The Myth Manifestation

by Lisa Shearin

  Cool Zen center restored.

  For now.

  At least on the surface.

  “I’ve been hacked,” he reluctantly admitted.

  Ouch. That would certainly set him off.

  Hacking Kenji was the tech equivalent of messing up Rake’s magical mojo. Both had safeguards in place to ensure neither ever happened. Someone had blown right past those safeguards. The quicker we found this individual and made them stop, the better off we’d all be.

  “No contact with HQ and no communications here,” Kenji said. “Getting back online with the headquarters mainframe would be nice, but my first concern is getting our comms back up.”

  “Do you know how they’re doing it?” Ian asked.

  The elf tech launched into a terminology-laden litany that I didn’t understand, but ended with something I could grasp.

  “. . . resulting in me being scrambled and blocked.”

  “Do you know a way around or through it?” I asked.

  Kenji just looked at me.

  “If you did, you would’ve done it,” I said. “We wouldn’t be having this conversation—and I wouldn’t have asked a stupid question.”

  Kenji gave me a little nod. “It was specifically targeted at communications. Everything else still works.”

  While Ian and I were checking in with Kenji, Rake had gone next door to the hotel’s surveillance room. He’d left the door open, and I could hear the hum of electronics. At least something was working in there.

  “Makenna,” Rake called. “We have video.”

  Maybe we were about to catch a break.

  The hotel’s security room made Kenji’s space look like a broom closet in comparison.

  The two longest walls were full of displays, each one divided into four sections. A long desk stretched the length of both walls, each desk occupied by three hotel employees, their eyes flicking over the screens.

  They were humanoid, but definitely not human. For one thing, they each had four eyes.

  These boys and girls weren’t from around here.

  This was Gethen Nazar’s turf and his . . . uh, people. He was speaking in low tones to the employee watching the surveillance cameras that showed the hotel’s areas that were below street level, including the hallway outside of the portal room.

  Our commandos’ body cameras weren’t working, but the hotel surveillance system was still up and running. I didn’t know why one and not the other, but I wasn’t about to look a gift horse in the mouth.

  “Argus says he didn’t see anyone other than Kenan Chaitan in the access hall,” Gethen told us. “However, as soon as Kenan accessed the portal room, the camera in there stopped working.”

  “I put in a repair request.” The multi-eyed surveillance officer turned toward us and did a double take at the sight of me and Ian armed and armored for ogre—or whatever put in an appearance next. I tried not to stare at Argus the Multi-Eyed. There was a lot of strangeness in the world, and to beings like Argus, that strangeness included us. It was all about perspective.

  “Less than two minutes after Kenan went in, the door opened again and seemingly no one left,” Gethen told us.

  Rake and I traded a glance.

  The killer had crushed Kenan’s windpipe, electrocuted him to death, and destroyed the hotel’s portal—all in less than two minutes.

  We had ourselves a cloaked killer—a magically powerful, cloaked killer.

  “Can I take a look at that footage?” I directed my question to Gethen and Argus. One was the boss, but the other had what I needed to see. I made it a point to be polite to everybody.

  Three of Argus’s eyes blinked in succession, but not the fourth one.

  Don’t stare, Mac.

  “But ma’am,” he said, “with the exception of Mr. Chaitan, there’s no one there.”

  I didn’t tell him that Kenan wasn’t there anymore, either. I didn’t know how much Rake had shared with his people, and I had no desire to stick my foot in my mouth.

  “I’m a seer, Argus. We believe someone was cloaked and following Mr. Chaitan. I won’t be able to see them clearly, but I will know if they were there.”

  Argus turned back to his console and brought up the video at the time Gethen had requested.

  I pulled up a chair and sat next to Argus as the video ran. Kenan Chaitan appeared, walking quickly toward the portal room door. I kept my focus on the still-empty space behind him.

  A ripple crossed the left side of the screen. Kenan was on the right.

  I quickly leaned forward. “Stop.”

  After a confused hesitation, Argus stopped the video.

  “Would you back it up, please? About five seconds?”

  He did.

