Come, Seeling Night

by Daniel Humphreys

  A wizard’s life is a thing of wonder, truly.

  Carlos found the situation hilarious, and while his wife was mildly disapproving, she let it slide. Karen still didn’t stop trying to set me up, though after the Becca experience I was much firmer in refusing.

  I tapped out a quick text, crossed my fingers, and hit send.

  Hey, it’s Duffer. I lost my phone and all my contacts. Do you still have Becca’s number?

  If there was anything I was worse at than dating, it was golf. I hoped that Karen remembered the nickname Carlos had bestowed upon me the first time we hit the links and put two and two together.

  All I could do now was wait. Tucking the new phone in my jacket pocket, I deposited my trash and headed out the door. I should have felt safe, but sitting steel made me feel antsy. Roxanne had taken an empty seat among a trio of college-aged girls, but when she saw me leaving she stood and transitioned to my side in a blur of speed. That was interesting—later, maybe we could experiment and see what sort of limits she had on her freedom of movement. She might be more helpful than I thought.

  As I walked up on the bike, I considered the Arizona license plates with newly-paranoid eyes and winced. Like my driver’s license, they linked to Kent and Jean’s home address. If I got pulled over, hit a red-light camera, or even had the plate run on a routine check, that would surely throw up a red flag somewhere. I added ‘swap license plate’ to my to-do list, and wondered where I’d find an opportunity to do so. On the bright side, I could manage it while invisible if I was careful how I handled the swap.

  What’s the plan, now?

  “Trying not to become more paranoid than I already am, to be honest,” I joked. With a shrug, I added, “Holding pattern. If I can find out what happened to my friends, I—” The phone buzzed in my pocket.

  I tried not to whoop as I read the text. There was a reason I liked to tease Carlos that his wife was the brains of the operation.

  Been wondering how you were, Duff. Let me see if I have her number somewhere.

  “Way to go, Karen,” I said. “Tell me you’ve got a burner laying around, girl.” There practically had to be one, the agency collected cell phones like some people collected stamps. Whether to loan out to contract workers or to manage less above-board endeavors, they were all over the place in the agency’s office.

  The wait was unbearable, though it was no more than a minute or two. My phone buzzed with a new notice, from a number I didn’t recognize with a San Diego area code.

  My hair’s about to turn the same color as yours over here. What the hell is going on?

  “That’s not good,” I muttered. The air near my cheek grew colder, and I realized Roxanne was reading over my shoulder. Well, at least I was in good company.

  You tell me—I was tied up for a few days and I can’t find anyone. Have you heard from any of them?

  They tied you up?

  “Figure of speech. I don’t think Division M will have this line tapped, but who knows.”

  Karen responded. C told me K’s house was on fire, that was the last I heard.

  “Damn,” I said. They were taking the RV back, but I hoped they didn’t get caught up in the mess.

  It had been a desperate hope, but it was one that I’d clung to. The reality of my situation hit me. No tracking spell, no clues as to the whereabouts of my friends—I was back to square one. A wave of despair rolled over me, and I tried not to scream in frustration.

  Karen—We’ll figure it out. I’ll talk to some of Scope’s friends.

  I debated how much to say. Surely they already had her under observation. Who knew how little, or how much, it would take for them to swoop in and move her to a secret prison as they’d done with me?

  “Screw it,” I said. Ask them if they know what Division M is.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Valentine—Tuesday afternoon

  Washington, DC

  It didn’t feel right to sit behind Director Newquist’s desk, so Val set up shop in one of the conference rooms. If anyone had any problems with it, too bad.

  He’d passed most of the director’s day to day work off to his executive assistant Claudia. Val didn’t want to get bogged down in the minutiae of expense approvals, incident reports, and memos. He had enough on his plate with the hunt for the Lockes and the investigation into the perpetrator behind the bombing of the Menagerie.

