Chapter 10

"I can't believe you've been doing all this behind Captain Blythe's back."

With my chopsticks halfway to my mouth, I shrugged. Lienna's tone wasn't accusatory or remotely judgmental. If anything, she sounded impressed.

"It hasn't been fun," I admitted after swallowing my mouthful. "I'm supposed to be investigating Commissioner Sparks and figuring out who put his corrupt ass in charge of the IA, but I've barely even had time to sleep the last couple of days."

She nodded sympathetically, her attention split between me and her carton of Pad Thai. We'd spent the last five hours holed up in the Crow and Hammer's boardroom so I could fill Lienna in on all the juicy details of my parallel investigations that I hadn't been able to reveal over the phone. Darius had stuck around for the first hour, then made like an amoeba and split so he could assist with the citywide, multi-guild Kade crusade.

Left to our own devices, we'd divvied up the workload: Lienna and her savant-level Arcana knowledge had taken over Darius's laptop to dig into Floris Visser's mysterious weapon, while I'd read up on Visser herself.

For the record, she was a nasty piece of work; the kind of nastiness that rivaled Charles Manson or Cruella de Vil—she even gave Kade a run for his money in the "psychotic violence" department.

She seemed like a perfect candidate to add to my growing list of enemies.

Around hour four, Lienna and I had ordered in some Thai since the Crow and Hammer's kitchen was currently unstaffed with everyone out hunting for a certain slippery ass-hat. As we munched and worked, we batted around ideas, theories, jokes, and the occasional mildly flirtatious quip.

It felt amazing. Like wrapping yourself up in a warm, fuzzy blanket after a hard day. Or after a long, lonely five months.

I dug my chopsticks into the last of my massaman curry. "What about you? I wasn't the only one holding back while we were apart."

She looked up from Darius's laptop. "What do you mean?"

"You mentioned some hardcore spell research a couple months ago, but I never heard about the finished product."

"Oh, right." She flashed me an excited grin. "I was working on a few new spells for my cube. I got some ideas from my friend, Isla. She's an alchemy genius."

This was the first time I'd ever heard details of Lienna's pre-Vancouver social life. It was strange to think about her having friends in LA. Actually, on second thought, it was stranger to think she wouldn't have any friends in LA.

"At one point, we were talking about advanced studies in our Arcana fields," Lienna continued. "Improving our skills, that kind of thing. And she told me about some transmutation stuff she's been working on."

"Wait, I thought the turning-iron-into-gold type of alchemist was a myth."

"Nope, though that's not a very useful application compared to everything else transmutation can do." She gestured with her chopsticks. "It's a branch of Arcana that can get really, really advanced."

"Like abjuration?" I ventured. I didn't know a whole hell of a lot about the various difficulty levels of Arcana magic, aside from the fact that Lienna's specialty was Stupid Hard.

"Similar, yes," she agreed. "Abjuration is complex in a different way, though. It requires a fundamental understanding of all magic and how it interacts with abjuration techniques. There's a lot of on-the-spot problem solving, especially if you're using it in the field."

I'd witnessed that a few times, from Lienna using a calculator to plan an array in the middle of a face-off with Quentin to sealing an anti-feminist fae monster back into his human-skull prison while he tried to melt us.

"Transmutation, on the other hand, requires a high level of precision and planning," she explained. "If you don't get it perfect, it won't work and you could end up wasting weeks on a single attempt. But what it can do is incredible—and that got me thinking about your reality warps."

I leaned back in my chair. "What about them?"

"The closest magical comparison to your reality warps—at least the ones you've done so far—is transmutation." Her face lit with excitement. "Turning metal handcuffs into plastic is textbook transmutation."

I nodded slowly, absorbing that.

"You were doing one of the most complex forms of magic that exists, and you did it instantly with just your mind. I think that's why your power disappears afterward."

"I don't follow," I said with a frown. "Arcana mythics don't lose their magic when they do transmutation, do they?"

Lienna shook her head. "But we only make the spell arrays with our inherent magic. The actual magical effect, whether it's creating an artifact or transmuting something, is fueled by the energies of the earth, which are basically limitless. That's why arrays and artifacts need time to charge. They aren't using our magic. They're using the planet's magic."

"And I don't have a whole planet to draw from," I said, catching on. "Just my tiny little brain."

"Exactly. And Arcana transmutation can take days or even weeks to charge, but you do it in an instant. It makes sense that even a simple reality warp will sap all your power at once." She set her empty takeout carton aside. "That's why mages and psychics get tired after using a lot of magic. Their power source is internal and can't be bolstered with an external source like Arcana and Spiritalis."

"Huh." I fiddled with my chopsticks as I connected the proverbial dots. This was a perspective I hadn't considered. I'd been terrified that if I kept screwing with the fabric of reality, someday my powers would vanish permanently, especially since they took longer to return each time I did it.

