by Geof Johnson
“I think we should. We’ll wait down here.”
Jamie closed the portal and went back upstairs. “I got hold of Fred.” Jamie reclaimed his seat at the table across from the FBI men. “She’ll be right over.”
They were forced to make small talk to fill the time until Fred arrived, and Jamie was glad that his father was with him. Carl pressed the FBI men for more details about the Pentagram Killer, and they seemed willing to talk shop with another lawman. They described the clues they already had, the number of victims, and where they found the bodies. Jamie found it to be chilling and morbid, but Carl obviously didn’t. I’m glad I’m not a detective, Jamie thought as he listened to their grisly conversation.
Jamie heard the front door slam and Fred walked in carrying her purse in one hand and swinging a dark pendant in the other. She didn’t wait for introductions. “I’d like some coffee before we chat. All of you want some.” It wasn’t a suggestion, it was a decree. “You like it black.”
“I want some,” Jamie said eagerly, suddenly craving a hot drink. It seemed so necessary, just then. He couldn’t imagine wanting anything else.
Coffee. Black and strong.
Fred turned her back to the FBI agents and scowled at Jamie, and he understood what she was doing. She’s using the pendant to cast a compulsion spell. She’s going to slip a potion into the coffee and she needs the agents to drink it. “Um, on second thought, maybe I’d better not. I’ll help you get it, though.” Fred winked at him and followed him into the kitchen. But he still wanted coffee. Desperately.
Jamie filled two cups from the pot on the counter and Fred took a small plastic bottle from her purse. She measured seven drops into each one and whispered, “I’ll fix a cup for your dad after you give these to the other two guys. We don’t want your dad getting any of this stuff by mistake.”
“I want some coffee, too.”
Fred rolled her eyes. “Oh, sure, but let’s take care of these guys first.”
Jamie took the cups to Agent Savern and Agent Nash and watched as they both raised them to their mouths and blew on them to cool them. Carl continued to make small talk with the men until they’d each taken a sip.
By the time the two FBI agents had finished their coffee, Fred had convinced them that she and Jamie and all of their friends and family knew nothing about real magic because there was no such thing. The men were also convinced that Terry was attending classes at WCU because she was taking a leave of absence from her job and was considering a career change.
As soon as the men drove away, Eric and Terry came out of hiding in the basement. Eric leaned close to Jamie’s ear and whispered, “Let’s go someplace where we can talk safely.”
“I can do this instead.” He glanced at Fred and Carl. “Stand near me.” He held out his hands and formed his shield, and the air around them shimmered, then he modulated it to muffle sounds. “Nobody can hear us now.”
Terry shook her head at the floor before saying, “I’m sorry. This is our fault. If Eric and I hadn’t contacted you, the FBI wouldn’t know about you.”
“You don’t know that for sure,” Carl said. “Unless you have access to their computers.”
“I do have access,” Eric said, “and I’m going to find out what they know. I’ll give them a couple of days first, to see what their reaction is to your meeting.”
“Those guys are certain that we’re not worth a second look,” Fred said. “That potion I gave them is one of Mrs. Malley’s, so it’ll work for sure.”
Jamie frowned. “Now I’m really worried. First the CIA shows up here,” — he gestured at Eric and Terry— “then the FBI. Is the NSA next?”
“Maybe not,” Eric said. “You guys seem to be maintaining clean electronic communication, but you’ll need to keep that up indefinitely. I’ll do a little more snooping and see what the NSA knows, but I’ll have to be careful. I don’t want to attract any unwanted attention. But last I checked, you’re still safe.”
Jamie sensed an unspoken for now. “Well, there’s not much we can do except be careful.”
“Eric,” Carl said, “what about the recording you made of Sammi?”
“I’ll drop it by the translator as soon as we get back to Langley. I should know something by the morning. If we can meet again tomorrow afternoon, we’ll tell you what they say. I also want to check this house for listening devices.”
