War Song (The Rift Chronicles Book 2)

by BR Kingsolver

  “Let me think about it,” she said. “Are you hungry?”

  After dinner, when Kirsten and I were getting ready to leave, I asked, “What are you going to do about Courtney and her family?”

  Olivia frowned. “I’m not sure. George is dithering. Akiyama Benjiro has offered a ransom to buy his uncle back, and the Magi Council is arguing as to whether to hold a tribunal or simply to levy a substantial fine and some kind of sanctions to try and hold Akiyama accountable for engaging in human trafficking.”

  “You didn’t answer my question.”

  She took a deep breath. “I suppose I didn’t. Courtney and the Moncrieffs would probably be included in such a settlement.”

  “What about Courtney trying to kill me? And you?”

  Olivia looked incredibly unhappy. “It’s probably better that you don’t bring that up in public. Especially with your Uncle George.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  She shook her head.

  There was a time, when I was younger and more self-righteous, when I would have blown up. But I had become somewhat immune to the ruling class’s immorality. What I did instead was simply turn and walk out.

  “So, people die and it just gets shrugged off?” Kirsten asked as we climbed in her van.

  “Welcome to the fun and games of the rich and powerful. Besides, no one of any importance died, right?”

  Just a bunch of idiot assassins Courtney paid. I didn’t feel sorry for them, but some of them probably had families who would miss them.

  Kirsten shot me a look. “So, we need to continue to watch our backs.”

  I nodded. “Yeah. And without the extra security Uncle George was providing but now seems to have forgotten about.”

  Chapter 11

  It didn’t take me long to crack Jurgen’s computer. In addition to the information he stored there, he had a secure lockbox set up online. That took a little more effort to open, but I managed it.

  The online storage was where the good stuff was hidden. As Carmelita had said, the boy was intelligent, and he had sniffed out a lot more information about the HLA than they thought he knew. Names, online IDs, secure lockbox locations, and connections to insurgent networks in other countries. I copied it all off and asked Kirsten to hide the chip in her greenhouse.

  The following morning, Carmelita picked me up at my home around nine o’clock. Her sporty two-seater wasn’t as expensive as Mary Sue’s car, but it was close to the range that might raise eyebrows if purchased on a cop’s salary. With the last name of Domingo, though, she probably felt she was slumming by driving it.

  “Nice ride,” I said.

  She laughed. “Cop issue, believe it or not. Contributes to my cover. I think they busted a drug dealer and confiscated it.”

  We drove down toward Washington, and she parked in a neighborhood that was just a touch shabby, south of Beltsville and north of the university.

  “Student ghetto,” Carmelita said. “This is where the above-ground headquarters of the local HLA group is located. The house is owned by a guy named Elesio Gomez. I’ve met him a couple of times, and he has the hots for me. I’m pretty sure we can find Susan Reed through him.”

  Gomez turned out to be short and stocky, with curly red hair and a mustache. I figured him to be very early twenties in age. He welcomed us into his house, where we found around a dozen more college-age people in various rooms, some working on designing posters, a couple organizing a march on campus, and several in the kitchen debating the ethics of slaughtering all the demons versus simply enslaving them. I silently wished them luck with either endeavor.

  Our host led us to a back bedroom and closed the door.

  “Have you heard?” Carmelita, playing the role of Dolores asked. “The strike against the Magi in Baltimore?”

  “Yeah,” Elesio said. “I wondered if that might be an HLA cell.” He seemed excited and happy about the murders.

  “There’s a problem, though,” Dolores said. “Bob Earling is dead, and Jurgen is in the hospital. The doctors don’t expect him to survive. But the mages have ways of extracting information even if he never wakes up. Bob told me that if something went wrong, I was to contact Susan Reed.”

  Elesio’s jubilation melted away. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean the cops may soon know everything Jurgen knows. About me, you, Susan, the whole operation. That was pretty stupid, you know. Blowing up buildings is one thing, but sneaking into a Magi’s residence and killing him? Why did we do that?”

