Magic Shifts

CHAPTER 13

“WHAT’S THE LAST thing you remember?” Doolittle asked me.

“My power word backfired for some reason. I think the backlash of magic caused my stroke. I tried to freeze the giant and failed. The recoil from it hit me and it felt like my head exploded.” I felt oddly flat. As if there were no emotion at all in me.

“It did,” Doolittle said.

Curran was watching me carefully.

“It was the worst headache of my life. I thought I was dying.” I tried to scrounge up more memories. “I was killing the giant. Lago jumped on it, but I had already cut the vein in the giant’s neck. We fell. Nothing after that.” My voice sounded flat too, as if it were someone else talking.

“You killed the giant. Law enforcement showed up. His corpse started spitting lizards,” Curran said.

“How big? What color?”

It took him about ten minutes to bring me up to speed. It was Friday, March 4, three o’clock in the afternoon. I had lost Thursday and a good chunk of Friday, although I could’ve sworn I’d been in the hospital bed a lot longer. The twenty-four-hour delay might have cost Eduardo his life.

“No news on Eduardo?”

“No,” Curran said.

“Where were you? I thought you and Julie were trapped in the Guild.”

“I went to kill some ghouls,” Curran said.

“You should’ve left a note.”

“I should’ve left a note,” he said. His jawline was tight.

I pushed off the bed and walked to the bathroom. My legs obeyed me. The last remnants of the headache lingered, but they too began to melt. I brushed my teeth and splashed cold water on my face, feeling numb and somehow disconnected, as if I wasn’t truly in my body but was standing nearby, watching some strange woman washing her face.

“You need to be alert,” Doolittle’s voice floated to me. “There is no way to determine how much function she has recovered. She may become disoriented. There might be sharp personality fluctuations. Normally I would expect her to panic, but we both know . . .”

“She will probably stab someone instead,” Curran finished.

I wiped my face with a towel and looked at myself in the mirror. Slowly, very slowly, a hint of recognition stirred in me. Hi. My name is Kate Daniels. Nice to meet you. I can still kick people in the head. I am still me. I have people I love who love me back. I have a job to do.

I felt better. My body had been resting in the hospital bed for hours. Very slowly, bit by bit, it began to feel like me again. I felt fresh as if I had gotten up on Monday morning after a very relaxing weekend.

I stepped out of the bathroom.

Doolittle rolled to the door.

“Where are you going?” I asked.

“I’m going to lie down,” he said. “Because I am old and tired, and I have exceeded my monthly dose of excitement. Kate, no strenuous activity. No fighting, no sex, and no power words. Especially not against any giants. If you repeat that experience, it will kill you. Your brain is still healing. Don’t do anything that could raise your blood pressure. Come and see me in a week. I don’t know why I prattle on because I’m sure you will ignore me.”

I came over and hugged him.

“There now.” Doolittle shook his head.

“Thank you for everything.”

“You listen to me.” Doolittle fixed me with his stare. “I do not want to bury you. I don’t want to see you in a coffin. At some point, no matter how stubborn you are, you need to stop treating your body as if it were a sword that you can resharpen every time it breaks.”

“If it breaks, sharpening alone won’t fix it.”

Doolittle made an annoyed grunt. “Kate! Take care of yourself. If you don’t care about an old man like me, do it for the sake of your future husband and your daughter.”

“No power words against the giants,” I promised.

He left. I closed the door behind me and turned.

Curran stood by the bed, his arms crossed on his chest. I walked over to him.

“Are you back or are you not?” he asked quietly.

“Somewhat.”

“Kate.”

The way he said my name made me want to reach out and touch him.

“I need to know where we are.” His gray eyes had grown dark, not angry but resigned. “Are we okay? Are we complete strangers, are we on a first date, or are we going home together tonight?”

I stepped closer to him and kissed him. For a moment he didn’t respond, and then he opened his mouth and pulled me to him, gripping me. I licked his tongue, letting his taste wash over me. Anticipation flooded me. This felt right. He was mine. My Curran. I’d almost lost him, but I’d fought for him and here he was, loving me. I slid my hands up his chest and around his neck. We stood locked, intertwined, almost one, tasting the same taste, breathing the same breath, and in this moment I felt whole.

I felt on fire.

He thrust his tongue into my mouth, pressing it against mine, his body so hard and strong against me, his skin hot, his hands roaming my back, sliding lower along the curve, and cupping my butt. He kissed me, hard and ravenous, drinking me in. Every stroke of his tongue against mine made me crazier and crazier. I slid my hands into his short hair, pressing into him. I wanted it to last forever, to stay like this, wrapped up in him, whole, loved, and wanted. I needed more.

People rose from my memories: my adoptive father, Greg, my biological father . . . Get lost, all of you. He is mine. I want him, I picked him, and he is mine. I don’t have to justify it to you or anyone else. If you don’t like it, piss off.

We broke apart. His eyes were full of golden sparks. Whatever restraints held him back, I had just torn into pieces. His gaze should’ve melted the clothes right off my body, and I had no idea why they were still there. I raised my chin and he dipped his head to my neck. His teeth nipped the skin there, sending delicious shivers down my spine.

