Nadia tensed, and Caina saw the faint glow as Nadia started to draw power for a spell.
“No, no, don’t,” said Caina, grabbing Nadia’s shoulder. “Don’t look at them. Talk to me about an office or business or something.”
Nadia blinked and then nodded. “Uh, the documents came in while we were gone, and the next staff meeting will have to be about revising the updated...”
An impressive flow of business-speak came from Nadia. Caina nodded and looked thoughtful and solemn but turned her attention to Sulzer as the Congressman approached. He was wearing an expensive business suit that failed to conceal his paunch and was walking in a hurry. Next to him glided a tall, elegant woman in a white dress and jacket. Her expression was serene and aloof, and her blond hair glinted in the sunlight.
Her appearance was attractive, but it was also fake.
Because it was the product of a Mask spell. Whoever the woman really was, she was using a Mask spell to conceal her appearance.
Behind Sulzer and the woman walked a half-dozen men in suits, their expressions blank, their eyes hidden behind wrap-around sunglasses. They had the tough look of bodyguards, competent ones, and their strides were fluid and quick…
Two details hit Caina’s mind hard.
First, the men weren’t actually breathing.
Second, a powerful aura of necromantic magic surrounded them.
The half-dozen men were undead. She had encountered undead like this several times before, and Caina knew firsthand how fast and strong such creatures were. Caina braced herself as she nodded to Nadia’s speech, preparing to summon her valikon. How had Sulzer known they were there? Had he used magic to locate them? No tracking spell would have worked on Caina, but it might have worked on Nadia. Likely Nadia’s presence had triggered the attack from the specters near the Cattleman’s Pride.
Sulzer and his party walked past Caina and Nadia without a sideways glance. They climbed the stairs to the bank and disappeared through the glass doors.
“Of course,” muttered Nadia. “He’s not here about us. He’s here to pick up his damned book.”
“Damn it,” said Caina. “We had him. All we had to do was to call in that safe deposit box, and he would have been done.”
“That woman with him,” said Nadia. “She has a Masking spell, didn’t she? I could feel it when she went past.”
“Yeah,” said Caina. “And his bodyguards...”
“Undead, all of them,” said Nadia, gazing at the bank doors. Caina nodded. “I’ve fought things like that a couple times before. Even been bitten by one once.”
Caina grimaced. “Bitten?”
“It wasn’t pleasant,” said Nadia. “But we’re not beaten yet, are we?”
“No,” said Caina, thinking it through. “No, we’re not. Almost certainly Sulzer’s here to take the book. When he does, we’ll follow him. If he has a secret location for practicing necromancy somewhere in the city, he’s taking the book there. Once we know the location, we can spy on him some more.”
“Good idea,” said Nadia. “Let’s follow him...”
“Wait!” said Caina. “We can’t just walk into the bank lobby. People don’t loiter there. It will be obvious that we’re following him.”
Nadia nodded, scowled in thought, and then her eyes widened. “I’ll Cloak myself. If I do it out here, Sulzer and the woman won’t be able to sense it.”
“Can undead like that see through a Cloak spell?” said Caina.
Nadia shook her head. “I learned that by putting it to the test.”
“How long can you stay Cloaked?” said Caina.
“About twelve minutes,” said Nadia. She shrugged. “Maybe a little less, since I’ve done it so often today. But if I’m not moving, I can stay Cloaked almost indefinitely.”
“Okay,” said Caina. “Go watch them. Don’t get too close.”
“I have followed people before, yes,” said Nadia, but she smiled. “I’ll come out as soon as they start moving.” She glanced around at the crowds. “Suppose following them in these damn crowds will be a challenge.”
“Not really,” said Caina. “If the book has an arcane aura, I can see it from a long way off. I can even see it through solid walls.”
“You can?” said Nadia. “God, that must give you a headache.”
“It does, sometimes,” said Caina. She had endured splitting migraines until she had learned to control the vision of the valikarion. “But I’ll put up with a headache or two if we can bring Sulzer down.”
“Wait here,” said Nadia.
She turned and jogged up the stairs. Caina watched as Nadia opened the door, and because she was watching for it, she caught the faint flash of silver light of the Cloak spell. Nadia vanished from sight, and Caina leaned against the wall and settled back to wait.