  “To strike directly against the mages,” Elesio said, a hard tone in his voice. “We have to hurt the oppressors, make them fear us.”

  He suddenly seemed to notice that a complete stranger was listening to their conversation.

  “Who is this?”

  “She’s on our side.”

  “Who is she?”

  Dolores gave him a smirk. “That’s a secret. Bob and Jurgen’s secret. They said she needs to meet Susan, and only Susan.”

  He shook his head. “I can try and get in touch with her, but I’ll let her decide what she wants to do.”

  Dolores smiled and sidled up to Elesio, pressing her breasts against him and looking up into his face. “Jurgen’s out of the picture now. Nothing to keep us from getting together.” Her expression changed to a frown. “But if you don’t trust me, then I’m not going to play. Jurgen was a real man, one who could make decisions, take action. I thought you were important, but if all you are is a messenger boy, then I guess I need to find someone else. I don’t do common.”

  She whirled away from him. “Come on, let’s go,” she said to me. Then, over her shoulder, “You know how to get hold of me. Tell Susan to call me. And tell her I won’t be coming down here again. I’m staying the hell away from places Jurgen might be telling the cops about.”

  Elesio had it bad, and he panicked. “Wait! Look, I can’t just tell you how to find Susan, but let me get in touch with her. You can wait around until tonight, can’t you?”

  “Let’s go,” I said. “He’s useless. I can’t believe you were interested in him.”

  Five minutes later, we had an address and a telephone number for Susan Reed, and Elesio thought he had a date lined up with Dolores for the following Saturday night.

  On our way back to the car, I said, “I’m not sure we should tell them Jurgen is still alive.”

  “I’m hoping that the HLA will make a play on Jurgen in the hospital,” Carmelita said, stopping by the car to make a call on her phone. When she finished talking to someone, she told me, “They’re boosting Jurgen’s protection with a couple of mages and a magitek. If the HLA wants to shut him up and sends an assassin, we’ll try and capture him.”

  As we drove over to Berwyn Heights, an upscale suburb east of the university, I said, “Elesio is obviously an idiot, but we can’t depend on people not recognizing me. I’ve been in the news a lot over the years, and especially in the last month.”

  Carmelita nodded. “Yeah, I thought about that and discussed it with DC Whittaker when he assigned you to this investigation. We’re not going to even try and hide who you are. Danica James, one of the most notorious magiteks in the world, bastard step-child of a Ten Family, cut off from her inheritance, bitter and rebellious. Bleeding heart who thinks the Magi are arrogant and corrupt and need to be taken down a few notches so the rest of humanity can breathe and reach their full potential.”

  “Yeah, that’s all true, but I don’t agree with mass murder as a method of protest.”

  She shot me a look.

  “Whittaker knows me pretty well,” I said, grinning at her. “The only part of that story that isn’t true is about being cut off from my inheritance and being bitter about it. I don’t want the damned inheritance. But do you think we can get the HLA to buy it?”

  “I met Susan Reed a couple of times,” Carmelita said. “She’s past protesting. As far as she and people like her are concerned, they’re at war. The Magi, the demons, the vampires. And as you’v
e already guessed, they aren’t against recruiting magik users to use as weapons. Susan is a witch, and there are a lot of witches in the HLA.”

  “Have you thought about things such as truth spells?” I asked.

  “She’s not that good a witch. But if it makes you feel better, we can get you a charm.” She pulled on a chain around her neck and showed me a small pendant.

  I laughed. “I already have one. My roommate is a witch, and a damned good one.”

  Kirsten supplied me with charms and potions, while I supplied her with magitek to protect and run her business. It was a good arrangement. And since her mom taught in the Witchcraft Department at the University of Maryland, we had access to experts in the field.