“Love me,” I whispered. “Love me and we’ll be okay.”

His hands roamed my body, caressing, stoking the need in me with every brush of his hard fingers. He inhaled my scent. I ground against him and felt the long hard length of him behind the fabric of his jeans. Yes. Please.

Someone knocked on the door.

“What?” Curran said, his voice even.

I kissed the sensitive spot under his jaw, tasting his skin and the faint scratch of stubble. It drove him nuts. I remembered that, too.

His eyes went completely gold.

“You wanted an update on the Guild,” Derek said through the door.

God damn it.

“They’re having a meeting in an hour. Also, Trisha says we have half an hour to clear the Keep before it causes issues. They are having trouble containing the fact that we’re here.

“Curran?” Derek called.

“We got it.” With a low growl, Curran let go of me, looking as if it physically hurt him to step away.

“He has the worst timing,” I said. “Always.”

“It’s his superpower.” Curran grimaced. “We have to stop anyway. I don’t want you to regret this later. And I don’t want your head to explode.”

“Really? You’re so good that my head would explode?”

It took him a moment. His expression changed from intense to speculative. “It’s a possibility. I’m not a doctor, but Doolittle says it could happen.”

“That’s a lot of expectation to live up to.”

“I exceed expectations.”

So modest, too.

“Do you want to go home?” he asked.

“No. I want to go to the Guild and then I want to find Eduardo.” And kick his kidnapper’s ass out of this city.

He pulled a bag from under my bed. “Your gear. I had Derek stop by the house.”

I eased the bag open and saw my belt, my throwing knives, my old beat-up jeans, and a bag with the strange dirty glass we had found by Eduardo’s car. “I love you.”

He squeezed me to him, kissed my forehead, and breathed in the scent of my hair. The relief was so plain in the way he touched me.

“It’s okay,” I told him.

“I know.” His voice was quiet. “I will always be there. I will walk across the whole planet if I have to.”

I closed my eyes and whispered, “I’ll meet you halfway.”

A couple of minutes later we emerged into the waiting room. Derek was slouching against a wall. Julie sat next to Ascanio. The same Ascanio who’d told her I might end up paralyzed or with amnesia and that I wanted to go home to die.

Julie saw me and jumped to her feet. Ascanio grabbed her hand, trying to hold her back.

Amnesia, huh. Well, let’s see how it plays out.

“I don’t know who you are,” I told him. “But don’t touch my kid.”

Surprise slapped his face. He let go and Julie hugged me. I hugged her back.

“Are you okay?” Julie asked.

“I’m okay.” I told her. “I’m not going anywhere. I’m not leaving you. You got it?”

“I got it.” She nodded. We’d talk about it more later when we weren’t in front of other people. Some things were better discussed in private.

Curran was moving and I walked next to him. We had to get the hell out of the Keep as soon as we could.

Derek and Julie fell in behind us. Ascanio chased me. “Kate! It’s me.”

“‘Me’ is a terrible name,” I told him. “You should aim for at least three letters.”

“Ascanio! You have to remember me.”

I shook my head. “Nope.”

“It’s not fair!” he declared.

“Yes, make it all about you,” Julie told him.

Ascanio stopped. “I will make you remember me!” he called.

The four of us kept going.

“You do remember him?” Julie whispered.

“Of course, I remember him.”

She snickered.

“Where is Barabas?” Curran asked.

“He said he would be at the Guild in case we decided to attend their meeting,” Derek said. “He packed us a care package. It’s in my car.”

“Good,” Curran said.

“We’ll need to stop by the Steel Horse to pick up the Clerk,” I added. Walking into the Guild with the Clerk would be like sucker-punching Bob right in the gut.

“Did you get a look at the giant?” I asked Julie.

“Yes.”

“What color was the magic of the corpse?”

“Bronze,” she said. “Just like the Tahoe.”

That’s what I thought. “Let’s talk more in the car.”

We opened the big doors. Six people barred our way. I recognized two. The Beast Lord’s personal guard.

Curran didn’t even slow down.

“Um . . .” one of the men said.

“Move,” Curran said.

They moved. We headed down the hallway. A petite woman turned the corner and rushed toward us, adjusting her large glasses. Dali. Hey, I recognized her. Score one for me.

“Wait.” Dali blocked our path. “Kate, you’re walking?”

“Yes.” And kicking.

“Can you tell me what’s going on? I know that whatever you’re doing is connected to the Pack, but Jim is ducking me.”

“We’re handling it,” Curran told her.

“I’m not asking you.” Dali turned to me. “What’s going on?”

In the old days I would’ve walked down the hallway and made sure nobody could hear us so I wouldn’t cause an incident, but I was no longer the Consort and I didn’t give a shit. “Eduardo is missing and Mahon won’t look for him because he doesn’t think Eduardo would make a proper son-in-law. George asked Jim to help, but he doesn’t want to overstep his authority.”

Dali blinked and turned to the personal guard. “Rodney. Go and get Eduardo’s file for me.”

“I can’t.” The big shapeshifter arranged his face into an apologetic expression. “Jim won’t like—”

Dali leaned forward, her stare direct and heavy. “I don’t care what Jim likes. Do it.”