Her mind sorted through various strategies for following Sulzer and his undead entourage. Caina had a gun in her purse, a Royal Arms .45 semiautomatic with an eighteen-round magazine, but that wouldn’t do her much good. The only way to take down an undead corpse with a gun was to put a round through the head since enough damage to the brain would break the spell animating the corpse. Of course, if it came to a fight, she would need to shoot Sulzer and the woman in the Masking spell first, since one of them was probably controlling the undead. Then again, in a gunfight, they would be overpowered. She had seen the shoulder holsters beneath the suit coats of the undead men, and she knew that undead created by a necromancer of sufficient skill could use firearms, sometimes with terrifying accuracy.
Caina had learned that the hard way. Some of Baron Maglarion’s undead had carried AK-47s.
Besides, getting into a fight on Wall Street would draw down the attention of Homeland Security, and innocent people would get killed. Nadia could probably take all the undead with her magic, but Caina didn’t know how much power Sulzer or the Masked woman might have, and Nadia might not be able to handle them both at once. For that matter, if Nadia really cut loose, she might kill some bystanders.
No, better to just follow Sulzer for now. As Caina thought it over, she realized that it would be straightforward to follow Sulzer. Between the Masking spell’s aura, the auras of the undead, and the necromantic spell upon the book, Caina could keep track of Sulzer’s movements from a distance. Given how heavily restricted parking was around the Stock Exchange and Wall Street in general, almost certainly Sulzer and his bodyguards had parked in the same ramp as Caina. If she and Nadia hurried, they could return to the car and follow Sulzer’s party.
And once they saw where he took the book, they could act.
High heels clicked against the bank's steps, and Caina looked up to see Nadia striding towards her.
“Okay,” said Nadia in a low voice. “The woman emptied out the deposit box and gave the deeds and the book to Sulzer. They’re coming out now. Want to act like we’re still talking about business from earlier?”
“Yeah,” said Caina, and she started talking about quarterly budget projections as Sulzer, the Masked woman, and the six undead men emerged from the bank’s doors. Sulzer had a leather briefcase in hand, and through it Caina saw the sickly green light of a necromantic spell.
The book was in his briefcase.
She and Nadia kept up their inane business chatter as Sulzer and his party walked past. As before, neither the Congressman nor the Masked woman spared them a look. The undead looked grim, but the sunglasses and suits gave them a semblance of life, and their grim appearance wasn’t out of character for private security.
“Okay,” said Nadia once they had moved out of earshot. “Now what?”
“Let’s go,” said Caina, pushing away from the wall. “They’ll almost certainly be parked in the same structure we used.”
Nadia nodded. “God knows there’s nowhere else to park around here.”
They headed after Sulzer and his group, keeping about twenty yards behind them. The sidewalk was crowded, but Caina had no trouble seeing the arcane auras around the Congressman. It looked as if Sulzer was deep in conversation with the Masked woman. There was no way Caina could overhear them, but she wondered what they were discussing.
“Looks like you were right,” said Nadia as Sulzer and his party approached the base of the parking ramp. They disappeared through the door in the corner.
“Come on,” said Caina, and they broke into a jog. She caught the door before it closed, and she and Nadia slipped through. They came to the ramp’s corner stairwell. Caina let the door click closed, and in the stairwell above them she heard the echoes as Sulzer and his people climbed. She lifted a finger to her lips, Nadia nodded, and together they climbed the stairs. Nadia made more noise than Caina would have wanted, but much less than she would have expected. Caina heard the click of a door opening above, followed by the rough growl of Sulzer’s voice and the woman’s softer tones.
“Fifth level,” whispered Caina. Nadia nodded again. They hurried up the stairs, and Caina eased open the door to the fifth level. The ramp had nine levels, and at this time of day, all of them were packed. Sulzer and his companions headed for a van two-thirds of the way down the ramp from the door. Caina hurried across the aisle, Nadia followed her, and together they ducked behind a parked car.
Caina peered at the van as Sulzer approached it. The vehicle was a long white Royal Motors passenger van, and Caina memorized the model, make, and license plate number. She and Nadia had parked on the third level, and the van would have to drive past them to get out of the ramp. All they had to do was get back to the third level, and it would be child’s play to follow the van.
Then one of the undead froze.
Sulzer had unlocked the van doors, and the other five undead had obediently followed him. But the sixth undead had gone motionless in the center of the aisle.
“Hey!” said Sulzer, snapping his fingers. “You! Come on!”
The undead did not move.
Sulzer glared at the woman. “I thought you said these things were perfectly obedient.”
