Chapter 6

 

Olga scraped up the last of her microwaved porridge as she contemplated the list of questions she and Darius had for Nick, and the branching lines of possibilities to explore depending on his answers. She would take charge of interviewing her childhood ally, today. Sleep had allowed her subconscious to process the shock of his appearance in the case and his role as a slave trader. She was prepared to handle him as she would any suspect who possessed information 13OPS required.

In fact, Nick had told them more than he probably suspected. She’d heard the note in his voice, unchanged despite his voice being lower pitched now than at eleven; the note that meant he thought he was cleverer than the person he was dealing with.

Back then, scared, grieving and alone, she’d been in awe of Nicky’s street smarts. But now, his not so hidden disdain for others wasn’t so admirable. It hinted at how he could trade in people.

Sociopath. Other people weren’t real to Nick. Only he mattered.

She could use that. She had experience in manipulating sociopaths—both those who worked for 13OPS and those hauled in as suspects. The key was to create a situation in which the sociopath pursuing their self-interest inadvertently provided you with what you wanted.

By spelling Nick asleep, she and Darius hadn’t only kept him imprisoned, they’d stolen from him time in which to scheme. He’d fallen unconscious in the living room, and would wake in the bedroom with Darius watching him. It would disorient him, just a little, and it emphasized that he was in their power.

“Lift the sleep spell in five minutes,” Darius said, and walked upstairs.

Olga released a shaky breath. Sharing a bed with him last night had been a practical decision. It didn’t mean anything. It wasn’t as if she’d regressed to childhood trauma when she’d shared a bedroom with her nana, lying awake at times listening to the old woman’s labored breathing, just to reassure herself that her nana still lived. Night was a lonely time, full of fears.

She hated that Darius had guessed her emotional vulnerability and offered his presence as a comfort. She’d babbled about her past like a big baby, which wasn’t like her. She didn’t trust people with her inner thoughts and worries. She grimaced. Her inability to reveal herself to a romantic partner destroyed relationships in their infancy. Yet now she was stuck in a small cabin with two men who knew her childhood trauma, and knew too that no matter how she buried it, it still marked her.

She would not be vulnerable. She was a 13OPS agent, a sorcerer and a survivor.

The five minutes was up. She cancelled the sleep spell she’d cast on Nick, and stacked the breakfast dishes to carry into the kitchen. The scrying tray lay on the kitchen counter. She’d interrogate Nick at the dining table.

She made him a plate of toast and a cup of coffee. Prisoners, even slave traders, had to be fed.

But what intrigued her was that in answering Darius’s questions, Nick hadn’t tried to evade his key role in human trafficking. If anything, he’d attempted to force them to pursue that line of inquiry.

So what was he hiding about his relationship with Svenson—the topic Darius had stated their interest in—that Nick was willing to wear the opprobrium and consequences of slave trading?

Did he think he could escape prosecution? Who else was involved in the network?

She stared at the laptop on the dining table. Even sorcerers couldn’t magic more hours into the day. She hadn’t had a chance to further examine the data she’d stolen from Nick. If they were lucky, Gregory would get back to her soon with useful intel. But luck couldn’t form a strand of their strategy.

Footsteps descended the stairs.

“Good morning, Lolly.” Nick’s blond hair was messy, but his green eyes were sharp. “I hope you slept as well as I did.”

“Good morning, Mr. Shugak, or did you legally change your name to Sheen?”

He smiled as he took the seat in front of the coffee and toast. “Like you, I shed my past.”

Darius sat down at Nick’s left, opposite Olga.

She pushed the laptop aside and watched Nick eat. “Tell me about the crystal in the warded circle.” Darius had briefed her on his observations at the compound. “For a start, who creates the crystal?”

“The crystals are a way for the people at the refuge—” Nick broke off as Darius coughed. When he resumed, he was chiding Darius. “As I was explaining, last night, before you sent me to sleep, the people you accuse me of trading in are in need of a safe place in which to learn about their magic and gain control of it. They suppress it, you know? They fear their own talents. The crystals are part of a siphoning spell. The residents feel safer, more able to learn about their talents, when their magic is drained.”

He gulped some coffee. “I prefer two teaspoons of sugar in my coffee. Not that I drink caffeine often. It’s not good for you.”

He intended to be a tiresome interview subject and drag out the process.

Olga leaned back in her chair. “No one is going to rescue you. The cabin is warded. Even if your allies—if you have any allies—employ a finder talent, the finder’s magic won’t get past my wards. You’re lost to your past, Nick. Time to think about your future.”

