Spell Caster

by Clara Coulson

  Or so it appears.

  “Well, that was a total waste of my best scowl,” grumbles Amy. She snatches her crutches from where she’d propped them against the wall and jams them under her armpits. “They didn’t even try anything.”

  Desmond smiles. “I believe we should consider that a good outcome, Major.”

  “Speak for yourself. I was looking forward to bashing a few skulls together. I’m getting restless, hobbling around this big-ass building with nothing to do.”

  “You could try the gym,” I suggest. “There are some new trainees in today. First combat course.”

  Amy lights up. “Ooh, fresh meat.”

  “That is a better alternative to instigating dangerous conflicts with rival supernatural groups,” Desmond agrees. “And I must admit, I’m ever so curious as to how you’re planning to ‘bash skulls together’ when you can only stand on one leg.”

  “Don’t underestimate me.” Amy cracks a grin. “When I was in high school, I beat up a guy twice my size while both my hands were in casts.”

  “Why were both your hands in casts?” I ask.

  “That’s not important. The point is—”

  “The point is,” interrupts Riker, who stalked closer to us while we weren’t paying attention, “there’s an ungodly amount of case wrap-up work to go around, mostly in the form of densely worded paperwork, and since your hands are not currently in casts, I expect you to handle a considerable amount of it.”

  Amy deflates. “Oh, come on, boss.”

  Riker doesn’t budge. “Upstairs. Work. Now. That includes you, Desmond.” He turns to me as the pair of them trundle off toward the lower level, suitably chastised. “You’ve got a different itinerary this evening, Cal. Because, after a minimal amount of cajoling, one of my practitioner contacts has agreed to attempt a banishment spell on the polong. I also made him swear to complete secrecy regarding your ‘status,’ and he’ll be signing an NDA to that effect the minute he enters the building. He’ll be here around six. I want you rested and ready to assist him, since I assume you’ll be required to work in conjunction, given that the creature is currently bottled up in your binding circle.”

  “Yeah, I’ll have to modify that before he can cast a banishment spell. I don’t know exactly how, but I’m sure the wizard will be able to guide me through the steps.”

  “Good.” He whacks me in the arm with his cane, none too gently. “So go nap, or eat, or watch TV, or whatever you need to do to get into the right state of mind before he arrives. That polong is the last loose end in this case, and I want it wrapped up with a nice, neat bow before the day is out. Understand?”

  “Yes, sir.” I gesture to the garage exit. “All right if I go grab dinner for the team? I’m thinking some good Chinese might at least cut down on Amy’s complaining.”

  Riker snorts. “Go on then. But don’t stray too far.”

  “I won’t.”

  On that note, I saunter out of the garage and immediately begin to stray.

  A brisk jog northeast, through a narrow park and a maze of dirty alleys and the damp back lots of eight different businesses, through practically every shortcut I know to bypass the crowds still lingering on the main roads, spits me out on Haverford Street, a planned high-income residential neighborhood that’s been under heavy construction for the better part of two years.

  Some of the older buildings on the street have yet to begin their conversion to the gentrified ideal, so I find one with a rusty fire escape still pinned to the side and use it to boost myself onto the roof. From there, I orient myself to the east and squat at the edge of the roof to examine the scene four blocks down, where there happens to be a major intersection with shitty signage and poorly aligned stoplights notorious for causing frequent deadly accidents.

  The accident I’m looking for has already taken place.

  At some point in the last few minutes, as a blue SUV was turning onto the northbound road, a tractor-trailer ran the red light from the west, without slowing down, and slammed broadside into the smaller vehicle. The SUV practically imploded, glass shattering, metal warping, the entire frame twisting into a knot. Everything inside the vehicle was either crushed beyond recognition, or in the case of the unbelted driver, flung out a window and thrown fifty feet across the road. That driver, by all accounts, should’ve died on impact with the ground. Yet there he stands on the sidewalk, bloody and bruised but not much worse for wear as two uniformed officers interview him.

  I imagine he’s reassuring the cops that he was the only one in the SUV.

