by Sierra Cross
“Here it is,” Masumi said with a sigh. “My life’s work.”
“This is fantastic.” A dark glint lit Aunt Jenn’s eyes. “With this information, we could unseat every Council member, unseat the entire legislative branch. Rip the power from their greedy—”
“No!” Masumi spoke with the horror I felt. “This isn’t about wresting power. It’s about saving lives.”
“Of course it is,” my aunt said. But it was too late. As far as I was concerned, she’d already revealed her hand. Aunt Jenn wanted…revolution?
“It’s time for justice, not revenge.” Masumi released the door and looked into the room, her eyes traveling over every item on its shelves, as if she was weighing and measuring the worth of the room’s contents. Eyes still appraising, she turned to me, “Your niece is different from you,” she mused. “She doesn’t crave unlimited power like you do. Even though she’s young, her compass points toward justice. A person like her…once she watches all those videos…” Masumi’s voice sounded confident, smug even. I was getting the uncomfortable feeling she was pinning her hopes on me to take on her mantle. And while it felt validating to have someone point out how different my nature was from my aunt’s, I also knew that Masumi was wrong about me in one important sense. I knew what I was fighting for. I wouldn’t be sucked in like she had been.
Masumi put her hands on my shoulders and pulled me close, the touch startling me. “There’s a painting in my bedroom.” Her words were so quiet I could barely hear her. “An abstract, tonal piece on the closet wall. The grid pattern is actually a map to this location. Under x-ray, it will reveal the only way to disable the locking mechanism if I am…no longer available.”
She released me and spoke loud enough for my aunt to hear, any evidence of fear or anger gone from her voice. “Without it, the room is wired to blow. You’ll have to figure out the filing system for yourself. Northwest wall, evidence organized for legal challenges.” She pointed then turned to the next wall. “Here are clinical observations and conclusions that were buried or otherwise subverted. And over here is genetic testing and scientific results that have never seen the light of day. It will take every piece of evidence here to show a pattern of abuse and its historical significance, in order to make a successful legislative change.”
“I appreciate that this is your life’s work. And it’s a noble cause, but I’m not your gal.” I wouldn’t dupe her like my aunt had done to me. “I just need proof that Mals aren’t intrinsically evil,” I reminded her. “That’s it.”
Without acknowledging my disclaimer, she reached into a box near the door and pulled out a flash drive. “Back when I was young and full of fire,” she said, her voice almost dreamy, “I thought I was going to recruit a team of reformers to help me. I compiled this, but never found anyone worthy of recruiting. That’s what I told myself. The truth is, I was afraid. This secret is so big. Spilling it could heal our society, or it could destroy us.” She looked at the drive but didn’t look like she was on the verge of handing it to me.
“Your secret will still be a secret—until you’re ready,” I said. “I’ll guard it with my life. I won’t even show it to my aunt.” I raised my right hand. “Promise.”
Masumi kept the drive tightly clutched to her chest. “What’s to stop Jennifer from performing a knockout spell on the drive home and simply taking it from you?”
Good question. Aunt Jenn had never attacked me in any way—but that didn’t mean she wasn’t capable. I didn’t relish a fight with a powerful dark witch.
“Zumi, really?” Aunt Jenn had the gall to look offended. “She’s my niece.” Masumi’s face didn’t soften. “You just said yourself, once she watches your video, she’ll be a convert. Why would I risk a battle when all I have to do is wait?”
Inwardly I breathed a sigh. My aunt was all kinds of evil, but stealing the drive from me wasn’t her style. Somewhere in that gnarled heart of hers she was convinced she could still turn me. “For what it’s worth,” I said. “I trust her. On this point, anyway.”
Masumi hesitated. “I would only give it to you on the condition that you promise to watch the whole thing—every video that’s on here.”
“You have my word.”
She looked at me for a long moment, sizing me up, reading between my lines. Then she nodded and handed me the drive. “You don’t know where your path will take you yet. But once you set out on this journey, you’ll have to ride it to the end. There’s no turning back for either of us.”
