ã€ŠParanoid Mageã€‹


 Chapter 1 - Revelation

    For some reason, there was one of them at the funeral.

    Ever since Callum Wells was young he¡¯d seen things. People. Things that were people, or people that were things. The not-quite-human. They were not very common, but not so vanishingly rare that he could write it off as imagination. He¡¯d mentioned it, once, as a child, and the doctors had prescribed pills. Callum Sr., paranoid soul that he was, had stopped his son from taking them after a week when they did no more than make him fuzzy and stupid.

    Callum didn¡¯t mention what he saw again. But that didn¡¯t mean he stopped seeing them. Mostly, it was people with the wrong color skin, the wrong ears, the wrong eyes. The wrong proportions. Sometimes it was just people that nobody else seemed to notice, walking as if they were invisible.

    It was one of the invisible people who had come by, walking around the edges of the small crowd. The person in question was a short man, looking entirely human but dressed in bright blue and wearing a beret, which was one reason Callum knew he was neither a mourner nor even visible. At least some people should have glanced at the flamboyant man but nobody did. Nor did the man really seem to pay attention to the mourners, instead wandering between them and the coffins and kneeling down to inspect something on one of the nearby gravestones. He glanced up and made eye contact with Callum. Immediately Callum relaxed his gaze, looking past the not-person.

    It was a skill he¡¯d had to learn in lieu of the drugs. People stared off into space a lot, but they didn¡¯t focus on things that weren¡¯t there. The invisible man frowned at Callum, leaned to one side, and when Callum¡¯s eyes didn¡¯t track him, shrugged and continued onward. Irrational anger kindled in Callum¡¯s gut at the man¡¯s disrespect. Even if he was invisible to everyone else, he could have at least waited half an hour for the funeral to be over. He was lucky Callum was not in as dark a mood as he might have been at his parent¡¯s graves.

    In a way the funeral was a mere formality. There was pain, yes, but it was a dull ache rather than anything sharp. His parents had been pushing ninety and he¡¯d visited them in hospice for years before they¡¯d finally passed away. It hadn¡¯t been a surprise, and he¡¯d done most of his mourning before medical science caught up with what was already certain.

    He was aware, and had been since he was young enough to count, that their relative ages meant that his parents had either flouted biological law or were taking care of a grandchild. Considering how much he looked like Callum, Sr., adoption was not a possibility. His birth certificate claimed Callum Sr. and Mary as his parents, and he¡¯d decided he was fine with that.

    In the end, it wasn¡¯t important. He didn¡¯t feel the need to muse on such unweighty matters, especially not during the funeral. Especially when he was distracted by carefully not looking at the invisible man snooping around the graveyard.

    ¡°Callum?¡± He blinked, and looked at Miss Mosley, one of his parent¡¯s friends who was practically an aunt and an octogenarian herself. She reached out to take his hand and patted it soothingly. ¡°It¡¯s okay, dear.¡±

    ¡°Thank you, Miss Mosley,¡± Callum said, properly going back to ignoring the man crashing the funeral. ¡°We all knew it was coming, but now that it¡¯s here¡­¡±

    ¡°Yes, I know. When you get to my age, you go to so many funerals.¡± Miss Mosely said, a little sadly.

    ¡°Don¡¯t be maudlin,¡± Callum said. ¡°I know they¡¯re better off now.¡± He wasn¡¯t sure how devout he really was, but at the very least he was a consistent churchgoer. The wisdom of the faith was at least some comfort. ¡°Come on, we¡¯ll go to that breakfast place you like.¡±

    ¡°Oh, you spoil me, dearie,¡± Miss Mosley said, but didn¡¯t turn down the invitation. She did, however, stand respectfully and quietly to one side as he set one of the flower arrangements on a different grave. It was one somewhat older, grave and grief both worn and weathered by time.

    Selene Wells had died when they¡¯d been married just three years, of one of those terrible incidents of fate. A brain aneurysm, completely undetectable before the event, had dropped her in her tracks at a restaurant one day. It wasn¡¯t anyone¡¯s fault, there was nobody to blame, not even himself, but even half a decade later he still felt rather hollow when he thought about her.

    Standing there staring at the gravestone, he realized he was out of family. Selene had moved down to be with him, and her family hadn¡¯t been thrilled. When she died, they¡¯d cut contact completely. He didn¡¯t have any brothers or sisters, and whatever cousins were around were scattered across the country.

    After the breakfast, after the mourners had dispersed, Callum set his jaw and went back to work. It might not have been the best reaction, but at least he had a current client and could lose himself in the process for a while. As an architectural consultant, he could more or less make his own hours, but more and more often he found those hours were pretty long. Longer than most self-made thirty-year-olds might choose.

    Despite his preoccupation, he made the time in the following weeks to go to the gym or go biking or shooting on a regular basis. Not that he much felt like it, but in addition to the general caution he¡¯d inherited from Callum, Sr., Selene¡¯s death had made Callum paranoid about his health. Considering the complaints of some of his clients, who were no older than he was, at the very least staying in shape was doing him favors.

    ¡°Hey!¡± The owner of the gym waved as Callum headed toward the equipment. Though he¡¯d introduced himself as Shahey, Callum was pretty sure that wasn¡¯t his name. Shahey was maybe five feet tall, but completely covered in red-orange scales and had a reptilian head rather than a humanoid one. Despite that, his ability to pronounce English was fairly good, though if he listened clearly he could hear the oddness of the different mouth shape creeping in.

    ¡°Mister Shahey,¡± Callum greeted him, extending his hand and pretending the massive claws the not-human had didn¡¯t bother him, no matter how delicately they were used.

    ¡°Haven¡¯t been in for a while,¡± Shahey observed, not quite asking a question.

    ¡°Been doing some stuff,¡± he said, not quite answering.

    ¡°It happens,¡± Shahey agreed. ¡°So, could you do me a favor?¡±

    ¡°Maybe,¡± Callum answered cautiously.

    ¡°Marie there just started coming in,¡± Shahey said, tilting his head in the direction of a young woman who wasn¡¯t out of shape but clearly didn¡¯t have much muscle tone. ¡°Thought maybe you could help her out.¡±

    Callum gave him a look, but he couldn¡¯t read whatever expression was on the reptilian face. It was probably something appropriately innocent on whatever human face most people saw, but that was just a guess. He wasn¡¯t sure if Shahey really needed help, or was trying to set him up with a prospective gym bunny, but it wasn¡¯t that great an imposition. He headed over to where Marie was fiddling with a hammer lift machine and lifted his hand in greeting.

    ¡°Hey, the gym owner said you could use a bit of orientation?¡±

    ¡°I could!¡± Marie flashed him a smile, which he took with good grace. He still wasn¡¯t entirely comfortable with flirting, even so many years later. Maybe someday he would be, but it wouldn¡¯t be that day.

    He was actually a little surprised by the attention Marie paid him, since he considered himself solidly average, though fit. Callum certainly didn¡¯t have the muscles of some of the regulars. It was more than a little flattering, and he had to admit it buoyed his mood, at least until Marie crumpled in the middle of a set.

    ¡°Marie!¡± He grabbed her on the way down, wincing as he banged himself on the side of the machine, and looked around to ask for help when three people burst through the front door of the gym. West Virginia was, for all the jokes, a quiet state, and he lived in a quiet town, one that had shifted from mining to biotechnology without much changing size. Gyms were not generally considered prime targets for robberies and city violence was not something he worried about, so he was completely baffled and blindsided when the three lifted guns and started shooting.

    He hurled himself behind the equipment, dimly registering that the gunmen weren¡¯t entirely human. Nor was their target. Their pistols cracked as they aimed at Shahey, but the bullets just seemed to bounce off his scales. The lizard-man rounded to face them and opened his jaws, and an instant migraine slammed Callum backward, stars dancing in front of his eyes as there was a sudden thunder.

    Heat scorched his face and when he blinked his vision clear, Shahey was gone. So were the gunmen. There was only a curtain of fire on that side of the gym, hot enough that the glass slumped and ran in little puddles. Callum stared for a moment, then coughed as acrid smoke rolled in. The sprinklers went off, to no effect, and he realized that everyone had to get out. He had to get everyone out. A quick glance around found that everyone was unconscious save for him, and for no apparent reason. The fire was hot, but not that hot.

    Since there were no more gunmen or guns, Callum dashed to the free weights and simply threw a barbell through the front window. Despite hurling the thing as hard as he could, the safety glass didn¡¯t shatter dramatically, but it was good enough. He used a smaller one to sweep the shards before starting to haul bodies, starting with Marie.

    The fire was clearly not a normal blaze, since it spread faster and was far hotter than any normal fire should be. By the time he got the second person out he was having to crawl under the smoke. It had only been a few seconds, and the wall of fire was licking along the ceiling and the floor both.

    Callum knew he should call it in, but there were only five other people in the gym. Four of them were close enough to the windows that he could pull them outside easily, it was just the last one who was slumped on an elliptical machine in the back. But the air was hot, too hot, searing his lungs and making him lightheaded as he crawled toward the unconscious woman, but he thought he could handle it.

    Until the too-fast fire brought down the roof. Or rather, the massive fans and rows of televisions and electrical wiring, plummeting down with a horrendous noise. The collapse sent a shower of liquid sparks over the ground. And over him.

    Callum screamed and then swore as a drop seared through his bicep, adrenaline damping the pain enough to keep him moving, coughing and crawling away from the mess. The woman toppled off the elliptical after a single pull, but he had no idea what to do with her. He could barely breathe, the smoke filling the air and obscuring the tangle of junk in the way. If that wasn¡¯t bad enough, his headache was back, migraine lights flashing over his visual field.

    Darkness closed in from the sides but Callum kept crawling. He could almost see the opening to the outside despite the detritus in the way, and lights flashed across his eyes as he reached out in that direction, envisioning himself there as if by hope alone he could get there. His vision flashed, and suddenly he was, sucking in fresh air and dropping the poor suffocating woman on the ground next to the other victims.

    The rough concrete dug into his hands as he tried to lever himself upright, wheezing as he dug for his phone. Part of him found it strange there were no sirens already, but it wasn¡¯t a movie set. In the real world emergency services took time to arrive. He was dialing when a voice startled him.

    ¡°What are you doing?¡±

    Callum twisted around to see the same man who had crashed the funeral, still wearing blue, though a different blue. He just stared blankly for a moment, his brain still not functioning properly, and the man rolled his eyes and plucked the phone from Callum¡¯s hand.

    ¡°Hey!¡± He scrambled to his feet, but a sudden blast of air knocked him over again.

    ¡°Wait there,¡± the man instructed, and turned to the burning building. He waved his hands at it and the fire simply went out. The smoke remained, pouring upward into the air, but the flames themselves were gone. Callum stared.

    He wasn¡¯t stupid. Callum was an avid reader of fiction, and he could use the internet just as well as anyone else. The guess he had never really articulated was that he was seeing the supernatural, but only crazy people claimed that. Plus, nothing he¡¯d ever seen was doing anything particularly noteworthy. Sure, there were weird-looking people and sometimes they tramped through public places, but that was the extent of it, at least in his town. Why bother confronting a person about having scales instead of skin if all they were doing was getting groceries?

    This was the first time he¡¯d seen anything really impossible. The instant fire, the subsequent extinguishing. Maybe even the miraculous transportation from one side of the building to another, though at the moment he wasn¡¯t entirely willing to rule out divine intervention. When impossible things were happening, anything might be true.

    ¡°So what are you?¡± The man in blue asked again, reaching out to take Callum¡¯s right hand. He instinctively jerked back, but the man just frowned. ¡°No classification?¡±

    ¡°I?¡ª¡± Callum coughed, and wheezed, his lungs burning. ¡°I have no idea what you mean.¡± It absolutely shattered the rule he¡¯d made to pretend that the things he saw didn¡¯t happen, but it didn¡¯t seem like an important rule at the moment.

    ¡°Really.¡± The man was skeptical, leaning over him. Callum levered himself to his feet, eyeing the stranger warily. His wits were catching up to him a little bit now that he had oxygen back, and he had some idea of how much trouble he was in. Whoever and whatever these people were and whatever they were doing, he¡¯d never heard of them or seen any supernatural stuff on the news, so it was all supposed to be secret. There were at the very least state-level actors involved.

    If you encounter this story on Amazon, note that it''s taken without permission from the author. Report it.

    ¡°Phone?¡± Callum said, holding out his hand. It wasn¡¯t the most important thing, but he did not like other people having his property. Besides, it was easier to deal with than everything else.

    ¡°Hmm?¡± The man glanced down at where he still had Callum¡¯s phone in his hand, and handed it back. ¡°Don¡¯t go anywhere or call anyone,¡± he warned, then turned back to the smoking building. Another gesture sucked out all the smoke, turning it into a solid ball above the man¡¯s palm. Whereupon he just dropped it on the ground. Finally, he took out his own phone and dialed someone ¨C not emergency services ¨C giving Callum a skeptical eye before rattling off a report.

    ¡°Dragonfire at Shahey¡¯s Fitness Center, I have a witness and five victims, but it looks like the perp sidestepped. Witness is unregistered. Yeah, I know. No, I¡¯ll wait, but hurry it up. I don¡¯t have the right focus to glamour something this big.¡± The man hung up and frowned at Callum. ¡°Do you have any idea how much trouble you¡¯re in?¡±

    Callum decided he¡¯d either gone full on bonkers, or his suspicions were right and he¡¯d somehow gotten involved in a supernatural crime scene. The weirdness of literally nobody from any of the neighboring buildings coming out to see why the gym was on fire, or now wasn¡¯t on fire, drove it home more than seeing special effects happening in front of his face. Despite the tautness in his gut and the tremble in his hands, he still had enough brains to recognize he needed to decide on his approach and stick to it.

    ¡°Are you an officer?¡± He asked. ¡°Where¡¯s your badge?¡± Callum figured that playing up the ignorance angle not only wouldn¡¯t be hard, but it¡¯d also make them suspect him less. Or at least tell him more. The man frowned at him and held up his right hand, exposing a tattoo around his wrist, one that looked like a chain with three colored dots on the inside of the wrist.

    ¡°That isn¡¯t a badge,¡± Callum said, though he had to guess the tattoo was supposed to mean something. He could act less disingenuous, but the nervousness helped him sell it. Callum had no idea what was going on, save that it was not something he was supposed to be involved in.

    ¡°Hmph,¡± the man said. ¡°Who are your parents?¡± Callum blinked at the non-sequitor. He was very clearly old enough to speak for himself.

    ¡°Look, unless you have a badge or identification or something, I don¡¯t see any reason I should answer any questions without a lawyer.¡± For the most part, he was simply channeling cop shows, though anyone knew that the best thing to do was to clam up. At least, when it came to US authorities. When it came to magical authorities, he sure didn¡¯t know, but an ignorant American would certainly assume the same applied.

    ¡°Oh, for?¡ª¡± The man took what looked like watchband from inside his pocket and slapped it against Callum¡¯s wrist. It writhed for a moment and wrapped around his wrist of its own accord, and he yelped and jerked backward, pulling at it for a moment before realizing his enormous headache had suddenly cleared up. Judging by the intent look the man in blue was giving him, that wasn¡¯t supposed to happen.

    ¡°The hell is this?¡± Callum demanded, pulling fruitlessly at the wristband. It was getting easier to play the outraged citizen, mostly because he only had to act a little. He really was outraged, though mostly it was fear coiling in his gut. The best way to keep yourself safe was your own attention to safety and you couldn¡¯t rely on anyone else. However, Callum had no idea how to keep himself safe from the, presumably, mage.

    ¡°I suspect nothing you¡¯ve seen before,¡± the man in blue said, eyebrows raised. ¡°Interesting.¡± His phone chirped, and he glanced at it. ¡°You¡¯ll have to come with me, mister¡­?¡±

    ¡°Callum Wells,¡± he said. ¡°But like I said, without a badge or something I¡¯m leaving.¡± The mage snorted and waved a finger, and the air rushed in to form glowing blue handcuffs around his wrists.

    ¡°How¡¯s that for ¡®or something?¡¯¡±

    Callum just stared. He lifted his wrists and tugged, staring at the obvious magic. It really was fascinating, even as he struggled to keep his eyes on it wonderingly and not to ask all the questions he wanted. If the man thought he wasn¡¯t very bright, it¡¯d make things easier. What exactly it would make easier he didn¡¯t know, but better to be underestimated than taken seriously.

    ¡°Okay,¡± he said at last. ¡°That¡¯s pretty good.¡±

    ¡°Come on,¡± the man in blue said. ¡°We¡¯ll get things explained to you.¡±

    For a moment Callum was tempted to slug the guy, handcuffs or no, and make a run for it, but there was no telling what magic could do. The man didn¡¯t look physically impressive, but maybe touching him would set Callum on fire. He had to play it smart.

    ¡°How long is this going to take?¡± He asked, relaxing slightly and noticing that the man in blue did too. ¡°I have work to get back to.¡±

    ¡°I have no idea, it depends on what we find out about you,¡± the man said, steering Callum out and away from the gym and toward a very ordinary-looking blue car. Apparently mages drove hatchbacks. Though there was something about it that seemed a little off, when he drew closer. It clearly was no police vehicle, true, but something definitely set his teeth on edge.

    ¡°What do you mean, what you find out about me?¡± Callum obediently got in the passenger seat of the hatchback, which was actually encouraging. He was clearly some equivalent of under arrest, but it wasn¡¯t so serious he was being handled with any great care.

    ¡°I can¡¯t say more without checking with my boss,¡± the man in blue said, though Callum was pretty sure that was a lie. The man in blue didn¡¯t strike Callum as having a boss he was worried about.

    The car jerked into motion and after turning onto the next street the odd midafternoon stillness faded. Traffic became normal, people were out walking on the sidewalks. But the man in blue refused any other of Callum¡¯s attempts at conversational gambits.

    After a while, Callum gave up, trying instead to figure out where they were going and finding his fear turning to excitement. After thirty years, what he was seeing was finally justified. He was going to find out something about magic, and even if it was just some mystical nondisclosure agreement, he knew. He knew! So what if he was a bit old to be indulging in flights of fancy? Any man ought to be able to enjoy wonder if he found it.

    Unfortunately, wonder seemed to come in the guise of a bland one-story office building in the laughably small downtown area. The sign claimed it belonged to some traffic escort company, and there were two trucks with safety lights to prove it. It gave Callum the same odd feeling as the car, though, and when the man in blue opened the front door, it was obvious it was just a front.

    The reception area was empty, and when they went past the front desk and around the corner, there was a large glowing circle on the ground. More glowing lines split off in some complicated pattern, swirling and looping about the circle. Callum whistled at the sight and the man looked from him to the circle and laughed.

    ¡°I suppose it does look unusual, at that. We¡¯ll just step inside.¡± He guided Callum in and extended his hand toward one side of the circle, what vaguely could be described as the back to judge by the density of the decorative lines, and held it there. A moment later there was a flash and they were suddenly elsewhere. Teleportation. It was obvious in hindsight, but he hadn¡¯t had any reason to suspect it before. The sudden clatter of a busy room washed over them, and Callum looked out past a sort of enclosed booth to something that seemed remarkably like a train station, or an airport.

    Except for things levitating about and lights flashing here and there.

    ¡°This way,¡± the man said, ushering Callum out of the booth and immediately off to one side, giving him only the slightest glimpse of a long row of teleporters adjacent to the big waiting room. Halls went this way and that, and dozens of what seemed like offices were spaced around the area.

    His guide brought him out of the public space and put him in an obvious interrogation room. It had a single table and two chairs, and it looked so normal that it was reassuring and disappointing at the same time. He was expecting more fancy magical stuff, but it looked pretty unadorned. Which was probably the point.

    The man in blue just left him there, Callum meditated on how to deal with the situation. Whatever was going on, they were acting like they had legal authority. But they weren¡¯t public, so it was still, effectively, a black project. A parallel or hidden authority, hopefully working with the official government but he couldn¡¯t be certain.

    He¡¯d have to go along with things for the moment, but not forever. Callum didn¡¯t trust shadowy secret agencies worth a damn, whether they were magical or mundane, and even if they were a portal to magic and mystery he was going to disentangle himself as soon as possible. Not something he could do from inside their headquarters, but provided he was unimportant enough, maybe once they released him. Assuming they did.

    Of course, that also assumed they weren¡¯t reading his mind, or they weren¡¯t going to put some kind of magical tracking device on him, or any of a number of other things. Pragmatically, he was at their mercy but it hopefully wouldn¡¯t be that bad. Practically speaking, unless there was something very strange going on, they wouldn¡¯t waste resources on him. Probably. Especially if they styled themselves civilized with official questioning and so on.

    A variety of options occurred to him, ranging from the prosaic to the extreme, but he didn¡¯t know enough to seriously consider any of them. Instead he took out his phone, which had no signal, of course, and started listing questions to ask whoever came by to talk to him. Safe questions. He certainly wasn¡¯t going to ask why he¡¯d been able to see supernatural things since he was a kid, not without knowing the repercussions of such a thing. It would be wonderful to know, but handing information to secret organizations was not a smart move.

    ?***

    ¡°Carrie is going to have your hide for leaving a magic-blocker on a suspect like that,¡± Supervisor Tharin observed. Agent Jahn was one of the more useful agents for the Guild of Arcane Regulation, and he¡¯d been absolutely right about the trouble a dragon-blooded would get into, but sometimes his judgement was odd. ¡°I¡¯m surprised he¡¯s still conscious.¡±

    ¡°He didn¡¯t even notice it. If anything, it seemed to make him feel better,¡± Jahn replied.

    ¡°But you¡¯re sure he¡¯s not a mundane?¡±

    ¡°Oh, completely. The security system knocked out every mundane around, which is one reason I doubt old Scaletooth started things. He¡¯s pretty good about keeping things quiet. Mister Wells there not only stayed awake, but I felt him use some kind of magic while evacuating the mundanes.¡±

    ¡°Laudable. But he¡¯s not registered.¡± Therin pulled up the entry on his computer. ¡°Callum Wells, Jr., age thirty. Parents, Callum and Mary Wells, deceased. No notes or records in our system at all.¡±

    ¡°He professed complete ignorance, too. I¡¯m actually inclined to believe him.¡± Jahn looked at the scrying window, which showed the suspect entering questions about magic and the supernatural into his phone. ¡°It¡¯s not just the ignorant act, because I suspect he does have suspicions. Maybe he saw someone¡¯s glamour slip in the past or something. But he really didn¡¯t have any idea what this was.¡±

    Jahn tapped the wrist tattoo that every magic-using or even magic-sensitive human was required to get. His had pips for wind and fire inside the open circle of a GAR agent, while Therin¡¯s had pips for illusion and kinesis. The magical tattoos integrated themselves into any major glamour and resisted any minor one, serving to mark everyone inside their world to each other. Their skills, power level, and authority.

    ¡°So how the hell did an actual mage, however weak, make it to thirty without coming to our attention? In fact, how did a mage appear from a completely mundane bloodline in the first place?¡± Therin frowned at the illusion of Callum sitting in the chair.

    ¡°I¡¯m glad that¡¯s not my worry.¡± Jahn shrugged. ¡°I just bring ¡®em in. I don¡¯t solve mysteries.¡±

    ¡°Well, he¡¯s also a witness to what went down with Scaletooth, so we¡¯ll start there,¡± Therin decided.

    ¡°Good luck,¡± Jahn said dryly. Therin rolled his eyes and cloaked himself in a subtle glamour that made him look older and more heavyset, grizzled and out of shape rather than young and lethal. The arcane portal opened itself for him as he stepped into the room, seeming to appear out of nowhere, and Callum jumped.

    ¡°Good afternoon, Mister Wells,¡± Therin said. ¡°There are a number of items to go over with you, but I¡¯d like to start with the incident at Shahey¡¯s Fitness Center.¡±

    ¡°Okay,¡± Callum said, studying Therin. There was something a little odd about that look, and Therin understood what Jahn had meant. It was a touch too knowing, without actually holding the proper understanding someone who had been immersed in the magical world would have. ¡°There isn¡¯t much to tell, though.¡±

    ¡°That¡¯s fine,¡± Therin assured him, taking a seat across from Callum.

    ¡°Well, three men burst in the front door and started shooting. I dived behind the arm press, and I saw they were shooting at a short man with scales. They hit him a couple times, and then everything vanished in fire. I started getting people out, but the shooters and the scaled man were just completely gone.¡±

    Therin pursed his lips. That was straightforward, and actually a relief. Someone attacking the dragonblooded meant that he didn¡¯t have to worry about bringing Scaletooth in. Or trying to hold him accountable for the cleanup. The bullets must have had magic disruptors if Scaletooth¡¯s glamour dropped, which meant the attackers didn¡¯t really know what they were dealing with. Or it wasn¡¯t really meant to hurt him.

    Either way, just knowing that it was an attack using firearms was enough to make a lot of people¡¯s lives much easier. And a number of agents would have to start work, but that was what agents were for.

    ¡°Anything you can add?¡± Therin prompted. ¡°I¡¯m sure you¡¯ve realized the attackers probably weren¡¯t human. Can you describe them?¡±

    ¡°Not really,¡± Callum said, shaking his head slowly. ¡°They seemed off, but I didn¡¯t get a good look.¡±

    ¡°I see,¡± Therin said. ¡°Well, that seems straightforward enough.¡± Plus, the runes in the table hadn¡¯t triggered. Detecting lies as such was a tricky business, but it was often possible to establish when someone was putting forth a blatant falsehood. ¡°Now, the next item of business. Agent Jahn tells me you profess ignorance of the arcane and the need for mages to register?¡±

    ¡°Well, yes,¡± Callum replied. ¡°I have no idea what¡¯s going on here.¡± The runes stayed quiet. A sufficiently skilled mage or just a very clever person could circumvent them easily enough, but the first was impossible with the suppression bracelet on and the second was unlikely. Callum hadn¡¯t asked the right questions to be that clever.

    ¡°Mister Wells, I¡¯m sure you¡¯ve at least gleaned the basics. Magic is real, and so are at least some of the magical creatures you¡¯ve seen in fiction. Not all of them, heaven knows, but enough. I¡¯m not going to give you the whole orientation now. If you were a mundane, you wouldn¡¯t be involved. I¡¯m sure you noticed that all the other people at the incident were unconscious.¡± He waited for Callum to nod before going on.

    ¡°It¡¯s a very simple magical ward most arcane businesses use, but it¡¯s weak enough that anyone with their own magic is unaffected. Agent Jahn also said he noticed you using a spell ¨C correction, using magic ¨C so it¡¯s clear you¡¯re a mage.¡±

    ¡°I mean¡­¡± Callum shifted uncomfortably. ¡°Okay, but I¡¯ve never done anything magical in my life. I¡¯d think I would know.¡±

    ¡°Instinctive magic use might not be obvious. We don¡¯t have any record of you or your family having any sort of contact with the supernatural, so for the moment I¡¯m willing to believe that you¡¯re not some kind of rogue, just a late bloomer. Very late. It¡¯s a good question how you managed to get to this age without something bringing you to our attention.¡± Callum just shrugged.

    ¡°What kind of magic do I have?¡± He asked instead. A very good question.

    ¡°It will require testing. Possibly extensive testing. Unfortunately, we don¡¯t have some magic stone that tells us the full extent of a person¡¯s magical affinities.¡±

    ¡°Hmm,¡± said Callum, taking notes on his phone. ¡°I have a lot of questions, but I guess the first is, what happens now?¡±

    ¡°We get you registered and tested,¡± Therin told him. ¡°Once we know what your magic is and the basic statistics for your magic use, you¡¯ll be in our system and we can figure out what you¡¯ll be doing for your draft.¡±

    ¡°Excuse me, my what now?¡± Callum said, a bit of a flash in his eyes. Therin was taken aback, but of course, he wouldn¡¯t know.

    ¡°Every mage serves the GAR ?¡ª that is to say, the Guild of Arcane Regulation, the organization that runs supernatural affairs worldwide ?¡ª for a period of time determined by their particular power and specialty,¡± Therin explained. ¡°Normally it¡¯s when they¡¯re quite a bit younger, but you started late.¡±

    ¡°But I have a job and clients,¡± Callum protested.

    ¡°Mundane ones,¡± Therin waved it away. ¡°By the time you¡¯re done with your service you¡¯ll have the skills for a better job anyway.¡± Callum was silent for a moment, clearly unhappy, but Therin wasn¡¯t worried. The man would change his mind once he got into the GAR curriculum.

    ¡°What does this service entail, anyway?¡± Callum asked after a bit.

    ¡°Oh, education and training, then enforcement like Agent Jahn.¡± Therin paused. ¡°Well, Agent Jahn is employed, not drafted, but it¡¯s kind of the same. You¡¯ll probably be deployed near one of the portal realms. That¡¯s where we need personnel the most, anyway.¡±

    ¡°I see,¡± said Callum. ¡°I don¡¯t suppose I have a choice? Can I just not bother with all this?¡±

    ¡°Rogue mages are hunted down by the GAR,¡± Therin told him matter-of-factly. ¡°Generally executed, too. Can¡¯t have rogues making trouble now, can we?¡±

 Chapter 2 - Reality

    Callum knew a hustle when he heard one. It didn¡¯t matter that the hustle was extremely well organized and claimed to wield authority equal to a national government, it was still a hustle. Mandatory training and mandatory draft? That just meant that everyone did things the GAR way or they got killed. A supernatural dictatorship. Fantastic. It was a tyranny he¡¯d never even known existed reaching out to claim control over him, but there was absolutely no way he was going to let it.

    Unfortunately, there was nothing he could do about it yet. He was not just going to go along with their serve or die requirement, but at the same time, he wasn¡¯t going to tell them that. So far his decision to be paranoid was paying off, since it was clear that the man talking to him was checking the truth of his statements in some manner. It was obvious by the way his eyes shifted to examine something after certain questions.

    He also wasn¡¯t very interested in answering any of Callum¡¯s questions. Once he¡¯d decided what boxes Callum went into, he¡¯d wrapped up the interview and pushed Callum off on some other functionary to take care of after banishing the magic handcuffs. At least Callum¡¯s new minder had a nametag, reading Coordinator Lee, and she looked as bored as any government bureaucrat.

    ¡°Right this way, Mister Wells,¡± Lee said, glancing at a tablet. If anything, the fact that they were using modern technology instead of clipboards was more impressive than the magic. Over half of Callum¡¯s clients didn¡¯t have any software that had been released in the past decade, even and especially the ones associated with governmental infrastructure.

    ¡°Is there some sort of orientation package I can get or something?¡± Callum was operating in the dark, not even knowing how legitimate this so-called agency was. Or if it was a national or supernational entity, or what. Not to mention, he had no idea what bits of supernatural existed, what didn¡¯t, what rules there were, and so on.

    ¡°Mm?¡± Lee glanced up from the tablet for a moment then back down. ¡°You¡¯ll have access to materials when you go in for training. Tests first, though. We don¡¯t usually test someone as old as you, or as apparently unpracticed.¡± Enough scorn leaked through the professional demeanor that Callum felt vaguely insulted, though he wasn¡¯t particularly excited for the tests. If he¡¯d been ignorant of magic for thirty years, it wasn¡¯t likely anything about what he found would be life-changing. In fact, it was GAR that insisted on changing his life, not magic.

    ¡°What do these tests entail?¡±

    ¡°We¡¯ll oversaturate you with mana, put you in a warded box, and see what happens.¡± Lee said, unconcerned.

    ¡°That sounds safe,¡± Callum muttered.

    ¡°Most people need help figuring out what magic types they have access to,¡± Lee told him sourly. ¡°There¡¯s no way to do that involving conscious control.¡± That sounded a bit specious to him, but he wasn¡¯t an expert on magic. Even if they didn¡¯t sound like they knew what they were doing, they probably did. He just shrugged and followed Lee.

    The warded box in question was an observation room with heavy glass on all four sides, which meant that anyone nearby could see in. That didn¡¯t excite him much, but if the tattoos people got identified them anyway, it wasn¡¯t like he had much privacy to begin with. The tattoo thing bothered him too, considering the history of compulsory identification, but it wasn¡¯t likely he could get out of it.

    Lee gave him a wristband to wear that was nearly identical to the magic-blocker one, only with chunks of what looked like quartz embedded in it. The headache came back, two or three times worse than before, and Lee shooed him into the room before he could ask about it. At this point it was clear it was magic-related, which certainly didn¡¯t improve his opinion the matter.

    ¡°We¡¯ll start the test now,¡± Lee said, her voice coming through the glass far clearer than it should have. ¡°Don¡¯t try to hold anything back. The wards should catch any manifestations and tell us what type of magic it is.¡±

    ¡°What do?¡ª¡± He didn¡¯t get further than that before that sensation of oddness he¡¯d picked up now and again suddenly redoubled, and his headache instantly tipped over into a full-blown migraine. Spots danced in front of his eyes, and he groaned, pressing the heels of his hands against his temples. The thought crossed his mind that whatever they were doing might actually kill him instead, as the headache got worse and he could have sworn his head was actually splitting in two. The lights got brighter and then suddenly a sharp, tearing sensation jolted through his mind, making him scream before pulling him down into darkness.

    For a long time he felt fuzzy and vague, unfocused, like a fever dream he couldn¡¯t wake up from. He saw no visions, received no insights, but at the very least his headache was gone. Then a sudden cold current pulled him along and his eyes snapped open.

    ¡°Back with us? Good.¡± Lee¡¯s voice came from somewhere off to the side, and Callum blinked up at what was obviously the ceiling of a medical facility. He looked around, moving gingerly because of the remnant memories of pain and his head splitting open, but everything felt fine. He wasn¡¯t hooked to any IVs, he didn¡¯t have any monitoring equipment on him, but there was another mage in the room with some kind of modified asklepian that he assumed was a medic.

    ¡°Yeah.¡± Callum found his voice was perfectly fine. He¡¯d had anesthesia back when he needed his wisdom teeth out, and remembered how rough it¡¯d been on waking up. It seemed odd to him that he felt focused and whole and hale. ¡°I feel pretty good, actually.¡±

    ¡°Thank your healer,¡± Lee said, and gestured to the medical mage.

    ¡°Thank you,¡± he told her, and she nodded to him before leaving the room. He looked at Lee. ¡°Was whatever happened normal?¡±

    ¡°Not really,¡± Lee admitted. ¡°I¡¯d have to dig into the histories, but I suspect it¡¯s just a consequence of performing the test on someone as old as you. According to Nurse Taison your casting ability will be impaired for a while, considering the vis overload, but while you were out we went ahead and put on your mage¡¯s mark.¡±

    Callum blinked at her and then lifted his right hand. Sure enough, there was a braided tattoo around his wrist with a solid grey-white circle right under the thumb. Revulsion squirmed through him and anger tightened his lips. It was just wrong to have something like that put on him without permission. Even if it was required, just doing it while he was unconscious really drove home the entire system¡¯s contempt for him. Or for anyone, really.

    ¡°So,¡± he said shortly, biting off many choice words. ¡°What does this mean?¡±

    ¡°Space mage,¡± Lee told him. ¡°It¡¯s quite rare, but we can¡¯t tell how powerful you are because of what happened with the test. Besides, at your age, it¡¯s impossible to know how much capacity you can get by exercising your magic.¡± She fluttered a hand. ¡°I¡¯ll get you the exercises for beginner mages, and the space magic primer. It¡¯s more meant for children, but¡­¡±

    ¡°Yeah, I¡¯m weird. I get it.¡± Lee eyed him, clearly displeased at his words, and her attitude toward him clearly went several notches downward. He found he didn¡¯t much care, since his attitude toward her was basically as low as it could go. Callum just shrugged at her.

    ¡°Fine. We¡¯ll have you report for training in two days.¡± She paused a moment. ¡°Actually, you¡¯ll probably need a tutor. I¡¯ll see who¡¯s available and we¡¯ll add the costs to your service time.¡± Callum ground his teeth, but didn¡¯t say anything about it. Adding unasked-for costs was one of the oldest scams in the book.

    ¡°Right, so, any chance I can go home and wrap things up there before I¡¯m taken wherever?¡±

    ¡°Hmm?¡± Lee blinked at him. ¡°Oh, I don¡¯t know. I¡¯ll have to ask Supervisor Therin.¡± She tapped at her tablet again, and Callum heard the messenger ping. ¡°He says okay, but you¡¯ll need an escort. Technically you¡¯re still under arrest until you¡¯re through all the orientation and oaths and whatnot.¡±

    ¡°That¡¯s fine,¡± Callum lied. He was already making certain plans. ¡°Any chance I can get a primer on GAR? Or is there some secret website that has the information on it?¡±

    ¡°The escort should be able to show you stuff. Your mundane access won¡¯t cut it.¡± Lee shrugged at him. ¡°He should be here in a little bit.¡±

    ¡°Great.¡± Callum sat up, then stood, shaking his hands out. He tried to reach out or do something with his apparently brand-new magical powers, but nothing sprang to mind. At a guess, his ability to see things he wasn¡¯t supposed to, which apparently involved glamours, was part of it. How that connected to spatial magic, though, he had no idea.

    He still didn¡¯t want to mention it. They already thought of him as an anomaly, but a pitiable one. If he became an interesting one, that might scuttle any chances he had to get away from it all. And he absolutely intended to. For some people, losing their entire life and being forced into servitude to some dictatorial secret society might be preferable to death, but he was not about to knuckle under to power-lusting tyrants.

    For some reason he was expecting Lee to get him a stack of hardcovers or the like, but instead she fiddled with her tablet some more and someone came to deliver a thumbdrive that she handed him. It didn¡¯t have any markings on it to identify the manufacturer, but it looked like an ordinary memory stick.

    ¡°You¡¯re going to need a GAR laptop or tablet or whatever to read from that,¡± she said. ¡°Your minder will lend you one.¡±

    ¡°Great,¡± he said. It wasn¡¯t great. If all magic stuff used a format that could only be read by arcane hardware, that explained why it wasn¡¯t all over the internet, but it also meant he was going to have issues making copies that weren¡¯t traceable by GAR. He was still toying with the thumbdrive when his escort or minder or, pragmatically, babysitter showed up.

    ¡°Agent Sen, this is Callum Wells. You¡¯re his officer for the next week or so until we can get him integrated.¡± Sen was a young man with Asian features, probably no older than twenty, with the arrogant assurance of youth and inexperience. Callum disliked him on sight, and it seemed it was mutual. Sen didn¡¯t even bother to school his face into something polite.

    By the uncomfortable way that he shifted the day bag he was carrying, Sen hadn¡¯t spent much time traveling. Which didn¡¯t really track with a supposed draft, but Callum already had his paranoid suspicions about that so it wasn¡¯t surprising. Despite all that, Callum didn¡¯t want to start a war with his warrant officer so he extended a hand and looked polite.

    ¡°Agent Sen, good to meet you.¡±

    Sen mumbled something in reply, his hand limp in Callum¡¯s clasp, and he shifted his day bag from one side to the other as soon as Callum released him. It wasn¡¯t clear if he was being polite or if he was just aware of Lee standing there watching them both.

    ¡°I¡¯m releasing him from medical,¡± Lee said, tapping her tablet, and Sen blinked, then turned to Callum.

    ¡°Oh, right. Follow me. I¡¯ll take you back to¡ª¡± He glanced down at his phone, mumbling again. ¡°Site 227-B.¡± Callum suppressed the desire to roll his eyes. Though by the numbering scheme there was actually a second teleport circle somewhere in his home town of Tanner, which was interesting. Not that he had any idea how to use that information, but it was better to know than not.

    Sen set out with the stride of someone who has somewhere to be, leading Callum back out through the maze of corridors to the departure station. Callum couldn¡¯t tell if the location was a headquarters or commercial complex or what, and hadn¡¯t even gotten to see outside for the entire time he¡¯d been there. He had the vague impression that the building sprawled pretty far in every direction, and it was clearly multipurpose since it had an interrogation and medical ward, but he had no idea what else all the offices were used for.

    He could see the row of teleport circles far better as they approached them, and more, behind and above the teleporters there were a number of people at what looked like switchboard stations. However the teleporters worked, they weren¡¯t fully digitized, as the workers physically moved connections around. Sen waved his tattooed wrist at the front of the teleportation circle and announced the destination to the operator for their circle before waving Callum into it.

    If he had to guess, these were the public teleporters, and there was some private version somewhere in the back where people could move around without needing to tell their travel plans to all and sundry. At the same time, the wrist tattoo had to be some form of verification, so it wasn¡¯t completely open to use.

    The second time through, the shift wasn¡¯t as smooth, because he could feel something flowing and snapping as they went from one point to another, reappearing in the fake traffic escort office. When they exited the blue car was gone, and Sen solved the issue of transportation through the boringly mundane expedient of summoning a rideshare. A reminder that Sen already had his address, called up from whatever government databases GAR had access to. Probably all of them. For obvious reasons he couldn¡¯t press while the driver took them to the suburbs, but once they got out he tried to pry some information out of Sen.

    ¡°So apparently I¡¯ve got spatial magic? I¡¯m pretty new to all this, what¡¯s a spatial mage wind up doing for the draft?¡±

    ¡°Hmm?¡± Sen gave him a look that made it obvious he had a low opinion of Callum¡¯s intelligence. ¡°Transportation, mostly. Space doesn¡¯t have any actual attack so you¡¯ll be a porter.¡±

    ¡°And what did you do, may I ask?¡± Callum opened the door for Sen, ushering him inside. Fortunately things were fairly clean. ¡°I have a guest room for you, by the way. No need to sleep on the sofa.¡±

    ¡°Well, it¡¯s something,¡± Sen muttered, then turned to Callum and held up his right hand, showing off a pair of pips. Red and white. ¡°Pyromancer, Aeromancer. I fought.¡± Callum nodded like he was impressed, but Sen didn¡¯t have the air that real veterans did. He seemed spoiled and self-important, not someone who¡¯d faced death and come out alive. Callum prodded a little more as he showed Sen about, but the mage just produced a laptop from his carry bag.

    This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.

    ¡°Look up your primers on this,¡± he said, thrusting the laptop at Callum, before heading back to the guest room. Since it seemed that Sen didn¡¯t care to actually explain anything himself, Callum took the laptop back to his office and opened it up. Unsurprisingly, it seemed to run on some proprietary operating system, though the setup was familiar enough that he had things figured out in just a few minutes. Even if it was, as promised, meant for elementary age children, it was still a primer on how to do magic. Callum bent to it with a will.

    ***

    ¡°What¡¯s this request?¡± Supervisor Therin asked Lee, reading over the report on the new mage. There wasn¡¯t much. It was basically the report on a child, for all that Wells was in his third decade. The magical information was nonexistent, his blood didn¡¯t match any known mage family, his magic type was a basic category rather than full abilities, and even his mundane information was boring. So he wasn¡¯t expecting to get a request for the healer Archmage to look at the man.

    ¡°Well, I gave him the standard test we do for kids, and that pretty much verified he¡¯d never touched magic before. But there were some anomalies.¡±

    ¡°Yes, you mentioned before he lost consciousness. And?¡±

    ¡°I didn¡¯t notice it until I went to replace the mana supply. The ward only blocked the manifestation of three thaums of mana, but the supply bracelet was empty. Fully charged, it holds a hundred. Somehow he absorbed ninety-seven thaums, or discharged it in a way the wards didn¡¯t catch.¡±

    ¡°Hmm, and if he¡¯d never touched magic, his vis pool should have been full, and not that large to begin with.¡±

    ¡°Yes,¡± Lee agreed. ¡°I¡¯m sure it¡¯s connected to how he managed to get to be thirty years old without noticing magic at all. He¡¯s some kind of medical curiosity.¡± Lee¡¯s eyes glinted with avarice. ¡°I bet I could make my reputation if I got to properly study him.¡±

    ¡°He has to do his service first, and I doubt you¡¯ll get the grand mages to assign him as your pet,¡± Therin warned. ¡°I¡¯ll sign off on your request to get Archmage Fane to look at him, but that¡¯s it.¡±

    ¡°Excellent.¡± Lee smiled happily. ¡°Keep me informed of where he gets sent for training, please?¡±

    ¡°I¡¯ll put you on the list,¡± Therin told her. He was a little curious himself. The eastern continental branch of GAR was big, and he had a lot of responsibilities ¨C he wouldn¡¯t have bothered with Wells if things hadn¡¯t involved a dragon-blooded ¨C but the man was rather odd. Most of the people Jahn delivered with a suppressor cuff were unconscious from the shock. If it weren¡¯t for Jahn¡¯s testimony, he would have thought the man was a mundane, betraying not the slightest sensitivity for any of the obvious magical warning signs strewn about.

    It wasn¡¯t likely he¡¯d hear from or about Wells again. The man was thirty; it was doubtful he¡¯d be able to adapt to the world of the arcane. By the time anything happened, Therin probably would have long forgotten about the man and would just be irritated by pointless notifications. Still, he added himself as a watcher to the man¡¯s file before continuing on with his day.

    ***

    Callum was pretty pleased with himself. It had only taken him an hour to start feeling vis following the directions in the book. Admittedly, that was apparently slow. He¡¯d found a browser on the laptop which connected to some sort of parallel internet ¨C more likely part of the so-called deep web rather than a wholly separate infrastructure ¨C and done some research between visualization sessions. The magical internet seemed to be part of a single monolithic site rather than anything independent, but there were forums and posted articles when he clicked around enough.

    Having heard both terms, he¡¯d been confused for a while about the difference between mana and vis until he finally got to the part in the primers that explained it all. There was ambient magical energy all about, denser in some places than others, and that was mana. It formed a pervasive atmosphere that mages drew from and sort of metabolized to form their own internal reservoir. A mage¡¯s own mana was actually called vis, and unlike mana it could have specific aspects, like his spatial talent.

    Mages could manipulate nearby mana, making waves in the ocean, or they could spend their vis and create spells. There were reasons to do both, the primer claimed, without actually going into detail. He really wanted to know everything about everything, but the primer had only the most basic of basics.

    He had gleaned that most mage children would already be able to feel their vis by the time they entered what was basically magical kindergarten, but they were encouraged to learn not to cast anything until they were older in some kind of magical potty training. So he was starting with a serious handicap, and one even more serious than just lacking basic training. Namely, his inability to see glamours.

    He¡¯d researched it by guessing at truesight, and found very little but discussions of various magical techniques for spotting and disabling glamours. In hindsight, that was obvious, and he didn¡¯t find anything on naturally being able to pierce them. Even the fae, who were real, of course, needed effort to pierce them. However, apparently glamours were often used not just for deception but also communication. A single one could hide something from mundanes and advertise it to arcanes, thanks to mana-active sight.

    The term itself was confusing because it referred to a number of different things. When it came to mages, a glamour meant either an audiovisual mask or flat invisibility, or a sign or signal visible only in magesight. For vampires, there was apparently some degree of mind magic, suggestion, and memory editing involved. The fae had a combination of illusionary covering and perceptual tricks, making it so people didn¡¯t notice them, and the shifters had some kind of natural projection that made people see beast forms as ordinary animals.

    So far, none of it had much affected him, but he needed to figure out some way to turn off his super-vision or at least also see what normal people did. Otherwise he would, ironically, be operating blind. But he was hoping by actually getting practice with vis and mana he¡¯d be able to solve that problem.

    The exercises were incredibly simple, but it was still an absolute thrill to be able to push a pen across his desk without touching it. It was brute force magic, shoving around mana without using his innate spatial vis, but it was more than he could do before. The sensation was somewhere between advanced visualization and a phantom limb, impossible to describe in prosaic terms but it felt exactly right. He spent at least ten minutes flinging pens and pencils around his office, telling himself he was honing his skills.

    Then he got back to work. Now that he¡¯d proved to himself that magic was real and he could actually do it, he wanted to find out more about the world he was getting himself into. He didn¡¯t want to accidentally insult a werewolf or something because he wasn¡¯t raised in arcane society and get his face ripped off. Callum also wanted to find out more about GAR and the draft and other apparent facts of life, because it still didn¡¯t sit well with him.

    Online research was second nature to him, considering his career as a consultant, and the magic internet wasn¡¯t really any different from the mundane one. It didn¡¯t take him all that long to find the information he wanted.

    The draft was mostly military, either hunting down troublesome arcanes on Earth or defending the front on one of six so-called portal worlds. The worlds were strange demiplanes between Earth and some weird multiversal connection that was the primary source of the planet¡¯s mana. So the arcane community had defended them since time immemorial.

    Sen had been right, that spatial mages were generally employed, in draft or afterward, to transport people and materials and not much else. What Sen hadn¡¯t mentioned was that the death rate for the draft was a horrifying thirty percent. That many casualties immediately tripped all kinds of mental alarms. If they were losing a third of their mages during their draft, then it was a losing battle, and that made no sense at all.

    Callum was no tactical genius, but according to the literature he found there was nothing on the portal worlds that couldn¡¯t be taken care of by emplacing some machine guns and mortars, and the supposed massive incursions could be solved with a nuke. Or at least military ordnance.

    Beyond that, none of the people he¡¯d seen at GAR seemed at all like they survived a winnowing process where three out of every ten mages died. In fact, they didn¡¯t think the draft was a big deal, so he started to poke around on the very limited magical internet. Depressingly, the reason wasn¡¯t even hidden. It was an open secret that it was political. The majority of those deaths befell mages that hadn¡¯t signed onto one of the major families or guilds.

    Grand mages and archmages lived hundreds of years. It didn¡¯t surprise him that they¡¯d taken steps to make sure that everyone lived under their thumb or not at all. They probably didn¡¯t even need to do anything anymore. The nature of bureaucracy and infighting meant that the current system would sustain itself solely because people with power had a vested interest.

    Fuck that.

    He¡¯d still been considering spending time as a human packmule, moving people from here to there. It didn¡¯t sound interesting, but it would give him plenty of time to practice magic and he could probably even keep up with his career, though he¡¯d have to be careful. Or maybe just work for people on the arcane side of things; mages built buildings too.

    Knowing that he¡¯d have to deal with politics and probably sign his life away to someone else for protection or else face an ¡®accident¡¯ made that idea intolerable. Especially since GAR enforced the system, acting as a global government that kept mages in line. To some extent, he understood why mages needed some oversight, but whatever well-meaning approach there had been in the beginning was long gone.

    Callum chewed his lip as he considered. It was one thing to entertain the notion of flouting some magical government that he¡¯d never heard of before that day. It was another thing to actually do it. But he only had a day or two before he was supposed to show up, so he had to think about it properly.

    It wasn¡¯t just GAR. If he wanted to avoid them, he had to drop out of sight for mundane governments too, or at least change his identity. Callum hadn¡¯t exactly had any criminal contacts, but he knew a guy who knew a guy enough to know the general shape of things. It was shockingly easy to remain unidentified, so long as the break with the old identity was completely clean. He couldn¡¯t touch his old money, old contacts, old email accounts, old chat handles.

    With magic it was surely harder, but if he could trust the official information, the fantasy of tracking people across the world from a drop of blood was just that. What could be tracked was magical signature, making it effectively useless for normal people. Or someone who hadn¡¯t been using magic recently. Or had massively changed their magical style.

    When Callum read that, he regretfully stopped practicing. He didn¡¯t know or have enough magic to be useful yet, so it was still a liability, but if he let the magical signature fade they¡¯d be stuck with mundane methods of hunting him down. Callum considered the laptop, then pulled out his phone and started taking pictures. He couldn¡¯t keep the memory stick, and without the laptop it wasn¡¯t readable, but he could keep the information on it. He had just about finished when Sen¡¯s voice came through the office door, startling him enough that he nearly dropped the phone.

    ¡°What¡¯s for food around here?¡±

    Callum hurriedly pocketed the phone and went to open the office door. Sen looked as annoyed as ever, but apparently mages needed to eat, too. While he really wanted to go through the exercises to see what magic looked like around Sen, to see if he could actually sense a mage, that was too much risk.

    What he really needed was a good few months to read and practice and get a handle on things himself. GAR had plenty of knowledge, but it was obvious that they weren¡¯t really trustworthy. To give them the benefit of the doubt, they probably didn¡¯t actually teach people wrong, but they certainly would sequester anything potentially dangerous or unorthodox. He wanted his own experience before diving into everyone else¡¯s.

    ¡°We can hit the steakhouse,¡± Callum offered. For some reason he didn¡¯t see Sen as a taco person.

    ¡°Very well,¡± Sen said, looking annoyed. ¡°That will serve.¡± Callum just shrugged and showed Sen to the car.

    ¡°Maybe you could tell me about your experiences in training, and the draft,¡± Callum suggested, trying to get something out of the man other than vague disapproval. ¡°I don¡¯t have any idea what it¡¯s all about.¡± It was the most base and blatant of flattery, but it worked. Sen spent the entire trip just talking about how amazing his mentor found him and how good he was at fire and air magic. When they got out, Callum hesitated before going into the restaurant, considering Sen was still going on about air magic.

    ¡°Is it okay to talk about this stuff in public?¡±

    ¡°What?¡± Sen gave him a look, then seemed to remember Callum was a novice. ¡°Oh, there¡¯s a basic glamour.¡± The young mage waved his hand, but Callum didn¡¯t notice any difference.

    ¡°How does it work so we can talk about arcane things without muting us completely?¡±

    ¡°It masks the words until we address someone who¡¯s inside the glamour, obviously.¡± That fit with what he¡¯d read, but he still wasn¡¯t exactly sure what that seemed like to other people. He¡¯d have to test it, but probably not immediately. With a little prompting from Callum, Sen resumed his boasting about the draft and confirmed what Callum had thought. It wasn¡¯t actually that dangerous.

    The six portal worlds corresponded to the six kinds of supernatural, or rather, vice versa. Vampires were due to the influence of one portal world, shifters another, fae a third. Dragonblooded were actual immigrants from a fourth. The fifth was responsible for sea monsters, and the sixth was apparently completely empty, which he didn¡¯t buy for a minute. Mages were completely human, though.

    ¡°So the others aren¡¯t human?¡± Callum asked, sipping at the beer he¡¯d ordered. The glamour had worked as specified, with the waitress not even noticing Sen¡¯s description of hurling fireballs from the defenses but having no trouble with their orders.

    ¡°Well, yes,¡± Sen said, giving Callum an odd look. ¡°I keep forgetting you¡¯re new to this. Vampires were something else before they came through into Portal World Three. I don¡¯t know what, but the portal made them human look-alike. Shifters have picked up some kind of magical symbiont from Two. Fae are the result of some humans colonizing One by accident ages ago, and getting too friendly with the things that came through the other portals there.¡±

    ¡°So vamps don¡¯t actually have to worry about holy water, crosses, sunlight?¡±

    ¡°What on earth are you talking about?¡± Sen frowned at him.

    ¡°You don¡¯t read much mundane literature, I guess?¡±

    ¡°Why would I?¡±

    Callum had to grant that was a decent question. While there had to be a lot of mages that were part of the normal world, it was clear there were just as many who were so wrapped up in the arcane world they didn¡¯t really think of the mundane one as real. He had no idea what Sen had been doing before he was tapped to play Callum¡¯s warrant officer, but it clearly wasn¡¯t field work. He shrugged and changed topics.

    ¡°So where were we? Dragonblooded? As in actual dragons?¡±

    ¡°That¡¯s what they claim. Dragons don¡¯t come through the portals, though.¡±

    ¡°That¡¯s a shame,¡± Callum remarked, and Sen shook his head.

    ¡°No, it¡¯s good. They would be extremely dangerous. Dragonblooded are extremely powerful, and they¡¯re supposedly pale imitations of the real thing.¡±

    ¡°Oh, well. Sea monsters?¡±

    ¡°Five is completely covered in water and there are storms. Things get through on occasion.¡±

    ¡°Sounds pleasant.¡±

    ¡°If you like getting rained on,¡± Sen said with a scowl. He was definitely a kid, but he was also far more forthcoming than Callum had expected. Though nothing Sen said about the portal worlds really made him feel like they were threats. Annoyances at most.

    Callum kept revising his plan in his head. Mostly because he revised Sen¡¯s competence downward. He was sure the mage could fling fireballs and whirlwinds with the best of them, but Callum doubted he was capable of staying up all night to make sure that his charge didn¡¯t decide to wander off. That would be a lot easier than trying to incapacitate the mage without killing him.

    He wasn¡¯t quite heartless enough that he was willing to murder Sen to get away. Plus, pragmatically, that would work against his desire to stay hidden from GAR. If he vanished, it¡¯d be a black mark for Sen and Callum would go on some sort of watch list, but if he killed an agent, they¡¯d have everyone out for him.

    The question was how much preparation he could get away with. He had a bug-out bag, containing an assortment of basics for emergencies, but he could probably get away with getting his safe-deposit and maybe a chunk of cash without making Sen suspicious. Assuming Sen even really knew how money worked.

    He didn¡¯t know how disconnected the interior of arcane society was from the real world. For example, Sen completely ignored the flirtatiousness of the waitress, who was almost falling over herself for Sen¡¯s admittedly archetypal good looks. Callum raised his eyebrows at the man.

    ¡°Already got someone back home?¡±

    ¡°What?¡± Sen paused with a piece of steak halfway to his mouth.

    ¡°The waitress.¡±

    ¡°Oh.¡± Sen glanced around vaguely. ¡°No, arcanes and mundanes don¡¯t work well together.¡±

    Callum pressed his lips together. He¡¯d got along well enough with Selene to get married, so that obviously wasn¡¯t true. It was just that Sen didn¡¯t care about so-called mundanes. For that matter, it seemed pretty clear that the supernatural world in general wasn¡¯t all that impressed by the mundane one, for all that they clearly were happy to copy all the nonmagical advancements.

    So far, he hadn¡¯t been impressed by what the supernatural world had to offer.

 Chapter 3 - Escape

    It turned out Sen did know what a bank was, but didn¡¯t care what Callum was doing there. It was obvious that he mostly put Callum in the mundane category, and the fact that Callum hadn¡¯t been practicing magic didn¡¯t help. Without the aura of vis about him, or the ability to pick up on the entire spectrum that Sen cared about, Callum might well have been another species.

    ¡°Got any word on when I¡¯m supposed to report, and where?¡± Callum asked, nodding at the small tablet Sen barely ever put down. From the few glimpses Callum had gotten from it, the mage was generally messaging someone or someones, but he could have sworn he saw the guy playing a game on the tablet once.

    ¡°Yeah, I¡¯ll take you back to the eastern headquarters tomorrow afternoon, so make sure you have everything wrapped up.¡±

    ¡°I will,¡± Callum lied.

    ¡°Great. Can¡¯t wait to get out of here.¡± Sen went back to fiddling with his tablet. Callum suppressed a snort. Although Sen had been quite voluble when he was talking about his own exploits, he¡¯d lapsed back to doing his best to ignore Callum once the topic was exhausted. Personally, Callum thought Sen had simply remembered he was supposed to be Callum¡¯s warrant officer, and was trying to be aloof for that reason.

    Callum made a show of packing, though he doubted Sen really noticed. The mage spent most of his time in the guest room, fiddling with the tablet. Callum really did pack, adding a duffel to his bug-out bag. Mostly his firearms and survival tools, along with his backup hard drives. Not the computer itself, of course, since that would be traceable and was easily replaced.

    The one major hole he had in his escape plan was that he didn¡¯t have any alternate identification at hand. It had never occurred to him that he might need to pretend to be someone else. But he had enough cash that he could probably make do. In fact, if he were lucky he¡¯d be able to find someone who made IDs for members of the arcane, since that had to be something that was done fairly often given the ages he¡¯d seen in his primers. Whether or not he¡¯d be able to find such people without undue problems was another question entirely.

    He waited until just after two in the morning, going over it again and again in his head, so stressed that he could taste the adrenaline in his own saliva. It was one thing to contemplate what he was about to do, but it was another to actually commit to it. He frankly doubted he¡¯d have been willing to make the leap without the casualty figures he¡¯d seen.

    Finally he opened his window, creeping out onto the roof on the opposite side of the house from the guest room. Getting to ground level was a simple matter of leaning out to grab the birch tree in the yard and shimmying down, making him glad he had gloves. Then he was on the ground and running.

    Callum kept waiting to hear some sign of alarm behind him, but it was a quiet night as he jogged along the sidewalk. So far as he could tell, he¡¯d gotten away clean, though that would last only so long. Eventually Sen would notice, and people would come after him. He intended to be long gone when they did.

    He continued jogging until he reached the nearest gas station, before calling a rideshare to a twenty-four-hour superstore almost twenty miles away. They¡¯d be able to track that, but he needed to get further away before dawn came. At least, he assumed they¡¯d be able to track that. The truth was that he didn¡¯t know their capabilities, but it was better to be paranoid than get caught.

    The sleepy driver dropped him off, and Callum meandered through the nearly-empty store, picking up the items on his mental list. Clothes, wig, prepaid phone, electric razor, makeup kit and makeup markers, bicycle. He borrowed the bathroom and shaved himself bald, using the markers to give himself a fake tattoo of just some abstract lines on the side of his neck. The makeup went on his wrist, hiding the real tattoo by simply covering it with flesh tones, and a wig changed his hair color from brown to blonde.

    That was where he ditched his old phone, smashing it in the parking lot after reserving a flight out of the country he never intended to keep. He tossed the remnants in the dumpster, then took off on the bicycle. Not that biking was a great way to go long distances, but it was better than walking to his next destination.

    While he didn¡¯t intend to fly commercial, he still intended to fly. There were small airfields everywhere, with pilots who had tiny puddle-jumpers and which didn¡¯t need him to check his luggage. Or show his ID. He¡¯d taken rides with his friends when they dusted crops on occasion, which was technically illegal but nobody cared.

    There weren¡¯t many cars on the road at that hour, but he still veered off into the woods every time he spotted headlights, managing to get to the airfields pretty much unseen by the time the sky started to lighten. Callum ditched the bike out in the woods and walked the rest of the way. Since it was a small airfield, there was just a security guy who nodded as Callum walked in. All the stuff he¡¯d read suggested that anyone who used the front door wasn¡¯t really suspicious.

    Most of the pilots headed out around dawn, especially the farm craft, so even early as it was, there was already someone fueling up their single-prop craft. Callum headed out as if he belonged there, despite feeling the need to spit to get rid of the taste of anxiety in his mouth. Looking confident was the best way to bluff.

    ¡°Hey, man,¡± Callum called, waving at the guy. ¡°You ready to head out?¡±

    ¡°Yessir.¡± The gentleman was on the older side, and he squinted at Callum and his bags. ¡°I¡¯m guessing you want to deadhead along?¡±

    ¡°Hey now, I¡¯m not that rude.¡± Callum reached into his pocket and pulled out a wad of cash, peeling off a few hundreds. ¡°Planes are expensive, and repairing them is more expensive.¡±

    ¡°I hear that,¡± the pilot said, taking Callum¡¯s implicit explanation at face value. Along with his money. ¡°You know I¡¯m only headed over to Ayres. Gonna see my grandson.¡±

    ¡°Hey, that¡¯s fine with me,¡± Callum told him. ¡°Better to go partway than not at all.¡±

    ¡°Jason Jones,¡± the pilot said, extending one hand while stuffing the cash into his jeans with the other.

    ¡°Mason Sutherland,¡± Callum said, having already invented the name on his way over. It was a good alias in his opinion; not so generic that it sounded fake, but not so memorable it¡¯d stick. ¡°Thanks for letting me ride.¡± It wasn¡¯t exactly allowed for small planes to take passengers as such, but it wasn¡¯t like Callum was leaving records.

    He climbed into the passenger seat of the plane, restricting his gawking as Jason clambered in and started preflight checks. Callum wasn¡¯t really sure who Jason was clearing the flight with, but he didn¡¯t mention his passenger, claiming he was taking a solo flight to Ayers. Wherever Ayers was.

    The noise of the prop was loud enough, even through the headset, that Jason didn¡¯t spend much time chatting. Which was fine with Callum, since he didn¡¯t have much to say. Instead he spent his time reading through the pictures he¡¯d taken of the magical exercises and the literature on spatial mages, taking notes by hand as the prop plane went west.

    After they landed in Ayers, he asked Jason if he could introduce Callum to someone else for another hop, and two hours later he was on a second plane, headed to Cooperville. Another place he¡¯d never heard of, but he didn¡¯t actually care exactly where he ended up, just that it wasn¡¯t easy for someone to figure out where he¡¯d gone.

    He didn¡¯t have a specific destination in mind, other than a small town in the Midwest, preferably up north somewhere. Property was cheap there and he could buy a house outright while leaving enough to live on for a while. Long enough to figure out a new income stream, anyway.

    After the second hop, he got a ride into town and got another bike, heading to a trucker stop. It was easy enough to hitch a ride there, easier than with the planes, and far cheaper. They even let him bring his bike along, and he got the chance to nap while the truck traveled the interstate.

    Three states later, he bid farewell to his last driver and biked to a hotel, paying for an overnight stay. Then he went and picked up the last bits of his disguise. He got the weakest reading glasses he could find and a vanity cane, washing the temporary tattoo off. It would take time for the beard stubble to grow, but there wasn¡¯t much he could do about that. He kept his head shaved, but bought a few more hairpieces to help him change his appearance. Just in case.

    That accomplished, he went hunting for a fake ID. Cities had concentrations of everything, including crime and corruption, which was why he normally avoided them. In this case, though, that would be useful. Walking through the city streets, there were considerably more nonhumans than he¡¯d seen in his hometown, though they tended to stick together rather than mingle.

    The third super pawn shop he stopped at was staffed by someone seven feet tall and with blue-green skin and tusks. Despite the man¡¯s size, he still managed to come off as seedy, which was basically what Callum wanted. He took a moment to wipe the makeup off his wrist to expose the mage tattoo and headed in.

    The ogre or whatever it was eyed him as he made his way to the front and lifted his hand in greeting. The oversized eyes flicked to his wrist and then back to Callum, looking wary.

    ¡°Yes, sir?¡± He asked, maybe a bit more politely than he would have greeted a normal customer.

    ¡°I need a mundane ID,¡± Callum said, not bothering to be more subtle since there was nobody else in the shop.

    Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on Royal Road.

    ¡°I don¡¯t do that,¡± the ogre said. Callum got out his money roll and peeled off a few hundreds. He was going to end up spending a few thousand on bribe money, but he¡¯d been making a good wage before he¡¯d had to run. He could afford it.

    ¡°No, really, I don¡¯t,¡± the ogre said, eyeing the money. ¡°But my friend does. I can call him and have it done in an hour.¡±

    ¡°How much does he charge?¡±

    ¡°Two thousand for a new mundane ID,¡± the ogre said. Callum raised his eyebrows, betting that was vastly overestimating the cost.

    ¡°Fifteen hundred,¡± the ogre admitted after a moment. Callum chuckled and counted out two thousand, pushing it at the ogre.

    ¡°So long as it just takes an hour, and it stands up.¡±

    ¡°It will,¡± the ogre said, and leaned forward a little, sniffing. ¡°You know, you don¡¯t smell like magic.¡±

    ¡°Exactly,¡± Callum told him, squashing the panic that statement created. He had to stay confident. The ogre nodded thoughtfully and turned to the phone.

    An hour later he had a brand new ID under the name of Chase Hall, and a used arcane laptop. He was over twenty-four hours overdue to wherever he was supposed to be going, and there was probably a bulletin out for him, but he was pretty sure that it¡¯d be difficult for anyone to track him down. Not that he was going to stay in the same city that he¡¯d gotten the ID in.

    He shelled out more money for a regular laptop and some prepaid debit cards so he had safe access to the internet. It took him a few hours of searching to find an area that met his criteria, and had low enough prices for him to buy something outright. Eventually he settled on a five-acre square with a house, on the outskirts of a small town in South Dakota, and sent a message to the seller asking for a meeting in a few days. It could have been sooner if he was willing to fly commercial, but he still had his guns with him and that would have caused issues.

    It¡¯d leave a record, if nothing else. There was no way that GAR didn¡¯t cooperate with normal authority, even if he found it unlikely that they outright controlled it, so he had to assume anything that could identify him to the government would bring in GAR. No, he would buy a used car and drive.

    He showered, changed, had to remind himself not to shave the stubble but to keep his head bald, and tried to sleep in the tiny motel room. It was some low-quality independent thing, which he didn¡¯t much like but had to lump. Callum was still on edge, every thump and door slam and footstep making him twitch. Some part of him was expecting tactical mages or the Arcane Bureau of Investigation or whatever they called themselves to break down his door. He¡¯d done the best that he could to anonymize himself, but it wasn¡¯t like he had experience. For all he knew, he¡¯d forgotten something obvious and GAR had known where he was the whole time.

    ***

    ¡°How did he get out without tripping your wards?¡± Therin frowned at Sen. The man was a scion of a powerful House, so there wasn¡¯t much in the way of punishment Therin could levy. In fact, Sen¡¯s assignment to Callum was sort of punishment in and of itself, after he¡¯d burned down half a block the last time he¡¯d been let out into the mundane world.

    ¡°I don¡¯t know.¡± Sen shrugged. ¡°My guess is that he wasn¡¯t as na?ve as you thought. We were only going to be there two days so I just spelled the doors. That¡¯s policy for mundanes, which Callum was.¡± Sen said challengingly, and Therin scowled. All signs had pointed at Callum just being a strange sort of cripple, but apparently not. Nobody fled for no reason.

    ¡°Fine, write up a report and I¡¯ll send it onward.¡± Therin didn¡¯t have much hope for Sen¡¯s report to be useful. In fact, he wouldn¡¯t have been surprised if Sen was lying about setting up wards properly, though he had to admit he wouldn¡¯t have pegged Callum as a flight risk either. He sent Sen out and then summoned Agent Jahn in.

    ¡°Well?¡± He asked as Jahn settled into the chair.

    ¡°No magical residue.¡± Jahn shook his head. ¡°I brought in the mundane authorities and they found he reserved a ticket for Laos, but I screened that flight myself. Only mundanes aboard. That was the last contact he had with his bank, too. Everything just cuts off there.¡±

    ¡°I thought they had enough surveillance that they could find anyone.¡± Therin said, irked. ¡°Blood tracking?¡±

    ¡°Got Sooz to do it. He¡¯s definitely not close enough to get a fix.¡±

    ¡°Which leaves just the whole wide world.¡± Therin sighed. They didn¡¯t get many rogue mages, and those that they did get were the ones who decided they were too powerful for GAR to control. GAR proved them wrong, every time. ¡°We have to find him.¡±

    ¡°I agree,¡± Jahn said. ¡°But he caught us all off-guard. We¡¯ll keep an eye out for spatial mages, since there aren¡¯t many, but Sen said that he didn¡¯t have any magical resonance at all. It¡¯s possible he just doesn¡¯t want to be a mage. Which is ridiculous, but might well mean he¡¯ll never appear again.¡±

    ¡°Archmage Duvall is not going to accept that. She was ready to start tutoring him tomorrow.¡±

    ¡°If he¡¯d known that, running away wouldn¡¯t surprise me,¡± Jahn said dryly. Therin shot him a look, and Jahn shrugged. He wasn¡¯t wrong, but it wasn¡¯t something agents were supposed to say out loud.

    ¡°It wouldn¡¯t surprise me if she came here to complain. I¡¯ll be sure to make sure you¡¯re here to help explain how a complete novice mage vanished.¡±

    ¡°I¡¯m sure I¡¯ll have duties keeping me busy,¡± Jahn demurred. Therin glared.

    ¡°Find him,¡± Therin demanded. ¡°Surely we have enough contact with the mundane authorities for that.¡±

    ¡°Yes sir,¡± Jahn said, completely serious. ¡°He¡¯s wanted for questioning in connection with a terrorist incident that burned down a local business,¡± he said, making a vague gesture with one hand to indicate the cover story. ¡°Which means that basically every authority will get his picture. If he shows up, it¡¯ll be mage-flagged and we¡¯ll know right away.¡±

    ***

    The fake ID worked as advertised, and Callum had no trouble paying the eight grand in cash for a small two-door coupe, an older model but one without too much milage. It wasn¡¯t great, but it really only needed to last him on the interstate. He made sure to drive slowly, or at least slower than he normally did, mostly sticking to the right lane and tensing up every time he saw a police car.

    Time wasn¡¯t doing anything to make him more confident. If anything, it felt like he was getting closer to the other shoe dropping. The one time he did see police lights he nearly swerved off the road, but he wasn¡¯t the target. The patrol car zipped right by him and disappeared up ahead, leaving him to get his heart rate back under control.

    Traffic thinned out as he got further out into the country, and he finally felt almost relaxed by the time he reached the interstate exit. The country was flat and bland, but the sheer lack of civilization actually helped. It didn¡¯t really feel like anyone was watching him when there was nobody else around.

    He had to stay overnight in another motel, but he did sleep marginally better and managed to make it to the property by the middle of the next day, following the GPS of his pay-ahead phone. It was a little run-down, but snooping around the property showed it had plenty of privacy and no obvious holes or leaks. To its credit, it did have an internet connection, despite being on the outskirts of the small town of Winut.

    Callum ended up waiting on the porch for the seller, whose car crunched on the gravel drive about an hour after he¡¯d gotten there. At least, he thought it was the seller, but when he looked up from his laptop the car was actually the sheriff¡¯s. He had to shove down the instinctive panic, and instead got up to greet the man. The sheriff rolled down the window and squinted at him.

    ¡°You here about the property?¡±

    ¡°Yes, I sent a message a couple days ago.¡± Callum leaned on his cane, squinting at the sheriff. ¡°Is it yours?¡±

    ¡°My daughter¡¯s,¡± he said, opening the door and getting out before offering his hand. ¡°Sheriff Langley.¡± Langley was heroically built, taller than Callum and twice as bulky without any hint of softness.

    ¡°Chase Hall,¡± Callum replied, transferring the cane and taking the hand. He noticed that Langley¡¯s eyes flicked to his right wrist for a moment, where makeup covered up the tattoo he¡¯d never asked for, and it was all he could do not to twitch. It might have been an overactive imagination, but he thought that Langley was in the know.

    ¡°So what do you think, Mister Hall? Interested?¡±

    ¡°Oh, definitely, definitely. It seems nice and quiet and maybe I could use something to keep me occupied, fixing it up here and there.¡±

    ¡°You seem rather young to be retired,¡± Langley noted.

    ¡°Oh, I¡¯m not retired,¡± Callum demurred. ¡°I¡¯m just taking a break for health reasons.¡±

    ¡°Well, this is certainly a quiet enough town. You¡¯ll be fine, so long as you steer clear of the local wildlife.¡± Callum had to wonder if that was a veiled reference to something supernatural or not. Before he¡¯d been exposed to the arcane, he wouldn¡¯t have thought twice about the warning.

    ¡°I¡¯m no hunter,¡± Callum said, thumping his cane against the ground. ¡°Just planning to maybe do some repairs, work on some of my own projects.¡±

    ¡°Sounds good. Why don¡¯t I call Jessica ¨C that¡¯s my daughter ¨C and get her down here? If you¡¯re ready to close the sale.¡±

    ¡°Sure,¡± Callum said, though he really didn¡¯t want to spend any more time under Langley¡¯s gaze. ¡°I mean, we¡¯ll still want an inspector to look at it and all that, but we can start the process rolling.¡±

    ¡°Fantastic. She¡¯s been trying to sell this property for a while. Ever since she got married, you know. But there aren¡¯t too many buyers out this way.¡±

    ¡°All the better for me,¡± Callum told him. Langley chuckled good-naturedly and took out his phone.

    ¡°Hey, sweetie. Yeah, your buyer is here already. Says he¡¯ll take it. No, I don¡¯t think there will be any problems.¡±

    ***

    ¡°I¡¯m pretty sure he¡¯s a mage of some kind,¡± Arthur Langley said.

    ¡°He didn¡¯t smell like a mage to me,¡± Jessica told her father. ¡°Plus, no tattoo.¡±

    ¡°You need to look closer. You could smell the makeup, right?¡±

    ¡°Yes¡­¡± Jessica drew out the word, considering. ¡°Was he covering his mage mark? That wouldn¡¯t mean anything though, we¡¯d still be able to smell the magic on him.¡±

    ¡°He noticed me checking for it, and he didn¡¯t say anything, but he was definitely a lot more stressed than he acted. So, I ran his ID.¡±

    ¡°Well, it had to be clean if you only think he¡¯s a mage.¡±

    ¡°Yes, it was incredibly sparse. I¡¯d say manufactured, but usually those are included in the GAR database too. His wasn¡¯t.¡±

    ¡°Hmm.¡± Jessica held her plate out, and Arthur transferred a steak from the grill. ¡°Is it really an issue? He¡¯s acting like he¡¯s a mundane, and it¡¯s not like he¡¯s anywhere near the pack grounds.¡±

    ¡°Maybe not, but I¡¯ll have someone keep an eye on him. We don¡¯t want any GAR interest here.¡±

    ¡°No.¡± Jessica sighed. The pack had enough problems without bringing mages in to pick over their secrets and, knowing mages, publish them to the world. One mage was bad enough, even if he seemed to be incognito.

    ¡°The alternative is that he is here for the reasons he said,¡± Arthur suggested, handing out another steak to Jessica¡¯s cousin. He growled and carried the plate off to savage the steak ¡ª with a fork, at least. He still had the bad habit of wanting to shift for food, but he was only six. ¡°He didn¡¯t smell of magic, and if he¡¯s here for his mental health then of course he¡¯d be stressed.¡±

    ¡°But you don¡¯t believe that.¡±

    ¡°But I don¡¯t believe that,¡± Arthur affirmed.

    ¡°You could just send a message to GAR. Ask them what a mage is doing out here.¡±

    ¡°Oh, I¡¯m sure they¡¯d like that,¡± Arthur rolled his eyes. ¡°Not even through the shifter council, not even for an emergency. Just, tell us about this random mage that¡¯s old enough to have his own House.¡± Jessica felt a chill.

    ¡°Wait, you think he¡¯s an archmage?¡± Then she shook her head. ¡°He¡¯d have to be, if he can block his magic signature that well.¡± She shivered. ¡°I¡¯m not sure I like the idea that I was shaking hands with an archmage.¡±

    ¡°He¡¯s pretty good at the mundane thing, too. I¡¯m not sure who it could be; normally they don¡¯t have any truck with the mundane world or even other supernaturals.¡± Arthur worked the grill, fat hissing as it dripped into the flames.

    ¡°We can pretend he¡¯s mundane, too, then. That¡¯s no problem. Not that anyone should be hunting across a mage¡¯s yard either. Gerry.¡±

    ¡°It was just the one time!¡± Jessica¡¯s husband protested. ¡°They didn¡¯t even notice!¡±

    ¡°Says you,¡± Jessica grinned, elbowing him. ¡°That you came to join with our pack says otherwise.¡±

    ¡°I just got tired of the city,¡± Gerry grumbled.

    ¡°Maybe this Chase did, too,¡± Jessica suggested.

    ¡°What¡¯s a mage going to do out here?¡± Gerry asked, rhetorically.

    Jessica just shrugged.

 Chapter 4 â€“ Learning

    Callum estimated he had about two years¡¯ worth of money after he paid for the house, give or take. Someone without any debts could be incredibly frugal, and barring any major surprises he was confident he could stretch his capital. He still had no idea what he¡¯d do when things started getting low, but that wasn¡¯t something he could afford to worry about in the near term. The immediate goals were to learn magic, and get rid of the damned tattoo. Considering the tattoo was magic, he couldn¡¯t do the second without the first.

    Moving in didn¡¯t take much time, considering he¡¯d left everything behind, but it still took some work to rearrange the house how he liked it. In the spaces between buying furniture and kitchenware and adding them to the place, he read the literature he¡¯d copied from front to back several dozen times. Once he had an actual office and a place to relax so he could concentrate, he dove into the exercises in earnest.

    The first thing was learning to reach out and find magic, to start integrating it into his sensorium. There was a lot of emphasis on mana sight, but it was obvious it wasn¡¯t anything visual. The ogre had talked about smelling magic, so it was clearly either synesthesia at work or just a shorthand for some other sense that they didn¡¯t have good words for. His bet was the latter, and he made himself a poor man¡¯s sensory deprivation tank with his bathtub.

    Unfortunately for him, there wasn¡¯t much concentrated magic around for him to focus on. There was some in his tattoo, which was kind of irritating, but the main thing he had to use for practice was actually the arcane laptop. He found out while doing the sensing exercises there was a little blob of something inside the device. A bit of work with a screwdriver popped the cover and showed that there was a small crystal with glittering etchings on it in addition to the normal computer innards. Some kind of magic dongle was his guess, but he didn¡¯t know enough to do more than look.

    According to the spatial literature he¡¯d copied, space mages were good at teleportation, portals, and enchanting things to be larger on the inside. That was it. Nothing else.

    Callum didn¡¯t believe it at all.

    There was no possible way spatial magic hadn¡¯t been thoroughly explored and exploited and every edge case figured out. Likely, all the more advanced stuff was locked behind GAR training, and what he had was aimed at kids, maybe even preteens, to let them know what they were in for. Unfortunately, poking around on the arcane internet showed him that anything advanced was proprietary, locked behind apprenticeship or guild or house status.

    Spatial magic, specifically, was always appended with an exhortation to contact Archmage Duvall. Which Callum was not about to do, but the fact that she was always and only the one who was listed showed how monolithic things were. Still, there was enough foundational information available that he could have something to work with, so he did.

    The first thing, in his estimation, was to reconcile mana sense with his glamour blindness. Considering that he¡¯d had it for his whole life, he didn¡¯t think he¡¯d be able to unlearn whatever it was that let him see right through glamours, but he could try and see them with his mana sense, working backward in a way. Most people used mana sense to pierce glamours, not see them, but he had to work with what he was given.

    To have something to see, he started in on magical workings. To his great surprise, it was actually quite easy to grasp his own mana. He figured it would take ages to go from vaguely shoving vis at things to structuring it, but it clicked almost instantly. When he started to try and move it around himself, he realized why.

    One reason he¡¯d gone into architecture was that he had an excellent, instinctive grasp of spaces and relations. Three dimensions were generally difficult for the human brain, but he¡¯d never had any issues, being able to hold all the relations in his head. It¡¯d made things a breeze, but he¡¯d never felt it was particularly supernatural. Now he knew differently.

    That sense was linked in with his magic. It wasn¡¯t magic itself, not really, but he¡¯d been exercising that part of his brain all his life, so maybe he wasn¡¯t as far behind as he thought. Though obviously he had to work hard to get anywhere near where a mage would normally be at his age. One didn¡¯t advance through an entire lifetime¡¯s education in just a few months.

    Once he had it figured out, he was able to cast his senses out into his surroundings, a sort of sphere of perception that wasn¡¯t quite visual. It was more tactile, though even that comparison wasn¡¯t exactly right. He could tell what everything was, and see right through it with a little bit of effort, but couldn¡¯t see colors or painted images or anything like that. Magic stood out quite clearly with that sense, though the range was pretty limited.

    ¡°So, threads and fields.¡± He took a bite of a bagel as he made notes based on the most advanced instruction he could find for free. Which wasn¡¯t much. Mages were incredibly secretive, even within the context of their own magical network. That, or everything about certain topics was censored. Callum didn¡¯t know how much was due to culture and how much was due to oversight. He didn¡¯t dare to make an account to post, since he wasn¡¯t really a registered mage.

    ¡°Threads are structure, fields are fill.¡± Annoyingly, mage children were taught wrong to start with, only so they could be taught correctly later. The lies-to-children involved things like how vis was guided into a structure, and unformed vis was a waste. Probably to make sure that they didn¡¯t learn sloppy habits. When they were older, they were told that unformed vis was actually important, and filled the spaces between structured threads for large-scale effects.

    He had to wonder how many kids could never unlearn those lies and were terrible mages because of it.

    The simple ¡°spells¡± started out with abstract geometry. Things like fireball were fairly easy to shape, though of course he couldn¡¯t make them due to his vis type. Putting spatial vis into the same shape didn¡¯t really do much; even mana was better at shoving things about. But he kept at it, tossing space balls off his back porch until he was exhausted, then repeating until he was satisfied with the shape. Then he started doing it without using his hands.

    In theory, magic was completely mental. In practice, it was far easier to make gestures that corresponded to some degree with the way he wanted the vis to go. There were a bunch of recommendations for beginning magic users to make things easier, but they built bad habits. Which was fairly usual, actually. The same was true with math and science and writing and any number of mundane topics, sacrificing accuracy for ease of understanding and forcing people to relearn things.

    Some cynical part of him pointed out it was possible there was an even more advanced way of doing things, considering how purposefully hidden and constrained everything was. The masters of this supernatural tyranny had no reason to let the general public know about the really juicy stuff. His early experiments showed why space wasn¡¯t considered an offensive school though; making a wad of space vis didn¡¯t result in fires or ice or anything that the more elemental types of vis did.

    In theory, he ought to be able to teleport easily enough, though only for short distances. That was what had happened in the gym, though he had no idea how he¡¯d done it and he didn¡¯t trust so-called magical instincts. If he was pulling things through space, he¡¯d rather start with something that wasn¡¯t likely to kill him.

    According to his primer, teleports and portals needed some kind of anchor at each end. That was how the circles he¡¯d gone through to teleport into the GAR headquarters worked. Though those apparently had more than just an anchor; they had the whole teleportation framework built into them, along with some way to make it so people could just push mana into them to make it work. He marked that as something to figure out in the far future and went back to fiddling.

    When it came to manual teleports, he found it was easy enough. The structure shown in the primer wasn¡¯t exactly complicated, and with the exercises that showed him how to push out spatial vis in the first place, it wasn¡¯t long before he could form them. It seemed there had to be a connection between the source and the anchor, so he didn¡¯t quite understand long-distance teleportation yet, but after less than a week he was able to teleport rocks across the yard.

    He had a bit of a cheat, though. Not that he was any more skilled than the next mage, but he¡¯d been working with buildings so long that he could just snap the idea of a room around whatever he wanted. Or rooms. Callum didn¡¯t know if it was particularly relevant as practice, but once he managed to get one rock to shuttle its way between porch and yard, he started doing it with three, then five.

    The hum of a motor and the crunch of tires on gravel made him stop his magical juggling. Just the sound of someone arriving made him feel a little panicked, like a guilty kid hearing his mother coming. He was out back, facing out into the woods for a reason, but it still wouldn¡¯t be a good thing if he was too obvious about what he was doing. The divide between mundane and arcane was enforced, and someone would notice if he crossed it.

    ¡°Mister Hall?¡± Someone called from the front, and Callum had to remind himself that was his name.

    ¡°I¡¯m on the back porch!¡± He called back, quickly teleporting his cane to his hand with a grin. That really wasn¡¯t a trick he was going to get tired of.

    The sound of footsteps preceded Jessica and her husband, Gerry. They¡¯d been by a few times, apparently just as good neighbors, but he couldn¡¯t shake his conviction that they knew about the supernatural world. Gerry, especially, had the habit of sniffing as if he smelled something, or was trying to. Or maybe he just had allergies.

    ¡°Hello, Mister Hall,¡± Jessica said, offering him a wave as the two of them appeared around the corner of the house. ¡°How are you settling in?¡±

    ¡°You can call me Chase,¡± he told them, levering himself to his feet with the help of his cane and offering each of them his hand. As usual, their eyes flickered to his right wrist. ¡°So far it¡¯s delightful.¡± Which it was. It hadn¡¯t started getting cold yet, so he couldn¡¯t speak to how the house was in the winter, but it was a comfortable place despite its wear. ¡°I was just putting together a list of repairs to make. Might as well, you know?¡±

    ¡°Yes, I know the old girl is a bit worn.¡± Jessica patted the porch column. ¡°It¡¯s nice that she¡¯s not moldering away, though.¡±

    ¡°So what brings you by?¡± Callum asked, since this time they hadn¡¯t brought food with them.

    ¡°Well, the kids will be going back to school soon, which means you might get some people cutting through your property. They know they¡¯re not supposed to, but they might anyway.¡±

    ¡°Oh, I think we¡¯ve all been that age,¡± Callum chuckled. ¡°It¡¯s fine, but the wooded parts are pretty overgrown. I haven¡¯t gotten around to clearing them yet.¡±

    ¡°I wouldn¡¯t worry about it,¡± Gerry said. ¡°Kids around here tend to be pretty good with the outdoors. Speaking of which, do you do any hunting?¡±

    ¡°Not for years,¡± Callum said. ¡°Isn¡¯t this place off-limits for hunting anyhow?¡± There were reminders about that pasted on half the signs between his house and the town center where he got his groceries.

    ¡°It¡¯s restricted,¡± Gerry said, nodding to him. ¡°Just wanted to make sure you know. We don¡¯t have many people moving in so I wanted to be sure you knew.¡±

    ¡°Believe me, I¡¯ll be mostly staying at home,¡± Callum told them. He felt like they were hinting at whatever supernatural goings-on were afoot, but he really didn¡¯t care much so long as they didn¡¯t bother him. Or report him to the authorities. ¡°You don¡¯t mind if I do target shooting in the yard though, right?¡±

    ¡°Just be careful not to do it when kids are around!¡± Gerry cautioned him.

    ¡°Of course, of course. I¡¯ll be sticking to the yard, anyway.¡± They¡¯d reminded him in a sideways way that he hadn¡¯t kept up with his shooting. He preferred to practice at least a little, though he¡¯d never had to shoot anything in earnest.

    ¡°I think we¡¯re good then,¡± Gerry said. ¡°Just wanted to swing by while we were in the neighborhood.¡±

    ¡°Don¡¯t be too much of a stranger,¡± Jessica said. ¡°I don¡¯t see you in town much.¡±

    ¡°I know, I know,¡± Callum replied. ¡°Still trying to catch up with myself, you know?¡±

    ¡°Oh, of course,¡± Jessica agreed. ¡°We¡¯ll be seeing you around, then.¡± She waved as she and her husband went back around the house. Callum frowned and cast his senses around, following them without looking, but also noticing that there was a bunch of what he could only describe as mana residue over the back yard. His vis use had disturbed the ambient environment, and maybe left a few fragments of itself around, which would probably be detectable to other people.

    He needed to figure out how to, if not completely hide, at least suppress the signature of magical use nearby. There was no way that anyone could miss the presence of it in the yard, if they had the sensitivity in the first place, which meant that his cover was probably broken. Though to be fair, he was almost certain they¡¯d suspected from the outset.

    Callum cast his senses inside the house and teleported his pistol and holster to himself, grabbing them out of the air and belting them on. While he didn¡¯t think to ask for concealed carry when he was getting his fake ID, the point was moot while he was on his own property, so it was better to be carrying.

    He puttered around the back yard for a little bit, finding himself unable to concentrate, before deciding he needed to do something with his time. He did have a list of supplies he needed for repairs, so he went into town to find what he could at the hardware store. By the time he returned home, nearly two hours later, he was feeling a little more settled and sat down to work on his magic again, with an eye toward secrecy.

    Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

    Ultimately, his solution was just to draw from civil engineering and make vis-sinks that would absorb any stray vis he left lying around. He was fortunate enough to find mention of a vortex pattern for drawing in mana, and rendered in vis on a few steel stakes and a crowbar, it went a long way toward erasing the disruptions. It seemed to him that little tiny bits of vis were left behind after he dismissed his constructs, disrupting the mana field, and once they were gone it returned to normal on its own. It took him more than a few tries to make it work, forming the whirling pattern in threads inside the metal and holding them, but eventually he got a few to work. By then he was exhausted enough from using his magical talents that he needed to take a nap.

    By the time he woke up, the yard was clean, so he just had to worry about the vis that was starting to build up in his own body making trouble as he walked around. As a stopgap he used the same vortex pattern on a ball bearing and stuck it in his pocket, but a more reliable way to shield himself went on his list. In fact, weaponization got sent to the top of the queue. The official literature didn¡¯t have anything useful, but he had more than a few ideas.

    Since he had to fix things around the house anyway, he decided he¡¯d practice with wood and nails. While he was fairly certain teleportation didn¡¯t run the risk of violating the Pauli exclusion principle, since he could pop rocks back and forth all day, there was no telling what would happen if he tried to teleport into a solid.

    For safety¡¯s sake, he went down into the unfinished basement and stretched his senses up to the porch above. Callum snapped a cage around one of the nails and guided a thread to his target board before pushing. While the official literature didn¡¯t mention it, he had found it was easy enough to alter the orientation of things on the target end, so he could drive the nail in properly.

    There was considerably more resistance than when he was teleporting in air, the anchor expanding the space and working against the enclosing material. The simple fact that the process was slowed down made him understand what was going on more, and why, for example, teleporting things didn¡¯t cause vacuum implosions to mark every movement.

    As befitted space mana, it wasn¡¯t so much the item that was being transferred as the space. The source of the teleport collapsed the surrounding space before it rebounded, generating a little bit of low pressure but not much, whereas the target expanded the space before it collapsed back. Teleporting in an atmosphere only had to worry about the resistance of space and atmosphere, but teleporting into a solid had to deal with the material straining against warped space.

    It wasn¡¯t impossible, and with a little more strain the nail appeared in the board, no muss and no fuss. It was probably more effort than hammering them in manually, but it was good practice. Flesh was probably easier than wood, assuming that there weren¡¯t other complications, and being able to teleport things directly past someone¡¯s skin would be horrifically effective.

    Another approach was to swap the two spaces. He¡¯d been fiddling with the swap when it came to multiple teleports, juggling stones around, but with air it didn¡¯t matter much. When it came to wood, it was nearly impossible. Where the teleport was just displacing matter, a swap needed to actually shear it off. After exhausting himself just swapping a nail for a thin column of wood, he knew he had to rethink things.

    For example, taking a closer look at his teleports showed that by using a generic box of a structure he was including bits of the ground when he moved things. They didn¡¯t move, of course, but even trying to made the whole process a lot more difficult than it should have been. It was also, as he repeated the same teleport a dozen times in a row, the main source of the vis ¡°pollution¡± he was cleaning up. It wasn¡¯t being sloppy with shaping vis into the forms themselves, but rather, imprecise targeting.

    Callum spent the next couple weeks using his vis to repair his house while paring down the mismatch between his actual target item and the shape that enclosed it. With his spatial sense he could actually figure out the genuine form of an object, which meant less vis use, more efficient teleports, and easier teleport forcing. It also meant he figured out telekinesis.

    It wasn¡¯t real telekinesis. That was the domain of force mages. His poor-man¡¯s version did most of the same thing by dragging the space around the item in question. Which started out just dropping things as they slid away due to gravity, but gravity was a function of space. He had to look up spatial tensors and heavily reference the illustrations, but it gave him a start.

    Gravity magic was its own separate class, at least according to the GAR site, but he knew gravity was basically a result of space warping to begin with. It took him a couple dozen attempts, but he finally managed to flex the vis inside one of the simple box constructs in the right way to mimic the effect. Nulling gravity and dragging space around was a pretty effective way of floating things. The only problem was, like everything else, it drew from his mana and his total capacity was pretty paltry. Or so he guessed; unlike most mages he hadn¡¯t been casting spells for decades.

    The pseudo-telekinesis was also inertialess, which was interesting, but meant he couldn¡¯t fling anything anywhere. As soon as he dropped the spatial field, whatever he was holding would drop straight down no matter how fast it seemed to have been moving before. On the up side, he could move big and heavy things just as fast as light ones, and with not much more effort.

    He seriously doubted nobody else had realized space mages could affect gravity, but at the same time it wasn¡¯t likely anyone would look at a gravity mage and think that he was a space mage in disguise. Which meant he had a way to cover his ability to work magic. The only problem was altering his tattoo.

    Gravity was blue-black, so he¡¯d have to alter the dot on his wrist. Which was, of course, illegal, but he didn¡¯t much care since he didn¡¯t really consider GAR as having any authority over him to begin with. The magic involved in the tattoo itself didn¡¯t care about his opinions though, and might well give him major issues if he couldn¡¯t crack it. He really wanted to get rid of the damn thing, because he didn¡¯t know what it did and he didn¡¯t trust it didn¡¯t have a kill command or something buried in it.

    The other option was to get rid of the tattoo entirely. Some careful probing showed that the magic was bound into the ink, but it seemed to be completely confined to the tattoo itself. At least, until he poked at the little dot that represented his magic type, and then he noticed that it was pulling in a little thread of his vis. Nausea washed over him at the sight of the thing feeding on him, feeding on him like a parasite, and he actually gagged before he swallowed and then spit to get rid of the taste.

    ¡°Okay, fuck that,¡± he said aloud and reached out to wrap the little dot in a spatial bubble before shoving all his vis at it in a bid to teleport it out. It shouldn¡¯t have hurt too much, considering it was just a small blob of ink, but agony lanced through him. Callum toppled off his porch chair but didn¡¯t stop pushing, and there was a disturbing tearing sensation in his wrist before a tiny bit of flesh dropped onto the painted planks of the porch.

    ¡°Gotcha,¡± Callum said between breaths, wobbling as he stood up and made his way inside to get some matches and kindling. He got both from beside the fireplace, dumping it into the firepit in the back yard and starting a blaze. Whatever the dot had been doing, pulling it out of his wrist seemed to have stopped it, because the magic dissipated as the fire burned, sucked away into his clean-up vortices.

    He inspected his wrist and found that it was very thoroughly bruised, but otherwise intact. The tattoo¡¯s magic seemed mostly intact as well, but if there were subtle changes that registered what he¡¯d done, he didn¡¯t know what to look for. The big change was that he no longer had a colored dot linked to it, just an empty space. Something to deal with later. The rest of the tattoo would have to go eventually, unless it was absolutely necessary for dealing with the supernatural.

    His magical muscles were definitely sore as well after that feat, but they recovered after a few days and he felt all the better for it. More confident, at least, that he wasn¡¯t feeding anything by spending vis all the time. His magical endurance was also clearly improving, as between the efficiency improvements in his technique and general practice he was able to move things around for most of the day without exhausting himself.

    With that much experience under his belt, he thought that he¡¯d try for portals.

    Obviously, the little bit of free literature had no specific instructions on how to make them, except for cautions to not think of them as tunnels. There were just hints and implications about the structure of portals but nothing concrete. It was irritating but not surprising. What was encouraging was that portals were supposed to be one of the two near-instinctive things a spatial mage could make, so it wouldn¡¯t be very far different from what he could already do.

    Callum knew that he was missing some fundamental interaction that let things work at a distance. Some fourth-dimensional shortcut or something that let far away spatial workings interact with each other. Still, he didn¡¯t have to crack that immediately, since he did figure out portals. Short range ones, anyway.

    It wasn¡¯t too much different from the teleports, as he just slid magic around until it felt right, but the major difference was that the entry and exit had to match perfectly, which was extremely difficult in three dimensions. Even if the actual portals were, effectively, completely two-dimensional, the magic that made them was not. He still had to link them with a thread of vis for that match to happen, which probably wasn¡¯t quite right. But wrong or not, it worked.

    The final result was a frame of vis on each end and a surprisingly mana-free region in the middle where the two spaces had been brought together. Callum squinted at the quarter-sized hole in the air, which didn¡¯t look like much since the other end was five feet away. It seemed stable enough, but the edges made him wary. Since the whole thing seemed completely flat, he was afraid of infinitely sharp edges. He definitely didn¡¯t want to dismember himself on his own portal.

    He teleported himself a bunch of pebbles to test the portal by simply throwing them at it, and found that the edges worked rather like the edges of a teleport. They were squishier than they seemed, tending to push the pebbles in toward the portal plane while distending a little bit to help them pass. When he picked up a branch and swiped the whole thing at the portal, the magic actually broke. While the concept of an infinitely sharp blade was neat, he was glad that he didn¡¯t have to worry about severing a limb by making the wrong movement with a portal.

    Dropping the portal while a stick was pushed partway through was another matter. The connection destabilized and smeared out as it collapsed, tearing the stick in half and mangling it rather than severing it cleanly. So that was a little bit dangerous, but still, he had working portals. That felt good enough that he decided to finally take a break and even go into town. After siphoning the mana disruptions off, of course.

    For the most part he¡¯d been a hermit, cooking his own food and even avoiding getting into discussions online, under any pseudonym. But Jessica and Gerry came by every once in a while, and he did go into town enough to see what was there, so he was aware of the small caf¨¦ there. It was a combined coffee and sandwich shop more than anything, and he was pretty sure the person who owned it was a Langley.

    ¡°Hello there!¡± The girl at the counter chirped as he walked into the caf¨¦, the small bell above the door jangling. Her nametag proclaimed she was Clara. ¡°I don¡¯t think I¡¯ve seen you here before!¡± If he had to guess, he would have said Clara wasn¡¯t more than fifteen or sixteen, which raised the question of why she wasn¡¯t in school, but it really wasn¡¯t his business.

    ¡°It¡¯s my first time,¡± Callum admitted, walking up to the counter. He eyed the menu, surprised to find there were fewer sandwiches and more steaks than was usual for a caf¨¦. Not a bad surprise, by any means, since he could always make his own sandwiches but the art of the grill had always eluded him. ¡°I¡¯m not sure if this is a late lunch or early dinner, so what do you recommend?¡±

    ¡°The steak tips,¡± Clara said with assurance. ¡°You can always take those home with you and have the rest later.¡±

    ¡°Sure,¡± he replied, and glanced around as Clara busied herself getting his food. There were a few elderly folks entrenched at a corner table, not even eating anything but rather playing some board game he didn¡¯t recognize. One of them caught him looking and gave him a squinty-eyed stare, and he had to suppress a laugh.

    When he extended his spatial senses, he got a surprise. The caf¨¦ had more of a basement than he would have expected, with multiple fully enclosed rooms, but it didn¡¯t seem to be used for storage. It was furnished, instead, though the enclosed rooms were empty. He was still trying to get a sense of what it was when his extended senses caught something approaching the rear of the caf¨¦.

    It was an animal at least three feet at the shoulder, vaguely doglike but clearly not, with a faint bit of magic clinging to it. It took him a moment, but he realized he was looking at one of the things he¡¯d occasionally seen around that most people saw as a dog or a cat. He didn¡¯t have enough experience to know what the magic was or what it did, but before he could investigate further the animal changed. There was a ripple in the mana around it that was intense but extremely contained, and blocked his ability to see what was happening inside.

    The disruption vanished, pulled inside the person that was standing where the beast had been only a few moments ago. Callum fought to keep his eyebrows from ascending to his false hairline. It was one thing to see shifters referred to, it was another to see them in person, as it were. The person stepped into the rear of the caf¨¦, and a few minutes later a young man bearing a striking resemblance to Sheriff Langley stepped up behind the counter. He squinted at Callum.

    ¡°You¡¯re Chase Hall, right?¡± It wasn¡¯t a hostile question, just a curious one.

    ¡°That¡¯s me,¡± Callum admitted easily. ¡°Let me guess, you¡¯re Sheriff Langley¡¯s brother?¡±

    ¡°Close,¡± the man said with a smile. ¡°Cousin. Jeff Langley,¡± he introduced himself, offering Callum a hand. Callum took it, and saw that Jeff¡¯s eyes flickered down to his right wrist. Since the shifters didn¡¯t have a mage tattoo, he had to wonder how they identified themselves normally, or if they bothered to at all. The impression he got from the literature online was that shifters and vampires had their own internal politics, but how exactly that interacted with mages was still a mystery.

    ¡°This your caf¨¦? It¡¯s pretty nice,¡± Callum said, by way of small talk. Shifter or not, Jeff Langley seemed to be an ordinary business owner, and his good nature didn¡¯t seem at all put on. Magic senses didn¡¯t help him distinguish truth from lies any more than his normal sense did, but his gut didn¡¯t give him any warnings when he looked at Jeff, or really, any of the Langleys.

    ¡°Mine and my wife¡¯s,¡± Jeff said affably. ¡°That¡¯s my little girl in the kitchen.¡± He hiked his thumb in the direction Clara had gone.

    ¡°I¡¯m not little!¡± Clara¡¯s voice came floating out from the back, and Jeff laughed. Callum just shook his head. They really were ordinary folk.

    ¡°What about you? You¡¯re old enough to have someone at home,¡± Jeff observed.

    ¡°I had one once,¡± Callum said, some of his good humor slipping. ¡°I¡¯m not ready to try again.¡± It came out as fairly light, but Jeff nodded and dropped the subject.

    ¡°Well, you know, you¡¯re welcome to come by anytime. You don¡¯t have to stay out in that old shack of Jessica¡¯s.¡±

    ¡°I¡¯ll probably be stopping by more often now,¡± Callum admitted. ¡°I¡¯ve been sorting through some stuff, you know how it is.¡±

    ¡°Sure,¡± Jeff said. ¡°Winut¡¯s a nice quiet place, so it¡¯s probably a good choice for that!¡±

    ¡°That¡¯s why I¡¯m here,¡± Callum agreed.

    ***

    ¡°He actually came by your caf¨¦? Did he do anything?¡± Jessica asked, pouring lemonades for everyone.

    ¡°He just ordered the steak tips. It¡¯s weird, though. You said that you smelled magic in his yard before, but he was completely clean. Though you¡¯re right, he¡¯s definitely covering up a mage mark. I was tempted to recommend him one of the shifter brands so it wouldn¡¯t be obvious from scent.¡± Jeff took the lemonade and sipped it, watching Clara race around on all fours with the pups.

    At that age, the natural glamour that made people see them as wolves or dogs or sometimes even cats wasn¡¯t quite developed, and it was obvious to anyone that looked closely that they weren¡¯t anything that existed in the natural world. In Winut that wasn¡¯t too much of a worry, since half the population was shifters, but only half. Besides which, packs could only get so large before they started bickering and had to split, so not everyone could stay.

    ¡°The only mage I¡¯ve run across that didn¡¯t reek of magic was an archmage,¡± Arthur Langley said, frowning at his lemonade glass. ¡°But he was terrifying anyway. Mister Hall practically seems like a mundane, if a wary one.¡±

    ¡°If he¡¯s not making trouble, I don¡¯t think we should worry about him,¡± Jessica said, dropping into the chair next to Gerry. ¡°Though I smelled Jeanine lurking near his yard. You need to warn her off that, Arthur. If he is a mage, he¡¯s a weird one, and I doubt the Midwest Alpha is going to go to bat for us against GAR if he hurts her.¡±

    ¡°I¡¯ll have to call another pack meeting,¡± Arthur said with a frown. ¡°I don¡¯t think we need surveillance anymore, just as well since school and hunting season is on us, but you¡¯re right. Anyone who gets near him in beast form is just asking for trouble.¡±

 Chapter 5 â€“ Trouble

    ¡°I am not happy.¡±  Archmage Duvall scowled at Agent Jahn, who didn¡¯t look happy either.  ¡°You¡¯ve had a month, and my space mage is still missing.¡±

    ¡°I¡¯m sorry, Archmage,¡± Jahn said.  ¡°We have the mundane authorities trying to find him, and I¡¯ve distributed his signature to every local GAR office.  I¡¯ve even asked the vampire and shifter councils to keep an eye out for a renegade space mage, but you know how it is with them.¡±  Serena¡¯s scowl grew more ferocious for a moment.  There was no love lost between supernatural groups.

    ¡°And the fae?¡± She asked, almost rhetorically.

    ¡°They very much don¡¯t care.  Unless he goes after one of theirs, of course, and why would he?  How would he?  Absolutely nobody has reported someone asking for apprenticeship, and how would he find them anyway?  We¡¯ve even tracked all the spatial magic questions on the online forums to existing students.  Archmage, I suspect he¡¯s either dead or has decided not to practice magic.¡±

    ¡°Nobody decides to not use their magic,¡± Duvall said scornfully.  ¡°No, he¡¯s important somehow.  What about his parents?  Family?  Who are they?¡±

    ¡°There is one oddity,¡± Jahn said after a moment.  ¡°His birth certificate says that he was born to Maria and Callum Wells.  But they would have been almost sixty years old at the time.  Not a problem for a mage, but impossible for mundanes.¡±

    ¡°And you haven¡¯t brought the parents in yet?¡±  Duvall asked dangerously.

    ¡°They¡¯re dead.  I was actually, by complete coincidence, at their funeral, tracking a gravehound.  No, they were mundanes, who spent their last few years in hospice.  I tried matching their genetics when that came to light, but like I said, I was tracking a gravehound.  There weren¡¯t any remains left in that graveyard.¡±

    ¡°That seems too coincidental,¡± Duvall turned to him.  ¡°Who set it loose? When?  Why?¡±

    ¡°So far as I could tell, it had been there since before the Wells family moved there.  If it was some fae pet, it was turned loose ages back.¡±

    ¡°That is an awful lot of excuses,¡± the Archmage said, narrowing her eyes at Jahn.

    ¡°It¡¯s the reason I came to see you.  We¡¯ve hit a dead end, and we¡¯ll have to wait until he makes a mistake.  The moment he makes a single noise, we¡¯ll get him, but if he¡¯s holed up in the mountains somewhere, we can¡¯t spare the resources to track him down.¡±

    ¡°He was supposed to be my apprentice,¡± Duvall growled.

    ¡°I¡¯m afraid you¡¯ll have to use your own resources,¡± Jahn said apologetically.  ¡°GAR has put the case in abeyance.¡±

    ¡°We shall see about that,¡± Duvall said, and vanished suddenly, teleporting as only a spatial mage could.  Jahn let out a breath and shook his head.  Archmages were temperamental at best, and Duvall was worse than average.  He didn¡¯t envy Callum when Serena caught up with him.  She was a lot scarier than GAR.

    ***

    ¡°Hey, Clara.¡±  Callum waved at the girl behind the counter.  He definitely spent more time in town than before, but not that much more.  Partly it was just an excuse to bike a few miles every day, partly it was because the people were genuinely nice, and partly he was curious about shifters.

    He wouldn¡¯t say so outright, of course.  Beyond the fact that he was pretending to be mundane, he genuinely didn¡¯t know the protocols that were supposed to exist.  The magical internet had references to agreements between mages and shifters, but no details, and it wasn¡¯t even clear if by mages people meant GAR or something else, like mage Houses or small guilds.

    ¡°Hello, Mister Hall!  Your usual?¡±

    ¡°Eh, surprise me,¡± he told her, finding a small table and sitting down.  While the past few weeks had been good for exercising his spatial sense and his magical stamina, he hadn¡¯t really been able to figure out some of the more complicated tricks that were mentioned in the forum posts for mage students.  Gravity, telekinesis, portals, and teleportation were really good and useful, but he knew it wasn¡¯t enough.  He needed good shields and wards and reactive spellwork, but he¡¯d hit a wall in figuring out anything but the most brute-force approach.

    The biggest breakthrough he¡¯d had, if it could be called such, had to do with the siphons he¡¯d made to clean up his distortion of the local mana.  They kept pulling in his vis but didn¡¯t do anything with it, eventually dissipating in four or five hours, vis returning back to mana.  He could overload it, as he¡¯d found out when the enchantment on one of the metal stakes failed.  The stored vis blasted outward and polluted everything nearby, making a mess that was far worse than the one he was trying to clean up.  It probably wouldn¡¯t be any fun to be caught in either, so he was glad to know before the one on the ball bearing he kept in his pocket got too energetic.

    If they held vis, it stood to reason that he could use them like a poor man¡¯s vis batteries.  Being very, very careful, he¡¯d tried pulling in a little bit of the accumulated vis, and it did give him a little bit of a rush as he absorbed it into himself.  So he could use it as a battery, but he would have to feed it himself and, given that the enchantment wasn¡¯t stable over long periods, it was of very limited usefulness.

    He had thought he might be able to use them to augment his ability to hold a shield, but the only thing he could come up with was incredibly hungry.  It was basically just a thin wall of high gravity shear, and while it did deflect bullets, it sure didn¡¯t stop them.  Considering a real shield was supposed to have a low enough cost that it could be kept up semi-permanently, he knew he was doing it wrong, but something was better than nothing.  Someday he¡¯d get to see real spellwork and update his own accordingly.  Someday.

    Hanging out in the caf¨¦, he did get to see shifters shifting more often than not.  The expanded basement was clearly some kind of safehouse, and half the time when a shifter was down there, they were in a beast or halfway form.  He felt a little guilty for playing voyeur, though the times when that would be more literal than not he definitely cut out the spatial sense.  He was curious, but not that curious.

    Annoyingly, he couldn¡¯t use spatial sense to hear or to see color.  He could sense the vibrations of people talking, if he really strained himself, but he couldn¡¯t translate it.  Yet.  He wasn¡¯t actually sure it was possible, but being able to eavesdrop by simply reaching out passively would be fantastic.

    Another thing he didn¡¯t know, since he didn¡¯t have another mage to ask, was whether his use of spatial sense was perceptible or if it was some passive interpretation of the world¡¯s normal ambient levels of energy.  So far none of the shifters had seemed to notice, but that didn¡¯t mean anything.  It would be a mistake to think that shifters and mages saw magic the same way.

    He followed Clara with his spatial sense as she brought out the steak he¡¯d ordered, thanking her as she put it down on his table.  She gave him a smile before beelining for where some other kids had come in the door, all about her age.  Weirdly, they were all fairly respectful, too, or at least the ones who were shifters were.  If anything, he could distinguish between shifter and mundane teens by which ones were moody, rude, and hormonal.

    ¡°She makes good steaks, doesn¡¯t she?¡±  Arthur Langley slid into the chair opposite Callum, holding his own version of what Callum had ordered.  ¡°I¡¯m pretty sure she¡¯s going to take over one day.¡±

    Callum had been paying some attention to the people in the room, but he hadn¡¯t realized the man approaching him was the Sheriff.  He¡¯d seen the car outside, but thought nothing of it.  The man still made him twitchy, just a little, if only because Arthur Langley was a Sheriff and Callum was pretty sure that he was a wanted man in both supernatural and mundane worlds.

    ¡°They¡¯re delicious,¡± Callum said after he swallowed the bite he was chewing on.  ¡°I think she¡¯s distracted by more normal teenager things right now though.¡±

    ¡°Ha!  Yes, I suppose she is.¡±  Arthur glanced back at the group of chattering teens.  ¡°I don¡¯t miss that age, you know?¡±

    ¡°In hindsight, it was mostly terrible,¡± Callum agreed with a little amusement.  ¡°Actually, kids around here seem better-adjusted than in most places I¡¯ve been.  So far as I can tell they don¡¯t even cross through the woods in my yard.¡±

    ¡°We have a big emphasis on respecting territory here,¡± Arthur said, and Callum wondered how the shifters ever kept secrets with that kind of innuendo.  Or maybe he was just hearing it because he already knew what they were.

    ¡°So what brings you over?¡±  Callum asked, changing the topic.  He very much doubted Arthur just wanted to say hello.  The sheriff raised his eyebrows at Callum, then shrugged.

    ¡°Just that I¡¯ve seen a few strange faces around here and there.  If you run across anything unusual, call me right away, would you?¡±  Callum blinked at Arthur.  He had a decent handle on the subtext up to that point, or at least he thought he did, but he had no idea what Arthur might be trying to warn him about.

    ¡°I was a strange face once,¡± he mused instead.  ¡°Did you warn people about me?¡±

    ¡°Tell you the truth, I did a little,¡± Arthur said with a laugh.  ¡°But I could tell you weren¡¯t from a big city, like the folk I¡¯m talking about.¡±

    ¡°If something happens, you¡¯ll be the first to know,¡± Callum promised, still completely in the dark about whatever Arthur was trying to say.  He really wanted to press Arthur on the details but didn¡¯t want to break their little d¨¦tente of pretending they didn¡¯t know about supernatural secrets.

    The most charitable option was that someone, from the supernatural or mundane world, was poking around looking for Callum and Arthur was giving him a heads up.  But it didn¡¯t really sound like that.  It almost seemed like Arthur was worried there might be general incidents, which could really be anything.  The content available on the supernatural internet was heavily censored, so while he had a general idea of what kinds of things were out there, the specifics of the politics and factions were completely opaque to him.  For all he knew, Arthur was warning him about shifter politics, and it was all internal.

    Either way, it sounded like it¡¯d be best to stay holed up in his house for a while.  Even more than usual, that was.  It would be a good excuse to go back over his notes and think of a different angle of attack for figuring out magical techniques, maybe dynamic ones like the siphon.  He¡¯d downloaded books on fluid dynamics and hydrodynamics and circuit theory to try and get reference material, but actually digging into it was proving rough going.  Spaces and geometry was one thing, quaternions and differential equations were another.

    He stopped by the grocery store and got supplies before biking back home, feeling an itch between his shoulder blades as he pedaled along the country roads.  Callum stretched out with his senses but didn¡¯t find anything.  Considering he could reach a good hundred meters with his spatial senses by that point, he put down the itch to warning-induced paranoia and just closeted himself in his house.

    For lack of anything better to do, he had a routine he went through with his spatial magic, juggling six glasses full of water through teleports around the house without spilling anything or making any sound.  He was up to almost one hundred sequential teleports without running into any issues, and slowly pushing forward.

    When it came to practicing with portals, he just blew bubbles on his porch and used moving portals to nest them inside each other without popping anything.  His success rate was only middling, but he was pretty proud of how fast he could make and move them.  He didn¡¯t have any practical applications yet, but all the literature he could find harped on control, so he couldn¡¯t go wrong with improving his.

    Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

    Something woke him in the middle of the night, his spatial senses catching a quick movement out at his limits, but by the time he focused it was gone, leaving him with a thudding heart and an unexplained thrill of panic in his spine.  It took him a long time to go to sleep after that, his spatial sense twitching at every random rabbit and mouse.

    By lunchtime the next day he¡¯d more or less forgotten it, buried in college-level textbooks and trying to teach himself things that might or might not have relevance to magic.  At least, until a car out on the road slowed and turned into his driveway.  Even though he couldn¡¯t see the details of a car¡¯s paint job with his spatial sense, he recognized the car itself. Even if he hadn¡¯t recognized the car, there was no mistaking Arthur Langley at the wheel, now that he had fixed the man¡¯s profile in his mind.

    Callum frowned and glanced around, but nothing betrayed anything untoward, and while he¡¯d been absently doing his teleportation exercises in the background, the siphon patterns he¡¯d put in the ball bearings scattered all about the house swept things clean fairly quickly.  He forced himself to wait until he could hear the crunch of gravel before standing up and going to the door, opening it to wait for the sheriff.  Considering the man¡¯s frown and the fact that he had a partner along for once, it wasn¡¯t likely to be good news.

    ¡°Afternoon, sheriff.¡±  Callum nodded to him, assuming it was official business.  ¡°What brings you by?¡±

    ¡°Duty, I¡¯m afraid,¡± Arthur said.  Behind him the deputy, Perdy by his nametag, got out a pad and a pencil.  ¡°Now, don¡¯t get mad, I have to ask these questions.  Where were you this morning at 3 AM?¡±

    ¡°Asleep.  Did something happen?¡±  It was a stupid question.  Obviously something had, and Arthur wasn¡¯t going to tell him immediately.

    ¡°And you don¡¯t have any corroboration for that?  A home security system, maybe?¡±

    ¡°Do I need a lawyer?¡±  Callum asked, raising his eyebrows.

    ¡°No, no.  You¡¯re not really a suspect, under the circumstances.  It¡¯s just that it¡¯d be nice to be able to tell certain people I¡¯m completely certain, you know?¡±

    ¡°Ah,¡± Callum said.  ¡°I do have a home security system, as it happens, but it¡¯s just door logs, not cameras.¡±  Nor was it something he was going give up without a warrant.  He hadn¡¯t gone anywhere that early in the morning unless he had sleep-teleported, and that wouldn¡¯t have shown up anyway.

    ¡°Right,¡± Arthur said, when it became clear Callum wasn¡¯t volunteering anything further.  ¡°Well, what¡¯s going on is there was a murder up the street.  Someone broke into James Hardy¡¯s house.  I don¡¯t suppose you saw anything?¡±

    ¡°What.¡±  Callum didn¡¯t really know James Hardy, just saw the man in the caf¨¦ occasionally.  Still, it was a bizarre shock, especially coming after Arthur¡¯s warning.  ¡°No, I didn¡¯t,¡± he said, then thought of the thing that had startled him awake.

    ¡°Think of something, Mister Hall?¡±  Arthur asked, noticing something even though Callum could have sworn he hadn¡¯t changed his expression.

    ¡°Well, something woke me up last night, like a large animal or something.  I wasn¡¯t sure what it was, and I just went back to sleep afterward.  I can¡¯t tell you anything else, though.  It was gone just as soon as I was out of bed.¡±

    ¡°Thank you, Mister Hall.  That might be helpful,¡± Arthur said, which surprised him.  Callum vaguely remembering something was not exactly damning evidence.  ¡°Got that, Perdy?¡±

    ¡°Yessir,¡± the deputy replied.

    ¡°Well, I¡¯m glad I could be of some service,¡± Callum said, a trifle bewildered.  It had to be some sort of weird supernatural thing, but he just couldn¡¯t ask.  Even if he was willing to break character, he didn¡¯t have any way to cast a glamour spell and he didn¡¯t know if Perdy was mundane or shifter.

    ¡°We may have more questions for you later, and don¡¯t erase your security recordings,¡± Arthur warned.  ¡°I doubt we¡¯ll need them, but if I do, I¡¯ll be back with a warrant.  Come on, Perdy.¡±

    Perdy scurried after the sheriff, while Callum watched them go.  He had the feeling trouble was brewing.

    ***

    ¡°You will not kill in my town,¡± Arthur snarled at the bulky man sitting across from him.  ¡°This is Winut pack territory, not yours.¡±

    ¡°I have no idea what you¡¯re talking about, Mister Langley,¡± the vampire said in a bored tone.  ¡°If one of your pet mundanes had a tragic accident, that¡¯s your issue.¡±

    ¡°He was killed by a vampire,¡± Arthur ground out.  ¡°They tried to make it look like something else, but I went myself and there¡¯s no mistaking the scent.¡±

    ¡°I fail to see why that¡¯s my issue.  I¡¯m not responsible for whatever strays you¡¯ve foolishly let live here without remanding them to a proper nest.¡±  The vampire was both bored and smug.  ¡°Unless you¡¯re accusing one of my vampires without any evidence of the fact.¡±

    ¡°There were no vampires before you came along,¡± Arthur growled.  ¡°I know it was one of yours and I intend to bring them to account.¡±

    ¡°I¡¯d like to see you try.¡±  At least, the vampire showed a flicker of emotion.  A feral gleam came and went in his slate-gray eyes.  ¡°If the Winut pack wants to challenge us, by all means, I will accept.¡±

    Arthur really did want to.  He wanted to drive the nest out of Winut, back to where they¡¯d come from.  Alpha Chester, who had dominion over the entire Midwest, had warned him that they¡¯d hopped there from Minneapolis, having been supposedly kicked out of Sioux Falls a few days prior.  The problem was the Winut pack was neither large nor old, and there were a dozen vampires in the nest.  If it came to a proper fight, only Arthur could hold his own.

    The vampire he was talking to, Victor, wasn¡¯t even the leader of the nest.  Just the face.  Arthur was pretty sure he¡¯d been chosen for maximum irritability, though the few times he¡¯d met vampires they¡¯d all been as condescending.  It seemed to be a feature of the race.

    ¡°We will see,¡± he managed, and walked out of the room.  The damn vamps had taken over the motel across from the caf¨¦, buying the mundane owner out with some money and light mind control, and were flaunting the fact.  Being so close to pack property was an absolute provocation.

    If the vampires attacked the pack, they¡¯d have to deal with Alpha Chester, given that there wasn¡¯t any agreement about a nest in Winut.  But if the vampires defended themselves, Alpha Chester would have to grit his teeth and take it.  It was politics, and politics was the worst.

    Arthur Langley walked past at least fifteen men with heavy armor and weaponry on his way out of the motel, the vampire¡¯s assurance against intruders given their daylight lethargy.  It would have been so much easier if they actually did burst into flames in the sun but, like many things, that weakness had been exaggerated.  Their disregard for human and supernatural life had not.

    He stalked across the way and into the caf¨¦, giving Clara a tilt of his chin to have her keep serving while he went down to the saferoom.  As soon as he closed the door he relaxed some of his iron self-control and slipped into his war form, stomping down the stairs as an eight-foot-tall beast man and growling.  He stopped when he saw Jessica and Gerry waiting for him on the couch.

    ¡°No good?¡±  Jessica asked rhetorically, and held up the phone she was holding.  ¡°Alpha Chester,¡± she said.  He sighed and closed his eyes, forcing himself to shift back to human form, a swirl of magic pulling him back into the smaller, more manageable size before he stepped forward to take the phone.

    ¡°Yes, Alpha?¡±

    ¡°They¡¯re obstructing,¡± Chester¡¯s bass voice rumbled through the phone.  ¡°I¡¯m going to be sending you a pair of troubleshooters anyway, but they can¡¯t officially help in a challenge.¡±

    ¡°They killed one of the mundanes here in town!¡±  Arthur snapped.  ¡°They¡¯re just going to keep doing it, since we don¡¯t have the numbers to stop them!¡±

    ¡°You think I don¡¯t know that?¡±  Chester¡¯s growl doused Arthur¡¯s rage in an instant.  Of course Chester was just as infuriated as he was.  ¡°But without proof, GAR will side with them and then we¡¯ll all be in trouble.  I swear, this has the stink of something bigger than just a rogue nest, but I¡¯ll be damned if I can figure out what.¡±

    ¡°But why Winut?  There¡¯s literally nothing here.  That¡¯s why I established a pack here!¡±

    ¡°It¡¯s not just Winut.  There¡¯s at least five other towns that are seeing similar issues, and that¡¯s just the shifters.  I¡¯m still feeling out the fae, but they¡¯ve dropped some hints.¡±

    ¡°What¡¯s the point of the rules if they just come and do what they want anyway?¡±

    ¡°If you can catch them at it, we can destroy them,¡± Chester said, but he didn¡¯t answer Arthur¡¯s question.  ¡°Keep a sharp eye out, and keep safe.¡±

    ¡°I will,¡± he said, and handed the phone back to Jessica.  She started chatting with her great-uncle again and Arthur looked at Gerry.

    ¡°Alpha Chester is sending two of the Wolfpack down here.  Go make sure nobody bothers them when they arrive.¡±

    ¡°Yes, Alpha,¡± Gerry said, and leaned over to give Jessica a kiss on the head before mounting the steps to the caf¨¦ above.  Arthur frowned and paced.  He had people watching the motel, but that wasn¡¯t enough.  The nest wasn¡¯t a bunch of weakling, newly-crossed vampires.  They were powerful.

    The question wasn¡¯t whether they¡¯d kill someone else tonight.  The question was who.

    ***

    Callum scoured the boards every morning for hints to shields or enchanting, but either the mods were very quick on the draw, or the students knew better than to discuss things in public.  Since he refused to register any account, he couldn¡¯t spark any discussion either, though considering nobody else did, any such post would stand out.

    He had been hoping he could generate some income by using his spatial magic to make enchanted items and sell them, but there was nothing to be found on how to do that.  The siphons he made counted as enchantments, barely, but they were weak and they faded fairly quickly.  Anything useful and permanent was beyond him, so he worked out his frustration by going and doing some target shooting in his back yard.

    Callum still had plenty of time before his funds ran out if things kept on as they did, but with the murder he was feeling twitchy and worried he¡¯d have to abandon Winut soon enough.  Considering how much of his money he¡¯d sunk into the house, that wasn¡¯t good.  Maybe he shouldn¡¯t have bought it, and just stayed at a hotel, but then he wouldn¡¯t have had a place to practice.

    At least with his spatial sense his shooting was improving.  He didn¡¯t even need to see to aim, though that was basically irrelevant, since he still needed to properly brace the gun to shoot.  If for some reason he needed to use a gun in absolute darkness it might come in handy, and it might be a nice party trick if he wanted to shoot behind him, but in practical terms it wasn¡¯t that great.

    Though maybe that thought was just from his mood making him grumpy.  It took him a good ten minutes to realize he¡¯d just been stewing on the subject of the murder and trouble and potentially having to leave, and not actually doing any shooting.  That made him shake his head and put away his firearms and targets.  He was going to go stir-crazy if he just sat around and dwelled on things.

    Instead, he decided to head into town to try and clear his head.  Instead of biking he actually took his car, feeling slightly more protected, though he pushed his senses out to catch anything untoward.  If he were willing to teleport, the bicycle would have made more sense.  He could teleport himself and the bike easily enough, but a whole car might be too much.

    Either way, he didn¡¯t sense anything weird until he passed by the caf¨¦, and noticed that the hotel was full up.  Though, considering the murder, they could be reporters or law enforcement or something.  He pondered going to the caf¨¦ for a moment, then decided he wasn¡¯t actually hungry, merely nervous, then continued on to the hardware store.  If nothing else, he could get some more supplies for testing things like his siphons.

    He slipped inside and started browsing through their metal miscellany when he spotted Jessica and Clara Langley staring at mallets and hammers.  He hadn¡¯t really marked either of them as being the home-improvement type, but you never could tell.  In smaller towns, people tended to be more handy.

    ¡°Going to take over the maintenance as well as the cooking?¡±  Callum asked, heading their way.  Jessica turned to look at him but Clara actually jumped, whipping around to look at him before letting out a breath.

    ¡°Don¡¯t scare me like that, Mister Hall!¡±  Clara scolded.  Callum lifted his hands in a gesture of surrender.

    ¡°You¡¯re twitchy about the murder, too, huh?¡±  He asked, after Clara gave a little nod of her head.

    ¡°Isn¡¯t everyone?  Poor Joan, she went to our church, you know?¡±  Jessica shivered.

    ¡°Wait, Joan?  I was talking about James Hardy.¡±  Callum blinked.  He¡¯d been going to church himself, but hadn¡¯t been doing so for long enough to know many people there.

    ¡°There was a second murder last night,¡± Clara confided in a low voice.  ¡°Miss Joan Gruber.  You didn¡¯t hear?¡±

    ¡°No, I¡¯ve been at my house all morning.¡±  Part of him wished that he¡¯d stayed.  One murder was bad enough, but two in two days sounded like a serial killer.  Maybe even a supernatural serial killer, given his knowledge of the inhabitants of Winut.  ¡°What happened?¡±

    ¡°I don¡¯t know,¡± Jessica said, clearly lying and not covering it particularly well.  ¡°But Arthur thinks it¡¯s the same person who killed James.¡±

    ¡°Well, that¡¯s terrible,¡± he said, and winced at how understated that sounded.  It was horrendous.  ¡°Got any leads?¡±

    ¡°Maybe,¡± Jessica said.

    ¡°It¡¯s police stuff,¡± Clara added.  ¡°We don¡¯t get told these things.¡±

    ¡°We¡¯re thinking of forting up, maybe even closing the caf¨¦ for a while.¡±

    ¡°That would be a shame.  I¡¯d understand, but it¡¯d still be a shame.¡±  Callum shook his head.  ¡°You know, if there¡¯s anything I can do to help, just say the word.¡±

    ¡°Thank you, Mister Hall,¡± Jessica said after a moment.

    ¡°Sure, anytime,¡± he told her, and went back to his own browsing, though it was hard to keep his mind on it.  If things were getting worse, chances were that he¡¯d be forced to skip town sooner rather than later.  On the other hand, something so blatant would probably be resolved quickly.  He didn¡¯t believe that two people could be killed in a small town like Winut without anyone knowing what was going on.  Callum surely didn¡¯t, but someone had to.

    He paid cash for another box of ball bearings and some more nails, then got in his car and drove back home.  Under the circumstances, he skipped the caf¨¦.  By the time he got home, he felt the need to burn off some nervous energy and got out his exercise equipment.  He hadn¡¯t been keeping up as religiously as he had previously, partly because there was no gym in a place as small as Winut, but he had a good excuse to work out his frustrations.

    Once he¡¯d managed to tire himself out, and probably make himself sore enough to regret it in the morning, Callum found he had no patience for reading the textbooks he¡¯d downloaded, and defaulted to playing around with his magic.  If nothing else, the wonder of being able to drag things through the air and teleport them around the house never really waned.

    Eventually, he ended up reading an old scifi book he¡¯d gotten in the used book section of Winut¡¯s local bookstore, twitching every time he caught an animal pass through his spatial perceptions.  Considering how far he¡¯d gotten it to extend, it frayed his nerves something awful.

    When dawn arrived, he was actually on the verge of dozing off when a car came barreling down the road and swerved into his driveway, sliding to a halt in a spray of gravel.  That woke Callum up instantly, and he hastily threw on some pants and a shirt while Jessica got out of the car and ran to the door.  He almost tripped going down the stairs as Jessica hammered on the door with more than normal strength, and had to teleport his cane into his hand at the last instant before he jerked it open.

    ¡°They¡¯ve taken Clara,¡± she blurted before he could even begin to ask.  ¡°You have to help.¡±

 Chapter 6 â€“ Violence

    ¡°What.¡± Callum blinked at her. He was fuzzy from lack of sleep, but he was pretty sure that wasn¡¯t why he was confused. ¡°Who took Clara now?¡±

    ¡°The vampires! They got her to walk into the nest and now they have her and?¡ª¡± Jessica took a shuddering breath. ¡°You said you¡¯d help.¡±

    ¡°I don¡¯t?¡ª¡± he said, and stopped. Jessica was one of the two people who¡¯d actually been around when he¡¯d slipped up and allowed some magic leakage, so it wasn¡¯t like he could convince her he wasn¡¯t a mage. Besides, as much as he¡¯d prefer not to get involved there was no way in hell he could live with himself if he walked away and left Clara in the clutches of vampires. Not that he knew anything about vampires other than what he read in fiction, which was apparently wrong, but they were clearly bad news.

    ¡°You said they have her,¡± he continued after a moment. ¡°Not that they killed her?¡± Jessica nodded mutely.

    ¡°Okay, give me a minute.¡± He was not equipped for a magical slugfest with supernaturals, but he could teleport. While he had no idea if he could manage to smuggle someone out past anything magically complicated, he was confident enough that he could spirit away someone even if they were tied to a chair or cuffed. Though the thought made him add teleporting handcuffs on and off people to his list of exercises.

    Callum left the door open so as not to be impolite and got his hat and coat from the rack to ward off the early autumn chill. When he stuck his hands in the pockets he teleported his ad-hoc vis storage ball bearings into the left, and a number of ball bearing siphons to the right. They were practically the same thing, just that his batteries had the vortex bit erased, leaving only the accumulated vis behind, paltry though it was. It made him aware of just how woefully undergeared he was. Not that he had any idea how to make casting implements, but it would have been nice to have something.

    ¡°So what?¡ª¡± he began, and almost stumbled as Jessica grabbed his arm and started hauling him toward her car. He couldn¡¯t even use his cane like he normally would. She definitely had abnormal strength. He weighed something around one-seventy with his muscle, not a huge guy, but Jessica had a grip like iron.

    ¡°Hey,¡± he protested, making preparations for a teleport just in case. ¡°Where are we going?¡±

    ¡°To Arthur and Jeff and Gerry,¡± Jessica said. ¡°Before they do something drastic.¡±

    ¡°Fair enough,¡± he allowed, vaguely recalling that Jeff was Clara¡¯s father, and got in the car when Jessica let go of his arm. The drive into town wasn¡¯t long, but long enough for him to consider his approach. Barring magical interference, getting Clara back was going to be quite possible, but it wouldn¡¯t stop there. Criminals and murderers wouldn¡¯t give up just because a kidnap victim escaped.

    He had pondered long on how to weaponize the amount of magic he could wield, despite being obviously rather terrible at it, and had some approaches that might work. Though it was impossible to plan in advance. He just didn¡¯t know enough.

    Callum had to force himself to relax to keep from fidgeting nervously. He didn¡¯t have any particular experience with any real trouble or action, so he was absolutely out of his depth. But it wasn¡¯t like he was going into combat. In fact, if he had his way, he¡¯d stay at the limit of his range and do everything from there. At least, that was what he told himself.

    He picked up a wall of magic as they drove into town, coming from the motel across from the caf¨¦. It was clearly the work of a real mage, but he had no idea what the complex construct was for. Callum studied it closely nonetheless, wishing he had his notepad with him so he could sketch it down, and part of him figured that was where Arthur and Gerry were. Except that he sensed them down under the caf¨¦, in the safe room, so he had no idea what the other mage was doing.

    He took off his hat by habit when they stepped into the caf¨¦, and it was only then that he realized he¡¯d forgotten his hairpiece. Which was long past irrelevant at that point, but it just went to show how rattled he was. Unfortunately his house was far too far away to find and teleport it.

    The caf¨¦ sign read closed but the lights were on and Jessica breezed in without a worry, heading to the back with Callum following. He wasn¡¯t even slightly surprised when Jessica led him to the basement, but at least he got to see it with his own eyes rather than spatial sense. The couches and chairs were all soft blues and greens, and at the moment they were all filled with shifters.

    Two of them were in some sort of weird half-form, eight-foot tall beast-men that looked not quite like wolves. He didn¡¯t know what the base species was for a shifter, but it had some feline and lizard shape in it as well as canine. All of them stared at him as he came down the stairs.

    ¡°What are you doing?¡± One of the shifted ones demanded of Jessica. It took Callum a moment to realize it was Arthur Langley, by the accent. ¡°GAR won¡¯t get involved. Not yet.¡± Callum debated what to say for a moment, and settled on a line he was pretty sure was cribbed from a movie.

    ¡°I¡¯m not here,¡± he said, and Arthur tilted his head at him. ¡°You don¡¯t know me, and I was never here, understand?¡± Arthur¡¯s muzzle slowly peeled back to show his teeth, and then threw back his head and barked a laugh.

    ¡°I understand,¡± Arthur said. ¡°You hear that everyone?¡± They all nodded, save for two shifters off to one side who were built like linebackers, almost as tall as the shifted Arthur and as solid as a steel bar. ¡°What can you do?¡±

    ¡°I¡¯m not going to answer any questions,¡± Callum said slowly, stepping forward, skin prickling a bit from the sheer focus of all the predators in the room. Part of his hindbrain really did not like the beast-men, though he wasn¡¯t panicking as much as he might have if he hadn¡¯t already seen them with his spatial sense. ¡°But I would appreciate being read in.¡±

    ¡°A chair for Mister Hall,¡± Arthur said, and one of the shifters that Callum recognized only vaguely as being a caf¨¦ regular stood and brought his chair over for Callum. Jessica squeezed his arm and went to sit with her husband.

    ¡°The vampires took over the motel across the way,¡± Arthur started, and Callum frowned.

    ¡°So the mage is with them?¡±

    ¡°Yes.¡± Arthur blinked at Callum, possibly not expecting that question. ¡°They¡¯re glamouring things so people don¡¯t notice all the guns, and warding so we can¡¯t sneak in.¡± Callum stretched out his senses again, trying to figure out the structures and patterns from knowing they were a glamour and a ward, but couldn¡¯t make heads or tails of it. He didn¡¯t want to poke his magic in and alert whoever was responsible, but there were big gaping holes to run his threads through so it wasn¡¯t like it was an impediment to teleporting.

    ¡°Okay,¡± Callum said, and Arthur continued.

    ¡°They arrived five days ago. Three days ago they killed Henry, and we sent for enforcers from the Midwest Alpha,¡± Arthur said, nodding in the direction of the linebackers.

    ¡°You know they killed Henry? Why haven¡¯t you done anything about it? They killed Joan too, didn¡¯t they?¡± It was obvious in hindsight. He wasn¡¯t sure why he hadn¡¯t known that instantly the moment Jessica mentioned vampires. Arthur gave him an odd look at the questions.

    ¡°How could we do anything about it? We¡¯re not strong enough to challenge them ourselves, and under the agreements? nobody else can do anything unless we can prove it to GAR or they get caught.¡± Callum held up a hand to stop Arthur¡¯s explanation, rage making the shifter¡¯s voice seem to come from far away. There were vampires here killing people and they couldn¡¯t do anything because of politics.

    ¡°What¡¯s the situation now?¡± He asked, when he got himself under control. The rage cooled into something else in his gut, and he laced his fingers together to keep his hands from trembling.

    ¡°We¡¯re not sure how they got at Clara, but she¡¯s not old enough to have much resistance against their mental influence. They claim she¡¯s there of her own free will but she¡¯s not.¡±

    ¡°Then, what happens when you get her back?¡± Callum reached out again, carefully going through every figure in the motel opposite until he found Clara. It took more concentration to tell people apart, but Clara was pretty obvious, because she was the only one who was crouched down against a wall. He almost reached out to teleport her then, but if he did that, it might set off all the alarms before he was ready.

    ¡°Well¡­¡± Arthur paced along the carpet, his claws flexing. ¡°Once she¡¯s free of any magic we can contact Alpha Chester and he¡¯ll have an excuse to send down the rest of the Wolfpack. Then we can challenge them and drive them out of Winut.¡±

    ¡°I see.¡± Callum said, amazed that his voice came out level. ¡°You won¡¯t kill them?¡±

    ¡°I¡¯d like to,¡± Arthur growled. ¡°But they¡¯re fast and tough and we¡¯d have to do it outside town, where we won¡¯t be spotted. There are twelve of them, and twenty thralls, and we don¡¯t have the people to deal with that without casualties.¡±

    ¡°What kills a vampire?¡± That was definitely not part of the forums, and it wasn¡¯t exactly something he could ask anyone else. Arthur gave him another look, but answered the question.

    ¡°Enough bodily harm. Mordite weaponry stops their regeneration, if you have any, but if you don¡¯t, you need to destroy the brain or the heart. It takes a mature shifter to actually do enough damage, given how fast the bastards are.¡±

    ¡°What about firearms?¡± Callum asked. Arthur shrugged.

    ¡°If you can hit them, it takes something serious to do damage. It¡¯s usually not worth trying, but a high powered rifle or shotgun at close range can work.¡±

    ¡°Very well.¡± Callum leaned back and closed his eyes, partly to think, partly to sense what was nearby. He had a burgeoning plan, not a very complicated one, but the simpler the better. There was a gas station on the corner with the motel and the caf¨¦, so that was at least half of it.

    ¡°All right, I think I can do this,¡± he said, feeling out the guns and ammunition stored in the motel across the way. Much of it was equipped by the exactly twenty individuals that were patrolling the outer part of the motel, but there was a room further in with a goodly amount of weaponry still packed away. ¡°But I¡¯m going to need a few things.¡±

    ¡°What do you have in mind?¡± Arthur asked.

    ¡°No questions,¡± Callum reminded him. ¡°I will need earplugs, a large trunk, and the cooperation of your fire department. I assume you have control of it.¡±

    Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

    ¡°We do,¡± Arthur said. One of the other shifters simply dug into his pocket and came out with a pair of orange earplugs. For some reason that wasn¡¯t surprising; the man looked like he worked construction for living or something equally blue collar.

    ¡°Great,¡± Callum said. ¡°The last thing is I¡¯m going to need to use one of those rooms.¡± He hiked his thumb at the safehouse cells off to the side, each of which was heavily reinforced. They probably weren¡¯t soundproof, especially if shifters had heightened senses, but it was close enough.

    ¡°Of course,¡± Arthur said, looking a little confused, but he paced over to the first cell and grabbed the key that hung there to unlock it. Callum took the earplugs and walked over, while Gerry got up and dug in a storage closet, upending a big plastic tub full of clothes and packaged toiletries.

    ¡°Will this work?¡± Gerry asked, and Callum nodded. He would have to steal some duffles so it wouldn¡¯t be obvious what was inside the container, but that was fine. There was a lot of stuff he was going to be stealing in the next few minutes.

    ¡°You¡¯re going to get Clara back?¡± Jessica asked, and Callum smiled at her.

    ¡°Absolutely. I can guarantee it.¡± He could, too. It was pretty damn easy to find her, since she was chained to a pipe in the motel basement, completely naked. It was all Callum could do to keep himself from grabbing her right then and there, but there were two guards with batons guarding her and that would only alert the whole place.

    Gerry shoved the tub inside and Callum followed, waving them out and having Arthur shut the door. He took a few deep breaths, feeling things out with his spatial sense, because he was going to have to do everything very quickly when he started. Mostly because they had a magic user on their side.

    The mage was actually the one he was most worried about, since it was likely she could sense his magic, and definitely his first target. She was obvious enough, since the wards had threads that led back to her, and every once in a while a pulse of vis would come out to refresh them. The ambient energy throughout the whole motel was disturbed from all the activity, so if there were any other mages he couldn¡¯t tell. He hoped not.

    He started by groping his way through the stock of the gas station and teleporting some road flares in front of him. He checked the price and teleported some cash onto the counter to make up for it, then he located the shotguns he wanted in the store room at the motel, and the ammunition for them.

    Some were older, but fortunately for him, there were some newer magazine-fed types with loaded magazines. There was boxed ammo too, but things would have been a lot more difficult if he had needed to reload manually. Seconds counted, or at least he had to guess they did.

    Callum felt his heart hammering in his chest, and took another breath. As soon as he started, he was committed. The vampires had to die, that much was clear. They preyed on humans, and that was that. But all the thralls were as human as he was, and he¡¯d have to kill them, too. But all it took was to look at Clara to decide she deserved a future way more than anybody working for monsters did.

    He wrapped a tight net around his chosen shotguns and a rack of filled magazines and pulled them into the safehouse cell, grabbing the first magazine and loading it while flipping off the safety. Without pausing even slightly he conjured two pairs of portals. One was inside the end of the shotgun barrel, with the exit right at the mage¡¯s temple, fractions of an inch away. The other was larger, on the other side of the mage¡¯s head, and had its exit in the half-full dumpster of the motel.

    Callum pulled the trigger.

    Before the mage even finished crumpling, he jumped the positions of the portals to bracket one of Clara¡¯s guards, firing a second shot. Then a third shot, to take out the other guard. He paused long enough to wrap his spatial threads around Clara, sliding them under the chains, and pulled. It was a lot harder than when he was dealing with objects, the teleportation framework trying to just slide off of Clara rather than take her along, but when he gave it enough juice it worked and she popped into the safehouse cell next to his.

    Then he resumed. Each pull of the trigger was incredibly loud in the enclosed space, even if a lot of the noise was on the other end. Still, he was fast enough that just alerting them didn¡¯t mean much. He could move his portals so quickly that he barely had to pause in shooting, targeting the vampires next. There were twelve of them in the basement, stretched out on beds rather than in coffins, but their inhuman features made it obvious what they were. Instead of aiming at their temples, he went from under the chin, hoping that by maximizing brain destruction he stood the best chance of killing them, or at least stunning them for a while.

    He got five before he had to change magazines, fumbling and nearly dropping it while watching and waiting for one of the others to get up. One of them started to stir just as he lifted the shotgun to his shoulder, so he bracketed that one with his portals and pulled the trigger again. It went still. Rapid-fire, he executed the remainder, or at least rendered them insensate. There were bits of bone and brain coming through the exit portals sometimes, but not all the time, and he had no idea how fast they could regenerate, or from what.

    The remainder of the guards were a bit tougher, since they¡¯d had time to react to the muffled sounds of gunshots. They were moving around, some starting to sweep the building, others heading down toward the vampires, and he had to focus to match what he was doing with moving bodies. It felt like forever, but it was probably no more than five seconds later that he started jumping his portals again, dropping one thrall after another. He had to change magazines twice more, but that was the only delay.

    Then it was over. His heart was pounding, his finger and shoulder were sore, and he felt sick, but it probably hadn¡¯t been more than a minute between the start and the end. Not that he could rest yet. It was one thing to kill them, it was another to make sure everything was dead, would stay dead, and there was nothing that would lead back to him.

    Callum teleported a bunch of his siphon ball bearings throughout the motel. He didn¡¯t have enough for one per room, but he did the best he could. Then he began looting the place.

    He pulled stuff from the storeroom to him, including empty luggage that had clearly been used to transport the guard¡¯s guns. In addition to weapons and ammunition, there was also cash, laptops, jewelry, phones, and from the mage¡¯s quarters, stuff that was clearly magical. He separated out the electronics, hastily cracking them open and yanking out memory cards and hard drives. The remains went back to the motel. While Callum didn¡¯t have time to count it, looting the vampires looked to have at least doubled his cash on hand, not to mention the value of everything else he¡¯d taken.

    While part of him wanted to leave all the guard¡¯s equipment with them, he was planning to burn the motel down and ammo cooking off would do nobody any good. So he swept it all up and stuffed it into anything that was still empty, having freed up a lot of space by ditching the computers. He felt a few pangs of guilt at stealing everything, but that hesitation was almost funny considering how deep he already was.

    Once again he opened up a small portal, but it led from the underground tank of gasoline at the station into the hotel. Callum jumped it from room to room, letting a couple gallons spill here and there and making sure to douse the vampires before he lit one of the road flares. The first one he actually teleported into the vampire¡¯s room, but for the second he used a portal to jab the lit end into a number of the rooms before finally tossing it where the mage had been. The actual packaging followed, just so there wouldn¡¯t be anything left to indicate what he¡¯d done.

    Then he was finished. The duffles and suitcases, filled with guns and ammunition and everything else he¡¯d taken, got teleported into a utility crawlspace under the gas station, and he looked around to make sure there was nothing different in the saferoom. The plastic tub had turned out to be useless, but that was fine, he could barely remember what he¡¯d wanted it for in the first place.

    His hands were definitely shaking, and he shoved them in his pockets, filling himself up from his makeshift batteries while waiting for his siphon bearings to clean up the lingering spatial magic inside the room. While he hadn¡¯t really expended that much, aside from teleporting Clara, it felt like he¡¯d run a marathon. He knocked on the door, and Arthur opened it.

    Unsurprisingly, Clara was already out. He¡¯d missed it while he was concentrating on getting the job done, but there was nobody else the half-sized not-a-wolf curled up in her father¡¯s lap could be. Arthur, still in beast form, sniffed at Callum and sneezed.

    ¡°Gunpowder, but no magic,¡± he noted. ¡°How did you get her?¡±

    ¡°No questions,¡± Callum reminded him. ¡°And I was never here.¡±

    ¡°The vampires?¡± Arthur questioned, but he was answered by someone thumping down the stairs.

    ¡°The motel is on fire!¡± He shouted, and Arthur looked from him to Callum. Callum shrugged.

    ¡°Can I get a ride home?¡± Callum asked.

    ***

    Arthur Langley watched the maybe-mage but definitely-dangerous man who had singlehandedly wiped a vampire nest in under five minutes exchange some surprisingly heartfelt words with Clara¡¯s parents and Jessica, and even awkwardly address the still-shifted Clara, before following Gerry up the stairs. He stood there for a moment, ears canted and teeth bared before he forced himself to shift back to human and take out his phone. He dialed a number, and tapped his foot as he waited for the man on the other end to pick up.

    ¡°Alpha?¡±

    ¡°Ron,¡± Arthur said. ¡°I want a fire containment on the Flats Motel.¡±

    ¡°You don¡¯t want it put out?¡± Ron sounded surprised.

    ¡°No. Let it burn, just don¡¯t let it spread.¡±

    ¡°Yes, Alpha.¡± He asked no questions, and Arthur hung up, then dialed another number.

    ¡°Chester here.¡± His Alpha¡¯s bass voice made his phone vibrate.

    ¡°Arthur Langley again. That issue with the vampires I reported a few hours ago? It¡¯s resolved.¡± There was a long silence, then a heavy sigh came from the other end.

    ¡°What did you do?¡± Chester asked ominously.

    ¡°I didn¡¯t do anything,¡± Arthur told him. ¡°In fact, I can swear that no member of the pack was involved, or even crossed into the land that the vampires had claimed for themselves.¡± There was another silence.

    ¡°Let me rephase. Tell me what happened,¡± Chester ordered, and Arthur winced. Just because he was glad to see the bastards burn didn¡¯t mean he should be flip with his Alpha.

    ¡°A man offered to help. He told us that he was not there, that he was never there, and we didn¡¯t know him.¡± Arthur considered how to put it. ¡°The name I know him by is obviously not his real name, but I wouldn¡¯t want to even say that one out loud on the phone.¡±

    ¡°A man.¡± Chester said, less oppressively. He understood how delicate Arthur was trying to be. ¡°A shifter? A mage?¡±

    ¡°I¡¯m not actually certain. He clearly wears makeup on his wrist where a mage mark could be, but there¡¯s no magic scent near him. Jessica said she smelled magic there once, but not since the one time and of course I never have.¡±

    ¡°It wasn¡¯t even that strong that time,¡± Jessica said from the side, her hand on Clara¡¯s head to soothe her. With shifter hearing, any phone conversation included the entire room. ¡°But I know I didn¡¯t imagine it.¡±

    ¡°He asked for earplugs, went into one of our panic cells, and shut the door. We heard gunshots, and two minutes later Clara walked out of one of the other panic cells. Maybe five minutes after that, he walks out, smelling like gunpowder but not like magic, and the motel is on fire. Not to mention, the room¡¯s completely empty, no guns or casings or the like.¡±

    ¡°The individual in question was afraid the whole time he was here,¡± John rumbled. He was one of the Wolfpack, Chester¡¯s enforcers, and they¡¯d eventually report everything in their own way. For the moment, they were polite enough to respect Arthur¡¯s boundaries and not mention Chase Hall¡¯s name. ¡°But not of us. It seemed to be just general anxiety. He got angry too, but at the vampires and GAR, in my estimation.¡±

    ¡°I could smell it too,¡± Arthur agreed. ¡°In fact, every time I¡¯ve met him he¡¯s seemed severely stressed. I¡¯m not sure what to make of it.¡±

    ¡°He did say he moved here for health reasons,¡± Jessica pointed out.

    ¡°That is quite odd,¡± Chester said thoughtfully. ¡°I know mages can hide their presence, but they rarely do. There¡¯s no point, and I understand it weakens them. Perhaps he is fae, instead?¡±

    ¡°I hadn¡¯t considered that,¡± Arthur said thoughtfully. ¡°He didn¡¯t seem the type, and usually I can smell them anyway.¡±

    ¡°In a sense, it doesn¡¯t matter. The vampires will scream bloody murder, but if all you know is a man who doesn¡¯t exist stayed in your basement and then all the vampires died of extreme incompetence, there¡¯s little they can do.¡±

    ¡°They¡¯re going to want to know who he is,¡± Arthur warned.

    ¡°Oh, they¡¯ll probably even pull strings to get a GAR investigator out there. I expect they won¡¯t find anything.¡± The tone of voice made it obvious Chester was making it an order, not a hope.

    ¡°As I said, the motel is on fire. I suppose we¡¯ll have to save the bodies, but I doubt any other traces of whatever he did will remain.¡±

    ¡°Good. Now, how did he find out about it? You only called me an hour ago.¡±

    ¡°I went and got him,¡± Jessica volunteered. ¡°I saw him in town earlier, and he told me if he could help, he would. When they took Clara, I just thought?¡ª¡± She paused, then continued. ¡°If he was a mage, he could do something.¡±

    ¡°Hmm.¡± The sound of Chester¡¯s fingers tapping something glass came over the phone. ¡°That¡¯s a point for fae, actually. Breaking all the GAR laws to keep his word.¡±

    ¡°Either way, Alpha, we owe him.¡±

    ¡°Yes,¡± Chester agreed. ¡°The question is: who, exactly, do we owe? We want to make sure we¡¯re not getting into something worse than what the vampires were up to.¡±

    ¡°One more point,¡± John put in. ¡°The number of gunshots was exactly the same as the number of vampires and thralls. Plus their mage.¡± That pronouncement was met with a thoughtful silence.

    ¡°So, investigate, but discreetly,¡± Arthur concluded.

    ¡°Very discreetly.¡±

 Chapter 7 â€“ Consequences

    Callum was a wreck for the rest of the day. Not because it had been hard, but because it had been easy. So easy. Terrifyingly, horrifyingly easy. He was a terrible newbie mage with all of three or four tricks and he¡¯d destroyed the vampires and their thralls. If he lost his mind and went on a rampage, there wasn¡¯t a single mundane in the world who had a chance against him, and he was just starting to learn.

    It was almost enough to make him understand the restrictions GAR put on mages, but fortunately after a few hours of showering some semblance of sense returned. The only reason he¡¯d gotten away with it was because their mage had been stupid and careless, the defenses were geared against shifters, and because he had a completely safe area coincidentally close enough to actually reach. In the real world, he couldn¡¯t fire a gun off willy-nilly even if he could displace the bullets a hundred feet away.

    When the adrenaline high finally left him, he actually fell asleep in the shower, only waking up after he had exhausted the tank and the water turned cold. He tried crawling into bed but slept only fitfully, starting awake every time a car drove down the road. By the time he dragged himself out again it was evening and he was feeling a little more human, but there was still a tight knot in his stomach that he couldn¡¯t do anything about.

    Callum went ahead and burned the clothes that he¡¯d been wearing, though it wasn¡¯t likely that anyone could track them. In fact, it was far more likely that he¡¯d be traced through one of the Langleys spilling what happened than it was from some forensic investigation of the scene. There wasn¡¯t much he could do about that.

    In fact, in hindsight, it would have been far better if he could have taken care of everything without going down to that basement at all. Not that he regretted saving Clara one bit, but it would have been far better to agree, leave, and do things out of sight from everyone. He wasn¡¯t sure how he could have gotten Clara out of there without teleporting her, but if he¡¯d done it somewhere other than the saferoom, it might have been easier to explain.

    Either way, he was stuck with it. He couldn¡¯t change what he had done, just make sure he was better about it in the future. Part of him was actually surprised someone hadn¡¯t been by yet to follow up; it had been hours and the motel fire was probably out. The best case scenario was that the Langley shifters, or whatever they called themselves, had collectively decided to keep Callum a secret, but he couldn¡¯t plan for that.

    He hoped he wouldn¡¯t have to abandon Winut, but he probably would. Which meant he had to plan for that, and that meant he needed to get the stash of loot. Callum cast his senses outside and, finding nothing suspicious, got on his remaining jacket and started his car.

    Instead of going into town the usual way he circled around, coming at the gas station from the other direction. Unsurprisingly, the actual street where the motel had stood was blocked off, but he only needed to get within range of the gas station in order to teleport all the luggage into the back of his car. He replaced the entire bundle with a single screw enchanted as a siphon, in the hopes that if someone actually looked there wouldn¡¯t be any traces.

    By the time he got back home he had been up and moving long enough to realize he was absolutely ravenous. He basically hadn¡¯t eaten anything since the previous day, so he made himself a sandwich from the stuff in the fridge as he teleported all the loot into the main room of his house. Eight duffle bags of weapons, six large cases of ammunition, two briefcases with the hard drives he¡¯d purloined, and then several large lockboxes with money and valuables. Finally, one loose duffel with the magical stuff he¡¯d looted from the mage¡¯s room.

    It was actually too much. He didn¡¯t have anywhere he could hide it all from a determined search. There were hollow spaces in the walls, of course, and some odd nooks and crannies, but the sheer amount of weaponry alone meant he needed to find or make a stash somewhere else. Callum summoned his notepad to his hand and wrote that on his list before digging into the actual specifics of what he¡¯d acquired.

    The weapons were, to his disappointment, just normal commercial weapons. He¡¯d been hoping for some magically enhanced ones, but no. Not that he could really complain, since now he had enough armament to outfit an entire platoon. Callum itemized the actual numbers of pistols, rifles, and shotguns as he went. The pistols seemed to be mundane armament, since they were merely standard nine-millimeter types, but all the rifles and shotguns were big and heavy.

    The magic, as it turned out, was in the ammunition. There were cases of normal commercial stuff, but most of it was not normal or commercial. The bulk of it was labeled silverite, engraved on the cases of rifle and shotgun ammunition, but there was a decent amount of black mordite and silver-grey corite stuff too. For use against vampires and fae respectively, he assumed. What people used against dragonblooded was anyone¡¯s guess.

    While he could manipulate the silverite and mordite and corite with his magic, he couldn¡¯t see inside them. With a little effort he could sweep his spatial sense into a material, like a rock or a wall, but the magical ammunition completely resisted that. Which was a little discomfiting, but it at least meant he¡¯d be able to identify the stuff easily enough in the future.

    When he took a closer look at it, a good amount of the stuff he¡¯d looted from the mage was the same way. There were a few jars of liquids and powders, with labels in a script he couldn¡¯t read, and trying to push his senses into them was difficult. They weren¡¯t quite as bluntly impossible as the anti-supernatural weapons, but it seemed anything that held magic was hard to sound out.

    Aside from what he¡¯d made himself, of course. It was an interesting question whether or not his little ball bearings would be magically opaque to another mage, or if he needed to do something special to get the effect. Unfortunately, there wasn¡¯t another mage to ask.

    Along with the components there were a set of ceramic slates with designs on them, clearly made with the liquid and the powder. Probing them with his senses he found that while some of it was just as hard to read, the center was completely open with a loop of magic in it not unlike the vortices. If he had to guess, the plates were magical tools and the center was where the user fed mana.

    He didn¡¯t try to use them. He had no idea what they did, and no matter how curious he was he didn¡¯t want to take the risk of blowing himself or his house up, or igniting some magical beacon that would draw attention down on him. The magic stuff became a note on his notepad to investigate later, and he put them aside.

    The other source of magic was something that looked like a woman¡¯s compact, but the interior had a set of thin metal plates with etching similar to the ones on the slates, arranged so the user could flip through them. The main difference seemed to be that the compact¡¯s plates were far simpler. It was all very mysterious and he didn¡¯t dare supply it any mana or vis without knowing what it was.

    Callum was really starting to get irritated, so he turned to the last bit, the lockboxes and the cash. At the very least, the more fungible part of the loot would cheer him up. Even though he didn¡¯t have the keys and hadn¡¯t learned lockpicking, he could simply teleport the stuff out of the locked containers.

    There was just shy of one hundred thousand dollars in cash, but that wasn¡¯t really the main haul. The gold plates, each of them labeled at one hundred grams of 999.9 pure gold and stamped with an unfamiliar logo, were. Ten kilograms of gold was a lot of money. A lot of money. Callum¡¯s consulting business had put him comfortably right at six figures for income, but actually staring at so much money gathered in one place was something else.

    There was also some sort of elaborate crest, the kind that used to be used for sealing wax on documents, that looked like it was gold but resisted his senses enough to be an alloy of one of the supernatural metals. It had some sort of abstract logo on it, nestled in among a bunch of baroque swirls, which if he was fanciful might represent vampire fangs, but it was difficult to tell. That, unfortunately, was something he couldn¡¯t sell. It might be magical, and it was definitely traceable.

    Callum opened up the briefcase with all the hard drives he¡¯d taken and stared at them. It had seemed like a good idea at the time but he actually had no idea what he¡¯d look for. He had no tools for cracking open encrypted files, he didn¡¯t have the resources to reference phone numbers or account numbers, and he didn¡¯t have the contacts to make use of any information he did manage to get.

    Not to mention he didn¡¯t have the know-how to make sure his computer was safe from any malware or whatever that was encoded in the hard drives. Sure, that might be giving them too much credit, but he couldn¡¯t think of a single reason to take the risk. At the same time, he was loath to simple toss them, so he got a bottle of rubbing alcohol and wiped them off to get rid of his prints in case he ever did pass them on.

    He wasn¡¯t sure he would. The only person he could give them to was Arthur Langley, and for all he knew shifters would be able to smell his scent on them unless he gave them a bath in alcohol or something. Obviously Arthur already knew Callum was involved, but whatever specialists would be trying to get at the data did not. The same was true of the crest.

    Callum felt woefully underprepared. He had originally thought that he¡¯d stay in Winut for years, slowly working out magic details while lying low, then when he knew more he¡¯d know what the next step would be. Now it was clear that not only would that not be happening, he didn¡¯t have even the basic supplies for dealing with brushes with the supernatural.

    The list on the notepad got longer. He could have used his phone, but he didn¡¯t entirely trust the sanctity of his data there. It might be excessively paranoid, but anything connected to the internet could be compromised, and without a supernatural-friendly phone he was probably even more vulnerable. The people at the top of GAR certainly didn¡¯t have to worry about their electronics being hacked. Or at the very least, didn¡¯t have to worry about the consequences if they were.

    He hemmed and hawed over the magical stuff, but eventually put it in a separate bag. If he figured out or found out what it was, he might take it with him, but there was no point in loading himself down just because it was shiny and magical. Everything else got repacked and moved to the basement. If nothing else, it was far, far easier to deal with moving things with his magic.

    Stolen story; please report.

    One of the duffles got repurposed into his new bug-out bag, with all the currency and some of the new weapons. The old ones he¡¯d brought with him when he moved to Winut would have to be discarded and destroyed, considering they were still registered to Callum Wells. Which was a shame, but if someone came by and wanted to inspect his guns, the matching serial numbers would give the game away.

    For better or for worse, it was near midnight by the time he finished sorting. Which meant he couldn¡¯t actually address his list, but he was also still exhausted. It wasn¡¯t just from a lack of sleep either, it was from the imagined echoes of what he¡¯d just done. He could still feel the kick of the shotgun against his shoulder and hear the sound. Shooting targets was one thing; shooting people was another. Since he had run out of things to do, Callum ascended to his bedroom again and tried to sleep.

    ***

    ¡°So the weapons we retrieved from the building matched those that were used to commit the murders,¡± Arthur Langley told the reporter. ¡°We¡¯ll have a full report later, but we¡¯re certain that the murderer was part of the drug gang that was caught inside the motel.¡± He found it absurd that even in a distant place like Winut, someone showed up hunting down news. Even after he¡¯d vastly under-reported the number of bodies and attributed the fire to drug manufacturing gone wrong.

    ¡°You¡¯re confident that there will be no further murders in Winut?¡± The reporter asked, in exactly the most irritating possible tone.

    ¡°Nothing is certain but death and taxes,¡± Arthur told her. ¡°But those druggies won¡¯t be killing anyone else. No further questions.¡± He walked away from the camera, ignoring the inane and useless questions she was shouting. It was all just a show anyway, because the people he actually had to worry about were yet to arrive.

    Just as he was thinking that, his phone buzzed, the caller ID proclaiming that Gerry wanted his attention. He took a moment to make sure he was out of earshot of the mundanes before he answered it, sliding into his car.

    ¡°They¡¯re here?¡± He asked, turning the key and starting the engine.

    ¡°Waiting for you at the pack compound,¡± Gerry confirmed.

    ¡°Please tell me they didn¡¯t bring a vamp along.¡± It was still daylight, so a vamp wouldn¡¯t be particularly active, but they always traveled with an annoying coterie.

    ¡°They didn¡¯t, thankfully. It¡¯s a mage and a fae.¡±

    ¡°Anyone we know?¡± Arthur wasn¡¯t surprised GAR hadn¡¯t sent a shifter agent. Considering the nature of the tensions, there would have been severe conflicts of interest.

    ¡°Nobody I know, but maybe you¡¯ve heard of them. Agents Danforth and Black.¡± That didn¡¯t ring any bells for Arthur, but he wasn¡¯t plugged in to the inner workings of GAR anyway.

    ¡°Text that to Alpha Chester,¡± Arthur ordered. ¡°See if he knows anything about them. I¡¯ll be there in ten minutes.¡±

    ¡°Yes, Alpha.¡± Gerry hung up, and Arthur concentrated on driving for the next thirty seconds or so before his phone buzzed. He stopped at an intersection and checked the text from Chester.

    Danforth wind mage. Black reads corpses. Be careful. Arthur replied with a thumbs-up and then continued driving. He certainly intended to be careful.

    The pack compound was a sprawling converted farm outside of Winut, several hundred acres fenced off and filled with shifter-friendly buildings and amenities. He didn¡¯t spend nearly as much time there as he would have liked, since his position as Sheriff wasn¡¯t just for show. It really was a full-time job, though not coincidentally one that put him in control of any possible supernatural incidents, especially ones that might involve his own people.

    He pulled into the driveway, noting there was a glider-plane instead of a rented car sitting in the field. It made sense for a wind mage to use such a thing, he supposed, especially since there weren¡¯t any teleport circles nearby, but they¡¯d need a car for use around town. They probably expected the pack to play taxi. Which grated, but was technically reasonable for them to ask.

    The general mood through the pack bonds was subdued but positive. They all knew that there was absolutely nothing GAR could fault them for, but at the same time, they needed to be careful not to give anything away about their mysterious savior. Though there were only two pack members aside from himself, Jessica, Gerry, Clara, and Clara¡¯s parents who actually knew about Mister Hall. The Wolfpack pair had already gone back to Chester, though, so they weren¡¯t an issue.

    He heard the tap of keyboard keys before he even opened the door, and smelled Danforth¡¯s magic along with a colder, more floral undertone that had to be fae. So he wasn¡¯t surprised when he entered and found the pair of them on their laptops in the big den. If they¡¯d been friends of the pack, it would have been the kitchen, but it took a lot to earn that.

    ¡°Agents,¡± he said, considering but ultimately deciding against a shift to war form. They¡¯d probably just see it as intimidation, rather than him just wanting to destress after a long few days. Danforth was a lanky specimen, looking middle-aged but still spry, while Black seemed very young and wispy, dark hair and pale skin a strong contrast to Danforth¡¯s blonde hair and tan.

    ¡°Alpha Langley,¡± Danforth said, standing up and offering his hand while being careful not to look Arthur in the eyes. He had to suppress a grin. No Alpha that interacted with the greater populace felt much of a challenge from anyone that wasn¡¯t a shifter, but it was nice to leave it in the protocols. ¡°How goes the cleanup?¡±

    ¡°Your people were still digging when I left,¡± Arthur said. ¡°But we have all the corpses in the morgue for you.¡±

    ¡°Excellent,¡± Danforth said, glancing at Black. She nodded faintly. ¡°We¡¯ll go there after we ask you a few questions,¡± Danforth continued. ¡°Nothing sensitive, just to clarify a few points.¡± Arthur found it amusing that they were using the standard line on him, despite the fact that he was in law enforcement as well.

    ¡°Sure,¡± he told them. ¡°Go ahead.¡±

    ¡°So, you didn¡¯t challenge the Noreseti nest over taking up residence in Winut?¡± Danforth asked.

    ¡°Correct. I¡¯ll be completely frank, we do not have enough mature shifters to deal with what they brought, and they knew it. I was discussing options with my Alpha when the situation resolved itself.¡±

    ¡°Resolved itself,¡± Danforth noted. ¡°An interesting way to put it.¡±

    ¡°My pack certainly didn¡¯t have anything to do with it.¡± Arthur shrugged.

    ¡°So you say,¡± Danforth said, and Arthur growled at him. The mage didn¡¯t exactly flinch, but his body language became far more defensive. The man might be a GAR agent, but that didn¡¯t mean he could insult Arthur in his own home.

    ¡°My apologies,¡± Danforth corrected himself. ¡°It is just that it seems difficult to credit that someone could destroy a vampire nest of that size without being obvious about it.¡±

    ¡°It is difficult to credit,¡± Arthur agreed. ¡°I¡¯m still surprised. But as I said, I only asked for help from Alpha Chester, and only within the confines of territorial agreements. The destruction surprised me as much as anyone.¡± He was fairly certain that mages like Danforth couldn¡¯t truth-scry him inside his own home. So far as he knew that required elaborate enchanting, and their own dedicated rooms, but it was easier to tell the truth. Just not the whole truth.

    Danforth looked at Arthur for a few moments, then glanced over at Black. She shrugged silently and he sighed.

    ¡°Very well, let¡¯s go see the corpses.¡±

    ¡°I didn¡¯t see a car outside,¡± Arthur observed neutrally. Danforth¡¯s mouth twisted.

    ¡°May I request transportation for the duration, Alpha Langley?¡± It was obvious enough that he was irritated by having to make the request, but that was just tough.

    ¡°Yes. We can take mine to the morgue, and I¡¯ll arrange to have a loaner brought out.¡± Surely someone in the pack had a beater they wouldn¡¯t mind foisting off on the GAR pair. It was maybe a little petty not to try and find a new car for them, but they were the ones who decided to come in an impractical wind mage vehicle.

    The supernatural morgue was, obviously, not in the same place as the mundane one. Not that Winut had a mundane morgue, let alone one capable of holding thirty-three bodies. No, the supernatural morgue was nearly an hour away, in Alpha Chester¡¯s territory. It probably would have been easier on everyone to meet the agents there, but GAR probably wanted to make a statement by having them show up at Arthur¡¯s home.

    He wasn¡¯t looking forward to a full hour¡¯s drive with them, but fortunately after a few more minutes of verbal prodding about the events of the Flats Hotel Massacre, which was what they were calling the case, Danforth defaulted to working on his laptop. And talking to Black, who only ever answered with pantomime.

    Normally Arthur would have gone straight to Alpha Chester to pay his respects upon entering his territory, but that was another hour¡¯s drive and he was in charge of the GAR agents. He contented himself with a text updating Chester about their location and intentions as he waited for them to gather up their laptops and exit the car. When they had themselves sorted he led them into the bland warehouse and down to where the charred bodies were laid out on the slabs.

    The fire had done a pretty good job of rendering the bodies unrecognizable, and likely not identifiable outside of genetic matching and dental records, but they were still more or less intact. He¡¯d been a little spooked when he¡¯d seen them the first time, and seeing them a second time didn¡¯t really help. Arthur was no stranger to death and dead bodies, but so many of them with the exact same wounds was bizarre.

    Danforth¡¯s mouth was set in a hard line as he and Black walked along the rows of corpses, stopping now and then to take pictures. What Danforth thought he¡¯d get from the pictures, Arthur didn¡¯t know, and fire-scorched mundanes were not exactly photogenic.

    ¡°They¡¯re all identical,¡± he said after a while.

    ¡°Yup,¡± Arthur agreed.

    ¡°Every single mundane has an entry wound at the right temple. Every single vampire has one at the base of the throat, aimed upward,¡± Danforth continued, raising his eyebrows at Arthur.

    ¡°I noticed that myself,¡± he agreed. ¡°I think you¡¯ll agree that¡¯s not shifter work. I¡¯m not entirely certain what could do that.¡±

    ¡°That¡¯s what we¡¯re here to find out.¡± He nodded to Black, and she stepped forward and touched the seared skin of the nearest body with one finger with a moue of distaste. The cold scent of fae suddenly spiked as black veins popped out over Black¡¯s pale white skin, her eyes turning into twin pools of darkness. Arthur had to keep himself from shifting; fae magic got really creepy sometimes, and Black was clearly on the far end of the scale.

    It didn¡¯t last more than two or three seconds. The transformation went as quickly as it came, and Black sighed.

    ¡°Completely blank. He was just standing there, and then he was dead. Didn¡¯t see or hear anything.¡± It was the first time he¡¯d heard her speak, and her voice was strange, holding some overtones that were probably magical. He was glad shifters had some resistance to magic, because there was definitely something in that voice he didn¡¯t want directed at him.

    ¡°Maybe try one of the vampires?¡± Danforth suggested, and Black made a face, but went over to that side. They had been rather more thoroughly cooked, and bone showed through in a few places, so Black reluctantly touched the bodies with only the barest tips of her fingers as she read them.

    ¡°It¡¯s the same,¡± she reported. ¡°He was sleeping, and then nothing.¡±

    ¡°Well, keep trying,¡± Danforth told her. ¡°Someone had to have seen something.¡±

    But nobody had. Black focused on the mundanes, since it had happened during the day and the vamps had probably just been asleep, but she tapped out after five more and they¡¯d all been killed the same way. One bullet, no warning, instant death. The most information she got was that some of them had heard gunshots in the far distance before they died, and two of them guarding something. Arthur mentally revised his image of Mister Chase Hall from merely dangerous to absolutely terrifying. Not only had he destroyed a vampire nest in minutes, he¡¯d done so without anyone catching him at it, and of course without getting a scratch on himself. He hadn¡¯t even looked winded. Fae assassin was seeming a pretty reasonable guess.

    ¡°I¡¯m afraid we¡¯ll be imposing on you for a while,¡± Danforth said, discreetly propping Black up after her show of magic. ¡°Someone who can do this is too dangerous to just let run around loose.¡±

    ¡°I¡¯ll have to find some room with the pack,¡± Arthur said. ¡°Our motel burned to the ground.¡±

    ¡°Ha, ha,¡± Danforth said, without a speck of humor, and Arthur pulled out his phone once again to update his pack. Since they were an hour away, it was a good time for them to go update Mister Hall, though if everyone kept their mouths shut he doubted that the agents would stumble on him.

    There might be some evidence in the motel itself, as the cleanup crew was still going through it, but Arthur doubted it. If Mister Hall had been thorough enough to ensure that every shot he took was done without giving anything away at all, then he was thorough enough not to leave anything behind that the fire wouldn¡¯t take care of.

 Chapter 8 â€“ Tension

    The car turning into Callum¡¯s driveway was familiar, and it wasn¡¯t the sheriff¡¯s. He was still feeling tired and hungover, even if he hadn¡¯t drunk a single drop of alcohol, so it took him a moment to recognize Jessica Langley driving and Clara in the passenger seat. Part of him was surprised it was just those two, but at the same time he was glad there was nobody else.

    Of all the people who might have shown up after what had happened, those two were probably the least worrisome to see arrive on his doorstep. He struggled out of bed and splashed water on his face, making sure he affixed the hairpiece and summoned his cane to his hand. Though he¡¯d been out of sorts when he¡¯d gone to the caf¨¦ before, he couldn¡¯t allow himself to break the habits of his disguise. When the knock on the door came he grabbed his cane, stumped down the stairs, and opened it up while offering the pair a smile.

    ¡°I wasn¡¯t sure you¡¯d be here,¡± Jessica said.

    ¡°Should I have gone?¡± He could barely summon the adrenaline to wake himself any further, but he did reach out with his senses to find his supplies, ready to move at a moment¡¯s notice.

    ¡°No, I don¡¯t think so,¡± Jessica told him. ¡°There are GAR agents here to investigate things, but they don¡¯t know about you.¡±

    ¡°I wanted to say thank you,¡± Clara said abruptly, hovering uncertainly a moment before stepping forward to give Callum a hug, squeezing with more strength than a girl her age should have. He just stood there awkwardly, arms partly raised, too stunned to do anything but try and let his brain catch up.

    ¡°You¡¯re welcome,¡± Callum said. ¡°But remember, I wasn¡¯t there, I didn¡¯t do anything.¡±

    ¡°We understand,¡± Jessica said, as Clara finally let him go. ¡°But at the same time, we can¡¯t just forget it, so¡­¡± She nodded at Clara, who picked up a large package from where it was resting on the porch and offered it to him. He hadn¡¯t smelled it before, but once it got closer the scent of steak and garlic and butter wafted to his nose. Callum¡¯s stomach growled.

    ¡°The Sienna Caf¨¦ is kind of closed for a while anyway, until they finish cleaning up the motel remains, so we brought you a bunch of food,¡± Clara explained.

    ¡°Well, I am hungry,¡± Callum said, suddenly feeling ravenous. ¡°Why don¡¯t you come around back and you can fill me in.¡±

    He led them around the side, knowing that his worries that they¡¯d be able to smell the guns and money he¡¯d confiscated from the vampires was probably unfounded, but he didn¡¯t want to take the chance. If nothing else, he hadn¡¯t exactly cleaned up the house for company. The back porch, on the other hand, was nice enough even with the chill in the air.

    Callum got one of the take-out containers from the package, opening it to reveal a heroically large steak, far larger than he ever ordered. He did offer to share it with Clara and Jessica, but they declined. Clara slightly more reluctantly than Jessica. Though considering she worked in the caf¨¦, he was pretty sure she could get ahold of all the eats she could ever want. On the other hand, teens were always hungry.

    ¡°If you don¡¯t mind my being rude by eating, what¡¯s going on?¡±

    ¡°Alpha Langley went to meet the GAR agents this morning,¡± Jessica said, unperturbed. ¡°He says they didn¡¯t get anything off the bodies, but they¡¯re going to be poking around anyway.¡±

    ¡°Mmm.¡± Callum mumbled through a mouthful of steak. Unless they had something specifically pointing to Callum, it was probably better to stay and try to brazen it out than vanish. If he decided to up and leave, that would look damn suspicious. Then they¡¯d investigate his house and yard and probably find some evidence that he had been involved, considering how thorough forensics could be. His greatest security was simply not being suspected.

    ¡°The GAR people have been going over the motel for almost a whole day now,¡± Clara put in. ¡°But I don¡¯t think they found anything either. I don¡¯t really know much about what mages do, though.¡±

    Unfortunately, neither did Callum. He thought his little siphons and the subsequent fire would remove the only traces he¡¯d left of his magic from the portals, but he really didn¡¯t know. There was always the possibility that there was some mage or, more likely, some fae who could just see the past and sniff him out no matter how careful he was.

    ¡°I appreciate you telling me,¡± Callum said, cutting himself another bite. ¡°I¡¯m not sure there¡¯s anything we can do to affect things at this point, though.¡±

    ¡°We¡¯re keeping our mouths shut,¡± Jessica said. ¡°But Alpha Chester is worried that your help might cost something. Something we can¡¯t afford.¡±

    ¡°Alpha Chester?¡± Callum asked, then immediately castigated himself for doing so. If he was pretending to be a mundane, he wouldn¡¯t know anything, but if he was pretending to be a normal member of supernatural society, he really shouldn¡¯t ask about local leaders. Any ordinary person would know, and he had heard the name before. Admittedly, he wasn¡¯t in the best state of mind then.

    ¡°The Midwest Alpha,¡± Clara told him, not seeming to care about his ignorance. ¡°He¡¯s Alpha Langley¡¯s own Alpha, so while you did help us, in a way you helped him too.¡±

    ¡°Well.¡± Callum considered how to play it. He wanted to use as few lies as possible, because that sort of thing was easy to get tangled in, but that wasn¡¯t the same as telling the whole truth. It was best to just play the mysterious stranger, because then people would draw their own conclusions and confirm their own biases. ¡°It was not something I did to get rewarded. I did it because I told you I would help if I could. And I could.¡±

    ¡°So you¡¯re not looking to call in anything for what we owe you?¡±

    ¡°You don¡¯t owe me.¡± Callum smiled briefly. ¡°Like I said, I was never there. It never happened. In fact, while I appreciate the gratitude, I would prefer that we leave it there and not speak of it again.¡± For all he knew, a mage somewhere could listen in from a hundred miles away, and with two GAR agents in the area it was better to be circumspect.

    ¡°Yes, of course,¡± Jessica said, glancing at Clara. ¡°Well, we¡¯ll be opening the caf¨¦ again in a few days. I hope to see you there!¡±

    ¡°I¡¯ll probably be out of food by then,¡± Callum said with a laugh, looking at the stack of takeout containers still in the package. ¡°Well, maybe not, but you can be sure that I¡¯ll be stopping by.¡± Assuming he was still there. Knowing there were actual GAR agents made him think of his to-do list. He needed to go into town and get supplies.

    Now that he had some basic magic, he actually had two ways of bugging out. One was the mundane way, hitching rides, using cash, and generally not leaving a trail, and the other was the magical way. He could teleport himself now, or he could, at least in theory, nullify his own gravity and space-drag himself. That gave him the option of a poor man¡¯s flight, though it absolutely came with issues of its own. Among them the fact that he hadn¡¯t actually tried it yet.

    The only problem was that he did have to worry about the vis itself being traceable. That probably wouldn¡¯t matter too much most of the time, whatever disturbance he made lost over time or mixed in with the presence of other mages, but with a pair of GAR agents nearby he couldn¡¯t take the chance. At least not immediately. He would only feel comfortable using magic if he was far away from anyone who could track it.

    ¡°Great,¡± said Jessica, and stood up, Clara following suit. ¡°We¡¯ll get out of your hair, then. Enjoy your meal!¡±

    ¡°Enjoy your meal!¡± Clara echoed, Callum stood to walk them out to the car before returning to put the take-out in the fridge and finish the absolutely massive steak. Alone, he teleported the notepad to himself and added more items, on the presumption that he might be able to bring more than a bag or two with him. More of a pious hope, really, but it was better than not being prepared.

    He drove out maybe half an hour later, circling around the closed road while he cast his senses out at the remains of the motel. It was still surreal to think that he¡¯d done that, so hard to believe that it was like watching the actions of a stranger. But the truth was he¡¯d do it again, considering what they¡¯d done.

    There were people combing over the ruins, as Clara had said, and while at least half of them weren¡¯t human, none of them were shifters. Nor were there any vampires; they seemed to be some kind of fae, by the pointy ears and the bizarre haze of magic coming off them. It wasn¡¯t threads and fields like mage spells, but rather like flowing water. He didn¡¯t dare probe too closely, but he did see some weak flickers of magic from some kind of mage, which probably did a great job of hiding any tracks he might have left.

    The stores he needed to visit were far enough from the motel as to be out of range, but he kept his senses active anyway. Camping supplies, duct tape, hardware cloth, plastic bags, tarp ¡ª nothing that would raise an eyebrow by itself, but taken all together it might look like he was getting rid of bodies. Which was why he went to different stores, of course.

    He got back home and busied himself with cleaning up his loot. The camping supplies went into the duffles along with clothes, money, and one each of the guns with a small amount of ammunition. While before he¡¯d taken it for the principle of the thing, now he knew exactly how lethal he could be. And how lethal he might need to be.

    The rest of the guns, the ammunition, and the magical items went in small packages, plastic bags wrapped in duct tape. He needed to cache it in some way, but he¡¯d been chewing over the possibilities for that and had maybe a solution. It wasn¡¯t a pretty solution, but it would probably work.

    Callum got a spade and went to the basement, then reached out with his senses to find a rock somewhere deep in his yard. He carefully surrounded it and exchanged its position with air, though if it needed an extra-hard push of mana, creating a little bit of a pocket that he quickly opened a portal into. It was about as wide as his hand, and he started shoveling dirt out with the trowel. Once it was big enough, he widened the portal and shoved one of the packages into it. Then for good measure, tossed a siphon bearing in with the package and dropped the portal, leaving the entire thing buried nearly ten feet underground.

    He worked his fingers, feeling a little bit of strain from the short handle of the spade, but he had a lot of packages to cache. At least the soil was much softer and deeper in Winut. It would be impossible to go so deep back in his hometown of Tanner, so close to the Appalachians.

    The bundle of hard drives got wrapped in the wire mesh of hardware cloth with some aluminum foil for the heck of it, on the off chance there was still some buried chip or something, or even some proximity thing for someone wandering around with a gadget he¡¯d never heard of. That one went as deep as he could find, though it wasn¡¯t much deeper than any of the others. The magic bundle got a siphon bearing, even though he couldn¡¯t discern any kind of signature leaking from it, and the faraday cage wrapping just in case.

    Once he was done, the only evidence that there had been stolen property around was a pile of dirt in his basement, and considering that it was unfinished the pile of dirt didn¡¯t even look too out of place. He had no idea if anyone would ever visit or look, but he felt a lot better with things cleaned up like that. Now he was ready for a visit, if the agents ever came.

    ***

    ¡°They¡¯re definitely hiding something,¡± Ray Danforth told his partner. ¡°There isn¡¯t a chance that Alpha Langley is as ignorant as he professes to be.¡±

    ¡°So eavesdrop,¡± Felicia Black suggested languidly. ¡°I thought you could hear anything within a mile radius.¡± Most people would have thought that pairing someone with siren blood with an air mage would be a recipe for disaster, but Ray had some certain advantages. Mostly, he¡¯d been tutored in how to safely reinforce his ears with his air magic without accidentally causing an embolism or similar issue, allowing him to screen out magical effects.

    Despite their improved hearing, a properly trained air mage was the most immune to siren effects.

    ¡°I have been,¡± he told her. ¡°You have no idea how lusty these shifters are. So I¡¯m overhearing quite a lot, but none of it is pertinent to our case. In fact there¡¯s remarkably little gossip about it, for all that some mysterious benefactor came and handled their problem for them.¡±

    ¡°I could try to get some of them to talk,¡± Felicia suggested with a smile.

    ¡°With Alpha Langley here, that probably isn¡¯t the best idea.¡± Ray frowned. Shifters were touchy at the best of times, but Langley clearly didn¡¯t like the idea of GAR agents in his town. Quite a reversal, considering the complaints Alpha Chester had to GAR in the files. Felicia¡¯s voice wasn¡¯t quite beyond the bounds of propriety to use, especially on a suspect, but hypnotizing random shifters was a good way to get teeth buried in someone¡¯s throat.

    Reading on Amazon or a pirate site? This novel is from Royal Road. Support the author by reading it there.

    ¡°So, actual groundwork?¡± Felicia asked, making a face as she sat up from the couch.

    ¡°Let¡¯s see what the cleaners found first,¡± he said. ¡°I¡¯m sure we would have heard already if there was anything exciting, but you never know. Considering we have exactly nothing so far in this case, any evidence of anything would be welcome.¡±

    ¡°Fine,¡± Felicia sighed. ¡°Let¡¯s see what car they stuck us with.¡±

    It wasn¡¯t even a car. It was a white pickup, and Ray wasn¡¯t much of a fan of the gearshift, but it did drive and it was, at least, scrupulously clean. If there was one nice thing about shifter compounds, it was that no slovenly behavior was tolerated. He let Felicia drive, her feet only just reaching the pedals, and focused on his air sense as they headed into town.

    The local mana was more or less undisturbed. Shifters didn¡¯t leave much magic residue and there didn¡¯t seem to be many fae or mages around, so any serious use would stick out. He could use the nearby air to trace out small passages and check houses and basements for anything unexpected, but there was nothing terribly unusual. Not that he expected to find much on the drive to the crime scene.

    Felicia waved her GAR badge at the fae keeping people out of the motel site and behind the police tape, and they were let through into the parking lot. The truck was so high up that even Ray would have to jump down, not to mention Felicia, if it weren¡¯t for the fact that he were an air mage. Ray channeled his focus¡¯ slowfall spell and targeted his partner, then himself, and simply drifted down with dignity.

    ¡°What do you have for us, Cenee?¡± Ray asked, approaching the other mage. A weak fire and earth type, he was excellent for dealing with smoldering rubble like the Flats Motel. Ray had worked with him more than once, especially when it came to incidents with dragonblooded. Dragonblooded always set things on fire.

    ¡°Well, I do have a magical signature for you, but I don¡¯t think it¡¯s going to help.¡± Cenee tossed a signature recorder to Ray, who reflexively pulled it to his hand with a gust of wind. He channeled some mana into it, through the signature, and the air manifestation glyph lit up.

    ¡°Damn,¡± he swore. ¡°The vamps had an air mage with them, didn¡¯t they?¡±

    ¡°Yes, Denise Hawking.¡± Cenee said. ¡°You¡¯ll have to check but they probably match. No other noticeable signatures.¡±

    ¡°Anything else?¡±

    ¡°A lack of something. We got a list of what they were supposed to have with them from Research and there¡¯s none of that. I¡¯ve combed it through with earth sense and there were only a few guns left. All the rest of the equipment is gone. The gold is gone. And the Minneapolis Vampire Council really wants a gold and banic formal crest back, or at least what¡¯s left of it, but I couldn¡¯t find a trace.¡±

    Ray made a face. Banic alloy was a combination of mordite, silverite, and corite, and it actually was fairly useless. It didn¡¯t even disrupt the magic of various supernaturals nearly as well as the pure metals. But it was quite expensive and did hold enchantments extremely well, so people with excess money sometimes used it for status symbols. No wonder they wanted them back; that was probably almost one million dollars worth of materials.

    ¡°So it was looted. Actually that makes things easier. Felicia, get that list and make sure there¡¯s a watch put on those items. If nothing else, we can probably find him when he tries to fence them.¡± Ray put the signature recorder in his pocket. ¡°Anything else I should know before you write your report?¡±

    ¡°I found some silverite chains in the basement. No corpse associated with them, though.¡±

    ¡°So they had, or had planned, to hold a shifter.¡± Ray shook his head. ¡°They didn¡¯t mention any of that, but if they¡¯d taken one of the pack, this seems rather more explainable, doesn¡¯t it?¡± Felicia poked him in the side. ¡°Yes, wild speculation, I know, but this didn¡¯t come out of nowhere.¡±

    ¡°You know, I find the fire odd,¡± Cenee remarked. ¡°The pack could have just called in cleanup normally. It¡¯s not like we don¡¯t have spats between supernaturals all the time.¡±

    ¡°Well, according to the pack, they didn¡¯t do this.¡± That was the Alpha¡¯s official statement, and Ray was actually inclined to believe it. Shifters tended to kill with their warforms or beast forms, considering their claws and teeth could cut through magic to some extent. Not to mention it was easier and cheaper than mordite or corite weaponry. ¡°Thanks, Cenee. We¡¯ll let you know if we have any other questions.¡±

    Cenee waved at him and went back to supervising the last of the cleanup. Ray tilted his head in the direction of the truck, where he applied a loft spell to help boost Felicia up into the driver¡¯s seat. He considered things as Felicia drove them away from the motel, heading nowhere, just driving the town.

    ¡°As I see it, there are two options. Either the person or persons responsible for this just happened to pass through at the time, which means we¡¯ll probably never catch them. The fire ruined the motel¡¯s records, and they didn¡¯t have any off-site backups. Or they¡¯re a local, and the vampires did something to provoke them. In that case, the fire is emotional.¡±

    ¡°A local that is capable of murdering a nest of vampires and thralls in the morning without disturbing anyone with more than the sound of gunshots.¡± Felicia nodded. ¡°It¡¯s possible. Fae have wandered off on occasion and not come back. I haven¡¯t noticed any fae around here myself, but surely Alpha Langley would know.¡±

    ¡°We¡¯ll get a list from him,¡± Ray decided. ¡°And we¡¯ll start looking through the records of the townsfolk ourselves. See if anything pops out.¡±

    ***

    Callum tried to distract himself from the hyperawareness of his spatial sense by doing some more studying. He was starting to see some ways that being able to twist space would let him do completely ridiculous things, but he wasn¡¯t sure how to make that happen with his magic just yet. Or if he even had the power to do so. Pseudogravity was very, very simple and it still taxed his mental capacity, so more complicated things might require tools.

    Tools he didn¡¯t have and had no idea how to get. He really wanted to see if he could find anything about that on the magical internet, but if there were GAR agents snooping around he didn¡¯t want to be caught with a magical laptop. So for the moment, the laptop was down in the basement closet of the caf¨¦, where supernatural electronics might be expected to be found.

    He¡¯d scrubbed everything of his from the laptop first and wiped it with alcohol, but he actually wasn¡¯t worried about anyone messing with it. So far as he was aware nobody ever cared about eight-year-old laptops shoved into a random closet. If they could trace him back through that, they probably would have been able to find him already.

    Callum had to stop himself from fidgeting magically. He¡¯d developed the habit of juggling teleportations as part of his magical exercise routine, and of course he didn¡¯t want to do anything when there were people presumably sniffing for any scent that was out of place. Metaphorically or literally, in the case of shifters.

    Jittery as he was, he caught the weird, almost shocking prod of a vis presence at the edge of his perception. He swore and jerked back, for all the good that would do, before he realized what it was. Or at least what it might be. Someone was poking about with their own senses, and not just passively either. It was like a strong wind blowing through one corner of his brain, and he hurriedly pulled things back, metaphorically closing his eyes.

    After getting used to perceiving everything with his spatial sense, he felt off-balance and was glad that he had a cane. He might actually genuinely need it while he was pretending to be a mundane, and it wasn¡¯t hard to sell that his vision was poor as he groped for the cane and stood up. The other mage might not have sensed Callum¡¯s presence, since after all Callum wasn¡¯t disturbing anything with his vis, but if he had, Callum wanted to at least be armed.

    Despite the scare, nobody drove up to his house in the next minute. Not even the next ten minutes. When he found himself pacing, Callum decided to just drag his laptop over to the window that faced out into the road and, if nothing else, browse his bookmarked entertainment sites while killing time.

    Because of that he actually almost missed it when a big white pickup turned into his driveway, even though the rumble of the engine should have warned him before the crunch of gravel. It wasn¡¯t what he would have thought a pair of alphabet-soup type agents would drive, but the pair that got out of the truck definitely fit the profile. Dressed in suits, hard eyes, professionally neutral expressions.

    One of them was a rather strange-looking fae, short, but with blue skin, pointed ears, and a slightly fishy face. What made that go from silly to intimidating was the flash of needle teeth, like that of an anglerfish, and the way the slitted green eyes had their pupils widen and then narrow as she looked at Callum¡¯s house. The other was a medium size man with medium features, the kind of person who stood out because he was so bland.

    Callum took a couple of deep breaths, glancing around to make sure that there was nothing obviously off about his house. The only thing that might possibly look odd to the outside eye, so far as he could tell, was that it was exceedingly clean. He probably had gone overboard tidying up after getting rid of the loot from the vampires, but a clean house was better than a messy one any day.

    A few seconds later, one of the two knocked on the door with a firm hand. Callum gave it a moment, as if he hadn¡¯t been expecting them, then picked up his cane and made his way to the door. He was damned glad he had seen the fae from a distance first, because up close it would have been hard to keep from staring, even with all the practice he¡¯d had schooling his face.

    ¡°Good afternoon, Mister Hall,¡± the man said, reaching into his suit pocket and producing his credentials. ¡°I¡¯m Raymond Danforth and this is my partner, Felicia Black. We¡¯re with the FBI.¡± The badge he proffered certainly did not say FBI. It said Department of Arcane Investigation instead. Callum figured it was covered by a glamour, one that he wasn¡¯t seeing, so he just accepted it. Even without his spatial sense active, he could feel magic radiating off the man, far stronger than anything the vampire¡¯s wind mage could have summoned.

    ¡°Oh. I see,¡± Callum said, examining the badge and looking back up at Danforth. ¡°What can I do for the FBI, Mister Danforth? Officer Danforth? Agent Danforth?¡± He was, paradoxically, not worried about being worried. Most people would be thrown if an FBI agent showed up on their doorstep.

    ¡°We¡¯re looking into the fire at the Flats Motel,¡± Danforth said, smiling professionally, in a way that didn¡¯t quite reach his eyes. Callum instantly disliked him. ¡°Do you mind if we come in and ask you a few questions?¡±

    ¡°That seems like the kind of thing I¡¯d want a lawyer for,¡± Callum said cautiously, keeping in mind the maxim that nothing was to be gained by talking to the police. He¡¯d bent that for Arthur Langley, but the sheriff was definitely dedicated to the welfare of Winut. The DAI agents, presumably under GAR, most certainly didn¡¯t. The two agents glanced at each other.

    ¡°You don¡¯t want a lawyer,¡± the fae said, speaking at last. The voice sounded weird, a little bit resonant with an accent he couldn¡¯t even begin to describe, but it was still understandable. Thank goodness. He really needed to figure out how to perceive glamours because there was no way she went around talking to mundanes with that voice. Someday he¡¯d run into someone who couldn¡¯t speak at all without the glamours and that would give the game away entirely. That said, he really didn¡¯t like the tone or the contents of the words. The trick was how much to push back.

    ¡°That sounds rather like a threat,¡± Callum noted. ¡°I¡¯ve heard the FBI can be aggressive, but surely it¡¯s not that bad yet.¡±

    The two exchanged glances again, but of a different type. He had issues reading Black¡¯s expression, the fae face being just inhuman enough to make him unsure how to interpret it, but Danforth looked strangely worried. There was just too long a pause before they looked at him again.

    ¡°Mister Hall, did Sheriff Langley tell you about the people in the motel?¡±

    ¡°I heard that there were people from out of town a few days before the murders happened,¡± Callum hedged, nerves prickling from something in the agent¡¯s stance. Danforth made a sort of a gesture, one that Callum recognized belatedly as being the one Sen used when he cast the obfuscation spell. He really wished that he had his senses up so he could study how it was done, but with another mage so close he didn¡¯t dare.

    Part of him was actually surprised that Danforth couldn¡¯t tell that Callum was a mage simply by proximity, but then, Callum had noticed that unless they were actively performing magic it was difficult to tell someone was a supernatural. He hadn¡¯t been able to push his senses inside anyone at all, mundane or supernatural, other than himself. Even normal people seemed to have a touch of vis, enough to make themselves immune to casual scrutiny.

    ¡°He didn¡¯t mention the pack to you, or the vampires?¡± Danforth asked, and Callum blinked at Danforth¡¯s sudden jump into supernatural business. Maybe he¡¯d assumed wrong and could tell that Callum was a mage.

    ¡°I really don¡¯t understand what you¡¯re talking about,¡± he said instead. It was the first lie he told them, but he still had the makeup on his wrist to hide the mage tattoo, and he wasn¡¯t fae or shifter.

    ¡°You will tell us what you know about the Flats Motel,¡± Black ordered, and this time he felt something strange when he heard her voice, some sort of magical pressure, and he knew he was in trouble. Not because of what Black was trying to do, but because whatever she was trying to do had failed. He didn¡¯t know what his response was supposed to be, so he stuck with ignorance.

    ¡°I really can¡¯t tell you anything,¡± Callum told her, and for a third time the pair exchanged glances.

    ¡°Look, Mister Hall, we¡¯re just trying to find out what really happened there.¡± Danforth said after a moment. ¡°We suspect that Sheriff Langley may know more than he¡¯s telling us, so we¡¯re hoping you might be able to shed some light on what went on.¡±

    ¡°I¡¯m afraid all I know is what I heard on the news. Some druggies murdered those two people and then accidentally burned down their own hideout.¡± It was a pretty good cover, though he doubted it¡¯d stand up to real scrutiny. Then again, the supernatural world seemed to be pretty good about covering its track so maybe that¡¯s exactly how it would stay.

    ¡°I see. If you¡¯ll excuse us, Mister Hall.¡± Danforth tapped Black¡¯s elbow, and the two of them turned away, walking back to their truck. But they didn¡¯t drive away, instead going into conference. Callum closed the door and watched them through the window, an uneasy feeling in his gut.

    They clearly didn¡¯t have enough evidence to link him with the crimes, but at the same time it was obvious they found him suspicious in general. If they ran his ID and started digging, they¡¯d find out it was fake soon enough. And that was assuming they didn¡¯t disappear him on general principles, as a supernatural alphabet soup agency was probably wont to do.

    Callum didn¡¯t even think of trying to take out the agents. There was no world in which that would help, even it was possible. They didn¡¯t have guns themselves, but as agents they had to be able to handle themselves, and a fae and a mage could probably wipe the floor with him if he tried anything. Plus if he gave them any reason to look too closely it¡¯d be obvious he was concealing a mage tattoo, and had even altered it, which would get him in a lot of trouble.

    Their discussion didn¡¯t take too long, and they came back to his door. Callum opened it before they knocked. He was a little heartened that their body language wasn¡¯t particularly tense, but Black¡¯s words killed whatever small bit of optimism he¡¯d managed to scrape together.

    ¡°Mister Hall, I¡¯d like to ask you to not leave the jurisdiction, as you¡¯re a person of interest in this case. We might have questions for you later as things develop.¡±

    ¡°Damn spooks,¡± he told them, channeling the way Callum, Sr., had talked about the internal affairs agencies. ¡°I have rights, you know!¡±

    ¡°And they aren¡¯t being infringed,¡± Danforth said tiredly. He turned away and the pair walked out to the truck, climbing in and driving off. There was even a little bit of magic involved in boosting the fae up to her seat. Callum stared after them a moment, then scrambled back into his house and started packing. That was as loud an invitation to leave as he¡¯d ever heard.

 Chapter 9 â€“ Reaction

    ¡°Thank you for your time, Miss Holt,¡± Ray said politely, and was rewarded by the door shutting in his face.

    ¡°So that¡¯s it?¡± Felicia asked.

    ¡°According to Langley¡¯s list, that¡¯s all the fae in town.¡± It was a short list. ¡°And I haven¡¯t sensed anything else while we¡¯ve been driving around.¡± Ray frowned. ¡°GAR doesn¡¯t have any records of any mages living out here either. Or dragonblooded, obviously.¡±

    ¡°So we¡¯re out of leads. Except that Chase weirdo,¡± Felicia pointed out. ¡°He can¡¯t be mundane and be immune to my suggestions.¡±

    ¡°Just because he¡¯s mundane doesn¡¯t mean he has no protections,¡± Ray cautioned. ¡°Especially in a shifter town. He may not even be aware of it.¡± It did happen. Heirlooms passing from generation to generation sometimes fell out of supernatural hands, and if it was just some minor enchanted object nobody would care enough to go looking for it.

    ¡°But he¡¯s the most suspicious character we¡¯ve run across,¡± Felicia protested. ¡°I mean, I actually tried and he just ignored me. Plus he lives right down the road from one of the mundanes the vamps got. That can¡¯t be coincidence. I mean, what if the vamps tried him first and ran into his protector instead?¡±

    ¡°Hm.¡± Ray considered. It was rather far-fetched, especially since he hadn¡¯t sensed any energies of any type near the guy at all. If he had someone actively watching over him, some supernatural relative or another, there should have been some traces. That left some sort of enchanted item, which was why Ray hadn¡¯t really looked for because he frankly hadn¡¯t thought of it. ¡°Well, it¡¯s not like we have any other leads. Unless we get someone in here to do truth compulsions on everyone in town, and Alpha Chester would have my head if we did that.¡±

    It was actually terribly frustrating. And also weird, that there was no magic trace left behind. Or mundane trace, at that. Normally Felicia¡¯s ability to sense what had happened to the recently dead was enough to put them on a useful trail, but in this case the best that she¡¯d gotten was that someone had fired a gun. Which they already knew from the corpses.

    ¡°We¡¯ll do that, then go back and see about scanning the rest of the dead,¡± Ray decided. ¡°If not who killed them, what was going on in that hotel. There had to be some reason someone decided to kill everyone.¡± That was still the most baffling part. The vampires insisted there was nothing special about that particular nest, but Ray was skeptical. The inclusion of the crest especially made him sure there was something else going on. Like there was someone they¡¯d pissed off that had followed the vamps out to Winut.

    The two of them got back in the truck and headed through the small town back to the wooded lane where Chase Hall¡¯s house was. Ray wasn¡¯t really expecting to get much, and when he saw that the car was gone, he knew he could expect nothing. It was possible that Hall had gone into town for something, but Ray had a hunch that wasn¡¯t the case.

    ¡°Nobody¡¯s home,¡± Felicia observed. ¡°Let¡¯s snoop.¡±

    ¡°Yeah,¡± Ray agreed. His pushed out his air senses and found there was nobody in the house or the yard, so he hopped out of the truck, helping Felicia down, and headed up to the front door. He mentally rifled through his focus until he found the standard lockpick spell, and pushed mana through it while pointing it at the door. It swung open and the two of them stepped inside.

    It was empty. It was clean. It was, in fact, too clean and too empty. There weren¡¯t any mementos or pictures, and not even enough random trash and discarded books. No electronics, either. Ray had to admit that he probably should have listened to Felicia, because there was definitely something screwy about Chase Hall.

    ¡°Wow, it¡¯s like he never moved in.¡± Felicia wandered into the kitchen, looking, but touching nothing. She knew to wait for him to ensure there were no traps, magical or mundane.

    ¡°Yeah,¡± Ray agreed. ¡°One second.¡± He closed his eyes and pushed out his air senses to the maximum, combing the house from top to bottom. It was completely empty. There were appliances and pots and pans and a few relics of someone living there, but that was it. Except for one thing.

    Ray held out his hand as he sent a gust of wind whipping around under the couch, rolling a small metal bead across the hardwood floor. He reached down and picked it up, not at all worried about the tiniest hint of energy he could sense in it. Even if it was incredibly deadly, the amount of vis involved wouldn¡¯t be able to push through his shields, and judging from what he could sense whatever it was had decayed almost completely.

    ¡°What did you find?¡±

    ¡°I¡¯m not sure,¡± Ray admitted. ¡°It¡¯s a weird and crude enchantment on a piece of steel. It¡¯s nearly gone. I¡¯ll try, but I don¡¯t think I can get a signature from it. But it definitely shows that Mister Hall knew a mage. Or a mage knew him. Steel degrades after about a day so this is recent.¡±

    ¡°Doesn¡¯t sound like he¡¯s coming home,¡± Felicia observed.

    ¡°No. Someone made him disappear and cleaned up their tracks almost perfectly.¡± He smiled grimly at the steel bead. ¡°Almost. We¡¯ll write this up and put it out to the other agents. See if anyone knows what this might be or if it¡¯s been seen before.¡± Or, if it was new, they¡¯d know to look for it in the future. It was so bizarre it almost had to be unique to whoever had been involved.

    ¡°I¡¯ll put out a stop and search on the car,¡± Felicia said, flipping open her phone. She must have gotten a picture of it when they had first talked to him. She really didn¡¯t like that a mundane had ignored her glamour suggestion.

    ¡°And then we¡¯ll go talk to Alpha Langley about Mister Hall. See if this new development will loosen his tongue.¡±

    ***

    Callum wasn¡¯t sure how long it¡¯d be safe to drive the car. At some point it¡¯d be noticed he was gone, and at some point they¡¯d send out a bulletin to keep an eye out for it. That was why he got off the interstate after the first hour and stuck to smaller roads. It wasn¡¯t like they were any less straight.

    Pushing his spatial sense to the limits he could drive pretty much as fast as he wanted to, since he could always slow down before he passed another car or got near an animal wandering about the road. So he actually managed to push eighty most of the way, which was about as far as he trusted the used coupe. Callum had never been a speed demon anyway, so that was as far as he trusted himself.

    He ended up ditching the car after seeing a truck for sale out front of a home that didn¡¯t look to be in too bad a shape. He paid cash for the pickup, transferred his bags over, and then consulted a map and drove his car to one of the many lakes around the state. Just abandoning it would have been easier, but that might have drawn attention and he didn¡¯t want anyone on his trail.

    Callum¡¯s idea was just to levitate it in. He¡¯d never done anything that large before, and the strain went up with volume. It wasn¡¯t mass, since he wasn¡¯t actually moving the matter inside the spatial bubble, but a car had thousands of times the volume of things like brooms and boards. Actually trying it, it felt like he nearly sprained something in the few seconds it took to go from lakeshore to the middle of the water.

    He had to sit down and breathe deeply while water bubbled and burbled as the car sank into the lake. Before actually sinking it, he had checked it was deep enough to hide the car because it would have been embarrassing to put in all that effort and wind up with something more obvious than a simple abandoned car. By the time it vanished from sight he was up to teleporting back, in stages, dropping a siphon bearing at the lake site and by his last teleport nearest the truck.

    All of that was merely temporary camouflage. He needed to get yet another new ID, a more permanent vehicle, and put together some kind of plan other than running away to a different city and staying quiet. Between the looted cash and the gold he was set for a long time, possibly even for life if he decided to go homestead in Alaska or something, but he wanted to know more about magic.

    Point of fact, he needed to know more about magic. He still didn¡¯t know why it was that he didn¡¯t see glamours, or how he could learn to either turn that bit off or figure them out from their magic. That meant his mundane act had limited utility unless he swore off interacting with magic and supernaturals entirely and hid.

    Which he wasn¡¯t prepared to do. While some, like Sen, were fairly awful, the Langleys had been nice people and Clara had seemed like any normal teenager. It seemed likely he¡¯d run into the supernatural at some point unless he wanted to be a hermit, and that didn¡¯t appeal to him.

    Some of it was because he genuinely wanted to know more about what he could do, but some of it was what was called sheer cussedness by the people Callum grew up with. The better he understood the supernatural world and how things worked, the firmer the foundation he could build for himself regardless of what he wanted to do. He wasn¡¯t going to let the magical authorities control his life.

    He resumed his journey in the pickup, taking time out to cover the various duffles and bags with a tarp as storms rolled in. The headlights were so anemic that he was doubly glad that he had spatial sense, else would have needed to stop for the night, especially as the rain intensified and the windshield wiper became inadequate.

    Hours and miles later, it was still raining, but he could see again by the glare of city streetlights. He found a cheap motel, paid in cash and, after a look at the room, slept in his truck. Then once again he went surveying for a fake ID, using his spatial senses to make the search easier.

    Going through a city with his magical sense active was far different than being out in the country, and not just because of the physical surroundings. There were tracks and traces of magic everywhere, entire buildings with magic nets around them, and even active magic users, though not many of those. The entire time he was driving he only caught one, and it nearly made him jerk off the road.

    Obviously he¡¯d been spoiled by the peace and quiet of Winut, at least up until the vampire incident. All the magical mess implied he could hide in plain sight in a city simply by virtue of there being enough ambient noise to hide his use, but he hated cities so that was out. It did make him feel less exposed, though, if everyone left magical tracks everywhere. It also made businesses that catered to the supernatural easy to locate.

    Considering his last experience, he restricted himself to paranormal-run pawn shops and gold-fencers, and simply colored in the spot on his tattoo where he was supposed to have a pip for his magic with a pen. Unlike that experience, he actually wanted to register as supernatural to the proprietor. Which meant he had to leave his siphon ball bearings in the truck, and he frankly felt naked without them.

    He wasn¡¯t really sure what to do to project the smell of magic, either, other than teleporting a bunch and that would be too noticeable. He wanted to hide his exact caster type even if he was admitting he was a mage. His solution was just make a large spatial bubble around himself but not do anything with it. That was actually enough of a strain that he made a note to add it to his exercises.

    His impromptu magical projection seemed to work well enough, and the man in the gold-buying shop actually gave him a nice questionnaire for a new ID. It seemed to be somewhat more upscale an operation than the ogre¡¯s, with a commensurate price increase, but that was fine with him. Hopefully this one would last longer.

    This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.

    From there, he went to several secondhand stores to get the disguise together for his new persona of Denver Brown, retired geometry professor. He ditched the hairpiece but got some greying dye for his stubble, which would eventually be a beard. A tweed suit and a crumpled hat emphasized the look, and some zero-prescription bifocals completed it. He kept the cane, since he¡¯d found he liked the prop, but he changed to a new one that was more clearly vanity.

    Without a specific destination in mind, he decided to ditch the entire idea of a destination and bought a Winnebago. It was surprisingly expensive, far costlier than the house in Winut had been, but with the largesse from the vampires he could afford it. Though he¡¯d have to exchange some of the gold plates in the next city if he also wanted to keep eating and have enough fuel.

    The pickup was discarded by the simple expedient of driving it into the bad part of town and leaving it unlocked. He expanded his senses to make sure nobody was watching as he rounded a corner and teleported back, a couple hundred yards at a time, until he was back inside his motorhome. Then he drove off again, heading for another city. It was probably overly cautious, but he didn¡¯t want to make all his purchases in one place.

    Once again he went to a paranormal-owned shop to get his business done. Partly because the source of the gold was paranormal and a mundane shop might give him grief, and partly because he was hoping that they¡¯d have more than just supernatural-compatible laptops and phones.

    ¡°Anywhere you would recommend if I¡¯m looking for some books on magic, for apprentices?¡± Callum asked as the man counted out money, coming up with a cover story on the spot. He was pretty sure the guy was a shifter, since he looked entirely human.

    ¡°You can try Pearson¡¯s Used Books, over on fifth and main,¡± the proprietor said doubtfully. ¡°But I haven¡¯t heard of many out there.¡± That didn¡¯t surprise Callum. It was obvious that supernatural society didn¡¯t believe in freedom of information, even if they did have their own version of the internet.

    ¡°Thanks,¡± Callum told him, taking the bundled money. He planned on visiting later, but a quick look on his phone showed him that it was already closed, so it would have to wait for the next day.

    Before he left entirely, he had an idea, and spent a while chewing it over while looking for holes. He felt a little bad about leaving without so much as a word to the Langleys, who had been more than accommodating. Even though Arthur Langley had clearly suspected something from the beginning, he hadn¡¯t pressed. Neither had Jessica or Clara, and Callum genuinely regretted that he¡¯d had to leave Winut. It had reminded him a lot of Tanner, and the people there had respect for privacy.

    He took time out for dinner and waited until the gold buyer was closing, casting out his sense as the proprietor locked up and headed out. Callum made a tiny portal nearby, linking it to one just behind the proprietor, and spoke.

    ¡°Can you get a message to the Midwest Alpha? Alpha Chester?¡±

    The man whirled around, instantly shifting to beast-man form, and Callum was glad that he was far away. He had the portal angled so he wasn¡¯t visible, flush against the brick of the restaurant he was by, while the other side was similarly hidden against the outside of the proprietor¡¯s shop.

    The beast-man sniffed, ears swiveling as he stared in the direction of the portal, as if he could intimidate it into giving him answers. After a few moments, though, he nodded curtly.

    ¡°Please tell him that Clara¡¯s friend is safe.¡± Callum judged that to be circumspect enough. It wasn¡¯t stating Callum¡¯s old identity, and it wasn¡¯t given the shifter even a glimpse of Callum¡¯s face, disguised or not. The only thing better would have been to use a different shifter, but Callum wasn¡¯t going to trawl the city for someone who could do the job. Once he had magical reading material, he was leaving.

    ***

    ¡°That¡¯s all he asked me to say, Alpha,¡± Keith reported. Chester frowned at his phone, but didn¡¯t let any of it creep into his voice or along the pack bonds. Some shifters were more sensitive than others and they¡¯d know if Chester was frustrated if he weren¡¯t careful.

    ¡°Thank you,¡± he told Keith. ¡°And no, don¡¯t go looking for him. That is an incredibly dangerous man. Even to a shifter.¡±

    ¡°Yes, Alpha,¡± Keith said, in a tone that implied he had never held such thoughts in the first place. Chester knew better. He could feel Keith¡¯s hunting instincts singing through the pack bonds, even though he wasn¡¯t Keith¡¯s direct Alpha. He closed the connection and dialed up Arthur Langley instead.

    ¡°Alpha?¡±

    ¡°Hello, Arthur. I just got an interesting message from one of Alpha Martin¡¯s subordinates. Someone told them that Clara¡¯s friend is safe. I assume the very friend himself, considering that the voice came from a wall, apparently.¡±

    ¡°That is good news!¡± Arthur¡¯s voice was cheery. ¡°Not that I thought anything would happen, but these damn agents have been harping on about him being kidnapped and us telling them what we know. Thankfully, Black wasn¡¯t able to get a read on Clara being there from the corpses, though she did know that someone was prisoner. Guess what their current theory is.¡±

    ¡°They had Clara¡¯s friend there, and an unknown benefactor took exception?¡±

    ¡°I encouraged it,¡± Arthur agreed. ¡°They¡¯re back at GAR now, apparently doing some more research.¡±

    ¡°And what of your own research?¡± Chester inquired. The mysterious friend was proving quite a strange beast. Most people wouldn¡¯t simply vanish when confronted by GAR agents, guilty or not, and those that did wouldn¡¯t get away with it. Mages left relics of their casting behind, shifters had pack bonds, and fae had their odd little kingdoms.

    ¡°Well, there¡¯s absolutely nothing connected to the name he gave me. Not surprising, really. The only real bit of history I could find was the title transfer for his car, which was just before he arrived.¡±

    ¡°It¡¯s not much,¡± he said, though he wasn¡¯t much surprised. ¡°Anything useful?¡±

    ¡°He didn¡¯t bring anything with him and he basically never moved into the house. There¡¯s absolutely nothing that ties him to a past at all. The agents were nice enough to share some of their file requests with me and there¡¯s nothing that exactly matches what happened in the motel, either. There have been some cases where a few people were instantly killed from behind, but so many with a gun in so short a time? And through the temple? He must have trained out on one of the portal worlds.¡±

    ¡°That was my thought, too,¡± Chester said. Ignorant indeed was the supernatural who didn¡¯t know of the portal worlds, considering that they were the source of magic and of every supernatural race. Even shifters needed to travel to the Deep Wilds, unimaginatively labeled Portal World Number 2 by GAR, if they wanted to turn a human.

    While GAR theoretically protected earth from the dangers of the portal worlds, such as they were, they also kept training facilities there. Some of the more deadly agents were trained in the officially-nonexistent sites, where magic was dense and lethal tactics could be practiced against people and things nobody on earth would care about.

    If one of those agents had gone rogue, GAR certainly had a problem. And it was GAR¡¯s problem, not his. For Chester, it might well be an opportunity, if he treated it right. The man wasn¡¯t a psychopath, but he could be terrifyingly effective, so there was probably some deal he could work out. He genuinely owed the man for saving his grand-niece, but he¡¯d already turned down any offers of payment.

    ¡°If you find out anything else, tell me. Although I doubt you will.¡±

    ¡°Agreed.¡±

    Chester once again hung up and closed his eyes, reaching through his pack bonds to tug lightly on two members of the Wolfpack, his own private enforcers. Two of them had, quite coincidentally, been present when the man had arrived, and that was the pair he wanted now. It didn¡¯t take them long to enter the huge living room of the pack compound, making their way over to him.

    ¡°Roy, John,¡± he greeted them. ¡°The man you saw in the basement before he took care of Arthur¡¯s vampire problem ?¡ª would you recognize his scent?¡±

    ¡°Of course,¡± John rumbled, almost offended at his Alpha questioning his prowess.

    ¡°Great. He was probably in or around this address in Lincoln,¡± Chester said, texting Keith¡¯s business to them. ¡°I want you over there as fast as you can manage and see if you can track him down. If you can find him, don¡¯t approach him. Call me first.¡± He eyed the pair. ¡°I¡¯ll admit, I¡¯m not sure if it¡¯s possible. I don¡¯t have any more information than that, but if anyone can track him, you two can.¡±

    ¡°Right away, Alpha,¡± Roy said, and the two of them hurried out.

    ***

    Callum was more than a little nervous as he approached Pearson¡¯s Used Books. It was one of those tiny old shops that wound up in the middle of a more modern segment of the city simply by being there first. It was also run by a mage.

    He couldn¡¯t tell what kind of mage, or even if it was possible to tell remotely with his spatial sense, but they definitely had a bubble of vis around them. Actually, studying that bubble closely was a help, because it wasn¡¯t a structured and contained thing like Callum had been trying to make. It was just a local saturation, not very strong, like the mage was purposely leaking mana.

    It seemed stupid to Callum, but there was probably a reason. Possibly even a good reason. Either way, he took a while to get the same effect with his own mana, pushing some out and then sort of tensing up as to not pull it back in. It¡¯d take practice to hold it for lengthy periods of time, but he didn¡¯t want to stand out too much.

    Finally he pushed the door open, walking into a close and crowded space made of old and polished wood. At the front were the normal fare of any used bookstore, but there was a little bit of magic around a section at the back, probably a glamour. It was a good thing that he¡¯d stayed most of his life in a relatively quiet and out-of-the-way town, or else he would probably have given himself away before by wandering into an obviously restricted section.

    As it was he had no trouble stepping into the back section, where the mage he had sensed was sitting in an armchair reading. He glanced at Callum but said nothing, just flipping a page. The book he was reading was titled Investigations on Portal World Resonance, which was pretty blatantly supernatural. So at least Callum was in the right place.

    Unfortunately for Callum, well over half the books were fiction. Supernatural fiction. He wasn¡¯t entirely certain why they needed to be separate from the mundane fantasy section, but maybe there was too much truth in there to allow it out in general circulation. The other half seemed to be mostly histories and political writings, which was actually fine. It was definitely stuff he should read. It just wasn¡¯t magical instruction.

    None of the books had an imprint or serial number, and every last one had a leather cover rather than anything seen on normal commercial books. The price tags all started at three figures, too, meaning that as much as he wanted to, he couldn¡¯t afford to just get a stack. He stopped at Arcane Defenses: A Treatise On Shielding and pulled it out, flipping it open to a random page. The jargon was relatively dense and the diagram on the opposite page didn¡¯t make any sense, but at least there was jargon and diagrams.

    ¡°The glamour won¡¯t let you read it without paying,¡± the mage said in a bored tone. Callum glanced at the page again, saw nothing different, and closed it, tucking it under his arm.

    ¡°Do you by chance have anything appropriate to the beginner mage? Like someone who is about to start apprenticeship?¡± Callum figured that was about the complexity he was at. He really would have liked to inquire after spatial magic books specifically, but that might be giving away too much.

    ¡°You seem a little old to be an apprentice,¡± the mage replied, still in the bored tone of voice, but flipped his book closed and floated it to a side table. Callum caught that the magic didn¡¯t come directly from the mage or his bubble, but from the pocket-watch the mage had in his breast pocket. Or mostly from it, at least. It didn¡¯t last long enough for him to study in detail.

    ¡°I am,¡± Callum agreed. ¡°It¡¯s not for me.¡±

    ¡°Hmph.¡± The mage waved his hand vaguely and more vis leapt from the pocket-watch, a complicated chain that wrapped around various books at the mage¡¯s direction. What that looked like was three tomes floating off the shelves and over to Callum, who took them with ordinary hands. He didn¡¯t know what type or aspect that levitation spell was, if any, and it was so far different from what he did that he didn¡¯t want to look weird by using it.

    The three books were Your First Focus, Mosu¡¯s Encyclopedia of Mage Houses, and Portal Worlds Primer. The first one seemed the most interesting, but he wasn¡¯t going to turn down anything might give him a better insight into what was going on. Though the three together totaled over a thousand dollars, and the shielding treatise doubled that.

    ¡°Thank you,¡± he said, and kept looking at titles. A lot of them looked intriguing, but between the expense and simply not wanting to look too suspicious he only settled on one other, a history detailing the establishment of GAR. That was more for his own curiosity than any driving need.

    The mage had gone back to reading, and when Callum took out his money clip the mage just glanced at the books and took the hundreds Callum peeled off for him without comment. And also without making an attempt to give Callum any change. Since he didn¡¯t want to raise a fuss, Callum just thanked him again and left.

    As soon as he was out of sense range of the mage Callum let out a long breath and leaned against the wall, sucking the bubble of vis back in. Now that he was out of there, his hands were almost trembling from relief. He¡¯d been prepared with so many lies, and filled in his broken mage tattoo carefully with the right color ink, but the other mage hadn¡¯t even cared.

    Apparently, even for the supernatural, retail was boring.

    Callum teleported into his motorhome as soon as he was in range, and despite a burning desire to read the books, he started the engine and left. Now that he could sense magic, and knew that there even were such things as magic book stores, it would be easier to find unrestricted knowledge. Though judging by what had been on display, nothing approaching a complete curriculum.

    He wanted to get some distance from the city and start experimenting. While magic would get lost in a city more than it would in the middle of nowhere, at the same time his fumbling around trying to learn things would be obvious. A mage of his age failing to show even beginner-level magic, outside his portals and teleports, would be suspicious.

    If the books had anything useful at all he could train on the go, and the next time he approached a city or another mage, he wouldn¡¯t be as blatantly ignorant. Every interaction was a danger, but if the mage in the bookstore was anything to go by, not a major one. So long as he didn¡¯t act suspicious, he was just another patron. So long as he paid cash and kept to his persona, he wasn¡¯t remarkable.

    Eventually he wouldn¡¯t be able to hide anymore, but eventually was the future. In the present, he had work to do.

 Chapter 10 - Frustration

    Reading about a mage¡¯s focus was equal parts enlightening and irritating. It filled in a massive gap that Callum had sort of felt with his use of magic, but hadn¡¯t really been able to articulate. It also explained some of the things he¡¯d heard and sensed about magic tools, like the compact he¡¯d found or the pocket watch he¡¯d seen.

    It seemed that mages used foci to cast most of their spells rather than manipulating their vis manually. They were something between a physical tool and a computer program, though the book he read didn¡¯t use that term, instead relying on jargon. A huge number of spells, though Callum was wary of that term, were so complex that forming them from scratch was considered a tedious waste of time. Instead, their basic structures were inscribed in a material so that the mage could simply push mana or vis through it and have a nearly complete spell pattern, needing only direction. Normally that material was a metal from one of the portal worlds, as mundane materials couldn¡¯t hold enchantment permanently.

    It sounded to him like it filled out everything but a few variables, but given that said variables were things like targets and widths, it wasn¡¯t something that could be easily filled in by the rigid structure of a focus. Nor was he a programming expert, to be able to easily translate the concepts into any particular language, basic or advanced. Part of him wondered if there was something like a magical computer anywhere, but considering that a focus needed a physical structure for the mana, that sounded like it¡¯d be a difficult prospect.

    Unfortunately for him, the First Focus book only had a pattern for one spell. That spell was the most basic spell of any mage¡¯s repertoire: telekinesis, which used raw mana rather than any particular aspect. It wasn¡¯t even a generalized version of telekinesis, since the book explained that it could lift a maximum of eight pounds, and had a very limited distance. Which sounded suspiciously like a certain cantrip, and probably was the origin of it. Though he had to admit, having telekinesis on demand would be useful.

    The book also gave him an insight on the vortex mana cleaner he was using. It was basically a terrible but more intense version of the mana acceptor, unable to hold mana and dissipating it into the ambient over time. His version had some severe handicaps for normal enchanting use, since it would only pull in his vis, but that was fine. If anything, he would rather have some way to disperse vis back to mana faster, but the text didn¡¯t cover anything like that.

    While the book showed the enchantment, it didn¡¯t show the structure of the magic the enchantment would make when he added energy to it. Even so, he would lay odds the chain-looking magic he saw the mage in the bookstore use was a version of it. First Focus mentioned that most mages purchased more complex focus plates eventually, and even made their own. Exactly where they were purchased or how they were made was not covered, even though it was stated very clearly that one had to be a full mage to do anything with them. Apprentices or unlettered types such as himself need not apply.

    It was rather like reading a book on what could be done with a computer, but having no computer at hand or any place to get one. Tantalizing, but out of reach. It did at least explain what the magic supplies he¡¯d found in Winut were and what they did. The mage had made her own foci for the wards, meaning she didn¡¯t have to pay much attention to the structure, so far as he understood. Unfortunately, he hadn¡¯t brought that stuff with him, so he couldn¡¯t experiment.

    The Encyclopedia and Portal World Primer both proved to be dry recitations of facts that were not particularly interesting or relevant, aside from informing him that a number of mage houses had been around a long time and had a lot of power. The Primer was clearly propaganda, considering the descriptions didn¡¯t jibe with Sen¡¯s stories. It also stated that the sixth portal world was just empty, which really made Callum wonder what they were hiding.

    The only real notable information was the location of the actual entrances to said portal worlds, four of which were in Europe and Asia. The fifth was off the coast of Australia, and the sixth was in South America. He wasn¡¯t planning to go to any of them, but at least he knew. It was also interesting to him that there were none in North America, China, or Antarctica. At least, so far as anyone knew.

    That left only the Treatise, which was fascinating and incomprehensible. It assumed a great deal more knowledge than Callum actually had, but the diagrams and what bits he could puzzle out implied that most mages actually carried some degree of shielding near-constantly, and a good shield could be reactive. All fantastic ideas that he loved, but had no idea how to implement. Especially since the examples were elemental ¡ª air, fire, water, and earth.

    He already knew spatial magic didn¡¯t work like those, and if the standard projectile exercise was any guide, standard shields would be equally useless. So all in all, he¡¯d spent over two thousand dollars to very little effect. After he got over the annoyance by drumming uselessly on the steering wheel of his motorhome for a while, Callum stopped off to get a burner phone and laptop and planned a road trip along used book stores.

