Midnight Marked

“And that’s our biggest question,” Luc said, writing ALCHEMY in all caps across the board with a bright green marker even stinkier than the first.

“This reminds me that I knew an alchemist once upon a time,” Ethan said, his gaze on the board. “Or a man who called himself an alchemist, at any rate. He was in Munich in the employ of a baron who wanted more wealth. He was convinced turning lead into gold was possible.”

“When was this?” I asked. Ethan had nearly four hundred years under his belt, after all.

He frowned. “Mid–seventeen hundreds, I believe. Alchemy had its run, but as far as I’m aware, it hasn’t been popular in magical circles in a very long time.”

“I assume the purported alchemist wasn’t successful?” Malik asked.

“He was not. He supposedly had success using a meteorite discovered in the Carpathian Mountains, but, to no one’s surprise, he wasn’t able to repeat the results for an audience.” Ethan lifted a shoulder. “He was a charlatan. He lived off the baron for nine or ten years before the baron grew tired of tricks.”

“What did he do?” I asked.

“Put the alchemist’s head on a pike to warn away anyone else who might have hoped to deceive him.”

Juliet glanced back at me. “Any chance this alchemy was practice, scribbles, the ravings of a madman, anything like that?”

“It was awfully precise to be scribbles,” Ethan said, glancing at me. “There were, what, a few hundred symbols there?”

I nodded. “At least that.”

“Someone has magic planned,” Malik said, and a heaviness fell over the room.

Luc tapped the plastic marker against the board. “Let’s talk through what that magic might be.”

“It was close to Wrigley Field,” I said, and all eyes turned to me. “Maybe the geography matters. Maybe they plan to hit it.”

“On the night of a game,” Juliet said, and I nodded, anger bristling beneath my skin. Supernaturals being violent toward one another was one thing. But targeting humans—those who didn’t have their strength, their power, their immortality—was something else entirely. It was a breach of the rules, whatever that game might have been.

Luc blew out a breath, wrote the idea on the board. “What else?”

“The El,” Ethan said. “The symbols were written on the trestle. Perhaps the magic was intended to disrupt service, to knock out a pedestal and derail the cars.”

“Like an explosion,” Luc said, and added that possibility to the list. He glanced back at me. “Only the one pedestal?”

“Yeah. We don’t know if he or she only meant to prep one and got interrupted, or only needed one in the first place.”

Luc uncapped the marker, drew three enormous question marks in the middle of the board. “So we need intel there. Translating the equation, hopefully, will fill in some of it.”

“We can also check the chatter,” Juliet said. “If it’s a big operation, there’s a chance someone is talking about it on the Web.”

“Good,” Luc said, adding the strategy to the board. “And how do the shifter and vampire fit into this?”

“If they’re friends with the sorcerer,” Juliet said, “they could have been entourage, buddy, bodyguard. Maybe a disagreement broke out.”

“Or, if not friends,” Lindsey said, glancing at Juliet, “maybe a rival or personal disagreement. Maybe the shifter was trying to interrupt the sorcerer.”

Lindsey nodded. “Doesn’t like what the sorcerer’s doing, doesn’t like how he’s doing it, so the vampire takes him out.”

“Or maybe the vampire was the antagonist,” Luc said. “Shifter and sorcerer are working together, vampire shows up, tries to head off the magic. Takes out the shifter, but the sorcerer gets away.”

“If that’s true,” I said, “and the vampire’s trying to avoid some big alchemical whatsit, why would he run away from us?”

“Maybe he’s on our side, relatively speaking, but didn’t want to be identified.” Luc glanced at Ethan. “Could have been a Red Guard member.” Luc was one of the few Cadogan vampires who knew I was involved in activities outside the House; he didn’t know that activity was the Red Guard or that Jonah, the Guard captain of Grey House, was my partner.

Or had been, anyway. Things were tense between us at present because I was sleeping with the presumed “enemy,” whom I refused to spy on.

“Could have been,” Ethan said with a slow nod. “But murder isn’t typically the RG’s MO. They aren’t normally that violent or that proactive. And killing with a bite isn’t their style.”

I’ll ask, I told Ethan silently, already brainstorming how, exactly, I was going to do that without making things worse. (“Hey, Jonah. I know we aren’t really talking right now, but did one of our RG colleagues kill a shifter near Grey House earlier tonight?”)

Ethan looked at Luc. “The shifter is our best lead at the moment. We have a name, a position, and a Pack. Find out what you can about his defection, and we’ll talk to Gabriel. He said they’ll host a wake tomorrow.”

Luc’s eyebrows lifted with surprise. “Even though he defected?”

“That was my question, too,” I said.

Luc nodded thoughtfully, considered. “We’ll do the research.”

“Discreetly,” Ethan said.

“I am nothing if not discreet.”

Lindsey snorted. “You walked down the hallway wearing nothing but a towel the other day.”

Luc grinned, stretched his arms. “I was hungry.”

“Mmm-hmm,” she said. “You were showing off.”

Ethan laughed lightly, but then closed his eyes, rubbed his temples. Here, in front of his trusted staff, he could be vulnerable. “Alert the House just in case. If an unknown sorcerer is spreading magic around the city, and a vampire is killing shifters, that kind of trouble could find its way here.”

“Already has, arguably,” Luc said.

Ethan nodded. “Nothing so far indicates the man or woman who wrote these symbols is known to us. Until we figure out the reason for the magic, we treat it as antagonistic. We don’t need to lock down the House, but I want everyone on alert.”