When I turned it over, I noticed a faint thumb print staining the reverse side. Whether or not the print was intentional, I could use it.
I showed the print to the others.
“Human oil,” I said. “It makes a strong agent for a hunting spell.”
I prepared the spell in the larger of the suite’s two bathrooms. It featured a jacuzzi tub and enough counter space for a small village. Plenty of floor space too. That’s where I sprinkled out two casting circles, one for the drink ticket and another for my own protection, featuring powerful protective sigils.
As I worked, I caught myself wondering about the young man who had given me the envelope. The same person who had called me that morning? That voice had belonged to a woman—unless he’d disguised his own. If so, who was he? How had he gotten my number? And why hadn’t he contacted me directly again?
Something about it didn’t add up, which put me on guard.
I stood within my protective circle and incanted until I felt power coursing through it. I then aimed the opal end of my cane at the ticket in the circle opposite me and spoke a second incantation. White light swelled from the gem. A moment later, a thin mist began to rise from the oil of the thumb print. It moved in a twisting path toward my gem, becoming absorbed into the hunting spell.
Now for your location, I thought.
Without warning, the ticket burst into flames—and then the entire bathroom.
I instinctively threw up a shield, but nothing manifested. Panicked, I looked down to make sure my protective circle was still intact. But I was standing on a black precipice, swollen rivers of fire leaping and thrashing on all sides.
Everything was fire. The land, the sky, the air crackling in and out of my lungs.
The power was violent and immense. For a dizzying moment, I hungered to control it, to bend it to my will. The magic I would be able to manifest … The people I would be able to protect … Vega, Tony, her family. The idea set off every nerve ending in my body as I burned with the need. It was reminiscent of my encounter with Sathanas two years before. I actually began pulling the fire into me before reason took hold.
Who in the hell am I kidding? The fire would eat me alive.
At that thought, the precipice began to crumble. I staggered back, but I was too slow. The ground disappeared, and I plummeted toward the raging rivers of molten.
“Disfare!” I shouted.
Energy detonated out in all directions, and I landed hard.
The bathroom took form around me, the tile floor hard and cool beneath my cheek. I pushed myself up to sitting. Sweat ran from my hair and soaked through my shirt. I stripped off my coat and sat panting, arms hugging my knees. I’d fallen out of the casting circle. My cane lay beside the jacuzzi, smoke drifting from the opal. In the other casting circle, the ticket had been reduced to ashes.
Crap.
Whether the defector had intended for me to use the ticket to track him or not, the efreet had built a literal firewall around their location. Oil, sweat, hair, a severed hand—it wouldn’t matter. No matter how potent the target material, nothing in my spell arsenal was going to be able to punch through that wall.
Hell, I’d barely made it back here.
I stood and paced the room on shaky legs. Brian and his Military Federation could be well into the ceremony to conjure Drage, and here I was in another bathroom.
I stopped and tried to listen to my magic. But it was still doing that head-nodding thing, telling me I was on the right track, that I had what I needed.
The hell I do, I shot back.
I pulled out my phone and dialed Claudius, but the call went immediately to voicemail. I left a message and then pulled the Upholders’ card from my shirt pocket. Arianna had said my first action shouldn’t be with them, but we were well beyond that. I looked at the card for another moment before dialing the phone number, Malachi’s I assumed. The line rang several times, but no one answered.
I clapped the phone closed.
“Fuck!” I shouted, sending the obscenity ringing off the walls.
Outside, I heard the murmurs of a conversation go quiet. A moment later, a soft knock sounded on the door. I turned to find Vega looking in. Her gaze went from the ashes in the casting circle to me.
“Everything all right?” she asked.
I waved her inside, and she closed the door behind her. “The hunting spell was a bust,” I confessed, dropping my phone back into a pocket. “The efreet set up a perimeter that I can’t get through. Just trying to figure out if there’s another way to know where they are. The Order’s still AWOL.”
Vega walked past me, brow furrowed in thought, and took a seat on the edge of the jacuzzi.
“I noticed you’re not wearing the pendant,” I said, unable to stop myself. The manic burst of relief at her being alive was tempering now, exposing an underlying annoyance at her for not holding onto the powerful protection.
She looked down at the place where the pendant would have been sitting. “I gave it to Tony last night.”
“Why?”
“A mother’s intuition,” she said, voice tight with defiance.
A part of me wanted to give her an earful. Instead, I sighed and took a seat beside her.
“Look, I get it,” I said. “You wanted more protection for Tony. But you left yourself vulnerable. What if that enchantment had been real? I wouldn’t have been able to do a damned thing. There’s no way I would have gotten back here in time.”
Her shoulder stiffened when I began to massage it, but it softened again. She leaned against me. “I didn’t mean to scare you, but as long as Arnaud’s out there, the pendant’s staying with Tony.”
“Fair enough. But what about you?”
“I have a 9mm duty weapon armed with silver rounds.”
Something told me that wouldn’t be enough, not against whatever Arnaud was becoming. I didn’t say that, though.
“What is that?” Vega asked.