  If there was a bright side to the near-total destruction of their primary base on the East Coast, it was that few of the prisoners in the underground facility had managed to escape. Falling debris crushed the majority of the detainees, but at least they weren’t roaming through suburban Virginia wreaking havoc.

  Val was of two minds on that. Their most dangerous prisoners merited a transfer to The Pit under Guantanamo Bay or summary execution under the Executive Order covering sapient non-human entities—NHEs—in place since the Coolidge administration. The creatures in the Menagerie were there for a reason. Not innocent, per se, but not definitively guilty, either. Certainly not deserving of being flattened by tumbling concrete. He was far angrier about the loss of experienced agents and friends.

  Sorting through piles of paper, he collated Helen Locke’s material into a stack and set it aside. As much as he loathed the thought, she needed to go on the back burner until she popped back on the radar. If Morgan’s instincts were right—and in his experience they usually were—they had a temporary reprieve until she rejoined their timeline.

  Morgan was on a plane to Europe first thing in the morning. Depending on how things went, Val hoped for some sort of lead there by the beginning of next week. The forensic crew hadn’t found much of anything to work with at the actual site of the explosion, but they had found some very interesting traces in Kristin Hughes’ townhouse. As soon as Eliot got out of the hospital, Val planned to let him take a look around. When it came to tracking cryptids or NHEs, his partner was even more effective than Morgan’s spinning needle. If the suspected succubus was still in the States, she was a dead fiend walking.

  Which left Paxton Locke as the current burr in his saddle. While Morgan’s reasoning had allayed some of the suspicions he’d felt since first speaking to the kid in the hospital, the seeming ease with which the wizard had not only escaped but continued to evade capture annoyed and frustrated him. Nothing in any of their background information gave any indication that he possessed the skills needed to avoid capture.

  “You can’t mind control a surveillance camera, damn it,” he muttered. “Where are you?” It was bad enough knowing that he might blown their best chance to stop Helen Locke. Not being able to find that chance to try and make amends was even worse.

  Division M was limited in what active measures they could use to track the younger Locke. He wanted to keep Morgan’s tracking device keyed on Helen, and they didn’t have another one to use for someone else. Something we need to rectify at some point.

  Someone tapped on the door to the conference room, and he looked up. Claudia stood in the doorway. He’d known her long enough to read the expression on her face as one of worry. “What’s up?” Val said.

  “We just got a call from Senator Weeden’s office. The oversight committee would like you to attend a meeting in an hour.”

  He groaned. “Of course they do. Just when I thought things couldn’t get any worse. Do you still have them on the phone?”

  “Yes, I do, Dir—Agent Valentine.”

  Val smiled, just a little. “He’s going to pull through, Claudia. I’m just trying to keep the plates in the air until he gets back. Tell them I’ll be there.”

  She returned the smile and said, “Will do, sir.”

  Left to himself once more, he rested his elbows on the conference table and massaged his temples. On the bright side, he didn’t have to go to Capitol Hill. Those buildings had wards, but they weren’t as dense as the secure meeting room in Division M’s section of ATF.

  The politicians were coming to him, but that didn’t make the situatio
n any better. Something told Val they were about to breathe down his neck, and hard.

  Paxton—Tuesday afternoon

  Phoenix, Arizona

  I didn’t know what to do while I waited for Karen to get back with me, so I just rode. Most of the roads in Phoenix were ruler-straight, and it would have been easy to zone out if not for the traffic. That, I supposed was the downside of such far-flung urban sprawl—everyone was on the roads. I’d rather have been out in the middle of nowhere, maybe a small town, but then again, those were the worst sorts of places to hide, weren’t they?

  Eventually, my surroundings struck a familiar note, and I took a turn as I realized I was nearing a dump site where Tlaloc’s followers had left one of their victims. At this time of day, Desert Storm Park was empty save for an elderly dog walker doing a loop around the walking path. After parking the bike, I strolled through the grass to one of the tiered benches and sat down.