    Most of them wouldn¡¯t be supernatural, but any that were bore investigating, and maybe he could even ask about where to get enchanting materials. Or even premade focuses, to let him do glamours. If he was really lucky he could find something, anything, on spatial mages. Annoyingly, most notes just referred back to Archmage Duvall, who seemed to be the sole authority on spatial magic, but there were a few hints here and there. So far as he gathered they were extremely rare, and diverged quite a bit from the standard elemental types. Of course.

    ***

    John Wilton sniffed carefully around the interior of the shop. His target¡¯s scent was faint, but there, and he exchanged a nod with his brother, Roy. Between them they could track down anyone, or at least, that was the idea. They exited the shop, John in beast form and Roy on two legs, tracing the scent and not finding it easy.

    Whatever magic the man used didn¡¯t leave any residue for them to follow, but it did wash out his tracks for large areas, forcing them to circle around and pick it up again by brute force. At the very least, he kept mostly a straight line, rather than winding through the city or looping back on himself. Any lesser trackers probably couldn¡¯t have found the trail at all, not after almost a full day, but supernatural senses made it possible.

    Even with that advantage it was a long and tedious process, with the trail finally ending at the far end of a vast parking lot. John sniffed at the asphalt, finding whiffs of diesel and chemicals and rubber, as would be expected in any parking lot, but he focused his senses and matched the ages of the scents as he explored where the man had been parked.

    It was not, surprisingly, an ordinary car. It had been parked crosswise, taking up a number of parking spots, and much larger than even a pickup. John sneezed and shifted back to human, the magic flowing through him as it adjusted flesh, bones, and sinew, then finally reformed his clothes around him.

    ¡°Some sort of van,¡± he reported, looking around at the parking lot. It didn¡¯t take him long to spot the surveillance cameras, nearly invisible to the mundane eye but clear enough to shifter vision. ¡°We¡¯ll have to get the footage.¡±

    ¡°I¡¯ll call Lucy.¡± Lucile Harper was only a semi-official member of the Wolfpack, their technical support when it came to dealing with the mundane world. While she wasn¡¯t quite as adept a hacker as the fictional version of the same, she had qualified for access to GAR¡¯s databases, and GAR could certainly get anything it wanted. The magic was in getting it from GAR without someone getting suspicious.

    John and Roy weren¡¯t just scent trackers. They had, in times past, been private investigators and could work the mundane side of tracing a person just as well as the supernatural. Admittedly, their target wasn¡¯t making it easy on them. Even if they could get a clear view of what he was driving, that didn¡¯t mean that they would be able to find out where he was going.

    Even Lucy wouldn¡¯t be able to get them access to every traffic camera in every location within a day¡¯s travel, let alone trawl that enormous amount of footage for a specific vehicle. They¡¯d have to use a more old-fashioned method of investigation, figuring out where he was going and why.

    If they were lucky, they¡¯d find somewhere else he went other than the gold exchange. If they were even luckier, they¡¯d get a usable image from the surveillance cameras. Though, Alpha Chester had emphasized being cautious. Considering what the man was capable of, asking questions indiscreetly might well cause trouble they couldn¡¯t handle.

    ***

    Outside of major cities and shifter towns like Winut, supernaturals seemed rather thin on the ground. It made some kind of sense, since vampires would need people to prey upon, mages had their own society, and shifters seemed to actually have packs. But he didn¡¯t know why he didn¡¯t spot more fae and dragonblooded, and if GAR had teleport circles like the one he¡¯d seen back home there was no reason to use cities.

    No matter the reason, the course he plotted along used bookstores heading south found very little in the way of either supernatural activity or offerings. There was one store in the middle of nowhere that catered to fae, with crystals and herbs and other such things, but they had nothing for mages. There was a faint aura of magic that he couldn¡¯t quite pin down around the items on the shelves, apparently all direct from Portal World 3, also known as Faerie. It was interesting, and odd to him that they had an entirely different magic from human mages, but not something he could pursue.

    Callum at least had higher hopes for the medium-sized town ahead, considering that he could sense some magical traces along the roads. Judging from the location of the trails they were probably made by people driving in cars, and he shuddered at the idea of leaving behind such obvious trails in the local mana field. Part of him wanted to go clean it up with one of his siphon bearings, but since they only cleaned up his own vis it wouldn¡¯t work. Not to mention it¡¯d be obvious and possibly even rude. For all he knew there was a bit of territorial marking to the display.

    He steered to the RV campground, one of the things that had made him decide on that town in particular, and attended to the necessaries before taking his bike out to head into town. While he did enjoy biking, actually using it as his primary method of transportation to get around a city would have been a pain, so he was glad he could teleport. Of course he had to make sure each teleport was unobserved, as he lacked any kind of glamour, and he kept a hefty supply of screws and ball bearings to form a safe trail from one point to another.

    Even in places where magic was common, he didn¡¯t want to be known as a spatial mage.

    For a while he was tempted to follow the magical signatures and see where they were going instead of heading to the bookstore, but after a minute of thought he decided there was no telling how far out of his way he¡¯d have to go, or how old the signatures were. Tracking a mage down to their home would probably be an exceedingly bad idea, even if they did leave a glaring arrow pointing right at it.

    He displaced himself along the streets, wheeling his bike out of a handy church courtyard and pedaling the next few blocks to the store. When it came within range of his perceptions he had to stop for a moment from the sudden jolt of anxiety because there was not just one mage there, some proprietor or another, but three. One of them was probably a match for one of the trails he¡¯d seen before, though he couldn¡¯t swear it.

    When his heartbeat settled again he continued on. He just had to keep in mind that nobody expected him to be a rogue mage, and to act like he was just visiting. Even if he acted a little weird, that was probably normal. According to the book on Mage Houses, there were mages from five and six hundred years ago still knocking about, so surely eccentricity was common.

    Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

    He didn¡¯t bother to lock his bike, merely leaning it up against the front of the store, but he did wish that he had that concealment glamour focus. It wasn¡¯t likely anyone would steal his bike, and he could always teleport it back in place if they did, but it was just one more thing to keep track of. Callum suppressed a sigh and stepped into the store.

    Only the shallow frontage was visible to the public, the telltale wall of a glamour hiding the rest of it. None of the mages reacted as he crossed into the supernatural area, just as they hadn¡¯t reacted to his perception in the first place. He was starting to think that it was passive, like looking or listening, and so long as he didn¡¯t spend any vis on it, nobody would notice. Not that he was willing to bet any significant amount of money on that.

    Taking it in at a glance, two of the mages were a husband and wife, both looking old and wrinkled, holding hands and reading in the far corner. The third was a college-aged girl, or maybe a recent graduate, off in a secluded nook he couldn¡¯t actually see thanks to the bookshelves. He doffed his cap, shoving it in his pocket as he walked forward, cane tapping lightly on the floor. It actually seemed to be a far more friendly store than the last one, if the books weren¡¯t glamoured, an impression confirmed by the male half of the pair in the back looking up and raising a hand in greeting.

    Callum nodded to him and walked over toward the bookshelves, finding many familiar titles. Eventually he reached the far end of the store and the study nook, finding the woman scowling fiercely at the book she had open atop the others. He took a moment to look at the title of the book, then he laughed. It was the Arcane Defenses book, and he knew exactly how she felt.

    ¡°Yeah, I found that one impenetrable as well,¡± he told her. He could pretend to be a lot of things, but rude wasn¡¯t one of them. Where he came from, people wouldn¡¯t just pass by someone like that if they could help, and she seemed so affronted by the book that he just had to speak up. ¡°I¡¯m not sure who the audience is, but I¡¯m pretty sure they made half those words up.¡± She blinked up at him when he started talking, but by the end of his second sentence she was laughing.

    ¡°And I thought it was me!¡± She smiled. ¡°I¡¯ve been trying to figure out this stupid book all day.¡±

    ¡°I wish I could help,¡± Callum said sympathetically. ¡°I¡¯ve been looking for literature appropriate for the beginner mage and let me tell you. This is not it.¡± The girl looked at him more closely, taking in his greying beard, glasses, cane, and expensive-looking suit.

    ¡°Are you taking on an apprentice?¡± She made a pretty good guess, and the kind he was trying to elicit.

    ¡°Not exactly,¡± he said. ¡°But close enough. I¡¯m guessing you are an apprentice?¡±

    ¡°No.¡± She scowled. ¡°I¡¯m looking to skip apprenticeship. Archmage Fane keeps trying to get me and I don¡¯t like him.¡±

    ¡°Can you even do that?¡± He asked, raising his eyebrows. ¡°Skip apprenticeship?¡±

    ¡°If you get your draft done with,¡± she said, lifting her hand to show off the mage tattoo and a pearl-white dot to represent her magic type. ¡°It¡¯s easier for healers but we still need basic things like shields.¡±

    ¡°You have no idea how hard it is for someone without apprenticeship resources to find out about things like a proper shield,¡± Callum agreed. ¡°Or maybe you do.¡± He considered the woman and the way she glumly flipped pages on the shielding book. ¡°Professor Denver Brown,¡± he said, offering her his hand. Introducing himself as professor kept things impersonal.

    ¡°Oh, Gayle Hargrave,¡± she said, clasping it with something he didn¡¯t consider a standard handshake. Despite the fairly out-of-the-way town, the girl clearly had some sort of upper-class mage upbringing. ¡°Did you come to see the Larsons, too?¡±

    ¡°No, I¡¯ve been poking around, looking at what literature there is available.¡± Callum considered, tapping his cane against the floor. Gayle seemed harmless enough, and she probably knew more than he did about a lot of things. Besides, they both wanted some of the same information.

    ¡°Maybe we could collaborate some? I¡¯ve done some research work in my time, writing things up. I¡¯m not sure how much time you have.¡±

    ¡°Oh, ages and ages. Nobody¡¯s going to make a healer do anything,¡± Gayle said, dismissive of the entire awful architecture of GAR and its draft. She was probably right, though. Rules didn¡¯t apply to the really powerful.

    ¡°I did find some things. If you have a list of what they want you to learn I can check my reference materials.¡±

    ¡°Oh, um.¡± She shoved around the stack of papers and books on the table until she came out with an obviously thrice-photocopied checklist. Callum was a little surprised she didn¡¯t have it marked down on a phone app, but with mages having such long lifespans it made sense that some of them would still be behind the times when it came to technology.

    ¡°Great, I¡¯ll be right back.¡± He just took a snapshot of it and headed back out to his bike, which had remained unmolested. Even if that list was all he got, it had been worth striking up a conversation with Gayle. That she was looking for the same sort of information he was seemed like a tremendous stroke of luck, but he¡¯d probably found some kind of researcher eventually, hitting up mage bookstores.

    The list was partly specialized for a healer, since obviously not every mage would have various flavors of healing, but it had a number of mainstays: telekinesis, glamour, simple enchantment, movement spells, shields, attacks, light and communication. Callum amused himself by ticking off the ones he could kind-of sort-of do, which was actually quite a few.

    It didn¡¯t take him long to grab the focus book from his motorhome and head back the bookstore, where Gayle had given up on Arcane Defenses and was taking notes on something else. Callum placed Your First Focus in front of her and pulled up a seat.

    ¡°I¡¯ll trade you,¡± he suggested. ¡°If you have a place to get the stuff for enchanting, you can at least make a kinesis focus.¡±

    ¡°Huh,¡± she said, dropping the book she had to pick the one he offered. ¡°I¡¯ve only got glamour on mine. I don¡¯t know about enchanting. I¡¯ll ask Miss Larson.¡± She stood up and strode in the direction of the husband and wife pair, while Callum drifted back to the bookshelves and listened while he browsed.

    ¡°Arcanist Larson, would you have enchanting materials available?¡± Gayle asked, with an accent that he couldn¡¯t quite place.

    ¡°You know the rules, dear,¡± Miss Larson said absently. ¡°Full mages only.¡± Callum did recall something like that, but he hadn¡¯t been sure how strictly it was enforced and he didn¡¯t want to push it. Like buying someone underage a beer, you could get away with it, maybe, but certainly not right after Gayle had asked. It did provide a neat Catch-22, that an apprentice couldn¡¯t get the materials to opt out of apprenticeship, which didn¡¯t surprise him one bit

    ¡°What about making a temporary one?¡± Callum suggested after Gayle returned and reported. ¡°It won¡¯t last long but I¡¯ve been able to stick vis into steel.¡±

    ¡°You can make temporary ones?¡± Gayle blinked at him.

    ¡°Sure,¡± he said cheerfully. ¡°They¡¯re terrible and can¡¯t handle much vis but if nothing else it¡¯s practice for the real thing.¡±

    ¡°Huh.¡± She narrowed her eyes at him. ¡°You¡¯re not a metal mage or something are you? ¡®Cause if so that isn¡¯t going to be useful to me.¡± In reply he held up his hand to show off the false color of blue-black there.

    ¡°No, gravity,¡± he told her.

    ¡°Oh, that¡¯s neat! You¡¯re almost as rare as I am!¡± Gayle said cheerfully. ¡°But that means you can already do kinesis. I guess?¡±

    ¡°Sure, but you can do that with mana. I don¡¯t know that you can do healing that way.¡±

    ¡°I guess not.¡± Gayle shrugged. ¡°So, what, you just get an iron plate and push mana at it?¡±

    ¡°I¡¯m sure there¡¯s better materials but?¡ª¡± He stopped as she bounded up again to ask Arcanist Larson.

    ¡°Arcanist Larson says brass is the best mundane material. I don¡¯t think this is brass though?¡± Gayle fiddled with her bracelet. Callum swept his senses over it, finding one of the plates on it to be mostly opaque to his senses, save for the mana input.

    ¡°It¡¯s probably all made from portal world materials,¡± Callum said. ¡°Mind if I take a look?¡±

    ¡°Well, be careful, my parents gave it to me,¡± Gayle cautioned, slipping the bracelet off.

    ¡°I won¡¯t do anything but look,¡± he promised, lifting the bracelet and peering at it through his bifocals. The focus pattern for glamours was really complex, and he had no doubt the bracelet was expensive considering how thin and precise the enchantment channels were. Considering that the plate itself was a clearly non-mundane material it had to be a portal world metal, but he couldn¡¯t guess what beyond that.

    It was also far too complicated to memorize. He¡¯d have to try and duplicate it later, if Gayle was going to be sticking around. After scrutinizing it for a few seconds, he handed it back.

    ¡°Yeah, we definitely can¡¯t make anything like that, but it¡¯s worth trying anyway.¡± He glanced at the checklist. ¡°What about an attack spell? I don¡¯t have any enchantments for that offhand, but surely healing has some really potent attacks.¡±

    ¡°What?¡± Gayle scowled mightily. ¡°It¡¯s healing, not harming!¡±

    ¡°But that depends on how you apply it, doesn¡¯t it? I expect you went to college for medicine?¡± Callum asked, and Gayle gave him a look.

    ¡°College? No, I¡¯ve had a magic education, not a mundane one.¡± Callum barely kept from rolling his eyes, and Gayle¡¯s look turned into a full pout. ¡°My parents put me through the best academy! I know it¡¯s old-fashioned one, but all the important families attend.¡±

    Callum could translate that one easily enough. Gayle had gone to a magic prep school for the rich and famous, learning networking rather than useful topics. Probably so she¡¯d be able to handle an apprenticeship, since he imagined that healing would be in immensely high demand. He knew not every mage was stupid enough to discard scientific knowledge, otherwise there wouldn¡¯t be supernatural internet or magic-friendly phones or computers.

    ¡°We¡¯ll skip that one for now,¡± he said. ¡°But for next time, get yourself a laptop and look up the clotting cascade and neurochemicals. I don¡¯t know how your magic works, obviously, but if you can just target one thing and boost it, you could knock everything else off balance.¡±

    ¡°Huh. I¡¯ll take your word for it.¡± Gayle wrote that down on her scratchpad. ¡°What next?¡±

    They spent a good few hours going through ideas and scouring the stock of books, and while it wasn¡¯t a complete waste of time they didn¡¯t get as much done as either of them would have liked. Most of what was interesting to Callum was incidental; things like brass being the better mundane enchanting material, or the list of what a brand new mage was supposed to be able to do.

    Gayle seemed pretty encouraged though, and she agreed to meet him back at Larson¡¯s Academe on Friday. He didn¡¯t ask for, nor was asked for, a phone number. Which was fine with him, since even if he was taking a risk by sticking around to chat with a mage of high society, it didn¡¯t seem too much of a risk if she couldn¡¯t track him. Or ask someone else to.

    He recorded everything he could remember, including sketching what he could study of Gayle¡¯s glamour focus, and in the morning he went shopping. While he liked his steel vortexes, and really didn¡¯t want them to be better, a few brass plates and other miscellaneous metalwork would serve as testbeds for enchanting. He really, really wanted to find an enchanting encyclopedia or something similar, because foci seemed to be the gateway to every single cantrip he could ever want and easier spellcasting besides.

    Afterward, he continued his road trip. He might yet find books that were useful to either him or to Gayle, and he needed to find a larger city to exchange another one of the gold plates in. While his cash reserves were still fine, technically, it was still a bit disconcerting how much he¡¯d spent of late, when normally he barely spent any money at all.

    Part of him really missed his career in architecture. It hadn¡¯t been a calling of incredible passion but he¡¯d been damned good at it and met a lot of great people. It had also provided him with more money than he needed very quickly, which was nice. Not that he¡¯d trade his magic for anything, but it still infuriated him that he¡¯d been forced to ditch his business because some supernational supernatural entity thought it had what amounted to a slave claim to him.

    He also hadn¡¯t ever seriously entertained the notion of killing someone. Not that he¡¯d call himself a murderer at this point, not when his victims were anything but innocent, but vigilante might not be too strong a term. Though he didn¡¯t have any intention of repeating the act, he¡¯d also be hard-pressed to look away if he caught more supernatural predations. Or maybe even mundane ones, now that he¡¯d crossed the line once, which was another reason to stay away from the cities.

    As he drove along, he kept pushing his spatial sense out further and further. If it really was passive, then he wanted it to be as high in fidelity and long in range as it was possible to get. He wasn¡¯t quite sure if it worked like a muscle or if he was slowly adjusting to a static sense that was always there, like an eyeball, but either way he needed to train it. If he strained too much, vis started to be involved, which meant it was definitely detectable, no longer passive, and he was trying too hard.

    Once again, most of the bookstores he went to were just mundane types, though Callum went to look half the time regardless. Partly to make sure his spatial sense wasn¡¯t missing anything, and partly because he just liked browsing old books. He was quite a reader when he had time for it, and if there was a deathly lack of useful mage books he¡¯d probably have time for it.

    It was Wednesday evening by the time he neared an actual supernatural business, with magical residue in and around the building but no mage inside. Which made it easier to pass as a mage, since any sense of magic at all would work and he could keep his vis properly contained so he didn¡¯t leave a trail. So far as he knew nobody suspected he was around so nobody was looking for him, but it was better to be safe than sorry.

    He entered the bookstore, waving at the person in the glamoured part of the shop, who looked human and so was probably shifter, and browsed. It seemed that he was pretty close to exhausting the standard selection of nonfiction, because he kept seeing the same titles over and over. The fiction section, on the other hand, never seemed to repeat itself.

    Callum did end up buying a few things, and the cashier bagged them up for him, but the way she looked at him was odd. He felt uncomfortable as he hurried out and he didn¡¯t wait long to teleport away, making his way back to the motorhome in a roundabout way. While he knew he was probably being overly paranoid, he kept his senses stretched out for any suspicious activity while he pulled out his books. Tucked in the top of one was a business card, blank but for three lines.

    Alpha Chester, it read, with a phone number only appropriate to supernatural phones. Call me was handwritten below in ink.

 Chapter 11 â€“ Offer

    Tracking their target had been tedious, frustrating, but incredibly satisfying when they¡¯d finally tagged him. Lucy had gotten a snapshot of the vehicle in question, a motorhome, but no picture of the man coming and going. Still, knowing it was a motorhome drastically cut down on potential places that he could stop, especially given the limited capacity of the tanks.

    The bulk of the real tedious work had been tracking him to other places than the gold exchange, which required a lot of running around in beast form, and finding which direction the motorhome had gone. That wasn¡¯t his work, but Lucy pulling traffic camera images from each of the major exits. Eventually, though, they¡¯d found he was going south, and Roy had generated a list of probable stops. It would have been faster if they¡¯d had access to GAR¡¯s teleportation network, but they did well enough on their own, visiting a dozen campsites and taking turns sleeping as they drove from place to place.

    When they¡¯d picked him up again, it took a lot more time in beast form to track his scent to a second used bookstore. Roy took a flying leap and decided to check other stores on the southward track, and they got more hits than misses. Neither of them had any idea what their target was looking for, but the pattern was undeniable. Stopping only for gas and snacks, mostly in the form of jerky, they tried to get ahead of him.

    Alpha Chester had made it clear that directly approaching him was not likely to go well. He didn¡¯t know that anyone was tracking him and had vanished for a good reason, so showing up out of nowhere was likely to be dangerous. At the very least, it would obliterate the only actual lead they had on him, one they¡¯d been exceedingly lucky to find in the first place.

    At one of the used bookstores they actually got a good description of their target, having missed him by only a few minutes according to the scent trail, though it didn¡¯t match what John and Roy had seen in the caf¨¦ basement. Which didn¡¯t surprise them, but it was very useful in giving instructions to local shifters on the Alpha¡¯s behalf.

    They got a description of one Denver Brown, and instructions to not approach or ask him anything, but ensure that the owners of used book stores along his path would phone in if they saw him. And that they¡¯d include one of Alpha Chester¡¯s cards.

    It wasn¡¯t exactly a long shot, but it was more indirect than he liked. Even if Brown got a card in with his books, it wasn¡¯t guaranteed he¡¯d even see it anytime soon. Or if he did, that he¡¯d call the number. So when he finally got a text that Brown had been spotted, and that one of Alpha Chester¡¯s cards was included with his receipt, John and Roy physically crossed their fingers and waited for a message from the Alpha.

    Even if he¡¯d told them not to engage, they really hated not being able to bring in a target for Alpha Chester.

    ***

    Callum spent a good few minutes panicking and not doing anything in particular other than picking up the card, looking at it, and dropping it again. He was suddenly possessed of an urge to drink, or smoke, or something, but he didn¡¯t keep any of those vices in his motorhome so the best he could do was pop a soda and somehow cut himself on the aluminum tab.

    He grumbled to himself and wrapped a tissue around it, taking a few sips before heading up front and driving off. There was no way that he could avoid calling that number, but he wasn¡¯t going to do it in the town they¡¯d obviously tracked him to. Even if Alpha Chester wasn¡¯t exactly the GAR authorities, Callum didn¡¯t trust that he was safe to interact with. In fact, Callum would probably have to ditch the magical phone he¡¯d gotten after the call, just so it couldn¡¯t be traced back to him specifically. Which was irritating, because those were a lot harder to get than a regular burner.

    Fortunately, there was always plenty of empty space outside of any city proper, small back roads and wooded lanes that were miles away from anyone. He navigated to a point essentially at random, making sure there was nobody nearby with his spatial sense as he pulled off into a small gravel lane. Putting the motorhome into park, Callum teleported the card into his hand and took out the phone. When he dialed the number it didn¡¯t ring more than once.

    ¡°This is Alpha Chester,¡± a deep voice said. ¡°Thank you for calling, Mister Brown. Or should I call you Mister Hall?¡±

    ¡°Brown,¡± Callum said decisively. Better to stick with his current identity, whatever it happened to be. He didn¡¯t even think of denying it; that would just be stupid. ¡°How did you find me?¡±

    ¡°I can assure you, Mister Brown, I intend you no ill will. If you will hear me out I will tell you exactly how we tracked you down. The why will become obvious soon enough.¡± Callum had to admit the man had presence, even over the phone. His voice was perfectly calm without being condescending or threatening in the slightest.

    ¡°Very well,¡± Callum said. ¡°I¡¯m listening.¡±

    ¡°While I am aware you wish no credit for it, I owe you for what you accomplished in Winut. Clara is my grand-niece and if she had come to harm, things might have gone poorly. What you may not know is that Winut is not the only place within my territory the vampires have been trying to expand.¡±

    ¡°So you want me to take out other nests.¡± Callum chewed his lip. ¡°I don¡¯t have any desire to become a mercenary.¡±

    ¡°I don¡¯t blame you,¡± Alpha Chester said. ¡°But the only talent I know you have is that of delivering death, and you have a willingness to do so outside of GAR¡¯s accords. If I knew more of your capabilities I might have other ways to employ you, but you strike me as a man who prefers his secrets, so I won¡¯t ask.¡±

    ¡°I appreciate that,¡± Callum said dryly. ¡°Considering I¡¯m not even certain I¡¯ll agree to this job.¡±

    ¡°Let me begin by assuring you that I will not, under any circumstances, tell GAR about you. I¡¯m assuming that sooner or later you will change your identity again, so doing so would only get me your ire, and I do not want that.¡± Alpha Chester¡¯s rumble remained steady and calm, and Callum had to wonder if he¡¯d rehearsed his speech. ¡°I know a potential asset when I see one, and I could offer you quite a bit in exchange for your help, all completely off the record, of course.¡±

    ¡°I see.¡± Callum put the phone on speaker so he could rest it on the dash, since his cheek and ear felt like they were almost burning from the combined heat of the phone and stress. ¡°Money isn¡¯t really an issue for me, but I could use information. Lots of information, especially about mages, the way their magic works and their society.¡±

    Part of him hated admitting that much, but he was already compromised with Chester, so it wasn¡¯t really that much of a risk. As Chester had said, if things went badly he¡¯d simply vanish again, though if he had to do that money might well become an issue. It turned out to be surprisingly easy to burn through cash when he had to abandon everything he¡¯d purchased.

    ¡°I can certainly offer that,¡± Chester said thoughtfully, not even asking why he needed it. ¡°I have access to an expert in mages who also does not officially exist. While he is generally reclusive, he owes me enough that I can set up a meeting with him. By phone, I would assume.¡±

    ¡°Possibly,¡± Callum admitted. He was sorely tempted. Not that he liked the idea of going around killing more people, but when it came to vampires there weren¡¯t any real moral objections. What was more, it wasn¡¯t likely that anyone would be able to link him to them other than Alpha Chester. So really he wouldn¡¯t be more exposed there.

    ¡°Tell me about what you need done,¡± he said at last.

    ¡°There are four shifter towns that the vampires have targeted,¡± Alpha Chester began. ¡°Down from five, after what happened in Winut.¡±

    ¡°But why? If vampires have to prey on humans to survive ¡ª they do, right?¡± Callum asked, and got an affirmative from Chester.

    ¡°It¡¯s a political move. The way representation is handled within GAR is complicated, but they are effectively abusing rules and a lack of enforcement to establish nests where they should not and ultimately reduce my influence.¡±

    ¡°Which means that there¡¯s probably all kinds of places with no protections at all against vampire predation,¡± Callum said. There was a brief silence, as if Chester was actually startled by that particular conclusion, before the Alpha spoke again.

    ¡°Yes, though they generally tend to stick to the cities, and GAR places limitations on their immigration numbers.¡± Callum wasn¡¯t impressed by that. Not that he was going to go even further vigilante, but it seemed to be madness to him to allow any predators of humanity into the world if they could avoid it.

    Not that he was much surprised. People were stupid and would ally with the devil himself if he promised them power. While he didn¡¯t know the full truth of vampires, it was obvious they were powerful. Enormous amounts of guns, gold, and goons didn¡¯t come from nowhere.

    ¡°So you want me to take care of the other four?¡± Callum made a face. That was quite the ask and he wasn¡¯t sure he was quite ready for that level of massacre. Or that he had the tools for it. There was no guarantee that he could approach the others the same way as the last one.

    In fact, he¡¯d gone over his actions in Winut again and again, partly to just reconcile being able to commit such violence, and partly to recriminate himself over being so careless. Luck had played a major role, since there were a dozen ways things could have gone badly, both with the vampires and the shifters. Even with all that luck on his side, he¡¯d been found by GAR solely because he was still in the vicinity and absolutely couldn¡¯t stand up to close scrutiny.

    ¡°In short, yes. I understand there is a risk of the Vampire Council itself becoming interested, but considering your circumstances you don¡¯t have anything to fear from them.¡± Chester sounded amused at the thought.

    ¡°Won¡¯t it be obvious you¡¯re involved if these trouble nests of yours are all attacked?¡± Callum figured Chester knew what he was doing, but it seemed a pretty transparent ploy.

    ¡°Possibly. I intend on having the local Alphas challenge as soon as you¡¯ve neutralized the vampires, which should muddy the waters, but I need not admit anything to anyone. The vampires decided to abuse the rules, so they have only themselves to blame.¡± Chester¡¯s voice changed from amused to cold and hard.

    ¡°Is there a time constraint?¡± Callum teleported his notepad to himself and started jotting down ideas. Part of him was staggered that he was even thinking about it, but he knew he really needed the information and resources and contacts that Chester could offer. Not that he was planning to be a mercenary, but he couldn¡¯t do other things without revealing he was a space mage. And he wasn¡¯t even that good of one yet, either, since he couldn¡¯t do long distance teleportation.

    Callum figured he needed knowledge of how to do that plus a solid basis for enchanting in order to be properly independent. Actually, he needed that whole checklist that Gayle had provided, if he wanted to pass as a mage at all. The only way he was going to get that was to do some work for other people. He couldn¡¯t make a career out of running and hiding.

    ¡°Some more than others. I will text an information packet to the phone you¡¯re using, if that works for you.¡±

    ¡°Sure,¡± Callum said, tapping his pencil against his lips. ¡°Access to your expert for the first job, and additional payment for the others as events warrant.¡± He knew that a targeted hit was probably worth a lot. Millions, in the mundane world, though probably less in the supernatural world. He had no idea how to arrange a dead drop or the like for any other kind of payment, but he could figure it out. He wasn¡¯t going to do it for free, even if he firmly believed human predators needed to die.

    Reading on this site? This novel is published elsewhere. Support the author by seeking out the original.

    ¡°So you¡¯re willing?¡± Alpha Chester asked, even as Callum¡¯s phone buzzed with the receipt of an incoming text message.

    ¡°Probably,¡± Callum said, looking at the text message. It had an attached picture that, according the message, had his information embedded inside. It wasn¡¯t something he¡¯d seen before, but it seemed easy enough to deal with. He teleported his laptop and connector up front to transfer it over, not too terribly worried about potential malware. It wasn¡¯t like he was keeping the phone, and the laptop got scrubbed fairly often. ¡°I¡¯ll text you after I have the chance to read this over.¡±

    ¡°I¡¯ll look forward to it,¡± Alpha Chester said.

    ¡°So, how did you find me?¡± Callum had almost forgotten the question, distracted as he was by Chester¡¯s offer.

    ¡°Ah, I had my trackers follow your scent from the area near Keith¡¯s store. Where you asked him to pass a message. From there, it was a lot of hard work following your movements until we could get surveillance footage. We probably would have lost you eventually if you hadn¡¯t hit every used bookstore on the way south. That¡¯s how I could anticipate you.¡±

    ¡°Ah. I appreciate you telling me.¡± Callum almost groaned. He hadn¡¯t even thought about how stupidly predictable he was being. Though from the sound of it, the only reason he¡¯d been caught at all was because he violated the golden rule of changing identities. He¡¯d reached out to someone his current identity shouldn¡¯t have known.

    ¡°Was there anything else, Mister Brown?¡±

    ¡°No. You¡¯ll be hearing from me soon.¡± Callum hung up the phone. Once the file was transferred over to his laptop he removed the memory card and cast out his sense to find a good place to discard the phone. Finding a tree hollow, he displaced the phone there and drove away.

    Part of him was getting annoyed at having to get a new burner every time, but he¡¯d stopped getting smartphones a while back, so it wasn¡¯t that terrible an expense. Alpha Chester probably wouldn¡¯t bother to tap his phone or trace his location, but Callum couldn¡¯t know that. Nor could he know if other parties were listening in, ones that Alpha Chester wasn¡¯t aware of or hadn¡¯t mentioned.

    It was only hours later, driving any direction but south, that Callum parked and looked at what Alpha Chester had sent him. The file was all text, with no pictures of the vampires or places, but the pr¨¦cis was to the point, giving an address, a priority, and a count of assets. There was even a categorization of the type of mage that they had with them, though only two of the four had mages.

    That just seemed short-sighted to Callum. He knew what mages could do, and it didn¡¯t seem that shifters or vampires or even fae had any good way to keep mages at bay other than their natural speed and toughness. While he¡¯d still have to check, those two wouldn¡¯t be even moderately dangerous for him.

    After teleporting around the town until he found a restaurant with free wifi, Callum searched the locations of the vampire nests, finding them sprawled out across Iowa, Nebraska, and South Dakota. Something like eight hundred miles of driving, according to the maps, so it wasn¡¯t something he could do in a day.

    Or maybe it was.

    He could teleport. Admittedly, his range was maybe five hundred feet at the moment, but a spatial mage teleporting themselves didn¡¯t take all that much mana. That wasn¡¯t even getting into how fast he could potentially go with his gravitykinesis, which had no real upper limit on safe speed.

    According to the intelligence briefing, none of them needed to be taken out prior to his next meeting with Gayle, where he was planning to copy the glamour enchant onto a brass plate for his own use. That would make it safe to use the gravitykinesis without getting spotted by bystanders and spy satellites. At least he assumed the glamour worked against mundane surveillance devices; it would be impossible to avoid people noticing, otherwise.

    The gravitykinesis wasn¡¯t something he¡¯d used on himself, though, so he¡¯d have to practice a little beforehand. Even if he didn¡¯t use that for transportation, he needed something faster and less visible than a motorhome. His bike was not going to cut it; he needed a motorcycle.

    It had been years since he¡¯d ridden one, but it wasn¡¯t a skill that someone ever really forgot. His current license was for cars, not motorcycles, but when he got a glamour that wouldn¡¯t matter. In fact, it probably wouldn¡¯t matter even before then unless he was a complete idiot and wrecked one.

    The motorcycle went on his list, and after he got back to his motorhome, he went on a drive to find somewhere private to practice. Without a glamour he did have to worry about other people spotting him, so he had to take himself out to a remote lake where nobody was around so he could try flying. Callum knew it wasn¡¯t going to be easy, which was part of why he hadn¡¯t tried it before. That, and some guy careening through the air was extremely obvious.

    He separated himself from the motorhome by at least thirty feet, wrapped himself in his spatial bubble, and then slowly applied the gravity gradient. It started out uncomfortable, progressed rapidly to nausea-inducing, and before he even got halfway he had to quit, doubling over and retching. What he had thought was a smooth gravity gradient wasn¡¯t. At all. He could feel different parts of him being pulled different directions, stretching and tugging and wobbling all over the place, and it was horrible.

    Callum teleported one of his chairs from his motorhome and sat down on it outside. Clearly he was not as practiced at this stuff as he thought, so he¡¯d have to figure out some way to get better at it, which promised to be a fairly tedious process. It also made him wonder how bad his other magic fields were. They worked, but so did gravitykinesis, and it clearly wasn¡¯t anything near perfected.

    As evening faded away, Callum spent all his time with a spatial bubble around himself, trying to smooth out his filler field. He could keep from getting too nauseous simply by keeping the amplitude low; enough to feel but not enough to apply real force. It was a cheap solution but what he really needed was a programmer and a bunch of accelerometers, so he could get a serious look at exactly what he was doing.

    Barring that, he had to settle for the human nervous system and his own magical senses. So far he¡¯d been working on the accuracy of the threads, snapping them into place, and looking at those dense concentrations of mana. The fields were thin and diffuse and required a different perspective altogether. The scope and vagueness was what made it difficult to tell what he¡¯d gotten wrong, like picking out thick lumps of fog from thin lumps of fog.

    Still, he refused to believe that it was impossible to sense that kind of thing. It was probably just an aspect that any magical child would pick up during their education that he¡¯d completely missed. It was a good thing that he¡¯d never needed to show off any spells to someone else or they¡¯d probably have wondered what was wrong with him.

    By the time he was ready to quit, it was late, he¡¯d missed dinner, and he definitely didn¡¯t feel like dinner. It was probably just as well. With all the driving around and identity changing he couldn¡¯t spend as much time exercising, and he was starting to feel a little flabby. It was probably mostly in his mind, but it wouldn¡¯t hurt him to skip a meal or two.

    The question was whether he¡¯d have enough time to practice prior to taking care of Alpha Chester¡¯s job.

    ***

    ¡°I tracked it, but I doubt it¡¯s useful. He pretty obviously ditched the phone.¡± Lucy waved a tablet in Chester¡¯s direction, but he shook his head.

    ¡°If we can¡¯t use it, we can¡¯t use it,¡± he told her. ¡°I wasn¡¯t expecting much anyway. We¡¯re lucky John was around to get his scent in the first place, so we could pick up the trail.¡±

    ¡°You sure this guy is worth that much effort, boss-man?¡± Lucy lounged on the couch, gnawing on one of the awful sour candies she liked. How her teeth hadn¡¯t disintegrated yet he had no idea.

    ¡°Winut massacre,¡± he told her.

    ¡°Wait, shit. That was him?¡± She sat upright, looking more interested. ¡°Office betting pool says he¡¯s a rogue black agent. Five to one odds on fae assassin.¡±

    ¡°Don¡¯t waste your money,¡± Chester said, shaking his head at her. ¡°John said he smells human. It¡¯s not conclusive, but he¡¯s got the best nose I know of.¡±

    ¡°Well, he can¡¯t be mundane. Nobody¡¯s that good,¡± she said, and Chester didn¡¯t ask her exactly how much she knew. The precise details of what happened were not written down anywhere, but that didn¡¯t mean that Lucy was ignorant of how it had been done in under five minutes. ¡°But what kind of mage uses guns?¡±

    ¡°I don¡¯t know, and we don¡¯t need to ask,¡± Chester said firmly. ¡°Not to his face, anyway.¡± He wanted to know more about Mister Brown for the simple sake of understanding who he was dealing with, but only knowledge he could get without disturbing Brown¡¯s aplomb. Or incurring his wrath.

    ¡°You run a background check on him?¡± Lucy asked, and then held up her hands at Chester¡¯s look. ¡°Stupid question, I know.¡±

    ¡°The only IDs we have are obviously fake, and completely mundane.¡± Chester shrugged. ¡°We¡¯ve only seen one example of his work so far. When we see more, we¡¯ll know more, and maybe figure out who he is.¡±

    ¡°Yeah,¡± Lucy said, sagging back on the couch and reaching for another candy. ¡°If you don¡¯t know who he is, are you sure it¡¯s a good idea to let him talk to Jasper?¡±

    ¡°You aren¡¯t supposed to know what Jasper is,¡± Chester said with a warning growl. Lucy shrugged unrepentantly. Since she was just human, no shifter, the pack magic didn¡¯t work on her and she had grown immune to shifter stares by dint of long experience.

    ¡°It¡¯s not my job to not know things,¡± she told him. Chester rolled his eyes.

    ¡°That¡¯s one you¡¯d better keep deep under your hat,¡± he told her.

    ¡°My black hat,¡± she agreed, and he groaned.

    ¡°Go take your mouth and find a room that can fit it,¡± he told her, and she laughed and grabbed her laptop before flouncing out. Chester sighed and rubbed the bridge of his nose. Lucy had showed she was trustworthy, but that didn¡¯t mean she couldn¡¯t be a pest.

    Chester stood up and padded to the door, not having to duck to fit his nine-foot frame through the opening since the entire pack compound had been modified for war form shifters. And beast form shifters, for that matter. There were still doors to private rooms, but everything else was open plan and tough enough to withstand shifter claws and the occasional bit of roughhousing with superhuman strength.

    Jasper had his own quarters, a sort of all-in-one apartment off the main complex. What he was supposedly employed for was his prowess as a chef, which was fantastic, but Chester could have hired one of dozens of qualified individuals for that, including some fae. What made Jasper special was his former life as a mage.

    Chester rapped on the door to Jasper¡¯s abode, which wasn¡¯t something he tended to do with his own people. The relations within a shifter pack were decidedly nonhuman in places, and sometimes shifters had issues interacting with both mundanes and shifters at the same time. Though as Alpha, it was expected he could do both.

    ¡°Oh?¡± Jasper blinked up at Chester, ducking his head to the alpha. He was a perpetually tired-looking, middle-aged man with pure Swiss blood and the features to match. ¡°What do you need, Alpha?¡±

    ¡°Your knowledge, as ever.¡± Chester padded through into Jasper¡¯s apartment, letting the ex-mage shut the door behind him. ¡°I managed to get into contact with someone operating outside of GAR. Possibly a mage, but doesn¡¯t act like one.¡±

    ¡°That¡¯s dangerous,¡± Jasper said mildly, dropping bonelessly into his armchair. ¡°Nobody works outside of GAR. Not for long, anyway.¡±

    ¡°Yes, well. I¡¯d like to get value out of this one while he lasts.¡±

    ¡°And you¡¯d like me to check his bona fides?¡± Jasper eyed Chester warily. ¡°You know I can barely even sense mana.¡±

    ¡°Not at all.¡± Chester shook his head. ¡°He wanted knowledge about mages and the way mages do magic. Considering that he¡¯s been hitting mage libraries, it¡¯s not just idle curiosity.¡±

    ¡°And you volunteered me?¡± Jasper asked incredulously. ¡°When he gets caught I¡¯m going to be next on the chopping block.¡±

    ¡°I¡¯m not stupid, Jasper,¡± Chester growled. It was far more effective on Jasper than on Lucy. ¡°No face-to-face meeting, just through the phone or possibly online. Either way, I¡¯ll have Lucy provide a voice changer and maybe even a movement rig. He¡¯s just as interested in preserving his privacy as you.¡±

    ¡°Right,¡± Jasper said with a sigh, running his hands through long blonde hair. ¡°So he¡¯s a mage outside GAR looking for information on human magic? If he¡¯s newly awakened he can¡¯t be more than what, sixteen or seventeen?¡±

    ¡°That¡¯s the most interesting thing.¡± Chester smiled. ¡°He seems to be somewhere between thirty and sixty, and whatever he is, I don¡¯t think he¡¯s new. He destroyed a vampire nest in less than a minute. In broad daylight. With no bystanders any the wiser.¡±

    ¡°Oh.¡± A gleam came and went in Jasper¡¯s tired eyes. ¡°A black agent then?¡±

    ¡°Something. He agreed to take out four more nests.¡± Chester shrugged. It would cause him trouble, but it was less important than keeping his people safe. Besides, the political ramifications of letting the vampires seize the area were far more dire than the trouble of sneaking around the GAR requirements. ¡°I want you to drag out all your grimoires, everything. I already owe the man and I don¡¯t think he realizes how important his work is. GAR would just execute him offhand at this point so he¡¯s never going to have any legitimate source of knowledge.¡±

    ¡°Ugh, and we all know how closely mages hold advanced magic to their chests.¡± Jasper brooded for a moment. He¡¯d never elaborated on what exactly had led to him being magically crippled, though Chester knew anyway. As an Alpha it was his job to know everything about his people. Which was why Mister Brown was not going to be one of his people yet, and probably never.

    ¡°Indeed. I still haven¡¯t put the puzzle pieces together on this man, but I would ask that you at least try to be polite and not to pry. He¡¯s been incredibly paranoid so far.¡± Chester chuckled softly, which rattled the glass on the coffee table. ¡°He managed to evade a DAI team. They still think he¡¯s an involved mundane.¡±

    ¡°Oh, to be there when they find out otherwise.¡± Jasper said dreamily.

    ¡°They won¡¯t. He already abandoned that identity. They probably already have him listed as deceased.¡± Chester waved it away. ¡°I just wanted to warn you what the circumstances are so you knew the difference between questions asked in earnest and attempts to find out who you are.¡±

    ¡°Now, that is paranoid,¡± Jasper said, raising his brows at Chester.

    ¡°Things just don¡¯t add up. I think they don¡¯t add up in our favor, but until this man starts making sense I want him treated with all due caution.¡±

    ¡°Even if you¡¯re exposing your most sensitive asset.¡± Jasper said dryly.

    ¡°If anyone asks, you¡¯re my chef.¡±

 Chapter 12 â€“ Preparation

    Callum ate takeout while he browsed the catalogues of the nearest used motorcycle places as well as the online classifieds. The classifieds were actually his preference for purchase, but too many of them were suspect, not working, or actually terrible bikes. In fact, most bikes were what he considered terrible bikes, at least for his purposes. He needed something fast, reliable, light, and not flashy.

    It took him a lot longer than he liked to settle on an option, and even then he had to make another hours-long trip to get another piece of gold exchanged, but eventually he had his auxiliary transportation. Since he already had the books and materials for when he was supposed to meet Gayle, he could spend the time doing reconnaissance. And practicing his gravitykinesis.

    Simply knowing that his ability to manipulate vis was not as good as he had initially thought helped him focus on what improvements he still had to make, but grappling with the more ephemeral filler between threads was not easy. It helped to have something to compare himself, but at the same time, he was clearly not very good at making crisp and clean vis constructs like Gayle. It was still an intensely nauseating and exhausting experience to try and lift himself, so self-flight was off the table for a while.

    Given that he was already putting in long hours, he didn¡¯t let a little thing like being tired get him down. He drove his motorcycle toward the first target, using his teleport when he could. While it wasn¡¯t nearly as fast as it might have been if he had a longer range or could do it more often, he probably doubled his overall speed.

    He¡¯d done some math on practicing his self teleport, and he could go tremendously quickly if he was willing to spend all his vis. Even if he had an effective range of five hundred yards, it didn¡¯t take but a second for him to reorient and teleport again, so he could go a full mile in about four seconds. Not that he could keep that up for long, so it was impractical for cross-country trips.

    When he arrived at the first, nearest town that had vampire problems, he circled far around the target address. While Chester had given him contact information for the local Alphas ¨C and it had not escaped Callum¡¯s attention that the Alphas all lived in or near the vampire locations ¨C he considered it a trap. The less he was known, the less likely it was someone could give him away.

    It was one of the ones without a mage, but apparently that didn¡¯t mean it was without magical protections. There was a ward up, but it was static, probably powered by mana in some way. It wouldn¡¯t be too hard for Callum to push past and he could probably wreck the source fairly easily. Though upon further thought, it was better if he didn¡¯t.

    It seemed weird to him that the wards were so permeable, but his best guess was that they were not meant to keep mages out. There was absolutely no way a shifter or a human or even a vampire could just waltz onto the grounds of the big old pseudo-mansion they¡¯d taken over without triggering them. Callum wasn¡¯t sure what happened if someone did, or how the personnel managed to bypass the ward, but the only reason he could push through was that all he needed was a single thread of mana. The size of the grid didn¡¯t matter since really any grid was useless.

    Since it was daytime, it was easy enough to find the vampires. They were the ones sleeping, though he could tell the differences from human if he looked close enough. Different ears, different jaw shape, weirdly slow and deep breathing pattern, bizarrely little difference between them. They could have all been related. He wished he could really see them.

    Then he realized that seeing them with his naked eyes would mean that a vampire was awake and aware and nearby and revised his thought. Seeing them with spatial sense was enough. Once he was done poking about, he got out his paper notepad again to take notes, though the layout was straightforward enough. Once that was done, he stowed his stuff in the saddlebags and took off to the second target.

    It was extremely late by the time he reached it, late enough that only three of the ten vampires were actually in the movie theatre they¡¯d taken over. That was enough to make the back of his neck itch, and he was incredibly twitchy while he took notes on the defenses.

    That one had an earth type mage defending, and the entire structure and the grounds around it were permeated with spells. It was significantly stronger than the other defenses he¡¯d seen, but at the same time didn¡¯t extend into the air at all. Which meant for him the entire thing might as well not exist, except for around the mage.

    Like all mages he¡¯d seen so far, the earth mage had a bubble around him, but unlike the others, it was dense enough that it did a fair job of obscuring his details as well as having complex threads woven throughout it. Clearly he had personal shields up, and Callum would have to put a lot more effort into neutralizing him than anyone else he¡¯d run into so far.

    The defensive shield meant that Callum couldn¡¯t put a portal within five feet of the guy, and probably couldn¡¯t open portals nearby at all without him noticing. He really didn¡¯t want to just shoot the guy, not if he didn¡¯t absolutely have to, and while the target mage was technically aiding and abetting Callum wasn¡¯t really feeling like he could actually murder the man in cold blood.

    At least until one of the vampires returned with a body.

    The vampire couldn¡¯t, or at least didn¡¯t, fly, but it did move shockingly fast. One second it wasn¡¯t there at all, and the next it had traversed the entire range of Callum¡¯s perception and entered the house. For all his straining Callum couldn¡¯t hear what was said, but the vamp tossed the body on the ground in front of the mage and moved deeper into the house. All the mage did was make a notation of some sort on a notepad.

    Magic flashed and the mage shoved the body down into the ground, past the foundation and into the earth some thirty feet below the building¡¯s floor. It was one thing to know that they were helping the vamps, and it was another to see them do so without any hesitation or revulsion. He still found it hard to believe that GAR actively aided the vampires in their depredations, but it wasn¡¯t like mages actually cared much about or for what they called mundanes.

    He grit his teeth against a hot flush of anger and considered the situation again, burning the emotion on a determination to take out the vampires¡¯ defender. He couldn¡¯t use a gun, but the little he had gleaned from the literature on shields told him there were limits on what it could handle at a time. While he didn¡¯t have any experience with proper magical attacks, enough brute force would work.

    With half of his targets surveilled, Callum drove home, brainstorming approaches on the way. He had to be fast, he had to be accurate, and it had to be something that he could get away with doing in broad daylight. If he could get that glamour focus done he¡¯d have some leeway, but not much. He assumed that any vampire or halfway competent mage would be able to utterly wreck him if he didn¡¯t annihilate them with a first strike, so he had to make his first strikes count.

    Fortunately for him, he didn¡¯t need to meet with Gayle until after lunch, because he got back late and was exhausted enough to sleep until nearly noon. He thought he¡¯d feel terrible when he got up, but he actually felt fairly normal. College had been the last time he¡¯d been able to pull those hours and not feel like he¡¯d fallen down a staircase, so he wasn¡¯t sure what to attribute his newfound resilience to.

    He wasn¡¯t going to look a gift horse in the mouth, though, and packed up his books and brass and drove, then biked, back to the used book store. Not on his motorcycle, though that would have been easier. Callum also stuck to a small carrier bag appropriate to a professor, rather than a more useful backpack or suitcase. In hindsight, his assumed identity could have been better crafted.

    The same couple was around, but they were upstairs in the apartments rather than down in the main part of the store with Gayle. Callum had no idea why that was the case, but then, he had no idea what normal mage behavior was. Maybe they didn¡¯t care because he wasn¡¯t a stranger anymore.

    No matter the reason, Gayle was sitting at the same nook, with a different set of books. When Callum rounded the corner, he was glad to see none of them were duplicates of the few he¡¯d been able to find. It made him feel less bad about how ignorant he was.

    ¡°Miss Hargrave,¡± he greeted her, setting down a stack of blank, polished brass plates with a clunk.

    ¡°Professor Brown,¡± she said, eyeing the brass. ¡°Don¡¯t you think that¡¯s too much?¡±

    ¡°I¡¯m assuming we¡¯re going to mess up the first few times we try enchanting these,¡± he said, putting down his pair of books on the table. ¡°Maybe we can wipe them, but I¡¯d rather just start with a new one.¡±

    ¡°Oh, good idea.¡± He could tell Gayle was fresh out of college. College kids never seemed adequately prepared for failure.

    ¡°I also got a couple more books that might be useful, one of which talks about light spells.¡± He tapped the book in question. ¡°Now, I don¡¯t have fire or lightning magic, but supposedly you can make it from just ordinary mana if all you want is some light. I¡¯m hoping between us we can figure it out.¡±

    ¡°Wouldn¡¯t you know already?¡± Gayle cast him a sideways look.

    ¡°Ah, but to construct one without a focus or references?¡± Callum asked her, and she pursed her lips and nodded. He almost felt bad about misleading her, but she was benefitting as much as he was. More, if she actually could use it to skip an apprenticeship with someone she didn¡¯t like.

    ¡°Oh, right, so,¡± Gayle said, shifting topics without a clutch. ¡°I went and looked at the stuff you suggested and it¡¯s kind of horrific! I¡¯m not sure I can use my magic that way.¡±

    ¡°Hmm,¡± Callum said, not really sure how to address that. Offensive spells were one of the absolute requirements, so she was going to have to learn it whether she liked it or not. Instead of pointing that out, he tried to be more diplomatic about it. ¡°You aren¡¯t going to be using it against people. Imagine if you¡¯re in one of the portal worlds healing people and something like a giant cockroach sneaks into your room to try and eat one of your patients. Would you feel so bad about killing one of them?¡± Gayle had blanched at the phrase giant cockroach, as well she might, and nibbled her lower lip in thought.

    ¡°I suppose,¡± she said grudgingly. ¡°But how am I supposed to practice it?¡±

    ¡°I couldn¡¯t say,¡± Callum responded offhand, dividing up the brass plates between them. ¡°Get a bucket of feeder crickets from a pet store?¡±

    ¡°You can do that?¡± Gayle blinked at him. He considered her a moment, and realized that it was pretty likely that she¡¯d never had a pet reptile or amphibian. She didn¡¯t seem the type.

    ¡°Sure. Mice and stuff too, depending on how adventurous you feel. I definitely wouldn¡¯t suggest testing it on people.¡± He eyed her. ¡°Did you start with people for normal healing?¡±

    ¡°Well, yes,¡± Gayle said, in a tone that implied it was obvious. For some reason Callum wasn¡¯t surprised. If early healing had been instinctual she probably healed her own scraped knees or whatever, but he thought they would have started her out on animals for more deliberate training. Then again, he didn¡¯t know what healing was like for her. Maybe it was something she really couldn¡¯t mess up. His own portals weren¡¯t infinitely sharp ruptures like they could have been, so perhaps healing didn¡¯t arbitrarily interrupt functional biochemistry.

    ¡°I¡¯m afraid I don¡¯t know much about magical healing,¡± he said. ¡°I¡¯ve had it done to me but that doesn¡¯t mean I know what it¡¯s like on your end.¡±

    ¡°Oh, of course,¡± she said. ¡°It¡¯s actually very easy. My healing vis reacts with a mage¡¯s own vis, for the most part. It makes it easy to target.¡±

    ¡°What about healing mundanes?¡± Callum pressed, though he hated using the term.

    ¡°Why, I¡¯ve never tried it,¡± she told him. Considering all the hospital-bound people in the world that seemed wrong. Even if it was just for practice, he would have thought she¡¯d have had the experience.

    ¡°You probably should. If it¡¯s different, then you¡¯ll know more about healing magic than you do. I¡¯m assuming that you can just visit a hospital and do it, but you might have to be careful not to raise any suspicions.¡± There were occasional tales of miraculous recoveries from various diseases, so it wasn¡¯t like it would be completely unheard of.

    ¡°I¡¯ll ask mom and dad,¡± Gayle decided, and turned her attention to the brass plates. ¡°So how do you even start enchanting? I¡¯ve never done it before.¡±

    It wasn¡¯t like Callum really knew what he was doing, but he¡¯d still done a lot. Enchanting was condensing threads inside a material and holding them in place until they stuck. It required certain geometries, curves an intersections, relative positions, and the like, and they didn¡¯t simply mimic the form of the spell frameworks. It was more like the enchantment was the integral of the spell form, some arcane topological translation that he didn¡¯t know the rules to create.

    Of course, most enchanting was supposed to be done with mana rather than vis. Different types of vis did different things, such as Gayle¡¯s healing actually working with someone else¡¯s vis. Even simple things like the mana acceptor functioned differently when made with mana or vis. In that case, it changed what it pulled in, so building a mana acceptor with mana would use mana, while building one with vis used vis. There were supposedly ways to transform one into the other even inside an enchantment, though at an extreme loss, but he didn¡¯t know the details.

    Support the author by searching for the original publication of this novel.

    Callum could see how that was useful for a mage¡¯s personal library of spells, especially if the focus obfuscated what was going on in some way. The problem was he didn¡¯t have the beginning of an idea of how to translate magic to enchanting. Not that he¡¯d seen many mage spells other than the ones he¡¯d made for himself from the spatial primer, but there were a lot of different architectural flourishes to represent.

    Gayle¡¯s glamour bracelet, for example, was insanely complex. It only made sense, since the term really encompassed some kind of mental or perceptual screening effect that made people not notice supernatural goings-on as well as, he presumed, some kind of shielding from recording devices. Neither effect was straightforward, and he wouldn¡¯t have any idea how to go about doing it himself, so he was mostly blindly copying hers and hoping that it worked.

    Constructing the telekinesis spell focus was a different kind of difficult. For the glamour, no matter how complex it was, it was all out there in the open. It was a two-dimensional setup and he could see every line and curve of the enchantment. The telekinesis spell, they had to go by the frankly terrible instructions in the book and hope they got things right.

    It was just as well he¡¯d set aside the entire day for it because it was not easy work. The actual enchanting was fine, but figuring out what was needed in the first place was not. Unsurprisingly, Gayle was far and away better at controlling energy than Callum was. While her education had been clearly lacking in many respects, in terms of actual magical finesse she showed the difference between someone who had a few months of experience and someone with years of professional training.

    It especially showed in her ability to manipulate mana. Callum had more or less stopped touching it after he figured out how to pull out his own spatial vis and make it do stuff. It had been a lot harder to grab much of the ambient mana and he didn¡¯t have anything he could really do with it so he hadn¡¯t bothered. Gayle, though, could control it with an alacrity and precision that he didn¡¯t even manage for his vis. He also took notes on what her magical building blocks looked like, which were rather thicker and more energetic than his.

    On the other hand, at least he could draw. His years of drafting meant that it was easy enough for him to sketch out the paths of the enchantment they were planning before trying to actually commit it to the brass. It also meant he could copy down the shape of the glamour enchantment in fairly short order, with annotations for flourishes in width or density that were hard to capture with simple lines.

    Frankly, the ability to draw straight lines and accurate angles was his biggest contribution to their collaboration, not his ability with magic. Without that, the slog of putting together a simple telekinesis focus would have become hopelessly mired. As it was, it took hours for what was, in the end, probably about five minutes of work. He didn¡¯t even have time to try and put together his own version of the glamor enchantment, but he had multiple pages of notes on it and a sketch he¡¯d rechecked five times so that might be something he could do on his own.

    ¡°Yes!¡± Gayle exulted as she grabbed mana and pushed it through the enchanted plate, directing the resulting construct to pick up books from the table. She watched as they floated through the air, and pumped her fist. ¡°Ha! Take that, Archmage Fane!¡±

    ¡°It¡¯s a step,¡± Callum agreed with amusement. ¡°There¡¯s a lot more to go, though.¡±

    ¡°Oh, don¡¯t be such a wet blanket,¡± Gayle said. Callum wasn¡¯t sure that any normal college graduate would use such a term, but he really wasn¡¯t surprised that Gayle was a few decades behind in her slang. Even her manner of dress was somewhat more formal than he would expect for a causal visit to the bookstore. The dress didn¡¯t look completely out of place, but it was rather fancy.

    ¡°I suppose you¡¯re right,¡± he conceded. ¡°Now¡¯s a good place to stop anyway. It¡¯s getting fairly late.¡±

    ¡°Yeah, it is,¡± Gayle said, peering over at the clock in the wall. ¡°Thanks for the help, Professor Brown!¡±

    ¡°Absolutely,¡± he told her. ¡°Same time next week?¡±

    ¡°Sure!¡± She made a face. ¡°Not looking forward to touching crickets but I guess it¡¯s worth a try.¡±

    ¡°That¡¯s the spirit,¡± he encouraged her. Gayle left first, and Callum watched with his spatial sense, unsurprised that the car she drove looked like it was made in the sixties and had been heavily enchanted. If he had to guess what kind of car a mage would drive, it would be that type.

    He collected the remainder of the brass plates and his notes, tidied up the table, and left himself. The Larsons hadn¡¯t moved from upstairs, though his perception had caught them moving about and having dinner while he and Gayle had worked. Callum assumed they had some degree of the same perception of him, which was why he made sure he was well out of range before he dropped his bubble and began teleporting his way back to his motorhome to start in on his own enchanting project.

    Considering his visualization capabilities he was tempted to put in the entire glamour enchantment at the same time. If that worked it¡¯d save a lot of effort and tedium on his part, but if it didn¡¯t he would have to check every bit individually and probably miss something. It was better to do it one line at a time, double and triple checking, especially since his mana control was so shaky. Getting the right widths and angles was irritating.

    It was just as well he did. He had a stack of a dozen plates to start, and the first seven he screwed up before he was halfway done. At that point, he went ahead and called it a night. The only benefit of exhausting himself so quickly was that it helped him get back onto a normal sleep schedule.

    In the morning he resumed his attempts, and with the benefit of a rested mind it only took him three more until he got it. The first two he actually finished and found they didn¡¯t work, the mana going through and stopping at junctions where he¡¯d not properly fitted the parts of the enchantment together. It was only with the third that everything functioned smoothly and he was able to cast a glamour by grabbing mana and forcing it into the acceptor on the enchantment.

    The result was incredibly interesting, at least to his sensibilities. The mana stream turned into some neutral pseudo-vis and solidified into a sort of bubble that was tethered to his focus. Beyond that there were techniques implied there that he had no idea existed. For example, instead of constantly needing energy to sustain itself, much of the initial investment went into a sort of loop that maintained the spell. Which meant that despite mana being so much less efficient than vis, it was still easy to maintain.

    Callum wasn¡¯t sure if the relatively low cost of operation was due to the efficiency of the spell construction or the type of spell it was. He could well believe his portals and teleports weren¡¯t efficient, but they were so simple in many respects that he didn¡¯t know how they could be improved. His only guess was that if there were a more efficient way of doing things, it was linked with how they did long-distance teleports. Maybe once he found out how they did those, he¡¯d be able to improve his own work.

    Either way it was good enough for the moment. One thing Callum did notice about the glamour spell was that it left an awful lot of residue behind, which really confirmed that it had nothing to do with any kind of energy efficiency. If anything, it seemed to be linked to how targeted the spell was. His teleports and portals did exactly one thing, and affected only what he wanted them to effect. The same with his gravitykinesis. But the glamour was a vague, undirected, and complicated spell so of course it left quite an impression.

    Just playing around with it he found that the spell was very clever, actually. He found the feedback from the spell made the available controls clear and obvious, like size, shape, and location. Plus full invisibility or just masking. It was frankly more responsive than his manual building of spells, which just went to show how terrible he was with them, but the effect was static. Besides which, he didn¡¯t really understand everything it was doing and that made him extremely uncomfortable, but there was nothing to be done about it.

    Experimenting with his steel vortex ball bearings, they couldn¡¯t clean up after the glamour at all, presumably because it was mana and not his vis. The residue of teleports and portals was gone after maybe ten minutes or so, if he dropped one nearby, but the glamour would need a different approach. He¡¯d need stronger cleaners, made from mana instead of vis and probably enchanted in brass, but those themselves would be easier for people to spot. Yet, glamours were so common for mages that maybe it wasn¡¯t even worth trying to hide the use.

    It was a damned difficult problem, to balance being unseen by the world at large and leaving no trace for the supernatural hounds. Callum knew he would err in one direction or the other, but hopefully he could be careful enough that such mistakes weren¡¯t fatal. If anything he¡¯d rather get spotted doing something supernatural by normal people, because they¡¯d be willing to ascribe it to inattention or publicity stunts. The supernaturals would hunt him down.

    Now that he had the glamour done, he needed to go check out the other pair of targets. With obfuscation in place he could teleport or use gravitykinesis without normal people noticing. Not that he was good enough to kinesis himself without exceeding discomfort, but it had occurred to him that he could just ride his motorcycle. If he divided up his spatial bubble and gave just the motorcycle enough negative gravity, it should be able to lift his weight just fine, and then he could spatially drag them both.

    Assuming he could hold the spatial construct that long. A motorcycle with a rider didn¡¯t take up nearly as much volume as a car, but it was still considerably more than what he moved around for his usual tasks. Though the real question was how fast he could go. It was moving space, not moving through space, so in theory there was no upper limit. Hell, it wasn¡¯t far from an Alcubierre drive, so if he was really good he could exceed the speed of light, though he very much doubted that would be true in practice.

    He changed from his suit into more motorcycle-appropriate attire, happy that the helmet obscured his identity, and tucked the glamour focus plate into the inside pocket of his leather jacket. The whole getup made him feel a little bit ridiculous and very much like he was experiencing a midlife crisis, but it worked. Besides, if he did take a spill he really did not want to tear off a few layers of skin, even if he could theoretically get Gayle to heal him up again.

    After driving sufficiently far away from the motorhome, Callum pulled off the road into a field and pushed mana into the glamour focus. Attaching the resulting bubble of obfuscation to himself, he molded it so it fit just him and the motorcycle, then tried his gravitykinesis idea, giving extra negative gravity to just the motorcycle body. Inevitably, he overshot the first time, the bike jerking upward and making him drop the magic as he clutched his groin.

    The next time he was far more careful, the bike wobbling a bit as it rose into the air with him aboard, rising until he turned the reverse gravity back down. It was pretty obviously unstable, and if he wanted to make a habit of it he¡¯d need something he could dangle from, but at least for testing it seemed to work. It also drained him a lot more rapidly than he liked, but that might not matter, depending on how fast he could go. Plus, he could store some vis in the brass he¡¯d gotten, just in case.

    With the gravity doing its job and letting him float, he tried dragging the space forward and things got very weird. There was no sense of movement, but things blurred. The slightest twitch of his manual control sent the landscape careening about, which just made things even worse and he found himself pressed into the ground in short order. Fortunately, because he wasn¡¯t actually moving, it wasn¡¯t like he actually crashed, more like he just lay down in an awkward position.

    Scrambling to his feet, he looked around and had no idea where he was. He powered on his phone long enough to get coordinates and found that in about thirty seconds of so-called flight he¡¯d managed about one hundred miles. Which was damn good, but it was not at all sustainable or controllable. He was one hundred miles east northeast, when he had intended to go due north.

    The good part was that moving space meant that the residue given off by the glamour didn¡¯t leave a two-hundred-mile long track smeared behind him. It stayed contained in the area around him, since technically he¡¯d never left it. Callum righted his bike and tried again, this time being far, far, far more careful about how he applied his vectors.

    It became obvious what had happened when he tried barely moving himself the next time. He wasn¡¯t moving, space was, so when he tried to move space relative to himself, the frames of reference added up. His moving self moved himself more, and his velocity relative to the real world compounded at absurd speeds. For better or worse, that also meant that if he dropped the space drag everything stopped instantly, so there didn¡¯t seem to be any middle ground between insane acceleration and nothing.

    Kind of terrifying when one potential option was accelerating into space.

    Still, if he kept things low he could just take short jaunts of a few seconds even if he did move very, very fast. Which fit the vis cost anyway. Going that fast absolutely decimated his energy stores, so it wasn¡¯t like he could actually reach infinite speed before he ran out of juice, but it was a very uncomfortable method of transportation regardless.

    Callum compromised by dragging himself for five or six seconds at a time before stopping to reorient himself and sometimes teleport himself down to the ground. It definitely wasn¡¯t fun, but it was far faster than driving. The only trouble was that it was very easy to get lost, considering the lack of landmarks and the fact that he wasn¡¯t following the roads. Still and all, he turned five hours of travel into one, which absolutely wasn¡¯t worth complaining about.

    The next address on his list was in the middle of a decent-sized town, a motel like the one in Winut. There was no handy caf¨¦ across the way, though, and while he could probably find the hideouts of the local shifters if he looked, that wasn¡¯t his aim. The dossier said that the mage protecting the location had fire and water talents, and it did not escape his notice that the motel lawn sprinklers had absolutely soaked the surrounding grounds.

    Like the earth mage, the water-fire mage had some form of shield up, which made him wonder why the air mage hadn¡¯t. Possibly the air mage had been less competent, or maybe the only reason those mages were shielding themselves was because of what happened in Winut. It was hardly a secret in the supernatural community.

    Either way, he needed the ability to take out the mage and then the vampires that were sleeping in the motel beds. Vamps sleeping on beds like normal people amused him, for some reason, but it did make it harder to see what his targets were, since there were some ordinary humans mixed in. Still, he managed to square his count with the number on his list, as well as sketch out the layout and take a few other notes, before driving onward.

    The last place on the list actually did have a mage, in contradiction to the information he¡¯d been given. It made him glad he¡¯d taken the time to survey of his own accord, because being unprepared for an active defense would be bad. From what he could see it was another earth mage, which made him wonder exactly how rare something like spatial was. He¡¯d only seen elemental and healing, not gravity or metal or time or light or shadow or whatever else was out there.

    The primer had mentioned a number of those, but only in the vaguest terms. Lacking any kind of census data meant that there was nothing to tell him if rare meant one in fifty, or one in fifty million. It was just another thing to take a note on, sigh, and move on with what he needed to do. Like shopping.

    He had a few ideas on how to approach the issues he¡¯d seen, but dealing with the shielded mages was going to be the hardest part. From Arcane Defenses he¡¯d gathered that he¡¯d need damn good magic to punch through a shield that way, but since he didn¡¯t have any offensive spatial spells that was fine. The sticking point was that the appropriate elements and their opposites tended to be fairly ineffective.

    If he wanted to kill an earth mage, he couldn¡¯t throw a rock at them, even one going very fast. Even a bullet might not quite work, as earth was related to metal. That said, he didn¡¯t really want to use guns for these if he couldn¡¯t get the portal right up close like last time, since he didn¡¯t trust himself not to miss and he¡¯d only have one shot.

    According to the timeline Chester had provided, he had three days before things became really critical, which was rushing a bit, but with enough work he could get things done. The major issue was transporting his materials to the towns and caching them somewhere, since he wanted to move as quickly as he could on the day of.

    A few visits to a number of hardware stores, scrapyards, and lumber yards netted him everything he needed. That, and some browsing of the internet to make sure he had his facts and figures right. Then it was just heads-down, manual labor for the most part. There was some testing involved, just to make sure he had everything right, but eventually he had it all ready.

 Chapter 13 â€“ Execution

    Callum knew that however the attacks turned out, he would have to be very mobile afterward, and preferably not even in the same state. His gravitykinesis helped with that, especially since he¡¯d made himself a really stupid looking flying chair to use instead of his motorcycle. He¡¯d taken an ordinary office chair and bolted on a vertical metal frame to make a sort of shelf above his head. The shelf just had some bags of concrete for mass, so when he used it for lift the chair would just hang straight down.

    He used it to ferry components out to each area ahead of time, caching the small things inside utility spaces and the big things he just put caution tape on. Nobody really questioned why a big piece of wooden piling was lying around if it had caution tape on it. Besides, putting them next to telephone poles made them look semi-official.

    Callum was pretty sure he could have tried glamouring them but he was risking enough by using teleportation to move them into position near the targets. A thousand yards or so away, sure, but that might well be dangerously close if he wanted to remain unobserved. He had basically one data point for how far a real mage could sense, and he didn¡¯t thing Gayle was a good example, so the best he could do was err on the side of caution and hope. Just that much sucked up another of his days, and he had to crash early from simple exhaustion.

    Part of the reason he was working himself so hard was to avoid thinking too much about what he was doing. Taking out vampires who had murdered people and who had kidnapped a kid in a fit of passion was one thing, but a cold assassination was something else. Not something that he would have considered in his old life.

    He was lying in bed worrying it over in his mind when he suddenly sat upright and fumbled for his laptop. All that planning and he hadn¡¯t bothered to check whether all the vampires had actually been doing anything untoward. After seeing one, Callum had just taken it for granted that all the vampires Chester had steered him to were murderers, rather than a political annoyance.

    It was a thought that had come far, far too late, but after a few minutes of sleuthing he found that he hadn¡¯t made a horrible mistake. The other towns also had recent murders or missing persons, and given the population in each that was exceedingly unlikely. Especially since in all the cases there were no details or suspects, just a rote article from a disinterested reporter.

    That relieved his mind enough that he could finally sleep.

    In the morning he drove to his staging area, a camp site off in the middle of nowhere, screened by trees. Hopefully it wouldn¡¯t matter where he started from, but just in case he had the remainder of his gold and cash and guns bundled up and cached at the bottom of a nearby lake, wrapped in plastic and duct tape.

    He teleported his stupid transportation chair outside of the motorhome, swearing to himself that he¡¯d come up with something less awful-looking or at least learn to properly smooth out the gravity, and settled in with a map and a GPS-enabled burner phone. He was going to be traveling very fast and the GPS would reflect that, and he didn¡¯t want anything of his associated with the locations, but he still hated to have to spend the money. Especially since it was separate from the one he was using to communicate with Chester; he¡¯d have to throw away two phones at the end of it, which meant he¡¯d be out of magical phones for a while.

    Even though he¡¯d be using the glamour focus, he took the time to dress himself differently, apply some fake tattoos, and don a hairpiece in order to look different. Callum found it amusing how much time he was spending on makeup as a middle-aged man, solely so he looked different than he did. Then he was off, moving in thirty-second jaunts in the direction of the first town.

    He picked the one without a mage because that was the safest for ensuring his plan really did work as intended. He decided to bring along a shotgun with a bunch of mordite ammunition just in case, since it was always good to have extra options when things went badly, but he hoped it wouldn¡¯t be necessary. Callum still didn¡¯t know how active vampires could be during the day, since all the lore about them was mostly invented, and he didn¡¯t want to tangle with one even if it was sleepy.

    The cache of materials was still in the duct he¡¯d put it in before, and a quick teleport moved it all into the garage he was using as a staging point. The occupant was gone for work, or so Callum assumed, and he didn¡¯t want to set things up in the open. Even if there wasn¡¯t much to set up, it would look pretty weird to any passers-by. The preparations consisted of eight steel plates, which he put on top of wire holders to raise them off the ground.

    Steel plates with cakes of densely-packed thermite on top of each.

    His way of thinking was that if a point-blank shotgun round worked on a supernatural, so would that. Especially since he could deliver it directly to them. It also solved his problem of needing to jump portals around and rely on his gun not to jam. Igniting thermite was a little tricky but the internet was full of wonders and had multiple designs using wires and electricity so he could do it all simultaneously.

    The stuff had not even been that hard to make, especially since he could just rent some equipment for the day to help with the metal powder. It probably wasn¡¯t as good as real commercial stuff, but he didn¡¯t want to buy that. He didn¡¯t know if he could buy that, and he wasn¡¯t interested in stealing anything. Robbing the vamps was one thing, but hurting ordinary folks by taking their stuff was not in his nature.

    Callum reached out to find all his targets, shaping a teleport field around each of the plates and their payloads and threading a vis strand through the static ward so he had a connection. It was quite a strain, holding eight inputs and eight outputs, but after all the practice he¡¯d put himself through it wasn¡¯t unreasonable.

    He touched the ignition wire to the terminals of the car battery that he¡¯d brought with him, and the thermite popped and began to fizz with sparks as burning magnesium started the process. That was his cue to teleport them directly atop the sleeping vampire¡¯s faces, thermite-cake-side down.

    The steel plate was mostly just there in case he was too slow with the teleport but also because he wanted something to help contain all the heat and sparks and redirect them to where they¡¯d do the most good. Which was to say, directly into the vampire¡¯s faces. Burning thermite acted quickly, so Callum wasn¡¯t actually sure if the vamps had time to scream or make any real sign before it did its work.

    Fire alarms started going off, the sprinkler system kicked in, and people started running around, but it was far too late for that. A pile of thermite to the face was as effective as Callum could have ever hoped, but he was glad he didn¡¯t have to see it with his actual eyes. Or smell it.

    Like the first time, there were some bags of cash and containers of gold, and he grabbed those. He didn¡¯t bother with the electronics or the guns, though he wouldn¡¯t have said no to more special ammunition, but a few thousand dollars and a few kilograms of gold didn¡¯t really take up that much space. He did consider stealing the ward, too, but he didn¡¯t have any confidence in being able to shut it down, so he left it be. After one last quick pass to make sure he hadn¡¯t missed something incredibly important, he distributed a bunch of his ball bearings to purge the indications of his teleports and started to tidy up.

    Callum teleported the wire racks into some restaurant¡¯s dumpster and added a cleanup bead, then picked up the car battery with one hand and his loot with the other. He wasn¡¯t sure that the thralls would be able to find his trail without supernatural aid, but they were probably calling in that aid already so he didn¡¯t want to stick around, and simply teleported himself back to his conveyance.

    The glamour residue would indicate a mage had been there, but that was probably okay because literally all of them used glamours. It wasn¡¯t even his own vis, it was mana, so there was nothing identifying on it. He still would have preferred to clean it up, but his vortex enchantments only worked on his own vis so he just let it be. A few seconds later, he was miles away, and he took the opportunity to turn on his phone and text the number Chester had given him. Just three words, letting him know that the nest was destroyed, then he turned it off again.

    That one had been easy. The other three would be more difficult, because there were mages involved. Mages with shields up, and he had no idea how robust those shields were. That was, frankly, where the whole thing could fall apart. A mage might well be able to track him, though he doubted any of them could move as fast as he could with his weird spatial dragging technique.

    There were also more targets in general. More vampires, who had to be killed after the mage, and that meant they might have time to realize what was going on. The thermite-to-the-face technique wouldn¡¯t work all that well if they were up and moving about, especially if they were moving supernaturally fast. Callum¡¯s own reflexes were not good enough to keep up with that kind of speed.

    That was really what he was counting on when it came to the other mages. They were still human, still squishy, and still slow, relatively speaking. He was pretty sure they were counting on their wards to warn them of what was going on, and the ones he¡¯d seen so far he could bypass. While he was far more uncomfortable with killing humans as opposed to vampires, they were actively helping the vampires murder people. The GAR-sanctioned mages were presumably mercenaries or otherwise willing, but the thralls might be just protection detail and under some kind of coercion, so at least in this case he could probably ignore them.

    Although Callum could make do without a vantage point as such, height made his plan easier, so he¡¯d perched himself on top of a water tower near the theatre. The big cylinder had a flat top that shielded him from casual observation, and there was enough room there to set out his plates of thermite.

    He¡¯d practiced, and holding twelve entry and exit points was too much, so he was going to have to work in sets of six. It shouldn¡¯t make a difference, because really, he had gotten quite fast at teleporting, but every second counted. The big wooden piling rested just beyond the thermite plates, and in theory he could try and get that going at the same time, but in practice he could only strain his multitasking so far.

    It took Callum a few minutes to make completely sure he¡¯d found all his targets. Aside from the mage, of course, who was in an inner room, apparently unfazed by the body count of his employers because he was just sitting there watching television. Being thus distracted didn¡¯t seem to impact his ability to keep up the wards, but on closer inspection Callum was pretty sure he was just using a focus for it.

    It made sense. Callum couldn¡¯t imagine keeping up a complicated spell like that for hours or days on end, and it probably was constructed properly so it took less effort than one of Callum¡¯s spells. In fact, it probably could run off of some kind of storage like that bracelet from GAR or the unmanned ward, so the mage didn¡¯t have to supply it the whole time.

    The wards and shield only covered the ground, though, so it was actually easier for Callum to just run a thread of vis over in preparation for teleporting the thermite. He kept a close metaphorical eye on the mage, but didn¡¯t get so much as a twitch as the vis thread entered the theater. Callum took a few breaths, knowing the next thirty seconds or so were going to be utterly manic, and touched the ignition wires to the car battery.

    Thermite sparked and he teleported the six into place, then grabbed the second set and lit them up, fumbling for a moment with the gloves he was using to insulate himself from the wire. Then he delivered the other six and he busied himself with the piling. After seeing how well it had performed at the first stop, Callum trusted that the stuff would do its job, he just had to take care of the mage.

    He¡¯d fastened some two-by-fours in a cross pattern at one end to encourage the thing to not tilt as it fell, though his understanding of lift dynamics was admittedly hazy. Callum wasn¡¯t sure how much it weighed, but he was damn glad he could lift it with gravitykinesis instead of his muscles, because it was heavy. He teleported it to the top of his range and angled it so it was facing directly down, then let it drop. That much wood going that quickly picked up a hell of a lot of force.

    In the few seconds of freefall, the earth mage had maybe started to stir. His head had turned, at least, and possibly the shield had intensified, but Callum couldn¡¯t be certain about that. But he certainly wasn¡¯t on guard and alert enough to react properly when a foot-wide diameter portal snapped into existence in the ceiling of the room and a huge chunk of wood came smashing down from three stories up.

    Needless to say, the results were messy.

    A stone shield did snap into place, reacting either to the mage¡¯s panic or the actual physical threat, but it wasn¡¯t enough to defend against several hundred pounds traveling at something like seventy miles an hour. Actually, Callum wasn¡¯t sure that the mage was dead, but the ward collapsed which was good enough for him. He repeated the process of grabbing the valuables and teleported out the wooden piling while he was at it.

    The bloodstains on the end of the wood made him queasy, as watching things through spatial sense was very far different than seeing it for real, but he didn¡¯t have time for second-guessing himself. The piling came along on his first jaunt a few miles away, to where he¡¯d plotted out the nearest bit of woodland, and he dumped it in a stream he¡¯d found there. He had to actually take a break then, getting jerky and tea out of the bags attached to the chair, simply because moving that much volume completely tanked his reserves.

    He didn¡¯t let himself rest long, though, and as soon as he felt up to it he continued his haphazard trail back to his motorhome. It was more or less on the way, and he needed to stash everything he¡¯d taken. Halfway there he stopped to text Chester with another update, and saw that the Alpha had replied with nothing more than a thumbs-up to his first.

    Callum gave himself fifteen minutes to just completely crash back at home. While time was of the essence, making it to the next stop in the approximate half-hour he could manage with his chair and still having enough vis to repeat his last performance was dependent on his total reserves. Despite all the practice and strain he¡¯d been putting himself though, he still didn¡¯t have a lot of magical endurance.

    Support creative writers by reading their stories on Royal Road, not stolen versions.

    In the end it actually took him more like an hour to get to his next target, and they seemed to be on guard. At least, the mage there was pacing about, the thralls were guarding every chokepoint and window, and there were two layers of wards, not just one. Which just seemed silly, to him. Two layers of walls didn¡¯t mean much when you still left the windows open.

    His vantage was not a handy water tower, but the top of some weird brutalist grain silo that was clearly from a much earlier era in the town¡¯s history. It was actually higher than the water tower, putting the motel and the water-fire mage just at the edge of his perceptions. The wind was pretty strong, and he was glad that he¡¯d taken the time to compress and pack the thermite even if he did put the plates behind the piling to shelter it from the wind.

    The first snag came when he was searching for the vampires in the motel. None of them were up and about, thank goodness. It seemed their nocturnal habits were strong enough that they didn¡¯t or couldn¡¯t stay up. But there were two young people, a man and a woman, locked in a room with chains on their ankles. A white-hot rage swept aside any of the worries he¡¯d had before as he studied them with his senses. It seemed that every mage that GAR lent out to the vampires was complicit in their doings.

    He didn¡¯t know if they were shifters or if they were just unfortunate college students that had been abducted for food. Either way, he wasn¡¯t going to let them stay there. The question was where he could put them. Though he could teleport them to basically anywhere within his sensory range, it would be best if he put them somewhere that the shifters could find them quickly.

    Since they wouldn¡¯t see him, there was no way they could give him away, but a little bit of obfuscation was probably needed to keep people from guessing they¡¯d simply been teleported out. Callum took a moment to work up and discard a number of possible plans before deciding on one he liked, though it¡¯d have to wait until after he took care of his targets.

    Once again he put together the thermite charges and plates, checking to make sure the piling was ready. He expected the fire-water mage would be even less able to deal with it than the earth mage, but that was sheer conjecture. Callum had no idea how mages did actual combat and whether having two types of aspects to their vis meant they were stronger or what.

    ¡°Volley one,¡± he muttered under his breath as he sparked the thermite and teleported it into place. ¡°Volley two. Now, artillery.¡± He lofted the piling over the side and let it fall. He snapped open a portal just above the fire-water mage just before the piling hit the ground, the wood falling at terminal velocity. There was a sort of detonation of magic from the mage¡¯s shields and Callum¡¯s portal destabilized and vanished.

    Unfortunately for the mage on the other end, that didn¡¯t stop most of the piling from slamming into him. For a purely magic attack, and possibly for someone full of vis like a mage or a supernatural, the burst would have been extremely effective. Maybe it even would have worked against magical materials, but against a two hundred pound chunk of wood, it didn¡¯t do much. It was only half of the piling, as the portal collapse had torn it apart, but half was enough.

    The hardest few seconds over with, Callum started sweeping back over the motel and cursed when he saw that one of the vampires was sitting up. Apparently that particular thermite cake hadn¡¯t ignited for some reason, which wasn¡¯t terribly surprising. But it was terribly inconvenient, since he had hoped to get away without having to use a gun. He grabbed the shotgun loaded with mordite rounds and formed a portal in the barrel, the other one at the back of the vampire¡¯s neck, pointed upward as he pulled the trigger.

    The mess the ordinary rounds had made was nothing to how the mordite round practically disintegrated the vampire¡¯s head. Callum took a moment to reposition the thermite and ignite it properly by displacing some still-molten sparks from its companions. It probably wouldn¡¯t hide the fact that he¡¯d had to shoot the vampire instead of burning it to death, but he didn¡¯t like the idea of leaving a failed thermite charge at the scene.

    Of course, the thump of the impact and the sound of the gunshot got people¡¯s attention, but Callum wasn¡¯t overly worried about the thralls. He was more concerned with getting the evidence out of there and rescuing the captives. Now that people were alerted, he had less time, so he formed a small portal between him and just behind the captives.

    ¡°Close your eyes,¡± he told him, speaking with an affected hoarseness to disguise his voice. ¡°I¡¯m getting you out of here.¡± The pair jerked around, so he had to repeat the instructions. ¡°Close your eyes!¡± He said again, and the two of them obeyed. He sent one end of the portal bouncing around the area of town he could sense, especially along streets, to provide the illusion of some kind of movement by way of varying sounds, before teleporting them into an employee bathroom at an auto repair shop.

    Once again he took out his phone, this time texting Chester more of an update.

    Coren nest done. Two captives transferred to Atkins Automotive employee bathroom.

    Callum assumed there was some process for easing people who had been caught up in supernatural issues back into mundane life, but he¡¯d have to follow up to make sure. No doubt GAR would want to question the pair, but his little sound distraction would hopefully muddy the waters enough that it didn¡¯t seem like teleportation. Of course, if it turned out that Chester or GAR simply vanished unfortunate victims like that, then Callum would have to deal with those involved. They were Callum¡¯s responsibility, and if the officials couldn¡¯t be trusted then he¡¯d have to find a non-official option.

    Exactly what that option might be, he didn¡¯t know.

    He scattered his cleanup bearings and grabbed what valuables he could sense, glad that the vampires had a standard way of storing them, as well as nabbing the two halves of the piling that had been torn apart by the portal. One from inside the motel, one from the bottom of the grain silo. Callum ditched them in the same way as the first, by putting them in some wooded land that was probably someone¡¯s backyard, then had to take more time out to rest and regain mana.

    Energy drinks didn¡¯t seem to do much for vis regeneration, and his ability to store energy to draw on for later use was limited. He¡¯d give an awful lot for proper storage stones or crystals or however that bracelet GAR had used on him had worked. In hindsight he should have figured out whatever was powering that first ward, but the best he could do at the moment was eat and nap, and he was definitely flagging. If the fourth one looked significantly tougher, then he might need to put it off until later, or skip it entirely. But he¡¯d have to at least check to see if there were more captives.

    Overall, the first three stops had taken him a little over two hours. He felt twitchy still, despite or perhaps because of how easy it had been. The few hiccups that had appeared hadn¡¯t been bad, and as far as he knew nobody had the slightest idea what his avenue of attack was. They were in some respect ready for him, but they thought he¡¯d be coming at them physically, instead of remotely. Still, he was worried that if he couldn¡¯t take them by surprise, he couldn¡¯t do anything at all.

    After another half hour of relaxing in his stupid chair and downing another tea, and being glad he was in the woods so he could just go behind a tree when the tea caught up with him, he started north toward the final target. When he got to the outskirts he turned on his phone in case he needed to text Chester an update and found that he had a message waiting for him.

    Vamps withdrawing. Cancel fourth.

    That was actually somewhat of a relief. While the vampires in question were undoubtedly murderers and deserved to die, that meant the only reason that he absolutely needed to go after them at the moment was to free anyone they had. He was completely exhausted, so he didn¡¯t trust himself to properly pull off another mass attack, but he had to know.

    He replied with a thumbs up, and continued on into town in order to find out. While he was there, he¡¯d retrieve his supplies too. It wouldn¡¯t do to have someone find where he¡¯d stashed them, even if it was unlikely. He paused just within sensory range of the target, studying them as the vampires and their thralls packed, the former moving somewhat sluggishly, but moving. Fortunately for everyone it was only vamps and thralls, with no poor victims, and a scant half-hour later their convoy headed away.

    On the way back to his motorhome, Callum found himself crashing hard. It was like being out of mana, only worse. It was only by gritting his teeth and cracking open some energy drinks that tasted like poison that he managed to get himself close enough to the motorhome to teleport himself and his bags the rest of the way. The chair he left in the woods. The plan was to properly dispose of it, but he couldn¡¯t manage it at the moment. He could barely manage crawling into his bed before he conked out completely.

    ***

    ¡°So how the hell is he doing that?¡± Chester asked the room at large. The room consisted of the Wolfpack, his mate Lisa, Lucy, and Jasper, who were the only ones actually read into Mister Brown. Or whoever he was.

    ¡°He might have access to the GAR teleportation network,¡± Jasper said. ¡°Or it¡¯s¡­¡± He pursed his lips. ¡°The fae supposedly had ways back into Faerie other than the actual portal. It¡¯s never been confirmed, but their magic doesn¡¯t work like ours so I¡¯ve always thought it was possible.¡±

    ¡°Lucy?¡±

    ¡°He¡¯s only turning his phone on near the locations. I could give you a cell quadrant but that¡¯s it.¡± She shrugged. ¡°Sorry boss-man, I can¡¯t tell you how he did it.¡±

    ¡°Shame,¡± Chester sighed. ¡°I¡¯d love to be able to move my own people around that fast.¡±

    ¡°I would too, but the way Jessica talked I don¡¯t think he¡¯d reveal his methods,¡± Lisa said, doing her best to be the voice of reason. ¡°Let alone agree to bring along shifters.¡±

    ¡°I suppose not,¡± Chester agreed. The man had reported two nests destroyed in less than an hour, hundreds of miles apart from each other. When he sent in his people, there were only mundanes there. The vampires and mages were dead, gruesomely so, and simply calling them out under the Accords meant that the thralls had to defend everything themselves, or surrender. Considering the circumstances, they were encouraged to surrender. Nice and neat and inside the rules, ignoring the person outside the rules removing the supernaturals on site.

    ¡°My question is how he bypassed the wards at the sites,¡± Jasper said thoughtfully. ¡°He should have rung the alarm bells crossing them, or they should have been destroyed. It¡¯s just very strange they were still intact.¡±

    ¡°There¡¯s no lock or alarm in the world that can¡¯t be bypassed,¡± Chester told him. ¡°You know that as well as I do.¡±

    ¡°Yeah¡­¡± Jasper sighed. ¡°But the only ward-picking foci I heard of was up in Archmage level stuff that GAR had control over. But this guy¡¯s got no magic?¡±

    ¡°Well he¡¯s obviously a supernatural, but I guess the details don¡¯t matter at this point.¡± Chester waved it aside. ¡°Point is, I wasn¡¯t expecting anything like this, so I¡¯m going to owe him more than a few lessons from Jasper on my behalf.¡± He glanced around at his audience. ¡°I¡¯d rather not owe him favors for long, I suspect that they could become ruinous if he waited until he really needed them.¡±

    ¡°You know, he¡¯s careful about burner phones and stuff, but I checked on his identities and he¡¯s got nobody working for him on the information angle,¡± Lucy said. ¡°Nobody¡¯s sanitizing or purging any of the data that does accumulate on him. Which isn¡¯t much, but still.¡±

    ¡°Are you volunteering then, Lucy?¡± Chester raised his eyebrows at her. ¡°What you do for me is already skirting the edges of what you can get away with while working for GAR. Helping him would be completely compromising yourself.¡±

    ¡°Eh, I didn¡¯t turn out a mage so none of them are going to give me the time of day anyway.¡± Lucy shrugged, but it was a bit of a sore point with her. Not every child of a mage bloodline actually turned out to be a mage. Some were merely magic sensitive, like Lucy, and while they were inside the supernatural world they were barely more than mundanes.

    Chester sympathized with them, and that was one reason he employed Lucy and Jasper, but while they both appreciated the work and safety, they were somewhat isolated. Neither of them were shifters or pack, after all, and sympathy went only so far. They just weren¡¯t equipped for the relationships shifters had with each other.

    ¡°I¡¯m not your dad,¡± Chester said with a shrug. ¡°I¡¯ll introduce you, but you¡¯ll have to convince him on your own merits.¡±

    ¡°Not a problem, boss-man.¡± She gave him a thumbs-up and he rolled his eyes, answering his phone. It was his Alpha from Lewisburg, the second place on Mister Brown¡¯s hitlist.

    ¡°Chester here,¡± he answered.

    ¡°One of the thralls called GAR, so we¡¯re going to have an agent in our fur soon enough,¡± Alpha Greene told him. ¡°Also, weird thing ¡ª something smashed that mage good. The smell was lumber, pine, aged near some place with sawdust, probably a lumberyard. I¡¯d say just a chunk of wood he bought somewhere, yet oddly I couldn¡¯t scent where it went or smell a blood trail out.¡±

    ¡°That¡¯s quite mysterious,¡± Chester said blandly. It was good to know there were some limits to the man¡¯s ability to pass without trace, but they¡¯d already guessed he had some ability to suppress scent. ¡°Just secure things. Make sure you can account for and verify everyone¡¯s whereabouts.¡±

    ¡°Yes, Alpha.¡± Green hung up, and Chester looked around at everyone.

    ¡°That was faster than we expected,¡± one of the Wolfpack noted.

    ¡°He left the thralls alive,¡± Chester said. ¡°I¡¯m not actually sure why, but it does make things more ridiculous. And slightly annoying.¡± Chester shrugged. ¡°At least calling GAR means that we can let the mages bear the expense of shipping the thralls back.¡±

    The phone on the table buzzed. The text message flashed up on the screen on the far side of the room, a setup that existed mostly because Lucy couldn¡¯t keep her hands to herself.

    Coren nest done. Two captives transferred to Atkins Automotive employee bathroom.

    ¡°Oh, hell.¡± Chester stared at the message. The issue wasn¡¯t that the third target had been taken care of, it was that there were mundanes involved. ¡°Now we need to call GAR. Lisa?¡±

    ¡°On it,¡± she said, while he rang up his Alpha in Corensville.

    ¡°Pierre? Send four to Atkins Automotive, there¡¯s some mundane witnesses in the employee bathroom. Have everyone else move on the nest. Call them out, and then go in.¡±

    ¡°Yes, Alpha,¡± Pierre said. He didn¡¯t sound enthusiastic, but he didn¡¯t know that the vampires were dead. Chester had hinted there were some core pack assets in the vicinity, even if he wasn¡¯t supposed to interfere with a regional dispute, just to ensure it didn¡¯t sound like he was ordering some suicide charge.

    He¡¯d probably call back soon enough, wanting answers Chester couldn¡¯t give him. They all had. Mister Brown¡¯s work was really doing a lot for his mystique, which was fantastic, though really secondary to why he¡¯d actually asked for hits on those vampires. He needed to keep his people safe.

    ¡°Yes, from vampires,¡± Lisa was saying. ¡°Your contact is Alexander Pierre. Phone number¡­¡± Chester listened to her rattle off the information to GAR and watched his phone. It was a strangely relaxing war council. When he couldn¡¯t do things himself, he found himself climbing the walls from impatience. Normally.

    With what Mister Brown was capable of, all he needed to do was wait and tell his people to secure empty buildings. The only worry was if the vampires did manage to catch him, and Chester rather doubted that was going to happen. There were still some strange oddities about the way the man acted, but nobody sane would go up against vampires unless they could outfight one.

    His personal phone rang again, and he lifted his eyebrows at the name that appeared for the caller. Certainly, he had been intending for this little operation to get attention, but he hadn¡¯t actually anticipated Mister Brown doing all four on the same day. Apparently Chester wasn¡¯t the only one who had been impressed.

    ¡°Chester here,¡± he answered.

    ¡°Call them off,¡± a voice growled over the receiver.

    ¡°Well hello to you, too, Vlad,¡± Chester said brightly. The name of the Master of the Minneapolis nest wasn¡¯t actually Vlad, it was Antoine Lavigne, but Chester enjoyed needling him.

    ¡°Call them off,¡± Antoine repeated, with no change in tone.

    ¡°I don¡¯t have any idea what you¡¯re talking about,¡± Chester said, infusing his voice with great cheer. ¡°Attacking your nests without an official challenge in place would be a violation of the accords.¡± In the same way that establishing the nests in shifter territories was, but Chester wasn¡¯t good friends with the local GAR adjudicator the way Antoine was.

    ¡°I¡¯m withdrawing from Carrington,¡± Antoine said, obviously between his teeth. ¡°So call them off.¡±

    ¡°Honestly, it¡¯s like you don¡¯t trust me at all,¡± Chester replied. ¡°Though thank you for telling me you¡¯re withdrawing from Carrington. I know Alpha Beys will be glad he can relax.¡± While he talked, he reached for the other phone and texted a reply to Mister Brown.

    Vamps withdrawing. Cancel fourth.

    ¡°Don¡¯t think I¡¯m beat, Chester,¡± Antoine warned. ¡°I don¡¯t know who it is you got to do this, but when I find them, they¡¯re going to wish GAR had got to them first.¡±

    ¡°Like I said, Vlad, it would be a violation of the accords if I had someone working for me! As you know, my pack very strictly follows the rules.¡±

    Antoine hung up. Chester grinned.

 Chapter 14 â€“ Payment

    ¡°This is a hell of a thing,¡± Ray said, looking at the scorched beds in the motel room.

    ¡°Same guy?¡±  Felicia asked softly, hands in her pockets as she looked at the damage with him.  The supernatural morgue was their next stop, but the shifters had insisted on having Ray take down the warding before anything else.  With the vampires and their hired mage dead, there wasn¡¯t anyone who could work the focus and shut it down properly instead of just breaking it.

    Since he wanted to see the crime scene, Ray didn¡¯t argue too much.

    ¡°Same guy,¡± Ray said.  ¡°Sure, the actual methodology is different, but none of these thralls heard or saw a single thing, aside from a solid thump.  Probably the mage.¡±  From what he understood, the mercenary they¡¯d hired to ward the place had been pretty thoroughly mangled with something blunt.  ¡°It seems unlikely we¡¯d have two ghost assassins operating in the Midwest.  Not to mention the targets.¡±

    ¡°Mm,¡± Felicia agreed.  Every single one of them had been one of Master Lavigne¡¯s satellite nests, and every single one of them had been encroaching on Alpha Chester¡¯s territories.  They¡¯d have to talk to Alpha Chester and Master Lavigne themselves eventually, and Ray was not looking forward to that.

    It was obvious that the political maneuvering between the Midwest Alpha and the Master of Minneapolis had reached a boiling point.  Keeping them in line wasn¡¯t Ray¡¯s job though, or Felicia¡¯s either.  It wasn¡¯t likely either of them would reveal the agents they were using, but they had to ask.

    ¡°I don¡¯t like that they¡¯re all the same modus,¡± he said instead.  ¡°You¡¯d think with different strike teams we¡¯d see something different.  It feels like this guy is using the GAR transportation network, which would make it an inside job.¡±

    Felicia grunted but didn¡¯t answer aloud.  Of course, they were in public.  Once they were alone he could get a better idea of what she thought, though he was pretty sure they were both thinking the same things.

    ¡°I found one!¡±  One of the cleaners trotted up, holding up a tiny plastic bag with a steel bead inside it.  Ray took it and puffed air into the bag so he could properly sense the bead, but any lingering magic from their target was long gone.  He still wasn¡¯t sure what they represented, but they were definitely a weird kind of calling card.

    ¡°Well, there¡¯s confirmation.¡±  Ray sighed.  ¡°How much do you want to bet our victims will have seen nothing?¡±  Felicia just scowled.  Normally her ability was very useful.  For this perpetrator, she was almost dead weight and she hated it.

    ¡°We need a staff,¡± Ray decided, and Felicia prodded him in the side.  ¡°No, we do.  There¡¯s two more scenes like this, way too many people to question, and you and I are going to be tied up with Chester and Lavigne.  And maybe King Ravaeb.¡±

    Felicia made a face.  Ray wasn¡¯t really looking forward to it either, but King Ravaeb was the fae authority over, roughly, the same area.  Now that they had a repeat offender, the collective knowledge of the local fae could very well be vital.  Under the circumstances, Ray had GAR¡¯s full weight behind him.

    Instead of making a report, he called the head office directly.  GAR didn¡¯t have the huge number of personnel that a mundane law enforcement bureau might, but for this kind of thing they would take people off less important cases.  They might even transfer in people from other regional offices.

    ¡°Great, thanks,¡± he said, maybe twenty minutes later.  ¡°Come on, we¡¯ll hit the morgue and when that¡¯s useless, we¡¯ll go see Alpha Chester.¡±  Felicia nodded, and they decamped.

    ¡°Did you notice that they use mundane methods?¡±  Felicia said when they were back in the car.  Their superiors had hustled them out so fast that Ray hadn¡¯t even had time to get his glider, though with free license to use the GAR teleportation network, it wasn¡¯t like they were slowed down much.

    ¡°Mundane?  They didn¡¯t use guns this time around,¡± Ray pointed out.

    ¡°No, but there¡¯s no lingering magic, and I have the autopsy report here.¡±  Felicia tapped her laptop.  ¡°Mage was killed by blunt force trauma with something wooden.  The vampires were killed with thermite.¡±

    ¡°How would you even do that?¡±  Ray scowled, trying to conceive of sneaking up on a vampire and hurling burning thermite at their face.

    ¡°Well, the steel plates were probably part of the delivery method.  Maybe there was some enchanted part that was taken away,¡± Felicia speculated.  ¡°But it¡¯s all brute force.  No use of bane material.  No direct spell effects.  No shifter claw or toothmarks either.¡±

    ¡°Now that you mention it, that is quite odd.¡±  Ray tapped the steering wheel thoughtfully.  ¡°You notice they didn¡¯t kill any thralls in any of these incidents, either.  Just the first.¡±

    ¡°I keep going back to the silverite chains.  I bet the first was done out of passion.  Vamps kidnapped someone he liked?¡ª¡±

    ¡°He?¡±

    ¡°I think so.  It¡¯s so impersonal, even the stuff that looks like he got mad and killed everyone.  Using a gun, so he likely wasn¡¯t prepared, considering no guns were used for these.  These other hits are what it¡¯s like when he¡¯s doing a job.¡±

    ¡°Okay, but if that¡¯s true we should have some records of this guy from before.¡±

    ¡°Unless¡­¡±  Felicia said, and Ray sighed.

    ¡°Yeah, unless it¡¯s one of GAR¡¯s troubleshooters gone rogue.  I raised that idea before, but maybe now they¡¯ll take it seriously.¡±

    ¡°We need to get a profile of everyone Chester¡¯s had contact with.  This has to be coming from him, even if we can¡¯t possibly prove it.¡±  Felicia tapped in a query on her laptop.  ¡°I¡¯m requesting an Archmage look at the profile on this guy though.  Even if we don¡¯t have clearance to know about GAR¡¯s pet projects, they will.¡±

    ¡°What, you think it¡¯s like a golem or something?¡±

    ¡°I don¡¯t know.¡±  Felicia shrugged.  ¡°Neither do you.  There¡¯s just rumors.¡±

    During their drive to the supernatural morgue, Felicia¡¯s laptop pinged as people were directed to the project and they all started acquainting themselves with the details.  Most were mages or magic-sensitive humans, as fae preferred field postings and the vamps were all asleep, but there were a few shifters in the mix.

    Ray didn¡¯t have high hopes for them.  Not when considering the nature of the investigation.  Now, if it were shifter packs being decimated, that¡¯d be another story.

    ¡°The hell.¡±  When Ray saw the line of essentially headless vampire corpses, he couldn¡¯t help but gawk.  It was one thing to read the report, it was another to see so many people with identical and unusual wounds.  The mage casualty, at least, had more normal injuries, though it was still uncomfortable to think that could be him.  The mage in question was Fremont Jackson, and was a fairly successful mage for hire.  Not quite as competent as Ray, but not someone who would be easily dealt with.

    ¡°Cause of death for Fremont was a severed spine,¡± Felicia supplied, seeing where he was looking.  ¡°Might be our best bet so far.¡±  He nodded and followed her to the end of the row, discreetly supporting her as she put her hand on the corpse¡¯s arm.  A moment later she let out a breath, blinking rapidly.

    ¡°He sensed magic nearby, and his shield formed around him, but something hit him hard enough to get through the shield.  It came from directly above, so he didn¡¯t actually see anything.  Again.¡±  She scowled.  ¡°He was plugged into the wards at the time and didn¡¯t sense anything from them.  Nothing touched the ground or came through the walls.¡±

    ¡°So what, did he fly in?¡±  Ray muttered, though he already knew the perp had ridiculous stealth ability.  His ability to bypass wards was chilling, though any good mage knew that wards were not as secure as most people assumed.  ¡°Did Fremont have any idea what type of magic it was?¡±  Though it wasn¡¯t possible to determine the aspect a priori, it was often relatively easy to figure out by the way it, or its effects, acted.

    ¡°No, but it appeared suddenly and close by.  Nothing was sensed traveling toward him.¡±

    ¡°Maybe an artifact, then?¡±  A lot of magical items weren¡¯t particularly obvious unless they were active, and most mages didn¡¯t bother to put anything under that much scrutiny if they were behind wards.  ¡°Could be related to those metal balls we keep finding.¡±

    ¡°Maybe,¡± Felicia said, sounding doubtful.  Ray agreed with her.  There were too many strange aspects to the case that pointed to nothing in particular.  It was impossible to do more than blindly speculate.  He was certain that Alpha Chester knew, but aside from that, it was difficult to see any gleam of hope in identifying their serial murderer.

    They didn¡¯t bother with more than one of the vampire corpses.  Felicia simply confirmed what they¡¯d expected: the vampire was asleep, and then it was dead.  Definitely the same guy.

    To get to Alpha Chester¡¯s compound, they used the GAR teleporters.  In the Midwest they were so sparsely placed that Ray¡¯s glider was often the fastest means of transportation, since they needed to fly hundreds of miles anyway, and he was tempted to just fly to their destination directly.  Alpha Chester did have a network link at his compound, though, so it was more polite to use it, but he stopped by the office to retrieve it in case they had any leads to follow up after their talk.

    The wood, sourced from Portal World 1, also known as Faerie, was folded into a box about the size of a person.  It could unfold of its own accord, using fae magic, but it also had a built-in focus so Ray could control it.  That focus kept it hovering on a cushion of air, tethered to Ray as he took them through the teleporters.

    The Midwest branch of GAR was actually located adjacent to the other regional branches, since the teleportation network meant they didn¡¯t need to be near the area they served.  It was mostly for organizational compartmentalization, though there were always people who wanted to merge it into one whole.

    He waved vaguely at the supervisors as they went from the incoming gate to the outgoing, waving his mark at the receiver and requesting 116-A from the operator, the teleportation circle that was outside Alpha Chester¡¯s compound.  There was a flash of transition and they were in the back of a small, pack-owned restaurant.

    ¡°Agent Danforth,¡± a shifter who had to be nearly eight feet tall rumbled, already in war form.  ¡°Agent Black.¡±  He nodded to each in turn.  Obviously Chester had been expecting them, even if they hadn¡¯t called ahead.

    ¡°Greetings,¡± Ray said, flipping open his credentials by force of habit.  ¡°If you could take us to see Alpha Chester?¡±

    ¡°Right this way.¡±  The shifter didn¡¯t bother to change to human form as he led them out the door and across the street, the folded glider bobbing behind them.  It was actually quite nice to be completely surrounded by other supernaturals.  If only Alpha Chester weren¡¯t one of the major issues Ray and Felicia had to deal with.

    They were shown through several layers of security, shifters in war form prowling everywhere, until they reached an office.  Chester himself was in human form, but wasn¡¯t much smaller than most war form shifters at that, making an oversized laptop look rather miniscule.

    ¡°Welcome,¡± Alpha Chester said, not rising.  Even though neither of them were shifters, Chester¡¯s presence was palpable, pervading the room.  ¡°Be seated.¡±

    ¡°Thank you,¡± Ray said.  ¡°I¡¯m assuming you know why?¡ª¡±  He was cut off as a phone buzzed on the table to Chester¡¯s right.  The Alpha looked over it and scowled, the temperature of the room seeming to drop.

    ¡°One moment,¡± he told them, and picked up the phone.  ¡°Chester here, I¡¯m afraid I¡¯ll have to call you back.  I have some guests at the moment.¡±  He powered off the phone and set it aside, turning back to them.  ¡°There.  Now, as you were saying?¡±

    ¡°We have some questions to ask you about yesterday¡¯s incidents,¡± Ray told him.  Chester smiled, and Ray knew he wasn¡¯t going to get anything useful.

    ***

    According to the clock, Callum slept a good fifteen hours.  The fact that all his joints ached agreed with that assessment.  He really was not meant for the kind of thing he¡¯d just done, and his body was telling him so.  There was probably some magic overuse ache in there, but everything hurt so he really couldn¡¯t tell.

    At least, he couldn¡¯t tell until he tried to teleport himself out of bed so he wouldn¡¯t have to move and a massive migraine flashed lights in front of his eyes.  He groaned, not wanting to move, but eventually forcing himself out of bed for painkillers and some water.  It seemed he was going to have to wait until he recovered from overexertion to do anything useful.

    For the next few hours Callum slumped in his chair and made some desultory attempts to poke around on his laptop but really couldn¡¯t focus on much.  It was only after he¡¯d gotten a lot of liquids and some real food down that he started feeling properly human again.  He still had enough of a headache that he didn¡¯t want to risk doing much magic, aside from his spatial sense which seemed to be fine, so he went ahead and started going through the loot bags manually.

    It was an awful lot of money and gold.  Part of him regretted not taking the fourth target, but considering how he felt he probably would have run out of gas partway through the operation.  Still, there were bundles of money and racks of the gold plates that the vampires used, as well as another crest.

    He got out his notepad and started adding things up and making notes.  There was definitely too much stuff to keep in one place, and while he didn¡¯t spot anything about the bills in question that would make them traceable, it wouldn¡¯t do to walk in with a pre-wrapped bundle of hundreds to try and buy something.  Even so, the infusion of cash was welcome, though it wasn¡¯t like he could really do anything with it.  Callum¡¯s day-to-day expenses were minimal and he certainly couldn¡¯t invest in anything large, as he¡¯d have to be prepared to abandon it at a moment¡¯s notice like he had the house in Winut.

    This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

    Without using his magic, it was surprisingly annoying to separate and organize everything, but actually physically moving around seemed to do him some good.  He labored away for the better part of an hour before deciding he had done what he could.  By that time he was feeling actually up to talking, which meant he had to drive.  He started up the motorhome and went in essentially a random direction for an hour before he pulled another burner phone from his stash and dialed the number Alpha Chester had given him.

    ¡°Chester here,¡± the voice came, but continued on before he could say anything.  ¡°I¡¯m afraid I¡¯ll have to call you back.  I have some guests at the moment.¡±  The phone beeped, and Callum frowned at the call-ended icon, not entirely happy to be brushed off like that.  He was tempted to dial back immediately, but there was no telling who the guests were.  For all he knew, Alpha Chester was schmoozing with the President or something.

    After a few minutes he shrugged, checking up on the nearest town and making his way there.  He brought his phone and his laptop with him, driving his motorcycle at a more sedate pace than usual to match his feelings of fragility.  Also because he was still feeling twitchy and didn¡¯t think he could take getting pulled over, no matter how unlikely that was.  In the fresh light of day, it was hard to believe he¡¯d managed to do what he had done.

    He didn¡¯t actually feel too bad about killing vampires, not after knowing what they were responsible for, but he was more conflicted about the mages.  They were pretty damn guilty, all told, but it was harder to rationalize them as being outside of normal legal jurisdiction.  He didn¡¯t want to turn into some crazy vigilante or cold-blooded killer.

    Not that he was cold-blooded.  It was more the opposite for him.  Yes, the information Chester could provide was the reason he¡¯d accepted, but knowing that his targets were hurting and killing innocents was why he could go through with it.  At least that was how he justified it to himself.

    That and similar contemplations kept Callum occupied on the ride. When he arrived he found a coffee shop with wifi to get himself set up.  He still had the plate with the glamour enchant on it, since he¡¯d been refreshing it studiously to keep it from fading out, and he could probably spare the energy for that even if he wasn¡¯t teleporting around like he preferred.

    Considering the odd hour there wasn¡¯t much traffic, so he closeted himself in a corner with some fancy-sounding spiced tea and went to see what the actual news thought of what had happened.  For some reason he wasn¡¯t surprised that there was nothing about it.  Since he hadn¡¯t burned anything down or killed any normal people, there was really no official need to acknowledge it.  The places were probably temporarily closed under some excuse, likely with some extra glamour punch behind it, and that was it.

    He stayed there an hour or so, poking about online and catching up with news and entertainment, before his phone buzzed.  Callum pushed a little bit of mana into the glamour focus, which made his entire body twinge but really wasn¡¯t bad, and accepted the call.

    ¡°You managed to call just as the GAR agents arrived,¡± Chester rumbled, not actually apologizing for hanging up earlier.  ¡°They were less than pleased with the scenes you left them.¡±

    ¡°But you were, I hope?¡±  Callum made a face.  That wasn¡¯t really what he wanted to say, but it had just slipped out.  Aside from Gayle he barely spoke to people anymore, and with Gayle it was strictly business.

    ¡°Your service was more than exemplary,¡± Chester said.  ¡°I have no complaints.  I knew that GAR would come by when I asked you to take care of things.  They¡¯re frustrated, of course, but as far as I know they have no lead on you.  It goes without saying that should you be identified, I can do nothing for you.¡±

    ¡°Of course,¡± Callum said.  That was a given.  Or at least, assumed, since it wasn¡¯t worth doing something off the books unless it was truly off the books.  ¡°I¡¯m hoping they¡¯re well away from this conversation?¡±

    ¡°They teleported out,¡± Chester confirmed.  ¡°But we have wards around here to keep our privacy even so.¡±

    ¡°I wouldn¡¯t place too much faith in them,¡± Callum said doubtfully.  Not only could he thread his senses past wards, he could thread his magic, too.  If he could, other people could, which meant that what most people thought of as genuine protection just wasn¡¯t.

    ¡°Yes, I¡¯ve heard about your rather impressive ability to bypass them.  Most people can¡¯t do that, so I think I¡¯m safe for the moment.¡±  Callum didn¡¯t argue, though he would have loved to explain.  Though Chester wasn¡¯t a mage, and wouldn¡¯t know.  ¡°I assume you called me about the payment I promised you?¡±

    ¡°Yes,¡± Callum affirmed.

    ¡°I actually have two introductions to make.  One is to the mage expert you wanted; you can call him Harry.  The other is to an information technology specialist.  She wants to be called Moneypenny.¡±  Chester delivered the information in a perfectly serious tone, but Callum had to laugh.  To be fair, it wasn¡¯t like he was using a real name either.

    ¡°Is Moneypenny the one who makes sure these calls aren¡¯t recorded?¡±

    ¡°I sure am!¡±  A new voice butted into the conversation, ignoring the light growl from Chester.  ¡°Gotta say, I¡¯m a big fan of your work.¡±  Moneypenny seemed cheerful, though she didn¡¯t actually reach bubbly.  ¡°You¡¯re the best ghost I¡¯ve ever heard of, but I thought I¡¯d throw my black hat into the ring because you don¡¯t have anyone covering you electronically.¡±

    ¡°It¡¯s true,¡± he admitted.  Callum didn¡¯t think he lost anything by that, since it absolutely was the case and didn¡¯t betray any confidences.  ¡°But you work for Chester already.¡±

    ¡°Only kinda-sorta.  I do stuff for him but he¡¯s not my boss boss.¡±

    Callum restrained himself from his initial reflex of brushing her off and took a moment to consider it.  His current identity was compromised anyway, so far as Alpha Chester and associates were concerned.  If he had to make another identity, it wouldn¡¯t matter overmuch if he had someone helping him with his current one.  There was probably some downside he hadn¡¯t considered, but aside from his basic response of preferring his own council, it actually seemed like a good idea.

    ¡°You realize that if I accept your offer, you can¡¯t research me anymore, right?¡±

    ¡°She¡¯s well aware,¡± Chester growled.  Moneypenny laughed.

    ¡°Yeah, that¡¯s fine.  Like I said you¡¯re a really good ghost, and anyway, boss-man here is satisfied that you¡¯re the real deal.¡±

    ¡°I would hope so,¡± Callum said.  He was mildly offended that Chester had done background work on him, but it was no surprise and he¡¯d taken steps with that assumption in mind.  Finding it validated really shouldn¡¯t upset him, but it did.  Callum still rather thought of himself as an ordinary private citizen, and resented people prying into his business even when it was expected.

    ¡°So is that a yes?¡±

    ¡°We¡¯ll discuss it later.  Give me a number and I¡¯ll call you once we¡¯re done here.¡±

    ¡°Yes!¡±  Moneypenny exulted, and a moment later his phone buzzed with a text that included both a phone number and an email address, along with several screen names for different chat clients.

    ¡°Now as for Harry, he does work for me,¡± Chester said.  ¡°Not that I¡¯m going to order him to record any conversations or the like, but I thought I would make that clear from the beginning.¡±

    ¡°I appreciate that,¡± said Callum.

    ¡°So, you wanted information on mages,¡± said a new voice, raspy and male and tired.  ¡°And I assume not the public stuff, considering you were going to bookshops.  I have a number of grimoires that I have scanned in, and L?¡ª¡± he stopped himself.  ¡°And Moneypenny set up a file depot for them.  I¡¯ll give you my contact information as well, of course, but most of what I know is in those books.¡±  The phone buzzed again, with another text.  ¡°Several archmages would have my head if they knew I was passing on some of this without their permission, so please don¡¯t spread it around.¡±

    ¡°I can assure you this is for my private use only,¡± Callum said calmly, but inwardly he was cheering.  He had thought there would be some extended question and answer session, or something equally arduous, or maybe some need to actually meet.  A cache of useful books was perfect.

    ¡°Before we split off, I do have a warning for you,¡± Chester said, and Callum bristled.

    ¡°Oh?¡±

    ¡°Not about me,¡± Chester assured him.  ¡°The Master of Minneapolis, Antoine Lavigne, has sworn everlasting revenge and so on.  So far as vampires go he is quite dangerous, so don¡¯t get caught.¡±

    ¡°Good to know.¡±  Callum wasn¡¯t impressed.  He already had all of GAR and the regular government on his case, so another vampire wasn¡¯t really a big deal.  In fact, it was more likely Lavigne was someone he would have to worry about only after GAR caught up with him.  So, don¡¯t get caught.

    ¡°That said, would you be interested in more jobs?¡± Chester asked, sounding hopeful.

    ¡°No,¡± Callum said firmly.  He had what he wanted, and didn¡¯t have any thirst for blood or lust for money.

    ¡°A shame,¡± Chester said, though he didn¡¯t seem surprised.  ¡°Thank you again.  If you ever feel like you need work, or you need some help, feel free to ask.¡±

    ¡°I will, thank you,¡± Callum said.  Chester hung up.

    Before calling either of the two Chester had recommended to him, Callum pulled up the file link on the burner phone and got the grimoire files.  It wasn¡¯t in one of the proprietary formats for magic computers, which made sense since the magical internet was locked down pretty thoroughly.  There were probably ways around it, but none available to him, so it was just a set of images.  That seemed safe enough to transfer over, but he¡¯d still use a disposable laptop.

    Just flipping through the so-called grimoires, Callum could tell they were not mass-produced titles like in the bookstores.  They were for the most part typed, but with hand-drawn and on occasion hand-written inserts, and were all personal investigations into magic.  It was fascinating, and there were even a few on enchanting, which Callum absolutely needed.

    There was not, however, anything about spatial magic, at least not by title.  There were bits on the four elements by different authors, a lot on fire magic, one book on wards, but no books on spatial magic.  Which wasn¡¯t surprising, but it was a little disappointing.  He pulled up his phone again and called up Harry, waiting for the eight or nine rings before the man picked up.

    ¡°What?¡±

    ¡°It¡¯s Professor Brown,¡± Callum said.  ¡°Did you give me your personal phone number?¡±

    ¡°Yeah, why wouldn¡¯t I?¡±

    Callum suppressed a sigh.  That wasn¡¯t exactly discreet, but it was his lookout.  It wasn¡¯t like Callum intended to keep that particular phone for much longer anyway.

    ¡°I guess it doesn¡¯t matter,¡± he said.  ¡°Anyway, I looked at your books and I have a few questions before I try digging into them.¡±

    ¡°Sure,¡± Harry said, sounding unenthusiastic.

    ¡°How would someone see through a glamour?¡±  Callum didn¡¯t have any idea how to even begin framing the question so he could find it in a book, and it was one of the major mysteries he wanted to solve.

    ¡°Huh?  Well, breaking a glamour takes?¡ª¡±

    ¡°No, no, not breaking it,¡± Callum corrected him.  ¡°See through it as if it weren¡¯t there.¡±

    ¡°Oh.¡±  There was a pause.  ¡°Huh.¡±  A longer pause.  ¡°Well, that¡¯s complicated.¡±

    ¡°I¡¯m listening,¡± Callum said.  Already, he was glad most of the information was in book form.  The guy¡¯s manner was incredibly irritating.

    ¡°It¡¯s really dangerous, actually,¡± Harry said.  ¡°Using vis internally.  With fire vis you could cook your own brain, with water vis you could burst your cells, that kind of thing.  But some Archmages and GAR agents know how to use their vis to reinforce their senses.  It¡¯s said that they can see past glamours and sense mana from miles away.¡±

    ¡°¡­I see.¡±  Callum took a moment to digest that.  Apparently he¡¯d been using magic all his life and never knew it.  Not that he had any idea how, or why, because he¡¯d always been able to see through glamours.  But it was internal magic, and he¡¯d already noticed it was incredibly difficult if not impossible to sense the inside of a supernatural.

    Then there were the dangers.  He could see how most types of vis would be dangerous to use if their effects manifested inside the body, but space magic didn¡¯t seem to have much of any effect by itself.  The projectile sphere spell came to mind.  Every other type of mana seemed to have some effect, but not space.

    He had his own theories as to why.  Mostly, it was because unless space changed very rapidly very quickly, things just moved in it as normal.  For something more common like fire or ice or water or anything physical, that wasn¡¯t the case.  Healing might be safe, but he¡¯d suggested some offensive applications himself and that kind of thing running rampant through the body could kill someone instantly.

    The question was how he could stop doing that.  Or if he could, if it was something he¡¯d been doing unconsciously for thirty years.  It was weird that he¡¯d been running vis through his senses, or maybe his brain, since before he could walk or talk so it might be something he had no control over.

    ¡°Okay, well.  That¡¯s actually very useful information, thank you.¡±  Callum looked at the books again.  ¡°The enchanting books.  Do they have the technique for translating spells down into enchantments?  Or at least the basic vocabulary for it?¡±

    ¡°In the second volume,¡± Harry said, sounding offended.  ¡°Though of course the most advanced enchantments are only known to the Enchanter¡¯s Guild.¡±

    ¡°That does not surprise me.  What about foci?  I¡¯m guessing I¡¯d have to go to the Enchanter¡¯s Guild if I wanted to get one of those.¡±

    ¡°Of course.¡±  Harry sounded a little baffled.  ¡°Most mages will make some of their own, but they do the best stuff.¡±

    ¡°That¡¯s what I thought, thanks.¡±  He decided to leave the interrogation about where exactly all the mage infrastructure was until later.  It wasn¡¯t like he dared walk in and order a multifunction focus for himself.  But still, all the guilds and families and so on had to have land and property and stores somewhere that normal people wouldn¡¯t see them.  Though with glamours, they could be hidden in plain sight.

    ¡°What aspect does the mage you¡¯re asking for have?¡±  Harry asked, sounding marginally energetic.  ¡°I can give you some recommendations based on what you¡¯re looking for.¡±

    ¡°Harry¡­¡±  Callum sighed.  ¡°I can¡¯t tell you anything.  I know you could be more helpful if I did, but I have to be careful.¡±

    ¡°Oh,¡± Harry said.  ¡°Right.¡±

    ¡°Anyway, thanks for the information.  I¡¯m sure I¡¯ll call again after I¡¯ve read through the material you gave me.¡±

    ¡°Sure,¡± said Harry, and hung up.  Callum rolled his eyes and dialed Moneypenny instead, lips twitching at the name.

    ¡°Hey, big man!  Gonna take my offer?¡±  She was not only expecting the call, but also knew exactly who was calling.  Not that it was difficult to ensure that was the case, even with burner phones and the like.  If she did network and communications security, that was the minimum degree of competence anyway.

    ¡°Maybe, maybe,¡± he told her.  ¡°I mean, how much do you charge?¡±

    ¡°Fifty bucks and you can have me for a whole night,¡± she replied promptly, which was so unexpected and ridiculous that he laughed for thirty seconds straight before he could get himself back under control.  He was pretty sure it was only the glamour that kept people from staring at him.

    ¡°Oh, God,¡± he said after he was able to breathe again.  ¡°I don¡¯t think I¡¯ve laughed like that in years.¡±

    ¡°Good to know I still have my touch,¡± Moneypenny said, a touch smugly.

    ¡°The touch you charge fifty bucks a night for?¡±  Callum almost regretted his riposte, clumsy as it was, but Moneypenny just laughed.

    ¡°That¡¯s the one!  Seriously though, I charge Chester by the job.  I¡¯ll send you a price list, but honestly, I¡¯m more into interesting jobs.  It¡¯s hard being in the supernatural world but not being able to actually do anything supernatural.¡±

    ¡°You know, to be honest, a lot of that hacking stuff seems pretty magical to me,¡± he told her.  ¡°But I thought you were a shifter, working for Chester and all.¡±

    ¡°Nah, I¡¯m human.  Parents were mages, but I didn¡¯t get the spark.¡±  She sighed.  ¡°Kind of makes me second class.  Practically a mundane.¡±

    ¡°Nothing wrong with being a mundane,¡± Callum said, before pressing his lips together.  Five minutes in and his lips were already far too loose.

    ¡°Tell that to a mage,¡± Moneypenny said dryly.  ¡°Here, I¡¯ll text you my stuff.¡±  The phone buzzed, and Callum glanced at it.

    ¡°Ah,¡± he said.  ¡°You left on your real name.¡±

    ¡°Yeah,¡± Moneypenny, or rather, Lucile said.  ¡°Honestly I don¡¯t think they¡¯ll catch you and if they do, a fake name isn¡¯t going to throw them off the trail.  Either Chester can protect me or he can¡¯t.¡±

    ¡°You¡¯re not worried about Chester,¡± Callum said, leaning back in his chair.  Lucile was a lot easier to talk to than Harry.

    ¡°He¡¯s practically royalty.  He could murder a dozen people in broad daylight and all he¡¯d get was a slap on the wrist.  I mean, so long as it wasn¡¯t an Archmage or master vampire.¡±

    ¡°Huh.  So, Lucile?¡ª¡±

    ¡°Lucy,¡± she interrupted.  ¡°Lucile makes it sound like I¡¯m eighty years old.¡±

    ¡°Lucy, then,¡± he said with a chuckle.  ¡°Do you have any idea what this whole vampire thing was about?¡±

    ¡°Vaguely.  Exploiting some rules about GAR representation based on territory.  The ones you offed weren¡¯t really supposed to be there, but since GAR chose not to do anything about it, it was down to actual combat aaaand the vamps brought like, ten times more strength than the shifters did for each location.¡±

    ¡°Ah,¡± Callum said.  ¡°Selective rule enforcement.¡±

    ¡°Yeah, that.¡±

    ¡°Blech,¡± Callum said with disgust, and Lucy made a noise of agreement.  ¡°So what happened with the pair that I rescued from the vampires?¡±

    ¡°I hate to say it, but I don¡¯t think it¡¯s anything good,¡± Lucy said.  ¡°The Department of Acquisitions is notoriously opaque.  I could find out for you, though.¡±

    ¡°I¡¯d appreciate it,¡± Callum said, wincing.  He should have known better than to let GAR take care of what they considered mundanes.  But he could at least hold out hope it wasn¡¯t too terrible.  ¡°Consider it your first job from me.  I feel a little bit responsible, since I¡¯m the one who pulled them out.¡±

    ¡°Yeah, I¡¯ll bill you,¡± Lucy said, then paused thoughtfully.  ¡°Wait, how are you going to pay me?¡±

    ¡°I thought you¡¯d have a suggestion,¡± Callum admitted.  ¡°I can always leave you money in a dead drop but that may not always be possible.¡±

    ¡°There¡¯s some dark web ways to set up digital transfers that are obfuscated, but they¡¯re complicated enough that you probably don¡¯t want to deal with them,¡± Lucy admitted.  ¡°A dead drop works best, but I can ask Alpha Chester to help with the logistics on that so you have more geography to work with.¡±

    ¡°Right,¡± he said.  ¡°How about we start with two kilograms of gold for a retainer.  That should give me enough of a tab that I can request things without worrying too much.¡±

    ¡°Damn, you don¡¯t play around,¡± Lucy said.  ¡°I¡¯ll take it!¡±

    ¡°Great, I¡¯ll text you the location in a day or so.¡±  He was sorely tempted to keep chatting with her, but he was afraid he¡¯d compromise himself.  Besides, he had books to read.

 Chapter 15 â€“ Refinement

    ¡°Wherever did you find the enchantment for a light spell?¡±  Gayle looked at him, almost suspiciously.  ¡°Professor Brown, are my parents paying you to help me figure this stuff out?¡±

    ¡°No, but maybe I should ask them,¡± Callum said with a laugh.  ¡°I just talked with a friend and he gave me some good leads.¡±

    The enchantment and fire aspect books had actually had multiple ways to make light.  The light and fire aspects were the simplest, by far, but those weren¡¯t useful to either Callum or Gayle.  Instead he¡¯d taken the example of how not to make a light spell, due to it being inefficient, since it was the kind of brute-force method a beginner would use.  There was a more efficient and clever way of doing it which was only described, and Callum couldn¡¯t reproduce it or even understand the general principles, even though he really wished he did.

    Callum was painfully aware he was behind on his magic theory.  Years and years behind, and he probably wouldn¡¯t be catching up anytime soon.  Working with Gayle helped just by seeing how someone who was properly trained did things, but he had still been tempted to skip the meeting just to study.  Though it wasn¡¯t like he had gotten anything done for the past few days anyway, still recovering from his exertions.

    ¡°Well definitely thank your friend for me.  And that telekinesis focus is working great!¡±  Gayle held up the brass plate, which she¡¯d obviously refreshed at some point during the past week.  Steel had to be refreshed every eighteen or twenty hours or it would fade.  Brass was more like four days, but it was far from permanent.  Fortunately, repairing one was much easier than making it in the first place, given how much trouble Callum had making the glamour focus.

    ¡°Fantastic,¡± he said.  ¡°How¡¯d your healing experiments go.¡±

    ¡°Ugh.  You were right, but it¡¯s weird.¡±  Gayle said, half-complaining.  ¡°I got a box of crickets and gah.  Having to actually touch them.¡±  She shuddered. ¡°But I can do damage with healing if I use an asymmetric framework with inversion circulation.¡±  More jargon, but Callum could more or less guess at the meaning.

    ¡°Is that something you can do at range?  Bundle it into a sphere or arrow type projectile?¡±  Gayle gave him a look, but took his actual genuine question as a Socratic one and considered seriously before answering.

    ¡°Well, I¡¯d have to keep control of it.  So it wouldn¡¯t have much range, you know, like thirty feet or so.¡±

    ¡°Thirty feet is better than needing to touch them,¡± Callum pointed out, but wondered at that range.  He could essentially cast anywhere within his sensory range, but that was nigh-on five hundred yards.  If the same was true for Gayle, she was practically blind.  Then again, she had a healing aspect, not a spatial one.

    ¡°I guess so,¡± Gayle said.  ¡°I just kinda wish I could throw fireballs or something!  Elementalists have it easy.¡±  She looked at him.  ¡°What about gravity magic?¡±

    ¡°It¡¯s a lot easier at close range, too,¡± Callum agreed.  ¡°Honestly, basically everything is.  I agree that elementalists have it easy, but keep in mind they can¡¯t heal.  Even if you have to learn an offensive spell, you probably won¡¯t ever need to see combat.¡±

    ¡°Oh, that¡¯s a good point.¡±  Gayle beamed at Callum.  ¡°When we finish figuring out these spells I¡¯ll just breeze through my draft and be able to open my own practice!¡±

    ¡°I¡¯m sure you will,¡± Callum said, a little amused by her naivete.

    Making a new focus with a light spell didn¡¯t take nearly as much time as figuring out the telekinesis focus had.  Not only was it a far simpler manifestation of spellwork, because it just created a light directly above and in front of the focus, but they had a direct template to work from.

    In fact, they went beyond the simple, static template and tried incorporating some of the dynamic parts of the enchanting patterns into the brass plates, since they had extras.  The first attempt didn¡¯t work at all, the second made a line of light, which was actually quite interesting, but it wasn¡¯t dynamic, but with the third they found the right bit to make the light float.  Callum still wasn¡¯t nearly as conversant with mana as Gayle, but he had to admit it was pretty fun to be able to manifest something other than portals.

    He felt ten years younger making a glowing ball of white light zip around the bookstore, like a kid playing with bubbles, but he could only let himself be distracted for so long.  Also, it became clear he absolutely had a longer range than Gayle, whose magic sense seemed to not only be limited to about thirty feet, but was actually line-of-sight as well.

    ¡°So, movement is probably going to be the hardest one,¡± Callum said, looking at the list of requirements.  Gayle made a face, still having fun playing with the light focus among the shelves, but returned to the table and flopped down opposite him.

    ¡°What even is there for a healer?¡±

    ¡°I mean, maybe you could scale up telekinesis,¡± Callum said thoughtfully.  ¡°It wouldn¡¯t be great, but you could carry yourself by your own bootstraps.¡±

    ¡°I guess.  Maybe your friend has other options?¡±  Gayle asked hopefully.  Callum snorted and shot her a look.

    ¡°Glutton,¡± he accused her.  ¡°But I¡¯ll ask.  No promises, though.¡±

    She promised to meet him at the same time next week and Callum went back to his motorhome to dive into the books.  He actually had one specific question that he wanted answered, but so far all his searching had turned up nothing.  He had no idea how the teleportation enchantment worked at such long distances, and it was something he desperately wanted.

    Instant travel was not nearly as impressive while it was fixed to his spatial senses.  His range admittedly seemed on the high end, but GAR could teleport hundreds of miles, maybe even thousands, so it wasn¡¯t as great as all that.  In truth, he could move faster using his gravitykinesis, even as half-baked as it was, though of course not through walls and doors.

    Ultimately he decided to call up Harry again.  He was hoping that if he couched his questions as trying to inquire about the GAR network it wouldn¡¯t imply that he was a spatial mage.  Unfortunately, Harry¡¯s reply wasn¡¯t very useful.

    ¡°I have no idea how they work,¡± he said tiredly.

    ¡°You never studied their construction?¡±  Callum pressed.

    ¡°I mean, I¡¯ve looked, it¡¯s not like they¡¯re hidden.  But you¡¯d have to be a spatial mage to do anything like that.¡±

    ¡°Ah, a shame,¡± Callum said, controlling his reaction.  That was perfect for him.  If the linked teleports were not obfuscated in any way, because of the rarity of the magic needed to make them, then he could just copy them whole cloth.  It wouldn¡¯t be quite that simple, of course, but it was better than nothing.

    He thanked Harry and went to dial Lucy, but paused, because he hadn¡¯t set up a dead drop yet.  That wouldn¡¯t be difficult, but his mind went back to all the hard drives he¡¯d pulled off the first set of vamps, still buried at his old house in Winut.  Lucy actually could take advantage of whatever was on there, though maybe nothing was.  Any intelligent operation would have made sure to change all their logins and so on, but a lot of times people were stupid.

    For a while he debated whether or not he should go back.  It had been a while, but they might have left watchers or alarms on the property.  Ultimately, he thought it would be worth his time.  Obviously he wouldn¡¯t get anywhere near the property itself, but he was pretty sure he could at least spot wards.  If there was anything there that might alert someone, he¡¯d be able to see it, but even if he didn¡¯t he¡¯d be nowhere near.  Besides, one of the other things he¡¯d left behind was obviously enchanting supplies, which he definitely wanted.

    Callum took his motorcycle and made his way north, not using gravitykinesis because he wanted to be as low-profile as possible.  That meant no teleportation or glamour either, so it was a long trip, but he spent it mostly musing over what he actually had found in the books.

    When Gayle had complained that elementalists had it easy, she was very much correct.  Water, fire, air, and earth, along with things like ice, wood, and metal, all had very similar basic concepts among mages.  Light and darkness weren¡¯t far different either, all creating tangible effects from the same basic structures: balls, spears, fields, walls, and so on.  They started to diverge with more advanced techniques, but they weren¡¯t complete strangers like healing or spatial.  Or temporal, though time magic was marked as simply theoretical.

    The ultimate consequence of that was that most common mage knowledge was useless to him, even if he tried to adapt it to how magic worked.  Not that Callum was going to ditch all the tomes on various forms of magical control, and in fact had doubts that the texts were right about how different the various vis aspects were, but he¡¯d already tried some basic elemental exercises and gotten nowhere.  Simple things like balls had no effect, and slightly more complex spellforms designed to conjure the appropriate element simply fell apart.

    Besides, some of the ideas, like the instant shower-and-scrub spell from the water elemental handbook, were really neat.  So were the spells for maintaining a mage¡¯s personal conveyance, which any of the basic elements could manage without issue.  Of course, air mages could fly and from what he read they seemed pretty smug about that.

    Unfortunately for Gayle, it seemed that any enchantment using anything but mana had to be done by a mage with the proper aspect.  So he could, in theory, make a gravitykinesis focus for her that used mana as input but filtered it through a spatially enchanted array.  There was some trick to the conversion he didn¡¯t understand, but it could still be done.  Not that he would, even if he knew the details, since he was supposed to be a gravity mage.

    When he arrived in Winut, Callum had to exercise iron control to keep from stopping by the caf¨¦, even as late as it was, to see if there were still familiar faces there.  True, he looked different, but if shifters could track by scent they¡¯d know him instantly.  Instead, he cruised slowly along an entirely different road where he could just barely get at the old property and the bags he had buried there.

    There did seem to be something around the house, some thin pseudo-ward, which actually relaxed him a bit.  If he had found nothing he probably would have been rather nervous about using his magic, but spotting what was probably an alarm that only covered the house didn¡¯t seem too bad.  Even so, he quickly teleported the hard drives into one saddlebag and the enchanting equipment into the other without slowing down.

    For some time afterward he drove east, scanning with his senses to make sure no hint of magic clung to him or the items he¡¯d taken, but apparently nobody had been tricky enough to try and attach trackers to stuff that was buried deep in his former back yard.  An earth mage probably could have found it, if they¡¯d cared to look, but he figured that it would at least look disturbed if that had been done.

    After an hour or so he was pretty sure that there was nobody following him, so he pulled over near a handy road sign.  Then he actually scanned the area with his spatial sense and realized that it didn¡¯t have anything appropriate so he moved on until he crossed a culvert.  There he got out the package with the gold and the one with the hard drives and taped them together then stuck the entire bundle to the underside of the culvert.  He took a picture of it, copied the GPS coordinates, and texted both to Lucy before calling her.

    ¡°Hey, big man!¡±  Lucy sounded cheerful, but that seemed to be her default state.  ¡°That¡¯s quite the large package you¡¯ve got for me,¡± she added in an overly sultry voice.  ¡°I hope I can handle it.¡±  Callum laughed and shook his head at her opener.

    ¡°Don¡¯t worry, my package always satisfies,¡± he said, before getting to the point.  ¡°The gold is in there, but I thought I¡¯d give you a present, too.  Some hard drives that I took off the vampires.  Maybe they¡¯ve got nothing, maybe they have valuable stuff on them, but either way you can have them.¡±

    ¡°And it¡¯s not even my birthday!  You really know how to treat a girl, big man.¡±

    ¡°I try,¡± Callum said with a smile.  ¡°I do have another request for you already, though.¡±

    ¡°Lay it on me!¡±  Lucy said eagerly.  ¡°And as to your previous one, so far it¡¯s all in administration limbo, so there¡¯s no telling what¡¯s going on.¡±

    Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on Royal Road.

    ¡°Ah, bureaucracy.  What I need from you is the locations of all the teleport points, gates, whatever you want to call them, that GAR has in the area.¡±

    ¡°All all or just public all?  ¡®Cause a lot of the big families and archmages have their own private ones and finding out if the exist, let alone finding them, is pretty difficult.¡±

    ¡°Just the public ones,¡± Callum assured her.  ¡°Though I guess I¡¯m a little surprised that there are any big families or the like around here.¡±

    ¡°Eh.¡±  Lucy sounded distracted, the timbre of her voice changing as she obviously juggled the phone from one position to another.  ¡°There¡¯s a couple, mostly outside the big cities, but not as many as other places.¡±

    ¡°That figures.¡±  Callum decided not to worry about the local families.  He had no desire to go traipsing around private mage property.  Or shifter or vampire property, for that matter.  ¡°Yeah, just the normal public ones are fine.¡±

    ¡°I¡¯m kind of surprised you don¡¯t already know,¡± Lucy said.  ¡°We figured that¡¯s how you were getting around.¡±

    ¡°Yes, well, a man has to have some secrets,¡± he replied.  It was a shame he couldn¡¯t convince GAR he was using their teleportation network, just for the sheer inconvenience and diversion factor.  It wasn¡¯t worth trying to connect the ghost assassin with anything concrete, though.  That kind of fancy flourish was bound to get him in trouble.

    ¡°I thought that was a woman¡¯s line,¡± Lucy accused him.

    ¡°Then you can keep it; it¡¯s not like I know all your secrets either.¡±

    ¡°For all I know you might!¡±

    ¡°A little mystery will be good for you,¡± he told her.

    ¡°Easy for you to say!  Okay, sending you the locations now.¡±  His phone buzzed and he glanced at the text, which was another text-as-picture attachment.

    ¡°Great, you¡¯re the best, Lucy.¡±

    ¡°You know it!¡±

    Callum hung up after a few more comments and turned to head for home.  By the time he made it he was absolutely exhausted by the simple fact that he¡¯d been driving for practically the entire day, not to mention that he kept his spatial senses straining outward just in case someone had spotted him getting the supplies.  Fortunately, it didn¡¯t strain him as badly as his more magically intense efforts and he was off to find the nearest teleport the next day.

    It seemed that using a false front for a teleport circle wasn¡¯t common, because both the first and the second teleport circle he tracked down were inside supernatural-owned businesses.  It was a wonder that there wasn¡¯t one inside the bookshop he kept meeting Gayle at, but since there was one about five minutes¡¯ drive away, that explained a lot.

    She didn¡¯t live in the area at all.  In fact, she probably was one of those families that had a private teleportation enchantment in their property.  The car she drove was actually parked with two others just like it in the back lot of an office building, which didn¡¯t have any signs he could read.  There was obviously some glamour there, but since he couldn¡¯t actually read glamour it did him no good.

    When he finally got eyes on his first circle, or at least his spatial senses, he knew that it was going to be a very long project.  They were by far the most complicated structures he¡¯d seen, though even at a glance he could see part of the reason for that was just the scale.  Unlike the other enchantments, it existed in three dimensions, and he was going to need more than a pencil and paper to take things down.

    It had been a while since he¡¯d touched CAD software, but it seemed perfect for the job.  A quick trip to the internet and a not so quick wait while it downloaded, and he had one of the programs he was familiar with installed on the laptop.  Even with that it took more than an hour to transcribe what he saw, just because of the complexity.

    He would have loved to see someone use it.  In theory he could trigger it himself, but that was too risky.  Instead he moved onto the next closest teleporter, hours away, so he¡¯d have more than one reference.  If they were all part of a network, some of the enchantments would refer to that network and he wouldn¡¯t need to worry about them.

    At least, that was his hope.  After transcribing the second teleportation enchantment he was a little bit worried, because there were a lot of differences, but it wasn¡¯t something he could just eyeball.  He¡¯d need to sit down with the enchanting reference books and grind away at it.

    The good thing was that, in theory, he could actually completely reproduce it because he was a spatial mage.  There was no way to tell which parts were specifically spatial and which were other aspects or completely lacking in aspects, aside from the intake which had to be mana if it was to be universally usable.  That was fine though, because he should be able to energize it directly, without the conversion, if he understood it.

    What he really, really wanted was to see the other side.  It was incredibly tempting, but he knew he couldn¡¯t.  Even with the best excuse in the world, Callum didn¡¯t think that being on GAR ground was a good or safe idea.  He still didn¡¯t know what that bit of the tattoo he¡¯d removed from his wrist did, but it probably was something people would notice if they looked.

    After getting both enchantments down, Callum parked his motorhome at the nearest stop and started chewing on the problem.  It didn¡¯t take long for him to get frustrated at comparing the drawings and the reference material using one small monitor.  He really missed his big, multiple-monitor office back at his house, and after a few more minutes he gave up and realized he actually needed the visual space to get anything done.  He could hold a lot in his head, but not that much.

    Since the nearest place to buy a monitor was an unfortunate distance away, he shelved the study to take a look at the magical components he¡¯d brought back.  With the references, and a little bit more experience, the contents aren¡¯t as mysterious as they had been previously.

    The liquids and powders were magical materials, sourced from the portal worlds, for creating foci.  Mixing the two created a sort of paste that could be enchanted, and over the course of a few hours it would dry and harden in place.  It made doing complex enchants much easier and cheaper than would otherwise be the case, since the creator could do as much or as little at a time as they felt like.

    Callum was impressed.  He doubted it was as good as doing an enchantment on a single crystal or anything similarly difficult and expensive, since piecemeal work would have far more variation in the final spell form and many more inefficiencies its creation, but it was more than good enough for someone of his skills.

    The various plates he¡¯d retrieved were wards.  Specifically, ward foci, meant to be usable by anyone.  Which was actually really fascinating, and gave him the chance to see wards form and move close up.  More importantly, it gave him the experience of what it was like to be on the receiving end of a ward.

    There was an entire realm of feedback that he wasn¡¯t aware was possible.  It was a bit like his spatial senses, but different at the same time.  In fact, if it weren¡¯t for his spatial senses he probably wouldn¡¯t have been able to deal with the sensory input from the ward at all.  As it was it gave him an awful headache the first time around, and he had to ease into it.

    The best comparison he could make was that a ward was an ancient, low resolution monitor, but one with alarms attached to it, while his spatial sense was a high-resolution, massive display that did nothing more than display.  Of course, the ward in question was air based and could be shaped to fit a large building, nothing at all like the earth ward he¡¯d also seen, so one ward couldn¡¯t really be taken as indicative of all wards.

    Actually using it let him figure out why the wind mage hadn¡¯t noticed the thread of his spatial magic poking through the holes.  The ward construct just didn¡¯t have the sensitivity for something that fine.  That might not be true of every ward so he couldn¡¯t count on his trick working all the time, but for most of them it probably would.

    He dropped the ward and scattered some vortex beads around to clean up whatever they could because, while it was interesting, it was the exact opposite of stealthy.  Not that his beads did much for mana, but he wanted to scrub what could be scrubbed.  Besides, he was pretty sure that he could make a better ward with vis once he got the theory down, though considering the complexity of the task that would be a while.

    Once he was finished playing with the different shapes and sizes of the ward focus, he took his motorcycle and drove into town.  Picking up a pair of monitors and the appropriate cabling was easy enough, but passing a little cluster of high-tech startups, which seemed to appear like mushrooms in every town these days, gave him an idea.  There was a little single-room office advertising 3D printing and CNC etching, which sounded exactly like what Callum needed.

    Both his manual and magical dexterity left something to be desired, at least when it came to enchantment, but the magic paste stuff meant that he didn¡¯t have to be perfect.  If he had some sort of existing guide, it¡¯d be even easier and, more importantly, let him make something smaller.

    The brass plate was fine, but it was large and unwieldy, whereas if he had a proper machine etch the patterns and then filled them with the paste, he could probably fit the entire enchantment on something the size of a postage stamp.  Maybe even smaller, once he¡¯d had more practice.

    It was easier to conjecture than actually do, of course, and it ended up being several hours before he was able to submit a properly formatted file to the etching company.  It would be more hours before it was done and he could go pick it up, so Callum figured he¡¯d stay in the area.  So far he¡¯d been traveling elsewhere each day, only going back to discuss things with Gayle, but that was possibly a little overly cautious.

    He spent those hours of waiting on the teleportation enchantment models he¡¯d made, and the very little headway he made confirmed it was going to be a long term project.  He needed more references, and at the very least he needed to see one in action.  There were too many structures inside the enchantment that didn¡¯t show up in the books he¡¯d gotten.

    Instead of trying to brute-force something that was obviously complex, Callum sighed and started studying enchantment theory from the beginning.  It had been a long time since college and dry theory wasn¡¯t nearly as fun as actually playing with magic, but it had to be done.  Besides, he had some vague ideas about foci he wanted to make for himself.

    ***

    Out of deference to the vampires, the meeting was held after dark.  None of the other supernatural races, aside from a small number of fae, were so powerfully affected by the time of day, so most of the time important decisions were made sometime after sunset.  Chester made it a point to make most of his decisions during the day, finding the pandering to the vampires to be quite tedious.

    He knew why it happened, of course.  Vampires were so very biddable, what with their blood dependence and addiction.  GAR effectively controlled them through their allowance of mundane blood and, on rare occasion, magical blood.  Hunting locations and targets were strictly controlled, and since the vampires were not about to do anything to imperil their food source they marched in firm lockstep with GAR.

    At least, mostly.  In reality there were plenty of dissenters on both sides and political machinations aplenty, but ultimately GAR had the vampire population firmly under control.  There were fewer levers on shifters and fae, and none at all on dragonblooded, so the vampires were part of the mages¡¯ power block.

    He heard Lavigne coming long before the vampire entered the room.  Mostly because he wasn¡¯t using vampire speed, which was downright horrifying for anyone that wasn¡¯t a powerful shifter or fae.  Even Archmages couldn¡¯t keep up that kind of speed, though with their shields they didn¡¯t really need to.

    ¡°Oh good,¡± Chester drawled without looking around.  ¡°The person who wanted this meeting actually deigned to show up.¡±

    Lavigne hissed, which was delightfully gauche, not to mention stereotypical, and blurred around to his chair.  To most it would be as if he simply appeared in it, but to Chester it was a very weak play.  A cornered animal baring its teeth.

    ¡°Keep a civil tongue in your head, cur,¡± Lavigne threatened.  Like all vampires he was medium-tall and bulky, but thin-faced and sharp-featured.  While Chester could tell them apart, it was more by smell than sight.

    ¡°Get on with it,¡± King Ravaeb said.  Chester always figured that the fae was mostly frost giant, since he was blue-skinned, bald, and two sizes too large unless he used a fae art to alter himself.  Unlike Lavigne, Chester would have to actually worry about Ravaeb in a fight.  Vampires were just fast and strong, their mind magic too weak to work on shifters, but fae could do all sorts of things.

    ¡°Yes, let¡¯s,¡± Lavigne said as if it were his idea and looked to the Archmage who was overseeing the meeting.  Archmage Janry did not look excited to be there, but he was powerful enough both politically and personally that nobody would dare to complain.  He was, fortunately, a fairly neutral party if only because he disdained all non-mages equally.

    ¡°This meeting is called to order,¡± Janry said in a bored tone.  ¡°Master Lavigne, you have the floor.¡±

    ¡°I want to know what GAR is going to do about the attack by the shifters!¡±  Lavigne said immediately, glaring at Chester.

    ¡°What attack?¡± Chester said lazily, leaning back and smirking at Lavigne in the most infuriating way he could manage.  ¡°My people were nowhere nearby when your vampires decided to take up their incendiary hobbies.  In fact, you might want to keep them close so nobody else decides to try.¡±

    ¡°That is a threat!¡± Lavigne snapped.  ¡°Archmage Janry, I demand you censure Alpha Chester!  He is contributing nothing to the discussion!¡±

    ¡°What discussion?¡±  Ravaeb was, at least for the moment, on Chester¡¯s side.  More because he didn¡¯t care about the meeting but was compelled to come because of the political implications of two of the three supernatural heads of the Midwest being together.  He¡¯d cheerfully see Chester burn under other circumstances.  ¡°You¡¯re just throwing wild accusations around.¡±

    ¡°Indeed, the incidents Master Lavigne is referring to are under investigation and shifter agency has been ruled out.¡±  Janry still sounded bored.  ¡°It is all speculation at this point, even the speculation that the perpetrator was fae.  Keep things responsive.¡±

    ¡°What is GAR doing to catch these murderers then?  Alpha Chester obviously is responsible for it and there he sits!¡±  Lavigne was quietly outraged, but Chester didn¡¯t let the impotent fury fool him.  Not only did Lavigne have enormous political clout, he was a master vampire and as dangerous as anyone in the room.  He just couldn¡¯t bring any of that to bear under the circumstances.

    ¡°You will retract that,¡± Chester said quietly, pulling on the pack bonds for power as he stared down Lavigne.  Not that he really cared about the accusations, true or not, but he had to maintain appearances.  Lavigne played the political game better than Chester, but he¡¯d forgotten that ¨C in the end ¨C only force mattered.

    ¡°I will not.¡±  Lavigne stared back, unimpressed with the weight of power gathering within Chester.

    ¡°Gentlemen,¡± Janry said, tone slightly less bored.  ¡°Cease your sniping.  We are here to discuss the possibility of an extremely dangerous assassin in our midst.  While it is true that the targets have been exclusively vampires and their hires, that doesn¡¯t mean they will remain so.¡±

    ¡°Do you have any idea at all who it is?¡±  Lavigne scowled and leaned back in his chair.

    ¡°The case file belongs to GAR, but I can tell you that so far the only evidence we have, if you can call it that, is the demonstrated abilities and the presence of ball bearings at every scene.¡±

    ¡°You could send your people around to look for someone with ball bearings in their pocket,¡± Chester said in amusement.  Lavigne ignored him and looked to Ravaeb.

    ¡°What about your pixies and brownies?  Couldn¡¯t you have them find the rest of the ball bearings and track the killer down?¡±

    ¡°First,¡± Ravaeb said in a tone of exaggerated patience, ¡°it does not work that way.  Second, I will not order my subjects out of their enclave for something that doesn¡¯t concern us.¡±

    Chester sat back and let Lavigne squabble with Ravaeb for the moment.  It seemed that Mister Brown was safe for the moment, since the only lead was laughable.  Fae magic could do some truly bizarre things, but mass-produced and mixed metal was pretty much impossible to track by sympathetic magic.  He had no idea what Brown used the ball bearings for or why they were there, but so long as he didn¡¯t switch to something more unique, there was no way to track it back to him.

 Chapter 16 â€“ Advancement

    Callum toyed with the key fob he¡¯d put the glamour focus into, marveling at how much smaller it was when done by machine rather than hand. He had ended up buying some cooking and electronics supplies to actually get the paste into place and tamp it down or pick it out, depending on how well he managed the enchanting. Fortunately with the pattern already in place there wasn¡¯t all that much he could mess up, so it hadn¡¯t taken him too many tries.

    He was pretty sure he had messed up with his timing. In order to help figure out what was going on with the teleportation enchantments he¡¯d staked out the teleporter that Gayle used and had arrived three hours earlier than their intended meeting time. He didn¡¯t know how prompt Gayle was, or whether she did anything else while she was in town, so he¡¯d erred on the side of caution.

    The problem was that three hours was a very, very long time to wait and stare at a single point. Even if he could close his eyes, it was still tedious and boring and closing his eyes just meant that he wanted to nap. Trying to read or study was a problem in a different way because then he didn¡¯t focus on the teleporter.

    Time crept by very, very slowly. To fill the dead space, Callum did some basic exercises, trying to keep himself from going soft, but even that wasn¡¯t something he could keep up the whole time. Callum kept catching his attention wandering and snapped it back to the teleporter, and after the thirteenth or fourteenth time he decided he¡¯d never be a good guard. It was closing on two and a half hours watching from the roof of a nearby building when he finally noticed a flare of magic. The mana passing through the enchantment defined a cylinder, and pulsed maybe a dozen times over two or three seconds.

    A moment after that it flickered, and Gayle appeared in the circle. Callum was fairly certain it wasn¡¯t the one-way teleportation; it looked more like the swap than it did the simpler formation. It definitely was not a portal, but he¡¯d already figured that much. Unfortunately, since it was practically impossible to look inside an enchantment, he couldn¡¯t tell what bits did what. Of course, it was also the receiver, so hopefully when Gayle went back he¡¯d get a better idea.

    He could easily have followed Gayle to the library, given how completely blind she was in magical terms, but that would have just made him feel like a weird stalker. While he might live outside magical law, there were some pretty severe limits on what he would let himself do. Creeping on young girls was definitely out of bounds. Even if Gayle was probably only five years younger than him, he still couldn¡¯t think of her as anything but a kid.

    Callum waited a good twenty minutes before following after her, doublechecking to make sure he had his reference notes with him. The main sticking points for Gayle¡¯s ability to opt out of apprenticeship were communication, movement and shielding. While it made sense that any mature mage would have a focus or native ability to do all the tricks on the list, it was obviously never meant to be possible.

    Some types had it easy with a few of the requirements. All of the elements could attack, but only air had any real communication ability native to it, and getting movement abilities out of the elements required a lot of control and power. For shields, he didn¡¯t know if the healing aspect had any options at all. Fulfilling all the criteria with shaping mana, homemade foci, and the limits of vis pretty much required an older mage helping. Which was already the definition of apprenticeship.

    Fortunately for Gayle, she had a cheat in the form of Callum. He¡¯d actually chewed over whether he wanted to keep the collaboration going, now that he had access to literature, but he didn¡¯t feel right just abandoning her to own devices. Not while they still hadn¡¯t wrapped up her own issues. Besides, not only was there nothing to connect Professor Brown with the vampire killer GAR was chasing hundreds of miles away, but he also was learning a lot from watching Gayle work.

    As usual, books could only teach so much. There were some articulations of the way that vis behaved, not quite like a fluid and not quite like a gas and, when enchanting, not quite like a solid, but none of those descriptions were anything like seeing it for himself. Whatever shortcomings she might have, Gayle absolutely had control of energies to a degree that Callum envied.

    It wasn¡¯t exactly a finesse, since he was pretty sure he could sense more finely than she could, it was just practice. After another few years he might have the offhand precision that she did, but considering that he didn¡¯t have any real drills or even a proper coach he might never get it. With all the will in the world, someone couldn¡¯t learn everything on their own.

    He strolled into the bookstore at the usual time, finding nobody around save Gayle, not even the Larsons. Which was odd, since he would have thought that they¡¯d at least have someone manning the counter, but there might well be a glamour to keep people away. So far he still couldn¡¯t actually see them.

    ¡°So did you get anything better than kinesis?¡± Gayle looked hopeful, but Callum shook his head.

    ¡°Since you can only use healing vis or mana, you¡¯re stuck with what mana can do. So mostly just glorified kinesis. I don¡¯t suppose you¡¯re hiding a second aspect somewhere.¡±

    ¡°Oh, I wish! It would be so much easier if I had fire or wind or something.¡± Gayle snapped her fingers. ¡°Boom! Half of the requirements done.¡±

    ¡°Then I guess we¡¯ll have to focus on the mana-based options. At least the requirement isn¡¯t that it¡¯s a good movement magic. Because frankly, it¡¯s going to be terrible.¡±

    ¡°Aww.¡± Gayle pouted. ¡°I guess I¡¯ll have to buy something to let me fly when I get my full mage credentials.¡± Callum almost asked her what she thought of the limitations before he checked himself. He really didn¡¯t need to try and convince Gayle he was some kind of rogue mage by criticizing the status quo.

    ¡°Yeah, for now, there¡¯s just the low-grade levitation.¡±

    ¡°Hey, you¡¯re a gravity mage,¡± Gayle said, narrowing her eyes. ¡°You can already do travel can¡¯t you?¡±

    ¡°It¡¯s less useful than you¡¯d think, but yes,¡± he told her.

    ¡°Can I see?¡±

    ¡°I suppose,¡± Callum sighed. He figured he¡¯d have to demonstrate something at some point, so he had been prepared for it. Fortunately he could do a short demonstration without the inertialess spatial movement, just by changing the gravity affecting his chair.

    He concentrated and wrapped his magic around the seat, altering the spatial angles until it started floating upward, then he tweaked it to go a little sideways before lowering the power so he wouldn¡¯t bump into the ceiling. He felt absolutely precarious perched on the chair, and not a little silly. A floating wicker chair was kind of ludicrous.

    ¡°Oh, neat!¡± Gayle clearly had a different opinion of it than he did. ¡°I can¡¯t wait ¡®til I can do that! Even if it¡¯s bad, it¡¯s still flying! C¡¯mon, let¡¯s get started.¡±

    Callum lowered himself back down, carefully, and manually readjusted the chair before taking out the brass plates. He¡¯d noticed that Gayle had never offered to bring any of her own, and didn¡¯t question the fact that he kept supplying them. It was pretty usual behavior for trust-fund college students, or whatever the equivalent was. It was amazing how blind people could be to how much was provided for them.

    While Gayle had to work from scratch, Callum had done a little bit of practice on his own so he wouldn¡¯t look quite so foolish when it came to a much more complicated focus than anything they¡¯d done before. He didn¡¯t technically need it, since he had his own version of telekinesis and, of course, far better travel, but it wouldn¡¯t hurt to have more tools. Besides, it wasn¡¯t just a version of telekinesis with higher power limits; there were some flourishes that he wanted to take a look at.

    Once again it reminded him of how far behind he was when it came to magic. Calling himself a professor felt overly optimistic even if he wasn¡¯t pretending to be a professor of magic, just because of how lost he was most of the time. Still, Gayle didn¡¯t seem to be too worried about his skills or lack thereof, so long as he was supplying information.

    When they finished the focus, Callum found that it took basically all his effort to use it to levitate himself, but Gayle seemed to have no issues. It was pretty humbling to see the difference in their magical oomph, at least when it came to mana manipulation. He¡¯d thought he was doing fairly well on the magical stamina front, but apparently not.

    It made him wonder what trained spatial mages could do. Probably massive portals and teleports; he¡¯d have an issue teleporting more than a few people, or generating portals larger than a few feet in diameter. Moving entire convoys or even buildings was far, far beyond him, but maybe not to a real mage. Not that he wanted to move all that. Just moving himself was enough.

    He made sure to leave before Gayle, giving himself time to make his way back to the GAR teleporter and set up his notepad. Unfortunately, it seemed that he¡¯d been too conservative again because it was well over an hour before she actually made it back to the teleporter, walking into the office building and making her way over to where the enchantment was inscribed. It was worth the wait.

    First, when she pushed mana into the acceptor portion, there was feedback. A complex loop of mana or artificial vis came out and wrapped about her wrist, where her mage tattoo was, before withdrawing. Callum scowled at that, but he wasn¡¯t surprised. If everyone had the tattoos, it made sense they were used as a security measure of some sort. His probably wouldn¡¯t work, because he definitely wasn¡¯t cleared to use them and he¡¯d messed with his anyway.

    There was a pause as essentially nothing happened, just some small fluctuations near a particular portion of the enchantment. It was too subtle for Callum to tell what was going on, but he assumed it was some kind of check or security feature or safety feature, mirroring the pulses he¡¯d seen when Gayle arrived. Then a spatial field unfolded from one section of the enchantment, buried underneath the floor, creating the exact same field that he¡¯d seen when she had teleported in.

    It flashed, and Gayle was gone. Callum frowned. Perhaps he¡¯d been hasty in judging things, because the very end was somewhat less useful than he would have liked, even if it did go to show that most of the enchantment was there for reasons other than actually forming the teleport. With all the enchantment complexity he thought there¡¯d be some meshing from the multiple output portions, but there wasn¡¯t. It was just one piece.

    That was good and bad. It meant that most of what was going on had to do with the teleportation network rather than the teleportation. He was trying to study a car to learn how internal combustion worked, when all he really wanted was an engine. So in theory what he wanted was much easier than what he saw, but it was also completely obscured by what he saw.

    Callum closed his eyes and focused on feeling the outlines of the enchanted portions with his senses. Now that he knew where to look, he could see that bit of it was actually discrete from the rest. Or rather, there were three parts total. One was the circle, which served to define the framework of where the enchantment went. Then there were the complex pseudo-circuits that controlled everything. What he wanted was a small cylinder directly underneath the circle.

    He thought very seriously about just stealing it, but decided if he was going to do that, it would have to be from a different teleporter a long distance away. Besides, stealing something that could let people teleport to it was likely an extremely bad idea. The problem was he really needed to see both sides of it, and considering the tattoo security he was even less interested in taking a trip to the other side.

    Grumbling to himself, he teleport-hopped back to his motorhome and busied himself with dinner while he considered options. No matter what he did, he¡¯d be tipping his hand a little bit, and he still wasn¡¯t entirely sure about Harry and Lucy. A thought occurred to him while he was reheating stew in the microwave and he paused to chew it over.

    Gayle was obviously very well-to-do, and if the part of the enchantment responsible for actually teleporting was as small as it seemed, portable teleports were probably something that existed. Obviously they¡¯d be restricted to the rich and powerful, though considering that mages generally were rich and powerful it¡¯d be only a truly elite cadre that had them.

    The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

    It was an assumption on his part but he might be able to ask, circumspectly, about it. A portable teleport probably wouldn¡¯t count for Gayle¡¯s movement magic unless she made it herself, which she obviously couldn¡¯t do, but she might know where one was. Otherwise, he¡¯d have to go through Lucy or Harry to see if they had access to one, or records of a defunct teleporter.

    Really, the problem was that it was hard to ask after it without tipping his hand too much. Though, teleportation enchantments were probably handy enough that anyone could be excused for wanting to get their hands on one. He¡¯d have to wait until next week for that, but it wasn¡¯t like he didn¡¯t have his hands full already.

    With some disgruntlement he went back to studying and sketching out more to-do foci. One was actually an advanced telekinesis focus, because there were certain limitations to the one he had. Mostly, he couldn¡¯t fling anything with it, which was a sad state of affairs. Once he had better control over his vis he could probably gravity-launch things, but he wasn¡¯t there yet. Not nearly.

    There were a few other common utility foci that any mage would have lying around. A cantrip that would essentially clean anything that wasn¡¯t too soiled, basically a magical stain remover, was fantastic and incredibly intricate. Apparently for fae or water-type mages it was extremely easy, but for anyone who was restricted to using mana it took some doing to keep the spellwork from damaging the article in question. There was even a version that a mage could use on himself, which was high on his list of acquisitions.

    Others were a basic fire spell and a basic wind blocker. There was no real mind magic, for better or worse, as that seemed the province of the vampires, and other things like tracking down items were exclusive to the fae. For better or worse, human magic couldn¡¯t reproduce everything other races could do. Shifting, for example, was thought to be pretty well impossible for a human mage.

    Considering that using vis internally was generally considered extremely dangerous, Callum agreed. Human mages seemed to use mostly physics, rather than magic as such. The glamour enchantment in part seemed to use the properties of mana itself, with how normal people couldn¡¯t perceive it, rather than directly affecting anyone¡¯s mind or senses. The precise mechanism was far too complex for him to understand, which was probably why the focus for it was more complicated than anything else he¡¯d seen.

    A few days later Lucy had some information for him. He didn¡¯t want to rely on any phone he used to call her, since it would be possibly compromised. She was a self-proclaimed hacker and even if she didn¡¯t geolocate every single call, she could. Unfortunately that made it difficult for her to call him back, so he had a single dedicated phone that he only powered on every once in a while, sometime before he decided on where he was staying the night, and even that got cycled out once in a while.

    ¡°Okay big man, I have some news, but you aren¡¯t gonna like it.¡±

    ¡°That does not bode well,¡± Callum replied.

    ¡°Oh it bodes all kinds of things. Those mundanes you handed off to the shifters? Well, GAR¡¯s Department of Acquisitions scooped ¡®em up and debriefed ¡®em and all, but¡­¡± Lucy let out a breath. ¡°Okay, GAR law is that anyone who brings a mundane into the supernatural world is responsible for them. Now, those two got brought in by the vamps, so the vamps were responsible.¡±

    ¡°So that means¡­?¡± Callum asked, a tension forming in the pit of his stomach.

    ¡°Well that means that they got given back to the vamps because they were considered to be the vamp¡¯s responsibility.¡± Lucy said it all in a rush, as if she was afraid he was going to interrupt her.

    ¡°They took two people that I rescued from being killed by vampires, and they gave them back to the vampires, and that was because I rescued them from vampires?¡± Callum asked in a soft tone. His vision had gone suddenly blurry and he could taste the adrenaline in his mouth, the news sparking a visceral response that was past anger and into something he couldn¡¯t really describe.

    ¡°That¡¯s how the Department of Acquisition works, yeah,¡± Lucy admitted unhappily.

    ¡°I want the names,¡± Callum ground out. ¡°The vampires, the agents, the whole department.¡±

    ¡°Uh,¡± Lucy said intelligently. ¡°Look, I understand where you¡¯re coming from but if you¡¯re going to start assaulting vampire nests or GAR property you¡¯re not going to last long, ghost or not.¡±

    ¡°I know,¡± he said, and shoved some of the rage aside, turning around and finding some of the rum he kept for emergencies such as this one, glad that he¡¯d called from the motorhome instead of the middle of nowhere. He downed a couple mouthfuls and took a few long breaths. ¡°You¡¯re right, I can¡¯t go after them right now. But I still want those names. And locations of all the GAR facilities you can manage.¡±

    ¡°I¡¯m not sure that¡¯s a good idea,¡± Lucy protested, but quietly. ¡°I can get behind killing the vamps that way but, I mean, I actually still work for GAR, you know? Kinda sorta.¡±

    ¡°No, no, I¡¯m not going to go on a rampage,¡± Callum assured her, feeling a little bit better with the alcohol kick. ¡°I just want to make preparations. The more I know, the better I can plan.¡±

    ¡°Right, if you¡¯re sure, then,¡± Lucy said, clearly reassured by his return to a more normal tone. ¡°Yeah I can get you stuff. Don¡¯t worry, you¡¯ve still got a lot of credit balance with me.¡±

    ¡°I should hope so,¡± Callum said, eyeing the bottle of rum and wondering if he should quit while he was ahead or give in and get himself truly sloshed after he was done speaking with Lucy. Alcohol had a tendency to anesthetize him pretty quickly, so it wouldn¡¯t take much more for him to be able to sleep on things. Which would probably be for the best.

    ¡°Thanks for the information, no matter how terrible it is,¡± Callum told her. He didn¡¯t stay on the line to chat, partly because he was feeling like being drunk and that was a terrible thing to do over a phone, and partly because he was a bit mad and didn¡¯t want to take it out on her.

    In truth it was exactly the sort of institutional rot he ought to have expected from something like GAR. Normal people ?¨C mundanes ?¨C weren¡¯t citizens and it had no obligation to them. Worse, GAR was a bureaucracy, run by councils and forms and paperwork, so there was probably no actual person involved in the decision. Or rather, there was, but it was just some bureaucrat who looked up the rules based on some vague report and applied them without thinking about anything but getting back to their game of Solitaire.

    He checked the document deposit link Lucy had given him a few hours later and found a bunch of maps and addresses, as well as some personnel listings from GAR with notes. The bureaucratic hierarchy at GAR was as bewildering as any large organization, though it was not nearly as large as the government of, say, any reasonably sized country. Maybe similar to a multinational corporation, with the added fillip of an enforcement arm that could use lethal tactics.

    Obviously he didn¡¯t have the full chart of every mage everywhere, just some portions of GAR¡¯s public departments. The fact that they could actually deputize any random mage was a little worrying, especially since they¡¯d all been through the draft and so presumably had some base indoctrination to GAR¡¯s orders, and meant that basically everyone was potentially a GAR agent. Or rather, all human mages were. The other supernaturals had parallel governance, but quite a few still worked for GAR.

    Unsurprisingly, at least to him, basically all the main GAR places were on the east and west coasts. It looked like the primary GAR bases were in upstate New York and southern California, though not in any major cities. With the teleportation network they didn¡¯t need to be, and it probably would have been harder to hide. He very much doubted that glamour protections extended to camouflaging traffic patterns and the like.

    The chain of command responsible for the outrage in question was located on the east coast, since even the so-called Midwest branch of GAR was located with the others. Again, it made sense with the teleports but it offended his sense of propriety that the regional governance wasn¡¯t actually in the region.

    Even with his ridiculous travel abilities, heading off to New York state was a bit of a long haul for him, so anything he was going to do to deal with people would have to wait until later. Instead, he focused on some more local GAR facilities. There were, unsurprisingly, offices scattered around, which was where most of the teleports were located.

    The closest major one was over in Kansas City, so he decided he¡¯d go ahead and have a look at it from a safe distance. The complexity and quality of workmanship on the teleporters and, for that matter, Gayle¡¯s bracelet focus were above and beyond anything he¡¯d seen when dealing with the vamps. That had to mean he wasn¡¯t seeing what real, state-of-the-art magework was like, as he was mostly disconnected from that world.

    Since it was just meant as a brief reconnoiter, Callum took the motorcycle. He wasn¡¯t overly pressed for time, either, so he decided against teleporting his bike on the way there. It was an odd experience, really, since he¡¯d become so used to moving at least part by spatial magic, but it gave him more appreciation for what he could do.

    His commitment to not teleporting lasted until he hit the city proper, and the traffic therein. There were enough smears of various magic lingering in the air that he didn¡¯t think anyone would notice a little bit more, so he turned on his glamour and teleported past traffic jams, using side streets to work his way toward the address on his phone. Which wasn¡¯t actually the same address as the actual GAR building, just in case.

    It was obvious which building was GAR¡¯s even before it came into the range of his senses. The density and energy of the local mana field increased, making the residual tracks of magic use stand out even more, as if it were radiating out from the GAR building. Which it very well might be; he wasn¡¯t completely certain how ambient mana worked, exactly, other than it did vary from place to place.

    The GAR building itself fairly blazed with the warding and protections once he got within a couple blocks. They were a few steps up from the wards that he¡¯d seen the hired mages use for the vampires, the weave tighter and more complex, with many binding points instead of one. He steered his bike off to the side, not exactly parking it since there was no room, but the nearly full lot of the corporate office gave him enough room to pretend to fuss with his saddlebags while he inspected it closer.

    While he lacked the vocabulary to articulate what he was seeing, it was obvious this was a professional design, compared to the rather simplistic and slapdash versions of warding he¡¯d seen before. It was certainly harder to push his senses through, but it wasn¡¯t impossible so long as he was patient. Once he managed to see past the first ward, there were actually a number of inner wards of about the same construction, wrapped around individual offices or rooms.

    Until and unless he improved his capabilities, there was no way he was going to be raiding a GAR office. So he¡¯d have to. There was no way he could let the outrage they committed go unanswered, but at the moment it was beyond his capabilities.

    Since the office was occupied, he did have a chance to see people enter and leave through some method other than the teleporter inside. Unsurprisingly, the wards were keyed to the wrist tattoos, just like the teleports were. It only made sense, but it meant that he basically couldn¡¯t get anywhere near a GAR ward without it tattling on him. Or so he guessed. It wasn¡¯t something he wanted to test.

    It also reinforced that he needed to get rid of the tattoo entirely. It was an identifier that he couldn¡¯t read and couldn¡¯t control, and worse, it was one he¡¯d sabotaged. That was going to be extremely obvious to anyone who knew how to look, and for all he knew it actually had his name in there somewhere. Besides, since he didn¡¯t keep a bubble of magic around him at all times, it was far easier for him to pass as a normal person.

    While he was there he made sketches of the ward setups, though it was really more notes on certain parts. The setup was far too complicated for him to record all of it, no matter how practiced he was at technical drawings. In a way it mimicked an electronic surveillance system, with the outer ward being an alarmed perimeter with the ability to check people in and out. Presumably the sub-wards were the same, either protecting privacy or sensitive items or information.

    Unlike an electronic perimeter, it was a full bubble around the building. Built into the walls, true, but there weren¡¯t any gaps even if someone drilled up from the basement. The interesting part was that there were floating bits of more intense spellwork within the ward lines, like sub-spells riding along the rails of the ward, which Callum could only guess at. Possibly they were active surveillance, but he wasn¡¯t sure who, if anyone, the ward was tied to. The bit he was watching seemed to go into one of the sub-warded rooms and he didn¡¯t want to push things too far.

    It still seemed his senses were passive, the act of pushing them through the wards more like squinting and tilting his head to see through a peephole, but if anything were to trigger the alarms it¡¯d be trying to invade the security center. He¡¯d have to go through the list of GAR properties Lucy gave him and see if he could set one off just by looking hard. It¡¯d be a bit of a risk, since with the teleporters they could send through any number of agents, but if he was far away and had a good escape route it might be worth trying.

    Part of him wanted to see if he could find the magic criminal scene, and Lucy didn¡¯t count. Criminal mages had to know all kinds of useful and interesting things, especially when it came to staying off the radar, but that meant it would be even harder for him to find them. Besides, he didn¡¯t think he was tough enough to hang around with a crowd of actual murderers and thieves.

    The thought made him laugh as he turned away and started his motorcycle again. Technically he was both of those things, what with his actions against the vampires, but it didn¡¯t feel that way. Nobody he had killed was just going about normal business. They¡¯d all been preying on people, mundane and shifter, so it didn¡¯t seem like it counted.

    It was a distinction that probably only he made. Everyone else in the supernatural world seemed to more or less view normal humans as being some other species that just happened to be useful. Which was not entirely wrong; someone who could blow up a building just by wanting to very hard was clearly not of the same stock as someone who needed tools to do the same.

    He drove back home, reaching the motorhome tired and grumpy, because really the entire excursion did nothing but confirm he was just one person and GAR was a big machine. If he¡¯d ever had some fantasy of dealing with GAR in a serious way it was pretty obviously just that: a fantasy.

    Once he got more understanding of magic and where he stood, he¡¯d need a long term plan. Even if it was a long term plan to just vanish. His experience with Winut had showed him that just wandering off to the middle of nowhere wasn¡¯t actually going to hide him from the supernatural, and he had to admit he wasn¡¯t going to just stand around and pretend ignorance if he saw something going down like with the vampires.

    The teleportation enchantment was an absolute must-have. He was completely stymied by any way to make his magic work outside his sensory range, since none of the self-contained structures in Harry¡¯s magical books actually did anything for spatial magic. So far Callum was not skilled enough to work it out himself, but if he got some useful references maybe he could duplicate it. At that point the world was his oyster, or at least, he only needed to make any given trip once.

 Chapter 17 â€“ Introspection

    ¡°What?¡± Harry sounded just as tired as he always did, and not exactly pleased to answer Callum¡¯s call, but Callum decided to ignore that. If Harry couldn¡¯t sound enthusiastic when Alpha Chester introduced them, that was probably just the normal state of affairs.

    ¡°I¡¯ve got some questions about instinctual magic use. I¡¯ve got a good handle on how spells are normally done, but obviously that isn¡¯t the only way it works.¡± He was lying, a bit. He had a basic understanding, but compared to people like Gayle it was not a good handle. What he did have was a completely different way of going about things, and a vis aspect that was rare enough there wasn¡¯t any easily accessible literature on it.

    ¡°Yeah?¡± Harry said, after far too long a pause.

    ¡°Well, young mages can obviously manifest things like fire, or light, or the like, without needing to make frames and twine vis together and all that. Spontaneous manifestations. What¡¯s the mechanism behind them?¡±

    ¡°Huh. That¡¯s a weird question.¡± Harry sounded ever so slightly interested, but when Callum didn¡¯t explain himself any further, his voice dropped back to its normal tired cadence. ¡°For the most part it¡¯s just agitation of a person¡¯s normal vis field.¡±

    ¡°Explain, please,¡± Callum said, when Harry didn¡¯t elaborate. He swore talking to the man was like pulling teeth.

    ¡°Well, for any mage, their body is suffused with vis, and one of the first things they learn how to do is how to project it out so they have full magical control over their immediate surroundings. But even before then they¡¯ll often shove it out unconsciously, putting enough vis into it that things start happening.¡± It was the most Harry had ever said at a time.

    ¡°Interesting. I think I understand. Why would a young mage fail to manifest any of this spontaneous magic?¡±

    ¡°I don¡¯t know, I¡¯m not a doctor. Maybe if they were vis-blocked or mana-starved somehow, but any kid growing up near other mages is going to be topped up just from the elevated ambient around.¡±

    ¡°Huh. Right, well, thanks for the information.¡±

    ¡°Yeah, sure,¡± Harry said. ¡°Kind of sounds creepy though. Those questions together.¡±

    ¡°I¡¯m sure it does,¡± Callum said noncommittally, having to forcibly restrain himself from explaining that he was asking for himself and he didn¡¯t have some mage¡¯s kid locked away somewhere. Even though he didn¡¯t actually care what Harry thought of him, it was still his first impulse to keep anyone from thinking he was a bad guy.

    After a few more deflections, Callum hung up and started to chew on what Harry had said. His memories of that first teleport weren¡¯t exactly clear, what with the panic and the fire and all, but it was the first time he¡¯d managed any magic at all, instinctive or otherwise. Callum still wasn¡¯t sure exactly why he¡¯d never done any before, but his guess was that he just didn¡¯t have the vis. If most or all of it was going to reinforcing his senses, he never would have had enough to do anything with.

    Not to mention, he¡¯d never really been in fear of his life before. When Shahey had done whatever it was that set the building on fire, it would have spiked the local mana high enough that he could actually metabolize some and for once had enough vis to work with. At least, that was Callum¡¯s best guess.

    The bubble thing, from the way Harry had put it, was actually pretty smart. At least, for anyone who didn¡¯t mind being labeled as a mage. Unfortunately, Callum did not want to be known as such outside of his interactions with Gayle, even if that did limit him. There was a certain amount of magical exercise that holding up a bubble took, which he was missing out on, so he¡¯d have to consider adding that to his rotation when he went out into the middle of nowhere to practice his portals and teleports.

    Normally, he just took his motorcycle out into the endless farmlands. It was easy enough to find a place with nobody around for a few hours in any given direction, though finding a place that wasn¡¯t a big open field in the Midwest was a little bit harder. He tried not to use the same place more than once, either.

    Based on what he read from his books, his best bet for increasing his magical ability was constant use. It wasn¡¯t a physical muscle, and it wasn¡¯t clear if it was a magical muscle, but the end result was the same. The more he practiced the better he¡¯d get, and only through constant repetition would he get to be any good.

    He wasn¡¯t sure how much he could improve from his starting ability, but there was a certain aspect of mastering the basics where he absolutely hadn¡¯t put in the time yet. Out in the middle of the woods, he formed portals over and over, worrying less about the residue they left as the crispness of the outlines and the smoothness of the field between.

    Whether or not he was getting better, he couldn¡¯t say. Not having a mentor to look over his shoulder and give advice was really unfortunate, but the best he could do was keep plugging away. Until and unless he met a mage that was classically trained and wasn¡¯t going to turn him in to GAR he¡¯d have to do it on his own.

    Testing his intrinsic, instinctive teleport was rather weird. He¡¯d already built up his ideas of having to frame everything with vis threads, so trying to work without them was a little backward. Probably, he¡¯d learned wrong. A lot of education targeted at younger kids was actually wrong, but useful for that level of expertise. Which made picking up advanced expertise that much harder.

    If he strained, he could push his bubble out fifteen or twenty feet, about the length that he¡¯d teleported before, but trying to teleport within that bubble without forming his usual outlines and fields proved problematic. He couldn¡¯t really get into the proper perspective to do things ad-hoc, even if theoretically he couldn¡¯t really hurt himself.

    The idea that people couldn¡¯t hurt themselves with instinctive magic use, and the immediate practice to curb it, was completely contradictory. Somehow he wasn¡¯t surprised. It didn¡¯t seem education in the world of mages was any better organized than on the mundane side.

    The first couple days he gave up after half an hour or so at the beginning of each practice session where he didn¡¯t manage to do anything at all with his bubble. Instead of beating his metaphorical head against it he just moved onto forming, dispersing, and reforming his magical threads. It was monotonous work, but it also gave his mind a rest from trying to worry about GAR and the tyranny of bureaucracy.

    At some point he realized the isolation was getting to him. Even though it had already been months, he still had the occasional reflex to try and bounce an idea off some of his online acquaintances, which of course he couldn¡¯t do. It wasn¡¯t like when he was in Winut, where there were people around and he could head to the caf¨¦ and chat. He definitely didn¡¯t want to unburden himself on Gayle, so there was only one person he could really talk to.

    ¡°What¡¯s up, big man?¡± Lucy asked cheerfully.

    ¡°Hey, Lucy,¡± Callum said, feeling his own mood lift by osmosis. ¡°Mostly just beating my head against the wall here, trying to figure stuff out. You said you worked with GAR before; do you know much about how human magic stuff works?¡±

    ¡°Aww, not just calling to hear my lovely voice?¡±

    ¡°Well, that too,¡± he admitted. Which was closer to the truth than he would have liked. ¡°But if I called without having a specific question you might start making assumptions.¡±

    ¡°And we all know what they say about asses and umptions,¡± Lucy replied. ¡°Yeah, the rest of my family is mages actually, whatcha want to know?¡±

    ¡°Oof, you¡¯re the only non-mage? That¡¯s rough.¡± He¡¯d seen how Sen, for example, had treated normal people, and he couldn¡¯t imagine it was any better among family. Probably worse, considering how highly those people thought of themselves.

    ¡°Yeah, that¡¯s why my day job is gruntwork for GAR,¡± Lucy said, though she didn¡¯t sound too broken up about it. ¡°They can¡¯t exactly boot me out since I¡¯m just slightly magic sensitive and know all about the supernatural world anyway. So they stuck me down in magical IT.¡±

    ¡°Well, their loss,¡± he said. ¡°So what I want to know is instinctual magic. The stuff without all the threads and fields and so on. I¡¯m reading up on it and getting a lot of mixed messages. Just wondered if you had any input.¡±

    ¡°Oh, right, baby magic! What about it?¡±

    ¡°I mean, how does it even work if it doesn¡¯t use any structure? From what I¡¯m reading nothing should happen, but it obviously does.¡±

    ¡°Well, I¡¯m not completely sure since I¡¯m not a mage, obviously.¡± He could practically hear her shrug. ¡°Let me think. I¡¯m sure dad mentioned something about it at some point.¡± There came the sound of fingers drumming on a desk, and Callum waited patiently.

    ¡°So, I think he likened it to, and don¡¯t laugh, how toddlers would just go wherever they were, whenever they needed to. It¡¯s only when they¡¯re older that they learn how to control their bowels and didn¡¯t need diapers. And by the time they¡¯re adults, well, most people would have to go through some serious mental exercises to just let go in public.¡±

    ¡°So it¡¯s basically a discipline thing that mages don¡¯t do spontaneous magic?¡± Callum frowned. That didn¡¯t exactly square with any of the other explanations, but he could at least see where it was coming from.

    ¡°I guess so? Like I said, I¡¯m not a mage. I do know it¡¯s all about your vis field though. It takes a lot of practice to construct things so they exist independently of your own personal bubble.¡±

    ¡°Hmm.¡± Callum was thinking through some of the implications of that, combined with the enchantments he¡¯d seen in his books. ¡°So, switching topics kind of, with the personal vis bubble being the real meat of a caster¡¯s, uh, casting ¡ª can you make a focus that just targets that vis bubble?¡±

    ¡°Oh sure, super newbie glamour enchants do that. You feed it the mana, it resonates with the vis. Not very flexible though.¡±

    ¡°Any idea where I could get one of those?¡± He had a strong idea of what he wanted to do. While Callum had been hoping that figuring out unformed magic would set him on the path to unlinked teleportation, being able to target his personal vis with enchantments was far more valuable.

    ¡°Through the Guild of Enchantment, but it¡¯s for full mages only,¡± Lucy told him. Callum nodded, considering that his tattoo would probably keep him from acquiring them anyway. Still, they¡¯d be useful.

    ¡°Thanks, Lucy,¡± he told her.

    Even if he didn¡¯t use bubbles, he could keep a glamour right over his skin without needing to project any vis at all, or so he understood. Despite the admonition against using vis inside the body, there had to be self-empowerment spells, like strength or speed. If he could get his hands on one of those, he might be a little less of a squishy human.

    It might even make it easier for him to figure out a way to make his gravitykinesis a proper flying focus. There were a lot of variables to figure out, like making it so it only moved him, and not making it so large it was impossible to power, but he might possibly be able to manage that. Then he could focus on not making it accelerate so hilariously fast.

    While he could see why a lot of foci wouldn¡¯t want to be constrained that way, to Callum it was a massive quality of life improvement, and if it were newbie magic he might even be able to find something about it. Especially since it was only useful for a limited range of focus types. But there had to be some market for it, thanks to how it was difficult to impossible to sense magic inside a person.

    It seemed contradictory that he could see through people¡¯s bubbles, or rather, sense through them, but not their physical forms. The best he could figure was that mages had magic bonded to their whole body, and density mattered. Magic wasn¡¯t completely disconnected from normal physics, as it was harder to push his senses into a solid wall than it was through air. So, rather like enchantments and metals from the portal worlds, magical people were hard to read.

    The exception was, of course, his own magic. He could see his own body just fine if he concentrated on it, which was a very weird sensation for certain. There was something intensely disconcerting about being able to sense his own beating heart, not to mention the other biological processes necessary for life. If he tried really hard he could manage the same with non-magical people, but it wasn¡¯t something he really found worthwhile.

    If you encounter this tale on Amazon, note that it''s taken without the author''s consent. Report it.

    He mused on such topics, writing his own notes, because there were a lot of things just plain missing from the reference books. Mana-sight was covered, but it was something different from what Callum had. Instead of being a specific technique, it seemed to be a side effect of using magic, like having an extra set of cones in the eye.

    Nothing Callum found in any of the books mentioned anything like his spatial sense. There was some mention of being able to sense through magic for things like wind or light, but Callum¡¯s all-around passive bubble was unique. Or more likely, it was unique to spatial mages and given how rare they were it wouldn¡¯t show up in anything but specialized literature.

    Which, considering the nature of the supernatural world, he wasn¡¯t likely to find. There might not even be any as such, just instruction from master to apprentice. He still found it hard to reconcile an internet-driven magic culture with one that held a lot of secrets close to its breast, but considering the magical internet was basically owned and operated by the magical government it wasn¡¯t too far out of line. It wasn¡¯t like the mundane world didn¡¯t have secrets.

    All he could do was make his notes, test, and think. He wasn¡¯t sure if he was getting any better in any practical way. There was nothing to test against but his own invented exercises, and the bearing those had to practical spellcraft was probably tangential at best.

    When the time for the weekly meeting with Gayle rolled around he had to consciously pull himself out of a sour mood and put on a more professional face. Especially since he needed to ask her a favor when he didn¡¯t have much to show. True, he¡¯d helped her a lot in the past, but he knew people had a tendency to discount such things.

    ¡°Ugh, shields,¡± Gayle complained, scowling at the notes he¡¯d brought with him.

    ¡°I¡¯m right there with you,¡± Callum agreed. Of all the magical constructs, shields were the most closely tied to vis. Mana shields were possible, but were hideously expensive and inefficient. Not to mention dumb; a proper shield was reactive and mostly passive, and usually a mage constructed the majority of their shielding manually. Foci helped, but foci had limitations to how flexible they could be.

    Since Callum wasn¡¯t anywhere near an expert in spellcraft, let alone enchanting, trying to come up with something useful was basically a short road to nowhere. His stack of brass plates was likely to run out before they actually got anything running, but given a day or two the magic would dissipate and they could be reused. Though he¡¯d definitely suggest she take some and do some work on her own. He certainly planned to chew at it in the interim.

    ¡°So, I have a favor to ask, if it¡¯s something you can do,¡± Callum said, and Gayle immediately looked at him with suspicion. It seemed more than he deserved, but he tried not to let it show. ¡°I¡¯ve been looking at more movement options, and I was wondering if you had access to some sort of portable teleportation option. The GAR system is so complicated, but if it was just a small focus it¡¯d be easier to check out.¡±

    ¡°Oh!¡± Gayle looked relieved, then thoughtful. ¡°I think dad might have a homebond. I can check. But you know I can¡¯t give it to you. They¡¯re expensive! And restricted.¡±

    ¡°No, no, I just want to look at it,¡± he assured her. ¡°I know duplicating one is out of the question but I have some thoughts I¡¯d like to confirm.¡±

    ¡°Your friend that you¡¯re getting this stuff from isn¡¯t a space mage by chance, is he?¡± Gayle gave him an inquisitive look. ¡°You could get him in big trouble if he¡¯s passing on this information without permission from his master.¡±

    ¡°No, it¡¯s nothing like that,¡± he assured her. ¡°And I understand if it¡¯s not something I¡¯m allowed to see, I was just hoping to get a look.¡±

    ¡°Well, maybe.¡± Gayle looked thoughtful. ¡°I can try and bring it next time.¡±

    ¡°I¡¯d appreciate it,¡± Callum said, trying not to show his exultation at the thought. Finally, finally he could get a look at how the heck people managed long-distance teleportation.

    ***

    Gayle energized the transport pad, waiting patiently as it verified her wrist ident. As a Hargrave she had access to most transports, in or out of the GAR network. Judging by Professor Brown¡¯s very plain ident, he barely had any access at all so he probably lived near where they met.

    The transport pad blinked and she walked out into the regional GAR office, giving the secretary a nod as she stepped out of the arrival area, and headed for the private network in the back. It was a little tiresome presenting her wrist at every door along the way, but since the teleports there went straight to various mage Houses it was understandable. She could just imagine the hell an archmage would raise if someone teleported into their home unannounced.

    The Hargrave House pad was right in the middle of the row, reflecting its importance, and she smiled at the blackberry bramble livery decorating the transport circle before the pad brought her back home. The entry chime rang as she stepped off, and Jameson appeared at the vestibule gates. He opened them for her and bowed as she stepped into the house proper.

    ¡°Welcome home, young mistress,¡± he murmured. While he looked like an unassuming middle-aged gentleman, he was a shifter with a fairly terrifying war-form. His fully shifted form would probably have been terrifying too, but he¡¯d let her ride his back as a ¡°doggie¡± too often as a child for her to really appreciate that.

    ¡°Thank you, Jameson,¡± she said, beaming at him. Despite the lack of progress with shields, she was still in a good mood because it was practically the only thing left to crack for her to sidestep Archmage Fane.

    She did have to wonder where her dad found Professor Brown. Not that either of them would admit it, since Brown was skirting several laws and, more importantly, violating several confidences with what he was helping her with. That much was clear, since there were some obvious bits of enchanting signature that he¡¯d mostly removed, but he hadn¡¯t caught all of it.

    Jameson escorted her further into the house, summoning her maids by some ancient butler technique to ply her with drinks and fuss over her hair. Two of them showed up with dress options for her, and she gave the one on the left a nod before glancing at Jameson. The fussing was normal, but the clothing choice wasn¡¯t.

    ¡°Formal dinner tonight, young mistress,¡± Jameson said with just the right intonations to tell her what and whom to expect. Family. Or rather, the head of the House, Archmage Glen Hargrave, back from whatever wild obsession he was pursuing this time. Some of the elders found it tiresome, but he¡¯d always been her favorite granddad. Or really, great-great-something granddad.

    She was pretty sure he was the one who was the most supportive of her attempts to get out of being apprenticed to Fane. The Hargraves and the Fanes had been on poor terms for forever, and Archmage Hargrave had just given her a conspiratorial wink when apprenticeship with Fane was mentioned. While he wouldn¡¯t criticize her if she didn¡¯t dress up, he¡¯d appreciate it a lot considering the attitudes of some of the rest of the family.

    ¡°I don¡¯t know what I¡¯d do without you,¡± she told the butler, shaking her head. ¡°All right, Jameson, I¡¯ll go get dressed.¡±

    ¡°Very good, young mistress,¡± he said, and withdrew. She passed by photographs of the portal worlds and curios from the same, from her dad¡¯s time in the draft, and went into her wing of the big, sprawling mansion. The windows looked out on a picturesque view of the Catskills, House Hargrave being surrounded by thousands of acres of wild land.

    She allowed her maids to peel her out of her town clothes and fit her into a more formal dress, her senior maid using the focus that Grandmother had given Gayle years ago to restyle her mistress¡¯ hair in a few moments. Another one washed her face and then together maids applied subtle cosmetics with the ease of long practice. In no time at all she was fit for a formal dinner with Archmage Hargrave.

    When she entered the central part of the mansion there were already a number of her relatives about, ranging in age from her two-year-old uncle to her eighty-year-old niece, thanks to the long lives of mages. Surprisingly, her dad was there, rather than stuck at GAR like usual.

    ¡°Father,¡± she said, inclining her head politely rather than hugging him, considering the extended family still about. ¡°I¡¯m glad to see that you were able to get time off from your duties.¡±

    ¡°Daughter,¡± he replied, his lips quirking up into a smile behind his bushy moustache and beard. ¡°Our whole department got sent home to avoid the displeasure of certain archmages. Someone is still making trouble over the whole vampire hunter ghost thing, so we¡¯re letting archmages bicker with archmages while the rest of us hide out.¡± Even if grand mages like her father were only one step below archmages, they were still below.

    ¡°Do you need to bring it up with Archmage Hargrave?¡± She was only vaguely familiar with what her father was talking about, since vampire politics were not her concern, but if archmages had gotten into a spat over it, it might be important.

    ¡°No, no. Someone¡¯s apprentice¡¯s friend was involved and now it¡¯s personal and so on.¡± He rolled his eyes. ¡°Nothing to do with us.¡±

    ¡°Oh, good,¡± she said with relief. ¡°Do you know why the Archmage is here though, father?

    ¡°He¡¯s got some wild hair about Portal World Four.¡± He rolled his eyes. ¡°As if the dragonblooded are going to let him poke around. It¡¯ll probably amount to nothing, but you know how he gets.¡±

    ¡°I¡¯ve heard stories,¡± Gayle agreed. She pressed her lips together, then decided she might as well ask while he was here. ¡°Father, I have a favor to ask.¡±

    ¡°Oho? And what might that be, darling daughter of mine,¡± he teased. It took all of her self-control not to pout at him.

    ¡°You have a homebond, right? Can I borrow it for a few hours for my study group?¡±

    He sobered at the request, looking at her carefully. Gayle knew homebonds were incredibly expensive, issued personally by Archmage Duvall, and really weren¡¯t supposed to be used except by people with the right licenses. She probably couldn¡¯t even activate it, not without getting more added to her tattoo.

    ¡°You know you can¡¯t use it for your travel spell,¡± he said, more a statement than a question, and she nodded.

    ¡°I know. I won¡¯t even activate it, we just have some ideas and a homebond is the right sort of enchantment to study. We¡¯ll just take a look next week and I¡¯ll bring it right back, I promise.¡±

    ¡°I¡¯m not sure what you could find out from a homebond, but if you¡¯re sure¡­¡± He peered at her a moment longer, then shrugged. ¡°I suppose so. It¡¯s not like I¡¯m using it these days.¡±

    ¡°Thank you, father!¡± She actually did give him a hug that time, though a brief one, straightening her dress afterward. ¡°I¡¯m very close to being able to pass and fulfill my duties without help.¡±

    ¡°I¡¯m proud of you, Gayle,¡± he beamed at her. ¡°I wish I could help more, but¡­¡± She nodded. The Hargraves were a bloodline of primarily force and air, though her mother was water. How that ended up giving her healing, nobody really knew, but it meant there was nobody in the family who qualified to take her as an apprentice.

    ¡°I¡¯ll get there,¡± she assured him. ¡°No Hargrave is going to be under the thumb of a Fane.¡±

    ¡°That¡¯s my girl,¡± he said. ¡°Now, we¡¯ve been ignoring everyone else long enough.¡± Gayle nodded, and turned to greet the rest of her family.

    ***

    ¡°So I had to promise Father I¡¯d only bring it over for a few hours,¡± Gayle said. ¡°I know it¡¯s not much time but he¡¯s not supposed to let it out of the House.¡±

    ¡°No, it¡¯s fine,¡± Callum assured her, focusing his senses on the paired teleport ?¨C the homebond ?¨C and clicking through the modeling program on his laptop. ¡°I really just wanted to study it.¡±

    ¡°We can¡¯t even use it,¡± Gayle said, a trifle grumpily. ¡°It¡¯s coded to dad¡¯s ident.¡± She rubbed her wrist absently and Callum stifled a grimace. It seemed the only reason he hadn¡¯t run into that issue more was that he¡¯d been buying used laptops, and that was the only magical technology he was interacting with. Everything else tied into the damn wrist tattoos, or at least, all the mage-specific stuff did.

    If he hadn¡¯t already seen the official GAR teleporters in action, that would have killed his ability to study the homebond, but after spending hours poring over the various bits and pieces, it was easy to locate the parts of the enchantment that were specifically spatial magic. They were surprisingly small, but then, the homebond itself was a lot smaller than he was expecting. The GAR teleporters were big bulky things, but the homebond was just a plate about a foot in diameter and an ordinary-looking, if rather thick, ring.

    It was a headache to push his senses through the mundane metals that covered up the wire tracery of the actual enchantment, but this was the only chance he was likely to get so he persevered. The ring actually had one of the things he was looking for, the enchantment that shaped the output to match a mage¡¯s personal vis. At least, that¡¯s what he guessed it was, since it wasn¡¯t familiar but it was in the place where there was normally a control for a mage to alter size and shape.

    The more important thing to locate was the way the pair were linked so that they worked over an arbitrary distance. The actual structure wasn¡¯t particularly special. While he¡¯d never be able to derive it himself, he could kind-of-sort-of see that it was a simple teleport, but it didn¡¯t seem to be pointed anywhere. Or rather, it seemed to point back toward itself, which made no sense.

    Callum frowned, looking closer, and comparing the receiver plate with the ring. Without his spatial senses he would have completely missed the key to understanding it, because the evidence was hidden inside the metal that covered the enchantments. The ring that was meant to be worn was matched by a ring on the plate, where the spatial structures were identical, and when he looked closer he saw toolmarks inside both the transmitter and the receiver. Matching toolmarks.

    The location portion was the only part that pressed up against the toolmarks, but it painted a clear picture to him. The enchantment was created, and then physically separated. That¡¯s why it directed back to itself, because it was its own target. He didn¡¯t really understand how it all worked, but it frankly didn¡¯t matter. If he was right, he could make his own homebond.

    ¡°Hello? Earth to Professor Brown?¡±

    ¡°Hmm? Sorry.¡± Callum blinked as Gayle¡¯s voice intruded in his concentration and he looked up at her. ¡°This is fascinating.¡± He glanced at his watch and saw that he¡¯d been at it for three hours somehow. It had been a long time since he¡¯d gotten so involved in something.

    ¡°Sure, but unless you know a spatial mage you can¡¯t make a new one.¡± Gayle said regretfully. Callum almost, almost offered to make her one, but curbed himself just in time. Not only did he not have the resources for that, it would surely out him. If not as being a spatial mage himself, as knowing one, and there weren¡¯t too many around.

    ¡°Mm, no, but the enchants give me an idea.¡± She had the terrible telekinesis version of movement anyway. What she was lacking was a shield, and with mage bubbles he might be able to figure out something that floated on the edge. He would have loved if the paired enchantment could be used somehow, but if mana or vis could be wirelessly transmitted with ease everyone would be doing so.

    ¡°I know we¡¯re cutting things short today, but I think I¡¯ve learned what I could from this and you said it was only for a couple hours.¡± He pushed the homebond over toward her. ¡°I¡¯m going to do some experimenting on my own and hopefully I¡¯ll have something shield-ish ready for next time.¡±

    ¡°Sure!¡± Gayle seemed happy enough with that, though he didn¡¯t know whether it was about having an excuse to cut the frustrating struggle with shielding short or the idea of him bringing something for her. While Gayle was far better with her control of vis, Callum still had the advantage of his spatial talent letting him grasp the geometries of enchantments. Plus, frankly, more practice at actually working at something.

    He saved and double-saved the render he¡¯d made of the enchantments, and followed Gayle outside the bookstore. She went to her car and he went to his bicycle, the two of them heading in opposite directions. He mused on the fact that both of them were headed off to a place they could teleport elsewhere, though his home was at least in the area. There was no telling where Gayle was coming from.

    Callum disciplined himself enough to keep from teleporting immediately, and instead waited until he was a sufficient distance away in a side alley before beginning to transport himself back to his motorhome. He had some experimentation to do, and the sooner he could get it done, the better.

 Chapter 18 â€“ Surgery

    It was more than a little irritating that he couldn¡¯t tell if he was doing it right when it came to the homebond enchantment. He had to rely on his notes and their accuracy, and while he trusted his ability to transcribe architecture that wasn¡¯t the same as understanding it all. Barring years of study he was stuck with blind copying, and he didn¡¯t like it.

    He especially didn¡¯t like that he couldn¡¯t practice with brass. After spending all the time imprinting the proper magical structure into the brass with spatial vis, when he went to have it cut, it turned out it didn¡¯t work. The magic didn¡¯t stick well enough, pulling away and dissipating as the saw cut the brass in half.

    Since he was absolutely forced to use his tiny stocks of magical material, he went all the way and put in another CNC order. Stripped of all the extraneous enchantments and compacted down to a single plane rather than a ring, it actually ended up being less than a quarter-inch in each dimension, and even that was only so he could cut it once it was done.

    Or rather, pay to have it cut. He was handy enough, but the workshop he was paying didn¡¯t let other people touch their machines. Callum sympathized, and just watched as a young man with safety glasses very carefully cut along the marked line. With his senses it was fine that he was stuck waiting outside the shop, since he could watch the process straight through the wall.

    It was fascinating and strange to see the enchantment get cut in half. After letting it fully sinter and harden, the enchanting paste held onto the spatial magic with an unbreakable grip, so the mere act of physical separation didn¡¯t really disrupt it. As the two halves separated there was a little bit of a ripple, some sort of complicated magical effect he couldn¡¯t quite grasp.

    It seemed to be trying to absorb energy from the surroundings, so he hastily fed it with his vis, letting some kind of resonance build up between the two severed halves until it flashed over and settled. The worker jerked in surprise, and Callum winced, hoping that whatever visible manifestation had occurred wasn¡¯t too dramatic.

    Judging by the look on the guy¡¯s face as he brought the two halves back out, packed individually in small foam blocks, it was something weird but not alarming. There was enough doubt there that hopefully he¡¯d forget about it and pass it off to imagination. Callum would have to use a different shop for the next time, though. No need to risk confirming something.

    He paid in cash and took the boxes with thanks before walking out and grabbing his motorcycle. For a while he rode away as normal, until he was confident he was out of sight, then began teleporting in order to speed up the trip. His fingers drummed on the handles of the bike, his mind more on the pair of boxes than the road as he blipped out of the city and drove toward the campgrounds. It seemed to be working, the enchantments were in place and full of energy, and he couldn¡¯t wait to test it.

    Unfortunately he couldn¡¯t just shove vis into it. The split resonance was only part of things and he didn¡¯t want to ruin either himself or the experiment by trying an unfinished product. He¡¯d duplicated Gayle¡¯s receiving pad, and he slid the receiver half into it, fixing it in place with screws.

    Callum really wanted to figure out how to cut mundane materials with his spatial magic. If he could shear rock or metal, he could have almost impossibly hidden caches. Or, if he wanted to think larger, bunkers. For the moment, though, he had to do everything the normal way, not that he could complain. It was a lot easier when he could just send his files off to a shop, rather than needing to carve metal himself.

    He carried the pad outside and put it in a clear area, standing right next to it so he could watch as things happened. Holding the little metallic chip of a transmitter, he pushed vis into it and watched as the teleport field started to form on the receiver pad, but slowly. While the transmitter could be filled with his vis quickly and easily, the receiver had to pull on and convert mana. It seemed it was hardly going to be a rapid getaway, unless he could get his hands on a good way to store mana.

    Commercial mana crystals were not in his immediate future.

    It took a good five minutes of channeling vis into the chip for the receiver to form, but once it did, his part of the enchantment flashed over to fully active in an instant. The feeling of the focus resonating with his own vis was profoundly unpleasant, almost painful. Also intimate, and not something he wanted to deal with for long. No wonder they weren¡¯t popular.

    He studied the two sets of magic with his senses, but couldn¡¯t see the connection between them. On the other hand, they both looked like normal teleport frameworks. They weren¡¯t exactly like his, since they just sort of blindly projected things out and he tended to alter his to suit, so they would definitely leave more residue. Still, there was nothing actually wrong that he could see.

    Callum braced himself, then mentally pushed on the focus.

    The teleport was awful, feeling much like being jerked around by gravitykinesis. He bent double, gagging as he nearly toppled off the receiver plate. His vision swam and his guts protested, but it had worked. It worked! Despite the fact that he was tasting bile and feeling like he had all-over muscle cramps, it worked.

    Then he realized he¡¯d have to test it at different distances, and groaned. Just because it worked when he was right next to it didn¡¯t mean that it would work at any distance. Considering there was no actual connection between the two pieces of enchantment, it probably would, but he needed to make sure before trusting himself to it.

    Spitting a few times to rid his mouth of the taste of nausea, he took advantage of his break to drive into town and get something for his stomach and his head. He was going to need it. While he probably didn¡¯t need to push forward on it, now that he had an actual emergency option within his grasp, he didn¡¯t feel like putting it off.

    By the end of the next few hours, he¡¯d established that he could use the teleporter from at the very least two hundred miles away, but that it was extremely unpleasant every time. It all added up until he was buried in his bed with a churning stomach, no matter how much pepto-bismol he poured down his throat. He also had a pounding headache, and his muscles kept twitching as if he¡¯d run a marathon.

    That wasn¡¯t to mention the vertigo.

    He¡¯d obviously messed something up with the enchantments, since he doubted that the original homebond caused such issues. The GAR teleports certainly didn¡¯t. It was probably his relatively poor control over vis threads, making problems he didn¡¯t even know to look for.

    But, working was working. Sure, it took longer to charge up the further away he was, though it was more an asymptotic change than a linear one, and it took a lot out of him even before the inevitable side effects of the teleport, but it was working. He had maybe enough enchantment stuff left over to make a second one, but if this one was working it was probably better not to tempt fate. Which meant that as soon as he was recovered, he needed to proceed with the next idea.

    He owed Gayle a shield focus, considering what she¡¯d gotten for him.

    A day or so later his stomach finally stopped rebelling at every little thing and he dragged himself outside. There were a number of machine shops that were willing to do some quick work, even when it was something odd like titanium. It helped that he could travel hundreds of miles to a specialty location without issue, and it helped more that he had large amounts of cash to rush things along.

    Fortunately, his requirement was just a very small sealed container of medical grade titanium foil, properly polished. It had to be smooth, too, given what he wanted it for, so he had to pad the corners a bit since he didn¡¯t dare shave off any of the actual transmitter. That made the final dimensions just about a millimeter bigger all around, but still plenty small for his purposes.

    He kept a very close eye, or at least, sensory focus on the machinist as he covered the chip in the foil and very carefully welded and abraded. Maybe Callum had been a bit overly aggressive in how important it was that the enchantment stayed intact, since the machinist seemed to be treating it like glass, but better that than damage it.

    In its final dimensions it looked like a polished lozenge, not that he intended to swallow it. He took it with thanks and added a tip to the payment, above and beyond the rush surcharge. It was exactly what he needed.

    Once again Callum returned to his motorhome, pulling up the diagrams he¡¯d saved on his computer. An emergency measure that could be confiscated, or was obvious, was no emergency measure at all. Especially since he very much doubted that he¡¯d be allowed any personal effects on the off chance he was captured.

    He knew he wouldn¡¯t let a mage keep even a spare pen.

    The human body had a lot of spaces where a little capsule could sit and not really do any harm. Flesh was fairly squishy, after all, and many internal bits and pieces were cordoned off from each other. That didn¡¯t mean he could be at all careless, but it did mean he could, in theory, implant the teleporter chip inside himself without needing to visit a surgeon.

    As unpleasant as it was, he focused his perceptions inside his body, which was full of messy biology, especially since according to his research the best place for what he wanted was the abdominal cavity. Pushing his senses through regular muscle wasn¡¯t too bad, but actually being able to perceive all the various gastronomical processes was just disturbing. Nonetheless, he focused on finding a likely spot before reaching out to grasp the little titanium-coated capsule with his senses.

    He¡¯d sterilized the heck out of it, of course, but he wasn¡¯t too worried. He didn¡¯t have to actually make a wound to implant it, and if something really bad did start because of it, he knew a healer. Callum intended to monitor things very closely, after testing to make sure it worked.

    Finding a likely spot, he braced himself and teleported the chip in as gently as he could manage. The flesh bent out of the way as the teleport field displaced it, the titanium capsule settling into place. It felt very, very weird, but not really painful. It was just slightly uncomfortable, a little bit of extra pressure in his guts.

    It was also immediately immersed in the vis that saturated his body, which made him glad that the input he¡¯d copied didn¡¯t actively draw on energy like his siphons. It was useful for the little ball bearings, but for something sitting inside of him, it¡¯d charge up almost immediately and then he¡¯d be walking around with the disconcerting sensation of a primed teleport field.

    Once he was sure it wasn¡¯t charging up on his own, he went ahead and did it anyway because he needed to test it. Pushing vis into something inside his body was easy enough, though weird. There was nothing any different about it; the location was simply disconcerting. It certainly felt the same when it was fully ready, the full-body strain of his vis in tune with the teleporter, and the nausea was the same when he transferred.

    ¡°Ha!¡± He muttered to himself. ¡°Now this is how you make a contingency.¡± Despite the fact that he still had to make the shield focus for Gayle, he decided to finish his preparations for the emergency escape. It wouldn¡¯t take more than a day or so.

    While he was really relying on his implanted teleport, he didn¡¯t want to use it if he didn¡¯t have to, and not every threat would require immediately bailing to the wilderness. He picked up two more fake identities for his go-bag, to start, with different sets of clothing for each. For one he even got some colored contacts, though they were hideously uncomfortable.

    The last thing he did before embarking on a trip was to make a new fast-travel chair. It was actually quite similar to the old one, just less rickety, and with an actual space for luggage. He stuffed a bunch of MREs in there, because if he had to fly off to nowhere he was probably going to be completely out of energy. Once that was finished, he packed up his supplies and headed off to make the best bolt-hole he could.

    He drove his motorhome off to the nearest likely national forest, which took up most of the time he¡¯d allotted. There just weren¡¯t any near the Mississippi River. He had a big pack made up that combined some survival supplies, like food and camping equipment, and emergency backups, like his extra gold and cash, a thumbdrive with all his work, and a bunch of guns and ammunition. It was weighty, but he didn¡¯t need to carry it around until after he¡¯d found his target.

    It wasn¡¯t long until he was out of sight of anyone, and began teleporting up into the wilderness of the Rockies, wanting to put more than a few miles between himself and civilization. Fortunately, it didn¡¯t take long to get out into the middle of nowhere, and start planning out his stash.

    This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

    Most of it could go in duct-taped trashbags, buried under the ground, but the receiver plate had to be out in the open. Some incidental debris would be fine, since the teleport would shove aside anything that wasn¡¯t too massy, but he didn¡¯t want to get rock or mud or fallen branches on top of it. Nor did he want it carried off by animals or accidentally turned upside-down or the like.

    His solution was a kit for a small shed. Having four walls and a roof would keep out the weather and the animals, and he could just board up the door since he didn¡¯t need it. It was exceedingly unlikely that anyone would run across it by accident, considering the terrain and his chosen spot being so sheltered, so he was fairly well satisfied. He almost would have preferred a cave, but such things had their own issues, like animal habitation or bad air, so that would have to wait until he was more prepared.

    Once he found his preferred area, he shifted himself back to the motorhome and hefted the shed kit. Callum was extremely glad he¡¯d figured out gravitykinesis, since it made setting up the actual shed far easier than it might have been otherwise, working by himself as he was. Having a bunch of effective extra hands meant that he was done in less than an hour, including piling a bunch of undergrowth around the shed to make it even less conspicuous.

    After that, he got all his supplies from the motorhome and stashed them nearby. Some he just put in the shed, like the extra clothes and blankets, but other stuff he wanted more secure so he did a bit of digging. In the end it actually didn¡¯t take all that long to cache everything, and even if he was a bit tired and sweaty when he got back to the motorhome, he was satisfied.

    Just having such a bolthole was an incredible weight off his mind, but he wished that he had more available to him. If his enchantments were less terrible and if he had more materials, it would be incredibly useful to start building his own teleportation network. Even if he could just teleport back to his motorhome on demand, it would be so convenient.

    He mostly daydreamed about that on his drive back, imagining being able to move all over the country, or maybe even the world, at a moment¡¯s notice. Which GAR could already do, so all the ideas he was entertaining had already been thought of by people long ago, and were nothing new. That made him brood on all the ways GAR could use it to get ahead of him, and he spent more time than was useful trying to come up with some way to spike whatever plans they might be making. When he finally got home he deliberately purged that train of thought and set up everything for the work on the shield focus the next day, before finally falling into bed.

    ***

    The telekinesis focus had been bad enough, but the shield focus was murder. Gayle couldn¡¯t really fault Professor Brown, since shield were one of the most difficult and least explained foci, and most of them used specific vis aspects rather than mana. Hargraves usually had a force Aspect, which would have meant she could whip out a shield manually, but with only healing she was forced to rely on enchantment.

    Once she was a full mage she could get a far better focus, probably directly from Uncle Caston, one that did use force aspect. Stuff like that was restricted, and while she doubted anyone would care if she had it normally, it definitely wouldn¡¯t work for her opt-out. Only commercial glamour enchants were allowed, mostly because they were required.

    ¡°Got it!¡± She said, holding up the brass plate. She noticed that Brown hadn¡¯t been working as hard as he usually did, though since he¡¯d brought two working versions for her to reference, she didn¡¯t much blame him. If he¡¯d already gone through all that twice, she¡¯d be fed up with it too.

    ¡°Fantastic, let¡¯s see it.¡± He focused on her plate, nodding to himself. It was obvious enough that he had more enchanting experience than he let on, considering he could spot problems so easily. Not that she was going to complain! Without his help it would have taken absolute ages to get anywhere, and of course this way her family wasn¡¯t involved at all.

    A faint, icy haze appeared in front of Professor Brown, and he studied it thoughtfully before returning the plate to her. She took it and invested her own vis, feeling the weird sensation of the enchantment interacting with her personal bubble to manifest in front of her. It was actually not that dissimilar to how healing felt, though more on the unpleasant side.

    ¡°I know it¡¯s only one side, but that should be enough, I hope?¡± Professor Brown sounded almost apologetic. ¡°Making an all-around shield, top and bottom and everything, was a lot more complicated and I didn¡¯t understand it all.¡±

    ¡°No, this is great!¡± She patted the brass. ¡°With this I can go take the test!¡±

    ¡°Then I guess this is our last meeting.¡± Professor Brown seemed a little wistful, but offered her his hand. ¡°Good luck.¡± She had to wonder exactly what was going through his head. Of course he¡¯d been paid well, some way or another, but he¡¯d been genuinely nice about it. It made her wish that all her teachers had been so friendly, rather than operating solely on the basis of her House. She wanted to ask, but she didn¡¯t, restricting herself to normal politeness.

    ¡°Oh, thank you!¡± She took his hand briefly, smiling. ¡°But I¡¯ll come by next week to tell you how it went. If they want something more I might still need your help!¡±

    ¡°Won¡¯t they shove you into the draft, though?¡± Brown raised his eyebrows at her.

    ¡°What? No, of course not. Even if I test through now I doubt my duty would start before the beginning of the year.¡±

    ¡°I see.¡± The Professor seemed thoughtful. He also seemed to have bags under his eyes, and she had foregone mentioning them, but she decided it¡¯d be rude not to at least offer to help. She wasn¡¯t really supposed to do anything significant before getting her full mage status, but it wasn¡¯t like Professor Brown was exactly playing by strict rules either.

    ¡°Are you feeling okay?¡± She asked him. ¡°I could help if you¡¯re not.¡± He looked surprised at that, but nodded.

    ¡°I had a pretty rough week,¡± he said. ¡°I didn¡¯t want to ask, but if you¡¯re offering, I¡¯ll definitely take some magical healing.¡±

    ¡°Give me your hand,¡± she told him, and he extended his left hand across the table. She put two fingers on his wrist like she¡¯d seen other healers do, and focused on synchronizing her vis to his. In theory she could do this at range, and eventually without even needing the feedback, but she hadn¡¯t gotten that far yet.

    Her mana sight was iffy, as healers tended toward perceiving things other than the complexities of mana and vis constructs, so the only thing she¡¯d seen of his bubble was that it existed. Actually touching it, she could feel that it was not nearly as dense and stable as it should have been, nothing like what a proper mage should be making. Which made her think he was a lot worse off than he had claimed, but aside from the weakness and wobbliness, there didn¡¯t feel to be much wrong with him.

    In fact, the vis inside his body was considerably more complex and strange than anyone else she¡¯d healed, and there was a lot of it. He shouldn¡¯t have had any issues with his bubble, but maybe it was just a question of concentration. She sent her vis in to fix everything that was wrong, and he visibly straightened up as some of the tiredness around his eyes went away. Not all of it, of course, healing vis couldn¡¯t substitute for actual sleep, but it had a definite effect. Which was exactly what she wanted.

    It would have been faster to be apprenticed to the Archmage, but since she was a Hargrave, Archmage Fane would stretch out her apprenticeship as long as he could. It would be years before she could really use her magic! Obviously Gayle wasn¡¯t about to go out and start healing people at random but she wasn¡¯t going to be closeted away due to some House feud either.

    ¡°Thank you,¡± he told her, smiling.

    ¡°You¡¯re welcome!¡± Gayle beamed. ¡°I think I¡¯ll take this and go call up the proctor right away, if you don¡¯t mind,¡± she added. ¡°I don¡¯t want this to fade while I¡¯m waiting.¡±

    ¡°Do you have all the rest of the focuses we made?¡±

    ¡°I¡¯ve had to refresh them every day or so, but I have them,¡± Gayle confirmed. Since they weren¡¯t permanent enchantments and they were made with her own control over mana and vis, they didn¡¯t violate any of the rules about external help or about the availability of portal world materials. She doubted she was the first to think of the loophole, but since it hadn¡¯t been closed she was going to take advantage of it.

    ¡°Then once again, good luck. Don¡¯t let them get you down, huh?¡±

    ¡°I won¡¯t,¡± she said, though she wasn¡¯t sure who exactly he meant.

    He gave her a wave as she departed, getting in the car her House had provided her and driving back to the link station. She was actually a little excited, breezing through the GAR station and back home. Jameson welcomed her as usual, but she was more focused on contacting a proctor.

    They were supposed to be completely independent and objective, but they were still members of one House or another. The name her father had given her was one Richard Elroe, of House Elroe, one of their closest allies. While he certainly wouldn¡¯t help her cheat, she could trust him to give her a proper examination.

    ¡°Lord Elroe,¡± the man answered, voice crisp over the line. House Hargrave still used landlines for the most part, though she understand that mundane mobile phones intended to supplant them. She didn¡¯t see them as all that useful, but enchanted communicators were another matter entirely, and she couldn¡¯t wait to get her hands on one of those. But like most enchanted items, they were for full mages only.

    ¡°Hello, Lord Elroe. This is Gayle Hargrave.¡± They¡¯d been introduced ages ago, but neither of them were really familiar with each other. Only their names. ¡°I¡¯m calling to request proctoring to test out of apprenticeship.¡±

    ¡°Oh?¡± Richard sounded very interested. ¡°You have everything on the checklist?¡±

    ¡°I do!¡± She confirmed, running her hands over the stack of brass plates. ¡°I¡¯m ready to take the test at any time.¡±

    ¡°Well, normally it takes a while to set these up since they¡¯re not regular, but I can probably have something ready tomorrow. What do you think?¡±

    ¡°That¡¯s perfect!¡± She told him, half-glad and half-anxious that it was so soon. ¡°When and where?¡±

    ¡°I¡¯ll meet you at GAR East at noon,¡± he told her.

    ¡°See you then!¡± She hung up, calling for her head maid and relaying the time and place to make sure that she didn¡¯t miss it. Not that she thought she could possibly forget. After all the work she put in, she¡¯d finally be able to make it to full mage and get out from under the looming figure of Archmage Fane.

    Once her staff had changed her back to something appropriate for wearing about House Hargrave, she went to tell her parents. Well, her mom, anyway, since dad would still be at work. She was a little nervous about it, because while they supported her desire, actually testing out of apprenticeship was pretty much unheard of.

    ¡°Mother?¡± Gayle said, standing outside her mother¡¯s study. It was more out of safety than respect, because Lady Glenda Hargrave had a habit of working on weaponized force spellforms that could make the interior of her study hazardous.

    ¡°Come on in, sweetie,¡± her mother¡¯s voice floated back, and Gayle stepped through the door. The study fairly hummed with protective wards, especially at the back where targets were lit up showing damage patterns. It looked like her mother was working on something splashy, considering the webwork of orange and red coating the blue backstop.

    ¡°So¡­¡± Gayle said, then decided to just blurt it out. ¡°I¡¯m taking the test tomorrow with Lord Elroe. I have everything on the checklist so I should be able to get my draft and full mage papers!¡±

    ¡°That¡¯s wonderful!¡± Glenda beamed. ¡°Your study group figured out all the enchantments?¡±

    ¡°We did,¡± she said, suppressing a smile at the fiction that there was ever a study group and not someone hand-picked to give her the opportunity.

    ¡°I¡¯m so proud of you!¡± Glenda crossed over to her to give her a hug, mindful of the house dress. Glenda herself had a protective suit on, to augment her shields when she was being creative, but she wouldn¡¯t wear that outside the private wing. ¡°I can¡¯t believe House Hargrave is going to have our first healer and it¡¯s my little girl.¡±

    ¡°Mom!¡± She protested, but not strongly. Gayle was a little bit giddy too.

    The next day came both too slowly and too quickly, but she was at the eastern GAR office at noon. Lord Elroe was easy to pick out, what with the House Elroe uniform and the heavy chain of a master mage around his neck and the meritorious service emblems across his chest. He gave her a broad smile and offered his hand, palm up first to show his fire and water pips along with Master Mage of the House tattoo.

    ¡°Gayle Hargrave?¡± He asked, as if it weren¡¯t obvious since she was in full House Hargrave colors for the occasion.

    ¡°Yes, that¡¯s me,¡± she admitted, offering her hand in return. ¡°Thank you for setting this up so quickly.¡±

    ¡°Not a problem, Miss Hargrave,¡± Elroe told her. ¡°It¡¯s my pleasure.¡± He gestured for her to follow him. ¡°It was quite amusing to get the testing range open. It hasn¡¯t been used in years.¡±

    ¡°Oh?¡± Gayle glanced sideways at him, a little surprised the decorated war hero would delight in stirring trouble for the staff at GAR.

    ¡°It¡¯s amazing how many people think they know better than an actual mage,¡± Elroe confirmed. The place he led her was inside the true sanctum of GAR East, since the door they went through needed his tattoo to unlock, but it looked ordinary enough. In fact, it looked a lot like her mom¡¯s study, complete with warded backstop. Elroe waved her to the table in the corner and watched as she got out the brass plates that held the temporary focuses she¡¯d made with Professor Brown.

    ¡°I¡¯ll just need you to sign here to attest that everything you brought was made by you, not using any restricted focus designs to the best of your knowledge.¡± He looked at the brass plates curiously, and Gayle simply smiled brightly and signed.

    ¡°Well then, we¡¯ll start with the checklist. Your school records demonstrate your capacity for healing, so we can waive that. I have no desire to slice myself open just to challenge Greyson University¡¯s integrity.¡± He checked that off, and Gayle was a little disappointed, since it wasn¡¯t like she had too many opportunities to show off.

    ¡°Next on the list, light.¡± Elroe looked up at her and she picked up the proper temporary focus, pushing her vis into it. The ball of light that appeared was not that impressive, but it could move around which was as much as the test demanded.

    The rest of the tests went well enough until it got to the offensive weapon test. It was obvious that he was expecting her to use a focus for that too, but she actually had something different for that. She shaped together a ball meant to disrupt the clotting cascade and hurled it at the wall. Considering it wasn¡¯t a physical element she wasn¡¯t sure how the wards would register it, but the black splotch that appeared showed they recognized it at least.

    ¡°What was that?¡± Elroe asked frowning.

    ¡°A healing attack!¡± She smiled proudly. ¡°It¡¯s designed to cause instant onset of clotting. I admit it wouldn¡¯t get past a good shield but that wasn¡¯t part of the test requirements.¡±

    ¡°Hm,¡± Elroe said noncommittally.

    ¡°Is something wrong?¡± Gayle asked, suddenly nervous. ¡°I know it¡¯s not like a fireball but I thought it would count.¡±

    ¡°No, I just have to check something about that. Might as well finish up and then I¡¯ll go make inquiries.¡±

    ¡°Okay,¡± Gayle said, somewhat crestfallen, but gamely continued working through the checklist. When she was done, Elroe signed off at the bottom but had her stay while he went to check on her healing ball attack.

    It took longer than she¡¯d thought. It was nearly half an hour later that Elroe returned, along with a grey-haired man with hard grey eyes in a black uniform of no House. He simply stood there while Elroe looked at her curiously.

    ¡°This healing attack, did you come up with it yourself? Please answer fully and honestly.¡±

    ¡°Well, it wasn¡¯t my idea initially. My study partner told me about how easy it was to destabilize a body and gave me recommendations of what mundane biology to investigate. After that I developed it using crickets and rats.¡±

    ¡°Who was your study partner?¡± Elroe inquired.

