Chapter 8

Darius and I headed straight back to the airport. So much for sunbathing. With stolen documents in hand and Jayce Tyrian—who clearly had both the aptitude and appetite for cold-blooded murder—on the hunt for us, lying around on a beach wasn't an option.

A few hours later, I was slumped in a cramped seat beside Darius as our direct flight home reached cruising altitude. When we'd first started our globetrotting adventures, I'd expected him to be a Business Class man, but no such luck. He was surprisingly stingy with his hard-earned dollars.

Between rushing to the airport, arranging flights, going through security, and keeping our eyes peeled for any gray-suited Trident goons, we hadn't gotten a chance to discuss, let alone delve into, the small stack of folders Darius had pilfered. Only now was he flipping through the files with thorough scrutiny. I was dying of curiosity, but I kept my mouth shut, letting him concentrate.

Ten minutes later, he closed the last folder. Separating one from the pile, he stuffed the rest into his slim carry-on bag, then opened his folder of choice and tilted it toward me. On the front page was a photo of what looked like a large-ish metal pendant with several concentric rings etched into it.

"This is it," he said, voice pitched so low I could barely hear it over the pervasive drone of jet engines.

"This is what?" I asked, leaning over our shared armrest.

"Do you remember that page from Tino's collection that you asked me about?"

"The one with the weird naked dude surrounded by magic symbols? Sure."

"I couldn't obtain the rest of the documents that went with that illustration," he told me, his gray eyes gleaming. "But this photo—this exact photo—was in that briefcase."

"Whoa." I took the sheet to get a closer look. "What is it?"

"I have no idea."

That was anticlimactic.

"But it and everything else in that briefcase I lost," he continued, "were related to the Consilium's efforts to collect powerful, illegal magical weapons—the kinds of weapons the MPD has been trying to suppress for centuries."

"So this thing is probably a weapon," I mused, examining the photo again. Didn't look very scary, but I already knew that meant nothing when it came to artifacts.

"And it's up for sale." Darius tapped the other documents in the folder. "This is Trident's record of the seller's $750,000 deposit to engage their brokerage services. The seller's name is redacted, but if we can track them down, we can steal the artifact before the Consilium can buy it."

"Oh shit. Do you think the Consilium was counting on their goon Gomez to deliver it to them?" I smirked. "They must be scrambling now that Tyrian is in control of Trident. From what we saw of him, even the Consilium would have trouble forcing him to do anything he doesn't want to do."

Darius nodded. "I have contacts who can help me identify the seller. We'll need to move fast. The weapon has been up for sale for five months, but now that Tyrian is in charge of Trident, the Consilium may already be moving to buy it before he can sell it to someone else."

I skimmed the details of the weapon and couldn't glean much of anything beyond it being old. Like, a millennium old. I didn't want to imagine what kind of continent-rifting, soul-devouring power it could unleash if the Consilium got their greasy paws on it.

"You work on that," I said, handing him the page and reclining my seat. "I'm going to recharge the ol' brain battery before we make landfall."

"For anything in particular?"

I heaved a sigh. "Oh, you know, just the usual—leading an investigation into the Consilium without the Consilium, my precinct, or my boss suspecting what I'm up to."

Darius made a noncommittal noise that, all things considered, could have been a little more sympathetic.

Lurking behind a cubicle wall, I watched Vinny swat at the solitary housefly buzzing around his head. He waved an arm in distracted irritation, focused on his monitor.

The fly bravely landed in the middle of his screen. As he reached out to squash it, I skulked toward his cubicle. The fly disappeared under his finger, then reappeared, now behind the screen. It scurried around, climbing over his icons and hiding behind his spreadsheet.

He peered at the fly. "What…?"

Behind him, I leaned close to his ear and whispered, "You might want to call IT. Looks like you've got a bug."

Startled, he spun his chair around, then sighed heavily at the sight of me. "I can't tell if I hate your warps or your puns more."

Ah, sweet normalcy. Agent Park was back to his typical bristly self, not an ounce of puppy love detectable.

He squinted at me. "You look tired. Didn't you take yesterday off?"

