Though I desperately wanted the chance to debrief with Max, I wasn’t given it. He’d been injured in the attack, and he was quickly whisked away to an ambulance. Plus, all nongovernment personnel were led from the crime scene. If I wanted a chance to thank Max for saving my life, I would have to wait. He was taken to hospital along with the other injured patrons.
The minutes ticked by, and though several detectives from the Warlock Division questioned Josh countless times, no one ever told us we could leave.
As Josh was questioned for about the fifth time, I found myself free to walk around the room. My hands were in my pockets as my feet ground against the dirt scattered everywhere.
I was right, I kept telling myself. That heat elemental had been the one from last night.
Which meant what, exactly? I knew Josh had sent that guy to remand. So… what? Someone had broken him out? But we would have been told. If someone had sprung one of our bounties, the Justice Department would’ve informed us immediately.
So what did that leave? That the guy had somehow used some spell to change his appearance, and he’d slipped out unawares? But people would still have realized that he was missing.
The possibilities boggled my mind. I could feel a migraine setting in, and if I was smart, I would take a seat and try to relax just as several of the uniformed officers had told me to do.
I wasn’t smart. I was driven. I’d faced a lot as a bounty hunter, but this was the first time I’d been in a place that had been attacked by warlocks. This wasn’t the sewers, and this wasn’t some out-of-town power plant. This was the most expensive restaurant in town. And these two warlocks – or whoever they worked for, at least – had decided to risk attacking the public.
No, wait – who had they attacked exactly?
I closed my eyes and went over the details I could remember. I’d run out of the bathroom, heard the screaming, and rushed in to find the elementals attacking.
What had they been after?
I kept picking up snippets of conversation as the Warlock Division chatted to the uniformed officers who’d been first on the scene.
Though I didn’t pick up anything useful – they did keep repeating one fact. Madison City hadn’t seen a public attack like this for two-and-a-half years.
For some reason that number stuck in my head.
Two-and-a-half years…?
Why was that important to me?
Though I could tell Josh wanted to rush over and debrief with me, he wasn’t given that option. One of the biggest warlocks from the Warlock Division – a man who bore an unfavorable resemblance to my least favorite Cruze Gang bully, Smythe – seemed to be questioning Josh over and over again.
Josh wasn’t losing his cool, which told me this wasn’t the first time he’d had to jump through Warlock Division hoops.
“Hey you – I told you to lock down the residue from the two portals. If we have any chance of figuring out where those two elementals came from, we need to lock the remnants of the portals down before they disappear,” another member of the Warlock Division bellowed at two uniformed officers.
I hadn’t had a chance to debrief with anyone, and until that point, I hadn’t even known that the elementals had arrived by portals.
That fact made me frown. I’d just assumed they’d arrived on-foot. But now I knew they’d come by portal… I couldn’t shake the impression that it was critically important. It meant they’d got here in a hurry, didn’t it?
Which meant they’d sensed some kind of opportunity.
Or maybe they’d been alerted to something.
I took a step back, shoved a hand into my pocket, and frowned in the direction of the bathrooms.
I couldn’t… have caused this, could I? That weird magical symbol carved into the back of the toilet door – it couldn’t have alerted those warlocks to something, right?
There was only one way to find out. I pushed toward the door.
Instantly one of the warlocks walked toward me. “Where are you going, ma’am? Our investigation isn’t over.”
I turned over my shoulder and smiled at her. “I’m heading to the bathroom. I’ll only be a couple of minutes. I’ll come straight back.”
Maybe my act was convincing, or this woman had bigger fish to fry and really didn’t want to waste her time chaperoning me to the loos. She nodded toward the door. “Don’t leave the building.”
“Of course not.” I walked away. Even if I wanted to leave the building, it wasn’t exactly an option. The place was swarming with police.
Which meant they’d be in the toilets too, right?
Just before disappointment could wash through me, I reached the ladies stalls and pushed in.
Fortunately my luck held out, and they were empty.
