The Book of Betrayal

by Melissa McShane

  “That’s sort of cold, even for you.”

  Lucia gave a humorless snort of laughter. “I’m not saying I wanted this to happen. That’s far too high a price to pay. Right now I’ve got my trusted people working on figuring out how it happened.”

  “I didn’t know magic that big was even possible.”

  “Possible, yes. Practical, no. There are no records of magic on that level ever being done. I’m also grateful they didn’t try this a month ago, when I still didn’t know which of my people I could trust. I’d have been completely incapable of running this investigation.” She cleared her throat. “And speaking of trusting people…you should probably know Ewan Campbell was not among the victims last night.”

  Ewan. Malcolm’s younger brother. “That doesn’t mean he’s one of the bad guys.”

  “No, but it doesn’t automatically clear him, either. Just be aware.”

  She hung up abruptly, leaving me gaping at the phone. If Ewan were a traitor…he and Malcolm weren’t close, but family was family and Ewan was high up in the hierarchy of Campbell Security. Which could mean the company wasn’t safe, after all.

  I’d left the movie paused in the middle of a scene transition, one picture overlapping the other. It felt appropriate for how I felt now. There was the world everyone knew, the one in which magic was imaginary and monsters a thing of story. There was the magical world, where men and women fought the Long War against monstrous invaders from some other reality. And then there was the shadow world, in which some of those men and women concealed their true natures as they worked with those invaders to defeat those who called them friends.

  I was one of the few who could see all three worlds, and it was an enormous burden. I hadn’t even been allowed to tell Malcolm the truth. Maybe that would change now it was clear he wasn’t one of the shadow cabal, as the Board referred to them. Assuming he…I dropped my phone on the couch and buried my face in my hands. Derrick, call.

  The phone rang.

  I snatched it up and saw Derrick’s name. My heart started pounding like a timpani. “Derrick?”

  “He’s all right,” Derrick said, and the room swam in my vision. “He was in surgery for a long time. The surgeon said—actually, he said a lot of things, but they had to operate on Campbell’s heart and it was tricky. But he’ll be fine. He’ll be in the hospital for a couple of weeks, but I’ll start healing him as soon as he’s in recovery. Once we get him home I can finish the job and he’ll be walking around like new. I promise.”

  “Thank you.” I wiped my eyes. “Have you seen him?”

  “He’s still in the ICU. I thought I’d call you first. There’s…it’s not all good news.”

  “You said he was fine.”

  “He is, for someone recovering from emergency open heart surgery. But that’s where the bad news comes in. The reason for the surgery was his aegis became fully physical. Not permanently—it was phasing in and out and causing a hell of a lot of damage. But they had to take it out. Thought it was a sliver of metal from the crash.”

  The dizziness returned. “They took it out?”

  “Yeah. It saved his life, but…Campbell’s no longer a magus.”

  4

  “But…that’s what he is,” I said. “He can’t not be a magus.”

  “I know it’s hard to imagine,” Derrick said, “but he’s lost his aegis, and that’s what it means. And you know that’s not everything he is. He’s still a Warden, even without his magic.”

  “I know.” I let out a deep breath. “All that matters is he’s still alive.”

  “Quincy has an idea to get you in to see him, but it will be in a few days, once things calm down and he’s not quite so closely observed.”

  “I’m so glad. Thank you. For everything.” A horrible thought occurred to me. “What if he blurts out my name when he wakes up?”

  Derrick laughed. “No worries. He’s on a breathing tube that keeps him from talking or swallowing. It will keep him from saying anything incriminating before he comes to his senses.”

  “All right. Would you—”

  “What?”

  “Never mind. I’ll tell him myself.” What I’d actually meant to say was to ask Derrick not to leave Malcolm alone with Ewan. If Lucia was right that this had been a shadow cabal act, and if Ewan was one of the traitors, he might decide to finish Malcolm off personally. But I realized in time there was no way to explain all that without giving everything away, and much as I hated it, I couldn’t assume Derrick wasn’t a traitor himself.

