Chapter 5

 

Analyze, scry, stretch, run, repeat. Throughout Tuesday, Olga limited her scrying sessions to an hour’s length. Becoming as wiped out as she was the previous night was counterproductive. The strain of holding the scrying session proved greater with the hunting lodge than it had with the compound. The difficulty lay in juggling two conflicting priorities.

The remote viewing aspect of the scrying tray operated by inserting magic into an area through the tiny gaps in the wards that protected the site and by avoiding all magic active in the area. In practice, that meant she had to guide the lines of magic from her spell through the wards, ensure that the threads wouldn’t catch on the wards, then consciously pull them in and around the land. Operating the spell at night was easier since people weren’t roaming around. Scanning the hunting lodge in daylight provided a number of near misses as people with magic popped here and there about their business. She lacked a sense of their purpose that would have helped her avoid them.

Darius watched as she worked. He didn’t distract her and he didn’t make a fuss about her schedule interrupting his own magic work. He was simply there, providing back-up in case her scrying spell did brush against a person, and that person followed it back to her with an attack.

The shadow lion was also present, but much larger than previously. It stood on the floor and was the length of the dining table.

“Is it growing?” she asked over lunch.

He frowned at the shadowy figure of the guardian construct. “It hasn’t absorbed extra magic, but I’ve been examining it to act as a magic suction-slash-battering ram in a fight.”

“So it’s bolstering itself in anticipation of answering your request of it. Fascinating.”

He smiled at her.

She raised her eyebrows in inquiry. Lunch was a cold pasta salad they’d bought yesterday. Sun-dried tomatoes gave it a strong flavor, along with olives and a pesto-inspired sauce. The bacon pieces in it were chewy.

“You know, you’re a bit of a magic nerd,” he said.

“That’s not an insult. I like to know how things work.”

“It wasn’t meant as an insult. But given how much analysis we’re doing, I’m curious that you haven’t pulled anyone in to help you with it. I’m not much use.”

She shook her head. “You’ve got my back. That frees me to concentrate completely on the spell, and once we have the data in and have analyzed it for a solid sense of the set-up you have more experience than me in planning our incursion.”

“So we are going to break in.” He sounded satisfied.

“We have to decide our priorities—after we have the data.”

There were a number objectives they wanted to achieve, sitting beneath the overall goal of isolating Svenson from his network of influence and bringing him to justice. The problem was in deciding which to pursue first and at what cost. Actions had consequences, and even if this was a covert operation, she’d have to justify and answer for her choices later in a 13OPS operational review.

Freeing the slaves couldn’t happen till she and Darius understood what was being done to them. Siphoning a person’s magic could be simple, but a careless or unskilled wizard casting the spell could inadvertently snag part of a person’s life force along with their magic. In that case, undoing the spell took time and care or the affected person could be left with chronic fatigue.

Late afternoon, she announced that it was naptime. “I think we can slip past the ward on the compound, tonight.”

“Easily,” he said.

She pursed her lips. By nature she was less inclined to bold confidence. “Without being noticed, at any rate. The security around the hunting lodge is more complicated, which makes the compound a softer target. Once inside, I suggest we concentrate on the manager’s house and the warded circle. I’d like to be in and out within an hour. The jeep has a silenced field. We can drive close and split up once we’re inside.”

“You’ll take the manager’s house?”

“I’ll copy his hard drive. If I can, I’ll clone his phone. For a start, I’d like to know who the boss of the operation is. For Svenson to let him run the compound adjacent to his hunting lodge, Svenson has to trust him. Let’s hope that trust is misplaced.”

Darius blinked. “You think you can turn the manager?”

“No. The goal remains to get in and out without anyone being aware of our intrusion. But what I’ve found is that people don’t guard other people’s secrets as well as they do their own. So the guy in charge of the slaves may reveal something of Svenson’s involvement that Svenson himself would keep hidden. It’s a longshot, but worth searching for.”

“Okay. While you do that, I’ll check what’s stored within the warded circle and ghost around the compound. I’d like to know more about who we’re dealing with—guards and prisoners both, and how they keep the prisoners occupied.”