I walked straight to the second bathroom from the end. I opened the door, walked in, and stared.
I paled. The mark was gone. It wasn’t just gone, in fact – it looked as if it had never been there.
I jerked a hand up and ran my fingers over the position it had been in. There was nothing except for the faintest charge of magic.
Just as I started to disbelieve what I’d seen, I remembered I’d taken a photo of it. I shoved a hand into my pocket, pulled out my phone, and scrolled to the photo. There it was. A P and an M with an X through them.
“What the hell is going on here?”
I kept frowning at the position where the symbol had disappeared for several more seconds. I knew – or at least I strongly suspected – that this was evidence. And if I strongly suspected that it was evidence, I had every obligation to bring it to the police’s attention.
But… God, it sounded awful, but I didn’t sense an opportunity there. In fact, I got the impression that if I let the police know about this, all my opportunities to solve this case would end. And I wasn’t being selfish here – I didn’t honestly care if I was the one to solve it. My opportunity magic specifically told me that if I didn’t solve this, no one else would.
I tipped my head back, closed my eyes, and sighed. Instantly Max’s warning flooded in. An opportunity for me might not be an opportunity for others. There was… every possibility that I was lying to myself. Maybe I just really wanted to be the one to track this down. Maybe my suspicions about the police were unfounded. Maybe what I was doing here was goddamn illegal.
… But maybe none of that mattered. My opportunity magic was clear. It told me I had to keep this close to my chest.
I shook my head as I suddenly realized something. All those months ago when I’d met Max, I’d pretty much told him he was a criminal. I’d never understood how he could morally justify walking the line between good and bad.
Now? I understood completely. If I followed my opportunity magic now, I would be very much going against the law.
I remained there for several seconds, warring with my conscience, but my desire to solve this case won out.
I pressed forward, locked my palm against the location of the symbol, and asked a simple question. “Where did you come from?”
I was justifiably tired after that frenetic fight. Like I’d said earlier – me using warlock magic was far more taxing than me using finding magic these days. My bones were weary, and my muscles felt like jelly. But here I was asking myself to give more.
“Where did you come from? Are you important to my case?” I asked. Though I couldn’t get a clear reading on the first question, on the second question, I felt my finding magic react. I felt a great surge of energy chase through me, and it was so powerful, my shoulders shook. “You are important to my case,” I concluded through a tight breath. “How?”
Unsurprisingly, I couldn’t get a clear answer on that. A diffuse, confusing sensation picked up in my throat and chest and made me feel as if I’d swallowed a stone.
I sighed.
These were the wrong questions to ask, weren’t they?
So what were the right questions to ask?
I opened my mouth to cycle through them, but that’s when I heard the door opening.
I shrunk back from the door, leaving it ajar. Fortunately the toilet seat was already closed, so I sat down on it quietly.
“The similarities are eerie,” I heard a woman say.
“Come on, they’re not that close,” her friend objected.
“You weren’t there two-and-a-half years ago. They’re pretty damn close. Two elementals ported into a theater, one dirt and one heat, and they caused massive destruction.”
“I don’t see how that’s eerie. Plus, this is a restaurant, not a theater.”
“It suggests the same MO. If that bounty hunter can be believed, the way those two elementals fought was almost exactly the same. The heat one did the brunt of the damage while the dirt one waited for his opportunity.”
“But that case two-and-a-half years ago wasn’t a random attack. It was an assassination. Nobody was assassinated here. We don’t even know what they were after.”
“You don’t know the details of that case at all, do you?”
“I may not have been there, but I am familiar with it.”
“Familiar enough to know that the woman who was killed was the sister of the bounty hunter in there?”
I almost gasped. I locked a hand over my mouth and pressed it in hard as I realized why two-and-a-half years had been so important to me.
It had been two-and-a-half years since Josh’s sister’s murder.
“He is?”
“Yeah. And the similarities don’t end there. Sandra McIntosh worked for Maximus Knights. And Max was here tonight.”
