“As that is not your responsibility, I find that promise to be hollow.”
“I will promise no harm comes to Dr. Stone.”
I turned my attention from Barden to Matt. “What was that?”
“Seeing as how you have already gone with me, you may have been detected.”
I frowned. “You said they had a way of tracking you, and no one else.”
“I thought that was the case, but from what I was able to ascertain, our mutual colleague”—he said “colleague” with something of a smile on his face—“seems to have proven otherwise.”
Brad. That was what he had to mean. “That’s because of you?”
“Not because of me. I think, Dr. Stone, that was because of you.”
I glanced from Barden to Matt. If they had attacked Brad at the hospital, and if somehow they were after me, it meant I might not be safe at the hospital.
Barden and Matt stared at each other, neither of them speaking, yet there was a weight between them, a certain energy, and I could practically feel Barden’s irritation as he stared at the other man. The implications were clear to me, even if they weren’t clear to Barden. Whatever else was taking place, I was now in danger because I had willingly gone with Matt. Had that been his plan all along? I wasn’t sure whether or not it was, but it left me with questions, and until I knew the answers—and until I knew whether I was in danger or not—I thought we needed to have Matt around.
I turned my back to Matt, lowering my voice. “I need to talk to you,” I said to Barden.
“I think we have much we need to discuss.”
“We do, but it’s more than that.”
“What more do you think we need to talk about? He came to my place, attacked my people, and is demanding my protection. Were it not for what he did for you, regardless of how he might have used you, I would have destroyed him already.”
“I doubt you would have managed to destroy me.”
I glanced back at Matt. “You’re not helping.”
Matt shrugged. “I’ve been around men like him before. Why do you think I wasn’t afraid to come here, Barden? I’m trained to handle situations like this. Men like you. And if I am, then others are as well. Whatever protections you believe you have around your operation are insignificant. Give me a place to stay, and not only will I ensure that Dr. Stone is safe, but I can help you fortify them.”
I glanced back at Barden, and now I could tell he was sold. Or was he? Matt was playing Barden, along with his sense of community and a desire to help the people who worked with him. Did he know Barden wouldn’t take well to being used? He likely had no idea what kind of man Barden actually was—or no more than what he had seen and heard, which when it came to Barden was little more than rumor.
“I don’t have a place that will keep you safe.”
Matt’s eyes narrowed. “That’s unfortunate. When the next attack comes, you won’t be ready.”
Barden held Matt’s gaze. “As I said. I don’t have a place that can keep you safe, but there might be an alternative.”
Barden turned to me, making a slight motion with his head, and I shook mine. “No.”
“Unfortunately, Dr. Stone, it might be the only way.”
8
The room off of Barden’s office was small—cozy, even. There was a pair of chairs situated across from each other and a small desk pushed back against the wall. Concrete lined every surface around us, including the ceiling, and an enormous metal door blocked our exit. The tingling as I had entered the room suggested to me this place was heavily fortified with magic, perhaps with enough to overwhelm anything I would be able to do, and possibly even enough to prevent Matt from overpowering it. Then again, seeing as how I knew precious little about Matt’s capabilities, that might not be the case.
There was little light in the room, a small puck-style lamp pressed to the concrete of the ceiling. There were no electrical wires running in or out of this room, and it had taken me a moment to figure out why Barden wouldn’t have wired to this place, before realizing that this was his panic room. Anything that ran into here would be a weakness, and the only thing he wanted here was ways to protect himself.
Surprisingly, though I had expected a place like this to be musty and stale, there was almost a minty odor to the air. It reminded me of chewing gum, but I didn’t see any sign of it. Maybe he’d used it in the fabrication of the walls. I didn’t know if scents mattered when it came to magic.
“Was this your goal all along?” I asked.
“My goal for what?”
“For forcing me to help you.”
“Dr. Stone, I had no interest in forcing you to do anything.”
“Seeing as how we are now trapped together, you might as well call me Jen.”
He studied me for a moment. “I was perfectly content to leave you alone, and leave you out of it.”
“I know that’s not true. I wouldn’t have been a part of this had you left me alone. And now because of you, I’m somehow embroiled in the kind of thing I wanted nothing to do with.”
“I’m sorry,” he said.
“I get the feeling you are not. I also get the feeling you are after something more than what you have shown me.”
There was something about Matt that still left me troubled, and although I hated it, I didn’t feel as if I could trust him. No, that wasn’t entirely true. I didn’t hate the fact that I couldn’t trust him. I hated the fact that he had pulled me into this activity, forcing me to be a part of something I had wanted nothing to do with. That was what I hated, and nothing more so.
“This will be over soon.”
“Really? It’s because of you Brad was hospitalized. Do you even know what happened?”
“I’m aware of what happened.” Matt looked across the small room at me, meeting my gaze. “I did nothing to harm Dr. Roberts.”
