“What do you think the Directorate is going to do once they realize he’s dead?” Deacon asked me from the closet as I rummaged through Christoff’s toiletries.

  “They’ll shut down his operation. They won’t let it continue until they figure out what happened to him. Since they’ll never recover a body, they won’t be satisfied with the answers.”

  The chest of drawers under the television held clothes folded neatly inside. Christoff had been the type to need everything in its place.

  “But if this mission is so important to the Directorate, do you really think they’ll just shut it down?”

  “I don’t think they’re going to shut down the entire thing, just their operations around Vegas. Since there are meetings all over the world, I’m going to guess that he wasn’t the only operative involved. It’s just going to make things harder on us if they shut down his operation and change their plans.”

  Deacon emerged from the closet holding the only indication that a mage had occupied this room: a marble. Except I knew it was more than a marble. It was a communication orb, a device that Christoff would use to communicate with other mages.

  “That’s it? Nothing hiding behind a cloaker?”

  Deacon shook his head. “Nope. This is everything. There’s no other magic in the room.”

  The fact that Christoff didn’t have any security on his room meant he didn’t think the Circle was close. Everything about this mage puzzled me, and I didn’t like it.

  I thought about leaving the orb. After all, we wouldn’t be answering it, but the last thing we needed was for a human to get their hands on it. If the Directorate tried to use it and the housekeeper or the duty manager at the hotel had it at the time, there was no telling what the mages would do. They could very well decide to murder the poor human in order to hide their tracks. “Pocket the orb,” I told Deacon.

  I hadn’t found anything of interest in the chest of drawers or the bedside table. That left the one remaining personal item in the room: a briefcase sitting on the floor next to the desk. I’d waited for Deacon to open it in case there was tellenium inside hiding magic.

  Without needing to be asked, Deacon lifted the case and placed it on the bed. When he popped open the latches, a laptop sat nestled inside. The interior pockets held flyers for more meetings across the country: St. Louis, Atlanta, Chicago, Seattle. It was not what I’d expected. I’d thought we’d find a rune, something to give us some hint of the Directorate’s plan.

  “Maybe the laptop will have some useful information on it,” Deacon said, his tone encouraging when he saw my disappointment.

  I wasn’t as disappointed as I was puzzled, though. Everything from the way Christoff kept his room to the way he killed himself confounded me. I’d never seen a mage so fully embrace their human cover before. Suicide by a tooth capsule was straight out of the human spy movies.

  Well, I’d seen my fair share of spy movies with Harry. I ran my hand around the inside of the briefcase, this time searching for something hidden. I tugged at the lining until a corner gave way.

  “Ha! I knew there had to be more.” As I pulled away the lining and attached pockets to reveal a secret compartment, Deacon crowded in beside me, ready to take over should I find a tellenium box.

  Instead, photos and a few envelopes with greeting cards fell out.

  “What the…” The word drifted into nothingness as I picked up a picture of a little boy, maybe six years old, and a woman who I presumed was his mother. The child had her same brown hair, but not her brown eyes. Staring up at me were blue eyes, Christoff’s eyes. The boy also shared Christoff’s mouth.

  Deacon ran his hand along the inside of the compartment. “There’s nothing else here.” He picked up one of the cards and read from it. “Happy birthday, darling. Wish you were here. We’ll celebrate when you get home. Paul helped me bake you a cake. He says he’ll wait until you’re home to eat it, but we’ll see how long that lasts. Love you, Sarah.”

  I picked up another piece of paper from the bed. The words “I love you daddy” were scrawled under a scribbled picture. “He had a son?” I looked up at Deacon, as if he might know something about this.

  He started to speak but then his lips clamped shut and he held up a hand, gesturing for me to be quiet. He sniffed the air. “There’s a mage outside.”

  Shit. The mage was either Christoff’s lieutenant or a Directorate operative sent to investigate. Christoff hadn’t struck me as the type to share power. He wouldn’t have a scheduled check-in after our meeting. I was his check-in. When Gregory never reported to the Directorate, that must have set off the alarm. We had to figure out a way to neutralize the situation.

