by Mia Marshall
He cracked one eye open, uncertain about the use of such blatant hippie language, but he tried again. With each long, slow breath, I could see the tension exit his shoulders and the muscles in his face relax, leaving him calm and open. “I feel... is that a worm?”
Vivian nodded. “A big one about an inch below the surface.” Johnson laughed openly. I was glad for him, but I also hoped Vivian was managing his expectations. With practice, he might learn to read the earth a bit, but that was all he could achieve. He was too weak to manipulate it, and his tiny drop of elemental blood was unlikely to provide anything other than a few blue ribbons in the county fair’s vegetable competitions.
Carmichael abruptly decided we’d socialized long enough. “What can you tell us about the shifters?”
I glanced toward Sera. Mac was still in his trailer, and while Simon was in the room, the agents hadn’t noticed the black cat perched in the beams. Their absence spoke volumes: leave them out of it.
“Well...” I stretched out the word, searching for an answer that sounded terribly informative while divulging no real information. I knew the shifters would continue to include us in the search for the missing teens only if they believed we weren’t then feeding their information to the FBI.
Fortunately, Sera knew better than to leave me in charge of keeping secrets. “What do you want to know?”
Carmichael turned to her, his body tensing at the sound of her voice. “Everything you learned in the course of doing your job.” There was an unmistakable emphasis on the last word.
“Shouldn’t a job come with benefits and paychecks? I’m not sure we actually have a job.” Her look was as innocent as Sera could manage.
He sputtered. “It’s been two days. We need processing time. We need to know this is going to work out.”
She shook her head. “See, that’s the problem. You keep acting like you’re doing us a favor, when I’m fairly sure it’s the other way around. It’s not like you two could wander into a shifter home and get answers.”
A red flush creeped into his cheeks, a flush I’d only ever seen Sera cause. The woman had a gift. “We could always find other elementals.”
“You think so?” Her doubtful tone made it clear how likely she considered that possibility. “Maybe. They wouldn’t be as powerful as we are, though. Not as pretty to look at, either.” She smiled at him, an easy, harmless smile, and took a pull of her beer.
“What do you want?” He spoke through gritted teeth.
She waited a long time to respond, taking several more swigs and appearing to think carefully about her answer. I knew she’d decided what to say before she even started this conversation. She might have been planning it since we left Reno. “I want you to understand that this is our world, not yours. Not yours either, Johnson, I’m sorry to say. We want to help you, but we’re going to deal with our world the best way we know how, and sometimes that will involve keeping its secrets. And you, well, you’re going to accept that and keep your whining to a minimum. Also, you guys do direct deposit, right?”
I admired how she failed to mention that shifters didn’t remotely consider us part of their world.
The red flush spread and darkened, and I was pretty sure his body vibrated slightly. I had to give him points for control, though. His hand didn’t twitch once toward his firearm. “Daily updates on all supernatural occurrences,” Carmichael insisted.
“Weekly. And we prefer the term magical.”
“Though our powers are steeped in nature and, we are, obviously, quite super.” I couldn’t resist contributing. Sera shot a conspiratorial smile my way. Carmichael chose to ignore me.
“Every other day.” Johnson watched Carmichael haggle, though he showed no sign of jumping in.
“Twice a week or none at all. Final offer.”
He studied her, weighing the strength of his position and seeing all its weaknesses. “Twice a week reports on all magical issues and daily reports on any human involvement, and your pay will be docked instantly if we find out you are withholding information we needed. That’s our final offer.”
Sera and I both nodded. It was a fair compromise, all things considered, though I feared we’d lose a fair bit of our pay if Carmichael followed through on his threat.
Carmichael exhaled, his relief tempered somewhat by his obvious annoyance. “Now, can you please fill us in on the basic points of the case?”
She gazed off into the distance, considering. “The shifters are having a couple of bad days.” Considering that update enough, she stopped talking and waited for him to explode.
Somehow, he held it together. “Are elementals involved in any way?”
“Other than you asking me and Aidan to butt in? No.”
He leaned forward, looking earnest and determined. I suspected this was a ploy. “You trusted us once with your secrets,” he implored.
The foolish man couldn’t know that a woman raised by Josiah Blais was completely immune to emotional manipulation. She’d been taught by the master, and no one else had a chance. If anything, she looked amused. “And word still managed to get out within the FBI. Neither of us are exactly welcome at home these days.”
This time, she neglected to mention that neither of us felt any desire to return home. Few people could tell partial truths with greater conviction than Sera.
Carmichael was running out of arguments. I wanted to save him, since he had no real chance of winning against Sera, and the longer he tried, the more foolish she’d make him feel.
“We can’t,” I said. “These aren’t our secrets to tell. You need to understand that. We’ll wear the white hats and help however we can, but we’re not going to betray the magical community more than we already have. I know you think you have a right to this information because of your new job, but that’s just not true. You’re still an outsider. The best we can do is tell you when there’s information we’re not allowed to share. Let us keep some loyalties, Carmichael.”
