Sully ducked and rolled under the swerving truck. Flames trailed from her hands, stinging at the cut that kept reopening on her palm. The homeless man, who was currently being piloted remotely, was running for his life. It seemed ridiculous that he would do that, since none of these controlled killers had allowed law enforcement to take them alive—whoever or whatever was doing the controlling seemed to like throwing them in harm’s way, perhaps for the amusement of watching the reactions of horrified bystanders.
The running homeless man was a bit of an oddity. He’d choked a string of victims and tossed them into the Black Bay. The magical residue left behind on their throats connected them to the case. At that moment, though, the important thing for Sully was not that he was an oddity, but rather that he was now an isolated oddity, trapped between two crumbling warehouses in a desolate area near the Harlem River. She launched a lance of bright white flame from her palms that struck his shoulder in a spectacular show of pyrotechnics.
In a blinding flash, the wave of raw magic escaping the man’s body was consumed by the initial spark of Sully’s new spell, and while the walls of the buildings on either side of him had begun to crack, they didn’t look likely to fall down. At least she could safely fight back now. One success in a month of disasters. Sully stopped cackling and wrapped yet another fresh handkerchief around her hand. Bandages had been too cumbersome; they interfered with her finger movements, disrupting her spells. She would rather be alive and bleeding any day of the week.
Suddenly, she felt as if someone was watching her. Scrying on her most likely. Sully turned around several times, trying to sense the source, but the feeling was gone. She growled deep in her throat and stalked away.
Street after street of back alleys separated her from the rest of humanity. So many of these warehouses sat empty at this time of year that the area was practically a ghost town. There was graffiti all over the walls. A stenciled picture of a snake seemed to be in fashion at the moment, with the words, “Don’t tread on me,” underneath.
Sully had seen these more and more over the last few years: wannabe revolutionaries in college bars; malcontent poor people who blamed the Empire for every tiny problem in their life. It only took her a few moments and a little bit of magic to erase identifying details from the graffiti so that the redcoats couldn’t hunt down the artists. A small act of defiance that didn’t cost her anything.
Sully was still drunk on adrenaline and swaggering by the time she got back to the populated streets. Not one of the people looked the least bit unusual, scurrying about their daily business, trying to get by. Any one of them could be next victim. Any one of them could be the next killer. Sully hated feeling helpless, more than anything else in the world. That, and having to rely on other people to solve the problem. It weighed on her—twisted deep in her gut.
She should have called the office and arranged for the dead homeless man—latest in the long list of dead civilians—to be scraped up off the pavement before the gulls got at it. But she couldn’t stomach going through the motions again right now.
After wandering aimlessly for a while, she shuffled into the queue at a coffee stand that was being run out of an old white van. The usual suspects were lined up at this time of day—workers ducking out between shifts for a little boost—but among them, sticking out like a sore thumb, was a gentleman.
He was slim and tidy, probably in his late thirties, with thick, slick hair. His skin had a faint olive tone that reminded Sully of the European dignitaries who’d made it out alive before the Veil of Tears went up after the Great War. He was dressed in a tailored black suit, accented with a pale green silk waistcoat and tie. On Staten Island, or one of the other boroughs of the city, he would have fit in just fine, but this was a rough area of New Amsterdam. She noticed him staring, but her patience was dwindling. With a scowl, she strode up the line and introduced herself. “I’m Agent Sullivan of the Imperial Bureau of Investigations. Are you lost, sir?”
He smirked, and when he spoke the accent was indistinct; he had clearly spent a lot of time in the Empire. “A pleasure to meet you, Madame Sullivan. Thank you for your concern. I am enjoying the delights of your city. Although it is very easy to find the most excellent cafés and talented baristas across the world, only here in Nova Europa can one experience such terrible coffee without a great deal of exploration. It is on every street corner here, no?”
Sully forced a smile and resisted every natural urge to hit him. “Well, I’m heading back into the city if you need directions.”
He held up a well-manicured hand. His smirk seemed to have been carved right onto his face. “Not necessary, my dear. I know precisely where I am going. Which is more than can be said for most of your people, no?”