  On the opposite side of the intersection is the driver of the tractor-trailer, bundled up on a gurney and waiting to be loaded into an ambulance. Unlike the SUV driver, this man is an utter wreck, and though he’s too far away for me to parse his conversation with the cops, I can guess what sorts of excuses might be tumbling from his spittle-covered lips: that he suddenly fell asleep even though he wasn’t tired, or that he had a seizure for the first time in his life and lost control of his body, or that the truck itself seemingly malfunctioned right as it neared the intersection, the brakes cutting out at a crucial moment.

  Whatever the case, the whole ordeal will be written off as one of those terrible accidents that everyone miraculously walked away from, medical bills notwithstanding. And no one on the mundane side of life will ever know that it was actually an attempt by a powerful magic murderer to assassinate a small child at the behest of his heartless bosses. A failed attempt, thanks to yours truly, with the assistance of a few werewolves and a fae—

  Someone clears their throat. Right behind me.

  I whip around to find the culprit is Alexander Targus.

  Having ditched the whole cloak and mask disguise, Targus stands before me in a wrinkled pastel-blue shirt, a crooked navy tie, and a light-gray pair of slacks with the hems folded up. A getup that gives off the impression he’s a young CPA taking a smoke break on a rooftop after five hours of working on a particularly troublesome tax audit. But despite the disarming freckles and the rather nerdy glasses, despite the handsome, youthful face framed by soft blond hair, despite the relaxed posture, hands in pockets, shoulders slouched, the sight of Targus strikes my heart with a fear so unfathomably earthshaking that I nearly lose all tension in my legs and fall straight to my knees.

  Because there is nothing in his eyes but a darkness deeper than death.

  “Calvin Kinsey,” Targus says, with no hint of emotion at all, “you are a pain in my ass.”

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  The spells hit me so rapidly I don’t even have a chance to blink. The first one pins my arms to my side. The second sweeps me off my feet and drives me into the ground so hard the roof cracks—and so do my ribs. The third one locks around my throat, cutting off my air supply, and as I choke, the fourth one slams into my gut three times in quick succession, like a pile driver trying to punch right through my body, practically pulverizing everything beneath my skin. Indescribable pain consumes my entire torso, but my screams are muffled by the vise around my neck, barely a whisper passing my lips.

  Targus stares down at my writhing form, apathetic. “We need to have a chat.”

  The magic vise yanks me up onto my knees and loosens just enough to let my desperate lungs drag in air. But I don’t get two breaths in before my battered stomach spasms violently and all the contents of my intestines, including half a pint of blood, spew out of my mouth and splatter across the damaged rooftop, leaking into the cracks.

  By the time I stop vomiting, my clothes are a saturated red, wet streaks on my chin and neck cooling in the winter air. Within the confines of the spells restraining me, my body shakes uncontrollably, pain and faintness fighting a battle to either keep me alert or knock me out. The pain wins only because I bite my tongue to give it an edge.

  You see, if I pass out, Targus might just kill me.

  Targus waits until he’s sure I’m coherent again and calmly walks around me to avoid the puddle of blood and bile. Once he’s
situated behind me, the spell around my torso roughly spins me around, no thought given to my jeans or knees, both of which tear under the friction, blood oozing out past the sheared denim threads. I give myself second to collect what shreds of composure remain in my mind, then raise my head far enough to make eye contact with the looming wizard. Targus, face still blank, reaches into his pants pocket and withdraws an object, which he drops on the ground between us.

  The glass paperweight.

  It cracks on impact but doesn’t shatter. Not until Targus drives his foot into it anyway.

  Grinding the shards beneath his shoe, he says, “It’s been a very long time since anyone has fooled me with such a rudimentary trick. I’d give you props for that, if it wasn’t wholly the result of a miscalculation on my part rather than a product of your skills.”

  He steps over the pile of glass and crouches in front of me. “Here I was, thinking I knew all there was to know about DSI Aurora. The esteemed elite captain turned commissioner. The veteran fist-fighter with a heart of gold. The former army major with a foul mouth. The ex-professor with a penchant for philosophy. The Thai swordswoman, all grace and deadly poise. And so on and so forth, all the way down the line to the plucky young detective who miraculously survives his every encounter with the roughest, toughest bastards on the supernatural battlefield.”

