Spell Caster

by Clara Coulson

  Why? Because if I alert Targus to the fact I’ve foiled his plot too early, he might discard (part of) his cover story and go after Sadie directly. And I won’t be able to stop him because he’s a fucking superwizard.

  I’m going to save blowing the lid on the “Targus is an assassin sanctioned by the ICM to kill Delos’ relatives” thing as a last resort and try to work within the confines of his current plan to thwart him.

  As it is, the end game of that plan is easy to figure out with all the background information filled in: Once the patsy is eliminated, Riker will release Sadie from protective custody and hand her off to Pamela Newsome so she can be entered into the werewolf foster care program. Targus will be camping out somewhere near the DSI building while the exchange takes place, and when Newsome leaves with Sadie, he’ll follow their vehicle until it reaches a convenient location and stage an attack that looks like some kind of accident.

  Sadie will either die in this “accident,” or Targus will use the attack to knock the adult Wolves out of commission, grab Sadie, and then murder her separately. My bet is on the latter scenario, because if Targus wants Sadie’s murder to seriously impact Delos, there needs to be ample proof she was murdered. Targus will probably take a picture of her body. Maybe even a video of the act itself. In fact, he probably has photos or videos of all the murders he’s committed so far, which have by now been transmitted back to the High Court so the interrogators can torment Delos with them indefinitely.

  Motherfuckers. You’re going to get yours one day. But not today…

  Today, I need to protect a two-year-old girl from a monster with no conscience. And no, I don’t mean the polong.

  I grab the top of the couch and haul myself up, my head spinning under the strain of attempting to unravel all the tangled threads of this situation. Closing my eyes for a moment to concentrate, I boil the problem down to its three basic elements:

  One, I need to subvert Targus’ plan to kill Sadie, and spirit her away to a place he can never find her again. Two, I can’t let Targus catch on to the fact I know his plan while I’m working to subvert it. And three, I can’t make anyone, including my own DSI colleagues, aware of the fact that Targus is working in the interests of the ICM. (Also, as a corollary to that last point, I have to make certain, under penalty of death, presumably, that no one else finds out about the Choir of Rooks, and that Targus doesn’t figure out I know about it.)

  Because that’s not enough of a steaming shit pile already, there’s one more complication: Targus knows I have magic, thanks to our little scuffle in the woods. Either he’s ratted me out to the ICM already, and they’re liable to force Riker to fire me at any time, or Targus is planning to hold on to that piece of intel until an opportune moment arises where he can use it to screw over DSI to maximum effect.

  I’ll have to avoid giving him that opportunity. Which means I’ll have to quit DSI. Soon.

  This case is the gift that keeps on giving. Seriously. Fuck everything.

  I lean back against the couch cushion and open my mouth to groan—only for a buzzing sound to preempt my attempt at brooding. A glance toward my bedroom reveals the culprit is my phone. It’s only half past four in the morning, which is too early for someone to call me in to work unless there’s been a major case development. So either something has gone terribly wrong and I’m getting an emergency call to inform me of the resulting damage, or someone is calling to report that there’s been a breakthrough—

  Edith. I told her to call me if she figured something out, no matter the time.

  I practically fly off the couch, rush into my bedroom, and snatch up my phone before it goes to voicemail. Swiping the answer prompt, I throw on my best “just woke up from a deep sleep” voice before I say, “Hello?”

  “Detective Kinsey,” replies Edith, still oddly chipper despite working through the night, “sorry to bother you so early, but you did tell me to call you if I uncovered any important information. And I believe I have.” She pauses to take a nervous breath, but it’s more excited than her usual fare. I have a sinking feeling I know what she’s going to say. “I’ve checked it over four times already,” she continues, “and I’m quite certain that the information contained in the evidence collected from the shed points to a likely suspect for the attacks.”