“What are you suggesting? That these two elementals were here to what, finish the job? It’s been two-and-a-half years. Plus, why would these two elementals care?”
“We heard reports from the civilian warlocks who helped to subdue the heat elemental that the finder,” the woman’s voice changed, dropping down a few notches, “swore that the heat elemental had changed his appearance. That he was a bounty she’d brought in only yesterday.”
They were both talking about me in awed tones – enough awe to make my back itch – but who really cared right now? The only thing that mattered was what they were discussing.
I was finally finding the details of this case. That realization pounded through me, and I kept my hand clasped over my mouth so I didn’t dare breathe a word and reveal my position, interrupting their conversation.
“That’s impossible. You must be mistaken. I mean what the hell are you suggesting? Someone would’ve had to break that elemental out of remand. Even then, we would’ve heard about it.”
“I don’t really know what I’m suggesting,” the first woman conceded. “But you have to admit weird stuff has been going down lately. Nothing feels right anymore,” she added, suspicion clearly marking her tone.
“This is just an unconscious reaction to the attack by the Cruze Gang. You haven’t had time to process it yet.”
“Is it? Weird shit was happening in the Justice Department long before that. Cases going missing, documents being altered – you name it. Even convicted criminals being let out and re-contracted.”
“Presumably all of that was to do with the Cruze plants. They’ve been removed now.”
“You can say what you want. This is strange.”
“There’s a difference between being strange and what you’re suggesting. What you’re suggesting is… some grand conspiracy. Now, can we please go to the loo? They’re going to start wondering where we are.”
Holy shit.
I had just learned so much. I slowly and carefully pulled my feet up until I was hugging them and no one would be able to see them underneath the toilet stalls.
When the women were done and left, I waited there a full three minutes until I snuck out. I unashamedly used my finding skills to ascertain when the coast was clear.
Then I made it back to the main room.
Everyone was so busy that no one had noticed I was gone.
No one but Josh. The warlock in charge had obviously finished questioning him.
As soon as I walked in, Josh nodded at me.
I made my quiet and careful way over to him.
He took one look at my expression and frowned. “What did you find out?” he asked simply.
I looked up at him.
He would know that this case was similar to the one where his sister was murdered, wouldn’t he?
I started to tune into his emotions, even though he hated that.
Sure enough, though his expression and demeanor were relatively unaffected, inside he was a trembling mess.
“What have you found out?” he asked once more.
“That this case is similar to the one where your sister died,” I whispered.
There was so much hubbub going on that I was sure nobody heard us. Nonetheless, I kept a constant scan of people’s emotions to ensure no one was eavesdropping.
Josh pressed his lips together. Maybe he went to shake his head, but he stopped. “How did you find out?”
“I overheard two warlocks talking about it in the bathroom.”
Josh took a hard breath. “I guess there’s no point in hiding it. Yeah – it’s eerily similar to the case where my sister was murdered.” Though his expression was controlled, his emotions were as turgid as a hurricane. Grief and fear mixed in his chest like a bomb.
I didn’t know what I looked like, but my expression must have revealed my tension, because Josh shook his head hard.
“Beth, I know what you’re thinking, and you have to drop it.”
“I don’t get it, Josh. A few weeks ago you wanted me to track down your sister’s murderer,” I whispered, again not letting my voice carry. “What changed?”
“You.”
I receded, taken aback. “Josh, what are you talking about?” I demanded. I couldn’t drop this again; everything was spiraling out of control, and the less I knew, the more trouble I was in.
Josh didn’t look happy. He shoved his hands into the pockets of his jacket and turned his head up to stare at the ceiling. “You don’t want to do this here—”
“Where else are we going to do it? I don’t know if you’ve noticed—”
“But this city is going to Hell in a handbasket? Yeah, I noticed that. The two elementals sure reinforced that when they tried to kill me and take all the diners with them.” Josh found a patch of dirt on his jacket and brushed it off before he looked at me seriously. “We’re still not going to do this here,” he said as he let his voice drop. He cast his gaze around the dining room as the police continued to deal with the aftermath of the attack.
