Spell Caster

by Clara Coulson

  “I agree with you, but I can’t effect that sort of policy change. Not yet.” There’s a gleam in his eye that speaks of ambition, but it’s tempered by his deep frown. “Altering decades-old policies takes time and persistent effort, and I simply haven’t had enough of the first or the opportunity to commit to the second. I plan to try, Cal, I really do, once our expansion plan fully comes to fruition and the growing pains settle down. But right now, DSI is not stable enough for me to risk rocking the political boat.”

  “Which means I get to drown if the ICM pushes me overboard,” I say in a way that is definitely not bitter at all. “Got it.”

  “Cal…”

  “I know. You’ve got to do what you’ve got to do. I don’t begrudge you for that.” The elevator comes to a stop, and I move forward as the doors begin to open. “It’s the ICM that’ll end up on my shit list.”

  Riker grabs my shoulder before I exit the elevator. “Whatever you do, Cal, just make sure you don’t end up on theirs. Because I won’t be able to protect you if that happens.”

  I let out a dark laugh. “What makes you think I’m not already on it?”

  A team of auxiliaries heading for the elevator ends our dreary conversation for the time being. We meander toward the infirmary, passing numerous agents coming on shift for the long night haul. Riker’s general menace as a six-foot-something warrior with a cool cane, a swanky suit, and a perpetual scowl is compounded by his status as commissioner, so every single group in our path parts before us, a third of the agents refusing to make eye contact and dipping their heads, a third of them staring at Riker with more than a little awe, and the rest handing out awkward hellos or good evenings.

  Every now and again, someone notices the significantly shorter detective walking next to the commissioner. Some of them are too new to recognize me, but more than a few give me a startled look and whisper zany rumors to each other after I pass. Things like, “Isn’t that Cal Kinsey? The guy who went to the Eververse and beat up a death god to rescue an archivist?” and “Did you hear about the time that guy got kidnapped by werewolves and then killed them with his bare hands?” and “I heard that guy isn’t completely human. They say he’s so strong he ripped vampires limb from limb during that museum battle.”

  Riker and I are infamous for very different reasons, but we’re roughly the same degree of uncomfortable under the spotlight, if his pinched scowl is anything to go by.

  After what feels like a mile-long trek, we finally reach the infirmary. An incident with some minor practitioners and a botched summoning landed three agents from a lower-level detective team in here a couple hours ago, so the place is still busy. Nurses power walk back and forth to check vitals and administer medicines and reapply magic salves. Doctors stitch ragged wounds and update charts and chew out agents for being reckless in the field. Machines beep and blood pressure cuffs hiss out air. Utensils clink and plastic tears as medical staff and patients alike dig into a dinner bordering on a late-night snack.

  Near the back of the infirmary are three beds with the curtains pulled to, and Riker points at them to confirm they’re the reason we’re here. Sometime during his argument with Newsome, he must’ve gotten an email or text from Ortiz indicating my teammates were all out of surgery and settled in to their sick beds for the night.

  Without a word, he leads me across the room, and as we’re approaching the first bed, the infirmary head herself slips out from behind the curtain, scrolling through something on her phone. She spots us coming and tucks the phone into one of the big pockets of her white coat before jutting her thumb over her shoulder. “They’re all awake and alert, though Captain Dean is extremely groggy from the concussion. I’ll probably keep her a little longer than the other two, just to make sure she doesn’t have any persistent cognitive problems.”

  “How are the other two?” Riker asks.

  “I’m just fucking peachy,” spits Amy through the curtain behind Ortiz.

  Ortiz rolls her eyes. “Detective Sugawara had a punctured artery in her leg. It’s been repaired, and the laceration stitched closed. I’ve put a healing salve on it, but she’ll still be off that foot for a few days. Until then”—she raises her voice—“she will just have to shut up and accept the damn crutches.”

  Amy groans.

  I stifle a laugh.

  “I heard that, Kinsey,” Amy calls out.

  Riker clears his throat, silencing us both.