She nodded. “Gregory will appreciate the information.” She stretched. “I’m going to nap for an hour, then start a stew. Early dinner, some more analysis and a couple of hours sleep before leaving at midnight?”

He sketched a salute.

She wasn’t certain if he was serious or mocked her. At any rate, she explained herself. “Missions like this, mixing civilian life and active duty, the danger is one of falling into bad habits. Not enough sleep, eating badly, no exercise. I make sure my teams stay in condition.”

“I agree. I respect that. Sorry if you thought otherwise.”

“Oh.”

He walked past her toward the stairs. “In fact, I think I’ll nap, too.”

The muscles of his butt and thighs stretched the worn denim of his jeans as he climbed the stairs.

She climbed slowly behind him, forcing her gaze away and down to her feet. It was a bad sign—incredibly unprofessional—that she wanted to share naptime with him.

 

In the jeep, approaching the compound, Darius had his combat spells ready, carefully selected and adapted from the top ten he’d favored as a wizard. Even unadapted, none should burn out as a result of channeling a sorcerer’s magic, not if their mission went as planned and they were in and out in an hour. But relying on plans going smoothly was an amateur mistake. You survived by being ready for—and ready to do—anything; not by relying on hope.

Although you should be able to rely on your partner.

Olga guided the jeep through a smooth U-turn and parked to the side of the road, ready to vacate the area at speed.

To his spellsight, the jeep shimmered with magic, but that was because he was inside it and Olga had keyed him to the vehicle—or mobile fortress. A mundane wouldn’t notice the jeep at all, and he doubted that a wizard or witch would do any better.

Olga had taken the concept of stealth to the nth degree. People not only didn’t sense the vehicle, they didn’t want to. Look-away spells of fiendish complexity were woven with invisibility, silence and push spells. And the spells could run without her conscious casting since they were embedded in enchantments.

If she ever tired of being a 13OPS agent, she had the ability to become a legendary enchanter.

They left the jeep at a neighboring farm’s back fence line and crossed its pasture land. In a few days the horses in the fields would be brought in and stabled for winter. Their presence didn’t matter. Cloaked and cautious, Darius and Olga passed through undetected.

The ward on the compound broadcast a look-away and forget spell. Since their analysis of the scrying tray had prepared them for it, he brushed off the compulsion and continued. Reconnaissance missions demanded focus. Events could change a plan, but the broad strokes of it and its key points brought you back. Once they passed through the ward, they’d split off. He was likely to complete his tasks first, and would either meet her at the manager’s house, or back here to run to the jeep together.

It was twelve minutes past two in the morning when they slid through the ward. There was more pasture to cross, but no more horses, before they reached the compound’s buildings.

Without magic, night and the uneven ground would have combined to slow him to a crawl. But he’d trained himself in the Maine woods to work with his prosthetic. He was as fast, or faster than, Olga.

The buildings were dark. There were no security lights or dogs. Human guards might be awake, but he expected them to be dull with night after night of inactivity. The compound gave an impression of settled peace. There was no conflict here, no aura of danger and misery.

Then again, the prisoners were asleep at this hour of the night. Or it could be an undetected tranquilizing spell. He halted in the deep shadow of a spruce. The whole night was a mix of shadows and utter darkness. He sensed for a spell that would subdue the compound’s residents, and found nothing. Nevertheless, he was wary as he ran to the southern end of the former equestrian arena.

Layers of wards required concentration to cut through. The outer layer around the entire building was the easiest since it aimed to keep people in, rather than out. He cracked open the door that faced the main house where the guards resided, and ducked in.

A cantrip had given him a cat’s night vision and he quickly assessed the open space around him. The vast building allowed for a large combined kitchen and living area. The grumbling hum of two commercial fridges filled the silence. There were stoves and sinks, tables, chairs and sofas. The latter were positioned either to face a wall screen television or each other, presumably for conversation.

As much as he wanted to see who the slaves were and their condition, the danger of waking them was too high to risk it. Some among them could be supersensitive to magic. He also had yet to locate the guards on duty.

