Paranoid Mage Book Three: Heretic Mage

Callum is at war with the Guild of Arcane Regulation, the organization that governs mages on Earth. He’s spent most of his time lying low and hiding out, trying to understand what he can do and how he can remain free from their meddling. What he’s learned is that he can’t.

It’s time to move from reaction to action, and take on GAR and its evils directly.

Foreword

This book would not have been made without the tireless work of my editor, Kaorin, and the support of my many patrons and readers. Thanks to everyone who has supported me!

Visit me on the web at http://www.inadvisablycompelled.com

If you feel like supporting me, you can check out my Patreon.

Heretic Mage Copyright © 2022 by InadvisablyCompelled

Table of Contents

Chapter 1– Gayle

Chapter 2 – Mictlān

Chapter 3 – Unwind

Chapter 4 – Work

Chapter 5 – Fulcrum

Chapter 6 – Christmas

Chapter 7 – Fane

Chapter 8 – Infiltration

Chapter 9 – Assassination

Chapter 10 - Cracks

Chapter 11 – Vacation

Chapter 12 – Evidence

Chapter 13 – Compromised

Chapter 14 – Annoyances

Chapter 15 – Favor

Chapter 16 – Foreshocks

Chapter 17 – Hammer

Chapter 18 – Fracture

Chapter 1– Gayle

Gayle Hargrave listened to the earth-shaking rumbling and crashing outside of Lucile Harper’s cell in Garrison Two. It was one thing to snipe obvious monsters from the safety of a fortified wall, and it was another to actually be in the middle of things. A sudden burst of hot air washing under the cell door made her flinch, before an enormous hole appeared above them. She barely saw the magic and certainly didn’t have time to react before it swept down, devouring them in darkness.

She felt herself spin through the air for a long eternal second before she landed heavily on something padded, letting out a grunt. A groan came from beside her and she had to stifle a shriek before she realized that it was just Lucile. Gayle would freely admit she was terrified; they weren’t any longer in Garrison Two, they weren’t even in a portal world, and there was no telling what would happen.

Finally, she laid a hand on her focus band, but before she could figure out which one was her illumination focus, a window opened and bright light streamed in. Gayle scrambled to her feet, putting together a negative healing dart as she squinted at the window. There wasn’t a person there and, in fact, it wasn’t even a window, but a disc that was letting in sunlight that revealed bare gray stone all around them.

“Lucy?” A voice came through the hole. A voice Gayle recognized.

Lucile popped upright in the dim light, her muscles tense and rigid, her fists clenched hard enough to draw blood. Cords stood out on her neck. She looked ready to throw a punch, but her face was completely blank when she replied.

“Of House Harper, that’s me.” Lucile’s voice was far too loud, bouncing off the walls of the small cave. As soon as she said it, she relaxed, breathing hard as all the tension drained out of her and almost losing her balance on the cheap padded blankets the light had revealed underfoot.

“Professor Brown?” Gayle demanded in the brief silence afterward, almost incredulous. She knew Callum Wells was an incredibly dangerous criminal – she kept having to remind herself that the Professor Brown she knew had been a lie – but she still found it hard to believe.

“…Gayle?” Wells said, sounding just as surprised as her. “Of all the— alright, this complicates things,” Wells muttered to himself. “Gayle, I need you to take a few steps away from Lucy, please.” He sounded so reasonable that she took a step before she realized what she was doing and stopped, crossing her arms and frowning. She wasn’t sure what Wells wanted, but she knew she wasn’t supposed to be helping him.

“Now, now, you wait just a minute!” Gayle said, managing not to splutter it. “I’m a member of the Bureau of Secret Enforcement, and you two are both criminals! I can’t just do whatever you tell me!”

“Gayle, do we really have to do this?” What instantly quenched her indignation was not that Wells sounded angry or upset or even threatening. He just sounded tired. “I know that healing magic is dangerous but I don’t think either of us want to fight.”

“I don’t want you to fight either,” Lucile said. “Especially not since I’m in the blast radius! Seriously though, you don’t seem a bad sort and the big man there is pretty scary.”

Gayle glared at Lucile, but her heart wasn’t in it. She found the entire situation surreal, completely unlike anything she had trained for. The only spell form she had that might help was the one that killed people, and it could kill mages with their shields up! Yet she couldn’t imagine actually trying to kill a person, especially one she knew. If she could even target him.

Which she couldn’t.

“Fine,” she grumbled, and stepped over to the bare stone wall. Vis surrounded Lucy, so light it was only a glimmering in Gayle’s magical sight, and Lucile disappeared. Leaving her alone in a small stone room. With no entrances or exits save the tiny window of sunlight. “Um,” she said.

“Why were you holding Lucy hostage?” Wells asked.

“I wasn’t holding her hostage!” Gayle said indignantly. She was kind of supposed to, but there was never any real chance of that.

“It’s not Gayle holding me hostage,” Lucy agreed.

“Oh. Fucking hell,” Wells swore. Gayle’s ears burned.

“Mister Wells,” she said, shocked.

“Sorry,” he said, apparently by reflex. “Is that fae magic?”

“That’s righ…” Lucile’s voice trailed off oddly and Gayle worried at her bottom lip with her teeth while there was silence from the window.

“Gayle.” Wells’ voice was flat. “Can I trust you to heal Lucy?”

“I— what?” She felt like she was having trouble keeping up with events. “What happened?”

“I don’t know. Will you do it?”

“Yes?” Gayle was a healer. That was what she wanted to do and how she thought of herself. She wasn’t willingly going to stand by while someone suffered. Not that she could see either of them at the moment, but that wasn’t relevant. A moment later, Lucile reappeared on the padded floor, but she was stretched on her back and either unconscious or close to it. Gayle stepped over and knelt down, extending her magic to the woman with a frown.

“Can you drop your bubble, please?” Wells asked. Gayle blushed.

“Mister Wells, that is highly inappropriate!”

“I suppose that’s true,” Wells said slowly. “Pull it back close, then. I want to keep an eye on Lucy myself.” Under the circumstances she couldn’t well argue his caution, so she made an effort of will to pull her sphere of authority tighter around herself.

Using her magic on a mundane – Lucile was close enough to count – was more difficult than on a mage. Normally a healer could count on a mage’s vis to do some of the work, but with a mundane she needed to be more selective and careful. Active healing senses were a mess of returns and she was no where near being an expert on what it all meant. Nevertheless, she was pretty certain there was nothing actually wrong with Lucile. Sure enough, just a hint of a low-powered refresh resulted in Lucile’s eyes opening, and she sat up with a groan.

“Can you talk about it now?” Wells asked immediately.

“I don’t know what you’re asking about, big man,” Lucile replied immediately.

“You take a rest then, Lucy.” Wells’ voice gentled. “We’ll figure this out.”

“I feel fine,” Lucile assured him with a brittle smile that betrayed her words. Gayle didn’t know what to think of such false bravado, especially coupled with some ailment she couldn’t detect or cure.

“I’m sure you do,” Callum said neutrally. “Gayle, do you have any idea how to purge fae mana from someone?”

“I— no?” Gayle blinked. “I guess get another fae to remove it?”

“That isn’t likely. What about a portal world? Would that erode it?”

“Umm.” Gayle considered the question. “Maybe? I know they had extra portals into Garrison Two so fae could function, but I don’t know about once they’ve actually done something.”

“Then we’ll do that. Keep an eye on her for me, please.”

“I will?” She wasn’t exactly sure what Wells intended to do, but she was pretty sure it wasn’t a good idea. Or at the very least a legal idea. Not that she blamed him, if he had some way to fix whatever was wrong.

“And thank you.” Wells voice sounded tired again. “While we’re here, I want to apologize for what happened to you. They told me that you got packed off to black ops because of my advice. I wouldn’t have done that to you on purpose, and I know that’s not an excuse, but I just didn’t know.”

“Oh.” Gayle was struck speechless. She’d gone over what she might say to him, and vice versa, so many times in her head, but she’d never thought he’d just flatly apologize. Her thoughts flew in useless circles, pointing out the apology didn’t make sense, that there was no way he could be unaware of the esoteric rules if he was so skilled. He seemed to be acting as if he were from some completely foreign land she’d never heard of.

“You’ll have to hang on for a bit. I’ll drop you off when I get a chance but I need to take care of Lucy first.”

“I told you, I’m fine,” Lucile butted in, with an even more brittle smile than before. She wobbled from where she had propped herself up on an elbow, and Gayle sent out another probe of healing magic. Yet again, there didn’t seem to be anything she could exactly fix. “Where exactly are we anyway, big man? Guess we’re not in the Deep Wilds anymore?”

“You’re somewhere safe,” Wells replied, and Gayle, while still quite flustered, didn’t miss that it wasn’t exactly an answer.

***

The rescue itself had gone well, except for one worrying complication. Nothing had compelled him to show up himself, which was a damn good thing considering the terrifyingly powerful bubbles that had been on the other side. Nobody had even died, and while he was forced to grab someone he didn’t intend to, at least he’d been able to. He hadn’t been at all confident of his ability to sweep a portal faster than a mage could disrupt it.

Fortunately for him, the mage in question was definitely not combat trained. Callum had only recognized Gayle in hindsight, since she was wearing a slightly tactical uniform and her blonde hair was cut shorter. The slightly bewildered blue eyes were the same, though.

With Lucy, he hadn’t known what to expect, but he was still somewhat thrown by the brunette with a small oval face who looked and dressed like she was out of a 1940s Sears Catalogue. Given how she’d talked about how isolated and outcast she was, he thought she’d be plain and frumpy, not strikingly attractive.

She was the complication. Immediately using the duress phrase and then practically collapsing in his arms was not exactly the triumphant introduction he’d hoped for. While he had no idea what exactly they’d done, he could sense a little bit of the swirly fae magic about her and even inside her. He had thought that shoving magical forms into someone else was impossible aside from healing magic, but Lucy didn’t have the dense, impenetrable vis of a vamp or a shifter. Hers was closer to a normal person’s, which he still had to work to see through with his perceptions, but he could do it.

Despite his worries, he couldn’t just leave the evidence of his presence lying around. Cleaning up the campsite was just a matter of teleporting everything directly over to his cache, including the dewar and the portal anchors he’d used for his assault. While having access to fresh lava was useful, having a portal anchor pair free was more useful and it wasn’t like he could trust the lava-side setup to stay, even if supernaturals couldn’t trace him. For all he knew some tourist group would come through later in the day, to say nothing of what the actual volcano itself might do.

He shifted the portal end that led to Gayle’s location inside his cave-cache as well, so it had the mana to stay open on its own, and he teleported himself to the surface above his cache so he could get to traveling. Out came the flying-chair and once again he lofted himself into the air. If he’d left a portal anchor in the Deep Wilds he might have been able to use that portal world to cleanse Lucy, but that was an impossible wish. There was really only one portal world he could get to.

Portal World Six.

Callum still didn’t know what exactly the San Lorenzo Tenochtitlán portal held, why it was considered empty, or what defenses might be in place. However, the effectiveness of his portal anchor in the BSE base gave him fair confidence about using it again to infiltrate Portal World Six, and it wasn’t like he had many options. At least, not if he wanted to help Lucy quickly. He didn’t know what was wrong with her, but he had a feeling it’d only get worse.

The precise location of Portal World Six was somewhere on his laptop, and while he could have gotten it out to check, he had doubts the records were accurate. He really didn’t trust any of the official information, and once he got close he could use the mana flow to locate the actual source rather than relying on any official information. Assuming he could get close without having to plow through a bunch of mage defenses. More realistically, he’d bypass them, but in his current mood he felt inclined toward smashing things.

He was actually fairly fresh, magically speaking. The assault on the GAR base had been stressful but he hadn’t actually done all that much. Opened less than a dozen portals, only one of them large, and none of them sustained. The gravity launcher he’d cobbled together was actually more effort, and there’d been plenty of mana pouring through the portals to help with recovery.

Even as vis-intensive as chair flying was, he wasn’t that far from the Portal World location, by design. He only needed a few jaunts to cross the isthmus and home in on the portal location, so it only took him a couple minutes to touch down close enough to start using normal teleports instead. The flying chair was fast, despite how much he mistrusted the process.

“Everyone okay in there?” He asked, opening a new speaking-portal into the cave where Gayle and Lucy were sequestered. Originally he’d planned to have Lucy change into a fresh set of clothes, just in case hers had trackers, and maybe even run her through an airport scanner to make sure there were no implants, but that had been kicked in the head by the current crisis. Even taking Lucy out in the first place had been a bad idea, fueled by the panic of the moment, but at least the only place he’d given away was the volcano spot. Anyone who wanted to was welcome to comb that as much as they wanted; he didn’t have anything there.

He was still a little worried someone might show up at the cave he’d hidden the girls in, since if there was some kind of tracker that worked like the paired spatial enchants, he wouldn’t be able to sense it operating. Especially if Gayle had it on her person. Homebonds were a technology he’d taken from them in the first place, after all.

“Just peachy, big man,” Lucy’s voice came, but it sounded a little wrong. He didn’t know if he was actually hearing it, or it was just his imagination since he knew she wasn’t in her right mind. “When are we going to be able to get out and stretch our legs?”

“Won’t be long now,” he said, not entirely lying. While he was cautious all the time, it hurt to actively mistrust Lucy, even if it wasn’t her fault. Especially if it wasn’t her fault. Of course, he mistrusted Gayle too, but unless she was a superb actor, he was pretty sure she wasn’t actively trying to trip him up. Which was in a way more dangerous, because that made her very unpredictable.

“Wait, you’re just going to a Portal World?” Gayle protested. “They aren’t going to let you stay inside the defenses! You can’t expect to just, just, wander around in the wilderness!”

“I don’t really intend to. Besides, I have some advantages.”

He had to drop the phone-portal to teleport. Or rather, he didn’t have to, but keeping it open and wrapping his teleportation framework around it was more effort than he wanted to expend for the moment. It wasn’t hard, but he was a big believer in the sum of percents and when going into an unknown situation every edge mattered.

The portal world site was out in the countryside near San Lorenzo, out by the bogs, rather than on the coast. At least, that was what he remembered, but the mana density didn’t seem to be rising like it had near the portal worlds in Europe. It was definitely still above the levels in the States, but he was starting to think that even Lucy’s information was wrong before he finally caught some actual flow.

Oddly enough, it wasn’t in the air, but rather, underground, a languid flow through the water table. The mana in the air seemed to be coming up from the ground, through the ponds and cenotes that dotted the area. Once he realized that, following it back to the source was not particularly difficult. He was glad he didn’t have to actually walk the area, though, because it was marshy and boggy and it would have been an absolute bear to slog through on foot.

“Almost there,” he informed the women, popping open a temporary phone-portal.

“That was fast! What’d you do, big man, sneak through the GAR transport system?” Callum suppressed a sigh as he ignored Lucy’s obviously leading question. He was sure now that her voice really was off, and it wasn’t his imagination. Not that he would have necessarily minded answering the question if they were alone, but with Gayle right there he wasn’t going to give away any secrets.

“Do you know anything useful about Portal World Six?” He asked instead, since it wasn’t like he’d be able to hide where he was if he was to actually use it. “Either of you?”

“It’s supposed to be empty,” Gayle said. “But it’s not safe either. Nobody really bothers with it.”

“Sorry, big man. I don’t remember anything interesting about it.”

“I guess I’ll have to find out myself, then.”

“Don’t!” Gayle pleaded. “If something happens to you we’ll be stuck in a cave!”

“That’s a fair point,” he conceded. “I’ll do something about that before taking any risks.” Risk was the main reason he hadn’t checked up on Portal World Six any earlier, despite building his bunker relatively close to it. Portal Worlds were dangerous, he’d already seen that, and he hadn’t seen any point to indulging what was ultimately just curiosity to find out.

Portaling Gayle out of the cave to the surface was probably a reasonable way to handle things, if he did it just before he and Lucy went into the portal world. At this point it seemed obvious she didn’t have a homebond, since they probably hadn’t expected him to be able to abduct her.

Not that he’d expected it, either.

Another minute or so brought him near the actual portal, to judge both from the underground mana currents and the magical constructs that popped up on the edges of his perception. He stopped there and used his portal anchor to scout further ahead. It’d already proven that it was hard to detect, and the worst that could happen was that it would be destroyed. Which was bad, but not as bad as an actual injury.

The odd thing was that the spell forms didn’t seem to be wards. They didn’t look like what he’d seen set up around various GAR places, anyway, especially since they seemed to be along the interior of an underground cave system. A partly flooded one, at that.

Though calling it a system might have been overselling things somewhat. It seemed a somewhat large cenote that had been walled over in the past – he was pretty sure he could make out the signs of earth-magic worked stone – that linked up with an underground stream. In all, he could probably call the cenote cave a temple, as every inch of the wall was carved. Or had been carved, at some point; the wet stone had done a pretty good job of eroding away anything recognizable other than a few human-shaped silhouettes.

Despite that, there was no recent sign of human presence aside from the enchantments themselves. There weren’t any personnel, no small outpost with teleporters. He hesitated to call it abandoned, because everything seemed too neat and tidy for that, and he knew that enchantments didn’t last forever, but it seemed empty at the moment. Whatever caretakers there were seemed to be gone at the moment.

Perhaps responding to an emergency elsewhere. Like a lava-filled outpost in the Deep Wilds, perhaps. Though the lack of guards was itself unnerving, like the portal world could take care of itself. Or those within it could, like with the dragonlands. He’d have to be on guard and ready to leave at the slightest twitch.

The portal was in the center of the cenote, but it looked completely different to his senses than any of the portals he’d seen before. If the other portals were generally holes held open by a magic framework, this one was ripped open and pinned in place. Quite literally. A mana-dense shard of some material had plunged out of one side of the portal and lanced into the ground, burying itself several feet into the rock.

Calling it something really undersold the menace the material gave off even through his spatial perception. It wasn’t like it was malevolent as such, but it had several planes and angles terminating in edges so sharp that he swore they cut the mana flow itself. Not to mention that the fundamental nature of space, that thing he could only feel in the vaguest terms, seemed distorted in close proximity to it. Maybe it had cut through into the world, rather than being a proper portal.

As a consequence, it leaned drunkenly at an angle to the floor, rather than being oriented properly up and down like the other portals he’d seen. The other side of the portal was traversable, but the weirdness of the space seemed to persist inside, so he wasn’t really looking forward to going in himself. It was obvious that despite what he had thought, this really wasn’t the same as the other portal worlds.

While he was studying it, he realized what the magical constructs around the cave were for, since they weren’t wards. Somehow, the mana outflow from the portal was being contained and redirected downward into the ground. Or rather, into the water. He was baffled as to why, but it at least explained the relatively lower mana levels aboveground.

Mana confinement and redirection enchantments were actually something he could use, but that would have to be some other day. He had an emergency to deal with and couldn’t spare too much time gawking. Callum pushed a vis thread through the portal, into the empty area he could sense on the other side, and teleported the focus through.

Immediately he ran into issues. The portal bobbled as usual, but his attempts to re-stabilize it were only partly successful. The recirculation network and the mana intakes kept collapsing, and while the primary portal structure did work it was highly strained, on the verge of destabilizing itself. For a few moments he ignored the surroundings as he wrestled with the portal anchor, ready to teleport it back if he couldn’t get it to function right.

When he did set up a teleport framework around the anchor, he realized the problem in a sudden flash of insight. The space was different there, and while his manually created constructs conformed almost without any input from him, the ones created by the enchantments were static. They couldn’t adapt to the differences, so they just failed. It was a weakness in the portal anchor setup he hadn’t anticipated, but then, he hadn’t really known how different the portal worlds could really be. Under the circumstances, and considering that his spatial perception really didn’t tell him much, Callum opened a portal to see what the portal world actually looked like for himself.

He blinked at obsidian and ash.

Rather than eternal day or eternal night, portal world six was dark, yet everything was still clearly visible. Not that there was much to see. Jagged spires of mana-rich obsidian thrust into the air in every direction, smooth and glassy except where they came to wickedly sharp points or edges. Flakes of what looked like ash drifted down from a featureless sky, landing on the flat obsidian of the ground and the tilted spires, yet failing to accumulate there.

The longer he looked, the more it hurt his eyes trying to figure out exactly what he was seeing. It was like time wasn’t passing, or a single moment was repeating. The sight was so weird that he almost lost control of the portal anchor while he was distracted. Apparently his interpretation of the GAR information about Portal World Six had been off-base.

Given how strange it was, he wasn’t going to go in there himself without testing things. He cast about and found some sort of rodent nearby, and promptly teleported it into the portal world. It froze, looking around in short jerks of its head, but it didn’t keel over or get attacked. That cleared up most of Callum’s worries, even if Six was a very strange place.

“Okay Gayle,” he said, after teleporting the rodent back to the surface and reclaiming the portal anchor. He was having issues keeping it open inside Six, so he couldn’t use it too easily at the moment. The question was whether the same would be true for his gut-portal, or whether his body’s vis would prevent the issue. “I’ll open a portal for you but I advise you not to wander too far.”

“What? Why not?” Gayle sounded a little affronted. It was better than the quaver of fear from before, something that had made Callum feel exceedingly guilty, but he had to wonder if she really understood what was going on. Though to be fair, he was pretty sure she was quite sheltered.

“Well, it’s the middle of nowhere. I’m sure you’d rather not have to try and hike to civilization yourself.”

“Oh.”

“Lucy, you’re with me.”

“Sure we all can’t stay together, big man?”

“I don’t think Gayle wants to go where we’re going,” Callum said, and opened a portal between the cave they were in and the wilderness just above said cave. It was a bleak December day, so it wasn’t exactly enjoyable, but it wasn’t like it was dangerous either. Gayle practically fled out of the opening though, and he wondered if maybe she was slightly claustrophobic.

Lucy, weirdly, tried to follow, but Callum reached out and teleported her over next to him. She stumbled and gagged from the disorientation of the trip, and he winced at how rude it was to do that without saying anything. He’d only been targeting himself and people he couldn’t or didn’t want to warn, and he made a note to himself to try and retrain his impulses.

“Jeez, warn a girl before you do something like that,” she admonished, once she got ahold of her stomach. She didn’t seem to be as badly affected as the Connors had been, though whether that was due to his improved control or her more robust vis he didn’t know.

“Sorry, Lucy,” he said, though there hadn’t been much choice. “I’ll need you to follow me.”

“Into Portal World Six? You think that’s a good idea?” She asked doubtfully.

“It may not be, but I think it’s necessary.” He threaded his vis back into the portal world and opened a passageway for himself and Lucy. “Please?” He added, offering her his hand. She stared at him a moment, as if weighing the idea, before taking his hand gingerly and letting him pull her through the portal.

Inside the portal world it was considerably stranger than he’d anticipated even after his preview. It smelled of cold ash and hot obsidian, although he wasn’t sure he’d have been able to say he knew those smells before he stepped through into Six. Nevertheless, he had a deep impression that was what he was smelling, though the air itself was neither hot nor cold.

The sky was not really a sky, but more obsidian spires, jutting into view from various angles, their origin hidden by the haze of ash that drifted downward. He’d put them in a clear area not far from the portal, but in every direction razor-edged obsidian sprouted from the ground, almost seeming to move from the corner of his eye. It was completely and fully creepy, with no sound but the faintest noise of water coming through the portal, but his perceptions didn’t catch anything alarming so he kept a firm grip on his nerves.

“I tell you what, big man, this is the weirdest place anyone’s taken me for a date,” Lucy said, glancing around with wide eyes. The sound of her voice was weirdly insulated, not exactly muffled but more as if it didn’t travel past a few feet.

“Well, I thought our first one ought to be more dramatic than dinner and a movie,” he said, though he wasn’t really feeling the banter. Instead he kept a close eye on the tangle of fae magic superimposed on Lucy’s body. If he was right, then being denied access to any of the mana that came from Faerie would choke it off, and the native mana of Six might even actively corrode it.

If he was wrong, he’d have to deal with Ferrochar to get it removed. That wasn’t something he wanted to do, but he refused to worry over it while he was in the middle of his first idea. Sufficient unto the day was the evil thereof.

“Well, you sure know how to pick ‘em,” Lucy said, staring around at the falling ash and the brightly-lit darkness. “Why did you feel the need to come here, anyway?”

“To hide out from anyone that might be looking for us,” Callum said, which was only half a lie. “Pretty sure that nobody can track us into here.”

Considering what the surrounding space did to his portal enchantment, he suspected any other enchantments that he might be missing would be similarly impaired. His gut-portal, thankfully, did seem to be stable, though Callum suspected that was because of the vis insulation. Something that Lucy didn’t really have.

That meant he still had a connection back to where Gayle was standing out in the scrub, frowning and shivering when he opened a small portal to check on her. With her bubble, all he could tell was that she was there. Callum wasn’t heartless, so he grabbed a camp chair and some blankets, dropping them next to Gayle.

“Thank you,” Gayle said, and Lucy snorted, poking him in the side.

“Come on, big man, you shouldn’t be checking on other girls when you’re on a date.”

“Yeah, yeah,” he said with a smile. Even if she was under some sort of weird enchantment, she was still Lucy. “Speaking of, let me get some stuff to make this more comfortable.” Even at the time he’d thought that stacking up a bunch of chairs and tables in the cave-cache was overkill, but now he was glad of it. He pulled a few chairs over, along with some bottled water.

“It’s not exactly a fancy restaurant, but it’ll do,” he said.

“Man, I don’t know that I’m ever going to get used to that,” Lucy said, reaching out to touch the suddenly-appearing chair before taking a seat. “Thanks.”

“I’d be a poor host if I didn’t provide this much,” he said, keeping a close metaphorical eye on the swirly fae magic around her. It might be fainter, but it might also be his imagination. It hadn’t been more than a minute.

“Honestly, big man, I’m just glad you got me out of there. That’s a pretty deep hole to find yourself in, you know?”

“I do know,” he said. “It wasn’t like I was going to leave you to their tender mercies.”

“I kinda figured, but until you showed up I was still worried. How’d you manage to get inside there anyway, big man? It’s not like just anyone can walk in.” She looked at him thoughtfully. “Did Chester help you?”

“I’ll fill you in later,” Callum said, hating to keep deflecting her but he wasn’t going to answer questions like that until he was sure she was clear of influences. Not to mention the portal to Gayle was still open. “Right now it’s best to just relax and hang out, weird as this place is.”

“Yeah, I don’t know how much relaxing I can get done here,” Lucy said, reaching for one of the bottles of water he’d put on the table. “It’s too quiet. And just weird.”

“It is at that,” Callum agreed. “Chock full of enchanting materials though, maybe. I might go ahead and grab some while we’re waiting.”

“Don’t let me stop you, big man,” Lucy said. “I’m happy just hanging out. At least for now. Gotta say, the bits of portal worlds I’ve seen before were way tamer than this place.”

“Portal World Six is probably off-limits for a reason,” Gayle put in stiffly, after trying and failing to ignore the conversation. She couldn’t get right up to the portal without her bubble interfering, but she was about as close as she could manage. “I don’t think you should be there at all! Let alone take anything.”

“Probably not,” Callum agreed. “But my options are limited.” Life would be a lot easier if he was just willing to steal whatever he wanted. There were plenty of soft targets, magical and mundane. But if he’d been willing to take the easy route he’d never have run from GAR to begin with.

Which meant he could hardly pass up an opportunity to secure a good amount. The sheer amount of mana-infused glass around was staggering. It probably wasn’t as good as a bane material, but for low-grade enchantments there was more than enough.

He wasn’t the first one to have the idea. Less than fifty yards away, though not visible through the jutting spires, was an area where there had clearly been harvesting going on. A relatively large spike had been toppled and parts of it had been carved out, though not all the loose material had been taken. There were chips and shavings and jagged chunks just lying around, which he swept up and deposited in his cave-cache.

Callum was considering taking the entire spike when the whispers started.

Chapter 2 – Mictlān

There was nobody around. Callum had a certain amount of trust in his perceptions, considering that he’d been able to spot basically everything within his sphere. Even fae and dragonblooded magic, while incomprehensible, was extremely obvious. So when a faint, indecipherable whispering started echoing all around them with no discernable source, he was fairly well spooked.

He shot to his feet, followed by Lucy, and wrapped his threads around them both as he prepared to teleport away. The only thing that stopped him from doing so immediately was that when he enclosed Lucy in his teleportation frame, he was absolutely certain the fae magic had begun to fade. It was working, if they could stay.

“The hell is that?” Lucy asked.

“I don’t know. Gayle?”

“What is what?” Gayle replied, confused. Apparently the noise didn’t make it through the phone-portal, adding to the weirdness of the noise. He kept his metaphorical finger on the button to teleport away into his cache, but was unwilling to so do while Lucy was still under the sway of fae magic.

“I hear⁠—” Lucy began, then stopped. There was another voice that spoke in the same unknown language as the whispers. They quieted, and someone stepped into Callum’s perception on the other side of the portal. Oddly, he wasn’t a mage, or at least didn’t have a mage bubble, but he was clearly supernatural by the vis density in his body.

“A moment of your time, young man?” The stranger called out, voice carrying weirdly through the portal space. It should have been a distant shout, but it sounded much closer.

“Only if you stay there!” Callum replied, feeling for his part like he did have to yell to push through the enveloping quiet. His instincts screamed at him to just leave, but he could practically see the dissolution of the fae spell. For the moment he had to rely on his reflexes being fast enough. They were, after all, several hundred yards from the portal entrance through a weirdly distorted space.

“Could this one tempt you into leaving the realm of Mictlān?”

“Not yet,” Callum said bluntly.

“I dunno, big man. I’m starting to feel a little weird.”

“Should I get Gayle?” Callum was glad he was used to splitting his attention, since he had three people to pay attention to at once.

“Maybe? I’m not sure…” Lucy wobbled, and Callum stepped closer to steady her.

“One points out that Mictlān is not for the living. In a single day and night, any mortal would become a whispering shadow.” The stranger said, and Callum couldn’t tell whether the man was listening to his conversation with Gayle and Lucy or not.

“I don’t intend to be here that long,” Callum called back, easing Lucy back to her seat. The warning prompted a memory to click, and he finally recognized the name of Mictlān. The underworld for the Aztecs and others of that tradition. Considering the weirdness of the portal world, it seemed appropriate.

“See that you are not. The shadows will get restive, should you linger.” The man sat down cross-legged outside the portal, treating water like solid ground, which made Callum relax fractionally. He still would have been gone already if it weren’t necessary for Lucy’s well-being. The situation was not at all under his control and he hated it.

“One is curious, however. You seem to have trained in the style of the priests of my people - with your power bound into blood and bone, rather than separating yourself and casting your power into a shell to block out the world.”

That got Callum’s attention. He had always figured that his own peculiarities as a mage, while rare or at the very least against prevailing orthodoxy, couldn’t be unique. He had never been able to set up a particularly strong bubble and found the process of doing so to be a strain. That was ignoring the way it left trails everywhere, which offended his sensibilities.

Unfortunately that implied that the person actually was a mage, and maybe even one with a passive sense like Callum’s. Or rather, he had to have some kind of passive sense, if he noticed that Callum wasn’t using a bubble and even called him a young man, and that was not good. He well knew he could cast where he could sense, so the other man was within striking range.

It was a tense standoff, at least from his perspective. The other man seemed perfectly at ease, sitting crosslegged on the ground and either meditating or just relaxing. Which just didn’t seem fair when Callum was coiled like a wound spring.

“I would be happy to discuss this later,” he said after a few moments, keeping a hand on Lucy’s arm. He had to purposely relax his grip, and she’d probably still have bruises, but Lucy hadn’t even winced. Callum couldn’t deal with everything at once, no matter how good he was at multitasking. The man had certainly piqued his interest and Callum would have liked to talk under other circumstances, but it wasn’t vital enough to be worth the distraction. Even if it was vital, he’d still choose Lucy.

In the end, people were more important than knowledge. There was no point in becoming more capable if he didn’t keep his integrity. He still felt a little guilty delaying the Connor’s rescue just to crib the portal plans, even with how well that had turned out.

“I’m not sure I should be here, big man,” Lucy said hazily. “I think⁠— no, I don’t know…” She seemed to be wrestling with herself, which more or less confirmed what Callum had thought. Some kind of fae influence on her mind, which was quickly being shredded by the foreign space and foreign mana. If it had been a mage enchantment, it probably would have broken right away, but fae stuff seemed more flexible.

“Don’t worry, Lucy,” he told her. “I think you’re almost clear.”

“Clear? I⁠—” Lucy suddenly groaned and leaned over to the side, making retching noises and spattering mostly bile across the obsidian. Callum grimaced, brushing her hair back out of the way as he steadied her. It seemed whatever it was they’d done to her was really nasty, or at least the process of removing it was. Admittedly, he was sure that his approach to dealing with the issue wasn’t the usual one.

“Gayle, I think you’re going to need to heal Lucy again in a minute or two.”

“Okay?” Gayle seemed mostly confused, sitting on a chair in the middle of nowhere wrapped in blankets. It was in a way rather surreal. Portals made a mockery of the concept of distance, especially since he could chain them together.

The wispy, liquid construct of fae magic was rapidly dissolving, apparently having crossed some sort of threshold. Every moment it frayed further until suddenly it snapped, and the magic lost its hold on whatever was anchoring it to Lucy. Then it was just gone, vanished like a puff of smoke.

“God, it’s gone.” Lucy said weakly. “Thanks, big man. I think I gotta lay down for a while…” She started sliding off the chair, and Callum caught her before she went down.

Shadows started to slide in from the surrounding obsidian spires. It didn’t make any sense, because there wasn’t any light. There was nothing to cast the shadows, and they didn’t register to his magical perceptions, but he could see the human-shaped silhouettes slipping toward them. All his hair stood on end.

“Time to go,” he said, and teleported several things at once. His spare portal anchor went outside the entrance to Mictlān, at the bottom of the stream that filled the temple. Once the current crisis had passed, he did want to speak to the strange mage. Lucy went to the cave where he’d first put her and Gayle, and he withdrew to his cache. Instantly he felt better, less oppressed, and without an active portal into Mictlān he didn’t have to deal with the incredibly creepy shadows.

He really should have known there would be things his spatial perceptions didn’t catch. If for some reason he was blind to glamours, it was obvious that there were a lot of different spectrums when it came to magic, and no single approach was universal. Also, it was obvious he should keep the hell out of Portal World Six.

“Gayle, could you help Lucy, please?” He hated leaving it to the other mage, but he couldn’t deny the value of magical healing. Once again he opened a way between the north Texas cave and the surface, and Gayle ducked through, pulling in her bubble so she wouldn’t break the portal with it. She knelt down where Lucy lay and started her work.

“It’s not working? Why can’t I help her?” Everything Gayle said sounded like an uncertain question, and Callum tamped down his temper.

“She’s probably just exhausted. Who knows when she last slept, and what that thing was doing to her.”

“What thing?”

“Some kind of fae magic enchantment entangled with her vis,” Callum said.

“It was fae magic? I guess that makes sense, but normally I can fix things!”

“I don’t imagine magic can fix everything,” Callum said, trying to suppress his own worry. “Is she fine physically?”

“Yes?”

“Then just keep an eye on her for me for now, please.” Callum pressed his lips together. He certainly had no interest in holding hostages but it’d be nice to have a pocket healer around a little bit longer. “I’ll drop you off when I can,” he said. “Might be another hour or so.”

“I will,” Gayle said. “But…” She trailed off hesitantly.

“Yes?”

“Can I at least get something to read?” Gayle asked plaintively. “I appreciate that you’re just going to send me home but it’s so awfully dull here.”

Callum stifled a laugh and combed through his cave-cache. It was something he actually had thought of and had picked up a crate of science fiction paperbacks at a used book store for something like twenty bucks. He hadn’t even looked at what they were, and it wasn’t like he could read with his spatial perception, so he just transported the whole crate over.

Then he dropped into one of his remaining chairs with a groan. He’d left the ones in Mictlān there, because the shadows could have them for all he cared. The thought made him reach out for the other half of the portal anchor he’d left, though. The strange man, presumably the one in charge of the portal world, likely wouldn’t be patient forever.

The portal snapped open almost immediately, given the heightened mana near a portal world, and Callum was glad to see that the anchor was where he left it. He was less glad to see that the stranger had turned to face its direction. Considering the difficulty others had in locating it, he would have hoped the knowledge of the anchor would have kept for longer, but then he hadn’t really been particularly stealthy.

Callum popped open a phone-portal, though reluctantly. He really disliked dealing with another mage that seemed similar to him, and under the circumstances he added a bit of safety by a sort of ad-hoc ward around the portal terminus. Both of them, actually. Rather than the elaborate frameworks that most mages used, he mostly had a thin frame filled with dense vis, just so he’d notice if something tried to push through it.

In fact, that frame might be enough to block the other mage’s sight, the way mage bubbles did. He was pretty sure anything strong enough to get through it would also collapse the portal, so for a spur-of-the-moment defense it worked pretty well. He’d have to work on it once he had time.

“You asked for a moment of my time,” Callum said. “I’ve got some now. First though, I can say I haven’t actually received any training at all.”

“Ah, a shame. One had thought perhaps you were some lost and distant inheritor.”

“Not so far as I know,” Callum said. “Unless you had some dalliance about thirty years ago.” It seemed highly unlikely. The man had a completely different body type, so even if Callum mostly took after his mother, his father was almost certainly of European stock as well.

“Certainly not!” The man said with a laugh. “One is named Huitzilin,” he said, the name very obviously not an English one. “You may use Wizzy, as one doubts you have encountered the proper tongue before.”

“I haven’t,” Callum admitted.

“And you, I suspect, are Callum Wells.”

“I am,” he said cautiously, double-checking the warding around the portal pairs.

“There is no need to worry,” Huitzilin said. “This one is not properly part of their nation. The people one protected died out long before they ever came to this continent, so now one is merely the guardian of Mictlān.”

“Well,” Callum said judiciously. “I am sorry for intruding, but I needed a portal world and there aren’t many I can enter easily.”

“Most would not consider it easy to enter Mictlān. It is hidden and protected, and the world itself is unwelcoming to outsiders. Though, you do not shout your power and shoulder aside the world with it like mages do. That is why the shadows did not notice you for so long.”

“What were those, anyway?”

“Those who walked into Mictlān and did not return,” Huitzilin said simply. “It is a land for the dead and only for the dead.”

“Will there be any lasting effects?” Callum asked, suddenly concerned. “We were only in there for a few minutes.”

“There are lasting effects for everything,” Huitzilin replied. “But I do not believe a few minutes of exposure will result in any harm. If the shadows had touched you, perhaps there would have been issues.”

“Good to know.” Returning to Mictlān was definitely out. “What about the obsidian?”

“You took some of the fragments from the old site?” Huitzilin didn’t seem perturbed. “You are welcome to them if you think they can be of use. Dead obsidian does nothing for anyone.”

“So long as no shadows came along with them.”

“Certainly not. They are of Mictlān, and cannot leave.”

“That is the best news I’ve heard today,” Callum said, but he still relocated all the obsidian into the sunlight above the cave-cache for the moment. He was pretty sure Huitzilin wasn’t lying. There wasn’t any point, in part, but he also didn’t seem to actually care that Callum was an outlaw. Maybe he just got that impression because he could actually sense the man and read his body language rather than just see a bubble.

“What was it you wanted to discuss with me, then?” He asked finally. If Huitzilin had some sort of agenda he was being very patient by answering Callum’s questions.

“One only wished to get the measure of the man who may herald the end of the cycle.”

“Um.” Callum said. “What? I’m not some sort of chosen one, I assure you.”

“Indeed?” Huitzilin asked with amusement. “One would point out that you have chosen yourself. Such is the nature of things. Civilizations rise and fall. Cities burn and new ones are built. One cycle ends, another begins. The higher the tinder is heaped, the smaller the spark that starts the fire. There is always someone who chooses to be that spark.”

“That makes some kind of sense, I suppose,” Callum said cautiously. “And GAR does seem massively unstable, especially considering the modern world.”

“They are far overdue for the deadwood to burn,” Huitzilin said.

“So you’re some kind of GAR revolutionary?”

“No, I’m too old. The cycle is the business of younger people,” Huitzilin said, rather fondly. “But it is the world I live in, so I have an interest.”

“Well, to be honest⁠—” Callum started, then stopped. “Actually, I just had another thought. One second.” He opened yet another portal to Gayle’s cave, feeling the strain from holding so many constructs at once and for so long. Even if he could do sixteen-some teleports, maintaining things definitely wore at him.

“Gayle, do you know a mage named Huitzilin? Says to call him Wizzy?”

“Oh, Archmage Wizzy.” Looked up from her book. “He’s weird.”

“Archmage, is it?”

“One has been given the rank, though it holds little real meaning.” Huitzilin said.

“Oh!” Gayle said. “That’s mean! You didn’t tell me he was listening in! My apologies, Archmage Wizzy.” Huitzilin laughed.

“It is of no moment,” he assured her. “One readily admits to having grown eccentric over the years.”

“Would you two be okay with Wizzy bringing Gayle back to civilization? Might be better than dropping her off in a random city, but I don’t want to impose on either of you.”

“I would not mind,” Huitzilin said.

“I guess? Grandpa said that Archmage Wizzy wasn’t a bad sort, anyway.”

“Fantastic. As I was saying, even if it is true that things go in cycles and things eventually fall, I don’t really have anything against most of the people in GAR. I never really thought of becoming a revolutionary. But some things just cannot be allowed. So…” Callum sighed. “I still don’t have any desire to be a revolutionary. But I don’t know that I can coexist with GAR when it enables preying on people.”

“It is the nature of the strong to prey upon the weak,” Huitzilin noted, not arguing, just stating a fact. “Every government that has ever existed has abused its people.”

“Sure, and maybe I’m a hypocrite, but the supernatural is decidedly different. Civilization is one long built up process of figuring out how to deal with ourselves. But most people don’t know you even exist, let alone have any way to deal with you.” Callum shrugged. “Even then, I’m not really looking to try and put in a new government or anything. I just want to stop the people who are doing bad things. Like whoever put that thing on Lucy, or the guy who heads up BSE.”

“Grand Magus Taisen isn’t a bad person,” Gayle burst out. “Everyone knows all he does is fight in the portal worlds! Everything else is other people!”

“Well, then whoever is responsible for blowing up a café I was in.” Callum waved it aside. “I’m not going to discuss specifics, obviously. At this point, though, it’s obvious I have to do something. We’ve long crossed the point where GAR would leave me alone.”

“You’re a murderer and a criminal!” Gayle said. “They shouldn’t leave you alone!” Huitzilin just shook his head slowly, apparently content to let them argue.

“Maybe I am. I’ve worried over that myself. But all I’ve done was defend people who couldn’t defend themselves.” Callum sighed. “What else was I supposed to do?”

“That’s⁠—! You can’t⁠—!” Gayle spluttered. “You didn’t have to kill anyone! That’s insane! You’re supposed to call in GAR when there’s a problem!”

“This one very much doubts this is an argument that can be resolved,” Huitzilin cut in with his leathery voice. “It has, however, provided one with the measure being searched for.”

“I have a question for you, then. You said that I was more along the lines of how you were trained. Do you have any training exercises or any knowledge at all I could have?”

“Archmage Wizzy!” Gayle said, a little shocked. “You can’t be thinking of helping him can you?”

“It is the duty of the old to provide wisdom to the young,” Huitzilin said. “However, the mysteries of one’s people were those of obsidian and blood, not of space. You seem to have already passed through the most critical part of awakening your power, regardless. The best advice now is to explore what you can.”

“Thanks, I guess,” Callum said. It was a little disappointing, but not surprising. If anything he should be glad that an Archmage was willing to just chat with him. “What exactly is the difference between what you and I do and what people like Gayle do anyway?”

“Little in terms of magical technique,” Wizzy admitted. “In fact, the creation of the shell may be the better approach. One’s people would invest our own power back into ourselves until we brimmed over, and could reach out into the world once again. But there were many that did not survive that process.”

“Is that why there aren’t any others like you around?” Callum found it rather suspect that there had been no mentions of an entire other tradition of magic, and one that fairly neatly explained things. Not everything, but at the very least his inability to use magic until late in life. If such a thing was commonly known there wouldn’t have been such confusion over it.

“Not as such. It has simply been so long since the traditions of Mictlān that none of my peers remain.”

“I thought mages didn’t really age,” Callum said, frowning. He knew that the Archmages were all supposed to be hundreds of years old.

“It takes the touch of healing magic to catalyze the change in aging. To slow it or, for an Archmage, to stop it.”

That was news to Callum. He’d thought it was something just inherent to being a mage, rather than a property of healing magic. Which would have an enormous impact over history, since any mage without access to what was apparently a rare aspect wouldn’t live any longer than anyone else. Clearly Wizzy had encountered it, but the other mages had not been so lucky.

“So why weren’t any new mages born in this region?” He couldn’t indulge too much curiosity; even if Wizzy seemed relatively friendly there were probably reinforcements on the way. The best defense he had was simply to limit exposure. But he was having trouble passing up asking questions of someone who was so deep inside the magical world.

“Mictlān is for the dead and the shadows, not the living.” Wizzy’s voice was calm and firm. “The cost of that sacrifice was power, but by the time that was understood my people were long gone.”

“Huh.” Callum had always assumed that mages were connected to the Portal Worlds, so it was good to hear he was right. “My condolences.”

“It was many centuries ago,” Wizzy said, which dated him fairly significantly.

“I appreciate you being willing to humor my questions,” Callum said after a moment. “But I really should get going. Gayle, how is Lucy doing?”

“Oh, um. Still asleep? I can’t find anything wrong with her.”

“Well, thank you for what you’ve done. I’ll open a portal over to Wizzy, unless there’s anything else.”

“One is satisfied for the moment, young Wells.” Callum nearly snorted at being called young, though the Archmage had to be hundreds of years old at least. He didn’t want to open a portal directly from where Lucy was to the temple, so he had Gayle cross to the outside first. Fortunately he only had to keep that one open a few seconds because he was starting to feel pretty ragged.

He did laugh when he saw, as he re-angled the phone-portal to catch her leaving, that Gayle was clutching one of the books he’d provided. One of the old masters of science fiction. Callum didn’t say anything, figuring that if she wanted to hold on to a penny copy it was more than worth the help she’d provided with Lucy’s healing.

A second portal brought her into the temple by Archmage Huitzilin, though Callum realized he had no idea how the Archmage had arrived. There weren’t any obvious entrances or exits. Still, that wasn’t really his worry. He gladly dispelled his excess constructs, leaving only the portal anchors and the warded phone-portal still up.

“I suppose it’s unlikely we’ll talk again,” Callum said. “But for what it’s worth, it was nice seeing you again, Gayle. I appreciate your forbearance, Archmage Wizzy.”

“You’re not what I expected,” Gayle admitted.

“You are almost exactly what I expected,” Wizzy said.

Callum closed the portal and retrieved his anchor. Suddenly free of other mages to worry about, he sagged back in his chair for a moment, before standing up and starting to break out some fresh linens for Lucy. He’d have to also scout and see if his Texas trailer was still safe. It’d be nice if she woke up somewhere that wasn’t a cave.

***

“He’s using a very small version of a breacher portal,” Archmage Duvall said. “I’m not fully certain how he’s managed everything, but it’s really not anything new. Just applied oddly. How he smuggled it in to begin with is not my problem.” She looked over at Grand Magus Taisen.

“Considering the size of the thing, it’s possible it could have been smuggled in with any supply delivery. Possibly even without a collaborator.” Taisen was unimpressed with Duvall’s analysis, and wouldn’t have been surprised if she were keeping some things to herself. Or a lot of things to herself.

He wouldn’t have used odd to describe what Wells had accomplished. Effective was a better word for his adaptation of spatial magic principles, which meant Duvall could be a lot more personally dangerous than she was.

“I’ve already instituted more stringent protocols for screening foci, but if we want to be truly safe against this sort of infiltration we can’t allow focus traffic at all.” He already had dozens of protests about the proposal, which he’d stolen almost whole cloth from military black protocol. No personal effects at all could move in or out of secure facilities.

People would have to leave everything – clothing, foci, hair bands, everything – and use facility-provided ones on the interior of the secure site. Admittedly, only Garrisons One through Three really needed that level of protection. That and Garrison Seven, but Seven was a complete black box and wasn’t even known to most Archmages.

“What about the spatial field I saw?” Taisen asked. “The gravity-like one.”

“I’m not fully certain why it acts that way yet, but it’s not very complicated.” Duvall waved her hand and replicated the construct he’d described to her, flinging her glass of water into the air. Her telekinesis focus caught it and corralled the water back in before placing it on the table. “It’s not very precise or particularly powerful, although I suppose it could be made more powerful. All it does is accelerate things.”

She said it causally enough, but Taisen recognized the calculation in her eyes. He wouldn’t have been surprised if she’d known it earlier, but even if she didn’t the applications were obvious. Accelerating objects was quite effective, as Wells had demonstrated. Duvall might be averse to fighting, but she wasn’t stupid, and being able to openly use a spell-form that could hurl houses was quite a boon for her.

“Apparently that’s enough, to judge by the havoc wreaked by that lava,” Archmage Hargrave said, echoing Taisen’s thoughts. “Force magic could do it better, but he only used spatial. So the question is — where were the rest of his team? Does he even have one?”

“Lucile Harper was under the impression that he did not. Apparently he was Chase Hall, and we’ve seen no evidence of any other mages, which does answer some questions. Such as how he can remain undetected. A single person with the degree of mobility he’s demonstrated will be nearly impossible to track down.”

“He’s not a single person, though,” Duvall disagreed. “There’s the Harper girl, and his fae friends, and we know Alpha Chester is involved. I want to know what’s going to be done about him.” She scowled around at them. “House Duvall is officially declaring Wells a heretic mage. With all the penalties that entails for anyone who deals with him.”

Taisen shrugged. He wasn’t going to contest it. Though it’d been ages since that particular proclamation had been used, he didn’t think anyone was going to defend Wells. Actually enforcing it was another question, but not really his business.

“You can do whatever you want on that score, but what I care about is my granddaughter. Where is she?” Hargrave demanded.

“I already have people sweeping for her beacon,” Taisen said. “A lot of people,” he added, at Hargrave’s expression. It was the first order he’d given after Duvall had evacuated everyone back to the European GAR facility. He had been faintly surprised that she’d been willing to do so without any complaints, and in fact had managed to get a portal open within minutes.

She’d borrowed one of their portal foci to do it, the very same breacher portal she had compared Wells’ device to, which made him wonder exactly how surprised she’d been that Wells was using a miniaturized version. The breacher portal focus was big and unwieldy, eight feet across and generating a portal big enough for several mages to charge through. The size made the evacuations easier, and was why it was used for assaults, but it was certainly difficult to carry around. Some of Duvall’s anger might be at someone revealing that an easily portable version was possible. Not that he was ready to accuse her, but it was food for thought.

“If she’s hurt in any way there will be hell to pay,” Hargrave growled, dividing his glare between Taisen and Duvall. Taisen’s scry-com chimed, and it in turn became the recipient of the Archmage’s ire.

“Go ahead,” Taisen said, ignoring the sheen of force armor flickering over Hargrave’s body.

“I have Archmage Wizzy here with Gayle Hargrave.” Taisen’s eyebrows went up.

“By all means, send them in.” With everything he had to deal with, that was an unexpected and massive relief. How Huitzilin, of all people, had managed to secure the younger Hargrave was an interesting question, especially since there was nothing to indicate the Archmage had secured Wells.

“Grandpa!” Gayle said the moment she stepped through the door. The elder Hargrave was up and out of his seat to enfold her in a hug before she’d taken a second step. Then he wheeled around to glare at the room in general.

“I’m taking my granddaughter home,” he declared. “I don’t care what the GAR or BSE laws say, she’s not going to be part of your idiocy any longer. Tell Fane — well, he knows what I think of him.”

“We should at least hear what she has to say,” Taisen said, though it was mostly a token protest. He hadn’t wanted Gayle conscripted into his forces to begin with, and if House Hargrave was going to be the one to institute that particular political struggle, he wished them luck.

“That can wait! We’re going home first.” Hargrave caught sight of Huitzilin standing behind Gayle, hands in his pockets, and scowled at him from force of habit before changing his expression to something more neutral. “Thank you,” he said, voice restrained.

“One can claim no virtue in this regard. Callum Wells asked if I would shepherd young Gayle back to her family.”

“You’re in contact with Wells? You’re in collusion with Wells?” Hargrave snapped out, pushing Gayle behind him as his force armor snapped into being. Taisen drew up his defenses by reflex as well, but everyone froze as a drop of red blood, blazing with vis, hovered in the air. Wizzy’s finger lowered from the pierced earlobe he’d used to draw the blood. Behind him, his weird shadow stared out with diamond-bright eyes.

Taisen had seen Huitzilin in action only once. The only one who could really threaten him was probably Fane, despite Huitzilin being classed as a water mage. He claimed he was in fact a blood mage, and his own blood could crush most defenses. Even Hargrave, nigh-invulnerable as he was, had a certain degree of caution toward the man’s magic.

“One merely encountered him in Mictlān,” Huitzilin said. “He withdrew soon afterward, but sustained a connection to converse. It was his own suggestion for Gayle to accompany me back to you.”

“Archmage Huitzilin, I would appreciate it if you would report on your conversation with Wells. Archmage Hargrave, I will contact you later, for Gayle to report on her experience at her leisure.” Taisen would have preferred it sooner rather than later, but he had no authority or force to push Hargrave to do things now.

“I need some sleep first,” Gayle said for herself. “Then I’d be happy to talk with you, Grand Magus.” Taisen inclined his head, and wondered as the Hargraves left exactly where Gayle had gotten a beaten-up copy of mundane fiction.

Huitzilin’s report on Wells, delivered in a laconic way, was not at all helpful. It didn’t surprise Taisen that Huitzilin didn’t actually care about GAR, or that he openly admitted he didn’t, but Duvall didn’t like it. Halfway through she stormed out in frustration.

“Thank you,” he told Huitzilin. He’d have to warn Ravaeb that Wells might be lying in wait for him, but the fae would probably relish the challenge. As for Sen, Taisen very strongly considered not saying anything. The House Fane idiot was not a shining example of magekind. “I would have appreciated it if you could have brought in Wells, but thank you nonetheless.”

“One never actually saw Wells with one’s own eyes,” Huitzilin said, which was believable enough.

“Actually, I wanted to ask about that. I doubt any of the other Archmages would answer my questions, but Wells seems to be able to cast spells without needing any line of sight. Somehow he’s able to move his vis around in a very large range without even pulsing vis senses. If he uses the same techniques as you, how is he doing it?”

“An interesting question. One is not entirely certain.” Huitzilin held up a hand to forestall any comment. “It is obviously a product of the majority of Wells’ power being bound into his body, rather than separated like in your tradition. One has the ability to feel flowing blood at quite some distance, and Wells likely has some equivalent ability.”

“Hmm.” Taisen sighed. “I don’t think I can put it off any longer. I need to be able to do that sort of thing, so I really need to push through into Archmage. Could you give me any advice on that? I know most of the theory, but I suppose you don’t use the same stuff we do.” Magic itself was no different – he could follow Huitzilin’s spellforms just fine – but the exact way that Huitzilin had become Archmage was a different path than people like Hargrave and Duvall.

“Is it truly your desire for more power that is prompting this decision? Was it a lack of desire that prevented you from taking the step before?” Once again Huitzilin held up a hand before Taisen could reply. “One has no doubt your technical knowledge is sufficient, but power is not solely composed of technical details. The further one gets from the foundations, the more the character and approach of a mage – or Archmage – matters.”

Taisen hadn’t pushed to become an Archmage because he knew that he’d lose control of what remained of the portal defense force, his Defensores Mundi. Archmages weren’t really part of GAR, and since he was of no House, that would leave him somewhat rudderless. In the current crisis, there was no chance that anyone would try and push him out. Better, once it was over, he’d be firmly established as an Archmage and would have the capability to stop people from pushing him out.

“I suppose this has been a long time coming,” Taisen conceded.

“It is better to be equipped for the future,” Huitzilin said. “One suspects there is only chaos ahead.”

Chapter 3 – Unwind

There were no supernatural traces at all near Callum’s trailer in Texas, even after he swept in a spiral three or so miles around it, so he felt he was fairly safe putting Lucy in the bed there. He wanted to crash himself, even as uncomfortable as the sofa was, but instead he forced himself to make some kind of brunch and hydrate. Hopefully Lucy would wake up soon, and if not, he’d have to get in contact with Chester again.

He'd assured himself there were no other lingering bits of magic or technological trackers, even though he was a little uncomfortable peering at Lucy that intimately. It was invasive, but he had to be sure for both their sakes. If anything, though, her own personal vis seemed stronger than it had been before.

Sitting in the bedroom waiting for Lucy to stir seemed a little bit creepy, spatial perceptions aside, so he moved a card table close to the door and set up with his laptop. Partly to get some of his thoughts down and partly just to have something to distract himself with. As well as the rescue had gone, he figured that the next time they’d have more mana jammers or something even larger and more powerful to deny his abilities. Or just more mages, since he really couldn’t go against them. Not directly.

Though, with Lucy safe, he had hopes he wouldn’t need to do anything for a while.

Callum was giving his usual sites a desultory look-through when Lucy stirred. Immediately he got up and knocked on the door to her room, making a conscious effort to act like a normal person rather than teleporting. He was pretty sure after the day she had, him appearing out of nowhere would be an unnecessary stress. While he tried not to peek too much, he sensed her jump when the sound came of his knocking, and she levered herself partly upright, her head focused on the door.

“What? Who is it?” She said, shrinking back in the bed. Callum didn’t blame her.

“It’s me,” he told her through the door. “The big man.”

“Oh!” She took a moment to survey herself before throwing back the covers and turning sideways on the bed. “Come in!”

He turned the doorknob and crossed over to her. She hesitated a moment and then stood up, half reaching out to him.

“Is it⁠— are we safe?”

“Yes,” he said. “We’re safe.” That wasn’t entirely true; if nothing else they’d have to get rid of Lucy’s tattoo. But it was close enough for the moment.

Lucy studied his face for a second and then practically toppled forward against him. Callum caught and steadied her in his arms as she sobbed into his chest. He didn’t say anything, just held her, knowing that there were times to cry and considering what she’d gone through this was certainly one of them.

It was a little odd having another woman in his arms, when he hadn’t even dated for years. Actually he was quite glad that Lucy was nothing like Selene; he’d mourned his wife and buried her, and he didn’t want to feel like he was trying to find a replacement. Fortunately, Lucy was Lucy and there was no mistaking her for anyone else. After a while she pulled back a bit and wiped at her eyes, still keeping one hand on his arm.

“Sorry about that, big man. Usually I’m more put together.”

“Hey, I understand completely,” Callum told her, giving her as good a smile as he could manage. “It’s been a rough couple of days for you, I’m sure.”

“You can say that again,” Lucy said.

“It’s been a rough couple of days,” Callum repeated, deadpan. Lucy burst into shaky laughter, punctuated by a hiccup.

“Oof, that was terrible. I needed that.”

