Can you do me a favor?
He expected to wait, or perhaps not to receive a reply at all, but the phone vibrated in his palm before five minutes had passed.
What do you need?
Elton hesitated to unlock the screen, but then he huffed, reminded himself that he was being ridiculous, and typed out his answer.
I want you to look into something for me. Sometime probably around 1785-95, there may have been an anti-Magistrate riot or protest in Philadelphia. Can you verify?
Why?
I have a theory, but I need more information to back it up. I don’t have access to Magistrate resources anymore, and I thought you would know better than me how to find out the truth.
What theory?
I don’t want to say until I know more.
How do I know what to look for if I don’t know what you’re trying to prove?
Elton pressed his lips together with his thumbs hovering over the keys. He didn’t want to tell Thomas that it was about Nathan. His old friend had suffered through endless research, note-taking, and did-you-knows for years before they parted ways. He’d also given Elton endless shit about his obsession with finding a witch no one had heard from in forty years and who was probably dead. Thomas had always been the one to remind him to occasionally come out of the archives and have dinner at home with Jocelyn. He finally typed out a reply with a frown on his face.
I just need to know if there was any protest back then, and how many people were involved.
Who are you looking for, Elton?
The blond frowned. He should have known that Thomas would see through him anyway.
Nathan said something about it, and I want to know what really happened.
The answer came almost immediately this time—just a simple ellipsis. Then the phone buzzed again.
This is what we’re doing? Still? Are you kidding me?
Elton exhaled sharply through his nose and leaned back on his bench.
This is important.
It’s always important. Isn’t he there with you? Why don’t you ask him this crap instead of having me look it up?
He’s not as forthcoming as you think he is. Even if he would tell me, I can’t ask him right now anyway.
Why not? Where is he?
Day drinking and watching General Hospital.
Wow. The most dangerous witch of our time.
Elton actually chuckled a little despite himself as the phone vibrated with another message.
Why do you even care about what he was doing two hundred years ago? You found him. You literally sleep next to him every night. You win the biggest fan trophy, Elton. Congratulations.
It’s not about being a fan. If he’s going to be around and helping us, I need to know where he really stands.
Elton hoped his grumpy scowl somehow showed through the text.
Just admit he dropped you a breadcrumb and your fixated little heart went all pitter-pat.
Elton almost put his phone down. It wasn’t about fixation. Of course he was curious—anyone would be curious—but this was about knowing the truth about the history of a man who Elton was trusting to work with him. The fact that it happened to be Nathaniel Moore, and that this would surely be details about the last olc túathaid of the era that Elton would only share with people who were long since dead, was secondary.
Are you going to help or not?
There was a longer delay this time before the answer came.
No promises.
Elton sighed.
Thank you, Thomas.
When he didn’t get another answer, he stood from the bench, dusted off his suit, and headed back toward the hotel, though he wasn’t particularly eager to know what state he might find Nathan in.
18
Cora wandered the city for a long time before she made any real progress. She had the address of her destination, and the GPS on the new burner phone she’d picked up was diligently leading her there, but she still took a few wrong turns on purpose just to extend her trip. It was a good idea, she reminded herself. Nathan had even thought so, and she’d assumed he would just laugh at her. But he hadn’t. He’d smiled and touched her hair and told her he hoped it worked.
The Magistrate was the government as far as witches were concerned. It was complex, corrupt, tied up in bureaucracy, and set in its ways, just like the regular mundane government was. But when people had problems with the government, they didn’t blow up buildings or kill cops or become vigilantes—at least, reasonable, well-adjusted people didn’t. They tried to change things. They wrote to their Senators or Congress or whoever. Just like the mundane government, not every single person in the Magistrate was corrupt. Cora had to believe that.
So now she stood outside a tall office building in Downtown Miami, staring up at the towering glass and steel and turning one of the wood charms on her bracelet. On the fourteenth floor of this building, the Miami Magister was in his office, probably sitting at a big desk while a secretary brought him coffee. She had no idea what a Magister did every day—other than twirling his mustache or ironing his wizard robes, maybe.
Cora took a deep breath, let it out in a determined puff, and pushed her way through the revolving glass door. None of the people milling around inside seemed to pay her any attention—they were all too distracted by their own business to worry about a girl wandering into the lobby, but a man at a tall front desk lifted his head to look at her as she entered. She tried to walk like she belonged there and knew where she was going, which successfully got her to the elevators without suspicion, and she slipped inside once the doors opened and pressed the button marked fourteen. It was actually the thirteenth floor, she guessed, since this was one of those buildings that skipped the number. She wondered if whatever Magistrate person had made that decision thought they were being cute by putting the witch offices on the technically-thirteenth floor.