He skirted the tables and stood against a wall where he wouldn’t be immediately visible to anyone entering from the outside door or the dormitories and bathrooms to his left. His target was in front of him: the warded room with the even more warded circle inside it.

Just what was the prisoners’ magic being siphoned to serve?

 

Olga widened a gap in the ward around the manager’s house and entered through the back door, directly into a mudroom with a combined washer-dryer and an overflowing laundry basket, plus discarded mud-encrusted boots. A coat swayed slightly on its hook on the back of the door.

Alert for an attack, she maintained her stealth spell as she passed the bathroom adjacent to the mudroom. She ignored the kitchen beyond it which, along with the living room, ran the length of the front of the house. The two bedrooms were to her left. The nearest one was an office, and her goal. The man in charge of the compound slept in the furthest, largest bedroom.

Olga peeped in, noted the single head on a pillow and a bunched up quilt on the queen-sized bed, the phone on the bedside table, and heard steady breathing with the faintest hint of a snore. She returned to the office and expanded the silence spell that enclosed her so that the entire office was soundproof.  She added a dark block to the window so that the guards wouldn’t notice her moving around in the office. Then she set to work.

While the computer started up, she cloned the nearest phone, the one in the bedroom, and put analysis of it aside for later. She plugged in an USB to copy the hard drive of the computer, and began searching the desk drawers and then the cupboards for information and oddities. Anything of interest she snapped a photo of with her phone, and by interest she meant items such as the dark magic grimoire that had been wrapped in a red wool and linen cloth.

She’d reached the corner of the room furthest from the window when the placid flow of magic stirred. She concentrated on sensing the site of the disturbance.

Darius was crossing the house’s wards, entering as she had through the mudroom.

“Wha-aa?” The sleepy, gargled exclamation came from the doorway. But it wasn’t Darius who stood there, although he loomed behind the man two seconds later. The house’s occupant had woken, but apparently not because of a threat he’d detected. He seemed shocked as he fumbled and switched on the office’s overhead light.

Olga blinked at the sudden brightness, but the cantrip for sight that she’d placed over her eyes adjusted within a half-second.

The man had a ripped body, bare but for satin briefs hanging low on lean hips. He had a sleepy, rumpled look to him; blond hair untidy and green eyes barely open as he squinted against the light. But then those remarkable, memorable eyes flared wide in shock.

Equal shock shot through Olga, striking with the force of lightning. She was looking at her past. “Nicky?”

A growl ripped out of Darius. “You know Nick Sheen?”

Nick Sheen, the slave trader who was meant to be in Chicago? “No, but I know Nicholas Shugak.” She’d known the boy, Nicky, but this man…

He stared at her as sleep and confusion cleared from his face. He was carefully calculating the odds, deciding his play. But for all that, there seemed to be honest emotion in his voice when he asked, “Lolly?”

Her voice was husky. “Yes.”

He started forward impulsively, arms beginning to lift for a hug—or to attack.

“We take him with us,” Darius said. “I want answers.”

So did Olga, but abducting Nicky would alert the compound and the hunting lodge next door of an intrusion, and therefore, alert Svenson of a threat moving against him. She made up her mind swiftly. Taking Nicky with them was their least bad option. Maybe it wouldn’t hurt to rattle Svenson’s cage.

She nodded simultaneously with Darius hitting Nicky with a sleeping spell. She grimaced, but couldn’t blame him for not waiting for her agreement. Nicky was a threat that had to be neutralized whether they took him with them or not.

His muscular body collapsed heavily to the wood floor. He looked so different to the skinny boy she’d known. It was his eyes that had given him away. They were a vibrant green and as shrewd as a leprechaun’s.

“Is there anything else you need, before we get out of here?” Darius asked.

She gave herself a shake. Time to be shocked later. “I’ll take the laptop and his phone, both powered off so they can’t be tracked. There’s a safe here, warded. I just about had it…” She crouched back down. “Five minutes. We might be able to make it look like Nick disappeared of his own accord.”

Darius nodded. “I’ll pack him a bag.”

She concentrated on unpicking the ward around the safe. It parted, and she flicked a quick open sesame spell at the combination lock. Tumblers turned. She opened the safe.