She sighed, “Alright. Have fun with your bad coffee.”
Sully knew that the man did not belong in this part of town, but had not quite reached the level of paranoia that let her drag people into cells just because they looked out of place. In New Amsterdam, that could be a full-time occupation. She walked to the end of the street and then did a quick travel spell. With a quick leap straight up and a few hops to get around the bay, she found herself in the janitor’s closet on the ground floor of the IBI building.
Today he was on top of a ladder smoking a rolled-up cigarette. In his other hand, he was holding a disconnected wire that led to the rooftop smoke alarm. He was startled, but not so startled that he fell or stopped smoking. Sully laughed despite herself and snuck out the door.
Her desk held multiple towers of paperwork. Sully had been sending and receiving dozens of reports from the increasingly nervous Leonard Pratt—all of which were duplicated on her desk. Beyond that heap of folders were the stacks of “observations.”
Sully had assigned a team of junior agents to keep track of Bertie, only to discover just how many man hours that entailed and how expensive it became when your target fled the city despite your polite request that she not do so. Bertie had gone to an isolated log cabin in Pennsylvania. Sully thought it was stretching the truth to call a three-story, half-glass, half-wood Swedish pinnacle a log cabin, but she lacked any better terminology.
There were other reports in her cubicle, too: detailed descriptions of each of the attacks and dozens of civilian interviews that sounded somewhat like Bertie’s story. Sully ignored the buzzing of her cell phone, as well as the ringing phone that was buried under a mound of toppled reports. She had so many autopsy photos on her desk she could probably keep the penny dreadful tabloids in business for years to come.
Something caught her eye on the top of one of the heaps of manila folders: A letter-sized envelope made of thick cream colored paper. Her name, identification number and the branch’s address were on the front of it, fine calligraphy in swirls of green ink. It was so out of place that she was tempted to open her mail for once. The elevator was halfway open when Colcross forced his bulk through the gap, gasping out as he spotted her, “Sullivan. Don’t move.”
She froze for an instant—that niggling sense of paranoia rushing back. Who would be a better choice of assassin than Colcross, if the killer wanted her gone? She observed the Deputy Director carefully as he sprinted down the corridor. Was his gait lopsided? Was he still him? She had never seen him run in all her years working here. Barely seen him out from behind his desk, in fact. She knew, and her perpetrator knew, that her boss carried a gun.
Sully stood still, but her heart battered at her ribs as he barged into her cubicle, nearly bowling her over. Her contingency spells fired off automatically and the whole cubicle started to spin around her—folders and letters and pictures swirled up off the desk, orbiting at increasing speed around the two of them. He stood before her, shoulders sloped, panting and watching in confusion at the paper storm. Sully spied the odd cream-colored envelope drifting in the air near her and reached toward it.
Colcross saw her slight movement and jerked his hand out to snatch her wrist, snarling, “No!”
But Sully moved out of his way, leaving Colcross’s hand in the empty space where Sully’s had been, and his fingers lightly brushing the envelope.
An unnerving sound erupted: tearing gristle, tubular bells, crunching, roaring, and a high-pitched whine all in a simultaneous cacophony. Sully leapt back, disrupting the protective swirl of her defensive spells and letting all of her mail and office supplies tumble to the ground around her. The red macaw now standing in her cubicle looked perplexed.
She carried the Deputy Director, whose name escaped her at the moment, back to his office and was greeted by the squawk of his predecessor, perched up on the curtain rail.
The Deputy Director fluttered up to take his position beside the Director, and Sully felt sick. There on the desk, untouched and unopened, was a cream colored envelope bearing the Deputy Director’s name, identification number and the building’s address scrawled in green ink. It sat on the desk like a poised scorpion, and she was damned if she would go anywhere near it until every half decent curse-breaker in the colony had taken a look at it.
She would never have recognized the threat, but the Deputy Director had been present when the Director went through his transformation. She reeled at the thought that her boss had received this letter, recognized its significance, and sprinted downstairs to protect her. And she couldn’t even be bothered to do the courtesy of answering her phone. She sank down into her usual seat opposite the Deputy Director’s desk, and she shook.