7. Marshall

Chapter 7

Marshall

I t wasn't uncommon for Marshall to get called in on a second case while he was investigating a lead. It was, however, unusual to get the request before he had finished unpacking.

"What do you mean by explosion ?" Marshall made sure his voice held none of the irritation he felt. People, he found, were at their best when calm, and he couldn't expect them to be calm if he wasn't.

Clayton, the tall, willowy man sent to deliver the request, was the same one who had greeted Marshall in the lobby. Clayton's red hair did nothing to help offset the intense crimson blazing across his cheeks, and Marshall hoped, for the man's sake, the appalling red wasn't a permanent fixture on his face, but it was hard to tell. When Clayton had met him this morning it had been there, though in a more subdued incarnation. Only time would tell, Marshall concluded.

"Well, perhaps not an actual explosion. It could have been an implosion, but then again, there was a building we are pretty sure did explode. Probably." Clayton's soft British accent should have made him sound cultured, but it was difficult to associate said adjective with the young man who had just dropped—for the third time—the remains of the doorknob that had fallen off in his hand when he had opened the door to Marshall's room.

"Maybe you could start from the beginning." Marshall's voice was a placid pond on a warm June day.

"Of course, Guardian." Clayton managed to put the remains of the doorknob into his pocket, and the small victory appeared to have calmed him somewhat. "One of the air sprites blew into my office—quite rudely, I must say—and told me a guardian was needed at the cemetery. It showed us—Samantha and me—a projection of the Granary Burying Grounds, only it wasn't there."

"How did it show you a picture of something that wasn't there?" Marshall kept his hands busy putting each roll of socks in order in his sock drawer. If he didn't, his fingernails would soon be digging deep crescents into his palms from sheer frustration.

Marshall did his best not to announce to the world his anger management issues. Good guardians didn't get emotional. Destroying a city block in the name of protecting the balance? Sure. As long as they didn't get emotional about it, a guardian could wreak havoc with impunity. But gods forbid one of them get angry.

Not that there wasn't good reason for that rule, but that didn't stop it from chafing.

Clayton examined an index finger that had begun to seep blood from its encounter with the doorknob. "The projection was… Oh, just come with me, and it will show you." Then his face flamed so brightly that Marshall feared the man was having a stroke. "Forgive me, Guardian… I didn't mean… Oh, dear…" he stammered incoherently, horrified he might have offended Marshall.

Marshall put a friendly hand on the ginger man's shoulder. "Don't worry about it. And please, call me Marshall.

"Thank you, sir." The red receded from Clayton's face a notch, but he was shaking hard enough for Marshall to hear the doorknob pieces jingling in his pocket.

Sighing, Marshall ran a hand through his hair, then he ran to the mirror to make sure he hadn't made his hair look ridiculous, and he had to smooth down an errant honey-brown lock before he was satisfied with what he saw. "Why don't you take me to the sprite so we can figure this out."

Marshall followed the shorter man down the hall, allowing Clayton to lead the way.

Clayton's fanboy behavior wasn't a first for Marshall. While Clayton's reaction was on the extreme side, many people Marshall met were nervous or awed by his presence. It was an unfortunate byproduct of Marshall's job.

Out of all the members of the Guard, guardians were elite. Known best for blasting their way through problems, the rumor was if you needed to call in a guardian, it was probably better to leave town until everything had calmed down.

While some guardians deserved the reputation—like the members of Blitz—other teams, like Snow or Mist, did their job without anyone ever knowing they were there. A team's name reflected what they specialized in, so being the leader of Fire made people understandably nervous around Marshall.

Once they got to the lobby, Marshall saw Samantha at Clayton's desk, sitting inside a small cloud. Her dark curls clung wetly to her cheeks, and Marshall had to cover a smile at the stiff expression on her face that belied her attempt to not look as uncomfortable and damp as she was. As the host of the Boston chapter house, Samantha Gonzales was the Guard's liaison to the magical community in New England. She did her best to keep good relations with everyone, no matter how soggy it got her.

Marshall bowed to the air sprite to show respect. The cloud coalesced into a humanoid form and bowed back.

"Okay, Fzzt," Clayton made the air sprite's name sound like something you might hear coming from a broken toaster. "If you would be so kind, please show Guardian Marshall what you showed us." He opened the top drawer of his desk and pulled out a bandage, applying it to his finger like he'd done it hundreds of times.