  A sudden, horrible thought occurs to me: What if Targus also used the polong to plant bugs in the office, in and around the workspaces where the people involved in the case are most likely to reveal important information? If this was any other case, I would dismiss that thought as pure paranoia, but Foley, probably at Lucian’s behest, insisted we talk about the Rooks only inside an Eververse Bridge, because there was a serious concern that Targus had the wherewithal to listen in on my conversations.

  Now, I searched high and low for bugs and spying spells when I returned from the Bridge, and found none, but that could simply mean Targus hasn’t gotten around to installing them yet. After all, he wouldn’t have known he needed to bug my place until he discovered my practitioner status during the fight in the woods. A fight that ended with me shooting him twice in the abdomen. Wounds that serious can slow even the best practitioner down, healing spells or not. There is indeed a solid chance he just hasn’t yet managed to drag his injured ass to my building and plant his spy gear.

  The DSI building, on the other hand, would’ve been a primary target for a spy op from the beginning of this case. And the entire time Targus was in the building earlier, pretending to lend a helping hand to his “new friends” at DSI, it would’ve basically been open season for the polong to plant bugs in every logical nook and cranny. Riker’s office. The analyst floor. The cafeteria. The Archive. The task rooms. You name an area where people frequently discuss casework, and Targus probably stuck a bug there.

  Shit. I can’t speak to Edith openly.

  My lips flap open and closed several times, as I struggle to come up with something to say that won’t tip any eavesdroppers off and will allow me to move Edith to a place where there’s unlikely to be any listening devices. The first thing that pops into my head is: “Oh wow, it’s good to hear that. I’m glad the evidence was useful, after what Ella and Desmond went through to get it.” I let out a fake laugh. “I can call Riker, if you want, and have him arrange a meeting with all the relevant people so you can review your findings with everyone at once. Then you can go on home and get some sleep while we handle the dirty field work. How’s that sound?”

  “You don’t want to hear me out first?” She seems disappointed.

  “I’d prefer to meet with you in person and review your supporting documents while you explain,” I reply, trying to sound cheery. “I learn better with visual aids.”

  “Oh! I see.” Her excitement returns with a vengeance. “I’ll put together a little presentation for you then, if that’s all right? I’d like to run my analysis by at least one other person before I deliver it to the commissioner and any captains. Just so someone can double-check my work and ensure I didn’t make any dumb mistakes. Normally, I’d do that with one of the other analysts in my section, but…”

  “But you’re the only one there.”

  “Right.”

  “Well, that sounds fine to me.” I add a yawn for good measure before I abruptly switch directions. “Say, can you do me a little favor?”

  “A favor?”

  “You know that room where I, uh, practice?”

  “Practice magic?” she says, something squeaking in the background. Probably her chair as she swivels back and forth. “Yeah, I know about that.”

  “Think you can go down there real quick and grab my duffle bag? My dumb ass left it there last night by accident, and it’s got some gear in it I’ll need today. I want to make sure I have that stuff in hand before Riker spots me without it and accuses me of being unprepared during a major investigation again.” I snort. “You know how he is.”

  “I do, yes.”

  “Anyway, I’ll meet you in the front lobby when I get th
ere. You can hand over the duffle bag, and I can hand over my opinions on your research. How’s that for a fair exchange?”

  “Hm…I guess that’ll work.” Her chair squeaks again as she stands. “Can you tell me what room number it is? I don’t think I’ve ever been to that part of the building.”

  “Actually, there is no room number. So why don’t you just stay on the phone and let me give you step-by-step directions? The basement level can get a bit disorienting. Everything’s painted gunmetal gray, and there are pipes everywhere. Feels like you’re in a submarine.”

  “Really?” Her low heels clack on the floor as she transitions from carpet to hallway tile. She hits the elevator button. “Sounds a little spooky.”

  “We should make it a haunted house next Halloween.”

  “I’m not sure the commissioner would go for that.”

  Our idle chatter continues until she reaches the basement level, after which I string her along with basic directions until she arrives at my study room. “Door should be unlocked,” I finish.