  There was a vaguely human-sized patch of transparent wavy lines causing what looked like a ripple in the air. I could see through glamours and cloaks in person, no problem. A glamour was a disguise. A cloak was complete coverage. With a cloak, to anyone except a seer, there appeared to be no one there. On TV or surveillance camera footage, it wasn’t easy, but I could at least see that someone was there. They’d appear as wavy lines. Glamours on video were a little clearer. When the image was magnified, the person looked blurry to me, especially around the edges. To paraphrase Jeff Foxworthy, if you look a little fuzzy when everything else ain’t, then you might be a glamoured supernatural.

  “Okay,” I said. “Now go forward, but slowly.”

  Argus did.

  The ripple followed Kenan Chaitan down the hall, its speed increasing the closer Kenan got to the portal room door. The killer didn’t want to risk being locked out.

  Kenan entered the code on the keypad and leaned forward for the retina scan. The door opened, he stepped inside, and the door closed behind him.

  “The door should have closed faster,” Gethen noted.

  “Kenan had a tailgater,” I said quietly. “Do you have anything showing him once he was in the portal room?” I asked Argus.

  “Not much, but I’ll show you what I have.”

  The video showed Kenan from behind, approaching the portal, then the screen went black.

  The killer didn’t want any witnesses, or any possibility of help being summoned for his victim.

  Kenji had come in and was standing next to Rake.

  “Can your program work with that?” I asked him.

  “Oh yeah.” He passed Argus a thumb drive. “Since e-mail’s dead in the water, too, we’ll have to download the stills on that.”

  Argus glanced at Gethen, who gave him a sharp nod. In less than a minute, Kenji had pictures to play with.

  “I’ll get started on these,” he said, “and I’ll let you know when I’ve got something.”

  Kenji went back to his computers and I turned my attention back to Argus’s bank of surveillance cameras.

  “Could you go back to the hall camera?” I asked. “When the door opened again, and it would look like no one came out.”

  To everyone else, it looked like the door opened and closed normally—except that no one left. I saw the same humanoid-sized collection of wavy lines that moved across the screen and headed back down the hallway.

  I felt Rake’s eyes on me. He was waiting for an answer.

  “The killer left and strolled down the hall,” I told him. “He didn’t even bother to hurry. Where’s the camera that would pick him up once he reached the end of the hall?” I asked Argus.

  “The lobby.”

  “Give me that view at the same time.”

  He did, and I watched intently. Everyone else watched me.

  Fifteen seconds after the killer walked out of view of the hall camera, he entered the lobby. He was still cloaked. My eyes flicked down to the timer. It was right after we’d been sealed inside the hotel. In the background, Rake, Gethen, and the doorman were trying to get the hotel’s front doors open.

  I was standing not five feet from where the killer glided right past me.

  “Dammit, if I’d just turned around, I’d have
seen him!”

  The cloaked man stayed close to the wall, crossing in front of the front desk and out of view.

  I leaned forward. “Next camera, Argus. We’re gonna follow this bastard until he drops that cloak.”

  The killer simply turned the corner and walked back into the ballroom filled with delegates.

  “Give me the ballroom,” I told him.

  Argus’s fingers were already on the move. “West ballroom camera coming up.”

  That camera’s view at the same time showed a tightly packed crowd of delegates trying to see out into the lobby.

  There was no sign of our cloaked killer.

  I scooted my chair closer to see the time at the bottom of the screen. “I don’t see him. Can you run that one again?”

  Argus nodded. “I’ll go back another minute.”

  He did, and the view didn’t change. No new person suddenly popped into view.

  Frustrated and angry, I slumped back in the chair. “This guy could’ve stayed veiled for as long as he thought he needed to. And if he knew where the cameras were and stayed out of range or behind people, I wouldn’t be able to see him.”

  “It’ll take some time,” Argus said, “but I’ll pull up every ballroom camera for you to review, from the time he would’ve come in until the last delegate left. We’ll find him.”

  Yep, Rake only hired the best.

  “At least that means we can eliminate everyone who is visible on the camera,” Ian said.