Rodney hesitated.

“What are you waiting for?” Dali asked. Her voice made it clear she wasn’t interested in an answer.

“He’s waiting for an ‘or,’” I told her.

“What?”

“Usually there is an ‘or’ attached to this kind of threat. Do it or something bad happens.”

“He doesn’t get an ‘or.’” A faint green sheen rolled over Dali’s irises. “There is no ‘or.’ Do it. Because I said so.”

Rodney ducked his head. “Yes, Alpha.”

We watched him retreat down the hallway.

“You’re getting good at this,” I told her.

She shrugged. “I figured it out. Most people will do just about anything you tell them to do, if you act with authority, give them no choice, and accept the responsibility for their actions. That’s kind of scary, isn’t it?”

GETTING THE CLERK out of the Steel Horse proved to be ridiculously easy. Curran and I walked in there and sat at the bar. The Clerk was drying shot glasses with a towel. He was a trim middle-aged man with light brown hair. He would’ve been a good bartender. He liked to listen to people.

“Kate. Long time no see.” The Clerk eyed us. “What will it be?”

“You like being a bartender?” I asked.

“It has its moments,” he said. “It’s a complicated business. Have to keep track of suppliers. Have to deal with customers.” He didn’t sound especially enthusiastic.

“What did you make at the Mercenary Guild?” Curran asked.

“Forty grand.”

“I’ll pay you sixty if you come back.”

The Clerk pulled the towel off his shoulder and called to the back. “Hey, Cash? I quit.”

As we walked out of the bar, the Clerk smiled. “I would’ve done it for less.”

“I don’t want you to do it for less,” Curran said. “You need to be paid what you’re worth. If you get the Guild running, we’ll talk about a raise.”

The Clerk smiled wider. “I’ll hold you to it.”

Now he was following our Jeep in his truck. One small victory at a time.

Curran drove. The magic was in full swing and the engine roared, but the soundproofing in the cabin dampened the noise enough so, even though we had to raise our voices, we could carry on a conversation.

“Here is what we know,” I said. “The ghouls originate in ancient Arabia. So do the wolf griffins and the wind scorpions. Before the griffin, the Oswalds were attacked by a giant tick, but ticks are universal. They’re on every continent, except probably Antarctica, and I wouldn’t rule that out completely either. So it could have been a tick from Arabia.”

“What about the lizards?” Julie asked.

“I can’t remember what they looked like, because of the head trauma, but it’s possible they are azdaha.”

“What are azdaha?” Derek asked.

“Azdaha. Persian dragons. The old Iranian mythos is full of dragon slayers.”

This line of reasoning was pointing me to a very troubling conclusion and I was trying to do my best to hold up denial as a shield.

“There is a pattern,” Curran said. “Everything is connected by the place of origin.”

“Yes. Also, reanimative metamorphosis is rare. To have two occurrences of it so close together is very rare. I would bet my right arm that whoever is behind the wolf griffin and ghouls is also behind the giant and the azdaha.”

“We need to get Julie to your friend the wizard,” Curran said.

“You mean Luther?”

He nodded. “You said they quarantine the bodies. Would he keep the wind scorpion on ice?”

Knowing Luther? Yes, he would keep it on ice and screw with it until someone higher up lost their patience, took it away from him, and set it on fire. I knew what Curran was thinking. If the wind scorpion also emitted bronze-colored magic, we would have confirmation that everything we’d encountered so far was connected.

“Luther promised me access to Mitchell.” I glanced at Julie over my shoulder. “Would you like to go to the PAD morgue with me to look at weird remains and then visit the PAD’s pet ghoul?”

Julie wrinkled her nose. “I could do that or spend the evening writing an essay for Contemporary English on an extremely boring book about people living in a pre-Shift small town, which has absolutely no bearing on my life and helps me not at all. I don’t know, both options are so enticing . . .”

“I think this new school made your sass even worse,” I said.

“You made me worse,” Julie said. “I’m your punishment.”

I shook my head. “Anyway, everything we’ve run across while trying to find Eduardo comes from Arabian mythology, which means it comes from the same geographical region as my magic. Same as my father’s magic.”

“You think Roland is behind this?” Curran asked.

“I don’t know. I do know that the giant was immune to my power words. My magic bounced off it and there was hell to pay. I can’t risk using a power word against this creature again or my head will explode.”

“We just lost one of our biggest guns,” Derek summed up.

“Not necessarily,” Curran said.

“I can’t attack it with power words directly, but I can attack the environment around it. My magic doesn’t work only against the creature itself. I used a power word on ghouls who were clearly answering this creature’s call, and it worked as intended.”

“Why?” Derek asked.

“Because there are some very key differences between the ghouls, the griffin, and the giant,” I said. “Let’s assume that some being, some Summoner, is behind all of this. He has some sort of agenda, but he is limited because he can only accomplish his goals during magic, so he somehow finds a way to control the ghouls and uses them to do his bidding. My power words work against them because while they are under the Summoner’s control, they still retain their own magic.”

“That makes sense,” Derek said.