“They are,” said the woman, calm as ever. “Unless they notice something.”
Caina’s throat went dry.
Then the sixth undead started to speak.
“A distortion in the pattern,” it announced. “A thread removed from the tapestry of fate. Dipped in silver fire.”
Maglarion’s undead had sometimes talked. They had spoken in strange, cryptic riddles. Apparently, the undead could see the future, but since they were mindless, it didn’t do them much good. But if their masters paid attention, sometimes they could learn secrets.
“Is the damned thing prophesying again?” said Sulzer, glaring at the woman.
“So it is,” said the woman, gazing at the undead with fascination. “Perhaps we shall learn something.”
“The sword of white fire,” said the undead. Caina’s alarm got worse. “The flame that burned the shadows. The one who burned the worlds, the Worldburner.” Nadia tensed next to Caina. “Your enemies come. Your enemies come.”
“Shit,” whispered Nadia.
“What?” said Sulzer, taking an alarmed step back. Ghostly green fire played around the fingers of his left hand, and Caina saw him drawing necromantic magic to himself, cold and twisted and corrupt. Sulzer was indeed a necromancer, and he was the one commanding the undead.
“Your enemies come. The Worldburner comes to burn slay you in ice.”
“Wait!” said the woman, lifting a hand. “It might...”
“The defend me!” snapped Sulzer. “Defend me now!”
The undead man moved in a blur. He whirled, his hand coming out of his jacket, and fired his pistol.
It happened so fast that Caina did not have time to react, and the bullet had been aimed at her head. It would have struck her forehead, had Nadia not shoved her to the side. The shot that had been aimed at Caina’s head instead struck Nadia’s left shoulder in a spray of blood, and she fell back with a groan, her head bouncing off the ground.
That shattered Caina’s paralysis, and she snatched her handgun from her purse, raised it, and fired. Her reflexes had taken over, and her bullet caught the undead in the forehead. The shot did enough damage that it canceled the spell, and the corpse fell inert to the ground. Caina sent three quick shots at the remaining undead. Her first bullet caught another undead in the forehead. Her next two shots went wild and slammed into the side of the van.
Sulzer started casting a spell, and the woman stepped forward. Her Masking spell dissolved, and the illusion of the woman in the white dress vanished.
In her place stood an Archon Elf.
The Elven woman wore the usual black uniform of the Archons, their three-headed dragon sigil across the chest. Her expression was cold and imperious, her eyes a brilliant shade of gold that matched her hair. The Archon woman gestured, and purple fire and shadow flared around her hand as she drew on the Dark One that no doubt inhabited her flesh. Caina started to aim at her, remembered that normal bullets could not hurt an Elf, and then sent a shot at Sulzer. The Congressman had time to duck, and Caina’s bullet pinged off the side of the van.
Both Sulzer and the Archon woman continued their spells, and the four remaining undead charged, drawing the pistols from inside their coats. Caina realized she only had time to shoot one of the undead, maybe two, before the others shot her.
Then Nadia rolled to one knee, her lips pulled back into a snarl, her eyes bright and feverish, and flung out her right hand. Fire blazed from her fingers, and a sphere of flame leaped from her hand and landed at the feet of the charging undead.
Then it exploded.
The blast of fire filled the aisle, engulfing both the undead and several of the surrounding cars. Caina couldn’t see if the fire had reached the Archon or Sulzer. Nadia was already casting again, her face gone white with strain, and she raked her hand through the air. A sheet of white mist sprang up between them and the fire, a sheet of mist that hardened into a glittering wall of ice that sealed off the aisle.
Nadia had just bought them time.
“Come on!” said Caina.
“Yeah, we should probably go,” said Nadia, her voice a croaking whisper. Her right hand was clenched to her left shoulder, and the gray sleeve of her jacket had gone dark with blood. There was another dark spot on the back of her shoulder – the bullet had gone right through her. Caina started to help her up, but Nadia got to her feet with a grimace. That was surprising – she should have been in shock on the ground, not able to cast spells and stand.
If anything, Nadia looked more annoyed than in pain.
Caina nodded, and they darted across the aisle and into the stairwell. She started to reach for Nadia to help her along, but the shorter woman shook her off.
“Just go,” said Nadia. “I’ll be fine. Get to the car before those undead punch through the ice wall.”
They scrambled down two levels of stairs and back to the third level. As they did, Caina heard an explosion echoing through the stairwell.
