by A. L. Tyler
Some entered the academy after careful brainwashing that assured they wouldn’t turn against the government. Others were never seen nor heard from again. The Bleak supported this practice with a lot of studies that showed leeches—even small children—were capable of killing with their inherent talents.
I wasn’t entirely sure if that was true or not.
“Mageiotomist,” I repeated. “Of course. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to offend—”
“It’s fine,” she said, stone-faced. “You can be a life restrictionist, if you so choose.”
We locked gazes. I blinked first.
“You’re going to be tired for a while.” She walked back toward the front door. “It’ll be that way for a while, every time I do a draw, but it’ll stop you from topping off. That means no more burns.”
I scoffed. If I had to live with Angel stopping in every few days forever, I might rather have the burns. “For how long?”
She scooped up her purse and turned back to me, considering. I could hear the magic—the arcane, ancient stuff that I had stolen—inside of her. It had been inside of me only moments earlier, and it was the most surreal thing I had ever experienced.
“We’ll start on demand,” she said. “Call me as you need me. I’ll come as quickly as possible, but I do have a day job, so I can’t always make it. Plan ahead. Most of my clients settle out to once or twice a month after the first three to six months. Some less, some more. As time goes by your natural capacity for magic will increase. Think of it like an old sweater, and every time you put it on it stretches a little more.”
I was almost afraid to ask. “Have you ever had someone who was able to stop your services completely?”
“I have.” Her lips spread into a bright smile and she nodded. She reached for the door. “That case wasn’t you, though.”
She shut the door, and I hissed through my teeth.
Back in the kitchen, Robert was back on the table, trying to pull the foil wrapper off of my burrito. And despite chugging a second energy drink for the morning, I was exhausted.
I hated Angel the whole way up the stairs. Without the magic inside me, the house sounded strange to me. I found a box of poorly enchanted medallions in the back of an upstairs closet, clinking away so quietly that I must have missed them before because I was carrying my own ambient background music.
And the kicker was, I couldn’t even disenchant them.
As hard as I focused, nothing happened. A quick and less-than-polite text to Angel told me it was a common side effect.
I was as useless as a human, but I shouldn’t worry—my magic would return in a few hours.
Or days.
And I was now stuck in a house full of subtle noises that I couldn’t get rid of. Fuck my life.
While nothing would ever justify the way the Bleak managed the magic community, I was beginning to see why they kept such close tabs on mageiotomists.
I stripped out of my burned clothes, and I intended to take a shower, but the bed looked too good. And the promise that I wouldn’t wake up in an inferno was too enticing.
Even knowing that my sheets would smell like burning polyester afterward, I fell asleep right then and there.
“NICE OF YOU TO SHOW up to work again.”
I rolled my eyes as Marge set her stuff down at her desk.
“And before six, even.” She poked her head into the back room and furrowed her brow. “And check-in is done. Wow. How long have you been here?”
“I don’t wish to discuss it,” I said sourly. Twelve hours passed out on my bed followed by two cleaning my house and another four passed out on the couch.
I was still tired, my house sounded strange, and my neighbors probably thought I’d gone nuts because I kept setting boxes of things that emitted noises only I could hear out on the back lawn.
“Okay.” Marge pulled her cell from her bag and started to text.
My eyes flashed. “I don’t need you checking in with Nick on my behalf.”
Marge shook her head and kept texting. “Then you can stop acting weird.”
I stopped mid-typing to turn and face her. She stopped mid-text, seemingly bracing herself for whatever I was about to do. If she thought I was about to hex her, she had some grit, because it didn’t show.
Marge glanced back at her phone. “Nick wants to know if you’ve already eaten.”
“Yes,” I lied. “I already ate.”
“Do you want bacon or sausage in your burrito?”
“I already ate.”
“I’ll get you a side of hash browns, too. You look like you’re planning to be bitchy today, so you need to carb load.”
