Chapter 2

 

Darius took a loaf of sliced bread out of the old breadbox and placed it on the table. He added butter, ham, cheese, pickles and relish from the fridge. It was one of the few new appliances in the cabin, but he’d chosen a retro vintage model so it didn’t clash too much with the dated kitchen.

His ex-fiancée had hated the cabin. She’d hated the remoteness, the woods, and the old-fashioned house. “A shack,” she’d called it. One step up from camping, but not to be considered when there were hotels and luxury resorts in far more fashionable locations where they could be together when he had leave.

Candice. She’d been as sweet as Candy while he indulged her. She’d talked of their life together, spinning elaborate dreams of two perfect children, a home, her love…

Her love hadn’t survived the loss of his right leg. “I can’t marry a cripple.”

How naïve he’d been, expecting her to be with him in the bad times. Instead, she’d bailed.

“Coffee?” Olga’s voice intruded. “I don’t mind making a fresh pot myself.”

He snapped back to the present and his gaze focused on the woman in front of him.

She might have mentioned coffee, but it was just an excuse to attract his attention. Her expression revealed genuine concern—for him.

His hands hurt. He looked down at them and realized he gripped the back of the nearest chair as if it was the sole stable fixture in an unstable world. How long had he been musing on the past? Freak it. Olga already thought his magic dangerously unstable. No reason to make her think he was, too.

“I’ll make the coffee.” His tone was harsh enough that he grimaced to hear it. She hadn’t earned his anger. “Plates in the cupboard.” He pointed. “Cutlery in the top drawer.”

He poured the dregs of the old coffee down the sink, rinsed the pot, and began making fresh.

She sat at the table and buttered bread.

“My ex-fiancée hated it here.” He hadn’t meant to say that. He didn’t want to foster a personal relationship with her, no matter what his magic was apparently doing. Animate magic? He’d never heard of the concept, and he disliked the thought of his magic acting independently. Even the shadow lion had gotten into the game and approached Olga for petting. He needed more control. He needed to learn more about being a sorcerer.

“Until I was ten, I lived in a trailer park.” She reached for the cheese. He’d forgotten to provide a cutting board, so she sliced it on a plate. “Then my Nana died. I wasn’t in foster care long, just over a year, before Minervalle found me and gave me a place with them.”

She didn’t provide any further details.

Contradicting his decision not to get personal, he wanted to ask questions.

However, when she looked up from slicing the cheese, her blue eyes were cool, their expression remote. “I can fit in almost anywhere, but not everyone is that adaptable nor have they been forced to become so. I respect your ex-fiancée for knowing what she wanted.”

“Which wasn’t a cripple. Freak it,” he cursed aloud, and cursed again as he felt his face heat with anger and embarrassment at what he’d revealed. Talking about Candice hating the cabin was acceptable, barely. Mentioning her rejection crossed the line into personal revelations.

Olga’s expression grew even more reserved. “Gregory travelled up here to check your status.”

The change of subject jerked him out of his downward spiraling mood. “What does that mean?” He sat at the table and began assembling his own sandwiches.

Olga took four slices of cheese, and pushed the plate with the remaining cheese toward him. “Gregory isn’t an aura reader.” She pressed her sandwiches together and carefully quartered them. “In fact, the nature of his talent is his business. But you should know that he wouldn’t have agreed for 13OPS to work with you, even off the record, if he hadn’t assessed your magic as steady.”

She was directing his focus from his physical state to his overall condition, contradicting Candice’s opinion and his own dourness, but subtly. Did she realize that she also revealed an aspect of her relationship with her boss, that Gregory respected and cared for her?

“He wanted to be sure you’d be safe with me,” Darius said.

She gave a one shoulder shrug and bit into her sandwich.

He finished making his own, then poured their coffees. “You are safe with me.”

“Maybe.”

Her equivocal reply surprised him. The sandwich he’d picked up stalled halfway to his mouth. “I won’t hurt you.”

