by Devon Monk
“He’ll get over it.”
“What?”
“If I’m breathing, he’s breathing. None of us gets out of living the easy way.”
Shame was making good time, his anger steadying his steps. I had to jog to catch up with him.
We got in the car. I glanced back at the inn. A lone figure stood on the porch, leaning against the rail. Terric. He waited, watching us.
Shame started the car. Then Terric turned and walked away.
Chapter Sixteen
Shame pulled out of the parking lot. “Where?” he asked.
“Stotts said on the corner of Southeast Tolman and Twenty-eighth. That’s out by the golf course, right? Do you know what’s there?”
He thought a minute, turned the car north and toward the bridge. “Isn’t that where Beckstrom’s labs are?”
“What?”
“Oh, come on. You don’t even know where your dad set up labs for Violet’s research?”
“Didn’t like him, didn’t know her, didn’t care. Which means no, of course I don’t know where the labs are.”
“It never came up in board meetings?”
Interesting question. It hadn’t come up in board meetings, but Violet had told me the subject of the lab, and more specifically the disks that were being developed there, was causing all sorts of suspicions among the stockholders and higher-ups of the company. So much so, she’d moved in with Kevin because of threats.
I felt like I was working a crossword puzzle with no clues. I should be guessing what was going on, but didn’t even know where to begin. People in the company were upset with her for something. The only thing I could put my finger on was that the disks had been used for a lot of bad things. And now Stotts wanted me out at the lab where the disks were made, to Hound something when there was very little magic left in the city.
A break-in? Maybe someone on the board got a judge on their side and was seizing property.
Whatever was going down out there, Stotts had not sounded happy.
“That’s a hell of a long time to think over your answer,” Shame said. “Try a short word like ‘no.’”
“Sorry,” I said. “It’s just-I think I’m missing something. That maybe Violet said something.” I pulled out my notebook and scanned back through the entries. Nothing that immediately looked like a clue. “And no, the lab hasn’t come up in any of the Beckstrom Enterprises business I’ve been involved in. But I’m not the CEO. Violet is.”
“And?”
“She told me there was some contention among the board members. They didn’t like not knowing what, exactly, she was developing, and why she wouldn’t let them get their hands on it. Plus, she moved in with Kevin.”
“Cooper? Her bodyguard?”
“She said she received threats. Why don’t you know about this? Kevin’s a part of the Authority. Doesn’t he report in or something?”
“Not to me. Any field agents-hell, all of us-report in to Sedra. She’s the mastermind.”
Yes, I knew that. I’d just never needed to report to her myself. Things had been really quiet the last couple months. All I’d been doing was training and learning. My teachers reported in for me.
“Do you think they can help Zayvion?” I asked. “Maeve, Jingo Jingo?”
Shame was quiet. “You said he went into a gate.”
“Yes.”
“He might find his way back. If a gate were opened near his body.” Shame took a breath and wiped his hand down his face, as if trying to mop off exhaustion. “Complicated by Jones using light and dark magic, all the disciplines. Opening a gate for him might go bad fast. Or it might help him remember what it’s like to be alive and bring him back.”
“So why aren’t they trying that? Hells, you and I could open a gate.”
Shame wiggled the fingers of one hand. “No magic, remember? It takes magic, a lot of it, or a lot of different kinds working together, to open a rift between life and death. Gates aren’t easy.”
Maybe not, but I’d watched Chase open and close them with a snap of her fingers. But then, she was Greyson’s Soul Complement. And they could break magic’s boundaries.
I rubbed at my forehead. The left side of my face still hurt. I’d probably be half tanned for the next few months. Since I had my notebook out, I made notes about everything that had happened. City lights, just electric, no magic, washed the pages in white and yellow. I finished my notes and gazed out the window at the magicless city.
Cars that were just cars, nothing shiny, nothing magic, drove past. In the low light of the sky’s exhalation into darkness, people walked the streets.