Darius returned with an overnight bag and a worn leather jacket.

Olga had to shake off a flashback. She remembered when those black leather trenches were the epitome of cool, but way out of most people’s price range in her and Nick’s childhood neighborhood. Two decades had passed since then.

Impatient with herself, she emptied the contents of the safe into the satchel she’d brought with her. The enchanted bag included a containment spell. No matter what dangerous items Nick had had stashed away, they’d be unable to harm anyone while in the satchel. She clicked the safe closed, released the ward so that it snapped back into place, and stood.

Darius cast a feather spell to reduce the burden of Nick’s weight, and lifted him over one shoulder.

She locked the front door behind them and they walked quickly back to the jeep. Once outside the former horse farm, she removed the wedge she’d left in its perimeter ward. The magic streamed back without triggering an alert.

Ten minutes later they were in her jeep and headed back to their rented cabin outside St. Cloud.

“Who is he?” Darius asked from the passenger seat.

Unconsciously, she looked in the rear view mirror, but Nick was no more than a lump stuffed into the backseat. “I knew him as Nicky, Nicholas, Shugak. We were foster kids together.” Despite her intention to be calm, her pulse quickened. “I was ten when Nana died. There was no one else. I went into the system, got assigned to a family in the area who fostered kids for the income. Sometimes that’s okay, but…five other kids in the house, two adults with personality problems, and me. I wasn’t only grieving, I was lost. And then, my magic showed up.”

It had been a bad time, the worst time, in her life. Just thinking about it had her depressing the accelerator as if she could outrun the memories. Except her past now rode in the backseat.

“Nicky.” She paused, aware of how her chest tightened. She’d had asthma during her year in foster care. Not before or after, but during. Anxiety attacks. She’d huddled in a cardigan, old, over-sized, and worn, but her nana’s. Occasionally, Nicky had been there and although he’d been a tough eleven-year-old boy, he’d rubbed her back and told her she was strong, that she’d survive. “You’ll make that magic your bitch.”

“Pardon?”

She shook her head. “A memory. Nicky used to say it to me. When I panicked, he’d tell me that I could control my magic. He looked out for me.” It hadn’t been simple kindness. She’d transferred the care she’d given her nana to Nicky. She’d cooked and washed his clothes, patched them, laundered his sheets along with hers and helped with his homework—when he bothered to go to school. She’d given him a sense of having a home, in exchange for him providing her with a shaky sense of safety.

Nicky had talked a big game, but he’d been able to back it up by cleverly deploying the tiny spark of magic he possessed to create an uncanny reputation. It kept him safe, and by extension, her as well.

“Nicky’s a hedge wizard, like Svenson,” she said to Darius. “I was eleven when Minervalle School found me. Nicky was back with his mom during that time. He wasn’t answering his phone. She probably sold it for drugs. He was in and out of foster care as they kept giving him back to her each time she claimed to be clean.” Old anger sounded in her voice; anger at how helpless she’d felt as a child.

She pressed her lips together, breathing through her nose till she was calm. A mile went past. “I never spoke to Nicky after I left for Minervalle. My life went a different path and…I was glad to forget the foster home. I didn’t forget my nana, but I choose to remember the good times, not the…caring for someone who is dying is difficult.”

“And you were only a kid.” Darius’s voice was deep and rough in the darkness. The old jeep didn’t have an electronic display to light their faces as they travelled through the night. “You had an opportunity to improve your life and you took it. That’s admirable.”

“Admirable, huh.”

He gripped her knee. There was no sexual intent in the gesture. It said he was there; that she wasn’t alone.

“Sorry.” She cleared her throat. “You were asking about Nicky, not my childhood history.”

He withdrew his hand.

They drove in silence till they reached the highway.

“I’ll need to take the lead in interrogating Nick Sheen,” he said as she overtook a slow-moving truck.

“I’d appreciate it.” Her hands tightened fractionally on the wheel, but her breathing had relaxed, and it stayed slow and steady as they returned to their lane on the highway.

“If I’d included a photo of Nick Sheen in my report—” he began.