“They got through the ice wall,” said Nadia.
“We’re here,” said Caina. She unlocked the car door, stripped off her jacket, and got into the driver’s seat. Nadia dropped into the passenger seat, sweat glittering on her face, her eyes feverish. For the first time, she let out a grunt of pain, the cords standing out on her neck.
“Goddamn it, but I’m sick of getting shot,” said Nadia.
“It’s not fun,” said Caina, wadding up her jacket and passing it to Nadia. “Here, hold this against it.” Nadia took the jacket, and Caina noted that her white blouse was starting to show a red stain around the edge of her coat. The bullet must have clipped a blood vessel.
She stabbed the key into the ignition and started the car. Caina punched the gas, spun out of her parking spot, and shot down the ramp. The gate was down by the ticketing booth, but Caina drove right through it, shattering the gate and spinning into the street.
“Homeland Security’s going to get after you for that,” said Nadia, her voice a little slurred, Caina’s jacket pressed against her shoulder.
Caina shook her head. “Nope. Car’s registration and plates are faked. I’ll change them out when I get back to headquarters. But we’ve got to get you to an ER. If you don’t see a doctor now, you’re going to bleed out.”
“Nah,” said Nadia. “I’ll be fine, just incapacitated for a day or so. Get me back to your office. We’ll talk more when I wake up.”
“You need a doctor,” snapped Caina, driving as fast as she dared through the crowded traffic. “You don’t just walk off bullet wounds. You...”
Her skin crawled with a sudden surge of arcane power, and golden light flickered before her vision.
She risked a glance to the side and saw that Nadia’s hands had started to glow with golden fire, the light spreading through the veins of her neck and face.
“What the hell?” said Caina.
“This is going to look weird,” rasped Nadia. “Don’t touch me, and don’t interrupt. Also, I’m going to scream a bit. Here we go...ah!”
She went rigid, her feet slamming against the floor, her back arching and her shoulders pressing against the seat, and she screamed as the golden light washed over her. Caina wanted to stare, but she didn’t dare take her eyes from the road. Nadia screamed again, the golden light blazing brighter, so bright than Caina needed to squint. The currents of arcane power surging around Nadia grew brighter, and for an awful instant, Caina was sure that Nadia was going to lose control of her magic and blow up the car.
Then the golden light winked out, and Nadia slumped against the seat, wheezing and sweating like she had just run a marathon.
“Oh,” she croaked. “Oh, I always hate that.”
She tossed aside Caina’s jacket and scrabbled at her collar, pulling back her blood-wet blouse and coat.
Caina did a double-take so violently that she almost went off the road.
The bullet wound had vanished.
“What the hell?” said Caina.
“Oh, goody, it worked,” said Nadia, her voice growing thick.
“That was an Elven regeneration spell,” said Caina. “How did you...”
“Gonna pass out now,” said Nadia. “Guess I’m gonna find out if I can trust you or...”
Her eyes fell closed, and she slumped against the seat.
Caina drove as fast as she dared.
###
Don’t get me wrong, the regeneration spell is better than spending months recovering in a hospital, and if I hadn’t used it before, I would have died of my wounds in Chicago and Washington DC and New York.
But the regeneration spell carries a price.
The pain is immense. It’s kind of like the system restore feature on a computer operating system, the feature that lets you reset the computer back to a working state if an important file gets corrupted or something. The regeneration spell acts like that, and you can feel every cell in your body rewriting and restoring itself in the torrent of regeneration magic.
It hurts. A lot.
Then there’s the coma after, and the dreams.
They’re like nightmares and hallucinations mixed together, only worse. Like, you sometimes hear about some idiot who overdoses on hallucinogens and kills himself to get away from the horrors in his mind.
The coma is like that.
Except times a thousand.
This time, I fled through an endless concrete maze that looked like Manhattan. Except Nicholas had used the Sky Hammer, and the towers of the city burned like torches, the sky blazing the way that Venomhold burned in the Shadowlands. Undead stalked me from all directions, pistols and rifles in hand, and the bullets pierced my flesh. I stumbled through the city, bleeding and dying, fighting for my life. The undead were so much more effective when they used firearms. It was a good thing that Vastarion and Victor Lorenz had never thought to equip their undead with guns. If they had, Russell and Riordan and I would never have gotten away from them.
Even as the thought crossed my mind, I saw my brother and my husband lying dead in the street, riddled with bullets.