But maybe that was because my reality warps had become increasingly difficult: when I'd changed a wand into a snake, I'd mostly altered its shape; shifting a grappling hook into an anchor had involved shape and size, including a whole schwack of added mass; and when I'd turned Kade's metal handcuffs into a plastic toy, it'd been a full-on transmutation of its elemental composition.

Thinking about that last bit made me feel a little woozy. Concentrating extra hard should not allow a person to rearrange molecules. It was downright unnatural.

"Anyway," Lienna said, pulling Darius's laptop closer, "I've been doing some digging about this weapon the Consilium wants. The Trident file only has basic information—that it was discovered in a Viking tomb twenty years ago and it's estimated to originate from 900 to 1000 CE."

"So real dang old," I concluded helpfully.

She flipped the laptop around to show me some kind of archaeological article on the screen. "I narrowed down all the Viking-related discoveries from around twenty years ago. There were quite a few—mostly these ring forts, which are really fascinating—and I think this is the one."

She scrolled down to a photo of what looked like a very nice field: green grass, a little hilly, the blue sky dotted with fluffy white clouds. It could've been a default Windows wallpaper from 2001.

"Is it an invisible fort?" I asked dubiously.

She rolled her eyes as though that wasn't a completely legitimate question based on the total lack of visible fort in the photo.

"The site is located a short drive southwest of Copenhagen. According to this report from the Nordic Society for Arcane Archaeology, it was discovered by humans, but when an underground tomb with signs of magic was found beneath the fort, the MPD stepped in and handed it over to a guild to manage."

"Signs of magic? Like ultra deadly weaponry?"

"None of the documents or articles I've looked at mention weapons or artifacts. They're mostly about the remains of the fort."

I sighed. "Interesting, but I don't see how any of that helps us."

"I'll keep looking," she promised, already opening a new search. "Maybe I can find something from the human side—the people who first discovered the tomb."

"Sounds good." I grabbed our empty food containers, fed them to the garbage can, then headed for the opposite end of the table. I gathered Tino's pile of Very Scary Magic and his notes on it and returned to Lienna's side. "I'm going to have another look through here for anything else that could be related to a Viking tomb."

We worked in comfortable silence, the room filled with soft sounds of typing and shuffling paper. I couldn't help smiling, ridiculously content in spite of everything—Kade's return, our dwindling time to steal a weapon from a scary international rogue, and the Consilium's whole "world domination" thing.

As I turned through Tino's notes, I found myself gazing at a familiar page: the unusual drawing of a levitating man surrounded by symbols of magic. I studied it again, my attention lingering on the sunburst symbol filling the man's forehead.

"Hey Lienna." I held up the paper. "What do you make of this?"

She took the page and studied it. "If I had to guess, I'd say it's a depiction of all the mythic types in a single illustration. We've got the elements for mages, nature imagery for Spiritalis, and some of these symbols could represent Arcana."

"Nothing for demons, though."

Lienna shrugged. "Demonica is very old—at least three thousand years, I think—but for most of that time, it was considered a branch of Arcana, not its own magic class."

I grabbed Tino's scant notes on the page and skimmed his neat handwriting. "Our neurotic expert estimated that this drawing dates back to the early sixteenth century."

Lienna tapped her lower lip. "That's around the same time the MPD separated out the Demonica class, but this drawing might predate that change."

"What about that thing?" I tapped my finger on the sun symbol emblazoned on the man's forehead.

She quirked her lips. "Psychic magic, maybe? Why are you so interested in this?"

"That's where I can feel my power." I pressed my fingertip to my forehead. "After I reality warp and lose my powers, I feel this awful emptiness instead—and it's right there."

She made a thoughtful noise. "Do other psychics feel their power in the same place?"

"No idea. I've never asked."

"Hmm." She set down the paper. "What does this illustration have to do with the Consilium?"

"Again, no idea." I gestured to the folder beside her, flipped open to showcase the weapon's photo. "But twenty years ago, the weird magic dude drawing was in a collection of documents along with the weapon, according to Darius. He got the drawing but lost the rest."

Lienna frowned deeply as she looked between the two. "They don't seem connected. A Viking amulet from Denmark a thousand years ago and an illustration from seventeenth century Europe—they have nothing in common."

I eyed that sunburst symbol again, comparing it to the warm, bright feeling of my psychic power. Giving myself a shake, I took the drawing from her and returned it to Tino's pile.

"You know," I said as I set the whole stack down on the table, "we should call it a night. My brain has turned to mush."

Nodding, she closed the laptop, but she didn't get off her chair. Instead, she swiveled to face me. Her eyes looked into mine in an unexpectedly questioning way.

