I looked at Deacon. “We’re going to St. Louis.”

  36

  Jonathan Brooks lived in a run-down neighborhood. Dogs incessantly barked and junk filled overgrown yards. He had to make decent money doing what he did, but I guessed he had a hard time laundering it. Besides, with the FBI watching him, he wouldn’t want to be flashing around money.

  After Sybil ported us here, we had “borrowed” a human’s car and driven by the address Trevor had given me. The FBI surveillance wasn’t too hard to find. Once we got the lay of the land, we returned the car. Sybil even insisted we top off the gas. All that was left was to port inside Jonathan’s home.

  I’d tried to figure out a way to do this without Sybil. She had been the Oracle her entire life, raised in a temple studying prophecy and had absolutely no training for this sort of thing. Unless we had some tea leaves to read, she’d be nothing but a liability. However, we needed her to teleport us here. This close to the Directorate’s path, we couldn’t risk my imprint getting out. That meant the cuff stayed firmly in place. While I could still teleport with the cuff, we didn’t know what other magic we would need. So Sybil had come out of necessity. She was the best bet to avoid detection by the FBI and any other humans that may be around. Accepting that it had to be this way, I gave one last set of instructions to Sybil and Deacon.

  “Before we go in there, it needs to be clear that I’m in charge. I tell you to get out, you get out. We don’t know what we’re going to find. I don’t need either of you to get hurt or die. So if you believe at all that I’m the Dragon Fae, then I’m pulling rank. Do you understand? Even if you think that listening to me will cause something bad to happen to me, I need your word that you’ll listen.” This whole Dragon Fae gig had to be good for something. The only way I could focus on the job that needed to be done was if I knew they’d listen when I tried to protect them.

  “Fine,” Deacon said, “but keep in mind that I can heal. It gives me an advantage. And as long as we’re both still alive, I can heal you too.”

  I looked at Sybil. She smiled wide. “I got it.”

  “Let’s go.” I held up both hands and Deacon, Sybil, and I formed a circle.

  Sybil ported us into Jonathan’s kitchen. All of the blinds and drapes were drawn, probably to keep prying eyes out. Dirty dishes leaned precariously in the sink. A cockroach skittered across the floor at our appearance. From the other room, we could hear the TV. That would make it easier to sneak up on him. Sybil cast a shield around us, muting any noise we would make from being heard outside of our bubble.

  “All right,” I said, “I’ll get in behind him and make my move. You two stay behind me. Deacon, try to look intimidating.” He wouldn’t need to try hard. Shifters who spent a lot of time in their animal form were always well built. Given Deacon’s profession, he was even more so. A guy like him wasn’t someone you wanted to find yourself on the wrong side of. “Sybil.” There was no helping it. I didn’t know how to get her to look like anything other than a kid excited about her first great adventure. “Just, try to not look so peppy.” Sybil rearranged her face and nodded. It was hopeless. On second thought, “Never mind. Look excited. You’ll be the crazy sadist of the group.”

  “Ooh, I like the sound of that.” I had to work to keep myself from laughing. Having the Oracle along may be a liability, but it was a fun one.

  We made our way together to the living room. Jonathan had his back to us, sitting on the sofa watching TV, three empty beer bottles at his feet. That should make my job easier. Even if he tried to fight, his reaction times would be slow. I crept up behind him and in one smooth movement got his neck into a chokehold. As he struggled, I leaned down and whispered into his ear. “Shh, wouldn’t want your friends at the FBI to overhear us, would we?”

  Jonathan shook his head. In reality, Sybil’s shield kept anyone from overhearing us, but there was no need for him to know that just yet. Let him stress a little bit.

  “Now, will you cooperate if I let you go?” I asked.

  Jonathan nodded, obviously lying. I released him, and he moved for a knife that sat on the coffee table. How he thought I had been able to sneak into his home and attack him from behind without noticing the knife on the table was beyond me. When he finally whirled around with the blade in hand, his grip weakened when he saw Sybil and Deacon behind me.