I thought loyalty was a language Carmichael would understand. He sighed heavily. “Let me see if I’ve got this right. We asked you to liaise on a case and communicate your findings to the FBI. We sent you to work on a case you would never have known about without us. Now, you are asking us to continue to employ you, despite the fact that your version of liaising involves telling us almost nothing about the case to which we assigned you unless it suits you and your friends.”
Sera and I looked at each other. “That’s about it, yeah.” I nodded and gave him a bright smile.
Carmichael rubbed his hand over his face, scrubbing his own skin in frustration. “Any human involvement?”
It was one small thing we could give him. “One of the shifters lied and said she was staying with a human friend. I’m not sure the girl knows anything, but you can talk to her.”
Sera nodded and gave them the name she’d learned from Dana. “Other than that, it’s all shifter families.” She offered Carmichael a small apologetic smile, one honest enough to catch him off guard. Sure, she was happy to bust his balls just for the fun of it, but we were also telling the truth. There were things we couldn’t tell these men without the shifters’ permission, and it took a rare sincere moment from Sera for Carmichael to finally understand that.
He nodded at her. “Thank you. And, considering that we don’t appear to be doing any work this evening, I’ll take one of those beers now.” He smiled a weak, tired smile, and with it the agent melted away, leaving a man in his place. It was the first time I’d ever seen Carmichael as anything other than the determined, focused agent. It made me think I should call him by his first name, if I had any idea what that was.
Instead, I walked to the kitchen to grab his beer from the fridge, wishing the whole time that Mac and Simon would join us and there was one less secret I had to keep.
Days passed, each hour creeping slowly by as absolutely nothing happened. The phone remained silent. I knew Will and his family were continuing to pursue every lead they could find, q
uestioning James’s and Pamela’s friends. I assumed Carmen was doing the same, but no one updated me or Sera.
We knocked on both their front doors at least once a day, but no one opened them. Maybe Mac had told them we were in contact with the agents. Maybe they just didn’t like us.
I wasn’t sure what we’d have done if someone had answered. An abusive boyfriend or crazy mother still seemed the most likely scenarios, and I had no idea how to simultaneously help and investigate the two families.
The agents checked in regularly, and they confirmed what we already suspected. Pamela’s friend knew nothing. She’d merely been an excuse, a distraction while Pamela snuck away with James. She had no more idea where they’d gone than we did.
We had little information to offer them in turn, a fact of which they were grudgingly accepting.
Vivian spent hours on the computer, digging up every bit of information we could find on our key suspects. She learned that James got his driver’s license the moment he turned sixteen, earned Bs and Cs in school despite strong test scores, took regular guitar lessons in Tahoe City, and was a menace on a snowboard. Nothing in his history hinted at violence.
Carmen’s story was more complicated. Vivian’s research indicated a wild past, the kind of life that felt more appropriate to a big cat than the preppy trappings that now surrounded her. In high school, she’d been the sort of student who, if she’d spent half the energy on her studies that she spent attempting to skip class and outsmart the teachers, she’d have been valedictorian. She’d skipped college, preferring to educate herself in the San Francisco nightlife. She only stayed in the city a few years before returning north with a few dollars to her name.
Somehow, I knew it wasn’t the lack of money that brought her back. The evidence suggested that Carmen was a resourceful woman, the kind who knew how to separate men from their money. No, San Francisco was beautiful, with manicured parks and tourist-friendly forests along the coast, but it wasn’t the mountains. She was here because this was her home.
Only a week after returning, she met Mark Avila in a Sacramento bar frequented by well-heeled political types. She convinced him to marry her within a week and divorced him less than a year later, taking full advantage of California being a community property state. A month later, she found a man more than happy to take on a beautiful divorcee and her infant daughter. He lasted almost three years. The second husband had visitation rights to see Dana, but the first hadn’t been heard from since the divorce.
It might be suspicious, if it bore any resemblance to the current case. Carmen liked gullible older men with money who made her life easier. Kidnapping her daughter and her boyfriend simply made no sense.
Sera and I spent a lot of time on the throw pillows, tossing theories back and forth and trying to find an avenue worth exploring. One we knew how to explore, more to the point. We knew we were in over our heads, though neither of us wanted to admit it. We had no training in this kind of work, no idea where to begin, and no clue how to open those doors that remained steadfastly closed.
I hadn’t seen Mac since the night the agents interrupted us. I didn’t know if he was avoiding me or working the case separately, but it didn’t matter. The message was clear: I wasn’t welcome in parts of his life.
Vivian was rarely home, spending all her time either in the library or with her ex-girlfriend. She continued to scowl and mutter whenever I asked for details, so I assumed it wasn’t going well.
Simon was still with us, though we didn’t know for how long. Reluctantly, we’d passed Carmen’s message on to him, along with a slew of reasons he could ignore her request. He nodded once, confirming he heard us, but said nothing in response. No one wanted to remind him of his talk of leaving, and we walked on eggshells around him, hoping that if we never mentioned it, he might just forget. Cats aren’t renowned for their long memories, after all.
