We lapsed into silence as I drove. Thinking of Sybil’s advice, I remembered that despite all of this Dragon Fae business, we were still partners. That had always meant something to me. “Thank you for handling those magical objects in Christoff’s home. It’s nice not having to worry about that.”

  I glanced at Deacon when he didn’t respond. I could have done without the surprised look on his face, but he recovered quickly.

  “You’re welcome. I’d imagine after the way your last partner died it’d be stressful for you to be around those things.”

  He seemed to want some kind of response, so I nodded.

  Deacon placed his arm on the console between us. “You can talk to me about it if you want. I can’t imagine how traumatizing it was.”

  “Not as traumatizing as it was for a family who won’t ever get their daughter back. I’ve been around my share of death. It’s all a waste, not a trauma.”

  “So is that your secret? You don’t care? Or you pretend not to? After all, you retrieved the item that killed her. That must have been nerve-racking.”

  I tried to find even a trace of judgement in his voice but came up empty. “I did what I had to. If I didn’t get it, then she would have died for nothing. I don’t sentimentalize these things. Someday I’ll be in her place. It’s all a matter of luck.”

  “And skill.”

  I shrugged. “More luck. No one’s perfect. We all slip up. The question is whether luck is on our side and we can recover. She couldn’t.” I wasn’t about to condemn a dead woman. She’d made a mistake. No matter how skilled I was, it could still happen to me.

  “Your life must be very difficult.”

  I laughed to keep my feelings at bay. I didn’t like it when he sounded so caring. “Didn’t you say you protected the dragons in Elustria? I’d imagine that’s difficult. Dragon scales go for a premium.”

  “It’s not the same. Defending a fixed position is an entirely different situation. The fighting is more fair. It’s me against a poacher. There aren’t as many surprises.”

  “I’d say it’s only different because you’re more familiar with it. I’d find that kind of work exhausting.”

  His eyes softened and the corners of his mouth lifted the slightest bit. “We each have our strengths then.”

  We arrived five minutes before the start of the meeting. The lobby of the hotel was silent, not a soul in sight. The doors to the designated conference room were closed with a piece of paper taped to them.

  Meeting cancelled.

  “No, this can’t be right,” I said as I tried the door just in case. “If these seminars have anything to do with what they’re planning, they wouldn’t cancel a meeting this close to the feast.” I pulled out my phone to call Trevor.

  “Maybe the Vegas meeting is the only one connected to the Directorate,” Deacon suggested.

  “No, Christoff said they had meetings going on all over.”

  Trevor picked up on the fourth ring, his voice groggy and barely coherent. “Nadiya? I just went to bed. What do you need?”

  “I’m at the Phoenix seminar, but there’s a sign saying it’s been cancelled. I know there has to be more to it than that. I need you to look on Christoff’s computer and see if there’s an email or calendar or message board or something explaining what’s going on with today’s meeting.”

  “On it. Call you back in a few.”

  I put my phone away and headed to the front desk.

  “What now?” Deacon asked.

  “We’ll see what we can find out.” At the front desk, I addressed the woman on duty. “Excuse me, but we’re here for the Be Your Best Self meeting. It says on the door that it’s been cancelled. Do you know if it was moved or re-scheduled or anything?”

  “I’m sorry, I don’t. We got a call last night from the organizer saying that he needed to cancel and asking us to put the note on the door.” The girl was gregarious and had her cell phone out next to the computer. She had a social network up where I could see she had recently posted. Strictly adhering to corporate rules and policies clearly wasn’t a priority if she was posting on social media during work. That would make my job easier.

  I glanced around the empty lobby. “I don’t see anyone around. Has anyone else asked about the meeting?”

  “No. I think they told most of the regulars.”

  I sighed and let a relieved smile overtake my face. “That explains it then. We’re new to the area. Is the meeting usually full of regulars? Do you see the same people week after week?”

  “Oh, yes.” She said it with a little too much animation.

  “Little bit of a crazy crowd?” I asked, knowingly.

  She realized that as part of this crowd, I could find her response offensive. “I’d say distinctive.”

  I laughed, trying to put her at ease. “I understand. Can I get the phone number of the organizer from you? Like I said, I’m new to the area and need to know how to get on the phone tree.”

  “Certainly. His name’s Phil Lester. Here, let me write down his number for you.” She scrawled it on the back of one of the hotel’s business cards and handed it to me.

  “Thank you so much. I really appreciate it. I’ll see you next week!” I waved as I walked away, Deacon following behind. Humans were easy to talk into violating privacy policies.

  I pulled out my phone to call the number and see what happened, but it rang before I had a chance to dial. Trevor. “Thanks for getting back to me. What have you got?”

  “The meeting’s been moved. I’m texting you the address. Listen, the way it was talked about is weird. They moved the meeting because they didn’t want any guests. It said this was a meeting only for the true believers who have proved themselves by reaching a certain level. They also changed the time to nine thirty because of timing issues with a special guest. None of this sounds good.”

  “Thanks, Trevor.”

  “Be safe.”

  “I always am.” I hung up and climbed into the car. “Come on. We’re going to have to race to get there in time.”