“Glad I could help.” He reached out his hand and teleported a box of tissues into it, offering them to her. She blinked at him and then laughed as she took the box from him. “Wow, that is going to take some getting used to. I guess, I mean.” She peered up at him, though she was only a few inches shorter than he was. “Am I going to be staying here or…?”

“I’d certainly like you to,” he told her. “I never wanted you to get involved in my mess, but now that you are I’m hardly going to abandon you.”

“Good,” she said, head still tilted back to look at him. “You know, you’re shorter than I expected,” she added, squeezing experimentally at the arm she had her hand on. She seemed surprised by the muscle there.

“That’s exactly what Danika Connors said,” Callum told her with a laugh. “I guess my reputation creates some unrealistic expectations.”

“Danika who? Oh, them!” Lucy blinked. “Huh, I can remember their names now. I wonder why.”

“Well, I did take you into a portal world long enough to purge any fae magic lingering around,” Callum said. “So how are you feeling?”

“Absolutely rotten,” Lucy replied. “But that’s not your fault. It’s better than before when I had that thing in my head!”

“Do you want to lie down again? Or get something to eat?”

“Oh, I’m absolutely ravenous, big man,” Lucy said, snuffling into the tissues. “Why don’t you show me around?”

“To be honest, there’s not much here,” Callum said, escorting her out into the small common room. It was actually a little embarrassing. He’d had a much nicer house before, and was building a nice one for later, but for the moment he was stuck in an aging double-wide. “But this is only a temporary base. I’m still getting something better built.”

“Yeah?” Lucy looked around with interest as he showed her to the couch. “Glad you said that because this place is kind of a dump. I mean, clean yeah, but. You know.”

“It’s not my favorite place either,” Callum said, turning on the small electric stove to start some soup heating. Then he teleported a bottle of water from the fridge to the table in front of Lucy.

“Thank, big man,” she said. “So. Wow. I guess I’m a criminal or something? An outlaw, on the run? Dammit! All my stuff is gone!” Callum glanced over his shoulder sympathetically, seeing her face running through expressions on fast-forward.

“Yeah, it’s a bit of a shock, I know. Takes a while to sink in.” It’d been over a year since he’d gone through the same process himself, but he remembered how he’d felt like he was drowning. Hopefully he’d be able to save Lucy some of that, though he wasn’t sure where the line was between helping her and telling her what to do.

“I would kill for a soda,” Lucy said, sipping at the water.

“We can pick some up when we go shopping,” Callum told her. “I mean, we’re going to need to. I don’t have any clothes for you or anything.”

“Oof. Wow, way to drive it home, big man.” Lucy rubbed at her eyes again. “You gotta give me something to take my mind off of this. What was the plan after breaking me outta there?”

“To be honest, that depends on you.” Callum left the soup to heat and went to sit in the overstuffed armchair on the other side of the coffee table. “I didn’t want to assume you were going to join me in being, you know, a vigilante on the run or whatever I am.”

“Eh, what else could I do?” Lucy waved it away with what was, to Callum, a rather forced casualness. “Go into mundane IT? Supernatural IT was boring enough!”

“I think you’d do really well as a security consultant, but I’m not going to be arguing that you change your mind.”

“You’d better not, big man, or I’ll start to think you don’t want me around.”

“Heaven forbid you should ever think that.”

“So, spill,” Lucy said, leaning back in the battered old couch and studying him. “How is it that you do what you do?”

Callum didn’t bother warning her again about how knowing all this stuff meant she was stuck with him. While he was worried she was still too shaken to make the best choices, it would just be insulting if he kept poking her about it. So he just started talking.

Sort of.

He’d thought it’d be cathartic to finally share everything, but he found himself battling his instinct to keep things vague. To leave out details. To obscure and obfuscate what he could really do. It actually took a concerted effort of will to be specific.

“Wait a minute, big man,” Lucy said after a bit. “You’re saying that this spatial perception lets you see everything in a six hundred-ish yard radius?”

“I do,” he confirmed. “Or at least, I can. If I really want to I can pull it back, like squinting or closing my eyes, but at this point I’ve pretty much gotten used to using it.”

“So that means you can sense right through people’s clothes?” She persisted.

“…yes,” Callum said, not liking where this was going.

“So that means you can sense through my clothes?”

“…yes.”

“You could at least buy me a drink first, big man,” Lucy said, flashing a grin. Callum laughed, a knot of tension easing.

“I try not to actually peek,” he said. “It does take some focus to really make out details and I usually reserve that for setting up teleports or getting through wards.”

“Which you can do because you have that tiny thread thing.”

“Which I can do because I have that tiny thread thing.”

“Crazy. You sure you’re just a mage, big man?”

“I’m not even a good mage! I can do like four things? Portals, teleports, gravitykinesis, and the sensory thing. Oh, and the spatial compression which is not very useful, so five.”

“Good enough for me,” Lucy said. “So what’s the plan now?”

“For the moment? Take a good long rest. My new house still isn’t done, and I have a bunch of magic practice to do. Some enchanting too.” Callum ticked off items on his fingers. “I also gotta figure out how to deal with the people who abused you.”

“Oh.” Lucy shifted on the couch, rubbing at her temples. “Can’t we just hang out somewhere? I don’t really want to think about running up against them again.”

“Well, it’s not like I’m intending to go on a rampage right away. I have in the past, but I think a more measured response is necessary.” Callum shook his head. “But can you imagine that they’ll let us – well, me, mostly – exist at this point? Though I wouldn’t ask you to come along on any of these projects. I mean, you could basically be Moneypenny, right?”

“Hah!” Lucy shook her head. “Honestly most of what I could do was ‘cause I already had access to the GAR system. I mean, I was admin! Not sure how well I’d be able to infiltrate things without that. At the very least I’d be more likely to get caught.”

“What about that nifty phone redirect thing?”

“Oh! Yeah, that. Sure, I could probably make another one of those,” Lucy said, looking thoughtful.

“Things like that, I could really use your help with. Plus, figuring out a good way to get internet in the bunker. I mean, don’t want them to trace us.”

“Right, right.” Lucy seemed more animated as she thought about it. “Sure, you’ll want to set up all kinds of security and harden things up. Plus you’re going to want to make yourself all anonymous for orders and things.”

“All of that. Now, so far as I know the only supernatural connections I still have are basically to Alpha Chester, but I think we have to assume that at the very least we have state actors looking for us the normal way. We can’t be caught on camera and we’ll need to get fake glasses or putty for our noses when we go out, and of course avoid anywhere that checks ID. If we have to take risks like that, we do so far away from anywhere we’re actually staying.”

“Anyone ever tell you that you’re kinda paranoid,” Lucy said, squinting at him.

“It’s worked pretty well so far,” Callum told her.

“I hate that you have a point,” she said, though it was with a smile.

She watched with some amusement as he teleported a bowl in front of her and then poured the soup in via portal, rather than the normal, sane way. In truth he didn’t tend to use his magic for fine manipulation like that normally, but he was maybe showing off a little. He hadn’t had anyone he could show off to, before.

“Kinda rubbing it in there a bit,” she said, and he stopped. It hadn’t occurred to him before, but she probably was rather tired of mages showing her up.

“Sorry,” he told her. “I kinda got used to doing stuff like this but it’s probably pretty rude.”

“Nah, it’s fine. Usually mages show off to demonstrate they’re better than mundanes or duds, not to serve lunch,” Lucy assured him. “Just don’t start acting like you’re better than me and it’ll be fine.”

“You don’t have to worry about that,” he said. “I’m still just some guy from West Virginia.”

“I’ll hold you to that, big man,” Lucy said. Callum nodded in understanding.

“Anyway, I’m planning to just crash for a couple days, but I need to get in touch with Chester again soon. He helped me break into that facility.”

“Oh, man. I hadn’t even thought about Alpha Chester. Guess I can’t work for them anymore either. Except, wait. I mean. Are they going independent or something?” Lucy dipped her spoon into her soup and stirred it. “I mean, if they find out that he helped you spring me that’s not gonna go down well. I know they already know what I know.” Lucy made a face at her own tortured sentence. “You know what I mean.”

“I know,” Callum said with a laugh. “It wouldn’t surprise me if he’s aiming to do something major but it’s fortunately not really our problem.” Callum ‘ported himself a bottled water of his own, unscrewing the top and taking a sip. “In the near term I have a bunch of enchanting work to do for Chester. Not that I’m complaining; rescuing you was absolutely worth it,” he said, inclining his head to her.

“Thank you, big man,” Lucy said, coloring slightly. “Enchanting, though. I’ve never seen it up close. Think I can watch?”

“Of course, though there really isn’t all that much to see,” Callum told her. “Maybe you’ll have ideas for electronic integration and stuff. I’m sure it can be done but it’s not really my specialty.”

“Man, I’ve been jonesing for a look at proper enchanting stuff. The only thing I’ve ever dealt with is those stupid dongles, and that’s just a black box you replace.”

“Well you can sit in when I do stuff. Though I have to admit, a lot of it I just design in CAD and send off to a metal shop to run through CNC.” Lucy blinked at him, then threw back her head and laughed.

“Ohh, I wish I could see the faces of the old farts in the Guild of Enchanting if they heard that. Though, I bet that BSE does something like that. I’ve heard that some of their new stuff is really good.” Lucy looked thoughtful. “Wish I’d checked on that before, well, you know.”

“Yeah,” he said. Callum was surprised by how easy it was to talk to her in person. It wasn’t always true that people were the same in the flesh, as he’d found out over years of being a consultant. Lucy was just as vivacious in person as she was on the phone though, even if he was sure that part of it was just bravado.

Despite how exhausted he was he stayed up to keep chatting with Lucy, and eventually they made a run to the store. She didn’t even have a change of clothes, and he could tell she hated having to borrow his money to get herself a proper selection. There was probably no way to drain her old bank accounts, sadly.

Eventually he did have to crash, and he left her to play around with his laptop while he got some actual sleep. The trailer was all of five hundred square feet with a single bedroom, and he’d have to break out the foldaway in the sofa, but he really didn’t mind. While he’d been living alone for long enough that he was used to it, there were some benefits to having someone else around.

If nothing else it’d force him to keep up-to-date on doing the dishes.

***

“He wrecked Garrison Two, he bypassed two Archmages and Grand Magus Taisen, and he pulled Lucy out of there in less than a minute.” Chester ticked the items off on his fingers. “All that from a little coin.” According to his subordinate, the portal anchor had been smuggled in by simply sticking it to a teleportation token, and nobody had given it a second look.

“Are we sure we want to keep dealing with him?” Lisa asked, offering him a chocolate chip cookie, fresh from the oven. “That’s a threat we can’t possibly mitigate on our side. That’s also maybe more than the BSE had bargained for. If they can’t come down on him, they’ll come down on us.”

“I know,” Chester said, taking the cookie and biting down. He took a moment to savor the taste before continuing. “At the same time, it won’t just be us. The vamps will be getting restive, the fae enclaves are already agitating. Besides, I don’t think Mister Wells will be a threat as long as we stay in contact with him.”

“What exactly is our goal, then?” Lisa flopped into his lap, leaning back against him. “If we try to steer him I’m pretty sure it’ll backfire.”

“Ride more than steer, I think. It’s time to consider whether we want to play with GAR at all,” Chester said, and Lisa tilted her head back to look up at him.

“Really?” She asked, just one word.

“We needed GAR back at the beginning, when we had to deal with the depredations of fae and vampire and human alike. When we needed them to hide. Now?” He shook his head. “The symbiotes have learned to project glamours a lot earlier than before. Most kids can do it before grade school.”

“They aren’t doing a good job of protecting us, either,” Lisa agreed, somewhat reluctantly. “But do we actually have the ability to separate from GAR?”

“No,” Chester said. “Not yet. Not when they can bring all their Archmages to bear. Or really, a few specific ones. But there’s a lot we can do without outright declaring independence.”

Lisa took her own cookie from the tray and considered it. She was basically the entire pack’s godmother. Not grandmother, never grandmother, but sometimes Nana. The internal affairs were her responsibility, helping arrange marriages and the pack’s disposition. She knew the temperament and attitude of Chester’s shifters better than he did.

“I think most won’t particularly care. Oh, a lot of them will be somewhat uncomfortable with what it might take to fend off GAR, but who actually likes dealing with those pencil-pushers? Of course anyone who’s had to deal with vamps will support it, too.”

Chester nodded. The pack was not a democracy; the decision was his and his alone. There would always be people who disagreed, but they were out of luck. The welfare of the pack as a whole was his worry, and not just in the near term. What worked for the moment might not in twenty, fifty, or a hundred years.

He was pretty sure that GAR’s days were numbered. They’d been around in one form or another since the sixteenth century, which was before his time, but he knew back then things had been a lot harder. Magic less understood, supernaturals more exposed to the mundane world, the portal worlds less tamed and explored. Shifter symbiotes hadn’t even learned how to project glamour. Maybe back then the way GAR worked had made sense, but he was certain they no longer needed it.

Not that Chester represented every shifter in the world. He didn’t even represent every shifter in America, though at last count something close to two-thirds of all US shifters were in his pack. But that was fine, the rest could stay in thrall to a dying organization if they wanted.

The trick was knowing when and where to push. Fortunately, Chester had an insider’s view. There were some mages – even a few cadet Houses – that were on good terms with Chester, which helped. The trump card was Wells himself, who was certainly going to be making further waves, sooner or later. Waves that Chester would be able to see beforehand.

So long as Wells kept their agreement.

***

Archmage Harold Hargrave watched his granddaughter reunite with his son and daughter-in-law with a smile, but inwardly he was disturbed. Wells hadn’t beaten them, not hardly. His spellforms were weak and poorly constructed, and while he was quick it was obvious they weren’t being formed by either focus or reflex.

Yet Wells had bested them. He’d simply evaded, been able to breeze through wards and walls like they weren’t there, and hurl mundane lava in quantities not seen outside an active volcano. Which, apparently, was exactly how he’d managed it if Duvall was to be believed.

Something that Hargrave wasn’t sure about anymore. Wells was just one spatial mage, not even an Archmage, so what had Duvall been keeping from them? What could she field, with her apprentices and her ubiquitous transportation system? She’d always been averse to combat, true, but so was Wells. That much was obvious.

When it came to combat, range was king, but mobility was the crown prince. Wells had sidestepped them through pure maneuvering, formless in approach. It reminded him of certain passages from Sun Tzu, though Hargrave was more a fan of Clausewitz, himself.

Wells had demonstrated the sort of insight that was hard to square with simply releasing Gayle back to Wizzy, of all people. He could have secured at the very least a pledge of neutrality, or passed along a specific message with Gayle. Yet he had done none of that. True, Gayle was young and impressionable and he knew that her version of events would miss some subtleties, but there didn’t seem to be anything to it.

Wizzy’s involvement was itself suspicious. He’d made no secret of his disapproval of GAR on principle, or of his complete lack of interest in doing anything about it. The Archmage was a self-proclaimed watcher and an elder, someone who could give advice but did not change things. Which was contradictory and bizarre, because advice could have an enormous effect, depending on to whom it was given.

He hadn’t really done much of anything for the past few hundred years, aside from pitching in on a few dire threats in the portal worlds. At least, that was what Hargrave had thought. Now he wasn’t so certain. There was no possible way that Wizzy had met up with Wells by accident — though he was not at all surprised the Archmage had made no attempt to bring him in.

The difference between actively sheltering a fugitive and aiding them by being indifferent to their presence was sophistry at best. Hargrave wasn’t sure he actually believed that Wizzy was genuinely working to undermine GAR, but he was choosing not to help. At least the man didn’t have a full House to back his agenda, whatever it was. It didn’t seem likely he was working with Duvall, but there was no telling what strange allies might appear these days.

“House meeting in three hours,” Harold said. He got a nod of acknowledgement from his son and drifted out, heading to his own room. While he was not a political creature by inclination, he did have friends and friendly enemies among the other Houses. They’d have to be informed about what had just happened.

“Frankly, I don’t think Duvall can be trusted,” he said to a gathering three hours later. The eldest of House Hargrave itself, all its cadet Houses, and several of their allies were all there, seated in the enormous library within the Hargrave compound. “She’s been making lots of noise about wanting to get her hands on Wells, but she did absolutely nothing when he showed up. They’re both spatial mages, so there’s some natural affinity there.”

“Do you think that Duvall is making some kind of play through Wells?” Lord Elroe asked doubtfully.

“It’s possible, though I don’t see how. It seems more likely that Wells is one of hers gone rogue. Or rather, gone heretic.” Harold grimaced. “Duvall’s insisted that spatial magic is peaceful for centuries, and while we’ve used it for logistical movement we’ve never seen it used the way Wells has. Is he a heretic merely because he’s revealed what spatial mages could do all this time?”

It was a discomfiting idea. Spatial mages were odd and different; the usual spellforms did nothing, and nobody else got any value from the portal and teleport frameworks. But it had been assumed they followed most of the other rules of magic. Perhaps falsely.

“So, what, are we setting ourselves against House Duvall?” The question came from the head of one of the cadet branches, Lord Turner. “That seems to be a rather risky move.”

“Possibly, but consider what Wells did by himself. Duvall has herself and ten? I think ten. Ten apprentices, and we all have anchors in our homes. That is a threat that we cannot ignore. At the very least, it demands transparency and investigation. What, exactly, have we been putting all over the world – and in the portal worlds! – this whole time?”

By the time he finished his brief pitch, people were nodding. Many of them were old enough to remember the various House conflicts, the open bloodshed and clashes of spells in the streets. GAR had put most of that behind them, but not all of it. When people lived as long as mages did, old grudges never really died.

“Another thing that might affect some of you is that I do not plan on letting either House Fane or the BSE lay claim to Gayle. She’s not just my granddaughter, she’s an invaluable strategic resource that we can’t afford to lose.” Harold surveyed the room. “I don’t trust Fane, I don’t trust Duvall, and since neither Taisen nor I could actually neutralize Wells, there’s no way that GAR or the BSE can keep her safe.”

“House Fane is not going to like that,” Lord Elroe noted.

“I imagine not. Taisen is not likely to push for himself, but he hasn’t had full control of BSE ever since they shoved the extra policing in.” Harold waved it away. “The point is, neither GAR nor the BSE can guarantee safety from Wells, so we have to protect ourselves. I advise you to be very choosey about where the more vulnerable members of our Houses are posted.”

“Are you actually scared of Wells?” Grand Magus Abbot asked, to a withering glare by Harold.

“No. He’s no threat to me, and he’s no threat even to the people of this House. But he is a threat to lesser mages that someone like me can’t mitigate. He’s a threat to the infrastructure, everything we rely on, because there is pragmatically nothing we can do to stop him from destroying any enchantment or building he wants to. That is the issue. Along with the chaos in the rest of the Houses. Don’t forget we have a lot of people unhappy with us because of the GAR searches.”

“The Silent War all over again,” someone muttered. Harold didn’t catch who, but he nodded agreement.

“Some might see this as an opportunity to strike, especially if GAR decides to look the other way when it comes to our Houses.” He eyed them again, but nobody had the temerity to suggest that he let them steal Gayle away again. “There are certain questions about GAR that need to be resolved, and now is the best time to do it. They’re busy with Wells and shifters and fae, so they’ll be more amenable to leverage.”

It wasn’t as simple as that, of course. There were ancient defensive protocols to dredge up, new wards to set around their transport disks despite Wells’ ability to breeze past wards at will, and lists of personnel to redeploy. They weren’t going to drop out of GAR entirely or anything similarly drastic, so it was more in the nature of tightening up their oversight. Clarifying lines of communication and of hierarchy.

An organization that was unsteady was far different than one in control. There were dozens of mages operating entirely in the dark, neither reporting to nor getting instructions from the House they owed fealty to. A situation that could not be allowed to continue.

The audit didn’t take long in the end. Though Harold himself didn’t bother with the minutiae of House Hargrave, they had some excellent recordkeepers and the cadet houses took after their parent. The militant houses tended to be well-kept, since logistics was the backbone of any operation.

“We’ll reconvene soon,” Harold said, when the work was done. “It won’t be long before someone makes a move.”

Chapter 4 – Work

Callum took some time out to rest, but not much.

After he and Lucy had stopped operating on dregs and he’d had time to attend church for his own peace of mind, he decided it was time to get in contact with Chester again. That meant heading back to Winut to drop off the portal anchor once again. Once Arthur actually drove the portal anchor to Chester’s place, he wouldn’t need to use that route again, but as it stood he didn’t actually know where Chester’s compound was. His sense of direction didn’t really work through teleports to unknown places.

“You know, this whole deal sounds better than the GAR transport network,” Lucy said, looking at one of the little portal anchors. “I mean, sure, it doesn’t go as many places but the teleporters can’t bring whole trucks through either.”

“Wait ‘till you see the flying chair,” he told her. “It’s very useful but it feels so very makeshift.”

“Ooh, you know I’ve never been flying,” Lucy said, eyes sparkling a little.

“I don’t actually know that it’s safe to come along on that thing,” he told her regretfully. “I mean, it’s only got one seat but it’s also a weird space magic application. If I’m not careful my normal teleports are pretty rough on people, so I’d be afraid this would do real damage.”

“Aw, that’s no fun,” Lucy said with an affected pout.

“If I ever manage to snag a proper flight focus I’ll take you up,” he promised. “Or, you know what? We can work on a tandem flying chair, because you’re right, flying is pretty great. And I don’t have to do the Alcubierre bit.”

“It’s a date, big man,” Lucy said.

“Flying for our first date?” He asked, not entirely joking. “What about dinner and a movie?”

“I’ll hold you to that when you get back,” Lucy said. “Now come on, show me this magical portal space where you’ve stored everything.”

It felt rather odd showing off the cave cache, considering that of all places that was the most private and important. Admittedly it didn’t look like much even with the work he’d done, and after seeing Lucy swinging a flashlight around he made a note to rig up more lighting. Not everyone could just use panoramic magical senses to navigate.

“So, this shouldn’t take too long,” he told her. “I’ll pop back once I deliver the anchor and we should be able to talk to Alpha Chester soon after.”

“Sure, big man,” Lucy said, experimentally turning on one of the LED lamps he had scattered about. “It’s a bit chilly but I can hang out here.”

“Yeah this isn’t really equipped for living.” It was fortunate that it was winter, because it really wasn’t pleasant to hang out in the cave without a proper jacket. “Right, see you in a bit.”

“Later, big man!”

He went through the entire process of recalling to Montana and using the chair to get to Winut. The small town still sparked a twinge of nostalgia for him, even though he hadn’t been there long. In hindsight he really should have spent more time being sociable; the people in Winut had been nice folk. Maybe in some distant future he could visit openly once again.

He found Arthur Langley at the pack compound rather than on patrol, playing catch with younger relatives. Some of them were on two feet, and some on four. It didn’t seem necessary to interrupt the game so he left the portal anchor at the front door, writing a quick note for Arthur and his family, and recalled to the cave. Lucy was sitting with a blanket and the crate of books, since there was no wifi down underground. At least not yet. Amusingly, she’d gotten out a book by the same author as Gayle and was thumbing through it.

“All set,” he told her. “We can head back to where it’s warmer and wait for other people to do the transportation.”

“Works for me, big man,” Lucy said.

“You know, you can probably call me Callum now,” he said, escorting her onto the teleport plate. Since it was still in the armored van, it wasn’t obvious where to go from the cave, and in fact it was quite unintuitive to get into the back of a vehicle to get out of a cave.

“I probably can, but I like big man more,” Lucy told him. He laughed and activated the teleporter, and the surroundings changed. Lucy’s eyes widened. “What the heck,” she said. “I could feel that!”

“Feel what?”

“Like, the actual spell form. Used to be I could feel that magic was around but this time I could kinda sense the details. That’s never happened before.”

“Mmm.” Callum mused, tapping his toe on the receiver plate. “Maybe after being exposed to more magic, the fae thing and Mictlān and all, your sensitivity has improved?”

“I mean, it must’ve. I know the toppest tier of duds can actually see magic, which honestly has got to be the worst. Being able to see it without being able to cast.” Lucy’s face scrunched up in a moue of distaste. “Honestly if I had to be a dud I’m glad I couldn’t be put into any of the magical inspection stuff. I prefer computers anyway.”

“Well, I can give you some of the exercise books to see if you can get anywhere, but your internal vis hasn’t changed much,” Callum cautioned.

“Oh boy, you’re talking about the little kid books aren’t you?” Lucy rolled her eyes. “Well, I’ll give them a look.”

It wasn’t much longer before Arthur Langley wrapped up his game, and when Callum opened a phone-portal the shifter seemed almost completely unsurprised. Not much later, Arthur was driving down toward Chester’s with the portal anchor in his pocket. It seemed that in the two days between Lucy’s rescue and his call the telepads he’d made for Chester had been confiscated.

“I think they’re slapping Alpha Chester with fines, as well,” Arthur said as he drove. “I don’t know if he’s going to pay though. There are some rumblings that make me think he won’t.”

“Can he even do that?” Lucy asked, leaning closer to the portal that was hovering over the table between them. It led to the cave cache, where a second portal set led through the anchor, so they could talk without a direct connection. Lucy had ribbed him over the precaution, but he still used it. “I mean, I know the big man and I are outside of GAR now, but he’s got a lot of people.”

“Don’t I know it,” Arthur said. “But he’s been a good Alpha so far. If he thinks he can get away with it, I trust him.”

Callum followed the course Arthur took and found that Alpha Chester’s compound was just over the state line in Nebraska, which meant that actually getting the portal there was not much different than getting it to Winut. Of course, the compound was much larger and there was noticeable security so if he made the trip in person it wasn’t likely he’d remain undetected.

“It’s Mister Wells again,” Arthur told the door guard bluntly, and while Callum winced it wasn’t like his identity was at all secret. At this point it wasn’t really even secret that he worked with Alpha Chester. That explanation was enough for them to let Arthur through, and he headed for the inner portion of the compound where Callum had talked with Alpha Chester before. The area protected by wards.

The Midwest Alpha himself was actually in the kitchen helping his wife roll dough. When the word got passed, he finished up whatever pastry he was working on and washed up, shifting into war form as he headed down to the secure area where Arthur was waiting.

“Mister Wells,” he said as he entered, spotting the portal hovering in the middle of the room. “I understand you managed to perform the entire operation unscathed.”

“More or less,” Callum acknowledged, and nodded at Lucy.

“Hey boss man, I’m unscathed too. More or less.”

“Lucy,” Chester said as he seated himself in his oversized armchair. “It’s good to hear you’re alive and whole. Though needless to say, resuming your prior job at the moment would be a rather fraught undertaking.”

“Yeah, I hear you boss man. No worries, I’m gonna be hanging out with the big man for a while anyway.”

“Be sure you take care of her, Mister Wells,” Chester said seriously.

“Yes, sir,” Callum said, completely understanding the tone in Chester’s voice.

“Good man,” Chester said, leaving Lucy red-faced and spluttering. “Now, I assume that you didn’t just call so Lucy and I could chat.”

“No,” Callum said, “though I’m perfectly happy to leave the portals open so she can catch up with anyone over there. I wanted to check in about the enchanting materials. The sooner I get them, the sooner I can start recycling it and get you some new telepads.”

“Excellent. I am glad I was right and you are a man of your word.” Chester signaled one of the other shifters in the room, whom Callum recognized as one of the two linebacker types from way back when he’d first gone into the basement of the café in Winut. The man headed off to another room, presumably to bring the loot. “I have a pallet of stuff, which we mostly can’t use. We haven’t tried disassembling it, since there’s a lot silverite in there.”

“Sure, that’s not a problem.” Callum hadn’t even thought about the issues of bane metals, but it only made sense that vampires would have more silverite or ironite around than mordite. “I can grab it through the anchor here right now if that’s okay.”

“Can you do everything through the anchor?” Chester asked, and it wasn’t just an idle question.

“Essentially,” Callum admitted. “So I know it’s maybe a bit of an ask to hang onto one, but if we’re going to be keeping in touch it’s more secure than a phone. More useful, too.”

“I’ll consider it, but not just yet,” Chester said. “You haven’t even come yourself. There needs to be more trust between us.”

“That’s fair enough,” Callum admitted. He wasn’t about to pop over to the shifter compound to prove himself, but maybe in the future he wouldn’t feel so twitchy about being around a bunch of high-powered supernaturals. Maybe. “In that case, I’ll deliver an anchor the next time we need to talk.”

Chester’s minion wheeled out the pallet, which was full of boxes and crates. Callum could sense a goodly amount of enchantments inside, and he spent a little bit of time surveying the contents to make sure there was nothing obviously active or dangerous. Though if they were in Chester’s house, they’d already gone through a teleport without exploding or something.

He simply teleported the pallet into his cave-cache. The shifters twitched at its sudden disappearance, but that was their only reaction. They clearly understood the threat that he could pose, and he revised his thoughts on the mutual trust issue a bit. He was going to have to do something or else risk losing the only supernatural allies he really had.

But first, there was work to do.

***

“There’s really not even a Wells case anymore.”

Ray Danforth sat with Felicia Black in the briefing room at GAR East, where the principal investigators of The Ghost, aka Callum Wells, were gathered. Agent Jahn had somehow ended up in charge of it, and while Ray had nothing against the man he didn’t like the idea of just giving up on things. Though he had to admit there wasn’t anything to investigate. Everyone knew who Wells was and what he could do, but finding him, catching him, and holding to account – that was a problem beyond what Danforth could manage.

“It’s a manhunt at this point, and we have no idea where he is. Considering the abilities he’s displayed, it could be anywhere in the world.” Jahn looked around the room. “So, most of you get to do other things. I’m looking into various resources for tracking him down, but until then there’s no point having anyone on standby.”

Most people looked just as happy to be done with it. The various BSE personnel were clearly fed up, especially since Wells had wrecked Garrison Two, though a few were just as displeased as Ray was. The man had made damn fools of some very experienced mages by simply not attacking in any way anyone had considered.

Not to mention there was a lot of tension between people of various Houses thanks to the interrogations from the internal investigation that had revealed Lucile Harper. Ray was damned glad that he and Felicia had the shield of GAR because there were some very upset mages who wanted their hides. He wasn’t sure whether some of those grudges would ever fade, no matter that they were doing their jobs under the auspices of some very powerful Archmages.

Various Houses threatening to leave GAR was nothing new. Some had even followed through with it, though they tended to fade into irrelevance fairly quickly. But there was a difference between a single House breaking away, or even a coalition, and the current fractious rumbling. There was no telling what would happen if the unhappiness catalyzed into real action.

Jahn spent the next few minutes calling names and mostly releasing people back to their previous chain of command. He saved the pair of them for last, tilting his head toward a side office as people filtered out of the meeting room. Ray exchanged glances with Felicia and followed.

“Now, I did say there’s no Wells case anymore, but we do have a known connection,” Jahn said without any preamble. “Alpha Chester. Considering how difficult it might be to let this go completely, I thought I might put in a word with GAR to have you put on that investigation.”

“We’d appreciate that,” Ray said, for both Felicia and himself. “Who are we working with?”

“Archmage Janry, for the most part. Yes, I know, Archmages are supposed to be outside GAR but you need something to counterbalance an Alpha like Chester.” Jahn shrugged. “Plus there’s whoever he decides to appoint. Frankly, Janry’s never been a particularly energetic fellow when it comes to anything outside his own House so I don’t entirely trust him to get the job done.”

“Huh. You want us to take over control of the investigation?” Ray asked doubtfully. It was true the Earth Archmage spent most of his time on his estate in the Deep Wilds, but he was still an Archmage. “We haven’t exactly covered ourselves in glory.”

“Who has?” Jahn asked, mostly rhetorically. “At least I know your reports are accurate. Which is another thing, I want you to send me a copy of those reports. If there’s something that ought to be followed up on, I can step outside the chain of command for it.”

“That would be welcome, I think,” Ray said cautiously. Felicia nodded firmly and wrote on her tablet.

“What kind of thing are we looking for?”

“Honestly, anything. We know he’s in contact with Wells, so every infraction you can ding him for. I don’t think anyone wants open war, but we might be able to drag him down with death by a thousand cuts. At the very least make him second-guess dealing with Wells.”

“I’m not sure how much I like that part,” Ray grimaced. “There’s got to be thousands of rules we don’t really care about that are still on the books.”

“Yes,” Jahn agreed. “But this is politics. We’ve got a bunch of Archmages, branch heads, and vampire Masters that want Wells’ head. If we can bring him in, then we can head off the worst of it. There will have to be concessions and favor-trading in the meantime, but we have to make it clear GAR is doing something.”

“You think bringing in Wells will stop everything?” Ray asked.

“He’s the legitimacy for their rancor. Get rid him, get rid of it. Which is why we need to move against anyone who supports him, too. To be honest it wouldn’t surprise me if someone makes a more violent move against Chester, but that’s not my problem. I just want you to dig as deep as you can. If we’re lucky, he’ll have some information buried somewhere about where to find Wells.”

“Yes, sir,” Ray said. “If something’s there, we’ll find it.”

***

“That’s some serious equipment, big man,” Lucy said, managing to make it a double entendre. Callum laughed and waved at the metalworking equipment.

“Yeah, and it’s going to be a lot of work taking this stuff apart and melting it down, even with magic.”

“Don’t let it be said I’m not willing to get my hands dirty,” Lucy said with a wink. “Seriously though, can you just melt down enchantment stuff? Seems a little simple to me.”

“I know you can with mordite,” Callum said. “I’ve never tried silverite or corite though. Hopefully we can scavenge most of this but I know that low-quality stuff can become useless.”

“Guess we’ll find out.” Both of them had on work clothes, Lucy managing to look attractive even in heavy overalls and safety goggles. Callum simply started teleporting the contents of the crates out into the workspace behind the trailer house.

Just on the face of it, a lot of stuff wasn’t going to be recyclable. There was a lot of bladed weaponry – knives, swords, and even an awl-pike – that just had some sort of lacquered coating on it. He could sense the mana in it, but the metal of the weapons was simple steel. The one exception to that was a short sword that seemed to be carved entirely from something that seemed like transparent, lustrous silver glass.

“I guess this is pure silverite?” Callum tapped it. The stuff was definitely not a metal. It felt more plastic, not glass, but harder and heavier than any plastic he was familiar with.

“Ooh, I think so. I’ve heard that silverite is actually some kind of amber, instead of metal.”

“Huh.” That was nowhere in the books that he’d read, or maybe it had been and he’d missed it. There was an awful lot of literature to get through. “It probably doesn’t melt down, then.”

As much as he disliked ruining a perfectly functional weapon, Callum got out a couple of clamps to see how hard the silverite actually was. It wasn’t like an intact sword was going to fit in his crucible. While he worked on that, Lucy started unscrewing ward boxes and similar items, something she was quite a deft hand at.

It was nice to have someone else around to lend a hand, and Lucy was really happy with something to do. Without something to work on she tended to withdraw into herself, and besides being there for her there wasn’t much he could do about it. At the same time, he didn’t want to condescend to her and find useless busywork, so he was glad there was something substantive for her to help with.

He was still somewhat disconcerted at times from someone else being in his space. Not that he allowed himself to develop bad habits, but it was still weird to have a person inside his house. Though he certainly didn’t object, even if they’d put off an actual date until after they got some of the work sorted.

Callum was broken from his musing by the silverite snapping. It took an awful lot of force to break the stuff, which sheared rather than bending. A few applications of a blowtorch didn’t do any noticeable damage to it, so he resorted to more extreme measures. Namely, he tossed it in the crucible and turned up the heat, though well away from them just in case the silverite burst into magical flame or something.

While that was cooking, he took the plates that Lucy had disassembled or, in some cases, pried out of their casings, and started transcribing the enchantments. She couldn’t open the plates without actually cutting things up, which would break the enchant, but he could note things first and scrap things later, since he could sense right through the protective metal.

He was a fairly deft hand at tracing things out, especially since there were a lot of similar pieces. Certain patterns were standard, like the mana acceptors and intakes, or the conversion portions. It all contributed to a library he was slowly building, though he had no idea to what extent it’d be useful. A lot of it he couldn’t do himself.

“Hey, Lucy, do you think there’s anything you can do with this?” Callum asked after he’d scribed in the new enchantment pieces. “I dunno how much you’ve played with CAD tools but I could use some help figuring out how to make this mess more useful.” He pushed the laptop over to her, and she happily started clicking away.

“Oh yeah, I’ve used this one before. It’s not my favorite, but I used to do all kinds of 3D-printing stuff. Lemme grab my laptop and I can start doing stuff. Oh hey, thanks!” The last sentence came as he waved his hand theatrically and teleported her laptop from where it was charging on the table inside. He had to use gravitykinesis to unplug things first, but that was easy enough.

“I’m not stuck on that program, you can use whatever you want. I’ve got some notes there, but honestly I’m used to designing houses. Not enchantments.”

“Sure, sure.” Lucy was busy on both computers as she fiddled with things. “I pretty much know how to build up a proper library. Don’t worry, big man, I’ll get this stuff sorted.”

“Thanks, Lucy!”

She gave him a big thumbs up and went back to work. He started scrutinizing various scrap when the silverite in the crucible abruptly lost all of its mana at once. It dispersed into the surrounding air, and he jumped over to verify with his eyes what he thought he sensed. It’d caught fire, very suddenly, and was merrily turning to ash. That more or less confirmed that he couldn’t recycle silverite that way.

“Any thoughts?” He asked Lucy, mostly rhetorically.

“I wish I had the enchanter’s guild stuff, but I don’t think they ever put any of it on the intranet,” Lucy shrugged. “Maybe when I get stuff built back up we can find out.”

“Righto,” he replied, and moved onto the other materials. There were a couple of the crests that he’d found from before, which he set aside for later since they seemed to be banic alloy and it was rare enough he’d like to find actual literature on how to process it. Then there were the wards, which didn’t look to be mordite. The color wasn’t right, and when he found his bottle of moonwater and brought it near the stuff, the enchanted wire didn’t shimmer.

By process of elimination it was corite, the fae bane-material. He was pretty sure other things could be used for enchanting, but the bane materials seemed far and away the best. Like with mordite, he didn’t have access to useful information like melting temperature or tensile strength, so he bisected a ward try to expose the corite and got out the blowtorch again. Even if silverite was a bust, corite seemed to be metal so he ought to be able to melt it down. Besides, it was clearly wire, so it could be worked.

After playing the blowtorch over an area for a while he noticed the section losing mana in a similar, if far slower, manner to the silverite. He snapped off the flame and tapped at the heated metal wire, only to see it crack like glass. Callum scowled at it.

“Dammit. How do they work this stuff? It’s useless if you heat it up.”

“Well, it is called cold iron, big man,” Lucy called out from the main worktable.

“No. I refuse to believe it,” Callum said, even as he teleported the other half of the tray, which hadn’t been heated up, into his freezer. “That would be too silly.”

“Well, I mean, it means they probably don’t melt the stuff.”

“Yeah, and I know you can cold-forge, but that requires a lot more effort than I want to deal with.” Callum grimaced. “Turns out you can destroy the usefulness of silverite and corite if you get them hot enough though. That’s not fun. Still, I know they use it so it’s just a matter of figuring it out.”

“Ugh. If I still had my access I could probably find something. An email or post at the very least.”

“Hey, don’t worry about it,” Callum reassured her. “You said the enchanting guild keeps things close to their vest anyway, so there wouldn’t have been much.”

“Even so.” Lucy sighed, flexing her fingers. “I hate to say it, but it’s freezing out here, big man. Mind if I work inside?”

“Oh, no, go right ahead! I’d bring some of this junk inside too but there’s just not much room in there.”

He continued sorting the enchantment material, getting several piles. One was stuff that was coarse enough that he could pry it out manually, or was fixed in wood rather than metal. One was a few other pieces of pure silverite. The last was the lacquered stuff, which he presumed was also silverite, though he didn’t know the process for how it had been applied.

While he was doing that he noticed that despite heading inside of her own initiative, Lucy seemed to be staring off into space instead of actually getting work done. He didn’t like that, and while he couldn’t really sort stuff inside – there just wasn’t room – there was no reason he had to leave her alone. He was used to speaking portals anyway.

“So, while I’m doing this and you’re doing that, go ahead and start considering how to get your access back. It’s not something we’re going to do now, but I’m sure you can come up with a game plan.”

“Oh!” Lucy jumped slightly, turning toward the small portal he was using to speak. It would let a bit of cold air in, but not more than the house’s HVAC could handle. He hoped. “Yeah! Okay, definitely. That’ll be fun, actually.”

He continued chatting with Lucy while he worked, somewhat amused by using portals to cross twenty feet of space, but glad that he could. The total amount of enchanting material wasn’t all that large in the end, though it was more than the mordite he’d acquired. Even if most of it went back to Chester he could at least build another portal anchor, maybe two. More than that, if he could figure out silverite. Callum was half-amused and half-annoyed when he took the tray out of the freezer later on and found that the corite had softened quite a bit. Lucy was insufferably smug, but smug suited her quite well.

Corite was more like gold than putty, but certainly soft enough that he could pry it out of the half-frame without any real issues. That wasn’t something he could go to a friendly metalworker to help with, but at least it meant that stuff like wire-drawing equipment would work on sufficiently chilled corite.

Simply chilling it was not enough to remove the enchantment the metal already held; to clear it out he needed to abuse it a bit. Even if he couldn’t melt it, he could still process it by putting it in a press, crunching the fairly thick wire back into something resembling an ingot. Even that didn’t clear out everything, until he repeated the process in the higher mana density of the cave-cache.

Which suggested a possible reason why GAR had so much infrastructure in the US. There might well be noticeably less wear and tear in the lower mana environment. Sure, there was higher mana from the portal taps, but that wasn’t the same amount as in Europe, and it really only enriched the area nearby.

It didn’t seem likely that his crude and labor-intensive method of recycling corite was how it was normally done, but it still worked. How well the metal would work in his wire-drawing equipment remained to be seen, but at least in theory he could make good on his deal with Alpha Chester.

That left the silverite. He really loved the idea of the lacquer, because that was something that could be painted onto a surface, but making that sort of thing took more than just crude physical tools. It was chemistry, and way beyond him. Maybe Chester would have some idea, but considering it was silverite he doubted it. Asking someone to work with their own bane material would be an issue.

Since he had the weapons and couldn’t process them, he went ahead and equipped himself and Lucy with a silverite dagger each. A gun with silverite bullets would be better and he didn’t have any intent to stab a shifter, but some protection was better than nothing. At least until he could get them better armed.

There was no telling when the supernatural would catch up with them again.

***

Archmage Fane Xun narrowed his eyes at the man in front of him. Most people had the sense not to bring him bad news, but everyone knew he was somewhat more gentle with his direct family. The combination of those two things meant that whenever he saw one of a particular set of nephews he knew there was something that was bound to displease him.

“Speak,” he said.

“Great Patriarch, House Hargrave has refused to communicate further regarding the new initiate. Nor has she been remanded to the custody of the Bureau of Secret Enforcement.”

“I thought this was already settled,” Fane said dangerously. He’d established that anyone who discovered Gu would be stripped of their House a long time ago. Then they would have nowhere to turn but House Fane. It had kept all the truly skilled healing mages within his House for many years. “Why is GAR not intervening?”

“I do not know, Patriarch.”

“What about Taisen?” The Grand Magus was a useful tool, spending more time off being a wilderness savage than paying attention to the BSE itself. With him often gone it was simplicity itself to apply pressure to the various deputies to ensure the right actions were taken.

“The Grand Magus is in seclusion.” Fane scowled. That could mean anything, but probably that he had hared off into the Deep Wilds again and couldn’t be found. Annoying, but potentially useful.

“Arrange to have our people secure the younger Hargrave anyway,” he finally said. “We can’t afford to look weak at the moment.” Some of the other Houses had held him responsible for the debacle of the mass interrogations that found nothing. The fools. Just because they were so incompetent as to miss the traitor hidden in their midst ⁠—

Fane dismissed the man with a wave of his hand and stood from his chair, which was barely short of a throne in the great hall of House Fane. The windows looked out onto a peaceful slice of Zhongguo, as one of the few Houses that kept their estates on Earth rather than the portal worlds. He sneered at even the thought of giving up the land of his ancestors, just to huddle in protective enclaves like peasants and begging Duvall for scraps. Having to rely on her for feeder portals was bad enough.

Besides, the portal worlds couldn’t be trusted. The Dragonlands being moved out of Zhongguo showed that. All those mages who thought they had nice, stable estates were fooling themselves. Might as well live on the moon, for how hospitable those places really were.

He clasped his hands behind him as he took a few steps to look out over a carefully pruned garden. It was a work of art, perfectly made to his specifications and run with a firm hand. If only people would be so amenable. It still irked him that the dragonblooded ran around without anything to curb them, aside from certain perfunctory rules, but there was only so much he could accomplish on his own. The rest of GAR was reluctant to rally around him on some points, just because they didn’t have to experience the long and sordid history of that portal world.

No, they were more worried about some young buck that was evading their clumsy fumblings to locate him. Fane was personally interested in that particular individual, because any insight into the process of magic was hard to come by. There weren’t so many mages around that many could be spared for his experiments, and he was keenly interested in how someone could go for three decades without manifesting any talent of note.

Elevating people’s intrinsic magical ability was something that had long occupied both his thoughts and his time. Crippling it had proved fairly simple, in the end, and had only needed a few dozen prisoners and criminals. So far instilling it directly into mundanes or duds had eluded him, though not for want of trying.

Generating mages in general was easy enough. If a human lived on a portal world long enough – the exact time varied from world to world – but returned to Earth before truly severe changes had taken place, they might become magic-sensitive. Might. Take those magic-sensitives, repeat the process with their children, and by the third generation there were mages. Tamed areas like the ones Duvall made didn’t count.

The current version of the draft had been irritatingly based on the training process he’d put together for his House, to expose his people to as wide a variety of mana types as possible. Taisen had seen other value to it, and Fane wasn’t going to argue to try and keep his monopoly on the idea. People weren’t that stupid; they’d know he had ulterior motives.

His experimentation had shown that a mage’s strength was directly related to their ancestors experiencing the diversity of the portal worlds. Someone who had only been to one would, in general, produce weaker mages than someone who had experienced four or five. Which was why being banned from the Dragonlands was such a blow. It had been an avenue of strength only available to House Fane lineages, but now he was restricted to the principal four.

Portal World Six wasn’t an option, either. Not just because of the busybody with the ridiculous name, no. It was that Portal World Six twisted humans on a scale measured in hours rather than weeks or years. It was far too dangerous.

That all made him wonder exactly what program had produced an apparent powerhouse like Wells. He had some unproven suspicions on how to make a spatial mage, to be borne out in the coming generations, but making a powerful one was apparently a far better investment than Fane would have thought. Wells had demonstrated himself to be a devastatingly effective assassin, which meant that some House somewhere had just gained a tremendous weapon.

That was a capability he’d like for himself, especially in the current climate of unrest between Houses. If someone thought about making a move – like House Hargrave, perhaps – sending an asset like Wells after them would be the appropriate response. Not to mention, if Wells could stabilize space in the same way Duvall could, perhaps House Fane could in fact have a trustworthy foothold in the portal worlds.

A motion of his hand summoned a servant to his side. A proper human servant; Fane didn’t want any shifter curs or vampire lackwits in his House. The less said about the fae, the better.

“Summon the Divine Fifth Group,” he told the servant. “And Fane Sen. Then bring me everything that was reported about the Wells situation.” Wells had proven extremely capable at dealing with any overt threats, but Archmage Fane really only wanted to get his attention.

He found it a little bit amusing that his ongoing issues with the dragonblooded had, in a way, kicked off the whole thing. So far as he knew there really weren’t any other connections to Wells, and nobody wanted to disturb a dragonblooded. But he didn’t care, and Wells seemed a sentimental enough fool that he could be easily swayed into motion.

It was time to revisit the town of Tanner.

Chapter 5 – Fulcrum

The trailer house was small enough that privacy was more an agreement than a fact. Callum could hardly miss it when Lucy woke up in the middle of the night with a cry, sitting bolt upright and fumbling for the lights. After a brief adrenaline scramble he realized what was happening. He hesitated a moment, then crossed over to the bedroom to knock at the door.

“You okay, Lucy?”

“Sorry, big man,” she said, voice subdued. She seemed smaller than usual, hunched in on herself. “Just, you know, having trouble sleeping.”

“Can I come in?”

“…yeah,” she said, after a moment of hesitation. They were both pajama-clad, since the trailer house’s HVAC was only barely up to the job of dealing with Texas in December, but it was still somewhat intimate. He quietly twisted the knob and stepped inside, trying not to make it seem like he was barging in as he leaned against the wall by the door.

“Nightmares about being captured?” He guessed.

“That and the geas stuff.” Lucy flexed her fingers for a moment before pulling the blankets up closer. “Makes me feel like such a damsel in distress, I hate it. Never had nightmares before, either. Not even when I was a kid.”

“I think it’s pretty understandable in the circumstances,” Callum said. He’d managed to escape having too many nightmares himself, though mostly by virtue of being flat out unable to sleep or crashing so hard he couldn’t remember anything when he woke up. “If it makes you feel any better I have rough nights myself. It’s not easy.”

“You, big man? You’re cool as cucumber!” Lucy said, but she smiled.

“I am an absolute bundle of nerves whenever I have to do something major,” Callum admitted.

“I’m not sure if that actually makes things better or worse,” Lucy mused.

Despite the calm he forced onto his words, some part of Callum was seething. He hated seeing Lucy like this, hated seeing her hurting. He hated seeing her made less. Her current state was a kind of vulnerability that nobody should ever suffer, let alone be put on display for anyone to ever see. Callum was so very tempted to target some BSE agents and facilities and just wipe them out, but after Lucy went back to bed he cooled off a bit and started chewing on the problem seriously.

The problem was that most of the people involved had just been doing their jobs and hadn’t done anything too objectionable by the standards of the supernatural community. There was a difference between people who were doing their best, being as moral as they could within an unjust system, and those who took advantage of their authority within such a system to abuse people. Some of the people who had questioned Lucy were ordinary cops, just doing their job. Others, like the vampire that had left her in muscle-locked compulsion or the fae that put the very nasty bit of magic into her head, needed to be held to account for their abuse.

It was the machine of GAR that was the main issue. At first glance it was just a huge faceless bureaucracy of interchangeable parts, but like any organization it was made up of people. Some of those people had responsibility and authority, and thus were the ones who needed to be called to account for the behavior of those underneath them. Others were purposefully and personally cruel, and needed to be called to account for their own actions.

The second type was easy to deal with. They were obvious, the hunters and the abusers, and he had no qualms about taking whatever action was required to stop them. The first type, though, were necessary to deal with. Even if they didn’t personally predate on people, they oversaw it, enabled it, encouraged it.

It took him a few nights of brooding to look at it from all angles. There was a big difference between intervening to save people ⁠– dealing with what he saw – and becoming an actual vigilante. Holding accountable those with ultimate responsibility. Those whose hands were only clean because of the number of steps between them and the actual events. Though by his standards, that type was far more deserving of punishment than their catspaws.

“Do you really have to?” Lucy raised the question when he brought up the topic. “Can’t you just not?” She shifted uncomfortably as she ate breakfast, which was actually just fruit and oatmeal. And sugar. Lucy had a sweet tooth that was so severe it was worrying.

“This isn’t going to stop, Lucy,” Callum told her, choosing his words with care. Actually articulating his thoughts was astonishingly hard. “Not unless GAR changes. And it won’t, because it’s a bureaucracy staffed by people who live forever. Or hundreds of years, anyway. They won’t give up their power and their habits. The only way to stop what happened to you and me from happening again, to us or to others, is to force that change.”

“That’s an awful lot to shoulder there, big man. Sure, maybe things can use a change, but why do you need to do it?”

“If I don’t do it, who will?” Callum tapped his fingers against the table. “Is anyone else even in a position to? And it has to change. If I want to live in peace, if people like me want to live in peace, then I have to break the power of GAR. If I want to stop people being taken and killed by supernaturals, I have to break the power of GAR.”

“I mean.” Lucy swallowed a spoonful of oatmeal. “There’s all these big old houses with lots of powerful people. Are you really going to just start killing them off?”

“I hope I won’t have to,” Callum said. “There are some people who absolutely deserve what’s coming to them, but once some of them are held to account, it might inspire things to change fairly quickly.”

“Or it might not,” Lucy said. “The Houses and GAR are big old powers, pretty set in their ways.”

“It might not,” Callum allowed. “But I can’t just shrug my shoulders and give up. And it’s not like simple reason is going to work on people who would blow up a café because I’m inside. Which is another point to forcing that kind of change. There are people who are willing to flatten an entire town just to get at me.”

“That’s a fair point,” Lucy said, though she didn’t look particularly eager. “I wish I could say that we could negotiate with them, but yeah. Archmages barely listen to each other.”

“If it makes you feel better, it’s not like I’m going to be going there myself.” He held up his hand and teleported a portal anchor into it. That sort of conjuring trick was never going to get old. “Plus, it’s not like I’m just going to start randomly killing GAR employees. I’m going to need your help to know who is actually responsible. Sometimes it’s not even the people in charge.”

“I, uh. Wow. That’s a hell of a responsibility,” Lucy said, looking stunned. “Like, hey Lucy: you pick ‘em, I hit ‘em!” She affected a gruff voice in imitation of him. “I dunno, big man. If I do that, what if I choose wrong and you kill someone innocent? What if I screw up and choose someone you can’t handle and you die?”

“See, this is why I need you, because it is something that needs that kind of thought,” he told her. It was too deep a discussion to plunge into immediately, something that they could get lost in before they took the first steps. “I won’t force you, and we won’t start right away, but you’re the best person I know. You understand supernatural society, you have the contacts, and you’re neutral. Who else would I ask, Alpha Chester?”

“No,” Lucy said slowly. “I don’t think he would even say that. His pack comes first and that’s that.”

“Just consider it. There’s a lot of work to be done first, all the enchanting and hopefully getting the bunker finished and all that.” Callum waved it away. “Just thought I’d set it out so we both have time to chew it over.”

“Gonna take some chewing,” Lucy said, gesturing with her spoon.

“Yeah, I think we need a bit of a break. How about I make good on that offer I made a while back?” Callum nearly laughed at Lucy’s expression, the blank look and spoon hanging out of her mouth contrasting with the Sears-catalogue looks and prim and upright posture. “Take you out on a date,” he prompted her.

“Oh! Well, I think I could spare some time for that, big man.” Callum relaxed slightly as Lucy peered at him. Some part of him, a small part, had been worried. “I guess dinner at that burger place doesn’t count, then.”

“It does not. But it doesn’t need to be around here.” He held up the portal anchor again. “Travel is fairly easy, after all.”

“That’s a good point,” Lucy said. “Surprise me!”

So he did. While Lucy was working on some complicated version of the enchantment CAD drawings, Callum looked up some things and started moving the portal anchor. Pragmatically, he still wanted something relatively close to one of his permanent destinations and, more importantly, something Lucy would actually enjoy.

“So check this out, big man,” Lucy said. He looked up and she waved at her laptop, so he joined her at the table to see what she’d done. The enchantment designs were familiar enough, though they seemed to have been rendered into vectors. Lucy had added notes on inputs and outputs for the various bits he’d identified.

“Now, this isn’t finished or polished or anything,” Lucy cautioned. “Probably will help though.” She demonstrated what she meant by running through a quick exercise in what was apparently a program that she’d made.

Each subsection of enchantment had been put onto its own tile, with the inputs and outputs arranged so they aligned with the cardinal directions. Enchantments could get really complicated geometrically, but the individual connections were generally linear, so segmenting things that way worked pretty well. She could click and drag copies of the tiles into a workspace, snapping together and even validating the inputs and outputs.

“I know it’s not all compacted like your portal enchants, and there’s a bunch of optimization that’s either really hard or just requires stuff I don’t know about yet, but we can at least play around. Plus, check it out, you can just send one of these tile setups to CAD.” She clicked a button and, after the laptop whined for a few seconds, a program popped up where the designs she’d just made were indeed properly rendered.

“That is fantastic,” Callum said, and meant it. He hadn’t actually had much time to try and tinker with enchantment stuff, for a variety of reasons. Even if the program Lucy had hacked together didn’t actually validate that the enchantment worked – and he didn’t see how it was possible for it to do that anyway – it meant he could experiment with possibilities without needing to wrestle with individual lines in a CAD drawing.

It'd get even better as they acquired more examples, which was something that Callum hadn’t entirely given up on. Maybe when things had quieted down more he’d slip back to pilfer more designs from one of the supernatural areas. As it was, Lucy had really taken advantage of his notes and separated things far more finely than he’d tried to do.

“Thank you so much,” he told her. “This is more than I could ever have done myself. We might even have time to actually experiment with enchanting!” He remarked.

“You’re welcome, big man,” she said happily. “But don’t count your chickens this early. I’ve seen how much work we’ve got left.” Callum nodded and sighed. Most of his time was taken up with turning the salvaged cold iron into new enchanting plates for Chester. That had involved another trip to get stuff machined, because while he could do some of it at home, he couldn’t do it all. When it came to actual enchanting, it was straightforward enough but tedious and time-intensive.

Corite, or at least the corite that he’d recycled, took substantially longer than fresh mordite for the enchantment to lock in place. Just holding the framework, as still and tightly controlled as he possibly could, for minutes at a time was a surprisingly tiring process. He was about halfway through what he could do with the metal, which was two pairs of telepads for Chester.

He kept enough of the stuff for himself to produce another set of portal anchors, but he hadn’t started work on those yet. Mostly he wanted to take a bit to chew on it and consider better designs, since it wasn’t something he needed as soon as possible. Clearly he’d have to bounce ideas off Lucy, too.

“That’s the idea,” Lucy said happily. “I don’t know what tools the guild uses but they probably don’t use CAD and mockups like this.”

“Probably not,” Callum admitted. “They’ve got more people and more history, though. We’re basically starting from scratch, so we need something like this.”

“Glad you like it, big man.”

“I do,” Callum said firmly. “Now that you’ve got that done, ready to take a break?”

“What did you have in mind?” Lucy asked, eyeing him.

“You did say to surprise you,” Callum said, waving a hand and opening a portal up to where he’d finally put the anchor. Warm air billowed through, along with the scent of salt air and greenery. “Might want to ditch the sweater, though.”

“Ooh, the beach?” Lucy asked, doffing her sweater and tossing it on the couch before she stepped through the portal. On the other side was a small walk of hotel and stores, in the middle of surrounding jungle.

“There’s that too, but there’s some really nice swimming cenotes down there,” Callum told her, following her lead. “Figured they’d be more picturesque than the beach. We’ll have to buy the swimwear here, but that shouldn’t be a problem.”

“You just wanted to see me in a bikini,” she accused good-naturedly.

“Well, I can’t deny that,” Callum admitted. “But my other idea was a ski resort.” Lucy shivered.

“You made a good choice, big man,” she said.

***

Lucy found the big man a lot easier to be around than she had expected. While she still found it hard to think of him as Callum even to herself, he wasn’t the towering, deadly assassin she’d built up in her own mind. He could absolutely focus, turning an almost disconcerting intensity on things, but he wasn’t that way all the time. Mostly he was easygoing and scrupulously polite.