Mostly they looked the same. Oh, maybe a few older coats, maybe more bad hairstyles, thicker waistlines, and a limp or two. But mostly, the kinds of magic people used to enhance themselves were noticeable only close-up-the perfect noses, teeth, complexion, sparkling wit, dulcet voice, and so on.
We’d gotten so used to taking care of flaws with easy fixes. What’s a little headache now and then for the illusion of youth? Seeing people with their true faces on was odd. Fascinating. The big noses, laugh lines, thin lips, frowns, crooked teeth-the imperfections somehow caught at the soul of humanity, and left it bare to be seen, the beauty and ugliness. It felt like suddenly we’d become what we were. For good, and for bad.
That lack of magic gave me a glimpse of something I didn’t know I was missing. A reality, an honesty, magic could not create. And like seeing a foreign land for the first time, I was caught by the beauty of it.
Lead and glass lines and conduits still wrapped like steel ivy up the outsides of the buildings, crawled up and up, and met at building tops where the gold-tipped spires of Beckstrom Storm Rods stood like beacons to the stars.
But stripped free of Illusion, Glamour, or the comfortable blur magic offered, crumbling brick, peeling paint, rust, and disrepair showed through. The sidewalks were not as clean, the plants not as tended, windows dirty, broken, or boarded. Safety inspections had to be done to assess a building’s health without magical enhancements-I’d just been through a barrage of them with the leasing of the warehouse by Get Mugged-so I knew the buildings were stable. They were also old, showing their history, their lives, in every crack and slant.
I loved it.
This was not the Portland I knew. Rust-streaked pipes and mechanical units on rooftops-air conditioners, vents, and the like-sat like squat warts against the sky, changing the familiar horizon. I wondered if Stone was up there somewhere. I hadn’t seen him since the fight.
“Have you seen Stone?” I asked Shame.
He licked his bottom lip. Shame still looked like hell, and the anger that had brought him back to life at the inn seemed to be wearing off, leaving a sickly sweat behind.
“You know Stone’s an Animate.” He looked at me. Waited. I had no idea what he was getting at.
“An Animate is an inanimate object infused with magic,” he went on. “Magic puts the life in them. And when magic is gone, there is nothing. . ”
“No. Absolutely no. You did not just tell me Stone is dead.”
“Allie. .”
“Shut up.”
Stone was fine. He was smart enough to track me, he was smart enough to curl up around a backup spell or something. I refused to believe he was dead.
But the more I looked at the city around me, the more dread sank in. There just wasn’t that much magic left. Not for generators. Not for illusions. And not for a gargoyle, no matter how smart.
Shame said quietly, “When magic kicks back up after the storm hits, he’ll come to.” It was sweet, but I knew he didn’t think that would happen.
Stone was just a statue. A big stupid rock who left dust all over my apartment and wore my socks on his nose. But he was my big stupid rock. I was going to miss the hell out of him.
I tried not to think about it. Because I didn’t want to show up in front of Stotts crying.
Shame drove like he knew right where the lab was. And maybe he did. Maybe the Autho
rity kept the lab on its watched list. But even if Shame hadn’t been driving, it wouldn’t have been hard to find the place.
Three police cars blocked the street. Beyond them the big white van of Stott’s MERC team parked half on the elm-lined sidewalk. A few police officers stood outside the building, which was more of a house, and two more at the street to keep people at a safe distance. I didn’t see Stotts’s crew: Julian, Roberts, and Garnet.
More police tape, a sullen yellow smear in the dying light, roped off the sidewalk outside the building.
The building really did look like a house out of a storybook. Old hand-placed stone walls scalloped the edges of the sidewalk. The Tudor-style house was set up on the small hill and faced the trees and golf course across the street. At least two stories, the house looked like a home rather than a lab, brick and stucco on arched doorways beneath steeply gabled roofs. The windows, slender and multipaned, had little light behind them.
In the driveway was Violet’s Mercedes-Benz.
My heartbeat did double time.