I screamed and ran for them, except now I found myself back in the Cattleman’s Pride, the music blaring, the lights a harsh crimson. The undead stood around me in the club, and the dancers on the stage had gone motionless, blood leaking from the bullet wounds in their heads.
The music stopped and the undead charged at me, and I fought for my life. Except I was back in the Eternity Crucible, and wraithwolves and anthrophages joined the undead. At last, they overwhelmed me and drove me to the ground, and suddenly I was back in the ruins of Chicago, the myothar’s undead rushing towards me in a mob.
On and on it went, one nightmarish vision flowing into another and another.
After a while, the visions faded, and I started to become aware of sensations.
I was lying on something. A cot, I thought. It wasn’t terribly comfortable. I had a nasty headache, and my throat was dry as dust. The faint metallic rattle of an air handler echoed in the distance. Voices came to my ears. Two women, talking.
No, arguing.
“Then you don’t know when she’ll wake up?” said Caina in her posh Brit accent. She sounded upset.
“Could be in five minutes, could be in a day, could be never,” said a second woman. She sounded American, and her voice was full of hostility beneath a calm veneer. “Caina, she ought to be dead. Her pulse was about twenty-five beats a minute, and her body temperature had dropped below eighty degrees. I’ve never heard of a human who could cast an Elven regeneration spell.”
“Neither have I,” said Caina. “She was shot through the shoulder, and I think it clipped an artery. I was afraid she was going to die of blood loss before I got her to a hospital, but she cast that regeneration spell.”
“Then,” said the second woman, “there’s nothing we can do. She’ll either wake up, or she won’t.”
There was silence. I concentrated on opening my eyes.
“She took a bullet for you, didn’t she?” said the second woman, accusation now in her voice.
“Yes,” said Caina.
The second woman scoffed. “You’ll be fine then, won’t you? People take bullets for you all the time. It never bothers you. I wonder if the people who work for you realize just how cold-blooded you really are.”
“I would have changed it if I could,” said Caina. She just sounded tired, sad.
“Oh, sure,” said the second woman, her control starting to slip. “You’re just full of regret. I...”
My eyes popped open, and I sat up with a gasp, the cot creaking beneath me.
“For God’s sake,” I croaked. “You two. Keep it down. I just got shot.”
I was in a cinder-block room with the look of an infirmary. There were four cots, several cabinets, and a long counter with medical supplies. Caina stood with her arms crossed over her chest, wearing the same blouse, slacks, and high-heeled boots from before. The second woman stood facing her, scowling. She wore tasteful jewelry and an expensive pantsuit of dark gray that screamed either lawyer or doctor. She was about Caina’s height but heavier, with long blond hair and green eyes that flashed with rage.
Both women stared at me in astonishment.
“Hi,” I said, rubbing my forehead. “How long was I out?”
“About nineteen hours,” said Caina. “It’s...let’s see, a little after 7 AM.”
“Huh,” I said. “I’m getting better at this. Only nineteen hours. But I was just shot once. Hey, do you have some water?”
“Yes, of course,” said the woman in the gray suit, crossing to the counter. She picked up a bottle of water, opened it, and handed it to me. I drained it in about three gulps. “How do you feel?”
“Terrible,” I said, “but since I got shot through the shoulder yesterday, on balance I feel pretty good. Thanks for the water. Who the hell are you?”
The green-eyed woman seemed amused. “I am Dr. Claudia Dorius, that’s who the hell I am. For a woman who was shot, you seem to be remarkably healthy.”
“Guess so,” I said, looking at my left shoulder. My jacket was gone, and someone had cut away my left sleeve. The skin of my shoulder was smooth and unmarked. I patted my back, feeling for the exit wound, but it was gone.
“Let me have a look quick,” said Claudia with brisk medical authority, reaching for a medical kit and dropping to her haunches in front of me. She shone a penlight in my eyes, checked my pulse, and took my blood pressure. “As far as I can tell, you’re healthy. Just exhausted and heading towards dehydration. You should probably drink a lot of water and eat something.”
“Who am I to refuse the doctor’s orders?” I said.
Claudia laughed, once. “You seem like the type.” She looked at Caina, her amusement turning to coldness again. “I’ll send you the bill.”
“Thank you,” said Caina. “For coming out on such short notice.”
Claudia ignored her and looked at me. “Here’s some more advice.” She leveled a finger at Caina, still looking at me. “Stay away from her. She’s dangerous, and she’ll get you killed and not lose a minute of sleep over it.”