  “Oh, isn’t that cute,” I said. “You think your little knife will protect you?” In less than a second I leapt over the sofa, twisted his arm behind him, grabbed his knife, and held it to his throat. “I don’t know why you want to make this difficult. We only want to talk. Let’s try this again, and I’ll be keeping the knife.”

  I released him, and he turned to face me and the others, keeping his back to the wall. He tried to keep his composure cool, but he glanced nervously at the knife. I had my hands at my sides, keeping only a loose grip on the weapon. Counterintuitively, keeping a relaxed stance actually made the knife more threatening and unpredictable. It showed I knew I didn’t need to point it at him. I didn’t need the knife at all to do him harm, but I’d keep it just to prove that I controlled his only means of defense.

  “What do you want?” Jonathan asked, focusing on me, pretending Deacon and Sybil weren’t there.

  “Now that’s better. I want some technical advice, thank you for asking. You sold some components to some people. I simply want some instructions on how to use them.”

  Jonathan looked around the room, from side to side, anywhere but in my eyes. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Oh, I think you do. You see, I have it on good authority that you’ve had a bit of a surveillance problem for quite a while now. It seems business really dries up when it’s no longer private. So the deal I’m talking about would be the last big deal you made. I need to know if there’s a way to remotely disable the detonators.”

  Something in Jonathan’s eyes shifted, a realization of something. A newer agent would think he was simply coming to understand that I knew what I was talking about, but I wasn’t new. There was something I didn’t know, and Jonathan was surprised, maybe relieved, about it. “Why would I tell you that?”

  “Because I have the power to make your life miserable. Just tell me how to disable them and I’ll leave you alone.”

  “What are you, FBI?”

  I nodded to Deacon and he grabbed Jonathan from behind, immobilizing his arms. Did Jonathan feel the powerful magic emanating from Deacon? I could feel it anytime I came near him. The touch of his skin was like an electric current. Did humans feel it the same way I did? It seemed impossible that they wouldn’t even though they always seemed oblivious to magic.

  I advanced on Jonathan. “If I were FBI, would I be doing it this way? I would just pull you in if I needed to. No, I’m a lot scarier than that. You see, if I was from the government, there’d be all these silly little rules about what I could and could not do. You’d have all these frivolous rights that I’d have to dance around.” I patted him on the head condescendingly. “Don’t you worry your little head about me possibly being FBI. I’m free to do whatever I please. And you don’t have to worry about anyone finding out. The FBI won’t find out and your customers won’t find out either.”

  “Do what you want, but all I have to do is scream and the guys parked outside will come running.”

  “Oh really? We’ve been discussing a lot of illegal activity, and they haven’t come in yet.”

  “Yeah, they just want this all on tape.”

  I came right up to him, as close as possible without touching. I leaned down to his ear and whispered, “Or, they can’t hear us at all.” I straightened and looked at him. “Do you really think I’d be so stupid as to come in here and let myself be eavesdropped on? I understand you’re not smart enough to avoid their surveillance, but I’m not you. You can scream and yell until you lose your voice. No one’s going to hear you.”

  “No offense”—Jonathan looked over his shoulder at Deacon then back to me—“but you’re not nearly as scary as the people I sold to.”

  I stepped back, pursed my lips, and nodded. “You’re right. I’m not. But she is.” I nodded to Sybil. She had her freaky perky grin on and waved at Jonathan, a little girlish twinkle of the fingers. “That’s Sybil, the sadist. There’s no telling what she’ll do to you.” I really didn’t know. The thought of Sybil ever performing an offensive spell was slightly funny. It didn’t matter. While I didn’t consider Jonathan an innocent human, I still really didn’t want to hurt him. Fear was a powerful motivator, and people didn’t need to actually experience pain to feel fear.

  “I’m telling you, you’re wasting your time.”

  Sybil sighed, and that was all the warning she gave. The knife flew from my hand and sliced through the air just in front of Jonathan, cleanly cutting away his T-shirt. Despite my training, I whipped my head around to Sybil, shocked.

  She shrugged. “I was getting tired of waiting. This way’s quicker.”