“Good. Now, a griffin is a summoning, something the Summoner pulled out of thin air. It’s an expression of his magic, so my power words may or may not work on it. I don’t think the giant is a summoning, because he was clearly wearing an object of power. It was shiny. I saw it in his ear. I think it might have been a piece of jewelry of some sort.”

“How do you know it was an object of power?” Julie asked. “Maybe it was just some random earring.”

“Because the giant was naked except for it and it was clearly too small for him. That object most likely turned him into a giant, and he probably started out as a person, not a summoning. For that kind of transformation to take place, the Summoner would have to imbue the human body with his power completely.”

“I get it,” Julie said. “The Summoner possessed the person and turned him into a giant, which makes the giant an avatar. It’s almost as if the Summoner himself became the giant.”

“Exactly. My power words work on the creatures he controls, they might work on the creatures he summons, but they sure as hell don’t work on him directly.”

“No power words,” Curran said.

“I agree,” Julie said.

“I have no plans to use power words unless I absolutely have no choice.” I made a mental note to ask Luther if the object of power had been recovered. It felt like I was missing something, some vital piece, but when I reached for it, I found nothing.

“I don’t understand why he attacked the Guild.” Derek grimaced. “What was the point?”

“Revenge,” Curran said. “Look at it from his point of view. First, he decides he has something against cats and starts attacking the Oswald family. He summons a tick. Eduardo, a merc, comes and kills it. Then Kate and I kill some of his ghouls. Then he summons a wolf griffin, and two mercs from the Guild kill it. He turns the griffin into a wind scorpion, and Kate and I, who had just come from the Guild, kill it. Then you, Ascanio, Julie, and I go into the MARTA tunnels and kill more of his ghouls. If I were him, I’d be pissed off and come over to the Guild to make the mercs pay and to make sure they stopped screwing with me.”

“The problem with our theory is that Eduardo doesn’t fit,” I said.

“Why not?” Derek asked.

“They didn’t kill him,” Curran said. “If Eduardo just happened to be targeted because he was a merc, than why not just kill him? Why go through the trouble of kidnapping him? What’s so special about Eduardo?”

“We won’t know until we pull his other jobs from the Guild,” I said. And to do that we needed two things: for the Clerk to help us, and for the rest of the Guild to look the other way. Everything hinged on the Guild, one way or the other.

Curran turned onto Phoenix Drive. The top floor of the Guild was in ruins, its roofline ragged and broken, but all of the debris from the parking lot was gone. The wrecked cars and chunks of the building had vanished. An inch of silvery powder covered the street.

“The MSDU did a shake and bake,” I said.

Curran glanced at me.

“They torched the contaminated ground and salted it.”

Salt was a universal detergent for all things magic. When you didn’t know what sort of magic you were dealing with, you had two options. You could set the contaminated object on fire or you could bury it in salt. MSDU usually opted for both, which was known as a shake and bake. They had excellent flamethrowers and there had to be truckloads of salt on the street. If anything magical survived that, I would be surprised.

“Okay, put your game faces on,” I told the kids.

We parked on the side. I grabbed the bag Barabas had given Derek for our show-and-tell at the Guild. Curran got out of the car and swung his cloak on. The cloak was Barabas’s idea. Big, black, and edged with black feathers, it was gathered on Curran’s right shoulder. The Pack had made it for him after he ripped off the Raven god’s head during the flare. He never wore it. Barabas had sent it in via Derek with my change of clothes and a note for Curran that said, Wear it, please. It forced you to focus on his face, and you didn’t want to look at that face or to see the power in his eyes. Curran the Godkiller.

The Clerk caught up with us, his expression stretching as he surveyed the damage. “Jesus. I came to see it yesterday but couldn’t get close. The authorities had the place cordoned off.”

“We’ll put it back together,” I told him. “Like new.”

“Better,” Curran said.

We walked to the Guild. The salt crunched under our feet.

The long-suffering metal doors of the Guild were open about a foot. Some halfhearted attempt had been made to push them together. It must’ve taken several people, because the edges of the doors left scrape marks on the salted pavement.

“You should do the dramatic door-opening thing,” I told Curran.

“Would you like to see me do the dramatic door-opening thing?”

“Yes, I would. Very much.”

A quick smile bent his lips. We picked up speed. We were almost marching now. A merc stuck his head out of the gap, saw us, and disappeared.

We reached the doors. Curran didn’t even slow down. He raised his arms. His hands hit the doors. He pushed and they swung open with a metal groan, scraping the floor.

Curran kept walking. My scary, scary bastard.

We walked into the Guild Hall. The floor had been stripped bare. Most of the roof was gone and open sky rose high above us. This would take so much work. Work and money.

Mercs sat and stood by the walls. I saw Barabas standing to the left. Our stares connected and he smiled.

In the middle of the floor stood Mark; Bob Carver; Ivera, who was the only other member of the Four Horsemen in the Assembly; Rigan, a big blond bear of a man who looked like he accidentally got left behind by some Viking raiders; and Sonia, a graceful African American woman muscled like a fencer. Oh good. The Guild Assembly was all here.

Everybody looked at us. Mark spared us a glance and turned back to the crowd. His suit sat askew on his frame. His tie hung loose around his neck. He looked feverish.