Chapter Three
“To access the Rare Records Room, I need to get permission from the Witches’ Assembly—” Liv stopped mid-sentence as I plowed through the door of Asher’s lab, my muscles stiff from being cooped up in Aunt Jenn’s car.
“Good of you to join us,” Asher said with an edge to his voice, taking a sip from his teacup. “Liv, you were saying.”
I’d just come back from a six-hour road trip, and he was still pissed at me for being late to a training session? Whatever, I was too keyed up to be derailed by his attitude. The flash drive practically burning a hole in my pocket. I crossed the room and plopped onto the edge of my green leather love seat. I tried not to look at the straight-back armchair beside me. The seat Matt was supposed to be in. I didn’t want to admit it to myself, but I’d been half expecting him to show up. Would he come back for his shift at Sanctum? Would he come home tonight? I could sense him in our coven bond, but all it told me was that he was alive—and not with me.
“Hey.” Liv tilted her chin at me. “I want to hear about your trip. But I gotta tell you both what I found in the archives. It’s about Callie’s condition.”
Callie’s condition. The way she said it, as if our sister witch had merely caught a bad flu, sent a pang through me. I dreaded telling Liv about the fight I’d had with the evil thing who’d taken over Callie’s body. Looking into those soulless eyes had finally forced me to accept the loss of our little sister. Something told me Liv wasn’t remotely ready to do the same.
“Liv, serious question. Are you trying to break our hearts all over again?” Asher’s sadness was so thick he couldn’t hide it under his usual mask. “We’ve consulted with the crones, gone through every tome I can think of. They all say the same thing. She’s gone.”
“None of the supposed ‘experts’ knew the Malum Osmium was anything more than a myth before we told them about it. They don’t know everything.” The hope in her eyes was painful to witness.
Taking a steadying breath, I told them how the imposter had mocked me, taunted me, and attacked me. Things that would have been unthinkable for our Callie. I had searched for our sister in those blue eyes that looked so familiar and come up empty. “She’s not in there.”
Liv inhaled a stubborn breath. God, it was killing me to see her like this. “What if she’s been magically hijacked, like you were with Tenebris?”
“Tenebris…” I involuntarily repeated his name, shrugging off the icy chill it sent to my core. The Caedis demon who had killed my parents and violated my mind was still out there, roaming the world in a brand-new, handsome young skinsuit—one he’d scored off the accidental, but much deserved, death of Leonard the geeky mage. Of course he was listed on the Fidei’s registry of Caedises, but in this rare instance they had no idea of his location. And as much as I hated it, hunting down Tenebris was in the vampires’ jurisdiction now. Director Ambrose Bonaventura and his sons wouldn’t rest until Tenebris was dust. It was a matter of honor to them. Still, after everything he’d taken from me and mine, I couldn’t shake the feeling that called to my soul. That I personally should be the one to remove that fucking Caedis from the Earthly plane. “That can’t be what’s happening to Callie,” I said to Liv. “He was only able to do that because of my dominion gene.”
Asher nodded in dour approval at my logical thinking.
“But there are other forms of possession that work pretty similar from the outside.” Liv sounded so hopeful. “I’ve found a footnote in an unrelate
d text in the witch’s library downtown. It references something called Itinerant Possessions. There are at least three forms of demonic possession that were new to me. All really rare and hard to do. But one of them stood out. If a Caedis has access to a power boost—like the evil tree—they can graft a splinter of their soul into a host body. Not the same as taking the human for a skinsuit. Theoretically, you could remove the splinter and—”
“You could?” I burst out. Liv’s excitement was contagious…till I remembered those cold, dull eyes. But what if Callie was a prisoner in her own body, had been all this time? Tenebris had possessed me for a total of three hours, yet the feeling of powerlessness and violation was still fresh. I couldn’t even comprehend the kind of torture she might be going through.
“What did it say happens when the splinter is separated from the host?” Asher asked, his gaze on her more challenging than curious.
