by Ella M. Lee
“Then we have to assume malicious intent,” Sylvio said.
Cameron nodded.
Daniel put his face in his hands for a moment, rubbing the bridge of his nose. He looked at me.
“I wonder...” he said idly. “Fi, what watch has Nico been wearing? The light one, with the tan strap? Or dark, like mine?” He held up his own wrist with his watch.
“He’s been wearing the light one a lot,” I said. “It’s new and he likes it.”
“Nicolas only wears three watches,” Dan said. “The blue one he’s had forever, and it’s chipped with a tracking device. That’s the one that’s still here in the clan house. He also has a black one, but it can’t be chipped because of its design. And then his new watch, the light one, that he got a week ago.”
Teng shook his head. “I don’t have the tracking for that.”
“I know,” Daniel said. “But the tracker is there. I installed it. Nicolas just hasn’t activated it yet. But… it can be activated remotely. If he were in trouble, he could activate it and hope we’d pick it up.”
Daniel grabbed his own laptop and typed something frantically. “I’m sending you something, Teng.”
I looked at Sylvio, who was waiting expectantly. Teng and Daniel exchanged a few more words, so highly technical that I didn’t understand them. After a few more agonizing moments, Teng spoke.
“Got it,” he said, pulling up another address. I read it over his shoulder and furiously typed it into the map program.
“Thank you, Nico,” Daniel murmured, still studying his laptop.
“Ha Wun Yiu,” I said. “Basically, in Tai Po. It’s likely a small apartment building or house.”
“So we have three locations. Wu Tip Shan, the location of the Tesla. Tai Hang, the location of the phone and access card. And Ha Wun Yiu, the location of the watch that we think Nicolas is wearing,” Daniel said. “My tentative guess is that someone forced the Tesla to stop and grabbed Nicolas. They scanned him for trackers and dumped anything that could give away his location along the way as they moved south. They ended up in Ha Wun Yiu with him and the watch, which at the time didn’t have an active tracker, and probably didn’t seem suspicious to them.”
“We can’t know for sure,” Sylvio said. “Any of these locations might be important, or none of them.”
“I think we’ve forgotten one important thing,” I said. “You can’t just grab Nicolas. He’s not a normal human. He’s not even a normal magician. You can’t take him out easily.”
“If he’s prepared, sure, there’s no way anyone could win against him,” Daniel said. “But caught off guard? He’s better than average, but even the best can be overcome when surprised.”
“So what now?” I asked.
All of our eyes went to Daniel. If I hadn’t been feeling so scared for Nicolas, I would have felt scared for Dan. He was a commander now, and he needed to make this decision for the rest of us. I didn’t envy his position.
“We split up. We’re going to form teams and go to each location. Fiona, bring up the group schedule. Who do we have?” he asked.
“Okay, let’s see…” I said, scanning the current calendar. “Obviously the five of us here are free. Irina is free. Ryan should be free as well. Athena is free. Farhad is gone, and Keisha is gone, so no portals. Chandra is busy, too.”
“Call Irina and Ryan, get them here, tell them to prep for a recovery,” Daniel said, pointing at Cameron and Sylvio respectively. “I’ve got Athena.”
“Should we call in more help? One of Nicolas’s allies?” I asked.
Daniel and Sylvio exchanged a look. “No,” Daniel said. “Nicolas doesn’t have any allies close enough to bring in for something this sensitive. The last thing we need is for it to get out that Nicolas is missing.”
Daniel brought the phone to his ear. I compiled my address information and sent it to Teng while listening to Daniel on the phone. After he hung up, he stood.
“I’ll be right back,” Dan said. “Wait for all of us to get here, and then I’ll explain. In the meantime, Teng, get a secure chat channel going for us and share the addresses and information across it.” He bounded from the room.
I went to Teng, double-checking his list of names and our current information. I scanned his list, trying to focus.
