by Martha Carr
Leira sensed the change in the energy field and felt a rip opening. The heavy, dark energy was parting in front of her, creating a path.
“Correk, no,” she said in a hushed voice. Correk is clearing the way. What will this cost him?
“What is it?” Hagan looked around quickly, but he couldn’t see any movement from the house. “We need to cover this ground quickly,” he said. The dry lawn was crunching under their feet. Every noise sounded amplified to them, and he was acutely aware of the number of windows staring back at them from the house.
Leira used two fingers to point toward the left side of the house. Hagan gave her a nod and bent low, moving as fast as he could toward the east side of the house.
Leira scaled the right side of the porch and easily swung over the rotten railing. She heard the familiar whine of a bullet whizzing past her head. She hit the floor of the porch, cracking two of the old boards, and rolled against the house, just beneath the windows. She crawled past the window and stood up with her back against the house. She leaned forward and craned her neck, trying to catch a glimpse through the window. It was going to be impossible to take a shot without knowing where the little girl was located.
The current of energy she had followed to the house came rushing through her like a gust of strong wind, sweeping into the house. From inside the house, she heard a choked gurgle, followed by gasping.
Leira hesitated, but only for a moment. The killer knew they were there, which meant the girl was in even more immediate danger. There was no time to waste. She took a look through the front window, ready to fire, using her newly found ability to get a faster, clearer assessment of the room in front of her. On the floor in the front room were two large men clawing at themselves, gasping for air, turning shades of blue and purple.
The back door of the house splintered as Hagan kicked his way in with one good solid kick. Hagan entered the front room, gun drawn. He quickly spotted the two men and glanced up at Leira. He put his knee in the middle of the larger man’s back and pulled his cuffs out. Leira entered through the front door, rushing in and covering him while he secured the second man.
Neither man resisted and within seconds, both of them had passed out from lack of oxygen. Hagan patted each of them down quickly, removing three small guns, an assortment of knives, and a pair of brass knuckles.
“Regular murderous boy scouts. They came prepared,” he observed.
Leira could sense they were running dangerously short of air. Magic still had them by the throat. “Correk, stop! They’re down,” she yelled.
“I thought you told him to stay by the car!” Hagan looked toward the door but didn’t see anyone. He shook his head. “Magic monkey business. Can’t say I’m not grateful for it. Stopped these mooks from shooting at us. This is why I eat so much,” he said.
The larger man began to stir. Hagen pulled him to his feet.
“That’s the killer,” Leira told him. “Keep your eye on this one,” she added, pointing toward the other man who was still unconscious.
Leira held her gun in front of her as she went to search the other two rooms in the house. She could sense that there was no more danger but she wasn’t willing to take a risk on brand-new magic. In the bedroom, someone had pushed an old, wide wooden dresser in front of the closet door. Leira shoved it aside, scraping the floor. She opened the closet door slowly, gun drawn, ready for anything.
The missing girl was pressed up against a corner of the closet. She looked dirty and frightened, but unharmed. Leira quickly holstered her gun.
“It’s okay, it’s okay. Lucy Kate, right? Okay. Hello Lucy Kate,” she said in a soft voice, her hands held up in front of her. She crouched down and reached for the girl. Lucy Kate drew back, terrified. An idea came to Leira and she summoned the energy, the magic, and gently reached out toward the girl.
“This may be a really stupid idea.”
Her eyes shimmered briefly and Leira could sense a ripple of energy flowing from her toward the girl. Leira inched forward saying, “You’re safe now,” over and over again, until she had the girl safely held in her arms.
It took some help from Correk to get the two large men, still dazed from the lack of air and Correk’s magic, in separate unmarked cars. Leira deposited the girl in the front seat of the Mustang. The girl drew her knees up under her chin and wrapped her arms around her legs.
