by Debora Geary
He sent Duncan a pretty insistent instant message. A few minutes later his friend’s face popped up on-screen. “Hey Jake. Long time, no see. When are you going to come ogle babes on the beach with me?”
Jake grinned. Duncan never changed. “I need to know the inside dirt on what happened in this zone for the last couple of decades.”
His recruiter and long-time friend frowned. “Why, what’s up?”
“I followed an alert today. Found my witch in juvie.”
Duncan winced. “Hate it when that happens.”
“It’s the second time in three months. And this time my witch wasn’t in lock-up, she works there. Dunc, she spent three years in juvie as a teen. Arson.”
“Fire witch?”
Jake nodded. “Yeah. At least four reported firestarting incidents in the year before she got put away. How did they miss a fire witch in this zone for that long? She should have been setting off alerts left, right, and center.”
“I don’t know. There were some rumors about the old guy who monitored that zone. He had a higher rate of reported false alerts than most of us.”
Meaning he decided the kid setting off the alarms wasn’t really a witch in need of help. Jake tried to keep a lid on his temper. Duncan was just a messenger, too. “What else?”
Duncan squirmed. “Now we’re moving into the territory of really unsubstantiated rumors, but almost all of the witches he found were boys. Sentinel keeps that kind of data pretty quiet, though.”
That did it. “What the hell, Dunc. Two-thirds of witches are girls. No one thought it was a bit strange when he didn’t find any?”
“Some of the old-guard monitors have old-guard ideas. That’s why I recruited you, remember?”
Jake definitely remembered. Duncan had followed him around for three months, getting him drunk and talking up the benefits of doing your civic witch duty while having an awesome time seeing the world. He’d been a little restless, and a lot bored, so he’d signed on.
He scowled into the monitor. “Some of that old guard still works in Sentinel headquarters. Are they covering for the old fart?”
Duncan sighed. “Probably. Jake, don’t do what I think you’re gonna do.”
Jake put on his best innocent face. “And what would that be?”
“I can’t believe you think I’d still fall for that face.” Duncan laughed and toasted Jake with a beer. “If you do that which shall not be named, be careful. I hear they just installed a new firewall.”
For all his beach-sloth ways, Duncan heard a lot. “Thanks, pal. I’ll catch you later.”
Taking a swig of his beer, Jake prepared to hack the Sentinel system. Their security was not at all lax. It was, however, a bit overconfident. They expected everyone to come crashing through the front door. Any good hacker knew that was just plain stupid.
Or at least they did once they grew up. He’d done plenty of front-door crashing in his teenage years.
Duncan was right; Sentinel did have a new firewall in place. Fortunately, it was the same one as the New Mexico Police Department, and he’d finessed into that just last month. A couple more finger wiggles, and he was in.
Viewing personnel files for Sentinel employees was probably several kinds of illegal. That didn’t much bother him, but he did have his own sense of ethics. He kept his nose out of Duncan’s file, however much fun it might have been to snoop.
The historical records were supremely well organized. Sentinel was good at paperwork. Jake located the file for the previous monitor of the New Mexico zone. Alvin Minton. He’d held the post for forty freaking years. That was some serious longevity.
His personnel file held hints of issues. A couple of suggestions that his incident reports were lacking in detail. One letter of reprimand for slow follow-up on a yellow-alert case. Yeah. Some poor kid sat in a mental ward for three months while Alvin took his sweet time following up.
Jake toggled over to the main Sentinel database. HR records might sometimes circumvent the truth, but data didn’t lie, and Sentinel was obsessive about keeping good data records.
He pulled up all the alert and incident reports for the New Mexico zone during Alvin’s tenure. Deciding not to hand-count forty years of data, he dumped everything in a spreadsheet and ran a series of formulas and calculations.
Fifteen minutes later, he stepped away from his laptop, his temper just barely leashed. He’d hoped Romy had been the one kid that had slipped through the cracks. Far from it. Alvin had dropped more kids down the cracks than he’d kept out.