“You had a hand in it. You’re the reason he was roofied, and if you hadn’t used whatever spell you did on him, he wouldn’t have been so sedated and gotten into an accident. He had a ruptured aorta. Did you know that?”
Matt shook his head slightly. “I did not.”
“He nearly died. When I last saw him, he was still on a ventilator lying in the ICU. Brad doesn’t have the same connection to magic as you or me, and he won’t snap out of it as quickly as either of us.”
And I wondered if my connection to magic was solid enough to allow me to survive something like that more easily. It probably was not. Mine was slow and clumsy, nothing like what others possessed. It left me wondering if there would be any saving me if I were in a similar situation as Brad found himself.
It wasn’t as if I had not been injured over the years. When I was in high school, I had gone skiing and broken my leg. That had taken a normal amount of time to heal. In college, after a night out too late, drinking, I had fallen and cut myself, stitches required in my shoulder. That had taken the usual time to heal. From what I understood from Barden and the other dark mages, when injured, a mage could use their power, feeding themselves in a certain way, using that magic to restore themselves rather than to perform a spell.
Maybe things would be different now I realized I had magic. I hadn’t been in any situation that would demonstrate it for me, so I didn’t have an idea of whether or not it would make a difference.
“He should have died,” Matt said.
“Was that your intent?”
Matt leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees as he watched me. “I had nothing to do with it, as I said, and with an injury like that, he should have died.”
“He almost did. That’s what I was telling you.”
“Did you do anything for him?”
“Not intentionally.”
Matt leaned back, crossing one leg over the other, his arms resting on his lap. “If you did, then he owes you his life.”
“If you hadn’t been at my home, he wouldn’t even owe me his life. That’s what I’m trying to get at, Matt. None of this would’ve
happened had you not come to my place and asked for me to get involved.”
“Unfortunately, you were always going to get involved.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means nothing, now. Had you let the team take Jean-Pierre, it probably wouldn’t have mattered, either, but since you got yourself involved then, you’ve gained the notice of the organization.”
“The only person in your organization who knows about me, and knows I had any hand in what happened, is you.”
“As I have told you, they have ways of tracking. There were others there that night. They might not have been in the parking garage, but they were aware of what took place, and they are aware of what role you had in it.”
I didn’t like the sound of that. “What are you after?”
“I’ve already told you what I’m after. I want to find out who killed John Adams.”
“How do I know it wasn’t you?” I watched him, looking for signs of a reaction, but none came. “You brought me there, and you deceived me to do so, the same sort of thing you’ve done ever since I met you. How do I know you weren’t trying to deceive me all along, making me believe you were innocent?”
“I didn’t kill him.”
Looking around the room, I wondered how long we would have to be here. Barden was out, trying to make his arrangements, but really, all he was intending to do was make a specific type of call. He wanted me to reach out to Jean-Pierre, to see if the vampires could somehow offer a way of protecting Matt. They had ways of evading tracking that even Barden wasn’t aware of, and he thought that if anyone would be capable of offering an element of protection, it would be them.
“When you left before, you had offered to help me learn,” I said, breaking the silence which had formed between us. We had been in the panic room for the better part of half an hour, long enough that I was getting bored. There wasn’t even a TV here, and Barden should have known better. If nothing else, he should have given me his laptop to use. At least then I could have watched something, though I suspected that in his panic room there was no wifi.
“You didn’t need my help.”
“You knew?”
Matt looked around the room before turning his gaze back to me. “Barden wasn’t the only one keeping tabs on others. I’ve been watching.”
“Great. Now I have you as a stalker.”
“It’s nothing like that.”
“Then what is it?”
“It’s your connection to a different sort of power.”
I studied him for a moment. “What sort of power?”
Matt smiled. “You sit in a panic room built by the head of the Dark Council and you have to question what sort of power?”
“It’s always been about Barden?” Hopefully, by the time Kate returned, she would have a grasp of her powers in a way to make her formidable enough that she wouldn’t have to worry about the paramilitary, and I was hopeful that in doing so, she would be unstoppable.
Then again, was that what we needed? Power—unchecked power—like that could be dangerous. Even though I knew Kate was unlikely to use her power in a dangerous way, at the same time, what if she did? Kate was a good person, and I knew her well enough to know she cared, but access to the kind of power she had would change someone. I knew it would change me.
“Barden has been something of a mystery to us. We’ve tried to obtain as much information about him as possible, and yet much as we have tried, he has still eluded us.”
“That’s the kind of praise that will please him.”
“That’s the kind of praise it makes him dangerous. We watch him—or we had; I don’t know if I’m part of a ‘we’ anymore—because there has been a question about what role he might play.”
“How long have you been watching him?”
“A long time.”
“You the whole time?”
