by D J DuMont
Willow’s eyes widened. “They destroyed themselves to avoid capture?”
Anjali nodded again, her expression looking more distraught with each new piece of information she shared with Willow. “Fortunately for us, the self-destruct sequence seems to have malfunctioned. We think that the magical shields our Agents had around themselves for protection interfered and kept the sequence from deploying correctly. In any case, it still killed the Dark Sparks that we’d briefly captured, but it didn’t fully destroy their jetpacks.”
Willow sat up straighter, her heart pounding. “So you were able to recover some information from the jetpack’s computers?”
Anjali actually cracked a small smile. “Yes, we were. That information is heavily encrypted, and the computers were still quite damaged even though they weren’t fully destroyed. I’m not sure whether we’ll be able to get anything useful, but if we get anything at all, it will be a help. We have so little information on Stein, and it’s worrisome how strong he seems to be getting.”
“But that still doesn’t explain how you know my father wasn’t there,” Willow pointed out.
“I was getting to that. We also found a simple audio player on one of the jetpacks. It was severely damaged but still workable, and it wasn’t encrypted at all. When we played the files, it was the exact recording of your father that had been playing when you flew up to attack Stein.”
Willow felt like a fool, but she wasn’t ready to completely concede. “Maybe my father was up there, too, in addition to the recording. Just because there was a recording doesn’t mean he wasn’t there as well!”
Anjali leaned back in her chair and rubbed her forehead. “We can’t say with one hundred percent certainty that he wasn’t there, but it doesn’t seem likely. The recording is exactly like the screams you heard. Stein clearly was using it as a ploy to draw Agents up toward the shield and away from the emergency bunker. Why would he actually have your father there and risk losing him, when he could just play the recording?”
Willow stuck out her chin stubbornly but said nothing. Anjali had a point, but she didn’t want to admit it.
Anjali leaned forward and gave Willow a sympathetic look. “I know it isn’t easy for you to hear all of this, but there is some good news.”
Willow raised a questioning eyebrow. She was so overcome with emotion at the moment that she didn’t dare to speak. She didn’t want to start actually crying in front of her professor. Thankfully, Anjali continued on without more prodding.
“The good news is that Stein has clearly realized how valuable your father is to the Agency. That means that he won’t harm him too severely. I won’t sugarcoat it for you. Stein will likely still mistreat your father and try to torture information out of him. But he won’t kill him. He’ll keep him in good enough condition that he can use him to play us. As long as Stein continues to think he’s valuable, your father will continue to live.”
Willow slumped in her chair. “Well, I’m glad to hear that, but you’ll have to forgive me if I’m not too optimistic right now. Stein no doubt has his best Dark Sparks guarding my father, and he probably won’t bring my father anywhere near an actual Dragon Heart Agency location. How are we supposed to make any progress on finding my dad? And how is Stein growing so much stronger? He got through that magic shield at the island in less than half an hour! He shouldn’t be able to get through it at all!”
Anjali’s eyes darkened. “We don’t know exactly how Stein has grown so powerful so quickly, but it’s clear that his ability to use magical capture and projection has greatly improved. This is a grave concern, but I cannot stress enough that you need to stay out of things and let Agency leadership handle it.”
Despite her resolve to be meek and agreeable, Willow made a face. Anjali noticed, and narrowed her eyes again.
“Willow, you have no idea how lucky you are that the President decided to champion your actions back at the island. If it hadn’t been for that, Agency leadership would have expelled all four of you on the spot. They take direct defiance of orders quite seriously, and I don’t need to remind you that this isn’t your first offense.”
Willow looked down at her hands again. Part of her knew that Anjali was right, but another part of her wanted to lash out and shout that she wouldn’t have had to defy orders if the Agency would actually put some effort into saving her father. In the end, she kept silent, but Anjali must have known what she was thinking. She looked sadly over at Willow and then stood, walking around the desk to put a hand on Willow’s shoulder.
“Look at me, Willow.”
Reluctantly, Willow looked up.
“I know that this isn’t easy for you, but you have to work within the parameters the Agency has set. You’ve become too hotheaded, and there are plenty of Agents at Headquarters who are ready to get rid of you without a moment’s hesitation at the first sign of the President not being impressed with you anymore.”
“You expect me to sit back and play nice while my father is being used and tortured by a man like Stein Viker?”
Anjali crossed her arms. “I expect you to be smart. And smart people know that sometimes, when you really want something, you have to make sacrifices in order to get it. Right now, the sacrifice you need to make is to play by the Agency’s rules. Lie low, work on mastering mental magic, and make sure you’re building a strong bond with Cayenne. Your mental magic and your dragon are your two biggest assets.”
“Two big assets that I’m never going to get to use,” Willow grumbled. “The Agency just sits around and waits for Stein to fall in their lap. That’s never going to happen. They need to go after him! Why don’t they do something?”
Anjali hesitated for a moment and furrowed her brow. Then she slowly walked around to sit behind her desk again. She leaned forward and gave Willow a very serious look. “I’m going to share something with you that I probably shouldn’t, but I think that knowing it will help you understand better why it seems that the Agency is doing nothing.”
