Chapter 19

From the sixth-floor window of our hotel, the glowing nightlife of Ho Chi Minh City seemed inappropriately cheerful. A fitful rain shower had dampened the city, and the streetlamps reflected off the puddles. Even the persistent headlights of traffic appeared brighter than they should have.

This juxtaposed brutally with the mood inside our room.

Three rooms, actually—Darius had booked one for each of us. When the receptionist quoted him a price of three million Vietnamese dong, I'd about choked. After the shitshow we'd endured, the last thing Darius needed was to remortgage his house to pay for hotel rooms.

Then I'd learned that a million dong was equivalent to less than sixty Canadian loonies.

We'd gathered in the first room we'd reached, our belongings dumped on the floor in the entryway and our tired bodies slouched on the furniture—Lienna on the edge of the queen bed, me on an ottoman beside the window, and Darius in an uncomfortable-looking armchair.

Lienna rubbed her hands over her soot-smudged face. "That was…"

I shifted away from the window. "A disaster?"

Darius didn't comment. He had his elbows braced on his knees, and it seemed like all his remaining brain power was dedicated to keeping his head from lolling side to side. Of all the magic classes, Elementaria took the most brutal toll on its users. Darius had pushed himself to his limit.

And it had all been for nothing. Kade was gone, and the weapon was gone with him. Not exactly a mission to write home about.

"What do we do now?" Lienna muttered. "Kade could take the weapon anywhere. Do we just… give up?"

"I don't know where he's taking the weapon." I leaned back against the cool glass of the window. "But his next stop is New York."

Darius lifted his head. Haggard exhaustion had grayed his complexion. "How do you know that?"

"He told me." I shrugged. "I don't think he was lying since he was pretty sure he'd trapped me on that plane with him when he said it. I barely managed to jump out before it took off."

There was a moment of silence in which Darius and Lienna were either contemplating why Kade would go to New York or wondering how I'd messed up so badly that I'd almost gotten abducted again while also failing to steal the weapon.

"Should we go to New York?" Lienna suggested.

"Unless we recruit the world's largest team of telethesians, we'll never find him. Besides, all he said was ‘New York.' He could've meant the whole damn state, not the city."

"What about the New York MPD?" my partner suggested. "Could we ask them for help?"

"Can we trust them?" I countered. "Our little Canadian precinct has a mole. Who knows what kind of Manhattan sewer rat or Consilium infestation is lurking in one of the world's largest precincts?"

Lienna sagged, her shoulders drooping with hopelessness.

I glanced at Darius. "I don't suppose you have any contacts in NYC we can call in for backup?"

"Not for this." He pushed to his feet as though every muscle in his body was three seconds from atrophying. "There's nothing we can do right now. We should get some sleep. In the morning…"

He trailed off in a not-very-Darius way.

I jumped up. My bones ached, and my flesh was bruised from tumbling across the runway, but I was nowhere near as exhausted as the luminamage. I helped carry his luggage to the room next door, made sure he didn't need anything, then left him to collapse in privacy.

As I walked the ten steps back to the first room, ugly emotions churned in my gut. Darius had given that fight everything—I doubted Lienna and I would be alive if he hadn't—but I still had psychic gas in the tank.

Which meant I hadn't given that fight everything. I should have done more. I should have found a way to beat Kade.

I let myself back into our original room and found Lienna digging first aid supplies out of her luggage. I took them from her hands.

"Let me," I said quietly. "Come on."

I led her into the reasonably spacious—for a cheap hotel room—bathroom, where she leaned on the counter. Wetting a cloth, I started wiping the soot off her face.

"I can do it," she murmured.

"I'm your first aid Kit, remember?"

She smiled, offering no more protest. When I'd removed the signs of battle from her face, she pulled her long-sleeved shirt off, revealing a fitted black tank top underneath. Scrapes and smears of blood marked her arms. I carefully cleaned them, finding more bruises, as well as a burn on her left wrist.

I exhaled roughly as I opened a jar of neatly labeled burn ointment. "I'm sorry."

"For what?"

