I realize that, and I don’t mind working with the residents, but the students get on my nerves. So many of them only want to get through the rotation and on to something else.”
“Were you any different? Think about how you were when you had to do…” I frowned as I studied him, trying to figure out what rotation he would’ve hated doing. The obvious one came to mind. “Urology. How engaged were you when you were doing that rotation?”
“More than you realize. I thought about doing surgery for a long time, but when I did my ER rotation and got involved in the trauma team, I realized I would enjoy the front line a whole lot more. I just liked being the one to respond first, to assess and stabilize, and to figure it out from there. I know it gets annoying at times and we have to deal with various specialties that don’t want to come in all that quickly”—I immediately thought about ortho and how long it had taken their team to come down to the ER for the kid and his broken leg—“but it gives us an opportunity to do things no other specialty can do. The fact that we are at a tertiary care facility means we get to see the most interesting things.”
Surprisingly—or perhaps, not so surprisingly—Brad had similar reasons to me. I had gone into emergency medicine because I enjoyed the initial assessment and stabilization. While I missed the continuity, I was able to make up for that in my own little ways, such as calling patients like I did or following them through the hospital setting.
“What about—“
Brad didn’t get a chance to finish. A knock came at the door, and I glanced up at the clock hanging on the wall, frowning to myself.
“Were you expecting someone?”
I shook my head. “Not tonight.”
Had Barden decided to send someone over to keep working with me? He usually sent a message ahead of time, giving me a heads up so I wouldn’t be surprised by someone popping in. In the magical world, such pop-ins could be dangerous, though when I had been first integrating into the magical world, I had seen my friend Kate pop in to see Barden and his people frequently.
I headed to the cabinet, reaching inside for the wand, slipping it carefully into my pocket. I hoped that Brad didn’t see I had gone for a wand, otherwise I’d have difficult questions to answer, but as it was, I figured I would rather be prepared for whoever might be at the door. If it was Barden or one of his people, then they would expect me to come carrying a wand. If it was someone else, then I could leave it in my pocket.
As I made my way to the door, I realized how foolish I was being. If someone were here to attack, they wouldn’t knock. There were no peepholes on the door, no way for me to look outside. I had asked Kate about that once, and she had told me there was a peephole on the door once upon a time, but when the protections were placed here, the peephole had been removed. A peephole was another failure point, and she was careful not to have any place that might fail and leave her in danger. I never knew if that had been her decision or was made by whoever had placed the protections on her home.
The knock came again.
“Who is it?”
“Stone?”
I didn’t recognize the voice, but with as many people as Barden had sent over for me to work with, it wasn’t uncommon for me to not recognize their voice. He had a rotation of six or so different dark mages who were working with me, each of them with a different specialty. It had amused me to no end at first, when I realized that even dark mages specialized, some of them having skill with different aspects of the magic to others. It was no different from medicine in that regard. Unlike medicine, the dark mages who were skilled in all areas—the generalists—were the most powerful and the most useful, and therefore the most valued. It was different in medicine. Primary care and the specialties that needed to have a wide breadth of knowledge were undervalued, at least when it came to the payment structure.
“Who is it?” I asked again.
“Open the door. I need your help.”
I felt something moving behind me, and glanced back, half-expecting Lucy to be there. There were times when I was working with magic that she would sit and watch, making me feel as if she had a connection to magic herself, though that had to be just my imagination. Instead of Lucy, I found Brad pushing up behind me.
“Is everything okay?” he asked.
I nodded, and realized how strange it had to look that I was so hesitant to even open the door. He wouldn’t know anything about the fact that I had to fear not only strangers who might want to do harm to me, but also the possibility that there could be some magical attacker coming at me.
Pulling the door open, I prepared myself, drawing power up through me and out through the wand. I readied for the possibility I might need to unleash it, and if I did, I would be revealing myself to Brad. If that happened, it might be the least of my worries. The face on the other side of the door froze me solid.
“Gillespie?” Brad asked.
3
Matt Gillespie was one of the last people I’d expected to see when I pulled open the door. Certainly not the last—I could come up with a dozen or so different names of people I actually knew I would find unlikely to visit in such a manner—but pretty low on the list. Not only was I not expecting to see him, but there was the simple matter that I hadn’t realized he even knew where I lived. I had been careful around him, not wanting to reveal it to him, partly because I didn’t know how he might use it, though I doubted he would ever do anything to harm me. At least, now I doubted it.
“Stone.” He nodded to me. “Roberts. I didn’t mean to interrupt.”