I glared. How could she even understand what this was like? I was locked into a situation of mutually assured destruction with a woman I hated. Angel was saving my life, but the very nature of her treatments was illegal in the eyes of the Bleak. I’d confessed my investigation into my father’s imprisonment to her—an act of treason that could ultimately lead me to suffer the same fate as my father.
Turning back to my computer, I grabbed my own phone off the charging cord.
“Warren.”
“I’m a big kid,” I said, feeling fresh exhaustion wash over me. “You don’t have to hire a sitter for me. And frankly, if I have to sit on the sidelines, I’d rather know you’re focusing your energy on finding Millie and Alex.”
“No new leads,” he said shortly. “I’m bringing your food in fifteen. Then I’m leaving town for a while.”
I glanced to the side, leaning back in my chair. “No new leads, and you’re leaving town?”
“Looking for new leads.” He tried to keep the frustration from his voice. He almost succeeded. “You started treatment?”
“Angel didn’t tell you?”
“Angel operates under a strict veil of secrecy. She doesn’t talk about her sessions or clientele.”
I glanced at Marge, who was doing an awesome job of pretending to read her email. “I’m now guessing that Angel is on your radar for this? Do I need to worry that my doctor has been blackmailed into treating me in some fashion?”
“She was investigated as an unsanctioned practitioner several years ago, but she’s been clean ever since. All I did was make a call on your behalf.”
A call to a woman who was still an unsanctioned practitioner, and doubtless continued to operate under Nick’s protection. But leeches—mageiotomists—never got off easy. “A practitioner of what, exactly?”
“A general practitioner,” Nick said with some humor. “She holds a job as a doctor and does a lot of pro bono work with low-income kids. The Bleak took note because her outcomes were statistically anomalous. Too many kids were suddenly cancer-free, and she was gaining some notoriety as a miracle worker. I think you know how the Bleak feels about that.”
Nick paused. Everyone knew how the Bleak felt about using magic to intervene in the lives of humans. They liked to call them ants because that was how they were viewed: the bugs we shared our planet with. Despite our obvious superiority, they just kept walking along in their little lives.
It was a sickening. Those of us who had seen it from the inside knew better, though. We were vastly outnumbered by all those ants, and they were cunning. Anything that risked the exposure of the Bleak to the outside world was a threat.
Even miracle worker doctors.
“But anyway,” Nick went on, “I looked into it, and she’s just that good. She was accused of too much. No one could be healing that many people within the typical limits of an individual’s skill. She was let go with a warning, and her winning streak slowed shortly after.”
I closed my eyes and shook my head. After Nick haranguing me about the things I could be doing with my stolen magic and how little time I’d put into mastering it, I’d never really thought about the things I could be doing beyond freeing my father. Angel was healing people—a lot of people—by absorbing magic that would have killed others.
“Yeah, I still don’t like her.”
“She’s curing kids of cancer.”
“And that’s admirable,” I conceded. “She also has a superiority complex.”
“Most good doctors do.”
I laughed low. “No. Most good doctors learn bedside manner, and at least try to hide their superiority complex. Angel is just a bitch. And I don’t like the ax she’s holding over my head.”
“And what ax would that be?”
I sat up straight and spun around in my chair, staring at Nick as he darkened our doorway. “That was not fifteen minutes.”
He set food down on the desk. Marge looked suspicious. “You got here in five minutes, and you got the order right?”
He waved his hands. “It’s like magic.”
Her phone chimed, and she shook her head at him. “It’s like you bought for the whole department, and you just grabbed this order from down the hall, jackass. Don’t patronize me.”
“I’m a fed.” Nick sat down, leaning back in a chair as he rested one ankle on the opposite knee. “I want people to like me. I know how cops feel about feds. And speaking of,” Nick cast me a sober look, “Whent called again. I hoping to push that off until after this case, but I don’t know how much longer he’s willing to give us.”