  “True,” I told him. “Thank you, Argus. Just call me when it’s ready.” I cussed under my breath. “Or send a messenger or freakin’ carrier pigeon.”

  “I’ve taken care of that,” Kenji called from next door. He leaned his head around the corner. “I asked Ms. Sagadraco if she would talk to the fey delegation about helping with comms until we get things back up and running. She did, they accepted, and they’re ready when we need them.”

  I grinned. The fey delegates were tiny, winged, and quick. Ingenious.

  Kenji was still our guardian angel.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Just because no one could leave the hotel didn’t mean there wasn’t any partying going on. Quite the opposite.

  Rake had ordered his hotel staff to pull out all the stops to ensure that the delegates were kept entertained. Having run one of our world’s most exclusive sex clubs—until it was swallowed by a Hellpit a few months ago—Rake knew a thing or fifty about showing people a good time. There wasn’t anything as overt going on here. For one, Vivienne Sagadraco would never allow it. Rake had arranged entertainment customized to each species’ and race’s idea of good, relatively clean fun.

  Some of the delegates were strictly nocturnal, and now was their happy hour. The other delegates fell into two camps: too pooped to party, and wide awake with worry so they might as well try to have fun.

  Yes, there had been a murder committed to keep anyone from leaving. The delegates didn’t know about it, and had yet to be targeted. Since the success of the summit depended on maintaining congeniality, Vivienne Sagadraco had determined that the best way to deal with the current situation would be to carry on with the summit’s meetings as scheduled, beginning in the morning. I shouldn’t have been surprised. After all, the boss was the epitome of the whole “Keep Calm and Carry On” thing. If her teatime would not be interrupted for monsters, murder, or German bombers, neither would the Centennial Supernatural Summit.

  And apparently, neither would vampire fun. Rumor had it there was one heck of a poker game going on in the room Vlad had taken for his team’s headquarters. As Ian and I headed toward the lobby, one of Vlad’s people passed us, presumably on his way to the game, and nodded a polite greeting. He had a flying monkey tucked under his arm.

  “Is that the vampire version of taking a keg to a party?” I quietly asked my partner.

  “More like just a growler. But yeah.”

  When we entered the lobby, my eyes followed the path the killer had taken from the scene of the murder to the ballroom. If I’d just turned around, I’d have seen him, cloaked or not cloaked. Yes, we had just been sealed inside the hotel, and my attention had been on the front doors, but that was no excuse. Ian and I could be interrogating a killer right now. Well, Ian could be interrogating a killer. That was another thing I had to admit I wasn’t very good at.

  “Why don’t you try to get some sleep,” Ian said. “It’ll take Kenji awhile to work on that footage, and there’s nothing you can do here.”

  “You’re not taking a nap,” I said accusingly.

  “I need to ask Rake a couple of questions about his portal mage.”

  Ian’s tone suggested Rake wasn’t going to appreciate his line of questioning.

  “You think Kenan was involved?” I asked.

  “Probably not, but as an ex-homicide detective, I have to investigate and eliminate every possibility.”

  That still didn’t bode well for Rake’s reaction to Ian questioning Kenan’s innocence in all this. Though at least Rake was probably still too sore from this morning to take a good swing at Ian.

  I was too tired to argue with my partner.

  Ian sensed victory. “I’ll walk you to your room.”

  I slid the keycard into my door lock and the light turned green.

  At least the hotel locks were still working.

  Kitty’s bag was on one of the beds, but she obviously wasn’t back from her portal-conjuring excursion to the penthouse.

  “Hear anything from Kitty yet?” I asked.

  “Her first attempt didn’t work,” Ian said, “but she wanted to try again.”

  “Meaning Kitty’s magic is screwed up, too.”

  “Probably. Yours seems to be working well enough.”

  “I wouldn’t really call what I do magic.”

  “I would. It saved our asses this morning with those bukas.”

  “I can just see things. Kitty and Rake can do things. It’s different. As to why it’s still working, maybe what I do isn’t high-level enough to be affected.”

