Chapter 5

The precinct was a twenty-minute walk from the Crow and Hammer, and a midafternoon urban hike would give me a chance to clear all the ancient magic facts from my brain and get back into Kade-hunting mode.

I wove through the foot traffic congesting the sidewalks of Powell Street until I reached Gastown, where weaving was no longer an option; it was too damn crowded. The best I could do was tread past the boutique furniture shops and overpriced coffee joints at the lackadaisical pace of all the other pedestrians.

As I bobbed through the crowd, mentally organizing my recently learned tidbits about Kade's past for my inevitable debrief with Blythe, I glimpsed something in the reflection of a parked car that sent a jolt down every nerve in my body.

It was the unmistakable shape of a bald head among the crowd a few yards behind me.

Now, don't get me wrong—there are a lot of bald white dudes in Vancouver. Steering hard into the curve of your receding hairline by the handle of a razor blade is practically a fashion statement in these parts. But something about this particular cue ball sounded alarms in my head.

My gaze swept across all nearby reflective surfaces to catch another glimpse without turning around to look. It couldn't be him, though. My brain was just filling in a Kade-like profile because I was thinking about him while I walked.

My heart rate was finally beginning to slow, calmed by an internal stream of logic delivered in Lienna's "don't be silly, Kit" tone, when a pedestrian heading in the opposite direction passed so close she nearly clipped me with her shopping bag. Her dark-tinted sunglasses reflected my own face back at me—and framed over my shoulder was Kade's steely-eyed countenance, barely three strides behind me.

Adrenaline dumped into my bloodstream. Eschewing courtesy, I shoved my way through the milling throng, garnering more than a few glares and grumbles. I really didn't care, not when the psycho who'd threatened to torture Lienna and me to death, and who I'd last seen decapitating Agent S?ze in a parking lot, was right on my tail.

No longer pretending I hadn't noticed him, I looked back to find he'd fallen a few more paces behind—but he was moving steadily toward me, pedestrians instinctively clearing a path for his wide shoulders, probably sensing the predator in their midst.

Was he alone?

I scanned the multitudinous heads jam-packed onto the sidewalk, dreading the potential sight of any other Consilium cronies, but none were immediately obvious. That didn't mean they weren't there.

The awkward intersection where Water Street connected diagonally with Cordova was just ahead. I picked up my speed and jaywalked to the other side. If I could cut across Cordova and disappear down one of the subsequent back alleys, I could put some space between me and Kade—and any of his goons. Then I could figure out what the hell to do.

Kade, the man I'd been unsuccessfully scouring the continent for over the past five months, was here. In Vancouver.

I'd thought I was hunting him, and the sudden role reversal was turning my heart rate into "The Flight of the Bumblebee."

I made it to the intersection, but a bevy of traffic combined with a badly timed red light stopped me at the corner. Ineffectually shielded by a clump of afternoon shoppers, I looked across the street to the sidewalk I'd illegally vacated.

Kade stood on the corner, ramrod still, eyes unwaveringly on me. His expression betrayed nothing other than unshakeable focus.

Had he come back to finish me off? Why now? Why approach me on a busy street full of humans? My head spun, my thoughts muddled by the animal part of my brain yelling at me to run for my life.

In theory, I could create a warp—a massive halluci-bomb to mess with the traffic lights or create a chaotic distraction—but out in public, with this many non-mythics surrounding me, I couldn't risk it. Just yesterday I'd been involved in a magic-exposure incident involving a dining car full of train passengers. If I created magical mayhem in front of dozens of unassuming humans on a street corner in broad daylight, I'd be DD toast.

Instead, I stared back at Kade and targeted his mind. He'd always seemed impervious to my warps, but I only needed to distract him for a few seconds so I could slip away.

Keeping it simple, I created a single voice that crept into his mind like a bad memory.

"You think you're hunting me," disembodied Kit whispered, "but the real hunters are behind you."

I hoped Kade would at least give a cursory glance over his shoulder, providing me with a split second to vanish into the crowd, but he didn't move. Even from across the street, I could see his eyes narrow and a sneer crawl onto his lips.

Nice try, Morris, his voice replied clearly inside my head.