She shook her head. “Don’t go there. I’m curious how he came to be in the manager’s house, as casual there as if it’s his home. You thought that he was in Chicago and that he’d been to the compound once.”

“My intel was wrong.” He quietly thumped his fist against the jeep door.

They passed a gas station, lit up and lonely in the night. She recalled the turnoff she’d have to take soon to reach their rented cabin. “Nicky went to the trouble of faking his physical whereabouts, which raises the question of why? He didn’t hide that he’s a human trafficker.” And that stuck in her throat like a peach pit, jagged and horrible. The boy she’d known had grown to be a man who traded in, and profited from, misery.

She swallowed and concentrated on things she could do, things she could change. “As soon as it’s a reasonable hour, I’ll contact Gregory to tell him we have Nick. If he can send us information on him, we can verify the information you get out of him.” She wet her lips. “I’d like to be present at the interview.”

“Agreed.”

 

Before they reached the cabin, Darius double-checked that Nick wasn’t a Trojan horse carrying a tracking spell or other offensive measures.

“He’s clean.” Darius got out of the jeep. Being from Maine, he was accustomed to the cold and didn’t comment on the crackle of frost when his boots hit the ground. “I’m going to wake him up rather than carry him to the house.”

“He’ll need a blanket.” She grabbed one seemingly out of thin air. The enchanted jeep stored things in strange ways. She dropped it on Nick’s legs as he woke up. She’d picked up the overnight bag he’d stuffed with Nick’s belongings and vanished inside before their prisoner blinked himself fully awake.

“Out,” Darius ordered.

“You got any shoes I can borrow?”

“You’ll survive.” It was no distance to the front porch.

With the blanket wrapped around him, Nick dashed to the porch, lifting his bare feet exaggeratedly high. “Much better in here. And Lolly. I thought I saw you.”

Darius gritted his teeth at the other man’s cheerful tone. An unsuspecting listener would think Nick was an invited guest. He got inside and shut the door.

Olga had left the overnight bag at the base of the stairs, and Nick had walked straight past it toward where she stood by the empty fireplace.

Darius grabbed him by a blanket-covered arm. “We have questions for you.”

“Of course you do. And Lolly and I have to catch up. But first, I need to piss. Don’t give me that look, man. Needing to piss was why I woke up and got into this mess.”

Darius escorted him to the bathroom, and stayed with him.

“Fortunately, I don’t suffer from performance anxiety.”

Darius didn’t care what the man suffered from. “Get dressed.” He’d had Nick carry the overnight bag up.

His prisoner climbed into sweatpants and a t-shirt, and put the toilet seat down to sit and pull on socks.

When they returned to the living room, Olga had two mugs of coffee ready. She sipped from one, and passed the other to Darius.

“Unkind,” Nick mourned, but his attention wasn’t on the coffee. He stared at the scrying tray with its layout of the compound and hunting lodge.

Darius dragged a chair away from the table and swung it around. “Sit.”

Now, Nick’s back was to the table.

Darius sat as well. They had checked Nick for magic, and his previous nakedness meant he had no weapons on him, but Darius wasn’t taking chances. He used magic to tie his prisoner’s ankles to the chair legs.

Nick felt the pressure of the invisible bonds. His strange green eyes narrowed as he studied Darius.

The two men faced each other. Olga sat to the side on the sofa. She had her laptop with her and switched it on.

Darius sipped his coffee. It was hot with just the right amount of milk. The fact that she had not only memorized his preferences, but indulged them even while off-balance from Nick’s appearance, pleased him. He kept his goal for this interview clearly in mind. They required information on Svenson. Afterward, Nick could be passed to Gregory for a thorough interrogation on the human trafficking network.

There was a distinct power play in the room when none of them spoke.

Olga connected her USB to the laptop. Within a minute she was flicking through the documents she’d copied. She was present, she was listening, but Nick’s interview was not her priority. She couldn’t have said it more clearly if she’d spoken.

Darius finished his coffee and put the mug on the dining table. The shadow lion still guarded the scrying tray and cabin, but invisibly. Darius didn’t intend for Nick Sheen to learn anything about him. “We have your files, your records. Why should we keep you alive?”