    ¡°Why, his name is Professor Brown. Are we in trouble?¡±

    ¡°You may be,¡± the man in black said, speaking for the first time. ¡°Tell me everything you can about Professor Brown.¡±

 Chapter 19 - Mistakes

    Callum was somewhat regretful that he¡¯d only meet with Gayle one more time. There just wasn¡¯t any reasonable way or reason to stay in touch after she went off to the draft and did her own thing. Not that he had any designs on the girl, but it was nice to have some connection to normalcy in what was turning out to be an unreasonably stressful and isolated life.

    He¡¯d chosen to flout GAR with his eyes open, so he had no regrets about that. After seeing how they treated normal people, even going so far as to call them mundanes as if they were some lesser species, he was even more sure he¡¯d made the right choice. Which didn¡¯t mean it was the easy choice.

    After chewing on it for a while, he decided to do something he really should have done ages ago. In retrospect, he¡¯d been stupid to just chat with a young mage without knowing who he was interacting with, but he could only learn from his mistakes. Or, correct them, which he did with a call.

    ¡°What¡¯s up, big man?¡± Lucy said, sounding chipper as ever.

    ¡°Hey Lucy,¡± he replied, stretching out in a recliner he¡¯d installed in the motorhome. ¡°How¡¯s it going with GAR?¡±

    ¡°Oh man, they¡¯re still annoyed they can¡¯t find the vampire ghost, which is the stupidest name I¡¯ve ever heard and I¡¯ve heard a lot. It¡¯s hilarious how incompetent it makes them look especially when three faerie kings have actually stated outright that you aren¡¯t one of theirs. It¡¯s great entertainment.¡±

    ¡°Well, I¡¯m glad to hear they haven¡¯t caught on,¡± he admitted. It was nice to know that he hadn¡¯t left anything particularly incriminating behind, though that was far and away much easier to do when he didn¡¯t have to be at the actual site. Teleportation meant that he broke up all the patterns and trails needed to track people.

    ¡°There¡¯s a lot of vamps hunkered down in various places in case you decide to visit, from what I hear,¡± Lucy told him. ¡°But since nothing¡¯s happened for a couple weeks it¡¯s kind of dying down.¡±

    ¡°Well, that¡¯s fine with me. Never really wanted attention to begin with.¡± He shook his head, glad that he¡¯d apparently gotten away clean. ¡°Anyway, got a question for you.¡±

    "So soon? I can''t even tell if you''re down on one knee!"

    Callum barked a laugh. He wasn¡¯t exactly certain why Lucy was so flirtatious, but she had the trick of surprising him. It was nice.

    ¡°Just because I¡¯ve given you gold doesn¡¯t mean I¡¯m ready to move on to diamonds,¡± he told her, and got a chuckle. ¡°Seriously though, what can you tell me about House Hargrave?¡±

    ¡°Don¡¯t tell me you¡¯re involved with them?¡±

    ¡°I¡¯ve met one,¡± he admitted. ¡°Just a kid, honestly. Gayle Hargrave. Helped her out a bit but I¡¯m pretty sure I won¡¯t see her again, so I was a little curious who she really was.¡±

    ¡°Huh. Just a kid, you say.¡± There was the sound of typing from the other end of the line. ¡°Looks like Gayle is twenty-two, hardly a child.¡±

    ¡°There¡¯s twenty-two, and then there¡¯s twenty-two, you know?¡± Callum told her, and she laughed.

    ¡°Yeah, sure. College kids are the same all over. What did you want to know?¡±

    ¡°The general score, I guess.¡±

    ¡°Hmm, well, I can send you a report but the long and short is that House Hargrave is one of the big old ones. Hargraves invented half of the offensive spellforms anyone uses, so they¡¯re pretty martially inclined.¡±

    ¡°Gayle is a healer,¡± Callum noted.

    ¡°Yeah, and that¡¯s weird. Looks like some blending of bloodlines. Houses are pretty obsessive about tracking that kind of thing, so I¡¯m surprised you actually met her. Normally a new talent like that is under lock and key, buuuuut I guess with a family of action maybe not.¡±

    ¡°She was hanging out with the Larsons?¡± He wasn¡¯t sure if that was relevant, but if Gayle was some powerful scion perhaps the elderly couple who ran that bookstore were more than they appeared. ¡°I don¡¯t know if that means anything to you.¡±

    ¡°Oof. Yeah they¡¯re a couple of old warhorses. Don¡¯t piss them off! If they¡¯re around no wonder House Hargrave let her wander off on her own.¡±

    ¡°I have no intention to, that¡¯s certain. I guess I should have figured that any mage that actually looks old is liable to be dangerous.¡±

    ¡°Maybe? The pictures I have don¡¯t look very old.¡± Callum winced at Lucy¡¯s reply. Apparently he¡¯d seen past a glamour without realizing it again. It was a good thing he¡¯d never mentioned anything about it. Someday he was going to get in major trouble from that, and he made himself a note to try to use his phone¡¯s camera more often and hopefully sidestep some of the issues.

    ¡°Anyhow, I guess I could use the information on House Hargrave, but I doubt I¡¯ll be interacting with them again. I was mostly curious about who it was I was helping out.¡±

    ¡°Probably someone you shouldn¡¯t deal with, big man. There¡¯s all kinds of powerful politics with the big Houses and you sure don¡¯t need Archmages after you as well as the vamps.¡±

    ¡°Message received.¡± It meant that it was really for the best that he¡¯d be cutting ties soon. Even positive attention could be dangerous, though he didn¡¯t think that Gayle would suspect him of anything in particular. He just had to gracefully decline any invitation to meet anyone else.

    Yet again he considered not showing up for the next meeting, but he also yet again decided against it. With only one meeting, probably one that was just going to be Gayle celebrating her new status. Or asking for help with something, but either way that would have to be the last meeting.

    ¡°So what I¡¯m sending you is pretty much their own press statement stuff,¡± Lucy told him. ¡°I¡¯d have to dig a bit to find anything juicy.¡±

    ¡°I don¡¯t need anything juicy,¡± Callum assured her.

    ¡°Aww, I was hoping to earn more of that gold.¡±

    ¡°Don¡¯t worry, I¡¯ll come up with a job for you soon enough.¡±

    ¡°Don¡¯t keep me waiting, big man.¡±

    ¡°I know better than to keep a lady waiting.¡±

    ¡°Shame I¡¯m not a lady, then.¡±

    ¡°Never been anything less with me,¡± Callum said with a grin. ¡°Actually, now that I think about it, I probably am going to need to ditch this identity soon. I¡¯d appreciate some steering on the best place to get a new one, and maybe some regions of the US where there¡¯s very little supernatural presence.¡±

    Running around in a motorhome absolutely muddied his trail, but it was also quite tiresome. Winut had been practically perfect for him save for the shifter and vampire politics, so if he could find something like that once again it would be nice. Through Lucy and Harry he could probably get more information on magic and try to build up a coherent understanding of modern magical theory. Something he realized he desperately needed after his discussion with Gayle.

    ¡°Boo. You could just ask me for a new one!¡±

    ¡°I could, but the logistics for that¡­¡± Callum shrugged, despite Lucy being on the phone and unable to see him. ¡°I think that¡¯d just put both of us at risk.¡±

    ¡°You make me very curious about who you think is after you, big man.¡±

    ¡°Aside from GAR?¡± He asked dryly.

    ¡°Oh sure, but they don¡¯t know you are you, you know?¡±

    ¡°I know.¡± Callum shook his head. ¡°Speaking of, and I hate to ask this because I know these types are trouble?¡ª¡±

    ¡°Trouble like you?¡±

    ¡°Not like me, I hope,¡± he told her. ¡°But do you have contact information for other people who might be operating outside of GAR¡¯s laws?¡±

    ¡°Noooot so much,¡± Lucy said thoughtfully. ¡°GAR tends to stamp on anyone that could be considered a rogue pretty hard. I know they¡¯re out there, but usually what I see is one of the big agents reporting that they have them in custody or dead, you know? I don¡¯t think there¡¯s, I dunno, some kind of organized rogue syndicate or anything.¡±

    ¡°Not really any room for one when GAR is already kind of a criminal syndicate,¡± Callum muttered.

    ¡°I¡¯ll pretend I didn¡¯t hear that,¡± Lucy said with amusement. ¡°The truth is, if you want stuff outside of GAR¡¯s laws you really need to hook up with an Archmage, a faerie king, a regional alpha, or a master vampire. They¡¯ve all got a lot more leeway than the rank and file.¡±

    ¡°What about dragonblooded?¡± It didn¡¯t surprise him that the rules didn¡¯t really apply to the most powerful. They never did. He was curious why Lucy had left out the fifth type of supernatural, though.

    ¡°They¡¯re mad, bad, and dangerous to know,¡± Lucy replied promptly. ¡°I haven¡¯t heard of any actively breaking GAR rules but I¡¯ve also only ever heard that you need to be careful around them.¡±

    ¡°Hmm. Fair enough. Well, if you run across some sort of black market information, I¡¯d appreciate a heads-up.¡± Shahey was the only dragonblooded he¡¯d ever seen, let alone met, and Callum couldn¡¯t imagine him as being particularly threatening. Dangerous, yes, especially after he was attacked, but he¡¯d just been playing an ordinary gym owner for years without a hint of trouble.

    ¡°Any specific items?¡± Lucy asked, not at all bothered by the illegality of the request. ¡°It¡¯s probably easier to get something through backchannels than try and pull it out of GAR¡¯s confiscated stock.¡±

    ¡°Weird,¡± he said, but didn¡¯t argue. She was the one who worked at GAR, be it ever so rank and file. ¡°I¡¯m looking for information on foci and enchanting, as well as any literature on the rare aspects for mages. Gravity, healing, time, space, that sort of thing.¡± He hoped that his phrasing and burying his real interest would obscure things. That was as close to a direct request for gravity instructional books as he dared make.

    ¡°Huh, gotta say, that¡¯s going to be a lot harder than actual stuff. The Archmages and Houses are pretty damn protective of that kind of thing.¡±

    ¡°I figured it was a long shot,¡± Callum admitted. ¡°I suppose I¡¯ll just keep my ear to the ground.¡±

    ¡°Gonna cheat on me there, big man?¡± Lucy teased him.

    ¡°Never,¡± he assured her. ¡°I¡¯m pretty sure you wouldn¡¯t want to be involved in some of the stuff I need anyway.¡±

    ¡°I¡¯ll have you know I like getting down and dirty,¡± she said with a laugh. ¡°When it¡¯s fun, anyway.¡±

    ¡°Oh, so you don¡¯t care what I do when it¡¯s boring?¡±

    ¡°That¡¯s right,¡± she agreed cheerfully. ¡°Just give me the highlights.¡±

    ¡°I actually don¡¯t have anything exciting going on right now,¡± he said. ¡°Thank goodness.¡±

    ¡°A shame,¡± Lucy said. ¡°It¡¯s really fun to hear the scuttlebutt from the things you¡¯ve done.¡±

    ¡°I¡¯m sure,¡± he said dryly. ¡°If I do things right, though, you won¡¯t hear anything at all.¡±

    ¡°Boo! I can¡¯t blame you, though. Some of these GAR people are scary.¡±

    ¡°Yeah, I¡¯ve seen a few of them,¡± Callum agreed. That one fishlike fae agent still creeped him out a little bit. After a few more minutes of chatting Callum finally hung up and went to go take care of his daily practice. With Gayle as a reference he had a better idea of what to work toward, and even if he didn¡¯t have a great regimen for training he still needed to put his nose to the grindstone.

    The wonder of being able to juggle portals and teleports still hadn¡¯t worn off, and probably never would, but dismissing and reforming the same ones over and over really did make it a chore. As did trying to hold a larger and larger spatial bubble, since the moment he overextended it hurt, rather like pulling a muscle but all over. His perception distance was great, but his ability to hold any spatial construct didn¡¯t seem to be getting better very quickly. Something the size of a vehicle was about all he could manage for the moment.

    Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on Royal Road.

    Not that he needed anything larger, but it would have been nice to have the option.

    He also set aside time to go poke around the locations of vampire nests and GAR offices he¡¯d gotten from Lucy. It wasn¡¯t particularly dangerous so long as he didn¡¯t do anything, especially since he wasn¡¯t going to actually walk inside the buildings in question. Ultimately he was going to have to do something, since he didn¡¯t want to become a hermit, and eventually he¡¯d run into them again.

    The GAR locations varied pretty significantly in terms of their defenses and local mana, but generally the larger ones had more protection. The small offices that seemed to exist only to give GAR a teleport point basically had nothing more protecting them than a minor ward or glamour, but the ones where people actually worked had controlled entry. He thought that was pretty dumb since the teleport network being unguarded meant anyone could stroll right into GAR headquarters.

    Then again, it was dependent on the tattoos. There was also clearly some manual control involved, so maybe it was better protected than it seemed. Plus, he hadn¡¯t had a look the actual GAR offices after he¡¯d developed his spatial sense. There might be truly obscene protections on the other side.

    The vampire places, on the other hand, were defended more conventionally. That meant electronic security and men with guns staffing the halls and watching the doors. They all still had a mage in residence maintaining wards, but the defenses in question weren¡¯t nearly as structured as the ones around the GAR buildings.

    Interestingly, there didn¡¯t seem to be nearly as many defenders as in the nests he¡¯d removed, probably because those were pushed up right against shifters and were expected to engage in violence. Instead of twice as many thralls as vamps, there was something closer to parity and a number of those were obviously domestic servants.

    Also, vampires tended to live in luxurious housing complexes. So that part of the stereotype was true, at least. He wasn¡¯t sure if vampires were actually immortal, but there were hints they were as long-lived as mages, who could get into three or four centuries at least. While he knew it was almost impossible that any vampire would spot him or even recognize who and what he was if they did, he still wasn¡¯t confident enough to keep a watch on the nests at night.

    Plus, if he caught them killing people, he¡¯d have to wipe them out on principle and he wasn¡¯t ready for more attention. He wasn¡¯t even sure he could manage it, not without a lot of preparation and buildup, but his brain went to figuring out options anyway. Callum was a little more confident since he had his escape option, but still aware he was incredibly vulnerable. He could run, but he couldn¡¯t fight anyone who surprised him.

    ***

    Agent Ray Danforth watched the black-uniformed squad spread out over the town of Kennecut, annoyed at not having any control over the situation but unable to do anything about it. He was not trained for a real rogue mage, let alone a rogue mage with restricted knowledge, but the Bureau of Secret Enforcement was.

    Despite being with the Department of Arcane Investigation, he and Felicia rarely had anything to do with the BSE spooks. Even when clashes between different supernaturals spilled out into the mundane world, it was generally fairly easy to take care of. A few glamours, some deflecting official statement, and fines all around.

    Where BSE came in was when something really serious was at stake. Something that couldn¡¯t be covered up, or something major coming through a portal world. Mages who disseminated the really dangerous, restricted knowledge that GAR and the Archmages kept under lock and key to prevent catastrophe. Or, most relevant, rogues who may have once been part of BSE themselves, ex-colleagues who could do more damage than an entire pack of shifters or nest of vampires.

    The Larsons had been quite cooperative, and even knew the man they were looking for. They¡¯d provided a glamour representation of him for the BSE team to study before the agents went to take their places around Kennecut. The couple also talked to Archmage Hargrave, who was absolutely furious, something Ray wished them luck on. The Archmage was armored up for war, his force shielding and the winds floating him from place to place turning him into some faceless god rather than the wild-haired man he often appeared to be.

    Apparently even BSE wasn¡¯t about to tell an Archmage that he couldn¡¯t take part. Not when the rogue mage in question had corrupted his great-great-great-granddaughter somehow. Ray didn¡¯t quite get what exactly the problem was, since the woman in question was perfectly fine. He¡¯d gotten a redacted transcript of the interrogation and nothing there was out of the ordinary, but grandparents could be quite protective.

    ¡°Comms check.¡± The voice of the BSE leader sounded over Ray¡¯s earpiece. Not that either he or Felicia were going to be much involved with the apprehension of the renegade mage, but it was still taking place inside their assigned territory so they had to be there. Or, well, didn¡¯t have to, but they did want to.

    ¡°Aleph Check.¡±

    ¡°Bet Check.¡±

    Felicia poked him in the side, distracting him from what was actually fairly tedious setup. It was rather odd to hear the agents muttering to each other when there was an Archmage right there. Hargrave could level the entire town and everyone in it, so there didn¡¯t seem to be much need for the BSE folks, but that was above his pay grade.

    ¡°No bet,¡± he told her, in response to her unasked question. They¡¯d discussed it before coming and it seemed unlikely that their mysterious killer and a rogue mage coming from nowhere were unrelated. While the vampire massacres had no magical signature, that was the sort of thing rumors attributed to BSE agents anyway, so it wasn¡¯t impossible.

    ¡°Coward,¡± she accused him in a whisper.

    ¡°I like to think I¡¯ve learned my lesson,¡± he told her in reply. ¡°Come on, let¡¯s get up top.¡±

    The BSE agent all had advanced foci that let them flit about as if they were masters of air vis, but even they couldn¡¯t stay airborne forever. They¡¯d marked out vantage points covering the approaches to the Larson¡¯s bookshop from all angles and graciously allotted one to him and Felicia. The one that was of least concern, of course, but at least it was something.

    His spell reached out to wrap them both in air and lift them up to the building roof, along with a small carry-case of supplies. Felicia, unfortunately, had to get fairly close to contribute anything useful, and that was assuming her voice could get past whatever shielding he had in place. According to Gayle he was a gravity mage, but the BSE folks seemed convinced he¡¯d have more than a standard shield in place. Still, his primary role was to get Felicia over to the mage after BSE had put a magic-blocker on, just in case it would help.

    The other thing he could do was fire a shieldbreaker. It wasn¡¯t part of the Department of Arcane Investigation¡¯s normal loadout, but he¡¯d requested a set from the armory and had the request granted. Especially since he could use wind to guide the charged netting to the target, which would hopefully overload any shield construct the mage would be using.

    ¡°Taw, check,¡± he said into his own mic after everyone had checked in. Everyone but Archmage Hargrave, who was hardly going to bother with such things. There weren¡¯t actually enough people to justify going all the way down the alphabet, but since they were outside of BSE¡¯s command structure they got the end.

    They didn¡¯t actually expect to see the rogue mage for hours yet. BSE had already combed Kennecut for traces of the man and found nothing. Aside from the Larsons and the younger Hargrave, there wasn¡¯t much in the way of vis, especially not the gravity aspect that their target supposedly had. That meant they couldn¡¯t track the so-called Professor Brown back to wherever he was laired and had to wait.

    The trick now was to make sure there was nothing to spook him, assuming he actually showed for his meeting. The younger Hargrave was already waiting with the Larsons, but if things went to any sort of plan their target wouldn¡¯t get anywhere near the bookstore. Even with their shields clamped down tight any competent mage would notice the extra people around eventually, especially the Archmage.

    They were covering all the roads into town, since according to Gayle the man came by bicycle. BSE was very interested in seeing where he came from, and actually had two of their number waiting at the travel link in case he was actually using the GAR system. If he was casually traveling through GAR without anyone noticing, a lot of people were going to be looking for new jobs.

    Felicia offered him a bottle of water, and he accepted, taking a swig as he positioned his telescopic focus in front of both of them. At its narrowest it was like a normal spyglass, but he preferred the window that gave him a comfortably wide view of his target. Felicia did too, since it wasn¡¯t like the fae could use any normal focus. They needed ones fueled by charged and stored vis or mana, which was fairly expensive. Roy himself charged the few that Felicia carried.

    For a while nothing much happened. It was the same old stakeout problem; they knew when the target was supposed to be there, but he could arrive early or late and either way, they couldn¡¯t afford to miss him. Aside from a few of the stranger fae, he didn¡¯t know anyone who actually liked stakeouts.

    Conversation was sparse, since they were both watching through the lens, and Ray was listening closely with his magic-enhanced hearing. Every car and pedestrian was suspect, and the only saving grace was that Kennecut wasn¡¯t all that busy so they only needed to look at one or two people at a time. Even so, Felicia lost interest fairly quickly and gave only a desultory look through the focus once every few minutes. Ray didn¡¯t really blame her for that, since this was not her specialty. If it weren¡¯t for the chance of a link between this mage and the phantom they¡¯d been chasing, they wouldn¡¯t be there at all.

    ¡°Dalet here. Potential target. White male, riding a bicycle, brown suit, hat, bag. North on Kent Avenue, by Fourth Street.¡± The words crackled over the earpiece, and Ray took a moment to remember where those streets were located before sweeping the lens over in that direction. There were a couple buildings between them and the target, but Ray was an air mage, so that was no trouble.

    It was a bit of an advanced technique, but bending air density to bounce light, mirage-like, was well within his capabilities. He set his wind mirror high up to get a better perspective at what Dalet was looking at, but didn¡¯t see the man or the bicycle. Ray started to sweep the lens when the earpiece buzzed again.

    ¡°Lost contact.¡± Pause. ¡°Regained contact, west Eleventh. He¡¯s a space mage or has a short-range teleport focus.¡± Even Ray didn¡¯t have access to short-range teleport foci, so if a random mage had one that was impressive. Or worrying. If he was a space mage though, they¡¯d have to move quickly to keep him from getting away.

    ¡°Shieldbreaker and buzzer,¡± Aleph ordered. ¡°Zayin and Yod, move to intercept.¡± The latter two were shifters, and when they decided to move they could really move. Ray swiveled his mirror around as he stood, wrapping both himself and Felicia in a cushion of air. He didn¡¯t dare move until the mage was neutralized, but he wanted to get there as fast as possible afterward.

    The mage had stopped and was looking around, frowning. Ray had to wonder if something had given them away, despite their precautions. He doubted that any normal mage would notice a BSE team, but perhaps the hovering Archmage Hargrave was too obvious, even if he was halfway across the city.

    Before he could be properly spooked, there were a pair of flashes from Waw and Tet, the latter of whom was actually riding on an invisible floating platform high above. Unlike mundane guns, the proper mage weaponry they had made no noise when they spat their payloads. Ray squinted in anticipation of the flare of shield disruption, but no such thing came.

    The mage looked startled for a brief moment as the magic-disrupting net smacked him hard enough to knock him off his bicycle. The buzzer hit him while he was still toppling, the disrupter dart punching into his shoulder rather than his chest. Ray gawked at the sight of someone without even the most basic of protections, then stopped worrying about the sight focus and the mirror and lifted himself and Felicia while Zayin and Yod moved.

    Shimmering walls of force popped up as Hargrave walled off three whole blocks in an impenetrable dome. Ray slowed, but a small hole opened and allowed them through, demonstrating the sort of casual knowledge and finesse that made Archmages a genuine terror. By the time he touched down on the inside, two bulky shifters, both in war form, had the man trussed up and loaded down with magic-blocker cuffs and anklets. The buzzer seemed to have knocked him completely silly, the man clearly semiconscious, but that was what he got for having no shielding or a hardened personal sphere.

    A moment after he dropped himself and Felicia to the ground, Archmage Hargrave arrived with considerably more flash and thunder. The man spat out enough stray vis that it triggered Ray¡¯s own shields, little sparks of force bouncing off and pinging against the nearby buildings. For a moment Ray was afraid that the Archmage was going to kill their only lead before they could question him, but Aleph stepped between Hargrave and the target.

    ¡°BSE thanks you for your help,¡± he said, despite the fact that Hargrave hadn¡¯t needed to do anything. ¡°We will take it from here.¡±

    ¡°I want him,¡± Hargrave growled.

    ¡°Once BSE and the DAI have completed their investigations, we will see if he can be released to your custody,¡± Alfa said, unmoved by the angry Archmage. The two of them stared at each other, Alfa blank-faced and seemingly immune to Hargrave¡¯s vis manifestations, and Hargrave visibly furious behind the force visor of his armor. Hargrave blinked first.

    ¡°Very well,¡± he said. ¡°But keep me informed! I want to know everything the instant you do.¡±

    He stepped back as Aleph turned to frisk the mage, also checking earlobes, teeth, and hands in a quick and impersonal inspection. Even if he didn¡¯t know what Aleph was looking for, he had to admit the BSE man was credibly professional. One of the other members conjured up a slab of force as Aleph emptied the man¡¯s pockets.

    ¡°Well, damn. I guess he is the killer.¡± Ray stared at the small handful of ball bearings that had been in the man¡¯s suit. It was obvious they had vis attached to them, in what seemed to be a mana acceptor pattern, but it didn¡¯t seem to be attached to anything. ¡°Or at least knows who it is.¡±

    He was still baffled by how easy it had been to subdue the man. They¡¯d all expected a rogue BSE agent, maybe even one who could shrug off shieldbreakers. That was one of the major reasons that Hargrave had been involved. They already knew he had access to restricted knowledge, which included a lot of very nasty things and might require someone of Archmage caliber to take down. Now it seemed they had overprepared, which was just fine with Ray.

    ¡°Look at the mage mark,¡± Aleph said holding up the man¡¯s right wrist.

    ¡°This just keeps getting weirder,¡± Ray said. The tattoo was a blank one, just the two outside bands, with no House or draft affiliation. On closer inspection, the aspect marker was gone, too, and the dot there was just ink on top of the skin. It was all very bewildering, but with the man still stunned it wasn¡¯t any time to start an inquisition. That could wait until they got somewhere he could be properly contained.

    He picked up the man¡¯s wallet, which contained nothing but cash and a driver¡¯s license in the name of Denver Brown. No credit cards, no old receipts, not even any loyalty or business cards that he might have picked up along the way. It was the wallet of a man who had something to hide. Or rather, of a man who didn¡¯t really exist except as a name.

    ¡°Felicia, could you run this?¡± He asked her, while he studied the rest of the contents of both the pockets and the bag the so-called Denver Brown had been carrying. Most mages had all their focuses organized in a proper container, so they could use them with a minimum of fumbling, but apparently Brown only had one focus, a glamour focus attached to his keychain.

    There were some brass plates that were enchanted as well, which fit in with the transcript they¡¯d gotten. Though why he¡¯d bother keeping such clunky versions of light or telekinesis foci after providing them to Gayle, Ray didn¡¯t know. He just found himself more and more confused as he took in what might be considered evidence, and the man himself was just as odd.

    Brown was compact, a touch too much flesh to be wiry, and sort of square. Square jaw, square face, square shoulders. The hands were soft rather than calloused, which wasn¡¯t unusual for a mage, but they had more than a few marks and scars on them. Mages didn¡¯t tend to accumulate scars, not like mundanes did, so that was another point toward oddity. It certainly didn¡¯t help that he could swear that Brown¡¯s face looked familiar.

    Felicia tapped him on the shoulder. Not only had she run the man¡¯s ID and discovered that that he owned a motorhome, which had to be nearby, but she¡¯d searched through the GAR system to find out who he might be. As it turned out there was only one missing space mage who would have such a simplistic mark.

    ¡°Hmm.¡± Ray looked between the picture and the blearily blinking man that Yod was holding. The hair was different, but the jaw and the nose and the eyes were the same. ¡°I think this is Callum Wells.¡±

 Chapter 20 â€“ Defiance

    Callum woke suddenly and all at once, with the exact same clarity as the first time he¡¯d been woken with magical healing. While he couldn¡¯t remember everything that had happened with surety, he did know he¡¯d been terribly, terribly careless. He should have teleported away the moment he sensed another mage on the edge of his perceptions. At the time he¡¯d thought it might be one of the Larsons, since they did live there after all, but since he¡¯d basically never seen them out of their store he should have smelled a rat.

    A pair of shifters suddenly moving, and moving quickly, had been what twigged him that something was wrong, but a flush of panic had frozen him for a critical few moments. It hadn¡¯t been the shifters that had taken him down, though, because he had a vague recollection of being shot with something. So it was probably some equivalent of a sniper, but that wasn¡¯t any comfort. More the reverse, since it showed that they were properly equipped to neutralize someone like him, and do so safely. At least they¡¯d gone with the nonlethal option rather than putting a bullet through his head from five thousand yards, but it was exceedingly unpleasant to find out that they could outrange his sensory range.

    Of course his major mistake was his continued contact with Gayle. Once he¡¯d gotten his hands on that homebond and the spatial enchants he should have just vanished, no matter how much his basic sense of decency rebelled at the thought. Even if he¡¯d done that, he never should have agreed to meet her again after resolving her issues to his satisfaction, let alone followed through with it. He¡¯d just been so glad to have a normal interaction that he¡¯d overextended.

    He was pretty well screwed now, though, the pleasant fullness of health giving way to a curdled gut as the full impact of things caught up with him. The Mages In Black had come to take him away and he should probably be thankful that they weren¡¯t at this very moment pulling fingernails or whatever just on the principle of the thing. Callum¡¯s thoughts started to scatter away and he took a few deep breaths, squeezing his hands into fists as he surveyed the room he was in with his spatial sense.

    It was heavily warded, enough that he couldn¡¯t push his senses out past it without a lot of time and effort. The interior of the room was just two chairs and a table, not unlike the interrogation room he¡¯d been held in when they¡¯d first found him. The big difference was that this one had no door, and that he was cuffed to the chair that he was in.

    There were extra bands around his wrists and ankles that registered oddly to him, distorted and opaque, obviously enchanted but with something far beyond his knowledge. He was also dressed in a plain sort of coverall, rather than his original clothing, but he couldn¡¯t say that was a surprise. In fact, that was more or less what he had anticipated.

    Callum focused inward, and found that his teleporter chip was still where it was supposed to be, down in his abdominal cavity. He almost groaned in relief at the discovery, but suppressed it, instead concentrating on feeding vis into the little focus buried in his gut. Even that much flexing of his internal energies stirred his vis against his skin, and the bands crackled, sucking up the excess vis and sending an unpleasant sensation through him, something worse than the jangling of his teleport field.

    He froze, muscles twitching in protest, but the restraints only siphoned off the vis that extended out of his actual body. Though Callum hadn¡¯t intended on casting anything, it was clearly impossible while wearing the bands. Or, well, impossible for him. He was fairly certain they wouldn¡¯t have weighed him down with so many if they were foolproof.

    They probably had known the moment he was awake, but Callum finally opened his eyes, shifting around to hide the fact that he was focused on channeling his vis inward. It would take minutes for the thing to charge, and he really hoped that the bands didn¡¯t stop it from working. He didn¡¯t think they would, since they weren¡¯t sucking his vis out through his skin, but they¡¯d probably cut him off from making more so he had to do it on a single tank, as it were.

    The interrogation room looked as bare to his sight as it did to his senses. White walls, white floor, white ceiling, white ceramic table and chairs. It was only the different shades of white that really did much to separate one from another. The sterile, almost surgical feel was chilling, and the only thing that it was missing to be straight out of some horror movie was a blood drain in the floor.

    His jumpsuit was grey rather than the jail-orange he¡¯d expected, but was still the classic prison-wear he¡¯d seen in media. The situation looked about as bad as it could be, and the only thing that eased the hammering of his heart in his chest was the slow trickle as the teleporter focus charged. From his experience it took about five minutes, which meant he had to hope they¡¯d try to talk with him longer than that.

    Callum half-expected that he¡¯d be kept waiting, though his knowledge of interrogation techniques was limited to certainly-inaccurate police procedural shows. Less than thirty seconds after he stirred, though, two people appeared in a twisting of teleportation magic on the far side of the room. The glimpse he caught of it implied that the enchantment for it was wound into the ward structure.

    One of the two was a square-jawed man dressed in plain black with no markings, some kind of uniform that looked vaguely tactical, rather than formal. The other was a familiar face, the weird toothy fae agent from the Department of Arcane Investigation that had come to his house in Winut. By contrast, her uniform was blue, formal, and even had a number of insignia and medals on it.

    The fae took the seat across from him, while the tactical guy stood behind her with arms crossed. He had the usual bubble of a mage, but the shields were a lot more intricate and powerful than Callum had seen before, and the bubble very clearly had been extended to cover the fae agent. Callum didn¡¯t think the guy was just a bodyguard though, since he was pretty sure he¡¯d seen the man¡¯s face before someone had reduced him from semiconscious to unconscious.

    ¡°Mister Callum Wells,¡± the fae said, which at least confirmed that he¡¯d been identified. Not that he was surprised. ¡°We have many questions for you.¡±

    He raised his eyebrows at her, but didn¡¯t reply. In truth he was thinking about how to play the conversation, because while he wanted it to take some time, he also didn¡¯t want to give anything away. Or anyone. His habit of using burner phones and discarding them regularly should protect Lucy and Harry, but there was no way they¡¯d miss the cache of records he¡¯d gotten. Hopefully those had been scrubbed of anything that would identify either Harry or Chester as the source.

    ¡°You are Callum Wells, spatial aspect?¡± She prompted.

    ¡°That¡¯s my name,¡± he admitted. The words came out commendably steady. If it weren¡¯t for the magical healing he¡¯d probably have been croaking them, and as it was his mouth felt dry.

    ¡°Were you complicit in destroying the vampire nests in Winut, Choral, Kenneshaw, and New Agers?¡± For some reason, it surprised him that she went ahead without any introductions or even a cursory reading of rights or the like. Though he doubted he exactly had rights at the moment.

    ¡°That¡¯s quite specific. What makes you think that I was?¡± It took him a few moments to decide on the appropriate wording instead of blurting things out. They had him dead to rights, but he wanted to know how. He might have missed some obvious trace or it could have just been them assuming the rogue mage and the mysterious killings were connected due to Occam¡¯s Razor.

    Oddly, the fae frowned and glanced back at the Mage In Black, who shook his head ever so slightly. She glanced back at Callum and sighed, drumming her fingers on the desk. Eventually, though, she came to a decision.

    ¡°Really, your enchanted steel already gave that away; we¡¯re more curious as to why.¡± The agent crossed her arms. ¡°It¡¯s a blatant violation of GAR law and it doesn¡¯t even seem to be your problem. The history we have on you is suspect but if you are just a late-bloomer from West Virginia, you have no business being out here.¡±

    ¡°Why?¡± Callum struggled to keep his face straight, because of all the things to give him away he didn¡¯t think it¡¯d be the stuff he used to clean up his tracks. In hindsight it was obviously an issue. it took hours for the enchantment to dissipate and he¡¯d used the ball bearings in places where no ball bearing should really be. ¡°Did you know the vampires in question were murdering people?¡±

    ¡°That¡¯s not really relevant,¡± she said, and he shook his head at her. He didn¡¯t want to be too flip, since he didn¡¯t want the guy lurking behind her to wander over and give him a few restrained beatings for his lip, but he thought the best way to play things was as someone not impressed by their authority. Which was true enough, since what he was really impressed by was their ability to wield force.

    ¡°It is to me,¡± he told them. ¡°From where I sit, the question isn¡¯t why I had an issue with those vampire nests, it¡¯s why you didn¡¯t.¡±

    ¡°So long as they stay within their allotment, they are still within GAR mandates. What you did?¡ª¡± The agent cut herself off, realizing she didn¡¯t have to justify herself to Callum. ¡°So, to the next question. Was anyone else involved? Do you know what happened to Chase Hall?¡±

    Callum nearly laughed. Though he didn¡¯t much blame her for not realizing he was Chase Hall, since she¡¯d only seen him the one time under that guise, and he¡¯d been sure to make Professor Brown look different than Mister Hall. He pressed his lips together instead, considering whether or not he should admit his alternate identity. His initial instinct was to deny everything, but that game was up. The best he could do was try and get information from them instead.

    ¡°Interesting that you should bring him up,¡± Callum said. ¡°Why was it that you told him he was a signature witness?¡±

    ¡°I¡¯m not here to answer questions, Mister Wells,¡± the agent said with annoyance, but the Mage In Black shifted slightly, as if he¡¯d seen something interesting in Callum¡¯s reply.

    Callum realized that he couldn¡¯t be too clever with the questions and answers. He wasn¡¯t trained in espionage or counterintelligence or even in how to answer questions properly without a lawyer. Given any reasonable length of time and he¡¯d either betray something he didn¡¯t mean to or give them a reason to break out the torture equipment. Really it was all stalling for time while he trickled vis into the focus in his gut.

    ¡°Well,¡± Callum said with a shrug. ¡°So far as I know he¡¯s fine.¡±

    ¡°And where might he be?¡±

    ¡°I have no idea,¡± Callum said, amused at how true it was. He really didn¡¯t have any idea where he was.

    ¡°We¡¯ll come back to that,¡± the agent said. ¡°Who do you work for?¡±

    ¡°Myself,¡± Callum replied promptly. ¡°I always have. Never got along with bosses. It seems I have problems with authority.¡±

    ¡°Very funny,¡± the agent said, without any enthusiasm at all. ¡°You may see some leniency if you name all the members of your organization.¡±

    ¡°You know, I¡¯m not clear on exactly what I¡¯m facing here. I¡¯m not even sure who you all are, or under what pretense you dragged me in.¡±

    ¡°Yet, you weren¡¯t very surprised when you woke up here,¡± she pointed out. ¡°Don¡¯t be disingenuous, Mister Wells. You¡¯re quite aware of all the reasons you¡¯re here.¡± Callum shrugged at that. He was hoping for more elaboration of the statutes since he¡¯d never actually seen the full set of GAR laws. The MIB took a step forward, standing beside the agent rather than behind her. She glanced sideways at him, but leaned back to yield the floor to him, confirming that he was more than a bodyguard.

    ¡°You¡¯re here under the auspice of the Bureau of Secret Enforcement,¡± he said in a low rumble. Which sounded like the most ridiculously totalitarian police Callum had ever heard of. ¡°While the Department of Arcane Investigation is handling most of the aspects of this case, the BSE has a very specific question for you. Where did you learn about the techniques you informed Gayle of?¡±

    ¡°The what now?¡± Callum was genuinely confused. ¡°I just found some stuff on focuses¡ª¡±

    ¡°The offensive healing,¡± the BSE man interrupted.

    ¡°I don¡¯t know what you mean. It seemed pretty obvious to me.¡±

    The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

    ¡°What was obvious?¡± He pressed.

    ¡°If healing can make the body change in one way, it ought to in another, and some of the failure modes for biochemistry are pretty strict.¡± Even as he spoke, he wondered if the issue was rather like spatial mages being no more than stevedores. Healing was rare, so it might be rather more guided and guarded than other aspects.

    ¡°Mister Wells, healing magic is magic, not biochemistry. Perverting its purpose with misapplied mundane ideas is abhorrent, and violates every guideline that Archmage Fane has laid down over the centuries. You have poisoned Gayle Hargrave¡¯s future with your so-called obvious insights.¡± The BSE man clearly had a better measure of him than the agent did, because that was the first thing that actually bothered him.

    ¡°That, I do regret. I didn¡¯t know that was such an issue. But how much trouble is it, really? She was trying to skip apprenticeship anyway.¡±

    ¡°She will have to enroll with the Bureau of Secret Enforcement,¡± he said darkly. ¡°With the knowledge she already has, there is no other choice. She is lucky that Archmage Hargrave has taken an interest, or things might be worse for her.¡±

    ¡°It seems a little harsh to punish someone for something that anyone with a little education could figure out in a couple weeks,¡± Callum said, scowling.

    ¡°Gayle Hargrave is exceedingly talented,¡± the MIB declared. Which she might well be, as it wasn¡¯t like Callum had anyone to compare her to. ¡°And it is a travesty that you¡¯ve twisted her mind toward corpsecraft and death rather than giving life.¡±

    ¡°It¡¯s your own damn requirements to have an offensive option,¡± Callum glowered at them. ¡°Besides, if she¡¯s that talented, the more fool you for hiding her away,¡± he told them. Part of him wanted to help Gayle somehow, but it was likely she, quite reasonably, blamed him for her trouble. If he got in contact with her somehow it¡¯d only compound the issue. Which didn¡¯t mean he was going to abandon the obligation he had to help her, if she wanted it, he¡¯d just have to be circumspect. Besides, it sounded like he¡¯d need to figure out the magical secret police in the future anyway.

    ¡°Were you trying to recruit her for your organization?¡± The fae spoke up again, cutting off a further remark from the MIB.

    ¡°A pocket healer would be a great idea, but no, I wasn¡¯t doing any recruiting. I just saw someone struggling under unreasonable restrictions and thought I¡¯d help.¡± The MIB¡¯s eyes hardened at that and Callum thought he¡¯d gone too far, but the fae merely grunted.

    ¡°You might make things easier on her if you were forthcoming about your organization,¡± the fae remarked. That almost made Callum lose his temper, but he managed to restrain his tongue. Instead he contemplated them for a moment while he wrestled with himself, then finally spoke.

    ¡°I suspect Archmage Hargrave will not be happy?¡ª¡± He nearly lost his train of thought as the teleportation focus suddenly flashed into full activation, thrumming uncomfortably through his body, just under the skin. ¡°?¡ªyou¡¯re using her as a bargaining chip when trying to question me,¡± he managed to finish with only a minor stumble.

    ¡°I think you underestimate the seriousness with which BSE takes a rogue organization,¡± the MIB said with disapproval.

    ¡°I don¡¯t think I do. Any such thing would be an existential threat to the little dictatorship you have. It¡¯s simply that after this conversation, none of you are going to see me again. But I might be seeing you.¡±

    ¡°Threats, now?¡± The MIB scoffed.

    ¡°It¡¯s not a threat. I¡¯m just telling you what¡¯s going to happen,¡± Callum said, and triggered the teleportation focus.

    ***

    Ray swore as Callum Wells vanished from inside the locked, heavily warded interrogation chamber, the blocker cuffs rattling as they tumbled to the floor and the jumpsuit silently slumped into the chair. Agent Zhen, the BSE agent overseeing the interrogation, slapped the panic button and additional wards went up, doors closing and locking of their own accord. Agent Denver, inside the room, flashed his shield, obscuring both Felicia and himself from view as Zhen rattled off code into his headset.

    ¡°Case Samekh; alert level four, units five through nine sweep and clear, origin A-7; Dalet, set auth two five two.¡±

    ¡°How the hell did he do that?¡± Ray said, as a squad came stomping down the hallway to properly clear the observation room and interrogation cell. It would have been better to ask why he did that. If Wells could teleport out of cuffs and through BSE wards, then he hadn¡¯t been captured. He¡¯d allowed himself to be taken.

    Which meant he wanted to be there, and that was worrisome. Ray had no idea what the man¡¯s game was. Was there something within the BSE building he was after, or someone? They already knew he was incredibly dangerous, even if they didn¡¯t know how, so he could do a lot of damage if he got free inside a secure site.

    It certainly didn¡¯t help that his group had something that could nullify fae compulsion. Felicia¡¯s voice hadn¡¯t worked on Hall, and didn¡¯t work on Wells. He didn¡¯t know of any mage foci that could do that, and he knew there wasn¡¯t any magic around Hall, so he had to consider there were fae involved in the organization as well. Overall, it seemed like a horrible looming mess of a threat.

    ¡°It might be he can get around magic-blocker cuffs and the wards,¡± Zhen said, tearing Ray¡¯s attention away from inward contemplation, and standing away from the controls and letting the BSE squad check everything over. ¡°If he¡¯s actually Archmage level, it¡¯s possible. It may be that he had a homebond implant, but we checked for that. It¡¯d have to be some model we¡¯d never seen before.¡±

    Ray grimaced. Implanted focuses were not exactly common, partly because they were illegal, but mostly because it was extremely difficult to direct vis somewhere a mage couldn¡¯t sense. They were generally placed right under the skin, so a mage could fill it by touch, though tooth implants were popular in certain quarters. Not that Ray had ever had one, but he knew they existed.

    A homebond implant was on the obscene side of rare and expensive, given the demands put on the relatively few spatial mages and the limitations on proper enchanting materials. Teleportation enchantments required the absolute purest materials. Duvall kept them from being overwhelmed, but there was an insatiable appetite for more teleports, more homebonds, and more spatial storage. The Archmage had a waiting list a mile long.

    If someone else was making spatial enchantments, that was unheard of. One that couldn¡¯t be detected by a resonator was even more worrisome. Unfortunately, there was no real consideration given to something that shouldn¡¯t have existed.

    They hadn¡¯t run him through an x-ray machine or the like; there weren¡¯t even any on the premises. With dedicated healers, none were ever needed. Even checking for focus implants wasn¡¯t exactly standard procedure, though in this case they¡¯d made the extra effort, running a magic resonator over his whole body. If there had been anything that a mage could sense to target, the resonator ought to have alerted them. Between the magic-blockers, cuffs, and being completely stripped of all foci, he shouldn¡¯t have been an issue.

    ¡°Blood tracking?¡± Ray asked, and Zhen nodded, speaking into his headset.

    ¡°Rheonor? I need a blood tracker on Callum Wells, the one we just sent over. Great.¡± Zhen waited, then nodded and looked to Ray.

    ¡°Wells isn¡¯t in the facility. Rheonor¡¯s trackers have a ten mile range and last through sunrise.¡±

    ¡°I¡¯ll take Felicia and get my glider,¡± Ray offered. With a ten mile range and some fifteen hours to go, there was really very little chance of being able to find the man¡¯s bolt-hole. It was presumably somewhere in the United States, but it would take a lot of luck to stumble across it.

    ¡°We have a Transporter on standby,¡± Zhen said, not too unkindly. Ray didn¡¯t much like it, but he had to lump it. This was more the BSE¡¯s case than his, now, though at least he could make a report on the identity of the murderer. The subsequent escape, though, that was something that would probably stay redacted for a good long time.

    On the other hand, if BSE was taking over, Ray wouldn¡¯t have to deal with the fallout from whatever Wells had been up to. Which was something of a relief. The case had been cryptic and frustrating from the start, and to end in so spectacular a blunder would have been bad for his career, and that of his partner.

    Felicia gave him a questioning look as they met up in the halls underneath BSE headquarters, the two of them following an escort out to less secure areas. Even though both of them were DAI agents, Secret Enforcement trumped their authority. He returned it with a brief shake of his head, not wanting to complain about their hosts while still in earshot.

    ¡°Where is he?¡± The Archmage that confronted them the moment they stepped outside the secure area was not the Archmage that Ray was expecting. He didn¡¯t know where Hargrave had gone, but it was Duvall that was standing there, looking irate. Ray had never seen her in person, but the House uniform made it very clear who she was.

    ¡°If you mean Callum Wells, he is no longer in DAI custody,¡± Ray said carefully. He wasn¡¯t going to spill what had happened without authorization, even to an Archmage. ¡°The Bureau of Secret Enforcement is in charge of things now.¡± He did, however, have no compunction about throwing BSE under the bus.

    ¡°Secret-keeping whoresons,¡± Duvall swore under her breath, and vanished with a flare of vis. Ray figured her interest in the matter was because she was a spatial mage. The spatial mage, really. She¡¯d pioneered portals and teleportation over three hundred years ago and, most importantly, spatial expansion enchantments. She snapped up every spatial mage that appeared, probably because she needed them for the GAR teleport network.

    Their escort shot them a betrayed look, and Ray shrugged. He sure as hell wasn¡¯t going to risk an Archmage¡¯s wrath. Even if spatial magic wasn¡¯t exactly fearsome, she might ban him from the network or something.

    ¡°C¡¯mon,¡± he said to Felicia, heading for the teleport out. ¡°I¡¯ll fill you in.¡±

    ***

    ¡°I guess my first instinct was right,¡± Agent Jahn said, looking down at his coffee. ¡°He played a pretty damn convincing mundane, though. The question is, what is his connection to Scaletooth?¡±

    ¡°The real question here is: how is there one of my spatial mages running around that I wasn¡¯t told about,¡± Archmage Duvall snapped. ¡°I¡¯m the Archmage here, they go to me! No exceptions. When I find out what House is conniving behind my back, there will be hell to pay.¡±

    ¡°That is absolutely something we¡¯ll look into,¡± Zhen said seriously. ¡°It sounds like there¡¯s more than just him, too. I could tell we caught him off-guard asking about Chase Hall, so there¡¯s some avenue of attack there, if we can ever find the man again.¡±

    ¡°Which I doubt,¡± Jahn said mournfully. ¡°Both Wells and Hall were only found because they got caught up in other things.¡±

    ¡°We¡¯ll need those records,¡± Zhen told him. ¡°If this group is dabbling in restricted magic, we need to know everything.¡±

    Jahn grimaced. That had been the most surprising thing to find out, though he did agree with Callum a little bit. Some of the so-called restricted magic was not particularly difficult to figure out, provided the mage in question educated themselves in mundane topics. Though few mages did, and mixing with mundanes wasn¡¯t exactly encouraged.

    The incident with young Gayle Hargrave was quite unfortunate, as healing was one of those aspects which was carefully managed. Unless one specifically designed their shield to block it, healing aspect would resonate with a mage¡¯s vis instead of being blocked by it. Archmage Fane could instantly kill a roomful of mages without even seeming to do anything, and in fact, had.

    Most people didn¡¯t know it, but Fane was the mage equivalent of the nuclear option.

    What would become of Gayle remained to be seen, but she was going to have to be pulled into the deeper levels of GAR regardless, and become properly briefed and trained on being an offensive healer. The major sticking point was Archmage Hargrave becoming personally involved, because that pulled House politics into everything. Thankfully that wasn¡¯t his problem, but he still had an Archmage actually present he needed to handle.

    ¡°Considering that they may have some access to restricted knowledge, is there any light you might be able to shed on matters for us, Archmage Duvall?¡± Jahn asked politely. ¡°We did not generally consider spatial mages to be particularly dangerous, but you are the expert.¡±

    ¡°It¡¯s not. Spatial is the only completely peaceful affinity. There are some advanced tricks, it¡¯s true, but nothing that would threaten an actual person.¡± Duvall sneered. ¡°Maybe mundanes, but not people.¡± Her hard gaze pinned Jahn to his chair. ¡°He¡¯s being used by someone else for this evil work because of your incompetence in not finding him earlier. Fix that, or I will make sure your career ends here, John,¡± Duvall finished, mangling his name.

    ¡°Yes, of course, Archmage,¡± Jahn said, concealing a wince. It was useless to wish the past was different, but he regretted picking up Callum Wells in the first place. ¡°We might start with Hall, given how each of the incidents involved the more mundane applications of force.¡±

    ¡°I don¡¯t really care,¡± Duvall said dismissively. ¡°I want him found, and I want him turned over to me. I want to know who taught him, and I want to know what his bloodline is. Everything! I get only one space mage every thirty or forty years at best, and I need every one I can find just to maintain my transport system!¡±

    ¡°We¡¯re doing the best we can,¡± Zhen said.

    ¡°Do better,¡± Duvall replied.

    ***

    Lucy had long ago leveraged her IT support credentials into proper surveillance of the GAR computer network. Nothing too untoward, of course, since there were people who would notice significant prying and whose attention would be disastrous. Still, she had a number of notifications to alert her to anything significant being discussed in unencrypted emails or texts from company phones.

    Her work office was a bit of a dungeon, with a partly?-purposeful rat¡¯s nest of cables going to servers and big monitors displaying indecipherable network traffic graphs for anyone that happened to poke their heads in. She, personally, had a smaller setup with a bunch of laptops and some privacy-screened monitors that was more discreet. It was inside a smaller enclosure with a fridge and a bathroom so she didn¡¯t have to wander out into GAR proper. That was partly for privacy, but partly because she wasn¡¯t a mage and people knew it.

    Much of her private area was taken up by a pair of 3D printers, one for metal and one for plastic, along with a worktable strewn with microcontrollers and electronic prototyping miscellanea. There were a few microdrones and similar toys as well, which she used for occasionally carrying memory sticks or the like around the office. Not that she couldn¡¯t walk, it was just more amusing to pilot a drone to do it.

    She had long ago automated most of her part of GAR¡¯s network, which was relatively small and tame compared to mundane corporate networks. The servers didn¡¯t even use the same protocols as mundane ones for everything, so network traffic was fairly sedate and most of her actual labor had to do with fixing people¡¯s email accounts or adjusting privileges. Most of her work time was actually spent watching videos or snooping around for her other job.

    Normally she only got a few low priority pings, barely anything worth mentioning. GAR was, for the most part, a fairly boring bureaucracy and nobody much cared about the budget for the next fiscal year or who was taking the lunches from the third-floor break room refrigerator. None of that interested her.

    The alert that went off regarded Professor Brown, aka Chase Hall, aka the Vampire Ghost Killer. That had settled some in recent days, as a lack of any further action meant a lack of any further gossip, but she still scrambled for her computer and started skimming through what her programs dumped into her personal devices. When she started reading she felt a flutter of panic, a chill going down her spine, but when she sorted out the abrupt ending of the communications, she started laughing.

    ¡°You got away from the spooks? Goddamn. Way to go, big man!¡± She turned and got a soda from her fridge, since she didn¡¯t have any alcohol in her corner office, and lifted it in a toast. ¡°Here¡¯s hoping I hear from you soon.¡±

    END BOOK ONE

 Chapter 1 â€“ Hiking

    ¡°Man, so, yeah, there¡¯s all kinds of ghost stories down there. Dogs baying and horns in the night, all kinds of creepy stuff.¡±

    ¡°Dude.¡±

    ¡°What?¡±

    ¡°There¡¯s a ren faire there.¡±

    ¡°Oh.¡±

    ¡°I keep telling you, that stuff isn¡¯t real!¡±

    ¡°Ghosts are totally real!¡±

    Callum finished paying for his bottled water at the supply outpost, wishing he could say something to the group of teens chattering behind him. He¡¯d like to tell them that while perhaps ghosts weren¡¯t real, other things were. Real and dangerous things, that he¡¯d just escaped from. But it wouldn¡¯t do any good, and if anything might endanger both himself and them. Instead he just sighed and packed away his supplies before heading back out onto the trail.

    Callum really felt his age. For all that mages were supposed to have some unreasonable longevity, he hadn¡¯t gotten any younger since he started using vis. Maybe a bit healthier, but that might just have been down to magical healing fixing things he hadn¡¯t been aware of. The healing didn¡¯t help his back be any less sore when he woke up from sleeping on a cot out the wilderness.

    He¡¯d been practically incapacitated for a couple days after his emergency teleport, nauseous and achy and bleary-eyed. Something he hadn¡¯t known about the paste-and-powder method of enchantment was that the stuff degraded. Callum wasn¡¯t sure if it was time or use or a combination of the two, but the already nauseating transfer had become something truly hellish, and he could sense some wobbles in the enchantments that just trying to refresh it didn¡¯t fix. He wasn¡¯t sure he trusted it, but he didn¡¯t have a way to replace it just yet.

    His emergency cache had a lot in it. Clothes, weapons, cash, backups of all the literature he¡¯d gotten and CAD drawings he¡¯d made, everything he needed to start over. What it didn¡¯t have was any enchantable material. That was gone, along with his motorhome, a good chunk of his resources, and all the focuses he¡¯d made, both temporary and permanent.

    Pleased as he was to have successfully gotten away from the Mages In Black, he was keenly aware of how damn badly he¡¯d screwed up. His greatest protection had been obscurity, and now all the scary magical people knew who he was, what he looked like, and that he was a threat. They knew his type of magic, and they knew what he was capable of.

    In hindsight he really should have waited to escape, maybe built on the bluff about the secret organization they assumed he was part of. If he could have made it look like he was being rescued by someone outside the BSE compound, it may have disguised his ability to teleport out of custody at least a little bit. Now, of course, he didn¡¯t even have that, since he really didn¡¯t trust his homebond after forty-plus hours of semiconscious suffering.

    For the moment, his only goal was to let the excitement die down. The MIB were probably still on high alert, but they couldn¡¯t remain so for weeks and months. He just had to lay low, be careful, and avoid any place with concentrations of supernaturals. If he did use magic, he needed to make sure that he was nowhere near anyone and that he cleaned up after himself. In a less obvious way than random ball bearings, at that.

    Callum could probably have laired out in the mountain wilderness for a while. Possibly for a very long time, just hiding away from the world, if he was willing to. But that wasn¡¯t living, that wasn¡¯t even properly surviving, that was cowering like a beaten dog. Someday, he wanted to go back to Tanner, which he still thought of as his real home. He wanted to walk around without fearing a black ops team ambushing him from the shadows. Even with his newfound abilities as a mage, he still wanted to keep his hand in with architecture, since he genuinely found it interesting.

    All of that required that he do something other than vanish to some desert island somewhere, though he didn¡¯t have an actual plan just yet. He just knew he had to do more than hide. For the moment there was an easy cover nearby and something to do while he was thinking: the Continental Divide Trail. Walking it was only natural since it passed not too far from his cache, and nobody would question a random, disheveled hiker who was traveling it. He had no idea what evidence had been left in his motorhome, so he had to write off everything except the cache, and maybe Lucy¡¯s phone number.

    He wouldn¡¯t really need magic to just hike, and the places nearby would be used to scruffy strangers wandering in to rest and resupply. While he¡¯d lost a lot of his stuff, he still had a lot of cash and enough changes of clothes to start. The problem was what else could fit into a backpack, since he couldn¡¯t take everything he¡¯d cached and with the homebond on the fritz he couldn¡¯t casually return once he started off.

    He had the normal backpacking essentials, which added up to be heavier than he expected, and he couldn¡¯t lighten his load with a little bit of surreptitious gravitykinesis. Or rather, he didn¡¯t feel comfortable doing so. What he really wanted was a spatial container. Callum had only found references to them, so he had no idea how common they were, though his guess was not very. Aside from the teleportation network, it seemed that spatial stuff was very rare. He wasn¡¯t sure if it was a materials or labor issue, or both.

    The extra guns and gold had needed to stay. He had zipped up his coat and settled his backpack into place. Considering the time of year, he was heading south. He didn¡¯t want to deal with heavy snow, though he intended to stop well before Mexico on the southerly route.

    According to the maps he¡¯d gotten from Lucy, there was only a light supernatural presence in the areas he was traveling. Certainly no vampires or mages, but there was one area that was a distinct fae region, and he¡¯d have to skirt around that. The normal glamours to keep people out wouldn¡¯t apply to him, so he might walk into a place he didn¡¯t want to. There were some places that went through the outskirts of shifter regions, but nobody really wanted to live in a desert.

    He felt a little out of place waving to people who were enjoying an autumn hike along the trails, both because he wasn¡¯t doing it for fun and because he¡¯d spent so much time avoiding people. Even when he went into towns he kept to himself. Out on the trail, though, people were friendly, reminding Callum of his hometown but at the same time making him a little uncomfortable. Intellectually, he knew that people would forget him the moment he was around the next bend but any attention made him a bit twitchy.

    The up side was that there was absolutely nothing magical in his perceptions. There were just trees, bushes, rocks, and occasionally people. That was quite relaxing, but it also reminded him that he needed to drastically increase the range of his spatial sense. Slightly over five hundred yards was impressive, but if he wanted to be able to catch mages before they noticed him, he needed more like five thousand yards. Which probably wasn¡¯t possible, but he could still do better than he was.

    Setting up the tent at night, he realized how much he¡¯d been spoiled by the shed. It might have been small and uninsulated, but it was more shelter than just the tent¡¯s walls, even if it was a pretty good tent. For some reason it seemed absurd that he was able to use magic but he couldn¡¯t use it to make himself more comfortable, even if he dared use as much as he liked.

    After a few days on the trail to distance himself, he followed the signs and asked a few hikers, and made his way to the nearest bastion of civilization. There he had his first hot meal in days, and after a shower groped habitually for a razor before reminding himself that he needed to keep his facial hair. The bed and breakfast even let him use their phone in privacy, which he did. Lucy¡¯s number was one he¡¯d memorized.

    ¡°Big man!¡± Lucy sounded absolutely gleeful as she answered the phone. ¡°I¡¯d say you started a firestorm when you broke out but it¡¯s been dead fucking quiet which is more impressive. Nobody¡¯s admitting anything, so you must¡¯ve pushed someone¡¯s nose in.¡±

    ¡°All I did was leave,¡± Callum said, somewhat amused by her enthusiasm. ¡°Though I¡¯m sure that they weren¡¯t happy about my doing so.¡±

    ¡°Well they got you labeled a terrorist now, so yeah, very unhappy.¡±

    ¡°Terrorist, huh?¡± Callum grimaced. That wasn¡¯t all that surprising, but for some reason it still hurt. Maybe he wasn¡¯t exactly a hero, but he¡¯d taken care of murderers and monsters. ¡°Sure you want to be associated with me?¡±

    ¡°Bah, they¡¯re just mad you pushed their noses in, big man. Now spill! What was it all about?¡±

    ¡°Maybe I can tell you someday, but at the moment I don¡¯t think it¡¯d be that good an idea. I¡¯m pretty much hiding out for now?¡ª¡±

    ¡°Even more than before?¡± Lucy said. ¡°What are you going to do, live in a cave?¡±

    ¡°I thought about it,¡± Callum told her.

    ¡°Wait, you¡¯re serious? What do you¡ª¡±

    ¡°Hang on,¡± he told her. ¡°I¡¯m just borrowing a phone for the moment so we can¡¯t chat overlong, but I wanted to make sure that none of you had any troubles after they found me? Pretty sure they took my stuff, and I don¡¯t think any of it implicated any of you.¡±

    ¡°Nah. Well, someone got kind of bothered about the magic books they found but I made sure those were scrubbed before they got to you.¡±

    ¡°Great,¡± he said. ¡°Next time I call I hope I¡¯ll have rebuilt some of my resources, but I have some requests for research.¡±

    ¡°Hit me, big man.¡±

    ¡°Since the cat¡¯s out of the bag, I want everything you can find on spatial magic and enchanting. Also some way to buy enchanting supplies. Blanks? Material for permanent enchants.¡±

    ¡°I¡¯ll start working on the first, but I already know the second. It all comes from the portal worlds so it¡¯s all highly regulated by the Guild of Enchanting. They decide who gets it.¡±

    ¡°Of course they do.¡± He considered that and put it off for another day. ¡°Then can you get me all the information you can on portal worlds? And the text of whatever agreements GAR has with vamps, shifters, and fae. Maybe some common knowledge type stuff for dealing with them.¡±

    ¡°That¡¯s a bit of a list,¡± Lucy said, and he could hear fingers hitting keys on the other end of the call. ¡°Some of it might be harder than others.¡±

    ¡°That¡¯s fine. I have time. Not like I can do anything while GAR is still on edge anyway.¡±

    ¡°You probably could, but point taken.¡± More tapping at keys. ¡°Give me a few days, and the next time you call me I¡¯ll set you up with a document download.¡±

    ¡°Works for me,¡± Callum said. ¡°Any advice before I go?¡±

    ¡°Yeah, Archmage Duvall is pissed. She¡¯s a right harridan so, uh, don¡¯t let her get near you.¡±

    ¡°I¡¯ve seen her name online, but I don¡¯t really know who she is,¡± Callum told her.

    ¡°Oh! She is the spatial Archmage. Came up with all the techniques, is in charge of all the spatial stuff. There aren¡¯t any other spatial mages at her level and they¡¯re rare enough that she mentors them all. More like owns them all, if you ask me. You barely hear anything from any of them but Duvall!¡±

    ¡°I see,¡± he said. That was exactly the kind of person whose brain Callum would like to pick, but if Lucy was warning him off, she was also exactly the kind of person he couldn¡¯t afford to. Besides, even if he didn¡¯t know what exactly being an Archmage entailed, they were clearly bad news. ¡°Well, thanks for the warning. I¡¯ll make sure we never meet. Can you send me information on the mage Houses, while you¡¯re at it?¡±

    He wished that he¡¯d remembered to cache the book he¡¯d gotten on the mage Houses, but no, that was gone. Loading Lucy up with a bunch of stupid simple information requests felt bad, but he wasn¡¯t about to go visit a bookstore anytime soon. Or any supernatural business, for that matter.

    ¡°I won¡¯t charge you extra for just throwing you digital copies of books I¡¯ve got anyway,¡± Lucy said. ¡°Fifty bucks a night, same as usual.¡± Callum laughed once again, despite himself, then shook his head.

    ¡°That works for me, Lucy. I¡¯ll talk to you later.¡±

    ¡°Hope to hear from you soon, big man!¡±

    ¡°Yep, I¡¯ll call you in a few days,¡± he told her, and hung up. Though he felt a little guilty about cutting her off, he quashed that reaction pretty ruthlessly. Acting like a normal human being against his own judgement was what had gotten him in trouble before. He didn¡¯t want to slip back into the same habits. Lucy was nothing like Gayle, and he didn¡¯t think she¡¯d slip and give him away somehow, but it would be stupid to be too incautious.

    He paid the owners of the bed and breakfast with cash peeled from the supply he kept accessible. The excess, something around fifty thousand dollars, was sorted and packed at the bottom of his backpack and took up a surprising amount of space. It was one of the major reasons he really wanted spatial bags. If he was going to have to carry around his stuff all the time, he would have to make hard choices about how much to carry and how much to cache, and where.

    Then it was back out on the trail. In spite of his worries and woes, it was actually a gorgeous hike, even if the autumn was maybe a little too crisp for his tastes. With his self-imposed ban on using magic, he had little more to do all day than stretch out his spatial sense and try to go further. It was already clear he had a finer resolution than most, and it was really difficult to focus on range and finesse.

    Partly, he used his perceptions to study himself. The nausea from the teleportation had lingered longer than he thought was appropriate, and he¡¯d still not been able to crack his glamour blindness, so a bit of self-reflection was in order. Gayle hadn¡¯t given him any reason to think internal vis was complicated, but she¡¯d also been someone who hadn¡¯t even had their apprenticeship yet.

    The author''s tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

    From what he could tell, vis saturated his entire body, even flowing along with his blood, but there didn¡¯t seem to be anything like a specific core within him. When he extended a strand of vis it just seemed to be from the nearest point, although if there was some generative structure inside him, it was lost among the rest of it. The only major feature seemed to be that the vis concentration in his brain was significantly higher than the rest of his body, and he shuddered away from inspecting that organ too closely.

    The best Callum could guess was that his brain, eyes, and ears were so saturated with spatial vis that it overrode whatever magic was coming in with the glamour. Though even that didn¡¯t really make sense, since supposedly he should have developed magical sight as he used magic. What he did conclude was that there was nothing he could do to change himself, at least not without the help of a specialist, so he¡¯d have to let it go for the moment.

    Instead, he turned his regard outward. He¡¯d never used his extra senses to just appreciate nature before, though it did lose something since he couldn¡¯t exactly see colors. On the other hand, if he was just relying on eyesight he couldn¡¯t have spotted rabbits, deer, and even a bobcat stalking its prey a couple hundred yards away from the trail.

    It was a welcome bit of fresh air, both figuratively and literally, and a reminder that his problems weren¡¯t all-consuming. That his magic wasn¡¯t just for causing trouble and getting from place to place without having to travel the intervening space. It made him wonder if other mages used their talents to just enjoy themselves, like air mages flying around for the heck of it.

    By the time he reached the next stop, some three days later, he was in a better mood than before. Less grumpy, anyway, thought he still kept caution well in mind. Instead of just shopping around the small rest stop, he consulted his GPS on a phone he¡¯d never used to call anyone and went to another, nearby town with an electronics store. He needed at least one burner phone to call Lucy, and some wifi to get the documents.

    ¡°Hey, big man,¡± Lucy said cheerfully. ¡°Got your stuff here. Maybe less than you want, some of it is under lock and key, and I mean that literally. No digital copies of most actual magic stuff beyond the basics anyone can find online.¡±

    ¡°You mean the GAR network?¡±

    ¡°Yeah, though I guess you don¡¯t have a login for that? I could make you one, though you¡¯ll need to obfuscate your IP if you use it. Someone might notice an active account belonging to a fake identity.¡±

    Callum could have kicked himself. Lucy had said that she was IT for GAR, so of course she could have gotten him an anonymized account. But he¡¯d never asked or even implied that he needed access to the GAR sites. He should have, but he¡¯d already mentally filed it away as out of bounds by the time he¡¯d met Lucy.

    ¡°Yes, please do that. I hope I still have credit with you.¡±

    ¡°Oh, you¡¯re fine,¡± Lucy said dismissively. ¡°Most of what you want is easy enough, just a little tedious. I¡¯ll let you know if you¡¯re getting low.¡±

    ¡°Thanks, Lucy. I¡¯d be flailing around in the dark without you.¡±

    ¡°It¡¯s nice for a girl to feel appreciated,¡± Lucy replied.

    ¡°Believe me, I always appreciate you,¡± he told her. ¡°Speaking of, any news on the hunt for me?¡±

    ¡°They¡¯re keeping mum. I haven¡¯t wanted to pry too much because it involves the Bureau of Secret Enforcement, and they don¡¯t joke around.¡±

    ¡°Yeah, they seemed pretty serious folks.¡±

    ¡°You¡¯ve no idea. They¡¯re the ones who go around putting down renegade mages or supernaturals that have started getting too big for their britches.¡±

    ¡°So their name means they enforce secrets, not that they¡¯re secret enforcers?¡±

    ¡°Ehh. I mean, you know about them, I know about them, but I bet the average mage has never heard of ¡®em. Or if they have, it¡¯s very vague. One of those things that those who need to know, know. Those who don¡¯t, never will.¡±

    ¡°Kind of wish I¡¯d never known,¡± Callum said wistfully, but the fact of the matter was that it was inevitable the moment he decided he didn¡¯t want to bow and scrape under some supernatural bootheel.

    ¡°Well you¡¯re in it now, big man. Gotta suck it up.¡± Her tone made him laugh.

    ¡°Yeah, yeah. In the process. I¡¯ve gotta sit back and rethink my approach anyway.¡±

    ¡°Ooh, now that sounds ominous. Ready to tackle the big bad secret police by yourself?¡±

    ¡°Hardly!¡± Callum snorted at the idea. ¡°That¡¯s a good way to get dead. That said I don¡¯t know how I¡¯m going to approach things yet.¡±

    ¡°Well, let me know when you do! I want to know where to look for the fireworks. Maybe win a few rounds of the office pool, laugh up my sleeve at the bosses falling over themselves.¡± Lucy was rather more sanguine about potential mayhem than he expected, but if she was practically mundane he could see her nursing a grudge toward those who thought themselves her superiors.

    ¡°If I can, I will,¡± he promised her.

    He ended up chatting for a while longer. After cooling down a bit more, he¡¯d realized that he needed to have someone he could talk to or else he¡¯d go crazy. Besides, Lucy already knew everything that could compromise so he didn¡¯t have to watch himself or put on some kind of act. She was a small bit of sanity.

    That said, when he hung up he made sure to vacate the area quickly. Not that he thought Lucy didn¡¯t cover her tracks, but she was the only connection anyone had to him. Magic could be capable of many things, even things Lucy didn¡¯t know about, and it was faintly possible that someone was headed his way. The GAR teleport network didn¡¯t have any public terminals nearby, but who knew what the spatial Archmage was capable of.

    After going through the rigmarole to get the supplied documents and transfer them to his tablet, because it was less battery-hungry than his laptop, he studied them while he ate lunch. Or a small subset, because he had a lot of material to go through. It was good that he wasn¡¯t really planning to do anything else for months.

    The technical stuff was too dense to get into over a burger, but he did skim the common information on the Fae since he was going to be near a fae area when he got further south. Callum was dead set against vampires and tentatively on good terms with shifters, but he didn¡¯t know much about fae, aside from them looking fairly inhuman at times.

    It was interesting to find out that the whole thing about fae not being able to lie had some truth to it, though it was mostly restricted to fae royalty. The humans that had settled in Faerie had been changed by the environment, but the actual royalty came from interbreeding from other beings that had arrived in the portal world. None of the portal worlds had any intelligent native inhabitants, so far as anyone knew, but they did have portals to further places with varying degrees of stability. Everything that wasn¡¯t completely human ultimately traced back to one of those far distant shores, rather than the portal worlds themselves.

    Aside from that, the most interesting bit was that their magic didn¡¯t work like vis, even if the literature claimed all supernaturals had it. Fae could do things completely impossible under magical theory, though for the most part they were not particularly powerful. Not a threat to a competent mage with proper shields and standard foci, Callum translated, but considering he wasn¡¯t that and didn¡¯t have those things, he was definitely going to have to swing very wide indeed.

    Once he was fully fortified, he finished his shopping and laundry and headed back to the trail. He couldn¡¯t read the notes while he was walking around, so he stopped a little earlier at night, letting the solar charger top up his tablet during the day. While he got used to sleeping in a tent, it took longer for his new beard and moustache to stop itching. Though, checking himself in his phone camera, he had to admit that he didn¡¯t recognize himself.

    His practice with his range did bear some fruit. Though he wasn¡¯t improving as quickly as when he¡¯d first started, he managed to bump his maximum perception from about five hundred yards in all directions to about six hundred, which wasn¡¯t much in terms of range but was huge in terms of volume. Not that volume was all that useful. He couldn¡¯t actually pay attention to everything in that sphere, and most of it was either air or ground so it didn¡¯t really account for much in the end.

    It did show that he¡¯d been pretty halfhearted about it back when he was driving around in his motorhome, but then he¡¯d had other demands on his attention. Out hiking there was literally nothing to do but look. It didn¡¯t seem like he¡¯d get the range to spot distant snipers any time soon at the rate he was improving, but even a little bit of extra distance was welcome.

    From what he could find in some of the less common literature, even that much range was abnormal. Passive magic sensing was limited to sight, with all the restrictions thereof, and direct contact with vis. People could sense their own magic just fine even without any sensory methods, but that¡¯s because it was basically connected to them and acted like proprioception.

    It explained why Gayle¡¯s sensory range seemed so myopic. She was basically limited to her bubble. In fact, most people were without active sensing, so he was really damn glad he¡¯d never revealed how much he could see to anyone. Being able to just sense everywhere was definitely not usual, at least not without pushing out vis and making it active.

    When mages did that, their senses could have an enormous range, if one restricted to the appropriate aspect. An air mage could only sense through air, and an earth mage through the ground. That implied to Callum that there ought to be some trick to turning his passive space sense into an active one, pushing vis out to massively extend his range, but he had no idea how to go about it.

    Nothing in the pile of documents helped either, because it seemed that almost all spatial magic was in what Callum tagged as House Duvall secrets. Once again, he¡¯d run into the fact that everything advanced was considered restricted, only available to a master¡¯s apprentice or a ward of the House. There was probably a lot of spying and digging going on somewhere, but none of it revealed any tricks to the public.

    Callum wasn¡¯t really one to resort to criminal activity if he could help it, but he was probably uniquely suited to stealing that kind of thing. Assuming it was kept in papers and books and not just in the mind. Going after a House¡¯s valuables seemed a really stupid thing to do, though, so it¡¯d remain a fantasy.

    Sorting through some of the common instruction that Lucy had sent him, he did notice a rather glaring omission. One that he wasn¡¯t too surprised by, considering his experiences with Gayle. There didn¡¯t seem to be any attention paid to normal science and history at all.

    ¡°Well yeah,¡± Lucy told him when he asked her about it, several days later and some miles down the trail. ¡°Mage Houses kind of live apart, some of them in or near the portal worlds, where the mana¡¯s thickest.¡±

    ¡°Then what about the magical internet? And all the other obviously modern conveniences I¡¯ve seen.¡± The magical community obviously wasn¡¯t stuck decades or centuries in the past.

    ¡°That¡¯s mostly from people like me,¡± Lucy told him. ¡°House family members who don¡¯t have the gift don¡¯t get magical schooling, so we go out and get a normal education. Plus the shifters mostly grow up here. Some fae can manage it, others can¡¯t. Vamps usually have their thralls deal with anything related to mundane matters, but none of them are stupid. They like guns and phones because they¡¯re handy.¡±

    ¡°All that, but they don¡¯t seem to instruct mages on the sciences,¡± Callum observed.

    ¡°Well, why would they? Magic takes instruction enough, and none of them are going to grow up to be engineers or rocket scientists.¡±

    ¡°¡­huh.¡± It seemed obvious to Callum that any standard education should include the basics, but he¡¯d never considered it from the mage point of view. Of course they didn¡¯t care; it wasn¡¯t their world. It was likely that a fire mage would learn about thermodynamics at some juncture, but it might come well into their lives when they were only ready to start making their own spells or something.

    ¡°A lot of mages never interact with mundanes at all,¡± Lucy told him. ¡°I mean, a bunch of GAR people work in offices they only enter and leave by transport network. Houses have servants to supply them. Something I¡¯ve learned working here; lot of people, mundane or supernatural, don¡¯t ever go outside their little circles.¡±

    ¡°They don¡¯t even go on the normal internet?¡± Callum asked skeptically.

    ¡°Some of them do, but a lot of them don¡¯t. There¡¯s no internet access in the portal worlds, after all, plus you can¡¯t talk about anything magic-related on mundane channels unless you want GAR on your case.¡±

    It still seemed unlikely to Callum, but it wasn¡¯t like people had nothing to do prior to the advent of the internet. Besides, the point about the portal worlds was very well taken. Mages only lived half on earth, and the other half was some weird magical realm that might have different rules entirely.

    Between his discussions with Lucy and the literature she provided he felt like he was starting to get a bit of a handle on what mages were like. A bit late, but he¡¯d been trying to come to terms with basic magic before. Unfortunately for him, he had an entire society that he needed to learn about, made worse by the secrecy surrounding it all.

    The official reason for which was some generic line about how the mundanes couldn¡¯t handle or be trusted with the intricacies of magic. Which didn¡¯t satisfy Callum at all. He had the feeling it was more that they didn¡¯t want to give up all the unsupervised power they had, all their little fiefs and feudal kingdoms.

    He spent the next few weeks heading south, reading up enough that he wouldn¡¯t totally embarrass himself when he interacted with people in the supernatural world, and taking out his tattoo. It was not pleasant, but his finesse was good enough to pull out little tiny bits of flesh. He targeted the magic in the mage mark, which he still didn¡¯t understand but could at least sense, and tore out pinpricks to toss into the fire at night. That meant some truly lurid bruising, and it was extremely tedious, but he was able to do eight or ten at a time if he spaced them out well enough.

    The double band with its braided motif was essentially gone by the time he reached the pit stop just north of where he¡¯d have to start his detour to stay out of the fae areas. There were a few spots of ink left, and he was still working on those, but he¡¯d compromised the magic enough that it had all dissipated. That was a major relief, even if it meant he absolutely did not fit in as a mage anymore.

    The pit stop wasn¡¯t a town so much as a little outpost with showers, water, and a specialty store selling equipment and supplies. For the most part he¡¯d been carrying only a few days¡¯ worth of supplies, but to skirt the fae he¡¯d need a bit more than that. He availed himself of the facilities, looking at himself in the mirror to trim the brown beard that he¡¯d grown. That combined with the moustache and long hair made him look like some weathered mountain-man, not an architectural consultant, which was all to the good. Though he¡¯d probably get some strange looks when he finally strayed away from the trails.

    Though he¡¯d become used to sleeping in the tent, things still woke him up at night. Usually it was just rustling from some animal, which he¡¯d quickly see with his spatial senses and go back to sleep. When something roused him just before dawn, it was more than just an animal. It was a whole troop of people, and they weren¡¯t human.

    He quite nearly took off then and there, freezing in his bedroll, but all they did was settle into the equestrian area of the outpost, some of the members heading over to the store or the facilities. Callum didn¡¯t know why they were there, but they didn¡¯t seem to be interested in the few humans who were sharing the camping area.

    Most of the fae he¡¯d seen in cities were basically oversized or undersized humans, often in different colors, and there were four in the group that looked human enough but had something off about them, making them more disturbing than the ogre types. They all rode fanged and clawed horses, which rather underscored their inhuman nature. They were joined by tiny flying things that made him think of pixies, and a set of five ambulatory trees, with only vaguely noticeable faces set high up.

    Then there were the shifters. He probably would have marked them as fae hounds if he hadn¡¯t had a chance to closely examine beast-form shifters back in Winut, because they were all prowling around on four legs. So far as he could tell they seemed pretty happy, and it wasn¡¯t like the fae were holding leashes, so they were probably cooperating with the fae. That didn¡¯t bode well.

    He started hastily packing his things, nerves on edge as the fae milled around, watering their unusual horses and eating rations. Callum studied them carefully, alert for any danger, but his exploration with his senses became more and more grisly the longer he looked. Even the most human things among them had too-sharp teeth and claws instead of nails, and the ones riding the fanged horses had something proud and terrible about them even through his spatial sense. They wore ornaments of bone, carved bracelets and rings, the decorations savage and snarling.

    He was on the verge of teleporting out of the tent, quite willing to leave it behind and get another one, when he noticed the necklaces. Rather than bone, they were ears. Fresh, and human.

    Callum closed his eyes for a moment, then conjured his pistol into his hand, along with the magazines of ironite and silverite. He didn¡¯t have enough bullets to take care of all the supernaturals, or the firepower to deal with them in other ways, but he had enough to make the ones in charge think twice about hunting humans. Or rather, never think again.

    He was considering whether he would be best served by teleporting out first, to find a location such as the bathrooms to ambush the lead fae, when a horn blew in the distance. The entire gaggle of fae and shifters jumped to attention and started off again, back into the woods.

    Callum cursed to himself. It was one thing to deal with them then and there, and it was another to follow them. If he went after them and whoever they joined up with, he was taking more risks, and asking for more trouble. All he had to do was stay in his tent, and they wouldn¡¯t even notice him. But he¡¯d know that they were out hunting people.

    He shrugged his backpack on and followed.

 Chapter 2 â€“ Hunting

    Callum was vaguely aware of the statistics on the people who went missing all over the country every year. Before his encounter with the supernatural he hadn¡¯t thought about it overmuch, willing to believe it was mostly people being stupid. Someone who didn¡¯t know what they were doing could easily get lost and starve to death in ten square miles of forest. He hadn¡¯t really thought too strongly that there was some agency involved, snatching people or disappearing them.

    Now that he¡¯d had some contact with the supernatural he was far more willing to believe in malicious intent. Vampires obviously contributed to the numbers, but they preferred the cities, so people who vanished in the countryside fell victim to something else. He didn¡¯t see people like the Langleys or Chester being responsible, but it seemed they didn¡¯t represent all shifters.

    While he knew now that most of the legends surrounding the fae were just that, it was getting on toward Halloween. Or rather, Samhain. It probably didn¡¯t matter, since it wasn¡¯t like mana or vis changed with the year, but fae magic was a bit weird and maybe the holiday was important somehow. Either way, the Wild Hunt was one of those enduring ideas that seemed not to be a complete invention.

    Callum was not a fan of it.

    Following was an absolute risk, but if he¡¯d just stayed in his tent for fear of being caught, it¡¯d be the same thing as being under GAR¡¯s thumb. They wanted to control him, to remove his freedom and his self-determination. If he did that to himself for them, he wouldn¡¯t be a man, he¡¯d be a wretch.

    Since Callum wasn¡¯t a wretch, he followed.

    He wasn¡¯t a stealthy tracker, and besides which, there was no way that he could keep up with the fae horses and shifters as they went haring off into the woods. Instead of running around in the dim predawn light, he transferred himself after them, staying well away from the bulk of their forces.

    With a range of six hundred yards, nearly two thousand feet, he could stay at least a thousand feet back or to the side at any given time, with something solid between him and the hunting party. Even with that he made sure to stay downwind, not knowing exactly how keen the senses of the fae or shifters were. In truth he was more worried that they¡¯d notice his teleporting around, since he didn¡¯t have time to scrub his presence with every single shift, but they were generating so much disturbance in the local mana that his impact was a falling leaf to their thunder of hooves.

    He still kept a sharp eye on them for any reaction to his stalking them. They were supernatural entities and he was just an unskilled mage, so if they caught onto him he¡¯d be running. Fortunately, his perceptions were so long-range and omnidirectional that it was basically impossible for anything to sneak up on him. Unless they could hide their magical signatures too, which he didn¡¯t totally discount, so he watched for any of their number suddenly vanishing.

    Callum reflected it would be a lot easier to follow and hide in the dense forests of the Appalachian mountains, instead of the lighter scrub and pine of the Midwest, but at the same time it meant he had plenty of open space for teleporting around. The hunting party headed deeper into the mountain and forest, covering the rough terrain far more easily than any normal person, displaying a chilling amount of grace and dexterity. He definitely would have no chance if they got anywhere near him.

    While they moved, he considered exactly what he was going to do about them. The pistol magazines held twelve bullets each, so he had at best twenty-four kills, split between the fae and shifters. That would actually mostly take care of the warband he was following, but he had to assume that he couldn¡¯t be as efficient and there were others he needed to deal with besides. Someone else had blown that horn.

    His primary goal was actually to rescue any people who might have gotten caught up in this supernatural nonsense. Though this time he wasn¡¯t going to be calling in Chester to clean up, that was for sure. These fae and shifters had decided to prey on humans, and there was no abiding predators on humanity. If he was forced to let them be in order to save lives, so be it, but Callum didn¡¯t want to have to make that choice. So he started considering ways and means to dispatch the perpetrators.

    Unlike other mages, he couldn¡¯t attack directly. Even if he could he was pretty sure that¡¯d be useless against so many fae, some of whom were clearly quite powerful. Which was fine, because using the environment was more powerful anyway. Callum was pretty sure there was some Sun Tzu quote about that.

    He began sweeping the terrain around him for ideas. They were heading into an area where there were sharp slopes, if not actual cliffs, and he entertained the idea of a rockslide or the like. Unfortunately there just wasn¡¯t that much loose scree, and considering the extraordinary physical abilities they had, falling rocks probably weren¡¯t all that much of a threat.

    The same objection applied to dropping fallen logs on top of them, aside from the fact that there were a lot of them. What Callum needed was something broadly and instantly lethal, or at least untraceable. This wasn¡¯t like ambushing vampires who were asleep in their beds.

    With the constant sweeping through every direction of his perceptions, he noticed something in a direction he normally took for granted. Underground. He hadn¡¯t really been looking directly below his feet, but with the slopes rising ahead of them he had shoved his perceptions through solid rock and found, a few hundred feet below the surface, an open space.

    Callum had almost forgotten about caves.

    The entire area was riddled with them, along with old and defunct mines. While he had focused more on commercial buildings, he¡¯d studied such things back in college and was aware of the dangers. It didn¡¯t take much to realize how damn dangerous just teleporting into a closed cave could be, since it was as likely as not that the air there wasn¡¯t breathable. That was ignoring the potential of collapse from people disturbing things that had been quietly eroding for millions of years.

    The extra hundred yards of range helped a lot there, as it massively increased the volume of the earth he could sense. Five hundred yards was already some very deep caverns indeed, and the extra range he¡¯d gained was like putting a twenty-story building below even that. He was tempted to just start picking off members of the warband as soon as he had the chance, but he had to be patient. That could come when he knew more.

    Callum teleported ahead, anticipating the fae¡¯s line of travel, and a second warband appeared in his range. That one had little flitting things that he could reasonably call pixies, rather than giant treefolk, but the small fae weren¡¯t any less savage. The things carried bone hooks and had breastplates made out of what seemed to be teeth. The way they darted about reminded him less of hummingbirds and more of wasps, though that was probably just his own bias.

    The two hunting parties converged, high and inhuman laughter as well as the unnatural bark-growls of shifters reaching his ears even as far away as he was. He stayed crouched behind a jut of rock on a ridge above them, eyes not looking at anything in particular while he watched them form up again. The shifters arranged themselves into a loose wedge, and behind them the riders formed a parade triangle. The one with the fanciest uniform and most decorations was at the front, with the rest of them behind, while pixies buzzed around as outriders.

    One of the fae made some gestures with his clearly magic sword, probably some kind of speech, and suddenly the shifters all bayed. The sound sent chills up Callum¡¯s spine, the noise both creepy and clearly bloodthirsty, and the whole thirty-some strong assemblage took off along the valley floor. For a moment Callum had second thoughts, seeing what he had to contend with, but then he considered the severed ears and steeled his resolve. It was an aphorism that all it took for evil to triumph was to do nothing, and doing nothing just wasn¡¯t in his nature.

    The problem was finding whoever they were hunting. He sure as hell couldn¡¯t track faster than they could, but he could move faster than them and probably had a better perception range. If he were quick he could range ahead of them and maybe find whomever they were after, though there was the risk the hunt would notice his presence.

    He was actually a little surprised they hadn¡¯t noticed already, what with all the stories on the superiority of supernatural senses. Those were fiction, and it was clear a lot of the fiction was wrong, but they did have better than human reflexes so it wasn¡¯t complete bunk. Admittedly, keeping a distance of several hundred yards and making no sound of footsteps because he wasn¡¯t walking probably made him hard for anyone to detect without active senses.

    Callum followed the fae for a minute or two, making sure they were headed along the narrow valley, further into the mountains, and then teleported ahead. The valley made it easier for him, since it wasn¡¯t likely whomever they were chasing would have climbed the steep walls, and he didn¡¯t have to scan as much area. He popped ahead six hundred yards at a time, taking a second to scan the area before moving onward, walking his way back and forth across the valley floor. He made sure to probe the ground around him as well, looking for handy caves for when things came to a head.

    It took longer than he thought. Fortunately, it seemed the time off from doing heavy teleportation hadn¡¯t dulled his abilities. If anything he seemed to have more magical stamina than before, since he didn¡¯t feel too strained by dozens of rapid-fire transfers across the length of his perception. Though the distance had never seemed to actually matter.

    There was a couple maybe five or six miles ahead of the fae, two young hikers who were panting and puffing as they scrambled along the valley, heading for god only knew what. Callum suspected it was more a matter of getting away from the things behind them than looking for somewhere in particular.

    He quashed his first impulse to immediately teleport them out of harm¡¯s way, trying to consider how he wanted to do things. There was still some time before the fae got there, but not that much time, and they¡¯d know there was a mage around if the trail ended in the middle of nowhere with lingering vis trace around. If he wanted this to work, he needed to finesse it a little.

    There were actually two likely caves in the five mile stretch that he could use, one of them small but completely enclosed, the other one sloping down past what he could actually sense, and both of them over fifteen hundred feet below the surface. He couldn¡¯t have even reached them before, which would have made his plan pretty much impossible, but since they were comfortably within his range now he was confident in using them. The issue was that both of those were behind where the couple were, and to the south. It wasn¡¯t much likely the fae would get near them, not if they followed the current trail. So he formed a very small portal, the size of a dime, between himself and the pair.

    ¡°I can save you, but you¡¯ll need to follow my directions.¡± His voice came out a little hoarse, but that was not a bad thing under the circumstances. Unfortunately it seemed to scare the ever-living daylights out of the two, the woman actually screaming and the two of them jerking backward. Callum had more than a little sympathy; they clearly knew they were being hunted and that would strain the nerves of anyone. He¡¯d been there.

    ¡°Don¡¯t worry, I¡¯m on your side,¡± Callum assured them through the portal. ¡°I need you to turn left and head across the valley floor. Your target is about two hundred yards back up against the escarpment, that scraggly pine that¡¯s right on the slope.¡±

    ¡°How,¡± the man spluttered. ¡°What?¡ª¡±

    ¡°Hurry!¡± Callum snapped. ¡°The sooner you get there the sooner you¡¯ll be safe. I¡¯ll warn you if the hunting party gets too close.¡±

    The two of them glanced at each other, then started off in the appropriate direction. Callum could hear them gasping for breath through the portal, and had to firmly step on his empathy. He needed them to lay a trail for the fae so he could get rid of the entire hunt, to ensure they wouldn¡¯t kill anyone in the future. The couple wasn¡¯t actually in any danger anymore; he could teleport them away just fine. He had an excellent sense of direction so he could get back the pitstop, too, given the time.

    He popped back over to the escarpment in question, where he could see further than he could sense. It was a weird sensation, considering that most of the time his spatial sense rendered his sight practically useless. Peering over the edge he could spot the movement in the distance, even if he couldn¡¯t hear anything.

    It might actually be a fairly close race, though if it got too down to the wire he¡¯d just get them out of there. The pair were definitely doing their best, though they had to be absolutely exhausted. They had proper hiking clothes on, but no backpacks or anything, so they¡¯d probably been captured and released somewhere nearby.

    For some reason, Callum doubted that the fae wanted to give anyone a chance to actually win the Wild Hunt. Assuming there were win conditions to begin with; he was well aware his vague notions weren¡¯t reality. For all he knew the story came first, and the fae thought that sounded like a grand lark. He popped back to within range of the pair, keeping them between himself and the fae in hopes that none of them would smell a rat. Or a mage.

    ¡°A little to your left,¡± he sent to the couple, and got a groan in response as they labored across the rugged, wooded floor of the valley, or really something more like a defile or a ravine. It wasn¡¯t more than a mile across, either way, but on rough ground that took some time to cross.

    He helped by steering them away from the worst of the underbrush, providing running directions while he recovered some of his vis. Callum wasn¡¯t any good at gauging it, though he knew there was a standardized unit and various tests to figure it out. He didn¡¯t think he was down by much even after all the rapid-fire teleports, but he¡¯d need every bit to deal with the fae.

    The tiny portal didn¡¯t take much effort to keep up. The fact that the expense was based on size and nothing else was a good incentive to keep things minimal and precise, something Callum felt he was pretty good at relative to other mages. It was true that some aspects of his control were terrible, but from what he¡¯d seen of Gayle¡¯s mana control most mages used ropes where he used threads. He wasn¡¯t completely sure of the full implications yet, but it did mean his minimum size of construct was smaller.

    Unauthorized use of content: if you find this story on Amazon, report the violation.

    By the time the pair reached the area Callum wanted, where the caves were in easy range of his perceptions, they were totally done in. Not that he blamed them; even though he did his best to keep in shape, running flat out through wilderness was exhausting. As they lurched toward the tree he teleported them from below in the valley to the far end of his range up on the escarpment, putting them almost a thousand yards from their original position.

    ¡°Oh, god?¡ª¡± The man¡¯s exclamation was cut short by the sounds of nausea, which took Callum by surprise. Though, he hadn¡¯t really followed up on the other people he¡¯d teleported. Apparently the process wasn¡¯t as smooth for everyone else as it was for him. Another point toward his control being actually kind of terrible.

    ¡°Just lie there. You¡¯re safe now. I¡¯ll lead you back to civilization soon,¡± he sent through his portal, keeping his voice hoarse to disguise it. Though he¡¯d have to caution them about mentioning their experiences. Considering what happened the last time GAR got ahold of normal folk it was clear that it was better to pretend nothing had ever happened.

    ¡°Thank you,¡± the woman said faintly. He hadn¡¯t really been expecting it, but those two simple words affected Callum more than he¡¯d anticipated. It didn¡¯t totally wipe away his concerns, but it certainly soothed some of his anxiety.

    ¡°Can you tell me how you got into this?¡± He asked them, while he waited for the fae. There was still time before he committed, and if there was a chance the situation was not all it seemed, he wanted to know.

    ¡°Hiking,¡± the woman replied, gasping for breath. ¡°Walked under a tree, everything was different. Said, we make it to sunrise, we live.¡±

    That was enough for Callum. Nobody should be playing games with human lives. There was only one way to deal with that, and it was a permanent solution. One that Callum was willing to provide.

    He didn¡¯t dare poke his head above the ridge to spy on the fae, and they weren¡¯t quite yet within his perceptions, so he formed a portal in front of his face and another high up. This gave him a better vantage than he would have had otherwise and he mentally berated himself for not thinking about such an application before, even if he wasn¡¯t all that comfortable with having a potential attack vector so close to his head.

    Callum was pretty sure he could move it in time if a fae decided to snipe him through the tiny hole, but it was still uncomfortable enough that he didn¡¯t keep it open. He only used it to catch a glimpse. The fae were right about the point on the trail where he¡¯d had the couple break from their forward path, wheeling their mounts around as the shifters sniffed out the change in direction.

    Seeing them all crowded together like that made him question again whether he was capable of dealing with them. He had a brief moment where he considered grabbing the pair that he had rescued and running off, but they seemed to still be having trouble moving. Exhaustion aside, he was genuinely a little worried that rapid teleportation might kill them if they were already having issues.

    When the fae started coming his way, he closed his eyes, dropping all his portals and focusing solely on his spatial perception. He did send out a couple tiny threads of vis to the caves below, in anticipation of the portals he¡¯d be making, but he didn¡¯t manifest any actual structures yet. Like all his attacks, it would be an ambush, and he didn¡¯t want to provide any hints of what was coming.

    The shifters came first, then the riders. The little pixie things buzzed back and forth and out and in, fast enough that Callum wouldn¡¯t have been able to keep up with reflexes of muscle and blood. He loaded his pistol and took a moment to survey the hunters, getting a feel for their locations and movements, then got to work.

    ***

    Anandell, son of Anradale, son of Andan, was in a grand mood as he steered his cabyll along the track the shifters had pointed out for them. The Wild Hunt was one of the best inventions of Earth, because there was really no thrill quite like hunting mundanes. Except maybe hunting other fae, but outside of Faerie that was frowned upon.

    That year¡¯s hunt was getting near to finishing. The pair that he¡¯d sent off into the corrugated ravines along the mountains had been told if they made it to sunrise, they could live. Of course, with the height of the mountains and the steep walls of the ravines, the sun didn¡¯t actually ¡°rise¡± for hours and hours. It was a little trick, but it still made him laugh.

    ¡°Oh, what fools mortals be,¡± he said to himself. Anandell had no idea where the line came from but he¡¯d loved it ever since he¡¯d heard it. The little mundane things were such fools.

    The only thing dampening the enjoyment of his hunt was the stalker they¡¯d picked up somewhere. He didn¡¯t know who or what it was, but Anandell was a noble fae and he knew when someone was spying on him. The quiet word he¡¯d passed the pixies hadn¡¯t resulting in turning up anyone, though.

    His biggest worry was that it was one of his opposition come to spoil his hunt and claim the prey for themselves. It wasn¡¯t exactly Misrandith¡¯s style, but he could see Bellona or Nisae imposing on him like that. They were both properly sneaky and underhanded, and it might be their influence that had caused the prey to suddenly change direction.

    He held up his hand, making a circling gesture with one finger, and waited. Then waited some more, frowning as he looked around. The pixie captain should have reported to him almost instantly, but it hadn¡¯t. In fact, when he peered around, he didn¡¯t see any pixies, nor did he hear the buzz of their wings off in the distance.

    ¡°Isain, where are the pixies?¡± Anandell demanded. Isain reigned in his cabyll and frowned, looking around.

    ¡°That is odd. They were?¡ª¡± He was cut off by the terrified scream of his cabyll as it dropped straight down. Anandell saw a pit of black beneath him as his own cabyll fell, and he vaulted out of his saddle, doing a somersault and landing on the ground as he touched the pin affixed to his cloak. Mystical protections instantly covered his skin, and he glanced around to see that his fellows had all been attacked by the pits to some extent or another.

    Isain and Lenneth had managed to leap free as well, while Zbevney was clinging to the ground, half of him dangling. Even as Anandell watched, the pit seemed to flex, and flowed up over Zbevney, swallowing him before vanishing. Of the nine of them, five were just gone, and the rest dismounted.

    Anandell sank his perceptions into the ground, communing with the land and intending to get his men back out of those pits but finding that there was nobody underground. While he still didn¡¯t understand exactly what was going on, it was clear they were under attack, so he flexed his will, stilling the world around them as he let the trees whisper what they had seen. As a fae noble, he was more than a match for anyone who needed to resort to such underhanded tactics.

    ¡°Isain! There¡¯s someone on that ridge there!¡± He pointed, and his faithful retainer nocked arrow to bow, taking aim and loosing. Anandell watched in grim satisfaction as the arrow smashed through the side of the ridge, sending an explosion of rock into the air and gouging a hole straight through.

    ¡°Ha, take that!¡± Anandell shouted, finding a little tussle like this one to be just as fun as hunting. ¡°Shifters, up the ridge!¡± He ordered, and there were howls as they surged forward in response. Only for the blurring forms of the beastly shifters to vanish, all falling away into terrible holes in the ground.

    A chill stole over Anandell as his men spread out, taking shelter behind trees as they readied themselves for battle. This had the stink of something far larger than one of his normal rivals. Perhaps it was a different fae enclave making a move, because he could sense the faint malaise of human-magic, but this was a more serious fight than he had first thought.

    He touched another one of his trinkets, breaking the runed length of bone to block hostile magic anywhere nearby him, and gestured for his people to form up behind him. Anandell tapped into his inner well of energy, letting him command the wind and earth even if they weren¡¯t on Faerie, and reached out to find who was attacking them.

    Incredibly, there only seemed to be three humans nearby! The prey, of course, somehow up above of the ridge, and a third one that he hadn¡¯t accounted for, but it didn¡¯t have the stink of a mage surrounding it so he almost dismissed it until he heard the sudden report of a mundane weapon and Isain toppled over. He reeled in shock before realizing it had to be cold iron!

    ¡°Illisiwithraisal!¡± He shouted at his saporling captain, who had stopped and dug its roots into the ground. ¡°Go report to the monarchs!¡±

    Illisiwithraisal groaned in acknowledgement, moving off more quickly than anyone might have thought likely. Saporlings had amazing speed across forested areas, borrowing from the trees already there. All he had to do was hold out until the message went through. Yet before the captain had gone far, a massive boulder smashed out of nowhere and crushed him to the ground, both then vanishing into blackness.

    Then Anandell knew fear.

    ***

    ¡°Shit, shit, shit,¡± Callum swore under his breath. The ambush had started well enough, with the pixies being surprisingly easy to sweep up with tiny little portals that joined to the lesser cave below. There were seventeen of them, and he¡¯d done them in three batches, so it had taken about five seconds. None of the larger forces had even noticed, at least at first.

    The reason he used portals was that a teleport just didn¡¯t work. He¡¯d tried it with the first pixie, but the framework had just slid off the fae¡¯s own vis. He wasn¡¯t sure it was right to call it vis exactly, but it was close enough, and while they didn¡¯t have mage bubbles they did have defenses of their own. So he¡¯d switched to portals, because once they were made the interior didn¡¯t have any magic to disturb. Sweeping a portal over them worked just fine.

    He¡¯d tried to take the riders next, on the idea that if he removed the leadership the others would be easier to deal with. That had not gone as well as he had hoped, and not because they¡¯d had forewarning, but because he hadn¡¯t anticipated the sheer reflexes of the fae. Sticking to six portals at a time, since that was something he was comfortable with, he¡¯d targeted the ones with the fanciest decorations.

    Half of them had managed to jump out of the portals he¡¯d put beneath their creepy horse-things before he could close them. One of the others had sort of done so, hanging on to the ground outside the portal as he¡¯d dismissed it. Which had demonstrated what would happen when the portal collapsed on someone or something with vis, if nothing else. Instead of tearing the fae apart, it had bounced off the vis and sort of squirted along the path of least resistance, the portal rolling up along the fae¡¯s body.

    That had worked for him, since it had ended with the fae in question in the cave below, but it did give him another thing to be careful of. It also made him feel less stupid about never thinking to try and kill people directly with portals, even if he¡¯d always been concerned about making sure there was no trace of space magic.

    He only barely noticed it when one guy aimed a bow in his direction, and even though it was just an arrow he hurriedly teleported out of the way. Thank heavens he took the weapon seriously, because the thing had hit like an artillery round. If he¡¯d stayed crouched behind his cover he¡¯d be nothing more than a wet smear.

    There was plenty of other fae magic going on, but Callum had no idea what any of it was. It just massively distorted the local mana, rushing here and there without any of the structure he associated with magic. If mages built houses with walls and ceilings for their spells, the fae version was all streams and waterfalls, not something that anyone could build a stable structure from.

    It was a little bit like a ward, actually, and made threading vis inside rather difficult. He felt like he was splitting his attention far too many ways, but when all the shifters surged over toward him he swept his portals forward and dropped them at the top of the larger cave, letting them tumble downward. They were actually easy to deal with; what worried him was the guy who had an antimaterial gun for a bow.

    Callum opened a tiny portal and shot him in the head with an ironite bullet.

    That had worked surprisingly well, the bane ammunition cutting through all the magic rigmarole and dropping him like a puppet with its strings cut. That was fantastic, but it apparently inspired some kind of fear because one of the treefolk bolted. It was surprisingly quick, and frankly they were the ones that Callum was most worried about, because they were large and rooted into the ground, so the portal trick wouldn¡¯t work as well.

    He cast about for anything he could use, and found a boulder a few hundred yards distant. Since he didn¡¯t have the concentration to spare to try and teleport it up then catch it as it fell, he just opened a portal above it and applied a very strong gravity field straight up. That took way more out of him than he would have liked but the boulder moved much faster than he had anticipated, crushing the treefolk and giving him time to portal it back down to the caves.

    Callum took a moment to breathe, then started swearing again as other treefolk scattered while the fae riders drew together. He threw caution to the wind and made a big portal, sweeping it down over the clustered riders, the other side inverted so gravity pulled them through. One of them somehow remained on his feet, clinging to the ground, so Callum shot him in the head.

    Then he had to teleport away again because he sensed a surge of some kind of magic headed his way from the treefolk, and a massive lashing thornbush appeared where he had been. Which would have been an even less pleasant way to go than smeared by some kind of insane explosive arrow.

    ¡°Where¡¯d I put that boulder,¡± he muttered to himself, feeling that his tank was starting to run dry, though at least he¡¯d successfully stashed all the riders in his makeshift oubliette. The problem with the fleeing treefolk was that he wanted no witnesses, and they moved quick. He popped himself over next to the boulder so he could move it alongside himself as he went after each the trees in turn.

    The first he managed to catch up to before it went too far, and he dropped the chunk of rock on it from above. That wasn¡¯t lethal enough to let him teleport it directly, or vis took time to drain out after death, so either way he had to use portals to bring the corpse back in stages. That was when magic surged through the ground, down at the edge of his perceptions where he¡¯d dumped everyone, as one of the fae did something.

    He¡¯d forgotten that some fae had earth magic, too.

    Callum opened another portal to introduce the fae to bane ammunition, and the thing actually was fast enough to jump aside. For a moment Callum was stunned that he¡¯d missed, considering that he was aiming by way of point-blank portal. That was an insane reaction time. It also showed that Callum was being sloppy, though he felt he had an excuse since he was trying to do so many things at once.

    He fired once more, missed again, and then got it the third time, while it was still recovering from the dodge. Then he doubletapped it, for good measure, because he didn¡¯t trust that one bullet was enough. He was rapidly running out of ammunition, so he had to hope that there weren¡¯t more earth-power fae to deal with.

    Besides, he had treefolk to catch. He had to pop himself in a widening spiral to find them, given how weirdly fast they could move, and if it weren¡¯t for how their vis stood out in his perceptions he probably wouldn¡¯t have been able to locate them. With that speed he didn¡¯t bother following up after he smashed them with the boulder, instead moving right after. Every second meant they were getting further away and harder to find.

    The first few were easy enough to find, and they didn¡¯t have any defenses against his boulder of death, so he could deal with them easily enough. By the time he got to the last one, though, he was a little bit panicked since he simply couldn¡¯t find it. It wasn¡¯t until he¡¯d gone a long way down the valley that he finally found it, apparently merging with one native tree and emerging from another one nearby, before leaping across to the next and merging again.

    He didn¡¯t understand what was going on at all, but he didn¡¯t have to, and caught the thing in a transition. With the last one down, he jumped back to the cavern just to make sure that there wasn¡¯t someone else trying to break out. Only to find out that he¡¯d vastly overestimated the air reserves of the caverns or, more likely, that a thousand feet down there wasn¡¯t good air to begin with.

    Callum felt sick as he felt so many bodies slumped down on the floor, with some of the riders still clawing at their throats before they dropped, but the presence of the pair that he had saved soothed his conscience somewhat. The fae and shifters had chosen to become human predators, and that was something that could not be tolerated. Part of him wished that GAR was actually trustworthy and would take care of that kind of depredation, but that wasn¡¯t the world that they lived in.

    Despite being bone-tired, he forced himself to go back and collect the remnants of the treefolk and dispose of them as well. He scoured the area for any stray vis, both his or any fae bits, and used some spare camp cookware to hold his cleanup enchant to disperse his trail, at least. A fork half-buried under leaves probably wouldn¡¯t really draw much attention.

    There wasn¡¯t much he could do about the obvious damage that had been done, but at least there was no sign of what had once been a Wild Hunt. Or a pretension at it, anyway. Once he was satisfied he¡¯d done the best he could, he lay back, aching all over, and tried to figure out how he was going to get the couple he¡¯d rescued home.

 Chapter 3 â€“ Destinations

    In the end he ended up opening portals end-to-end to get the couple back to the campsite.

    Not only did he not want to hang around in case he¡¯d missed something, but the couple had already seen magic. He¡¯d even teleported them, so if they were inclined to spill the whole story it¡¯d be obvious to whoever was in charge that a spatial mage was involved. Given that, there wasn¡¯t any extra harm in using magic to get them back to a place they could rest a little earlier.

    ¡°I advise you not to talk of this to anyone, ever,¡± Callum cautioned them through his portal-phone. It would have been compounding foolishness to meet them in person. Hopefully they would think he was also some kind of fae. ¡°I can¡¯t stop you, but if you do that, I can¡¯t protect you, either. Not a second time.¡±

    ¡°We understand,¡± the man said. Callum hadn¡¯t introduced himself nor had he asked for their names. The best thing he could do for them was bring them back to civilization and ensure they pretended it had all never happened. He was pretty sure they were never going to hike there again, that was certain.

    ¡°Do we owe you anything, for¡­?¡± He added uncertainly.

    ¡°No,¡± Callum said curtly. ¡°It¡¯s safest for everyone if we forget all this happened.¡± He wasn¡¯t entirely speaking to them, either. While he had committed great and terrible violence upon a number of people, it wasn¡¯t something he enjoyed or really took that much satisfaction from. The sensation of watching the fae suffocate still haunted him, no matter how deserved it was.

    Callum¡¯s sense of direction, something he assumed was related to his spatially-enhanced ability to grasp relations and dimensions, meant that it didn¡¯t take them all that long to get back. It was a further drain on his already-depleted vis reserves, but so long as he only teleported himself and kept the portals merely person-sized, it was manageable.

    ¡°The campsite is just ahead,¡± he told them. ¡°Good luck.¡± With that he teleported himself back to his tent, flopping down and suppressing a groan. He really, really wanted to go back to sleep, but he even more wanted to be away from scene of a crime as quickly as possible.

    He forced himself to finish packing his bedding, crawl out of the tent, and fold it up. By then the couple had made it to the shop at the middle of the campsite and were on the phone. Hopefully they were calling someone to come pick them up, because he really couldn¡¯t do anything else to help them.

    With one last look around he headed off onto the trails, popping away from the mountain the moment he was out of sight. He¡¯d have to take a good couple days off after making his escape, because he was already feeling the all-over fatigue that came of overstraining his vis, but he really wanted to get far away. It was a shame he didn¡¯t have any reasonable way to gravitykinesis himself about, but at the same time, he wasn¡¯t sure he could manage something that difficult at the moment.

    Once he got out to a highway, he started walking, taking out one of his burner phones. Since he was limited to one big backpack, he didn¡¯t have too many burners available, both for space reasons and because he couldn¡¯t just spend the money for them all the time. This kind of demanded it, though.

    ¡°Hey, big man!¡± Lucy¡¯s voice came, cheerful as always, which did lift Callum¡¯s mood a little. Not much, because he was still a bundle of nerves and nausea, but it helped.

    ¡°Hey, Lucy,¡± he said, and his voice must have carried something.

    ¡°What¡¯s wrong?¡± She asked, dropping the playful tone.

    ¡°I ran into some issues. Can you put me in contact with Chester? You can join in too, I suppose, I¡¯ve got something important that it¡¯d be dumb to keep from you.¡±

    ¡°Yeah, can do,¡± Lucy said seriously. ¡°Hang on.¡± There was a silence as Callum hiked down the road. He was hoping to hitch a ride in eventually, but he had some questions to ask first. After a few minutes there were assorted clicking noises from his phone, and Chester¡¯s deep burr came on.

    ¡°Chester here.¡±

    ¡°It¡¯s me,¡± Callum said. He wasn¡¯t sure if his name had gotten to Alpha Chester or not, though he wouldn¡¯t have been surprised. That didn¡¯t mean he was going to say his name over an open call. ¡°I¡¯m out near the Creede fae enclave, and I ran across a group of fae and shifters hunting humans.¡±

    ¡°I see,¡± Chester said, but that was all.

    ¡°And you¡¯re okay with that?¡± Callum said, maybe sharper than he intended, his nerves still on edge.

    ¡°You do not get to speak to me that way,¡± Chester said coldly, and Callum could feel Chester¡¯s power from the other end of the phone. It wasn¡¯t magic, it was just the sheer authority of someone used to wielding it, and it shocked him out of his dark introspection.

    ¡°Right, sorry,¡± Callum apologized. He didn¡¯t respect Chester¡¯s authority as such, but he had been rude without cause. ¡°Given the shifters, I had to wonder if it was something you condoned.¡±

    ¡°I had heard of that kind of thing,¡± Chester admitted after a moment of silence. ¡°Believe me, none of my pack would be allowed to indulge in such idiocy. I don¡¯t think King Ravaeb would either, but the Creede area is out of either of our jurisdictions.¡±

    Callum grunted. He wasn¡¯t really happy with that denial of responsibility, but it wasn¡¯t like Chester could be responsible for the whole wide world. If anything, it was probably for the best that Chester wasn¡¯t involved. The man was one of the few supernaturals outside of Winut who seemed a reasonable and responsible guy.

    ¡°So what would happen if such a group simply vanished?¡± He could have been more direct, but he was feeling a little twitchy and defaulted to deniability.

    ¡°The entire hunt? Describe who was involved.¡±

    ¡°Well, I don¡¯t know what the official names are, but I¡¯ll do my best. Seventeen pixies, nine shifters. Five treefolk, and nine elf types? Riding fae horse things, with claws and teeth.¡±

    ¡°You need to leave right away,¡± Chester told him bluntly. ¡°Those are fae nobles. The local monarch will know if they¡¯ve been killed, no matter how well you covered your tracks, and you might end up with a fae king or queen looking over the area themselves. If they can¡¯t find anything, they¡¯ll bring in others. I don¡¯t care how well you hid things, fae magic is likely to turn it up eventually.¡±

    ¡°Oh,¡± Callum said. ¡°Is anyone else in danger? There are other people nearby, too.¡±

    ¡°I doubt it,¡± Chester said. ¡°They¡¯re going to be after you.¡±

    ¡°I see.¡± Callum considered it. He was already on the run from GAR, so he didn¡¯t see how having a bunch of fae out for his blood would be any worse. Then again, more people was more people and the fae might have resources that GAR lacked. He understood that fae magic worked oddly and could do stuff that human magic could not.

    ¡°I have an offer,¡± Chester said abruptly. ¡°You come work for me, I¡¯ll keep those types off your back. I¡¯ve got experience protecting people from the rest of the supernatural word.¡±

    Callum had to stomp on a rude reply. Not that he thought Chester was trying to trap him, but Callum had already seen what happened when he trusted someone enough to be a physical point of contact. The best Chester could do would be to stash him in a safehouse where he didn¡¯t go out, and Callum was capable of that much himself.

    There were a lot of things that having a backer could get him, but he¡¯d be beholden to what Chester wanted done, which was something he was not willing to do. The entire reason he¡¯d struck off on his own and was willing to flaunt GAR was to keep from being put under someone¡¯s thumb. Being shackled for his own good was not much better.

    ¡°No,¡± he said. ¡°I appreciate it, but no. I¡¯ll just make myself scarce for a bit.¡±

    ¡°Hard to make yourself scarce from fae lords,¡± Chester said dryly.

    ¡°That makes your offer kind of silly,¡± Callum replied. ¡°Where would you put me? The Deep Wilds?¡± There was a moment of silence from the other end and Callum realized it wasn¡¯t really a terrible idea. He wasn¡¯t sure if other supernaturals could even enter any portal world not their own.

    ¡°I do not advise you go there on your own,¡± Chester warned him, as if reading his mind. ¡°Not only are both sides controlled by GAR, it¡¯s very dangerous in the wilds for anyone who is not a shifter.¡±

    ¡°Don¡¯t worry, I won¡¯t. But thank you for the information. And, I¡¯m glad you weren¡¯t involved.¡±

    ¡°What are you going to do?¡± Chester asked.

    ¡°Goodbye, Chester,¡± Callum said, and hung up. He frowned at the phone for a little bit, mulling over whether he was being too hasty. Or at least, ungrateful, since Chester had actually been trying to help, rather than being controlling or obtuse. Unfortunately, it was better if he didn¡¯t know what Callum was up to.

    His phone ringing startled him so much he nearly dropped it, because he only ever used it to call out, and usually powered it down when not in use. He simply hadn¡¯t gotten around to turning it off due to his navel-gazing. It was pretty obvious who the caller was, though, without even looking at the number.

    ¡°Hey,¡± he said.

    ¡°Hey, big man. You okay? You seem kind of, ah, on edge.¡±

    ¡°I am,¡± he admitted, sticking out his thumb as the sound of a car came from behind. It passed by him without slowing.

    ¡°If you don¡¯t mind my asking, why¡¯d you go and rile up the fae?¡±

    ¡°They were hunting people. People, Lucy. That can¡¯t be allowed to happen,¡± Callum said, voice coming out harder than he told it to. ¡°I couldn¡¯t live with myself if I let it happen.¡±

    ¡°That¡¯s,¡± Lucy said, and he couldn¡¯t exactly tell what emotion was in her voice. ¡°That¡¯s a lot to shoulder, big man.¡± Whatever she was feeling, she didn¡¯t try to dissuade him. Or encourage him.

    ¡°I know,¡± he said. ¡°So I¡¯m going to have to make some preparations. I¡¯ll talk to you later, Lucy.¡±

    ¡°Alright, big man,¡± she said, pausing a moment. ¡°Stay safe,¡± she told him, just before he hung up once again. This time he did turn off the phone, sticking it in his pocket and holding out his thumb for the next car coming along the road.

    Portal World 2, the shifter¡¯s Deep Wilds, was probably off-limits. So was Portal World 1, Faerie, for obvious reasons. Portal World 6 had him deeply suspicious, and he was not confident enough to brave something that was probably above top secret. But he needed to get enchanting materials and the other Portal Worlds should have some. He just needed to decide exactly where to go.

    ***

    Alpha Chester looked grimly at his phone. He wasn¡¯t used to being dismissed so suddenly, especially by other supernaturals. Even mundanes gave him the proper respect. But that wasn¡¯t really what was bothering him.

    ¡°What the hell is he thinking, Lucy?¡±

    ¡°I can¡¯t tell you much of anything, boss man,¡± Lucy replied, still on the line. ¡°Not that I know myself. He hasn¡¯t said much since the, uh, incident.¡±

    ¡°I¡¯m somewhat worried,¡± Chester said frankly. ¡°He seems to be getting more unstable.¡±

    In truth Chester had not expected that the man would ever be caught. That he was, and by happenstance, was actually something not well known. But Alpha Chester had enough pull and connections that he¡¯d gotten the identity of Callum Wells and the fact that Callum had somehow vanished from BSE custody.

    Mister Wells presented a very strange puzzle. He¡¯d had some of his other contacts dig into the man¡¯s public records, but they¡¯d presented the same thing. Up until the previous year he was fully documented, with school and college records, credit cards, car loans, tax returns. But there were holes.

    His parents didn¡¯t match at all. They were too old, and yet the archival photos next to Callum¡¯s made it absolutely clear they were related. They¡¯d died of old age, which had been actually verified by GAR, so they weren¡¯t mages, but only mages would have a son that late in life. Not to mention, there were no indications of what mage family the Wells might be related to. He had to be related to someone, since mundane families hadn¡¯t been allowed near the portals for hundreds of years.

    Then, his records with GAR. No mage tattoo, an absolutely bizarre test which was actually redacted from normal access and had required him pulling a few strings to get, and vanishing in the night. It was hard to square his sedate history with the nonsensical magical background and an absolutely terrifying killer that felt confident in taking out fae nobility. Or, alternately, was able to but ignorant of what that meant.

    ¡°Yeah, he seemed to be doing okay after he broke out, but he¡¯s definitely a bit shaken right now. He might be going a little crazy out by himself, but I hope not,¡± Lucy said.

    Royal Road is the home of this novel. Visit there to read the original and support the author.

    ¡°Someone like that going crazy is not something anyone can afford,¡± Chester pointed out. ¡°It¡¯s a shame he didn¡¯t take my offer. I really think he needs a safe place to bunker down for a while.¡±

    ¡°You don¡¯t think he¡¯s part of some big renegade group, then?¡± Lucy asked him idly.

    ¡°No. I wish I knew why they think that, but I¡¯m almost certain he¡¯s by himself. He doesn¡¯t seem the type to take orders, anyway.¡±

    ¡°You gave him an offer,¡± Lucy said.

    ¡°I had to make some kind of effort.¡± Chester sighed. ¡°I wish I knew what he wanted. It¡¯s hard to even articulate a deal when all I know is that he¡¯s capable of incredible violence, and is extremely slippery. I know he claims he¡¯s not looking to be a mercenary but it seems he¡¯s really good at it.¡±

    ¡°You know what,¡± Lucy said, ¡°I¡¯ll talk to him. If there¡¯s anything I can tell you in good conscience, I will.¡±

    ***

    Callum was headed overseas. Specifically, to Europe, where a good half of the portal worlds were located. Keeping Chester¡¯s warning in mind, he decided he didn¡¯t have any time to spare. He¡¯d move first and dicker over details on the way.

    He put his mouth on autopilot as someone picked him up, someone who was willing to bring him into nearest town, being polite while he considered how he was going to do it. The problem with air travel was that it wasn¡¯t like hitchhiking. Deadheading without an ID was only really possible for small private planes, not big international jets. There were probably private jets making the trip, but he didn¡¯t know anyone with one. Aside from Chester, maybe, and he¡¯d already decided against putting himself in Chester¡¯s care.

    Callum would have to stow away, and spent some time dwelling on the logistics. He could probably fit in the baggage section easily enough, but that was unpressurized and unheated. Trying to figure out the best way to deal with that, up to and including maybe opening and maintaining a tiny portal into the cabin, took up most of his trip into town until he realized he was being stupid. If he had the time to rig together some sort of airtight suit or insulated tent or whatever, he had the time to remake his glamour focus.

    With a glamour to make him invisible or at least ignorable, all the ridiculous security requirements that were heaped onto passengers would only help him. There¡¯d be fewer people, more places to sit that nobody would have claimed, and nobody would think that someone who was already on the plane had gotten there in any way but through security.

    Having to actually steal a place rather than paying for one properly did rankle, but there was no way he could do it the normal way. At least, not in time. If he weren¡¯t worrying about powerful fae on his trail he¡¯d probably wait to get a proper passport ID or something, maybe even take a boat rather than a plane. Admittedly, he had paid for a ticket and never used it before, so maybe he could view this as balancing the scales, but that was a slippery slope. Justifying things just made them easier every time, so he had to make sure this was the last time.

    The closest international airport was in Denver, which was quite a ways away, so he just had his ride drop him in the nearest town and he went around getting things together as quickly as he could. The backpack was exchanged for a giant rolling luggage duffel with much more capacity. He kept the camping equipment, since he didn¡¯t think there¡¯d be any friendly place to stay inside any of the portal worlds, and added new clothes, finishing with his electronics, money, guns and ammunition. One nice thing about not flying legally was that he didn¡¯t have to worry about his baggage getting stolen or held up. Best of all, he could actually carry things that would normally be impossible to bring on a plane.

    The long hair got cut, the moustache removed, and the beard trimmed into a goatee. He stopped to get a bunch of brass and then called a taxi service to take him to Denver. Or at least partway there; over two hundred miles was a long drive, after all. All that took less than an hour, which Callum mostly spent with his senses fully extended and looking for anything suspicious.

    It was only twenty minutes after he¡¯d left the town behind that Callum relaxed at all, taking out his laptop and one of the brass plates to try and reproduce the glamour enchantment. Thankfully, while he was pretty tapped out in terms of vis, enchanting didn¡¯t need much in the way of capacity. Not that he was particularly good at the process to begin with, but the car bumping around was more of an issue than his low battery.

    Even cruising along on the highway, Callum felt it was way too slow. Partly because he could go faster, at least when he hadn¡¯t run himself out of vis, and partly because he was painfully aware of the GAR teleport network. If he could have used it, getting to London or Paris would probably be less than an hour¡¯s trip, and that mostly to wherever the nearest teleport was.

    The up side of that network was that it was extremely unlikely there were many supernaturals, or at least mages, at the airports. If he could use the teleporters, he sure wouldn¡¯t fly. At least not on a plane. Being able to soar around on the basis of his own magic was pretty appealing, though. Eventually he¡¯d fix the problems with his gravitykinesis and be able to do it himself.

    He changed taxis a couple times on the way to the airport, and went through four brass plates until he finally got a working glamour enchantment. Even with a reference, even having done it before, the process was incredibly tedious and involved. A failure to keep up his practice over the past few months certainly didn¡¯t help, either.

    Callum paid the taxi driver when he was dropped off at the parking lot of the airport, and took ahold of his glamour focus as he walked toward the entrance. Sweeping his perceptions over the place, he could see there actually were wards up in addition to the mundane security. They weren¡¯t everywhere, and he had no idea what they were tied to, but it seemed at least some areas were protected. There was one faint one across the entrance back of the security checkpoint, which would catch anyone who arrived, and a stronger one at the entrance to a private area deeper in the airport.

    That was a little bit curious, but it might well be something like what he was thinking earlier, a place for someone like Chester to get on a private plane. He surely didn¡¯t run everything through GAR, even if the teleporters were incredibly handy. No matter who it belonged to, though, he didn¡¯t need to mess with it.

    Instead he ducked into a bathroom and activated the glamour focus. At some point someone might realize he never left the building again, but he was pretty sure people weren¡¯t watching that closely. He threaded through the weave of the ward and popped himself to the other side of security, making sure to appear in a secluded area even with the glamour active.

    From there he parked himself at a nearby table and referenced flight numbers and destinations. While it was more important to get going as fast as possible as reach a specific destination, his chosen portal world had its entrance near Matterhorn, so he¡¯d prefer to be closer than further away. Actually looking at the numbers, he was astounded by just how many aircraft were actually going overseas on that day alone, so it wasn¡¯t hard to find one. It wasn¡¯t direct, but at least the layover was short.

    He drifted off toward the departure gate, waiting for the plane and keeping his senses extended. It still felt weird to be around so many people, especially since he couldn¡¯t sense any supernaturals. Though in the end, supernaturals were apparently less than a tenth of a percent of the population, and spreading to the portal worlds cut down their presence further.

    When he found the appropriate plane, the numbers on the side matching the flight records he¡¯d found, he popped himself aboard back in the stewardess area. There he wedged himself out of the way with the glamour tight around him. He really wished he could hurry the plane up, but all he could do was wait. Eventually, though, it went through the slogging process of boarding and the interminable wait at the runway.

    The entire time he¡¯d been waiting for some supernatural to appear on the edge of his perceptions, but nobody did. Only when they were in the air did he relax. It¡¯d be a few hours until they touched down, and he didn¡¯t think anyone would be able to catch an airplane traveling at speed. Finding several empty seats near the back of the plane, he teleported there and settled in for a nap. He really needed one.

    ***

    King Jissarrell of the Moiral Enclave scowled as he walked deliberately through the valley. Lingering remnants of a fight were everywhere, the mana disturbed with the aftereffects of protective spells and treestepping. Yet for all the evidence of a terrible battle there were no bodies, no pieces of bodies, and not even any blood.

    He had no great love for any of the noble fae that had met their ends, useless chattering hangers-on that they were, but he did have an obligation to them and their families. The crunch of leaves and grass underfoot was interrupted as his boot kicked a steel fork, and his hand clenched briefly as he turned the offending item into a flitting butterfly in a fit of pique. The useless mundanes and their slovenly habit of leaving detritus everywhere offended him, but there was little he could do about it at the moment.

    It didn¡¯t take much of an eye to see the course of the fight. Trampled grass, disturbed stone, the damage to the ridge. Branches broken from saporlings, hair from shifters, even traces of pixie dust here and there. Anyone with eyes could trace the battle, just as anyone with eyes could see there was no record of who they were fighting.

    ¡°Remember,¡± Jissarrell said quietly, and the earth shuddered as it obeyed. The ghostly forms of Anandell and his hunt sprang into being, laughing and chattering away as they followed their shifter guides. Jissarrell observed silently, pacing alongside the cabylls as the hunt found the point where their quarry had turned. They rode forward with only a little caution, not noticing when the pixies all disappeared in the space of a few breaths.

    Jissarrel froze the memory with an effort of will, studying the black disks that swallowed the pixies. It wasn¡¯t clear exactly what magic it was, but it certainly wasn¡¯t fae. He would have felt that. Perhaps the human magic, but their clumsy fumblings were usually smeared across the landscape, and they announced themselves with beacons wrought of their own power. There was none of that here.

    He let time flow onward, and watched as those same black disks pulled shifters and cabylls underground, though he could sense no disturbance in the ground at all. One of the nobles shot at something on a far ridge, which he would get to in time, and was dropped in turn.

    Time once again froze as he inspected the distortion made by cold iron. Its very presence disrupted the magic that reconstructed the scene, but it implied that the black disks could be used to conjure the stuff. Though after seeing certain nobles only partly swallowed by them, and emerging none the worse for the wear, perhaps it was better to think of them as holes.

    He turned widdershins and appeared on the ridge above. There was nothing there where the damage from the arrow had been wrought, so he had to turn back time to find the target. It was a scruffy human, barely more than an ape, with overgrown beard and hair and tatty clothing, crouching behind the rock and his right hand fuzzed with the presence of cold iron. When the bow was drawn, he vanished.

    Jissarrel raised his eyebrows. That was unusual. There was no bright beacon-smear of power emanating from the man so he didn¡¯t seem to be a mage, but that was clearly the work of magic. He strolled to the point where, later, a saporoling had attacked something, and found the man there instead, still sheltering, but apparently doing nothing else.

    The scruffy man vanished once again, just before ghostly vines climbed out from the rocks. Jissarrel surveyed the area, but the only other humans he saw were the prey. He watched them, and saw them eventually vanish through the same holes that had taken his subjects.

    That was somewhat interesting; perhaps the pair were important to someone, despite being obviously mundane humans. He would have some of his servants track them down and see who they were connected to. Whatever organization was responsible for this would have be made example of.

    In the meantime, he would find the man with the cold iron. That one was involved, personally, and Jissarrel wanted to question him, personally. He would be sure to teach everyone that he would not stand for anyone interfering with his subjects in any way.

    Jissarrel returned to the ghostly memory of the scruffy man, scowling down at the hazy outline. Then he reached down, fingers plunging through the surface as he gripped the beating heart within the memory, and tore it out. The outline of the man collapsed as Jissarel held the essence in his hand, an echo of the life it represented.

    Good. The memory was fresh enough, and Faerie¡¯s touch close enough, that it had worked.

    He wove a cord out of sunlight and strung the heart on it, letting it float behind him as he turned to the nearest tree. Circling it thrice, he was back in the heart of his enclave, the light and airy palace glowing above him. Jissarrel brushed past the bowing and scraping attendants as he crossed to the stables, eyeing his beasts.

    ¡°Saddle the windmare,¡± he commanded. ¡°I may have to cover a great deal of ground.¡±

    ¡°Yes, Your Majesty,¡± the sprightling groom said, bowing and withdrawing to do just that. A windmare could cover a hundred miles in an hour, but the mundanes¡¯ infernal contraptions could go almost that fast and the man already had several hours of lead time.

    Jissarrel swung onto the windmare the moment she was saddled, wheeling her around in the direction the heart showed and letting her have her head. They were a stiff breeze racing along the ground, blowing through the nearby town and snatching hats from heads as they circled before heading off in a new direction. He followed the heart as they raced along the mundane roadway, leaving a path of frost behind them.

    The trail led a surprisingly long distance before it reached its end. Or, not an end, but an annoyance that made Jissarrel snarl. It was one of those damnable mundane airports, where they unnaturally hurled themselves through the air faster and higher than birds. The heart still beat, and he could almost scent the trail going up into the air, but it would be a further journey than he had planned.

    He was going to have to resort to something other than a windmare.

    ***

    Aside from a brief bout of heartburn the plane ride was fairly relaxing. He didn¡¯t quite drift off, but came close. The jolt of landing brought him to full wakefulness, and he reached out to the airport itself to get himself off the plane. Like Denver, it had some warding around it but nothing like what he saw around GAR offices. Unlike Denver, O¡¯Hare seemed to have a few shifters hanging around, though whether they were staff or passengers he couldn¡¯t tell.

    It did mean he had to be a bit circumspect about his movement. He popped over to inside a bathroom, and fished around for a bit of something he could enchant to cover his tracks. It took him a moment of staring right at the door lock while he cast about to realize that it was metal too, and he could just add a little vortex enchant to it directly.

    Once he started thinking about it, he really didn¡¯t need to use any sort of metal scrap in most places. The modern world was practically made of the stuff, so there¡¯d be something handy in most places. Screws, brackets, locks, a car chassis, all that was a potential bit of metal to use because it wasn¡¯t like it had to be loose. Just nearby.

    That didn¡¯t mean he could completely ditch his scrap metal collection, because there would always be places without something appropriate, but it did mean that he¡¯d be far better served by choosing his teleportation points with care. The vortex enchantment didn¡¯t fix the residue left by glamours, though, so he turned his off for the moment to prevent the shifters from sniffing him out and wheeled his suitcase out into the terminal.

    He had to exchange a bunch of cash for the appropriate currency at absolutely ruinous rates, but that was expected. It was rather unpleasant how fast the money went, even if the vampires had supplied him with a truly absurd amount. Of course, it would have been nice if he could bring his entire cache with him, but he was still lacking in the skills for that.

    Then, while he waited, he had a surprisingly good but vastly overpriced meal and figured out his later connections. One of the shifters gave him a bit of a scare while he was eating by heading his way, but when the person came into view it was just a harried-looking manager in deep discussion with an off-duty pilot. The pair strode past the restaurant without even a glance.

    The layover wasn¡¯t very long, only an hour and a half, so the connecting flight arrived shortly thereafter. Since it was a triple-seven it was actually extraordinarily easy for him to stow on board by just popping into the crew rest compartment. It was a little room with bunks and not much else, and suited Callum¡¯s purposes perfectly.

    He couldn¡¯t stay there the whole flight unless he was willing to keep the glamour up the whole time, and considering that he wanted to get some actual sleep that wasn¡¯t the case. While the plane was loading, though, it was a nice place to hide out. Once they were in the air and the empty seats were obvious, he found a likely place to rest and settled in.

    While he did so, he reflected on how absurdly easy it was to abuse magic. At least his magic. Someone with the ability to control fire probably wouldn¡¯t get very far trying to bluff their way onto a plane, but his talents meant that he could bypass almost any barrier in the modern world. He could be the absolute best thief anyone had ever heard of, if he was of a mind to.

    Considering he felt guilty simply deadheading on a jumbo jet, costing the airline tens of dollars at most, that was not really in the cards. He wasn¡¯t the only one with such talents, though, and considering the attitude of the supernatural world toward the normal one, there was going to be someone who¡¯d do that kind of thing. The protections of GAR just weren¡¯t enough, since it seemed they mostly only stepped in when it was supernatural interests at issue.

    He had no illusions that he¡¯d be able to change any of that. All he could do was deal with people who were obviously preying on normal folks and keep himself safe. To do any of that, though, he needed tools, and that was what he hoped to get on his trip.

 Chapter 4 â€“ Portals

    He¡¯d been out of the country exactly once before, for his honeymoon with Selene. They¡¯d gone down to the Caribbean, taking a cruise among the small islands there. His work had never really demanded much travel, since he was a consultant rather than an on-site type. Looking at the Swiss countryside, he wished he could have toured it with Selene. She would have enjoyed it just as much, if not more, but they¡¯d never had the chance.

    The cities were not as amazing as the brochures¡¯ breathless endorsement, but Callum had never been a city person to begin with. Besides, Geneva had more than its fair share of supernaturals. There was a lot of disturbance from mages in various parts of the city, and he could spot a number of shifters and fae, so he got out of there as fast as possible.

    While Callum stood out a little bit, it was mostly as an American tourist, and heaven knew there were enough of those about. Not that he stayed in the populated areas too long. It was easy to forget that he was on the run when he¡¯d spent the past hours sleeping on a plane, but he couldn¡¯t linger and see the sights.

    Fortunately, the Matterhorn was less than one hundred miles away in a straight line. It was a considerable trip if he followed the roads, but he didn¡¯t need to, and at this point each teleport was somewhere around a third of a mile. Several hundred teleports was a lot, but the hours of sleep on the plane had helped with his vis-induced strain and he was ready to go. So long as he didn¡¯t have to transport other people or something like a car, he¡¯d be fine.

    The compass from his camp kit actually came in handy, as he mostly just had to set himself a direction and follow it. Since he just had a phone and not a proper GPS unit, he couldn¡¯t use that to find his way, though for all he knew an active GPS device near the portal location would throw up flags somewhere. That was certainly a security precaution he would use, that or just blocking GPS like the military did.

    Even the compass was barely necessary, though. The ambient mana was thicker in Switzerland than it had been in the US, and he could tell he was going in the right direction because it was somewhat like going upstream. He figured the thicker mana helped with his teleports, too, since he had more overall energy. Some of the early literature had mentioned that mage Houses had more mana locally, but he hadn¡¯t really understood how much of a difference that made.

    He only stopped once, to get out a heavier jacket, as he made his way into the Alps. It was probably for the best that he was taking the direct route through wilderness, since he couldn¡¯t speak the language. Or read it. Sadly, he didn¡¯t have any translation magic to hand and without an internet connection he didn¡¯t have translation technology either.

    It only took him half an hour to get to where he wanted to go, in the rugged terrain away from the trails that crisscrossed the mountains and glacial kettles. That was a pretty ridiculous speed, though not one he could keep up for long. It was a fairly tedious and grueling process, finding the point on the edge of his perceptions that he could transfer to, forming the teleport, and popping forward.

    The flow of mana made it obvious when he was near his target. The ambient mana did move, but generally it was slow enough that it was barely noticeable, not that it seemed to exert any affect on the real world to begin with. On the slopes, though, it was cascading down, obviously originating from a point higher up in the mountains.

    There was no visible infrastructure until suddenly there was. No power lines or roads or radio towers were in evidence, but after the next few teleports he could suddenly see a structure built into the mountain. It looked like a house had been merged with the mountainside, solid stone with windows indicating two stories and a door letting out onto a small porch.

    When it came within range of his spatial perceptions he could tell that it had a number of wards surrounding it, as well as glamours, so it was effectively invisible to normal people. It also had a teleport, which was a little worrying, but he didn¡¯t think it was likely that they¡¯d anticipate someone entering that particular portal world. Indeed, the house was empty, though there was a bunch of active enchantment around.

    He couldn¡¯t help but appraise it from the point of view of his former profession, finding that despite the sturdiness of the construction it was clearly made by an amateur. The floors weren¡¯t perfectly level, the hallways were too narrow, the rooms were almost perfect cubes. Which meant they had different ceiling heights, most of them too high or too low, and it was only the fact that it was made completely out of stone that kept the structure from being completely compromised. If he had to guess, some earth mage had worked it together rather than it being properly designed.

    The back of the house opened into a cave, which to Callum¡¯s inexpert eye looked coarse but not quite natural. He threaded his vis past the house wards and popped into the cave, blinking as his eyes adjusted. The mana flow was even faster in the narrow confines and he almost felt like he was walking against a current, though it was all in his head. If he pulled back his perceptions and waved his arm around, he couldn¡¯t feel anything at all.

    The portal itself came into sight and perception at about the same time, as he walked down a tunnel lit with soft white from crystals overhead. Visually, it looked no different from any of his portals, though somewhat wider. It was just a hole, a doorway to somewhere else, though one tall and wide enough to drive a big rig through. To his perceptions, it was far more complex.

    His portals were basically just a ring made out of vis, tearing open a hole between the two ends. There was some structure there, but nothing fancy. The magic holding open the entrance to the portal world, by contrast, was fantastically complicated, with intricate loops and swirls and branching fractal patterns. There were different sizes of magical threads, even, with different densities of unformed vis between them, and even that was made more complex by the mana rushing through the portal.

    He wanted to stay and study it, his brain tickling with ideas, but he had to remind himself that he was here to get away from any possible fae pursuit, not to gawk. The portal would be just as visible from the other side. What was better, he was pretty sure that no fae was going to want to follow him into the dragonlands, even if they could.

    The dragonlands were theoretically off-limits to GAR, which was why it only had a little outpost and not a full complex. His choice had been made by default, since he wasn¡¯t going to go to Faerie or the Deep Wilds, and wandering around the Night Lands seemed particularly foolhardy. He couldn¡¯t breathe underwater, and the supposedly empty portal world was in a nasty part of South America and he¡¯d stand out there far more than Europe. Besides, that one just smacked of military-grade secrets.

    Dragonblooded didn¡¯t come through the portal often, though, so it was essentially unused. If it weren¡¯t for the fact that humans were absolutely forbidden from going through, it¡¯d be completely perfect. He figured it was a calculated risk; even if something was off-limits, if nobody was around to actually check he wasn¡¯t going to get into trouble.

    Without any further rumination, he popped himself right up to the portal and walked through. Given that the center was basically just open space, he probably could have teleported through instead, but he didn¡¯t know for certain and it wasn¡¯t like he had to be sneaky. Besides, he could see through to the other side and there was certainly nothing worth speaking of there, just bare rock and moss. It was only when he stepped through that he realized what an alien place it was.

    The rock and moss was mundane enough, but the view was that of sky. The portal was set into a cliff, but one of such scope that the mind boggled. Looking out from the ledge he couldn¡¯t see a bottom or a top, with blue sky in both directions. There was just an uninterrupted length of near vertical rock slope, dotted here and there with straggles of green.

    It was enough that he took several steps back from the edge just to stop the vertigo. The space beyond the cliff was an absolutely enormous expanse of nothing, and it was completely impossible. He had known intellectually that the portal worlds were a bit weird, but that was a far cry from seeing something so staggering.

    Nor was it just the visuals that were astounding. With his spatial perceptions he could tell that the fundamental nature of space itself, perhaps the underlying reality of the portal world, was different. He couldn¡¯t articulate exactly how, and he hadn¡¯t really ever noticed the flavor of space on Earth, but then, he¡¯d never much thought about the color of sunlight either.

    Along with the change in flavor, for lack of a better term, was an absolutely massive amount of mana. It was no wonder it was pouring from the portal on the other side. He felt energized and suppressed at the same time, unused to the amount of ambient energy.

    After a moment he focused on the actual cliff face rather than the general sensation of weirdness he was getting from his surroundings. It was considerably more difficult to push his perceptions through the rock there than it was back home, and the cliff face seemed to be solid, anyway. There were just lots of protrusions or dents, one of which held the portal. There were another few places he would trust his footing within range, so he popped himself up to a little niche about two hundred feet above the portal itself.

    That way he was gone if anyone poked their head through the portal, and what was better, he could still inspect the portal structure itself. It looked like it might be more difficult than he¡¯d thought to find enchanting materials in this portal world, since there wasn¡¯t anything approaching normal terrain nor any civilization he could use as a guide to find the raw materials. He¡¯d do some surveying himself, but between the dimensional portal and ditching any fae tail, he definitely didn¡¯t count it as a wasted trip.

    Callum pulled out his laptop and booted it up, only belatedly realizing he was lucky that electronics worked at all. He could tell that space was different, and it might well have affected his computer, or fried it. Since it worked, he pulled up his CAD program and started transcribing the portal.

    ***

    King Jissarrell of the Moiral Enclave growled in frustration as the heart he¡¯d been following suddenly evaporated in a puff of mana. The spell had only a few hours left in it anyway, but it was still an affront. It had been irksome enough to track it to one of the big human cities, and then the trail had gone over the ocean and he¡¯d had to call in a favor to travel across the waters.

    The fae of the Old Country thought themselves as far above King Jissarrell as they did their own subjects, but they did respect his pursuit. Revenge was one of the most time-honored traditions, after all. There was some scoffing about him pursuing a mere human, but only some. They did know what human mages could do, after all.

    He reigned in the zephraim he¡¯d been using to follow the trail from the Black Forest. All he knew was that his target had vanished somewhere in the south of Europe. Which was more than he¡¯d known before, but he had been so looking forward to tracking the man down and peeling his skin off his body. Now, that pleasure would have to be delayed.

    There weren¡¯t many things that could break that tracking spell, but any sufficiently powerful fae, like another king, certainly could. Even would, given sufficient inducement or simply knowledge that they¡¯d be irritating another powerful fae without any risk. Spite was another one of those time-honored traditions.

    He wheeled around in the air and headed back north, the zephraim stomping on the air, jagged antlers of lightning crackling as it made its displeasure known. He kept a firm hand on the reins, however, and steered it back to its home. Jissarrell dropped it off at the stables and proceeded further into the enclave.

    The scent of proper fae magic was rich this close to Faerie, tempting him to cross back over, but he resisted. That would just put him under the control of the great faerie lords, and he was quite happy being his own monarch with his own land. The magic was weaker on Earth, and the mortals annoying, but it was better, as one wit had put it, to reign in hell than serve in heaven.

    Instead, he made his way to the Door of Glass, pricking his finger and letting the blood drip onto the frame. The transparent crystal drank in the offering, red spreading up and out to cover the entire door. Once it had sucked in the appropriate amount of magic, the Door swung open, and Jissarrell stepped into the Ways.

    Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

    They were few and hard-built on Earth, compared to their counterparts on Faerie, but with that came a lessening of danger. It was very little trouble at all to walk to the New World, with barely anything that would try to eat him, no matter that he was a fae king. Unfortunately the Ways didn¡¯t reach to the Moiral Enclave yet, but he could use the human transport network to return to an area within reach of home.

    He could have taken it to the Old World, or to return for that matter, but that would have involved letting the humans know where his business was. Besides, it was far better that they didn¡¯t know about the Ways, thinking that everyone relied on their own transportation or movement overland. It kept them happy and foolish and easy to trick.

    Alas, he was going to have to engage with those very same humans. With the trail broken, he¡¯d have to resort to the unimaginatively named Guild of Arcane Regulation, who were supposed to police their own. It pained him to admit to the humans that he¡¯d been unable to bring vengeance upon the offender himself, but he could at least take comfort that he¡¯d be making annoyances for all the fae that lived in the Old Country.

    The white-trunked trees and blood-red roses of the Ways rose on either side of him, screening out the great nothingness that was between, razorgrass bowing before the power he carried with him rather than cutting his legs to ribbons. A small stream trickled across the path, and Jissarrell stepped over it very carefully. To dare the stream would be to dare an entire ocean at once, and even a fae king would be foolhardy to try that.

    Trees and roses eventually gave way to a marble and glass arch, and Jissarrell stepped out of the Ways, emerging in the heart of the White Mountains in the northeast of the New World. He was on good terms with King Guisame, and servants came to attend to him the moment he emerged, offering him freshly gathered dew and the still-beating heart of a deer on a tray of polished maple. It was good to be shown the proper respect.

    He took a bite out of the heart, blood dripping down his chin, and headed through the palace of living trees. Guisame would probably be holding court, and Jissarrell wanted to remain on good terms with him so he proceeded to the gardens, certain that the servants would inform Guisame of his whereabouts. Indeed, in fairly short order King Guisame arrived, his antlers bare and dry with the season and with Queen Lorenn on his arm.

    ¡°Brother!¡± Jissarrell clasped forearms with Guisame and bowed over Lorenn¡¯s offered hand.

    ¡°Brother,¡± Guisame returned. ¡°Was there any success in your hunt?¡±

    ¡°No, brother,¡± Jissarrell replied. ¡°Something drew a veil between me and my prey after I arrived in the Old Country. I will have to go to the human mages and let them know that one of their kind has broken the agreements.¡±

    ¡°Ah, a shame you could not find him,¡± Guisame said, then brightened. ¡°At least it shall provide some way to make the humans squirm!¡±

    ¡°It will indeed,¡± Jissarrell said with satisfaction. ¡°Perhaps even make trouble for some of those in the Old Country, if they can find who might be shielding him.¡±

    ¡°Ah, I look forward to that! You need not go to them, either. I can send a servant through the transport booth; might as well get some use out of the cursed thing.¡±

    ¡°That would be most welcome,¡± Jissarrell agreed. Guisame crooked a finger, and a brownie went scampering off to fulfill his king¡¯s wishes.

    ¡°You must tell us the full story of the one who has incurred such wrath,¡± Lorenn said, eyes sparkling in anticipation of a gory tale.

    ¡°I would be happy to.¡± There wasn¡¯t much to it, but what there was had some interesting flourishes. Besides, there was nothing a fae king liked so much as a good story.

    ¡°That is fascinating,¡± Guisame said once Jissarrell had finished. ¡°I have not heard of humans doing anything like that! One wonders what dark and desperate plots they have brewing.¡±

    ¡°Perhaps the humans will shed light on it, loath as I am to suggest such a thing,¡± Jissarrell said. ¡°For no other reason than I believe human magic is involved. They do claim to have dominion over it.¡±

    They frittered away the time on trivialities until a pixie returned with a human in tow, showing their age as humans did, even the mages. At the very least the man showed the proper courtesies, bowing and waiting for introductions. Jissarrell forgot the name as soon as it was said, since it was hardly relevant.

    ¡°I was told you had something to report about a renegade mage?¡± He asked after he was given leave to speak.

    ¡°Perhaps.¡± Jissarrel flicked a finger, knitting an image of the scruffy man from sunbeams and an errant breeze. ¡°I can only tell you what I saw, but I believe that the holes in space were some form of human magery.¡±

    ¡°Holes in space?¡± The man repeated in that tiresome habit they often had. He took out one of those mundane contrivances and tapped at it in a disharmonious clatter. ¡°Your majesty, could you explain exactly what you saw?¡±

    For a second time Jissarrell told his tale, but the human didn¡¯t seem to appreciate it, which was rude. When it was over, the man chewed his bottom lip, glancing from his laptop contraption to Jissarrell and back again. Finally, he seemed to come to a decision.

    ¡°King Jissarrell, we believe the man you describe may be the renegade mage, Callum Wells. He is considered extremely dangerous, as he has been involved in the recent vampire massacres as well as escaping from GAR custody. Can you be any more specific about where you may have tracked him in Europe?¡±

    That sparked Jissarrell¡¯s interest. A random assault was one thing, but a visit by a renegade was far more interesting. Not to mention one that had already given the vampires a black eye!

    ¡°You know that is not sufficient,¡± he told the man. ¡°Give me a proper story.¡±

    ***

    Callum found the portal world very strange indeed. It had taken him a little bit to realize it, but there was no sun. There was light, but it seemed to be coming from everywhere in the endless sky, and didn¡¯t vary in brightness at all. Besides which, he hadn¡¯t seen a single cloud, and while it was chilly it wasn¡¯t cold or windy like he would have expected a cliffside to be.

    On the other hand, just because it seemed to be stark didn¡¯t mean it was lifeless. He had seen winged shadows in the far distance, seeming to be incomprehensibly vast, hazed by atmosphere as they were, but that was only a guess with no real backing. The rustle of wings had come on occasion from somewhere nearby, and it sounded more normal sized, but he hadn¡¯t actually seen what was making the noise.

    He¡¯d been snacking from his camp food and drinking from the water bottles he¡¯d brought, and considering the lack of any local water he had a pretty strict limit on how long he could stay in the portal world. Admittedly, he could just pop back over to the other side and gather snow to melt, but he wanted to wait until the last possible minute for that.

    That meant he needed shelter, and not just the tent. Callum was genuinely worried about something very large trying to investigate him in the middle of the night or something, and there was a particular dearth of places to hide on the exposed cliff space. Except for one bit.

    The portal back to Earth wasn¡¯t flush with the rear wall of the depression in which it was located. That was actually true on both sides of the portal, so the pocket formed a very odd, narrow room with two rock walls from two different worlds. Portals were two-way, after all, and while he hadn¡¯t yet found a reason to use both sides at once, the fact remained that the back of a portal was just as much a window as the front. Or rather, there really wasn¡¯t a front and a back, save for what he was working with at the time.

    Even though it was probably fine, he swept the air in the hidden alcove with a portal, exchanging it for the atmosphere outside. The way his perception worked as it went through the portal was somewhat brain-twisting, since he could sense the same area relative to him from two different perspectives, but other than the magic-sense equivalent of eyestrain he adapted easily enough. He even found that he could thread his vis through the portal, so long as he didn¡¯t get too close to the edges. If the vis strand got anywhere near the mana threads that defined the hole between realities, it got horrifically shredded.

    Working with his magic on the portal world was a bit different from Earth. It was definitely easier in terms of strain, because the extra mana available meant he could do more at a time. At the same time, it was harder because it took more effort to make and hold the magical structures. He could, somewhat grudgingly, see how it was useful for mages to train on portal worlds if they were all like that.

    He set up his tent and checked his phone for the time, finding that despite the brightness outside it was after nine. After the day he¡¯d had that was good enough for him, so he wedged himself up near-ish one of the portal edges, where there would be some airflow, and tried to get some sleep. It wasn¡¯t very comfortable, the differences in the environment nagging as his senses, but eventually he did manage to get some semblance of rest.

    It wasn¡¯t the best sleep he¡¯d had, especially when something passed by outside that was loud enough to sound like thunder but came and went almost as quickly. Whatever it was didn¡¯t pass close enough for his perceptions to catch it and he only thought of opening a spy-portal belatedly, after his heart had calmed down. He was glad he¡¯d not tented out in the open, with something that big around.

    Still, it was enough that he could feel his brain working again once he¡¯d gotten up. For one thing, he was pretty sure the portal was artificial. It wasn¡¯t wholly out of the realm of possibility that it had spontaneously formed, but there were too many flourishes for him to really believe it.

    For one thing, it had mana intakes regularly spaced around the portal¡¯s structure, taking advantage of the portal world¡¯s excess. He could have believed one was some random manifestation of magical nonsense, but purposely load-balanced like that seemed unlikely. There was also the plain fact that it looked like a portal made out of vis, if one far more complex than he was used to, even if after however many hundreds of years it was composed completely of mana instead.

    If someone had made it, that launched an entire fleet of new questions, none of which were particularly relevant to him. What was relevant was that it demonstrated a number of techniques that he could use, or at least crib from. He might even be able to cover some of the weaknesses of being self-taught.

    His self-appraisal, at least compared to Gayle, was that his fine control was terrible. While that was still true, after studying the portal he had some insight into why: his threads were too small. It seemed counterintuitive that having a finer structure meant less ability to manage the details, but his little threads didn¡¯t handle the power quite right so things kind of smeared. The containment for his vis fields wasn¡¯t entirely static at the edges. It was something he¡¯d only really seen after noticing the filaments in the portal that matched the size of his threads were very low energy indeed.

    Not that making thicker threads helped at all, since they were just as overloaded and at that scale the subtle trembling of the outlines was even more visible, not to mention taking more vis out of him for no real benefit. He couldn¡¯t even figure out how to begin to flex things to change the power per volume, and none of the literature had mentioned anything about vis power density. Which had probably contributed to his oversight. It was probably possible to change, considering that there were variations in the portal structure, but since the portal was the first place he¡¯d seen that it wasn¡¯t a common technique.

    He didn¡¯t know whether that was just some natural inclination or a peculiarity of spatial aspect or his lack of formal training, but the same thing that let him sneak vis threads through wards meant that he had a huge problem when it came to the actual structures. Fortunately the portal had answers for that, too, because the magic that made it was big and energetic and it used tubes rather than threads for the most high-powered parts of the portal structure. There was no reason he couldn¡¯t do the same thing on a smaller scale, provided he could figure tubes out in the first place. Not a sure thing, but at least a direction.

    Along with a potential solution to his control problems, there were bits of the portal that seemed to recirculate the energy so it didn¡¯t use nearly as much to keep itself open. That might possibly help with his scaling problems, where the maximum size of any portal or teleport he could manage was about the size of a car. He¡¯d seen energy recirculation in the glamour enchant, so he knew it was possible, but he just was not good enough to translate it from the glamour to a portal. Now that he had a working model, it was worth a shot.

    Callum popped back to his original niche and set out his solar charger while he took notes by hand. At some point he¡¯d digitize them but he wasn¡¯t sure the solar charger would even work despite the brightness. For all he knew there weren¡¯t any actual photons arriving and it was all some magical handwave.

    While he trusted in the accuracy of his notes, they weren¡¯t as good as studying the whole thing in motion, so he planned to stay and study the portal for as long as his supplies held out. The biggest thing he risked was that someone would be waiting on the other side, but if so he could take a gamble on his homebond enchantment, even if it was a terrible experience.

    It was just too bad that there was no obvious source of enchanted materials, though he was seriously contemplating trying to chisel some rock off the cliff face. The stone didn¡¯t quite seem as mana-infused as the stuff he¡¯d gotten from the vampires, but it was better than brass or other non-magical materials. Plus there was an infinite amount of it. If he could actually quarry the stuff he might even be able to build a house out of enchantable stone, which had all kinds of implications.

    For a while he enjoyed the light and fresh air, and simply lost himself in sketching and note-taking. He tried forming tubes like the ones the portal had and, while he didn¡¯t get very far, he didn¡¯t get nowhere, either. That was better advancement than he¡¯d gotten from vis density, and the portal was obviously the work of a master, so he wasn¡¯t worried overmuch. It wasn¡¯t something he could expect to master first try.

    Even if he was absorbed in his work, he hadn¡¯t entirely forgotten that he was somewhere off-limits. He kept his perceptions stretched outward, and glanced at the sky in case he saw any of those giant shadows coming his way. Still, considering that he was in the middle of a bare expanse of infinite cliff he didn¡¯t expect many visitors. He was more concerned with someone coming through the portal, but so far there had been neither hide nor hair of anything on that end.

    So when something did happen, it came with no forewarning at all and took him by complete surprise. The mana shuddered and froze and his perception fuzzed painfully, forcing him to pull it in even as he tried to pop himself back by the portal. The frozen mana made it almost impossible to push his vis through, and he hadn¡¯t gotten far when the stone to either side of his perch pulled away from the cliff and slammed together in midair.

    He couldn¡¯t help but gawk as the granite fused into a marble dais, more pieces slamming in to form distinctly Greek columns and an ornate dais. An alien crystal vine sprouted from the base of each column and wound itself up to the top in the matter of a second or two, flowering into black leaves etched with a unfamiliar script in gold. Finally with a clap of thunder, a dragonblooded appeared atop the dais, looking stern and imperious.

    ¡°Mortal!¡± He thundered. ¡°You have violated the laws of¡ª¡± The dragonblooded faltered and blinked at him, continuing in a much more normal voice. ¡°Wait, Callum? Callum Wells?¡± For his part, Callum was just as confused.

    ¡°Mister Shahey?¡±

 Chapter 5 â€“ Dragonblooded

    ¡°You know, if anything I¡¯m surprised it took this long for someone to give them a run for their money,¡± Shahey mused. ¡°Five hundred years and there hasn¡¯t been a serious threat to GAR. I¡¯ve heard that some have tried before but didn¡¯t get very far. Spatial, though. Kind of odd. If anything I would have bet on a force mage being the one to upset their apple carts.¡±

    ¡°I wouldn¡¯t say I¡¯m even doing that, sir,¡± Callum said, cautiously sipping at the odd fruity-spicy drink that Shahey had conjured. Literally conjured. The dragon had literally made it from nothing in a dizzyingly complex dance of more vis than any dozen mages could field.

    It wasn¡¯t something simple like temporarily summoning water or earth, like Callum had read mages could do. Shahey had created something with complex organic molecules inside of a decorated glass tumbler from absolutely nothing, and as far as Callum could tell it was completely real and solid. Shahey had also demonstrated that he could unmake matter, destroying the dais and pillars in flagrant violation of the laws of conservation.

    He knew that each supernatural species had its own unique magics, but he hadn¡¯t run across anything solid on what the dragons could do. The answer, it appeared, was that they could simply create and destroy matter at will. Combined with the immense amount of power Shahey demonstrated, he could disintegrate Callum at a whim.

    Callum was being very polite.

    ¡°Mostly I¡¯ve been running away from various things,¡± he continued. ¡°Part of why I¡¯m here, actually. I had to deal with some fae and I was told their king might be on my trail so I figured they wouldn¡¯t follow me into the dragonlands.¡±

    ¡°More like can¡¯t,¡± Shahey said. ¡°No fae magic here.¡± He waved a clawed hand through the air. ¡°You basically don¡¯t exist to them now. Not that I want to encourage you to come here, either. It¡¯s still forbidden. You¡¯re just lucky it was me that came by to see who was hanging around the portal.¡±

    ¡°Yes, and I deeply appreciate your forbearance in the matter,¡± Callum said. He had silently thanked God that he¡¯d known Shahey before becoming a mage, considering the circumstances. On the other hand, it did seem a bit suspect that it was exactly Shahey who showed up, and showed up after giving Callum plenty of time to incriminate himself. Not that he¡¯d accuse Shahey of putting on an act. ¡°I hope that the incident at the gym didn¡¯t result in anything permanent.¡±

    ¡°Well, I had to remake an avatar,¡± Shahey said with a frown. On the scaled face it looked quite intimidating, though maybe Callum was just inferring that from the suppressing aura that made it impossible to forget exactly how powerful the dragonblooded was.

    ¡°Avatar, sir?¡± Callum asked. It wasn¡¯t lost on him that the dragonblooded and dragons were referred to as distinctly different things. Shahey regarded Callum, looking less like a jovial gym owner and more like something old and alien and dangerous.

    ¡°This isn¡¯t exactly a secret, but I would ask you not to speak of it too much,¡± Shahey said. ¡°This is just a puppet.¡± He thumped his chest. ¡°Used up the last one with that dragonfire. Which isn¡¯t actually something we do, but I liked the lore so much I had to add it.¡± He smiled indulgently at the memory. ¡°Anyway, the real me wouldn¡¯t exactly fit through a portal, and just existing over on the other side would probably come with catastrophic consequences. So I have a few of these running around on Earth.¡±

    When Callum had caught references to dragons, they¡¯d just been described as powerful. He¡¯d taken that in the same way that a tank was powerful, or a strong mage was powerful. Apparently he should have been taking it the way a god was powerful. He¡¯d known that he was swimming around in deep waters, going to a portal world, but he hadn¡¯t realized that they were abyssal.

    ¡°Ah,¡± he said faintly. ¡°So those shadows in the distance are your people?¡±

    ¡°You can see those?¡± Shahey gave him a sharp look. Callum blinked at him and debated how to answer. So far he¡¯d not informed anyone in the magical world of his glamour-blindness, and barring an exigent reason he¡¯d rather keep it that way. Unless Shahey demanded answers, of course, because Callum was rather at his mercy.

    ¡°Just shadows, sir,¡± Callum said. ¡°Nothing more than that.¡±

    ¡°Huh. That¡¯s interesting, though it¡¯s not like we get many mages here. I¡¯m not sure why you can see even that much, though. Maybe it¡¯s something you got from your father.¡±

    ¡°I assume you don¡¯t mean Callum Senior?¡± Callum managed after a moment, struck completely sideways by the comment.

    ¡°No.¡± Shahey tilted his head at Callum. ¡°Did you not know?¡±

    ¡°I had my suspicions,¡± Callum said. ¡°Mom and dad were far too old for it to be the usual process. But I never asked for the story because it didn¡¯t seem important. Now, it might. You knew my parents, then?¡±

    ¡°I know everybody in Tanner,¡± Shahey proclaimed. ¡°It¡¯s one of my project towns.¡±

    Callum made an inquisitive noise. Shahey was more voluble than he expected a massively powerful individual to be, but at the same time Callum had already made it clear he didn¡¯t know much about the supernatural. After seeing Shahey at the gym and as the enforcer of the dragonlands portal, he had a strong feeling that everything was an act.

    ¡°All the world¡¯s a stage,¡± Shahey said. ¡°Brilliant man. Anyway, dragons mostly just watch people. Earth isn¡¯t our territory and we don¡¯t want it anyway, so we¡¯re, in a sense, tourists. We don¡¯t interfere with local matters,¡± Shahey said, with a level look that made it very clear Callum couldn¡¯t ask him for help ¡°But we might give a nudge here or there to help one of our favorites on a purely mundane affair.¡±

    ¡°So you really were trying to set me up with that lady at the gym?¡± Callum asked, mind leaping to an absolutely irrelevant matter for some reason. At least he knew he hadn¡¯t been imagining things; Shahey was acting. He wasn¡¯t human and never had been, and all the expressions were put on solely for Callum¡¯s benefit.

    ¡°I was!¡± Shahey laughed. ¡°I didn¡¯t know about your talents at the time. Maybe I should have suspected, though. Supernaturals tend to be more comfortable in each other¡¯s company, so maybe your grandparents had a few drops of blood from somewhere. Fae or mage.¡±

    Callum nodded, a little bit disturbed. Less at the implications for his heritage than at the concept that he was being influenced without his knowledge. Perhaps the reason he¡¯d settled so quickly on Winut, without looking at other properties, was some subtle urging of his hindbrain he hadn¡¯t noticed. Or he¡¯d gone deeper into fae territory than he meant to, just because of that small nudge.

    ¡°So far as your actual parents go, really there¡¯s not much to the story.¡± Shahey tapped a claw against the table, something he¡¯d also conjured. ¡°When Callum and Mary moved to Tanner, they had a daughter. I don¡¯t know what went wrong with her, but she turned into a trollop pretty early on and wouldn¡¯t clean up her behavior. They had a falling out, kicked her out, and disowned her. She vanished for a while, turned up pregnant, had you and left you with Callum and Mary.¡±

    ¡°¡­I see why they never told me themselves.¡± It was hard not to take it personally, that he was the bastard son of a woman of ill repute, but at the same time, that clearly hadn¡¯t mattered in the end. He¡¯d turned out just fine, and he owed all that to his real parents, not the biological ones. Though it did raise the question of who exactly the father was, and how much those genes were responsible for Callum¡¯s magic, and glamour-blindness.

    ¡°You turned out well, there was no need to weigh you down with it,¡± Shahey agreed. ¡°I never thought you had any particular supernatural talent myself, so it¡¯s not surprising nobody else did. Though if they¡¯d known, they¡¯d have snapped you up immediately. The weirder aspects are in high demand. As it is, I¡¯m surprised they let you slip away so easily.¡±

    ¡°I was careful they didn¡¯t think much of me,¡± Callum told him. ¡°It¡¯s much easier to trick someone when they think you¡¯re stupid.¡±

    ¡°Ha! I like it.¡± Shahey favored him with a toothy grin. ¡°Just don¡¯t be actually stupid, like wandering into our territory uninvited.¡±

    ¡°No, sir, I will not. You have my word I won¡¯t return without an invitation,¡± Callum said. He meant it. Shahey had been fairly easygoing throughout the conversation, but at the same time, the mana had remained frozen as a reminder of the power the dragon held. At least on his side of the portal. He wasn¡¯t sure if it was a threat or just a consequence of having the attention of Shahey¡¯s real body.

    ¡°Good,¡± Shahey said. ¡°Then it is time to go.¡±

    ¡°Do you have any advice you could offer me before I leave?¡± Even if Shahey, or dragons in general, wouldn¡¯t help him or oppose him in any substantive way, he might be able to get some useful information. Politeness went a long way.

    ¡°If you¡¯re looking for enchanting materials, you¡¯ll want either the Night Lands or the Deep Wilds. Faerie is rather like here, and you won¡¯t go unnoticed.¡± Shahey stood, waving his hand and creating a staircase down toward the portal out of thin air. ¡°Of the two, I¡¯d suggest the Night Lands. The Deep Wilds are more hostile, and it¡¯s easier to get mordite anyway. You just need to root around at the bottoms of the cenotes there.¡±

    ¡°Surely enchanting material isn¡¯t just limited to bane metals,¡± Callum said, following Shahey carefully. It was a very, very long way down.

    ¡°I suppose not, but I¡¯ve only passing familiarity with the details.¡± It only made sense, since nobody but mages could make enchanted items. Or even use them, unless they were completely passive. ¡°By the way, you should stop by Tanner again when you get the chance. Nobody there believes you¡¯re some kind of murderous terrorist.¡±

    ¡°I¡¯d love to,¡± Callum admitted. He still thought about the people he¡¯d left behind on occasion, though he didn¡¯t let himself dwell on it. It wasn¡¯t like he could go back. ¡°But if I did, GAR or the feds would pester them or worse.¡±

    ¡°That¡¯s true,¡± Shahey said. ¡°I suppose you¡¯ll have to get far more terrifying, enough that nobody will dare to cross you.¡±

    ¡°That¡¯s the dragon way?¡±

    ¡°It is.¡±

    ¡°I will keep that in mind, sir,¡± Callum said.

    ¡°If you want to talk to me again, stop by the gym,¡± Shahey said.

    ¡°Out of curiosity, why a gym? I mean, you¡¯re a dragon, it seems a little ordinary.¡±

    ¡°Because it¡¯s interesting,¡± Shahey said cheerfully. ¡°I get to meet all kinds of people. I met you, for example.¡±

    ¡°I don¡¯t think I was too interesting before I found out I was a mage.¡±

    ¡°Oh, you weren¡¯t that bad. Admittedly, you¡¯re much more entertaining now.¡±

    That made Callum laugh. They stopped in front of the portal, everything that Shahey had summoned dissolving back into nothing. It was going to take a while to digest the conversation, since Shahey had given him a lot to think about along with a number of hints.

    He was a little regretful Shahey hadn¡¯t offered to help, but at the same time, he was glad. Although it wasn¡¯t likely that dragons could exert their full power on Earth, if Shahey did make a move Callum would be beholden to the dragon¡¯s interests, rather than his own man. Callum would far rather take the harder road and remain independent than rely on someone else¡¯s strength to protect him.

    ¡°What about the people who attacked you? It seems like a terribly stupid idea.¡±

    ¡°It is,¡± Shahey said cheerfully. ¡°But some people just can¡¯t suffer wounded pride.¡± He rolled his eyes. ¡°I might have to go remind someone of the foolishness of such an action. But it need not concern you.¡±

    ¡°Fair enough,¡± Callum said. ¡°I suppose you¡¯ll just fire-breath them like you did those trolls or whatever they were.¡±

    ¡°It¡¯s kind of funny,¡± Shahey said musingly. ¡°We don¡¯t actually breathe fire, but in Earth lore dragons could, so why not? It¡¯s a great idea, actually. Very imposing.¡±

    ¡°It is at that,¡± Callum said, wrestling his luggage around as they reached the bottom of the stairs. It was much harder to maneuver without gravitykinesis. The portal back looked just the same, its magical construction resisting the freezing effect of the dragon¡¯s presence.

    ¡°If I may ask, did you make that portal? I¡¯m pretty sure it¡¯s artificial.¡±

    ¡°Alas, no,¡± Shahey chuckled. ¡°I think we¡¯d have more of them if we did.¡±

    ¡°Huh,¡± said Callum. That implied that it was a human mage that had made it. Somehow. He wanted to ask more, but there was a glint he didn¡¯t like in Shahey¡¯s eyes that reminded him the dragonblooded was only a tiny extension of a larger, vaster, and far more dangerous being. Especially when Shahey tilted his head toward the portal meaningfully, which was definitely his cue to go.

    ¡°I¡¯ll stop by if and when I can,¡± Callum said instead, stepping toward the portal and pulling his luggage along behind him. ¡°But it might not be for a while. Years, I guess. Any last thoughts before I go?¡±

    ¡°The strong do what they can, and the weak endure what they must,¡± Shahey quoted at him. ¡°You¡¯re taking the path of the strong. Think about it.¡±

    ¡°I will,¡± Callum promised, though he wasn¡¯t entirely certain some quote from ancient Greece was entirely relevant. Though considering the architecture he¡¯d used, Shahey clearly had a soft spot for the time period. He gave Shahey one last nod and stepped back through the portal.

    ***

    ¡°This is an official request from the Department of Arcane Investigation,¡± Ray Danforth said, trying to be patient.

    ¡°There¡¯s nothing I can tell the DAI that I haven¡¯t already told you,¡± Arthur Langley said mildly, but there was no give in his expression.

    ¡°There are not many people who had close contact with Mister Chase Hall.¡± Danforth clasped his hands together. ¡°In turn, he is one of the few people we know has had contact with Callum Wells. We acquired information recently which suggests a new line of inquiry.¡±

    ¡°Oh? What might that be?¡± Arthur looked skeptical.

    ¡°We have confirmation that he has contacts in Europe.¡± Ray would have rather kept that detail private, but King Jissarrel, who¡¯d supplied the information, had other ideas. To a fae, the idea of being involved in the story of some ghostly murderer was too good to pass up, so he¡¯d been telling everyone who listened. It wouldn¡¯t be long before it reached Callum himself, or whatever organization he had, so they needed to move quickly.

    Unauthorized use of content: if you find this story on Amazon, report the violation.

    At least Jissarrel had been able to track the airports he used, so they had a number of feds and their image matching programs combing through footage to see if they could find a recent photo. The fae king had provided a ghostly image of his own, but that was hardly useful. Even if Callum hadn¡¯t shaved off the mess on his face, the apparition was a hazy magical conjuration that¡¯d be difficult to process into something the average Interpol agent could use.

    ¡°Europe is a long way away. I don¡¯t think anyone here would know about it.¡±

    ¡°Perhaps not, but now that we know there¡¯s something there, we can ask specific questions that might jog people¡¯s memories. Whether Chase Hall mentioned anything about Europe, had an accent, talked to anyone with an accent, any of that.¡±

    ¡°He sounded purely American to me,¡± Arthur said. ¡°Honestly he mostly kept to himself. Came here for mental health reasons, like I said last time. The only people who had much interaction with him were myself, Jessica, and Gerry.¡±

    ¡°Could you arrange for interviews with them? It won¡¯t take long, I simply want to see if I can get them to recall anything.¡±

    ¡°Hm.¡± Arthur eyed Ray distrustfully, but eventually nodded. ¡°I¡¯ll have them come by.¡±

    ¡°Thank you,¡± Ray said, sitting back in his chair. It seemed like the Wells case was the only one he¡¯d been working on recently. Or the Ghost case, as some still called it, since it wasn¡¯t like escaping from BSE custody had made the name any less apt. For himself, he preferred not to romanticize someone as clearly dangerous as Callum Wells.

    It took some time for the witnesses to arrive, since they all had jobs, and the results were mutually unsatisfactory. For him, nobody had any information that might hint at a link between Chase Hall and Callum Wells or Europe. He didn¡¯t even think they were sandbagging like they had before, though at the same time nobody had yet admitted they knew anything about the hotel massacre. For them, it was just another round of annoying questions and having to take time out of their days.

    When he stood up, he was not very hopeful. It seemed like it had just been a waste of a trip and a day, especially when this was mostly BSE¡¯s case anyway. They probably wouldn¡¯t even thank him for his trouble, and might blame him for the lack of information. He found Felicia waiting outside the office he¡¯d appropriated for the interviews, and she reached out to grip his arm.

    ¡°We need to go,¡± she whispered in his ear, and he nodded, escorting her out the door. He wasn¡¯t sure what she had for him, but it was not something for shifter ears. Ears that were far too sharp for them to speak freely.

    They took the teleporter back to GAR, heading into the back to the secure areas that led to the DAI compound. The US branch adjoined the GAR headquarters, so it wasn¡¯t necessary to go through another set of teleport pads. It wasn¡¯t like the BSE black site, which didn¡¯t have any other way in or out. He followed Felicia into their shared office, closing the door and waiting for whatever she obviously wanted to tell him.

    ¡°I got the story out of one of the young shifters,¡± Felicia said. ¡°Clara.¡±

    ¡°You did?¡± Ray stared at her. Her siren blood meant that Felicia didn¡¯t talk too much around others, because when she did it was generally a compulsion. That could be blatant, or it could be subtle. Often she used the former, in her capacity as an agent, but sometimes it was the latter. ¡°Alpha Langley will have our hides. Hell, Alpha Chester will demand them, and get them!¡±

    ¡°It¡¯s fine, she doesn¡¯t know,¡± Felicia said, waving it off. While sometimes they had to bend the law as DAI agents, fae also had odd ideas of morals. Normally it was fine, and Ray rather liked Felicia, but sometimes she took a line that struck him oddly. ¡°The point is, the victims did kidnap a shifter. Clara. She¡¯s too weak to fight compulsions properly.¡±

    ¡°Oh?¡± Ray leaned forward, objections forgotten. ¡°I mean, we can¡¯t possibly use the information officially, but what happened?¡±

    ¡°She was teleported out. That¡¯s not what she said, but she described a sudden displacement with extreme nausea. I¡¯m not sure why the nausea, but since we already know Hall was working with Wells, that seems relevant. Also, that Hall came out of a closed room smelling like gunpowder. It¡¯s pretty clear that Wells was playing porter for him.¡±

    ¡°That is some excellent corroboration,¡± Ray admitted. ¡°We can¡¯t use it officially, but I can write up a report that still gets the necessary information up the line. It¡¯ll be easier to look for two people than one.¡±

    ¡°I¡¯ll make sure Interpol has Hall¡¯s name and information, too.¡± Felicia said with a sigh. ¡°He and Wells seem to have the mundane act down pretty well so they might have more luck than we do.¡±

    ¡°Time for paperwork, then,¡± said Ray, turning to his computer. He still missed the click-clack of a proper typewriter, but computers were just so much easier to work with.

    ¡°Oh boy,¡± Felicia said, without enthusiasm. Ray snorted and pulled up the email client, flashing as it was for his attention. There was some of the usual inane stuff, commentary about cases neither of them were involved in, but one of them was from BSE and it caught his attention.

    Baiting Callum Wells

    Agent Danforth;

    I need your input on a proposal for potentially entrapping Wells using known associates. Duvall is pushing hard and the Europe lead is far too vague.

    Zhen.

    Ray groaned. The Wells case just seemed to generate work out of thin air. He couldn¡¯t wait for it to be over.

    ***

    Fane Sen was in a foul mood. He had not exactly covered himself in glory when he had allowed Callum Wells to escape, but it was in the end a minor matter. Some new and incompetent mage wouldn¡¯t make it far before GAR picked him up again. Except they hadn¡¯t.

    Then it turned out Wells was somewhat more valuable than he¡¯d thought. Not only was Archmage Duvall absolutely furious about losing a very rare spatial mage, but somehow the man was a dangerous renegade. He hadn¡¯t impressed Sen as anything of the sort at the time, and even now he doubted it, but he¡¯d read the reports and certainly something had happened.

    If anything, learning that Wells was some kind of spatial magic mastermind should have excused the escape, but for some reason it just made Patriarch Fane more angry. Sen was suffering under a cloud from no fault of his own, and a displeasure that had resulted in him being assigned to support the Bureau of Secret Protection that was deploying to Europe. Not to head the team, no, just to play backup, despite his demonstrated prowess with wind and fire.

    He knew that the Patriarch had leaned on someone to make sure he was included. Sen wasn¡¯t stupid; he realized that the idea was that he¡¯d be able to redeem himself by bringing down Wells, but he thought this was all rather much for one man. Though it was true he was looking forward to seeing that bastard brought appropriately low.

    ¡°It¡¯s all hurry up and wait,¡± one of the other men grunted, some agent with a completely nonsensical European name, something Polish or the like. The relations between the Chinese mage clans and their European counterparts were not as strained as the mundane ones, but neither were they particularly warm.

    ¡°Why do we have to sit here all suited up if nobody knows anything about the guy?¡± Another complained, though he didn¡¯t stop sorting through his combat foci.

    ¡°Because he¡¯s a spatial mage and he¡¯s not going to stay in the same place for long.¡± Sen explained the obvious, ignoring the answering glare. ¡°The moment we get anything I bet you that Duvall herself comes to deploy us.¡±

    ¡°Possibly, but it¡¯s unlikely.¡± Zarin, the BSE leader with a surprisingly pronounceable name, disagreed. ¡°Archmage Duvall is incredibly busy with the portal worlds and has better things to do than our job. Besides, she has an aversion to violence. She might make an exception for a spatial mage, but we expect to find more than just a spatial mage.¡±

    ¡°I don¡¯t like how little information we have,¡± the first agent complained.

    ¡°Neither do I,¡± Zarin said. ¡°But considering what this group¡¯s already done we can¡¯t sit back and wait.¡±

    ¡°What worries me is the reports that he¡¯s associating with the dragonblooded,¡± said the man with the annoying name. ¡°That¡¯s not something even we should be tangling with.¡±

    ¡°They¡¯re not really that impressive,¡± Sen said. ¡°My Patriarch has killed several.¡±

    ¡°Yeah? And how has that worked out for him?¡±

    Sen scowled. The feud wasn¡¯t active anymore, but there had been some rather vicious fighting between the dragonblooded and the Fanes around the turn of the eighteenth century. Some of the older members of the House still didn¡¯t like leaving the bounds of the Middle Kingdom.

    ¡°That¡¯s just a rumor,¡± Zarin chided them. ¡°The dragonblooded don¡¯t align themselves with any factions on this side of the portal. If there¡¯s one around, we ignore it.¡±

    ¡°Yes, sir,¡± said the annoying man. Sen sighed, and went back to checking his foci.

    ***

    Callum wasn¡¯t really eager to go into the vampire world, for many and obvious reasons, but it was clear he had two choices. One was to take a few risks and get the materials he needed to set up infrastructure, or hide under a rock. Even if he chose the latter, all that meant was that it¡¯d take longer for GAR to find him and he wouldn¡¯t be prepared when they did. In the end, it wasn¡¯t a choice at all.

    Contrary to expectations, the vampire portal world, the Night Lands, didn¡¯t have its entrance in Transylvania. In fact, the locations of the portal worlds seemed rather disconnected from their mythological sources, as the fae portal wasn¡¯t in Ireland, but rather the Black Forest of Germany. Considering Shahey¡¯s mention that the legends of dragons came before the dragons themselves, Callum had suspicions that supernaturals were not as old as they liked to style themselves.

    From the official history he¡¯d found, the fae portal was far and away the oldest, since it had been around long enough for people to actually colonize it, but it was in Germany, which wasn¡¯t generally connected to Titania and Oberon in legends. The Alps didn¡¯t really seem like the best place for dragons, and the Ardennes, in France, didn¡¯t scream vampire.

    Those three places were, however, nicely remote areas for someone to experiment without being disturbed while still being close to civilization. Or, alternately, they were areas where a portal could be moved to that were not in the path of common travel. The limited amount of literature he had access to didn¡¯t hint anything about their origins, but there was no reason they¡¯d always been where they were now. After all, he could move his own portals without dismissing them.

    He was fresh and recharged after spending time in the dragonlands, so he wrapped himself and his luggage in his vis and started teleporting northward. The one ID he had was only good for the states, certainly not for Europe, and he wasn¡¯t sure how well just paying cash or hitchhiking would be taken. They were used to American tourists, certainly, but he didn¡¯t have a passport and he wasn¡¯t sticking to the tourist traps.

    That said, it was still two hundred miles from the Matterhorn to the Ardennes, which was a fairly long haul. If he could take what Shahey said at face value then the fae shouldn¡¯t have been able to track him after he entered the dragonlands, and the same would be true in the Night Lands, but it was a tossup as to whether they could locate him in between.

    Accordingly, he traveled quickly, with his senses spread wide, ready to head off in another direction if he caught a hint of anything supernatural. Even if the area was remote and so perfect for a fae enclave, the preponderance of dragonlands mana probably kept them away. Even so, he made sure to teleport to spots screened by trees or brush, because he¡¯d learned his lesson about snipers.

    An hour or so later, he¡¯d slowed down on his teleports as there didn¡¯t seem to be any pursuit happening. With a little bit of breathing room, he decided that he¡¯d be perfectly capable of fleeing from a moving train if someone did catch up to him, so he made his way to a train station and bought a ticket to Basel. He found his nationality and complete inability to speak anything other than English was not a problem, though he was warned that crossing the Swiss border was a little more involved. Not that he had to worry much about that.

    The train ride gave him a little bit of time to try and ponder the new insights he¡¯d gotten from the portal worlds, but he didn¡¯t have the ability to actually practice anything. He¡¯d leave smears behind him in the mana field as the train moved, and he still felt that masquerading as an ordinary person was the easiest way to hide from supernatural attention. Instead he got out his laptop, reading up on the Night Lands while the back of his head marveled at how bizarre the encounter with Shahey was.

    There was no telling how old the dragonblooded was, but by his own admission, Shahey had been in Tanner throughout Callum¡¯s entire life. It was hard to believe the dragonblooded didn¡¯t know more about his parents or even Callum¡¯s talents, but at the same time he wasn¡¯t someone Callum could push for answers. Although, Shahey had been remarkably forthcoming about the nature of dragons and Callum¡¯s parents, which made Callum wonder what exactly Shahey was trying to manipulate him into doing.

    Unfortunately, he didn¡¯t know enough to figure out what Shahey¡¯s angle was, or if he was just messing around. The uncertainly made him even more anxious, chewing his lip as he looked out the window at the landscape passing by. Eventually he wrestled his thoughts back around to being careful in the moment, rather than in the future.

    Each time the train entered a major city, he got a little twitchy because there were obviously supernaturals around, and he ended up teleporting off the train before it actually arrived at the station. There were too many mage trails to be comfortable and some obvious fae, so he decided to circle around and pick up the train on the other side whenever there was such a stop. While he¡¯d done it before, teleporting from a moving place to a stationary one or vice versa was a bit weird, the relative positions changing constantly.

    He wasn¡¯t sure what happened to the velocity difference, but he certainly felt no deceleration. It did imply that he ought to be able to fling stuff if he had a moving teleport anchor, though the logistics for that were somewhat fraught. It was one thing to have himself and a stable piece of land to reference, it was another thing to move the framework willy-nilly. Portals might be better, and he added that to his notebook as a topic of practice.

    Callum got off the train for good just before he reached Basel, leaving behind a cleanup enchantment in the screws of the seat he¡¯d been using, and made his way northward a few score miles until he found a French train station. There he purchased another ticket, one for his real destination of the Ardennes. Something he did note as he traveled was the shifting mana as he passed by the fae portal, somewhere over in Germany. Even though he couldn¡¯t really tell the difference between the different types, there were definite currents.

    With the precautions he was taking, there were only two times when he got really alarmed. Both times he saw mage bubbles moving in his direction and he popped himself orthogonally a few times and waited to see if he was followed. Fortunately he wasn¡¯t, but that still was an unpleasant experience.

    Callum wished to himself that he could afford to be less jumpy as he finally got off near his stop. Just like when he was near the Alps, he could sense a higher flow of mana coming from somewhere out in the Ardennes. Also like the Alps, it was quite picturesque despite the chilly weather and he wished he had the time to actually enjoy it, rather than blaze through as fast as possible.

    He sighed and headed inward toward where the map marker placed the portal, though with somewhat more caution than he had approached the dragon¡¯s portal. He expected one that was actually trafficked would have more infrastructure, and indeed it didn¡¯t take him long to find the edges of a ward. Of course, it was made easier by how quickly he could move with teleports; as far as walking went it would have been quite a trip.

    Unlike the dragon¡¯s portal, the vampire portal was a full GAR installation, which was actually more worrisome than actual vampires. He had a number of advantages, but enough people and defenses could make any kind of infiltration impossible. No matter how much he needed materials, if it was too busy he wouldn¡¯t even dare.

    Upon actual surveillance, though, it wasn¡¯t actually that large a compound. While he was intellectually aware of how much the teleport network changed things, it was weird to see a large building off in the woods and completely disconnected from anything else. At the very least it should have been a small town, if it was a staging point for the draft and a connection to one of the major supernatural races, but it wasn¡¯t.

    The building reminded him more of a courthouse than a castle, large and squat with a single oversized story, the walls all a single piece of smooth stone. There was only a single set of windows by the door, which was a heavily reinforced number facing north. It was pretty boring to look at, really.

    The outer wards were probably actually glamours, designed to hide the place from prying eyes. They didn¡¯t have the rotating connections that he¡¯d seen in more advanced wards, and were just a loose screen that was easy to get past. Beyond those there was some heavier warding that seemed like actual security systems.

    Even if there weren¡¯t any windows he located a tree for cover before he teleported himself through the outer wards, so he could bring the entire building inside the range of his perceptions. It took him a while to see through the weave of vis that made up the security ward, but the interior wasn¡¯t complex either. The actual portal was in the center, inside of a room that looked fairly fancy and even included a ramp going through the center of the portal to the other side. There was a guardpost set at the door leading into and out of the room, with some complex enchantments that he couldn¡¯t even begin to puzzle out.

    That guardpost had a pair of mages, but neither of them seemed to notice Callum. In fact, they were reading and not really paying attention at all. The rest of the building was given over to facilities for the guards and a set of GAR teleporters. One of the normal ones, and one that had a far, far larger pad, presumably for cargo. It did make sense that they didn¡¯t need more than a set of observers and access control on the Earth side of the portal, but it still felt weird.

    The portal itself was not the same as the one which led to the dragonlands. In a way that was obvious; it was some other weird dimension, of course it wouldn¡¯t be the same. But it was also a massive tangled snarl of mana rather than the coherent and structured ring of the dragonlands. At a guess, it was actually natural, or mostly natural.

    There were structured portions tacked onto the snarl, possibly so it could be moved, and the weird twists and turns of the rest of it were, after a closer look, not actually random. While it was still complex, he could see some familiar patterns. The actual portal anchor structures; the bits that pulled in mana to fuel it; all the usual features were there. They just looked messy and were probably very inefficient, but he could at least believe they¡¯d been made by natural processes.

    On the other side of the portal was another, larger room, which he assumed was likewise guarded or at least controlled. That could have been a serious issue, since he absolutely needed to get through unobserved. He was confident he could bypass the wards, but less confident he could bypass actual observers.

    Fortunately for him, the vampire portal was positioned very similarly to the one in the dragonlands, where there was a definite front and back. Though the area around it was artificial rather than natural, there wasn¡¯t a wall flat against the unused side of the portal. It made sense, since the actual rim was thicker than the flat plane of the hole it made, but the upshot was that there was a few feet of empty space that he could hide in.

    Before he went in, he made sure to charge up his emergency escape. It wasn¡¯t pleasant to deal with, but if he got caught sneaking in he¡¯d need to use it right away. Once the focus was tingling unpleasantly, he sent a thread through the gaps in the warding and popped himself behind the portal.

 Chapter 6 â€“ Night Lands

    Callum stood in the dusty darkness of the portal rear for a few minutes, feeling the homebond vibrate his vis while he stretched out with his senses to make sure that nobody had noticed his entrance. The little space he was in was screened from either side and there was a lot of mana pouring through, so he hoped that it wouldn¡¯t be obvious that he¡¯d teleported there.

    He was proven right when the mage bubbles didn¡¯t move. That was true on either side of the portal, as both sides had an access chamber guarded by people. The difference with the Night Lands was those people were vampires.

    Now that he was more familiar with things, he could tell the difference between them and a normal human solely from the vis they carried inside them and not just the change in features. Actually, Callum was a lot more worried about them than he was about the mages. It had become clear that mages didn¡¯t generally have the senses to pick him up so long as he was being quiet and out of sight, but a vampire might well see or hear or smell him and move faster than Callum could react. He didn¡¯t want to stay in close proximity for very long.

    The building in the Night Lands actually was a castle, and like in the dragonlands the area was absolutely saturated in mana. It took more effort than he liked to get his perceptions through the thick stone walls and figure out where he was in relation to everything. Like every castle it was far larger than was strictly practical, with a truly fantastic number of rooms and broad, tall hallways. Unlike the compound on the other side, it was built with quarried blocks and practically oozed age.

    It was definitely inhabited, or at least staffed, with a mix of vampires and mages and, uncomfortably, normal people. Or at least humans without the standard mage bubble. It made at least a little bit of sense, because a castle demanded menial labor and he couldn¡¯t see mages stooping to cooking and cleaning. But in an off-Earth, vampire-filled castle, that seemed like a pretty terrible existence.

    Or they might just be people like Lucy, supernatural duds employed by GAR in whatever jobs. It was a mistake to think that just because the people weren¡¯t supernatural, they¡¯d be on his side. He didn¡¯t notice any marks of blatant slavery so there was at least some measure of civility. It was something to look into after he was finished, because he¡¯d need a hell of a plan to think about dealing with an entire castle in any meaningful way.

    Fortunately, castles were not exactly tall. Even if it was a magical castle, the roof overhead was well within Callum¡¯s range and, what was better, had some nice sheltered areas he could put himself in. Selecting an alcove at the base of a turret, he popped himself to the outside.

    The first thing he noticed was the moon. It was enormous and full, covering half the sky, seeming almost close enough he could touch it. Unlike the silvery illumination of Earth¡¯s moon, the one in the Night Lands gave off a sort of weird, grey-blue glow, even if it made no sense for glow to be that color. That rendered everything outside dim and dark, somewhere past twilight but not the deep dark of a moonless night.

    The moon itself wasn¡¯t crater-scarred and barren like Earth¡¯s moon either, instead slowly rippling as if it were made out of water. It was just as alien a sight as the endless cliff face of the dragonlands, and in many ways far more breathtaking. The utter blankness and blackness of the rest of the sky only emphasized the way the moon dominated everything.

    Despite the dragonlands being in eternal day, or at least having a cycle longer than he¡¯d been there, the Night Lands being, well, night still somehow surprised him. It was stupid, especially since the name told him all he needed to know, but actually crossing from day to night so sharply was disconcerting. He was just glad he had his spatial perceptions, because his night vision was not anywhere good enough for the Night Lands.

    Not that it was particularly dark in the town. Unsurprisingly, the castle and the portal was surrounded by more buildings, though he wasn¡¯t sure town was the quite the right word for the sprawl of civilization. There were lights along the streets and shining through house windows, a blue-white that reminded Callum of natural gas more than anything, though he suspected it was all enchantment-based. Trees and gardens shone green under spotlights

    The layout was a little weird too, the building clustered together, and it took him a bit to understand that he was seeing a bunch of close estates rather than a normal town.

    He¡¯d known that mages had a significant presence in the portal worlds, but it was still odd to see. Since it seemed quite likely the night was a permanent one, he didn¡¯t know how any person could stand to stay permanently, but the huge estates probably had more than enough light. It wouldn¡¯t be too different from people who stayed indoors all day anyway, and there was always the teleportation network if they wanted to get somewhere on Earth.

    Considering the abundant mana, he could even see why people would want to live in a portal world, though he found it far too strange for his tastes. Part of that was how, just like the dragonlands, the space itself seemed a little bit weird, a little bit off. He didn¡¯t know how he¡¯d articulate it, but if mages didn¡¯t notice it, they¡¯d probably only enjoy the benefits of the mana. At least sprawling out on this side of the portal meant they messed with the real world less, or so he hoped.

    There was a lot to learn in the town, since as he focused down on some of the streetlights he could see they were far more complex light enchantments than anything he¡¯d seen in his books. If the estates held full mages and the sort of magical technology they were used to, he could figure out a lot of useful things. But that was only if he was willing to stick around, and he really wasn¡¯t.

    He wasn¡¯t sure if it was local day or night or if that was entirely irrelevant, but there were people moving about outside, probably vampires, and he did not want to attract any attention. If he pretended to be mundane, he wouldn¡¯t know how to act, and if he pretended to be a mage, he didn¡¯t have a functional tattoo or knowledge background to pass any real scrutiny.

    From his vantage point he couldn¡¯t tell exactly which direction was the shortest way to get out of the town, though he figured he was near the center, so he chose the darkest direction and went that way. Since there were mages around muddying up the local mana, he decided against making any cleanup enchantments from some of the spare metal he was carrying. In fact, he wasn¡¯t sure it would work the same considering the far more intense mana, and he castigated himself for not experimenting back in the dragonlands.

    Instead he popped himself along the path of the roads, using trees to keep out of the sight of anyone nearby and keeping far away from any pedestrians. As annoying as it was, the sickening tingle of the primed teleport was what gave him the courage to do it, though it was vanishingly unlikely anyone would really stop him. The security checks at the portal meant that they wouldn¡¯t be on the alert for a random mage who wasn¡¯t supposed to be there.

    He followed the lit road until it left the surrounding estates and carved a path off into the darkness in a long trail of faint illumination. There he took a sharp turn to leave the trappings of civilization. While he¡¯d noticed the difference in the spatial feel between Earth and the Night Lands almost immediately after arriving, the border between the settlement and the wilderness was even sharper. The pressure against moving his vis threads was higher even than the dragonlands and the general weirdness of the way things were put together stronger. The wilderness definitely felt unsettled.

    Even if the darkness wasn¡¯t welcoming, he wasn¡¯t going to try and get what he needed from the town or follow the road to whatever its ultimate destination was. Whatever passed for civilization in the night lands would be too full of either mages or of vampires for his tastes. Not only were people the real danger to him, but if he wanted enchanting materials he didn¡¯t want to compete for them.

    It wasn¡¯t to say that the Night Lands were harmless aside from the vampires. There had to be something for drafted mages to fight, after all. There was a front, somewhere out in the darkness, that held the line against the hostile denizens of the Night Lands, both intelligent and not. From what he read, not only were there hostile vampires not aligned with GAR, but also entire regions that seemed to spawn predatory horrors. Considering vampires fit that description, Callum wasn¡¯t surprised.

    The literature Lucy had provided contained lurid descriptions of possible beasts that ran the gamut from formless, gibbering masses of teeth and darkness to massive wormlike creatures the size of skyscrapers, encroaching on the safer parts of the Night Lands. Personally, Callum suspected those were things of ages past, if they¡¯d ever existed at all, but it was the only information he had so he had to give it some respect.

    However, all that was out at the front, and back closer to the portal the Night Lands were semi-tamed. Which wasn¡¯t to say that the wilderness was completely safe. Away from the front, the main threat was apparently from something called a moon-stirge, basically a cow-sized wasp with a matching temperament. Clearly they weren¡¯t any significant threat near the portal settlement, since there were no walls and people out in the open, but it was something he¡¯d have to keep an eye out for once he got further into the wilderness.

    What there weren¡¯t any of were zombies, ghouls, ghosts, ghasts, or other sorts of greebles. In fact, the entire portal world had a weirdly truncated ecology. There was a type of grass, looking nearly black in the unnatural light of the moon, and here and there were gnarled trees with ghostly gray leaves, but there weren¡¯t any insects. Nothing buzzing or humming. No bird calls, nothing but silence.

    It was incredibly oppressive, and Callum found himself holding his breath at times as he headed off perpendicular to the road. He was extremely glad that he had a superb sense of direction thanks to his spatial magic, because the lights faded very quickly into the distance and he was surrounded by an endless plain of black grass broken up by the gray spots of the weird trees.

    He knew he was looking for cenotes, but with the completely uniform terrain he didn¡¯t know what the signs would be. Though he figured that any deviation would be worth investigating. Even his ability to see straight through the ground didn¡¯t seem to help, since the soil and bedrock seemed to be just as monotonous and featureless as the surface. The only things that seemed to break the sameness of the layers were the extensive root systems the trees had.

    Still, he could scan six hundred yards in every direction, so he felt he had a pretty good chance of running across something that would give him a lead. If not, he¡¯d just go back and rethink things. For the moment he let the vis he was trickling into his focus fade, sighing in relief as the harsh jangling sensations abated. He could keep it mostly charged, and for the moment he needed all his focus to pay attention to the Night Lands.

    ***

    Nasser Tannenhaur sniffed curiously as he passed the High Road out of Weltentor. Then he sniffed again, following a faint scent to the edge of the lanterns. It was not strong, but it was clear that someone had gone out in that direction, and if he was not mistaken, that someone was a mage. That was a very curious thing, since anything beyond the lights was fair game for whatever roamed the black plains. Or whoever.

    There were other settlements, true, but not of mages, so none of them could be the destination. The only reason the mages left Weltentor and went out was to acquire pearls from the wells of moonwater that dotted the Night Lands. All the ones from the well at Weltentor were long since spoken for, and besides, clearing out the wells as they appeared nearby provided useful extra stocks of moonwater.

    Such expeditions were always in groups, however, with a vampire guide to sniff out any recently manifested well. The moon had been quiescent for weeks, as well, so all the nearby wells had already been claimed and harvested. There was not a single reason he could think of for a lone mage to stray outside the light.

    It wasn¡¯t exactly his problem. He just kept an eye on Weltentor¡¯s boundaries by order of the Master, just in case some new arrival or even a rival Master decided to make trouble. A human mage wandering off wasn¡¯t a threat to Weltentor, but it was strange enough that he decided he¡¯d report it. He reached up to touch the scry-com on his lapel, activating the enchantment that connected it to the operator back in Weltentor Keep.

    ¡°Acknowledged,¡± came the cool female voice of the operator.

    ¡°Nasser, reporting,¡± he said. ¡°I have the track of a lone mage heading out along the High Road.¡±

    ¡°Who is it?¡±

    ¡°I don¡¯t know, I just have a faint scent. Possibly an air mage, moving quickly? It¡¯s too faint for someone not using travel magic.¡±

    ¡°Acknowledged,¡± the operator replied. ¡°Wait one.¡±

    Nasser did, drumming his fingers against the hilt of his blade. He knew that on Earth, they used bullets forged of pearls rather than blades, but the Night Lands were still civilized. He just hoped that he wasn¡¯t supposed to go out after the lone mage. Without light, the land itself changed with the whims of the moon and could make it difficult to track anyone who didn¡¯t have proper illumination.

    ¡°Nasser, return to base,¡± the operator said.

    ¡°Acknowledged,¡± he replied, and headed back to Weltentor Keep, breezing along at speed. It was best not to keep his superiors waiting, and besides, he¡¯d have an opportunity to refill on moonwater. He¡¯d tried the blood the wretches on the other side of the portal had to make do with, and was not impressed. Moonwater was better, though even blood was preferable to the ashes he had available before he came through the portal.

    He entered Weltentor Keep, bowing his head to higher-ranked guards and following the hallway to the security office. There, he expected to see the Warleader, or perhaps a representatives of the humans, considering the subject of his report. What he did not expect was the black uniform of no House and the pin of the Bureau of Secret Enforcement.

    Nasser stood somewhat straighter at that. He understood the deference to their mage allies, but he generally did not find them particularly impressive. The BSE men, however, were colder and harder than a Master and wielded their magic with deadly efficacy. The sight of the black uniform was enough to make Nasser even more cautious than usual.

    ¡°Grand Magus Taisen,¡± Warleader Van Harr introduced the man. Nasser inclined his head.

    ¡°Grand Magus,¡± he greeted the man.

    ¡°You said you found the track of a lone mage,¡± Taisen said. ¡°Could you identify the person?¡±

    ¡°I do not think so,¡± Nasser said thoughtfully, after considering it for a moment. ¡°The track was very faint, but it very clearly went outside the light border. It was a single scent, but I could not swear I would be able to pick it out from any other mage scents.¡±

    Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

    ¡°That is unfortunate,¡± Taisen said, in the sort of dead tone that the Master used before someone died, but fortunately Taisen did not have that kind of authority. Instead he just turned to Warleader Van Harr. ¡°We have been pursuing a renegade mage. While it seems unlikely one slipped past the guards here, we are taking this seriously. There is no point in pursuit, not in the Night Lands, but we want to be on high alert if and when they return to cross back to Earth.¡±

    ¡°I will report this to the Master,¡± the Warleader said. ¡°I am certain he will marshal our forces as you request.¡±

    ¡°Excellent.¡± Taisen said. ¡°Show me to him.¡±

    Both Nasser and Van Harr bristled at that, but the aura of power Taisen had gathered about himself demonstrated why it was not a good idea to take offense. Aside from the fact that it would raise hell with GAR and make the Master displeased. Warleader Van Harr scowled but turned to point deeper into the keep.

    ¡°This way, Grand Mage Taisen. Nasser, you are dismissed.¡±

    Nasser saluted Taisen and hastened away, down to the canteen where he could get some moonwater. It sounded like he¡¯d be pulling double shifts for the next few days, and he was going to need it.

    ***

    The literature on the Night Lands was very much not sufficient. It wasn¡¯t that there were creatures stalking him or anything, the place might as well have been a desert. The emptiness was creepy, but he wasn¡¯t overly worried about that. The problem was that the landscape changed.

    That particular shift had only happened once so far, the moon above beating like the pulse of a giant heart, and everything just rearranged itself in a mass of flickering shadows. The space and magic in his perceptions shuddered, twisted, and warped in a convulsive burst before it snapped back into place, his surroundings suddenly different. Where there had once been a grassy plain, there were rolling, scrubby hills of dark gray rock and blue moss. It seemed like everything outside him had been squeezed and reassembled without regard for what was already there.

    Callum cursed to himself and started teleporting back the way he¡¯d come. While the phenomenon was as interesting as it was horrifying, it made him fear that he¡¯d just gotten himself lost in the portal world. The intense spatial distortions were probably how the portal had formed in the first place, which would have been fascinating if he weren¡¯t terrified he was lost in an alien world.

    It was a massive relief to see the lights gleaming exactly where his sense of direction said they should. He stood on the black grass and stared for a bit, reassuring himself the town was really there, before heaving a sigh and turning to head back out. If the change didn¡¯t move him or the buildings, the landscape changing wasn¡¯t a huge issue. At least, if it didn¡¯t decide to bury him or the like. That said, he was uniquely immune to being buried, and if the settlement was still around it seemed that turning everything into a towering ocean was not to be expected.

    He had wasted a lot of time backtracking, though. Callum took an angle to his original path, since he¡¯d already established there were no cenotes that way, and teleported his way through the newly-created hills that were just as silent as the plains before. What was interesting was that they only appeared out of sight of the settlement, so perhaps there was something about magic or people that stabilized the landscape.

    At least the prevalence of mana helped with the exertion of rapid-fire teleporting, though he made sure to just hike for a while after each spate. He was forced to haul his luggage along with gravitykinesis, though, since the uneven stone underfoot didn¡¯t lend itself to the little wheels. Plus, making any kind of noise felt like a mistake, and he even found himself breathing quietly as he walked.

    Eventually he started yawning, since his clock and his body agreed it was late, and the dim surroundings didn¡¯t help. Callum really didn¡¯t like the idea of camping out in the open, despite not having seen any trace of anything living, but he wasn¡¯t really going to have a choice. Even though it was likely to change at any moment, Callum found as sheltered a nook as he could manage and broke out the tent.

    He was glad he¡¯d resupplied himself before coming, and could fill himself up on jerky, trail rations, and water. For some reason making a fire seemed an exceedingly bad idea, if for no other reason than it¡¯d be a beacon in the darkness. Eventually he compromised by setting up a small hand-crank battery lantern inside a firmly zipped tent, just so he¡¯d have something to look at other than grey-blue darkness.

    While he¡¯d have to catch some sleep, he did while away a little bit of time practicing with the new magical structures. He still had no luck dialing down his thread power, but flexing threads to make them flatter seemed at least possible. It was a bit of a road from flat threads to tubes, but he¡¯d at least made a start.

    Adjusting his normal, simple, and intuitive portals so they had recirculating structures was actually more of an issue. He¡¯d gotten so used to making them that trying to alter them felt uncomfortable. It didn¡¯t help that trying to add in the new structures meant that the portal never formed, or the entire mana structure collapsed. Or blew apart.

    He wasn¡¯t completely disheartened, since the trick was obviously an advanced one, but it didn¡¯t exactly put him in the best mood. Still, he dutifully recorded his attempts in his notebook before snuffing the light and closing his eyes. In the end, he only caught fits and snatches of sleep, the overwhelming silence and heavy mana making him restless. Callum decided that once he was done with his foray he would have to find a good safehouse and just crash for a few days.

    For better or for worse, there wasn¡¯t another moon-pulse and landscape-rearrangement during what passed for night, and when his watch told him it was early morning he figured he might as well get up. Actually, he would have preferred it return to the grassy plain because the rocky hills made digging a hole for his morning ablutions rather difficult. He really wished he had foci to take care of certain biological realities.

    He scrubbed his face with a moist towelette and packed up, heading onward and outward to find a cenote. Frustratingly, it seemed that he¡¯d given up just slightly too early the night before, because in less than an hour his spatial sense found movement off to one side. He couldn¡¯t see it with the naked eye, or even hear anything, but as soon as he focused on it he could tell it was one of the stirges.

    The thing was under one of the grey trees, chewing on it with horrific mandibles. That was actually fairly ordinary, but the fact that the root system of the tree kept trying to stab the stirge was not. They hadn¡¯t looked like anything special to his senses before, but the tree was using them as spears, albeit to not great effect. Still, he was glad he hadn¡¯t actually gone near one of the trees. Maybe he would have been fast enough to get out of the way, maybe not.

    Callum flattened himself against the ground and teleported himself in a big circle around the stirge, hoping that its presence meant there was a cenote around. He absolutely did not want to get any closer than he needed to. Wasps were bad enough; a wasp with a stinger like an icepick was pure nightmare fuel.

    Before he could investigate that much the stirge finished whatever it was doing and extended its wings, which were completely silent as it flitted off. He followed at a distance, the maximum distance he could, only able to perceive it with his spatial senses. The total flight wasn¡¯t far, though, two miles at most before the cenote he¡¯d been looking for came in view.

    It was maybe fifty feet across and almost perfectly circular, like someone had drilled a hole into the ground. It was also over two hundred feet deep, about half of that full of some kind of liquid that was even stronger in mana than the surroundings. In fact it seemed like it was the source of mana, energy oozing up out of the cenote.

    He could guess right away that it normally took multiple mages to clear such a thing. First of all, there was an appropriately large nest of stirges, living in the stone walls of the well. There were too many to count, and they made the idea of getting anywhere near the well a non-starter. While Callum had plenty of tricks, he didn¡¯t fancy his chances against a swarm of oversized wasps.

    That wasn¡¯t even accounting for what was in the waters, or whatever the cenote was actually filled with. There were fleshy pods clinging to the walls with long, spiked tentacles. Whenever one of the wasps drifted down to drink from the water surface, the nearest tentacle-pod would try and grapple it, churning up the surface of the water.

    There were also smaller shapes in the water, arrowpoints of some kind of fish, and round lumpen things at the very bottom. While neither of them seemed particularly offensive to his senses, he was entirely certain that, considering every other form of life he¡¯d seen in the Night Lands, they were quite nasty.

    Even with all that, he was sure that it wasn¡¯t too dangerous for competent mages to clear out. True, he didn¡¯t know how magic-resistant the life might be, since it was very clearly more energized than anything on Earth, but they were still animals. Group tactics and probably some flamethrowers would account for the stirges, while the tentacle things could be taken care of with old-fashioned dynamite.

    Hopefully actual mages would have better tools than those.

    At the very bottom of the cenote, scattered among the lumpy things, were small spheres resting on the rock that had the weird, dense feel of the vampire seal or, to a lesser extent, the bullets and enchanting materials. It was immediately obvious that was the mordite he¡¯d come for, but so far as he could tell there wasn¡¯t anything overly special about it other than the amount of mana inside it.

    Carefully, ever so carefully, he stretched out a thread of vis to wrap a teleport construct around the spheres. So far, he¡¯d seen it was very possible for people to notice and react to his magic, and there was no reason that animals couldn¡¯t do the same. This time, he didn¡¯t even have any handy walls and portals to hide behind, but if he was slow and subtle about it, he might be able to grab the stuff without disturbing anything.

    He¡¯d half-expected it to be hard to handle the mordite, given the energy density, rather like Clara or the pixie, but there was no resistance at all when he teleported it away. The sphere, about the size of a grape, appeared in the compartment in his luggage he¡¯d reserved for enchanting stuff. At the same time, a ripple ran through the not-water, something slightly different from the splashing and thrashing of the tentacled limpets.

    That wasn¡¯t good.

    Either his magic was more noticeable than he¡¯d liked or removing the mordite spheres was more disruptive than he¡¯d hoped. There was a little bit of a stir from the fish and the lumps, but nothing major. Yet.

    Callum took a moment to consider, then made himself a little action plan. First, he wrapped his teleport framework around some of the not-water and teleported it into one of the empty water bottles in his luggage. Even if he had no idea what it was, or what it was good for, it was magical and worth having some to fiddle around with. Then he reached out and got ready to take as many mordite spheres as he could in one go.

    Eight seemed to be his limit, but that was fine. That¡¯d still be quite a bit of raw enchanting material, at a quality far higher than anything he¡¯d seen. It was certainly a far cry from the powdered stuff, and possibly even purer than what he¡¯d seen in the teleportation network or the homebond. It was hard to tell with those, because they were just thin wires, which raised the question of how people with larger native vis threads enchanted them.

    He made a mental note to write down that question later and yanked on the teleports. The eight spheres of mordite dropped into his luggage, and the cenote went wild. The not-water started to fizzle and bubble, the lumps at the bottom of the cenote unfolded into long, snakelike things that shot toward the surface, and the stirges exploded into the air.

    Callum teleported directly away from the mess, and quickly, with an involuntary shiver. It was the first time there was actual noise in the Night Lands, a combination of hissing and buzzing, and it sounded incredibly angry. He didn¡¯t know whether the cenote inhabitants would be able to track him down, but even if they didn¡¯t, that might well draw other creatures or even vampires or mages. The latter would be a problem, since he had no time to clean up after himself, but there wasn¡¯t much he could do about it.

    Several miles later, he stopped and waited, listening and straining his perceptions for anything that might be following him. There was silence and stillness, so far as he could tell, and he let out a long breath and sat down to take a look at his loot. He didn¡¯t want to touch any of it, because for all he knew it was toxic, so he just got out his lantern and shone it into the luggage container briefly.

    The nine mordite spheres he had looked like tiny versions of the moon overhead, slowly rippling surfaces and all. In his perceptions they were solid, so the visual effect wasn¡¯t entirely real, but since he couldn¡¯t see mana visually, glamours and all, it wasn¡¯t that either. He¡¯d need better light to study it more, and that wasn¡¯t going to happen in the Night Lands.

    For once things seemed to be going fairly well, so he zipped up the container again and started back toward the gate. Since he hadn¡¯t been ambushed between the portals, the fae might have lost the trail by now, and if they hadn¡¯t, hanging around in a portal world wouldn¡¯t help. While he would have liked to think that stowing away on an intercontinental flight was enough, he wasn¡¯t sure about that. He did know that there were limitations, else he¡¯d have been found far earlier.

    All he needed to do was get back through the gate and he could settle down to make some serious items and do some serious practice. His notebook held a number of half-coherent thoughts for foci that he could work on, and ways he could protect himself or others. He still was determined not to be a mercenary, but he could at least be more considered in his responses.

    ***

    Bartholomew Janry¡¯s Shift Survey was going well. They¡¯d already found and cleared five wells in the controlled lands around Weltentor, which was near the limit for the normal appearance rate. The only issue had been the update by scry-com to be on the lookout for a lone, possibly rogue mage wandering the Night Lands, but they hadn¡¯t seen anything like that. Even if they had, Bart¡¯s team could have handled it.

    ¡°There¡¯s some noise to our eight o¡¯clock,¡± Garan¡¯s voice came over the scry-com, the wind mage being their dedicated listener as well as their transportation.

    ¡°Combat ready, everyone,¡± Bart instructed. ¡°Take us there, Garan.¡±

    They readied their shields, pulling up their active combat forms. Shards of force whirled around Bart, air congealed in front of Garan, and Christopher crystallized shards of ice. Edgar formed four sets of portals, the logistical support meaning there was no chance of any of them being flanked, let alone surrounded.

    Most mages didn¡¯t actually fight with a spatial talent on their side, given how rare they were, but Shift Surveys always needed one. Not only was their absolute sense of direction necessary to keep from getting lost, especially if a Shift happened outside the bounds of an illuminated area, but they could energize a large enough portal to siphon the moonwater off to Weltentor. Bart had found that even without any offensive abilities, the flexibility of instant movement was very helpful.

    A few minutes of flight brought them within range of a cenote that seemed to have already been disturbed, the stirges swarming and the moonwater thrashing with barbed limpets and the guardian kraken. He flexed his vis through the flight focus and took point, with Garan and Christopher flanking. Edgar, of course, stayed back, but his portals darted ahead.

    The stirges swarmed up at them, and Bat sent his force darts arcing through them. Like most animals in the portal worlds, they had some resistance to magic, but not enough to stop the spell form of a competent mage. Their torsos exploded in a shower of gore, and Edgar caught the falling corpses in one of this portals.

    They were used to fighting together, ice and force projectiles wreaking havoc on the stirge swarm while wind broke up groups or smashed the creatures together. Portals let them reposition at will, bouncing back and forth and utterly ignoring the stirge¡¯s attempts to surround them. Not that the creatures were all that dangerous, but those harpoon stingers actually could punch through a mage¡¯s shield, and none of them wanted to take the risk.

    In a few minutes they¡¯d eradicated the swarm, with the carcasses piled up in a gory heap, while the limpets and kraken snapped and strained madly from their places in the cenote. Edgar came closer and took the paired focus from his backpack, setting it on the ground as he focused his vis through it. The portal manifested in front of him, and he sent it flying off over the cenote and down to start taking in the moonwater.

    The aquatic beasts flailed at the portal but Edgar held it together, draining the moonwater into the immense cistern in Weltentor. The net there would catch the fish and other things floating in the water, and without the moon-water to float in and absorb, the kraken and limpets would be easy enough to dispatch. For Christopher to dispatch, anyway; they were tough, and had to practically be frozen solid to die.

    Neither he nor Garan were going to get near those flailing, razored tentacles.

    ¡°So, why was this already active?¡± Bart asked aloud.

    ¡°Another well nearby? Maybe they fought?¡±

    ¡°I¡¯d give you five to one odds it was that lone mage we¡¯re suppose to be watching for,¡± Edgar said, concentrating on holding the portal intact against the flailing tendrils.

    ¡°Could be, but it would be pretty stupid to rile up a cenote like this by yourself,¡± Bart replied.

    ¡°You wouldn¡¯t get much out of it,¡± Edgar agreed, using a smaller portal to get a better perspective on the cenote as he lowered the drain. The reflection of the moon in the glowing water was dead and dry rather than shimmering and liquid, a reminder of how different the intrinsic magic of the Night Lands was from the familiar spell forms of human magery.

    Christopher approached and started to freeze the bits of flesh that were revealed by the dropping water, staying well out of range as frost coated the inside of the well. For his part, Bart stayed back by Edgar, watching through the perspective portal and holding several force magic constructs ready just in case. While it seemed routine, every single creature in the Night Lands could kill an unprepared mage in a single blow, so nothing could be left to chance.

    As the drain portal reached the bottom of the cenote, the moon-water reduced to a few inches, the lumps of mordite came into view. Only, most of them were gone. Bart stared at the empty depressions where the bane-metal should have been, and then lifted his scry-com to report in. No matter how their lone mage had done it, they had definitely been there.

 Chapter 7 â€“ Pursuit

    ¡°We¡¯ve got a potential hit at Weltentor Landing.¡± Zarin said. ¡°Everyone, sound off.¡±

    It only took a few seconds. They had their armor on, their foci primed, and auxiliary charges at their waist if necessary. Sen had been given an air mage¡¯s standard loadout, which was essentially what he had worked with during his service, though of higher quality. The armor had built-in flying foci, with subordinate resonators to link up with his teammates, and the gauntlets had heat projectors for both the standard bolt spell and a few variations.

    The built-in glamour was potent, probably strong enough to render them invisible to most mages at a distance, or at least those not using active sensing. Even Sen found it difficult to focus on the team when the glamour was active. The earpieces, though, were fairly standard, even if such things were a relatively new development. At some point in the distant past they would have needed dedicated far-speaking foci, rather than automated relays, but that sort of thing was irrelevant now.

    In all, he was impressed by the quality of the equipment, and while some of it might be restricted to BSE he¡¯d have to see how much of it could be gotten for House Fane. It was better than what he¡¯d been issued for his service and, of course, better than his own personal foci. Similar, but crisper and more responsive.

    He linked the mage¡¯s mark on his wrist to the transporter pad and it resonated through his vis for a fraction of a moment, bringing them from the staging complex through to France. The moment they were through he keyed his flight focus to his partner¡¯s subordinate focus, both of them lifting off the floor slightly. So long as they stayed near enough, the force mage could fly almost as well as an air mage thanks to Sen¡¯s vis.

    The others in their six-man squad joined him in a powered hover, darting out the door and crashing through the ward-line. The other two squads arrived just behind them, as soon as the transporter cycled, all of them spreading out into the air. They all ignored the alarms that set off, and Sen sent out his senses, taking in the surrounding miles and listening for any stray people. There were the ones inside Weltentor Landing, at their stations, but beyond it¡ª

    ¡°South, two klicks!¡± Zarin snapped. ¡°Go!¡±

    Sen sent his partner and himself speeding south after Zarin, locating the target only belatedly. Down in the forest there was the sound of human breath and the radiant heat of a living person, and there was not supposed to be anyone in the exclusion zone. They had their glamours wrapped tight around them, and Zarin¡¯s partner hefted a heavy arcane rifle. It was not a weapon that Sen wanted to be on the other end of, considering the massive spelled rounds the thing fired. He couldn¡¯t imagine how expensive each round was, but it wasn¡¯t like BSE needed to worry about the scarcity of good enchanting materials.

    They were a good fifty meters up as they closed in on the target, the other teams moving to block off the escape routes. They did have an unconfirmed report of a homebond implant, which meant they needed to scramble the mage¡¯s vis and incapacitate him as fast as possible. It was only if that failed that lethal force was authorized.

    The moment they got within maybe half a kilometer, there was a subdued flare of magic and the target vanished. Obviously the mage was using active senses, but it had to be something subtle, considering that there was no clear sweep of vis to accompany it. Sen had a number of choice words spring to his lips but before he could actually say them, Zarin snapped more instructions.

    ¡°Teleport! Half click west! Two-Gimel, take the shot!¡± Even as he spoke they were altering course to head after the teleport, with Sen pumping vis into the flight focus to keep pace with Zarin. Somewhere ahead of them there was a bright flare as callsign Two-Gimel fired, a glowing ball of tight wards appearing among the trees.

    ¡°Miss,¡± came the terse statement. ¡°West again.¡±

    ¡°We¡¯ll go ahead, herd him toward us,¡± Zarin decided, and went faster. Their team zipped higher in the air, vis pulsing out into the surroundings as they scanned the terrain for their target. Sen knew they only had a limited time before the man used the homebond, assuming it existed, so they needed a clean hit.

    Zarin hadn¡¯t yet signaled they were in position when there was another blip of magic, just below them, and the sharpshooter jerked his arcanorifle around. Force magic launched the capture round, which smashed through the tree cover toward the target below. Sen winced as it impacted, the unleashed vis blazing.

    It didn¡¯t need to hit the target, and in fact, wasn¡¯t designed to. What it did was deploy a sphere of interlinked wards and shielding, to keep the mage physically and magically isolated. Not to mention a burst of light and sound, coupled with the Special Target Access Bypass, meant to disable any renegade mage. STAB had a chance to permanently impair someone¡¯s spellcasting, though, so it was rarely deployed. Even at that distance, he could feel it tingling through his mage mark.

    ¡°Target neutralized,¡± Zarin said, confirming that the wards were up. ¡°Moving to¡ª damn!¡± He spun, and Sen followed the motion to find that somehow, some way, the mage had gotten out of the capture area. He was almost half a klick westward, crouched down at the base of a tree.

    ¡°Goddamn,¡± Zarin swore. ¡°How the hell?¡ª¡± He stopped himself. ¡°Capture failed. Lethal force authorized.¡±

    ¡°Finally,¡± Sen said, and conjured flame into his hands.

    ***

    Callum hoped that he hadn¡¯t given himself away. There seemed to be more vampires out and about when he returned to the settlement, and he didn¡¯t know if that activity meant he¡¯d been spotted or if was just that local morning had arrived. No matter the reason, there were people walking the streets and the perimeter than when he had left.

    That meant he had to be more careful, but it wasn¡¯t an impenetrable surveillance. It did mean that he needed to get out of there quick, though, since he could only assume the trend would continue. Whether the vampires were waking up, were preparing for something, or suspected he was around, he wanted to slip out before it got worse.

    The castle was essentially in the middle of the group of estates, so there wasn¡¯t a significantly better approach from any direction, but he still circled around the town to make an entrance from a different angle than his departure. The actual estates were so very tempting, but there was no way that old and powerful mages didn¡¯t have something impressive to protect their actual homes. Especially since he couldn¡¯t see whatever glamours were in place, which no doubt spruced up the dark stone buildings and would signal to people where they ought to actually go. The mage equivalent of a welcome mat or a no trespassing sign.

    Unfortunately, he wouldn¡¯t find out anytime soon. Or maybe ever.

    The added patrols meant that he had to take a slightly circuitous route into the keep, making sure to keep well away from any vampire that might possibly spot or sniff him. Once again, there were at least enough traces of mages about that his passage would blend in, but at the same time the increased patrols meant something was going on. It might be that his passage was far enough from normal traffic patterns to be suspicious in and of itself.

    For that reason he popped up to the castle roof, inside the wards, as quickly as he dared, sending his perceptions down and through the portal. The moment before he teleported into the room behind the portals, dark and smelling of stone, he thought he sensed one of the vampires turn in his direction, blurring into motion. He couldn¡¯t be sure it was him that they¡¯d sensed, but Callum was absolutely not going to wait and see.

    He threaded his vis through the wards and popped back out into the woods, behind a tree, then popped another few times before pausing to figure out where he was going. The train station was the obvious choice, but part of him wanted to refrain from retracing his steps. It might be better to go north to Belgium, or maybe even head over to Luxembourg.

    Even though he hadn¡¯t stopped for more than a second, orienting himself toward the borders, it apparently was too long. A set of mage bubbles appeared in his perceptions, high up in the air and moving quickly in his direction. It was so unexpected the sudden jolt of adrenaline practically paralyzed him, then he frantically cast his perceptions off in the opposite direction and teleported.

    Only to find there were more mages there. Callum swore to himself as he scrambled to re-orient, popping in another direction just before something flashed and rumbled behind where he¡¯d been, all kinds of magic strobing on the edges of his perception. Somehow, he¡¯d given his location away.

    Almost belatedly, Callum started charging his implant again. It wasn¡¯t entirely discharged to begin with, since he¡¯d kept it close to topped off, or as close as he could get without it triggering and resonating through his vis. It was hard to teleport with it up, so he always had to trade off between being ready to bolt and ready to evade.

    He popped in a few random directions while he charged it, finding there were at least two teams flying through the air. There was no telling how many personnel they¡¯d sent out after him, or what had prompted it, but he absolutely had to get the hell out of there. He had to teleport a few more times, staying ahead of the teams, until the thing snapped into full activation and made him grit his teeth against the feel. He paused as another team approached and pushed the focus.

    Nothing happened.

    The teleport matrix around him just sputtered out and collapsed without taking him anywhere, leaving him completely stranded. His contingency had failed. He gawked at it, completely startled, for long enough that someone overhead took a shot at him.

    It landed a dozen feet away, bursting into light and cacophonous sound that sent him reeling away, along with a swirl of complex magic that did absolutely nothing so far as he could tell. What did work was a framework that sprung up in a sphere around the source of the impact, trapping him inside.

    Callum groaned, dazed and reeling, half-blind and half-deaf, but still clutching his luggage. The flashbang had done its job, but if the magical flares were meant to suppress his spatial perception, they hadn¡¯t worked. Shahey¡¯s frozen mana had been far more painful and far more effective.

    The framework glowed bright with power, but it wasn¡¯t so tightly woven that he couldn¡¯t get a vis thread through. There were multiple layers there, some obviously wards, some obviously not, but it was only the work of a panic-fueled moment to sneak past them and push out to the edge of his perceptions. He pushed another teleport, finding himself hunched under a low tree.

    He knew he couldn¡¯t stop there. There was still a group on the edge of his perceptions, and it was obvious that they could sense him about as well as he could sense them. Away from the wards of the portal facility, he could tell there were active senses at play, diffuse vis clouds riding along the mana, and he hated himself for missing them to begin with. The excuse that he¡¯d gotten too used to the overly-dense mana of the portal world wasn¡¯t good enough.

    The next transfer was punctuated by the roar of fire as a spell lanced out where he¡¯d been and set the entire area ablaze. It wasn¡¯t just flame, since there was plenty of vis lingering where it struck, and his instincts screamed at him that it was terrible and horrible and he should not be anywhere near it. Callum hastily popped himself ahead again, zigzagging at angles so it wasn¡¯t obvious where he¡¯d appear, and had his forethought rewarded by an obviously leading shot missing. Instead, it flattened a stand of trees with a horrific crunching noise, as if it weren¡¯t already obvious they were trying to kill instead of capture.

    Callum focused on just teleporting as fast as possible. He didn¡¯t know if it was possible for them to keep up, because six hundred yards per second translated to over one thousand miles per hour, but at the same time, he didn¡¯t have the time to clean up after himself, so they¡¯d be able to track him easily. Plus, he couldn¡¯t keep up such rapid-fire teleports for an hour.

    As he figured, he left the mages behind once he got going, but that absolutely wasn¡¯t going to matter for long. This was hide-and-seek, not a footrace. He was headed west, more by circumstances than by choice, and with at least two teams following him, he cared more about outdistancing them than trying any circumlocution. If he were them, he¡¯d be casting a wide net just to prevent that. Maybe put a person at every teleportation point, though there were surely limits to their manpower.

    The moment he encountered a road, less than a minute later, he shifted trajectory to follow it. What he needed was a town, somewhere he could blend in and physically move away from his trail. Even if they had some way to unerringly pick him out in a crowd, which he doubted since they hadn¡¯t before, just being in among buildings and people would force them to slow down.

    It wasn¡¯t much longer until he landed in a small French town. Ten seconds at most. He normally didn¡¯t chain teleports that quickly, since he needed time to appraise things within his sphere of perception, so he wasn¡¯t prepared for exactly how fast it was. A six-hundred yard radius was an awful large circle.

    He popped into existence between two buildings and leaned against the stone wall of some ancient courthouse or something, squinting and blinking. Everything was a big blur, his head was pounding, and his ears were still ringing from the flashbang. Callum felt concussed, though he was pretty sure he wasn¡¯t. Under the circumstances he didn¡¯t trust his ability to walk without falling over, so he just pressed his cheek against the cold stone while he sorted through all the people and buildings suddenly within his perceptual range.

    Under the circumstances he was somewhat less concerned with glamours, but he still waited until he could find a small, empty restroom, and teleported himself and his luggage over. Callum fumbled to lock the door, then slumped down to rub at his eyes. He had no illusions he was safe, exactly, but he should at least have time to think.

    ***

    ¡°The STAB must have damaged his implant,¡± Zarin decided. Sen¡¯s assigned partner, the guy with the annoying Polish name, had been tracking the vis traces for the past ten kilometers, and they¡¯d been consistent. It was a little too faint for Sen, but that wasn¡¯t his specialty anyway.