I realized I was still holding the card from the Upholders, turning it over in my fingers, flipping between the phone number and the sigil. I thought about my meeting with Vega’s brothers, their demand that I quit seeing her.
I stopped turning the card. “An opportunity to protect you and Tony.”
Vega peered up at me, the skin between her eyebrows folding in question.
“I met with a group last night. They’re dealing with demon incursions and want to form a sort of mutual-protection organization. I help them, and they help me. Malachi’s involved. He was the acolyte at St. Martin’s when the demon lord possessed the vicar.” Vega nodded that she remembered. “His involvement gives the organization the backing of the interfaith community, and that means a spot in their safehouses. There are no more secure places in the cities. If I join, I can get you and Tony in.”
“What’s the catch?” Vega asked.
“Like I said, I help them, and they help me. But in that order.”
“So, you’d have to, what, bail on this thing with Brian and the efreet?”
“Not necessarily.” I remembered the face Malachi had made when Jordan spelled out the terms of the agreement, as if the druid were being unreasonable. It was something I had been revisiting a lot that day. “The others in the group may not like it, but I think I can convince Malachi to give us those spaces and let me complete my work here.” That was what I’d been hoping to talk to him about when I called him just now.
“I know that doubtful look in your eyes,” Vega said.
“Well, the agreement would be bonded by magic.” I indicated the sigil on the card with my thumb. “And if I’m wrong…”
“You could be pulled off this,” Vega concluded.
“Yeah.”
“Then forget it,” she said.
“Even if means protecting—?”
“We have a powerful instinct to protect our loved ones,” she cut in. “That’s natural. But so does everyone, Everson. If we start putting our priorities first, we’re abusing our pos
itions. Me as a sworn NYPD officer, and you as a member of the Order. Look, I want Tony to be safe more than anyone. But if there’s even a chance that getting him a place in a safehouse jeopardizes what we discussed in the other room, forget it. Could you live with that? The death, the destruction, the rampant fear? All because we put something of ours first? I couldn’t. And that’s something my brothers will never understand.”
I cracked a smile.
“What?”
I kissed her and slipped the Upholder’s card back into my shirt pocket. “I think that’s exactly what I needed to hear. But now comes the hard part. Figuring out where Brian and the efreet went.” I could feel the clock ticking on the dragon conjuring, the efreet taking form, the demonic race to reach it…
“Doesn’t your teacher keep telling you to listen to your magic?” Vega asked. “What’s it saying?”
I tuned in to it again. “That I have everything I need.”
“Then I’ll get the others ready,” Vega said, standing.
“But I don’t know what in the hell it’s talking about.”
“You will,” she said simply, and closed the door behind her.
I stood, wishing I had Vega’s confidence in me. But she was also telling me I needed space to think, something I’d had precious little of since being awakened by the anonymous caller that morning.
Still on the edge of the jacuzzi, I bowed my head and replayed the call in my mind, listened to the voice. It belonged to a woman, not a man disguising his voice. I was sure of that now. There were women in Brian’s Military Federation, but the person who had given me the envelope had been a man. A different person, in other words.
I replayed that moment, watching the flicker behind the young man’s vacant eyes. I then considered Vega’s question about why Brian hadn’t been able to cast against me that morning.
“Unless they were the same,” I whispered.
My magic stopped moving and gave a pair of hard nods.
I stood suddenly, grabbed my coat from the floor, and dug in the pocket until I was holding the envelope again. What if the point of giving me the envelope hadn’t been the drink ticket, but the manifesto?
I unfolded the single sheet of paper and turned it over to the blank back.
I drew a lighter from my pants pocket. Holding my breath, I thumbed the wheel.
The flame glowed through the paper. Several seconds passed before something began to happen.
“Well, I’ll be damned,” I said.
30
I emerged from the bathroom, holding up the manifesto triumphantly. Vega, Mae, Bree-Yark, and Stan met me at the table in the center of the suite, where I set the manifesto down to display the writing on the back. Tabitha, who had turned half the table into her personal lounging area, sauntered over for a closer look.
“What is this?” Stan asked.
“The Military Federation of the Dragon’s schedule for the con,” I replied. “But made invisible to the uninitiated. Brian used the same technique in the final section of his spell book. It can only be revealed by fire. They had events scheduled for both days—meetings and ‘validations,’ they called them—all of it culminating in this.” I tapped the last item on the schedule.
“‘The New Dawn,’” Vega read.
Stan nodded fervently. “That’s the summoning of Drage.”
I moved my finger down the page. “And we have an address.”
“That’s an old quarry up in West Nyack,” Vega said. “About thirty miles from here.”
“How fast can the NYPD get us there?” I asked.
“I’ll call in some helos,” she said, pulling out her phone. “They can have us up there in ten.”
While Vega made the call, I considered the location. “Quarry makes sense,” I remarked. “Concealed, but plenty of room.”
“And they’re going to need it,” Stan put in. “Do you know how big Drage was? We’re talking the size of a city block.”
“Well, the idea is not to let them get that far,” I said.
Mae shifted uncomfortably. “What about the efreet? If it’s working for Brian…”
“Actually, I’m pretty sure we’re on the same side.”