Willow sat perfectly still, only moving to blink. Anjali wasn’t known for sharing more information than she had to, and Willow could see by the conflicted look on the professor’s face that she was wrestling with whether to tell Willow what was on her mind. Willow held her breath, hoping that Anjali would speak. The past few years had been so hard, and the past day had been absolutely unbearable. Willow needed some shred of hope, and she was hoping that Anjali was going to offer that to her.
“What is it?” she asked hopefully.
Anjali chewed her lower lip for a moment. “I’ll tell you, but you have to promise not to tell anyone else that I told you this. Not even Sylvie.”
Willow nodded. “Okay.”
If Anjali shared something truly big, it would be hard not to tell Sylvie. But if that was the price Willow had to pay to learn more about what was holding back the search for her father, then so be it. She would keep her mouth shut.
“We think that someone within the Agency is leaking information to Stein,” Anjali said, a grave expression on her face.
Willow’s jaw dropped. “But who? Who would do such a thing? Who would risk the consequences?”
Anjali shrugged. “That’s the question all of the higher-ups at the Agency are asking themselves right now.”
Willow shook her head slowly, trying to comprehend how anyone could be so foolish. Leaking Agency information to anyone outside of the Dragon Heart Agency was considered high treason. Anyone caught doing so would be subjected to severe punishment. They would be stripped of their magic, have their memory wiped, and be sent to maximum security prison for the rest of their life with no possibility of parole. There had only been one person in the history of the Agency who had dared to risk such punishment, and they had been caught within a week of when they started to leak information. The most senior Agents at the Dragon Heart Agency took every opportunity to remind all of the Dragon Heart Agents that treason was not tolerated.
It also wasn’t easy to get away with. The A
gency used powerful lie detector spells to keep its Agents honest. These spells weren’t plagued with inaccuracies the way traditional lie detectors were. Lie detector spells were nearly impossible to resist and, when performed by a master wizard, had nearly one hundred percent accuracy. Only the strongest, most talented of wizards would stand a chance of falsely passing a lie detector spell.
Willow frowned at Anjali, feeling confused by this whole situation. “Haven’t they done lie detector spells yet?”
Anjali nodded. “Yes. They’ve been systematically going through the ranks of wizards, but so far nothing has been found. The only wizards they have left to test are low ranking wizards or students. In other words, people who wouldn’t have much actual knowledge to give to Stein. It seems that the lie detector spells have failed.”
Willow looked up at Anjali in horror when she realized the implications of that statement. “Do you mean…”
She couldn’t even finish the sentence, but Anjali understood. “Yes,” the professor said wearily. “It’s highly likely that the mole is someone in the highest ranks of the Dragon Heart Agency. Only someone who is a very talented wizard with years of experience would be able to successfully resist a lie detector spell.”
Willow sat back, stunned. She understood now Anjali’s hesitation to tell her. This sort of treason was unprecedented, and if the majority of Dragon Heart Agents learned of what was happening, mass chaos was likely to follow. How could the Agents be expected to follow Dragon Heart leadership when one of those leaders was betraying them?
And then, another more troubling thought crossed Willow’s mind. How could she ever expect the Dragon Heart Agency to find her father until the mole was revealed? No matter how much work they put into searching for him, if a top Agent was following along behind them warning Stein, then Stein would always be one step ahead of the Agency.
For perhaps the first time since Willow had learned that her father was still alive, she felt truly hopeless. She jumped to her feet and started pacing back and forth across Anjali’s messy office.
“Something has to be done! We can’t just let someone leak Agency secrets. There must be a way to stop this!”
“Trust me, the Agency is trying. They’re watching everyone at the top like hawks, but so far all that has been accomplished is making everyone distrust everyone. It’s not a good situation, and the President is losing patience. In a way, it was good that you defied orders and impressed him. You gave him something to think about besides how the Agency can’t find the mole.”
Willow felt emboldened by this. She knew Anjali was still angry at her, and rightfully so. Things could have easily gone the other way, and the President could have been furious that she and the other students had flown up to fight Stein. The way things were going right now, the Dragon Heart Agency couldn’t afford any more of the President’s wrath.
But the President hadn’t been angry. And now, Willow wanted to do something to help find whoever was leaking information.
“There has to be more that can be done,” Willow said, waving her hands excitedly as she paced. “I can help. I can search the databases for unusual activity. I can review transcripts from lie detector spell sessions to see if anything sticks out. I can—”
“You can study hard and keep quiet about this,” Anjali interrupted in a tone that brooked no argument. “I am not technically authorized to reveal the information I’ve just revealed to you. I haven’t been forbidden from talking about it, but I can assure you that Agency Headquarters would not be pleased to know that I told a rebellious student about the bigger problems the Dragon Hearts are facing.”
Anjali’s tone was so severe that Willow didn’t dare argue. She sat back down slowly and stared over at Anjali, trying to figure out whether there was anything she might be able to say to change her professor’s mind.