  The door clicks open, and Edith steps into the room. It’s pitch black in there without the lights on, and the switch is placed awkwardly far from the door, so I can picture Edith as she feels for it along the wall, slipping farther and farther into the room, until finally, she has to let go of the door and it thumps shut behind her. Then she finds the light switch and flicks it up. “Ah, there we go,” she says, laughing off her nervousness. “Now, where’s that duffle bag of yours?”

  Regret heavy in my chest—I really don’t want to drag Edith into this mess—I drop my lighthearted tone. “Sorry to say, Edith, but that was a ruse to get you down there. I need you to listen to me very carefully.”

  “What?” Her voice takes on a hint of anger, and I know her face is reddening. “I don’t—”

  “This concerns Sadie Wheeler’s safety. Her life.”

  Edith lets out a small gasp. “What’s going on?”

  Over the next few minutes, I lay out a sanitized version of the problems currently facing DSI, including that the building’s security has likely been compromised with listening devices—hence me tricking Edith into going downstairs to a room that wouldn’t have been bugged—and that the perpetrator of the murders is planning to use those devices to work out how to get past the protective detail guarding Sadie so he can kill her.

  I neglect to tell her that the man whose identity she worked out from the “evidence” is actually a patsy and that the real perp is Alexander Targus, but I manage to spin a believable web anyway. With only the softest pinch of cajoling, I convince her that the best option right now is to hold off on informing anyone about her findings while I secretly work outside the perp’s surveillance network to set him up to fail. “Give me two hours to set everything into motion,” I plead, “and then call Riker for a meeting to present your information.”

  Edith is quiet, except for her even breathing, something she must be forcing herself to do to retain some semblance of composure. Eventually, she replies, “I have to admit I’m uncomfortable with this.”

  “So am I.” And those words are totally true. “But if we go on the hunt for the bugs, we’ll tip the guy off that we’re onto him and he’ll change tactics. He might assail the building as a last-ditch effort and risk the lives of numerous agents. Or he might go to ground and hide in the shadows until he finds a flaw in our security that allows him to attack Sadie directly. Either way, the danger to Sadie’s life will be extreme.”

  I pick at a stray thread on my pants to distract myself from the guilt gnawing at my stomach. The guilt of once again manipulating a colleague. If I’m not careful, Edith could end up in as much trouble as Zhane did. “I want to make sure we catch this guy today and end the threat to Sadie altogether. But to do that, we have to outplay him.”

  Edith hesitates for some time. Her mind runs through the reel of crime scene photos over and over again, no doubt, all the people the killer butchered yesterday captured forever in HD quality, including Sadie’s poor mother, nude and broken on the floor. She finally says, “I understand the stakes. So I’ll do my best to play along with the subterfuge. But, I have to ask, you are going to tell everyone about this ploy, right? After we have the man in custody?”

  “Of course.” Half truth. Half lie. “As soon as we’ve got our guy, I’ll tell Riker exactly what went down. If he wants to blame anyone for anything, he can blame everything on me for being the ‘mastermind’ behind this scheme. I’ll make sure none of it blows back on you.”

  Edith sighs. “You really shouldn’t make promises you can’t keep, Detective Kinsey.”

  For a moment, I’m so startled the timid analyst called me out that I can’t make my mouth work. “Well, I, uh…”

  “No need to apologize. I get that you’re trying to do the right thing. And I agree that this is the right thing to do in this particular case, for Sadie’s sake. I just wanted to point out that you can’t control every aspect of a situation that involves so many moving parts, and when you try to anyway, there are inevitably casualties.”

  The storage room doorknob clicks again as Edith walks back into the hall. “If you’re not realistic about how these types of scenarios tend to play out, then you’re always going to end up disappointed. And I find it really sad when good people drown in disappointment. So don’t make promises you can’t keep, Detective, especially when you’re tinkering with a big machine. That way, little cogs like me won’t suffer too much false hope.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  Under the cloak of darkness and a rickety-ass veil, I steal out the side entrance of my building. As I creep through the narrow, damp alley toward the street, I clutch the rectangular paperweight humming with magic energy close to my chest. My other hand sits in my pocket, near my handgun, ready to yank the weapon out and fire indiscriminately into the nearest shadowy corner if I so much as feel the temperature in my general vicinity rise more than two degrees.