With that, Claudia turned and opened the door, and I recognized the basement hallway below the Ghost Securities headquarters. I heard the click of Claudia’s shoes against the concrete floor until the door swung shut.
“I don’t think she likes you very much,” I said.
“She doesn’t,” said Caina. She had been cool as ice during our fight with the specters and our escape from Sulzer’s undead, but now she looked rattled. No, that wasn’t quite it. She seemed haunted.
“What, did you make fun of her shoes?” I said.
“I got her brother killed,” said Caina, staring at the wall.
I thought of Russell and went cold.
“You see,” said Caina, “her brother and I were...quite close. Then he died saving my life and the lives of many other people. Claudia has never forgiven me for it. Nor should she.” Some of the reserve drained from her face, and she looked tired and sad.
I didn’t say anything. I thought about how I would feel if Russell died saving someone. I also thought about how I would feel if Riordan was killed saving my life. Because he had almost died many times to save my life. He had infiltrated the Rebels to help me, and if he had made a single mistake, Nicholas would have put a bullet into his head.
“I’m sorry,” I said at last. “If my husband was killed...I’m not sure how I would react, but a lot of people would die.”
“No, I’m sorry,” said Caina. “You saved my life, Nadia. Thank you. I should have realized those damned undead might figure out that we were following them. They don’t seem to perceive linear time, and...”
I shrugged. “I screwed up, too. I’ve dealt with undead before. And I underestimated Sulzer.”
“But I am sorry,” said Caina. “I should have seen it coming, I...”
“For God’s sake,” I said. “It wasn’t your fault. We both screwed up, and Sulzer got lucky.” I thought of the haunted look in her eyes as she spoke of Dr. Dorius’s brother. “I get the impression that you tend to blame yourself for more things than you’re really responsible for.”
Caina scowled, opened her mouth, closed it, and then sighed. It was fascinating to watch.
“People tell me that,” she said in a quiet voice. “Again and again.”
“Well, if it makes you feel better, thanks for looking after me,” I said. “And thanks for calling that doctor. That must have been hard since she hates your guts.”
“But she came nonetheless,” said Caina. “Claudia is a doctor before anything else.”
“She seems the bossy type,” I said, and Caina laughed. “Instead of trying to assign blame, we should figure out what to do next.”
“True. First, that Elven woman with Sulzer was an Archon,” said Caina. “I thought all the Archons died in the Mage Fall.”
“Never believe anything you see on the news,” I said. “Also, almost nearly all the Archons died in the Mage Fall, but only if they were on Kalvarion at the time. If there were any Archons on Earth, the Mage Fall wouldn’t have reached them. I bet that Archon woman was here for the battle of New York and hid out with Sulzer after Venomhold was destroyed.” I shook my head and stood up, pleased that I didn’t fall over. “What happened after I passed out?”
“I got you here,” said Caina, “and down to our infirmary. You didn’t seem to be in any immediate danger, so I took care of the cleanup from our...incident at the parking ramp. We didn’t show up on any of the security cameras and weren’t persons of interest in the investigation, but they did get the car’s license plate. Fortunately, it isn’t connected to the company at all, so there are no links here.”
“What about Sulzer?” I said.
Caina shook her head. “The cameras got his license plate, too, but the van isn’t connected to any of his companies. Homeland Security is investigating the incident as either an arson, a car accident, or an insurance fraud.”
I scowled. “Insurance fraud? Seriously?”
Caina shrugged. “You know what stock traders are like, and that ramp was full of expensive cars. Half the brokers in the Stock Exchange would set their own houses on fire if they thought they could cover it up and cash out.”
I took a step forward, winced at the feel of the cold, smooth concrete of the floor. “Where’d my shoes go?” Caina pointed to the side of the cot, and I slipped them back on. “Okay. Let’s think this through. You got the license plate of the van?”
“Yeah,” said Caina. “It’s registered to one of Sulzer’s companies, one that owns a couple of restaurants. I suppose if we manage to tie him to the time of the explosion, that might make Homeland Security take a closer look at him, but it won’t do any good. If they question him, he’ll say he saw an explosion and had no idea what the hell happened. Probably would try to sue the ramp’s owners in the process.”
“Sounds like him,” I said. “But he had come to the bank to get the book. We know he left with the book, which meant he needed it for something. Or that Archon needed it. No, wait. She didn’t use any necromancy during the fight, did she?”