Sera and I waited, feeling more useless by the hour. By the third morning, I felt ready to climb outside my own skin. The agitation pulled at my center, at that ball of energy that rested quietly in my core, just waiting for a chance to spring to life. It demanded release. I hoped ignoring it would cause it to quiet and atrophy, but I feared the opposite was true. I suspected it would only grow louder until I sated it with action.
And so, when Sera exploded from her room on that third morning, hair wild from sleep and eyes bleary from lack of caffeine but still a bundle of pure energy, I understood the force that motivated her when she announced, “Screw this. We’re doing something today.” It was the same force coiled within me, familiar and foreign at the same time.
“Back to the lake or the river?” I suggested, with little hope that we’d find anything in either spot.
She shook her head, clearly sharing my doubt. “I think we exhausted those. Think if we camp on their doorsteps, the families will finally open their doors?”
“We could maybe stop at a costume shop for some bear or cat ears. Might make them more accepting of our presence.”
She was amused by the thought. “While my sexy cat has served me well at more than one Halloween party, I don’t think it’ll work quite as well on Carmen.”
“You know, if it ever comes down to a fight between you two, I’m not sure who I’d put money on. I mean, you, obviously, cause of the whole loyalty thing and the way you could set her on fire, but otherwise it would be a hard call. That woman scares me.”
“It’s the claws. She’d be hell in a slap fight.”
“Fair point.” The conversation tapered off into comfortable silence, both of us trying to come up with a plan that was only somewhat ridiculous. I got there first. My idea was still mostly ridiculous, but it was the only one we had.
“Get dressed, Sera. Something casual and, er, hot.” She simply looked at me, her scornful expression suggesting she was always hot, regardless of her outfit. “We’re going back to school.”
CHAPTER 8
“I assume your plan is more complex than we sit outside a public school until someone arrests us for loitering in a suspicious manner? Cause I had plans today that didn’t involve ending up on a sex offender registry.”
We were parked across from the square mass of brick and concrete that formed the local high school. It was the sort of utilitarian building built for function rather than design, the city planners unwilling to shell out any money for unnecessary architecture. At the moment, it was silent, and we could only wait impatiently for the lunch bell to ring.
“I thought we might be able to get Brandon to open up a bit more if we got him on his own, away from his family. From what I’ve heard, siblings know secrets that would horrify parents, so we need to know what he knows. And I’m hoping he’ll be more forthcoming if he’s talking to an attractive woman.”
Sera nodded slowly. “You remember I did my best to scare the actual bejeesus out of him when we met, right?”
I was unconcerned. “He’s a teenage boy. Fear and attraction go hand in hand.”
“I just want to be clear about this. Am I wearing my extra tight jeans to seduce Mac’s teenaged cousin?”
“Seduce is such a strong word. I was thinking charm. Cajole, perhaps.”
“Why did I get assigned this particular task?”
I shrugged. “Hey, you always say you’re the hot one. If you’re willing to relinquish that title...”
“Please. I’ve seen your recent attempts at flirtation. If we want the kid to fall down laughing, you’re our go-to girl.” She sighed, a big, dramatic exhalation that let me know how put-upon she felt. “Until you get your mojo back, call me Mrs. Robinson.”
“Hey. My mojo is working just fine.”
“Really? How’s Mac?”
I muttered several comebacks under my breath, most of which involved creative combinations of profanity, then settled for a simple, “Shut up.”
She grinned, knowing she’d won that round. Her victory allowed her to be magnanimous. “Give it time. I mean, you are kind of a freak. Peop
le need to warm to that. But you have your good points. Okay, sure, you have boring taste in music, and you drive like someone’s cataracts-ridden grandma. You wake up at a completely ridiculous hour each morning. You could win an Olympic medal in stubbornness.”
“I assume the good points are coming eventually?”
“Sorry,” she said, sounding not sorry in the least. “I got sidetracked.”
“Don’t forget the part where I’m slowly becoming insane. That’s got to be a selling point for someone.”
Her smile fell instantly, and when she next spoke, her voice held no hint of laughter. Apparently, I’d found the one subject she didn’t want to joke about. “That is not going to happen, Ade. It’s just not. You hear me?”
“How can you be so sure? I mean, yeah, we only have Josiah’s word that madness is inevitable, and normally I’d say his word is about as valuable as Monopoly money. But my mother said the same thing, and you saw what Brian became. I know you didn’t meet Trent Pond, but trust me, he wasn’t living in the same reality we do. Whatever I am, whatever I might become, it’s not good.”
“But Trent was just a little nuts, right? I mean, he was in a regular mental hospital, not one for the criminally insane. So there’ve got to be different levels of crazy. We just need to figure out how to keep you on the low setting.”
I’d already considered this option and had a working, if highly depressing, theory. “Yes, but Trent was ice and water, right? Similar elements. Brian was ice and earth, very different ones. And me, well...” I let the silence speak for me. Water and fire were polar opposites. If I was right, I wasn’t just looking at a ride on the crazy train. I could be its conductor.
I looked at Sera, at this friend I’d only just gotten back. It was too soon to lose each other again. “Besides, if the elementals ever learn what I am, I won’t even have a chance to go crazy. The council will order, well, you know.” I stopped, unwilling to speak the words aloud.