Nick shrugged. “You’ve gone to the trouble of carting me here. You tell me. What do you want?”

“Information on Svenson.”

“The big fish, huh?” Nick made a show of leaning back and getting comfortable, but the bindings on his legs limited the effectiveness of the move, and his jaw had a hard, tense line despite the casual tone of his voice. “13OPS finally got the balls to go after him?” He was dribbling information, teasing them into pursuing the wrong lead even as he indicated that he knew Olga’s occupation.

“I’m not 13OPS.”

“No?” Nick assessed him. “Military, maybe. Not civilian. Someone Lolly trusts, but can you trust her?”

Darius ignored the taunt. It wasn’t meant for him, anyway. He didn’t glance aside to see if the barb found its mark with Olga. Instead, he picked up the string Nick dangled. “Why do you think we’re interested in Svenson?”

“Because he’s an interesting man. Power is always interesting.”

Darius had received basic training in field interrogation, but questioning informants and suspects on a mission had been Gabe’s role. Maybe he should have waited till he’d had a chance to read the information Olga had taken from the office, and until he’d spoken with her. “Will Svenson kill you for talking with us?”

“Are you going to offer me protection?”

“No. My instinct is to kill you and save Svenson the trouble.” He let Nick scrutinize his expression and saw the realization sink in that he meant it. Someone who traded in slaves didn’t deserve mercy.

Nick’s fingers curled, nails scratching over his knees. He turned his head to look at Olga. “Would you let him kill me, Lolly?”

Olga had discipline. This was Darius’s interview. She stayed silent, her head bent over the laptop that she balanced on her knees.

“She won’t let you kill me,” Nick confided to him. “She understands why I did what I did. How I’ve helped.”

“Svenson,” Darius reminded their prisoner.

“He was my role model in the early years. A hedge wizard, like me. He clawed his way up and out. First to financial security and respectability, then to real power and wealth.”

“And slave trading is respectable?”

Nick shook his head once, the gesture and his expression was one of disappointment; but not disappointment in himself. He pitied Darius. Nick looked at Olga. “Do you know this one’s background? Home-baked cookies and organized sports. I guarantee it. School jock. Lots of family. A place in the world. And he takes it all for granted.”

Darius had a sudden, unsettling flashback to Olga’s wide-eyed survey of his barn at the cabin. His family’s century of residence hadn’t been part of her experience. But she was too mature, too savvy to fall for Nick’s manipulation. Trying to drive the two of them apart was an obvious ploy on his part. He was a conman, one good at reading people and playing the odds. He didn’t actually know who Darius was. He’d guessed. But Darius was far more, and more complicated than his upbringing.

“Lolly, we know what it’s like to have nowhere to go. If your fancy school hadn’t swooped in and whisked you off, what would you have done? 13OPS is like everyone else. They don’t want white trash. You saw your chance to make yourself over, and you took it. I don’t blame you for leaving me behind. But would you deny that opportunity to other people?” He spread his hands wide.

Darius intervened. “Do you help people on Svenson’s behalf?”

Nick’s attention remained exaggeratedly on Olga. “Yes, I use Svenson’s influence, his money and power, to help people who have no one to turn to.”

Darius refused to play along with Nick’s twisting of the truth. “Can you prove that your traffic in humans is linked to Svenson?”

“Lolly is looking for that link.”

Darius’s skin crawled at the affection in Nick’s voice. He said, sharply. “So help her find it faster.”

“There is no link. Svenson employs the best deep cover artists in the business. I can’t even begin to imagine how convoluted the process by which his money is hidden. Push this button. Pull that lever.”

Darius stood. “You talk, but you don’t say much.”

Nick tilted back his head to meet his eyes. “Then you’re not listening. Lolly is.”

“If you think Olga,” Darius emphasized her name, “gives a damn about you, you’re wrong. Twist your words how you like, you’re a slave trader. Despicable. Killing you makes the world a better place.”