Actually, mostly he was stable. Her entire world had been upended, her job was gone, her house was gone, everything she’d worked for was metaphorically burned to ashes, and even her few friends were out of reach. Despite all that, the big man talked and acted as if everything was going to be okay, discussing little things as if they mattered, without ever condescending to her or making light of the situation.

She was still surprised he was a compact, ordinary-looking guy rather than some buff brickhouse, but it worked. It didn’t hurt that he was actually genuinely interested in her, as opposed to the few sad sacks from GAR she’d tried dating. After being so utterly dismissed as a dud it was a nice change to have someone taking her seriously. Not that she believed she needed the validation, but it sure didn’t hurt.

The best thing was that she still had stuff to do. Lucy was pretty sure she’d have gone spare if she’d had to sit around all day sewing or something. Or just staring out the window, or even watching movies. Getting her teeth into the enchanting stuff was not only interesting, but it also distracted her from the lingering cloud of her time in GAR custody.

So had the date. She had been to the beach once before, but by herself it just wasn’t anything special. With someone, it was a nice day off, and it freed her mind up to chew on some of her problems. Not the big ones, so much, as the small ones, like enchanting materials.

Lucy tapped her fingers against the bread-loaf-sized chunk of obsidian resting on the table, feeling the mana inside it tingle against her fingertips. The big man had pulled out tons of the stuff — a hundred pounds of it, anyway. Unfortunately, glass couldn’t be worked the same as metal so figuring out a good way to turn them into enchantment substrate was slightly tricky.

He could just embed the spell forms in the glass bulk, in theory. In practice, he claimed that without any physical structure to follow the vis smeared out rather than locking in a particular place. Then there was the thread he used to connect himself to the spell form, which would stick in the mana-dense glass and form the enchanting equivalent of sprue.

She’d more or less volunteered to figure out a way to use the stuff. Which might have been silly, since she couldn’t enchant, but it seemed like it would be an interesting challenge. Besides, the almost-translucent glass was neat, though she’d already cut herself on an edge.

The fact that it was just big bulk glass was likely one major reason why the enchanting guild didn’t bother sourcing it. Even if there was an enormous amount of it, and it could hold enchants, it wasn’t any good as a serious substrate. Of course, there was also the fact that portal world six was kind of off-limits and way too dangerous for most mages.

Lucy had spent half the day searching glass-working methods while the big man focused on the telepads. Which was a far better term than spatial transportation receiving plate, the term she’d seen on itemized budgets. Most of that work he did across from her, focusing on bits of wire as he referred to his CAD designs. Every once in a while he went back outside to seat the wire in the big metal plate, and she was happy to leave that cold chore to him.

“So, here’s my idea, big man,” she said, when he came back inside sometime after lunch.

“Lay it on me,” he said, sliding into his seat across from her.

“Lay what on you?” She asked with a grin.

“Don’t start what you don’t intend to finish,” he told her, and she giggled.

“Well, we’ve got these tiles I’ve made for modeling enchantments,” she continued, tapping her laptop. “I’m thinking we turn those into real tiles. Find a place that’ll do the glasswork, but we chop all this obsidian into like, inch-square tiles, add a tab-slot thing so they lock into place. Can just mask-etch the enchantment patterns on them, so they’re raised up.”

“Seems a fantastic idea to me,” he replied, looking at the big block of obsidian. “I guess we have enough that it won’t matter if I mess up once or twice. Heck, we could even hot-swap enchantments, or see if that’s really possible.” The big man smiled as he thought about it, clearly following the same path of ideas Lucy had taken. For once, a mage not only listened to her ideas but agreed with them. “Yeah, just need to find someone who’ll actually do that kind of glasswork.”

“I’ve found three places that say they can, but not anywhere around here. Not a problem for us I don’t think.”

“Nope,” he agreed cheerfully. “Why don’t you go ahead and get the details and whatnot, and when you’ve figured out which one or ones we’re using, we can take a road trip. Well, more like a flying chair trip unless you really want to drive.”

“I can do without,” Lucy agreed. “Though speaking of the flying chair thing, can you use a portal anchor to do the same thing?”

“Yeah, though stability is a problem. I was thinking of making a little mini-chair type thing for the portal anchor,” he told her. “Since it’s so small it’d be less effort to do.”

“Right, so, what if you stick a portal anchor on a drone?” She suggested. “That way you don’t have to use magic to keep it in the air, and like, drones are pretty common everywhere now. Plus, we can run the control signal through the portal. Have GPS and telemetry and whatnot all on a computer.”

“Ooh, fancy.” His eyes lit up with the same sort of interest that she had when contemplating a new toy. “I knew there was a reason I liked having you around.”

“You betcha, big man,” she said, flushing. His flirtatious lines often came out of nowhere and caught her by surprise. “Maybe we can add a repeater into the anchor housing or something, but the metal is thick enough we can just force a signal through.”

“Right, right,” he agreed. “And we could make some integral housing where I could just teleport the anchor in and out, instead of having to unscrew anything.”

They continued spitballing ideas for a better portal anchor, and Lucy got out her design program to start making notes and prototypes. While it was true that she’d lost everything from her prior life, it was turning out that living with the big man wasn’t so bad. Beach trips, working directly with enchantments, and best of all, she was able to use her skills for something that actually mattered.

It was nice to be around someone who appreciated her.

***

“This is bigger than I thought,” Ray muttered, rubbing his eyes and looking up from the records that Alpha Chester had provided. So far the shifter had been quite helpful, which Ray had found suspicious in the extreme. He was under investigation, and he’d even been polite to the people who came to cart away Wells’ enchantments, so obviously Chester was holding some cards.

Someone who was under investigation only provided records without complaint if those records were wholly innocent. But they both knew Chester wasn’t innocent. The enchantments proved that, and with Wells’ status as a heretic there were serious consequences for anyone caught dealing with him. But there was proof, and then there was proof. Chester had enough money, connections, and personal might that it would be difficult for anything short of the most blatant dealings to really impact him.

Ray had to assume the financial and membership records were at least partly doctored, but the ones that were there spoke of an extremely large organization. Accountants, engineers, architects, carpenters, masons, janitors, everything. Of course they weren’t all employed by Chester. Most of them had their own businesses or worked for someone else, supernatural or otherwise. But all of them owed fealty to Chester, and that added up to a lot of people and property.

“We need a staff,” Felicia opined, looking up from the sheaf of papers she was perusing. Alpha Chester had, of course, provided paper copies of everything, not digital ones.

“What we need is to just give up on this stuff.” Ray waved at the cartons stacked all about their office. “There’s no way that there’s anything useful in here. We can probably spend months combing through it and spotting tiny infractions, but we aren’t going to find anything juicy.”

“True.” Felicia tossed aside her papers with obvious relief and no small bit of force. “Then where do we start? We don’t have any dead bodies for this, at least not yet.”

“Don’t tempt fate,” Ray warned her. “We should start at the other end. Lavigne. Pretty much every contact between Chester and Wells was related to Lavigne, and even if we can’t prove it we know he wiped out Lavigne’s nest. Chester might have sanitized his own records, but I doubt he thought to, or even could, sanitize Lavigne’s.”

“Mmm. What could we find?”

“I don’t know. But we aren’t going to find anything with this.” Ray pushed away the paperwork on his desk with disgust. “Offload it to whoever. I’ll go find the archives for Lavigne. While we’re there we can find out anything they have on other rogues.” Rogue mages did happen, of course, but Ray couldn’t think offhand of anyone that had given GAR such fits.

The two of them left the office and its boxes of useless paperwork behind. Ray’s destination was not much better than the mess he’d left behind, since the archives for GAR Midwest took up an entire basement. Filing cabinets lined the walls and racks of boxes made extensive aisles in the middle.

The thick-spectacled fae in charge of it was all of three feet tall, all knees and elbows, and he gave Ray a suspicious look when he asked for Lavigne’s records for the past year. Even after he showed his badge the archivist didn’t seem happy, but he snapped his fingers, swirly fae magic washing outward and drawing two thumps from the depths of the archives. A moment later a pair of boxes slid themselves over to a push-cart and hopped on board.

“Thanks,” Ray said, and wheeled the boxes back to the office. Unlike Chester’s stuff, these records were small enough that they actually fit into his and Felicia’s workspace. She was already there, with two coffees and some donuts that she’d procured from somewhere, and he took his share gratefully as he sank into his chair.

“You’re a lifesaver,” he said. “Now, let’s see if we can figure out if Lavigne had anything on Chester.”

“Fun,” Felicia remarked, but took a batch of folders from the top box and started looking them over. The best thing to find would be some evidence that Chester had broken rules of secrecy or territorial expansion in his long conflict with Lavigne. There were plenty of injunctions by Lavigne to go through, most of them probably frivolous, but it was frankly easier and more likely than extracting information from the shifters.

He didn’t want another repeat of Felicia’s off-the-books interrogation. That was dangerous, and the longer the case went on, such as it was, the more erratic Felicia was likely to get. Ray wasn’t entirely certain how the current twist would affect things; they’d never had a case be ended without being resolved. Most supernatural criminals couldn’t flout GAR and BSE.

For a while there was silence, punctuated by the rustling of paper and the sipping of coffee. Both of them were more field agents than desk agents, but GAR Midwest was quiet enough that they probably spent more time at their desks than in the field. They had practice sifting out useful information from a morass of reports.

“Okay, there’s a lot of Department of Acquisitions reports here,” Felicia said eventually. “Like, a lot a lot. Somebody should have flagged this, because I’m pretty sure he’s over his limit.”

“We’re not investigating Lavigne,” Ray said, but shrugged. “Still, that’s probably related. If we take Wells and Harper’s testimony as it stands, vampire overreach – or the perception of it – is the inciting incident.”

“Constance?” Felicia asked.

“Might as well go to the top,” Ray said, picking up the folders. “You know, here’s a thought. If nobody was checking on Lavigne’s acquisitions numbers, the same might be true of Chester’s. He’s got a huge organization, did he get all those shifters through proper channels?”

Felicia shrugged, retreating to silence as they stepped outside the office. If Lavigne had been overrunning his numbers for so long, somebody had been fudging on his behalf somewhere in GAR and that could get ugly. It wasn’t directly related to their investigation, so it’d probably get handed off to some other agent, but it seemed likely to spark another round of internal investigation.

Nobody wanted that.

If they were lucky it would lead back to Chester. If it was a dead end, they’d have to actually tackle those reams of forms the shifters had given them. If they were extremely unlucky, they’d get to deal with another internal investigation and make even more enemies.

The Department of Acquisition wasn’t located in any of the GAR US locations. It was in GAR Paris, where Guilde des Arcanes was still blazoned on the walls in gold leaf. The head of the Department of Acquisition, Constance Earl, had an office with a view of the Eiffel Tower, if from a distance, but when the pair entered she was certainly not enjoying the view.

“I don’t care whose land they crossed, you go in there and get them,” she was saying, half-yelling into the scry-com in French, chronically red face even more choleric than usual. “No, I’m not going to call him! What, are you allergic to work? Do your job.” She cut the scry-com with a sharp gesture and glared at them. “What.”

“We have a few questions related to the late Master Lavigne,” Ray said, as Felicia squared up the reports. “Specifically, it seemed he was exceeding his allowance on hunting without being called on it.”

“Lavigne,” she said. “Yes, Master of Minneapolis.” Somehow she managed to butcher the city name in her heavy Parisian accent. “I heard about his death. A shame. He was a pillar of the community, and his work required a few tokens of appreciation.”

Ray shared a glance with Felicia. It wasn’t like they were unaware of the sort of political horse-trading that went on, but it was never above them in their chain of command. Usually it was the sort of thing that the pair of them investigated, that ultimately wound up in scenes full of blood and bodies.

“We have these reports,” Ray tried, and Felicia held out the folders in question. Constance didn’t move, and after a moment Felicia dropped them on her desk. Then Constance sent a flick of vis through a telekinesis focus to spread out the forms, glancing them over. She didn’t invite them to sit.

“And?” Constance said at length. “What is it you want?

“Well,” Ray said, feeling a touch lost. “We were looking into Alpha Chester and his feud with Lavigne. Since Lavigne had so many overages we thought we’d bring it to you.”

“Yes, and?” Constance’s frown seemed to, if possible, grow more intense. “You have an offer for me?”

“No,” Ray said at last finally realizing what Constance was saying. She was thinking they were there to cut in on whatever deal she’d been running with Lavigne. “We were just hoping to get an insight on what was happening. Find out if something like that was going on with Alpha Chester.”

“That cagey old bastard? No, he wasn’t interested in any deals.” Constance flicked the folders back together with her focus and put them on a cabinet behind her.

“What about the excess mundane deaths?” Felicia wrote on her tablet and held it up.

“They’re not excess unless I say they are,” Constance said, voice suddenly cold. “It’s my department. So long as I keep things so that the mundanes don’t notice and cause trouble, it’s none of your business. Shut the door on your way out.”

Ray knew a dismissal when he heard it, and the head of the Department of Acquisition was far above his pay grade. Since they’d never sat down, he simply nodded and turned about, following Felicia from the room. The back of his neck itched as Constance’s hard eyes followed him out.

“What a bitch,” Felicia wrote and showed to him, making him laugh.

“Yeah,” he said. “Makes our jobs harder, too. Guess it’s back to interviewing shifters.”

“Woof woof,” Felicia wrote, and then wiped her tablet before anyone could see it. Ray shook his head. He was glad that she was in a good mood, because he didn’t like the idea of the next several months of work at all.

Chapter 6 – Christmas

The bones of his bunker house became fleshed out as things marched on toward Christmas. Callum did spend some time walking through the work site, using his perceptions to check that there wasn’t anything untoward going on. He did have to point out a few places where they needed to redo some work, but that was actually fairly common.

Some projects he’d worked on had involved so much peculation and graft that they’d taken twice as much money as budgeted and still delivered a substandard product. Thankfully, the village head who’d taken charge had found a company that wasn’t prone to that — or at least, not when it came to his house. There was a reason that Callum preferred to work with smaller, more local companies.

The only thing that worried him was the toughs that hung around now and again, shifty looking characters with guns. Miguel assured him it was just for security, but Callum wasn’t sure he entirely believed it. The only reason he didn’t push harder is that none of them seemed to take an interest in him, specifically, and the building site probably did need some security. Once it was finished he intended to cover it with a glamour but for the moment it was hardly secret.

Since the house was still under construction, he and Lucy were forced to do all their work in the little trailer house and its back yard. He finished up the telepads for Alpha Chester, and while it was a little disheartening to know that he wouldn’t get actual cash for them, being paid in enchanting material was absolutely worth it. His worry over money was probably a little premature anyway, since with the vast majority of the investment for his bunker finished, there weren’t many ongoing expenses.

At least, at the moment. The days of eating cheap food and living in a hovel were coming to an end pretty quickly, and he well knew how fast things added up when two people lived together. Upon reflection, he was probably going to need to think about income sooner rather than later.

Lucy wanted to try and access her accounts from some random city somewhere, and Callum had very reluctantly talked her out of it. He knew exactly why she wanted it, because she didn’t want to rely on him, become beholden to his whims, but there was no way that money was still there. If it hadn’t been simply frozen, all the accounts would be flagged to throw an alarm and there was no telling how much trouble that would cause. Lucy didn’t like it, but she saw his point.

Which wasn’t to say she resigned herself to relying on him financially. She fully intended to earn her own money, and for that to happen she needed a brand new identity. Something which took a while considering she had to start from scratch. Callum didn’t understand the ins and outs of what she was doing, since he’d just bought his IDs at a shady black market store, but it meant at some point in the future they could actually use bank accounts. Maybe.

The delivery of the telepads was remarkably lacking in drama. Lucy’s idea of using a drone made things far easier, even though the current version was basically just taping a portal anchor to a kid’s toy they’d gotten from the local big box store. Actually designing and constructing a dedicated, drone-integrated portal anchor was going to take more time and experimentation.

Being able to use his insane spatial dragging technique at a distance freed him to use it more liberally, and with less worry of accidentally shooting himself into space. Experimenting with the portal anchor demonstrated something he had worried about, and one reason why he really didn’t like using the technique for long periods of time: angle mattered. If he tilted it forward or backward, swiveled left or right, the trajectory of his motion followed. After all, space was relative, not absolute.

If he just tried to float up an anchor by itself, even with the best of intentions it’d end up tumbling and spinning, which resulted in completely unpredictable movement. The only reason his flying chair didn’t do that was that he wasn’t actually floating. It was more like he was in the basket of a hot air balloon, so it was fairly stable. Not completely, but good enough for the short distances he was going.

That was why the drone was so important. The thing was very stable, and if he ended up lofting it a few thousand feet up into the air, that was fine. The mana was far thinner that high , but most of the mana keeping the portal anchor open came from the cave-cache side anyway. The only potential issue was losing the actual control signal, if he had to close the portal for example, but Lucy set it to hover when it didn’t have connection. Under most circumstances she piloted it through a high-powered emitter placed right next to the portal anchor. He wouldn’t have thought that a signal would go through the metal, but it wasn’t thick and it was nonferrous so apparently it worked.

Alpha Chester’s people nearly shot it out of the sky when it approached the pack compound, but that was fair enough. That would have been his reaction, too. At least he had the presence of mind to approach from outside the property rather than invade the pack’s airspace, else he and Lucy would definitely have lost the drone and probably the portal anchor in the bargain.

What made the handoff short was the simple fact that Alpha Chester wasn’t there. That threw him, for some reason, but it only made sense. Chester was in charge of an awful lot of people, so he couldn’t stay holed up on his compound all the time. Callum just deposited the telepads with the gate guards and recalled the portal-drone.

Lucy was particularly pleased by how well the drone worked, and attacked her own projects with renewed vigor. He had to more or less trust that she was keeping herself sufficiently anonymized as she dipped her toes back into internet security stuff, which was hard. His instincts wanted to object to that, but Lucy couldn’t hole up any more than he could and she knew how to protect her location.

“Finally managed to check in on the Connors,” she said, only a day or so later.

“Oh?” Callum hadn’t exactly forgotten about them, but the couple had been far from his mind under the circumstances. Especially since he had no way to actually get in contact with them, especially without Lucy’s ability to obfuscate phone calls and the like.

“Yeah, they were having issues— not something you need to deal with, big man!” She added after he raised his eyebrows. “Problem is, supernaturals run all the banks where they are and they’re not supposed to be in contact with supernaturals. So, financial troubles.”

“That is the worst kind of problem,” Callum said, finding his jaw clenched on the Connors’ behalf. If he were to have to deal with it, all he could do was lay down an ultimatum to Ferrochar.

“Sure, but it’s the kind of problem I can fix.” Lucy looked very pleased with herself. “You’d be surprised how amenable banks are to the right kind of subterfuge. I’ve got them closed out of their old place and supplied them with new connections. Which also means I’ve got some real people to supply references for my new ID! Plus, Danika’s fun to talk to.”

“Fantastic,” he said, and meant it. He didn’t believe for a minute that the difficulties the Connors were having were an unintended side effect of the deal, because fae were fae. At least, if the stories were even half true, and some of Lucy’s complaints made it sound that way, he should have expected something like that.

“You know, big man, you could probably go see them about your knee.” Lucy poked his cane pointedly, and Callum rubbed the knee in question. It wasn’t terrible, but it still wasn’t anywhere near normal. He was aware that he probably could have asked Gayle to fix it, too, but he really couldn’t afford to trust her that much.

“I don’t know,” he said doubtfully.

“Hey, I know we’re all hush-hush about things, but consider!” Lucy held up a couple of fingers. “They’re already excluded from GAR’s radar, they already know about you, they already owe you, and they have the right set of skills to help fix it up.”

Callum grimaced. He couldn’t actually refute any of those points. That didn’t mean he was quite ready to concede that they should go visiting, but it was true that he basically had nothing to worry about from the Connors. It wasn’t like he could even object to the distance because with the portal-drone it wouldn’t take very long at all to get an anchor to Miami. Or wherever they’d located themselves.

“Maybe,” he conceded.

“Come on, big man,” Lucy said, leaning forward on the table. “You can’t avoid people forever. I know you have so far,” she added, holding up a hand. “I know why you want to keep from dealing with others. But if you want to start taking action you need some connections. If nothing else you’ve got to meet with Alpha Chester if you’re going to keep doing business with him.”

“I know he wants to, but shifters outclass me so much it’s not funny.” He’d seen them move, and he was pretty sure his reflexes weren’t up to the task of even teleporting him in time. “In person, anyway. I’d be helpless.”

“Yeah, me too, but I never worried about it!” Lucy shook her head. “It’s not like I’d fare any better against you either, mister mage.” Callum winced, but nodded slowly. “I’ll vouch for him, big man,” Lucy continued. “Look at it this way. The only way he’d ever consider moving against you would be if you’re a threat to the pack. Now, do you think that’s more likely if he knows you and you go to his barbeques, or if you continue to be a mysterious maverick?”

“You,” he said, pointing at her. “Are making it very hard to argue against your points.”

“It’s part of my charm,” she said, dark eyes twinkling and lips curving into a smug smile. “Plus the pack’s barbeques are amazing.”

“I will give it some serious thought,” he promised.

“Great! I’d love to catch up with Lisa again,” Lucy said happily, which essentially decided it. He’d have to chew over the options and figure out what prep work he could do, but it seemed very likely he’d have to end up ceding at least a little ground in his obscurity.

Lucy’s arguments were valid, but so were his concerns over how any contact with others could bring him to the attention of the authorities. When he was by himself and not trying to do much more than deal with crises as they arrived, keeping to the margins had been his best option. Now that he was moving to more deliberate action, he probably didn’t have any choice but to make a few connections.

Very, very careful ones.

With Christmas coming quickly, he didn’t have all that much time to chew over things. Plus there was plenty of work. Lucy was fortunately taking up a lot of slack with the designs for various enchantments, so he could focus on actually honing his magic. He had the pseudo-ward for blocking portals, practice with making tubes instead of threads so he could make more robust and precise spell forms, and just generally trying to push his perceptions and magical stamina to greater heights.

He did take Lucy out on a few more dates, but it was more about spending time together than trying to move past cuddling. She was still dealing with her own issues, and until she had gotten her feet under her again there wasn’t a possibility of their relationship progressing further. He wasn’t going to build on shaky foundations.

Callum decided to join two ideas by sending the drone back to Alpha Chester’s land while Lucy was busy with other things. Fortunately, that time the shifter was home, so it wasn’t long before the portal focus got shuttled into Chester’s basement. It was obvious by the set of Chester’s shoulders that he was expecting something deeply dramatic, but what Callum had was fairly harmless. At least to Chester.

“I wanted to know about maybe bringing Lucy by at Christmas,” he said through his phone-portal. “She said that she celebrated with you before.” Apparently, Christmas was not really observed in the mage world. Though even if it were, Lucy’s estrangement from her House would have made it a lonely holiday for her. Chester’s face worked for a moment, shifting through expressions before settling on amusement.

“That’s not a question for me,” he said. “That’s a question for my mate.” Chester didn’t do anything noticeable but a few moments later Lisa came down the stairs, taking a seat next to Chester. “Mister Wells wanted to know about attending Christmas with Lucy.”

“Oh!” Lisa smiled, and Callum noticed she had slightly pointed teeth even in human form. “Lucy does have a standing invitation to come, and I see no reason she shouldn’t bring her boyfriend.”

“Ah,” he said, unable to deny the charge. “I don’t know to what extent we can stay, since it would be bad for it to get out that we were there.”

“Let us take care of that,” Lisa replied.

“Very well,” Callum replied, with deep, deep misgivings. He considered springing it on Lucy as a surprise, but ultimately decided against it. It’d be unfair, especially since she’d probably want to get presents for her friends in the pack and with the current income constraints that would take some finesse. Actually, he would need to do so as well, since it would be fairly gauche to show up without something for the host.

Lucy, of course, couldn’t help but tease him.

“You changed your mind pretty quickly, big man. I didn’t even have to tell you about Lisa’s cookies! She makes these gingersnaps for Christmas that are just, wow.” She went dreamy-eyed, staring off into space as she lost herself in memory.

“I did say I’d give it some serious thought,” he protested.

“Well, thank you.” Lucy took a few steps nearer to give him a hug, humming Christmas music under her breath.

***

Ensharrehael was annoyed

Rather, the avatar known as Shahey was annoyed; Ensharrehael himself had rather different brain wiring than the hominids the avatar was modeled from and his emotions didn’t translate so well. Still, annoyed was close enough.

The Fane feud was more than an irritant; it’d been why he’d asked for the Earth side of the dragonlands portal to be moved somewhere less accessible. Though the technological revolution on that part of the planet had been a big draw at the time anyway. He couldn’t use other species’ magic, but their discoveries in materials and devices were absolutely fascinating.

Fascinating enough that he didn’t want to be distracted by the constant clashes between his avatars and the Fane clan. It would take far too many avatars charged with far too much power than was courteous to permanently deal with that sort of problem. Making that kind of move would also risk the humans closing the portal, which would defeat the entire point, so he had to exercise circumspection.

The Shahey avatar that had discorporated with the previous Fane attack had been at the lower end of invested energy, in an attempt to keep from influencing the surroundings overmuch. An interesting experiment, but he had decided that having an avatar capable of proper defense against other supernaturals was more important. There was no point to anything if he lost the town.

A decision that had shown its wisdom as Fane’s minions descended upon Tanner in force. For once, though, they hadn’t shown up for him. The lackeys were all over Tanner, being generally obnoxious and making it very clear they wanted to get in touch with Callum Wells. Or else. Shahey could probably take care of it himself but it would not solve the root issue.

Shahey didn’t sigh, because he was busy spotting for one of his regular customers. Ensharrehael did instead, lungs the size of a small city drawing in air and expelling it. Then the dragon started spinning new avatars into existence. Wells was a difficult man to get ahold of, but it was at least known who his associates were.

Wells was an unexpected result of Shahey’s little town, but he was an interesting one. Considering what he’d already done, he might even be able to solve Ensharrehael’s problem with the Fane clan. It wasn’t interference if all he did was pass along a message someone was trying to send anyway.

So far as other possibilities – well. Not all the avatars were the small, jocular Shahey. Some were designed for combat; large, hulking, sharp of tooth and fang; scales made of layers of polymer, ceramic, and steel. Projectile weaponry was not beyond the dragon’s capabilities, but mages were far weaker to mass and grappling. Besides which, he wanted to keep any combat quiet, not destroy buildings.

Tanner was its town. Best to keep it safe.

***

Callum almost talked himself out of attending three or four times before Christmas actually arrived, but he’d given his word. It helped that they were actually attending Christmas lunch, which was just Chester’s immediate family rather than the entire pack. The shifters might be confident in their ability to keep things a secret, but there was no way dozens of people could be relied on to keep his and Lucy’s presence under wraps.

Lucy was wearing one of her presents, an actual fur coat he’d found at a secondhand store, and once again looked like she belonged more to the 1940s than the modern era. Her preferred fashion sense had actually surprised him a little bit, considering her otherwise modern sensibilities, but he was hardly going to complain. Besides, the contrast of that style with her professional use of CAD and other cutting-edge software was fun.

Once again they flew the drone in to Chester’s compound, and Callum verified there weren’t any hidden observers as someone brought the anchor into Chester’s house. There were, in fact, a few mage bubbles in some outlying buildings, but he’d been warned about those. GAR had extra liaisons and observers and whatever about, since Chester was being investigated, but they weren’t allowed into the core buildings.

That was one of the things that had made him almost call off the meeting. He didn’t, but he was going to be on a hair trigger to evacuate. The mages were close to a half-mile away, though, and Callum would be in a building and behind wards. He’d been closer to mages in many of the cities he’d driven through, so he had to clamp down on his worries and hope that nothing happened while preparing for the alternative. At least once the anchor was in Chester’s actual house the mages were far enough out that they wouldn’t be looming on the periphery of his senses.

“You don’t need to be so jittery,” Lucy said, patting his arm. “If Chester said it’s all safe and secure, it is.”

“I can’t help it,” Callum replied, ready to open a portal linking the interior of the armored van to Chester’s basement. “I know they’re entire buildings away but I could sense the other mages so it was like they were right there. I know you can’t, but it’s hard to be casual about this outing.” Lucy opened her mouth to reply, then closed it, frowning for a moment.

“Tell you what, big man. If you really think there’s a danger of GAR coming down on our heads, we don’t have to.”

“That’s unfair,” he told her, half-amused despite his protests. He knew the chances were low, or close to nonexistent, and he knew that it was better to meet with Alpha Chester sooner rather than later, but if it were up to him he still wouldn’t take the chance. Whether letting Lucy convince him was a good idea or not remained to be seen.

“Let’s go, I guess,” he said, and opened the portal. Alpha Chester and Lisa were on the other side, along with the Langleys; Arthur and his wife, Jessica and her husband Jerry, and Clara’s family. The bodybuilder type guards were, for once, not around.

While Callum had gotten the measure of Alpha Chester with his spatial sense, it wasn’t the same as seeing him in person. While he wasn’t as hugely looming as the linebackers he kept around, Chester was still a big man, north of six feet with the kind of muscle that came from heavy labor. He looked like a Viking or, considering the season, a young, fit Santa Claus: all blonde beard and white-toothed smiles. Chester extended his hand as soon as they stepped through the portal.

“Welcome, Mister Wells,” he said. Callum took the hand and was glad to find Chester was not a crusher. With shifter strength, that could have been a problem. “It’s good to finally see you in the flesh. And to see you again as well, Lucy.”

“It’s only thanks to the big man,” Lucy said. “Otherwise I’d still be stuck in that BSE black hole.”

“Yes, indeed,” Chester replied, letting go of Callum’s hand. “Many of us here have at least something to thank Mister Wells for,” he continued, and Callum knew it was only in his head that such a phrase sounded sinister.

“Hello again,” Clara said, smiling. “We’ve been hearing all about you.” Her eyes flicked to the cane he was leaning on, with a trace of confusion, but she didn’t say anything about it as she offered her hand in turn.

“Only good things, I hope,” Callum said, somewhat bemused. It was the first time in years that he’d been in a crowd of people he knew instead of passing strangers. His long-disused social skills were fairly rusty, but they slowly kicked in again as the group headed upstairs for lunch.

It helped that there were no mages and only a scant handful of shifters within his perception sphere aside from the people in the room. Considering who he was, actually getting that level of privacy was probably quite the concession. One that Callum appreciated.

To Callum’s surprise, there wasn’t any talk of business. It was quite relaxed, with people sharing little anecdotes from their lives and some arguments over sports teams and television shows. Clara asked about his knee, and Lucy talked him into retelling his escape from the GAR squad after he’d left the Nightlands, though it was still somewhat sanitized. The Langleys didn’t need to know all the details about his perception and his gravitykinesis.

He had to admit, extremely reluctantly, that it was nice. Lucy was clearly enjoying herself, treating Lisa like an adoptive mother and teasing Alpha Chester with terrible puns. Frankly Callum thought that Lucy had understated how well she fit in with the shifter pack, but there were probably lines Callum wasn’t seeing. A single lunch wasn’t nearly enough time to dig into those subtleties.

There wasn’t enough room in the kitchen for everyone to help with the washing up, and Callum found himself relegated to the living room with Chester and Arthur. To Callum’s surprise, Arthur offered him a cigar, which he turned down politely, and Chester poured whiskey for them.

“I do have some news for you,” Chester said, as they nursed their respective drinks.

“Oh?” Callum asked, suddenly wary again.

“A dragonblooded came by looking to pass a message to you. Said his name was Shahey.” Chester raised shaggy eyebrows at Callum.

“Well, I do know Shahey,” Callum admitted, somewhat thrown. He certainly hadn’t forgotten the conversation he’d had with the dragonblooded, but he hadn’t expected to hear from Shahey anytime soon. “What was the message?”

“That you should stop by Tanner soon. Some mages want to get your attention there and he thought you might take exception to that.”

“Yes, I do take exception to that.” Callum frowned. He figured that Shahey would take care of anyone encroaching on Tanner, so either it was more than Shahey could handle or there was some further aspect to it. After seeing what the real Shahey could do in the dragonlands he wasn’t convinced of the former. “Thank you for telling me.”

“I don’t need to tell you to be careful,” Chester said. “But for what it’s worth all my dealings with the dragonblooded have been straightforward. Unlike the fae, they actually mean what they say. If one of them is upset with you, they will let you know.”

“That does help,” Callum said, though that had been his appraisal of Shahey anyway. “Thank you for telling me.” He was particularly happy that Chester hadn’t sprung Shahey on him or anything likewise dramatic. It was stressful enough just dealing with a normal, happy, domestic family.

“I hate to run you off, but we’ve got people coming over to start preparing for dinner,” Chester said.

“That’s fine. I think I’m about tapped out on social interactions for the day anyway,” Callum said. “It was nice, though. It’s been a while since I’ve done anything for the holidays.”

It took a little longer to collect Lucy, who emerged with a container of gingersnaps, and he opened a portal back to the van. Having a second set of anchors made it much easier to keep things indirect, though he very much doubted anyone from Chester’s side would be able to follow the portals. It was just habit. They took the telepad back to the house and Lucy flopped right down on the couch.

“Oof. That was fun, but still took it out of me.” She narrowed her eyes at him. “What’d Chester tell you? I know that look.”

“So you’re interested in my looks, huh?” Callum asked, and Lucy replied by sticking out her tongue. “Mister Shahey wants to talk to me,” he continued, though he did wonder exactly what look Lucy meant. “Apparently something is happening in my old hometown.”

“Can’t we catch a break?” Lucy complained, sitting back up. “They can’t let things rest for even a month, can they?”

“No,” Callum said. “Like I said, they’ll never leave us alone. If anything I’m surprised it took this long to try and get at me that way.”

“Yeah but I don’t think GAR would mess with a dragonblooded’s stuff? Pretty sure the official policy is basically just don’t.”

“The problem is we’re way past ordinary times,” Callum said. “Normal policy doesn’t really apply, and if it’s not GAR that’s even worse.”

“So what are you gonna do about it?” Lucy asked, shedding her coat and folding it carefully. “I know I said you should probably meet people but I didn’t mean that kind of thing.”

“Yeah, we’ll need to fly the drone anchor there,” he said with a shrug. “As to what I do about it, I have to see what’s going on first. It didn’t seem an emergency, since Shahey just left a message.” He wasn’t quite as sanguine about it as he sounded, but it was Christmas. Certainly he deserved at least that much rest.

The next day he and Lucy flew the drone to Tanner. It’d been a long time since he’d seen the Appalachians with his eyes, and the sight made him homesick. They weren’t as gorgeous in the winter as any other time of year, but he still missed having a horizon that wasn’t flat.

With his magical perception he could tell that Tanner wasn’t just any town. There was more background mana, though instead of a portal source like GAR used it seemed to be more like an eddy in the slow background flow. A natural confluence, perhaps, or maybe dragon techniques were subtle. Like with other areas of supernatural activity, that mana was churned up, which in addition to the higher background would explain why those who could sense mana would feel more at home there.

He had the drone go straight to Shahey’s gym, but even on the way there he noticed a few mage bubbles around. While Callum could believe that there were one or two mages in town, he was pretty sure the mages he sensed were part of the trouble Shahey had mentioned. However, nothing was on fire and there wasn’t anything notable in the local news, so he let it pass for the moment.

Lucy dropped the drone down on the roof the gym, where Callum could easily sense Shahey inside. The reverse didn’t seem to be true, since Shahey didn’t react in any way, even when he moseyed back to the counter. Once there was some modicum of privacy, Callum opened a speaking-portal.

“You wanted to talk to me?”

Shahey might not have noticed the drone, but he also didn’t flinch at Callum’s voice sounding out from behind him. The dragonblooded glanced directly at the portal and nodded. Some vis stretched out around him, nothing that looked like either fae or mage spells, but he already knew that dragonblooded magic was different.

“Yes,” Shahey said. “I see you’ve picked up a few tricks since we last spoke.”

“I have,” Callum admitted. “It makes stuff like this easier.”

“I can imagine,” Shahey replied. “I shall get right to the point, then. Archmage Fane wants to talk to you. Unfortunately, he decided to get this point across by coming in with men and money. We’ve got thugs wandering the town, the businesses are being pressured, nobody feels safe.” He sounded annoyed, but not actually angry.

“I’m assuming there’s a reason you didn’t take care of it?” Callum tried to keep the accusation out of his tone. He didn’t like being jerked around by people who figured out what buttons they needed to press.

“I could take care of the men, but the money and political pressures are more difficult.” Shahey sighed. “I have been at odds with Fane for over a hundred years, so there is some degree of personal animus here. But I think it would be for the best if you addressed the root cause.”

“You want me to kill Fane.” Callum wasn’t much impressed by Shahey’s suggestion. Admittedly, the idea had already sprung to mind but he wanted to be more measured in his actions. Violence was an easy first resort, and while it did solve some problems it was a slippery road. If he always jumped to it right off it would just cause more problems, and as he’d told Lucy, it was important to locate the principal actors. The ones with whom responsibility truly lay.

“I wouldn’t object to it,” Shahey said. “Though I’m not sure I would advise it, either. If Fane’s vis even touches yours, he can kill you. That’s what it means to be a healing Archmage. I know that from experience.”

“That is terrifying,” Callum said with a shudder. With that kind of ability, he couldn’t even use his portals from a distance.

“More, Archmage Fane is one of the most powerful Archmages. It is certainly not appropriate for me to try and remove him. So I merely give you advice. It is only by dealing with him that you can truly resolve this situation.”

Callum nodded at Shahey’s words, even though the only person who could see him was Lucy. It wasn’t bad advice, and probably would have been more potent a few months or even weeks ago. Even as it was, confirmation of his own thoughts was a good thing.

“Do they have someone they want me to talk to?” Not that Callum was inclined to listen to anything those people had to say, but he needed more information.

“They do, actually,” Shahey said. “One of Fane’s nephews, I think, name of Sen.”

“You’re kidding. The guy who was supposed to be my minder?”

“The very one.”

Callum didn’t ask how Shahey knew who Sen was, because at this point he wasn’t surprised by what Shahey knew. Sen popping up again was probably less ridiculous than it sounded: he was one of the few people from GAR who’d met Callum and could vouch for Callum’s identity. That Archmage Fane could acquire him for what was apparently an off-the-books operation just demonstrated what Shahey had already said. Fane was a big player.

“Where is he staying?” Callum had to wait for an answer to that because someone came up to the counter, and Shahey’s magical field shifted slightly to allow him to talk to the customer. As he’d expected, Shahey had some sort of glamour or privacy field. Likely he was just preventing sound from propagating where it shouldn’t.

“They muscled through a purchase on the old Murcheson place,” Shahey told him once the customer was gone.

“Thanks. Since it’s your town, you want to go with? Or anything I should keep in mind?” Shahey’s face crinkled into a smile at the question.

“It’s your town too,” he said. “You lived here for how many years? I’m sure you’ll use your best judgement on what to do.”

“Right,” he said.

“And come by to visit when you’re done! People here still worry about you.”

“I’ll see what I can do,” Callum said, but didn’t promise anything. “I’ll let you know how it goes.”

“Good luck,” Shahey said, and Callum closed the portal.

Chapter 7 – Fane

“Fane’s bad news, big man,” Lucy said.

They were sitting at the table, discussing things after Callum’s talk with Shahey. Lucy hadn’t made any comment while Callum was getting news from the dragonblooded, but she’d still been listening closely and heard it all. “A right bastard, in fact. I’ve heard rumors of some real bloody stuff out of the Fane household. Like, even Gayle was complaining about Fane’s people acting like complete jerks, and she’s a Hargrave!”

“Have to say I’m not really impressed by any of the mages I’ve run into,” Callum said dryly, then shook his head. “Well, that’s not entirely true. Some of them have seemed like fine people, but GAR actively enables abuse. Anyway,” he shrugged, not wanting to delve into the topic. “Guess we might as well see what Fane wants.”

“Sure that’s a good idea?” Lucy looked uncertain, and Callum chuckled. It was odd for her to be more cautious than him.

“Well, dealing with Fane directly is obviously a terrible idea. But I might be able to stall his subordinates or get some idea of what we’re up against. I operate in the dark so much it’d be nice to actually know what’s going on for a change. Problem is, how do I deal with him if he can kill me just by vis contact?”

“Hmm.” Lucy tapped her forefinger against her lips thoughtfully. “You know, we’re already transmitting through the drone. Could strap a speaker and mic to it, or just dump some A/V equipment through with a teleport, and control it from here.”

“How long would it take to set that up?” Callum asked, glad that Lucy had the expertise to just do that sort of thing. He could probably have thought of it and maybe even done it himself, but it would have been a serious chore. “No way we’re dealing with Fane’s people without that.”

“Not long. Pretty sure I know some comms stuff that’ll work out of the box.”

“Great.”

Researching and then going out to buy something appropriate didn’t take more than forty minutes, most of it travel time. The solution they settled on was basically just a high-powered walkie-talkie system, though once they had time Lucy wanted to build something more appropriate from scratch. For the moment, cheap and simple worked well enough.

“Alright, big man. Where’s that house?”

Callum hardly needed a map to find the way to the old pseudo-mansion off the town square. He knew Tanner like the back of his hand. He hadn’t ever navigated it with his perceptions, but it didn’t take much adjustment. It wasn’t very far, only a couple minutes of drone piloting to get within range.

There was a ward up around the building, though it was one of the less complex types like he’d seen with the vampires. He could pretty much breeze through that sort with no effort, counting six mages and fourteen normal folk inside the big house. It didn’t take a master of analysis to see that the normal types were servants to the mages, but that was the kind of thing he almost expected at this point. Since he couldn’t pick out Sen from bubbles alone, Callum simply teleported a walkie into the front room, with the volume cranked up.

“Well, Sen, you wanted to talk to me,” Callum said into the handset.

The startlement inside the house was gratifying. He was a little surprised they hadn’t sensed the teleport, but all the mages were in different rooms and he knew his magic was generally subtle. Active vis senses raked through the house, and bubbles flew through doors and even windows as the mages converged on the front room. He wished he could see their expressions.

“Callum Wells.” A voice came over the walkie, and while Callum couldn’t swear it was Sen’s, it probably was. “Show yourself.”

“I don’t think so,” Callum said, while Lucy shook her head at the sheer stupidity of the demand. “If you want to talk, we can do so this way. If you’d rather not talk, I wonder what the hell you’re doing in Tanner.”

“Very well,” Sen said after a moment, and two of the mage bubbles left, flying into the air and starting to circle out from the house. Looking for Callum. Apparently they didn’t even notice the drone sitting by the chimney of the house across the street. They swept with their vis senses but probably were not looking for the tiny signature of the portal anchor hiding behind a bunch of metal and plastic.

“Patriarch Fane graciously extends you the chance to join House Fane,” Sen said, almost sneering. “He has been favorably impressed by your expertise and is willing to offer you the shelter and protection of the most powerful House of all.”

“How generous,” Callum said dryly. “For what reason would I accept that offer?”

“You think you can hide from GAR and the BSE forever? You may have had some successes, but I nearly had you in France,” Sen said, voice waspish over the walkie. “It’s only a matter of time before someone catches up with you.”

“You were the one who attacked me in the café?” Callum asked, flexing his fingers as his body thrummed from a sudden burst of adrenaline.

“Like I said, I almost had you. Good as I am, I’m not an archmage or even a BSE agent,” Sen said. “The moment one of them finds you, you’re done. Unless you have someone like Archmage Fane protecting you.”

Callum was glad that the walkie was push to talk, because otherwise Sen would have heard the several choice words Callum had to say after the admission. The man clearly hadn’t been held to account for killing people, and he needed to be. Eventually. As much as Callum wanted to do something right then, that would sacrifice any opportunity to deal with the actual source of the issue.

Shahey’s advice about focusing on the source of the problem was more immediate than Callum had thought.

“That’s mostly threats,” he said instead, as Lucy shook her head. Whether at him or at Sen, Callum wasn’t sure. “Is there any carrot to go with the stick?”

“It’s House Fane,” Sen said, disbelief evident in his voice. “There is nothing you could possibly want that they cannot provide.” Callum bit back a choice reply. The more he thought about it, the more horrifying that statement was. There were all kinds of appetites that should never be indulged.

“So what happens if I decline?” Callum asked, doing his best to sound firm and in control. “Are you going to leave Tanner?”

“Why would we do that?” Sen asked, genuinely puzzled. “After everything we spent to establish a foothold here?”

“This guy is some kind of moron,” Callum said, making sure that the walkie wasn’t in transmit mode. “He actually thinks that I’d be fine with that? That I want to work for them?”

“I mean, House Fane is kind of big and powerful,” Lucy said. “Probably a lot of people would be glad to work with them, but nobody that I’d get along with.”

“Gotta give him an answer of some sort. A stall.” Callum considered, running through a few half-baked ideas, then pressed the talk button. “I need some time to think about it. And I want to meet with Archmage Fane directly.”

“What makes you think he’ll meet with you?” Sen scoffed.

“He went to this much trouble. GAR knows who I am and what I can do. Surely he can take the time to take the teleport network here.”

“I suppose I can inform him you wish an audience.”

“Not at House Fane,” Callum warned. “If not here, some neutral place. I’ll return in a week to hear your answer.” He would have liked to punctuate his ultimatum with retrieving the walkie, but mage bubbles prevented that. Instead, all he could do was ignore Sen’s protests about propriety. So long as Sen didn’t reject things outright – and Callum was certain he didn’t have the authority – it was good enough.

“A week, huh?” Lucy raised her eyebrows at him.

“It’ll give us some time to plan. And find out more about Fane.” Callum leaned back in his chair. “There’s no way I’m prepared to do anything right now. If Sen’s the one who blew up the café in France then I can’t let that go, but I’ve got to worry about what would happen with Tanner if I did that.”

“Shahey can probably take care of it,” Lucy pointed out. “Still kinda weird that you’ve got a dragonblooded consulting you.”

“It is,” Callum agreed. “But I can understand why, in this case. It’s aimed at me, and Shahey sees an opportunity to get past his limitations. I bet you that he could deal with Fane if he really wanted to, but from what he told me, that level of involvement would violate their own rules.”

“Yeah?” Lucy’s eyes lit up. “You never did tell me about the conversation you had with him.”

“Sure, I’ll fill you in later,” Callum said, keeping his senses on the mages in the house. “Once we finish up here. Then we’ve got to figure out what we can do in a week.”

“You could have asked for two weeks, at least,” Lucy said with a faux pout. “But yeah, a week isn’t that much time. We’ll have to burn the midnight oil on this one.”

“I suppose I should tell Chester, too,” Callum said unhappily. “Moving against Fane – if and how we do so – is not a minor thing. I did promise to keep him informed.”

“I don’t think he’d object much, big man.” Lucy considered. “Actually, he might. Things have got to be strained as is, if you make some major moves on House Fane that could cause some real inter-House violence to happen.”

Callum winced. That was beyond what he really wanted to be responsible for, but at the same time he could hardly avoid it. If he started holding the people who were genuinely responsible for the atrocities of GAR to account, it would shake things up. No matter who they were.

All that sort of calculation made it tedious and uncomfortable to keep people informed of what he was doing. For all the vulnerabilities of being off as a lone agent, one of the benefits was that he could just do as he liked. He still could, in fact. Neither Shahey nor Chester had the authority or capacity to stop him.

Still, it would be an annoyance if they had arguments about what he should or shouldn’t do. Callum mistrusted that kind of thing, even if they couldn’t technically stop him. It was far too easy to reason for or against any course of action, and he was pretty sure both of them could speak circles around him if they tried. He’d have to be careful to try and spot the line between giving him advice and trying to control his actions.

“Once they cool down we can move the drone, but for now we might as well figure out what we’re going to be doing this next week. That’s not much time to figure out a way to deal with the worst case scenario.”

“You mean Fane himself showing up?”

“Bingo.” Callum rubbed at his forehead. “If he’s as dangerous as Shahey says, then I can’t really do anything near him. I’m not going to let Tanner become some statistic for a mysterious gas leak on the evening news or whatever, but it’s hardly going to help if he just looks in my direction and I fall over dead.”

“So you’re going to try and kill him? Just like that?” Lucy looked uneasy.

“No, not just like that. We’ve got a week. I want you to find out everything you can — follow up those rumors. I very much doubt that he’s going to leave Tanner be anyway, but we need to know whether or not he should be killed. Then we need to figure out how to deal with everything. If we can deal with Fane himself, we can manage anything short of that.”

“Is this how you do it every time, big man?” Lucy asked, staring at him with a slight widening of her eyes.

“Not exactly, but it’s the same idea. Try to figure out and prepare for every possibility. Or at the very least for the worst case scenario.” Actually he hadn’t had nearly as much time as he would have liked for anything that he’d done so far, but he’d at least prepared somewhat.

“Right, well then. I’ll see what I can dig up — you know I don’t have my old connections anymore, big man. There might be a few back doors but if they’re smart they’ll have trapped ‘em.”

“It might be worth considering what you could do if you had physical access,” Callum suggested. “We could try sneaking a portal anchor or even a drone onto the premises. If there’s people coming and going all the time there’s only so much they can do for security.”

“Those are some big brass balls, big man. I like it. Yeah, we can see about that. What else?”

“Well, offhand, how the hell would you kill an Archmage?”

“Uh. I sure don’t know,” Lucy replied. “You just want to know what they’ve got going for them in general? So they’ve got their shields, for one. They’ve all got homebonds, I’m pretty sure. Enchanted clothing. Focuses of all kinds, probably super fancy stuff. You’d have to get past all that.”

“So a single, overwhelming strike, one that can overcome their magical defenses, and doesn’t give them time to recall.” Callum smiled wryly. “And doesn’t level Tanner in the bargain.”

“Right.” Lucy tapped her laptop thoughtfully. “Sounds like we need to have a big brainstorming session. I’m not sure I have a good feel for how you do this stuff yet, big man. I dunno how much use I’m going to be.”

“Hey, you thought up those tiles,” Callum pointed out. They were still waiting for them to be finished, but the glass cutter had sent some initial photos and they looked pretty good. “Not to mention the drones and walkie-talkies. I’m sure once we get into it you’ll be fine.” If nothing else, having someone to simply bounce ideas off of would be a help. He knew that working solo he’d missed obvious things more than once.

They started hashing out ideas while Callum kept an eye on the mages in Tanner. They had missed the drone arriving, because they weren’t looking for it, but they’d be hypervigilant while they thought he was still around. Anyone who paid attention wouldn’t miss a drone flying around. He could just recall it through the anchor, but that would give things away.

Lucy had reminded him, during one of their talks, that just because one person in GAR knew something it didn’t mean everyone in GAR would know. Bureaucracies were generally terrible about distributing important information. One full of politics like GAR might be even worse. It was clear that everyone important knew that Callum had gone in and wrecked a BSE outpost in the Deep Wilds, but it wasn’t likely every grunt had it in the forefront of their minds. So even if he’d revealed the portal anchor trick once, it was still a good idea to keep it concealed.

He actually had to turn off the portal after a while, since people were still stirred up and the mana flow through the anchor would start to get noticeable. It wasn’t until the next day that he reconnected and had Lucy fly it back to Shahey’s gym.

“I have doubts Fane would come himself,” the dragonblooded said once Callum had filled him in. “But it’s good to know. I’ll see about organizing some sort of impromptu town fair or the like to keep everyone away from the area.”

“Considering what Sen did last time, that’s a good idea.” Even if Callum didn’t want to level Tanner, he doubted the Fane people had any such compunctions. While he still didn’t really like working with people, it was nice to leave those sorts of logistics to someone else. He had enough on his plate trying to figure out how to deal with walking death in the form of the healer Archmage.

“Good luck,” Shahey said, with a toothy smile on his reptilian face.

“Thanks,” said Callum, and recalled the drone.

“We should get more drones. How many more of those anchors can you make?” Lucy asked, going to the charger to replace the batteries. “We could use like a million of them.”

“I think two more pairs,” Callum replied. “It’d be more if we could do anything with silverite.”

“Yeah, I’ll try to figure out where we can look for that. Probably can figure it out if we snoop on the Guild of Enchanting.”

“I would really like to get ahold of their archives, yeah.” He really wanted the basis of the theory on transcribing spell forms to enchantments. The bit he had was like the times table when what he really needed was statics and differential calculus. A focus version of the gravity field or the like would be really nice, but far too complex for his current knowledge.

It didn’t take very long to get the drone back to Chester’s compound, but it was still tedious. Callum was well aware that his perspective on travel time and ease was being completely warped by the portal anchors, since going several hundred miles in half an hour or so was incredible. Yet he still couldn’t help wanting to have a dedicated portal anchor by the shifters.

There was a bit of a wait, but when Chester was ensconced in the warded basement with the drone, he opened a phone-portal to bring the shifter up to speed. Between them, he and Lucy filled him on Fane’s involvement and what they were intending to do about it. Chester reclined his chair in war-form, ears flicking as he listened.

“I’ve never had to deal with Fane myself,” Chester said. “I know he’s the reason there basically aren’t any shifters – or fae, for that matter – in China, but he’s kept his interests more in line with increasing his own House’s power. The only influence he has in the US is places where his family’s bought up land or businesses.”

“Didn’t I send you a document on him at some point?” Lucy asked. “Real early on. I don’t really remember what was in it but I remember scraping his name some years back.”

“Maybe,” Chester said. “I forgot you don’t have access to any of that anymore. We’ll see if we can find it.” He waggled a finger and one of the people in the basement room went off to check. “I don’t have anything else to really offer on Fane though. Except maybe wish you luck.”

“We’re going to need it,” Callum said. “Still not sure whether we’ll have to actually kill him, but I hate being on the defense. It’s just a losing proposition.”

“Most people would say it’s the other way around,” Chester said dryly. “But I suppose I understand your position. I don’t think we have any investment in this one way or the other but I appreciate being kept in the loop. GAR has to know about Tanner, but I doubt Fane is filing any paperwork about it.”

With his obligations taken care of, Callum was happy to just bury himself in trying to come up with ideas on how to deal with Fane. Lucy was a fantastic help, in part because she knew more than she realized. From the fact that Archmages had a small backchannel teleport network to how Archmages didn’t actually bother with guards because it showed their strength, just bouncing the stupidest concepts off her helped fill out a sketch of what he was working with.

Then there was the tech stuff. Callum could use a walkie-talkie or a laptop easily enough, but quickly and easily setting up transceivers, networking together wifi cameras, or setting up a nigh-untraceable phone call was all Lucy’s work. Things he needed if he was going to even contemplate talking to Fane; there was no way he was bringing his magic anywhere near the Archmage.

He doubted Fane actually wanted to kill him; the job offer was probably genuine. The things Callum could do held obvious attractions for anyone who wanted a stealthy agent. The thing was, he doubted that he’d be given a choice, not when Fane had gone to the trouble of effectively holding his hometown hostage.

Callum needed to make sure he had his own options.

***

“The sheer arrogance of the man is astounding.” Archmage Fane found Fane Chen’s droning to be tedious and obvious. Truly, Chen had a talent for banality. It made him a capable administrator for House Fane, but having to endure the man’s endless repetition and reedy monotone voice always made the Archmage reconsider.

“The effrontery! We don’t need anyone with that kind of attitude!” The bluster continued until the Archmage raised a finger. Suitably chastened, Chen sat back silently.

“As unacceptable as his behavior is, that sort of caution is completely in line with what he’s already done. He wouldn’t be the kind of man we do want working for us if he was pliant.” It was one of the most irritating conundrums, one as yet unsolvable. Though not for lack of trying. The very best tools were the ones most difficult to wield.

“What do you intend to do, Patriarch?” Someone asked at last. One of the rotating toadies that some of his sons used to keep an eye on him. As if their pretentions of someday inheriting House Fane would ever go anywhere. None of them had anywhere near enough talent to be an Archmage.

“Apply more carrot and stick both,” Fane said. That was part of why he had included Sen in the team. Mostly to see what Wells would do when confronted with someone who had attacked him, since Fane wasn’t very impressed with his grand-nephew’s incompetence. A reasonably passable mage, but lacking in any sort of social acumen. Not so great a loss, if Wells decided to eliminate him.

He had been expecting some sort of reaction, but Wells had disappointed him in that regard. Or perhaps not disappointed. Wells had demonstrated more self-control than Fane had anticipated, after having been lured quite predictably to Tanner. That made it difficult to gauge what pressure would push him which way.

“Yes, Patriarch,” Chen said, sensibly scribing down Fane’s words as holy writ.

“First, I will agree to meet him personally,” Fane said, to some surprised looks. They obviously didn’t realize how valuable an asset Wells could be. “We can grant him some face. His desire to not meet at House Fane itself is understandable caution, but I very much doubt he realizes how great the influence of our House is. Ning, arrange the matter at the resort in Beijing.”

“Yes, Patriarch,” the toady said, bowing.

“Huang, security. We know Wells is a slippery customer and I do not want House Fane property damaged or destroyed. More, we need to show that House Fane is not vulnerable. I will have the reports from Garrison Two made available to you.”

“Your will, Patriarch.” Huang was fairly competent. Fane was a benevolent master and didn’t expect Huang to completely Wells-proof the resort, but demonstrating they were capable of countering and controlling him would send the message Fane wanted.

“We will also send the message that we are not to be dictated to. The hand gives, and the hand takes away.” Fane waved a hand dismissively. “Take Journeyman Cho to Tanner. Cure all those that ail, and wither all crops on the ground. Let him contemplate how easy it would be to do the reverse.”

“As you will it, Patriarch.” Master Yen bowed as well. He was the one in charge of managing Fane’s healers. Most of those with the healing aspect were his now, whether born into the House or acquired through other means. Some lesser healing mages had escaped his grasp, but that was for the best. Even the dimmest and dumbest would realize that a complete monopoly on healers by a single House was dangerous.

Duvall’s monopoly on spatial mages only endured because there were so few. Something which might not be the case much longer. In fact, Wells had arguably broken that monopoly by his very presence, and no matter how that turned out whoever found the next one would contest Duvall’s claim.

“Wells is the thorn in the side of GAR,” Fane said, addressing his underlings. “A demonstration of how effective one determined individual can be. When we bring Wells under the aegis of House Fane, not only will that disruption be gone but we will be the architects of the new status quo. Whether or not Wells is actually effective hardly matters. Only what it appears.”

There were nods all around. They all knew that Wells wasn’t really that dangerous. Oh, he’d done well enough against chaff, vampires and fae and the dregs of mages, but he’d also done absolutely nothing against those in Garrison Two. A proper shield was enough to render him impotent. No, the real threat was to the authority and legitimacy of GAR, and all it would take to undo all the fractures Wells had caused was to assert authority and legitimacy. It was everything House Fane could ask for.

With the matter of Wells taken care of, Fane dismissed most of the council. Only Chen remained. The nature of Fane’s experiments were well known, but the outcomes were not. A secret only had value if it could be wielded at the right time.

“What is the status of the shipment from Constance?” Fane asked.

“It is late. She claims the current shakeup has impacted her ability to provide subjects, but will be sending several duds and fae in addition to the usual mundanes.”

“Very well.” The fae were, in fact, quite a boon. He had not made progress on splicing fae magic into a mundane or a dud, let alone a mage, but he had so few subjects to work from. He was convinced there was some way to do it, since the ability seemed to be biological in origin, but hadn’t even reproduced the experiments that had removed magical ability.