  We knocked on the door of a nice, two-story brick neo-colonial home with a manicured lawn and well-kept flowerbeds. The woman who answered the door looked completely out of place.

  “What the hell are you doing here?” she demanded. “And who the hell is this?”

  “Bob is dead,” Carmelita-Dolores said. “Jurgen got shot and may not make it. He said if anything happened to him, I should go to you.”

  I assumed the woman was Susan Reed. She appeared to be in her mid-twenties, medium height, overweight, with a splotchy complexion and dishwater-blonde hair twisted and held up with a barrette. Her clothes that morning consisted of a University of Maryland sweatshirt and sweatpants. A sneer, that I assumed was habitual, completed her outfit.

  Her attention shifted to me, and I saw her eyes widen. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I haven’t done anything wrong, and if your cop friend thinks she’s coming in, she’d better have a warrant.”

  I gave her an indulgent smile. “Don’t worry. Dolores said she could introduce me to someone of influence within the HLA, someone who might be able to use my talents. But if she was wrong, no problem. I can hook up with someone else. Come on, Dolores. Let’s not waste any more time here.”

  “You’re Danica James,” Reed said.

  “Yes, I am.” I turned to walk away. “We can try and contact one of those other names we found on Jurgen’s computer,” I said to Dolores.

  I made it about two steps when Reed called, “Wait!”

  Looking back over my shoulder, I saw that Dolores was still standing on the porch with Reed in the doorway. The HLA member looked as though she was unsure of what to do.

  “You have Jurgen’s computer?” Reed asked.

  “Yes. A lot of interesting information,” I said. “Combined with the magitek device I found at the Greer mansion, I think I understand enough as to what’s going on. I could turn it all over to my superiors, but I haven’t figured out how that would do me any good. So, I called Dolores. It turns out that we seem to think a lot alike.”

  Reed shook her head. “I don’t understand. What are you doing here?”

  “Looking for like-minded people. Until I cracked Jurgen’s computer, I had no idea the HLA was potentially an effective organization. I always thought it was just a bunch of idealogues playing games and making fancy speeches.”

  “Your Family is in the Ten,” she said.

  I barked out a laugh, not having to fake much to put some bitterness into it. Members of my family had tried to kill me repeatedly in recent weeks.

  “James is definitely not one of the Ten,” I said. “Findlay would be happy if I just went away and they could pretend I never existed. Do you know how many laws and restrictions I have to put up with because I’m a magitek?” I snorted. “I have no love for the Magi.”

  Turning away again, I walked down to where Dolores’s car was parked on the street. Dolores stayed, and after talking to Susan for another ten minutes, she joined me. We got in the car and she drove off. As soon as we were away from the house, her face split into a grin.

  “Nice job. I think she bought it. She said she had to confer with other people on some mysterious ‘council,’ but that she’ll call me in a day or two.”

  “Sounds good, and in the meantime, I think we should get hold of Novak. I’m pretty sure I know who our axe murderer is.”

  Chapter 12

  We met Novak at a café in Columbia, southeast of Baltimore. The area had been an upscale bedroom community for Baltimore and Washington before the wars, and nothing had really changed in that respect.

  In spite of the rain, we sat outside on a covered patio warmed with a magitek grid. Novak had suggested the place, and just the presence of the magitek warned me about the prices. My suspicions were confirmed when I opened the menu. Carmelita didn’t seem surprised.

  After we submitted our orders through the compu-menu, I said, “When I cracked Jurgen’s computer, I found some files he had stored online. He might have made a good cop, but instead he’s going to spend the rest of his life in Antarctica. Essentially, he kept dossiers on members of the HLA and of some other underground organizations he was in contact with. One of the HLA radicals is identified as a magitek who lives here in Columbia.”

  “There might be a lot of magiteks affiliated with the HLA,” Carmelita said. “You also can’t assume all of their contacts are sympathetic with the radicals’ goals or methods.”