I frowned. With the added stress of receiving illegal treatments for my mana burn, an official Bleak inquisition was the last thing I wanted to think about.
And yet, even as my anxiety built, my palms stayed as cool as ever. That was a relief.
I reached for a burrito.
“I was just talking to Beech,” Nick said, giving Marge a nod and a smile. “He says you’ve been doing a great job picking up the slack in your partner’s absence. He also said they got funding for a promotion, and with Jette—”
“Janet,” Marge corrected.
“Janet doing so much work with me, your name is topping the list. Good work, Jones.” Nick chuckled when he saw the look on my face. “What? Beech knows your career is going in a different direction. The fed pays more. He’s investing in keeping the talent he still has.”
I didn’t even know what to say. It wasn’t like I was at my job more than twice a week anymore, anyway.
Marge fished a folder from her drawer. “And speaking of fed cases, this is for you.”
I eyed the folder as it passed over the desk.
“You’ve got talent, Marge. Thank you.” Nick winked at her before standing up. “I’m going, though. Janet, take some time to recover. Call me if you need to.”
I forced a smile. “Right.”
Nick left. I turned back to my computer, and an email from Marge caught my eye.
You’re not actually taking time to recover, are you? ;)
I almost turned around to berate her, but then thought better of it. She was being cautious in case Nick was still lurking.
I clicked on the email. What was inside made me share a smile with Marge over my shoulder.
RC is in Sandstone Correctional until November.
I waited thirty minutes just to be sure Nick was really gone. Then I packed my bag, suffered a look from Marge that I should know better, and I left.
Chapter 26
SANDSTONE CORRECTIONAL Facility was located three hours south of my work. Closer to five hours during rush hour, but I was likely going to be driving home late.
Visiting hours didn’t start until five in the evening.
I arrived two hours early, but the wait was just long enough. There was normally a lengthy application and approval process to visit an inmate in SCF. I sat in my car with a cursed teaspoon from Farrow’s contraband, staring at until it until I was finally able to tune the annoying hum it emitted.
It wasn’t much. The curse slowly went sour again the moment my concentration broke, but it was enough to tell me I could work a minor spell. When the security guard at check-in went to look me up, he saw my name—or rather, the name of someone approved to see Mr. Coffing—on the screen and my ID.
I waited a little longer than normal for Jackson Coffing. Probably because they had somehow forgotten that he was having a visitor that day.
“Long time, no see,” Jackson said as soon as we were alone at the table. “So long that I appear to have forgotten what my own sister looks like. Have you had some work done, sis?”
He was a thin man with gray hair carefully combed back and tamed into a side part that would have been more at home in a high-powered Wall Street conference room than a low-level security prison. His azure eyes pierced into me as his thin lips cut an impatient line.
I saw his wrist move—he was getting ready to signal the end of the meeting.
“I need information on a man named Samson Grift,” I said quickly. I glanced uncertainly at the guard.
“We have an arrangement.” Coffing waved off the guard. He stayed his hand. “I need a name. Talk.”
I hesitated. “Marjory Corm.”
“I need a real name, sweetheart,” he said sarcastically.
This time, I didn’t hesitate. “Millie. Millie Corm.”
Jackson groaned and itched at a tattoo on his left forearm. I caught just a glimpse of a rune and sighed in defeat—of coarse he’d put certain protections on himself. He was a crime lord.
That rune told him when someone lied. Now that I was listening for it, I could hear the quiet, creeping whisper just under the hum of the AC vent over our heads.
I licked my lips. “Jette Driftwood.”
He flashed a smile. Perfect teeth; one silver canine. “Ms. Driftwood. What brings you after Mr. Grift today? And why ask me?”
I’d known him all of half a minute, and I was already afraid what would happen to Louis Irvine if I dropped his name.
“I have a... source,” I said haltingly. “That says you were working with him when the Bleak took him down.”
He raised his eyebrows with an amused half-smile. “Is that so? I need a name.”