In forty years, there had been 167 alerts. Alvin had written up eighty-one of them as false alarms—and every last one was a girl.
Jake knew what could happen to witch kids with uncontrolled magic and no one to stand up for them. Alvin was dead, but someone at Sentinel was going to answer for this.
He would have gone to the mat just for Romy and the three years she lost, but she had eighty friends. And he’d bet not all of them had survived as well as his redhead.
He sat back down at the computer. By the time he walked into Sentinel headquarters, he was going to know what had happened to every last one of them.
Chapter 4
Romy pulled her station wagon up in front of the Center and grabbed her bag off the seat. She was perilously close to being late, and with all the grief she gave her kids about being on time, that wasn’t an option.
Rehearsal had run overtime, thanks to her director’s delusions of grandeur. She loved doing community theater, but the few people in it for the dubious glory could be really annoying. Mental note—don’t be one of those directors. Not that her kids would let her get away with that kind of crap.
She ran down the detention-wing hall and into the drama room. The last thing she expected to see was the guy who’d tried to snatch her yesterday slouched in a chair next to Skate.
She skidded to a halt and glared. “What are you doing here?”
He reached out a hand. “Hey, I’m Jake. I’m hoping to start a drama program for teens up in Albuquerque, and I heard you were the best. I came to check things out.”
Liar. “Who let you in?” Romy could see Skate’s posture shifting to alert. She tried to ratchet down her body language; no point getting Skate in trouble.
Jake nodded toward Darlene, in her usual post by the door. Darlene waved and wiggled her eyebrows at Romy.
He’d smooth-talked Darlene? Romy was pretty sure no one had accomplished that in the last decade.
“The dude says he can act, Romy,” said Skate. “Mostly action stuff. Maybe he can help us out with the rumble scene.”
Romy tried not to laugh. Fine. If the kids wanted to put Jake through their own special brand of hazing, she wasn’t going to get in their way. She looked at Jake. “You know the basic plot for West Side Story? This is the big gang fight in Act One.”
“Manny’s out sick,” said Skate. “He can be Riff.”
“Hey,” Jake said. “Doesn’t he die in Act One? Who kills him?”
Skate grinned. It wasn’t pretty. “Me.”
The gang cast members assembled. Since all eyes were on Jake, clearly word had gotten around. Romy issued her standard warning with a little more emphasis than usual. “No blood, guys. Remember, this is acting.”
At a signal from Skate, the action started, and she settled back to watch. Riff usually took a pretty decent pounding in this scene. Darlene grinned from the doorway.
Jake made halfhearted attempts to dodge a few blows until a pretty solid one landed. Then Romy saw his face change. This was clearly a guy who had been in a few street fights. She and Darlene both took several steps closer in case they needed to step in; no one pounded on their kids. Jake saw their moves and rolled his eyes.
In the next three minutes, Romy learned all she needed to know about the kind of man Jake was. He had fast hands, even faster feet, and precise control. He fought as dirty as any kid in her group, but with the kind of restrained violence that earned respect without doing any real
harm.
Finally, Skate started to advance on Jake. It was time for Riff to die. Instead, Skate stopped and put out his hand. “You fight good. I can kill Riff when Manny gets back.”
Jake nodded once, tough guy to tough guy. Fascinating, thought Romy. Skate didn’t like very many people; he respected even fewer. She stepped forward. “All right, I think we’ve rumbled enough for today. Now let’s run through impromptu job interviews.”
Her guest looked totally confused. “What part of West Side Story is that?”
Romy grinned. “It’s the part that earns these kids the right to participate in West Side Story.”
“We have to pretend to act like regular schmucks,” Skate said.
Well, Romy thought, that was better than several of the words he would have used last year. She had a strict no-swearing policy for drama rehearsals. If her kids were ever going to pass for anything other than delinquents, they needed to expand their vocabularies.
“I don’t get it,” Jake said.
