Max groaned and shook.
Then I felt a splatter of blood transfer from his mouth onto my cheek.
And I freaked the hell out.
They say for young warlocks that their magic will often follow strong emotions. But I wasn’t just a new warlock. I was a frigging sorcerer. And as genuine desperation pounded through me, my magic surged.
The fans reacted. They started to spin as fast as frigging jet engines.
They produced an insane downward draft, and it was finally enough to blow away the elemental’s dirt.
I heard Josh give a triumphant grunt.
Then he shoved forward, the sound of his shoes squeaking against the floor and kicking through the dirt filling the air.
The dirt that had been pounding into Max’s back finally subsided.
I felt as Josh started to cast a containment spell.
The several other warlocks who’d been in the dining hall were already subduing the heat elemental.
So it was over.
Max slumped against me.
My heart trembled. “Max?” I wrapped my arms around him. “Max!”
I felt him chuckle. The reason I felt him chuckle was that his face was buried close to my neck, and it sent a gentle, warm puff of air against my skin. “Don’t worry, Beth. I’m not hurt badly. I’m just very, very put out. And dirty.” With that, he pushed off me. Or did he linger a second? A second where he took a memory of the way I felt underneath him? Of my own heat, of my own presence?
Or maybe that was just me.
Though Max was clearly pushing up off me to stand, I didn’t break my grip on him immediately.
“Jesus Christ,” I heard Josh grumble from behind us as I let go of Max and he helped pull me to my feet.
Josh was down on both knees, kneeling in a mound of dirt, his face drooped, a hell of a frown marking his lips. “That was a heck of a fight. You okay?” He looked right at me.
I tried to pat the dirt off myself. It was hard. I was covered. Rather than answer him, I turned and locked my watchful gaze on the other warlocks who were subduing the heat elemental. “We need to get these two out of here and to remand.”
“I’m gonna take that as a yes, you’re okay. I’m glad. Thanks for your help,” he added as he pushed up. He grabbed the flaps of his jacket and tugged down on them hard. Dirt cascaded around him. He frowned at it. He’d already subdued the dirt elemental, and he quickly reached around, grabbed a pair of handcuffs, walked into his magical circle, and clapped them on the elemental’s wrists.
The guy wouldn’t look at Josh. He wouldn’t look at anything. Now his power had been subdued, he looked like an ordinary man. One who had shut down.
No, wait, he hadn’t shut down. His emotions didn’t suggest defeat. They suggested this was a minor setback, and even if he was sent to remand, it wouldn’t matter.
Josh finished clamping the handcuffs in place, and he stepped out of the magical circle. “All right – time to send you where you belong.”
I darted forward. “No, wait,” I spat.
Everyone looked at me.
Josh frowned. “We have to get rid of these guys as soon as possible.”
“She’s sensing something,” Max said quietly. “What is it?”
“Something’s wrong here,” I said. “This guy doesn’t care that he’s going to remand. He doesn’t care that he’s been caught. He knows he’s gonna get off.”
Josh gave an unsettled swallow. “That’s bravado—”
Max shook his head and looked right at me. “What do you mean?”
“He thinks someone’s gonna save him. Have you got friends in powerful places?” I asked the guy directly.
His emotions changed. He became guarded as he blinked his eyes and looked at me but didn’t say a thing.
Sirens out on the street suggested the police had finally arrived. Which meant my ability to run this investigation was about to end. I took a step toward the guy, I opened my mouth, then I tugged my head to the side abruptly. I started to run over to the heat elemental.
“Beth! What are you doing?” Josh protested as he dashed off after me.
I reached the heat elemental. I suspected I would see one thing. I suspected… felt he would be the guy we’d tracked down yesterday. The same guy we’d caught and sent to remand. The same guy, according to police paperwork, who was still in remand.
But as the guy tugged his head up and looked at me, I realized he wasn’t the same man.
I shook my head and took a step back. “Something isn’t right. That guy—”
“That guy what?” Josh darted in and hissed by my ear. “The police are literally half a minute away. When they get here, you won’t be able to do what you want. This will become their investigation.”
“I… he feels like the guy from yesterday,” I managed.
The guy reacted. Though I could tell he was trying to control his emotions, he couldn’t. A surge of fear blasted through his heart. His expression, however, remained stony.
Josh shot me the kind of look that told me I was crazy. “He’s clearly not the same guy. That other heat elemental gave us such a run around, I’ll remember his face for life. Beth—”
I shook my head. “Something really bad is going on here, Josh. It is the same guy. He feels like him. And when I accused him, he became terrified.”
“He doesn’t look terrified to me,” Josh managed. But though he sounded as if he didn’t believe me, I could equally tell that he wasn’t about to dismiss me, either.
“Josh, is there any way somebody could change their appearance over night?” I asked.
“There are a number of ways, Beth, but we’re out of time.” Josh tilted his head to the side in time to see half of the Warlock Division spring into the room.
I stood there and stared at the heat elemental, knowing I was right. But it didn’t matter that I was right, did it? Because there was nothing I would be able to do about it. If this situation had ever been in my control, it wasn’t now.