“Not on purpose. But there are a couple of things I need to teach you about sorcery. Gregory assessed your magic as stable, but he’s not a sorcerer. He doesn’t know to question whether your magic is bleeding off purposefully, as mine does, or bleeding out to form animate magic. Your magic likes me. Even your guardian construct, which is very interesting and something I’d like to study.” She raised an eyebrow at him.

He ignored her to eat his sandwich. He didn’t taste it. He was chewing on her words.

Undaunted, she sipped her coffee. “I don’t think your magic would lash out and hurt me on purpose, but sorcery operates differently to wizardry in a few key areas. The greater amount of magic we channel changes the nature of the spells that work best for us, and can actually explode spells that aren’t designed to cope with our level of power.”

“I didn’t know about the spell failure.”

She smiled wryly. “Sorcerers don’t like sharing their secrets.”

“But you’re going to share some of yours with me?” He considered that point, and noted that she gave him the time to do so. She was guiding this conversation, but not pushing it. “You’re saying that we have to trust each other, but that there are lines. We’re not friends.”

She supplied the word. “Colleagues.”

“All right.”

There were only crumbs left on her plate. She put her empty coffee mug on it, and carried her dishes to the sink. “Don’t ever use the word cripple in my hearing,” she said quietly. Her spine was very straight, her eyes on the sink, not him. “Everyone has some feeling of inadequacy they struggle with.”

“I lost my leg, Olga. That’s not a ‘feeling’, or an inadequacy. I lost part of me. I lost my fiancée and the future I wanted.” He wanted to swear. Bit it back. “We should talk about the case. Svenson.”

“I know what the issues are. And I know what we have to address so that things don’t blow up in our faces.” She turned around. “You’re a sorcerer, now, Darius. You don’t get to indulge in self-pity while your magic is surging. It will try to solve whatever you’re fretting over. You have to control it, channel it, use it up. Otherwise…magic isn’t rational. It doesn’t have moral values. It tries to achieve what you want, regardless. Consequences don’t matter to it.”

She rubbed her arms. “I’m not a shrink or your friend. Do you think I want to meddle in your psyche? But being a sorcerer isn’t an extension of being a wizard. The rules are different. The damage we can do is worse both in degree and in kind. Either we’re in control of ourselves and our magic, or we’re a danger to others.”

She slapped her hands down against the side of her thighs. “I thought you were in control. I’m rattled because your magic greeted me. Have you thought what might have happened if the magic in your ward recognized me as someone you hated or feared? Someone like your ex-fiancée?”

He deflected the attack automatically. “Candice wouldn’t come here.” Oh hell. Candice’s actions weren’t the issue. He was. Trying to avoid the problem made him appear weak. If a soldier under his command had tried it, he’d have called them on it.

Which was what Olga did. She sat down and rested her elbows on the table. “The magic that coalesces when a sorcerer doesn’t use it acts according to a sorcerer’s desires, including the ones we don’t want to own up to. I should have made sure you understood sorcery from the start, but you and I,” her finger pointed between them, “we don’t get along. I thought you’d follow up with your military contacts and learn from a sorcerer who shared your background. Someone like Colonel Jake Enroy.”

“I thought I was coping with the changes.”

“Mmm.” It was a sound of disagreement, but one that said she wasn’t going to start an argument.

He raked a hand through his hair. “Obviously I wasn’t, but I didn’t know that.” Which wasn’t quite true. He’d felt different. His magic had felt different. But he’d stayed busy tracking Svenson, coming to terms with the guardian construct that now served him via the rune branded onto his chest, and adjusting to being part of a combat courier team once more.

Conscious that he was fudging the truth, he gave her a different truth, instead. “I’m aware that Colonel Enroy is a sorcerer, but I didn’t want to inform the army of my changed status. That I’m a sorcerer. I can’t be recalled, and it wouldn’t be…wise for anyone to try. My time of taking orders is finished.”