Fzzt expanded into a circular shape, hovered a few feet off the floor, and began to shimmer with a random assortment of colorful lights. The effect was beautiful but disorienting, so Marshall sat down in one of the red velvet chairs scattered around the lobby. Randomly keeling over wasn't something people expected from a guardian.

Marshall was relieved when the light show became less random and formed an overhead picture of a cemetery.

"According to Fzzt, he was having a normal day in his part of town, playing with one of the local flocks when something… interesting happened." Clayton's quirked lip told Marshall that interesting wasn't the word he would have personally chosen.

Marshall watched two figures walk into the cemetery. At first, they were too small to make out any details, but the air sprite must have found them interesting and gotten closer because the ‘screen' zoomed in on the pair, showing a tall man climbing up a tree.

Marshall could tell right away what piqued the sprite's interest. The man was dressed in black from head to toe and carried himself like a soldier in enemy territory. As the sprite got closer, Marshall recognized the near-dead, haunted look of a man who had killed more people than he could number.

With surprise, he noted the man's companion was his complete opposite. He was smaller than the soldier by almost a foot and looked like a harsh word would blow him away. His small body curled in on itself like he was trying to keep from being noticed, and the paper-thin black hoodie he clutched around himself did little to disguise his delicate frame, giving Marshall the impression of a fairy being forced to attend a yoga class.

Before he had time to wonder at the unlikely couple, a rust-colored distortion rippled around them, bounced off, and hit the tree behind the two. When he saw the soldier throw himself at the boy to protect him from the blast, Marshall felt blooming respect but tucked it away until he could watch the entire scene play out. For all Marshall knew, the soldier was trying to gain the boy's trust and would end up killing him in order to steal something.

The debris from the exploded tree made things harder to discern, and the air sprite had a different idea than Marshall did about what was interesting enough to pay attention to. Right now, the sprite was focusing primarily on the pattern made in the air by the smoke and blossoms from the tree as they drifted to the ground, but he could tell by the number of colors splashing against them that the couple was pinned down by spell-fire from more than one attacker.

All magic had a flavor, and it varied from person to person. Those strong enough to sense this flavor experienced it in different ways. Like most magic users, Marshall sensed magic as color. Currently, he could see two distinct colors crashing over the boy and his companion, sometimes mixing together to make some truly spectacular combinations.

The thing he found most interesting was that none of the spells actually hit the pair. They were bouncing off and dissipating entirely or coating the area around the two but leaving a neat little hole where the intended targets sat. When the boy moved around, the shield stayed in place, but when the soldier moved, it inched over, echoing his movement. Marshall was pretty sure the shield was centered on the man, which made no sense. It was clear from the moment Marshall saw him that the man was a norm. His aura was a pure, unbroken black, and no magic user carried weapons like this guy did.

"Why does the kid keep doing that?" Clayton's voice interrupted. "I didn't notice the first time I watched this, but—look, he did it again!" He walked over and pointed to a flare of pink that went from the boy to the soldier when he touched him, causing the man to fall over into a lifeless heap.

"Why would he want to incapacitate the only person who could help him escape?" Samantha's voice was incredulous. "Maybe he's stealing the soldier's essence to power a spell?"

"No." Marshall's sense of magic was better than most, so now that he was paying attention, he could see exactly what was going on. "He's not doing it on purpose. The soldier is sucking it out of him. And look, it only happens when they touch. I think the boy is an empath."

Samantha raised her eyebrows. "An empath? I've never heard of one strong enough to knock someone out with a touch." Watching the fight had taken away her public relations persona and replaced it with who she really was—a librarian who loved a good mystery. "At this boy's age, he should be trained enough to keep from accidentally spilling out into another person like that. Who is he? Do you recognize him?"

Neither Marshall nor Clayton had and said as much.

"Why is there no sound?" Marshall knew air sprites were able to zero in on any sound for miles in any direction, and he wanted all the information he could get for this investigation.

Clayton looked at the sprite for a moment and cocked his head, clearly hearing something Marshall and Samantha couldn't. "He said today is a silent day for him. Sometimes he likes to go quiet for a while just to change things up." Another pause and then he said, "We've completely ruined it for him today, and he's pretty mad about it."

