“Got it. And you think that’s what happened?” Darien asked.
“Well…” Mitch grimaced. “I’m not sure, frankly. It’s a guess. Considering the effects we’ve seen, it makes sense, although Morgan isn’t known to have been a particularly sloppy mage from all I’ve read.”
“So…” Caroline looked from Mitch, who was frowning at his legal pad, to Darien who was leaning back in his chair and glaring at the ceiling. “What do we do now?”
“Now,” Darian sighed. “We wait to hear from Greg and hope that Sheldon Collins leads us to our stolen artifact, so we can arrest him for everything from theft to reckless use of magic and public endangerment. He’s just lucky that nobody died in the storm or he’d be looking at murder charges.”
16
They parked down the road from the facility and walked to the gate that opened for those who got a security key when they rented a unit. Darien frowned at it for a moment then pulled out his phone. A moment later Greg strolled up and pushed a button on a stand on the other side of the gate, which started rolling open.
“Gotta get out if you get in, I guess,” Greg said with a smirk.
“Which unit are we watching?” Darien followed close behind Greg who was striding back into the maze of buildings.
“It’s around the corner here, but right on the ground floor, fortunately, so it’s got an outside access door. I called Lena and she said that it’s rented to Collins himself.” Greg pointed to a small door in the wall. “Those lead to stairs and the roll door beside it has a freight elevator for the second floor units, but the rest of these roll doors lead right into the ground floor spaces. Your timing is either really good or really bad. Two more guys just showed up. One’s a shifter. The one who jumped us the other night, I think.”
“So… At least one mage, maybe three, and one of them’s a werewolf. Other than the shifter, all human?” Darien scowled.
“Yep. We have a plan?” Greg led them to the corner of the second building and pointed out the roll door where Collins and his buddies were. It was cracked open about six inches and light poured out into the late afternoon light. It was one of the few benefits to the summer that the sun was with them well into the evening. Otherwise the air hung heavy and thick, the humidity and heat squeezing them were they stood. Caroline almost wished for more rain, just to break the pressure, but considering the investigation she wasn’t going to say anything.
“Can you get close enough to hear what they’re saying?” Darien asked.
“I can, but only just. They’ve got a ward up to warn them if anyone gets too close.”
“Okay. Get in hearing range and try to figure out if the horn is in there. If it is, we can nail them all on the theft at the very least,” Darien said. Greg nodded and stalked silently towards the gap. Darien turned back to Caroline and Mitch. “Okay, here’s the plan. You two hang back. If we can get them on their way out, that will be our safest bet. We do not want to go rushing in there. They could have who knows what sort of protections up. Once we have them secured, Mitch, you go in and make sure that any wards or boobytrap spells are disabled. Our files on Collins say that he’s only a middling mage of no great power and even less skill. He’s registered as having tested stronger with water than anything else, but he mostly sticks to being a sleazy lawyer and slumlord, so I doubt that you’ll have any problems.”
“Certainly. I don’t foresee any real trouble if he cast something dodgy in there.” Mitch nodded and set his tool bag down to start rummaging.
“Caroline, you’ll mostly be watching this one. But I want you to keep your eyes and ears open. You’ll still have a report to file and Point is going to make you go over it about a thousand times,” Darien said with a smirk that faded quickly. A small line appeared between his brows. “But if things go sideways, you get clear, understand? Your safety is your first priority.”
Well, that hardly seemed fair. “But—”
“No buts,” Darien cut her protest short. “You did great under pressure when we were escaping those crazy elves, but this is your first official case and you’re still a brand-new intern. If you get hurt your mom will kill me. Then Point will stake my remains and burn whatever’s left. And then the rest of the office will start in.”
Caroline rolled her eyes. Darien was dead serious, she could tell.
“Fine,” she huffed. “You’re no fun.”
The three of them turned their attention to Greg who was crouched about ten feet away from Collins’ unit door. She knew where he was: he was out in the open in direct sunlight, but actually seeing him was difficult. Her eyes just kept sliding past him, even when she tried to focus.
“Tricky, isn’t it?” Mitch’s voice was pitched low, not quite a whisper, but if he hadn’t been right behind her Caroline would never have heard him. “Not even he’s sure exactly how it works. It seems to be simply inherent to his nature. Darien can see him more easily than we can as humans, but even he has difficulty when Greg truly doesn’t want to be noticed.”
“He’s gotten in trouble more than once for hiding at his desk,” Darien grinned. “And I suggest you never get into a prank war with him.”
“No wonder he stayed back to… what’s going on?” She pointed to where the roll door was opening wide, the work lights inside spilling their brightness out onto the pavement. Behind her she heard Mitch swear as the interior of the storage unit was revealed.