“How do we explain all of this?” asked Hagan. There were large sweat stains under his arms. “I’m not even sure what happened. That’ll make it tough to fill out all of that paperwork. Besides, we have to explain why we went off by ourselves and didn’t tell anyone what we were doing. What excuse do we have for being out here and tripping over this in another jurisdiction?” he asked sarcastically, making air quotes with his hands. “You have a magic spell for that?”
“Yes, we call that lying,” said Correk. “Works pretty much the same way here as it does on Oriceran.”
Leira noticed Correk was leaning against the car and his skin was even paler than usual. “You’re going to need some food, and this time something that resembles actual food. No arguments.”
“Our story…” said Hagan. “Somebody start this mythic tale for me.”
“How about…” Correk started.
“How about we got a tip and were so close to the area we drove on up to take a look. An anonymous informant told us they were about to pull out. No time to call it in. A six-year-old girl was at risk. These two goons can talk their fool heads off about something invisible strangling them and we’ll do our best shrug. Everyone got it?” Leira asked. She raised her eyebrows, her mouth in a straight, determined line.
“Simple. I like it,” said Hagan. “Gonna be a shitload of paperwork.”
“Always is,” she replied.
“Even a few discussions about jurisdictions and cooperation.”
“Yep,” Leira agreed as she got in the car. Hagan was still mumbling as he walked back toward his older Oldsmobile and started up the engine.
Leira started up the Mustang and did a sharp U-turn, spitting gravel, eliciting a moan from the back seat. The little girl looked up at Leira, worried.
“It’s okay,” Leira said softly. “He can’t get to us from back there.”
The little girl was sitting in Correk’s lap, holding on to the side of the seat.
Leira looked over at Correk. “This is almost too much for me,” she said. “We can tell a lie to the Captain and given the outcome, they’ll buy it without a lot of fuss. But what about these Silver Griffins? Won’t they be along next to tell us to cut it out?”
“Possibly. Likely.”
“Great,” Leira said, turning on the lights as they pulled out onto the paved road.
“Sometimes you have to take a risk and break the rules,” Correk said, looking out toward the road.
“You don’t strike me as a rule breaker. And, in case you can’t feel this one, I’m not either, usually. Feels too much like lying. Another thing I’m not a big fan of.” She looked in the rearview mirror and saw Hagan closely following her as they cruised out onto the highway, pushing eighty-five miles an hour. It wouldn’t be long before they were back in Austin. “So, what do we tell them? The Griffins?”
“They already know what we’ve done. They’ll tell us what to think, and soon.”
Leira looked down at Lucy Kate. She felt an unexpected twinge she wasn’t used to after a case. “This whole feeling thing is a rough roller coaster ride,” she said softly.
“It suits you. Cousin.”
“Yeah, I caught that earlier.” She glanced at him. “We’ll be circling back to that, don’t you worry.”
“You did the right thing, no matter who finds out.”
“Yeah, well, so did you,” she said.
Chapter Three
The sign that hung on the door to the large, open room said PDF in large black letters. It stood for Paranormal Defense Force and was comprised of a small group of hand-selected magical creatures who
se ancestry went back to Oriceran.
One of the requirements though, was that each hire had to have been born on Earth. Magical beings made ordinary human beings very nervous, in general. It was why they kept the small department off the books. The PDF was the ultimate black-op.
There were jokes around the department about what PDF actually stood for. On bad days it was joked the PDF stood for put down fast. A reference to the days when human beings liked to dissect anything they didn’t understand. On better days, PDF stood for presto digitalis frenzy, an incantation every magical child learned that made someone cluck like a chicken.
At least once a year, someone got fed up and made a human general, or worse, a Congressman from some small state who had just learned about their existence and insisted on a tour, flap their arms and crane their neck, gulping in air as they crowed at the fluorescent lights overhead.
The never was, never will be spell was getting a workout from PDF.
Even so, there was an unspoken agreement that once someone had let loose with a childish prank, they’d give it a minute or two before reversing the spell and erasing the memory. That way everyone got one good selfie in before the fun was over.