  The place looked as though a giant ice cream scoop had taken a chunk out of the land and landscaped the rim. The benches lined one wall of the inverted dome, pointing toward the grassy bottom. I wasn’t there to look at anything, particularly—I hadn’t found much even when it had been a fresh crime scene, but it was a peaceful place to wait and think.

  “I was here last week,” I said to Roxanne as she walked by. Rather than sit, she pretended to tip-toe along the edge of the bench. I guessed she was amusing herself—I didn’t think ghosts could fall. “Long story short, guy found an imprisoned Aztec demon and made a deal with it. Got a cult and a bunch of followers out of the deal. All it cost him was a few human sacrifices.” Not to mention his life.

  Roxanne turned around, looked at me, then looked out over the park. The light of the midday sun passed through her, ever-so-slightly, and lent her a more ethereal appearance than she’d had when I’d found her last night. It’s a little past the point where I can learn from my mistakes.

  “No lecture,” I shrugged. “Just making conversation.”

  You seem worried.

  “Well, yeah. Finding my friends was the quickest way to figure out what Mother had planned for Cassie and the grimoire. You still don’t remember anything?”

  I don’t, no. Sorry.

  “It is what it is.” I thought for a moment. “Focus on what you can remember. Maybe you heard something, and just didn’t think anything of it at the time. What did you do between busting Mother out of prison and coming here?”

  She sat down now, crossing her legs with a thoughtful expression. We spent the first the first couple days going to long-term storage facilities. She—Helen, umm…

  Amused, I said, “You can say her name. She’s not Voldemort.”

  Roxanne cocked her head. You like Harry Potter?

  “How old do you think I am? I’m only twenty-six.” I waved a hand. “Go ahead.”

  Helen was pretty angry. She had stashed a lot of things—spells and magic items—for a day when she might need them, but Division M found them. When Melanie first wrote her, we went to a few that weren’t too far away and found one that wasn’t broken into, but it didn’t have much.

  I thought about Melanie carrying the Edimmu under her skin like a messed-up talking tattoo, and her trio of cloned familiars. If that wasn’t much, Mother must have managed to steal a lot more using her connections than I’d feared. “After that?”

  She said we needed protection, so we went to the University of Iowa. I had a…friend who went there, and I visited him once. It seemed strange, but if I had to describe it I’d say Roxanne looked almost embarrassed. It was kind of a two birds with one stone thing, you know? We needed protection, and I knew where we could get some big, strong jerky guys.

  I closed my eyes. “Familiars,” I said. That explained the mess on the back of the RV. “How many?”

  We each took two—well, not Helen.

  I winced. Melanie had used a spell to literally divide her boyfriend into identical triplets. While the magic had replenished the lost body weight, it hadn’t done the same to intellect. Uno, Dos, and Trace, as she’d called them, each had the mental acuity of a short-tempered Doberman with twice the loyalty. I didn’t look forward to another fight with familiars like that without a shotgun or two. “So you had nine, plus the four of you?” Roxanne frowned, and I worried I’d gone too far. She had to have known about Melanie’s demise during our encounter, but it probably wasn’t very diplomatic to bring that up. Attempting to redirect the question, I added, “You said Mother didn’t take one. Why?”

  Roxanne shuddered. She did something to one of the sorority girls at the party. Sucked out her youth, or her beauty, even. Helen called it a Bathory spell. When she finished, she looked twenty years younger, and stacked. The ghost gave me a wary look, and continued, She promised she’d teach it to me.

  Unsure how to respond, I said, “I see.” Mother had always been a master manipulator, alternately using charm or rage to take the easy route through life. As a child, the emotional ups and downs were confusing until I understood her act. I still wonder why my dad stuck around. He was smart enough to recognize her ways, and while we never discussed it, I felt before he died that we shared some silent understanding that we needed to walk on eggshells through a nitroglycerin plant when it came to Mother. Roxanne must have made for an easy mark—dangle the temptation of eternal beauty and watch her dance. Suddenly sick to my stomach, I shook my head and grimaced. “Damn it, Mother.”