* * *
Eric and Terry returned late the next day with the results of the translation. A bigger group gathered at Jamie’s house to meet with them, including John Paul, Rollie, Sammi, Bryce, and Melanie. Before doing anything, though, Eric checked Jamie’s house for electronic bugs, carrying a black, hand-held unit from room to room before pronouncing them safe.
“Has it really come to that?” John Paul asked as Eric put the device back in its case.
“We’re CIA agents,” Eric snapped the latches closed simultaneously. “It’s our training. You can’t be too careful. I’ll do Fred and Rollie’s house later, and when we get back to Cullowhee, I’ll need to check their dorm rooms. I should check your cars, too.” Eric turned to Sammi, who sat next to Fred on the couch. “Have you heard anything today?”
“No, but I’m trying. I can’t always make it work when I want it to.”
“Don’t worry about it,” Terry said. “You’ve been helpful enough.”
“So, what did the translator say?” Fred asked. “What did Sammi overhear yesterday?”
“Well….” Terry drew a long breath. “It’s definitely Korean. It sounds like a couple of North Koreans, judging from some of the colloquialisms.”
“I’ve got a copy of the translation, if you want to read it,” Eric said. “But I’ll give you a synopsis of the conversation.” He cleared his throat and crossed his arms behind his back, like a soldier at ease. “We think it’s a couple of government officials, but we don’t know which ones. They have a lot of them, anyway. Throughout the conversation, they’re basically tossing around ideas about how to stir up more unrest in the Middle East. It seems like their goal is to start a war between Israel and Iran, which jives with some new information that we have. I’ll get to that in a minute.”
He put his hand to his mouth and cleared his throat again. “They’re discussing other ways to use Phillip Cage to accomplish this, and how to get approval for his fees. They gripe a little bit about that. They think he’s too expensive, but he consistently gets results without throwing any suspicion on them.”
“Excuse me,” Bryce said, “but why would they want to start a war between Israel and Iran? How would North Korea benefit from that?”
“Because they know that the United States would get pulled in, and that might bring another Arab country into the fray.”
“Iran isn’t Arabic,” Melanie said. “They’re Persian.”
“I know, but they’re Muslim, and that’s important. Other Muslim nations might not be able to sit back and watch the U.S. attack one of their own. Doesn’t matter if they’re Sunni or Shiite.”
“We attacked Iraq, and no other country helped them,” Jamie said.
“That’s because everybody hated Saddam Hussein. The North Koreans seem to think that if things get bad enough, at least one other country would support Iran.”
“I still don’t see how this helps the North Koreans,” John Paul said.
“Because they’ll be able to sell some of their nuclear technology. It’s their only real export. Their economy is in terrible shape right now, so if they can sell a few nukes, they can bring in some desperately needed cash.”
“Nukes. Whoa.” Jamie rubbed his forehead lightly with one hand. “So what else have they used Phillip Cage for?”
“Glad you asked,” Terry said. “You’ll remember that his most recent attacks have been on oil ministers, and we just got a report of another assassination. An Iranian oil minister, Farhad Samadi, was killed in his hotel room in Beirut yesterday.”
“Hold on.” Rollie held up one hand. “How do
you know that was Cage’s hit? His runway and his road are trashed.”
“He could’ve hiked down to a waiting car and driven there,” Terry said.
“But I thought he wasn’t killing people now, just messin’ up their minds with magic.”
“He was, and I’ll get to that.” She scanned every face in the room before continuing. “The hotel’s video camera shows a nicely dressed woman walking down the hall, past the two guards outside of Mr. Samadi’s room, and going right in.”
“You think that was Cage in disguise?” Carl asked.
Terry nodded. “Pretty convincing, too. I saw the video. Apparently, Mr. Samadi had a fondness for the ladies. The odd thing is that the guards let her go past them without checking her. They hardly even looked at her. Or him, I should say, since it’s a man in dress.”
Fred wrinkled her brow. “Was she, or he, twirling a pendant or anything?”
“He was moving his right hand in a circular motion. The guards don’t remember a thing. That’s why Eric and I think it was magic. He could’ve been using a spell, right?”