A wall of shelves and a work table spanned the back wall, cluttered with books and magical paraphernalia of a mage’s craft. On the floor was a large casting circle, clearly having been the work of several weeks to draw and charge, with some sort of crystals at the end of long arrows pointing to each off the four cardinal points, making it look a bit like a magical compass rose. At each point, behind the crystals, stood a man. The man at the northern point was Collins, but the other three were strangers, but they all held their hands over the crystals and the circle lit up under their chants
In the center of the circle was a man, tall and lanky with shaggy brown hair who wore jeans that sagged on his hips and a rumpled, black t-shirt that somehow looked greasy and stained, even from twenty feet away. He was holding Phineas Morgan’s horn and at his feet were two other objects: a map which sat on what seemed to be an antique ottoman. The man in the middle— Caroline guessed that he was the shifter— raised the horn to his lips and took a breath, waiting for his cue.
“Where’d the other mages come from? I thought there were only three guys in there?” Mitch asked. “What should we do?”
“Goddamnit,” Darien growled. “He’s trying it again! Caroline, go!”
Before Caroline could respond, Darien was running towards the circle shouting. ”FPAA! Cease all casting immediately and surrender!” Greg was himself leaping at Collins, who turned and flicked a nod at the two agents closing in on his spell circle.
Darien and Greg were both stopped at the line of the roll door, bouncing off a ward. Caroline had enough experience with them to know that unless Mitch could get it disabled soon, they’d be having another storm, and this time it might turn deadly. Mitch was running towards the door now as well, with his bag in one hand, the other waving in front of him as he tried to cast on the move.
“Collins, if you don’t stop now it will only go worse for you!” Greg snarled. His eyes glowed golden and he appeared to be slashing claws at thin air, but wasn’t getting past the ward.
“It doesn’t matter what you are, Agent Barnett! Either of you, although I was mistaken in my assumption that you were a mage, Agent Webb. Not that it matters.” Collins grinned cheerfully. “That ward will keep out any paranormal or mage that isn’t specifically attuned to it, which means the five of us and nobody else. And once this storm hits, we can take care of you three with relative ease with what’s in here. It will be simple to shoot a few deadly spells out this door and poof! No more trouble from the FPAA!”
Darien and Greg both growled while Mitch crouched at the side of the door and m
uttered. Just from the set of his shoulders, Caroline could tell that he wasn’t confident that he could get through the ward in time to stop the spell from being completed.
“It could be fun to go another round with you, kitty cat,” the shaggy man in the center smiled and winked, and Greg’s snarl made Caroline’s fight or flight reflex kick in. She actually took a step back before Collins’ words sank in. No paranormals or mages could get through the ward… but she was neither.
Oh, Darien was going to be pissed.
“Now, Freddy! The circle is charged!” Collins crowed. Caroline raced towards the entrance as the wolf raised the horn back to his lips and took a deep breath. Just as he started to blow, Caroline whipped past Mitch and reached out with Ollie’s gadget clutched in her hand and pointed as near to the shifter’s chest as she could aim, and pulled the trigger.
The last thing she knew was a blinding flash of light and the roar of a train passing far too close. Then, as the dark took her away, she thought she heard someone call her name.
17
Caroline’s ability to hear when someone was lying made her fairly indispensable for the interrogations and Point wanted her in the observation room with him for the whole processes even though the medics wanted her in bed under observation. They worked out a compromise where Caroline had a seat and a medic there for most of it to perform checks at regular intervals. Caroline thought it was fairly ridiculous, especially since she’d spent most of the previous day being yelled at by everyone, including a number of people who had no relation to the case whatsoever. Even Julia showed up for a turn.
Her mother hadn’t let up her ranting for closing in on an hour over the phone before Caroline had cut her off and hung up. She’d probably need to call back and apologize for being rude later, but she couldn’t take any more. And her mother only got the cover story version of an electrical generator explosion.
Still, it was better than what she’d been through with Point. And Mitch. And Greg. And Darien had been too mad to talk to her at all, which kind of sucked, but at least he hadn’t yelled at her yet so maybe he’d let all these lectures settle down a bit before he took his turn.
Right after the— fight? Explosion? She wasn’t sure what to call it yet. Turns out when you cross a spell circle with a magical taser, you get a massive magical short circuit that feeds back into the mages casting the spell. And blows the poor idiot with the taser backwards and halfway across a parking lot. The road rash alone was enough to teach Caroline a lesson about never doing that again, but she still didn’t regret it.
Right after she passed out, Mitch had checked her over for injuries and magical damage while Greg and Darien arrested everyone. Only the shifter had put up much of a fight, having been somewhat protected from the spell’s blowback inside the casting circle. Once he had finished reading her the riot act, Mitch confirmed that the spell was calling up another storm, and it easily could have been larger than the first, so lives were probably saved by her rash action.
As it was, the horn’s enchantment activated and a stiff wind blasted through the storage unit’s interior, casting books and tools and other magical bits and bobs all over the place, and the totally natural storm that had been brewing all day hit about an hour later while they were still cleaning up the scene alongside the local law enforcement.