  “You’ll visit him as soon as we can manage it. I promise,” Derrick said. “They tell us we can go in to see him in a couple of hours. I’ll keep you posted.”

  “Thanks, Derrick.”

  I disconnected and dropped the phone into my lap. It wasn’t a total relief, but my hands weren’t shaking anymore. I couldn’t imagine Malcolm without his magic. Practically the first thing he’d done when we met was set something on fire with magic. He used it as naturally as breathing—though it sounded like right now, his breathing wasn’t natural. It hurt, thinking of him in that condition. But he was alive, and—I curled up and cried great tears of relief and joy. Alive, and I would see him soon.

  I abandoned the movie—I didn’t really need to see Scottie Ferguson make over poor Judy Barton—and dragged my quilt back to my bedroom. Maybe now I could sleep. In a few hours, Judy would be here, and then my day would start. A day filled with Wardens tromping in and out of Abernathy’s, filled with theories about what had happened and why. I would be very surprised if any of them came near the truth.

  “I’m just saying it’s weird that they all had heart attacks at the same time,” Doug Schrote said. The Ambrosite treasure hunter had been hammering that point home for half an hour, and I was ready to beat him senseless with my copy of the Accords. Doug wasn’t the sharpest knife in the drawer, but he was a dedicated conspiracy theorist and it was just bad luck he’d happened on a conspiracy that was real. Not that he knew this. Not that I intended to tell him.

  “If the aegises were defective, they might have responded to a pulse of magical energy,” Evelia Duclos said. Evelia was a lot smarter than Doug in every respect but one: she thought she could win an argument with him. “And those happen more frequently during storms. Or it could have been the storm itself. Electromagical energy is powerful.”

  “We get storms this time of year, every year, and it’s never happened before.”

  “That’s not a reason to go looking for a mystery, particularly when Mr. Parish is still investigating. So is Lucia.”

  Doug stubbornly shook his head. “If someone wanted to strike at the Wardens, taking out our steel magi would be a good first step.”

  “Someone, who?” Evelia exclaimed. “The mundanes don’t know anything about us, and even if they did, they can’t work magic. Unless you’re suggesting it’s invaders.”

  I successfully kept from cringing at Evelia’s words.

  Doug’s jaw firmed up squarely. “No one knows where the intelligent ones went, but they have to be around somewhere.”

  “Doug.” I put some force into his name. “I told you, it’s $625. Pay me so I can help someone else.”

  “Oh. Right.” Doug pulled several crumpled bills from his pants pocket. “You see it, don’t you, Helena?”

  I handed him his augury. “I think an electromagical pulse makes more sense than a conspiracy.”

  Doug scowled, but he left without saying anything more about intelligent invaders. I looked past him through the window, down the sunlit street at the spot where one of those creatures had abandoned the human body it was wearing and revealed its true self. What if Doug were one of them, and he was hinting at the truth as part of their cunning plan, whatever it was? I made a mental note to have Lucia check him out.

  “Doug’s a good man, but he lives in a fantasy world,” Evelia said. “Don’t be too worried about his fanciful ideas.”

  “I won’t, Evelia.”

  I
took her augury slip and retreated into the oracle. Had I looked more disturbed than I should? Most people today had put my distractedness down to my distress over the many, many deaths that had rocked the magical world to its core. Everyone was in mourning today, except maybe Doug, who didn’t have a lot of friends. I’d had few customers, and those auguries they’d asked for had been variations on the theme of “what would So-and-so want us to do with his possessions?” It was a reminder that death could touch anyone. Maybe I needed a will. I didn’t have a lot to leave behind.

  Ahead, I saw the blue glow of an augury, and quickened my step. Evelia Duclos was the only one left waiting for an augury, and it was just after five. If I was lucky, no one else would come in, and the last hour would pass uneventfully. Probably I shouldn’t entertain thoughts like that, tempting fate and all.

  But the store was still empty except for Evelia and Judy, just emerging from the back of the store. “$475,” I said. “Judy, will you take payment?”