I dipped my fingertips into the white salve, unable to meet her eyes. "Kade got the better of me—again. It's my fault we lost the weapon."

"It's no one's fault." She watched me gently smooth the cream over her blistered wrist. "Nothing went according to plan, and the odds were stacked against us from the start."

I swapped the cream for a pack of big Band-Aids, which I applied to the scrapes on her arms. "You could have died. I should have done more."

"Kit." She pulled the bandages from my hands, set them on the counter, then grasped my wrists. "Fighting the Consilium, stopping them—you aren't solely responsible. I know it feels that way, especially since you've been working with both Darius and Blythe, but you can't carry the weight of it all on your shoulders alone."

My hands curled into fists. She was right that I felt ultimately responsible, but that's because I was responsible. Bouncing back and forth between Darius and Blythe had forced me into the uncomfortable role of being the only person who knew everything that was really going on. If I didn't take on that responsibility, who would?

"The Consilium has the weapon." I looked down at her fingers curled around my wrists. "I can't prove it, but I think they're going to use it soon. They didn't drop thirty million dollars and pull Kade off his ‘abduct Kit' mission for something they might not need."

Lienna gave a small nod. "Probably not."

I dragged my gaze back up to hers. "By the time we wake up tomorrow, Kade might have leveled half of Manhattan with super-mage magic."

She released my wrists and brought her hands to my face, pressing her warm palms to my cheeks. "That won't happen, Kit. The Consilium operates in secret. Causing mass destruction isn't their MO."

She didn't know that. None of us knew what the Consilium planned to do.

Her hands slid down to my shoulders, and she pulled me closer. When she draped her arms around my neck, I wrapped her in an embrace. We held each other, oblivious to the dirt on our clothes or the lingering smell of smoke and blood in our hair.

I wanted to hold her like this forever. I wanted to never leave this room so we wouldn't have to face more danger, more threats, more unanswerable questions, and more Consilium bullshit that we shouldn't have been responsible for stopping, but somehow we were.

An ex-conman with inexplicably growing powers, an abjuration prodigy trying to make up for her father's corruption, and a former assassin who'd fought this battle once before.

We were up against a cabal of ruthless, untouchable, anonymous power players in the upper echelon of the world's most powerful organization.

Lienna combed her fingers through my hair, probably trying to soften the rigid tension in my shoulders. I settled my hands on her waist, leaning back slightly to bring her face into view.

Her eyes were gentle with understanding and dampened by weariness, but behind both was that mysterious glint. I'd wondered since the day I met her what that glint meant, and for the first time, I had a real inkling.

It was the determination and passion, the sheer force of her personality that drove her to keep reaching for the impossibly high standards she set for herself. She wasn't giving up.

Neither would I.

My fingers brushed across her cheek as I slid my hand into her hair. She tilted her face up, cheeks flushing and lips parting with anticipation. I leaned down.

The kiss started slow, building with gradual, inevitable intensity. Finally, there was no danger, no undue influence, no adrenaline rush. It was just the two of us, arms around each other, bodies pressed close, mouths locked.

It was the kind of kiss I thought I'd never get with Lienna. It was exactly a thousand times better than I'd imagined.

Our lips parted, her warm breath whispering over my skin. I rubbed my thumb against her cheek.

"You should get ready for bed," I told her softly. "We need sleep."

She nodded, her cheeks flushed and her eyes a little wide. She pushed up onto her toes, pressing one more kiss to my lips.

I left her in the bathroom and took over the chair Darius had vacated. As the sounds of running water filled the bathroom, my thoughts wandered back to my failed attempt to steal the weapon—but hating every iota of Kade's miserable existence wouldn't accomplish anything except ruining the memory of that kiss with Lienna.

Levering back to my feet, I grabbed my laptop and keys. Sitting on the bed with my legs stretched out, I inserted the USB stick and raced through the TOR browser setup until a green cursor blinked on a black screen, waiting for the mole to join the chat.

Only after a log-in message from "Degu" had appeared did I bother considering what time it was in Vancouver.

>Degu: Who is this?

>You: Rose Petal.