“What about your future, Lolly?” He’d finished his breakfast, and now mimicked her posture, leaning back in his chair. His black sweater pulled across his chest. “You’ve illegally kidnapped me and are holding me hostage. You’re the one in the wrong, here. Your career is over if I lodge a complaint.” He glanced over at Darius. “Or is it a case of dead men tell no tales?”

Darius grabbed Nick’s plate and mug, and walked into the kitchen.

Olga appreciated that he was leaving her to deliver the first of their threats. “It’s interesting that you don’t fear being outed as a human trafficker. Presumably in the circles you run in, trading in people is acceptable. Possibly that’s true for Svenson and his supporters. But they have wealth and lawyers and public relations teams to insulate them from reality. You don’t. And yet…”

She leaned forward, not enough to be stagey. Just enough to signal that she was going on the attack.

Nick’s eyelids flickered as he registered the change.

“13OPS is a government agency. We work under its laws, just as mundane law enforcement agencies such as Homeland do. The only difference is the highly secret Supernatural Regulation Act that empowers us. Boiled down, the act tells us to enforce mundane legislation and regulation as and when supernatural entities and happenings transgress it. Immigration security has established rules to manage the inflow of migrants and refugees with magical talents. The key issue for you is that people with a magical talent who enter the country illegally are deemed terrorists.”

His mouth tightened.

She nodded fractionally in acknowledgement of his comprehension of where she was heading. “The rationale is that people with magical talents have the capacity to be, in and of themselves, weapons.”

“All people have that ability,” he objected.

“Nonetheless, it is those of us with magical abilities who must enter America legally or be deemed terrorists. I have evidence.” She patted the laptop. “That you run a people smuggling operation specializing in people with magical talents. By definition, that makes you the head of a terrorist operation. As such, terrorism being a grave and present danger to national security, your legal rights are limited.”

“We can kill you.” Darius had returned and stood at the foot of the table. “And we’d be given a medal for doing so. You’re scum, dangerous scum.”

Nick rocked forward. He gripped the edge of the table. “You’re insane! I’m not a terrorist.”

“Yes, you are. Now, tell me about the crystals. Who made them?”

“Liam Yerka, a geomage.” Nick rubbed the back of his neck, then swore. He pushed back his chair abruptly enough that it wobbled and paced to the front door, away from Darius, who watched his movements with a predator’s intensity.

Olga judged Nick’s actions to be a performance, one that gave him time to think and, he thought, tested the limits of freedom they’d allow him.

“The guard who set up the siphon spell, the one for draining the residents’ powers. She’s a wizard. Kylie Vitug.”

“Does Liam Yerka work for you or freelance?”

“He lives in Colorado and couriers the crystals to us.”

Olga hid her satisfaction, unsure if Nick had meant to slip with his use of crystals, plural. It would have been her next question anyway. How many crystals were they dealing with? “How long does it take for a crystal to be fully imbued with magic?”

He rubbed his neck, casting her a harassed look. He stayed two steps from the table, pushing his luck, and stretching his metaphorical leash, as he lingered by the sofa. “If Liam’s done a good job, the crystal can absorb magic for a month, a month and a half. A lesser crystal is charged in a week.”

“So how many crystals have you charged?” she asked. And when he frowned at the floor. “Will I find a record of where they went in your data?”

He remained silent, but there was a subtle shift in the taut lines of his body that hinted at satisfaction; which meant that the answer to her question was no, she wouldn’t find where the crystals had went via the data she’d stolen.

“Who did you sell them to?” she asked, nonetheless. “Svenson?”

Nick perched his butt on the back of the sofa. “Why do you want him so bad?”

“Why is your slave compound abutting his land?” she countered.

His mouth curved in an impish smile. “Coincidence?”

“How many crystals have you sold?”

“Twenty.”

“To whom?”

He raised his eyebrows. “To whom? How very proper,” he mocked her. “I’m desolated to disappoint you, Lolly, but my customers require confidentiality.”

“I’m uninterested in terrorists’ requirements,” she snapped back. The shift from routine questioning to anger was a standard interrogation technique.

Nick withstood it.

Despite the claims of various research wizards who specialized in spellcraft, there was no reliable truth spell, or Olga would have used it. The difficulty wasn’t with the nature of truth, but with the performance of the human mind. No truth spell in existence could pierce self-delusion or conviction. A liar who forced belief into his lies could present them as truth. The danger, then, was that the person casting the truth spell ended by believing lies. At least, without the spell, she remained convinced that everything Nick said had to be independently verified.

“The crystals are interesting.” She watched his casual pose against the sofa. His sweater and sweatpants were creased from Darius stuffing them into an overnight bag, but they were brand name. His socks were black and new.