Fane suspected that there was something in the blood of the things that might euphemistically be called Oberon and Titania. It wasn’t just the twisting of the portal world, though humans had been inside Faerie longer than anywhere else. By what few accounts he could find, prior to the arrival of the beings who had taken on Shakespeare’s monikers there was little to no fae magic at all. Just distortions of form.

“I shall be in my lab,” Fane decided. He was the only one who had the authority to open it, so it was a place few people went without direct instruction. “Only interrupt me if there is news of dire import.” Chen bowed low in acknowledgement, and Fane strode from the office. He had work to do.

***

It clearly wasn’t Wells’ work. Ray and Felicia both had been entirely too happy to be pulled from their useless accumulation of irrelevant infringements on the part of Chester’s shifters. The push had started out seriously enough, but they’d both concluded it was useless. Time had made it clear that Alpha Chester was not going to be intimidated by such bureaucratic pressure.

The news of another potential Ghost attack had been a welcome break. Except that just visiting the scene they could tell it was just a clumsy copycat. There was too much collateral damage, too much evidence of physical might. Some of the furniture was smashed, some of the dishes broken.

They’d been called to the crime scene for two reasons: there was no sign of forced entry and there were small steel ball bearings found at the crime scene. In a sense it rather did seem like one of Wells’ hits, since the kills had been from cold iron bullets. But everything else made it clear someone had physically been there, so not Wells at all. Which meant Felicia’s power would actually be useful.

“It’s a copycat,” he told the GAR man who had called it in.

“But,” the man – a mage, though a sorry specimen of one – protested. “The ball bearings. That’s what he does!”

Ray considered pointing out the rest of the issues, but decided it wasn’t worth the trouble. The dull-eyed fellow wouldn’t have the wit to understand. It was hard to believe such a person even survived their service in the portal worlds, but the most incompetent of mages had to wind up somewhere.

“We’ll take it from here,” he assured the man instead, and looked over to Felicia.

“Morgue?” She wrote on her tablet, and Ray nodded. Since it wasn’t Wells, they’d probably find out who it was soon enough. Considering that the attack had been in the middle of Chicago, the morgue wasn’t very far, not like the last few scenes where the bodies had been out in the middle of nowhere. Or missing entirely.

The fae victims were not quite nobles, but somewhere in the upper rung of the complicated fae hierarchy. Two were far larger than human, with bulky, stony bodies, while the third was smaller and looked almost human but for extra joints and claws. They were as much a mess as anyone would expect, considering they were shot in the head.

Felicia touched the cold arm of the small fae briefly, her glamour flickering as she exercised her own unique power. After a moment she snorted and got her tablet, giving him an expressive eyeroll before she started sketching. It didn’t take long before she had a clear picture of a quartet of vampires.

“Figures,” Ray said. Places like Chicago were more vampire than fae territory anyway, and scuffles were not uncommon. Outright murders were less so, but not unheard of. Trying to blame it on Wells was a new wrinkle, but by now everyone had heard of the Ghost. Felicia started fiddling with her tablet to attach the sketch to their report while Ray called their new supervisor.

The investigation into GAR had shaken up a lot of posts, and when they’d returned to normal duty there was a new mage in charge of the Department of Arcane Investigation. Not one Ray had even heard of before; someone transferred in from somewhere in BSE. It wasn’t ideal but considering their old boss had been embezzling a bit on the side it was understandable.

“Supervisor Lane,” the voice came.

“It’s Danforth. That fifth avenue site wasn’t Wells. Felicia’s sending over the rendition but it was just a vampire attack.” Felicia gave him a nod as he talked. “Not anything to do with Wells. We can probably wrap it up in a few hours, just need to⁠—”

“No, return to your previous duties.” Lane’s voice was curt. “It’s a local matter.”

“With respect, sir, we don’t know that yet. The identities haven’t been confirmed⁠—”

“I said it’s a local matter.” Lane’s already curt voice turned waspish. “Go back to pestering Chester.” He hung up. Ray sighed and looked at Felicia.

“I guess that answers whether we’re being punished or not.” She made a face in reply and tapped the drawing of the vampires again. “Yeah,” he agreed. “We could, but I’m pretty sure they’d bench us entirely if we started poking around on our own.”

Felicia just sighed and submitted the report. It sat ill with her not to finish such a simple investigation, and he had to agree. He didn’t have the same sort of driving requirement as a fae did, it was more the principal of the thing for him, but those two aligned well enough most of the time.

“We have to do something, though,” Felicia said, when they were back out in the car. “We can’t just keep cooling our heels because they don’t like how the Wells case went.”

“I don’t think either of us want to try freelance,” Ray said dryly. “But you’re right. There’s no telling how long this is going to drag on and I already don’t like some aspects of it.”

Felicia sighed agreement. They’d run into politics before, now and again, but most of their cases were straightforward. Or had been until now.

“We’re going to have to figure out a way to wait this out,” Ray said. Supernaturals had long memories, so whatever grudges people had against them weren’t likely to go away any time soon. Their best bet was to go somewhere obscure or protected enough that it wasn’t worthwhile for people to spend political capital on them.

“So long as we don’t go back to Faerie,” Felicia said firmly.

“Don’t worry,” Ray replied. “We’ll never be that desperate.”

Chapter 8 – Infiltration

“Finally.” Grand Magus Lorenzo Rossi opened the crate containing the black-market telepads with a flick of his telekinesis focus. It had taken a little bit of prodding to get them from Duvall, despite the fact that the Guild of Enchanting was on nominally good terms with the House. Considering the circumstances it was understandable, but not ideal. They had more stake in a rogue mage selling black-market enchantments than Duvall did, after all.

GAR should have sent it to him, rather than letting Duvall seize it, but after accounting for their various finesse tools the Guild of Enchanting had been more or less disconnected from the whole Wells imbroglio. They weren’t being attacked or having their supplies stolen, though they’d doubled the protections on their stockpiles soon after the news arrived.

Rossi floated the four teleportation plates out onto the large table for him and his subordinates to examine. The things would have to be destroyed eventually, since they weren’t Guild make and there was no telling how dangerous they were, but it was worth studying before then. It would be instructive to find out whether Wells had any Guild training or not.

It was also important to know if Guild secrets had leaked or not. Rossi didn’t care much who Wells inconvenienced if it didn’t cut into the Guild’s business, and in fact there had been some fairly nice income from replacements they’d had to make thanks to Wells’ activities. He wasn’t so stupid as to presume that was a viable way to drum up business but he wasn’t going to object to a temporary windfall.

The plates were very much not to guild standards.

First of all, the mundane material was plain steel, the exact grade to be determined, rather than the brass alloy they used to reduce degradation of portal world material. Then there was the unusual size. One set of plates too big, the other too small. The standard size was standard for a reason, being the best tradeoff between required enchanting material and efficiency. Both the plates were wasteful to anyone who knew how enchanting worked.

The worst part, though, was that the enchanting patterns were fully exposed. Guild enchantments were obscured inside meshed or even welded brass, to keep the hard-earned secrets away from prying eyes. People still tried, of course, but the Guild made sure it was very evident if there was tampering, and responded accordingly.

“God’s blood,” Ordermaster Minot muttered. Rossi nodded grimly. Somehow Wells had cribbed all the flourishes from the Guild’s teleportation pads. The core linking enchant was well known, of course, but all the experimentation and optimization that had gone into the mana intakes, the recirculation networks, the fill leveling, all that, was secret.

Literally years of work and hundreds of pounds of enchanting material had gone into figuring the minute angles and relations. More, the painstaking logistics of encapsulating structures so that they could easily be applied to any of the high-powered enchantments the Guild provided. Seeing it all out in the open without any protections was practically blasphemous.

Especially since it was clearly just blindly put together without any individual considerations. He recognized the characteristic signatures of a number of his best artisans, all shoved together. Seeing such butchery of real professional work was actually painful.

Rossi directed mana into one of the platforms and watched the framework spring up above it and its sister. Worse than the blatant ignorance, the violation of proper practices, and the outright plagiarism was that the enchantment work itself was insultingly shoddy! There were flaws and inconsistencies that made even the Guild’s finest work defective and inefficient.

It would work, certainly, but Wells – or whoever had done the enchantment – had absolutely butchered the execution, even if he somehow had managed to draw out even the smallest details of the actual design. In fact, the design was so perfect it was extremely suspect, given the shoddiness of the actual enchantment.

“Check the tool marks,” Rossi said, doing just that himself. “This was done on a machine.”

The Enchanter’s Guild was no stranger to using tools. Unlike many Houses, they actively scoured the mundane world for techniques that could improve their craft. Enchantment blanks were carved with powered saws and drills, and the vis stylus had been receiving constant updates to its design for the past two hundred years.

Every single enchantment used the stylus these days, now that it was a piece of thaumo-electromechanical artifice that let mages lay down smooth, even, and perfectly matched vis threads. It even let them bring in mages that weren’t read into Guild secrets to blindly supply vis for certain rare aspects, like healing. Or spatial.

Rossi, Minot, and their assistants divided the work between them, scrutinizing the teleportation plates with glasses and resonators to divine the internal structure. The fact that it was out in the open made it far easier, as did the fact that it seemed to be pure mordite and thus easy to distinguish from its surroundings. Which was a waste of good material and another indication that Wells had no idea what he was doing. Only the core of a teleport enchantment benefited from pure mordite or corite; the rest could be of lesser alloys.

“This is a single plate, milled from a blank,” Minot said, running his fingers over the edges of the metal disk floating in front of him, studying the surface through an eyepiece. “Demonstrates the characteristic edges of numerical control machines.”

“Enchantment was done in the part-merge method,” Rossi added, examining the resonator. “You can even see where the mordite has been welded. Explains some of the quality of the projected spellform. The rest, well, that’s down to the mage.”

That was another reason they used the stylus. While most mages had fairly good vis control, the best enchantments required something better than fairly good. The part-merge method itself had been outmoded decades ago anyway, though it was still common for homemade, personal enchantments.

“So, what, he got the blanks cut on a machine and then filled it in manually?” Minot sounded almost incredulous. Rossi didn’t blame him. Going to all the trouble of ensuring that the geometry was precise and then enchanting so poorly was almost inconceivable.

“Keep in mind that, if GAR is right about Wells, he’s coming at this with a completely mundane mindset,” Rossi warned. “I imagine that’s exactly what he did. There’s no telling where he got the enchanting material from but it’s clear it was all done by hand.”

“How did he get ahold of our enchanting patterns, though?” Minot scowled at the delicate tracery of wire embedded in the plate. “Even if he stole a spatial transportation receiving plate, taking it apart without destroying the patterns should be nearly impossible.”

“Only nearly. Not completely.” Rossi well knew that the primary protection against people copying enchantments was actually the reputation of the Guild itself. Those who infringed upon its secrets were dealt with harshly. “There are some mundane techniques that could extract the patterns, given enough time and care.”

“I do not like the idea of our knowledge being recorded in mundane ledgers somewhere,” Minot said, watching the assistants take down notes on exact dimensions, numbers, resonance strength, and design.

“No,” Rossi agreed. “This is not the usual sort of pilfering.” There was always some pushing from the Houses, the newer and younger ones especially. Attempts to steal Guild designs, or more laudable ones to invent their own. But Wells wasn’t part of a House, wasn’t part of a shifter clan or a vampire nest or a fae kingdom. He was an independent, which was not something they’d had to deal with before.

The problem was still the same. The Guild was built on its reputation and its secrets. They couldn’t possibly allow Wells to get away with stealing from the Guild, let alone selling those enchantments secondhand. Whatever they had to spend on running Wells to the ground was a pittance next to the integrity of the Guild of Enchanting. Not to mention finding and purging whatever records there were from Wells plagiary.

The issue was how to do that. The same reports that had alerted him to Well’s attempts at enchanting had told him that GAR had been trying to find the man for a while, but Rossi wasn’t surprised they had failed. Glorified errand-boys and bureaucrats, the lot of them. The Houses and the Archmages were the real power, though if pressed Rossi might admit that some of the larger fae kings and shifter alphas counted.

“Call the Enforcers for a meeting. We have to deal with this quickly and quietly, but be able to claim it publicly when we neutralize him. More, we need to make sure that nobody buys from him in the meantime.”

“We can blacklist that shifter, what was his name? Right, Chester. But shifters are not a significant market for enchanting to begin with.” Minot tapped his fingers thoughtfully on the table. “Not since they learned how to do glamour, anyway.”

Rossi nodded. That had been annoying. An entire market drying up, and not because of any competition or even a better option coming along. Just because the shifters had symbiotes that could adapt, however slowly, and generate their own magic. So far none of them had shown any signs of replacing the metal-joining or heating or cooling foci, but Rossi had no idea how long that would be the case.

Even if shifters weren’t the largest market, blocking the ability of Chester’s shifters to acquire new focuses was something. He had no idea how big the man’s workforce was or even where he was located, not without referring to the reports directly, but it would certainly hurt him more than it hurt the Guild.

“Let it be known that if we find anyone trafficking in Wells’ black-market enchantments, they will be banned from buying focuses of any sort, from anyone,” Rossi decided. “If we have to move to more active punishment, we will, but that should dissuade most people.”

Most mages couldn’t even function without the focus tools provided by the Guild of Enchanting. It was a more dire threat than any more direct action, though that was on the table too. The guild enforcers were more than a match for anyone but Taisen’s own disciples, in Rossi’s opinion.

“I’ll have Nico and Isabella make the rounds,” Minot said. “What about GAR?”

“What about them? This is a Guild matter.”

***

“Right, here we go.” Callum pushed his vis through the telepad. The test object was an empty propane tank, though really anything could have worked. The tank vanished from the pad and, in his senses, reappeared at the target before violently imploding.

Water, it seemed, was very similar to air. Or rather, fluids all had the same cost for shoving them around with spatial vis. It wasn’t actually displacing anything, considering that it added space during the teleport, so the only force that had to be overcome with water was hydrogen bonding between adjacent water molecules. Or at least that was Callum’s guess, because there wasn’t any difference in the difficulty between teleporting into the bottom of a bucket and the bottom of the ocean.

Accidentally smashing himself into the bottom of the ocean was another nightmare to add to the potential issues of using the flying chair. Which he intended to never use again, now that he had the portal anchors. As it was, the portal anchor was enclosed in a solid cube of iron to protect it from being warped by the pressure. By itself, the portal anchor was small enough that the pocket of air inside might well collapse and ruin the entire thing.

He'd actually used his acceleration to get it down to the bottom of the ocean in the first place, since things did not sink very quickly. It would have taken hours to reach the bottom of the Marianas Trench, and he was impatient. An hour or two probably wouldn’t make a difference either way, but he was feeling the time crunch of securing a solution before the week was up.

“Well, big man?” Lucy asked, unfortunately unable to see what was going on. He’d tried opening a portal at a shallower depth just for an experiment and found that it ended very poorly. The water shot through at full pressure and almost instantly destabilized the portal, resulting in a puddle of seawater in his back yard and not much else. So she had to rely on his descriptions from his senses.

“It got pretty well crushed,” Callum said, teleporting the remains back and letting them land with a thump on the table. It was a little wet, but his control was good enough that the teleport didn’t carry much water with it. “Is it enough to deal with a mage shield? I have no idea.”

“There’s not any deeper place on Earth,” Lucy said with a shrug.

“Well, what about the Portal World? Five I think? The sea one.”

“Now it’s my turn to have no idea. There’s a GAR outpost there – maybe it’s a BSE outpost, actually – but it’s all water so it’s not exactly well explored. Couldn’t tell you how deep it gets.”

“Maybe we can try it.” He considered the teleport plate and the block of iron sitting in the crushing, lightless depths, then recalled them. Now that they knew it worked, and how long it took to get things situated, he could plan out the deployment.

He was using an approach he’d thought of some time back, but had never followed through on: tampering with the GAR teleportation network. There were a lot of reasons he hadn’t, most having to do with how complicated it would be to get right. Even if he got it right, it’d probably only work once, so he’d reserved it for something dramatic.

Like killing an Archmage.

Some of the enchantments clearly existed as safeguards, likely to keep multiple teleports from happening at once, but other parts existed to do things like bypass mage resistance to teleportation. Which was a massive benefit to him, since there was no way he could brute force teleport or portal an Archmage. Ultimately all he needed to do was replace the teleportation core in the GAR teleporter with one that he’d made, then feed vis into the GAR core when his was charged to fool the matching enchantments on the other end.

The safety and security parts of the GAR system made it so he couldn’t just replace it and let it sit. It wasn’t clear how many alarms would be raised if the activity on both sides didn’t match, but he recognized the designs for some alarms in the enchanting. He’d tested his replacement surreptitiously with Chester’s help, sending one shifter through instead of another, using the GAR telepad located in Chester’s compound, and even if it was a bit of a pain it worked.

Callum really didn’t like having to rely on someone else, and sharing the secrets with them, but he had to know it would work. He tried to be glad that he did have a conspirator to run such a test with, but despite what his rational mind said, his instincts were conflicted. It was probably something in his blood, considering how Callum, Sr., had acted.

“Do we have the exact coordinates for Five?” He asked Lucy, instead of dwelling on it.

“We don’t, but I’ve got everything ready to hook up to the GAR network. Might be able to just get the information from there. I think all the BSE stuff is part of the network. They’re the most modern faction, anyway.” Lucy was clearly very ready to regain her information access. It wasn’t really necessary to tap into the GAR network when they could just look for themselves, but it was an excuse that Lucy was ready to seize on.

“Okay, we’ll see if we can get in,” Callum said. “Let’s head out to the van.”

“Awesome!” Lucy exulted, and bundled all her tools into the bag. He didn’t want her to connect to any GAR stuff from his house or the internet there, no matter what protections they used. Instead, they were headed a few hours drive north to piggyback off of some random public wifi, though he used the drone-portal setup to get there instead of driving the whole distance.

“This still feels so ridiculously overdone,” Lucy half-grumbled as she set herself up in the van.

“I know, but stuff like this is why GAR couldn’t find me even when they knew I was calling you,” Callum said. He still didn’t know how long they’d had Lucy’s phone tapped before they brought her in, but it had been long enough that they would have found him if he’d ever called from his home.

“Yeah, I know,” Lucy sighed. “I guess it makes sense, too. I’m just not as paranoid as you.”

“It’s kind of my job,” Callum agreed. He wouldn’t have even considered trying to infiltrate an actual GAR headquarters before. Now that he had practice with the anchors, though, it was less insane. They were small and stealthy, far easier to hide than a person, and in a building full of mana and vis, wards and spellforms, they wouldn’t stand out.

Even if an anchor was noticed, he could just pull it back. The worst case scenario was the anchor getting disabled and GAR seizing it. In that case he’d have to dispose of his half before they used it to track him down somehow, but that wasn’t too hard. Now that he had just a few more anchor sets it was probably worth it to try and infiltrate GAR.

Not only would having access to the information there be extremely useful, but it’d be a good test to see if he could get into the main GAR buildings. Someday he might need to break in for something urgent, and it’d be good to know what the limits were. Still, he was being very careful, so the anchor they were using for the task was at a remove, chained through an intermediary portal set. From his Texas house to the cache-cave, from the cave to a deserted, jungle-choked beach on the northern part of the isthmus, and from the beach to wherever the anchor was going.

The chain actually required a signal booster for Lucy’s drone, going through all the distance and metal that it did. The three different perceptive spheres also meant that he had to pull back a bit to keep from overload, metaphorically squinting his eyes, which wasn’t ideal but he had doubts he’d ever be able to keep track of that much space. Besides, when it came to buildings, three or four hundred yards was more than enough.

The GAR complex, which held all the US branches, was in upstate New York, along the Hudson River. Callum was actually somewhat surprised it wasn’t in New York City proper, but it probably would have strained the limitations of glamours to block off such a large area in the middle of one of the most populous cities on Earth. It wasn’t like they needed to be in the city anyway, what with the teleportation network.

While there were multiple layers of glamour about it, the place stood out like a sore thumb because of the significant increase in mana nearby. If the small GAR offices had one or two feeder portals, the central complex probably had dozens. It wasn’t as strong as an actual portal world link, but it was enough to pick up several miles away.

Lucy flew the drone in well outside the various layers of warding and glamours, putting it down in among a stand of trees within sight of the buildings. Callum had to admit the complex was a gorgeous example of the Beaux-Arts style, at least on the outside, with columns and carvings. The inside where he’d been had been somewhat converted to something more drab, but the exterior still looked great.

“It’s a shame all this is invisible to the general public,” Callum said. “There aren’t many buildings like this left. Usually they’re preserved on some historical registry or another.”

“You know, I’ve never seen it from the outside before,” Lucy mused. “I just took the teleporter into work.”

“More’s the pity,” Callum said. “Seems to me people would be happier to work in a pretty building instead of a boring box office.”

“Yeah, probably,” Lucy admitted as he teleported the focus out of its holder on the drone. Lucy had rigged up something more graceful than literally duct-taping it to the quadcopter, a nice little bracket right by the transceiver, which made it easier to attach and remove the anchor. He pulled the drone back, letting it pop into existence on the table, and started toward the buildings.

According to Lucy, the server rooms were located in the basement. Or rather, one of several basements and subbasements, each of which might well have its own protections. He’d want to avoid popping himself into a fae’s domain or up next to a vampire, since they might well notice something a mage would miss. Mages relied on wards, which he could bypass, not advanced senses.

The truth was the layers of wards around the central GAR offices seemed to be less potent than ones he’d seen around some of the branches. His guess was that they were just old, and had never been updated. From what he understood, rogues like him weren’t very common, and even when they did appear it wasn’t around the head office. Only a crazy person would try to break into or attack the place chock full of mages and other supernaturals.

“How’s it going, big man?” Lucy asked, fiddling with the memory sticks she’d loaded up with malware. He essentially trusted that however she compromised the GAR setup it wouldn’t be traceable to the Texas house. Which apparently wasn’t too hard to ensure, as much as the idea of having any connection back to his location rankled. When it came time to move to the bunker any kind of internet access was definitely going to happen off-site, though, through a portal focus.

“Right at the outer walls,” he told her. The little dime-sized anchor was more or less hidden inside the decorative bushes planted around the perimeter of the complex. So close to a building, the enormous range of his perceptions was really driven home by how he could see into practically the entire thing. Dozens of mages and as many supernaturals of other types, independent wards guarding discrete rooms, and a bewildering array of vis and mana in use.

There was so much going on it actually hurt to perceive. Even inside a portal world, the mana was merely intense. A bright light, rather than a hundred different-color strobes. Having a full building of supernaturals doing supernatural things inside his perceptions showed one of the severe downsides of his spatial sense, that of overstimulation. If GAR had some idea of how things looked to him, it’d probably be extremely easy to generate a magical flashbang that actually worked on him.

The good part of it was that it seemed pretty obvious that his small portal anchor would be absolutely lost among all the spell forms running through the walls and ceiling and floors. Unless someone had perceptions just like his and was actively looking for a portal enchantment, the anchor ought to be obscured by everything else. Especially useful since, according to Lucy, the server area itself didn’t have much magic about it. Just the central enchantment that tied in with the dongle all the supernatural laptops and phones used.

Which actually made it easy to spot. There was a basement area swirling with fae magic, one with a strict grid of intense mana, neither of which he wanted to touch, but Lucy’s old office seemed fairly harmless. Except for the fact there was someone inside.

“We do have a slight problem,” Callum said. “There’s a mage hanging out in the office. I’m pretty sure if I open a portal it’ll be noticed.”

“Honestly we want the server room anyway,” Lucy said, sliding over the sketch of the basement where she used to work. “I doubt they’ve changed anything significant. Passwords and such sure, but not the actual hardware. Kinda surprised they even found anyone who knows enough to work the server-side stuff, let alone a mage.”

“The BSE folks and the young mages I’ve seen seemed pretty tech-savvy,” Callum told her, snaking a vis thread down through the layers of wards and around into the server room. He made sure to keep it inside the walls, out of the magic sight of anyone who might be paying attention. After springing Lucy he was very aware of how powerful being able to deny mages line of sight was.

“Yeah, I guess. Maybe I’m a bit biased ‘cause I mostly dealt with people who thought computer stuff was impenetrable nonsense. All complaining to me when they forgot to plug their computer in or whatever.” Lucy scrunched up her face in a pout before she smoothed her expression. “Kinda sore that they did find someone to replace me.”

“No one could replace you,” Callum assured her, and Lucy laughed.

“Flattery will get you everywhere, big man,” she said. “Now, there’s two boxes I need access to. Big server cluster and a smaller, flat thing. That way we can get in without any monitors noticing.”

“Unless they’ve added more monitors since then,” Callum said.

“Eh. I doubt it, they’d just replace the boxes at most; server architecture kinda is how it is. But it might be a good idea for me to take a look.”

Callum cast a cautious, metaphorical eye at the mage in the other room, but there were a few walls between the server and the mage so he took the plunge and opened a small spy portal so Lucy could see through. There was no reaction he could see, but there were so many bits of spellforms everywhere that if he’d tripped an alarm it wouldn’t be obvious.

“Pan left please,” Lucy said, keeping her voice low as she leaned forward to look through the portal hanging between them. “Pan right? Okay, looks like they kept the same architecture. Great, just get me a portal in by the ports on the back of that box over there. Thanks!” She happily shoved one of her memory sticks into a port and hummed for a moment as the lights flickered.

“Perfect.” She pulled the stick out and set it aside, then directed his portal over to one of the boxes on the rack. “I swear, I wish I had spatial magic to deal with wiring these things every time,” she said to him sotto voce, plugging in another memory stick. “It gets super awkward to deal with it.”

Callum had to refrain from shushing her. She was being quiet, far quieter than the loud hum of fans that came through the portal, so it wasn’t like she was going to attract any attention. It just seemed wrong to be chatty when they were breaking and entering.

“And we’re done,” Lucy said, pulling out the memory stick. By habit, he’d put cleanup enchantments into the metal racks, so even the small amount of magical residue he’d left would be gone soon. Callum snapped the portal closed and then recalled the anchor, marveling at how easy it had been to get at GAR headquarters. There had been certain areas that were protected enough that he’d have issues dealing with them, certainly, but not the facility as a whole.

They’d learned from Lucy’s rescue and there were jammers up around sensitive areas, where he assumed the portal feeds and ward boxes were. The teleports were still only protected by wards, probably because they wouldn’t work with the jammers up, but any place where he sensed fae magic was just as well protected in Callum’s mind. There was no telling what they could do or sense. But since he could see where those things were, he could just bypass all the layers of protection at once.

“Not used to having to do this remotely,” Lucy muttered, tapping at her laptop. “Used to be I just had my own on-site server backdoor. Okay, Portal World Five. I can probably do better but here’s the first thing that looks worthwhile.” She swiveled the laptop around to show what looked like a set of scanned documents. No search function, all hand-written and hand-scanned, but legible enough.

It was an actual, honest-to-goodness report on Portal World Five, written by one Grand Magus Taisen. Callum recognized that name, and while he didn’t know much about the man it seemed he wanted to make sure whoever needed to go to Five had the proper information. There were even pictures that had been scanned along with the writing.

Some of the background was fascinating, like the supposition that Five was actually the oldest portal world, connecting intermittently like Faerie had before it was stabilized. The portal had even been shrunk from something fifty feet across to more like five, though it had stayed underwater. Marginalia noted that it wasn’t stable outside of water, which said potentially interesting things about the magic involved.

Apparently the actual fortress, Garrison Five, had been made by a bunch of earth mages and was a giant pumice thing that floated on top of the endless ocean of the Portal World. Which was pretty neat, actually. The important thing was that so far as anyone could tell it was endless in every direction, meaning down as well. Water mages could only verify a few kilometers down, but things got darker, heavier, and bigger down there. True leviathans lurked in those depths.

Given that some of the things they killed were as big as Jules Verne’s kraken, that was saying something.

That was good enough for him. He’d gotten proof of concept with the Marianas Trench and the portal worlds had a certain advantage. Spatial focuses didn’t work quite right, which would hopefully include Fane’s homebond. In the absurd pressures miles under the surface of an infinite ocean, even a few seconds of delay might be enough to breach Fane’s defenses.

“Send me that, would you please?” Callum asked, pushing Lucy’s laptop back toward her. “I’ll want to read it closer later on, but it definitely sounds like a perfect location.”

“Sure thing, big man. You do that, I gotta catch up on stuff in here. If they actually do find what I’ve done I’d rather have set everything to get transferred first.”

“Sounds good.” Callum got his own laptop and loaded up the program Lucy had installed to control the drone. He wasn’t nearly as familiar with the controller that she used to move the thing around but he wasn’t trying to do anything fancy. Mostly just make sure the thing stayed level.

Sending it out over the ocean wasn’t like sending it overland. On dry ground he could rely on the surface to stop him if he aimed downward, but over the water that wasn’t the case. Instead he had to move in short jerks high up in the air, making sure never to aim at the surface. Which meant it was good he had GPS coordinates, because mana stuck close to the surface and up in the atmosphere he couldn’t sense the flow he normally used to track portals.

Portal World Five was marked by a large buoy, more than big enough to land the drone on. The buoy itself held the glamours and protections to ward normal folk away from the area, though there were once again no personnel guarding the entrance. Not that Callum was surprised, considering the location.

The portal itself was some fifty feet under the water, oriented horizontally rather than vertically and with the buoy mooring chain running through it to the other side. Callum’s senses found that the destination was in a big pool of water surrounded by rock — the pumice mentioned in the report. There were ladders leading out of the pool and up to the level above, where there were actually a few mages in furnished rooms. He spread his perceptions throughout the entire fortress, finding it sparsely populated. None of the mages had the intimidating sort of bubble that marked an elite – probably an Archmage, from what he knew – but he wasn’t interested in the structure anyway. He just wanted to go straight down.

Callum threaded his vis through the wards and teleported the steel-cube-enclosed anchor into the ocean below the fortress. Immediately he could sense the strain on the anchor, as it left the space just around the portal and fortress. It wasn’t nearly as bad as Mictlān, where he wasn’t even able to keep it open without constant work, but he had doubts he’d be able to reopen the anchor if he let it close while it was in the portal world. The core part of a homebond would still work, but the mana intakes and recirculation framework would not, which would delay that escape option.

He enclosed the anchor in a gravitykinesis frame and dragged it downward, letting the seconds tick by as his vis poured out. By the time he stopped it was far deeper than the Marianas Trench, and had stopped because it had fetched up on something solid. Not ground, but a body, full of vis and extending in every direction farther than his perceptions could handle. A body that was already starting to contort around the cube.

Reflexively, he snatched back the steel cube, but started laughing when he thought about it. Forcing Fane to deal with crushing pressures, spatial distortion, and horrifically large predators was far better than the pressure alone. It still wasn’t a guarantee, but since he couldn’t send Fane to the center of the Sun, it was the best chance he had.

“Sounds like it went well, then?”

“I think it’ll do, yes,” Callum agreed.

“Got some good news of my own,” Lucy said, waggling a finger at her laptop. “Found an email from one of the Fane people. They’re setting up a meeting in Beijing. Got the location and everything.”

“Fantastic,” Callum said. Less than an hour in and getting tapped into GAR’s network and was paying off. “Let’s take a look.”

Chapter 9 – Assassination

“They did what?” Callum wasn’t really sure how to feel. Bewildered, mostly, because he couldn’t see any sense to both healing people and destroying vineyards. The first was great; Ms. Mosley even had the hip she was constantly complaining about fixed. The second was just plain vandalism. He had no idea how much time and money those vines represented but it was probably a lot.

Actually, the more he thought about it the more pissed off he got. The vineyards were private and not really a major contributor to Tanner’s economy, so as a threat it was useless while still being wanton destruction. If they’d actually wanted Tanner’s food supplies to suffer they’d have had to target dozens of small poultry places and fields, as well as blockade the roads to cut off imports.

He was getting really damned tired of people trying to take shots at him and hitting someone else.

“It’s supposed to be a combination carrot and stick,” Shahey replied, shaking his head. “I’ve gotten familiar with the way he thinks, and that sort of demonstration is meant to say, look what I can do.”

“Yeah, it says to me he could be helping a lot more than he is, but he isn’t. Instead he wants to be petty and destructive.” Not that such a thing surprised Callum. Any mage that wanted to be helpful would be sidelined and punished by the secrecy and dictatorial rules of GAR. Another reason not to treat every mage like a war criminal, as if he needed one.

“The same could be said for most supernaturals,” Shahey said. “But the secrecy came from a time when they weren’t as well organized or powerful, and now they’re stuck with it.”

“They, not we?” Callum asked.

“We’re not natives,” Shahey said. “There’s no telling how much damage it would do if people knew outsider powers like us were around.”

“Okay, that’s fair,” Callum said. He had to admit that Shahey had a point there. If it were just dragonblooded, it’d probably be not much of an issue, but with everyone else it became extremely complicated. “So, it looks like I need to take care of Fane. Which from what I can see he’s absolutely earned beyond what he’s doing here. If I do that, can you deal with whoever is in Tanner?”

“As an official request?”

“It can be,” Callum said. Considering what the dragonblooded had said about his type being guests, he could well guess Shahey was hinting at the rules Callum needed to invoke to get real help.

“Excellent,” Shahey said. “In return, I would like you to come to the dragonlands and open up new rifts. Not to Earth, just new world portals.”

“Ah. I can’t do that,” Callum said. “I thought they were just natural things.”

“Natural? Yes. Just? No. If you can’t do it yet, I can wait until you can. Time is not an issue.”

“I imagine not,” Callum said automatically, still somewhat shocked by the concept that he could open holes to other realities. Even though he’d seen that the dragonlands portal had looked artificial he’d not really made the leap to thinking about doing it himself. He’d figured the dragons had done it.

Now he wondered if it had been Duvall, or someone like her. There had to be a reason why Shahey or the other dragons hadn’t extracted a similar service from GAR’s spatial mages. He had to imagine there were risks associated with it that he didn’t know about; politics wasn’t always the answer. But they were risks the dragonlands would be running, not Earth, and the ability would probably be extremely useful for him.

“I accept, then. Though I have no idea when I’ll be able to do something like that,” he warned Shahey.

“As I said, I have time.” Callum assumed that the dragon behind the dragonblooded was immortal, even if the avatar was somewhat expendable.

So far as Callum knew, Sen was still in Tanner so he’d be one of the mages Shahey neutralized — however Shahey wanted to do it. That was even assuming that they had orders to start wrecking stuff. Or decided to on their own, which was something he could well imagine from what he’d seen so far.

Sen needed to be held to account for murdering innocent bystanders, since GAR obviously wasn’t going to, and Callum wasn’t too fond of delegation. There was too much room for doubt or for error. Or for someone else to get hurt. But if Shahey was going to take care of it, he’d be satisfied. Tanner was the dragonblooded’s town, too, so he could trust that Shahey would do the right thing.

“I’ll get back to you after things shake out. Your judgement on how to deal with the people here is probably better than mine.”

“You sell yourself short, Mister Wells, but it is true I have a certain insight.” Shahey shrugged scaly shoulders, looking out over his gym. “I wish you luck. Fane has been an irritant for a very long time.”

“Yeah, I bet he has.” One of the most alarming findings about Fane was how many people the Department of Acquisition sent him.

Lucy had found the records when she’d gone digging on Fane in order to confirm rumors. Literally thousands of people, mostly mundane but some supernatural, had been shipped off to Archmage Fane personally. When there was any notation on the reason, which was not common, it just read some variation on medical purposes. A phrase to chill the blood of anyone familiar with human history.

The Department was rotten from top to bottom, and could not go on existing, but he didn’t know how to start with it. Not yet. Fane was a more urgent consideration anyway, and he could only take on one thing at a time.

“The hell did you just agree to, big man?” Lucy asked. They were in the van again, since Lucy was doing some more trawling through the GAR databases and emails. Until he had enough material for a permanent portal to a decoy internet site, they were wardriving public wifi whenever she needed to check it. Which wasn’t really an issue, with portals and teleports.

“Something far in the future,” Callum said. “I have no idea how to even begin. Making portal-world portals hasn’t exactly been on my radar. But something to look into once we’re more settled.”

“Man. Kind of a lot to bite off.” Lucy shook her head. “But I guess they have to come from somewhere. For all I know House Duvall has a bunch of portal worlds of their own somewhere and just don’t share.”

“Now you’re being properly suspicious,” Callum told her, and she stuck her tongue out at him.

“You’re infecting my thought processes,” she accused him.

“Probably so, but I’m not wrong,” Callum said, and she reflexively glanced down at her wrist. He’d been working on removing the tattoo for her, which was unpleasant for both of them but had to be done. The magic inside it had broken already but there was still a lot of the band left. Lucy hid it with a bracelet most times.

“Nobody likes a know-it-all,” Lucy said, threatening him with her index finger. He grabbed it and she relaxed, linking hands with him. “Well, except when it helps.”

“Hey, I don’t know everything. I’m just a suspicious bastard.” Literally true, he realized after a moment, but he didn’t take back the phrase.

“Yeah, yeah. That’s pretty obvious at this point.” Lucy squeezed his hand then returned to poking at her laptop. “Can’t complain too much. Otherwise I wouldn’t get to play with all these toys.”

The toys in question were little boxes Lucy had made with audiovisual capability and transmitters – an improvement over the walkies – for when he was supposed to “meet” with Fane. Callum had no idea when they expected that to happen, since he hadn’t gotten official word. His week deadline was up the next day, and since the high-end resort was secured and a good chunk sectioned off, he assumed that they’d be telling him to meet Fane almost immediately. But that was only an assumption.

Placing Lucy’s boxes around had been incredibly easy, despite the jammers that had been deployed in sensitive places. He was somewhat annoyed that the use of those things had proliferated, but he couldn’t expect the people in GAR to keep that particular countermeasure to themselves. Still, the jammers only covered a small area and he could pop in a few of the spy-boxes and their signal transceivers to cover those parts of the resort.

When the time came, he’d be using a tablet to actually talk to Fane — assuming the man didn’t reject that sort of thing out of hand. Not that it mattered, since the point was less what he’d say to Fane, what deal he would or wouldn’t make, and more about being able to know which teleporter Fane was going to use.

“Any other movement we have to worry about?”

“From GAR? No, they’ve got people combing various places and following up some stuff — all copycat crimes, I think. They do have people looking around Texas, but Texas is a big place. The Houses, though. They don’t use the email system much, so I have no idea.”

“So long as there’s nothing specific,” Callum said, though he frowned at the idea of more copycat crimes. There wasn’t anything he could really do about it, at least on the face of things. Not unless he was willing to personally hunt down every perpetrator, and he wasn’t a detective. Though he doubted that he was the reason the crimes happened, just a convenient excuse.

“There was a mention that they still have the mundanes – sorry, the Feds – looking for you. So I guess don’t go to any airports or post offices any time soon.”

“Wasn’t planning on it anyway. Heck, with your drones we have a better way across the ocean. Faster, anyway.”

“I do like it when you tell me how clever I am.”

“Good thing it’s true, then,” he said. Lucy grinned at him. “Okay, I’m all set here. Guess we’d better get ready for showtime.”

“Suppose so.” Callum charged the teleport plate for Lucy, and she stepped on it.

“I still swear I can feel this stuff,” she said. “Maybe when we get the tiles in I can play around with it more.”

“Definitely,” Callum agreed. She’d tried the beginner mage exercises to no avail, but if other supernaturals used enchantments, there might be some sort of in-between condition where a non-mage could trigger one that was already charged. How exactly that worked required more study. Assuming they could finally get the time.

He found it hard to sleep, tossing and turning on the couch foldaway. Lucy had offered to trade with him but he had insisted she take the bed. There were times when she would go quiet, especially if she were left to herself too long, face drawing into something distant and wary and completely unlike her. The things she’d experienced had taken their toll, and despite her upbeat attitude it was clear they still haunted her.

So he insisted she take the bedroom and whatever comfort and security it had. The foldout bed was not at all inviting, and even felt a little exposed that close to the front door. Or so he felt, and he figured she felt the same way, especially since she didn’t have the perceptions to tell what was going on everywhere nearby.

Ultimately he managed a few hours of sleep, and did his best not to drag when he finally hauled himself into the shower. Someday he’d be fresh and ready when it was time to do something important, but thus far he hadn’t been so lucky. It wasn’t like he even needed to be ready to deal with the actual Archmage, if he and Lucy were reading things right. They’d only had a couple emails to go off of, but it seemed pretty clear Fane wasn’t headed to Tanner.

By the time he got out Lucy was up too, and they went through the process of making coffee and getting breakfast together before starting in on the actual work. Most of what he was relying on was her stuff, so he really couldn’t do more than look it over. Used tablets, drones, little boxes with breadboards and stuff from electronics supplies stores. He was learning, but she had years and years of experience.

“So, what’s the over-under?” Lucy asked once they were seated at the table together. “Twenty bucks says they tell you to show up there or else, but only after some tedious sneering.”

“No bet,” Callum said. “Too easy. I think the real wager is whether they try to refuse to talk to the tablet.”

“I’ll say no for the stooges in Tanner, but yes for the Archmage. I expect he’ll be super pissed you don’t show up in person.”

“Good thing we don’t care about that.”

They could have sent the drone with the tablet over in the early morning, but Callum decided to wait until around noon. Not so much as a power play as because he wanted to have plenty of time to do final checks and keep a surreptitious eye on what they were up to. There was no such thing as being too careful.

So far as he could tell, though, all the mages inhabiting the big old mansion did was eat delivery from one of the better restaurants in town. Watching through cameras was very strange when he was used to sensing through his sphere, but the portal focus was parked on top of Shahey’s gym so he was watching through Lucy’s relay boxes. It was less immediate, but he could actually see color and writing, not to mention actual people instead of featureless bubbles. It made him wish that he could actually get that sort of thing from his spatial perceptions.

Lucy piloted the drone over, and this time the mages noticed it as it approached the front entrance of the house. Since Callum didn’t have an anchor there he couldn’t actually see if the drone had tripped wards or if active senses were in use, but either way the drone camera fuzzed as they carried it inside and then a few moments later he saw someone’s face from the tablet camera. The man barked something in Mandarin.

“It’s Wells,” Callum said, turning on his own camera. There was nothing behind him but a cheap whiteboard to block out any details of his location. “Get Sen.” The man blinked at the tablet, then turned away and spoke some more Mandarin. Soon enough, Sen’s face appeared on the camera.

“Took you long enough,” Sen said with a sneer. “I was beginning to think you’d run away.”

“I said a week. It’s been a week.” Sen’s entire manner irked Callum. Probably more than it should have, but since the guy was an unapologetic menace it was hard to treat him objectively. “What do you have to tell me?”

“You should be flattered,” Sen told him. “Patriarch Fane has agreed to meet you. It is a great honor for anyone outside the House to see him. But make no mistake, you will bear the burden for all the trouble our Patriarch has had to go to.”

“Oh, I’m sure I will,” Callum said. He wondered exactly how Fane intended to squeeze him, but it was only an idle thought. There was no way he was getting within a hundred miles of Fane or his people. “So where and when?”

Instead of replying like a normal person, Sen had to make it a production. Or more likely, it was Fane that made it a production. There was a crackling noise and it seemed that Sen had gotten out an honest-to-goodness parchment scroll.

“You are requested and required to present yourself to Feng Palace Resort, Beijing, China, no later than eight AM tomorrow.” Sen paused to sneer at the camera again. “That should not be too difficult for a spatial mage.” Callum had to check; there was a full twelve hours offset so it was a little past midnight over in China. Without teleports, the eight hour deadline would have been incredibly difficult.

“You will refer to Patriarch Fane only as Honored Patriarch. You will wear a suit, with head uncovered. You will…” Sen kept listing off requirements that made it sound more like a peasant meeting with a king. Which it probably was, from their perspective.

“You gonna tell them that you’re not even showing up in person?” Lucy messaged him through their private chat program, the text popping up in the corner of the laptop he was using to talk to Sen. She didn’t say anything because neither of them wanted to give away that he wasn’t alone.

“No. I’d rather wait until the very end so they have less time to try and change things.” If Fane decided not to show up, or change the location of the meeting, all the prep work they’d done would be wasted and who knew when they’d have another chance. Or what sort of mischief Fane would send their way in the meantime.

So he just nodded along as Sen listed out the requirements, trying to suppress his irritation at being dictated to even if he didn’t intend to actually obey. The restrictive dress and behavior mandates weren’t particularly interesting or even that unexpected, but the bubble protocol was interesting. Or rather, sphere of authority, as they called it. He was supposed to keep his suppressed, close around him, which he vaguely recalled being somewhat indecent. All in keeping with trying to establish how low he was in the social pecking order.

It seemed weird to Callum that they were trying to be so high and mighty when they were the ones who had come to him. But then, that was generally the attitude of despots and tyrants, who thought that their attention was flattering. Considering that Fane had been around for a few hundred years, there had been plenty of time for the Archmage to evolve that sort of outlook. Assuming it didn’t come naturally.

“Understood,” he said, when Sen finally wound down. “Is there anything else?”

“That will be all,” Sen replied.

“Can I have my drone back?” Callum asked. Sen frowned and the feed cut out. He glanced over at Lucy, who shrugged.

“He probably slagged it,” she said. “I’ll remove it from the network anyway, just in case they’re smarter than that.”

“We’re going to run out of drones at this rate,” he said. They did have five extras sitting in boxes in the corner, but he’d already wrecked a couple by accident, and if mages were going to start melting them those five wouldn’t last too long. He’d already written off the one he was sending to Fane.

“Heck with the drones, even used tablets are kinda expensive,” Lucy grumped. “I didn’t realize how much money you burned through when everything is single-use.”

“There’s a reason I use cheap burner phones most of the time,” Callum agreed. “Right, we have eight hours to get everything set up.”

“I tell you what, big man. I was afraid we’d have like, eight minutes. Eight hours is plenty of time.”

“Don’t say that, you’ll jinx it,” Callum said, and she snorted.

“Now, don’t go superstitious on me, big man. Being paranoid is bad enough.” Her grin held a teasing edge, so he reached over and tousled her otherwise immaculate hair. That earned a squawk of outrage, but she didn’t stop smiling.

The operation actually needed all the anchors he had available to him, plus the teleportation core he’d made for the occasion. Which fairly well exhausted his stock of corite, but they couldn’t think of any other way to deal with Fane. Not in any way that was certain. Between his healing and his homebond, the man was just too slippery even if they could get through his shields.

One drone went back to Portal World Five’s buoy, where Callum dropped the steel-enclosed anchor for later. Then the drone itself went on to Beijing, and the teleporter closest to the resort. Or rather, to some six hundred yards away from it, since he didn’t want to be anywhere nearby when Fane came through. That was also close enough to hook into the chain of surveillance boxes that Lucy used to connect to the network they’d left in the resort.

Of course, the entire plan could be derailed if Fane came through some other teleportation location, but there was nothing they could do about that. Fortunately, even House Fane didn’t have free access to spatial enchantments and there was only the one node anywhere close. Though interestingly enough, that particular GAR office was staffed solely by humans, some mages and some not. It seemed that the Chinese branches didn’t want to share with other supernaturals.

It took at best an hour to put the portal anchors into place and test the electronics connections, making sure that none of the boxes had been disturbed or compromised. Considering they’d all been placed in inaccessible areas with the help of his spatial senses, it would have been a surprise if someone had found them, but he was still dealing with supernaturals.

“C’mon, big man. Let’s take a lunch break. You can’t work all the time.” Lucy poked him in the side to distract him from surveying the teleportation office for the umpteenth time. “Getting all sour-faced on me.”

“Okay, okay,” he laughed, fending her off. “We’ll go get something interesting. Probably better if I come back to it with fresh eyes.”

“That’s right,” Lucy nodded. “Besides, we probably won’t be as anxious if we’ve got something in our bellies other than sausage and waffles.”

“I still don’t see how you eat that stuff.” He shook his head. Callum had never acquired a taste for pancakes or waffles or sweets and breads in general, but Lucy seemed to thrive on the stuff. How she managed that while still maintaining her figure was a mystery for the ages.

“It’s delicious, that’s how.”

Going out to lunch with Lucy did help, and while he couldn’t completely put things out of his mind, he puttered around the house until after dinner and the eight o’clock hour approached. He didn’t have much of a dinner, because despite Lucy distracting him from the problem at hand he was wound too tight to be hungry.

Fane’s arrival was a bright blazing beacon of obvious power, the same completely opaque, steel-hard shell he’d seen from the mages in the Deep Wilds. Callum’s portal anchor was far away from the teleport but his hands still shook slightly as he contemplated the man’s bubble, knowing how deadly it was.

Callum only relaxed once the bubble went out of range, heading outward to the resort, though not entirely since he knew that so long as there was any of his magic nearby there was the possibility of danger. It was remote, but there, which was why he was using cleanup enchantments basically everywhere. Then he gave Lucy the nod and turned his attention to the little windows she had set up for each of the camera feeds.

It hadn’t been hard to figure out where the meeting was going to be. Once they’d put in the surveillance it’d just taken observation, and occasionally running some of the chatter through a translator to double-check. Neither he nor Lucy spoke the language.

It took Fane no more than ten minutes to go from teleporter to the resort. Callum studied the camera footage as Fane sat down to a lavish breakfast, which would not be finished by eight, so he would be making Callum wait. Not very surprising.

He looked almost cartoonish, with a long white moustache and beard, carrying himself with dignity. Even Fane’s face seemed almost perfectly stereotypical. It probably played well in his own House, but Callum was just a little incredulous people like that actually existed. Admittedly, the concept had to come from somewhere.

At five to eight, Lucy piloted the drone with the tablet from its position on an overhang of the resort’s indoor garden courtyard area that had been reserved for the meeting. Callum was half worried that someone would blow the thing up before he could state who it was from, but Lucy kept it well away from the center where Fane was eating breakfast.

“This is Callum Wells, here to see Patriarch Fane,” he said as Lucy piloted it toward one of the employees, the speakers mounted on the drone amplifying his voice over the buzz of the drone’s rotors. The poor man did an actual doubletake, before turning away and speaking something over the headset he had.

Callum was sure they had no idea what to do about the fact that there was a drone with a tablet with a video call, rather than a person. Some poor soul would have to kick it up the chain until it reached Fane himself, though Callum rather doubted the Patriarch was unaware of what was going on. Even if Fane’s active senses wouldn’t notice the drone, it wasn’t like Callum was being quiet.

Lucy parked the drone on a nearby settee while the information traveled along the chain of command. One of the relay boxes still had a view of the courtyard from above, full of potted plants and lavish furniture, while Fane himself seemed unruffled by the scurry of activity about him.

Finally someone went over to whisper in Fane’s ear, and the man nodded but made no move to have the breakfast cleared or anything. Eventually someone came back and addressed the tablet hesitantly. The employee’s accent was strong, but he was still understandable.

“Patriarch Fane will see you at his leisure. You will wait until then.”

“Sure,” Callum said, and switched to the chat program.

“Hurry up and wait,” he remarked to Lucy.

“That’s how it always is,” Lucy replied. “I swear, supernaturals love their power games.”

They were kept waiting for a good hour while Fane sipped tea or coffee or whatever, had the table cleared, and read a book. Callum was sure he was meant to be stewing or something, but really he was just bored. He was almost tempted to just call the whole thing off, since he’d already gotten what he really wanted — Fane in a known location, with a specific teleporter that he’d use. But he might as well learn what he could.

Finally an employee came and lifted up the tablet, bringing it over to Fane’s table. It was low on battery but Callum doubted the discussion would take too long. There wasn’t much to negotiate about.

“You did not come in person,” Fane said, disapprovingly. “What reason do you have for this insult?”

“You may have noticed I’m a careful person,” Callum said. “And you probably also know that I’m aware of how dangerous healing mages are. Considering that and my relationship with GAR in general, it didn’t seem advisable to be physically present.”

“I’m the Archmage of House Fane, boy. GAR works for the Archmages, not the other way around,” Fane scoffed. “I thought you were a sharp one but maybe you’re just lucky.”

“Maybe,” Callum said noncommittally. “What exactly was your offer?”

“I don’t like your tone, boy,” Fane scowled imperiously at the tablet. “Even if you’re not in front of me I can still make you regret it.”

“Perhaps so,” Callum said, though he wanted to dare Fane to try. “But I admit I am somewhat at a loss as to why we’re even meeting in the first place. With House Fane being so powerful, surely trafficking with a known criminal is an unnecessary risk.”

“When you’re powerful, the only thing that matters is more power,” Fane declared. “You, young Wells, could greatly enhance the power of House Fane.”

“You want to offer me a job?”

“A job,” Fane scoffed. “What you have is an invaluable opportunity to join the greatest House in the world. Do you think GAR would even dare touch you? Hardly! I have been tracking your accomplishments and House Fane could use a man like you. We are, of course, invulnerable, but agents of even marginal competence are difficult to come by.”

“You flatter me,” Callum said dryly. On the other side of the table, Lucy was rolling her eyes in an exaggerated fashion. It was all being recorded, as well. He sure didn’t intend to take Fane’s offer but the recording of Fane making the offer might cause a splash. Lucy would be sure to get it sent out on the GAR network after they were done.

“Hardly!” Fane scowled again. “You have talent, but only that. Talent is something to be harnessed or crushed. Those are your choices.”

“And what exactly do you intend to have me do?” He found it a little odd that none of the ever so generous offers had included any details on what they imagined him doing. It wasn’t hard to guess, but he’d like to hear it directly.

“What you do already,” Fane said. “Only more effectively, guided by a better hand.”

“I prefer guiding myself,” Callum said, glad that Fane had put it so bluntly. He was well convinced Fane was a bad man – in fact, the proof of the deliveries from the Department of Acquisition was enough for that – but direct threats made things easier.

“Then you’re a fool,” Fane snapped. “And you’ll pay for wasting my time.”

“I doubt it.” Callum couldn’t resist the comment. For some reason, it seemed to seriously infuriate Fane, the man’s eyes pinching nearly shut in fury.

“Not only are you a fool,” he said coldly. “You’re a fool with a deathwish. Nobody spurns House Fane.”

“Then we have nothing to discuss.” Callum did successfully resist the urge to point out that Fane’s ultimatums made him sound like a third-rate supervillain. He didn’t want Fane riled up to the point where he would, for example, use the homebond to return directly.

Callum waved a finger at Lucy and she turned off the feed to the tablet. She kept an eye on Fane while he started preparing for the assassination. The first thing to do was start his steel cube anchor sinking into Portal World Five, which he hastened along with some judicious use of gravitykinesis. Then he had to make the switch on the teleporter.

All the ones he’d seen were standardized for the most part. There were some flourishes on some of the ancillary enchantments, but the core telepad was identical. All he needed to do to change out the core was open a portal underneath it, unscrew the existing core and slot in his ringer. They didn’t even use proprietary screws or anything, so they made great subjects for his temporary cleanup enchantment.

“Alright, he’s leaving — aaaand, invisible. Glamour up I guess.” Callum nodded. His ability to pierce glamours didn’t extend to recordings, where the altered reality had been dutifully recorded and reproduced.

“Great.” Callum performed the switch, putting the old core on the table. Though he was pretty sure it wouldn’t take much thought for anyone to figure out what had happened, he still wore gloves to avoid fingerprints or anything like that. Then he dismissed the portal, focusing back on the still-sinking cube and driving it further downward.

He was jittery, even though the plan itself was incredibly simple and almost entirely risk-free. Even if it failed, they’d not be much worse off. It didn’t help that once he stopped shoving the steel cube downward, big shifts of vis and mana brushed by the edges of his perceptions, like sharks circling just out of sight. He knew he wasn’t in any real danger, but it was still disconcerting.

The minutes waiting for Fane to get to the teleporter stretched. It seemed to take forever, broken only by Lucy drumming on the tabletop. He didn’t speak, and she didn’t either, the two of them just waiting in silence.

When Fane’s adamant bubble showed up on the very edge of Callum’s perceptions, he scrambled into action. The receiver plate for the ringer teleport core went over into Portal World Five, but he couldn’t just leave it. The spatial differences meant he’d have to help the teleport framework form. Then he watched intently, reaching out to the spatial core he’d pilfered from the teleporter.

In order to keep the ancillary enchantments, the security and safety ones that surrounded the actual telepad, from sound any kind of alarm, he had to charge the original core. That way its matching receiver on the other end registered as being in use, and it would trigger properly to send Fane on his way. Only, it was Callum’s core inside the teleporter, and where it would send Fane was not a GAR facility.

Over the next few seconds the enchantment structures unfolded and stabilized. Callum had to give the receiver plate in Portal World Five extra juice, since the normal mana intakes didn’t work quite right. He even tweaked the framework directly, though that wasn’t something that would last. Not that it needed to. It just had to work once.

The teleport frames locked into place and Callum pulled his anchor cube back, leaving the teleport plate behind in the portal world. He really would have liked to know that the plan worked, but there was no way he was leaving any link to his vis where Fane might think he was under attack. He very much took Shahey’s warning seriously; a casual discharge from Fane would probably kill him.

Fane’s bubble vanished from the teleporter, and Callum stopped feeding the original core, the deception complete. He quickly opened another portal to swap the cores, not overly worried about the mages inside the teleportation office. The maintenance room was thoroughly screened from them, and none of them had shown any signs of restiveness. A few seconds later the original was back in place, and he began the process of retrieving their surveillance boxes. That was a chore, but no matter what happened he didn’t want them discovered.

Now they had to wait and see if it worked.

***

Archmage Fane simmered. The sheer gall of Wells to snub him so! Clearly he’d vastly overestimated the man’s intelligence. While his actions had demonstrated some form of competence, whoever handled him had to be doing the thinking. No sane person would insult House Fane the way Wells had, let alone the Archmage that led it.

He would remove Tanner from the map for such a thing, to start. The fact that it was part of the dragonblooded’s suspicious projects was a bonus, but he wouldn’t have committed the resources to such a thing before. Now, it was required. He couldn’t let such an insult pass.

Punishing Wells himself would be harder, but Fane was sure it could be done. The man was just as foolishly emotional as Fane had thought, so even with all his pathetic little technology trickery it would be possible to draw him out. Then any of Fane’s apprentices could incapacitate the man. Healing magic, chi and gu, was ultimately the most powerful. It hardly mattered that he couldn’t manipulate wind or water when he could control those who could.

Such as the Guild of Enchanting which had provided the foci he used to fly from the resort to the teleporter. He preferred having his servants around to ease the annoyances of everyday life, but an Archmage in public was a lone power, and needed no help. It would hardly do for Patriarch Fane to look weak.

His local teleporter was far nicer than the often completely utilitarian versions that the barbarians over in America used. Still, he barely noticed the silks as he strode up to the pad and activated it. Unlike other mages, Archmages could attune their shells properly, since it was no longer being restrained by the limits of the body. Archmages didn’t wear those ridiculous, intrusive magical tattoos.

The teleport snapped and his shields reacted immediately, the world going black around him. A sudden burst of portal world mana flowed through him, pressing in against his shields as they held back something, fairly screaming from a force that he couldn’t see.