“For years, I ran this hellhole. I babysat your idiot founder,” Mark said.

Faces turned grim. Insulting Solomon Red’s memory wasn’t a good move.

“I bargained with suppliers. I got you the big-ticket contracts. I handled the VIP clients. The Malinov contract? I got that for you. The Horowitz job? I arranged that. Not Solomon Red. Not the Clerk. I did that.”

Oh goody. We’d caught him in the middle of his “I’m a special snowflake” speech.

“That’s bullshit,” Rigan said. “I was on the Horowitz job. They wouldn’t even talk to us until Solomon convinced them we were good.”

Mark spun to him. His eyes narrowed. “You know what, Rigan?” He took a deep breath.

Wait for it . . . Wait for it . . .

“Fuck you!”

There it is.

“Fuck all of you.”

He was going to walk. I could feel it. Bob knew it too, because he wasn’t talking. Unlike three-quarters of the people present, Bob also knew that running the Guild without Mark would be almost impossible.

“I’m done defending myself. I’m done justifying myself. This place is finished. Finished!” Mark grinned. “Well, I’m not going down with this sinking ship. I got myself a job. I am done.”

“What the hell are we supposed to do?” one of the mercs called out.

“I don’t give a goddamn crap what the rest of you shit-sniffing animals are going to do. I am out. I just wanted to let you all know how much I hate each and every single one of you. Rot in hell for all I care.”

Mark turned to leave.

“Wait,” Bob called. “What about your shares?”

Mark spun around. “You want my shares, Bob?” He giggled. “Is that it? My worthless shares that you and your Neanderthals drove from two hundred and seven dollars per share to fifty-six cents? You’re not getting them, Bob. I already sold them. And I got above market value, too. Enjoy the rest of your lives in this busted-ass ruin.”

Mark bowed with a flourish, turned, and took off.

Silence reigned.

“Who bought his shares?” Sonia asked.

“I did,” Barabas said.

Everyone looked at Barabas. Bob Carver had the expression of a man who was feverishly calculating his odds.

“I’m invoking the Donations and Charitable Contributions provision,” I said. “The last entry under Membership Powers in the Manual.”

Everyone looked at me.

I raised my bag. “I am donating twenty thousand dollars to the Guild to be used only to fund the Clerk’s salary and the salary for an assistant of his choice for the next two months, if the Guild is willing to reinstate him.”

“You can’t do that,” Bob sputtered. “You can’t just buy your way in.”

“Yes, she can,” Rigan said. “Hell, yes, she completely can.”

Bob turned to him. “We had a deal.”

“Your deal didn’t mention her donating money. What the devil do you think this is, the Order?” Rigan turned to the crowd. “Raise your hand if you work here for free.”

Nobody moved.

“Who here wants to get paid?”

A forest of hands went up. It’s nice when they do your work for you.

“Three of my last paychecks were short,” Sonia said. “Three! I’m sick of it.”

Bob turned to Ivera. She shrugged.

“Why are we still talking about this?” Rigan asked. “I move to reinstate the Clerk. All in favor?”

He thrust his hand up. Sonia joined him. Ivera raised her hand. Bob hesitated, but his hand went up. Voting against the Clerk in front of the whole Guild would slam the lid on the coffin of his leadership.

“Majority,” Rigan announced. “You’re reinstated, Clerk.”

Someone in the back clapped. The crowd caught it, and the hall erupted with stomps, applause, and whistles.

The Clerk made a little bow.

“Alright, alright,” Bob yelled. ‘We have bigger problems. Like no damn roof.”

“Under the corporation provision, I request to enroll three people as my auxiliaries,” I said.

“This can wait.” Bob glared at me.

“No, it can’t,” I told him.

“Last time I checked, Daniels . . .” Bob started.

“She killed the giant,” a woman called out. “She cut his neck. Lago took the credit, but I saw her do it.”

Lago took the credit? Sounded like something he would do. And I didn’t remember a bit of it. Must’ve happened between the giant falling and the lizards Curran told me about.

“What does that have to do with anything?” Bob yelled.

“If it weren’t for her, the Guild wouldn’t be standing,” the woman answered. “Let her do her thing.”

“Where were you, Bob?” another merc called out.

“I was on the job,” Bob barked.

“Let her talk.” Alix Simos stepped forward. That was unexpected. I barely knew him.

“Who are you enrolling?” Sonia asked me.

“Him, him, and him.” I pointed to Curran, Derek, and Barabas.

“No,” Bob said. “Don’t you see? She’s using it to avoid the stopgap.”

Barabas opened his mouth. I shook my head. It would be better if I said it.

“Bob, it’s not up to you. I’ve been registered as a corporate member for over a year. I can enroll my auxiliaries any time.”

“She’s right,” the Clerk said.

“You’ll be liable if they screw up,” Bob said.

“Fine, you’re enrolled,” Sonia said. “The Clerk will do the paperwork.”

Bob spread his arms.

“What?” Sonia gave him a look. “I want to see where this is going. The three of you are in.”