"In a manner of speaking." There'd been a takeoff yesterday—two if you counted both planes. I'd arrived home in the middle of the night, crashed for a few hours of restless dreams where I was trapped in a computer program while Neo berated me for getting his outfit wrong in the helicopter warp, before hauling my sorry ass into the precinct around midmorning.

When I didn't reveal any juicy details about my personal day, Vinny swiveled back to his spreadsheet. "What do you want, Kit?"

"How's it going with DRAFT?" I asked, shifting over to lean against his desk where I could see his face.

He shrugged one shoulder. "I'm waiting to hear back from one of the guys I met during that case. He worked with Kade and definitely doesn't like him. I think he's going to help, but I might end up having to buy him Canucks tickets."

I let out a low whistle. "Nice work. Did your DRAFT guy have anything interesting to say about Kade from when they worked together?"

"Just that Kade was a bloodthirsty son of…" Vinny cleared his throat. "A lot of profanities, mostly. Anyway, I'll let you know when I hear back from him about the reports."

I nodded. "I appreciate it, Vinny."

"Yeah, yeah," he muttered.

Zipping away from his desk, I angled toward another fellow agent. Agent Vigneault was parked in her cubicle, her thin frame bent over her computer and her tightly curled black hair bobbing along with the rhythm of her keystrokes.

"Hey, Kit," she said, flashing me a smile. "What's up?"

"Same old, same old. You got a minute?"

"Absolutely." She spun her chair to face me. "Official business or something juicier? Girl trouble, maybe? Agent Shen's still in California, right?"

Good gossipy Gabby, was the entire precinct invested in my relationship with Lienna?

"Official business," I told her. "Sort of."

"Sort of? I'm listening."

"I was wondering if you could do some digging for me. I've tried with zero luck, and you're the best agent I know when it comes to uncovering nasty business that no one else can find."

She looked even more intrigued. "Does this have anything to do with whatever secretive case you've been running with Captain Blythe?"

"I can neither confirm nor deny the involvement of our beloved leader."

She snorted. "What do you want me to dig for?"

"Not a ‘what' but a ‘who,' actually. Peter Kade, father of Benjamin Kade."

Vigneault's expression instantly hardened. If anyone had reason to hate S?ze, Kade, and the rest of the IA shitbags who'd made our collective lives a living hell, it was Vigneault. S?ze had shut down one of the biggest cases of her career, then thrown her in lockup for calling him out on it.

"Is he as scummy as his son?" she asked darkly.

"That's what I want to find out. Can you help?"

Her look was so vindictive that I half expected her to crack her knuckles. "Happily."

"Thanks, Clarice," I said, genuinely grateful to have a senior agent with hardcore detective skills on my side. "And… be careful, okay? You know the IA is a quagmire of nasty shit. We don't need any more of their attention."

"I'll be discreet," she promised. "Is there anything else I can help with?"

The smile pulling at my lips took me by surprise. I hadn't expected the other agents in the precinct to be so willing to take on extra work—and risk—to help me. Then again, I'd never tried asking before.

"You're doing more than enough," I told her, then hesitated. "Although… do you happen to know where Agent Tim is?"

Twenty minutes later, my arm was twisted behind me, and my face was pinned to a mat on the floor of the precinct's training room.

"And that," Agent Tim declared, his knee digging into my back, "is how you disarm and restrain a solo attacker."

From my horizontal position, I could see a dozen fledgling MPD trainees watching Tim intently. He continued speaking without taking his weight off me.

"I know what you're thinking, and not just because I can read your minds."

The students chuckled dutifully. Hardy-har, telepath humor.

The jingle of a chain accompanied his next words. "Your opponent isn't truly subdued without these."

Cold metal cuffs ratcheted closed around my wrists. Instantly, my powers died as though someone had lobotomized my psycho warping control center.

MPD-issued abjuration handcuffs—the kind every agent carried while out in the field, the kind Kade had used to hang Lienna and me from a pipe in the mechanical room of an ice rink, and the kind I had shattered by reality warping the metal into flimsy plastic.

"As you know," Tim told his class, "most Arcana spells require an incantation to activate. These handcuffs, however, are specially designed to activate as soon as the cuff closes. You only need one cuff around a mythic's wrist or ankle to cut off their magic."

And what a wonderful feeling it was to have your magic cut off like it had never existed in the first place. I just loved it.