    ¡°He barely needs it, considering how fast he moved,¡± someone else¡¯s voice came over the scry-com. ¡°We¡¯re back at the teleporter.¡±

    ¡°Team Two, wait in Saint-Quentin. Team Three, Reims. I¡¯ll let you know.¡± Zarin said, flying after the tracker.

    ¡°Any intel on the endurance this guy has? He could get to the other side of the country before we catch up with him,¡± said Zarin¡¯s partner, another man whose name Sen hadn¡¯t bothered learning. Just his callsign, One-Bet.

    ¡°No, but we have watchers at the airports. We do know that he uses planes, presumably to avoid GAR.¡± They took a sharp turn in the air to follow a road, cars driving unaware some fifty meters below. ¡°If we need to we can shut everything down. The French government already knows we¡¯re pursuing a renegade.¡±

    Love this story? Find the genuine version on the author''s preferred platform and support their work!

    ¡°What are they going to do?¡± Sen asked scornfully. ¡°Wave as he goes by?¡±

    ¡°If he can¡¯t use GAR transport, then he has to rely on mundanes, so even just delaying things would be helpful.¡± It wasn¡¯t exactly a reprimand, but Zarin¡¯s tone of voice was warning enough. ¡°Though, if we can track him now, it might be worthwhile seeing where exactly he runs to.¡±

    ¡°These traces won¡¯t last all that long,¡± the man with the Polish name warned. ¡°Given a day or so of lead time, these teleports wouldn¡¯t be traceable.¡±

    ¡°Let me call it in,¡± Zarin said, and lifted a hand to his lapel. ¡°Grand Magus Taisen? Yes, we have an opportunity here¡­¡±

    Sen half-listened as Zarin spoke with his superior, frowning at the mundanes below. It was genuinely disappointing that Callum Wells, if that was indeed who it was, had fled so quickly. He¡¯d been looking forward to paying back some of what he was owed for Wells making him out to be a prime fool.

    Still, at least that bastard hadn¡¯t completely vanished on them. There¡¯d still be time to deal with him when they caught up. Maybe letting the man expose his entire operation would be more satisfying. After all, someone like him had to have a hole to crawl back to. They hovered for a moment while Zarin discussed it, then he waved them on.

    ¡°We¡¯re still capture-or-kill, but if his homebond doesn¡¯t work, only use lethal force if you¡¯re forced into close proximity, or to defend yourself. Remember, he has demonstrated extreme lethality, so do not let your guard down.¡±

    ¡°But he¡¯s a space mage,¡± Sen complained, though quietly. When he¡¯d been performing his tour of duty, the space mage that had been their porter at the front hadn¡¯t done anything but open portals and hide behind the walls. Well, there had been something she¡¯d done with the quartermasters that he wasn¡¯t quite clear on, but she¡¯d mostly provided transportation for forays out into the wilds. He saw the value in not needing any break in the fortress wall, but without someone who could apply force it wasn¡¯t exactly a fearsome repertoire.

    The trail bent abruptly again at an intersection, heading toward a small town. Sen had to fly the perimeter with his partner, sweeping for a trail, but after they¡¯d done a full circle the man grunted.

    ¡°Nope. He¡¯s still in the town. No perceptible vis use there, though.¡±

    ¡°Odd.¡± Zarin¡¯s voice came over the scry-com. ¡°Spread out, going to incap, make sure you take care of the cars and the like. Ready?¡± Affirmations came from the rest of the team. Sen added his own, begrudgingly.

    ¡°Mark.¡± The ability to incapacitate mundanes with a mana pulse was a well-known one ¨C and it had to be mana, not vis, for some reason ¨C but harnessing that on any scale took work. Normally that was charged wards, though Sen wasn¡¯t sure why they kept such a large presence in the mundane world at all. He knew that some people made noises about things like smartphones, but such inventions were so clever they had to be mage work to begin with.

    Zarin¡¯s vis reached outward, grabbing onto the local mana in an impressive display of control, and flung it downward. All the mundanes stumbled and slumped, while Sen and his team made sure to stop cars in motion and prevent any major damage. Sen found it a little silly that BSE had to hide its own actions, but nobody wanted the mundane world at large to know about mages.

    He could only imagine how much clamor there¡¯d be from the mundanes for mages and other supernaturals to solve all their problems. To clean up their messes. To do this and do that. They fought among themselves so much that he couldn¡¯t imagine what a pain it¡¯d be to deal with them if they thought they could bring mages into the mix.

    Sen left his companions to deal with the mess, not having any wish to baby the mundanes. Besides, force magic was far better with handling that sort of thing than wind or fire. Instead he focused on finding who wasn¡¯t affected by the mana pulse, because if the man really was in the town he¡¯d be the only one to shrug off the effect.

    Indeed, he found someone, standing inside a coffee shop while everyone else was preoccupied with falling over.

    ¡°Contact!¡± Sen snapped, then shaped a double-layered spear of air and fire through his weapon foci and launched it in the man¡¯s direction. It crashed through four walls, but the man vanished right as the projectile exploded through the front of the coffee shop.

    ¡°Dammit, Sen!¡± Zarin snapped. ¡°Stop making a mess!¡±

    ¡°I almost had him!¡±

    ¡°Stow it! Brz?czyszczykiewicz?¡±

    ¡°On it.¡± The tracker¡¯s vis spread out as he looked for the mage¡¯s trail. The hunt was on once again.

    ***

    Callum knew he had only a few minutes, but he needed to consult a map and he couldn¡¯t do that while half-blind. He managed to pry himself upright and stagger out of the bathroom, leaning against the wall of the coffee shop and taking out his phone in an attempt to look at least vaguely normal. The luggage was what marked him as out of place more than anything, but he didn¡¯t think too many people were looking.

    He blinked rapidly, hands trembling as he tried to poke at the phone. It was obvious he needed to stop being found by people and go back to ambushing people so hard they couldn¡¯t shoot back. Or better, not deal with any of this at all, but that was a choice long since flown.

    It was hard to see through the spots dancing in front of his eyes, but it looked like he was east and north of Paris, assuming the caf¨¦¡¯s wifi had him at the right spot. The best thing would be to completely change direction and head to a different country, preferably by train, so he wouldn¡¯t leave any traces. Unfortunately, he didn¡¯t think he had time to find a train station and wait. It wouldn¡¯t be hard for them to simply blockade streets or shut down transportation.

    Aiming for a major nearby city had a similar problem with the added issue of a native supernatural population to marshal against him. He could blend in better, true, and the mess of native magical trails might well disguise him, but he didn¡¯t fit in. Callum wasn¡¯t French, didn¡¯t speak French, and despite not having a bubble had far more vis than any normal human. It wouldn¡¯t take much searching to find him.

    Unfortunately, he didn¡¯t have time to consider it much. He was still trying to focus on the map and failing when the traces of active senses swept over the town. He¡¯d put an enchantment in the bathroom to sweep up his teleport track, but he wasn¡¯t sure whether it¡¯d be sufficient, or if the enchantment itself would give him away, so he stretched out a single vis thread, ready to bolt at the slightest provocation.

    If they had to search manually, he could probably slip out. His perception gave him a massive leg up in that regard. Even if he didn¡¯t use it for teleportation, he could just take routes that avoided the mages. If he was feeling clever, which he wasn¡¯t, he could even make it look natural. At best, he hoped that they¡¯d take time to decide what to do.

    He had no such luck.

    The sheer scope of the mana manipulation that one of the mages performed was absolutely terrifying, showing how far down the totem pole Callum really was, despite his advantages. It wasn¡¯t clear exactly what was going on until the mana pulse suddenly swept down over the town, shredding his vis thread. But that was not the reason for the attack, because everyone just slumped over.

    He¡¯d completely forgotten about the way mana knocked out regular people. Or some such explanation; he had doubts about that exact wording since there was mana everywhere and it couldn¡¯t be the simple presence that did anything, it had to be an actual manifestation. That mana pressure wave was something, but he had more important things to worry about.

    Like the spell bearing down on the coffeeshop.

    Even though he knew that mages didn¡¯t care overmuch for mundanes, there was a difference between knowing it and seeing someone lob a bomb at a bunch of helpless folks. There was nothing he could do about either, since it was all he could manage to shove a thread of vis out to the edge of town. He was pretty quick at it, but it still took a finite time, and it was only by dint of long practice that he didn¡¯t fumble the framework. He shoved himself through in the same moment as the wall exploded, the sharp report cutting off abruptly. Not quite fast enough, though.

    A chunk of wall hit him just before the transition, slamming into his ribs at an angle and sending him reeling as he dropped down from the hastily-placed teleportation field. He landed hard and awkwardly, mostly on his right leg, and something in his knee popped as he collapsed. He didn¡¯t quite scream, but he did wheeze miserably, still gamely clutching his luggage.

    The searing pain scrambled him for a moment, unable to focus on anything else as he lay on the ground, clutching his knee. It was only dread that forced him to send out his perceptions, the knowledge that he had to keep going. He didn¡¯t need to be able to walk to be able to teleport.

    Callum put a hand over his ribs as he moved himself along, feeling gingerly where the debris had hit him, but he didn¡¯t think it had done more than bruise under the winter jacket he had on. The knee, on the other hand, was less pleasant, already feeling swollen and stiff and throbbing painfully at the slightest movement. There wasn¡¯t anything to be done about that, though, other than take it as a reminder that he was not an actual mage with proper shields and ways to deal with high-powered magical combat.

    Not that the bystanders were any better off. Callum had made a grievous error to think that he could simply hide in a town, that simply being among mundanes would make any difference. His presence had gotten people killed, because mages simply didn¡¯t care. It wasn¡¯t good enough to just hide from GAR, he had to get away from everyone, so there wouldn¡¯t be any collateral damage.

    The answer came to him as he clutched the luggage and randomly teleported himself into the French countryside, and he could have kicked himself for not considering it earlier. The mages could trace his teleports, and he didn¡¯t have time to clean them up, but he did have a method of travel available to him that didn¡¯t leave a trail and was definitely too fast for them to follow. Not to mention, it wouldn¡¯t put any more bystanders in harm¡¯s way.

    He just hadn¡¯t thought about it because he¡¯d decided to associate self-gravitykinesis with the idiotic flying chair, after finding he couldn¡¯t sustain a gravitykinesis field on himself without completely losing his lunch and his bearings. Callum didn¡¯t actually need his terrible chair for it, though. His big rolling luggage was large enough to hang on to, and in fact had a number of straps that would make it viable for the purpose. It¡¯d be even more rickety and makeshift than the stupid chair, but would probably work, and it should have been his first thought.

    He wound his arms through the luggage straps, giving them several twists to make sure he wouldn¡¯t fall, then hugged it to himself as he wrapped the vis frameworks around it and himself. His knee refused to cooperate as he shifted to try and get a better grip, but he gritted his teeth and flexed the field to counteract his weight.

    It jerkily rose into the air while he dangled below it, feeling like a complete fool and with the straps digging into his arms. Callum didn¡¯t need to get all that high, but he did need to at the least clear the height of trees and local terrain if he didn¡¯t want his jaunt to be cut abruptly short. It would be pretty damn sad for his amazing getaway to get stalled ten feet away because he hit a tree or a phone pole.

    The problem with getting airborne, aside from the precarious position, was that it made him a target. The pursuing mages were way beyond his spatial sense, but he could see the blurry specks of things that weren¡¯t birds suddenly turn toward him. At least, he thought so; his eyes still hurt too much for him to put too much stock in what they told him.

    Before they could start targeting him with any proper war magic, he put a second field around both himself and the luggage and dragged. The world blurred by with the monstrous acceleration, and he released the kinesis part almost instantly. His already abused ears popped and frigid cold smacked him as his surroundings resolved into being very high up. He shuddered and aimed himself down at the ground, a shoreline, pulling again and finding himself pressed up against the ground somewhere.

    He really had no idea where he was. Not the ocean, not a city, that was about all he could tell. It was warmer, which made sense since he¡¯d been aimed straight south, but that was it. Still, the change in climate was enough to imply that he¡¯d at least gone quite a few hundred miles, although admittedly without a glamour. Hopefully that didn¡¯t really matter, and if anyone caught the second or so blur of him moving about, it was marked down to imagination or something.

    The mana density was noticeably lower too, so he couldn¡¯t be as prodigal as he¡¯d been in France and Switzerland. His reserves were near empty after that jaunt, and they weren¡¯t being refilled particularly fast, but he was far enough away from his origin point that he could move a bit more cautiously. Even better, he could clean up after himself.

    Gravitykinesis left a bit more of a signature than teleportation, so he stuck a fork from his camp kit in the ground with a vis scrubber enchant and reclined against a nearby rock. He had aimed more or less south, which encompassed a lot of territory but shouldn¡¯t be complete wilderness. He¡¯d dropped the phone at some point during the attack and subsequent flight, so he had to use local landmarks. After searching with his spatial sense, he did find a rough trail and followed it.

    It turned out it was a hiking trail. He kept himself hidden from the hikers, since his winter clothing and rolling duffel would probably draw a certain amount of commentary, but following it downhill finally sort-of answered the question of where he was. There was a seaside town with fantastic Mediterranean architecture, which he couldn¡¯t help but admire for being so much more interesting than the steel-and-concrete boxes so prevalent in cities. Even better, it seemed to be a tourist town, which meant a lot of people probably spoke English.

    He shucked his coat and disguised his hobble as best he could before entering the town, finding a small hotel that let him make an international call after he showed a twenty-euro note. There was only one way to know how the search for him was going, and how safe it¡¯d be to travel. Hopefully it wasn¡¯t too early or late wherever Lucy was.

    ¡°Big man! How¡¯s Mallorca?¡± He could barely hear her over the persistent ringing in his ears, but her voice was still as cheerful as ever. That was something he needed under the circumstances.

    ¡°Oh, is that where I am?¡±

    ¡°You¡¯re in Mallorca and you don¡¯t even know it? Come on!¡±

    ¡°It¡¯s, ah, been a day,¡± he told her, keeping an eye on the people wandering by the hotel. There weren¡¯t any supernaturals around, but maybe they didn¡¯t take Mediterranean vacations. For all he knew, Faerie was the prime getaway for the discerning mage on holiday.

    ¡°Yeah? What¡¯ve you been up to?¡±

    ¡°Mostly getting chased around by some mages,¡± he admitted. ¡°They jumped me, but I¡¯m pretty sure I got away clean. I was hoping you could find out for me whether or not they have any idea where I am or what I¡¯m doing.¡±

    ¡°Oof! Let me take a look, big man.¡± He waited for a short time while she did whatever it was that got her access to GAR goings-on. ¡°Man did you stir them up! Lotta messages flying. Nothing in your neck of the woods though, far as I can tell. I think you might want to avoid airports for a while.¡±

    ¡°That¡¯s what I was afraid of,¡± Callum said. ¡°What about the fae? Did they stop tracking me?¡±

    ¡°Ahaha, so, Jissarrell has been telling that story for the past few days! How he followed a deadly and dangerous assassin to Europe before they noticed and severed the tracking spell. Yeah, you¡¯re fine, unless they get another fae king to go after you.¡±

    ¡°How likely is that?¡± Callum frowned. ¡°I mean, I did kill a bunch of them.¡±

    ¡°Yeah but you¡¯re famous now so that¡¯s practically an honor! I dunno, though. Let me look at something real quick.¡± There was another silence. ¡°I¡¯m not seeing any history of them helping anyone. It may be they can¡¯t do it randomly. Fae magic is weird.¡±

    ¡°Thanks, Lucy.¡± He let out a long breath, not sure what to think about those tidbits. ¡°I wasn¡¯t sure whether I¡¯d be dodging high-powered fae forever or what. Glad to know they have limits, too.¡±

    ¡°That¡¯s what I¡¯m here for, big man. Now tell me what you¡¯ve been doing!¡±

    Callum considered a moment. In general he didn¡¯t tell anyone what he was doing, because it was safer that way, but it wouldn¡¯t hurt to give her an edited view of events. She was actually inside the magical culture, so she might even have some insight on what had happened, and it would be nice to tell someone. He¡¯d cut out Shahey and the dragonlands, but everything in the Night Lands was probably fairly harmless.

    ¡°Alright,¡± he said. ¡°I¡¯ll give you the edited version.¡±

    ***

    ¡°That¡¯s not spatial aspect,¡± Archmage Duvall said with flat certainty. ¡°I don¡¯t know what it is, but it¡¯s not spatial aspect.¡± Duvall was the expert but Zhen knew a lot of magic and had no idea what it might be, if not spatial. The report had described the man gripping some kind of bag and floating in the air without using air aspect, which might well be gravity, but then apparently the man shot off at supersonic speed without leaving any trail or making any noise, which definitely was not.

    Spatial was the only human magic it could be.

    ¡°When we tested him, he only manifested the spatial aspect,¡± Zhen said cautiously, not wanting to get any further on Duvall¡¯s bad side. ¡°We¡¯re assuming this is Callum Wells, of course. Though I doubt there are many unknown spatial mages wandering around.¡±

    ¡°That test was terrible and you know it. A full one hundred thaums emptied? That¡¯s as much as I¡¯d absorb. No, he faked it. Oh, sure, the spatial results were real, but you missed another aspect.¡±

    ¡°There haven¡¯t been any spatial mages in the past who manifested additional aspects,¡± Zhen said thoughtfully. ¡°I would find it more likely he had some strange focus or even some fae artifact.¡±

    ¡°Then you¡¯d better find who gave it to him,¡± Duvall said flatly. ¡°I am very disappointed here! You failed to find my mage until some fae wandered by and then when you do find him, BSE can¡¯t even capture him!¡± Her vis crackled around her as she eyed him. ¡°If BSE cannot make use of the special privilege of having my apprentices tend to your needs over everyone else¡¯s,¡± she said, her finger stabbing at his face with every word, ¡°it may be time to revoke them.¡±

    ¡°He has twice escaped through novel methods, Archmage,¡± Zhen told her. ¡°We are not experts in spatial magic.¡±

    ¡°A homebond isn¡¯t new, you just failed to find it.¡± Duvall leaned forward, tapping her finger against the report sitting on the desk. ¡°I have far more important people than you that need my time, and if I have to keep cleaning up after you I will make sure they know exactly why. If I am forced to personally take command of this situation, I will make sure to rebuild the Bureau from the ground up. This time without the incompetence.¡±

    Zhen suppressed a wince. That was a major threat, and coupled with Duvall¡¯s total control over the transport system, she could well cripple BSE for some time to come. Hopefully the others would talk her around, but Duvall was well-known to have strong opinions.

    He hated dealing with Archmages.

 Chapter 8 â€“ Recovery

    After recovering some sanity by way of a long talk with Lucy, he crashed at the charming Mallorcan hotel and slept for a good eighteen hours. When he woke up, he was at least rested, but his knee was no better, something which sent the back of his mind into a little bit of a panic. One that he ruthlessly suppressed, to only fair success. That was something he¡¯d have to address when he got somewhere with a hospital he could trust.

    He had to assume all the international airports in Europe and in the US were being watched by supernaturals, or at least covered with something that¡¯d alert them if he came around. It probably only took one watcher, since he couldn¡¯t cover up actually using a teleport or portal, and they¡¯d showed that they could track him easily enough.

    Callum still wanted to get home, though. Not that he had a particular home in mind besides the United States, a realization that made him stop and think. He wasn¡¯t willing to give up on his home country, or even his home state, but thinking that he needed to only be in one place was a mistake. Once he made teleports, it didn¡¯t matter how far away anything was.

    So long as the enchantment actually worked.

    Some perceptual poking and prodding provided the reason his contingency had failed. The enchantments themselves were breaking down, very much like they did with mundane materials, though far slower. Apparently even enchantments weren¡¯t immune to the march of time, though he was sure the substandard substrate didn¡¯t help. He probably should have melted down those seals and used them instead, but he¡¯d been far too worried about their destruction backfiring. He just hadn¡¯t known enough at the time.

    He suspected it was the receiving plate that had completely failed, considering that his implant had accepted vis and was mostly intact. If anything, he was lucky that he hadn¡¯t torn himself apart with some malformed teleport or the like. The little chunk of titanium was pretty worthless without it, though, so he made a very, very careful survey before delicately teleporting it out from its place in his guts for later disposal. Fortunately it hadn¡¯t been in long enough, or the medical-grade titanium had done its job well enough, that it wasn¡¯t attached. Removing it did feel very weird, though.

    While he was self-inspecting he took a look at his knee, but he frankly didn¡¯t know enough about anatomy and couldn¡¯t distinguish well enough between all the various bits to make any kind of guess. He¡¯d be better off diagnosing by symptom, but of course there were a million things that could go wrong with a knee and it¡¯d be better to get actual medical attention first.

    He didn¡¯t want to get stuck in Mallorca, since it was still uncomfortably close to France and he didn¡¯t know how quickly and how far they¡¯d widen their search. At the same time, he wasn¡¯t all that far from Algiers. He wouldn¡¯t fit in and he couldn¡¯t speak the language, but he was pretty confident nobody would be looking for him sneaking out through the airport there.

    He burned a couple hours searching through flights and planning his route and timing, because he did not want to go through Europe. In the end he plotted out a couple transfers that took him over to Sao Paulo before heading up to Mexico City. He knew that Mexico had plenty of health tourism, so finding a doctor to treat him that also wouldn¡¯t keep records would be possible. Perhaps not easy, but possible.

    A very nice employee from the tiny hotel somehow found a cane for him to lean on, since he could barely put any weight on his knee, and directed him to where he could buy a tiny inflatable kayak. Part of Callum wanted to just stay and relax, bum knee or not, but he was running low on money and unless he started cashing out his gold he¡¯d be broke pretty soon. In fact, given he was in some tiny tourist town on an island, cashing the gold might well be impossible. Just the kayak would blow through most of his remaining funds, and that was basically a one-use item.

    Besides, complacency would get him killed.

    It had already gotten other people killed. Callum knew he wasn¡¯t actually responsible for their deaths; that burden was on the mages who felt it was a good idea to attack a caf¨¦ full of incapacitated people. But he still felt responsible, and he knew that he could have done better. Could have avoided involving others.

    It was something to keep in mind for the future. GAR and its agents were the ones responsible, were the ones causing the issues, and there was no temptation to turn himself in to save people the trouble. There was no way he was submitting to such an authority. But he would be more circumspect, so others weren¡¯t involved. If other people were involved, he¡¯d do his best to get them out of the blast radius.

    It wasn¡¯t exactly a solution, but it was the best he could decide on for the moment. To distract himself, Callum decided to examine his spoils in the light of day, before he went globetrotting. In sunlight, the mordite spheres didn¡¯t look like they were made of rippling water, but instead some dull grey-blue metal. At least, until he brought them near the plastic water bottle full of the stuff from the cenote, which glowed with the same light as the Night Land¡¯s moon.

    It was the Night Land light that made it look weird, too, not simple proximity. He played around with it a little bit and found it would change if he reflected the light using a mirror, but mere proximity did nothing. Through his spatial sense he could only see the faintest of fluctuations within the mordite, and nothing from the liquid, so it was a mystery to him. The only thing they had in common was a touch of the weird spatial flavor of the portal worlds.

    He did find it a little wondrous that, even if he could sense mana, and vis was very structured and organized, magic could still act like magic. It was also a sobering reminder that he knew really nothing about how magic worked, and couldn¡¯t assume anything at all.

    Sorting through all the books he¡¯d gotten from Lucy and Harry, there wasn¡¯t any reference to mordite being toxic, but there also wasn¡¯t anything useful like its melting point or other standard properties. It obviously could at least be used for wire and bullets, but that didn¡¯t really say much. Especially when he was fairly certain the mordite bullets he had were an alloy of some sort, since they seemed less magical to his senses.

    He packed away the stuff, replenished his stock of food and drink, and limped his way over to the shop with the kayaks. They seemed a little dubious about him getting one given his obvious issues with walking, but he managed to convince them and get it inflated. Once that was done, he simply energized his glamour enchant, climbed in, and teleported himself out into the ocean.

    From there he just went south, lifting the kayak just a little bit with gravitykinesis and give it a brief bump of Alcubierre movement before continuing with normal teleports. He certainly didn¡¯t want to overshoot. The Mediterranean was actually quite calm, so he didn¡¯t have to tire himself out with rapid-fire teleportation, making landfall a few hours later on the north coast of Africa. A thought that was actually quite surreal to him.

    It turned out that he had actually managed to land within ten miles of Algiers itself, so it was fairly easy to make his way in toward the airport. Once again, he couldn¡¯t read the local signage, but there were at least icons. Rather like Mallorca, there didn¡¯t seem to be nearly as much supernatural presence in the area as he would have suspected from such a large city. There were some traces, and he was pretty sure he spotted a few fae, but maybe most mages lived near the portals. So far as the literature went, there weren¡¯t any in Africa.

    That didn¡¯t explain the United States, but that might just be a function of wealth. Since mages used gold, they almost certainly hung out with the owners of gold mines or oil barons. World leaders, too. Regardless of the reason, though, that just made it easier for Callum to teleport into the airport and from there onto his target aircraft.

    He still hated stowing aboard, and would far rather have just flown normally, but lacking a passport meant that he was certainly not going to be able to pass through customs legally. Not to mention the guns and ammunition in his bag, or the glowing water or weird metal balls. He still purchased a ticket though, under Keith Summers, which was the license he had on him, after observing that nobody¡¯s passport was checked against their ticket at boarding. That satisfied both his need for fairness and anonymity, even if he did skip baggage weighing and security.

    Porting his duffel into the cargo compartment wasn¡¯t a problem, either.

    The actual trip to Mexico City was long and boring. Callum tried to just sleep for most of it, still emotionally and physically wrung out from his ordeal. Aside from that, he pulled up the enchanting literature on his laptop and tried to slog through it. Even if he¡¯d glanced at most everything they¡¯d given him, it was a lot, and quite a bit of it didn¡¯t make any real sense to him without the proper educational background.

    When that got too painful for his tired brain, he took out his old drawing tools and started sketching. His realization that he could, with the mordite, actually make a miniature teleportation network inspired him a little bit to start making plans. Maybe it was too early, but he¡¯d need some kind of bunker, eventually.

    It was over thirty hours later when he actually arrived in Mexico City, thanks to layovers, and he was feeling pretty grungy despite taking a shower at one of the nicer airports. The moment he landed, he could tell there was more mana around than there was in the states, but it wasn¡¯t anything like Europe. Which was probably for the best, really, since he was sure supernatural density more or less correlated with mana.

    He really didn¡¯t like Mexico City. It was too close, too crowded, too loud, and even if there weren¡¯t many supernaturals relative to Europe, there were enough that he felt overly watched and studied. With his perceptions sweeping around him he was pretty sure nobody was actually following him, but he definitely felt closed in and would be glad to be on his way. He had to stay for a while though, since it took some hours to find a doctor willing to look at him on short notice and for cash.

    ¡°You¡¯ve torn your ACL,¡± the doctor said bluntly, and went on to cover, exhaustively, the required care. Exercises, braces. He was admonished for continuing to walk on it, but it wasn¡¯t like Callum had a choice. At least it didn¡¯t need surgery, yet.

    The fact that he couldn¡¯t just walk off what had really been only a simple fall made him feel really old, which was not pleasant. How bad it was remained to be seen, but Callum would be using crutches and cane for a while, so he sure wasn¡¯t going to be going out hiking again. He was certainly not enamored of being so immobile but it wasn¡¯t like he actually needed to do the walking.

    Callum tried to look on the bright side. It would give him an excuse to really work on his kinesis and turn teleportation into a reflex. The doc gladly took US Dollars, and Callum got a taxi back to the hotel. There, he made sure to get new clothes, get a haircut and some dye to give himself some extra gray, and a knockoff but good-looking suit to make it look like he was not a refugee. Then he was ready to leave.

    Getting back into the United States wasn¡¯t overly difficult. There weren¡¯t even any mages or supernaturals manning the checkpoints, and of course the normal setup had no chance of stopping someone who could teleport. From there, he just paid a taxi to take him deeper into Texas.

    The fact that he looked respectable and was on crutches actually made it much easier to work his way back out to his cache in the mountains, and pick up the rest of his supplies. He¡¯d been chewing over exactly how to bunker down for a while, considering what he needed access to, but what he¡¯d seen on the drive through Texas had given him an idea. There were enormous numbers of trailer homes for rent, entire ghost towns where he could get at least shelter, electricity, and internet. With barely anyone around, there was also no real danger of involving other people in the event of supernatural troubles.

    He didn¡¯t even need ID, if he paid for it in advance, with cash.

    As a bonus, while Texas was home to two major shifter packs and had vampire Masters in Houston and Austin, the bland, hard desert areas didn¡¯t seem to be appealing to anyone. He had to admit even the mana seemed somewhat scarcer there, even though there was supposedly a portal somewhere in South America.

    Callum didn¡¯t really enjoy the neighborhood, but it was in the middle of nowhere, and a beat-up, third-hand, used white pickup truck meant he could drive out into the scrub to practice magic. Which was something he very, very badly needed to do. First, though, he had to replace his contingency.

    The original was slated for melting down, but he¡¯d kept it for reference. It was obvious both the implant and the receiver plate had degraded pretty badly, but Callum had high hopes for a proper enchant with purer materials. The only problem was how to make his metal spheres into those enchants.

    Once again, it was micro-industry to the rescue. Some scouring on the internet and he found a metal shop a few hours drive away with all the toys, and he still had all his old CAD files. The only difference was that instead of filling it with paste, he¡¯d be pouring in molten mordite. At least, that was what he thought, but the folks at the metal shop suggested hammering wire in, instead.

    Mordite looked and felt sort of like lead without the light of the cenote water, so he just claimed the stuff was an alloy but he wasn¡¯t sure exactly what. In the end, the melting temperature wasn¡¯t all that high, so it didn¡¯t take them long to turn half of the hundred or so ounces of mordite he had into very fine wire, and the other half into a flat ribbon. The former for generic enchanting, the latter for the twin-type enchantments like homebonds.

    He kept a close watch on the process with his senses, a little worried that just normal metalworking processes might ruin the magical properties, but that didn¡¯t seem to be the case. In the end, he ended up with not only the processed mordite, but five sets of receiver plate and implant blanks. Just one was not enough; he needed to have an actual network.

    The wire wasn¡¯t quite as ad-hoc as the paste, but it meant he could still make some mistakes without having to start completely from scratch. He could even use a basic acetylene torch to melt the wires together at intersections. The only weakness, then, was his issues with terrible vis control.

    You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

    The fact that he could only make overloaded vis threads, for lack of a better term, had to be at least part of why the teleports were so bad. He was fine, but it was probably because it was his vis all the way. With the homebonds, it was like someone else doing it with his technique, so he suffered just as badly as the couple he¡¯d teleported before. For that matter, probably as badly as Clara and the teens he¡¯d taken from the vampire nest.

    Though he hated to do so, he made a new homebond implant before trying to fix his vis, just because he didn¡¯t want to be caught without it. He could always make a new one, but he couldn¡¯t make a new him if he got caught again. It was a tedious process, but made far easier by being something he¡¯d done before.

    With the wire segments he could still work piecemeal, like with the paste, but he had to be careful when joining things. If he melted the metal or even flexed it too much, the enchantment degraded or vanished. From what he could tell, the enchanting structure was bound into the physical matter, and if that started to break down, the vis that was entrained with it did too.

    Unfortunately the improved materials didn¡¯t really translate to an improved experience, and it still was like a punch to the gut to go through. That said, it was notably better than the last use of the original model, when he¡¯d escaped from GAR and been laid up for multiple days. He took a full two days to relocate his emergency escape cache, driving up to Montana and placing down another shed-cache before returning to Texas.

    Then he called Lucy again.

    ¡°Heeey, big man! How was your vacation?¡±

    ¡°I wish I could have stayed longer,¡± he told her, absently rubbing his knee as he sat in the back of his pickup. ¡°Alas, it was not to be. How about you? I think you¡¯ve answered like, ten seconds after I¡¯ve called you, every time I¡¯ve called you. Don¡¯t you ever rest?¡±

    ¡°Haha! I think I¡¯m owed a ton of vacation time, actually. You gonna take me somewhere?¡±

    ¡°You know, I¡¯d like to,¡± he said, and stopped for a moment to consider what he¡¯d just said. But it was true; Lucy was about the only person he actually enjoyed talking to. She was fun and sharp, and though he hadn¡¯t really found anyone interesting since Selene died, she ran more to his tastes than the gym bunny that Shahey had tried to set him up with. She was the only one where it didn¡¯t feel like he had to hide everything about who and what he was. Sure, he kept things from her, but she knew it and didn¡¯t mind, even if she did keep cheekily asking for details.

    ¡°Gonna show me a good time, big man?¡± Lucy asked with her usual playful tone.

    ¡°I would, but it¡¯s just not possible right now,¡± he told her regretfully.

    ¡°Oh? Oh!¡± Callum smiled to himself as Lucy made sudden, stuttering flustered noises rather than her usual playful banter. ¡°I, uh. Um.¡±

    ¡°I need to maintain my security, so I¡¯ll just have to be satisfied with hearing your lovely voice,¡± he told her, still a little bit teasing.

    ¡°Wow. You really go right at things, don¡¯t you, big man?¡± Lucy said, a little faintly. ¡°Whew! You can¡¯t see it but I¡¯m fanning myself right now.¡± Callum laughed.

    ¡°I¡¯ve learned to be direct, yes. But I¡¯m kind of GAR¡¯s Most Wanted, so it¡¯s all academic.¡±

    ¡°I suppose it is,¡± Lucy said. ¡°I, ah, wasn¡¯t expecting that, though.¡±

    ¡°You don¡¯t have anyone trying to date you over there?¡± Callum asked, a little curious. He didn¡¯t actually know anything about her besides her voice.

    ¡°Ah, man, nah. I¡¯m not a mage or a shifter, so the dating pool is basically other duds and most of them are pretty miserable bastards to begin with. Not that I blame them, but GAR isn¡¯t really a hotbed of romance.¡±

    ¡°To be fair, most offices aren¡¯t. I don¡¯t imagine mages are much different from anyone else when it comes to being boring.¡±

    ¡°Hah! If anything, they¡¯re worse! Mages and Grand Mages and Archmages love their titles and procedures and every little thing being just so. I guess if you¡¯re two hundred years old you don¡¯t like surprises, or something.¡±

    ¡°I imagine not. Back when I did office work, the people who had been around two or three years were crusty. If that went on for decades or longer, I imagine they¡¯re totally ossified.¡±

    ¡°Ossified, ha! Yeah, that¡¯s exactly it. Thankfully I don¡¯t work for them, otherwise there wouldn¡¯t be an IT department and I¡¯d be doing laundry or something.¡±

    ¡°Yeah, that doesn¡¯t sound fun.¡± It made a bit of sense that non-mage descendants were stuck with more menial jobs, even if it wasn¡¯t particularly fair. If it took relatively rare materials to make enchantments, then they couldn¡¯t automate all the labor they needed, and he was sure mages weren¡¯t interested in doing their own cooking and cleaning. Bringing in regular mundanes had its own issues, so of course there was an underclass.

    ¡°Actually the shifters do a lot of that now. Vamps and thralls staff things too. Not the Masters or Alphas, but, you know. Lower tiers,¡± she told him. ¡°There just aren¡¯t enough duds anymore. Mages are careful about bloodlines and stuff.¡± Callum suppressed a laugh at that, considering what he now knew about his parentage.

    ¡°Well, all that bloodline stuff seems really archaic to me,¡± he told her.

    ¡°I can tell!¡±

    ¡°Anyway,¡± he said, letting the implied topic drop. It wasn¡¯t something he really wanted to dwell on too much. ¡°As much as I love calling just to talk to you, I do have some business, too. I was wondering about selling a teleport enchantment. A homebond. Basically, who would I sell it to and for how much.¡±

    ¡°Oof, you¡¯re not asking for much, are you? I¡¯ll have to get back to you but I don¡¯t know how many people are actually going to be interested in black-market magecraft. It¡¯s probably like a million-dollar item but who¡¯s gonna buy it? I dunno.¡±

    ¡°There¡¯s no rush,¡± he assured her. ¡°I haven¡¯t even made it yet. But it would be nice to get that kind of cash infusion.¡±

    ¡°Ha, I bet! But yeah, I don¡¯t think there¡¯s all that large a market for enchanting stuff that isn¡¯t, you know, official. I¡¯ll check around a bit, but it¡¯s possible it¡¯s just not something you can move.¡±

    ¡°Well, if I can¡¯t, I can¡¯t,¡± Callum said, but he grimaced. He could take some shortcuts with his magic, but it took labor and materials to build a bunker, no matter what form that bunker took. He was going to take it seriously, so it needed to be livable, not something to just hide in for a few hours or days, or even weeks.

    That meant he really needed a cash infusion. While he still had a good chunk of gold and some cash from the vampires he¡¯d raided, he was intimately familiar with how expensive buildings could get. A full million dollars could actually be a fairly limited budget, especially taking into account furnishings and equipment.

    ¡°I¡¯ll get back to you when I can,¡± Lucy promised him. ¡°I hope I¡¯ll have some good news for you, but that¡¯s a pretty hot item you¡¯re trying to move.¡±

    ¡°I appreciate it,¡± he told her. ¡°How¡¯s my deposit holding up?¡±

    ¡°Ah, well, I could use another kilo or two soon,¡± she said. ¡°Moving it originally was a bit of an adventure, but I¡¯ve got that squared away. Funny, that stuff¡¯s actually a pretty common medium for the Houses, but I hadn¡¯t handled it myself before you paid me.¡±

    ¡°I¡¯ll do another dead drop soon then,¡± he promised. ¡°I wouldn¡¯t want you to think I didn¡¯t appreciate you.¡±

    ¡°Oh, I¡¯d never think that, big man.¡±

    He stayed on the phone a little bit longer, trying to corral his vis threads into making tubes while he talked, but it was actually Lucy who rang off that time. She did have a day job and couldn¡¯t sit around all the time talking with him. Part of him wondered if talking so blatantly about stuff while at the job was actually a good idea, but Lucy seemed to know what she was doing.

    It was just as well, since he needed to properly focus on his exercises.

    He''d been using the basic magical structures like balls and bolts and beams as practice, even if they didn¡¯t do anything. While he was fiddling around with casting multiple things at once he¡¯d accidentally shot one of his own constructs, and it had promptly collapsed. That had made him sit up and take notice, because he thought it might give him a way to punch through other mage¡¯s spells, but a little bit of experimentation kicked that idea in the head.

    It turned out it wasn¡¯t the vis interacting that was the problem, it was the spatial distortions they made. Even a small amount of disruption to the portal¡¯s frame was enough break the structure and collapse it. The same was true for a teleportation frame, but a simple box or sphere without any twisting or vis fill passed right through. Really, it was the attack forms that had the effect, which implied some deeper substance to their pattern than just the shape of ball or bolt.

    Callum already knew that his stuff could be disrupted, but it was good to find out there were more ways than just brute force to mess up magic. He added some way of hardening his spells to his list of things to figure out, as if he didn¡¯t have enough to research. For the moment, he was focused on changing his threads.

    He was actually somewhat pleased to have something specific to work toward that he could see palpable progress in. At no point could he figure out how to make vis threads with less energy in them ¡ª or more, for that matter. When he overcharged a teleport it was more a matter of increasing the fill portion of the framework, not adding energy to the threads.

    Changing the shape, though, that was within his grasp. There were two ways to get a tube; he could flatten the threads and roll them, or try to inflate them from the center. The former seemed like it was easier to work toward incrementally, and he¡¯d already made some strides, but that would make deploying his vis threads into a finnicky multi-step process. Something that was probably a nonstarter for anything but enchanting.

    Inflating the vis threads by filling them with the unformed stuff seemed way faster and easier, if it was possible. Considering how they were formed, he gave it a decent chance that it wasn¡¯t, but he still wanted to give it a shot. Besides, he¡¯d not actually tried playing around with his magic for far too long. Especially since he had a self-imposed ban on using it while he was in hiding.

    That didn¡¯t mean he hadn¡¯t been thinking about it, and since there was nobody around out in the ugly scrub deserts of west-central Texas he could fiddle around as much as he wanted. Which was good, because progress was slow.

    The breakthrough came after about a week of fiddling, when he finally managed to make a strand of vis thread swell up like a balloon. Sort of. It looked like it was full of unformed space vis but at the same time, like it wasn¡¯t, in one of those weird perceptual tricks that his magic could play sometimes.

    Naturally, he poked it with a stick.

    Actually it was more of a splinter. Callum¡¯s vis threads were really the size of a thread, something like one-tenth the cord thickness of a normal mage¡¯s working, so he had to use a very small test piece. The splinter seemed to distort as it passed through the bubble, but failed to come out the other side. When he withdrew it, though, it looked undamaged. It took him a little bit more poking and prodding to figure out exactly what was going on, but when he did, he threw up his hands and grinned.

    ¡°Ha, ha! Yes!¡± He would have done a little jig, but his knee reminded him that it did not like being used. What he¡¯d done was make an area, however small, that was larger inside than outside.

    Admittedly, he had no idea how to make any use of it, both because of the size and because he had to hold the vis in place, so it wasn¡¯t like he could just set it and forget it. It was a pretty great feeling to figure out some new piece of magic by himself but there was a lot of work to do in order to make it at all useful. Like figuring out how to turn a construct into an enchantment, and vice-versa.

    Obviously, just turning a tiny speck of space into a slightly less tiny speck of space wasn¡¯t useful in and of itself, but finding out it was even possible was the hardest step. He dismissed the vis bubble, then made a new thread and tried again, repeating the process until he could do it at will. Only then did he try reproducing it on a larger scale.

    He found out very quickly that a thin framework of vis threads, like he used for portals and teleports and even his gravitykinesis, was not sufficient. He had to build an actual box, and then shove a bunch of unformed vis into it. Considering how small his vis threads were, that was a problem.

    Fiddling around with the tiny box, he naturally poked at it and tried to destroy it just to see what would happen. If he just let it unravel, it was equivalent to a teleport, where the extra space appeared or disappeared slowly enough that the only thing that happened was some mild air movement. With the thin walls of the box, made from flattened vis threads, it wasn¡¯t too hard to pop it instead.

    Rather like a portal, it fell apart if he hit it with too large a stick, the rapid passage of matter overloading it. The spatial attack spell burst it too, and either way he could sense a ripple as space realigned itself. He wasn¡¯t sure what he¡¯d do with that, but it was another tool to practice with nonetheless. It seemed that his attempts to flatten his threads had more than one application, so he focused on that when he went out to practice magic.

    Even without being able to enchant with it, something that was bigger on the inside had all kinds of uses. Especially when he could collapse it, too. His initial experiments were only on the order of ten or twenty percent before they collapsed, but he could probably improve that. So long as he kept his head down in the meantime.

    ***

    ¡°How the hell can these people just vanish?¡± Archmage Hargrave scowled, looking at the reports strewn over Agent Jahn¡¯s desk.

    ¡°Well, sir, they do clean up after themselves.¡± Jahn had actually been impressed by the makeshift enchantments they¡¯d found on Callum Wells. They were remarkable in their crude efficiency, while at the same time used such a delicate framework that it was clear special tools were at play. While there were foci to reduce the impact of a mage¡¯s vis, they were generally foci that muddled the local mana field, smearing it and destroying the details of what had been used. Wells¡¯ approach of pulling the vis out and leaving no traces at all only worked because he had an extremely light touch to begin with, and didn¡¯t seem to use any normal mana foci.

    Jahn still wasn¡¯t sure whether or not Wells had BSE training. The handwritten notes they¡¯d found seemed to be a random assortment of action items for novice mages, but his capabilities and subtle vis were the marks of someone far more advanced. BSE agents could be remarkably slippery themselves, but there had been actually zero trace of outside vis at the vampire sites and, once they had known about it, the place the fae had disappeared. No mage he knew, not even BSE folk, operated with such a minimal footprint.

    ¡°I think we need to give serious thought that they have contacts inside GAR who are covering for them.¡± Hargrave clasped his hands together, giving Jahn a stern look. ¡°Maybe BSE itself. Ignore that old harridan Duvall. I need you to lead an internal inquiry.¡±

    ¡°With respect, sir, I¡¯m an external agent, I don¡¯t deal with internal affairs.¡±

    ¡°That¡¯s exactly why I¡¯m giving you the job. Neither the Master of Paris or King Suine have found any traces of them in France. Or what that artifact was that he was using to get around.¡± Jahn nodded. The description from the team implied something very strange indeed, maybe even something from out of Faerie itself.

    There was no real worry about the fae as a whole backing Wells. The fae didn¡¯t do anything as a whole, and if one of the fae kings on Earth was starting to get restive, the others would sabotage him out of spiteful glee. But even if one was doing so in secret, the ability to stay so completely off the radar of both magical and mundane authorities was suspect.

    ¡°I suppose I could try, sir,¡± Jahn conceded. ¡°There are other agents more qualified¡­¡±

    ¡°You¡¯ve met the man personally, you didn¡¯t completely shirk your responsibilities like some people, and we¡¯ve got a lot of other people out sweeping Europe. Some people think the earth mages are going to find a bunker somewhere.¡± Hargrave rolled his eyes. ¡°Only BSE is taking this as seriously as it should be and, like I said, I suspect they¡¯re compromised.¡±

    ¡°The BSE folks aren¡¯t going to like me stepping in,¡± Jahn said. ¡°Do I get a crest?¡±

    ¡°Yes,¡± Hargrave said. ¡°You¡¯ll be doing this on my authority. And Fane¡¯s. He may not be happy with whatsisname, but he¡¯s less happy with Wells.¡±

    ¡°Understood.¡± Hargrave was a powerhouse, but Fane was a terror. Jahn had never met the man personally, but rumors abounded, and he knew enough to know a lot of them were true. ¡°I¡¯ll start with Black and Danforth. They¡¯ve done the most work on the case, so they¡¯re the most likely source of any leaks. If it¡¯s not them, they¡¯ll be the best ones to handle some of the grunt work.¡±

    ¡°Whatever you think best,¡± Hargrave said, brushing it aside with an indifferent wave of his hand. ¡°I just want you to find whoever they¡¯ve got inside GAR. Or whatever. We know he can bypass wards; there may be sabotage or surveillance enchants in place. There¡¯s really no telling.¡±

    ¡°Yes, sir. Do you have the crests with you?¡± Archmage or no, Jahn wasn¡¯t about to start bossing people around without an actual symbol of authority. He already had a significant amount of authority, with a deliberately vague rank and no clear chain of command, but that also meant that anyone high up could boss him around and he¡¯d have to take it.

    Hargrave dug into the pocket of his double-breasted suit and took out two crests, one bearing the Hargrave Seal and one bearing the Fane seal. As a matter of course Jahn pushed a little vis out and brushed over them to assure himself of their authenticity. Even if he couldn¡¯t compare signatures right there, they both were energized as proof of an Archmage¡¯s backing. Not that anyone would dare falsify them.

    ¡°I¡¯ll get started right away,¡± he promised.

 Chapter 9 â€“ Inquiries

    ¡°Well big man, it¡¯ll be a little complicated on this end, but the best buyer for your piece of merchandise is a certain Alpha we both know and, well, maybe we don¡¯t love but we at least get along with.¡±

    ¡°That seems a little too convenient. Is he willing to buy it just so I owe him a favor or something?¡± Callum asked.

    ¡°Honestly, maybe a bit? But like I said, I don¡¯t actually have much in the way of, ah, criminal mage contacts. BSE and GAR keep a very tight lid on that. And homebonds are basically special order from Duvall, so one just showing up is bound to create questions.¡±

    ¡°But the Alpha can handle it?¡±

    ¡°Well, shifters and vamps do hire mages. So I guess the idea would be for him to have a mage charge things or something, not sure.¡±

    ¡°Mm.¡± Callum was pretty sure that Chester was still trying to do him a favor, more than buying something he really could use. That was something he was quite leery of, but he also needed the cash infusion for a bunker. Preferably in gold, or something that would easily and untraceably convert into other currencies. ¡°Well, once again, I haven¡¯t made it yet, so if there¡¯s some specifications on size or the like, I¡¯ll see what I can do to accommodate him.¡±

    ¡°You¡¯d do better to talk to him directly, big man. I can set that up for you, tomorrow?¡±

    ¡°That sounds great, Lucy.¡± Their calls had been maybe a little awkward on occasion after he¡¯d admitted a more-than-professional interest, but not much. He had the feeling that she was as strained for proper human contact as he was.

    When he hung up he bent himself back to the task of practice and study. If he was going to be making another homebond, this time for an actual customer, he needed to get the enchantment right. Alpha Chester probably wouldn¡¯t appreciate needing antacids and pepto-bismol after every use.

    His progress on turning threads into tubes was not going too badly, but it was becoming pretty obvious that he¡¯d never have the facility at it that he did with his threads. He could, with effort, flatten out a thread and roll it into a tube, at which point the structure was stable. It was a tedious and finnicky process, though, and he was far from being able to do it ad-hoc.

    Trying to make structures with them clarified a lot of differences between himself and regular mages, though. The tubes were stiffer and larger, not as easy to manipulate but not as prone to deformation. That meant there was none of the vibration or oscillation his threads always had while the frameworks were energized, but it wasn¡¯t possible to match the outline as well. So it actually required less total vis, was presumably not nauseating, but it was far slower and left behind a lot more evidence.

    Sadly, it was not the cure-all that he¡¯d been hoping, but it would at least mean his enchantments could be less terrible. Especially since he¡¯d been making at least a little progress with the actual literature and theory. Enough that he could identify some of the simpler aspects, anyway. If nothing else, he could make a larger receiving plate, something more along the lines of the GAR teleporters, so multiple people could fit through simultaneously.

    The derivation from construct to enchantment and back still escaped him. It was, apparently, hard to begin with, and the advanced stuff was of course restricted to the Guild of Enchanting. At least the more basic techniques were widely known simply because every mage wanted to turn their spells into foci instead of having to construct them manually every time. Not that he blamed them.

    His gravitykinesis was actually the perfect candidate for turning into a focus. It was basically impossible for him to lift himself because of the impact his blurry vis threads had on things like guts and the inner ear, but having to construct that from tubes every time would be exceedingly difficult. Unfortunately, there was just too much involved in that process to even start at the moment, so he¡¯d have to stick to the floating chair or flying luggage version until he found some better references.

    Callum had also spent a lot of time drafting up plans for his bunker. Which was, despite the name, not something he wanted to build underground. With air and earth mages, that wasn¡¯t that much protection anyway. No, the value would be in making it difficult to find for anyone, mundane or magical. Doing that while still being able to have things like power and internet might be more difficult, but magic would help.

    Now that he had the materials, he really wanted to enchant permanent portals. Not big ones for people or vehicles, but something small enough to run a cable bundle through. He was pretty sure that was what GAR used to increase the amount of mana at their offices, since they very definitely had more than the surroundings. The only issue was whether there was enough ambient mana around, though he¡¯d been making strides on reducing the costs for his own constructs.

    He¡¯d kinda-sorta cracked the recirculation issue, after much study of the CAD drawings he¡¯d taken from the dragonlands, but what he could manage thus far was a pretty crude approximation. Eventually, he was confident that he¡¯d be able to manage a proper one, though, since he was ever so slowly learning some of the principles behind the structures. Trial and error weren¡¯t nearly as good as instruction, but he wasn¡¯t sure he¡¯d trust any mage at this point.

    The copious notes he was taking, on the other hand, might well help someone down the line. He didn¡¯t know who, or when, since it wasn¡¯t like he was in the running to get his work immortalized by the magical authorities. Still, there was no telling what the future held. Plus, he¡¯d long ago gotten into the habit of sketching or writing down everything, and so much magic was relative distances, curves, and angles that it shared a lot of commonality with his architecture training.

    In anticipation of the cash infusion he¡¯d be getting from Chester, Callum drove all the way to Dallas to trade in a couple of his gold plates for money. There was nothing particularly exciting about the trip, save for the fact that there was quite a bit of supernatural presence there and he felt a little weirded out having a heavily warded building within his perceptions.

    With his tattoo gone, he couldn¡¯t pose as a mage anymore, so he had to make do with a normal buyer for his gold, though he didn¡¯t cash out more than one plate at a time. If he looked hard enough, he could find people who were happy to take bullion, no questions asked. One particularly seedy place, though, sent someone to trail after him when he turned down their laughable offer. That was kind of hilarious, since he just discreetly turned a corner and teleported to the next block.

    It did drive home why he was staying out in a sparsely-populated area in a trailer home, despite the drab surroundings and occasionally sketchy neighbors. The whole thing made Callum miss West Virginia, or even South Dakota. Anywhere with more green. But even that was better than the sea of uncaring faces and bland concrete of a city.

    After he refreshed his cash reserves, it was a long tedious process of shopping around and doing the minutiae of getting his plans fleshed out. He had, somewhat regretfully, decided that his bunker couldn¡¯t be in the United States, if for no other reason than the surveillance everywhere. Or rather, the fact that every transaction and phone call and so on was so interlinked and the requirement for identification so ubiquitous.

    Eventually, some facial recognition database somewhere would flag him on a store camera or something, and he¡¯d have another GAR kill team after him. Considering the way the last one acted, that wasn¡¯t something he wanted to deal with. Especially since they didn¡¯t seem to have much care for other people or infrastructure. He had to wonder how many ¡°industrial accidents¡± and ¡°tragic fires¡± were the result of such things.

    Though from what he¡¯d seen, there probably weren¡¯t too many rogues like him. Enough that they had a black ops force, sure, but for all he knew they mostly operated in the portal worlds. Or their magical cleanup squad was really good, which was equally possible, since there weren¡¯t overt signs of major magical battles anywhere.

    The secrecy still bothered him, because from what he saw it wouldn¡¯t have been that hard for mages and assorted supernaturals to establish themselves on top. Sure, there weren¡¯t that many of them, but they were so obscenely powerful that they ought to have been at the top of all the classical civilizations. But there were no real hints of that.

    Either history worldwide had been thoroughly scrubbed, which didn¡¯t seem likely, or supernaturals hadn¡¯t actually been around in antiquity. It was one thing if they¡¯d been there to found Rome or Babylon, but it was another if they would have had to compete with the Holy Roman Empire. Now, of course, he was sure they¡¯d inveigled their way in with the elites of the world, who could use things like healing magic. Or instant teleports.

    The mages, he could understand. They had the portal worlds and probably not a huge need for normal technology. The vamps and the shifters seemed like they¡¯d benefit far more from positions of power, though he supposed they might have issues that weren¡¯t clear at first glance. Even with glamours, things like not being active during the day would make it difficult for them to rule over humans.

    Or maybe they just wouldn¡¯t be able to restrain their appetites.

    For the moment that secrecy did help him, or rather, the disconnect between the magical world and the real one. It meant he could wander around a showcase on solar panels without having to worry that something would mark him as a rogue mage. Partly because no normal person knew about mages, and partly because solar panels just weren¡¯t something the magical world especially cared about.

    He doubted they spent much time in the offices of civil engineers, either. Which Callum did. He couldn¡¯t get his plans properly certified since he hadn¡¯t located the actual land he wanted to put his bunker, but he could at least get someone qualified and start running it through the process of figuring out electrical and plumbing. Not that he even wanted to get it officially certified, since that would risk his ID and he¡¯d rather not.

    As it stood he¡¯d at least learned from his past mistakes and had his pickup under a different name than Keith Summers, amateur metalworker and the actual purchaser of the various services and material. The amateur was not a stretch, either. After watching the mordite processing, Callum figured that he might as well get a crucible and some other equipment so he could do it himself in the future, or if he needed to recycle his wire.

    His knee made it essentially impossible for him to move heavy stuff with pure muscle, but that was what magic was for. He could even transfer molten metal with gravitykinesis, and probably more easily and safely than physically pouring a crucible. At some point he wanted to see if he could get anything of value from simulating microgravity, but that was pretty far down the list in his notebook.

    Callum also picked up a new cane while he was out, something with a bit more style than the generic medical one from Mallorca, since despite all the exercises he was still feeling a bit lopsided. With that, he was ready for his call with Alpha Chester. Mostly, anyway. He still felt that same tension as he used to whenever he met any client for the first time, that little niggling worry that he¡¯d come off as a complete idiot. Of course, he¡¯d dealt with Chester before, but not in this exact way.

    ¡°Chester here.¡± The man¡¯s voice came from the phone as Lucy linked him into the conversation. Callum wasn¡¯t entirely certain what technological witchcraft she had worked so they could talk anonymously, but he figured she had to know what she was doing. ¡°You say you¡¯ve got a homebond to sell?¡±

    ¡°More like I can make one to sell,¡± Callum replied, sitting in the back of his pickup out at the edge of cell service. ¡°Considering you¡¯re not a mage, I was thinking you might like something a little different from the ring-plate setup. Like maybe two plates that connect to each other?¡±

    ¡°That would be excellent,¡± Chester said. ¡°How would I use it, and how big can you make it?¡±

    ¡°Well, you¡¯re still going to need a mage to activate it, unfortunately. I can¡¯t change that just yet, nor the fact that you¡¯re going to need a mage or some kind of mana source to charge it up. But as for size, probably a meter diameter circle.¡±

    ¡°Wait one,¡± Chester said. Callum tapped his pencil against his notebook while he waited, thinking. The paired-plate thing was actually a fairly simple evolution of the homebond, since the actual teleportation enchantment was symmetrical. It wasn¡¯t nearly as complicated as what GAR used, but it also didn¡¯t have any protections or security or anything. Which was why he wasn¡¯t going to make one for himself.

    Chester might be able to secure both ends of the teleport, but Callum sure couldn¡¯t. Teleport pads would probably be more pleasant to use than a homebond, but it¡¯d also be an open invitation for someone to wander into whatever secure area he used. That wasn¡¯t even counting that he wasn¡¯t sure how the teleport overcame the vis resistance people had.

    When he fed it directly, it was linked in, so that made sense. But mages that just shoved mana into it, rather then vis, didn¡¯t have that benefit, and that wasn¡¯t mentioning the bubbles and shields and so on. Nor did he know how a non-mage like Alpha Chester would use one, given the difficulty he¡¯d had teleporting Clara.

    ¡°We can manage that,¡± Chester said after a moment. ¡°One meter is acceptable.¡±

    ¡°It also doesn¡¯t have any of the flourishes the GAR system has,¡± he said. ¡°There¡¯s no security, nothing. It¡¯d just teleport from point to point.¡± He was planning to leave some room on the pads for Chester¡¯s pet mage to add any extra stuff to address that, though maybe it was just a matter of raw power. Either way, he needed to make it clear because it wouldn¡¯t do to sell Chester a lemon.

    Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.

    ¡°That¡¯s actually better, for our purposes,¡± Chester assured him. ¡°The more stripped-down, the better. ¡±

    ¡°That¡¯s handy,¡± Callum said dryly. ¡°Though that means no safety features, either.¡±

    ¡°But it will work?¡±

    ¡°I¡¯ll test it myself before I send it over,¡± he said. ¡°I assume we¡¯ll use a dead drop again.¡±

    ¡°Of course,¡± Chester said, with some degree of amusement. ¡°I¡¯ll have Lucy supply you with a map of my territory.¡±

    ¡°Works for me,¡± Callum replied. ¡°Speaking of Lucy, I¡¯d like you to pay her out of whatever this is going to run. Say, ten percent finders fee and ten percent more for a deposit.¡±

    ¡°So, twelve kilos to you and three to Lucy,¡± Chester said, without skipping a beat.

    ¡°Works for me,¡± Callum agreed. ¡°I¡¯ll let Lucy know when it¡¯s ready.¡±

    ¡°That is acceptable,¡± Chester told him.

    ¡°Sounds great to me, big man,¡± Lucy said happily. ¡°Another couple like this and I can retire!¡±

    ***

    Most of the official work correspondence Lucy got was routine. For her, it was all through email, because fortunately enough her bosses were technology-literate. Most of GAR proper was, in fact ?¡ª all the bureaucrats and decisionmakers for the day-to-day operations. The Houses themselves still lagged behind. There was also the fact that GAR employed a lot of non-mages, so they couldn¡¯t use foci.

    Lucy was pretty sure they¡¯d come up with scry-coms solely to avoid using mundane-produced goods.

    The email that dropped into her inbox that morning landed with an almost audible thud, marked with importance flags and all caps and exclamation marks. That by itself wasn¡¯t really an issue, but the contents were a little unsettling. Orders for every employee at GAR Midwest to report to the main floor, with the implicit threat that anyone who didn¡¯t would be at best fired. Considering it was GAR, the penalties could run a lot more severe than just job termination. Like life termination.

    ¡°Well, shit.¡± She scrambled to flip a few switches on her various machines and peripherals, burning her secretly routed connections and purging a few bits of local storage. Most of her illicit work was kept offsite, with only a few connections that she had full control over. It was probably a little cheeky to route anything to GAR Midwest, but she was the one who was in charge of the network and had as anonymous and encrypted a connection as could be managed. Besides, it wasn¡¯t like she had anything else to do most of the day. Her job was mostly a game of waiting until something broke.

    This seemed like it was a little more than something breaking though, and she could always re-establish things if it wasn¡¯t anything unusual. Or maybe she¡¯d just leave them off. Given how stirred up things were at the moment it was probably a smarter idea, but she¡¯d always enjoyed sticking it to the mages higher up who were supposed to be supervising her and had no idea what she actually did.

    She locked down her workstation and got out of her chair, patting herself down for a quick inventory to make sure she had everything before heading out of her dungeon. The IT center was, in fact, underneath the main part of GAR Midwest, a flight of empty echoing stairs taking her up to the ground floor and in among the people who were emerging from various offices.

    There was various confused conversation, the crowd naturally splitting into the duds and the lower-level supernaturals who worked at GAR. Lucy was by far the youngest of the duds, most of the others being well into middle age and about as cheerful and exciting as could be expected from a group of office drones. She was technically an office drone herself but she preferred to think she didn¡¯t count.

    ¡°What¡¯s going on?¡± Albert, the facilities clerk, asked her.

    ¡°I don¡¯t actually know,¡± Lucy said, which was the concerning part. Usually she caught wind of anything unusual going on by snooping on emails, but there had been nothing to indicate some kind of emergency all-hands. Which meant it had come through purely supernatural channels, mage-to-mage.

    ¡°Huh,¡± he said, and they continued on out into the main floor. Everyone else was there, with some of the mages and a couple of the fae floating above the gathered employees. Supervisor Lowell stood at the front, flanked by people in black uniforms. In fact, she realized, the entire area was surrounded by the black-uniformed types, scattered about the edges, which made Lucy very uneasy.

    ¡°Hello, everybody,¡± Lowell said, a false smile plastered on her face. ¡°There have been some internal issues of late, so the BSE is here to do some interviews. If you don¡¯t have anything to hide, you don¡¯t have to worry about it. All interviews will be confidential, of course.¡±

    A thrill of fear shot through her, but she tried not to show it. Of all people gathered there, she was the one who actually did have something to fear. There wasn¡¯t any way she could bow out of it either, if the Bureau of Secret Enforcement was about. At least she didn¡¯t stand out because everyone was nervous, and a dozen people started talking at once.

    ¡°Silence!¡± The speaker was a small woman next to one of the BSE folks, and her voice carried enough magic with it to still the tongues of everyone who was speaking. Lucy found she couldn¡¯t even open her mouth, and shuddered involuntarily. She hated compulsion, and she hated more that she had no real way to stop it.

    Usually she had some resistance to that kind of thing, even if she was a dud. While she couldn¡¯t exactly see magic, she could still sense it, and sort of brace herself against it. Not so in this instance, since the woman¡¯s magic was so powerful, some fae thing of frozen rose petals reaching into her brain.

    ¡°Thank you, Agent Black,¡± one of the BSE members said. ¡°Now, M-0 follow Agent Carter. M-1, Agent Jay. M-2 and above, Agent Black.¡± The agents raised their hands as their names were called. Lucy gritted her teeth and started making her way toward Carter.

    The compulsion was already fading, but there were only a few mutters here and there. Nobody was happy, but at the same time, nobody was going to risk the wrath of BSE. They were the real deal, and they had no sense of humor whatsoever.

    What was even worse than being separated out that way was the fact that they were being taken to the teleporters. There were some interview rooms on-site, but they were just meant to deal with low-level supernaturals who had been caught being naughty. Going off-site meant they were anticipating something serious.

    She found herself maybe third in line, ahead of Albert but behind two of the switchboard operators. A quick glance showed that there were more BSE personnel up there, working the teleporters and determining the destinations. They were definitely taking this seriously.

    The line shuffled forward as a BSE agent processed them through the teleporter one by one. When it was Lucy¡¯s turn, the room blinked and she found herself in a bare, white alcove behind a security station. The atmosphere was oddly oppressive, so it was probably in a portal world, but there was nothing to indicate where. Yet another black-clad BSE agent, this time a vampire lifted a crest marked with the symbol of House Fane, and the tattoo on her wrist tingled.

    ¡°You will state your name,¡± the agent instructed, the vampire¡¯s voice compelling her to speak. She couldn¡¯t even brace herself against it that time, her mouth opening of her own accord.

    ¡°Lucile Harper.¡±

    Some of the fae and vampires employed by GAR pushed around their dud coworkers, so it wasn¡¯t like she¡¯d never been the target of compulsion before. It was kept to a minimum, since even if they were duds they were still part of GAR, but that didn¡¯t stop the occasional instruction to forget what they¡¯d walked into the room for, or eat the wrong lunch. So she wasn¡¯t completely unfamiliar with nature of such things, even if she¡¯d never felt it hammer home so hard before.

    ¡°You will proceed through the gateway.¡± She had no choice but to comply, in that horrible feeling of doing something against her own better judgement. Of knowing that something is a mistake and doing it anyway. It wasn¡¯t like there was even any need to use compulsion to simply wave her through into the facility, but they did it anyway.

    Her feet carried her forward past the warded gateway, skin crawling at the feel of the vis scan, and she stopped. The facility was chillingly bland and unmarked, a dull gray hall with dull gray doors and sourceless lights stretching out in front of her. The door to her left opened and another vampire stepped out, also clad in BSE black.

    It could have been the brother of the one at the security station, but most vampires bore at least a vague resemblance to each other. They could be taller or shorter, paler or darker, but there was something about the eyes and the mouth that they all had in common. Maybe it was just the inhuman interest and the faint sneer, but Lucy didn¡¯t need to see fangs to know it was a vampire.

    ¡°You will follow me,¡± the new one instructed, and proceeded down the hallway, forcing her to walk along behind. A few moments later she heard the agent at the security station instruct someone new to state their name, and heard Albert answer.

    ¡°Halt,¡± the vampire told her, forcing her to nearly fall over as she stopped abruptly. He opened one of the unmarked doors to reveal an empty room with two chairs, a table, and some cameras. ¡°You will enter the room,¡± he instructed, and she was compelled inside.

    ¡°You will sit down. You will not speak until you are told.¡±

    Lucy seated herself on the nearest chair in a kind of nightmarish haze, unable to ask questions or even protest her treatment. Not that she thought BSE would listen, but this was far beyond bullying or poking fun. It was like they¡¯d already judged her guilty.

    What was worse, they just made her sit there for a good ten or fifteen minutes before the vampire agent returned. For some reason the compulsion never waned, and all she could do was stew in fear and anxiety, not knowing what was going on or whether they knew anything about her. When the agent did come back, he had a small folder that he set down on the table as he took the seat across from her, his nametag labeling him as Agent Blanchet.

    ¡°This interview will be recorded,¡± Blanchet stated flatly, and Lucy would have scoffed if she could have. It was hardly an interview when she couldn¡¯t say anything of her own accord.

    ¡°You will answer all questions truthfully and completely,¡± Blanchet said, and opened the folder.

    ¡°What is your name?¡±

    ¡°Lucile Rosetta Harper.¡±

    ¡°What are your duties at GAR Midwest?¡±

    ¡°Information Technology management. I run the servers for GAR.¡± Even if she couldn¡¯t fight against the requirement to speak, she could at least control the precise words she used. The first few questions were innocuous enough, which she was glad of. It gave her some time to regain her bearings and start actually thinking rather than reacting. The introductory portion of the interrogation was probably to get people used to answering questions, since even under compulsion people could trip over their tongues, but for her it was an opportunity to clear her mind.

    ¡°Have you given anyone, for any reason, any information restricted by GAR?¡±

    ¡°No.¡± It wasn¡¯t a lie. She had never given anyone any information. She had always sold it, never given it for free. Although part of her struggled to elaborate on that, the flat no was far better than a twisty truth that might invite further questioning.

    ¡°Are you aware of anyone who has, for any reason, supplied restricted information to individuals opposing GAR¡¯s interests?¡±

    ¡°Five years ago, Lucian Friar supplied the preferred pastry choices of the lower office pool to Gran¡¯s Doughnuts across the street. Four years ago, in August, Albert Lan gave the bid data for office supplies to a wholesaler friend so they could underbid.¡± She had almost five years of personal experience with all the little, petty, harmless sort of peculation that could be considered restricted information and individuals opposing GAR¡¯s interests, without even touching on the sort of nonsense more important people got up to.

    Tattling on anyone of real importance would generate questions of its own, but she had plenty of little things to get through first. It was the best bluff she could think of to screen anything she had done, because while she couldn¡¯t refuse to answer, she could answer in the least helpful way possible. Blanchet listened for a few minutes, frowning, before finally getting fed up with her increasingly petty and convoluted stories. He held up his hand, then realizing that didn¡¯t do anything, actually commanded her to stop.

    ¡°You will stop talking,¡± he said bluntly, and then referred to his paper again. Lucy rubbed at her throat, glad that she hadn¡¯t been specifically commanded not to, wishing she had something to drink. Wishing she could ask for something to drink.

    ¡°What are your duties with regard to Alpha Chester?¡±

    She¡¯d been expecting that one. It was no secret she was on retainer for Alpha Chester, and even had her physical residence near the pack headquarters. It wasn¡¯t like she could stay in the House she¡¯d been born to.

    ¡°I provide technical support and troubleshooting,¡± she said. ¡°I make sure his networks function, his phones are supported, and supply teleconferencing services.¡± Those were what she was hired for. Anything beyond that was freelancing and not, strictly speaking, a duty.

    ¡°Do you have significant relations with anyone outside of GAR aside from Alpha Chester¡¯s pack?¡±

    She struggled with that question a fraction of a moment, completely unable to keep herself from answering it, but not willing to betray the big man. The thought of which sparked enough of an idea that she could harness her tongue in the instant before she actually started speaking.

    ¡°My big man calls me up sometimes and we flirt a lot. Last time we talked he wanted to take me out somewhere and I think that would be really great because I haven¡¯t had a proper date in¡ª¡±

    ¡°You will stop talking,¡± Blanchet said, with a long, flat look at her. Contrary to mundane literature, vampires were not sexy at all. They weren¡¯t sexual at all. They couldn¡¯t reproduce and had no interest in anything related to it. Finally he stood, closing the folder and tucking it under his arm.

    ¡°You will stand up and follow me,¡± he instructed her, and brought her back along the sterile, featureless hallway. Back through the gateway, and the vamp there lifted the crest again. Suddenly the irresistible compulsion faded, and she staggered suddenly, gasping and heart hammering like she¡¯d run a marathon.

    ¡°You will go back through the teleport,¡± the security guard said, but it lacked the bite of before. Not that she was about to disobey. She wobbled through and found herself back in GAR Midwest, where she was directed to sit off to the side with the others who had finished their interrogations.

    Lucy knew she was incredibly lucky that they¡¯d not asked more specific and pointed questions, ones that would have been harder to answer without betraying herself, but it wasn¡¯t all luck. She had always known she could be compelled to speak, which was why she separated everything. Why she always worked by individual contract, why she didn¡¯t call her clients by name, nor ask them for their names. Even Alpha Chester.

    Even so, she¡¯d never thought it would be needed. Not beyond, at most, deflecting a too-curious fae. She¡¯d never considered that she¡¯d be treated like some criminal renegade and deprived of even the ability to speak for almost an hour. Lucy slumped down and put her head in her hands. Her jaw ached from gritting her teeth and her palms smarted from where her fingernails had been digging into them.

    She sure as hell wasn¡¯t getting anything else done today. Being angry was one thing, but Lucy was too pissed to even think.

    ***

    ¡°So, nobody admitted anything.¡± Agent Jahn looked at the reports from the BSE folks that he¡¯d cleared to work on the case. He¡¯d known it would be a headache from the beginning, but not this much of a headache. Part of him thought wistfully of the large television at home and the stack of those animated foreign shows he had yet to get through.

    Not that he¡¯d ever admit to such a thing.

    ¡°I wouldn¡¯t say anything. We did get a lot of confessions of minor wrongdoing,¡± Agent Lavigne, of the Lavigne nest, pointed out.

    ¡°None of which we will be doing anything about. Well, except for Ms. Janry.¡± Jahn grimaced. He didn¡¯t care about stealing paperclips or salting doughnuts, but a full embezzlement scheme was something GAR would have to address. Not that it was his problem.

    ¡°It would be easier if we could have told people what we¡¯re looking for,¡± Agent Belas said, his bald head reflecting the overhead lights like a mirror.

    ¡°That¡¯s against policy,¡± Jahn told him brusquely.

    ¡°For internal investigations, especially,¡± Agent Danforth added. ¡°The fae spreading around their stories is bad enough, but to admit we think GAR is compromised? We¡¯d have entire Houses pulling their members out, not to mention packs and nests.¡±

    ¡°And the duds would gossip about it,¡± Agent Blanchet said. Jahn had given him the job of dealing with the duds, though he hadn¡¯t been aware the vampire would be so annoyed about it. ¡°They chatter on and on about such pointless and stupid mundane things!¡±

    ¡°Keep it professional, people,¡± Jahn warned them. ¡°Danforth, what about the magic sweep? Find anything?¡±

    ¡°Only a few people with extra privacy wards on their office,¡± Danforth said. ¡°If there were any other foreign enchantments, they¡¯ve been integrated into the base structure, and Tarson checked against all the renovation records. Nothing¡¯s out of place.¡±

    ¡°I don¡¯t like it,¡± Jahn sighed. ¡°But sometimes you don¡¯t find anything because there¡¯s nothing to find.¡±

    ¡°You don¡¯t really believe that, do you?¡± Danforth looked over at Jahn.

    ¡°No.¡±

 Chapter 10 â€“ Target

    Callum emerged on the other side of the trailer house, stepping off the receiver plate. Tedious as it was, using the tube structures for enchanting worked far better. Getting the vis to bond cleanly and smoothly was much easier, and didn¡¯t require nearly as many tries. There were some scraps of mordite wire that would require recycling, because vis certainly did not come off of that without melting it, but it had been far easier with the new technique.

    What was better, for the first time he could use his own teleport enchantment without any real issues. There was more of a jolt than with the official GAR teleporters, from what he could remember, but it was far from the near-incapacitating nausea and disorientation of Callum¡¯s own homebond. Which, itself, was far better than the original one he¡¯d made with less robust materials.

    The pads worked both ways, and had a mana acceptor with a converter structure he didn¡¯t understand but could still copy. The conversion rate was usurious, but it did mean that he could empower the teleporter without using his vis directly. Unfortunately, if he did that, he couldn¡¯t actually use it since the teleporter didn¡¯t grab him. It tried, but it just couldn¡¯t get a hold.

    It was a weird feeling from his end, though it did imply he had least some ability to resist other mages. Not much of one, though, from his experiences. Admittedly there was a difference between a low-powered, non-weaponized teleport and something designed to deal damage to another mage.

    To make it work for him he had to feed his vis in directly, which mitigated the resistance enough for it to move him. It didn¡¯t completely eliminate it though, not like the implanted, vis-resonance version did. In exchange, the plates and their teleportation framework were large enough take multiple people through. It worked from either end as well, so it was a two-way transport.

    Callum was pretty pleased, despite the mordite he¡¯d have to recycle and the fact that it didn¡¯t even have the recirculation stuff to reduce the cost of sustaining it. Compared to the GAR stuff, or even the homebond he¡¯d looked at, it was crude and ugly, but so long as it worked he was fine with it. So long as it worked.

    He was still worried that Chester¡¯s pet mage wouldn¡¯t have whatever trick it was that made it so the teleport could take along supernaturals, but there might well be a super simple solution. Something that could turn off that resistance. In fact he was pretty sure that was the case, since it wasn¡¯t like Gayle¡¯s bubble changed when she went through a teleporter.

    While he¡¯d been working on that, he¡¯d also used some of the fine wire and some key fob blanks to make himself a new glamour focus and a telekinesis focus. He still had gravitykinesis, and he preferred using it over the focus, but telekinesis was so easy a focus he figured he might as well have it. Plus, gravitykinesis couldn¡¯t really apply any pressure without him trying to shift the orientation of the gravity field around, and that usually just ejected the object in question.

    The new foci, made with tubes, took noticeably less mana to manifest their effects, admittedly with a commensurate increase in residue. That restricted their use to cities with an already-heavy supernatural presence, or really, really out of the way spots. Even if he hadn¡¯t actually seen any signs of supernaturals around his trailer house, he couldn¡¯t be sure that some shifter pack or something wouldn¡¯t swing by on patrol.

    For all he knew, doing too much magic practice would make that more likely. He¡¯d been thinking about Shahey¡¯s comment about how supernaturals tended to be more comfortable around each other, and how mana was so disturbed in cities. Callum¡¯s theory was that all that churned up mana was similar to the dense flow near the portal worlds, meaning it gave mages more energy.

    He wasn¡¯t sure about other types of supernaturals, since he hadn¡¯t seen anything unusual in Winut, but it might just have been something he couldn¡¯t directly sense. After all, it wasn¡¯t like he could tell the difference between the type of mana coming from the Dragonlands versus the Night Lands. There had to be subtleties he hadn¡¯t noticed yet.

    Callum already knew he disliked where he lived, necessary as it was. What he didn¡¯t know was how much of that was something in his hindbrain, and how much was just that west-central Texas was an ugly place to live. That the trailer was a depressing place to sleep. That the pickup made a weird rattling noise that the mechanic hadn¡¯t quite been able to fix.

    All these things bothered him, but now he had to wonder if they bothered him more than they should. He had to wonder if the idiosyncrasies of the old house in Winut hadn¡¯t annoyed him as much as they should have. There was no telling what instincts he needed to doubt.

    An instinct he didn¡¯t doubt was the alarm in the pit of his stomach when he called Lucy and it went to voicemail. That had never happened before, and any break in normal patterns was suspect. If he¡¯d bugged out the moment he¡¯d seen something was off during the last disastrous visit to Gayle, he never would¡¯ve been caught.

    The sudden change meant he wasn¡¯t even sure if the number was safe to call anymore. It was true he¡¯d never called her at an unreasonable hour, but at the same time, she¡¯d answered pretty much immediately every single time. It didn¡¯t even ring, it just flipped straight to a machine-generated message about reaching the inbox of a different number than one he had dialed.

    Callum turned off the phone and climbed back into his truck. He¡¯d have to try again later, in the evening maybe, but part of him was afraid that there was already someone tracing his position. If Lucy was compromised, they¡¯d probably at least know he was in Texas, though Texas was quite the area to search. Maybe it¡¯d be better to take a trip out of state for a while.

    He loaded everything important into the pickup, not trusting the trailer to remain unmolested while he was away. Whether it was nosy neighbors or some supernatural stopping by, it was better not to leave anything identifiable or valuable behind. Besides, it wasn¡¯t like he had that much that was irreplaceable in the first place, just the enchanting materials, money, and electronics.

    The last thing that went in the back of the truck was version three of the flying chair. He was still very, very leery of using self-gravitykinesis, since the last time had left him however many thousands of feet in the air, and it drained his vis reserves absurdly quickly. There was a very real risk, and even more substantial fear, of accidentally going too high, or even out into space, and killing himself with his stupidity and lack of control.

    Even with all that, he couldn¡¯t deny that his personal warp drive could be extremely useful, when used with proper caution and forethought. Callum had no desire to use it to escape again, not when he had a working homebond again, but it was better to have the option than not. Even if it still looked silly, he¡¯d put more thought into making the new version functional.

    He¡¯d found a tractor roll cage and installed a seat in it, then bolted some shelving below the seat. The top of the cage got some scrap metal and an army-green tarp covering it. The end result was something that looked like it could go either on farm equipment or some disused carnival ride, but it served his purposes. It didn¡¯t fall over when it was on level ground, it could carry equipment, it kept the rain off, and he could unroll the tarp to camouflage it somewhat. It didn¡¯t even look terribly out of place on the back of a beat-up pickup.

    Callum headed north and east since, when he did get in contact with Lucy and Chester, any dead drop would be in Chester¡¯s territory anyway. He called twice more as he drove, at hour increments, and got a different voicemail number and a pizza place. If nothing else it answered why Lucy never gave him a different number to call. Callum wasn¡¯t conversant enough with tech to know how she¡¯d set up some weird number routing system, but he could imagine how that effectively protected her end of things.

    If it was broken, that might mean it hadn¡¯t protected her.

    He stewed on it a bit as he made his way through Texas, not braving the interstate solely because he didn¡¯t trust his truck to handle anything faster than highway speeds. Unfortunately there was nothing he could do about it; he didn¡¯t even know where she was physically located if he was of a mind to check on her. Which he didn¡¯t, that sounded far too much like some sort of trap and he¡¯d already walked into one of those.

    From then on, he made sure only to call while driving on dirt roads, on the off chance someone was tracking locations. It was easy enough to keep changing directions too, since he didn¡¯t have a specific destination in mind. Nobody could get ahead of him if he didn¡¯t know where he was going next himself. It was late evening before he finally got a response, and Lucy¡¯s voice came through the receiver.

    ¡°Hey there, big man.¡± For once Lucy did not sound chipper. In fact, she sounded positively exhausted.

    ¡°Everything okay over there, Lucy?¡± Part of him suddenly wished they¡¯d established a duress code. Though he was pretty sure if someone was there Lucy would be fake-cheerful instead of glum.

    ¡°Bit of a few days at work,¡± Lucy said. She didn¡¯t elaborate.

    ¡°Is that why I couldn¡¯t reach you earlier? I was a little worried when I kept getting different wrong numbers.¡±

    ¡°Ah, yeah. Sorry about that, big man. Have to restrict my calls a bit.¡± Callum chewed his lip as he considered that, stopping at a light and checking carefully before taking a right.

    ¡°I take it work got too dangerous for your side job? I¡¯m not accusing, just, if you need me to be more circumspect, that¡¯s fine. I guess I was a bit spoiled before.¡±

    ¡°It¡¯s nothing you did, big man,¡± Lucy said, then paused. ¡°Well, it probably is, but nothing you had control over.¡±

    ¡°Huh.¡± Callum took another turn. ¡°Some shakedowns at GAR ¡®cause they haven¡¯t found me yet?¡± Considering the reaction he¡¯d gotten over in France it was obvious they were serious about getting him, but that didn¡¯t mean he had any grasp of what the internal scuttlebutt was. He could have been their number one priority or just another annoying thing between real high level politics.

    ¡°That¡¯s my guess.¡± Another dead stop to the conversation.

    ¡°If you don¡¯t want to talk about it, that¡¯s perfectly fine,¡± he assured her. ¡°But if you want to rant about GAR, I¡¯m all ears. It¡¯s not like I¡¯m going to defend them.¡± His comment drew a laugh, though not a loud one.

    ¡°Yeah, I know,¡± Lucy said. ¡°I guess, it¡¯s just. I didn¡¯t really think they were that bad, you know? Maybe not the bees knees and all that, and I¡¯m a dud so I¡¯m kind of a whatever, but it was a pretty good gig. But then they came in to audit us or whatever you call it, and it was like I wasn¡¯t even a person. They didn¡¯t even let me walk on my own, it was all under compulsion.¡± Callum¡¯s grip tightened on the cracked faux leather of the steering wheel and he stepped on the brake, slowing down and steering into a strip mall¡¯s parking lot.

    ¡°Are you okay?¡± He asked again. ¡°I don¡¯t¡ª I can¡¯t imagine what that¡¯s like. That¡¯s got to be horrible.¡±

    ¡°It wasn¡¯t pleasant,¡± Lucy said. ¡°But, I mean. All they did was ask me questions.¡±

    ¡°And they still let you go?¡± Callum asked. A slow-dawning alarm crept on him as he processed what that portended, but if Lucy wasn¡¯t urging him to flee, there had to be a reason.

    ¡°Not to brag, big man, but just because an answer is truthful doesn¡¯t mean it¡¯s useful. They don¡¯t think I¡¯m more than an empty-headed office drone.¡±

    ¡°Damn, Lucy! That must¡¯ve been some quick thinking.¡± The bit of burgeoning fear collapsed and he smiled, but it was more vindictive than happy. ¡°I know when GAR came down hard on me I was kind of a wreck.¡±

    This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

    ¡°I¡¯ve got a hard time imagining you being anything but a smooth operator, big man,¡± Lucy said, a little bit of forced cheer in her voice. ¡°I don¡¯t think I¡¯m cut out for your kind of life though. All that was awful, but really, what can I do about it?¡±

    ¡°They say all it takes for evil to triumph is to do nothing,¡± Callum told her. ¡°But you haven¡¯t been doing nothing. You¡¯ve been helping me, right? Besides, for the moment, nothing might be the better call. There¡¯s no point in getting yourself caught.¡±

    ¡°Huh.¡± She fell silent for a moment to consider it. ¡°Yeah, I¡¯m gonna be walking the straight and narrow for a while. Nothing risky for Lucy.¡±

    ¡°Welcome to my life,¡± Callum told her, with as much of a wry twist as he could manage. ¡°It¡¯s fine, though. Better you be safe than get found out by the powers that be.¡±

    ¡°Yeahhhh, I¡¯m with you on that one.¡±

    ¡°You know,¡± Callum said, tapping his fingers on the steering wheel. ¡°If they¡¯re willing to use compulsion it might be good to establish some kind of duress code,¡± he said, following through on his earlier idea. ¡°Not a set phrase or anything, that seems too easy to block.¡±

    ¡°You are crazy paranoid,¡± Lucy told him. ¡°But in this case, I think you¡¯re right. Umm. Let me think.¡± Nothing came over the phone for a while, but eventually she had an answer. ¡°If I bring up my House, that should do it. They¡¯ve written me off and I¡¯ve written them off and good riddance, eh? So if I suddenly insert that into the conversation, you¡¯ll know.¡±

    ¡°I¡¯ll keep that in mind,¡± Callum said, though he couldn¡¯t help but grimace. Being ejected from the family that way had to be terrible.

    ¡°Anyway, I¡¯m guessing you¡¯re calling about my other job? With the boss man?¡±

    ¡°Sure am,¡± Callum said, letting the subject drop. ¡°I¡¯ve got it finished and it works for me, but I don¡¯t know if it¡¯ll work for him. Under the circumstances I figure I¡¯d better drop it off and let him poke at it rather than demanding money for what might be hard for him to use.¡±

    ¡°I tell you what, big man, I see so many emails about needing new teleport locations and having to do maintenance on the teleporters that if they knew you were making your own, they¡¯d have apoplexy.¡±

    ¡°I can just imagine.¡± So far as he¡¯d seen, every single spatial thing ran through Duvall, making her a tyrant among tyrants. Obviously he didn¡¯t know her personally, but he¡¯d worked with, though never for, people with the same death grip on their area of responsibility.

    ¡°Gimme a minute, see if I can get ahold of the boss man.¡±

    ¡°Sure thing.¡± Callum turned around and left the strip mall parking lot, turning on the windshield wipers as a November drizzle started. Less than a minute later, a familiar voice answered.

    ¡°Chester here.¡±

    ¡°It¡¯s Mister Summers,¡± Callum said, having decided to just use his current name. Just on the off chance there was some kind of surveillance for Professor brown. ¡°I have a prototype, but you should probably make sure you can get it to work before issuing payment.¡±

    ¡°That was quick,¡± Chester said. ¡°I was on a waiting list for three years before they installed a GAR teleporter here.¡±

    ¡°I suspect they¡¯ve got more to worry about than I do. Lots and lots of enchantments, lots and lots of mages who need them.¡±

    ¡°Likely so,¡± Chester allowed. ¡°I¡¯d prefer it if you would leave the package with one of my Alphas. Label it as coming from Clara¡¯s friend. Lucy, would you send him a list?¡±

    ¡°You got it, boss man.¡± Even with Chester, Lucy didn¡¯t sound quite herself. ¡°Give me an hour and call me back, would you, big man?¡±

    ¡°Will do,¡± Callum said. Given the phone situation, all her network stuff was probably in disarray, so he didn¡¯t blame her for needing a little bit to prepare. ¡°Vamps still behaving?¡± He added out of idle curiosity.

    ¡°No, but with the sheer devastation of Master Lavigne¡¯s numbers, most of what¡¯s been going on is infighting.¡± Chester¡¯s voice held a grim satisfaction. Callum found that he suddenly, intensely did not care at all. That was the sort of ridiculous internal politics that he¡¯d wanted to get away from.

    He still didn¡¯t regret it, but his success at avoiding magical politics was very much mixed. At least he was meeting them on his terms, though, rather than as some pawn between a bunch of people who didn¡¯t care about him. If he had played at all by their terms, he would have lost.

    ¡°Well, I wish you luck with that,¡± he said, and did mean it. Chester seemed like the sort of man he could have worked with in other circumstances. Even if he had only interacted with the Midwest Alpha a few times, Lucy didn¡¯t seem to have any issues, which was an endorsement.

    ¡°Thank you, Mister Summers,¡± Chester said. ¡°Is there any other business?¡±

    ¡°Not that I can think of.¡±

    ¡°Then I look forward to receiving the merchandise.¡± The line went dead, and Callum hung up, taking out his other phone to look for a hotel sufficiently far away from his current location. Part of him wished that he¡¯d set up a teleport system between his truck and his house, so he wouldn¡¯t have to bother with any of that, but he¡¯d need something more robust than a pickup for that. Preferably something that had an interior that was completely safe, like an armored truck.

    He kept driving east, yawning involuntarily as darkness fell, and dialed Lucy¡¯s number at the appointed time. The hotel was still a ways away, since there¡¯d be little point in possibly compromising a place he was intending to spend any amount of time at, and he¡¯d taken the lesson that Chester had given him to heart. There were no straight lines to give away his path of travel.

    ¡°Hey there, big man,¡± Lucy said.

    ¡°Long time, no talk,¡± he replied.

    ¡°I¡¯m pretty sure my great-grandparents used that joke,¡± Lucy accused.

    ¡°What can I say, it¡¯s a classic.¡±

    ¡°C¡¯mon, big man, you can do better than that!¡±

    ¡°Probably, but not at, uh,¡± he checked the clock. ¡°Not at nearly nine.¡±

    ¡°Boo,¡± she said, still a little subdued. ¡°Okay, big man, I have two things. One of them is the list that Chester wanted me to give you, but the other one is just for you.¡±

    ¡°Yeah?¡± Callum asked, interest piqued. He couldn¡¯t actually remember if he had any standing requests with Lucy, but it had to be something interesting if she introduced it like that.

    ¡°So, yeah, I¡¯ve got to lie low at GAR for a while, but before I shut down all my stuff I grabbed everything related to you. Most of it¡¯s pretty useless, but I did find something I think you might want to deal with.¡±

    ¡°Uh-oh.¡±

    ¡°I¡¯m afraid so. They, uh, tracked down that couple you rescued from the fae out near Creede. Well, the fae did, but GAR¡¯s tagged them and brought them in.¡±

    ¡°They did what?¡± His voice came out cold, the steering wheel creaking under his hands again. He was only dimly aware of his surroundings for a moment, the back of his head buzzing from the sudden jolt of fury, and he had to steer off the road again so he didn¡¯t cause an accident.

    ¡°I mean, good and bad. They¡¯re just being held for questioning, but I mean, they¡¯re sort of officially inside the supernatural world so I guess they¡¯d be considered the fae¡¯s responsibility? I¡¯m not sure, since they¡¯re part of the investigation into you so?¡ª¡±

    ¡°How did they even find them?¡± Callum demanded. ¡°Why? They can¡¯t possibly¡ª¡± He cut himself off, since Lucy didn¡¯t deserve his ranting. ¡°Right. So. If you¡¯re telling me this then they¡¯re actually accessible, not buried deep in some GAR black site or something.¡±

    Callum was more than willing to do something about the supernatural injustices he saw, but he wasn¡¯t stupid or suicidal. Ambushing a bunch of unaware fae was one thing, but trying to break into a secure facility was something else. Especially since GAR could just teleport reinforcements even if he got the drop on whoever was inside.

    He couldn¡¯t save everyone that GAR messed with. Or most, or even many. It was a sprawling bureaucracy in the highest halls of power and he¡¯d have been just as happy never interacting with them at all. But going after someone he¡¯d already rescued made it personal.

    He hadn¡¯t forgotten what had happened to the young pair that he¡¯d rescued from the vampires, either. There was still an accounting for that in the offing, once he figured out how. Callum wasn¡¯t prepared to go full vigilante, but some people had something coming to them.

    ¡°Yeah, they¡¯re being held at a GAR building in Miami. Guess they¡¯re not important enough to take to wherever BSE keeps the real scary folks.¡±

    ¡°Or GAR is hoping to catch me by leaving them accessible.¡±

    ¡°I don¡¯t think so, since like, there¡¯s only the normal boilerplate DoA reports on them. Hasn¡¯t even crossed the department head¡¯s desk I don¡¯t think. If you want I can send you the email text I found. Just thought you¡¯d want to know about it.¡±

    ¡°Oh, I do, absolutely,¡± he assured her. ¡°I¡¯ll have to be very careful about what I do, though.¡±

    ¡°If you think it¡¯s a good idea,¡± Lucy said, seeming a little hesitant. ¡°Maybe it¡¯s not. I mean, if they¡¯re ready for you then you shouldn¡¯t go, either. The DoA handles this kind of thing all the time, they¡¯ll probably be fine?¡± It was more a question than a statement.

    ¡°From what you told me about the Department of Acquisition, they definitely won¡¯t be fine,¡± Callum told her. ¡°Even if they are lying in wait, I have to do something. If I don¡¯t do anything, then that just means there will be more and more of this. Someone told me recently that the strong do what they can, and if you don¡¯t do good things if you can, then you end up with no good anywhere.¡±

    ¡°So you¡¯re a good guy, huh big man?¡±

    ¡°I don¡¯t know about that,¡± Callum admitted. ¡°But I do know I¡¯m seeing evil.¡±

    ¡°I guess it¡¯s hard to argue with that,¡± Lucy said after a moment, suddenly sounding very tired. Not that he blamed her. It wasn¡¯t exactly a fun thing to contemplate.

    Eventually Callum hung up, pulling up the promised text and copying the list of names and addresses of Chester¡¯s Alphas. He couldn¡¯t help but dwell in the news that Lucy had given him as he drove toward the hotel, unsettled and unhappy. The big problem with something like GAR was that it was a big machine and getting it to leave anyone alone was difficult. The more effort he put into it, the more of a target he¡¯d make.

    He was pretty sure that most people wouldn¡¯t be willing to do what he did and completely opt out of society, change their names, and start over. It wasn¡¯t likely they could go to the mundane authorities either, since they¡¯d either be in cahoots with the supernatural authorities or just completely steamrolled by magical ability. Even normal agencies could fake evidence, so a magical one would have no trouble at all.

    It weighed on his mind enough to unsettle his sleep, leaving him tired and grumpy the next day. He got up to deliver the teleport plates anyway, sorting through the fairly long list of Alphas to find one that was near enough that he could actually reach within the day. While he drove along, though, his mind was already skipping forward to what he was going to do rather than the job he¡¯d just finished.

    While he wanted to get going and head to Miami as soon as he could, the fact of the matter was that it wasn¡¯t something he could do half-cocked. There wasn¡¯t an immediate threat; the blow had already landed. Besides which, there was no way that he¡¯d be able to sashay in and pull them out without any repercussions. The last GAR outpost he¡¯d looked at had genuine security and staff, plus it was a good bet Miami had a significant supernatural presence for potential reinforcements.

    It took more than a few hours of driving to get to Oklahoma and out to the address from Lucy¡¯s list. It was a huge, upscale compound, basically a development unto itself, surrounded by crops and cattle fields, and it would actually be difficult to approach anonymously. He had to park his truck by the side the road and pop himself though the fields toward the central house, which looked like an old plantation mansion.

    The package got left on the front step with the note about Clara written directly onto the metal with a marker. He¡¯d splashed the plates and packaging with rubbing alcohol too, in hopes of purging his scent, but he didn¡¯t know if that would really work. It wasn¡¯t even clear whether shifters who did scent-tracking used physical scent or some kind of magical residue he couldn¡¯t detect.

    Then he drove off, to find a place with free Wi-Fi so he could do some looking at the local maps. Finding long-term parking was a pain, but if he was going to Florida he couldn¡¯t go in his old pickup. He wasn¡¯t even sure it¡¯d make it that far. Besides which, no matter what sort of approach he ended up taking, he¡¯d need more room than just the pickup bed.

    For better or worse he didn¡¯t have to return home. With everything useful already along for the ride, he merely rented a small U-Haul van under the name he used for the truck and transferred stuff over. Part of him would have preferred something more separated, but he was not confident in driving something that large in a city. The motorhome had been large enough and he just knew he¡¯d clip something in the city streets if he took something as big as one of the moving trucks there.

    It was times like that where he fully appreciated being able to teleport and float items both small and large. While his knee wasn¡¯t terrible, he definitely would have had issues moving stuff back and forth, especially large things like the chair. What would have probably been half an hour or more of heavy labor took less than five minutes of sitting in the cab and concentrating.

    Then it was off to Florida. What would have been something like a three hour flight was a two-day drive, even helping things along with judicious use of portals. It was a lot easier to drive the U-Haul through a portal than it was to teleport the whole thing, given the length of the van, but it wasn¡¯t something he could do too often. Even if a portal large enough for a van was not that much wider or taller than one for a car, the area scaling meant it took a whole lot more vis.

    During the drive it was technically his birthday, but he¡¯d not been one to celebrate such things for a while. Birthdays just didn¡¯t seem to be particularly exciting once he¡¯d gotten stable finances and had taken a few vacations of his own accord. Once he didn¡¯t even have anyone to share them with, he¡¯d more or less written them off. The only reason he marked that one was because he felt so damn old, with a bum knee and stiff muscles from spending all day driving.

    It was ironic that he was seeing far more of the world as an outlaw than he had when he was a genuine student of architecture. Admittedly, he found that most cities just had the same sort of styles over and over, rather than the far more interesting local construction that had evolved from their own cultures and resources and limitations. Suburbia had the same sort of bland sprawl, which meant a good chunk of his drive was flat-out boring.

    At least it gave him time to ponder over options for dealing with the GAR outpost. It might be for the best to just abscond with the pair, because it didn¡¯t sit right with him to try and assassinate some office workers who just happened to be in the building. On one hand, he¡¯d seen a good number of these GAR personnel were complicit in the depredations of vampires and, he supposed, other supernaturals. On the other, there were people like Lucy who just happened to be employed by the machine.

    He had second and third thoughts about going after the couple, whose names he still didn¡¯t know, but he had to do it. His own morals aside, he could well see GAR deciding to take and hold anyone he had even the slightest contact with, regardless of how innocent they actually were. Shahey¡¯s presence was probably the only reason that Tanner hadn¡¯t been locked down by GAR, and not everyone had that protection.

    Whatever he did in Miami would be a statement, so he¡¯d have to make sure it was the right one.

 Chapter 11 â€“ Reconnaissance

    Florida was unreasonably warm, at least to Callum¡¯s sensibilities. Despite it being well into November, it was temperate enough he didn¡¯t need a jacket, which just seemed wrong. He had to adjust his attire to fit in, though the license plate of his van still marked him as out of town. Admittedly, most all moving vans had plates from different states, but he still felt conspicuous.

    Miami itself was no treat, either, the actual city crowded and claustrophobic, though there was more green than he had expected. The real problem, though, was that it seemed to be quite the supernatural hotspot. He could sense the trails of various mage-bubbles and spotted a number of shifters and fae with his own eyes. They seemed to cluster around the financial district, which only made sense. Even in the supernatural world, money was important.

    It wasn¡¯t just individuals, either. There were threads of wards running over the entire city; nothing immensely powerful, just something that linked various houses or businesses that had their own, denser warding schemes. If that sort of infrastructure required actual wire strung along the utility cables, that was one explanation for why it was in short supply. Utilities generally trumped luxuries.

    It was the most complex magical infrastructure he¡¯d seen, or rather, the most complex one he¡¯d paid attention to. He hadn¡¯t been looking for such things in other places, not even in the Night Lands, so there might well have been similar setups there he just hadn¡¯t noticed. The one other GAR building he¡¯d sought out had been in a far smaller city as well, so it might just be a scale issue.

    Either way, he wasn¡¯t comfortable driving around and possibly tripping some kind of alert. Given that every mage carried enchanted materials in the form of foci, the raw material he had with him probably wouldn¡¯t set anything off, but mages also had the tattoo. Callum had no idea how much of an anomaly he¡¯d look like, but he had to assume there was some kind of surveillance. He¡¯d be far more comfortable if he could work his way around the various lines of wards.

    He stowed the van in a parking lot and walked into town. The address of the GAR office was not in the densest part of the urban sprawl, but close enough. There were buildings everywhere, fenced in houses and squat blocks of businesses, pretty much all of which seemed to be owned and occupied by normal people. Still, mixed in here and there he saw some blatantly fae figures, or sensed some shifters by their vis.

    It made the back of his neck itch, but there was nothing to make him stand out from the teeming masses, or at least he hoped there wasn¡¯t. With his tattoo long gone and no bubble, plus having the RFID blocker in his wallet enchanted to suck up any stray vis, he shouldn¡¯t have anything to make anyone suspicious about him being a supernatural. Not that he¡¯d stand out in a city like Miami.

    Even without the address he probably could have tracked down the office of his own accord. Not only was it at the center of the spiderweb of various ward lines, or maybe they were even mana transmission lines, but there was a subtle flow of mana coming from it. Callum was almost certain his ability to perceive mana had improved, since he was able to tell that not only was there denser mana at the GAR building, it was generating a slight current.

    The effect was a very, very underpowered version of the outflow from the portal worlds, enriching the local atmosphere. Since he knew what to look for, it was easy to follow that upstream to the source, which was a fairly ordinary-looking two-story office building. At least, to his eyes it was ordinary; to judge by the layered threads of mana and vis around it, there was some serious glamour at work.

    He took a walk around the block as he slowly worked his perceptions past the intricate warding, noticing a number of supernaturals coming and going even as he did so. Not just mages, either. There was a steady trickle of fae and shifters going into the office and leaving again, engaging in some kind of workaday business.

    It took him at least twenty minutes of patient and focused inspection, during which he ran across a small gaming store and flipped through books as an excuse to linger, but eventually he was able to see through the outer defenses and into the actual building. Aside from the magic everywhere it was almost depressingly mundane. There were clerks at their desks, a janitorial staff emptying trash cans and vacuuming, and a bunch of offices mostly staffed by mages.

    That immediately shut down the vague plans he had of leveling the building somehow. Someone had to answer for the blatant evil of kidnapping the victims of fae tricks, but it wasn¡¯t the people who staffed the computers or cleaned the floors. The bureaucracy was evil, but it would be monstrous to judge all those laboring under it as equally evil. Some were, no doubt, but most people were likely just indifferent at worst.

    It took him a bit longer to actually find the people he was looking for. The basement of the GAR office had cells that looked a lot like the ones the shifters had back in Winut, only with an additional layer of warding and shielding. That made them just that much harder to see through, and he actually went walking again in the hopes that the change in physical perspective would help him finagle his perceptions through the walls of vis and mana.

    It didn¡¯t, of course. Peering through just took time, and a sensation a little bit like his eyes adjusting to bright lights as his perceptions resolved the strands of energy. He was pretty sure it would be actually impossible for him to push his perceptions through a completely flat wall of vis or sufficiently condensed mana, but nobody used those as structures, save maybe for mage bubbles. Since every functional bit of magic had some specific shape to it, a flat wall would actually interfere with the way that a ward or shield even worked.

    There were two normal people in one of the cells, with a woman lying down on a cot and a man sitting in a chair next to the cot, reading a book. He couldn¡¯t precisely judge whether they were the exact same people he had rescued before, but they were a close match and besides, there probably weren¡¯t many non-supernaturals floating around in GAR facilities. At the very least it was good to see they were being treated reasonably well, not that he had expected whips and chain.

    It was tempting to try and pull them out right then and there, but Callum knew that he was not ready for such a thing. It¡¯d probably cause a furor that might well bring more kill teams through the teleports, plus he wouldn¡¯t be surprised if the pair had been tagged with tracking devices of some sort. If it were magical he could probably find it, but some little tech bug was probably beyond his abilities.

    The truth was he needed some way to keep them safe, and he sure couldn¡¯t do it alone. He could barely take care of himself, let alone some young couple who ought to be off honeymooning in Acapulco. Unfortunately, the only way he could figure that GAR would let them be was if they were taken under the wing of some supernatural force or another. He remembered, vaguely, that Lucy said that once a normal person was in the know they were supposed to be someone¡¯s responsibility.

    That was a genie he couldn¡¯t put back in the bottle. The only thought he had to deal with that was put them in the care of someone who was supernatural, and could at least be trusted to be reasonable. He didn¡¯t know enough about supernatural politics to know if it was really possible though, so he¡¯d have to expose himself a little bit.

    ¡°What¡¯s up, big man?¡± It was evening by the time he called, after spending a couple hours observing the GAR office. It had taken him a while, but he¡¯d eventually concluded that some portion of the visitors were simply getting foci recharged. He wasn¡¯t sure how the fae and shifters used magical items, or if they were just passive, but there was a definite exchange of mana-charged crystals.

    ¡°Hey Lucy, I¡¯m kind of at an impasse,¡± he said, walking along a relatively uncrowded side street several blocks from the office. As much as he disliked using anything magic unless necessary, he had a glamour up just in case. ¡°I need to know some political stuff, but the only person I can think to ask is basically you. Maybe Chester, but it might get weird.¡±

    ¡°Ooh, kinky.¡± Her tone was pitched precisely to pull an involuntary bark of laughter from him. ¡°Whatcha need there, big man?¡±

    ¡°Well, you know those people you told me about? I was thinking about it and what the heck am I supposed to do with them when I get them?¡±

    ¡°Uh. You know what, that¡¯s a good question.¡±

    ¡°Yeah, so at this point GAR knows about them and how they got pulled into the supernatural world, so it¡¯s not like I can vanish them properly. Not unless they¡¯re going to change identities and stuff, which is possible, but they probably wouldn¡¯t be up for that. Most people aren¡¯t.¡±

    ¡°Oof. You¡¯re right, most people aren¡¯t like you. No offense there, big man, I just can¡¯t imagine keeping so low profile for so long.¡±

    ¡°None taken,¡± he told her. Sometimes he found it kind of weird himself. ¡°You can see how they need to get some sort of supernatural sponsorship so they can live their lives normally, but that is probably quite a bit of an ask since GAR is going to want to use them against me.¡±

    ¡°Hoo boy, you¡¯re not asking for a small thing there, big man. Yeah that¡¯s a problem.¡±

    ¡°Right, so how do I get that protection? I¡¯m not conversant with the internal politics but there¡¯s got to be some way.¡±

    ¡°I dunno, big man. If the people up top want something, and want it hard enough, it¡¯s awful hard to say no.¡±

    ¡°Sure, but, they can¡¯t all be aligned. Internal politics and that.¡±

    ¡°Oh, yeah, no, there¡¯s all kinds of bickering. Let me give it a think, big man.¡± There was silence from the phone for a little bit. ¡°Okay, okay, I think I¡¯ve got an inkling of a hint. You said you rescued them from fae?¡±

    ¡°A wild hunt,¡± Callum confirmed. ¡°Or their re-creation of it, anyway.¡±

    ¡°That means that they¡¯re sort of under the fae¡¯s umbrella, then.¡±

    ¡°I¡¯m hardly going to send them back to the people who were hunting them,¡± Callum said dryly.

    ¡°No, no, I mean. Not all the fae are like that, I mean, they¡¯re all a bit weird but that whole human-hunting thing is not normal. Heck, they fight each other way more than they bother humans.¡±

    ¡°Mmm.¡± He could see that. A lot of the nonhumans he¡¯d seen over the years were fae and for the most part they hadn¡¯t been given anyone issues, even if it was damn weird to see a tusked ogre thing buying eggs at the grocery. ¡°Okay I can buy that much. What are you thinking?¡±

    ¡°Didn¡¯t the fae make that pair an offer of some sort?¡±

    ¡°Hmm, yes,¡± Callum said slowly, starting to see what Lucy was getting at. ¡°That if they survived to sunrise they¡¯d be free.¡±

    ¡°So there you go. Fae take their offers very seriously, and right now, GAR is breaking that agreement.¡±

    ¡°Huh. I don¡¯t know that I like it, but what do you think are the odds? That the fae would actually make sure they were left alone?¡±

    ¡°It wouldn¡¯t hurt to ask. I may not be as plugged into the GAR stuff as before but I can get you a direct line. So, some advice: giving the local fae king a reason to stick his thumb in the eye both of GAR and of a different fae king might be enough for him.¡±

    ¡°Mm.¡± Callum considered it. He didn¡¯t much like the idea of dealing with the fae directly, but he¡¯d always known that at some point he¡¯d have to interact with the frameworks of authority. Most people couldn¡¯t exist outside them, for very good reason, and it wasn¡¯t like he didn¡¯t already have some illicit links in the persons of Lucy and Chester.

    The question was how much he was willing to risk. Pragmatically, he couldn¡¯t give up everything to help two people, and just in driving to Florida he¡¯d let emotional reasoning rule him maybe too much. At the same time, he wasn¡¯t going to give up just because he had to do something difficult.

    ¡°Can it be done safely?¡±

    ¡°If you mean can I get you an anonymous link to them, yeah I think so. If you mean can you deal with the fae without agreeing to something you didn¡¯t mean to, that¡¯s on you, big man. It¡¯s not like they can bind you to anything over the phone, but, you know. Still don¡¯t want to agree to things you shouldn¡¯t.¡±

    ¡°I suppose I have to give it a try. Unless you think Chester would be willing to help?¡±

    ¡°Nah, not without a lot of finagling. Keeping people unmolested by GAR is a completely different ball game from deniable assets. I could be wrong, but I just don¡¯t see him taking that risk.¡± Callum had more or less figured that. Just because he avoided politics didn¡¯t mean he was totally unaware of the subtleties of high-level play.

    Unauthorized usage: this narrative is on Amazon without the author''s consent. Report any sightings.

    ¡°So what do I need to do to talk to this fae?¡±

    ¡°Weeelll,¡± Lucy drew the word out, and he could hear papers shuffling in the background. ¡°First I gotta tell you, Jissarrell, the fae king who was after you before, has been telling the story of tracking you over to Europe all over the place. So you¡¯ve got a reputation, and they gave you that scary name and you¡¯re supposed to be some real bad dude with big backers and stuff.¡±

    ¡°I knew I wasn¡¯t really anonymous anymore, but I don¡¯t like that.¡± He still found being called The Ghost incredibly stupid, but there were probably worse things he could be called.

    ¡°Not much you can do about it, big man. Fae loooove their stories.¡±

    ¡°Ugh.¡± Callum tried to recall what he¡¯d read about the fae, that wasn¡¯t confused with pop culture descriptions. ¡°They actually can lie, right?¡±

    ¡°The less powerful ones, definitely, but the kings and stuff, not really. Supposedly the King and Queen back in Faerie literally can¡¯t, because if they say something it just is true.¡±

    ¡°Well that¡¯s not terrifying at all.¡± It sounded like Faerie was very definitely not on his list of tourist destinations.

    ¡°Eh, yeah, but that¡¯s so deep in Faerie you¡¯ll never see it. Of course, that¡¯s all stories I¡¯ve heard from the fae that moved out here so who knows how accurate it is.¡±

    ¡°Mm, so, they¡¯ll keep their word and not lie, but be careful of what words?¡±

    ¡°That¡¯s exactly it, big man.¡±

    Callum considered. On one hand, he absolutely was not the caliber of person who negotiated with fae kings. On the other hand, something he¡¯d learned while being a consultant was that all that mattered most of the time was projecting that you were, in fact, capable. The old adage about faking it until making it was not entirely untrue, and if he did have a reputation, it was something he should take advantage of.

    ¡°Alright, how do I get in touch with the guy? Obviously with the maximum possible mystique.¡±

    ¡°Ha! Yeah okay, so, I can do some telecoms magic on my end if you give me a minute. The King of Miami is named Ferrochar, and I think he thinks he¡¯s part dragon or something. He loves gold and owns a huge bank.¡± Lucy gave him the name and address, which he marked down in his notebook. ¡°Pretty sure he¡¯s not actually part dragon though.¡±

    ¡°Yeah, I¡¯ve met a dragonblooded. Definitely aren¡¯t going to be any dragon-fae hybrids running around anytime soon.¡± Even as he said that, he realized he couldn¡¯t be sure, but if they were mostly just avatars he didn¡¯t think any dragon would be too interested. It was a moot point, though.

    Callum juggled his phone, retrieving his laptop from the carry-bag he had it in and sorting through the stuff he¡¯d downloaded from Lucy. So far he hadn¡¯t even learned the names of the people he was rescuing and he¡¯d need that for his chat with Ferrochar. The email Lucy had given him had at the briefest possible precis, naming them as Leo and Danika Connors, physical trainer and nurse respectively. Where they were employed and what their current legal status was, it didn¡¯t say, but if they were missing for too long then any cover story would be somewhat strained.

    ¡°By the way, Lucy,¡± he said, scribbling some quick notes to himself on his notepad.

    ¡°Yeah, big man?¡±

    ¡°Thanks so much for the help.¡± Callum couldn¡¯t help but let the genuine appreciation for the one normal human contact in his life bleed through. ¡°You¡¯re just, absolutely the best.¡±

    ¡°Hey! Yeah, you¡¯re welcome!¡± Lucy sounded a little flustered, but she recovered quickly. ¡°But it¡¯s gonna cost ya!¡±

    ¡°Fifty a night, right?¡± Callum said. Lucy laughed.

    ¡°All right, big man, let me get this set up before we get into trouble,¡± she said. Callum smiled and tapped a few more notes, keeping a sweep of the area with his perceptions. Despite the hour, there were still an awful lot of people out and about, both mundane and supernatural, though none of them seemed to notice him in particular.

    Just tracking them nearby made him twitch, especially since some number of them were undoubtedly murderers, but he wasn¡¯t there to exact vigilante justice. Not exactly. Not unless he saw something that needed it.

    If vampires all preyed on humanity, it might well be justified to erase them from existence, but that kind of systematic extermination was not something he could do. Not if he wanted to remain human himself. Even what he had already done had changed him, and although he had every intention of dealing with whatever evil crossed his path, he didn¡¯t want to start seeking it out.

    He took a few breaths, trying to figure out his mindset for dealing with Ferrochar. So far he¡¯d been more or less winging it whenever he had to deal with the supernatural world, and while that worked to some extent, he didn¡¯t have the security of obscurity from before. Rather, he had to create an entirely new layer of protection by this persona of the Ghost.

    Which was a really stupid name.

    ¡°H¡¯okay, big man. According to the records I have I¡¯ll be putting you through to Ferrochar¡¯s general. That¡¯s the closest I can get you.¡±

    ¡°I appreciate it, Lucy. I¡¯ll let you know how it goes.¡±

    ¡°You¡¯d better!¡± With that, the phone clicked over and rang twice. A voice answered, saying something in Gaelic.

    ¡°This is the Ghost,¡± Callum said, not bothering to try and disguise his voice. For this, it was known who he was. ¡°Connect me to King Ferrochar.¡±

    There was silence from the other end, and he could imagine Lucy tittering away somewhere at the introduction. It was a little bit overbearing and ostentatious, but if he understood things right that was just a bonus to the fae. Dragons might see the world as a play, but fae considered themselves actors in a theatre.

    ¡°This is King Ferrochar,¡± a gravely voice rumbled. ¡°To what do I owe this call?¡±

    ¡°I have an opportunity for you to annoy both GAR and King Jissarrell,¡± Callum said, keeping things short, to the point, and framed in Ferrochar¡¯s interest. While he had never been excellent at sales, he¡¯d learned enough to at least sell his services to his customers.

    ¡°Oho? I didn¡¯t realize the Ghost was playing politics now.¡±

    ¡°There are political consequences to any direct action,¡± Callum said obliquely. He really didn¡¯t want Ferrochar to know that the Connors¡¯ were actually his first priority. ¡°An acquaintance of mine suggested you would enjoy those consequences the most.¡±

    ¡°Enjoy them? Ha! I like the way you put things. And someone I know, knows you? Fascinating¡­¡± Ferrochar trailed off, considering, which Callum didn¡¯t like. For all he knew, the fae had some weird spell that could track people along connections like that, so he bulled on ahead before the fae king could pursue that line of thought.

    ¡°GAR has annoyed me by taking two mundanes, Leo and Danika Connors, into custody. I do not like that my interests are being meddled with, so they will not be in custody much longer. One of King Jissarrell¡¯s nobles promised them freedom if they survived until sunrise. They are currently not free.¡± He kept things short and obvious, but tried to avoiding stating his precise intentions. The more the fae read into things what they wanted to see, the better.

    ¡°That is interesting,¡± Ferrochar mused. ¡°Perhaps a little specious, to claim that an agreement had been broken, but without sophistry, where would we be?¡±

    ¡°I wish for them to live their life without any supernatural influence due to their connection to my activities,¡± Callum continued, ignoring Ferrochar¡¯s continued prodding. ¡°I imagine it would take a fae king to make that happen.¡±

    ¡°I could¡­¡± Ferrochar mused. ¡°It would be quite fun to poke some noses, but at the same time, it¡¯s not all that interesting. What do you think, my queen?¡±

    ¡°I want to see the Ghost in action,¡± a female voice said. Callum grimaced, because he didn¡¯t know what the queen¡¯s name was, and he really would have preferred to maintain a veneer of omniscience. ¡°If the Ghost is to visit our fair city, then surely he will not leave without exhibiting his skills.¡±

    ¡°That is a wonderful idea, my queen. If such mundanes as you describe made their way to our door, then we would be willing to shelter them. Of course, we couldn¡¯t possibly retrieve them from GAR custody ourselves. And it would be far easier to claim we have no idea how they arrived if the ward-lines were to mysteriously go dark.¡±

    ¡°And with the wards out, the fact that nobody will be tracking your activities is merely happenstance,¡± Callum said, trying to act like that had occurred to him long before the conversation.

    ¡°Oh, entirely,¡± Ferrochar said gleefully. ¡°Of course, considering your proclivities so far, I will muse idly that the wards are to protect supernaturals from each other, and mundanes probably wouldn¡¯t even notice the difference.¡±

    ¡°Of course, we can¡¯t make any deals with someone wanted by GAR,¡± the queen¡¯s voice came. ¡°These are things that would simply happen.¡±

    ¡°They do happen when I am about,¡± Callum agreed. He was actually happy with such an offer, since it meant he wasn¡¯t unleashing some wild hunt on other poor folks. There were some very noticeable gaps, though. ¡°I suppose it would be unsporting if your subjects who would be in the area were to be less observant than usual.¡±

    ¡°Certainly not! We can¡¯t breach our agreements with GAR, after all, but I assume the Ghost would have no issues avoiding such a simple thing.¡±

    ¡°No doubt,¡± Callum said dryly. It didn¡¯t much surprise him, and in fact, he would not be much surprised if there was extra surveillance. At this point they even knew he was a spatial mage, so there might be some special pieces of surveillance just for that. On the other hand, it was obvious from the coarse framework of the wards they were using that he could still operate below their resolution.

    He just had to be extra careful.

    Frankly, he didn¡¯t like it. He didn¡¯t want to draw the attention, he didn¡¯t want it to be known that he cared, he didn¡¯t want to be connected to anything except by rumor and implication. Yet, it was probably the only way to keep the Connors safe, and it was obvious that in the future he would have to be even more careful about leaving evidence where normal folks were involved.

    Or he¡¯d have to do what he was doing now, and make sure that they understood that any time they tried to get a handle on him, he¡¯d punish them for it. In some ways that was far more sure, but he struggled with it because it was not a simple of matter of dealing with obvious problems. There was some degree of malice aforethought, and he had to be damn sure of his targets and damn sure of his reasoning.

    ¡°I believe we have an understanding,¡± Callum said. ¡°Do you agree?¡±

    ¡°Once and twice and thrice, I so agree,¡± Ferrochar said, which sounded to Callum like as strong an oath as he was going to get for something so unofficial.

    ¡°Excellent,¡± Callum said, and hung up. Then he extracted the memory and SIM cards from the phone and surreptitiously teleported it into the nearest storm drain. It might have been a little bit overcautious, but there was no telling what was possible with the fae.

    Mostly, he didn¡¯t trust that Ferrochar wouldn¡¯t somehow try to track him down just for the fun of it, though it was probably next to impossible with whatever obscured routing Lucy had set up. The thought of which made him get a different phone and text her about Ferrochar maybe trying to track her. He couldn¡¯t do anything about that, but perhaps she could.

    In truth, the extra conditions Ferrochar wanted for no doubt nefarious purposes were basically what he¡¯d have to do anyway. Callum didn¡¯t want to attack random employees at the GAR office, but infrastructure was another matter. The ward setup was just too dangerous, as were the teleportation platforms. The only problem was the dubious morality of letting the fae run free.

    It was a lesson to him to not allow any loose ends in the future. The less he had to interact with the corrupt power structures of backstabbing and grift, the less he¡¯d compromise himself. Keeping free of such loose ends might not really be possible with fae around, but on the other hand, if the fae were marginally on his side that would help. He imagined that was how GAR had found the Connors, anyway.

    Ultimately he needed a way to get GAR to leave him alone completely, and that wasn¡¯t going to happen at the moment. It was a process, either of becoming more invisible or more dangerous or both, and he wasn¡¯t there on either front yet. He just had to work with what he had.

    Now that he had specific targets, he swept his senses back over the GAR office as he walked away from it. The ward-lines over the city merged into the GAR wards, but all those had to be controlled from somewhere. There were undoubtedly some that were independent, but removing the central control would have to count for something. Besides which, he could probably snip the wires that carried the ward thread-lines outward.

    The interior of GAR was so dense with various vis threads for wards and whatever other magics were in play that it took him some time to find the center. The actual core, where everything linked up, was in one of the rooms near the center of the second floor. When he peeked inside it, though, he didn¡¯t just see the enchantment that tied it all together. He also saw the source of the abundant mana.

    There was a portal.

    It was tiny, about the diameter of his pinky finger, and while he couldn¡¯t tell much about what was on the other side, it seemed to be very close to, or even inside, a portal world. It might have been inside the actual facility that guarded the dimensional portals themselves as, though he hadn¡¯t seen anything in the Ardennes, he hadn¡¯t been looking, either. In hindsight, it was obvious that the extra mana had to be coming from its ultimate source, and if they had teleportation enchantments, portal enchantments were only logical.

    Callum practically wheeled in place as he hunted for a location where he could sit down and pull out his laptop. Even if getting the Connors out was his first priority, there was no way he could turn down the opportunity to sketch out the portal enchant. Even at a glance it was obvious that the portal enchant was so mana-hungry that making large permanent portals was a nonstarter outside of the portal worlds themselves, but even a small one could be insanely useful.

    It seemed a little odd they were that inefficient, considering that he didn¡¯t find portals that much more taxing than teleports, but he still didn¡¯t have a good grasp of the complexities of enchanting. Then again, the long-distance teleport took way more juice than just the normal one, and a portal was a constant drain rather than a one-time one, so maybe it made sense. All the spatial stuff was excessively advanced anyway, and while he could copy it, he didn¡¯t fully understand it.

    While his senses were mostly focused on the enchantment powering the portal, he still noticed what might be termed the night shift arriving at the GAR site. Some fae, of course, including a few of the pixies, and a number of vampires settled into various offices throughout the building. He had to admit it was absolutely surreal to think of some blood-sucking magical being doing data entry, but GAR seemed to be like any bureaucracy, which meant paperwork.

    Miami¡¯s excessive night life worked in his favor, because there was a caf¨¦ that was still open and had actual customers that let him keep the GAR office within range of his senses, although at the extreme end of them. While normally he didn¡¯t rely on chemical stimulation, it was looking to be a long night so he ordered coffee while he booted his CAD program. He worked as fast as he could, feeling guilty the whole while, but the Connors had been in custody for days so another half-hour wouldn¡¯t make too much difference.

    Like the teleport spell, it was something that had been sawed in half, but it was far more intricate. Unlike any previous enchantment he¡¯d looked at, it actually had different sized wires, likely to go with the different sized components of the portal. Like the dragonlands portal, there were intakes and recirculation structures on a smaller scale than the main portal frame. The smallest ones weren¡¯t as small as his threads, and the largest ones weren¡¯t as relatively outsized as the portal¡¯s tubes, but they were very definitely on different scales. Fortunately, those were reflected by physically smaller and larger bits of enchanting metal.

    It would take some practice, but he was pretty sure that he could reproduce the pattern himself. Once he had it down to his satisfaction, Callum packed up and headed back to his U-Haul. He knew where the teleporters were, he knew where the wards are, and he knew where the Connors were. All he needed was a plan.

 Chapter 12 â€“ Jailbreak

    Callum spent a few hours driving around Miami to get the last of the materials he needed to deal with the GAR office. A big plastic office jug that he filled with seawater, some shears, and inflatable mattresses to fill the back of the U-Haul. The last was mostly to make sure the Connors didn¡¯t land on anything hard when he pulled them out, as they weren¡¯t likely to be braced and ready for a teleport or portal.

    Plus, it was pretty likely they wouldn¡¯t be up to moving around much, considering how traumatizing his teleports were for others. He clearly wouldn¡¯t have time to make the clumsy and clunky tube version of his magic, even if it would be more comfortable for them. Unfortunately for their comfort, the back was also fairly well fumigated with patchouli oil, for two good reasons.

    The primary one was that Lucy had suggested it to him as a way to sabotage shifter or even vampire scent abilities. It would smell very strongly and so be very obvious to such superior senses, but at the same time would be almost impossible for a shifter to pick out a particular person¡¯s scent, making identification difficult. Besides that, if the Connors got sick from the teleportation, well, it¡¯d help cover that up too. Not that it would fool skilled trackers like the ones Chester had sent after him, but it¡¯d drown out human scents in a casual survey.

    The rest of the back of the van was mostly taken up by the chair, with all his enchanting stuff and weaponry packed into it, along with less important bags with clothes and toiletries and snacks. He¡¯d originally intended to turn in the U-Haul after hours and teleport the keys back out, since it was paid for up through the next day and he wouldn¡¯t feel too bad about a couple extra hours. But the lot was absolutely covered with cameras and he could think of no way to sneak the van out without causing even more issues for himself.

    In the end he had to fall back on anonymity, because there was no reason for people to try and check random moving vans multiple miles away from the target location. Trying to finesse the van thing would probably just draw attention to it, if people noticed it disappearing and reappearing. In the end he¡¯d just have to drive it in and drop it off normally.

    It would have been amazing and perfect if the drop-off was within range of the GAR building, but such was not to be. Instead, his staging point would be a gas station, and then he¡¯d proceed past the fae-owned bank and drop off the Connors before disposing of the moving van. He was hoping he could just hide out until normal business hours and rent a new van, from a different place, but if he needed to use the flight chair to escape, he would.

    With that, he was prepared for a few bits of inspired sabotage. He hoped that taking out the central nexus of the wards and the portal that supplied the extra mana would crash the ward-lines, but if not, he could physically disconnect them. While he couldn¡¯t take down any wards that weren¡¯t connected to the box, he could just thread his way through them so all they could do was inconvenience him.

    The actual teleport network he waffled over a bit, because he could target just the physical component holding the spatial enchant. The teleportation circles were incredibly complex, but ultimately, that was the lynchpin that made it all work. If he did that, it would reveal he knew how the teleportation networks worked, whereas if he just destroyed everything, it would reveal nothing.

    On the other hand, it risked a lot of collateral damage, which was something Callum wanted to minimize. Someone would be cleaning up after him, after all. There was a difference between doing a job, and making a mess. He decided to compromise by targeting a number of important-looking spots, rather than just the single one. That would imply a degree of knowledge, but perhaps not a precise ability to target the most glaring weakness.

    It was good to hold some cards in reserve.

    What made it far easier for him was that the teleportation enchantments had built-in maintenance access. It was magically protected, true, but there was a lot of stuff to make it run, and he¡¯d had proof himself that enchantments didn¡¯t last forever. The pure materials lasted far longer, but he didn¡¯t think everything was made out of pure bane metal, so there was still degradation.

    Beneath the teleportation setup there was a maintenance room, or really, a maintenance closet, which had plenty of access to the enchanted portions from below. There seemed to be clever mechanical things to slide them out and probably replace things piecemeal, but all he needed was a place from which to do some damage.

    Callum didn¡¯t exactly have a ten-step plan, but he did run through the action items in his head half a dozen times before he shifted the moving van into gear and started to maneuver through the late-night traffic. Even in Miami, the witching hour wasn¡¯t exactly bumper-to-bumper, so it was a bit of a worry that a U-Haul moving around at that time would stand out.

    Nevertheless he made his way along streets, stopping at the lights and stretching his perceptions to try and make sure there was nothing untoward going on. Not that he knew what the usual patterns were and there were far too many people within his sphere of perception, normal and not, to pay attention to anyone in particular, but he was still wary of being ambushed. Callum was already regretting dealing with Ferrochar, even if it was necessary. He felt like he had a target painted on his back.

    It was best to be done quickly, then. His path brought the GAR office into the extreme edge of his range, some six hundred yards away, something like three blocks between him and his target. It took him a few minutes to work his perceptions back through the ward and shield walls, if not as long as the first time, but a quick sweep assured him there was nothing too amiss. The Connors were still in their cell, people were still at desks, and while there was a large group of shifters hanging out in the lobby, they didn¡¯t seem to armed or armored. If anything, they seemed to be janitorial, but he wasn¡¯t sure why there were so many.

    He left that worry to another day and focused on the ward nexus, his first target. The central connection was a box with a bunch of trays inside it with enchantments. It reminded him a bit of very old analog computers, or maybe electrical junctions, more than electronics. There was someone in the next room monitoring it, a vis link going to one of the enchantment sections of the box, but so far as Callum could tell the guy wasn¡¯t paying much attention.

    Apparently Ferrochar hadn¡¯t passed along a memo.

    Very carefully, Callum slipped his vis in, threading it all the way to the interior of the ward box, and then reached back for some of the water from his jug. Not to drink, of course; it was his latest trick. As with every trick he¡¯d figured out, it was something he preferred to keep in reserve, though he was pretty sure that any investigators would have issues figuring out exactly what had gone on given the scanty evidence.

    Or maybe they wouldn¡¯t, since they would have the whole knowledge base of magedom to draw on and he doubted any of his tricks were completely unknown. The only thing that might well be novel was his perception, and the size of his vis threads. Which he figured were connected, since if the ward he¡¯d tapped into once before was any guide, mages had a much lower resolution and they¡¯d have to use larger vis structures. Either way, he suspected they would have to strain themselves to understand what he was doing.

    First he made a little box of flattened threads inside the jug of water, maybe half an inch on each edge, and stuffed it full of vis to expand the space inside. The volume of seawater in the jug dropped as it filled the suddenly-larger interior of his vis box, and he held the construct in place as he layered on two more pieces of spellwork. One was a bit of gravity, drawing the water in toward the center of the box rather than letting it fall down through the vis construct, and the other was a teleportation framework.

    After all, it was all his own vis, so if he was careful none of it really interfered with itself.

    That teleport went into one of the pieces of equipment he¡¯d brought with him, a small but robust steel casing. The water just about filled the space inside, and with that he made a teleport framework on the end of his vis thread and shoved the makeshift grenade through. He let both constructs drop immediately, the magic holding them in place dissipating, and there was suddenly too much water for too little a space.

    The ward box exploded.

    So far he didn¡¯t have much of an expansion or compression ratio, however it was termed, but really any amount of too much inside to outside was an explosive proposition. Of all the things he¡¯d tried, liquid was the best. Gas just compressed itself or, at most, sprang a leak, while solids were somewhat tricky. Metals actually held onto the compression framework a little bit, so the expansion was slow. It destroyed the capsule, alright, but it didn¡¯t really pack the punch he had hoped for.

    Wood was slightly better but it had a tendency to crunch and, once again, not pack the punch he¡¯d hoped for. Besides, cutting blocks of wood or metal to size was tedious, when he could just use any old bucket of water and let the teleport take care of the portioning.

    In the grand scale of things it wasn¡¯t even that good a weapon, at least not until he could scale things larger. Frankly a bullet was more lethal in general, especially since if he could put a teleport somewhere, he could generally put a bullet there too. But some way to improvise explosives was extremely useful, especially when all that was left was water and a bit of random metal scrap. Scrap he could always add a vis cleanup enchantment to.

    The detonation crumpled and distorted the various trays in the ward box, thoroughly trashing the actual enchantments and immediately sending ripples along the ward-lines. Unlike an electrical wire, the failure cascade happened slowly, far too slowly for him to sit and watch. The portal enchantment was anchored on the top of the ward box, and its collapse was rapid, vanishing in a burst of mana.

    The mage that was supposed to be monitoring it reeled backward, scrambling to his feet as a shield and other conjurations spun up out his vis, but Callum was already moving on. He deposited another three spatial bombs into the maintenance closet, one directly below the plate that held the actual teleport pairing and the other two at some complicated-looking nexuses of enchanted material. The impromptu bombs weren¡¯t powerful enough to actually break any of the material, but it scored, bent, and distorted, and that was sufficient. He knew from experience that even minor deviations from the required geometry would make an enchantment unusable.

    In the few seconds it took for him to lob his follow-up grenades, the ward-mage had triggered some kind of alarm, to judge from the way everyone inside the office jolted and swiveled around. The shifter janitors grew into their warforms, becoming ten-foot-tall monstrosities, but there were two rows of buildings between Callum and the office, so they had nothing to attack. If they did manage to target him, that amount of space was less reassuring than it might seem. He¡¯d seen how fast they moved.

    The difference between normal human reaction time and that of other supernaturals was on clear display. While the mages were still fumbling with phones and things, the vamps were already out surrounding the building, while pairs moved at absurd speeds to sweep through the building. They blurred through the offices, the front desk, the storage areas, and of course the ward and teleport rooms.

    It was a clear they were executing some pre-planned emergency drill, which focused on the sensitive areas of the offices, the personnel and the magical infrastructure. The cells in the basement were an afterthought at best, which was good for him. That gave him the time to wrap his teleport framework around the Connors and pull them into the back of the van, letting them drop onto the patchouli-smelling air mattress.

    His last act was to drop a small pin with the cleanup enchantment inside the Connors¡¯ old cell. While it wasn¡¯t like he could hide his involvement in the jailbreak, removing evidence where he could made him feel more secure. The metal scrap from the grenades had a few intact cleanup enchantments, since he¡¯d put several on them ahead of time, and with all the magery going on over there they¡¯d probably be enough to reduce his component down to barely detectible levels. Then the light changed, and he drove on, headed directly away from the office.

    It was as well he did, because a set of vamps and shifters, followed very belatedly by mages, began searching the surrounding area. Just before it slipped out of his range of perceptions, he caught the teleport area surge with mana before the nascent threads of spellwork collapsed. They wouldn¡¯t be getting any reinforcements that way.

    ¡°What¡ª urgh.¡± Leo Connors¡¯ nauseated voice came from behind him, from the darkness of the van¡¯s rear. ¡°Man, what is this, who, I mean¡ª¡±

    ¡°I¡¯m moving you to a friendlier place,¡± Callum replied, glancing at the forms of the two through the rearview mirror. He almost ran a red light as he kept a survey with his perceptions, having a hard time focusing on everything going on, including the pair he¡¯d stuffed in the back of his van. Supernaturals were swarming out into the open as the ward-lines faded, including flying fae zipping around overhead. Some were pixies, but there were larger and less humanoid things as well, even a mounted noble flashing through the upper part of his perception sphere on some amorphous mass of fae magic.

    ¡°Wait, you! I thought you¡ª urgh.¡± Callum could guess at what Leo was saying, though all Danika could manage was a pained moan in what Callum guessed was agreement with Leo¡¯s questions. ¡°What the fuck is all this?¡± Leo continued, trying to prop himself upright on the mattress. ¡°Why are these things after us all the time?¡±

    ¡°Unfortunately, you got caught up in my problems,¡± he explained. It really did need some comment after he¡¯d told them he couldn¡¯t help them anymore.

    ¡°Why? What did you do?¡± Leo managed to get out as Callum continued driving as casually as he could toward the financial district.

    ¡°That¡¯s not important,¡± Callum said. It¡¯d take too long to explain, and besides, he wasn¡¯t sure how much they¡¯d believe or empathize. Sure, they¡¯d encountered the supernatural, but there was no telling exactly how much they knew or how well they were dealing with it. ¡°What matters is I made a deal and you can go back to your normal lives.¡±

    ¡°That¡¯s,¡± Leo wheezed. ¡°That¡¯s not good enough, man. The hell am I supposed to do when something jumps out of the wall and?¡ª¡±

    ¡°Dear,¡± Danika interrupted, faint but firm. ¡°Please don¡¯t yell at the guy who¡¯s saved us twice now.¡±

    Callum sympathized with Leo. He¡¯d been pretty indignant when the supernatural world had come knocking at his door, and if that had happened when he¡¯d still been married, he would have been even less sanguine. That didn¡¯t make it any less tiresome to deal with though.

    Callum drove on, and had gotten to the next stoplight when a big wall of twisty fae magic flared behind him and some sort of barrier went up over the block or so surrounding the GAR building. A glance in his side mirror showed nothing visible, but then, they probably wouldn¡¯t want it to be. Undoubtedly there was all kinds of magic visible to mages and possibly other supernaturals, but not to normal people and not to him.

    If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

    ¡°There¡¯s too much to tell you and not enough time,¡± Callum said distractedly. ¡°I¡¯m taking you to the people that should protect you from everyone else. You¡¯ve already seen there¡¯s supernatural out there, and most of it doesn¡¯t care about normal people.¡±

    ¡°Yeah you¡¯re not kidding me! Man, this can¡¯t be legal or whatever, we didn¡¯t do anything!¡±

    ¡°I know,¡± Callum said. ¡°But¡ª¡±

    ¡°And why the hell does it smell like weed in here? Are we tripping or something?¡±

    ¡°No,¡± Callum said firmly. ¡°It¡¯s to hide your scent in case shifters come around.¡±

    ¡°Hide our what? You¡¯re fucking kidding me?¡ª¡±

    As far as Callum could tell he hadn¡¯t done anything suspicious, but maybe just driving around in van late at night was enough, because a police strobe lit up behind him. He almost stomped the gas, but instead managed keep control and not immediately rear-end the car in front of him. A thousand thoughts flickered through his head, but he couldn¡¯t really act on any of them because there were still supernaturals within his perceptions, and he didn¡¯t dare teleport or activate his glamor.

    He had hoped that the police car would pass him, but no such luck, and Callum grimaced and pulled off to the nearest parking lot. Of his options, that seemed the best considering the supernatural presence about. The man in the police car wasn¡¯t supernatural, so Callum wasn¡¯t that worried about him as such, but if he had to teleport out things might get sticky. He¡¯d have to see if he could bluff his way through or not.

    ¡°We¡¯ve got cops,¡± Callum interrupted.

    ¡°Can¡¯t you just magic us away?¡± Danika asked.

    ¡°Not without attracting attention,¡± Callum said, keeping his senses focused on the police car. ¡°But I will if I have to.¡±

    He scanned everything nearby, looking for the faintest hint of supernatural suspicion, but none of the fae or even mage figures overhead seemed to concern themselves with a mundane traffic stop. In fact, Callum realized, if the cop wasn¡¯t looking for anything supernatural, that would be fantastic cover because no mage would bother with what they considered mundane authorities.

    ¡°I guess we can¡¯t tell the cops we were kidnapped,¡± Leo said with disgust.

    ¡°Maybe just pretend you¡¯re high or something?¡± Callum suggested.

    ¡°Haven¡¯t done that since college,¡± Danika said, a little wistfully. Callum suppressed a shake of his head. College was so long ago for him that he could scarcely imagine it.

    The minute or two it took the cop to get out of the car stretched to an eternity, as Callum was afraid of searchers coming up behind them, but the greatest concentration of activity was happening closer to the office, several blocks away. How long that would be the case, he didn¡¯t know, but he could feel time ticking away as the officer leisurely got out of the car and came up to the side of the van.

    ¡°Late night moving?¡± The officer inquired in exactly the tone of voice that set Callum¡¯s teeth most on edge. In a previous life he probably would have been mildly obstreperous, if not outright curmudgeonly, but this wasn¡¯t West Virginia and he really needed to get this over with as fast as possible.

    ¡°Just bringing these two home,¡± Callum said, hiking a thumb toward the back. He still hadn¡¯t gotten a good look at the Connors, despite being able to survey them with his spatial senses. It was hard to discern how disheveled they looked just from a sense that was closer to touch than sight.

    The policeman clicked his flashlight and leaned into to shine it on the rear of the van. In the rearview mirror he caught the pinched and squinting faces of the Connors. They really did look like they¡¯d had a couple rough nights, but more of the drunk and hungover type than the kidnapped by supernatural forces brand of rumpled. Danika, particularly, was a bit red-faced and baggy-eyed.

    ¡°What¡¯s going on, man?¡± Leo said, and Callum¡¯s jaw almost dropped at the way Leo suddenly sounded about one quarter as intelligent as he had before. He had abruptly become a stereotypical stoner or hippie or other late-night druggie. Danika added to the illusion by giggling, which made Callum wonder whether they¡¯d actually done this sort of thing before.

    ¡°You people know you¡¯re not supposed to drive around without seatbelts, right?¡± The officer said mildly.

    ¡°But it¡¯s so comfortable back here!¡± Danika complained, almost hitting a valley girl type accent. Callum kept his mouth firmly shut and let his passengers play the bluff. Part of him was surprised they had the presence of mind to come up with a cover story themselves, but they couldn¡¯t be that far out of college. Perhaps their hard-partying days were still fresh in their minds.

    ¡°Right,¡± the officer drawled. Callum could see him weighing the merits of dealing with a pair of stoners versus getting back to whatever else he was doing at that time of night. Eventually, laziness won. ¡°Look, you need to wear a seatbelt. Don¡¯t fuck in the back of a moving van. Get out of there and take a proper seat.¡±

    The Connors glanced at each other and Danika squeezed herself forward to sit in the passenger seat, while Leo sat down in the flying chair where it was crammed against the other side of the van. There wasn¡¯t a seatbelt, and the thing wasn¡¯t even properly secured to the floor, but that seemed to be good enough.

    ¡°I¡¯ll give you a warning now, but don¡¯t do this again.¡±

    ¡°Sure, man,¡± Leo said.

    ¡°And you,¡± the officer said, looking at Callum. ¡°Make sure you clean this damn thing out before you return it.¡±

    ¡°Yessir,¡± Callum told him, doing his best to look put-upon. The officer thumped the side of the van and returned to his car, and Callum checked the traffic before starting off again.

    ¡°Huh. You¡¯re shorter than I expected,¡± Danika said after a moment. Callum glanced sideways for a moment before returning his eyes to the road. Of all things to say, that was one he didn¡¯t have any ready reply for, so he elected to ignore it.

    ¡°We can¡¯t really talk here, wait for a bit,¡± he said. Although if someone was really supernaturally surveilling all the conversations, Leo would have already made that theoretical listener suspicious. Callum wasn¡¯t going to compound that risk, though.

    Surprisingly, the Connors did keep their silence through the next few red lights. The fae and mages zipping around in the air seemed to mostly converge on the GAR office, which they were steadily leaving behind, though thinking of it as a crowded sky was not actually correct. There had been a dozen or two pixie things, but he¡¯d only spotted four or five mounted fae and an equal number of flying mages. Which was still quite a lot, but he was sure an assault on a GAR office was an all-hands-on-deck situation, and the aerial forces he¡¯d seen probably represented everyone in the city.

    Another block, and something big rushed through Callum¡¯s perceptions. It was clearly fae magic, all liquid and twisty, a massive wall of it rushing at him from somewhere ahead. He barely had enough to tense up instinctively before it was over and past, receding into the distance. It didn¡¯t interact with him at all, so far as he could tell, but that was enough to start him charging his emergency teleport. He¡¯d stirred up something really big.

    Of course he had; he¡¯d stolen prisoners from a government building. There was a difference between knowing that and seeing some grand working coming from the fae. Considering his deal with Ferrochar, Callum had no idea whether that huge chunk of magic was meant to prevent mischief or cause it, and either way he didn¡¯t want to be around to find out.

    ¡°What is it?¡± Leo asked, and Callum glanced in the mirror again. He wasn¡¯t aware that he¡¯d betrayed anything, but then, under the circumstances it wasn¡¯t surprising Leo was watching him like a hawk.

    ¡°Supernaturals reacting,¡± Callum replied, not really wanting to tell the guy that he didn¡¯t actually know. ¡°It¡¯s not trouble yet.¡±

    ¡°Yet?¡±

    ¡°It¡¯s going to be trouble for someone, somewhere, somewhen,¡± Callum replied. ¡°Just not us right now. I¡¯m taking you to a bank the fae own, a different set from the ones who hunted you. They agreed to keep you safe from any supernatural shenanigans.¡±

    ¡°Why?¡± Danika asked.

    ¡°Supernatural politics,¡± Callum replied absently, changing lanes to avoid some idiot who was trying to speed on the late-night city streets. Why the cops went after Callum rather than someone in an overly loud muscle car was beyond him. ¡°You got brought in because of my mess, so I¡¯m fixing it.¡±

    ¡°Oh.¡±

    Acting as some professional supernatural agent felt rather surreal, especially since he was barely a mage to begin with. He¡¯d been doing well so far, but escapades like rescuing people from GAR¡¯s grasp were something that would catch up with him real quick. At the same time, he had to do such things. If he stayed completely cowed by what GAR could do, and let them do as they wanted, there was no point in staying free. Scratching out a living in a cave wasn¡¯t freedom.

    The difficult thing was balancing that freedom with caution. From what he could tell they wouldn¡¯t be able to harden their wards against him sneaking in his vis, but they might well trap the wards in some way if they knew how to bait him. Even now they might be tracing the Connors, so he wanted to get them off his hands as soon as possible.

    ¡°When I drop you off, just tell them your name and that the Ghost brought you.¡±

    ¡°The Ghost?¡± Leo repeated incredulously.

    ¡°Not my idea, I assure you,¡± Callum told him.

    ¡°Are you going to do it, the, ah¡­¡± Danika asked hesitantly. ¡°I mean, I feel kinda awful.¡±

    ¡°I know, I¡¯ll use portals,¡± he told them, taking pity on the pair. ¡°I¡¯ll be sending you off in a minute here.¡± Callum wasn¡¯t about to get any deeper into the financial district than he needed to, and the target building was almost within his perceptions.

    A number of the big banks had some degree of magic within them, though it wasn¡¯t all mage warding. Some of it was flowy, floaty fae stuff that probably served the same purpose, or maybe some of the gold or jewels there were fairy fakes. Or maybe actual fairy valuables, for all he knew.

    The actual target was pretty easy to spot because it had a lot of protections he could see, and maybe more he couldn¡¯t. While it was pretty easy for Callum to discern the general gist of human magic structures, fae ones were completely alien. He could only guess at the difference between protection and utility magic by whether the swirling stuff formed more of a wall or suffused the interior in crossing currents.

    Even with the differences he could still thread his vis in past the protections, though he suspected that it¡¯d be a lot easier for the fae to notice his intrusion than a mage. Or to stop it, because there were definitely places where the magical current was so strong it¡¯d snap his vis thread pretty instantly.

    ¡°Ready?¡± He asked.

    ¡°Not really,¡± Danika said. ¡°Can¡¯t you come with us?¡±

    ¡°The deal was about you two, not me. Fae are tricky.¡± He actually didn¡¯t know if Ferrochar would try and accost him or not, considering what he understood of supernatural politics, but it was best not to find out.

    ¡°Is there any way we can contact you?¡± Leo asked.

    ¡°Or repay you?¡± Danika added.

    Callum considered. He wasn¡¯t going to give them his phone number, or Lucy¡¯s either, but he could see about having her contact Ferrochar and set them up with something like what she used to talk to him. It would be nice if there was some way to keep tabs on them other than through police reports or something. Just to make sure the fae were playing nice.

    ¡°I¡¯ll have an agent contact you if it¡¯s safe,¡± he told them. For a brief moment the thought that it¡¯d be great to have someone help him with his knee crossed his mind, but he threw it away. There was no way that would do anything but expose him unnecessarily. ¡°Time to go, now. Remember, tell them who you are and that the Ghost sent you.¡±

    ¡°The Ghost sent us,¡± Leo confirmed, getting out of the chair. Callum selected a room up in what were probably executive territory without anyone in it and teleported the mattress there, followed by a portal linking the van to just above it.

    ¡°Hurry,¡± Callum urged, and Leo stepped through his side of the portal. Danika glanced at Callum.

    ¡°Thank you, again,¡± she said, and hurried through her side, even as fae started to converge on the room. Callum tossed a vis cleaning pin through just for the heck of it and dropped the portal, signaling a left turn as he stopped at a light. He kept his senses focused on them to make sure that the fae didn¡¯t treat them badly, circling the bank building at a three-block remove.

    The first set of fae entered the room and stopped as the Connors¡¯ said something, hopefully what Callum had told them to. Then suddenly and without any fanfare, there was suddenly a fae with a lot of magic swirling about him in the room with them. He bowed very flamboyantly, head turning as he seemed to look around the room. More of the fae magic spilled outward from the bank, running through the streets, and Callum took that as his cue to leave.

    He had no idea what the magic was meant to accomplish, but since it seemed that Ferrochar was going to keep his word, Callum wasn¡¯t needed there anymore. While he couldn¡¯t speed through the streets or teleport himself across under the circumstances, he still made his way to the drop-off with all due haste. It helped that the U-Haul lot was far enough from the center of activity that he wouldn¡¯t have supernaturals around. Or if there were, he¡¯d know they were up to no good.

    It was a tense fifteen or twenty minutes to get to the lot, but the supernatural presence faded as he went, even if there was some lingering magic about. It was like a faint mist curling about the ground, blowing here and there in unseen breezes. A demonstration that fae kings were not something to be taken lightly, indeed, and while they might not be all-powerful, they did have a long reach.

    With the magic blanketing the ground, Callum was a little careful when he did finally reach the lot. He kept it completely mundane as he dropped the keys in the deposit envelope for the after-hours lot, then the envelope itself went back in the deposit bin. With his own flashlight he made sure everything was packed up into the trays he¡¯d put under the flying chair, enchanted some vis cleanup into the walls of the van, and then teleported both himself and the chair onto the roof of a nearby building to keep out of the magical mist.

    Learning from the last time, when Callum settled himself in the chair and pulled it into the air with inverted gravity, he aimed himself at a point on the ground in the distance, rather than just the horizon. The world blurred, then seemed to twist oddly, and he stopped pulling with a stab of unease. When things resolved, he was indeed near the ground, but not where he had aimed. Instead of miles and miles away from the city center, he was maybe two miles from where he¡¯d started, next to a huge, dense-flowing wall of fae magic.

    Since it was fae and not human, he had no idea where to even start with puzzling out what it was and how it worked, but he could sense some sort of spatial twist to it. Nothing that he could analyze; it was more of a different flavor, the same way that the portal worlds were. Considering that he¡¯d gotten stopped at the wall, it didn¡¯t take much imagination to figure out it was some kind of barrier, and one that had stopped even his bootleg Alcubierre drive.

    ¡°Ah, dammit.¡± There was a reason he had his implant, but he had hoped he could avoid using it so soon, if for no other reason than he couldn¡¯t bring his flying chair through. While he could push out his vis and take some things with him, the receiving pad in the shed wasn¡¯t big enough for the chair.

    The implant was nearly charged anyway, so that wasn¡¯t a problem, but he didn¡¯t trust that he hadn¡¯t tripped something by running into the wall. Callum lifted himself up again and dragged himself in the opposite direction, toward the ocean, in a bid to dispose of his chair properly. There was another blur and twist, and Callum dropped his field.

    Seawater rushed in, catching him by surprise and making him choke as he clamped his lips together. He scrabbled with his senses, lungs burning, and grabbed his drawers from the chair as it sank down toward the seafloor. Something big and heavy with magic moved on the edges of his perception, and he pushed out his vis to encompass his supplies before he pushed, not wanting to meet whatever that was.

    The world shifted around him and he was suddenly in a dark, close, freezing cold shed somewhere in northern Montana. He was dripping seawater, his phones, guns and cash were soaked through, and he¡¯d lost the latest flying chair. On the up side, he¡¯d rescued the Connors and negotiated with a fae king without losing his shirt.

    It could have gone worse.

    ***

    ¡°Why the hell wasn¡¯t this better guarded?¡± Ray Danforth asked, mostly rhetorically. Miami was a bit far out of his jurisdiction, or Felicia¡¯s either. No matter how cute she was when she was angry, he didn¡¯t like Felicia having to go pay homage to the local fae king. Nor was he happy about having to deal with more aftermath of the Wells fellow when they¡¯d very specifically discussed him possibly coming after people of interest in the case.

    ¡°With respect, sir, we had double crew for shifters and vampires, and we had full wards up.¡± The mage that had been manning the wards looked somewhat worse for the wear, more from realizing how deep a hole he¡¯d gotten himself in than actual injuries. For how deadly Wells could be, it was interesting that the body count for this incident was zero. Even if the actual damage was fairly significant.

    ¡°You were told that they have ways to bypass said wards, right?¡± Ray asked in exasperation, then shook his head. ¡°Never mind. Just make sure nobody else comes in.¡±

    ¡°Yessir.¡±

    Ray prowled through the evacuated office, lightly brushing his senses around. Even if he knew it was silly, the first thing he checked for were ball bearings, but there were none, only bits of metal scrap. He frowned at the floor in the maintenance room where water pooled, not certain what to think of it.

    ¡°It is merely the blood of the sea,¡± a leathery, whispery voice sounded in his ear, and he couldn¡¯t help but jump. Ray wheeled around to see a tanned, round-faced man with a nose like a squashed pepper in jeans and an old white shirt, with the badge of an Archmage pinned to it.

    He should have felt another mage¡¯s sphere of authority intersect his. In fact, an Archmage¡¯s should have displaced his, but the man had no shell of vis at all. Despite that, and despite his casual air and relaxed posture, he fairly radiated danger.

    Then there was the shadow. It wasn¡¯t just a regular shadow; it was dark as pitch despite the illumination in the room, and two diamond-pinpoint eyes stared at Ray. Working with Felicia, he¡¯d seen a lot of odd fae stuff, but the shadow held a certain edge that was more disturbing than fae magic.

    Especially since it was attached to a mage.

    ¡°Archmage,¡± Ray greeted him cautiously, not even sure what House the man belonged to.

    ¡°One suspects you chase something greater than you,¡± the Archmage said, not exactly returning the greeting. ¡°The cycle turns as it will, and cares not for that which is trampled in its wake.¡±

    ¡°Uh. Yessir?¡± Archmages could be eccentric, but usually they weren¡¯t this weird. The response he got was a sigh.

    ¡°You will want to get Archmage Duvall,¡± the man said to him. ¡°She may be able to understand what happened here.¡±

 Chapter 13 â€“ Involvement

    Serena Duvall ignored her scry-com¡¯s chime. No, she was focused on locking down the last corner of House Janry¡¯s new estate in Faerie. Spatial stabilization was the task that consumed the most of her time ¡ª no one else had the talent or the vis reserves to do it. Everyone needed her to do it, since every mage habitation in the portal worlds needed to be adjusted back to something similar to Earth.

    The native space of the portal worlds made casting difficult. And odd. Fine under some circumstances but not for daily life. More pragmatically, it interfered with her delicate teleportation enchantments ¡ª and nobody who was anybody would go without her network. Too useful. The sheer demand for them overwhelmed her apprentices, few of them that she had.

    House Duvall had a ten-year backlog at this point.

    The most important part of the spatial tuning was preventing the corruption of humans. Corruption into other things, like the fae and with shifters. Portal worlds were fantastic, for mana. Less fantastic, for living. Given a few generations, the portal worlds would twist mages into something else ¡ª unless she twisted it first.

    It was better than the other supernaturals. Some couldn¡¯t even enter other portal worlds without losing their talents. Or dying. Mages could cast no matter the portal world ¡ª living there was another matter.

    One last shove locked the space into alignment. She pulled in her vis and sent a trickle through the scry-com ¡ª not without reservations. There had been so many interruptions of late, and she was getting tired of it. Her work was wearing enough without people whining at her. Wanting her to hold their hands and clean up after their messes ?¡ª she¡¯d gotten tired of that two hundred years ago with her own children.

    ¡°What?¡± She snapped, just knowing that, whoever was calling, she wasn¡¯t getting home on time. That she¡¯d be running short of sleep ¡ª again.

    ¡°We¡¯ve had another sighting of Callum Wells,¡± the voice on the other end said. One of the BSE people.

    ¡°So you didn¡¯t catch him, then,¡± she said.

    ¡°Technically, we didn¡¯t even see him. It¡¯s just that he freed two mundanes we were holding as witnesses, and the techniques match his operation.¡±

    ¡°So why are you calling me then?¡±

    ¡°There may be some residue of what he was doing left about. We still don¡¯t know how he manages to slip past wards and since he¡¯s a space mage we need an expert analysis.¡±

    Duvall growled. She didn¡¯t want to have to deal with these things ¡ª but no one else qualified. And she wanted Wells caught, too. If there were a bunch of spatial mages somewhere, they were a threat to her House ¡ª and a monumental waste of talent! If it was just Wells, he was clearly competent enough to be of use ¡ª if he was finally brought to heel.

    ¡°He also sabotaged the teleporter and feeder portal,¡± the man continued. ¡°So we need replacements.¡±

    ¡°Then submit a request for them!¡± Duvall snapped. She was the one who approved emergency replacements, and the process existed for a reason ¡ª no chance she was going back to being hounded in person by the others. Not to mention half of GAR.

    ¡°Yes, Archmage,¡± he said.

    ¡°Well?¡± She demanded when he didn¡¯t continue. Her patience was wearing thin. ¡°Where is this?¡±

    ¡°Miami, Archmage.¡±

    ¡°Fine,¡± she said, and dropped the scry-com¡¯s construct. Her vis pulsed outward, and she tied into House Janry¡¯s teleport pad. Even she couldn¡¯t transport herself directly to a target location without some kind of anchor ¡ª so she¡¯d made sure there were anchors all over the place.

    She popped into one of the GAR facilities and sent out another pulse, locating the teleportation switchboards and moving herself there. She had an encyclopedic knowledge of all the anchor locations ¡ª it was her network, after all. Far better than the original, now. That had just been a long hallway with plaques labeling the destinations.

    Duvall ignored the operators, searching for the Tampa anchor in the wall of them at the back. Then she linked in and transferred herself. Such was impossible for most, needing to link their vis in through their tattoos. Archmages could do better, of course.

    The moment she was in Tampa she teleported up and out, riding her flight focus through the night, south and east. Space stretched around her, making her journey shorter as she soared through the skies. She had been to every anchor location ¡ª and space mages always knew where they had been. One of the first things she taught.

    She could see the residue of a large fae working when she neared the city. Probably from the King of Miami. It had left a mess, as usual ¡ª fae magic didn¡¯t have the structure or control of real magic. One reason she didn¡¯t like Faerie, even if all the other houses did.

    Duvall punched through the remnant spatial distortion and landed down at the GAR office. Some shifter dregs moved to intercept her, but when they saw her Archmage emblem, they stopped ¡ª as they should. She ignored them and transported herself inside, not even needing to worry about the wards. They were down.

    The most powerful mage on site besides herself was in the maintenance room, and he jumped when she appeared. Showed he wasn¡¯t paying attention ¡ª he should have noticed her vis from active sensing. It was some BSE person, but not one of the ones she recognized.

    ¡°Well?¡±

    ¡°Archmage Duvall, thank you for coming. As you can see there is damage to multiple sections of the teleportation framework, and we think he delivered something with his spatial magic. There¡¯s water residue so we¡¯ve asked Grand Magus?¡ª¡±

    ¡°Out!¡± Duvall pointed to the door. She was tired of the man¡¯s yammering on about things she could see with her own eyes ¡ª things that didn¡¯t matter. Besides, if they wanted her to find out something about Wells¡¯ magic, she needed to have no others obscuring it.

    There was no point in using active senses ¡ª they¡¯d just drown out whatever residue was left. Passive sensing was the only way. Duvall redirected some of her vis from her shell into her body, then directed a trickle into her own mind, the surroundings billowing into existence in her head. She stopped at ten feet, since there was little point in going further. There was too much information, and it was a dangerous and vis-hungry thing.

    Such internal reflection was limited to Archmages ?¡ª and was one of the criteria to become such. For Archmages, the entirety of their vis and the metabolization was in the shell, with any vis inside their body being structured completely for reinforcement or augmentation. For any other mage, feeding vis inward would cause a loop, as the vis tried to drain into itself. Like a hole in a dam, locking their entire power into themselves. It took a powerful healing mage to interrupt the process ¡ª and not incidentally, it took total vis externalization to protect against healing. Another thing only Archmages could do ?¡ª more shell than flesh.

    She traced the faint echoes of vis, easily noticing the remnants of spatial vis ¡ª of course. They were faded and distorted, pulled in a direction. Her kinesis focus plucked a fragment of metal from the ground and she frowned at the tiniest hint of a lingering enchantment. Mundane metal couldn¡¯t handle much, but she had read the reports. Something to clean up his vis.

    The framework remnants were oddly fragile. She would say it was crude yet fine ¡ªaccurate, but sloppy. Too much power, and barely enough. Woven gossamer instead of a properly solid framework. He was working through finesse tools, but she had no idea why. They were useful for close work, but had no range or real power ¡ª maybe to hide his normal magical signature.

    Not that she needed his normal threads to see his style. Clearly not someone she had trained. She¡¯d never stand for such terrible spellwork. Terrible, but it obviously worked well enough. Even if it was underpowered.

    A teleportation framework ¡ª yes. Inside that, some dense mass that might indicate expanded space. Might. It wasn¡¯t how she would go about it, clearly. Yet ¡ª she did recognize some of the shapes and features. With the fragments of metal strewn over the room it was clear what had been done.

    It was appalling ¡ª a transgression of everything spatial magic was. The reason she restricted expanded spatial spaces to the portal worlds was their danger if they were disrupted ¡ª danger to everyone. Turning the precision and wonder of expanding space into a crude tool of disruption was absolutely unconscionable.

    He definitely needed to be found ¡ª for everyone¡¯s safety. She would certainly recognize his magic if she ran across it again, but she couldn¡¯t even connect the teleport to the other end ¡ª too degraded. Deliberately.

    ¡°One is always mystified by the harbinger of the cycle.¡± The voice made her jump, because she hadn¡¯t sensed another mage enter the room. But there he was, the spooky bastard ¡ª Huitzilin.

    ¡°Archmage Wizzy,¡± she said, not bothering to keep the disapproval from her voice. He insisted that everyone call him by that ridiculous nickname unless they could pronounce his real name properly. Which nobody could.

    ¡°Archmage Duvall,¡± he returned, in his weird accent that he refused to change.

    ¡°I didn¡¯t know they called you to analyze the water magic,¡± she said.

    ¡°They did not.¡± Huitzilin seemed smug. ¡°I came to see if the sparks and smoldering I heard of were beginning to catch or not.¡±

    ¡°Speak plainly!¡± She didn¡¯t have time for his nonsense.

    ¡°The thorn in your paw,¡± Huitzilin said. ¡°The Wells issue. One is merely curious about their provenance and their role.¡± He tilted his head slightly, and a shadow slipped through the doorway to take its place where it belonged. His shadow, which whispered to him in a sibilant language nobody else living understood.

    It wasn¡¯t something a mage should have. Something a mage should do. But that was just Huitzilin ¡ª creepy. And strange. Too close to the fae, even if he predated them. Predated everyone, if he could be believed. They found him when the first mages reached the new world, already there, already old.

    ¡°Well, he¡¯s a damn nuisance.¡± Duvall brushed past him. Of them all, Huitzilin didn¡¯t maintain a proper shell ?¡ª now called a sphere of authority by young jumped-up mages far too impressed with themselves. Not that he was any less powerful or dangerous. He just didn¡¯t come from a proper background, and it was bizarre to see someone with an Archmage pin with no vis aura.

    ¡°One suspects he is long overdue,¡± Huitzilin said. Duvall whirled on him.

    ¡°Are you supporting him?¡± She gathered the vis within her sphere. Space magic might well not be able to harm directly, but there were many indirect methods to deal with someone. Even another Archmage.

    ¡°One has never met the man. Perhaps one should, but he has not yet passed within one¡¯s sight.¡± Duvall scowled, but figured he was telling the truth. Of them all, Huitzilin was the least political. Never showed up to meetings. Didn¡¯t even have a House.

    ¡°Then go back to guarding your temple,¡± she said, and left. The teleport enchantments would have to be replaced entirely. The sabotage was very targeted ¡ª he¡¯d known where to look.

    Aside from the transport array and the ward nexus, there were traces of Wells¡¯ vis in one other place ¡ª the cells. That was just a simple teleport residue, even if it was in Wells¡¯ bizarre style. Duvall turned to the man who had been shadowing her. From a safe distance.

    ¡°Who was in here?¡±

    ¡°A pair of mundanes who were witnesses to the fae disappearance Wells was implicated in,¡± he told her.

    ¡°Did they know anything?¡±

    ¡°No, they didn¡¯t even see him.¡±

    ¡°Then why did he take them? Why did we even have them here?¡±

    ¡°It¡¯s standard procedure for the Department of Acquisitions to?¡ª¡±

    ¡°Oh, Constance,¡± Duvall said scornfully. ¡°She¡¯s not an Archmage. Why did she have them and not us?¡±

    ¡°The Department of Acquisitions?¡ª¡±

    ¡°You know what, I don¡¯t care. Find them again, figure out why he took them. Maybe he¡¯ll come after them again.¡±

    ***

    ¡°The fae have them,¡± Jahn reported. ¡°Some kind of obscuring working. All their names are gone from our paperwork, or rather, replaced, with Prospero and Sycorax.¡±

    If you stumble upon this tale on Amazon, it''s taken without the author''s consent. Report it.

    ¡°Fae,¡± Hargrave said in disgust. ¡°Of course, we already knew Wells was working with the fae. Someone there, anyway. What did the King of Miami have to say?¡±

    ¡°Oh, he practically rubbed my nose in it. Miami is his territory, I already knew it had to be his intervention. But the mundanes were fae responsibility under the accords and so on. You know how much a stickler for rules they are when they want to be.¡± Jahn sighed, sorting through his notes.

    ¡°They won¡¯t even admit they have them, not out loud, unless we can specifically name them and why they¡¯re needed. Which of course we can¡¯t now. And apparently there was some deal made. I sent some feelers out and a number of the other kings back him up, so, well. It¡¯s a political thing now.¡±

    ¡°Mmm. At least we know he can be enticed out of whatever hidey-hole he has,¡± Hargrave pointed out. ¡°We can use that. Perhaps not with those mundanes, if they are indeed that well protected, but there are others. Anyone he¡¯s come in contact with.¡±

    ¡°That¡¯s a little bit difficult. Most of the people we can confirm are either in Tanner, and under Scaletooth¡¯s protection¡ª¡±

    ¡°Damned dragonblooded.¡±

    ¡°Indeed. The others are in Winut, so they¡¯re Alpha Chester¡¯s people. That is perhaps somewhat easier to deal with, but rather more politically awkward.¡± Jahn set the notes aside. ¡°But there¡¯s an angle here. How did Wells know? Not many people got the report about their whereabouts, or that they were even detained. There¡¯s a leak somewhere.¡±

    ¡°You already did an investigation,¡± Hargrave pointed out.

    ¡°Sure, but we know Wells¡¯ group uses mundane stuff all the time. I¡¯m going to get in some Feds to go over that chain of communication, figure out where the leak was,¡± Jahn said, giving Hargrave a level look. ¡°Maybe we didn¡¯t find anything with magic because there wasn¡¯t anything to find.¡±

    ¡°You¡¯re the one in charge,¡± Hargrave grunted. ¡°I never really approved of all this mixing GAR does but that hardly matters at this point. Do what you have to.¡±

    ***

    Somehow, the trip gave Callum a cold. Even though he had extra clothing in his stash, the temperature shock, coughing up seawater, and general stress meant that he still picked up some kind of ick. At first he had thought it was just the normal nausea of his imperfect homebond, but once it progressed into sneezing he knew it was more than that. The misery of runny noses and coughing and sneezing was at least not out of place in the weather, since Montana had snow even if it wasn¡¯t Thanksgiving yet.

    He moved the shed-stash while he was at it, even if there was no evidence that anyone could track down the destination of his homebond. It was just for peace of mind that he wasn¡¯t using the same place twice. Fortunately, being sick didn¡¯t seem to impair his ability to manipulate magic, so he could use gravitykinesis and teleports to get everything situated a hundred miles away, with a trail of old rusty metal scrap to suck up all the vis.

    Unfortunately his knee was stiffer than ever after the chill, though that might just have been psychosomatic. He was glad he¡¯d left a cane in his cache, though, since he couldn¡¯t use teleporting when it came to getting taxis or rideshares or hitchhiking. If he could find a usable flight focus, that would make everything he was doing so much easier.

    He couldn¡¯t even call Lucy until he¡¯d gotten himself back to civilization and got himself a new phone or two. Even if he was already in the habit of buying disposable low-end phones to make calls, the smartphone he used for pocket navigation and wifi access was out of commission, maybe permanently ruined, and that was irritating. Not a huge expenditure in the grand scheme of things, especially if he had a significant payday coming in from the sale of the teleport pad, but he still didn¡¯t exactly have a stable income.

    ¡°Big man!¡± Lucy said when he finally rang her number. ¡°Heard you really made some waves down there!¡±

    ¡°I imagine so. The Connors¡¯ are safe?¡±

    ¡°Oh man. Now that¡¯s a trip. Nobody even knows who they are. You just told me their names and it just slipped right out of my head. The fae did something and kinda made them unmemorable? I dunno, fae magic is weird.¡±

    ¡°So long as it works,¡± Callum decided. He did wonder exactly why he was immune to that kind of alteration, since he was demonstrably not immune to all fae magic. Unless he was specifically excluded, or it was a glamour on an enormously grand scale.

    ¡°They¡¯re all stirred up beyond that, but I¡¯ve been trying to keep a low profile, so I can¡¯t give you details.¡±

    ¡°No, it¡¯s fine,¡± Callum assured her. ¡°I just don¡¯t want to do that kind of thing again. Too many things can go wrong. I really don¡¯t like the idea that anyone might be held hostage on my account.¡±

    ¡°Yeah, yeah I hear you big man,¡± Lucy said, after just a moment of silence. ¡°Better to stay outta sight.¡±

    ¡°I¡¯d say I was doing my best, but I¡¯m obviously not,¡± Callum sighed. ¡°After this, I absolutely intend to bunker down and stay out of things. I have so much work to do.¡±

    ¡°I can just imagine,¡± Lucy said sympathetically. ¡°Speaking of work! Our mutual friend tested your merchandise and it works just fine, so he¡¯s going to be paying out when you¡¯re ready.¡±

    ¡°Any time is fine. Just so long as it¡¯s in a nicely crowded location.¡± He was on fairly good terms with Alpha Chester, but he still wouldn¡¯t put it past the man to have some observers out at the drop-off point. He¡¯d tracked Callum down once before, and he might try to do so again. Not out of malice, just out of caution.

    ¡°Crowded, huh? I thought you¡¯d want remote.¡±

    ¡°Kind of hard to be anonymous if I¡¯m the only one around,¡± Callum said.

    ¡°Ooh, right you are, big man.¡± He heard the tapping of a keyboard over the phone. ¡°I¡¯ll make sure he knows. Probably will have a place for you in the next day or so.¡±

    ¡°Great,¡± Callum told her. That would give him time to get all the way down to where he¡¯d left his pickup and actually have proper wheels. They might well put the dropoff somewhere near where he¡¯d left the teleportation plates, but they might not. He didn¡¯t much care either way, so long as he didn¡¯t have to keep paying for a car to move him from one point to another.

    ¡°One more thing,¡± he told her. ¡°Once I get that I may be out of touch for a while, doing some busywork. If you don¡¯t hear from me for a week or so, don¡¯t worry.¡±

    ¡°I¡¯m touched that you¡¯re thinking of little ol¡¯ me,¡± Lucy teased him. ¡°I¡¯ll be sighing and pining at the phone until it rings.¡±

    Callum felt himself relax a little as he chatted with Lucy, who seemed to be the only person he could actually talk with. Which he realized was probably a dangerous position to be in, but he¡¯d go insane if he didn¡¯t have anyone that he shared some kind of connection with. Even back in Winut when he closeted himself up, the townsfolk were friendly when he went out to get supplies. It had helped.

    When he hung up he focused back on the task of going south. Fortunately, he could alternate taking taxis and teleporting between his destinations, which both broke up his trail and vastly sped up his progress. While he was in no way capable of chain-teleporting the thousand-plus miles from Montana to Texas in one go, he could cross spates of fifty or sixty miles, accounting for the lower mana in the States.

    He napped in the car or truck or whatever vehicle he was in at the time. Continuous casting really took it out of him, and he felt like he was some geriatric having to sleep all the time. At some point he¡¯d have to ask Lucy, or maybe Harry, if regular mages had such issues.

    Overall it took him three days to make it down to where his pickup was parked, pay the bill, and liberate it from the lot. By that time he had a dead drop location from Lucy, on the roof A/C unit of a restaurant located in a small town outside Wichita. It made his commute a bit longer, but he couldn¡¯t complain. Not when he was getting paid so much for it.

    When he drove through the streets near the restaurant, he did indeed spot a few shifters around, though it was difficult to tell if that was incidental or they were surveillance. It was the territory of some pack, after all, so presumably they had legitimate jobs and errands in the area. At least there was nobody on the roof where the package was supposed to be, and the package itself was easy enough to find. It was just a small case placed inside the housing of the A/C unit, and so far as he could tell it didn¡¯t have any trackers.

    Callum teleported it onto the seat beside him and continued driving, heading out of town. After an hour¡¯s driving he turned on the phone and texted Lucy that he¡¯d picked up the package. She replied with a thumbs-up and he turned the phone off before continuing on.

    It was just as well he wasn¡¯t at home, since he had to exchange more gold for cash, and he could only do that one plate at a time. A few thousand dollars a pop. Which meant just one or at most two different places per town or city, and since he had a long way back home he might as well stop off on the way.

    The first stop was Dallas, to see if the consultation review was done for his plans. If it had been for certification he¡¯d be waiting for a long time yet, but for just a review and sanity check, a week might be reasonable. It wasn¡¯t like anything he was doing was groundbreaking and he knew exactly where to look online to crib proper plumbing and wiring.

    For once he was in luck, and their resident engineers had gone through the plans and made corrections. With, of course, the understanding that it would still have to go through the appropriate process if he wanted to actually build it. Which he did, but not in the United States.

    Callum took the packet and went back home. Not that the trailer house was much of a home, but it was better than nothing. Mostly he just assured himself that everything was still functional, it hadn¡¯t been broken into, and nobody was trying to evict him. He¡¯d paid rent of course, but given that he¡¯d done so more or less on the sly it was a worry the landlord would try to cheat him. All that was different, though, was a mailbox full of flyers and advertisements.

    He idled around for about half a day, doing laundry and cleaning his guns, before realizing he didn¡¯t actually have any reason to stay there. While he did want to put together more enchantment infrastructure, he also wanted to get the ball rolling on his bunker, so after making sure he was ready and resupplied, he headed south. It was time to go back across the border.

    There were two good reasons. One was that if he was closer to the South American portal world, he¡¯d have more mana to work with, and the other was that it was a lot easier to stay anonymous in a place that wasn¡¯t the US. Not that he was abandoning the States, but it was a sad truth that he couldn¡¯t operate as freely as he liked with GAR arrayed against him.

    Especially since they seemed to have some sway over the normal government.

    From the GAR literature Lucy had provided, Portal World Six wasn¡¯t actually in South America, since it was located in the vicinity of historical San Lorenzo Tenochtitl¨¢n. It was an amusing bit of sloppiness from his introductory literature, and it was good that Lucy had given him something more concrete because otherwise he¡¯d have been planning on heading to Brazil or something.

    Pragmatically, he couldn¡¯t hitchhike or rideshare through Mexico like he could the US, for a variety of reasons. On the other hand, he had a pickup, and he could teleport, so getting across the border was exceedingly easy. It wouldn¡¯t be rapid progress, but it was better to have the pickup anyway since his target was far away from any cities.

    The Oaxaca region of Mexico had plenty of empty land, full of greenery, and most importantly: that land was for sale. Or could be bought, anyway. He really didn¡¯t need much, just a place that was remote enough that nobody would bother him while being close enough he could actually get it built. There wasn¡¯t even a need for power or internet access, since he¡¯d designed the bunker to be completely off the grid and he could supplement things with magic.

    If he had enough local mana to form permanent portal enchantments, there were a number of obvious ways to generate unlimited power. For internet, he could rent a business incubator office or something and feed a signal through a tiny portal. He was sure Lucy would have some good ideas there, but the point was he didn¡¯t even have to have the access in the US.

    They were all grandiose ideas, but first he had to find some property. He could probably pay directly with gold, and it would go a lot further than it would have in the US. With such thoughts on his mind, he wrapped a glamour around his truck and headed past the border, driving through portals as he headed into Mexico.

    ***

    Lucy sipped at her rum-and-coke and brooded. She didn¡¯t really go in for alcohol that much but it had seemed more appropriate of late. There was the mess at work, which was still ongoing, making every day tedious and depressing as every single thing everyone did was scrutinized. Then there was the mess with the big man.

    She hadn¡¯t needed to tell him about the couple that GAR was holding in Florida. He had made it clear that he would need to deal with it if it came up, so she knew exactly what would happen when she had given him the information. At the time she¡¯d seen it as a great way to get GAR¡¯s goat, but in hindsight, it had been an awful shitty thing to do. Sending him off to something that could have been terribly dangerous, just because she was piqued, was about the worst thing she could have done to him.

    He wanted to know, yes, and wanted to take care of it, but she could have waited to tell him. At least until there was an easier way to get at them. Something, anyway. Even if he didn¡¯t seem too worried about what had happened, the rumors she¡¯d overheard had a lot of salacious detail. The Fae King had gone so far as to put up a barrier to prevent any supernaturals from leaving, though given the big man¡¯s homebond that was never going to be much of a problem.

    Even at the best of times, the big man talked to her only intermittently, and now he was going to be gone for a while. It made her feel that he was upset with her and didn¡¯t want to talk her, even though she knew that was silly. But it still hurt, even if she only knew him as a voice on the phone.

    Just a voice on the phone, but a friendly one. One who actually laughed at her jokes rather than taking them with a sort of amused tolerance like the shifters. Also a mage that didn¡¯t think of her as a second-class citizen at best. She¡¯d barely talked to her family in years, and now she was afraid she¡¯d messed up one of the few normal relationships she had.

    The fact that she¡¯d gotten a lot of extra money, enough to make a decent retirement fund, ought to have been a salve but it really wasn¡¯t. GAR never lacked for money and her pay was fine anyhow, so the minor fortune was less of a real benefit than it had seemed at first. If anything it made her feel more guilty, even though it was completely unconnected.

    The sudden tones of the ominous music she¡¯d selected for the big man¡¯s call startled her enough that she spilled rum and coke all over her shirt, and she hastily put it aside to pull up her telecom program. By this point she¡¯d made it automatic to track where he was calling from, and even put it on a map for herself. It wasn¡¯t exactly a slick design, but it was neat to see anyway.

    ¡°Big man!¡± She said, forcing cheer into her voice. ¡°Mexico, this time? Didn¡¯t travel as far for vacation, I guess.¡±

    ¡°Hey, Lucy! Just a short trip, yeah,¡± he said. He certainly didn¡¯t sound upset with her. ¡°Calling a bit earlier than I figured because I realized I forgot something. Do you think you could set me up with a supernatural map around the isthmus?¡±

    ¡°I can do my best, big man.¡± She made a note about the request so she could charge it properly and started sorting through the databases she¡¯d built up over the years. ¡°I already know there isn¡¯t too much out there, though.¡±

    ¡°Yeah, most of them seemed to be in Europe?¡±

    ¡°Europe, US, China, and the portal worlds,¡± Lucy agreed. ¡°Where the money is and where they originated.¡±

    ¡°I have to say, I was a little surprised to find out there was a fae king of Miami, of all places. Didn¡¯t really strike me as a faerie spot. I figured more trees and toadstools for that kind of thing.¡±

    ¡°Haha! Yeah, there¡¯s a few that like the urban spots. Miami, Las Vegas, Paris, a few others.¡± She poked at the computer, waiting for her database to process. She didn¡¯t have access to a huge server farm so it took time.

    ¡°Huh. I guess it wasn¡¯t coincidence the couple were being held in Miami then?¡±

    ¡°Nah, the biggest GAR offices are where other supernaturals are anyway, usually. Or the other way around, I guess. It depends.¡±

    ¡°That does make sense,¡± the big man said thoughtfully. ¡°I think I heard something like that before.¡±

    ¡°Yeah probably. It¡¯s kinda funny, the different types of supernaturals don¡¯t really get along that well but still like clustering up.¡±

    ¡°That explains GAR, I guess,¡± he said idly. ¡°Hey, Lucy? I don¡¯t remember if I said this before but thanks for telling me about those two. I¡¯m working on exposing things less, but, they were my responsibility and you let me take care of it.¡±

    For a moment Lucy thought that he¡¯d read her mind, or that she¡¯d said something, but she reminded herself that he didn¡¯t actually have that capability. Probably. He was a bit of a mystery but even the fae couldn¡¯t pull your thoughts from your head over the phone. Then she corrected herself; he¡¯d probably been brooding over it the same as her, since they hadn¡¯t talked that long about anything of consequence when he¡¯d first gotten back.

    ¡°Hey, you¡¯re welcome,¡± she said, still feeling a little guilty but not sure how to express it. Or if she even should. ¡°I thought you would¡¯ve wanted to know, so¡­¡± She wasn¡¯t quite sure how to finish that thought.

    ¡°I did,¡± he said firmly. ¡°I can¡¯t do everything, but I can do some things. If you¡¯re ever in trouble with supernatural stuff?¡ª¡± He paused a moment. ¡°Yeah. If you¡¯re ever in trouble with supernatural stuff, you tell me, okay? You¡¯re important to me, so if there¡¯s ever any trouble I want to be there to fix it.¡±

    ¡°Oh,¡± she said, her cheeks heating a little. ¡°Well, thank you, big man. I will.¡±

 Chapter 14 â€“ Bunkering

    His bunker really wasn¡¯t going to look anything like what the word usually implied. There was no way that he could actually protect himself against a group of mages, and really all he needed to deal with vamps or shifters was some kind of panic room because all they could bring to the table was physical force. Though if they found the bunker, there was probably no point in fighting to begin with. Instead, he was relying on obscurity. It had worked well enough before, until his cover had been blown, and it was always the first and best way to stay hidden.

    What he was actually building was a normal house out in deeply rural Oaxaca. Two bedrooms, two baths, though he wasn¡¯t actually expecting to have company there. It was just absolutely bizarre to build a house of any size without at least two, and he could always use the extra room for something else. A large kitchen combined with dining room, a living room that would probably be a gym, an attached garage.

    The basement was probably where most of his magic stuff would go. He was leaving it unfinished for the moment since he didn¡¯t know exactly how his various tests would go, but a giant concrete room was good enough. He¡¯d also put a separate workshop off to the side since he would be doing metalworking, and having a place for his own crucible and molds and things like wire-drawing equipment would be great, but also not in an enclosed basement.

    For the moment he had solar panels planned to power the place, but he was optimistic about using a pair of portals to generate energy. Oaxaca had a lot more mana than the States, and it was pretty obvious that permanent portal enchantments made perpetual motion machines pretty straightforward. In fact, it was so straightforward that he had to imagine GAR and BSE used it themselves.

    Just the thought of it really irked him. It was infinite electricity. Sure, there were limitations, but if they¡¯d wanted to, the supernatural community could have provided the world with free and unlimited power. Among other things. He could do that, if it weren¡¯t for the impositions of GAR authority and the fact that the grid wasn¡¯t really cut out for some random person pumping huge wattages into it.

    Instead, he was stuck using it for his own little house.

    It was a damned travesty. If the various governments of the world were in bed with the supernatural, as seemed to be the case, it seemed pretty weird that they hadn¡¯t asked for infinite portal energy. Of course, explaining that away without revealing the existence of magic would be difficult, but it could just be presented as a classified technology and just have wires run from a black site.

    In the end it wasn¡¯t his problem, but it was a bit of a personal peeve seeing potential wasted like that. Though it wasn¡¯t like he was really living up to his full potential either, tromping around in the wilds of Mexico, so maybe it was a bit hypocritical. The forests were rather nice, though.

    Callum had found a hundred-acre slice out near some township somewhere, mostly completely wooded, and with a few systems of caves that he could sense. His house wasn¡¯t going to go directly atop any of them, but it would still be near enough that he could use one as a panic room. Once he¡¯d freshened up the air in it and maybe furnished it a little.

    It was just a matter of purchasing it. Callum drove his pickup to the outskirts of the nearby township, really hoping there was someone who could speak English. He had a translator program loaded on his phone, but that would just show he was ripe for ripping off.

    In order to offset that, Callum was dressed in a nice set of slacks and a polo, and had gotten himself a nice silver cane to lean on. The pickup being somewhat beat-up undercut the image a bit, but he wasn¡¯t planning to be seen driving it up to city hall. Instead he just teleported himself nearby and walked the rest of the way, even if that was not that great for his knee. He¡¯d been doing the exercises, but it still was a point of weakness.

    His attire and cane drew eyes as he approached what passed as the municipal building. That was fine; he¡¯d made sure to turn his hair completely grey and was wearing glasses, so if for some reason it ever mattered, nobody would guess he was only thirty-one. The only thing he couldn¡¯t do anything about was that he clearly wasn¡¯t from Mexico.

    The man inside the municipal building blinked at him when he walked inside, taking in Callum¡¯s garb and straightening up. There was a certain amount of suspicion in those eyes, which Callum didn¡¯t blame him for, but what Callum wanted was straightforward enough. So far as he could tell the land he¡¯d picked wasn¡¯t even being used for crops, and besides which, he had plenty of money to pay for it. Or rather gold, in the briefcase he carried in his other hand.

    ¡°I need someone who can speak English,¡± he told the man. ¡°I need to buy some land.¡±

    ¡°Si, se?or,¡± was the reply, along with a motion for Callum to follow him inside. He was led to someone¡¯s office, given a chair, and the man vanished back out to the front. Callum followed with his senses, and when the man took out a phone, he formed a tiny portal to listen in. Considering there was no sign of supernatural presence, that didn¡¯t seem like much of a risk.

    Not that eavesdropping did very much when Callum didn¡¯t speak the language. The translation application didn¡¯t really do a good job either but he seemed to be calling someone else with more authority and who had actual English skills. That was all to the good, but Callum felt that was a bit too easy. Then again, it was probably the easiest thing for them to just see what the man with money wanted.

    ¡°Thirty minutes,¡± the receptionist or whatever he was told Callum in fairly broken English, coming back into the room after finishing the conversation. Callum nodded in return, and was left alone. The wait wasn¡¯t unexpected, but he did worry about a possible ambush or attempted strong-arming by whomever was coming.

    While he waited he surveyed everything around with his senses, locating the best places to teleport if he needed to make an exit. He had his glamor focus ready, and if people had guns he¡¯d pre-emptively make sure they weren¡¯t going to function. Most mages probably thought they had nothing to fear from normal folks, him included, but Callum was very aware that nobody was actually invulnerable.

    The wait was closer to forty minutes than thirty, but he knew the local leader had arrived when a truck with a half-dozen people rumbled to a stop in front of the building. That was too many individuals to be comfortable, but only one of them actually headed toward the door. The rest spread out to simply hang around just outside.

    There was a brief discussion between the man who¡¯d arrived and the receptionist, before they approached the office. Callum stood as they entered, leaning on his cane, and studied the fellow they¡¯d brought to talk with him. He looked weather-beaten and wrinkled, but his eyes were sharp as he took Callum¡¯s offered hand and introduced himself as Miguel.

    ¡°I was told you wanted to buy land?¡± Miguel asked, moving to take the seat behind the office desk while the receptionist left to give them privacy.

    ¡°Yes, and build a house there. I have the plans for it, and I was hoping that you might be able to suggest local companies.¡± He opened the briefcase and took out a printout of a plat of the land he¡¯d picked out that showed the boundaries, along with a copy of the schematics and items list. He arranged them on the desk, but Miguel focused on the land.

    ¡°The price for the land, Se?or, it is quite a significant expense¡­¡± Miguel began. Callum silenced him by taking out one of the gold plates.

    ¡°I will be paying with these. If you could arrange for the construction companies and other such details, I would be grateful.¡±

    He was pretty sure that Miguel thought he was with the cartels after that, which was not an implication Callum actually minded. At any rate, Miguel easily agreed to take care of all the details that a local would know after Callum displayed the gold. There was some discussion, and Callum didn¡¯t push too hard, but he wanted to make sure that Miguel knew he wouldn¡¯t stand for any ideas of just taking his money.

    For some reason, that wasn¡¯t very hard.

    ¡°One more thing,¡± Callum said, sliding across several of the hundred-gram gold plates. ¡°What are the men outside for?¡± Miguel twitched, half-glancing around to check if there were some place Callum could have observed them from. There wasn¡¯t.

    ¡°Ah, it was in case of any trouble, Se?or. Men with money sometimes bring trouble, you see.¡±

    ¡°There won¡¯t be any trouble.¡±

    ¡°Of course not,¡± Miguel assured him, taking the gold plates. Callum was sure he would siphon off some of that money for himself, but really, that was not a problem. He just wanted to make sure that the house was built to standards. ¡°If there is no trouble, there is no trouble.¡±

    ¡°Good.¡±

    ¡°We will start clearing land tomorrow,¡± Miguel said, and offered his hand again. Callum took it.

    ¡°I¡¯ll be by on occasion to check your progress. And see to expenses.¡±

    ¡°Of course. My door is always open to you,¡± Miguel said, offering to Callum an honest-to-goodness business card, which he accepted. Hopefully Callum wouldn¡¯t have to spend too much time overseeing things. It¡¯d be tedious enough running back and forth with some of the stuff he was going to source State-side, like the solar panels, but he did want to get the bunker done.

    At least he didn¡¯t have to drive the whole way each time. Being able to teleport sped things up immensely, and he was planning on making another set of teleport plates. Their placement was going to be a bit of an issue, but he figured it might be good to make use of the caves he was sensing. Probably even buy a local pickup, and use that in order to disguise how he was bringing things in.

    The next few weeks promised to be extraordinarily busy. He was going to be making enchantments, ferrying equipment back and forth, and even learning some amateur metalwork stuff. Figure out some new transportation, too, since he wanted a van of his own. All the stuff he needed to do in order to harden himself against anything GAR might try.

    ***

    ¡°According to Duvall, he¡¯s probably using a finesse tool to get past the wards.¡± Agent Danforth reported, breaking Jahn out of his contemplation.

    ¡°Enchanter¡¯s Guild is going to love that,¡± Jahn sighed. A focus for working at smaller scales than that of standard vis was not exactly a common piece of equipment, since only certain kinds of enchantments actually needed them. ¡°Either them or BSE, if he¡¯s using a picker instead.¡±

    ¡°I don¡¯t think so,¡± Danforth disagreed. ¡°Again according to Duvall, everything was at the same scale, which isn¡¯t how any of our pickers operate. What I don¡¯t get is how he got the range on it. No matter what tool you use, those little strands can¡¯t go all that far.¡±

    ¡°Another thing to figure out when we catch up with him. Or them, I suppose.¡± Jahn tapped the desk thoughtfully. ¡°We can¡¯t harden every ward, but there are some measures we can take for some place we expect him to be.¡± At that scale, vis threads were so fragile that they¡¯d break just from the passage of someone¡¯s field of authority, so making wards that way was no good.

    Jamming did work, breaking those fragile threads, but it was mana-intensive and made normal spellcasting difficult, not to mention, once again, tripping wards constantly. But it could be done. Just not everywhere all at once, and if the wards kept going off they¡¯d be useless against everyone and not just Wells.

    ¡°We definitely need to give him a target,¡± Jahn said at last. ¡°We have to entice him to attack a place of our choosing. We had that chance with the mundane pair, but we weren¡¯t careful enough.¡± That still rankled. Wells¡¯ group was so devoid of handles that it should have been obvious the pair were more than just witnesses.

    A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

    The Department of Acquisitions hadn¡¯t done nearly enough. Though they¡¯d had the pair in custody for over a week and nothing had happened, Jahn would have still preferred if they¡¯d been moved to a BSE safehouse. Of course, all that was hindsight. When they¡¯d first acquired the couple, everyone had been focused on Europe and reinforcing the landings to the Portal Worlds. Wrestling with the Department of Acquisition over a pair of mundanes had not been on anyone¡¯s mind.

    That was not a mistake they¡¯d make again.

    ¡°What about Ferrochar?¡± Jahn asked, turning to Agent Black. He¡¯d tried applying some pressure to the fae in order to get ahold of the mundanes once again, but it was exceedingly difficult when he couldn¡¯t even name the people in question. Such a powerful working meant that it had to be part of a bargain. A fae couldn¡¯t summon that kind of thing of their own accord.

    ¡°He¡¯s all but saying he had contact with Wells. As the Ghost, of course.¡± Black typed the words, displaying them on a portable monitor. While Jahn knew how to protect himself from Felicia¡¯s talents, he appreciated the habitual caution.

    ¡°That idiot is going to get someone killed,¡± Jahn said bluntly, and Black nodded agreement. He wasn¡¯t sure how exactly she¡¯d wound up on the outs from the various fae enclaves, but she was loyal to GAR rather than any of the fae kings. For the fae version of loyal, of course, so it wasn¡¯t like he trusted her implicitly.

    ¡°Well, if Ferrochar is determined not to support GAR, then we need not support Ferrochar,¡± Jahn decided. ¡°I¡¯m going to ban his fae from the Miami offices until he decides to start cooperating. Or rather, the Archmages are.¡± He tapped his breast pocket where the Archmage seals sat.

    ¡°You¡¯re not worried about loading up BSE, under the circumstances?¡± Danforth asked doubtfully. ¡°I mean, fae go kind of weird when they can¡¯t do their thing.¡± He gave Black a look when he said that, something with a bit more feeling than that of an assigned partner. It wasn¡¯t any of Jahn¡¯s business, but he was pretty sure there was something there. They were just a little too much in tune, stayed a little too close to each other, for just coworkers.

    They actually reminded him a bit of a pair from one of his favorite shows, but for a fae, that was probably intentional.

    ¡°There¡¯s a number we can cycle off the fronts if it¡¯s an issue,¡± Jahn reassured them, though it was a worry. All the races needed GAR in one way or another. Vampires needed blood and lairs, shifters needed jobs and land, and fae needed to pursue whatever story they¡¯d decided to embody. But that¡¯s exactly why it was a credible threat. ¡°Anyway, it¡¯s not more people we need to deal with Wells, it¡¯s better planning.¡±

    ¡°No argument here,¡± Black wrote.

    ***

    ¡°We still have not recovered,¡± Antoine Lavigne, the Master of Minneapolis, didn¡¯t shout, but his voice was cold and hard. ¡°Almost sixty years worth of recruiting from the Night Lands wasted, all because GAR failed to locate a rogue mage.¡±

    ¡°I fail to see why you are complaining to me,¡± Archmage Janry said, maybe a touch impatiently. ¡°I¡¯m not in charge of the Night Lands. Or rogue mages.¡±

    ¡°Because GAR has not reached out at all to offset the results of their error. You haven¡¯t punished Chester, you haven¡¯t found more newcomers for me, you haven¡¯t even found and punished the mage!¡± Lavigne eyed Janry. ¡°So what is going to be done?¡±

    ¡°All that can be done, already is. If you mean on your account, as I said, I don¡¯t control the Night Lands. Nothing is stopping you from heading there on your own.¡± Janry waved dismissively. Lavigne glared.

    ¡°I see,¡± he said icily. ¡°Thank you for your time.¡± Lavigne didn¡¯t bother to wait for the dismissal before he blurred out the door. Moving at his speed rather than the laggard humans, who for all their power never achieved the sort of physical mastery that a vampire could.

    He was fed up waiting. GAR was supposed to support them, not hang them out to dry. A mass murderer was out there, and nobody seemed to care at all. The only answer was to do something himself.

    Lavigne pressed his thumb against his passkey, a drop of blood linking it to him so the teleportation network could move him from place to place. He could have done as Janry suggested, and gone to visit with the Master of Weltentor in the Night Lands. There, he could have supped on fine moon-water and tried to negotiate for some lesser spawn to come over to earth.

    That wasn¡¯t him, though. That wasn¡¯t why he was on Earth. His was to take whatever he could seize, hold it and drink his fill. That was what made him the Master of Minneapolis, and why he had come so near to crushing the pretensions of that cur Chester. If it weren¡¯t for the murderer.

    Instead he took the network back to his own nest, standing proud in the Minneapolis skyline, and strode into the main room. The thralls seemed to sense his mood, melting away into the corners or side rooms as Lavigne stalked up to an underling. It was one of the youngest of his recruits, newly arrived through the portal and too clumsy in his new body to be sent out on missions.

    ¡°Bring me a meal,¡± he ordered. ¡°And Zegrev.¡±

    The underling bowed and moved off, barely faster than a human, and Lavigne looked out the window at his city, lit up for the night. It was all his, but it just wasn¡¯t enough. It was right and meet that everything he could see, he could claim, by whatever means. He¡¯d tried playing nice, and it had become obvious how ineffective that was.

    Zegrev appeared with a squirming mundane, and Lavigne took the meal, holding the food with the implacable strength of a vampire and sinking his fangs into its neck. Blood itself did not taste very good, but the essence of life he pulled from the mundane was oh so sweet. When he was sated he cast the thing aside for the thralls to clean up and patted his lips with his kerchief.

    ¡°We need to take our own action to lure out the murderer,¡± Lavigne told his second. ¡°We only have access to one target we know matters. Clara Langley.¡±

    ¡°Yes, sir,¡± Zagrev said. ¡°What is it you wish?¡±

    ¡°I want you to take three ¡ª no, four of the eldest and take her. Or all the Langleys, I don¡¯t care. I want them here, where he has no advantages.¡±

    ¡°Of course, sir,¡± Zagrev said. ¡°Under what auspice?¡±

    ¡°Power, of course. Chester reminded me that the only true power that exists is force. GAR didn¡¯t do anything about Chester¡¯s crimes, so they¡¯re hardly going to object to anything I do.¡± They¡¯d already shown that, being too weak to actually enforce any of the laws they proclaimed to have.

    ¡°It will be done,¡± Zagrev said, and withdrew.

    Lavigne went back to contemplating the skyline. If nothing else, the murderer had shown what a weak and feckless organization GAR really was. They couldn¡¯t rein in shifters, they couldn¡¯t rein in fae, and they couldn¡¯t even fulfill their obligations to him.

    If it was like that, he would simply do as he wished.

    ***

    Callum realized he really should have cribbed some of the building protections the last time he¡¯d stopped by a GAR office. While he had a glamour that was good enough for him, he didn¡¯t have anything that would cover an entire property, or at least a house. He¡¯d have to go shopping.

    The main worry was whether or not he¡¯d be able to reproduce some of what he¡¯d seen. It wasn¡¯t so much the complexity that was the issue, since he was pretty confident he was able to trace the geometry of enchantments fairly well. The problem was that he only had access to mana and spatial vis. Just like spatial enchantments required spatial vis, a glamour or protection might require light or wind vis, or a reinforcement shield might need earth vis. Anywhere there was a converter, rather than it just using raw mana, he couldn¡¯t make his own.

    He figured the reason the glamour enchantment only used mana was because they had to make so many. If it were gated behind a specific vis there¡¯d be a situation like with the teleports, where there was a waiting list. In fact, there probably were other glamour enchants, ones that used different principles, for people who had the appropriate vis types and could fuel them directly.

    Either way he needed to do more surveillance, but fortunately he didn¡¯t need to do anything to actually intrude on the operations of the office in question. For that, he just went to nearest one over in Dallas and snooped a bit from six hundred yards away, transcribing things into his CAD program.

    Frankly, he felt he was understanding more about enchantments by cribbing from the existing ones than trying to muddle through the theory. He could at least recognize certain common patterns, like the bits for conversion or defining areas, and slot them in properly. It wasn¡¯t exactly a thing of great finesse, but he was confident that he could make a glamour that would hide his entire house.

    If it were in the States he¡¯d probably need to make a feeder portal first. Considering that Portal World Six was in Mexico, it was a little bit of a surprise that the total mana was so relatively low, but when he¡¯d been driving through he¡¯d noticed that it dropped off very quickly as he went north. It might just be that Europe was so mana rich because it had three portals in close proximity.

    To compound the issues with enchanting, Callum was going through the mordite startlingly quickly. He was still fairly certain that most of the stuff that was used was alloyed somehow, but Lucy couldn¡¯t get him any of the enchanter¡¯s guild records, so he didn¡¯t know what it was alloyed with. Considering how little he had and how it was already processed, he had to put off experimentation and just focus on minimizing the use of the stuff.

    He archived the sketches of the various warding and shielding reinforcements the GAR office had, and just worked on figuring out the building-size glamour. Or rather, glamours, because when he started analyzing it he could see there were three different converters feeding it. In the end there was only one part he could really use, and it was the actual part that projected it to the size of a building. The core of the enchantment, the part that defined what the magic actually did, required things he couldn¡¯t duplicate.

    It was a good thing he¡¯d gotten a look at how GAR did it, because it was a different design than the personal glamour focus. Designing the new enchantment, running it over to a fabrication shop to get the blank cut, then enchanting with his mordite wire took a couple days. Especially since he had to use the tubes instead of his normal threads. The end result was the personal glamour core, but with a building-size projection.

    He tested it on his own trailer house, to his satisfaction. People could still stumble across it, but it was uninteresting enough that nobody would even look twice. A supernatural would probably notice, though, so he shut it down. It barely functioned anyway; the mana levels in Texas were just too low.

    The other thing he did was make a second set of teleporter plates. One he just kept in the trailer house, but the other he took down to the bunker site in Mexico. It was a long drive, even with the way he cheated, and he was glad that it was the last time he¡¯d be making it in a pickup. By the time he got out at the bunker site, he was aching all over from the poor seat padding.

    There was already construction equipment where he¡¯d wanted the house put, and even though he didn¡¯t enter their sight, the workers seemed to be actually doing things instead of just hanging out to get paid. The latter was, sadly, surprisingly common among the contractors he had talked to in his former life. For now there was just a bunch of muddy dirt as trees were cleared, but it was a start.

    Callum formed a portal between the fair-sized cave he¡¯d picked out and a random patch of open air under the trees, sweeping it back and forth to make sure there was real oxygen there. The memory of what he¡¯d done to the fae was still fresh in his mind, and he shook away the nauseous feeling that accompanied it. Only then did he transport himself and his equipment inside.

    It was pitch black, of course, but when he clicked on the light there wasn¡¯t anything interesting to look at anyway. It was exactly what he had sensed: a big empty pocket in the rock, irregular and unadorned. There wasn¡¯t even a properly flat patch for him to put the teleportation pad on, but he moved a few pieces of deadwood down from the surface to wedge under it so it was mostly level.

    He placed a few long-life LED lanterns about, and piled up camping equipment in a corner. While he could have made a second homebond, he wanted to be able to go both ways, and with the plates he could move both ends around. Once he finished and was ready to go check in with Miguel, he pursed his lips at the teleport plate.

    There was no reason he couldn¡¯t make one large enough to transport vehicles.

    Of course, it would take a lot more time to charge, and it was a lot harder to find a safe place to stash something that size, but actual cargo transport might be really useful. So long as he didn¡¯t have to make the physical receiver that large, anyway. Thus far he¡¯d been copying GAR and using a fairly rigid framework embedded in a plate, but the magic wasn¡¯t restricted to the physical location of a focus.

    It was obvious in retrospect, but it made him wonder what the actual limits were. He had a six-hundred yard range; if his enchantments could have that range as well then he could think of all kinds of applications. Even being able to displace things a few feet would be useful.

    He considered options as he drove over to meet Miguel, who still had toughs hanging about his place of business. Callum didn¡¯t like it, but as long as they didn¡¯t try to intimidate him it wasn¡¯t really his problem. Especially since everything seemed to be going well on the construction side.

    Callum supplied a few more gold plates before leaving. He had weighed the merits of paying in cash versus gold, and while the gold was more traceable due to the marks, that was only if it wasn¡¯t melted down and recast. Which it probably would be. Besides which, it went a lot farther than trying to convert it in the US by relying on people willing to do things off the books. Building a house was an expensive proposition, and Callum needed to be smart about it.

    Especially since the solar panels and HVAC equipment was coming from the States. He¡¯d arranged for deliveries at a self-storage, which had pretty much destroyed all the free cash he had left. While Callum wasn¡¯t exactly impoverished, it wasn¡¯t like he could casually buy new vehicles. Or even burner phones. The expenses added up.

    He had a few guilty thoughts about robbing a GAR office, but if he really needed a cash infusion it would be better to make another enchantment to sell. Maybe just a glamour instead of something as ridiculous as a homebond. So far he hadn¡¯t even heard back from Chester about how well they were working, or if they were at all useful.

    On the way home he chewed over how to connect things so he had at least some protection against one of the endpoints being compromised. There was no value in a network that was just unconnected pairs, but he had to assume that anyone, or at least another space mage, could use his if they found them.

    So a big room full of teleporters was out, but maybe some kind of dispersed network was possible, with endpoints a mile away from each other or something. He¡¯d have to rethink his emergency location, or at least re-site the teleport plates. Or make more plates. The last seemed the best solution, since the core spatial part that made it all work could always be slotted into something else.

    When Callum got back to Texas, he¡¯d have to do a lot of enchanting.

 Audiobook Released!

    This is not a chapter! Just an announcement!

    Hey everyone! The audiobook for Paranoid Mage Book One has been released!

    You can get it here.</a>

    If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

    The narrator is Jeremy Frazier, who also did Blue Core Book One. I''m planning to have the audio versions of future books out somewhat closer to the release dates of the text releases in the future.

    Hopefully you all enjoy! Paranoid Mage is of somewhat more reasonable length compared to Blue Core, so it won''t be a multi-day epic to listen to haha.

 Chapter 15 â€“ Grievances

    ¡°There are definitely vampires headed for Winut,¡± Roy Wilton said.

    Alpha Chester grunted. There was a reason that he¡¯d had his people keeping an eye on the Minneapolis nest ever since their first play. It had been obvious that they were not intending to follow the accords, and that GAR wasn¡¯t going to do anything about it. The only surprising thing about the vampire¡¯s actions was that they had waited until now.

    ¡°No formal demands, no communication at all. Sounds familiar, really.¡± Chester shook his head. ¡°Get Jasper,¡± he ordered, taking out his phone. ¡°I suspect we¡¯ll have the opportunity to use our new acquisition sooner than I thought.¡±

    ¡°Alpha,¡± Roy said, and left. Chester dialed up Arthur Langley, hearing the phone ring a few times before Arthur picked up.

    ¡°We¡¯ve spotted more vampires coming your way,¡± Chester said without any preamble. ¡°I suspect they¡¯re a little bit piqued since our mutual friend remains evasive.¡±

    ¡°What do you have in mind?¡± Arthur asked. ¡°Going to come here to camp out?¡±

    ¡°Just swap for a bit,¡± Chester agreed. ¡°I¡¯ll have Jasper ferry everyone around. You don¡¯t have to worry; we¡¯ll ensure they don¡¯t do anything to Winut. I suspect they¡¯re just after us. Or rather, you.¡± Chester knew vampires, and how vindictive they were. Winut and the Langleys were the closest things to the redoubtable Mister Brown that Lavigne could hurt.

    Somehow the story about how Clara had been taken from the motel had leaked. Unofficially, of course, and figuring out the origin had driven Arthur up the wall, but Chester was pretty sure nobody had actually betrayed them. It was just hard to keep things from fae when they decided they really wanted to snoop.

    That meant everyone knew, unofficially, that Mr. Brown ?¨C in addition to whatever compatriots he might have ?¨C had started their spree on Clara¡¯s behalf. For better or worse, mostly worse, that meant there were a lot of people interested in Winut. Unofficially. Already several powerful fae had dropped by to visit their very, very distant relatives in hopes of getting some kind of line on the Ghost.

    It really hadn¡¯t taken much foresight to put the other half of the black-market teleport pad in the Winut compound. As he¡¯d been warned, shifters couldn¡¯t actually use them, not like the GAR ones, but a mage could. Or, a crippled mage and a number of mana batteries.

    They did still need to use the tokens that temporarily suppressed their resistance to magic, which was annoying, but at least they were going from safehouse to safehouse. That forced vulnerability made using the GAR teleporters untenable for most Alphas except under the most dire of circumstances. Not that any shifter particularly liked that requirement.

    ¡°I¡¯ll get everyone together,¡± Arthur assured him. ¡°We¡¯ll be ready in twenty minutes.¡±

    ¡°Expect me in twenty, then,¡± Chester said, and hung up. Roy returned with Jasper a few moments later, the tired-eyed mage blinking at Chester.

    ¡°Get the Wolfpack together,¡± he told Roy. ¡°We¡¯ll be leaving in twenty minutes.¡± Then Chester glanced at Jasper and hitched a thumb in the direction of one particular saferoom. ¡°We¡¯re going to need transportation for a few groups.¡±

    ¡°Yes, sir,¡± Jasper said, without any enthusiasm. Not that he ever showed any, though he had seemed slightly more alive controlling the teleportation platforms, even if he couldn¡¯t fuel them.

    Chester rose and went to find his mate to tell her what was going on. It wasn¡¯t hard; he merely had to follow the scent of fresh-baked cookies. It was a good thing his mate liked baking, because he wasn¡¯t sure how he¡¯d satisfy the Wolfpack¡¯s sweet tooth otherwise.

    ¡°Hey, love,¡± he said, poking his head into the kitchen. ¡°Lavigne is making a move on the Langleys. We¡¯ll be trading places with them for the next few hours, maybe a day. Did you want to come with, or stay here and play host?¡±

    ¡°Hmm.¡± Lisa pursed her lips. She was almost as deadly as Chester was, able to draw on the same amount of pack magic, but didn¡¯t enjoy fighting all that much. ¡°I¡¯ll stay here. It¡¯s always nice to see the Langleys. Shame it¡¯s always when something awful is happening.¡±

    ¡°We¡¯ll have to have a meetup when all this is done,¡± Chester said, leaning into the kitchen a little further to steal a kiss before heading back down to the basement. The six other members of the Wolfpack were there, half of them already shifted into their War Forms, with Jasper sitting by the teleport plate watching it charge.

    He had Roy give them the briefing, though there wasn¡¯t that much to it. They just knew that a number of vampires were being convoyed out of Minneapolis and they were headed in the direction of Winut. At this point it was obvious what the destination was; they hadn¡¯t even tried to hide it. But then, they didn¡¯t need to. It wasn¡¯t like it was illegal for them to drive around.

    When the time rolled around, the seven of them crowded onto the teleportation plate, only barely fitting, and used their tokens as Jasper sent them off to Winut. The experience was not as good as with the GAR gates ¡ª there was a definite jolt, a shock that took a tiny bit of shifter healing to deal with, but nothing that would really threaten even a mundane. As promised, Arthur Langley was waiting on the other side, with most of his immediate family.

    ¡°Alpha,¡± Arthur said, the pack bonds snapping and humming as the two Alphas met. After a moment, Arthur inclined his head, and the magic settled.

    ¡°Arthur,¡± Chester said. ¡°My home is open to you.¡± Then he smiled. ¡°Lisa¡¯s baking cookies.¡±

    ¡°Well, we sure can¡¯t miss those,¡± Arthur chuckled. ¡°Come on, everyone.¡±

    The Wolfpack handed off their tokens to the shifters heading the other way, and Chester texted Jasper to bring them through. It took three trips, with Jasper sending the tokens by themselves, but most of the Winut pack went through. The only exceptions were those who weren¡¯t staying at the compound, and had other jobs or housing throughout Winut.

    That did mean closing down a number of businesses for the day, but that wasn¡¯t without precedent. The Langley clan was known to have big family gatherings on occasion. For those who knew their true nature, it was even less of a surprise.

    The Langley compound had some defenses, mostly in the nature of reinforced walls and doors, since they had to deal with the occasional spats between supernaturals. Even outside of the allowed challenges, Chester and his pack didn¡¯t really trust GAR to protect their interests. Under the circumstances, though, neither Chester nor the rest of his Wolfpack really needed them. They were planning to ambush rather than defend.

    The evening turned on toward night as they settled themselves in and waited. All of them were in war-form, crouched and readied with the patience of the hunter. The stars had been out for several hours when a series of figures silently ghosted across the lawn and arranged themselves at windows and doors. Chester watched coldly from his post by the front door, waiting until the vampire suddenly wrenched the wood-veneer steel off its hinges.

    Chester pulled on the magic of the pack bond, accelerating his strength and speed far beyond mortal limits. The wall cracked behind him, steel denting from the force of his leap as he tackled the vampire, three-inch claws punching through supernatural flesh. He recognized the face of Zagrev, contorted in pain and fury, but unable to struggle against the power of the Midwest Alpha.

    ¡°You!¡± Zagrev managed to get out, just before Chester¡¯s jaws closed around his head. Shifter magic pushed against vampire magic as he tore off Zagrev¡¯s head, spitting the foul thing out and tossing the rest of the corpse back through the door. There were other noises from the house, banging and splintering and the cries of vampire and shifter alike as combat was joined and subsequently finished.

    Through the pack bonds he could tell that the only injury of note was from Tessa, who¡¯d broken her hand on the skull of one of the vamps. She¡¯d not hear the end of that one. Chester fed her extra magic to accelerate the healing process, looking around at the mess he¡¯d made. It was going to take some fixing.

    The entire ambush had lasted two seconds at the outside, and had deprived Lavigne of his right-hand man, at the very least. It had been so very simple, but only because they could get there without anyone knowing. Both GAR and Lavigne would have been alerted if Chester had left the compound, let alone gone to Winut, but with the black-market teleportation nobody was any the wiser. They wouldn¡¯t know that Lavigne¡¯s vampires had taken on a wolf rather than a puppy.

    He''d have to see if he could get more.

    ***

    When Callum actually made the portal enchantment, he found out why it took so much mana. Or rather, he found that he¡¯d been massively underestimating how much mana teleports took. It was a matter of inefficiencies; it took a lot of ambient mana funneled through a converter into the spatial vis enchantments to mimic what vis normally did. A single teleport took five minutes to charge up in the States, but it only took a few seconds down at his Mexico place. Taking that instantaneous cost and turning it into a constant one meant that yes, indeed, large portals were hard to support.

    Even small ones weren¡¯t really possible if both sides were in the US. He¡¯d need to either site them closer to a portal world, or have a feeder portal like GAR used. If he was handling them himself, he could hold both sides open regardless of the mana level, so it wasn¡¯t like it was useless in other places. Just slower. It also let him push his perceptions through the portal, so he could teleport things or people, which was potentially better than making an enormous teleportation plate.

    Little portal anchors would be easier to hide than a plate, but they would take longer to charge enough to open initially and he¡¯d have to spend more vis to keep them open. Considering his limited amount of enchanting material, he¡¯d have to decide on his approach sooner rather than later. For the moment he needed at least two pairs of portals, one for the generator and one for general testing, something that was a long and tedious process. Even if he didn¡¯t have much else to do, it was an effort.

    On the other hand, at least he didn¡¯t have to reinvent the wheel when it came to his portal power device. People had done extensive hypothetical calculations online, for a variety of options. There were some crazy designs out there, but he really wanted something with essentially no maintenance.

    Unfortunately, it required moving parts. It wasn¡¯t like a solar panel where it could all be solid state. He was exploiting gravity, and that meant something, somewhere was falling. In the end he decided to just go with a water column and a small turbine generator. All that stuff he could buy practically off the shelf, which made putting together a perpetual motion machine that much easier.

    All of that equipment came from metal shops and their associates, who were rapidly becoming his best friends. There was a lot of overlap among skilled tradesman and finding someone who could provide him a small generator and a storage bank was really not that hard. Of course, normally the setup for a hydro turbine involved a lot of engineering to deal with the water flow, but since Callum was cheating he could manage it fairly easily himself.

    The only thing he really needed customized was a couple stands for the portal pair, some adjustable tripod kind of thing so he could lock the two sections of pipe together. He tested the final apparatus in the back yard of the trailer house, out of sight of the road. The pipe was tall enough to project over the top of the trailer anyway, but since there was nobody around he felt like a quick run-through wouldn¡¯t hurt.

    Despite the column being infinite, the water had only the length of the pipe as the head before passing through the turbine, so to some extent that was the total amount of energy he could extract from it. Except, of course, that the turbine didn¡¯t stop the water completely dead, so there was some residual carryover until all the forces balanced. He was actually a little worried that the eternal water pipe might overspeed and break the apparatus, but when he finished testing it, he found he was worried for nothing. Water wasn¡¯t frictionless and neither was the turbine, so while the energy was infinite it didn¡¯t happen all at once.

    He filled it by forming a portal between the pipe and the bottom of a barrel full of industrial-purified water, letting water in and air out at the same time. The goal was to have no air at all, just water, and he was pretty sure he could get very close. When he did it for real he¡¯d have to be far more careful to ensure there weren¡¯t air bubbles continually falling upward, but for the test it did well enough. Watching it charge the capacitor pack was surreal and quietly amazing, even if he had to hold the portal pair open himself rather than letting the ambient mana do it.

    Then he had to disassemble it all because there was no need for it at the trailer. It¡¯d have to come with him to the cave, to be set up once the bunker house was done. There were instructions for maintenance and lubrication that he¡¯d have to deal with, but only eventually. Industrial equipment was pretty hardy.

    Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.

    Flush with success, he decided he¡¯d call up Lucy and see how she was getting on. He¡¯d been a little busy with shuttling things back and forth for the past few days and while the folks at the machine shop were nice enough, they were still strangers. Laboring in complete isolation, he found he tended to get a lot more stressed and twitchy than things really called for.

    ¡°Hey, big man!¡± Lucy said, picking up right away. That was a rarity of late, though it was the weekend, and wearing on toward Thanksgiving. ¡°Anything shaking down there?¡±

    ¡°Actually a bit, yeah. Nothing exciting like the vacation trips I¡¯ve been on, but a few personal projects are coming along.¡± He was never sure exactly how much he should tell her. Obviously she knew his real identity and some of his capabilities, but at the same time the more he told her the more she could give away. Likely not willingly, but two people couldn¡¯t keep a secret.

    ¡°Ooh? Anything fun? Anything sexy?¡±

    ¡°Something fun, but probably not that sexy unless you¡¯ve got a kink for power generation,¡± Callum told her. ¡°It does make me wonder how much enchanting is used to make technology work better. I¡¯ve seen some things that are super new, like the magical laptops and phones, but a lot of stuff seems kind of ancient.¡±

    ¡°Oh yeah, big man, ongoing process. Especially since you have to pry any super advanced stuff from the Enchanting Guild¡¯s cold, dead hands. Probably literally.¡±

    ¡°I can just imagine,¡± Callum said, but he did wonder exactly how it kept a monopoly on the creation of enchantments. With his spatial perception he could trace out the circuits of most any enchantment he¡¯d run into, but then, he hadn¡¯t tried reproducing some of the really complex stuff. The security portions of the teleportation enchants, or the wards in GAR offices. Maybe there were flourishes that he hadn¡¯t run into yet, because he''d mostly just been using the simplest and most straightforward things. Nothing that reacted or sensed, just an input and an output.

    ¡°Oh speaking of that! I have some good news, bad news, good news, related to your special project that just got bought.¡±

    ¡°That certainly isn¡¯t ominous,¡± Callum said, shifting in the cab of his pickup and switching the phone from one ear to another. It had decided to be miserable outside, and he had to peer through murky rain as he drove. ¡°At least there¡¯s more good than bad?¡±

    ¡°That¡¯s the way you gotta approach life, big man,¡± Lucy told him. ¡°So good; everyone is fine. The bad; The Master of Minneapolis has been agitating about you and after that stunt in Florida got super peeved. He sent a bunch of vamps to go bother the Langleys, probably to get your attention. The good again; your merchandise was used to add reinforcements and ambush the vamps in question, so the boss man wants another. Just in case.¡±

    ¡°He did what?¡± The news was somewhat disarmed by the fact that it had turned out well in the end, but finding out that the vampires were still bothering Clara and the rest of the Langleys was a jolt. He¡¯d thought he¡¯d left that behind, but now it seemed not.

    There was a type of person who could never let well enough be, and had to make sure everyone, everywhere conformed to their vision. To whom merely existing was an affront. The kind that would never, ever leave him alone. It seemed Lavigne was one of those types.

    ¡°Hey man, it¡¯s fine. Like I said, they got caught out and taken care of.¡± Lucy seemed to catch something in his voice, and he shook his head to try and clear his mind.

    ¡°Yeah, I know,¡± Callum sighed. ¡°It¡¯s just that I am so tired of people trying to get at me by going after someone else. I want to stop people from doing that, but I don¡¯t know how. Except plan to punish anyone that does, I guess. If someone goes after you, goes after anyone, I need to be able to deal with it.¡±

    ¡°Whoa there, big man. I know where you¡¯re coming from but these people are big names. Not to mention GAR itself.¡±

    ¡°That only makes it worse,¡± Callum told her. ¡°That just makes it more likely they¡¯ll try, and that they think they can get away with it.¡± He rubbed at his eyes, feeling suddenly tired. ¡°You know, it¡¯s probably not the best idea to keep dealing with me. It¡¯ll get you into trouble eventually.¡±

    ¡°Nah, big man,¡± Lucy replied. ¡°I¡¯m in it to win it. Besides, what would you do without me? Probably be off in a hole somewhere, yeah?¡±

    ¡°Probably,¡± Callum admitted. He needed someone that knew what was going on, that was certain. ¡°I appreciate it, Lucy, even if maybe it¡¯s not the wisest choice.¡±

    ¡°Hey, I like you a lot more than I like any of the people I work with. I mean, you get me, big man. All the others are stiff old twigs with no sense of humor. And I have to admit¡­¡± Lucy stopped to laugh. ¡°You¡¯ve been my biggest payday ever and even if it¡¯s just money, it¡¯s still a lot of it!¡±

    ¡°Hey, you¡¯re worth it,¡± Callum said. ¡°You said that he wanted another set of teleport plates?¡±

    ¡°Yeah, same deal. Guess they¡¯re worth it.¡±

    ¡°Mmm.¡± Callum considered. ¡°Not immediately? I have my own projects and I have limited resources to work with. Unless he can get me raw portal world materials?¡±

    ¡°I don¡¯t think he can, big man. Especially since he¡¯s kinda-sorta under a cloud because they know he did some dealings with you. Can¡¯t get at him directly, but he¡¯s no mage so trying to get that would be real rough.¡±

    ¡°In that case, I can¡¯t say yes right now. I¡¯ve got my own projects I¡¯m still doing that take priority. But I¡¯ll keep it in mind and figure out when I can get him another set.¡±

    ¡°Sure, big man. I¡¯ll let him know.¡±

    Callum didn¡¯t press for too many details on the vampire attack over the rest of the conversation, since really he wasn¡¯t sure he wanted to know. There was obviously a bunch of bad blood to begin with between the two factions, and need-to-know went both ways. If he didn¡¯t know what went on, he couldn¡¯t betray it by accident.

    He did want to know a lot more about the Master of Minneapolis, because Callum was pretty sure that just losing once ¨C or rather, twice ¨C would not be enough to get him to stop. For the moment he wasn¡¯t quite sure how he wanted to deal with it, or if he was even capable of doing so, but it was better to be forewarned and forearmed than write it off as someone else¡¯s problem. That was a good way to get blindsided.

    In his darker moments of anger he¡¯d considered ways to wreak some real havoc with his magic. Or even without it. They were thoughts he hadn¡¯t really followed through on because he didn¡¯t want to become some sort of maniac. There was a big difference between punishing people who deserved it and wholesale destruction.

    He¡¯d considered and mostly rejected one of the simplest ways of weaponizing portals on a large scale: the infinite portal box. The idea was to take a box, put a portal at the top and bottom, teleport the air out, and then teleport in the ammunition. Let it fall for a week or two and it made for an extraordinarily high yield bomb. The trouble was, it was a bomb he couldn¡¯t disarm and he had no idea when it¡¯d go off.

    Something like that could fail in a lot of ways, like hitting the side of the container, or whatever molecules of air remained in the box making enough friction heat to melt things, or just the portals not being able to handle high speeds. Add in that it needed a high mana environment or him keeping the portals open manually and it just wasn¡¯t a viable weapon. Besides, all it did was explode.

    If he wanted to do that, there were probably easier ways to go about it. Plenty of things exploded, from methane to dispersed flour, assuming he needed a larger detonation than his little water grenades. Which did an admirable job of damaging delicate equipment, but were probably fairly useless against any supernatural.

    Now that he was facing having to potentially deal with some master vampire or some similar individual, he needed to think about how to really do a lot of damage. Thermite plates wouldn¡¯t be enough. Pistols might not be enough, not after he¡¯d seen the way that a fae could actually dodge such things.

    So he was going to have to spend some time coming up with approaches to dealing with such people. He had some ideas, ranging from the simple to the insane, but each would require him to actually investigate and see how expensive they¡¯d be. The problem was that any that required a permanent portal ate into his stocks of mordite, meaning if they were disposable they¡¯d damn well better be worth it.

    His personal notebook was starting to look pretty alarming. In addition to notes on infinite power, he had notes about how to collapse buildings and how to get ahold of large amounts of nitrogen or methane. If anyone else saw it, they¡¯d think he was a total nutter, and they¡¯d probably be at least half right.

    In addition to thinking of ways enchantments could be weaponized, he started playing around with his gravity field more. He hadn¡¯t forgotten how effective just a random boulder could be, and he could fling fairly large projectiles, so long as he didn¡¯t have to do too many or anything absolutely enormous. Theoretically he could actually launch vehicles, though not very often, given the strain it was to encompass something of that size.

    The great thing about the gravity launcher and the accompanying gravitykinesis was that mass didn¡¯t matter. It was all about volume, and a boulder the size of a car was a lot of mass. Hurling something like that at a hundred miles an hour or more was more realistic than trying to make something relativistic with clever exploitation. Not that he could carry a boulder around in his back pocket, but he was a spatial mage.

    He hadn¡¯t cracked making a useful spatial compression enchantment. Or expansion. Or whatever it was called. While he could hold together the enchant manually, that took time, attention, and vis, and wasn¡¯t particularly portable. On the other hand, he did have teeny tiny portals. There wasn¡¯t much functional difference between compressed storage and a portal back to some cache somewhere full of useful things.

    It''d have to be one of the caves on his bunker property, since the only way he could have a portal open in a reasonable timeframe was to put it in a high-mana area, but that was fine. It wasn¡¯t ideal, since keeping everything as physically separated as possible was the best idea, but he¡¯d need physical access to it anyway. Putting it in the same area meant he wouldn¡¯t have to double-up access to his home, and he could move the teleport plates elsewhere. Or sell them to Chester.

    With that thought he started making another portal set, but this one aimed for letting his spatial perceptions through rather than funneling mana or running pipes. So it only needed to be as wide as a finger, or really, even smaller than that if he could manage. He¡¯d already found that he could send his perceptions through fairly small holes and while the sensation was weird, small apertures didn¡¯t impair him at all, so he wanted the portal to be less noticeable.

    What he had in mind was another implant. Two was probably the limit he was willing to risk, at least without getting an actual surgeon involved, but that would probably be good enough for now. One for his homebond, which he needed to redo with tubes so it wasn¡¯t so awful, and one for this cache.

    The main difference between a portal enchant and the homebond was that the portal had to physically exist somewhere as a discrete torus, rather than using the resonator that just grabbed everything inside the volume of his vis. The homebond¡¯s input didn¡¯t even make sense with the way a portal worked. He just used the enchantment he¡¯d sourced the portal pairs, which had the portals appear just above the enchantment plate. Since he was making something very small, he could just enclose it.

    That would make the implant a little larger than the homebond, but not much larger. After all, the portal itself was smaller than a dime. Since he could use threads instead of tubes, the physical space the spell matrix took up was that much smaller and meant it didn¡¯t need to be all that much wider than a dime, either. The enchantment geometry required to define the portal didn¡¯t need to be strictly three-dimensional, so he could stack sections together to make it thicker without making it wider. Doing so meant he spent slightly more mordite on the connections, but he could hardly begrudge the use of his portal materials for something so important.

    Planning was one thing, doing was another, and he had to go visit his friendly metal-shop to get all the made and cut. The two portal anchors, which were identical so either of them could be implanted, and a new homebond to replace the old and terrible one. Even if he had some equipment, he really wanted professional help with these, especially since they couldn¡¯t have sharp edges and they¡¯d be getting medical-grade titanium coatings.

    Then there was his own work with tapping the mordite into place, enchanting it, bonding it to the next piece of mordite, continuing the enchantment, and all that tedium. Though he supposed it was good that he was already to the point that it was tedious rather than worrying he¡¯d mess up with every motion.

    They didn¡¯t look like much when they were finished, but he was damn proud of them. He wanted to break out some champagne, or call Lucy and brag, but he¡¯d never liked champagne and no matter how he felt about Lucy it wasn¡¯t a good idea to detail his hidden cards over the phone. So he just toasted himself with a bottled tea and let the moment pass.

    Callum did test both of them before he took them off to get coated. The new homebond, using his new tube technique and benefitting from extra enchanting practice, was better than before even if it didn¡¯t measure up to GAR teleports. There was a distinct feeling of disjunct and disorientation, but it wasn¡¯t anything that lingered.