His last statement won him a scowl.

“I am in charge of this investigation,” she said.

He was willing to concede that she was partially accurate. “For 13OPS, you are.”

She snorted. “Before we get distracted, let’s deal with the fundamental peril of sorcery. Animate magic. This isn’t the best example to work with, but it’s the issue that came up, so that probably means we—you—need to deal with it.” She broke off. “Do you want to do the dishes while we talk?”

The cabin lacked a dishwasher, so yes, their lunch dishes would have to be washed by hand, but there was no rush. He grimaced. If she was suggesting work to keep him busy, she’d have a reason. If he wanted to learn, and learn safely, he needed to go along with her suggestions. He got up from the table. “I’ll wash, you talk.”

“Okay. I’ll use your broken engagement as the example.”

“I should never have mentioned it,” he muttered as the sink filled with hot water and soap bubbles.

“Your magic has a number of options as to how it responds to your anger. You use the term ‘cripple’.” Her distaste for the word sounded in her voice. “You probably think that magic coalescing and acting independently in service to you will seek to regrow your leg.”

“I hadn’t.” He squeezed the dishcloth. “Can it?”

“Regrowth, no. But restoration, the replacement of a missing body part, yes. It is possible. It’s a complicated blending of an enchantment and a multi-layered spell, which is why it’s too complicated for animate magic to do by itself. It requires a sorcerer’s purposeful guidance.”

Sometimes he could still feel his missing limb. Sometimes it felt as if he wriggled its non-existent toes. He concentrated on washing the few dishes and cutlery. Olga specialized in enchanting objects, but he didn’t ask her if she could replace his leg. It sounded as if she could. He took a steadying breath. If he chose, even if it took him years to learn the spell and enchantment, he could be whole.

She continued her lecture as if she hadn’t just altered his world and self-perception. “Unguided and unused, your magic is more likely to attack than to attempt to heal or create. Depending on your level of anger with your ex-fiancée, the magic could dissolve her leg, leaving her to experience life as a ‘cripple’.”

Soapy water dripped unheeded onto the floor as he turned and stared at her.

She nodded stern confirmation. “I’ve never heard of animate magic altering a person’s mind or emotions, but it is brutally effective at physically harming those it perceives as its sorcerer’s enemies. It could curse anyone your ex-fiancée gets involved with. It might randomly maim strangers.”

“I…” He didn’t complete the sentence. He had no idea what he wanted to say.

“Sit.” Olga nudged him onto a chair. She rinsed the few dishes, leaving them to drain while she  wrung out the cloth and draped it over the edge of the sink.

When she sat down opposite him at the table, he had a coherent sentence assembled. “You’re saying that as a sorcerer my magic collects in such a significant amount that it becomes capable of independent action, and that the action it takes would make a psychopath cry with envy.”

She laughed. “Animate magic isn’t psychopathic. It’s simplistic. Direct. Whatever we scream for in our secret souls, it tries to achieve.” Her smiled faded. “The problem is that all of us have bad angels as well as good, which is why we can’t allow our magic to build up, to coalesce, to the point where it acts without our direction.”

“So we have a monster on a leash.” He rubbed his chest, where the guardian rune was branded. He had two monsters. Three, if he counted himself; and sometimes he did. In his army career he’d proven how good he was at killing.

“It’s simply something we have to manage. Find a way to use up your magic, and it’s not an issue.” She flattened her hands on the table. “One more thing before we concentrate on the case.”

“Go on.” He’d rather know all the nightmares and monsters he had to deal with.

She regarded him solemnly. Her eyes were an incredible shade of blue, reminiscent of the lake on a clear day like today. “You mentioned that you didn’t contact Colonel Enroy because you didn’t want the army learning of your capability for sorcery. I have good news and bad about that. After the events with the paradise fruit two months ago, I didn’t record your new sorcerer status in the 13OPS database. However, after scanning you here, today, Gregory might. He didn’t notice that your magic was escaping to do its own thing, but he would have noticed how high your magic level is.”

