Dani
Dani was perched in one of the visitors’ chairs in the office as the COO perused her computer screen. Margorie Devoe, the Chief Operating Officer of “The Seven’s,” was behind her desk, making her wait. Hoping to make her squirm. Make her worry.
Power games pissed Dani off; always had. But she knew how this game was played. She relaxed into the stiff-backed chair and sipped the coffee. It was still hot, so she hadn’t been here as long as it felt like. She lifted a hand and stroked her pearls, an affectation that went along with her undercover ID and fake personal and professional history.
She had spent the early morning in the lab, while the techs, the psychologist, and the counselor tested her magical abilities, and then the later morning filling out paperwork: medical records, financial records, personal and professional history. Part of the paperwork was true, the rest was total fiction and was currently being run through “The Seven’s” IT department for verification. If her cover didn’t hold, if someone picked holes in her false identification, she’d be tossed out on her butt, and their client would have no way to find their missing family member.
The laboratory testing had taken place in a void room and Dani had failed. Utterly. On purpose. Instead of igniting the candle, or heating the cup of water with her power, she had blown up a computer and the desk it had been sitting on, and then set a wooden doorway on fire, the blaze so hot she had set off the fire alarm and the fire department had shown up, lights, sirens, and hunky first responders, most young enough to be her grandsons.
Blowing things up and setting things on fire had been fun, and not something she’d done on purpose in years. Her cover was that of a spry, elegant woman whose power came on her late in life, and she had no way to control it.
She looked out the window of Devoe’s penthouse office and something white caught her eye. She pulled off her reading glasses and sipped her coffee, watching as if bored by waiting.
Two men wearing white hazmat suits with full face and head coverings, were across the quad from The Sevens’ main building. They lifted a gurney out of a white truck. A truck. Not an ambulance.
The men pushed the stretcher-on-wheels up a ramp toward the building. On the gurney was a sheet that appeared to be covering a person. Her heartrate sped.
Why Hazmat suits?
The breeze caught the sheet covering the body. Whipped it up in a high billow.
The woman beneath it was wearing a hospital gown. Void strips were over her head. Void strips stopped magical power. What the ever freaking hell?
Devoe spun her fancy leather chair to face Dani, her gaze one of evaluation.
Dani swiveled her head, met Devoe’s eyes, and lifted her eyebrows in question. Not speaking, not giving the woman that much control. The silence stretched. Dani sipped.
“You have a powerful and uncontrolled talent,” Devoe said. “Seven Oaks Assisted Living and Magic Training Facility is the best teaching institution to educate a woman of your advanced years in how to harness and direct that power.”
Advanced years, my ass, Dani thought. Devoe was either a rude little twit or trying to push her buttons. Maybe both. But she simply sipped.
Devoe extended a long-fingered, perfectly manicured hand across her desk, pushing an electronic pad. With her other hand, she slid paper copies across. The papers were Dani’s application as student and resident at the magic school. The electronic signature was attached to … nothing. The COO’s eyes glittered.
Dani accepted both and hoped by all that was holy her team had discovered something through the small Invader device she had plugged in to the hidden wall socket in the lab. Taking a breath, she signed her life away. Maybe literally.