This didn’t have the same feel as going into a Chaser station. She couldn’t quite put her finger on why, but it put her at ease, a little. As the elevator made a soft ping and the doors began to open, she whispered, “Hoona sattaande,” and sucked in a breath to hold it. She poked her head out through the doors, the tingling sensation of Nathan’s invisibility spell prickling her skin, and when she stepped forward in view of the receptionist’s desk, the woman had already returned her attention to her work after a brief glance at the apparently empty elevator. Cora crept by her without breathing and hurried toward the hallway as fast as she dared. She didn’t know if it actually helped the spell to hold her breath or not, but it made her feel more invisible, so it couldn’t hurt. She hit a barrier at the edge of the hall and broke it with the faintest whisper she could manage, then continued on.
She only passed a few doors into a kitchen, a conference room, and a pair of small offices before she reached the heavier door at the very end. A plaque at head height read:
Hugo Calero
Magister Plebum
City of Miami, Florida
Cora hesitated with her hand near the door knob, suddenly unsure of the wisdom of her decision. Had people gotten slips under their doors with her picture on them, too? Bad enough she’d been listed as “20-year-old Asian female” on Nathan’s poster. What if she showed her face and got thrown in jail?
She’d been holding her breath too long to keep wavering. She exhaled slowly as she turned the knob, and she opened the door just wide enough to slip through before easing it shut again behind her.
The office was large, with floor to ceiling windows making up two walls and a heavy corner desk at the far end. It was pretty bare inside save a large Magistrate seal gracing the wall just behind the desk, carved blue and gold and decorated with fancy filigree. The man at the desk looked to be in his late forties, with darkly tanned skin and sleek black hair that had only just begun to grey at the temples. He looked up from his computer at the sound of the door and paused when he found nothing there.
“Danielle, did you need something?” he called,
leaning out a little farther from behind his monitor.
Cora let the spell slip like a cloak sliding off of her shoulders, and the Magister started, briefly looking Cora up and down.
“Hello,” he said after a moment, eyebrows lifted curiously.
“Magister Calero?” she asked. She stayed near the door in case she had to run, but the man didn’t seem overly concerned with her sudden appearance. She probably didn’t seem too intimidating in her jean short shorts and slouchy t-shirt. He still kept his hands on the surface of his desk as he swiveled in his chair to face her, though.
“I am. Did you have an appointment, miss?”
“No, I didn’t. My name is Cora Daniels, and I need to talk to you about Rafael Maduro.”
The Magister’s handsome face darkened, and his interlaced fingers tightened in on themselves. It wasn’t necessarily a good sign that he already seemed to know the name. “What about him in particular?”
“He’s probably going to die tonight. Gruesomely and publicly. I’m here to find out if that upsets you or not.”
Calero paused, taking a few beats to look into the young woman’s stern face. “Why would that have anything to do with you, exactly?”
“Because I’m here with Nathaniel Moore, and he’s going into that factory tonight.” Cora felt a little awkward about the obvious name drop, but it had the desired effect—Calero paled, his eyes darting toward the closed door. He’d obviously gotten his warning slip of paper from the Magistrate.
“Nathaniel Moore is here with you?”
“No,” she clarified, and the Magister visibly relaxed. “But he knows exactly where I am, and he’s very protective.”
“Your meaning isn’t lost on me, Miss Daniels. I take seriously anyone who is able to get in here quietly enough to surprise me.” He gestured toward the chairs in front of his desk. “Would you care to have a seat, and we can talk?”
Cora moved forward to take him up on his offer, still wary as he leaned over to his phone to tell Danielle to hold his calls. When she was settled, Calero reached out for a smooth stone at the corner of his desk that she’d mistaken for a paperweight, and at the touch of his fingertips and a soft word, she sensed the faint buzz of the silencing barrier surrounding them. He folded his hands between them again with his elbows on the desk.
“What interest, may I ask, does Nathaniel Moore have in Rafael Maduro?”
“None specifically,” she answered. She smoothed her palms over her knees to subtly wipe away the clammy feeling beginning there. At least her voice was steady. “But he has an interest in anyone who keeps their business running with slave labor and uses the ingnas on innocent people to keep them in line.”
Calero’s gaze dropped briefly to the surface of his desk before finding Cora’s face again. “So you’re aware.”
“How is he still doing it if you’re aware?” she snapped with more venom than she intended, but the Magister didn’t seem insulted.
“Are we speaking plainly?”
“I hope so.”
“I would like nothing more than for Rafael Maduro to take up permanent residence at the bottom of Biscayne Bay,” Calero said flatly. “But I’m in a difficult position. People higher-up than me are protecting him—he’s untouchable.”
“We know,” Cora said. “That’s why we came.” She tilted her head at him. “But if you don’t like it, why haven’t you done something anyway? What’s the point of being a Magister if you can’t help anything?”
“Consider my situation. Mine is an appointed position, not an elected one. Someone specifically shielded by the Council—even if I know them to be guilty, how can I move? To the Council, we’re all replaceable. If I run Maduro off, they’ll cover it up, put someone else in his place, and I’ll be out of a job. They’ll find someone who will look the other way. Then I’m not even as much help to my city as I can be like this.”