It kept my mind occupied. Otherwise, I would be too worried. For Nicolas to fall off the grid… I didn’t want to think about what that might mean. He was the strongest commander I had ever met. Who could surprise him and corner him?
I thought about how I had left things between us, so uncertain. I didn’t want something terrible to have happened to him without a resolution.
I didn’t want anything terrible to happen to him at all.
Maybe that told me something about my feelings, about where my heart stood on the matter. I had never been more panicked than I felt right now, not even about my own life. I could barely breathe. Maybe Dan was right, and these feelings could teach me not to overthink.
Ryan arrived first, dressed sharply in a fitted black suit, no tie. He was armed with several knives under his jacket, and he was holding a pair of sleek gloves and a stack of three small black zipped cases.
Irina came next. She, too, was all in black, her hair slicked back into a bun. She went to sit next to Cameron. I clenched my jaw and avoided her gaze. There was no time for me to be annoyed at her for driving a wedge between me and Nicolas.
Athena and Daniel arrived together. Dan was also in all black, his T-shirt taut across his chest, a large knife at his thigh.
He took a seat, pressing his hands together.
“Everyone roll call in the secure channel that Teng has set up. We’re going to stay in contact that way,” he said.
We all pulled out our phones to check our connections as he launched into a succinct explanation of what we had discovered, covering it in chronological order.
“Here’s the deal,” Dan said. “Teng will be running things from here. Athena, stay with Teng, provide him with any operational support he requires. Ryan and Irina, you’ll be headed to the location of the Tesla. Sylvio and Cameron, you’ll be headed to the location of the phone. Fi and I will go to Nicolas’s suspected location based on his watch’s tracker. All relevant information is in the channel.
“When you get to your location, your primary goal is to recover Nicolas. If he is not there—and I don’t expect that he will be at the car or phone locations—you are to recover his possessions and search the area for more data. Stay in contact with our channel and route specific requests through Teng.
“Fi, Syl, go get changed and ready. Fi, grab the keys to the Audi from Nico’s apartment. Ryan, you’ll take Irina in your car. Back here in five minutes.”
Everyone got up. Daniel followed me out the door and grasped my arm. His look was immensely serious. “Can you handle this, Fi?”
I was shaking. “Yes. I love him, and we’re going to get him back.”
“Can you work with Irina?” he asked.
“Yeah, sure, whatever. This isn’t about her, and I don’t care about what happened right now.”
Dan studied me for a moment before nodding. “Okay. Go.”
This will be fine, I told myself. Daniel is leading it. Daniel wouldn’t let anything happen to Nicolas.
This had to be fine. I couldn’t pour any more energy into worrying. Daniel needed me with him. Nicolas needed our help. I had to keep it together and follow orders for now. We would find Nicolas, alive, and get him home. I had zero doubts that Daniel and I could handle whatever we faced.
I would figure out the rest later, under less duress.
I dressed in black, braiding my hair and arming myself with two knives. When I arrived back at Teng’s apartment, Daniel motioned for me to hand the car keys to Sylvio.
“Fiona,” Ryan said, getting my attention. He held out one of the small zippered pouches. In it were several odd objects: two tiny metal discs, five pieces of metal that looked like toothpicks, a small
black marble, a small red marble, and something that looked like a thumbtack. He pointed to each thing in succession.
“Nicolas will be almost certainly be shackled,” he said. “To free him, press one of these discs to the seam on each shackle, and they’ll open. If you need to get through a shield, use one of these picks. You can just shove it directly into a shield at any point. The black marble will suppress or destroy any magic it comes into contact with. You can throw it at things or press it against things. The red marble is a magic grenade. Send a hint of Water magic into it, and you have three seconds before it explodes. The thumbtack is a reviver. If Nicolas is unconscious or otherwise being kept subdued by magic, press this into his skin anywhere.”
He zipped up the kit and handed it to me. I took it with surprised hands. “You made all of this? That’s amazing.”