I took another step toward him. “Josh, who knows when we’ll get another chance? I feel like we’re running out of time.”
“We’ll get another chance when we get home. Just wait until this is over, Beth.”
“Who says we’re going to get a chance to get home?”
There must have been something about my voice, because Josh looked at me sharply. “What are you sensing?”
“That you’re right – this city is going to Hell in a handbasket, and we’re not going to get a chance for another breather. So, for the love of god, just tell me.”
Josh put his face in his hands and stared at me through a gap in his fingers. “Jason told me not to.”
“Excuse me?”
“Jason… he told me to drop the investigation into my sister.”
“What—”
Josh looked right at me. “He told me you can’t look into this.”
“When did he do this?”
“Does it matter? It was after the incident with Jeopardy.”
“But – why? Why the hell does he care if I look into this?”
Josh looked at me, right at me. “He cares about you, Beth. That’s the point.”
I got stuck on shaking my head. “I don’t—”
“Care? Yeah, well it doesn’t really matter. Because he’s a sorcerer, and he gets to lay down the law.” Josh looked away from me sharply.
All the anger I’d been feeling for him over the past several hours washed away as I took a deep breath. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”
Josh let out a low chuckle. “You don’t have to be sorry, Beth – because you’re right, you didn’t know. And that’s the point. You weren’t meant to. Now you do, I guess I’ll have to deal with Jason.”
“Leave him to me,” I growled.
Josh arched an eyebrow. “That sure is a scary voice, Beth, but you’ve got no chance against Jason. He’s Internal Affairs,” Josh said bitterly. “He’s also got every right to protect you for the prophecy. The world is at stake.”
My back straightened. “Excuse me? He’s got every right to protect me for the prophecy?”
Josh’s shoulders dropped. “That sounded bad.”
“Yeah, it sounded awful,” I let my emotion shake through my tone on the word awful. “It sounded like the only reason people care about me is that I’m useful.”
Josh looked at me, and he sighed. “I’m sorry. Beth… I’m sorry.”
There it was – a real apology. My emotion-sensing magic confirmed that as I felt a tingle shoot down my back. I sighed. “Okay. Thanks. But what now? I’m serious, Josh.” I started to answer my own question. “We… we need to look into the murder of your sister.” My demeanor changed entirely. “I’m… I’m sorry to mention this again. But—”
“You’re a finder, and you think… it’s finally time to find the truth. I get that.”
I looked at him. “Josh,” I said quietly, “it is. It’s not just my powers telling me this – it’s plain old reason. This case… it’s connected to your sister’s murder. I’m sorry I had to say that. I’m sorry I had to bring this up at all. But—”
“You’re not lying,” he said, voice fragile. “I get that, Beth. And I—” He ground his eyes closed, tilted his head up, and appeared to settle himself. “Agree.”
“… You do?”
Slowly he shifted his head back down, and he nodded. “Yeah. I may not be a finder. But I’m sick of people warning me off this case,” he said, his voice descending into a growl.
“Who—” I began. I stopped myself.
Josh ticked his head to the side. “What? Why did you trail off?”
“You’ll tell me if you need to,” I said confidently.
Josh angled his head to the side as a small smile spread across his lips. “Was that you actually being discreet and careful, Bethany Samson?”
I looked at him and nodded. “That was me trusting you. I know you’re not keeping these things from me to be malicious. And I know… you’ll share in time. So let’s go, Mr. McIntosh. Let’s solve this case.” I deliberately didn’t refer to it as his sister’s murder again. I needed to keep Josh rational, or at least pull him back from the majority of his fear and anguish and self-hate. And if getting him to rely on his powers as a bounty hunter was how I was gonna do that, then that was what I would do.
Josh nodded.
Together, we strode out of the dining room, the police finally letting us leave. I crushed more dirt and shattered window glass underfoot as I walked toward the door, and it reminded me of one thing – my life wasn’t done breaking yet.
Hell no, it was only just getting started.