"My apologies, Fzzt," Marshall said, aiming for somber. It was important to be respectful to elemental sprites.

Marshall's attention was jerked back to the scene before him when a deep, blood-orange magic joined the silver and rust that had been pelting the couple. They all watched in fascination as the air sprite moved backward to encompass the whole battle, probably having had enough of spells flying through and around him. The spells wouldn't hurt Fzzt—nothing much could—but they would be irritating.

The ‘screen' jerked sharply, and the three watchers could now see who was attacking the unlikely couple. "Stella Blaike!" Samantha exclaimed.

"And Sterling and little Helen, too," Marshall confirmed.

"The boy looks a bit like them, doesn't he?" Clayton squinted. "A long-lost relation, perhaps. Come to watch the fight for the family mantle? I've heard Matriarch Elanor isn't doing terribly well these days."

"For the gods' sake, ni?o, stop touching the poor man!" Samantha yelled at the same time Clayton said, "Aaaand he's out again."

When the three witches huddled together, Marshall knew things were about to get ugly. He found himself rooting for the boy and his soldier and tried to stop. Even though the boy looked small and helpless, he knew it meant nothing. Marshall had been mistaken before, and the price was too dear to pay ever again.

When the building collapsed behind them, it was clear the witches, at least, were not on the side of the angels.

"This has gone too far." He jumped to his feet and began to pace, wanting to do something, but he also knew he needed to see the rest of the fight before he could act.

"What is he doing now?" Clayton was referring to the gestures the boy was making with his hands.

Marshall focused on the boy. "I would say he's casting a spell, but there's no magic behind it." That wasn't quite right though. There was something churning up inside the boy, but it was unfocused and kept dissipating before anything could happen.

When the soldier scrabbled away from the boy, Samantha cheered. "Soldier boy finally got the memo!"

Marshall noted when the soldier pushed away from the boy, he took his shield with him. But when he saw the pink firestorm erupt from the boy's body, wild and unconstrained, Marshall lost his train of thought. The boy was definitely not an empath—they were notoriously bad at combat spells.

It was starting to look like there might be no good guys in the fight after all. Family power struggles were always messy. They were rare though, because no one wanted the attention of the Guard.

Too bad for the Blaike family. They had his full attention now.

Then Marshall thought of the soldier, who might as well have had norm plastered across his forehead, and began to feel sorry for him. If anyone in this mess was innocent, it might be him. But if so, how was the man creating a shield? Marshall had too many questions and needed to get into the field to start finding answers.

"Wait, can you pause, Fzzt? Back up to… Yes, right there. Thank you." He walked closer to examine the boy's face when he saw the devastation his spell had created. He looked horrified at what he had done. "Does that look like the face of a person who knew what he was doing?"

"He looks like a frightened child to me," Samantha said softly. "I don't think he has any training at all, Marshall."

"Thank you, Samantha. Okay, you can keep playing, Fzzt."

The frozen ‘screen' got sharp around the edges and quivered slightly.

"Fzzt feels it is important for you to know he isn't a machine and has better things to do with his time than to act like one." Clayton delivered the message with the air of a person expecting to be bitten.

Clayton's shoulders relaxed from their position by his ears when Marshall smiled wryly and said, "Of course you do, Fzzt. We are all grateful to you for helping us right now, and I'm deeply sorry for offending you. Would you be willing to stay long enough to let us see the end?"

In response, the ‘screen' softened and continued showing the scene.

They sat in silence as they saw the hole take the entire cemetery and most of the street. Everyone but the sprite sighed in relief when the couple got away.

When the ‘movie' ended, Marshall was about to thank the sprite, but it swirled over to the door, blew it open, and left before he had a chance to do more than open his mouth. Firmly closing it again, he went to Clayton's desk, grabbed a notepad, and scrawled a quick message.

"Give this to my team when they get here and tell them what happened." He handed the pad to Clayton who dropped it, caught it, then dropped it again. Marshall patted his shoulder. "Also, see if you can find any other sprites who might have seen where those two went after the cemetery."

It looked different than it had the last time Marshall was there in the late 1800s. Trees that had been newly planted now towered overhead.