Matt shook his head. “Dr. Stone, I suspect you and I are the same age. Seeing as how we’re both hedge mages, we do tend to age normally, or as close to normal as possible.”
“What you’re getting at is that you’re too young to have been chasing him that long.”
“That is what I’m getting at. There are others who have been pursuing Barden longer.”
“What about the fact that the Dark Council has been hiding all this time?”
“The organization has never truly cared about that. It mattered to the Mage Council, and it mattered to their protection of the Veil, but it has not been all that significant to us.”
“Why?”
“Because it was easy enough to understand that the Dark Council and the Mage Council are not all that different. Regardless of what the Mage Council wanted to believe, their power was similar enough to that of the Dark Council. Because of that, they are able to utilize a similar spell.”
“You have hedge mages of both type within the organization, don’t you?”
Matt nodded. “We do. And while there are subtle differences, it’s not so great as to make it impossible for us to train together.”
“Why act now?” I asked. What was it about Barden that troubled the organization that they would need to get involved now, after all this time? They had been observing him until now, so why did they suddenly care whether he was operating more openly?
“We haven’t acted now. We have continued to monitor, keeping tabs on Barden, but he has done nothing other than what he has always done. He is well known for trying to accumulate information. It’s how he has consolidated his power over the years, and it’s how he’s managed to keep his people safe. It’s not too different from how the organization has operated.”
“Why would vampires have killed John Adams?”
“I think the better question would be why would someone want to make it look like vampires killed him.”
“And why do you think?”
“I don’t know. I’ve been trying to dig up information, but it has been difficult to do so.”
“Don’t you have assets within your organization?”
“I do. Or did.”
“You don’t anymore.”
“I don’t know whether I can trust them. Anyone I communicate with might be in contact with others who could be just as dangerous. The challenge for me now is knowing who to trust.”
“And yet you decided to trust me.”
“I trusted you could be helpful, Dr. Stone. I trusted you hadn’t changed a lot in the last few months that you weren’t the same person.”
“What is that supposed to mean?”
“It’s not an insult, if that’s the way you were trying to take it. All it means is you are caring. You proved that in the short period of time I knew you at Hennepin General.”
I suppose that was a compliment, or as much of one as I was likely to get from Matt. “I’ve been trying to get a better understanding of my power.”
“That’s never a bad idea.”
“I haven’t really learned all that much.”
“I find that hard to believe. You have access to some of the most skilled dark mages. You should have learned something.”
I shrugged. That wasn’t true. Barden had been providing me access to various different Dark Council mages, wanting me to continue to work with them, hoping eventually I would find someone who had a match to whatever particular talent I possessed, but as I hadn’t grown up with my magic, it was different. I didn’t understand the reason for that, other than the fact that it should have manifested itself long before now.
“Barden seems to think I have to uncover the source of my magic.”
“Typically that is true.”
“Typically?”
Matt leaned back, watching me. He was incredibly relaxed, considering the circumstances. “I was seven when I began to have stirrings of magic. It wasn’t until I was in my early teens that I had any control over it, but even then, I at least knew about my power.”
“Are you Mage Council or Dark Council?”
“You can’t t
ell?”
I shook my head. “I can’t really tell at all.”
“Other than that you seem to be aware of when others are using magic.”
I studied him, saying nothing.
He shrugged. “I’ve noticed that from the very beginning, Dr. Stone. You always tense just a little when someone uses magic around you. For most mages, that is unusual. There are spells that can be done which would allow you to understand the kind of magic being used around you, but having an innate knowledge of magic is incredibly rare. For most, it would be valuable.”
“Maybe that’s my talent.”
“Maybe.” He said it so casually, almost as if he believed it.
My connection to recognizing magic was not innate at all. Without the bracelet I wore, it was unlikely I would even be aware of anyone performing magic around me. It was all because of Kate and this gift, but then, I wondered if that had been the entire purpose behind it. She might’ve only given me the bracelet so I could get into the condo, not so I would be aware of others using magic around me.
“What kind of magic do you have?”
“My parents are members of the Mage Council,” Matt said.
“Both of them?”
He nodded. “I think they were disappointed when I didn’t have anything more than hedge magic. Not that I could blame them. My sister is quite skilled, and has trained to use her power in a different way to me.”
“How has she used it?”
“Well, she was a knight, but seeing as how things have been changing throughout the councils, there has been less and less need for knights. I don’t know what she will do now.”
“Do you still have contact with them?”
Matt stared at me. “No.”
“Why not?”
“This isn’t an interview, Dr. Stone.”
I looked around the concrete room, before turning my gaze back on Matt. “We don’t have anything else to do, and seeing as how you haven’t been particularly forthcoming about yourself before now, I figured I would use this as an opportunity to try to get to know you better.”
“Why?”
“Because I’m curious?” I shrugged. “Are you always so difficult?”
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