“No,” said Caina. “Sulzer’s aura was necromantic, and he was the one controlling the undead. The Archon woman was using dark magic, but her aura didn’t have the necromantic taint.”
“They must be working together,” I said. “She had the book and didn’t want to use it. So, she gave it to Sulzer. The Archons thought that humans were just clever monkeys, and she wouldn’t care what the book and using necromancy would do to Sulzer. I bet Sulzer thinks he’s the one running the show, but the Archon is pulling the strings.”
“Makes sense,” said Caina. “We might have spooked them, though.”
“Yeah,” I said, “but they won the fight. We would have frightened them, but not enough for them to flee the city. They will take the book and keep it secure wherever Sulzer created his pet undead. Probably a warehouse or an empty apartment building or something he has leased through one of his fake companies.”
“But we don’t know where it is,” said Caina. “If we had been able to follow Sulzer, that would be one thing, but we had to get out of there before Homeland Security showed up.”
“And we weren’t any shape to win a fight against Sulzer,” I said. I snapped my fingers, looking around. “Shit, where’s my purse? I had pictures of the deeds on my phone. I didn’t have time to look at them all.”
“On the counter,” said Caina. She crossed to the counter and passed it to me. I opened my purse and pulled out my phone. To my dismay, there was a missed call from Riordan.
God, what was I going to tell him? I didn’t want to tell him that I had been shot, that I had nearly gotten killed. But while I was new to being married, I was pretty sure that keeping secrets from your spouse was probably a bad idea most of the time. Okay, I would tell him in person when he got back. Not over the phone. It wasn’t safe to talk about my job over the phone anyway.
I tapped out a quick text message, telling him that I was sorry I had missed his call and that I was all right. Which was technically true. I said that I loved him and wanted to see him soon, which was true without any technicalities whatsoever. Caina waited without complaint while I tapped out the message. No doubt she had deduced what I was doing.
“Okay,” I said, switching to the phone’s photo gallery app. “Let’s see what we have. I’m betting that one of these deeds is the place he’s been using to create undead creatures.”
We bent over the phone, and I started swiping over the pictures of the deeds. We passed all the ones in Spanish since I didn’t think we had frightened Sulzer enough for him to flee to Colombia. Instead, we focused on the ones for properties in Brooklyn. Two of them were for apartment buildings, which might work, but the third…
“Wait,” I said. “That address. Isn’t that...”
“That’s the Cattleman’s Pride,” said Caina.
We looked at each other.
“Goddamn,” I said. “That was it all along. That’s where he’s been using necromancy. Either in the upper floors or in the cellar or something. That’s why those specters came after me when I used magic in the club. Sulzer must have commanded them to keep watch over the club, to go after anyone who used magic nearby. That’s why they manifested and attacked.”
“It makes sense,” said Caina. “I should have seen it sooner. I thought one of Sulzer’s cronies owned the club. But if he owns it himself, no wonder he has all his meetings there.”
“Do you know what he uses the top two floors of the building for?” I said.
“Closed for renovations,” said Caina.
We looked at each other.
“Sounds like a euphemism,” I said. “We’ll have to check it out. Damned if I know how, though.” I paced in a circle, scowling. “If I use a Mask spell, it will draw the attention of the specters. I’m pretty sure ‘Marianna’ has gotten fired for missing work, so you can’t go back as a waitress. Two women of our age who just walk into a place like that are going to draw attention.” I came to a stop, trying to think. “I suppose I could Cloak outside and then go inside to look around, but that’s chancy.”
Caina nodded. “I have another idea.”
“Oh?” I said.
“Can you dress in such a way so that you look...” She waved her hand, searching for an appropriate euphemism. “Trashy.”
“Trashy?” I said. “Sure, that’s easy. I...” I stopped. “Wait. You don’t want to audition as dancers or something?”
“God, no,” said Caina. “I have a better idea. I’ll disguise myself as a male lawyer, and you’ll come as my date. Another couple coming to the Cattleman’s Pride won’t draw any attention, and we’ll be able to slip away from the crowd and look around upstairs.”
I stared at her. “But you don’t look anything like a man.”
“That’s where the art of disguise comes in.”
“You can really disguise yourself as a man?” I said. I could, and I had done so frequently. But I had the Masking spell. Caina didn’t.
“Oh, yes,” said Caina.
“What the hell,” I said. “This I’ve got to see.”
***