“More than likely. Eric, how did Cage kill the oil minister? Did he shoot him?”
“Mr. Samadi died from ingesting Aconite. Traces of it were found in his drinking glass. It’s a poison that was once used by the Mossad, which is the Israeli intelligence agency. But the Mossad would never be that clumsy now. If they wanted to poison someone, there’d be no traces. But we think that whoever poisoned Mr. Samadi did it to cast suspicion on the Israelis.”
“So,” Terry continued, “if you consider this assassination together with the conversation between the North Korean officials, you’ll see a connection.”
“Does this last hit have anything to do with what happened at that conference in Istanbul?” Jamie asked. “The one you took me to?”
“Yes,” Eric said. “We think that Cage stole information from one of those officials and used it to plan this attack against Mr. Samadi.”
“So what we may be seeing,” Terry said, “is a plot by the North Korean government to start a major war, using Phillip Cage as the catalyst.”
John Paul raised his chin and put his hands on his hips. “Well, maybe we should nip this in the bud, then. We should go to that monastery in Romania and snatch Mr. Cage right now, when he’s not expecting it. We’ve got enough people who can handle weapons, if Carl and I go with you, and we’ve got plenty of magic, with Fred and Jamie and Rollie. Jamie could probably get Nova to go with us, too, if he made a doorway for her. That’s a lot of firepower, and Jamie can use his shield to protect us.”
Eric shook his head slowly before answering. “We talked about this before. It’s too dangerous. Cage has probably beefed up his security at the monastery after we destroyed his aircraft, and don’t forget that the monastery itself is a maze of tunnels and corridors and small chambers. He could be anywhere inside of it, and we’d have to ferret him out the hard way.”
“What if you got some more agents to join us? Another ten or twelve, trained for this kind of operation? I bet you have people like that.”
“We do, but the only realistic way to get close to the monastery is through one of Jamie’s magic doorways. A helicopter would get shot down, and the mountain has its own, natural defenses, as well as armed guards.”
“So? Get your agents to do the oath and take ’em through a magic doorway. Simple.”
Eric shook his head again. “There are a couple of reasons why I don’t think we should tell anybody else about the magic. For one, I think we’re pushing our luck as far as we can without the wrong people finding out about it, and secondly, if we have a mole at the agency — and I’m not saying that we do — we don’t want them finding out and telling Cage about Jamie and Fred and the others. Cage might come over here and try to kill you.”
“Oh my God,” Fred said.
“He could shoot you with a sniper’s rifle from a thousand yards away, and you’d never see it coming. You couldn’t protect against it, unless Jamie kept his shield up twenty-four seven.”
“I can’t do that. I have to sleep sometime.”
“Right,” Terry said. “And Cage can kill you any number of other ways. He’s an extremely dangerous man.”
“So,” Eric continued, “let’s not expand the number of people who know about the magic. Let’s try to solve this problem with what we already have.”
“Do you think we can do it?” Carl asked.
Eric gave him a steady look before nodding once. “I’m confident we can.”
“I am, too,” Terry added. “We just have to figure out the best way, and wait for the best opportunity.”
“All right, then.” It was Carl’s turn to nod. “But let’s be careful.”
Fred turned to Jamie and narrowed her eyes. “And no hero-missions to Romania without the rest of us.”
“Yeah, sure.” Jamie shrugged. “We’ll all go next time.”
“Are we done here?” Eric said.
Nobody seemed to have anything else to add, so everyone prepared to leave. Sammi approached Terry and they exchanged smiles, then Sammi took Terry’s hand.
“You should bring your daughter next time,” Sammi said, “so we can play.”
“Um, she’s a little young for you. She’s only four.”
“That’s okay. We can watch Little Mermaid or something. She likes Little Mermaid, doesn’t she?”
“It’s one of her favorites, but…she doesn’t feel good right now. She’s a little sick.”
By this time, Fred had noticed what was going on and joined the conversation. “What’s wrong with her?”
Terry quickly shook her head and tightened her mouth. “It’s nothing. Don’t worry about it.”