Thankfully, Tim didn't keep me down for long. He uncuffed my wrists, and as he stepped back so I could stand, the bright, warm spot in my brain burst back to life.

"All right," Tim said, turning to his students. "We're going to partner up and try this move at half speed to start. Grab your practice cuffs from the bin by the door and get started."

Straightening my shirt, I hastened to join Tim, who was already milling between the pairs of students, observing them as they set up for the exercise.

"Can we talk now?" I asked him quietly.

His attention moved over his practicing students. "Until the next demo, sure."

I made a mental note to finish talking to him before he roped me into playing his punching bag again.

"It's about Kade," I said, keeping my voice low so his students wouldn't hear me over the clamor of shouts, yelps, and bodies smacking into the mats.

Tim's eyes jumped to my face. "What about him?"

"Did you notice anything unusual about him?"

The telepath scoffed. "You're gonna need to be more specific."

"I think Kade might be?—"

"Hips!" Tim shouted at a nearby pair of trainees. "Use your hips!"

They nodded at their instructor, then performed the drill once more as he watched.

"Better," he said, waving at me to stick close as he wove through the practicing pairs. "Kade might be a what?"

I cleared my throat. "A telepath."

Tim gave me a sharp glance, then shook his head. "Kade's not a telepath."

"You sure?"

"Absolutely."

I frowned. "I'm really actually super certain he's not a plain old sorcerer."

Stopping to face me, Tim nodded slowly. "Yeah, I suspect he has some kind of Psychica ability. But he's definitely not a telepath."

"How can you be so sure?"

I wouldn't normally push back like this, but I had heard that murdery bastard's voice in my head, and as far as I knew, telepaths were the only psychics who could pull that off.

"Telepaths don't fare well against other telepaths," Tim explained, his gaze swinging across the dozen trainees. "Our ability involves reaching out with our thoughts, which makes it impossible for us to simultaneously guard our minds. But Kade was always guarded. He's obviously trained in anti-telepathy techniques, and he's very good at it. He never slipped up, not once, not even when he didn't know I was in range of his mind."

I remembered what Kade's middle school teacher had said about his sixth sense for knowing when other people were nearby.

Tim shrugged, a crease between his brows. "He's so guarded that I suspect some kind of psychic power. Something that's honed his mental control. But I don't know what. Mentalism, maybe?"

He sounded less than confident in that theory.

"Are there any abilities besides telepathy that can let a mythic project their voice into someone else's mind?" I asked.

Tim arched his eyebrows. "Of course."

"Which one?" I asked intently.

"Psycho warping, obviously."

Duh. I felt stupid for not figuring that out.

But did that mean… no, absolutely not. There was no plausible reality in the infinite multiverse in which Kade was also a psycho warper.

I stared into the distance, my vision losing focus. I couldn't detect other people the way Kade could, but I could vaguely sense the minds around me. It's how I targeted or excluded other people while warping even when I wasn't looking at them.

"Could he be a telethesian?" Tim asked, yanking me out of my thoughts.

I considered that, then shook my head. "No, it doesn't fit."

Just yesterday, I'd watched a telethesian confusedly search a room for me and Darius while we were only a few feet away. Kade, on the other hand, had unerringly targeted both of us whilst in our respective invisible forms at a much greater distance.

"Kade is something else," I muttered to myself. "Something more powerful."

Tim made a noise of agreement in the back of his throat, then turned to face the trainees. "Bring it in, rookies!"

The trainees pulled themselves out of the various twisted positions they were in and jogged toward us. I inched away, not done with our conversation but also leery of reprising my role as Tim's demo dummy.

"We're going to add a small twist to the exercise." Tim held up a rubber training knife. "All the same movements, but instead of throwing a punch, the attacker will be trying to stab you. The goal is to subdue them without the blade ever touching you."

Near the edge of the group, a trainee set his fingers ablaze and muttered to his neighbor, "Or I could just fry them."

Oh, great, another pyromage. At least this one wasn't a train-hopping Consilium assassin with a cartoonish haircut. He was just an ego-driven chump who thought—pardon the pun—he was hot shit.

As snickers sounded from a few other trainees, Tim clocked the arrogant flame jockey and shot him a glare. "What was that, McMillan?"