Skate smirked. “Romy says it’s good acting practice. If I can behave like some prissy private-school kid for a job interview, then I must be a pretty good actor.”
Jake rubbed his ribs. “You do a great gang thug.”
“That’s not acting.” Skate earned appreciative snickers from his audience.
Jake considered a moment, and then reached out a hand to Skate. “Hello, I’m Mr. Dickhead, head of hiring for Standard Insurance. And you are?” Romy was impressed; he’d gone from likeable guy with bad-boy edges to condescending senior executive in three seconds flat.
Skate’s mouth hung open, so Romy stepped in to coach. “He looks pretty obnoxious—you up to this?”
Mission accomplished; Skate’s mouth snapped shut and he reached out to shake Jake’s hand. “I’m Michael Sykes, and it’s very nice to meet you, Mr. Dickhead.” No sign of a smirk anywhere. That was serious progress.
Jake gestured toward a table and two chairs hastily set up by a couple of the kids. “Have a seat, Mr. Sykes. Tell me about yourself.”
Romy cheered silently as Jake ran Skate through the interview gauntlet. The questions were tough, random, and occasionally stupid, just like your standard job interview. And without the visual, you never would have pegged Skate as a kid from the hood.
Then Jake’s face shifted. “One last question. It sounds like you might be a reasonable fit for Standard Insurance, Mr. Sykes. I’m concerned, however, about your… appearance.” He gestured in the general direction of Skate’s tattoos.
Only Darlene’s hand on her shoulder kept Romy in her seat. Skate was silent for a couple of seconds. Then he spoke with calm conviction. “Tattoos don’t make the man, Mr. Dickhead. What’s inside does.”
“Yeah, it certainly does.” Bad-boy Jake was back. “Hell of an act there, Skate. Next time I’ll wear a skirt and be the sexy-flirt hiring manager. Trust me, those are harder to deal with.”
The rest of the room busted up laughing at the idea of Jake in a skirt. Skate raised an eyebrow. “You coming back?”
“Yeah. For a while. Gotta help you guys work on that rumble scene.”
The buzzer sounded, ending free time. Kids filed out, heading off to dinner, and Romy walked over to Jake. She had no idea what to do with him. “I don’t know why you’re here, but you earned enough points that I’m not going to have Darlene throw you out. We need to talk.”
Jake nodded. “You hungry?”
She contemplated him a moment. “Yeah. Let me wrap up here, and I’ll meet you out front.”
Jake left, and Darlene walked over. “What’s that all about?”
Romy shook her head. “I have no idea. Pretty sure he wants something, but I have no idea what.”
Darlene snorted. “Then you’re a lot dumber than I think you are, girlfriend. Skate liked him, and so do I.”
And those were two tough gatekeepers, but neither of them knew she could make sparks fly out of her fingers.
Jake wanted her; Darlene had that much right. She needed to find out why. She wasn’t a fourteen-year-old witch in need of rescuing any more.
Chapter 5
Jake leaned against his bike and waited for Romy to come out.
That had been quite the education. The bar fight loosely disguised as a scene in a play hadn’t been a big deal, but watching Skate handle a tough interview with brains and self control… How the heck had Romy pulled that out of a kid from the hood?
He watched her walk out of the building. She still looked at him with suspicion; he was going to have to work on that.
“When does Skate get out?” That was obviously the last question she’d been expecting.
“In sixteen weeks, three days—why?”
“Think he’d be willing to relocate to San Francisco?”
“I imagine he’d be thrilled to go anywhere that wasn’t here, but why?”
Jake took out his cell phone and dialed a friend. “Hey Mikey, it’s Jake. Quick question—you got a spot for a new intern in about four months? Good artist, great fighter.”
Romy’s face was caught somewhere between scowl and disbelief.
After listening a moment longer, he hung up. Mikey hated talking on the phone. “There’s a job for him in San Francisco if he wants it. Mikey’s a good guy. He’ll work him hard enough there won’t be any time left to find trouble.”