He was a teenager when his father had taken him to see the cemetery where Paul Revere had been laid to rest. Marshall had grown up on the tales of adventures Revere and his father had gone on together. To hear his father tell it, the Revolutionary War was a big laugh, but sometimes his father would get a look in his eye while sharing a story, and Marshall could tell he was editing out the more gruesome details.

He knew his father would have been angered by the scene that lay before Marshall now. There was nothing left of the cemetery where so many legends had been buried. The hole the boy had created was deep enough that the bottom was shrouded in darkness. It was good the full force of the spell had been focused down rather than out. Otherwise, the death toll would have been staggering.

Marshall needed to find the boy quickly before he hurt someone.

After sampling the general flavor of the crowd's thoughts, Marshall was able to discern that no one had any idea what was going on. He cast out further, searching for magic, and zeroed in on the top floor of a building on the other side of the crater.

In order to get there before the next Ice Age, he had to nudge people out of his way. It took a minuscule amount of power to do so and didn't break the core tenet of the dreamwalkers.

No altering people's souls.

Rather than change who the person was on a fundamental level, nudging merely muddied up their thoughts for a short time, making them highly suggestible. Once they heeded his simple, "Excuse me," they went on their way, never knowing anything out of the ordinary had happened to them.

Marshall could feel the fear and anger of the crowd around him and had to close his mind away to keep from getting swept up in the fervor. Once he found out what had really happened, Marshall needed to be able to deal with the person or persons responsible with a clear and level head.

Once inside the building, he came across a dozen or so norms in uniform. He could tell from their auras they were on a witch hunt, and anyone in their path was going to have a bad day. Marshall had neither the time nor the inclination to convince them that he wouldn't make a good scapegoat, so he scooped up their thoughts and told them collectively he wasn't there.

Marshall was forced to squeeze against the wall as they stormed past him to avoid getting trampled. He was tempted to follow in case they found what they were looking for, but he needed to verify for himself the contents of the wrecked hallway he had glimpsed in their minds.

He was glad he had. The fight was only minutes old, so the air in the hallway was filled with residual energy. Both ends of the hall shimmered with the jagged, white distortion of demon magic. Anyone coming in contact with either of those spots would be in danger of possession, so once he was done investigating the scene, he would need to clear them away.

One side of the hall had a large dent in the wall, not far from one of the distortions, and the air in the entire place vibrated with power. Marshall could see a faint halo in the air of thwarted spells. Even though they didn't have much of a chance of doing any damage on their own, there was still a possibility they could combine into something unpleasant, so they would have to be cleared too.

There was no doubt in his mind that this battle was a continuation of the fight in the cemetery. The magical signatures were the exact same. Except for demon magic. That was new. And very troubling. This was definitely a case for the Guard.

Marshall found it interesting that this time the spells were less lethal in nature, unlike the ones in the cemetery. The intent behind them held a flavor of containment, rather than destruction. What had changed in the short time between both battles?

Between one breath and the next, his partner Jack's hulking presence loomed over his shoulder, barely giving him a start. Marshall didn't think to wonder anymore at how, unlike nearly everyone else, Jack could manage to sneak up on him undetected. "Adelle's downstairs trying to get a trace on the couple in your message like you asked."

"Get her up here. This fight is more recent and easier to get to." Marshall's sister may have been the best tracker in the Guard, but the closer she could get to a scene, the better her results were.

While Jack contacted Adelle, Marshall went to the other end of the hall and saw a smear of red down the wall. This was what had gotten the officers so excited. Norms wouldn't be able to see the scene the way Marshall could, but a blood-stained wall was universal in the world of crime investigation.

He eyed the bullet hole in the wall near the stain. It looked like the soldier had held his own in the fight.

Many magic users had little knowledge of norm weapons, and it looked like at least one member of the Blaike family had suffered from that ignorance.

Once he saw his partner was done contacting Adelle, Marshall made his way over to Jack and held out a hand. "Can I get an assist? I could probably do it on my own, but I'd rather not tap myself dry at the beginning of a case."

In a very Jack-like fashion, he didn't ask any questions and extended his hand, palm up, in a gesture of trust. If Marshall asked something of him, Jack would give it.

