Cornered Magic

by Charissa Dufour

  Chapter Three

  Sam returned the three men to the administration building just in time for their meeting with a few government officials. This time, Sterling didn’t offer to shake her hand. Hunt eyed her for a moment before turning away and following his boss into the conference room. Before Tibbs could question her, Sam ducked out of the building and hurried down the street.

  A few minutes later, Sam knocked on Amber’s door, her injured hand tucked against her chest.

  “Ready?” she asked, not feeling up to parsing pleasantries when Amber opened the door.

  Amber frowned at her. Amber was used to her surliness, but this was a stretch, even for Sam.

  “Everything okay?”

  “Rough tour.”

  Amber’s eyes flickered down to the hand Sam held against her chest. “They hurt you?”

  “Not precisely.”

  Sam watched as Amber ground her teeth together, no doubt feeling Sam’s emotions. Slowly, Amber nodded. She grabbed her own jacket and closed the door. Amber lived in the same parking garage housing complex as Sam, one floor up. Though Sam would never admit to it, the notoriety Amber suffered for being her friend broke her heart. Amber and Carl shouldn’t have to pay just because they were nice to her, but they did and did it willingly.

  The children playing in the courtyard gave them a wide berth as they made their way to the spiral driveway.

  “You sure Becky’s missing?” Sam asked as they reached the ground.

  “Yes. I’ve asked around. No one’s seen her in at least two days.”

  “In that case, we need to go to the Feds.”

  Amber’s face melted into a look of rebellion. She may have loved everyone, but the officers of the Federal Mystics Bureau didn’t count according to her code. Then again, Sam didn’t know any mystic who liked the Bureau.

  “Amber, you don’t have to come.”

  Despite the two years since the attack, Amber still couldn’t face the uniformed officers with any ease, and Sam didn’t fault her for it. In truth, Sam knew Amber’s perpetual friendliness was in direct response to the horrors of her past. The officer in question had not actually managed to rape her, but her boyfriend had spent six months in solitary confinement and had been transferred to the Florida Reservation as a result of his interference. The Bureau didn’t see it as a man saving his girlfriend from a revolting act, but rather as a mystic attacking a federal officer.

  “I’ll come,” Amber finally said, forcing a smile to her face.

  Sam gripped Amber’s shoulder with her good hand. “You sure?”

  “Can’t be afraid my whole life.”

  Sam shrugged. “I plan to be,” she mumbled under her breath as she turned to walk back to the admin building.

  Together they walked into the administration building, standing in the same foyer where Sam had met Hunt and the others. Amber stepped forward and asked the receptionist if they could speak with the captain in charge for the day. While Amber spoke, Sam tried and failed to keep her eyes off the door leading to the conference room.

  It was a glass door, with blinds pulled up. From where she stood, she could easily spot Roman Hunt standing behind Sterling’s chair. Sterling was talking, gesturing emphatically. Sam watched the executive talk, unaware that Hunt had spotted her. Her eyes flickered up, catching his gaze. To her annoyance, he glanced at her hand, still pressed protectively against her chest.

  Sam turned away, hiding her injury from him, just as the Duty Captain emerged from the hallway that led back into the bowels of the building.

  Despite her efforts, Sam cringed at the sight of the human sauntering up to them. Captain Reynolds had been the bane of her existence since the first time Sam was put into Solitary. She didn’t know what had caused the man to hate her so much, but after a number of confrontations, the feeling was mutual.

  “What?” he asked, none too kindly.

  Amber swallowed. “Sorry to bother you, sir, but a friend of ours has gone missing.”

  “Friend gotta name?”

  “Becky Stirgus.”

  The man rolled his eyes down to the computer and punched a few buttons. Neither Sam nor Amber knew what he was doing. It was illegal for mystics to own any technology fancier than a tape player. Of course, that didn’t necessarily mean a few mystics didn’t own computers with connections to the internet. Sam didn’t understand any of it but Carl did.

  “Well, there aren’t any incidence reports concerning her.”

  “But we can’t find her anywhere,” said Amber, fluttering her eyelashes in an attempt to look innocent.

  Sam tried not to roll her own eyes at Amber’s efforts.

  “Sure she ain’t visiting her boyfriend or something? Spending a few days in the sack?” asked the captain, obviously thinking all mystics were enormous sluts.

  “Are you sugges…” began Sam before Amber smacked her on the arm.

  “We’ll just keep looking,” Amber said over the top of Sam’s grunt.

  “You just do that,” said Reynolds before patting the secretary on the shoulder and turning away; he disappeared into the hallway before Amber and Sam could leave.

  They reached the street, no closer to finding Becky.

  “Guess it’s time to go to her house,” Sam said.