He smiled tightly. “Thanks. I’d prefer we didn’t have to use any of it, but I’d rather we all be prepared. These are the types of tools that have been useful in the past.”
It had never occurred to me that anything bad could happen to a member of my new family, and now my heart was shattering with worry.
It’ll be fine, it’ll be fine, it’ll be fine, I chanted to myself, following Dan out the door with shaking steps.
Chapter 21
“How are we getting to Ha Wun Yiu?” I asked Daniel as we crossed the street toward the garage.
“My car. It’s a little less conspicuous than any of Nico’s cars.”
I didn’t know he owned a car. Usually he drove one of Nicolas’s fancy sports cars. He took us up to the third floor, where he unlocked a demure dark-gray Lexus IS-F and ordered me in with a tilt of his head.
It was still a surprisingly fast car, and we were out of the building and pulling onto the highway within thirty seconds. I could see Sylvio driving the Audi ahead of us. I didn’t know what car Ryan was driving, but I imagined he and Irina were well on their way too.
It was ten minutes before Dan pulled off the main road and down a side street.
“Fi,” he said, “request an updated tracker location from Teng.”
Daniel crawled the car down a side street and into some undergrowth. Teng confirmed that the location hadn’t changed. I plugged the coordinates into my map app, and once the car was parked, leaned over to show Daniel. He studied it for a minute, looking around us periodically to get his bearings. The location was a building roughly one hundred yards behind us.
“We have a slight advantage, Fi,” he said. “I lived in this area for a little while. We’re going to walk closer to the site and take a look at the building. Between the two of us, we should be able to get a read on who is inside, if anyone.”
I called up our secure group channel and sent an update.
Fiona: On site, approaching location.
“Activate your block-sync,” Daniel said.
I watched as he activated his own, all of his beautiful magic going dark in my vision. I knew it was still there and usable, but it unnerved me nonetheless. I touched my own ring, nervously twisting it around my finger again and again.
Daniel left the keys in the car. We walked rapidly toward the building using my phone as a guide. It was night. The area was dark and quiet, mostly rundown and abandoned.
The building we had identified was a shabby two-story house made of dingy white stucco, with a tiny iron balcony at the back and laundry hanging from a clothesline that looked like it had been there for weeks. Luckily for us, there was shrubbery all around it, and we could get quite close. Daniel circled the house at a great distance once, and then we stopped, hidden in the shadow of a tree.
The occupants hadn’t bothered to hide their magic usage. The front door wasn’t shielded, but wards shimmered on all the windows and doors, including the front door.
“Flame, Meteor, or Wild?” Daniel asked.
I studied the magical signature of the house. Definitely not Flame—the wards weren’t right. And none of it felt like Wild to me.
“Meteor,” I whispered, my heart ratcheting up a notch.
“Yeah?” Daniel said, studying the scene with narrowed eyes.
“Yeah.”
I was an excellent detector, and Daniel trusted me. I closed my eyes for a moment, focusing.
“Four on the ground floor, maybe five?” I said. “Nicolas is upstairs.”
My heart had eased the second I sensed his magic, however faint it felt. It meant that he was still alive. I didn’t know what shape he was in or how to get him out of the building, but all of that was dwarfed by the simple fact that he was still breathing. The rest could be figured out.
“Agreed,” Daniel said, his eyes still narrowed. He paused. “There’s definitely a commander in there. I can feel it.”
Dan was right. I detected a strong magical presence that had the signature of a competent commander.
“We have to assume Nicolas can’t fight,” I said. “Ideally, he can help us, but more likely he’s shackled and drugged and unconscious. They’d be risking too much to let him have time to work out a plan.”
It was almost 8:20 p.m. now. Nicolas had been captured at approximately 4:25 p.m., so he’d been with them for four hours. If he hadn’t escaped already, I didn’t think it was likely he was in any state to do so now.
Daniel ran his eyes over the building a few more times. It looked deserted. To the casual mortal observer, it would definitely seem that way. Dan and I knew better, but I was still surprised that no one had come to the door or peeked out a window while we had been standing here. They didn’t seem interested in guarding their surroundings closely.