Darius sighed and stretched. “Not a problem. 13OPS isn’t the army. I assumed you’d already shared my sorcerer status.”

“It’s private information, unless you or your magic behaved badly.”

He appreciated her ethics, but he wasn’t fussed. “If Gregory adds it to your database, I’ll count it an acceptable cost of partnering with 13OPS. It’s worth it to take down Svenson. I would assume Gregory will wait to update the database till this investigation is done?”

“I’d expect so.”

“Good. Then, unless you have any more information to rock my world, let’s focus on the case.”

She opened her mouth, then closed it, her lips thinning with tension. She obviously wanted to dispute the implication that in focusing on his magic, she’d been wasting time. She hadn’t been.

And she’s right, he admitted to himself. But the truth failed to lessen his anger.

For Olga, the personal element of discussing his ex-fiancée and his lost leg, hadn’t been a private matter, but an issue she’d tackled so that it wouldn’t disrupt pursuit of their case. For him, it had scrubbed old wounds raw.

“I’d like to see the camp in Minnesota,” she said. “I can read your report and data along the way, as you can with the information I have on Svenson. Driving, we can be in Minnesota by Monday night.”

He frowned. “Why drive? I get that you don’t want our plane travel trackable, but Rest can open a portal—”

“I want to take my jeep.”

He paused, recalling what he’d sensed about the vehicle. “You have enchantments on it.”

“Integral to it. It’s a mobile fortress, defensive and offensive. If your animate magic hadn’t intervened to greet me as a friend, your wards should have hesitated to let it in. I’d like it to be our base in Minnesota.”

“I don’t mind. Rest can open a portal big enough for you to drive the jeep through…” He trailed off as she shook her head.

“My jeep has too many major magicks. I’m not risking how it interacts with a portal or with the path in-between.”

“We’ll lose at least two days if we drive to Minnesota.”

“You need those days to practice being a sorcerer.”

That uncompromising statement silenced his protests. In sorcery, she was the professional, and he, the rank beginner. “Is there more to it beyond using up and controlling my magic? Can you teach me as we drive?”

“Yes, and yes. The jeep has a containment box framework which I’ll activate to keep your magic from escaping. It’ll be a safe zone for you to learn in. It’s not just you who’ll be learning. I’ve never partnered with a sorcerer before. I’d like a chance to experiment with how our magic affects each other’s casting before we try it in a hot zone.”

Those were all good reasons to drive to Minnesota.

She evidently read his agreement in his body language. “Do you have camping gear?”

“In the barn.”

The barn was such familiar territory to him that when she halted in the doorway, he stared at her quizzically. Only as he watched her gaze pan slowly around the large, organized space did he try to see it as a stranger would.

After nearly a century of vacations spent at the lake, a lot of gear was stored in the barn: everything from a mobile bird hide to a snowmobile for winter travel. There was fishing equipment, tools, axes (so many axes), and old furniture too good to throw away. A vintage tractor lurked in the deepest shadows in the far back corner.

“I guess you have camping gear.”

“And everything else,” he agreed wryly.

She grinned. “Yeah.”

“My great-great-grandfather built the cabin after his return from fighting in the First World War. His mother was Canadian, and he crossed the border to enlist in their army and fight for the British Empire. In the beginning, people still believed that war could be glorious.”

“You’d think that the carnage of the Civil War would have taught them otherwise.” She stretched up and touched a canoe one of his great-uncles had made in the 1950s. It hung suspended from the rafters.

“There were decades in between. People forgot. Grandfather Andrew returned, suffering from shellshock. He spent years out here, alone. He got better, got married. Grandmother Georgette had her own photographic studio. He joined the business and they ran it together till his death, when it passed to their second eldest son.”