  Targus’ hand shoots out, grips my chin, and yanks it to the left. My jaw dislocates with an earsplitting snap. Magic-augmented strength. “But it’s not miraculous at all, is it?” he continues over my shrill whine. “It’s the illusion of miraculous. Because the truth beneath a simple sleight of hand is that DSI’s been hiding a real practitioner among their ranks.” With another tug, he shifts my jaw back into place. “In hindsight, I should’ve figured it out sooner. High Witch Iyanda mentioned you by name during my chapter head swearing-in ceremony, and she never names normal humans if it’s not a necessity.”

  He clicks his tongue. “I’m guessing she was trying to give me a hint that I should take a good look at you. And clearly, I should’ve taken that hint, since you’ve now gone and dismantled half my hard work. Alas, I allowed my preconceived notions of DSI to get the better of me.” He backhands me, shattering my right orbital cavity, and for a worrying moment, the vision in my eye shorts out. “Not a mistake I will make again.”

  A dull groan slips over my bottom lip, accompanied by a dribble of blood. “It was enough,” I mutter, “that you made it once.”

  “Was it?” He lowers himself to the ground and sits cross-legged. Totally at ease. “You don’t believe I can wrest the child’s location out of you?”

  “I’m saying it doesn’t matter if you know where she is or not. You can’t touch her.”

  His thin blond eyebrow rises. “Really? Where is she then?”

  I smile, and I must look monstrous, lips covered in blood. “The Winter Court.”

  Targus stiffens, almost imperceptibly. “Ah, I see. You invoked some kind of bargain with the fae, and now they’ve taken the girl out of play entirely. Even the High Court practitioners, with all their might, can’t intrude into Faerie without disastrous consequences. And while failing to recover the child is a major blow to my efforts, it’s far less destructive than a death knell delivered by the fae. So the only choice on my end is to give up on killing the girl.”

  He nods in a contemplative way. “You’re quite clever for a boy your age. I’ll give you that, Kinsey. Clever and audacious.” His hands cup either side of my head, his touch almost gentle, defying the stunning strength he displayed only a minute ago. It’s not until his fingers dip past my chin that I realize he’s planning to break my neck. “But as interesting a specimen as you may be, you are at best an exotic element unintentionally disrupting an otherwise stable mixture, and at worst a rogue agent liable to wreck anything you please. I can’t have you walking any streets without a proper leash, much less the streets that are now mine. And since I don’t have the time or the patience to leash you myself, you will have to go—”

  “This city isn’t yours,” I spit, spraying blood across his face, “and you’re not free to kill me without repercussions.”

  “And what repercussions might those be?” Targus glances at the blood spatter on his glasses, unconcerned. “Don’t try and convince me you’ve told all your little friends at DSI about my duplicity, because I know that, for whatever reason, you haven’t.”

  His hands tighten around my head. “I’ve been meticulously analyzing every piece of DSI gossip I’ve been able to get my hands on since my visit to your office yesterday afternoon, and while I’ve hit on several interesting threads, nothing about me in particular has pinged my radar. And if there’d been anything, trust me, I would have picked up on it, with all the tools I planted.

  “I’ve got your commissioner’s phone tapped, along with most of the captains’, for starters, and I’ve installed back doors into your encrypted servers. I spent the better part of last night reviewing your current case files for any clues that DSI had made me as the culprit of those ‘dastardly’ murders. A boring but necessary task, unfortunately drawn out by the fact I had to spend several hours recovering from gunshot wounds.”

  He eyes my stomach, indicating his pile driver spell was payback for those bullet wounds. “I’ve also had a whole host of mundane spies following your team since yesterday morning, after you caught the case, and listening in on your conversations in case you said something important I couldn’t reliably record.”