  Deacon barely closed his door before I sped off. The meeting started in eighteen minutes. The GPS said it’d take at least twenty-eight to get there. “Buckle up.”

  23

  If the whole spy gig ever ran out, I had a real future as a race car driver. Might make for a nice retirement. Much less dangerous, at least.

  The address took us to a commercial district. I parked near a bunch of cars at the end of a row of warehouses. Deacon and I found the warehouse specified in the address and watched it from behind a building opposite the entrance. A man stood guard outside the warehouse door. He held a clipboard with a list on it that he checked when a few stragglers approached him. After confirming they were on the list, he let them in. Whatever this was, they were taking it seriously as far as only being for true believers.

  “He’s a mage,” Deacon said from behind me.

  “Are you sure?” If he were a mage, that would make it a lot harder to get inside. Deacon would be impossible to get inside with the amount of magic he radiated.

  “Positive.”

  “It’s not someone inside who’s a mage?”

  Deacon chuckled without humor. “Oh, there are more inside, don’t you worry.”

  “We’ll have to spy the old-fashioned way then. You stay here. He’ll notice your magic. I’ll watch through a window.”

  “Is that really going to be useful without hearing what they say?”

  “Oh, I’ll hear everything.” I fished around inside my bag and held up a listening device Trevor had given me. It fit in the palm of my hand. “Human technology has its uses.” At times, technology seemed almost like magic. Before Deacon could say anything else, I made my way toward the building. I expected to have to go around the long way in order to avoid the sight line of the man out front, but once the meeting started, he went inside. A few seconds later, magic radiated from the door. He’d sealed it. That was my cue to find a better vantage point.

  The window I peeked through didn’t give me the best view, but it was better than nothing. I didn’t want to risk getting closer and being seen. A man who was the carbon copy of Bob except this time he had blond hair stood at the front of the room. I assumed this was Phil. I nestled the earpiece from the listening device in my ear and pointed the directional mic at the speaker. The man’s voice came through as clearly as if I were sitting in the room.

  “Welcome! I am so excited you all could make it today. I was a little worried that the change of time and venue would cause some of you to miss out, but I hope you understand. Today’s meeting is very important. We had to make sure—”

  Deacon walked up behind me. I didn’t need to turn around to know it was him. His magic was not only powerful but familiar now. It rolled off him and wrapped around me, like the embrace of a friend. “Are you sure they won’t be able to sense your magic?”

  “No. I don’t think they’re looking for it. There are a few mages in there, and something else, something more powerful. No one’s going to be able to single out my magic while I’m out here.”

  I focused back on the meeting. Phil was still speaking. “Today is the day you’ve all been waiting for. Today, you are going to ascend to a higher plane.”

  “Is the guy speaking a mage?” I asked Deacon.

  “No. There are two over there by the table.” He made a motion with his head, but I already knew where he was talking about. They were fiddling with something on a folding table.

  “Do you have any idea what it is they’re messing with?”

  Deacon cocked his head to the side and looked into the distance, as if he were concentrating while taking in deep breaths. After a few seconds, he shook his head. “No, I can’t make it out. I think there’s something magical there, but I’m too far away to get a good read on it, especially with all this other magic floating around.”

  “When you say there’s stronger magic in there, what are we talking about?”

  “I think it’s an elf, but there’s something different about it. Might be a shade?”

  Shit. The last thing we needed was someone helping out the mages. Shades were also known as fallen elves because they had fallen from grace in the elf community. They were mercenary in nature, simply magic-for-hire. What a couple of mages in a room full of humans were going to do with a shade was anyone’s guess.

  “All the mages are using cloakers. So they’re not completely confident that we wouldn’t find out about this meeting.” Deacon’s ability as a sniffer was invaluable. It was one thing to be able to identify magic, it was another to sense it from behind a cloaker.

  “Either that or they don’t want their elf friend to be able to identify them by their magic. If this person’s a mercenary, they’re just as likely to sell the imprints of these mages to us after aiding them. Remember, these are the same type of people who will kill a dragon for its scales.”

  Deacon took a deep breath, taking in the scents around him. “Well, whoever it is just performed some pretty serious magic.”

  I searched for signs of the magic Deacon smelled but couldn’t see anything. The humans lined up one by one in front of the table and were handed something. I strained my eyes but still couldn’t make them out.

  “I recognize those,” Deacon said. “They’re being given the same devices we found at Christoff’s house.”

  “That doesn’t make any sense. Why would they want humans to give off a magical imprint?” I looked over my shoulder at Deacon. “These people will do anything their leaders tell them. And they’re impossible for us to trace. Why destroy the one advantage they have with these humans by having them give off magic?”

  Phil announced, “Once you receive your items, step right this way, and you will ascend to a higher plane.” He gestured to a doorway leading to another room that wasn’t visible from our vantage point. Without bothering to explain to Deacon, who didn’t have an earpiece to hear Phil, I ran around the corner of the building and found a window that would give us access.