I stepped back. Barabas stepped forward. “Cutting Edge invokes the Donations and Charitable Contributions provision. In accordance with financial limits, Cutting Edge donates $150,000 to the Guild, $50,000 per auxiliary member, to be earmarked as follows: $18,000 for the repair of the roof, $10,000 for the repair of the interior, $12,000 to settle the outstanding balances on utility bills . . .”

He kept going. How had he even managed to figure out all of this in less than forty-eight hours? With each item Bob’s expression darkened a little more.

“. . . and finally the remaining $16,000 to restock the supply of ammunition for the weapons room. In the interests of making sure the money is distributed as assigned, Cutting Edge designates me as the treasurer for these funds.”

“All in favor of grabbing this money before they change their mind and appointing that guy to handle all the admin crap with it?” Rigan asked.

“Don’t you see?” Bob pointed at Curran, who loomed next to Barabas in his dark cloak. “It’s him. He’s bankrolling it.”

“I don’t give a flying snake who is bankrolling it,” Sonia told him. “It’s money, Bob! Money in hand!”

Bob ground his teeth. “We all fought for this spot. We earned it. You can’t just let an outsider come in and take it over. He’s buying his way in.”

“Would you care to explain how exactly I am an outsider?” I asked. “That’s mean of you, Bob. My feelings are all injured.”

The crowd snickered.

Rigan turned to Bob. “He isn’t asking for anything.”

Bob opened his mouth and clamped it shut.

Yep, you’ve just been outmaneuvered. Curran didn’t ask for any position in the Guild except for that of an ordinary merc.

Curran smiled.

“The man is giving us magic money with no strings attached,” Rigan said. “He hasn’t asked for any special power. He isn’t bargaining with us. He’s just offering us money. Do you have money, Bob? If you want to give us 150K, I’ll use yours instead. Hell, I’ll use anybody’s money to get gigs coming into the Guild again.”

“Let’s vote,” Sonia said, and raised her hand.

Rigan put his hand up. Ivera hesitated.

“Ivera, shit, piss, or get off the pot,” Rigan said.

Mercs, people of genteel disposition and refined manners.

Ivera raised her hand. Bob shot her an injured look.

“We need the money,” Ivera said quietly.

“Done.” Rigan rubbed his hands together. “We just passed the budget for the next two months.”

Bob spat on the floor and walked out. Ivera followed him. Wrong move. He’d just given Curran the run of the field, and Curran wouldn’t waste the opportunity.

Curran pondered Bob’s spit. “We need to clean this place up. Grab a shovel or a broom, and let’s go.”

“I’m not a janitor,” Paula, one of the mercs, called out.

Curran turned to her. “Funny, I’m not a janitor either. Although that depends on who you ask. Sometimes I end up cleaning up other people’s messes. But we’ve all been there. That’s what being a merc is, right?”

“You wouldn’t know,” Paula said.

Curran glanced at her. “I take it you come to us from a privileged background.”

Paula drew back. “That’s none of your business.”

“I don’t come from money,” Curran said. His voice rolled, filling the space. “Everything I have I made with my own two hands, and I have to work hard every day for it.”

“Even Daniels?” another merc asked.

That got some giggles. Curran cracked a smile. It was a bright, infectious smile. “Especially Daniels. I work to keep her daily. Otherwise she wouldn’t put up with me.”

More laughs.

“I thought I was going to be rich at one point, but when I left my people, instead of paying me, they gave me shares in this Guild.”

“You got suckered,” someone called out.

“That’s what they thought, too,” Curran said. “Turns out I suckered them. I think this place is a cash cow.”

People laughed.

“You need to have your head examined,” Paula volunteered.

He ignored her. “I’m not here to make speeches or to run anything. I’ve been there and done that. I have a family now and I’m here for only one reason. I’m here to make money.”

He had said the magic words. They were listening now.

“When I hire someone, I look at the tools of his trade and his place of work. If I am hiring an electrician, I want her shop to be clean and organized and her tools to be in good repair. If I am hiring a killer, I want to know he has respect for his job and his weapon. Look around you. There is garbage on the floor. Dirt. Old food. The place doesn’t smell too good and looks worse.”

The mercs looked about, as if seeing the Guild for the first time.

“If I walked through that door right now and saw this, I wouldn’t hire us. We look weak. We look sloppy.” Curran shook his head. “Judging by this place, you could never tell that this is a guild of skilled tradesmen. Because that’s what you are. You put your life on the line every day to make a buck and to help people. Not every Joe Blow can do this job. This is just as much a guild as an electricians’ or masons’ guild, except that when a member of this guild screws up, instead of the power going out or the building looking crooked, people die.”

They were hanging on his every word now.

“You deserve better than to come to work in garbage. Once the gigs start coming in, we’ll hire janitors and we’ll pay them well, because we’ll have the money to spare. But for someone to hire us, he has to make it through the front door without gagging. Besides, that’s my kid over there.” He nodded at Julie. “I don’t want her to think that I work in a dump. So I’m going to get off my ass and clean this place up. If you are too well bred to take pride in this place or if you are too scared of dirt, I don’t mind. Go sit out of the way with the rest of the special snowflakes.”

FIFTEEN MINUTES LATER I stood next to the Clerk as he pulled the list of Eduardo’s jobs. I was feeling light-headed. My left side itched all over. But if these were the worst side effects I got, I would be thrilled.