Darius hadn’t allowed him shoes. It was little touches like that which accumulated and broke a person—except that they didn’t have time to crack Nick’s secrets slowly.

They’d changed the dynamics of the investigation into Svenson when they’d kidnapped Nick.

She remembered their year together in foster care. There’d been times when neither of them wore socks, and new socks, socks without holes, had been the best luck. Socks had been one of those communal items in the foster family she’d been with, something you lost to the bullies or conceded out of compassion to others.

She remembered the cold feel of cheap shoes, the hardness of them, and how they rubbed blisters raw.

“What spells have you experimented using the crystals in?” she asked Nick.

Darius had assessed the crystal he’d seen at the compound as equivalent to the power a pentacle of wizards could summon for a single spell. He intervened at this point. “Don’t be shy,” he advised Nick. “A hedge wizard like you can’t have resisted trying out a crystal. All that power available to you when you’re normally so weak.”

“It’s intelligence, not magic, that creates a man’s opportunities in life. I’m not lacking.” But Nick had reacted to Darius’s taunt.

Olga hid her satisfaction and the small internal “pounce” on their prisoner’s revealed weakness. People gave away far more than they intended when taunted into protecting their ego. She’d asked Darius to join in the interview for just that purpose: to underline the difference in power between him and Nick, with Nick as the loser, obviously.

Hedge wizards had little ability for spellsight. Few of them could manage it at all, and those that did saw blurs rather than the clear lines of magic that Olga observed. Nick might be able to sense that Darius had a lot of magic, but controlled as it was, Nick wouldn’t be able to measure the extent of that magic and that it was sufficient to identify Darius as a sorcerer. Nick would judge Darius’s power on the basis of the effects his magic achieved.

And if he wanted to imagine himself as smarter than Darius, then that was his funeral.

“The crystals are too valuable for me to waste them by pretending to be a wizard.” Nick returned to the table and his seat. “Just as my time is too valuable to continue with this farce. What deal are you offering me, Olga?” Not “Lolly”. Nick’s serious expression matched his changed tone. Playtime is over, he was saying.

She didn’t believe him. This was another ploy. Another distraction. But she was in charge of this interview. “So you’ve never used the crystals and you don’t know if they explode?”

His eyebrows rose, widening his eyes in an expression of shock. You’d think he’d never heard of the crystals he’d sold exploding.

Then, again, she had just made up that accusation. She hadn’t known the crystals existed before Darius discovered the one at the compound.

“The crystals are stable.”

“Describe what you saw and felt when one was being used.”

His left hand rose, the tip of his middle finger tracing a quick line over the top curve of his ear. For the first time he had to pause to consider what story to tell. He tugged at the lobe of his ear. “I’ve never seen one used.”

Liar, she thought.

Darius agreed with her. “Oh, you’ve seen one used. But a real wizard called on the crystal’s power and you didn’t understand how or what he did.”

Nick shrugged.

Olga guessed that he was hiding the purpose the crystal had been put to. It was a topic to be pursued later. “When did you meet Svenson?”

Darius glared at her, as if he was more interested in the crystals than in Svenson. He proved to be a surprisingly convincing actor. The way his mouth compressed implied that he was barely restraining an objection to her interviewing strategy.

The hint of discord between them was a lure for Nick to try to divide them, as he’d attempted last night with his memories of her and his shared childhood. “Svenson contacted me about ten years ago. I was selling cars.”

Darius folded his arms. “Typical hedge wizard. Doctoring used cars with the tiny bit of magic you possess and selling innocent customers lemons. You were probably good at it.”

“Good enough to attract Svenson’s attention. He employs a guy full-time to search for anomalies like my successful selling record despite the ongoing high number of lemons. The guy trawls through data, running different searches, changing parameters, refining variables.” Suddenly Nick was knowledgeable and expansive. “13OPS could learn a lot from Svenson. He doesn’t ignore those of us with minor talents.”

Olga smiled ironically. “Would you really want to be in a 13OPS database as a known hedge wizard?”

Darius beat Nick to the answer. “It beats being recorded as a dead slave trader.”

Silence engulfed the room. Darius’s tone had been too matter of fact for even Nick to shrug off. Darius hadn’t been threatening. He’d been stating a fact.

“How many minor talents does Svenson employ?” Olga asked.

“I wouldn’t know.” Nick scowled at Darius. “I don’t know why you’re making this personal. Unless you want to screw Olga. You’re not her type.”

She coughed. “How would you know what my type is? We were eleven, Nick.”

His vivid green eyes turned in her direction. “You need someone to fuss over, someone who makes you feel needed. Your granny conditioned you to be a carer. This one.” He jerked a thumb at Darius. “He’s too close to being your equal for you to be comfortable with him.”

