“De Harven’s records are pristine,” Andrea began “Everything checked out. He did four years in the Army. I found his DD214, the discharge papers, and called it in to the National Personnel Records. They said it would take two months to confirm, so I called it in to a buddy of mine in the Military Supernatural Defense Unit. He says everything on MSDU’s end comes up roses. I also found de Harven’s NCO evaluations and his pay stubs.”
A man might falsify his discharge papers, but he’d have to go an extra mile to fake pay stubs and performance reports.
“Orlando PD confirmed he was a cop,” Derek said. “I talked to two people who knew him. They said he was a good cop. Dedicated.”
“We went through de Harven’s apartment.” Andrea opened an envelope and pulled a Polaroid out. It was a picture of a digital painting. A sunrise died down over the sea, leaving ragged gray clouds in its wake. In the center of the picture a lone rock jutted from troubled water, supporting a white spire of a lighthouse that sent a brilliant beam of light toward the horizon. The caption under the image said, DARKNESS REIGNS AT THE FOOT OF THE LIGHTHOUSE.
“Is this supposed to tell me something?” I asked.
“It’s a lighthouse,” Andrea said in the same voice in which people usually said, “It’s a murder.”
“It’s a very nice lighthouse. Lots of people have paintings of lighthouses.” Where was she going with this?
Andrea dug in the envelope and pulled out a picture in a frame. Two rows of teenagers stood in their graduation robes. Andrea pointed to a dark-haired kid on the left. “De Harven.” She stabbed the blond kid on the far right. “Hunter Becker.”
I waited to see if she shed any more light on it.
“Hunter Becker!” Andrea repeated. “They were in the same high school class!”
“Who is Hunter Becker?”
“Becker the Gory? Lighthouse Keepers? Boston?”
“I would’ve preferred Becker the Easily Surrendering or Becker the Quite Reasonable, but beyond that his name tells me nothing.”
Andrea sighed. “The Order suspects the existence of a secret society called the Lighthouse Keepers. They’re well organized and really well hidden.”
“A secret society?” Derek frowned. “What, like Masons?”
Andrea huffed. “Yes, just like Masons, but instead of getting together, putting on silly hats, and getting drunk and sponsoring charity events, they get together and think up ways of killing people and destroying government buildings. They hate magic, they hate magic users, they hate magic creatures, and they would love to exterminate the lot of us with extreme prejudice.”
Well, that pretty much covered everyone in this room.
“Why?” Derek asked.
“Because they hold technological civilization to be the perfect state of humanity. They think magic is dragging us into barbarism and they must preserve the light of progress and technology. Without it, we would all descend into darkness.” Andrea shook her head. “Three years ago Hunter Becker blew up a medmage hospital in Boston. Dozens dead, hundreds injured. They tracked him down and he walked out straight into a SWAT unit, clenching a gun in each hand.”
Suicide by cop. Always a good sign.
Andrea held up the Polaroid, pointing to the caption. “This was written on the wall of his safe house. That is what in our business is called a ‘clue.’ ”
Thank you, Miss Smartass. “Excellent work, Miss Marple.”
She bared her teeth at me. “Kate, these people are fanatics. That stunt in Boston took a lot of teamwork. The hospital was developing an experimental magical treatment for the blue flu. They had several virulent variations of it in their labs, guarded better than Fort Knox.”
She counted off on her fingers. “Someone built several bombs with an elaborate fail-safe. Someone bypassed three levels of security. Someone distributed the bombs on separate floors in restricted areas with limited access. Finally, someone had given Becker access to the building across the street, which was the local police station. It was estimated that at least six people were directly involved in the bombing, some of whom had to be hospital personnel. Nobody except Becker was ever discovered, and the only reason they found Becker was that he had been injured by debris and left a blood trail. None of the people were planted, Kate. They actually worked there. Since then, the Order has found two other instances of terrorism, all involving teams of covert operatives. That’s how these people operate: they recruit young and activate their members as the need arises.”