Chapter 5
Though I desperately wanted the chance to debrief with Max, I wasn’t given it. He’d been injured in the attack, and he was quickly whisked away to an ambulance. Plus, all nongovernment personnel were led from the crime scene. If I wanted a chance to thank Max for saving my life, I would have to wait. He was taken to hospital along with the other injured patrons.
The minutes ticked by, and though several detectives from the Warlock Division questioned Josh countless times, no one ever told us we could leave.
As Josh was questioned for about the fifth time, I found myself free to walk around the room. My hands were in my pockets as my feet ground against the dirt scattered everywhere.
I was right, I kept telling myself. That heat elemental had been the one from last night.
Which meant what, exactly? I knew Josh had sent that guy to remand. So… what? Someone had broken him out? But we would have been told. If someone had sprung one of our bounties, the Justice Department would’ve informed us immediately.
So what did that leave? That the guy had somehow used some spell to change his appearance, and he’d slipped out unawares? But people would still have realized that he was missing.
The possibilities boggled my mind. I could feel a migraine setting in, and if I was smart, I would take a seat and try to relax just as several of the uniformed officers had told me to do.
I wasn’t smart. I was driven. I’d faced a lot as a bounty hunter, but this was the first time I’d been in a place that had been attacked by warlocks. This wasn’t the sewers, and this wasn’t some out-of-town power plant. This was the most expensive restaurant in town. And these two warlocks – or whoever they worked for, at least – had decided to risk attacking the public.
No, wait – who had they attacked exactly?
I closed my eyes and went over the details I could remember. I’d run out of the bathroom, heard the screaming, and rushed in to find the elementals attacking.
What had they be
en after?
I kept picking up snippets of conversation as the Warlock Division chatted to the uniformed officers who’d been first on the scene.
Though I didn’t pick up anything useful – they did keep repeating one fact. Madison City hadn’t seen a public attack like this for two-and-a-half years.
For some reason that number stuck in my head.
Two-and-a-half years…?
Why was that important to me?
Though I could tell Josh wanted to rush over and debrief with me, he wasn’t given that option. One of the biggest warlocks from the Warlock Division – a man who bore an unfavorable resemblance to my least favorite Cruze Gang bully, Smythe – seemed to be questioning Josh over and over again.
Josh wasn’t losing his cool, which told me this wasn’t the first time he’d had to jump through Warlock Division hoops.
“Hey you – I told you to lock down the residue from the two portals. If we have any chance of figuring out where those two elementals came from, we need to lock the remnants of the portals down before they disappear,” another member of the Warlock Division bellowed at two uniformed officers.
I hadn’t had a chance to debrief with anyone, and until that point, I hadn’t even known that the elementals had arrived by portals.
That fact made me frown. I’d just assumed they’d arrived on-foot. But now I knew they’d come by portal… I couldn’t shake the impression that it was critically important. It meant they’d got here in a hurry, didn’t it?
Which meant they’d sensed some kind of opportunity.
Or maybe they’d been alerted to something.
I took a step back, shoved a hand into my pocket, and frowned in the direction of the bathrooms.
I couldn’t… have caused this, could I? That weird magical symbol carved into the back of the toilet door – it couldn’t have alerted those warlocks to something, right?
There was only one way to find out. I pushed toward the door.
Instantly one of the warlocks walked toward me. “Where are you going, ma’am? Our investigation isn’t over.”
I turned over my shoulder and smiled at her. “I’m heading to the bathroom. I’ll only be a couple of minutes. I’ll come straight back.”
Maybe my act was convincing, or this woman had bigger fish to fry and really didn’t want to waste her time chaperoning me to the loos. She nodded toward the door. “Don’t leave the building.”
“Of course not.” I walked away. Even if I wanted to leave the building, it wasn’t exactly an option. The place was swarming with police.
Which meant they’d be in the toilets too, right?
Just before disappointment could wash through me, I reached the ladies stalls and pushed in.
Fortunately my luck held out, and they were empty.
I walked straight to the second bathroom from the end. I opened the door, walked in, and stared.
I paled. The mark was gone. It wasn’t just gone, in fact – it looked as if it had never been there.
I jerked a hand up and ran my fingers over the position it had been in. There was nothing except for the faintest charge of magic.
Just as I started to disbelieve what I’d seen, I remembered I’d taken a photo of it. I shoved a hand into my pocket, pulled out my phone, and scrolled to the photo. There it was. A P and an M with an X through them.
“What the hell is going on here?”
I kept frowning at the position where the symbol had disappeared for several more seconds. I knew – or at least I strongly suspected – that this was evidence. And if I strongly suspected that it was evidence, I had every obligation to bring it to the police’s attention.
But… God, it sounded awful, but I didn’t sense an opportunity there. In fact, I got the impression that if I let the police know about this, all my opportunities to solve this case would end. And I wasn’t being selfish here – I didn’t honestly care if I was the one to solve it. My opportunity magic specifically told me that if I didn’t solve this, no one else would.