He opened the third door in a row of lockers and began pulling out modern camping gear: a sleeping bag, ground sheet, backpack. He closed the door. “Do we need a stove?”

“Got one. Just pack what you need personally.” She wasn’t watching him. She’d found the dirt bike one of his cousins had left at the lake, and was studying it.

“If it’ll fit in your jeep, we can take it.” A second form of transport might be useful.

“No.”

He left her to explore the barn, and returned to the cabin. He needed to pack clothes, weapons and a few just-in-cases, as well as to shut down the cabin for his departure. Any food that wouldn’t keep for a week, he added to his supplies. What they didn’t eat, he’d throw out.

He was used to breaking camp fast, and the rituals of leaving the cabin in a state to quickly pick up his life here again was second nature.

Just over an hour later they were on their way. He drove.

“Since you know the roads out of here better than I do,” Olga had said. Now, she sat beside him, engrossed in the pages of his report on what he’d found on Svenson and on the trafficking of magical humans. Her report for him waited in a satchel in the back.

He commented on the jeep’s supernatural smoothness over the back roads. Local people kept them up as best they could, but the heavy logging trucks caused damage every year. Yet the jeep travelled smoothly over the potholes and degraded surface.

“I get carsick, especially if I read,” she said. “Good suspension takes away the jiggly lines of text that trigger motion sickness. It was trial and error to work out the enchantment in the suspension, but it was worth it.”

He had other questions, more important and pertinent questions, but he withheld them. The sooner she finished reading his report, the sooner they could talk, and in a couple of hours they’d swap driving responsibilities and he’d read her report.

She flicked back a couple of pages.

A rifle shot cracked the silence. Then a second one.

She looked around.

“Hunters,” he said. “After ducks, probably. Old-timers hunt game in the early mornings, but duck hunting in the afternoon and evening is growing in popularity. You can sleep in.”

“Safer in the morning, before they start drinking,” she muttered, her attention back on his report.

“Ducks drink?”

His humorous question won him a baffled look.

“Joke,” he said.

“Yeah. I just didn’t think you did. Joke, I mean.”

He frowned.

She patted his arm. “Don’t worry. It wasn’t a good joke, so you haven’t completely destroyed my view of you.”

That was a joke, kind of.

“I don’t think either of us are going to get work as comedians,” he said, and glimpsed her smile.

“Good thing we have other talents.” She rustled the pages of his report into order. “Interesting report. I won’t ask how you got the lead on the people smugglers that we missed. That wasn’t purely from interrogating cryptid hunters.”

He was unnervingly aware of where her hand had rested briefly on his arm. Did the fact that they were both sorcerers have some sort of physical effect, generating a special awareness of one another? Hadn’t she suggested something like that earlier? It wasn’t a question he wanted to ask her, or at least, not yet. “The monster hunters confirmed some rumors I heard elsewhere,” he answered carefully. “Certain circles are okay talking with a veteran where they avoid 13OPS.” From the corner of his eye he saw her regard him narrowly.

“You still must have a point of contact to gain entry to those circles.” She didn’t ask further questions, but she’d underlined that she recognized the gap in his report.

Mentally, he shrugged. Like a journalist, a 13OPS agent would understand protecting one’s sources.

In fact, Darius had contacted his combat team member Gabe’s Uncle Bo. Bo was a fixer, someone who connected magical talents of the legal and illegal kind with people wanting to hire them, usually for illegal purposes. Bo kept his identity as a fixer secret, but in his paranoia, he retained another layer of distance between himself and his nephew. If he was ever outed, the old man didn’t want his activities burning his only remaining family. Darius’s team were the sole people who knew of the relationship. Now that they’d decided to re-enter the magical world as a combat courier team for hire, Bo was guiding Gabe in his development as their handler and as a fixer in his own right.

When Darius had wanted information on human trafficking, he’d gone to Bo with the question. He’d gone in person with Rest opening a portal directly to the old man’s hideout. Originally from Louisiana, Bo was taking a vacation in Texas.