  You must think we were pretty stupid.

  I shrugged. “She’s good at telling people what they want to hear. You’re not the first. If I have anything to say about it, you’ll be one of the last. What next?”

  Roxanne told her story, and I listened, mostly silent. I asked a few questions here and there, but for the most part it was a linear progression. In a strange way, each stop Mother and her coven had made mirrored my own checklist. The thought of an illicit magic shop in San Francisco piqued my interest, but given Roxanne’s description of the carnage they’d wrought, I doubted there’d be anything left.

  The one thing I now knew was that Mother had refused to give the girls any details about her ultimate plan save for cryptic comments about ‘saving the world.’ As far-fetched as that seemed to me, Roxanne and the others had drunk enough of the Kool-Aid to go along for the ride. Until it cost them their lives.

  “And here we are,” I said.

  Here we are, she agreed. What now?

  I leaned my head back and looked to the sky. “I’m open to suggestions,” I said. For a pregnant pause, I half-hoped that the entity that liked to wear my dad’s face would pop in for a lecture, but no such luck.

  My phone buzzed with an incoming text, and I dug it out.

  Talked to Gordo. He says those guys are bad news.

  “You don’t say, Karen,” I muttered. Gordo was a retired SEAL and part-time military contractor that worked the odd job here and there for the De La Rosas. No kidding, I replied.

  I’m serious, Duffer. He didn’t even want to talk about it. He looked SCARED.

  That gave me pause. Gordo and I were about the same height, but he had biceps the size of my thighs. I’d worked a few cases with him back in the day before I went out on my own, and the dude could probably bench press a Volkswagen.

  He, Scope, and a few others had kept some drug dealers at bay while a ghost led me to some kidnap victims the bangers were holding for ransom. Back before I’d figured out how to use my magic to defend myself, I’d appreciated rough and tumble types with machine guns watching my back.

  I could use that sort of thing right about now. Stifling a laugh, I replied, I get you. What does he think I should do?

  Karen must have had the reply queued up and ready to send: Come home. We can figure out the next step from here.

  I tossed the idea around. I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was running away, but at the same time, I was also running to something close to safety. Between Karen, Gordo, and everyone else who was out of Division M’s hands, I’d have s
ome backup.

  Surrendering to the inevitable, I replied, OK.

  Chapter Twenty

  Valentine—Tuesday afternoon

  Washington, DC

  The Mystical Affairs Oversight Committee didn’t get much air time on C-SPAN, for obvious reasons.

  Val walked into the warded conference room ten minutes early. He wasn’t surprised to see that seven men awaited him, sitting in a row on the opposite side of the table from the door. Great, they’re playing games.

  The group was, by tradition, a mixture of senior Senators and Representatives—three of each—along with a Presidential appointee. In Val’s experience, this was a good thing. The lack of publicity meant that the committee members couldn’t grandstand in front of the cameras to raise public awareness for legislative efforts or future campaigns. For better or worse, anyone in this room—other than Val, of course—was here for reasons other than raising their public profile.

  Deputy Attorney General Perez, the current Presidential appointee, sat in the center of the row, and he nodded to Val. “Have a seat, Agent Valentine.”

  “Sirs,” he replied, taking the offered seat. He resisted the urge to doff his suit coat. He still carried his holstered sidearms, and he didn’t want to make any of the men across the table antsy.

  He studied their faces as he waited for someone to speak. Other than Representative Lucas of Indiana, there was a lot of gray hair and wrinkles trying to stare him down. Ironically enough, he was a hell of a lot older than every one of them, and in no way intimidated by such things as political power.

  Senator Weeden, a balding, bespectacled fellow from Iowa, leaned forward. “First of all, how’s the Director?”

  “He’s out of intensive care, but they’re keeping him in a medically-induced coma. Still touch and go.”

  “Damn shame,” Weeden said. “We called this—”