Fane was not a man to panic easily. He would have been dead long ago if that were true. Yet there was still a brief instant of shock at the effrontery of daring to attack him, one he conquered by blasting outward with gu to sense and kill anything around him. Even as his magic gave him hints of something incredibly large, now dead, he started charging the gold homebond ring on his finger.

Yet, it didn’t want to take. The magic was there, but it struggled, and Fane cursed the crude and unreliable artifice of that Duvall creature. He’d tested it before but she had probably given him a defective homebond, to judge by how poorly it was working. Even his prodigious magics were having difficulty keeping him safe from whatever was around him, whatever travesty of a reality the portal world was, but surely he could hold out long enough for the ring to charge.

Surely.

A massive rumbling came from something in the black depths, the roar of some enormous creature vibrating against his shields. He tried to force more vis into the ring, but it was a thing of space, not of healing, and his shields shook as something big closed around him.

His vis pulse showed teeth the size of houses closing down, and he hurled out more Gu. The thing was dead instantly, but the teeth collapsed on him, adding their pressure to that of the surroundings, one mountain added to another. His shell cracked, shivered, then shattered. Water with enough pressure to powder rocks crashed in.

In the end, even the great Archmage Fane couldn’t withstand the crushing depths of Portal World Five.

Chapter 10 - Cracks

“I really don’t care,” Archmage Hargrave told the House Fane flunky who was blocking his path into the House proper. He wasn’t well disposed toward House Fane on the best of days, and even less so now. Some of them had been sniffing around his House grounds and it had been a pleasure to send them whimpering home to their master.

Minus a few of their number. There were consequences for trespassing, and it would do to remind House Fane that not everyone was cowed by their wealth and near-monopoly on healers. Open conflict between their Houses was hardly likely from such a minor clash, especially due to the video he’d been shown.

“It doesn’t matter what the Archmage is doing. He has a lot to answer for,” Hargrave continued. It seemed every House had received an email from someone inside House Fane with a recording of the Archmage trying to recruit Callum Wells. Which wasn’t necessarily a bad idea, but Fane obviously didn’t realize both that he was being filmed and that Wells was not amenable to pressure.

Hargrave hadn’t thought of such things himself, and had been forced to have the House swept for listening devices. They had even found a few, though after some very pointed inquiry he’d found it was all internal. Just younger mages trying to get one over on each other. He’d stopped that quickly enough, and handed down mandates to make sure his people kept an eye out for any new surveillance.

It wasn’t comfortable, but there was obvious value to what mundane craft could accomplish. Thanks to the video it hadn’t taken more than a few hours to put together a coalition to hold Fane to account. Hargrave wasn’t exactly the most interested in the inter-House politics but this was so blatant that even he couldn’t ignore it. Besides which, he’d never turn down an opportunity to turn the screws on Fane.

“I will inform Master Chen,” the House Fane man conceded, withdrawing from the vestibule. Hargrave didn’t much like being in House Fane, but their greatest power – their negative healing – wasn’t a threat to him, nor was it a threat to Archmages Janry and Elroe at his back. Hargrave glanced back at them and snorted, swaggering forward out of the vestibule into the main room.

House Fane was excessively luxurious, to the point of being garish. Not just silk and gold, but polished banic filigree carrying protective enchantments and wards. Hargrave didn’t exactly hate his luxuries, but there was a big difference between comfort and whatever Fane was doing.

“I say give him ten minutes and then we just start smashing,” Archmage Elroe muttered. Hargrave raised an eyebrow, irked by the implied instruction. It wasn’t like Elroe would do any smashing, since his aspect was fire and he’d just melt everything. It was Hargrave and, especially, Janry who would do the smashing with force and earth. Even the best shielding wards couldn’t stand up to Archmage strength.

Between the three of them, they represented more than enough power to deal with whatever nonsense Fane wanted to put forth. Not that Hargrave expected all that much trouble, at least not physically. Fane was more than slippery and underhanded politically, but Hargrave wasn’t going to give him a chance to weasel out of this.

“Apologies, Archmages,” said an obsequious-looking man, pencil thin and slightly greasy, hurrying up to them. “I am afraid there is a problem. We…” He trailed off and licked his lips. “We don’t know where Archmage Fane is.”

“What the devil do you mean?” Hargrave demanded. “Is he in hiding?”

“No, Archmage,” the man said. “He never returned from Beijing. He went through the teleporter there but didn’t return to the House.”

A faint alarm rang in Hargrave’s mind. He didn’t know Fane well, not personally, only as much as he needed to thoroughly detest his fellow Archmage. But he knew enough to realize that simply vanishing to who-knew-where was not something Fane would do. That it occurred directly after his discussion with Wells was beyond suspicious.

“If you’re covering for him, there will be consequences,” Hargrave said, flexing his force armor just a touch. The lackey went white-faced and started babbling.

“No! One would never give such an insult to such an illustrious person as yourself. We have no idea where our Patriarch is! The House has been in an uproar, he has been missing for almost a day⁠—” Hargrave stopped listening, turning right around.

“The hell is he playing at?” Janry muttered. Elroe was quicker on the uptake.

“That bastard. This changes things. No idea how he did it, but considering what happened to everyone else that’s dealt with Wells⁠—" Elroe cut himself off. “We have to check with the China GAR branch. Maybe they know something.” Hargrave nodded agreement. Considering that China had only the Fanes and their cadet Houses, that would require some flexing of authority, but he wasn’t worried about that. He was worried about what they might find.

Or rather, he was looking forward to it.

He marched over to the teleporter and ripped out all the framing to expose the enchantments, ignoring the protests of the House Fane man. It looked fine, but there was only one way to test it. Maybe it wasn’t necessary, but he had a sudden suspicion.

“You, teleport to the China GAR branch and back,” he ordered the House Fane man. The idiot gawped at him, but considering that it was Hargrave he hurried to obey after a few moments. Only after he returned did Hargrave go through the teleporter himself, floating up and into the switchboard balcony the moment he was on the other side. His companions were only a few seconds behind him, and knew enough to go start securing the higher-level personnel before they could rabbit. Hargrave could see Janry’s vis flickering out as he secured the exits.

“When did Archmage Fane come through here last?” Hargave demanded. The switchboard operators just looked at him with blank and terrified expressions, and he sighed. They probably didn’t speak English. This was going to take longer than he wanted.

After several hours, they did finally get the answers they wanted, though most of that time was spent dealing with language issues. Records were gone through and times compared, though in a way they need not have bothered. Everyone agreed that Fane had gone to Beijing, but hadn’t returned from it.

He’d disappeared between one teleport and the next.

That changed everything. Wells was more a threat to legitimacy than to actual people, or at least he had been. A danger that would pass the moment he was stopped. Killing Archmage Fane brought him into another realm entirely, and Hargrave had no idea how the powers of the supernatural world would react. Some would lend their own agents to help GAR scour the world for him, but others wouldn’t care at all. Houses with no holdings on Earth were completely distant from Wells’ activities, so to them he was very much someone else’s problem.

No matter what others thought though, Wells was now a real threat to real people. More, he was a threat by way of the very tools the entirety of supernatural society relied on. This had pulled back the veil on a very ugly door indeed.

“This is an issue for Duvall,” Hargrave said. “In fact, if Wells can suborn the teleportation system, Duvall certainly can. I don’t know about you gentlemen, but I am rather leery of stepping into one of these transporters now that we know what can be done.” There was very little that could threaten him, but that didn’t mean there was nothing.

It was well worth remembering that they had not fully plumbed the depths of the portal worlds, and the powers that the greatest of the fae held could rival what an archmage could do. So far Wells had attacked from unconventional vectors, and Hargrave didn’t want to get blindsided again. Elroe nodded grimly, and even the perpetually sleepy and bored Janry looked more alert.

“We’ll fly,” Elroe said, and Janry shrugged.

“I’ll just go by ground,” he said. Nobody but Janry liked the frankly claustrophobic confines of his earth vessel, despite the fact that it could shoot almost completely straight to any point on Earth. Assuming Janry’s aim was good, anyway.

“We’ll meet you by Portal World One,” Hargrave confirmed. “Then we’ll pry some answers out of Duvall.” It really didn’t matter how much Duvall threatened to restrict the teleportation network. Not when the network itself could no longer be trusted.

***

“This is really blowing up, big man,” Lucy said, wide-eyed as she looked at her laptop screen. “It’s like, practically war. I’m only seeing the low-level chatter and people are fighting and clawing about House Fane and the teleporters.”

“Definitely a good time to keep our heads down.” Callum was actually feeling a little weird about what they’d pulled off. Taking out the person pointing the gun at you was one thing; taking out the person giving the orders to the person pointing the gun at you was another. Better, and worse, simultaneously.

Lucy seemed to be taking it okay. She had been at least as incensed by Fane’s casual threats as he had, that same gut-level emotional boiling, and he knew how destructive that could be even after doing something about it. Drinking worked, sometimes, but that was a bad habit he didn’t want to start so he had given her some quiet advice about channeling it into something productive.

After all, there was still more to do: he wanted Lucy to investigate the Department of Acquisitions and the fae king that had laid that geas on her, Ravaeb. The former was obviously evil and the latter probably had more sins to his name if he was willing to do something as nasty as the geas, but he didn’t want to move without more information.

They needed a break, too. Everything had been work, work, work for weeks, so while he wasn’t going to rest on his laurels he wasn’t going make any immediate plans. There was plenty enough to do just with practicing his magic, reading through whatever Lucy pilfered from the magical internet, and trying to catch up on sleep.

There was also upkeep to do on the bunker. A little more gold to pay Miguel, and some yelling to do at people putting together substandard plumbing. He rather wished he’d had his perceptive sphere when he was doing architecture. Not that he was ever a supervisor or anything, but when doing walkarounds it would have been nice to spot some of the problems before they started. In a way it wasn’t like any of the buildings were his responsibility after the plans went through, but at the same time there was a certain amount of pride in workmanship.

“If you’d had it before, you probably wouldn’t have gone into architecture,” Lucy pointed out. “You’d do, like, prospecting or treasure-hunting. Pull gold right out of the ground.”

“I’ve thought about that, but most ore is just, you know, rock. You have to treat it with stuff and I can’t really tell one rock from another.” Callum shook his head. “Treasure hunting, well, maybe. Even with my range though there’s an awful lot of land to try and inspect.”

“Better than a metal detector,” Lucy observed. “Besides, wouldn’t it be super cool to dig up some old gold coins from somewhere?”

“It actually would be,” Callum admitted. “I just don’t know where to look.”

“You know there’s plenty of shipwrecks and things nobody’s scavenged ‘cause they’re deep and it’s the middle of nowhere so it’s not worth it. But your little portal anchor thing means you could just snatch anything you wanted.”

“Huh,” Callum said. “I didn’t know that.”

“Aw, c’mon. You never dreamed of digging up pirate treasure when you were a kid?” Lucy pouted at him. “I grew up in a mage House and I still wanted to be a pirate!” Callum laughed.

“Okay, you’ve convinced me. We can go treasure-hunting. Considering we have no current income, that’d actually be fantastic, assuming we can move it.”

“Ask Chester,” Lucy suggested. “Like, collectors want to know where it came from, and I bet he can get together a diving team for cover.”

“And it’s all normal money, nothing supernatural about it,” Callum mused. “Nobody would be looking for it, and there’s plenty of ways that we could get access to the proceeds. I like it.”

“That’s why you keep me around,” Lucy said in a singsong voice.

“If you’ll find the places you want to go treasure-hunting, I’ll run it by Chester.”

“They’re mostly out in the middle of the ocean, but some are around the Caribbean,” Lucy hinted.

“Sure,” Callum agreed. “Let’s hit the beach.”

It was easier said than done, but Chester was more than amenable to assembling a front for them. Callum really disliked how dependent on Chester he was becoming, though he could have liquidated his finds on his own. It was just faster, easier, and honestly safer to do it through the shifter’s contacts.

“Now, I’m the Midwest Alpha, not the beach Alpha, so my personal expertise on this isn’t great. But I have a team based out of Oklahoma that’s willing to take the credit. They’ve got a sub drone so you can get pictures to verify the wreck you’re salvaging.”

“That works for me,” Callum said. That meant they could really only salvage one location, since it’d be incredibly suspect for some diving team to salvage multiple ones in close succession. He didn’t even know what the best prospects were. Sure, there might be ships loaded with gold or silver that had sunk, but there were plenty of historical artifacts that were worth just as much to the right collectors.

He was glad Lucy had brought it up, because he’d gotten as far as realizing he couldn’t distinguish ore from other rock and how big the world was, and more or less written off the idea of cheating out hidden resources. In hindsight it was obvious, but he wouldn’t have thought of it himself. At least not anytime soon.

The drone portal setup meant he didn’t have to worry about hitching discreet rides on airplanes anymore, for which he was glad. It also practically invalidated the van, except he still liked having bulletproof surroundings if he was wandering around somewhere. While he could just teleport from place to place, or even make portals for himself and Lucy, that required a lot more finesse than just driving like a normal person. He had to teleport out of sight, but nobody thought twice about a van.

Unfortunately the van would have been out of place in Barbados, but neither he nor Lucy were. Tourists were all-season, and merely walking the beach was an ordinary activity. Well, Lucy did most of the beach walking. With his bum knee and his cane there was only so much sand he could take, but he kept himself active in other ways. With the injury and being holed up as he’d been, there were some excess pounds to work off.

He felt a little odd to be off enjoying himself with Lucy, hundreds of miles from where there was a lot of supernatural drama happening. Drama that he’d directly caused. But it was for the best. He couldn’t keep up with everything that was happening to begin with, and trying would only create more stress and he’d probably do something stupid.

Callum really needed a vacation.

***

“They were here for me?” Gayle reflexively reached for the focus band around her wrist. After her run-in with Mister Wells at Garrison Two she’d gotten with her mother and started practicing with her defenses more seriously. If she’d had proper reactive shields and more advanced offensive options she might have been able to do more, even if Wells hadn’t actually been a true threat to her.

The sumptuous surroundings of House Hargrave made her practice seem maybe a little quaint, but that had never stopped her mother. Or her father. Or her grandfather. The least she could do was follow in their footsteps.

“It seems House Fane doesn’t want to take no for an answer.” Her father shrugged, leaning back in his armchair. They were in her father’s den, where he conducted real business, a place she’d been forbidden as a child. Now he was treating her as a full adult, and it was profoundly satisfying. “We already knew that, though, so it’s not much of a surprise.”

“Even though House Fane is, well. In trouble?”

“A House is more than its Archmage. True, House Fane’s power was mostly in Archmage Fane, but it still has the wealth, the contacts, all of that. They still want you under their control.” He sighed. “Normally GAR would have something to say about that, but under the circumstances? They’re not saying anything.”

“What circumstances?” Gayle shook her head. “I mean, there’s so much going on, what specifically is it?” Before her argument with Wells, she would have guessed they were simply overstretched dealing with something that hadn’t happened for over a century: the death of an Archmage.

Now she had a few doubts. That maybe her grandfather’s defiance of the GAR requirements – requirements that she’d also found a little objectionable – was the real reason. That maybe House Hargrave was being left on its own as a punishment.

She didn’t want to believe that, but her faith in the simple and straightforward world presented by The Academy had been shaken by the events of the past year. There might be good reasons to break GAR’s proscriptions other than selfish malevolence, and there might be reasons for GAR’s laws other than the good of all mages. Not that she had been quite so naïve before, but GAR had always seemed to work pretty well.

“GAR’s charter was originally from the Archmages. So the Archmages could focus on their own work and their own Houses without either coming to blows or being pestered all the time. With all that’s going on, well. GAR isn’t interested in helping out a House that’s not well disposed toward it. Especially not when they are having issues with their own relevance.”

“Who makes that sort of decision?” Gayle asked, her nose wrinkling. “Who’s sitting there going, ‘oh, Hargrave’s being annoying, don’t help them?’”

“You’d be surprised.” Her father suddenly grinned wide. “House Hargrave made a lot of enemies breaking with the old Houses when we moved to America. Rebels like us always have enemies among the old guard.”

“You’re a rebel?” Gayle asked in disbelief. “You work for GAR!”

“Maybe not anymore,” he said, the grin fading. “We’re all on indefinite leave thanks to everything going on. Portal World research isn’t all that important in an emergency, and Archmage Hargrave hasn’t had a chance to try and get it reinstated.”

“So how much of what I was told about GAR was a lie?” Gayle mused. “It’s certainly more partial than it’s supposed to be. All that was supposed to be behind us.” She’d learned about the Silent War, and the struggles between the mage Houses before GAR had been established. The grudges created back then still existed, since most of the mages involved were still around, but they were supposed to be buried.

“I don’t think there were very many lies, really. But a lot was probably left out, and I admit it’s more fragile than I thought.” He pursed his lips, looking out the window of the drawing room. Gayle followed his gaze, seeing the flare of the full alert warding out at the edge of the property. They weren’t quite in fortress mode, but they weren’t far from it either.

“I think we’re going to have to prepare for all-out war again. Though with Archmage Fane gone, we are in a far better position than we might have been. Fane was one of the only people Harold needed to worry about. I hope it doesn’t come to that, but it might.”

“I wish Mister Wells hadn’t started all this,” Gayle said, but she couldn’t help think about the arguments he had made. That they wouldn’t leave him alone. Of how everything he’d done was to defend people. She wasn’t sure she entirely believed that, but none of the official story really contradicted him. If that were true, how long would it have been until someone started breaking things?

“You can wish in one hand so long as you do something in the other,” her father said. “We need to start making long term plans. You’re one of the few healers that isn’t part of House Fane, so if things start falling apart a lot of people are going to need you.”

“Oh! Of course.” Gayle nodded firmly, glad to have something concrete to consider. Something that she actually wanted to do. “You think House Fane won’t let their healers help people?”

“I’m not sure House Fane is going to exist soon enough,” he admitted bluntly. “They made a lot of enemies, and without an Archmage to protect them, nothing GAR says is really going to matter much. There aren’t even any other supernaturals who’d be on their side.”

“What about us?” Gayle asked, suddenly worried. “We don’t have to worry about Jameson or anything, do we?” Their shifter butler had been with him since before Gayle was even born, and she hated the idea of mistrusting him for any reason.

“No, fortunately. We’re on good terms with our neighbors, because we still actually live here. A lot of the Houses in the Portal Worlds, though, they only have support of one of the other races.”

“Alright,” she said. “Family meeting?”

“Family meeting,” he agreed.

***

Ray hadn’t dealt directly with any dragonblooded in the past. There weren’t many around, and they actually didn’t get into too much trouble. When they did get into trouble, it usually required Archmages to intervene. He was only vaguely aware of why they were allowed to stay, but he was pretty sure the unofficial reason was bribery.

Scaletooth – or Shahey, as he styled himself – received them in a basement underneath Tanner that would make Midas himself sweat. Everything, from the carpet to cups and bowls to the beverages on the walls, was as mana-dense as any bane material. He wouldn’t have imagined that level of opulence existed from the outside, since there was no indication of it when arriving in Tanner.

Clearly they were in over their pay grade, and he was beginning to regret pulling the strings he had to get himself and Felicia assigned to interview Shahey. Properly speaking, Wells wasn’t their business, and there wasn’t exactly a case. But Felicia had wanted to go, and it was hard to say no to her when she used that particular pleading tone even if he was immune to her magic.

“Thank you for agreeing to speak to us,” Ray said politely, settling into a chair that was worth probably as much as his glider. Maybe more. “I admit I was surprised that you reported the incident yourself.” Someone had to have known Fane was messing about in Tanner, trying to get ahold of Wells, but apparently it hadn’t been done through proper channels. Which had resulted in a number of dead mages.

They were all House Fane’s, so there was nobody to really press any sort of complaint under the circumstances. But there had to be some accounting for it, even if it was just to write them off as being incredibly stupid. It was not a good idea to engage a dragonblooded in his own territory. What Ray and Felicia were mostly interested in was whether Shahey really was connected with Wells.

“I suspect if I hadn’t, nobody would have noticed,” Shahey told them, relaxed and at ease. While the dragonblooded was not overly large, he was extremely well muscled with sharp, intelligent eyes. In the privacy of the basement he had dispensed with his glamour, revealing polished scales that gleamed in the light. It wasn’t too hard to imagine him outflanking a bunch of mages who were looking to start trouble. “They weren’t supposed to be here, and with Fane gone, who would even know?”

“A fair point,” Ray conceded, sharing a sidelong glance with Felicia. “I suppose I should start with asking whether or not you had contact with Wells during this incident.”

“I did,” Shahey admitted easily, which was a bit of a surprise. There were consequences for dealing with someone like Wells, though only if GAR could apply them. Or possibly the Guild of Enchanting, if they were so inclined. Either of which was far from certain at the moment. “He asked me to take care of the mages here in case they decided to get restive. It is, after all, his hometown.”

“True enough,” Ray said. “Do you have any insight on what exactly happened to Archmage Fane?”

“Callum didn’t tell me what he was doing, only that he might be taking care of Fane. Certainly, I had no objections.” Shahey smiled, wide and toothy. It was not a human smile, and there was no humor in it. The disagreement between the dragonblooded and House Fane was an old thing, but nobody really paid it any mind since it mostly came down to a spat now and then. At most they needed a few glamours and maybe a compulsion to deal with the fallout.

“Are the dragonblooded taking sides between GAR and Wells?” Ray asked. It was a blunt and leading question, but it had to be asked. The dragonblooded didn’t much like dancing around, as far as he’d been told, and a solid no would relieve both his mind and that of others. A solid yes would certainly relieve nobody’s mind, but would clarify matters.

“We don’t take sides,” Shahey demurred. “Your internal affairs are internal, and we will only act in proper defense of territory. You should know this; our agreements are hardly secret.”

“Some would say that dealing with Wells at all is taking sides,” Ray pointed out. Felicia shifted uncomfortably as she took down the conversation. That sort of logic was endemic in Fae circles, and didn’t tend to end well for the people on the receiving end. Ray himself didn’t believe it, but he knew how the people who would actually read his report thought.

“Everyone has a vision of how the world should work,” Shahey said. “It’s no business of mine if someone else thinks I should be doing their job. Unless they try to make me, of course.”

“I see,” Ray said. Felicia took notes. “Do you have the capability or willingness to put us in touch with Callum Wells?”

“I advise you give that one up.” Shahey shook his head. “I’m not saying you couldn’t catch Callum, because he’s only human, but I think you’re past the point where it matters. How many suppressed conflicts have flared to life with GAR preoccupied as it is? How much mischief are the fae making, and the vampires? They’re only barely bothering to conceal their spats from mortal eyes.”

“So you’re anticipating GAR’s collapse?”

“Let’s just say that change is happening, even if the destination is uncertain.” Shahey regarded the pair of them. “Some advice for the both of you. You’re still stuck on the idea that this is an investigation about Callum Wells.” He nodded in Felicia’s direction, which meant he knew about her particular issues, in fact. “It might be better to consider this an investigation into GAR, where Callum is merely one of many incidents. Unravel the causes, find the principal actors. Then decide what to do.”

“You’re suggesting GAR is at fault?” Ray asked, not entirely certain what to make of Shahey’s words. He could see the value for turning Felicia’s fae nature in a different direction, but there were more layers to it than he could pick apart at a bare glance.

“You’re smarter than that, surely,” Shahey said. “It’s not for me to proclaim who is at fault, only that it deserves a closer look than it’s being given.”

“I see.” Felicia didn’t take notes on that. “The actual incident, then — do you have the remains available to us?”

“Certainly.” Shahey stood and glanced at the wall, which dissolved. There was no hidden door or compartment; the wood paneling visibly evaporated into air. They followed him into the room beyond, with bodies on stone slabs. It was freezing, yet no cold spilled out into the main room and there was no visible circulation or even enchantments to make it so.

Ray’s mana-sight could only catch a little bit of what Shahey was doing, though clearly there was a lot of work invested in the makeshift morgue. There was a reason mages were wary of dragonblooded. In their lair they had incredible power.

The corpses appeared to have been savaged by something with claws almost a foot long, which was not much of a surprise. Ray had taken the time to familiarize himself with the few dragonblooded-mage clashes and found that they were generally settled physically rather than with an application of vis. At least, when it was settled in the dragonblooded’s favor.

Felicia stepped forward and touched an exposed hand with one finger, black veins crawling over her skin as she exercised her unique talent. Then she stepped back, glanced at him, and nodded. No surprises. She repeated the process with each corpse, writing down the names of the dead on her tablet. Once she was done she stepped back, taking a wet wipe from her pocket to clean her hand, and Ray took the tablet from her.

One of the names was Fane Sen, which made the connection between House Fane and the Tanner incident more than just hearsay. Not that Ray doubted, but there was a difference between knowing and proving. He’d get the details from Felicia later, but she would have given him a different sign if it had seemed Wells was himself involved anywhere.

“Very well, I’ll send someone by to collect them,” Ray said. He’d get the full report of the memories from Felicia later, but there really wasn’t any doubt that the mages had attacked a dragonblooded. Or at least, refused to leave a dragonblooded’s territory, which was about the same thing. “Thank you for your cooperation.”

“You’re polite,” Shahey said, ushering back out. “I appreciate that. I would more appreciate if nobody else tries to mess with my town.”

“I can’t speak for anyone else, but I’ll include that in my report,” Ray said.

“And keep in mind what I told you,” Shahey admonished them.

“We will,” Ray said, sharing a look with Felicia. They’d need to have a long talk after work when they got home.

***

King Ravaeb inclined his head ever so slightly to his latest petitioner. While it was off season, there were still enough human tourists that Yellowstone claimed the occasional victim. When it did, he would receive a gift of fine leather or carved bone in exchange for a modicum of the power he could tap from the enormous sprawl of geysers and bubbling springs.

Normally, that was all. He would not actively seek anything further, hemmed in as he was by vampires, mages, and shifters. But the vampires were gone, the mages were distracted, and shifters were grappling with the imposition of GAR. It was the perfect opportunity to push.

There were some shifter families located along the periphery of Alpha Chester’s territory that were isolated enough that they could be cut off and eliminated. Chester’s watchdogs were tiresome and overzealous, and Ravaeb could do without them. The restrictions on how obvious he could be had some logical basis, but there were too many of them and they were too stringent.

Now he had the chance to expand. To remind people of the fear they should have of the wilderness. To make sure he wouldn’t be pushed back again. He signaled his stablemaster and stood, just as the last petitioner left his halls. His nobles gathered around.

“We hunt,” he said, and they shared dagger-toothed smiles.

Chapter 11 – Vacation

Treasure hunting was actually more fun than Callum had expected. Lucy operated the sub drone to get pictures before he swept over the wreck and starting pulling stuff out. He had to admit she was right about the thrill of pulling up old valuables, though most of it was buried under sediment. Unlike the time-frozen galleons of media, a real shipwreck was mostly decayed with only bits and bobs sticking out from the ocean floor.

After consulting with Chester’s team, Callum realized that actually getting something with significant archeological value was more effort than it was worth. Those were enormous productions, with way too much documentation to properly falsify, so he had to skip some of the larger wrecks and look for something small but with a good amount of metal.

There were some small encrusted weapons, swords and a swivel gun, the iron banding of a chest collapsed around a couple pounds of silver coins, some ancient Spanish type, mixed with a few gold coins of the same era. Lucy sent the photos to the salvage team and annoyingly what they had found was not really worth all that much in the grand scheme of things. Maybe a hundred thousand, after fees and taxes and the salvage team’s cut. Not at all bad for a couple day’s work but far from the tens of millions he could theoretically pull if he really tried hard.

Of course, tens of millions would draw too much attention, so that was for the best. All things considered it was obvious why people didn’t bother with salvaging stuff like that because just finding it without the kind of perception Callum had would cost thousands in time and equipment. It cost him a couple of afternoons at the beach.

“Can we keep some of these?” Lucy asked, pouring the few gold coins from hand to hand and letting them clink against each other. The silver, on the other hand, needed to be properly polished and cleaned. “They’re just so cool!”

“I can hunt around for another wreck and just get some stuff for ourselves,” Callum said with amusement. “I think you’ve converted me. Bullion is neat, but old coins just have a certain cachet.”

“I don’t know how you ever had fun without me, big man,” Lucy said.

“I really didn’t,” Callum said. “It’s up to you to provide it from now on. I hope you’re ready for such a heavy burden.”

“I’ll do what I can,” Lucy said gravely. “But it’s an uphill battle.”

Callum had never really considered himself a beach person but the little rental house they’d found was extremely nice, as were the surroundings. Cozy, even, though it was all too tempting to sit around and do nothing. Even he felt the pull of the hammock despite his general restlessness.

On the other hand, swimming was good exercise, and it sure didn’t hurt that Lucy looked amazing in a bikini. After all the stress it was nice to actually relax. Especially since the only supernaturals he’d sensed on the whole island were what seemed to be a shifter family on vacation. The ready supply of really fresh fruit was a great luxury, the quality of the local stuff far exceeding anything Callum had eaten before.

They didn’t even have to worry about the most annoying part of a vacation: travel. With his extra portal anchor, it was incredibly easy to pop back and forth between Barbados and Texas, or really anywhere else they needed to go. Such as when the cut obsidian came back, packed in a big wooden crate with truly absurd amounts of padding. Which it needed, given the way the delivery company had manhandled the thing.

He and Lucy sat outside the rented house, and he enchanted the squares while she tested assembly and swapping them around. There wasn’t all that much ambient mana in Barbados for the enchantments to function, but that was fine for the most part. If they really wanted it, he had his gut portal, and the larger-scale testing could be done later anyway. Best to start small.

They even had plans for a size-variable portal and teleport setup, though the core would still have to be metal. He wasn’t sure how well that would work, and it wasn’t like glass was all that portable in the end, but it was still neat to have. Admittedly his ability to extend his personal sphere of influence by portal anchor was far and away more flexible, but he had limits to his ability to multitask. Automation was good. Things that let Lucy handle magic were better.

“Yeah, I can definitely feel this stuff.” Lucy waved her hand through the manifestation of mana above the tiles. It was just a small glamour, not really accomplishing anything since it merely obfuscated a small area above the actual enchantment, but it was proof of concept for a more involved assemblage of the tiles.

“Hmm, I think I can see that myself,” Callum said, focusing on it with his spatial perceptions. Lucy’s vis seemed to be deflecting the mana threads, more than just a normal material would. Or probably a normal person, but he hadn’t tested that. Even Lucy could break his little threads, but the thicker tubes could survive that kind of contact. “I wonder if you could learn to adjust the inputs?”

“Uh, maybe? I dunno, big man, it’s not like I can work up any spell forms or anything.”

“Sure, but if it’s just taking in mana, you only need to be able to activate it.” Callum put down the tile he was holding. “Which I don’t fully understand myself actually, since I’m pretty much blindly copying other people’s work. But there is a trigger, in uh. This type.” He slid across one of the tiles.

“Right, I remember these.” She traced her fingers over the fine lines raised up from the glass. “Well, I guess we can give it a try?”

Callum enchanted the trigger mechanism right then and there and slid it over to Lucy, who rearranged the tiles. The tiny glamour collapsed, and Lucy put her finger over the bit that was supposed to accept mage input, nose wrinkling as she concentrated. It was absolutely adorable.

“Give it a second to accumulate enough mana,” he told her. He could force it by shoving vis in but he didn’t want to mess up the experiment. “It’s relatively thin out here and even a small glamour takes a bit to set up.”

“Right,” Lucy muttered, but if anything her nose only wrinkled more. Callum watched closely, in case he could help, but for him the control element of focuses hooked right into his normal vis manipulation so he’d never had issues. At least Lucy had gone through the children’s primers recently so she knew how someone was supposed to start manipulating mana and vis.

After a few long minutes the glamor suddenly flicked into place and Lucy blinked. She waved her hand through it, since she couldn’t actually see the magic threads, then grinned at him. He smiled back.

“Looks like I got it, big man. It’s not easy, but there’s a kind of a thing there. Not sure I can do more than turn something on and off, though.”

“Hey, on and off is a good start,” Callum encouraged her. “Don’t sell yourself short. Means that you can turn on portals and defenses and things! That’s going to make setting up the magical part of the bunker so much easier.”

“Yeah!” Her eyes lit up as frustration turned to calculation. “Man that’s going to be so much better if I can light switch wards or shields or something. Whatever we put together. I wonder if there’s some way to just register me in?”

“I don’t have anything like that yet, but I’m sure it exists. I mean, the mage tattoo stuff has to work somehow right?”

“Oof, don’t remind me,” Lucy said, rubbing her wrist. The tattoo was mostly gone, but he knew how much it hurt to get it ripped out through teleportation, even if it was a tiny bit at a time. He didn’t like doing it any more than she did, but the thing was far too dangerous to leave in place.

“Maybe you can find me a target with some neat authorization wards I can crib from. They’ve got to have some way to attune people.” He was mostly talking to himself, but Lucy nodded along. “It can’t just be a tattoo and vis thing.”

“Some sort of token like the shifters do,” Lucy said. “All the tattoo stuff was kind of set up by House Fane, I’m pretty sure. You need a healing mage to get other vis mixed up with yours, right?” Lucy asked rhetorically. “But I know that Chester’s wards and so on all use tokens of various sorts, we can probably look at those. Wish I could get at the Enchanting Guild’s stuff though; I think they do most of the actual work.” Her words weren’t entirely organized but he agreed with the sentiment. There was a lot of knowledge out there that they just didn’t have access to.

“Aren’t they located in Faerie or something though?” After Shahey’s warning about how the denizens would know he was there, Faerie was pretty well off limits. Even a portal anchor was more of a risk than in other places because fae magic was so weird.

“Yep,” Lucy confirmed. “S’okay, though, since there’s still a bunch of House estates here on earth or in the Nightlands and Deep Wilds. I bet any one of those will have what we want.”

“Mm. I haven’t been going after the actual Houses since my issues are mostly with GAR, but I guess some unobtrusive surveillance isn’t out of the question.” House Fane was the obvious target, but they were also the ones most stirred up – though that was probably just his bias. Lucy only had access to the GAR emails, not the internal House communications, but even from that there was a lot of chaos.

There were obviously a number of grudges on a variety of sides that had broken loose. Some people had stopped coming to work, whether because of their House or to avoid opposing Houses. There were fae who had been recalled to their kingdoms or vampires to their nests. Lucy had even seen a few emails asking where someone was, like they’d vanished entirely.

So far her tap into the servers was undiscovered. She’d sent the video from Sen’s email address, spoofing his phone, and that was a dead end since Shahey had taken care of him. Or maybe not, Callum wasn’t sure what internet forensics were possible, but since everything Lucy did was completely disconnected from their physical location even a complete reveal would only be annoying at best.

For the moment they were clear, which meant for once he wasn’t just reacting to GAR’s nonsense. After Chester’s salvage crew fronted them half the theoretical take from the salvage, split evenly between him and Lucy, Callum actually paid for another few weeks at the Barbados rental house. Part of it was simply because it was very nice in Barbados and quite miserable in Texas, and it wasn’t like Lucy needed to be in Texas for wireless access. Part of it was a more pragmatic reason — any potential lead their enemies might find would point back to Texas.

Lucy had a completely different idea of what to do with her share.

“Fie on your paranoia,” she said. “If you portal them over they won’t even know where they are! You can’t just ignore your knee and hope it gets better, since we can’t get a magical healer. Especially now.”

“It’s awful difficult to argue against that,” Callum said, rubbing at the knee in question. It wasn’t terrible, but it sure wasn’t great and walking on soft sand certainly didn’t help. So while he wasn’t a fan of roping in the Connors to take a look at it, Lucy ran him out of excuses before he could even start thinking of them.

“Great, then I’ll call ‘em up and we’ll send a drone over to Florida,” Lucy said, ruthlessly forging ahead. “It’s still pretty early.”

“You think they’ll have time?” Callum asked, though he pulled the drone out from his cave-cache and started checking its charge level.

“If not now, later,” Lucy said. “Not like there’s travel time to worry about.”

“True,” Callum admitted, and Lucy pulled up her VOIP program to make the call. As it turned out, they were, in fact, pretty well free. By this point he and Lucy had enough practice with transporting the drone around through his Alcubierre gravitykinesis that shuttling it over to Florida was a simple matter.

The Connors lived in a fairly well-to-do suburb, probably attending to retirees. Even so, there was a slight edge of shabbiness to their particular house. The fence not painted as recently, the grass not cut to the same specifications. He wasn’t sure if that was due to an overabundance of work for the Connors, or the reverse. All he’d heard vaguely from Lucy was that they were having banking issues and she’d resolved them, but money flow was something else. As he well knew.

“Sure, just go out into your garage,” Lucy said, nudging Callum with her elbow. “You’re headed somewhere warm, just step through the portal.” At her prompting, he opened the portal for the Connors, and he watched two familiar faces come through.

While they certainly looked less rumpled than when he’d seen them last, they also looked to have aged somewhat. There were some new worry lines, at any rate, but Danika smiled as Lucy greeted them cheerfully. Callum leaned on his cane and waved at them as they glanced around.

“Didn’t expect to see you again,” Leo said. “Tell you what though, your girl Lucy there is a lifesaver.”

“She sure is,” Callum agreed, looking over at Lucy, who flushed slightly and ducked her head. “She mentioned you were having issues, and not of the kind I specialize in solving,” Callum added, feeling more than a little awkward. “Glad to hear that got cleared up though.”

“Well, mostly,” Danika put in. “We did lose a bunch of business from supernatural-affiliated people, which was weird. You’d think they’d have magical healing.”

“Oh?” Callum waved for them to sit down on the little porch of the rented cottage, an awning shading them from the sun. “I mean, I know you were supposed to be left alone but I didn’t think it’d go that way. Though maybe I should have guessed, with fae.”

“No offense to you, but I haven’t been much impressed by the magical world I’ve seen so far,” Danika said, taking one of the indicated seats.

“No, I’m right there with you,” Callum said dryly. “It’s how I got this bum knee in the first place.”

“A torn ACL is no joke,” Leo said, all business. He seemed to have forgiven Callum’s high-handedness in the months since they’d last met. “You should have been seeing a specialist since the very beginning. Hopefully you haven’t done permanent damage, but even so you’ve probably added in a lot of unnecessary recovery time.”

“Yep, let me take a look at it,” Danika said, picking up the small medical bag she’d brought along. Thankfully it was warm enough that Callum was wearing shorts, and he suffered himself to be poked and prodded while Lucy chatted happily with Danika. He teleported out a couple cans of soda for the Connors in the meantime, who reacted appropriately.

“Okay, your magic is really neat,” Danika said. “Maybe a little scary when you think about it but still neat.”

Lucy had no trouble talking with the Connors while Danika and Leo traded off telling him what he needed to do to fix himself up, but Callum still felt detached. It might have been because they were there to see him in a profession capacity, or that he’d spent so much time isolated, or just because their previous encounters had been so odd. But Callum was worried there was something to the assertion that mages didn’t get along with mundanes. That maybe his hindbrain recognized they didn’t have magic and that made him uncomfortable.

So he forced himself to be sociable. The Connors seemed normal enough people and Lucy liked them, which was an endorsement itself. It helped that it seemed they knew what they were about, as Leo made him go through a series of exercises and gaits.

“You probably don’t need surgery,” Leo said. “You’re lucky, but it’ll still be months of exercise before you’re back to full use.”

“If you reinjure it somehow you need to visit a hospital right away,” Danika added. “You’re not young and you won’t bounce back quickly.”

“Mages are supposed to live longer, but it really doesn’t feel that way,” Callum sighed.

“Your injury is consistent with your age, anyway,” Danika agreed.

“So while we’re here, I wanted to bring something up,” Leo said abruptly, and Callum realized that some of the awkwardness was due to whatever Leo had been chewing over. “I’m glad you got us out of there, and I don’t want to deal with those monsters ever again, but it’s not like the magic stuff has really gone away, you know?” He shared a look with Danika.

“How do you mean?” He didn’t want to deal with them being harassed, mostly because he was enjoying not having to worry about supernatural tyranny for a bit.

“Just, you know, they’re around. You see them wandering about. Well, we do, now.”

“I do know what that’s like.” Callum was pretty sure they hadn’t developed the same glamour blindness that he had, because their vis was still completely mundane. More likely, they were being excluded from the normal fae glamour, possibly as part of whatever working it was that kept them shrouded. Or maybe just because fae liked messing with people. “Are they harassing you?”

“No, not at all. They ignore us, which is the thing.” Leo still seemed to be chewing on how to say it. “It’s a hard thing walking around pretending not to notice all this stuff. We kind of want to be all the way in or out. But from what I’m hearing it’s not really possible to be all the way out.”

“Not as such,” Callum said, considering. He didn’t really blame them, since he’d lived that way for years and it was quite a strain. If they simply moved, they ran the risk of GAR or someone messing with them, unless they had protection. “The only thing I can think of would be to see if Chester needs a nurse and a physical therapist,” he said, looking at Lucy. She shrugged.

“There are places without supernaturals, but not all that many I don’t think?” He looked at Lucy.

“I’d have to check on the details, but yeah, some places of the world have less influence than others. You’d have to move though. There’s not many places in the US where you can be really free of supernaturals.”

“So beyond that, I think you’ll have to tolerate it for now,” Callum told them. “There’s politics stuff going on that might make things easier in the future. At the moment, it wouldn’t be a good idea to draw attention.”

“Fair enough,” Leo said.

They didn’t stay too much longer after that, though the whole visit ended up being a couple of hours. He sent them back through a portal and double-checked that there was no fae attention before he recalled the drone. Lucy stretched and reclined in her chair, having the good grace not to be too smug about her victory.

Aside from the new exercises he had for his knee, there was actual work to keep him occupied. Which was fortunate, because he was already starting to get listless from taking it easy. He had a tendency to be workaholic and, even if having Lucy there helped curtail it, he felt weird taking it easy for so long.

The limitations of the rental house meant he couldn’t do enchanting metalwork, not without going back to Texas, but playing with the glass tiles was another matter. The two of them built elaborate logical chains of glamour and ward, though there were certain limits. The actual library of enchantments they had was small and according to Lucy it didn’t work from a strict set of interchangeable core components the way circuits did, so it wasn’t like they could build a magical circuit board. Even the simplest magical components did unique and specific things. But they could build a glamor or even a portal that could switch between different areas pretty quickly and easily.

“I really can’t wait for the bunker to be done,” Callum said. “Can’t really install any of this stuff while the workers are still there.”

“Weird to call it a bunker. It’s just a house. A house in the middle of nowhere, but still just a house.”

“A self-sufficient house,” he reminded her.

“Yeah, and I admit your water portal thing is neat. House estates usually run off mana directly but you can’t do that with phones and computers so I like your solution better.”

“It was pretty satisfying to put together,” he admitted. “Though now that it’s getting closer to done we need to think about actual defenses. I was hoping that I’d be able to use enchanting for that but most of what I’ve found needs someone with a different kind of vis to do the work. So we’re going to need mundane options, even though glamours and such make that less than ideal.”

“Hey, you did pretty good with those vamps and such with just mundane defenses,” Lucy said.

“That was just distance and surprise, which don’t really work for a house. Plus magic can slip around mundane stuff too much for my liking.” Callum shook his head. “Anyway, wiring up security and stuff was a job for a professional, which I’m not. But maybe you can?”

“Hmm.” Lucy pursed her lips. “Normally I just do, you know, electronic security. Not security-security.”

“Yeah, and I don’t know how effective things would be against mages or whatever, but it’s better than nothing.” He shrugged, and Lucy nodded.

“Gonna need something more than deadbolts and alarms to deal with supernaturals though,” she pointed out.

“Yeah, I’ve been kind of thinking of that. I need either more bane ammunition, which I have no idea where to get and is probably expensive, or I need heavier weaponry.” Callum made a face. “Which makes me sound like some commando but I’ve seen guns do work on supernaturals, if you can hit them.”

“So, what. Hit up a military surplus?”

“Yeah, there’s all kinds of ordnance for sale all over the world if you really go looking. Normally you can’t keep that kind of stuff in your back pocket, but I don’t have that issue.”

“Oh man, I’d love to see the look on some vamp’s face when you pull out a tank,” Lucy said with a grin.

“Well I doubt we can afford a tank, but something.” The bane ammunition meant that he could deal with supernaturals like regular people, but there wasn’t much of it left and he was not exactly a marksman. His portals meant he generally didn’t need to aim physically, which was a massive cheat, and his spatial sense was far more precise than his vision. Taken together, he could adjust portal location and orientation with more finesse than he could use his hands.

Unless he was planning to snipe someone from further away than he could sense, he didn’t even need to be holding the gun. Which was good, because considering the sheer amount of talent and practice that level of marksmanship took he was never going to be an expert. Given that his particular talents eliminated the disadvantages of heavy, bulky, but powerful weapons, he could benefit from getting something large that could do real damage.

“I’ll never say no to new toys,” Lucy said with a grin. “Gimme a bit and I’ll find out where we can go to pick up some big heavy stuff.”

“It’s probably not possible to get some of that crazy new stuff I’ve seen, the automatic turrets and whatnot, but I don’t know that they’d work against supernaturals anyway,” Callum said. “But some weapons and maybe some of those whisker-laser tripwires maybe? We’ll have to see what’s available.” He was only vaguely aware of the finer points of military hardware. It wasn’t like he’d ever considered needing the stuff.

Apparently it wasn’t all that difficult to find the information, especially through some of the dark web sites Lucy had encountered in her prior life. There was even a page with pictures of all the merchandise, which meant he needed to do research. No point in getting stuff blindly.

At the same time, Callum did some local shopping. Not for guns or armor or anything of that nature, but for plants. Actually thinking about his bunker, and the fact that’d be done fairly soon, meant he needed things to go in the yard. Useful things, not decorations, so he got some young breadfruit trees in pots. He’d never even heard of the stuff before, but the equator was not like where he grew up in West Virginia.

If nothing else, needing to plant a garden would give him an excuse to play with his faux gravity more. It’d worked extremely well to hurl rocks and lava, but it would be interesting if he could use it to pull chunks of dirt out of the ground. He could thread his vis into the ground, so it seemed possible that he could make a gravity shear field and just rip chunks out easier than trying to teleport solid matter.

Really, he needed to practice more in general. There was no substitute for repetition and the only real technique he’d been getting practice with was gravitykinesis. He’d barely done anything with his home-brewed spatial expansion, for example, though he didn’t know what use it had aside from water-grenades. Which wasn’t an excuse to let it languish.

He and Lucy rented a small boat, a runabout with a tiny deck, so he could be certain any magical weirdness would be far from incidental notice, and he kept a portal open for Lucy’s wifi while he shaped vis. While he had made a little exercise routine for himself, Lucy helped by taking notes. There was a big difference between just pushing himself magically, and actually quantifying volume, duration, and speed of making various constructs. He also got a firm radius on his perceptive sphere, sitting at one thousand, nine hundred sixteen feet and some handful of inches. The edge was a little fuzzy, tapering from full detail to nothing over six or eight inches.

It was an insane amount of volume to cover, and the linear distance alone was nothing to scoff at. It was actually far enough that it took him a moment to string his vis from one edge to the other, even when there was nothing obstructing him. While there was no such thing as too much range, he was probably near the point of diminishing returns, especially since there was certainly a maximum volume he could reasonably view.

While he played with vis he also practiced shrinking his perceptive sphere, trying to get more accurate with reducing his maximum range. Turning it off was easy, and pulling it back to about half was not hard, but trying to set it to a specific distance was nearly impossible. At least, for the moment. He had no idea if trying to achieve finesse there would lead to improvements elsewhere, but it was worth trying while he was working on everything else.

That everything else included trying to get a start on cross-world portals. Not that he had even the slightest idea what made the portal world portals themselves capable of that, but he’d seen them so he could start trying to assemble something similar. It probably wouldn’t work, but he might get hints.

“I swear, this looks like some scene from some cheesy action movie’s training montage,” Lucy said, amused.

“I suppose it is a little silly,” Callum admitted. He was doing pushups while holding several blobs of seawater with gravitykinesis. It was partly to help with multitasking, though he was doing fairly well on that front anyway, and partly because he had to do some exercising when he was out on the boat. He’d already done the knee therapy for the day so it was upper body time anyhow.

“I didn’t say to stop,” Lucy said, her voice sly. Callum snorted and continued the exercises. He even badgered her into joining, since it was better to start good habits whenever possible. Lucy made faces but eventually succumbed.

It took another week or so for Lucy to figure out exactly where and how they would be getting their weaponry, which was not some awful black-market bunker full of toughs as Callum had imagined. It was just an open-air display out somewhere in eastern Europe with quite a few people wandering around. Even with that, Callum kept the glamour up while they were there, since he hardly trusted people shopping for heavy ordnance. He didn’t even drop it as such, just expanded it to include the salesman when they wanted to get something.

Fortunately for him, everyone there was fine with the currency he had, which made the transactions simple. They didn’t get anything as absurd as explosives, because there was no way he’d be able to handle those without blowing himself up, but they did get a wide variety perimeter sensors and an antimaterial rifle. The last was hilariously expensive, as was the incendiary-explosive ammunition that went with it, but he’d seen how tough supernaturals were.

He also, after consideration, got a number of tear gas cannisters. Since supernatural senses were stronger than human ones, the stuff might well work better on them. Or not, since they might be less susceptible to the irritants. Either way, they were less dangerous than explosives and he could probably use them to good effect.

Lucy got a pistol and rifle of her very own, though it’d take some practice for her to be comfortable with them. While he still had a bunch of weaponry he’d confiscated from the vamps, most of it was just too large for her frame. She could use it, but since they were there he figured it was worthwhile for her to get something she really liked.

Rearmed and refreshed, they only needed to wait for the bunker house to be done, which was still weeks away thanks to weather delaying some of the construction. In the meantime they’d be looking more at what was going on with GAR and what the two of them needed to address. He would not at all be surprised to find that GAR’s floundering and flailing had revealed more problems, beyond things like Ravaeb and the Department of Acquisition, but there was only so much he could do.

One thing at a time.

Chapter 12 – Evidence

Constance Earl was not happy. Normally her job was straightforward enough, though it took a lot of attention to detail. Managing the interactions between the mundane world and the real one took a bit of finesse, and nobody really appreciated the light touch it took to keep the work to a minimum.

She sat at her desk, but she wasn’t working, she was thinking. There were papers stacked on the broad expanse of dark, polished wood, but she paid them far less mind than the needlepoint she’d taken from the basket she kept under the window behind her. It was something she’d learned as a girl and she still felt it helped keep her fingers busy while her mind worked. Plus she could work out her frustrations by stabbing something with a needle. Frustrations like how people did not appreciate the work she did.

Nobody was afraid of mundanes, but the sheer amount of effort it took to clean up after the more injudicious members of the supernatural community could very quickly spiral out of control. One incident led to another, mundanes sent in more personnel and became more suspicious, more mages or even fae or vampires were required to suppress it, and it could very quickly become an enormous mess. Like the incident with the BSE team chasing Wells, not even that long ago.

The current upheaval was making things a lot more difficult. Not only had her two best sources of additional resources been flat-out killed, but GAR and BSE had curtailed the number of people she could send to deal with things. Not to mention that the flow into her personal and House coffers was at its lowest ebb in decades.

That thought made her accidentally bend her needle in annoyance and she made a face as she got out a new one and threaded it. She was making a decoration for her grand-niece’s room, so maybe it wasn’t completely appropriate to work on it while she was annoyed, but she wanted to get it done on time. Which she wouldn’t if she kept destroying needles out of personal pique.

Not only was her income suffering, but her own House had limited the number of people she could call on. There had been some clashes between House estates over in Faerie, and even a few disappearances in the Deep Wilds and Nightlands — nobody she knew personally, but it was enough to make her House draw up their defenses. Nor was her House the only one, leaving GAR with an almost skeleton crew in some aspects and loading more work onto the Bureau of Secret Enforcement.

Even that was a problem because Taisen was missing, and if anyone knew where he was, they weren’t telling. His subordinates normally ran things anyway, but the House Fane sorts were at odds with the ones loyal to Taisen, and with both their masters gone it was a lot of squabbling. All of which meant GAR was barely functional when it came to enforcing its rules.

Rules such as those imposed by the Department of Acquisition. Constance lowered the needlework long enough scowl at the stack of reports on her desk. She was pretty sure that some of the vampire nests and fae enclaves were taking advantage and going over their allowed limits without checking with her first. She was the final word on what was appropriate, and there was always room for negotiation, but she did not appreciate people violating her dictates. Especially when she couldn’t hold them all to account.

Which wasn’t to say she was helpless to enforce her policies. In fact, it might be easier once she called in the right favors and set up the right channels. The preoccupation of the larger Houses could be made to work for her, too. They were so focused on themselves and their old enemies that they’d hardly notice what was going on outside them.

Her telekinesis focus had long been an extension of her mind, and she preferred her magic to her flesh, anyway. Healing magic was fine so far as it went, but perfection could only be found in magic. She would be glad when she finished her shell and had completely freed her power from mundane clay.

She used that telekinesis to shuffle through the reports, riffling through dozens of pages at once and sorting them out on her massive desk. After she found what she wanted, she lofted three different pens to start assigning penalties. The Guevara and Lorentz nests had been the most uncooperative – and the nearby fae enclave didn’t like them besides – so they were the easiest ones to deal with.

She would have called that enclave’s Prince, who went by Sirrelan, but he was the kind of fae that eschewed modern conveniences, so she was forced to send a handwritten note by messenger instead. It wasn’t a long note, but it didn’t need to be. All it really needed to contain was a brief explanation of what the enclosed documents meant. Generally the internal correspondence of the Department of Acquisition wasn’t meant for outside eyes, but in this case it was the entire point.

If GAR itself wasn’t moving against the people who were thumbing their noses at the Department, then someone else would. After all, technically they were all part of GAR. Deputizing them was no overstretch of her authority. That would trim the sails of the vampires well enough, and best of all Sirrelan would owe her another favor for letting him go on a hunt and add a few vampire heads to his mantel. Six or seven, by her judgement.

Then there were her contacts over in Faerie proper, the Old Fae that had a monopoly on corite and had a very limited list of what they exchanged it for. Their support was contingent on a steady supply of living bodies, though they weren’t picky about race. Vampires, humans, shifters, or even other fae. Constance had no idea how they kept the other races alive in Faerie and didn’t much care, but the current crisis might be a good opportunity to secure more corite.

The fae weren’t the only ones to receive her attention. She stayed away from the principal actors in the ongoing crisis, the American Midwest shifters, because there were already too many people involved, but there were plenty of others who had snubbed her. Recently or in the past. A few shifter packs in Spain, a fae enclave in the Netherlands. A moderate number of deaths at the hands of their neighbors should remind people to stay in line, and she’d acquire goodwill and debts from the people she’d empowered to act for her.

On such small and friendly favors did the world run.

Constance focused back on her needlepoint, now more relaxed that she’d decided what to do. A small smile crossed her lips as she unspooled a new color of thread. It hadn’t even been that difficult, in the end, to address the problems facing her. No more difficult than the needlepoint.

***

Alpha Chester slid to the side, claws flashing out to grip and throw Roy. The attempt to close was laudable, though a grapple wouldn’t go well even for one of the best of his Wolfpack. Though with John helping his brother in the spar, even a momentary loss of freedom could be a problem.

Half the reason for the spar was to work off his frustration. Chester did not enjoy the scavengers nibbling at the edges of his pack, but the fact that it was merely scavengers and merely nibbling showed that GAR lacked the will to do more. To some extent, they also lacked the ability, now. He was well aware of how much they relied – had relied – on Fane and his command of offensive healers for force supremacy.

There was also the sudden and severe shortage of personnel. The Houses were withdrawing into themselves, old alliances and rivalries coming back into focus as Fane’s death continued to send ripples through the supernatural world. There was a sudden sense of vulnerability from the death of that foul old titan Fane, and none of them liked it.

Of all of them, House Hargrave showed the most distance from GAR. Something that pleased Chester, as Archmage Hargrave was one of the few Archmages that was both militant and good enough at it that Chester couldn’t possibly subdue him. Other Archmages could wreak enormous amounts of devastation, especially Janry and Kolar with their Earth aspects, but were less inclined toward combat. It was well worth his time to consider approaching Hargrave, if carefully, to work out some understanding outside of GAR.

John wheezed as Chester’s foot caught him in the stomach, sending him flying into the steel-reinforced wall with a meaty thud. That forced him backward just long enough for Roy to smash into his side, but Chester spun with the impact, metal squealing underfoot as his claws dug in, and hammered Roy with an elbow. He was glad to see he hadn’t quite lost his touch, even if he was doing more administration than fighting these days.

He would need both those talents if he was going to deal with everything coming their way. GAR was hardly going to protect them even and especially with its reduced manpower, since Chester had all but declared independence from the governing body, but that meant he was more free to send his Wolfpack around to troubleshoot. Mostly by shooting trouble.

Ravaeb’s fae were the largest source of that for the moment. He could deal with petty fines and legal proceedings, which were slow and easily deflected if there weren’t real teeth behind them, but actual attacks were something else. Chester had known that Ravaeb had a cruel streak to him but he hadn’t realized how much the fae had been constrained by GAR.

It was obvious, now, what sort of story drove Ravaeb. Winter winds had brought wendigo sweeping down from the north, leaving paths of rot through shifter lands. Entire households had been reduced to rotting bone before he’d pulled his people back, closer to where more powerful members of his pack could protect them. His Wolfpack had destroyed two skinwalkers, and thank goodness they had extra cold iron to dispatch the horrid things.

It was the kind of skirmishing that presaged a war, and GAR was hardly going to stop it. If anything, they might move to support the fae, and not just through the bureaucratic machinery. But Chester wasn’t quite ready for that kind of conflict.

Chester needed allies, and that was a problem. The fae were notoriously mercurial, and the closest enclave was Ravaeb’s, whom Chester was going to hold to account for the deaths he’d caused. Somehow, some way. So there were no friends in that direction. The vampires existed more or less to counterbalance shifters, and the two groups got along basically nowhere. Mages were under the thumb of GAR, with few exceptions.

One of those exceptions was Wells, whom Chester counted on his side. Chester was hesitant to call him an actual ally, since Wells was pathologically independent, but the man at least had no ill will toward him. The other was the Archmage, that he’d only found out about thanks to Lisa’s discussions with Lucy. Archmage Wizzy.

Chester hurled Roy at John, the latter reeling from another bruising kick, and he saw with approval that John wasn’t blindsided by it at all, instead helping Roy land braced on his feet. But Chester held up his hand, done with sparring. They could go all day, and had before, so long as they were careful not to inflict injuries with their claws, but he wanted to spend some time with his mate and children. It wasn’t good to do all his thinking during combat, since that colored his thoughts toward the militant and that was not always the best answer.

He mused on other options as he showered and ascended up to the open meadow behind the compound where pups gamboled in the grass. Wizzy was definitely neutral, but Archmage Hargrave was getting there, and House Hargrave itself had always treated shifters fairly. The Archmage had even managed to poach a small pack from under Chester’s nose a couple centuries prior, which spoke well of the Hargraves considering the shifters involved.

Then there was Shahey, who had once been called Scaletooth back when Chester was but a pup and might well be a resource now that Chester had a line to him. The dragonblooded famously didn’t take sides, but that didn’t mean they did nothing. A little bit of extra insight or resources here and there could be incredibly valuable, if he could convince them to play ball.