  Knock, knock, knock. I motioned with my finger over my lips, encouraging Deacon to remain silent.

  Knock, knock, knock. “Christoff, it’s Collin. Open up.”

  This was why I had my cover. I strode to the door and opened it. Collin’s face registered surprise.

  “Who are you?” he asked, his eyes narrowing.

  “Ms. Solenko with Zippy Security.” I pulled out one of my business cards and handed it to him. “The question is, who are you?”

  “My name’s Collin. What’s going on here? Where’s Christoff?” Collin tried to peer around me, but I moved to block his view.

  “Why don’t you come inside and we can discuss it?” Nothing in Collin’s demeanor hinted that he knew my true nature. My trusty cuff did its job well. If I got Collin inside, it’d give me more options.

  Collin nodded and took a step forward. I opened the door wider, letting him inside. I stayed behind him, my back to the shut door.

  “Who is this?” Collin nodded at Deacon and then turned to face me. Suspicion crept into his eyes as he realized we had him trapped. The fact that he assumed we were both human kept the suspicion from turning to panic. I just had to keep him far enough away from Deacon to not feel his magic.

  “That’s Mr. Smith, head of the hotel’s security. The occupant of this room has gone missing, and we’ve been asked to investigate.” Collin’s response would give me some insight into where his mind was. Best-case scenario, he bought that we were human and would go on his way. It was almost always to our advantage to keep agents in play. We could keep eyes on him and maybe figure out what on earth the Directorate was up to. Worse-case scenario we took him in for questioning. This time, we’d be on the lookout for suicide attempts.

  Collin held my gaze, as if searching for the truth. The corner of his right eye twitched. I prepared mentally to take action but maintained my steady breathing. Collin turned back to Deacon. I took the opportunity to search for his wand or talisman. He wore a leather jacket despite the warm day. When his right hand reached into his left cuff, I crouched down and lifted my pant leg to grab my dagger, just in case. As my hand closed around the hilt, a stream of fire engulfed Collin so quickly and burned so hot that the mage didn’t even have an opportunity to scream.

  “Holy shit.” My eyes widened as I looked at Deacon. He stood in his human form, his dragon scales fading back into skin. Only his head had shifted. It was a common shifter trick to begin to shift and then change back before the transformation was complete. I’d never seen it done to such effect, though.

  I shook off my shock. I needed to douse the flames before the fire alarm went off. The memory of the pain from my cuff lingered fresh in my mind. I wanted to remove it, but I needed it to mask my imprint. Collin had been a surprise. How many other mages were waiting to surprise us?

  The only thing that could make the situation worse was if they figured out my identity. I braced for the pain. With a wave of my hand I extinguished the flame, sucking the oxygen away from it and suffocating it—cleaner than dousing it with water without having to worry about steam. The mage fell to the ground, badly disfigured. Whoever this Collin was, no one would be able to get a visual ID on him.

  Bolts of pain shot up my arm from the cuff. The pain fueled my anger, but I stamped down both. After confirming that the flames were extinguished, I faced Deacon. Instead of the panicked eyes I expected to see, confident pools of green met me. An apprehensive shadow clouded them when he saw me gearing up to dress him down. “We need to get something straight. In this partnership, I have seniority. You don’t take a single action without my approval. Got it?”

  “I just—”

  I held up my finger. “No. You don’t think. You don’t do anything. I’ve been doing this for a long time. Violence is a last resort. We didn’t have orders to kill him, and we could’ve gotten something useful out of him. At the very least he could’ve remained in play, and we could’ve surveilled him to figure out what the Directorate knows. Now that avenue’s closed to us. I have contingencies set up for just this situation.”