  “Sure,” Judy said, pulling out the receipt book. “The accountant called. He wants to set up a time for him to bring over your taxes for you to sign.”

  I made a face. “Better now than later, I guess. It just feels wrong to worry about something so ordinary when so many people are dead. See you later, Evelia.”

  I went to my office, put my feet up on my desk, and pulled the office phone toward me, a putty-colored lump that was probably twice as old as I was. I’d caught Malcolm using it one night, while he was on the run for murder, and the memory made me close my eyes and hug the phone tight to my chest. I wanted to see him so badly—well, I’d just have to practice patience, something I’d mastered in the five months we’d spent apart. Mostly mastered.

  I called the accountant and set up a time for the next day, then hung up, but I didn’t return to the store. Could the oracle communicate on behalf of a dead person? It almost seemed like spiritualism, asking for the motives of someone who’d passed away, but the oracle hadn’t rejected any of the auguries and hadn’t charged much for them, either. It was things like that that made me think the oracle was alive, though not in any way that made sense to a human. It was a comforting thought after the day I’d had. So many of the dead had been friends, or at least acquaintances.

  My phone rang, startling me off my chair. “Tell me you haven’t heard rumors that this is some kind of enemy attack,” Lucia said.

  “Just from Doug Schrote, and nobody listens to him.”

  “Well, I’ve heard it from two sources more reputable than him. It’s only a matter of time before I have to confirm it. When I do, I want you to be prepared for the fallout. I’ll send some trusted enforcers over to maintain the peace. For now, I want you to send Judy Rasmussen to the Gunther Node tonight. Make up some errand. Tell her…I’ve got some confidential paperwork you need and I don’t want to trust it to a flunky.”

  “I can’t tell her that. She’ll want to know why I don’t get it myself.”

  “Then come with her. Just get her over here. I want her cleared before things go south.”

  “All right. In an hour.”

  Lucia hung up. “What can’t you tell me?” Judy said. I spun around to see her standing in the doorway, her black-fringed eyes narrowed suspiciously.

  “Um…nothing?”

  “You are such a bad liar. It’s a good thing no one on the Board has ever asked you point-blank about your relationship with Campbell. Who was that?”

  “Lucia. She wanted you to pick up some confidential paperwork. I told her you’d make me do it. I just don’t want to go alone.”

  “You’re still not telling the whole truth, but that one’s more plausible.” Judy rolled her eyes. “Honestly, I don’t want to go home for a while. It’s just a reminder of death. Let’s pick up Lucia’s incredibly important paperwork, then get something to eat. Maybe Viv will want to come.”

  “I’d like that.” The thought of spending the evening with friends cheered me. I felt some niggling guilt at enjoying myself when so many people were dead, but my being miserable wouldn’t bring them back. “Let’s just hope no one else comes in.”

  No one else came in. I called Viv and arranged to pick her up after our business at the Gunther Node. Lucia knew Viv was in on the secret of the magical world, and her only response had been, “Why don’t we just sell tickets?” which I guessed meant she wasn’t going to kill me outright. But I didn’t think Lucia’s acceptance would get Viv a free pass to the inner workings of the biggest Neutrality in the Pacific Northwest. So I locked up the store at 6:02 and Judy and I got in my old Civic and headed toward the Columbia.

  I let Judy drive. I’d never yet been out to the Gunther Node, or rather the entrance to the node, under my own power, and I only had a vague idea of where it was. “This isn’t about paperwork,” Judy said.

  “Of course it is.”

  “There’s nothing so secret that Lucia can’t entrust it to Dave or Martin. What are we really going out there for?”

  “Lucia just said paperwork. If she wants something else, she didn’t tell me,” I lied. I didn’t know the details of the procedure that confirmed the presence of what Laverne Stirlaugson, chairwoman of the Board of Neutralities, persisted in calling the “traitor’s mark,” just that it was non-invasive and left the subject unaware they’d been tested. But Judy was smart enough to figure out something was off. What was I going to do if she wasn’t clean? I trusted Judy with my life, and if she did have the mark, I was certain she was just one of the one in three who were innocent carriers.