The pups ran over to crowd into their granddad’s lap and he laughed and tickled them. His family and his pack were a concrete reminder of why he was so careful, so cautious, and why he was so worried about what Wells was doing. The man might well crack open some other part of supernatural society, which made him dangerous beyond any personal threat.

There was part of him that reflexively wanted to remove that threat, no matter how helpful Wells had been, but Chester had learned to temper that reaction. That kind of thinking usually didn’t go to good places, not in the long run. Still, Wells had been fairly quiet for a while, and that was a worrying sign.

No news was not good news.

***

“It looks practically done,” Lucy observed, examining the small house. Or perhaps medium sized house, depending on one’s standards. The yard was mostly mud, but there was fencing up around what would eventually be the garden area, where Callum had planted the fruit trees.

When nobody was around, of course. It wouldn’t do to have a bunch of construction workers see dirt and potted trees flying around of their own accord. Even then he didn’t do as much as he could have, just to prevent people from being overly suspicious. Lucy was mostly inured to his quirks, but that had gotten a brief roll of her eyes and look of exasperation even if she didn’t argue the point.

“The interior needs finishing, and I don’t have any furniture for it,” Callum said. “But we can start moving in now.”

“That’ll be great. The beach house was nice and the Texas trailer was, well, not so nice, but there’s just something weird about living in a place that isn’t mine. Well, yours.”

“Could be ours,” Callum said, putting his arm around her. She leaned against him and tilted her head back, looking up at him with dancing dark eyes.

“Ours, huh?” Lucy said after a moment, mouth crinkling into a smile. “I kinda like the sound of that.”

“Yeah?” He pulled her closer, head drifting down toward hers.

“Yeah,” she said, and he kissed her.

He was quite satisfied with the way the vacation ended. It couldn’t last forever, though, and the bunker still needed work even if there was a roof over their head. With the portals it wasn’t like they even fully needed to move out of the Texas trailer, not yet. With Callum’s magic, it took more time to decide things than actually transport them.

One thing that he wanted to take advantage of, now that the basement was finished, was their experiments with the obsidian tiles. There was a lot of value in being able to hot-swap enchantments, especially ones that Lucy could control. Even if that control was no more than turning them on or off, like activating or deactivating wards and glamours. Just changing tiles let them vary the enchantment size from house-wide to panic-room, either manually or through programmed actuators sliding things into place.

The latter was planned, at least, to have an off-site location. Lucy being able to flip a switch and be somewhere far away, yet still accessible to Callum was an enticing prospect. They just needed more enchantment material.

The two of them laid out the tiles in the walled-off section of the basement, though of course they couldn’t experiment there while the workers were wandering around above them. With the obsidian being a limited resource – they weren’t ever going back to Mictlān if he could help it – being able to run multiple enchantment types through the same projection framework was very helpful

“We need to get more enchantments,” Lucy said, sliding around the tiles in the grid form she’d printed.

“Yeah, I had been trying to do that before GAR found you out,” Callum admitted. “Kind of got side-tracked after that.”

“Then let’s see what we can find.” Lucy picked up her laptop and prodded him “Since we don’t have internet here yet.”

“I know, I know, we need more portals,” Callum said. He wanted to legitimately purchase an internet connection in some distant country and just use an anchor to connect them, but they didn’t have enough free anchors to dedicate one to that. Instead, they went wardriving for public wifi.

It wasn’t the best solution, because it exposed innocent people to potential reprisal. But state actors would know finding users of public wifi was hopeless and he had Lucy keep a log of whose access she used just in case. If supernaturals went after these businesses, he wanted to know.

Her hook into the GAR servers was still intact, though from what she said it wasn’t likely anyone would spot it unless they were very specifically looking for what she’d done. Possible, but unlikely, unless they brought in mundane talent who already suspected it. Still, he opened a portal into the armored van for them and then brought them out where one of the anchors was parked at the moment, out in Colorado.

It didn’t take long for Lucy to log into the server and start searching, but what she found was not the best news. Many of the largest repositories were off-limits simply due to being in Faerie, which he wasn’t prepared to deal with until he had a better handle on protecting himself from fae magic. The corite anchors might be sufficient, but they might not.

“If Faerie’s out, what’s the next best target?” He asked Lucy as they drove along the highway, keeping one eye out for some place to eat lunch.

“Well, I guess it depends on how risky you think it is to use your anchors,” she said. He nodded thoughtfully.

Callum’s magic practice had paid off fairly well, even if there was nothing dramatically new or improved. He was faster, the wards he put up over his portal anchors were more refined, and he could produce tubes efficiently enough that they only took something like two or three times the vis of his threads.

There was less progress in other avenues. Native threads were still faster by far, and despite being more fragile were generally good enough for what he was doing. They also cost less vis, which was still an issue since despite his practice he didn’t seem to be getting all that much magical endurance. His gut-portal made it less of an issue since he could get extra mana, but he still couldn’t sustain large constructs for significant lengths of time.

He'd also improved the ratio of spatial compression for his water grenades, even if he still couldn’t make the spatial changes permanent or even cover larger volumes. He was sure his version of the technique was terrible, the worst kind of brute force, but it worked. Considering he wanted it to destructively fail, being terrible was actually a good thing.

In general there hadn’t been any drastic improvements but, considering his portal anchor trick was so very good, that wasn’t a problem. He wasn’t exactly comfortable since he still lacked shielding, but once again physical dissociation and his perceptual sphere sidestepped that vulnerability under most circumstances. But at the same time, no new tricks meant he couldn’t surprise people as easily, so he wanted to look at more spell forms, which brought him around to pilfering again.

“I think that I can deal with mages,” he decided. “Even if we get caught, I don’t think there’s much they can do to us through the anchors.”

“Then House Fane,” Lucy said, fingers drumming on the desk mounted in the back of the van. “It’s one of the few Houses that’s still mostly Earth-side, and judging by these emails there’s some kind of internal power struggle.” She glanced up from the laptop with a toothy smile. “So I don’t think they’ll be hardened against someone like you.”

“Aye,” Callum agreed. The general chaos and confusion of infighting would work to his advantage when it came to borrowing and copying books or the like. People would be far too busy to keep a strict eye on their collections.

Callum didn’t intend to actually properly steal anything from them. He could, and it would be easy, but that wasn’t a road he wanted to go down. There might be circumstances where he could justify taking actual stuff rather than information from a House, but he wasn’t there yet.

Back in the bunker, he settled in the basement with Lucy to send their drone over to the target. House Fane was located somewhere in the central north of China, in the middle of nowhere more or less, close to the border with Mongolia. The wilderness compound was a picturesque slice of some lost age, with hundreds of acres of dynasty architecture sprawled across rugged rock and ribboned streams. He had to take a moment to appreciate it before moving on to the task at hand.

The chaos described in the emails wasn’t obvious from just a surface look. There wasn’t active warfare. Instead, people seemed to carry themselves almost hunched over, and stayed holed up in their rooms rather than going about their business. At least so Callum assumed; there was far less traffic outside than a facility the size of House Fane warranted.

Unfortunately, House Fane didn’t have a map plan on any of the servers anywhere. Lucy had looked. Instead they had to pilot the drone around very circumspectly and Callum swept over each room with his senses, trying to figure out what was going on. Most of them were living space, of course, and he mostly skipped over those, especially the occupied ones. He wasn’t there to play voyeur, and people would certainly notice if he temporarily snatched books or the like from occupied rooms.

The first potential spot was a heavily warded inner room at the center of one of the larger buildings, which revealed itself to be some kind of treasury. There was extra bane material there, as well as what Callum assumed was gold and silver bars of various sizes. There were even a number of items brimming with swirly fae magic. The display did rouse his cupidity but there was nothing there that seemed to be what they wanted so he left it untouched.

Deeper into the property his perceptions intercepted an extremely suspicious passageway leading down to a small complex of rooms underneath a manicured garden. Everything else he’d seen at House Fane was normal enough, but the underground rooms were straight out of some horror novel. It was proof of all the rumors that Lucy had found.

There was nothing living there, but there were weeks-old rotting corpses in tiny locked rooms, people who had clearly died of neglect and being stuck in something little more than a closet. The larger rooms had a variety of mundane medical tools, along with magical focuses that Callum was forced to assume were the same. There were exam tables with restraints, and freezers with partially dissected cadavers.

“Holy shit,” he said, pulling his perceptions back, swallowing against nausea as he fumbled for some alcohol. He wasn’t that much of a drinker but he needed a bit of reinforcement after seeing that.

“What?” Lucy said, blinking at the bottle of cognac that appeared on the table. Callum poured it into a shot glass with his own hands, knocking it back and feeling the burn spread down his throat.

“Found Fane’s chamber of horrors,” Callum said. “There’s nothing alive down there now, for what it’s worth, but dear God if anyone needed to go it was him.”

“Yikes. Do I want to know?”

“No, you do not,” Callum said. “I’m tempted to go take another trip to the volcano to purge the place.” He took another swallow of cognac, despite the fact that it was a fairly expensive bottle. “There are some focus tools there but I don’t know what they do. I don’t want to know what they do.”

“How bad is it?” Lucy said, eyes wide.

“Ever read about the horrors of the gulags, the death camps, the medical experiments done by dictators and governments all throughout history? Fane’s making a good attempt at retreading that ground.”

“Damn,” Lucy said, eyeing the cognac bottle. “Sure you want to look at that stuff?”

“No, it’s better to know these things,” Callum said grimly. “Certainly puts any lingering doubts to rest. Also means I’m not going to feel too bad taking all their secrets.”

“You think we should maybe document it?” Lucy asked.

“Maybe?” Callum said. “I don’t know who we’d be documenting it for, or why. Fane’s dead, and I don’t think GAR cares much about mundanes, right? But…” He considered it. “There’s a difference between something happening off somewhere else and having it thrown in your face.”

“Yeah! I know a lot of people are, you know, indifferent but I don’t think most of them are monsters. Good thing I added cameras to the drone, that’ll make it easier.”

“I’m pretty sure you’re going to regret it,” he told her.

“That’s what the brandy is for,” she said, taking his glass and pouring a finger for herself before tasting it. “How do you drink this stuff, anyway?”

“It’s a bit of an acquired taste,” he admitted. “But I think we’re going to need it.”

His perceptions were one thing, but the pictures and video were even worse. By the end, Lucy had ended up downing a quarter of the bottle, and he’d helped her through a portal to the bedroom in the Texas trailer to sleep it off. It had obviously been abandoned for a while, likely since they’d taken out Fane, so if he had known he could have done something about it.

Instead, he had skipped out on vacation. It wasn’t his fault they’d died, but at the same time it had been a consequence of what he did. Callum was very much tempted to follow Lucy’s example with the brandy, because he sure as hell wasn’t going to be getting any sleep, but instead he forced himself to continue the survey. Getting drunk wouldn’t serve any purpose.

He skipped around the massive House complex until he found something that looked like actual focus storage. They weren’t labeled particularly well and he had to be careful about activating the focuses, but with nobody around to even notice he was borrowing them, he had hours to make notes. There were offensive and defensive foci, which he was absolutely thrilled to be able to crib, as well as more consistent and coherent versions of utility focuses. Telekinesis, light, flight, glamour and illusion projection, all kinds of things. No healing foci, unfortunately, despite House Fane having a near monopoly on the aspect.

There were also books stored in the room, which seemed promising except for them all being in some variety of hanzi. The labels had been too, but one or two logograms were easy to translate. Entire books were less so, especially since he didn’t even know what the important sections were. The best he could do was take pictures of the pages before and after the spell form diagrams, for later analysis. He certainly didn’t have the time to digitize entire volumes.

In a way the focuses were an easier way to see spell forms. Even if he wasn’t making them himself, he could at least see what the structures looked like if he channeled vis into the things. It didn’t always help, since a number of the focuses had the conversion that meant someone else had used specialized vis, but at least he could make some connection between the topology and the effect.

Callum transcribed everything into his CAD program as well, just to have some place to store them. Good as his memory was, with the advantages of his spatial sense, the geometry was complicated and most of it wasn’t even static. He’d have to ask Lucy about some way to do animations or something, to capture the motion, though recording things that way would be tedious in the extreme.

The most interesting forms he found were, to him, the one that redirected light and the one that temporarily conjured water. From what he understood, forms were more or less universal and it was the vis that decided the actual effects. Of course, the portal forms were completely meaningless to fire or water or healing vis, in the same way that his spatial vis had no effect in the normal ball form.

Redirecting space and conjuring space were both things he was interested in doing. The former would be incredibly useful both as enchantment and spell if he could get it to work, and the latter might be the proper way to build an expanded spatial area. The problem was he wasn’t that good a mage, so he had to go at things backward and hope the effects carried over like he wanted.

Lucy was still asleep when he tried practicing with the spell forms in the bunker basement, putting together tubes rather than his usual threads. While in a lot of ways he was clumsier with tubes, they were more stable and that made it easier for him to manipulate them in situ. Threads were fragile enough that if he got things wrong the spell form had a tendency to collapse.

After what he’d seen he wasn’t in the mood for dealing with anything particularly tedious, so he mostly just gave each form a cursory test. As neat as the spells had seemed at the time they just didn’t play too well with spatial vis. Which wasn’t to say they didn’t work at all; there were clearly some effects. It’s just those effects were so weak as to be nonexistent.

Bending light, for example, was very different from bending space. There was some alteration there, an almost perceptible disjunct when he finally managed to put the tubes into the proper configuration, but tossing pebbles through it showed there wasn’t much to it. He’d have to do some work and probably pump way more vis into the construct for it to do anything, and even then it’d probably take some massaging. Still, it did something, and subtle effects were what most technology was based on.

The conjuring spell, on the other hand, did practically nothing. So far as he could tell whatever new space it created dissipated almost instantly, making ripples that only his spatial sense could make out and only when he shoved a lot of vis into it. He ended up concentrating so hard on it that he knocked over his glass when he went to reach for it, a sort of clumsiness he’d almost completely left behind when he got his spatial perception.

Obviously the next step was to try and put the conjuring spell inside of a vis box, which caused the entire thing to collapse almost instantly. Callum wasn’t entirely disheartened, since outside of teleports and portals, which were fairly straightforward and intuitive, everything else took a lot of work. He was going to have to fiddle with things and practice to get anywhere, but at least the spell-forms were stable by themselves.

His major problem was that he was half a lifetime behind mages born into a House. Not only did he not have the resources, he didn’t even have any of the basic schooling. Sure, there was some help in the literature he’d gotten from Chester’s contact all that time ago, but that wasn’t the same as having first principles drilled into him. Most of what he was doing was blind fumbling and inferred rules. So he just gave up and got in the shower to try and wash away the stress.

“So what exactly are we doing with this footage?” Lucy asked, quite a bit after she’d gotten up and recovered from her hangover the next day. They were back in the Texas house, to avoid all the construction workers still tromping around the first floor. Neither of them liked the idea of being drunk around a bunch of people they didn’t know, though Lucy pouted a bit at having to stay in the old trailer when the nice new basement was available.

“Spread it out. Publicly email it to everyone like the Fane video. Maybe do it from Fane’s own account? I’m just wondering if we ought to sign it as being from The Ghost or not.”

“Why not sign it as being from someone in GAR?” Lucy suggested. “Stirring the pot and all.”

“That’s possible,” Callum agreed, though he rather disliked that kind of maneuvering. Not liking it was no reason not to use it, though. It wasn’t like he was overly fond of killing, either. “Who deserves that kind of trouble though?”

“Constance,” Lucy said promptly. “She was involved anyway, considering what we found.”

“True,” Callum said with a grimace. Constance had been actively feeding people to Fane, making her a monster herself. One deeply embedded into GAR. “Though, I have to wonder if instead she’d just take credit for it. If Fane’s dead and everyone turns against him, she might jump on this and somehow spin it to her advantage?”

“Sure, maybe,” Lucy agreed. “But do we really care?”

“Hm,” Callum replied, his worries derailed.

“I know you want to remove the Department of Acquisition entirely, so does it matter what sort of maneuverings they do in the meantime?”

“You know, it really doesn’t.” Callum shook his head. It was so easy to get wrapped up in certain trains of thought. Lucy was right; whether it caused trouble for the Department of Acquisition or not was somewhat moot. Especially as it seemed like Constance was directly responsible for the victims that Fane had acquired.

“Right then, I’ll leave that to you,” Callum said. “I’ve still got a ton of practice to do but when you’re ready for it I transcribed a bunch of enchanting stuff. The drone’s still there in case we need to reference things. Got a lot to work through already though. Plus I need to take you shooting.”

“Ooh!” Lucy’s eyes lit up. “I know it’s not like the movies but I’m still pretty excited.”

“We also need to test that big rifle,” Callum said. “Going to have to go out into the middle of nowhere to try that.” He was pretty sure a lot of gun ranges would have fun with something that was basically one step short of crew served, but that was the kind of attention he didn’t want.

“I can’t even imagine firing that thing. It’s huge.”

“Almost as big as I am,” Callum said, and Lucy stuck out her tongue at him.

“Keep dreaming, big man.”

“Actually I need your help with it.” She raised her eyebrows at him, but he just smiled and continued. “Since I’m not going to be lugging it around, just firing it from the cache, I need some way to remotely trigger it and cycle the chamber. Aiming shouldn’t be a problem, but since some supernaturals can dodge bullets I’d rather not rely on a single shot.”

“Yeah, makes sense.” Despite how much she was looking forward to shooting her own guns, she was clearly still working up to the idea of proper self defense. “Honestly I don’t think it’ll be too bad. Probably illegal as hell, but a bunch of microcontrollers and some boards and I bet I can put together some kind of solution.” She stopped, expression turning wistful. “Oh, for my 3D printer. Hey, I can actually get one now, can’t I?”

“Absolutely,” Callum said in amusement. “We can stick it in the basement instead of trying to fit it in here.” He waved his finger in a circle, indicating the Texas trailer.

“Yeah! It’s gonna be great! Not a beach, but you can’t have everything.” Lucy grinned. “Of course I’m spoiled by teleports. I thought the GAR system handy but you’re twice as handy.”

“I was blessed with two hands,” Callum said, stepping up and wrapping his arms around her.

“Terrible,” she said, a smile in her voice as she leaned into him.

She was far more serious when they called up Alpha Chester later in the day to talk about the recordings. As usual the discussion was conducted via portal-phone, and Callum was incredibly glad that he had two portable anchors now. There might be some limit to how many he could use at a time but it didn’t seem like he’d reach it anytime soon. Sadly, no extra bane material was in the offing just yet.

“I honestly don’t know what will happen,” Chester told them, reclining in his basement with his wife Lisa and a few of his enforcers. “Some of the hardened old veterans, they won’t care. Not unless it’s their people. Younger mages, maybe they’ll be sympathetic. Now, if it turns out that there’s shifters involved that’ll cause some sparks, but with vampires or fae it’s kind of a crapshoot. I don’t think it’ll be quite the splash you’re hoping for, but just leaking it will make trouble for some people.”

“I guess atrocities were more common a few hundred years ago,” Callum mused.

“It’s a lot nicer today,” Chester agreed. “So maybe it’ll have some effect, maybe not. Worth the effort, though, especially if you send it to everyone and not just the Archmages. Show the rank and file what’s going on.”

“I don’t see how anyone can be okay with that,” Lucy muttered. “Doing that to people.”

“Hopefully more people agree with you than I think,” Chester said. “Thanks for giving me advance notice. I’ll add to whatever whispers go around.”

“Right,” Lucy said. “Off it goes.”

All she’d done was package the media up without trying to do any editing, which Callum felt was a good idea. Not only was the footage disturbing and not worth the mental stress of reviewing, but any kind of editing would have run the risk of making it look doctored. The stark, silent video of what had been found in Fane’s dungeon was enough of a statement.

The only text attached to the bulk email, which Lucy was sending out to literally every email address in the GAR database, was a line identifying it as belonging to House Fane. Neither of them knew enough about the head of the Department of Acquisition to try and fake some kind of message, so just spoofing her address as the origin would have to be enough. Someone would probably locate and delete the media from the server eventually, but that would take time and work since Lucy had done some trickery to lock the files away from any kind of modification.

He hoped it would cause trouble.

Chapter 13 – Compromised

The footage was equal parts horrifying, sickening, and infuriating. Gayle had only caught a few glimpses before needing to turn away, fighting the gorge that rose in her throat despite the healing vis that constantly saturated her body. It was bad enough that anyone had done that kind of thing, leaving behind half-rotted bodies that had died of neglect or torture, but for a healer to do such a thing made her almost ashamed of her aspect. Gayle would never be anything like Fane.

“I am so glad I never actually met Archmage Fane,” Gayle said out loud.

“Indeed,” agreed her father.

Her entire family was gathered in the drawing room, which was not to say the entire Hargrave family. It was Gayle, her mother and her father, and her grandmother and archmage grandfather. Under the circumstances the House itself was fairly busy and they couldn’t afford to stop what they were doing to chew over news together, even momentous news like the missive that had gone out about Fane’s basement laboratory.

Gayle herself was not really used to being included in such meetings. She was, after all, only barely a full mage. Even that was a little bit hazy, thanks to how she’d been transferred into BSE, and nobody knew where Grand Magus Taisen was to clarify her position. But she’d found that as one of the only healers not affiliated with House Fane, and certainly the only healer in House Hargrave, she’d taken on new importance. Which was both daunting and uplifting, since people actually listening to her cut both ways.

“Honor is apparently not a concept that Fane ever learned,” her grandfather said. “There is a difference between destroying the enemy and whatever that was.”

“Do we really think Constance sent it, though?” Her mom frowned. “That girl wouldn’t even share candy when she was a kid. I can’t imagine her sending something like that out unless she was paid for it.”

“It’s likely it was Wells’ organization.” The Archmage shrugged. “Or maybe him personally, but either way, he was the one who removed Fane.” The ice in his glass clinked as he took a sip of whiskey. “That’s certain,” he concluded, punctuating his words with the click of his glass on the table. Gayle and her mother just had tea, for all the healing in the world couldn’t make her like the taste of alcohol, but all the men – and grandmother – had something harder.

It felt a little odd to be discussing such matters of import just sitting on the sofas with drinks, but she wasn’t sure how else they would do it. The quiet, informal meetings were, as she remembered from when she was very small, how the real decisions were made. Though she wasn’t quite sure how much she could add.

She almost voiced the thought that maybe Callum had targeted Fane because of her. She didn’t think of herself as having an ego, but Callum had seemed genuinely regretful about what had happened to her and how much Fane threatened her. Or maybe it was a message. When they had argued about how appropriate Callum’s actions were, and what GAR should do about things, she had no idea what had been going on in House Fane. If the Guild of Arcane Regulation wasn’t able to prevent something like Fane’s butchery, it was obvious that some kind of reform was necessary.

That wasn’t really her call, though. Her responsibility was House Hargrave, and that was enough for her. More than enough, even, since she’d suddenly gotten the responsibility of healing everyone who needed it within the House, which was far more than she’d thought.

There had been sudden skirmishes, not in the portal worlds but on the actual House borders. So far her House hadn’t suffered any deaths, but some people had come back with severe burns or even severed limbs, blood loss stopped only by force magic caps and bandages. It made her glad she wasn’t out there on the front lines.

“We should condemn it,” Gayle said, drawing eyes. “I know that some of the Houses won’t care, especially with what’s going on now, but if we want sympathy from the younger mages or some of the more ascetic Houses, this is perfect. We’re against Fane anyway and it’s not like we’re doing any of that stuff.”

“It’s not much of a risk,” her mother agreed.

“Also, though,” Gayle said, then hesitated. Actually advocating House policy was new to her, but she was determined to do the best job that she could. Even if some of what she’d settled on was unconventional. “I think we should take the opportunity to do some mundane outreach,” she said after a moment.

“Mundane outreach?” Grandma Jeannie questioned. Gayle flushed, but gamely held up the books she’d gotten.

“I was going over all this mundane literature on medicine and anatomy and such. I swear I learned more just from going through textbooks – publicly available mundane texts – than the last year at the Academy. GAR uses stuff based on it, and Grand Magus Taisen has no problems taking advantage of that kind of knowledge. We should, too.” Seeing that she had their attention, though not outright agreement, she continued on.

“Have you seen new phones and new computers?” The House computer for GAR communications was ancient by comparison. It even used a dial-up modem, which apparently was already outdated. “I think we’d benefit from working with mundane experts and businesses. Reserve enchantments for things only enchantments can do.”

“Now that would take some selling,” her father said, though he didn’t, himself, look upset.

“Mister Wells said he only had a mundane education,” Gayle pressed. “If that’s true, imagine what other mages could do if they had a full breadth of mundane knowledge! It’s not like it’s even hard to get. Like when I looked up clotting and neurology. All it took was going to a library!”

“Hmm. It might not be a bad idea,” grandfather mused. Gayle almost rolled her eyes, but didn’t. Grandfather doted on her perhaps a little too much. “We can set forth some new guidelines on how to interact with the mundane world, and use that as a wedge against GAR. The Houses that stay in the Portal Worlds won’t care anyway.”

It wasn’t quite the chain of logic she had followed, but it was good enough. No House changed in a day, and even just slightly more mixing with the mundane world would be nice. She had to admit to herself she really wanted to get more books like the one Callum had given her, and that was difficult from inside House Hargrave.

She was sure there was another piece of logic behind the decision as well. One which nobody admitted: that they didn’t want to make targets of themselves. If Callum could kill or banish one Archmage, perhaps he could remove others.

Perhaps anyone could.

***

The report of an anti-materiel rifle firing a .50 round was deafening, expensive, and satisfying.

The rounds cost a ridiculous amount of money, up to nearly one hundred dollars each for the explosive-incendiary types. Callum didn’t want to practice too much with the rifle just due to the costs, but he had to try it out a little bit. Not to get a feel for the thing, since he wouldn’t be firing it himself, but to see how it interacted with his portals and spatial senses.

He had no illusions about being a sniper or any kind of crack shot. Spatial senses and portals were his tools, and while they made up for a lack of actual prowess they didn’t nullify the physical properties of guns. He could measure a perfect straight line between two points in his spatial sphere, that was perfectly fine, but guns didn’t shoot perfect straight lines.

At point blank range it was pretty much irrelevant, but that was also close enough for a supernatural to notice and react to his portal. Mages had shields, and the others had superior reaction speed. Opening a portal two, three, or even five hundred yards away from the target were each a completely different scenario.

It didn’t really matter how powerful the bullet was, it still obeyed gravity and was pushed by wind. Maybe he’d be able to compensate for such things with enchantments eventually, but for now he had to work within the limitations of physics. Which meant that he wasn’t actually nearly as good a shot from any distance past about a hundred yards.

One way to fix it at a medium distance was actually to shoot straight down from above. That presented a smaller target than someone’s center of mass, true, but he could think less about where to aim his portal. It wasn’t until he got out to the longer ranges that effectively landing a shot with anything less powerful than the .50 rifle was basically impossible, even with his advantages. He wouldn’t really want to risk even the big rifle at his full range.

On the other hand, he could accurately target one to two hundred yard shots with the .50 rifle, which was a hell of an accomplishment under most circumstances. In the cold wind, fingers numbed half by temperature and half by the kick of rifle, he had doubts he’d be able to hit the broad side of a barn. Without his portals he could basically only hit the opposite side of the quarry he’d chosen for practice, far beyond where Lucy’s targets were set up.

“You make that look easy, big man,” Lucy said, very carefully unloading her own rifle.

“Well, I’m cheating. You’ll probably be a better normal shot than I am in a couple weeks,” he told her. She wasn’t exactly a natural at it, but she’d gone at it with determination despite her hands shaking from anxiety and adrenaline after emptying her first magazine.

“Cheating or not, this is harder than it looks,” Lucy said, getting a bottle of water from the cooler. She still preferred soda, but the realization that she’d no longer have access to healing magic on a regular basis meant she had to actually start thinking about her teeth and general health. Something that made her grumpy at times.

“You’re doing better than I did when I started out,” Callum encouraged her, only bending the truth a little. “It just takes time and practice.”

“Boo.” Lucy pouted for a moment before she started packing things away. Not that he couldn’t just sweep everything into the cave, but it would be treating her like a child to just do everything for her. Neither of them wanted that.

After spending several weeks much further south, the Texas cold was rather shocking. Worse, it didn’t even come with snow, which was the main selling point of winter weather. At least they could retreat to the bunker basement, even if it wasn’t exactly a full house, and the Texas trailer wasn’t really that bad. Though the cave-cache was slowly taking over a number of the functions of a normal residence.

“You know, it’s worth thinking about maybe expanding the cave,” Callum mused to Lucy as they sat in the bunker basement and ignored the sound of a generator overhead. Soon as everything was done he’d break out his magic generator and they’d be properly independent. “Or finding a new, larger one. Given how big my perception is, we could fit multiple vehicles and basically an alternate everything.”

“Long as we don’t live there,” Lucy said. “I know I spent most of my time in a basement before anyway, but I think I’d go crazy if I couldn’t see the sky at least sometimes.”

“I don’t think we could really have a full cave house unless we could find a trustworthy earth mage,” Callum said. “And I can’t imagine we’ll have that anytime soon. Besides, I don’t want to live in a hole in the ground either. Storage space is for things, not people.”

“Glad we’re on the same page there,” Lucy said. “Though I guess it’s weird that the bunker doesn’t feel like it can hold up against something like a shifter or a fae.”

“The idea is that if someone actually threatens us, we go after them first,” Callum said. “I mean, it’s what I got the gun for, but actually getting at one of the big time supernaturals is something else entirely. I don’t think we can pull our teleport swap trick again, unfortunately. Which is a shame, because I bet it’d work better against a shifter or a vamp. Or even a fae, but I don’t know about that given their weird magic.”

“Fae magic is just bull,” Lucy agreed.

Callum had to agree. He hadn’t encountered much of it, but what he had seen was completely arbitrary. At least it consistently required mana from Faerie, so dumping a fae into Portal World Five would be perfect if he could swing it. But if regular fae elites could pretty much jump back out of his portals, he was sure a king could do worse. Maybe even take control of it somehow, thanks to how weird fae magic was.

“Hopefully it’s not enough bull to stop a bullet,” he said, tapping one of the oversized incendiary-explosive rounds that he’d gotten for that purpose. Normally it’d be way above overkill for a person, but if fae were supernaturally tough it’d probably do its job. A corite bullet would be better, but the ones he had probably wouldn’t kill unless he could hit the head or the heart, and maybe not even then. They weren’t really all that large, and the purity wasn’t really that high.

“That was awful,” Lucy groaned. “You need to sharpen your wordplay skills.”

“Yeah it was,” Callum agreed. “I knew you’d hate it.”

“That’s not something to be proud of!” Lucy protested.

Callum opened a portal back to the Texas house. He had a drone anchor parked there to replace the teleportation pad, which was slated to be recycled because it wasn’t useful anymore. The small portal anchors were far superior and the teleport enchantment needed to be altered if Lucy was going to be able to operate it. The bare bones version he had made just wasn’t something she could manipulate.

They were still working on how to hook it up to the tiles. There was an entire section in the basement dedicated to it, because anything that was integrated into the tiles was something Lucy could control. The issue was they didn’t quite have anything that could integrate the metal teleport core into the glass tiles, so they’d have to go visit a metal shop soon.

Despite the pile of things he had to do and the looming task of determining a plan of dealing with the monsters still lurking in GAR, Callum was feeling fairly relaxed. He felt like he actually had time to just sit and talk and cuddle with Lucy in the bunker basement. Had time to see the house actually completed.

He only saw mages when he visited Alpha Chester, the ones set on him as observers and spies, and even then it was at a distance. The riskiest, most stressful thing he’d done was comb through House Fane’s stuff, and they had been far too preoccupied to even notice the little drone perched on top of a roof decoration. But relaxed as he was, he was still vigilant enough to notice when one of his portal anchors started charging of its own accord.

Callum wasn’t aware of saying anything, but apparently he said something because Lucy turned away from the tiles setup she was tinkering with to stare at him. She asked a question but he was far too busy wrestling with the portal focus to explain, hurling spatial attack forms at it after a moment of frozen surprise. That forced the forming thread to collapse, preventing it from actually creating a portal, but it didn’t solve the problem.

“I need you to break this,” he said, teleporting the anchor over to the table in front of Lucy. He could have done it himself, but it was easier to spend all his attention making sure the portal anchor didn’t fully activate, and that none of the others were doing the same thing. To her credit, Lucy didn’t even ask questions, just grabbed her hammer and screwdriver from next to the tiles and plied them against the anchor.

It didn’t take much to deform the little bit of metal enough to disrupt the enchantment. Once it was broken, the intrusion stopped but Callum didn’t relax. He had no idea how such a thing could happen, and until he knew for sure he had to assume all of his anchors were suspect. For the moment he pulled all the anchors out of his cave cache – three pairs total, including the one that Lucy had just destroyed – to examine.

“The heck was that for?” Lucy asked, placing the bent and destroyed anchor next to the others on the table.

“Someone hacked my portal anchor I think?” Callum hazarded, heart still pounding. The anchor in question was paired with the drone that he had used to surveil House Fane, which was in a way a relief. That one had definitely been in enemy territory, and could have been compromised, though a close sweep showed no foreign vis. It had to be something on the House Fane side, which he didn’t understand but it at least explained why such an intrusion hadn’t happened before.

“We need to figure out a way to completely depower these things without destroying them, just so we can make them safe on our end. There’s no way we can just leave them as they are.”

“Whoah there, slow down,” Lucy said drawing out the last two words. “Are you sure they can even do that?” She added, reaching out to find Callum’s hand and squeezing it as she spoke. “Gotta be Duvall. If anyone can do that, it’s the Archmage. But she’s been around a while without this happening.”

“Yeah, I know.” Callum scowled at the portal anchors lined up on the table, feeling nauseous. “I’ve gotten lazy. I haven’t been making sure to clean up every single teleport with the drone, because they already knew that we were doing stuff.”

“You think that they could open the portal because of, what, traces you left? How would that work?”

Callum blinked, then realized that while he knew nothing about proper magery, at least he could sense magic. Most mages didn’t really seem to even notice the traces they left, so of course Lucy wouldn’t know about it. He took a moment to explain about how vis got stuck in ambient mana, and how he had cleaned it up, while he got up and paced to burn off some nervous energy.

“I figure that they found some of that residue and exploited it,” Callum concluded. “It’s that or any set of portals is vulnerable to being opened this way, but if that were true, they would have found me after I rescued you. There was probably enough magic getting flung around there to hide things, but at the Fane household? Nah, some of the buildings were practically dead.”

“So we disconnect them like with the tiles? Or put them somewhere it doesn’t matter?” Lucy suggested. “Like, just put a bunch of them at the bottom of the ocean and have only one leading back?”

“Something like that, yes,” Callum agreed, and took a deep breath. “No matter how we go about it we need more bane material. I’ll have to be careful, but we definitely need to put our portal network somewhere inaccessible. Until then we’ll have to be very careful and rather less mobile.”

“And we’ll have to recycle this,” Lucy said, holding up the dented portal anchor.

“And we’ll have to recycle that,” Callum agreed.

***

“I don’t care what you think,” Serena Duvall said coldly, staring at the visitor in the receiving room of her main House complex. It was austere compared to some of the Houses, but each chair was well made and matched, each painting by one of her own House. The man sitting in one of those chairs was out of place - his unctuous tone, his garish canary-yellow suit, his very presence. She did not like having her carefully-arranged day interrupted any more than she liked having her carefully-chosen furniture abused by uninvited guests. “House Duvall is not involved in Wells’ actions. We have declared him heretic! Surely you see why, if he’s subverting my network to this extent!”

House Duvall was perched high in the mountain-sized tree that towered over the portal to Earth, taking up the entirety of a limb ten miles across and fifty miles long. Not that it was densely occupied, but she’d wanted to future-proof her claim. She didn’t trust Faerie, she didn’t like the Night Lands, and she didn’t like the mana density of Earth, so the Deep Wilds it was.

Her position forced mages to make the trek to her, though flying up to House Duvall’s limb was hardly onerous for any competent mage. Let alone an Archmage like Corrilon. Yet he still seemed somewhat out of breath, though she couldn’t fathom how.

“Nevertheless, it was the network that was used to remove Archmage Fane. We still haven’t found⁠—”

“Would you ban doors if an enemy walked through one?” Duvall snapped. “We have safety features, but nothing is safe if you let some ignorant criminal walk up to it and pervert it into a trap!”

“Be that as it may,” Archmage Corrilon said doggedly, which fit his lined and wrinkled face that reminded Duvall of a grizzled mastiff. “Be that as it may, it is hard to trust your network, considering what it has been used for. Wells has demonstrated a number of heretofore unseen abilities with spatial magic, and you can’t convince any of us that you’re unable to do the same thing.”

“I have dedicated my craft to useful and constructive applications of spatial magic,” Duvall said. “We have always known that portals and teleports were an enormous strategic advantage. That’s why I built the network. Just because Wells is better at using it for combat potential than you, that’s no reason to suspect me.”

She had already known some of what Wells was doing — though the specific applications were strange. Breacher portals were one of her oldest collaborations with the Guild of Enchanting. But using them at the size Wells did required a very sharply focused vis sense — which he clearly wasn’t using. His method of accelerating matter was a very spatially focused version of telekinesis — effective in a very coarse way, but it didn’t compare to the real thing.

It was obvious his ability to slip through wards and probably his ability to use the tiny portals came from his extensive use of ultrafine vis. Her best guess was that he had a specialized tool that let him use it more effectively than the ones from the Guild of Enchanting — making its origin a mystery. Someone had to be backing him, somehow, and it was really damn infuriating that it was leading her fellow Archmages to question her.

“If we can’t verify your network is safe, how can we use it? You must turn it over so we can—”

“So that’s what this is about,” Duvall said scornfully. She should have known that was the first target the others would go after. Her transport network made her all but untouchable — because it was hers. GAR owned the land, the pads, the screening enchantments, but every single core was purchased with House Duvall money.

Duvall knew she was no good at fighting — she didn’t like it and spatial wasn’t actually any good at it, Wells’ exploitation aside. But that was fine. She just enabled those who could fight. So she had other kinds of power, and the more simple-minded Archmages hated that they couldn’t just dominate her with their combat prowess.

“I am not giving up my life’s work because you can’t find a single heretic mage,” Duvall told Corrilon.

“We must insist that you submit the teleportation network to be verified and controlled properly. Now that we know what can be done with it, we cannot allow you to hold such a potential weapon over the heads of everyone in GAR.” Corrilon’s voice was reasonable — unlike his words. No wonder he’d been selected to talk to her. Most people started yelling much more quickly.

“That will not happen,” Duvall said flatly. “If you’re so worried about what will happen if you use the network, don’t use it.”

“That’s not reasonable, Archmage Duvall,” said Archmage Corrilon. “Too many people and goods move through the teleportation network every day to simply stop using it.”

“I wasn’t offering you a choice,” Duvall said, rising.

Below her personal house, in the living wood of the tree, there were storage rooms filled with her projects — and a certain number of personal spatial devices. She didn’t use any spatial expansion herself — she knew how dangerous it was. A pulse of vis gave her enough of a line to travel down herself, and a brief glance around the rigidly ordered rows found the portal frame she wanted.

It was one of her better designs, a portable folding model that could be deployed or stowed with a few twists. Her friends at the Guild of Enchanting had enjoyed the challenge — even if nobody else needed such portals. Not even the BSE, since they already had larger models.

She deployed one half in a matter of a few seconds, setting it up on an immaculately swept floor facing a number of storage bins and returning above to where Corrilon was still waiting before he could grow impatient. He blinked at the wooden case in her hand, but she ignored his confusion — Corrilon was just a mouthpiece. One of the least inspired water mages she’d seen, despite his power.

Another vis pulse let her find the anchor for the teleport between House Duvall and GAR Europe. She latched onto the core and used it to open a portal. Mostly to speed up the process of getting Corrilon out of her hair.

“Go on,” she said, shooing him through the portal and following herself.

“Archmage Duvall, what are you doing?” Duvall spared him a glance. Even his jowls reminded her of a dog. An absurd caricature of a dog in an absurd yellow outfit. Utterly ridiculous – and not worth her time.

“It should be obvious,” she said, twisting the handles on the portal frame as the wood clicked out into a tall frame. “If you will only use my network if you can take it from me, you will not use my network.” She cast out another vis pulse, locating all the cores stored at the switchboard behind the operators.

Not all of them were hers, actually — even she had to permanently sell some to Houses or GAR or the BSE. The teleports between GAR buildings, the private House transports, the portal world stations. The barest bones. Everything else, all the hundreds of locations — those were hers. So she took them back.

Though the portable frame she could see the racks that were designed to hold cores, so she began teleporting them through into her basement. They were all numbered, and she had all the documentation of which core number went to which destination, so while returning them would be tedious, it would merely be the work of an afternoon for some dedicated people.

If she returned them.

A lot of people would capitulate simply from the interruption of their normal habits, but Duvall wasn’t certain she should return things to what they were before. Shutting down the GAR network was not a whim or caprice — she’d long considering the implications if she needed to use that card. Perhaps she’d let the network grow too large, and be used too easily.

It was her power, but now she realized that it was a power that was taken for granted — and she did not like what was hers being taken. Power that was never exercised was impotent. Given a few days or weeks of trying to work without her contribution to magekind, all the accusations and power-grabs would dry up. Or grow more blatant, but she was prepared for that.

“You cannot⁠—” Corrilon began, but she reached out for the teleportation core to the American GAR offices, ignoring his words and the stares of the switchboard operations who suddenly had no enchantments to switch.

“My network, my rules.” She told him. For all his kindly charm and raw power, he was completely unimaginative and spineless, exactly the kind of person she disliked the most. “If you care to revise your accusations, you know where House Duvall is.”

She left Corrilon behind as she repeated the process twice more for America and China — though China was truncated since Fane held sway there. Over a thousand teleport cores. Then she returned to the House and sent messages to each of her apprentices. Most were already at House Duvall — a necessary step, for their own safety. Those that were on loan to BSE were told to return.

One of them came with news.

“Did you see what was sent out to everyone about Fane, Archmage?” Young Cormac asked, shoving a small electronic device far too close to her face. “It says Constance sent it, but who knows if that’s true.”

“It probably isn’t,” Duvall said, after she had pushed the device away and saw what it contained. Constance didn’t have the imagination. Which left only Wells — and that meant there might be a trail. “Keep the defenses up,” she decided abruptly. “I’m going out. If anyone wants to complain have them leave a note.”

“Yes, Archmage,” Cormac said, and Duvall went over to her personal teleportation nexus. There were connections to each of the portal worlds, a few of her allied Houses, and the Guild of Enchanting. It was that last she energized and stepped through.

The Guild of Enchanting headquarters was located in Faerie, so of course it was improbably picturesque. Everything in Faerie was. They couldn’t just have a river or a mountain or a tree — it had to be a perfect ribbon of blue, a heart-stopping snowcapped peak, or some mossy elder titan. There was a reason Houses competed for space on Faerie, but Duvall mistrusted a landscape so disproportionately beautiful.

She ignored the jewel-like birds flitting around enormous gleaming blossoms and marched through the receiving room to where a servant stood by the door. Some half-sized fae, which didn’t mean he wasn’t dangerous — the Guild of Enchanting took their security seriously. Duvall’s Archmage pin was enough for the servant, though, and he opened the door for her to step into the main part of the Guild.

Grand Magus Rossi himself met her a few scant minutes later, which she hadn’t asked for but wouldn’t turn down. It would make things easier for her. And faster. Time was of the essence.

“Welcome, Archmage Duvall,” Rossi began but Duvall held up a hand.

“I’m in a hurry, Grand Magus,” she said. “I need to borrow one of your finesse scribers and lenses.”

“Why, certainly,” Rossi said, startled. “What for, may I ask?”

“Since GAR seems to be too incompetent to trace Wells, I’m going to do it myself,” she said bluntly. “He uses finesse threads, and those just break when I try to handle them, so I need one of your scribers.”

“Of course,” Rossi said, making a sign to one of the servants in the corner of the room. “We’re interested in locating Wells ourselves. We’ve taken some steps ourselves — employing mundane detectives to find where he may have manufactured his enchantment blanks. But that is a rather slow and tedious process.”

“If I locate him, I’ll let you know,” Duvall said insincerely. She would actually have to get her own mages first, since she wasn’t going to take him into custody herself. He was dangerous. But she would be able to lock down his use of vis — if she could get close enough.

When the servant returned with a cart bearing the items she’d asked for, she plucked them up with her telekinesis focus and bid Rossi an abbreviated farewell. The man was competent enough, but far too impressed with the sound of his own voice. She also didn’t like the subtle remonstrance about taking Well’s enchanting work first.

She grimaced at the pointlessly elaborate halls of GAR China as she made her way to the House Fane teleporter — one of the ones she had not confiscated. She simply energized it and went through without any hesitation or even concern. Without Archmage Fane there was nobody of any standing to even protest. She ignored the challenge of one of the savages House Fane had masquerading as mages and went outside, hauling the equipment with her as she flew into the air.

Finding Wells’ traces among the business of a House was not going to be easy, but she knew the area that he was in thanks to the video. Her foci carried her to Archmage Fane’s old building, with all its useless frilly roof things, where she deployed the enchanting lens. It was specially designed to help a mage focus on small and subtle pieces of vis, like those generated by a finesse scriber — and actually doing most of the work to screen out the traces of other mages. Duvall had already seen what Wells’ portal anchor structure looked like, so she had a clear idea what to look for.

It still wasn’t easy. Wells’ anchor was very small and he’d shown he could easily put it inside walls or in other cubbies, so she had to use a combination of close range passive perception and the lens to track down where it might have been. Under the circumstances she was prepared to spend all day at it, considering how many Houses she’d cancelled work for.

Fortunately for her she found the traces after only an hour of scrutinizing the outside of the building, tracking it down to just above the surface of a roof. Whatever he was using to hold his portal anchors wasn’t very large, but it was still offset far enough that he had to be using something. Once she had it located and had the lens locked in, she channeled her vis into the scriber.

Normally she didn’t bother using scribers. They didn’t help with her greatest labor, locking down the space around House territory in the portal worlds, but she was still familiar with them. The finesse ones were always uncomfortable, squeezing her vis into smaller channels without guiding them into any particular framework. Uncomfortable — but necessary.

She focused on the lingering traces of Well’s threads, some of which went straight downward and through the wards. The scriber could get maybe two feet, and the lens five, and her passive perceptions reasonably ten, so it wasn’t like she couldn’t get through the wards. It was just that she couldn’t do so with enough facility to do anything useful.

It wasn’t like she needed to, though. The patterns of the portal anchor were right there, for once not blurred like most of Wells’ workings. Few people cast spells up on top of the roof. Nor was there one of his distortion enchantments — to his detriment.

Duvall filtered her vis into the echoes left by his threads and started carefully pulling and prying, amplifying the resonance and connecting with the other half of the portal anchor. Only her best students could duplicate that sort of touch — a few frankly better than her. But none of them could do everything she could. Once the framework stabilized she energized her homebond ring, spinning out a portal there as well. She’d need help.

“Have Magus Geoffrey bring his squad,” she told the shifter stationed by her homebond anchor. He snapped to attention and rushed off to do her bidding, returning only a minute later with Geoffrey in tow. Her chief of security had a number of burly mages and shifters, which should be more than sufficient if she could neutralize Wells’ spatial magic.

“Be ready to subdue one mage,” she said as they flew out of the portal to hover in the air next to her. Geoffrey nodded, and she started to pry open the anchor.

At least, she tried. It went fine for a minute or so, as she strengthened the connection, then suddenly the link tried to destabilize. Duvall frowned at it, fighting with the threads through the intermediary of the scriber. It should have been easy enough to open a portal and secure a foothold on the other side — but somehow Wells was ready for her. She had no idea how or why he was primed to break the enchantment form in the anchor on such short notice, and cursed him under her breath as she worked.

“Heretic whoreson,” she muttered. “Manarotted dudspawn.” Despite everything, she was managing to get the structure closer and closer to stability — then it suddenly went dead. The link snapped and vanished. Wells had actually destroyed the anchor.

“Damnation!” Duvall shouted, Geoffrey and her squad moving to surround her protectively — and uselessly. She could have had him. In fact, she almost did, but somehow he’d noticed almost immediately. For him to be forced to destroy his own portal anchor was at least a distant consolation prize. He couldn’t have too many, and it showed he was definitely afraid of her.

Wells wasn’t perfect, or unshakeable. He was like any other mage — he made mistakes. There would be another time he didn’t obfuscate his portal anchors.

She’d get him next time.

Chapter 14 – Annoyances

Callum couldn’t make a proper nexus with only two portal anchor pairs. There had to be a dedicated link between the cave-cache and where he put anchors that he was actually using, so the incident with the hacked anchor cut his links from three to one. Better than none, but he was very seriously considering recycling the teleportation pad into a portal anchor. They were just that useful.

The longer chain also meant he had to constrict his maximum perception distance, so he could have his maximum at the destination and not uselessly at the bottom of the ocean where he’d put the beginnings of his nexus. At least he’d already been practicing that, so it wasn’t as difficult as it might have been, but there was nothing like necessity to spur practice and repetition.

“We really need more enchanting materials, big man,” Lucy said, despite the fact that she was playing with the glass tiles. Not that she was wrong. The tiles were great, but they couldn’t act like anchors.

“I still have to recycle the pair that we had to break, but yes. We do,” Callum agreed.

“So how are we gonna get it?” Lucy leaned back in the couch and yawned. They were both low on sleep after the scare with the portal anchor and the subsequent scramble to minimize any further risk. It actually made him feel better that it wasn’t perfect, because it had seemed too good before. “We can’t put it off, ‘cause we need that flexibility.”

“Well, we could try going to the Night Lands again,” Callum said. “I’ve been once so I kinda know what I’m looking for, and I imagine the drone will work just as well over there as here.”

“Okay sure,” Lucy said. “But what about Fane’s stuff? I know he’s got to have a bunch.”

“I don’t think it’s right to just take from the House coffers,” Callum said with a frown. “That’s not just Archmage Fane’s wealth, it’s— oh, wait, the lab.”

“Yeah, the lab too. But like, might as well take House Fane’s stuff,” Lucy said, opening a soda with the characteristic pop-hiss of an aluminum can. “Not like they deserve it, is it?”

“That’s the kind of thinking that leads down a bad road, I think,” Callum said. “I mean, that’s money not just for people like Fane himself, but the janitors, the help, the children, all of that. You know?”

“I guess,” Lucy said, not entirely convinced but ceding the point with a shrug. “So, the lab. We definitely don’t want people reusing some of that stuff anyway right?”

“Very much,” Callum agreed. “And that is completely on Archmage Fane. I guess there’s some argument that it should be left as evidence, but I don’t think mages care much about evidence that way do they?”

“What, like police procedural stuff? Nah.”

“Right,” Callum said. “Not sure about trying it now, though. We just got hacked by Duvall; what if she’s still there?”

“She just got you ‘cause you didn’t clean up, and you’ll clean up this time. I mean, if she’s still there you’ll know before she can do anything right? Your long range radar and all that.”

“Yeah, but I don’t like taking the chance.”

“But as far as they know, you don’t have any more business there,” Lucy argued. “And now that we’ve told people about that lab someone is going to get to it, sooner or later. So there’s no reason to lay in wait for you, that’s just paranoia talking, but if we wait it’ll be crawling with mages and even more risky.”

“Hm.” Callum considered it, and had to grant the point. “Alright, we’ll have to see if there are people there already, but if not we can loot it. I should have thought of that when we found that damn place but I was just too disturbed.”

“Yeah seriously.” Lucy’s nose wrinkled and she shuddered. “I don’t know if I’m looking forward to tearing that stuff apart or don’t want to even touch it.”

“Hopefully the former, because we might have lot of it to do. So long as I can get stuff by teleports. I’m sure as heck not sending either of us over there to start unscrewing things,” Callum cautioned her.

“Yeah, I’m on board with that,” Lucy said. “Creepy place in the middle of a bunch of House Fane people? That’s just straight up horror movie stuff.”

“It is,” Callum agreed, and reached through his linked portals to start moving the drone. He was glad they had the more powerful repeater, since it was going through more links even if the ocean-bottom portal nexus was just two anchors in a block of steel instead of one.

Even with the Alcubierre style movement it took time to move the drone all the way around the world to China. He could only go in short jaunts with a fairly rough idea of where he’d land, and they had to home in on the target more or less manually. The two of them ended up watching some streaming movie for most of it, since there wasn’t anything that required much brainpower.

They approached the House with rather more care than the first time, with Lucy landing the drone well outside the perimeter and Callum moving it in with teleports. This time, though, he was more careful. He’d gone back to his old standby of ball bearings, since they were cheap and he didn’t actually care if they knew that he’d been there. Only that they couldn’t actually trace his vis.

Something that had obviously become critical. Archmage Fane could kill anything his vis touched, so other Archmages probably had similar talents. Like Duvall and her ability to compromise his anchors. So he needed to make sure there were no traces of his magic anywhere, or as close to that as possible.

He left a little trail of ball bearings as he teleported his way in past the wards and smaller buildings, back to where the lab was. For some reason he’d expected to have to wait for people to clear out, even if it was late evening over in China, but it was deserted. It didn’t look like anyone had even gone down there, and Callum realized that he hadn’t exactly shown where it was. The entrance was deep inside Fane’s house anyway, and that seemed to be off limits for everyone, at least so far.

Which gave him space to ransack the lab. Despite Lucy’s arguments, he was worried that Duvall might reappear at any moment, and there was no telling what she could do if she were prepared and found an active portal of his. So even if it was deserted he had to be as fast as possible. If it weren’t for the fact that they really needed the portal materials he probably still wouldn’t.

There was a lot of enchanted stuff there, though much of it was just part of the room. Anything that was mounted in furniture or appliances was pretty much off-limits, unless he could teleport out screws and such to free it from the mountings. Which he could probably do given time, but he didn’t have that time.

The ward box was an obvious target, since he and Lucy had already disassembled those and found that they were mostly recyclable. But the wards dropping would probably draw attention, so that would have to go last. Instead he focused on the strongest, most mana-dense and highest-purity signatures in the tools that lined the shelves and counters of the lab.

He had no idea what most of them did and really didn’t want to. They probably were dangerous to activate, so he was hardly going to play with them himself, though he could just transcribe them later on. The richest strike seemed to be a set of sealed chambers, each of them maybe a foot in diameter, each with a sphere hanging from the ceiling. The spheres were solid chunks of metal and glass and, most importantly, nearly pure enchanting material along with energy-charged crystals. The way the chambers were arranged and furnished reminded him of incubators, with the enchanted sphere as the lightbulb, but they were thankfully empty so he had no idea what they might be for.

Each sphere was secured to the ceiling with ordinary chains and charged with one of the vis or mana crystals, which was something he was very much looking forward to getting his hands on. Since there were no screws or other complicated mounting means he simply teleported them off their chains and into a distant corner of the cave-cache.

He would have preferred moving it further, but with only one anchor he didn’t have the options. The enchantments were active and he did not want to deal with whatever effects the thing created. The best he could do was put it somewhere he could see that the magic didn’t overlap anything he cared about.

The tools from the shelves went to a different corner, and then he put together a water grenade to take out the ward box and the associated feeder portals. Trying to shift that while the enchantment was active would be impossible, or at least inadvisable, considering all the spell forms around it. Before he actually deployed it, he made sure he had lots of the vis cleanup beads around, since he had to assume someone would notice and investigate such a big change. There was no way he wanted another portal hack.

While he’d tested the slightly improved grenades before, seeing the damage they did to a real object was sobering. Instead of just bending the trays out of shape he actually blew the side out of the ward box and sent it ricocheting off the wall. Callum winced at that, making a mental note to dial down the amount of compression he was using. He just wanted stuff disabled, not destroyed.

Even with the debris it only took a few moments to scoop up the ward box and scatter a number of cleanup beads across the area to make sure there was nothing left of his vis. Then he put several more on the roof where the drone was before recalling it back to the cave-cache and closing the portal.

“That didn’t take long,” Lucy observed. He’d kept up a running commentary because she could hardly see what he was doing, and it surprisingly helped clarify his thoughts to actually say what he intended to do. It was only while talking about it that he realized it would be incredibly stupid to teleport out the screws holding the incubator enchantment spheres in place instead of just separating the links of the chain holding them up, for example. He just found it far too easy to get fixated on a particular solution.

“Yeah?”

“Man, I know that you do all the planning ahead of time normally but it took like five minutes. You’re quick.”

“Not when it counts,” Callum said with a grin, and Lucy laughed and blushed.

“You got me there, big man,” she said.

Since they’d already had experience with breaking down enchanted goods, it wasn’t really a difficult process to start tearing stuff apart. Which was for the best, because he was barely paying attention, his senses focused on the incubator enchantments as they ran down. Something that took longer than it should have because of the ambient mana in the cave-cache. It would have taken far longer if he hadn’t been able to disconnect the crystals fueling them.

“You awake there, big man?” Lucy said, startling him.

“Yeah, I’m just keeping an eye on these things,” he told her. “They’re about out of juice but I don’t trust ‘em.”

“I wouldn’t trust anything from Fane’s dungeon either,” Lucy said.

“So while we’re waiting, what exactly are these?” Callum asked Lucy, putting the crystals on the table. Each of them was about the size of a grape, with six sides and flat ends, and looked like polished quartz. Certainly they didn’t stand out very much to the naked eye, but he could feel the enormous amount of mana inside. Which was odd, since he would have thought that would have ended up in some kind of enchantment instead of just being a magical capacitor.

“All I know is that the Guild of Enchanting makes them,” Lucy said. “They’re not, like, dug out of the ground or anything.”

“Huh,” Callum said, examining the crystals. Experimentally, he poked his vis into it and tried to siphon out some of the mana, finding it to be as easy as pouring water out of a glass. The same went for pushing mana into it, though that was harder simply by virtue of his lack of control over ambient mana. Vis didn’t seem to want to stick at first, but once he emptied it out completely – bringing it below the ambient even in Texas – it accepted his vis.

“Seems like it holds a lot,” Callum said, as he tried to fill it up. “Either that or I don’t have much endurance.”

“I’m certainly not looking to complain, big man,” Lucy winked at him. He winked back. “Seriously though, I haven’t really heard of any other mages running out of vis, not like you do. Guessing it’s part of your whole general thing.” She waved vaguely in his direction.

“I’d have to ask that Archmage about it,” Callum said with a sigh. That certainly wasn’t going to happen anytime soon. Maybe ever. The man had seemed neutral enough but there was a big gap between neutral and trusted.

“Something to put on the list,” Lucy said. “I remember seeing something about the thaum capacity of mages a while back, so I can probably find it again.”

“I hope so,” he agreed. “I wish GAR digitized more records.”

“You and me both, big man.”

It wasn’t the most cheerful of notes to start work on, but at least with the recycling they could make visible progress. Callum did end up transcribing the enchantments on the incubators – or whatever they actually were – on the off chance they weren’t something horrific. It might well be something that Fane had created and was unique to the lab, and Callum wasn’t quite ready to destroy an enchantment that he didn’t understand.