    The mini-portal was pretty well perfect, though. The magical construct manifested in a tiny pocket inside the implant, with essentially no space on either side of it, connecting the two titanium discs. It was completely enclosed, but since most of it was just normal metal it didn¡¯t block any of his perceptions. What was better, he could teleport himself through the portal, though that sort of dislocation tended to destabilize the portal structure.

    What he ended up with was a twin pair of titanium discs, thin and flat but completely rounded. The homebond was nearly identical, only being slightly thinner the portal pair. Callum felt that he was being a little prosaic about shoving stuff into his abdominal cavity, but since he wasn¡¯t breaking any skin or anything, all he had to do was make sure they were sterile. Which he did by washing them thoroughly before running them under a high-powered UV light at the machine shop, then teleporting them into a bottle of saline when nobody was looking.

    The old homebond came out and the new implants went in, and Callum went on a brief jaunt as he used the old homebond to get to his cache and replace the receiver plate, then used the portal implant to return home. The reshuffling continued as he picked up the telepads he¡¯d used to connect himself to Mexico and scouted around for another cave, one that he could use as a cache. With as large as his property was, he spent some time hunting to find the best possible cave, something large enough to fit everything, but still dry enough to be safe storage.

    Strictly speaking, the portal was just as much an emergency button as the homebond, and maybe a better one. Even if they somehow got vis-blocker bracelets on him again, he wouldn¡¯t be sending any power outside himself, so they shouldn¡¯t have any real effect. Though he was pretty sure that if they caught him a second time that trick wouldn¡¯t help him. Nor would having two separate implants. Unfortunately, he couldn¡¯t think of a better way to hide it.

    That said, two backups were better than one. The portal did far more for him, but part of him was a little concerned about others being able to sense through the portal. He knew the worry was probably groundless, but it was still in the back of his head, so he kept the homebond for an alternate emergency escape. If he had serious reservations about the portal, the homebond had nothing that gave away what was on the other side. He felt a little bit unsettled the rest of the day, though he wasn¡¯t sure how much was psychosomatic and how much actually was the added pressure of another tiny implant. Callum knew people regularly had much larger implants put inside them, but under far different circumstances.

    Once he had all the logistics checked and doublechecked, he moved some of his largesse of weaponry to the new and larger cave. Although, looking around, he¡¯d have to renovate to some extent just to make things organized. At the very least bring in storage racks and some concrete to level out the floor. He¡¯d already put air quality sensors out, though he¡¯d already refreshed the atmosphere in the house-sized cave.

    He wouldn¡¯t exactly call himself prepared for every contingency, but the portal-cache massively simplified his logistics. It even made it possible for him to bring his pickup back and forth, already loaded up with materials. The problem of the Master of Minneapolis lingered in his mind, because he knew he¡¯d have to address it somehow, but he let it stay in the back. So long as nothing happened, he could focus on bunkering down.

 Chapter 16 â€“ Groundwork

    ¡°So what do you think?¡± Agent Ray Danforth asked the federal agents that Felicia had managed to secure for the investigation. They weren¡¯t exactly in the know, but at the same time the loan of their services was somewhat legitimate. There were so many convolutions to the federal bureaucracy that a little bit of fae ensorcellment made it easy to get some off-the-books talent. So long as everyone got paid, nobody even thought to raise a fuss.

    ¡°The pattern is very concerning,¡± said Dave. He was also an agent, but for the moment they forewent the honorifics.

    ¡°Yeah?¡± Ray asked, leaning forward. ¡°I thought it was a bit of a relief that he hadn¡¯t been killing people.¡±

    ¡°It means that he¡¯s finding out what the minimum necessary force is,¡± Dave explained. ¡°The first one, he killed everyone. The next set, just the targets. When he didn¡¯t kill anyone, that meant that there was nobody he considered a target at the site. So he didn¡¯t start out as an experienced operator and is still learning.¡±

    ¡°If he wasn¡¯t experienced, how did he manage to do everything he did?¡± Ray asked skeptically. None of what he saw was the work of a novice.

    ¡°He didn¡¯t have wetwork training,¡± Dave clarified. ¡°There are all kinds of expertise that can translate to real havoc, if someone is determined enough. What this means is that he¡¯s getting more dangerous. If he were escalating, that¡¯d actually be easier, because then he¡¯d very quickly try something that was too much for him.¡±

    ¡°That is a worry,¡± Ray conceded, but for his own part, he was just glad Wells wasn¡¯t running around slaughtering people in job lots. He wasn¡¯t sure how much more dangerous the man could be than that. ¡°But it mostly seems he¡¯s reacting to threats against him or people close to him.¡±

    ¡°Well, you¡¯re trying to find him, aren¡¯t you?¡± Dave pointed out. ¡°If I were you I¡¯d worry about agents going missing or something if they get too near. Did you hear of anyone who had an unfortunate accident lately? Allergic reactions, maybe? If he¡¯s learning finesse as he goes, you may be overlooking the more recent victims.¡±

    ¡°I don¡¯t believe so,¡± Ray said. Admittedly, the disappearance of the fae was a big question mark. The assumption was that they were dead, but there was no telling what had happened. Jissarrell¡¯s spell hadn¡¯t revealed the destinations of the portals, only that they had existed. ¡°But I will check.¡±

    ¡°Aside from that, there¡¯s not much to go on for where he might be now. If he¡¯s in the system for facial recognition he¡¯ll pop up in an airport and a few other places, assuming he¡¯s not using some kind of disguise.¡± Dave shrugged. ¡°We¡¯ll keep crunching data to see if we can find Wells, but there¡¯s a lot of places in the US where you can stay out of sight.¡±

    ¡°Very well.¡± Ray suppressed a frown. He had hoped that they¡¯d be more helpful, considering how difficult it¡¯d been to track the man through magical means, but perhaps that was asking too much. ¡°What about the other matter?¡±

    ¡°Ah, now that one, that one has meat.¡± Dave switched folders. ¡°We¡¯ve pulled all the logs and records and copied all your servers, and we¡¯re starting the deep dive now. We¡¯ll see who had access when, and if anyone could have been getting it some other way. Plus, there¡¯s the money.¡±

    ¡°Which money?¡± Ray asked, suddenly interested.

    ¡°I¡¯m not sure yet, but there¡¯s always money. We¡¯ve started digging into the financials for everyone that works there. Any discrepancy, any suspicious spending, any of that, and we¡¯ll find something interesting. Wells and his group have to be paying off someone at GAR. Even if it¡¯s ideological, something weird will show up with the money.¡±

    ¡°I hope you¡¯re right.¡± Ray shook his head. That was a lot of tedious effort that his department was not cut out for. For this alone, it was worth bringing in the mundane experts.

    ¡°It never fails,¡± Dave said with assurance. ¡°Follow the money.¡±

    ***

    Callum was having great fun filling in his portal cache. Having access to a huge inventory at will was incredibly, obscenely powerful, for everything from offense and defense to just everyday chores. He never had to worry about forgetting his keys, could easily stash away groceries without toting them to the truck, and could even store the pickup instead of needing a parking space. Admittedly, the last was needless, since none of the places he ever went were particularly crowded, but it would surely be useful sometime in the future.

    Of course, he didn¡¯t magically get a nice, neat, organized inventory. He just had a big chunk of space in a cave. He had to make a special trip to find a place with a lot of free-standing racks and shelving that he could inspect and figure out how to use. Mostly he wanted a bunch of big flat surfaces and neatly sorted drawers, because there was nothing more multifunctional than a flat space.

    In keeping with that, he spent a lot of time evening out a chunk of the floor. He was sure that someone, somewhere would have been horrified by him ruining a natural cave, but it wasn¡¯t one with beautiful stalactites and the like. It was just a hole. A few wheelbarrows full of gravel filled in a lot of cracks and corrugations, and then a few more wheelbarrows of cement he mixed up himself did a lot to create a nice foundation to start from.

    The portal anchor went on a stand he¡¯d found at a used furniture place, right in the middle of the pad, and he arranged the rest of the stuff relative to that. A set of cones to demarcate where vehicles would go, a bunch of tables where he put the weapons, as well as packs of trail food and jerky. Under that, a few packs of bottled water.

    He got some racks and big bins for holding water grenade supplies, extra clothing, currency, materials for disguises, and all that. Food and big barrels of water, especially, since there was no telling when he¡¯d need them. The cache was still a little scanty, but eventually he¡¯d fill it out. At some point he¡¯d have to get electricity in so he he¡¯d have more options, but that¡¯d require either another portal generator or somehow running cables.

    Outside the concrete pad, he put a bunch of boulders. There were plenty of nice big rocks like that wherever glacial moraines could be found, which was all over the northern US. By his estimation, the car-sized boulders were on the order of thirty tons, while the smaller ones ranged from two or three to ten or fifteen tons. He hadn¡¯t been considering it at the time, but it was no wonder his boulder weapon had simply smashed the wood fae.

    The cave didn¡¯t have room for too many big rocks, and besides, they were probably worthless against earth mages, but they were still the best large-scale projectiles he had. He took one of the tree trunks from the forest-clearing that was still going on around the house site for alternative ammunition, but it just wasn¡¯t as good. He¡¯d have to find out whether metal would be better, and possibly visit a scrapyard, but boulders were free. A full ton of metal was expensive, even if it was scrap.

    Since he¡¯d armed himself with such projectiles, he figured he¡¯d better practice while he had the time. There was no point in a weapon he couldn¡¯t use properly. He¡¯d not really used his gravitykinesis as an offensive weapon, since it required some amount of preparation, but now that he¡¯d done that preparation he had no reason to put it off.

    He ended up spending the better part of a day hucking rocks.

    Even though he¡¯d invented the gravity alteration trick a while back ¨C which wasn¡¯t actually gravity as such, but altering the spatial tensor or some jargon like that ¨C he hadn¡¯t really tried many tricks with it. It was basically a static flexing of the space field inside of a box, and he¡¯d left it at that. Now that he was being more proactive with it, he had to set aside time to experiment.

    Countering gravity took effort; making gravity go in an entirely different direction took twice the effort. It was really a matter of how much he was distorting space, relative to what it was supposed to be by physics. He could get a rough idea of the effects just by using the gravity field on a weight placed on a bathroom scale, and it was pretty easy to see that the ratio of effort to effect was roughly linear. Twice as much vis, twice as much gravity.

    While he didn¡¯t have access to whatever equipment mages used to measure such things, he¡¯d say that gravity manipulation was actually the most vis-intensive of his tricks, aside from spatial expansion. Teleportation was the easiest, and portals fell somewhere in between. They all scaled with volume, though for portals that was the volume of the torus that formed the perimeter, since the hole was perfectly two-dimensional.

    The recirculation bits he¡¯d stolen from the Dragonlands portal actually helped quite a lot. Even if he wasn¡¯t using them too efficiently, incorporating them into his frameworks meant that he could handle larger things than before. Maybe double the volume, which didn¡¯t translate to much in terms of linear dimensions, but it was not a small increase.

    The final result was that the size and speed of things he could huck was a weird sort of optimization puzzle. The easiest thing was to make a column of altered gravity and let the rock accelerate along it with a force of ten or fifteen times standard, but he couldn¡¯t make those columns overly long without bumping into the upper limit of the total vis output he could handle. Increasing the gravity force meant he got more bang for his buck for each bit of acceleration, but meant he could accelerate for less time.

    It might have been nice if he could use the gravity directly, but all the acceleration came from the distortion imposed by his vis frameworks. For mages or even supernaturals, that¡¯d just slide right off. In fact, the mage bubbles might disrupt the entire thing, he wasn¡¯t sure. Either way, throwing things was a far better use of his time.

    In fact, he didn¡¯t ever want to try and engage a mage with actual magical combat. They were better, they had more training, and they seemed to have more vis capacity. He was basically playing a game of rocket tag every time he encountered them, because he had no real way to defend himself. If he didn¡¯t kill or at least neutralize his target right off, he was pretty well screwed.

    Given the nature of his testing, he found a disused quarry far away from any kind of population and brought along some earplugs. They helped, but didn¡¯t protect him from the bone-jarring shock of the impacts as he smashed boulders against the quarry walls and let them splash into the dark water that had pooled there. It was quite a kick to throw multi-ton boulders around like he was an actual mage and not some cut-rate amateur, even if it was exhausting. He ended up opening the portal in his implant just to get some extra mana flow and replenish his vis reserves.

    It was in a way tempting to leave the portal open all the time, so he¡¯d have extra mana flow for himself, but it left a definite residue behind which necessitated cleaning up after himself. Besides which, surely someone would notice a high-mana source wandering around if it was left open for significant lengths of time. He didn¡¯t think that short periods really impacted much, especially since it was inside him.

    Callum thought it unlikely there were any significant side effects from having that mana flow in him simply because people lived in the portal worlds, and those had far more mana than he was getting through the portal. They breathed in air and drank water completely saturated in the stuff. It still was a little niggle at the back of his brain that dumping a lot of mana right into his guts might not be the best idea, though, so he kept it conservative.

    At the end of the day he was completely wrung out but thought he had a pretty good grasp of how to properly throw a rock. He was even able to incorporate flinging the gravitykinesis matrix itself around to give things a bit of an extra oomph. Beyond the range at which he could use portal delivery, he wouldn¡¯t have any real accuracy, but it was better than being forced to close the range.

    The practice had also sparked some more ideas for how to use his portal connections effectively. The gut portal had not only been amazing in terms of logistics, it showed he could freely connect two different areas with portal anchors. Rocks weren¡¯t the only thing he could fling, and while portals were fragile, they did let through things like air and light. Even water, if there wasn¡¯t too much flow, since he still had the issue that any real movement of matter through the magic threads disrupted them.

    If you come across this story on Amazon, it''s taken without permission from the author. Report it.

    Somewhat regretfully, he set aside most of his remaining stock of mordite for making a few extra portal enchantments. It was more than a little alarming how fast he¡¯d burned through it, though fortunately it seemed that it would last a lot longer than the paste. So far he¡¯d seen no signs of degradation from his old homebond implant, at least not before he re-melted the mordite so he could use it in something else.

    With the gut portal fully functional he reshuffled his destinations. The portal went to his bunker, the homebond stayed in northern Montana, but the teleport pad got moved to transition between Montana and his trailer house in Texas. Soon enough he¡¯d be ditching the trailer house and free up the telepad, though when it came to construction, soon was generally measured in months.

    Once he had portioned out the mordite for each project he decided he did have enough for one more to sell to Chester. Considering how expensive the bunker project was, having the extra money would be a bit of a relief. He absolutely hated how much he was spending getting all his infrastructure up and running, when for most of his life he¡¯d been fairly frugal, but soon he¡¯d be able to return to normal. Normal-ish.

    ¡°Hey, big man!¡± Lucy answered the phone on the third ring, as Callum sat in his pickup with the heater going. ¡°What¡¯s shaking?¡±

    ¡°Hey, Lucy,¡± he said. ¡°Thought I should check in, since I kinda got wrapped up in stuff the past couple days. Everything still quiet over there?¡±

    ¡°What, at work? Hell, no. There¡¯s a million new policies and procedures and enforcements, the scheduling is all out of whack, and all the bosses are mad at everyone and everything. On the up side, we all got a few days off while they were figuring out whatever they were doing on their end. Paid vacation!¡±

    ¡°Glad I never had to deal with that stuff,¡± Callum said, with feeling. His stint in a cubicle farm had been all of a few months before he¡¯d gotten fed up and quit. In hindsight he¡¯d been fairly lucky to build up the contacts he did so his consulting business worked, but at the time he had just been thinking about how he couldn¡¯t stand the environment.

    ¡°Eh, it¡¯s not so bad. I have my own little dungeon full of toys.¡±

    ¡°Kinky.¡±

    ¡°Ha! Not that kind of dungeon, sadly. Just a basement full of servers and such.¡±

    ¡°Sounds pretty nice, actually,¡± Callum admitted. ¡°Though I¡¯m a little surprised you actually go into GAR for that. I would have thought you could be remote at this point.¡±

    ¡°Ha! Computers are new enough to GAR, something like remote work is asking a bit much. Besides, you can imagine what they think of anything like that slipping out from under their thumb.¡±

    ¡°That is a point,¡± Callum admitted. Admittedly, most of what he knew about GAR was really second or third-hand, but monolithic entities weren¡¯t very friendly to independent agency. ¡°I suppose extra vacation is the best you can expect out of the mess.¡±

    ¡°Yeah, but gotta be honest, it¡¯s not like I do that much at work. Except when someone breaks something.¡± Lucy laughed. ¡°I¡¯m not sure I actually know what to do with all this free time!¡±

    ¡°Go out somewhere? See a movie?¡±

    ¡°Ugh, man, there¡¯s nobody here to go with but the shifters and they have just the worst taste in movies.¡± For some reason that made him laugh, but at the same time he was a little curious.

    ¡°You don¡¯t have any mage friends? Mundane friends?¡±

    ¡°Not really. I mean, I¡¯m a dud. Neither fish nor fowl. Mages are all stuck a hundred years in the past and don¡¯t care about me anyway, and I¡¯m not really cut out for trying to hide all this stuff from mundanes. Technically I¡¯m supposed to get some kinda release form or whatever to actually go out past the shifter territory, not that anyone actually cares.¡±

    ¡°Well, that¡¯s a shame. Though I guess that explains some stuff.¡± The glamours explained part of why the whole supernatural thing was a secret that kept, but only part of it. If they policed the people who actually went out into public to some extent, at least gave them an orientation, that would help. The magical cleanup squad would probably do the rest.

    ¡°Yeah, so, that¡¯s me. Kind of a homebody.¡±

    ¡°You should probably get that release,¡± he told her. ¡°If you¡¯re going to be retiring and all. Since one of the reasons I called was to tell you that I can make another telepad for our mutual friend.¡±

    ¡°Oh! Oh, man, yeah, he¡¯s gonna be happy about that. Kept asking me about it.¡±

    ¡°Well, you can tell him yes.¡±

    ¡°Great, yeah! Let me call him up right now actually.¡± Callum waited a moment, and the line clicked as Lucy did her telecoms magic.

    ¡°Chester here.¡±

    ¡°It¡¯s me,¡± Callum said. ¡°I hear you¡¯re in the market for a second device.¡±

    ¡°I certainly am,¡± Chester said, with a grimness that didn¡¯t seem to fit a purely commercial transaction.

    ¡°Same as last time, or did you want it larger? Or smaller?¡±

    ¡°Larger,¡± Chester replied. ¡°Five feet or so, if you can.¡±

    ¡°Sure, that¡¯s not a problem. I won¡¯t be able to supply any more for a while, though.¡±

    ¡°Understandable. The additional one will be sufficient for our purposes.¡±

    ¡°I can have it to you in a few days,¡± Callum said, wondering vaguely at what purposes Chester had in mind, but not asking. It was better if he didn¡¯t know, considering the use the last one was put to. Not that he disapproved at all, but Callum didn¡¯t want to get entangled in Chester¡¯s supernatural struggles.

    ¡°Excellent. Same pay as before?¡±

    ¡°Works for me.¡± Considering that Chester seemed to really want it, he probably could have pushed for more, but it didn¡¯t seem worthwhile. Chester was really the only person who would buy the stuff, and something close to a million dollars was more than enough for his purposes.

    ¡°The same drop-off locations work for me, but I assume you want payment in a different city?¡±

    ¡°I do.¡±

    ¡°Then I shall be looking forward to the package delivery.¡±

    ¡°Good doing business with you,¡± Callum said, feeling oddly aware of how much it sounded like they were dealing in drugs or something equally degenerate. Not that black-market teleports were any less illegal under GAR. Chester hung up with a click, and Lucy got back on the line.

    ¡°All right, big man, you keep me updated.¡±

    ¡°Will do, Lucy. Thanks for playing go-between for me.¡±

    ¡°Anytime, big man!¡±

    ***

    Gayle Hargrave absolutely loathed her teachers. It was in part what she was learning, because she didn¡¯t really have any interest in the destructive uses of healing magic, but it was also because they were all Fane¡¯s old apprentices and complete jerks. They condescended to her because she wasn¡¯t Chinese and wasn¡¯t House Fane.

    The Chinese Houses had been absolutely sullen ever since the dragonblooded had requested their portal be moved into Europe, some two hundred years back. With no portals in China, especially not ones that could be lived in, they¡¯d been less important than the European families and couldn¡¯t stand it. They especially couldn¡¯t stand House Hargrave because it was an actual American House, and it showed.

    What really rankled, though, was that she wasn¡¯t really able to be part of House Hargrave. Grampa¡¯s influence had kept them from forcing her into no-House blacks, but at the same time, it was clear that BSE claimed her. Frankly she didn¡¯t care about the spooks and didn¡¯t feel any pride in whatever business they had. It was her family that mattered, and unless things changed she was stuck on the other side of a procedural wall from them.

    She wasn¡¯t even allowed to go back and visit when she wanted. Garrison Two was somewhere in the Deep Wilds, and the only way off-site was a set of teleporters that were guarded and controlled. Not that she¡¯d try to sneak out. After what had happened with Professor Brown, Gayle was not about to try and circle around the rules again.

    Gayle gathered her vis into the dissonant framework that she¡¯d been shown, watching dispassionately as her bolt of what the apprentices called Gu slammed into the monstrous, six-limbed tiger-thing prowling around the outskirts of the BSE facility. It wasn¡¯t even a challenge; the beast just dropped as her magic instantly necrotized its brain. She understood the importance of keeping the infrastructure clear of the ravenous beasts that prowled the Deep Wilds, but it felt like she was pointlessly wasting time.

    ¡°Not good enough. Do it again.¡± Fane Xan, who was supposed to be her tutor, didn¡¯t say what she¡¯d done wrong, or how she could improve. BSE had mandated that she be trained, but they hadn¡¯t made sure she was being trained well. Gayle glowered at the man and turned away from the crenelations.

    ¡°Where are you going?¡± Xan demanded, and Gayle scowled back at him over her shoulder.

    ¡°You do not speak to a daughter of House Hargrave in that manner,¡± she said coldly. ¡°If you do not intend to teach me properly, you will be silent.¡± Her mother had made sure she knew when to invoke the House and when not to, and this was certainly a time when she should rest on her House¡¯s dignity. If Grampa hadn¡¯t kept them from inducting her into no-house like BSE normally did, she wouldn¡¯t even have that.

    Considering the man had the black uniform, despite his name, he certainly didn¡¯t have the standing to order her around like that. Even then, she might have listened, if he actually did anything helpful. Instruction was not the same as making someone repeat the same thing over and over.

    Archmage Fane might have been more helpful, but she hadn¡¯t talked with him. Or seen him. She wouldn¡¯t, either, until and unless she learned the dialect that he spoke. Which she probably could, if she put her mind to it, but there hadn¡¯t been much incentive. Instead, she was waiting for the political struggle to end and she could go back to House Hargrave.

    Gayle was pretty sure the only reason BSE was so insistent on keeping her was because Professor Brown was still at large. Or rather, Callum Wells, who bore the juvenile nickname of the Ghost. She still didn¡¯t know what to think of that, since she couldn¡¯t imagine the elderly man going out on a massacre. The thing she wanted to know was why he¡¯d sent her on the path of destructive healing.

    She refused to call it by Fane¡¯s name in her own mind.

    If it weren¡¯t for the fact that he was wanted by everyone, she would have thought he was one of Fane¡¯s agents, meant to force her into the archmage¡¯s care with forbidden knowledge. In fact, she still wasn¡¯t completely convinced that wasn¡¯t the case. She¡¯d done a little bit of snooping on her own and the fact that he was there at one of Fane¡¯s stupid attacks on a dragonblooded was very suspicious.

    Inter-House warfare was subdued under GAR, but by no means was it gone. Callum¡¯s strange aptitude test could well be the result of one of Fane¡¯s experiments. She¡¯d only heard rumors, but Fane had not hidden the fact that he thought he could change and improve magical talent by proper application of healing vis.

    Gayle walked down the stone steps into the inner courtyard. The BSE facility had a thick stone outer wall, with a dome composed of interlaced metal and glass above it to keep out the flying monsters. Despite the medieval look, the interior buildings were properly insulated, furnished, heated, and cooled. The entire thing sprawled over two or three square miles of real estate, a crowded grouping of buildings that reminded her more of the campus she¡¯d learned magic at than a top secret facility.

    She stopped to let several shifters in war-form past, the party carrying in a somewhat smaller beast than the one she¡¯d just dropped. It looked like some twisted offspring of a boar and a bird, though it did make for a very good barbeque. It wasn¡¯t exactly haute cuisine, but it had a certain rustic charm. Supplies did come in through the teleports, but the facility was at least partly self-sufficient.

    Technically speaking, she outranked the shifters here, who were mostly support staff. At the same time, this was their portal world and they were due some deference. Besides, they were more powerful here than on Earth, more in tune with the dangers and the ebb and flow of magic. She could just see the local mana; they could actually interpret it like the weather.

    ¡°Shouldn¡¯t you be training?¡± Gayle jumped as Grand Magus Taisen appeared from nowhere. The head of the BSE possessed a vanishingly rare triple aspect, though for some reason he¡¯d never advanced to Archmage. Gravity, Light, and Force meant that Taisen could appear practically anywhere at speeds that nobody would believe, and was an utter monster in a fight. Unlike Fane¡¯s lackeys, she actually respected Taisen.

    Taisen¡¯s abilities were not in doubt, and he¡¯d built the Society for Portal Defense from the ground up before GAR folded it into the BSE. He was polite and respectful, even though he outranked practically everybody. Plus, he''d been her mother¡¯s rival back when they were still in the academy, and that said a lot.

    ¡°Just having me shoot the same thing and then yelling at me is not training,¡± Gayle said bluntly. Then she relented a bit; he was still her superior. ¡°Grand Magus,¡± she added. ¡°I know that only Fane¡¯s apprentices can teach me how to properly use negative healing, but I don¡¯t believe they are actually trying. House Fane and House Hargrave do not get along.¡±

    ¡°There is a reason I insisted that the members of the Bureau of Secret Enforcement swear their allegiance to no House,¡± Taisen said. There wasn¡¯t any particular bite to his tone, but she understood what he was saying anyway.

    ¡°I understand, Grand Magus, but this is not what I chose.¡±

    ¡°Yes, indeed. That is certainly not common.¡± Taisen didn¡¯t actually apologize or offer to change things. She understood why, but it was still hard not to resent him. Just like she resented House Fane, and Professor Brown, and all the other people who had gotten her stuck here.

    ¡°I¡¯ve seen your transcript,¡± Taisen said instead. ¡°I suspect you¡¯ll have no trouble understanding the scope of what negative healing can do if you acquire more mundane medical literature. There is far more to the body¡¯s capabilities than most healing mages realize.¡±

    ¡°That¡¯s what got me into this mess.¡± Gayle gave Taisen a sideways look. He looked older, distinguished, with a hard face and greying hair, but moved like he was built from coiled springs. The rumors were that he fought in mundane wars, using their weapons, just to see what it was like, and he certainly spent more time killing things in the portal worlds than running BSE. ¡°But even if that¡¯s true, where would I get such things?¡±

    ¡°You¡¯ll find some in your quarters tomorrow,¡± Taisen said neutrally. ¡°I¡¯m sure you¡¯ll find that the knowledge contained therein can be used in many ways, and not just in combat.¡±

    ¡°Thank you, Grand Magus,¡± Gayle said, not missing the hint he¡¯d tossed her way. While she didn¡¯t really have any interest in learning more harmful healing, studying on her own was one way to discharge her obligations, and if Taisen thought she might find healing applications he was probably right. So it wouldn¡¯t be a complete slog.

    ¡°It is my responsibility to make sure all my people have what they need,¡± Taisen returned. ¡°Be it material or information.¡±

    ¡°Speaking of information,¡± Gayle ventured. ¡°Is there any news on Pro- I mean, Mister Wells?¡±

    ¡°Of late? He removed two mundanes from GAR custody and somehow convinced a Fae King to shield their identities.¡± Taisen responded promptly. ¡°He remains as elusive as ever, but eventually he¡¯ll slip up. Or someone will.¡±

    ¡°I hope so,¡± Gayle said glumly. ¡°I just want to know why.¡±

 Chapter 17 â€“ Blame

    ¡°Second verse, same as the first,¡± Callum muttered to himself as he drove through a small town in Nebraska. It was a bit of a haul from Texas but he didn¡¯t really mind, since he was there to pick up almost a million dollars worth of gold bullion. It was hard to be grumpy about the drive when that was the reward at the end.

    Especially since he could use his new gut portal to store the truck and teleport back home.

    This time the padded case was located in the open belltower of a church, and Callum wondered why Chester had gone for high roofs. At this point he was certain that Chester knew Callum was a spatial mage, but then again, it wasn¡¯t likely that his subordinates knew that it was Callum who was doing the work. Sky access might be a plausible excuse for how the gold vanished without anybody seeing anything.

    He stopped at a light while he located the case and the dense gold in the sphere of his senses, and pulled it into the pickup. So far as he could sense none of the few shifters hanging about the small town had line of sight to the case, and none of them made any particular reaction to him driving off with it when the light changed.

    Callum waited until he¡¯d driven out into the country for an hour or so before calling Lucy to tell her he¡¯d picked up the package. It seemed she was still on vacation, and it sounded like she was going a little stir-crazy being stuck at home.

    He sympathized. At least when he¡¯d gone into his self-imposed exile he had a lot of projects to keep him busy, but all of Lucy¡¯s stuff was over at GAR. Which was a good argument for why she shouldn¡¯t let other people take care of her stuff, as it meant that it wasn¡¯t really, properly hers. Not that he¡¯d point it out at the moment, since it¡¯d just be adding insult to injury.

    ¡°I tell you what, big man,¡± Lucy complained. ¡°I can¡¯t even pet dogs around here ¡®cause I¡¯m not sure when it¡¯s going to be someone¡¯s kid instead.¡± Callum barked a laugh.

    ¡°Nothing you want to order off the Internet? I¡¯m sure there are some toys you¡¯ve been wanting to get for a while.¡±

    ¡°Kinky,¡± Lucy said, reflexively. ¡°Nah, though. I mean, I¡¯ve got everything back in my office. 3-D printers and stuff take a while to ship and what would I do with two anyway?¡±

    ¡°I guess that¡¯s a point,¡± Callum admitted. ¡°When do you start back, anyway?¡±

    ¡°Still a couple days,¡± Lucy replied. ¡°This break thing runs into Thanksgiving. I like vacations, but I¡¯d rather plan for ¡®em, you know? At least let me bring my coffeemaker home with me.¡±

    When they wrapped up their conversation, Callum opened his gut portal and teleported the case of gold onto a table set up for the purpose. So far as he could tell there were no electronics in it, but even if there were, there was no way any signal would make it out of the enclosed cave. The truck got teleported to the concrete pad as well, and he tossed a rusty hinge with his cleanup enchantment down to cover his tracks. Then he invoked his homebond and made his way to the trailer via telepad.

    Callum actually felt rather smug as he pulled the pickup back out of the cave and put it in his driveway. At least, until he noticed how low it was on gas, but he could make a run for that later. The trip back had given him a few more ideas that he felt really dumb for not having explored before.

    Obviously he could nest portals. There was no problem running vis through his gut portal, which meant there was no problem running it through any other portal he made. So one between his current position and the edge of his perceptions gave him two sensory spheres, and let him chain out to double his normal distance. Then he could make another portal set, and triple it.

    Actually trying that ran into some issues, though. Not so much with the magic, which worked just fine, but with his perceptions. Even if he didn¡¯t pay full attention to that six-hundred-yard perceptual sphere, it was still there. Doubling that input was something he could handle, even if it was somewhat of a strain. Tripling it was not something he could sustain for long, like staring into a bright light, and quadrupling made all his threads collapse as his brain overloaded in a sort of white-out moment and he lost track of his magic.

    A little bit of experimentation showed his proper limits were something closer to two and a half times his current volume. He could probably work his way up to three, but if his base perception got larger, that multiplier might actually go down a bit. There had to be some upper limit. The human brain, however magical, was not infinite.

    That didn¡¯t mean he could only nest three portals. He could pull back his magical perceptions, and what mattered was the total space he was looking at, not how many ways he could see it. That was why his other experiments with using portals hadn¡¯t really bothered him; they¡¯d all overlapped the same space. If he put five portals within ten feet of each other, six hundred yards away, he only got ten feet more radius on a bubble that half overlapped his original one. Or whatever complicated math described that intersection.

    Still, being able to double his range if he needed to was not something to sneeze at. Especially since he only needed to use teeny tiny portals to do so, and those had to be harder to detect than something large. Obviously not impossible, but it might give him an edge. Considering what he was up against, he needed every edge he could get.

    Callum took a break from his work simply by driving into town and getting a burger and a milkshake from the local greasy spoon, then pulling up some videos on his laptop to distract himself with. Thanksgiving hadn¡¯t been much for the past few years, but at least he¡¯d had a proper house. It was all he could do to not be maudlin.

    On the other hand, despite what he¡¯d given up to be on the wrong side of GAR and supernaturals in general, it wasn¡¯t like he hadn¡¯t accomplished anything. He¡¯d seen other worlds and dealt with dragons, and most importantly he¡¯d actually saved some people. Not everyone, but at least the Connors and Clara.

    A few good deeds were better than none.

    ***

    Getting a teleport pad smuggled into Lavigne¡¯s penthouse was not easy. Vampires tended to use thralls for their gruntwork, so there was nobody to suborn, coerce, or bribe. On the other hand, they still had to take deliveries and Chester¡¯s work with Lucy had prompted him to get in contact with other unsavory mundane elements.

    The team he had hired gave the go-ahead when the crate was unpacked and the pad free and open. It was afternoon, but considering how many vampires Lavigne had lost, it probably wouldn¡¯t matter if it was midnight. Once other nests caught wind of how weak Lavigne had become, they¡¯d likely start making moves, but Chester was making one first.

    He owed Lavigne for both what had been done, and what had been attempted.

    To avoid suspicion, he¡¯d had members of his pack bring their mana charges to the compound. They¡¯d have to forego some of the benefits of commercial enchantments for a week or so, but some judiciously arranged family reunions and vacations ameliorated most of that. There were plenty of people at Chester¡¯s compound, enough to gather a number of watchers who would be absolutely certain Chester never left.

    It wasn¡¯t like GAR was even being particularly subtle about it. Some poor bastard from the Bureau of Shifter Relations was sitting in one of the guest houses to be available to Chester in what was tritely referred to as trying times. Although Chester, certainly, wasn¡¯t really being tried by GAR¡¯s issues with Wells. At least Chester had long had the interior of his compound warded from prying eyes, with Jasper certifying it properly worked.

    ¡°Team One, ready?¡± The Wolfpack made noises of agreement.

    ¡°Team Two, ready?¡± The secondary team, including a few of his subordinate Alphas, nodded.

    In the next room, others were stocking janitorial carts with chemicals, mops, brooms, vacuums, and a few fae charms. Even Chester couldn¡¯t evade the consequences of eradicating one of the Masters of the Midwest, if GAR knew about it. But only if they knew about it.

    It wasn¡¯t like he could hide Lavigne¡¯s disappearance, but he could deflect the blame. After all, he was at his pack compound the entire time and there was someone else who could infiltrate a protected building and clean it out. It didn¡¯t matter whether or not the Ghost had done it, just that he could have done it.

    Jasper sat next to the new, double-size teleport pad as it energized. The other end had some mana charges to reduce the cycle time, so it didn¡¯t take more than a minute after the surveillance team had given the go-ahead before it was ready for them. Chester stepped onto the plate, both teams crowding on with him, and pricked his finger with the token.

    The moment their surroundings shifted Chester pushed the go-ahead through the pack bonds. Now that they were inside Lavigne¡¯s building, they wanted to keep things quick and quiet. They spread out from the storage room the pallet was being kept in, all of them in war form and with claws out. They¡¯d bypassed the outer wards, but there were still internal alarms that could make life difficult for them.

    Unfortunately, a lot of the thralls would have to die. While Mister Summers, or Wells, or whatever he was calling himself had spared them, it was a wasted effort. Thralls had once been mundanes who had somehow survived feeding, but something essential had still been taken from them. They were slavishly obedient, unable to consider doing anything other than carrying out the orders of whatever vampire they had latched onto.

    That didn¡¯t mean they were stupid, though, and they wouldn¡¯t ignore the invasion of a bunch of powerful shifters. Not that they would be expecting said invasion to come from the core of the building. Chester¡¯s team headed upward, while Alpha Vernon¡¯s team went for the security center. Arthur Langley would have wanted to come, but Chester thought it was better if he was nowhere near the operation. Or even knew about it.

    They tore through three rooms before there was any hint of resistance, snapping necks and tearing out throats, as the thralls were only slightly faster than an ordinary mundane. The danger was in their silverite weaponry and ammunition, because all it really took was one good hit. The petrified tree sap silverite was made from was poisonous to the symbiote, disrupting their intrinsic magic if it even pierced the skin. It wasn¡¯t simply a risk of wounds that didn¡¯t heal with their usual alacrity; a shifter could be rendered temporarily mundane. Or permanently, with enough of the stuff.

    The thralls were equipped both with all kinds of bane types, as shifters were not the only threat Lavigne had to worry about. He was quarrelsome even for a vampire, and got into occasional spats with other Masters or even fae, which could easily result in at least moderate amounts of violence. The first pops of gunfire came as Chester entered a large lounge area, punching holes in the wall behind him as he dropped to all fours and rushed the shooter.

    Sheer impact sent the thrall flying backward, organs ruptured and bones shattered before he even hit the wall, and the first actual vampire appeared through the far door. While they didn¡¯t exactly burst into flames in sunlight, they were very nocturnal and their raw power waned with the sun. They relied on blades and guns more than shifters did, so the one that came through the door had a silverite dagger in each hand.

    It was more difficult to deal with a vampire that was aware of the threat, even a sun-weary one, than one surprised by ambush. There was a reason that shifters moved in packs, though, and Chester feinted forward, drawing out attacks from the daggers as they ripped through the air while Roy maneuvered to flank their attacker. Chester and Roy danced with the vampire for a few moments, feinting and swiping, until he overextended and Roy¡¯s claws lashed out and severed his spine.

    Chester¡¯s earpiece clicked twice to let him know that Alpha Vernon¡¯s team had secured their objective, and if the mundanes he¡¯d hired were doing their job right, any attempt to call out should be jammed. That actually made things easier; the vampire¡¯s own glamours would silence the sounds of battle, so none of them needed to worry about being quiet.

    Climbing upward was the most dangerous part of taking the building, because whether they used elevator shafts or stairwells, there was an angle for someone to shoot at them. Even so, silverite bullets were still only bullets, which was why Chester had given Craig a big steel shield, and why the burly shifter took point as they went upward. The Wolfpack practically sprinted up, but nonetheless making sure to check and verify each room and kill. According to public record, Lavigne was supposed to only have a dozen vampires with him, but that same record said that Chester was still in his compound so he knew how little to trust it.

    This book''s true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.

    Despite owning the whole building, Lavigne¡¯s nest only filled the uppermost floors, so it didn¡¯t take very long to reach the top. He had to send two shifters back due to injuries, and three more were relegated to support because they¡¯d gotten silverite injuries, but he had more than enough people to deal with the remaining vampires and thralls. Most importantly, enough to deal with Lavigne himself.

    By the time they reached the opulent penthouse on the highest floor, Lavigne was waiting for them. The vampire master had kitted himself out for a fight, with silverite-lacquered armor and a long silverite-edged saber, rather than just a knife. Chester could smell it from across the room; it was the pure stuff, not the alloys normally used for weapons.

    ¡°You¡¯re not even dogs,¡± Lavigne sneered, holding the saber in a ready stance. ¡°You¡¯re jackals, slinking around the backs of your betters.¡±

    Chester didn¡¯t respond. He was more concerned with the surroundings than the words of a soon-to-be dead vampire. There was no way that Lavigne would be out in the open like he was without some kind of trap or fallback. Nothing presented itself too obviously, but Chester remained cautious as he directed his people to fan out along the walls on either side of the door.

    ¡°Cat got your tongue, dog?¡± Lavigne taunted, poorly, then switched to French. ¡°Honorless cur, come forth and fight me properly. It is what you are here for, is it not?¡±

    ¡°It is not, actually,¡± Chester replied in the same language, happy to have extra time for his people to move. ¡°A fight is for an opponent, not an enemy. Besides, I¡¯m a shifter. We work in packs.¡±

    He directed his Wolfpack through the bonds, two of them shifting down to beast form and feinting in toward Lavigne. Even if they weren¡¯t as powerful in beast form, they were more agile and far smaller targets. Considering that Lavigne almost certainly had something planned, it was more important they be able to dodge.

    There was a snap of some spellform as Roy darted in, and he yelped as something lashed out from beneath the floor. He scampered backward on three legs, the fourth one pouring blood out onto the carpet, his foreleg a stump. A flex of pack energy staunched the bleeding, but Chester could feel the crackling of competing magics at the wound. That was something that would take a while to heal.

    ¡°Only you can approach me,¡± Lavigne said, pointing his saber at Chester. ¡°Your vaunted pack will not help you here,¡± he added. ¡°Once I tear you apart?¡ª¡±

    Lavigne¡¯s speech was interrupted as Vernon¡¯s team, having finally made it to the roof and rappelled down a floor, appeared at the top edge of the windows and fired. The vampire blurred into action, but even he couldn¡¯t dodge a shifter-directed fusillade of bullets completely. The mordite ammunition tore through Lavigne¡¯s body and sent him sprawling on the floor, still mouthing imprecations with his last breath.

    Chester watched dispassionately. It would have been far more difficult if Lavigne had kept his subordinates on the same level, instead of lording over them. But that was the difference between Chester and Lavigne. Chester and his Wolfpack were the fastest and strongest, but that just meant they could feint and lead with the least amount of risk. Roy¡¯s wound might have been lethal for a slower shifter. There would have been some satisfaction in disassembling Lavigne himself, but that was nothing compared to getting the job done right and bringing everyone home alive.

    ¡°Good job, everyone,¡± Chester said, reaching up to his earpiece. ¡°Send in the cleaners.¡±

    In a sense, actually killing their way through the building was the easy part. Now they had to make sure there was no evidence of shifters. Not even a trace. They¡¯d have to somehow break the spell trap that was on the carpet, and probably take away the carpet itself, given that Roy had bled on it.

    After all, they¡¯d never been there. It was the Ghost.

    ***

    Buying an armored van was more complicated than it should have been.

    Callum was somewhat staggered by the sheer variety of armored vehicles available to him, at least in theory. Most of them were old cash trucks, but there was a lot of military surplus knocking around up to and including honest-to-goodness APCs. Not that he wanted one of those, tempting as it was. They¡¯d stand out too much.

    A normal armored van wouldn¡¯t look like much, though. Put a ladder on one of them and it¡¯d be hard to tell it apart from some random utility vehicle. He definitely wanted the additional protection that an armored vehicle gave him, mostly because he needed a very secure place for a teleport plate, one that he could move around. That was the primary reason, but part of it was also that he wanted to be able to handle an attack like the one that had hit him in France.

    He actually had no idea what level of armor rating would be required to resist a spell like that, but he was pretty sure it would take more to punch through a proper armored car than a brick wall. It was magic, true, but he¡¯d seen that his constructs failed to work properly when they hit solid material. He didn¡¯t imagine that a fireball or whatever would just pass through obstacles. Mana wasn¡¯t entirely ephemeral.

    Hopefully he¡¯d never have to find out, but at the same time he felt a lot safer in a vehicle that would deflect rifle fire and small explosions. Heavy enough munitions would still be an issue, but he was dealing with the supernatural. An actual tank likely wouldn¡¯t be enough against a serious opponent.

    The guy who actually had the armored van, which looked like some generic white utility vehicle, was in fact quite happy to take gold bullion instead of cash. He reminded Callum of some of the people his father had hung around with, old and crusty and full of stories. The heavy Texas accent really helped round out the stereotype, but Callum wasn¡¯t complaining. The official sale was just a twenty-dollar bill and Callum had a new vehicle to use.

    Callum¡¯s only real objection was that it was a bit of a gas hog, and was bulkier than the pickup with an oddly floaty start and stop. Still easier to handle than the Winnebago, though, so he couldn¡¯t complain too much. The back was big enough to haul practically anything he would have wanted to put in the pickup, too, so it was just as handy.

    The best part was, he could just slide it into his portal cache rather than trying to figure out a way to drive both it and the pickup all the way back home. He was still tickled by how useful it was. Obviously he had to do so out of sight of the previous owner, but that was only a little bit awkward.

    Unfortunately, he was really damn low on enchanting stuff so he couldn¡¯t kit out the van as much as he might like. Not without cannibalizing supplies he¡¯d already earmarked for just-in-case weaponry and eventual home warding. He¡¯d really have to get more, but he was sure that the portal worlds were still being very closely guarded, and trying to get through one now would be idiotic.

    Not that his original trip was any great shakes, but he hadn¡¯t had much of a choice.

    There was a temptation to try and raid some depot somewhere, but that wasn¡¯t the same as taking from those who preyed on people. They had forfeited their right to property. GAR as a whole was definitely on his bad side, but there were a lot of people inside GAR as a whole who hadn¡¯t done anything wrong. Just stealing stuff from a random bunch of people who had no doubt paid for it with their own time and labor would make him no better than a common criminal.

    It was a problem he mused on as he took another trip down to his bunker to survey the ongoing construction work. Things seemed to be going well, but building a house took time. It¡¯d still be a couple months before he could move in, let alone start properly furnishing and doing magical experiments.

    For the first time in what seemed like ages he was on top of all the various crises and had time to focus on fundamentals. He still had years and years of magical theory and practice to catch up on, everything from basic magical reflexes to vis field uniformity exercises. Not to mention, he just needed more magical stamina.

    Between the rock-hucking and moving the armored van around, it was pretty obvious he didn¡¯t have much of a capacity. Studying his own vis with his perceptions, he didn¡¯t really see any significant change in his body, even when he was completely out of gas. Though it wasn¡¯t like he could tell a difference when he was biologically tired, so it was probably something closer to the molecular level than the thread level.

    At least he had enough of a tank to escape when he needed to, but crashing for twelve or eighteen hours afterward was not good. It also sent him looking for any biological understanding of vis, because if he got physically tired then there was some physical role it played in his biology. Unfortunately, the backup literature he¡¯d cached didn¡¯t have anything useful.

    The only real references to vis-exhaustion he could find were about when a mage was first learning how to construct their bubble. Or shell, or most officially, ¡°sphere of authority,¡± which sounded insanely pompous. The segment on the bubble was fascinating otherwise, though, since there were various basic social rules for interacting with other mages when bubbles would intersect.

    Generally, bubbles were supposed to be kept flexible so they¡¯d deflect each other and mages could do things like shake hands. Though, reading between the lines, mage society didn¡¯t have much in the way of casual social contact. That was reserved for only the closest of family or lovers, and going without a bubble entirely was akin to being naked, so it was basically only done when a mage was completely safe.

    That meant the very first mage he¡¯d killed had almost literally been caught with their pants down.

    A more powerful mage, though what powerful meant was left vague, could effectively shoulder a less powerful mage¡¯s bubble aside. That was, quite obviously, considered somewhat rude, but that didn¡¯t stop people from doing it. The whole thing sounded tedious, but Callum had to concede bubbles made some kind of sense.

    Or at least, it made sense in a world with low-grade inter-House feuds and other kinds of supernatural violence. The sort of world from five hundred years ago, not the modern one that ordinary people had spent a lot of time and blood building. Not exactly the kind of society he would spend his time in, if he had the choice.

    ¡°Hey, big man!¡± Lucy greeted him when he called, pre-empting his question with one of her own. ¡°Did you go and take out Lavigne?¡±

    ¡°What?¡± Callum blinked. ¡°Who? Oh, right. No, I didn¡¯t. What happened?¡±

    ¡°Oh man, he just vanished. The whole nest, all cleaned out and empty, everyone gone. No traces of anyone, the security tapes trashed, whole nine yards. Looks like your work, kinda, just because the outer wards didn¡¯t get tripped and there¡¯s no evidence of anything.¡±

    ¡°No, that wasn¡¯t me,¡± Callum said, frowning. His first thought was, naturally, Chester. He very well knew how absolutely insane being able to teleport was, and Chester had two sets of telepads. That didn¡¯t mean it was him, though, because it was one thing to arrive somewhere undetected, and it was another to eliminate an entire building undetected.

    ¡°I suppose I should have seen this coming,¡± he concluded glumly. ¡°Copycats. If anything, I should have expected this earlier. Why not take out a rival and blame it on me? It¡¯s not like I¡¯m going to issue a press release stating that I didn¡¯t do it.¡±

    ¡°I guess not, but like. That¡¯s just going to make things harder for you, isn¡¯t it?¡±

    ¡°It might?¡± Callum pursed his lips. ¡°I don¡¯t like it, but if I was nowhere near, they¡¯re just going to come up empty. Damn. I almost wish I could tip someone off that it wasn¡¯t me, but at the same time, there¡¯s no way to do that without it causing all kinds of problems. Besides, it¡¯s not my business.¡± It still rankled, though. Not that he had any objection to taking out Lavigne as such, but if such copycat crimes caught on then a lot of things might get blamed on him.

    On the other hand, they couldn¡¯t mimic the ability that made him so difficult for them to deal with: his physical distance from any kind of crime. His vague understanding was that copycats often got caught very quickly, because committing a crime in a certain way meant it was premeditated. That meant a paper trail, and that meant getting caught.

    ¡°If you say so, big man,¡± Lucy said, somewhat doubtfully. ¡°But if it wasn¡¯t you, who was it? The boss man?¡±

    ¡°Yah, probably,¡± Callum agreed. ¡°But maybe some other vamp was tipped off, who knows. It smells like high level politics and that¡¯s not a game that either of us want to play. If we ask Chester and he denies it, what are we going to say?¡±

    ¡°I guess,¡± Lucy grumbled. ¡°But I¡¯m a little hurt. Usually he lets me in on these kinds of escapades.¡±

    ¡°Mmm, but this one involves me. You¡¯d probably have told me, and I would¡¯ve objected. And he wouldn¡¯t have cared unless I pressed the issue, and I might have.¡± Callum sighed. ¡°I¡¯d appreciate it if you¡¯d tell him not to do that again, whether or not he admits that he did in the first place.¡± Technically Callum could talk to Chester himself, but he had enough foresight to know that was not a conversation he wanted to have.

    ¡°Will do, big man. Though the boss man doesn¡¯t take orders too well.¡±

    ¡°Yes, well, if he didn¡¯t do it, he¡¯s got nothing to worry about. If he did do it, he deserves it.¡±

    ¡°You¡¯re not the one who has to tell him!¡±

    ¡°Tell him if he has to growl at anyone, growl at me.¡±

    ¡°Ha! Man, do not make dog jokes at a shifter.¡±

    ¡°What, afraid they might bite you?¡± Callum grinned as he got Lucy to laugh. ¡°Anyway, it¡¯s a message from me. I¡¯m pretty sure he won¡¯t blame you. Didn¡¯t seem the type.¡±

    ¡°Nah. I¡¯ll let him know, big man.¡±

    ***

    ¡°I think we¡¯ve got something.¡± Agent Dave, no last name given or required, slapped down the folder on Jahn¡¯s desk. ¡°Well, there were a lot of somethings, but most of that was just people gambling or other stupid things. This¡­¡± He paused for effect. ¡°This is substantial.¡±

    ¡°How substantial?¡± Jahn asked, not particularly impressed by the theatrics.

    ¡°Over a hundred thousand dollars in gold. She tried to hide it, but large amounts of gold get noticed.¡±

    ¡°She?¡± He was impressed, now.

    ¡°Lucille Harper. Two large cash transactions, one just after the incident down in Florida, and another one right about the time that Lavigne fellow got hit.¡± Dave looked very smug. ¡°She did try to use different accounts, but all the actual exchange places she used where in the same geographical area so it wasn¡¯t too hard to localize it.¡±

    ¡°Hm.¡± Jahn didn¡¯t recognize the name, so he picked up the folder and flipped through it. She was just a dud, so it was no wonder he didn¡¯t recognize the name. ¡°She was already interviewed,¡± he said, somewhat doubtfully.

    ¡°Yeah, I pulled the video on that. Whoever you got to do it did not do a very good job. I spotted a couple of answers that were clearly evasions, and a couple of questions that were just flat out stupid. You should¡¯ve gotten that other lady, Black, to do all the interviews.¡±

    Jahn grimaced. Agent Black was definitely good at pulling out answers, given her fae background, but she¡¯d been focused on the high profile members of GAR. People who had real access, real connections, and real stakes. They just didn¡¯t have enough people with experience in questioning to handle the hundreds of GAR employees, so inevitably the less valuable targets had gone to less experienced BSE agents.

    ¡°What do you suggest?¡± Jahn knew that if he reported things up the chain, or really to anyone, they¡¯d want to rush in and grab Harper. He also knew that was a stupid idea, given how she¡¯d already proven to be at least somewhat resistant to questioning under compulsion.

    ¡°Bug her office. And her home. See who she talks to, and track them down. Depending on how plugged in she is to the network, we could uncover the entire group if we just give her enough rope.¡± Dave reached over the desk to flip to the end of the stack of pages, and tapped the spec sheet he¡¯d included for the devices in question. ¡°Don¡¯t think a place like this would have problems with the budget.¡±

    ¡°No, indeed.¡± The only reason Jahn wasn¡¯t spending more money was because he didn¡¯t have anything to spend it on. BSE was crawling all over Lavigne¡¯s office already, and adding more people wouldn¡¯t help that. There were really no other leads to go on, since the fae were being unreasonable and he was already applying what pressure he could.

    ¡°Very well, you¡¯re cleared to do that. A full work-up, everything. I¡¯ll have Danforth and Black join you; they¡¯re wasted on the Lavigne scene.¡±

    ¡°Fantastic,¡± Dave beamed. ¡°I think we¡¯ve finally got a good lead here. We just have be patient and reel it in.¡±

 Chapter 18 â€“ Ramifications

    ¡°Thanks, Lucy,¡± Callum said.

    ¡°Hey, no problem big man. Sorry I couldn¡¯t help more.¡±

    ¡°It¡¯s fine,¡± he assured her. ¡°I figured as much.¡±

    ¡°Well, good luck,¡± she said. ¡°Check in later.¡±

    ¡°Will do,¡± he assured her, and hung up. Removing the battery as usual, he stuck them both in the glove compartment and focused on driving.

    With the bunker construction under control and the bulk of his enchanting done, Callum figured that the best use of his time was to go foraging. Not so much for things, since Callum was fairly flush and the portal worlds were off limits, as for information. Actually analyzing and experimenting with the ward designs he¡¯d gotten showed him that there were a lot of bits he couldn¡¯t do, since they took specialized vis. Which meant he needed more options.

    He''d checked with Lucy but like he¡¯d thought, all the places where there might be repositories of complex enchanting were in the portal worlds or GAR headquarters, and so off limits. There were mage Houses on Earth, too, but that was just as bad as trying to break into GAR, if not worse. At least GAR expected people coming and going all the time, whereas a private estate would suspect anyone hanging around uninvited to harbor ill intent.

    That limited him to smaller GAR offices and private businesses, but the book run where he bumped into Gayle showed there were a number of supernatural businesses about, though primarily near large cities. It¡¯d take a lot of driving, but that¡¯s why he had the van. That was something he could park overnight and be relatively certain it¡¯d remain unmolested, while he slept at the trailer in Texas.

    For the moment he¡¯d shifted his telepad from up near his homebond cache to inside the van, letting him jump back and forth between wherever he was driving and his home. If for some reason he had to use the homebond, he¡¯d have to make his way south manually. Although if some attack forced him to recall and he couldn¡¯t take the telepad with him, the trailer was a write-off anyway.

    Callum was basically on a road trip, with the list of GAR¡¯s offices as a guide. Lucy didn¡¯t have a list of private businesses, partly because she didn¡¯t want to risk poking around GAR¡¯s documents at the moment and partly because GAR didn¡¯t even have a comprehensive list. At least not all in one place. Most of the private little things were offshoots of Houses, and so governed more by whichever given House than by GAR proper.

    He''d scoped out the Dallas GAR office more than once, so there was nothing new there, but he hadn¡¯t snooped on any of the surrounding businesses. In fact he¡¯d stayed well away, since he didn¡¯t want to attract attention, but his range meant he could peek at them without risking anything. The anonymous white van with a ladder on top meant he could park wherever he liked for as long as he liked and people would just look right past him.

    The new armored vehicle wasn¡¯t too bad to drive even in the city streets, despite its issues. Even with better shocks to compensate for the extra weight, it accelerated slowly and braked weirdly, making him keep the speed lower than he otherwise might have. Still, he wasn¡¯t at risk of rear-ending anyone and just having the protection was worth the money he¡¯d paid for it. He wasn¡¯t exactly relaxed when he sensed mage bubbles around, but didn¡¯t feel as horribly exposed.

    Considering the increased mana concentration around GAR offices and the access to teleporters, all the supernaturals tended to cluster in the same spots. Fae, shifter, and vamps sprawled out more than mages and in different ways, but he couldn¡¯t reproduce or use their types of magic anyway. His plan was to poke around near the offices, use the trails in vis to track people¡¯s comings and goings, and just generally snoop.

    Part of the problem with foci was that he didn¡¯t even know what tools were available. He knew some of the common ones, of course, but there had to be dozens or hundreds of specialty types he could use, assuming he could find a template. Even something for doing laundry or heating meals could be incredibly useful, and he still hadn¡¯t found a version of the self-cleaning focus that didn¡¯t use air and water vis in the enchantment mechanism.

    Unfortunately, he kept coming up pretty much empty. The personal foci were generally kept inside a mage¡¯s bubble, and those were practically opaque to Callum¡¯s senses. He was pretty sure less so than before, as some weaker ones were verging on the translucent, but he definitely couldn¡¯t resolve the intricacies of a commercial focus through that kind of murk.

    Ultimately he decided the issue was that Dallas wasn¡¯t really a major supernatural hub. At least, not compared to other places like Miami. After spending two days poking around without much to show for it, he called Lucy again. The list of supernatural areas was useful so far as it went, but he wanted the opinion of someone who actually understood supernatural society.

    ¡°Hey Lucy!¡± He drove along the interstate, an hour or so away from the urban center.

    ¡°What¡¯s up, big man? Just couldn¡¯t wait to hear my voice again?¡±

    ¡°That too,¡± Callum said with a laugh. ¡°Really wanted your quick opinion on something. What are the biggest supernatural places in the US? Like, the cities or areas where there are a bunch of mages and such?¡±

    ¡°Oh, uhh. I¡¯d say probably Vegas, New York, and Miami? Used to be more but a lot of Houses have moved into the portal worlds.¡±

    ¡°Huh.¡± Callum wondered if, in the end, GAR wasn¡¯t somewhat of a self-solving problem. The more they migrated off-world, the less reason they had to meddle in Earth¡¯s affairs. Of course, unless all the supernaturals went back there too, a lot of the fundamental problems remained. ¡°Well, that¡¯s all I needed. As always, you¡¯re the best, Lucy.¡±

    ¡°Hey, you know it big man!¡±

    ¡°I¡¯ve got my marching orders, then. I¡¯ll let you know how everything goes.¡±

    ¡°You¡¯d better!¡±

    Callum chuckled and hung up, juggling phones as he brought up a route into Nevada. Las Vegas was the closest of the three hotspots, and he was pretty sure he didn¡¯t want to go back to Miami anyway. The fae there might recognize him even with a disguise on.

    For this road trip he¡¯d gotten himself a little bit of cosmetic putty and altered the shape of his nose, plus gotten his hair cut short and wore a cap. Combined with winter clothing, he was probably, likely, hopefully unrecognizable by sight. If he was going to be hanging around supernatural areas, even with the distance his perceptions afforded him, he didn¡¯t want to look like any photos they might have.

    Unlike when he was traveling by motorhome, he didn¡¯t have to scrupulously plan where he would park for the night. He didn¡¯t need special facilities or attend to special maintenance, or even use gas station bathrooms. All that he needed was a space where the van wouldn¡¯t get towed, and he could go back to the Texas trailer.

    It was an entirely different experience with his home in his back pocket, one he¡¯d recommend to anyone who was a spatial mage with teleportation enchantments. Or could at least could tag along with someone like that. He was pretty sure that the people who went out to deal with the front in the portal worlds had already discovered the wonders of being able to return to a friendly redoubt at any time, though maybe they didn¡¯t use that kind of thing on purpose. It was hard to take a threat seriously if it was just a day trip.

    It was a thought that made him step back and doublecheck that he was being cautious enough. Now that he had an easy way back to his home, it was possible that he¡¯d start behaving in ways that would make him stand out. A van made it less likely that anyone would notice if he toted around something that would be out of place for a tourist or visitor, but he¡¯d have to make sure he didn¡¯t act too stupid.

    Especially in Las Vegas. Even in the normal world, it had a reputation. He imagined it¡¯d be even worse on the supernatural side.

    ***

    Callum Wells was an annoyingly slippery customer. His calls were few and short, and when he did talk it was far enough away from any of the GAR teleporters that a strike team couldn¡¯t make it in time. They could localize his position thanks to the cell towers, but if it wasn¡¯t a place with surveillance it wasn¡¯t much of a lead when he was gone long before anyone arrived. Nor was he treading on fae territory, which would let them track him with fae magic.

    The signal also vanished completely after the conversation was over, so they couldn¡¯t even keep tracking him. The best they could do was try and piece together any common cars from the surveillance they did have, but there were just too few data points. Of course they¡¯d sent teams scouring the areas each time he called, but there was no trace of any magic and half the time the call had been from a highway or interstate.

    ¡°Depowering his phone every time,¡± Dave commented. ¡°That¡¯s not what a normal person does. He¡¯s gotta know someone¡¯s after him.¡± That was probably true, but there¡¯d been no trace of that in any of the conversations. In fact, the conversations leaned more toward friendly chatter with Harper. Listening to borderline flirting between a criminal and a traitor was not particularly fun. He didn¡¯t even say anything concrete, up until the last call.

    ¡°I¡¯ve got my marching orders, then. I¡¯ll let you know how everything goes.¡±

    ¡°I do wonder who he¡¯s working for,¡± Jahn said, as the line went dead. They¡¯d already dispatched a BSE team but barring some miracle there wouldn¡¯t be anyone around by the time they got there.

    ¡°I¡¯m more worried about what he¡¯s going to do when he reaches his destination. That¡¯s three cities that we need to warn and get reinforced.¡± Danforth stood. ¡°Good luck. Tell me if there¡¯s anything else that comes through.¡±

    Jahn nodded and waved in dismissal. He didn¡¯t think that Wells was headed to any of those cities in order to wreak havoc ¡ª the man was a vigilante, certainly, and his group had done incalculable damage, but not nearly as much as they could have given the demonstrated talents. With how they could slip past wards and evade detection, there could have been a lot of casualties, thefts, and sabotage. Yet Wells was still asking basic questions, as if he¡¯d actually only run into the supernatural a year or so ago.

    The whole thing still didn¡¯t add up. Too many question marks, and they¡¯d yet to get a glimpse of anyone other than Wells and Hall. Though it made sense why such an organization would have a spatial mage as a designated point man. Wells clearly had an insane, near-Archmage level of mobility, and while Duvall would never risk a spatial mage without a great deal of backup, the more aggressive approach was clearly working.

    If anything, he wished they¡¯d caught on to Lucile Harper earlier, so they¡¯d have more time to entrap Wells and his organization. Slow and careful was the play here, but everyone was agitating that something be done. Despite Archmage Hargrave putting him in charge of the overall investigation, he wasn¡¯t going to be able to hide Harper¡¯s involvement for long and when that came out, he¡¯d have to deal with all kinds of people who wanted a piece.

    In the end, GAR existed to make things easier for the Archmages. The amount of pressure he, or anyone at the Guild, could put on the Archmages was mostly limited by how nice they were willing to be. With Hargrave, Duvall, and Fane all personally interested, he was sure at some point one of them would swoop in to try and take Harper for themselves, because of course they knew better than he did.

    Then there was all that mess with the younger Hargrave and BSE, and Taisen would surely want that resolved as soon as possible. A rogue organization was BSE¡¯s responsibility so they should be willing to be patient, but not everyone had the same priorities. He could, ironically, count on the mundane help more because their thinking aligned with his, and they had no stakes in any of the political morass.

    ¡°Do you think he knows that we¡¯re listening in, somehow?¡± Jahn was fairly sure Agent Dave¡¯s preparations had been adequate. They¡¯d had to break into Harper¡¯s place to physically plant their devices, and even there they¡¯d been limited by some of Harper¡¯s protections. Not so limited that they couldn¡¯t compromise all her communications, but some of the more elaborate snoopery would have been too obvious.

    ¡°No,¡± Dave said, with flat certainty. ¡°That doesn¡¯t mean that they don¡¯t suspect it. Depending on how paranoid people are, they might have a lot of code words and anything that¡¯s not said in person and privately uses some variant of that. Most of it sounds too natural to me, but it¡¯s possible.¡±

    ¡°And we¡¯d have to take Harper to figure it out,¡± Jahn mused.

    ¡°If you can turn her, that¡¯d be great, but it doesn¡¯t sound like he gives her much information to begin with. I mean, wait long enough and someone will slip up, that¡¯s for sure, but I don¡¯t know how urgent this all is.¡±

    ¡°Urgent enough.¡± Jahn frowned. ¡°But she¡¯s our only lead. I want to play it carefully.¡± They could go in and try to compel her to entrap him, but Harper had already demonstrated an ability to resist or corrupt compulsions. For the moment, it didn¡¯t seem worth the risk.

    A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

    ¡°Tell me if he calls again,¡± Jahn concluded. ¡°I better go follow Danforth. We have three cities to reinforce.¡±

    ***

    Las Vegas was very strange.

    The whole thing was like some alien planet, a full city in the middle of a scrub desert for no apparent reason. All the people living in the dull sprawl of suburbia only there to feed the sudden neon and skyline of the Strip. It was as far from his own West Virginia home as he could imagine and made him suddenly homesick.

    Of course he¡¯d studied some of the stuff in Vegas, because the buildings there were famous for various reasons, but it was different seeing them with his own eyes. Not surprisingly, the supernatural presence seemed more concentrated on the Strip than on the suburbs. The GAR office itself wasn¡¯t far from the Luxor, the latter of which had a lot of twisty-swirly fae magic around it. It was still a perfectly normal hotel, so he didn¡¯t think it was a fae stronghold exactly, but there was clearly something going on there.

    Of course he didn¡¯t drive down the Strip itself, not willing to fight the traffic or wanting to put a van with an enchantment in it so close to supernatural activity. So long as it was inactive he was pretty sure it was difficult to detect from any distance, but driving it through a bunch of high-powered traffic was just asking for trouble.

    There were mages zipping about, active vis senses sweeping the area as they patrolled. The wards glowing in his perceptions clearly had been deemed not enough, though he wasn¡¯t sure why the Vegas area was more on edge than Miami had been. Though it could very well be his fault, after he¡¯d raided the Miami branch. Or it might be that the supernaturals in Vegas were more fractious.

    The more he circled around the area the less he liked it. There was just too much going on, with all different kinds of supernaturals out and about and alert. If this was business as usual for Las Vegas he probably wouldn¡¯t be able to blend in properly, and if it wasn¡¯t, he definitely wouldn¡¯t be able to wander through unobserved. He didn¡¯t have a bubble so he didn¡¯t stand out, but he still had more vis than a normal person so stringent enough security checks would catch him.

    Then there were the wards. They were mostly the same stuff that he¡¯d gotten past before, but here and there some secondary enchantment fuzzed the area, like some kind of mana jammer. He could still see through it with sufficient effort, but he imagined it¡¯d make wriggling vis threads through a tedious prospect.

    He wasn¡¯t all that surprised that there were some defenses that seemed specifically geared at him, not after the furor he¡¯d caused, but it was still a little depressing how quickly they¡¯d been deployed. Not that the defenses would do all that much if he was determined, but they were more than he wanted to deal with. Just getting some more enchantment foci to play with was not worth daring an entire city of riled-up supernaturals.

    Callum turned around and drove away.

    It was irritating how little activity it took to shut him out. The improved defensive warding was at best an annoyance, but the people were the real barrier. He couldn¡¯t fake being a mage, and between his glamour blindness and mage-quality vis, couldn¡¯t quite pass as a normal person either.

    A sufficiently attentive person could figure him out; it didn¡¯t even need to be some elite. The supernatural version of if you see something, say something was probably the best defense they had. What Callum had was the natural advantage of the attacker: he could choose the time and place.

    Las Vegas, halfway through December, was not a good time or place. After his stunt in Miami, maybe all of the larger areas were off-limits until they cooled down. There was no way they could stay on full alert forever, and there were probably plenty of smaller supernatural areas he could crib knowledge from. It¡¯d be more work than doing the rounds of a supernatural city, but he was probably being too greedy anyway.

    He made sure to stay scrupulously within the speed limit as he drove back out of the suburbs. At least, until he got far enough out that he was more likely to get pulled over for being too slow, and then he just took a random road that headed out into the desert. Supernatural presence was thin on the ground out there, as was everything else.

    Callum pulled off the road, off behind a jut of rock, and got out long enough to open his gut-portal. The van went into his cache, and he closed the portal and dropped a cheap piece of scrap with a vis cleaner before invoking the homebond. Only when he was safely in the little shed in Montana did he relax, rubbing at his eyes.

    ¡°That was a bust,¡± he said to himself, and opened the gut-portal once again to get out the maps of supernatural stuff that Lucy had supplied him. From what he¡¯d seen in Miami and Vegas, it wasn¡¯t just mages that had enchantments; fae and shifters had some small trinkets as well. Which meant they were something that could be manually operated and only used mana, so he was very curious about how that worked. Visions of hooking up enchantments to computers danced in his head, though he was sure if it was so easy it would already have been done.

    Or maybe it had been done and he just hadn¡¯t spotted it. There were entire swaths of supernatural society he hadn¡¯t taken a close look at. Anyone wandering through the fields of the Midwest wouldn¡¯t know about the Grand Canyon, or redwood forests. Computers were pervasive enough that he should have seen more integration than the magic dongles used for supernatural phones and laptops, but most people didn¡¯t see all the servers that made the internet run. He had to keep reminding himself really knew very little about magic society at large.

    While he was at the Montana shelter he doublechecked the homebond enchant, but it still seemed fine. The pure mordite hadn¡¯t noticeably deteriorated. With that chore done, he debated just putting the teleport plate back in place and returning home. After wasting all that time driving up only to have to bail the moment he¡¯d gotten a look at Vegas, he was pretty well fed up with the whole idea.

    Instead he sighed and got out the laptop, ignoring the low charge, and pulled up the maps Lucy had given him. Not an itemized listing so much as regions generally covered by various factions and GAR branches and Houses. There were all kinds of overlapping spheres of authority, which probably resulted in a ridiculous morass of bureaucratic and political wrangling, but that meant it wasn¡¯t likely all of them would be on such a high alert.

    He did want to avoid entangling Chester though, so he decided he¡¯d head west, out the California way, and see what he could see. After some teleporting to get to a place where there were actual roads, he retrieved the van and headed out. Only once he was a few hours away from his cache did he call Lucy again, putting the phone on speaker as he drove.

    ¡°Hey, big man! How was your trip?¡± Not that he¡¯d specified a trip, but Lucy could connect the dots.

    ¡°Learned a few things, but not what I wanted. They were kinda stirred up so it¡¯s probably better if I go elsewhere,¡± he told her. ¡°Just curious if you knew anything about that.¡±

    ¡°Not that I¡¯ve heard,¡± Lucy said. ¡°But they¡¯ve been pretty extreme ever since Miami, so, it might just be that.¡±

    ¡°True enough,¡± he allowed. It might take months for things to die down from that kind of stunt. That was why he¡¯d gone hiking, before. Probably, he should just wait for the bunker be done but he wasn¡¯t sure he could hole up for months without something to work on. What he could, and maybe should do was buckle down for serious magical experimentation, and see if he could grind out any improvements by sheer repetition.

    The main reason he hadn¡¯t was that he was so far behind other mages. He couldn¡¯t outgun them or outlast them, and he had no idea how many countermeasures they had waiting for him once they knew what he could do. What he needed were more tricks, more bits and pieces of things that he could throw at the wall or, more to the point, at anyone who came after him.

    That couldn¡¯t work forever either, but most people would consider being a magical outlaw a losing proposition to begin with. He had a little more optimism than that, but at the same time he knew that most of his approaches would only be effective the first time. Or from ambush.

    ¡°Guess I¡¯ll just have to be a bit more circumspect in the future,¡± he concluded, mostly to himself.

    ¡°Gotta say, big man, I don¡¯t think you have it in you to be circumspect.¡±

    ¡°Maybe that¡¯s what I want them to think,¡± Callum said in amusement. ¡°But I suppose my track record is rather dramatic.¡±

    ¡°I haven¡¯t heard of anything like it,¡± Lucy agreed. ¡°But you know, these days I wonder if that actually means anything. It¡¯s not like they really are talking about you officially. It¡¯s mostly the fae swapping tales and everyone knows they¡¯re notorious gossips.¡±

    ¡°Yeah, I would seriously doubt any official history of theirs.¡± After his trip to the Night Lands, he wasn¡¯t even certain the threats that the various portal worlds had were real. Or still real, anyway. It wouldn¡¯t be unreasonable to think that supernaturals had driven the worst offenders extinct.

    He would have, in their place.

    ¡°Sounding a bit conspiracy theorist there, big man,¡± Lucy observed.

    ¡°Nah. Just compare any two country¡¯s official versions of history when it comes to a war,¡± Callum said, downshifting as he coasted along a mountain road, foot hovering over the brake. ¡°If they were on opposite sides, sometimes even the same side, those are very different versions of facts. What gets recorded is whatever suits the person doing the recording at the time. It¡¯s just basic human nature.¡±

    ¡°I suppose it might be,¡± Lucy said.

    Callum didn¡¯t push. He knew he had a rather more cynical view of most of human nature than most people, and that was fine. Probably for the best, even.

    ¡°Anyway I¡¯ll catch up with you in a bit, I¡¯m losing signal here.¡±

    ¡°You really like being out in the sticks, don¡¯t you big man?¡±

    ¡°That¡¯s where all the fun is,¡± he told her.

    ¡°You¡¯re gonna have to tell me how that works one of these days,¡± Lucy said. ¡°Talk to you later!¡±

    ***

    ¡°So they didn¡¯t even see him,¡± Duvall said with a scowl. ¡°He was there, at one of those sites, and even if he didn¡¯t get what he wanted, he was there. With all the wards and jammers and watchers, still nobody saw him.¡±

    ¡°We couldn¡¯t shut down the entire city,¡± Jahn pointed out. ¡°Anyway, if we had it would have been obvious.¡±

    ¡°Then there¡¯s not much point in laying in wait for him, is there?¡± Duvall pointed out. ¡°Just take the dud to the BSE facility as bait. That¡¯s the only way we¡¯re going to get Wells, or any of those people, somewhere we can make sure they won¡¯t get away.¡±

    ¡°We¡¯ve barely been at this a week,¡± Jahn replied, frowning. ¡°Given enough time¡ª¡±

    ¡°Given enough time they¡¯ll have complete reign to carry out their plans,¡± Duvall cut him off. ¡°Besides, you and I both know that without Wells they have no transportation or screening. The gunmen and financial backers are irrelevant, and besides, we can make Wells tell us about them.¡±

    ¡°You still want to take him alive?¡± Jahn said doubtfully.

    ¡°Of course! He¡¯s a spatial mage! And at least marginally competent too, despite his obvious lack of teaching. Never mind the fact that we have to know his bloodline. Spatial mages are far too rare.¡± Duvall jabbed her finger at Jahn. ¡°Your way hasn¡¯t worked. Mine will. Get her, take her to the Deep Wilds, and make sure you have people set up to catch him.¡±

    ¡°Archmage Hargrave¡ª¡±

    ¡°If you won¡¯t, I will,¡± Duvall said. ¡°I¡¯ve had enough of my time wasted arguing about what should be done. We tried it your way, and all we¡¯ve done is lose assets, people, and trust. All the while they run about unopposed and do whatever they want. No, this ends now. We do it my way.¡±

    Jahn pressed his lips together, then nodded. There wasn¡¯t much he could say to that, and in the end, he really couldn¡¯t override an Archmage. Not one that was dead set on a course, at least. He wasn¡¯t even sure that Hargrave would disagree. He was more interested in Wells personally than in the organization, anyway.

    ¡°Very well, I¡¯ll bring her in.¡± He picked up his phone and dialed up Danforth. His partner, the fae, would make it easier for them to bring in Harper. Not that a dud could really do much to resist a mage, but compulsion was easier than force. Quieter, at the very least.

    Duvall waited, visibly radiating impatience, until he¡¯d relayed the orders to Danforth and hung up. Then she gave him a short nod and vanished in a brief twist of vis. It was easy to believe Wells was at Archmage level considering that Duvall could pull off the trick of teleporting around as she pleased, though admittedly her active vis senses were fairly obvious.

    Jahn crossed into the other room, where Dave was sitting at the monitoring station, and gave him a wave. The mundane raised his eyebrows and stood up, stretching as he got out of the chair. There were a couple others under Dave, but Jahn had never tried to instruct them himself, since he was not familiar with the particulars of their expertise.

    ¡°Boss-lady chew you out?¡±

    ¡°A bit,¡± Jahn admitted. ¡°Looks like we¡¯re done here. We¡¯ll get you debriefed and paid.¡± A little bit of fae tinkering would remove any untoward knowledge of the supernatural, and they¡¯d be available the next time GAR or the BSE needed mundane agent expertise. It was butting into the Department of Acquisition¡¯s turf a little bit to turn them loose again, but he¡¯d bet on Grand Magus Taisen and Archmage Hargrave over that harpy Constance.

    ¡°You know what this means, boys,¡± Dave said cheerfully to his underlings. ¡°Paperwork!¡±

    There were assorted groans, and Jahn left them to it. He needed to go explain things to Grand Magus Taisen, before Danforth and Black showed up with an unexplained inmate. Fortunately, the head of BSE was easier to deal with than most Archmages, so long as there was no politics involved.

    Besides, if it came down to it, he would bet on Taisen over Wells.

    ***

    ¡°Lucille Harper, you will stop what you are doing and come out here.¡± Felicia Black¡¯s voice rang out in the basement, and the sound of typing stopped. Even with the protection afforded Ray by the special techniques he¡¯d learned, Felicia¡¯s voice carried a commanding tone. Though she was quiet and soft-spoken most of the time, when it was time for business she leaned into her siren heritage and grabbed attention.

    Harper emerged from her office with the slightly stiff movements of people under heavy compulsion. Not that Ray was worried that Harper would be able to resist it at all. Felicia¡¯s abilities were a lot more advanced than any but the oldest of the vampires, and her magic was a lot more difficult to resist. While the vampires often needed a vis bypass to do anything to mages, Felicia could affect almost anyone directly.

    ¡°Lucille Harper,¡± Ray said. ¡°You¡¯ve been found to be in collusion with Callum Wells. Your rights under GAR are forfeit and you will be remanded into the custody of the Bureau of Secret Protection.¡±

    Harper didn¡¯t say anything, completely under Felicia¡¯s influence, but Ray could see the fear in her eyes. He almost felt sorry for her, but only almost. She¡¯d been helping someone who¡¯d murdered mages, vampires, and fae. There was no telling what havoc he¡¯d wreak in the future, especially if he had someone inside GAR.

    ¡°You will follow us,¡± Felicia added, as Ray went over and cuffed Harper¡¯s wrists behind her back, using a vis blocker even if Harper was supposed to be a dud. Not that he expected any trouble, but Wells had already proven to be an unpleasant surprise. There was no point in risking a sudden and unexpected use of magic.

    They escorted her out of the basement and over to the teleportation pads, where one had already been reserved for transportation to the BSE facility. Those teleportation anchors weren¡¯t normally kept in the main area of GAR, which was why one of the BSE agents was in the switchboard mezzanine to oversee the transfer. The procession attracted a few stares, but not many, since there weren¡¯t too many people around that time of day, and only a few of the teleport booths were seeing any use.

    He linked his mark into the teleportation matrix, while Felicia discreetly palmed her charm, and the white walls of the BSE entrance facility replaced the paneled wood of GAR Midwest. If it weren¡¯t for the thick mana it would be impossible to tell it was in the Deep Wilds, since there were purposely no windows in the holding area. He glanced over at Felicia, but the BSE facility had feeder portals so vampires and fae could still function, so she didn¡¯t look too disturbed by it.

    The sound of their footfalls on the tile floor echoed off the walls as they escorted Harper to the interrogation room. Although only Ray and Felicia were supposed to interview Harper, there were a number observers in the next room, including two Archmages and the Master of Weltentor. It really wasn¡¯t possible to be in any deeper trouble than Harper was.

    They steered her into the interrogation room and Felicia ordered her to sit across from them. Ray stood behind Felicia, linking into the room¡¯s monitoring enchantments, and making sure it was transmitting to the observation room. This was not an interrogation they wanted to flub.

    ¡°Lucille Harper,¡± Felicia said. ¡°Tell us everything you know about Callum Wells.¡±

 Chapter 19 â€“ Recriminations

    Callum dialed Lucy¡¯s number and frowned as it rang. Ever since the shake-up at GAR he¡¯d made sure only to call in the evening when she was home, and while he didn¡¯t think she had nothing better to do than wait for him to call she¡¯d always answered before. Once again, any break in normal behavior made him anxious. After the third ring someone answered.

    ¡°Callum Wells.¡± It wasn¡¯t Lucy¡¯s voice. He nearly dropped the phone as he fumbled in a spasm of panic, barely hearing the rest of whatever spiel the man on the other end had for him. ¡°?¡ªAgent Ray Danforth and?¡ª¡± Finally he stabbed the call end button then steered off to the side of the road and yanked out the components out of the phone. Then, lacking any nearby bodies of water within his perceptions, teleported the bits outside and ran over them several times before getting back on the road.

    He felt sick. Somewhere in the back of his head he¡¯d always known there was a risk that they¡¯d find Lucy, especially after they¡¯d interviewed everyone. But at the same time, since she¡¯d already passed the magically-compelled interrogation, he¡¯d thought she was safe. Even if she wasn¡¯t, he wasn¡¯t about to tell someone how to live their life. That was the exact problem he had with GAR, and it was wrong to inflict it on someone else.

    Now he wished he had said something to her, though he knew that wouldn¡¯t have gone well. At least, he sure wouldn¡¯t want someone else butting in and telling him how to live his life. Even and especially if it was from good intentions. That was really the worst kind of condescension.

    It was a good thing that he was on a mostly untraveled back road somewhere on the border between Idaho and Washington State, otherwise he might have run the risk of crashing into someone. He sure wasn¡¯t able to pay close attention to the road, fingers trembling with stress he wasn¡¯t able to release while he was essentially fleeing from where he¡¯d placed the call.

    Eventually he pulled off at a runaway truck ramp. There was enough random detritus around that he could just enchant loose bits of metal with his cleanup pattern before he teleported himself and the van through to his cache. Moving the portal through itself was always an odd experience, though he¡¯d found that it mostly only collapsed if he used threads, the instability interfering with the portal structure. If he used tubes, it was perfectly fine; the portal didn¡¯t care where it was located.

    Callum sat down in the cool darkness of the cave and rubbed his eyes. He¡¯d been intending and hoping that after the Miami thing he could just lay low, collect enchantments, and work on his general prowess. Perfect his tricks and invent new ones, maybe something as useful as the gut-portal. Admittedly, there wasn¡¯t much that could be as handy as that, but there was no telling what he could come up with if he had time to just sit and play around.

    Part of him regretted just hiking around for two months and not doing any real magic practice, but the fact was he couldn¡¯t have done anything useful without enchantments. Probably. Either way, he¡¯d needed that time.

    There had been a lot to digest out on his very long hike. Mulling over the people he¡¯d killed, over how he was a fugitive with no real prospects. Thinking about his prior thirty years of life, now that he knew magic, and wondering whether that latent magic had somehow caused his wife¡¯s death. The possibility that just being around him might have affected Selene, or maybe even his parents, was not a very palatable one.

    Ultimately he had to come to terms with the fact that he couldn¡¯t have, or wouldn¡¯t have, done anything different. The best he could do was to work on his own abilities, so as to not waste the opportunities he¡¯d been given. He still sincerely intended to take that time to work on making himself a better mage, but he had to do something about Lucy, first. Part of him was guiltily glad that he¡¯d never shared anything too incriminating, or even called her from any of his safehouses. That didn¡¯t mean he was totally safe; they probably knew he was in Texas and there was no telling how long they¡¯d been tracking his phone.

    The Texas house was probably a lost cause and at the very least he¡¯d want to change license plates or something for his van. It was generic enough that getting the numbers on it altered would be sufficient to preserve its identity. Obviously they didn¡¯t know it already, or he¡¯d have been pulled over somewhere, but given enough time and data crunching they might be able to figure it out. He couldn¡¯t verify he¡¯d never called from areas with some kind of surveillance. Despite the part of his mind screaming at him to do something about Lucy, he had to check over his own safety before he could start contemplating it.

    Callum got up and paced the length of the concrete floor he¡¯d installed, making his way by sense instead of sight. While he did have LED lamps scattered around, he didn¡¯t actually need them except to read. For a little bit all he did was walk, trying to shake out the buzzing adrenaline and clear the taste of stress from his mouth, his stomach churning with worry over Lucy.

    The problem was that his attempts to insulate himself from everyone meant that he didn¡¯t actually know much about Lucy¡¯s own situation. He knew she worked for Alpha Chester and had a residence in that area, and that she worked for GAR, but that was it. Aside from the phone number she¡¯d given him, he had no way to get in contact with her ¡ª not that any such contact was possible if GAR had snatched her away. But if he¡¯d known more, maybe he could have found a trail.

    As it was he had exactly one contact who might know something, and that wasn¡¯t even someone he could talk to on his own. The card Alpha Chester had given him once was long gone, assuming that number was still being used. Not that he¡¯d trust phones anyway. If they got Lucy to talk they¡¯d know Chester was involved, and while Chester might have political protection that didn¡¯t stop people from tapping his lines or whatever.

    He would need to talk face to face. Or at least, voice to voice, in a way that would keep anyone from eavesdropping. Either way, he¡¯d have to travel physically, though the more he thought about it, the less he thought he¡¯d really need to be there in person. His implant and cache had really gotten him thinking about portals, and the abuses thereof when he could push his perceptions and magic through them.

    One of the items he¡¯d created was a second pair of portal disks, two dime-sized metal pieces, and there was no reason that he couldn¡¯t send half of that in lieu of his actual body. Such a thing wouldn¡¯t work everywhere ¡ª he¡¯d already found that the portals spawned by the enchantments were fairly fragile and it would be easy for any mage to shut it down even by accident. They¡¯d work well enough to insulate him from shifters, though.

    It wasn¡¯t that he distrusted Alpha Chester, exactly. The man had proven to be as good as his word and seemed to be a fair dealer. It was just that Callum was very aware of how massively outclassed he was when he was within physical proximity of a shifter. They weren¡¯t human. He might well say something deeply offensive in shifter society and that was something he¡¯d rather be at a distance for.

    He spent a few minutes chewing over the concept before committing to anything, but didn¡¯t see anything really wrong with it. Except maybe the implicit insult in not actually arriving in person, but there was nothing to be done about that. Besides, if he was never physically there, that made it easier for everyone to assume there was no contact.

    Callum teleported himself back up to Montana, but instead of getting out his van or his truck, he got the chair. The third or fourth version of his flying chair, he¡¯d lost count, was practically identical to the previous, with the roll frame and shelves and a tarp, but was somewhat smaller. Since he didn¡¯t need to carry as much with him, the gut portal being superior to any kind of shelving, less volume was definitely better. The Alcubierre trick was extremely vis-intensive and his reserves weren¡¯t exactly enormous.

    One of the changes he¡¯d made was to add a tank of oxygen. It was far too easy to get extremely high up and he didn¡¯t want to suffocate if he made some kind of mistake. Not that he planned to do another jaunt like he had in France; that had come far too close to him exiting the atmosphere entirely or going into freefall from thousands of feet up. No, he¡¯d do things safely, but safely also meant he had to be prepared for emergencies.

    He invoked his glamour focus and the gravitykinesis field, shielding himself and lifting the chair into the air. Since he was already up in the mountains he had a fairly good view and his first jaunt, aimed down at the ground, got him pretty far to the south and east. Winut was a fairly small target, but he could get most of the way there by the very coarse navigation afforded him through the flying chair.

    One jaunt brought him into weather, and he was glad that the tarp provided some protection because, even bundled as he was, being hammered by sleet was not a fun experience. Lifting himself up only meant he was surrounded by fog, so he actually had to switch to the pickup and drive for a while toward his location. He wasn¡¯t going to risk running into something he couldn¡¯t see when completely surrounded by cloud.

    When he actually made it to the Winut area, he was very cautions. The Langleys were probably well-disposed toward him, but assumptions were a very bad thing in his situation and even if they were happy to see him, there might be watchers about. Possibly even watchers the Langleys didn¡¯t know about.

    He¡¯d just have to hope he could track down someone he knew without getting spotted himself.

    ***

    Sherriff Arthur Langley tensed as he smelled a brief spike of human magic, and he glanced over his shoulder at the rear of his cruiser. There wasn¡¯t anyone else in the car, he could tell that much, since even a glamoured mage would displace enough air that he¡¯d be able to tell something was off. Not that there had been enough magic for it to be a proper mage presence. Then there was another waft of magic from the passenger side, along with cold air and the smell of stone.

    ¡°Sherriff Langley?¡± The voice came from a small, dark circle hovering in the air, but it was a voice he recognized and he relaxed slightly.

    ¡°Mister Hall?¡± He had never thought that he¡¯d hear from Hall ¨C or rather, Wells ¨C again. It was a shame, since Wells seemed like good folk and with fantastic skills. But it was understandable that he¡¯d had to leave, given the way GAR wanted his head.

    ¡°Yes,¡± Wells¡¯ voice echoed from the hole. ¡°I realize using this to speak is probably a little bit rude, but you understand I have to be somewhat careful about when and where I¡¯m seen.¡±

    ¡°Certainly,¡± Arthur replied, a little bemused by the voice coming from a floating hole in space. He knew that mages were capable of all kind of tricks, and since Wells was a spatial mage something like that perhaps made sense, but it was still a bizarre application. He¡¯d seen them use air-type magic for far-speaking, but never tiny portals. ¡°What do you need from me?¡±

    ¡°I need to get in touch with Alpha Chester. Not through the phone,¡± Callum added immediately afterward. ¡°I¡¯m obviously using a portal to speak to you; there¡¯s an anchor that I¡¯d like you to bring to him so I can speak the same way.¡± There was another whiff of magical scent from Wells¡¯ teleportation as a small disc of metal appeared in the front seat. The speaking-portal vanished at the same time, only to reappear a moment later. ¡°Can you do that?¡±

    ¡°Certainly,¡± Arthur said, reaching over to pick up the metal disc. There was a faint tingle of magic from it, barely perceptible, and he had to guess the speaking portal was somehow being projected by it. ¡°Can I just put this in my pocket or something?¡±

    ¡°Absolutely,¡± Wells said. ¡°Just don¡¯t damage it.¡± Arthur slipped the anchor into his breast pocket and reached for his phone, dialing Chester¡¯s number.

    ¡°Chester here.¡±

    ¡°Alpha Langley,¡± Arthur said. ¡°I need to come by in an hour or so on a matter relating to Claire.¡± He was aware of Wells still listening through the floating portal, and besides, there was some need of circumspection when it came to these things.

    ¡°You probably should expedite the matter,¡± Chester said, which Arthur well understood. The teleportation pad, Wells¡¯ own creation as he understood it, was still stored at the compound. It would probably be moved eventually, but for the moment there was still instant transport between his house and Chester¡¯s.

    This book is hosted on another platform. Read the official version and support the author''s work.

    ¡°Yes, Alpha,¡± Arthur said.

    ¡°I will make sure things are ready.¡± The phone went dead and Arthur hung up.

    ¡°Does that work for you?¡± He asked Wells.

    ¡°It does. I¡¯ll be closing this portal now, but I know what¡¯s going on around the anchor.¡±

    ¡°Understood.¡± Arthur did appreciate the warning. Not that it mattered overmuch, but he would have been somewhat put out if he hadn¡¯t been told he was bringing an observing eye and ear along with him.

    He reached for the radio to inform headquarters he was heading back to the compound and simply made a U-turn, driving back along main street. By the time he reached the compound and dropped a few words about where he was going, John of the Wolfpack was in the basement room with the telepad. John tossed him a teleport token as he approached.

    ¡°Something happen?¡± John inquired idly.

    ¡°I have a message for Alpha Chester,¡± Arthur said. ¡°And a bit of a package?¡± He tapped his breast pocket. ¡°I¡¯ve got an observer along so don¡¯t say too much.¡±

    John raised his eyebrows but shrugged and nodded, waiting for Arthur to step onto the telepad before poking at his phone. A moment later there was the snapping sensation of the black-market teleporter and they appeared in Chester¡¯s basement. He wasn¡¯t worried about giving away any particular secrets to Wells; the teleporters were from him and the basement saferooms for any shifters having issues were well known to begin with.

    The smell of magic coming from the anchor in his pocket wavered oddly with the teleport but still lingered as Arthur stepped out of the saferoom where the telepad was kept. Chester was there in the basement in war-form, ears perked inquisitively in Arthur¡¯s direction. For his part, Arthur inclined his head. As always in Chester¡¯s presence, the pack-bonds shift and settled, reaffirming their connection.

    ¡°Hall ¨C Wells, I guess ¨C wants to talk. He gave me a magical anchor that lets him do so; said he was watching from it.¡± Arthur plucked the little metal disc from his pocket and offered it to Chester. The Alpha took it, giving it a frown, and then his ears slanted backward as he frowned at the hole that appeared in the air.

    ¡°Alpha Chester, I presume?¡± Wells¡¯ voice came from portal.

    ¡°Indeed,¡± Chester said. He didn¡¯t seem too excited, but Arthur knew that Chester resented how imperious Wells was. Even if he found the man too useful to properly chastise. ¡°I presume you¡¯re calling about Lucile.¡± He gestured for everyone else to take seats as he placed the disc down on the table, lowering himself into the massively oversized armchair that had been built just for him.

    ¡°I am,¡± Wells said shortly. ¡°All I know is that someone else answered her phone.¡±

    ¡°Well, GAR took her in yesterday. I got the impression they had her under surveillance for a week or more before that. Of course they¡¯ve interrogated her and I have some issues to deal with because they know about those telepads you made.¡± Arthur winced. Those were useful and expensive and GAR would almost certainly want to take them. He wasn¡¯t sure if Chester could manage to keep ahold of them.

    ¡°Do you know where they took her, and what the dispensation of forces is at that location?¡± That was very odd phrasing, one of those things that made Wells seem like something other than the supposed architect his background provided. Chester shook his head.

    ¡°I owe Lucile some consideration for her service with me. She may not be pack but she is one of my people. However, that sort of consideration is not the same as sending you after a heavily guarded BSE facility as if you were some kind of guided missile.¡±

    ¡°So you won¡¯t help?¡± Wells¡¯ voice was flat and hard, and Arthur had to restrain an inhuman growl from his throat. Nobody talked to an Alpha that way. Fortunately, Chester had practice dealing with non-shifters and didn¡¯t turn a hair.

    ¡°I didn¡¯t say that, but this requires more consideration. If nothing else, there are shifters at the facility that I would prefer remain alive and intact.¡± That actually surprised Arthur a little. He didn¡¯t know that Chester had gotten some of his people into GAR¡¯s pool of shifter labor.

    ¡°I see.¡± Wells¡¯ voice warmed fractionally. ¡°A more considered approach is a better idea than just going in there half-cocked. What are you thinking?¡±

    ¡°This is not just some vigilante action,¡± Chester said, claws tapping on the reinforced arms of his chair. ¡°This is an all-out declaration of war against GAR, to which I am not yet willing to commit either my pack in particular or the shifters in general. So any agreement between us would be, of necessity, a clandestine one.¡±

    ¡°So no change there,¡± Wells said, a trifle impatiently.

    ¡°No, but we need an agreement. If you would follow my direction?¡ª¡±

    ¡°No.¡± The response was instantaneous and reflexive, but no less final for all that.

    ¡°?¡ªthen perhaps an alliance of sorts. You are very, very dangerous. Your brazen flaunting of GAR''s authority and their inability to catch you have already started the process of infighting. It¡¯s a bit of a cause c¨¦l¨¨bre among the fae, some of whom are rattling the chains of authority.¡±

    ¡°It¡¯s not much of an organization if one person can threaten it so,¡± Wells said.

    ¡°It is not the one person, it is that anyone is successfully defying their authority. The appearance of strength is strength; the appearance of weakness is weakness. How much faith would you put in an authority so publicly unable to fulfill their basic function?¡±

    ¡°Fair,¡± Wells said after a moment. ¡°What did you have in mind?¡±

    ¡°Even if you will not operate at my behest as such, I would want to know what you are doing. So I can get my people out of the area, or take advantage, as the case may be. Or, despite what you may think, I may have knowledge of what you¡¯re about.¡±

    ¡°The only reason I can do anything is because nobody knows what I¡¯m doing, or where, or why,¡± Wells replied. ¡°I could use more information at times, but anything you act on could compromise me or my plans.¡±

    ¡°Do I seem like that sort of blunderer to you?¡± Chester demanded.

    ¡°No. But two can keep a secret only if one of them is dead.¡± Wells was silent for a moment, and Arthur couldn¡¯t help but shake his head at how deeply suspicious that sort of sentiment was. ¡°I can agree to share information in good faith. Nothing more than that.¡±

    ¡°This is, after all, a gentleman¡¯s agreement,¡± Chester said. ¡°While we¡¯re at it, it¡¯s quite likely the teleportation equipment you provided will end up with GAR. They¡¯re already insisting on it. I¡¯d like more.¡±

    ¡°If you can provide enchanting materials, it¡¯s not a problem,¡± Wells said brusquely. ¡°Now, what about Lucy?¡±

    Arthur could see Chester controlling himself. It wasn¡¯t so much the attitude as Wells not being there in person, so none of the normal signals a shifter would rely on were there. Tone of voice alone just wasn¡¯t enough.

    ¡°The BSE facility is located in the Deep Wilds,¡± Chester said. ¡°The only way in or out is by teleport; actually reaching it on foot is nearly impossible. I don¡¯t know exactly what they have planned but I¡¯m sure they have wards, guards, all of that. There hasn¡¯t been enough time to gather what changes they¡¯ve made, but I do have a building plan.¡±

    ¡°That would be helpful,¡± Wells said. ¡°So far as reaching it goes ¡ª I have options, but could you have someone carry in an anchor like the one I¡¯m using here?¡± Everyone¡¯s eyes went to the small silver disk resting on the table. It was completely innocuous, but if it was a way for such a dangerous man to access something, it was also very ominous.

    ¡°I could,¡± Chester said, drawing out the second word. ¡°What is it you intend to do?¡±

    ¡°Retrieve Lucy,¡± Wells said promptly. ¡°That¡¯s the main goal. How it goes from there depends on what I find. I would be lying if I said I was not prepared to level the entire thing.¡±

    ¡°I see.¡± Chester didn¡¯t contend Wells¡¯ assertion of his capabilities. It was obvious that Wells was deeply angry, but he was also not stupid or boastful. It wasn¡¯t something a shifter or a vampire could contemplate, but mages and fae had access to some truly destructive options. What exactly a spatial mage could do when provoked, Arthur couldn¡¯t imagine.

    ¡°Any shifter casualties will not be tolerated,¡± Chester said bluntly. ¡°I know you have the capacity to bypass obstacles. Most shifters at the site are simple menial personnel. There are a few who may be troublesome but it¡¯s better to avoid any shifters at all.¡±

    ¡°I can¡¯t be held responsible for what the mages might do once a firefight erupts,¡± Wells warned. ¡°I can avoid targeting them directly unless I notice something truly objectionable, but last time BSE targeted me they killed a number of people in a caf¨¦ just to try to get at me.¡±

    ¡°Yes, any direct action,¡± Chester amended.

    ¡°I¡¯ll take responsibility for Lucy, but if she needs medical care or something I may have to come to you,¡± Wells added.

    ¡°That is reasonable. She is, as I said, one of us. But you are right, she can¡¯t remain with us after such an assault.¡±

    ¡°Then I believe we have an understanding.¡±

    ¡°Yes. The soonest I can get the anchor there is approximately fifteen hours from now, with the next shift.¡±

    ¡°Understood. Here is a number you can text the building information and tell me when the anchor has been delivered.¡±

    Wells rattled off a number and Chester gave his mate Lisa a glance. She wrote it down as it came and gave him a return nod.

    ¡°I will contact you later,¡± Chester promised.

    ¡°Thank you,¡± Wells said, and the black portal vanished, the smell of magic slowly fading from the room.

    ¡°What are you thinking?¡± Lisa asked. Not challenging, just curious.

    ¡°That I couldn¡¯t convince him to do anything else, regardless,¡± Chester said. ¡°We might as well take advantage of it. It¡¯s not like he¡¯s going to bring down the BSE , let alone GAR, but if they get their teeth kicked in enough we might be able to gain a little more independence.¡±

    ¡°And if they capture him?¡±

    ¡°I don¡¯t think that¡¯s an option, for anyone.¡±

    ***

    Lucy was wrung out.

    The fae¡¯s compulsion had been far different and far more insidious than the vampire¡¯s. She¡¯d genuinely believed that the agent was her friend after the first few minutes of conversation, and it wasn¡¯t until the spell was broken hours later that she¡¯d realized what had happened. They¡¯d even had drinks and chatted about life and work, bantering like old pals. It left her feeling sick and violated and she barely noticed the vampire escorting her out to a cell.

    ¡°You will sit down,¡± the vampire told her. They¡¯d done whatever it was that removed her innate resistance again, and she was forced to take a seat on the cot. ¡°You will not move,¡± the vampire added, and her muscles practically locked in place. As he turned to go, she thought he looked like the one who originally interviewed her.

    Minutes ticked by as her thoughts spiraled in on themselves, unable to focus on anything but the mess she was in. Her muscles started to ache, then cramp, but she couldn¡¯t even shift, the compulsion holding her in place. The cramping turned to creeping agony, but all she could manage was a pained keening noise as she was held prisoner by her own body.

    She wasn¡¯t sure how long that lasted, the searing, almost tearing pain and weakness stealing through her body taking away her vision as she panted, lost in a haze of suffering. Her entire world contracted down to the screaming of her muscles. Then, suddenly, a cold wave washed it away instantly, as if it were some nightmare she was waking from. Lucy blinked, seeing the face of a young woman out of the corner of her vision, since she couldn¡¯t really even look around,

    ¡°Why aren¡¯t you?¡ª?¡± The woman said. ¡°Oh! I see.¡± She touched Lucy¡¯s elbow and the feel of that cool sensation was accompanied by a loosening of the compulsion that held her in place. Lucy collapsed onto the cot. She couldn¡¯t help it. Her body was refreshed with magical healing, all the pain vanished like a bad dream, but somehow that made it worse. Between that and the compulsion she didn¡¯t feel like she could even tell what was real. It wasn¡¯t until she felt the trickle of tears down her face that she realized she was sobbing.

    For the most part she thought of herself as tough, but the preceding few hours had been by far the worst thing she had ever experienced. Part of her was terrified it would happen again, and she really didn¡¯t know if she could handle it. Or what she might say or do to avoid having to go through it.

    When she finally wiped her eyes free of the tears the woman was still there. She looked faintly sympathetic, but didn¡¯t actually move to help. Belatedly, Lucy realized that the woman had to be a healing mage, which was the reason why she wasn¡¯t in screaming agony anymore In fact she felt really good, physically, even if her wits were scattered hither and yon.

    ¡°You¡¯re Lucile Harper, right?¡± The woman said finally, when Lucy managed to sit up and look over at her. For a moment Lucy didn¡¯t reply, feeling like she¡¯d almost forgotten how to speak of her own accord, but then her brain recovered.

    ¡°Yes?¡± She felt like she should be hoarse and strained but her throat was fine. Which just seemed wrong.

    ¡°I¡¯m Gayle Hargrave,¡± the mage said. Even if she was physically fine, Lucy was so shaken it took her a few long moments to place the name.

    ¡°Oh,¡± she said.

    ¡°You know Callum Wells, right?¡±

    Lucy rubbed her eyes, trying to get her thoughts together. She really, really didn¡¯t want to talk about Callum anymore, but Gayle¡¯s question was a completely different thing than the interrogation from before. She¡¯d even healed Lucy up and freed her from that horrifying hell of compulsion.

    ¡°I¡¯ve talked to him, but I¡¯ve never met him,¡± she told Gayle. ¡°I don¡¯t know¡ª I don¡¯t know if there¡¯s anything useful I can tell you.¡±

    ¡°I just wanted to know why he told me to use my healing magic for harming instead,¡± Gayle said, a bit plaintively. ¡°I don¡¯t want to be part of BSE but the anti-healing technique is supposed to be secret.¡±

    ¡°I¡¯m not sure if it helps,¡± Lucy said slowly, ¡°but I don¡¯t think he actually knew what he was suggesting. His background is really weird. It¡¯s like he¡¯s completely ignorant of most of mage society, but at the same time has some super elite training in certain things.¡±

    ¡°That doesn¡¯t help,¡± Gayle sighed and crossed her arms. ¡°He ruined my life and pulled me away from my House and it was just an accident? That¡¯s just¡ª no, I don¡¯t believe it.¡±

    ¡°I think he¡¯s some House¡¯s pet project,¡± Lucy offered. ¡°One they lost control of.¡± Either that or he was exactly what he appeared to be, which was actually a scarier proposition.

    ¡°You think he¡¯s going to come get you?¡± Gayle asked abruptly, and Lucy blinked. For some reason that hadn¡¯t crossed her mind, but now that it¡¯d been asked, she realized a lot of the interrogation had centered around it. Everything she had said and felt during the fae compulsion was distant and weird, like someone else¡¯s memories.

    There hadn¡¯t been anything she could tell them. She really didn¡¯t know all that much about his capabilities and he¡¯d been coy when describing exactly how he¡¯d managed some of what he had. But one thing he hadn¡¯t been coy about was that he would lever her out of GAR¡¯s hands if they ever closed on her. Which they had.

    ¡°Yes, and they know it,¡± Lucy said. It wasn¡¯t betraying anything she hadn¡¯t been forced to say already. Gayle scowled.

    ¡°He¡¯s going to answer for ruining my life,¡± she said and left the cell.

    Lucy wasn¡¯t sure the door was even locked, but she wasn¡¯t about to try a facility full of mages and vampires. She hunched down on the bed, focusing on breathing. There was nothing she could do herself, not as a dud, but she could at least be prepared. She didn¡¯t know when Callum would be coming, but when he did, she¡¯d be ready to make a break for it.

 Chapter 20 â€“ Heretic

    Once again it was obvious why he couldn¡¯t just hide in a hole. He had a moral imperative to do something, in addition to his own personal responsibility. Technically, Lucy couldn¡¯t be used to get at him if he didn¡¯t allow it, but he refused to even entertain the possibility of abandoning her. Callum didn¡¯t want to leave Lucy in GAR custody for any longer than he needed to, but it was just like the couple down in Florida. He needed to prepare and do things right.

    An unavoidable delay was letting Chester¡¯s people smuggle the portal anchor in. The fifteen hours was in a way a good thing, because it forced him to take the time to make sure he had everything ready on his end. Since he¡¯d been stocking his cache for so long, it wasn¡¯t actually much a survey, but it was better to do that without feeling overly rushed.

    There was one stop he did have to make before anything else, and that was to get a vacuum flask from the nearest industrial shop. The beat-up old thing wasn¡¯t rated to protect from something like lava, but it¡¯d still prevent ambient heat from getting at the portal focus. The focus itself was metal so it could stand more heat than he could, but mordite had such a low melting point that he didn¡¯t want to take the slightest risk. He didn¡¯t even care if the dewar got trashed, so long as it worked long enough. His portal focus falling apart mid-rescue would be a problem.

    After he recalled to his cavern-cache, he changed into the civilian body armor and helmet he¡¯d gotten, which felt overly cumbersome but it wasn¡¯t like he was going to be running around. Nor did he expect it to block any serious offensive spells. He was more worried about shrapnel and debris and other incidental things, like what had hit him in France. Especially since he was going to be hanging out somewhere fairly dangerous even before the attack.

    Callum¡¯s ability to work through portals gave him a ridiculous flexibility that he¡¯d only just started to explore, but he¡¯d already figured out one application. Not too far south and east of his Mexico hide out was Pacaya, Guatemala, which was in a near-continuous state of eruption. There were lava rivers all over the place, which was precisely what he wanted.

    Fortunately, a thermal-reflective blanket was one of those things included in the basic camping equipment he had stashed away, and even though it wouldn¡¯t be all that effective, it was better than nothing. That combined with the breathing apparatus he¡¯d already gotten was enough that he felt safe getting near an active lava flow, especially with the six hundred yard buffer.

    Once again he used the chair to get around. It was annoying how dependent he was on GPS to figure out his location, but it wasn¡¯t like he could see what was going by whenever he was in mid-blur. By this time he¡¯d picked up an old-school GPS hiking handheld, and while he wasn¡¯t completely sure he trusted it, at least it wasn¡¯t a smartphone.

    While flying chair trips were still fairly draining on the vis front, the new model didn¡¯t need carrying capacity so it was just a little bit smaller, and every bit helped. So did the excess mana in the area, which helped him recover between jaunts. For some reason, the mana generated by the sixth portal world didn¡¯t seem to drop off as rapidly to the south as to the north, so he didn¡¯t even need to tap his gut-portal for the boost. It was only maybe four hundred miles, so it really didn¡¯t take him long at all, even though he was being far more conservative than the panic-driven stunt that had seen him to Mallorca.

    Nighttime made it easier to navigate, actually, since the lava flows stood out starkly against the dark ground around the volcano. It was a sort-of tourist area and so not supposed to be terribly dangerous, but even so he had his breath mask out as he aimed himself down toward a dark patch near a particularly large flow. There were still hours to go until he expected a message, so he was going to have to camp out for a bit while he waited.

    The value of a portal focus was made very clear with how he could leave it open without spending any focus or vis on it. That meant he could just keep his gut portal active and occasionally open a small portal to the area above his cave-cache. That was where he left his phone, since he could get a cell signal from the tower in the nearby town. It wasn¡¯t a great signal, and it wasn¡¯t a great phone, but it worked and that was enough for him.

    It turned out that he didn¡¯t actually need the thermal-reflective blankets if he didn¡¯t try to walk right up to the lava itself, so he stayed on the rocky, ashy ground on the next slope over. He knew he had to nap before it was showtime, even if it was just a couple hours, but he was too keyed up to manage it right away. Instead he pulled up the layout that Chester had given him and looked it over for the fourth or fifth time.

    The black site was surprisingly large and small at the same time. It sprawled out over a big compound with training and housing and storage and all the things a completely independent operation would need. Teleporters should have meant that a lot of that wasn¡¯t necessary, but he appreciated that the base was set up so it could be run independently if necessary. It made the place a lot different from most of GAR¡¯s centralized infrastructure, which made him think that whoever ran it was independent of the stuff he¡¯d seen so far.

    The actual holding cells were just in a small central area, underground, which was all he was worried about. There weren¡¯t many of them, so it wasn¡¯t like it¡¯d be difficult to find Lucy, but at the same time it meant he wasn¡¯t likely to be able to cause a distraction by letting a bunch of prisoners loose. An isolated cell was better for him anyway because if she was surrounded by mages he had no idea how he¡¯d deal with that without massive collateral damage.

    Hopefully they didn¡¯t realize that themselves.

    Even with all the preparation, with his boulders and water grenades and the lava flow, he actually didn¡¯t want to fight anyone. In fact, real combat was very much a losing proposition for him, since he didn¡¯t have training or proper magical defenses. The best thing would be if he could portal in, grab Lucy, and bail before anyone was the wiser. That didn¡¯t seem likely though, since they surely knew at least some of what he could do.

    They¡¯d be ready for him. He just had to make sure they weren¡¯t as ready as they thought.

    ***

    ¡°Are you sure he¡¯s even coming?¡± Harold Harper, head of House Harper, glanced up from the document he was signing and gave Ray Danforth a frown. ¡°You said he hung up on you.¡±

    ¡°Fairly sure.¡± It was not a secret that they¡¯d put Lucy in the BSE facility. In fact, they were making it as public as possible, because they needed Wells to know where she was. There was no use baiting a trap that was hidden away from the prey.

    Ray had actually been surprised by how Wells had cut off the communication. Usually people listened and responded, even when it might not be in their best interests to do so. But Wells hadn¡¯t even hesitated, which made it difficult to know if he had enough information to actually come after the Harper dud. Lucile was the only connection they¡¯d found inside GAR, and she was even the go-between for Wells and Alpha Chester.

    So far, there hadn¡¯t been a hint of Wells contacting the shifters, though it wasn¡¯t like they could stop every subordinate that came to Chester¡¯s house for business. Not that they were making any secret of their scrutiny, and Duvall had even sent someone to demand the teleportation pads that Wells had supplied them. She had hit the roof when she¡¯d found out, but she was far too busy to go deal with that sort of thing herself. Or at least so she claimed; Ray suspected the reason might be she just didn¡¯t like dealing with shifters.

    Still, Wells had been shown to be resourceful and the more people who knew her location, the more likely it was to get back to him. Considering the effort he¡¯d taken just to retrieve a pair of mundanes from custody, it didn¡¯t seem likely he¡¯d leave Lucile Harper to languish. It still wasn¡¯t a sure thing, but they were acting as if it were. They had to.

    ¡°Here,¡± Harold said, pushing the document across the table. Ray glanced at it before putting it in the folder. Officially removing Lucile from the Harper family was probably unnecessary; their loyalty wasn¡¯t in question as a cadet branch of House Janry, and it wasn¡¯t like they needed more leverage on Lucile. But Harold had insisted when Ray had come to spread the news.

    ¡°Thank you for your cooperation.¡± The words were rote, and Harold barely glanced his way as Ray stood up to leave. He collected Felicia on the way out, who was half-glad and half-sad to be visiting the Janry-Harper estate on Faerie. She hadn¡¯t told him the full story of how she¡¯d ended up on Earth and unaffiliated with any of the fae enclaves, but on the rare times they wound up in the portal world she was visibly uncomfortable.

    ¡°Should just hold her in Faerie,¡± Felicia said quietly, even though she clearly didn¡¯t like the idea. ¡°It doesn¡¯t matter how sneaky he is if the land itself is looking for him.¡±

    ¡°What fae king would we owe if we did that?¡± The question was more rhetorical than anything, just like Felicia¡¯s comment. Felicia nodded in acknowledgement.

    ¡°My family would love to offer, and you¡¯d be a fool to agree,¡± she said. Her voice was more resonant than usual, the siren heritage coming to the fore along with a brogue that she¡¯d worked hard to hide.

    ¡°You okay?¡± Danforth asked, putting a hand on her shoulder.

    ¡°I¡¯m worried,¡± she said, the sky darkening with her words as just the tone of voice called in cloud cover. A good reminder of how the human portion of Faerie was still Faerie, and fae magic held sway. ¡°They¡¯re already telling stories about the Ghost. Maybe that doesn¡¯t mean much if he¡¯s a mage, but there are fae undercurrents in motion. I¡¯m not sure what happens if we can¡¯t catch him.¡±

    Danforth glanced around. The vestibule of House Janry was not exactly private, but there also wasn¡¯t anyone about at this time of night, so he pulled her closer. Underneath the glamour he could feel the corded muscle of her real form shift as she leaned into him for a moment.

    ¡°Time to get back to work,¡± she said soon enough, thumping her head against his shoulder, then pulled away and straightened her uniform before turning back to the teleporters. Danforth followed, giving her a little bit of space. She wasn¡¯t overly touchy in general, especially not on the clock, which told him how worried she really was.

    When they returned to the BSE facility, it was in the process of being locked down tight. There were guards around the perimeter, in case Wells came overland with his flying artifact, and around the teleporters, if he could use the GAR transportation system. Lucile¡¯s cell was protected not by wards, which hadn¡¯t been very effective in the past, but by a high-powered mana jammer to keep any kind of vis construct from manifesting.

    Royal Road is the home of this novel. Visit there to read the original and support the author.

    The two of them passed through a new set of magical scanners and a hastily-installed airport scanner to hopefully spot any implants that Wells or any of his group might have. It was annoying to have to pass his focus folio through the checkpoint, but that particular security measure was only temporary. Felicia had her token, and some bits of jewelry that she was equally reluctant to give up. One of them was the necklace he¡¯d given her, but others were of purely fae origin and she clearly hated giving them up.

    The pair passed deeper into the facility, through the hallway of the central building, past the interrogation rooms, and outside. The holding cells were in a completely separate building, forcing people to cross the open courtyard inside the walls of the BSE base. The grass there was the oddly springy, wiry stuff of the Deep Wilds, and outside the walls the canopies of the monstrous trees broke the horizon like distant mountains.

    Unlike the Night Lands, where there was only ever the moon, or Faerie, where the time of day depended on location and the general mood of the inhabitants, the Deep Wilds had an actual light cycle, though twilight and dawn lasted a lot longer than they should. The oversized sun beat down overhead, through the dome that protected the courtyard from the similarly oversized wildlife that wheeled and circled in the too-blue sky.

    Ray was already starting to sweat just in the short walk between buildings, and resorted to conjuring up a breeze to keep Felicia and himself comfortable. It didn¡¯t help that they were dressed more for Earth weather than the portal worlds, since they generally didn¡¯t spend too much time in any of them. Cooling enchantments brought the air to a more comfortable temperature as they stepped back indoors, in the vestibule of the jailhouse.

    ¡°Ah, good.¡± Jahn looked up as they entered, the agent overseeing operations by sheer inertia, though the BSE employees knew what they were about. ¡°You can¡¯t by chance lay a geas, can you?¡±

    Felicia shook her head. Jahn heaved a sigh.

    ¡°Guess I¡¯ll have to ask King Ravaeb. He¡¯s about the only one we can use who¡¯s not involved, one way or another.¡±

    ¡°Hopefully not,¡± Ray replied. Ravaeb had a brutal streak, which could make an already nasty business even worse. But it wasn¡¯t his business, so he just moved on and held out the folder. ¡°For what it¡¯s worth, House Harper severed all ties with Lucile when I filled them in.¡±

    ¡°That¡¯s not too surprising,¡± Jahn said, taking the folder and put it on the desk behind him without looking at it. ¡°Nobody likes a traitor.¡±

    ¡°Out of curiosity, what is the geas for?¡± Ray was only passingly familiar with what exactly constituted a geas rather than a compulsion, despite having a fae partner. It was more of a fae royalty thing, and while he suspected Felicia was closely related, she definitely wasn¡¯t in that power bracket.

    ¡°It¡¯s because despite all this,¡± Jahn said, waving his hand around to indicate the activity, ¡°there¡¯s the possibility we won¡¯t catch anyone. So it¡¯s insurance. If we can get Lucile to report on whatever base they¡¯re operating from, we can come in full force.¡±

    ¡°Ah.¡± Ray couldn¡¯t argue with that. Everything they¡¯d seen indicated a group whose strength was stealth rather than raw power. Wells hadn¡¯t been particularly impressive back when they¡¯d first accosted him in Kennecut, and he hadn¡¯t even tried fighting back in the Ardennes. If they could locate his home base, they could attack him on their terms. ¡°You think he¡¯d slip past the Grand Magus? Or Archmage Hargrave?¡±

    ¡°Under the circumstances, I don¡¯t think we can rule out other traitors,¡± Jahn said bluntly. ¡°We know he¡¯s made agreements with the fae and with Alpha Chester. We haven¡¯t turned up anyone else here in BSE, but these are shifter lands. I wouldn¡¯t assume we know everything and everyone around us, or that this facility is as well-hidden as it¡¯s supposed to be.¡±

    ¡°I¡¯d say you¡¯re paranoid, but this case has been weird from start to finish,¡± Ray observed.

    ¡°Speaking of which, are you going to stay here while we wait?¡± Jahn asked. ¡°I know you¡¯re not as combat-rated as a lot of BSE folks.¡±

    Ray didn¡¯t answer immediately. Instead he looked to Felicia, who was not combat-rated at all and was actually inconvenienced by being in the portal world. On the other hand, she was more tenacious than he was and had a bit of a fixation on properly finishing their cases, even those that were supposed to be out of their hands. Not that Ray terribly objected, but for Felicia it was part of her fae story.

    ¡°We¡¯ll stay,¡± Felicia wrote on her tablet, holding it up to show Jahn.

    ¡°Then get yourself equipped at the armory. I¡¯ll ask Grand Magus Taisen to put you into one of the shifts.¡±

    ¡°Yessir,¡± Ray replied, and braced himself to head back into the unseasonable heat.

    ***

    Lucy felt like her head was stuffed full of gauze wrapped around thorns. It was hard to think, and when she did think she couldn¡¯t think about some things or else the thorns would start tearing and twisting, cutting through her memories and ideas. Trying to turn her into something else. The fae magic from before was terrible, but it hadn¡¯t been like this.

    She sat on the cot, holding her head in her hands, prodding at the chains the fae king had bound her with. It wasn¡¯t the same as the compulsion which had made her act in accordance to strict rules, and it wasn¡¯t like the siren song, which had made her believe something that wasn¡¯t true. It had some components of those but it was all together in a single thing that she could feel poised around her, waiting to strike.

    It was terrifying.

    Just trying to think around the edges was hard and painful in a way she couldn¡¯t properly describe. It would have been a lot easier to just relax and go with the flow, just lean into the geas and let whatever happened, happen. But if she did that, she had a terrible suspicion, creeping in from behind the gauze, that she wouldn¡¯t be able to change her mind afterward.

    Yet, as she groped around thoughts of the big man and shied away from them as the thorns threatened her, she felt there were gaps in the hedge. The geas had too many components, too many moving parts where things didn¡¯t quite meet up. She couldn¡¯t even articulate the thought that she could exploit them, but the feeling was there, down deep where the thorns couldn¡¯t see.

    She had to act natural, but she also had to find out everything she could. Be friendly and inquisitive, but not to the point of arousing any suspicion. Any time she got a chance to call in and inform them about what was going on, she had to, but at the same time could never do so where the big man or anyone with him would notice. The conflicting mass of requirements hurt her head, she refused to let them come together or try to make them make sense.

    It would have been easy, and she was so tired, but Lucy had been lorded over by the magical all her life. This wasn¡¯t new, or at least, that¡¯s what she forced her fuzzy brain into thinking, even if deep down she knew. She knew she was in trouble so deep that she could never dig her way out on her own.

    She had to rely in the big man. Even in the privacy of her own mind she didn¡¯t call him by name, and it galled her to have to just hope for external help. She¡¯d worked hard to become self-reliant and self-sufficient, as nigh-impossible as that was for a dud serving in GAR. But that didn¡¯t mean she was so stupid or proud as to not know how bad things were.

    The ambient magic was so high it hummed against her skin, vibrating off her teeth and making the back of her neck itch. She didn¡¯t know what it was, and the geas kept her thoughts from doing anything but idle uselessly for fear of being torn, but it was just another tiny torture to add to the rest of the mass of misery. She could recall how she¡¯d felt after the first time they¡¯d interviewed her, and how inconsequential that seemed in comparison. Lucy was sure that, one way or another, someone would pay for this.

    ¡°I don¡¯t like this.¡± The sound of someone else¡¯s voice made Lucy twitch and peer blearily up to see Gayle sitting on a chair on the other side of the cell, lips pressed together in distaste. The geas twisted around, assuring Lucy that Gayle could be trusted and that she should tell people Gayle could be trusted.

    ¡°I¡¯m not a combat mage. I don¡¯t even like using reversed healing!¡± Gayle continued to complain, though it seemed to not really be directed at Lucy. ¡°I bet grandpa doesn¡¯t even know,¡± she continued darkly. ¡°Got half a mind to go out there and tell him.¡±

    Yet, she didn¡¯t.

    ***

    Grand Magus Taisen laced his fingers together, frowning at the others in the room. He couldn¡¯t deny that Wells was the BSE¡¯s responsibility, but he misliked using the Deep Wilds outpost for it. It was never meant to be a containment facility. Like all the garrisons he¡¯d built, it was designed as a training outpost and a staging area for eliminating some of the worst threats the portal worlds had to offer.

    Unfortunately, he didn¡¯t have the ability to overrule two Archmages and the Master of Weltentor. In theory he had the authority, but pragmatically they¡¯d just ignore him at best and remove him at worst, and Taisen doubted anyone else understood the logistics that kept the portal worlds under control. There were factions that already decried the resources he needed, and ignored the fact that small problems became large problems.

    Just like Wells, in fact.

    ¡°We all want our pound of flesh,¡± Hargrave said, his aura crackling slightly. ¡°But there isn¡¯t enough to go around.¡±

    ¡°He¡¯s a spatial mage, so he¡¯s mine,¡± Duvall said flatly. While her raw magical might didn¡¯t match her fellow Archmage, her wealth and influence could absolutely bury House Hargrave if she wanted to.

    ¡°A spatial mage that nobody has been able to keep under control,¡± Taisen pointed out, keeping his voice mild. ¡°How do you propose to do so?¡±

    ¡°Lock him down with vis drainers and set him to enchanting for the next decade or two,¡± Duvall replied, waving it away. ¡°Even if he never amounts to anything else we know he can make enchantments. Speaking of which.¡± She glared at Jahn.

    ¡°We¡¯re in the process of confiscating the teleportation pads,¡± he said mildly, showing remarkable aplomb for someone who ranked far below everyone else in the room both in terms of status and prowess. ¡°They have been stalling a bit but I wouldn¡¯t be surprised if I had them before anything happened here. Even if Chester is playing against GAR he¡¯s not willing to completely defy us.¡±

    ¡°And what of the vampires?¡± The Master of Weltentor, Victor Dumas, spoke in a calm and controlled voice. Taisen doubted he actually cared too much about the deaths himself, but as the nominal head of mage-vampire relations he had a valid complaint. ¡°If nothing else, we are owed a weregild for the deaths of so many at the hands of this group.¡±

    ¡°When we find out who else is working with him, and what their resources are, we¡¯ll make sure to include you,¡± Jahn said.

    ¡°I¡¯m not sure there is anyone else working with him,¡± Taisen said, speaking at last.

    ¡°Oh?¡± Jahn suddenly looked more interested. ¡°We have at least Wells and Hall that we know of.¡±

    ¡°True,¡± Taisen conceded. ¡°But I¡¯ve looked at the reports of the various incidents. I don¡¯t pretend to know how it was done, but it all has the feel of a single mind, a single approach.¡± He couldn¡¯t put his finger on it exactly, but it was the sort of instinct he¡¯d learned after dealing with thousands of engagements, both supernatural and mundane.

    ¡°If it¡¯s just one mage, then our preparations ought to be more than enough,¡± Hargrave said. ¡°He folded easily enough the first time. Two Archmages and however many mages and shifters are here already ought to be more than enough to take care of him.¡±

    Taisen suppressed a sigh. That was exactly the sort of attitude that caused disaster. He couldn¡¯t really blame Hargrave though; the man was an absolute monster and practically invulnerable. There were few people on Earth that could really threaten Hargrave, and not much in the Portal Worlds either. But Hargrave wasn¡¯t the target.

    ¡°Archmage Duvall,¡± he said instead. ¡°As you say, he is a spatial mage and in your jurisdiction. But I¡¯m unclear what your role is in our defense. Is there a method whereby you can suppress his spatial abilities?¡±

    ¡°No more or less than any other magic,¡± Duvall said with a tremendous scowl. ¡°Spatial magic is special because of what it does, not how it acts. Any of you should be able to shatter his shell if you get close enough. From what the younger Hargrave said he is a far cry from being an Archmage.¡±

    ¡°Grand Magus Taisen,¡± Jahn said. ¡°Ultimately, the actual combat is in your hands. We are trying to capture Wells, or whomever he brings with him, but I understand how difficult that can be.¡±

    ¡°He¡¯s one of my spatial mages,¡± Duvall growled.

    ¡°Archmage, so far he has proven extremely difficult to deal with, and demonstrated abilities that don¡¯t comport to spatial magic?¡ª¡±

    ¡°That¡­¡± Duvall sputtered. ¡°That heretic is abusing some very dangerous and unusual corners of spatial magic. Nothing that could stand up to any real spellforms.¡±

    ¡°Heretic or not, he has done immense damage to GAR and to BSE.¡± Jahn said firmly. ¡°Whether captured or killed, if¡ª when he comes here, he will not leave.¡± The response to that was nods all around.

    ¡°Agreed.¡±

 Chapter 21 â€“ Rescue

    Callum paced back and forth beside the campsite he¡¯d set up near the Pacaya volcano in Guatemala, counting down the hours as his cane dug into the lose, rocky ground. He¡¯d gotten a little sleep, somewhat further away from the actual lava flow than his staging point, but only a little bit. The anxiety was just too much for him to relax.

    He ran over his supplies in the cave cache once again. Guns, his spatial grenade materials, and a number of boulders. None of which he wanted to use, but he had to be prepared. Food and drink and a medical kit, because there was no telling what shape either of them were going to be in afterward. He had his van parked near a hospital in Mexico, with the telepad relocated from his house to the cave.

    There¡¯d been no traces of supernatural activity at the trailer. That was good, since it was that as a bolthole or a random hotel, and Callum didn¡¯t much trust hotels. The less he showed his face, the better.

    Once he finished yet another inventory, he stopped to review the map he¡¯d gotten of the BSE base. The problem was that Chester couldn¡¯t guarantee where the portal anchor would be placed, or that Lucy was actually in one of the cells. He wanted to move as quickly as possible once he activated the portal, so he¡¯d need to get himself oriented and figure out which building was which from his sensory sphere.

    Undoubtedly they were waiting for him, but unless they had every square inch of the facility locked down and under surveillance, he was pretty sure that the activation wouldn¡¯t be obvious. His major worry was that the portal anchor itself would be blocked, because even if Chester¡¯s shifters got caught smuggling it in, having the anchor dumped in some lockbox wasn¡¯t an issue. Even if it was somewhere offsite, he could just teleport the anchor back through the portal and do things the hard way.

    Even though assaulting the BSE facility was in many ways incredibly stupid, he wasn¡¯t going to just rush in, guns blazing. He had some idea of the capabilities normal mages possessed, and more importantly, what they didn¡¯t possess. They couldn¡¯t see through walls the way he could, and they couldn¡¯t cast through walls the way he could. In a weird sort of way, their facility was more of an advantage for him than it was for them.

    All that said, he couldn¡¯t stand up to combat mages. At all. Which was why his plan was to simply not be exposed to combat mages, though of course no plan survived first contact with the enemy.

    Callum gnawed on a stick of beef jerky and opened a portal through the connection in his implant to the area above his cave-cache. He could just see the bones of his bunker through the trees, but more importantly, his cell phone could get signal so long as it was high enough. He¡¯d solved that problem by balancing it, along with a solar charger, in the canopy of a tree.

    As with every time he¡¯d checked it so far, there were no messages, so he snapped the portal shut and went back to pacing. He had too much nervous energy, though his knee was complaining about the uneven ground, cane or no cane. It was well past dawn in whatever time zone Guatemala counted for, but he had no idea what time it was in the Deep Wilds. For all he knew it was an eternal time like the Dragonlands and Night Lands, but there had to be some sort of standardized shifts. Probably. Hopefully.

    Once again he snapped open a small portal to his cell phone, even though it¡¯d been less than five minutes, but this time when he peered through the opening he saw it had a text notification. He reached through the portal and grabbed it, the few moments the old phone took to open up the text display seeming to take forever. It was from Chester.

    Package should be delivered.

    Callum didn¡¯t like the qualifier, but it couldn¡¯t be helped. He imagined that there was no actual communication between the facility and the outside, so the best Chester could do was verify that the person with the portal anchor had gone there. Possibly with some time buffer to account for getting it past security. Considering it was small and inactive, it was probably not too difficult for a shifter to keep it hidden. Or even for it to pass through in plain sight; he¡¯d seen that shifters did have foci for one reason or another on occasion.

    He set a timer for five minutes, just to give it a little more padding, and went and took care of his ablutions before the final checks. Callum doublechecked the body armor, even though it shouldn¡¯t matter at all, finishing off the jerky and taking a few swallows of water. His hands felt sweaty, and the worm of fear gnawed at his gut, but he took a deep breath and watched the timer tick downward.

    When the alarm rang, he silenced it instantly and teleported himself closer to the lava flow, where a portal anchor sat in the dewar. The vacuum bottle was, in hindsight, probably not even necessary, but it was still a hundred yards closer to the flow than he felt comfortable going himself. Mesmerizing as a lava river was, it was still twelve hundred degree rock.

    Callum reached out and energized the portal anchor. It sprang up right away, and mana started flowing through. It was in a portal world. His perceptions flowed through, and he concentrated on feeling out exactly what was on the other side.

    Given the separation between him and the anchor, he had approximately five hundred yards of range through the portal anchor, maybe a little more. The total distance of his perceptions had probably grown a touch, but he¡¯d not done any specific tests for a while. That was still a large enough sphere to encompass a building, if not quite big enough for the entire campus that was supposed to be on the other side.

    Chester¡¯s agent had deposited the portal anchor in a utility closet, among a jumble of cleaning supplies. At least that¡¯s what he assumed all the bottles of liquid were, among mops and brooms. The building itself seemed to be something like a barracks, with a number of rooms with bunk beds arranged around a central hall. Outside of the barracks, there was a thick, magically reinforced wall in one direction and what seemed like warehouses in the other.

    There were three mages and six shifters within his sphere of perception; two of the mages and three of the shifters were in bunk beds, scattered throughout the barracks, the others were on the wall, where it turned into a dome overhead. He waited with bated breath to see if they noticed the portal focus, but none of them so much as twitched. Though it wasn¡¯t like the portal itself was a particularly large or intense bit of magic, by anyone¡¯s standards, so it wasn¡¯t too unreasonable that they didn¡¯t notice.

    Callum looked at the map, figuring out where the anchor had ended up. The buildings weren¡¯t even warded to speak of, just having some minor enchantments around the windows and doors. They didn¡¯t look like the screens of wards, anyway, and the way the mana flowed through the structure was different, but he intended to avoid them anyway.

    From the reference he had, the anchor had wound up on the north side of the compound. There was no gate leading in or out; they probably used magic for that. The warehouses and barracks were more or less as he had suspected; mostly empty at the moment, but he put that down to it being the off-season at the moment. Or maybe just during local day.

    He wrapped his threads around the portal anchor, extending his vis out to the warehouse through the mana-saturated ground, and pushed. It wasn¡¯t much of a jump, but with his range he really didn¡¯t need too much to cover most of the rest of the facility. The perspective bubble on the end of the anchor shifted, and the portal bobbled. If he were cleaner with his threads, or used tubes instead, he could move without the portal destabilizing, but he was in a hurry so he had fix it by shoving more vis into it instead. It didn¡¯t take much, but it was a concerning tradeoff when he knew he was relatively vis-limited.

    The new location meant new buildings came into range. They were more central; the administration, the communal hall, the processing center. They were far more warded, and it took time for him to get through into the interiors. He cared little for what was stored in the warehouses, mostly normal supplies from what he could see, but even if there was any magic stuff there he couldn¡¯t afford to raid it. Betraying his presence before it was absolutely necessary was a terrible idea.

    That particular consideration was immediately tested when he brushed his perceptions through the administration area and found a case with a number of lumps that were very mana-dense. They seemed quite similar to mordite, so he could only guess they were silverite, harvested however and stored somewhere secure. It was annoying that he only ever ran across interesting things when he had more important issues at stake, because he didn¡¯t dare touch the silverite no matter how much he wanted to.

    In addition to the extra warding, there were a bunch of mages around and a number of them were using active vis senses. They were little feathery pulses drumming through the air or the ground, which Callum regarded with a lot more trepidation than the wards. Enchantment spellforms were limited, but he had no idea about direct magic scrutiny. Evading a security system was one thing; evading the naked eye was another.

    Unlike the naked eye, he could actually see the use of the vis senses and where they were aimed. Some of them were just everywhere, others were focused, sweeping here and there, so there wasn¡¯t really much space for him to run a thread that wouldn¡¯t be observed. That said, he only needed a single, small thread to move the anchor from one place to another, and the anchor itself was a small thing.

    The various sorts of warding seemed to block the active senses fairly well, and there were all kinds of enchantments active in the buildings he could sense. Were he to try something large and flashy, especially out in the open, it¡¯d be noticed immediately, but he might well be able to hide most of his activity behind the existing enchantments.

    There were lots of mights and maybes, but he couldn¡¯t take forever to make a move. Just because nobody had noticed his portal yet didn¡¯t mean they wouldn¡¯t ever. The outflow of mana alone might alert someone if the portal stayed open long enough, and if a searcher got closer to where his anchor was hidden they might well find it.

    His target, the cell block, was a little bit further along. If he could teleport the anchor to the full extent of his perceptions like he preferred, he¡¯d already have it within range, but he was limited to sneaking about and hiding the anchor in storage drawers or other places that weren¡¯t immediately visible. Even though he could loft the anchor with his gravitykinesis, he had to assume the moment any mage or even shifter laid eyes on it they¡¯d sound the alarm.

    Callum waited, counting the beat from the regular pulses of the ground-based active vis, and as soon as he had it down he shoved a vis thread out between one pulse and the next, running it to the plumbing gap behind a sink in the communal hall. The followup teleport was barely in time, and he paused, heart pounding even though all he¡¯d done was a little bit of magic. The seconds stretched onward, but it didn¡¯t seem like he¡¯d been noticed.

    He turned his attention to the actual cell block, because it was a painfully bright blaze in his perceptions. There wasn¡¯t just warding ¡ª or rather, he wasn¡¯t sure there was any warding at all. Instead there seemed to be some kind of mana overload, something that churned the ambient energy into a chaotic maelstrom. It reminded him a bit of what he¡¯d seen in Las Vegas, but with a lot more power.

    It was pretty clearly a defense aimed specifically at him. At this point his ability to bypass wards was no secret, and they probably even had some idea of exactly how he was managing it. Whatever was going on with the mana wouldn¡¯t be any defense against a shifter or a vampire, but if he tried sending a vis thread in there it¡¯d just get shredded.

    The sheer amount of mana noise made it difficult for him to tell the details about things deeper in, but he could at least figure out where the walls and people were. Mages were, of course, obvious by their bubbles, which meant the one figure without the bubble was Lucy. Obviously he had to remove the jamming source, but he had to do so without risking Lucy. If they had been really smart, they¡¯d have put it in the same room as her, as close as possible so he couldn¡¯t smash it from range.

    That was all assuming he was right in his conclusions. He wouldn¡¯t put it past them to make the entire cell a complete honeypot and hold Lucy somewhere else. It wasn¡¯t like Callum even knew what Lucy looked like, so a ringer was not out of the question. On the other hand, using that kind of bait was a risk in and of itself, and he was fairly sure they didn¡¯t care too much about Lucy as such. They would have already wrung out whatever intelligence she had, considering their resources.

    Still, the information that she was being held in this particular facility had come from Chester, not through some official source that would be very obviously trying to lure him into an ambush. If she wasn¡¯t the one in the cell, there weren¡¯t very many places in the facility where they could be hiding her. In fact, he¡¯d already passed over most of them and hadn¡¯t run across anyone else human without a bubble.

    The presence of vampires and fae implied there were some of those feeder portals Callum had cribbed his designs for somewhere about, and he considered tracking them down first. He was sure that if he broke them, that¡¯d send some of the personnel into a bit of a flurry, maybe even force some evacuations.

    Despite the urgency he felt in the back of his head, he needed to be methodical. There was a mage in the room with maybe-Lucy, so whenever he made his move, he had to be quick. He could only imagine the mage was there to take her hostage if he managed to break in. Or maybe the moment things kicked off.

    He took a moment to scrutinize everyone he could reach within his perceptive sphere. For the most part mage bubbles looked all the same to him, but a few people stood out. In near the jammer there was one mage that had a bubble that wasn¡¯t just opaque, but almost reflective in how solid it was. A second mage of similar quality was in the admin building, along with a third whose bubble seemed like hammered iron. It wasn¡¯t like he could sense through any of the bubbles to begin with, but most didn¡¯t seem as substantial as those three.

    If you spot this story on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

    Callum was absolutely glad he wasn¡¯t actually there. Those bubbles were intimidating even if, so far as he could tell, they had no idea he was there. Aside from the normal movements of people, mostly shifters walking from one place to another, there didn¡¯t seem to be any real activity. Carefully, he made a mental note of where everything of even marginal sensitivity was placed. The teleport pads, ward boxes ¨C there were only two of those, for admin and in-processing ¨C the jammer, and the feeder portals. He found three different clusters of the last, so there might be more somewhere out of range, meaning that cutting them off entirely would be difficult.

    The jammer would require a little bit more work than the rest, since he had to go through multiple walls ¨C or a ceiling ¨C and it was right near the cell. But everything else he could reach, and while it might not be all the infrastructure in the facility, it was a lot of it. What he wanted to do was smash the jammer, grab Lucy, and run, but there was no way to guarantee that would work and the cost of failure was too high. Better to spend a second and a bit sowing chaos and preventing reinforcements or communication, because once the element of surprise was lost he wouldn¡¯t have much time or space to react. He ran through the actions he was planning over the next few seconds in his head several times to prepare, and make sure he covered all the contingencies.

    With a limit of sixteen or so constructs, he felt comfortable targeting four things at a time. Two sets of portals and a high-powered directed gravity field. He picked his priorities, waited for a lull in the active sensory sweeps, and then spun up everything at once.

    Basketball-sized portals opened up in the maintenance space for the teleporters, by the ward boxes, and one of the feeder portals. A gravity shear accelerated streams of scorching lava through the portals at something like one hundred fifty miles per hour, more or less obliterating the targets and making an absolute mess of everything around them. Despite not aiming at any people, he still saw some debris bounce off the shields of the mages monitoring the ward boxes, as the splash was somewhat more impressive than he¡¯d expected.

    Immediately he snapped the portals to his next set of targets, the remaining feeder portals and one of the warehouses since he had attention to spare. It took a moment of juggling to keep the lava from breaking his portals, but less than a second later another several hundred pounds of liquid rock smashed into and through walls and enchantments.

    Mages started to move, and Callum focused on the jammer.

    ***

    Taisen had mastered the art of waiting long ago, but neither of the Archmages showed much patience. Duvall, especially, clearly wanted to be elsewhere, though Taisen could hardly blame her. He knew a thing or two about having far too much work and far too little time to do it in. Hargrave showed a more ordinary impatience, frowning at whatever reports he¡¯d brought with him.

    It wouldn¡¯t last forever. Even as important as Wells was, tying down two Archmages in addition to himself was an enormous expense. If the man didn¡¯t make a move soon, or at all, all the preparations would be for nothing. From the way he read Wells¡¯ history, though, a credible threat to the Harper girl would be good enough to force his hand.

    Taisen pulsed his light-aspect vis outward, sorting through the flash-impression it gave him of every nook and cranny and searching for anyone who might be out of place or acting oddly. The current crop of BSE trainees was off in the Night Lands, since he didn¡¯t want a bunch of novices in a firefight with a rogue mage, so there weren¡¯t all that many people around.

    Despite his experience and the steady sweep of his senses, he wasn¡¯t ready for the sudden explosion of violence. From absolutely nowhere magic flared up and a confusion of destruction followed. Taisen began moving before he even consciously realized it, his hindbrain cataloguing the targets. Communication, coordination, reinforcements. Valuable infrastructure. They shouldn¡¯t need backup, not with a pair of Archmages and a Grand Magus, not to mention a full gamut of BSE agents, but backup was no longer an option.

    Force and light shields went up around his sphere, giving him protection and rendering him invisible, the pure corite foci worked into his uniform creating perfectly crisp and clean spell forms as he energized them. Some people swore by banic alloy, but he always found the stuff from the fae lands worked best for him. The bracers around his forearms spun up the beginnings of his preferred offensive spellwork, disks of ravening light and crushing gravitic spheres just waiting to manifest.

    ¡°Teams one and two, suppress the lava.¡± Taisen had no idea where Wells had gotten ahold of an earth-fire aspected mage, but neither type by themselves could deal with something like a half-ton of molten rock, which was already starting to catch things on fire. ¡°Three, surround the cells.¡±

    Hargrave burst out of the building just behind him, the door splintering as it couldn¡¯t open fast enough, joining Taisen in the air as they swept for Wells. There was nobody immediately obvious who could be opening the portals, nobody clearly out of place, as he spun in the air gauging distances and angles. The realization came just as another portal opened near the cells, and Taisen flicked out a gravity sphere to intercept it.

    Wells didn¡¯t need line of sight.

    He caught a glimpse of a magical construct through the new portal, accelerating lava as if it were gravity but clearly not gravity. He knew what gravity did and didn¡¯t do, and something that looked like that wouldn¡¯t result in such extreme acceleration. Then his own gravity ball smashed into the portal, disrupting it and rolling up the lava that had been coming through. The glowing ball of rock that resulted would have been a fantastic projectile to send after Wells, if only they could locate him.

    ¡°Duvall!¡± He snapped over the scry-com. ¡°Where are these portals coming from?¡± She hadn¡¯t joined them outside, but Duvall was not a combat mage. Spatial mages never were; the spatial aspect had nothing useful in terms of shield-forms, and relying on mana-fed foci for a shield was hopeless. Even Duvall¡¯s Archmage-level shield did nothing more than displace her away from attacks.

    She was more interested in capturing Wells anyway, so she was stationed near the jammer, in hopes of either catching Wells or at worst spiriting the younger Hargrave out of danger. Taisen and Hargrave were on the same page, though. Wells had to be eliminated.

    Archmage Duvall didn¡¯t answer immediately, as Hargrave just bulled forward toward the cells. Not that Taisen disagreed; that was Wells¡¯ ultimate goal, and any other destruction was just distraction. It was just that he couldn¡¯t tell where Wells actually was, the portals seeming to open from practically nothing. He focused his senses down, trying to catch anyone who might be disguised or sheltering under some fae artifact.

    ¡°They¡¯re coming from Earth,¡± Duvall¡¯s reply came just as another portal snapped open, this one just in front of the walls of the cell block. A car sized boulder smashed through the wall and carved a path of destruction before a quick-reacting earth mage turned it to sand with a flare of mana. Unfortunately, a ten ton boulder just turned into ten tons of sand, rather than vanishing like an earth-magic construct, and the resultant destruction might actually have been worse than if it had remained a boulder. ¡°He might not even be here!¡±

    ¡°Then how¡ª?¡± Taisen cut himself off as he caught a bare flash of vis connecting the portal to somewhere else. It vanished when Hargave collapsed the portal with a bar of pure force, but there was enough to get a lead. He let Hargrave deal with the cell block while he concealed himself and floated into the communal hall, hunting for traces of the man.

    Taisen¡¯s estimation had been that Wells, no matter what tricks he used, wouldn¡¯t be able to stand up to a real mage for more than a few seconds. Wells clearly agreed with that sentiment, if Duvall was right and the man wasn¡¯t even physically present. The problem was, Wells¡¯ tricks were really good.

    ***

    The mages were a lot better than Callum had even figured. They hadn¡¯t been able to stop the damage of the initial chunks of lava, but they¡¯d reacted basically instantly and didn¡¯t seem at all confused or surprised. The first pair of portals he¡¯d made to try and smash the jammer had been absolutely rebuffed; one by the elite mage inside the cell block and another by a different elite that was hovering in the air.

    Every moment that slipped by tilted the advantage away from him, so he gave up trying to finesse it and just sent a boulder at the wall. Not aimed directly at Lucy¡¯s cell, or even at the jammer, but to open up a hole for subsequent salvos. It worked, but it was a shock to see how easily an earth mage had dealt with it, and how easily the mage bubbles of the people in the way had shrugged off the attack.

    Those shields made him feel a bit better about throwing a lot of lava through his next portal. He aimed the spray of molten rock directly at the jammer source, but it still spewed everywhere once it left the acceleration field, splashing over everything and everyone along its path. To his utter shock the opaque-reflective mage actually blinked aside, or rather, outside, in a ripple of somewhat-familiar magic that made him believe it was a spatial mage.

    The shock made him pause for a moment, part of him wishing that he could see what had happened more closely. The way the mage¡¯s teleport had worked was so unlike what he did that he knew he could learn from it. But he didn¡¯t have time.

    Since he couldn¡¯t hide his vis threads like he had before, another of the elite mages homed directly in on the hall where his anchor was hidden, waves of vis washing through the building. There really wasn¡¯t much time. Thankfully the lava he¡¯d hurled through the gap in the cell block walls, covering practically every surface in molten rock, did its job. The jamming field dropped, heat or impact finally damaging some part of the enchantment, and he could finally properly sense into the cell.

    The mage bubble overlapped where Lucy had been, but he didn¡¯t have time to try and figure out how to disentangle the two. The one mage with the impossibly strong bubble was sweeping in toward the cell, straight through the walls in the way. Before he could second-guess himself, Callum opened as big a portal as he could make and swept it over the mage bubble, cot and all, as fast as he could so the portal wouldn¡¯t get disrupted by shields, dumping everything sideways into the containment room he¡¯d made.

    He''d actually taken apart his infinite-energy portal pair for this particular purpose, and put one end in yet another cave, somewhere in northern Texas. There was no way that Lucy didn¡¯t have some sort of tracking on her, magical or technological, whether it was an implant or something woven into her clothing or what. While he would have liked to make the rescue in comfort, there was no way that was in the cards.

    The mage bubble and its contents had to wait for a moment, because Callum wasn¡¯t done quite yet. His last bit of magic had been enough to betray the location of the portal anchor, since the mage that had been hunting it down started flicking out little lances of vis that tore apart the wall the anchor was behind. Callum wrapped his threads around the anchor and teleported it back to his hand.

    His perception of the BSE base vanished, the portal destabilizing and collapsing. He hadn¡¯t been seeing with his eyes or hearing with his ears, but it seemed like a sudden silence regardless, just the empty volcanic landscape and the small cave with a mage and, hopefully, Lucy. Callum turned the portal anchor over in his hand and put it in his pocket. Job done.

    ***

    ¡°What the hell was that?¡± Archmage Hargrave was furious. Not quietly furious, either, his voice a stentorian bellow as he vented his spleen at Archmage Duvall. ¡°Why did you let that maniac kidnap my granddaughter?¡±

    ¡°I could ask you the same thing!¡± Duvall snapped back. ¡°You know I¡¯m not a combat mage. You were supposed to keep anyone from even getting close enough to matter!¡±

    Nobody wanted to get near a spat between two Archmages, even if neither of them were being so gauche as to move beyond words. Hargrave¡¯s solid force armor rendered him a faceless automaton, but he wasn¡¯t even flexing his outer shields. Possibly he was too mad to.

    ¡°We knew he was slippery! You should have gotten Gayle out of there the moment things started happening!¡±

    ¡°What, in the five seconds before someone battered the wall down with sand?¡±

    ¡°Five seconds is a hell of a long time?¡ª¡± Hargrave began, then cut himself off as Taisen floated down toward the pair. ¡°So how¡¯d he get in?¡± He demanded of the head of Bureau of Secret Enforcement, whose facility it was supposed to be.

    ¡°I don¡¯t think he did.¡± Taisen was less upset than either of them, and more thoughtful. ¡°Like Archmage Duvall said, I don¡¯t think he was ever here. I¡¯m not sure how he was sending portals over here, that¡¯s not my business.¡± He looked pointedly at Duvall.

    ¡°I can think of a few possibilities,¡± she said grudgingly. ¡°None of them seem likely, but he did do it.¡±

    ¡°Regardless, there were two things that struck me during the attack ¡ª no, three. One, he didn¡¯t need line of sight.¡± Taisen held up a finger, looking from Archmage to Archmage. Neither of them responded. ¡°Two, he was using some construct that acted like gravity, but wasn¡¯t. If it were gravity it would have resulted in things being drawn in and crushed, not launched like it was.¡±

    ¡°Heretic,¡± Duvall muttered. ¡°I don¡¯t know where he¡¯s learned but he¡¯s twisting space magic all out of bounds.¡± Taisen ignored that. He¡¯d had any preconceptions about proper or improper magic use beaten out of him by long experience with hostile creatures and mages alike. What worked, worked, and what didn¡¯t, didn¡¯t. The Houses were slightly touchier about things, which was one reason why the BSE was of no House.

    ¡°Three,¡± he said. ¡°There was some tiny bit of something that he was doing behind one of the sinks in the canteen. I couldn¡¯t find anything, but maybe one of you can.¡±

    ¡°I¡¯ll go,¡± Duvall said immediately. Hargrave just growled silently and loomed behind as Taisen went to show Duvall to the spot. Along the way, mages were already cleaning up. Most of the damage was easily taken care of by earth and fire mages, to quench the lava and shift the stone, to repair walls and doors. The damage that would take real repairing were all the enchantments. There was also the quickly vanishing touch of the other portal worlds. It¡¯d take hours, but they would need to evacuate the vampires and fae before it ran out entirely.

    Unless Duvall could conjure up a new connection, but that seemed unlikely. Wells seemed to be able to open a portal wherever he wished, but Duvall wasn¡¯t as flexible. It took an actual portal anchor, preferably one made with pure portal world material, to bridge something like that.

    Danforth and Black were guarding the site. Taisen felt a little sorry for them; they¡¯d been stationed at intake and aside from getting slightly lava-scorched when the teleportation pads got destroyed, they hadn¡¯t gotten near their quarry. Duvall ignored them and homed in on the location, seeming to go by smell. Taisen certainly couldn¡¯t sense any residual magic.

    ¡°There was a portal anchor here,¡± Duvall announced, frowning at the spot. ¡°Very small.¡± She did something he could barely follow, her speed and precision better than his, despite her lack of combat experience. ¡°Damnation,¡± she said. ¡°His terrible thin threads just snap. I can¡¯t re-open it.¡± Taisen carefully concealed his reaction. He didn¡¯t know Duvall could open portals just from their residue, though now that he did, certain past incidents he was not supposed to be privy to made more sense. It also meant Wells wasn¡¯t impossibly conjuring portals from nowhere, which at least brought the man¡¯s abilities back to reasonable ground.

    ¡°Then I suggest you find another way to get my granddaughter back,¡± Hargrave said, voice hard as diamond. Duvall replied, but Taisen wasn¡¯t really listening. He was thinking about how damn pathetic their defenses really were.

    If Wells could run roughshod over the barriers and wards of Garrison Two, there was no reason to think that it was actually effective. Someone else, or something else, from the portal worlds might have some of the same talents. Who knew what things had passed through the portals that they hadn¡¯t even noticed?

    Wells was a threat to GAR, but Taisen really didn¡¯t care about that. He didn¡¯t even care about how much Wells had wrecked Garrison Two, since that could just be repaired. Taisen was more worried about what his abilities meant for the safety of the world. Wells was many things, but he wasn¡¯t some otherworldly horror lurking in the dark.

    As far as Taisen was concerned, all Wells had done was demonstrate that GAR did not have as good a handle on things as they said. He¡¯d been defending the Earth from the portal worlds for years before GAR came in and merged him with the BSE. That was something he¡¯d had to accept at the time, but things were different now.

    Let GAR handle Wells. He needed to return Defensores Mundi to its roots.

    END BOOK TWO

 Chapter 1â€“ 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 ¨C she kept having to remind herself that the Professor Brown she knew had been a lie ¨C but she still found it hard to believe.

    ¡°¡­Gayle?¡± Wells said, sounding just as surprised as her. ¡°Of all the¡ª 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¡ª 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 ¨C Lucile was close enough to count ¨C 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¡ª 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 Tenochtitl¨¢n 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.

    Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.

    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 seemed 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 ¨C he was pretty sure he could make out the signs of earth-magic worked stone ¨C 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 been 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 â€“ MictlÄn

    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?¡ª¡± 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 Mictl¨¡n?¡±

    ¡°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 Mictl¨¡n 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 Mictl¨¡n. 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?¡ª 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?¡ª¡± 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 Mictl¨¡n, 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 Mictl¨¡n 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 Mictl¨¡n 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 Mictl¨¡n.¡±

    ¡°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 Mictl¨¡n. 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 Mictl¨¡n 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 Mictl¨¡n 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 Mictl¨¡n, 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.

    This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

    ¡°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?¡ª¡± 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 caf¨¦ 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?¡ª! You can¡¯t?¡ª!¡± 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 Mictl¨¡n 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.

    ¡°Mictl¨¡n 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 ¨C clothing, foci, hair bands, everything ¨C 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 ¡ª 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 ¡ª 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 Mictl¨¡n,¡± 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 ¨C he could follow Huitzilin¡¯s spellforms just fine ¨C 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 ¨C or Archmage ¨C 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 â€“ 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?¡ª 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 ¨C well, me, mostly ¨C 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.¡±

    The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

    ¡°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 ¨C even a few cadet Houses ¨C 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 ¡ª 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 ¨C and in the portal worlds! ¨C 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 â€“ 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 Mictl¨¡n 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 caf¨¦ 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 ¨C 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.¡±

    The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

    ¡°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 ¨C knives, swords, and even an awl-pike ¨C 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 ¨C there just wasn¡¯t room ¨C 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 ?¡ª

    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 ¨C the exact time varied from world to world ¨C 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 ¨C like House Hargrave, perhaps ¨C 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 â€“ 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 ?¨C dealing with what he saw ¨C 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 caf¨¦ 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 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 ¨C and he didn¡¯t see how it was possible for it to do that anyway ¨C 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?¡±

    Love this story? Find the genuine version on the author''s preferred platform and support their work!

    ¡°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 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 ¨C or the perception of it ¨C 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 â€“ 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 ¡ª 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¡ª 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.

    If you come across this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

    ***

    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 ¨C 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 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 â€“ 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 caf¨¦?¡±  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 ¨C and Callum was certain he didn¡¯t have the authority ¨C 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 caf¨¦ 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 ¨C if and how we do so ¨C 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 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 ¡ª 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 ¡ª 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.¡±

    If you stumble upon this tale on Amazon, it''s taken without the author''s consent. Report it.

    ¡°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 ¨C or fae, for that matter ¨C 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 ¨C a mage, though a sorry specimen of one ¨C 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?¡ª¡±

    ¡°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?¡ª¡±

    ¡°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 â€“ 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 ¨C or whoever had done the enchantment ¨C 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 ¨C maybe it¡¯s a BSE outpost, actually ¨C 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.

    If you encounter this story on Amazon, note that it''s taken without permission from the author. Report it.

    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 ¡ª 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 ¨C probably an Archmage, from what he knew ¨C 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 Mictl¨¡n, 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 â€“ 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 ¡ª 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 ¨C an improvement over the walkies ¨C 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 ¡ª 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 ¡ª 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 ¨C sorry, the Feds ¨C 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.

    This narrative has been purloined without the author''s approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.

    ¡°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 ¡ª 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 ¨C in fact, the proof of the deliveries from the Department of Acquisition was enough for that ¨C 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 ¡ª 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 ¨C their negative healing ¨C 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?¡ª¡±  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¡ª" 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.¡±

    This story has been unlawfully obtained without the author''s consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.

    ¡°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 ¨C requirements that she¡¯d also found a little objectionable ¨C 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 na?ve 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 ¨C or Shahey, as he styled himself ¨C 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 ¡ª 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 â€“ 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 ¨C 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 ¡ª 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.

    The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.

    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 â€“ 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 ¡ª 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 ¨C and the nearby fae enclave didn¡¯t like them besides ¨C 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 ¨C had relied ¨C 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 ¨C they weren¡¯t ever going back to Mictl¨¡n if he could help it ¨C 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.

    Support creative writers by reading their stories on Royal Road, not stolen versions.

    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 taken 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 â€“ 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 ¨C and grandmother ¨C 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 ¨C publicly available mundane texts ¨C 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.

    If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.

    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 ¨C three pairs total, including the one that Lucy had just destroyed ¨C 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?¡ª¡±

    ¡°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 ¡ª 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 ¡ª which he clearly wasn¡¯t using.  His method of accelerating matter was a very spatially focused version of telekinesis ¡ª 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 ¡ª 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¡ª¡±

    ¡°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 ¡ª 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 ¡ª 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 ¡ª 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 ¡ª and a certain number of personal spatial devices.  She didn¡¯t use any spatial expansion herself ¡ª 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 ¡ª 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 ¡ª 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 ¨C 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 ¡ª 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 ¡ª 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 ¡ª 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 ¡ª 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?¡ª¡± 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 ¡ª 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 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 ¡ª 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 ¡ª 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 ¡ª 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 ¡ª 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 ¡ª 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 ¡ª 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 ¡ª 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 ¡ª 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 ¡ª 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 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  ¡ª  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 ¡ª 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 ¡ª 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 ¡ª he made mistakes.  There would be another time he didn¡¯t obfuscate his portal anchors.

    She¡¯d get him next time.

 Book 3 available on Amazon

    Hello everyone!  Book Three (which ends with Chapter 18) is now available on Amazon.</a>

    The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.

    If you are a patron, you will have access to the .epub version of the book as well.

    The paperback and audiobooks should be coming soon as well!  The audiobook is finished recording and the paperback just needs a bit more touchup.

    Just as a note, I''ll be taking a one-week break after Book 3 finishes up on Royal Road, which I think is November 4?  Something like that.

    And if you do buy the book, please rate and leave a review!  It does help a lot when it comes to Amazon algorithm stuff.

 Chapter 14 â€“ 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¡ª 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 ¨C bringing it below the ambient even in Texas ¨C 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 ¨C or whatever they actually were ¨C 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.

    If you encounter this tale on Amazon, note that it''s taken without the author''s consent. Report it.

    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 fa?ade 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¡ª 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 ?¡ª 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 ¡ª 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 ¡ª 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 â€“ 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 ¡ª 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 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 ¡ª 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 Mictl¨¡n 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 ¡ª 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 ¡ª 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 story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.

    ¡°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?¡ª¡±

    ¡°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 ¨C something that was precipitated out of the ambient flow like a brine pool on the ocean floor ¨C 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 â€“ 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 portions, 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 ¡ª 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 ¨C Chen refused to believe the Patriarch was actually dead, since he couldn¡¯t conceive of anything powerful enough to kill an Archmage ¨C 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.

    Unauthorized content usage: if you discover this narrative on Amazon, report the violation.

    ¡°Y''all 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 ¡ª 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¡ª 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 ¨C that would de facto make him one of Chester¡¯s agents ¨C 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 ¨C well, granddad ¨C 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 ¡ª 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 ¨C depending on one¡¯s perspective ¨C 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 ¨C or even mass suicides and widespread devastation ¨C 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 ¨C the expanse of a proper universe was far more interesting than the empty sky of the liminal space between worlds ¨C 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 ¨C Archmage Duvall ¨C 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 ¡ª 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 â€“ 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 ¡ª 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 of 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¡­¡±

    This novel is published on a different platform. Support the original author by finding the official source.

    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 ¨C for Hargrave certainly hadn¡¯t heard the news from anyone else ¨C 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 â€“ 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?¡ª¡±

    ¡°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 ¡ª 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.

    If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.

    ¡°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?¡ª¡±

    ¡°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 ¡ª 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 ¡ª 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 caf¨¦ 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

 Not a chapter - Webfiction panel

    Hey everyone!  While I don''t have a chapter for you today, I do have some content.

    A few weeks ago I participated in a Webfiction panel hosted by Fictopia, along with ErraticErrata, the author of A Practical Guide To Evil</a>, Jeremy Bai, the translator of I Shall Seal The Heavens</a>, and Drew Gilmour, the agent for Mother of Learning</a> and The Wandering Inn.</a>

    Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

    So basically I was the new kid on the block.

    However, it was fun and interesting to do, and while I think I sounded a bit stupid and laughed a bit too much (also my mic was not the best), it turned out well enough.

    You can find my part of the panel here on YouTube.</a>

    If you have any questions or follow-ups I invite you to join us on Discord.</a>

 Chapter 1 â€“ Moving

    Callum and Lucy had spent a lot of time in the Texas trailer, and even with the bunker nearly complete they weren¡¯t entirely moved out. Callum¡¯s teleportation and gravitykinesis, or even telekinesis focus, made things a lot easier physically, but did nothing on the side of organization. Nor could his magic speed up how fast concrete or paint dried, so the move to the bunker was a slow and piecemeal affair, something they were still working on a week after dealing with Ravaeb.

    At least until events conspired to force the issue.

    Callum jolted into full wakefulness when a mage bubble brushed across the edge of his perception. Under most circumstances waking up with someone snuggled in against him was a pleasant thing, but the hammer blow of adrenaline ruined it. He was up and out of bed before he realized he didn¡¯t really need to be, since grabbing everything and leaving was purely a function of magic.

    ¡°Whuzzah?¡± Lucy said, stirring sleepily as he reached out with his vis and started transferring everything that was left. The mage bubbles were moving quickly somewhere overhead, and while not headed directly at his trailer he had to assume they¡¯d notice something if they¡¯d gotten so close.

    ¡°We gotta go,¡± he told her. The food in the fridge, the clothes in the dresser, the grill outside. Some of the furniture had come with the trailer, so he didn¡¯t take that, but he grabbed everything else he could in the first few seconds. A handful of the cleaner beads got distributed over the whole house, and a more powerful one put on a small plate that he dropped on the floor of the room.

    The mage bubbles were still several seconds away, and while he couldn¡¯t tell whether they¡¯d seen him directly or not he had to assume they knew. Besides, they could launch attacks from that far away, so he wrapped both himself and Lucy in a teleportation matrix ¨C tube based, so it wouldn¡¯t so hard on her ¨C and pulled them into the cave. Only then did he feel like he could breathe, heart still hammering.

    Lucy squeaked as she dropped a few inches onto the cot he had set up before propping herself up and squinting into the darkness of the cave. Callum reached out with his perception sphere and teleported an LED lamp into his hand, flicking it on and lofting it over toward Lucy. She squinted and snagged it out of the air, shivering in the cool cave atmosphere.

    ¡°The heck?¡± She demanded.

    ¡°I sensed mages overflying the trailer,¡± Callum explained. ¡°I wasn¡¯t going to hang around and hope they passed by.¡±

    ¡°Oh.¡± Lucy said, wrapping her arms around herself. ¡°Well, damn. How¡¯d they find us? Not through the portal anchors I wouldn¡¯t think?¡±

    ¡°Timing is weird too,¡± Callum said, pulling clothes out from the piles he¡¯d teleported and handing Lucy hers. Even if he¡¯d gotten around to heating the cave, which he hadn¡¯t, it was still bare stone and concrete. ¡°I would have figured it¡¯d be earlier, if it were some magical scrying.¡±

    ¡°I¡¯ll have to doublecheck the server, though it¡¯s not like I ever even accessed it from the trailer house¡­¡± Lucy shrugged and hastily dressed, sitting on the cot to put on her shoes and socks. ¡°What about the bunker? Do you think it¡¯s safe?¡±

    ¡°Not if they can trace us directly, but otherwise I think so.¡± The bunker didn¡¯t even have a mailing address as such. Even if some mundane organization found out about it from Miguel, the town councilman who was handling the local businesses, that didn¡¯t imply any supernatural activity. The greatest risk was that his bunker house would attract the interest of a cartel, and he had thoughts on how to deal with that, but for the most part he suspected the bunker was invisible to state-level actors.

    That wasn¡¯t a certainty, though, which was why one of the portal nexus links was to another safehouse, a little campsite with supplies that wasn¡¯t too far from civilization. Lucy had a teleportation setup for it made of anchors and obsidian tiles, just in case she needed to escape while he wasn¡¯t around for some reason. Considering what had just happened, that seemed more likely than it had before.

    ¡°Well, at least we¡¯ve got power here now,¡± Lucy said in resignation. Callum still had to wait for the last of the construction equipment to be cleared away before he could set up the infinite portal generator, but the solar he¡¯d gotten worked well enough in the interim, as long as the two of them were sparing with it.

    ¡°I guess it¡¯s not a terrible thing, even if I hate being forced to run away. Means we have to actually buckle down and finish our chores.¡± Callum finished dressing and studied the cave-cache in his perceptions to make sure he hadn¡¯t forgotten anything. All his supplies were there, minus the ones that had been ruined when he¡¯d assassinated Ravaeb.

    Callum still wasn¡¯t clear on whether the fae magic had gone through the portals or worked through more esoteric means. No matter how it had happened, Ravaeb had managed to send a fae after Callum, and only the presence of the shifters had kept him intact. More lasting damage had been done to the corner of the cave-cache where the antimaterial rifle had been, with the actual rifle being turned into some kind of goo and the water barrels blowing apart from the sudden growth of stinking algae. Even the stone had suffered, and while he¡¯d portaled the worst of it back into the remains of Ravaeb¡¯s enclave, the stone under where the gun had been was still slowly crumbling.

    The rest of his cache was intact though. The armored van, the other water barrels, the preserved food. The guns, the ammunition, the clothes and camping equipment. The secondhand furniture and bedding. The last were the most important at the moment since the bunker was unfurnished, and with the emergency move they¡¯d have to make do until Alpha Chester came through on his agreement.

    ¡°Easy for you to say, mister I-was-on-my-feet, but you weren¡¯t the one who woke up falling,¡± Lucy said, only half serious. ¡°What time is it even?¡± Her hand went for her pocket by reflex, but her phone wasn¡¯t there. Callum located it in the pile of stuff he¡¯d more or less blindly swept off the dressers and handed it over. Lucy groaned.

    ¡°Too early to be awake, but too late to go back to sleep,¡± she said. Callum snorted. She wasn¡¯t exactly a morning person.

    ¡°I couldn¡¯t sleep anyway. I can still taste adrenaline.¡± Callum grimaced, then opened a portal to the bunker basement, the only fully finished area so far. Since the cave was only a few hundred yards from the house, it didn¡¯t even need a dedicated portal anchor. With carpet and interior walls, the basement was considerably warmer than the cave and, when Callum flicked a switch, actually illuminated.

    ¡°Aight.¡± Lucy yawned and meandered sleepily through the portal and over to where her laptop and 3D printer were laid out. The printer actually required so much power that with just solar panels they could only fuel the simplest of builds, but that wouldn¡¯t be the case for long.

    Callum eyed the clock ¨C it was quite early ¨C and then the backhoe and dozers still on his property. The only real work left was taking care of all the dirt and mud and piles of gravel that were strewn about from the construction. But he could take care of that himself, with gravitykinesis.

    ¡°Hey Lucy, might as well set up the building-wide glamour, but don¡¯t use it yet. I¡¯m going to move all the equipment off and tell Miguel everything¡¯s finished.¡± So far Miguel had been nothing but helpful, the town representative perfectly happy to put in the work so long as Callum supplied gold bullion. It was actually a little suspicious, but finding someone like him was preferable by far to trying to negotiate directly with the locals.

    ¡°Great!¡± Lucy yawned again. ¡°Have fun with that.¡±

    Callum would prefer not to use the glamour, since a building vanishing would be more suspicious than the initial construction, but he was worried about regular folks poking around. Supernaturals didn¡¯t have any reason to check out the area, but it was hard to hide construction equipment and laborers. If he were lucky he wouldn¡¯t need it, but Callum didn¡¯t believe in luck.

    Moving the construction equipment wasn¡¯t really too difficult. Despite all his practice, creating a framework much larger than a car was still a strain, but not so much of one that he couldn¡¯t move everything out to the edge of the property. He still had to use a portal anchor, since the house was smack dab in the middle of his hundred-acre swath and that was too far even for his senses, but they had enough extra that keeping one around the house was no issue.

    Once he had all the equipment lined up next to the actual bit of road that wound near his property, he grabbed the van from the cave-cache and obscured the license plate with mud before he drove it into the village where Miguel lived. Despite it only having been maybe six months since he started paying Miguel for the house, there were some obviously new bits of infrastructure in the village. Which Callum certainly didn¡¯t begrudge. He had expected a bit of skimming, especially since he was paying for things to be done quietly, and it was good seeing it being used to improve the town rather than Miguel¡¯s own pockets.

    He still wasn¡¯t sure whether the toughs that always seemed to be around Miguel¡¯s place were part of the village, belonged to a cartel, or something else entirely, but they didn¡¯t hassle him so he ignored them. When he knocked on the front door, the usual man let Callum in and asked him to wait in the front room. With his sphere of perception he knew exactly what the guy was busy with even if he didn¡¯t really want to, and wasn¡¯t about to rush the man.

    ¡°Se?or,¡± Miguel said, some fifteen minutes later as he sat on the couch across from Callum. ¡°Is everything going well with the house?¡±

    ¡°Yeah, it is,¡± Callum told him. ¡°Actually, I came by to say that they¡¯re done. I know they were still working on some tidying up but I can attend to that myself.¡± He reached into his pocket and teleported two more gold plates into his hand. That pretty much finished off his gold bullion but the money from shipwreck salvage was a decent enough income for the moment. ¡°Just wanted to settle accounts,¡± he said, extending the gold plates to Miguel.

    ¡°Thank you, Se?or,¡± Miguel said. ¡°I do wish to tell you there were some inquiries about who was building nearby. Idle questions, nothing special, but it is difficult to hide such construction equipment.¡±

    ¡°That¡¯s fine, if anyone comes by I¡¯ll take care of it,¡± Callum assured Miguel, though inwardly he grimaced. Those inquiries could be anyone from nosy neighbors to policemen or criminals. Though so long as they were mundanes the glamour would probably be sufficient.

    ¡°As you say,¡± Miguel replied, and Callum nodded to him before heading back out to the van. He didn¡¯t really even need the cane anymore, thanks to the Connors. Lucy was still the main point of contact between Callum and the couple he¡¯d rescued some six months back, and their input had helped his knee recover. Mostly. It probably needed mage healing to be perfect again, but Callum didn¡¯t need things to be perfect.

    He recalled himself and the van back to the cave-cache the moment he was out of sight of the village and then stepped back into the basement. Lucy was still tinkering with the obsidian tiles, and she gave him a wave as he appeared on the designated receiving spot. He¡¯d made it a proper telepad, since it was Lucy¡¯s escape hatch as well, adding in some drywall enclosures to create a homemade teleportation booth.

    ¡°Everything go okay?¡±

    ¡°Yup,¡± he confirmed. ¡°Time to get us some power.¡±

    ¡°Woo!¡± Lucy left off her wiring and stood. ¡°Let¡¯s go.¡±

    His infinite power setup was simply a pipe with a portal at the top and bottom, hooked up to a secondhand water turbine generator. Simple as it was, it developed more than enough power from his tests so all he needed to do was wire it into the house. Lucy had done wonders with setting up a little monitor and valve to actually reduce or stop the flow when and if they were at full capacity.

    He used gravitykinesis to assemble it outside the back wall of the house while Lucy dealt with the wiring plugs. This was exactly why he¡¯d had a consultant for the electrical wiring, because he was not going to mess with figuring out electrical distribution himself. There was just a simple connector for the generator¡¯s output.

    Then he started transferring purified water from his barrels to the interior. The water¡¯s infinite fall was interrupted by the turbine blades, and the generator started to spin. The big house-supplying battery registered current, and nothing caught fire.

    ¡°Wonderful!¡± Lucy said. ¡°Now all we need is the furniture.¡±

    This narrative has been purloined without the author''s approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.

    ¡°I guess we should check in with Chester,¡± Callum said. They¡¯d been laying low for a while, to let the excitement die down, so it was probably time to pop their heads out and see what had happened.

    ¡°Sure thing, link me up,¡± Lucy said, heading back inside to get her laptop. Callum followed, reached out through the portal nexus and found the drone they¡¯d left in the US. It was near to Chester¡¯s place, though near was a relative term when it came to the speed that he could achieve with the drones. It didn¡¯t take much maneuvering to get the drone near a caf¨¦ wifi and Lucy pulled up her VOIP program.

    ¡°Hey Lisa,¡± she said. ¡°Yeah, okay. Sure, we can probably come over?¡± She glanced at Callum, and he shrugged and nodded. He didn¡¯t have any objections, and it wasn¡¯t like it took any real time.

    Half an hour later, he opened a portal to Chester¡¯s house. Unlike every other time he¡¯d sent the drone in, there were no mage bubbles keeping watch. In fact, the entire GAR office that had been there, small as it was, had been demolished, and recently. There was still construction equipment in place near the foundations.

    ¡°Welcome,¡± Chester said, for once not greeting them in the basement. With the break from GAR, Chester no longer needed to hide dealing with Callum. Which wasn¡¯t the same thing as being entirely in the open, since the warding was still up.

    ¡°Feeling okay? Recovered from the concussion?¡± Lisa asked, setting out hot chocolate for everyone.

    ¡°Yeah, everything seems fine,¡± Callum said, accepting a mug with thanks. ¡°You all haven¡¯t had any trouble?¡±

    ¡°Well, that¡¯s what we asked you over here to discuss,¡± Chester said. ¡°I assume you saw that House Hargrave and their faction also left GAR?¡±

    ¡°Lucy told me.¡± Callum allowed himself a smile. ¡°I don¡¯t imagine they liked that, especially coming on the heels of your independence.¡±

    ¡°No, they do not, but it has actually helped us a lot. So far they haven¡¯t been able to drum up any Archmages to try and force the issue with me and my allies,¡± Chester said. ¡°So first of all, I have a number of contact requests from our allies.¡± He slid across a stack of cardstock. ¡°I didn¡¯t screen them, and I don¡¯t know what they want, but I said I¡¯d at least forward them.¡±

    Callum grimaced. He didn¡¯t want to deal with any other forces; he had barely wanted to deal with Chester and even though that had turned out okay that wasn¡¯t likely to happen twice. Despite that, he wasn¡¯t so blind that he didn¡¯t see the value in at least being able to talk to a bunch of non-GAR supernaturals when necessary.

    ¡°Alright,¡± he said, taking the stack of cards, flipping through to see all the contact information and notation was in the same hand. Lisa¡¯s, he was pretty sure. ¡°I won¡¯t promise anything but I¡¯ll think about it.¡±

    ¡°The other thing is, we didn¡¯t include any vampires in our alliance and some people took exception to that.¡±

    ¡°I bet.¡± Callum frowned and glanced at Lucy. ¡°Is there anything about that in the GAR chattering?¡±

    ¡°There¡¯s everything going on right now, big man.¡± Lucy flung her arms out in an expansive gesture. ¡°People panicking and thinking that you¡¯re going to attack them, people claiming the Hargraves have wiped out entire Houses, everything. Hard to know what¡¯s real and what¡¯s just nonsense right now.¡±

    ¡°We¡¯re dealing with things ourselves for the most part,¡± Chester said. ¡°But I thought you¡¯d want to know that we¡¯re seeing vampires actively expanding their thrall numbers. What I don¡¯t know is how much of that is supported by GAR and how much is just people seizing what they can during the chaos.¡±

    ¡°Of course they are.¡± Callum pressed his lips tight together. He could hardly blame Chester for passing the problem to him, especially since it was something Callum was concerned about. He had no interest in going around punishing vampires one nest at a time; that would be stressful and probably impossible in the long run. But someone had to stop them if GAR couldn¡¯t.

    Especially since it was, at least in part, his fault that GAR was no longer curtailing their activities. Though GAR had outright condoned preying on normal folks, there had also been limits. Now there weren¡¯t.

    ¡°If you could forward that information to Lucy, I¡¯d appreciate it,¡± he said. While he was grimly satisfied with GAR¡¯s dissolution, the problem was they weren¡¯t yet out the other side into a new sort of stability. It was chaos, and he would have to put in the work to make it better. Intentionally or not, he was the one who had created the current climate, and now it was his responsibility to do something about it.

    ¡°Certainly,¡± Chester said, nodding to Lisa. ¡°I¡¯ll keep you updated on anything else we find, too. I know you¡¯re not our alliance¡¯s avenging angel, but I expect a few showings of The Ghost will help keep people firmly on the side of not hunting mundanes.¡±

    ¡°Not to mention being the right thing to do,¡± Callum said, then shook his head. ¡°That¡¯s not fair. You have your own things to deal with. Are there any surprises I need to be careful of like with Ravaeb? I haven¡¯t seen or heard anything about vamps being able to launch that kind of weird long range attack but I¡¯ve only ever gone after low-hanging fruit.¡±

    ¡°In and of themselves? No. But the vampires are more heavily sponsored by the mages so they often have enchantments or mages themselves as defenses.¡±

    ¡°So I only have to worry if I sense any fae magic.¡± Not that Callum was going to leave things to chance. Any future attacks would be done from a place where he could teleport out if necessary. An empty field somewhere. ¡°In a way I guess I¡¯m going back to the beginning.¡± Chester raised his eyebrows at that, but shrugged it off.

    ¡°We also have the enchanted stuff from the GAR office for you,¡± Chester said. ¡°We can¡¯t use it or trust it even if we could, so we¡¯ll pass it on to you for recycling.¡±

    ¡°Fantastic,¡± Callum said, glad that there was some good news at least. He wasn¡¯t sure there would be enough stuff of sufficient quality for any more anchor pairs, but he had four pairs hooked into his nexus already and there wasn¡¯t too much value in more. But he had a lot of enchantments cribbed from Fane to experiment with, and he could never have enough material to do it with. The less pure stuff especially lost its efficacy fairly quickly.

    ¡°I¡¯ll have that sent over, and your furniture. If you want any folks to install cabinets or anything they¡¯ll need a heads-up though.¡±

    ¡°I¡¯ll let you know if I need it,¡± Callum said. His gravitykinesis and regular telekinesis focus meant that he might well be able to do it himself. He rather enjoyed that he could replace the requirement for extra hands and raw muscle with magic, and besides, he really didn¡¯t want any supernaturals to visit the bunker. ¡°Thank you.¡±

    They didn¡¯t stay for very much longer, but at least long enough to finish the hot chocolate and be shown to a pallet full of stuff. Despite mostly trusting Chester and his people, and Lucy¡¯s friendship with them, he was still glad to be back in their own bunker. He just couldn¡¯t relax around other supernaturals, not completely.

    ¡°So, gonna be going after people again, huh?¡± Lucy asked.

    ¡°They¡¯re not people if they¡¯re preying on folks,¡± Callum said reflexively, then sighed. ¡°It¡¯s not really my favorite thing, but it sounds like the vamps are asking for it. I¡¯ll want you to make sure that we¡¯re being given real information, though. I really don¡¯t like the idea of turning into a weapon to be pointed at some bozo¡¯s enemies.¡± Lucy nodded in agreement.

    ¡°Yeah, will do,¡± she said.

    ¡°While you do that, I¡¯ll finally furnish the house.¡±

    ***

    Constance Earl, head of the Department of Acquisition frowned at Supervisor Lane of the Department for Arcane Investigation. He was hurrying in the door to the meeting room some twenty minute past the hour, and she had no idea why he was late. The man barely did any work. With GAR cut down to bare bones everyone should be working double time but it seemed like the complete reverse. Only the most basic stuff was getting done, save for in her department.

    ¡°Now that we¡¯re all here, we can begin,¡± said Magus Mavros, head of Archmage Affairs. His tedious barb at Lane went unanswered as the man didn¡¯t seem to notice, taking a chair and scowling around at the rest of them. The heads of the various GAR departments didn¡¯t need to meet too often, but under the circumstances it seemed a good idea.

    ¡°The Archmage Council is meeting soon and they want some plan of action,¡± Mavros told them. While there was no overall leader of GAR, Archmage Affairs was the conduit between the Guild of Arcane Regulation and the Archmages it nominally served. There were, of course, representatives for each of the races, though Shifter Affairs was looking uncomfortable with his post. ¡°Considering the current crisis.¡±

    ¡°What exactly are we supposed to do? The Houses are the ones who are causing it to begin with,¡± the head of Supplies said. ¡°Have Duvall put her network back and I might be able to get something done but until then ¡ª what, ask people to carry freight around?¡±

    ¡°If you have to!¡± Finances snapped back. Constance let their squabbling pass as she deliberately opened her folder and looked over her notes. Unlike some people, she had seen the current crisis coming even before Duvall had raised things to the boiling point.

    Her fellow department heads were gathered around a large table in GAR Paris, where most of GAR¡¯s services were still intact. Despite the comfortable chairs, the expensive coffee and pastries, and the view of Paris itself through arched windows, nobody seemed particularly happy. The issue was, for once, not even something they¡¯d brought on themselves. Which meant nobody could be held responsible for it or even blamed for it.

    So they squabbled. When they were finished their quarreling, she had something actually useful to contribute. While Constance wasn¡¯t part of the big inter-House politics as such, there were factions she was in close contact with thanks to her role as head of Acquisitions. Someone needed to take up the slack that GAR had left off.

    ¡°If you¡¯re quite done,¡± Constance said at last, as Finances and Supplies wound down their sniping. ¡°I do have some offers that should make our lives easier. There are some fae who have their own transport network they would allow us to use for a moderate consideration, for one.¡±

    ¡°That would be excellent,¡± Logistics said.

    ¡°I haven¡¯t heard anything about that,¡± Fae Affairs said with a scowl.

    ¡°I know,¡± Constance told him. ¡°They¡¯ve been operating closely with me and a number of Archmages in Faerie, instead.¡± Her primary backer was actually a neutral party, not really backing either GAR or the new factions. At least officially. Unofficially, he had many fingers in many pies, given how much infrastructure he¡¯d created.

    ¡°Don¡¯t you have better things to do?¡± Finance said suspiciously. ¡°I know for a fact that we¡¯re seeing an uptick in supernatural related incidents and that should be your job. If you¡¯re going to be off playing with fae maybe¡ª¡±

    ¡°Don¡¯t blame me for BSE¡¯s lack of personnel,¡± Constance cut him off. ¡°These people have actually helped with curtailing some of this sudden flurry of illicit activity. Unless you want things to get worse and run the risk of breaking into the open. I¡¯m sure the Archmages will thank you for having to deal with a huge population of restive mundanes.¡±

    That shut him up. In fact, she had everyone¡¯s attention, so she allowed herself a small smile. The factions that had kept the more militant bent of GAR at the forefront of politics had mostly broken away, or been crippled by Archmage Taisen¡¯s formation of his own House. While the current crisis was severe, it was also an opportunity for those focused more on the inner workings of supernatural society to take charge.

    ¡°I have certain proposals here for undertaking the rebuilding of GAR,¡± she said, opening the folder. ¡°With and without the support of House Duvall. I recognize the value of returning our transportation network to functionality, but in case that isn¡¯t possible, there have to be alternatives. Not only that, I have some ideas for making the current spate of violence useful to us, rather than increasing our workload.¡±

    They talked it over for a solid two hours. The coffee, tea, and pastries vanished, slowly but surely, and in the end Constance walked away with almost every concession she wanted. More importantly, her backers wanted. Constance herself was happy with the expansion of powers for the Department of Acquisition, though enforcement of that would be ticklish for a while.

    It was time to focus more on the life and welfare of supernaturals anyway. Let Taisen worry about the portal worlds; GAR should serve the people who did real work. Like herself.

    ***

    ¡°I can¡¯t believe he was living here,¡± Grand Magus Lorenzo Rossi said, pacing around the small trailer house in Texas that his agents had located. The Guild of Enchanting had spent quite a lot of time and money on locating Callum Wells, and it was irritating to only miss him by fractions. Though by all accounts he was quite slippery, and it was unlikely he¡¯d believe that Rossi only wanted to talk.

    ¡°We probably would have overlooked the area entirely if he hadn¡¯t spent a lot of vis leaving,¡± Commander Graham said, bald head gleaming in the morning sunlight. ¡°As it is, his vortex enchantments have done a good job degrading a lot of his signature. But it¡¯s still definitely spatial.¡± The Commander handed over the signature analyzer, and Rossi gave it a cursory look. It registered as spatial, but he hardly needed that for confirmation they¡¯d found Wells¡¯ haunt. Only one mage would stick around in a dilapidated old dump like the one they¡¯d found.

    ¡°Are there any functional versions of the vortex enchantment about?¡± He asked instead. While he was pretty sure he knew what Wells was using and why, nobody really used vis spirals that way. They ran the risk of disrupting the very enchantment they fueled. It¡¯d be instructive to see if Wells had made any changes, considering how much he used the thing.

    ¡°We have a steel plate with a partial. It¡¯s already decaying,¡± Graham told him. Rossi grimaced. It went against the grain to use mundane materials for enchanting at all, but it was obvious that Wells used it for the very reason that it didn¡¯t last. ¡°But we found something more interesting while searching the house.¡±

    ¡°Oh?¡±

    Graham beckoned him over to a small evidence box set up on a table outside the house, which held a few square pieces of black material that glowed faintly to his mage sight. Rossi picked up one of the squares, noting that it was cracked partway through, and seemed to be glass. More importantly, the surface was a familiar piece of enchanting design, though strangely only a piece, not something that could sustain itself on its own.

    He picked up a second one and found that it was similarly damaged, with a big chip in the middle of the enchanting design relief, but the notch-and-groove arrangement on the edges meant the two tiles fit together. Perforce, so did the two components of enchantment, the edges fitting flush against each other. It was a fascinating construct, and he could immediately see the utility even if he didn¡¯t much like the execution.

    ¡°What is this? Enchanted glass?¡± He frowned as he turned the tiles over in his hands and then he blinked. ¡°Wait, is this from Six?¡±

    ¡°I believe so, sir,¡± Graham said.

    ¡°Well, we¡¯re sure not going to reproduce this,¡± Rossi said. ¡°But the fundamental idea is sound. Not what I would have expected given his poor enchanting skill.¡± Though even as he said it, he realized it was exactly the sort of thing someone who could only copy enchantments would come up with. Chopping up the bits and pieces for reuse rather than trying to make a single coherent whole.

    ¡°There¡¯s very little else here, sir,¡± Graham said. ¡°Nothing that seems related to Wells¡¯ work.¡±

    ¡°I would think not,¡± Rossi said, regarding the dump of a house. ¡°Which is a shame. This is very interesting, even if his technique is the worst I¡¯ve ever seen.¡± He turned the linked pieces of glass over in his hand again before putting them in the evidence box.

    ¡°If there¡¯s nothing else, you might as well recall your men, Commander Graham,¡± Rossi said. ¡°We¡¯ll have to get at Wells some other way.¡± With the fracture of GAR the Guild of Enchanting no longer had ready agreements with either Alpha Chester¡¯s or Archmage Hargrave¡¯s factions, so he needed to negotiate with them anyway. It was an open secret that Chester could get in contact with Wells, so there might be a way to approach him from that quarter. He still hadn¡¯t given up hope of stopping the man from broadcasting Guild secrets all over the place.

    Or of getting the services of a spatial mage not under the thrall of Duvall.

 Not a chapter - Book Three Audiobook available!

    Well, Amazon''s timing on this was really suspicious.  It was like it was just waiting for me to release my chapter so it could force me to double-post.

    Anyway, the third book is available in audio form now!  Once again, Jeremy Frazier is doing the voicework. He''s done all my audiobooks so far and I think he does a fantastic job.

    This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

    Here is the audible book link</a>, for those who wish to use the audible service directly.

    Alternately, here is the amazon audio link</a>, or you can just click the audio option from the Heretic Mage book link.

 Chapter 2 â€“ DÃ©jÃ  vu

    The first thing Callum did was go looking for more mordite.

    There was no reason to suffer any vampire to live, in his opinion. Not on Earth. While he had nothing to say about their behavior in the Night Lands, on Earth they preyed on people and that could not be borne. Every vampire left alive was condemning people to death. But Callum wasn¡¯t physically or mentally capable of actually wiping out every vampire nest on Earth, and going after this one or that one in particular felt somewhat wrong. But given a target and a reason he had to act.

    Chester had provided both, in the list of nests that had made themselves conspicuous by consumption. Creating thralls was killing people even if the body lived, and thralls themselves were more of an accident than a thing of calculated purpose. So they had supplied the reason, and Callum needed to deal with it. But he wasn¡¯t going to go in half-cocked. He was making sure he was absolutely prepared.

    His experience with Ravaeb had shown him that normal weaponry had an effect, but he would need artillery to deal with anything of real power. An ancient vampire probably couldn¡¯t retaliate in quite the same way a fae king could, but might well be equally as tough. Buying artillery wasn¡¯t completely off the table ¨C the black market where he¡¯d gotten his antimateriel rifle had featured a few pieces ¨C but the care and feeding of something like that was so difficult that bane ammunition was a better idea.

    He knew there were ammunition manufacturers somewhere who could do custom work for him, whether it was by tipping or cladding larger calibers with the stuff, or by making the entire bullet out of either pure mordite or an alloy. Mordite acted like a normal metal, so that was easy enough to deal with, though he was still trying to figure out how the other bane materials were turned into bullets. Just in case. At least with Callum¡¯s abilities he didn¡¯t need thousands of rounds.

    Some of the salvaged enchantments that Chester provided were a mordite alloy, but it really wasn¡¯t very much. Callum actually felt that his best bet would be to go back to the Night Lands ¡ª he knew what he was looking for there, and with the portal anchor and drone he could cover more territory faster. The portal anchor wasn¡¯t really susceptible to being stung by stirges, either, so he could take his time and make sure he got every last bit from any cenote he ran across.

    ¡°This is kind of boring,¡± Lucy said, watching the feed from the drone. The approach to the Night Lands had been nigh identical to the first time he¡¯d gone, only slightly complicated by some roving jammer fields and additional personnel. Even if they could see his tiny threads, they couldn¡¯t see them when they were inside walls or floors. Callum had spent a good hour or two just studying the portal itself, not only sketching its structure into CAD but getting a feel for it. He didn¡¯t have solid grasp of how they worked, but with two world portals transcribed he had a better understanding of what he was looking at. He knew it wouldn¡¯t happen soon, but he took his agreement with Shahey seriously. Only once he was satisfied with his study did they actually breach the portal.

    They¡¯d been through and outside of the Night Lands settlement in less than two minutes.

    ¡°You¡¯d think a land of eternal night populated by vampires would be exciting and chock full of ancient ruins or something, not an empty desert,¡± she added.

    ¡°It¡¯s the shifting you have to watch out for,¡± Callum told her. ¡°That¡¯s what makes it weird and dangerous.¡±

    ¡°So if there were any ruins, they¡¯d be gone,¡± Lucy said.

    ¡°According to one of the books, you have to have some kind of light to keep things from shifting. So yeah, I guess the moment things go dark any ruins would just vanish.¡±

    ¡°What about the drone? Will it get shifted away too?¡± Lucy asked. She was piloting the drone herself, sending it zipping through the air. Callum was focused almost entirely on his senses, while Lucy looked for anything that might be a cenote in the low light of the enormous moon.

    ¡°Not so long as I¡¯ve got a vis box around it,¡± Callum said. ¡°Now, that¡¯s a guess but it¡¯s a pretty good one. The light thing may actually only be the case if it¡¯s magical light, but the space twisting didn¡¯t affect me personally. Just everything around me.¡±

    ¡°Well, either way I¡¯d rather be here than there,¡± Lucy said, leaning back in the new, very comfortable, padded chair placed in the sunny living room of the bunker house. Most of the beautiful handmade furniture was placed, with more on the way. He¡¯d designed the living room to be open and airy and that was already paying dividends. The difference between being cramped into the trailer and having a real space to stretch was night and day.

    ¡°Yeah, there¡¯s not much to recommend it.¡±

    ¡°There¡¯s not even¡ª wait, what the heck is that?¡± Lucy leaned forward to stare at the screen, and a moment later what she was referring to came into his perceptions. They were way out away from the settlement, the better to find cenotes without attracting any attention, and for the first time Callum saw evidence that there was some truth to the reasoning behind the mage draft.

    There was an enormous insectile monster almost fifty feet high and twice that long ambling along a ridge. It was a strangely angular thing, with a slate-grey, slab-sided body from which projected a myriad of crystalline legs. The eyeless head had mandibles larger than a person, which twitched as it clicked its way along the rocky ground.

    ¡°Now, this is a good reason to have a portal world defense force,¡± Callum said. ¡°Let¡¯s not tempt fate and risk an anchor.¡± Lucy nodded agreement, and they sent the drone off away from the thing. After Lucy had snapped a few pictures.

    It took a while to find a cenote, even with their speed and perspective, but pilfering from it was comically easy. Even though stealing mordite stirred up the wildlife, they just whisked the drone and anchor off and away before any of the animals could get the idea to even look for it. Unfortunately, not only were the cenotes rare, they didn¡¯t yield all that much raw material.

    Lucy decided to make a day of it, bringing him a surprise picnic lunch while he was taking a break from concentrating on the little mordite marbles. They snacked on sandwiches in chairs on the tropical lawn while navigating the Night Lands. Gathering weapons materials while safe and comfortable was oddly relaxing for something of such dire import.

    Judging by the few bane bullets he had left, the alloy that was used in them was something like ten percent mordite, so even if he was going for double that it only took a few cenotes to acquire enough for a reasonable amount of bullets. A process that made him aware he was somewhat lucky to find one as quickly as he had, the first time. Lucy rattled them in the plastic container they were using.

    ¡°Doesn¡¯t look like much, big man.¡±

    ¡°Yeah, but check this out.¡± He pulled his bottle of cenote water from where it was stored in the cave, only to find that it was just ordinary water. The magic had left it at some point, which explained at least why they didn¡¯t ship it out to Earth. ¡°Oh, never mind. I guess it doesn¡¯t work on this side of the portal.¡± Lucy raised her eyebrows at his non-explanation.

    ¡°It looks like it¡¯s liquid under the glow of Night Lands water,¡± he explained. ¡°Next time I¡¯ll siphon off some so you can see.¡±

    ¡°That does sound neat,¡± Lucy admitted. ¡°But it just looks like metal now.¡±

    ¡°Just as well. That way it doesn¡¯t raise any suspicions,¡± he said, and put the lid on the box of mordite marbles. He had a small crucible out back and some ingots of ammunition-appropriate lead alloy, so despite how much it hurt to use precious bane material for something other than enchanting, he headed outside and started the alloy process. A small test batch showed that the alloying process ended up with a loss in magical potency relative to the ratio of the metal. The end result was something with a magical signature partway between the vampire¡¯s original bane bullets and what he¡¯d been aiming for. Presumably the bane effect was of similar strength.

    ¡°Gonna make a lot of bullets,¡± Lucy said, watching him pour the metal from the crucible into the ingot molds. He was using a smaller variant of his lava technique, forcing the metal to slowly rise upward into a portal feeding directly to the top of the ingot mold.

    ¡°Hopefully more than we need. I really don¡¯t want to go on some kind of rampage,¡± Callum said.

    ¡°Pretty sure nobody wants that,¡± Lucy said. ¡°You¡¯re already pretty scary in the magical world, mister Ghost.¡±

    ¡°I don¡¯t like just letting vampires go either,¡± Callum grumped. ¡°But it¡¯d take way more bullets than I could ever get to deal with them.¡± He sighed. ¡°Anyway, speaking of The Ghost, I assume there¡¯s still a price on my head. How hard are they looking for me?¡±

    ¡°Officially? I think they¡¯ve got one team but it¡¯s kind of in name only. If you show up somewhere they¡¯ll probably come after you but I¡¯m not seeing much chatter about hunting you down right now. Mostly they have other concerns.¡±

    ¡°If they were smart, they¡¯d take the opportunity to reform their policies,¡± Callum said. ¡°But I doubt they will. Not for a while, anyway. It¡¯s going to take time for Chester¡¯s group to put real pressure on them.¡±

    ¡°To be fair, I don¡¯t know how they can reform with vamps,¡± Lucy said, and Callum nodded. Though apparently vampires could survive on moonwater within the confines of the Night Lands, its potency drastically decreased in the scarcer mana of Earth. Actual vampirism was still an option in the Night Lands themselves, and even stronger there. Callum imagined the old vampires over on that side of the portal were truly monstrous.

    Still, unless they could perform the kind of nonsense that fae magic allowed they were not exactly a threat to him. They could move as fast as they wanted, be as strong as they wanted, and since he wasn¡¯t there they could do nothing. It wasn¡¯t like he could be any more wanted by the supernatural authorities. The only reason they weren¡¯t really actively looking for him was because the only way to track him was through his own failures. Or Chester, but he was a completely different thorn for GAR.

    Lucy found a manufacturer out in Utah who was willing to work with supplied material, and the pair of them made a quick run to drop it off. He was certain that Chester probably could have dug someone up, but considering how much they were already relying on Chester for things, Callum wanted to diversify. It would be far too easy to just become an adjunct rather than his own agent.

    The project would take a few days, but that was fine. While they were technically moved in, with the furniture arranged, there was always more tidying up to do, and Callum¡¯s magic only helped so much when it came to planting the back garden. Or sweeping up, for that matter, and if there was a cleaning enchantment in the books he¡¯d copied from the Fane household he hadn¡¯t run across it yet.

    In the meantime, Lucy had dug into GAR reports and found three vampire nests that had noticeably expanded their ranks of thralls and so had exposed themselves. Some of them had even increased their number of vampires, but that was importation from the Night Lands. Even though he knew it intellectually, sometimes Callum had to remind himself that vampires couldn¡¯t turn ordinary people. Though making thralls was bad enough.

    ¡°This feels like real spy stuff,¡± Lucy said, sprawled in the early morning sunshine on the back patio and poking at a tablet as they monitored one of the nests in question. Callum had no desire to repeat the attack on Ravaeb, which had not been as clean and effective as he wanted. By preference there would be no collateral damage, no witnesses, and no survivors. Ravaeb¡¯s assassination had broken his streak, but that just meant he had to be even more careful.

    ¡°We do have certain advantages,¡± Callum admitted. He¡¯d installed a few of Lucy¡¯s monitoring boxes around the Madrid nest and while neither of them spoke Spanish the actions of the nest were obvious enough. As stereotypical as it was, they seemed to be involved in organized crime, preying on trafficking victims. Which meant Callum had already transported several would-be dinners or thralls out of their grasp and over to a nearby police station. It probably wasn¡¯t enough, but there was only so much he could do.

    Despite the obvious differences, the entire setup felt a lot like what he¡¯d seen the very first time he¡¯d dealt with vampires. A building full of men with guns, with a smaller number of vampires, and a mage for defense. The only real change was that one of the vampires was obviously in charge, rather than it just being an undifferentiated group of supernaturals.

    He¡¯d stuck with shotgun slugs for the mordite rounds, because he just wanted something that did maximum damage at point blank range. Besides, he still had plenty of shotguns from his initial raid, having carried the weapons from cache to cache. The manufacturer had done an excellent job, delivering ammunition that was to his eye indistinguishable from commercial rounds, but Lucy made additional versions of the remote gun trigger just in case.

    Now that he¡¯d had more experience with mages, he was grateful the first one he¡¯d dealt with had been at the bottom of the rung. The more trained and more powerful ones could throw out a shield that stopped multiple ton boulder impacts, let alone a falling chunk of wood. Judging by the vis bubble the mage monitoring and helping the vampires in question wasn¡¯t much stronger, so he actually wasn¡¯t worried about whoever it was interfering.

    This narrative has been purloined without the author''s approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.

    Not that he was going to let the mage go back to whatever they were doing. The mage was there aiding and abetting something absolutely terrible, even if they wasn¡¯t holding the trigger themselves, as it were. Accordingly he had a simple plan to deal with them ¡ª a flashbang, and then a gravity-accelerated rolled steel joist that he¡¯d picked up at a scrapyard. Metal mages were rare enough that he was pretty certain none of them would be stuck with scutwork like monitoring wards.

    The second round of vampire assassinations went almost entirely without drama. There was no time crunch, no worry about physically transporting himself from site to site. He had enough portal anchors that he could use one for each nest; New York, Madrid, and San Francisco, in that order. Like Madrid, the New York nest got most of its victims through human trafficking, which made a grim kind of sense, and he¡¯d arranged for an anonymous tip to the authorities through Lucy after he took care of the supernaturals. In San Francisco, they simply kidnapped vagrants and homeless, so there was less that could be done on the mundane side.

    An RSJ moving at a hundred-plus miles per hour was enough to deal with the mages. He was actually surprised, and glad he didn¡¯t have to go with the other options he¡¯d set up just in case that wasn¡¯t enough. There was just a huge difference between dealing with prepared Archmages and specialists, and ambushing the dregs.

    The vampires, even the ones that were still awake, were practically helpless. Of course, he conducted the raids during the day, early morning in San Francisco and afternoon in Madrid. He had four shotguns set up by remote, which meant he could multitask on targets, especially since he wanted to recover the slugs for recycling. The bane shots were absolutely devastating, stripping away all the supernatural toughness of the vampires and resulting in horrendous amounts of damage.

    It was horrible. He was glad that he didn¡¯t have to experience it with his other senses, and equally grateful he wasn¡¯t inured to it. He didn¡¯t want to turn into some cold-blooded psychopath.

    He was equally glad that he hadn¡¯t performed the entire operation from his house. Callum could just imagine trying to relax in the sofa and having flashbacks to executing vampires en masse. The two of them were in the cave-cache, which at least felt more suited to dark and dirty business, and was something he wasn¡¯t actually in most of the time.

    Unlike House Fane, there weren¡¯t any innocents involved with the vampires, no children or menials whose future or life savings might be bundled up with the cache of money and materials. He looted their vaults, though he restricted himself to actual money, gold, bane materials, and weapons, which he piled up in the corner of the cave. There was probably more wealth in objects d¡¯art or furniture, but Callum didn¡¯t have the time or energy to spare on that. He just wanted what he could use himself.

    The three hits left every last vampire there dead, along with their attendant mages, but he left the thralls alone. Callum had been told that they weren¡¯t really people anymore, or something of that nature, but they were obviously victims. In the cold clarity of deliberate action, he could not and would not target people whose only crime was being abused by supernaturals.

    Unfortunately, there were a lot of thralls.

    ¡°That¡¯s going to be a heck of a lot of arrests, big man,¡± Lucy said, the drone perched on the building opposite the New York vampire nest showing a long series of flashing light as police cars and emergency vehicles pulled up. When an anonymous tip included a live feed of gunfire and dead bodies, it was taken a little more seriously. ¡°The BSE folks are not going to enjoy cleaning it up.¡±

    ¡°The original mess is theirs to begin with,¡± Callum said. ¡°Letting in these monsters and then aiding their depravity.¡±

    ¡°Can¡¯t really argue with that, just that it¡¯s a big mess that involves a lot of normal people.¡± Lucy shrugged. ¡°Like, aren¡¯t you worried about the blowup if you expose the supernatural world somehow? I don¡¯t think most people would really believe it and there might be Archmages or Fae Kings who come out to stomp on the news, but it could happen.¡±

    ¡°I¡¯m not that worried about it, because in the end this isn¡¯t that much different from a normal criminal organization,¡± Callum said. ¡°But it is a worry. I¡¯m not sure how much I agree with keeping the whole thing secret to begin with, but I cannot begin to imagine the violence that would ensue if the entire supernatural world were revealed. That¡¯s something more complicated than I¡¯m qualified to deal with.¡±

    ¡°Yeah, more than anyone is, but you might have to start thinking about it,¡± Lucy told him. Callum sighed and rubbed his eyes.

    ¡°You know, I just wanted to be left alone,¡± He mused. ¡°Things have gotten a little out of hand.¡± Lucy barked a laugh.

    ¡°I¡¯ll say! We might want to give a thought to slowing down here, let things work themselves out,¡± she suggested. ¡°Maybe pause to reassess and figure out how to deal with things for real and not just piecemeal.¡±

    ¡°That would be preferable,¡± Callum agreed. ¡°I can¡¯t ignore some things, and I¡¯ll have to act if I see them. But if people would stop poking me then maybe we could all get our bearings.¡±

    ***

    ¡°We have lost more of my people in the past two years than the last century,¡± the Master of Weltentor said, his voice cold and hard. Much like the room Constance was in, with stone walls and stone floors and blue magelights to illuminate gray raspwood furniture. The trees of the Night Lands didn¡¯t actually yield a particularly good wood, but it was expensive and the crowded office demonstrated an appreciable outlay. ¡°Is anything going to be done about it?¡±

    ¡°Do you have an idea of how to find Wells? The Ghost?¡± Constance asked tartly. Beside her, the Head of Vampire Affairs stirred uncomfortably, but didn¡¯t add anything. The woman was frankly useless, put in place by the same forces that were behind Archmage Corrilon. Even Constance wasn¡¯t sure exactly which Houses were part of the club, though she could guess it was the oldest ones. Her own backers moved in the same circles. There were a number of Archmages whose Houses predated GAR itself, yet they didn¡¯t have enough direct power or responsiveness to shape things like BSE and DAI.

    ¡°It is not my function to police the human world,¡± Weltentor replied. ¡°It is GAR¡¯s.¡±

    ¡°Yet it is not every vampire nest that is being attacked, only those who are vastly exceeding their allotted behavior,¡± Constance said. ¡°I am hardly in sympathy for those who are taking advantage of our present enforcement issues. All of them were in violation of GAR law.¡±

    ¡°You are saying you will just let it lie.¡± It wasn¡¯t a question.

    ¡°I am saying that you have to accept the realities of the situation,¡± Constance said. ¡°Don¡¯t want to draw the attention of the Ghost? Don¡¯t exceed the quotas that Acquisition allows. Those limitations exist for a reason.¡±

    Weltentor frowned at her, but didn¡¯t reply. Constance wasn¡¯t exactly pleased by the damage that Wells had wreaked, and it was a flat out lie to say that they had exceeded their quota. She had given them tacit permission to expand as a reward for targeting certain other factions, but Weltentor didn¡¯t have to know that. Nobody did; not when she could use it as a cudgel to replace some of the missing hard power.

    People tended to listen when the alternative was turning up dead.

    ¡°At the same time, I¡¯m aware that these issues can¡¯t go completely unaddressed on our end,¡± Constance said. There had to be some carrot to go with the stick. When Vampire Affairs failed to take the obvious cue, she nudged the woman with her elbow.

    ¡°Ah! Yes.¡± The reedy mage with oversized spectacles jerked to attention. ¡°GAR is issuing a number of additional emigration slots for you to use. Allowing you to renormalize your numbers much sooner.¡± It was also, effectively, a bribe. The Master of Weltentor was the opposite side of the Head of Vampire Affairs; a representative rather than any actual ruler. The extra numbers meant more he could profit from.

    ¡°We do not have infinite population to draw from. New vampires appear as they appear, and only some of them come to us,¡± Weltentor said. Constance said nothing. Vampire Affairs made some conciliatory noises but nothing concrete. Finally Weltentor tilted his head, conceding the point.

    ¡°If steps are taken to see that this does not repeat, there is a certain pool of fresh blood that is eager to step out from the Night Lands,¡± he said.

    ¡°Excellent. The best steps to take would be to refrain from violating any of GAR¡¯s laws. As I said, they are there for a reason. Only those who draw attention to themselves run the risk of being targeted,¡± she lied. Nobody had any real control over Wells¡¯ attentions except perhaps Alpha Chester, who was absolutely in contact with him. None of the vampire nests that had been targeted were at all in contention with Chester though, so it was hardly like The Ghost could be considered an agent of the new alliance.

    The meeting didn¡¯t last too much longer. Once Vampire Affairs turned over the papers for the extra allotment, Weltentor was just as glad to be rid of them. Overall, Constance was pleased, and not just because she hadn¡¯t needed to make any extra concessions. Turning a potential issue to her advantage was always a delightful trick, and she was rapidly becoming the de facto first among equals of the various department heads at GAR.

    Even though Wells was beyond her control, she could still use him as a club, a bogeyman to threaten people with and ensure they stayed under her thumb. Or at least, the thumb of GAR. His actions were very predictable in a certain way, even if there was no telling where or when he would strike. Which just made him even more effective for a phantom police.

    Constance returned to her suite in Paris, small but tastefully appointed with gifts from friends and in thanks for favors done, and penned a few notes to people of import. After having her email compromised she was somewhat suspicious of the entire GAR network. The girl that they¡¯d used to lure Wells out was apparently familiar with electronic networks, so Constance expected that she still had access. Nobody with any sense trusted the networks anyway, and anything of real import was hand-written and hand-delivered, to be disseminated among the Houses and Old Fae through their own channels.

    She sipped a fine Night Lands vintage while she worked. While the vampires themselves were indifferent to the culinary arts, the Houses that lived there had created a unique wine from a rare variety of native berry and moonwater, lending a pleasant mana-rich tingle to the liquid. It had been one of the little sundries that her friends among the new guard had supplied in appreciation for her services, a benefit she enjoyed very much.

    There was to be another meeting, a similar one, with King Atreus and Fae Affairs, considering what had happened to Ravaeb. She expected that to be significantly different in tenor. While some of the fae kings were cautious about someone who could remove Ravaeb so easily, many of them simply took gleeful delight in the Ghost¡¯s destruction of one of their peers. Which didn¡¯t mean that they wouldn¡¯t use the incident to squeeze GAR for what they could. Atreus himself was one of her backers¡¯ close allies, so it was going to be more congenial overall.

    Not that any GAR¡¯s troubles were any personal worry anyway. The so-called concessions only further cemented the power of her faction, moving authority from some of the departments to her own. Which was all to the good, since someone had to pick up the pieces and keep GAR from fragmenting.

    Even Wells was doing his part, though he didn¡¯t know it.

    ***

    Ray Danforth stood in line with the rest of Archmage Taisen¡¯s forces as the House Hargrave healer came through and gave each of them a refresh. He actually recognized the girl as the one who¡¯d been involved with Wells way back at the beginning of the current troubles. It was a small world.

    She stopped in front of him and gave him a smile as her vis flicked out to touch his bubble, and the familiar feeling of magical healing flowed through him. Ray wasn¡¯t actually injured; even in sparring it never went far enough to break through shields. Humans were far more fragile than something like a shifter or a vampire and the titanic forces mages could wield meant that anything that broke a shield would probably kill the target. But regular magical healing kept people healthy and alert, which was Taisen¡¯s goal.

    ¡°Thank you,¡± he said, and the girl nodded at him before moving onto the next mage. Despite being among the combat mages, Danforth was, fortunately, not actually expected to sally forth himself. Taisen mandated everyone drill regularly, but he and Felicia both had been given something closer to their old job.

    Once healed, they all returned to Garrison Seven by way of a portal ¡ª one of the BSE¡¯s old breaching portals, fueled by vis crystal charges for the transport. With the teleportation network both untrustworthy and unavailable, the only real way to use spatial enchantments was to repurpose portal devices, despite being energy hungry and lacking any way to verify who and what was going through in the way the old teleport system did.

    It was also the only way to transport the growing number of mages who had removed their tattoos. All of Taisen¡¯s forces had taken theirs off, and Ray had followed suit. It was effectively a permanent break from GAR, but Taisen had bluntly informed them of the dangers of anything that bypassed their vis exclusion.

    Deep beneath the Antarctic ice, Archmage Taisen had created a sprawling complex and fortified fallback position in case of anything truly horrendous. Before the events of the past couple years, Ray would have thought that was unnecessarily paranoiac. Now, he well understood what had driven Taisen to make it.

    The structure was similar to the way things were built in the Night Lands, with glamour-paintings instead of windows and plenty of light, a fairly comfortable place to live despite its location and purpose. The mages all scattered to their various tasks as they emerged from the portal, and Ray strode down the carpeted hall to the apartment complex. He turned off at the one he shared with Felicia, letting himself in and getting a wave from Felicia herself.

    ¡°Find anything?¡± He asked her, crossing over to the table and taking a seat next to her.

    ¡°There are some hints,¡± Felicia admitted, passing a few aged reports over to him. They had been tasked with finding any hints of illicit supernatural settlements, or just things that might have slipped past the guards at each of the Portal Worlds. Since Wells had demonstrated he had no trouble bypassing the protections, Taisen presumed others could, too.

    It was a thankless task of combing through ancient paperwork, but it turned up more evidence of supernaturals living outside the aegis of GAR than Ray had thought. Even though BSE and the DAI should have caught these things, they clearly hadn¡¯t. Or, perhaps more worryingly, they¡¯d likely been covered up with a few bribes here or there, or the hints to rank and file that they needed to ignore anything above their station.

    The only saving grace was it didn¡¯t seem likely that any of the horrors from the portal worlds that Ray had seen during his service had snuck through. They didn¡¯t use glamour, and a thirty-foot, bright blue wyrcat with serrated fangs would be obvious even to mundanes. But vampires and fae were cleverer. He wasn¡¯t sure about shifters; if they had gone anywhere it was somewhere populated sparsely enough that nobody was around to notice or report strange happenings.

    Not surprisingly, at least in hindsight, a lot of the suspicious activity was in the areas of Earth that GAR had neglected. As mage-centric as the institution was, located mostly in Europe and China and the US, there were enormous swaths of land that were supposedly uninteresting to supernatural races. With no GAR support and no nearby portals, there would be less mana and it¡¯d be less habitable for any supernatural who might go wandering.

    South America, Africa, India. Those all lacked anything but the most cursory supervision and the issue was exacerbated by the language barrier. Aside from a few fae with unique gifts, there was no such thing as universal translation and while most mages were multi-lingual simply due to age, there were limits. Ray could speak most of the Germanic and romance languages to some degree of proficiency, but that only covered so much.

    ¡°We should talk to Archmage Wizzy about this South America stuff,¡± she said, tapping one of the folders. ¡°If we can get at him. He¡¯d know if it was anything worth looking to. Or if it¡¯s from Portal World Six. The idea that nothing comes out of there should really be looked at again.¡±

    ¡°There¡¯s no way he¡¯s guarding that portal for no reason,¡± Ray agreed. ¡°Not just because he doesn¡¯t want people going in. I¡¯ve never been myself, and I don¡¯t know anyone who has.¡±

    ¡°And we can¡¯t trust GAR about it,¡± Felicia agreed.

    ¡°We¡¯ll have to be careful,¡± Ray said. ¡°There¡¯s no telling what we could stir up.¡± The last time they¡¯d been working on some unknown case, they¡¯d found themselves up against Wells. Wells hadn¡¯t seemed interested in them, but there was no guarantee that would hold for anyone else. Given how much damage one rogue mage could do, he didn¡¯t want to see what would happen if more rogues started popping up.

 Chapter 3 â€“ Reassess

    Lucy was worried.

    Once again she had been woken up by Callum stirring from the bed in the middle of the night, and she peered blearily after him as he headed to the bathroom. Probably for antacids, which he¡¯d been chewing down like candy as of late. Alcohol was saved for special occasions, but the current method of coping wasn¡¯t helpful either.

    ¡°You okay?¡± She asked, when he came back to bed.

    ¡°Just heartburn,¡± he said, crawling under the sheets.

    ¡°You gotta let things go,¡± she said, reaching for him.

    ¡°Yeah, I know,¡± he said, snuggling up to her. She squeaked in indignation from his cold feet. ¡°It¡¯s just¡ª there¡¯s so much that comes with what we¡¯re doing. We saved a lot of people, but how many didn¡¯t we save? We took out these vampires, but there are others, most of which we don¡¯t know anything about, that are just as bad or worse. Plus it wasn¡¯t like the vamps set up the trafficking rings. Not all the monsters are supernatural, but I''m just one man even if I am a mage. I have a responsibility, but I just can¡¯t be a big hero.¡±

    ¡°S¡¯way too heavy for this late at night, big man,¡± she said with a yawn. There were too many cobwebs in her brain to grapple with that kind of worry. ¡°But I tell you what, you can¡¯t hold the world on your shoulders. Too much a responsibility for one man.¡±

    ¡°I suppose,¡± Callum said unenthusiastically. ¡°It still seems like it¡¯s my fault that things are starting to happen.¡±

    ¡°Believe me, they were happening long before you came by.¡± Lucy turned and rolled overtop of him, nestling her head in against his neck. His arms came up around her and she could feel him relax. ¡°Let¡¯s get some sleep,¡± she muttered. ¡°You¡¯re gonna be useless tomorrow if you stay up.¡±

    ¡°Yeah, yeah,¡± he said, but drifted off again only a few moments later.

    His maudlin mood seemed to have dissipated when they got up in the morning. Working clearly helped, at least when it came to the garden and the metal craft shed that he was putting up outside. It amused her, considering how many mages disdained physical labor and even used telekinesis foci instead of their hands for ordinary tasks.

    She stretched out on the couch with her laptop, attending to her own business while he worked outside. Some freelancing online, where she¡¯d reestablished her bona fides under a different name, the investments she¡¯d made with the money from salvaging, and catching up with friends and contacts. Mostly in Chester¡¯s pack.

    Internet access was no longer an issue. She¡¯d anonymously rented a piece of an office in Albania and Callum had set one of the portal anchors to connect there. It required a bit of a booster since it went through the nexus, but the Wi-Fi was good enough.

    Lucy mused over the issues while she worked, since it was obvious that things couldn¡¯t continue with Callum being some kind of unaffiliated enforcer. He was physically and magically capable of it, but he didn¡¯t have the temperament. Not that Lucy was any real expert, but she talked with Lisa all the time and in some ways Alpha Chester¡¯s position was analogous.

    The thought made her dial up her friend. Partly just to talk, but partly because Lucy and Lisa had ended up being the official contact point between Callum and Chester. If there was something that needed passing in either direction they managed it, though that wasn¡¯t really all that common. Mostly they just chatted.

    ¡°Hey Lucy,¡± Lisa¡¯s voice came. Her friend usually used a headset, but Lucy could still hear thumps in the background. Probably in the pack gym then, with shifters sparring.

    ¡°Hey Lisa, anything new?¡±

    ¡°Actually there is! We had a representative from the Guild of Enchanting come by. Partly to establish relations with Chester, but they also wanted to talk to Callum.¡± Lisa didn¡¯t sound concerned. ¡°Apparently they had business matters they wanted to bring up.¡±

    ¡°Huh.¡± Lucy said, and jotted down the number that Lisa gave her. She knew that the Guild of Enchanting wasn¡¯t fully part of GAR, but she wouldn¡¯t have thought they were so separate that they¡¯d be making independent deals with Chester already. Nor could she imagine what business they had with Callum, other than the deadly kind. But if Lisa was passing on the message they were at least moderately polite.

    ¡°I¡¯ll tell him,¡± she said. ¡°Is it urgent?¡±

    ¡°Not that I know of,¡± she replied. ¡°Tell you what is urgent, though. You and him. Can¡¯t keep putting it off.¡±

    ¡°I know, I know,¡± Lucy said with some exasperation. Lisa had been nagging more than was comfortable, but she did have a point. Not that Lucy didn¡¯t enjoy spending time with the big man but if they were going to have anything more it couldn¡¯t wait forever. ¡°I honestly think he doesn¡¯t know what it¡¯s like to feel secure anymore. Not that I blame him after the past couple years. I¡¯ll work on it.¡±

    Lisa, mercifully, let it drop after that, and they just talked and gossiped about what was going on. Lisa¡¯s grandkids, Lucy¡¯s work, Callum¡¯s garden. The scuttlebutt out of GAR and out of the Hargrave-Taisen alliance, which didn¡¯t yet have an official name. Chester¡¯s moves to cement his authority over the Midwest region, at least when it came to supernaturals.

    ¡°One moment Lisa, he¡¯s back,¡± Lucy said, still on the phone when Callum returned. He smelled of damp soil and wet grass, and leaned down to give her a kiss on his way to the kitchen. Lucy grabbed his wrist before he slipped away again and he looked at her with eyebrows raised.

    ¡°Something up?¡±

    ¡°Lisa says the Guild of Enchanting wants to talk to you,¡± Lucy told him.

    ¡°I bet they do,¡± he said, his face smoothing into that neutral mask he used when he was contemplating possible trouble.

    ¡°We can just use a box to talk to them,¡± she suggested. ¡°Heck, we can even put it somewhere with Wi-Fi access so you can clean up the vis before they get there.¡±

    ¡°That is a good idea. I suppose there¡¯s no harm in hearing what they have to say.¡± He rubbed at his forehead, leaving a smear of dirt from his fingers. ¡°I guess we can set it up. Do you have their contact information?¡±

    ¡°Got a phone number,¡± she said. ¡°I guess they¡¯ve got someone plugged into mundane stuff. I¡¯m pretty sure they also have a presence online but there¡¯s no telling who pays attention to that.¡±

    ¡°I imagine they wouldn¡¯t want to be caught talking to me,¡± Callum said. ¡°Sure, set it up.¡±

    ¡°On it, big man,¡± she said.

    ¡°I can¡¯t believe you still call him that,¡± Lisa said with amusement, as Callum went to wash.

    ¡°Hard to think of him as anything else,¡± Lucy said. ¡°Not after he rescued me and all.¡±

    ¡°I can¡¯t argue with that,¡± Lisa said. After a little more discussion they hung up and she dialed the number from the Guild of Enchanting. She had been half expecting to be answered by some kind of secretary, but after a few rings the voice that answered stated a name that Lucy actually recognized.

    ¡°This is Lorenzo Rossi,¡± a heavily accented male voice said. ¡°Mister Wells?¡±

    ¡°This is Lucy, on behalf of Wells.¡± She didn¡¯t want to use her family name, but it hadn¡¯t quite reached the point of taking Callum¡¯s, so she just had the one name for the moment. ¡°You wanted to set up a meeting?¡± It surprised her that the actual head of the Guild of Enchanting was answering a phone directly, but maybe they really wanted to talk to Callum. She couldn¡¯t imagine the big man waiting on whatever layers of bureaucracy normally insulated Rossi from ordinary people.

    ¡°Yes, as soon as possible.¡± Rossi was brusque. ¡°It is a matter of some urgency,¡± he added, contradicting Lisa, but Lucy imagined if it had waited this long then it wasn¡¯t really time-sensitive.

    ¡°The best way to do it would be a public place in the mundane world, and we¡¯ll attend through a tablet,¡± Lucy said. ¡°He doesn¡¯t trust any mages enough to meet in person, for obvious reasons.¡±

    ¡°I see,¡± Rossi said after a short pause. ¡°I suppose that is sufficient. What do you suggest?¡±

    The easiest solution would just have been to lean on Chester again, but Callum didn¡¯t like relying on the shifters more than he had to. Which Lucy found a little silly, but she knew when to pick her battles when it came to his paranoia. It was hardly difficult to set up a meeting in a business incubator conference room over in California for the next day.

    They made their preparations beforehand, of course, flying in with a drone and depositing the tablet hours before the meeting was supposed to occur. She could only watch through the cameras, on the tablet and on the drone, but Callum could see ¨C or sense ¨C everything. Lucy could scarcely imagine what that was like, but Callum mostly handled it fine. There were moments his eyes went distant, when he was clearly paying attention to something else, but for the most part he focused on the real world.

    She didn¡¯t see Rossi arrive, thanks to glamour, but Callum warned her he was flying in and after a moment he appeared on the cameras, a distinguished gentleman with dark hair and Mediterranean features. He came with three outriders, clear subordinates, carrying polished leather cases that were too small and too wide to be briefcases. Sample cases, maybe. They walked into the conference room and Lucy nodded to Callum, turning on the video link with the tablet.

    ¡°Mister Rossi?¡± Callum spoke, as it didn¡¯t seem that Rossi noticed the tablet was on after a few seconds, holding a muttered conversation with one of his companions.

    ¡°Ah!¡± Rossi said, completely unflustered. Lucy studied him through the tablet camera as he seated himself, and he didn¡¯t look very stressed or worried. Grave at most, so she didn¡¯t think it was trouble. Or it was a lot of trouble, and they thought they had something of enough power to not worry about putting pressure on Callum. ¡°Mister Wells?¡±

    ¡°That¡¯s me,¡± Callum said, face set. Lucy was pretty sure he didn¡¯t realize he did that. His normal face, when he talked to her or actually relaxed, was quite normal, but when he had to deal with the mages or other authority figures there was a hard, intimidating cast to his features. Personally, she felt it matched the moniker he¡¯d gotten, and that he was the only one who thought The Ghost was a silly name.

    ¡°I actually have a rather large number of items,¡± Rossi said, apparently friendly, though everything Lucy had heard about the man was that he was a hard businessman. ¡°But I¡¯ll start with the first one. Could you please stop spreading Guild enchantment secrets everywhere?¡±

    Callum blinked. Lucy stifled a giggle. Though Rossi probably wouldn¡¯t be able to tell, especially since he only had the tablet to look at, behind Callum¡¯s mask he was completely thrown.

    ¡°I wasn¡¯t aware that I was,¡± he said stiffly.

    ¡°The teleportation pads you¡¯ve been providing,¡± Rossi said, a touch impatiently. ¡°All that work just out in the open! I know you don¡¯t have any idea how much time and effort went into perfecting every single one of those designs but you could have at least covered it up!¡±

    ¡°That is fair,¡± Callum said after a moment. Lucy raised her eyebrows at him. She hadn¡¯t expected that reaction; normally the big man flatly ignored any attempts to exert authority over him. ¡°That is a reasonable change to make, though you understand I am constrained by my circumstances. I¡¯m somewhat surprised you¡¯re not asking me to desist altogether.¡±

    ¡°Yes, well,¡± Rossi waved it away. ¡°As you say, you¡¯re constrained by your circumstances. It¡¯s obvious you have the power and expertise to examine and recreate enchantments, and after seeing your work I¡¯m hardly going to start making demands.¡± That, despite already having made one.

    If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. Please report it.

    ¡°Indeed,¡± Callum said. ¡°It hasn¡¯t worked well for anyone else so far.¡±

    ¡°Exactly.¡± Rossi leaned forward toward the tablet. ¡°I¡¯d rather work with you. It¡¯s obvious you don¡¯t have any schooling in how to properly perform enchantment but you have some natural skill and insight. Like those tiles we found at your old place.¡± Callum didn¡¯t react to that, even though Lucy felt her mouth turn downward of its own accord.

    ¡°We¡¯ve looked at them and think there are some very promising applications. What a fascinating idea. However did you come up with it?¡± Callum smiled at that, very suddenly.

    ¡°That wasn¡¯t my idea,¡± he said. ¡°That was Lucy¡¯s.¡± He beckoned toward her, and she joined him in front of the laptop camera, feeling somewhat self-conscious. ¡°We work together on enchanting,¡± he continued.

    ¡°Oh,¡± said Rossi in obvious surprise. ¡°Very well, then. I would like to extend both of you a business opportunity. I know I can¡¯t stop you from enchanting, and you may not understand how limited our access to spatial mages is. Archmage Duvall and her apprentices make themselves available to a certain extent, but they all have demands on their time.¡± Callum took a breath and leaned back.