Bo and Gabe’s ancestors had been slaves. After hearing Darius’s idea that a trade in magical creatures could logically (if evilly) be extended to a trade in magical people, Bo had laid aside the piece of wood he’d been whittling. They were sitting on the front porch. Bo’s vacation home was a 1930s beach shack on the Gulf Coast with a million dollar view. He had a boat and fished, and his neighbors were distant enough not to bother him. That, and he’d invested in top class wards and had Darius reinforce them during the visit.

“I’m not a moral man,” Bo said. “I’m certainly not a hero. I never understood Gabe’s decision to join the army and fight for other people. It cost him.” Bo squinted against the glare off the water. “Cost all of you. But slavery…”

 He twirled the knife he’d been whittling with. It was an extension of his body, worn but well-maintained. He threw it at a board wired securely to a porch post. The scars on the board showed that this was a trick he did often. He had large hands and wiry, muscled arms, the skin beginning to sag from age. “I still ain’t getting involved.”

“I wouldn’t want you to,” Darius said.

Rest simply kicked back in an old kitchen chair, balancing on two of its legs with his own legs on the porch rail.

“I need a starting point,” Darius said. “I’ll make my own introduction. You won’t be part of it in any way, Bo. But I need a direction in which to start my hunt.”

“Hell’s breath,” the old man cursed softly. He whistled an exasperated two-note tune.

The three mutts lying on the porch raised their heads and looked inquiringly at him. When he gave no command, they resumed dozing.

“I’m hunting whether you help me or not,” Darius said. He was thirty four, past the age of expecting anyone to protect him, but that was the look in Bo’s eyes.

Gabe’s uncle wanted to protect his nephew’s friend. To Bo, they were all boys. They’d fought for their country, survived, and deserved peaceful lives. Darius recognized the attitude because it was one his family shared.

“I don’t intend to engage anyone directly. That would defeat my ultimate goal of bringing down Svenson. He’d learn that I’m sniffing around.”

“And get rid of you,” Bo muttered.

Rest grinned a hungry grin and made his first contribution to the discussion. “He could try.”

Darius was the one member of the team hell-bent on bringing Svenson to justice for his twisting of General Olafur and that man’s lethal sabotage of their mission. Rest had Donna and a new life. Gabe had his girlfriend. Austin, well Austin didn’t like to look back. But Darius, he was all about looking back, and about leveling the scales of justice. Nor did he have a woman to distract him. However, just because the other team members weren’t making Svenson their priority didn’t mean they wouldn’t like to exact some revenge.

They were an experienced combat team. They took the fight to the enemy.

Bo got up and retrieved his knife. “Revenge, justice, whatever name you give it, you’re better off living your life. But since you’re not going to listen to a word of warning, I’ll give you some names.” He picked up the wood he’d been whittling. “Don’t go getting yourself dead.” And then, he named names.

Heading out of Maine, aiming for Minnesota, Darius put aside memories. “Our route takes us through Chicago.”

Olga closed the folder with his report in. “We’ll resist the temptation to look up Nick Sheen.” The man who coordinated the slave trade. She tapped the folder on her knee with a fingernail. “Although, if we wrap up our investigation into Svenson, we could join Gregory’s taskforce to bring in Nick Sheen and his network. Or, I could. I’d like to.” It was an ambitious timeframe; likely an impossible one.

But Darius understood. He shared her anger.

She turned abruptly and put the folder on the backseat. “In your report, you flag that you haven’t been able to confirm that Nick Sheen and the other slavers are keeping the slaves obedient via suppression charms.”

“It’s the most feasible explanation. There are up to fifty or sixty slaves gathered together at various nodes in the trade network. If they didn’t have some means of suppressing their magic, fifty magic users working together could blast their way free.”

“Unless they don’t want to.”