The Guild had turned into a bustling hive. Trash was being swept, debris was being shoveled into wheelbarrows and, across the floor, Curran single-handedly picked up huge chunks of brickwork that had fallen off the walls and carried them outside.

“Here is everything.” The Clerk handed me a handwritten list.

I scanned it. Routine, routine, routine . . . Nothing even remotely pointing to Arabian mythology. Nothing in that particular subdivision. This looked like a dead end . . . Eduardo had worked a lot in these few weeks. Did he ever sleep?

Wait.

I pointed to an entry on the fifth of February. “It says here he declined a gig.”

Clerk checked the list. “I remember that. He took a job in the morning, came back two hours later, and dropped it.”

Dropping a gig wasn’t unheard of, but once you committed to a gig, you had to do it, so the Guild allowed only three dropped gigs per year. This was a blue gig too, which meant double rate. “What happened?”

“It was a bodyguard detail, VIP client. Rose was with him on it. I did the interview with her afterward for the liability and evaluation, and she said that everything was fine until Eduardo saw a neighbor come home. Hold on . . . I don’t remember this that well.” Clerk flipped through another book. “There. ‘A man in his early fifties, six foot tall, large frame, dark hair, dark eyes, short beard, olive complexion, glasses . . .’”

I’d bet my arm this was Nitish’s customer.

“‘. . . riding a breathtaking black Arabian horse.’”

“Arabian?” That by itself didn’t mean anything.

“Yes. Rose knows her horses. She went on for about five minutes about how good that horse was. Let’s see, Rose ‘made a comment to Eduardo, “There goes a million-dollar horse.” Eduardo looked at the man as he was dismounting. The man recognized Eduardo and called him by name. Eduardo didn’t answer, went inside the house, got his gear, and left. The man watched him leave but didn’t interfere.’ The end.”

Hello, Eduardo’s stalker.

The Clerk looked up. “He came straight here, dropped the gig, and took another one. I told him it was a bad habit to get into and he said it was personal.”

“Can I have the address of the neighbor?”

“No, but here is the address of the gig.” Clerk wrote it down on a piece of paper. “Just this once.”

“I promise.”

“Was he a friend of yours?” Clerk asked.

I didn’t like the sound of that “was.” “He still is.”

“I hope you find him.”

“So do I.”

I needed Derek. It would be dark soon and I had to talk to Mitchell, because he was still my best bet to figure out if something was influencing the ghouls in the Atlanta area. I couldn’t miss that date.

I glanced up and saw Ascanio picking his way across the floor. A middle-aged African American man in a suit walked next to him.

Ascanio saw me and made a course correction.

“What are you doing here?” I asked.

“This is Mr. Oswald,” Ascanio said. “He came by the office, so I thought it would be better if you talked to him yourself.”

Mr. Oswald. The woman whose family we saved from the wind scorpion had the last name of Oswald.

I held out my hand. “Mr. Oswald?”

“Thank you for saving my wife and my kids,” he said.

Normally I would offer to take him to one of the side rooms, but right now everything was filthy, so we might as well stand. “No problem, sir. Sorry about the accommodations. We had some trouble the last magic wave. How is your family doing?”

“They’re doing well,” he said. “We’ve hired movers and put the house on the market. We don’t want to take any chances.”

“That’s understandable.” Keep him talking . . .

“Pamela mentioned that you asked if anybody had a problem with us or our cats.”

Please tell me that someone had a problem with you and that you know his name and address. Please, Universe, do me this one favor.

“A couple of weeks ago I was doing some yard work after that storm we had. I was in the front yard and this man came up to me and started ranting about how our cats get on his car.”

“Have you ever seen him before?”

Mr. Oswald shook his head. Of course not. That would be too easy.

“I told him that he must have me confused with someone else, because Sherlock and Watson are inside cats. It makes no sense, if you ask me. A cat is a predator. He must go out and hunt to be fulfilled, but the kids are scared that something will eat them, so we keep them inside.”

“What did the man say?”

“He became very agitated.” Mr. Oswald frowned. “He raised his voice, waved his arms around, and proceeded to what I can only describe as ranting. I thought he might be intoxicated. Eventually he got to the part where he told me that everything was fine until ‘you people’ moved into the neighborhood with ‘your spoiled brats.’ At that point I told him to get off my property.”

“Did he?”

“He told me that now his hands were tied and walked off.”

I pulled my small notebook out. “What did he look like?”

“Late fifties, dark hair, balding, average build.”

“White, Hispanic . . . ?”

“White. He wore a suit and tie. Glasses.”

Too generic. “Anything else? Anything you can remember?” I asked. “Tattoos, scars, anything out of the ordinary?”

“He wore an earring.” Mr. Oswald thought about it and nodded. “Yes, I remember. He wore an earring in his left ear, one of those dangling earrings with a very large glass gem in it. I thought it was strange because it didn’t fit him at all.”

“How do you know it was glass?”

“It was bright red and the size of an almond in a shell, almost an inch long. I thought it looked ridiculous.”

Alarms went off in my head.

“Can you draw the earring?” I passed the notebook to him.