“Stop,” I told Shame. “I need to get out.”
Why would she be here? I thought she was moving in with Kevin. I thought she was being smart, being safe. Making baby blankets or knitting diapers or something.
Stress is a weird thing. I got out of the car and heard the door slam shut, but I didn’t hear the car drive away. I didn’t know what the cop asked me when I jogged past her. I didn’t feel the police tape skim my back as I ducked under it and made it to the driveway up the walkway.
No blood on the concrete. No blood anywhere that I could see. That was something. Maybe Violet had arrived after the break-in. That made the most sense. Stotts must have called her. Like he called me. To look at the damage inside. To fill out an insurance form or something.
I turned to go into the building.
Stotts’s hand landed on my wrist, warm and callused, and brought the world suddenly back to me.
“Stay out of the way.” He pulled me to one side, near a line of bushes. Didn’t let me get close to the door.
There wasn’t any room for me to go anywhere. Men filled that door and came through it with stretchers.
One stretcher carried an unconscious and pale Kevin Cooper. Blood had been wiped off his bruised face, but still leaked in his light brown hair, turning it dark on one side. An oxygen mask fit snug against his face. They moved him past me so quickly, I couldn’t see where else he might be injured. But I could smell magic on him. A lot of it, a lot of spent magic.
“Who?” I said. “Who did this?” I was trying to ask who could do this. There just wasn’t that much available magic to be able to do this much damage. “How long? When? When did that happen to him?”
Stotts hadn’t let go of my wrist. Smart. I’d probably go in there and ruin evidence in this state of mind.
“You’re here for that,” he said. “To Hound the scene. Tell me what you see. There’s more.”
And he was right. There was more.
More EMTs, men and women, and another stretcher. This one with tubes and monitors. I knew who it was from the shape of the prone figure even before I could see her face.
Violet.
Dad scratched at the backs of my eyes, no longer a moth-wing flutter, but something made out of sharp edges and teeth.
I exhaled to stay calm and pushed at Dad, needing him in a corner, away from my conscious thoughts, away from seeing Violet on a stretcher. I must have tried to pull away from Stotts too.
“Don’t,” he said. “Don’t get in the way. Let them do their job.”
Violet, my dad said. No. Please, no.
I pressed my lips together to keep his words from forming in my mouth. He was in my head, but he had no right to use my body. Even if Violet was hurt.
She was in better hands than mine right now. I was not a doctor, and neither was my father. Getting her to the hospital as quickly as possible was the smart thing to do.
As they passed, she opened her eyes.
My dad struggled, shoved at my control. Violet, he thought.
“Daniel?” she whispered.
No. Hell no. I didn’t care how much they loved each other-I was not going to let my father talk to her, was not going to let him use me or my mouth or thoughts that way, and was not going to stop the EMTs from getting her medical attention.
The EMTs moved swiftly past me. With Stotts’s hand still clamped to my wrist, I held my ground while Dad battered the edges of my control. Then the EMTs were gone. Violet was gone, placed very carefully into the back of an ambulance that drove away, lights flashing and sirens blaring. I pulled my hand away from Stotts.
Dad went dead silent. Angry.
Too bad.
Okay. Regroup. First the job. Hounding. Hounding the crime. Without magic. Then checking on Violet.
“Anything you’d like to tell me about this before I go in there?” I asked.
He looked at my expression, puzzled. Then glanced over my shoulder at the ambulance. Maybe at something beyond that. “Violet and Kevin were here when it happened. Violet was semiconscious when I arrived. She can’t remember anything.”
“Head wound?”
“She’s been hurt,” he conceded.
Yeah, well, I figured that out all on my own. “Is she going to be okay? Is the baby in danger?”
He looked down at his shoe, then back at me. “They don’t know yet.”
Fuck.
And the cool wash of my dread and my father’s anger melded into something else. Resolve. Whoever had done this, whoever had attacked my wife-I mean my friend-and my unborn sibling, was going to suddenly have a very bad, very short life.