Lucy even took pictures, just in case, before they started tearing the thing apart. Each of the incubators supplied enough nearly-pure mordite to make a portal anchor pair, which was the largest influx of material yet. The rest of the stuff was rather less pure, less potent, and could be relegated to things like their own set of wards. They even had enough that Lucy could start on proper integration between metal enchants and the obsidian tiles.

That meant another go-round with the local metal shops. Callum really wanted a CNC machine, but they were hilariously expensive as well as bulky, and there wasn’t any point in making that kind of investment until they were fully moved into the bunker and had a shed or something. Lucy’s new 3D printer, even if it was one of the miniature ones, took up enough space as it was.

There was only one change made to the base anchor design, and that was to make it so the core, the bit that had to be cut in half, wasn’t permanently fixed in place. Instead of being a solid, integral piece inside of a metal shell, it was held together with little locking pins. Considering the amount of prototyping they were doing, setting it up so he could move the core to some other sort of projection enchantment only made sense. It made the anchors slightly larger, but they didn’t need to be implantable like his gut portal.

“So how exactly are we going to do this nexus?” Lucy asked from her armchair in the rear of the van. Until they had more options for their nexus, Callum wasn’t comfortable hanging around the same spot too long. He didn’t entirely trust that their location, at least in general, hadn’t been compromised when the portal had been accessed. So they were in the van, and Lucy very reasonably didn’t want to hang around in a bare, boring rear compartment.

They’d furnished the back of the vehicle with some chairs and desks bolted to the floor, and Lucy had even put up a few posters of some bands she liked. It was not and never would be a place to live, but it was at least more welcoming than before. Hopefully it wouldn’t be necessary for very long, assuming there was no sign of anyone snooping around any of their holdings.

They’d stopped for lunch on the way to the metal shop they’d sent their designs to, because there had been a problem with the order. The shop didn’t want to ship to a PO Box, and under the circumstances it was faster to just pick it up rather than try to convince some underling to send it anyway.

That time the business was actually in Colorado rather than Texas, so the van pulled double duty. He rarely actually drove any real distance, simply using the drone to teleport the van to some handy spot near his destination and arriving in the van to keep up the façade of normalcy. It also gave Lucy the opportunity to do some wardriving and catch up on whatever she was involved in from the internet security side of things.

“Well, we have to have a way to defend against it getting compromised. I have to assume that eventually someone might stumble across an active anchor no matter how careful I am. If not the nexus itself. So, bottom of the ocean for now, but a water mage wouldn’t have any trouble with that I imagine.”

“Yeah okay, so why not put it in one of those underwater vent things? Smokers, I think?” Lucy said, and Callum pursed his lips in consideration but she wasn’t done. “Wait, you’re looking into making new portal world portals so what about in a completely different portal world! Oh, even better! Put it on the moon!”

“The moon.” Callum raised his eyebrows at Lucy.

“Sure! I mean, portals don’t care how far away something is right?”

“I suppose not,” Callum said slowly. “But getting to the moon is not easy, even when you have spatial abilities.”

“Aw, c’mon, don’t you want to have a secret moon base?” Lucy said, draping herself against him.

“I definitely wouldn’t say no to a secret moon base,” Callum said, putting an arm around her. “But I don’t think we’re quite there yet. I mean, if nothing else I’m pretty sure there’s no mana out there. Hardly any when you get up high, and the moon is really high.”

“Oh man, I’m gonna get to design magic rockets,” Lucy said.

“Maybe, but first you gotta design the bottom-of-the-ocean nexus,” Callum replied. “Like, a hydrothermal vent— isn’t that going to be just as vulnerable to water mages? Or will the temperature make it hard for them? I guess it depends on how they come at it.”

“I mean, I guess it’d be better if you could stick it in lava but that would probably just melt.”

“Yeah, too hot and it will ruin mordite and corite both,” Callum agreed. “So we’ll have to be careful of where we put it.”

“Right, I’ll get to sketching,” Lucy said.

“Yeah. I guess I’d better get back to driving.” Callum shifted himself up to the front of the van and pulled out of the restaurant parking lot. Only a few minutes later he arrived at the address on the shop’s site, a gravel lot on the outskirts of a minor city.

He opened a portal back into the rear to give Lucy a kiss before he headed in to see if he could get their anchors. The man behind the counter looked bored enough until Callum gave the order number. The moment he typed it into the computer at the counter his eyes widened and he looked faintly panicked.

“I’ll go check,” the guy said, and hurried into the back. Callum frowned and created a portal to listen in, since there was obviously something going on. His perceptions didn’t pick up on anything too unusual, nothing supernatural anyway, but that didn’t mean there wasn’t trouble brewing.

“Hey, that guy is here,” the clerk told his apparent supervisor.

“What guy?”

“The one that ordered that pattern on the watchlist. Terrorist dude.”

“Oh. Oh! Well call the goddamned cops, don’t just tell me.”

Callum made a fist beneath the counter. He could read between the lines pretty easily and it was clear that he wasn’t going to be getting the anchors today. Possibly ever. There was no telling which party had clued people in to the enchantment patterns he was using, because of course it had to be the enchantment part. Nothing else about what he was doing was unique.

What really pissed him off was that he’d already paid for it. Lucy had handled that account so it didn’t lead back to them directly, but they’d still have to burn it now that it was compromised. Also the destination address, and the email, and associated IDs. The only disguise he had on was some putty to change his nose, and a hat to hide his hair, but that would probably be enough. He didn’t really stand out.

In a way he was surprised that there weren’t already a bunch of federal agents crawling around. Or that they hadn’t sent the package anyway with an attempt to catch him picking it up. Probably that bit of missed opportunity was the shop acting on its own. He doubted that some proper federal agent had come and told them exactly what to do if an enchantment order showed up. No, if this random shop in Colorado had the information then it was something that had gone out to all of them, some bulk mailing from the GAR central office. Or some alphabet soup agency.

He focused on the area again, sweeping around in case he’d missed anything obvious, though if someone was lying in wait they probably would have sprung the trap already. There was nothing supernatural, but there were a pair of people in a car across the street with holstered guns. Maybe they were just normal people, but he couldn’t help thinking they were government agents.

Callum dropped some cleanup beads and teleported back out to the van. No point in waiting around to see what else the shop had to say, let alone what the authorities might do. Lucy glanced up as he popped into existence in the back of the van and saw the look on his face.

“What happened?”

“We got found out,” Callum said, hearing the disgust in his own voice. “Nobody’s after us yet, but let me drive us out of here.”

“Right,” Lucy said, and he teleported himself up front and climbed into the driver’s seat . The car didn’t follow, but they might be tracking with satellites or something. He definitely didn’t have the range to tell anything on that score. Still, all he needed to do was turn off into a wooded driveway, screened from the road and the house, and he was ready to leave.

He reached into his cache for a number of washers, turned them into vis-cleaning enchants, and dropped them underneath the van. It wasn’t actually an emergency, so for the sake of Lucy’s comfort he took the time to assemble the teleport for the van out of tubes and brought them back to the cave. Only then did he return to the back of the vehicle.

“So, what are we doing now?” Lucy asked, visibly nervous.

“Well, we have to assume everything related to the request is compromised. Email, bank account, address, ID ⁠— everything. The van too probably, but it’s just a van so all we need is new plates. So I guess I need you to try and empty out the accounts in some untraceable way and make sure there’s no connections back?”

“That much I can do,” Lucy agreed. “Well, we’ll have to stop off somewhere to pull the cash out but there’s not much left in there. Like a hundred bucks or something.”

“Well that’s good,” Callum said. “Is everything else secure?”

“I think so,” Lucy said. “I’ll go through it all though. Once people start digging there’s a lot of weird connections people can make though.” She wrinkled her nose, obviously thinking how she’d been found out. “Better make triple sure.”

“Thanks,” Callum said, and sighed, leaning against the inside of the van. “Dammit, I’m going to need to buy CNC stuff now. Not ready for that.”

“Shouldn’t be more than a couple weeks before we have room for one,” Lucy said.

“Yeah, but a couple weeks without portal anchors,” Callum grumped. “Okay, I did plenty fine before I had them but still. I want a full nexus.”

“They can’t possibly have reached every metal shop in the world,” Lucy said. “We can just go down to Brazil or something.”

“Yeah, I guess so,” Callum said. “I just hate being pushed out of my home. I’m going to have to do something about that eventually.”

“That’s not ominous at all.”

“Well, it’s all the same thing, right?” Callum started charging the telepad to head back to the Texas trailer. “GAR’s the one fueling all this. I’m already at odds with them, so when that problem gets solved, this all goes away. That’s the theory, anyway.”

“The theory, huh?” Lucy stepped onto the telepad with him and squinted as she tried to trigger it. After a minute she shook her head, but Callum wasn’t too disappointed. The telepad was not set up for being triggered by someone else, since it used only the most basic of enchantments.

“Yeah, I’m sure it won’t be that simple,” Callum said with a sigh. “But one thing at a time.”

***

“Be damned with Duvall,” Lorenzo Rossi growled. “What is she thinking, shutting down the entire transport network in the middle of a manhunt?”

“Perhaps she forgot that its not just her enemies that use it,” Ordermaster Minot suggested diffidently. “There has been much public unhappiness about Duvall of late.”

“And there’s going to be more,” Rossi grumped. “If we’d had the network we might have been able to get there before Wells arrived.”

“Even BSE teams couldn’t capture him,” Minot pointed out. “It’s unlikely our own people would have performed much better.”

“We don’t need to capture him,” Rossi said. “We just need to make him stop spreading our designs around! I’m sure we could cut a deal.” With Wells able to contend against Archmages, especially Archmage Fane, it was no longer an issue of dealing with some heretic mage on the outs with everyone. He was a power in his own right, and required somewhat more careful dealing.

It was still imperative to stop Wells from flinging around their designs freely and openly, regardless of his reasons. Preventing him from using them at all was probably impossible, but there were possibilities. Another source of spatial vis for enchanting wouldn’t go amiss, especially if he could negotiate a better deal than the one with House Duvall.

“We can look into alternate methods of getting in contact with Wells,” Minot suggested. “Hunting him down has proven to be a problem for, well, everyone. Yet it’s almost certain he is in communication with, for example, Scaletooth.”

“Who doesn’t care about enchanting at all,” Rossi pointed out. The dragonblooded had never been tempted by anything the Guild of Enchanting had created, and they even eschewed the transportation network for the most part. “But you’re right. There may be another way to get to him. Thank goodness we’ve at least stopped him from spreading stuff around for now.”

The Guild had spent a substantial amount of money and not a few favors getting mundane detectives and law enforcement to canvas the entire United States and Europe. That had involved revealing some small portions of the enchantments Wells was using, but the core parts were barely secrets anyway and without the whole thing most people wouldn’t be able to put it together.

Even then it was not so much the secrecy itself as the knowledge that it was the Guild’s secret. The best way to harness Wells was to get him on the Guild’s side. Obviously not with threats — that had not gone well for anyone so far. But if Wells was making black-market enchantments by blindly cribbing designs, he likely could use the expertise of real enchanters.

“Very well, see if you can get a meeting with Scaletooth. The more we have to deal with Wells the hard way the more things are likely to escalate.” Rossi frowned. “At the same time, we might as well pursue whatever leads the mundanes turn up. No sense in wasting that investment.”

***

The skinwalker snarled and lashed out with its ragged, rotted-black nails, and Chester slid back out of range, claws scraping on the tile of the despoiled kitchen. With its human guise shed, the monstrosity was even taller than Chester, skin like tanned leather overstretched on a gaunt, too-long frame with muscle and sinew like steel cords. The thing was incredibly ugly, as befit such a monster, and stank of cold and rot.

Since GAR had more or less blacklisted them, they’d run out of corite ammunition in their spats with Ravaeb’s forces — not that they’d had much to begin with. Chester hadn’t been trading favors with the right people, so they were down to claws and blades, which was how the fae liked it. They would even call it fair, which meant it was anything but.

Roy lunged in with his corite dagger, punching a hole through the tough hide of the thing’s back, and jumping away again as it rounded on him. Thick, lumpy black blood oozed from the wound, but it didn’t seem to be slowing the skinwalker down. They were tough bastards, which was why it took him and the Wolfpack to deal with this one rather than leaving it to the local Alpha.

That and it had eaten the local Alpha, which was how it’d gotten noticed in the first place. Even skinwalkers couldn’t manage to replace a shifter in the pack bonds, the connection the symbiotes created among themselves. Chester wasn’t sure why the skinwalker had even tried, save for that shape-changing fae seemed to have an especial hatred of shifters.

Chester sprang in the moment the skinwalker turned, sinking his claws into the thing’s back. It felt simultaneously like trying to dig through steel and like cutting rotted meat, a thoroughly unpleasant sensation compounded by the fae’s mana rattling against his own.

It was a contest the skinwalker lost, of course, since a single fae couldn’t stand up to the power of Chester’s entire pack, funneled upward to him. He rent and tore, and leapt back when the thing’s arms bent entirely the wrong way to try and cut his throat. John took his turn flanking with his own dagger, the three of them whittling it down rather than just grappling it. Chester could simply tackle it and outlast the thing, but there was no point in doing anything that stupid when they could kill more safely and efficiently some other way. It was strong and fast, but not stronger or faster than the Wolfpack or Chester, and it was outnumbered.

Three minutes later it had slowed enough, not from blood loss as it seemed to have an unlimited supply of the stinking, half-clotted stuff, but from severed tendons and punctured muscles. Crippled that way, Chester simply bore it down to the blood-smeared tile floor and severed its spine at the neck, grimly sawing his way through until he beheaded it.

“These things are awful,” Roy rumbled, holding his arms out so his claws wouldn’t accidentally smear any of that awful black blood on his fur. “I think we’re going to have to burn this place.”

“Probably,” Chester agreed. He scraped his own claws across the wood of the wall in an effort to clean them, but it was already hopeless. He was going to have to bathe in lye or something to get the stink out.

“How many of these does Ravaeb have?” John asked, staring down at the corpse. “They’re tough.”

“Only when they’ve successfully replaced someone,” Chester said. “The more they follow their story the stronger they get, but fae this nasty rarely get the chance.”

“Good thing, too,” John said.

“Yeah, well, with Ravaeb encouraging them we’re only going to see more problems.” Chester scowled.

“I hope you’re not intending to walk into Yellowstone,” Roy said dryly, trying to wipe off his own claws. The house was a loss, and Chester was only glad that the late Alpha Moore’s mate and children had gotten out of there before something worse could happen.

“Hardly. No, Ravaeb is not someone I could reach without major casualties. But perhaps there is someone who could reach him.”

“Yeah?” Ray frowned at his claws, which still were stained black.

“We will have to see what Mister Wells has to say. If anyone can eliminate a fae king in his lair, it would be him. And if anyone has earned it, it would be Ravaeb.”

Chapter 15 – Favor

“There’s something I think we need to discuss face to face.”

Callum frowned at the phone-portal he was using to talk to Alpha Chester and then glanced at Lucy. She shrugged back. That sort of wording always made Callum think that he was in trouble somehow, but he was absolutely certain he’d done nothing that would irk Chester.

“What’s this about?” He asked, not quite ready to pop through on Chester’s say-so.

“I have a favor to ask. Or maybe a job for you to do.”

“Ah.” Callum wasn’t much enamored of doing jobs for other people, but so far Chester hadn’t asked for anything too outrageous. More importantly, he’d taken Callum’s rejections of direct employment with enough grace that it wasn’t like Chester as pressuring him into anything. “Is now good?”

“Yes.”

“Right, we’re coming through.” He would have preferred to be more indirect than opening a portal directly from the bunker, but they still didn’t have the new portal anchors made. There were language barrier issues and just finding a machine shop with the right stuff in South or Central America was more difficult. Not impossible, by any means, but they’d only just found someone who seemed like he could do it properly.

The reason he’d sent his only free portal anchor over to Chester was to see about actually selling another set of telepads. Perhaps even two. With the GAR system temporarily shut down, he was sure it’d be an easy sell, and perhaps not even to Chester. There had to be others out there willing to take the risk, even though Chester would probably play intermediary.

He opened up a portal for himself and Lucy, and stepped through from the Texas trailer into Chester’s basement. It was significantly warmer than their trailer and its relatively anemic heater, and Lucy happily shed her sweater before flopping down into one of the overstuffed armchairs in the room. For the first time Callum appraised it as a room, rather than as a secret meeting place, considering how much work it might be to put something like it into his cave.

“Thank you,” Chester said, in his half-form rather than human. Somehow even as a ten-foot hyena-cat-wolf, he still looked to have a viking beard with the ruffles of his white fur. “Please, have a seat.”

Callum took the chair next to Lucy’s, as Chester’s wife Lisa came down the stairs carrying a tray of fresh-baked chocolate chip cookies and an assortment of drinks. Lucy visibly perked up at the smell of the cookies, which Callum had to admit was quite enticing. Though really it only made him worry about what exactly Chester had in mind that required buttering up. Though it wasn’t Chester that started things.

“Look at you two,” Lisa said with a grin. “You’re so cute together!”

“Um,” said Lucy. Callum suppressed a smile, well recognizing the signs of the interested mother or grandmother.

“Well, what are you waiting for?” Lisa asked Lucy as she put down the cookies. “Time’s a wasting. When are you going to make it official?”

“Ummm,” said Lucy, her face red. Callum laughed and rescued her.

“We’re discussing that,” he said. “Things are a little crazy right now.”

“They’re always like that,” Lisa said dismissively. “Put off having a family for any reason and you’ll put it off for every reason. Then you’ll regret it.” She waved a cookie threateningly in Lucy’s direction. “So I’m expecting to see babies soon.”

“Ugh. Now I know how your kids feel,” Lucy complained. “Do you have to put it that way?”

“Yes,” Lisa said unrepentantly. Lucy looked at Callum helplessly and he put his arm around her.

“It’s a mom thing,” he told her. Lisa wasn’t Lucy’s actual mother, but considering that Lucy had been completely disowned by her blood family, the shifter matriarch was clearly the better parent.

“With that out of the way,” Chester said, unfazed by his wife’s behavior as Lisa sat down beside him on the couch. “GAR is beginning to fragment, and some people who were previously behaving no longer are. I don’t complain of this to you, since people have been chafing at their bonds for a while. Sniping and nibbling where they could get away with it. The only difference is that things have started happening much faster.”

“Someone’s giving you trouble?” Callum asked, taking a cookie for himself and getting a knowing smile from Lisa. He couldn’t imagine that anyone could cause Chester issues short of GAR itself, or maybe an Archmage or the highest-powered vamp or fae.

“Let us say King Ravaeb has decided to embrace certain aspects that he had not emphasized before,” Chester replied. “There are a lot of, frankly, monsters that he’s let run rampant. Really, actively directed toward us.”

“That certainly does not sound good,” Callum said cautiously. Part of him wanted to protest that it wasn’t his business, but he knew that wasn’t entirely true. From any angle.

“No. His people have been killing mine, as well as any mundanes that have gotten in their way,” Chester said bluntly. “I have had my differences with Ravaeb in the past but I did not realize he had been so constrained by oversight. Now he’s been granted full latitude by GAR.”

“Wait, wouldn’t he get in trouble for killing non-magical folks?” Lucy protested. Callum was happy to hear her not calling them mundanes.

“Normally yes, but they’ve got dispensation from Constance herself to be rather more profligate than before.” Chester shook his head. “It’s been practically a war between my people and his. Maybe the fae don’t care about deaths, but I do.”

“Constance again,” Callum sighed. While he was sure that Chester was telling the truth, he also knew that Chester’s goals had to do with his own stability and power. Callum did not like being used as a political pawn, even if the target absolutely deserved it. “Okay, so it’s sounding like Ravaeb needs to go. Would that actually stop these attacks? I mean, if the fae are just monstrous wouldn’t they rampage anyway?”

“I’m surprised you didn’t ask for proof,” Chester said.

“Oh, I’ll want whatever you have, certainly, but you wouldn’t pitch something like this to me unless you could back it up.” Callum rubbed at his forehead, contemplating it. A fae king would actually be easier to take out than an Archmage with a teleport redirection, but he was pretty sure he couldn’t actually manage such a thing. Especially not now.

“For your question, no. With the chaos of having a king missing, and the way the kings make the enclaves, no. Even those that decided to run amok would not be nearly as empowered. Then there would be the infighting…” Chester shook his head as he contemplated it. “I do not think they would be nearly the threat without Ravaeb.”

“Mmm. I have a grudge of my own, but that wasn’t enough to justify going after him. This, though.” Callum pressed his lips together. “Those that prey on people cannot be suffered to live.”

“That feels a little strong,” Lucy said. “I mean, I guess I can’t argue but it kinda sounds fanatical.”

“Perhaps it is,” Callum conceded. “But it’s what I can point to and feel absolutely firm about. All the supernaturals are too complicated and all the infighting is old politics that I can’t really comment on. It’s not my place to deal with old grudges or the like. But preying on people? That makes you a monster.”

“You know, some would stretch that definition to include an awful lot of people,” Chester said.

“Sure, but you know what I mean and I know what I mean. You can pick apart words forever, make anything mean anything.” Callum shrugged. “I know I’m not good enough to debate semantics so I won’t even try.” He knew he was being a bit defensive, but he’d run into the word-twisting type more often than he’d liked, especially in his former life as a consultant.

“I do know what you mean,” Chester said. “So I can rely on you for help?”

“Tell me what we’re up against, first,” Callum said, glancing over at Lucy. “I have certain advantages but I’m not some tactical genius.”

Callum found it surprising that Ravaeb’s kingdom was located deep in Yellowstone National Park, though he couldn’t say why. Maybe because the names of the fae that Ravaeb commanded were from entirely different areas — though as he understood it, the fae were aping the legends rather than the other way around, after Lucy had filled him in on how fae tended to follow stories. Though just being in Yellowstone didn’t narrow anything down, considering how huge the park was.

Specifically, Ravaeb was located in the rugged mountains near the continental divide, his enclave twisting space and time twisted so there was far more room than appeared on any map. Fae magic was, properly speaking, complete bullshit, as unlike shifters or vampires or even mages it could do almost anything. That was, fortunately for everyone, balanced by the fact that it was restricted by its own arcane rules, further twisted and turned by the fae’s odd psychology. So the spatial stuff was not at all like what Duvall or, to a lesser extent, Callum could do, and only worked exactly where the fae court was.

Callum had seen something related to that kind of work down in Florida, but he hadn’t stumbled across wherever the actual fae kingdom was — if indeed it was at all hidden, and not just located in one of the giant skyscrapers in Miami. Ravaeb’s location needed a little bit more to obscure it, so he wasn’t surprised they had their own version of glamour. While Callum expected that his senses would be able to see through that kind of trickery, he didn’t actually know.

“Most fae kings are surrounded by their court, though not too much of it,” Chester said. “I obviously haven’t been to Ravaeb’s but you’d expect to see all kinds of smaller fae around the periphery and nobles in close to Ravaeb.”

“So I probably couldn’t fly the drone in,” Callum said thoughtfully.

“Even if we could I wouldn’t trust it afterward,” Lucy said. “Fae magic does some spooky stuff.” Callum nodded grim agreement.

“Yeah I’d have to throw it into Mictlān to get purged and I’m not sure how much I’d trust that either.” Callum shook his head. “Is there any chance of luring Ravaeb out? Some kind of GAR meeting or something?”

“Maybe, if you hadn’t sent everyone scrambling after you killed Fane,” Chester said, though there was no bite to his tone. “Though I expect it wouldn’t be particularly healthy for me to show up to a meeting either. There’s probably more than a few people who’d like to catch me out in the open.”

“Ugh.” Callum grimaced. He knew that there’d be fallout from his defiance of GAR and his removal of people like Fane, but it wasn’t pleasant to hear about it. Not that he would change what he did. Other people reacting badly wasn’t something he had control over.

“So if we can’t lure him out then we have to get into his kingdom, and that sounds pretty difficult. At least, not without being noticed.” Callum drummed his fingers on the chair arm. “Is there some fae that are friendly that could give us advice? Maybe some kind of material we could disguise a portal anchor with?”

“You would have to go to the fae for that last one,” Chester said. “So far as friendly — well, I’m not sure I’d consider any fae to be particularly friendly. Not really. But doing business with the Ghost? That would probably work.”

“That nickname,” Callum said with a wince. “I guess it’s worth a shot. The only one I’ve had any dealings with is Ferrochar. Would you recommend him?”

“Actually no, the others might get jealous,” Lisa said. “I’d actually recommend King Jissarrel. You killed some of his nobles so dealing with him would end up with more credit to the fae mind.”

“They are so weird,” Lucy muttered.

“So long as I can do it at a distance, I suppose that’s okay,” Callum said with a frown. That was definitely business to transact through a warded portal, or really, one of Lucy’s boxes with the transceiver portal hidden somewhere nearby. Or, the easiest option, by phone. “I don’t suppose there’s a number I can call him at?”

“I don’t know of one,” Chester said. “Lucy?”

“I’m pretty sure not, but I’ll check after this,” Lucy said.

“He probably doesn’t, considering where his kingdom is centered,” Lisa said. “Over in Europe most of the fae kings have a phone somewhere, but some of the ones here are pretty well closeted away in wilderness.”

“Hmmkay.” Callum took a bite of his cookie and considered for a moment. He didn’t mind doing preparatory work — in fact, he needed to, since he could only get things done with tricks. But considering how irritating his last deal with the fae was, he really didn’t look forward to it. Especially if Jissarrel figured out what Callum was up to, since he was pretty sure that somehow Ravaeb would end up knowing about it.

“Right, then. Do you think he’d care about telepads? There’s not much I can trade without giving away my goal.”

“Everyone cares about telepads since Duvall shut down the network. Even back-country fae.” That made Callum wince. While he didn’t viscerally understand how much GAR had depended on the teleports, he knew that it had a deep impact. It was absolutely bizarre to contemplate that a few moves on his part had crippled a global magical authority.

Of course, it wasn’t like one incident would shut down an entire network. That didn’t happen in the mundane world and it wouldn’t happen in the supernatural one. People must have been just waiting for an excuse, some inciting incident to seize on. It was just luck, good or bad, that he’d been that incident.

“Right, well.” Callum pursed his lips. “Then I think we have a plan.”

“We do?” Lucy said, looking skeptical.

“An idea of a plan, at any rate.”

“I would offer you more material support if I could,” Chester said. “I’m aware this is not a simple task, but we are very low on cold iron ourselves and I suspect you don’t intend to stick him with a knife anyway.”

“What about the enchanting metalwork?” Lucy asked. “We’re having to do things the long way around for that.”

“I’d love to,” Chester said. “But all our businesses are under scrutiny of some sort. That would almost certainly get caught.”

“Oh, boo,” Lucy said, wrinkling her nose.

“You know,” Callum said, after considering a moment. “I actually have an idea for something your people could do that wouldn’t look suspicious. Do you happen to have anyone who does carpentry? I have a place that needs furnishing.”

***

“This is an absolute mess,” Ray Danforth said.

“This scene isn’t much different than the last eight.” Felicia scrawled on her tablet.

“I mean everything,” he sighed.

The scene in question was one of shattered furniture, carpets crusted with blood, steel frames bowing out from the walls, and debris scattered about as if a tornado had hit the place. It wasn’t even the first one like that the pair had seen in the past few weeks. So far the fighting between various factions was quiet from the outside, but that didn’t make it any less vicious.

There were no bodies. The two of them could very well guess who had been involved from the sorts of damage that had been done to the suburban house. The brute force physical violence was vampire, considering the time frame and lack of any claw marks, while the odd patches of perfectly unmarred floor or wall indicated fae trickery at work. The glamours had failed along with the creators’ lives, which was one reason why they were there. Someone had called the police after hearing the ruckus, as they put it.

The DAI was one of the few departments left in GAR operating mostly at full strength, but that hardly helped when there was more to investigate than ever. People had been taking advantage of the muddled enforcement and even open encouragement to settle old scores. It had reached the point where Ray and Felicia had been pulled off the useless Chester investigation again.

The sudden explosion of violence was strange if for no other reason than the perpetrators would be caught eventually. The supernatural world wasn’t that large and people had loose lips no matter the species. It was as if people thought they’d never be held to account, even when GAR recovered. Which might well be the case; neither Ray nor Felicia really knew much about some of the people who’d been brought in as the DAI and BSE reshuffled themselves.

In a way it wasn’t surprising. Most of the grudges weren’t something generations past; they were within living memory for most fae and quite a few vampires, and GAR had made sure there was little goodwill between the different factions. Ray wouldn’t go so far as to say GAR and the mages had played them off against each other in the past, but that was certainly going on now.

“What do you expect? There’s basically bounties out now.”

“Yeah, makes me wonder why we’re investigating. We know why it happened and to whom.”

“Paperwork makes the world go ‘round. That and ‘favors.’” Somehow Felicia managed to pack scorn into her handwriting as she referred to what they’d found out about Constance and some of the others high up in GAR after the bombshell of Archmage Fane’s death and the revelations of his activities. They certainly didn’t believe that Constance had actually sent it, especially since even moderate scrutiny had found a number of unpleasant facts that indicted Constance almost as much as Fane.

It was all out there in the open. There was really no attempt to hide the favor-trading and special dispensations Constance handed out. Probably because it was her department and who would hold her to account? Certainly not GAR, and the Archmages wouldn’t care. Not that Ray had been entirely unaware of that kind of thing, but he’d never looked into the breadth of it before.

Their banishment to useless jobs had not helped.

“So are we done here?” Ray asked, and Felicia nodded. They didn’t even need their supernatural talents for this particular crime scene. Just a keen eye and Felicia’s tablet to take notes and pictures. Fortunately they didn’t need to even try to wrangle any time from the overworked BSE to deal with any leaks, since if anyone had seen anything suspicious they were keeping it to themselves and that was good enough.

The two of them left the house, ducking under police tape. Which worked nearly as well as glamours sometimes. He took big breaths of fresh, frigid air to clear the smell of death from his nose, glancing up at an overcast sky that had a few flakes drifting down.

“Useless. Have to go after Master Vinito.” Felicia wrote, looking as frustrated as he felt.

“Sure,” Ray agreed. “If they actually want to stop this. Which I don’t think they do.” He cast a privacy shield around them before he said the last, just in case there were any observers. He was pretty sure there weren’t, since he’d cast his vis out and found every breathing being within the nearest mile. There was nobody unexpected, but it was an important precaution these days. Just because he didn’t notice anything out of the ordinary didn’t mean there wasn’t anything, as Wells’ actions had shown.

“We should find Jahn. He’s got to have some idea of what to do.” Ray nodded. Though he didn’t look it, Jahn was far older than either Ray or Felicia and sat outside normal GAR hierarchy as a special investigator. He would have a better grasp of what the options might be, given that they were hardly in a position to trust the DAI. The problem was, Jahn was not exactly readily accessible.

The man had been in charge of an investigation that had not only ruffled the feathers of half the Houses, but hadn’t even caught the target. Though there was still a concerted effort to track down Wells, Jahn himself had departed under a cloud. And promptly vanished from the public eye.

Ray still had the scry-com Jahn had issued them, which ought to be linked to Jahn’s. It was buried somewhere in the office, but now that Felicia had raised the idea it should be easy enough to find. They weren’t really doing anything else meaningful with their time anyway, aside from Felicia stewing on GAR’s sudden slide into deep corruption. Or rather, the sudden reveal of that corruption.

They headed back to the office, Ray’s glider doing the bulk of the heavy lifting. That was another reason they were being leaned on to cover the reports of violence and death. Ray’s mobility was abruptly far more valuable with the teleportation network so diminished. He wasn’t complaining; he liked flying in his glider.

The scry-com was in the drawer of his desk, and he exchanged glances with Felicia before by silent and unanimous verdict they went back out. There probably weren’t people listening in on the offices in GAR, but it wasn’t worth the risk. Wells had been declared heretic by House Duvall, which was as good as automatically blacklisting or even targeting anyone who could be considered on his side. And in the current climate questioning GAR would definitely be seen as aligning with Wells.

Once they were safely in the air, soaring five hundred feet above Minneapolis, Ray energized the scry-com. Despite their precautions, he wasn’t at all convinced it would actually work. With Jahn in hiding or seclusion, it wouldn’t have been surprising if the linked scry-com had been destroyed. So he was actually surprised when the focus connected.

“Agent Jahn?”

“Agent Danforth,” Jahn’s voice came. “I’d forgotten I had this on my band. I assume you’re not just calling for the fun of it.”

“I am not,” he said. “Felicia and I are hoping for some advice.”

“Not sure how much I can give you,” Jahn said wryly. “I’m not really part of GAR anymore.”

“That’s part of what we’re asking,” Felicia said, since the scry-com wouldn’t carry the power in her voice. “DAI is being turned into a political tool and neither Ray nor I are comfortable with that. And we’re on the wrong end, after everything that’s gone down.”

“Yes, I’m right there with you,” Jahn replied. “Unfortunately, unless you’re willing to play high-level politics there’s not much you can do, other than keep your head down.”

“Willing or not, neither of us are really part of high level politics.”

“I thought Agent Black⁠—”

“No,” Felicia interrupted, voice flat. Ray winced as the power bounced off him, despite the precautions he took to avoid being affected by her voice.

“I see. Well, the only options you have are to play the game or bail out.”

“What do you mean, bail out? Is that where you’ve gone? Holed up somewhere?” Ray didn’t want to push too much, but he was curious where Jahn had gone.

“I’m with Grand Magus Taisen,” Jahn said. “It’s not like there was anyone else who was willing to take me in.” Ray nodded, realizing he didn’t know what House Jahn was. Or maybe he was originally BSE, No-House, and had severed ties before becoming an independent agent.

“Where’d he vanish off to anyway?” Felicia asked. “People have even asked us about him.”

“Needless to say, he had a few more plans and contingencies than anyone thought,” Jahn replied. “I can’t tell you where we are, but we are in seclusion. The Grand Magus is trying to push to Archmage.”

“Oh.” Ray took a moment to just contemplate that. There weren’t that many Archmages, though there weren’t exactly official rolls. Perhaps thirty or so, and a few others that preferred not to show themselves, hiding away on a family estate and not engaging with the world. Just because someone had the power of an Archmage didn’t mean they had the temperament or interest in taking up the burdens of leadership and politics that came along with the title.

Even so, almost all Archmages had a single aspect. There were only a few people in history with a triple aspect, none of them had become Archmages, and none of them had as lethal a combination as Taisen. Though Ray wasn’t sure how much becoming Archmage would really change for the head of BSE; the man was an accomplished combat mage to begin with.

“I can’t invite you of my own accord, but I suspect the Archmagus would be glad to have anyone of good character that GAR sees no use for,” Jahn continued. Ray was glad that he’d taken the glider out. That was not a comment they needed anyone overhearing.

“That’s quite generous,” Ray said cautiously, exchanging a look with Felicia. “I don’t believe we’re at that stage yet.”

“Not yet, but I don’t like the way things are going,” Felicia said, which actually surprised Ray. He hadn’t directly asked what story she was following, but he was pretty sure it was the professional detective. It was difficult to know exactly where he slotted in, especially with the tension between them, but he wouldn’t have thought she’d turn away from her employer.

“We will certainly keep it in mind,” Ray concluded, going with Felicia’s decision. “I suppose it depends on how bad things get. What’s going on now could easily resolve itself if the Archmages got together and decided to fix it. But they aren’t. Which I’m kind of surprised they haven’t already, since Duvall shut down the transport network.”

“I think you’re underestimating the impact of someone killing Fane,” Jahn said. “The last time any Archmages were killed was hundreds of years ago, and it was Fane who did it. Now? They all have to feel vulnerable.”

“Wells is dangerous, but that dangerous?” Ray shook his head. His House was a minor one, and he’d more aligned himself with the DAI rather than House politics, so he wasn’t much in tune with the higher echelons.

“It’s more that it shows Archmages can be killed,” Felicia said. “I’m not even that convinced Wells is all that powerful. It wasn’t like he managed to breach any shields at Garrison Two. It’s more that he can completely blindside people. We don’t even know Fane is dead, just that he disappeared.”

“An academic difference at best,” Jahn replied.

“Yeah,” Ray mused. “But if that’s the case I’m surprised that the Houses haven’t stirred themselves to locate Wells of their own accord. Though I guess it’s not like they have any more leads than we do.”

“They’re probably blaming each other for Wells, but he might not be part of any House,” Jahn said. “I expect they’ll start going after people outside the direct Houses soon enough, too,” he added, unsubtly hinting at their own situation.

“I wonder if he knows how much chaos he’s caused,” Ray said, rather than a direct response to Jahn. They weren’t yet ready to say yes or no. “Or if that was his plan all along.”

***

Callum hadn’t been back to the area where he’d rescued the Connors ever since his headlong flight months ago. Not that he’d had reason to, but the whole region still had a no-go marker in his head. Even by proxy it felt weird to return to the Creede area, especially since he was actually looking for fae.

He’d sharpened his senses considerably since then, so he could sense a little bit an alteration in the local density of mana. It wasn’t so much a current, like with portals, as the edge of a pond, or possibly a lake. Part of him wondered how he had missed it before, but back then he hadn’t known what to look for.

There were, in theory, official ways to get the attention of a fae king that didn’t involve wandering into his territory, but Callum didn’t want official. Nor was he wandering, strictly speaking, as he teleported his screened anchor deeper into the wilderness. It was one of the anchors made out of corite, since cold iron was the fae bane material and ought to provide an extra layer of defense against any trickery the fae tried.

Lucy had suggested not using the drone to fly in, since he was supposed to be the Ghost. Something obvious was not part of the Ghost’s narrative, from the fae perspective, so he was manually working his way deeper into the fae kingdom. He had no idea how far he could get without being noticed but he’d have to talk to someone eventually.

“How’s it looking?” Lucy asked, fiddling with the communicator box that she’d picked out for the task. Not only did it have the normal audiovisual stuff but, considering they were dealing with fae, there was a small corite-gridded cavity for him to open a portal and peer out or listen with his own eyes and ears. He wasn’t sure he wanted to risk it but there was every chance the electronics would flat out fail to work.

“Nothing so far,” he reported. “Just a few small fae so far.” He also stared noticing some weirdness to the general everything a few miles deeper into the fae territory. It was hard to puzzle out, but there seemed to be some fundamental shift that applied to the space in general, somewhat like the portal worlds’ spatial difference but in reverse.

The deeper he went, the more change there was. The whole thing seemed to be an enchantment of absolutely enormous proportions, or maybe a spell. While he couldn’t tell what the magic was actually doing, the fae lack of need for a frame seemed to work to their advantage to truly large-scale workings. The magic just floated about, doing what it did without any architecture to hold it in place.

There were more spatial changes too, something subtle but still noticeable. He was pretty sure there was a form of expansion, but it wasn’t just that. While he didn’t know how exactly the fae magic was doing it, there was a definite twist to areas of the forested terrain that almost hurt his brain.

“Okay, this is bizarre,” he said, rubbing at his temples. “We’re going to need, like, four dimensional CAD if I want to transcribe what I’m sensing here.”

“Oh? Non-Euclidean stuff?” Lucy asked with interest. “I could probably try and hack something together but it’s really hard to get that stuff right.”

“Might have to come back to this, then,” Callum said. “It’s got to be useful, even if I don’t really understand it yet.” Especially if he was supposed to understand how to open up portals to different worlds.

For the moment he did his best to memorize what he was sensing before he somewhat reluctantly moved on. There was a reason he was there and it wasn’t like the fae enclave was going anywhere. The flourishes only got more prominent and more severe as he got deeper anyway, to the point that he could only imagine it would be massively disorienting for anyone trying to navigate normally. He wasn’t quite willing to pop open a secondary portal to look directly, but he could guess that there were areas that didn’t lead where they seemed they should, or were larger inside than outside, or just had distorted directions.

Obviously, quite a few of these were centered around dwellings that certainly weren’t houses, open-air meadows framed by pillars or trees grown into sheltering overhangs with furniture resting on naked grass. A number of them were inhabited, and it was difficult to tell sometimes which might be sapient fae and which might be beasts, or if there was really any difference.

There was what seemed to be a perfectly ordinary bear, save for the vis swirling about it, solemnly having tea with a two foot tall man in a suit. A man-shaped creature scampered happily about on all fours, despite not being anatomically suited for it, and lapped water from a stream like a dog. Callum would have thought him some enthralled victim save for the way magic swirled about him as he moved. Whatever he was, he was dangerous.

It was clearly not Jissarrell though. He’d seen what a fae king looked like in Miami and there was a world of difference between the man-beast and an actual powerful fae. So far none of them had seemed to notice the tiny portal anchor being teleported along at the edges of what he could sense, but it was small and he was definitely not getting anywhere near anyone or anything that might notice.

Not that they could remain unnoticed for long. According to what he could read and what Lucy and Chester had told him, a fae king was preternaturally aware of things that happened within the bound of his kingdom, and something like human magic should be obvious. Plus the vis cleanup beads he was leaving as he went. Even if his portal anchor was made from the fae bane material, that should only make it more obvious something was going on. Not that he was going to complain if he did manage to make it all the way to Jissarrell on his own terms.

A little deeper in, and things became even more obviously unnatural, with wispy trees supporting large platforms with dancing fae, or even houses built on the mists billowing up from a waterfall. The latter one was just offensive to Callum’s sensibilities, but it wasn’t his house so he forced himself to leave it be. It wasn’t like he could do anything without drawing attention anyway, and he was pretty certain he was close to the center.

One teleport more and he finally got noticed.

The surrounding lake of denser mana – something that was precipitated out of the ambient flow like a brine pool on the ocean floor – trembled and a fae that had to be Jissarrell simply walked out of a tree near the anchor. It happened too fast for Callum to really understand what he was seeing, but it didn’t seem like a teleport. Though it was probably a mistake to think of anything the fae did as having a direct equivalent to mage spell forms.

Some of the liquid fae magic swam into being around his portal anchor, a dense and rapid thing that would actually make it difficult for him to run a vis thread through without it shredding. Fortunately the barrier was not so close that he didn’t have room to work, and he gave Lucy a quick signal before he teleported her box onto the grass above the anchor.

“King Jissarrell, I presume?” He said, and the fae stopped. The camera on the box showed an elegantly garbed man looking as if he had been carved from some pale wood, with pine needles for hair and beard. The trees and grass in the background were impossibly green and brown and bright, the entire scene like something out of some fantasy painting.

“I am,” Jissarrell said, hands clasped behind him as he regarded the box with knot-like eyes.

“Good,” said Callum. “I am the Ghost. There is something I wish to purchase.”

“Really?” Jissarrell didn’t seem particularly upset. Only interested. “If you really are the Ghost, you can tell me what happened to my people that you removed.”

“They’re in caves about twelve hundred feet underground from where they were hunting,” Callum said. At this point it didn’t seem to be necessary to keep that particular secret. He also had to refrain from any further comment on the situation.

“Ah? That makes a great deal of sense.” Jissarrell nodded sagely. “Perhaps that is close enough to preserve in tableau. We will see.” It jolted Callum to hear the fae king considering the dead only for their entertainment value, but he had to remind himself that fae were weird.

“To my requirements. I need a container or material that can hide the presence of human magic from a fae king.”

“Really?” Jissarrell said in some amusement. “It sounds like I would be giving you a weapon to use against me.”

“If I wanted to move against you, I would have already done so,” Callum said.

“That sounds like a threat.”

“I do not make threats,” Callum replied. He always felt a little stupid acting like some tough, aloof assassin, but apparently it was effective.

“Indeed,” Jissarrell said, and inclined his head to the box. “In return you offer…?”

“A telepad pair. No restrictions, no networking, just a pair of discs that will swap contents. You will have to have the capability to charge and trigger a human enchantment, but that is the only caveat.”

“An interesting proposal. We fae do have our own ways of moving about, you know.”

“Certainly,” Callum agreed. “But other fae would know about those, wouldn’t they? This would be something else, something they don’t have and can’t replicate.”

“Now that is definitely something worth paying for,” Jissarrell replied, the pine-needle hair rattling as his expression brightened. “I think we can do business.”

Chapter 16 – Foreshocks

Callum spent almost a week putting magical threads into portal world metals. It felt like he’d slowed down on that front, taking longer the more experience he’d gotten, but there were reasons. His new enchantments were more complex, with actual trigger potions, and far better made than his earlier stuff.

The designs were still being made by CNC, though. Lucy had found an appropriate machine shop in Mexico, very far from the cave cache, and while the shop had fleeced him on the costs the work was good enough. Four portal pairs and a very large teleportation pad for Jissarrell, the latter of which necessitated another trip into the fae enclave.

The second time around he made sure to take a deeper and longer look at some of the spatial weirdness involved. Not only did he want to be able to do that kind of thing himself, but if he was going to start working on portal world connections he needed to expand his mind. The portals he’d seen were all different and he would definitely study them again, but there wasn’t anything obvious about how and why they cut between worlds.

He knew that some of what he was seeing was just fae weirdness, since waterfalls plunging straight out of redwood-sized oaks into pools larger than the roots framing them were not an aspect of normal Earth terrain. At the same time he was more than willing to learn from people who had been warping reality for longer than he’d been alive. So long as he did the learning on his own terms at least.

Jissarrell appeared in the same glade that they’d met the first time, for certain values of meet. There was nothing there but grass and trees, not even other fae. The king was the only person within Callum’s prodigious range, despite some obvious dwellings in trees and below the ground.

“So long as the magic is kept within the bounds of this wood, it will not be detectable,” Jissarrell said, producing a sphere of dark, striated wood the size of a basketball from nowhere in particular. So far he hadn’t remarked on Callum’s use of the transmitter box, taking it completely in stride. Considering the sylvan surroundings that seemed strange, but perhaps it was just the reputation of the Ghost helping things along. “As long as there is no seam or crack, of course,” he added.

“Of course,” Callum said. It was pretty typical, there being some kind of catch. That was just how fae magic worked, he was pretty sure, but that was the kind of restriction he could manage. “I have your teleportation plates ready, as specified.” Jissarrell had wanted them large enough for a horse, which was bigger than Callum had made before but only took a little extra enchanting material, and not even the good stuff.

He popped the plates out onto the grass, and Jissarrell let the wooden sphere fall. Callum caught it before it hit the ground, teleporting it off to a remote location through the makeshift portal nexus. There was no way he was going to trust the wooden ball. He was sure it would do what Jissarrell said it would, but he would bet that it wouldn’t do one ounce more. He’d borrowed a small pocket in the earth, something too small to even be called a cave, in the northern Appalachian Mountains for the purpose.

“Pleasure doing business with you,” Callum said.

“I look forward to seeing what the Ghost has planned,” Jissarrell said. Callum recalled the communication box and anchor and let out a long breath.

“He is a little creepy,” Lucy said. She’d been able to see his living-bark face from her own laptop, where she’d mirrored and recorded the exchange. “Kinda like a movie effect of some sort.”

“Yeah,” Callum agreed. “I’m actually a little weirded out that he doesn’t seem to actually care I killed his subjects. Either he’s really good at hiding a grudge, or he’s completely inhuman.”

“Fae king,” Lucy reminded him.

“Yeah. Weird to think about, but yeah.” Callum shook his head. “Well, we’re done with him for now. Time to start working on the hidey ball he gave us.”

“Hidey ball,” Lucy said and giggled. “Don’t worry, I’ll have my shooty bit ready for your hidey ball soon enough.”

“Shouldn’t that be my line?” Callum asked, and Lucy snorted.

She closed out the conferencing program and opened up a file to get back to her own work. She’d made a remote fire mechanism for the antimaterial rifle, but was still debugging it, a process as arcane to him as his abilities were to her. Ultimately it’d probably be better to replace the entire firing assembly with something custom made, but for the moment Lucy had a device that literally just pulled the trigger. Which sounded easy, but making sure the timing was tight and consistent required a bit more finesse.

His part was the ball, and that meant doing something that he’d only ever had middling success with: tearing apart something solid with teleportation. Doing so with tiny bits of flesh was hard enough, and wood was even more difficult. Fae wood, doubly or triply so. Teleporting out a pea-sized chunk of wood from the center of the sphere he’d been provided knocked him flat for an entire day.

Which brought a lot of fussing from Lucy, something he didn’t entirely dislike. She had a point that he wasn’t by himself anymore, and he didn’t need to just go off and do things by himself — and by corollary, risks he took weren’t just his to bear. But he couldn’t think of any other way he could have done it, and he had yet to find any particular risk in exhausting his vis other than having to rest.

Once he’d recovered, it was simple enough to open a tiny portal and drill through it to start removing material from the inside of the wood. He kept the shavings, though he had no idea what he’d do with them, and taped a portal anchor into the cavity he’d scraped in the ball. Callum really would rather have made a proper fixture, but it wasn’t worth the extra time and effort when duct tape worked just as well.

They took the ball out to a quarry for testing. There were a surprising number of disused, abandoned, or otherwise deserted pits and mines and quarries in Texas, so he could go to a new one each time. Though as big empty pits surrounded by rock and scrub went, they were pretty much all the same.

“Great, this should work but I haven’t tried it with live ammunition yet,” Lucy said. She adjusted her ear protection, and Callum double-checked his before he opened a portal.

The rifle was anchored to a frame that was itself bolted into the rock of the cave-cache. They’d lined up a number of his water barrels in front of it just in case. Though it shouldn’t go off unless one or the other of them triggered Lucy’s device, it was still loaded and had to be treated with the respect it deserved.

He squeezed the thumb trigger Lucy had rigged the transmitter to and servos whirred as the signal traveled through the portal and to the receiver on the other side. They’d made sure to get a semi-automatic type, as it suited their purposes better, and several loud reports shattered the air as it fired rapidly. A single press was single-fire, but it wasn’t likely that he’d ever use that. Even with his spatial-sense-assisted aim, he didn’t trust that one bullet would hit. Or be sufficient.

“Woo, that’s a racket,” Lucy said, as Callum vented the cave to get rid of the smell and generally refresh the air. “It works though!”

“It works,” he confirmed.

***

Fane Chen was less than happy about the state of House Fane. He couldn’t enjoy the luxury of his office, the silk drapes and cushions, the gold inlaid desk, the glowing mana-powered sculptures that doubled as elegant light fixtures. Nor could he enjoy the magnificent view of the House gardens outside, properly and elegantly trimmed and kept green and thriving even during winter.

Ever since that heretic had banished Patriarch Fane – Chen refused to believe the Patriarch was actually dead, since he couldn’t conceive of anything powerful enough to kill an Archmage – the House had been treading difficult ground. There were suddenly more Houses willing to flout them than there should have been, or even dared to oppose them outright! There had already been deaths, despite the threat of House Fane’s wrath.

Then there were the internal problems, with Fane Yun and Fane Li Hua vying with him for control of the House. The utter fools. The Patriarch had seen their mediocre talent for what it was worth, which was why they had never been elevated beyond their stations. No, it was he, Fane Chen, who had been entrusted with the governance of House Fane, and he would continue to do so.

What he really needed to cement his control over the House was to demonstrate his superiority. His merits over the last hundred or so years had obviously not been enough, but they had all been done under the direction of the Patriarch so perhaps they had been less than visible. He needed to do something to prove he could keep the House’s strength.

“Whatever happened to that Hargrave apprentice we were supposed to get?” Chen asked. He knew there had been issues with the Hargraves that had been resolved somewhat unsatisfactorily, but that was only to be expected from American barbarians. Chen’s younger cousin, Xien, flipped through the papers, adjusting his reading glasses. That was an affectation; in House Fane there was nobody with the slightest deformity.

“Our collection emissaries were repulsed three times, once with casualties,” Xien reported. “Hargrave still has not ceded her to us, nor to GAR or BSE.”

“That is one of the few remaining orders from Patriarch Fane,” Chen said. “We will rectify that. Despite its current difficulties, it will not do to let anyone think that House Fane can be stymied. Especially when it comes to healers.”  From what Patriarch Fane had said of House Hargrave and its master, they were too weak-willed and weak-minded to be much of a threat to a proper force.

“Yes, Manager Chen,” Xien replied. He dutifully took down Chen’s words, his own desk at one edge of Chen’s expansive office.

“Gather our ten best combat mages, and three of our best Gu users. We should not let this linger.”

“Yes, Manager Chen,” Xien said.

While House Duvall had yet to reinstate the teleportation network, House Fane’s private transport pads still worked, so they could at least get to the main GAR offices in the United States. He had intended to demand additional BSE personnel there, but there seemed to be few about. Instead he was, after an infuriating wait as underlings talked on phones, ushered into the office of the new head of the Department of Arcane Investigation.

“I can issue you a warrant,” said Supervisor Lane. He had the overly pale look of one of the Houses that resided in the Night Lands, though Chen didn’t know which of the big Houses Lane was a part of. “But we’re low on personnel at this time of night. Especially of a caliber that can call the Hargraves to account.”

“Of course,” Chen sneered. It was no surprise that the Americans were so lax and haphazard that they didn’t even have the ability to police their own. Of course, that was why he had brought so many. “Give me the warrant, and the location of House Hargrave.” He obviously wasn’t going to simply use the private teleporter undoubtedly somewhere on GAR grounds. Not that he had any compunctions about bulling through to find it, but taking any losses would damage his merits.

“Yes, certainly,” Lane said, commendably quickly and with proper servility. Though he did not offer any refreshment while he wrote out the warrant and obtained the maps, it at least didn’t take the man too long.

Chen took both and returned to where his men waited in the main room of what the Americans called GAR East. He handed the map to Captain Sie and they all powered their flight foci as they left the building. It was nearly night, since the States had the bad taste to be on the opposite side of the world from real civilization, but that was probably better for an assault.

Finding the Hargrave estate barely needed the map. It was north and west of the GAR holdings by several hundred miles, but it fairly blazed with protective wards to his mana sight. There were guide markers built into the ward structure, which he followed to lead his people around to the estate front and dropped down to get the attention of the person at the post there. He was on official business, so he would use the front door.

A whipcord-thin man with no hair stood at the gatehouse, the interior light shining off his bald head as he regarded Chen from behind a powerful set of shields. Despite himself, Chen had to admit that the House defenses were impressive, though he was fairly certain the squad with him could punch through it. Though really, it was the Gu users who would do most of the work.

“I have a warrant for Gayle Hargave,” Chen said, holding up the paper. “She’s to be given over to the custody of House Fane.” The guard looked at them in silence a bit and then turned and spat. Not as a gesture of disgust, Chen realized after a moment, but because he’d been chewing tobacco.

“Ya’ll are from House Fane, then?” He asked, his English so accented that Chen had a hard time understanding it for a moment.

“Of course,” Chen said, almost affronted. He and all his men were in House Fane colors.

“Yeah, you’re not welcome here.” The guardsman didn’t seem to be much impressed by Chen or his entourage, likely because of the protective enchantments.

“I see.” Chen powered his scry-com. “Sie, Hua — remove this obstacle.” Despite the fact that he used a proper language rather than the mess of English, the guard seemed to understand what Chen had said and the wards flared. A kinetic shield went up around the guardhouse and rippled out to enclose the entire estate. No matter. Something that large could hardly be sustained for long.

The ground shook, and he lofted himself into the air again as Sie’s magic furrowed the earth, tons of rock shifting against the shield in a bid to shatter it. Hua wielded fire magic more precisely, a white-hot spear smashing against the protective energies. Unsurprisingly, other mages came flying in on the other side as the Hargraves own guard detail joined the sudden chaos.

Chen’s shields brushed aside a return kinetic bolt, and the air was suddenly filled with the energies of spells as magic shot in both directions. The trees around them cracked and caught fire, those that still stood in defiance of the churning earth quickly devastated by stray bolts or sparks. Shields flashed into momentary visibility as they turned aside the spells that were on target. Larger patterns emerged inside mage’s spheres of authority as specialized foci were brought into play, and either resulted in a massive fusillade of energies or were disrupted by spellbreaker bolts cutting far enough into competing vis to sever a link. It was all far too fast and chaotic for anyone to actually grasp what was going on, the automatic shielding and combat foci and honed reflexes doing the bulk of the work.

Suddenly the shield protecting the Hargrave guards gave way, finally disrupted or drained by Sie’s work, and Chen pointed.

“Show them Gu,” he ordered, and the healer-aspected mages who had been hanging back spun their own constructs. While healing constructs had a hard time going through ward shields, since they were pure mana in the end, personal shields were another matter.

He couldn’t hear the screams past the thunder of the impacts and explosions buffeting the water shield he kept about him, but he knew they had to exist as two, then three, then four of the mages dropped out of the sky. Chen pushed forward, finding one of the downed mages was the bald man from the gatehouse. His left arm and cheek was already black and necrotizing.

“As you see, we’re more than capable of making our own entrance.” He couldn’t help gloating.

“My big brother can beat up your big brother,” the man croaked out. Chen frowned, about to attribute the words to a dying man’s delirium when something hard smashed against his shield and forced him backward. A series of boxes made out of pure force separated out the House Fane forces, and Chen felt a twinge of fear as his strongest water breacher did nothing but splash off the surface of the powerful vis construct. Even the Gu mages didn’t seem to be able to penetrate it, though they should have been able to break any mage’s vis by poisoning it.

A man utterly blazing in Chen’s mage sight dropped down from the night sky, ignoring the fires and the efforts of fourteen mages trying to break his constructs. After a moment Chen noticed there was a young girl with him, who immediately landed by one of the downed mages. Even at a distance, through the haze of the kinetic shield, he could see it was healing magic.

“Fane bastards,” the man spat, and Chen bristled. “Why are you here?” He continued, and Chen waved the warrant at him.

“It is the right of House Fane to hold any users of Gu! I have the dispensation from the Department of Arcane Investigation to take Gayle Hargrave into custody.”

“Do you now?” The man said. “In the face of an Archmage, the ultimate authority of a House, you dare to still make such petty claims?”

“Your man refused to obey the warrant!” Chen shot back. “GAR and the DAI are my authority.”

“Be damned with your warrant,” the man replied. “Be damned with the DAI and with House Fane.”

“You would flout the law?” Chen demanded. The man looked at him, then flicked a finger. The box containing Yui Xian, one of their Gu users, shot forward toward the man. Chen watched with horror as the gold-armored man simply punched forward, his fist passing through the box and Xian’s shield alike, and Xian practically exploded. There was a spray of red inside the box, and the man pulled his unstained fist back to leave behind only a layer of red sludge at the bottom of the kinetic box.

“Yes,” the man, who could only be the Hargrave patriarch, said coldly. “I would.”

***

Callum sorted through his box of tricks. He was more or less relying on the rifle, which was loaded with a ten-round cartridge of the insanely expensive explosive-incendiary rounds, but he wasn’t satisfied with only relying on it. The tear gas and flashbangs were close at hand, as strange as it felt to handle that sort of equipment, along with his own water grenades, though they were weak enough that he doubted they’d do much. Maybe if he had cold iron casings, or a cold iron alloy, but he didn’t.

He had made more thermite, given how terrifyingly potent the stuff was. The quick-ignite kind, anyway, though it wasn’t likely to be all that useful against moving targets. While maybe he could have gotten other explosives or even poisons, he didn’t have anywhere near the expertise to use any of it properly and wasn’t interested in blowing himself or his cave cache up by accident.