I barely had time to register the low pitch of his voice invading my gray matter before the people around me started hustling into the intersection. The traffic lights had changed. Shaking my head as though I could dislodge Kade's voice, I rushed into the throng.

So did Kade, his eyes still on me.

I reached the far sidewalk, took a couple of quick steps along it, then Split-Kit myself. Fake Kit melded with the crowd while invisible me spun a hundred and eighty degrees and sprinted back across Cordova Street just as the light went yellow.

For whatever reason, my warps didn't work well on Kade, but as I'd hoped, it took him a couple seconds to lock onto the real me. That was enough. He started into the street, only to reel back toward the sidewalk as a honking mail truck accelerated through the intersection.

I kept running, retracing my steps down Water Street and doing my best not to shoulder-check any pedestrians into oncoming traffic. I didn't slow down until I found another intersection and hung a hard right.

In the shade of an Irish pub, I caught my breath, half expecting Kade to come barreling around the corner.

But he didn't.

As far as close shaves went, that had been tight enough to make Sweeney Todd wince. What the hell was Kade doing back in Vancouver? My first thought was that he'd returned to complete his previous mission: murdering Darius. But why would he come after me? Compared to the infamous Mage Assassin, I was a literal nobody.

"Damn it," I growled.

The target of my slow, tedious, five-month-long investigation had been within spitting distance, and I'd run away like Cinderella at the stroke of midnight.

I leaned against the brick fa?ade of the pub, pulse thudding in my ears, smells of seafood chowder and heavy stout wafting into my nostrils, and a nagging voice in the back of my head belittling my cowardice.

Taking a long, deep breath, I tried to imagine what Lienna would say if she were here. What would she tell her partner who'd fled the relentless, slippery psychopath who'd almost killed us multiple times before?

Yeah, I'd run, but I also wasn't armed with anything but my warps, which failed to work properly on that bald bastard. Alone, I was outmatched. As I'd learned the hard way during my two failed field exams while trying to earn my agent title, I was at a huge disadvantage against certain psychic powers.

I replayed the sound of Kade's voice. Nice try, Morris.

The truly unnerving part was that it made sense. Based on his ability to see through my warps, how he handled Darius's lumina magic, and the stories Miriam Baker had told me about adolescent Benny, I could only draw one obvious conclusion.

Kade was a telepath.

I was staring at a woman in her early twenties. Her wavy, chocolate-brown hair had tasteful golden highlights and hung around her shoulders. She had soft features and a huge, playful smile.

She was just an image on a phone, but I was utterly baffled by her.

"Her name's Kayla," Vinny told me.

Leaning against the wall of his cubicle and trying to hide my bewilderment, I managed a monosyllabic, "Wow."

"It's been a little over a month now," he said, turning the screen back to himself and taking in her photo one more time before pocketing his phone.

"No shit," I muttered.

"What do you think?"

His question caught me off guard. What did I think? I thought it was a weird-ass question to ask your coworker about your new girlfriend based on no more information than a single photo and a first name. What the hell was I supposed to say? She was pretty? She looked fun? The digital representation of her face indicated friendliness?

"Uh, I…" Come on, Kit. You can say anything, literally anything… as long as it's nice. "She seems?—"

"Beautiful?" Vinny interrupted. "Too beautiful?"

I frowned. "What?"

"So beautiful that she's got to be out of my league, right?"

"No, man. I wasn't going to?—"

With a heavy sigh, Vinny slumped back into his chair, ruffling his neatly pressed suit. "You're right. Of course you're right."

"I'm sorry, but what am I right about?"

"She's out of my league!" he exclaimed with a note of desperation. "There's no way this is going to last."

He ran a hand through his hair. Or, more accurately, his fingers dragged across his mohawk, knocking several heavily gelled strands out of whack. This was a gesture I'd never seen Vinny do, not once since we'd started working together.

And it worried me. I was far more used to his apoplectic frustration with my semi-regular pranks at his expense, but here he was, anxiously ruining his perfect hair and spouting insecure babble… over a girl?

Actually, on second thought, it made perfect sense. Men are stupid.