  “I understand, but you said it was a problem that we didn’t have a body for Christoff. Now we have a body.” He helpfully gestured to the pile of charred black flesh. “With how badly burned he his, the Directorate won’t be able to tell that it’s not Christoff.” Deacon’s sure voice made it sound reasonable. It wasn’t the worst idea in the world. It seemed he’d given his actions some thought and not acted on impulse.

  “And what’s to keep them from thinking it’s Collin?” I studied the body, searching for any identifying characteristic. Collin had stood slightly shorter than Christoff, but both of his feet sat as piles of ash. Height wouldn’t be discernible with any accuracy.

  “Nothing other than the fact that it’s a dead body, of a man, in Christoff’s room, and all things being equal, it just seems more likely to be Christoff.”

  And that brought us to the pressing issue. “A burned body in the middle of a hotel room isn’t exactly discrete. They’re still going to come to the conclusion that Christoff was assassinated.”

  Deacon cocked his head to the side as if this was a minor concern. “We can make it look like an accident.”

  “And how do we do that? What kind of accident burns him and nothing else?”

  “I was thinking more along the lines of a real fire. You pull the fire alarm, we’ll wait until the area’s evacuated, and I can scorch four or five rooms. You extinguish the flames, and no one gets hurt.”

  Different possibilities and options ran through my mind. It didn’t take long. There weren’t many alternatives. “We really need to work on your discretion.”

  “Exactly. The Circle would never do something like this. You’d never do something like this. When the Directorate finds out there was a hotel fire, where humans could’ve been hurt, they’re more likely to take it at face value. It’s not your style. Not the style of the Circle. You know what they say. If it looks like a dragon and flies like a dragon, it probably is a dragon.”

  I side-eyed the body on the floor. “I’m just worried this looks a little too much like a dragon.”

  “You wouldn’t have believed a dragon shifter was working for the Circle if you hadn’t seen me shift with your own eyes.” His calm confidence in his plan and his expectation that I would go along with it drove me mad. I couldn’t tell if he didn’t understand the dangers of our job or if he simply knew he could handle them.

  I couldn’t argue with his plan, though. It made sense. A hint of genius lurked in its crude design. It was still too unpredictable for my taste, but Deacon wasn’t the complete idiot I had pegged him for. I gathered up the contents of Christoff’s briefcase and went in search of a fire alarm.

  13

  Sirens blared in the hotel parking lot. A blur of activity surrounded a fire truck. While the casino downstairs had every square inch covered by security cameras, the hotel hallways were devoid of such monitoring. Deacon completed the task, and I verified no evidence of our involvement remained.

  Deacon keyed the return address from one of the greeting card envelopes we found into the GPS as I pulled out of the parking lot. “It says we’ll be there in just over four hours.”

  “I’ll make it faster than that.” I passed a van full of tourists and accelerated as I turned off of the strip. At this time of day on a weeknight, the freeway to Palm Springs would allow me to stretch my Corvette’s legs.

  This would normally be the time when Sasha and I would debrief, go over what worked and what hadn’t, but I didn’t have that kind of relationship with Deacon. With the way things had gone, I didn’t know if I ever would. Deacon’s plan had worked, but I still didn’t like the style of it. Most of my time was spent trying to blend into the shadows and Deacon kept pushing me into the light. It wouldn’t be so bad if I thought it was accidental, but I think he wanted me there, exposed, vulnerable. Anything I said to him now would be critical and not conducive to building trust. “I’m going to touch base with Alistair.”

  I reached for my phone, but before I had it in hand, Deacon commandeered it. “You’re driving. Let me.”

  “I’m more than capable of doing two things at once.”

  “You’re already going over the speed limit. It’s dangerous to use your phone while driving.”

  “You do realize I’m a sorceress, right? I think I’ll be fine.”

  “Yeah, but why risk it?” His boyish grin made it impossible to argue with him, especially when he was right. Everything about him exuded a carefree attitude that was foreign to me. Nothing in life was carefree. Assassinating people, spying, lying, they were all necessary. I believed in what I did, but never for a moment did I relax, let myself think that life was simple, that the things I did were of little consequence. Each life lost burned. Each lie took a bit of my soul with it. Would Deacon ever get to that point? A part of me hoped not.