It helped that all the members of the PDF looked as ordinary as any other mid-level manager who worked for the government, even if they did have the ability to turn somebody into a toad.
The two women sat in front of the oversized virtual screen hanging in front of them, puzzled at the data scrolling by: green symbols in straight lines. Their eyes followed along as their concern grew.
They were sitting in a nondescript, low-slung grey brick building that was tucked in the back of an office park decked out to look like different companies that sold manufacturing equipment in Alexandria, Virginia just across the river from Washington, D.C. It was a government front for an enterprise that was known only as the G4 Project, including the PDF. The witches and wizards, and a handful of elves that worked there liked to refer to it as Area 51, but only when their human coworkers weren’t around.
That line usually got a snicker or a raised eyebrow out of any new hire. Part of the requirement, after all, was you had to have some non-human blood.
“You sure this isn’t the work of the Silver Griffins?” asked the younger woman, dressed neatly in navy blue slacks and blazer. She wrinkled her nose and squinted at the data still coming in. “I can’t remember in the five years I’ve been here ever seeing so much unregistered magic phenomena. Lois, you’ve been here longer. Does this ring a bell?”
Lois scowled at the other woman. “I’m not old in witch years you know, Patsy,” she said, pushing the thin brown frame of her glasses back up her nose.
Patsy smirked, and let out a snort. “Okay, whatever. You didn’t answer my question. Any of this look familiar? I mean, geez, that has to be a right good explosion, right? We should report this to the G4 section manager.”
“Now, hold on to your britches, there, Patsy. They’re just a bunch of government humans. The worst kind! Very literal! Long-winded! They’ll call for a study! You’ve seen what they do when they hear that one of our kind is out using their natural talents. They run amok! What if this is some naturally occurring gases, or something?”
“Ha! That’s a good one. Remember what happened back in ‘04 when those elves managed to make the fireworks hang in the air over the Super Bowl? That nice Light Elf, what was his name?”
“Justin Timberlake.”
“Yeah, that’s the one. Sang at the halftime just as the fireworks went off and hung there, glittering in the sky.”
“So pretty! Sure, I remember. Saw it live on TV and said to Earl, Earl, that sure is pretty but it’s gonna cause trouble. Don’t you know my phone rang just a minute later? Didn’t get to see the end of the game.”
“Thank goodness for Justin’s quick thinking and that so-called wardrobe malfunction!” Lois let out a peal of laughter, bending over in her chair.
“One little nipple and everyone forgot about the fireworks. Humans,” Patsy chortled. “See all of those swirls and triangles and the sparkling explosions next to the one that looks like a ferris wheel gone crazy?” asked Patsy, pointing at the symbols streaming in front of them, reflecting off of Lois’ glasses. “That’s an explosion in the middle of downtown Chicago.”
“Huh. I thought that was just a large use of magic like an artifact or a group of wizards performing a spell together.”
“Well, in a matter of speaking, but when it’s combined with the swirls it means a big magic kaboom. Now, seeing as how all the morning programs haven’t spit out their coffee and run as fast as they could to Chi-town I’d say someone also did a pretty neat job of covering it up. That, I’ll bet you my tenth row Aerosmith tickets, was done by the Silver Griffins. The big boom doesn’t read like them but the cover up sure does.”
“What do you think it all means?”
“Someone powerful is using magic out there,” said Patsy. “From the looks of it, not your average Oriceran. Hmmm, interesting.”
“We have to report it. That’s our entire job description,” said Lois.
“No doubt. It’s how we phrase it that will matter.”
“You mean, like we maybe don’t mention the use of an amnesia spell…”
“Good example, yes. And, maybe we dig around for a few facts first. Look in the Chicago Tribune for anything weird that happened that day.”
“That works for me. Just sounds like we were doing our best to do an even better job.”
“Totally agree.”
“Uh oh.”