Sleeper cells of domestic terrorists. This investigation was getting better and better. “How do you know all this?”
Andrea bit her lip. “Becker was a knight of the Order.”
If the Keepers infiltrated the Order, it would be impossible to find them. With their anti-magic attitude, they would fit right in. Someone like Ted would welcome them with open arms. Hell, Ted could be one of them. I would have to be very careful now, because I very much wanted Ted to be involved. So much so that if I wasn’t careful, I’d twist reality to implicate Ted, whether he was guilty or not.
“They infiltrated the Order and the PAD,” Derek said. “De Harven was a cop before he was a guard.”
“It could literally be anyone. It could be Rene.” Andrea waved her arms. “It could be Henderson. Anyone.”
“Not anyone,” I said. “I’m not one, you’re not one, neither is Derek. I’m reasonably sure we can exclude Curran and the kid as well.”
Ascanio grinned.
Andrea stared at me. “You’re not taking me seriously!”
“That’s probably because you’re not excited enough,” Derek said. “You should clench your fists like they do in the movies, shake them, and yell, ‘This is bigger than any of us! It goes all the way to the top!’ ”
Andrea pointed her finger at him. “You shut up. I don’t have to take shit from you. From her, maybe. But not from you.”
“I trust your professional judgment,” I said. “If you say there is a secret society, then there is one. I’m simply trying to define the boundaries of our paranoia. Did all the other incidents involve more than one person?”
“Yes.”
I thought out loud. “If de Harven was a member of the Lighthouse Keepers, then he’d been activated to obtain Adam Kamen’s device, which means we can expect there to be an entire cell.”
“Probably.”
“The optimal size of a terrorist cell ranges between seven and eight members,” Derek said. “Groups below five members lack sufficient resources, manpower, and flexibility, while a group above ten begins to fracture due to specialization. Larger groups require managerial oversight to remain cohesive. That’s difficult to do while the cell is in sleeper status.”
I closed my mouth with an audible click.
Derek shrugged apologetically. “I spent a lot of time with Jim.”
“So we can expect between five and ten people?” I asked.
“Probably closer to five,” Derek said. “Especially since de Harven is dead. However, that’s assuming that we’re dealing with a single cell. They may have more than one cell in a city the size of Atlanta, and they also may mobilize neighboring cells if their goal is vital enough.”
Nobody would awaken a sleeper cell for something minor, not when its members have been dormant for years. “How many people can we expect if they threw caution to the wind and moved all available cells in?”
Derek frowned, concentrating. “I’d guess between fifty and three hundred. The more people, the less cohesive the group. If I were them, I’d rely on hired muscle. Not every job has to involve the entire cell. Some targets can be eliminated by a contract killer, for example. It minimizes the risk and the exposure—if the job goes sour, the killer can only betray one member of the group.”
Andrea rocked back and forth. “What the hell was Kamen building in that workshop?”
“I don’t know. But I know someone who does. He’s tied up in our loup cage.”
I strode to the loup
cage, Andrea, Derek, and Ascanio in tow. I took the key off the hook in the wall and unlocked the door.
The loup cage stood empty. Perfectly intact rope lay in coils on its floor. It was still tied.
Derek looked slightly ill. I’d seen this precise look on Jim’s face when a teleporting thief stole the Pack maps a few months ago. “How the hell . . .”
“Magic,” Ascanio said.
“The tech is up.” I tried the cage door. Locked. “Neat trick.”
“Next time we’ll chain him to the wall,” Andrea said.
“There won’t be a next time.” He wouldn’t let himself get caught again. At least, not this easily.
Derek walked off. “The back door is unlocked,” he called out.
Well, at least we knew he didn’t evaporate into thin air.
We’d failed to find Kamen, we’d failed to recover the device, and the only person who could shed light on what was happening had disappeared from a locked cage while in our custody. It was good that I owned the damn place, or I might have had to fire myself.