Marshall took the offered hand and closed his eyes. Jack's skin was as warm and grounding as the desert hues it resembled. As usual, Jack's power was right on the surface and easy to siphon off. Marshall called the star-flecked rainbow of his partner's magic into the azure of his own wellspring of power, causing their colors to combine into a pattern reminiscent of a supernova remnant.

The pleasure of Jack's power beckoned, doing its best to draw Marshall away from his appointed task. It was the only downside to joining with the man. He felt too good, and it conflicted with the Guard's no emotions policy. It wasn't a hard rule for every member of the organization, but powerful dreamwalkers didn't get the choice to follow it. They kept their shit together, or else.

And Marshall had the dubious honor of being at the head of the pack.

Once Marshall had himself under control, he harnessed and condensed their combined magics into the shape of a net, which he cast out as far as he could. In his mind's eye, Marshall now had thousands of tiny, gently pulsing lights under his control.

Each light represented a person within a one-mile radius of him. Most were a simple black, signifying it was the soul of a norm, but a small number were colors, ranging from the jewel tones of his partners to black lights with bright flecks of color belonging to those who probably didn't even know they possessed magic. Passing by Adelle's warm orange essence and a familiar, vibrant yellow that spelled potential trouble, he searched for an anomaly—anything that might be the soldier or his young charge.

For a fleeting moment, he thought he felt an odd nothingness on the fringes of his net, but it was gone before he fully registered it. He tried to grab it, but how was he supposed to hold on to nothing?

He tried to suppress his irritation but couldn't hold back a sigh. It would have been nice to catch them now and save himself the trouble of hunting them down later.

Marshall told all the black and color-flecked black lights to find a safe place to sleep—safe according to him, not the person. The last thing he needed was a bunch of zombie-like sleepwalkers wandering all over town, trying to get to their beds. No, the closest empty spot of sidewalk or floor was good enough for his purposes.

As they slept, he gave them all a simple, but strong, suggestion that told them the cemetery damage was caused by a sinkhole, adding in a compulsion to tell anyone outside his radius who saw them sleeping that they had fallen down due to an aftershock from the sinkhole.

Then he searched for memories of either of the fights. He found nothing but confused impressions and wild speculation, neither of which would be helpful in his investigation.

Marshall took away any memories that didn't support his sinkhole story, then went into the minds of the police officers who had passed him on the stairwell and told them all to forget anything they heard or saw in the hallway. His job would be easier if he didn't have to fight with the Boston PD to get to the soldier and the boy.

Once Marshall finished, he woke everyone up. Normally, he didn't need a subject to be asleep to alter memories, but for big things, like the destruction of a major landmark, he needed to go in deeper than he could while the person was awake. If he touched someone, he could do almost anything he wanted using minimal power, but on such a massive scale, he needed speed over finesse. It had only taken him thirty seconds to complete the entire spell, cutting down the chance someone outside his net had stumbled across his sleepers.

Marshall opened his eyes. "Done. Thanks for the boost."

"That was quick."

"I've had a lot of practice." A hundred-plus years of exploring his magic had given him the precision few of his contemporaries had achieved. It was one of the reasons why he was the leader of the most called-upon team in the Guard. No one had stopped to wonder if he was ready for the responsibility. They'd just shoved him into the fray feet first.

"Took you long enough to get around to that." A rich, booming voice with an Irish lilt informed him. "Back in my day, it was the first thing we did."

"Back in your day people also regularly died of smallpox, didn't they?" Jack frowned at the newcomer in an uncharacteristic show of irritation. "But you don't brag about it, Callum."

Internally, Marshall sighed. The only reason he could think of for Callum Lane to be here was to talk to Marshall about becoming the new praetor. "I prefer to observe a situation before I decide to tinker with thousands of people's minds. It saves time and endless backtracking."

"Sure, and it can, but with my way, you'd be having a better chance of catching the criminals before they get away." Callum's thin mouth was tight with disapproval, and his bushy red eyebrows had nearly eclipsed his eyes. It was going to be one of those encounters.

"Did you come here to be a backseat driver, Cal?" Marshall decided to just get it over with. Dodging the man wasn't working, so they might as well have it out now.

"You know why I came here, sonny. You've been moping about long enough, and it's time for you to get back to your real life and your real job."

"This is my life, and I happen to like my job. I'm quite good at it. Or so I'm told."