    ¡°So you want to, what, sell my enchantments?¡±

    ¡°Not exactly. Your work is, pardon my bluntness, barely passable. At least as it stands. But perhaps we could provide instruction ¡ª and more importantly you could provide portions of enchantments that only a spatial mage could provide. I assume you, or rather Lucy, would want the proceeds from properly registering your interlocking enchantment design with the tiles.¡±

    ¡°In short, legitimacy,¡± Callum said, and glanced at her. Lucy nodded firmly. Someone in the mage camp actually taking them seriously was a new one for her, and she thought it was a fantastic idea. The big man would probably have a lot of caveats and carefuls, but moving out of the black market would be great.

    ¡°Perhaps, though there are a lot of caveats that we¡¯d have to discuss,¡± Callum said. ¡°Though I¡¯m surprised you¡¯re approaching me like this, considering GAR has a price on my head.¡±

    ¡°Ah, but the Guild of Enchanting does not work for GAR. We work with GAR, certainly, but we were there first and we have always prided ourselves on being a separate organization.¡± Rossi looked somewhat smug. ¡°We deal with Houses on an individual basis, so there¡¯s no reason we can¡¯t do the same with you.¡±

    ¡°I see.¡± Callum pursed his lips. ¡°Then let us discuss it.¡±

    Lucy pulled her laptop around to take notes. She wasn¡¯t about to turn down the option for learning more about magic and getting money for her work, but she was happier about how it would reduce the pressure on Callum. He felt, for good reason, that it was more or less the two of them against the world, and having another group of people not gunning for his head would be helpful.

    Callum¡¯s paranoia had been justified more than once. Setting up a distress phrase, insisting on shooting the guns remotely, and the bunker itself. There were people after them, they did have enemies, and the world was a scary place. Despite that, the strain of treating everyone like they were potential foes was telling. She actually wondered exactly how he¡¯d gotten along before being introduced to the supernatural, though the fact that he was working for himself, by himself, was at least part of an answer.

    Being officially recognized by the Enchanter¡¯s Guild was at least one step to actually living like normal again, and hopefully not the last.

    ***

    Jissarrell watched as the crystals energized the teleportation pad, and a servant stepped in. He vanished, then reappeared a moment later to bow to his master. Jissarrell dismissed him with a flick of the finger, and stepped onto the pad himself.

    It was not nearly as stylish as the Door of Glass, nor as exciting as the Ways. He¡¯d done his best by surrounding the pad with a chamber more appropriate to a fae enclave. There was a walkway between the petals of a lotus ten feet high, with the teleporter ensconced at its center, but it was still transparently not proper fae magic. Though that did give it its own particular cachet.

    He stepped onto the pad himself and pulled in his power, letting the human-wrought magic wash over him. It wasn¡¯t comfortable bottling himself up, pretending even for a moment that he was anything less than a King, but the teleportation pad was far too weak to affect him if he didn¡¯t make an effort to let it. There was a brief shift and then he was in Florida, in the endless halls of gilt and steel that surrounded King Ferrochar¡¯s court.

    Ferrochar himself was waiting with his nobles, horns smoldering and a cloak of molten gold rippling the air with its heat. He inclined his head to Jissarrell, their powers briefly clashing in a friendly contest of wills before pulling back. Amusingly, despite his extensive holdings and court, Ferrochar¡¯s personal power was not that great. In Faerie that would be a weakness that ensured his court would be crushed by his neighbors, but on Earth Ferrochar¡¯s other holdings meant that he could contend with Jissarrell as an equal.

    ¡°King Jissarrell,¡± Ferrochar said. ¡°Welcome to our humble court. I invite you to partake in our hospitality.¡±

    ¡°Thank you. I am glad to be received as a guest by the King of Miami.¡± Both of them relaxed slightly as the magic of the words cemented their roles. ¡°And believe me, I have such stories to tell.¡±

    ¡°As do I,¡± Ferrochar replied with a smile, gesturing for Jissarrell to walk beside him. ¡°As far out as you are, you probably haven¡¯t heard about the new American Alliance.¡±

    ¡°Ah?¡± Jissarrell¡¯s ears twitched. ¡°You, binding yourself in an agreement with someone?¡±

    ¡°A very interesting one,¡± Ferrochar said knowingly, tapping a finger to the side of his nose. ¡°One that includes Ensharrehael.¡± Jissarrell nodded gravely. While he didn¡¯t care much about dragons, Ferrochar¡¯s story and his hoard aligned so well that it was no wonder the fae king found that to be such a coup.

    ¡°It also insulates us against a major threat,¡± Ferrochar said, eyes gleaming. ¡°The Alliance is, nominally at least, aligned with The Ghost. Or he with us. After Ravaeb¡¯s exquisite demise, that seems a reasonable position to be in.¡±

    ¡°Indeed,¡± Jissarrell said with a smile, the pair of them walking into a lavishly appointed room, half of it gold and iron, the other half greenery and water. The two kings took seats in their respective halves, facing each other across the divide. ¡°I could feel the echoes of his death all the way down the Rio Grande. But I was not surprised. Where do you think the teleportation pad came from?¡±

    ¡°No!¡± Ferrochar said, delighted by the gossip. ¡°What did you give him for it?¡±

    ¡°A bud from the Way of Roses,¡± Jissarrell said. ¡°It won¡¯t grow outside of Faerie or the Ways, but he wanted something that would conceal him from a King.¡±

    ¡°Oh, how wicked of you,¡± Ferrochar said approvingly. Neither of them mentioned that such a thing would allow The Ghost to go after any King if he wished. To do so would be awfully gauche, and besides, it would be perfectly ironic if Jissarell ended up dead thanks to that gift. ¡°But apropos; the Ways are what I wanted to discuss with you.¡±

    ¡°Indeed?¡±

    ¡°I know you don¡¯t have a Door of Glass in your enclave, so perhaps you have not been to the Ways lately. It has grown.¡± Ferrochar paused as a servant brought them refreshments on a crystal tray, a deep green liqueur for him and a sparkling, fire-red one for Jissarrell in a touch of mirrored aesthetics.

    ¡°Is that not a good thing?¡± Jissarrell inquired, sipping the drink and nodding approvingly.

    ¡°It would be, if it were from our own efforts,¡± Ferrochar said darkly. ¡°I believe someone from Faerie itself has begun pouring power into the Ways. More, the Ways themselves are becoming wild. Some of the Old Things have begun showing up.¡± He gestured a circle with his drink. ¡°The daughters of Frost and Fell, the children of The Long Mile. Nothing to threaten you or I, but they did not come from me, or even from enclaves in the Old Country.¡±

    ¡°I mislike that. Earth is not Faerie; they should have no purchase here.¡± Jissarrell scowled into the dregs of his drink. ¡°What has changed? Was that human organization truly standing them off? Did Raveab¡¯s death serve to fuel some deep purpose?¡±

    ¡°Regardless of the reason, we may need to begin fortifying our own enclaves,¡± Ferrochar concluded. ¡°These human teleporters are a good first step; the deep fae would not even consider using that kind of magic. We shall have to see if we can get more from the Ghost.¡±

    ¡°You can reach him?¡± Jissarrell raised leafy eyebrows.

    ¡°As I said, our Alliance is nominally aligned. I can get word.¡±

    ¡°Then by all means. When a storm is coming, one takes every opportunity to reinforce one¡¯s shelter.¡±

    ***

    Callum didn¡¯t trust the Guild of Enchanting as far as he could throw them, but they seemed willing enough to honor their agreement. They were still lining up an instructor who would be willing to teach remotely, since Callum was hardly going to meet any of them in person, but they¡¯d already dropped off the enchanting scribe and a significant amount of money for licensing Lucy¡¯s tiling prototype.

    After the initial meeting, she¡¯d actually spent more time talking to them than he had, making several followup calls to demonstrate how the tiles could be changed out with linear actuators, and describing more advanced ways of doing it that required significantly more investment and infrastructure. He wasn¡¯t worried about giving away any important secrets, and besides which it was her idea so she got the benefits.

    ¡°This looks kinda crazy,¡± Lucy said, examining the scribe Callum had out on the porch. Callum had to agree. It was a big metal arrangement, a series of complicated armatures like spider legs hanging over a flat plate of a working space. Several of the vis crystals of varying sizes were slotted into one side, forming a circuit connecting the armature bases with a pad on the other side of the device. With his perceptions he could see the pad was a deliberate intake enchantment, similar to his own vis cleanup spiral.

    It had come with a user manual, one that appeared to be made with a genuine printing press rather than a more modern technique, and was bound with string rather than glue. Still, it was readable enough and the operation of the thing was fairly simple. He just fed vis in, selected an armature, and used it to trace out the geometry of the enchantment. What was more, there was even a way to duplicate the motion across armatures, a completely mechanical linkage, so he could trace a blank with one and the others would follow suit to enchant one or more copies simultaneously.

    It was a very clever little device ¨C or rather, big device since it was the size of an entire table ¨C especially since it was almost entirely mechanical. It didn¡¯t need ambient mana to run any of it. Callum was actually a little surprised how well it would work with his CNC approach, and he wondered if the Guild of Enchanting already used something similar. Everything he¡¯d seen had been handmade to some extent, but there was an enormous gulf of machine tools between hammer and chisel and a CNC device.

    ¡°I¡¯m going to go over it again to make sure there aren¡¯t any surprises in it, but this will make things so much easier,¡± Callum said. It seemed it was time to actually buy his own CNC device, so he could do everything in-house. Or in-shed, as it were.

    ¡°Especially with how much work the Guild wants you to do,¡± Lucy agreed.

    They hadn¡¯t signed any contracts, but Callum had agreed to at least cover and obfuscate the enchantments he provided to other people. That was only fair, since it wasn¡¯t his work to begin with and profiting off it was ambiguous at best. Amusingly, his work was not good enough for the Guild itself to sell, though they hadn¡¯t tried to make him stop. Instead they¡¯d just asked him to do some enchantment scribing on teleportation cores and frames, supplying already-created unenchanted versions of both for him to energize.

    ¡°I tell you what,¡± Callum said, wrapping a gravitykinesis bubble around the scriber and lifting it up. ¡°This brings me back to when I was consulting for architecture. Now it¡¯s enchanting, but it¡¯s still that kind of work.¡±

    ¡°Yeah? You know, you don¡¯t talk all that much about stuff in the past,¡± Lucy said, walking along beside him as he floated the scriber over to his work shed. Though it was more advanced than just four walls and a roof; it had electricity, HVAC, and a solid concrete foundation.

    ¡°I haven¡¯t thought about it too much of late. It seems so weird and distant now,¡± Callum told her, setting the scriber down on the big work table. ¡°Back then I didn¡¯t know magic existed. Didn¡¯t have to worry about governments being after me. I was just sort of living my life for me, you know?¡±

    ¡°All by your lonesome?¡± Lucy asked.

    ¡°Well.¡± Callum considered, and while he hadn¡¯t ever raised the topic before he wouldn¡¯t have been surprised if Lucy already knew. His life as Callum Wells hadn¡¯t been particularly hidden. ¡°I¡¯m a widower, actually. My wife, Selene, died of a brain embolism some six years back.¡±

    ¡°Oof. I read up on you, so I guess I knew that, but hearing it¡­¡± Lucy trailed off and shook her head. ¡°I guess I¡¯m surprised that you shacked up with anyone after that.¡±

    ¡°I did my mourning, and she wouldn¡¯t have wanted me to pine forever,¡± Callum said. ¡°But I just didn¡¯t find anyone interesting. Until you.¡±

    ¡°Flatterer,¡± Lucy said, leaning in against him. ¡°I guess that explains why you¡¯ve waited to get serious, though.¡±

    ¡°Maybe?¡± Callum hedged. ¡°I mean, it¡¯s been a pretty wild ride and it feels like everything¡¯s been up in the air.¡±

    ¡°Well it¡¯s not wild now,¡± Lucy said. ¡°I think we¡¯re doing pretty well here, with this little house and official Guild of Enchanting work and everything.¡± She took in a deep breath and let it out again, looking away and over the yard. ¡°Besides, I¡¯m not a mage; I don¡¯t live forever.¡±

    Callum winced. That was not something he¡¯d thought about very much, and preferred not to for the most part, but she was right. If the other mages were anything to judge by Callum could wait five or ten or thirty or even three hundred years and he¡¯d be just as hale as he was now. Not so for Lucy.

    ¡°You¡¯re right,¡± he told her. ¡°We shouldn¡¯t keep putting things off.¡±

    ¡°So¡­?¡± Lucy asked, drawing out the word.

    ¡°I¡¯ll go shopping for a ring,¡± he told her, finally committing himself. After doing it once, the second time wasn¡¯t as hard as he might have thought. Now that he was thinking about it, his mind jumped to how he could make the ring a homebond and use a vis crystal in the setting to fuel it. ¡°I¡¯m not putting it off, but I still have some preparations to make!¡± She laughed.

    ¡°Great. So what are we doing in the meantime? Just hiding out here and make some money?¡±

    ¡°For now, yes. There¡¯s always the possibility that someone will make some moves that I need to deal with, but I don¡¯t want to play enforcer all the time.¡± Callum grimaced. He was aware there was still stuff going on, abuses by more than just the vampires, but he couldn¡¯t play world police all by himself. He¡¯d kill himself with overwork or sloppiness if he tried that, and he arguably might make things worse.

    Even as it was, he couldn¡¯t be sure things were better for the average normal human than they were before he accidentally split GAR down the middle. The Department of Acquisition had been a source of great evil, and still was, but for the moment they seemed to actually be keeping a lid on more restive elements of the population. Someday they would be held to account, but only when Callum was sure he could act without inflicting even more damage.

    It was time to wait and see how things developed. He would still stomp on anyone who needed stomping, of course, but if he kept trying to disrupt the reorganization all he would accomplish would be to generate more chaos. Which despite appearances was not his goal.

    He was also worried about his actual capabilities.

    Callum had a few good tricks, but most of them had been shown off and the proliferation of jammers showed that people had some idea how to lock him out. Add in the way Duvall could track his portals if they weren¡¯t properly cleaned up and there wasn¡¯t much separating him from people who could completely block or counter his repertoire. He needed time and knowledge to create more techniques.

    The Guild¡¯s tutor would probably give them those, or at least a start on them. If he could translate his gravitykinesis to an enchantment, he¡¯d have more. Perhaps it would even be possible to talk more with people like Wizzy, and get a better grounding.

    But first he had to shop for some jewelry.

 Chapter 4 â€“ Time

    They had their honeymoon in the same cottage that they¡¯d vacationed at once before, on the island of Barbados. Returning to the same place might have been unwise, but Lucy wanted to and Callum did his best to tamp down his suspicions. It wasn¡¯t likely anyone would ambush them and the only people who had even known they had ever been on an island were the Connors. Which was such a tenuous connection there was no reasonable way anyone would be able to trace them.

    Being unplugged from what was going on and just spending time with Lucy left Callum unburdened for once, but they couldn¡¯t just hang out on the beach forever. Time continued on regardless and obligations piled up, so when they got back they had plenty to dig into. Even if they were relatively flush with cash, they needed something other than each other to occupy their time and Callum was very aware of the need to build his skills.

    ¡°I feel like I¡¯m back in college,¡± Callum muttered, sitting at the table on the porch as he took notes from one of the books that the Guild of Enchanting had supplied. ¡°Having to do homework and everything.¡±

    ¡°You¡¯re the one that asked for it, big man,¡± Lucy said, sitting across from him with a new, oversized laptop. ¡°But yeah I know how you feel. My stuff is pretty obtuse, too.¡±

    ¡°CAD¡¯s the closest I ever got to programming,¡± Callum told her, putting his notes aside for the moment. ¡°I guess there¡¯s always new stuff to learn?¡±

    ¡°Oh yeah, nobody¡¯s an expert at everything. Heck I¡¯m not even a good programmer, I just know some tricks and where to look for solutions. But rocket science is a really rough subject.¡±

    ¡°Rocket science?¡± Callum blinked.

    ¡°You didn¡¯t think I¡¯d forgotten about the moon nexus, did you?¡± Lucy flashed him a brilliant smile. ¡°If we¡¯re going to do that I gotta figure out how to solve a bunch of issues, so I¡¯ve got homework, too.¡±

    ¡°I can¡¯t wait to see what you come up with,¡± Callum said. He actually had forgotten about the moon nexus, mostly because he¡¯d written it off as being just a flight of fancy, but as far as security went it was hard to beat a vacuum a quarter-million miles away. If it worked.

    Most of Callum¡¯s work was more grounded and of more immediate import. He had a weekly video chat with Morgan, the Guild of Enchanting tutor. He was a grandfatherly-looking man, with a white beard and laugh lines around his eyes and a heavy Italian accent. Fortunately for them both, he didn¡¯t seem offended by teaching the very basics to a grown man, though there was some difficulty since they couldn¡¯t observe each other¡¯s spellwork directly.

    Nor did Callum mention the scale of his threads, and how he had to make tubes to get anywhere near the consistency of a normal mage¡¯s native vis. As useful and helpful as the Guild was being, they were not exactly his friend. Just a customer, and he¡¯d learned long ago not to reveal all his cards to customers.

    They clearly thought the same way, because they didn¡¯t reveal all their secrets to him. The materials they sent to him for enchanting on the scriber were mostly some kind of alloy, with only the bisected cores being pure bane material. There was even an attempt to obfuscate the enchantments he was making. The blank that they supplied to the scriber had a number of useless pieces to the enchantment, where the blank told the scriber not to insert vis. Something Callum wouldn¡¯t have noticed without his passive senses.

    He figured that was the way that they normally outsourced stuff, assuming they tended to outsource at all. The vis input for the machine was something that didn¡¯t need to be right next to the scriber, considering they had some way to make it flow like water or electricity. It wasn¡¯t difficult work; in fact, the scriber made it quick and easy to enchant stuff, though more boring. He would have used it himself for his own enchantments but for the fact that his were far more compact. The scriber just didn¡¯t go that small.

    ¡°I actually have something to show you guys,¡± Callum said, once he was more certain of where the Guild stood. It was very firmly a business, which had certain good points and certain bad points. ¡°These designs were used by House Fane. The devices themselves no longer exist, and I have no idea what they did.¡± He gave Lucy the nod, and she sent the files over to the tablet on the other end.

    ¡°Oh?¡± Morgan was only moderately proficient at manipulating the tablet, but he opened up the files and started looking at the renders.

    ¡°It might be something you made for him, but considering where it was, maybe not. I trust that you can figure out what it does and whether it is something that ought to be available at all.¡± Callum was generally a big believer in the idea that it was people who were the problem, not tools, but sometimes things were purpose-built to be awful. Which seemed like something Fane would do.

    ¡°We will certainly look into it,¡± Morgan promised.

    While Callum was quite busy, The Ghost did not seem to be in demand. After he had very thoroughly stomped on the vampire nests, nobody else seemed to be poking their heads out, at least not enough to require Callum¡¯s special attention. Lucy monitored the GAR network and Chester had his own contacts, but everything was relatively quiet.

    Not that he wasn¡¯t tempted on occasion to go knock heads, since vampires and a number of fae were antithetical to human life, but people had gotten smart. While he could track down large fae enclaves or obvious vampire nests, he didn¡¯t automatically know where supernaturals were. After the hit on the vampire nests a lot of supernaturals had decentralized, so if he wanted to find them he¡¯d have to comb a huge swath of countryside.

    Then there were the numbers. With upwards of ten thousand vampires on Earth, from GAR records, it would take him thirty years to get them all if he killed one a day. That wasn¡¯t the kind of thing he could keep up for thirty days, let alone thirty years.

    It felt like a little bit of a weak excuse, but Callum was not some indomitable nemesis. He had human limits and was even less inclined to go and take risks when he was achieving some small measure of security and safety with Lucy in their little house. The glamours had even worked in warding off a few thuggish types who had come by, forcing a group of men in a truck to circle aimlessly before going past the front of a property they could suddenly no longer perceive. He couldn¡¯t glamour the entire hundred acres, but he¡¯d made sure to cover the road access.

    ¡°For some reason that makes me feel more uncomfortable than most of the supernatural stuff,¡± Lucy said, watching the battered pickup drive off through a drone feed. She had wired the property with surveillance to some extent, but setting up a full hundred acres was more than they could manage, so it was mostly focused around the road access, such as it was, and the house. The road itself was just dirt, and would get reclaimed by nature eventually, but for the moment Callum had just put a couple trees across it.

    ¡°I think I¡¯m affecting you,¡± Callum said mildly. ¡°But yes, when someone comes after where you live it¡¯s a very different thing.¡± They would have to set up some kind of war room, for when they needed to deal with those kinds of things. And they would have to deal with them.

    ¡°I need to get back to practicing shooting,¡± Lucy muttered. ¡°Just in case they come by again.¡±

    ¡°That¡¯s the spirit,¡± Callum encouraged her, and she wrinkled her nose at him, which just provoked a kiss. ¡°We¡¯ll go shooting this afternoon,¡± he said. ¡°Glad you have that glamour on remote control.¡±

    ¡°Yeah,¡± she said. ¡°Gonna keep that on me, too.¡± Lucy tapped her pocket where she had the little encrypted wifi device that activated the tile setup in the basement. They¡¯d even added a second emergency teleport, one over to Chester¡¯s house. The only thing better than one emergency hideout was two emergency hideouts. ¡°I think I am getting infected with paranoia. But I can¡¯t say you¡¯ve really been wrong about it too much.¡±

    ¡°Better safe than sorry,¡± Callum agreed. ¡°I¡¯m almost worried it¡¯s been too quiet.¡±

    ***

    Alpha Chester had attended quite a few weddings in his time. Everyone in his pack, of course, which added up to significant numbers after nearly two hundred years. Then there were pack friends, some of which knew who and what he was, and some of which just thought he was a well-to-do rancher. He never expected to be going to Lucy¡¯s wedding, considering her black sheep sort of status and her general disconnect with her peers.

    He especially wouldn¡¯t have expected a wedding to the most notorious man in the supernatural world.

    It was a little sad that his pack were essentially the only guests. Wells didn¡¯t have any friends or family, though inviting them would have been an issue to begin with, and Lucy had burned all her bridges with GAR and mages. Though Chester suspected that they were both happy enough with something small rather than a grand ceremony.

    Wells seemed fairly happy for once, which considering the stress that rolled off him essentially every time Chester had encountered the man was quite the feat. He was still twitchier than he probably should have been, but seemed to have relaxed enough that he didn¡¯t reek of anxiety to shifter senses. Chester approved. If there was one day a man had the right to not fear, it was his wedding day.

    After that, though, Chester mostly put the man out of his mind. The Ghost was important to the alliance Chester was trying to cement, but only in a distant way. The threat, the bogeyman, the symbol. The man himself was best handled carefully and at a distance, away from any real political discussion.

    ¡°We need more mana infusion for our glamour tokens,¡± Ferrochar said, sitting across from Chester in an upscale restaurant in Kansas City. ¡°There are enough of us that don¡¯t have native glamours in Miami that things are getting a little strained, especially with the GAR office closed.¡±

    ¡°The Guild of Enchanting is already charging us through the nose,¡± Chester sighed, cutting into the double-sized steak he¡¯d ordered. ¡°But we¡¯ll ask. I¡¯ll also see what our black market enchanter has to say. I don¡¯t know if he¡¯s gotten that far, but I suspect he¡¯d be fine undercutting the Guild on that score.¡±

    ¡°Good,¡± Ferrochar said. ¡°The teleportation pad has been quite useful, even if it is less polished than what the mages use.¡±

    It was the fourth or fifth meeting, and that was just with Ferrochar. The fae king was the largest contributor to Chester¡¯s American Alliance, but not the only one, and there were always problems that needed dealing with. Most of them were petty enough, but there were some lurking feuds that needed to be buried. Along with certain troublemakers.

    He hadn¡¯t bothered Wells for that. In fact, he wasn¡¯t sure that Wells would have even agreed with what Chester had done, but since it was between supernaturals it also wasn¡¯t something he would have involved himself in. But it wasn¡¯t anything difficult, and it was good to remind alliance members that he had teeth of his own. Outsourcing everything to Wells, even if he was amenable, would be a bad idea.

    The largest development out of the past few months was actually some discreet communications from the Hargrave-Taisen alliance. They hadn¡¯t bothered naming themselves, just remaining aligned Houses, but they had very definitely broken from GAR. The two Archmages were terrifying enough that nobody considered overt action against them, especially with Fane out of the picture.

    Actually Chester had somewhat more sympathy with GAR, dealing as he was with the members of his own agreement. Even if it was only a fairly loose coalition, he was spending more time than he would have liked holding it together. The lack of mages really did put a logistical strain on his resource, too, since they were the only ones that could produce consistent enchantments, so he would be glad to get on better terms with the breakaway Houses.

    GAR itself had sent a few diplomatic protests but Chester hadn¡¯t encountered any real opposition from them. He thought it likely the lack of response was due to most mage Houses not even being in America. So long as the supernatural-heavy cities stayed signed on to GAR, Chester¡¯s independence didn¡¯t make a huge difference. He was sure there were a lot of mages and vampires who were sorely missing their janitors and groundskeepers, but that shortage had begun when GAR shut down the transporters.

    Despite all the political annoyances, things were relatively quiet. Removing Ravaeb and Lavigne had immensely simplified Chester¡¯s defenses, and exiting GAR had helped his finances. While he complained of the Guild of Enchanting¡¯s price-gouging, it was still better than the fees and duties that GAR had demanded. Mundane taxes were actually more of an impact, especially as more of his people shifted from being employed by mages to running their own businesses.

    ¡°We¡¯re going to have to start involving ourselves in local politics,¡± Chester mused to Ferrochar. ¡°Otherwise we¡¯re going to end up butting heads with mundanes and needing to institute our own version of BSE. I don¡¯t know about you but I¡¯d rather not reproduce all of GAR¡¯s nonsense.¡±

    ¡°A fae mayor, can you imagine?¡± Ferrochar replied, smiling faintly. ¡°It¡¯s somewhat challenging to engage them on their own terms, without being able to use our gifts properly.¡±

    ¡°Only somewhat?¡± Chester raised his eyebrows.

    Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

    ¡°Well. They are still mundanes. Even the best among them has only a few decades of experience.¡± Ferrochar waved it away. ¡°I am not so concerned. In Miami I am a fixture. What I obtained during that night of mischief is enough to keep a handle on the supernaturals in Miami that aren¡¯t part of my court. Save perhaps the actual GAR office, but that¡¯s barely staffed these days.¡±

    ¡°I haven¡¯t much heard from GAR for a while,¡± Chester remarked. ¡°I¡¯m kind of surprised.¡± He paused as the waitress delivered another bottle of beer for him, and poured it into his glass. ¡°Though I¡¯m not complaining. Pursuing a war with mages is not an enticing proposition.¡±

    ¡°It is not.¡± Ferrochar lifted a bite of his own steak to his mouth. Unlike some of his counterparts, Ferrochar didn¡¯t eat it as rare as possible. ¡°Doubly so because there may be other troubles on the horizon. There have been some certain signs of things moving in from Faerie, either at the behest of the current version of GAR or because the current GAR can¡¯t stop them.¡±

    ¡°I don¡¯t like to hear that,¡± Chester said darkly. The fae were ultimately far more dangerous than mages or vampires, who had straightforward power. It was easy to determine what he needed to do if he wanted to deal with them, but fae might do anything and that was hard to prepare against. ¡°I have noticed there are more vampires coming in, too. Ones that are less understanding of the state of local politics. So far there¡¯s only been a little shoving on the edges of my territory but I suspect it¡¯ll escalate sooner rather than later.¡±

    ¡°That is something The Ghost would get involved with, no?¡± Ferrochar asked.

    ¡°Possibly.¡± Chester preferred not to speculate on Wells¡¯ motives to others, especially not since he was now a married man. There was a fair bit of difference between someone who was on their own and someone who had settled in with a partner. Wells would be both more dangerous, and less.

    When he returned to his own home he sent out the word to keep an eye out for any unknown fae. For his own part, he started drafting a missive to King Jissarrell. That particular Fae didn¡¯t really engage with the world the way other supernaturals did, keeping to his own enclave. But he was on Chester¡¯s border, and Ferrochar had hinted in conversation that Jissarrell might be open to collaboration.

    Chester didn¡¯t expect quick movement on that front. If anything, the speed with which the American Alliance had come together, fragile though it might be, was surprising. Even if months later he was still hammering out details and having to bribe, threaten, cajole, and flatter people to get them to agree to the very simple rules the Alliance had established.

    As it rolled into spring he had the sense that everyone was catching their breaths and reassessing the new order. Nobody was willing to make major moves. Except for him, of course, as he sounded out people on the topic of GAR versus his Alliance.

    The surprise that threw him the most came in late May, when Wells ¨C both of the Wells, now that they were married ¨C came for one of their visits. They came on occasion, maybe once every couple weeks ¨C mostly for Lucy¡¯s benefit, Chester thought, but Wells had thawed at least a little. Chester tried to make sure that the Langleys came by whenever possible, as Callum was the most relaxed with them. Not that he objected to seeing his grand-niece more often.

    He could smell it after the two of them stepped through the portal Wells used. Shifter senses were sharp enough that he could tell a lot more than most people would be comfortable with about a person¡¯s health and emotions. Normally nobody mentioned it, for a number of obvious reasons, but he could hardly turn off his awareness. So he was aware within seconds that Lucy was with child. So was Lisa.

    ¡°Why, congratulations!¡± She said, beaming and stepping forward to give Lucy a hug. Callum looked surprised, though not confused. So at least Lisa wasn¡¯t telling the couple anything they didn¡¯t know. ¡°The nose knows,¡± she added at Callum¡¯s look, tapping her own.

    ¡°Hey, you ruined our announcement,¡± Lucy said with a pout. ¡°We were all set to surprise you. Well, I was anyway.¡±

    ¡°You never had a chance,¡± Lisa told her, still gleeful.

    Sometime later they were all seated in the living room, Lucy and Callum on one couch, Chester and Lisa on another, and a little tray with chocolates and brandy on the table between them. Not that either Lucy or Lisa were partaking in the alcohol. Neither of them really liked it all that much and Lucy of course couldn¡¯t indulge at the moment anyway.

    ¡°It¡¯s not just a visit for the announcement,¡± Callum said at length, like the words were being dragged out of him. He clearly wasn¡¯t overjoyed about what he was saying, even if he was not at all unhappy about Lucy¡¯s condition. ¡°But there are complications. Ignoring people who would want to use a child against me; the kid might be a mage. If he¡¯s a mage, he¡¯s going to need actual schooling, actual training, but not GAR. Even if he¡¯s not, he¡¯s going to need other kids to play with. We¡¯re out in the middle of nowhere which is fine for the two of us but not for the three of us.¡±

    Chester nodded. He didn¡¯t envy Callum the issue. Shifters had it rough enough, where they needed to go back to the Deep Wilds during pregnancy to ensure the symbiote could cross over to the child. He would have to get Callum to create a teleportation platform linking there soon enough, since GAR controlled the actual portal. But at least there was a community to help raise new shifters. Mages only had the Houses, and those were fairly exclusive.

    ¡°You are, of course, welcome here,¡± he said. ¡°There¡¯s only so much we can offer, though. We¡¯re shifters, so we don¡¯t have too much insight into how to raise a mage.¡±

    ¡°Neither do I,¡± Callum sighed. ¡°What about that mage you put me in contact with before? Harry?¡± It took Chester a moment to place the name, but he shook his head.

    ¡°Ah, you mean Jasper. It¡¯s not really necessary to hide his name anymore. Jasper might have some insights but I honestly would not trust the man with a child. He also doesn¡¯t have any real power anymore ¨C which is a tragic story ¨C but I suspect would be less than ideal for the purpose.¡± Callum nodded, not looking too surprised.

    ¡°We are in tentative contact with the breakaway Houses, though,¡± Chester offered. ¡°As well as Archmage Wizzy. Though I¡¯m surprised you didn¡¯t ask your Guild of Enchanting contact.¡±

    ¡°That¡¯s business. This is personal,¡± Callum said.

    ¡°They¡¯re kind of cold,¡± Lucy added. ¡°I want people who are, you know, actually human. Like you guys.¡±

    ¡°We¡¯re shifters,¡± Lisa said with some amusement.

    ¡°You know what I mean,¡± Lucy said with a pout.

    ¡°We do,¡± Chester said with a chuckle. ¡°I don¡¯t have a much better opinion of most mages than you do, I expect.¡±

    ¡°Putting us in touch with Wizzy and the other mages would be helpful,¡± Callum said, nudging the conversation back on track. ¡°There¡¯s also ¡ª well.¡± He pursed his lips. ¡°I don¡¯t actually know many people anymore. So as Lucy¡¯s friends, we were wondering if you would be willing to be the godparents.¡±

    ¡°Of course!¡± Lisa said before Chester even had time to consider it. Not that he would have chosen any differently. Callum and Lucy weren¡¯t part of the pack, but their contributions had been invaluable. Besides, they didn¡¯t really have anyone else. Maybe the Langleys, but Lucy didn¡¯t know them as well as she knew Chester¡¯s immediate family.

    ¡°We would be honored,¡± Chester added instead. ¡°And I¡¯ll send out messages today, to see who is willing to discuss things with you.¡±

    ¡°Thank you,¡± Callum said.

    Chester was happy for them, but part of him couldn¡¯t help being worried. A man that lived for himself was dangerous enough, but a man who had a family to defend could be downright apocalyptic. He knew that he¡¯d move heaven and earth for any of his kids or grandkids, and with what Callum could already do, there was no telling where the man¡¯s limits were.

    ***

    ¡°You¡¯re reinstating the teleports?¡± Magus Mavros, head of Archmage Affairs, looked hopeful. Which was better than the pathetic hangdog attitude he¡¯d been carrying around, but Archmage Duvall didn¡¯t have much sympathy for him either way. He at least didn¡¯t clash with the decor of her front room, in a cool blue suit and a hat properly placed on the rack.

    ¡°You should learn to listen,¡± she told him bluntly. ¡°There are caveats. Archmages won¡¯t travel unless they can verify both ends, so we¡¯re switching to portals. That will require an overhaul of huge portions of the system. For everything else, I¡¯ve been working with the Guild of Enchantment on additional security precautions to prevent the spatial cores from being changed.¡±

    It had been a long slog. Ways to register when the core was removed ¡ª or when it was added. Methods to authenticate it was in fact the same core that was supposed to be there. Extra readouts for the operators to check that everything was functioning as it should. Most of it was just extra useless cruft, but it made people feel more secure ¡ª which was the idea.

    She had let GAR suffer with its limited transportation system long enough. While she could go for years without personally suffering much of a side effect from the logistical pinch, other people were crying very loudly about it. About their pocketbook ¡ª or personal life. Especially the other supernaturals who didn¡¯t have flight foci to easily get from place to place.

    ¡°It¡¯s still an improvement over no transport,¡± Mavros said. ¡°I¡¯ll be happy to give people the news.¡±

    ¡°The increase in infrastructure means that the fees will be higher,¡± Duvall warned. ¡°The Houses may not thank you.¡±

    ¡°I¡¯m sure it will be fine,¡± Mavros demurred. ¡°House Corrilon and House Laurent have been very generous in supplying the needs of GAR ever since the Hargrave secession.¡± Duvall narrowed her eyes at that ¡ª she knew those Houses were simply the most visible of the new factions that had arisen. The old and distinguished ones that stayed in Faerie or the Night Lands and had mostly seemed to ignore Earth itself. She¡¯d done a lot of work for them over the years, and could probably even name them ¡ª even if she hadn¡¯t met them.

    For the most part House Duvall was its own faction entirely. Her interests mostly ran toward keeping her House stable and secure, and ensuring that she had control over spatial magic ¡ª for exactly the reasons that Wells had shown. It could be quite dangerous if it were misused ¡ª when it should have been a safe and secure magical aspect.

    ¡°Very well,¡± she said at last. ¡°If GAR will sign off on the costs, the Guild of Enchantment and House Duvall will begin installing the new enchantments.¡±

    It seemed too easy ¡ª even mages disliked spending money. But perhaps she had simply underestimated how much the lack of ready transportation had pinched important people. There were allied Houses that were in entirely different portal worlds, so if they had neglected to secure very expensive private teleportation enchantments, they¡¯d be quite inconvenienced.

    She watched Mavros go from the window of the front room, passing out through the wards and flying back down the trunk of the enormous tree. Then she turned to call her apprentices. They had work to do, and she had orders to fulfill from various Houses who needed even more room in their various portal worlds. Under the circumstances she had put spatial stabilization on hold, but as things calmed down it would probably be safe to resume.

    There was one wrinkle in any plans for spatial movement, and that was that heretic Wells. She had no idea what he was up to. Though he¡¯d vanished for months on end before, and all the manpower in GAR hadn¡¯t been able to dig him up. But if he was hiding in a hole it¡¯d take a fae with exactly the right resources, talent, and reason to find him ?¡ª in other words, impossible.

    Duvall was under no illusions that she¡¯d seen or heard the last of Wells. Though where he¡¯d pop up she had no idea. At least the Guild of Enchanting hadn¡¯t found any more of his awful teleportation devices. It was going to be harder to police the GAR breakways, but everyone needed the Guild of Enchanting¡¯s services. Hopefully if he showed his face again, they would be able to deal with him somehow.

    ***

    ¡°What the hell is going on?¡±

    Gayle winced at Magus Mercator¡¯s language, glancing sideways at him for a moment while she attended to his subordinate. She did most of her work in Taisen¡¯s clinic, which looked a lot like the mundane hospitals she¡¯d gone to see. Clean, bright, blue and white, with staff that weren¡¯t healing mages to assist her. So far she was still the primary healer, since most were still with GAR or the remains of House Fane, but Taisen had scrounged up a few lesser healer mages to help.

    She had to agree with the question, because Magus Grunwald was the fifth mage in as many days that she¡¯d needed to help regenerate a limb. Which meant there was something that was powerful enough to breach a mage¡¯s shield, but not powerful enough to kill instantly. It almost had to be on purpose; most injuries mages sustained were burns, frostbite, and crush impact. The last usually came from being swatted into the ground when their shields didn¡¯t give under impact.

    ¡°We¡¯re not sure, sir,¡± Grunwald said. ¡°I never saw what did this.¡± He gestured with one hand at the stump of his other arm. It was grown out to the elbow now, something that Gayle was doing in stages to reduce the strain on his system. One of the things that mundane studies of bodies had helped her understand. Healing magic wasn¡¯t medicine, but biology still applied and some of the problems that arose did translate.

    Gayle was dealing with injuries on a daily basis, but that was exactly what she wanted. Ever since they¡¯d left GAR there had been no single mention of her using negative healing, no demands for useless and baseless practice, nothing but her own investigation into the healing arts. It was exactly the sort of freedom she never knew she wanted, and it was made even better by a lack of restriction on focuses. She could make a proper shield and had a real weapon, which she felt a need for after dealing with Wells.

    At the same time, there were some issues. Shortages and logistics problems. The House was not easily accessible now that the teleportation network was down ¨C and they didn¡¯t trust it anyway, since it linked up to GAR ¨C so ferrying in food and goods from mundane areas had been somewhat of a scramble. She was pretty sure that was why her father was talking with the new American Alliance, just to get the personnel needed to keep things running.

    ¡°Right, well, you rest here. I¡¯ll go talk to Archmage Taisen,¡± Mercator sighed. ¡°There¡¯s something going on in India but it¡¯s hard to find what.¡±

    Gayle considered it while she passed healing vis through Grunwald¡¯s arm stump, her technique far more focused than it had been before she started looking at mundane medical knowledge. She only knew that House Taisen, what had formerly been part of the BSE and the Defensores Mundi before that, was looking for things that GAR might have missed.

    They were soldiers, used to dealing with the portal worlds, not hunting among mundanes for something hidden. Taisen was stretched thin, manning the portal world garrisons and trying to account for Earth¡¯s safety. They would probably be able to figure it out eventually, but Gayle already had too many mages in convalescence.

    Once she was finished with the day¡¯s session she left the clinic of Garrison Seven and walked through the windowless halls to Taisen¡¯s office. Something he barely used, actually, but at least he had a secretary there to make sure people could find the man. Fortunately for her, he was actually in, and he set aside some large maps when the secretary let her through. The room itself was completely bare besides the desk, two chairs, and one stack of documents. There wasn¡¯t even anything on the walls.

    ¡°What can I do for you?¡± Taisen asked, focusing his full attention on her. She appreciated that he took her seriously. Some of the other mages didn¡¯t, seeing her as too young to really know anything.

    ¡°Well, I had a thought, with all those mages coming in injured.¡±

    ¡°Yes.¡± Taisen looked grim. ¡°I¡¯ve gone to look myself but whatever it is has enough sense not to attack an Archmage.¡±

    ¡°Well, we know someone who is really sneaky, right? Mister Wells? Wouldn¡¯t he be interested in helping with a threat too?¡± She felt almost embarrassed suggesting it, but she doubted anyone else understood that the man wasn¡¯t some murderous loose cannon. He didn¡¯t have anything against supernaturals as such, it was more the way GAR handled things. Taisen looked startled, then thoughtful.

    ¡°That¡¯s an interesting proposition,¡± Taisen said. ¡°I admit he¡¯s demonstrated certain abilities that even I can¡¯t quite duplicate. Though I have doubts he would be interested in working with us, especially considering his former run-ins with the BSE.¡±

    ¡°Maybe not, but we could ask. When I talked to him, he told me that what he cared about was protecting mundanes from supernaturals. And this would certainly count, right? He¡¯s not going to be going after our people if we¡¯re protecting Earth.¡± Gayle worried for a moment that she¡¯d come on too strong ¡ª she hadn¡¯t talked to Wells that much. Though the little he had said really had stuck with her.

    ¡°Ask how?¡± Taisen raised his eyebrows at her. ¡°He¡¯s called The Ghost for a reason. So far nobody has come within a hundred miles of finding him when he didn¡¯t want to be found.¡±

    ¡°House Hargrave is talking to the American Alliance,¡± Gayle explained. ¡°And it¡¯s openly known that they have The Ghost¡¯s backing. Or at least blessing.¡±

    ¡°Then do so,¡± Taisen said, nodding. ¡°I have nothing particular against the man, and if he can be trusted and if he can do the job, I would be happy to have his help.¡±

 Chapter 5 â€“ Threats

    Life, Callum reflected, was what happened when one was busy doing other things. Under any sane rationale, it was not time to start a family. But time moved forward and made fools of everyone. He had been perfectly happy living with Lucy, learning about magic and tending his garden, and not worrying about the long term future. Now he had a lot more to worry about in the future, though he considered it a blessing rather than a complication.

    He gave Lucy a squeeze, the two of them cuddled up on the couch reading their respective literature. Technically studying, though Callum was starting to reach the point of diminishing returns struggling through the notes he¡¯d gotten on structural theory. It was late enough that his brain just wanted to turn off.

    Lucy responded with a happy little noise and shifted her position against him, tilting across his lap with a thump and giving him a cheeky wink past her own book. He snorted and tossed his tome on the table, readying a counterattack that would keep them pleasantly distracted for an hour or so when her laptop chirped. It was the tone Lucy had set for an official business message from Lisa.

    ¡°Gonna let me answer that?¡± Lucy asked, eyes sparkling as she dropped her book to grab his wandering hands.

    ¡°I guess so,¡± Callum conceded, helping her back upright so she could grab the laptop. Lucy tapped the keyboard a couple times and the chirping stopped as Lisa¡¯s face appeared on the screen.

    ¡°Hey Lucy,¡± Lisa said. ¡°Oh good, Callum¡¯s there too. This was unusual enough that we figured we¡¯d pass it on right away. You know about Archmage Taisen, right?¡±

    ¡°I know that he broke away from GAR and stripped out a good chunk of the BSE,¡± Lucy said. ¡°Unfortunately I don¡¯t have access to his servers so I don¡¯t know much.¡±

    ¡°Well, his organization before it became BSE was called Defensores Mundi, focused on the threats out of the portal worlds,¡± Lisa said. ¡°So that¡¯s what his new House is aimed at too, and they think they¡¯ve run into something really nasty down in India. Nasty enough that they want Callum¡¯s help.¡±

    ¡°I¡¯m not exactly a combat mage,¡± Callum objected. ¡°I mean, I¡¯m glad that someone has that philosophy, I¡¯m all for it. But I¡¯m not sure what they expect me to do if real mages can¡¯t manage it. My tricks go only so far.¡±

    ¡°It¡¯s more a matter of finding their target,¡± Chester¡¯s voice came, the picture on the laptop shifting as Lisa turned the camera to include him, too. ¡°They sent over actual reports to try and convince you, so they¡¯re serious about this. And get this ¡ª Gayle Hargrave added a note.¡±

    ¡°That¡¯s not a name I ever expected to hear again,¡± Callum said in surprise. ¡°I guess she¡¯s doing fine, then.¡±

    ¡°They¡¯re also not on the GAR servers anymore,¡± Lucy said. ¡°Most of what I see in the GAR networks about the Hargraves is pretty uncomplimentary, but that hardly means anything.¡±

    ¡°Send it over,¡± Callum said. ¡°It won¡¯t hurt to see what they have to say.¡±

    ¡°It¡¯s all on paper,¡± Chester said, and Callum shook his head. After dealing with the Guild of Enchanting and the way they had everything on paper, rather than digital, that should have been his first thought.

    ¡°Right, I¡¯ll have a drone there shortly.¡± He told them. ¡°At this point it¡¯s almost worth it to just park an anchor by your property.¡±

    ¡°We should discuss that later,¡± Chester agreed. ¡°I think we¡¯ll need some more transportation work from you once you look over this Taisen stuff.¡±

    ¡°No problem,¡± Callum agreed readily. To some extent, he wasn¡¯t even comfortable with charging Chester for the work anymore. They were friends ¨C if mostly Lucy¡¯s friends ¨C and the godparents for his child. The Alpha still needed to cover material costs, but spending a few hours enchanting was hardly an issue. The scriber couldn¡¯t do the teleportation cores he used, but the transmitter and receiver pads were far easier now that he had some infrastructure.

    The nearest drone was actually parked on a rooftop in a town not too far away, as part of Callum¡¯s efforts to have anchors placed where he could respond to anything in reasonable time. So it was only a few minutes to get it to Chester¡¯s place and in range to grab the missive. It was a set of stapled reports with two letters ¡ª one from Taisen and one, as promised, from Gayle. There was no residual magic clinging to it, or any enchantments, so it seemed safe enough. He unfolded Gayle¡¯s first, which was written by hand on some high-quality paper he didn¡¯t recognize, with almost calligraphic lettering.

    Mister Wells,

    It has been some time since we last spoke, and I have had both time and cause to reflect upon everything that has occurred. I will confess I am not entirely convinced of the rightness of your view, but events have amply demonstrated that you have cause to believe as you do. It is those beliefs and your conviction in them that lead me to prevail upon you with a request.

    Archmage Taisen, whom I have the great privilege of working with, has undertaken the task of defending the Earth from those threats that stem from the portal worlds ¨C something that I trust you would find honorable. In this endeavor he has been investigating places we may have missed here on Earth, and in the course of that investigation has run into some trouble. That trouble has caused a great many injuries which I am still treating at the time of writing, and I fear the situation may soon escalate beyond injuries and any aid I could render.

    I beg you to take his request seriously. I know you, and I know Archmage Taisen, and I believe you have similar opinions on the rightness of the world. You will not regret helping him.

    ?¡ª Gayle Hargrave

    ¡°Huh,¡± Callum said, and passed the letter to Lucy. ¡°She doesn¡¯t talk like that.¡±

    ¡°She¡¯s a Hargrave,¡± Lucy replied by way of explanation, looking over Gayle¡¯s missive while Callum cracked the seal on the envelope with Taisen¡¯s letter. It was an actual wax seal, too, with Defensores Mundi and a shield-and-globe crest. The paper crackled as he pulled it out and unfolded it.

    Unlike Gayle¡¯s short, formal, calligraphic letter, Taisen had three pages of printed information. He was blunt, spending maybe a sentence and a half on courtesies before moving on to describing the situation as if it were a military briefing. Location, resources, incidents, all that, referencing the enclosed reports.

    In a way it was straightforward enough. They¡¯d traced rumors of disappearances and a spreading no-man¡¯s-land to a place in the north of India, finding several abandoned towns that looked like they¡¯d been overgrown for a lot longer than the rumors indicated. It was several hundred square miles of wilderness, and the mages combing the area hadn¡¯t actually found anything despite sudden attacks coming from apparently nowhere.

    The actual request was for Callum to investigate with his own particular talents. He couldn¡¯t tell how much Taisen actually knew about the portal anchors and spatial perceptions, but at this point it was obvious what Callum could do. Which meant there was far too little he could surprise people with, and that was one reason he was working on building up his foundations with magical theory. He absolutely needed to have surprises.

    ¡°Are there any GAR records for that area?¡± Callum asked Lucy, showing her the written name of the region, which was not something he could pronounce. Lucy frowned and turned to her laptop, doing whatever magical search she had for the information from the GAR servers.

    ¡°Nope. GAR doesn¡¯t even have a branch in India,¡± she said with a shrug. ¡°At least not in the digital records.¡± Callum nodded. A lot of what mages did was on paper rather than electronic anyway, but he wouldn¡¯t have been surprised if there was a lot of off-the-books development. Though without a portal world feed, India would not be especially appealing to supernaturals.

    At least, that was his impression, and it was dangerous to think that was the whole story. Any official consensus was suspect, especially one that conveniently rendered huge swaths of land uninteresting to the powers that be.

    ¡°Well, whatever-it-is seems to have wiped out several villages so it¡¯s definitely on the list. I actually like this,¡± Callum said thoughtfully. ¡°I don¡¯t have to kill it, I just have to find it or find out what it is, and call in people who are good at this sort of thing.¡±

    ¡°You¡¯re plenty good at it, but yeah,¡± Lucy agreed, putting her hand on her stomach. ¡°Best not to take chances you don¡¯t need to.¡±

    ¡°Right,¡± Callum said. ¡°Plus I guess it¡¯s not a bad thing to open diplomatic relations with a mage faction that doesn¡¯t want to kill me.¡±

    ¡°Definitely,¡± Lucy agreed, leaning against him to peer down at the sheets still in his hand. ¡°How do we talk to them? Oh, there¡¯s the phone number.¡±

    ¡°It kind of amuses me that with all this magic, phones are still the easiest way to talk,¡± Callum said. He handed the sheet off to Lucy and picked up one of the stapled reports, thumbing through it. The text was a photocopy of some handwritten documents, though the penmanship was good enough that it wasn¡¯t too difficult to read, but the contents were fairly bland. It used a lot of unhelpful phrases like proceeded to POI Delta and resonance levels normal, which he could guess the meaning of but did not serve to paint a vivid picture. The reports seemed to be only corroboration for what was in the letter, so he only skimmed them.

    ¡°Mister Wells?¡± The sound came from Lucy¡¯s laptop as she connected her VOIP to the provided number. Considering that it was one of the magical phones, he wasn¡¯t sure how she¡¯d managed to make an internet version, but it worked so he wasn¡¯t going to complain.

    ¡°This is Wells,¡± Callum said, dropping the reports back on the living room table.

    ¡°This is Archmage Taisen,¡± the voice said, a strong, stern baritone. ¡°I assume from your call that you wish to discuss aiding my House.¡±

    ¡°More or less,¡± Callum said. ¡°It¡¯s not so much about your House as it is about dealing with monsters that threaten people.¡±

    ¡°Yes, young Gayle said as much. I¡¯m glad to see she was right.¡± Taisen¡¯s voice was neither warm nor cool, but Callum didn¡¯t mind. He wouldn¡¯t expect friendliness from an established mage right off. ¡°Though I admit we don¡¯t know much about your capabilities save for what you have used against us in the past.¡±

    ¡°I hope you¡¯ll understand if I prefer not to elaborate too much,¡± Callum said. ¡°But from what I understand you just want me to see if I can locate your problem without alerting it. While I can¡¯t guarantee success on that score, I think I stand a good chance and I¡¯m willing to try.¡±

    ¡°Excellent,¡± Taisen said. ¡°We should discuss how to coordinate. It¡¯s one thing to find them; it¡¯s another to relate that information back in a useful way, quickly enough that we can act on it.¡±

    ¡°Lucy?¡± Callum prompted.

    ¡°We¡¯ll provide an electronic device,¡± Lucy said. ¡°We¡¯ll be able to communicate with you through it, or stream video from anything we find that¡¯s interesting. Maybe even GPS, depending on what things are like.¡± She glanced at Callum, and he shook his head slightly. He could give them a direct portal, if he had anchors at both locations, but he didn¡¯t want to commit to that before finding out what things were like.

    ¡°I won¡¯t commit to being in your command structure as such,¡± Callum added. ¡°But I¡¯m not stupid, and I¡¯ll do my best to keep you properly informed before I do anything unless some extreme emergency arises.¡±

    ¡°Understandable,¡± Taisen said. ¡°I would prefer you stay out of any action anyway; confusion during combat, no matter well-intentioned, can be deadly for those involved.¡±

    ¡°Agreed,¡± Callum said. ¡°When do you want to start?¡±

    ¡°In three hours, by preference,¡± Taisen said. ¡°I see no reason to delay more than necessary to get my squad prepared.¡±

    ¡°Very well,¡± Callum said, checking the clock. ¡°Tell me where you want me to send the electronics.¡± Three hours was cutting it a bit close, and maybe running a bit late into the evening, but he could probably get to India in time and hopefully he¡¯d be able to comb the area relatively quickly. He agreed with Taisen: there was no reason to put off dealing with a problem.

    Taisen recited a string of numbers ¨C GPS coordinates ¨C and Lucy hastily recorded them, fingers tapping her laptop keys. Then she looked up where that actually was, bringing up the map so they could start moving their drones. Callum nodded.

    ¡°Got it,¡± he told Taisen. ¡°Expect a delivery soon.¡±

    ¡°I would warn you that our compound is warded,¡± Taisen said dryly. ¡°But you¡¯ve already shown how little that matters. I would at least ask that you leave your device at the guard post out front to prevent stirring up some people who are very much on edge.¡±

    ¡°No problem,¡± Callum assured him, and the connection went.

    The staging base was in Nepal, which was not very far away from the target. At least for given values of far; with flight foci or Callum¡¯s gravitykinesis, a few hundred miles was practically next door. Even halfway around the world was a fairly short jaunt now that Callum had more practice with transporting the drone. He still had to be careful not to send it too far out and thus launch the drone into space, but he had a better judge of how to use the insane Alcubierre movement.

    When he reached the area, the mage¡¯s redoubt was fairly obvious. Aside from the usual wards and glamours, it was clear that an earth mage had formed the small fortress, building it into the side of a sharp slope. It had much in common with the stone outpost he¡¯d seen next to the dragonlands, where things were barely structurally sound and certainly not properly leveled or plumbed. But he wasn¡¯t there to criticize their building prowess. At least not to their faces.

    Love this story? Find the genuine version on the author''s preferred platform and support their work!

    ¡°He needs to train his mages on how to design a proper building,¡± he grumbled to Lucy. ¡°This is just shameful.¡± She just laughed.

    There were a number of smaller constructions along the ward line, basically single rooms that seemed to anchor the wards, which had to be the guard posts Taisen had mentioned. There was a mage in one of them and, while there was room to wiggle past the wards and drop one of Lucy¡¯s boxes into the guard post itself, he decided to be polite and just teleport the box onto the ground just outside the wards.

    It was a ¡®donation box,¡¯ according to Lucy, since it had a bad penny ¨C an anchor ¨C inside it. He¡¯d taken all due precautions with the anchor, starting with using his personal brand of warding that would block off passive senses. He¡¯d also put a potent vis-eater enchantment on the inside, and had small squib charge attached to the portal in the nexus. Perhaps it wasn¡¯t perfect but it¡¯d be awful difficult for anyone to use it to track him.

    The rest of the box was taken up with a tablet, battery, transceiver to link up with their intranet, and higher quality audiovisual equipment than the tablet itself had. The speakers could be surprisingly loud, which was useful when trying to get people¡¯s attention. Like the guard at the post.

    ¡°Delivery from The Ghost for Taisen,¡± he said, and watched through his perceptions and the extra screens Lucy had set up in what was originally meant to have been a basement office, and was now dubbed the war room ¨C something he had made after dealing with vampires, but hadn¡¯t used until now. There were a dozen screens on the wall for when Lucy¡¯s surveillance was fully active, though only a few were on at the moment.

    The guard¡¯s head snapped around as he spotted the box on the ground, and to his credit he didn¡¯t seem at all confused by it. A chain-like telekinesis form reached out and grabbed the donation box, pulling it into the guard post through a hole that momentarily appeared in the wards. That was something Callum wished he knew how to do, but his were only a very simple on or off.

    If he had time, he would see about copying some of the enchantment stuff while he was there. He was more aware of the value in such designs after working with the Guild of Enchanting, so he wouldn¡¯t be reselling most of his pilfered knowledge, but he would absolutely use it for himself. As it was, he was too busy navigating the other drone toward the area of interest to worry overmuch about miscellanea like that.

    There wasn¡¯t much to the redoubt other than a lot of mage bubbles, plus a handful of shifters and fae. He noted there weren¡¯t any vampires, which could either be out of consideration for Callum or because Taisen shared his opinion of them to some extent. Interestingly, there weren¡¯t any feeder portals like he¡¯d gotten used to seeing, just the charged crystals being used to augment mana intakes, though there was more ambient mana than he would have expected so far from any portals.

    Taisen wasn¡¯t even in an office, he was in a common room having breakfast with a bunch of mages, something he could only tell due to the cameras on Lucy¡¯s box. The bubbles filling the room more or less blocked out his senses, but he could see which one was Taisen right away by the diamond-hard quality of the mage sphere. Callum had partly gotten over the instinctual twitch whenever he sensed a bubble, but even through the anchor it was uncomfortable having so many inside his perceptions.

    The guard handed off the donation box to Taisen with a few muttered words, and Callum had the odd and unpleasant experience of having his anchor pulled inside an Archmage¡¯s bubble. He couldn¡¯t sense out through the shell that surrounded Taisen, practically blinding him while Taisen carried the box. At least the bad penny itself seemed to exclude the Archmage¡¯s vis, though for all Callum knew that was something Taisen let happen, rather than trying to shove his power into and through a physical object.

    ¡°Mister Wells,¡± Taisen said, after he¡¯d taken the donation box aside and put it on a stone desk in an otherwise bare room. ¡°I appreciate the help. While it wasn¡¯t discussed before, I assure you we will provide proper pay for your aid.¡± Unlike most mages Callum had encountered, Taisen actually had a military bearing, rather like the veterans Callum had encountered years ago back in West Virginia.

    ¡°I certainly won¡¯t turn that down, but we¡¯ll see what¡¯s necessary first,¡± Callum said. The drone had been drawing closer to the area in question and he had finally twigged to something that had been bothering him. The effect was far more subtle and far-reaching than the other versions he¡¯d seen before, but he recognized the slowly accumulating mana pond of a fae enclave.

    There was no swirly magic to accompany it, at least not yet, and most of the region had been barely above what he would consider the normal amount, but it was definitely the same phenomenon. What was more, the effect extended far enough that the redoubt was inside it. Or more likely, someone had extended it to include the redoubt, because there was absolutely no way it was coincidence.

    ¡°Did you know you were inside a fae enclave?¡± Callum asked, then muted his own microphone. ¡°We¡¯ve got to switch out the drone for the ball.¡± He hadn¡¯t expected to need the wooden ball soon, if ever, but he hoped it still did what it was supposed to.

    ¡°Oof,¡± Lucy said.

    ¡°I did not,¡± Taisen said, his eyes narrowing as he looked at the box. ¡°How do you know this? None of our resonators picked up anything, nor did our fae.¡±

    ¡°It¡¯s very low level and very pervasive. There¡¯s not really any mana movement to betray it, but I¡¯m familiar with the signs. I haven¡¯t checked the boundaries but I bet that it got pushed out to where you¡¯re camped.¡±

    ¡°Likely so,¡± Taisen said grimly. ¡°Now that I know, we can deal with that.¡± He stood and walked off, to take whatever steps he might, and Callum focused on swapping the anchor from the drone to the ball. He still hadn¡¯t come up with anything fancier than duct tape for it, so some extra portals was all it took to secure the anchor, still in India, to the ball.

    ¡°Stupid ball,¡± Lucy muttered. ¡°Can¡¯t see anything through it.¡±

    ¡°Believe me, I¡¯m no happier,¡± Callum said. He was absolutely spoiled by Lucy¡¯s drones. As amazing as his perception sphere was, it lost enough detail that having a camera feed was practically necessary.

    What was worse, he couldn¡¯t teleport with impunity if he was trying to be stealthy. Considering the size of the area he had to cover, that wasn¡¯t ideal. Someone might notice the ball floating around, since that was the only way he could move it, so he had to both guide it around physical obstacles and keep his senses stretched out in case some supernatural came close. Though for the most part all he could find was ordinary wildlife and the slowly deepening mana pond.

    On the redoubt end of things there was a sort of a snap throughout the compound as something about the wards changed. The vague shallows of the fae enclave vanished, pushed away or consumed. Which was a handy trick, and something Callum would like to learn. Fae magic was so weird it would be great to exclude it from his home.

    ¡°Any progress?¡± Taisen asked, his shell cutting off Callum¡¯s base-side perceptions again and just leaving the camera.

    ¡°Nothing yet,¡± Callum said. ¡°I¡¯m still tracking down the center of the enclave.¡±

    ¡°I would like to know how you do that remotely,¡± Taisen said. ¡°It has something to do with your brand of perceptions? And these little enchantments you use ¡ª miniaturized portal anchors?¡±

    ¡°I¡¯m hardly going to answer that,¡± Callum said dryly.

    ¡°I had to ask,¡± Taisen said. ¡°Do keep me informed.¡± Callum agreed before muting his mic and turning his attention to navigating the fae wood ball about.

    ¡°He actually seems pretty reasonable,¡± Lucy remarked.

    ¡°Sure, but I¡¯m giving him something he wants,¡± Callum said absently. ¡°Plus he can¡¯t actually get to me. I¡¯m pretty sure he could shut down the portal anchor instantly, so even that much isn¡¯t a threat. Of course he seems reasonable. He¡¯s in control.¡±

    ¡°Anyone ever tell you that you¡¯re kind of suspicious of people?¡± Lucy asked him.

    ¡°I think you¡¯ve said something about that once or twice,¡± Callum replied.

    He ran across one of the destroyed villages soon enough, and he had to agree it was bizarre. There were very clearly modern appliances, but the amount of overgrowth was like it had been abandoned for decades or more. Enormous trees growing through cars, streams cutting through houses, bricks crumbled to dust and sand. Since according to the reports the villages had gone incommunicado something like two or three months ago, it was obvious fae shenanigans.

    Even with his perceptions, Callum almost missed the first fae inhabitant. He¡¯d had a preview of how fae could skip around through some pseudo-teleportation mechanism, one that didn¡¯t involve space at all, from his dealings with Jissarrell. This was another version of that, a figure just fading out before he could get a good sense of what it was.

    For a moment Callum thought that somehow it had sensed the ball or maybe even his perceptual sphere, but when he actually looked at the area there was a flowing circle of mana through a trio of standing stones. So he¡¯d probably just happened upon someone using a faerie circle or whatever. Part of him was tempted to simply camp out at the circle, though it clearly wasn¡¯t anywhere near the center of the enclave, but if he was being responsible it wasn¡¯t his choice alone. He turned the mic back on and described what he¡¯d found to Taisen.

    ¡°I don¡¯t think it¡¯s worth it to move anyone on it yet,¡± Callum concluded. ¡°You¡¯re only going to get a surprise raid once and I haven¡¯t finished searching the area. If I don¡¯t find anything I can always come back.¡±

    ¡°Agreed,¡± Taisen said grimly.

    There was another good hour of following the subtle gradient before he found what he was really looking for, but it was really obvious when it came into his perceptions. An entirely out-of-place building, perched in the middle of the mountainside jungle, constructed in absolutely blatant Gupta-era architecture. It wasn¡¯t a temple though, since he was pretty sure Buddhist temples didn¡¯t have actual skull-cups festooning the stairs.

    Part of Callum wondered why it seemed that the fae went for the overdone and macabre so often, but if they were patterning themselves after stories of monsters of course that would be true. Part of the reason the stories of monsters were so compelling was because they were extreme and macabre. Nobody was interested in the story of the slightly grumpy basically normal person.

    ¡°So, what story is it that has giant fanged man-eaters in a Buddhist temple?¡± Callum wondered aloud.

    ¡°Rakshasas,¡± Lucy said, and he looked at her, startled. ¡°What? I read a lot. So do you; you ought to know that.¡±

    ¡°Well, there¡¯s a bunch of Rakshasas then,¡± Callum said, rolling the ball closer in the undergrowth and surveying the place. There didn¡¯t seem to be any equivalent to a fae king, nothing that was as vis-dense as Jissarrell or Ravaeb had been, but every single one of the Rakshasas were massive, muscled, and clearly had a bunch of magic working for them. ¡°And they have captives.¡±

    Fifteen people, mostly men, were in stone cells underneath the temple floor. Callum assumed they were the remains of the people who had been in the villages overrun by the fae enclave, and his fingers twitched with an urge to do something about it. But after Ravaeb he¡¯d learned that dealing with fae was very risky, and besides he had an entire squadron of mages standing by.

    ¡°Found the target,¡± Callum said, then realized he was muted and repeated himself after he switched his mic on again. ¡°Can¡¯t give you GPS coordinates without possibly tipping them off, besides which fae areas are weird when it comes to location. I could open some assault portals for you though, if you¡¯re quick.¡±

    ¡°Describe the target,¡± Taisen said tersely.

    ¡°Buddhist temple, bit like a pagoda, five levels. Thirteen fae ¨C Rakshasas is our guess ¨C with five, two, one, three, two, going from bottom to top. Fifteen humans confined in the basement. They¡¯ll need medical care, and once you start I can shift them over to the redoubt.¡±

    ¡°I see.¡± Taisen pressed his lips together for a moment on the feed from the box. ¡°We aren¡¯t exactly equipped for mundane refugees here.¡±

    ¡°You¡¯re mages,¡± Callum said, a touch impatiently. ¡°How long does it take an earth mage to whip together a room, or a water mage to create a shower and something to drink? If need be that can be part of the price of my help. Take these people, clean them up, and see them back to civilization.¡±

    ¡°Very well,¡± Taisen said, without argument, which somewhat surprised Callum. ¡°Can you provide four portals spaced around the pagoda?¡±

    ¡°I can,¡± Callum said, even more surprised that Taisen wasn¡¯t questioning the safety or efficacy of said portals. Though to be fair, it wasn¡¯t easy to falsify a portal destination, not like a teleport.

    ¡°Then we¡¯ll be ready in five minutes,¡± Taisen said, and picked up the box as he stood from the desk. He placed it on a table in the common room and barked orders. Apparently he had something that let him communicate with everyone in the base, since people came running from rooms away.

    In a matter of moments an Earth mage had sunk all the chairs and tables back into the floor, emptying the room. People assembled in the cleared area, forming quadrants with four squads of five. Callum thought that wasn¡¯t exactly the sort of numbers advantage he¡¯d prefer, but then, Taisen was number twenty-one and Archmages were supposed to be powerful.

    Support staff started breaking out blankets, water bottles ¨C which was amusing given that there was a water mage ¨C and shaping shower cubicles against one wall while Taisen briefed his men. Which was basically the information Callum had already provided, with some additional tactical addendums Callum had no reference for.

    ¡°Portals ready,¡± Taisen said, half a request and half a command. Callum pushed out vis threads from his ball as fast as he could and snapped them open equally spaced around the pagoda. Taisen¡¯s vis pulsed as he flashed something through the portals, faster than Callum could really parse, and then ordered his squads through.

    Thus far, Callum hadn¡¯t seen any real combat magery in action. There¡¯d been some when he had rescued Lucy, but most of those mages had been surprised and had only a few seconds to react. Taisen¡¯s teams were primed, ready, and they were the ones surprising the Rakshasas.

    At least a hundred different spells spun out from the twenty-one combat mages, but Taisen was the most terrifying. Callum wasn¡¯t sure what exactly the Archmage did but his spell encompassed the entire stone pagoda. It simultaneously cut the structure into brick-sized chunks and sent them flying outward; not by an explosion but in a controlled movement, like the entire thing was on wires that had expanded outward.

    The Rakshasas were understandably startled. They recovered almost immediately though, the mana in the fae pond turning into a swirling maelstrom as individual Rakshasa scattered outward, bouncing off floating pieces of masonry in impossible athletic feats. Fae magic intersected with mage vis as Taisen¡¯s squad members targeted the Rakshasa in spell forms way too complicated for Callum to parse.

    All the energy flying around shredded Callum¡¯s vis threads, closing the portals, but that was fine because he had another job anyway. While Taisen had disassembled the above-ground portion of the pagoda, the prison basement remained, though there was no telling for how long. He could only sense magic for the most part, but there seemed to be a lot of excess spellwork going off, destroying nearby trees and liquefying earth and stone.

    He hurriedly pushed his vis thread down into the ground, snaking it through to where the captives were and opening portals back to the redoubt. It was a simple matter of sweeping the portals down over the people and delivering them to the waiting support staff. People made noises of obvious surprise and confusion, but he didn¡¯t speak whatever language it was in northern India so he could only guess at the contents. Thankfully there were people on the staff who spoke it, too.

    Since he didn¡¯t understand a single word he only kept one ear on the goings-on at the redoubt and kept most of his attention on the fight. Though calling it a fight or a battle was pretty much overselling it. The regular mages seemed to be having issues with the fae magic; their bubbles couldn¡¯t quite keep it out. Taisen, though, was simply absolute on the battlefield.

    Frankly he probably could have handled the whole thing himself. If anything, the reason he seemed to have brought extra mages was just because there was a limitation on multitasking. Taisen had vis walls up that utterly severed the connection between the pagoda area and the rest of the enclave mana pond. It was more vis than Callum could manage in an entire day, and was just one of the constructs Taisen had spun out.

    It should have ended almost instantly, but they were delayed simply by the effort of taking prisoners. Three of the fae were definitely dead, torn apart in the short amount of time Callum had been distracted, but several others were imprisoned in magical boxes and one was getting what looked like vis-draining chains put on it. Callum was glad to leave them to it.

    The roiling battle around the pagoda crunched to a halt after another two or three minutes, when Taisen brought the hammer down on a pair of fae that refused to stop fighting back. Callum knew that gravity was one of Taisen¡¯s aspects, and considering his own experience with the force he found it very instructive to watch. Also, horrifying, as Taisen¡¯s complex vis construct dropped down on top of the fae and turned them into actual paste.

    As if Callum needed more reason to stay far, far away from other mages.

    Once the surviving fae were all wrapped up in the chains, Callum popped another one of Lucy¡¯s boxes out near where Taisen was standing. The enclave pond wasn¡¯t going away just yet, but it was different from the ones with fae kings. He assumed that Taisen would know what was going on, now that Callum had alerted him to it. Or maybe there would be more nests of the things, though he hoped not.

    ¡°Thanks Lucy,¡± he said, once Lucy gave him the thumbs-up that the new box was connected properly. ¡°Need a lift back?¡± He spoke into the mic, and Taisen glanced at the box on the ground. Clearly it hadn¡¯t surprised him.

    ¡°I¡¯ll send two squads back. The rest of us will comb the area, now that we know what we¡¯re looking for.¡±

    ¡°Portals coming up,¡± Callum said, and then opened two portals back to the redoubt. He was already feeling a little drained, mostly because he was opening very large portals so people could go through three or five abreast. ¡°If you find any other prisoners, I trust you¡¯ll rescue them.¡±

    ¡°Certainly,¡± Taisen said, almost impatiently as he watched his men return to base. ¡°I¡¯m not a monster. I hunt monsters.¡±

    ¡°That¡¯s good to hear,¡± Callum replied, then muted the mic. He glanced at Lucy and shook his head. ¡°I hope he does.¡±

 Chapter 6 â€“ Direction

    It was one thing for some tyrannical magical government to exist, because at least that was a structure full of people and could be grappled with. It was another to think that there were whole groups of supernaturals out there completely off the radar doing whatever they liked. Which might have been hypocritical, since he was exactly one of those supernaturals, but there was no guarantee these off-the-books enclaves weren¡¯t officially endorsed by GAR in some way in the first place.

    A government that openly endorsed murder and kidnapping probably covertly endorsed more of the same. He couldn¡¯t imagine it would take much of a bribe to let some supernaturals through on the sly and set up where they wanted. Though he had to admit that the timing implied it was the new guard at GAR that was responsible, not the old one.

    Chester¡¯s American Alliance at least seemed to be doing what it was supposed to, though he had no way of really investigating it. He didn¡¯t entirely trust everyone involved was keeping their noses clean, but they were supposed to be keeping an eye on each other. Callum¡¯s reputation as The Ghost probably did more work to keep people honest than anything else.

    ¡°There is nothing in the GAR networks,¡± Lucy grumped, furiously scowling at her laptop and then at the cookies on the kitchen table. She erased the scowl and picked up a cookie, turning in her seat to look at him. ¡°Nobody¡¯s talking about anything of any consequence, I swear. A million emails about meetings and nothing about what¡¯s in the meetings.¡±

    ¡°That¡¯s pretty normal,¡± Callum remarked, going through the precision exercises that he¡¯d managed to finagle out of the Guild of Enchantment tutor. There were multiple versions, but he had settled on building a ship in a bottle through mana displacement alone. It was tricky, especially since moving too fast could result in mana sliding right through the matter, but it did force him to be both careful and precise.

    He wasn¡¯t sure exactly how well that sort of thing applied to his thin threads, or conversely his tubes, since he had a finer control to begin with. Still, he was years and years behind on basic skills and habits. While he had a definite advantage with his perceptions, everything he made was extremely simple and nothing like the complex spell forms he¡¯d seen from Taisen¡¯s men.

    They¡¯d almost certainly been using foci, but equally certainly the focus didn¡¯t do all the manipulation. If they were anything like the telekinesis focus he had, there were big parts that were completely under the mage¡¯s control. Instead of individually manipulating threads, it was like flinging around a net; easier to deal with but still requiring finesse.

    No matter how fine he could manipulate things, that wasn¡¯t the same as manipulating them correctly. He was entirely self-taught, so it was no wonder that he¡¯d picked up bad habits. Though he was keeping a very, very close eye on the techniques to make sure they weren¡¯t counterproductive either due to his uniquely small threads or just because they were unexamined orthodoxy. On one hand, there were hundreds of years of practice and refining in the approaches and ideas of how to handle vis. On the other hand, this was a society full of secrecy and conflict and people who were probably not above sabotaging future generations.

    He had a better idea of what the exercises were for now that he actually had a better understanding of spell forms. Things like teleports and portals weren¡¯t so much the simplest or most instinctive spellforms, though they were not all that complex, as they were the ones that came most naturally to the vis. Just putting a bunch of undirected vis threads in an area drifted into a vague approximation of one of the two, which made doing any other spell form more difficult. All the complex things like shields and whatnot obviously worked, but they all required making vis do things it didn¡¯t naturally want to do. Like any tool, really, but he didn¡¯t have as much an appreciation for it before.

    It also made him wonder about his gravitykinesis. It hadn¡¯t taken overly much work to create, so he had to assume other spatial mages could. The Alcubierre effect, though, might not even be possible with a bubble up, or at least not with shields up, which made it less useful for normal mages.

    Still, he couldn¡¯t believe nobody had ever found it. Or rather, that Duvall hadn¡¯t, considering she controlled all the space mages. But it was possible that she had ¨C or someone else had in the past ¨C and promptly discarded it due the danger. Accidentally winding up hundreds of miles above the ground was terrifying.

    He realized his mind was wandering so he dropped the exercises and focused on Lucy¡¯s complaint. She was still grumbling under her breath as she poked at the laptop, squinting slightly against the midmorning sun coming in from the big front windows.

    ¡°I expect we¡¯ll only find out anything if Taisen talks to us again,¡± he said, finding the thread of conversation again. ¡°Assuming he gets anything out of his captives.¡±

    Callum wasn¡¯t overly concerned with the fate of the man-eating fae that Taisen had taken, just their victims. The mages had essentially cleaned them up, fed them, muddied their memories of the past month and set them down outside a fair-sized city. He couldn¡¯t object to any of that, even the mind manipulation, since it would be easier on everyone if they just knew something terrible had happened and weren¡¯t trying to claim that demons had invaded their village and kept them captive.

    Or maybe not. Either way, he was not equipped in any way to deal with a large number of traumatized people who didn¡¯t speak the same language. It was one of the things that kept Callum grounded; he was all too aware that even the best he could do was eliminate some threats. Something like actually saving people was a lot more complicated.

    ¡°Well, nothing from him yet. Do have something about Duvall reinstating the travel network. With extra security and all those buzzwords you¡¯d expect from an official communication.¡± Lucy shook her head. ¡°No explanation of what that security actually is though.¡±

    ¡°Well, I expected the trick to only work once. Though I have to say, there probably wasn¡¯t a better target than the scariest Archmage of all.¡± Taisen¡¯s shell had been intimidating and had absolutely outclassed Callum¡¯s vis, but the worst he could have done would have been to send something through the portal and out into the bottom of the sea. The nexus portals didn¡¯t even face each other for that reason. Compared to what Fane could supposedly do, that wasn¡¯t particularly scary.

    ¡°Yeah,¡± Lucy agreed. ¡°Though I can tell you from my IT experience that extra security measures are just more ways to mess with the system, half the time.¡±

    ¡°Oh?¡± Callum sat up straighter. ¡°You think that I might still be able to do something with the new and improved teleports? Not that I necessarily want to, but it¡¯s nice to know I could. If we have another Fane.¡±

    ¡°Well¡­¡± Lucy made an equivocal gesture with one hand, tilting it from side to side. ¡°Just because I know information security stuff, doesn¡¯t mean I could crack enchantment security stuff. A lot of analog bypasses are stupid tricks anyway, sort of sideways to how the security is meant to work, so we might not have the tools or background. But I wouldn¡¯t completely write it off.¡±

    ¡°Definitely something to put on our list,¡± Callum said. ¡°Though we¡¯ve got enough on our plates right now.¡±

    ¡°More on your plate than mine,¡± Lucy said, sliding her chair back and standing up to stretch. Callum watched appreciatively. ¡°How¡¯s the portal world stuff going?¡±

    ¡°Eh.¡± Callum shrugged. ¡°I need to go back and watch them in action. I can¡¯t make a normal portal stable all by itself, and that¡¯s only one aspect of the dimensional portal.¡±

    ¡°Too bad you can¡¯t ask the Guild of Enchantment people.¡±

    ¡°I don¡¯t think they¡¯d know. Duvall might. Heck, she might have been the one who made the dragonlands portal to begin with.¡± Callum shrugged. ¡°But if she were willing to talk about it I¡¯m pretty sure Shahey would already know how to do it. Or at least give me some hint. I don¡¯t think he¡¯s posing me challenges for my personal growth.¡±

    ¡°I dunno,¡± Lucy said, smiling wryly. ¡°Dragonblooded are pretty weird. I could see one doing the wise old mentor thing for funsies.¡±

    ¡°Maybe,¡± Callum hedged. ¡°But not in this case. I mean, think about it. No two types of magic are the same, so even fae can¡¯t exactly make portals, not the way I can. Plus the dragonlands portal is definitely mage work. I imagine they don¡¯t like that GAR can just shut them off.¡±

    ¡°Wouldn¡¯t that imply GAR could shut off any of the portals?¡± Lucy asked. ¡°That¡¯s a heck of a threat.¡±

    ¡°I don¡¯t see why not. Which is probably why Chester needs an in. Speaking of which, we should probably call him and see if he¡¯s ready for the deployment.¡± Actually making a teleport pad was easy enough, as was a feeder portal. Those were his staple enchantments and he was pretty good at them ¡ª by his standards, if not the Guild¡¯s. Finding a safe spot to put it on the other end, in the Deep Wilds, was another matter.

    There was some kind of politics involved there, though the exact details had never been elaborated on. He didn¡¯t know if Chester and other Earth shifters were political exiles or expatriates or something else entirely, but regardless of their status it was apparently a bit of work to get some safe area over in the Deep Wilds. Chester didn¡¯t want to put him to the trouble of making something until they knew exactly what was allowed.

    ¡°We need a secretary,¡± Lucy complained good-naturedly. ¡°Though we¡¯d need one that can make anonymously screened calls.¡±

    ¡°Those are probably in short supply,¡± Callum agreed. ¡°What we need is to be less in demand.¡±

    ¡°Ha,¡± said Lucy. ¡°That one¡¯s all your fault.¡±

    ***

    Felicia Black frowned through the glamour display at the fae wrapped in cold iron laced chains. He didn¡¯t have her sympathy. Not just for what he¡¯d done, which was a violation of all the laws ¨C and the reasons for those laws ¨C that had once been set out by GAR, but for the choices he¡¯d made.

    Some of the fae that came to Earth chose monstrous stories for a reason. A hero gained power, but a monster had power. It was easy, it was lazy, and those who used it got what was coming to them. The fae she was looking at was probably no older than she was, and she was barely older than what her glamoured form looked like, and that sort of inexperience showed. Archmage Taisen would have wiped the floor with them in any case, but they should have put up a better showing than they had.

    ¡°You know them?¡± Ray stepped up next to her, hands in his pockets.

    ¡°No,¡± Felicia said, speaking aloud since it was just the two of them in the insulated observation booth. ¡°But I know their type. The kind of fae that thinks they can bestride the world because it¡¯s their destiny to do so. You can find them by the dozen anywhere you go.¡±

    ¡°Sounds a lot like young mages,¡± Ray remarked. ¡°So no idea where they came from? Interrogation is doing nothing.¡±

    ¡°Oh, I know exactly where they came from,¡± Felicia said darkly. ¡°Not that it helps. They¡¯ve got to be from one of the Seven Lesser Courts in Faerie. Some group of troublemakers and ne¡¯er-do-wells being sent out to serve someone¡¯s purpose somewhere else.¡±

    ¡°So nobody¡¯s going to miss them,¡± Ray said.

    ¡°Oh, certainly not.¡±

    ¡°Then why wouldn¡¯t they tattle on whoever smuggled them over?¡±

    ¡°I very much doubt they even know.¡± Felicia smiled without any humor. ¡°It wouldn¡¯t even be anything so crude as memory manipulation. Everything would have been their own idea. They would have come up with it and they would have run across exactly the right pieces of information they needed by sheer happenstance. It would have been their own cleverness and cunning that got them through the portal ¨C if they even used it ¨C and past the guards. And so on.¡±

    ¡°That¡¯s insidious,¡± Ray said. ¡°So no way to connect them to Constance?¡±

    Stolen novel; please report.

    ¡°I don¡¯t see how,¡± Felicia said, frustrated. ¡°I know she has to be involved. I¡¯ve seen that she¡¯s communicating with the Seven.¡±

    They had spent a lot of time on research for Taisen, tracking down rumors like the one that had ended up locating the fae in India, but that wasn¡¯t all they¡¯d spent their time on. There was also GAR. She couldn¡¯t just cut ties with them, not without severing threads of her story, so she had to find out exactly what they were up to and what had led to the betrayal.

    Between Taisen¡¯s own records that he¡¯d kept privately and what the Hargraves had been kind enough to supply, she could read between the lines well enough. Not that the Seven weren¡¯t subtle ¡ª but that was the point. There was no need for any of the supernatural factions on earth to hide their influences on GAR. More the reverse; they wanted to demonstrate to their masters or their citizens that they had sway with GAR. But some people, mostly mages, were obviously acting in concert without any apparent contact or collaboration. She was quite familiar with that sort of invisible hand.

    ¡°Come on,¡± Ray said, putting a tentative hand on her shoulder. His skin was almost burning hot against hers, the heritage running through her veins giving her flesh the chill of early spring, and she disdained the touch of humans. Or fae. But Ray was different. ¡°The temple place is clear and he wants us to take a look around, see if we see anything.¡±

    ¡°Sure,¡± she said, putting her hand on his before turning away from the projection. The prisoners probably wouldn¡¯t survive for much longer, not without a patron to speak for them. Justice served, as far as she was concerned. A simple execution was far less cruel than what the Seven did to its failures anyway.

    The mage on duty at the portal station energized the framework for them, and they walked through, Ray¡¯s glider bobbing along behind in box form. The redoubt on the other side was mostly empty, but there were no plans to abandon it until Taisen had wrung everything he could from the area. The glider was a necessary component of that, since they didn¡¯t have anyone to teleport them out to the site. Not this time.

    ¡°I can¡¯t believe Wells was right there,¡± Felicia muttered as the glider unfolded.

    ¡°He wasn¡¯t exactly,¡± Ray replied, half-distracted as the wood slid smoothly into the deployed configuration. ¡°But I guess his spellcraft on-site is close enough. Such strange ships that pass in the night.¡± The glider door on her side popped open and she slid inside, Ray joining her a moment later.

    ¡°I don¡¯t like dealing with a criminal like Wells,¡± Felicia sighed. ¡°I know, it¡¯s not really our jurisdiction or even our business anymore. Maybe we should even thank him. But he¡¯s always going to be an outlaw to me.¡±

    ¡°Yeah, I¡¯m kind of surprised that the Archmage dealt with him,¡± Ray said. ¡°Though, I admit it did the trick. Hard to argue with his decisions when it works.¡± Felicia hummed agreement, looking out the window as Ray sent the glider over the densely-forested mountain foothills.

    She could feel the remnants of an enclave as Ray flew them toward the battle site, the tatters of a nascent court slowly fading into nothingness. Hardly anything, in the end, not with so few and so pathetic a set of fae, but it was at least executed with more subtlety than most. Back at the redoubt even she hadn¡¯t noticed, drowned out as it was by the abundance of human magics. Even so, she put a black mark on herself for not noticing when Wells apparently had.

    Closer to the center, it was more obvious but not as much as usual, either because they had been trying to escape notice or just because it was dissipating with nobody left to anchor it. She had doubts there would be anything substantive remaining now, but the fae had been inexperienced. Even if there was nothing that pointed back toward Faerie or GAR, there might be some trace of other undocumented enclaves.

    The remains of the building came into view soon enough, the bricks still pinned in the air from Archmage Taisen¡¯s spellwork. Seeing the disassembled rock hanging in space, faces polished from precise cuts, she was reminded yet again why the fae as a whole had taken the archmages¡¯ terms centuries ago. A fae king could do as much, and easily, but only in his territory. An archmage could do it anywhere.

    There were a few mages still surveying the area with their tools, but ultimately they wouldn¡¯t get anywhere without an actual fae. Ray landed the glider and the two of them climbed out. While Ray usually took the lead, this time he trailed behind her as she took a deep breath of the lingering magic and followed its trail past the hanging chunks of stone.

    At the center there was nothing more than a bare foundation of stone, at least to the naked eye. Likely to magesight as well, but she knew better. Hiding in plain sight was one of the first and earliest tricks any fae learned, and it never stopped being useful. Instinct and impulse led her to one particular spot, and she narrowed her eyes at the air there.

    ¡°Open,¡± she told it.

    Though she¡¯d done her best to bury her heritage, it was still handy now and then. Especially since no human would be able to see any particular difference between it and the normal spread of fae abilities. Even most fae wouldn¡¯t be able to pinpoint the exact nature. Though most fae wouldn¡¯t be able to command another¡¯s workings.

    The air split apart and a pile of goods spilled out, caught by Ray¡¯s telekinesis before they could hit the ground. Some gold, some silverite and mordite weaponry. A chunk of evenstar from Faerie, which was probably what they had used to found the enclave in the first place. She reached out and plucked the translucent silver crystal from Ray¡¯s magical grasp and studied it, but there was nothing that set it apart from any other minor fragment.

    ¡°Evidence?¡± Ray asked.

    ¡°Of backing from Faerie, yes,¡± Felicia said. ¡°Of who the backer is, no.¡± She reached into her pocket for an evidence bag and deposited the evenstar inside. Not that the DAI had ever really concerned itself with chains of custody the way mundane law enforcement did, but the basic idea was extremely useful. Taisen encouraged following such protocols for the sheer order they imposed.

    ¡°What about the dead?¡± Ray asked, glancing over to the small, earth-mage-raised dome fifty meters away. Felicia grimaced. Even if it was one of her most useful talents, she wasn¡¯t overly enamored of playing with corpses. But she nodded, reaching into her bag and taking out her tablet since they were going to be near other mages. Sometimes she resented needing to use it, but most of the time she was glad to have an excuse not to feed the power of her voice.

    The interior of the makeshift morgue was freezing, with some impromptu spellcraft by a fire or water mage preserving the bodies. Or the pieces of bodies, in some cases, since Taisen¡¯s mages had not been gentle. Ray reached into his pocket and got out a package of wipes, the plastic crackling as he opened it. She nodded thanks before touching a finger to the closest of the bodies.

    That particular ability was better for pulling out the identities of criminals than it was for a deeper dive into a dead person¡¯s thoughts and motivations. She only had the barest experience of the last moments of life ¡ª though that was often enough. A mere touch pulled out the last lingering impressions from the nearest body and seared them across her mind. It was a jolt she was long used to, and she sorted out the emotions, images, and the ineffable shock of mortality¡¯s end.

    The fae in question had been so sure of his power and prowess that most of his last moments were spent in outraged shock that anyone would have the effrontery to challenge him. Something she¡¯d seen many, many times before. There was, however, an actual useful twitch of thought toward the end, some concept that the mages had betrayed them.

    ¡°They had some mage allies somewhere,¡± Felicia wrote, after scrubbing her hand with the wipe Ray handed her. ¡°No idea where. I don¡¯t think they knew where. But this wasn¡¯t entirely on their own.¡±

    ¡°Well. That¡¯s not a surprise but it¡¯s nice to have confirmation.¡± Ray grimaced. ¡°The question is who. I figure GAR, but what if it¡¯s one of the breakaways? They don¡¯t have anyone overseeing them and bribing someone with corite would be easy enough.¡±

    ¡°Is anyone from the Hargrave Alliance located in Faerie?¡± Felicia scribbled. ¡°That¡¯s where I¡¯d look first.¡±

    ¡°I have no idea,¡± Ray said, started to sigh, and stopped himself with a grimace. Even keeping the corpses cold didn¡¯t make them smell any better. ¡°Let¡¯s finish up here and then we can check. Maybe you¡¯ll find another hint.¡±

    ¡°Oh boy,¡± she wrote, without enthusiasm, and moved on to the next corpse.

    ***

    Constance frowned as Supervisor O¡¯Keefe of the Department of Arcane Investigation hurried through the door ten minutes late. Just like the unlamented prior head of DAI, though she imagined O¡¯Keefe had no better reason for being late than Lane had. It just seemed endemic to the post.

    ¡°Now that we¡¯re all here,¡± she said, quelling the chatter of the other department heads. ¡°There is not much this time. The new transport network is being rolled out; does anyone have any concerns?¡± If anyone did, they didn¡¯t dare voice them. ¡°Then, the real issue: the official GAR response to the breakaway Houses. It¡¯s been long enough and GAR should say something.¡±

    Properly, that was the role of Archmage Affairs, but Magus Mavros was useless and besides Constance was the one with the connections to people of real consequence. The money, the materials, the connections that even the Guild of Enchanting needed if they were to continue to operate. Most of Constance¡¯s backers hadn¡¯t even been that put out by the transport network being down, since they were deep in Faerie or the Night Lands.

    Any declaration that GAR made was effectively toothless. Taisen and Hargrave between them had stripped out most of the militant mages that were serving in GAR, and while the Houses had their own forces that wasn¡¯t the same as having a proper military. The real purpose of condemning the breakaways was to allow the Houses still in GAR to apply pressure from other avenues, to have backing for whatever political overtures or maneuverings they had in mind.

    Constance didn¡¯t much care about their schemes, so long as her House in general and she in particular benefitted from the arrangement. Obviously that ruled out most action, since trying to conduct a campaign under the limitations of personnel and the appearance of maintaining GAR¡¯s policies was impossible, but words were easy. She collected the committee-created proclamation regarding the Houses in question, a self-important thing that used such verbiage as we condemn in the strongest possible terms, and adjourned the meeting.

    She returned to her office and settled down to think, needle working as she began to crochet. Every time she had to deal with communications she had to make a choice whether to use the electronic network or a written missive. It was a matter of tactics; she knew the former would leak, while the latter only might. Determining what should go public in the normal way, what should go public through back channels, and what was genuinely secret was a delicate mix.

    She ended up sending three versions. The expurgated proclamation for public consumption, the real one to be leaked as it would, and an annotated version for her backers, making note of who contributed what. They¡¯d already replaced Lane, both for his failure to deal with Wells and the Hargraves, and because he¡¯d made some rather injudicious decisions when it came to pawns.

    That thought transferred her telekinesis focus from dealing with the meeting notes to scribbling out another missive. There were of course costs when it came to dealing with the fae portion of her backers, and one such cost was finding a particular fae ex-agent of DAI. One that should never have been lost in the first place, to her understanding.

    The Department of Acquisitions had more personnel than most now, and more freedom with the transport network coming back into service. Finding someone shouldn¡¯t be that hard. Though it wasn¡¯t like anyone had been able to track down Wells, despite his ongoing activities as The Ghost. A fae wasn¡¯t a spatial mage, though, so Constance had hopes that it wouldn¡¯t be as difficult.

    Chores done, Constance sent a message to her secretary to deliver lunch and pondered the topic of Wells himself. The damage he¡¯d done to GAR was enough that he was possibly the most wanted magical criminal of all time, but there was no real point in tracking him down under the current circumstances. It was far better to manage him, which could be done without even finding the man.

    The secretary arrived with lunch, direct from a Parisian caf¨¦, and Constance took a spoon to her chowder as she sorted reports with her telekinesis. The easiest thing to do was to imply some threat to the American Alliance by one of her troublemakers, and sooner or later Wells would take care of it. That had worked already, and she was hesitant to let such a weapon languish, but sadly most of the various groups were staying in line.

    Before she could be content with the way things were running, one of GAR¡¯s fae messengers slipped through the door: a two-foot, cat-eared personage with one of the most annoying voices Constance had ever heard. He always seemed smug, too, though that might have been the cat aspect. She would have barred him from her office if he weren¡¯t one of her main links to the fae that her House was collaborating with.

    ¡°Delivery,¡± he drawled, pulling a scroll larger than himself from nowhere in particular and tossing it into her desk before scampering out on four legs. She scowled after him, robbed of even a chance to properly protest his intrusion, and snatched up the scroll. Even the old mage families had graduated to sealed paper envelopes, so what looked like a vellum scroll in a silver-gilt case had to be from Faerie.

    Constance opened it with a growl, wax seals crackling and crumbling once they were breached, and she glanced over the contents. Then blinked. She¡¯d been expecting some update on the immigration papers or personnel that she¡¯d helped station at the portals, but the contents were of somewhat greater import.

    It has come to Our attention that The Court of Long Claws has been extinguished. We will not brook such casual violations of Our agreements. Find those who have infringed upon Our prerogatives so they may be punished.

    There was more, in high-flown language, but the first three sentences were all she really needed. Not that she had any idea who was in the so-called Court of the Long Claws but it had to be one of the favors that she¡¯d let through. What she didn¡¯t like was the presumption that she could be simply ordered to do things, like some servant.

    She was tempted to just toss it aside, but it wouldn¡¯t do to completely alienate such allies. If nothing else her House and her backers wouldn¡¯t thank her, though she felt that the mages on her side gave their fae allies more respect than they really deserved. Mages were the masters of GAR, not any of the foreign powers they brokered with.

    Constance set the scroll on the corner of her desk with a click and scraped the last bit of chowder from the bowl with her spoon. Unfortunately she had a good idea of who was responsible, and it wouldn¡¯t help anyone. Taisen and his busybody House, thinking they had the authority to determine who and what was welcome on Earth. That or Wells himself, since he had demonstrated that he could survive the curse of a fae king.

    There was no direct way to pull the claws of either one, for the same reason GAR couldn¡¯t force them to submit to the guild agreements. Neither of them could be reached by the guild, or had holdings in the guild. Nor did Constance have the authority to talk to them directly, despite becoming the first among equals at GAR. Not that she would want to anyway. But she might be able to finesse something.

    The best thing would be to set them at each other. Infighting between GAR¡¯s enemies would only be to the good, though generating that kind of animosity was not easy. Even with the resources of the Department of Acquisitions, there was only so much she could do. She would have to be careful about it.

    With luck, she could get her problems to solve themselves.

 Chapter 7 â€“ Steps

    ¡°I don¡¯t like this,¡± Callum said.

    ¡°Oh, come on, mister grumpypants,¡± Lucy said, checking herself over in the mirror again. ¡°You don¡¯t like anything.¡±

    ¡°I like you,¡± he replied, putting his arms around her and stilling her primping. Which was unlike her anyway, so she was likely almost as nervous as he was.

    ¡°Okay, point for you,¡± Lucy conceded. ¡°But come on. How bad can it be?¡±

    ¡°I have literally not been in a room with another mage where it¡¯s turned out well,¡± Callum said.

    ¡°Then this can be the first time,¡± Lucy said. ¡°Besides, Chester and Lisa will be there.¡±

    ¡°A point,¡± Callum said, though he still didn¡¯t like it. A risk was a risk, but there were some he had to take.

    He opened a portal to Chester¡¯s compound, where they had finally permanently stationed an anchor, and the two of them walked through. They were both dressed up for the meeting to some extent, with Lucy in her best dress and himself in a tailored suit, though he wasn¡¯t sure it was entirely necessary. Archmage Wizzy apparently never dressed up more than jeans and a tee.

    Still, he wanted to give a good impression and he hadn¡¯t quite lost the reflexes he¡¯d had back in his former life, where he had to meet customers face to face to get their business. He straightened his tie and glanced around by habit, though his senses already told him that none of the guests were there yet. There were, though, more shifters than usual, likely to escort the expected arrivals. Or just to keep an eye on them.

    ¡°Relax, Callum,¡± Alpha Chester said, offering him a hand. ¡°Nobody is going to take the risk of provoking you, even if they were of a mind to.¡±

    ¡°I know, but it¡¯s a habit by now.¡± Callum took the hand, which was human, as was Alpha Chester, at least for the moment, though if any defense was necessary he¡¯d be seeing the war form. He still wasn¡¯t sure exactly what the limits on changing forms were, but none of the shifters he¡¯d seen had shown any trouble swapping from one to the other. They didn¡¯t even tear their clothes, thanks to symbiote magic, so he tried not to worry about Chester¡¯s combat readiness.

    ¡°Come on and have a seat,¡± Lisa invited, sweeping Lucy up into a hug before practically depositing her in one of the handmade overstuffed chairs that matched the big living room table, all of the furniture tastefully rustic in design. ¡°I¡¯m kind of surprised you¡¯re first but it¡¯s probably for the best.¡±

    ¡°Maybe they¡¯re still not used to the teleports being down. Or mostly down, anyway,¡± Callum said, taking the seat next to Lucy. ¡°But they can all fly so they can¡¯t be that far behind.¡± Chester was about to reply when he cocked his head, then nodded.

    ¡°Speak of the devil,¡± he said. ¡°Archmage Wizzy is just arriving.¡±

    ¡°Mm,¡± Callum said, straining his perceptions in that direction even though there was no need. Wizzy was obvious by the hard outline of his vis which, like Callum, was restricted to his body rather than shrouding him in a bubble. He approached on foot, in no hurry, and was passed through to the interior. It was only by dint of great exertion that Callum didn¡¯t teleport himself and Lucy away, though he had the forms ready to go. Those were going to stay in place the whole time no matter what anyone said.

    ¡°Archmage Huitzilin,¡± a shifter announced as Wizzy finally entered the room and Callum saw him clearly for the first time. He was struck by how distinctly unhandsome Wizzy was, with a nose like a squashed pepper and a face like old leather, but at the same time he had a certain presence. The Archmage had a battered cowboy hat in one hand, tapping it against his knee as his eyes fixed on Callum.

    ¡°Young Wells,¡± he said by way of greeting. ¡°And I assume the young miss Lucy.¡±

    ¡°Archmage Wizzy,¡± Callum replied, tamping down his worries to be polite. ¡°Thank you for coming.¡± Then his eyes caught the slithering shadow coiled up behind Wizzy and he jumped to his feet. ¡°I thought those couldn¡¯t leave Mictl¨¡n,¡± he added flatly, a hair¡¯s breadth away from triggering his teleport.

    ¡°They cannot,¡± Wizzy said calmly, ignoring Callum¡¯s stance and sinking into another of the chairs. ¡°One is in many ways part of Mictl¨¡n, so this shadow has not strayed beyond its bounds. Most are already aware of one¡¯s shadow, but it is far too easy to forget that you have not had exposure to your peers.¡±

    Callum scowled, but Chester nodded slightly. Callum wondered why he hadn¡¯t been warned, but then, Wizzy was right. He had no context for what was usual and what was weird in supernatural society. Even with Lucy there, he hadn¡¯t grown up in it or lived it. After a moment he sat back down, though he was if anything even more tense than before, on his last frayed nerve. Wizzy put his hat on the table and leaned back, at ease.

    ¡°Is there anything you wish to ask before the others arrive?¡± He inquired, his manner easy but his eyes sharp. Callum rubbed at the bridge of his nose, trying to focus his thoughts, and Lucy put a soothing hand on his arm. He reached over to squeeze her hand and looked at Wizzy.

    ¡°Here¡¯s one. How do you defend yourself? All the mages I¡¯ve seen have the bubbles that shield them, but you don¡¯t.¡± Callum waved in Wizzy¡¯s direction. ¡°I don¡¯t imagine that you¡¯ve gone this long without someone trying to jump you.¡±

    ¡°Indeed not,¡± Wizzy said. ¡°For those using the internal techniques, the defenses are internal as well. Our clay is more resilient when it comes to holding patterns of vis. There are still dangers, but we are not so vulnerable to our own magic.¡± He tapped his fingers on the arms of his chair. ¡°However, one has never dealt with a spatial mage in that context. It is not clear exactly what form your defenses would take.¡±

    ¡°Ah,¡± Callum said, though he wasn¡¯t exactly surprised. ¡°Do you mean you have the full shield setup underneath your skin like with mages, or something else, if you don¡¯t mind sharing?¡±

    ¡°Something else,¡± Wizzy said. ¡°One¡¯s blood is always under control. A relatively simple reinforcement makes everything under the skin stronger than steel. It is a benefit of those who use the method of the ¨­lm¨¥catl. Though one admits that the complexity of the spellwork of other Archmages far exceeds what anything created in one¡¯s own past, and once again, a spatial mage is outside the realm of familiarity.¡±

    ¡°Boo,¡± Lucy said. ¡°I¡¯d kind of hoped for something concrete. It¡¯d help him relax.¡±

    ¡°Space is also different than any kind of matter,¡± Callum said thoughtfully. ¡°You¡¯re not manipulating something that¡¯s there, you¡¯re manipulating the there that the something is.¡± He made a face at his own twisted locution. ¡°I¡¯d really like to pick Duvall¡¯s brain but there is no way that she¡¯d help me.¡±

    ¡°One can provide some suggestions that translate between the intuitive internal methods and the complex external methods,¡± Wizzy said. ¡°But it seems your approach is, taken in total, unprecedented.¡±

    ¡°Yeah, I¡¯m not surprised,¡± Callum sighed.

    ¡°The other two are arriving,¡± Chester broke in, and Callum braced himself. A few moments later a pair of bubbles appeared on the edges of his perceptions, moving smoothly toward Chester¡¯s compound. He hated that he couldn¡¯t see inside them, though he presumed that Chester¡¯s people had vouched for their identities. Neither of the bubbles was the diamond-hard sort that he¡¯d seen from Archmages, so they probably were who they were supposed to be.

    ¡°Gayle and Glenda Hargrave,¡± one of Chester¡¯s people announced as the pair were shown into the meeting room. Callum stood again, though this time out of politeness. Gayle was more or less as he remembered her, though she¡¯d returned to her normal dress sense, which was rather like Lucy¡¯s. Glenda was obviously her mother, with the same blond hair and blue eyes and a similar face, though she hardly looked any older. It was more the way she carried herself.

    ¡°Mister Wells,¡± Gayle said hesitantly.

    ¡°Gayle,¡± Callum said, trying to ignore the prickling on the back of his neck from being anywhere near a healer. ¡°Mrs. Hargrave,¡± he said, nodding to the mother. He didn¡¯t offer his hand, and neither did they. Mages didn¡¯t do that anyway.

    ¡°Just Glenda, please,¡± Gayle¡¯s mother said, expression neutral. ¡°Our House is too large for me to be the Mrs. Hargrave.¡±

    ¡°Glenda, then,¡± Callum acquiesced. ¡°Thank you for coming. I wasn¡¯t sure you¡¯d be interested in helping.¡±

    ¡°I¡¯m a mother myself,¡± Glenda said, looking over to Lucy. ¡°I have a certain sympathy.¡±

    ¡°Please, have a seat,¡± Chester said, taking initiative as host, and Gayle and Glenda settled down next to each other while Callum reclaimed his spot. They were widely spaced around the big coffee table, with Lucy and Callum on one side with Chester and Lisa, while the three visiting mages took up the other side.

    ¡°I just want to say,¡± Gayle spoke suddenly. ¡°Thank you for helping Archmage Taisen. He said that he might have lost people if you hadn¡¯t done everything you did.¡±

    ¡°I could hardly stand by,¡± Callum demurred. ¡°Not if I was going to stand by my own beliefs.¡±

    ¡°Still, that is why we are here,¡± said Glenda. ¡°It helps show you¡¯re not some deranged murderer.¡±

    ¡°Hey!¡± Lucy protested. ¡°He¡¯s not deranged.¡±

    ¡°I notice you don¡¯t contest the murderer part,¡± Glenda said.

    ¡°Considering who he¡¯s killed I don¡¯t think that counts either,¡± Lucy growled. Callum put a hand on her arm.

    ¡°We¡¯re not here for an accounting of my actions. What I need is information.¡± Callum smiled somewhat bitterly. ¡°Neither of us are part of mage society, but we need its expertise on how to deal with a magical child.¡± Gayle actually smiled. Glenda nodded and pursed her lips.

    ¡°Before we start, I would like to caution you that the issue of a mage and a¡­¡± Glenda paused a moment, clearly rephrasing what she was about to say. ¡°The issue of a mage and a sensitive is not guaranteed to be a mage as well.¡±

    ¡°And that would simplify things, but from what Lucy tells me you can¡¯t figure that out until after a couple years anyway, so we need to know what to do.¡± Callum suppressed a sigh. He felt like he was giving ground, even though they were just talking. ¡°And if we do have a mage, I want to have avenues open for proper education.¡±

    ¡°What is Wizzy doing here, then?¡± Gayle asked.

    Callum hated to give away any information about himself, but this was a matter of health. Not his health, but his child¡¯s health and maybe even Lucy¡¯s. So he had to let go of some of his secrets.

    ¡°I was never educated formally. I use Archmage Wizzy¡¯s type of vis methods, which is why I do not have a bubble.¡± He waved a hand around himself. ¡°We need to know every possibility, and have to choose what we actually teach our children.¡±

    ¡°Plus I got kinda cut off after they found out I was a dud,¡± Lucy said. ¡°So I dunno what a mother needs to know about baby mages either.¡±

    The ensuing discussion was a long one, and Callum took notes, filling page after page of a notebook. Lucy was recording it all anyway, but it was better to get down his thoughts and interpretations at the time. He didn¡¯t really relax, but it didn¡¯t seem like anyone was going to make any moves. Which was all to the good. If someone attacked Lucy things wouldn¡¯t end without a lot of destruction.

    He felt rather odd planning for things more than a few months or even years in advance. The past two years or so had been too hectic, and besides the supernatural world was hardly stable at the moment. Even if they accepted the tentative offer of House Hargrave tutors, by the time such teachers were needed House Hargrave might have changed its mind. Or lack the manpower to offer help.

    ¡°There is an issue I do wish to raise,¡± Glenda said, once the bulk of the questions had been answered.

    ¡°Hmm?¡± Callum put down the glass of water Lisa had provided and took firm mental hold of his threads again.

    ¡°House Hargrave has run into issues securing food and supplies in a timely manner,¡± Glenda said. Gayle glanced at her and nodded support. ¡°We¡¯ve been sourcing from the New York area, but with GAR so close by all the supernatural outlets have been essentially closed to us.

    ¡°There have also been some attempts to frame Archmage Taisen as being responsible,¡± Glenda added with a frown. ¡°Puerile, but I suppose it should be suspected. Regardless, I would like to ask about getting some teleportation enchantments for the House. That will make it easier to source things from a less sensitive location.¡±

    The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

    ¡°You haven¡¯t been able to get any from the Guild of Enchanting?¡± Callum raised his eyebrows. ¡°I¡¯ve done at least fifteen for them at this point.¡±

    ¡°No¡­¡± Glenda said, eyeing him. ¡°I didn¡¯t realize you were working with the Guild of Enchanting."

    "It''s at a distance, but I am.¡± Callum frowned. ¡°Maybe they¡¯re using the teleports for themselves. I know it was only just recently that Duvall started restoring the network, but if you are asking me to make some for you, I absolutely can. If you can provide the enchanting material that¡¯ll make things easier but I do have some already.¡±

    ¡°House Hargrave would prefer to commission it all from you, work and materials both,¡± Glenda said. ¡°We would like to formally request three pairs of teleportation pads, in exchange for whatever resources we supply you for education and training.¡±

    ¡°In installments,¡± Callum said. Now that he and Lucy had raided cenotes once, they could do it again. It just took time. Besides which, actively trading with House Hargrave put them on friendly terms, even if he still wouldn¡¯t trust them as far as he could throw them. ¡°I¡¯ll put one together after this meeting, and additional teleports at year intervals while you¡¯re providing instruction, for as long as necessary.¡±

    ¡°That is acceptable,¡± Glenda said. ¡°Provided the first year¡¯s payment for ongoing support is this year.¡±

    ¡°Done,¡± Callum agreed. ¡°What about you, Wizzy?¡±

    ¡°One has no need for additional teleportation,¡± Wizzy said calmly. ¡°However, there may be some need for different spatial services in the future.¡±

    ¡°As long as it¡¯s reasonable,¡± Callum said. ¡°I¡¯m not going to write a completely blank check.¡±

    ¡°Certainly not,¡± Wizzy replied.

    ¡°Hey now,¡± Lucy said pointedly. ¡°I may not be a mage but I¡¯m not useless. I bet ya¡¯ll need IT support now that you¡¯ve split from GAR. Computers and networking and telephony and all that.¡±

    ¡°Yes!¡± Gayle said, suddenly perking up. ¡°One of the things we¡¯re trying to do is add more mundane knowledge to our House. There¡¯s also¡ª¡± She interrupted herself to turn to Callum. ¡°Do you have any suggestions for where to look? To improve our own spellcasting, I mean. Since you said you learned most of yours by reference to mundane techniques.¡±

    ¡°Huh.¡± Callum raised his eyebrows. Given the contempt he¡¯d seen for normal technology and learning outside of GAR agents he was a little surprised, but he supposed that his own accomplishments were impossible to ignore. ¡°Basically all university-level physics, chemistry, and biology, to start. Trouble is I don¡¯t really know enough about other aspects to be sure how much of it applies.¡±

    ¡°And where can we find these things?¡± Glenda asked. Callum took a moment to remind himself that these were people who probably didn¡¯t generally use the internet at all, and were unaware of everything that was on it.

    ¡°Tell you what,¡± he said. ¡°You can consult with Lucy about getting your buildings wired and such, and we¡¯ll add in pointers to all these resources. They wouldn¡¯t do much good to you without proper access anyway.¡±

    ¡°And,¡± Lucy said, elbowing Callum. ¡°Since you¡¯re here. Callum¡¯s knee has been bothering him for a while. Maybe you can fix him up?¡±

    ¡°I did wonder about the cane,¡± Gayle said, nodding to herself. ¡°Certainly, I¡¯d be happy to.¡±

    Callum grimaced. He hadn¡¯t intended to bring it up, but of course now that they were face to face he didn¡¯t have a good reason to protest. Part of him knew it was stupid to even want to reject the help, but the last few times he¡¯d dealt with magical healing he¡¯d been in GAR custody. His hand automatically went to his knee before he nodded.

    ¡°Very well,¡± he said, trying not to sound ungrateful. It wouldn¡¯t be fair to either Lucy or Gayle.

    Unlike before, Gayle didn¡¯t have to physically touch him. She just pushed a ball of complex vis out of her shell and sent it down toward the knee in question. It took every ounce of his self-control to let it contact him, but when it did an odd jolt of refreshing energy ran through him. He could feel bits inside his knee shift, and then it was done.

    ¡°Thank you.¡± That time he actually did manage to sound properly grateful, and Gayle flashed him a bright smile.

    ¡°Glad to help, Mister Wells.¡± She turned to Lucy. ¡°Oh, I¡¯m not confident in it yet, but there are some specific things healers do for expectant mothers. I¡¯ll make sure I can manage that before our next meeting.¡±

    ¡°Thank you, Gayle,¡± Lucy said, managing a far more credible smile than Callum had.

    ¡°Oh!¡± Gayle said suddenly, glancing between Lucy and Callum. ¡°I just wanted to ask. That book you let me have. Do you have any others like it?¡± She flushed as Glenda shook her head indulgently. ¡°I mean, I don¡¯t know where to start, there are so many books available.¡±

    Callum laughed. He couldn¡¯t help it. The request was just so ordinary that it seemed absurd.

    ¡°Sure,¡± he said. ¡°I¡¯ll give you some recommendations.¡±

    The Hargraves left soon after, but Archmage Wizzy lingered behind. He had been the quietest of the participants, only piping up the once to expound on the dangers and benefits of the internal style of magic. Aside from that, he had been content to watch and listen.

    ¡°You have been a spark that has set a fire,¡± Wizzy said. ¡°But it has not truly caught. Not yet. Do you intend to continue forging a new path?¡±

    ¡°That seems a bit leading,¡± Callum said cautiously. ¡°If you¡¯re asking if I¡¯m satisfied with the world as it is, no. Especially not since it¡¯s not just my future I need be concerned about.¡± He didn¡¯t want to say out loud that he couldn¡¯t foresee a future where vampires still existed on Earth, or even where GAR still functioned as it did. Wizzy seemed amenable to the chaos Callum had caused, but it was better not to create any expectations one way or another. "But I''m taking things one step at a time."

    ¡°Is there any other way to move forward?¡± Wizzy asked, rhetorically. ¡°One merely suggests that you exercise caution in more than relations with other mages. Mictl¨¡n is not the most dangerous possibility when it comes to portal worlds.¡±

    ¡°You know about opening up other dimensional portals?¡± Callum asked. He didn¡¯t know how Wizzy knew about Shahey¡¯s charge, or even if he knew. It might just be that Wizzy figured he¡¯d get around to it eventually. ¡°Anything you can tell me about the process?¡±

    ¡°Not as such. One only knows stories, that certain spatial Archmages were capable of it, and they often found that the portals opened to desolation and death.¡±

    ¡°Well, I guess I hardly expected otherwise,¡± Callum mused. He hadn¡¯t actually tried opening a dimensional portal yet, not with his current knowledge, but it made a certain kind of sense most of them would just explode. If the other end were somewhat random, it could open into a star, or vacuum, or a universe full of antimatter, or just some physics so alien that concepts like matter and energy didn¡¯t apply.

    That all the portal worlds were at least vaguely Earth-like might not so much represent some fact about dimensions being habitable as only habitable dimensions could sustain a portal. He knew how fragile portal magic was. The dimensional portals might be more robust than the usual fare but he doubted they¡¯d survive forming in extreme conditions.

    ¡°Simply take care you do not find yourself in the underworld,¡± Wizzy told him.

    ¡°Careful is my watchword,¡± Callum assured him.

    ¡°Like taking coal to Newcastle,¡± Lucy muttered. Callum snorted, and she grinned at him unrepentantly. Once Wizzy left as well, Chester waved them back into the chairs.

    ¡°We¡¯re ready for you to connect us to the Deep Wilds,¡± Chester said. ¡°It¡¯s moderately urgent, if you can do it soon.¡±

    ¡°I have the telepads,¡± Callum confirmed. ¡°I¡¯m a bit worried about how well it¡¯ll work in a portal world, though. I¡¯ll give you an anchor to send over and I¡¯ll set things up, since I have a fallback if it doesn¡¯t quite form normally.¡±

    His work for the Guild of Enchantment had paid off at least a little. For something as simple as assembling a static box, he could make his own enchantment. Which was his quick and dirty solution to making sure a teleport could form ¡ª create a very simple enchantment first that permanently erected a spatial field that asserted the normal spatial conditions of Earth, protecting the teleportation framework as it formed. He called it an exclusion frame, and apparently Duvall could do that without an enchantment focus, but that wasn¡¯t a trick he¡¯d figured out yet.

    ¡°Excellent,¡± Chester said. ¡°It¡¯ll be a lot easier when I don¡¯t have to sneak things through agents.¡±

    ¡°I¡¯m surprised they¡¯re letting much traffic through to begin with,¡± Callum said, and shrugged. ¡°But I guess there¡¯s a lot of shifters still in GAR.¡±

    ¡°Used to be that people would take vacations there all the time,¡± Lucy put in. ¡°If other packs do that, and I bet they do, it¡¯s a pretty busy portal.¡± Callum nodded at that, reminded again how much incidental knowledge he was lacking because he didn¡¯t grow up in magical society. Even though he¡¯d been with Lucy a while, even though she¡¯d tried to teach him things, so much knowledge was just internalized to the point that she didn¡¯t even realize she knew it.

    ¡°Right,¡± Callum said. ¡°We¡¯ll get you connected as soon as you get the anchor to where you want it.¡±

    Once they returned back to the bunker, Callum flopped onto the couch with a groan. Even if he hadn¡¯t done anything, the stress had still tied him in knots and holding the vis threads in place for so long had been exhausting. Socializing was not fun.

    ¡°Don¡¯t be so dramatic,¡± Lucy said, dropping down next to him and leaning against him as he put an arm around her. ¡°Besides, you got your knee fixed, right?¡±

    ¡°I did,¡± he admitted, flexing the joint in question. ¡°I didn¡¯t realize how much of a difference it would make.¡± He¡¯d probably keep the cane around; it was a fun and useful affectation, but not needing it would be a relief.

    ¡°At least I won¡¯t have to drag the Connors out of Florida again,¡± Lucy said. ¡°They¡¯ll be glad to know you¡¯ve gotten it fixed up.¡±

    ¡°Huh, I imagine so,¡± Callum admitted. He wasn¡¯t sure how it happened that Lucy had become friends with the Connors and not him, but maybe it was for the best. He would probably just remind them of everything they¡¯d gone through. ¡°Wizzy¡¯s last comment though, made me think.¡±

    ¡°Ooh, that¡¯s dangerous,¡± Lucy said with a grin. ¡°Whatcha got?¡±

    ¡°Well, I was originally going to start experimenting with the dimensional portals through anchors, because obviously, but it¡¯s probably going to need more care than that. There might not be any limitations on cracking through to new realities, and accidentally opening up to an antimatter planet would end poorly even if the portal is small. I don¡¯t need to accidentally set off a nuke somewhere in the Midwest.¡±

    ¡°Oof, yeah,¡± Lucy said, then cocked her head at him. ¡°So you were thinking maybe it was space time?¡±

    ¡°Yeah, space time,¡± Callum agreed with a laugh. ¡°Remote portals are safe, but very remote portals are safer.¡±

    ¡°Fantastic. We¡¯re gonna need to order more stuff.¡± Lucy wiggled happily. ¡°I guess we could buy time on a cubesat or something but it¡¯d be better if we can do it all ourself. You can go that high, right?¡±

    ¡°I¡¯ve never tried, but accidentally finding myself in space was somewhat of a nightmare of mine when I still flung myself around that way. I have noticed that the mana gets thinner higher up but I don¡¯t know if that¡¯ll matter with an anchor connected to here.¡± He waved around at their relatively mana-rich environs.

    ¡°Right, well, I have a bunch of stuff I had drawn up anyway. We can start simple. Awesome thing about portals; we don¡¯t have to wait for launch windows or even worry about telemetry. Gimme a couple days and we¡¯ll have a rig to start. Drone¡¯s not going to cut it.¡±

    Actually a drone probably would have cut it. In fact, an anchor by itself might have cut it, just for an initial test. But that wouldn¡¯t really prove anything since they couldn¡¯t just be in space ?¡ª even he knew that. Orbits were complex and getting anywhere required precision. There was no point in being careful and opening a portal in space if anything that came through that portal would deorbit moments later and turn into some apocalyptic bolide.

    The further out he could go, the safer things could be, but there was really no telling what magic was like out beyond the bounds of Earth. He¡¯d seen that the portal worlds were different. For all he knew the Earth had been saturated in mana long enough that out in the vacuum of space, vis would behave differently. It was worth letting Lucy set things up for their first foray.

    In the interim he set up Chester¡¯s teleport to the deep wilds. As he¡¯d suspected, the plates he¡¯d made on Earth didn¡¯t quite work. They took a lot of time and mana to erect the spellforms, and Callum didn¡¯t trust that the transfer would be healthy for the people involved. He knew how rough badly formed teleports were. The exclusion frame he¡¯d made solved the problem, albeit with a significant increase to the required mana.

    For some reason Callum had been expecting a shifter outpost to be some kind of crude makeshift thing, but the place the portal anchor had ended up was a neat, clean, walled town, built up high on one of the massive trees that dotted the Deep Wilds. If it weren¡¯t for the ground being wood, he would have sworn it was just a clearing. Despite how well-run it was, the place was still fairly Spartan and was a stark contrast with his plans to start a magic-powered space program with Lucy.

    Such plans were easier to create than to implement, and took quite a while to get going. They ended up waiting several weeks for all the bits and pieces Lucy ordered to come in. Cold gas thrusters, even simple ones, and vacuum gyroscopes were apparently not easy to manufacture or calibrate. Between the Guild of Enchanting and the loot from the vampire nests they had plenty of cash for it, since in the end they didn¡¯t need too much gear.

    The first prototype was an anchor inside a steel cube, like they¡¯d used for the bottom of the sea, though it had some extra features to transmit signals. Lucy wasn¡¯t so much worried about the pressure, though it was possible that would be an issue, as she was about heat and impact. A stray micrometeorite would absolutely ruin something as fragile as a portal anchor, and for both mordite and corite the heat might well make it degrade faster.

    The casing for it had some gyroscopes and cold gas and a bunch of hardened electronics, along with some solar panels. It was basically a larger, clunkier cube than the one that surrounded the portal anchor. Still, it worked, and it didn¡¯t need to look pretty to do the job.

    Callum simply lofted it in the air with his gravitykinesis, then sent it upward with his Alcubierre technique. On the camera feed, the ground shrank with breathtaking speed and Callum stopped after just a few seconds. Like when he¡¯d sent himself at the horizon, it didn¡¯t take long at all to get very high up. He could see the edges of the Earth through one of Lucy¡¯s cameras, but his own perceptions were rather more limited.

    More limited, in fact, than usual. He guessed they were somewhere outside the atmosphere, maybe somewhere around low orbit, and when he released the box of spatial vis his perceptions didn¡¯t find a bunch of empty space. They found nothing until they were carried along with the expanding cloud of incidental atmosphere, and even then it took the mana pouring through the portal for him to really get a sense of the area around their box.

    ¡°Huh,¡± Callum said. ¡°Apparently I need mana for passive perception to work, and there¡¯s none in space. So it doesn¡¯t just operate on reality, I guess? Or, well. Mana is reality, but it¡¯s a foreign reality so it¡¯s not out there yet.¡±

    ¡°Yeah,¡± Lucy said, looking away from her camera. ¡°I can¡¯t imagine it matters much though. Unless that means you can¡¯t do magic out in space?¡± Callum poked a vis thread through, and while extending it out into the manaless vacuum felt odd, it didn¡¯t fail.

    ¡°No, I can still do magic, but if that portal gets disrupted it¡¯s not going to open again.¡± Callum looked at the camera displays Lucy had going, which showed a lot more than the nothingness his spatial perception provided. ¡°I guess mana is affected by gravity, at least a little bit? Something sure keeps it all on Earth.¡± Though he¡¯d already seen that mana was affected by matter, too. Otherwise the mana coming through the portals would be trying to diffuse through the whole wide universe and it¡¯d be practically impossible to get it in any concentration.

    ¡°We can work up a physics of mana with this,¡± Lucy grinned. ¡°It¡¯s cutting-edge research!¡±

    ¡°It is!¡± Callum agreed. ¡°Though it¡¯s going to make putting together any space nexus area a bit of a problem. I did see that the Mictl¨¡n portal had some sort of construct that contained mana. I¡¯ll have to ask Wizzy about that. We might have to build a box to hold the mana in.¡±

    ¡°Box inside a box inside a box,¡± Lucy muttered, and poked at the controls. The slow tumbling of the Earth and the stars on the monitors slowed and then stopped, and she checked the readouts. ¡°Well, it looks like the stabilization is mostly working. It¡¯s a lot easier since we¡¯ve got no thrust and so little mass, but it seems like this works well enough. Until it hits something.¡±

    ¡°Sure,¡± Callum agreed. ¡°It¡¯s our very first mana-powered satellite.¡±

    ¡°It¡¯s not a satellite yet,¡± Lucy warned. ¡°In fact it¡¯s falling pretty quickly. Probably hit atmosphere again in a few minutes, so you¡¯ll want to recall it before that happens.¡±

    ¡°I suppose I could do it now,¡± Callum said.

    ¡°You could, but look at this view!¡± Lucy waved at the Earth below them and the crystal clarity of the stars. Some of the cameras were iced over or nonfunctional, but enough worked to give them a breathtaking vista. ¡°We can watch it for a bit, right?¡±

    ¡°Of course,¡± Callum said, put his arm around her as they watched the world turn.

 Chapter 8 â€“ Lies

    ¡°We¡¯ve got a message from someone who isn¡¯t Chester!¡± Lucy looked up from her laptop, sounding a bit surprised. She had set up some kind of dead drop communications for other people from the American Alliance, but they hadn¡¯t had anyone use it. Which was fortunate, since The Ghost only operated in a very narrow scope and it was never a good thing when someone needed them.

    ¡°Who is it?¡± Callum looked away from the enchanting he was doing, playing around freehand rather than using the inscriber. He was attempting to construct a version of the directed gravity spell form, and considering that he was still fumbling around with a very small amount of proper instruction there was no point in trying to make a permanent version. Instead he was just playing around with brass wire.

    ¡°One of the independent fae. Toclerane?¡± Lucy shook her head. ¡°No idea how to pronounce the name. He¡¯s on the list of signatories so I guess he¡¯s real enough.¡±

    ¡°What does he want?¡±

    ¡°Says that he¡¯s tipping us off to some malefaction ¨C that¡¯s the actual word he used ¨C some malefaction by other supernaturals in his area. Umm.¡± Lucy¡¯s fingers rattled over the keyboard. ¡°Wichita.¡±

    ¡°That doesn¡¯t sound good,¡± Callum said, putting his wire model aside. ¡°Did he say what kind of malefaction?¡±

    ¡°A-nope. Just has a number so he can consult you.¡±

    ¡°Huh. Wonder what¡¯s going on. He¡¯s part of the Alliance; shouldn¡¯t they be taking care of it?¡± Callum asked, stepping around the table to peer over Lucy¡¯s shoulder.

    ¡°Not everyone is part of the Alliance. Might be the other guy¡¯s still with GAR,¡± Lucy suggested. ¡°That¡¯d make things complicated.¡±

    ¡°I don¡¯t like it,¡± Callum grimaced. ¡°But I suppose we¡¯ll have to hear him out.¡±

    ¡°Should I dial him up right now?¡±

    ¡°If there are people at risk we shouldn¡¯t delay,¡± Callum said, sliding a chair over next to Lucy and seating himself in it. They could and maybe should have gone to the office, but the living room was quite comfortable.

    ¡°Right.¡± Lucy poked at some of the programs she had in her laptop, and her VOIP window popped up. So far, at least so far as either of them knew, nobody had come anywhere near the servers and bypasses that Lucy was using for phone calls. Still, they weren¡¯t about to call directly from the bunker. The phone rang three times before there was a click, and a deep, cultured voice answered.

    ¡°Ye-ees?¡± The person on the other end sounded as if he were delighted to get a call, rich and friendly. Knowing that they were dealing with a fae, that immediately prickled Callum¡¯s instincts and set his teeth on edge. ¡°This is Toclerane.¡±

    ¡°This is The Ghost,¡± he said, keeping his tone and manner businesslike. ¡°I understand you¡¯ve run into an issue you feel should be brought to my attention.¡±

    ¡°Why, yes!¡± The voice, if such thing were possible, became even more friendly. ¡°Fantastic! I was hoping you would call.¡±

    ¡°I take supernatural threats seriously,¡± Callum replied. ¡°Your message was rather short on details. I will need more than that.¡±

    ¡°Oh, certainly, certainly.¡± Toclerane hastened to assure him. ¡°I have been dealing with this intemperate rake for years, but I¡¯ve never had the thought before that he might be someone who could be permanently stopped. I am hardly capable myself and this notorious villain is protected by his friends in authority.¡±

    ¡°Still short on details,¡± Callum said. He knew Toclerane¡¯s type. They loved to talk, and could ramble on for hours without actually saying anything. ¡°Who is it? Is he part of GAR? What exactly has he been doing?¡±

    ¡°Ah! This particular scoundrel goes by the name of Anexis and he has been deep in the pockets of GAR ¨C or they in his ¨C for years. He has vexed and hounded me and the people I have protected for some time, and it has only been through my efforts that his victims have not met with utter disaster.¡± Toclerane sounded rather smug about that.

    ¡°The very specific incident as of late, two days ago ¡ª Anexis used his particular skills to sabotage an entire building full of children! Poor mundane teenagers who had no idea what could be going on or the danger they were in. He dusted the place with a poisonous gas¡­¡± Toclerane paused dramatically. ¡°And it was only by my hand that none came to harm. Yet, I am not powerful enough to confront this miscreant directly. My skills lie in other directions.¡±

    ¡°That does sound bad,¡± Callum conceded. There were plenty of stories about child-eaters that fae could draw from. In fact, it seemed the majority of monsters were stories for or about kids ¡ª and stories being appropriate for children didn¡¯t make the monsters any less horrifying. ¡°I need more details. What does this Anexis look like? Where does he live?¡±

    There were other details Callum needed too, if he were to do anything, but it was clear Toclerane was far from objective when it came to facts. Assuming he wasn¡¯t flat-out lying ¨C which fae could do, for the most part ¨C there was some sort of threat at play and Callum certainly wouldn¡¯t brook anyone threatening children. But there was also no point in going in blind.

    ¡°Well! He should be tall but he has a hunch, and a long wicked nose! His hair is like a rat¡¯s nest of dirty straw and¡ª¡± Toclerane went on in that vein for some time, using ten words when one would do, but eventually Callum had a location and description.

    ¡°I will look into it,¡± Callum said, and waved at Lucy to cut the connection.

    ¡°So this Toblerone guy,¡± Lucy said, after the program showed they were disconnected. ¡°I dunno, he seemed a little overly impressed with himself.¡± Callum mouthed the words Toblerone guy and laughed, shaking his head.

    ¡°Well, at least he had real information. Just have to check it first. Does the GAR database have anything on that Anexis guy?¡±

    ¡°On it.¡± Lucy¡¯s fingers rattled across the keys again. ¡°They still have too much stuff on paper. It¡¯s annoying.¡±

    ¡°I¡¯m just surprised they have any electronic capability at all,¡± Callum said.

    ¡°Even magic can¡¯t beat email for management,¡± Lucy said. ¡°I¡¯m pretty sure the only reason we got it is all the office folks wanting to spend more time playing solitaire or whatever.¡±

    ¡°Sounds about right,¡± Callum agreed.

    ¡°Ummm, okay Anexis.¡± Lucy pursed her lips as she looked over what came up from the GAR servers. ¡°Independent Fae. No address, just a neighborhood, but it¡¯s close to what Toblerone gave us.¡±

    ¡°Anything else?¡±

    ¡°Not in this database. No commentary on powers or attitude or anything. I¡¯m sure there¡¯s something somewhere in GAR but these entries are pretty bare bones. No records associated with him though, so nothing to do with Acquisitions or BSE.¡± Lucy shrugged and leaned back in her chair. ¡°So if he¡¯s causing trouble there¡¯s nothing in it that has reached the level of an official report.¡±

    ¡°Yeah, well, given that it¡¯s a bureaucracy there¡¯s a million ways for any such report to get ¡®lost.¡¯ I suppose you should keep digging and see if there¡¯s any incidental information, but the easiest thing would be to just put an anchor there and check.¡± Callum sighed. ¡°There¡¯s no point in delaying if this fae is going after kids. Hopefully in the future the American Alliance can deal with this sort of thing themselves.¡±

    ¡°We could run it past Chester,¡± Lucy suggested, tapping her laptop meaningfully.

    ¡°I mean, yeah, shoot him an email, but it¡¯s not like he¡¯s in charge of anyone outside his pack,¡± Callum pointed out, rubbing at the bridge of his nose. ¡°Honestly Toclerane is doing the right thing in contacting us.¡±

    ¡°Maybe, but I could do without this kind of work,¡± Lucy said with a frown.

    ¡°Me too,¡± Callum sighed. ¡°But if I don¡¯t do it, nobody will, so best get it over with.¡± He reached through the nexus and located the drone closest to the area. Since he couldn¡¯t sense writing with his perceptions, Lucy had ended up engraving numbers on the portal anchors so he could keep track of which was which. Anchor two was the only mobile one in Chester¡¯s general area, since he didn¡¯t want to mess with the anchor in the compound, and a short jaunt down to Wichita wasn¡¯t that much of an imposition.

    At the very least it seemed like he wouldn¡¯t have to break out the stealth ball. The target area was an ordinary residential address, not some fae reality pocket. Presumably most of the fae he¡¯d seen in various cities had the same arrangement, for all that he¡¯d been concerned with enclaves. Though maybe the inclination to live outside enclaves was also an inclination to act more like a human and less like a monster.

    When the drone got closer he could see through Lucy¡¯s cameras that the region was a slice of Kansas suburbia, almost disturbingly generic in its appearance. A sprawl of endless identical houses covered the flat landscape, and with no apparent magical current to follow Lucy had to actually aim the drone camera at street names and house numbers to find the target.

    ¡°What a dreary place to live,¡± Lucy said.

    ¡°Right?¡± Callum shook his head. ¡°It looks so weirdly inhuman that it seems like it¡¯s fae place anyway.¡± Of course it wasn¡¯t, since suburban sprawl was a perfectly normal phenomenon, if one he didn¡¯t much like.

    His perceptions encountered a few lone supernaturals as they swept over the houses, probably fae and possibly shifters, living as ordinary folks. Or at least among them. Since they were just mowing lawns or playing fetch with pets, Callum wasn¡¯t about to bother any of them. There weren¡¯t any piles of skulls or anything else like he¡¯d seen in other places, so it definitely wasn¡¯t any of his business.

    The address they had for Anexis was superficially identical to any of the other surrounding dwellings, but there was a definite concentration of swirly fae magic about the house and the yard. Lucy set the drone down on the roof of the next building over, while Callum took a moment to survey the situation. They were actually lucky, since it seemed Anexis was home. Or at least, some fae was home, tending a grill in the back yard.

    ¡°Gimme a second, going to see if I can get an actual eye on him,¡± Lucy said, fiddling with the drone and the cameras. It took a little bit of repositioning, but after a couple minutes they had an image of someone who looked like just a normal suburban dad. He was blond, and did have an aquiline nose, but no hunch was evident, nor the issues of complexion Toclerane had described.

    To Callum¡¯s perceptions, the fae¡¯s real form wasn¡¯t too much different. A little taller and a little broader, which considering the frame and paunch of the glamour made him large indeed, though not outside human standards. The features were a bit more exaggerated, but it seemed that Anexis, or whoever was at Anexis¡¯ house, was basically human-looking.

    ¡°Box?¡± Callum asked, and Lucy took one from the stack and toggled it on to check that it worked, then handed it to him. He teleported it onto a small table in the backyard, and turned on the microphone. Normally he didn¡¯t communicate with his targets, but so far they had nothing but Toclerane¡¯s unsupported word that there was anything going on. After all, he had claimed that he¡¯d stopped most of what Anexis had been doing.

    ¡°Anexis?¡± Callum asked, and the fae spun away from the grill. Magic swirled a moment in startled reaction, but when the man spotted the box on the table it condensed down to coat his skin. Which Callum didn¡¯t blame him for.

    ¡°What is it? Who?¡± The voice over the mic sounded ordinary enough.

    ¡°Are you Anexis?¡± Callum repeated.

    This tale has been unlawfully lifted without the author''s consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.

    ¡°I am,¡± he said, approaching the box.

    ¡°This is The Ghost,¡± Callum said.

    ¡°Oh, what? Shit. Why?¡± Anexis said, backing away from the device. He seemed wary, but not panicked.

    ¡°I received certain information about your activities and, finding it suspect, decided to give you the chance to address it directly.¡± Callum didn¡¯t like it. He wasn¡¯t equipped for investigating thing beyond obvious evil, and for all he knew Anexis¡¯ homeowners association was more evil than him.

    ¡°Information from who?¡± Anexis said sharply, then realizing who was talking to, moderated the question. ¡°If you¡¯re willing to say.¡±

    ¡°Perhaps. When I have satisfied myself that you are not a threat to the people around you.¡±

    ¡°I¡¯m not!¡± Anexis waved the spatula that was still in his hand around at the neighborhood. ¡°"Do you think I¡¯d live here if I were?¡±

    ¡°Possibly,¡± Callum said, unmoved by the argument. ¡°How do you account for the accusations that you attempted to poison a number of teenagers two days ago?¡±

    ¡°What? Two days ago?¡± Anexis turned back to the grill, but the spatula in his hand trembled as he flipped the burgers there. ¡°Look ¡ª I¡¯m a bit of a prankster, okay? It¡¯s my thing. So there was a school dance my friend¡¯s kids were at and I did a bit of magic shenanigans. Just a, you know. Fart bomb, basically.¡±

    Lucy dissolved into helpless giggles as Callum shook his head. Of all things, he was not expecting juvenile pranks. Of course, there was every chance that Anexis was lying too, which was why Callum didn¡¯t like being put in this position. His role was not to arbitrate in spats between supernaturals.

    ¡°Can you check that, Lucy?¡± Callum asked, muting the mic briefly. ¡°Maybe at least a school paper or something?¡±

    ¡°Find out which school,¡± she said, still stifling laughter. ¡°I¡¯ll see what I can do. Maybe someone gossiped in the school paper.¡±

    ¡°Where did this take place?¡± Callum asked, and then asked a second time because he hadn¡¯t unmuted himself the first time.

    ¡°Southdale High School,¡± Anexis said promptly. Callum glanced at Lucy as she as she frantically typed away at her keyboard. He was no internet sleuth, but he imagined that finding something mentioning a prank at a high school dance was not going to be easy. At least, not without access to chat programs and such, and Lucy certainly didn¡¯t have that.

    However, he¡¯d underestimated social media. That was something he had only used in connection with his business as a consultant, and never gotten into himself. But obviously a gaggle of high school students would post about what happened during a dance, especially if it was some obvious prank, so inside of five minutes Lucy had several posts and videos about it.

    ¡°Sure doesn¡¯t seem too big a deal,¡± she said, pulling up a clip of some high-schooler laughing about it. ¡°I mean, I bet some people were unhappy but it¡¯s not exactly murder.¡±

    ¡°Mm.¡± Callum grunted, not entirely pleased, though Anexis wasn¡¯t the problem. Playing pranks wasn¡¯t necessarily nice, but hardly an offense worth sending The Ghost after. So Toclerane had massively played up the danger, or Anexis was lying too. ¡°Any serious accidents at that school this year?¡±

    ¡°Ummm.¡± Lucy looked at him. ¡°That¡¯s a broad question. What do you mean?¡±

    ¡°Basically anything that resulted in death. Kids are idiots and break stuff all the time, so unless it was a really suspicious accident it¡¯s probably just the natural course of things.¡± While they were talking, Anexis finished grilling his burgers and plated them. One was for him, and the other was for a neighbor that came through a fence gate to chat. The neighbor was a normal human, so Callum marked that as a positive in Anexis¡¯ column.

    While the suburban neighbors ate and chatted, Lucy did research, and Callum stewed. It was still possible Anexis was being clever, but he was pretty certain that Toclerane had simply tried to point him at someone the fae didn¡¯t like. Callum had known that would be a potential problem from the moment he agreed to even listen to other people, and he had no desire to be someone else¡¯s weapon.

    ¡°Well, it¡¯s not the most thorough research job,¡± Lucy said some thirty minutes later. ¡°But nothing jumps out at me. Couple sports related accidents, some idiots cutting themselves up jumping off the bleachers, that kind of thing. One death by traffic accident, but they were out of state at the time.¡±

    ¡°Sounds like Anexis is in the clear. And Toclerane is not.¡± Callum frowned. ¡°Once he¡¯s done with dinner there we¡¯ll wrap things up.¡±

    ¡°We gotta do dinner too,¡± Lucy said, standing up and trooping over to get herself a refresh on her drink. Unsweetened tea, since she was still trying to cut down on sugar.

    ¡°Yeah, we¡¯ll be done soon,¡± Callum said, taking the second glass that Lucy had poured for him. ¡°Thank you.¡±

    ¡°Sure thing,¡± she said, and sighed. ¡°Man, you know, we¡¯re not even being paid for this nonsense.¡±

    ¡°It is an issue,¡± Callum agreed. ¡°It¡¯s not like we¡¯re poor but it¡¯s the principle of the thing. People will just end up wasting our time if there are no costs or consequences.¡±

    ¡°So what¡¯re we gonna do about it?¡± Lucy wrinkled her nose. ¡°Don¡¯t like the idea of charging people for, you know, rescuing someone.¡±

    ¡°Just make things clear that The Ghost isn¡¯t to be casually invoked.¡± Callum said. ¡°I¡¯ll think about it.¡± It wasn¡¯t much longer until Anexis¡¯ neighbor wandered back to his own yard, and Callum turned the microphone back on.

    ¡°Do you have any idea why a fae named Toclerane would wish you harm?¡± Callum asked. He didn¡¯t have any compunction about revealing the source of the inquiry. He wasn¡¯t a lawyer or a cop and wasn¡¯t duty-bound or even ethically bound to keep things anonymous. Especially not when he strongly suspected that someone was trying to use him like some petty thug. Which was something he would not allow.

    Anexis jumped, turning to the box still resting unobtrusively on the table.

    ¡°Jeez, give a guy a little warning,¡± he complained, rubbing at his nose. ¡°Lemme think,¡± he said, tilting his head back and looking up to the sky for a few moments. ¡°You know, I suspect I do. He fancies himself a bit of a fairy godfather, and his current ward was at the dance. Perhaps he found my prank a little gauche.¡± Anexis shrugged, and Callum rubbed his eyes. He imagined that targeting the dance was because Toclerane¡¯s ward was there, given how the explanation so readily sprang to Anexis¡¯ tongue.

    ¡°I see. I shall address that matter myself. Your pranks are not my business, unless you cross certain lines.¡±

    ¡°What lines are those?¡± Anexis asked, but Callum didn¡¯t reply, instead simply recalling the box. That was a very bad question to answer. Anything he said would be twisted against him, any specific rules immediately lawyered and exploited and turned inside out. It didn¡¯t even take a fae to do that.

    ¡°Not too pleased with Toclerane,¡± Callum said. ¡°But I¡¯m glad I don¡¯t have to kill any monsters today. Let¡¯s get dinner, and we¡¯ll figure out what to do about it.¡±

    ¡°Could get Chester?¡± Lucy suggested as she stood up and stretched, heading for the fridge. Callum followed.

    ¡°We can update him, but Chester¡¯s not Toclerane¡¯s boss, or ours either,¡± he disagreed. ¡°We need to handle it ourselves. I¡¯m not about to shoot him just for that, but he needs at least a good slap to the face.¡±

    ¡°So why don¡¯t you?¡± Lucy said.

    ¡°What?¡± Callum blinked.

    ¡°I mean, sure okay you don¡¯t want to go there yourself, but, okay?¡ª¡± Lucy waved her hands vaguely as her idea formed. ¡°We¡¯ve got some corite, right? Just put it on a plate and one of my servos can literally smack him with it if you teleport it to the right place.¡±

    ¡°That seems a little, I dunno. Overdone. And is it right for The Ghost? But it should be a shock like a punch to the face.¡± Callum tapped the refrigerator door in thought, holding it open while Lucy pulled out leftovers. ¡°I think your idea about using corite is right, though. This needs to be a warning with some bite behind it.¡±

    ¡°Sounding like an old-school crime lord there,¡± Lucy said, microwave beeping as she started heating the food.

    ¡°Yeah, you¡¯re right, I do.¡± Callum grimaced, watching the microwave timer tick down. ¡°But The Ghost kind of is, right? I mean, what¡¯s the alternative? I can¡¯t let people just call me up for funsies.¡±

    ¡°I suppose not.¡± Lucy slouched against the counter. ¡°Just don¡¯t want to go all Godfather, you know?¡±

    ¡°Oh, I agree,¡± Callum started taking plates out from the cabinet. ¡°I think we can get away with merely expressing displeasure in no uncertain terms. Killing monsters is one thing, but I¡¯m not going to inflict harm on people just because I¡¯m mad.¡±

    ¡°Oh, oh! What about just teleporting him off to the middle of nowhere? Like, plop him down in rural Zimbabwe or something.¡±

    ¡°Closer, but we want people to know about this.¡± Callum pursed his lips. ¡°Maybe pop him into the middle of Jissarrell¡¯s or Ferrochar¡¯s enclaves.¡±

    ¡°With a shame sign!¡± Lucy said. ¡°We¡¯ve got some crappy corite we could use right? Just make a chain and hang the sign around his neck.¡±

    ¡°That would be perfect,¡± Callum said, a little relieved they¡¯d found another solution. ¡°I wasn¡¯t comfortable with the idea of slapping him around anyway. He inconvenienced us, we inconvenience him. Turning it into real violence is an escalation that just seems...¡± He paused for a moment, searching for the right word, then shrugged. ¡°Unjust.¡±

    On one hand, the low-quality corite he had was still something that could be used for enchanting, and there was certainly no end to that work. On the other hand, if he wanted to be able to portal a fae and not risk some kind of escalation, he needed to use corite. And making sure everyone knew that they couldn¡¯t get away with lying to him was important, more important than a focus. It was an investment.

    He never would have come up with the idea himself, but it played into fae perfectly, so far as he understood them. Even if he had the stomach to commit serious injury to Toclerane, that wouldn¡¯t have meant anything. Not really. Especially with how robust fae were. But turning it into gossip was at the same time an acceptable level of response and the only real threat a fae would care about.

    A big rattling chain would have been perfect, but what Callum had could really only be turned into a thick wire, which would have to do. He got to work on that the next day, while Lucy put together the shame sign. It was just a chunk of wood with I tried to lie to The Ghost burned into it, but she seemed to have a lot of fun making it. Admittedly, most people enjoyed using a blowtorch.

    Even as simple as it was, it still took half the morning to put together, mostly thanks to Callum making a few false starts with the wire-drawing equipment. They weren¡¯t in a rush where seconds counted, but they still needed it to be done soon so it was seen as a proper reaction to Toclerane¡¯s actions. Once they were ready Callum sent one drone toward Jissarrell¡¯s enclave while Lucy took charge of the other, zeroing in on Toclerane¡¯s address.

    For once Callum wasn¡¯t all that worried about being caught infiltrating a fae enclave, though he still used the ball to do it. The theatre of it all would be far better if nobody was expecting it, but on the off chance someone noticed, it wasn¡¯t the end of the world. His brief interaction with Jissarrell made him think that particular fae king would approve, but also might try and bargain over it, which Callum didn¡¯t feel like dealing with.

    He stopped when he located the actual court, where there were buildings and a bunch of fae going about whatever business faerie courts dealt in. All he really needed to be sure about was that there would be an audience.

    ¡°H¡¯okay, he should be in that apartment,¡± Lucy said, zooming in one of the drone cameras. Toclerane didn¡¯t live in suburbia, but rather an apartment building in downtown Wichita, one that was full of supernaturals to Callum¡¯s sense. ¡°Ready?¡±

    ¡°Yep, call him.¡± Callum focused on the apartment building while Lucy dialed the number again. The fae in the apartment hurried over to the phone, but waited until it had rung three times before picking it up and answering.

    ¡°Ye-ees?¡± It was the same drawl, so Callum was satisfied.

    ¡°I do not like it when people attempt to manipulate me,¡± Callum said bluntly, not bothering to introduce himself. He could have just teleported Toclerane then, but he wanted to be sure it was very clear why it was displeased. ¡°Setting me after someone for a harmless prank is not acceptable.¡±

    ¡°Harmless?¡± Toclerane was affronted. ¡°It seriously compromised my work with my ward! That¡¯s not harmless at all!¡±

    Callum didn¡¯t bother to reply. The Ghost wouldn¡¯t argue with someone and besides, it seemed believably fae that Toclerane would see such a minor inconvenience as something worth killing over. Lucy rolled her eyes and Callum reached out to the shame sign, wrapping it up in his threads before teleporting it around Toclerane¡¯s neck.

    The fae staggered, and Callum could see the liquid currents of vis that surrounded his skin evaporate. Nothing stopped him from taking it off himself, but in the next instant Callum formed a portal, sweeping it over Toclerane and dropping him into the middle of Jissarell¡¯s court. Though it was a little tempting, he didn¡¯t stay to catch the fallout, pulling back the ball and the drone.

    ¡°That was actually pretty satisfying,¡± Lucy said with a grin. ¡°I know I didn¡¯t do much personally but you¡¯re right. Don¡¯t like people trying to trick us.¡±

    ¡°I hope this gets the point across.¡± Callum shook his head. ¡°Well, it turned out better than it could have. I don¡¯t know what I¡¯d do if I ended up killing someone who didn¡¯t deserve it.¡±

    ***

    It was a remarkable jape, really. King Jissarrell hadn¡¯t thought The Ghost had it in him. He¡¯d seemed dull and stodgy and no fun at all, too serious to appreciate true showmanship. Clearly there was at least some trace of poet in him, considering what he¡¯d done to that absolute wet blanket Toclerane.

    ¡°Toclerane has left the enclave,¡± one of his lieutenants informed him. In the grand scheme of things, he should probably thank The Ghost for removing as many of his nobles as he had. They had been fairly useless anyway. Foppish cavorting had its place, but not when so many took to it. Now he had people like his new subordinate who actually paid attention to what went on.

    ¡°And he left the sign,¡± Jissarel said, not quite asking. Toclerane¡¯s apoplectic fury had been amusing, even if the cold iron that was part of the apparel was not entirely pleasant to have in his domain. Nevertheless, no matter how humiliating it was for the moment, it was an amazing story with a relic to go with it. Jissarrell would have kept it, though he might have also considered how he would pay back such an affront. Someone of Toclerane¡¯s status should simply be glad they had not earned any more severe a penalty, and use the incident for his own aggrandizement.

    ¡°He left the sign,¡± the lieutenant confirmed, and Jissarrell snorted. Most fae who lived outside the enclaves had a good reason to do so, and sometimes that reason was that nobody liked them. If Toclerane couldn¡¯t take a joke, let alone appreciate such a dramatic warning, it was no wonder he was on his own.

    ¡°We shall have to hang it somewhere,¡± Jissarrell decided. The cold iron would complicate the process, but it wasn¡¯t pure enough as to render all fae magic impossible. The only complication displaying it might create would be if other people thought pestering The Ghost would get them their own memento, rather than dead. Fortunately not many people had access to The Ghost, and he certainly was not about to provide it.

    ¡°Yes, your highness,¡± came the reply, and Jissarrell dismissed him with a flick of a finger. While the Toclerane incident had been an amusing diversion, there were more important matters. To wit; The Ways growing ever closer to his enclave.

    Jissarrell had already decided against a Door of Glass, considering what was beginning to prowl the Ways. A Door of Roses might well serve, though, provided he could coax one to grow. Especially since he needed to control the access, before the Ways decided to make their own inroads to his enclave and ended up being something he had no authority over.

    The storm that had blown through GAR had more or less passed him by. There was little practical difference between GAR and the American Alliance, save for who might actually help should he find himself in trouble. The encroachment of the Ways was another threat altogether, and not one that he could avoid or address with people like the Ghost. It was a fae matter, and a fae matter alone.

 Chapter 9 â€“ Misdirection

    ¡°Well?¡± Constance snapped at Supervisor O¡¯Keefe. She was not used to being summoned, and while pragmatically she outranked O¡¯Keefe, appearances had to be maintained. The new GAR was still fragile and it wouldn¡¯t do to seem like they were fighting each other already.

    ¡°Thank you for coming,¡± O¡¯Keefe said, ignoring her tone. ¡°I got a message from a fae in the American Alliance. He is rather displeased and wants to help us.¡±

    ¡°Huh.¡± Constance dropped into a chair and wrinkled her brow, considering. Fae were notoriously spiteful, so in a way it was hardly surprising that one of them would be offended enough to turn against Alpha Chester. Yet going directly to GAR was not their normal style. ¡°How so?¡±

    ¡°I believe he¡¯ll want to explain it himself,¡± O¡¯Keefe said with a sigh. ¡°But he has some insight into how to weaponize The Ghost and destroy his reputation.¡±

    ¡°We¡¯re already weaponizing Wells,¡± Constance pointed out. ¡°I don¡¯t think we need any special insight for that.¡± Unfortunately, most of what they could do was spin incidents after the fact. Getting him to attack a target of their choosing was more of an issue. Especially since he mostly went after vampires, and they were fairly easy to control anyway.

    ¡°Perhaps not,¡± O¡¯Keefe conceded. ¡°But this fae is willing to feed us information from the inside, and has said that he can get Wells moving on a target. We just have to make up some convincing evidence.¡±

    ¡°Hmm. I¡¯m not sure we¡¯re in a position where we care that much. But¡­¡± She trailed off and considered. There was still the insistence from her fae backers about dealing with Taisen¡¯s faction. It was next to impossible to get any inside information on what they were up to, but people did talk a little bit and there was good reason to suspect Wells had aided them. ¡°It might be worth at least starting in that direction.¡±

    ¡°I¡¯ll call him in,¡± O¡¯Keefe said, and pressed a button his desk. A DAI agent showed in a rotund fae in a bowler hat, whose face was barely visible behind a bushy muttonchop. Constance hated him on sight. She regarded most fae with the same disdain, but was too professional to let that get in the way of her work.

    ¡°This is Toclerane Tinn. Mister Tinn, this is Director Earl of the Department of Acquisition,¡± O¡¯Keef introduced them. ¡°She controls most of the people who would be involved in carrying out any ideas like the one you had.¡± Constance frowned at the phrasing but didn¡¯t correct him. Not in public.

    ¡°Excellent! It¡¯s an honor to meet such fine personages!¡± Tinn exclaimed with false exuberance. ¡°I am so glad to meet someone who might take that awful Ghost fellow down a peg or two.¡±

    ¡°Niceties can wait,¡± Constance said, ignoring Tinn¡¯s outstretched hand. ¡°What makes you think you know a way to direct the Ghost¡¯s attention in any useful capacity?¡±

    ¡°Why, the mere fact that he investigated my complaint,¡± Tinn said, completely uncowed by Constance¡¯s chill welcome. ¡°If you could have heard the iron in his voice when he contemplated that someone might be threatening mundane children! Well. It¡¯s certainly an easy button to press.¡±

    ¡°I see.¡± As much of a buffoon as the fae presented himself to be, he clearly knew what he was talking about. That was one of the more irritating things about dealing with fae ¡ª the more serious one appeared to be, the less likely they were to be worth dealing with. ¡°Then let us discuss things.¡±

    Once she got past Tinn¡¯s overwrought way of talking, his account was quite detailed, and Constance made notes to check with the other party in the affair ¡ª Anexis. It was possible that Wells had done all his research without making contact, but it could also be that Anexis hadn¡¯t reported an encounter with The Ghost.

    It also seemed to confirm that the Harper dud was still plugged into the GAR network. She couldn¡¯t imagine any other way that Wells would have established fae bona fides and researched their history so quickly. Assuming he didn¡¯t stay up all night, it was merely hours between Toclerane¡¯s request and Wells¡¯ reply.

    It was unfortunate that he did do research, but at the same time, it was something that could be worked around. Planting evidence was not impossible, especially since GAR controlled the way that evidence was reported. Using a few agents to falsify news reports or the like was not difficult either, though it would have to be done with great care.

    ¡°We appreciate the tip, Mister Tinn,¡± Constance said, not entirely insincerely. She could have and would have come to the conclusion on her own eventually, but having it shoved in her face made it easier. ¡°The Guild of Arcane Regulation welcomes the ability to neutralize the effectiveness of The Ghost.¡±

    She¡¯d be testing it first, of course. There were certain fae that she needed to be dealt with that could be easily brought to the Ghost¡¯s attention. She simply need to raise their crimes to be more visible. Once that worked, she¡¯d be ready to aim him at more important targets.

    ***

    ¡°Aha!¡± Callum smiled at the ugly-looking wire contraption. It didn¡¯t seem like much to the naked eye, but it was doing what he wanted. Which was to say, it blocked the flow of mana. More than blocked; it was like a solid wall, keeping the mana completely contained and allowing the interior to reach equilibrium with the portal anchor inside it.

    The downside of such a thing was that he couldn¡¯t work his vis threads through it. The enchantments outside Mictl¨¡n were more efficient and permeable to his senses and magics, but they were also immense and that permeability went both ways. Trying to restrain the mana flood of a portal world was probably a fool¡¯s errand, but his little portal couldn¡¯t provide enough pressure to overcome the enchantments.

    ¡°Finally got it?¡± Lucy peered over from her new chair. She was starting to show, so Lisa had sent over something that was supposed to be easier and better for Lucy¡¯s posture.

    ¡°Yep. Space stuff, part two,¡± he said, and slid the wire box across the table to her. It was more like a sphere, and the ugliness was more to do with the three enchantment layers not lining up and resulting in something without symmetry or pattern. That was a feature rather than a bug, since the structures locked together in weird ways once the enchantment was activated. To his spatial perceptions it was far more aesthetically pleasing. ¡°Still gotta test it of course, but if this works we can make a bigger one and start actually putting things in space.¡±

    ¡°I wonder how hard it¡¯d be to build like, a room we could put in space,¡± Lucy said thoughtfully. Callum chuckled.

    ¡°I might be an architect, but that¡¯s a bit beyond my expertise. Atmosphere, radiation, all that stuff. It¡¯s probably something that¡¯ll have to wait until after we have all the portal stuff worked out,¡± he told her. ¡°Besides, it¡¯s one thing to have a little box floating around. Something room-sized might cause issues even with a glamour.¡±

    ¡°You¡¯re still underestimating how much room is up there,¡± Lucy disagreed. ¡°Outside of certain orbits you could have Everest floating around and it wouldn¡¯t inconvenience anybody.¡±

    ¡°Huh.¡± Callum pursed his lips, momentarily considering how hard it¡¯d be to teleport Mount Everest, then shook his head. ¡°Well, that might not be a bad idea. It might even be a better place to put a cache, assuming we can solve the engineering problems. Or find someone who¡¯s already solved them.¡±

    ¡°The internet is a wonderful place,¡± Lucy agreed.

    It didn¡¯t take all that long to set up the mana test drone, which Lucy had festooned with Ghost Space Program stickers. Calling their little experiment a space program was perhaps overwrought, but it was fun. Besides, they could get into space. Even if he was cheating with magic, that felt special.

    He lofted it into space the same way as before, though the containment was deactivated since the enchantment was powerful enough to interfere with his spatial box. He actually needed two anchors to monitor everything, since the insulating bubble blocked his perception and he needed to see what it looked like from the outside, too. Mana leak testing was something he had to do manually. There weren¡¯t any instruments to measure mana density that he knew of, and it¡¯d be hard to calibrate them on Earth anyway.

    Once activated, it was obvious that the first pass wasn¡¯t going to work. Callum wasn¡¯t sure if mana really followed the rules of pressure or mass or what, but it seemed like the disparity between the mana flooding from the anchor and the manaless vacuum was too much. Under pressure, what had seemed like a solid wall turned out to have a lot of holes. It leaked, and badly, not quite able to keep the density that Callum wanted inside. Though he was pretty sure he could take care of that with another layer or two.

    ¡°Getting there,¡± Callum muttered. ¡°A few more iterations and we can start thinking about moving the nexus.¡±

    So far there hadn¡¯t been any new attempts to crack open his portal anchors, but he¡¯d also been very careful to clean up every place he used his magic. Even Toclerane¡¯s house and Jissarrell¡¯s court had gotten a number of his vis scrubbers to make sure that there was nothing to trace. When it came to security he and Lucy were on the same page. She had dozens of stories about how a vulnerability in the IT world could go unseen for years until it suddenly caused disaster, and he didn¡¯t want that to happen with his portals.

    Putting his nexus in vacuum still wasn¡¯t perfect security, but it¡¯d make things a lot harder for people. In fact he¡¯d bet that most mages weren¡¯t really even clear on what a vacuum was, let alone the proper precautions for dealing with one. A quick-thinking mage or one with a homebond probably could survive, but most people weren¡¯t ready to pop out into an airless freefall hundreds or thousands of miles from anywhere.

    There was also some part of him that wanted to actually do something real with it. Easy access to space was a lot like the infinite portal loop electricity. If mages actually worked with the rest of the world, they could do amazing things. But they didn¡¯t, and Callum was pretty sure he wasn¡¯t the best person to change that. There was no accounting for what might happen in the future, though.

    All that was just wild-eyed speculation and wishful what-ifs. There was still an awful lot of work and learning to do, and a few months of practice with the Guild of Enchanting tutor was hardly enough. Especially since the tutor couldn¡¯t see his actual spellwork to give him pointers. He wasn¡¯t about to risk that kind of exposure, though.

    While he was less worried about GAR hammering down his door, he still had a faint suspicion the Guild of Enchanting was trying to track him. Unless they managed to hack a portal anchor he was pretty sure they couldn¡¯t. All the electronics used a portal to link up rather than the actual internet, and tracing Lucy¡¯s online presence would only lead to the off-site server.

    The largest worry he had was that they¡¯d slip a locator of some kind into the equipment or materials they sent him. They knew he wasn¡¯t as talented at spellwork as other mages his age, and while they didn¡¯t know about the way his senses worked he still worried that they might get something past him. So he swept every single thing he took from them very thoroughly before teleporting it to a separate, remote cave. Only after they¡¯d been there for a few days did he bring the materials to the bunker.

    Time slipped away surprisingly quickly. Lucy and Callum worked on their respective projects, the garden grew, and the days grew hotter. He was glad that he¡¯d designed the house with sufficient air conditioning, and had the power to run it. The summer heat was absolutely brutal.

    In their regular meetings with Chester, he saw Clara and Arthur and Jessica on occasion. Clara started driving, and started thinking about college. With access to the Deep Wilds restored, Jessica ended up announcing her own pregnancy, so of course Lucy had to make friends.

    GAR kept reorganizing, as any bureaucracy did when there was blame to be allotted. Neither he nor Lucy really paid too much attention to it, but various departmental heads stepped down and were replaced. Some internal reorganization recurred, this sub-bureau or that being shuffled into an adjacent larger structure. The end result seemed to be a more streamlined hierarchy, but there was really no telling how well it actually worked.

    He even took care of a couple more vampire nests and a couple of fae that were brought to his attention. But according to GAR records there were thousands of vampires and possibly tens of thousands of fae, so even though he absolutely was removing monsters it was hardly a dent in the totals. He wanted to do more, but didn¡¯t know how to locate the source of the issue.

    The entire time he was expecting another communique from Taisen, since he heard through Lucy¡¯s grapevine that there were still investigations ongoing, but it was quiet. They had more contact with House Hargrave in the form of Gayle and Glenda, whom they regularly met at Chester¡¯s place to give Lucy check-ups. Which Callum still felt twitchy about, but when his paranoia ran up against his family¡¯s health and safety, family won out.

    It was during one of those checkups, sometime in early fall, that Lucy brought up the first inklings of more trouble. She was the one who was plugged into the wider world, and he was content to leave it to her. He was busy enough trying to shore up the holes in his self-taught magical capabilities, not to mention all the thousand chores of just living life. Lucy was the one to kept an eye on the outside world.

    ¡°Hey,¡± she said, glancing between Glenda and Chester. ¡°Either of you know anything about an Alpha Curran?¡±

    ¡°Name doesn¡¯t ring any bells,¡± Glenda said, and Gayle shook her head in agreement.

    ¡°European, I think,¡± Chester suggested. ¡°Unless there¡¯s one of the fae-aligned packs I don¡¯t know about with that name.¡±

    ¡°Huh. Well, I¡¯m starting to see some stuff about them outta GAR and I was hoping you would have more insight.¡± Lucy shifted under Gayle¡¯s hand. ¡°It¡¯s surprisingly hard to dig up stuff about that pack.¡±

    ¡°The European shifters are generally more closely attached to mage Houses, rather than being independent,¡± Chester said. ¡°One reason why I was much happier with being here in the US. More room here anyway.¡±

    ¡°Huh,¡± Lucy said. ¡°I guess that¡¯s why there¡¯s nothing about them on GAR servers. House stuff is still kind of separate still.¡±

    ¡°I can ask,¡± Chester offered.

    ¡°I don¡¯t know how well that¡¯ll work,¡± Lucy sighed. ¡°What I¡¯m seeing is some hints that they¡¯re going out hunting for people nearby.¡±

    ¡°So something I would need to take care of,¡± Callum said unhappily. He wasn¡¯t much of a fan of Lucy bringing it up in front of the Hargraves either, on the off chance there was some connection there.

    ¡°If Curran is part of a House, then going after him means going to war with that House,¡± Glenda warned. ¡°That¡¯s not like a fae enclave that¡¯s going to fall apart when the King dies. That¡¯s the kind of feud that would go on for years.¡±

    The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.

    ¡°House Fane fell apart pretty well,¡± Callum said. He wasn¡¯t entirely certain what their status was now, but they seemed to have practically vanished off the face of the Earth.

    ¡°That¡¯s because House Hargrave ¨C that is to say, us ¨C destroyed them,¡± Glenda said with grim satisfaction. ¡°The Archmage removed all their top people and the other Houses divided the remains. Without anyone of note and after all the ill will they¡¯d built up, there wasn¡¯t anyone to hold them together.¡±

    ¡°Ah.¡± Callum grimaced. He hadn¡¯t had anything against any of the other House Fane people, just Fane himself. But none of his actions occurred in a vacuum; anyone he removed represented a power vacuum that would be filled. Sometimes that helped people like Chester, but sometimes that would result in further destruction. Which wouldn¡¯t stop him from removing monsters as he found them, but did make things more complicated.

    ¡°Well, I¡¯m not sure that would be much different from GAR already being after me,¡± he decided. ¡°There¡¯s a reason none of you know where we live, even if we are allies. Though I¡¯m surprised nobody¡¯s tried leaning on you yet. Or maybe I¡¯m just overestimating my own importance.¡±

    ¡°Oh, I¡¯ve had some inquiries,¡± Chester said. ¡°But unless they want actual war they can¡¯t really pressure me. One of the benefits of being completely independent.¡± Chester chuckled softly. ¡°We even have our own contacts with the Guild of Enchantment and, of course, our own black market enchantment supplier.¡±

    ¡°Good to hear.¡± Callum well knew that he wasn¡¯t all that much help politically, and that his only real talent was basically just to threaten assassination. Hardly the best way to get allies or assuage the fears of anyone neutral. There needed to be some way to build things too, if he really wanted to improve the world, but that was sadly not his path. ¡°When we get home we¡¯ll see about looking into Alpha Curran.¡±

    ¡°We¡¯re almost done,¡± Gayle said, standing up. ¡°I wish there was more diagnostic stuff in healing magic,¡± she said. ¡°I swear that would make things a lot simpler and faster.¡±

    ¡°Maybe you can invent it,¡± Lucy suggested. ¡°With House Fane out of things aren¡¯t you kind of the top healer around?¡±

    ¡°Um.¡± Gayle looked stunned by the suggestion. ¡°I¡¯m definitely not the best healer around. But I guess without House Fane¡¯s expertise we have to start rebuilding techniques anyway. Diagnostic magic though? I wouldn¡¯t know where to start.¡±

    ¡°I dunno either.¡± Lucy shrugged. ¡°Not a mage. But the Guild of Enchanting might have something. They can measure magic output, right?¡±

    ¡°Yes¡­¡± Gayle frowned thoughtfully. ¡°I know they can measure total mana and they provide the aspect sensors.¡±

    ¡°Then maybe they can measure more,¡± Lucy suggested.

    ¡°The feedback from wards reminds me a lot of old style television,¡± Callum put in. ¡°Big old pixels. I don¡¯t know if that means you can turn the magic feed into something that works the same way but it might be worth asking.¡± Gayle exchanged a look with her mother and nodded thoughtfully.

    ¡°I¡¯ll look into it,¡± she said.

    He and Lucy had their own research to do, now that she¡¯d brought up the specter of another monster. Not only did they need to find out more about this Alpha Curran, they needed to see if anything was actually going on. Which was less easy than he had initially thought, considering what he¡¯d seen with the human trafficking. The line between normal crimes and supernatural crimes was blurrier than he¡¯d expected, so just looking for mysterious deaths in an area wasn¡¯t all that useful an indicator.

    To that end, Lucy couldn¡¯t just poke around online, even though that was the best place to start. They needed to get some intelligence on the ground ¡ª or rather, in the air. After she scoured the GAR databases to get a general region, they sent a drone to southern Italy to check on things.

    The language barrier certainly worked against them. He sure couldn¡¯t speak Italian, and neither could Lucy, both of them relying on machine translation. Which wasn¡¯t terrible, but it certainly made things take longer than they should have. There were some hints in local papers, but Lucy wanted to compromise the local police station to be certain.

    With no supernatural defenses, it was easy enough to open a portal and let Lucy plug something in. She didn¡¯t even bother to infect it with a virus or anything. Her hardware let her pull the entire database without anyone being any the wiser. Callum wasn¡¯t sure how that worked, but that kind of thing was her specialty.

    If it were just vampires, he probably wouldn¡¯t have been so careful. He already knew vampires deserved everything that was coming to them, but anyone else needed close scrutiny. The best thing would be to witness something himself, preferably something he could stop, to verify the claims.

    In fact, their experience with Anexis had made Lucy suggest hiring a private investigator. If there hadn¡¯t been a social media trail, they would have just had the word of one person against another and that was not good enough. Just police reports weren¡¯t sufficient, considering the cover stories and coverups that were possible even without supernatural interference. Deaths could be victims, or cover stories for supernatural infighting, or completely fake identities.

    They tracked a number of mysterious disappearances to a region by a little village in the mountains near the southern coast of Italy, which was where Callum took over. He skimmed around using the drone looking for supernaturals, since Lucy didn¡¯t have access to much in the way of European records. In fact, the Europeans used the American servers so they didn¡¯t even have their own, relying on paper and personnel for the most part.

    Technically Callum could get access to that; his portal anchors did wonders for infiltration. But apparently most of the records departments were run by fae, and there was a huge difference between searching a database and trying to parse out information from stacks upon stacks of papers. Under the circumstances, he preferred searching the area to find things, since he could pick up on any supernatural people or structures with ease.

    Sweeping a spiral pattern out from the village, it only took an hour or so to find the mage House. It reminded him a little bit of House Fane, since it too was a sprawling compound set into mountainous terrain, but it was very clearly full of classical Mediterranean architecture. There was only one road leading up to it, winding through picturesque forested foothills, so it wasn¡¯t quite as disconnected as House Fane, but it clearly got most of its supplies through teleport.

    While he¡¯d seen only mages and a few normal humans ¨C or rather duds, as much as he hated that term ¨C in the Fane complex, there was an entire shifter population inside the ward barriers of the mage House. Interestingly, they seemed to be security, to judge from the fact that the ones patrolling around the edges of the grounds had guns and blades. Bane weaponry, if he were to guess based on the mana signature.

    ¡°Any idea which House this is?¡± Callum asked Lucy, watching the camera views from the drone as it perched on top of a building. Once they were inside of the outer wards, the glamours no longer screened things. ¡°They seem pretty martial.¡±

    ¡°A lot of the Houses are,¡± Lucy said, clicking through scanned documents on her laptop. ¡°I¡¯m reading as fast I can but none of this stuff is properly digitized.¡± Her voice was disgusted. ¡°These people have awful handwriting, I swear.¡±

    Callum snorted, but there wasn¡¯t a rush. Not yet. As soon as he saw something terrible he¡¯d intervene, but until then he would just watch.

    He didn¡¯t actually care about what the internal behavior of the House was. All he wanted to know was what they were doing when it came to the regular people nearby. So he parked the drone by the road and waited for people to leave. Which didn¡¯t actually happen for quite some time.

    Callum actually had to keep an eye on the House for three days before a foray left along the road, a bunch of shifters in animal form. He stopped the enchanting he was doing to focus on them, teleporting the drone and anchor along after them. Given shifter senses they hadn¡¯t used the actual rotors anywhere near the House, so he was really just moving the drone between the trees and couldn¡¯t get a good image of them on the cameras. Not that he needed it with his perceptions, but he¡¯d been spoiled by Lucy¡¯s wall of monitors.

    None of the shifters seemed to notice the presence of the drone, and he had no issues following them as they ran around seemingly just for fun. They were terrifyingly fast through the undergrowth, and surprisingly quiet according to the microphone pickups. He sure wouldn¡¯t want to be hunted by them. Compared to the Wild Hunt that he¡¯d run into almost two years ago, they were a lot more professional. Callum would say more powerful, since they seemed to have more strength and speed and general physical prowess than the ones that had been hunting with the fae.

    Something that was demonstrated when they ran down a deer, which had absolutely no chance against one shifter, let alone a dozen of them. It was kind of odd to watch, since he¡¯d never actually seen any of Chester¡¯s pack doing that kind of thing, though of course they probably did.

    After hunting down a few more unfortunate wildlife, devouring them, and running through hill and dale, the pack returned to the House. So it wasn¡¯t really anything worth commenting on, save for the fact that it was an excursion from warded grounds. Yet after they returned, Lucy grunted and tapped at her laptop.

    ¡°Okay, that¡¯s weird. I¡¯ve just gotten a couple emails from GAR pop up on my filters that claim that they need some cleanup after Curran¡¯s people just ate a couple of mundanes.¡± Lucy said.

    ¡°That¡¯s not suspicious at all.¡± Callum scowled. ¡°That feels like someone is playing at something, though I don¡¯t know what yet. Either they¡¯re being framed or that group was a distraction. Are there extra shifters we don¡¯t know about?¡±

    ¡°I dunno!¡± Lucy looked up from her laptop. ¡°Let¡¯s check the town.¡±

    ¡°Yeah,¡± Callum agreed, and Lucy activated the drone. Back in town, she accessed the police database again and came up with two missing persons, just like GAR had said. The record was itself suspicious, since it had been entered by the lieutenant at the front desk maybe thirty minutes prior, as an anonymous tip, with no further information.

    ¡°Police don¡¯t mark a person as missing unless it¡¯s been a while. More than a few hours, anyway,¡± Callum remarked. ¡°That¡¯s some fast work from the BSE ¡ª and they¡¯re supposed to be understrength, aren¡¯t they?¡±

    ¡°Something is rotten in the state of Denmark?¡± Lucy suggested. ¡°Or Italy, I guess.¡±

    ¡°Yeah. Something¡¯s weird. We¡¯ll stay on it. Get a second drone down there for more surveillance.¡± He itched to do something about the deaths, assuming they were real, but at the same time he had a deep uneasiness about the situation. Not to mention how frustrating it was to do all the spadework himself. Though he knew that nothing worthwhile was ever easy.

    They spent another few days keeping an eye on the area, with Callum tracking Curran¡¯s pack whenever they went out, leaving another drone to patrol the area. It was a good thing he¡¯d gotten used to splitting his attention, even if his surveillance didn¡¯t find anything. Which was a problem, since four days after the first report, there was another claim that two more mundanes had been taken by the Curran pack. There was even a Department of Acquisition form attached to the emails.

    ¡°Someone is playing at something,¡± Callum complained, arms wrapped around Lucy as she lay against him. ¡°Either Curran knows about our surveillance and knows how to dodge it, or these records are being faked for some reason.¡±

    ¡°I don¡¯t know anyone who¡¯d have anything against Curran¡¯s House, but I¡¯m not up on House politics,¡± Lucy said. She¡¯d at least been able to figure out whose House that was, though it had been more difficult than it really should have been. ¡°We should ask House Hargrave.¡±

    ¡°I suppose.¡± Callum grimaced, realizing that if he was going to do his job properly he had to at least allow that much. ¡°Yes, go ahead and do that. I don¡¯t like all this. It doesn¡¯t make sense.¡±

    ¡°Yeah, since when do mages make sense,¡± Lucy dismissed his complaining. ¡°Okay yes, there¡¯s probably a reason but what are the chances it has anything to do with us?¡±

    ¡°Pragmatically, it probably doesn¡¯t. But when I run into something like this I feel like there¡¯s a conspiracy afoot.¡±

    ¡°That¡¯s because you¡¯re paranoid, dear,¡± Lucy said fondly. ¡°I¡¯ll call Gayle,¡± she added, trying to lever herself upright and finding it a little difficult. Callum helped her up and she gave him a kiss before turning to her laptop. He only half-listened to her conversation, as she¡¯d somehow become good friends with Gayle during the checkups. Though Lucy was far more personable than he was, so it wasn¡¯t that much of a surprise.

    ¡°That House is one of Archmage Taisen¡¯s, I think,¡± Gayle said, after she and Lucy had made their way through several minutes of catching up. ¡°Pretty sure anyway. A lot of the Houses still here on Earth are either with us or with Taisen.¡±

    ¡°It sounds like they¡¯re being framed for something,¡± Callum put in, leaning closer to the pickup. ¡°It¡¯s probably a bit too much to think it¡¯s for my benefit, but I suppose GAR might have other axes to grind.¡±

    ¡°Well, they¡¯re still kind of part of GAR,¡± Gayle said. ¡°Just Archmage Taisen¡¯s supporters.¡±

    ¡°Which is exactly why they¡¯re being targeted,¡± Callum sighed.

    ¡°I suppose so,¡± Gayle said with disappointment. ¡°Boo. I¡¯ll tell Grandfather about it. He and Archmage Taisen can figure out what to do.¡±

    ¡°We¡¯ll keep an eye on it from this end,¡± Lucy said. ¡°Might see what they¡¯re actually up to.¡±

    ¡°And keep it quiet, if you can,¡± Callum added. ¡°Don¡¯t want to tip anyone off if we¡¯re going to catch whoever is messing with us.¡±

    ¡°I¡¯ll let Grandfather deal with that,¡± Gayle said. ¡°He¡¯s done this cloak-and-dagger stuff before.¡±

    ¡°If you find out anything, I¡¯d appreciate it if you could let us know,¡± Callum said.

    ¡°I¡¯ll call you back later,¡± Lucy added. ¡°Tonight or tomorrow.¡±

    ¡°Sure!¡± Gayle agreed happily. ¡°I want to pick your brain about some college courses when you do. I found quite a few but they all claim the other courses are terrible.¡±

    ¡°Of course they do,¡± Lucy laughed. ¡°I¡¯ll get you squared away, don¡¯t worry.¡±

    ¡°Thanks, Lucy!¡± Gayle said. Callum shook his head as she hung up.

    ¡°You¡¯re just so much better at that than I am,¡± he told her.

    ¡°Because I¡¯m not scary and grumpy,¡± Lucy said happily. Callum just rolled his eyes and kissed her.

    Considering what they were seeing, Callum moved the second drone to the vicinity of the local police station, to try and catch whoever was doing the reports. It might be some poor local compelled into it, but it might be an actual BSE agent and that would be telling. He was almost completely convinced of Alpha Curran¡¯s innocence, but until things were resolved he needed due diligence and so he left the other drone parked where it had been.

    It paid off less than a day later, when a vampire entered the police station late in the local evening. Callum had only been paying the vaguest of attention, but the feel of supernatural vis crossing into his range snapped him to alert, and when he identified the type of supernatural as a vampire he knew something bad was about to happen. Especially since the vampires were basically considered GAR¡¯s lackeys.

    ¡°Heads up,¡± he told Lucy. ¡°I think we¡¯re about to get a lead.¡±

    ¡°Bwuh?¡± Lucy blinked at him fuzzily, lifting her head from where she was napping in the sunlight coming in from the big windows.

    ¡°Don¡¯t worry about it,¡± he assured her. ¡°Probably just going to be following a vamp around.¡± He was already sorting through the bane ammunition while the vampire in question spoke to a policeman.

    ¡°Bwuh,¡± she said, and flopped back on the couch. Callum couldn¡¯t hear anything, not with the drone outside on the roof, but the wisps of vis that the vampire gave off and the way the officer at the front immediately turned to the computer let him guess what was going on.

    This was the source of the reports. Callum left off what the report actually was for the moment and followed the vampire after it left the building. After one street it shifted from normal human walking speed to supernatural swiftness, and Callum had to teleport rapidly to keep up. Even after all this time he didn¡¯t know what normal speeds were for a vampire, but the one he was trailing outpaced cars on the highway.

    Some twenty minutes later, the vampire halted outside of a GAR office in a coastal town. It was a tiny one, nothing like what Callum imagined was over in Rome, but it still had a teleport. When the vamp stepped inside, Callum had to make a quick decision. He and Lucy hadn¡¯t taken the time to try and decipher all the security protocols in the new teleports, mostly because he was still learning how to read enchantments, so he didn¡¯t know what would set off the alarms.

    He didn¡¯t really have much to lose though, so he quickly ran a thread of vis into the forming teleportation framework and recalled just the drone, shifting his portal anchor onto the ground just behind the vampire. His biggest worry was that the vamp would sense it, but with all the other magic around, the more subtle teleport seemed to be drowned out. The teleportation framework energized itself and they went from the Bari office to a much larger GAR facility.

    ¡°You¡¯ve got a serious look on your face,¡± Lucy said, handing him a plate of spaghetti. He hadn¡¯t even noticed her get up and start dinner.

    ¡°I¡¯ve got an anchor inside one of the big GAR offices,¡± he replied, taking the plate. ¡°Following that vamp from before.¡±

    ¡°Ooh, infiltration.¡± She took the seat next to him. ¡°Anything juicy?¡±

    ¡°I just got in,¡± he told her, leaning over to give her a hug before they started. ¡°Next step is to make sure we¡¯re unnoticed. Umm, we¡¯re going to need a portal box that isn¡¯t a drone.¡± He skimmed through the supplies they had in the basement while keeping half his attention on where the vampire was going.

    ¡°They¡¯re the ones with a P in front of their number,¡± Lucy reminded him unhelpfully, and offered him the parmesan.

    ¡°Definitely too complicated for me,¡± Callum mused, and teleported a box on the table on the other side of the plates. ¡°Could you check that really quick?¡± He ran a thread of vis through the assorted fields and enchantments that surrounded the GAR teleportation landing and teleported his anchor on top of an electrical box inside the far wall.

    The GAR office was noticeably different from the American versions of the same, with older architecture marred by clear signs of renovation to install plumbing, electricity, and replace windows. If he had to guess it was GAR Paris, their main office in Europe. The vampire made his way into the office sections, and when Lucy handed him the box Callum snaked a vis thread through the various layers of warding. The box went just outside the office the vamp had entered, and he tapped the tablet to start recording.

    ¡°Third report,¡± the vampire said.

    ¡°Good,¡± a woman¡¯s voice replied. That was all, and Callum was forced to juggle portal anchors as he split his attention between the vampire and the person he¡¯d reported to. The vampire left by way of the front door, out onto the streets, and the women picked up a phone.

    ¡°Supervisor O¡¯Neill? Yes. Has Toclerane reported on any movement from the Alliance? I see. Yes. We need another, then. A couple of kids should get Wells¡¯ attention.¡±

    Callum felt something cold coil in his gut. It was aimed at him, and it wasn¡¯t hard to see what, or why. If he hadn¡¯t started watching when he had, if he¡¯d come to it after all the evidence had been properly planted and the traces erased, he probably would have taken the bait and killed a lot of innocents. To say nothing of any innocents who might be killed in order to make the attempted framing stick.

    ¡°Who is that?¡± Callum said, his voice coming out hoarse. Lucy looked absolutely murderous as well, and she took command of the cameras. He waited until there was no traffic, and as he teleported the box back into the hallway in front of the office. The name on the door read Constance Earl, Department of Acquisitions, Director.

    ¡°Right,¡± Callum said. ¡°Constance needs to die.¡±

 Chapter 10 â€“ Reap

    Callum had known for a while that he would have to deal with the Department of Acquisition. It was evil, but it was also a bureaucracy, where responsibility was mortgaged and amortized and smeared out over so many people that for any act it was hard to point a finger at who should be held to account. Beyond that, he had to worry about the limitations it had actually imposed, and whether he was ready to deal with the consequences of removing it.

    Clearly he shouldn¡¯t have hesitated. He¡¯d refrained from acting because he was afraid of the consequences, and that had come with its own consequences. Evil and death, which had occurred specifically because somebody wanted to manipulate him.

    He didn¡¯t know if the reports represented actual deaths to try and draw him in, or just existed to create a paper trail, but he suspected the former. It wasn¡¯t like the Department of Acquisition shied away from the deaths of ordinary people. Now he had to remove it regardless of the fallout, and he had to admit some part of him was relieved. He had never liked letting it go even if it seemed the best choice at the time.

    ¡°So,¡± he said as he took a seat in the war room, lacing his fingers together and leaning forward. Lucy drew scribbles on the whiteboard program displayed on the center monitor, glancing at him occasionally. ¡°The question we have to deal with is how we¡¯re going to approach this. The vampire nest has to go before she sends them on another errand, but that¡¯s easy. Constance, though. She¡¯s a mage, and not a weak one. I don¡¯t think an RSJ to the head will work like with the others.¡±

    He had put an anchor on top of the roof at GAR Paris and trailed the vampire with another one, and was monitoring with both anchors. Soon after Constance had taken the report from the vampire she¡¯d left and gone across the street. She had a suite in a nearby building which probably was enormously expensive, but she might well have lived there since it was built. It was easy to forget mages could be old. Constance wasn¡¯t even the only mage in the building, and it had glamour and warding layers around to keep it safe.

    ¡°You¡¯re the only person I know who doesn¡¯t call ¡®em I-beams,¡± Lucy noted, then leaned back and pursed her lips. ¡°Any other way to deal with this? I mean, we kinda set the policy to not mess with GAR too much just because of the chaos it¡¯d cause.¡±

    ¡°What else are we going to do if she¡¯s targeting me directly?¡± Callum demanded, though he pushed down his voice so he wasn¡¯t actually yelling at Lucy. ¡°You have to resolve problems, not just avoid them because you don¡¯t want to deal with the work.¡±

    ¡°Okay, okay,¡± Lucy said, wiping the digital whiteboard clean. ¡°So yeah, I-Beam wouldn¡¯t work anyway since she¡¯s a metal mage, though I can¡¯t imagine she uses it to control anything other than paperclips.¡± She scribbled Constance¡¯s name and aspect on the whiteboard. ¡°So no direct approaches I guess. Teleportation?¡±

    ¡°Still not sure about the new cores, or about how she uses ¡®ports,¡± Callum growled. ¡°I¡¯d love to watch for a few days but I don¡¯t think we can spare the time.¡±

    ¡°I¡¯ll put that down as a maybe,¡± Lucy decided. ¡°What other indirect methods do we have?¡± She wrinkled her nose. ¡°I honestly can¡¯t tell if this is exciting or grim, contemplating this stuff.¡±

    ¡°Why not both?¡± Callum asked. ¡°It¡¯s not something anyone sane wants to do, but there¡¯s also nothing more real than life and death.¡± He scowled and crossed his arms, staring at the whiteboard but not really seeing it. ¡°One option is, assuming we can¡¯t trick a teleport, to try and use a portal and hope that her shield doesn¡¯t break it. Seems unlikely. It worked on Gayle but she was a healer with very little real experience.¡±

    ¡°Yeah, that seems iffy,¡± Lucy agreed.

    ¡°Massive brute force is out, I think. Setting off an explosion in an office building in the middle of Paris ¡ª no. I¡¯d probably kill the janitors and not her, which I¡¯m not willing to risk.¡± Callum scowled at Constance¡¯s name on the board, jaws aching from his teeth being set. He had very little patience for dealing with Constance, and he had to get this done immediately. Before there were any more victims on his head. ¡°So that leaves, hmm, poison maybe.¡±

    ¡°What, like, cyanide in her food?¡± Lucy asked skeptically. ¡°That doesn¡¯t seem like you, you know?¡±

    ¡°I know, but what can I do? But no, not food. For all I know GAR¡¯s got poison testers or Constance has something on her person. I know I would, in her place. Some fae charm or another.¡± Callum shook his head. ¡°I¡¯m thinking maybe carbon monoxide, or possibly even something like argon. You can get the stuff from a distributor, and it really doesn¡¯t take much.¡± He opened up his own laptop to find a place to buy from, since even if it was available it wasn¡¯t exactly at the corner store.

    ¡°That¡¯s pretty grim,¡± Lucy said. ¡°Kinda weird that it seems worse than just using bullets, but I guess it makes sense.¡±

    ¡°I¡¯ll have to run out and see about buying some cylinders before the shops close,¡± Callum said, cycling through the other drones until he found that was somewhat near a depot. Multitasking had become second nature to him after so much practice. ¡°Do you think you can find out who she was talking to?¡±

    ¡°Maybe, but I doubt it,¡± Lucy said. ¡°Those are just internal phones, nothing to track them. And all the coordination for this has been done completely outside email or anything on the servers.¡±

    ¡°So they know we¡¯re listening in,¡± Callum concluded, starting up the drone and sending it toward the store he¡¯d settled on.

    ¡°I guess so, dangit,¡± Lucy sighed. She almost habitually took over the piloting controls once the drone¡¯s telemetry appeared on the monitors. ¡°I haven¡¯t seen anything weird from my server tap at all, though.¡±

    ¡°They don¡¯t have to know exactly how it¡¯s compromised to know it is,¡± Callum said. ¡°They could just make assumptions and be careful. Which seems to have worked.¡±

    ¡°Boo. I guess they can¡¯t always be stupid.¡±

    ¡°Not always,¡± Callum agreed, leaning down to give her a kiss. ¡°Okay, I¡¯m going to run and get some welding gas or whatever.¡±

    ¡°I don¡¯t like this kind of purchase,¡± Lucy said uncertainly. ¡°But I guess that¡¯s how we have to do it. Hurry back.¡±

    Callum took a moment to disguise himself before he teleported himself and the van to the vicinity of the store. He took a moment to check himself in the mirror one last time before he drove into the parking lot, to make sure he looked at least slightly different from Callum Wells. The square glasses and thick eyebrows and some gray worked into his hair pretty well obscured him, but it was still a possibility that some facial recognition program could find him. If he didn¡¯t look or act like someone on a restricted list, it was less likely he¡¯d be flagged.

    He asked the man at the front desk about welding gas, and settled on a mixture of argon and carbon dioxide. The guy at the counter gave him a second and a third look, and Callum realized he was very obviously fuming. He stepped away from the counter and pretended to call someone, just to defuse the tension and give him a minute to get his expression under control.

    After that they did end up selling him what he wanted, several cylinders of welding gas mixture, though it probably helped that the purchase was not a cheap one. Some employees wheeled out a dolly with the tanks and loaded it into the van after he handed over the cash. He simply drove off before turning onto a back road and teleporting back to the bunker. It had been one of the easiest bits of preparation he¡¯d needed to do.

    ¡°So I was thinking, what about that Toblerone guy?¡± Lucy asked, when he slid back into his seat in the war room. ¡°If he¡¯s tattling on us we gotta do something about him, too.¡±

    ¡°Now, that is something we give to Chester,¡± Callum said. ¡°I mean, we¡¯ve got enough to do and being an informant is more of an American Alliance thing. Keep him up to date that Constance is on our list, too. I did promise to let him know when I was doing something important.¡±

    ¡°Great! I can just pack up that recording and sent it off now,¡± Lucy said. ¡°What a jerk.¡± Callum snorted. He had no doubt that Chester would take his pound of flesh, but that was what Toclerane got for being a quisling.

    ¡°Well, he¡¯ll get what¡¯s coming to him,¡± he said. ¡°I don¡¯t have time for it anyway. Besides Constance and Toclerane, I¡¯ve got to deal with the vampires, but that will probably have to wait until morning. Their morning.¡±

    ¡°Gonna be a long night, then,¡± Lucy noted. ¡°And me without my soda.¡± Then she brightened. ¡°Hey since I¡¯m seeing Gayle regularly I can start eating sour candy again!¡± Callum just raised his eyebrows at her.

    ¡°Diet choices aside, we need to figure out what we¡¯re going to be doing with the Department of Acquisition. Just taking out Constance is one thing, but there¡¯s no point stopping there.¡± Callum settled in next to Lucy and tapped his fingers against the desk. ¡°Maybe purge all their records, while we¡¯re there. Remove all their infrastructure.¡±

    ¡°Won¡¯t that just result in people running rampant?¡± Lucy asked doubtfully. She chewed her lip as she poked at her laptop.

    ¡°No matter what we do, that¡¯s going to happen,¡± Callum said grimly. ¡°They shouldn¡¯t have legitimized and formalized murder in the first place, and the only way to fix it is to start from scratch. Which won¡¯t happen unless they¡¯re forced to.¡± Not that he thought merely damaging the department would be enough, but the alterative was trying to slaughter mages in job lots in an attempt to get rid of every employee of the Department of Acquisition. Which, however furious he was, he was not about to do.

    ¡°I guess there¡¯s no way to make things better without making them worse?¡± Lucy asked, mostly rhetorically.

    ¡°I wish I knew one,¡± Callum said, clenching his hands into fists before forcing himself to relax. ¡°But I have to deal with people trying to make me kill innocent people. Especially if they¡¯re doing so by targeting other innocent people.¡± He looked at the image of the building from the camera, comparing it to what he could sense. The glamour obviously didn¡¯t make the building invisible, but it did make it less interesting and made all the open windows look closed and the balconies look abandoned.

    At that time of night the real version wasn¡¯t much different. There were a few stationary bubbles that Callum presumed were people sleeping, and there was one where the person was clearly watching television. He couldn¡¯t tell what Constance was up to, not through her bubble, but after moving around the suite a bit she entered the bedroom.

    ¡°Right,¡± Callum said, after waiting twenty minutes and seeing no shifting in the bubble. ¡°Need to check the target and then we can start.¡± Since Constance was a metal mage, he had to be a lot more careful with his stuff than usual. All his enchantments were in metal, beside which the apartment was full of objects touched by liquid fae magic. There was no telling what kind of defenses were inside.

    Instead he hovered the box just inside the wards but outside the window, and Lucy fiddled with the cameras. He hadn¡¯t realized there were fancy filters on the camera boxes, like zoom and even night vision. It had to have been expensive but he¡¯d left the construction of the things to Lucy and wasn¡¯t auditing her purchases anyway. She knew what she was about.

    ¡°That¡¯s Constance,¡± he said, setting his jaw.

    ¡°Yeah,¡± Lucy agreed without enthusiasm, comparing the image to the official photograph from the GAR database. His original idea had been to open a portal in a heater vent but he was stymied by the fact that the place was heated with magic rather than with any kind of central air. The building was far too old for the kind of ventilation he was used to.

    The only entryway that was anywhere nearby was a window cracked in the bathroom that adjoined the bedroom. Which was less ideal but would still work, considering the quantity of containers he¡¯d picked up. There wasn¡¯t even any hiss, since it was just a portal, though he had to work hard to keep the magical construct from collapsing even using tubes rather than threads. Callum didn¡¯t know how long it¡¯d take, but it was a relatively small room and he had an awful lot of the inert gas, so it was only a matter of time.

    ***

    Constance Earl sat bolt upright, heart pounding and gasping for breath. She felt awful, her head throbbing and her gut churning, and she threw aside the sheets and lurched for the balcony. The cold air seemed almost sweet as she stepped outside, clutching her nightgown around herself as she took deep breaths and tried to calm herself.

    She did not consider herself prone to panic or anxiety, but things had been tense at work. There was just so much to do and important people who wanted results. It had seemed all under control, but perhaps the pressure was getting to her more than she thought.

    Slowly her heart and breathing calmed, though her stomach was still making its protests known, and she grimaced. Clearly she shouldn¡¯t have eaten so soon before bed. By the time she stepped back inside she was shivering so she touched her focus band, finding the heat focus to warm herself up as she went to the kitchen. Clearly she wouldn¡¯t be getting any sleep for a while.

    After rummaging a moment she found a fae good-health trinket in her collection and pressed it against her belly, letting it soothe her unsettled stomach. Then dressed herself and crossed the street back to GAR. The Guild itself never slept, though most of the night shift was taken care of by vampires. It was actually quite useful to have a labor force that preferred the late hours, though sometimes the vampires themselves disconcerted her. They weren¡¯t human, and it showed now and again, enough to set her teeth on edge.

    Not that she was going to discard a tool simply because it wasn¡¯t perfect.

    Constance decided it was all her hemming and hawing about work that had her upset. There were a number of decisions she hadn¡¯t yet made, and the stress of dealing with Wells certainly didn¡¯t help. Everyone knew that he was dangerous and that normal security didn¡¯t do much to protect against him. Still, he¡¯d only ever gone after people who threatened him directly. She didn¡¯t want to have a low opinion of his intelligence, but it was obvious he didn¡¯t have the resources or wherewithal to deal with multiple layers of indirection. But there was a reason she was using the vampires, for the gruntwork and paperwork both.

    If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.

    Like the vampires, Wells had been a tool, but sometimes a tool was just too dangerous. The more she reflected upon it, the more it was obvious Wells was just too much to keep around. Too dangerous, too inaccessible, too uncontrollable. Since he¡¯d shown he could kill an Archmage, she¡¯d been wary of dealing with him too much.

    She settled into her office and decided she would push ahead on some of the things she had been sitting on, just to clear out some of what was weighing on her mind. It probably didn¡¯t help her stress levels that she¡¯d been hemming and hawing on some of the demands the fae allies of her backing Houses had made. Most specifically, a portal so they could sidestep the control at the primary one.

    Of course, it had to be entirely off the books as, between Duvall and the Guild of Enchanting, portal frames were tracked fairly closely. She was pretty sure there were a few in the vaults, though, and maybe one or two could be creatively lost. Fortunately, the offering price was quite high, and some of the fae favors could be very well used by both her personal House and the main branch of the family.

    She wrote out a few missives to start the gears going with her decisions. The Department of Acquisition did have the authority to use breacher portals every once in a while, so she could at least misplace one by having it brought to some convenient location for her allies to find. Beyond that would be hard to justify, so they¡¯d have to make do with just the one. At least for now. For what they were offering, she would definitely try to get ahold of another.

    While she was at it, she signed off on extra funding for some new defenses against The Ghost. The jammers were okay as far as it went, but the idea was to do more than simply block him off. Yet development of things took time and money, so anything that came out of the program would take a while. Money well spent, in her judgement.

    Constance sent those out and then sorted through the paperwork that had arrived on her desk in her brief absence. Most of it was conventional enough, but there was a report that vastly eased her mind, though it was something that she hadn¡¯t been thinking of at all. One of her informants had properly located the fae agent her backers were so interested in. Felicia Black was verified as being in Taisen¡¯s employ, and in his facilities, which was not the best report but it fulfilled their request.

    Actually getting to her would be more involved, but until and unless they specifically offered her payment for that, it wasn¡¯t her worry. Constance still had no idea why they cared so much about, frankly, a low level agent, but fae were strange. It might just have been some vendetta that needed to be finished. So long as they paid for the service, she didn¡¯t see the harm in it.

    Once that was finished she was yawning, and she dropped it in the outbox before she headed back to her suite. Since there was just the issue of Wells left, she felt she could handle that much pressure. Having some actual accomplishment definitely made her feel better, and she was sure she would sleep well.

    ***

    When Constance woke up in the middle of the assassination attempt, Callum almost recalled the anchor that instant. It was only when she ran out to the balcony, on the other side of the building from where he¡¯d parked the box, that he decided they hadn¡¯t been noticed. He didn¡¯t know exactly what Constance thought was going on, but when she left for the GAR office, it seemed like they were pretty much done for the night.

    ¡°Well, that didn¡¯t work,¡± Callum said. ¡°I don¡¯t know if she has any idea or not but it sure didn¡¯t work.¡±

    ¡°I don¡¯t know I have the stomach for this,¡± Lucy muttered. ¡°Maybe we shouldn¡¯t be going after Constance at all. Sure, she¡¯s a bad person, but it just feels wrong to go after her right now.¡±

    ¡°Mmm.¡± Callum rubbed his temples. He¡¯d been certain at first, but as the operation had gone on he¡¯d been less and less sure of himself. ¡°We have to, if for no other reason than she¡¯s signing off on killing innocent children to frame people,¡± Callum replied. ¡°Anyway, it¡¯s not something to worry about right now. We¡¯ll get some rest, I¡¯ll see about dealing with the vampires before they kill anyone else, and we¡¯ll rethink the approach.¡±

    Despite what he said, he didn¡¯t get much sleep. Lucy seemed disturbed too, clinging against him as if she were afraid that he would hare off somewhere in the middle of the night. Callum was feeling a little bit impaired by the time he dragged himself out of bed, but he still went down to the war room again as soon as he had showered. By that point the vampires had all returned to the downtown building they were using, one with more than the usual amount of warding.

    They seemed to be fairly high up in GAR¡¯s hierarchy, if the quality of their building was any indication. They even had a jammer, though it covered mostly the ward box rather than where the vampires actually dwelt. Unfortunately for them, they also didn¡¯t have a dedicated mage. He wasn¡¯t sure why; perhaps being in the middle of Paris or being one of GAR¡¯s direct pets meant they didn¡¯t need the extra protection. But it certainly made his life easier.

    He took the trouble to move an anchor out into the middle of the ocean floor. Unlike some of the other nests he¡¯d dealt with, the vampires didn¡¯t seem to be part of a trafficking organization or other normal crime, so he could just make them disappear without getting law enforcement involved. Two of the vampires were actually still awake, but that was no real problem with his bane ammunition.

    If anything he was a little surprised that the vampires hadn¡¯t developed more defenses against him, especially since he¡¯d seen other people using jammers more extensively than they were. Though maybe these vampires, being over in Europe rather than in the Americas and being so close to GAR, thought that they were protected enough. They weren¡¯t.

    Ten bodies went onto the sea floor and he left the human thralls to do whatever they would. He didn¡¯t see any victims or even corpses, but he just assumed that was because such things had been cleaned up. He wasn¡¯t sure how much vampires actually needed to eat, he was sure all the ones Earth-side were murderers.

    By the time he had that wrapped up, Lucy was up and about and making breakfast. He had never asked her to do it, but she seemed to like it and he wasn¡¯t about to turn down bacon and eggs. But he couldn¡¯t really relax because the Constance issue loomed over them.

    ¡°I think I¡¯ll have to use her office,¡± Callum said, musing over the plan from the previous night. ¡°It¡¯s got actual air vents and there¡¯s a lot less fae nonsense in the GAR offices, weirdly enough. She must have a supplier.¡±

    ¡°I don¡¯t know why, but it seems worse than a gun,¡± Lucy said unhappily. Callum started to reply, then stopped as she continued. ¡°Callum, it just seems wrong.¡± That brought him up short, and made him look at it from another angle. The reason why The Ghost existed was because some things were just wrong, and Lucy saying that about his own plans was enough of a shock to make him stop and reassess.

    ¡°You know, you¡¯re right,¡± he said. After getting some time and distance from the issue he didn¡¯t like the idea of poisoning Constance either. Among other things, it had the same objection as explosives, where he couldn¡¯t really guarantee the target. ¡°That doesn¡¯t seem right.¡±

    ¡°You were pretty angry last night,¡± Lucy said. ¡°Maybe I should¡¯ve said something then but now that I¡¯ve slept on it I don¡¯t think you should do it.¡±

    ¡°Yeah.¡± Callum sighed and rubbed his eyes. ¡°I think it¡¯s necessary to remove her, but in a way that¡¯s more appropriate and doesn¡¯t feel like nasty snake in the grass stuff.¡± It was easy, very easy to gas someone, but there was no such thing as a soldier who used poison. In some ways it hardly mattered how he did it, but in other ways it did.

    He was already balancing a very tricky line by being willing to kill for his convictions, and some methods made it far easier to become more indiscriminate than others. He didn¡¯t want to be the person, or be known as the person, who went around poisoning people because that was the mindset that led to acceptable casualties. That led to things like the Department of Acquisition.

    ¡°I suppose might be necessary,¡± Lucy said, though she wasn¡¯t enthusiastic about it. ¡°I mean, she is kind of awful. And it¡¯s not like you can ask her to stop. But what are you going to do?¡±

    ¡°That¡¯s the rub.¡± Callum drummed his fingers on the table as he thought. ¡°What about the space stuff?¡±

    ¡°The space stuff?¡± Lucy sat back, visibly relaxing now that they¡¯d discarded the gas idea. ¡°Sure! Yeah! I know how to do that. Okay, what do we have ready to go?¡± She wiped bacon grease off her fingers and turned to her laptop.

    ¡°Two anchors,¡± Callum said. ¡°I¡¯ll put them back into orbit.¡± Lucy had done the math to get a pair of anchors orbiting rather far out, somewhere away from the usual satellites, and guided him into using the gravitykinesis coupled with the Alcubierre effect to make them stay there. Even if they didn¡¯t have any permanent space presence yet, reproducing the exercise was easy enough.

    ¡°Right, so, there¡¯s basically no speed limits in space,¡± Lucy began while he lofted their space drones high above the Earth.

    ¡°Maybe not, but there are time and reaction limits,¡± Callum said. ¡°We can go pretty fast but not, you know, relativistic. At the same time, any portal I open is only going to exist for a fraction of a second so we have a fairly narrow window.¡±

    ¡°It doesn¡¯t need to be that fast,¡± Lucy reassured him. ¡°And the laser positioning can get things down to the microsecond. I¡¯ll have to do some calculations but we can just have the orbits meet. Doesn¡¯t have to be head on to have quite a bit of relative velocity.¡±

    ¡°Maybe we only need to go fast enough to have something, I dunno, punt her into another portal,¡± Callum said thoughtfully. ¡°I don¡¯t want to blow up a building, after all. And while I bet that any shield would disrupt my portals in an instant ¨C heck, the atmosphere by itself probably would ¨C that may be all that¡¯s needed. It takes a finite amount of time for a portal to collapse.¡±

    ¡°So you could do it whenever and wherever. I mean, once we had the timing set up.¡±

    ¡°Yeah.¡± Callum nodded, feeling far better about this than the other plan. Lucy was right, and the Ghost wouldn¡¯t use poison or other such underhanded things. He really didn¡¯t want to get into the habit of just doing the most expedient thing. Besides, there were just so many ways that the poison attempt could fail that were out of his control. A portal to space, and one that only needed to last an instant, was something he could be confident about. ¡°Thanks, Lucy. That works so much better. Let¡¯s do it.¡±

    ¡°Aw yeah, space stuff,¡± Lucy said in singsong as she took another piece of bacon. There was some urgency, but only some. The disappearance of the nest would be reported soon enough, but in a strange way that wouldn¡¯t mean much. The Ghost was well known to wipe out vampire nests, and that was just a matter of course. To be deplored by GAR, but nothing more than that.

    At least that was the idea. GAR Paris hadn¡¯t gone into lockdown yet, anyway. That might change over the next few minutes, but part of him couldn¡¯t imagine that the disappearance of the vampires hadn¡¯t been reported basically as soon as it had happened. Even if he¡¯d used portal pairs to deal with the bullets and their mess, it wasn¡¯t exactly silent on the far end.

    He shifted most of his attention over to the space anchors as Lucy did calculations. The newest ones had, in addition to the cages that kept the mana in, projections on every face with stamped letters so he could orient himself. How Lucy determined the orientations relative to the surroundings he didn¡¯t know, but there were quite a few sensors of various types on the newest models. It seemed if the big space agencies could do it, so could they.

    ¡°Okay, one-gravity acceleration in the direction of A for five, four, three, two, one. Now C for fifteen seconds. Fourteen¡­¡± Callum followed Lucy¡¯s directions to get the two drones on intercepting vectors. He¡¯d lost track of exactly how it was supposed to work after a minute, despite the advantages his spatial senses gave him. Orbits were weird.

    In truth he probably could have done this same thing with the portal loop he¡¯d used to take out Ravaeb, but that had so many issues that unless he was pressed for time it wasn¡¯t something he wanted to repeat. It was an incredibly draining, one-shot weapon, and an imprecise one unless he used a space-based backstop instead of bombing someone. Using the space drones was something that he could try dozens of times a day.

    He could have used a portal loop in space, too, but that required a constant effort and constant vis expenditure. The lack of any mana in space made doing anything there more difficult, as his vis wanted to diffuse out into the nothingness. They had practiced intersecting drones in space a few times before and while it was insanely fast, Lucy had some sort of laser communication thing that made the calculations very accurate indeed.

    It was a bit of a kludge and while it was more finicky than a bullet to the brain, it packed enough punch to make a mage flinch. While he might have been violating the rule of keeping it simple, once things were lined up it was just a matter of opening portals at the right time. Newtonian mechanics would take care of everything else.

    ¡°Okay!¡± Lucy said, and tapped a rapidly ticking countdown timer to emphasize the display. ¡°They¡¯ll be basically on top of each other when that hits zero.¡±

    ¡°Right,¡± Callum said, and teleported a small boulder behind one of the anchors. Behind relative to the vector, at least. That was the projectile, since the drone would be absolutely smashed if he sent it through. They had more ready access to portal materials and money than before, but it¡¯d do less than nothing and it was made of stuff that Constance¡¯s magic could control.

    The pair were closing at something like mach two, which was insanely fast but less than what he¡¯d done with Ravaeb. Then he just needed to pay attention to the countdown timer, since it was tricky throwing a portal in front of something that would cross his perceptions in half a second.

    While they were busy setting up their shot, someone had finally told GAR about the vampire raid. Or so Callum presumed, by the brief flurry of activity and a small posse of mages heading out of the office in that direction. The discovery didn¡¯t result in a total lockdown or even a broader stir of panic, though most people in GAR had duties completely unrelated to what the vampires were up to.

    Unfortunately he couldn¡¯t put things on pause while he watched what happened. Not without missing their window, and it¡¯d take a while set up another one ¡ª time he didn¡¯t want to give her in case she would order some kind of reprisal. As the timer ticked toward zero there was someone else in Constance¡¯s office, on the other side of her desk. A mage bubble of middling power, probably some functionary or another. There wasn¡¯t anything he could do about that, though, and part of the point of his approach was that it wasn¡¯t going to have much collateral.

    He readjusted the drone leading the boulder at ten seconds, so it wouldn¡¯t fly through the portal too, and then fixed his eyes on the timer as he snaked out tiny threads of vis. Lucy stayed silent, making sure not to distract him as the clock neared zero. Callum checked and rechecked his vis threads, heart suddenly hammering as the moment drew near, and he snapped open the portals.

    Everything happened at once.

    Magic blasted outward to destabilize the portals even as the air began to rush out into vacuum. A boulder traveling almost twice the speed of sound smashed through into the office and into Constance¡¯s bubble behind the desk. Shields activated for both bubbles, and while Constance¡¯s proved up to the task of withstanding the terrific impact, the boulder still accomplished its job in shoving her through the portal before it collapsed completely.

    A shock wave blew through the building, bouncing off the other mage¡¯s shields and blowing out windows in the office and down the hall. An expanding cloud of atmosphere spread out from the portal site out in deep space, as the projectile and fading mage bubble continued out beyond where he could sense. Callum pulled back the box and reset the two space drones to be near each other, only then remembering to breathe. Lucy looked at him inquiringly.

    ¡°It worked,¡± he reported, using the moments of confusion to teleport all the filing cabinets in Constance¡¯s office out into space next to the drones. That was all he could manage before supernaturals started swarming the site, but it would have to do. ¡°I¡¯ll leave an anchor near that pack in Italy for a while but I doubt there will be any more trouble from that end. We can check out the papers I got later.¡±

    ¡°Glad it¡¯s done,¡± Lucy said, not quite as jubilant as him. He nodded agreement.

    ¡°It feels kind of shaky though. We need to figure out a better way to do the same thing. Or just some way to consistently punch through mage bubbles.¡±

    ¡°If you can figure out that one, you¡¯ll upend a few hundred years of magical weapons race,¡± Lucy said. ¡°For anyone without a homebond, I think space is close enough.¡±

    ¡°You¡¯re sure Constance didn¡¯t have one?¡± Callum asked, though the sheer impact of the boulder had to have rung the shields like a bell. Combined with the lack of mana in space, he would bet most people wouldn¡¯t manage in the thirty seconds or so they had. Though even if Constance did have one, it wouldn¡¯t be as disastrous as with Fane.

    ¡°Everything I found was that she relied on fae stuff more,¡± Lucy said, sagging into her seat now that things were finished. ¡°And there¡¯s no fae mana in space.¡±

    ¡°In space, no fae can hear you scream,¡± Callum muttered. ¡°Feels a little weird to have access to the immensity of the rest of the universe. I¡¯m still surprised the portals even work without a connected mana field.¡±

    ¡°Well, it¡¯s magic,¡± Lucy said.

    ¡°Sure. I almost wish that I could talk to Duvall about that,¡± Callum sighed. ¡°I know it¡¯s magic but I still can¡¯t help but thinking of it like science.¡±

    ¡°At least it¡¯s not as random as fae stuff,¡± Lucy observed.

    ¡°True,¡± Callum admitted, shaking his head at the memory of the horrible things Ravaeb had unleashed against them. ¡°You know, it occurs to me this is the first time I¡¯ve moved against GAR directly. Everything else has been, essentially, personal. But Constance had a specific role in GAR and that was the problem.¡±

    ¡°I¡¯m glad we¡¯re already in hiding,¡± Lucy said. ¡°This is not going to go over well.¡±

    ¡°I¡¯m not sure what else they can do,¡± Callum agreed. ¡°But if there is something, we¡¯re going to find out.¡±

 Chapter 11 â€“ Beginnings

    ¡°The people at the portal are not doing their job,¡± Ray Danforth said to his partner. Both of them were bundled against the chill of the New Zealand mountains, though Felicia hardly needed it. It was the sixth unregistered fae enclave they¡¯d been to in the past year, though it might have been more apt to call it an infestation. Unlike most places, the surrounding terrain had hardly been altered at all, but the landscape had already been almost fantastical. He was pretty sure that the fae had settled there because of the natural beauty and how similar it was to Faerie¡¯s inherent aesthetic.

    Not that the creatures Taisen¡¯s mages had captured were beauties themselves. They weren¡¯t even proper fae as such. Instead they were some of the terrible beasts that lived deep in Faerie, the Cold Children and the Shadows of That Which Dwells Beneath. A real fae would have adopted some of the local legends ¨C there were plenty ¨C but these types hadn¡¯t bothered.

    ¡°I suspect they did not come through the portal,¡± Felicia replied, putting her bare hand on the flank of some abomination of spider and hound, stiff white hair rustling audibly under Felicia¡¯s touch. It shivered, completely cowed, which was a far sight from the hostility the barely-thinking Cold Children showed to mages. Besides which, it would have frozen Ray¡¯s hand right through if he¡¯d tried the same thing.

    ¡°They dwell deep in Faerie, and they¡¯d hardly wander through on their own,¡± Felicia said at length. ¡°But with the connection to Earth, there might be other paths some fae could travel to get here.¡±

    Ray raised his eyebrows. The fae were notoriously closemouthed about a lot of their abilities. Everyone figured they had ways to move around that were close to teleportation, but with the limitations any faerie magic had that could mean anything. It could be something they could do at will, or something that only worked under a full moon at midsummer. Even Felicia didn¡¯t elaborate on such things usually, despite how close they¡¯d been over the years.

    ¡°So there¡¯s some kind of backchannel trafficking road into Earth from Faerie now?¡±

    ¡°I suspect so. If I knew where it was I could just send them back.¡± She patted the abomination again. ¡°Without it, moving them will require a breacher portal and likely some discussion with GAR.¡±

    ¡°Above our paygrade,¡± Ray observed.

    ¡°Yes. But they should go back. They don¡¯t belong here,¡± Felicia said. If they couldn¡¯t be returned, they would have to be exterminated like the things that had been riding the Cold Children¡¯s shadows. Ray was vaguely aware that things were not so simple as there being Winter and Summer Courts, but that characterization wasn¡¯t terribly far from the truth either. Both of the invading species could be thought of as things from the Winter side of the scale, but at least the Cold Children had physical bodies.

    Ethereal beings were generally rare and difficult to deal with, but the shadowy parasites were completely helpless against mages with control over light or darkness. The fae animals had been fairly simple to subdue for Taisen¡¯s team, even without the Archmage in attendance, but they¡¯d only properly gotten settled down once Felicia had been brought on site. There actually weren¡¯t that many fae in Defensores Mundi with a working knowledge of creatures from Faerie proper.

    ¡°At least we didn¡¯t need any outside help for this one,¡± Ray sighed, hands in his pockets. It was freezing, no matter how beautiful the mountains looked. ¡°You know we¡¯re going to need to track this down. Find this origin point.¡± He knew it was true, but it also appealed to Felicia¡¯s detective instincts.

    It¡¯d be healthier than finding trouble spots, too.

    The idea of pursuing something substantive after they¡¯d been stymied on their investigation into GAR ¨C mostly by no longer being part of it ¨C visibly perked her up. She seemed to lose ten years in an instant, and very well might have. The way fae magic worked was weird.

    ¡°We may have to talk to some fae kings,¡± Felicia said. ¡°If the Archmage will back us.¡±

    ¡°I think he will, since I doubt anyone else wants to deal with them,¡± Ray said.

    ¡°I don¡¯t even want to, but I will,¡± Felicia said, then dug her tablet out of her bag as the transportation team came by. Some earth and light mages had whipped up large, lit cages for the creatures, big stone boxes that were proof rending claws and jaws ¡ª and any intangible shadows that might be still in hiding.

    ¡°It¡¯s under control,¡± she wrote on her tablet as the multi-ton cage was set down on the ground. ¡°I¡¯ll guide it in.¡±

    ¡°If you¡¯re sure, ma¡¯am,¡± said Captain Yang. Neither Ray nor Felicia were part of the pseudo-military structure of House Taisen, but people more or less listened to them in their areas of expertise. Which hadn¡¯t always been the case in the Department of Arcane Investigation.

    The earth mage opened the cage by simply removing the stone from one side and Felicia ushered the Cold Child into it before the cage was sealed again. Out of Felicia¡¯s influence it let loose a shrill and terrifying cry, muffled by the confines of its box. Ray winced, rubbing at his ears by reflex.

    ¡°Anyway, think you can figure out where they came from locally?¡± Ray asked. ¡°I doubt they swam across the ocean.¡±

    ¡°I can try,¡± Felicia wrote, and made a motion at Ray. In reply he whipped up an air cushion so they could get around quicker, rather than hiking over the rough terrain. They floated about the area as Felicia turned her head left and right, scenting for the origin of the fae incursion. They had already determined that the place the creatures had laired wasn¡¯t where they¡¯d emerged, but they¡¯d been there long enough any original tracks were long gone.

    The two of them left the last of the cleanup behind, to mages who were more equipped for the job, and ventured out into the countryside. They weren¡¯t stupid about it, of course. Ray called in with a scry-com, and if they were to run into anything untoward they wouldn¡¯t tackle it on their own. But the region had been fairly well surveyed for threats, so he wasn¡¯t worried.

    They followed a zig-zag path as Felicia played bloodhound, over mountain ridges and down valleys. The things had gone quite a way, but eventually Felicia waved them to a stop by a large and lonely tree growing at the top of a cliff. Up close, Ray could see the disturbance in the mana, though to his eye there was no order or consistency to it, save that it focused on a circle of bare rock framed by gnarled roots.

    He stood back as Felicia prowled around the circle, for a moment looking more primal and animalistic than normal. She stopped after three circuits and turned toward the center, speaking words that Ray could sense but couldn¡¯t actually hear. It was a display of pure fae magic unexpected enough that she had finished before he had fully realized what was going on.

    ¡°There was a path here,¡± Felicia said, walking across the circle toward him. ¡°But it¡¯s gone. I think it was closed on purpose, but I couldn¡¯t swear to it.¡±

    ¡°We need to make sure it won¡¯t open again,¡± Ray said, running his fingers over his focus band. Faerie magic was affected enough by the environment that there were simple ways to disrupt it. He simply pulled the tree off its perch and relocated it at the base of the cliff, tapping into his earth-moving focus to bury the roots. It would have been faster and simpler to just destroy the tree, but Felicia wouldn¡¯t have liked that.

    Only then did he doublecheck the GPS coordinates before logging them for his report. If other things had come through, they might have gone in another direction, so there would be some teams sweeping out to see if there was anything to follow up on. For all anyone knew, the creatures were a distraction from something more insidious.

    ¡°Thanks,¡± Felicia said. It wasn¡¯t clear whether she was referring to his removal of the faerie path or preserving the tree. She came back to stand next to him once again, looking around with those sharp black eyes that so easily captured him when he wasn¡¯t being careful. ¡°I don¡¯t think there¡¯s anything else for us here.¡±

    ¡°I suppose not,¡± Ray agreed, because there was something for them elsewhere. Ever since they¡¯d found out Wells¡¯ real identity they¡¯d been stuck in a kind of a vague muddle, without a clear goal to chase. They merely had busywork to do. Finding out who was smuggling deep Faerie creatures into the world, though, that had some meat.

    It would be nice to have something to sink their teeth into.

    ***

    ¡°We have no desire to move against The Ghost or the American Alliance,¡± Archmage Hargrave said flatly. Gayle bit her lip, still not used to being present when high-powered discussions were being held. The library at House Hargrave was a completely different setting with four different archmages arguing. Besides her own grandfather, there was Archmage Janry, there as a neutral observer, Archmage Taisen, there in solidarity against GAR, and Archmage Corrilon, as GAR¡¯s representative.

    She wasn¡¯t the only non-archmage present. Everyone had staff along, some recording the proceedings with notebooks and cameras, others there as advisors or strategic assets. Gayle fell into the last category, as House Hargrave¡¯s sole healer. The library was large enough that it didn¡¯t really feel crowded, but hardly anyone besides the Archmages were noticeable.

    ¡°It¡¯s only a matter of time before they move against you,¡± Corrilon said, his voice so lifeless and insipid that Gayle could barely pay attention despite the stakes. ¡°The latest attack against GAR shows that they will not brook any power but their own.¡±

    ¡°That¡¯s not true,¡± Gayle said, cutting in. Even six months ago she wouldn¡¯t have dared, but after working more closely with her grandfather and shouldering some responsibilities of her own she had more self-assurance. ¡°The Ghost has made it very clear what he objects to. We aren¡¯t going to have any problems.¡±

    ¡°You still have relations with the vampires in major city centers,¡± Corrilon replied, the argument uninflected as if he were reading off a checklist. Which perhaps he was. Even Gayle knew that everyone believed Corrilon was someone else¡¯s voice, though opinions were mixed on exactly whose.

    ¡°Relations which are nobody¡¯s business,¡± her grandfather said, before she could argue. It was hard to remember that it was better to never explain or make excuses. She had always preferred being reasonable, but reasonableness wasn¡¯t how things were done at the top. ¡°I¡¯m hardly surprised that Constance was eliminated. Even within GAR she had made enough enemies. For all I know The Ghost didn¡¯t even do it on his own account.¡±

    ¡°You will regret not neutralizing such dangerous people while it is still possible,¡± Corrilon said, though the threat was undercut by the monotonous drone of his voice. ¡°As GAR is made weaker, there will only be more problems. Inaction now means chaos later.¡±

    ¡°We¡¯ll take our chances,¡± her grandfather said.

    ¡°Not all chaos is bad,¡± Archmage Taisen observed. ¡°It represents opportunity, not just randomness. House Taisen is not and has never been in favor of the Department of Acquisition. Why risk mundane threats when we don¡¯t need them?¡±

    ¡°Leaving this be will generate internal threats like other rogue mages,¡± Corrilon replied. Gale could swear she saw his eyes tracking like he was reading a line off a page.

    ¡°Now that there are other options aside from GAR, I very much doubt it,¡± Taisen said.

    Apparently Corrilon ran out of lines, because his little group took their leave soon after that. Janry had barely contributed anything during the whole discussion, and was the only archmage that looked appropriately bored by Corrilon¡¯s dreary voice. Once the GAR representative was gone, her grandfather sighed and shook his head.

    ¡°As annoying as he is, eliminating Constance does change things. There¡¯s a difference between going after vampires and directly striking at important mages.¡± He turned to Gayle. ¡°Do you know why he did it?¡±

    ¡°Why, no, but I can ask the next time I see him. It won¡¯t be long. Mrs. Wells is almost due so I¡¯m seeing them fairly often.¡±

    ¡°Do so,¡± he said.

    ¡°Far be it from me to point out the obvious,¡± Janry¡¯s assistant piped up. ¡°But if you have access to Wells¡¯ wife and soon to be child, isn¡¯t that a good way to control him?¡± Gayle scowled thunderously and opened her mouth to object, but closed it again when she saw her grandfather¡¯s expression. He was studying the man with the particular mix of interest and disgust that someone might use to regard a rather loathsome insect.

    ¡°You¡¯re suggesting that we coerce someone who is willing and able to assassinate archmages and give him every reason to turn his attention to us,¡± her grandfather said, his voice flat. ¡°Does Janry employ you so he knows which ideas not to entertain?¡± The man colored, but didn¡¯t reply.

    ¡°Head on back to the House, Jameson,¡± Janry muttered, voice just as sleepy as his expression.

    ¡°Yes, sir,¡± Jameson said, and stood up to leave. Unlike before, he couldn¡¯t simply teleport out. House Hargrave did still have some teleportation pads, but they only linked with their closest allies. Jameson was forced to actually leave through the front door and make his way to wherever it was that he had come from. House Janry hadn¡¯t actually left GAR the way her House had, so she wasn¡¯t sure how good an idea it was to have them at this kind of meeting, but they were still maintaining a sort of reserved support of House Hargrave.

    ¡°Since I assume nobody else is going to repeat that kind of idiocy,¡± her grandfather said. ¡°Is there any real issue with this development? We don¡¯t need anything that Acquisition did anyway.¡±

    ¡°Constance may be gone but the apparatus is still there,¡± Taisen said. ¡°Someone else will be put in charge of it. Though¡­¡± His lips tightened. ¡°I know she ran it more through personal connections than proper channels. The actual reach of the Department of Acquisition may not be nearly as far as it has seemed.¡±

    This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

    ¡°Which doesn¡¯t seem like our problem,¡± her grandfather replied.

    ¡°It might be mine,¡± Taisen said unhappily. ¡°The BSE has been kind of operating, but if there¡¯s a significant disruption in how people interact with mundanes, someone has to clean it up. At some point we supernaturals might have been powerful enough to not worry about the mundane reaction, but that¡¯s certainly not the case today.¡±

    ¡°Shouldn¡¯t we be thinking about how to interact with mundanes openly?¡± Gayle asked, and all eyes went to her. ¡°I don¡¯t mean right now,¡± she added hastily. ¡°Just as something to start thinking about. I¡¯ve been looking around on the internet on what can be done and even with glamours there¡¯s probably a point past which we can¡¯t hide.¡±

    ¡°Don¡¯t be so sure,¡± Taisen grunted. ¡°The idea that there¡¯s nothing outside of technology has gone both deep and wide. Half the stuff the BSE cleans up would probably be attributed to fanatics of various stripes even without our intervention.¡±

    ¡°People do not like the idea that there are those different from them, especially if they¡¯re better,¡± her grandfather said without any shame at all. Though it was hard to argue that mages didn¡¯t have an advantage over those without magic. ¡°There is and was no way to live among mundanes without it ending badly.¡±

    Gayle nodded, but she wasn¡¯t entirely convinced. Not only was it wrong to just take the advancements the mundanes had made without giving back, but she didn¡¯t think everyone was as blind as Taisen thought. They couldn¡¯t hide it forever, and to be exposed without being prepared would be catastrophic. She just had no idea what on Earth could be done.

    ***

    ¡°I have to wonder why an organization as powerful as GAR, even after the withdrawal of its militant houses, has so much trouble dealing with one man.¡±

    Teller Janry suppressed a frown as he regarded the Master of Weltentor. It was a complaint he was growing tired of, though it was usually directed at GAR by Archmages or fae rather than vampires. Possibly because usually there were no vampires left to complain when Wells acted, and Weltentor was their only superior.

    ¡°Not even Alpha Chester knows where Wells is located,¡± he explained patiently. ¡°He doesn¡¯t use any of the normal supernatural channels, and he doesn¡¯t even appear in public. Even mundane methods of tracing him don¡¯t have anything to start from.¡±

    ¡°Don¡¯t tell me you¡¯re just going to sit there and take it,¡± Weltentor said scornfully.

    ¡°No, indeed,¡± Janry said. There was no knowing what exactly Wells had used to remove Constance. The eyewitness had not been very useful, just testifying to a sudden burst of magic and thunder and then Constance ¨C and her desk ¨C were gone.

    Duvall had, after much pestering, been convinced to look at the remnants of the spatial magic. He hadn¡¯t personally been present, but the report had said she¡¯d decried it as leading to some uninhabitable place only a heretic would conjure. She had flatly refused to open an actual portal. From the way the report was worded, he gathered she¡¯d been rather more curt than the bland description he¡¯d gotten.