>Degu: Word around the precinct is you're on an extended vacation. In my experience, that's usually code for a forced leave of absence because you're a screwup.

Okay, dude, hit me where it hurts, why don't you.

While my few days of globetrotting were not, in fact, the result of a work-related snafu, I couldn't deny that "screwup" was an appropriate assessment of my current state—on a scale the mole couldn't even fathom.

>You: Not exactly. Have you found anything on the IA audits I asked about?

>Degu: This is a give-and-take relationship. Satisfy my curiosity on your whereabouts and I'll tell you what I've uncovered.

I groaned aloud. I was so not in the mood for this underhanded furball's games.

>You: If I tell you I'm in a time zone 14 hours ahead of you, is that good enough?

>Degu: I'd prefer GPS coordinates, but I'll take what I can get.

>You: Asia is lovely this time of year.

>Degu: Fine.

The cursor blinked for several long seconds. I waited, hoping the mole was busy typing up all sorts of juicy IA details for me.

>Degu: Considering what I had to do to get this info, you owe me big. For starters, S?ze's audit on our precinct? Those orders came straight from Sparks.

Oh shit. So Commissioner Sparks wasn't merely aware of S?ze and Kade's nefarious intentions; he'd sicced the two murderous slimeballs on us.

>Degu: Sparks personally ordered 9 precinct audits, including ours, over the past 2 yrs. The audits he DIDN'T order seemed legit, but the others had no real history of corruption or incompetence. But the IA still went in and dismantled their leadership. S?ze was involved in 5 of the audits, and we were the only precinct to come out the other end still functioning.

Holy chaotic crap. Sparks was deliberately unraveling entire precincts.

Scratch that.

The Consilium was deliberately unraveling entire precincts.

"That can't be good," I muttered, reaching for the keyboard.

"What can't be good?"

I jolted, looking up to find Lienna standing beside me, her hair tied up in a bun and an oversized t-shirt making her look extra cozy. I'd been so focused on the mole's information that I hadn't heard her leave the bathroom.

I scooted into the middle of the bed, tilting the laptop invitingly. She sat beside me and leaned close to read what "Degu" had said. Her eyebrows scrunched tighter and tighter as her gaze zipped across the text.

"This definitely isn't good."

"Seems to be a running theme with these guys." I straightened the laptop on my thighs and typed a quick question.

>You: What happened to the other eight precincts?

>Degu: People quit or were fired or disappeared. Inexperienced agents got promoted to positions of power. Admin roles were left vacant. Post-audits, the affected cities saw reported mythic crimes up 200%, bounty completions down 40%, guild compliance down 35%, and incidents of public magic exposure up 1600%. The Dissimulation Department had to scramble to get things under control.

"You know it's bad when the DD shows up," I remarked grimly.

Lienna nodded. "But why? What's the point of messing up precincts?"

A damn good question. Yeah, Sparks and the Consilium were colossal bags of week-old elephant shit, but even the baddest of bad guys generally had a reason for their evil misdeeds.

>Degu: Now get this. Over the same 2 yr period, Sparks tried to launch an investigation into the DD six separate times. His justification: the DD's poor performance in the same cities where the IA sent the precincts into a death spiral. He blamed the DD for not doing a good enough job at handling the rise in magic exposure.

"That's bullshit," Lienna said, scowling at the screen. "The IA created the problem, and besides that, it's never been the DD's job to police mythics."

I nodded in agreement. Local agents were the first line of defense when something went wrong with magic secrecy, and only when shit got too big or too messy did the DD step in. Say what you will about the authoritarian regime of one Captain Aurelia Blythe, but she ran a ship so tight, the only time I'd seen DD agents on the streets of Vancouver was a particularly memorable day when two angry super-fae re-enacted King Kong vs. Godzilla in broad daylight.

My fingers zipped over the keyboard, adding another question.

>You: What happened to the investigation attempts?

>Degu: Nothing. The DD shut that shit down each time. The department is too powerful to get pushed around by the IA, and Ashbluff has been in charge for 20 yrs. He knows what he's doing.