  “Yeah, but this guy is cross-referenced with Bob Earling,” I said. “He has a police record, including arrests at anti-Magi protests, and he was enrolled at the university at the same time as Susan Reed. He’s at least worth checking out.”

  My companions both nodded.

  “And if we take him down?” Novak asked.

  “We do it quietly and turn him over to Whittaker. I don’t want Susan Reed or any of his other contacts to know about it.”

  “Makes sense to me,” Carmelita said. She called Whittaker, and using the information I gave her, got a secret search warrant authorization for our suspect’s home.

  “Do we want backup for this?” Carmelita asked.

  I shook my head. “Not if we want to keep it quiet. If a SWAT team cruises into the neighborhood, someone will call the media, and it will be on the newscasts before he’s even been booked.”

  “You said he knows Susan?” she asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “Then I guess I should go in first.” She cast a spell, and Susan Reed sat in front of us instead of Carmelita.

  I jumped, my heart in my throat. The transformation had been so sudden and taken me by surprise. “You’re an illusionist.”

  “Aeromancer, but yeah, I’m pretty good with illusions, too.”

  We ate our lunch and then drove over to the suspect’s home—or more accurately, his parents’ home. I had done my research the evening before and found out that Justin Beaver worked for a company owned by one of the Hundred. He was a mage of little power and married to a witch. Their older son—Carl—was a magitek who flunked out of the University of Maryland, and his roommate at the university was Bob Earling. Carl, age twenty-five, lived with his parents and had no record of employment.

  Carmelita, wearing the illusion of Susan Reed, drove her sports car, while I rode with Novak. I had him park around the corner, and we watched Carmelita park on the street in front of the Beavers’ residence.

  By previous arrangement, she fussed with her purse, checked her makeup, and took her time getting out of the car. I walked past, staying on the sidewalk, and used my magik to disable all of the active magitek devices in the house. There were seven active and quite a few more that were inactive. When I finished, I stopped and peered at the house next door, as if trying to read the address, then proceeded down the street.

  I stopped at the corner and turned to watch. Novak took up his position at the other end of the block.

  Carmelita rang the bell, and a short while later, the door opened. Since she was wearing a listening device, both Novak and I could hear the conversation.

  “Susan! What are you doing here?”

  “Bob and Jurgen are dead. The cops also know that magitek was used in the Carpenter and Greer murders. You need to get out of here.”

  “Shit! How do they know abou
t me? How did they die?”

  “Are we going to discuss this out here on the porch?” the fake Susan asked.

  “Oh, no. Come in.”

  Carl ushered her into the house and shut the door. That was our cue to move. Novak’s assignment was to watch the back door while I hung out by the garage on the side of the house and watched the front.

  Then I heard a third voice through the device Carmelita carried—male, older, deeper, rougher. “What the hell’s going on?” I thought I detected a slight Eastern European accent.

  “The cops know about my devices that were used in the Baltimore attacks,” Carl said.

  “Jurgen and Bob are dead,” Carmelita said. “The cops killed them.”

  A string of curses erupted from the third voice. What followed were sounds of confusion. People rushing around, cryptic comments, not much in the way of understandable conversation.

  “Where do you plan to go?” fake Susan asked.

  “None of your damned business, you slut,” the rough voice responded. Then, much closer, “How do I know you weren’t followed? How did you find out about the cops killing them? It wasn’t on the news.”

  “I have sources.” Susan’s voice was shaky. “Let go, you’re hurting me.”

  That was my cue. An illusion usually wouldn’t hold up with direct contact. I headed for the front door, drawing my weapon. I magiked the lock on the door, turned the knob, and pushed it open.

  Beyond the foyer, a tall, burley man with a three-day growth of beard held onto the Susan illusion by the arm, shaking her. To my eyes, Carmelita still held the illusion, but I had no idea what the big man saw. Noises came from upstairs through a stairway to my right, and I assumed that was where Carl had gone.