"Nothing, sir," McMillan said with zero discomfiture.

"You know what? Change of plans." Tim beckoned me toward him. "Let's do another demo."

Damn it. I should've escaped while I had the chance.

"McMillan," Tim said commandingly, "I want you to attack Agent Morris. Everyone else, stand back."

As Tim and the rest of the trainees retreated ten feet, the pyromage looked between me and his instructor, deeply skeptical.

"You want me to attack him?" he asked.

Tim nodded. "No holds barred. Go all out."

"You mean …?"

"Fire, pyromage," Tim said dryly. "I'd suggest some fire. Unless you want Agent Morris to tie you in a knot."

I raised a questioning eyebrow at the telepath, and he winked.

Okay, I guess we were doing this.

McMillan faced me and took a deep breath. I stared back at him, hands in my pockets, a deliberately bored look plastered on my face. The rookie summoned a meager fireball in the palm of his right hand and threw it at my chest.

I casually sidestepped his attack. "You can do better than that. Hit me with all you got, Charizard."

McMillan smirked. Fire swirled around his hands, and he brought them together, forming a whirling, blazing sphere the size of a basketball, then hurled it at me.

I stretched my arms wide, welcoming his attack. The flames hit me square on, wreathing my chest in orange waves. Instead of shrieking like a scalded banshee, I let out a low, cackling laugh. My body lifted until I was levitating two feet off the floor.

McMillan stared at me, his mouth hanging open. The other trainees gaped.

Maybe I could make this a lesson for all the newbies. If I'd learned anything since becoming a full agent, it was not to underestimate anyone or anything magical. And a hard lesson it'd been.

"You think you're a master of flames, little mage?" the flaming, levitating specter in the middle of the room asked in a beastly rumble. "You don't even know the meaning of fire!"

With the last word, heat roiled through the training room. The walls blackened. The padded mats sizzled, then suddenly plunged downward all around the trainees, who clustered together in sudden panic like extras in Dante's Peak.

Hissing, bubbling lava roiled. The room's walls had turned to jagged, blackened stone, and the tiny island of steaming, overheated boulder on which the trainees stood was the only haven amid the seething molten rock. Smoke billowed up toward clouds as dark as the sky above Mordor.

Tim and the trainees cowered in the mouth of a volcano, and the burning specter that had once been Agent Kit Morris had taken on the texture of magma as his jaw expanded, glowing red ooze falling from his mouth.

"This is fire," he boomed as they choked on torrid, sulfuric fumes. "Or more specifically," I added in a normal tone as the whole warp popped like a bubble, everything returning to normal, "this is why you shouldn't underestimate your opponent."

With that, I snapped a pair of practice handcuffs around McMillan's wrists. He twisted to look over his shoulder at me, face drained of all color. I glanced at the rest of the class, seeing the shock permeating the crowd.

I might have gone a tad overboard.

Tim cleared his throat. "All right, back to practicing against an armed opponent. Come on, everyone."

Rather sluggishly and with a lot of huffing and sweating, the students shook off their brief volcanic immersion and split into pairs again. McMillan slunk away without waiting for me to remove the cuffs.

"Holy shit, Morris," Tim muttered, moving to stand beside me. "When the hell did you learn to do that?"

"Do what?" I asked, confused. He had a pretty solid understanding of my warping skills, seeing as he'd been my trainer and an opponent during my field tests.

Tim stared at me. "Are you even tired?"

"Tired?" I rubbed a hand through my hair. "I mean, I didn't sleep great last night, but I downed a couple shots of espresso on my way in."

His eyes narrowed, and I could almost feel his telepathic power poking into my brain to check my sincerity.

He shook his head. "Never mind."

I frowned, fully intending to ask what the hell he was going on about, when my phone buzzed in my pocket. As Tim headed toward the trainees, I pulled the device out and unlocked the screen to find a message from Darius.

How soon can you be here?

I grinned, all thoughts of Tim's weird probing into my energy levels shoved to the back burner. How soon could I haul ass to the Crow and Hammer to hear what Darius had uncovered about the mysterious weapon the Consilium was so interested in? Why, as soon as I could escape the precinct.

My thumbs zipped across the keyboard, and I hit send as I strode to the door.

Be there in an hour.