“What now?” Patsy pushed her long blonde bangs out of her face.
“Look!” Lois held up her smart phone. “Front page of the Tribune from the same day as the explosion. Just under the fold. Two people mysteriously disappear from a college soiree. A professor and a dean. No history of mental illness it says. Total mystery. No traces found.”
Patsy looked up at the screen and pulled out her wand, a government-issued willow branch left over from the glory days of the 1970s. Totally old school and not as effective as the new ones made on 3-D printers, but it got the job done. Besides, it was the only type approved for use within the small bunker of a building. They were required to leave them in their lockers at night.
Patsy waved the wand around in short swirls and occasional sharp pokes in the direction of the screen that was part paranormal magic and part modern technology.
“Oh, that’s bad. That’s bad indeed. Two deaths for sure, and it’s the same location as the big kaboom. Well, the humans will not take this well at all.”
“Unless the two victims are not of their kind. They tend to take that a little better.”
“A lot better. Quit Googling so much. Give me a chance to think.” The green letters flittered across the screen, letting off sounds like children’s toys, with high-pitched whines, clicking and whirring.
“Maybe we could run it past the gnomes in magical forensic accounting first.”
“Not a bad idea. Very discreet group, those gnomes. They seem to know how to handle the touchy government types. And they dress so well, with their little suits and bowlers.”
“You mean touchy humans,” said Lois.
“Well, that goes without saying, but when you mix it with mid-level government managers, well, kaboom!” Patsy wiggled her fingers in the air, rolling her eyes.
Lois shrieked with laughter followed by a hiccup, not uncommon for her. “You think it’s that girl? You know, that detective in the wild, wild West?”
“If you mean Texas, maybe, but I doubt it.” Patsy pulled her wand out from where she had tucked it neatly into the back of her bouffant. Lois’ government issue willow branch hung from a delicate gold chain at her waist, right next to her ID badge, always at the ready. “You still have that connection in the Silver Griffins?”
“My cousin? Of course I do. Not many ever choose to retire. You know that. But she’s never one for gossiping, particularly since there’s a rumor goin
g around that the PDF ratted on a few magical beings last year.”
“Yeah, I heard that one last time I was in Hanover County. Lovely spot for a kemana. Best tomatoes on the planet.”
“Those are from Oriceran seeds and there’s a little magic in that Hanover soil, you know.”
“Who doesn’t know that?” Lois was always irritated at having the obvious pointed out to her. “Best BLT there is.”
“What were you doing in Hanover? Was it work?” Patsy asked, pushing the topic further.
Lois looked at her over the top of her glasses and said quietly, “You know these walls have ears.”
Patsy pulled her wand back out and with a flick of the wrist, swirled the air around them.
“You have a minute, girlfriend. What were you up to?”
“Recharging of course, although those damn tomatoes were a good enough reason. I know they like to keep our energy levels at a minimum but they don’t have our best interests at heart. I figure out ways to drive toward Richmond every few months.”
“I hear you. Who did rat out those wizards last year?”
“I heard it was their own stupidity. Got a little high on some Oriceran weed and were found making a light show out of fireballs around the Capital. Had to tie them all up till they came down off the high, otherwise they would have kept sneaking in spells. Juvenile stuff. Of course, they had no memory of it. That O weed will make you forget your name. Still, no one believes me when I tell them it wasn’t us who told on them.”
“Ah crap! What was that?” Patsy slid out of her chair, almost plopping on the floor before rebounding to her feet. The symbols were taking on different shapes, spitting new data across the screen.
“More unauthorized use, but this time in Austin, Texas.”
“Well, that has to be her. What was her name?”
“Hang on, I have it right here,” Lois said, shuffling papers.
“Your fascination with putting things on paper baffles me.”
“The humans love it. Here it is. Leira Berens, an unaffiliated magical being. Recently detected and in the company of an actual Oriceran. A Light Elf. Very interesting times, Patsy.”