  “Anyway,” Ortiz continues, “Detective Wright had a dislocated shoulder and three cracked ribs, along with an assortment of large bruises and deep cuts. The shoulder has been relocated and the ribs have been wrapped. He’ll be back on his feet by morning, but I don’t want him back in the field for at least a week.”

  “Nothing like a bout of desk work,” Desmond says from behind his curtain, “to make me remember why I choose to go outside and risk my neck every day.”

  Riker ignores him and says to Ortiz, “So they’ll recover?”

  She nods. “They’ll be uncomfortable for a little while, but I’m sure they’re all mature enough to handle some minor aches and pains.”

  Amy snorts. “Minor my ass.”

  “Yeah,” Riker says, “they sound just fine to me. Mind if we pop in for a chat?”

  Ortiz gives the curtains a dismissive wave. “They’re all yours, Commissioner. Take as much time as you want.”

  Riker passes by Amy’s bed and heads for the one in the middle, from which no voice has yet emerged. He peels back the curtain to reveal Ella laid up at a low angle, her eyes nearly closed and her breaths shallow but even, dozing but not comfortable, the pain and pressure in her head a constant companion. A large white bandage decorates one side of her face, hiding the now stitched-up laceration beneath, and a small patch of her short hair was shaved away so Ortiz could follow the cut to its end point just beyond her temple. Her neck also sports a few minor cuts, but none are bandaged and all are already scabbed over. Any bruises she may have are hidden by the blankets pulled up to her shoulders.

  That stupid guilt starts churning in my gut again, seeing my captain in this state.

  If only I’d sensed the polong before it lashed out at the shed.

  I know it’s a stupid thought to have, since the damn thing is invisible. Even so, I can’t help but feel that there must’ve been some way I could’ve noticed it sooner. Before it killed the Wolves and destroyed DSI’s one advantage in this case—not to mention our political relationship with the Lycanthrope Republic. Before it tackled my team and left them sitting on the sidelines for the remainder of an extremely important investigation, one in which a child’s life is at stake, an investigation that needs the most experienced teams in the field at all times.

  As Riker pulls a guest chair closer to Ella’s bedside, I speak up. “Do we have thermal goggles in our armory, by any chance?”

  Riker gently takes Ella’s hand in his before he answers. “Funny you ask that. After your report on the attack at the Wheeler apartment, I asked the armory inventory manager that exact question. Turns out the answer is no. We have plenty of night-vision goggles but no thermal goggles. An oversight I plan to remedy as soon as possible.”

  He rubs circles into the back of Ella’s hand, pausing to examine her face again. She looks a little less tense than she did a minute ago. “I had someone down in admin call all the shops that carry hunting and army equipment and ask if they have thermal goggles in stock. One does, but they were closing right when they received the call. They accepted an order for their entire inventory and promised we can pick it up at six tomorrow morning.”

  “Good to hear.”

  “Probably the only good thing you’ll hear tonight.” He lifts one hand and makes a shooing motion. “Now, unless you want to spend the evening cracking jokes to make Desmond and Amy feel better about being benched—”

  “Haven’t I been tortured enough already?” Amy whines.

  “—you should head on home and get some sleep. You’ve been going no
nstop all day, and I want you in top shape tomorrow. Because I have a feeling this case is going to heat up even more now that the Wolves are out for revenge.”

  My shoulders slump, partially in relief—I am tired and want some sleep—and partially in defeat. “I hate to leave this guy on the streets all night. He could kill somebody else while I’m snoozing.”

  “Sometimes, that’s how it plays out, Cal. There’s no helping it.”

  I run a hand through my hair. “I know. I just…”

  “I understand.” He shoos me again, more emphatically. “Now go. And on your way out, make sure you stop by your locker and grab your spare set of suppression rings.”

  “Aw, come on.” I scuff my foot against the floor. “Really?”

  “Yes, really. Until we know for sure whether your cover’s been blown to the ICM at large, we keep up the ruse.”

  “Ugh, fine.”