But Anjali answered the question for her. “I don’t want to hear another word about this, do you understand? I don’t want you to try to come up with some creative way to convince me to let you help. And I certainly don’t want you going behind my back to try to convince someone at Headquarters to let you help. Do I make myself clear?”
Willow nodded, even though what she really wanted to do was to stand up and yell about how this was her father’s life at stake, and all the threats in the world couldn’t keep her from helping him.
But she’d caused enough trouble today, and she knew she wasn’t going to change Anjali’s mind.
That was alright, though. She had promised she wouldn’t try to convince Anjali to allow her to help, and she’d promised she wouldn’t go talk to Headquarters to ask to help. But if she just so happened to find useful information on her own, then surely, no one could fault her for that.
Could they?
Willow smiled sweetly at Anjali and assured her haggard-looking professor that she would head over to the Birch Point side of campus and wouldn’t cause any further trouble today.
And she wouldn’t.
But what Willow would do was find a way to start searching for the leak in the Agency. Whoever the mole was, they were not only putting everyone in the Dragon Heart Agency in danger, they were also keeping Willow from seeing her father—and Willow had had just about enough of being kept away from her father.
When she left Anjali’s office, the Dragon Heart building was quiet. With a glint in her eye, Willow decided to make a pit stop at the Dragon Heart library to grab a few books before heading to her dorm room on the Birch Point side of campus.
It was time to read up on lie detector spells.
Chapter Seven
While everyone else at Birch Point Academy spent their last weekend before the official start of classes in the rec room, hanging out, having fun, and avoiding anything that resembled work, Willow holed herself up in the library.
She didn’t want to use the library on the Dragon Heart Campus, because she was afraid Anjali would see her there and realize that she was studying lie detector spells. Anjali wasn’t stupid, and she would know in an instant that Willow was trying to find a way to discover who was leaking sensitive Dragon Heart Agency information. But Willow also had to be careful not to let any of the non-wizard students from Birch Point Academy see the spell book she was reading.
She was straddling two worlds, and not doing a very good job of it. But all she could do was continue moving forward as best she could. Her father was depending on her, and she had to find a way to help him. There must be something she could do.
Luckily, Willow had discovered a spot high up on the top floor of the Birch Point library where no one else ever went. The room looked like it was used to store out-of-date books, because the books up there were covered in thick dust and had copyright dates from decades past. A lone table and chair by a dirty window had also been covered in thick dust, but Willow had cleaned off the table and taken an entire bottle of Windex to the window until it sparkled like it was brand new.
Her efforts had been rewarded well. Not only did she have a private “office” of sorts, but that office had an incredible view. Willow was at the top of one of the tallest buildings on campus, and she could see the whole picturesque assortment of buildings, cobblestone pathways, and pristine forest beyond. The Dragon Heart campus wasn’t visible, but she knew it was out there, and she smiled at the thought of Cayenne happily resting in the meadow near the dragon stables.
Right now, the forest around campus was still green and lush, but in a few months time it would all be blanketed in white. Winter was coming, and Willow shivered at the thought. She’d been hoping her father would be back before the cold blew in this year, but things weren’t looking hopeful.
That wasn’t going to stop Willow from trying. She spent hours poring over the books she’d swiped from the Dragon Heart library, learning everything she could about lie detector spells. She wasn’t sure what exactly she was going to do with all of the information. In an ideal world, she’d be able to get her hands on the transcripts of conversations betwee
n Dragon Heart Agents and the wizards at Headquarters who were casting the lie detector spells. Perhaps there was something in those transcripts that would alert her to a problem. But she had no idea how to get her hands on those transcripts, and asking Anjali wasn’t an option.
What could Willow do now, except study and learn as much as she could? She had to have faith that she’d find a way to track down the leak, and that once that leak was stopped, her father could be rescued.
It was a tall order for a sixteen-year-old girl, but the adults at the Agency didn’t seem to be making much progress. It couldn’t hurt for Willow to try.
But her absence from pretty much every social event on campus didn’t go unnoticed. Willow tried to avoid talking to Sylvie, Locke, or Cara, and she definitely tried to avoid talking to Alexis, her non-wizard roommate at Birch Point Academy. But on the evening before classes started, Alexis managed to corner Willow as she was coming out of the library.
“You’re studying an awful lot considering the fact that classes haven’t even started yet.”
Willow had been looking down at the giant book on lie detector spells, reading while she was walking. She hadn’t expected anyone to be at the library at nearly nine p.m. on their last night of freedom. Everyone was down at the rec center, having a giant pizza party and intending to stay up way too late considering that school was starting in the morning.
When Alexis spoke, Willow nearly jumped out of her skin, then quickly attempted to hide the spell book.
“I’m just trying to get a head start on some…things,” she said in a flustered voice as she tried to shove the spell book into her backpack. The tablets they’d been issued were useful for hiding their regular class books, but unfortunately the older books—which was the majority of magic books—still weren’t available in electronic form.
Alexis stared suspiciously at the book, then crossed her arms and shook her head at Willow. “This is our third year rooming together. We’ve become such good friends, or, I thought we had at least. But you still hide this…this…whatever it is from me. Are you ever going to trust me?”