He sketched a quick shape and passed it back to me. It looked like a cluster of large grape berries fused together and covered by a metal cork with the gem in its center.

“It was obviously a very bad imitation,” he said. “The gold looked too pale, like one of those metallic paints, and the earring was old and dented.”

Crap. Old was bad. A simple design was also bad.

“Was the gem faceted?” I asked.

“No, it was smooth. What is it called?” He grimaced.

“Cabochon cut,” Ascanio said.

“Yes.”

And we just went from bad to worse. “Thank you so much, Mr. Oswald. You were of great help.”

“Of course. Sorry we didn’t tell you sooner, but I never mentioned it to Pamela. She was already worried about the neighborhood.”

“Why was she worried about the neighborhood?”

“We had some odd things happen. It started with the cars. We’ve got a neighbor down in the cul-de-sac. He’s what you might call a bike enthusiast. Every damn Sunday if the tech is up, right when we’re trying to sleep in, he starts riding his bike up and down the street. Two weeks ago I saw him crying on the curb. Someone had crushed his bike and all of his cars. I saw what was left—it looked like someone stepped on them.”

You don’t say. “When was this?”

“Last Monday. But the worst thing was last Thursday. We decorated for Shift Day. There are a lot of kids on our street.”

Shift Day was a new holiday, born from the terror of the first magic wave years ago. On the anniversary of it, people put out decorations: streamers made with ribbons, crosses, crescents, the Star of David. They lit blue lights and little kids went up and down the street knocking on doors and handing out little charms in exchange for cookies and candy. It was a way to celebrate life on the anniversary of the day when one-twelfth of the Earth’s population died.

“We had all the decorations out, the ribbons, the wire monsters, everything. The whole subdivision was decorated. Then overnight everything disappeared.” Mr. Oswald cleared his throat. “All of it gone in the entire neighborhood, like it was never there. I talked to Arnie across the street and he says he was coming home late that night. He drove past the decorations, pulled into the garage, and then remembered to go grab the mail, so he walked back out. We are serious about the decorations at our house. We’d wrapped our tree in ribbons. It took the kids a good hour. Arnie might have been a minute in the garage, but when he came out, everything was gone on the entire street. What kind of magic can make it all vanish in a couple of minutes?”

The kind of magic that turned a normal middle-aged man into a sixty-five-foot giant. Last Thursday was February 24. Eduardo disappeared on Monday, February 28. “Mr. Oswald, could you think back for me. When did you talk to the man about your cats?”

“A few days ago,” he said.

“Was it before or after that Thursday?”

He frowned. “It had to be before. I left on Friday, so it must’ve been . . . It was Wednesday. I remember it was Wednesday, because I took the trash to the curb.”

“And you don’t know who might be behind this?” I asked.

“No idea. But I hope you find the bastard. Well, I better get going.”

“Of course. Thank you so much for your help.”

He went out.

“Why is it important if the gem was faceted?” Ascanio asked.

“Because people didn’t start cutting gems until the fourteenth century. Before that they didn’t have the tools, so they shaped them into cabochons. That man saw an ancient earring with an inch-long ruby in it.”

I turned to Ascanio. “Do you work for me?”

“Yes. You promoted me from unpaid to paid intern.”

“Whose idea was it to make you an intern in the first place?”

“Yours. Andrea thought it was too dangerous,” he said helpfully.

“That’s because Andrea has a better head on her shoulders than I do.” There was a reason why she was my best friend. “I need you to call the Chamblee and Dunwoody Police Departments and ask them if there were any complaints against the Oswalds specifically or anything in their neighborhood.” Given that the Oswalds’ house was right on the border, there was no telling to which department the complaints might have been placed.

Ascanio got a weird look on his face. “You already told me to do that. They had no complaints.”

“Did you call or go there in person?”

“I called.”

Since he was an intern, I had to train him. “A loud motorcycle, a bunch of bright decorations, and cats who sit on people’s cars. What do they have in common?”

“A cranky neighbor who shakes his cane and yells at people to get off his lawn.”

There was hope for him yet. “Cranky neighbors complain and they usually complain to the authorities, and often in writing.” And sometimes, when their complaints are ignored, they make deals with arcane powers. Unfortunately, there was always a price to pay. “Can you be charming, Ascanio?”

Ascanio unleashed a smile. He didn’t just grin, he launched a smile like a missile from a catapult. It would likely have the same catastrophic impact on anything female, ages fifteen to thirty. Perfect.

“I need you to go to the Dunwoody Police Department and be charming. Ask around. Someone has to remember this man calling in. If you don’t find anything, go to the health department, then to animal control. Do you have a car?”

“Yes.” He nodded.

“Go and do this for me. Don’t come back until you dig something up. I need a name.”

“Okay. And then will you remember me?”

“I don’t know. I have amnesia, paralysis, and a death wish, and they don’t go away just like that.”

He opened his mouth and froze. “Okay. I’m an ass. She wanted to know what could happen, so I told her. But I shouldn’t have.”

Good call. “Bring me a name. Then I’ll give remembering a shot.”

He took off and I went to collect Julie. We needed to find Luther and ask him some questions.