"Kit…" She seemed to steel herself. "There's something I want to talk about."

A deep feeling of foreboding washed over me. "Okay."

She smiled wanly. "It's nothing bad. I don't think."

That did nothing to reduce my sudden and very acute sense of impending doom.

"When I went home…" She drew in a slow breath. "I had a lot of time to think. I spent a lot of it worrying about you, and not just because I knew you were hunting Kade, traveling all over by yourself, and doing other dangerous stuff you couldn't tell me about."

I sat in the discomfort of her silence, waiting with dreaded anticipation for her to finish that thought.

She looked down at her lap. "I was also worried that I made a big mistake when I left. The way I left, I mean."

"Sneaking off while I was sleeping without saying goodbye," I clarified.

Her mouth twisted sheepishly. "I thought you might be upset—I mean, I figured you were rightfully upset that I'd left like that when things between us were kind of… up in the air."

That was an apt description—and not just because it was the title of a 2009 George Clooney movie partly about a dude struggling with his love life.

She dragged her gaze back up to me. "Being back home and taking care of my dad, it forced me to think about some stuff. Like how I tend to avoid situations or feelings that make me uncomfortable. I always told myself I was just prioritizing things that are important to me, like my job or my studies."

I watched her, scarcely breathing.

She bit her lip. "But seeing my dad so sick and being so scared that I would lose him—it put all that into perspective. I always thought I'd have time later on to figure out how I really felt about him, whether we could reconcile or not, but suddenly, time with him wasn't guaranteed."

I nodded. That was a lesson I'd learned in the hardest way possible. It was a lesson I carried with me deep in my chest.

She took a moment to collect her thoughts. "My relationship with my dad isn't the only uncomfortable feeling I've been avoiding. There's also… us."

I flinched, and her eyes widened.

"Wait, no—I don't mean that I'm uncomfortable with you. I mean I didn't want to deal with the—the complications of us. Because… because I really want there to be an ‘us,'" she finished in a small voice.

Oh.

Oh, wow.

I had to swallow twice before I could speak. "You do?"

"Yes." Her confidence returned and she straightened. "I was holding back because of Captain Blythe's warning, and how everyone says not to get involved with coworkers, and I didn't want to ruin our friendship, and… well, we've been dealing with a lot of other stuff—all the life-and-death cases, you know."

"There's been a lot of that," I agreed, my voice a little hoarse.

"But I don't want my fear of complications to hold me back. I don't want to wait until it's too late."

"Too late for what?" I asked softly, not wanting to make any assumptions about her meaning.

A slow flush rose in her cheeks. As she hesitated, I leaned forward, my focus on her intensifying. Was she saying what I thought she was? Had she changed her mind about the possibility of becoming more than friends? More than partners of the work variety?

I needed to know so badly. My heart pounded as I stared at her, my eyes trying to drill straight into her head so I could see what she was thinking.

What if he doesn't want to be with me that way?

Her voice was the faintest whisper, almost too quiet for me to hear.

"I do," I blurted.

She jolted. "What?"

"I really, definitely do," I said in a rush. "I've wanted that for a long time."

"Wanted what?"

My rising hope faltered. "To be with you."

She stared at me like I'd sprouted a face full of tentacles, Davy Jones style.

"You asked… you asked whether I wanted to be with you," I ventured uncertainly. "And I?—"

"No, I didn't." She was looking less confused and more freaked out by the second. "I didn't say that. I didn't say anything."

"What? But I heard you?—"

"I was thinking that, Kit."

"Thinking?" I repeated, feeling stupider by the second. "That doesn't make any sense."

"Kit…" She drew in a deep breath. "What am I thinking?"

If she hadn't looked so deadly serious, I would've made a silly quip about that being an unfair starting point for a romantic relationship.

"Lienna, what are you talking about?"

She leaned forward. "Concentrate, Kit. What am I thinking?"

Unnerved and more than a little confused, I settled into my chair and squinted at her face. This was nuts. I couldn't read her mind, even if I concentrated as hard as I?—

—matcha. My grandma's favorite dessert is matcha. My grandma's favorite dessert is matcha. My grandma?—

My eyes widened and I jerked back. I could hear her voice, but her mouth wasn't moving. There was no sound in my ears. I could hear her inside my head.

"Matcha," I whispered.

Her repetitive stream of grandma sentences stopped, and I caught a sharp "holy shit" from her mind before I tore my focus away from her. I turned my chair sideways and stared at the wall instead.

"Lienna," I muttered, feeling like the ground had become dangerously unsteady beneath my feet.

"Kit," she replied. Her breath rushed out. "I don't think Kade has any telepathic ability."

Feeling like I was on the precipice of a very dangerous cliff, I glanced at her, and our eyes met as she dropped the figurative bomb she was holding right on my head.

"I think you do."