  His fingernails start to dig into my skin. “So you see, I know exactly what information you have and haven’t passed to your colleagues, and nothing you’ve said over the past twenty-four hours has pointed the finger at me. I can be reasonably sure you didn’t inform the Wolves of my identity either, despite the visit to their pack house I assume you made this morning while I was busy tracking a taxicab. Because if you had told them about me, they’d already be aiming for my throat. Wolves aren’t exactly known for their restraint.”

  “I get it,” I wheeze, “you have ample proof I’m the only person who knows the truth.”

  “Precisely.” He forcibly tilts my head from side to side. “So explain to me what I have to lose by killing you.”

  “An email.”

  Targus pauses. “Come again?”

  “First, let me explain the whole shebang.” I hawk a glob of blood at his face, but it falls short and soaks into his shirt. “I can tell from the way you’ve been beating around the bush that you believe I figured you out from some clues you inadvertently left at your crime scenes. Like the magic signature that almost matched Nottaway’s, but not quite enough to fool someone with a major practitioner’s sensitivity level. Or that the fact you and Nottaway, while having somewhat similar builds, are easy to tell apart by shape and weight when examined up close and personal, a discrepancy I would’ve noticed after engaging Nottaway in that fight at his house.” I stop for a few haggard breaths. “Am I warm so far?”

  Targus’ eyes narrow, ever so slightly. “Indeed. My pet theory was that, utilizing your practitioner skills, you realized DSI was being led astray by a false trail and then utilized a few minor leaps of logic to make your way to me, the new wizard in town, an unknown quantity, who conveniently showed up at the DSI office during a critical turning point in your investigation to supposedly offer a helping hand in the form of a list of potential suspects. Is that not what happened?”

  “Not even close.” I run my tongue across my blood-covered lips. “You’re still underestimating me. By a wide margin.”

  “How so?”

  “You think I just did some good detective work. But it’s a lot more than that.”

  Targus’ gaze sharpens further. “How much more?”

  I don’t answer him immediately. I give him some time to stew first.

  “Kinsey,” he warns, fingers digging deeper into my skin, putting so much pressure on the skull beneath that, for a second, I’m convinced my head’s going to explode. “Enough with the wor
d games. Spit it out.”

  Gasping in pain, I say, “I know you’ve been sent here on a mission by the High Court.”

  Targus freezes, entire body like a statue. Only his lips move as he asks, “Do you now?”

  “Sure do.” I flash him a weak, trembling grin. “I also know what that mission is: to kill Robert Delos’ distant relatives in order to convince him that the Court is willing to exterminate his entire family line if he doesn’t give in to the interrogators and spill everything he knows about the Methuselah Group. I know Sadie Wheeler was supposed to be the lynchpin in your operation to break Delos’ spirit, and that unless you can somehow convince Delos she’s dead without real evidence, it’s likely that every other murder you’ve committed in the past two days has been a complete waste of effort.”

  Targus stares at me, face totally blank, for a long and deathly quiet moment. Then he drops his hands from my head and rests them in his lap, fingers interlaced. A return to his artificial theme of casual body language that, for some reason, I find far more threatening than the open acknowledgement he wants to rip my head off my shoulders and toss it into a dumpster. “This email you referred to,” he says at last, tone flat and mechanical, “am I right to assume it contains this dirt you’ve somehow dug up on the Court and me?”

  “You are.”

  “Wonderful.” He honest-to-god twiddles his thumbs. “So, who’d you send it to?”

  “No one. Yet.”

  His eyebrows twitch. “You’ve got it on a time delay.”

  “Yup. It goes out at five thirty, on the dot. To Riker, and to every other DSI commissioner on the planet, to Pamela Newsome, and to the office of the President of the Lycanthrope Republic, to Mayor Burbank, and to the agent in charge of the FBI’s Paranormal Squad, who I assume will forward it to the White House.”

  I swallow to wet my throat, ignoring the overwhelming taste of copper. “The confirmable details in the email, combined with the DNA evidence that it was you I fought in the woods the other night, will cause an immediate and catastrophic breakdown in political relations between the ICM and everyone else. With the lives of innocent civilians on the line, and on the morgue slab, the human authorities will no longer be able to justify looking the other way when the ICM subverts mundane law.