“So what you’re saying is, you let Maduro get away with it to save your own skin.”
“I may deserve your scorn, Miss Daniels, but who’s to say the man or woman who comes after me wouldn’t be worse? In my time here, I’ve coordinated and housed countless unregistered refugees from Cuba and elsewhere, I’ve opened a clinic for magic-induced illnesses that employs a dozen people, I’ve sponsored a scholarship for young witches who want to attend the Magistrate academy—” He spread his hands as if offering his only defense. “I love my city; I want to do what I can for it.”
Cora sighed. “But people in your city are suffering, Mr. Calero. We took a girl from Maduro’s house who’d had the ingnas used on her. He was using her like some kind of...housekeeper sex slave.”
“He called me to complain that someone had broken into his house.” Calero’s brow furrowed as he frowned. “Was it Moore who killed the two mundane policemen?”
“Yes,” she answered honestly. There was no point in lying.
“And two nights ago, there were reports of a stolen motorcycle crashing into a lifeguard tower on South Pointe Beach?”
“Uh—”
“Witnesses said a white male in his thirties, apparently intoxicated, then set the entire thing on fire somehow, walked up to the bar on the water, and asked for a shot of rum and some marshmallows.”
Cora let out a sputter. “I wasn’t, ah...present for that.”
“A lot of mundanes were. It wasn’t easy to explain away. And the young lady with him had to go to the hospital.”
Her shoulders slumped a little. “That...sounds about right. I never said he was a role model.”
“I was also notified of a murder just last night,” he went on. “In fact, there was apparently a young Asian woman present—”
“That wasn’t Nathan,” she objected immediately. “That was a Chaser who was trying to kill me.”
The Magister frowned as though he was familiar enough with the out-of-town Chaser to have already formed his own opinion, but he didn’t share it with her. He considered the girl for a few seconds. “And why are you here talking to me about Rafael Maduro, if you’re the sort of person Nathaniel Moore feels protective of?”
“Because there are bigger problems with the situation than just whether Maduro is alive or dead, and Nathan isn’t exactly a big picture guy. You said it yourself—if Maduro’s gone, they’ll just get someone else to do the job. But you need to believe that he’s going to die tonight, and there are going to be a lot of sick people with nowhere to go. We’re really good at stirring shit up and not so good about dealing with the aftermath. I thought maybe a Magister would have more experience cleaning up other people’s messes.”
Calero cracked his first small smile. “You’d be right,” he said. He leaned back in his chair with his hands laced over his lap. “You’re taking a risk by telling me about this, you know.”
“I know.” She glanced down at her hands, drumming her fingers on her knees before looking back up to meet his eyes. “Nathan and the other man with us—I love them, but they’re both...extreme. They’re bitter, and they don’t listen to a lot of reason anymore. Nathan’s always told me how pointless and heartless the Magistrate is. He thinks everyone involved is a useless bureaucrat at best and a tyrant at worst. I’m hoping he’s wrong. I’m hoping you’re better.”
The Magister pursed his lips in thought for one long breath, then nodded and gave a soft chuckle. “You’re not a bad orator, Miss Daniels. Have you considered seeking an appointment yourself?”
Cora laughed. “I mean, do they do background checks? I’ve done a little time.”
“That’s a shame.” Calero nodded once more, as if to himself. “You seem like an intelligent young woman, and I certainly respect the courage it took for you to come here and talk to me, so I’ll level with you. I can’t condone what you and your companions are planning to do. I definitely can’t help you, and if I’m asked, I’ll deny I ever met you. But,” he added, shifting in his chair with a small shrug, “if something gruesome and public were to happen to Mr. Maduro, and the witch popula
tion of Miami and at large were made aware of what’s been happening inside that factory, well—I’d be forced to address it as a public official. And I would make sure that those people were taken care of and Maduro’s accomplices punished. That much I can promise you.”
“That’s...actually more than I was hoping for,” Cora admitted.
“Everyone wins. Maduro gets what he deserves, the people he’s hurt get the help they need, and I get to be the man who exposed the inconceivable corruption. You’ll be doing me a favor, really.”
“Well, you’re welcome.”
“There is something I want from you in exchange for turning a blind eye to your premeditated murder, however.”
“What’s that?”
Calero leaned forward to rest his elbows on the desk again. “Once you’ve done what you set out to do, and Rafael Maduro is dead—get Nathaniel Moore out of my city.”
Cora snorted softly and nodded. “Fair enough.” She rose from her seat and took a step toward the door without turning her back to him. “I’ll make sure you can’t help but notice us,” she said, and Calero lifted one pleading hand.
“Do limit the collateral damage, if you can. Moore may have been before my time, but I’ve heard the stories.”
“They don’t do him justice; I promise.” She moved back and put a hand on the door knob. “You’re not bad for a Magister, Mr. Calero.”
“And you don’t seem too bad for a violent subversive, Miss Daniels,” he answered with a faint, conspiratorial smile.
The Left-Hand Path: Prodigy Page 21