Sammi’s features drew down in a look of deep concern. “Is she gonna be okay?”
Terry’s face and body stiffened and she closed her eyes for a long moment. Then she said quietly, “I don’t think so,” and she covered her mouth with her hand.
“Oh, Terry,” Fred said. “I’m so sorry. What’s wrong with her?”
Terry took a shuddering breath and said, “Cancer. Stage four.”
Sammi looked up at Terry and said, “Is that bad?”
“It means she might die, Sammi. Maybe soon.”
“No! She can’t die. She’s only four.”
“That’s what I say,” Terry said, her voice cracking. “It’s not fair.”
Fred felt her eyes sting with tears, and she blinked them back and glanced at Eric, who stood awkwardly nearby, his expression sympathetic. He knew, Fred realized. But he wouldn’t tell us because Terry asked him not to. “Terry?” Fred said. “What kind of treatment has she had?”
“Radiation, chemo, you name it. Nothing has worked.”
“You should be with her now.” Sammi bobbed her head.
“I know, Sammi, I know. It’s killing me, not being there to help her and…and hold her, but….” She rubbed one hand over her face and let out a shivering sigh. “I’d have to quit my job, and we need the money. We’ve already reached our insurance cap, and I’ve spent all of my savings and most of my mother’s, too. She sold her house to help pay for the treatments, but what else can we do?” Her chin fell and Sammi wrapped her arms around Terry’s waist while the rest of the room remained painfully quiet.
“You should take her to our clinic in Rivershire,” Jamie said. “There’s a healer there named Keeva, and she could probably help.”
Terry shook her head without looking up.
Fred stepped closer to Terry and put a hand on her shoulder. “Really, you should. She’s a powerful witch, and she can do amazing things. She’s working with the two doctors there and you’d be surprised what they can cure.”
“I don’t know.” Terry raised her head, her eyes wet. “Stacey just finished a round of chemo and she’s really weak right now. I’m afraid she might not be able to withstand any more treatment for a while. It might kill her. Is the magical therapy traumatic? Would it be too hard on h
er little body?”
“Uh, good question.” Jamie turned to Fred. “What do you think?”
“Boy….” Fred bit her lip and wrinkled her brow. “I have no idea. We need to ask Keeva.”
“I don’t think she’s there this weekend. Let’s pop over there Monday, before your one o’clock class.”
“Terry,” Fred said, “if Keeva thinks it’s safe enough, will you give it a try?”
“Of course! But you have to be able to guarantee that it won’t kill Stacey or make her worse.”
“I don’t know if we can guarantee anything,” Fred said, “but I really think Keeva can help her. Let me and Jamie talk to her first, and then you can decide.”
Terry held Fred’s gaze for a long time without speaking, until Sammi pulled on Terry’s hand and smiled reassuringly at her. “Keeva can make Stacey all better. I’m sure she can. You’ll see.”
Terry tried to return Sammi’s smile, but it her lips merely flickered. “Okay, Sammi. Stacey has a follow-up appointment with her doctor on Tuesday afternoon. Maybe we’ll find out that her tumors have shrunk and she won’t have to do any more treatments, magical or otherwise.”
“And if the chemo didn’t work,” Jamie said, “it might be time to try some magic.”
* * *
During dinner, Rachel watched Jamie poke at his food with his fork while he stared at his plate. His head was propped on his palm with his elbow on the table, and he was quiet.
“Jamie, sit up straight, please.”
He pulled his arm down to his side and sat back in his chair, lifting his gaze for barely a second before dropping it again as if his eyes couldn’t withstand the gravity.
“Okay, out with it.” She set her fork on her napkin and leaned toward him. “Something’s bothering you. What is it? Is it those two FBI agents who came by earlier?”
Jamie shrugged one shoulder and pulled his mouth up at one corner. “I guess.”
Carl rested his silverware on the edge of his plate and glanced at Jamie before turning to Rachel. “He thinks government agents are going to come storming in here any day now and lock us all up.”
“Is that true?” Rachel said. “Is that what you think will happen?”