“Right,” he said, checking through it a couple times. “Once we place the volcano anchor we’ll be ready.” Callum doubted the volcano trick would do much against a fae that had made a volcanic region his home base. Besides which, mundane lava probably was nothing more than a warm bath to anything with potent nature magic.

“Almost ready,” Lucy corrected him. “I think we could use some more backup. I didn’t think about it with Fane because I know what mages can do. But fae are weird.”

“So I understand,” Callum said. “I’ve seen a bit, but not enough to really have a feel for it.”

“Right, so I had a talk with Lisa,” Lucy said. “I figured you’d be focused on all your stuff and wouldn’t think about it, but if the fae can send anything or anyone back at you even despite the portals, I’m not going to be any help. But the Wolfpack? Battle shifters? They’re fast and tough and they’d be able to tear anything apart. Or pull us out of danger.”

“I— huh.” He still thought in terms of solo operation. Lucy was a fantastic asset for setting things up, but in the end he was the one manipulating the portals and teleports so he wasn’t used to thinking far outside that.

“She just offered to help us; we don’t have to,” Lucy said, maybe misreading his hesitation. His first impulse was to say no, but he didn’t have any good reason to refuse. Alpha Chester was at least mostly trustworthy and Lucy was absolutely right about fae trickery.

“No,” he said. “You’re right.” He had to make the choice to trust her. By himself he was definitely careful, but if he didn’t trust anyone he’d make too many mistakes. People weren’t meant to be completely alone, in any aspect. And Lucy was with him for the long haul. “It’d be helpful to have people around who can deal with supernaturals better than we can. Up close, anyway.”

“Great!” Lucy said with obvious relief. “I’ll call up Lisa and tell her we’re coming over?”

“Sure,” Callum said, still feeling a little bit weird about intruding that way, but found the appeal growing the more he thought about it. Callum wasn’t going to depend on shifter guards all the time – that would de facto make him one of Chester’s agents – but in this circumstance and against this target, it would be stupid to turn down the help.

He sorted through his preparations once again, mentally running through the various things lined up in the cave-cache, while Lucy called her friends. The work had come back from the metal shop, so he’d finished making up a new nexus. It was basically just a bunch of metal boxes chained together, and he’d put it right at one of the black underwater smokers he’d only seen on the nature documentaries he watched with his dad – well, granddad – as a kid. That let him keep one of the portal anchors open for Lucy to run her internet through.

While she was chatting, he started moving an anchor over to Pacaya, the same volcano he’d used before. There weren’t all that many places in the world where there was easy access to fresh, moving lava, especially ones that were stable enough for him to use. He’d found a few active lava basins on the internet but they all were so hostile that he was afraid his anchors would melt before he could get any use out of the lava.

“They’re ready for us,” Lucy said after a few minutes, and Callum switched to focusing on the anchor that was up closer to Chester’s compound. It was actually there because he had intended to use it to get close to Ravaeb’s territory before switching to the wooden ball, but it wasn’t like Chester’s place was all that far away.

“By the way, Lucy,” he said. “Thanks for thinking of that. I know I wouldn’t have.”

“That’s what I’m here for, big man,” she said happily. “To make sure you don’t turn into a big paranoid ball of curmudgeon.” He paused and put an arm around her, taking a moment to appreciate everything she did do for him. Neither of them minded the delay.

By that time, getting the drones into Chester’s compound was easy enough. Lucy just said hi to the gate guards through the mic and somebody brought the drone in. He could have just bypassed Chester’s security if he wanted, but that would have been unnecessarily rude.

He opened a portal into the usual basement, nodding to the shifter there — John, he was pretty sure the name was. Lucy followed him in, but before they could find seats to wait for Chester, John bestirred himself.

“We’ve got a more secure area for you,” he said, and Callum took a moment to actually look and see where Chester was. He knew the layout of the compound, of course, but that wasn’t the same as knowing what everything was used for.

He found Chester in something that Callum wouldn’t exactly call a secure area, since it was basically just a big open field, but there were a lot of shifters there. Under the circumstances, that probably was better than a place where there might be collateral damage if something energetic happened. Even though Callum was satisfied he knew where they were going, he and Lucy both followed John on foot.

All the shifters were in their war form, making a crowd of eight-to-ten-foot-tall beast-men about twenty strong, scattered over the grassy courtyard. Seeing them all together, most of them were a shade of dirty white, but here and there were some exceptions. One shifter was jaguar-black, another one a sort of steely blue, and a couple had tabby patterning despite clearly not being cats. He still thought they looked half hyena, half wolf, and half lion, despite the mathematic impossibility.

“Hey, the gang’s all here,” Lucy said happily. While Callum felt uncomfortable confronted by all the shifter firepower, Lucy very obviously felt safe surrounded by people she knew. People she knew could handle themselves, at that.

“Hey Lucy,” Lisa said, the incongruity of her voice coming from a half-ton beast making Callum blink. It more or less worked for Chester, whose voice just got deeper, but he’d never seen Lisa transformed and for some reason her voice hadn’t changed either. “Welcome, Callum. When are you going to make an honest woman of Lucy?”

“I think we have to get past the current issue,” Callum said, knowing better than to try to question her timing. Grandmothers were pushy. “I appreciate the bodyguarding.”

“Sure, happy to help,” Lisa said, completely ignoring the glare that Lucy was sending her way.

“Great,” he said, trying not to stare too much at the crowd of shifters. “Lot of people.” This many shifters meant that Chester wasn’t keeping his cooperation with Callum quiet. Or at least, far less quiet, though considering that there were no mages within Callum’s sphere it wasn’t exactly public either.

“Yes,” Chester agreed. “When dealing with fae magic, it’s better to have a lot of people paying attention. Besides, everyone here has fought and killed fae, so we have some experience.” There was a general rumble of assent, an animalistic communal growl. That, more than anything, raised the hairs on Callum’s neck, but Lucy just rolled her eyes.

“Aside from protection while you deal with Ravaeb, is there anything you need?” Chester asked.

“Well, chairs and a table,” Callum said, and produced his own from the cave-cache. Chester’s furry eyebrows went up as the furniture simply appeared on the grass, but he just shrugged after a moment. Callum was peripherally aware of reactions from the others that he had never seen and had never seen him, but nothing dramatic. “There actually isn’t much to see at this end. I do it all through the portal anchors,” he said, tapping his temple.

“Fair enough,” Chester said. “We’ll hang out here.” He didn’t make any obvious signal, but about three-quarters of the shifters standing or sitting out on the grass shifted into full beast form and stretched out. They looked relaxed, but they reminded Callum of the hunting hounds he’d seen when he was a kid and went to visit a ranch with his dad.

He and Lucy sat down at the table he’d pulled from his cache, and she directed the drone up into the air. He wrapped his framework around it and sent it off west, toward Yellowstone. Chester and Lisa and the Wolfpack he recognized took up stations near the table, standing on guard in an almost military way, but he didn’t let that distract him.

Callum had fae to deal with.

***

Ensharrehael considered the offer, sailing or floating or flying – depending on one’s perspective – through the endless blue of the mana world.

There were several good reasons that dragons didn’t have their avatars take too active a role in the worlds they could access. They had found years ago, to their detriment, that merely copying the biological architecture and playing a role was not sufficient to actually, fully understand the natives of the worlds they encountered. A multitude of seemingly insignificant misunderstandings could cascade into sudden and ruinous war – or even mass suicides and widespread devastation – if the dragons actually tried their hand at ruling.

Then there were the portals themselves. Dragons had many talents, but creating portals was not one of them. So far, they hadn’t run into any purely technological methods to cross dimensional boundaries. While some of the advancements in space travel on Earth might render that moot – the expanse of a proper universe was far more interesting than the empty sky of the liminal space between worlds – they were as yet made vulnerable by portals they could neither create nor control.

Earth was the first place Ensharrehael had personally encountered any sort of magic that could reproduce the effect. Unfortunately, the number of human mages that could actually create new dimensional portals was vanishingly small, and the one he knew could do it – Archmage Duvall – had flatly refused. She apparently already knew the dangers inherent to casual breaches of reality.

There was good reason to support anything that would make Callum Wells survival and success more likely, even if it flirted with breaking the rules he and his companions had set down a very long time ago. Moreover, it wasn’t like Alpha Chester was asking Ensharrehael for direct help. Simply wisdom and guidance, which for the most part kept Ensharrehael from crossing over to the forbidden realm of actually being in charge.

He tinkered with a new avatar, dabbling in the concept of making it elderly — to better convey age and wisdom. His own body was, of course, effectively immune to the ravages of time. In the abyss of mana-saturated air he used a good amount of it for testing, converting and rebuilding sections of flesh and blood and scale. Most of him was no longer merely meat, but something closer to cybernetics, living metal and lubricant blood with fission hearts beating at intervals.

The chamber he used for designing new avatars was under his rear-left wing, in a small pocket of inert atmosphere. A place to play with some of the more useful, but combustible, materials born of Earth’s technological progress. The elderly adviser avatar didn’t need to be particularly exotic, though. He experimented with a beard but didn’t like the way it looked with scales, so instead he used fins to provide the same sort of aesthetic, curling under the chin and the same dark green as the scales.

Even just making such a thing was effectively a decision. There were so many reasons for Ensharrehael to at least sit in as a revered elder, and not many to turn it down. It would be more amusing than trying to play elder for the Fanes, at least. They had been utterly without humor.

Even Ensharrehael, as alien as humans were to him, understood the humorless ones were not to be trusted.

Chapter 17 – Hammer

Callum’s body was in Alpha Chester’s yard, but his mind was on Ravaeb. He tuned out the chill in the winter air, the glare of the sun in the clear blue sky, and the shifter guards looming nearby. Instead he focused on the drone hovering above the outskirts of Yellowstone National Park. He couldn’t sense any trace of fae influence, but that was for the best. There was no point in allowing even a hint of his presence.

He withdrew the wooden ball from its hiding place in a pocket of earth and teleported it down to the forest floor, where it rested among snow and frozen loam. The drone itself he pulled back to the table, where Lucy cut the lift. From there on out she couldn’t do much more than watch.

“Thanks, Lucy,” he said, and started shifting the ball into the park.

“Play ball,” she replied, apparently thinking of the same turn of phrase he was, and he snorted as he stretched out his perceptions. He had to go quite a few more miles toward the center of the park than he’d expected before he started to notice the same mana pond phenomenon that Jissarrell’s enclave had demonstrated. Once he found it though, it seemed to get denser far more sharply than it had in the Creede area.

Denser and twistier. Space wasn’t exactly being tied in knots, but there was more distortion in more places than the last fae realm he’d looked at. He considered what he was looking at for a moment, then realized it was stupid to just ponder it himself when he had people around who might actually understand the implications of what he was seeing.

“I’ve never been, you understand,” Chester said when he asked about it. “But from what I understand a lot of Ravaeb’s fae prefer to be hidden. They tend toward ambush and duplicity, and his court itself is knives-out.”

“How do they get anything done then?” Callum wondered aloud, skirting around some of the brain-twisting contortions that had the distinct vis signature of a fae inside. The concept of a court wracked by infighting was not new, even infighting that was literal and not just social, but such things hadn’t lasted long historically. “Wouldn’t they just all kill each other off and collapse?”

“Depends on how hard it is to kill a fae,” Chester replied, and Callum shook his head. It still sounded like a recipe for chaos, but Callum wasn’t there to critique Ravaeb’s management style. He was there to kill the king.

Now that Callum was in the actual fae realm he didn’t dare use teleportation, since that would expose his magic, but he could weave a gravitykinesis framework inside the ball and sent it rolling or even flying around. That made the process of getting deeper a lot slower than it could have been. Not that it was slow, as such, but he was spoiled by moving a thousand feet every few seconds.

For once he had to actually worry about being caught. His instincts were all wrong for physically maneuvering something through the world, since he’d spent so long barely caring about the path between two points. He kept catching himself wanting to thread right through trees and brush, and he had to keep reminding himself to keep out of any potential line of sight. Even in a fae enclave, he was sure a wooden ball rolling about on its own was cause for suspicion.

Unless the wood was actually invisible to fae. That wasn’t impossible, but Callum didn’t think Jissarrell would do him that favor. The fae magic shrouding seemed to work, at least, since he could sense an odd muting of the pond as it pressed against the surface of the wood. The interior, where the anchor was, had none of the excess mana at all. He half expected the ball to start bobbing backward from mana pressure alone.

Soon enough he started to run across the same sort of ridiculous unnatural formations that he’d seen in the heart of Jissarrell’s enclave. Only instead of picturesque waterfalls coming from oversized trees, they were things like ice caves shaped around boiling geysers and wind-scoured canyons cutting deep into the earth. There were scenic parts, but they were scenic in a harsh and uncompromising way.

Some of it was not beautiful. There were swaths of dead and rotting vegetation, bubbling swamps that even through his remote perceptions felt diseased, and pits of burbling and steaming mud that had nothing at all to recommend them. Despite how awful those features were, every one of them had someone or something inhabiting it. He kept the orb far away but he could still get the outlines of huge, long-limbed things crouching or creeping or swimming in the muck and detritus.

“You were right,” Chester remarked to Lucy. “It really doesn’t look like anything. I can’t really even smell any magic.”

“He’s going to kill Ravaeb with the power of his mind,” Lucy said. “Plus a huge gun we picked up. But yeah, it’s actually a little freaky that he does everything all spooky silent. He hates the name Ghost but it works.”

“It’s so stupid,” Callum muttered. “Like I’m some kind of comic book villain.”

He didn’t have to be quiet. It was hardly like anyone would hear anything through a portal anchor being chained through his nexus. But he couldn’t help it; he was trying to be sneaky so he was going to be quiet. He hadn’t disassociated his magic from himself that far.

Callum floated the ball from tree to tree and from bush to bush in short hops, mostly to make sure he hadn’t missed anything in his perception sphere. He had the range to ensure there was nobody around, something quite useful since there were small fae or magical beasts flitting about here and there, or burrowing underground.

Compared to what a wilderness should have, it was practically a desert. There were only insects, clustered around unidentifiable carrion. Yet there were no animals those carcasses could have come from. No elk or deer or bears, not even mice or foxes or birds flying around. Even through his spatial senses it felt off and oppressive.

He followed the feeling of increasing pressure as his best guide for the center of Ravaeb’s domain, since he had no idea where exactly he was going and the only path he could take was necessarily circuitous as he avoided any inhabitants. Even if Callum had been provided a map, he was pretty sure that it’d be useless given the general weirdness and spatial twisting the fae enclave demonstrated.

The minutes stretched on, nearing an hour, and shifters got up and moved around, cycling through forms. Lisa leaned on the table and chatted with Lucy, though in low tones to avoid distracting him. Callum didn’t even realize he was scowling until Lucy said something.

“Something wrong on the other side, big man?”

“Hmm?” He blinked and shook his head, stretching since he’d somehow become stiff and cold already. “Not wrong as such, but it’s pretty unpleasant over there. Just the environment is hostile and disgusting. Like, a land of blight and winter.”

“The longer a fae sticks to their story, the more powerful they become,” Chester remarked. “Big stories mean more power, too. Plenty of old stories about the king of cold and death.”

“Yeah? Well, it’s definitely both of those.” Callum shivered.

“Want something hot? Coffee? Chocolate?” Chester offered. He didn’t seem too worried about the cold.

“Sure,” Callum said. “Chocolate please? Thanks.” He flexed his fingers inside his gloves. “I guess I just didn’t realize I’d be spending so much time out here.”

“The sight lines are worse inside,” Chester said blandly, but smiled when Callum looked at him skeptically.

The carafe of hot chocolate helped, both the warmth and the sugar, as he kept floating his stealth basketball into Ravaeb’s demesne. The scattered dwellings, if they could be called such, got closer together until Callum broke out into a clearing where there seemed to be actual paths and fences. Footpaths became bridges over small streams, winding away from the edge of the wilderness.

Except that all the construction seemed to be bone.

It was so overwrought and macabre that Callum almost laughed. It was terrible, and he was sure there was human bone in there given the motif and theme of Ravaeb’s story, but it was also incredibly silly. Though the kind of insane required to build an entire pier and tethered boat out of nothing but fused bones was horrifying in its own right. It was exactly the sort of thing you’d see out of a deranged serial killer — which of course Ravaeb was.

The problem with actually stumbling on Ravaeb’s court was that there were fewer places to hide a self-propelled sphere of wood, and sight-lines longer than Callum’s sensory range. Not a problem if he could have teleported but moving manually felt dangerous and exposed. Especially since there were plenty of fae within Callum’s sphere, with relatively little underbrush to hide the movement of his anchor.

None them seemed like the maybe-elves of Jissarrel’s nobles. They were all oversized or undersized, too long of limb or too short of it. For the most part Callum had no idea what sort of creatures they were supposed to be other than creepy. He did spot some that might well be aping certain urban legends, but that was only a guess.

He didn’t actually care what the court was doing, except for how hard it made it for him to move the ball around. Nevertheless it seemed there were a lot of fae talking and bickering with each other, and once there was even a fight that ended up with a much larger fae disemboweled by a small, razor-toothed mouse-thing. Callum would have sworn the wounds were lethal, but it was back on its feet and complaining to someone within thirty seconds while its intestines knitted back together.

After trying to figure out how he was going to fly a chunk of wood around without anyone taking issue for a good ten minutes, Callum almost slapped himself. There were streams, and they were going in approximately the right direction, so he simply rolled the wood into the water and let it float. Or rather, he helped it float, piloting it like a tiny boat rather than trusting the current.

His range was enough that the palace at the center of the clearing came into his perceptions not too long after the ball started inward, though calling it a palace was overselling it. The center of the bone court was more of a raised pavilion, framed but not walled, like some kind of oversized gazebo. It was hideously well made, every inch of the bone that made it up carved with exacting precision by a master. Obviously the work of years, and despite the material there was nothing out of place or haphazard about it.

Callum had a very dark urge to liberate some powerful munitions and just drop the biggest bomb he could find at the center of the whole thing. He quashed it though, since not only was it impractical, but he wasn’t there to kill everything, even if many of them were undoubtedly the kinds that deserved it. But he didn’t know that and he wasn’t about to cause massive death and destruction just because some people deserved it. The lesson of Sodom and Gomorrah came to mind.

“Found him,” Callum said, as the wooden ball drifted along the stream. Ravaeb was obvious not just from the fact that he was sitting on a throne in the center of the pavilion, but from the sheer scale and density of his vis. In fact, Callum was a little uncomfortable looking at him, because just from the impression of his power it felt like Ravaeb would notice. He nearly had a heart attack when Ravaeb shifted, though it seemed to be just to lean over and say something to what could only be described as a yeti standing to the side of his throne.

At least, Callum assumed the fae was speaking. Ravaeb didn’t have any lips.

“What’s he look like?” Lucy asked.

“Herne the Hunter by way of zombie apocalypse?” Callum hazarded. “Like, twelve feet tall, big deer skull for a head, thin but muscled and boy is that weird.” If anything, Callum was underselling the menace of Ravaeb’s actual form. His size, the corded sinew and muscle, and the casual power of even his slightest movement implied that he could fell buildings and overturn tanks if he wanted to. He hoped the gun they had was large enough.

“I’ve never seen past his blue-skinned-giant glamour,” Chester remarked. “But yes, that is Ravaeb.”

“It’s not really a treat.” Even with magic, he wouldn’t have thought it was possible for someone to be alive with an actual skull for a head, though Callum was sure he was missing details thanks to only being able to use his spatial sense. Ravaeb’s outlines were actually a little blurry, his vis melding with the heightened mana of the enclave. There were obviously subtleties beyond what he could discern, but he was pretty sure he was seeing some aspect of the whole fae king thing. One with the land and all.

“You’re close enough to engage?” Chester didn’t give any obvious signal, but the shifter gathering he’d almost forgotten about all stirred.

“Yes,” Callum confirmed. The ball wasn’t even in the pavilion; he’d wedged it under a handy bridge over a thousand feet away. Mostly because he didn’t want to have his perspective bobbling about while he was focused. “I’ll count us down,” he said, gripping the trigger for the antimateriel rife. “Ten, nine…”

He poked a single vis thread out of the ball and snaked it over to the pavilion. That was actually the riskiest bit of the entire venture, whether his miniscule vis threads would trigger any kind of response. Callum had some hope that even if they were noticed, nobody would realize the actual threat until it was too late. Two hundred yards away, when Callum reached zero, he snapped open a portal and held down the trigger.

Ravaeb’s chest exploded.

The fae king was huge and Callum aimed for center mass, so with his spatial sense advantages the first bullet hit exactly where he was aiming. Not so the rest, because a small thing like an exploded chest didn’t really slow Ravaeb down. Despite being so huge, he was out of his throne before the second bullet hit, which gouged out a good chunk of the bone back with a spray of fragments but didn’t actually penetrate it, which was worrying coming from an anti-tank weapon.

He tracked Ravaeb with the portal, turning it slightly as Ravaeb seemed to simply blur to the side. The Fae was fast, but he wasn’t quite faster than bullets, and until he located the tiny portal Callum was using he wouldn’t even know where the attack was coming from. A second bullet dug into Ravaeb’s side, drawing another fountain of gore, but the fae king still didn’t go down. Instead, he did something.

It was impossibly, incomprehensibly complex. Callum could at most glimpse a fraction of whatever it was Ravaeb’s vis did, but something blasted out from the fae and twisted and contorted every cubic inch of the surrounding space. Bones crumbled, fae reeled back. Before Callum could close his portal to the gun, the fae magic shoved through it.

He’d actually been using his nexus, opening two sets of portals. One was to an empty box near the anchors, and the other was from the box to the target. The empty box abruptly imploded, boiling into the sea. In the next step in the chain, the rifle dissolved into black sludge and the water barrels nearby burst apart, spilling rotting goop everywhere.

Then there was a numb shock and disorientation as the world wheeled around him, his thoughts blown to the four winds as someone caught him and put him back to his feet. He didn’t even know what had happened until thought came rushing back, his face and hands aching as his brain scrambled to keep up with the speed at which supernaturals operated. His perception sphere only belatedly informed him that there was some monstrosity where the table used to be. A towering horror of bone and rot that he could only blearily see through eyes that refused to focus.

He found Lucy being supported by some other shifters on the far side of the clearing, which quenched a panic that he hadn’t even realized was building, and shook his head. His brain still seemed to be catching up to his sense as sound slammed into him, a horrific clotted gurgle of rage from the thing that Ravaeb had somehow, somehow sent right to him washing over him.

“We’ve got this,” Chester shouted, dodging a blow that practically vaporized the remains of the table. “Finish it!”

Callum blinked and reached back out through his portals. He’d been so disoriented by the impact that he’d completely lost track of what was going on in the pavilion. It’d only been a few seconds at most, but at the speed supernaturals could move that was a lot of time.

Ravaeb was still in the pavilion, thankfully, standing with his chest heaving and whatever passed for blood dripping onto the polished floor. The retaliation seemed to have taken more out of him than Callum’s weapons, but he was clearly injured and the fae around him all had a lot of magic swirling about to protect themselves. Unfortunately, the biggest and baddest weapon Callum had was black slime on the floor of his cave so he was forced to scramble through his backup plans.

He started out by dropping all his flashbangs into the group of fae on the pavilion. Gravitykinesis let him yank the pins easily enough and launch them from a dozen yards away. It wasn’t a very accurate shot but it didn’t need to be, especially since the fae protections stopped the flashbangs in midair. For some reason the shield didn’t even destroy them, which he’d figured would happen and was the reason he used them all. On the off chance one of them would be intact.

Two of the fae, tall thin things with too many arms actually reached out to pluck the cannisters from where they hung in the air, only to very clearly regret it when the flashbangs went off a second later. Most of the fae reeled backward, hands went to eyes or ears or both, but it disrupted the shielding around Ravaeb enough that Callum reached through to the anchor located in Picaya and hurled a deluge of lava.

A horrific crunching, bubbling noise distracted him and he focused on the horrific fae thing Ravaeb had sent at him just before his shifter guardian hauled him off faster than he could track. A line of steaming black ichor lay where he had been, and despite a half-dozen shifters worrying at it, the rot thing was still moving. Not for long, by the look of it, but it was obviously still trying to get at him.

The monster was a weird parallel to the lava streaming down over the pavilion: aimed at Ravaeb but quite happy to take any other fae that was in its path. Callum wasn’t sure what would actually do damage, the heat or the impact of that many tons of liquid rock, but a high-speed stream of the stuff slammed into Ravaeb and his retainers. Only to instantly freeze into rock.

He couldn’t tell which fae had done it, there was too much fae magic swirling around, but for a moment Ravaeb was trapped inside solid stone. Even if the heat of lava hadn’t seemed to do much, Callum took the opportunity of that momentary imprisonment to ignite some thermite and dump it on his head. Lucy had made a nice little igniter with plenty of magnesium, and the entire mass of thermite flared to life with another press on the remote she’d made for him.

That seemed to at least bother Ravaeb, because when the mass of ignited metal landed on the bone skull he shook his head and then burst from the encasing stone. That scattered burning thermite everywhere, so it wasn’t nearly as effective as when Callum had used it on the vampires, but the fae king was at least moving slower.

The wounds Callum had inflicted were practically gone, as far as Callum could sense, and while the thermite had made a few holes that was about it. The greatest difference was that both Ravaeb’s vis and the mana level of the enclave in general seemed to have been reduced. The best guess was that Ravaeb was burning power to survive and to retaliate, since even impossible Fae magic took resources. Still, Ravaeb was more or less whole despite everything.

There was really only one option left, one Callum had hoped to not need because he wasn’t sure it would work. It was a single shot weapon, and it wasn’t exactly precise. Not to mention that he had only tested it once and using it took a lot out of him. Besides which, it required enough space that the cave-cache or the target area weren’t usable, and that meant in general he needed to do it near himself. Which carried a lot of risks.

While he wasn’t confident enough to craft bullets, he’d still made a set of bane darts out of some of the remaining scrap. Callum conjured a new portal pair nearby, since if this wasn’t enough to finish Ravaeb, he’d have to see if the shifters could manage it and he wasn’t sure he’d have enough juice to make another portal afterward. The pair were just oriented straight up and down, an infinite loop much like the electrical setup he had planned, and he teleported the corite dart into the middle of it. Then he applied as intense a gravity field as he could.

If offsetting one gravity for a volume was like holding one pound in his hand, then faking a hundred gravities was like holding a hundred pounds. Doable, but not for any real length of time. On the other hand, an acceleration of nine hundred eighty meters per second, per second, meant he didn’t have to keep it up for long. A ripping, crackling noise came from the loop, from a sonic boom sweeping past dozens of times a second as the vis drained out of him almost instantly.

“God’s blood!” The shifter still holding onto him said, though Callum could barely hear him over the roar of the dart as it tore through air, and the sound of the wind itself as it whipped through the crowd of shifters. Even if the atmosphere between the portal was subject to the same acceleration, it escaped from the sides of the gravity column and mixed with what was nearby, so while it was slower than the dart it still generated a localized gale. Callum had no idea whether it’d be enough, but he was scraping at the bottom of his reserves, body taut with concentration as he maintained the field. Before he failed and set off a bomb right in front of his own face he snapped open a portal below the loop, the other end aimed right at Ravaeb.

The Fae’s magic lashed out right as Callum banished the portal loop, but the bane dart was going so fast that it didn’t matter. The impact was beyond his wildest expectations. The dart blasted through the portal and exploded. Callum didn’t know exactly why, and couldn’t track everything because it was moving so fast, but the entire pavilion blasted apart. Along with Ravaeb.

Debris flew back out of the nearby portal, along with several chunks of fae king, as vis exhaustion crashed down on Callum. He struggled to keep the portal open for some reason his brain couldn’t manage to recall under the sudden wave of weariness and the bleariness in his head. It collapsed too, and all he could think as pure exhaustion dragged him under was if that hadn’t killed Ravaeb, nothing would.

***

Archmage Hargrave simmered all throughout the service. The House cemetery was gorgeous and picturesque even as the snow fell and laid a white blanket over the monuments to the dead. There were two new ones, thanks to the attack by the bastards from House Fane, the obelisks raised by earth mages but chiseled by hand.

His granddaughter, Gayle, didn’t look any happier under her coat and scarf, knitted hat pulled down around her ears. She’d been able to save almost all the mages injured by the Fane thugs, but only almost. Negative healing was terrifying and the fact that House Fane brought it out showed that they’d really slipped the bit. Other aspects could fight, but negative healing only killed.

“…and by Your command we return to dust…” Father Horan said, as the service drew near its end. Hargrave himself wasn’t a believer, but enough mages and shifters of the House were that they had a priest on staff. Though mages died infrequently enough that the funeral services were hardly ever required.

As the head of House he presided over the funeral anyway, schooling his features into a neutral mask. He didn’t talk about what he was going to do to make the Fane bastards pay for what they’d done, or the role GAR had played in it. The faces in the assembled crowd were too preoccupied with the recent loss for that, even if some of the older mages showed more anger than grief.

Unfortunately he didn’t personally know either of the guards that had died. They were all under the command of his cousin Philip Hargrave, and Phil was in charge of the eulogy. But they deserved the head of the House to at least commend their dedication to duty and the bravery of their sacrifice, so he did, feeling that it was partly his fault for not investigating the alarm immediately. He’d thought it was just another probe.

His part of the speech was short, and he yielded to Phil for something more involved as he chewed over what he was actually going to do. House Fane had more or less declared war, though without Archmage Fane he wasn’t worried about that as such. It was more about what exactly would happen with GAR, and whether it was even worth trying to reconcile with them.

Hargrave was almost glad when the ward alerts went off again.

“Continue,” Hargrave said gravely to the mourners, half of whom had already energized focuses. “I will take care of this.” He armored himself and shot off toward the source of the alert, near the rear entrance to the estate. Surprisingly, there was only one man standing outside the wards, though he had the characteristic shell of an Archmage to Hargrave’s mage sight.

“Horace,” the man said as Hargrave landed on the interior of the wards. Archmage Hargrave stared.

“Taisen?” He asked, though he already knew the answer. “Finally decided to push on through, I see!”

“I should have long ago,” Taisen sighed. “I just needed a kick in the teeth to show me that. May I come in?”

“Certainly,” Hargrave said, reaching out to the ward locus and contacted the bit of his vis there as authorization. “And congratulations.” The ward quieted itself and a small portion deactivated for a moment, letting Taisen stroll through. Hargrave might have been more cautious if it was any of the other Archmages, save those from aligned Houses, but Taisen had his high regard. He was one of the few mages who actually understood what it meant to commit to the martial path, and in fact had done it better than Hargrave himself. It took a brave man to give up his House.

“Thank you,” Taisen replied, hands in the pockets of his coat as he strolled inside. “Didn’t mean to interrupt what you had going on, though.”

“Yes, I should get back to the funeral, but I’ll be with you once it’s over.” He lifted himself into the air and Taisen followed, allowing himself to be escorted to the House reception hall. Hargrave left him there with head butler Jenkins to keep an eye on him, but even as he rejoined the funeral with assurances about the alert he wondered about Taisen.

The former Grand Magus wasn’t exactly a personal friend, though he was a friend of the family through his daughter-in-law, but Hargrave respected him. Especially since he had protected Gayle inasmuch as he could without compromising his own position during her stint with the BSE. Hargrave might have wished he’d done more, but Taisen wasn’t that kind of man. He’d even abandoned his family name when he formed the no-House rule so long ago, and had gone by a single name ever since. Which made his appearance at House Hargrave immediately after becoming Archmage – for Hargrave certainly hadn’t heard the news from anyone else – suggestive.

Once the service was over and people dispersed, Hargrave returned to the house and invited Taisen into his office. It had extra wards and was far more private, since he very much doubted whatever business brought the new Archmage by was anything he wanted to be public. He flicked open his drinks cabinet with a thought and poured them both a few fingers of a literally warming fae liquor as Taisen took a seat.

“I would like to know what brings you here,” Hargrave asked bluntly, since it was just the two of them. “What made you finally push through?”

“The Bureau of Secret Enforcement is unfit for purpose.” Taisen shrugged. “I thought that I could keep it aimed generally in the right direction, especially since I managed to make the no-House requirement stick, but there was just too much cruft from other forces.” He sighed. “Well. When we got our teeth kicked in by Wells it was obvious things had gone too far.”

“So you’re going to reform the BSE?” Hargrave frowned as he sipped the fae drink. By custom if not by law, Archmages didn’t actually run anything in GAR, even if the apparatus as a whole answered to the Archmages. The idea was to keep any one House from using it against the others, but Taisen had no House.

“No. I’m re-creating the Defensores Mundi. GAR can keep its secret police; I only care about real threats.” Taisen frowned at the shot glass on Hargrave’s desk before taking his own sip. “And I’m going to be taking my people out of BSE to do it. I’d like your support.”

“Support?” Hargrave asked, raising his eyebrows.

“Not people,” Taisen assured him. “But with the other Archmages. Most of them don’t even live on Earth anymore; they don’t actually care. But they do like their secret police and bullying new Houses. I wouldn’t mind backing.”

“I see.” Hargrave pursed his lips. “I’m considering breaking House Hargrave from GAR entirely. Not only is there the whole Wells issue, they keep issuing warrants against my granddaughter. They don’t even have a teleportation network anymore, so why cede any sort of sovereignty?”

“An alliance, then?”

“At least an alignment,” Hargrave said. “I know you have no interest in the power games of Houses. Though you should at least do yourself the favor of declaring yourself one, since no-House won’t work now that you’re at Archmage level.”

“Ugh.” Taisen made a face. “I suppose. I do have the Garrisons.”

“We’ll back you if you back us,” Hargrave said. “Between us we could hold off an army.”

“I agree,” Taisen said, swallowing the last bit of the liquor. “I’d like to beg another favor while I’m here, too. There aren’t any GAR or Fane healers I’d trust, but now that I’m Archmage I’d like one to give me a refresh.”

“Certainly,” Hargrave agreed graciously. “I think Gayle would be happy to see you.”

Chapter 18 – Fracture

“When we agreed to work together, you agreed to keep me in the loop for your decisions,” Chester began. “So I think it’s only fair I return the favor.”

“Mm?” Callum said, arm around Lucy as she leaned against him. He was still feeling a little disoriented as he reclined on the couch in Chester’s basement. Only the clock told him how much time he’d lost between vis exhaustion and a minor concussion from being smashed in the face, because he sure hadn’t kept track. So far Chester had been an excellent host and Callum had no complaints, but he was ready to leave and take Lucy home.

“With Ravaeb gone, I’m the only supernatural with any real power in the Midwest,” Chester said. That cleared some of the cobwebs from Callum’s head, and he gave Chester a sharp look. He was back in human form, looking like a Viking, but he shook his head at Callum’s expression. “I’ve got no intention of conquering anything, but it does mean that there’s nobody to apply pressure when I break from GAR. Which I’m going to be doing today.”

“Ah,” Callum said. “Congratulations. It’s probably for the best, considering all the issues with GAR.”

“Just so,” Chester agreed. “But of course, even I am not entirely capable of standing on my own. I’ll be meeting with some people to form agreements and get advice on any alliances. Not to make anything like GAR, but just a number of peers aligning themselves in the same direction.”

“That sounds promising,” Callum said cautiously. Anything that replaced GAR would just suffer from the same issues, but a coalition of smaller entities might be less of an issue. It might also be more of a problem, depending on who made it up; there was no such thing as a perfect solution.

“I imagine you won’t want to stay for the meeting, since that’d imply you were endorsing the alliance.” Chester raised an eyebrow, and Callum nodded agreement. It wasn’t like Callum had no interest in what Chester was putting together, since it’d pragmatically influence supernatural politics over most of the United States, but he couldn’t actually be part of it. The only role he could play was that of enforcer, unless he took a direct political stance, and either one would subvert his actual goals and approach.

He couldn’t really decide to be left alone if he was in charge of anything.

“On the other hand, I don’t want to end up in a position where you’re gunning for my head the way you were with Ravaeb,” Chester said.

“I’d rather not be in that position either,” Callum said. So far he didn’t have any issues with Chester, mostly because Chester had no issues with regular folks. Everything he’d heard showed that the Alpha ran a tight ship, and apparently a lot of shifters did janitorial work or construction, which probably helped. It was hard to have an ego when mopping floors or digging ditches.

“Right, so, what do I need to keep in mind to make sure that doesn’t happen?” Chester asked, spreading his hands. “I’m not asking for a Ten Commandments or a manifesto, just your offhand thoughts. You don’t strike me as an unreasonable man.”

“I try not to be,” Callum agreed. Lucy snorted.

“You’re plenty unreasonable, big man,” she disagreed. “But not about this kind of thing, so go ahead.”

“It’s pretty straightforward, I think?” Callum said, speaking slowly as he considered it. “You don’t prey on people. I can’t really say anything about fae or shifter internal politics; I wouldn’t want to meddle. But when it comes with normal folks, you just don’t.”

“You realize that excludes the vampires entirely, right?” Chester pointed out. “At least the ones on Earth. They can’t subsist on moonwater over here. They have to eat people’s vis.”

“Then that’s their problem,” Callum said firmly. “Even if they didn’t have anywhere else to go, I don’t care. You don’t prey on people. Anyone that allows that can be first in line and save the rest of us the trouble.”

“Ha! Well, I can say there’s no real love lost between us and the vamps anyway.”

“Or between anyone and vamps, really,” Lucy put in. “I know there’s some mage families that love ‘em, and they’re great for night shifts, but who wants to work with them?”

“Indeed,” Chester agreed. “That’s easy enough. I was already doing that, but I think the people I am talking to won’t be too put out by that limitation. It’s a good idea anyway, because why would you put yourself at odds with the people who control the entire planet?” He held up a hand. “Which I know is rather mercenary, but not everyone can be convinced by arguments about morality.”

“Sure,” said Callum, who hadn’t intended to argue anyway. “You’re the one who’s playing the politics, not me. Pretty sure I’d get fed up with it.”

“I’d worry about you having to play sheriff all the time if you were part of it,” Lucy said, taking his hand. “You’re doing that enough as it is.”

“I suspect there would be a lot of people who would not want to join an alliance where you’re an enforcer,” Chester observed.

“So that’s three votes against, motion carries,” Callum said. “I’ll leave you to declare your independence, then. I imagine by now you’re ready for the difficulties that’ll cause.”

“Without GAR being able to field Fane or Hargrave against me, I suspect I’ll have little trouble,” Chester agreed. He had gotten a little bit of advance notice from House Hargrave directly, and would enjoy what happened when that particular bit of news became public.

“Then I guess there’s nothing else but to thank you for your help and your hospitality,” Callum said, standing and offering his hand. Chester took it, and then gave Lucy a smile.

“Take care of him,” he said, and Lucy nodded with faux solemnity. Callum rolled his eyes and opened a portal back to the Texas trailer.

“We’ll stay in touch,” Lucy promised, and linked arms with Callum as they stepped through. Once they were back in familiar territory, and the portal was closed, she stretched and gave a little shake. “You did it, big man! Was a little scary there, though.”

“Yeah,” he said. “It was the right call to involve the shifters.” Callum took a long breath and let it out. “Plus, Ravaeb seemed pretty damn nasty.”

“Yeah,” Lucy said, leaning into him again. “So what are we going to do now that the big bad fae is gone?”

“Well,” Callum said, looking down at her mischievous little smirk. He smiled back, knowing she didn’t mean work but he had to tease her anyway. “There’s always moving⁠—”

“Nah,” Lucy said, grabbing his hand and hauling him toward the bedroom. “We’re gonna celebrate.”

***

“You can’t do this,” the mage threatened as Chester’s claws ripped apart the vis of the man’s shield. The mage reeled backward and Chester grabbed his arm. Neither of the watchers that GAR had installed were particularly powerful mages, so their magic was essentially impotent when he drew on his pack bonds.

“You might want to start using your brain,” Chester said, force-marching the man out of the well-appointed room that he’d been living in for weeks. At Chester’s expense, no less, which had made his presence all the more galling and his expulsion all the more satisfying. “If anything you should be thanking me for merely throwing you off my land.”

He had originally intended to shove the mages through the GAR teleporter, but with those out of commission he had decided to settle for tossing the mages out into empty grassland. Which was almost as good. Let them fly back under their own power.

The mage tried saying something else but Chester shut him up with a deep growl. It was freeing to be able to be as rude as he wanted to representatives of GAR, though he wasn’t going to go so far as to injure them. Unless they really brought it on themselves, of course.

John had the other watcher in a headlock when Chester met him at the outside of the building, and kept batting away the attempts of the mage to form something from his focus. A twitch through the pack bonds and Chester gave him permission, so John tightened his grip and growled warningly in the mage’s ear.

The two shifters raced for the edge of the compound’s property, dragging the mages along. It was never pleasant for humans to be moved that quickly, but Chester didn’t really care. The two of them stopped at the edge of the property, at the big private gate, and as one hurled the mages over the gate and into the grass beyond. Neither of them were talented enough to cushion their fall, but Chester wasn’t going to feel bad for any bruises or sprains they got from the rough handling.

“Remember,” Chester rumbled. “Tell your masters they are no longer our masters.”

He watched as the pair of mages took to the air. Shifters technically didn’t have any real air power, but that was why he’d quietly acquired a little bit of military hardware. The anti-air weaponry wouldn’t do anything to an Archmage, but it’d do well enough for lackeys, and by the time anyone in GAR decided to move on him he would hopefully have more support.

The two mages vanished behind glamours, though Chester could still track them by the way they displaced the air as they flew off and away from the compound. Once he was certain they were gone, he joined in with the rest of his immediate pack. They had quite a bit of work to do in clearing out the inner courtyard and setting things up for the summit.

Wells had actually been kind enough to clean out the worst of Ravaeb’s odious remains by simply sending the pieces back to the fae court. Nobody yet knew what the fallout of the fae king’s death would be, and the last time a fae king had died it’d been over in Europe so Chester wasn’t familiar with the process. So far the only issue was the stinking dirt he was helping to shovel into a dump truck, but there would be more. Which was why he was rushing the meeting a bit.

Fortunately he didn’t really need to impress anyone with the surroundings for the summit. Most of the work was just making the area less offensive to the senses, and he would have done that anyway. The main meeting room in the big pack house only needed some touching up, and he already had someone out getting drinks and snacks while Lisa baked cookies.

Though he didn’t have much to prepare, he still cut it close as he was just stepping out of the shower when the first guest arrived. Surprisingly, Shahey came by car, an old beat-up sedan that didn’t look like it should even be on the road. But it smelled of magic and purred like a kitten, and to Chester’s shifter senses it wasn’t actually even an internal combustion engine. Dragonblooded secrets, it seemed.

“Alpha Chester,” Shahey said, shaking Chester’s hand. He had either dispensed with the glamour or acquired a new one, because the scaled man looked somehow old, with fins and scales somehow implying a bearded elder in a worn but impeccably clean suit. Though Chester imagined the clothes were just as misleading as the car. “I expect this will prove to be interesting, even if I am only here to give advice.”

“I hope it’s only interesting. There’s always a risk in bringing people together.” Chester escorted Shahey to the meeting room, letting him select one of the overstuffed armchairs.

“It would be quite rude for people to start fighting in front of me,” Shahey replied mildly, and Chester nodded. That was at least some guarantee of good behavior from everyone.

Wizzy was next, the Archmage strolling up to the gates of Chester’s compound from nowhere in particular, dressed in jeans and a duster. Like Wells, Wizzy didn’t have any scent of magic lingering around him, but also like Wells, the very way he carried himself made it obvious he wasn’t ordinary or mundane. Chester hadn’t been sure he would come, since getting a message to the man was not easy, but it was good to have a mage involved.

“I don’t suppose the Wells boy is going to be here?” Wizzy asked, in his leathery voice.

“No, we judged that to be too impolitic,” Chester said. Wizzy seemed disappointed, but nodded anyway and took off his hat as he stepped inside. The others filtered in over the next couple hours — Ferrochar, who looked like an elf with dragon horns, Alphas Smith and Carlson, who headed the packs in the south and east respectively, and several unaligned but still powerful fae who lived in Chester’s territory.

There were no vampires. Chester hadn’t invited any to begin with and with Callum’s condition he certainly wasn’t accepting any crashers. Which there were, as insanely stupid as it was.

The information came through the pack bonds as he chatted with his guests. Someone had tried sneaking through and been run off. One was fae, the other vampire. Half an hour later, the anti-aircraft gun Chester had smuggled in coughed, swatting a mage out of the sky. These were all minor incidents though, and didn’t require any of those inside to bestir themselves.

“To make it completely official,” Chester said, once everyone had arrived. “I have declared independence from GAR as of today. The Midwest Pack no longer recognizes its authority over our actions.”

“As has the Miami enclave,” Ferrochar said immediately after, which Chester had not heard about. In fact, he wouldn’t be surprised if Ferrochar had decided that on the spot. “GAR has no hold over us.” Chester gave Ferrochar an appreciative nod anyway.

“Nor do I have any interest in making my own version of GAR. I don’t want to tell fae what to do, or dragonblooded, or even mages. Nor do I want to be told what to do. I merely wish an alliance of like-minded individuals.”

“Including the dragonblooded?” One of the independent fae asked.

“Mister Shahey and Archmage Wizzy are advisors,” Chester said. “Being by far the oldest supernaturals in America.” Wizzy chuckled at that, but didn’t contradict him.

“What were the terms you had in mind for the alliance?” Ferrochar asked.

“Nothing significant. I’m not certain that even mutual defense is the best idea; that is something better handled between individuals. But nonaggression between parties, and a commitment to prevent any behaviors that might bring us to the attention of mundanes.” Chester shrugged. He really didn’t think anyone there would be too interested in any military alliance as such, though he would be glad to be wrong.

“Though there is one particular mandate,” he continued. “Provided by The Ghost.” That got everyone’s attention, though Shahey and Wizzy didn’t seem particularly surprised. “He is not part of this alliance, nor does he approve or disapprove of it. But he has informed me that what he cares about is preying on people. Internal disputes for fae or shifters are not his problem, but he is very firm that we should live among mundanes rather than on them, as it were.”

“Not everyone is going to like that,” Ferrochar said with a frown. “Some of my⁠—”

“The Ghost has destroyed Ravaeb,” Chester interrupted him. “For what he allowed his people to do. You may wish to take this opportunity to look to your own and decide if it is really worth pursuing that path.”

“Ah,” Ferrochar said, looking enlightened. He had probably noticed that Ravaeb was dead, but everyone else looked various degrees of surprised or stunned save Shahey. As well they might. Even Archmage Wizzy raised his eyebrows.

Chester had never seen Wells in action before, and was struck by how little there was to see. The man had just sat there concentrating — at least until a fae curse converged on him and pulled one of Ravaeb’s guards from wherever the fae were. Then there had been something. A brief roaring sound and then an impact like a meteor, to judge from the splatter. Chester had doubts he would survive that sort of thing himself — and he very well knew that Wells could insert his anchors into position with nobody the wiser.

“I don’t much care about fae, and hunting mundanes is stupid,” Alpha Carlson said. “But I don’t like the idea that you can send the Ghost my way.”

“I can reassure you on that part. I can’t tell the Ghost what to do at all.” Chester shook his head. “He’s turned down the opportunity to work for me more than once, and if he found out I was coercing him in any way I suspect he’d take it personally. If anyone does wish to contact him I would be more than willing to forward a message, however.” Several people spoke at once and Chester held up a hand. “After we’re finished,” he said.

“Now, let us discuss life without GAR.”

***

“We have a report, finally.”

Grand Magus Lorenzo Rossi looked up from the prototyping scribe and held up a finger while he shut down his equipment. The enchantment lab was gleaming and polished metal and ceramic from wall to wall, with dozens of analysis and production tools in their own isolated areas. There was probably more practical enchanting inside the lab than in most Houses.

“A report on what, Minot?” Rossi said with some exasperation.

“Wells,” Minot said, stepping inside the lab. He was familiar enough with lab protocols to use the defined path on the floor, careful not to stray into any of the working areas. Even when they weren’t active, some of the machinery was powerful enough or delicate enough that their boundaries were off-limits. When Minot reached the scriber Rossi was using, he handed over a tablet for the Grand Magus to study.

“Huh,” Rossi grunted, scrolling through the report. It was from the mundane agency they’d used, taking an analysis of everything they knew about Wells’ whereabouts. The phone calls they’d traced, the shops he’d used, the false addresses and identifications. There was less than he would have liked but more than he would have thought, and while Rossi hadn’t seen any patterns, clearly the mundanes had.

The report hadn’t been able to give them a concrete location, but it had managed to pinpoint an area. There was a noticeable hole in the middle of the scatter plot of observations, somewhere in the middle of Texas. Not a small hole, either, but enough of one that it seemed likely that Wells had at least one hideout in the area, and that’s what the hole was about. Several hundred square miles was a lot of searching, especially for something that was only a possibility, but it was better than the whole wide world.

“Wonderful,” he said. “See who we can put on this. I want to talk to Wells. And make sure that GAR doesn’t know about it; they’d just mess things up.”

“Yes, sir,” Minot said.

***

“I’ll be damned.” Ray Danforth stared at the screen of his computer. He even closed the email and then opened it again, just to make sure he had read it right. Felicia’s ever-so-slightly cold hand touched his arm as she peered over his shoulder.

“Oh,” she said out loud, and Ray’s desk trembled from her unsuppressed voice.

It wasn’t an official communication. It wasn’t even meant for their eyes, but Ray had a colleague in the Department of House Affairs who was willing to forward them the news. House Hargrave, House Elroe, and all their cadet houses had officially seceded from the Guild of Arcane Regulation. If that wasn’t enough, an announcement for a new House formed by Archmage Taisen had arrived with the same messenger.

While the news fell short of an actual declaration of war, it was only just short. With the crisis and Fane’s death the calculus of it all was beyond him, but he knew an opening salvo when he saw one. Maybe Hargrave did just want to be independent, but GAR could hardly allow that from a pragmatic point of view. A small House that would wither on its own soon enough was one thing, but several hundred mages and three Archmages was another.

“Well, I think it’s time for lunch,” he said, closing the lid of the laptop. “That’s not something to deal with on an empty stomach.” Felicia nodded, turning to get their jackets from the hook by the door of the office. The abrupt removal of the teleportation network had altered the normal lunchtime routine, and weirdly had made it so that the easiest way to get a meal was to go to Paris.

The links between GAR offices still existed, and while the US GAR offices were off by themselves, GAR Paris was in the city. They’d have to take Ray’s glider to eat anywhere nearby in the US, which wasn’t a problem but sometimes they just wanted to go down the street and get something quick.

Of course, it helped that there were more supernatural-run eateries in Paris than even in New York, so finding a place where they didn’t have to wait was easier. They ended up in a corner café with a properly ward- and glamour-screened booth, for fae like Felicia where their very nature could bother other patrons.

“So this is a right mess,” Felicia said at last, leaning back against the aged wood of the booth’s back.

“Yeah,” Ray said, adjusting his cutlery on the lacquered tabletop while he thought. “The thing is, without Fane and without the teleports, it’s going to be complicated to do anything. Who are they going to send after Hargrave? Let alone Taisen, I don’t think we’ve seen a triple-aspect Archmage before.”

“It sounds like GAR actually won’t be able to do anything, then.”

“Well,” Ray said judiciously, leaning back as the waiter brought wine and appetizers. “There’s a lot of other Houses that aren’t on great terms with the Hargraves. Rinne and Toller and there’s probably some Chinese ones now that Fane’s sort of headless. But yeah. GAR is gonna have trouble.”

“Where does that leave us?” Felicia asked, taking a sip of her wine. It was a red, as always, and she savored the taste for a moment before lowering her glass. “I sure don’t want to be in the middle of that.”

“Thankfully, we won’t.” Ray said. “Oh, it’s going to be a pain for us, sure, but with Hargrave out it’s not the DAI’s business. We’ve got more than enough to deal with investigating all the stuff emerging now that GAR’s shorthanded.” He paused to consider the prospect. “I will probably want to move out of my House quarters, though. House Roth doesn’t have any dog in this fight and might just close itself off.”

“I’ll get the guest room ready,” Felicia said, and Ray gave her a sharp look. He wasn’t certain whether she was teasing him or not, especially since she could manage her voice to be entirely ambiguous. She looked back with the completely inscrutable look that only real fae could manage, something ageless and beyond human understanding. So he was pretty sure she was flirting.

They were almost done with their meal when their phones chimed in harmony, and Ray took his out. He scowled at the name and header of the mail on the preview screen. Nothing requiring them to report to Supervisor Lane was good news.

“Well, there goes the afternoon,” Ray sighed, and signaled the waiter. Half an hour later Felicia knocked on Supervisor Lane’s door while Ray double-checked their suits. Being chewed out for sloppy dress was frivolous, but still not something Ray wanted to have to deal with again.

“Come in,” Lane said, and the two of them entered to stand in front of Lane’s desk. Even in the short time he’d been head of DAI, the man had made the Supervisor’s office his. There were pictures on the wall and knickknacks on the shelves, though nothing that showed why anyone thought Lane made for a good DAI Supervisor.

“Sir?” Ray said. Lane didn’t offer them seats.

“I have a report that House Hargrave denied a DAI warrant, issued on a complaint by House Fane,” Lane said. Ray almost asked whether that had happened before they had broken from GAR or after, but held his tongue. He didn’t officially know that yet.

“What kind of a warrant, sir?” Ray asked.

“One Gayle Hargrave is to be remanded to the custody of the BSE or House Fane, due to her use of restricted magics,” Lane said. As if Felicia and Ray hadn’t been in the middle of that whole mess.

“I believe Archmage Hargrave made his stance on that clear,” Ray said cautiously.

“Archmage Hargrave doesn’t run GAR,” Lane said coldly, which Ray thought somewhat undersold Hargrave’s influence on the organization. “Nor does he run the Department of Arcane Investigation. You two will go to House Hargrave with a new warrant for that and for the deaths of Fane’s personnel, and see it is carried out.”

“Yes sir,” Ray managed to squeeze out, though inwardly he was goggling at the man. Ray knew a few tricks specifically taught to him so he could work with Felicia, but he wasn’t anywhere near powerful enough or important enough to deal with an Archmage. Let alone one that had just broken with GAR. Lane shoved a folder across his desk, and Ray picked it up.

“Dismissed,” Lane said, and Ray exchanged a glance with Felicia before stepping out into the hall.

“No way,” Felicia wrote on her tablet.

“Office, then glider,” Ray said in agreement.

He floated his glider outside the actual GAR building, which still felt odd considering how long he’d been using the transportation system. Once it unfolded and he helped Felicia into the passenger side, he climbed in and sent his vis through the focus, sending them into the air. Nobody remarked on the boxes they’d loaded the glider with, packed full of the few personal effects they kept in their shared office.

“Is he trying to get us killed?” Felicia asked, when they were safely in the air.

“I think he might be,” Ray said after a moment. “He didn’t even tell us that Hargrave wasn’t part of GAR anymore. If we went in like we had actual authority behind us, things could go badly. Even if we had actual authority things would go badly.”

“I do not like being set up for a fall,” Felicia said coldly. Ice frosted over the window on her side of the glider.

“No,” Ray agreed. Neither of them had actually spoken about their action out loud, so he decided to just say it outright. “We’re going to have to leave the DAI. And GAR, because they’d probably lock us up if we just handed in resignations.” That was putting aside the cloud they were under after their failure to deal with Wells.

“We should inform House Hargrave first,” Felicia said. “I doubt we’ll be the only ones they send.”

“Yeah,” Ray agreed, turning the glider northward. “What about you? I know this can’t be easy.” Not that an abrupt career change was good for either of them, but for fae that kind of thing could literally kill them if they didn’t reconcile it.

“The organization we worked for isn’t what we thought it was,” Felicia said. “Now, we find a position with more integrity and investigate the real origin of our problems.” It was the closest she’d come to outright stating what story she was trying to tell, something that was considered rather gauche normally. Either it was obvious or it wasn’t. Ray had more or less figured out that she was the plucky investigator, and being caught up in events greater than she’d ever anticipated was an easy extension of that kind of thing.

“Hope Jahn is still answering his scry-com,” Ray said in reply, fishing the focus in question from his pocket. He energized it and waited in silence, which stretched for a good few minutes until it connected.

“Agent Danforth,” Jahn said, sounding somewhat distracted.

“Agent Jahn,” Ray acknowledged. “We’ve run into some issues at GAR so I think it might be for the best that Felicia and I take up your offer.”

“I see.” There was another period of silence. “Do you remember where the staging ground for the BSE is, in the south of Germany?”

“I think so,” Ray said. It’d been a while since he was there, years in fact, but he was pretty sure he could find it from the air.

“Meet me there tomorrow at sixteen hundred local time,” Jahn said. Ray did some quick math.

“We’ll need an extra day,” he replied. “It’s not like we can use the GAR teleporters.”

“Very well. Day after tomorrow, then.” Jahn was all business, but not brusque or hostile. Danforth had the impression that he was just busy.

“We’ll be there,” Ray said, and the connection went. “Not exactly the warmest of receptions,” he remarked to Felicia.

“It’s that or Faerie for help,” Felicia said. “And you know what I think about Faerie.”

“Yeah,” Ray said. It didn’t take much longer to get to House Hargrave’s property, the journey there mostly filled by contemplative silence. Once the House wards became visible, Ray angled the glider down and brought it to a hover outside of the House’s front entrance. An area that looked like it had been recently cleared, with a vast swath of open dirt.

He let his glider gently drift the last few inches and stepped out, giving Felicia a little bit of a lift to the ground. The two of them approached the guardhouse, where a man watched them warily but didn’t openly challenge them. Under the circumstances, even that much tolerance was surprising.

“Business?” The gate guard grunted as they stepped up to the guardhouse, turning to spit tobacco into a spittoon in the corner.

“I’m Ray Danforth and this is Felicia Black, formerly of the DAI,” Ray said.

“Formerly, huh?” The man said, giving them a sharper eye.

“Indeed. I just wanted to give House Hargrave the message that we were sent with paperwork about the incident with House Fane.” He held up the folder. “I don’t have any plans to actually enforce it, but I thought you might want to know they’re trying to stir trouble. We weren’t told about your secession.”

“I see,” the guard replied after a pause. “Wish I could say I was surprised, but I’m not. Guess the Archmage will want to talk to you.”

“We’d rather not,” Ray said. “We have a lot to do since we, ah, quit the DAI without telling anyone.” The guard barked a laugh.

“Yeah, okay,” he said, holding out a hand for the folder. Ray passed it to him. “Ray Danforth and Felicia Black. I’ll make sure the Archmage knows. If this is all on the up-and-up, we owe ya.”

“I appreciate it,” Ray said. A favor from a mage House was no small thing. The two of them returned to the glider, and Ray lifted it back into the air and aimed it toward Felicia’s apartment. Now that the dangerous DAI warrants and accusations were out of their hands, they had a lot of packing to do.

Ray had no idea what exactly Jahn and Taisen were up to, but if he had to bet, he and Felicia wouldn’t be the only ones fleeing GAR.

END OF BOOK THREE