  While Deacon had proved incapable of following protocol up to this point, he had no problem with the contact protocol. Alistair rang us back and Deacon held the phone up between us with it on speaker. “Where are you two at?” Alistair’s voice drowned in the wind whipping by.

  “Sorry, I have the top down.” I shouted to make sure he could hear me. “We’re headed to Palm Springs.”

  “What’s in Palm Springs?”

  “It looks like Christoff had a secret family,” I said. “I don’t think the Directorate knew about them, but I don’t want to take any chances. We have to get to them first. I’m pretty sure they’re human. Once the Directorate realizes he’s dead, they’re going to start fishing around. We may need protection for them.”

  “I’ll bring it up with the Circle. What else did you find?”

  I swerved to miss a blown-out tire in the middle of the road, and Deacon took over briefing Alistair. “He didn’t have any magical items other than a single communication orb. We found a briefcase. Inside were some flyers for other meetings and a laptop. Pictures and letters from his family here on Earth were in a hidden compartment in the briefcase.”

  “You need to get to one of the other meetings,” Alistair said, urgency morphing into annoyance in his voice. “We can’t lose time chasing down a secret family.”

  “Don’t worry,” I said. “I’ll check out the meetings. The next one isn’t until the day after tomorrow anyway.”

  “Are you going to take the laptop to your guy?”

  It didn’t take long after being stationed on Earth for me to realize I needed a tech guy. With the help of the Circle, I’d found Trevor. His identity was known only to me and the contact who’d connected us. Alistair didn’t even know his name. Trevor not only tutored me in tech basics but he had skills with computers that seemed more supernatural to me than magic. “Of course. I’ll drop it off to him tomorrow.”

  “I really think you should forget this family and get the computer to him tonight. You’ve got too much to do. As of right now, we don’t know anything about what the Directorate has planned.”

  I didn’t need to be reminded. No one knew more acutely than I exactly where we stood and what was at stake. The magic in my blood tingled, eager to be released, to be of use in my time of need. It always responded to any threat to my safety. In Elustria, I’d bend it to my will, release it and let it aid me like a partner. Learning to manage without it was like learning to function without a limb, only harder. Magic could do things a limb couldn’t.

  “I’m well aware, Alistair. The family is non-negotiable. As far as we know, they didn’t ask for any of this. Besides, we have no leads other than more of the same crazy meetings. Christoff was a high-placed, powerful agent. I’m betting we get more valuable intelligence from his home than we do at a public meeting.”

  Alistair remained silent as he considered what I’d said. I knew this dance well. He didn’t necessarily agree, but he wouldn’t argue, not unless I was in immediate danger or he saw some hole in the plan that escaped me. Our relationship depended on a level of trust not usually found between two people. Alistair knew once I set my mind on something, he wouldn’t dissuade me, and neither one of us wanted to get to the point where I hid what I did from him.

  “All right. Let me know when you’re done. I’ll try not to worry. Please don’t give me reason to.”

  “Me? Give you reason to worry? I don’t know when I’ve ever.” My smirk and mock confusion bled through my voice.

  “Yeah. And don’t forget to teach your rookie a thing or two.”

  “She’s a great teacher.” Deacon flashed me a smile. It worried me that I couldn’t tell if he was serious or joking.

  “I see she’s at least taught you how to lie well. Stay safe, you two.” The line went dead.

  The only thing I knew we’d find in Palm Springs was Christoff’s family. That was enough for me, but I couldn’t say that to Alistair. As much as he cared about me, we both still worked for the Circle. While we all liked to think the best of our benevolent employers, truth was they didn’t care about Christoff’s family. I had to hope that this trip would turn up more, make it easier for me to get the Circle to protect the unwitting family. A part of me believed it would, but I didn’t know if that was real or if I just didn’t want to believe that I was wasting time when I had a bigger mission.

 

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