Nick looked down at his hands, which were loose on his thighs, no longer giving away his tension. The interrogation wasn’t working. They weren’t gaining new information, but Nick was gaining confidence. “You invaded my home, tonight. You used magic against me, and you kidnapped me. If you’d come in the daytime, you could have spoken with the residents I care for. You think they’re slaves. They’re not. They are refugees. And yes, they were smuggled into the country illegally, but if you knew what they’d been suffering—”

Darius grunted. He was tired, frustrated, and his right foot hurt in the ball of the big toe—which it couldn’t do because it didn’t exist anymore. Phantom pain, just what he needed. “Shut up. You’re no misunderstood do-gooder.”

“My people don’t want to leave.” Whatever else Nick had intended to say, a sleep spell silenced him.

Olga apologized. “It’s late—or very early morning. Take your pick.” She shutdown the laptop. “I need to send this data to Gregory for analysis. From a quick look, it doesn’t mention Svenson. A detailed analysis might turn up something. However, what is clear is the operating procedures for the slavery ring. Nick might be telling the truth and the few dozen people at the compound are glad to be there, but there are many others that he simply sold to people. Humans used for who knows what purpose, treated without any protection of law or compassion.” Her voice wavered.

“What do we do with Nick?” Darius asked as he cast a healing spell to erase the phantom pain in his missing foot.

Olga placed the laptop on the table. “We keep him. I have questions—after we’ve slept. Regroup at 10am?”

“Okay.”

She phoned and left a message for Gregory, briefly describing the situation and telling him she was sending the data stolen from Nick’s computer.

Darius frowned at their unconscious prisoner. He undid the bindings and levitated the man to lie down on the floor.

“The sleep spell will keep him unconscious,” Olga said. “But I still don’t want him down here unsupervised.”

“The shadow lion is guarding against foreign magic.”

She rubbed her eyes. “I’ll sleep on the sofa. Nick can have my bed.”

“You can share with me,” Darius said, not thinking, just responding to her weariness and how hurt she’d been to have her past raked up. His brain caught up with his mouth. “The bed’s big enough to share, and I’d rather share it with you than with Sleeping Beauty.” And there were only two beds in the cabin. Presumably its owner didn’t want group house rentals.

She stared at him for a long moment. “All right. Thanks.”

He hadn’t expected her agreement. Now, he wanted to ask why she’d agreed. Biting back the question, he hoisted Nick with magic and carted the unconscious man up the stairs. It felt odd to watch Olga carefully cover their prisoner with a quilt. Would she have tucked in a stranger? On the other hand, under the influence of the sleep spell, the man was unable to notice and deal with the cold in the air. He decided to accept that her concern was pragmatic. A prisoner with the flu would make life harder.

She picked up her few belongings—she hadn’t unpacked—and carried them into his room. She extracted a t-shirt and leggings from her bag, vanished into the bathroom, and returned quickly, sliding into the unmade bed.

He’d had some idiotic idea of making sharing a room and bed less intimate by switching the overhead light on. Seeing her tug the covers up to her forehead to shade her eyes told him how stupid he’d been. He switched on a bedside lamp, switched off the ceiling light, and took his own turn in the bathroom.

The spell to replace his prosthetic with a temporary magical replacement ran through his mind. If he used it, he could remove the prosthetic in the privacy of the bathroom. He couldn’t sleep with it on. Call it a mental quirk, but having that cold thing attached to his knee in the warm comfort of a bed was just wrong.

And what if Olga’s feet touched it?

He compromised by wearing the prosthetic back into the bedroom and sitting on his side of the bed to remove it. That made him sufficiently uncomfortable to satisfy his Puritan soul that he wasn’t indulging in vanity and trying to hide the reality of his missing leg from the woman sharing his bed.

Not that she noticed. She faced away from his bedside light with the covers pulled over her head. Her voice was sleepy. “I’ve set my phone to wake us at 10am.”

He leaned his prosthetic leg against the bedside table and switched off the light. It would be dawn soon. They’d decide what to do with Nick Sheen over breakfast. Darius slid under the covers and had to resist the temptation to steal some of Olga’s warmth. The sound of her slow, regular breathing lulled him to sleep.