by May Dawney
For now, she had bigger fish to fry. The barkeep pulled the door open to reveal another bar; smaller, darker. No windows, just old-looking lanterns and vault lights. The whole setting had something ‘steampunk’ about it, with its beer barrels, flickering lights, and old-school recliner seats.
Thankfully, there wasn’t a dress code. There were only a handful of people there, all in everyday modern clothes. A group of three men sat close together on ornate couches in a corner, another barkeep stood behind a tap, and two women looked up from a hauntingly familiar book, which one of the two closed and turned over so the front was concealed. The men hushed as well and took them in.
Viktoria regretted her decision to come here on an early Tuesday afternoon. She should have waited for the night to visit, when there would be more people and their entrance wouldn’t be so obvious. Now, they’d send out warning flares.
She was about to back away when a hand landed upon her shoulder.
“These people foreigners.” The bartender’s broken English didn’t hinder his volume any. “They come looking for kin. This one a mage—” He shook her a bit. “This one Otherkin. Not pixie.”
One of the men laughed and the second bartender shook his head.
“You get, right?” The barkeep winked at her.
She nodded. “Because of his size. Got it.”
“Yes, because of his size.” The bartender slapped Tempest’s shoulder, to which Tempest chose not to react. “Go, mingle. It is very empty because of the recent happenings, you must have felt, yes?”
She nodded again.
“Well, people are afraid, they don’t come and drink. Afraid of Inquisitio. I tell them: Inquisitio don’t come here. They send death squads, I kill them.” He laughed and shook her again, then pushed them forward. “Enjoy.” With that, he walked backwards and shut the door.
Did the sudden shot of ice in her veins show on her face? She lifted her hand and waved, trying to sell her panic as awkwardness. “H-How’s everyone?” She cleared her throat.
“Hello.” One of the women—late fifties, pale, unkempt hair barely contained by a loose braid—nodded at them. Her arm lay across the volume she and her friend had been reading.
Tempest nodded.
The men returned to their quiet conversation but cast the occasional glance.
“How about another beer, hm?” Tempest wrapped his arm around her shoulders, which jolted her until she realized he must still be trying to pass as her boyfriend. The ridiculousness of that thought shook her out of her shock over the death threat she’d just received.
“Yes.” She tried to relax into his hold. “Beer.” Maybe more alcohol would be a boon. “And something to eat, I’m ravenous.” Now the turmoil in her belly had settled, she became aware of the hollow ache in her gut. “I’d forgotten how hungry magic makes you.”
He guided her toward the bar. “Two beers please, whatever is on tap. And a menu? Or a list of food you serve?”
This barkeep was scrawnier and a little hipster, with a beard and grey knitted sweater—not a luxury in the back room, which was quite a bit colder than the bar up front. He nodded and poured them both a pint. “We have a little food.” His accent was much less pronounced. “It’s on the board.” He pointed to a sign Viktoria hadn’t noticed yet.
She took it in and resisted the urge to roll her eyes. She was starving and the menu choices—in as far as there were any—were all vegan. Of course they were, she was among mages again. Since returning to the Inquisitio, she had resolved to eat as much meat as possible because of its interference with magic; every little bit helped. Now she was really hungry, there was no way a salad was going to do the trick. The odds were good that the chef could make something else, something with meat, or dairy, or seafood, or even something with eggs, but she’d blow their flimsy cover the second she’d make the request.
“I’ll have the baked sweat potatoes.”
“The tofu burger.” Tempest sounds about as enthusiastic as she felt.
“I will tell the kitchen. Pick a place to sit, I will bring you food. I will be able to find you.” He grinned.
“Not that hard, hm? Do you—” Sensing her chance, she leaned over her glass. “Do you know what happened? That wave?”
He shrugged and shook his head. “Magic. Some people say that it was special magic, like from the Veil itself. Chaos magic.” He nodded at the men. “They think it’s Inquisitio—” He inclined his head toward the women. “They are researching if it’s happened before. They think so. Something called, um…from Polish it translates to ‘wilderness mage.’” He shrugged. “Many people stay home, just in case the Inquisitio come.”
“Did everyone feel it?”
He picked up an old cord phone and held the receiver to his ear. “I think so. Many messages, but the Society is quiet. They are working on finding out what happened, I think.” He pressed a key, then fired off their order.
Viktoria shared a glance with Tempest. All of this was terribly interesting. Perhaps she should consider going undercover more often, especially in a country where the Society didn’t have a stronghold. “Come, we’ll sit.”
Tempest let her pass and choose, so she chose somewhere near, but not on top of, the women. She wasn’t interested in overhearing conspiracy theories about the Inquisitio—not today, at least—but that book had peaked her interest.
The women spoke Polish and quietly so, so listening in was not going to happen. The book also lay under the woman’s arm, still, closed and seemingly abandoned.
Viktoria sipped her beer. It was sub-par to the potion-filled beer she’d been served before, but at least it was cold.
Tempest got comfortable on a wooden bench with a fluffy pillow and put his beer on the table.