I glanced over at Brad before turning back to Matt. Dressed in a black T-shirt and dark jeans, his wavy brown hair longer than it had been the last time I’d seen him, he looked nothing like the intern I had once believed him to be. Now it was easier for me to see him as a member of the paramilitary, a branch of some secretive group that tracked people of power. It was because of Matt that I had gotten dragged into the magical world more deeply than I had intended. Not his fault directly, but because of others like him.
“What are you doing here? I didn’t realize you were still in Minneapolis.”
“I thought you transferred to a different residency,” Brad said.
Matt glanced from me to Roberts, and he shrugged. “I didn’t go all that far when I transferred from HGMC.”
“Transferred?” I mouthed. I hadn’t realized he had even stayed within medicine. I had believed he’d returned to his previous work. Everything Matt had said—and done—had suggested to me that he’d abandoned medicine. After all, it was a front to begin with, and it involved a lot of study for him to keep up with.
“I moved to a program in St. Paul.”
There was only one hospital there he could have moved to, and I even kne
w several of the staff working there. If they had accepted him as a transfer, how had we not heard about it? Wouldn’t someone have called? But then, knowing his connections, it was possible they wouldn’t have called. They might even have believed he’d come from a different program, and given the way he would be able to fabricate his records, it was possible he’d made it look as if he had.
“It’s good to see you, Gillespie. It was a shame you decided to transfer, but…” I glanced over to Brad. He was an attending within the residency program, which meant he would have a little bit more insight about the intricacies of what had taken place, and I found it surprising he didn’t seem to know Matt had never actually been a part of our residency.
“Well, you know…”
A strange tingling washed over me, and I heard a thump. I turned, and realized that Roberts had collapsed to the ground.
“Do you mind if I move him?” Matt asked, brushing past me as he stepped into the room. He seemed unmindful that there were protections all around here, and he lifted Brad as if he weighed nothing, though they were a similar build. Brad might not have had the same muscularity as Matt, but they were almost the same height, and both athletic. It was probably why I found them both attractive, despite knowing I shouldn’t.
“What did you do to him?”
“Just a little trick I know. I call it the Sleeper, and it will knock him out for a little while. When he comes around, he won’t have too many memories of what happened to him.”
“You roofied him?”
Matt glanced over. “I’m not going to take advantage of him, if that’s what you’re getting at.”
I shook my head. “That really wasn’t, but…”
Matt chuckled. “You have a strange sense of humor, Dr. Stone.”
“Why are you here?”
“I need your help. I didn’t realize you had company, otherwise I might have waited a little bit.” He dropped Brad on the couch, slipping a pillow underneath his head. “Or maybe I wouldn’t. I don’t know.”
“Why do you need my help?”
“It’s your connection that I need.”
“My connection?” I didn’t like the sound of that. My mind raced through the various types of connection he might be interested in, and it didn’t take me long to come to the fact that he could be interested in either my tie to the dark mages or to the vampires. While I didn’t have a great connection to the vampires, I had helped an elder vampire, and because of that, he owed me. Matt had been there, and he knew what I had done, so given who he was, and the things he might be interested in, I wasn’t surprised he might think he needed to use that.
“Nothing quite like I imagine you are contemplating.”
“You don’t have any idea what I’m contemplating.”
“Knowing you, I suspect you are trying to decide whether I need your access to the Dark Council, which has been working with you. And from what I can tell, you are improving rapidly.”
I frowned. How would he have known that? “Have you been keeping tabs on me?”
Matt shrugged. “That’s sort of what I do, Jen. Once I identify someone who has the potential to cause trouble, I need to keep track of them. You have to understand that.”
“Oh I understand all right. I also understand that I don’t have any real potential to cause trouble. I keep to myself.”
“Let’s see. You are a known associate of Barden Leifan, not only one of the most powerful dark mages in this hemisphere, but also a man who has gained a certain reputation, even without his ties to the magical world. You are a hedge mage who Barden himself is personally mentoring.” He leaned over and shifted Brad, moving him so he wouldn’t fall off the sofa. “I find that impressive, by the way. From what I can tell, Barden is particular about who he takes in.”
“From what I can tell, Barden likes to take in women,” I muttered.
“Women?”
I shrugged. “Sorry to disappoint you. I don’t think you’re his type.”
“Then the two of you…”
I wrinkled my nose. “No. Barden is more like a father figure. Maybe a grandfather figure.”