He contemplated her answer as they hit the highway. “You think the slavers threaten their families to maintain control?”

“Huh?” She’d been unlacing her boots. “No. I don’t think that at all. The hints are there in where the magical talents have been sourced.” Boots off, she tucked her left leg under her right thigh, getting comfortable. She rested a shoulder against the window. “Admittedly, it’s obvious to me because, sadly, I’ve seen this before.”

She massaged the back of her neck for a few seconds. “Human trafficking is international. If you overlay where Nick Sheen is getting people with magical abilities from, it matches regions where magic is feared and hated. Places where witches are stoned, shamans cursed, and inexplicable phenomena are deemed the devil’s work.”

“No way.” He hit the steering wheel with the heel of his left hand. “You’re not convincing me these people signed up to be slaves, that they’re willing workers.”

“Perhaps they are,” she said sadly. “They get to live. They get fed and clothed—presumably. They have some sort of value if people are willing to buy them.”

“No,” he repeated himself, louder.

“No,” she agreed. “But I do think the attitudes that they’ve experienced growing up with magic and being hated and feared for it, mean that the people Nick Sheen trades in would shrink from attacking, or even defending, themselves with magic. The agents who find the magical talents probably choose those who’ve learned to hate themselves. Shame is a potent weapon of self-sabotage. From Sheen’s perspective, the best slaves are those who have internalized their society’s hatred of them, and believe they deserve to be mistreated. Sheen doesn’t need to suppress these people’s magic. They do that themselves.”

Darius growled disgustedly.

“We’ll need to have healers and counsellors available to help the people Gregory frees.” Olga was planning as a 13OPS agent. “And determine where they might find refuge. Some…it would be their deaths to return them to their homes.”

An ambulance’s wail approached, heading in the opposite direction. As the emergency vehicle passed them, Darius glanced at the speedometer. Immediately, he took his foot off the accelerator, grimacing from guilt. “I didn’t think a jeep could go this fast.”

“The old girl’s full of surprises.” Olga’s half-humorous answer was absentminded.

Shortly afterward, they stopped for a bathroom break and to swap driving responsibilities. He dived into her report. His had been focused on the human trafficking and its possible link to Svenson; the biggest hint of which was the Minnesota slave camp’s proximity to Svenson’s hunting lodge. Still, that wasn’t proof.

Olga hadn’t found proof either, no smoking guns, but she had unearthed links between Svenson and government decisions. Of course, that was what lobbyists were paid to achieve.

“I haven’t been able to build a case against Svenson,” she said. “I did this in my spare time and I was hampered by having to avoid raising flags by my interest. I intend to fully exploit these two weeks.”

He reread a page. “I focused on people. You chased the land. I hadn’t considered nexus points as loci of power. The consortium he put together that is buying up nexuses in—”

“Is a distraction,” she interjected.

He stared at her.

She stared at the road. However, she tipped her head fractionally in his direction. Or rather, in the direction of the papers he held. “My report is comprehensive. I’m used to working with a partner. I’ve given you all the information in case you can pick up something I’ve missed. A consortium discreetly acquiring nexuses warrants 13OPS paying attention, but not interfering. Accumulating power isn’t illegal.”

Her hands rested lightly on the steering wheel of the jeep, barely guiding it, which raised the question of the extent and nature of the enchantments embedded in the vehicle. Could it drive itself?

He hoped to study the vehicle when they camped for the night. For now, the sun still shone, even if it was angling lower to the horizon.

Olga tapped the steering wheel to a tune only she heard. The gesture was restless; not quite a fidget, but not a happy action, either. “In his late teens, Svenson was a street performer. He performed magic tricks, the same tricks a mundane stage magician might use, but probably adding a bit of glamour and confusion with his hedge wizardry. Busking taught him a skill that he still uses. The art of distraction.”