I pulled up our group chat channel again.
Ryan: Found the car. It’s destroyed. Run off the road. There’s a good amount of blood here.
Cameron: Phone and wallet were thrown out of a moving car window. Found them on the side of the road.
I typed a response.
Fiona: Nicolas is at our location, alive but status unknown. He is being held in a residential house off the main road. There are 4 or 5 Meteors present, including a commander.
Daniel: Ryan and Irina, leave the Tesla where it is, get to this location ASAP, approach with EXTREME CAUTION. Syl and Cam, get the location of my Lexus from Teng, park your car, and wait there for further instructions.
Daniel signaled for me to follow him around back. One of the windows that held the clothesline was open a crack. We ducked under it. I twisted my hands together, tense. I could just barely hear voices from inside.
“…dead yet?”
“Any minute now. It should have killed him three hours ago. He’s strong as hell, but we can get the fuck out of here soon.”
“Mark is impatient.”
“Mark is always impatient.”
My eyes met Daniel’s distressed ones. He signaled me away from the window.
“We have to go in now,” he hissed.
“Ryan and the others will be here soon.”
“I don’t know if we have fifteen minutes for them to get here.”
I weighed our options. Five Meteors, including a commander. Water magic was generally stronger than Meteor magic, but those were not good odds, even with Daniel here. He was powerful and well trained, but I wasn’t nearly in his league.
“Do you have a plan?” I asked.
“Yeah. I think. Maybe,” he said, tapping his fingers together. “Fi, you have to get to Nicolas and see if he’s okay. Can you get up to that second-floor balcony without being seen?”
“Sure, but there are wards on the door. I can deal with the shield, but I can’t nullify the wards. They’ll know the second I step inside.”
“I’ll be distracting them,” Daniel said. “I’m going to walk right through the front door. That will disrupt their wards. At the exact same time, you’re going to go through the balcony door. With luck, they will be focused on me and won’t notice that two people crossed their detectors, especially with how much your magic can look like Meteor magic. Get Nicolas. If he’s tr
apped in some way, free him. If he’s injured, stabilize him. If you can get him to move, get him the fuck out. Make for the car.”
“What about you?” I asked, alarmed. “You can’t go five against one.”
“It’s fine. I just need to hold them for a few minutes. The others will back me up.”
“Dan, no way.”
He met my gaze levelly. “Not your call today, Fi. I’m your commander.”
“Don’t do this to me,” I pleaded.
He ignored me. “As I cross the wards, I’m going to yell, ‘Hey, are you my new neighbors?’ That’s your signal to go. Use one of Ryan’s picks to get through the shield.”
I opened the kit. Daniel plucked out the red marble and two of the picks. I took the rest of the little gizmos and put them in my pocket, holding a pick in my right hand.
“Fi,” Daniel said, catching my wrist, “I’m trusting you to get Nico out, no matter what. Do not reveal yourself if possible. Do not come to my aid. If this goes badly, if anything happens to me, hold out for Ryan and Irina, and call for Syl and Cam.”
I studied him, worried. Eventually, I nodded. I didn’t want to agree, but he was right—he was my commander, and I had signed up to trust him.
I leaned into him. “Don’t you dare get hurt. Remember, don’t let them use your blood against you. Keep a physical shield up at all times.”
He took out his phone and started typing quickly, sparing me a small, encouraging smile.
Daniel: URGENT. We’re going in. Ryan and Irina, prepare for a fight when you arrive. I’ll need you both. Use your own initiative for timing.
“Go, Fi,” Dan said. “I’ll give you two minutes to get into position, then listen for my signal.”
I nodded, taking a deep breath. I checked my pockets to make sure everything I needed was there, then crept quietly around to the other side of the building, counting in my head.
Thirty. I was at the base of the building, keeping out of sight of the windows.