  Thankfully, nothing pounces at me from behind the rank dumpster or leaps off the fire escape and tackles me to the ground. I reach the end of the alley unimpeded and scope out the neighborhood beyond. Nothing sets off my normal or magic alarms, but that doesn’t mean there’s no spy gear, or spying spells, on the walls or the windows or the light poles, just waiting to record me tripping over my own two feet as I try to cross the street under my veil. In fact, seeing nothing makes my suspicion itch all the more, the uncomfortable sensation worming its way up my spine.

  After I almost got the better of Targus during that fight in the woods, there’s no chance whatsoever he would decide to forgo scoping me out. He’s got eyes on me, in some way, shape, or form. And I need to make them blink.

  Based on what Lucian and Foley told me though, Targus is so good at everything he does that I’d likely have trouble picking out his surveillance tools even if I had a map of exactly where he placed them. There’s no doubt in my mind that I’ll trip something, whether it be a ward or a motion-activated camera, as I break away from my apartment building and make my way down the street. Hell, just stepping out into the alley might’ve caught the Rook’s attention. Targus might be watching me right now, or at least extrapolating my position based on the waste energy my poorly constructed veil is no doubt pumping out like car exhaust.

  If I’m going to make this “plan” of mine work—and I say “plan” because it’s got about as much finesse as an elementary school macaroni art project—I need to be able to lose, confuse, or otherwise divert Targus’ spying efforts long enough for me to have an important chat with a certain woman fond of frowning and yelling and making her eyes glow yellow like a nocturnal predator about to strike down its prey. That diversion attempt is where the magic-infused paperweight comes in.

  A block and a half from my apartment is a mid-sized hotel that sees a lot of early morning cab pickups. The place caters to traveling businesspeople, who prefer to get the hell out of Dodge via crack-of-dawn flights so they can avoid the daytime crush of casual fly
ers who hold up the security lines. One such businessperson, a generic white guy about forty-five with salt-and-pepper hair, emerges from the front entrance of the hotel about seven minutes after I hunker down at the edge of the alley. Someone from the hotel scuttles out behind him, holding the guy’s expensive suitcases. Not thirty seconds after they come to a stop at the edge of the sidewalk, a yellow cab cuts a hard left at the nearest intersection and slows as it approaches the hotel.

  That’s my cue.

  I dart out from the alley and race down the street, praying that my veil doesn’t collapse. I can feel the spell straining to stay intact as each hard footfall on the concrete jars the umbrella of vaguely organized energy hanging a few inches above my head. Before this morning, I’d attempted to cast a veil exactly once, and I did such a piss-poor job that I made all the people in the room above my study closet—which happens to be an auxiliary agent lounge—disappear into thin air, which caused a panic that led to multiple injuries and several trips to the infirmary. Riker was so annoyed by my “antics,” as he put it, that he punished me with janitorial duty for five whole days.

  Sometimes, I swear I can still smell the Pine-Sol.

  Anyway, this morning’s veil casting attempt went much better, probably because I pronounced the words correctly this time. But by no means is the spell anywhere close to stable, and I’m fairly certain a gust of wind could blow it off me like a bed sheet. So I hurry toward the hotel as fast as I dare, occasionally whispering memorized reinforcement words under my breath that allow me to patch the network of small cracks that form in the dome-shaped drape of magic obscuring me from view.

  I time my approach so that I sidle up behind the businessman and the bellhop right as the cab comes to a stop in front of the hotel. The cabbie pops the trunk, the bellhop hefts the suitcases, and the businessman, preoccupied with his phone, leans forward and opens the rear door.