I strode into the building, past the fallen door that looked like it had been blown off its hinges, and into the main room.
Stotts followed.
The first room was a reception area, though there was no desk. Just a couple small clean couches, a TV mounted on the wall, and a computer and a phone on a table.
I didn’t have magic at my disposal. None of us did. I glanced over at Stotts to see if he was uncomfortable with that. He looked calm, composed. Didn’t look like having magic or not having magic made any difference to him. Sort of an “If I don’t have my gun, I can kill you with my hands” kind of look.
Very cop of him. And it meant he wasn’t all that surprised that magic had suddenly died out.
“Do you know why magic’s gone?” I asked.
He shook his head. “I’m thinking it might have something to do with that gut feeling of yours. The storm. We’ve had magic black out on us before. But never this long.”
“Okay, so you know I can’t Hound without magic.”
“I’d just like your eyes on the place.”
There were already police officers and other specialists working the scene. Stotts’s MERC crew was inside, using a few gadgets that looked like they were low-magic but useful, like the glyphed witching rods, and nonmagical things like cameras and fingerprinting tools. Very old-school police procedural.
I felt out of place-I didn’t know what all the stages of investigation would be. All I ever did was Hound magic, track spells, identify casters, and not get involved in the cleanup and meticulous recording of the event.
Stotts had once told me that I was different from other Hounds he’d used, and I saw things in more detail than they did. I guess we were about to find out if that was still true without magic.
I walked through the room, careful not to touch anything, looking at the tables, the couches, the shelves, the walls. I inhaled through my nose and mouth, taking in the scents of metals and plastics, carpet cleaner, and the musty-closet smell of old books.
If magic had been cast here, in this room, I could not smell it.
“How’d the door get bashed in?” I asked.
“Police.”
Okay, so that was good. No magical battering ram. “Is there another room?”
I knew there had to be. There had to be a research room-maybe a cl
ean room, a room glyphed and warded and I didn’t know what all else-to actually produce the disks, if the disks were made here.
“This way.” Stotts led me down a short hall, where windowed rooms lined either side. I followed, tasting the air, listening, looking. I might not have magic, but my senses were acute.
At the far end and right of the hall was a room with a door open. I stepped through the doorway and covered my nose. Magic had been used here. A lot of magic. I could smell the burnt-wood stink of it, hot as red peppers shoved up my nose. I didn’t remove my hand, instead breathed through my fingers. This was the lab. This was where the disks were made.
Stotts didn’t have to tell me. The magic that was used in here-no, the magic that was stored in here-hung like a flashing billboard that said WATCH YOUR STEP, MAGIC AHEAD.
The room had several long, low working counters sectioning it off, and the walls were bracketed by cupboards and countertops. Toward the back of the room was a wall of little silver-plated drawers, like safety-deposit boxes. Maybe a hundred, two hundred drawers.
All of them were pulled out, broken open, busted.
Drawn forward like a string on a reel, I walked over to the drawers. Black velvet lined the bottoms of the drawers. Glyphs, whorls of glass and lead, were worked into the walls of each drawer, scrolling a repeating pattern around the inside. Hold spells, I thought, maybe Containment. Tricky, intricate stuff. It had taken a fine, fine hand for that. A hell of a magic user had made these boxes and it was clear they were intended to keep whatever was inside them, inside them.
A flutter at the backs of my eyes, feather soft, brushed harder the longer I looked at those boxes.
And for a second my vision shifted. It was as if I were looking at the boxes through someone else’s eyes. My father’s eyes. I remembered-or rather I saw his memory of-the disks nestled in the drawers, one disk per box. And I knew that every disk had been fully charged with magic before it had been placed in the box.
Why would anyone store that much magic in one place?
As soon as I thought it, I heard his answering thought. Experimental. Untested. We were pushing the parameters, calculating the decay rate. Finding out how much magic the disks could hold and for how long.