  As I’m spinning around to schlep my way back to the exit, Riker adds far too jovially, “Oh, and since you’ve directly encountered our perp twice now—and managed to expose your big secret to him the second time—I want an auxiliary team to tail you home and stake out your apartment tonight. Just on the off chance our incredibly intelligent and calculating killer decides to take a stab at you while you’re off in dreamland.”

  “Well, that’s great.” I kick the infirmary door open. “Just great.”

  Chapter Eleven

  My quiet apartment feels even less like home than usual, with a stakeout team on the corner making sure I don’t get murdered in my sleep. I slam the front door behind me, lock it tight, and strip off all my work gear right there in the foyer, too beat to worry about what hypothetical guests will think about the clothes strewn messily on the floor. On bare feet, I pad over to the kitchen, warm up a TV dinner in the microwave, and grab the last beer in my fridge, then plop down on my new couch, set my feet on my new coffee table, and turn on my new TV. I try to enjoy these new features of my living room as much as possible, since practically everything I owned was destroyed last month when vampires raided the place in an attempt to assassinate Foley.

  I’m going to use my money’s worth until my empty wallet stops burning a hole in my pocket.

  I spend a couple minutes scrolling through Netflix until I find a movie where the progress bar is only a quarter gone, but just as I’m about to click on it, I remember why I didn’t finish it. Because Cooper and I were watching it together, and we got a little frisky in the middle. So if I pick up where I left off in the movie, my brain is constantly going to poke me about the obvious absence of my boyfriend, the conspicuous space on the couch where he would be if he hadn’t been shipped off to Siberia for helping me. Irritation—and yes, loneliness—intensifying, I scroll past that movie and pick a different one at random. It ends up being an animated Disney movie.

  Good enough.

  Like some pathetic bachelor with nothing better to do, I watch the entire movie, pausing only once to change out my TV dinner tray for a bowl of popcorn and my finished beer for a can of Coke. By the time the credits finally roll, my eyelids are heavy, my bowl is empty, and my can is lying on the carpet, crumpled by my fist. I set the bowl on the coffee table and stagger over to my bedroom, aware I’m going to feel absolutely awesome when I wake up tomorrow morning after eating junk for dinner, and not caring one bit. Because if my mind is in such a bad state, it’s only fair my body is too, right?

  Oh, Cooper would love this self-destructive attitude, I think as I kick my bedroom door shut and shuffle up to the bed. He’d love it so much he’d smack me with an oven mitt and call me a fucking moron.

  God, I miss Cooper Lee.

  If we could at least have a chat, even on a regular phone call, he’d be able to pull me out of my depressive mood spiral with only a few sentences spoken in that reproachful tone that always makes his voice crack on certain sounds. But no, that stupid facility in the middle of godforsaken Siberia just had to have a server meltdown, and apparently it’s so cold and snowy down there, they can’t get all the equipment they need to replace the system shipped to their door in less than a freaking century. That’s what it feels like—as if it’s been a lifetime since I had a chance to talk to Cooper. I wonder if he…

  Okay, that’s enough. I slap my cheek to pull my brain out of the brooding corner. Stop dwelling on the shitty situation you’re in and get your head back in the game. You’ve got a bad guy to catch tomorrow, and if you fail again like you did today, more people could die. More civilians. More Wolves. More DSI agents. You’ve got to wake up bright-eyed and bushy-tailed tomorrow and come at that bastard with everything you’ve got, Kinsey.

  And if I actually manage to pull off a victory, then I’ll have a cool tale to impress Cooper with. A tale that may just take the edge off the news that, funny story, I got brutally killed by vampires last month, and then found out after I spontaneously came back to life that I’m not fully human and my deadbeat dad is actually some fearsome Eververse creature of great and terrible power.

  For some strange reason, I have not yet figured out a way to sugarcoat that story.

  I rake my fingers down my cheeks, groaning out, “Why is my life like this? Huh? Who thought this was amusing?”

  Predictably, no one answers.