  A cloaked figure, who I assumed was the shade, stood in one corner, out of the way and not really visible to the humans. But that wasn’t the shocker. In the center of the room stood a portal to Elustria. One by one the humans walked through to a chorus of oohs and ahhs. The magical devices must somehow allow the humans to pass through the portal. Normally, a non-magical living creature wouldn’t be able to go through. These devices meant the mages could use humans in Elustria as slave labor or test subjects for experimental magic. I didn’t know exactly what the Directorate had planned for them, but I felt reasonably sure that none of these humans would ever return to Earth. Families would be missing husbands and wives, mothers and fathers, sons and daughters tonight.

  Once the fifteen or so humans had disappeared through the portal, the mages followed and then the elf. Just like that, they were all gone, not leaving a trace that they had ever been there. With the mages gone, the spell binding the door vanished, allowing me and Deacon to enter. We walked to the rooms in the back of the warehouse. Nothing remained except for the folding table they had used to distribute the devices.

  While I wouldn’t be able to get imprints of the mages because of their cloakers, the shade was a different matter. I entered the room where the portal had been and performed the spell quickly, gritting my teeth against the pain my magic caused. A clay tablet formed in the air above where the shade had stood. When the shade’s magic imprinted on it, I sealed the tablet and levitated it to me. With any luck, the Circle would be able to identify the elf who helped them. We might be able to get answers from him. For the right price, I was certain we would. In which case, the mages made a wise decision in hiding their magic.

  I didn’t bother with the imprints left by the devices. We didn’t have time, and we already knew they wouldn’t match anything on record. Still, it’d behoove Alistair to have the Circle send in a team to collect them all. We might be able to trace them in Elustria.

  “What do you think that was?” Deacon asked after I handed him the imprint. My bag was full and, due to some strange human quirk, men always seemed to have bigger pockets to store things.

  “They just proved that those devices can get a human through a portal. There’s been talk in the past that the Directorate would want to use humans as slave labor. We’ve been worried about them doing that here on Earth for ages.” I couldn’t get any more useful information from this room, so I moved to leave.

  “Wait.” Deacon’s arm shot out in front of me and then his finger went to his lips. He smelled the air, taking in a deep breath, his eyes closing. After a second, his eyes opened and darted back and forth. How something could stand out to him in this mess of imprints confounded me. “Someone’s here.”

  The door at the front of the warehouse slammed shut. We both took off at a sprint. When we reached the door, Deacon skidded to a halt, and barred the way with his arms. “Don’t touch it.”

  Magic radiated from the door. It wasn’t a strong spell, but there was a quicker and less painful way out than countering it. I kicked out the glass window to the left of the door and climbed through, ignoring the cuts the glass shards left on my bare arms. It hurt less than performing magic.

  Deacon followed, and we ran after the mage. He darted between two buildings. When we turned the corner, he was nowhere to be found. Teleportation rings sat in the gravel.

  “Shit. Is it really asking too much for something to go our way?” I ran my hands through my hair, grabbing the roots in frustration. I turned to Deacon. “Did you at least get a feel for his magic?”

  Deacon nodded. “Yeah, I could identify it if I had to.”

  Maybe if we sat down with some imprints on file he’d be able to identify the person. “Let’s head back. We’ll have Alistair send a team here to gather up all the imprints and trace where those rings go.”

  In the car, I called Alistair before Deacon even had his seat belt fastened. The phone rang and rang, eventually going to voicemail. I hung up without leaving a message. “He must be in Elustria. I want to get a team in there as soon as possible, while those imprints are still fresh. Do you have any way of contacting the Circle?” I asked Deacon.

  “No, but didn’t you say that you met Sybil? Give her a call. I’m sure she has ways.”

  Luckily, Sybil had taken my phone and programmed her number into it when she was at my apartment. She picked up on the first ring. “Sybil, it’s Nadiya.”

  “I know who it is. You need to come home, quickly. There’s been an incident.” I didn’t recognize her voice. A serious, somber tone came through her shaky words, as if she held back tears.

  “What is it?” My mind flew to Alistair. I assumed he was in Elustria, but maybe the Directorate had found him.

  “I don’t have very many details. Everyone at the Circle is understandably busy. There’s been an attack.”

  “What?” Deacon said, sitting up in his seat. “Where? Who was the target?” The mix of anger and protective concern in his voice made me happy we fought on the same side.

  “It’s not Alistair, is it?” I asked before Sybil could answer. “I called him and didn’t get an answer.”

  “No, it’s not him.” Her voice stopped shaking. Relief washed over me. At least she sounded sure. “Alistair is probably just busy like everyone else. Get over here. I’m in contact with the Circle, and you’ll know everything as soon as I do.”

  I glanced over at Deacon and his eyes met mine. It didn’t escape either of us that she hadn’t answered our questions. In that moment, we were a true partnership. We were both fighters needing to know our next target.

  “You have to know more than that,” I said. “What do you mean when you say there was an attack? Is it Meilin? The Circle? One of the royal courts? An assassination?”

  She hesitated. I didn’t know what could be worse than those options. When she spoke, it became apparent that the pause had been for her to collect her voice. “All I know is that a group of mages attacked a school full of children.”

 

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