The others looked at me quizzically. Even Tabitha tilted her head.
“The person who called me this morning and the person who gave me this”—I indicated the schedule—“were different. But I believe they were both under the control of the efreet. Though efreets can’t challenge their masters outright, they’re constantly looking for ways to undermine them. Powerful sorcerers knew this and put fail safes in place before summoning the efreet. But even if he’d had that kind of foresight, Brian didn’t have the power. Just his charisma. I think he realized the efreet had phoned someone,” I said, remembering the second voice I’d heard in the background of that morning’s call. “I think he put stricter controls on its contact with people. The efreet could no longer communicate with me, but it was able to give me the program with the secret schedule.”
“What do you mean by being on the same side?” Bree-Yark asked.
“More an overlapping of interests. If the efreet kills Brian, it will go to sleep, but still be bonded to the phylactery. The efreet wants to be permanently freed, and it sees me as the best path. It probably tapped into Brian’s mind to learn about me in the first place, then used his computer skills to find my number.”
Vega ended her call, but had had an ear on our conversation, apparently. “Even so, what’s to stop Brian from ordering it to attack you?”
“It ignored Brian’s order to attack me at the session this morning,” I pointed out.
“And you don’t think Brian made sure that wouldn’t happen again?”
“It’s a risk I’ve considered, but with the efreet seeing me as an asset, it’s going to pull every stop to help me help it. And again, Brian’s no sorcerer.”
Vega’s expression told me she was only half reassured. “The helos will be here in five. Because there are officers involved, the NYPD wants in. I’ve already told them this is a supernatural case,” she quickly added, before I could argue about their inclusion. “I’ll keep them out of your way.”
That relaxed my shoulders a little. The last thing I needed was for the NYPD to try to take the lead on this. I looked over my team. My mind was already coming up with reasons for why I didn’t need them on the final push—until I remembered what Vega had said about my habit of going it alone.
One person—or wizard—can only shoulder so much.
She seemed to have been following my train of thought, because she looked at me pointedly and cocked her head toward my teammates.
“All right,” I said to the group. “Who else is in?”
Bree-Yark raised a hand. “Just need to stop off at the Hummer for some more ordnance.”
Mae’s hands wrung the handle of her carrier. It was the having to fly part.
“Look, Mae, I’ll understand if—”
“No,” she said, looking up. “I don’t know what I can do to help, but I didn’t know what I’d be able to do at Yankee Stadium either. And like I said then, I’m an old woman who’s only going to get older sitting around. I’m in too.”
“Good,” I said. “Tabitha? I could use you on demon watch.”
She responded to the sudden attention with her irritated face.
“You’ve come this far,” Mae pointed out.
“Yeah, and I still owe you a dinner for doing lunch today,” Bree-Yark put in.
“Fine,” Tabitha huffed, then turned to me. “But I’m off ledge duty for the next month.”
“Fair enough.” I gathered my things. “Let’s move out.”
“Hey, what about me?” Stan asked.
I stopped near the doorway and waved the others past. Stan had stood from the table. Even though he had to be pushing sixty, he wore the expression of a child who hadn’t been picked to play kickball.
“It’s going to be a scene,” I said.
“And I’ll
just be one more person in the way.”
There was no point sugar-coating it. “Yeah. But you got us to this point. The info on Brian, Cameo, the gauntlet, Drage, the Military Federation of the Dragon. Vital, vital stuff. The fae enchantment was kind of screwed up…”
He snorted. “I guess that was kind of screwed up. Probably not worth the five years off my life either.”
“You gave them five years?”
“Each. So, actually fifteen.”
I whistled.
“Yeah,” he agreed.
At that moment, a stocky woman pushed past me, her face red as a ham. “I leave the con for thirty minutes, and I come back to this?” she screamed. “The sessions are derailed! The hotel’s a mess! There’s talk of monsters and murder and mass illusions! Attendees are leaving! What in the hell have you been doing?
I raised a hand to Stan. “Hey, ah, it sounds like you have some things to take care of here.”
He gave me an aggrieved look but waved for me to go ahead. I closed the door on more screaming. No wonder he’d wanted plausible deniability.
I was hustling to catch up to the others when my phone rang. I fished it out of a pocket.
“Claudius,” I answered, recognizing the number. “Just the person I was hoping to talk to.”
“Yes, Everson, I’m so sorry. I received your message, but I’ve been getting so many. I think it all caught up to me, and I, well, I fell asleep.”
“Any word from the Order?”
“Nothing lately. I’m starting to get a little worried, Everson. I—”
“All right, don’t worry about them right now,” I cut in. “I need you for something.”
He stopped suddenly, as if I’d smacked the top of his head. “You mean, you’d like me to pass on a message?”
“No, Claudius, I need you.”
“Me? Whatever for?”
“Just listen.”
“What do you want me to do?” the cabbie asked.
Arnaud shifted in the backseat for a better look. Something was happening. Two blocks ahead, beyond a police barricade, helicopters were setting down on the street in front of the Centre Hotel. This must have been what the wizard and detective were involved in. Arnaud stiffened.
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