"This?" Callum peered around the magic-soaked hallway. "This is a simple matter anyone could clean up. If you like, I can take it off your hands and leave you free to return to?—"

"I don't quit in the middle of a case." Marshall cut him off harshly.

"Don't suppose you do, do you? You should, though. It's time to stop living in the past." Marshall's eyes narrowed dangerously, but Callum forged ahead, obviously meaning to speak his peace. "Praetor Nala's been dead more than a year now, and it's time for a new one to take her place. It's time for you to step up and be the man we all know ya to be."

"The man you used to know is gone, Cal. I haven't been him for a long time now."

"You only say that because you can't let go, won't let go…"

"Callum…" Jack growled out a warning to the man.

Heedless of the warning, Callum forged ahead. "She's gone, man! You have to let her go and move on. Stop wasting your talents mooning over a lost child—" Callum's words froze in his mouth, and he swayed where he stood, his mind no longer under his control.

Marshall's eyes burned as he fought to control himself. "She. Is. Not. Gone." Each word was punctuated by Callum staggering back a step as Marshall's will pushed at him.

"Mars." Jack's hand was on the back of Marshall's neck, grounding him. "It's okay, you can stop now. No one is going to keep us from finding Nova."

Marshall snapped his gaze away from Callum, releasing the man from his control, and took a deep breath to calm himself. "I told you I'm not the man you knew, Cal. If you need someone right now, you'll have to find another praetor. My time is not my own to give." Not trusting his control, he kept his eyes on the wall next to Callum.

Not easily daunted, Callum stood his ground but showed sense and calmed his tone. "Your father, gods rest his soul, wouldn't have left you to stew for as long as I have. But he isn't here, so I'll do right by you the only way I know how."

"My father would have found her by now," Marshall said bitterly.

"Self-pity doesn't become you, sonny. Nor does it accomplish anything."

Jack tightened his grip, as if expecting Marshall to get angry again, but Marshall only laughed softly. "You're more like him than you know, Cal."

"I don't know. I think he would have kicked your arse for what you just did."

"And brought me in on charges, I imagine. You can, you know." Marshall could feel Jack tense behind his back.

What would his friend do if Callum decided to take Marshall in? Probably something rash. For all his jokes and relaxed attitude, Jack could be unpredictable when someone he cared about was threatened.

Callum shrugged. "Now why would I want to be doing that over so little a thing? Too much paperwork involved for my liking. Besides, if the Guard prosecuted people over every tiny infraction, they'd never get anything done." He slowly relaxed his fists, showing that—kind words aside—he had been rattled at how quickly and easily Marshall had called up the power to control him.

Marshall closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose. "Your call." Now that his temper had faded, all he could feel was a sweeping exhaustion gripping his body and mind.

Jack relaxed, dialing his protective stance back by half like he always did once a crisis had passed. Since that fateful day five years ago, Jack had been glued to Marshall's side, ready to give Marshall the support he needed. Ever the watchful friend, ever faithful in helping him hold it together.

However, what Marshall really needed right now was for Cal to go away and leave him to his investigation in peace. It had been a long time since Marshall had needed the older man to hold his hand in the field. As long as he was around, Marshall would have to fight to stay in charge.

It had always been that way between the two. Even before the death of Marshall's father, Cal had taken it upon himself to watch over him. Losing his mother moments after his birth, Marshall had attracted more than his fair share of parental figures, most of them benign.

Not Cal, though. Instead of letting him learn and grow, Cal tried to force Marshall along a path allegedly for his own good . His older sister Adelle had done the same at first, but when he had proven time and again that his judgment in the field was as unparalleled as his mastery over the Dreamscape, she had stood down from her self-appointed role as Marshall's life coach. If she hadn't, he never would have been able to work with her.

But, as annoying as Cal was, he was the only person other than Adelle and Jack who cared about how young Marshall was. Cal still pushed Marshall to be someone he wasn't ready to be, but he planned to help Marshall once he became praetor. In the long run, that would be far worse than what the people who treated Marshall like the savior of the world were doing now.

Cal saw Marshall as a stand-in for his father and pushed him to take his place. But once he got Marshall where he wanted him, Cal wanted to be his regent. It would be done out of love, but he would never stop trying to coddle Marshall. If Marshall allowed Cal to do as he pleased, he'd have the man stepping on the back of his shoes for the rest of his life.