    ¡°We have acquired some of the mages from House Fane to work on countermeasures, but it requires more time and material,¡± Teller said diplomatically. ¡°Even if we can¡¯t find him, his targets are fairly predictable. Which is one reason I¡¯m here. Extra mordite will help expedite the process.¡±

    ¡°I see.¡± Weltentor¡¯s expression didn¡¯t give anything away. Teller found most vampires to be rather simple-minded, but the Master of Weltentor had been around for a long time. Long enough to learn some subtleties. ¡°And will you be offering additional freedoms from the Department of Acquisitions as well?¡±

    ¡°Not for the moment.¡± Teller grimaced. ¡°In the current chaos, it has seemed best to let other powers fight for that particular post. We can always capture it later. No, we rather hoped you would see this is as being in your own interest as well. After all, vampires are his primary targets. We will, of course, share any usable protections we come up with.¡±

    His House was extremely wealthy, of course, but developing an entirely new class of defenses took materials that just weren¡¯t available in quantity. Even working with the Guild of Enchanting in absolute secret, there was only so much bane material to go around at any given time. Experimental enchantments were the worst too, since they usually had to be broken down and recycled, rendering the enchanting medium useless very quickly.

    ¡°Yes, I suppose it is for both our benefits,¡± Weltentor conceded after a moment. ¡°However, I want more license to send new nests through to Earth. Not only to replace that which has been displaced by The Ghost and the American Alliance, but I am well aware of the considerations you¡¯ve been giving the fae.¡±

    Teller blinked, but otherwise schooled himself not to react. He wasn¡¯t sure if Weltentor¡¯s source was Constance herself, who was a perfectly competent tool but sometimes overreached, or his own contacts inside of various agencies. House Janry had long suspected Weltentor had more control over the Earth-side vampires than he was purported to have.

    ¡°I only have so much latitude for what I can promise,¡± Teller said. ¡°But very well. Let us discuss it.¡±

    ***

    Callum held his son carefully in his arms, breath stuck in his throat as everything changed.

    Perhaps that wasn¡¯t quite right. There was no seismic realignment of his priorities, no sudden revelations. Just a slow settling in of how it was real and what that meant for the future.

    The entire process of birth had been entirely without drama, mostly thanks to magical healing. Between Gayle and the shifter midwife there had been no surprises, no worries, and Lucy had barely broken a sweat. It wasn¡¯t anything like how things were portrayed in media, but that was for the best.

    They were still at Chester¡¯s compound, at least for the moment, settled in a private suite until the midwife cleared them. With magical healing that really shouldn¡¯t be long, but he wasn¡¯t going to take any risks at all. He was glad that Chester¡¯s compound was equipped for the purpose, though considering how large the pack was, it wasn¡¯t all that much a surprise. It meant no need for a hospital and all the risks those entailed.

    ¡°Hey, you had your time,¡± Lucy said, relaxing in the chair next to his. ¡°Gimme.¡± She made grabby fingers at her son and Callum laughed, carefully passing him back over.

    ¡°So, Alexander or Robert?¡± Callum asked, since those were the names they¡¯d gotten down to.

    ¡°Hmm.¡± Lucy pursed her lips as she snuggled the sleeping baby up against her. ¡°Alex. I don¡¯t want my son being Bob the Mage.¡±

    ¡°Fair point,¡± Callum laughed. ¡°Alexander it is.¡± Since Alexander was going to be a mage, considering the amount of vis in his body. It was significantly denser than Lucy¡¯s, though not as much as Callum¡¯s. Though Alexander was only a few hours old, so that was only to be expected.

    It was far too early to know what kind of mage Alexander was going to be. Even mages from the primary Houses didn¡¯t really start showing any kind of ability until elementary age, and the standard test was done around four or five. If manifestations started earlier, a smaller version of the vis-drainer bracelet was often employed simply to keep the child from harm.

    That was all stuff they¡¯d gotten from Gayle, and it was a bit of a relief to know they wouldn¡¯t have to worry about their infant setting fires before he could speak. That was assuming that he didn¡¯t inherit Callum¡¯s predilection for internal vis use, anyway. Which they would need Gayle to deal with if it did happen, just in case that vis loop had to be broken.

    For better or worse, the first couple years weren¡¯t very different for mage kids and normal kids. Considering most mage children were raised inside a portal world, with absurdly abundant mana, they probably started manifesting magic earlier than anyone raised on Earth would. That gave himself and Lucy a grace period where they only had to worry about the usual new-child issues. Which were hardly minor. Despite being married before, he¡¯d never been a parent.

    ¡°Here¡¯s my new phone number in case you need any healing done,¡± Gayle said, as they prepared to head back home the next day. She offered Callum a little business card, something that had clearly been recently printed. ¡°Now that I have a real mobile phone.¡± Callum took it and flipped it over, seeing Gayle¡¯s name along with what he took to be the House Hargrave crest.

    ¡°I can manage pretty much any type of medical emergency,¡± Gayle elaborated as he looked at the fine print. ¡°I have mostly magical training, but I¡¯ve been taking courses for mundane medicine too!¡±

    ¡°Thank you, Gayle,¡± Lucy said cheerfully, handing Alex off to Callum so she could give Gayle a hug. ¡°Definitely glad we didn¡¯t have to do all this the mundane way.¡±

    ¡°Yes, thank you,¡± Callum agreed. ¡°I also have something for you.¡± It was just as well he could use magic since his hands were full. He pulled a linked pair of teleportation plates from the cave-cache, ones that he¡¯d made very recently. As such, they were far more efficient and pleasant to use than his first few designs.

    ¡°I figure you should leave one here, with Chester¡¯s permission of course,¡± he said, floating the plates down next to Gayle. ¡°It¡¯ll save you all a lot of time to be able to connect up directly. I¡¯ve got another set I¡¯ve been working on for you that I¡¯ll give you later for payment.¡±

    ¡°Oh, excellent,¡± Gayle said happily. Glenda, off to the side, nodded with more analytical speculation in her eyes. Callum wasn¡¯t sure how hard it was to get ahold of new spatial enchantments now, since Duvall was trying to retool them all, but it sure wouldn¡¯t hurt to have a link between the American Alliance and House Hargrave.

    ¡°We¡¯ve also got something for you personally,¡± Lucy said, taking Alex back from Callum with a knowing smile. Predictably, he started to complain at being handed around so much, and she made soothing sounds as Callum pulled something else from the cache.

    ¡°Copies of all my favorite books,¡± Callum said, as a rather large box appeared on the floor. Even if it was all paperbacks, that many books got heavy. ¡°There are probably duplicates for some of the ones you have already, but I¡¯m sure someone will read them.¡±

    ¡°Ooh!¡± Gayle practically squealed, flicking out her own telekinesis focus to open the box up and examine the contents. ¡°Thank you!¡± She said, and he suffered himself to be hugged by the exuberant healer. Which was something mages didn¡¯t generally do, so he figured his lack of bubble helped in that regard.

    ¡°You¡¯re welcome,¡± he told her, awkwardly returning the hug while Lucy snickered at him. ¡°If there¡¯s nothing else, we¡¯ll be in touch,¡± he said. They¡¯d already thanked Chester and Lisa, who had business of their own to attend to and hadn¡¯t even been around for a few days. It spoke volumes that he wasn¡¯t feeling under constant threat from the shifters that lived in the compound with Chester gone.

    ¡°Sure,¡± Gayle said cheerfully. ¡°And I¡¯ll show him that stuff from Constance.¡± She waved in the direction of the filing cabinets full of documents he¡¯d brought.

    ¡°Yeah.¡± Callum grimaced. That had been weeks ago, and only now was anyone asking him about it. The fallout for that seemed to be moving slow-motion, with the speed only bureaucracies could manage. He was doing his best not to let it get to him, and it wasn¡¯t like they weren¡¯t busy with other things.

    With a few other words of goodbye, Callum opened a portal back to the cave, then the house. Even with his vastly improved control and ability to use tubes nearly as well as threads, he wasn¡¯t going to trust his son¡¯s health to his still relatively shoddy teleportation. Portals were just safer.

    Lucy slumped down on the couch, cradling Alexander against her and letting out a groan. Callum raised his eyebrows and settled down next to her, teleporting a glass into his hand and some juice from the fridge into the glass. He handed it to her and she took a long drink before leaning against him.

    ¡°Something the matter, dear?¡±

    ¡°Magical healing or not I am tired,¡± Lucy said, and Alexander started fussing again. Lucy immediately handed her glass to Callum and he took it with some amusement while she fed little Alex.

    ¡°I¡¯ll take him for a while, and you can nap,¡± he suggested.

    ¡°Good idea,¡± Lucy said, transferring Alex over and promptly flopping onto his lap and closing her eyes. Callum smiled and shook his head, considering his son and the future that created.

    Some people would want to use his family against him. Even ignoring how he was at odds with half the supernatural world, the reason that Houses were essentially sovereign nations was because they still operated on the old politics of centuries past. All kinds of nastiness was acceptable if it removed the competition.

    It wasn¡¯t fair to raise his child completely separate from both mage society and normal society, which meant Callum would have to make some overtures to a normal life. His alliance ¨C friendship ¨C with Alpha Chester was a start, but it wouldn¡¯t be enough. There was time, but at some point he would have to resolve enough things that Alexander wouldn¡¯t have to be looking over his shoulder every minute of the day.

    He really didn¡¯t know how to do that. Making nice with what remained of GAR wasn¡¯t exactly possible, but it wasn¡¯t like he was going to try and eliminate everyone who could possibly stand against him. Nor did he want to try and vanish, since even if that were possible that just meant he¡¯d be waiting for the past to catch up.

    Callum readjusted Alexander and rubbed his eyes, deciding to let go of the maudlin contemplation. It wasn¡¯t something he needed to answer that moment, and there were more immediate worries. Like cataloguing all the baby supplies and making sure they weren¡¯t missing anything. Which they probably were.

    Neither he nor Lucy got all that much work done over the next few months. Which wasn¡¯t to say there was no progress on any front. Callum kept up with his daily exercises and Lucy doodled designs for the space nexus, and both of them got as much sleep as Alexander allowed them. Then the last parts came in and their moon base was ready to be turned into reality.

    ¡°It needs an upward vector for six seconds,¡± Lucy instructed, looking at the readouts in the war room. Callum complied. Intersecting the moon was not as simple as just pointing in that direction and letting the Alcubierre take over, since not only did the technique drain vis something awful but space was large and the moon was a lot smaller than it seemed. Despite the name he¡¯d given it, his spatial drive was not faster than light. At least, not with the length of time he could keep it up.

    With judicious use of both Newtonian momentum and inertialess movement, Lucy navigated their anchor probe around to the far side of the moon. He actually had no idea how the lack of mana would affect glamour, and whether they¡¯d affect light or radar or every other wavelength that was used in space sensing. While glamours seemed to fool satellites, they also had miles of mana to interact with, not an incredibly thin shell. Which made the far side of the moon the best place to avoid scrutiny.

    ¡°Okay, love. Do your thing,¡± Lucy said, as the cratered face of the moon stabilized in the camera feed. ¡°Alcubierre it now.¡±

    ¡°I don¡¯t think that¡¯s a verb,¡± Callum said.

    ¡°Doesn¡¯t matter,¡± Lucy said heartlessly. ¡°You know what I mean. Just smack the moon.¡±

    ¡°Yep, pretty sure I can¡¯t miss from this distance,¡± Callum agreed, and formed matrix with his vis, tugging it directly forward for a few seconds until it collapsed of its own accord when it intersected solid matter. They were on the moon.

    ¡°One small spell for a mage, one giant task for dud-kind,¡± Lucy said.

    ¡°How long were you saving that for?¡± Callum asked in amusement.

    ¡°Way too long,¡± Lucy grinned.

    The major issue with the moon was that it got completely unmitigated sunlight for weeks at a time, and it could get extremely hot. Especially metal, which was not exactly an insulator. On the other hand, blocking off the sun entirely would result in things getting too cold, so Lucy had needed to rig up some thermal insulation, with the actual portal connection doing the bulk of the work keeping things reasonable.

    In order to get the rest of the nexus in place, he had to use a small secondary portal without any shielding to spray mana over the place, supplementing it with vis to keep everything from collapsing as he moved the sprayer about the area. Then the actual nexus boxes went into place, each one spaced a hundred yards or so from the central one he used to access the nexus.

    ¡°Oh man, what a view,¡± Lucy said, looking at the intense starfield visible through the cameras. ¡°If I can figure out how to get a spacesuit I totally want to go there in person.¡±

    ¡°Hard to disagree with that,¡± Callum said, making sure all the portal links were functioning. The mana was already dispersing away, but the little insulated bubbles where each of the portal links were still appeared to his senses as little bubbles among a void. Which didn¡¯t make much sense to him, since he figured that mana would have been the carrier of the perception, but it seemed that magic did as magic would.

    The next issue for the moon nexus was supplying enough mana to keep things open. Previously they¡¯d only kept things going temporarily, thanks to the mana issues. While the insulating enchantment did a good job in keeping mana from escaping into the vacuum, it relied on mana coming in from the Earth link, and in most places there just wasn¡¯t enough ambient mana around to keep everything fueled. For the moment he was just using his own vis to hold portals open when he needed them, since there was hardly a requirement to have all eight portals and their accompanying drones and anchors, but he had other plans.

    The most straightforward option was tubes literally piping mana out from the central nexus point, but that would take a lot of enchanting materials. Shielding the moon anchors already took a lot more material than telepad pairs, along with a lot of his increasingly precious time. But there was another option: opening a dimensional portal. Eventually. When he figured that out.

    After all, that was half the reason he¡¯d moved into space. Experimenting with such portals on or near Earth was far too dangerous, but in the vacuum of space beyond the moon he didn¡¯t have to worry about anything too terrible. Considering that portals formed naturally it was obvious that they didn¡¯t do things like end the universe, though Callum wasn¡¯t about to rule out thermonuclear-level consequences. Something like Tunguska could very well have been a portal of that kind.

    ¡°Gonna be the first mage on the moon,¡± Lucy teased.

    ¡°I might well be,¡± Callum admitted. ¡°All I can think of is how big a deal this would be if I could be open about it. Magic is just an insane force-multiplier for technology.¡± He had no illusions that without technology, a portal to the moon would be useless if not outright deadly.

    ¡°Maybe someday,¡± Lucy said.

    ¡°Someday,¡± he agreed.

 Not A Chapter - Webtoon Announcement.

    Hello everyone! I''d like to announce that Paranoid Mage has been licensed by Webtoon for a, well, Webtoon adaptation!

    <blockquote>

    WEBTOON Expands its IP & Creator Ecosystem With Webcomic Adaptations of Hit Web Novels

    WEBTOON will grow its slate of series in 2023 with adaptations of fantasy, LitRPG, and romance content from renowned web novel publishers and platforms

    Erratic Errata¡¯s ¡°A Practical Guide to Evil,¡± Zogarth¡¯s ¡°The Primal Hunter,¡± and ¡°Paranoid Mage¡± by InadvisablyCompelled are among the hit web novels getting webcomic adaptations on WEBTOON

    Los Angeles, Calif. (Jan. 18, 2023) ¡ª Some of the biggest names in web novels and web fiction are coming to WEBTOON, the world¡¯s largest digital comics platform. The company today announced a series of deals and a slate of content that will see popular web novels adapted as webcomics on WEBTOON, giving fans a new way to enjoy their favorite web novels in a serialized webcomic format.

    As part of the new webcomic slate, WEBTOON has partnered with some of the most exciting publishers in web novels and web fiction. WEBTOON will adapt popular titles from Aethon Books and Moonquill, as well as WEBTOON¡¯s Wattpad and YONDER platforms.

    This novel is published on a different platform. Support the original author by finding the official source.

    The new slate of web novel adaptations expands WEBTOON¡¯s global IP & creator ecosystem, which now includes webcomics, web novels, serialized fiction, TV, film, podcasts, audiobooks, and print publishing. WEBTOON¡¯s family of brands include WEBTOON, Wattpad, Yonder, and Wattpad WEBTOON Studios. Together, this IP & creator ecosystem allows WEBTOON to adapt IP across a variety of formats, turning fan-favorite stories from each brand into multi-format franchises, reaching new fans around the world and helping creators monetize their work in new ways.

    ¡°Web novels are one of the most exciting new categories in fiction, with new voices bypassing traditional publishing to share their stories and build global fandoms online,¡± said David Lee, VP of Content at WEBTOON. ¡°With richly-built worlds that take genre fiction in creative new directions, web fiction is uniquely positioned for web comic adaptations. We know WEBTOON readers and web fiction fans will fall in love with these stories in their new visual format as webcomics.¡±

    Among the first group of titles that will receive webcomic adaptations in 2023, are Zogarth¡¯s ¡°The Primal Hunter¡± series, which has sold more than 100,000 eBooks and 50,000 audiobooks across nine volumes; InadvisablyCompelled¡¯s ¡°Paranoid Mage¡± series, which has over 3.5 million views online and has sold more than 25,000 ebooks, reaching Amazon¡¯s top ten bestseller list for Urban Fantasy; and Erratic Errata¡¯s ¡°A Practical Guide to Evil,¡± which has over 30 million views online for the completed series.

    </blockquote>

    You can read about it here!</a>

    As you can see I''m in some pretty illustrious company too!

    How this affect you, the reader? It won''t. Paranoid Mage will continue and complete as usual, but sometime in the future it will also be available in a visual format, and isn''t that neat?

    Although I guess it means we''ll have to actually see Callum''s face...

 Chapter 12 â€“ Follow-through

    ¡°We¡¯re about finished with the cleanup, Alpha.¡±

    Chester muttered an acknowledgement over the radio. Normally he only worked with his pack and could send messages through the bonds, but now that he had the Alliance he was bringing in the occasional fae to help. When it came to eliminating messes, fae definitely made the process easier. Which didn¡¯t make him any happier about moving on the building across the street.

    It wasn¡¯t so much that he disliked cleaning after trespassers that were treading on his territory, but that there were so many of them. It was mostly vampires trying to muscle in, apparently completely unworried about the consequences of infringing on the American Alliance. Something that he had objected to with great emphasis.

    His ears flicked as he caught another sound from the vampire stalking him. Chester was fairly certain it was the master of this little nest, and it thought it was being sneaky. Either it didn¡¯t know who Chester was or it didn¡¯t have good intelligence on exactly how good Alpha shifter senses could be. Especially under the circumstances, where he was fully open to his pack magic since he knew there was a vampire after him.

    It was amazing how often a vampire master would go for the person in charge, presuming that would be enough to rout everyone else. Though that seemed to be true enough for vampires, due to whatever remained of their original instincts and society. They grouped up in an almost slavish fashion. The fanatical loyalty of thralls was an echo of that same attitude, proof of how they¡¯d been twisted from human. It made them both extremely dangerous and extremely predictable, as a master¡¯s subordinates obeyed orders immediately but also nearly always defaulted to swarming the most powerful-seeming person.

    This particular master was somewhat sneaker than normal, since it seemed to have left its subordinates to distract Chester¡¯s people in order to go for Chester himself. Something that hadn¡¯t gone well for the lesser vampires. He turned slightly and unlimbered a pistol with mordite bullets from the holster on his armor, the bane metal a gift from the redoubtable Mister Wells. A glimpse of another perspective came from another of his wolfpack as they managed to lay eyes on it, of the vampire aiming a gun, and he launched himself sideways.

    The sudden reports of gunfire from three different sources sounded at once, and a moment later the vampire was dead. Chester hadn¡¯t been hit, but he had to assume that the vampires were using silverite just as he was using mordite. The body armor was extra insurance against it, but it was better not to tempt fate at all.

    He sent a wordless question out through the pack bonds and got confirmation back that there were no other vampires out and about. The only way they¡¯d be able to slip past his people was if they had fae help to mask things in ways he couldn¡¯t detect, and he had his own fae for that. The smallest fae, the pixies, were surprisingly gung-ho about sniffing out any potential enemies or interference.

    ¡°All clear,¡± he said over the radio, and added an extra confirmation through the pack bonds. The gunfire wouldn¡¯t be a problem. One of his subordinate Alphas was the chief of police. Not many shifters actually liked living in the city, but a few did, which was useful in places like St. Louis. It was impossible to guard the entire edge of the territory the American Alliance claimed, but since most vampires aimed for cities they didn¡¯t have to worry about every mile of the border.

    ¡°Where are they all coming from?¡± Lisa¡¯s voice sounded in his ear, from where she was running overwatch. They¡¯d followed Wells¡¯ example and started employing drones, which weren¡¯t as good as supernatural senses and were still susceptible to glamour, but did provide an eye in the sky that was surprisingly helpful. ¡°There can¡¯t be all that many vampires in the US.¡±

    ¡°It seems like a lot,¡± Chester agreed. ¡°But we¡¯ve only taken care of fifty or so. Who knows how many are over in the Night Lands?¡± While they didn¡¯t have any solid confirmation, everyone figured that GAR was letting a lot more vampires through onto Earth, especially into the lands of the American Alliance.

    It wasn¡¯t just because he¡¯d promised Mister Wells, or rather The Ghost, that he¡¯d keep from abusing mundanes. He had a responsibility to his territory, and anyone that couldn¡¯t cooperate needed be eliminated. Not just to keep his authority secure, but because supernatural fights always ran the risk of putting cracks in the protection of ignorance.

    The vampires weren¡¯t even the only problem. Crime was up all over, and while Chester had no proof that it was directly related to GAR loosening its grip, he had a hunch that certainly wasn¡¯t helping. Humans were perfectly capable of generating violence on their own, but to his eye it seemed like someone was stirring the pot. And the more violence there was, the more likely it was that supernaturals would get involved and make everything worse.

    ¡°Any leads from our faerie friends?¡± He asked, walking away from the ambush spot as the cleanup crew came to take care of the vampire corpse. While vampires were dangerous, they weren¡¯t all that stealthy. It was the infiltration of things from faerie ¨C and not just the fae themselves ¨C that worried him. The American Alliance claimed vast swaths of open land, and there was only so much that could be done to patrol them. Especially since they had very little mage support.

    ¡°They haven¡¯t noticed anything out of the ordinary, but you know how that is,¡± Lisa said. ¡°We haven¡¯t lost any of our people either, so if there is anyone or anything they¡¯re staying quiet.¡±

    Chester grunted. With all the extra work he was having to do, he almost missed GAR. Almost. With House Hargrave and House Taisen at least loosely aligned with the Alliance, he had pretty much restored everything that they¡¯d been lacking. There were just some things that mages were better suited for.

    ¡°Let¡¯s finish up here and head on back,¡± he said. ¡°Get some time to relax before the next crisis.¡±

    ***

    ¡°I¡¯m sorry,¡± Lucy said, rubbing her temples as she sorted through all the emails they were getting. ¡°This is my fault.¡±

    ¡°Wait, what?¡± Callum said, looking up from a giggling Alexander, whom he was entertaining with floating, hand-carved alphabet blocks.

    ¡°I was supposed to decide who we target or don¡¯t target. I should have realized that messing with the Department of Acquisitions would result in this mess.¡± Lucy wrinkled her nose and pushed away the laptop. Callum shook his head and stood up, crossing over to her.

    ¡°No, it¡¯s my fault. I didn¡¯t listen to you and I pushed ahead anyway.¡± He pulled her up and hugged her. ¡°I was just mad and focused on getting rid of Constance. I was supposed to listen to you when it came to these things, and I didn¡¯t and all this started happening. Next time, smack me good if I¡¯m fixated like that.¡±

    ¡°Well, so long you¡¯ve given me permission,¡± Lucy said, slightly more cheerful. She smacked his arm gently. ¡°Bad Callum.¡±

    ¡°Save that for the bedroom,¡± he murmured, and Lucy giggled.

    ¡°Anyway, that¡¯s all well and good but what do we do now?¡±

    ¡°I¡¯m not sure. It was always going to happen,¡± Callum said, keeping an eye on his son as he started to crawl across the hardwood floor after the blocks. ¡°Though I guess maybe we should have been more prepared.¡± He¡¯d managed to get some of the filing cabinets, which were full of records, but that hadn¡¯t seemed to make a difference. Or maybe it was for the best, considering that what they had learned was that the Department had practically abandoned any real enforcement.

    Callum was pretty sure they knew he and Lucy had access to the servers. There had been some desultory attempts at improving security, but Callum could always just give Lucy physical access to the server room so that hardly mattered. Instead they¡¯d reverted to using a lot of physical or verbal messages. Which seemed like a lot of work to Callum, but there was still plenty of activity on the servers. It was just the juiciest stuff that was hand-delivered.

    Not that it mattered, since there was plenty of stuff outside of GAR to worry about. The American Alliance was dealing with supernatural incursions where it could, and House Taisen was going after some of the worst offenders in other places, but it felt like gears were becoming unwound. There was no way they were catching everything, especially since Taisen had to split his personnel between Earth and the Portal Worlds.

    ¡°Which is one reason why I didn¡¯t want to do it! Next time I am going to make you listen to me.¡± She narrowed her eyes at him, and he lifted his hands, having already conceded the point. ¡°Anyway, I¡¯ve got a couple leads from the American Alliance that are worth looking at.¡±

    Callum made a face. He¡¯d had to do three raids on vampires and two on minor fae in the past few months, and while none of them had been particularly dangerous he was growing to dislike such things more and more. It had to be done, but every time he felt like the other shoe was about to drop. There didn¡¯t seem to be all that much that either type could do against his particular brand of magic, but there was no such thing as a perfect offense. He just didn¡¯t know what the countermeasure was going to be.

    ¡°Alright,¡± he said. ¡°We¡¯ll take a look at them in a little bit. After we put Alex down for a nap.¡±

    Sometimes he still found it surreal that he had a son. Though that went away when it came time to change Alex, something that was almost entirely Callum¡¯s job thanks to the telekinesis focus. While he¡¯d always known magic was fantastically useful, there were just so many little applications that he never considered before they came up.

    For good or ill, they actually couldn¡¯t find anything of substance to the rumors the Alliance had fed them. It could be just overzealous whispering, but it could also be that people were learning how to hide from his surveys. Combing through a city was nigh impossible without a specific address or neighborhood to start from, even with his range. Unless he found an actual vampire nest or witnessed a crime in progress, there were too many incidental supernaturals moving about to really localize anything suspicious.

    Occasionally he saw crime of the more mundane variety in the cities and took care of it as best he could. Teleporting people away, or pulling the bullets out of guns, or in one case relocating some poor bound and gagged woman out of the back of a shady van and into a police department. But he was all too aware that it was a patchwork job at best and there wasn¡¯t much he could do about the source of the problems. Fixing human nature was too big an issue for any kind of mage.

    Even when he did have obstacles that needed to be dealt with lethally, they didn¡¯t take up too much time. It was, in the end, a fairly simple thing. Most of his time, between parenting and working with his Guild of Enchanting contact, was spent trying to spin out new tricks or at least new foci.

    The best thing to come out of that experimentation was finally getting an enchantment for faux gravity. It wasn¡¯t nearly as optimized as the enchantments he¡¯d been cribbing, and there was still quite a bit of experimentation to do to make it more efficient, but it worked. Which was somewhat less valuable than it might have seemed at first, but still useful. Even if it turned out to have no real application, he was damned proud of it.

    ¡°Oh man, now I feel like a superhero,¡± Lucy said, hefting a big chunk of stone he¡¯d enchanted to experience a tenth of a gravity. ¡°Or maybe like I¡¯m on the moon,¡± she added, letting the stone drift down onto the grass in their back yard.

    ¡°You know, magic is still great,¡± Callum said, holding an Alexander who was wide-eyed at his mother¡¯s antics. Or maybe just in general. It was pretty easy to impress an infant, so far as he could tell. ¡°Though I wouldn¡¯t trust that enchantment with anything really large just yet.¡±

    ¡°Maybe not, but it¡¯s still fun,¡± Lucy said, watching the rock drift downward like an oddly-shaped inflatable. ¡°What are you planning to do with it though?¡±

    ¡°I¡¯ve got some ideas,¡± he said. ¡°How well they¡¯ll work is another matter.¡±

    The first thing he thought of was increasing the gravity in the pipe that fed his hydroelectric generator. That way he could increase the power generation or reduce the amount of pipe needed. In fact, he could use the hydroelectric generator to make energy even in space, for when they expanded the moon nexus. The same sort of enchantment could also make a gravity gun, accelerating anything inside the barrel at multiple gravities. A regular gun was probably more useful for most targets, but the gravity gun could work on anything and he could set up some kind of portal loop in the moon nexus if that ever felt like a good idea. Those were all long term plans, which required a more reliable enchantment and more infrastructure, but none of them were off the table.

    The best offensive use was to enchant giant slabs of stone. Since such enchantments didn¡¯t have a hope of directly affecting a supernatural, using it to send a target skyward at a rapid clip by using the ground underneath the enemy was a good bet. Or, alternately, crushing them with a two-ton rock under ten gravities.

    If you come across this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

    Admittedly, mages could probably deal with that, and other supernaturals were likely quick enough to get out of the way. But he was pretty sure that nobody would be expecting a rock that looked entirely mundane to suddenly start moving. Even if it was unlikely to kill anyone, it¡¯d be a great delaying tactic.

    Portals made it entirely possible to drill deep into solid rock without any specialized tools, or at least, more specialized than a rock drill to begin with. Once he had a hole bored into the center and a pocket hollowed out, he put in the enchantment with one of the crystal mana capacitors they still had. The whole thing was triggered through one of Lucy¡¯s remotes, and testing it launched the boulder way, way into the air. If he hadn¡¯t put a portal anchor inside it during the testing, it might well have continued all the way into space.

    Lucy added a timer so the enchantment would cut off far earlier, and started considering how to make it into something useful. A few random booby traps would be ineffective; they needed some kind of area denial or some way to funnel people if the enchantment was meant to discourage intruders. He didn¡¯t think the enchantments had enough force to kill them directly.

    They ended up laying down a net of small cables under the grass, and attached it to said boulder. Activated, it formed a large metal net that would go off into the sky. Not lethal, but more effective than a projectile. It wouldn¡¯t be clear what the purpose was once the grass mat grew back either, though he suspected any supernatural worth their salt would be able to see there was something there.

    Retooling the generator was much quicker and felt more useful. The tall pipe necessary for the proper pressure was awkward, so reducing that while keeping the same power made the entire apparatus look less ramshackle. He also made a small region out in the back yard with lower gravity just for the fun of it, because there wasn¡¯t any point in having magic if you couldn¡¯t enjoy it.

    ¡°You know, can we make a higher gravity training area?¡± Lucy wondered out loud, bouncing around the low-gravity field with Alexander. ¡°We could get Gayle to heal us up, right?¡±

    ¡°I¡¯m not sure that works in real life,¡± Callum laughed. ¡°But it¡¯s a good point that we need to do more exercise.¡±

    ¡°Boo, that¡¯s not what I meant at all!¡± Lucy complained. ¡°Isn¡¯t dealing with a kid exercise enough?¡±

    ¡°You¡¯d think, but I swear I¡¯m starting to get a spare tire,¡± Callum said, frowning down at himself.

    ¡°That¡¯s just your imagination,¡± Lucy said, sliding in closer and pinching his waist while Callum laughed and grabbed at her fingers.

    The gravity trick, however fun it was, didn¡¯t really contribute to his personal survival. The thing he really wanted to figure out was spatial shielding, but even asking judicious questions of the tutor didn¡¯t help with that. Everything with normal shields was bound up in the shell, and he wasn¡¯t any good with that. He was pretty sure the trick that shells allowed, effectively permanently fixing patterns inside it, didn¡¯t even apply to him.

    Wizzy¡¯s advice had been along the lines of using his magic to affect his body and defending that way, but that was easy to say for him. He controlled blood, and it was easy to imagine how that would make it difficult for someone to hurt the Archmage. For Callum, it was less obvious. The actual space his body occupied changed all the time, and even if he could introduce some kind of walking distortion, putting it under his skin would result in massive trauma.

    The best he could imagine was something that lay right on top of his skin, but he was leery of powerful magic so close. After yanking out his own tattoo and getting floored by his first, low-quality teleport he knew that he could hurt himself with his own power, but Wizzy seemed to think he ought to be immune to incidental magical effects. Which was probably why he was never bothered by his own teleports, though that didn¡¯t explain why his attempts at pseudogravity were so uncomfortable.

    Perhaps the Guild tutor could have cleared that up, but he was still too skeptical of the Guild of Enchanting to consult them about that sort of personal problem. He just had to experiment. What to experiment with, when it came to shielding, was something that he turned to Lucy and the internet in general for.

    It wasn¡¯t that he didn¡¯t have ideas, it was that he wanted completely outside perspectives. It was obvious that the normal mage approach wouldn¡¯t work, and while it wasn¡¯t like anyone else knew precisely how his magic would work, a lot of people had spent a lot of time thinking about what would happen if you could tie space in knots. Not just conceptually either; there was a lot of math and physics out there.

    He was pretty sure that Mictl¨¡n was a hyperbolic space, for example. Something which was sort of like an expanded space, but also not. For all that he was supposed to be good with spatial reasoning, stretching his brain to make non-Euclidean spaces and not just read about them was a bear.

    A brief test with the meat of his thumb showed that trying to turn his actual body into a non-Euclidean space was about as bad an idea as he thought, if not for the reasons that he had considered. It wasn¡¯t that suddenly occupying a space with odd distortions resulted in catastrophic damage, but that the exposed tissue suddenly had more space to occupy. There was some expansion into a vacuum, but also bits of tissue that shouldn¡¯t have been touching each other were, and that resulted in massive bruising.

    ¡°You know, it might be okay if it was a full body thing,¡± Callum mused to Lucy, looking at some models of higher-dimensional topology. ¡°The issue is the disjoint between normal space and weird space. Actual higher dimensions is probably a bad idea, but twisted space ought to be fine if it¡¯s not applying force.¡±

    ¡°I caught maybe one third of that,¡± Lucy said.

    ¡°Now you know how I feel when you talk about computer stuff,¡± Callum laughed. ¡°This is really annoying. If there was a way to harden space that¡¯d just be so much easier.¡±

    ¡°Isn¡¯t there?¡± Lucy asked. ¡°Couldn¡¯t you make it so, I don¡¯t know, extra stuff can¡¯t enter a space?¡± Callum pursed his lips at that, then shook his head.

    ¡°What I can mostly do is change the shape and location of space,¡± he said. ¡°There¡¯s also some weird esoteric properties that are, I guess, the dimension-ness of it. Like whether it¡¯s Earth or a portal world.¡± He made a vague gesture at the bit of empty air where his current spatial construct was hanging, even though it looked like nothing visually. ¡°I wish I could just will something to happen without understanding it and it¡¯d work, but that¡¯s not how it goes.¡±

    ¡°It just doesn¡¯t seem right that magic involves so much math and engineering,¡± Lucy agreed. ¡°Also, before you start doing anything on the scale of your whole body, we¡¯ll want to have Gayle there in case it goes bad. I know you¡¯re careful, but still!¡±

    ¡°Mm, you¡¯re right,¡± Callum agreed, less reluctantly than he might have before. While he didn¡¯t trust mages as a general rule, it was hard to hold anything against Gayle. Even if she¡¯d never taken the Hippocratic Oath, she definitely adhered to it. She was obviously less na?ve than when he¡¯d met her, but her attitude was the same. ¡°It¡¯s going to be a while, though. I¡¯m still trying to work through ideas.¡±

    ¡°Sure,¡± Lucy agreed. ¡°But hey, if we have a healing mage on retainer we¡¯d better make use of it.¡±

    ¡°Heh. Feels weird to actually have the money that we can do that.¡± The gold plates that supernaturals tended to use amongst themselves were supplemented by more valuable bane metal plates. Usually mordite, but sometimes corite, with gold being the lowest denomination and banic alloy being the highest. The emphasis on vampire bane-metal for many transactions was probably why he¡¯d not found any of it in the loot he¡¯d gotten from raiding nests. The pay that he¡¯d gotten from the Guild of Enchantment gave them a small cache of usable currency, instead of having to trade favors or rob the dead.

    ¡°Oh please, like Gayle would take your money,¡± Lucy said.

    ¡°Gayle wouldn¡¯t, but Glenda would,¡± Callum pointed out. ¡°I¡¯m pretty sure she doesn¡¯t like me.¡±

    ¡°She¡¯s a mom,¡± Lucy said, as if that explained everything. Which perhaps it did.

    The training exercises from the Guild of Enchanting actually came in handy, which Callum had not been expecting. While his portals and teleports were down to reflex actions, holding everything in place while he tried to twist space in ways that defied description required certain habits. It was akin to muscle memory rather than multitasking, some ability to hold things without directly focusing on them.

    He was pretty sure that he was going to need to make a focus for some of it, though. Other mages used the bubble, and a shield entrained with it, something that was completely unconscious and instinctual. He didn¡¯t do either of those things, so he had to figure out other methods.

    Considering how difficult it was to try and turn the Alcubierre effect into an enchantment, he wasn¡¯t looking forward to the long hours it¡¯d take to make anything as complicated as a shield into a focus. Especially when he had so many distractions, with Alexander and Lucy and even working in the garden. It was to the point he even got the feeling that the Guild of Enchanting contact was a little put out that he¡¯d pulled back on the spatial enchantments he¡¯d been doing for them, even if it wasn¡¯t that much of a reduction.

    Every once in a while he marveled at how life in the bunker had become his new normal. Instead of drawing up building plans and researching properties, he was creating magical items and making space itself do tricks. Not to mention having a wife and child.

    What he wished was that there was some way to avoid the spates of supernatural violence. He¡¯d set himself on that path and didn¡¯t regret it, but it was tiresome having to constantly plan for combat. Yet so long as there were supernaturals preying on humans, he would have to do something about it.

    ***

    Teller Janry was not particularly enamored of his new job. It might not have been so bad if he¡¯d gotten it immediately after it was previously vacated, but he was stepping in as the head of the Department of Acquisition nearly a year after Constance¡¯s death, with months of mismanagement by a number of different candidates. It was, frankly, a mess, both inside and out. Part of that was his own fault for not stepping in earlier, but the wisdom at the time was to let someone else suffer the blame for the inevitable consequences.

    ¡°More paperwork,¡± his nephew Coran said, dropping a stack onto the brand new desk. Teller grunted. They were still finding things that dated back to before Constance¡¯s assassination, and not even all of it was strictly Acquisitions related. The attempts to centralize GAR had been massively set back by her death, especially with the endless bickering between the remaining department heads and those Houses that were not part of the realignment of GAR interests.

    ¡°Anything on our mutual friends?¡± Teller asked. The most pressing urgency was less GAR itself ¨C after all, it wasn¡¯t like the organization was going anywhere ¨C than the price that his House¡¯s fae associates had demanded for their help. For all that they lived as long as mages, or possibly even longer, they were damned impatient when it came to calling in debts.

    ¡°We¡¯re still looking. There¡¯s a note that Constance had found Miss Black before she was removed, but nobody stored the paperwork in her office properly. Whatever paperwork that survived, anyway.¡±

    ¡°Well, keep looking,¡± Teller sighed. ¡°I¡¯ve more meetings to attend.¡±

    ¡°Better you than me,¡± Coran muttered, and trooped out again to return to the archives for the Department of Acquisitions. Even fae magic could only help so much when huge chunks of it were not even labeled properly, let alone ordered or organized.

    Teller frowned around at the office room, which had been repaired and reinforced with the best they could think of to block off Wells. Despite the refurbishment and the fact that everything was being brought in only when necessary, it was already starting to show signs of disorganization. It hadn¡¯t helped that Constance¡¯s collection of fae artifacts had made any documentation that might have been at her own apartment unavailable. Either destroyed, or hidden away somewhere impossible to find. Even if the lesser Courts of Faerie were nominal allies of House Janry, Teller found their magic damned inconvenient at times.

    He left and locked the door behind him, a complex focus linked to his mage¡¯s mark sealing the room and activating the defenses. Coran could leave anything he found in the delivery box outside the door. It might be overcautious, but Teller didn¡¯t want anyone but himself to have access to the office and the official seals and symbols therein. Not to mention the possibility of Wells making another appearance.

    The teleportation system was somewhat more cumbersome to use than it had been in the past with the new security in place. Not only did it require the old mage mark connection, but he had to wait for the link to be verified and then the teleportation pad itself had defenses activated to prevent interference. It was only after the switchboard operators had checked and doublechecked that everything was proper that the teleportation happened.

    Houses used portals now, so the wait time and, frankly, the danger that teleporters posed were beneath his station. By the time the magic clicked into place, Teller was tapping his foot impatiently, even though it wasn¡¯t the operators¡¯ fault. Finally the room changed around him and he could feel the rich mana of the Night Lands. Teller actually preferred the flavor of the mana in Faerie, though that was hardly surprising considering that was what he grew up on during his boyhood in House Janry.

    He showed his badge of office to the guards of the World Portal, and they nodded him through into Weltentor Castle. The Houses there still had direct teleports, but the increased security had restricted all other travel through the portal proper. Something he found amusing, considering how many supernaturals were bypassing the portals anyway of late.

    There were more vampires in Castle Weltentor than the last time he¡¯d visited, likely thanks to how much the Master of Weltentor¡¯s status had risen under the new Department of Acquisitions. Teller wasn¡¯t actually sure where all the vampires were coming from, but there were entire communities of them out there in the Night Lands, and apparently more than a few were eager to abandon the quiet darkness for the opportunities of Earth. Some of them ran afoul of the American Alliance, but they knew the risks of the territory.

    ¡°Director,¡± said the vampire attending the portal. Judging from his size and bulk and poor accent he was relatively new, but at least had attained enough merit to be trusted. ¡°The Master is ready for you.¡± Teller nodded and followed the vamp out of the portal room and up to the next floor of the castle, then finally to a study that looked out onto the glowing lights of Weltentor Landing. The Master was standing there at the window, but when Teller entered he turned around with the exaggerated grace of supernaturals who could move faster than any human.

    ¡°Welcome,¡± the Master intoned. ¡°I understand that you have an offer from certain of the fae courts,¡± he added, moving straight onto business. Which was interesting, because he wasn¡¯t supposed to have been told that much. Someone would get in trouble for leaking it, but Teller didn¡¯t much care since it made his job easier.

    ¡°Indeed.¡± Teller waited for the Master to be seated, then joined him as the vampire poured some kind of wine into two glasses. Frankly, he was pretty sure the Master had been watching too much mundane media, with their strange ideas of vampires. His manner of dress was uncharacteristically ornate. ¡°With the changes to GAR and the new threats that have appeared, it has become obvious that we need more supernaturals around to keep things under control.¡±

    The Master nodded but didn¡¯t speak, sipping the wine and regarding Teller. He surely knew how many vampires had ended up dead trying to jostle the shoulders of the American Alliance, or had attracted the attentions of House Taisen. How much he cared about them, Teller wasn¡¯t sure, since they were freshly taken in by the Master and not tutored for years.

    ¡°Some of the fae have expressed an interest in joining with vampire nests and establishing a sort of joint enclave, combining magics and strengths,¡± Teller said, withdrawing a formal scroll from inside his vest. He placed it on the table between them. ¡°Matters on Earth have been allowed to slip from our control for far too long. At this point, Earth is almost a liability. It¡¯s time to make it useful once again.¡±

    ¡°On that, I can certainly agree,¡± the Master said, reaching over and picking up the scroll. ¡°I will give this offer all due consideration and get an answer to you soon.¡±

 Chapter 13 â€“ Trap

    ¡°Well, this is weird as heck,¡± Lucy said, squinting at her phone. Callum had no idea how it was comfortable for her to sprawl across the couch at that angle, let alone read on her smartphone while half upside-down. If he tried that he¡¯d have a headache in about a minute.

    ¡°You can¡¯t just leave it there,¡± Callum said, not looking up from where he was trying to feed Alexander. Mage baby or not, he was still as fussy and messy as any child that age. ¡°Considering our line of work, if something¡¯s weird it¡¯s weird.¡±

    ¡°No kidding!¡± Lucy agreed. ¡°One of the packs out near California had a run-in with a vampire that turned into bats and flew away.¡±

    ¡°Um.¡± Callum blinked. ¡°Vampires can¡¯t do that though, can they?¡±

    ¡°Nope.¡± Lucy said. ¡°That¡¯s just mythology. So what the heck?¡±

    ¡°Maybe it was some kind of glamour or illusion? I don¡¯t know why they¡¯d go with something that involved, though,¡± Callum said, wiping off Alexander¡¯s chin. ¡°Unless ¡ª you know, that would kind of make sense for a fae, right?¡±

    ¡°I guess, but why would they be masquerading as a vamp?¡± Lucy rolled off the couch and onto her feet. ¡°I mean, okay, I guess that¡¯s an option for fae, but why would they bother? I dunno, maybe they¡¯re making up something to cover why they let a vamp get away.¡±

    ¡°That¡¯s possible,¡± Callum agreed. He didn¡¯t believe shifters were very far different from ordinary humans when it came to that sort of thing. For that matter, he would bet there was the same impulse to shirk and deflect in vampires and fae, so someone inventing a wild tale wasn¡¯t out of the question. The question would be why, since if they needed help with a vampire nest they only needed to supply The Ghost with certain details.

    ¡°I think we¡¯ll have to look into it anyway. Vamps are bad news no matter what and if they¡¯re teaming up with other supernaturals¡­¡± Callum trailed off and shook his head.

    ¡°I mean, they¡¯ve teamed up with other supernaturals for forever,¡± Lucy pointed out. ¡°That¡¯s what GAR is anyway, right?¡±

    ¡°Point,¡± Callum admitted. ¡°But this feels different. Enchantments are pretty damn limited if you¡¯re not a mage, but fae magic can do more if you can get ahold of it, right?¡±

    ¡°I know some people use fae artifacts for stuff, but I don¡¯t know how well they affect mages as such. Some of the things they do are just weird. Like with how they protected the Connors.¡± Lucy shrugged and Callum nodded. He still wasn¡¯t sure how the fae king had managed to affect the whole of GAR; that was some world-changing power. But then again, the Connors were inside Ferrochar¡¯s land and he¡¯d already seen that fae kings had serious power there.

    He didn¡¯t like the idea of what fae-empowered vampires might be able to do.

    ¡°Right, well, where are we going to be looking for this storybook vampire?¡± He asked.

    ¡°You¡¯re gonna laugh,¡± Lucy warned.

    ¡°Lay it on me.¡±

    ¡°Tijuana,¡± she said. He laughed.

    ¡°Okay, that is pretty funny,¡± Callum admitted. ¡°Hard-partying vampire fae.¡±

    ¡°They may not even need their glamours,¡± Lucy agreed. ¡°Makes me wonder what the shifter pack was doing out that way, but I guess they¡¯re not one of Chester¡¯s so whatever.¡± She waved it away. ¡°There¡¯s probably vampires in all the west coast cities but if we¡¯re looking for fae you should be able to find them, right?¡±

    ¡°Maybe,¡± Callum said. ¡°I mean, the enclaves are kind of obvious but if it¡¯s over the whole city it might well be the same problem as hunting vampires in general. I don¡¯t suppose they¡¯ve got any more precise a location than a huge city.¡±

    ¡°Not so much. Here, check the email,¡± Lucy said, holding out her phone. Callum took it with telekinesis and looked over the message. What Lucy hadn¡¯t mentioned was how careful the wording was in the email to the Ghost, as if the author was afraid he was going to offend Callum by being disrespectful. Verbal circumlocutions aside, the meat of the message was clear enough.

    The Sonora pack, as they called themselves, were trying to push over to Baja California, and in doing so they¡¯d stopped by Tijuana. The sighting in question was on the outskirts of the city, and reading between the lines someone had stumbled across a vampire trail and tracked it down to start a fight. Which seemed a poor decision from his point of view, because it was the vamps¡¯ home turf and they¡¯d have all the advantages. Regardless of how questionable the choices had been, it¡¯d still led to the sighting.

    Once they put Alexander down for a nap they headed down to the war room to start moving a drone in that direction. Given his slowly increasing finesse with the Alcubierre magic, it really didn¡¯t take more than an hour or so to get a remote into the area. He¡¯d never been to the area in his prior life as an architectural consultant, and looking at the video feed from the air he didn¡¯t think he¡¯d been missing much. His mental picture of a Mexican town was shaped by westerns and historical studies, but Tijuana was just another boring modern city.

    He had to get surprisingly close to get a hint of the fae enclave. The subtlety of it reminded him of the fae he¡¯d tracked down over in India, though he knew that didn¡¯t mean they were directly connected. Still, he suspected. The enclaves in Florida and Colorado and even in Paris were all fairly obvious, almost flaunting their existence. They weren¡¯t trying to hide, at least not from other supernaturals.

    The Tijuana enclave was definitely trying to be circumspect. Callum wouldn¡¯t have been surprised if they were completely off the books, hiding even from GAR. Though considering GAR¡¯s diminished capacity, he wondered if there was a point to that. Admittedly, they were definitely enforcing their rules within GAR, and a lone enclave was probably easier to make an example of than either Callum or the American Alliance.

    ¡°You think maybe we should capture someone to explain what¡¯s going on here?¡± Callum wondered aloud.

    ¡°I mean, that¡¯d be awesome, but do you think you can?¡± Lucy asked.

    ¡°No, I don¡¯t.¡± Callum sighed. ¡°Taisen has a bunch of stuff for imprisoning supernaturals and it all looks really specialized, and he still backs it up with guards. I guess I could try tossing someone in an enclose cave; a vampire isn¡¯t going to be able to get out of that, even if they can turn into bats. But only if there¡¯s an opportunity.¡±

    ¡°Sure,¡± Lucy agreed. ¡°Safety first. Also, finding them first.¡±

    ¡°Yeah,¡± Callum agreed. ¡°Might be a while.¡± The enclave was spread out over a huge area, spilling over the border into California, and he had doubts that he¡¯d find his target at the exact center. If they were trying to be subtle they¡¯d avoid that issue exactly because it was so obvious.

    In a normal fae enclave he would have used the wooden ball, but Tijuana was full of the usual hustle and bustle of a city. It was busy enough that the drone wouldn¡¯t stand out, and besides which there was already mage activity there to mask anything he did. It wasn¡¯t a full network like in Miami but it was clear that the fae-vamps weren¡¯t the only game in town.

    ¡°Or maybe,¡± he said, musing to Lucy. ¡°Maybe there¡¯s already a fae presence here and the vamp types are hiding in it.¡±

    ¡°Eh, let me doublecheck, but I don¡¯t think GAR has one registered there.¡± She took a moment off from working the cameras to dig through her database connection. Despite the clear move away from using the electronics from GAR, they hadn¡¯t yet found Lucy¡¯s tap nor had they purged the extant databases. Callum figured that was because most of what was in those databases was harmless and useless, except for GAR¡¯s internal bureaucracy. Especially the parts that collected money.

    While she was busy, Callum poked around the city, finding a few neighborhoods where there were mages about but no GAR office as such. Either the teleporter was like the hidden ones he¡¯d seen, a single pad for discreet use, or the office had gotten shut down when GAR had to scale back. He didn¡¯t see any shifters, which made sense, but he did run across traces of something that he was pretty sure was a dragonblooded.

    So far the only one of those he¡¯d met was Shahey, but he knew that there were others, if not many. For better or for worse he couldn¡¯t find an actual dragonblooded, just traces of magic that looked like theirs. It certainly didn¡¯t look like fae or human.

    ¡°Okay there¡¯s a lot of entries for Tijuana,¡± Lucy said, sounding surprised. ¡°More than I thought. But not a fae king or anything. Have an address for a vampire nest but I bet it¡¯s outdated.¡±

    ¡°Might as well start there,¡± Callum said, and Lucy navigated the drone to the block in question. As expected, there weren¡¯t any supernaturals there, but there were remnants of wards in the walls where someone had missed stripping out all of the enchantment metal, resources he promptly took for himself. If nothing else, a normal private detective could probably find out who had rented it and where they¡¯d gone ¡ª assuming that the vampires hadn¡¯t just brainwashed someone and hijacked the building.

    He started spiraling outward from the old address, something that took a lot of time and was the reason why he didn¡¯t just skim over every city that crossed his path. Despite the scale of his perceptions there was just so much that he¡¯d be doing it every waking hour if he expected to get anywhere. Lucy left to go check on Alex, and Callum followed to help after a moment since he didn¡¯t actually need to be in the war room.

    It was lunch by the time something supernatural crossed his senses, and he paused in the middle of assembling his sandwich. Lucy was scowling at him because he was adding pickles, and for some reason she thought pickles on a sandwich was a travesty. When he stopped she actually brightened for a moment before he shook his head at her.

    ¡°Got something,¡± he said, finishing the sandwich and taking a bite. Lucy made a face at the crunch the pickle made. ¡°We¡¯ll see if it goes anywhere,¡± he added, after he chewed and swallowed.

    ¡°If it does, at least wait until Alex is finished,¡± Lucy said, bouncing their son before settling him in the high chair to feed him. By now he¡¯d been up for a few hours while Callum had worked. They¡¯d had to work their hours around his. ¡°Your father has very weird food tastes,¡± she added, speaking directly to Alex. ¡°You¡¯d better not have inherited those.¡±

    ¡°What¡¯s wrong with pickles?¡± Callum asked in exasperation.

    ¡°What isn¡¯t wrong with pickles?¡± Lucy answered, sticking her tongue out. Alexander giggled. Callum rolled his eyes and kept teleporting the drone in pursuit of the speedster, who was actually flying. It had a small pair of butterfly wings keeping it impossibly aloft, though considering it was only three feet tall to begin with it wasn¡¯t as silly as it might have been.

    It wasn¡¯t quite as straightforward as leading Callum right to the vampires, but the winged fae seemed to be some kind of messenger. It went from group to group of supernaturals, something that Callum considered to be rather indiscreet, but after the third stop he was more than happy to just follow it around. Even if it didn¡¯t bring him directly to what he was searching for, it gave him a short list of supernatural concentrations.

    The tracking paid off at the ninth stop, where there were a number of supernaturals resting in interior bedrooms. It only took a moment of study to determine they were vampires, given how familiar Callum was with their vis and their general physical proportions. The question was whether any of them were actually fae, or if some aspect of fae magic had altered normal vampires. Just because he¡¯d found a nest didn¡¯t mean he¡¯d located the source of what had been reported.

    ¡°Right, marking this one,¡± Callum said, and left a drone there while he continued following the messenger with one of the others. Part of him was surprised that the drone hadn¡¯t been noticed, though given that he was teleporting it from rooftop to rooftop several hundred feet away from the little flying faerie it would be difficult to tell even with super-senses. Whoever was in charge of the enclave probably realized there was magic about, but relative to all the residue kicked up by mage bubbles and whatever active spells were going on, his teleports were barely there.

    ¡°You think there¡¯s more than one?¡± Lucy asked, taking down notes while Alexander played with blocks. ¡°I mean, generally different nests don¡¯t play well together.¡±

    ¡°Yeah, but if there¡¯s fae involved who knows how many rules are being broken,¡± Callum said. ¡°Just want to see if there¡¯s anything else obviously off.¡± He rubbed at his face. It was entirely possible that the vampire nest were not the only ones who needed to be dealt with, but sorting out normal innocent supernaturals living their lives from those who were preying on people was difficult enough. Some of them might well be part of mundane crime to begin with, and that was a knot he didn¡¯t even know how to start untangling.

    Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

    The little fae seemed to have finished its route a few stops later, and while Callum was suspicious of pretty much every set of supernaturals that the messenger had visited, none of them had been doing anything obviously terrible. Not even the vampires, though Callum simply marked that down to them being inactive during the day.

    If he was being fair, most supernaturals didn¡¯t seem to be particularly evil. Vampires fed on people, and so were monsters absolutely, but it seemed to be the minority of fae who decided to go the monster route. Most of them wanted to be minor pranksters or fairy godparents or whatever harmless role they were acting out. There were probably some nasty shifter packs outside the American Alliance, but Chester had stomped on things pretty firmly, so there was less to worry about on that score. Despite knowing that, he still felt like any supernatural he ran across might be doing something terrible just out of sight.

    Lacking any actual evidence, however, he returned his attention to the vampire nest. There were fifteen vampires, which was actually on the large side for a nest so far as he¡¯d found, but if one of them was actually a fae he couldn¡¯t tell the difference. Not with them inactive and with the lake of fae mana that every enclave had muddying the metaphorical waters. He would bet that the vampire disguise wouldn¡¯t extend to mordite vulnerability though, so if one was unusually resistant to his bullets, that would mark them.

    ¡°Okay, let¡¯s go downstairs so I can check the weapons and get this done.¡± Barring actual emergencies, he wasn¡¯t going to perform any carnage anywhere but the war room, which was meant for that kind of thing. He had to separate the activities of the Ghost from his normal life or he¡¯d go crazy.

    ¡°I¡¯ll hang around outside,¡± Lucy said, picking up Alexander. ¡°It isn¡¯t naptime for a while.¡±

    Callum nodded. There wouldn¡¯t be anything to see, since the drone with its cameras would be parked a hundred yards away or more from the building, but neither of them felt it was appropriate to bring Alex into the war room. Hopefully by the time he was older and trying to get into places of his own accord, the war room wouldn¡¯t be needed.

    They trooped down the stairs and Callum stepped into the war room. By now it looked like some sort of CEO¡¯s meeting room, with one wall covered in monitors and another with the magical tile arrays that Lucy had put together. There were two desks with peripherals, and the servers that powered all the electronics hummed in the corner, plus a closet with some emergency supplies of one sort and a refrigerator with emergency supplies of another.

    He put the glass he¡¯d carried with him on the desk while he started checking over the shotguns. He cleaned them after every use, and with the cave mostly covered in concrete there wasn¡¯t that much moisture, but it was better to make sure they were functional first. He made sure they cycled properly with Lucy¡¯s homebrew remotes, replaced the batteries in one, then opened a few small portals to load them up and focused on the building.

    As usual there were wards, but at this point he barely noticed anything that wasn¡¯t a full jammer defense. It probably was unlikely that there¡¯d be wards at the same fidelity as his threads any time soon, both because nobody else operated at that scale and because threads that thin were so fragile. In the absence an active mage, the building was pretty much defenseless. The thralls definitely didn¡¯t have any chance in stopping him.

    ¡°Right, starting,¡± he said absently, focusing on stretching out his vis threads and forming the portals. As usual he went with four at a time, so as to not overstrain his ability to multitask just in case something unexpected came up. The portals snapped open, he pressed the remote and the shotguns triggered, and then everything went sideways.

    The wards that he¡¯d bypassed so easily flared, seemingly tripped by the formation of the portals. Instead of trying to throw up a shield or trigging an alarm, it sent out a huge magical pulse that he¡¯d never seen before. He barely had time to parse that when the pulse latched on to his vis threads, racing up through his connections, through the nexus, and into him.

    Fireworks exploded behind his eyes.

    ***

    Lucy leaned against the door jamb, making faces at Alex even though she should probably be letting him play with something more substantive. She just felt like she needed to hold onto him at the moment, reassuring herself while Callum was dealing with more horrible vampires. When she had been in GAR she¡¯d merely disliked them, but being confronted by what they were doing, constantly, she had gotten closer to Callum¡¯s visceral murderous reaction.

    She was still glad she wasn¡¯t doing it herself. Shooting guns was exciting and working on the automatic firing mechanisms had been fun, but there was a big huge gap between that and actually using them. Seeing how Callum¡¯s face went cold and hard when he had to deal with monsters, she didn¡¯t want to.

    Even so she wasn¡¯t going to leave him alone to deal with it on his own. Her worries in that direction were vague and unarticulated, but she didn¡¯t want the man she married to change. She was his conscience and his sense of fun, and after the massive mistake with Constance it was even more clear that he needed her for both things. So she stayed.

    Suddenly he made a garbled noise and she glanced in to see him toppling out of his chair. Panic seized her chest and she just stared for a moment, before Alex made a cry of displeasure at her holding him too tightly. Then she caught up to herself and rushed over, grabbing at him and trying to hold him steady as he slumped down onto the floor.

    ¡°Callum? Callum!¡± The only response was a shallow and gurgling wheeze of breath. Drops of blood oozed out from beneath his eyelids and Lucy nearly screamed. Alexander started crying and she held him with one hand as she fumbled for her phone with the other, nearly dropping it before she managed to punch the three-digit panic code that would alert both Gayle and Chester.

    There wasn¡¯t time to try and calm Alex. She just held onto him the best she could while trying to drag Callum out to the teleport pad. While he wasn¡¯t actually a big man and she had been exercising at his insistence, his limp body was still astoundingly heavy.

    ¡°Come on, come on!¡± She repeated, uselessly and nonsensically as she hauled on his arm, sliding him across the rug with a strength borne of adrenaline. Her world narrowed to the distance between the office door and the teleport, which was suddenly way too far. She grunted and cursed and promised she would hit the gym harder, digging in her heels and pulling. The seconds passed like years, but after another few tugs she got him onto the teleport pad. Then she slapped the button labeled Chester¡¯s.

    They had tested the link thoroughly, because there was no point in having an escape route that didn¡¯t work. Still, it was mechanically activated rather than electronic and the long moment between button-press and action nearly had her crying. The electric motor whirred and then suddenly they were elsewhere. If anyone other than Callum had made the teleports it wouldn¡¯t have worked, not with a mage¡¯s natural resistance to teleports, and they¡¯d have to change to portals when Alex got bigger, but she was really glad that it worked this time.

    There were already a pair of shifters waiting when they appeared on the pad, credit to Chester¡¯s people, both of them in war-form and armed to the teeth. Even as an eight-foot wolf-person, Lucy recognized Jenna, who was also a licensed nurse, as she jumped forward to pick up Callum.

    ¡°What happened?¡± The other shifter asked over Alex¡¯s crying, someone Lucy didn¡¯t know offhand, but she answered anyway.

    ¡°He was taking care of some vampires and just collapsed!¡± Lucy bounced Alex and made soothing noises, trying to get him to calm down. ¡°There might have been some fae around but nothing powerful so I don¡¯t know what it might have been.¡±

    Jenna put Callum on the couch and cocked her ears, studying him, before going to the closet with blurred speed and pulling out an oxygen kit. The valve hissed as she slapped it over his face. Then she went to dig out more medical supplies from the closet.

    ¡°Where¡¯s Gayle?¡± Lucy asked. She knew it was unreasonable, but her husband was dying. Even with teleports people moved only so quickly, but she wasn¡¯t willing to wait. Even though she knew the only reason the shifters were there was that they did move at superhuman speed. Then she saw Jenna¡¯s expression, and took a breath to try to steady herself. ¡°I mean to say, how is he?¡±

    ¡°Bad,¡± Jenna said bluntly. ¡°Full hospital wouldn¡¯t do much for long.¡± Lucy winced, feeling like someone had stuck a knife in her heart, but that was how shifters worked. They wouldn¡¯t sugar-coat something so important.

    ¡°Maybe like that rot thing Ravaeb did?¡± Lucy hazarded. ¡°Dammit, we can¡¯t deal with fae at all can we?¡±

    ¡°I don¡¯t smell any fae magic on him,¡± Jenna said. Lucy frowned but before she could reply she felt the other teleporter turn on. While she still couldn¡¯t see magic as such, she could feel it going on nearby, and she turned to see Gayle blink into existence on the pad, along with someone she didn¡¯t recognize. He was an older mage, severe looking, and while he looked vaguely familiar she couldn¡¯t place him.

    ¡°What?¡ª¡± Gayle started to say, then saw Callum on the couch and rushed over to him. Her chaperone followed at a more leisurely pace, eyes flicking over the room in a way that raised Lucy¡¯s hackles. She stepped back toward the other shifter guard, almost bumping into him, holding Alexander protectively. But the mage stopped in the middle of the room and glanced Lucy¡¯s way.

    ¡°What happened?¡± He inquired.

    ¡°I don¡¯t know,¡± Lucy said, after a moment of silence. ¡°He was just taking care of some vampires and fell over.¡±

    ¡°It¡¯s negative healing,¡± Gayle said, one hand on Callum¡¯s forehead and the other on his chest. ¡°Honestly not much of it, but it doesn¡¯t take much.¡±

    ¡°But how? He said there wasn¡¯t even a mage there.¡± Lucy said with a frown. They still hadn¡¯t told everyone of the exact nature of Callum¡¯s senses, but by this point most people had figured out the general idea. Which might mean that someone had figured out how to dodge Callum¡¯s senses, but it didn¡¯t seem likely to her. Even if they had, targeting him was not easy.

    ¡°I don¡¯t know,¡± Gayle said crossly, doing whatever it was that healing mages did.

    ¡°There were programs in place to create defenses against him when I left GAR,¡± the other mage said. ¡°But they hadn¡¯t amounted to anything at that point.¡±

    ¡°Who are you, anyway?¡± Lucy asked, knowing she was being a little rude but not really caring much. The man raised his eyebrows at her and then turned to face her fully and gave her an odd little bow, like someone who was raised in one of the classical mage Houses.

    ¡°Archmage Taisen, at your service, Mrs. Wells,¡± he said.

    ¡°Oh.¡± Lucy said. Alex protested as she squeezed him a little tighter. It was no wonder that his presence made her feel weird, and no wonder he looked familiar. Callum had worked with Taisen a bit, so she should have remembered who he was, but Lucy still associated him with her captivity at the BSE compound.

    ¡°At ease,¡± Taisen said. ¡°I am here to safeguard Ms. Hargrave ¡ª and because I well know how slippery Mister Wells is. If he has run into something he can¡¯t handle, it¡¯s something I need to worry about, too.¡±

    ¡°Ah.¡± She knew that made sense, but it was hard to focus, instead looking over to where Gayle was doing whatever healer mages did. Jenna stood there, holding a box of wipes and syringes and bandages, but wasn¡¯t using any of them while Gayle was at work. ¡°How is he?¡±

    ¡°He¡¯ll be okay, Lucy,¡± Gayle said with a reassuring smile, and Lucy almost slumped to the floor with relief. It was like a massive weight had suddenly lifted from her chest. ¡°Lucky you got him here so fast. It wasn¡¯t very targeted negative healing, but that just means that there was damage everywhere.¡± She glanced up at Jenna. ¡°If you have a saline drip that will actually help.¡±

    Jenna nodded and moved to pull more stuff out of the closet, which was apparently a lot better stocked than Lucy had imagined, but Lucy still felt uneasy. Not that she¡¯d seen any major healings but she thought it was supposed to be fast and didn¡¯t require any outside help. She didn¡¯t really suspect Gayle of anything but that didn¡¯t mean she liked it. Taisen noticed.

    ¡°Gayle has been using a slightly different approach to reduce long term consequences of substantial healing,¡± Taisen informed her. Gayle glanced back at them and caught Lucy¡¯s eye, nodded, and then turned back to Callum. ¡°A shock heal can result in vis weakness for some time, depending on how badly off the person is.¡±

    ¡°Oh, okay,¡± Lucy said, glad there was some real explanation. She shifted Alex slightly and wrinkled her nose. ¡°How long is it going to be until he wakes up?¡±

    ¡°Another ten minutes at least,¡± Gayle replied. ¡°I want to clear the blood out of his lungs first, and make sure there¡¯s no neural bruising.¡± Lucy shuddered.

    ¡°Yes, please,¡± she said, and turned her attention back to Alex, who was still unhappy. Not that she blamed him. She wasn¡¯t happy either, but at the same time, extremely glad about all the precautions they¡¯d put in place. At the time she¡¯d just thought it would be for Alex, since young children had mysterious health problems all the time, but if they hadn¡¯t made sure that everyone could use it under every circumstance, her husband might well be dead.

    She watched Gayle fuss over Callum for a few minutes, rocking Alex and making soothing noises until he stopped crying. Part of her was actually glad to have something to focus on, rather than just staring at Callum¡¯s body on the couch. Even if he was supposedly fine, there was still blood dribbling out of his nose and eyes and ears, most of it already starting to dry, and while his breathing was getting steadily better it had sounded too shallow and liquid for far too long.

    The other shifter, whose name Lucy still didn¡¯t know, vanished out of the room and returned with a baby bag full of supplies. She gave him a grateful look and dug out some toys while she kept half her attention on the couch. Jenna opened some disinfectant wipes to get rid of the blood on Callum¡¯s face, though the clothes were going to need more attention when they got home.

    She found her brain hiccupping back and forth between stupid petty details like that, the fact that Callum had almost died, and the fact that he hadn¡¯t died. Lucy hated how scattered she was, since that was the exact opposite of how she wanted to behave in an emergency. Though she supposed the emergency was over, but still, the adrenaline crash left her feeling awful.

    ¡°Going to bring him around,¡± Gayle called, removing the saline drip, and the two shifters backed away from the couch even as Lucy hurried over. After a beat, Taisen joined the shifters at a reasonable distance, so it was just Gayle, Lucy, and Alex. The healer mage tapped Callum¡¯s forehead and his eyes snapped open. She felt the familiar sensation of his magic wrapping around her and she was half surprised he didn¡¯t immediately teleport them away. Instead he glanced over the room and reached out to take Lucy¡¯s hand as he shifted himself upright.

    ¡°I imagine I need to thank you for your services, Gayle,¡± he said. He was in full Ghost mode, to judge from the non-expression on his face. ¡°That was not pleasant.¡±

    ¡°I imagine not!¡± Gayle said. ¡°You got hit by an unstructured blast of negative healing somehow.¡±

    ¡°Ah.¡± He grimaced. ¡°There was a booby trap in the vampire nest. I got past their wards just fine but they seemed to have been tuned to detect spatial magic. Or just human magic in general; there weren¡¯t any mages in the building.¡± His eyes flicked to Taisen. ¡°It seemed to be a combined fae-vampire effort, but that part was human enchantment. It went off, latched onto my vis, and you know the rest.¡±

    ¡°Understood,¡± Taisen said grimly. ¡°If that becomes common, we are going to have serious issues.¡±

    ¡°Wouldn¡¯t that just kill whoever¡¯s inside the building?¡± Gayle wondered aloud.

    ¡°I don¡¯t know,¡± Callum said, even if the question wasn¡¯t really directed at him. ¡°That level of enchanting is beyond my expertise.¡±

    ¡°Wait, if it¡¯s negative healing enchantment, doesn¡¯t that mean they have negative healing people making it?¡± Lucy said. ¡°There aren¡¯t all that many of those around.¡±

    ¡°I¡¯m not sure my house has been tracking all of House Fane¡¯s former assets, but even if they supplied their services to the Guild of Enchanting, that doesn¡¯t change the problem.¡± Taisen sighed. ¡°I¡¯ll speak with the GOE but there¡¯s no telling how many of these are out there already.¡±

    ¡°In the meantime, we¡¯re not going to be doing any more vigilante work,¡± Lucy said, ready to insist on it. ¡°We can¡¯t have something like this happen again. It might be worse next time.¡±

    ¡°No, I agree,¡± Callum said. ¡°We need a different approach.¡±

 Chapter 14 â€“ Goals

    Magical healing was strange. Callum thoroughly appreciated it, considering how close he had been to death, but it felt almost too easy. It turned a serious mistake and crippling injury into an ephemeral dream, and voided the weight of what had happened. Callum was still taking it to heart, the discomfort at not being discomforted enough to make him restless.

    ¡°We have to finish the job,¡± he said, glancing at the clock in the room at Chester¡¯s compound. Gayle and Taisen hadn¡¯t left yet, but they were being entertained by Chester at the main house. ¡°I know we said no more vigilante work, but if we let on that this is enough to stop me it¡¯s going to have nasty consequences.¡±

    ¡°Only if you can do it safely,¡± Lucy said. ¡°Can you?¡±

    ¡°There¡¯s a reason we got another antimaterial rifle,¡± Callum said darkly, reaching through the gut-portal to check on the status of said weapon. A quick teleport loaded it, and he was ready to use it. ¡°It¡¯s not as good as my usual approach but with those thin walls? I can go right through.¡±

    ¡°Well, we¡¯re staying here until you¡¯re done just in case,¡± Lucy said. Callum nodded agreement. There was no need to put his vis anywhere near the building. His perceptions worked just fine to aim the rifle and shoot some fifty-caliber bane bullets through the walls. He didn¡¯t have many of those, but they were absolutely lethal.

    Unfortunately, some vampires had left while he was incapacitated, but not all of them. There were still four left, and a moment¡¯s work with Lucy¡¯s remote was all he needed to put a high-caliber bullet through each one. Then he switched to cheaper ammunition and hammered the hell out of the booby-trapped ward box. He didn¡¯t trust that the box was the sole source of the issue though, so he swept his perceptions over the building to find any trace of enchantment and shot what he found.

    The buildings hadn¡¯t been warded against something like the rifle, which was fortunate, but he expected next time someone would think of that. He knew mages could make bulletproof shields, even if he imagined doing that for something the size of a building was prohibitive.

    Once he was certain there were no more active enchantments, he reached in and teleported out the remains of the ward box. It appeared in front of him, full of holes and broken in several places from the impacts. Whatever part of it had held the booby trap enchantment was unrecognizable, at least to his eyes.

    ¡°You really did a number on that,¡± Lucy said, eyeing it warily.

    ¡°Yeah, I guess I might as well hand it off to Taisen before we go home. Maybe he¡¯ll figure out something useful but I think I¡¯m going to have to move past being a vigilante. Figure out some way to solve the whole thing.¡±

    ¡°Fixing the vampire problem¡¯s a big ticket item,¡± Lucy said. ¡°I dunno how to even start.¡± She sighed and bounced Alex a bit. ¡°Has to be something that doesn¡¯t wind up like this, though.¡±

    ¡°Yeah,¡± Callum said, standing up. He still felt odd that he didn¡¯t feel bad. ¡°Come on, let¡¯s go deliver this and then go home.¡±

    Despite his words, it was some time before they escaped back to their house, leaving the ruined ward box with Taisen ¨C along with the location of the building. Ironically, Callum¡¯s attack wasn¡¯t even something he needed to worry about cleaning up. Bullet holes were perfectly explainable. But finally they returned and had time to actually relax.

    ¡°There¡¯s a few things to deal with,¡± Callum said later, when Alex was napping and he and Lucy had grabbed some lunch. ¡°One is the fae-vamp connection. We still don¡¯t know enough about that and for all we know it was designed to draw my attention. That booby trap was certainly directed at me.¡±

    ¡°Yeah, and whoever set that up has got to go,¡± Lucy agreed, a shadow crossing her face as she reached out to grab his hand. ¡°But we have to be more careful, right? It doesn¡¯t matter who did it if you run across one again, only worse.¡±

    ¡°Absolutely.¡± Callum passed a hand over his face. ¡°I think I may have to ask Taisen about that one. He¡¯s probably looking at it anyway, but neither you nor I are really equipped to do real detective work.¡±

    ¡°Yeah.¡± Lucy wrinkled her nose. ¡°My GAR tap is getting less and less useful.¡±

    ¡°We got more out of it than I figured,¡± Callum said. ¡°Much as I wish everyone in GAR was stupid, they aren¡¯t completely.¡±

    ¡°Eh. I don¡¯t know I¡¯d go that far,¡± Lucy said, wrinkling her nose. Callum snorted. Lucy¡¯s opinion of her former employers seemed to have dropped over time.

    ¡°Either way, it¡¯s not our specialty. So there¡¯s that.¡± Callum waved it aside. ¡°The other thing is the vampires themselves. Their access to Earth in the first place.¡±

    ¡°Thinking of going after the Night Lands portal somehow?¡± Lucy asked, taking a bite of her pickle-free sandwich.

    ¡°Yeah, but that¡¯s hardly going to be enough, is it? There¡¯s still teleport and portal links that would connect the Night Lands to Earth. I have to really sever ties, natural and artificial.¡± He tapped his fingers against the side of his glass tumbler, chewing it over. ¡°Which means having to engage with all those Houses over on the other side of the portal, somehow.¡±

    ¡°Also what would happen if a bunch of vampires were stuck on Earth,¡± Lucy pointed out. ¡°Assuming closing the portal even did anything for that.¡±

    ¡°Yeah, it might not have any immediate effect. And if it does, giving a lot of vamps absolutely nothing to lose could end badly.¡± He shook his head. ¡°This has all kinds of strategic-level implications. If I can do it in the first place.¡±

    ¡°Not like you can exactly practice,¡± Lucy said.

    ¡°Not with existing ones,¡± Callum agreed. Lucy raised her eyebrows and took another bite of sandwich. ¡°I know, I know,¡± he said to her unspoken comment. ¡°I¡¯m going to have to buckle down and do some real experimenting.¡±

    Despite having a moon nexus, he hadn¡¯t really been using it to its full effect. There wasn¡¯t a great excuse for it, though he had some minor ones. The space drones lost their enchantment integrity far quicker than ones on Earth, even with the mana insulation that he¡¯d put together. He had only vague thoughts on how to make a proper dimension-piercing portal, so even starting was difficult to get a grip on. But simply being difficult was not a reason.

    ¡°Since other activities are off the table anyway,¡± Lucy agreed. ¡°I tell you what though, any experimenting ought to be done next to the teleporter. Which really ought to be closer to the war room, now that I think about it.¡±

    ¡°Yeah,¡± Callum agreed. ¡°I¡¯ll put in some work and make it into a proper panic room. I should have done that before, now that I think about it.¡± He rubbed at his eyes, thinking. ¡°Until that¡¯s finished, I¡¯ll keep the experimentation for when we¡¯re at Chester¡¯s place, when we bring Alex over.¡± He grimaced. ¡°It¡¯s like the nexus doesn¡¯t even matter, if things can get to me that way.¡±

    ¡°Just a few things,¡± Lucy disagreed. ¡°It¡¯s not even possible to stumble across the nexus by accident. Or use it to break through to us.¡±

    ¡°Heh. I¡¯d like to see them try.¡± Callum nearly smirked. It was possible that someone might link one of the gun portals up to the cave-cache, but he cleaned up on the cache end even when it wasn¡¯t quite as easy or possible on the other side. The anchors, on the other hand, were more or less permanent, and thus vulnerable to being compromised. He almost hoped someone did, just so they found themselves exposed to vacuum. After a moment of contemplating paying the booby trap that had caught him forward, he sobered.

    ¡°Unfortunately this project is going to have to be kept under wraps until we¡¯re about ready to execute it. Not that I don¡¯t trust Chester, but the rest of the Alliance is leakier than a sieve.¡± Anything that was meant for the Alliance¡¯s information was as good as public. There¡¯d been a number of attempts to compromise the proxy emails that Lucy was using, for all the good that would do anyone. Even if people tracked it down, it¡¯d be a little server box in a random office in Estonia or the like.

    They¡¯d changed the location after each attempt that Lucy had logged, even if nobody had found the physical box. After running into the booby trap, though, he wasn¡¯t sure about even leaving it up. They were reclusive, but not inaccessible, and that might need to change to be safe. Something that was at odds with regular visits to Chester¡¯s compound, but he couldn¡¯t think of any way to make an emergency link work without some kind of connection.

    ¡°Gotta get to it then,¡± Lucy said, picking up her plate to take it to the dishwasher. ¡°Alex has a playdate this afternoon.¡±

    Callum pursed his lips. Despite having been married to Lucy for almost two years, he still wasn¡¯t quite used to her springing plans on him. It was quite different from his first wife, who had been very much a creature of habit. Lucy wasn¡¯t committing him to anything terribly important, but it always felt jarring to have his time spoken for. They were still getting used to each other, and he was sure his disinterest in going out and doing things threw Lucy on occasion. Just one of the things people had to get used to when they were living together.

    ¡°Okay,¡± he said after a moment. ¡°Let me go dig up my notes.¡± He also hadn¡¯t adjusted to the fact that, at least for the moment, some of his research was relegated to when he was somewhere else, a place that people could get to in emergencies.

    ¡°That¡¯s the spirit,¡± Lucy grinned. He teleported his plate and cup into the dishwasher and stood up, giving her a hug and a kiss before he went to his own office ¨C though it was more just a corner screened off from the living room ¨C to pull up the renderings and handwritten notes he¡¯d made on the dimensional portals.

    So far, he¡¯d studied every portal save for the one that led to Faerie. That one was deep inside a Faerie enclave over in Germany and even with the stealth ball he wasn¡¯t confident in getting too close to it. Especially after the booby trap. Five different dimensional portals was quite a lot to reference anyway, especially since they were all different.

    Aside from the dragon portal, all the others seemed to have been created from the portal world side. The Night Lands had its own native spatial distortions, Mictl¨¡n had mana-energized obsidian and a weird non-Euclidean environment. The Deep Wilds had its portal inside one of the massive, physics-defying trees, where silvery amber had formed a perfect circle. The mechanism for Portal World Five wasn¡¯t actually clear, but the tangled mess of mana was very clearly not something a person would make.

    One major conclusion that he''d drawn was that the inefficiencies and idiosyncrasies mattered. There had to be something that made a portal connect to one place and not another, and while that thing was obvious for normal portals, it had to be intrinsic to the mana or vis structure for dimensional portals. It also made sense that the portals came to Earth from the other side; on Earth, magic needed to be spatial vis to make a portal, but in portal worlds other rules could apply.

    Portal worlds were liminal realms. They weren¡¯t full universes with consistent laws of physics. That was most obvious in the Night Lands, where the world simply stopped a hundred miles away from Weltentor, but the infinite cliff of the dragonlands or the unfathomable depths of Portal World Five didn¡¯t make any real sense. When he¡¯d put a drone high into the air in the Deep Wilds, he hadn¡¯t found a normal atmosphere. Instead the sun had blurred into a cloud layer and another layer of greenery became visible above, as if the entire thing was some inside-out hollow Earth.

    The dragonlands portal was really the only evidence it was possible to punch through to a portal world from Earth. At least, so Callum assumed. Even Shahey didn¡¯t know which side it had been formed on, and of course Callum couldn¡¯t ask Duvall, who was the only one likely to know. It was just something he¡¯d have to experiment with.

    Callum made sure everything was copied over to his laptop, then slid it into his back along with his notebooks before slinging it over his shoulder. It wasn¡¯t like it would have been an issue if he¡¯d forgotten something. He only needed a thought to move between home and Chester¡¯s compound, but he still had a lot of habits from before a time where he was a thought away from a dozen places at once.

    ¡°Alright, Lucy,¡± he called, and carried Alex over to stand next to him. He reached through to nexus to the anchor parked at Chester¡¯s compound and opened a portal.

    The so-called playdate was really an excuse for a bunch of Chester¡¯s pack to get together and chat. In a way it was a bit like daycare, but everyone was involved. The shifters acted more like a big extended family than any kind of hierarchy. Even though Callum wasn¡¯t like Lucy ¨C on friendly terms with everyone ¨C the general atmosphere was far more relaxed. It was how he reminded himself how to talk with people normally.

    They walked into the nursery building and he spent a few minutes greeting the other parents, though it was really Lucy who did most of the networking. He even spotted Clara there, looking after a younger cousin, and spent a little bit of time talking with the girl and the other Winut residents who were there. Apparently she even had a boyfriend, though he hadn¡¯t come along, which seemed weird to him but time passed for everyone, and people lived their own lives.

    Once he¡¯d gotten more settled, he staked out a corner table and set up his laptop and notebooks, then located one of the space drones sitting in the basement back at the bunker. He sneaked a vis thread through the mana containment, a hole that he¡¯d specifically added into the design, and teleported the drone out to the moon. A quick Alcubierre jaunt upward left it hanging a few hundred miles above the surface of the moon, which was close enough to deep space for experimentation.

    He made very small test portals inside the bubble of the mana confinement, mostly not getting anywhere. Which was fine, he hadn¡¯t been expecting much for his first tests. The fact that his portal structures didn¡¯t so much as stir the space inside them was not very hopeful, but he had dozens of configurations to test. Not to mention brute force and the process of just cramming as much spatial vis into an area as possible.

    It actually took over a month of testing, on and off between actually living life, before he got the first tiny blip of a possible response. His portal construct was insanely complex, with lots of extra loops in a manner reminiscent of the dragonlands portal, requiring him to make a few sets of foci just to hold the pieces in place. Crafting the foci was a huge time sink, but a necessary one if he was going to get anywhere.

    Even with the extra training he¡¯d been undergoing, he didn¡¯t have the skill to hold such a complex construct in place. It wasn¡¯t so much the number of threads as how precisely he had to hold their relative orientations and movements. There was no way to abstract things like he could with teleportation or the Alcubierre or gravity box.

    One of the things that slowed down the process was that he had to document every single attempt. That meant building a wireframe render of the threads and tubes every single time, often with vector annotations. Even with the macros and other tools Lucy had made to help him put together the renderings more quickly, it was a tedious process.

    ¡°Yeah, welcome to engineering,¡± Lucy said with a laugh when he complained. ¡°Nothing¡¯s simple, most of the time you¡¯re just guessing at most of what you¡¯re doing, and if you don¡¯t write anything down you¡¯re just going to be useless. Have to know what works and what doesn¡¯t.¡±

    ¡°At least it¡¯s not as bad as it could be, thanks to your programs,¡± Callum said, trying to imagine how someone in a prior age might have possibly recorded the portal structure. Normal portals were a simple torus, and the threads more or less wanted to stay in position. The dimensional portals were still a torus from the broadest scale view, but they had a bunch of nested, braided substructures that put an enormous amount of strain on the system, which was why he couldn¡¯t just tweak and fiddle to his heart¡¯s content. Especially since drastic changes would require making entirely new foci, which was yet another time and money sink. Not only did holding all that stuff at once drain his vis, but since the actual setup was not entirely stable, it was easy to accidentally collapse when making adjustments.

    Did you know this text is from a different site? Read the official version to support the creator.

    ¡°You know, if you¡¯re recording all this stuff, we might be able to use it,¡± Lucy mused.

    ¡°How do you mean?¡± Callum poked at the render he was working on, tweaking the fine angles and distances to make sure it was completely accurate.

    ¡°Well, we can get one of those machine analysis or learning programs,¡± she suggested. ¡°I don¡¯t know what works, you don¡¯t know what works, but we let a mathematical modeling program crunch down a bunch of models and we might get some insight on what the bits do. Once you have a working model, anyway. Heck, even having working and not-working to compare would be good.¡±

    ¡°Would that even work?¡± Callum raised his eyebrows at her. That kind of thing was well out of his wheelhouse. ¡°I mean, it does seem to follow rules of structure, but it¡¯s still magic.¡±

    ¡°Eh, analysis software shouldn¡¯t care. Of course we can¡¯t rely on it, but if we¡¯re careful about the inputs we give it, we might get something useful out. I mean, you¡¯re already doing most of the work with the renders so we might as well.¡±

    ¡°Sure, anything that might help¡± Callum agreed. Even the tiniest bit of extra insight would be useful.

    ¡°Awesome, I¡¯ve always wanted an excuse to mess around with that stuff,¡± Lucy said, and went to get her own laptop.

    He continued experimenting over the following days, poking around blindly, and when success came he almost missed it. The change was only slightly noticeable; a shifting of the spatial fabric inside the ring of the prospective portal. For a moment he thought he was imagining it, until he pushed more vis into the construct and the shift grew more pronounced, like a fabric wrinkling. Except it was kind of in reverse, becoming more wrinkled with tension rather than smoothing out.

    ¡°Ha!¡± Callum pumped his fist, attracting Lucy¡¯s attention. And Alex¡¯s too, since he suddenly started toddling over. Lucy followed behind, but let Alex make his own way as she raised her eyebrows at him.

    ¡°Had a breakthrough, dear?¡±

    ¡°Well, had a reaction at least. We¡¯ll have to compare it to everything else and see if there¡¯s something obviously different. Or not obviously different, I suppose.¡± Callum reached down to scoop up his son. ¡°What¡¯s up, little guy?¡± Callum asked, and was treated to the rapid-fire babble only toddlers could manage.

    ¡°I think we¡¯re going to have to think about testing the little guy¡¯s magic soon,¡± Lucy said.

    ¡°Yeah,¡± Callum said. ¡°I¡¯m going to have to hurry things along if we want the world to be normal when he gets a little older.¡± He smiled down at Alex. ¡°Back to work, I suppose.¡±

    ***

    ¡°I hate tracking fae,¡± Ray groaned. Felicia just laughed, a musical tinkle that set nearby flowers to dancing. Obviously she wasn¡¯t put out by the complaint, which of course she took as a compliment. She had been in an excellent mood ever since they¡¯d tracked down what Felicia called a Gate of Bones in South America.

    Ray had promptly been sworn to secrecy about the Ways.

    Personally, he wasn¡¯t happy about the fae having a way around the world ¨C and possibly even from Faerie to Earth ¨C that was completely sideways from normal travel. It was strictly inferior to the teleport network, considering how few terminus points there were, but there was apparently actual space inside, and life from Faerie.

    It was a huge problem for Defensores Mundi, though the only reason Ray agreed to a fae-backed oath of secrecy was that Taisen already knew that the Ways existed. Them being on Earth, however, was news to everyone. Properly controlling them was something only fae kings could manage, so once it had been found it became Taisen¡¯s responsibility.

    Which freed them up to track down a problem of another sort. The fae that were empowering vampires ¡ª or at least, purported to be doing so. Ray had already interviewed the shifters that had reported it and while they certainly weren¡¯t lying, that didn¡¯t mean much. When it came to fae, shifter senses weren¡¯t exactly reliable.

    That led them to the western coast of the United States. Felicia hadn¡¯t gotten much from the corpses Wells had left behind, but there was a tiny hint that there was someone backing them, and where. Sadly, the cities of the West Coast were vast, sprawling, and chock full of supernaturals and mages. Mostly all aligned with GAR.

    Felicia trailed him along the hillside in the Napa valley, where he knew there were some fae. He could hear them, but he couldn¡¯t find them. Ironically, they were so deep in an enclave that Felicia¡¯s sensitivity to fae magic wasn¡¯t helpful at all. It was everywhere.

    That or she was enjoying watching him hunt this way and that through the faerie maze. Close as they were, she still had that little impish twist to her that enjoyed pranks. Fortunately, she also had a sense of proportion that some lacked. Glamouring a mirror to reflect a wild-haired, older version of himself was funny. Trying to genuinely convince someone they¡¯d aged overnight was not.

    Ray paused to run his senses through the wind again, closing his eyes to focus and turning toward where he heard faint voices and music. It didn¡¯t matter that it was directly where he¡¯d just come from; traversing fae enclaves was sometimes just like that. With Felicia at his back, he tromped back down the hill, then turned left into a row of grape arbors.

    Each arbor was larger than the last, rapidly towering like redwoods full of grapes in complete violation of what anyone would see from the outside, but that was par for the course. The actual Court for the enclave was under the last and largest arbor, with grapes the size of beachballs dangling from vines a thick as oaks.

    The light-dappled glen in the midst of an eternal summer didn¡¯t seem like the kind of place that would be dealing with creatures of the night, but that very irony was why it was believable. He could hear Felicia straighten up behind him, and knew that she was putting on her professional face to deal with the fae here. They weren¡¯t in DAI suits anymore, but the gunmetal gray tactical uniforms of Defensores Mundi were a good replacement.

    Before anyone even greeted him, a naked, laughing fae danced past and pressed a glass of wine into his hand. He handed it off to Felicia, since he sure wasn¡¯t about to trust fae alcohol when he hadn¡¯t even been introduced to whoever was running the bacchanal. Even looking for such a personage was difficult, since it seemed every fae he could see was involved in some kind of drunken revelry without any orchestration from above.

    ¡°Welcome, mage!¡± Someone exclaimed after he¡¯d stood at the entrance to the bower for a minute or so, and a flower-crowned satyr staggered out of a pile of dead drunk fae near the center of the court. Despite the obvious inebriation, the fae still screamed danger to Ray¡¯s instincts, though he was pretty sure the one in question wasn¡¯t a king just yet. ¡°What brings you to the Aestivus Court?¡±

    ¡°Prince Finidel,¡± Ray replied with a polite bow. He¡¯d at least been able to find that much out ahead of time. ¡°I¡¯m here on behalf of Defensores Mundi, merely to ask some questions about certain agreements that were made. Perhaps not by your court specifically, but I have reason to suspect a Prince of your stature would know who it is.¡±

    ¡°Oh? And why would we know such things?¡± Finidel said, tottering closer. ¡°And why don¡¯t you introduce me to your beautiful companion?¡± His drunken walk swayed past Ray somehow as he reached for Felicia.

    ¡°Stop.¡± Felicia¡¯s order froze not only Finidel, but all the nearby revelers as well as some drifting petals and butterflies that halted midair. Ray was quite certain that she¡¯d become more powerful over the past two years. It wasn¡¯t just finishing up successful investigations and digging deep into her own story, either. He was pretty sure it was due to the Ways opening all over the place, meaning more Faerie magic about, but that was just his guess.

    ¡°I didn¡¯t introduce you because she bites,¡± Ray said casually, gripping Finidel¡¯s elbow and turning the man around. ¡°You know how it is. Some women are just prickly.¡± Finidel didn¡¯t resist as Ray pulled him along for a few steps, only shaking off the command once they were a few feet away.

    ¡°Yes, yes I see,¡± Finidel said casually, as if he hadn¡¯t been bearded in his own den. ¡°So you had questions about certain agreements?¡± He snapped his fingers and a half-human, half-deer woman pranced over and handed Finidel an amphora of wine. Even if the fae seemed already mostly drunk, he wasted no time in tilting it back and swallowing a huge quantity of stuff so strong Ray could swear he was getting buzzed from the smell.

    ¡°Yes. There have been reports of some vampires displaying, shall we say, rather fae-like traits. The local enclave didn¡¯t know anything, but we followed the trail here.¡± Ray wasn¡¯t really convinced by the drunken fop act. Even if he wasn¡¯t a king, Finidel was a Prince and hadn¡¯t had anything on his record at all, so he kept his nose clean.

    ¡°Ah! I do know what you mean,¡± Finidel said agreeably, no doubt convinced more by Felicia¡¯s action than Ray¡¯s tone. Though after a couple years training with Taisen¡¯s people, Ray wasn¡¯t a slouch either. His combat foci were updated and refined and he could have flattened the oversized arbor with tornado winds. Or suffocated the court by taking away their air.

    ¡°What can you tell me about them?¡± It wasn¡¯t necessarily the agreements themselves that were the problem. Defensores Mundi couldn¡¯t exactly police deals between different supernatural groups. It was the weirdness of the two cooperating along with the anti-mage trap. Something which was not entirely created by the Guild of Enchanting, if the GOE was to be believed.

    ¡°Oh, it was nothing much. We just had someone come through from the Seven Lesser Courts,¡± Finidel said airily, as if it were barely worth thinking about. Which perhaps it was, for him. ¡°He had some gatherings and goings-on and there were comings and goings we weren¡¯t really intended to pay attention to.¡±

    ¡°But you did?¡± Ray asked, since Finidel clearly wanted him to. Getting information out of fae required a bit of patience, which amusingly enough Felicia did not have.

    ¡°Well.¡± Finidel said conspiratorially. ¡°I didn¡¯t hear everything but I do have some names of people who were involved. Which I really shouldn¡¯t say but there¡¯s really no telling what might come out in a drunken conversation between two people.¡± He took another quaff of the amphora, a swallow that would kill any human. ¡°Care to join me?¡±

    ***

    ¡°We think he¡¯s somewhere in Central America.¡±

    Talbot Earl nodded at his superior¡¯s words, but he didn¡¯t see how much that helped. Teller Janry was at the head of House Janry¡¯s efforts to suppress the power of the breakaway factions, but sometimes Talbot thought he was a bit too fixated on The Ghost. True, the man was an absolute menace, and showed that he could and would target persons of importance, but he wasn¡¯t the political threat the American Alliance or the breakaway Houses were.

    ¡°That is quite the area to search,¡± Gracie Earl observed neutrally. Teller scowled.

    ¡°Don¡¯t be so disingenuous. Of course that¡¯s not enough to get anywhere, but considering that he seems to have his own worldwide teleport network, being able to narrow it down even that much is miraculous. Even the DAI¡¯s fae can¡¯t really get a read on him. It¡¯s mostly mundane analysis at this point.¡±

    There were some people sitting around the cozy study in House Janry that made faces at that, but they were mostly the types who hadn¡¯t been back to earth in decades, if not longer. Talbot was sure most of them would come around when they saw the surveillance capabilities that mundanes were capable of now, to the point where even glamours were starting to fail at their task. Though not many of them were actually going to Earth. There was plenty to do to keep up relations with the other Houses, on Faerie and the other portal worlds.

    ¡°So why bring it up?¡± Gracie asked.

    ¡°I need you to liaison with the local governments and other organizations,¡± Teller told her. ¡°They have thousands of people more than we do, and the man is completely off the grid. It¡¯s more likely someone will run into him by chance, so we need the numbers on our side.¡±

    ¡°Yes, sir,¡± she said, without that much enthusiasm. Talbot didn¡¯t blame her. Dealing with mundanes wasn¡¯t the most prestigious assignment, but it needed to be done.

    ¡°Talbot,¡± Teller said. ¡°I need you to see if Scaletooth can be persuaded away from the side of the American Alliance. The dragonblooded are supposed to be neutral, but that¡¯s just the official stance. If they figure out something the dragonblooded want, then there¡¯s really no limit to the amount of resources that Scaletooth could provide.¡±

    ¡°Yes, sir,¡± Talbot said, no more enthused by his assignment than Gracie had been. Trying to convince the dragonblooded to do anything was not likely to succeed, and he hated to report failure.

    ¡°Don¡¯t push too hard,¡± Teller cautioned. ¡°We don¡¯t want to push him to active support. Just getting him to reaffirm that he will keep out of things will be enough, under the circumstances. We haven''t forgotten that he knows Wells personally, and that might be enough to make him biased.¡±

    ¡°Understood,¡± Talbot said. As soon as the meeting adjourned, he checked his focuses and took the teleporter out of House Janry and to GAR proper. Given the events of the past few years, he didn¡¯t need to look up where to find Scaletooth ¡ª now Shahey. His involvement in the whole Wells case had put the small town of Tanner firmly on the map.

    The teleport network still wasn¡¯t up to full strength, so he had to actually fly out from one of the big East Coast cities, getting an appreciation for what had become of Earth civilization. It was one thing to visit a city on occasion, and it was another to see the massive ribbons of lit asphalt crossing the countryside. The sheer sprawl of what the mundanes had managed was just bizarre.

    He did his best not to look too discomfited by the strange surroundings. He didn¡¯t really understand why a dragonblooded would decide to lair in a small town in West Virginia, or why, since he did, he wouldn¡¯t spend any effort making it look more pleasing. By Talbot¡¯s standards, Tanner was downright dumpy but, compared to the surpassing beauty of Faerie, most places on Earth were.

    He landed in front of the small, unassuming house that was supposed to be Shahey¡¯s, and dropped his glamour. The mana was more comfortable than he¡¯d expected, even if it was thin, but he didn¡¯t sense anything that would betray the presence of a dragonblooded. Talbot frowned into the little black circle that was supposed to be a camera, and looked nothing like the big boxes he remembered.

    He pushed the doorbell and waited, tapping his foot impatiently until the door opened. Suddenly Talbot could see magic, the distinctive glow of a glamour on top of the rather ordinary-looking man who was waiting at the door. He beckoned Talbot in, and once the door was closed behind him he dropped the glamour.

    Shahey was the same short, green-scaled reptile-man that GAR had on file, though there was more to him in person. With the glamour gone, he fairly radiated power, more than the file said he was supposed to. Not that Talbot was intending to be rude to a dragonblooded.

    ¡°This way,¡± Shahey said, leading Talbot down a stairway, where he suddenly could see that the entirety of the basement room seemed to be made of packed-together mana. It wasn¡¯t, of course, it was merely wood and stone, but it was impressive nonetheless. He took a seat where Shahey indicated and regarded the dragonblooded.

    ¡°Thank you for seeing me,¡± he said, since Shahey didn¡¯t seem to be willing to start the conversation. ¡°The Archmage¡¯s Council appreciates that dragonblooded have abided by their agreements for so long with so little difficulty. Would that all our members were so upstanding.¡±

    ¡°We do try to abide by our agreements,¡± Shahey said mildly. ¡°So you are here on behalf of the Archmage¡¯s Council, rather than the Guild of Arcane Regulation?¡±

    ¡°GAR serves the Council, and under the circumstances I would hardly say that the dragonblooded are subject to the oversight of GAR. You don¡¯t use the teleports, or the services of any of the Departments. So we thought it was better to deal with the principals of the agreement.¡±

    ¡°Admirable,¡± Shahey said, reclining in a chair that could have bought half of House Earl, and waved a finger. A swirl of bright mana and vis condensed in his hand, and another one on the dark wooden table at Talbot¡¯s right. Shahey¡¯s turned into a snifter of something glowing faintly blue, while Talbot¡¯s became a large stein of what smelled like beer. ¡°Though as you point out, the dragonblooded do not exactly need most of the services that GAR offers, so what is it that the Council wants? And what does it offer in return?¡±

    ¡°With the changes to the status quo, the Council doesn¡¯t think the current agreements are really applicable,¡± Talbot said, picking up the beer and taking a sip. It was, unsurprisingly, excellent. ¡°We are thinking about loosening some of the restrictions dragonblooded currently labor under, as well as offering some guarantees for territory.¡±

    ¡°That sounds like quite the offer,¡± Shahey said, the corner of his mouth turned up into a sort of smile. ¡°But what exactly do you expect us to do? Certainly you wouldn¡¯t be gifting us out of the goodness of your heart.¡±

    ¡°Perhaps not, but it would be for everybody¡¯s good,¡± Talbot said, taking out his handkerchief to dab at the foam on his lips. "Things on Earth are starting to slip out of control, and the council believes it is in everyone¡¯s interests to bring it back in line.¡±

    ¡°That seems appropriately vague,¡± Shahey said, unimpressed. Talbot frowned. Mundanes could be useful, as Shahey had to know since he had a town full of them. But only when they were given proper direction. Expanding on that was the obvious next step, as was crippling the powerbase of the new American Alliance.

    Which was why someone had been sent to approach Shahey first, and Talbot had been the only one with any prior dealings with a dragonblooded. Admittedly, not Shahey. It was known that Shahey in particular was at least nominally friendly with the American Alliance, so if he could be persuaded to withdraw that would make things easier in the future. He was also the only dragonblooded with a permanent address, and the best way to get in contact with the others.

    ¡°The Council is forming a coalition with certain fae and vampires to reduce the amount of chaos here on Earth and establish a more solid place for our people. After all, Earth is the only place all the races can live, and as the crossroads it¡¯s an incredible strategic asset,¡± Talbot said, picking his words with care. ¡°Which the current difficulties with breakaway groups threaten.¡±

    ¡°So you¡¯re asking me if I¡¯m going to stand neutral if you move against the American Alliance?¡± Shahey asked, far more bluntly than Talbot would have liked. ¡°If not help you outright?¡±

    ¡°My understanding is that you would stand neutral under the current agreements anyway,¡± Talbot said. ¡°But there are many shades and varieties of neutral, and as I said, those agreements may be subject to revision anyway.¡±

    Shahey chuckled, draining his glowing drink and dissolving the glass, as if underscoring the power he held. Hardly necessary, considering the intense energy that saturated the well-appointed room. Then he clasped his hands together and regarded Talbot.

    ¡°I appreciate the offer, but I have my own interests. Dragonblooded have more reasons for being neutral than simply the agreements we made when we came through the portal.¡± Shahey shook his head. ¡°There are only a few things that might make us reconsider, but unless you can make Archmage Duvall work for us it is unlikely.¡±

    Talbot scowled. He didn¡¯t actually represent the full Council, only a portion of it that was working in concert with their fae allies. Duvall was not part of that coalition, especially not after a rather hasty attempt to bring her under control. The shutdown of the teleportation network had been rather inconvenient and she hadn¡¯t at all tried to make amends. Nor was there much way for the coalition to put pressure on her, given her monopoly, though there were efforts to break that monopoly that had yet to bear fruit.

    ¡°Very well,¡± he said. There had been strict instructions not to press, and besides, declared neutrality was almost good enough anyway. ¡°Thank you for your time.¡±

    ¡°It¡¯s good to know what my fellows are thinking,¡± Shahey agreed. ¡°If anything changes I will be sure to get in touch.¡±

 Chapter 15 â€“ Progress

    ¡°I need a break.¡± Callum rubbed at his eyes, seeing wireframes and labels whenever he blinked. ¡°You do this stuff for fun? It¡¯s worse than doing building layouts.¡±

    Lucy laughed. They had sort of swapped jobs, or at least hobbies. He was the one bent over a computer, while Lucy was potting plants. Hibiscus and bromeliads, to brighten up the porch and decorate the room. Alex was even helping, inasmuch as an almost-two-year-old could. Enough time had passed that they were trying for a second one, but things would happen as they did.

    ¡°It does take a bit of getting used to,¡± Lucy admitted. ¡°Though it¡¯s easier when you¡¯re indoors. Glare does not help with the eyestrain.¡±

    ¡°But it¡¯s so nice out!¡± Callum objected. Mexico didn¡¯t really have late fall as such, but it was pleasant enough that he liked being outside when he worked.

    ¡°Then you just brought it on yourself,¡± Lucy said mercilessly.

    ¡°Yeah, yeah,¡± Callum replied, slipping out of the chair and going over to join his wife and son. ¡°I hope your machine learning stuff works because I don¡¯t even know what to look for.¡±

    ¡°Well I can¡¯t guarantee it¡¯ll help, but it won¡¯t hurt,¡± Lucy said.

    Callum had managed to barely, barely eke out an opening with the small dimensional portal experiments he¡¯d been doing. Each one took enough juice that he couldn¡¯t do more than one or two attempts a day, and those attempts were not particularly fruitful. On the few occasions he managed to create a full opening, they¡¯d collapsed again before Callum had managed to glimpse anything on the other side.

    His guess, solely based on gut instinct, was that whatever he was connecting to was just too alien. Something like Mictl¨¡n, only more so. It wasn¡¯t the same one every time, either, because unless he duplicated every last detail of the construct perfectly, it acted slightly differently. He actually hadn¡¯t been able to manage that kind of reproduction until the third or fourth time he¡¯d recorded one, due to just entering some fraction of an angle wrong.

    Occasionally some puff of gas escaped from the pinhole sized portals, so perhaps one fourth of the portals he¡¯d opened were in an atmosphere. The rest were either vacuum or something solid, and if they were vacuum that would explain why nobody tended to open dimensional holes on Earth. Most mages wouldn¡¯t have the option of operating at the remove Callum could manage, and if they were making person-sized portals then the results would be unpleasant.

    He wasn¡¯t up into the hundreds that a good machine learning program needed, but there was enough to start doing fancy topological analysis on them. He was hoping to get some idea about the similarities and differences, the patterns and randomness that contributed to whether and where it would open.

    ¡°At this rate, it¡¯s going to be a very long time before I can fuel the moon base, let alone open something useful for Shahey,¡± Callum grumped, pulling Alex onto his lap. That resulted in his shirt getting almost instantly covered in potting soil as Alexander thrust some unidentifiable plant toward his face, but he hardly minded. It reminded him of why he was spending so much time grinding away at the problem.

    ¡°What¡¯s this, kiddo?¡± He asked.

    ¡°Salad,¡± Alex said seriously, and mouthed a piece of leaf before spitting it out. Callum just laughed.

    ¡°Real lettuce is tastier,¡± Callum said. ¡°We¡¯ll get you some in a bit.¡±

    In the end, he wanted a world that was safe for his wife and his son. One without vampires, or predatory fae or tyrannical mages. He was under no illusions that he could remove every threat, because the world just didn¡¯t work that way. But at the very least he could eliminate ones that should never have existed in the first place.

    ¡°You should at least tell him you¡¯ve gotten started. Maybe he can loan something to help. Heck, maybe opening these things inside portal worlds is easier,¡± Lucy suggested.

    ¡°Maybe so,¡± Callum admitted. They could probably use the Deep Wilds for that kind of practice, but if he accidentally spawned a black hole that would be a problem. He was pretty sure that the dragons could snuff out any potential threat that might happen in the dragon lands, though. ¡°Okay, do we even have contact information for him directly? Or is it through Chester?¡±

    ¡°He literally has a public phone number,¡± Lucy said, shaking her head at him. ¡°You know, because he owns a gym. You told me that yourself!¡±

    ¡°Grabbity ride!¡± Alexander demanded before Callum could answer. He laughed and slung Alex onto his shoulders, lowering the gravity so they could bounce around.

    ¡°I guess I¡¯m getting old. I completely forgot about that,¡± he said, as Alex laughed gleefully. ¡°Right, I¡¯ll call him in a bit.¡±

    Once Alex had gotten bored with the low-gravity bounding and wandered off to focus on some toy cars and trucks, Callum pulled up Lucy¡¯s VOIP program to put a call through to Shahey¡¯s gym. He surprised himself by actually remembering the number by heart, even though it was lifetimes ago that he had to last dial the number.

    ¡°Shahey¡¯s Fitness Center, how can I help you?¡± It was Shahey¡¯s voice and, knowing what Callum did, he still found it odd that Shahey was just answering phones like an ordinary person.

    ¡°It¡¯s me,¡± he said, trusting that Shahey would recognize him in turn. ¡°I¡¯ve made some progress on your request but it¡¯s not quite there yet. I¡¯d like a proper discussion about it when you have the time.¡±

    ¡°Ah, excellent!¡± Shahey said, loudly and happily. ¡°Monday will do. We can meet at our mutual friend¡¯s place.¡±

    ¡°Sure,¡± Callum said. ¡°Thanks.¡± The line went dead and he looked over to Lucy, somewhat nonplussed. ¡°That was easy.¡±

    ¡°Dragonblooded seem a lot more casual than mages,¡± Lucy agreed. ¡°Shahey is, anyway.¡±

    ¡°And thank goodness for it,¡± Callum said, leaning over to give Lucy a kiss before turning back to work, glare or not.

    When Monday rolled around, Callum headed over to Chester¡¯s compound. Pragmatically they had a small second house there, or at least a few dedicated rooms, which felt like an imposition. There was more than enough room in the compound, though, and it wasn¡¯t like Callum wasn¡¯t earning his keep. Extra teleports and even some early attempts at full portal frames meant that Chester¡¯s American Alliance had a lot more flexibility than anyone would expect.

    While he hadn¡¯t specified a time, Shahey showed up in the morning, though it wasn¡¯t the Shahey Callum knew. The dragon had made an avatar that looked like he had taken inspiration from cartoons and movies, almost a perfect match for the generic wise old man. Except, of course, with scales and fins rather than skin and hair, though even the scales were somehow a little bit wrinkled.

    ¡°Do you like it?¡± Shahey said, waving a hand to indicate his current form. ¡°It seemed appropriate for an advisory role.¡±

    ¡°It¡¯s certainly something,¡± Callum agreed, a little amused. He knew Shahey had a certain flair for theatrics, but he hadn¡¯t been expecting that. ¡°I¡¯d easily believe that you give out quests.¡±

    ¡°I might start doing that,¡± Shahey agreed. ¡°Like the one I gave you, hmm?¡±

    ¡°I¡¯m not so sure that¡¯s a quest, as such,¡± Callum demurred. ¡°Though I don¡¯t think I¡¯d have started without your suggestion. So far we¡¯ve only been getting very small and very temporary portals, that self-destruct right away. Still working on that, but I¡¯m thinking it might be a good idea to practice it somewhere other than the vacuum of space.¡±

    ¡°You¡¯re making portals in space?¡± Shahey asked, hairless brows raised.

    ¡°Sure,¡± Callum said, realizing that neither he nor Lucy had really discussed their moon nexus with anyone. And it would stay that way, even if he doubted Shahey would spill such a tidbit. ¡°Safest that way. But the, ah, fabric of space in space,¡± he said, making a face at his own tortured locution. ¡°It isn¡¯t the same as in a portal world, so I was wondering if we could do some testing in the dragonlands, where you¡¯d want it put anyway. I¡¯m pretty sure you could deal with anything that might potentially come through.¡±

    ¡°That is not unreasonable,¡± Shahey admitted. ¡°I will have to ask the others, just to be certain.¡±

    ¡°There isn¡¯t a rush,¡± Callum assured him. ¡°And it¡¯s not like I don¡¯t want to figure out how to do it right. Just thought I¡¯d keep you up to date.¡±

    ¡°Well, they¡¯ve agreed,¡± Shahey said, flashing his teeth in a smug smile. ¡°We¡¯ll allot a region and you can do your testing there.¡±

    ¡°That was fast,¡± Callum said. Of course, Shahey¡¯s real body was off in the dragon lands and, presumably, he wasn¡¯t all that far from his fellow dragons. The avatars were a lot like Callum¡¯s anchors, and he had to imagine that the dragons realized how powerful that kind of remote presence was. ¡°Great, we can take care of that whenever you like.¡±

    ¡°I presume you will be using one of your devices?¡± Shahey asked, and Callum nodded. ¡°Then I will have someone waiting at the portal.¡±

    ¡°Works for me,¡± Callum said, and started to sort through the various drones he had scattered around. But Shahey wasn¡¯t done.

    ¡°While I¡¯m here, I should tell you that I was recently approached by someone on behalf of, not GAR, but the Archmage¡¯s Council. The coalition of Houses. They¡¯re apparently intending to take more of a hand in things on Earth, do more with other supernaturals.¡± Shahey snorted. ¡°They tried to bribe me with loosening the restrictions on the agreements dragonblooded operate under. It seems they didn¡¯t realize those restrictions are just as much for our benefit as theirs.¡±

    ¡°That doesn¡¯t seem good,¡± Callum said. He wasn¡¯t quite surprised. Since GAR had become weaker, that meant there was a power vacuum that someone would step into. Obviously what he was seeing from the fae and the vampires was part of that, but he¡¯d assumed there was more. ¡°Any specifics? I guess you¡¯ve passed this on to Chester already. Seems more his thing than mine.¡±

    ¡°For some reason, the person they sent seemed to be shy about getting into particulars,¡± Shahey said with amusement. ¡°Just telling you is skirting the bounds of what I should be doing, but I suspect it¡¯s not really news for you anyway.¡±

    ¡°Maybe not, but I appreciate it.¡± It also gave more urgency to Callum¡¯s quest to remove the vampires. He had no illusions that he could easily target or even find a bunch of conspiring Houses, but he could remove a tool and leave them toothless. ¡°Which reminds me, I have something that I wanted to give you. Which I¡¯m surprised you didn¡¯t ask for before.¡±

    He reached into the cave-cache and pulled out a pair of circles wrought from steel. They were about large enough for someone to pass through, and appropriately heavy. He¡¯d put footers at the bottom so they could stand freely, but there were brackets all the way around if Shahey wanted to mount it to something.

    ¡°A portal pair,¡± he explained. ¡°Teleporting supernaturals has a lot of problems so I¡¯m falling back on portals. This thing requires a lot of juice, but I hope you can manage that much. Though I did add a socket for one of those mana capacitors the Guild of Enchanting makes if you have access.¡±

    Originally the portal frames were intended to be a bit of a bribe for getting access to the dragonlands. It was an expensive piece of machinery, though part of that expense was the time investment in learning how to make it properly in the first place. There were differences between tiny portals and large ones, at least when it came to how enchantments were structured. The big ones needed a lot more support to stay open.

    If you spot this story on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

    From a strictly budgetary viewpoint, it wasn¡¯t worth just giving one way. But the dragonblooded were, despite being officially neutral, fairly close to being allies and with Callum working on closing a dimensional portal, he had to consider other people trying to do the same. He wasn¡¯t sure what they might have purchased from the Guild of Enchanting before, but an extra, off-the-books way for an ally to get to Earth was certainly worth it.

    ¡°Now that is a princely gift,¡± Shahey said, eyes sparkling. ¡°As you point out, it is difficult for us to use teleporters, and the portal frames that the BSE used have been a more recent invention. This sort of backup is beyond useful.¡±

    Callum had to wonder how recent person-size portals actually were. Recent could mean anything from a few years to a few decades to maybe a century, considering how long-lived everyone involved was. If Shahey¡¯s place he would have gotten one as soon as possible, but with Duvall¡¯s monopoly there might be some kind of blacklist in place.

    To his amusement, Shahey didn¡¯t lift up the portal frames with magic, but rather materialized an ordinary cargo dolly. Just like the last time he saw dragon magic in action, it was a rather terrifying flex of an immense amount of vis, but it was used only to make something simple and common. It seemed to be a theme of Shahey¡¯s.

    ¡°I can teleport them over when my drone gets there,¡± Callum offered, but Shahey shook his head.

    ¡°It¡¯s better that I bring them myself,¡± the dragonblooded said, and Callum let it go. It was probably something to do with dragon rules or maybe Shahey just wanted to screen it for traps or flaws prior to letting it into the portal world. He didn¡¯t object. He would have too, just the same way he analyzed every single thing he got from the Guild of Enchantment.

    ¡°That¡¯s really all I had to meet about,¡± Callum admitted. ¡°Thought it was important enough, though.¡±

    ¡°Oh, it¡¯s certainly important,¡± Shahey agreed. ¡°So I¡¯ll do you a favor in return. One of my compatriots suggests you might want to look at South America. Nobody bothers her, of course, but there are some odd goings-on down there.¡±

    ¡°South America¡¯s a big place,¡± Callum said, instantly suspicious. Not that he thought that Shahey would set him up for something, but just bringing up a topic meant it was something Shahey felt was important. Not to mention it was the first time he¡¯d even had it admitted that other dragons had avatars. Unfortunately an entire continent was a bit too broad a scope.

    ¡°My friend lives in the middle of the Amazon jungle,¡± Shahey said.

    ¡°Still pretty big,¡± Callum muttered.

    ¡°It is indeed,¡± Shahey agreed. ¡°An issue enough that mundanes might start noticing.¡±

    ¡°Maybe that¡¯s a good thing,¡± Callum suggested. ¡°If these people are pushing harder, let it all come out in the open. Sunlight being the best disinfectant.¡± While he didn¡¯t think he could go about trying to reveal all the magical influences in the world, if they would reveal themselves he didn¡¯t really think he was duty-bound to stop it.

    ¡°That would be a terrible idea,¡± Shahey said bluntly. He stroked at the fin-beard on his chin. ¡°Dragons have encountered a number of worlds with pre-existing civilizations had had no concept of magic. Some more advanced than others, though none have had quite the technological prowess of humans. Nevertheless they all destroyed their world when we revealed ourselves, which is why we don¡¯t do it anymore.¡±

    ¡°Really.¡± Callum didn¡¯t have any reason to believe Shahey was lying, and he already knew that portal worlds could connect elsewhere, but at the same time that was a fairly dire forecast.

    ¡°Let me be specific,¡± Shahey said, settling more comfortably in his chair. ¡°The best outcome we had was that the natives began worshipping us as gods. Which gave us rather less control over them than you would think. But this religious fervor destroyed their previous culture, stripped away all the tools they¡¯d made that might have propelled them onward. Their philosophies, beliefs, technologies ¡ª for what were they next to the one who could conjure anything from thin air? Even if we protested, there were wars, purges, genocides ¡ª just so people could try and win favor from us.¡±

    ¡°That¡¯s¡­¡± Callum pursed his lips. ¡°That¡¯s pretty terrible, but yes, I can believe it.¡±

    ¡°Another world was less fervent about it, but just the fact that we existed spawned ideologies and philosophies so nihilistic, so bleak, that the population plummeted. There were too few people to keep up the civilization they¡¯d made, so they collapsed into savagery while plagues and starvation ran rampant. The last one I¡¯ll mention, well. They had tools not available to you, but they fought at the chance to access our portals, wars that escalated to the point that the entire surface of the planet was turned to dust and ash.¡±

    ¡°You¡¯re suggesting that we risk nuclear warfare if this all comes out?¡± Callum frowned, but he didn¡¯t dismiss the idea right away. Magic represented a seismic shift in the way the world worked, and even the assumptions people made about human nature. Extreme longevity alone would be a massive shock.

    ¡°There are six tiny points in the world that make mages,¡± Shahey said. He didn¡¯t continue with that thought, but he didn¡¯t have to. Callum could track it well enough once Shahey pointed it out. Every single government in the world would need its own mages, and they¡¯d want to deny that resource to others. Anyone who didn¡¯t have mages on payroll was impotent against anyone who did, save for something like a nuclear strike.

    That was ignoring that ordinary people would want to be mages. Or want their kids to be mages. Everyone would want access. There¡¯d be riots. People would demand magical healers for crippling illnesses, and then less crippling ones. That didn¡¯t even touch the morass of fae or the threat of vampires.

    ¡°Okay, yeah, put that way I¡¯m convinced,¡± Callum conceded. ¡°There might be a way to do it but it sure isn¡¯t here and now with the way things stand.¡± He really should have come to those conclusions himself, but he¡¯d mostly just considered the whole idea too complicated for him to deal with and left it there.

    ¡°I would prefer not to have to deal with worldwide conflict, so I am quite glad you agree,¡± Shahey said.

    ¡°Me too. I live here,¡± Callum said, rubbing at his forehead. ¡°Okay, I¡¯ll make sure I look at it and probably send Taisen¡¯s people that way too. Thanks for the heads up. Any other places I should look at?¡±

    ¡°No, the others have been too busy with their own projects and haven¡¯t been paying attention to anything else,¡± Shahey said, rolling his eyes. Callum wondered how many there were. Dealing with out of control vampires and fae and egotistical mage houses, it was easy to forget that for most of his life he¡¯d mostly seen supernaturals just living ordinary lives. There were a million places for someone as low-profile as Shahey to hang out and nobody think twice.

    ¡°Right, then. I suppose I¡¯ll see you when I fly the drone through.¡±

    ¡°Already waiting,¡± Shahey said. Callum shook his head. Now he had a bit of an understanding what it was like for other people to interact with him, when he had his anchors all in position and could treat far-flung parts of the world as right next to each other. It was disconcerting.

    ¡°Then I¡¯ll see the other you in a minute. Tell me if there are any issues with the portal frames.¡±

    ¡°I surely will,¡± Shahey said, setting the frames on the dolly with a lot more ease than his aged appearance would suggest. ¡°Thank you once again for the artifice.¡±

    After returning home, it didn¡¯t take Callum long to get a drone through to the Matterhorn. While he¡¯d been near the dragon lands portal more than once, for the first time in years he actually went through it. Not that it had changed any, still being a sheer vertical cliff of mana-rich stone and an endless abyss of sky otherwise. The Shahey waiting for him there was the toga-clad variant, but still acted the same as the others.

    The dragonblooded simply grabbed the drone and did something with his magic to make them move fast. It wasn¡¯t Alcubierre fast, and it wasn¡¯t exactly flight since there weren¡¯t any wings involved, but they zipped along the cliff face fast enough that it blurred on the drone¡¯s cameras. His normal perceptions were a bit overloaded by the sheer amount of vis being exercised by Shahey, but he wasn¡¯t overly worried about where Shahey was taking the drone. The further away from anything even marginally vulnerable, the better.

    While he¡¯d seen the sheer scope of the cliff the first time he was there, the blurring speed and absolutely unchanging horizon from the drone cameras really drove home how large it was. The size of planets, maybe. There was no curve to break the horizon.

    Lucy leaned in stare at the lack of landscape while Shahey conveyed the drone along. After maybe ten minutes and probably several thousand miles, Shahey came to stop and created an open shelf in the cliff in a fraction of a second. He placed the drone on it and then tapped it curiously.

    ¡°Still there?¡±

    ¡°I am,¡± Callum said through the drone speakers. ¡°Anything I need to know before I do any experiments? Should I notify someone if there¡¯s an issue?¡±

    ¡°No, we¡¯ll know,¡± Shahey said with assurance. ¡°Good luck to you.¡±

    ¡°Thanks,¡± Callum said. ¡°We¡¯ll need it.¡±

    ¡°And I¡¯m not just talking about the portals,¡± Shahey added.

    ¡°Yes,¡± Callum sighed. ¡°I know.¡±

    ***

    ¡°Still no activity from The Ghost,¡± the mage functionary reported to the Master of Weltentor. The Master nodded and waved him away, glancing at the fae seated at the table.

    ¡°If it weren¡¯t for direct reports to the contrary, I would think that the defenses worked,¡± The Master said.

    ¡°The true effectiveness of any such defense is fear. Fear paralyzes the spirit, dulls the mind, and weakens the body.¡± Jusael, the Prince of the Court of Roses was annoying and foppish, and thought himself far more profound than he was, but had more than enough power to back up his title. He looked nothing like a real vampire ¡ª pale, painfully pretty, with visible fangs and batlike wings. It was frankly an insult, but it was hard to argue with the results of whatever about it was giving the fae power.

    ¡°Perhaps, but it would have been nice to have permanent results,¡± Weltentor replied. ¡°I mislike this reliance on posturing and games.¡±

    ¡°That¡¯s all life is,¡± Jusael said, smirking in a deliberately infuriating way. When Weltentor had agreed to work with the fae, he hadn¡¯t envisioned needing to deal with someone so insufferable. He wasn¡¯t so impatient as to throw away the benefits of being able to send hundreds or even thousands of vampires through to Earth, from which he would take his tithe and even get some subordinates, but he wished his counterpart was more tolerable.

    ¡°Regardless, it seems we can push further. Assuming you have additional subjects who are willing to go to Earth?¡±

    ¡°There is never any lack of eager fools,¡± Jusael laughed. His laugh was as objectionable as his look. ¡°I will go select another five or six to come through.¡±

    ¡°I will have my candidates meet yours here in three days,¡± Weltentor said. The little nexus was on Earth, since crossing over to each others¡¯ worlds was a fraught proposition at best. Neither of them were quite comfortable with being so reliant on the other¡¯s good will. Weltentor didn¡¯t even like going to Earth, but the new management was far more reliable than the old GAR.

    Jusael flounced off to the balcony, flexing his wings as if trying to show off to Weltentor before flying off into the night. Weltentor himself left the meeting room, stepping into the halls of the small office complex that had been built in the middle of the jungle. The heat and noise of the surroundings was quite unpleasant compared to the cool quiet and stillness of the Night Lands, if the mana density weren¡¯t already reason enough to dislike the place.

    Weltentor was perfectly happy to leave the colonization to others, especially those less powerful vampires and fae ¨C or sometimes even mages ¨C who were deluded enough to think that they would be in charge simply because they weren¡¯t under direct supervision. The mages that kept up the little outpost were of barely any consequence. He knew who pulled their strings, and they wouldn¡¯t dare oppose House Janry.

    Neither would he, not just yet, but the day was coming soon. A vampire¡¯s power would grow slowly with moonwater, but the consumption of vis was far faster. Human vis was a poor substitute for that of other vampires, though it did work, but Weltentor hadn¡¯t fed on a human in more than a century. He¡¯d been eating vampires, letting them grow enough on moonwater to be worth the effort.

    Now that he could just skim from the immigration groups, he was growing quite fast indeed.

    None of the humans made a bid for his attention, so he simply walked to the teleporter in the corner and flicked the lever that started the process. While he would have preferred a portal, there weren¡¯t so many of those about that this not-entirely-official outpost could acquire one yet, assuming the mana density would even support it. The new teleport at least had extra safety features so someone like The Ghost couldn¡¯t compromise it, but it did take longer.

    Once it turned green he stepped through and was back in Castle Weltentor, the heady mana of the Night Lands rushing back into his lungs. He proceeded through the castle, servants bringing him a glass of moonwater without him needing to raise a finger, and he took a long drink - the lower mana of Earth always made him thirsty. Then he went out into the darkness, where his people were at home.

    Mages thought they understood the Night Lands, but they really didn¡¯t. They were only human, after all. There was an ebb and flow to the rhythm of the moon, and it was possible to ride the currents of a Shift. With sufficient practice, at least.

    He followed the lit pathway out into the dark, moving at proper speeds rather than laggard human ones, feeling the tides of the moon and using them to guide his travel. Out beyond his territory ¨C the tamed and stultified area where he let the mages live ¨C there were places where other old Masters dwelt.

    One such place was a scattering of dark stone illuminated only by the moon and the witch-light glow of kindled moonwater. The buildings were close, the streets and alleys barely wide enough for a single person, and the communal sleeping area in the center had no walls at all. It had a name, but that name was in the original tongue, one barely suited for the new bodies that the Night Lands had provided, and he couldn¡¯t use it. Mithwalte was as close as the tongue could come.

    By the time he reached the center, the Master of Mithwalte stood waiting. Both of them ignored the newer, lesser vampires, though Weltentor noted that at least five of them were new enough that they didn¡¯t know how to walk. Considering that it had only been a single Shift since he¡¯d last visited Mithwalte, that was an impressive haul from the wastes.

    ¡°You wish to offer more slots?¡± Mithwalte asked, as if Weltentor visited for any other reason. Weltentor reached into his breast pocket and tossed Mithwalte two objects. Distilled moonwater, treated by fae alchemy, and a bundle of silverite plates for currency. The last was not so much for trading between nests as it was to buy the services of mages, either directly or through him.

    ¡°Another twenty will do it,¡± Weltentor replied. That would be two nests, and he wasn¡¯t going to just make deals with Mithwalte. He¡¯d consume one or two from each batch, adding to his own power even while it seemed like he was doing them a favor, giving them the chance to grow.

    Once he could stand up to an Archmage, he¡¯d be ready.

 Chapter 16 â€“ Distractions

    Archmage Taisen hovered over the treetops by a lake in the middle of the Amazon Basin, invisible to every sense he knew how to counter. He knew that still left some gaps, but even a fae king would be hard-pressed to notice his presence. Which was demonstrated by the fae court that was going about its business directly underneath him.

    He did not create Defensores Mundi in order to police the inevitable conflicts between supernaturals. It was meant to stop the threats from the portal worlds, which was more complicated without free access to the main portals, but he had the foresight to acquire his own. He also had, with some reluctance, taken up the task of restraining the more excessive sorts on Earth. Reluctant less because he objected to dealing with such people permanently, and more because it was the kind of mandate that had no limits. Without boundaries, any organization would expand to fill every available space.

    So far as he was concerned, most of the problems that GAR had created sprang from the fact that it had tried to do everything. That kind of all-encompassing authority would always end up contradicting itself and snarling itself on cross-purposes. Taisen had no desire to make the same mistake. Nor did he want the responsibility.

    Still, the goings-on below were definitely in the envelope of Defensores Mundi. Unlike the usual sort of fae enclave, this one was out in the open. No special rules, barely even a glamour, which meant that the massive tree that had abruptly grown to straddle the Amazon River itself was visible to the naked eye. To satellites too, most likely.

    That was bad enough, but it wasn¡¯t just fae down below. There were vampires operating with support of fae magic over hundreds of miles. While the Amazon Basin had been sparsely populated before, it was completely unpopulated by any mundanes now. Not all of them had been killed; some had just been driven out.

    It irked him that Wells had tipped him off before his own sources could inform him of it. In hindsight, he should have suspected something with the way the Brazilian government had some vague coverage about an ongoing series of disease outbreaks in the Amazon Basin, but there were so many genuine disasters and problems worldwide. It was easy to miss those that might be supernatural. Not that any natural disaster created trees the size of skyscrapers. By any metric, wholesale destruction and alteration of the Earth couldn¡¯t be allowed.

    He clicked the transmitter of his scry-comm, the similarly-cloaked squad around him checking in with brief return clicks. Even if he was muffling sound with a judicious use of force magic, he didn¡¯t want to take chances. He gave the signal, and they scattered.

    Taisen drew on his vis, somewhat wishing that he¡¯d been able to manage the sort of internal reinforcement that Archmage Huitzilan had described, but satisfied enough with the power he¡¯d achieved by finalizing the step into Archmage himself. The creations he spun into existence inside his shell didn¡¯t have much finesse, but they didn¡¯t need it.

    Orbs of coruscating light packed around bubbles of force appeared at eye level among the fae, exploding with an intensity that was blinding and deafening even to supernaturals. Massive wedges of force cut into the earth, severing the tree at its roots, and a vortex of intense gravity lifted it from its perch above the river. Bark and limbs crackled and crunched as the mana-enhanced wood collapsed in on itself, wind whirling about the rapidly disappearing tree.

    Taisen¡¯s resident fae expert had assured him the tree was the locus of the enclave, the source of any passage they had into the Ways and god knew what other connections that might be spilling out into South America. Normally it would have been nigh-indestructible so long as there were enough fae to anchor it, but he was an Archmage. By destroying it first he removed the fae interlopers¡¯ shield and retreat both.

    The sounds of combat came from below as he used his light senses to track his people. He could have simply wiped out the entire nest himself, but he was a big believer in empowering his soldiers. The more experience they could get, the better, especially when he was running oversight. At some point, he had to trust in his people¡¯s ability to perform by themselves. If anything, he was spending too much time putting out fires on Earth, when it was obvious there were issues on the portal worlds.

    He caught one fae trying to ambush a mage with some sort of magical spear, and a brief whorl of light magic sent an invisible lance downward faster than thought. Finding the right frequencies for magical lasers had been a pain, but an invisible sword a mile long was an extremely useful weapon. Taisen spun out some gravity chains and used them to cripple several large fae beasts, things that had been brought through from somewhere deep in Faerie.

    Wind began to howl as his gravity vortex finished compressing the bulk of the tree and started in on the atmosphere, instantly condensing clouds as the shockwave raced through the air. The forty-story tree had been turned into an almost spherical lump of wood, so Taisen dismissed the vortex and let the wooden ball drop down into the river, where it sank like a stone.

    From there it was mostly mopping up. Half the people he¡¯d brought along were there to reshape the ground just to hide the obvious buildings and alterations. There was nothing they could do to fix what had been done to a lot of the local plant life, but fire would clear that up. He didn¡¯t bother to take prisoners, because they already knew where this incursion had come from. At least roughly.

    Faerie was leaking into Earth.

    It had never happened prior to the GAR shakeup, so he was forced to conclude it was purposely being allowed, but none of his official inquiries had gone anywhere. BSE didn¡¯t even bother policing anywhere outside of the main strongholds of Europe, China, and the US coasts. Admittedly, that was partly because he¡¯d taken half their workforce with him. He allowed himself a self-satisfied smile, because it was the better half.

    ¡°Clear, sir,¡± the voice of the Lieutenant Armond came over the scry-com. He checked the battlefield with his own senses and nodded.

    ¡°Clear,¡± he agreed, and flicked out a massive glamour, now that there was nothing to break it. There would probably be mundane attention soon enough, something that Lieutenant Armond noticed as well.

    ¡°What were they thinking, sir? This could have gone very badly for everyone,¡± she asked, disgruntled.

    ¡°I suspect that, generally, they expect us to clean up their messes,¡± Taisen said, his mouth set in a thin line. ¡°Maybe they thought we¡¯d swoop in with glamours or something, but by forcing us to respond they¡¯re able to stretch us thin and, when the time comes, ambush us.¡±

    ¡°That sounds an awful lot like war, sir.¡±

    ¡°It does indeed,¡± Taisen said grimly. ¡°There is a reason that GAR is supposed to keep other supernaturals very restricted. We aren¡¯t fae or vampires and don¡¯t live like them, nor do they live like us. The very first agreements made it clear that they could live with us on Earth, not displace us. What they¡¯re doing is exactly why I created Defensores Mundi in the first place.¡±

    He wasn¡¯t a fan of the American Alliance for those exact same reasons, but they had at least committed to much of the same restrictions as GAR. In fact, Chester¡¯s people preferred to blend in and Wells¡¯ specific moral requirement opposed any sort of creep into an actual threat. Of course, they covered more densely populated and surveyed lands so what they could do without attracting attention was fairly restricted. And the potential consequences were greater.

    The American Alliance blended in with the general mundane population and spread itself wide, rather than separating itself out into fae enclaves or mage Houses. If they ever needed to be dealt with, it wouldn¡¯t be easy to even find them, let alone corral and contain them. Not as diffuse as they were.

    ¡°I¡¯m glad it¡¯s not my job to figure that out, sir,¡± Armond said. Taisen grunted.

    ¡°Sentiment noted, Lieutenant.¡± he said. ¡°I¡¯m not looking forward to trying to tackle it myself.¡± He surveyed the aftermath of the battle. Here and there fires burned, soil and rock was churned and displaced, foliage was torn and mangled. To say nothing of the bodies. ¡°For now, we¡¯ve got a lot of cleaning up to do.¡±

    ***

    Mateo Torres rolled the gold coin over his fingers while his men drove the trucks into town. While the stamping was amateur at best, it was very definitely pure, and his cartel was very interested in whoever had dumped nearly a million dollars in gold into their territory. Theirs, because the previous owners been useless, as evidenced by the how easily they¡¯d been taken over and how they¡¯d ignored such an enormous potential resource.

    The Torres family could always use more traceless gold, but tracking back the coins to a small village in the middle of nowhere had made them all suspicious. Flooding the area with gold was the sort of move that might mean a large militia, or a mine, or a facility to control something even more lucrative. Most of the various products and services in the area were under firm control, but there were always people trying to strike out on their own.

    Their convoy came to a halt inside the little village, which had quickly become deserted. Everyone stayed inside, knowing they didn¡¯t want anything to do with such a convoy. Mateo glanced around as he slid out of the car, seeing that despite the size and remoteness of the town, there seemed to be a lot of new vehicles, new facades, and even new asphalt on the roads. A lot of money had clearly been dumped into the area.

    He meandered away from the vehicles toward the target of their interest, a building owned by a man named Miguel Vasquez. Mateo¡¯s armed guards surrounded him, one of them pounding on the door until it opened. An older man stood at the threshold and blanched at the sight of Mateo and his people arranged outside, though it wasn¡¯t like he could have missed them before. Nobody else had.

    "Where¡¯s Miguel?¡± Mateo¡¯s lieutenant demanded, and the doorman stammered and backed up, gesturing them inside. The lieutenant snorted and shoved the doorman out of the way as he stepped through, weapon held casually as he eyed the interior then signaled the all-clear. Mateo walked in and glanced around, finding the house obviously sporting new furniture and appliances too.

    ¡°Mister Torres, welcome.¡± A man stood in the living room, keeping his hands very obviously in sight and giving him a respectful nod. ¡°What can I do for you?¡±

    ¡°You¡¯re Miguel?¡± Mateo asked brusquely. The man nodded again, and Mateo flipped the gold coin his way. Miguel caught it and looked at it. ¡°You¡¯re going to tell me who is spending so much gold around here. And where I can find him.¡±

    ¡°Ah. It is just some gringo who wanted a private house. I can show you the lot on the maps¡­¡± Miguel offered, handing the coin back into the demanding hand of Mateo¡¯s lieutenant. ¡°However, the last group that went down there couldn¡¯t find anything. They said that the road and the tracks just vanished.¡±

    Mateo grunted. He hadn¡¯t heard about that, but then again, the previous owners had been fairly careless. Whatever had happened, it had been buried well. Or maybe they¡¯d just gotten the wrong area, assuming Miguel hadn¡¯t misled them.

    ¡°So, what, an American? Show me.¡±

    ¡°He was an American, yes,¡± Miguel said as he hastened to obey. ¡°But he didn¡¯t seem too worried about people looking for him.¡± He headed back into an office and dug through filing cabinets under the watchful eyes of Mateo¡¯s men. He came back with a large map and spread it out on the desk. The plot of land was off near the village of San Fernando, one of a thousand such villages with that name, but the location was clear enough.

    ¡°I think he was a dangerous man,¡± Miguel added uncomfortably as he showed them the map. ¡°Perhaps, American military? I do not know."

    ¡°Yeah?¡± Mateo pulled a cigarette from his front pocket and lit it. ¡°Well, I¡¯m a dangerous man, too,¡± he said, taking a long drag and blowing the smoke out at Miguel. ¡°The Torres family isn¡¯t going to permit foreigners to do what they like in our territory.¡±

    ¡°He offered a lot of gold,¡± Miguel said, by way of excuse. ¡°And he just wanted a house. I hired the workers myself, so I know that¡¯s all they built. I still have the house plans somewhere around here.¡±

    ¡°Sure, get those too.¡± Mateo acknowledged. He had doubts that it was just a house but Miguel wasn¡¯t acting like he was hiding anything. If anything he was being too accommodating. Not that many people would hesitate when confronted by someone in Mateo¡¯s position. Or by the firepower that came with that position.

    While Miguel was digging for the documents, Mateo texted an update back to his brother with a snapshot of the map. Not that either of them expected real trouble, but lack of communication was an easy problem to avoid. The family they¡¯d removed hadn¡¯t been the best at keeping each other updated, and that had let the Torres family roll right over them. Mateo wasn¡¯t going to be that stupid.

    When the house plans came out Mateo did feel a bit stupid, because he couldn¡¯t read architectural drawings. Not that he let it show. He just took more pictures and sent them off. What he did understand looked normal enough, just a basement and some places labeled as bedrooms and bathrooms and a living room.

    Which was only more suspicious. Who would bother trying to build an ordinary house off the grid in rural Mexico? There was no telling what might be going on out of the sight of everyone.

    ¡°What was his name again?¡±

    ¡°I don¡¯t know. The documents are in the name of Mister Smith, but he paid in gold.¡± Miguel shrugged. ¡°I didn¡¯t ask too many questions.¡±

    Mateo scowled, considering whether he should make an example of the man or not. Miguel should have reported on the American back when the property was purchased, but little more could have been expected. It was hardly reasonable to expect him to pry anything useful out of a rich and dangerous man who obviously wanted privacy. Miguel also paid promptly and completely, so it probably wasn¡¯t the best idea.

    Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on Royal Road.

    ¡°If anything like this happens again, you will notify me directly,¡± Mateo said. One of his men shifted the gun he was carrying.

    ¡°Yes, of course, Mister Torres.¡± Miguel said hastily.

    ¡°Come on,¡± he said to his men. ¡°Let¡¯s go check on this Mister Smith.¡±

    ***

    Lucy sat in her section of the back garden, pulling weeds. She was hoping that eventually she¡¯d be able to interact with a telekinesis focus enough that she could do it that way, but it wasn¡¯t like she actually minded the work. She never would have guessed before that she liked it, but there was something relaxing about working with plants. Fiddling around with drones and rapid prototyping was still more fun, but she couldn¡¯t do that with Alexander.

    Her son was busy grabbing the plants she¡¯d pulled out of the soil and carrying them over to the compost pile, where he threw them as hard as he could. They didn¡¯t go very far, but he seemed to enjoy it. He ran back toward her and she opened her arms.

    ¡°Come and give mommy a hug,¡± she said, and smiled as Alex ran full-tilt into her embrace. ¡°Mwah,¡± she said, and he giggled as she gave him a big sloppy kiss. It was just the two of them for the moment, since her husband was out shopping.

    With Alexander, Lucy hadn¡¯t had any cravings at all, but this time she was getting them something fierce and Gayle couldn¡¯t do anything about it. Or rather, she couldn¡¯t do anything permanent, not without running risks nobody was willing to take. Fortunately it wasn¡¯t like it was hard for Callum to make a grocery run, nor was it like she was asking for anything completely outrageous. Even if Callum did give her a look when she asked for licorice.

    She wasn¡¯t sure what he had against licorice, but it¡¯d be fun to tease him about it later on.

    Her phone chimed from the chair on the deck, and she frowned. It wasn¡¯t the usual tone, and it sounded familiar, but she couldn¡¯t quite place it. Brushing the dirt off her hands, she stood up and walked over to check the phone, only to doubletake when she saw the notification was a warning from her home security system.

    ¡°Oh, heck,¡± she said, mindful of Alex following her. She swiped open the phone and tapped on the notification, getting a picture of a bunch of men with semiautomatic rifles marching through the forest near the road. A chill went down her spine and she gawked at the picture before she dropped the phone into her pocket.

    ¡°Come here, sweetie,¡± she said, scooping Alex up and hurrying inside.

    ¡°What¡¯s wrong, mama?¡± He asked, though it came out a little garbled since he was still only two.

    ¡°We just gotta go down to the basement for a while.¡± She and Callum had practiced an emergency drill once or twice, but that was a lot different from actually having an emergency. She stepped through the basement door and locked it, hurrying down the stairs. It was just a steel fire door, nothing truly reinforced, but Lucy felt better with it locked. Only then did she let Alex down and text Callum.

    He might come sweeping back in a few seconds, or have already spotted the men with his senses, but he might not, too. Callum was not as attuned to his phone as she was, and with all the nexus stuff he seemed to miss things sometimes. He had admitted it was hard to keep track of everything when he had so much volume for his perceptions. Even if she didn¡¯t get how his spatial sense worked, she understood that much.

    Safely down in the basement with the door locked, she took Alex¡¯s hand and pulled him into the war room. They¡¯d kept him out before, but that was where most of her controls were for their defenses and she wasn¡¯t going to tell Alex to go play in the other room while she attended to things. Instead she just shut the door behind them and went over to where the tile controls were.

    The first thing she turned on was the glamour. While it shrouded the existence of the house from normal eyes, it was also visible to mana-sight so they didn¡¯t leave it on all the time. They didn¡¯t want to broadcast their presence to any supernatural in the area. Unfortunately, all it did was hide things. There was nothing to stop someone from crossing through it just by moving blindly forward, so it wasn¡¯t that great of a defense.

    She pulled up all their surveillance cameras on the screens in the war room, and watched the reactions. There were around a dozen men pushing their way through the underbrush where the access road had been, where despite two years of growth there was still a clear view of the house. The ones at the front faltered when, to them, the house ceased to exist, but someone barked something in a Spanish dialect she couldn¡¯t decipher. That seemed to be enough to shore up their reserve, and they continued on.

    ¡°Teevee!¡± Alex said, climbing up on a chair and staring at the screens.

    ¡°Pretty much, sweetie,¡± Lucy agreed, some of her panic easing as she looked over her options. Callum hadn¡¯t replied yet, but it¡¯d been maybe a minute or two, and the escape portal was still there. But she also had the tile-fueled magical traps.

    Still, she hesitated. She¡¯d have to turn off the screens regardless, because she didn¡¯t want Alex seeing any real trouble just yet, but so far she¡¯d not actually pulled the trigger on anyone. Despite all her practice with guns, she didn¡¯t feel she had prepared herself to actually do anything lethal. Then again, there was probably nothing that could prepare her.

    One of the men actually noticed the surveillance cameras, though to be fair they weren¡¯t deeply camouflaged. They all had wires running to them so they were just mounted inside little wooden posts to keep the weather off, which generally wouldn¡¯t look like much but anyone who got close would be able to see the camera inside on any close inspection.

    Predicably, one of the gunmen aimed their rifle at her, and she instinctively ducked despite it just being a camera. He fired, but it wasn¡¯t like in the movies where it instantly went black. It took several tries for the person to actually hit the camera, but eventually that particular one went out, which was sobering. She couldn¡¯t hear the gunshots from down in the basement but they weren¡¯t that far away from the house and eventually they¡¯d get close enough to cross through the glamour field.

    ¡°Okay, sweetie, television is going off,¡± she said, even though Alex had already lost interest and was investigating the fridge in the corner, which had some emergency soda and other snacks. Fortunately he hadn¡¯t tried messing with the tile setup against the far wall. It was all mounted pretty firmly, but two-year-olds could be surprisingly strong.

    Lucy grabbed the tablet and opened up the camera feeds there, blanking them from the wall so Alex wouldn¡¯t see anything he shouldn¡¯t. Most of the spell traps had been set up with supernaturals in mind, and against normal people even a minor deterrent was going to be lethal. The largest trap they had, the cables connected to some rocks, would absolutely work but might be overkill. She¡¯d actually rather just scare them off, especially since they were just mundanes. They weren¡¯t monsters like Callum hunted.

    Fortunately, the tile setup allowed for a lot of flexibility. She started slotting in different spell forms, altering the area that the projection covered. Obviously it¡¯d be a bad idea to unleash any offensive magic in the house, so she changed the projection area to just out front. Instead of glamour, she slotted in Callum¡¯s brand-new gravity enchantment, oriented sideways.

    ¡°Hang on, wait, no, keep your hands off of that,¡± Lucy said, making her voice just a little bit firm. Alex had come over almost immediately after she started fiddling with it and she had to stop him from grabbing onto the tiles. They didn¡¯t have any sharp edges, or shouldn¡¯t, but they were still made of glass and fragile enough that they could get broken if he dropped them. They didn¡¯t have all that many backups, either.

    ¡°Why don¡¯t you get mommy a soda while she takes care of this,¡± she said, turning him around and pointing at the refrigerator. She was sure he¡¯d be complaining about chores in a few years, but for now Alex loved to go do simple tasks for his mom and dad.

    He ran off and she slotted the last of the tiles into the mounts, pushing them flat and letting them click into place. She waved her hand over the tiles, making sure the mana was flowing through all the enchantments, then put her hand against the trigger. The mana capacitors were full, which was good because Callum¡¯s enchantments took a lot of juice.

    Lucy activated the trigger, about the only interaction she could make with mana, and watched on her tablet as the gunmen suddenly found themselves falling sideways some twenty feet, getting flung back along the overgrown access road. She winced as some of them ended up smashing into trees as they pinwheeled impossibly through the air, but she could only be so sympathetic. Even if she didn¡¯t want to kill them, they had been creeping around her house with guns.

    ¡°Soda, mommy!¡± Alex said, holding a bottle in both hands, and Lucy put aside the tablet to scoop him up.

    ¡°Thank you, sweetie! I think we¡¯re almost done down here, then we can go back up and get lunch.¡± She kept an eye on the tablet, where only one of her cameras had a view of the would-be assailants. They were piled up near the edge of the property, right on the road. One had even gone flying far enough to smash into one of their trucks and break a window.

    Alex latched onto her tablet and she didn¡¯t try to pull it away, since the men were far enough away that it looked like some kind of movie. They seemed to be arguing, but it wasn¡¯t long before they all got into various vehicles, some of them limping, and drove off.

    ¡°Smart move,¡± she said under her breath, then sent another text to Callum. Handled it.

    ***

    Callum nearly had a heart attack when he saw the text from Lucy. He probably also gave someone palpitations when he vanished from behind his cart at the grocery store, but they would just have to cope. Sure, she said she¡¯d handled it but that didn¡¯t help at all.

    He pushed out his senses through the anchor at the bunker, grabbing Lucy and Alex from where they were and teleporting all three of them to the backup bunker, a little cave in the Pacific Northwest. With a blink they were all three in the cold, dark, but safe retreat. Though Alex started wailing as he was suddenly surrounded by cave.

    ¡°It¡¯s okay, sweetie,¡± Lucy said, as Callum summoned one of the LED lanterns he¡¯d left in the cave into his hand and turned it on. The brilliant light illuminated the close walls of the emergency campsite, and he grabbed Lucy and Alex in a hug before looking at them.

    ¡°Everything okay?¡± He asked, though Lucy seemed cheerful enough and Alex was unhappy but unharmed.

    ¡°The defenses worked fine,¡± Lucy assured him as she tried to soothe Alex. ¡°Just a bunch of normal people with guns. I sent them packing. Didn¡¯t even get anywhere near the house. I told you I had it handled,¡± she said, and kissed him. ¡°Got you handled too, mister,¡± she added, tugging at the jackets she and Alex were wearing. He hadn¡¯t even noticed, but it seemed Lucy had been ready for his reaction.

    ¡°Well,¡± he said slowly, some of his worry draining away. ¡°I guess the question is how compromised the bunker is. If it wasn¡¯t supernaturals, there might not be any immediate danger, but now that there¡¯s attention we might have to start rethinking things.¡±

    ¡°All they know is that some mysterious force threw them back to their cars,¡± Lucy said. ¡°Do you think they¡¯re really going to go, oh yes, let¡¯s keep walking around the spooky ghost-haunted woods in Mexico?¡±

    ¡°Fair enough,¡± Callum acknowledged. For normal people, finding nothing and getting thrown around by an invisible force wouldn¡¯t even be something they¡¯d admit to. ¡°But why did they come in the first place? And they might talk enough to draw attention from supernaturals or even be in the employ of supernaturals.¡±

    ¡°We¡¯re not moving,¡± Lucy objected to his unstated conclusion. ¡°Not just because of this.¡±

    ¡°Mmm,¡± Callum said, neither agreeing nor disagreeing. He liked the house too, and they¡¯d spent a lot of time getting it just right. ¡°I think we¡¯re on a timer no matter what,¡± he said instead. ¡°But that timer might be long enough.¡±

    ¡°Long enough for what?¡± Lucy asked, as Alex finally stopped crying.

    ¡°For us to make it so nobody dares target us,¡± Callum said.

    He¡¯d always known that he couldn¡¯t hide forever. Being remote and nigh-inaccessible was a great first line of defense, but he¡¯d come to the conclusion that what he really wanted was to be like Archmage Wizzy. Dangerous, unknown, with more allies than enemies.

    It was a work in progress. He definitely had a lot of enemies, but the American Alliance, House Hargrave and House Taisen were not exactly threats, even if he hadn¡¯t signed any agreements with them. And once he¡¯d removed the vampires, there¡¯d be a lot less power arrayed against him.

    ¡°That sounds ominous,¡± Lucy said. ¡°Maybe I can get you a cat and a high-backed chair to complete the effect?¡± Callum blinked, then laughed.

    ¡°Okay, maybe that¡¯s a little too dramatic, but we do have to do more for our safety. If nothing else we¡¯ll have to increase our home security. I¡¯ll ask about different glamours, or maybe we can buy some fae artifact to make the house harder to find,¡± Callum mused aloud. ¡°I also need to buckle down on getting that shield going.¡±

    ¡°All good ideas,¡± Lucy agreed. ¡°We can discuss it at home, right?¡±

    Callum checked through the anchor, bringing in a drone to teleport around the area and properly sweep the region. There was nobody around, and no traces of the people who¡¯d tried to get at the house other than some broken glass on the dirt road near the property. Once he was sure there was nobody nearby, and no subtle traces of any magic other than the house defenses, he teleported them all back into the living room.

    ¡°Just in case, pack up some extras beyond the bug-out bag,¡± Callum told her. ¡°That way we won¡¯t be caught off-guard.¡± Lucy wrinkled her nose, but nodded. ¡°I¡¯m going to be making my own preparations, but first I have to go check on Miguel,¡± he continued. ¡°I knew it¡¯d be a risk when I made sure this land was purchased and built on legitimately, but I thought it¡¯d be less of a problem than trying to scratch out a house the other way. We¡¯ll see what he has to say.¡±

    ¡°If worse comes to worst, couldn¡¯t you just teleport the whole thing?¡± Lucy asked. ¡°I mean, we¡¯re not connected to a grid or anything.¡±

    ¡°Except for the well and septic, I could,¡± Callum agreed, feeling out the size of the house with his senses. ¡°In theory anyway. It¡¯s a lot bigger than anything I¡¯ve done before, though. I¡¯ll have to test it.¡± A little tiny part of him imagined putting it on the moon, though there was no way he could get his hands on anything that would keep air in. Even if there was a magic solution, he wouldn¡¯t trust it.

    ¡°I think it¡¯s also a good idea to keep the glamour up,¡± Lucy said. ¡°I¡¯m not sure if they actually saw the house or anything, but they probably would have just passed by the property with it up. Right?¡±

    ¡°Yeah,¡± Callum shook his head. ¡°I guess I was wrong about who we had to worry about.¡± He rubbed his palm over his face. ¡°We¡¯ll keep it up for now, and I¡¯ll see if I can finagle better versions out of the Guild of Enchanting later. Assuming there are better versions.¡±

    ¡°You¡¯re not going to try and wipe out whoever it was?¡± Lucy asked with morbid curiosity.

    ¡°If it¡¯s just regular people, I don¡¯t think I can,¡± Callum sighed. ¡°Besides, if they¡¯re really scared off, I don¡¯t see the point. The damage is done anyway. If they¡¯re going to keep harassing people, then I might have to do something. Anyway,¡± he said, crouching down to take Alex¡¯s hands. ¡°Sorry for scaring you, Alex. Next time we go to a cave we¡¯ll do it the regular way, how¡¯s that?¡±

    ¡°¡¯Kay,¡± Alex said, scrubbing at his face.

    ¡°I¡¯ll be back soon. I just have to check on something,¡± he told his son, then glanced up at Lucy. ¡°Do you have the surveillance footage? I¡¯ll want to make sure I know who it is.¡±

    ¡°Sure do,¡± Lucy said, clearly far less affected by the intrusion than he was. She handed him a tablet as he stood up, watching the admittedly short section of footage. Lucy had very clearly scared them off, which was frankly probably better than killing them. Their disappearance might have drawn more attention.

    He accessed the drone controls for the one he¡¯d brought back to surveil the property and sent it off to the town where Miguel lived, the name of which he still didn¡¯t know even two years on. Since they used portals for everything, he rarely bothered to think about their physical surroundings. The town looked nicer than he¡¯d remembered, but he recognized the house he was aiming for, and he was pretty sure Miguel was inside. All he needed was a tiny portal to spy into the room and he verified it.

    ¡°Alright love, I¡¯ll be back in a little bit.¡±

    ¡°Stay safe,¡± Lucy returned, giving him a hug. He returned it, and teleported himself outside of Miguel¡¯s front door. The man himself was talking with his employee or whoever it was that ran the front desk, both of them smoking cigars. Summoning his cane to his hand, he rapped on the door.

    Miguel himself opened it, and flinched when he saw it was Callum. Which seemed excessive, but it at least set the tone. He leaned on the cane and raised his eyebrows at Miguel.

    ¡°We had visitors,¡± he said.

    ¡°Si, Se¨¾or,¡± Miguel said. ¡°The Torres cartel sent someone. They asked about your gold.¡± He wiped at his brow with a handkerchief and Callum sighed. He wasn¡¯t surprised that Miguel had spilled about him; after all, they had guns and organized crime didn¡¯t play around. But it was better than a state actor and the gold wasn¡¯t really all that huge a draw. Overall he hadn¡¯t spent all that much.

    Then again, organized crime didn¡¯t play around.

    ¡°Did they say anything on their way back?¡±

    ¡°No, I didn¡¯t see them,¡± Miguel said.

    ¡°Mm. If they come back, call this number,¡± Callum said, getting one of the weird sanitized connections Lucy had for them. ¡°I¡¯ll work it out with them, so you don¡¯t need to worry about it.¡± Hopefully inviting Miguel to send trouble Callum¡¯s way would also mean he had enough forewarning to deal with any unpleasantness.

    He didn¡¯t want armed men showing up at his house again, but he didn¡¯t think he would be so lucky.

 Not A Chapter - Book Four Audiobook released!

    Hello everyone!

    I''m getting better at my timing and this time it''s only a few days after the book release!

    The Audiobook for Reclusive Mage is now available at Amazon</a> and Audible.</a>

    You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

    As a reminder, Book Five is the final book in the series.

    I am only just barely starting the next story, which will be absolutely nothing like either BC or PM because I guess I''m never satisfied.  No details on it just yet, but there will be something when PM wraps.

 Chapter 17 - Breakthrough

    ¡°Sure, yeah, I¡¯ll fill him in,¡± Lucy said, on the phone with someone while she stretched out on the couch. ¡°Glad you didn¡¯t need our help with this one.¡±

    Callum cocked his head at what sounded like some kind of business, but he didn¡¯t interrupt. He found it was far less stressful to let Lucy deal with the people who wanted The Ghost¡¯s attention most of the time. Half of it was nonsense anyway, despite the screening measures already in place, and if he had to deal with it there probably would have been violence.

    He was busy anyway, since he still hadn¡¯t quite cracked either dimensional portals or useful shields. He¡¯d made progress, though, and it was a little irritating to think that he probably could have started years ago, just after he first started magic. Callum knew that was a little unfair, since half the tools he was using to experiment hadn¡¯t existed until he made them, but it still felt like he¡¯d wasted time.

    At least it had been relatively quiet, even with needing to deal with Constance and the negative healing trap. The incursion by the cartel had him on edge, and though he was glad that the past couple years had only been interspersed with a little drama, he knew that was partly because he¡¯d kept himself deliberately disconnected. Now, though, it seemed like things were picking up again. He just hoped he¡¯d be ready for it.

    The access to the dragonlands had accelerated his learning about portals, if for no other reason than the ambient mana made it far easier to make and sustain his prototype portals beyond a fraction of a moment. Though it seemed that one of the reasons they were unstable was what filled the other side.

    The destination he¡¯d actually managed to find, from refining and experimenting with the first form to give him a response, was the exact opposite of what he wanted in a portal world. Instead of being abundant in mana, it had some kind of anti-mana that utterly annihilated ambient mana and destabilized vis fairly quickly. When he managed to keep the portal open for longer than an instant, a void of energy spilled out both sides of the portal. Very quickly it formed something that looked a bit like a black hole, with mana spiraling in from the sides as the portal frame took it in while an opaque nothingness bulged outward.

    Fortunately it was not self-sustaining, and the negative mana would eat his portal the moment he stopped channeling vis into and reinforcing the structure, but it was still disconcerting. He wasn¡¯t sure if he had bad luck or if anti-mana was common, but if such a portal were opened at full size it would probably be catastrophic to anything magical nearby.

    ¡°So, if it¡¯s anti-mana, how do you even get a portal there?¡± Lucy¡¯s question was exactly the same one he had, and it wasn¡¯t easy to answer.

    ¡°Well, I¡¯m pretty sure my vis isn¡¯t punching through to the other side to form the portal, it¡¯s one-way instead of a synchronized pair like usual,¡± Callum hazarded. ¡°Since the actual hole isn¡¯t magic, the vis frame isn¡¯t affected until the anti-mana spreads out enough to start eating at it.¡±

    ¡°Still weird,¡± Lucy opined.

    ¡°Weird, but useful,¡± Callum agreed.

    It didn¡¯t take much imagination to see how he could weaponize such a thing. Bane materials worked against people, since they disrupted vis, but did nothing against pure mana constructs or enchantments. The anti-mana, though, would probably punch through enchantment shields or wards as if they weren¡¯t there. It was a fantastic discovery, but completely at odds with what he was actually trying to accomplish.

    Now that he had a start on how to make such portals, he could start to try and adjust the destination. Something that probably wouldn¡¯t have been possible without the statistical analysis software Lucy had dug up. Apparently it had originally been used for some kind of particle physics theory modeling, but it handled the complex interlaced torus patterns well enough. Actually putting numbers to things that worked and didn¡¯t, and being able to compare the two, made him figure out what ratios he needed to alter and where.

    Something that probably would have been impossible if he was doing things by paper and pencil. Or at least, required decades of experimentation, rather than just a lot of really intense bookkeeping. Even at the first pass he had a good idea of what portions of the spellform had to be just so, and what portions were more flexible.

    So far he hadn¡¯t managed to break into a positive mana world, but he figured it was only a matter of time. He¡¯d been double-checking against the extant portals and there were a lot of things he hadn¡¯t yet tried. The problem was that he was feeling the press of time, since the longer it took the more problems could proliferate.

    It wasn¡¯t like he¡¯d gotten much further on the shield idea, either. Despite Wizzy¡¯s advice, he¡¯d more or less abandoned the idea of putting any kind of magic into his actual body. Even if he could somehow displace himself dimensionally, he still needed to breathe, and having extra dimensions would just expose his insides in a direction that didn¡¯t normally exist.

    His best idea was having it sit right on top of his skin, because pushing his vis out a few millimeters was no real problem. It was like clenching a fist, and while it wasn¡¯t something he¡¯d want to keep up permanently, it¡¯d serve for any kind of combat situations. Which still wasn¡¯t as good as normal mage shields, but any defense was better than no defense.

    They¡¯d need that defense sooner or later. So far there¡¯d been no followup to the cartel incursion, but Callum knew it was just a matter of time before the incident attracted more attention. He wasn¡¯t sure if it would be mundane or supernatural, but he was already preparing for the day when they¡¯d have to bail. If he was very lucky, he¡¯d even be able to take the house with him.

    ¡°Okay, bye!¡± Lucy chirped and hung up the phone. ¡°Well, sounds like there¡¯s huge problems down in Brazil and that area,¡± she said, less happily. ¡°Too big for us to do anything about, and I think Taisen¡¯s going to be spending some time cleaning house down there, but supernaturals being that big and flashy seems kinda, I dunno. Rash? Why are they being so big and dumb?¡±

    ¡°My guess is because they think they can get away with it,¡± Callum sighed. ¡°As bad as GAR was, it was at least a status quo. Now we¡¯re in the period where people are trying fill in that power vacuum. It probably would have happened anyway; we¡¯re dealing with a bunch of nigh-immortals here. It¡¯s pretty obvious these people have all had their own agendas, and all they¡¯re doing is taking advantage of an opportunity. The fact that we¡¯re starting to see trouble again might mean that the vacuum has been filled.¡±

    ¡°Ugh. I don¡¯t think I like the idea of going up against the plots of people who have had decades to think about it.¡±

    ¡°Which is why we don¡¯t,¡± Callum said firmly. ¡°Let Chester take care of the plotting and planning. The Ghost just removes monsters. That¡¯s it.¡±

    ¡°I guess nuking the vampire portal still counts as monster removal,¡± Lucy mused.

    ¡°On a grand scale,¡± Callum agreed. ¡°Assuming I can make it work.¡±

    ¡°Then we have to worry about the fae invaders maybe?¡±

    ¡°I¡¯m hoping that Taisen can deal with them.¡± He turned away from the model on his desktop and blinked to rest his eyes. "There¡¯s a lot of fae that seem fairly okay, so I don¡¯t think that threatening their portal is really justified? If anything we just need to put Taisen in charge of screening people or the like.¡±

    ¡°It¡¯s nice to find responsible nigh-immortals,¡± Lucy agreed.

    ¡°Yeah,¡± Callum agreed, trying not to dwell on the fact that he was probably one of them. Long-lived, at least, though it wasn¡¯t really clear how much things had slowed down for him. Three or four years just wasn¡¯t enough time to tell whether or not he was permanently stuck in his thirties. Admittedly, after Gayle¡¯s healing he was feeling fewer random aches and pains. ¡°Anyway, I¡¯m glad that we don¡¯t need to step in. Wonder why Shahey told me and not them, though.¡±

    ¡°Dragonblooded are weird,¡± Lucy opined. ¡°Probably has to do with their rules. You¡¯re kinda doing them a special favor so they can speak more freely.¡±

    ¡°Point,¡± Callum said, standing up and stretching. ¡°If there are no crises brewing, how about we go out for dinner somewhere tonight?¡±

    ¡°Yeah!¡± Lucy said cheerfully. ¡°I haven¡¯t been to that little pizza place over in Creighton for ages.¡±

    He put complicated topological nonsense off for the rest of the night, just enjoying the dinner and an evening with his family, and the next morning he had a few hunches bubbling from the back of his head. It seemed the break was just what his brain needed. Callum double-checked the dragon lands portal to make sure he was thinking right, then made a dimensional version out in space.

    Mana came through.

    The portal didn¡¯t collapse for once, pulling mana from the other dimension, though it was only mana coming through. Appraising it with his senses, it seemed the other side was complete vacuum. It was also deeply distorted, even more than Mictl¨¡n, and he was pretty sure it would probably kill anyone who actually entered it in short order.

    He took a little peek through the space-drone camera, pushing his vis through the portal so he could rotate it around and move the perspective. Considering the portal worlds that he¡¯d seen before, he was curious what a version without an atmosphere would look like. The answer was that it looked just like any normal starscape, at least at first. Then he noticed the dots of light were moving far too quickly for them to be the same sort of star he knew, and he swiveled the portal around, trying to figure out what he was actually seeing.

    The portal seemed to be in a binary star system, the two burning suns solid white disks to the camera. At least until the suns turned lazily and blinked. Callum swore as something the size of planets moved through the void, and he tore apart the portals. Even if the connection was tiny, he didn¡¯t want anything like that with access to Earth.

    ¡°Okay! Success, but also, yikes.¡±

    ¡°Success?¡± Lucy squinted at him. ¡°You cracked dimensional portals already?¡±

    ¡°What do you mean already, I¡¯ve been at this for almost a year,¡± Callum grumbled. ¡°And that¡¯s with cribbing from six different examples! But yeah I made one that worked. Not self-sustaining though, so it¡¯s not really a real portal, but it¡¯s at least something. Problem is, the one I made was kinda scary.¡±

    ¡°Scary how?¡± Lucy asked, getting out Alex¡¯s lunch. Once again they were at Chester¡¯s place for a group playdate, which wasn¡¯t exactly daycare but it did mean that they could socialize or work without needing to keep quite so strict an eye on their son.

    ¡°Think Lovecraft,¡± Callum said grimly. ¡°Big scary monsters.¡±

    ¡°Don¡¯t all the portal worlds have big scary monsters?¡± Lucy pointed out.

    ¡°Okay, true,¡± Callum conceded with a nod. ¡°But these were bigger and scarier.¡±

    ¡°Next time get pictures!¡± Lucy said. He snorted and poked at the space cam feed, rewinding it and turning the laptop around to show her. She squinted at it, puzzled, until the twin suns turned out to be eyes of impossible proportions. Then she shuddered. ¡°Okay, that was a good call.¡±

    ¡°Yeah, so, I have the shape for that one down, but we¡¯re not going to use that one again,¡± Callum said. ¡°But I think I might have figured out the ratios to get mana worlds rather than the other stuff.¡±

    ¡°So you think you¡¯re ready to deal with the, ah, elephant in the room?¡± Conscious of their location, Lucy didn¡¯t state the plan to close the vampire portal outright. Even if none of the shifters about were paying direct attention to their conversation, every single one of them could hear it. Which did mean they knew that Callum could open portals to other portal worlds, but that was less incendiary than closing existing ones.

    ¡°Probably so,¡± Callum said. ¡°To be honest, I probably could have before, but I wanted a few more tools.¡± The weapon he intended to use was simple: anti-mana portals. He¡¯d originally been hoping to make a version of the big portals to discover why they were so stable and then figure out how to get rid of them. If they were fragile they¡¯d have been gone long ago, especially something like Portal World Five.

    It was possible he could have closed them by just dropping a rock going very, very fast on top of the portal, or even just conventional explosive if he were willing to use it. But he didn¡¯t know, and if he just started attacking a portal site to no effect, it¡¯d seem like weakness. Not to mention it¡¯d incite a global manhunt ¡ª more of one than there was already, anyway. If he succeeded, that was an entirely different situation.

    Succeed or fail, he needed preparations to ensure he could survive the attempt. Which he was really hoping to get from the portal world experimentation. In addition to fulfilling his obligation to Shahey, he could just put a portal to some nice, pleasant dimension up by his moon nexus and be absolutely unassailable. Even a moderately livable one would work. He just had to keep trying until he found something that wasn¡¯t simply deep space.

    Referencing Lucy¡¯s analytics program and making his own notes, he was pretty sure he had an idea about the portal destinations. He didn¡¯t have the language to discuss it, not without referring to the three-dimensional diagrams, but there were certain ratios and angles that seemed to have influence over where it emptied out. There was probably years and years of experimentation to get anything like precision from it, and he could imagine endless mathematical theories, but Callum didn¡¯t need that. He just needed something that worked for the moment.

    Someday, someone would benefit from what he was learning, though he didn¡¯t know who. Considering what was on the other end of dimensional portals, it wasn¡¯t really a bad thing that basically nobody could make them. At least for most people they¡¯d have to take the risk personally, rather than doing what he did and doing any testing very far away from anything important. Like Earth itself.

    This book is hosted on another platform. Read the official version and support the author''s work.

    Lucy listened to his meandering thoughts on the portals once they got back home, even though he wasn¡¯t very articulate about it. There were pieces to the puzzle that were difficult to represent with the models, like the pressure and tension of holding the construct in place. He¡¯d made notes as best he could, but without any instruments that could properly measure such things they were just impressions.

    ¡°So what do you think the chances are of finding a nice place like this?¡± Lucy waved her hand in the direction of the front garden. ¡°I mean, I get wanting our own place but how likely is it?¡±

    ¡°I have no idea,¡± Callum admitted. ¡°Only two of the portal worlds seem particularly habitable. Now that I have a starting point, though, I can just keep trying. Rolling the dice.¡±

    ¡°Portal world lottery, huh,¡± Lucy said with a grin. ¡°I should set up a betting pool.¡±

    ¡°You probably should,¡± Callum said with a laugh. ¡°But we might run into some places that we can¡¯t talk about. I¡¯m even uncomfortable spreading around that deep space portal world. Creeps me out.¡±

    ¡°Hey, you don¡¯t know their names so you can¡¯t get their attention. That¡¯s how it works right?¡± Lucy winked at him. ¡°So have you tested that portal in the dragon lands yet?¡±

    ¡°I actually haven¡¯t,¡± Callum admitted. ¡°I should. But if it¡¯s vacuum on the other side, hm. I guess I can just use the big steel block we have.¡± He reached out into the cave-cache and grabbed the chunk of metal, teleporting it out to the dragonlands site. In hindsight, he probably should have been using that kind of thing to begin with, in addition to the various protections he had on the space drone. He scribbled a note to himself and then reformed the successful portal.

    Given that dragonlands space was slightly different, he wasn¡¯t really sure that the portal itself would work, but he matched the structure as precisely as possible. The dragonlands were not too terribly different from Earth anyway, certainly not as distorted as Mictl¨¡n or the Night Lands. It was rather like tracing a drawing on a slightly bent tabletop, so he was pretty sure he had it right.

    The portal opened into a deep space once again, but this one was very different. There was no mana on the other side, nor was their anti-mana. The space felt very much like Earth¡¯s, and when he aimed the drone¡¯s camera through the portal he spotted an actual galaxy in one direction. A galaxy composed of green-white stars.

    Callum was no space expert but he did know that there was no such thing as a green star. So while it seemed similar to Earth, there were probably completely different physics at play. Or maybe just subtly different, but that would be enough to make it completely uninhabitable. It wasn¡¯t until he rotated the portal around that he saw the exit was also a few miles away from a small swarm of objects. It was like an artist¡¯s idea of an asteroid belt, but it was all variously-sized red spheres of rock.

    At least it seemed that portals came out near, roughly, objects of interest. From a strictly statistical perspective that made no sense, because the universe was so large that intersecting a planet¡¯s surface was essentially impossible. But there was clearly some kind of bias in the way the various portal worlds and universes connected. Mostly he blamed magic, though he was sure someone with a more philosophical bent would find something profound about the nature of reality.

    ¡°Well, looks like it¡¯s a different place to me,¡± Callum said. He showed the viewscreen to Lucy, who happily recorded the odd cosmology.

    ¡°You know, you could probably just spend the rest of your life opening random portals and finding cool new places,¡± Lucy said.

    ¡°Probably,¡± Callum admitted. ¡°There might be a pretty narrow range of portal worlds in existence, though. Or the other ones I can get to are just so alien they¡¯re unusable. Could be that¡¯s why they¡¯re taking so much juice.¡±

    ¡°Don¡¯t be such a wet blanket,¡± Lucy said, putting an arm around him and kissing his cheek. ¡°Have a little fun! We get to sightsee dimensions!¡±

    ¡°We sure do,¡± Callum said, succumbing to Lucy¡¯s good cheer. He still had to figure out how to make a portal self-sustaining for it to be really right, but it was enough of a breakthrough that he was satisfied.

    He spent the next few days experimenting with portal destinations, both out in space and in the dragonlands, though he could only make a couple attempts per day and only did so at Chester¡¯s house. The drain made him put in an order for the capacitors that the Guild of Enchanting made, even if they were expensive, since there was no way he¡¯d be able to try bigger and badder portals without some sort of external source. He could fill them between experiments, when he was doing other things. His magical endurance had improved over the years, but it was still well below what he¡¯d seen out of most mages. After fifty or a hundred years he¡¯d probably be up to par, but he couldn¡¯t wait that long.

    Especially not when there were threats popping out of the woodwork. They both had been absolutely blindsided by the email that Lucy got, and it instantly sent him into an incandescent range.

    ¡°I¡¯m going to kill her,¡± Callum said, the sudden flush of anger making him almost lightheaded. For the most part he and Lucy ignored the rumors and scuttlebutt and blathering of uninformed. There were quite a lot of people in GAR and even in the supernatural community at large who had only bad things to say about the Ghost. That was to be expected.

    That luxury seemed to be fading, and perhaps it was gone entirely. While people might idly wish death on him, impotent wishes didn¡¯t concern him at all. What did matter was people who might actually be able to get at him, one way or another. After his experiences with the fae, he wasn¡¯t really willing to assume that physical remoteness was enough to protect him. Or more importantly, protect Lucy and Alex. Especially if GAR, and whoever had taken control of it, was moving now.

    The video seemed to have been captured by a smartphone, so all the glamours were intact. The people appeared human, but on closer inspection their features were so exaggerated that it was very clear that they were just fae masquerading as such. There was a man who was far too round, both body and head like stacked spheres; another had a head that was almost perfectly cylindrical, like a pencil eraser. The only one he really cared about, though, was someone who looked like a storybook crone, with a chin so pointed it could cut glass.

    ¡°Of course we can¡¯t touch him,¡± she scoffed as he watched it again, trying to catch any details that might identify the people involved. ¡°If The Ghost were so easily cornered he wouldn¡¯t have earned the name. Could any fae find such a person? But now he has a son, a firstborn.¡± The crone leaned forward, eyes dancing in malicious glee. ¡°And firstborns are my specialty. There are so many ways to tempt a child. A shiny thing, just out of reach. The whispered promise on the wind.¡±

    ¡°To what point and purpose?¡± Asked the eraser-headed man. ¡°Merely enraging The Ghost does not serve anyone.¡±

    ¡°Ha! It¡¯s the child that interests me,¡± the crone said, with a cackle that seemed to darken the room even in the recording. ¡°Crack his bones for marrow and make candles from his fat. The firstborn of some legendary hunter would make for something so delectable I can hardly imagine it.¡± She licked her lips with a black tongue.

    ¡°More pragmatically, a lack of control works for us,¡± the round man said. ¡°How much of these upstart groups¡¯ own policy is due to The Ghost being out there and enforcing his arbitrary rules? Break that propaganda, and we can start cracking open everyone else.¡±

    ¡°I¡¯m going to kill all of them,¡± Callum said, repeating himself, and stood up, even though he didn¡¯t know where he was going.

    ¡°Whoa there, hoss,¡± Lucy said, standing up herself and wrapping her arms around him. ¡°Don¡¯t go off half-cocked. This is pretty clearly bait.¡±

    ¡°Bait or not, I¡¯m not going to let anyone threaten Alex,¡± Callum growled. ¡°Especially that thing. That¡¯s a monster that must die.¡±

    ¡°Look, I¡¯m not going to defend someone who eats babies,¡± Lucy said. ¡°But you don¡¯t have to do it. Listen to me, Callum. Going after these people yourself would be a mistake. Heck, they might just be malcontents with delusions of grandeur and all of this is completely toothless. Or it¡¯s faked somehow.¡±

    Callum grunted. He still wanted to tear someone apart with his bare hands, at least figuratively, and he didn¡¯t buy that mere discussion was harmless when it came to fae. Charms and hexes were well within their abilities, and there was no telling how little they needed to aim one Alex¡¯s way. It was ever so tempting to find them and nuke them from orbit.

    ¡°Hey,¡± Lucy said, slapping the table and snapping him out of his brooding. ¡°You said I pick targets, right?¡±

    ¡°Yeah,¡± Callum took in a deep breath, letting it out and trying to clear his head. Lucy was right. The last time he got pissed and went after someone, he regretted it. Not because the person didn¡¯t deserve it, but because of everything else that happened. And he had put her in charge of stopping him, so he couldn¡¯t overrule her. ¡°How did we even get that?¡± He asked, waving his hand at the laptop where he¡¯d been watching the video.

    ¡°Right, so, I gave different contact addresses to Taisen and Hargrave and Chester,¡± Lucy said, pulling him away from the desk in the war room and out into the basement. ¡°This came in under Taisen¡¯s code, but completely anonymous. I traced the account and it¡¯s just some random grandmother in Italy with unsecured wifi, so that doesn¡¯t help. But only someone among Taisen¡¯s people would have that code, and probably not many at that.¡±

    ¡°So you think he should trace it?¡± Callum said, considering it.

    ¡°Well, it may not be that secret, but who connected to Taisen would know about Alex and the contact code? And be in contact with nasty fae like that?¡± Lucy squeezed him and he took her hand. ¡°Let Taisen run them to ground, instead of you running into another trap like with those vampires. I don¡¯t think he¡¯d suffer this kind of behavior either.¡±

    ¡°Okay, but in the mean time we have to be very careful about Alex,¡± Callum said. ¡°Or ¡ª you know what, Taisen had something that could block out fae influence specifically. I¡¯ll get that from him.¡±

    ¡°Yeah!¡± Lucy agreed. ¡°The vigilante thing works sometimes, but for this? We have friends. Call in some favors.¡±

    ***

    ¡°A strange circle we¡¯ve come in,¡± Ray muttered. Felicia nodded agreement. Working under Archmage Taisen was in many ways a step up from working for the DAI. Very little of it was spent policing internal affairs, but rather looking into serious threats to the stability of the world.

    Yet they found themselves once again pursuing an internal investigation, and at the behest of no less than Callum Wells himself. Almost completely the reverse of how everything started. Not that Ray objected as such; if the video was to be believed that was definitely the sort of behavior that needed to be suppressed. But it was hard to be on Wells¡¯ side after everything the man had done. Felicia didn¡¯t seem to have the same kinds of reservations, being almost enthusiastic about the investigation.

    ¡°We were in DAI to take down bad people,¡± Felicia wrote, when he voiced his doubts. ¡°Now we¡¯re here, and these are bad people. Just that simple.¡±

    ¡°Still rubs me the wrong way to be doing it for a criminal,¡± Ray sighed. ¡°I know, we¡¯re not in GAR anymore, but you can¡¯t trust people who just go vigilante.¡± He waved it aside. ¡°Anyway, that video. Seemed almost staged to me, you know?¡±

    ¡°Not necessarily. Some types do talk like that.¡±

    ¡°None here,¡± Ray said.

    ¡°No, I don¡¯t think it was in the base,¡± Felicia wrote, stylus tapping against her tablet. ¡°I don¡¯t recognize those glamours and I don¡¯t think any of those types fit in here anyway.¡±

    ¡°Yeah, but someone here leaked it.¡± Ray sighed. ¡°Between Gayle Hargrave and Archmage Taisen himself, there¡¯s so many people who might know about Wells¡¯ child, so it¡¯s probably better to go at it from the contact angle.¡±

    ¡°Paperwork it is,¡± Felicia wrote.

    A great deal of investigation was tedious grind, and this was no exception. Asking questions of Taisen to find out where he¡¯d recorded Wells¡¯ contact information, and who he told about it, took up several hours, and that just gave them a long list of things to follow up on. More questions to pursue, access logs, surveillance footage, and tramping up and down the Antarctic base even before they started considering the other outposts.

    They kept things quiet and discreet of course; internal investigations were always delicate. Though Ray rather doubted it was any intentional leak. There were too many ways some fae could have heard about Wells¡¯ child, especially the way they liked to gossip, and a fae could quite easily have charmed the contact information out of any of the secretaries that had it available. Even if the people who had the contact information didn¡¯t really know what it was for.

    Naturally, the portal into Faerie was the most closely scrutinized. While House Taisen was not exactly on hostile terms with GAR, using the GAR-controlled portals into the various portal worlds was a delicate proposition. Taisen had breacher portals set up to each of the various Garrisons, though, which remained under his control. Unfortunately, despite House Taisen having a more military air to it, there wasn¡¯t so strict a control that they knew the location of every person for every instant in time.

    Two days later, they compared notes and dug through interview transcripts. As usual, no glaring candidates stood out, but there were a few connections that seemed promising. A few led into Faerie itself, but some led to the local enclaves.

    ¡°I really hope it¡¯s a local matter,¡± Ray muttered, looking over the list of people and locations.

    ¡°I don¡¯t think I want to go to Faerie anyway,¡± Felicia agreed, before wiping her slate. ¡°I could not trust that I would be allowed to stay independent. Especially not now, with things moving and the Ways stirring.¡±

    ¡°Politics ruins everything,¡± Ray sighed. ¡°That¡¯s fine, I can pop in and ask a few people. Not like I¡¯d be going outside of the human areas.¡± Felicia nodded, and Ray slid the pad across to her. ¡°Right, any thoughts on who we should start with?¡±

    For the rest of the day, Ray interviewed people while Felicia sniffed around for any hint of the fae in the video. The existence of the video was restricted but he wouldn¡¯t have been surprised if the glamours they showed weren¡¯t the usual ones. They were just a little too off to pass easily among mundanes, and if they were enclave fae they wouldn¡¯t have had glamours to begin with.

    Unfortunately, they didn¡¯t get anywhere, so the next day Ray left his notes with Felicia for further work and went to the breacher portal to Faerie. He rubbed at his wrist by reflex as he waited for the mage in charge of portal access to open the way. With healer support, removing the tattoos had been little issue, but he still thought about it every time he used a portal. Even he had been surprised by how thoroughly the mage marks could compromise vis protection.

    Stepping through into Faerie, the sky was almost painfully blue, the air unreasonably pleasant, and the grass, even in Garrison Two, was lush and green. On first glance it was as gorgeous and amazing as a storybook, but Ray found that the longer he looked the more unreal it seemed. Which was perhaps why he barely ever went back to his own House¡¯s compound in Faerie.

    Garrison Two was not all that far outside of the place humans had claimed for their own, sitting in a mountain pass that overlooked a land of ice and darkness. There were things there that had to be fended off on occasion, beasts of faerie or rogue fae. Or just bored fae. He didn¡¯t hear any fighting when he emerged, though from the high vantage he could see movement stirring on the frozen plains.

    After exchanging a few words with the lieutenant on duty, he took to the air, wrapping his travel focus about himself and shooting off through the sky. Unlike the skies of Earth, there was always traffic above the surface of Faerie beyond that of ordinary beasts. It was possible to see anything from schools of floating jellyfish to massive rocs to terrible snarls of eyes and teeth that attacked anything within reach.

    He avoided a particularly hungry-looking cloud but otherwise was unmolested on the flight between Garrison Two and the vast spread of Houses. At least until a massive whirl of fae magic suddenly blew up from nowhere and surrounded him. His shields snapped into place as he tapped his offensive foci, suddenly unable to see through the mist around him.

    ¡°What have we here?¡± A voice said, and a fae that looked mostly human save for the blue skin and pointed ears appeared from the mist. He grinned at Ray, flashing prominent fangs, while bat wings beat languidly at the air. It was an odd look, suspiciously like some of the mundane stories about vampires, which was not something to be taken as coincidence. Not with fae.

    ¡°I¡¯m Ray Danforth, House Taisen, here on the House¡¯s business,¡± Ray said brusquely. ¡°I would appreciate it if you would let me pass.¡± He knew none of the Courts claimed this area, so in theory nobody should be accosting him. But this fae, whoever he was, had the aura of a King.

    ¡°Oh, not the fly I was expecting to catch, but ¡ª did you say Raymond Danforth? Little Felicia¡¯s toy?¡± The fangs glinted as the fae¡¯s grin stretched wider. Ray didn¡¯t reply, suddenly feeling like he had gotten into something far deeper than he¡¯d intended. Clearly someone had spilled details on the investigation, no matter that they were being careful, but he didn¡¯t know how deep a hole he was in.

    ¡°Well then, come with me,¡± the fae said, pointing at him, and he froze. A hammerblow of compulsion magic washed over him, akin to Felicia¡¯s best. But he¡¯d been training against Felicia¡¯s best, so it didn¡¯t bother him. But he wasn¡¯t sure he could get away, not against a Fae King. After a fraction of deliberating, he pretended to succumb to the compulsion. It would be a lot easier to deal with hostile fae if they thought he was under their sway, and they might not even think to properly frisk him.

    ¡°Yes, sir,¡± he said, even as he toggled his scry-comm with the distress/duress codes. Someone ought to be monitoring them. If not, he knew Felicia would do something. He didn¡¯t know what, since she¡¯d rid herself of any attachments in Faerie, but something. In the meantime he would have to figure out what this particular fae was up to.

    It had been a while since he¡¯d been undercover, but he was sure he could do it.

 Chapter 18 â€“ Assault

    ¡°I¡¯m afraid I have no idea what you¡¯re talking about,¡± the fae representative told Archmage Taisen.

    ¡°I see,¡± Taisen said. It meant that the fae had closed ranks to obscure whatever had happened to Ray Danforth. He didn¡¯t know why, either. While he was unwilling to let the fae get away with kidnapping one of his men, he could hardly start a war with the Seven Lesser Courts all at once either.

    The click codes Ray had sent over his scry-comm before vanishing implied that it had been a fae that had taken him, not some random beast that had been ¡°accidentally¡± allowed to wander into the territory between the Houses and Garrison One. There was a reason he drilled the codes into everyone, even though he¡¯d never really expected to need them. Something that could be directed with pure vis, likely unnoticeable even to fae kings, was an incredibly powerful emergency option.

    ¡°I would appreciate it if your sovereign would contact me with any information should he find it,¡± Taisen said, knowing he couldn¡¯t press too much. Not while he was still in Faerie. Even for him, that was a dangerous proposition.

    If they had been on Earth, it would have been a different matter. Taisen would have had no compunctions using whatever force was necessary if he¡¯d been able to lay his hands on a fae who might know. It was the sort of mess that reminded him why he¡¯d never wanted to be an Archmage or head of a House to begin with. He wanted to be out solving problems with direct action, not arranging things and tiptoeing around other people¡¯s sensibilities.

    ¡°Of course, Archmage Taisen,¡± the representative said insincerely, and bowed. Taisen scowled and turned away. The fae wouldn¡¯t help, but he was on good terms with a few of the Houses that lived on Faerie. He¡¯d fought alongside Archmage Caledon at Garrison One, before Caledon even was an archmage, and the man had been a strong supporter ever since.

    He flew out of the diplomatic post, just outside human territory, and shot toward House Caledon. It would be good to renew those ties, and maybe ask a few favors. If the fae felt that they could move against him, he might need allies there sooner rather than later.

    ***

    Archmage Duvall would have been perfectly happy never hearing about Callum Wells again. It wasn¡¯t like she didn¡¯t have other things to be doing ¡ª she had a life completely independent of all the drama going on with GAR and the Earth in general. She would admit to a grudge ¡ª but an Archmage had better things to do.

    Other people were more invested, from the presence of Teller Janry in her front room. House Janry was generally polite to her ¡ª as they should be after she¡¯d stabilized over a hundred acres for their Faerie estate! But she mistrusted them being in charge of the Department of Acquisitions ¡ª or any other places they¡¯d gotten their hooks into.

    ¡°We¡¯re certain it¡¯s Wells,¡± Teller said, sipping tea in exactly the proper manner for someone of his background and station ¡ª manners she appreciated. Duvall had been seated across from him, but restlessness at the thought of dealing with Wells again had driven her to her feet and she found herself pacing next to the window. ¡°Given how slippery he is, we haven¡¯t approached the area directly, but we interviewed all the mundanes. Among other things, the reports definitely sound like brand of gravity magic, even if they didn¡¯t see him directly. Besides, there¡¯s nobody on record in that area.¡±

    ¡°That¡¯s all well and good,¡± Duvall said. ¡°But what do you expect me to do about it?¡±

    ¡°Lock him down,¡± Teller replied. ¡°Like I said, he¡¯s slippery. But you can stop him from teleporting around, right?¡± There was a hint of challenge in his voice and Duvall scowled.

    "Of course I can," she said. It was obvious Wells could do some things she found difficult to grapple with, but she¡¯d seen his magic and was more than confident she could counter anything he did ¨C Wells was no Archmage.

    ¡°Then GAR is officially requesting your presence to counter any potential spellcraft,¡± Teller said. Duvall frowned. She did have her own bone to pick with Wells ¡ª what she¡¯d found about his portals was disturbing. There was nothing at all on the other end, just some terrible void ¡ª it was heresy, plain and simple, and could not be allowed to continue. So long as they weren¡¯t expecting her to go into actual combat with Wells, it was probably worth her while.

    ¡°Very well,¡± she said. ¡°The particulars?¡±

    ¡°With Archmage Taisen¡¯s departure, we have fewer battle-ready mages, but we do have a squad from DAI who will be backing up a combined force of fae and vampires,¡± Teller said. ¡°The site is unfortunately close to Portal World Six, so we have to be a little careful, but Archmage Wizzy doesn¡¯t seem to be involved.¡±

    ¡°I can open a portal directly if you¡¯re going to stage somewhere,¡± Duvall said with a grunt. She knew that was what they wanted anyway. ¡°What about Archmage Janry? He could just sink the area into the ground if they want to get Wells.¡±

    ¡°It¡¯s unlikely the Archmage could do anything fast enough to prevent Wells from escaping, and given Wells¡¯ particular talents a more direct approach seemed best,¡± Teller said ¨C just excuses. More likely Janry was just scared of the man who¡¯d already killed an Archmage and a Fae King, not to mention whatever he¡¯d done to remove Constance.

    ¡°Fine,¡± Duvall said. ¡°But I want at least half the squad with me. As you said, Wells is slippery. On the off chance he¡¯s got something I don¡¯t know about, I want to be properly protected.¡± She had faith in her shields, more or less, but under the circumstances she wanted to be protected by people with faster-than-human reflexes.

    ¡°That can be arranged,¡± Teller said, which meant Duvall probably could have asked for more. She sighed and turned to face him.

    ¡°When were you intending to do this?¡±

    ¡°The sooner, the better,¡± Teller replied. ¡°Local night is in nine hours. That would be the first window.¡±

    ¡°American time,¡± Duvall sighed, glancing at the grandfather clock ticking away against the wall. ¡°Fine. Where exactly are we going?¡±

    ¡°Mexico,¡± Teller said. ¡°We¡¯ll meet at the Mexico City branch office an hour beforehand.¡±

    ¡°Very well.¡± Duvall looked at the clock again. ¡°I will be there.¡±

    ¡°I appreciate your assistance in this matter,¡± Teller said, draining the tea and standing up to offer her a bow. ¡°I look forward to seeing you tonight.¡±

    Duvall saw him to the door while a servant cleaned up, and then pulsed her vis to teleport down into the armory. Not that she used combat foci, but there were still extra tools that she didn¡¯t want to do without. A couple of fae trinkets that she actually trusted, reinforced under-armor with kinetic protections, and a few extra sensory foci.

    She let her seneschal know where she was going to be as she prepared for the excursion ¡ª her own guard would have been preferable, but they weren¡¯t quite as powerful or trained as she would like. Considering Wells¡¯ track record so far, they¡¯d only be at risk for little gain, especially since there was going to be a DAI squad there anyway.

    When the appointed time came around she made sure she was appropriately dressed, double-checked all her foci, and reached out to the House¡¯s teleporter. She pulled herself through it to the GAR hub, and then pulsed her vis to locate the appropriate anchor. Two more teleports brought her from the hub to the Mexico City branch. Which was not very large, merely a few rooms and offices beyond the teleporters.

    To his credit, Teller was already there. He stood to greet her as she stepped out of the teleporter, dressed in a combat uniform with an arcanorifle slung across one shoulder ¡ª a weapon he probably didn¡¯t know how to use. At least he cut a good figure.

    ¡°Any updates?¡± She demanded, not wanting to waste any time.

    ¡°No, we¡¯re just waiting for the rest of the squad to arrive.¡±

    ¡°Give them this.¡± She took an anchor from her bag, a lightweight plate about six inches in diameter. ¡°I can bring them through when we need to.¡± If they were mages there¡¯d be no issue, but extending flight to a large group of vampires was not easy for anyone who wasn¡¯t of air affinity to begin with.

    ¡°Fantastic,¡± Teller beamed, and handed her a scry-comm. It was one of the newer, military models, and she clipped it to her shoulder, feeding it a thread of vis from her shell and shaping the resulting spell form around her ear and mouth. She liked her normal scry-comm better ¡ª but she wasn¡¯t so stupid as to insist on different communications for such an operation.

    She pulled out a chair and sat, knowing she was earlier than expected ¡ª but resenting the waste of her time anyway. The squad came in all at once a few minutes later, all in combat uniform with DAI logos, mostly vampires with one fae. He didn¡¯t look any different from the rest ¡ª but Duvall was an Archmage. She could tell the difference.

    The non-mages were in a ten-man squad, with some kind of internal grouping that she didn¡¯t care about. So long as they were competent enough to protect her. Frankly she would have preferred Taisen¡¯s soldiers, even if Taisen himself had suspect allegiances. He didn¡¯t do backroom deals ¡ª the one thing about him she respected.

    There were four additional mages as well, none of whom seemed particularly powerful but probably represented a range of aspects to cover all contingencies. There was a reason every House tried to have a variety of aspects ¡ª though almost every House was known for one. But they probably wouldn¡¯t be too useful in an actual fight. Wells didn¡¯t function like a typical combat mage.

    Teller started giving some sort of briefing that she mostly ignored. She already knew the history with Wells, what he had done and what he could do. All his abilities required that he be able to use his own magic, though, and with no other mage of note around ¨C Teller hardly counted ¨C she should be able to suppress Wells. Teller ended the briefing by handing the anchor to the fae, and Duvall stood, ready to leave.

    ¡°I¡¯ll notify you through scry-comm when Archmage Duvall is ready to bring you over,¡± Teller concluded, and Duvall grunted affirmation. The sooner they started, the sooner it¡¯d be done.

    With that, they went outside and took to the air, Duvall following Teller even further south. The sun was almost behind the horizon, and the lights of mundane cities faded as they went further out into the country. It reminded her of the last time she visited the Portal World Six site, for maintenance ¡ª she couldn¡¯t fathom why someone would live so far out in the middle of nowhere. Unless they had to.

    Wells was too dangerous to get close to without preparation. He had shown he had quite the sensitivity, but even he couldn¡¯t sense miles away without resorting to active vis pulses. Which was something she would recognize and could deal with. But even from a distance the lines of a glamour were visible to mana-sight, marking the presence of a mage dwelling.

    Duvall pulsed her vis straight downward, finding a road and aiming for it. That time, Teller followed, and when she touched down she conjured a few lights ¡ª she felt better with their surroundings illuminated. Then she reached for the anchor, activating it so she could pulse her vis through to the other side.

    ¡°I¡¯m ready,¡± she told Teller.

    ¡°Give it another few minutes,¡± he said, looking at the sky. It was still purple, not quite into the black of night. ¡°We want our people to be completely ready.¡± Duvall shrugged, finding herself more and more annoyed by the time it was taking. Every time she had to deal with direct action she spent most of her time doing nothing ¡ª a complete waste.

    Duvall tapped her foot, waiting impatiently as Teller talked with someone over the scry-comm. While she was tempted, she didn¡¯t try to pester him into going before he was ready ¡ª she didn¡¯t like combat, but she wasn¡¯t stupid. Let people who actually knew how to carry out an operation do their thing.

    Finally he gave her the nod, and she tapped the anchor again, using it to snap open a portal frame. The squad blurred through, equipped with rifles and blades both as they assembled on the road. Teller said something else that she didn¡¯t really listen to, but they divided themselves so three moved into guard position around her and the other seven got into some kind of formation ahead.

    ¡°I¡¯d really prefer to do more surveillance first, but we can¡¯t risk Wells noticing and rabbiting.¡± Duvall thought he was explaining for her benefit, but she wasn¡¯t sure ¡ª maybe he just liked to hear himself speak. She was convinced enough that it was Wells, and if it wasn¡¯t, GAR could deal with the apologies.

    ¡°Archmage, if you could teleport us in and lock down the area?¡± Teller said, turning to her. She sighed, and then pulsed her vis out as far as it would go. Unlike some other aspects, the spatial active sense didn¡¯t give much more than outlines and densities, but it worked well enough for her purposes.

    It bounced right off the house itself, since of course that was more tightly warded than just the glamour, even if at a glance the wards weren¡¯t great, but her pulse did find a number of suspicious bits and pieces of enchantment and metal. She selected a clear space outside the house and wrapped everyone in vis, overpowering their resistance to drop everyone in a clear space in front of the house ¡ª and quickly, because she knew he would have noticed the pulse.

    At the same time she pushed out her vis from her shell and spun a stasis net over the area, her magic freezing space. Not that it stopped anyone from moving through it, but any attempts to teleport around would be difficult. Let alone open any kind of useful portal.

    Help support creative writers by finding and reading their stories on the original site.

    The squad of seven rushed forward, and she felt a push back against her stasis net ¡ª nothing that she couldn¡¯t handle. She was an Archmage after all, and it was proof that it was Wells. But her satisfaction was short-lived as some her vis simply vanished. It wasn¡¯t broken or overpowered, it was simply gone.

    It was a sensation that she¡¯d only felt once before and would never forget.

    ¡°Wait?¡ª¡± she managed to say, but that was all she could get out before it was too late. Their targets vanished and the horrible emptiness ballooned outward, just in front of the squad smashing through the back door, and then continued to grow and grow as it devoured her vis ¡ª worse, invalidated it entirely, as if her magic didn¡¯t exist at all.

    The wards around the house were snuffed out as a veritable explosion of null magic burst outward from a portal that had to be the size of a person, a spear pointed directly at them. The vampires and fae went limp, all the animating mana stripped from their bodies, as Teller conjured a stone wall that did nothing at all to impede the progress of the spreading nothing. It smashed into her shell and her shield fizzled and vanished as it tried to activate. The vis shell itself was proof against the null trying to erode it ¡ª she was an Archmage. But she was still defenseless, and with Wells wielding that kind of weapon, she was not going to stay.

    Duvall pulled a strand of vis from her shell and fed it into herself, where a paired teleportation core was entrained in her very flesh ¨C something she had been inspired to create after Wells¡¯ disappearance from a heavily warded room. It wouldn¡¯t do for the Archmage of Space to be less adept than a heretic. It energized and pulled her away, all the way back to her estate in the Deep Wilds. She appeared in her saferoom, where the other half of the teleportation core was etched into space itself, so it would never degrade.

    She staggered over and dropped into the luxurious chair, panting from sheer nerves. Wells was absolutely insane. Null magic was exactly why she refused to try and open new portal worlds; not only did it eradicate any mana and most vis it touched, it could even permanently cripple a mage if their vis shield failed. She didn¡¯t know why or how he had that spell form so ready to hand, but it was proof that he was far too dangerous to handle.

    Serena Duvall prided herself on knowing when an obstacle wasn¡¯t worth the effort, and she promised herself she¡¯d have nothing to do with Wells ever again.

    ***

    For better or worse, it turned out that paired portals worked across dimensions even if the dimensions weren¡¯t connected. It took quite a few tries, but eventually he found a portal world that seemed to at least vaguely match ordinary physics and didn¡¯t have massive creatures swanning around in space. It was still a vacuum, and the stars were partially obscured behind spiderweb-like filaments, but there was only empty space and a small featureless planetoid nearby, so he took the risk of putting one of his space drones through.

    Since he could still connect to the drone when the original portal vanished, that proved the concept, though Callum wasn¡¯t sure he wanted to rely on an enchantment for a consistent connection to the real world. The big dimensional portals were clearly stable on timescales of centuries, which was the kind of reliability he wanted. The Guild of Enchanting had found out that even pure bane materials were only functional for a decade or two outside their native portal world, and that was on Earth. In other portal worlds or deep space, that was even shorter.

    Still, if he found a more habitable portal world, it might well serve as an emergency retreat or a storage area until he cracked the permanent portals. He was almost certain it was possible, but there was no telling how long it would take or how much effort would be needed to make a proper redoubt. As an interim measure, Callum was genuinely considering trying to find a corner of the Deep Wilds instead, despite it being a jungle chock-full of nasty beasts.

    He put aside his sketches and followed Lucy as they went to tuck in Alex for the night. Two was the age where sleep was more complicated than it really should be, so it was a whole production. Frankly it was probably too late at night, but they were caught up in trying to do too many things and all they could do was the best they could do.

    ¡°C¡¯mon sweetie, time for bed,¡± Lucy said.

    ¡°Wanna play outside!¡± Alex protested, angrily rubbing his eyes and obviously exhausted.

    ¡°Alex, listen to your mother,¡± Callum said. ¡°You¡¯re tired, we¡¯re tired, and the sooner you go to sleep the sooner tomorrow?¡ª¡± He cut off as a cascade of vis pulsed through his perceptions, surprise and panic freezing him in place for a moment. But just one moment before he grabbed Lucy and Alex to try and teleport them away to the panic room. Only to find he couldn¡¯t.

    The vis wave hadn¡¯t really gone away, it had turned into some sort of rigid structure, hooking into every bit of space and holding it in place. He knew exactly who it had to be, the thought occurring the moment before the structure shifted and a teleport formed, dumping sixteen people out into the garden. Six were in mage bubbles, and he recognized the strength of one of them. Archmage Duvall had come calling.

    He was aware hazily that the rest were vampires of some sort, with swirly fae magic in and around them, but he was more focused on how to deal with Duvall. He had to break her hold, if he was going to get everyone out of there, and he had no time to do it in. Just shoving vis at the problem did nothing; her control was far more powerful than his. He needed something that didn¡¯t care about her strength.

    The idea came to him as the garden door crunched, the supernaturals rushing the house. He couldn¡¯t make any large spatial constructs, but Duvall still operated on the same scale as every other mage, and there was space between her hooks to make a very small portal. And there was a portal he could make that would get rid of vis.

    He reached through his gut-port for his foci and with a sharp twist he wrenched open a portal to an anti-mana world just in front of him, the negative energy pouring out and eradicating Duvall¡¯s threads. She seemed to flinch, the hold weakening, and he took the fraction of opportunity to shove the three of them through the gut-portal, through the nexus, and into the emergency backup cave in the northern United States. There was a lot of work put into the house, though, and he didn¡¯t want to leave all that behind if he didn¡¯t have to, so he tapped into some of his cached vis crystals and stretched the portal wide, intending to shove it at Duvall so he could break her hold.

    At an inch or so across, the anti-mana effect was more or less a sphere. He¡¯d expected that to translate to a moving mana-eater that would sever vis threads in the area, but it turned out that it did not scale linearly. Instead of a larger sphere, at five feet in diameter the anti-mana exploded out of both sides of the portal in an enormous deluge, billowing out to even larger than the portal width as it went.

    A huge cone burst forth in both directions, sweeping over the entire invading party, who were already strung out halfway through the house, and passing straight through the walls. All the glamours and wardings collapsed instantly, shredded apart, and the supernaturals seemed to simply fall over. The vis lockdown vanished. Even his connection to the portal was severed, but when the portal didn¡¯t collapse Callum just goggled.

    He wasn¡¯t sure what to do about the anti-mana portal, but before he needed to start trying to work his way in and rip up the portal infrastructure, it finally collapsed on its own. A lifetime of fifteen seconds was not much, but it was a lot longer than the small portals had been. That was something he¡¯d have to think about later, when he had the time.

    There was basically no mana around in the air, all of it having spent itself against the anti-mana, which might have been what caused the portal to finally collapse. There were fifteen bodies in various states of life left behind, all of which had been completely purged of vis. They looked almost exactly like they were normal humans. The vampires were completely down, and while the mages were conscious, they didn¡¯t seem to have any magic.

    He had no idea how long that would last, so he took advantage of it while he could. All it took was simply grabbing them and teleporting them into space. Without any vis, they couldn¡¯t resist, and they couldn¡¯t survive. But that was just the people who had led the assault. Duvall was obviously the one who was unaccounted for and he had no idea how long it would be until she got reinforcements, so he had to leave.

    But he had a few seconds, it seemed. Long enough to try instituting the escape plan he¡¯d started on after the cartel had visited. He opened a small portal into a corner of the basement and threw a switch, blowing the cutoffs for water and septic, then reached out to wrap the whole house and basement in one giant teleportation framework.

    That was really what he¡¯d gotten the vis crystals for, and despite the earlier expenditure he still had enough in reserve to support everything. Without planning ahead he wouldn¡¯t have been able to rip the house and the machine shed out whole cloth, but he¡¯d added a few reinforcement enchantments to the foundations, mostly to keep the house in a constant field of one gravity no matter what. Fortunately that hadn¡¯t been destroyed by the anti-mana. He¡¯d also made room around the concrete with some judiciously applied gravity blades so he could teleport it easily enough.

    Most importantly, he¡¯d made a big hole out in the middle of nowhere in Montana, near another cave. It wasn¡¯t a permanent solution by any means, and his instincts screamed about leveling and grading, but it would do for a week or so. Bringing the house and the shed meant they kept all their stuff, minus the garden, yard surveillance, and traps, so it was not quite as great a setback as it could have been. He drained two vis crystals in an instant teleporting the entire house out to the fallback position, then turned to where Lucy was still fumbling with one of the LED lanterns he¡¯d stocked in the fallback cave.

    ¡°What was that?¡± Lucy asked, holding onto Alex ¡ª who was definitely not getting any sleep for a while.

    ¡°Supernatural assault team,¡± Callum replied grimly, trying to take slow and measured breaths. Every time something like that happened, the rush of adrenaline made him feel like he was sick. ¡°They had Duvall with them, that¡¯s how they ambushed us. Not sure how they got a lead on the cartel, but it had to be them who gave us away.¡±

    ¡°Oh,¡± said Lucy faintly. ¡°So how bad is it?¡±

    ¡°Well, I got the house out,¡± Callum said, belatedly reaching through the gut-portal to start sweeping stuff out of the cave-cache into the nearby one he¡¯d picked as a backup. The other caves were not as well finished or furnished, but they weren¡¯t meant to be permanent anyway. ¡°That property is a write-off and we¡¯ll have to get our water from the barrels for a while, but we managed to salvage most of it.¡±

    ¡°That¡¯s good,¡± Lucy said, then slumped, letting Alex down to the floor. ¡°But dammit, I liked that place and the garden. Are we going to have to be running for the rest of our lives?¡±

    ¡°No,¡± Callum said flatly, opening up a portal to the relocated house and ushering Lucy and Alex through it. ¡°Once I find an appropriate portal world we¡¯ll have something unassailable, but I also need to make it unthinkable to go after us.¡±

    ¡°That sounds ominous,¡± Lucy said.

    ¡°It just has to be obvious it¡¯s not worth it to even think about it,¡± Callum said. ¡°Now, all the people who came to assault us are dead, save Duvall ¡ª she ran away. So that¡¯s something. But we¡¯ll have to go further.¡±

    ¡°Someone¡¯s dead?¡± Alex asked, and Lucy blinked down at him.

    ¡°Don¡¯t worry about it, sweetie,¡± she said, hugging him against her. ¡°We¡¯re going to be spending more time over with Uncle Chester for a while, okay?¡±

    Callum grunted. In Mexico they could spend a lot of time outdoors in late fall, but in Montana it was not nearly so nice. He was going to have to board up the back anyway ¡ª the door and wall near it were completely destroyed thanks to the vampires barging through.

    ¡°Why don¡¯t you put in a movie or something and let me fix the back a bit,¡± Callum suggested. ¡°Maybe when that¡¯s over it can be time for bed.¡± He¡¯d have to put any serious discussion off until Alex went to sleep, which was probably for the best so the stress of the moment could pass.

    ¡°I¡¯ll tell Chester and Lisa too,¡± Lucy said.

    ¡°Can we go, um. Can we go Uncle Chester¡¯s?¡± Alex asked, which was pretty damn cogent for a two-year-old as far as Callum knew. Callum and Lucy exchanged glances.

    ¡°Why don¡¯t you go on ahead,¡± Callum suggested. ¡°I¡¯ll clean up a bit and join you.¡± He was somehow sticky with sweat, something he hadn¡¯t even noticed until that moment.

    ¡°Okay, honey, I¡¯ll see you in a few minutes,¡± Lucy said, wrapping her arms around him for a kiss. Callum held her close for a moment and then crouched down to hug Alex before opening the portal.

    ¡°I¡¯ll be along in a minute, kiddo,¡± he said, and Alex nodded with due seriousness before running through the portal into Chester¡¯s house. Lucy followed, and Callum went to take care of business while he finished transferring things out of the cave-cache.

    He picked up the conversation much later on, when Alex finally crashed. He sat with Lucy, Chester, and Lisa, drinking water because it was too late at night for caffeine and he was too wrung out for alcohol. In truth he would have much rather had the conversation when he was awake and rested, but he might end up putting it off even more if he waited.

    ¡°So, what¡¯s the plan for making sure nobody else comes after us?¡± Lucy asked. Callum sighed and rubbed at his eyes.

    ¡°Well, one thing is that no man is an island. I think I¡¯m going to have to officially enter some sort of arrangement with the American Alliance, House Hargrave, and House Taisen. Not really as myself, but as The Ghost or whatever. I¡¯m not here for politics, but it¡¯s impossible to live without some kind of association.¡±

    ¡°You¡¯re practically there anyway, at least from my perspective,¡± Chester said.

    ¡°The terms of our Alliance are in many ways based on your enforcement to begin with,¡± Lisa added. ¡°An official relationship wouldn¡¯t really change anything, aside from us saying so.¡±

    ¡°Yeah, and it¡¯s been stupid to turn down that resource,¡± Callum shook his head. ¡°Sometimes I¡¯m an idiot. I wanted to be independent, but¡­¡± He just shrugged.

    ¡°I¡¯m sure Gayle and Glenda would be fine with it too,¡± Lucy put in. ¡°They haven¡¯t asked us for anything yet, but it¡¯s not like we¡¯re on bad terms. I dunno about Taisen though.¡±

    ¡°Yeah, it¡¯s too bad I¡¯m the primary point of contact there,¡± Callum agreed. ¡°I¡¯m really not good at making friends.¡±

    ¡°You¡¯re too grumpy,¡± Lucy agreed with a fond smile, taking his hand. He squeezed back and looked at Chester and Lisa.

    ¡°The other thing is I need to make it clear that nobody is to mess with me. I¡¯m not sure who exactly I got rid of with that assault on my house; maybe Lucy can find out later. But I need to address Duvall, GAR in general, and all the supernaturals who would be willing to come after me.¡±

    ¡°That¡¯s a tall order,¡± Chester said dryly.

    ¡°Well.¡± Callum exchanged glances with Lucy. ¡°I¡¯m going to close the portal to the Night Lands.¡± Chester blinked once, slowly. Lisa showed more reaction.

    ¡°You what?¡± She goggled at him. ¡°That¡¯s ¡ª I don¡¯t know how that will go but that¡¯s not going to make people any happier with you.¡±

    ¡°That ship has sailed,¡± Callum argued. ¡°The point now is to be so damn scary nobody wants to take the chance. It¡¯s not like I¡¯m a threat to ordinary fae or shifters or mages. It¡¯s just the monsters.¡±

    ¡°That is a point,¡± Chester rumbled. ¡°If you want to properly ally with people though, you¡¯ll have to give them forewarning for such a drastic measure. People can deal with strong tactics, but not randomness. Surprises don¡¯t help.¡± His tone was pointed, which was as close as he¡¯d come to criticizing Callum¡¯s past actions.

    ¡°I suppose,¡± Callum conceded, though he hated the idea of having to consult people before he did anything. ¡°If it¡¯s just the heads of House Hargrave and Taisen and yourself, that¡¯s not terrible operational security. More than that though, and I¡¯m afraid it¡¯d leak and people would do anything to head it off.¡±

    ¡°They certainly would,¡± Chester agreed, clearly not sad at the idea of the main shifter rivals being cut off. ¡°But once it¡¯s done, if you have people to back it, it turns from some terrible, unprecedented disaster to a statement of power.¡±

    ¡°Right, which is the idea,¡± Callum said, half agreeing, half thinking out loud. ¡°Might as well contact them and get them in for a briefing tomorrow.¡±

    ¡°I can take care of that,¡± Chester offered, and Lucy yawned.

    ¡°Yeah, please,¡± she said.

    Callum wasn¡¯t quite ready to go to sleep himself. The strange behavior of the anti-mana portal was still on his mind. He¡¯d been damn lucky none of his family had been nearby, considering what had happened when he¡¯d opened it. Maybe scaling it up had been overly reckless, but it was only sixty times larger. What had happened was not on the same scale.

    He opened a small portal over in the dragonlands, then doubled its size. Then doubled it again, watching the anti-mana spill out. Four inches was not much larger than one inch, but as his senses covered the black spot where the anti-mana was he realized he¡¯d been completely overlooking how things scaled.

    The portal construct was essentially just the perimeter, which scaled with diameter. The surface area was a square of that. The amount of anti-mana was a volume which was a cube. So the sixty-fold increase from one inch to five feet was, after doing some math, some two hundred thousand times more anti-mana.

    The exponents probably weren¡¯t exact. It took more than sixty times the vis to open a five foot portal, but it wasn¡¯t thousands of times the cost. All the vis crystals in the world wouldn¡¯t help if the scaling was that severe. But he had an inkling that the reason the huge portals were stable was maybe due to scaling factors.

    Tiny portals could be fed enough mana to be sustained. Larger ones took so much absolute mana they were temporary. But even bigger and the volume of mana they could pull in ¨C or was in the space they occupied ¨C started tipping the balance. That was his guess, one that he¡¯d have to verify later.

    After all, he needed to check his weapon before he used it.

 Chapter 19 â€“ Sever

    Chester¡¯s place was the de facto meeting spot for what Callum considered the non-GAR factions, and he was pretty sure that was mostly because of him. Even if he was on fairly reasonable terms with House Hargrave and House Taisen, he didn¡¯t trust them enough to walk into their lairs. Frankly, he didn¡¯t trust them enough to meet them in person even at Chester¡¯s, but there wasn¡¯t much of a choice.

    He couldn¡¯t even sit in the corner, since he was in part the host of the gathering, so he just found a chair in Chester¡¯s sitting room and did his best not to scowl. Lucy sat next to him, having left Alex with some other parents off in another part of the compound. While he would have liked to have his son closer to him just in case, it was also not the kind of discussion that was appropriate for a two-year-old, and it wasn¡¯t like Alex was out of range of his perceptions.

    Gayle and Glenda had come, but they were for once accompanied by Archmage Hargrave himself, which did not make Callum at all comfortable. It didn¡¯t seem to be all that long ago that Hargrave was gunning for him, and he doubted someone who¡¯d lived however many centuries was so quick to let go of grudges. But they¡¯d also had nominally friendly relations since and he was pretty sure Gayle at least would keep Hargrave from lashing out.

    Archmage Taisen was there too, in a black tactical suit, with no outriders. Unlike Hargrave, Callum was pretty sure Taisen had nothing against him personally, but also was the one most likely to act if he thought Callum was overstepping. In a way, Taisen was the most like Callum, which made him the most concerning.

    The American Alliance itself was represented mostly by Chester and Lisa, but Shahey had been invited, too. His old-man avatar lounged in a corner chair, smoking a pipe. The smoke itself, though, only billowed and curled theatrically, a constant low-grade exertion of dragon magic keeping it from actually producing any smell for the other people in the room. Assuming it was real tobacco to begin with; it was clearly an act, so he wouldn¡¯t be surprised if Shahey wasn¡¯t smoking anything real.

    ¡°Yesterday, a strike force including Archmage Duvall assaulted my home,¡± Callum said. ¡°This is a state of affairs that cannot continue. I need to make it clear that I am outside of GAR¡¯s jurisdiction and not subject to their authority. Alpha Chester has suggested that the best route to that is for you all, and the American Alliance, to treat me as a peer with the same kind of power. Which I know is a lot for an individual, so I¡¯m intending to couple that with something I was already planning. I¡¯m going to close the portal to the Night Lands.¡±

    Reactions were varied. Taisen grunted, Hargrave scowled, Gayle gaped, and Shahey grinned. There were, at least, no immediate cries of objection. Either Chester had briefed them somehow, or they just weren¡¯t surprised that he could claim to do such a thing. Of course he¡¯d made no secret of his distaste for vampires, so he was hardly breaking precedent.

    ¡°It wouldn¡¯t be a bad idea,¡± Taisen conceded after a moment. ¡°Vampires are a dangerous tool at best, and their most base nature is to feed on living vis. They will eventually turn on mages, given the chance, and they¡¯re entirely incompatible with mundanes. Better to remove things now than deal with the mess later.¡±

    ¡°GAR depends on the vampires to counterbalance shifters and fae,¡± Hargrave said. ¡°Removing them would change the composition of GAR and what Houses have influence on Earth. I don¡¯t know if it would be for better or worse, but no matter what it would hurt their power. Which I personally support, but it would not go unanswered.¡±

    ¡°I don¡¯t necessarily want to strand people on either side, since presumably there are a few mages of the vampire-aligned Houses that aren¡¯t complete monsters. Worse, with no way back, vampires on Earth could do a lot of damage. On the other hand, I need that closure to have meaning.¡± Callum paused, then shrugged. ¡°I don¡¯t think it¡¯s possible to sustain the mana flow from the Night Lands without it, but it¡¯s impossible to know how long it would be before that would start affecting things.¡±

    ¡°What about enchanting?¡± Glenda pointed out. ¡°Closing the Night Lands is going to remove a primary source of our most useful materials.¡±

    ¡°Two things,¡± Callum said, since this was one of the things he¡¯d actually anticipated. ¡°One is that Taisen will still have a portal to the Night Lands and can still send people out to the cenotes. The other is that I am preparing to open up new portal worlds. Preferably ones without any inhabitants. Once I locate useful enchanting materials in them I could provide teleports or portals in.¡±

    That got rather more of a reaction than his announcement about closing the Night Lands. A couple people spoke at once, then Taisen gestured to Hargrave. The older Archmage leaned forward, eyes sharp.

    ¡°You can access new portal worlds?¡±

    ¡°I can,¡± Callum acknowledged. ¡°In a way I¡¯m surprised that Duvall hasn¡¯t, since it¡¯s not impossibly difficult. I think I can understand why not, but I know she could.¡± He had advantages in his recordkeeping, what with the 3D modeling software, and the ability to open portals far away from himself, where nothing could get through. But Duvall had centuries of practice, far more power, and access to the rest of the magical world in a way Callum didn¡¯t.

    ¡°People have asked,¡± Hargrave said. ¡°She refuses to entertain the idea.¡±

    ¡°It¡¯s not exactly safe,¡± Callum conceded. ¡°But I have ways of ameliorating the issues. Though that brings me to the issue of Duvall herself. She¡¯s one of the people who can give me trouble and I don¡¯t want to deal with her trying to hunt me down all the time.¡±

    ¡°Oh, you haven¡¯t heard?¡± Hargrave said, then shook his head. ¡°Of course you wouldn¡¯t have. House Duvall has decided to mark and avoid you. No member of House Duvall will even acknowledge your existence now. Archmage Duvall is hardly going to agree to track you down anymore.¡±

    ¡°Huh.¡± Callum blinked. ¡°I guess I scared her.¡± It also made him revise how dangerous a huge anti-mana portal was if she didn¡¯t want to get near it. On the other hand, it seemed dangerously convenient for Duvall to declare him off-limits. ¡°But how far does that really go?¡±

    ¡°Duvall¡¯s a coward,¡± Archmage Hargrave said bluntly. ¡°More, you can¡¯t possibly afford to endanger her. The reason she has so much sway is that she is the only person who can make portal worlds safe for permanent habitation. There isn¡¯t a single House that would let you get away with removing her.¡±

    ¡°As opposed to letting me get away with what I already have?¡± Callum asked, somewhat doubtful that the rest of the magical community could really do worse than they already had.

    ¡°That includes me,¡± Hargrave said grimly. ¡°Though, under the circumstances, I would undertake to resolve things between you if Duvall hadn¡¯t already made her stance clear.¡±

    ¡°I hope you realize the potential issues of opening a new portal, however,¡± Taisen added. ¡°The Defensores Mundi would prefer not to have yet another front to deal with, even if you might well be closing one.¡±

    ¡°Not a problem,¡± Callum assured him. ¡°I won¡¯t get into it just yet, since I¡¯m still doing experiments, but no matter how it shakes out the access won¡¯t be vulnerable.¡± Since he could keep paired portal or teleport links, there didn¡¯t even need to be an active portal, even if he wanted the ability to make one.

    ¡°That¡¯s interesting. Duvall never would touch making new portals,¡± Shahey said.

    ¡°I don¡¯t blame her. Without certain advantages it would be an extremely bad idea,¡± Callum said. ¡°With modern tools, though, I can take proper precautions.¡±

    ¡°I¡¯d definitely like to see these precautions,¡± Taisen said, then waved his hand, putting aside the topic of the portal worlds. ¡°Before that, when did you intend to close the Night Lands portal?¡±

    ¡°Essentially, now,¡± Callum replied. ¡°Or as soon as may be.¡±

    ¡°They attacked our home,¡± Lucy said darkly. ¡°I don¡¯t want them doing that again.¡±

    ¡°So we¡¯ll give them something else to focus on,¡± Callum concluded. ¡°I¡¯m aware it¡¯s not just the vampires I need to worry about, but as a statement of power, they¡¯re the only ones I can target with no compunctions.¡±

    One of the benefits of dealing with principals meant there was no need for follow-up meetings or for someone to consult someone else. Not that he was dependent upon their approval, even if he was seeking their help. The access to new portal worlds was a very considered carrot to go with the stick he wanted to employ. Though it wasn¡¯t aimed at any of them, if they put their weight behind it he needed to provide some measure of appreciation.

    To him, the most important part was getting Taisen to be in charge of the remaining portal in. He couldn¡¯t actually remove Taisen¡¯s existing portal without crossing some rather hard lines anyway, so convincing him to be gatekeeper was key to keeping things from getting too severe. Though having everyone else do the political heavy lifting was a godsend, since Callum didn¡¯t trust himself to come off as anything other than unhinged if he had to present himself in public.

    Under the circumstances, Gayle was going to stand by in the next room for emergencies while he worked, but it was going to be him and Lucy in their little complex at Chester¡¯s. He would have preferred the war room, and not just because he wasn¡¯t used to having an audience, but it was safer to have help on hand. Besides, there were plenty of trustworthy people who could keep an eye on Alex.

    Even Lucy didn¡¯t have all that much to do compared to their usual stuff. There weren¡¯t a bunch of drones to track or people to call. Mostly she had a layout of which set of buildings belonged to which House, so he could figure out where to focus his efforts. The general paucity of spatial enchanting meant that there weren¡¯t likely to be paired anchors squirreled away in forgotten basements, and he could focus on the feeder portals and the main connections to Earth.

    He felt a little bad for sabotaging the enchantments in the Houses, since they hadn¡¯t done anything against him directly, but he needed to cut off the Night Lands as much as possible and he didn¡¯t imagine the mages who were allied with the vampires were going to be very sympathetic to his viewpoint of them. Nevertheless, the only thing he was doing was cutting off the connections.

    Even if there were a few teleports or portals lingering around, he wasn¡¯t all that worried about them changing the impact of closing the main portal. By the cubic calculations, it¡¯d take hundreds of man-size portals, constantly open, to match the volume of mana flowing through the original. By square calculations, it¡¯d still take quite a few, more than could be found in a short amount of time. Ones that Duvall would have to make, something she would not be likely to do if he understood the position she¡¯d set out.

    ¡°Okay, House Grummond,¡± Lucy said, examining the map. For this particular mission they didn¡¯t have a full drone, but rather a tiny box not much larger than the bad penny itself. It wasn¡¯t like the Night Lands had much aerial traffic and considering vampire senses they didn¡¯t want anything that could attract attention.

    He teleported the anchor around, sneaking his vis through the wards with extreme caution. It didn¡¯t seem likely that mages would have an anti-healing booby trap when anyone could set it off, but he didn¡¯t intend to find out. Instead he skimmed over the place with his perceptions, finding the portal frame set up in a vestibule, and relocated his box into a little cubbyhole under the floor. While the big mansion style dwellings were clearly mage-crafted, they still had all the weird nooks and crannies of buildings that had been around long enough to see changes in form and function.

    The anchor for the portal was in the floor beneath the frame itself, and unlike the GAR installations it was not something easily accessible. Someone would have to unbolt the whole portal frame and pull it out. Not actually difficult, but definitely intended to be more permanent than not. Which didn¡¯t matter to him, since he didn¡¯t need to actually physically access the cores anymore.

    Instead he formed a very tiny anti-mana portal just above where the core was. A half-inch of steel at the bottom of the portal frame didn¡¯t mean much to the anti-mana, which passed straight through and erased the enchantment below. In fact, it erased the mana right out of the enchanting material, rendering the whole thing inert. Then he let it collapse, the anti-mana erasing any traces of his vis ¡ª though he doubted anyone would have a good time if they tried to reopen it, assuming someone other than Duvall could. Just in case, he left one of his own cleanup beads where the anchor box was before he teleported back out.

    ¡°Check,¡± Callum said, and Lucy scribbled a note on the list.

    Even with the range on his perceptions it took quite some time to move his box from place to place and find each teleporter or portal. Especially since he had to be careful not to tip off anyone, trip any alarms, or attract any attention. While a box a few inches on a side was not exactly obtrusive, he didn¡¯t want to underestimate supernatural senses. Or the complexity of what a ward could detect.

    A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

    Despite all his precautions and advantages, he wanted to get this done quickly and quietly.

    ***

    The Master of Weltentor paced restlessly though the halls of his castle. Something felt off, an oddness in the air of his domain that he couldn¡¯t quite place. Though perhaps it was just being unsettled after the failure of the Janry raid on The Ghost. He didn¡¯t yet have details, save for Duvall¡¯s proclamation about it, but there seemed to be no survivors other than her. Which meant the Ghost was still alive and it was only a matter of time before retaliation. Whether that retaliation would be against him or his allies remained to be seen.

    Nevertheless, he had made preparations. The Ghost was the only supernatural who seemed willing to directly act against him, and not just by acting as a watchdog for the Defensores Mundi. Which was another annoyance, but he had to admit the nests that Taisen¡¯s people removed were being injudicious. At least, in the current climate.

    There were plans for being far less judicious, and far more obvious. There was, after all, no point in obeying the rules if doing so resulted in death. Or even stagnation. He was hardly going to ask his subordinates to hold themselves back and play well if The Ghost was going around picking them off as he wished.

    Which was why he¡¯d provided as many as he could with the gu defenses. Ones that they could activate at their leisure, whether it was the Ghost they suspected was assaulting them or someone else. Or, should there be some threat the gu defense couldn¡¯t handle, they had his instruction to go out and do as much damage as they could, wherever they were.

    If he couldn¡¯t target The Ghost directly, Weltentor could at least threaten him with something he cared about. Since The Ghost¡¯s stated goal was to protect mundanes, for whatever reason, then it was simple enough to just massacre mundanes to hurt The Ghost by proxy. How long would he be willing to attack nests if it resulted in mass death?

    Weltentor had found that humans didn¡¯t have the strength of will to do what was necessary. Mage or mundane. Fae at least didn¡¯t seem to have any compunctions, even if their quirks made it difficult to depend on them.

    He touched the fae charm amulet that hung around his neck, walking down through the castle to walk the roads of Weltentor Landing. If his collaboration with the fae had gotten him anything, it had been protections that might well be proof against the Ghost, considering it would be combined with his own strength and power. Not to mention access to the Ways, admittedly in a very limited capacity.

    ¡°Anything to report?¡± He asked the guard on duty at the portal room. It was staffed by mages and vampires both now, and while they had yet to catch anyone, there was always a chance they might notice some tiny detail.