“Doing what, exactly? Fighting’s the last thing Skate needs to be messing with when he gets out.”
Only if you thought like a girl. Jake smiled. “You can’t take fighting out of him, Romy. Mike runs a video game design shop, about a hundred employees. Lots of fight scenes in the games. I figure if Skate designed all those tattoos he’s wearing, he’s a decent artist, and Mike will make sure he gets trained in all the latest animation tools.”
Now the disbelief on Romy’s face warred with hope. “You got him a shot at learning to design video game fight scenes?”
He shrugged. “Seemed like it would fit him.”
Her eyes flooded. Shit, that wasn’t what he’d been going for. He was no knight in shining armor. “There’s a string attached.”
Now her eyes hardened; that was a lot easier to deal with. “Name it.”
“Have dinner with me. Listen with an open mind to what I have to say.”
“That’s it?”
Jake laughed. “What were you expecting?” On second thought, he probably didn’t want to know. “Your ride, or mine?”
Romy looked at his bike, and he could see desire in her eyes. He tossed her the keys. “I’ll let you drive.”
They hopped on the bike. She was tiny enough he could have wrapped his arms around her and driven himself, but there was no need. He could tell she knew one end of a motorcycle from the other, and he didn’t plan for them to stay on pavement for long, anyhow.
Romy kicked them off and headed down the road toward Albuquerque. There were none of the wiggles and squeals that had come from the last girl he’d put on his bike. Just competent driving and a grin he could see all the way through the back of her head.
He looked around and made sure the road was deserted. In New Mexico, that wasn’t a hard thing to come by.
“I ask the power of earth and land,
Come on out, give me a hand.
Lift us high in the daybright sky
Hard work’s done, it’s time to fly.
Gotta do what must be done,
Make it so, Number One.”
When the bike lifted of the pavement and headed for open sky, he got his wish. Romy squealed. And wiggled.
He wrapped his arms around her securely and killed the engine. He liked the rumble, but it made talking pretty much impossible. “Relax. I do this with all the pretty girls.”
She sat still as stone for almost an entire minute. Then she began to laugh. It was the sound of absolute freedom, and the heart of why he flew. Something inside him… yearned.
Which was more than a little disturbing. For all the normal guy reasons, and becaus
e his mom swore he would love once, love deeply, and marry a brunette. You didn’t argue with one of the world’s best fortunetellers.
Leaning forward, he grabbed the handlebars. “Hang on.” He kicked up the speed and flew into a slow vertical loop. Romy squealed again and reached for his arms—and sparks flew out of her fingers.
Her voice was high and panicked. “Put us down. Now.”
Crap—big mistake. He’d been so sure she would enjoy that. “Sorry, I won’t do it again. Nice and steady all the way to dinner, I promise.”
“Jake. Down, please, I can’t control it for much longer.”
She was going to be sick? Jake headed for the ground with all possible speed. Airborne puking could be an unholy mess.
They’d barely hit the sand before she was off the bike and running away at top speed. Cursing, he ran after her, and then stopped dead when she threw a fireball into the desert.
Wow. No wonder she’d set off the Sentinel alarms.
She turned her head back to him. “Stay back. I’m not done, and I can’t get it under control.”
Jake watched, puzzled. She was clamping her hands, exactly the same thing she’d done at their first meeting when she’d been shooting sparks out of her fingertips.
He cursed profusely under his breath. The signs were all there, and he was an idiot for missing them this long. Fortunately, he had long practice with the required spell.
“I ask the power of earth and land,
Come on out, give me a hand.
Put up a barrier to the power,
Hold her magic quiet this hour.
Gotta do what must be done,
Make it so, Number One.”
That wouldn’t work against her will, but if she wanted control, she should have it now.
Romy turned around slowly to face him, hands still clenched. “What did you do?”
“A basic spell to buffer your access to power. It should make your magic easier to control.”
She nodded, just once. “Thanks. Sorry, I have no idea what happened.”