Liv looked away. “I’m still reading up on that. That’s why I need access to the Rare Records Room—”
“I’ll tell you what it says.” His voice was softer now. “That nine times out of ten, the original soul perishes during the grafting of the splinter. And in rare cases where the soul has persisted, there’s never been a documented case where it survived the separation process.”
“Separation has been attempted so few times that there’s not enough evidence to be conclusive,” she said, undaunted. “And it doesn’t even say how they did it. Maybe if we had more information we could improve the process. Perfect it. That’s why I need access to the Rare Records Room.”
“I hear your point.” Asher’s voice was calm, but it felt like his compassion was stretched to its limit. He swallowed the last of his tea in a single gulp and reached across the coffee table for the pot. “But—”
“No ‘buts,’” Liv said. “We need to do this. I need to.”
“Liv, I’ll be honest. I don’t have much hope…” I let my words trail off as the realization hit me. I had needed today’s fight to let go of Callie. Maybe Liv needed this? “But you should do whatever it takes to follow up on that lead,” I said, ignoring the anger flashing in Asher’s eyes. “Take as much time as you need. Asher and I will cover for you, won’t we, Asher?”
He looked at me with muted anger. “Of course we will. That’s a brilliant use of our resources.” His voice was chock-full of mock enthusiasm. Without relaxing his furious gaze on me, he reached into his back pocket, plucked out a slim leather-wrapped flask, and topped off his tea. He’d been drinking this whole time? And not in ladylike dollops either.
We each dealt with grief in our own way. Liv, taking refuge in her spells and empty possibilities, refusing to give up hope. Asher, fighting to protect her from disappointment and further pain. Each of them trying to numb the ache in their heart. Had the pain of Callie’s loss helped drive Matt past the breaking point?
Matt. The other hole in my Swiss cheese heart. The weight of the thumb drive in my pocket reminded me that I couldn’t afford to let my grief slow me down. Couldn’t let it dupe me into spinning my wheels over a lost cause, the way Liv was. Or self-medicating like Asher.
Moving forward was what was going to soothe my soul. And we had one coven member I was sure we could help. Assuming the info on Masumi’s flash drive was as conclusive as she’d implied. I was dying to open it. In the face of my coven imploding, Masumi’s certainty that I would get sucked in by her cause seemed laughable. I fished out the drive and held it up. “Aunt Jenn wasn’t lying, for once. This Fidei woman had mountains of evidence. Dr. Shimizu gave me this.” I did have a pang of guilt about forcing my already sad coven mates to watch something depressing. But it had to be done.
“You’re kidding.” Asher raised an eyebrow. “Your aunt actually came through?”
“In a roundabout way,” I said. “The good news is she’s stopped trying to turn me. The bad news is she thinks I’m her key to taking over the world.”
“Excuse me?” Liv asked.
“Okay, not the world. Just the Spelldrift.”
“Pretty sure our buddy Ambrose would take issue with that,” Asher said.
“We’re in no danger of her being able to overthrow the Council Suprema. It’s just her warped little daydream.”
Asher pointed to the drive. “How does what’s on that play into her world-dominance fantasies?”
“Yeah, what’s on that thing?” Liv asked.
“I have no idea.” But Masumi had implied it was pretty powerful stuff. My friends deserved a content warning. “I’m thinking it’s going to be a little hard to watch.” I turned to Asher. “She said we had to watch it on a computer with no Internet connection, no web cam in a room with no Amazon Echo or Google Home-type listening device and no monitored security systems.”
“Paranoia much?” Liv muttered.
“Certainly covering her bases, isn’t she?” Asher said.
“She’s been stealing classified records for over a decade,” I said, feeling protective of Masumi. They hadn’t been in that bunker, seen her security or witnessed her very tangible fear. “Other Fidei whistleblowers have been killed for their efforts. It’s not paranoia if they really are out to get you.”
Liv nodded slowly. A cloud of seriousness replaced the snark as the weight of my words sunk in.
Asher unplugged the monitor from one tower computer and attached it to another, making no bones about the conditions. “This room is clean,” he said, “and I have a dumb terminal I can plug the drive into.” I handed the drive to Asher. He held it poised in front of the port for a moment before inserting it and the aura of expectation engulfed us all.
