Part sculpture, part mid-twentieth-century municipal boast, the Floodmouth Opera House took advantage of its waterfront location with a magnificent glass wall facing the ocean, connected to a long rectangle with its famous three waves in stainless steel plating on the top. In the daylight, the glare was blinding, but at night, the reflected city lights were beautiful.
We'd arrived after the start of the fourth act, forcing Salt to threaten an usher until the kid showed us to the box where Delia was sitting. Salt pushed the door open just enough to see that Delia was inside and that there wasn't another exit. Then we waited in the hallway for the performance to finish, listening through the nearly soundproofed doors as Mimi got on with dying in Italian.
"Your job," Salt told me in a low voice, "is to record everyone who looks like they might be thinking about coming over to talk to her as we leave. Discreetly," she added. "There's a chance we'll be able to connect some dots later."
Relieved to have a reason for being there, I nodded and got my phone ready. Simon had insisted I come along, but it wasn't as if I could do anything useful during an arrest. Analyzing a spell and determining its likely country of origin wasn't exactly a high-stakes-moment skill.
We waited in the quiet hallway, the orchestra barely audible through the doors. Simon's phone buzzed with a new text. He angled the screen so I could see the message from his mother saying my sister had returned home.
The muscles in my neck relaxed. This might be only a temporary win — Maya's parents needed to get her training, and soon — but at least I knew she wasn't sleeping on the streets tonight. "Thank her for me, would you?"
Salt glanced up from her phone. "What's that?"
I waved a hand, hoping she wouldn't press for details. "Just some family drama. It's sorted out for the moment."
The supervisory agent held my gaze for an uncomfortable moment. "As long as it doesn't impact the Bureau, I don't care. But the minute it does, I need to know. Got it?"
I nodded. In truth, I wasn't sure where this particular problem landed as far as the Bureau was concerned, but I wasn't getting into it tonight.
"Good." A wave of applause sounded from the theater and she put her phone away. "It's time. Let's go."
The cheering hit me like a wall when Salt opened the door. Onstage, the cast held hands and bowed. Flowers rained down on the stage. Delia looked up as Salt stepped forward to stand by her side. The other three people in the box expressed a range of surprise and confusion, but only the silver-haired man seated next to Delia looked like he was objecting. I made sure to capture his face in my recording. Delia put a hand on his arm and spoke quietly. Whatever she'd said, he still wasn't happy, but he stopped protesting.
Delia stood, settled her cape around her shoulders, and walked toward the door with Salt on one side and Bowers on the other. When she saw me, a wrinkle formed between her brows, but it was quickly smoothed away. She stopped at the threshold where I waited. "It was that spell in the elevator, wasn't it? I should have known." She made a small sound. "But if I had, I would have missed a truly magnificent performance. On the whole, I think it was worth it." She turned her head to look at Salt. "I assume it was your decision to wait until the end? Thank you."
Then she swept by me, head held high, as if the two FBME agents were escorts meant to protect her.
An hour later, Simon and I were in his office at The Vault, watching via a remote feed as Salt and Deputy Director Diego Bowdey questioned Delia. If I'd needed any confirmation that this case was important, Bowdey's presence in the building would have removed all doubt. In the six months I'd been working there, he'd been in The Vault twice, both times on scheduled visits during working hours for meetings and award presentations. But watching him and Salt together, it was obvious they knew each other well.
All of Delia's jewelry had been removed and placed in the safe in Salt's office — not the evidence vault. Hopefully tomorrow I'd have a chance to examine everything, but Salt wouldn't let anybody touch anything unless she was there in person.
Next to me, Simon was researching public records and looking through Hamilton's social media. Salt had already sent a team to watch his apartment, just to make sure he didn't disappear if he was involved in all this, but so far, the place was empty. He'd left The Vault two hours ago. Without going inside his rooms, the team couldn't tell if he'd fled, or he was just out late.
In the interview room, Delia was saying, "It's no good asking me for names." So far, she hadn't denied anything, though she also hadn't given any useful specifics. "They've put spells in place to prevent that. My heart would stop if I tried to tell you."
"She didn't ask for a lawyer," Simon said, frowning as he rubbed his thumbnail against his lower lip. "Something's not right."
I kicked off my shoes so I could sit cross-legged in the chair. Not dignified, but it was late. On the desk in front of me, I was tracing the lines of the spell Salt had been carrying. Like the copy I'd handed to Simon, it hadn't alerted when Delia was near, and I found the same modification. I yawned. "Same thing on this one." Dropping my hands, I pushed the card away. "But I can't swear it wasn't an honest mistake that he repeated." I really didn't want Hamilton to be involved with this.
On the monitor, Salt tapped her pen against the desk. "Where are the vampire mages?"
Weirdly, Delia looked proud, of all things. "Jennifer Perkins figured it out, didn't she? I told them we should hire her, but at the last minute, they got cold feet. What a wasted opportunity." She blew out a breath and gestured to her surroundings. "And look where it got us. By the time I convinced them I had been right all along, it was too late."
No lie — it was an ego boost to hear her say that. The bad guys knew me by name! Probably I needed to find another therapist.
"Where?" Salt repeated.
"Can't tell you," Delia said. "And truthfully, I don't know where they are now. I visited once… No, I can't say more about that without triggering the spell. But they moved them after I visited anyhow, so it wouldn't do you any good."
Simon clicked through to another website. "Hamilton plays a lot of poker. Did you know that?"
Left unsaid was that a gambling problem made the player vulnerable to blackmail and other subversion. It was something they covered during hiring and orientation. But even if Hamilton had a problem with gambling, it still didn't prove anything. "Mostly we just insult each other and he tells me about a bunch of conspiracy theories. Maybe he's playing poker now."
I was realizing that I knew almost nothing about Hamilton. A week ago, I would have said he was the closest thing I had to a friend at work.
On the screen, Salt put down her pen and leaned back. "Why didn't you run? You must have been notified — there was a big enough leak that the Seattle agents escaped. But you still went to the opera."
"It was Attilio Pagano." Delia looked between her two interviewers and sighed at their lack of reaction. "You wouldn't understand. And I was told the finding spell had been temporarily neutralized." She looked straight at the camera. "To be clear, I knew nothing about the attempts to kill Jennifer Perkins and Simon Bowers until after the fact."
"She really seems to like you," Simon commented.
"Doesn't everyone?" My stomach growled. We'd left Silver Edge before the food arrived, and hunger was catching up with me. "I need to get something to eat. You want anything? Ha ha, just kidding."
"Hilarious. I can get something delivered, if you want. My treat."
"Nah." I shoved my shoes back on and stood. Accepting all the perks of Silver Edge while I was hiding from assassins was one thing. Having Simon pay for stuff when we were at work was another. It seemed like a bad precedent to set, especially now that the people trying to kill us had bigger problems. And I needed a few minutes alone to clear my head. "I'll just grab something from one of the carts on the square. Let me know if Delia says anything useful while I'm gone."
Except I was pretty sure she'd already given us the answer, at least as far as Hamilton was concerned. What else could she have meant about the spell being temporarily neutralized? I watched the floor indicator in the elevator count down as I wondered how I'd completely missed Hamilton's involvement.
It wasn't hard to find the answer. After planning my whole life around academia for so many years, this job had just been a stopgap to keep a roof over my head. I'd done the work, but I'd treated it as a temporary thing. I hadn't bothered to really get to know anyone here, not even Hamilton.
But it wasn't as if academia would suddenly welcome me back with open arms. And the longer I stayed away, the more I realized how messed up that environment had been. Maybe it was time to stop mourning my old life and start looking forward to what came next.