  Jonathan pissed himself and sweat poured down his face as he stared at the point of the blade just a hair’s breadth from his right eye. “What the hell.” His voice trembled.

  I focused back on him, all business. “I suggest you answer my questions. How do you disable the detonators?”

  “Man, get that knife away from me.”

  Just seeing the tip of the blade so delicately positioned at his eye made my head hurt. Sybil flicked her wrist and Jonathan screamed, but the knife stayed in place.

  “What did you do?” I asked Sybil.

  “Seeing the knife was clearly bothering him, so I took his sight.” Sybil then addressed Jonathan. “You can still feel it though, right?” She shook the knife side to side, causing a breeze against Jonathan’s eye. The spell she cast was a simple one. It wouldn’t permanently blind him. In fact, he technically wasn’t blind. Sybil just made him see nothing but black.

  “Stop. I can’t tell you what you want. The detonator can’t be deactivated.”

  He didn’t seem to be lying. “You have a problem there. My guy tells me there’s a lot of electronic communication going on between the bombs and the detonators. You should be able to remotely turn them off.”

  “Your guy’s wrong. There’s no way to control them. There’s one master detonator. The other detonators aren’t detonators at all. They’re like relay points, signal boosters. The detonator triggers them all and they tell the bombs to go off. There’s nothing I can do to stop it. If you want to control those explosives, you have to physically get the detonator.”

  “Don’t lie to me,” I said, my voice dangerously low.

  “I’m not. I swear. Please, let me go. I won’t tell anyone you were here.” His voice trembled until it broke into a watery mess.

  This wasn’t at all how this was supposed to go. We were supposed to come here, Jonathan would tell us how to disable the detonators, Trevor would hack into the cloud or whatever, and the job would be done. “Who has the detonator?”

  “I don’t know, man. I never met anyone. Everything’s done anonymously. I delivered the package via a dead drop.”

  “You’re telling me you left stuff that dangerous in a dead drop?” Stupid didn’t even come close to describing it.

  “Yeah, that’s the only way I’d get paid.”

  “You’re an idiot.” I turned and paced. I believed him when he said he didn’t know who had the detonator. If he did know, he’d likely be dead.

  “What do you want to do now?” Deacon asked, still holding Jonathan’s arms behind his back. “I can snap his neck and be done with it,” he added for dramatic effect.

  A high-pitched whine came from Jonathan. “Nah, man. Please. I answered your questions.”

  I didn’t know what to do with him. That was another complication. Even if he did tell someone, no one would believe his story.

  “I can take care of his memory,” Sybil said.

  “You can do that?” I asked.

  “Sure, on humans. The subject can’t have magic.”

  Only the fae had the ability to alter a person’s mind, as far as I knew. Performing that kind of magic on a human would require less skill because humans didn’t have the defenses a magical creature would, but it was still impressive. In this instance, we’d be doing Jonathan a favor by erasing this encounter from his memory. “Go ahead then.”

  The knife fell to the ground and Sybil approached Jonathan. He struggled in Deacon’s hands. “Wait, what? Don’t let her near me.” He shook his head side to side, trying in vain to see her. “That bitch is crazy.”

  Deacon tightened his grip and kneed Jonathan in the back. “Watch your mouth.”

  Sybil placed her hand on Jonathan’s head, and he stilled. Her eyes got a faraway look in them. Jonathan’s entire body went slack. After about thirty seconds, she withdrew her hand. “He’ll be sleeping for a while. Just lay him out on the sofa. He’ll wake up and think he fell asleep watching TV. He’ll never know what happened.”

  Deacon followed her instructions. “I guess he’ll just think he pissed himself in his sleep.”

  “That’s better than what really happened,” I said. I had sorely underestimated Sybil. She reached out her hands to port us home, smiling in her usual way as if we hadn’t just tortured an arms dealer in his own home.

  37

  When we arrived at Sybil’s apartment, she wasted no time. “I’m going to get this information to Alistair and see if he’s made any progress with the prisoner. Is there anything you want me to pass along?”