I tipped my head back, closed my eyes, and sighed. Instantly Max’s warning flooded in. An opportunity for me might not be an opportunity for others. There was… every possibility that I was lying to myself. Maybe I just really wanted to be the one to track this down. Maybe my suspicions about the police were unfounded. Maybe what I was doing here was goddamn illegal.
… But maybe none of that mattered. My opportunity magic was clear. It told me I had to keep this close to my chest.
I shook my head as I suddenly realized something. All those months ago when I’d met Max, I’d pretty much told him he was a criminal. I’d never understood how he could morally justify walking the line between good and bad.
Now? I understood completely. If I followed my opportunity magic now, I would be very much going against the law.
I remained there for several seconds, warring with my conscience, but my desire to solve this case won out.
I pressed forward, locked my palm against the location of the symbol, and asked a simple question. “Where did you come from?”
I was justifiably tired after that frenetic fight. Like I’d said earlier – me using warlock magic was far more taxing than me using finding magic these days. My bones were weary, and my muscles felt like jelly. But here I was asking myself to give more.
“Where did you come from? Are you important to my case?” I asked. Though I couldn’t get a clear reading on the first question, on the second question, I felt my finding magic react. I felt a great surge of energy chase through me, and it was so powerful, my shoulders shook. “You are important to my case,” I concluded through a tight breath. “How?”
Unsurprisingly, I couldn’t get a clear answer on that. A diffuse, confusing sensation picked up in my throat and chest and made me feel as if I’d swallowed a stone.
I sighed.
These were the wrong questions to ask, weren’t they?
So what were the right questions to ask?
I opened my mouth to cycle through them, but that’s when I heard the door opening.
I shrunk back from the door, leaving it ajar. Fortunately the toilet seat was already closed, so I sat down on it quietly.
“The similarities are eerie,” I heard a woman say.
“Come on, they’re not that close,” her friend objected.
“You weren’t there two-and-a-half years ago. They’re pretty damn close. Two elementals ported into a theater, one dirt and one heat, and they caused massive destruction.”
“I don’t see how that’s eerie. Plus, this is a restaurant, not a theater.”
“It suggests the same MO. If that bounty hunter can be believed, the way those two elementals fought was almost exactly the same. The heat one did the brunt of the damage while the dirt one waited for his opportunity.”
“But that case two-and-a-half years ago wasn’t a random attack. It was an assassination. Nobody was assassinated here. We don’t even know what they were after.”
“You don’t know the details of that case at all, do you?”
“I may not have been there, but I am familiar with it.”
“Familiar enough to know that the woman who was killed was the sister of the bounty hunter in there?”
I almost gasped. I locked a hand over my mouth and pressed it in hard as I realized why two-and-a-half years had been so important to me.
It had been two-and-a-half years since Josh’s sister’s murder.
“He is?”
“Yeah. And the similarities don’t end there. Sandra McIntosh worked for Maximus Knights. And Max was here tonight.”
“What are you suggesting? That these two elementals were here to what, finish the job? It’s been two-and-a-half years. Plus, why would these two elementals care?”
“We heard reports from the civilian warlocks who helped to subdue the heat elemental that the finder,” the woman’s voice changed, dropping down a few notches, “swore that the heat elemental had changed his appearance. That he was
a bounty she’d brought in only yesterday.”
They were both talking about me in awed tones – enough awe to make my back itch – but who really cared right now? The only thing that mattered was what they were discussing.
I was finally finding the details of this case. That realization pounded through me, and I kept my hand clasped over my mouth so I didn’t dare breathe a word and reveal my position, interrupting their conversation.
“That’s impossible. You must be mistaken. I mean what the hell are you suggesting? Someone would’ve had to break that elemental out of remand. Even then, we would’ve heard about it.”
“I don’t really know what I’m suggesting,” the first woman conceded. “But you have to admit weird stuff has been going down lately. Nothing feels right anymore,” she added, suspicion clearly marking her tone.
“This is just an unconscious reaction to the attack by the Cruze Gang. You haven’t had time to process it yet.”
“Is it? Weird shit was happening in the Justice Department long before that. Cases going missing, documents being altered – you name it. Even convicted criminals being let out and re-contracted.”
“Presumably all of that was to do with the Cruze plants. They’ve been removed now.”
“You can say what you want. This is strange.”
“There’s a difference between being strange and what you’re suggesting. What you’re suggesting is… some grand conspiracy. Now, can we please go to the loo? They’re going to start wondering where we are.”
Holy shit.
I had just learned so much. I slowly and carefully pulled my feet up until I was hugging them and no one would be able to see them underneath the toilet stalls.
When the women were done and left, I waited there a full three minutes until I snuck out. I unashamedly used my finding skills to ascertain when the coast was clear.
Then I made it back to the main room.
Everyone was so busy that no one had noticed I was gone.
No one but Josh. The warlock in charge had obviously finished questioning him.
As soon as I walked in, Josh nodded at me.
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