Or possibly even something older than that. He didn’t look it, but Barden was old, almost impossibly so. I still had a hard time coming to terms with the fact that he was as old as he was, or that if I began to use magic heavily as he suggested, I would age just as slowly. Or maybe not quite as slowly—I wasn’t nearly as powerful as him, and I didn’t have the same potential with that power as he did. Instead, my hope was to find a niche and specialize in it. That was the reason he sent so many people to work with me. If I could continue to develop and continue to grow with my abilities, there was a chance I could find a specialty to settle into. Each time I thought of it, it seemed strange to me. The very reason I had gone into my medical field was because I hadn’t wanted to specialize, and now here I was trying to find a magical specialty I could focus on.
“Right. Anyway, as I was saying, not only are you an associate of Barden, and a hedge mage, but you have gained the confidence of a vampire elder. There aren’t many in the magical world who can make the same claim. The vampires tend to stick together, and the elders are notoriously difficult to reach.”
“Don’t tell me you intend to try to harm Jean-Pierre.”
“I helped you save him, Jen.”
“After your men tried to kill him.”
“They weren’t my men. We had once served on the same team, but when they went rogue…” Matt straightened and took a deep breath. “To answer your question in my roundabout way, I have been keeping tabs on you.”
“And it has nothing to do with the fact I share a home with Kate Michaels?”
I held his gaze, demanding he meet my eyes. Now I knew he could find me here, I also needed to know if Kate was in any danger when she returned. Not that I thought Matt would cause her any difficulty… At least, I didn’t think he would, but to be honest, I didn’t know a lot about Matt, so it was possible he could cause trouble for Kate.
“We are monitoring her.”
“Really? And how are you monitoring her?”
He shrugged. “Not well, unfortunately. She has been difficult to keep track of.”
At least there was that. I didn’t want Kate to be easy for them to track. As much as I wanted to see my friend, I didn’t want her to be in any danger. Her sabbatical was supposed to be only six months, and her being gone for the better part of a year was unsettling, but through my connection to her, a connection that had formed when she had saved me from dying, I knew she wasn’t suffering, though nothing more. It was almost as if she shielded herself from me, keeping me from knowing what she was experiencing.
“Which is why you’re following me.”
Matt shrugged. “You. Barden. Others like that. We figure that if we can’t follow her, the least we can do is to follow her known associates.”
“You make it sound almost as if she’s a criminal.”
“Not a criminal, but she is dangerous. I know she’s your friend, but there’s a reason we need to keep an eye on her.”
“You’re not going to convince me I shouldn’t be bothered by you tracking her.”
“I don’t need to convince you. At the same time, I’m not interested in harming her. As far as I know, she hasn’t done anything that warrants anything more than observation.”
What he left unsaid was almost as troubling. While she might not have done anything that warranted more than observation, it was possible she would in the future. I had no idea what Kate was up to, just as I had no idea how deeply she was tied into the magical world. All I knew about Kate was that she had left to try to better understand her ties to power. It was the same thing I was trying to do, but to hear Barden tell me about it, Kate had a very different connection to magic from mine.
“Why do you need me, then? Does it have anything to do with her?”
He shook his head. “I’m not so naïve as to think you would be willing to help with her. As much
as I might want you to—”
“I’m not going to betray her, so don’t try to convince me to do so.”
“I’m not trying to get you to do anything like that. But what I do need is your assistance with something even your friend wouldn’t be able to help with.”
I watched Matt for a moment, sizing him up. He was a hedge mage, like me—at least to hear him tell of it. He wasn’t a magical practitioner like Barden, and he required special supplementations in order to work his magic, much like I did. Matt simply had far more experience with it than I did, and because of that, he was able to do things with his power that I had not even come close to understanding. The fact that he had a way of roofieing Brad spoke to the level of power he possessed.
Was that what I would someday become? It was hard to believe I would, but I suspected Barden wanted me to specialize in the same way that Matt specialized, even though I doubted Barden had any interest in me becoming a member of the paramilitary. Then again, maybe he would. Barden valued connections, and having an in to someplace like that was just the sort of thing he would enjoy.
“What do you need my help with?”
“I can’t claim you’ll be thrilled to help.”
“Wow. Honesty. That’s surprising coming from you.”
“My deception before was necessary, Jen.”
“I understand you believe it was necessary, but the way you went about it was more than what you needed to do.”
“What I needed was to find out what my men were up to. If I hadn’t, they wouldn’t have stopped. They would have continued to come after the vampire elder—“
“Jean-Pierre. You can use his name.”
“Fine. If I wouldn’t have gotten involved, I wouldn’t have known they were coming after Jean-Pierre. You have your own connections, but you weren’t going to be able to stop them. There’s no shame in acknowledging that,” he said.
“I never said there was.” I glanced over to where Brad lay unmoving on the sofa. “Are you going to tell me what you need me for? Or are you going to keep me guessing?”
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