“The energy wave has them spooked.” She switched back to Swiss, which didn’t seem like a bad precaution. “That’s an issue for us.”
He nodded. “Let’s just sit a while. We have time.”
She checked her watch. Two p.m. local time, so one p.m. London time. The squad must be moving into position now to intercept Gregorios Senna’s girl.
It was an odd sensation to get angry at the thought of the man who had dashed her hopes and dreams, but have her magic remain dormant. Was this how regular people experienced emotions? Could they experience them freely and never fear they would lash out and put their heads on the proverbial executioner’s block?
She drank a large gulp of her cold beer to soothe the sting. God, she hated that man. Twenty years and she still wanted to strangle him at the mere thought of his name and the image of his face it produced.
Hopefully he’d gotten old and fat, and those damn curls had fallen off his head. She brought her glass to her lips and downed half its content before she set it down on the table with a smack.
Tempest slid his arm around her shoulders and pulled her in so he could rumbled against the shell of her ear. “You are sending out a very ‘do not approach me’ kind of vibe. I suggest you smile.”
“I don’t feel much like smiling. We’re spinning our wheels here.”
“Then, I suggest you try.” He lessened his pull so she could sit up straighter. “I do enough brooding for the two of us. It helps with the tall, dark, and handsome thing.”
Viktoria snorted out a laugh. Tempest was far from handsome, and while he had the ‘tall and dark’ parts down, it wasn’t in the sexy mysterious stranger kind of way, but more the ‘please don’t eat my babies’ type of way. She didn’t thank him, because that wasn’t how they did things, but she relaxed against him just a fraction and allowed herself a moment of respite.
The bartender appeared with their food a few minutes later, and for a meal served in the dodgy back room of a brewery, it didn’t look half bad. Her sweet potato was topped with some sort of tomato sauce filled with chickpeas and vegetables, and Tempest’s tofu burger looked enough like a hamburger to pass cursory inspection.
He took a bite, chewed, and swallowed without emoting a th
ing.
Curiosity got the better of her quickly. “And?”
He shrugged and ran his tongue along his teeth. “It’s tofu. Other than that, it’s a hamburger meal. It’ll do.”
She laughed and cut into her potato with more confidence. He was right, for a meal served without meat, it was good.
By the time her plate was empty and her belly full, Viktoria had also settled into the place. She wasn’t hungry anymore, she’d had two beers, her magic was still dormant, and while they hadn’t achieved much in the way of getting their hands on wild mage DNA, being away from the office and the pressure of the Inquisitio’s constant scrutiny was invigorating. There was something to be said for playing hooky.
Not that she could afford it.
“We need to figure out a plan.” She leaned against Tempest under the guise of covert conversation, but she had to admit—if only to herself—that she was doing it mostly out of a desire for companionship. The last time she’d sat like this, in a bar for mages and Otherkin, she’d had a very different arm around her shoulders, but she’d felt much the same otherwise—not at ease with the situation she was in, but happy to be where she was, regardless.
Tempest ran his fingertips along her upper arm and looked around. “Yes, we do.”
She followed his gaze. A man and a woman had come in while they were eating and they’d sat down with salads for lunch.
The women had resumed reading and schmoozing, which Viktoria took as a sign that while not accepted, Tempest and herself had become tolerated as part of the décor. That was encouraging.
The men had become louder—and more drunk. Their slurred speech made deciphering their Polish an even harder task, but Viktoria knew a good few Polish curse words and she recognized “Inquisitio,” so it seemed they were still on the topic.
“Any ideas?” He didn’t sound like he had any.
“Maybe, I—”
Her phone rang, which caused her to frown. She pulled the device from her pocket and stared at the string of hashtags that indicated a blacked-out and secured number.
Tempest arched a brow, but remained quiet as she picked up the call, then took care to turn the volume down as much as she could and still hear the person on the other end.
“Yes?”
“It’s Theresa. There’s been a development.” Reisch’s voice was tense and low, which meant she was furious. The calmer Reisch became, the more deadly her fury.
“I’m in public, so I can’t ask many questions. Talk.”
“Oh, I’ll talk. I sent Anderson to London as agreed, and he and his team fucked up royally.” The iciness on her voice intensified.
Viktoria’s heart sped up. She hoisted herself into a more upright position, away from Tempest’s body. “What happened?”
“The Senna girl happened. She buried them.”
For a second, Viktoria’s mind blanked. She glanced around, then cupped her hand around her mouth so no one could lipread her words either. “She killed them?”
“They were wearing their gear, they’re fine. No, I meant she buried them. She tore the street apart and dragged them down as if it were quicksand. London police dug them out and arrested them.”
“Shit. Shit, shit, shit!”
Tempest gripped her arm and tried to get her attention, but she shook him off.
“I can’t deal with damage control on this, Reisch.”
“I’m handling it. Lawyers dispatched, PR team engaged, but Wagner, I expected more from them than to cause me this kind of headache. This is worse than Berlinger’s failure in Vienna.”