The observation was both disconcertingly insightful—with training and experience, Darius could match her as a sorcerer—and wrong. “People grow, Nick. They change. I’m not the kid so desperate for kindness and purpose that she served you like a slave.” Cooking, cleaning, covering for him with their foster parents and school. “Slavery seems to be a theme with you. If we’re talking about people who feel threatened by those equal to them…is that why you traffic in people with magical talents? Envy and trying to tear down those with more power than you.”

“Sorry to disappoint you, Lolly, but I’m in it for the money.”

Darius made a scornful sound in his throat. “So much for your claim to be altruistically helping the people you’ve imprisoned.”

Nick smiled at him, an unfriendly baring of white teeth. The uneven teeth of his childhood were now perfect. “Lots of directors of charity groups will show you how it’s possible to get rich from philanthropy.”

Interviews were a tedious process. In movies and on television, they were portrayed as exciting. The detective pounded the desk or demonstrated incredible acumen. The prisoner cringed or snarled defiance. However, the reality was of a painstaking search for the truth from an inimical opponent.

Hedge wizards like Nick relied on minor spells. His self-professed success as a used car salesman had likely combined a cantrip or two to keep the car running long enough to get it off the lot, along with a charisma spell. The charisma spell would have convinced his victims to trust him.

Taking in his confidence and physical attractiveness, Olga slipped into spellsight to confirm that he wasn’t using magic.

Nope. This was all Nick, the conman.

Darius had locked away Nick’s ability to do even the small magicks of hedge wizardry, and that lock held.

She contemplated her adversary. It was likely that the charisma spell he’d used on his used car customers, he now employed on the people at the compound. Unless they knew how to shield against that sort of subtle spell, they’d be under its influence whenever he was physically present. They would want to believe Nick’s statements and to please him.

He was accustomed to manipulating people.

“What job did Svenson initially offer you?” she asked.

“He didn’t. There’s no link between Svenson and me.”

“You operate a holding cell for a terrorist human trafficking network on land next door to his hunting lodge, land owned by one of his private trusts.”

Nick nodded, granting her the point. “I’m impressed that you dug up the private trust.”

Darius rose and paced. The length of the interview, or maybe Nick’s attitude, was wearing on him.

“Svenson never offered me a job. Deniability, clean hands, building influence. Svenson operates by placing people where they’ll be useful to him. First, he gives them a chance to demonstrate not only their skills, but their flair. If you see an opportunity, will you take it?”

“Where was your first ‘placement’?”

He pretended to be coy. “Let’s just say that some Mob bosses are open to the idea of magic and willing to exploit any edge they can get over their rivals and over law enforcement.”

“A Mob lackey. Why am I not surprised?” Darius muttered.

Nick grinned, pleased to have gotten under his jailer’s skin. “Because you’re psychic?”

“Because you’re an idiot with no morals,” Darius snapped back.

At this point, Olga wasn’t sure he was faking his animosity toward Nick. “Is the Mob involved in your human trafficking?”

“Directly? No.” Nick was blasé. “If, on occasion, they discover what they term a freak in among their—”

“Slaves,” Darius supplied.

“They know to contact me because I might be willing to…rehome the person.”

Darius ceased his meandering pacing. “He’s a waste of time. We’re not learning anything from him, Olga.”

She stood. “We’ll take a break.”

“Or I could just kill him.”

She ignored Darius’s mutter.

Nick, however, regarded the other man with a wary, hidden fear that indicated he’d heard genuine intent in the threat.

A trip out to the jeep before breakfast had gained Olga a few useful tools. She fished an electrum bracelet out of her jeans pocket. It wasn’t an object she’d enjoyed enchanting, but for her own safety and that of her team, sometimes it had to be used. And those were times like now, when she was stuck with a prisoner in a building that lacked a holding cell.

“Go sit on the sofa.” She could spare Nick that much compassion.

“Why?” Unmoving, he watched her walk around the table.

She stayed out of his reach. “Because I’m about to suppress your sight and hearing, so you might as well be somewhere comfortable.”

He inhaled sharply. “Hell, no.”

Darius smiled. His magic moved swiftly, scooping Nick up, levitating him over to the sofa and holding him there.

Olga leaned over and locked the bracelet around his left wrist.

“You bitch,” Nick said. He stood, but after three unwary steps banged his knees into the coffee table, he fell backward onto the sofa. “This is torture.”

No. This was keeping him contained.

“We need to plan our next steps,” she said to Darius. “I’d like to investigate Svenson’s hunting lodge, tonight. What information do we need that you think we can get from Nick?”