  Ian proceeded to check my room for any sign of anything that wasn’t supposed to be there. Thoroughly. And then he checked it again. I finally had to say something.

  “Having second thoughts about me taking a nap?” I asked.

  No answer, meaning he was.

  “If you think you’re gonna sit in here and watch me sleep, you can kick that idea right outta your head.”

  Ian scowled. “I don’t have time.” And he clearly didn’t like it.

  He reached back between his shoulders and drew his ancestor’s spearhead.

  I held up a hand. “Don’t even think it. Besides, it’s yours. It knows you, not me. It probably won’t even work for me. Plus, the room across from the stairs is a guard post, remember? You set that up. Guard the people on each floor. That’s their job.”

  Ian gave me a level look and resheathed the spearhead. “Calvin and Liz are on duty.”

  “Perfect. Our monster-killing dynamic duo. I couldn’t be safer.”

  “Yes, you could.”

  “Yes, I could.” I started herding him toward the door. “But you won’t be here, so an armed-to-the-teeth Ranger and Marine within screaming distance will have to do. Besides, it’s not like I’m gonna be able to sleep anyway. I’ll just be resting horizontally, maybe with my eyes closed, probably not.”

  I opened the door and made shooing motions with my hand.

  “I’ll send a messenger when Kenji’s ready,” Ian said.

  “And I’ll be here,” I promised. “Safe and in one piece. I have guns, knives, and Raid wasp spray. Twenty-foot stream, can’t miss. I’ll be fine. Now go.”

  He did. Reluctantly.

  I just stood there for a minute with my back against the door.

  I was tired.

  I pushed off of the door and headed for my bed, glancing at the clock on the nightstand before going facedown on the mattress. Dang, I’d been up for nearly twenty hours. Since I’d started working for S
PI, I’d had to stay up round the clock on more than one occasion, but it didn’t get any easier, and it’d never been fun. The forces of evil didn’t take naps, so we didn’t either.

  Maybe I should’ve taken a detour to the hotel spa for a pre-nap massage. To cater to the nocturnal delegates, it was open twenty-four hours. Better yet, I could’ve simply taken a power nap there. Rake had a masseuse who was a siren, and a kelpie who did seaweed wraps. I’d have been out like a light. Though at this point, I’d be happy with an occasional shower and semi-regular meals. This was probably the last chance I’d have at getting some sleep, so I owed it to myself to give it my best shot. Normally, my head would hit the pillow and nighty-night would follow within five minutes. For me, sleeping really hard meant sheet prints on my face and a little pool of drool on my pillow.

  Right now, sleep wasn’t just elusive; it’d run for the hills. My mind simply refused to shut down.

  There was no rhyme or reason to the manifestations. The bukas appeared in the morning, the grimtogs in the afternoon, and we’d been sealed in the hotel in the evening. Kenan Chaitan had been murdered by a cloaked mage around the same time. The flying monkeys made their entrance after midnight. An equal length of time hadn’t passed between each incident, and each one had happened in a different part of the hotel.

  I rolled over on my back and tugged various holsters and sheaths to where they wouldn’t poke me while I at least tried to sleep; but I kept them where I could get my hands on them fast. I pulled out my phone. Still no signal, but I didn’t need a signal to use my failsafe, get-to-sleep-quick trick—two rounds of my favorite word-find game.

  After five rounds and thirty minutes, I had to admit my failsafe had failed.

  I sat up, plumped the pillows, and reached for the remote.

  The TV turned on to nothing but snow and static.

  Oh yeah, no satellite. Though the snow looked familiar. Hadn’t there been a movie—

  Holy shit!

  I couldn’t hit the OFF button fast enough. Ain’t no way I was letting any of that crap from Poltergeist in here. SPI didn’t work with spirits; there were other agencies for that. In fact, SPI had a sister agency. Ghosts were real. As far as I was concerned, nobody needed to be messing with ghosts. Monsters, I could take. Ghosts? Uh-uh. And with the assortment of beasties we’d seen today, I wasn’t about to take any chances on asking for more trouble.