Her heartbeat threatened to drown out Reisch’s accusations. The alcohol she’d consumed wasn’t doing her brain any favors either. “Fix it. I’ll deal with them and the aftermath later. Just cover their tracks, get them home, and we’ll take it from there.”
Reisch was silent for a few seconds. “I’m not happy, Wagner. None of us are. You’re a good House leader, but make sure you don’t become the next liability. Not even your family name will keep you in office then. We’ll talk later, I have to deal with this nonsense, but you’d better come through with the wild mage or we’re going to have to reconsider a couple of things.”
The call cut out before Viktoria could reply. She pulled the phone away from her ear and stared at her screen for several seconds.
“What’s wrong?” Tempest’s voice was calm, as always, but she could hear the edge.
“London.” She turned the screen off and returned her phone to her pocket before she leaned back.
“Hm.” He nodded. “What do we do next?”
There was only one thing to do after a warning like that. “We take action.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
These are grim times. A disturbing kind of sorcery has been reported to the Council. A teenage girl in Barcelona, Spain, destroyed her father’s house and many others around it in a burst of magic unlike any we have seen. I have investigated every account that has filtered its way through, and it looks like this might be the type of witchcraft that Simon Magus spoke about in his works. He states:
“A third of the city was leveled yesterday by a powerful force. […] Nothing remained of the building but a twisted mess of materials, fused together into lumps of organic and inorganic matter. The source was a young boy, barely ten or eleven summers old. […] Had he lived through this manifestation of power, he would have been far more powerful than I am.”
Another new danger! I must investigate further.
– Rudolf Wagner, ‘A Guide for the Death of Witches’
VIKTORIA WAS ON her feet before she’d thought through what she was about to do. If she started to think it through, it could only be to the detriment of her determination. She strode over to the two women.
They shut and hid the book under an arm long before she arrived and looked up at her with wide eyes as she stopped at their table.
“Y-yes?” The woman with the book checked to make sure the title was hidden. Up close, Viktoria was sure she’d been right, even with only a few glimpses of the cover.
“You’re either very brave or very stupid to take that into a place like this.” She inclined her head toward it.
Both women jumped.
“What do you mean?” The second woman was a little younger than the woman with the book, or she was Otherkin. The curvature of her ears and the pointiness of her nose suggested fae or fairy. The two were hard to tell apart in halfbloods. In that case, she could be a lot older than her companion. Her accent was thick.
Wagner dragged her gaze down again. “‘A Guide for the Death of Witches’? In a place like this?”
She’d kept her voice low, but the women still hurried to check if no one had heard.
The only one who paid them any heed was Tempest. He inclined his head, but thankfully didn’t try to smile.
“Please, we just wanted to check a reference.” The woman with the book gripped it now and pulled it onto her lap, under the table. “Because of what happened.”
At least they were educated in the history of magic.
Viktoria pulled over a chair and sat at their table. “I assume you found the mention of wild witchcraft?”
They nodded.
“What do you think?” She looked from one to the other as the women exchanged a glance.
“It is a minor reference.” The woman with the book seemed to be testing the waters.
“It is, but it seems to match.” Viktoria leaned forward a bit. “Except for the fact that there was another release, so she must be alive…somewhere.”
They nodded.
“Yes, that is what we think.” The Otherkin held out her hand for the book.
After a moment’s hesitation, the other woman slid it over, face down. “We don’t understand how she can live. I have heard of wild magic and wild mages before. They all die. Always.”
“That’s what I thought.” Viktoria held her gaze. “Not this one, though. She must be alive, because I doubt the odds of two wild mages ma
nifesting at the same time.”
The Otherkin had located the passage and rotated the book so Viktoria could read. Since it was a book she was intimately familiar with, she could decipher the Polish translation.
“What we’re talking about is what it means. What um…” The woman waved her hand in frustration as she searched for words. “What will happen now. Where they are and what they will do. They say it happened here, in Kraków, that the gas explosion that is on the news was really the wild mage manifesting. They said on the news she had died, though. But could that be, you think? That she is the wild mage, and that she lived?”
Viktoria didn’t have time to strategize, so she opted for the truth—well, part of the truth. “I heard that too, and I think it could be the case. I’m looking to find out what happened in that building.”
The human woman’s eyes widened. “Why? Why get involved? Inquisitio will be there. It is a big risk to be a mage today, in Kraków. Many people stay home because of it.”
“I don’t care about the Inquisitio, I can take care of myself.” The boast fell off her lips so easily that she shocked herself. Not because of the ease with which she’d lied, but the fact that she hadn’t felt like she was lying at all. If she had her powers, she could take on any of her own Death Squads—she knew that was what the mages called them these days. She wouldn’t have to, of course, but she could. In theory.
The women regarded her but didn’t comment. The Otherkin looked down at the book.
“I’m looking for a seer with guts.” She forced the words out before she lost her nerve; she had an in, she was on topic, it was now or never.
“Why?” The Otherkin shook her head. “For this? You really want to um, investigate?”
“I do. I need to. I—” She through furiously for a reason and grasped on to the first explanation that came to mind. “I’ve been researching wild mages for years. I-I need one to help me.”