“His stick is still here,” Ascanio said, holding up the volhv’s staff.
Ha! Gotcha. “Bring it here.” I headed to the back room, opened the door of the body freezer, and stuffed the staff into it.
“What are you doing?” Andrea asked.
“A volhv without his staff is like a cop without a gun. He’ll come back for it. The office is a fortress, so he won’t be able to get in during tech. He’ll return during magic, when he’s at his strongest. I’ve warded this freezer so hard, it would take MSDU to get through it. When he returns, we nab him.” And this time he would stay put.
* * *
THE TRAFFIC HOME WAS MURDER. IT WAS SEVEN fifty-five by the time I pulled into the parking lot and sprinted across the yard. I conquered the hallways, and I and my files headed downstairs, two steps at a time.
I was almost to the landing when Jezebel, the second of my boudas, barred my way. Her eyes blazed bright red. She looked ready to spit fire.
“I know, I’m late.” I put some speed into it, hoping my knee held up.
Jezebel chased me, keeping up with ridiculous ease. “I’m going to rip their heads off and skull-fuck them.”
That would be something to see, especially since she didn’t have a penis. When Jezebel got worked up, getting her to explain things was next to impossible. I’d been learning to guess. “Who?”
“The wolves,” she snarled.
Not again. “Which of the wolves?”
She bared her teeth. “I’ll cut her legs off.”
So Jennifer was involved. Of course. During my aunt’s rampage, Jennifer, the female half of the wolf alpha pair, made an executive decision not to evacuate. My aunt attacked the wolf safe house in the city while Jennifer was out, and her magic caused the whole house to go loup, including Jennifer’s twelve-year-old sister Naomi. When I ran into the house, hoping to kill my aunt, Naomi attacked me and I ended her life. Jennifer blamed me for her sister’s death. The wolves went out of their way to stick it to me whenever they could. They turned it into almost a game.
The auditorium door loomed before me. Two minutes to eight. “We’ll talk about it after.”
“Kate?”
“After.”
I took a deep breath, opened the door, and strode in, Jez behind me. An enormous auditorium stretched before me. Rows of ledges crossed it, offering a place to lie and sit, all facing a wide stage lit by electric lamps and braziers cradling open flame. A giant desk with a chair waited in the middle of the stage. Usually it was flanked by two chairs. Only one chair this time. My chair.
The bottom rows were filled. Shapeshifters sprawled here and there, some by themselves, some in couples. At least a hundred people, maybe more. Petitions rarely attracted that kind of audience. Something was up.
I raised my head, walked across the stage to the desk, and sat. To the left, just below me, a second desk stood perpendicular to the stage. The desk was occupied by a dark-haired woman about my age. She had curly brown hair, large dark eyes, and an infectious laugh. She also introduced herself as George. George’s full name was actually Georgetta, and she tended to break people’s bones when they used it. Her parents were the only two beings on Earth able to say it without consequences, and since her father was Mahon, the Pack’s Executioner, I didn’t want to try my luck. During petitions, George acted as the neutral third party, who prepared summaries of the cases and ran the hearings.
George rose and rang the bell. “We’re now in session.”
The crowd quieted.
Damn, there were a lot of people here. Shapeshifters gossiped like old Southern ladies at church. If they got hold of some juicy rumor, they showed up in droves to watch it unfold. So far today I’d been cut, burned, bruised, advised that we were facing a secret society, and emotionally compromised. I didn’t need any more bloody surprises.
“Case of Donovan versus Perollo,” George announced.
Two shapeshifters rose from the audience and went down to the first row.
I opened the first file.
The first four cases were routine. A dispute over an abandoned car on the border of the rats’ territory. One of the cats had found it and spent a few hours hauling it out of the ravine. Technically all of the shapeshifter territory was Pack territory, but each clan house had a few square miles of exclusively their land, so the clans could meet in private. The car went to the rats. I ruled that the cat had no business on their land in the first place.