"Any day now, she'll look at me and realize she could do so much better," Vinny rambled. "On a good day, what am I? A seven out of ten? And Kayla, she's a ten! Maybe you'd say a nine. No lower than an eight-point-five, right? I don't know your type—well, I do. It's Agent Shen, but still?—"

"Wait, what?" I interjected. Was I that obvious? Even Vincent Park had picked up on it?

Motor-Mouth McGee kept chugging. "That kind of disparity just isn't sustainable. And it's not just looks. She's on track to become an officer at her guild, and I'm just?—"

"Vinny," I said firmly, placing a hand on his shoulder. "Take a breath, dude."

He stared at me for a second, then inhaled deep and slow through his nose.

"Good." I sat on the edge of his desk so I was closer to eye level with him. "You know, part of me agrees with you."

He winced. "You do?"

"On the looks front? Absolutely. As far as I'm concerned, you're about as attractive as the wrong end of an irritable donkey."

An unexpected snort-laugh burst from Vinny.

"But you know what they say. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder." It was my turn to wince. Was I really devolving into cliches? Romantic pep talks were not my strong suit. "Besides, you've got lots to offer besides looks."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah."

There was an uncomfortably long pause. Did he want me to list said offerings? This was not the conversation I'd been expecting when I'd stepped into his cubicle five minutes ago.

Since Vinny still seemed to be waiting expectantly, I gave it a shot. "I mean, you're smart. And you're in great shape."

He shrugged. "That's just part of the job."

"Yeah, because you take down bad guys for a living, Vinny. That's awesome. Not to mention your eye for detail, which I'm sure Kayla will appreciate when she gets a haircut and you notice before she has to prompt you."

The mohawked agent grinned and sat up in his chair. "That actually happened last week."

"And she loved it, didn't she?"

"She did!"

"There ya go." I stood up from my spot on the edge of his desk, desperate for this conversation to change gears. "Speaking of that eye for detail. I'm wondering if you can do some digging for me."

"What kind of digging?"

"You know the MPD's elite Defense, Recon, and Arcane Field Tactics team?"

He nodded. "DRAFT. Yeah, Agent Harris and I did a joint operation with them earlier this year."

"For the eco-terrorist witch coven thing, right?" I asked rhetorically, knowing exactly which operation he'd been involved in—it was the reason I'd started this conversation. "I heard you got some insight into how DRAFT does things."

Vinny shrugged with faux modesty. "Working with them was definitely an experience. I learned a lot."

I leaned forward, lowering my voice. "Did you learn enough that you might be able to get your hands on some of their old reports from between 2010 and 2013?"

Vinny scrunched up his nose. "DRAFT's activities are usually pretty locked down. I don't know if even Captain Blythe would have the security clearance for it."

"What if you talked to some of the guys you worked with on the eco-terrorism case? Could they help?"

He crossed his arms, eyeing me warily. "I don't know, Kit. Nosing around for something like that…"

"I wouldn't ask if it wasn't important." I leaned closer, meeting his eyes. "I'm looking for reports that mention Agent Kade."

His body language instantly changed, arms dropping and shoulders stiffening. "Kade was a DRAFT agent?"

I nodded. "For three years before he joined Internal Affairs."

"Hmm." Vinny scooted his chair forward and tapped his mouse to wake the computer on his desk. "I'll see what I can do."

"Awesome. Keep me posted, okay?" I backed out of his cubicle. "I'm overdue for a debriefing with Captain Blythe."

I was three steps away before Vinny spoke. "Hey, Kit?"

Pausing, I glanced back. "Yeah?"

"Thanks. You know, for…"

"Don't mention it," I replied. "Seriously. I mean that in the most literal sense."

Not that I regretted giving him a small confidence boost, but I also didn't want to have to think about Vinny's love life ever again.

A few minutes later, I was sitting across from Blythe, the door to her office closed tightly behind me to avoid any prying eyes or eavesdropping ears. She had her elbows braced on her desk, hands clasped, blue gaze laser-beaming across my face.

"Tell me what you learned," she ordered.

"Agent Park has a new girlfriend and deep-seated self-image issues."

She scowled. "You know what I mean."