  Mostly certain.

  “It better not be some kind of surprise party. It’s not even close to being my birthday. And I hate surprise parties anyway.”

  “It’s not a surprise party. I wouldn’t do that to you, not after what happened the last time.”

  “Good.”

  We drove along a bumpy road paralleling the river, passing warehouses and barnlike structures. Planes passed overhead, taking off from the airport several miles west of us. A small white van I recognized as belonging to the Gunther Node passed us going the opposite direction, and then Judy pulled up to a small airplane hangar and parked just inside the door. It was completely empty except for us and another of the white vans, and colder than a March evening could account for. I stood next to my car, shivering and rubbing my arms despite my fleece-lined jacket. “How do we get in? There isn’t anyone here.”

  Judy strode across the concrete, the tapping of her low heels echoing off the corrugated iron walls. I followed her toward a white circle painted on the floor. It wasn’t perfectly round, but had squiggly lines and curves emerging from it. In an abstract way it looked like a flower wreath. Judy walked across it; I followed more carefully, not liking to touch the white paint.

  An electrical box hung on the far wall, but Judy opened it and revealed an old-fashioned telephone handset. She removed it and put it to her ear. “Helena Davies and Judy Rasmussen,” she said. She listened for a moment, then hung it up and motioned me to join her in the circle. “Hurry,” she said, and I stepped inside just seconds before the world blinked, and we were elsewhere.

  The new place was cavernous and made of poured concrete, easily three stories tall, lit by long fluorescent bulbs hanging from the walls and ceiling. It made me think of some Cold War military facility, or a nuclear power plant, but I doubted either of those would smell faintly of gardenias. Men and women hurried across the cavern, some of them pushing carts, others carrying papers or briefcases or strange equipment that might have come from a UFO.

  Judy shooed me out of the circle we’d arrived in, which looked nothing like the one we’d left. “Ms. Davies,” a woman called. I knew her only as Sue, one of the unaffiliated bone magi who worked for Lucia. “Come this way.”

  Judy and I followed Sue into a narrow passageway, lit not by fluorescent bulbs but by red-tinted LEDs. It wasn’t the same route I’d taken the last time I’d visited the node, but then I had no reason to believe we were going to Lucia’s o
ffice. Or maybe we were, and there were half a dozen routes to her office. The place was certainly big enough for that to be possible.

  The passageway snaked along, taking us deeper into…it felt like we were underground, deep underground. There were no doors, nothing but the ruddy concrete walls, rough-finished, and the polished concrete floor that reflected the lights like tiny suns.

  We walked for nearly three minutes, and the passage curved and doubled back on itself like some kind of intestinal system. I started to get nervous after one minute. This couldn’t be a normal welcome. Judy had been to the node several times, and she had to guess something was wrong. I glanced quickly at her, striding along beside me; she looked cranky, but then she often looked cranky when she was hungry, which she probably was. She turned her head to look at me, and I smiled, hoping I didn’t look suspicious. I needed to be a better liar if I wanted to keep myself safe.

  Finally, we came to a door at the end of the passageway, matte-silver with a simple latch. Sue opened it and gestured for us to go through. It opened on a long, straight hallway lined with more metal doors, and now I felt confident, because I remembered this hall. I didn’t need Sue’s aid to find Lucia’s office, but I let her go first anyway. Judy followed close behind me.

  Lucia’s office looked like a ‘50s bomb shelter, with a desk matching mine back at Abernathy’s and a metal bookshelf crammed with papers and oddly shaped equipment. The plastic milk crates stacked against the back wall, also full of papers, had multiplied since I’d been here last. Lucia sat behind her desk, her fingers interlaced and resting on its top. Behind her stood her assistant Dave Henry. Dave held a strange-looking gun that looked like it had been made by the Tiffany Company from a design by Nerf.

  “Took you long enough,” Lucia said. “Henry?”

  Dave took a manila envelope from the shelf and handed it to me. “That’s it?” I said.