They’d discovered three more stolen artifacts in the mess, as well as several more that were in the same vein as the horn and the ottoman (also enchanted by Phineas Morgan to blow gusts of wind at random people walking past to surprise or scare them,) and had been legally obtained.
Caroline had missed all that, though. At first because she was unconscious. Then, once she came around and Mitch had looked her over again, she had been relegated to an ambulance which took her to the nearest hospital with a magical-injuries ward until the very small hours of the next morning when Darien picked her up and drove her back to the office in silence. Once back, Point started his lecture while the medics were still getting her settled, and only wound down when Mitch and Greg walked in to take over the lecturing duties.
So, now, after about three hours of sleep in the infirmary, she was sitting in the observation room with Point and a grumpy medic listening to Darien and Greg interview the shifter— amusingly named Leonard Wolfe, the poor thing— who turned out to be a veritable font of information with no loyalty whatsoever to his employers.
“Man, they ain’t paid me enough to lie to the feds. Screw that.” He lounged in his seat in the interrogation room toying slightly with the scribed silver handcuffs he wore, and Greg and Darien regarded him with a thin veneer of patience.
“Why don’t you tell us what they did pay you enough for?” Darien asked.
“Dave hired me to run a few errands and blow the stupid horn in the center of the circle. They needed someone to do it that wouldn’t accidentally mess with their enchantments so other mages were out. That Collins guy hired Dave to help with the spell casting, and Dave and I know each other from way back, so he called me in. First time they did it on the boat they damn near killed us, sinking out there. Dumbasses didn’t think that making a storm while we’re on a boat was maybe a bad idea, and I had no clue what they were doing. I’m no mage.”
“And you attacked us later on. Why?” Greg growled.
“We didn’t like having feds poking around the place. I saw you on my way back to my place and thought I’d get a bonus. Didn’t realize you were a shifter yourself, and a… what the hell are you, anyway?” Wolfe glared across the table at Darien who ignored him. Caroline smirked at the show of bravado, but she could tell that the shifter knew he’d decided to assault a federal agent and was in hot water up to his eyeballs. He was cooperative, though, and told them about everything he knew, which wasn’t a ton, but was enough to work with and would probably go a long way with the prosecutors. Wolfe didn’t know the details and honestly didn’t much care. He was only there for the paycheck.
Did he know the horn was stolen?
“Course I did. That prick at the museum let us in after everyone else went home and opened the case for us to grab it.”
“We got a call from Agent Grace,” Point grumbled in Caroline’s direction. “He and his partner picked up Doctor Whitman on a few charges related to antiquities theft and the sale of stolen property. Turns out that his current employer isn’t the only one things have gone missing from.”
“Couldn’t happen to a nicer guy,” Caroline muttered. Then she sighed and spoke up a bit. “Wolfe is being totally honest. He’s a lowlife thug, but it seems like he knows he’s seriously outclassed here. Maybe if we were the local sheriffs and he was up against a charge of stealing hubcaps or something, he’d try lying, but I think he’s too scared. I can hear that much easily.”
“I agree. I think it’s about time to go after Collins himself.” Point stalked out of the room.
“Where does that guy find suits to fit those shoulders?” Caroline muttered. The medic behind her snorted a laugh, and for the first time since the mess at the storage unit, Caroline grinned.
“I am a lawyer, I know how to handle an interrogation.” Collins sat in the room with a styrofoam cup of terrible coffee in front of him from the pot they had going for that express purpose. Mitch had his desk mug filled with good coffee that he set down on the table before sitting, and Darien had a bottle of water and a can, and a file folder under his arm.
“I hope you don’t mind if I eat. I skipped lunch to get through the paperwork for you and, well. I need my supplements or I’ll get cranky.” His voice was pleasant and Caroline could hear the amusement and satisfaction at Collins’ reaction when he made a small gesture with the can of preserved blood before sitting down. Collins, for his part, reared back in his chair as far as he could without knocking it over and stared at Darien with wide eyes.
“Y… you’re a…. That’s…” he spluttered. Caroline and the medic giggled and Point raised his eyebrow.
“It’s a can of blood from an FP
AA certified provider, yes,” Darien dropped the oil to the table before sitting down and waving the can casually at Collins, almost like he was offering a taste. “I mean, it’s not quite like fresh, but it’s so much more civilized.” Collins paled further, which was pretty impressive, actually.
“Remind me to smack that dumbass upside his pointy toothed head after this,” he grumbled without much heat.
“An off balance suspect is a less careful suspect,” the medic said with a smirk and they all shook their heads at the hissing sound of the can being opened.
The interview with Collins went about as well as everyone expected. The greasy lawyer slumlord tried to weasel his way around everything, even though he was actually caught in the act of casting an unstable and destructive spell using stolen property while simultaneously threatening three federal agents.
“So you have a ten million dollar insurance policy on the apartment property. I’ve checked the public records and it’s valued at just under two million dollars,” Darien said, taking a sip of his snack.
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