Sometimes Marshall felt so small inside, like maybe he should just sit back and let Cal and the rest of the Guard plan out his life for him. But whenever he was at his lowest and ready to give in, he would think about Jack and Adelle and the support they gave him. Their confidence in him was far more powerful than anything Marshall had magically. With them at his back, he could do anything.

Pulling together all the authority that the mantle of being a guardian had bestowed on him, Marshall looked at Cal. "When this investigation is over, I will come to you, and we will discuss this further, but I don't promise that you will like the results." He held up a hand to forestall the argument he saw brewing on Callum's face. "Later. Right now, I have a case to solve."

Only slightly mollified, Callum looked thoughtful for a time, his massive eyebrows furrowed in concentration, and then nodded. Finally, he reached out and clapped Marshall on the shoulder. "You're a good boy, Marshall. You'll do the right thing when the time comes." He turned to look at Jack with skepticism. "You look out for him, you hear?"

"I don't need you to tell me that, old man." Disdain dripped from Jack's words.

"Don't start, you two." Marshall jumped in to forestall the inevitable argument that occurred when Jack and Callum were in the same room together. As far as Marshall could remember, those two had never gotten along.

Callum leveled a narrowed eye at Jack, but after a moment, he shrugged and turned to leave.

As Callum walked away, Jack said, "I don't know why I bothered to stop you. If I had waited another minute, you could have Crafted him a better personality."

"You stopped me because you're a good friend. He means well even if he is irritating."

"Where does he get off calling you boy ? You've been a guardian for years."

"I think at his age, everyone looks like a child. He was born in the sixteen-hundreds, after all." And as much as Marshall liked to think otherwise, he was still considered a child by the Guard's standards. The fact that Marshall had his own team was unheard of at his age.

Jack snorted but said nothing. The scowl on his face spoke volumes.

A tall woman with long, honey-colored curls entered the hallway. Her hazel eyes matched Marshall's as well as the large, round pendant she had hanging from a chain around her neck. The rest of her attire was tight, black, and functional, befitting a guardian in the field.

"Adelle, where have you been?" Marshall snapped.

"Dearest, I saw Callum on the stairs, and I'm sure he rattled you just now, but there's no need to be snippy; it's not like you." Adelle kissed her brother on the cheek and asked Jack, "How bad was it?"

Jack shrugged. "Cal could have been more controlling and obnoxious. I mean, he left when Marshall told him to, so that's something." His words were light, but his eyes told a different story.

Adelle nodded like she understood exactly what had happened.

Marshall hated it when they did that. For the most part, all three of them worked together seamlessly. Their skills and personalities complemented one another so well it was like the gods had created them to work as a team. Then there were other times when it felt like the two of them were only doing the job because Marshall was and that their real job was to support him and keep him from going insane or losing control.

Marshall was starting to suspect they weren't wrong to behave so. Under specific circumstances, his control over his temper wasn't what it should be. The burden of too much power on young shoulders had left Marshall far less stable than he should have been.

Aside from that less-than-minor detail, Marshall was a master in his field, so Fire was always called in to handle the big cases. If a situation had gone completely pear-shaped, Marshall and his team were the ones to get called in to fix it, and it was beginning to look like this might turn out to be one of those cases.

Their original investigation would have to be put on hold for the time being while Fire sorted out this new mess. Which was a shame, because Marshall had put a lot of research into creating the persona he was planning on using for that mission. If he finished this case quickly enough, he might even remember it when it came time to use it, though he wasn't holding out much hope for that.

Marshall had a hunch Callum had been incorrect in his assessment of this assignment. While it was true that ninety-nine percent of the time, the discovery of demonic energy during an investigation ended up being nothing more than an ignorant witch delving greedily into magic he or she didn't understand, and that it was simple enough for a single guardian to take care of without a team, it would be foolish for Marshall to assume so.

Marshall had empirical knowledge that, on rare occasions, it turned out to be something much, much worse.

Pain flared in Marshall's hands as his fingernails bit into his palms. He unclenched them slowly, trying not to draw attention to how close to the edge he still was. Taking in a slow, deep breath, he centered himself. If there were nightmares, or—his breath hitched—demons about, he was going to need every bit of calm he possessed to deal with them.