She ceased tapping. “The consortium is a distraction. Svenson has a private company registered in Panama,” a notorious tax haven and mecca for anyone wanting to obfuscate their financial activities, “and through it he bought an island in Papua New Guinea just over a year ago. Or leased it. The pretense is that his company will mine the island for gold. Over the last year, through a combination of bribery and threats, the island’s previous residents have been moved off it.”

“I read your description of the island.” It sounded beautiful with rich volcanic soil, verdant growth, and tropical seas. “It’s not on a nexus.”

The jeep sped up; only noticeable because they started passing the other cars on the highway faster. Inside the vehicle it felt as if they barely moved. “I think Svenson intends to create an artificial nexus.”

For a couple of minutes, Darius just watched the traffic, thinking about the possibility. He’d have said a nexus couldn’t be artificially created. It was a place of power. Spells enacted at a nexus were stronger. He rubbed the back of his neck. “I’m thinking like a wizard, aren’t I?”

“That magic is limited and has to be carefully coaxed? Wizards aren’t wrong, but sorcery proves that there are ways around the limits of magic. One of those ways is to accumulate magic. I believe that’s why Svenson was buying up the rarer, more powerful cryptids the hunters captured. And now, your evidence indicates he’s buying people for the same purpose.”

“The bastard intends to drain their magic.” The papers in his hands began smoking. He was literally burning them with his rage. He swore, and cut off the flow of his magic. Tension held him rigid in the aftermath. “If I doubted your decision to prioritize training me in sorcery, I don’t anymore.”

It seemed his emotions were the trigger for his animate magic to act; a fact he’d been unaware of since he’d successfully suppressed his emotions prior to Olga’s intrusion into his life.

Could it be called an intrusion when he’d invited her presence?

“You’ll learn fast,” was all the comfort she offered, whilst ignoring his implicit apology. “When Svenson’s name turned up in a few brushes with Minervalle alumni, I looked into his history. He’s a smart man. He came from poverty in West Virginia to claw his way to millionaire status, and billionaire status in terms of influence. For each stage he advanced he had clear goals and he took the time to cement his gains. He was a strategist, and people his pawns.”

Darius put the scorched papers back in the satchel. “Was?” 

Her mouth tilted upward. “You caught that? I think he’s changed. I can’t prove it—any more than I can prove the illegality of his actions—but where he had goals, meticulously crafted strategies, and contingency plans, now I suspect he’s ruled by obsession.”

He replaced the satchel on the backseat. “Obsession makes a person dangerous. They don’t count costs.” Obsession could lead to murder. Collective obsessions could spark wars. But… “I didn’t see anything obsessive in Svenson’s behavior.”

“He’s afraid of dying.”

“Ah.” That was a common fear. But Svenson had money and influence. He knew about magic. A madman could mix the two with desperation and try to challenge fate. “Immortality isn’t possible.”

“As to that.” She cleared her throat.

Freak take it. How many more of my certainties is she going to upend? And she and his animate magic were right. He was attracted to her. She was nothing like his ex-fiancée, Candice. Olga was tall and moved with a supple grace that spoke of strength as well as fitness. She was confident to the point of bossiness, and had cause for it. Even dressed casually, she exuded professional competence and a hint of danger. 

She glanced at him. “One of Donna and my friends, a Minervalle grad, got caught up in a situation recently. Someone was killing people in pursuit of the philosopher’s stone, the alchemists’ fabled elixir of life. The investigation revealed that an anonymous donor has promised ten million dollars to the first person who provides them with immortality.”

“Svenson,” Darius said the name like a curse.

“That’s my guess. A witch employed by 13OPS went rogue and tried to claim the prize. It wasn’t the money she wanted, but the other thing the sponsor promised. A chance to retreat to a new Shangri-La with him. Immortality in paradise.”

He contemplated what a degenerate man obsessed with not-dying would do to achieve that goal. “Hell.” The stakes had just gotten higher. Svenson might very well unleash the equivalent of hell on earth if he thought it would gain him immortality.