"Oh, you mean how Kade has been a violent psychopath since adolescence and once murdered his middle school class's beloved pet turtle?"

Blythe's gaze sharpened even more. "Keep going."

I gave her a speedy rundown of my conversation with Miriam Baker, including Kade's "slipperiness." This detail didn't seem particularly revelatory to Blythe; she was less concerned about Kade's powers and more interested in where he was and who he was working for.

"Well, he's in Vancouver," I said. "As of an hour ago, anyway."

Her whole body tensed. "How do you know that?"

"He followed me through Gastown. I managed to give him the slip, but not before I heard his voice in my head." I shrugged. "Methinks he's a secret telepath."

Blythe slowly leaned back, her frown deepening. I watched her, wondering what thoughts and questions were churning in her head—and if they were the same as mine.

"I don't like it," she finally said.

"You don't like that the violent lunatic we've been hunting for the past five months, to no avail, has shown up right in our neighborhood?"

"No."

"Me neither." I chewed my lip in thought. "I can only come up with a few reasons he might return to Vancouver—pretty much all of them of the murder variety. Namely, to kill me, you, and/or Darius, who was his ‘primary objective' back in March, if you recall."

Blythe's lips thinned at the mention of Darius.

"But," I continued, "Kade also knows that our whole precinct wants him behind bars, that you and I extra want him behind bars for trying to kill us, and that Darius extra-extra wants to stick one of his very sharp daggers into Kade's throat. So even if Kade is back in town, why reveal himself to me like that?"

"And why reveal his telepathy after keeping it so carefully hidden?" she mused darkly. "He could be back for any number of reasons, but the fact he targeted you is… unexpected."

"Because I'm a small fry compared to you and Darius?" I suggested.

"Or because you were getting too close to uncovering something he doesn't want you to know," she countered. "Though his middle school experiences aren't likely to reveal crucial information."

I nodded, fairly certain there was a statute of limitations on turtle murder. On the other hand, the second half of my Arizona adventure had included potentially crucial info—Tino's documents—not to mention the three Consilium goons who may or may not have reported my presence on that train to their boss.

The sudden thought that Kade might be said boss had me wishing we hadn't set that trio loose.

Unfortunately, I couldn't tell Blythe about the Consilium assassins or Tino or my side quest with Darius. She knew there was corruption in the MPD, but she wasn't aware of the Consilium's pompous appellation. Lienna and I had included it in our reports, but as Darius had predicted back in March, everything we'd submitted into the MPD system that had included the word "Consilium" had mysteriously vanished.

Blythe, who'd been recovering from her Kade-inflicted stab wound at the time, hadn't gotten a chance to read those reports before we'd submitted them, and on Darius's advice, I hadn't put the Consilium's name into her brain after the fact. Things might go all kinds of sideways if the wrong people heard either of us talking about the Consilium. It was safer to keep that talk between me and Darius—and outside the precinct.

"You mentioned Kade's father," Blythe said, breaking into my thoughts. "Did you get a name?"

"Peter."

"Peter," she murmured to herself, eyes drifting upward in thought. "Peter Kade…"

"Ringing a bell?" I asked hopefully.

She shook her head. "Not that I can recall, but it's another lead worth following."

"I'm already looking into it."

"Good." She drummed her fingers on her desk. "As for Kade, he knows too much about our precinct. I'll put out a notice to all our agents, but it's time to leverage the guilds. I'll double Kade's bounty and personally speak with the GMs of our top bounty guilds to ensure they understand the urgency and danger."

My eyebrows shot up. "All the GMs, you say?"

"Yes," she snapped impatiently.

"Even the Crow and Hammer's GM?"

Her glare intensified. "Anything else, Agent Morris?"

I was going to take that as a "yes, and I hate it with the fire of a thousand jilted lovers." I just hoped Darius was quick on his mental feet when she informed him about Kade, seeing as I'd called him on my way to the precinct to warn him that the assassin who'd almost offed him was back on his turf.

"How's your investigation going?" I asked Blythe, slouching more comfortably in my chair. "I don't suppose your persons of interest showed up randomly in Vancouver today too?"