Liv, Asher, and I sat on the red couch facing the monitor as the drive mounted. A younger version of Masumi’s face filled the screen and then she scooted back, like she could see herself on a display. She was dressed professionally in a white coat with the Fidei insignia on it, the tidy surfaces of her office in the background. Looking directly into the camera, Masumi looked fresh-faced and eager. A fire burned in her eyes as she began to speak with a steady determination. This was a woman that people would follow. What had happened? When had the aura of fear consumed her?
“My name is Doctor Masumi Shimizu. I am the assistant head of the Fidei Department of Amalgam and Deviant Analysis. I have a master’s degree in Behavioral Science from UW and a PhD in Advanced Biogenetics from Johns Hopkins.
“Everything you’re about to see, I secretly taped while performing my job duties—a job I hold to this day in order to retain recording access to these human rights atrocities. I never believed I would turn against the Fidei. Ours is a noble organization filled with so many fine people. But this small faction has betrayed everything we stand for. I had no choice.”
The video rough cut from Masumi to a lab where a grown man was strapped to a vertical table, bruises and abrasions covering half his naked body, electrodes connected to his temple. IV tubes crisscrossed like roads on a map, running to what looked like an eerie magicborn dialysis machine behind him. Were they analyzing his blood, pumping him full of some drug, or what?
Off screen, Masumi spoke over the audio. “Subject number 171-3-A. Tyler Jenkins. Thirty-two years old. Married, father of two. Occupation, baker.” There was a hitch in her voice before she continued. “He lived his entire life in Castleton. He was a member the Chamber of Commerce. He was a volunteer at his children’s preschool.”
Three techs in white uniforms surrounded the beleaguered ‘patient.’
“We know your lineage.” The first tech sounded bored, like he was sick of repeating himself. “You can’t pretend any longer. Come on, Tyler, show us your variant ability.”
“I have,” the beaten man implored, voice hoarse and cracking. “I have nothing else. Please. Please.”
“I think you’re holding out on us.” The second tech, a crooked grin on his face, stepped back and threw a gut punch. The prisoner’s head lurched forward, and he began dry-heaving.
“You can end this any time,” tech n
umber three said. “Just let your freak flag fly and we’re outtie.” He paused as if waiting for a response, but the prisoner’s throat was still clenched, rendering him unable to speak.
“We’ve had no measurable output of variant serum,” an older male voice intoned from off-camera. “Please increase your persuasion to level three.”
Without warning, all three techs stepped toward the man throwing punches to his face and body, a free-for-all.
“Please, no,” the prisoner begged in choked bursts as his body absorbed the blows. “I don’t want to hurt anyone. Please—”
The crunch of a bone breaking made my stomach lurch. The man howled with pain. From the center of the cluster of techs, a crystalline cloud of gold and blue magic sprang to light.
“Now we’re talking.” Behind the tortured man, the wheels of the mysterious medical apparatus began to rotate. It lit up like a slot machine that just hit the jackpot. A pale blue substance flowed through the tubes into what looked like plasma bags.
“See, that’s all you had to do, Tyler,” said the first tech, psychopath-calm. “We’ll clean you up so you can be all fresh for tomorrow—”
The blue and gold magic that surrounded the Mal ebbed and then swelled, making his attackers step back. Through his pain, a look of horror crossed Tyler’s face…as if he knew something bad was about to happen. The lights on the machine began to flash wildly, like it couldn’t keep up with the surge.
“I can’t control it!” Tyler bellowed.
“Clear the room!” yelled the male voice from off screen. “If his power isn’t shut down now it will blow the equipment.”
The swirl of magic around the prisoner flashed like light through a chandelier. The whole room shook and shards of magic exploded from the center of the Mal. All three torture-techs collapsed, burns blooming on their skin. The energy burned through straps and the beaten man slid down the table. Power was still radiating from his core, but his muscles didn’t hold him up. It was like he was stuck in the on position and couldn’t shut himself off, even though it was killing him.