After another steadying breath, he turned his mind back to the present moment. He looked at the white spots on either end of the hallway. Even if they were made from ignorance, rather than intent, they could still be harmful to any unsuspecting person who got too close to them. When demon magic was used, it left a thin spot between dimensions. If those spots were thin enough, something nasty could reach out from the Demon Realm into the Real and treat itself to a free lunch.

"Jack, I need you to check on the officers I passed on the way up here. If any of them came in contact with these spots, they could have been possessed and will need to be purged." He touched Jack to show him the essence of the officers he needed to find.

Communicating through touch was the easiest form of telepathy, but most dreamwalkers preferred not to. It was such an intensely personal experience that the majority of dreamwalkers chose to spend their time and energy setting up a remote link even though a simple touch would give them instant access. Marshall had been through so much with his teammates that such intimacies were second nature to them. It conserved energy and was a more precise method.

With a cocky grin and an ironic salute, Jack left to carry out Marshall's order.

Marshall made his way to the nearest stain of demon energy, gesturing for his sister to follow. "Addy, what do you make of this?"

Adelle followed but stopped before Marshall did, sniffing at the air around them.

She wrinkled her nose. "Ugh, it smells terrible. I hate demon cases. Eating is nearly impossible until they're done." Adelle was a rarity among dreamwalkers. While most of their race could sense magic in only one way, Adelle could both see and smell it, making her an excellent tracker. Once Adelle had a person's essence, they couldn't hide from her. There was one notable exception, but they all tried not to dwell on it.

Marshall gave her shoulder a sympathetic pat and winced as a hint of her disgust at the smell rolled through him. "Sorry, but it's got to be done. Can you tell which side did this? If it's the Blaikes, this could get ugly."

A vacant expression settled on Adelle's face and Marshall waited while she sorted through what her senses were telling her. When she came out of her trance, she looked vexed. "The taint is too strong to sort out a signature. All I can tell for sure is that a young male used this spot to gate out of here, and…"—she directed her attention toward the other spot down the hall but took only a moment to conclude— "a middle-aged female used that spot to gate as well."

Marshall ran a hand through his hair thoughtfully before he could stop himself and then had to stop himself from whipping out a mirror to see if he'd messed it up. Control issues? Who, him? Surely not.

He laughed at himself and then asked, "Could it have been our mystery couple? Possession would be a good explanation for why a norm had such a shield protecting him. If they were both newly possessed, their life force wouldn't have been drained enough for us to have seen it through the distortion of the replay we saw. Our vantage point was pretty crappy."

"The little one was pretty enough to be a woman. We could have gotten their gender wrong," Adelle mused. "It could also explain why they didn't know how to use their magic. Sometimes it takes a demon a while to figure out how to operate the host." She shook her head. "I can't say for sure if it was our mystery couple. I'll need more to go on. This hallway is so crowded with magic that it's impossible to sort it all out." She pointed to the blood on the wall. "It's possible Stella was the one who gated out here. If she was low enough on power for her shield to pop, she might have gotten desperate."

Marshall was quiet, allowing his mind to sort through the painfully small handful of facts they had. Due to the presence of demon magic, it was more likely the mystery couple were the bad guys. For as long as Marshall could remember, the Blaike family had been an unimpeachable presence in the Guard and the Other. Their family never had possession infestations because they were powerful enough to be able to identify a demon on their own and would have called the Guard in to kill it right away.

They weren't known to be terribly sentimental, so harboring a possessed family member wasn't their style. If something threatened the greater good, they would stamp it out ruthlessly. The building they had destroyed in the attempt to capture the two was a testament to that.

Still, Marshall was going to need to interview them. "It's possible but not likely. You know what the Blaike family is like."

Adelle shrugged noncommittally. "I've heard stories about them that don't fit the image they project to the rest of the world."

He chewed on that for a minute before asking, "Were you able to get anything from the crater downstairs?"

"The energy is even more muddled down there than it is up here. If I had been the first person on site, I might have been able to pick up something, but there are so many people freaking out down there that it's one big psychic mess."

Marshall nodded. "I don't think there's anything else here for us to see. Let's clear out these spots, collect Jack, and get over to the Blaike mansion. You can tell me about those stories on the way."