"They did not," she growled, as though this was a great disappointment to her.

This was unsurprising, to say the least, considering her persons of interest were S?ze, who was too dead to show up anywhere, and Sparks, whose spot at the top of the Internal Affairs ladder probably prevented him from taking unscheduled trips to Canada's west coast to harass a lowly field agent. Her prying into S?ze had given us nothing but dead ends—pun intended—which left only Sparks as a potential line of inquiry.

"I've exhausted all my avenues for insight into the IA department," Blythe continued. "As far as I can determine, Commissioner Sparks is in full control of his subordinates. Everyone has the same opinion: nothing happens in Internal Affairs that Sparks isn't aware of."

I didn't speak, letting that statement settle over us like an unpleasant, chilly blanket. "So, it was Sparks who sent S?ze and Kade to implode our precinct and murder Darius. Or he at least knew about it."

This wasn't exactly a surprise—we'd suspected Commissioner Sparks all along—but channels of power within the MPD were convoluted and always shifting, with inter-department interference, shadowy backdoor influencers, and too many crisscrossing lines of communication to keep track of. Blythe had spent the last five months carefully prodding the IA for insider info about who controlled whom, and she'd needed to tread very carefully.

"This is bigger than just one dude," I said, "even if he is the IA's head honcho. If we can go through everyone on the committee that elects the IA Commissioner?—"

"No," Blythe interrupted.

"No?"

"The special committee that elects the Internal Affairs commissioner is classified at the highest level. There's no way for us to acquire a list of the members' names."

"No shit," I said quietly, leaning back in my chair.

This revelation flew in the face of everything I knew about how department heads were elected. According to the MPD handbook, each bigwig was voted in by a special committee comprising the experts, influencers, and authority figures of that particular field. Getting an invitation to join a committee was a point of pride for most folks. If you were a hotshot mythic accountant, for example, being invited to vote for the head of the financial department was a real feather in your cap. Or a bead on your abacus. Or whatever.

It reminded me of the Academy Awards: writers nominate writers, editors nominate editors, actors nominate actors, and so on. And no one in Hollywood was shy about proclaiming their official Academy member status.

Which was the opposite of the IA's special committee, apparently. No one outside the committee knew who had put Sparks in charge of one of the most powerful departments in the MPD. How was everyone okay with that?

"Why is it such a big secret?" I asked.

Blythe's expression grew darker and more thundercloud-like. "To protect the committee members from persecution, bribery, undue influence, and so on."

"That's not very helpful if the bastards have already been bribed or corrupted," I observed, frustration hardening my voice.

She nodded in agreement.

"So," I said pointedly, "maybe we should find out who these oh-so-special people are."

Blythe gave me a long, hard, silent stare, during which she was either considering my proposal or reconsidering her opinion of my intelligence.

"Wherever the records of the special committee members are kept," she said, "neither of us has a chance in hell of getting our hands on them. Start with Sparks instead. I want a list of all politically powerful mythics he interacts with, has a past with, or who might have influence over him."

"Got it."

Her lips thinned again as she pulled a folder off the stack on her desk and held it out. "Be careful, Kit. We're wading into even more dangerous waters now."

A chill ran through my limbs. Taking the folder, I flipped it open to give the top page a glance. A photo of Commissioner Sparks stared up at me. Closing the folder with a snap, I gave a short nod.

"Is that all?" she asked. "Any other details from your trip I should know about?"

Details like… illegally leaping onto a moving train with her sworn enemy to save a neurotic archivist from a trio of Consilium assassins?

"Nope," I answered. "That's all she wrote."

"Keep me updated."

"You got it, Cap."

I rose from my chair, tucked the folder under my arm, and quickly exited her office, exhaling as soon as the door closed behind me. I'd been performing this dance for five months now—keeping my team-up with Darius King on the DL, avoiding any direct references to the Consilium, inventing excuses to go on "work trips" that had precisely nothing to do with my investigation into Kade.

I was getting real tired of it. Being torn between these two lovers-turned-foes who were both essentially working on the same goddamn case but refusing to speak with each other—it really wore a guy out.

And it left me wondering… how long could I keep it up?