I shook my head. “No. You’ve got my name, that’s the only name you’re getting.”
He held up his palms. “Then I’m afraid I’ve got nothing for you.”
He started to rise.
“Nick Warren.” I cringed as it slipped out, but if Nick had worked with Coffing before, he knew how to manage. “Says you did some business with Grift back in the day. I need to know about Grift.”
“So ask Warren.”
If not for Angel, I probably would have sparked up right then. I wish I had—it might have helped Coffing take me more seriously.
“I’m asking you.” I rose with him, and stared him down. He was short for a man—maybe only my height, and wiry. It still felt like I was staring down a cougar preparing to rip my throat out.
He looked me up and down, and then crossed his arms, nodding. “This is personal. You do favors?”
“Excuse me?”
Coffing shrugged. “You know Warren. If I tell you what I know about Grift, I assume we’re friends. If I ask you to return the favor down the line, can I count on you to be a friend.”
He’s out in November. If I was about to find out that Grift—and perhaps Coffing—had both been involved in framing my father, then I knew the only favor I would ever do this scumbag.
“Yes,” I said, trying to stop myself from snarling. “I do favors.”
Coffing did a quick raise of his eyebrows and sat down with a smile. Feeling like I’d somehow signed away my firstborn, I did the same.
“Grift was the best bad cop I ever met. The man had connections. More connections than me, and that’s saying something.” He leaned back, searching the ceiling for the past. “He had people on the streets. People in the Bleak. Handlers—the man was a social engineering genius, and he was a charmer and a snake. I was worried at first because he liked to skate the rules and step over the line. Five times I thought he was going down for sure, and all five of them he managed to slip the charges.”
“You didn’t think he was going down the time he got caught?” I breathed. I didn’t want to insult him, but I had
to know.
Coffing chuckled. “Grift was busted on charges of treason. What can I say? I never had an interest in government work, so whatever he was doing, I wasn’t in on it. Must have been his personal hobby.”
“Treason?” I asked. I couldn’t believe it was happening. Right there—all of my questions were being answered. “Did he implicate anyone else?”
Coffing’s smile turned sharp. He leaned in toward me. “Why do you want to know, little girl?”
His eyes were wandering my face in a way that made my stomach squirm. I hadn’t seen that look in someone’s eyes since Robert had set me on this crazy quest.
“It has to do with my father.” I had to know. I had to see what he thought I was saying.
“Hm.” Coffing sat back. He smirked. “You might want to ask your mother about him, then. He was a womanizer, and you do have some of him around the eyes.”
My stomach sank. Robert had said the same thing. Who was this man? Were we related?
“I don’t have a mother,” I said. At least, I’d never known her, and my father had never once mentioned her. At a young age, I’d decided that he was enough for me, and I never asked. “How did Grift die?”
Coffing’s eyes flashed in surprise. “Die? Who killed him? The Order?”
I lowered my chin. The feeling in the pit of my stomach only got worse. It felt like the room was spinning. “Nick Warren. Years ago. When he went down for treason.”
“No,” Coffing sneered his disagreement. “If you’ve met Warren, you know he doesn’t kill the ones he can take alive. Grift was a fighter, but he wasn’t a match for Warren. No. I have sources. The last I heard of Samson Grift, he’s still in Bleak custody.” He gestured to his temple. “In and out of his own mind, answering questions and giving leads on the rest of us. That’s how the Bleak rolls.”
“Samson Grift is alive,” I repeated.
“That’s what I just said.” He had apparently grown bored of the conversation, because he placed his hands firmly on the table and stood up. “Look, you want to know if he’s your father, go to The Cork Tree. There’s a picture on the wall circa the Grift era. I framed it because Sammie wasn’t fond of pictures, and it’s the only one in existence I’ve ever seen. It isn’t great. Judge for yourself, and ask around. But that’s all the information I have on Grift.”