  I couldn’t think of anything. Everything I’d done had led us to dead ends. “No. Let’s hope he’s had better luck getting that mage to talk.”

  Sybil nodded and considerately went to her bedroom to make the portal. That left me with Deacon and my thoughts. We didn’t even know where to begin searching for the detonator. It could literally be anywhere in the world. Without the help of the dragon shifters, we didn’t have the resources to go after every seminar location. If the mage I’d captured had given Alistair any workable intelligence, he’d have passed it along already. In short, we were screwed. In twenty-four hours, hundreds, probably thousands of people would die. I knew it, and I couldn’t do a damn thing to stop it.

  “Do you need a ride home or are you crashing here?” I asked Deacon. Ever since the scene with Drake, I didn’t even know if Deacon had a home anymore. From what I understood, he had been staying on the Syndicate compound.

  “I’m fine. Don’t worry about me. How are you doing?” He tried to meet my eyes, but I avoided the contact. I had to get out of here. I couldn’t do this with him right now. It was too much. The expectations, the guilt, the oncoming attack, the uselessness I felt. It was too much, too fast, and I thought I might explode with it.

  Ignoring his question, I brushed past him and out the door. I could hear him following me down the stairs. When I got to my car, he opened the passenger door and got in with me. I don’t know what motivated him, if it was my mood, some protective instinct, but I didn’t have the emotional energy to argue with him. If he wanted to come along, fine.

  I put the top down and peeled out of my parking space. Once I got onto the Beeline Highway I let loose, gunning it all the way to Red Mountain, letting the wind whip through my hair as if I didn’t have a care in the world. Deacon, much to his credit, kept quiet and let me drive. I pushed the car faster and faster, trying to outrun my frustrations. To some extent, it worked. By the time I pulled off the road and parked, a calm had overtaken me. I don’t know if it was the speed or just being here at one of my favorite spots.

  Red Mountain was off-limits to hikers. That made it nice and private. Deacon and I didn’t see anyone as we silently hiked to the top. At the peak, I took a seat on the ground and Deacon followed suit, close enough to be a supportive presence but not right next to me. Brilliant shades of pink painted the sky. The sun descended, long fingers of bright red reaching over the valley as if it was clawing to stay above the horizon, shining forth in all her glory before the moon could overtake her.

  My hand rested on the ground beside me. The cool dirt contrasted with the hot air. I dug my fingers into it. This barren land throbbed with life. Despite my best efforts, this desert had become home. Sometime when I wasn’t looking, it had wormed its way into my heart. These people, these humans, they’d done the same. How come the parts of my heart that Trevor and Harry held were the same size as the ones that Alistair and Deacon did? These weren’t my people. This wasn’t my home. Everything inside me screamed the contrary. I had joined the Circle in order to defend and protect my people. Sorcerers. Except now I wasn’t just a sorceress. I was also part fae. Did that explain the affinity I felt for nature both here and in Elustria? It didn’t matter. Drake had been right. The correct decision in this situation was to simply kill everyone associated with those seminars, but I couldn’t do it. I didn’t know why. I didn’t think I wanted to know.

  “What are you thinking?” Deacon asked, breaking the silence.

  “I’m wondering when this place became home.” From Trevor I had learned that Elustria and Earth weren’t all that different. All you had to do was listen to Trevor tell of the history between the Hopi and Navajo tribes to learn that people have been fighting over differences in both worlds since the beginning of time. Add in the arrival of European settlers and you saw how quickly people could put aside differences in order to fight a common threat. It was so like the history of my own world in many ways. It comforted me because we are all more alike than anyone would like to admit. And with commonality comes a hope for understanding and peace. It scared me because if this world that evolved independently of Elustria hadn’t learned to live in peace, did my world have any chance?

  Was it the fact that I could no longer freely use magic that caused me to bond with these humans? Would my feelings change if I were able to discard the cuff for good? These were stupid questions with stupid answers. It didn’t matter. I was condemned to the cuff the day I screwed up that hit in Elustria. Maybe I was becoming more human. Maybe that wasn’t such a bad thing.

 

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