  Annoyed, I set my alarm, shimmy into my sheets, click off the bedside lamp, and plant my face in the pillow. Despite my churning thoughts, sleepiness comes on quickly, something that always happens when I expend a significant amount of magic energy during the day. My textbook claims you can experience spiritual exhaustion the same way you can physical exhaustion, due to the intrinsic connection between the body and s…

  I jolt awake in the darkness. The clock on my nightstand claims it’s just past three AM. It takes me a moment to orient myself, turning onto my back and taking stock of the shadowy bedroom, before I figure out what it was that dragged me out of my fitful rest plagued by half-remembered dreams. My phone, sitting on the corner of my nightstand, is buzzing the way it does when I have an incoming call. And a call coming in this early in the morning can’t possibly herald good news. So I hesitate to lift my arm and pick up the phone. Because I’m not sure I can stand to hear about yet another disaster.

  They might need you for something, I prod myself. Answer it.

  I reach over and snatch the phone off the nightstand, bringing it close to my face so I can tell who’s calling. To my surprise, it’s a number I don’t have in my contacts, which means it can’t be somebody from DSI, since my phone syncs daily with the office number database. There’s a moment where I’m struck by a spike of irritation, thinking that some random robocall or wrong number dialer has woken me up in the middle of the night. But then my eyes drift to the top corner of my screen, where the notifications are listed. There’s a voicemail icon there, which means this person is probably on their second attempt at reaching me.

  With more than an ounce of confusion, I answer the phone. “Hello?”

  “Finally!” says the man on the other end. “I was starting to get worried you were dead. Again.”

  I sit up, shoulders tense. There are very few people who know I died and came back to life. And only one of them sounds like… “Foley?”

  “Little slow on the draw there, huh?” He pauses. “Were you asleep? You sound groggy.”

  “It’s three in the morning here.”

  “Ah.” He lets out a breathy laugh. “I’ve been bouncing around between so many countries lately, I’ve totally lost track of the time zones. Didn’t mean to cut your beauty sleep short. Sorry. But we really need to have a chat, like urgently, right now, at this very minute, so you’re just going to have to chug an energy drink or something.”

  “What is it?” I slide my legs off the bed, wincing as my bare feet touch the cold floor. I forgot to turn on the heat in my bedroom before I conked out. “Are the Black Knights making another play? Do you need help?”

  “Oh no, nothing like that,” he says quickly. “We’ve actually got
them on the run for the time being. Last week, we reclaimed two of the houses they took over during the coup and wiped out about forty of their number. I’m currently working with the partially reformed Parliament to appoint new elders from the satellite families of those houses and start new primary bloodlines, since most members of the original head families are dead and buried. Once that’s done, the new elders can start reorganizing their house assets and getting their business networks and such back up and running. I won’t say all aspects of the recovery are going swimmingly or anything, but they’re going.”

  “Well, that’s good to hear.” I scratch at my stubbly chin. “But if you’re not having any Knight problems, then why are you calling?”

  “Because I just got word that you’re sitting on a nuclear bomb, with no idea it could go off at any time.” A grave silence fills the gaps between his words. “Since I literally owe you my life after you gave yours up last month trying to protect me from my sister, I think it’s only fair that I help you avoid dying a second time.”

  “Wait, what are you talking about?” I flick on my bedside lamp. A soft yellow glow fills the room, chasing away the shadows. “What bomb?”

  “You’re currently investigating a series of murders, correct? Whose victims all happen to be connected to Robert Delos in some way?”

  “How do you know that?”

  “I can’t tell you over the phone. There’s a chance someone could be listening in.”

  “Listening in how?” The hairs on my neck prickle at the idea somebody might be watching me. “With a wiretap, or with magic?”

  “Both.”

  Commanding my racing pulse to calm, I clamber out of bed and plod over to my closet to grab some fresh clothes. “Okay, I’m going to pretend that cryptic comment hasn’t totally freaked me out and ask: how exactly are we going to have a conversation, if not over the phone?”