"Ashbluff?" I muttered, rifling through my memory banks for the name.

"Director of the DD," Lienna informed me. "My dad said he's the only department head who is well-liked by all the GM coalitions."

I drummed my fingers on the side of the laptop. "Was the purpose of all the precinct audits to disrupt the DD and get rid of Ashbluff? Does Sparks just have a burning hatred for this guy, or was there some other reason?"

"It can't be that simple. When Sparks sent S?ze and Kade to destroy our precinct, they were also ordered to capture and/or kill Darius and his allies."

"Right," I muttered, my head aching with all the unanswered questions. I thought for a moment, then typed in a reply.

>You: What's YOUR take on all this?

>Degu: That's your job, Sherlock. I just provide the information. If you want more, I suggest you bring me back a souvenir.

>You: There's a shop here with cute little mugs that have different names on them. What name should I look for?

>Degu has logged out.

Oh well, it was worth a try.

I unplugged the USB stick and tossed my keys into my open bag, where it sat beside the bed. "We can assume the Consilium isn't particularly fond of Director Ashbluff."

"That sounds like a safe bet." Lienna pulled the laptop onto her legs and opened the MPD archives. "The Consilium already controls the head of the IA, and if Kade's father is also involved with the Consilium, they control the head of the Obscura Influentia department too. That's two of the four most powerful MPD departments."

"What are the other two?"

"According to my dad, Special Investigations…"

I remembered that one—Darius had fictitiously worked for it while pretending to be a senior MPD agent during his chat with Jayce Tyrian.

"… and the Dissimulation Department," Lienna finished, typing its name into the search bar as she spoke.

She hit the enter key. The loading wheel spun, and then we were dumped onto a subpage for the DD. The first thing on the page was a big "report an incident" button. Under that was the contact information for the department's HQ.

"Shit," I whispered, cold sinking through my gut. "Lienna, look."

I pointed at the DD's address: a building in New York, New York. Our eyes met, shared trepidation zinging between us.

"It could be a coincidence that Kade is going to New York," she said quickly. "It's the biggest city in America, and one of the big hubs of the international MPD. The DD isn't the only department in that building."

"Right," I agreed, wishing her logic could calm the "doom is imminent" pounding of my heart. "He could be going to New York for anything. Maybe he wants to go to Coney Island."

She nodded emphatically as she clicked a few more times. The DD's basic info page, accessible to any mythic, was replaced by the agent-only information board. A big notice with a red title sat pretty at the top, and its glaring letters assaulted my widening eyes.

That feeling of impending doom increased tenfold, and no logic on our good green planet could convince me that the mythic world as we knew it wasn't about to end.

"Lienna," I croaked.

"Yeah," she agreed, her voice a whisper of dread.

"What do we do?"

She pushed the computer onto my lap and swung her legs off the bed. "I'll go wake up Darius." She grabbed my phone off the nightstand and held it out to me. "You call Captain Blythe."

I took the phone with numb fingers. As Lienna speed-walked for the hotel room door, I scrolled through my contacts until I found Blythe's private number. A single call from Vietnam to Canada would absolutely wreck my upcoming phone bill.

I hit her number and lifted the phone to my ear. It rang a handful of times before the cap's familiar voice barked at me from half a world away.

"Agent Morris, are you following orders?"

Well, hello to you too, dear captain. "What orders?"

"You're supposed to be resting. Where the hell are you?"

There were so many ways I could answer that: "I swear on the grave of Charlie Chaplain that I haven't set a single foot on the streets of Vancouver," or "I definitely did not engage in a life-or-death brawl against an international criminal and her army of mercenaries," but I opted for the truth instead.

"I'm in Vietnam."

There was a very long, very heavy pause.

"Why?"

I inhaled deeply and let it out. "Captain, we have a problem. A really big problem." I glanced at the open laptop screen and that bold headline in red. "We need to go to New York City."

"Kit." Her utterance of my name was layered with all kinds of questions. "What the hell are you up to?"

"Oh, nothing much." I snapped the laptop shut. "Just trying to prevent the apocalypse."