  Within minutes they entered the little neighborhood, once designed to be like a regular housing community. When the Reservation had first been built the designers had put in the neighborhood, trying to give the inmates more of a human experience. The neighborhood consisted of a one-way loop surrounded by row housing. The houses had since been divided up into single-story apartments. In recent years, to keep up with a major increase in tenants, the government had brought in plastic crates and turned them into studio apartments for the single residents of the Reservation. These crate-apartments were put in the streets, leaving only the cracking sidewalks for foot traffic.

  Sam and Becky entered the dark, narrow pathway, keeping their pace up as they scurried past two werewolves lounging against their front doors and chatting. The two men chuckled as they passed, one even letting out a wolf-like howl of appreciation.

  For the billionth time that day, Sam felt the urge to release her gift. She was tired and tired of being used, and the day was only half over. Sam focused on the pain in her burned hand in an effort to ward off the temptation beating through her veins. Just a small taste of the wolf and you’ll be strong, whispered her gift as though it were alive.

  Thankfully, Amber kept their pace up and they quickly passed the werewolves. They reached the eastern end of the neighborhood and climbed the steep steps up to Becky’s second-story crate. Amber knocked on the door and waited. Knocked again and waited some more.

  “Carl?” suggested Amber.

  Sam nodded. They made their way back through the neighborhood and out onto the main street. Carl was one of the unlucky fae who lived in the complex nearest the shipyard and all its iron. Sam didn’t feel much like approaching the iron again, but she didn’t have a choice.

  “You gonna tell me what happened to your hand?” Amber asked as they neared the southern-most complex.

  “Long story. It’s fine.”

  Sam could practically hear Amber roll her eyes as they entered the complex.

  Like most housing complexes in the Reservation, Carl’s was designed to use as little electricity as possible. It was laid out with a minuscule courtyard in its center with balconies wrapping around it on the second and third levels. This tiny courtyard allowed the apartments to have exterior walls—and therefore windows—on two ends. The natural light provided by the windows, theoretically, meant the inhabitants didn’t need to turn on their lights as much. This theory took such hold in the collective heads of the FMB that apartments were now limited on the power allowed per month. Most inhabitants had learned to restrict their uses of electricity for basic necessities like cooking.

  Carl opened the door, a wide grin already plastering his face. Ca
rl was the sort of young man for which one immediately wanted to make a sandwich. From head to toe, he was nothing but skin, bones, and heart. He took a step back to allow them entrance, tripping over his own feet in the process.

  Amber smiled at him cheerfully and Sam did her best to copy the expression. They followed Carl back to his closet-sized room. The room fit his twin-sized bed, a narrow dresser, and a small desk with his smuggled computer. Beyond that, there was about a one-foot-by-two-foot swath of empty floor. Amber moved straight to his bed, sitting on the edge, to make space for the rest of us. Carl took up his seat at his desk while Sam leaned against the closed door.

  “Did you guys go?” asked Carl, clearly aware of Becky’s disappearance.

  “Went to the feds. No help. Went to her apartment. She didn’t answer,” replied Sam.

  “Carl, could you do some computer snooping?” asked Amber, waving her hand at Carl’s fancy box.

  The thin man hesitated a second before turning in his chair and powering up the computer, his gift surging forth to power the technology. Carl’s gift—creating electricity—was a major contributor to his interest in technology and his ability to pursue it. Without his gift, he and his mother would never have been allotted enough electricity for him to use a computer.

  “I’m not sure what I can do, but I’ll try.”

  Sam moved to sit beside Amber as Carl began typing. Neither of them knew the first thing about human technology and computers. The screen changed a few times, sometimes with nothing but words, other times with pictures of strange people and places. The girls kept quiet as he worked.

  Fifteen minutes later he turned and shook his head.

  “I checked the news sources. Nothing. No stories about a fae dying or escaping the Res.”

  “What about the feds thingy?” Sam asked.

  “The fed’s program?” Carl replied.

  Sam shrugged. “Sure. That thing.”

  Carl chewed on his lips. “I can try to hack into their network. Maybe they’re holding her in Solitary.”

  “Why wouldn’t they just tell us that?” countered Amber. “They usually sing that from the rooftops. They want us to know each time they put someone into solitary confinement. They want us to know what the punishment is for whatever.”

  Sam and Carl nodded in response.

  “I don’t know what else to do,” replied Sam. “Carl, can you try?”

  He hesitated again before turning back to his computer. “This is gonna take a few hours at the least,” he said over his shoulder.”

  “I’ve got nowhere to go,” Sam said as she pushed herself back onto the bed so that she could lean against the wall.

  Amber copied her and settled in to wait.