The second case was a domestic dispute between ex-spouses belonging to different clans. When the couple had divorced, the rat father took the children, and the jackal mother claimed that she didn’t have to pay child support because both kids turned into rats. I decided she did.
The third and fourth cases involved a business jointly owned by Clan Heavy and Clan Jackal. It was long and complicated, and I had to check my notes more times than I could count. When all interested parties finally sat down, I had to squish the urge to collapse in relief on my desk.
Another couple stepped up. The man’s right arm was in a sling and he held himself like he was spoiling for a fight. He looked to be in his early twenties. Hard to say for sure—shapeshifters were long lived, and some people I could’ve sworn were in their late forties were pushing seventy.
The woman appeared to be about the same age. Slender, she had a pretty face framed by a waterfall of blond hair that spilled below her waist. She seemed on edge, as if she expected me to throw something at her at any moment.
The man raised his head. “Kenneth Thompson, Clan Wolf, petitioner.”
The woman squared her shoulders. “Sandra Martin, Clan Wolf, defendant.”
A warning bell went off in my head.
Ken looked at me. “I exercise my right of individual appeal. I appeal to have my petition judged by the Consort.”
That meant that he wanted me to make the judgment. If Curran were here, he could offer his opinion, but the decision was my responsibility. Except Curran wasn’t here.
“I’m the only person here,” I told him. “I have to judge your case by default.”
Ken looked a bit confused. “I was told to ask for direct appeal.”
I glanced at George. She made a winding motion with her left hand. Keep going. Right.
Barabas had made me memorize the protocol, so at least I wasn’t completely lost. I looked at Sandra. “Do you have any objections?”
She swallowed. “No.”
“The request for individual appeal is granted,” I said.
The audience focused on me. So this was it. That was why every busybody in the Pack was here. I glanced at the wolf alpha couple. Daniel was impassive and Jennifer had a small smile on her long face.
Okay. You want a fight, you’ll get one. I opened the file and pulled out the summary—two typed pages. With Andrea and her conspiracy theories, this was the one case I had failed to preview.
George gave me a reassuring wink from her
desk.
I scanned the summary. Oh boy.
“These are the facts of the case: You, Kenneth, were romantically pursuing Sandra. In an effort to court her, you broke into her house on Friday. She woke up, found you in her bedroom, and shot you with a Glock 21, damaging three of your ribs and shattering the bones of your right arm. You feel that her reaction was excessive and want compensation for the pain and suffering and medical bills. Is this correct?”
Ken nodded. “Yes, Consort.”
I glanced at the summary. “It says here that when Sandra woke up, you were nude and carrying a bouquet of sticks.”
Ken turned a shade redder, but I couldn’t tell if it was from embarrassment or outrage. “They were roses. I tore the petals off and put them on the carpet.”
If Curran were here, he’d be closing his eyes and counting to ten in his head.
“Can I say something?” Sandra asked.
I looked at her. “No, you can’t. You have to wait your turn.”
She clamped her mouth shut.
I turned back to Ken. “Did Sandra encourage your . . . courtship? Did she give you any indication that she liked you?”
“Some,” Kenneth said.
“Be specific,” George said.
“She told me that I looked nice. I’ve been trying to get her for a while, so she knew I liked her.”
“Can I say something?” Sandra asked.
“No. And if you ask me one more time, I’ll have you removed and we’ll proceed without you.”
She blinked.
I looked back at Ken. “What else did Sandra do to encourage you?”
Ken considered. “She looked at me.”
Great. Just peachy.
“So because Sandra looked at you and said that you looked nice, you decided to break into her house and surprise her in her bed naked?”
A light laugh ran through the audience. I glared at them. The laugh died.
Ken turned bright red and turned back to glare at the shapeshifters in the stands. All we needed now was for him to go furry and rip into our spectators.
“Kenneth, look at me.”
He snapped back to me.
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