    ¡°No, Master Weltentor,¡± Sullivan said. Weltentor hadn¡¯t been a fan of the vampire in question deciding on an Irish name rather than the traditional German, but it was oddly close to the name in the original tongue so he¡¯d let it pass. ¡°I haven¡¯t heard or scented any presence of person or machine.¡±

    ¡°Carry on,¡± Weltentor said, and left the castle itself. He didn¡¯t have anywhere in particular he was going, but rather let the ebb and flow of the Night Lands¡¯ own magic guide him. If there was something he couldn¡¯t place, perhaps the world itself would guide him. There were few mages out and about, but he passed them at speed, moving too quickly for them to even react.

    More than once he¡¯d been tempted to just grab one and rip the vis out for himself, especially the weaker and less able ones, but he had long ago learned restraint. There were at least two Archmages in the Night Lands, and he couldn¡¯t quite stand up to one of them yet, let alone both. When he could, it might be a different story.

    Without a destination in mind, Weltentor toured the settlement, circling the multi-acre sprawls of the various Houses on the brightly lit walkways of mage-wrought stone. The flow of the Night Lands pulled this way and that, small and subtle shifts that seemed unnatural and so probably were. But there was no telling what the mages were up to at any given time.

    Despite his instincts, he couldn¡¯t find anything particularly out of place until the alarm went up at House Hofmann. The strobing mana combined with the piercing wail and a shaped fire spell shooting into the air certainly got his attention, along with everyone else¡¯s, and he blurred along at maximum speed to arrive at the gates in under a second. There was a shield there but he shoved right through it, less worried about the safety of the House than he was about what the alarm might mean to the security of Weltentor Landing. He knew the layout of each of the Houses, having been guest there more than once over the centuries, and he rushed through to the main room, stopping only when he saw a vampire member of House Hofmann security.

    ¡°What¡¯s going on?¡± He demanded, and the vampire jumped, not yet having enough of his own power to track Weltentor with his own senses.

    ¡°The outbound portal was sabotaged,¡± the guard responded after a moment of startled recognition. ¡°It¡¯s completely dead.¡±

    ¡°What about the other Houses?¡± Weltentor demanded, immediately considering the angles. There was very little point in sabotaging just one House¡¯s access. The only reason anyone would bother was if they were cutting off everyone¡¯s way out as a prelude to an attack.

    And there was only one person he could think of who could manage that kind of sabotage.

    ¡°Never mind that, assume The Ghost is here,¡± Weltentor decided out loud, and reached for his scry-comm. It was one of the things he¡¯d traded from the mages, even if he needed to work it physically, and it let him join the House communications networks. It wasn¡¯t something he used much, but he was glad he had it.

    ¡°Everyone. The Ghost is assaulting Weltentor Landing. Activate all wards and protections. Check and guard your portals and teleports.¡± He switched off the scry-comm and changed over to his own personal communicator. ¡°Gu defenses now,¡± he ordered, which only encompassed Weltentor Castle, but it might be sufficient to deter The Ghost. It was up to his subordinates to get any mages out. Or not. Their deaths could always be blamed on The Ghost.

    He left before Archmage Hofmann could get out of whatever study he¡¯d buried himself in and pester Weltentor with questions. There were more important things to do than humor a scatterbrained, if powerful, old man. Without knowing what The Ghost¡¯s objective was, Weltentor had to be as careful as possible, and be in as many places as possible.

    Moving at his best speed, he circled Weltentor Landing but couldn¡¯t sniff out The Ghost with any of his senses. Which was about as expected, but still disappointing given how much more powerful he¡¯d become in the past few years. The only real trail he had to follow was the vague and uncertain ebb and flow of the Night Lands. Something that could be incredibly powerful, but was indirect and not exactly timely.

    Over the next few minutes he got confirmation that most Houses had been sabotaged already, with only a few retaining any access. That was bad enough, but only a moment later House Lehmann reported that their previously-working portal had gone dead after some unknown mana void appeared. House Richter started scrambling to pile through their own portal before it closed, even though they didn¡¯t really have any holdings on Earth. They wanted out before the noose closed, rather than trying to stay and fight. Though without being able to find The Ghost, fighting was not an option.

    ¡°Captain Friedrich,¡± Weltentor said into his personal communicator. ¡°Send out word to prepare for unlimited culling, to be executed if they don¡¯t hear from me within twenty-four hours.¡± While he still had hope that the gu defense might stymie The Ghost, there was always the possibility that there was something cataclysmic on the way.

    But if he couldn¡¯t stop the attack, Weltentor could damn well make certain that The Ghost regretted it.

    ***

    Callum actually managed to spot and disable about three quarters of the likely portal anchors before anyone noticed. It was later than he feared, but sooner than he¡¯d hoped, since the more loose connections to the Night Lands existed the less overpowering the closure would be. The wards and shield flared around the House his anchor was stashed in, and he had to work at it to find a hole to slip through. The lockdown versions were far less permissive than the normal warding, probably because they didn¡¯t care about ordinary magic setting it off.

    Of course, he could make a tiny anti-mana portal to poke a hole in one if necessary, but he had only so many vis crystals to replenish his reserves, and while he¡¯d budgeted a few extra just in case, he needed most of them to deal with the dimensional portal. As yet he didn¡¯t have the reserves of an Archmage, so he couldn¡¯t just throw magic around willy-nilly.

    The next House already had people camping on top of the portal frame, mage bubbles completely excluding it so he had to skip it. Perhaps he could have wriggled through if he was willing to spend the time and vis, but it wasn¡¯t worth it. An incomplete purge was preferable to failing his main objective.

    His following target didn¡¯t have theirs so well-guarded, and he sniped it out from under the noses of the mages that were hanging around the portal room. Their heads snapped around when the anti-mana spilled out, but he pulled everything away an instant later so he didn¡¯t see the reaction. It seemed he wasn¡¯t going to get away with any further mischief unnoticed.

    Of the remaining Houses, one had the portal active and people were going through, one had jammers up so he couldn¡¯t get near, and one had such intense shielding that he couldn¡¯t punch through without using a vis crystal, so he didn¡¯t. With everyone on guard, he had to accept that cutting most of the Houses off would suffice, and he¡¯d have to target them later on if it mattered. It was time for the main event.

    ¡°Right,¡± he said. ¡°Going to close the big portal now.¡± Lucy glanced at him and circled the Houses they¡¯d missed on her map printout, then leaned back in her chair.

    ¡°Ready here,¡± she said. While she didn¡¯t technically have a direct hand in the process, she was prepared to jump at a moment¡¯s notice if he fell over for some reason. Or alternately, smash the anchor he was using to connect through the nexus to the Night Lands.

    Callum teleported the anchor back toward the central castle, seeing that it was warded too, but when he tried to sneak his vis through it the magic latched on and started to race up the thread. He jolted and then snapped off the thread a heartbeat before it rushed into the nexus, and he found himself half-standing and tense. He was suddenly glad he¡¯d encountered it before, and was ready to sever a connection, otherwise the anti-healing would have taken him out.

    ¡°What is it?¡± Lucy said, reaching out to take his hand.

    ¡°Castle has a negative healing defense on it,¡± Callum said. ¡°I can¡¯t get to ¡ª wait, I¡¯ll just do it from the other side.¡± It didn¡¯t seem likely the anti-healing defense, if it reacted to any mage vis, was something that GAR had installed on the Earth side of the portal. If it had, he¡¯d have to resort to something dramatic, but he doubted anyone there realized what his true target was.

    The moon nexus wasn¡¯t excessively large, but he still had enough drones to have a couple stationed in Europe, so five minutes later he was looking at the Earth-side version of the Night Lands portal. It had wards up, but they weren¡¯t nearly as strong as the ones he¡¯d seen around the Houses on the far side. Bracing himself, he experimentally poked a vis thread through, but considering there were active mage bubbles he doubted the negative healing defenses were up. Sure enough, nothing adhered to his vis thread.

    The feeder portals were placed just above the portal room, with some of the mana-redirecting enchantments pushing a tithe of the huge outflow to them. He wasn¡¯t entirely certain why the feeders weren¡¯t in the Night Lands itself, but he suspected that perhaps GAR didn¡¯t trust the vampires quite as much as it seemed. Since they weren¡¯t in the Night Lands, he didn¡¯t actually care about them. If the portal closed, they wouldn¡¯t work.

    ¡°Okay, good to go,¡± he said.

    ¡°Here¡¯s hoping it¡¯s enough,¡± Lucy replied. He was pretty sure it would be, but there was no way to test it beforehand.

    ¡°Fingers crossed,¡± he replied, and reached through his gut-port to tap all the remaining vis crystals. The actual dimensional portal was about thirty feet in diameter, so his portal would nest right inside it. Even with a bunch of auxiliary vis he wasn¡¯t sure he could make something quite that large, and he was genuinely worried about turning it permanent if he did so. It didn¡¯t seem likely, since the anti-mana would erode the portal itself at some point, but it was a chance he didn¡¯t want to take.

    He pulled heavily on the crystals and snapped open a five foot diameter portal in the middle of the Night Lands one, perpendicular to it, a ring within a ring. The moment it opened the anti-mana smashed out in a great flood, absolutely devouring the structure of the Night Lands portal. The complicated mess dissolved like spun sugar, the anti-mana washing out to wreck the warding and shielding of the Earth-side facility and the castle like.

    Callum had done a lot of testing with portals of various sorts, but he¡¯d never tried to collapse two dimensional portals onto each other at the same time. From what he¡¯d seen it wasn¡¯t likely to result in the sort of insane space contortions that science fiction seemed to use; things should just go away. Unfortunately for the Earth-side and Castle both, that wasn¡¯t quite the case.

    The outer portal collapsed into the inner one before it destabilized naturally, the two points of dimensional shear tangling with one another and turning into some kind of knot that made Callum¡¯s brain hurt. His senses pinched as the knot broke, sending out a sharp wave of mana-charged space. It was like a bomb hit the place, walls and floors shearing and crumbling, dust billowing up from the earth.

    Mana and vis seemed to be some proof against the distortion. None of the mage bubbles faltered, and the enchanted portions of the building seemed to weather the wave better than ordinary stone. Even though the building had been made with magic, the stone wasn¡¯t magical as such.

    ¡°Goodness,¡± Callum breathed. The entire Night Lands outpost was absolutely wrecked, though it wasn¡¯t an explosion as such. It was more like it¡¯d been hit with an earthquake, the shock wave traveling a good five hundred feet or more before it faded enough to stop affecting matter. Which meant his drone was safe, though his vis around it probably would have stopped things anyway.

    The castle fared better, though he could only see part of it through his senses. Between the higher ambient mana and the material itself being mana-infused, it weathered the shock wave with only some minor crumbling of the room the portal was housed in. There had been no mage bubbles there to begin with, so he was less concerned with the fallout, but there were going to be an awful lot of repairs needed.

    ¡°All done?¡± Lucy asked, putting her hands on his shoulders and squeezing them to relieve Callum¡¯s tension.

    ¡°Looks like,¡± Callum said, focusing on where the Night Lands portal had once been as he reached up to put one of hands on hers. The space there was disturbed, locked into something slightly different from what he considered the normal background of Earth. It didn¡¯t surprise him, though he wasn¡¯t sure whether to attribute it to the portal being there for so long or the violent way it had been closed.

    ¡°Better announce it before anyone else does,¡± Lucy suggested.

    ¡°Yep,¡± Callum agreed, standing up. The two of them walked out into the other room, and Gayle hopped up.

    ¡°You closed the portal?¡± She asked, eyes wide.

    ¡°I did,¡± Callum agreed. ¡°Now to capitalize on it.¡± He waved a hand and opened a portal to the main room, the three of them stepping through to join Chester and the Archmages.

    ¡°It¡¯s done,¡± he reported, and Hargrave stood.

    ¡°We¡¯ll make our announcement,¡± he said, and beckoned for Gayle to join him and Glenda.

    ¡°I will as well,¡± Taisen said. ¡°Glad we had time to write it out beforehand.¡±

    ¡°Yeah,¡± Callum said, glad that he¡¯d been convinced into letting people know. ¡°I¡¯ll be here for now, if you need me.¡± The relocated bunker house had power, but without water or sewer it wasn¡¯t really a great place to spend much time.

    He wasn¡¯t expecting to actually be needed. Barring someone re-opening the portal, which was to say, Duvall, his part was pretty much done. True, he hadn¡¯t gotten every portal out, but there weren¡¯t many connections left and making artificial ones wasn¡¯t simple. Besides which, he could still remove them later. While he would have preferred a clean severance, a delayed death was good enough. Unfortunately, it wasn¡¯t more than a few hours later that Taisen returned, accompanied by a full squad.

    ¡°We need your help,¡± he said, the moment Callum walked into the room. ¡°Vampires all over the world are killing people in public. They¡¯re going to crack the secrecy wide open.¡±

 Chapter 20 â€“ Staunch

    ¡°Well that was awful,¡± Lucy said, scrubbing at eyes that were red from staring at computer screens. At the end of twenty hours of mass vampire slaughter, Callum and Lucy were running on empty.

    ¡°Yeah,¡± Callum agreed. It wasn¡¯t as bad as it might have been ¡ª there were ultimately only so many vampires, and Taisen had not even bothered with letting them surrender. Between Archmage Hargrave and Archmage Taisen, there was no question of having enough firepower. Only of how fast they could get from place to place.

    For once, Callum hadn¡¯t needed to do any combat himself. Instead, the two of them had been running logistics for House Taisen¡¯s and House Hargrave¡¯s people ¡ª and maybe even for some GAR types, by the end. He lost track after the first dozen hours.

    Most of his time was spent portaling people from one place to another. Under the circumstances, GAR was not exactly restricting its teleport network, but they also didn¡¯t have ready portals to places like South America or India. With the drones, he and Lucy could move entire teams around with more flexibility and speed than flight foci.

    The entire mess was what he had been hoping to avoid by providing paths back to the Night Lands by way of Taisen. He knew closing the portal would be a crisis for them, but one with a clear solution ¡ª return to the Night Lands. They knew they could go back to Night Lands, so they still had a future. Especially since vampires were supposed to be under the broader framework of GAR, where the sluggish nature of a bureaucracy would work to restrain quick action. He thought, as had everyone else, that it would result in a withdrawal, however disagreeable and grudging, to their native land.

    Instead, the vampires as a whole seemed to have gone rogue, even though it meant they would die.

    He cast a metaphorical eye at the alcohol he kept in the cabinet at the house, but if he had even a drop he was pretty sure he¡¯d just fall over. It was tempting anyway, just to help him deal with what had happened. What he¡¯d seen, what he had provoked. Even if it wasn¡¯t his responsibility, what had happened had occurred in response to his actions, and it was beyond just random attacks. It was something planned, though the why escaped him.

    They were specifically targeting places like hospitals, shelters, orphanages, and even police and fire stations. It was an attack ¨C or rather, a series of attacks ¨C calculated to draw the most attention and do the most damage to vulnerable people. Every single aspect of it was sheer spite and hatred.

    Callum had been grimly amused that the vampires hadn¡¯t had it all their own way, even before the mages got on scene. They were supernaturally fast and durable, but bullets weren¡¯t entirely useless, and the younger vampires didn¡¯t have all that many advantages if they didn¡¯t catch someone off guard. In a few places there had been a number of vampires down even before Taisen¡¯s troops arrived.

    ¡°If I¡¯d known this was going to happen?¡ª¡± Callum started, then stopped. He would have taken different precautions if he had known, but if anything it only confirmed that closing off the vampires was the right thing to do.

    It was hard to say that in the face of so many dead bodies and a half-dozen countries in a full-out panic. All he could taste was the acid in his throat from the sight of at least a hundred battles. He wasn¡¯t sure if every vampire in the world had joined in on the massacre ¨C he rather doubted it, actually ¨C but there were probably tens of thousands of casualties worldwide.

    It was a number that staggered him, to the point where it didn¡¯t seem real. He didn¡¯t know how many vampires had died, and really didn¡¯t care, but his actions had precipitated a tragedy that he very much doubted could simply be attributed to random terrorist action. Not only was there a human cost, but he was facing something that could spiral into a worldwide crisis.

    ¡°Hey, it¡¯s not just you. Everyone else signed off on this,¡± Lucy said. ¡°Nobody thought that it¡¯d come to this. If you want to blame anyone, blame the vamps for involving random bystanders.¡±

    ¡°Oh, I do,¡± Callum said darkly. ¡°But I have to wonder if it was worth it. I know in my head that they were killing hundreds or thousands a year, that they¡¯d been doing it for centuries and would go on doing it for centuries more.¡± Callum found himself almost shouting, his hands white-knuckled fists. He forced himself to relax and sit back in his seat, taking a long breath. ¡°And I knew more vampires were coming over all the time,¡± he concluded. ¡°But that doesn¡¯t help when all I can see are piles of bodies that are my fault.¡±

    Lucy stood up and took a step over to him, wrapping her arms around him. He leaned against her and sighed. What was meant to be a triumphant finale had been tainted by mindless, evil violence, and he just didn¡¯t know where to go from there.

    ¡°Looks like we aren¡¯t seeing any other outbreaks.¡± Taisen¡¯s voice came from the magical trinket he¡¯d supplied, lying on the table. A scry-comm, it was called. ¡°We¡¯ll all be monitoring things but I think we¡¯ve cleaned up the bulk of it.¡±

    ¡°Good,¡± Callum said, slumping in his seat. ¡°What even happened?¡± He asked aloud, though he¡¯d asked the same question at least a score of times in the past day.

    ¡°Weltentor must have somehow gotten a final order out,¡± Taisen said grimly. ¡°He¡¯s not dead ¡ª my contacts in Weltentor Landing have assured me of that. This was retaliatory, pure and simple.¡±

    ¡°That was simply evil,¡± Callum said.

    ¡°I¡¯ve seen worse,¡± Taisen replied. ¡°All things considered, we¡¯re damn lucky that we got on it before it turned into something we couldn¡¯t deal with.¡±

    ¡°We can¡¯t let something like this happen again,¡± Lucy said, leaning over the table to talk at the device. ¡°Like, how many supernatural people are going to be willing to just do this if they don¡¯t get their way? Especially if it works?¡±

    Callum was a little startled. That kind of approach was usually his role, but he wasn¡¯t really thinking his best. Or maybe he¡¯d underestimated how much he¡¯d rubbed off on Lucy. While he didn¡¯t exactly rant about his perspective, they¡¯d discussed it and Lucy was on board. He just didn¡¯t realize how much.

    ¡°Yes,¡± Taisen said shortly. ¡°The entire reason I made Defensores Mundi was to keep dangerous things away from Earth. Clearly that hasn¡¯t worked.¡±

    ¡°We have to¡­¡± Callum trailed off, rubbing at his eyes. He knew what he wanted, but he wasn¡¯t sure how to put it. ¡°We have to get out in front. Everything I¡¯ve been doing has just been for me. That, or it¡¯s been a reaction to GAR or whoever.¡± All he¡¯d wanted, originally, was to be left alone. Unfortunately, he couldn¡¯t leave well enough alone, and he had to intervene when he saw things happening. Which had led him down the road to the current situation.

    Just acting on the things he could see wasn¡¯t enough. When all he did was act on things in front of him, he missed the larger scope of things and ended up being blindsided. His caution had served him well and it was only through his preparations that he¡¯d survived some of those things, but preparation was not enough.

    It was time for the Ghost to do more than lurk in the shadows.

    ***

    ¡°This entire debacle shows how dangerous it is to let these people run around unchecked.¡± Archmage Janry addressed the assembled Archmages, gathered together in an emergency session at House Janry in Faerie. Despite the rich liquor and delectable hors d¡¯oeuvres, people didn¡¯t seem to be enjoying themselves. At least, most of them.

    For those who were part of House Janry¡¯s inner circle, nothing had come as a real surprise. The destruction of the Night Lands portal itself had been unwelcome, but in the cold calculus of politics it was actually a net benefit. The vampires had made useful tools, but they were becoming less controllable, and their removal made it far easier to pull the uninterested and unaware Houses from their indifferent neutrality over to the side of House Janry.

    The one thing he hadn¡¯t been prepared for was breaking from his own position of apparent neutrality so early. Even up until a few weeks ago he had been included in some of the discussions between GAR and the breakaway Houses or the American Alliance, which had done wonders for knowing where he needed to put his people. But he¡¯d been a supposedly neutral party, and there was no way to affect that disinterest anymore.

    Most of his allies were keeping relatively quiet, letting him be the face of the political change. Janry knew and cultivated his reputation, and his apparent indifference to things gave him a strange sort of legitimacy in the current climate. All of his allies had people within GAR to make sure it ran properly, but they were limited in how they could affect things without completely breaking GAR and running against the interests of other Houses.

    ¡°Hard to argue that,¡± said Archmage O¡¯Toole, his red hair making his pale face look even paler. ¡°But what do you suggest, outright war against House Hargrave and House Taisen?¡±

    ¡°I wouldn¡¯t go that far,¡± Janry demurred, mostly for the fact that he knew most people wouldn¡¯t commit to that. He was certain they could absolutely destroy those Houses, since there were more Archmages on his side by sheer numbers. But most of them didn¡¯t have the fire in their belly to risk themselves in combat. ¡°However, we certainly can¡¯t let them have a free run of Earth, let alone risk the other portal worlds. We still need access to the rest of the portals, and Earth itself, to retain the potency of our bloodlines.

    The looting of House Fane had revealed a number of interesting tidbits, including Fane¡¯s research into mages. Houses that had not been interested in Earth for over a century now had a stake. One that was easy to leverage.

    ¡°Even if we don¡¯t take the fight to them directly, I propose that we eject the renegade Houses entirely. Cut them off from the portal worlds. Pressure the Guild of Enchanting to stop doing business with them. I would like to go after the American Alliance ¨C they don¡¯t have Archmages, after all ¨C but I suspect that would be treated like a direct assault on the renegade Houses themselves.¡± Janry shook his head. ¡°They have unfortunately close ties.¡±

    There were some uncomfortable murmurs at that. Some of the Houses predated the discovery of the Deep Wilds and of shifters themselves. Most of the Archmages there really didn¡¯t think of anyone outside of the Houses themselves as properly people, especially those that weren¡¯t human. Not that Janry really thought better of them himself, but he properly understood the weakness of such an attitude.

    ¡°Of course, Wells himself clearly has to go,¡± Janry said, and waited for the noises of assent to stop. ¡°Furthermore, we need to take a firmer hand on Earth directly. It¡¯s far too valuable to be left to people who would be so hasty as to close an entire portal world.¡± Janry looked around at the assembled Archmages, catching the eyes of his allies where they sat in the expansive ballroom. ¡°GAR has been effective in the past, but now I suggest we repurpose it for more direct action.¡±

    That occasioned an argument, but Janry wasn¡¯t worried. Most Houses saw GAR as the thing that transported good for them and occasionally dealt with some annoyance. Not as a fairly powerful organization, even now, with broad authority and significant wealth. Not to mention being the main conduit for controlling all Earth-based supernaturals, of which there were a fair few.

    If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

    It wasn¡¯t the most subtle play, but emergencies were the kind of opportunity that subtlety couldn¡¯t capitalize on. He didn¡¯t even have his favored agent in play anymore, since Teller Janry had been summarily removed in the latest attempt to neutralize The Ghost. In fact, the spectacular failure of that attempt was why Duvall wasn¡¯t attending the meeting, despite the power of her House and her expertise in portals. She¡¯d come around eventually, but for now she was cowering in the Deep Wilds, refusing to deal with any of the political issues.

    The people they already had in place would be enough. With the other Houses on their side, it wouldn¡¯t even be difficult to restructure GAR to take more aggressive action.

    Once he had someone new installed to control GAR directly, they could finally get some real work done.

    ***

    ¡°It¡¯s probably only a matter of time before we have to read in the mundanes,¡± Chester said, regarding the people gathered together in his meeting room. The mood was sober, as it might well be after the catastrophe they¡¯d endured. Wells had been affected the most, but he was not a party to the discussion. Sometimes it was easier to talk things through without someone like him.

    Hargrave grunted. Taisen frowned. Wizzy shrugged. Shahey shook his head.

    ¡°I don¡¯t think that will go well,¡± the dragonblooded said mildly. ¡°I¡¯ve warned others, but revealing magic and the existence of supernaturals is likely to be catastrophic.¡±

    ¡°Oh, right now it absolutely would be,¡± Chester agreed. ¡°But I wouldn¡¯t be surprised if people followed up on this vampire incident and started asking some pointed questions. Glamour and compulsion work very well, but there are far too many people to deal with them all. In fact, manipulating too many people might itself reveal us.¡±

    ¡°There are already cover stories we didn¡¯t even invent, something about a cult or a terrorist organization,¡± Hargrave said. ¡°Claiming responsibility wouldn¡¯t exactly endear us.¡±

    ¡°Of course not,¡± Chester agreed. ¡°As I said, right now is not a good time. But think about it, eliminating the vampires as a concern ¨C I know there are still some about, but they¡¯re almost irrelevant now ¨C is a good first step. Wells is certainly rather extreme, but his attitude is similar to the way mundane authorities will react. If we can claim that we removed the monsters from our midst before we contact them, that will go a long way toward establishing our bona fides.¡±

    ¡°No matter what we do, the mundane governments are not going to like a completely separate faction among them,¡± Taisen said. ¡°Because there is no way that mages are going to work under mundane authority.¡±

    ¡°Not to mention, every mundane authority is going to want mages. They¡¯re going to want to make more, to be able to call on them for peacekeeping and emergency response if nothing else,¡± Shahey said. ¡°There will be wars over the portal worlds.¡±

    ¡°There would be,¡± Chester agreed. ¡°If we remain limited to the portal worlds we have now.¡±

    ¡°Ah,¡± Shahey said.

    ¡°Wells,¡± Hargrave said.

    ¡°Just so. He¡¯s figured out how to access other portal worlds. Whether there are permanent portals or not, that means that we¡¯re no longer restricted to just the six. Well, four, with the Night Lands and Mictl¨¡n off the table.¡± Chester said, looking around at the others. ¡°If there are dozens or even hundreds of such worlds, and there are portals to them, that solves the issues of access and space at once.¡±

    ¡°That would likely only trade one set of problems for another,¡± Wizzy pointed out, twisting the cap off another beer. ¡°One has seen the kind of monsters that portal worlds create from humans. In every sense of the word.¡±

    ¡°We wouldn¡¯t necessarily need the permanent portal,¡± Taisen said thoughtfully, considering the idea. ¡°I don¡¯t know what the effects of hundreds of such portals would be on Earth.¡±

    ¡°There might be enough mana here for mages to start showing up normally,¡± Hargrave said, frowning at Wizzy¡¯s beer. ¡°Which would solve some problems and cause others.¡±

    ¡°And any of them would be avenue for all kinds of things to crawl through.¡± Taisen nodded in agreement and pointed at Hargrave. ¡°But a teleportation link? No mana, no access, no creatures. Very controlled.¡± Even Wizzy looked appreciative about that.

    ¡°I wonder if he could be convinced to share his technique with Duvall,¡± Hargrave mused. ¡°While Wells clearly has certain advantages, Duvall is still an Archmage. If she could replicate it, or even better, refine it and teach it to her apprentices¡­¡± He trailed off and took a sip from his glass of liquor. ¡°I hate to give her more power, but that would be even more valuable than stabilizing the portal worlds so we can live there.¡±

    ¡°I would still advise against it,¡± Shahey said. ¡°But it¡¯s not my world and if you decide to go that route I will dredge up some of our older records.¡±

    ¡°One has found it rather surprising that the secret has lasted as long as it has,¡± Wizzy said. ¡°Though the world seems to have done just fine without magic. Perhaps Wells would conclude that as well, and decide to shut all of them.¡±

    Chester frowned at him, and Hargrave growled in the back of his throat. Taisen was the only one who didn¡¯t react, but he¡¯d surely had similar thoughts. After all, it was an old debate, and one of the reasons GAR had been formed in the first place. Back before the spell-forms had been developed and perfected, before the symbiotes had adapted to humans and human form, mundanes had seen them as an unnatural threat and acted accordingly. They had thought that the world was better off without the supernatural.

    Even now people debated it in fantasy forums on occasion, purely as a hypothetical. Chester didn¡¯t follow it so much, but the younger members of the pack did, if for no other reason than it wasn¡¯t really a hypothetical to them. But Chester wasn¡¯t interested in packing off to the Deep Wilds, and even Wells wasn¡¯t going to force him to do that.

    ¡°For all our sakes we had better hope he does not,¡± Chester said instead.

    ¡°I¡¯ll talk to Lucy,¡± Lisa said, speaking up for the first time. ¡°Make sure he¡¯s not thinking in that direction. Personally I doubt it, but if he starts to I think she can break him out of it.¡±

    ¡°Good,¡± Taisen grunted. ¡°There¡¯s the rest of the issues to worry about, though. They¡¯ve already kicked me out of Faerie. They can¡¯t manage it in the Deep Wilds, but losing Garrison One is a worry.¡±

    ¡°You don¡¯t have access at all?¡± Hargrave asked sharply.

    ¡°Hardly. I¡¯m not completely without friends over there, and the portal anchor is in safe hands. But that¡¯s not the same as having a serious foothold.¡± Taisen sighed and swirled the whiskey in his glass, making the ice clink. ¡°Besides, I doubt whoever took it over can hold the Garrison against a real assault. Sure, there hasn¡¯t been one in thirty years, but now that things have changed?¡±

    ¡°That seems like their problem,¡± Chester said. He was only concerned with the internal mage politics so far as it affected him. Which was an unfortunately broad scope, but internal struggles over in Faerie were actually good for him. Anything that weakened GAR and the reach of the Archmages was, at least for the moment, good for him.

    ¡°At least until it spills out over to Earth,¡± Taisen said grimly. ¡°There are already too many incursions from people in Faerie who shouldn¡¯t have had access at all.¡±

    ¡°Which is another situation where the secret could get out to mundanes,¡± Chester said. ¡°For all its flaws, at least the fae that GAR let through before have been happy to keep their activities hidden. Open conflict between Courts, though? They¡¯d probably flaunt it on purpose.¡±

    ¡°There is only so much you can do to get the house in order,¡± Wizzy said, his shadow moving restlessly under his chair. ¡°Though one can at least exert himself on your behalf. Archmage Taisen, if you could pass along anything found in Central and South America, it will be resolved.¡±

    That was a surprise to Chester, since as far as he knew Wizzy didn¡¯t tend to get involved with worldly affairs. Though things were changing, and fast, and as much as Chester knew that Callum Wells would hate to hear it, how that change turned out depended on The Ghost.

    ***

    Ray Danforth was bored.

    That was probably unusual for someone who had been kidnapped and was being kept in the center of a hostile Court, but there just wasn¡¯t much to do. The surroundings were nice enough, in typical Faerie fashion, with the various humans the Court kept as guests or ¡°guests¡± inhabiting what could only be described as a bower. It was a massive castle furnished with craftsmanship that would have cost him a good amount of his yearly salary.

    It was at least better than being thrown into a dark dungeon or being threatened with the tender mercies of what fae considered interrogation. If that happened he would have had to break character, though he was pretty sure that wouldn¡¯t go well. In the middle of the Court, the fae king ¨C or rather, prince, as he styled himself ¨C had as much power as most Archmages. Possibly more in certain respects, given how strange fae magic was.

    It¡¯d only been a few days, but from what he¡¯d seen of the Court, any assault to try and free him from their control would be fraught at best. The Courts of Faerie had far more to them than the ones on Earth, which was one reason he hadn¡¯t yet tried to make a break for it. He wasn¡¯t certain he could even find his way out, despite the lack of any walls or fortifications. The geography was almost arbitrary.

    The most he¡¯d been able to do was to snoop around with his vis senses, using the reinforcement techniques to keep any of the fae from being able to actually compel him and at the same time listen in on discussions he shouldn¡¯t be privy to. While it was fairly obvious he was being kept as bait, what surprised him was exactly who they were trying to catch. He would have guessed it was Taisen, but it seemed their interest was in Felicia, instead.

    He''d always known she was more important than the normal exiled fae, the kinds that decided to stay outside of enclaves. That she was important enough to risk Archmage Taisen¡¯s wrath was news to him, though there were other goings-on. Something to do with House Janry and the Seven Lesser Courts. That was a bit of a surprise, since Archmage Janry had never impressed him as having any particular aspirations, but Ray wasn¡¯t an expert on the various Archmages either.

    Ray wandered out onto the balcony of the castle¡¯s second floor, ignoring the gossiping of the entranced men and women that inhabited the gilded cage, and stretched out his hearing once again. The fae magic that suffused the area hid much of the surroundings from sight, but not from his augmented senses. The center of the court wasn¡¯t that far away, and he overheard quite a bit, albeit in a mangled form of Old English that he barely understood.

    He committed as much of the gossip to memory as he could, mostly because he was almost certain the court was involved in the case he was pursuing. Which might well be moot, but he knew Felicia would be interested regardless. While he would have preferred to write it all down, there was no way that would go unremarked by his jailors.

    The snooping was really the only form of entertainment around, since the other people the fae had trapped were poor conversationalists and he had no interest in indulging in carnal appetites. Something that seemed to be the primary diversion for some of the mundanes. Most of the time he heard useless ¨C if entertaining ¨C anecdotes, but after twenty or thirty minutes of listening in he heard something that sent a shock down his spine and almost made him lift off into the air before he remembered himself.

    The Night Lands portal had been destroyed.

    Ray cursed to himself. He had no idea what was going on back on Earth, but he had a good guess on who was responsible. Only one person dealt both in portals and wholesale destruction, and in a sense it was inevitable that Wells would go after the vampires. There was nothing he could do from where he was, but with the chaos that he knew was coming, there would surely be some opportunity he could exploit.

    He just had to wait for it.

    ***

    ¡°I¡¯m as frustrated as you are,¡± Archmage Taisen told Felicia. She raised her eyebrows, and he corrected himself. ¡°Perhaps not, he is your partner,¡± Taisen conceded. ¡°But he¡¯s one of my men, and I do not abandon my people,¡± he said, punctuating the last few words by thumping his palm against his desk. ¡°But since we¡¯re not welcome in Faerie, it¡¯s considerably more difficult to look for him.¡±

    ¡°Understood,¡± Felicia wrote, though she wasn¡¯t happy about it. Faerie could be deceptively hostile, and to be unwelcome in Faerie was more serious than it might be for other portal worlds. As an Archmage, Taisen himself could deal with most of what Faerie could throw at him, but not everything, and of course he¡¯d be a very tempting target.

    Those were all practical considerations, but she still resented that they hadn¡¯t yet found Ray. Felicia was almost certain he was alive, for reasons beyond just refusing to believe the contrary. Nobody was in the habit of snatching mages, for various reasons, and for someone to take Ray specifically was especially unlikely. Perhaps someone had caught wind of the leak they were investigating, but it seemed more likely to her that she was the reason.

    She didn¡¯t want anything to do with Faerie, and never had, but that didn¡¯t mean that Faerie felt the same way about her. Even when she went, she always stayed within the human bounded areas, and that was bad enough. For all that she wanted to go out and find Ray herself, she couldn¡¯t. It would be a disaster.

    ¡°I¡¯m going to be asking some of the friendly Houses over there to help,¡± Taisen told her. ¡°But they¡¯re not going to be all that willing to go up against any of the local Courts.¡±

    ¡°I doubt they¡¯ll help,¡± Felicia wrote. She wasn¡¯t generally impressed with the mage Houses, though they were marginally better than the Courts she was familiar with.

    ¡°Likely not,¡± Taisen agreed with a sigh. He glanced around the spartan office as if there might be some answer there. ¡°The best bet would probably be the American Alliance. They have a number of Fae Kings aligned with them who might have some idea of who and how and where. I¡¯d be happy to give you a Defensores Mundi crest by way of personal endorsement.¡±

    ¡°I appreciate it,¡± Felicia wrote. ¡°But none of the Fae Kings on this side of the portal are going to be able to do anything to any of the Lesser Courts.¡± She stopped for a moment, since while she had the idea, actually saying it made it real. ¡°We need someone who can infiltrate the Courts and find and extract Ray without needing to actually fight them. We need the Ghost.¡±

    End of Book Four

 Chapter 1 - Exploration

    ¡°Any luck?¡± Lucy asked, as Callum opened his eyes.

    ¡°Not yet,¡± Callum said.

    ¡°Maybe the moon just isn¡¯t the best place to find somewhere livable,¡± Lucy suggested.

    ¡°I suspect you¡¯re right,¡± Callum agreed. ¡°It can¡¯t be coincidence that there were so many portal worlds that had perfectly breathable atmospheres on Earth¡¯s surface. In the grand scheme of things, the surface takes up basically zero percent.¡±

    Up to that point, he¡¯d only been opening portals from the far side of the moon, thanks to the portal nexus he¡¯d put on the moon¡¯s surface, or in the dragonlands. There was no way he was risking the Earth with a passage to some terrible hellscape. Which had been the right choice, back when he¡¯d first started. Now that he had some grasp of the subtleties of dimensional portal creation, it was probably time to experiment somewhere closer to home.

    ¡°Then we can stop crashing at Chester¡¯s place,¡± he muttered, but Lucy just laughed.

    ¡°It¡¯s not too bad here,¡± she said. ¡°I like the house better, but not without water, or when it¡¯s...¡± She pursed her lips. ¡°Well, perched on a big dirt patch in the middle of nowhere.¡±

    ¡°Yeah,¡± Callum sighed. After GAR had found out where his bunker was in Mexico, he¡¯d needed to move the entire house and cave-cache, but that meant there was no water or sewer. The electricity still worked, since he could feed his infinite-portal setup from the portal world connections. At least Chester¡¯s people had repaired the damage from when the GAR hit squad had broken through the back door and wall.

    ¡°Alright, I think I¡¯ve got enough juice for two more today.¡± Callum rubbed at his temples. He¡¯d been wringing himself dry trying to find a useful portal, and even though it¡¯d only been three days since he¡¯d closed the Night Lands portal he was frustrated by his lack of progress.

    The old adage was that when it rained, it poured. Callum had managed almost two years of relative quiet, time enough to train his own magic and learn a few tricks, but with the closure of the Night Lands portal everything was happening at once. He had to find new and useful portal worlds, he had relocate his house and his family, and he had to worry about the forces that were stirring in Faerie.

    All that was almost too much to handle, but just handling it wasn¡¯t enough. If all he did was react to their moves, he would never get anywhere. There were thousands of mages, entire Houses, and the Guild of Arcane Regulation that were still arrayed against him. Worse, they had no compunctions about targeting ordinary people, even if it was just to punish him.

    There was an enormous amount to do, both for himself and his allies, but it all started with the portal worlds. An untouched but habitable portal world would be an unassailable redoubt for him and, potentially, his allies. If he could find multiple ones, even better.

    ¡°For luck,¡± Lucy said, leaning over to give him a kiss. He held her close for a moment, then released her and focused on his spatial perceptions.

    The moon nexus had grown to fifteen connections. Three were connected to space drones ¨C one of which was actually in the dragonlands ¨C and one each to a drone located in the Night Lands and the Deep Wilds. The rest were in more conventional remotes scattered throughout the world.

    If he tried to run his senses through all of them it¡¯d overwhelm him instantly, so for the most part he restricted his passive perception to his cave cache and whichever drone he was working with. That did run the risk of someone happening across one of the drones while he wasn¡¯t paying attention, but they were all parked somewhere normally inaccessible. Inside a duct, in a space between walls, or inside some forgotten junction box on an overgrown property, whatever place seemed the safest.

    He selected the drone he kept in Australia, in the vicinity of Portal World Five, and teleported the little frame he used for dimensional portal tests down there. Since he never knew what would be on the other end of the portal, he only ever opened it inside a box with six inch thick steel walls. Even that probably wasn¡¯t really sufficient, but it was the best he had.

    Making a new dimensional portal required pushing vis through four different foci that each created a braided torus, doing most of the heavy lifting while he got the angles and sizes exactly right. Lucy had actually printed out a wireframe of the best working portal structure for him, one that consistently connected to portal worlds with mana, to make it even easier to compare structures and make sure he was doing it right. A physical example was far easier than trying to parse models on a screen.

    When he¡¯d used that structure on the moon, it¡¯d gone to a section of alien space with what looked like stone discs floating around in vacuum. But he¡¯d seen that some portal worlds were far smaller than a planet ¡ª the Deep Wilds and Night Lands both seemed to be fairly limited ¡ª and there probably wasn¡¯t actually anything outside that liminal space. The concept of a reality simply stopping bothered him, but that seemed to be how it worked. The distance between Earth and the Moon was larger than a planet, so he was tentatively thinking that opening the same kind of portal from Earth¡¯s surface might go somewhere else entirely.

    He double-checked the model and then shoved his vis into the portal structure, his teeth gritted and hands gripping the chair arms as he focused. The portal strained against space, ripping open a hole to a different dimension, and his perceptions found mana and atmosphere on the other side. The destination wasn¡¯t even that much distorted from normal space, which was one reason he¡¯d been focusing on that variant. The atmosphere was proof that he¡¯d been right, and that the same portal structure let him access different places depending on where he opened it. He teleported a drone through, and looked at the feed.

    What he saw was a massive stretch of water and rock, glimmering in bright light from something very like a sun overhead. Grey stone outcroppings jutted up from what looked to be a shallow ocean, with sand breaching the surface here and there. Small straggles of green clung to the sides of the juts, which was the only speck of color on them.

    It wasn¡¯t really that promising, but neither was it terrible. The sound of rushing water came through the microphone, and on closer inspection it seemed the tide was coming in. Or going out. It was flowing at a tremendous pace, scouring away and depositing sand at a visible rate. Callum winced, thinking about how much force that water had, but it wasn¡¯t something horrifying like the sun-eyed beast he¡¯d seen in one of his first portal explorations.

    ¡°Hey, it worked!¡± Lucy said, peering over his shoulder. ¡°It doesn¡¯t look too bad.¡±

    ¡°Not at all,¡± Callum agreed. ¡°Not exactly somewhere to live, but at least a place to survey for enchantment material. I¡¯ll leave a drone there.¡± If nothing else, it¡¯d be great as a mana source to keep his nexus stable and give him extra sustainability through his gut portal. ¡°And I¡¯ll also put out the habitability test.¡±

    They didn¡¯t have any fancy chemical analysis hardware, but just because it looked like normal sky and greenery didn¡¯t mean it was actually safe to breathe the air or drink the water. The simplest expedient was to just teleport a cage with a couple mice over to the portal world and observe. If they didn¡¯t keel over and die or grow extra heads or anything, it was probably relatively safe.

    Going somewhere himself would take more than that, but if he wanted to start providing alternate portal worlds for his allies, all he needed was something with value. A full House of mages could wring inestimable value from a portal world that was useless to him. He let the dimensional portal drop, relaxing as the vis drain vanished and the drone stayed in contact through its own portal anchor. So far he hadn¡¯t had any issues connecting to portal worlds when the initial dimensional connection was severed, but he didn¡¯t trust that would always be the case.

    ¡°Guess we aren¡¯t going to be having a beach day,¡± Lucy said as she studied the drone¡¯s feed. ¡°Kind of bleak, now that I look at it closer. Not even that warm.¡± The slightly unreliable thermometer/barometer combination attached to the side of the drone reported it was in the mid fifties, which wasn¡¯t much warmer than Chester¡¯s compound in Nebraska.

    ¡°It¡¯s better than vacuum,¡± Callum said. ¡°And I don¡¯t see any monsters. Nasty tidal scour though so maybe it¡¯s not surprising nothing¡¯s around.¡± Not that portal worlds seemed to need a true ecology. It was all mana fueled, or a consequence of the weirdness of the liminal physics that governed them.

    ¡°Well, go on,¡± Lucy said, nudging him with her elbow. ¡°Get another drone in there so we can go exploring. It¡¯s a whole different world! One that isn¡¯t scary!¡±

    Callum laughed and searched for a spare drone he could use to surveil the portal world, and pulled the one out of the west coast. He hadn¡¯t really needed it, and he could always put it back later. Leaving the first drone by their test mice, he scooted over so Lucy could sit beside him and pilot the other one around.

    From high up in the air, the tidal plain seemed to be endless, with no actual ocean or even a moon in sight to cause the water¡¯s movement. It could have been a giant river, too, but something about it reminded Callum more of tidal estuaries and saltwater marshes. Maybe it was just the dearth of plant life.

    Lucy steered the drone forward, the lightweight machine bobbling in the occasional gust of wind. There were no landmarks of note, just lots of the rock spurs poking twenty to fifty feet out of the sand wand water. In a way it all looked the same, but a few minutes later he was pretty sure it was actually identical.

    ¡°Fly down closer to that island there,¡± Callum said, pointing at the screen. Sure enough, as the drone got closer, they could make out the mouse cage and the other drone resting on the bare rock. It seemed like the space wrapped around itself, and if it was the same in every direction the whole thing was probably no more than twenty or thirty square miles.

    ¡°That is a heck of a thing,¡± Lucy said, laughing. ¡°It¡¯s tiny! Itty bitty pocket world.¡±

    ¡°Yeah, it¡¯s kinda weird,¡± Callum agreed, shaking his head at the screen. It implied there were maybe hundreds or thousands of such pocket dimensions, but most of them would probably be worthless. Though he wouldn¡¯t mind a ten square mile pocket world if it was nicer than a desolate tidal plain.

    ¡°Any enchanting materials though? I guess they wouldn¡¯t be bane material since there¡¯s nothing really here.¡± They still had a drone in the Night Lands to collect mordite since that was the easiest enchanting material to get, especially with Callum¡¯s abilities, but a more reliable and private source would be a gold mine.

    ¡°Don¡¯t know yet, I¡¯ll have to¡ª¡± Callum cut off as another mage bubble appeared in the range of his perceptions, accompanied by a fae. Not inside the little cabin they were staying at, but at the teleportation area that Chester had set up for the American Alliance. It was an archmage, which demonstrated to Callum why it wasn¡¯t good to have an unsecured teleport inside secure territory. That archmage was probably Hargrave or Taisen, but someone else could wreak all kinds of havoc.

    ¡°What is it?¡± Lucy asked, tensing and reaching out to grip his arm.

    ¡°Archmage visit with fae companion,¡± Callum replied, wrapping a teleportation framework around himself, Lucy and Alex, his son being absorbed in some toy cars off to one side. ¡°I doubt it¡¯s just social.¡±

    This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

    ¡°Not like there isn¡¯t enough going on,¡± Lucy muttered, maneuvering the drone to land again in a sheltered spit of stone.

    ¡°Yeah.¡± Callum stood, reaching over to close the laptop. It wasn¡¯t like what he was doing was secret, but he wasn¡¯t quite prepared to tip his hand that he had a pocket dimension ready to go. Even if it wasn¡¯t viable for habitation, it¡¯d make a good source for feeder portals. ¡°Might as well go see what the crisis is.¡±

    ¡°Look on the bright side,¡± Lucy said, going over to Alex. ¡°It might not be a crisis.¡±

    ¡°It might not,¡± Callum admitted, but he didn¡¯t believe it.

    ¡°Come on sweetie, we have to go check with Uncle Chester. We¡¯ll be back in a little bit.¡± Alexander picked up his car and held his hands out, and Lucy scooped him up.

    ¡°Sorry I¡¯ve been so busy, Alex,¡± Callum told his son. ¡°We¡¯ll play some games tonight after dinner.¡±

    ¡°Gravity tag!¡± Alex demanded instantly, and Callum ruffled his hair.

    ¡°Sure, kiddo, sounds good to me!¡± Normally it wasn¡¯t too difficult to catch a two-year-old when playing tag. When that two-year-old could and did literally bounce off the walls, and ceiling, it was a lot more athletic proposition.

    They shrugged on their coats to make the short trudge between buildings. While Callum could have teleported or portaled them easily enough, it was a pretty rude thing to do in someone else¡¯s house. Besides which, he didn¡¯t want to pop in on an archmage unannounced in case said archmage was twitchy. Callum still hadn¡¯t cracked any kind of useful shield.

    By the time that they reached the main mini-mansion in the compound, Chester and Lisa were in the front room with the archmage. Callum had a moment of uncertainty, thinking maybe it was presumptuous to think that his presence was necessary, but the shifter hanging out in the front room waved them onward. Sometimes it was weird interacting with people whose senses were good enough that they were functionally better than his spatial perceptions.

    "Thanks, Gregory!" Lucy said, and Alex waved at the guard. Somehow even his son seemed to know more shifters than Callum did.

    When they entered the sitting room that was the default meeting area, Callum was somewhat relieved to see the archmage in question was Taisen. He wasn¡¯t sure he actually liked the man, but Taisen was a straight shooter and someone Callum could respect. It was far easier to deal with someone who was all business than political creatures. The fae accompanying him was another matter, and after a few moments of staring, Callum finally placed her.

    ¡°Oh, it¡¯s you,¡± said Lucy. He glanced at her and then back to the fae.

    ¡°You two know each other?¡± He asked. Callum only knew her as the somewhat creepy fishwoman-looking agent who¡¯d tried to interview him what felt like lifetimes ago. Which didn¡¯t exactly endear her to him, but Taisen had also started on the other side. Even Hargrave had. It was one of the difficulties of dealing with what was essentially a combination of revolution and civil war.

    ¡°She was the one who interrogated me,¡± Lucy said, eyes narrowed. Taisen opened his mouth to say something, but the fae was quicker. She held up a digital tablet with text written on it.

    ¡°I want to apologize,¡± it read. ¡°At the time, I was working for GAR and I thought you all were simply criminals. It was only later that I found out how much corruption there was within GAR. It isn¡¯t an excuse, but it is the only explanation I can offer.¡±

    ¡°¡­huh.¡± Callum wasn¡¯t sure what to say to that. Neither Taisen nor Hargrave had exactly apologized for their prior opposition of him, both seeming to view it as the inevitable consequence of high level politics. ¡°Up to you.¡±

    ¡°Hm,¡± said Lucy, holding onto Alex¡¯s hand. ¡°I¡¯m not exactly a fan.¡± She took a longer look at the fae, who was clearly upset. The fae wiped the tablet and scribbled something else, holding it up again.

    ¡°Please,¡± it read. ¡°My partner is in danger.¡±

    Lucy frowned, studying the fae further. Callum was glad he was rubbing off on her, because anyone could come in with a sob story. Admittedly, Taisen¡¯s presence made it more believable, but they weren¡¯t obligated to interfere in strictly supernatural affairs. After a few moments Lucy took a deep breath and let it out, then nodded sharply.

    ¡°We¡¯re willing to listen.¡±

    ¡°The reason we¡¯re here is that we need your expertise,¡± Taisen said, getting straight to the point. ¡°Or rather, we need The Ghost¡¯s abilities.¡±

    Callum exchanged glances with Lucy. She shrugged, and let Alex go run over to Chester. It seemed like it was going to be the sort of discussion that a small child didn¡¯t need to be part of, and Chester was obscenely good with kids, mage or shifter. Callum tried to take notes, but Chester¡¯s prowess was obviously just knowledge from being however many years old and helping to raise however many generations.

    They took their seats on the couch, Taisen and the fae woman settling in across from them. Chester and Lisa stayed off to the side, clearly keeping an eye on things but mostly taking care of Alex. Callum took Lucy¡¯s hand, looking at Taisen and the fae.

    ¡°So what is it you need The Ghost to do?¡±

    ¡°This is Felicia Black,¡± Taisen introduced the fae. ¡°She doesn¡¯t tend to speak in mixed company because of her particular heritage.¡± Lucy¡¯s grip tightened on his at that, but she didn¡¯t add anything. ¡°A few days before you closed the Night Lands portal, she was looking into that video threatening your child that was leaked, along with her partner Raymond Danforth.¡± It seemed like lifetimes ago that Callum had seen the recording of fae threatening Alex, but just mentioning it brought it fresh into his mind once again. ¡°Ray went missing in Faerie,¡± Taisen continued. ¡°And we have reason to suspect he was abducted by one of the Courts.¡±

    Callum frowned. That was not exactly the sort of request that he had been anticipating. He¡¯d thought there would be more fallout from the vampire attacks, which he knew was still a looming issue as mundane governments investigated things. Not that he was going to make any moves against the poor saps trying to find out what was going on, but helping move supernaturals en masse was definitely something he could do.

    ¡°I¡¯m not unsympathetic,¡± he said slowly. ¡°But my encounters with the fae have shown me that they¡¯re very difficult to deal with. No offense intended. It¡¯s a kind of magic I can¡¯t really be sure of dealing with, and I¡¯ve never even touched Faerie itself.¡± He did feel he had some responsibility, if Ray and Felicia were investigating on his behalf, but he wasn¡¯t going to stick his head in the magical blender for them.

    ¡°You have some way to remain hidden from fae senses,¡± Felicia wrote on her tablet, as a statement of fact rather than a question.

    ¡°Sure, but I don¡¯t know how well that¡¯d work in Faerie proper,¡± Callum said. ¡°And even then, it¡¯s not all-powerful. I would need something that was better proof against fae magic than one item that I can¡¯t really even trust.¡± In fact, he would prefer not to engage with Faerie at all, but that ship had sailed. If he wanted to get out ahead of events, and all the people buddied up with the Houses still backing GAR, he needed the ability to operate in Faerie too.

    ¡°I¡¯m going to need something that is definite proof against fae magic.¡±

    ***

    Felicia Black regarded the man on the other side of the table. Though she had been introduced to him as Callum Wells, it was difficult to think of him as anything other than The Ghost. Even now she could feel the power gathered around him and his wife both, making them feel like they were barely there.

    Part of her was surprised that he was meeting them in person at all, but she supposed they had come to him. Actually, to Alpha Chester, who well knew the power of playing host to someone like The Ghost, but they were the ones on foreign territory. Considering how he operated, it seemed likely using Chester as intermediary was a grudging compromise.

    What the Ghost asked was not unreasonable. She still didn¡¯t know how he managed all his infiltration, but the magic of humans and the magic of the fae was different enough that a powerful enough fae might be able to stymie him. Especially a fae from the Seven Lesser Courts, whose princes were indistinguishable from their holdings. Even if The Ghost was as inconspicuous as a flea, a flea of human magic would still be something they noticed. And would deal with.

    ¡°There may be something I can do,¡± she wrote, slowly and reluctantly.

    Felicia knew that The Ghost was the only one who could get Ray out. It wasn¡¯t just her experience as a detective but her instincts as a fae screaming at her about the sheer weight of The Ghost¡¯s story. There were thieves and assassins from Faerie, of course, but they had their own interests and lacked the potent history of both justice and subterfuge The Ghost had. Nor would a human demand something as insidious as a fae¡¯s idea of payment. Not that they¡¯d even discussed remuneration yet, but it was clear he wanted something that would permanently protect him from the fae.

    There was no question she had to find and rescue Ray. The worry gnawed at her gut, and showed itself in her voice. In a way it wasn¡¯t a very fae-like thing to admit to, but that was one reason why she¡¯d left. Her path was something closer to human, and Ray had been her constant companion through the whole thing. Their relationship was still a little ambiguous, and purposely so, but now she¡¯d come to a critical point. Not just for them, but for her own story and sense of identity. She had to decide what she was willing to sacrifice for Ray.

    ¡°What did you have in mind?¡± Wells asked, his face a cold mask of life and death.

    ¡°I would ask that this does not leave this room,¡± she wrote, rather than answering directly.

    "We all have secrets," he agreed easily, then cast a glance over to where Alpha Chester¡¯s mate was playing with his offspring. She smiled at them and picked up the child, bouncing him lightly and distracting him from the conversation.

    ¡°We¡¯ll go get a snack,¡± she said, and closed the door behind her as she left.

    ¡°I suspect I cannot cast anything on you directly,¡± she wrote. Most mages actually could take fae enchantment fairly well, since their magic was concentrated into their shells, but Wells was another story. Rather like Archmage Huitzilin, his power blazed inside his body, utterly rejecting anything foreign. ¡°However, I can create a token that would shroud you as you wish.¡±

    ¡°You can make something that would stand up to fae kings?¡± Wells asked, his voice admirably neutral. She didn¡¯t blame him for his skepticism.

    ¡°There is a reason I asked for secrecy,¡± she said, and put down her tablet.

    She had known this moment was inevitable. Her time as a civilian on Earth couldn¡¯t last forever, and the moment that they¡¯d left GAR the clock had begun ticking. By nature she would be drawn to the agents of change, but she didn¡¯t think she¡¯d be forced into things this way. Felicia took a deep breath and then let it out. Even if the people in the room kept it secret, there was no way to take back what she was doing. No mantle, once donned, could be shed freely.

    ¡°I am Felicity Niflungr Blackblood, daughter of King Oberon and Queen Mab.¡± Her words hung in the air, crystallizing the magic of Faerie around her. She reached up and plucked a hair from her head, holding it up before her. ¡°By my authority I bestow upon The Ghost the mantle of Chosen of Oberon and Agent of Mab, so that no fae magic shall find him without his choosing, nor any child of Faerie raise their hand against him without peril.¡±

    The hair braided itself together, growing and knitting itself into a long black cloak as the weight of Faerie draped itself over Felicia¡¯s shoulders. She didn¡¯t have the power for something like that herself, nothing near it. But as a princess of the fae, she could ask Faerie itself to provide. It was a mantle she had shunned her whole life, both because she¡¯d seen what easy power did to people and because she knew what responsibilities came with it. But to save Ray, she had to finally take up her birthright.

    Archmage Taisen stared at her after she spoke, since she¡¯d never breathed a word about it to him. Even Ray had only hints, and she was glad he¡¯d never pressed since she wasn¡¯t sure she could have avoided telling him. Though that was moot now, and he would know when he returned. And he would.

    She met Wells gaze, and even through the mask of The Ghost he seemed shocked or impressed. Lucy was less restrained, and she looked absolutely gobsmacked. Chester was the one that seemed the most unflappable, but she caught a gleam in his eye ¡ª or maybe it was an intuition from the mantle she had finally acknowledged.

    Felicia held out the cloak, which was embroidered with a winged black cat, facing away. It was somewhat embarrassing as a personal symbol, but it would change in time. She had turned her back on the mantle and fled; but now that she had taken it up, that would change. Eventually.

    ¡°I have never seen magic do that,¡± Wells said at length. ¡°It¡¯s not as vis-dense as I would have thought for what it does ¡ª that is to say, what it is supposed to do.¡± He half-asked, raising his eyebrows at her.

    ¡°It is not quite as powerful as it may seem,¡± she confessed, continuing to use her voice as she felt the effects of her declaration continue to settle in. ¡°It is certainly not a completely invulnerable defense. But it should be potent enough.¡±

    Wells still didn¡¯t take it, looking at it intensely with his eyes narrowed. She didn¡¯t know what he was looking for, but eventually he nodded to himself. He stood up and held out his hand. She passed the cloak over, and he nearly dropped it.

    ¡°It¡¯s heavy,¡± he said with surprise.

    ¡°A mantle always is,¡± Felicia agreed.

    ¡°Hm.¡± Wells considered the cloak, examining the feline heraldry, then looked at her. ¡°A mantle? What sort of obligations come with what you said ¡ª Chosen of Oberon and Agent of Mab?¡±

    Both the fae and the investigator parts of her were pleased that he wasn¡¯t accepting the offer without reservation. That was exactly the right question to ask, though she was not so crass as to try and tie The Ghost with an unwanted binding. Though she doubted she could, even if she wanted to.

    ¡°I charge you with only one: to find and retrieve Raymond Danforth,¡± Felicia said. That wasn¡¯t how she normally talked, but it was required. She was not speaking as the private investigator, but the princess. ¡°Beyond that, it will only be revoked should The Ghost refuse a direct order from Queen Mab.¡±

    ¡°Interesting.¡± He didn¡¯t don it yet, and Taisen spoke up for the first time.

    ¡°This is as much a surprise to me as to you,¡± he said, looking at Felicia before turning back to Wells. ¡°However, I can vouch that such an artifact couldn¡¯t be created if there were any untruth to it. Or rather, that kind of magic works because it is true, or becomes truth. Not common outside of the actual royals. Which I suppose Agent Black is.¡± He cast her another glance.

    ¡°I see.¡± Wells draped the cloak over his arm. ¡°If this works as promised, then I am willing to help. What can you tell me about Faerie, who might be holding him, and where?¡±

 Chapter 2 â€“ Faerie

    Callum didn¡¯t entirely trust the cloak, though he had to admit the pageantry around it was impressive. It also further established that fae magic was complete nonsense; there had not been nearly enough vis to form solid matter out of nothing, so far as he could tell. And it was real matter too, not just conjured pseudo-matter.

    He knew his ability to perceive magic was better than most mage senses, barring some of the tools that the Guild of Enchantment made, but he was pretty sure that the complexities of what went into the cloak were beyond even what he could tell. Not that he¡¯d be able to unravel it anyway, since it was all rippling faerie magic, flowing and liquid.

    As Felicia had said, the magic didn¡¯t actually affect him directly. He could see how its magic simply rolled off his vis. Exactly how it functioned was a mystery, but if it provided its protection without having to actually touch him with the faerie magic he was a lot more comfortable with using it.

    One of Chester¡¯s people brought in drinks and a new type of cheese cracker that Lisa had made, as Taisen and Felicia explained a bit about Faerie. Obviously they couldn¡¯t get into all the complexities of the politics and local scene, any more than he could have given a full explanation of the full history and culture of the United States in a few minutes¡¯ briefing, but they did cover the high points.

    The Seven Lesser Courts were, despite their name, fairly powerful, and charged with relations between Earth and Faerie. Deeper in, the fae got stranger and reality bent more thoroughly, to the point where it wasn¡¯t safe for humans to even exist. So the Lesser Courts had gotten fairly close to the various mage Houses, gaining power from being the gateway for fae who wanted to pass over to Earth and from dealing with the stories and goods the humans themselves brought. Not just the individual fae, Callum understood, but the entire domains benefitted from the process.

    ¡°So they¡¯ve allied themselves with this sort of shadow council that¡¯s taken control of what¡¯s left of GAR,¡± Taisen concluded. ¡°Probably for broader access to Earth. I suppose it¡¯s obvious, but without people like Hargrave and myself, there isn¡¯t much pressure to keep supernaturals limited. It¡¯s not like they live here and have to deal with the would-be conquerors they¡¯re sending our way.¡±

    ¡°That doesn¡¯t surprise me,¡± Callum acknowledged. It was the same pattern that had happened millions of times throughout history. ¡°But why did they target Ray, specifically? It doesn¡¯t seem related, unless it¡¯s just part of being anti-you.¡±

    ¡°Because of me,¡± Felicia wrote. She¡¯d returned to using her tablet after squaring away the issue of the cloak. ¡°Not only am I a valuable piece if they could somehow get ahold of me, but my being on Earth is problem for any claim they would wish to stake. Faerie¡¯s magic itself would recognize me over them. So they wish to draw me away from my chosen world.¡±

    Callum grunted. Supernatural politics again, but it made some kind of distant sense. He preferred to avoid that kind of thing, but he could see an opportunity when it strolled up and smacked him in the face. Supporting Felicia as the global interface between fae and humans was a far-ranging move, but it was clear someone needed to be there, the way that the Fae operated.

    ¡°So I get Ray back, and they don¡¯t have any leverage on you. That means you could stand opposed to them and it¡¯d matter. Them being, the people who have been invading Earth these past couple years, and not playing nice with humanity.¡±

    ¡°I don¡¯t have an army,¡± she wrote.

    ¡°No, but you have legitimacy, and an Alliance with a vested interest in keeping things from going too far,¡± Callum said, making a circle of the room with his finger.

    ¡°I¡¯ll consider what I can do.¡± Felicia wrote slowly, her lips pressed tight. Callum was a little bit sympathetic, because he understood what it was like to have to completely discard everything and start a new life. If anything, she had his respect for being willing to sacrifice her career and identity for the sake of her lover.

    It was a better reason than his.

    ¡°Well, if this cloak works as advertised than we might as well get started,¡± Callum concluded. "Generally I don¡¯t have witnesses, but in this case having someone who knows Faerie and who and what we might be looking at will help a lot. Chester, do you have a space where we can set up a bunch of monitors?¡±

    ¡°Of course I do,¡± Chester said easily. ¡°You don¡¯t think we have movie night?¡±

    ¡°I know the place,¡± Lucy laughed. ¡°Can you pull over the monitors and my laptop, dear?¡±

    ¡°Sure,¡± Callum said, standing up. The war room would probably have been slightly better for what they were doing, but he wasn¡¯t ready to extend that much trust yet. True, the house would be moved at some point, but the thought of strangers in his home was just too much.

    They all trooped over to another part of the sprawling not-a-mansion, where there was a large blank wall with a projector, and Callum teleported half a dozen spare monitors over along with Lucy¡¯s laptop. She fiddled with the connections as he plugged in the electronics, watch by a bemused Taisen and Felicia. Chester was more used to it, and he helped to sort everything out. Despite all that magic could do, getting electronics cables into their proper slots was still a tedious task.

    Lucy connected to their wifi through one of the portal anchors, and Callum reported on which drone he was using. They didn¡¯t have one in Faerie itself, but he did keep one near enough to the Faerie portal that he could get there in short order. He wasn¡¯t entirely comfortable showing people the entire process, but it was broadly known that he had surveillance capabilities. Besides, it wasn¡¯t obvious exactly how all the moving pieces operated.

    Soon enough there was an image from the camera feed up on the overhead projector, with other angles on the smaller monitors. It was kind of arbitrary which camera was the primary one, but it was easier to have a front and a back so he could orient himself when he moved it around. The image blurred and refocused in short bursts as he used his Alcubierre trick to move the drone from its post in Luxembourg to the GPS coordinates of the portal in Germany.

    ¡°So what made you go to join Archmage Taisen instead of sticking with GAR?¡± Callum heard Lucy ask. He doubted anyone else present realized how much courage that took, given how much her bout in GAR custody had affected her. The sound of Felicia¡¯s stylus scrawling on her tablet sounded as he approached the Faerie portal.

    It had more infrastructure around it than any of the others. In fact, it was a small town in the middle of the Black Forest, entirely shrouded in glamours of the fae sort. It looked pleasant enough, closer to normal than what he¡¯d seen in some of the enclaves, but he knew there was some catch to it.

    The portal itself was in the center, set inside an arrangement of standing stones, and despite it being in the open air there was enough structured magic in the air that he knew it wasn¡¯t unguarded. If anything it was more thoroughly protected than the Night Lands portal had been, between the actual magic and the small fae that seemed to make the standing stones their home. Small in stature, but he could sense the density of vis inside them and knew they were heavy hitters.

    This was the first test of the cloak. He felt a little silly wearing the thing but, if it worked like it was supposed to, the drone would be no more noticeable to the fae than it would have been to humans. The wording that Felicia had used was his magic was invisible, not his devices, and he wasn¡¯t about to get overconfident.

    ¡°Alright, silent mode,¡± he said, cutting into Lucy¡¯s quiet conversation with Felicia about Ray. He hadn¡¯t been watching directly, but he¡¯d gathered from Lucy¡¯s half of the conversation that they¡¯d been abused by the bureaucracy. A part of him thought that was only appropriate, but he stepped on that pretty firmly.

    Lucy cut the power to the drone¡¯s propellers, and he teleported the machine into an appropriately-sized chimney with the flue closed, close enough for him to sense his way through the portal. The other side was also surrounded by standing stones, though they were far more impressive than the Earth equivalent.

    Instead of six or eight feet, they were six or eight stories tall, though at the same time the space around them twisted so they didn¡¯t quite take up the space something that big ought to. There was also really nothing to demarcate any difference between structured fae magic and the ordinary background of the portal world. The mana flowed every which way in constantly-changing structures, as if the entire area was under one big enchantment. Which it might well be.

    He located a likely hiding spot, inside a small hollow of brush at the base of one of the stones, and teleported the drone in. Then he waited, seeing if any alarm would be raised, or any magical response would come. The lack of any attention on the Earth side was hopeful, but Faerie itself was the real test.

    ¡°That is impressive,¡± Taisen said, watching the display flicker between locations. The main display didn¡¯t show much at the moment, just some too-green grass, but the overhead camera showed the venerable-looking standing stones framed against a painfully blue sky with absolutely picturesque clouds. ¡°Even though I know you can move around that way, seeing it is striking.¡±

    ¡°Faerie looks ridiculously story-book,¡± Callum said, more or less ignoring Taisen¡¯s comment.

    ¡°Yeah, everything there is exaggerated,¡± Lucy agreed. ¡°I mean, it¡¯s pretty and all, but look at it too long and it seems kind of weird.¡±

    ¡°Felicia says that given time, the land will adapt to the inhabitants,¡± Lucy reported, since Callum couldn¡¯t spare his attention to twist around and read the tablet.

    ¡°No time for sightseeing, alas,¡± Callum replied, and looked at the map that Taisen had provided. The human region sprawled out from the portal location, over five hundred square miles of House compounds and acreage, farms and vineyards of various sorts. All of it had been stabilized by Duvall, which gave him a serious perspective on what longevity could accomplish.

    The Seven Lesser Courts were roughly east, whereas to the west was a massive feral wilderness. Not that direction worked right in faerie. The digital compass built into the drone kept blinking different orientations even as it sat still, magic bending whatever magnetic field there might be into transient knots. There were landmarks, though, and by comparing Taisen¡¯s map to the standing stones he managed to figure out which direction was which.

    No fae came by to investigate the drone and no particularly noticeable magic seemed to target it. They hadn¡¯t left GAR-controlled lands, so Callum wasn¡¯t completely convinced the cloak was working, but the early signs were promising. Since the infiltration seemed to be working, he began teleporting his remote through the countryside.

    It was like going through a combination of the best parts of New Zealand, Europe, China, and America ¨C and those were just the inspirations that he recognized. Despite the human area ultimately not being all that large, it was absolutely packed with grottos and groves and waterfalls and mist-shrouded spires. There wasn¡¯t a single spot that was just ordinary landscape.

    Once he got far enough out, an area that was supposed to be mostly agrarian, he lifted the drone with gravitykinesis and tugged it in the direction of the border. The pseudo-Alcubierre effect he was so used to drained his vis, and a few seconds later he let it go. The landscape that snapped into view was quite different than the one they¡¯d left, with no actual ground visible under a massive tangled carpet of roots the size of houses, twining up to a mountain-scale tree in the distance.

    ¡°The Court of Prince Galivrick,¡± Taisen said, as a flock of what Callum would swear were Pteranodons flew past the camera feed. ¡°Probably not where he is, but we¡¯ll have to check anyway.¡±

    ¡°Finding one person in something that size,¡± Callum sighed, looking over at his guests. ¡°We¡¯ll take a look, and eavesdrop. What¡¯s the difference between a fae prince and fae king anyway?¡±

    ¡°There is only one king in Faerie,¡± Felicia wrote, her mouth set into a hard line. ¡°I may not know exactly where he could be but I know how they think. Ray would be a ¡®guest¡¯ of the prince himself. There will be a gilded cage in the prince¡¯s estate, and Ray will be there. If not this Court, than another.¡±

    ¡°That¡¯s better than having to sweep the entire place,¡± Callum said, somewhat relieved. It was one thing to commit to help, it was another to see the scope of a city-sized region and know he had to find a single person within it. Even with his perceptions and assuming that Ray was going to stand out thanks to the mage bubble, it would have taken ages. More than a day, and he definitely intended to keep his promise to Alex and set aside time to play with his son.

    Part of him would really have liked to look around at the enormous variety of ridiculous wildlife that inhabited the sky and the ground in Faerie. He was pretty sure he spotted not only dinosaurs, but absolutely mythical wildlife like gryphons and unicorns. Of all the portal worlds, Faerie seemed closest to an actual magical world, but he didn¡¯t have the time to marvel at the causal wonders it held.

    The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.

    Callum tugged at space again and the drone blurred right up to the tree, stopping pressed against a trunk with bark that was five hundred feet thick. He began teleporting the drone upward, still on the lookout for any possible hue or cry thanks to the drone¡¯s presence, but none of the animals paid the tiny drone any heed. Of course, he kept it as hidden as possible, but with the fae he doubted that would have been enough by itself.

    The crown of the tree was practically a city of its own, but from the cameras he could tell exactly where the Prince¡¯s dwelling was. The biggest, fanciest dwelling, half-grown and half-carved, in the center of the canopy. He made a beeline right for it, jumping the drone from roof to roof or hollow to hollow, keeping as circumspect as he could even though he couldn¡¯t exactly hide his magic. It was the cloak that made the subterfuge possible.

    A few minutes later he was inside an astoundingly extravagant complex. Not exactly a building or a palace, not with the way it was integrated into an enormous branch of a living tree, but close enough. The sheer scope of the mana moving about was intimidating, swirling and flowing and dancing through the gold and silver and frescoed glass, but it seemed to pass right through or maybe around his vis threads. The fae prince himself was obvious even if he wasn¡¯t actually inside Callum¡¯s perceptions. The density of the mana pointed right to him, shifting as the prince moved about his palace.

    There were dozens of rooms, pools, groves, and dark oubliettes within the palace, but Callum was looking for non-fae. It wasn¡¯t until he¡¯d gotten further into the sprawl of rooms that he found someone who wasn¡¯t part of the actual Court. But it wasn¡¯t a mage. There was a small set of what Callum could only characterize as apartments with a bunch of normal people.

    ¡°Well,¡± he said grimly. ¡°This is something else I need to deal with. We have to get them out of there.¡±

    ¡°Well, maybe,¡± Lucy said, watching the camera feed. The drone was parked in a high corner, atop a bookshelf, with a view of a young man happily painting the view from the balcony outside his apartment. ¡°Doesn¡¯t look like he needs a rescue.¡±

    ¡°They¡¯re just ordinary people,¡± Callum said with a sigh. ¡°Probably making the best of a bad situation. Or completely brainwashed.¡±

    ¡°Or they made a deal,¡± Lucy pointed out. ¡°The Department of Acquisitions isn¡¯t the only way people run into the supernatural. I mean, sure, some of them might be prisoners here but do you want to assume that about everyone?¡± There was a pause and the sound of Felicia¡¯s stylus as Callum navigated the drone through the apartments. ¡°Okay that¡¯s a good point,¡± Lucy said, and Callum glanced away from the feeds.

    ¡°Some of them might only be alive due to the influence of Faerie,¡±  Felicia had written. ¡°I know that some of the Lesser Courts have poets from centuries past, only still alive thanks to their bargains.¡±

    ¡°That makes things more complicated,¡± Callum asked, taking another look at the man on the drone feed. He didn¡¯t look familiar, and his art didn¡¯t strike any chord, but for all he knew that guy might be some ancient Dutch master, preserved like a fly in amber. ¡°If there are people there that don¡¯t want to be, they should be helped, but you¡¯re right. If it¡¯s something they chose I¡¯ve got no right to mess with it.¡± He rubbed at his temples.

    ¡°It¡¯s something you¡¯ll have to sort, I think,¡± he said to Felicia. ¡°You¡¯re right, it¡¯s too complicated for me to figure out. Just assuming these people are victims is reductive, but some of them certainly are.¡± Felicia¡¯s face firmed into stern resolution and she nodded. He was glad that she was willing to commit, because while he wasn¡¯t going to make it a condition of his help, he was more than willing to heap work on someone who¡¯d stepped up as a person of authority.

    ¡°I will address it as soon as it becomes possible,¡± she wrote, and he continued on. There was a core or so of humans in the palace, but no mages, so Callum left them alone and moved on. The map of Faerie was vague, but that was because of the spatial twisting that made things harder to get through. Which, amusingly, didn¡¯t matter to him since he could teleport straight past any contorted maze that separated one point from another.

    If Galivrick¡¯s court was effectively elves, then the next Court was pretty much dwarves. Not that it was coincidence, since the fae adapted human stories. The mountain stronghold, the abundance of gold and silver, the short and stocky fae populating the galleries of stone. All of it was such a direct copy of fiction that Callum found it actually uninteresting, for all the fantastical nature of it. The architect in him was fascinated, but there wasn¡¯t all that much cleverness in the structure; rather all the effort had been put into the frills and decoration.

    The mountain city had its own version of a palace, a suite of enormous rooms at the center of the network of mines and elevators, but there were no mages there, either. There was some sort of oubliette near the back, inside of which was something that looked exceedingly nasty, a spider crossed with a cutlery shop, but he couldn¡¯t tell whether it was a prisoner or a beast to be fed. Or if there was really any difference.

    ¡°You know, you could do an awful lot of information gathering with this,¡± Taisen noted. ¡°I¡¯m not exactly a spymaster but if nobody¡¯s noticed your devices by now then you could find every little secret these people have.¡±

    ¡°I guess so, but that¡¯s not what I do,¡± Callum said distractedly, trying to pay attention to Felicia¡¯s tablet while scanning both with his eyes and his senses. ¡°Internal affairs aren¡¯t my business. It¡¯s threats to ordinary people, or to myself.¡±

    ¡°The mantle is for The Ghost,¡± Felicia wrote. ¡°That creates certain limitations.¡±

    ¡°Ah,¡± said Taisen, enlightened. Callum nodded. He didn¡¯t exactly have specific limitations on The Ghost, but spying on people for any purpose but planning a method of execution was off the table. The Ghost was not someone else¡¯s tool.

    Getting out of the mountain required as much time as getting in, since he couldn¡¯t just Alcubierre his way out of it, but soon enough the drone was free and he reoriented himself on the map. The Seven Lesser Courts formed a sort of semicircle around the mage lands, though the way that space itself could shift meant that wasn¡¯t exactly a solid border. The boundaries between each Court were a contorted mess that, without teleportation, he was pretty sure he wouldn¡¯t be able to navigate.

    The third target was at least somewhat more interesting. Callum didn¡¯t recognize the source material, but it was a great gloomy wood with stone-brick towns and cities built in under the dark canopies of the enormous trees. They weren¡¯t mountain-sized, but they easily met or surpassed redwoods, even if they looked more like ancient oaks.

    It was all overdone gothic architecture, which he rather wished he had time to look at more closely. But he didn¡¯t have time to transcribe the designs, instead working his way inward toward the center of the Court. It was an enormous castle complex that was practically city all to itself, linked to outlying castles and towers with bridges and buttresses.

    Callum teleported the drone through the area, stretching his thousand-foot-plus sensory range to its limits as he looked for where the prisoners might be. He accidentally stumbled across a vault, which had literal tons of various magical and nonmagical riches, along with a goodly amount of corite locked away in thick-walled steel boxes. Tempting as it as, he wasn¡¯t there to steal things, so he moved on.

    It wasn¡¯t until he got to one of the towers that was surrounded by fae spatial contortions that he struck paydirt. The presence of a mage bubble had him convinced he¡¯d found his target even before he teleported the drone into range. Callum parked it on the top of a bookshelf, behind some kind of potted plant, just in case the mage happened to be looking in that direction. One of the unfortunate aspects of mage bubbles was that he had no insight into lines of sight or attention, which made them harder to work around than other supernaturals.

    While Felicia¡¯s cloak seemed to work well enough against fae, he¡¯d underestimated the sensitivity of mage senses. There was nothing shielding his magic from mage perceptions, and while they didn¡¯t have the range and sensitivity of his passive abilities they were hardly blind. Despite how small the teleport was, and the drone itself was, it was enough to attract some attention. The figure mostly obscured by the plant¡¯s gold and red leaves turned around, and a pulse of vis swept out from the mage.

    ¡°Dammit,¡± Callum cursed, castigating himself for his carelessness. He¡¯d been too worried about fae noticing him to remember about mages. ¡°We¡¯ve been noticed. Better hope that¡¯s him.¡± If it wasn¡¯t, Callum doubted that the mage could keep him from ¡®porting the drone away, and it wasn¡¯t likely anyone would connect some unknown bit of magic with The Ghost snooping around, but he didn¡¯t trust to chance.

    He caught a glimpse of a face through the gaps in the plant, blurry because of the lack of focus and, while he didn¡¯t recognize it, Felicia visibly brightened. She hastily scribbled on the tablet, holding it up to him.

    ¡°Can I speak to him?¡± Callum nodded, and Lucy poked at a few controls and pushed the laptop in her direction. He kept his eyes and senses focused on the person in the room, worried more about potentially losing the drone than a specific threat. It was fae magic that went through his portals. That and negative healing.

    ¡°Ray, it¡¯s me.¡±

    While Callum didn¡¯t feel any of the power in Felicia¡¯s voice himself, he could see its effects when walls and desks actually vibrated from the quiet words. Curiously, at least to him, that effect seemed to carry across the microphone despite there being no direct connection. He could see the swirl of fae influence pushing out from where the drone was, which frankly was worrying since even if he was shielded, that didn¡¯t mean Felicia was.

    ¡°Felicia?¡± Ray¡¯s voice came through the pickup, sounding more than a little suspicious. Which raised Callum¡¯s estimation of the man, since he¡¯d be pretty skeptical too. A daring rescue from nowhere was more fiction than reality.

    ¡°The Ghost located you,¡± Felicia said, her voice clipped and crisp. ¡°I¡¯m leaving the details of your extraction to him.¡±

    ¡°Archmage Taisen, I assume you can handle him if there¡¯s any fae magic still on him,¡± Callum said, since even with the mage bubble up and Felicia¡¯s recognition, he wouldn¡¯t have been surprised if the person they were rescuing was a ringer.

    ¡°I can,¡± Taisen said, cold and hard.

    ¡°Then¡ª¡± Callum stopped as the underlying mana swirled, and someone stepped out of the corner of the room. He recognized that particular bit of oddness, even if he had no idea how the fae could teleport without any noticeable spatial distortion. ¡°Time¡¯s up.¡±

    He reached out to open a portal for Ray, but with the arrival of the fae prince, for it could be nobody else, the mana of the area locked itself down, completely under the thrall of the prince. Callum knew that he didn¡¯t have quite the punch of an archmage, so the sudden rigidity of the mana might not even have been conscious. Without extra tricks, there wasn¡¯t much he could do to contend with the power of above-average supernaturals.

    Which was why he didn¡¯t ever commit to something without extra tricks.

    ¡°Princess¡ª¡± The fae prince got out just the one word before Callum tapped into his vis and opened an anti-mana portal.

    Not inside Faerie, of course. He¡¯d found that it was mostly real universes that were reachable from the portal worlds, and trying to open a dimensional portal from an unknown place in some liminal dimension wasn¡¯t guaranteed to lead anywhere in particular, even if anti-mana seemed to be a common portal destination.

    Instead, he took advantage of the fact that the middle of a portal was not magic at all, just a hole in space. By using both a dimensional portal and an ordinary portal, he simply funneled the output from the anti-mana dimension through into Faerie. While Callum was mostly trying to get the leeway he needed for a person-sized portal, the reaction that it got was wildly out of proportion.

    The fae prince let out a wild keening noise that shrieked through the speakers, forcing Callum to clap his hands over his ears. A moment later either the speakers or the microphone gave out, leaving a ringing silence. The coiling mana retreated, pulled into the prince¡¯s body, and Callum took his chance, snapping open a portal for Ray. He didn¡¯t like having a direct connection between the room and Faerie itself, but with Archmage Taisen there it was probably a better idea than dumping Ray onto some random part of the world.

    To Ray¡¯s credit, he recognized what was going on and pulled in his bubble as he darted through the portal. The fae prince, visible with the glance through Callum¡¯s portal, looked to be a pale guy with storybook chiseled muscles and bat wings, baring his teeth to show sharp fangs. He lunged after Ray, moving in a blur, but rebounded off some reflexive cast of Taisen¡¯s, a wall of force flashing out with a speed that Callum wished he could duplicate. It had to be something like a shield, but extended beyond the personal bubble.

    Then Ray was through and Callum banished the portal, withdrawing the drone and teleporting it into the tidal plain that he¡¯d found earlier. He didn¡¯t quite trust that it was free of the taint of Faerie. Felicia stood up and threw her arms around Ray while Taisen did something complicated with his vis. Scanning for problems, Callum assumed, since an Archmage could probably see through a bubble in a way Callum couldn¡¯t.

    ¡°What the hell was that?¡± Callum glanced over at Taisen and blinked. He didn¡¯t need to act coy, since it was pretty obvious that the archmage was referring to the anti-mana. Even if Taisen hadn¡¯t gotten a clear view of it, the residue and the fae reaction was enough to show that it was something unusual.

    ¡°One of my secrets,¡± he said. ¡°I¡¯m sure every mage has them. Given the weight class of the stuff I¡¯m dealing with, I need ¡®em.¡±

    Taisen grunted and let it go, though he clearly wasn¡¯t happy with the answer. Still, he clearly wasn¡¯t going to press. Callum almost wanted to tell him that it wasn¡¯t anything that Taisen could mimic, but he was resolved to give out no hint that he didn¡¯t have to. He¡¯d already tipped too much of his hand, since Felicia¡¯s presence had drawn out the fae prince.

    It was not the surreptitious jailbreak he¡¯d been hoping for. While Callum knew that he¡¯d have to deal with the Faerie types eventually, it would have been far better to delay any confrontation until he had his redoubt. They may not even have really known about his existence, as removed as they were, but he very much doubted that was the case anymore.

    Callum was pretty sure they¡¯d just declared war.

    ***

    Prince Jusael of the Court of Roses growled, flinging out his hands in frustration and crushing the furnishings of the room into miniscule fragments. The bait he¡¯d set out had caught the prey twice now. The first time he¡¯d seen the immediate advantage in seizing Princess Felicity¡¯s paramour, but even with that leverage the Princess herself had been too careful to actually enter his territory and instead she¡¯d taken his prize away.

    The irritation of that made him smash a few windows, sending glass splinters out over the stone far below. With a daughter of Oberon and Mab of his own, he could have been more than a mere prince of the Lesser Courts. Jusael had no concerns about subjugating the Princess herself, because despite her lineage and her gifts she¡¯d been stupid enough to try and build up a small, heroic story, rather than taking the power that could be so easily grasped by anyone with sufficient vision.

    He stalked around the point that was still scarred by the horrific piece of Hel that had been let through. Not that he knew exactly what it was, but it had burned like nothing he had ever encountered before, tearing out part of his own estate and consigning it to oblivion. The actual damage was not that great, in the totality of things, but the sheer foreign shock of it had taken him by surprise.

    There were remnants of the mage workings that had been involved, but he didn¡¯t dare touch them in case they were trapped with that same invisible fire. Not that he needed to trace them. The very nature of what had happened was enough proof. There was only one person who would be allied with the Princess, be able to enter Faerie without any trace, and then take away one of Jusael¡¯s guests so easily. The Ghost.

    Jusael whirled and took three steps, all that was needed to reach anywhere in his princedom. There were messages to write, including one to be taken through the Ways to where it connected with the Night Lands. Eventually the mages would get what was coming to them, but for the moment it seemed all the targets of both Court and House had gathered in one place. For good or for ill.

 Chapter 3 â€“ Redoubt

    There was plenty of strategizing to be done, but Callum left that to the others. He wasn¡¯t indifferent to the coming conflict, or his place in it, but the absolute best use of his time was establishing portal world access. It would give him a position of strength from which to pursue the rest of his goals ¡ª namely, removing all those with designs on Earth.

    He didn¡¯t have the wherewithal to fight a crusade for centuries on end. The supernaturals needed to properly police themselves, not require some external agent to convince them of the simple morality of not preying on people. He had only the haziest ideas of how to accomplish that, but he knew that he¡¯d need to involve other people. Alpha Chester and the two aligned Houses were a good start on that, and while Callum didn¡¯t think that putting them in absolute charge would turn out much better than GAR, at least with those people running things he¡¯d be left alone.

    Neither could he just destroy all the opposing mage Houses. Even if he was capable of that kind of slaughter, if things spilled out into full war it¡¯d engulf all of Earth. The supernatural secrets would crack wide open, governments would get involved, and nuclear war was not out of the question. He did not want to precipitate that kind of disaster.

    ¡°I really want to just go back to our own house,¡± Callum muttered, rubbing his eyes as he looked at the laptop screen from one of the exploratory drones. ¡°Feels so wrong doing this in a guest room.¡±

    ¡°Just think of it as added incentive,¡± Lucy suggested. ¡°Not like you need it, but it¡¯s always better to look on the bright side. Like how we don¡¯t actually have to worry about fae going after Alex.¡±

    Callum grunted agreement. He hadn¡¯t gotten or been interested in the full debriefing, but Felicia¡¯s partner had at least confirmed that the video he¡¯d been sent was solely to get his attention. Not that the fae in question weren¡¯t that nasty, but reaching Alex was beyond them for the moment. At least, so long as he stayed inside wards.

    Since he didn¡¯t want to dwell on that, he returned his focus to the drone. Once again they seemed to be running low, since he wanted to keep one in any of the portal worlds that seemed even mildly useful. Which wasn¡¯t many, so far, but when the number of drones he could spare was in the single digits it didn¡¯t take many.

    ¡°What¡¯s our next site?¡± He asked, already feeling his focus slipping. Though he¡¯d left most of the route planning to Lucy anyway.

    He had been skipping his drones to different locations around the world, opening dimensional portals to find different destinations and hoping to stumble on one that was more inviting than the chilly tidal plain. At Lucy¡¯s suggestion, he targeted areas of the Mediterranean and tropics in the hopes that the portal worlds would reflect the climates there, and it sort of worked. The metaphysics of portal worlds were more confusing than ever, but there did seem to be a rough correlation.

    One of the dimensions he found had a nice enough temperature, but the howling winds there had nearly ripped the drone apart before he pulled it back. Another one was so dimensionally foreign, beyond even Mictl¨¡n, that he didn¡¯t bother exploring past the giant columns of boiling ice that surrounded the initial portal. Between delving attempts, he spent time with Alex and funneled his excess vis into the crystals so he could try again without exhausting himself.

    ¡°Man, we should have started here,¡± Lucy said, checking her notes. ¡°Barbados! Maybe it¡¯ll be like that vacation house. That was nice.¡±

    ¡°It was nice,¡± Callum agreed, shifting the drone out to the Barbados area and Lucy piloted the drone down toward the nearest speck of land. It was small enough that it didn¡¯t even have infrastructure, and probably didn¡¯t even have a name. Once landed, he tapped into his crystals to punch open a dimensional hole. The lack of any dramatics was promising, as was the fairly normal space his perceptions found on the other side. He teleported the drone through and the two of them watched the laptop screen.

    ¡°Huh,¡± said Lucy.

    The drone had appeared in the middle of a clearing, which was ordinary so far as it went, but what was not ordinary was all the islands floating in the sky. At first he¡¯d thought they were some sort of strange clouds, but after closer inspection they were genuinely chunks of rock. There were three of them visible from the clearing itself, hanging in the air with a dusting of greenery on top, though it was difficult to tell the scale.

    ¡°Well, let¡¯s check it out,¡± Callum said, and lifted the drone into the air. The trees looked vaguely familiar, though he couldn¡¯t say if they were earth species or not, but the lack of anything grotesque or severely out of place was a good sign. There was a ribbon of blue marking a river that led into a lake, and back out again. Then right off the side of the island.

    Getting more distance from their landing point, it became clear that the portal itself had opened onto the surface of one of the islands, all of which were hovering in a blue void of sky. There was a vague smear of light overhead, not quite a sun, but nothing below except the dots of more islands, scattered about. In the distance there was even a fractured rainbow from a waterfall off the side of one of them, as if it were some fantasy poster instead of a real landscape.

    The thermometer registered in the upper eighties, a summery temperature which was practically perfect. Though Callum didn¡¯t believe for one moment it was quite as idyllic as it looked. There was surely some catch, but at first glance it seemed to be a fairly good candidate for the house.

    ¡°Well that is gorgeous,¡± Lucy remarked. ¡°It¡¯s like some kind of fairytale! Well, except it¡¯s not all exaggerated like Faerie is.¡±

    ¡°We¡¯ll put some mice there and see how they fare, and then if it¡¯s all good we can go ourselves,¡± Callum agreed. ¡°The only thing is I¡¯m not sure that this one will have that much in the way of enchanting material. There doesn¡¯t seem to be much material overall. But it¡¯s not like we can¡¯t get it elsewhere.¡±

    Lucy piloted one drone down to the original island and Callum scanned the area for animal life before he brought the mouse cage over. If the mice got eaten that certainly gave him some data, but he was hoping to find out whether the local atmosphere was breathable or not first. But the island seemed to be more like the Night Lands, with a truncated ecosystem. Few insects, and only a few birds about that reminded Callum of Darwin¡¯s finches. It might well be that the islands were like the Galapagos, with very few natural predators at all.

    Leaving one drone there, they took a second one to tour around the visible landmasses. As they approached the next one over, which seemed considerably larger than the original, a small flock of great winged shapes burst from the canopy and circled around before heading off into the distance. They looked like some kind of variant of albatross, but it was a good reminder there might be airborne beasts to watch out for.

    Diving in closer, he swept his senses around and found the larger island had a few prowling, cat-like animals, but it was nothing too terrible. He didn¡¯t discount the possibility that those, too, could fly, but it seemed like simply selecting the proper island might be enough to ensure no lurking predators. Though it wasn¡¯t clear exactly where all the water was coming from, portal worlds didn¡¯t exactly conform to conservation of mass and energy to begin with.

    ¡°I do like the look of this,¡± Callum said, flicking through the drone feeds. ¡°I¡¯m sure there¡¯s some catch that I¡¯m missing but, barring anything horrible, I think it¡¯s worth trying.¡±

    ¡°So long as the mice don¡¯t fall over dead,¡± Lucy agreed cheerfully. ¡°Speaking of, that riptide world seems to be livable. No mutations yet.¡±

    ¡°Might as well offer that one to Taisen or Hargrave then,¡± Callum decided. ¡°It¡¯s not great but I¡¯m sure a team of actual mages could deal with it. Bunch of earth and water mages maybe.¡±

    ¡°Right, about that,¡± Lucy said. ¡°Since the portal world thing isn¡¯t exactly a secret location, how about getting in some mages to landscape whatever place we wind up putting the house? Make it flatter, put up some walls, strengthen the foundation, all that kind of thing.¡±

    ¡°Hmm. Yes, that would make things much easier,¡± Callum conceded. He still wasn¡¯t a huge fan of bringing in other people to work on the house, but the strength of a portal world redoubt was in its inaccessibility. He could make a public statement about where his home was located and it wouldn¡¯t make it any easier for people to access it. Except maybe for Duvall, but she¡¯d clearly wiped her hands of that, and even then he¡¯d be shifting things through the moon nexus first.

    On the other hand, a few mages would substitute for weeks or months of work by people with heavy machinery. Pragmatically, they could even do things that no normal equipment could, like make bedrock flow around an existing foundation. Or change a slope without disturbing the foliage atop it.

    ¡°Alright, why don¡¯t you ping Taisen and Glenda and see what they want to do about it. I¡¯ll need more to really start making a difference, but one is better than none.¡± Callum was also quite happy to leave the first exploration of a new portal world to people who were used to alien environments and might have all kinds of tricks and magical items that would keep them safe.

    With the new portal world, Callum felt accomplished enough to go spend some time with his wife and son without worrying about heavy matters for a while. Unfortunately, he couldn¡¯t shake the thought that if he wanted a world where his family could live safely, he needed to do something to make it so. Part of him was tempted to close the portal to Faerie too, but it wasn¡¯t like the fae were fundamentally an issue like with vampires. That would just be an expedient solution and, ultimately, the wrong one.

    There was a reason why people like Alpha Chester or Gayle Hargrave were willing to work with him, despite his hardline stance and remaining outside the authority of the Houses and the supernatural community in general. Callum didn¡¯t overstep, and didn¡¯t have collateral damage. At least he tried; closing the Night Lands had been rather more of a bugbear than he¡¯d expected, even though he¡¯d been certain to give the Houses there a lifeline back to Earth. But his restraint gave him a kind of legitimacy that couldn¡¯t be bought.

    He was pretty sure being able to provide new portal worlds would help, though.

    ¡°You know, there haven¡¯t been any new portal worlds since we found Six,¡± Taisen said, gathered in the courtyard of Chester¡¯s compound the next day. He and Archmage Hargrave had extra mages with them, what Callum could only describe as troops. Combat mages, anyway, despite the fact that there weren¡¯t any animals in the portal world so far as Callum could tell. Not that he was going to object to their caution; he would have done the same.

    ¡°The Night Lands is actually the most recent,¡± Hargrave said absently. ¡°Five and Six are probably the oldest portals timewise.¡±

    ¡°And now it¡¯s gone,¡± Taisen said, almost with a laugh. ¡°Hopefully this one won¡¯t cause as many issues.¡±

    ¡°It¡¯s small and uninhabited,¡± Callum said. ¡°Least so far as I can see. Not like there¡¯s a permanent portal anyway.¡±

    ¡°We¡¯ll need one to replace the mana loss from the Night Lands portal eventually,¡± Hargrave warned. ¡°There¡¯s already noticeable depletion in the larger cities.¡±

    ¡°A problem for another day,¡± Callum said. ¡°Ready for the portal?¡±

    ¡°Yes,¡± Taisen said, glancing back at the sled that had a bunch of supplies. Including one of the portal frames, because neither of them wanted entry or egress to be dependent on Callum¡¯s presence.

    Callum threaded his vis through the portal network, past the drone that was still sitting on the tidal plain, and opened a portal. The bleak light of the tidal plain bled through, along with the sound of water and the scent of salt. Gayle¡¯s magic pulsed lightly, taking care of any microorganisms that might be drifting through. Not that anyone had worried about that with the other portal worlds, and Callum suspected that there wasn¡¯t any real risk of cross-contamination. Portal worlds would be either too alien or just not have the teeming bacterial life of a true world. Such liminal spaces didn¡¯t seem to be entirely real to begin with.

    Taisen barked a few orders and the mages trooped through. Once the archmage had tested the portal frame to ensure it worked, Callum left them to it. The drone was there just in case, but they didn¡¯t need his supervision to figure out what value, if any, the portal world had.

    He did catch glimpses over the next day or two though, and by that point he was chomping at the bit to get his house finally moved and restore his home to normalcy. Or as close to normal as things would get in a portal world. The sun did rise and set in rough accord with the Earth¡¯s rotation, so that was close enough, but he¡¯d still have to do some work to deal with the peculiarities of the liminal space.

    This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

    The main one was that the islands weren¡¯t floating. They were falling. Not quickly, not at the terminal velocity of a big chunk of rock, but observing the mice and the air whistling past the edges of each island made it clear. It wouldn¡¯t be enough to erect a wall around things; he needed to add enchantments to adjust local gravity, and probably to muffle sound too. Fortunately, there was more than enough mana in the portal world to support such a thing.

    He didn¡¯t have to worry about the islands suddenly smashing to pieces against the ground, either. There was no ground, or rather, it seemed to wrap around itself like the tidal plain did. Why there was still air movement past the islands he didn¡¯t know, but once again, liminal spaces were weird. He was lucky that he hadn¡¯t run into a place where the islands were careening against each other like bumper cars.

    When the mice seemed to be fine after a few days of exposure, he had no compunctions about asking for the aid of the allied Houses in setting up his own home in the portal world. Things were past the point of using money; access to another portal world was literally priceless. Nor were the people of either House Hargrave or House Taisen really for hire. In fact the professional landscaper mages were based out of House Janry, which meant they weren¡¯t exactly accessible. Or trustworthy.

    Once again a bunch of mages assembled in Chester¡¯s courtyard and Callum opened a portal. That time, it was warm air that spilled out, and the scent of greenery. Taisen¡¯s team went through first, to sweep and secure the area just in case there was something Callum had missed, then Hargrave¡¯s people. Callum went last, with Lucy and Alex following once Taisen¡¯s people gave the all-clear.

    Actually crossing over to the island felt like stepping into one of his low-gravity areas, and while there wasn¡¯t too much wind on the surface, he could hear the whistle of it from where he stood. He¡¯d selected one about five miles across, which was one of the smaller ones but it did have a spring, a river, and a lake, which was all that was necessary from Callum¡¯s perspective. Mages could do the rest.

    Running his perceptions through the ground hadn¡¯t uncovered any caves, but there was a fairly mana-dense core on each island that might well be something he could use for enchanting material. Not that he was going to excavate the island he intended to live on, but there were plenty of candidates around. For the moment, he was primarily focused on getting something established.

    ¡°At least it¡¯s warm here,¡± Lucy half-shouted over the noise. ¡°Kinda loud though.¡± Alex made an unhappy noise, hands over his ears.

    ¡°There¡¯s definitely some sound muffling enchants,¡± Callum called back. ¡°I can¡ª¡± The last two words were yelled into silence as one of the mages set up exactly the sort of effect Callum had been talking about. ¡°Well, that,¡± he finished more quietly, and Lucy giggled.

    ¡°So how are you two feeling? Any issues?¡± Callum asked, crouching down to look Alex in the eyes. He kept his perceptions focused on them, ready to teleport them out if there was anything untoward about the way the portal world affected them.

    The one thing that worried him was that the vis inside their bodies didn¡¯t alter the basic, slightly different structure of the portal world. It made sense, since it wasn¡¯t exactly a magical effect, but it wasn¡¯t something that he could let go unaddressed for long. He, on the other hand, still had normal earth flavor inside of his body. If he had to guess, that was one of the benefits of the internal spatial reinforcement ¡ª he was immune to the distortion of portal worlds. Not immune to any of the hostile environment, but the space itself didn¡¯t affect him. It would have made him a perfect explorer, if he¡¯d been inclined in that direction.

    ¡°Nope, feels normal to me,¡± Lucy said.

    ¡°Floaty!¡± Alex said, jumping up into the air and going three times the usual height thanks to the falling-elevator effect the islands had going on.

    ¡°Well, if you start feeling weird, let me know. I¡¯m going to be fixing up the local space anyway, but this isn¡¯t Mictl¨¡n.¡± He wished he knew how Duvall managed the permanent alteration that she was so known for, but if it were easy then she wouldn¡¯t be the only one doing it.

    ¡°I think we¡¯ll be fine,¡± Lucy said, looking around at the little clearing. Thick-trunked trees with broad, flat leaves grew to about ten feet tall and wildflowers in blue and yellow waved in the brisk breeze. Pragmatically speaking, there was no end to the tests that would be necessary to make sure every single aspect was safe, because there could be toxic berries or some equivalent to poison ivy, but Callum intended to make a bit of a walled garden.

    ¡°There¡¯s nothing large nearby,¡± one of Taisen¡¯s men reported. ¡°You¡¯ll wants wards to secure the sky, but there are no native threats on this island.¡±

    ¡°Fantastic,¡± Callum said. ¡°I¡¯ll go see if they¡¯re ready to do the landscaping.

    In general, Callum hadn¡¯t seen much large scale mage work. He¡¯d witnessed Taisen¡¯s people fighting once or twice, but relative to what he knew mages could do he¡¯d only encountered a small fraction. So he watched in fascination as the House mages spun out huge spell constructs like nothing he¡¯d seen before.

    Working in concert, a half-dozen mages from House Hargrave flattened out the landscape, yanked the native foliage out of a large patch of earth to leave churned dirt, and raised thick stone walls around the edge of the island. The river and lake were adjusted slightly to accommodate the landscaping, and drains were bored through the entire island at specific points to prevent any flooding.

    It took less than an hour for the mages to make it ready for him to bring the house over. The most finnicky part was setting up the rock slab at the right depth to encompass the basement. Nearby, there were another set of stone slabs at the surfaces, one for the machine shop and the other for a barn to replace his cave-cache.

    ¡°Go ahead and bring it in,¡± said the guy in charge of the whole thing, a bald air mage who was the only one Callum had seen with a habit of chewing tobacco.

    ¡°In three, two¡­¡± Callum counted down, and then tapped into all his spare vis crystals to teleport his house once again. It popped into existence on the prepared foundation, and Callum braced himself against the wave of weariness from the effort while the earth mage went to work melding things together. A moment later he transferred over the machine shop too, so he could hook it back up to power after everything was squared away.

    From the cave-cache he retrieved a few sacks of ground cover seed, and the bald mage dispersed it over the entire cleared patch in a few seconds. Sadly, there weren¡¯t any human mages that could grow plants faster, not even healers. That would have to wait for nature to take its course.

    At least, that was what he thought until Lucy suggested that he have someone import the entire garden from Mexico. The garden was vanishingly tiny next to the acres and acres of back yard, but it¡¯d be better than bare dirt outside the back door. It was a blind spot for him; he¡¯d essentially written off the entire area, but it didn¡¯t take that long to send a drone back there.

    Surprisingly, it was pretty much untouched. Showing a little bit of overgrowth from a couple weeks of no attention, but it didn¡¯t seem like anyone had been by with enough interest to bother the plants. Maybe GAR and the others who had been after him had written it off for much the same reasons.

    While he could only supply a small portal, the earth mage didn¡¯t really see it as a problem, effectively chopping the garden into ribbons of earth that floated through the portal into the new back yard. It was a better solution than Callum¡¯s teleportation, since ripping out a bunch of plants and dirt was actually a lot of effort for him. It was very clearly no big deal to the earth mage.

    With all that done, the only remaining tweaks were to get water in and septic out. With the former, just diverting from the river was good enough. He¡¯d still be running it through a number of filters, but it was water. With the latter, once again the mage ability to shape rock and earth made it simplicity itself. It made him envy earth mages, considering how broadly their skills could be applied.

    Though he wouldn¡¯t trade teleports for anything.

    In less than a day, really only a few hours total, the island had been transformed from untouched fastness to about ten thousand acres of tamed land and five times that of buffer forest. Trees near the outer wall had been trimmed away so that no small creatures could jump from the branches into the courtyard. It was still vulnerable to flying things, but a large-scale glamour enchantment would probably be sufficient to deal with that.

    Not that he¡¯d be letting his son wander around unsupervised for a while. Even if Taisen¡¯s people had cleared the area, there was no guarantee there wouldn¡¯t be some hidden danger somewhere. Which was still better than the vulnerability of remaining on Earth.

    ¡°Thanks, everyone,¡± he said, not offering a hand because mages didn¡¯t do that, but he had offered beers. Only a few people had taken him up on that. ¡°That was easier than I expected.¡±

    ¡°Benefits of having a House,¡± the bald mage said. Callum still didn¡¯t know his name. ¡°No single aspect can do everything by itself.¡±

    ¡°Tell me about it,¡± Callum said. Admittedly, the earth mages had done most of the work, but air and water mages had done their share with shaping the protected area. Those types would have been more useful in the maintenance and upkeep, but he wasn¡¯t going to be bringing mage groundskeepers over.

    ¡°The wind muffler will decay after about a day,¡± the mage added. ¡°So you¡¯ll want your own version up before then.¡±

    ¡°Great,¡± Callum said, and opened a portal back to Chester¡¯s compound. ¡°I¡¯ll let you all know if I need anything else.¡±

    ¡°Glad to visit,¡± the mage said with a smile. ¡°It¡¯s nice here. Just needs beaches.¡±

    Once they were all gone, Callum relaxed properly for the first time in days. He dropped down into the lawn chair on the back porch, finding that it still had a faint hint of cold about it from being out in the Montana winter for so long. Lucy and Alex joined him, and he put his arms around both of them.

    ¡°This is great,¡± Lucy said, looking around at the open area, the distant walls and the river and lake. ¡°I love it here already. But what are we doing next? Can¡¯t just hide here.¡±

    ¡°No indeed,¡± Callum agreed, rubbing his eyes. ¡°I¡¯ve got some enchanting to do if I want this place to be really livable, and then ¡ª I don¡¯t know. I¡¯ll have to talk with the archmages and then Felicia. We need to make some moves before the other side does.¡±

    ***

    ¡°Seeker Jarmin has arrived,¡± reported Magus Tiana, who had taken up the task of managing all of Archmage Janry¡¯s meetings. He wanted to grimace but kept his face under control, for the sake of his niece if nothing else. She didn¡¯t need to be glared at.

    ¡°Send him in,¡± Janry said, glancing around the room to make sure there were no missives or papers the visitor shouldn¡¯t see. Everything inside his extensive study was warded and protected, of course, but that didn¡¯t protect against carelessness.

    The door opened and a short, red-haired and red-skinned fae sauntered inside, hopping into the chair with no effort whatsoever. With the smirk on Jarmin¡¯s face, he looked the very definition of impish, and Janry resigned himself to a fairly tedious discussion. Though at least it would be a substantive one.

    Janry was irritated by how long it had taken the fae to properly bestir themselves. He knew that the fae had to work in their own time, with their own purposes. Their rules made straightforward action difficult sometimes. Of course, the Courts had long structured themselves to get around most of those limitations, but there was only so much a fae could cheat without weakening themselves.

    At least the Lesser Courts had finally marshalled some of their more obscure members to help. The takeover of GAR had gone smoothly enough, thanks to Janry¡¯s people in key positions, but GAR¡¯s sphere of operations was more restricted than it had been before. Getting the fae courts to do more than send malcontents over to Earth was instrumental for his plans.

    ¡°I¡¯ve been told you¡¯re able to track down, essentially, anyone,¡± Janry said.

    ¡°Only people who threaten the Court of Roses,¡± Jarmin corrected, fussily adjusting the cuffs of his dark blue suit. ¡°I am Jusael¡¯s Seeker, not some vagabond knight.¡±

    ¡°Yes, of course,¡± Janry said, suppressing the urge to roll his eyes with the ease of long practice. ¡°By now I should think it clear that the breakaway Houses are doing exactly that. They are in league with the upstart American Alliance and especially with the heretic known as The Ghost.¡±

    Janry didn¡¯t care much about the old tradition of magical heresy, but it was useful. Some of the more conservative Houses, ones that had barely glanced at Earth for centuries, still gave it weight. As did some of the fae, for their own reasons that were ¨C in his opinion ¨C entirely self-serving. Which was no different than the mage houses, so that was some comfort.

    ¡°Yes, we have heard of this Ghost,¡± Jarmin said, almost sneering. Once again Janry had to suppress a reaction. No matter how powerful a fae was, he underestimated Wells at his peril. Under most circumstances, he would regard Wells as an archmage, though of course that was not possible given the man¡¯s youth.

    ¡°The Ghost, Archmage Taisen, Archmage Hargrave, and Alpha Chester are the only targets of consequence,¡± Janry said, broadening the scope of Jarmin¡¯s attention. While the existence of Wells and his ability to seemingly get anywhere granted the breakaway forces genuine legitimacy, he was ultimately a distraction. Without his allies he was just a single man, with few real resources.

    Though if they could remove him, that removed the bedrock on which the bid for independence was based. Neither Taisen nor Hargrave was willing to use the force they were capable of, not really. Otherwise they would have been the ones in charge of GAR. Wells clearly did not have the same problem. Janry would love if Jarmin could find and remove the man, but it didn¡¯t seem likely.

    ¡°I¡¯m sure you can find some of them yourself,¡± Jarmin said, squinting at Janry.

    ¡°There is a difference between knowing the locations of certain compounds, and knowing the layouts, strengths and weaknesses, and avenues of movement,¡± Janry said. He found it necessary to lay things out for fae agents or they¡¯d just pursue what they found interesting. Which didn¡¯t always overlap with what was useful.

    ¡°That is more interesting,¡± Jarmin said, hopping out of the seat in a single bound. ¡°I¡¯ll add that to the Prince¡¯s own orders. Maybe I¡¯ll find something fun when I¡¯m poking around your Earth.¡±

    ¡°Excellent,¡± Janry said blandly, and the small fae tapped the side of his nose before vanishing from the study. One of those highly annoying habits that fae had, especially in Faerie. He was going to have to talk to Duvall again, and see if she could adjust Faerie further than she already had. Perhaps deny the fae some of the advantages the portal world gave them.

    After finishing a few missives, he took a break for lunch and then met with his agent at the DAI. Internal policing of supernaturals was less important these days, and the DAI had been retooled for dealing with mundane power structures. There was little that a mundane could do against a mage or a fae, but they couldn¡¯t simply command leaders or celebrities to obey. It turned out that a sudden break in behavior meant those people were confined or hospitalized or removed, not obeyed.

    ¡°To be honest, we could use more gold and silver,¡± Agent Ferrull said. ¡°Bribing people is still easier than finding a fae minder. Vampires would probably be better, but, well.¡± Ferrull shrugged and Janry nodded. What vampires were left after the disastrous events of the past few weeks were hardly reliable. Some were evacuating back to the Night Lands, but most were roaming restlessly. Of the over one hundred nests he¡¯d been in contact with, only two were still intact.

    ¡°Not a problem,¡± Janry assured him. It was not difficult for an earth mage to find and pull the metals out of either the Deep Wilds or somewhere on Earth. He¡¯d been cautious about it solely to preserve the value of the precious metals, but he still had effectively unlimited funds available to him. Janry simply wrote out a scrip for Ferrull to take fifty kilograms each of silver and gold out of the House Janry vaults.

    ¡°Excellent,¡± Ferrull said, folding the bond and tucking it into the breast pocket of his suit. ¡°With this, I think we should really be able to get things moving."

 Chapter 4 â€“ Maneuvers

    ¡°Mister Wells wants to talk to you,¡± Ordermaster Minot said without any preamble, standing just outside the exclusion zone for the scriber.

    Grand Magus Lorenzo Rossi scowled, then marked where he was before he shut down the scriber. The past few years working with Wells had been quite profitable, with the enchanting and the tile-based approach that had been licensed to the Guild. There had even been some interesting new creations made from it. Yet Wells was not exactly in his good books at the moment, considering how much more difficult he¡¯d made it to get mordite.

    Which made enchanting in general significantly more difficult.

    ¡°Very well,¡± Rossi said, since as annoyed as he was, Wells was an important customer. Maybe not the best customer, but an important one. A man that could destroy one of the six true portals was hardly to be kept waiting. He secured the scriber and rose from the bench, making his way out of the lab.

    He had to cross over back to Earth through the Guild¡¯s teleportation system but, since Wells had supplied some extra enchanting for the Guild¡¯s own use, that was less of an imposition than before. Unsurprisingly, one of Wells¡¯ drones was sitting in a small meeting room. Rossi had yet to meet the man in person and doubted he ever would.

    The small display on the side of the little box lit up, showing Wells¡¯ face. He prided himself on keeping the Guild up to date with mundane technology, but sometimes he was a little discomfited by how Wells used it. Especially since it was clearly integrated with some amount of enchanting. Not that he was rude enough to probe it with his tools, but he could sense the magic involved.

    ¡°What can I do for you, Mister Wells?¡± Rossi asked, putting on his professional face.

    ¡°It¡¯s more the other way around,¡± Wells said neutrally. ¡°How would you like exclusive access to a new portal world with enchantment resources?¡±

    ¡°What.¡± Rossi laughed, his composure deserting him at the ridiculous concept. ¡°That¡¯s not really a question, Mister Wells.¡±

    ¡°I suppose not,¡± Wells said. ¡°I am prepared to offer you that, with the understanding that you will apply pressure against the coalition that is opposing us.¡±

    ¡°The Guild of Enchantment generally remains apolitical,¡± Rossi said cautiously. Which was self-evident, given that they were dealing with both factions on equal terms.

    ¡°Are you familiar with nuclear weaponry?¡± Wells asked, and Rossi frowned.

    ¡°Naturally. I do stay up to date with Earth¡¯s advances.¡±

    ¡°The dragonblooded suggest, and I agree, that if these people break the secrecy of magic we¡¯ll have a nuclear conflict on our hands,¡± Wells said, lips compressed to a thin line. ¡°It doesn¡¯t seem to me that don¡¯t prey on normal people is too great a burden, but apparently it is.¡±

    ¡°And they threaten you directly,¡± Rossi said, not overly impressed by the threat of a nuclear deployment. Compared to what magic could do, simply wrecking a city wasn¡¯t so fearful a prospect, and the mundane¡¯s own terror of it made him doubtful it was a serious possibility. Wells¡¯ background as a mundane probably made it seem more important to him.

    ¡°And they threaten us directly,¡± Wells agreed. ¡°But as you said, you¡¯re apolitical and you really don¡¯t need Earth. I don¡¯t expect you to care about that. Which is why I¡¯m offering you a private portal world and all the resources within it.¡±

    ¡°That is hard to believe,¡± Rossi said, leaning back and considering the offer. If it were true, it was priceless. Assuming there was useful enchanting material, a private portal world could not only be mined for resources but used to house secure laboratories. Or people. ¡°Can you stabilize it the way Duvall does?¡±

    ¡°Not at this time,¡± Wells admitted. ¡°There is an enchantment that does much the same thing, but it isn¡¯t permanent the way Duvall¡¯s work is. But you can always contract her. I don¡¯t see any reason this portal world would be different from any other.¡±

    Rossi sighed. Duvall¡¯s portal world stabilization was exceedingly expensive and time-intensive. It would have been fantastic to have some competition. But an enchantment that mimicked it would be good enough for the moment; after all, they were the Guild of Enchanting.

    ¡°I hesitate to ask, but do you have proof of what you¡¯re offering? The idea of a new portal world is rather extraordinary.¡±

    ¡°Certainly, but you¡¯ll want a portal frame or homebond yourself,¡± Wells said. ¡°There¡¯s no full portal to it. Not yet.¡±

    Rossi touched the signet ring on his finger, which not only marked him as the head of the Guild of Enchanting but was indeed a homebond. One of the most valuable enchantments available, if rarely used. But for peace of mind, nothing came close.

    ¡°I have both,¡± he said. ¡°I will assemble some of my team before I enter an unknown portal world, though.¡±

    ¡°Good idea,¡± Wells said. ¡°Just tell the drone when you¡¯re ready.¡± Rossi nodded sharply, then stood up and left the room, almost bowling over Ordermaster Minot.

    ¡°Get Goliri,¡± Rossi told him, referring to their head of security. ¡°I want a full team. We¡¯re going to be landing in a portal world and it¡¯s not going to be secure. Also get one the portal frames from the vault.¡±

    ¡°Yes, sir,¡± Minot said, some people to run errands. In half an hour he had an entire expedition put together, and Rossi tapped the box.

    ¡°We¡¯re ready,¡± he said, and Wells¡¯ face appeared again.

    ¡°Opening the portal now,¡± he said, and vis flashed for a moment before a circle showing an expanse of dark and rainswept stone appeared in the air and mana poured out. He waved Goliri forward, and the man crossed through with the portal ring in tow to secure the area.

    It occurred to him belatedly that Wells should have supplied a more complete description of the destination ¡ª certainly he¡¯d explored it, if he promised enchanting materials, but he didn¡¯t appreciate the lack of information on what hazards there might be. Though if Wells had said nothing, there might not be anything notable. It still paid to be cautious, but he doubted Wells would be so stupid as to try anything underhanded. Not when he was trying to curry favor.

    ¡°Clear,¡± Goliri reported over scry-comm. ¡°Portal frame functional. No threats. You can come ahead.¡±

    Rossi stepped through the portal, which he was aware Wells was still actively holding open, and looked around the portal world, sweeping it with his senses. It looked like a wasteland of stone and water, with rain pouring down from a dark gray sky, and not at all hospitable. But his metal-aspected vis found a not-insignificant amount of material threaded through the rocks beneath their feet, and even in the water collecting in pools and streams about them.

    He flicked out some vis, condensing a strand of the metal out of the water and feeling the amount of mana inside. It seemed acceptable, so he twisted the metal into a wire and overlaid his vis, watching it take the enchantment. It would take more experimentation to figure out all the properties, but there was definitely something to it.

    ¡°Start setting up an outpost,¡± he told Goliri. If they were going to be mining enchantable metal from the portal world, or even rock or water, then they needed something to protect them from the elements. And whatever creatures might be out there. He turned back to the portal and stepped through, facing Wells¡¯ device.

    ¡°You¡¯re as good as your words, Mister Wells,¡± Rossi said.

    ¡°Then you¡¯ll take a position?¡± He pressed.

    ¡°Yes. Tentatively, at least. More work needs to be done to fully satisfy me of the usefulness of the world¡¯s resources, but even as it stands I believe you have convinced me. Anyway,¡± he said with a small smile. ¡°Such a massive disruption would be bad for business.¡±

    ***

    Agent Daniel Lowry grunted as a bump in the road almost made him spill his latte. He frowned at the driver, but it really wasn¡¯t his fault. This deep into the countryside it wasn¡¯t surprising that there was so little maintenance. Daniel was frankly surprised there was power this deep into the sticks. There was nothing around but empty countryside, which meant that Daniel¡¯s coffee was going to be the last good one he was going to get for a while.

    He pulled his phone out of his pocket, unlocking it and pulling up the map to see where they were. At least there was service, even if they were far away from anywhere civilized. The northern part of Nebraska was barely inhabited, certainly lacking any cities, and it took forever to drive places. Why a supposedly wealthy person like Chester Fredrickson would willingly live in such a place he could not fathom.

    ¡°The compound is just ahead,¡± the driver said, noticing Daniel¡¯s preoccupation. The other two agents next to him also looked up from their laptops, and started packing them up.

    ¡°Compound?¡± Daniel asked. His briefing had been less on Chester¡¯s location and more on resources and holdings. Internal Revenue didn¡¯t concern itself so much with the physical nature of things as the monetary nature. He knew the value of Chester¡¯s holdings, but not their nature.

    In response, the agent pointed to what looked like an actual wall, with a gate across the road. Daniel frowned and started typing on his phone. Surely some portion of that construction was illegal. Violating some kind of environmental regulations if nothing else. Since his job was to take Chester down a couple of dozen pegs, there was an endless amount of red tape and fines he could use to snarl the guy.

    The gate was manned by people in an actual guard station in the wall. The driver flashed his federal agent identification, but it took entirely too long for someone to open the gate. Daniel added some notes about obstructing federal agents.

    The so-called compound was a small town inside the walls, with full-on streets and buildings and shops all around a large central mansion. Daniel scribbled notes about Chester possibly running a cult in his notebook as his driver steered the car inside. There were plenty of people around, but it wasn¡¯t the safe anonymity of the city. Everyone seemed to notice the car driving in, and Daniel shifted uncomfortably.

    They pulled to a stop outside the mansion, and Daniel got out of the car, hefting his messenger bag and tucking his hands inside the pockets of his jacket. It was annoyingly cold outside, and he followed his fellow agents Richie and Samuel to the door. Richie pressed the doorbell, and they waited a moment before a woman opened the door.

    ¡°Come on inside and warm up,¡± she invited them, and Daniel scurried inside out of the weather. Even if it was the beginning of spring it was too chill for Daniel. There was a rack for coats that he ignored, preferring to get right to business rather than stay.

    ¡°We¡¯re from Internal Revenue,¡± Daniel said, removing his badge from his breast pocket. Irritatingly, the woman didn¡¯t seem to be too impressed. ¡°We¡¯re here to see Mister Fredrickson.¡±

    ¡°My husband is fairly busy, but I¡¯ll see if he can make time,¡± the woman said, somehow maneuvering them into a front room. ¡°Wait here for a moment, I¡¯ll come get you.¡±

    If you encounter this narrative on Amazon, note that it''s taken without the author''s consent. Report it.

    ¡°We¡¯re from the federal government,¡± Daniel protested. ¡°Make sure he knows that we¡¯re considering a full audit, and that his swift cooperation may have an impact on what we¡¯re required to do.¡±

    The woman¡¯s face firmed, her smile fading, and Daniel felt a faint prickle on the back of his neck. Something about her put him on edge, and from the way that Richie and Sam stiffened up, he wasn¡¯t the only one. Not that she was threatening them, but there was something definitely unfriendly about her look.

    ¡°I see,¡± she said shortly. ¡°I will tell my husband that, too.¡± Which sounded like a threat somehow. Then she breezed out the door, leaving the three of them in a well-appointed room. Daniel scowled.

    ¡°I don¡¯t like it,¡± he said aloud. ¡°Already feels like they¡¯re hiding something.¡±

    ¡°We already know they are,¡± Richie said. ¡°Otherwise we wouldn¡¯t have been sent here.¡± Sam just readjusted the holster of his gun. Daniel didn¡¯t think it¡¯d come to a shootout, but it was good to remind people where the real power stood.

    He paced along the wood floor, noting that everything was wood ¡ª the walls, floor, ceiling, furniture, all of that. It was astoundingly rustic, but perhaps to be expected so far out into the country. Or maybe it was just a cult thing. The longer it took, the more annoyed he got, so by the time the woman returned he was in quite the mood.

    ¡°It¡¯s about time,¡± he snapped, before she wordlessly led them deeper into the mansion.

    The man in the small library matched the picture they had of Chester Fredrickson, maybe too well. It didn¡¯t seem that he¡¯d really aged in the past fifteen or twenty years. Though maybe it was just the beard.

    ¡°Chester Fredrickson?¡± Daniel asked, just be sure, as he reached for his credentials again.

    ¡°I¡¯m Chester,¡± the man acknowledged.

    ¡°Agent Daniel Lowry, Internal Revenue,¡± he said. ¡°We¡¯re here because of inconsistencies with your reporting.¡±

    ¡°Shouldn¡¯t you be talking with my accountant?¡± Chester asked, and Daniel smirked.

    ¡°It¡¯s your finances, you¡¯re the one responsible for it. Now, I need you to produce all your financial information for us. Until we¡¯ve finished the audit, your accounts will be suspended and you won¡¯t be allowed to leave the state.¡± He always enjoyed people¡¯s reaction to that, but Chester¡¯s expression barely flickered.

    ¡°I don¡¯t believe I will be doing that. Honey, call our lawyer.¡±

    ¡°Are you refusing the lawful order of an agent of the federal government?¡± Daniel pressed, shoving his identification toward Chester. The man somehow wasn¡¯t there though, he managed to slide around them to where his wife had a phone.

    ¡°You¡¯ve got no warrant, I didn¡¯t even have to let you in,¡± Chester said, then took the phone. ¡°Apparently I shouldn¡¯t have. Hey, Caspar? Yeah, it¡¯s a bit of an emergency, there¡¯s some people claiming to be feds here. No, no papers.¡±

    ¡°Now you listen to me,¡± Daniel said, stepping forward. ¡°You have to comply or everything is going to stay shut down. You can¡¯t just ignore me.¡± Chester turned toward him and something about him made Daniel step back, his hand dropping to the gun at his waist.

    There was a sound behind him and Daniel spun around, finding two huge men flanking agents Richie and Daniel. It wasn¡¯t clear whether his fellow agents had drawn their guns or not, but either way they had been disarmed, the pistols looking like toys in the hands of Chester¡¯s bodyguards. He spluttered in protest.

    ¡°Assaulting federal agents? I¡¯ll see you locked up for this! You¡¯ve just made a big mistake.¡±

    ¡°Hang on Caspar, I need to get Julia.¡± He poked at the phone for a moment and then put it back to his ear. Daniel took a step forward but was stopped by one of the bodyguards, who had somehow managed to get between Chester and himself.

    ¡°Yes? Yes. Hello District Attorney Julia,¡± Chester said, emphasizing the title. ¡°It¡¯s just that I¡¯ve got three people claiming to be federal agents who came onto my property, threatened me, and drew weapons. No, they¡¯re uninjured.¡±

    Daniel scowled. He didn¡¯t actually know who the district attorney was, but they shouldn¡¯t be interfering in a federal investigation. Clearly she was just on the take from Chester, but it¡¯d be a bit of a block.

    ¡°Right, okay. See you soon.¡± Chester poked the phone again. ¡°Caspar? Yeah, can you come by in about twenty minutes? Sure, that¡¯ll work.¡± He finally turned to face them again. ¡°The police are coming by in about twenty minutes, along with my lawyer. You can leave, or you can sit in the front room until they arrive.¡±

    ¡°You can¡¯t do this to us! We¡¯re agents of the federal government, no two-bit local police are going to touch us,¡± Daniel said, still in disbelief at the sheer gall of Chester¡¯s people.

    ¡°I think you¡¯re in for a big disappointment,¡± Chester said.

    ***

    ¡°I wish they weren¡¯t smart enough for it, but frankly going through the mundane government is going to give us more problems than attacking directly,¡± Alpha Chester told Callum. ¡°I have some of my own people locally, but there¡¯s nothing I can do about Washington.¡±

    ¡°And you think we can,¡± Callum said, tapping the table in the war room and glancing at Lucy. She shrugged.

    ¡°I¡¯ve got people threatening to bring the National Guard, or at least SWAT teams, down on me. Which I will not allow.¡± Chester¡¯s voice sharpened. ¡°I understand and agree with your condemnation of preying on mundanes, but I will defend myself against them.¡±

    ¡°No, that¡¯s fair enough,¡± Callum agreed. ¡°It doesn¡¯t matter that they¡¯re just tools, they¡¯re still dangerous. So, hm. Get in, remove or alter records and orders, and find out who¡¯s being bribed?¡±

    ¡°And who¡¯s bribing them. It may not be appropriate to remove government functionaries, but supernaturals are fair game,¡± Chester said darkly.

    ¡°True,¡± Callum agreed. They knew, broadly, who was responsible. GAR, and the Archmage¡¯s Council backing them. But Callum wasn¡¯t really ready to try and assassinate several dozen Archmages. GAR might well be a potential target, now that he had a proper redoubt and the requisite infrastructure. Even if he still didn¡¯t have a shield, he didn¡¯t really need one when he never appeared personally.

    Not that either thing would help with the gears that had already been set in motion. Aiming the enormous apparatus of the federal government at Chester was probably the hardest thing to combat, which was of course why it had been done. Callum didn¡¯t like how easy it was to suborn the mechanisms of state control, but that was a completely different problem and not one that he could fix.

    ¡°What do you think, Lucy? Can you hack the government?¡± He raised his eyebrows at her and she laughed.

    ¡°Oh, goodness no. Not that way at least. But since you can get me into the physical server rooms I don¡¯t need to. I just need to dredge up the right database searches. You get to have all the fun dealing with the physical documents.¡±

    Callum grunted. The requests to harass Chester and the associated records were almost certainly backed up in hardcopy somewhere, spread out over however many facilities. He wasn¡¯t overly worried about his actual capabilities, since with his drones and his spatial magic, there was practically no way any mundane agency could defend against him. But finding where the records were in the first place was a steep challenge.

    ¡°While we¡¯re at it, maybe we can get rid of your records too,¡± Lucy suggested. Callum chuckled.

    ¡°Yeah, I¡¯m still technically on the terrorist watch list, aren¡¯t I? Would be nice, even if I¡¯m not living in the US anymore.¡± He had never wanted to move out permanently, and would have enjoyed staying in Tanner or Winut, but he had to be realistic. There was no way that he could exist anywhere as a normal person.

    ¡°Alright, we¡¯ll take care of it,¡± he told Chester. ¡°Keep lawyered up though, no idea how long this will take.¡± Unfortunately, Chester didn¡¯t have the same luxury Callum had, to withdraw to a private portal world. Not only did he need the mana from the Deep Wilds to survive, but his people were scattered everywhere. The compound was only a useful place for them to coordinate, not the actual source of Chester¡¯s power.

    ¡°Oh, I certainly intend to,¡± Chester assured him. ¡°Just don¡¯t take too long.¡±

    ¡°We¡¯ll get right on it,¡± Callum said. ¡°I¡¯ll let you know when we make progress.¡±

    ¡°You know, I always wanted to hack the IRS,¡± Lucy said, once they¡¯d hung up. ¡°I don¡¯t know how you plan to deal with the people who already know, though.¡±

    ¡°Eh, it¡¯s a bureaucracy. Remove all the files and they¡¯ll end up just closing things down because everything requires documentation since nobody wants responsibility.¡± Callum sighed, knowing that was too na?ve a position. ¡°It¡¯s not simple. If there¡¯s someone with a real vendetta, who¡¯s just abusing their power, that¡¯s different from random people in a larger system. We¡¯ll just have to take it as it comes.¡±

    ¡°We¡¯ll start after lunch,¡± Lucy said, glancing out the front window where Alex was running around like a madman, lost in whatever world the two-year-old had conjured for himself. There was a wall to keep him from straying outside of the enchantment border where Callum had corrected space and gravity, but sometimes Callum doubted that would be enough. Kids had an amazing capacity to get where they shouldn¡¯t.

    ¡°After lunch,¡± Callum agreed, rising and crossing to the door. It would be the work of days or weeks to get things done, so there wouldn¡¯t be a problem if he spent some time with his son first.

    ***

    Seeker Jarmin sniffed deeply, following the scent of mage. The trail of their magic workings was unique, and it lingered no matter how careful they were about it. With one step he moved from one clearing to another, hunting down a trail from the last known sighting of Archmage Taisen¡¯s forces.

    It was one thing to know that House Taisen existed and for the Archmage to show up from time to time, and it was another to know where they were. The mages in Faerie might be too limp-wristed and weak to attack Taisen directly, but the Courts had no such problem. Not only was the man a menace, he was an absolute bore. Installing a chokepoint between the Ice Plains and the valley the mages had been given had deprived so many people of so much entertainment.

    It was an insult that couldn¡¯t be forgiven.

    He¡¯d been stymying the expansion of Faerie onto Earth as well, but that was all in good fun. Moves in the Great Game were perfect entertainment. It was just that Taisen went about it in the dullest possible manner! Even The Ghost was more interesting, and he barely did anything.

    Jarmin took another step, then jumped into the air, floating on the wake of the mage¡¯s passage as he followed the flight spell they¡¯d used. Anyone could follow that strong a trail, provided they stumbled on it to begin with. A few minutes of tedious tracking later, he found himself by a river where the entire landscape had been flattened. While Taisen¡¯s people cleaned up after themselves, it was obvious some forward base had been there at some point.

    He stretched out his hands, his fingers touching the remnant magic with virtuoso skill, playing through the interwoven spells that had been cast. His feet led him where they would, his eyes half-closed as he delved further and further back through time. In his mind¡¯s eye he rewound the destruction of the forward base, people coming and going, a brief battle, then more useless milling about.

    It was the formation of a portal that interested him, and he prowled around where the portal frame had once been. He could almost see the enchantments, that strange pastime of human mages; strange but frustratingly useful. It offended his sensibilities for something so bland and boring to be desirable.

    He sniffed again, his nose sorting through all the various effects that had passed through that particular point, until he caught the scent of an actual portal. That was what he¡¯d been waiting for, and he reached out to grab onto the magical connection, feeling the tenuous link shiver between his fingers. Jarmin had to be careful, but he was a Seeker for a reason. His finesse with such fragile, lingering echoes was second to none.

    A moment later and he grasped the connection, letting it haul him through time and space to the other end, his entire form faint and ghostly as he traversed the mage-wrought corridor. He popped out into a large, brightly-lit room ¡ª momentarily empty and with no enchantment structure in evidence. That hardly bothered him, because it also meant there was nobody around he needed to avoid.

    Jarmin spun a disguise for himself with a few snaps of his fingers, rendering himself the blandest, most forgettable human possible, and moved out of the room to find out where he¡¯d ended up. Still Earth, of course, but the completely enclosed corridors with no windows made it hard to tell the location. He stopped in a hall that seemed to be on the outside of the place, waiting for a preoccupied mage to pass him by, and ghosted through the wall.

    Solid ice met him, and he jerked back in surprise. It would take more than a poke outside to find his location. Yet, just the ice itself spoke to him, some of the stories whispered on the wind. Hyperborea, it said, which didn¡¯t mean much but it did give him some suspicions. Instead of outward, he looked for a way upward, climbing stairs and skirting indoor gardens. With everything enclosed, he was as good as certain the facility was buried under the ice.

    Once he¡¯d gotten as high as he could without crossing through a door guarded by some grim looking guards, he ducked into a nearby empty room and shed his disguise. He went out through the wall again, up through the ice, ephemeral and unseen as he followed cracks and rifts toward the surface. It took a surprisingly long time, making the installation hundreds of feet below the surface, and when he finally emerged there was nothing but a waste of snow and ice.

    At last all the pieces came together, and Jarmin laughed, voice echoing over the frozen fastness. He wasn¡¯t familiar with all of Earth¡¯s geography, but he could recognize Antarctica at least, and he could feel the terrible stories of the place in his bones. There was nothing of hope on the ice or under it, only terror, despair, and isolation.

    Jarmin loved it. He knew some others who would love it, too, ones that would enjoy setting themselves upon an Archmage. Now that the base¡¯s exact location had been found, it was only a matter of time before they came.

    Once again he let himself be carried by the wind, blowing into the twelve-winded sky, to let himself be carried over the sea. The ocean waters glinted below, promising death to any who dared their depths. Even Jarmin.

    At the same time it was exhilarating. Jarmin had tracked down all kinds of things for the Fae Prince over the centuries, from maidens to beasts to priceless treasures, and he had honed his abilities so well that little in outer Faerie challenged him. Earth, though, was just weak enough to make it a sport, without actually running the risk of him actually failing.

    Failing wasn¡¯t fun, after all.

    Once he reported back to his Prince, he would be free to go after the real prize: hunting down the Ghost. The fact that the man had managed to break into the Courts undetected was intriguing, even if the Princess¡¯ own power had ruined the subterfuge. Tracking her down would have been easy enough, but getting that close would be dangerous even to him. Inside her Court, he¡¯d have to play by her rules, and only Oberon knew what rules someone who¡¯d been living on Earth for most of her life would invent.

 Chapter 5 - Clashes

    Breaking into government records was more involved than Callum had thought. Between Lucy handling the digital stuff and his own ability to get anywhere, he¡¯d gotten probably a touch lazy and overconfident about such tasks. Or maybe it was just that GAR and mage Houses weren¡¯t all that large, unlike the federal government.

    There were hundreds of offices scattered over multiple states, and just trying to find out where all the records were stored was an ordeal. That went for both physical and digital, since it seemed that the network that stuff was stored on was ancient. Getting Lucy access was easy enough, but things didn¡¯t go as smoothly as they had before.

    ¡°Why is it so terrible?¡± Lucy groaned, slapping the table next her laptop, which was plugged into a server in an obscure room through a portal. ¡°It¡¯s like, fifty year old languages and database software! I haven¡¯t even touched this stuff! Ugh, I¡¯m going to have to go learn it all.¡±

    Callum laughed. He wasn¡¯t unsympathetic, but of all the complaints to be had about government level security, the age and obsolescence wasn¡¯t one he¡¯d anticipated. Though it wasn¡¯t like the physical filing was any better. How anyone got any work done was beyond him.

    ¡°Well, best to focus on the immediate stuff for now. Get rid of any of the communications or memos directed at Chester. Did you find out who incited it at least?¡±

    ¡°Yeah, Director Cornell. I figure, just wipe everything of his to start. Copy it all and give it to Chester, though I don¡¯t know if his lawyer could do anything even with proof.¡±

    ¡°Probably not,¡± Callum agreed. ¡°They couldn¡¯t even answer how they got it, even if the government admitted it was real. But it¡¯s worth a shot. Right, let¡¯s pay a visit to Cornell and move on from there.¡±

    Callum wasn¡¯t certain if he was more surprised at how little magical protection there was on government offices, or how much. The relative lack of it showed that there really weren¡¯t many supernaturals, or at least not supernatural interest, high up in the government bureaucracy. But there were some places that were warded or had some kind of fae protections. Though he didn¡¯t know if that actually meant there were supernaturals directly involved. It was entirely possible some people had family trinkets with fae warding on them.

    Cornell¡¯s office was so messy it made him actually appreciate the organization at GAR. At least the filing cabinets Constance had kept were properly alphabetized and divided. Instead there were piles of manila folders and an honest-to-goodness cathode ray tube monitor, with the computer password written on a sticky note adhered to the oversized bezel of said monitor.

    Admittedly, this was all inside a bunch of mundane security that Callum could completely ignore. People tended to get complacent about their personal security when they had others to take care of it for them. He didn¡¯t even know where the Director was, despite it being work hours.

    Both he and Lucy wore gloves, reaching through useful portals rather than actually going there directly. No need to leave more of a presence than necessary. They expected to find a receipt for whatever had started the harassment, but any information would help. Even if it was just another location to look through.

    ¡°What do you think they¡¯ll do if all the stuff related to Chester keeps disappearing?¡± Lucy asked idly. ¡°I mean, it can only help, but won¡¯t they realize someone is messing with them?¡±

    ¡°Sure, a few people will, but it¡¯s a huge bureaucracy. Without a paper trail and clear instructions, it¡¯s just going to mire itself in confusion and internal investigations.¡± Callum flipped through a folder and grimaced at the dense columns of numbers attached to a name he didn¡¯t recognize. ¡°I¡¯d feel guilty about it, except it¡¯s just a lot of bad actors weaponizing other bad actors.¡±

    ¡°Tell you what, I feel properly secret-agent-y breaking into top secret facilities,¡± Lucy said, having less compunctions about their search than Callum. ¡°Though it¡¯s a little disappointing I don¡¯t really get to use the vulnerabilities I¡¯ve learned. All that work and people leave passwords out or have unpatched fifty-year-old code in their computers!¡±

    ¡°Turns out that the government is banal and dusty, who would¡¯ve thought?¡± Callum said, and Lucy pouted at him.

    Despite their complaints, there was some information to point them to other locations, not far away. There was so much bureaucracy in one place, and yet it wasn¡¯t actually centralized. It was as if someone had gone out of their way to make it as obtuse and inefficient as possible.

    ¡°At least we don¡¯t have to walk it,¡± Lucy said, looking at the drone footage. ¡°It reminds me of all the GAR hallways, except worse.¡±

    ¡°Yeah, there¡¯s nothing more depressing than big government buildings ¡ª wait a minute.¡± Callum frowned as his perceptions ran across a bit of magic where it shouldn¡¯t have been. For the most part he ignored the normal people doing their own jobs, since they were just government employees. Even if there were occasional fae artifacts around in offices, it wasn¡¯t surprising given how wealthy people ended up with gifts or heirlooms.

    But there was a difference between that and seeing fae magic actually in a person. While he still couldn¡¯t really read the structure of fae stuff, he had seen something similar before ¡ª the geas that had been put on Lucy. Perhaps not as strong, but it was still some kind of manipulation.

    ¡°Looks like someone under a geas. A weaker one, but still a geas.¡± Callum sat up straight in his chair and Lucy let out a long breath.

    ¡°Guess we¡¯ve got to do something about that,¡± she said.

    ¡°Yeah, let me get my cloak,¡± Callum said, standing up and reaching through his portal network. Since it was made out of fae magic, he couldn¡¯t store it in the redoubt without destroying it. He had to leave it in an Earth-side cache, and leave open a portal while he used it so there¡¯d at least be some fae type magic around.

    He put it on, feeling a little bit silly, even if the cloak was itself quite comfortable. But it seemed to do what it was supposed to, and any time he acted as The Ghost he figured he might as well wear it. Dealing with the fae was tricky.

    ¡°Aight, if you could get pictures of this person and his name, I¡¯ll just clean him up.¡±

    ¡°Sure,¡± Lucy said, fingers dancing across the keyboard of her laptop as she searched for the person¡¯s identity. ¡°But who are we gonna tell?¡±

    ¡°Well, we do have a fae princess who¡¯s supposed to be moderating faerie stuff on Earth. Eventually.¡±

    ¡°Okay, but what¡¯s Felicia going to do?¡±

    ¡°I sure have no idea, but frankly, that¡¯s her problem,¡± Callum said. Lucy raised her eyebrows at him. ¡°If she asks for help, that¡¯s one thing, but I wouldn¡¯t dare to suggest policy when it comes to fae power struggles.¡±

    ¡°I guess that makes sense,¡± Lucy said. ¡°Okay, got the name and photos.¡±

    ¡°Great,¡± Callum said, and focused on the government official in question. He was sitting in a conference room with a few other people, eating lunch and playing on his phone. Nothing out of the ordinary. After calculating sight-lines for a few moments, Callum opened up a very small portal behind the guy, leading to an anti-mana dimension.

    He was getting slightly better at it, and didn¡¯t need to lean on his vis crystals as often, which was good since anti-mana was by far the best way he had to deal with hostile magic. The anti-mana that bubbled out from the portal swept through the man¡¯s body, erasing the fae influence before Callum collapsed it.

    The portal itself hadn¡¯t gone entirely unnoticed; wherever it led did have its own atmosphere, and a gust of wind shoved a few papers around. People shifted and looked about confused, and one of them may have seen the dark circle behind Callum¡¯s target, but since it vanished so quickly he suspected they¡¯d just write it off.

    The guy he¡¯d just purged the mind control from, or whatever it was, didn¡¯t seem to notice, but that was fine with Callum. It was better than undergoing a sudden seizure or something because a fae had twisted his brain around so much he was just an empty shell. In a way Callum was glad that GAR had been run by people with no interest in Earth, simply because hijacking leaders and governments would be so easy to people with magic.

    ¡°Done,¡± Callum said. ¡°Guess I¡¯d better sweep for others. I don¡¯t think whoever is doing this would stop at just one random bureaucrat.¡± Though for all he knew the man was important. There was no telling who had control of what in a bureaucracy, not really.

    He focused on his perceptions as he swept the drone through the building, and moved on to the neighboring ones, focusing on any trace of magic. Aside from the three fae artifacts he¡¯d already found ¨C all old coins, in some kind of display case ¨C there was someone with a charm necklace and one rug. None of them seemed to really affect people, though. It wasn¡¯t until he moved through to the more rarefied echelons that he ran into another affected person.

    The victim that time was an older lady, in yet another conference room, having a meeting. Which seemed to be about the only thing that went on in the government complex. He teleported the drone into a likely corner, putting the little box on top of a projector, and waited for Lucy to capture the face of the woman before purging the fae magic out of her.

    She actually wobbled, but didn¡¯t fall over, and listening to the drone feed she merely made claims of being tired, low blood sugar, and other such excuses. Which she probably believed, though Callum didn¡¯t like how it had affected her. She might have been under their control for a long time.

    ¡°You know, this isn¡¯t as widespread as I expected,¡± Lucy remarked.

    ¡°They probably can¡¯t do it to just anyone,¡± Callum said. ¡°I mean, fae magic is bullshit but it does have rules. Plus, from what I¡¯ve seen it¡¯s pretty obvious when people are manipulated. It¡¯s not like these people have unquestioned authority, either, so there¡¯s compromises to be made.¡±

    While he didn¡¯t have the time to survey literally everyone in Washington, DC, he made a pass through all the important areas of governance and purged three more people. None of them were particularly high up, but there was clearly some kind of plan at play. Hopefully one that would be derailed by removing the control.

    ¡°You know, there¡¯s probably people all over the world who have some kind of control on them,¡± Lucy suggested.

    ¡°Possibly, but I can¡¯t scan literally everyone,¡± Callum sighed. ¡°I swear, the more we look the worse this gets. I really hope that Felicia can clean it up more directly.¡±

    ***

    ¡°It fits in with what I heard over in Faerie,¡± Ray Danforth said, sitting with Felicia and two archmages. Neither Archmage Taisen nor Archmage Hargrave were particularly happy to hear what Wells had to report, though it wasn¡¯t like they could be targeted by any government. Neither House existed in any mundane records or could be accessed by mundane enforcement.

    ¡°Now, I¡¯m pretty sure they¡¯re going to backstab House Janry and GAR the moment they can,¡± he continued. ¡°But for the moment they¡¯re working hand in hand. Exactly why they want to control Earth¡¯s governments is beyond me, though.¡±

    ¡°Power,¡± Felicia wrote. ¡°There are billions of humans to play parts in whatever stories they decide to pursue. There aren¡¯t even millions of fae. The incursion of the Ways will help spread the mana of Faerie too, bringing the two worlds closer together.¡±

    ¡°Essentially, an invasion,¡± Taisen concluded. ¡°Do they realize how dangerous it is if the mundanes catch wind of it? Have any of them seen what a modern military can do? Glamours aren¡¯t really going to help against bombs and missiles.¡±

    The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.

    Ray grunted. He didn¡¯t see how bombs and missiles would help defend against fae blending in and manipulating people, but the worry about Earth finding out about the supernaturals had turned from theoretical to real all too quickly. Now that he was out of it, he didn¡¯t have much good to say about the Guild of Arcane Regulation, but they had kept that from being anywhere near a possibility for a very long time.

    ¡°I guess the question is what Wells expects you to do about it,¡± Ray said to Felicia.

    ¡°Resolve it,¡± Felicia wrote. ¡°He expects me to do my duty as a daughter of Oberon.¡±

    ¡°That seems a little¡­¡± Ray paused and considered his words. ¡°It¡¯s a bit much to expect.¡±

    Felicia sighed and rubbed at her eyes, then dropped her glamour. Which was fairly unusual, though Ray was not unfamiliar with the sight of her native fae form. He was pretty sure she had somehow put on a few inches, though, and her skin was shading toward a darker blue.

    ¡°Now that I have taken up my heritage, it¡¯s not something I can put aside,¡± she said, putting her tablet down. Her words hung in the air, an almost physical presence. ¡°I have to either fulfill it or fail at it, now.¡± She reached out to him and he took her hand.

    ¡°Felicia, I¡ª¡± He stopped, not entirely certain what to say. She¡¯d sacrificed more than he ever would have asked to get him out of Faerie, and he knew he didn¡¯t fully understand what all the changes meant. Things had gone beyond the days of being ordinary agents and investigators, or even just the days of being partners. He had no idea how he¡¯d measure up to a fae princess, but he certainly had to try.

    The ping of the emergency comms network interrupted his stalled train of thought. The Antarctic base had a broadcast system just in case, but it was rarely used, so the tone jerked everyone to attention. Taisen was out of his chair before the voice cut in.

    ¡°Case Zulu in Storage-5, Transport-7,¡± a voice came. It was calm enough, but he knew the various codewords Taisen had drilled into his people. Case Zulu was an invasion by a hostile party.

    ¡°There are fae here,¡± Felicia said, ignoring the fact that there were plenty of fae already working for House Taisen, but Ray knew what she meant. While it was possible that some hostile House could find the Antarctic base, trying to assault through the protections Taisen had set up would be difficult. At least for anyone who wasn¡¯t Wells, but he was pretty sure Wells wasn¡¯t involved. Fae, though, could skip past some of the protections.

    ¡°While I¡¯m here? Poor timing,¡± Hargrave said, his force armor appearing and rendering him into a faceless titan.

    ¡°Or purposeful,¡± Taisen said, his own force shield rather less showy than Hargrave¡¯s, but certainly no less potent. ¡°All the targets together,¡± he said before he started snapping orders through his comm-link. Ray shored up his own shields, extending his sphere of authority around Felicia.

    ¡°I need to confront them,¡± Felicia said, brooking no argument. ¡°We¡¯ll go to the fight.¡±

    Ray was glad that neither Taisen nor Hargrave argued, though really there wasn¡¯t time. He channeled his vis through Felicia¡¯s uniform and the two of them took off flying after the archmages. The base was built large enough that mages could use their movement techniques, both horizontally and vertically, and they shot past other personnel following drilled-in responses. Not everyone in House Taisen was a combatant.

    They reached the vertical shafts and dived downward four levels, hearing the sharp crack and rumble of magic in use. A moment later they emerged into a scene out of a horror movie. Walls and floors were no longer metal and stone, but flesh and bone and wriggling things. Blood stank and spattered everywhere, most of it inhuman, but that didn¡¯t seem to matter to the intruders.

    Eye-twisted tentacles rose from the floor, while distorted beasts, looking like some careless god had smashed parts from a dozen animals together, crawled along the walls. If it was just flesh it wouldn¡¯t have threatened even a subpar mage, but he could see the magic twisting thick about it, turning limbs and teeth into something harder and tougher than steel. Things moved far faster than anything a human could track, blurring from one position to another, easily evading concentrated fire.

    In the gore it was impossible to tell how many mages were down, but Ray didn¡¯t believe for a moment there hadn¡¯t been casualties. If a fae had enough power to transmute that much metal and stone, then they had enough to breach the shields of most mages. Especially if it was a surprise.

    ¡°The hell is this?¡± Ray muttered, channeling vis into his combat foci. A vicious cyclone spun out, tearing apart one of the lumpen chimeras and scattering unidentifiable pieces over the already-gory floor ¡ª only for the pieces to shift and merge and reform into other, smaller horrors. ¡°This isn¡¯t fae stuff,¡± he complained, even though he saw it had to be.

    ¡°I recognize the stories,¡± Taisen said, conjuring some sort of spell that set swaths of eldritch organism to smoldering. ¡°Doesn¡¯t burn as well as it should, though.¡±

    ¡°Allow me,¡± Felicia said, and raised her voice, which was something Ray had almost never heard. ¡°I charge House Taisen under my authority to remove the enemies of Felicity Blackblood. Any who surrender and swear to me will be spared. Those who persist will be destroyed.¡±

    A pulse of mana swept out from her; it wasn¡¯t much power, but it seemed to change the tide of the battle in its wake. The mages that were having trouble keeping the heaving mass of flesh at bay found it suddenly far easier to cut and cauterize. Taisen¡¯s magic severed and compartmentalized and crushed, revealing that the change of the storage area¡¯s walls was a true transmutation, not just illusion. It also revealed a tunnel of flesh leading down into the ice, from which terrible wet noises came.

    ¡°I¡¯ll take care of¡ª¡± Taisen started, but Felicia interrupted him. Ray understood why; if she wanted to be a princess, she had to be in charge. But interrupting Archmage Taisen made him wince.

    ¡°They get one chance,¡± she said. ¡°Purge any who refuse to surrender. Archmage Hargrave, might I request your aid in eliminating the rest of these insurrectionists while Archmage Taisen deals with this?¡± She pointed out into the hall. There was at the very least another level of fae to deal with, and that was assuming more hadn¡¯t arrived.

    ¡°I¡¯d enjoy it,¡± Hargrave said, his golden armor glowing as he surveyed the carnage. Taisen merely snorted and dove down the tunnel, burning things as he went.

    ¡°C¡¯mon, Ray,¡± Felicia said, and he spun them around and headed down the seventh floor transport hall. Instead of a sea of flesh and tentacled horrors, there was a swarm of enormous fish-like humanoids, as if in some mockery of Felicia¡¯s own inhuman traits. They were being held off almost entirely by a single metal mage with a barbed wall, but each blow from the fishy fists dented it, and their blue-green skin simply shrugged off projectiles of fire and ice.

    ¡°Surrender or be destroyed,¡± Felicia thundered, her words sweeping past the defending mages ¨C who were disadvantaged by not wanting to bring tons of ice down on their heads ¨C and made the attacking fae flinch. Hargrave darted in ahead, shrugging off the spells from the other mages, and went fist to fist with the nearest monsters. They did not survive the experience.

    After the combat went from an effective stalemate to a slaughter, the dozens of assaulting fae suddenly broke and tried to run back through a hole in the ice. Hargrave¡¯s force wall blocked them off with contemptuous ease, and Ray contributed some of his own piercing winds to whittle down the numbers of the fishmen fae. Only with nowhere to go did some of them actually start to surrender.

    ¡°Mercy!¡± One of them cried, then another. ¡°Mercy, Princess Blackblood!¡±

    Taisen¡¯s people hesitated, but Hargrave went in closer, boxing the fae off in an impenetrable wall. Ray followed with Felicia and she stared down at them imperiously.

    ¡°Swear to me,¡± she said. ¡°Heart, mind, and breath.¡± Several of them blanched, but Felicia merely waited, and Hargrave began reducing the size of the box around the fae. That was all that was needed for one to start reciting the oath, quickly followed by several of its compatriots.

    One of them started screaming something at Felicia in a language Ray didn¡¯t know, but whatever it was, he was set upon by several others in the box and torn to pieces in a sudden burst of claws and jaws. Ray was used to some level of casual violence from the fae, but it was strange to see them turn on each other so quickly and thoroughly.

    ¡°You can release them,¡± Felicia said, after all the fish-men inside the box had either sworn their oath or been massacred for refusing to swear. ¡°They won¡¯t move against you.¡± Not that they were all that much of a threat after Felicia had, through whatever fae interaction, crippled the opposing magic.

    Hargrave released the force box, and Felicia surveyed the gaggle of fish fae. Already their forms were blurring, and they¡¯d probably return to something similar to human in short order. Once a fae¡¯s story was broken, it was left with only a vestige of power and whatever form they¡¯d been born with. Ray had a suspicion these fae had adopted their current form only recently, if they were using stories that Archmage Taisen recognized, since they had to have come from the Lesser Courts in Faerie.

    ¡°Not the most auspicious start to my own Court,¡± Felicia said, surveying the beaten fae. ¡°But it is a start. If Archmage Taisen¡ª¡± As if her words caused it, there was a shaking and shuddering from somewhere deep underneath them, where Taisen was undoubtedly eradicating the much more powerful fae that had started converting the base. One of the sworn fae leapt at the nearest mage while they were all distracted, only to shriek and wither away in midair, turning to dust.

    ¡°The hell was that?¡± Ray asked, staring at the place where the fae evaporated.

    ¡°Oaths are not to be taken lightly,¡± Felicia said, but her grip was tight on his arm. Despite the harsh mien she had adopted, it was clear she was finding it difficult to deal with everything. ¡°I expect that nobody else will be tempted,¡± she added, her words nearly flattening the gathered fish-men.

    ¡°So where did they come from?¡± Ray asked, looking at the hole in the back of the room, opening into an ice tunnel. He didn¡¯t see how that could have happened without setting off the wards, though just because it looked like a physical passage didn¡¯t mean it was.

    ¡°Someone must have opened a tunnel from Faerie,¡± Felicia said, taking a deep breath. ¡°There is a Way involved, I can smell it.¡± Then she turned to Hargrave. ¡°My thanks for your help, Archmage Hargrave. The Court of Blackblood owes you a favor.¡±

    ¡°Glad to be of help,¡± Hargrave said after a moment, clearly processing what exactly it meant to be owed a favor. Ray took a moment to consider it himself. He still didn¡¯t know how he felt about Felicia being a direct daughter of the rulers of Faerie, especially since she still didn¡¯t act like it. Her sudden assertion of authority over the attacking fae was an exception, but he suspected it would eventually be a rule.

    That more or less stopped the attempted sabotage of the Antarctic base dead. Ray doubted that either of the archmages would have been in any danger, especially not with all the precautions that Taisen had in place, but it was very possible that the base itself would have been destroyed. Not to mention how many of the less skilled mages could have been hurt or killed.

    ¡°I¡¯ll have to talk to my new subjects, and find out who they are and what they know.¡± Felicia¡¯s voice still resonated in the air, powerful even if it wasn¡¯t aimed at anyone in particular. ¡°Then, I¡¯ll see if I can do anything about what The Ghost asked,¡± she added, lowering her voice until only Ray could hear her. ¡°An embarrassing amount of my power comes from the legitimacy his recognition grants me. The least I can do is return the favor.¡±

    ***

    The Master of Weltentor stepped out of the Gate of Bones, baring his teeth at the weak mana of Earth. Already he could tell that the savory breath of the Night Lands was waning, some vital element gone. The amount puffing out from the Ways was hardly going to be noticeable, and the Ways mostly carried Faerie¡¯s stink anyway. The connection into the Night Lands was not and never would be particularly strong, so it wasn¡¯t even possible to send subordinates and repopulate, but it was at least a way through to Earth.

    The gate itself was no longer in South America, that particular avenue having been closed with prejudice. Somehow the fae had conjured up an entire castle in a dark and rainy country, where whatever sun there was failed to penetrate the clouds. He suspected that it was some piece of fae nonsense, though at the moment it was welcome. The Earth¡¯s sun was irritating.

    ¡°Welcome,¡± said Prince Jusael of the Court of Roses, with just a hint of mockery, as if his form weren¡¯t enough. Weltentor restrained himself. Despite his personal dislike of Jusael, the fae protections had been proof against mordite and it was only through the Ways that Weltentor had any access to Earth. The fae had a superior position, and he would be a fool not to recognize it.

    ¡°Prince Jusael,¡± Weltentor said neutrally. ¡°How go your plans?¡±

    ¡°Frustratingly,¡± Jusael said, with a hiss. ¡°The mages refuse to commit to a war, which is the only way to decide such things. Free passage to Earth helps a lot, but I¡¯ve seen what archmages can do. This entire thing could be over in a few days if they united.¡±

    ¡°Humans are bad at uniting,¡± Weltentor said, taking a seat and glancing out at the rain-swept, bare-branched forest beyond the castle. ¡°Given a chance they¡¯ll each form their own faction.¡± Both vampires and fae were far better at centralizing power, but it was an unfortunate fact that humans had the advantage on Earth. By raw numbers, if nothing else.

    ¡°Our opponents are irritatingly united,¡± Jusael remarked. ¡°It¡¯s much harder to assault a fortified position than a divided nation.¡±

    ¡°Which, I take it, is what you wanted to see me about.¡± Weltentor said, somewhat exasperated by how Jusael danced around any topic for ages until he finally got to the point. He preferred to be direct.

    ¡°Now that we¡¯ve found the daughter of Oberon, she has proved unfortunately evasive. Preferring to hide behind the power of mages.¡± Jusael sneered, waving a dismissive hand to show what he thought of that. ¡°Nor will she meet any of her peers on the field of battle, preferring to only deal with the less powerful among us. However, a vampire might do just fine.¡±

    ¡°Preferably a vampire that can stand up to archmages,¡± Weltentor said, nodding understanding. ¡°Of which there are very few.¡±

    ¡°Precisely.¡± Jusael showed his fangs. ¡°With Princess Blackblood removed ¨C and I would prefer capture, considering the value of her bloodline ¨C then we would be free to establish more footholds on Earth. Her very presence makes it more difficult.¡±

    ¡°I wouldn¡¯t be opposed,¡± Weltentor conceded, having been made aware of the connection between the fae¡¯s target and his. Useful as the fae were, he needed a more personal reason to come out to Earth than the fae wanting him to hunt down one of their number. The Ghost was about the only reason he could think of, and it was the name that had lured him out.

    ¡°But it seems foolish to provide The Ghost with such a target,¡± he said after a moment. ¡°So far nobody has had any luck holding a prisoner The Ghost is interested in. He has yet to bring anyone back from death.¡±

    ¡°That is a risk we are willing to take,¡± Jusael said, without quite conceding that he¡¯d had someone taken from under his nose. ¡°It is certain that much of his ability comes from her to begin with.¡±

    Privately, Weltentor doubted it, but he wasn¡¯t going to argue with a fae. It would only make Jusael more stubborn and pigheaded. As if any fae prince needed to be more insufferable. While he was looking forward to meeting The Ghost in person, as it were, he wasn¡¯t going to do so while holding onto a hostage. Though if Jusael managed it, so much the better. There was no way he was going to let the Ghost get away with severing the Night Lands. Even if he couldn¡¯t target the man directly, he could do enough damage to hurt.

 Chapter 6 - Planning

    ¡°What do you mean you won¡¯t provide them?¡± Harper Janry goggled at Lorenzo Rossi of the Guild of Enchanting. It was true that with the Night Lands portal severed, the cost for a lot of enchantments had started to rise, but the supply issues hadn¡¯t seemed too bad. At least, not so far. ¡°Are the stockpiles really in that bad a shape?¡±

    ¡°No, that is not the problem,¡± Rossi said, hands clasped over his belly as he regarded Harper. ¡°In fact, we have sourced some new enchanting material. Rather, the Guild of Enchanting shares its worries with the dragonblooded and certain members of the supernatural community about the dangers of upending the status quo on Earth.¡±

    Harper opened his mouth, then shut it before arguing. Archmage Janry hadn¡¯t put him in the role of envoy because he spoke before he thought. The Guild of Enchanting was one of the most powerful organizations among mages, perhaps even more powerful than GAR. Especially after GAR had been crippled by the most militant and Earth-based branches pulling out of it.

    If the Guild of Enchanting was concerned about something, that was a political stance and it was something they would have made clear. Clearly someone, somewhere, hadn¡¯t passed along the appropriate messages, because Rossi wouldn¡¯t blindside him. The head of the Guild of Enchanting was not dumb, and he wouldn¡¯t just spring an embargo on him ¨C and who knew how many other Houses ¨C without some form of notice. That was a failure that Harper could address when he got home.

    ¡°It seems a notable change of policy for the Guild of Enchanting to take sides in a political disagreement,¡± he said instead. Not that the Guild of Enchanting was apolitical, but theirs was a relatively mercenary approach. They cared less about the topics that archmages struggled with and more about what was best for the craft.

    ¡°The dealings of the Guild of Enchanting are generally confidential,¡± Rossi said, clearly picking his words with care. ¡°But certain clients have made a very strong argument that the actions of the Archmage¡¯s Council and the Seven Lesser Courts are not in the interests of the supernatural community.¡±

    Harper didn¡¯t need to be brilliant to read between those lines. The American Alliance and the rogue Houses had somehow gotten the Guild of Enchanting on their side. It was not a small thing ¡ª while corite-based enchantments in Faerie would last forever, not every enchantment was based in corite and any new enchantment of any complexity came from the Guild. While they had some stockpiles of raw material, they didn¡¯t have the expertise to create the high-quality work most mages expected. Expanding onto Earth would require cannibalizing existing wards or glamours, and most of those were deeply embedded into House security.

    ¡°I see,¡± he said, biting off a considerably different set of words. ¡°I must admit I am somewhat surprised that the Guild of Enchanting is turning down such a large contract. There are entire estates that need to be built and furnished.¡±

    ¡°There are some considerations more important than money,¡± Rossi said, so piously that Harper almost laughed. The man wasn¡¯t fooling anyone.

    ¡°You do realize how many people are going to be unhappy,¡± Harper pointed out instead. ¡°Essentially all the Houses in Faerie are united in the determination to make Earth safe again. To prevent another disaster like the debacle with the Night Lands.¡±

    ¡°There is some risk,¡± Rossi agreed. ¡°But the Guild has considered the merits of the arguments and cannot support widespread changes in the policy toward Earth.¡±

    Harper suppressed a sigh. There had to be something really big going on if the Guild of Enchanting was betting against the largest and oldest Houses in existence. Admittedly, the Houses in question weren¡¯t the most familiar with direct combat, but it would hardly come down to a war. There were enough ways to dominate mundanes without resorting to brute force.

    In a sense the refusal to supply the enchantments House Janry needed was a secondary matter. It would be painful, but the House¡¯s coffers were deep and they had enough infrastructure that they could repurpose some of it, especially if they could get the other Houses to pitch in. The Guild of Enchantment¡¯s opposition as an opinion on who would prevail was far more damaging.

    ¡°I suppose you aren¡¯t going to budge on this issue,¡± Harper finally said.

    ¡°I¡¯m afraid not. The Guild of Enchanting appreciates House Janry¡¯s continued patronage, and after the current crisis I fully expect things to return to normal. But for the moment we have to be more circumspect with the tools we provide.¡±

    ¡°Well, then, thank you for your time.¡± Harper rose and offered Rossi a bow. ¡°I¡¯ll speak with Archmage Janry and see what we can do.¡± Not that the archmage was going to reverse course, but Harper needed to be polite.

    ¡°The Guild of Enchanting is always glad to talk,¡± Rossi said with a smile. ¡°This too shall pass.¡±

    Harper smiled, nodded and took his leave. The consequences of the Guild of Enchanting taking a side needed to be dealt with as soon as possible. Some of the weaker-willed Houses, or rather archmages, might well see it as a reason to bow out of a conflict that they were only half-heartedly committed to in the first place.

    ***

    Rossi watched Harper depart through the teleportation system, and the smile slipped from his face. He had hoped they would have more time before the Houses started their moves, because the Guild wasn¡¯t quite ready to commit. The portal world that Wells had provided them was still being developed, and despite his prodding Wells hadn¡¯t quite been ready to commit to providing additional ones. Sadly, events had forced his hand, and now they would have to accelerate their work.

    He left the meeting room and headed deeper into the Guild¡¯s central office. His mage mark verified him and let him pass the heavy security around the rooms in the middle. The secure vaults were where the most intricate enchanting records kept, and for the moment where the connections to the new portal world were located. There were three in all, the portal frames fueled by the mana flow from the portal world itself.

    The transportation rooms were heavily shielded to prevent any mana leakage in either direction. They were secret for the moment, and even when only opened temporarily the strange mana could leak out into Faerie, something the locals would surely notice. Even mages would notice the turbulence if they left it open too long.

    He channeled vis through the portal frame, the embedded storage crystal augmenting his efforts to open the portal, and stepped through into a room that looked almost identical to the one he¡¯d left. Pale blue stone walls, flat and unadorned, with a single exit. He nodded to the guard at the post just inside the door, and continued through a hall into a large production shop. One that wasn¡¯t in full use, not just yet.

    ¡°Guildmaster,¡± Ordermaster Minot said distractedly as he examined one of the scribers. ¡°It¡¯s almost there, but not quite perfect. Wells means well¡ª¡± Minot stopped and grimaced at his own wording. ¡°It¡¯s just not as accurate as we need. The spatial differences are just enough that anything we make here would be less efficient.¡±

    ¡°Then we need Duvall,¡± Rossi said.

    ¡°Good luck,¡± Minot said, straightening from the scriber. ¡°I don¡¯t think she¡¯s going to come out of her estate until this is all over. She¡¯s done it before.¡±

    ¡°Then I¡¯ll simply go to her,¡± Rossi said. ¡°Have one of the portal frames packed up. Even if she¡¯s not a fan of the person who opened access to this new world, she should see the value in having ever more work demand.¡± He snorted. ¡°It¡¯s not like GAR is using her apprentices for porters anymore.¡±

    ¡°I believe she still likes the starberry tea,¡± Minot said. ¡°I¡¯ll have someone dig a cannister out of the vaults.¡±

    ¡°Yes, excellent,¡± Rossi agreed. Part of him winced at parting with the tea, since it could only be made once a century when starberries bloomed, and it was frankly scarcer than the wine made with the berries themselves. But it would be worth it to get the spatial archmage on their side again.

    ***

    Seeker Jarmin was equal parts frustrated and amazed. The Ghost lived up to his name, and Jarmin was having great difficulty catching a scent. He¡¯d visited each of the locations The Ghost had been present and, despite his skill and prowess, Jarmin couldn¡¯t locate anything belonging to the man. There wasn¡¯t even a conspicuous absence to follow, just occasional muddled patches that might have been a trail, if they actually led anywhere. Which they didn¡¯t.

    After visiting the sites of various actions, some joint activities with House Taisen and some solo operations, he knew he¡¯d have to take a different approach. Whatever The Ghost did, however he covered his tracks, it was proof against Jarmin¡¯s abilities. But The Ghost was also Callum Wells, and Wells might be easier to find ¡ª especially through his son, who shared his blood.

    Not that it was easy, by any means. A dragonblooded controlled Wells¡¯ original haunt, and the shifters had obscured his subsequent addresses, but after enough snooping around he found that Wells still maintained links throughout the world ¨C some sort of personal portal network ¨C though nobody seemed particularly clear on how it worked.

    It was almost by chance that he found it, but he finally picked up Wells¡¯ actual scent from Alpha Chester¡¯s compound. They had nearly as much warding up as Taisen¡¯s base, but remaining ethereal was sufficient to avoid notice. He didn¡¯t dare prowl around in even a changed form since, unlike humans, shifters could spot a fraud instantly. But it was not hard to separate out the few human traces, especially the exuberant residue of a mortal child.

    He almost thought that he had Wells then and there, but the only trail in or out was an enchanted piece of metal that had such heavy distortion around it that any trail it may have led him on had been washed away. But even if that lead was dry, there was the rest of the probable network, so he began hunting.

    Jarmin let the winds take him as they would, following intuition more than anything as he covered the miles, flitting hither and yon. It felt far easier than trying to track down The Ghost. Callum Wells was a real person, someone the world knew, while The Ghost was hidden and shielded and protected.

    It was the work of days, following the faintest hints here and there, but eventually Jarmin ran across a whiff of Wells¡¯ magic, weirdly isolated several dozen feet in the air. Tracking from there, he traced a convoluted route until he found a tiny device parked inside a hollow log. It was part mundane technology, but within it was also a piece of enchantment; an active spatial connection.

    He cackled silently, making sure not to manifest by accident. It was no secret The Ghost had keen senses, not unlike those of a Fae Prince. Jarmin suspected that perhaps he had gotten that from the Princess, though The Ghost¡¯s child was undeniably merely human. It seemed strange for the human mistress to have a child before the Princess, but Blackblood was already strange for attempting to deny or hide her heritage. One more oddity was hardly important.

    Clearly The Ghost ¨C or rather, Wells, as this was not part of The Ghost¡¯s operation ¨C had never expected his little device to be found. It was well-hidden, with barely any trace save for a minor flow of mana ¡ª a flow out through the portal, which was unusual considering the already low mana levels on Earth. Such a minor deviation would be barely noticeable, except to someone like Jarmin.

    He reached out to touch the connection, letting himself flow along it. He could almost feel the secrecy, the exclusionary nature of the tiny connection. Something nearly forbidden, which was the sweetest of fruits. His form flitted out through the other end, and all his glee turned to ash as all the mana suddenly vanished. His ethereal form was stripped from him and he choked on nothing at all in a black-skied, hellish desert that stretched away in every direction.

    ***

    ¡°Holy shit.¡± Callum reflexively stumbled backward, nearly slipping and falling in the shower. He was completely blindsided by fae magic squirting through one of his nexus connections and turning into some short, suited fae. A fae that promptly started flailing and choking in the airless, mana-deprived surroundings of the moon.

    ¡°Mm?¡± Lucy¡¯s vague sound of inquiry came from the bedroom, but he didn¡¯t have time to answer. He teleported out to the cache, still dripping, and pulled a shotgun and fae-bane ammunition to himself. It wasn¡¯t like there was room in the shower to load and fire.

    The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

    The fae wasn¡¯t immediately dying, either; vis billowed out to surround him and stave off the harsh environment. While it kept evaporating away into the vacuum, the fae had enough power to make headway, and who knew what would happen then. Callum pushed a bit of his own vis out onto the moon and formed a portal between the shotgun and behind the fae¡¯s head and fired. A glittering plume of atmosphere spread out from where the fae had been, while in Callum¡¯s perceptions the vis acted in a similar way, dissipating into the vacuum.

    He shivered, the concrete of the barn cache cold under his feet, water and shampoo dripping onto the floor from his skin. He found himself somewhat disconcerted by the fact that he¡¯d dealt with the entire thing while naked and lathered up, but his enemies were not polite enough to wait until he was ready. Callum dropped the gun on a worktable, promising himself he¡¯d clean it up later, and teleported back into the shower. The hot water helped his muscles unclench too, his body only realizing the terrifying nature of the intrusion after it was over and done with.

    ¡°What¡¯s up?¡± Lucy called, somewhat more clearly, standing at the door of the bathroom.

    ¡°Fae incident,¡± Callum replied through the shower curtain. ¡°Give me a couple minutes and I¡¯ll fill you in.¡±

    ¡°Okay,¡± Lucy said, and Callum wasn¡¯t sure she even realized he¡¯d teleported away. He¡¯d only been gone a few seconds at most, thought it had seemed longer at the time. It seemed more than passing strange to just continue on as if nothing had happened when he¡¯d just fended off a home invader, but there was nothing else he could do. Not immediately, anyway.

    Half an hour later, he was properly showered and dressed and there hadn¡¯t been any other intrusions to the nexus. Once he was certain the fae was truly dead he had teleported the body back to Earth, mostly so it didn¡¯t lose all its magic. He wasn¡¯t sure if Felicia¡¯s ability would work without some kind of magical continuity.

    ¡°I guess the moon nexus did work though,¡± Lucy said. ¡°I mean, if he could survive on the moon¡¯s surface maybe this was kind of a big deal type fae? I don¡¯t think most of them can do that.¡±

    ¡°If nothing else, he had some kind of teleport-type powers,¡± Callum said. ¡°At the very least, he came through the portal as just a big bunch of magic, or something. The anchor drones are intact so he just passed right through them.¡± He sighed and leaned back in the chair, watching Alex happily eating breakfast. ¡°I¡¯m not happy someone found one of my drones but it turned out as well as I could have expected.¡±

    ¡°Oh, you¡¯re not going to be taking more precautions?¡± Lucy teased.

    ¡°All I can do is shut down the portals when I¡¯m not using them, but that means blinding myself.¡± Callum grimaced. ¡°I thought that cloak was supposed to hide me, but then again, I can¡¯t wear it all the time, especially not in the shower.¡±

    ¡°Fae magic is tricky,¡± Lucy replied.

    ¡°Bacon!¡± Alex said, waving a piece of it before cramming it into his mouth.

    ¡°You said it, kiddo. Bacon is fantastic,¡± Callum said with a grin, ruffling Alex¡¯s hair and getting a pout in return.

    Lucy put in a call to Felicia while Callum and Alex cleaned up from breakfast, and soon enough they were all meeting at Chester¡¯s compound. Callum felt a little bit like he was imposing, but there weren¡¯t many options. Especially since a portal world would possibly kill a fae without feeding mana in, which made earth the only viable meeting place.

    ¡°Mister Wells,¡± Felicia said, and her mage companion, Ray, nodded stiffly to them. ¡°If you have a corpse we¡¯d best take it outside.¡± While Callum wasn¡¯t affected by it, there was obvious power in her voice by the way he could feel it vibrate through his feet, even at a normal volume. When she spoke, nearby mugs and dishes rattled.

    ¡°Only if you want to keep it,¡± Callum said. ¡°I can just open a portal, otherwise.¡±

    ¡°Of course,¡± Felicia said. ¡°Depending on what I find I may be taking the body with me, but a portal works for now.¡± Callum nodded and flicked open a portal to one side, opening right over the corpse of the fae. He¡¯d left it in the woods by the drone, since it was in the middle of nowhere. Felicia reached through and touched an arm with her finger, black veins standing out on her skin. That was creepy enough, but her eyes turned black, too.

    ¡°This is more than it used to be,¡± she muttered, pupil-less eyes shifting this way and that. ¡°Ah. This creature was looking for you as Callum Wells, not as The Ghost. And it wasn¡¯t easy for him, at that.¡± She shook her head. ¡°That was a nasty place you led him. I won¡¯t even ask how you managed it.¡±

    Callum grunted. It made sense that he was only protected when he was acting in a certain way ¡ª donning a mantle, as she¡¯d put it. It was weird, but he kind of understood how that type of fae magic worked and that kind of loophole was only to be expected. Thankfully his habits of cleaning up after himself had mostly worked, if this was the first time a fae had tracked him down.

    ¡°This creature is the one who discovered Garrison Seven, as well,¡± Felicia continued. ¡°He worked for Prince Jusael of the Court of Roses. Also House Janry.¡±

    ¡°Jusael is the one who was holding me,¡± Ray said. ¡°Bat-winged guy, pale?¡±

    ¡°That¡¯s him,¡± Felicia confirmed.

    ¡°He¡¯s the vampire cosplayer behind that creepy video?¡± Callum asked, raising his eyebrows. ¡°Did he have anything to do with the fae-empowered vampires we started seeing a while back?¡± Properly speaking, he hadn¡¯t really seen them directly, but he couldn¡¯t forget the reports after they¡¯d led him into the negative healing trap.

    ¡°Ray?¡± Felicia prompted.

    ¡°I suspect so. When I was in his Court there were a number of discussions about vampire stories.¡± Ray frowned tilting his head back and tapping his foot as he thought. ¡°I¡¯d have to go through the reports I made when I got back to be sure, but I¡¯d lay odds he¡¯s the one pushing them.¡±

    ¡°Then he¡¯s the one with the negative healing traps,¡± Callum said. ¡°Which were also in the Night Lands. So it was probably him who got out the orders for the vamps to go wild.¡±

    ¡°For that to be the case, there¡¯d need to be a connection between Faerie and the Night Lands,¡± Felicia pointed out.

    ¡°All you¡¯d need is an unaccounted-for teleport anchor,¡± Callum mused. ¡°Or whatever fae thing that guy used to get through my portals. It wasn¡¯t physical.¡±

    ¡°No, that was his own special talent,¡± Felicia disagreed. ¡°It is not something you can expect to see from many others.¡±

    ¡°Well, that¡¯s something at least,¡± Callum muttered. Felicia nodded and withdrew her hand. Ray had a disinfecting wipe ready for her, and Callum closed the portal as she scrubbed her fingers. ¡°But this means that the vampires aren¡¯t out of it yet.¡±

    ¡°What makes you say that?¡± Ray asked, pulling a chair out for Felicia. Callum sat across from them, and while the little dining room of the loaner cottage in Chester¡¯s compound wasn¡¯t as comfortable as the big meeting room, it was definitely more private.

    "Because he ordered his minions to kill people out of spite,¡± Callum said bluntly. ¡°Nobody with that frame of mind would possibly let things go. No, he¡¯d be trying to do as much damage as he could, however he could.¡±

    ¡°Aren¡¯t the Courts and Janry trying to do that already?¡± Ray asked, half-rhetorically.

    ¡°I think they¡¯re afraid of open war,¡± Callum said. ¡°But this guy sure isn¡¯t. He probably would love to see it happen.¡±

    ¡°It¡¯s possible,¡± Ray said doubtfully. ¡°But what can we do about it? Finding a single person is quite difficult, as you well know.¡±

    ¡°I do know,¡± Callum sighed. ¡°I¡¯d appreciate it if you asked Taisen to keep an eye out, but for now ¡ª if he¡¯s working with the fae Courts you¡¯re probably a target just as much as I am. Can you hold up against a top level vampire? I don¡¯t know how powerful they can get.¡±

    ¡°Perhaps,¡± Felicia said, sharing a glance with Ray. ¡°In the middle of Garrison Seven, yes, but I can hardly hide there. Not if I am to fulfill my obligations.¡±

    ¡°Then I have a couple of homebonds for you,¡± Callum decided. It wasn¡¯t like he had huge amounts of spare enchanting done, but Felicia was his best path toward wrangling the fae. Otherwise his only option was closing that portal too, and he couldn¡¯t help but think the fallout would be even worse. A small investment to keep her alive was definitely worthwhile.

    He reached out to his cache and summoned two sets of homebonds, leaving him one spare. The receiver plates took up most of the floor, and the rings weren¡¯t exactly perfectly sized but they could be altered bit without affecting the underlying enchantment. He pushed them across the table and Felicia and Ray took one each.

    ¡°You¡¯ll have to deal with the vis resistance yourself, I¡¯m afraid,¡± he told them. ¡°But otherwise they should work. Faster in high-mana environments, or if you use a capacitor.¡±

    ¡°I can manage it,¡± Felicia said. ¡°Thank you. This is uncommonly generous.¡±

    ¡°You¡¯re welcome,¡± Callum said. ¡°Now, the question is what to do about Jusael himself. We need to block him from causing any more trouble.¡± There was an obvious solution, but after the debacle with the Night Lands he was less confident in direct action. Part of him was tempted to pitch taking over the Faerie portal. With Taisen in charge he¡¯d be a lot more confident in the traffic between worlds, but that was probably something that the Archmages couldn¡¯t let stand.

    ¡°You¡¯re The Ghost,¡± Felicia said, as if that were the answer to the question. ¡°You should simply remove Jusael.¡±

    ¡°Doesn¡¯t that run the risk of forcing more open conflict?¡± Callum asked, raising his eyebrows. ¡°That¡¯s our main limitation. Preventing this thing from spilling out into the real world.¡±

    ¡°Maybe for mages, but you¡¯re The Ghost and he is fae. That is precisely your story and it would not be at all unfair,¡± Felicia said. ¡°In fact, the other Courts would respect you for it. Not if you threatened the portal to Faerie, they¡¯d all have to mobilize everything if that was the case. But removing a specific person for a specific reason? Especially a Prince?¡±

    ¡°Really?¡± Callum leaned back in his chair and clasping his fingers together. ¡°That would make things easier. I hate this morass of politics, and direct action is far more my speed. But only if I don¡¯t put my foot in it like before.¡±

    ¡°I¡¯m rather surprised he took the chance, actually,¡± Felicia mused. ¡°Directly threatening you opens him up to reprisal. Perhaps he simply does not believe that anyone from Earth could injure him in his own territory.¡±

    ¡°I¡¯d be happy to disabuse him of that notion,¡± Callum said. ¡°But the last time I took on a fae king, it was not pleasant. His magic was able to hit me even from a distance, and he summoned up something right on top of me. I don¡¯t suppose your cloak will protect me from that?¡±

    ¡°Perhaps,¡± Felicia said at length, clearly considering the matter. ¡°However, there is a difference between being protected against detection, and being protected against grasping thorns.¡±

    ¡°Right.¡± Callum sighed. He knew it wouldn¡¯t be a free pass against magical fae bullshit, but it was still annoying to hear. ¡°I¡¯ll have to make the proper preparations then.¡± Including having Gayle on hand, and the shifters. In some way it¡¯d be a rerun of his assassination of Ravaeb, but he wasn¡¯t going to fool around with mundane weaponry.

    ¡°Well, if we¡¯re going to do this, I don¡¯t see any reason to waste time,¡± he continued. ¡°I¡¯ll check with Lucy, and then I¡¯ll need to scout things first, but probably as early as tomorrow I¡¯ll want you ¨C and likely Taisen ¨C around in case things go sideways.¡±

    ¡°That¡¯s prompt,¡± Ray observed. ¡°We¡¯ll make sure all the relevant parties know.¡±

    The pair left soon after, Ray floating the teleportation plates out through the door, and Callum returned home. He checked in with Lucy and Alex, then surveyed his cache. If he was going to be dealing with a fae prince or king, he needed cold iron. Unfortunately, that was the bane material he had the least of, only amounting to a few ounces. Enough for an enchantment, but barely enough for a killshot.

    Though he wasn¡¯t sure even that would be sufficient to take out a fae prince in Faerie itself. He was sure the bane material would do exactly what it was supposed to, but a few ounces might do very little to a person who seemed to be indistinguishable, magically, from the princedom he ruled. Like trying to kill a skyscraper with a shotgun.

    Once again, the anti-mana portal was probably his best bet, but he was very wary of anything that seemed like such a panacea. There had to be a catch somewhere, some downside he hadn¡¯t noticed yet. Other than the potential for magical Armageddon if such a portal became permanent.

    Until such a downside become evident, though, he was absolutely ready to abuse it to strip away all the magical protections and benefits built into buildings. Or people. At some point people would figure out a countermeasure, and he had to get all the use he could out of it before that happened.

    ¡°You know, I can¡¯t say you¡¯re wrong about getting this guy, but at the same time, I really don¡¯t like the risk of dealing with another fae curse or whatever. Ravaeb was bad enough and he was just an Earth-side fae.¡± Lucy said, watching as Callum played catch with Alex, while she set up the screens for the war room from her laptop.

    ¡°Yes, but I¡¯ve got more advantages now,¡± Callum said. ¡°And for once I have time to do some proper surveillance ahead of time.¡± He tossed the foam ball to Alex, who headbutted it instead of trying to catch it and then pursued the errant ball into the yard. When he came back Callum picked him up to give him a hug. ¡°Alright, kiddo, we¡¯ve got to do some serious stuff now, we can play more later.¡±

    ¡°¡¯Kay, daddy,¡± Alex said, and squirmed out of his arms before running off to get his pedal car so he could tear around the back yard. Callum watched him go, shaking his head before standing up.

    ¡°Right, war room time.¡±

    ¡°I¡¯ll keep an eye on you from here,¡± Lucy said, tapping the laptop. Callum didn¡¯t blame her, since it was a nice day out ¨C as always, in their pocket universe ¨C and neither of them wanted to leave Alex completely unsupervised. That was the exact reason Lucy had put surveillance in the war room.

    Callum gave Lucy a hug and a kiss and teleported himself downstairs, settling into the chair and running through his preparations. A feeder portal, for the cloak, the cloak itself, a set of drones, and the wooden ball just in case. Then he snaked a thread of his vis through the portal to Faerie.

    The second time through, he knew where he was going so it was a fairly simple process to send his drone into the air and drag it off toward Jusael¡¯s enclave. Or princedom, really. Unlike last time, he was looking for Jusael himself, who ought to be considerably easier to find than prisoners.

    He started with the central and largest castle, since with his perceptions he should be able to spot the fae king more or less immediately. Unfortunately, there was a lot of extra space crammed into the area through fae-style spatial manipulation, so he couldn¡¯t do it all in one go. Callum also had to make sure that his drones stayed out of any visible sight-line, since even with the cloak protecting him his actions weren¡¯t actually invisible. Considering that some fae phased right through walls or skittered around tiny passages, that was more difficult than it was with a human building.

    After some observation, he ended up parking his drones in various cabinets and drawers, deep inside kitchens or bedrooms. That wasn¡¯t quite as good as he preferred, but the privacy of various fae was a better shield than being physically obscured when it came to Jusael¡¯s dwelling. With multiple drones stashed away, he was able to track Jusael¡¯s movements, and made notes with timestamps as the fae prince moved about his castle.

    The best thing would be to ambush Jusael in his sleep, but he wasn¡¯t sure the fae actually did sleep. Especially since there was no actual sunlight in his region of Faerie. Barring that, some time when Jusael was alone, since Callum was going to err on the side of excessive force. He didn¡¯t want to involve bystanders if he could help it.

    If he didn¡¯t have the advantage of the cloak and his perceptions it would have been the work of days or weeks to surveil such a huge and busy place, but Callum only needed six or seven hours. Not all at once, but spread out over the day, focusing half his attention on Jusael while he went about other business. He didn¡¯t much enjoy watching a vampire cosplayer and matching court, but it at least gave Callum time to put together a plan of action.

    ¡°Set it up for tomorrow,¡± Callum told Lucy, rubbing at his eyes to try and ease the faint headache from straining to read everything in a thousand-foot radius. ¡°Shifters and mages for backup, and Felicia in case there¡¯s a fae thing we need to deal with. Hopefully we won¡¯t need any of them, but better safe than sorry.¡±

 Chapter 7 - Dispatch

    One of the keys to Callum¡¯s plan to take care of Jusael was an idea that he¡¯d rejected long ago: the infinite portal box. His assassination of Constance had showed him that the sheer force and speed of things in space could match supernatural toughness, but intersecting drones was tricky and unwieldy. It had seemed the best way to do things at the time, but with more skill and resources came more options.

    Letting a projectile accelerate infinitely in the vacuum of space sounded good, but it wasn¡¯t as easy as that. Even the slightest drift would send it careening against the walls of the container that braced the portals, which would at best destroy the entire thing. He needed the spatial field to force the projectile to the center of the apparatus, so it would stay, pick up speed, and not end up exploding ahead of time.

    Enchanting a gravity field that pulled not just downward, but inward, was well within his capabilities after several years working with the Guild of Enchantment, and a portal pair inside a mana insulation box barely took any work at all. All that went into space near the moon, with a feeder portal to his pocket universe to keep it powered, and he started it up. A collection of corite buckshot started its infinite fall.

    The yield for such a device got absolutely insane if he let it run for weeks rather than hours, starting to climb past nuclear and into planet-cracking territory, which was not the sort of bomb he wanted lying around. In the short term though, the buckshot turned into something with a lot more pep than a mere gun. Or even artillery.

    Considering the potential of making the box, he wasn¡¯t going to tell anyone but Lucy. It was one thing to be The Ghost, and it was another to be The Ghost with a nuclear arsenal. He didn¡¯t want people thinking he could or wanted to eradicate entire countries. Nor did he want to get into thinking on that scale himself. No, The Ghost went after individuals, for their own actions.

    He and Lucy spent some time setting everything up beforehand, since they were for once inviting people over to the redoubt rather than using Chester¡¯s compound. There was a very good reason for it ¡ª Callum¡¯s portal world was completely disconnected from Faerie. There was not even a trace of Faerie¡¯s mana, which would make it extremely difficult for any retaliation on Jusael¡¯s part. Not that he was using the house for it, despite the usefulness of the war room.

    They¡¯d left Alex with Chester¡¯s people for the moment, where he was happily playing with shifter kids. Sometime soon he¡¯d start manifesting his magic, and that would introduce a whole raft of problems, but for now he was just like any other nearly-three-year-old. Admittedly, one with friends that could change between four legs and two.

    The two of them set up a big pavilion tent on one of the other islands, a smaller one with barely any greenery, along with plastic outdoor furniture. Power and internet were brought in through a temporarily-reassigned drone connection, and they set up several spare monitors on the tables. Lucy looked it over and laughed.

    ¡°Seems more like a picnic than an attack,¡± she said. ¡°Dinner and a show, featuring The Ghost!¡±

    ¡°It does seem a bit of a circus,¡± Callum agreed with a chuckle. ¡°There¡¯s more people involved every time. If it weren¡¯t a fae prince I wouldn¡¯t want to do any of this.¡±

    ¡°I wish we didn¡¯t have to do any of this,¡± Lucy grumped, popping another piece of sour candy into her mouth. Since Gayle was coming, she was flagrantly and smugly cheating on her diet. ¡°I liked it when things were quieter.¡±

    ¡°Gotta earn that level of quiet,¡± Callum sighed. ¡°There¡¯s going to be a lot more of this for a while.¡±

    ¡°I know, I know,¡± Lucy said. ¡°Doesn¡¯t mean I¡¯m looking forward to it.¡±

    ¡°Right, time to get everyone over.¡± Callum simply opened a portal to Chester¡¯s place a few minutes earlier than he¡¯d anticipated. He had feeder portals set up for the shifters and for Felicia, one from the Deep Wilds and the other from near Faerie itself, which meant that almost his entire drone portal network was tied up. No matter how many anchors he had, it never seemed to be enough.

    Chester wasn¡¯t attending himself, but his Wolfpack was, five heavy hitters that were more than enough to secure Callum¡¯s physical safety. Then there was Archmage Taisen, accompanied by Gayle, Felicia, and Ray. Not that he expected to need any of them.

    ¡°Oh wow,¡± Gayle said, looking around, her eyes bright. All the floating islands were visible around them, with the waterfalls and associated fragments of rainbow. With the protections against the wind up, it was extraordinarily picturesque. ¡°This is amazing.¡±

    ¡°It¡¯s not bad,¡± Lucy said modestly. ¡°We¡¯ll be working on getting you guys your own portal world soon enough, but no guarantees what it looks like. Hard to control that kind of thing.¡±

    ¡°I¡¯m not sure how much you¡¯re going to actually see,¡± Callum cautioned them, donning his fae cloak before settling into his chair. ¡°But you¡¯ll know if things go wrong.¡±

    The only anchor he¡¯d left in Faerie was the one embedded in the wooden masking ball, and even that was outside of the confines of the castle that Jusael used for his court. He¡¯d stuffed it into a tree, and now he used it to push out his surveillance drones and start hopping them into place through chained teleports. Since he¡¯d spent so long on it before, it only took him minutes to get them all in position.

    Jusael was very much a creature of habit, so far as Callum had observed. He moved through the same rooms, using the same hallways, accompanied by the same people. The Prince was very rarely by himself, though Callum doubted most people realized it. One of Jusael¡¯s attendants was invisible and ethereal, a flowing vortex of vis. Though it might not have been an actual person as such, maybe some manifestation of Jusael¡¯s control over the local mana. There was no way that Callum could eliminate Jusael without also affecting that phantom guard, which was something he¡¯d had to accept.

    The best time to catch Jusael by himself was not in his bedroom, considering the number of paramours he had waiting there, but at the top of a high tower. The prince often went there to send or receive bird-carried messages and sometimes practiced swordplay. It certainly looked flashy to Callum¡¯s perceptions, especially since the fae¡¯s movements would quickly exceed what he could track, but he didn¡¯t know how useful it actually was.

    Even the best swordwork couldn¡¯t beat orbital bombardment.

    He was vaguely aware of his guests chatting as he waited for Jusael to head up to the tower. Callum always felt a little awkward when other people were around for his operations since it was mostly in his head, so he was glad they were leaving him alone to work. Even if he was mostly just waiting.

    ¡°Jusael¡¯s moving,¡± Callum said, when the prince finally got some news and started the climb to the top of the tower. Given Jusael¡¯s displayed ability to be anywhere he wanted in an instant, Callum wasn¡¯t sure why he walked, but a good amount of fae life seemed to be performative. Which made Callum¡¯s job easier, if nothing else.

    The fae prince reached the top of the tower and reached out an arm, calling down one of the enormous birds that circled above the castle. He tied a scroll about its leg and then released it back into the air, where it shot off toward one of the other fae princedoms. Callum took the opportunity to teleport one of his drones to just outside the tower, out of the line of sight under an overhang created by the crenellations. For this, Callum wanted as short a path for his vis as possible.

    He tapped into his vis crystals, opening two small portals linking Faerie and Earth, and two anti-mana portals Earth-side. The next few moments were somewhat delicate, as he pushed the anti-mana portals through the connectors to Faerie before they collapsed, making sure to aim them Jusael¡¯s way. Then he pulled the anti-mana portals wide, pouring enormous amounts of vis into them to expand them to a six foot diameter. The two were positioned to intersect at Jusael¡¯s position, though given his prior experiences with large-scale anti-mana, it¡¯d blanket most of the tower¡¯s top.

    Callum figured that was the most ticklish part, because with Jusael¡¯s speed he could possibly avoid the anti-mana effects ¡ª but only if he realized what it was. Given the degree to which it had made Jusael flinch before, he was hoping that a wide-area saturation would be enough to distract and catch the fae prince in its path. Not that he expected to kill Jusael with it, but to isolate him from all the power he could draw on from his princedom.

    The blank anti-mana billowed out, not quite as energetic as it had been on Earth, but the enormous columns still blotted out big swathes of perception. Including, unfortunately, where Jusael was, but it was better that than leaving the fae prince free to pull on more power than Callum would use in a lifetime. Through the drone¡¯s pickup he heard Jusael scream, which he used as his cue to teleport over the contents of the infinity box at the same time that he repositioned the drone to see Jusael on camera.

    With the ammunition accelerated to an impossible blur, he needed to grab the entire space and move it to Faerie, making sure it was pointed in the proper direction. Even if he couldn¡¯t see the fae with his perceptions directly, his spatial instincts were so sharpened he could aim by sight alone.

    The infinite loop portals collapsed, separated as they were from the enchantments that had powered them, and the buckshot slammed into Jusael and the surroundings with the force of a small bomb. The shockwave and shrapnel took out his poor drone, the feed instantly going blank and the portal collapsing. He switched to one of the other drones he¡¯d put nearby, teleporting it up to the tower to make sure he¡¯d actually managed it. If he¡¯d simply missed Jusael, he was going to be irritated.

    ¡°What the heck did you just do?¡± Gayle asked, boggling at the feed from the drone. The entire top of the tower was simply gone, the anti-mana portals already collapsed. There was just a stump of stone, steaming slightly for reasons that were probably magical.

    ¡°Killed Jusael. Probably.¡± Unfortunately he had to add the conditional, because he¡¯d been a little too potent and there wasn¡¯t anything left that might be construed as a corpse.

    ¡°You removed a fae prince. In Faerie. In twenty minutes.¡± Taisen bit off each sentence, sounding as if he didn¡¯t believe it.

    ¡°And several hours of preparation,¡± Callum pointed out, though he had admit it had been a pretty clean and direct operation.

    ¡°You realize even I would have difficulty accomplishing that,¡± Archmage Taisen said, looking at the drone feed with narrowed eyes. ¡°And it would involve considerably more destruction. With an entire realm to draw on, it¡¯d be a pitched battle at the very least.¡±

    ¡°Pitched battles aren¡¯t really my thing,¡± Callum said, made somewhat uncomfortable by how focused Taisen looked.

    ¡°Doesn¡¯t that mean you can assassinate anyone?¡± John of Chester¡¯s Wolfpack asked, taking a sip of one of the beers Callum had provided. ¡°Like, Archmage or whoever? That amount of force concentration."

    ¡°Possibly,¡± Callum conceded. ¡°But I¡¯d rather not draw too much attention to that fact. I don¡¯t want anyone jumping in with our enemies just out of fear of me.¡±

    ¡°At this point I think you¡¯ve made as many enemies as you ever will,¡± John remarked.

    ¡°Sure, but if we¡¯re too scary people won¡¯t stop being enemies,¡± Lucy pointed out. ¡°I mean, I know I sure don¡¯t want us to have to fight all the Archmages.¡±

    ¡°That¡¯s honestly kind of scary,¡± Gayle said, still staring at the drone feed. ¡°Like, I know you¡¯re on our side, and I guess it¡¯s not too different from grandfather getting serious, but it feels different.¡±

    ¡°Looking at it, even if you destroyed the tower that shouldn¡¯t be enough to kill a prince of Faerie,¡± Felicia said, regarding the damage. ¡°I presume there was cold iron involved.¡±

    ¡°Yeah,¡± Callum said, not mentioning the anti-mana. If it ever became an issue he¡¯d reveal it, but for now it seemed better to keep it under wraps. ¡°Is there any way you can tell if I actually managed it? All the local mana seems to be in a tizzy, but that doesn¡¯t tell me anything.¡±

    ¡°In a tizzy,¡± Lucy murmured in delight. Callum gave her a brief, tired smile. She still found his occasional rural turns of phrase amusing.

    ¡°It should be safe to open a brief connection,¡± Felicia confirmed. ¡°Even a second or two will make it clear whether the princedom is leaderless. Or if Jusael is simply recovering.¡±

    The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.

    ¡°Archmage Taisen?¡± Callum waited for Taisen to summon a half-dozen spell forms and nod at Callum, ready in case something tried to come through. His head ached as he opened yet another portal between them and Faerie, finding that even with the vis crystals to take the brunt of the load, juggling so many portals, and such large ones, drained him pretty thoroughly.

    Felicia went so far as to put her hand through the portal and waved it about, like she was feeling what direction the wind was going, then drew it back. Callum shut the portal after, finding the lack of reaction encouraging. The last time Felicia had even been near Faerie, a fae prince had showed up instantly.

    ¡°The realm is trying to adhere to the next in line,¡± she reported. ¡°Jusael¡¯s successor will inherit much of his power, but Jusael himself is gone.¡±

    ¡°Great,¡± Callum said, sagging into his seat. ¡°Then we¡¯re done here.¡± He went to recall all his drones, but then stopped and waited a moment in case there was something urgent he¡¯d forgotten.

    ¡°Didn¡¯t have to do anything,¡± John rumbled. ¡°Least there was beer,¡± he concluded. Callum snorted. He had provided some refreshments, just in case they had to wait a while for Jusael to write a message, but it had turned out to be a fairly quick operation overall.

    ¡°I¡¯m glad we didn¡¯t have to do anything,¡± Gayle declared. ¡°Fighting isn¡¯t any fun and I see enough injuries with Archmage Taisen¡¯s people.¡±

    ¡°I¡¯m on your side,¡± Callum declared, pulling all his drones out of Faerie and standing up. ¡°Thank you for being on hand anyway.¡±

    ¡°This is going to make waves,¡± Taisen noted. ¡°Are you intending to go after the others? Or any of the Archmages?¡±

    ¡°Not today,¡± Callum said. ¡°I don¡¯t have any evidence the other Fae are doing anything untoward ¡ª though if you get me that, I may change my mind. I also need more corite, though,¡± he said with a grimace. ¡°I¡¯m out.¡±

    ¡°I¡¯m sure we can find some if we need another prince removed,¡± Taisen said, and Callum nodded. He hadn¡¯t expected a gift of a fairly precious material, since nobody in the Earth-side alliance had real access to Faerie. The Guild of Enchanting might be able to provide it, or he¡¯d have to scavenge it from Faerie himself.

    It would have been really nice to loot Jusael¡¯s treasury. There was so much stuff there, that even if he just took cold iron he¡¯d be set for a long time. But The Ghost was a cold, direct actor. He wasn¡¯t punishing Jusael¡¯s entire court, just the man in charge. Possibly he could have taken Jusael¡¯s private property, if any survived the destruction, but the domain treasury was off limits.

    He''d started that approach a long time back and it had proven to be a good idea as the whole reputation of The Ghost grew. The Ghost¡¯s attention was personal, and anyone who wasn¡¯t being individually evil was safe. Both their person and their property. It was an integrity that couldn¡¯t be bought, and was probably the only reason he could be the backbone of the Earth side alliance.

    If he wanted to make a world that he wanted Alex and any other future children to inherit, he needed to be strict with his behavior. Even if not everyone would agree with it, consistency was king.

    ¡°Now that this is done, we should discuss how we¡¯re going to approach Janry,¡± Taisen said. Callum nodded agreement. The problem was, he wasn¡¯t sure what he could do about Janry. Not only was removing an archmage an entirely different prospect than the constrained politics of the fae, but he wasn¡¯t sure how much Janry was personally responsible for. Or if he was just another link in a chain leading somewhere even further afield. It was useless to take out the emperor when it was the grand vizier who was the problem all along.

    ¡°We¡¯ll have to be careful about it. I might be able to target him, but only when we¡¯re absolutely, positively certain,¡± he said.

    ¡°Oh, I agree,¡± Taisen replied. ¡°And if you have to take him on directly, we should at least peel away as many other Houses as possible.¡±

    ¡°I suppose we¡¯re done here then,¡± Callum said, glancing around at the little island. ¡°You all can come back to my house, or I can send you back to Chester¡¯s. I¡¯m sure most of you would rather just go home.¡±

    ¡°I¡¯ll stay,¡± Gayle said, glancing over at the monitors even if they were blank. ¡°To represent House Hargrave.¡±

    ¡°That sort of stuff is Chester¡¯s or Lisa¡¯s business,¡± John said, standing up. The rest of the wolfpack followed. ¡°We¡¯ll head back.¡±

    Callum spent the next few minutes juggling portals and teleports, cleaning up the little outpost by the simple expedient of sending the entire thing into his back yard. He wasn¡¯t really looking forward to another afternoon of hashing out political moves, but he did have a responsibility. He didn¡¯t want to end up with another Night Lands debacle.

    ***

    ¡°What.¡± Archmage Janry stared at the fae standing in his study. It wasn¡¯t one of the usual messengers, since the Lesser Courts at least used generally human-looking types for that purpose. This fae looked like nothing more than a very large, black dog, even if it could speak.

    ¡°The Court of Roses will be dealing with internal matters for some time,¡± the dog said, underplaying the sort of cutthroat maneuvering that a power struggle entailed. ¡°We have no interest in severing relations but of necessity any help will be contingent on the debts or inclinations of individual fae. The Court of Stone will be the first among equals until such a time as the Court of Roses has resolved matters.¡±

    ¡°Very well.¡± Janry knew that he betrayed no real emotion over the news, a quirk that he¡¯d used to his benefit for a long time. But that didn¡¯t mean the irritation didn¡¯t burn at the back of his chest. ¡°I will redirect my communications to the Court of Stone.¡±

    The dog made a sort of amused growl and left. Janry watched it go, then sighed and then summoned his aide via scry-comm. Magus Tiana appeared with commendable alacrity, and once again Janry schooled his ire for the sake of his niece.

    ¡°I¡¯ve just been told that Wells removed Prince Jusael of the Court of Roses,¡± Janry said without any preamble. Not that he knew that for certain, but there was nobody else it could be. ¡°Inform the Archmage Council, and tell them that we¡¯ll be dealing with the Court of Stone instead for the foreseeable future.¡±

    ¡°Yessir,¡± Tiana said, only showing her surprise with a slight widening of her eyes, and bowed before leaving the study. Janry watched her go, then stood and paced over to his window, looking down the slopes of the majestic mountain his House was built on. He was finding the Earth alliance, though they hadn¡¯t yet started calling themselves that, very irksome. If they had attacked one of the Houses, that would have been different. But removing Jusael was only praiseworthy to the Seven Lesser Courts.

    It would be hard to convince the neutral Houses to take it seriously when the fae didn¡¯t themselves. To them it was a stylish move, to be admired, not the threat that it really was. Janry had no doubt Wells was working with Archmages Taisen and Hargrave, along with that stray fae princess, and that was how he accomplished the removal of so powerful a target. Even if Wells was an Archmage himself, it wasn¡¯t possible to summon the raw power necessary to eradicate a prince of the Seven Lesser Courts so easily.

    He turned and unlocked his vis-keyed safe, taking out a specific scry-comm and activating it. Then he returned to his House paperwork while he waited, for he didn¡¯t expect an immediate answer. There were plenty of plans that needed adjustment anyway, even though the general outline remained undisturbed.

    Removing Wells himself remained an almost impossible proposition; if the fae couldn¡¯t find and eliminate him, no mage could. Human magic just didn¡¯t have that sort of flexibility, so Janry wasn¡¯t going to bother with that at all. But given Well¡¯s reticence in dealing with people who didn¡¯t threaten him directly, undermining the power base of the Earth alliance was perfectly reasonable. And there were a number of allies that were vulnerable to indirect action.

    ¡°This is the Master of Weltentor.¡± A sour voice came from the scry-comm, and Janry positioned it in the center of his desk with a flick of his kinesis focus.

    ¡°This is Archmage Janry,¡± he said. ¡°Were you aware that Wells removed Prince Jusael yesterday?¡±

    ¡°I was not,¡± the response came at length. ¡°That is an extremely dangerous man. You need to eliminate him before he does any more damage.¡±

    ¡°If he could be found, I would,¡± Janry said. ¡°Short of assaulting Alpha Chester¡¯s compound in the middle of a visit ¨C which would not guarantee anything ¨C he is impossible to find. Even the Guild of Enchanting doesn¡¯t deal with him directly. Only his remotes.¡±

    ¡°Then my strategy remains,¡± Weltentor said. ¡°Assault him by proxy. Hurt him. Force him into a vulnerable position.¡±

    ¡°That¡¯s your role,¡± Janry said, somewhat irritated. He was constrained by needing to keep the support of the other archmages. Weltentor was not, but the fact was the vampire had done very little to prosecute his part of the offensive. With free reign on Earth there was a lot of damage Weltentor could be doing, though admittedly of the incidental variety. There were lots of low-level personnel under Chester or the rogue Houses that were vulnerable.

    Unfortunately Janry couldn¡¯t actually order Weltentor. The destruction of the Night Lands portals had effectively severed their relations, and unless Janry could convince Duvall to reopen it ¨C if such was even possible ¨C they were at best allies of convenience. And Duvall was unlikely to be amenable until after the issue of Earth was settled.

    ¡°I have my own targets,¡± Weltentor said shortly. ¡°I will have to advance my plans.¡± The scry-comm clicked as Weltentor hung up, and Janry rubbed at his temples. He very much disliked working with people he couldn¡¯t control; even the fae were very biddable given the proper incentives and framing.

    As annoying as Weltentor was, he did have a point. Janry would have to escalate the efforts to deal with the people supporting the Earth alliance¡¯s principal actors. But do so in such a way that he didn¡¯t tip things over into open conflict, since that would certainly scare off some Houses. That wouldn¡¯t always be the case, but supernaturals tended to move slowly.

    The question was what the best target would be.

    ***

    ¡°Thank you for agreeing to meet me, archmage,¡± Grand Magus Lorenzo Rossi said. Archmage Duvall nodded at him, lifting her teacup and taking a sip. As much as she would have preferred to remain completely aloof, the Guild of Enchanting was her most important contact ¡ª she barely worked with anyone other than Rossi.

    The gift of a rare tea was unexpected ¡ª but suspicious. House Duvall and the Guild of Enchanting were on good enough terms that such a bribe implied asking something beyond the normal bounds of commerce. In these uncertain times, she was loath to take on any special work, but the coalition put together by House Janry had frozen her out of some of her usual markets. Not that anyone could replace House Duvall for certain services ¡ª but they could certainly restrict certain amenities.

    ¡°House Duvall is always glad to entertain the Guild of Enchanting,¡± she said diplomatically. ¡°And of course, it¡¯s good to see you personally. Thank you for the tea.¡± It was good, with notes that couldn¡¯t be found on Earth or the Deep Wilds, delicate and sweet and tart with lingering hints that seemed more like emotions and memories than actual flavors.

    ¡°I understand it¡¯s a particularly good crop,¡± Rossi agreed, studying her across the table. ¡°Unfortunately, current events in Faerie may make it more difficult to get in the future.¡±

    ¡°I know,¡± Duvall said, trying not to grimace. She wasn¡¯t going to lay odds on how the conflict was going to turn out, but she wasn¡¯t willing to rule anything out ¡ª not after seeing what that heretic Wells was willing to do. Some of her detractors among the other archmages had called her out for cowardice, but she¡¯d always kept House Duvall neutral in any conflict, small or large. Besides which, she knew what Wells was playing with and she wanted no part of it, either to deal with it being used as a weapon or the inevitable consequence of a mistake. ¡°However, if you¡¯re here about those events I¡¯m afraid I can¡¯t offer any aid of note.¡±

    ¡°I¡¯m not, actually,¡± Rossi said, visibly brightening and clearly glad to put the topic behind him. ¡°I have a spatial enchantment I would like you to help me refine, as well as some work I would like to get your estimate on.¡±

    ¡°Oh?¡± Duvall felt herself relaxing. That was far safer a topic than current politics ¡ª and the Guild of Enchanting sometimes had interesting ideas she wouldn¡¯t have come up with herself. Theirs was the collaboration that had resulted in the switchboard that made the modern teleportation network possible. Even in the wake of the changes she¡¯d needed to make, it was still the best way to connect so many destinations.

    ¡°If you have the time, I¡¯d appreciate you coming out to our new site,¡± Rossi said. ¡°I think you¡¯d find it interesting and, speaking frankly, your professional opinion would be valuable.¡±

    ¡°I find myself with a surfeit of time today,¡± Duvall replied. ¡°When I finish my tea I would enjoy seeing your new site.¡± She didn¡¯t even know that the Guild of Enchanting had expanded its holdings.

    ¡°The new location is somewhat secret,¡± Rossi cautioned her, even as she was wondering about the particulars. ¡°Of course, I know you will keep it in confidence.¡±

    ¡°Certainly,¡± Duvall replied. She was quite curious, but didn¡¯t let that hurry her through the tea. It was just too good. Only once she had finished the last drop of tea did she stand. The servants could clean up while she saw what Rossi had to show her.

    Like most of the Houses, Rossi had converted his connections to portals, though unlike most Houses he had a direct connection with House Duvall. They stepped through to the Guild of Enchanting, but Duvall noticed that the far end had been moved to Earth from Faerie. The layout was still the same though, and she noted that Rossi was leading her to the high security section, where he kept experimental products.

    Out of respect both for his privacy and for the sensitivity of enchantment creation she didn¡¯t use her active senses to probe the area, so she was surprised when Rossi showed her to another portal and stepped through. She followed, and frowned as she studied the sensation of the surrounding space. There was clearly a spatial construct in place, and she pulsed her vis to examine it.

    ¡°This is¡ª¡± she stopped. It was a construct meant to make space act like Earth¡¯s, an artificial version of her stabilization. It encompassed only the single room, though there were many other similar ones covering the rest of the structure. They were in a portal world ¡ª but not one she recognized.

    ¡°It¡¯s not very good,¡± Rossi said, half-apologetically, while she was still recovering from the shock. ¡°Any significant spellcasting will disrupt it, so it¡¯s a stopgap and not a solution. We still need you to alter this space.¡±

    ¡°This is a new portal world.¡± Duvall snapped, not making it a question. ¡°How did you gain access to it?¡±

    ¡°Alas, our sources remain confidential,¡± Rossi said, which all but guaranteed that the source was Wells. ¡°However, we control sole access to this particular portal world. We have it on some authority that sole or primary access to other portal worlds may be offered to Houses on a case by case basis in the near future. All of which will need stabilization.¡±

    Duvall huffed, looking around the blank receiving room. It went against the grain ¡ª she didn¡¯t like anyone infringing upon her prerogatives and the specialty of House Duvall. But she wasn¡¯t stupid. She certainly couldn¡¯t provide access to new portal worlds. Wells was running insane risks, dealing with dimensional portals, but if he could make it work it was something that she couldn¡¯t compete on.

    Every House would want their own, but they¡¯d also want the land stabilized. The enchantment Rossi wanted to collaborate with her on would provide a temporary solution, enough to entice people to build, and create more demand for her services. Not that it was lacking just yet ¡ª but there was only so much land in Faerie or the Deep Wilds.

    She hadn¡¯t gotten where she was by taking the short view. Wells¡¯ experiments would only end in disaster ¡ª a disaster she had no desire to be part of. But in this case, there wasn¡¯t a good reason to stay completely aloof. Whether these supposed other portal worlds appeared or not, House Duvall had to remain on the forefront of spatial magic.

    ¡°Very well,¡± she said, eyeing the enchantment skeptically. ¡°Let us take a look. I am certain House Duvall can improve on this amateurish work.¡±

    Rossi smiled.

 Chapter 8 - Investment

    Ray Danforth offered the mundane a professional smile, the kind that barely reached the lips and didn¡¯t touch the eyes at all. Not that people in the government expected anything else, especially not from people like him. Everyone knew what to expect from someone in a suit with badge, earpiece, and gun. Even if it was an arcanopistol rather than mundane issue.

    ¡°Thank you for your time,¡± he said. ¡°You may go.¡± The employee scampered out without a backward glance. Ray sighed and rubbed his eyes, glancing at Felicia. She chuckled softly, the power of her voice thrumming through the air. He¡¯d been interviewing most of the people even though Felicia could compel answers from them ¡ªprecisely because she could compel answers from them. She wasn¡¯t just acting as someone¡¯s agent anymore; she was a Fae Princess and she couldn¡¯t forge her own story by acting like her predecessors and opponents.

    ¡°At least we¡¯re nearly done,¡± she said. Ray nodded. Screening through entire government departments for people who might be affected by fae compulsions took a lot of time, no matter how much or little magic was used. They¡¯d only found two people affected out of almost a thousand, but that was still two people too many. It didn¡¯t bode well for the rest of the departments ¨C and other governments ¨C they had yet to cover. But the more people they found, the easier it would be to find the root source and deal with it all at once.

    It was clear enough that GAR and the Seven Lesser Courts were involved, but that wasn¡¯t good enough. They needed names, times, locations. If not for them, then for The Ghost. Arbitrary punishments were not a good way to start a new era of supernatural politics, and holding any random member they could find accountable would not be appropriate.

    ¡°Next is Senator Wagner¡¯s office,¡± Felicia said, consulting her tablet. ¡°We¡¯ll probably¡ª¡±

    Ray¡¯s shields snapped into existence as the wall exploded, thickened air stopping debris dead, and he reached for his combat foci by reflex. Something smashed into his shields so hard that he was flung out of his seat and into the far wall, only the cushioning built into his protective construct keeping him from being knocked silly.

    ¡°Stop.¡± Felicia¡¯s voice hammered out, every speck and particle and piece of debris freezing in place. Even mana stopped, his shield of solidified air turning crystal from the force of her command. It froze a man in midair, like a fly in amber ¡ª or rather, a vampire, his hands already partway around Felicia¡¯s neck. She stepped back out of range with a single, unhurried step and glanced at Ray. He gave her a thumbs up, reaching for a vis cuff. The vampire was clearly powerful, but given sufficient time the cuff would drain him enough to be handled.

    Then the vampire¡¯s head moved and his body flex, shattering Felicia¡¯s control. Sound returned, along with blaring alarms and screams as the building shuddered, creaking from the damage the vampire had done. Ray changed his mind and flicked out a combat focus, trying to pull all the air out of the vampire¡¯s lungs ¡ª but the attacker had already moved.

    One of Felicia¡¯s guards appeared from her shadow, now taking the form of a uniformed agent, and aimed his arcanopistol before he even stopped moving. But he wasn¡¯t a strong fae just yet, and while fast was not up to the task of taking down the vampire. He managed a few quick shots, but was rendered into red mist an instant later.

    Ray flung out walls of air shear, miniature vortices to stymie and disrupt the vampire¡¯s movement as he drew his own arcanopistol and switched the bullets to mordite. Even in the seconds that took the vampire threw Felicia through the wall, her power not quite enough to make him stop but at least enough to keep her intact as she fended him off. The other fae guards were entirely useless, outsped and outmuscled by the vampire¡¯s power.

    ¡°Burn.¡± Felicia¡¯s voice came again a second later, the command more directed, and the floor, the air, the mana itself all burst into flame where she was focused. The vampire reappeared for a moment, clothes combusted and smoldering, but not much harmed. In that moment Ray couldn¡¯t help but think about Wells¡¯ certainty, about someone coming for them. Apparently Wells was prescient, and considering the power of the vampire in question the only one it could be was Weltentor.

    He took advantage of Weltentor¡¯s moment of distraction to fire on the vampire, which either didn¡¯t land or didn¡¯t hurt it, for a moment later the vampire smashed into his shield again. Ray could feel his vis shredding under the force of the attack, and he only managed to squeeze off one more bullet before the gun was torn away and the vampire¡¯s hands were around his throat, shrugging off the vis of Ray¡¯s bubble like so much water.

    ¡°Surrender yourself or he dies,¡± Weltentor said, looking at Felicia. Everything froze for a moment, her eyes meeting Ray¡¯s. He couldn¡¯t even gasp against the iron band about his neck, but he could move his vis. Ray mouthed a word at her, the one they¡¯d settled on for certain types of emergencies, and he saw by the slight shading of her eyes as she got it.

    Before Weltentor choked him out entirely Ray triggered his homebond, feeling it vibrate through him as he let his bubble collapse back into his body. There was a horrifying sensation of being wrenched sideways, like every nerve in his body was being turned inside out, and then he was somewhere else.

    Ray staggered and heaved, mentally cursing Wells¡¯ homebond, but when Felicia popped into existence next to him he was glad for it. Even if the first thing she did was lose her lunch. Normal homebonds were not that bad.

    ¡°You okay?¡± He rasped, and Felicia nodded.

    ¡°Aside from the trip and my retainers,¡± she said sourly, wiping her mouth. Ray coughed and channeled vis into his scry-comm.

    ¡°Archmage Taisen,¡± Ray he said, throat sore but functioning. They¡¯d put their homebond in the Antarctic base, lacking a more secure place with fae mana. ¡°We were attacked ¡ª will report soon.¡± He wrinkled his nose as the confirmation came, feeling a little sorry for the janitorial crew that would have to clean up the mess.

    They managed to get cleaned up and settled back in surprisingly quickly. Ray felt a little self-conscious about having Gayle come in just for a bruised throat, but he had to admit it was nice to be able to give a report without having to strain. Not that they had to give a report, as neither of them were technically under House Taisen anymore, but it would be stupid not to read their allies in about what had just happened.

    ¡°I¡¯m not sure how much I like saying that Wells was right,¡± Ray concluded. ¡°Without those homebonds we¡¯d have been properly screwed. But they aren¡¯t going to save us a second time. Whoever that is, they¡¯re still out there. I think it¡¯s Weltentor, but I don¡¯t know.¡±

    ¡°I suspect it is,¡± Taisen agreed. ¡°Not many vampires could get through a shield with that little effort. Which raises the question of how exactly he managed to get from the Night Lands to Earth, and how he¡¯s managing to maintain his power here.¡± Taisen shook his head. ¡°Though I suppose that runs secondary to what we do about it.¡±

    ¡°Or why they targeted us,¡± Ray said. ¡°I can see Weltentor having reason to go after Wells, or even you, but why Felicia and I?¡±

    ¡°Politics,¡± Felicia said. ¡°Finding Wells is nearly impossible. Finding us is less so, and Wells is invested in us.¡±

    ¡°True,¡± Ray said, grimacing. He still wasn¡¯t used to being something more than a simple agent. Inanely, the only thought he had at the moment was how hard it was going to make the investigation.

    ¡°At least what we do about it is obvious,¡± Felicia said. ¡°We have to remove Weltentor.¡±

    ***

    Callum¡¯s basement had what was probably the most valuable shelf in the entire world. Or worlds, to include the liminal spaces. Lucy had taken all his notes and modeling for the dimensional portals and printed out a statue of the actual spatial magic for each location, giving them their own bases etched with the corresponding GPS coordinates for each of the portal worlds he¡¯d found. The row of figurines had all the information necessary to access every world that Callum had found so far, those that were habitable anyway, so that any spatial mage could reproduce access in the future.

    He placed the latest miniature on the shelf, adjusting it slightly to make sure it was straight. There were reasons beyond just pure theatre to have the references. They were going to be, essentially, selling these to various Houses, and Callum had learned the value of presentation from his prior life as a consultant. True, private access to a pocket universe and infinite mana were strong selling points, but nothing beat a physical token when it came to holding people¡¯s interest. Of course, he¡¯d have to be careful about who had access to a fully rendered model of the dimensional portals, considering the inherent dangers, so the mage houses would probably get something deliberately inaccurate.

    ¡°You know, it feels maybe weird we haven¡¯t run into a portal world with people in it,¡± Lucy said, fiddling with her laptop to save the footage the latest pocket universe they¡¯d found. One that seemed to be an endless stretch of lightless caverns, which probably was quite valuable but Callum was glad to leave the exploration and colonization to someone else. If there were critters in it, they were probably something horrific.

    ¡°Well, what, of the six main portal worlds there¡¯s only people in three of them? Deep Wilds doesn¡¯t count since it was colonized by humans. And I don¡¯t think the dragons come from the dragonlands.¡± Callum shook his head. ¡°Honestly I¡¯m a little surprised we¡¯ve found as many as we have, especially with any kind of life. I thought it¡¯d be more like space, you know?¡±

    ¡°I actually thought it¡¯d be more full of monsters,¡± Lucy said. ¡°You know, like those creepy giant space things from that first world you opened.¡±

    ¡°Yeah, I¡¯m a little surprised too,¡± Callum admitted. ¡°Though I¡¯ve been restricting things to near-Earthlike dimensions. I bet a few of the ones we ran across that felt weird had all kinds of nasty monsters inside ¡®em.¡±

    ¡°Too bad we didn¡¯t look closer,¡± Lucy said sadly. ¡°Monsters are cool. You know, on the other end of a camera.¡±

    ¡°Y¡¯know, if they¡¯re like the fae, they might not stay on the other end of a camera,¡± Callum pointed out. ¡°So I¡¯d rather be careful. Anyway, let¡¯s get this rolling.¡±

    ¡°Operation heavy bribery,¡± Lucy grinned.

    ¡°No surer way to get people to do what you want,¡± Callum agreed. ¡°Time to get Rossi on the horn.¡±

    They had a dedicated drone for the Guild of Enchanting now, given how closely they were working with Rossi¡¯s people. Callum still didn¡¯t really trust them as such, but he did trust that Rossi was smart enough to see where his best interests were. Nobody else could supply new portal worlds, and even if they were being used as political bribes, the Guild of Enchantment got a lot of value from being the sole and exclusive distributors.

    ¡°Mister Wells,¡± Rossi said, appearing on the drone screen a few minutes later. He had on a pleasant smile, probably because he knew that he was about to be extremely wealthy. If not by actual money, by the sheer amount of favor he¡¯d get from the other Houses.

    ¡°Mister Rossi,¡± Callum said. ¡°We have all twenty portal worlds for you.¡± Most of them were unexciting save for being endless sources of mana and, of course, extremely private. There were a few gems, like the enormous misty mountain valley that was probably even better than the island world Callum had claimed for himself, and he was sure that Rossi would know how to leverage that the best.

    ¡°Oh, that¡¯s excellent,¡± Rossi said, beaming. ¡°I¡¯ve made a few discreet inquiries and I think we¡¯ll want more soon enough, but with a full twenty that should be enough to start.¡±

    ¡°I¡¯ve marked the most interesting ones with red stickies,¡± Callum said, teleporting over a stack of folders. ¡°When you want access to one, just supply the frames and I¡¯ll set up the anchors.¡± Despite the new portal world, with its own source of enchantment material, building twenty sets of portal frames out of his own resources was too much of an ask. Just the anchor pairs were a hell of an investment, since he had to buy pretty much all of that from the Guild.

    The author''s content has been appropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

    Despite the cost, it was easier than spending the time trying to find a cenote in the Night Lands. Callum found it weird to be in a position where his time was more valuable than enchanting metal, but it was probably inevitable. As soon as he realized it was possible to open dimensional portals, they were always going to be the most potent use of his time. From a monetary perspective, anyway. He found having to come up with so many usable worlds to be tedious, and it gave him a pang of sympathy for Duvall. He understood more what it meant for her to spend most of her time stabilizing portal world space.

    There was one world that he¡¯d found that wasn¡¯t on the stack of folders, because it went to House Hargrave. Taisen was happy enough with the tidal plain, and in fact preferred something desolate for a military outpost, but after Callum had found a few more conventionally acceptable places Lucy and Gayle had put their heads together and presented their choice to Archmage Hargrave. It wouldn¡¯t do for one of his allies to pay for the privilege.

    ¡°Excellent,¡± Rossi said, fanning the folders with kinesis and glancing at them. ¡°Archmage Duvall has agreed to sell her stabilization services on the new portal worlds, too, so I¡¯ll get her one first. She¡¯s probably the best person to sell them to the rest of the Archmages.¡±

    ¡°Too bad I can¡¯t hire her,¡± Callum said wistfully. The enchantment he had worked well enough, but he was aware it wasn¡¯t quite as good. If nothing else, it meant there was always an enchantment surrounding them, and at some point Alex was going to get too vis-dense for it to do its job.

    ¡°Give it a few decades, she might change her mind,¡± Rossi said, and Callum was once again reminded of the time scale these people normally operated under.

    ¡°I¡¯m not holding my breath,¡± Callum sighed. ¡°Anyway, just so long as these other houses know where these private worlds are from.¡± He doubted the Guild of Enchanting would try to sell him short, especially since Callum had his own sort of reputation.

    ¡°Oh, I¡¯m looking forward to that part of it,¡± Rossi said, clearly far more at ease with political wrangling than Callum was. ¡°A lot of people are afraid of you, so you can imagine how it reflects on the Guild that we, along with Houses Hargrave and Taisen, have managed to convince you to part with such valuable things.¡±

    ¡°Ha.¡± Callum shook his head. He¡¯d brought that reputation on himself. ¡°Well, I guess I can¡¯t object to that image management. So long as it works.¡±

    After a few parting pleasantries, he left Rossi to sort through the folders and start the process with the other Houses. Callum expected they¡¯d never be friendly as such, but the more he tempted away from Janry¡¯s side the easier it¡¯d be to deal with the remaining ones. At some point there¡¯d be few enough that he could take direct action.

    He was just about to put everything away and take a break with his family when Lucy¡¯s laptop chirped with an incoming message. The tone was the one Lucy had set up for Felicia, since she was now her own independent faction. One he was backing ¨C a state of affairs that boggled the mind.

    ¡°Lucy here, what can I do for you?¡± Callum put away some of the remaining bits and bobs from their experimentation as he listened to Lucy¡¯s half of the conversation. ¡°Oh. Well! I¡¯ll get him then.¡± Lucy glanced up at him and tilted her head to beckon him over. Callum joined her at the desk and she put the connection on speaker.

    ¡°We were attacked by a vampire like you said,¡± Felicia¡¯s voice came, and Callum pressed his lips together. He wasn¡¯t sure if he was worried or vindicated. ¡°We had to use the homebonds, which are awful by the way,¡± she added with a laugh. ¡°But they worked, so thank you.¡±

    ¡°You¡¯re welcome,¡± he said. ¡°And believe me, they used to be a lot worse. I just don¡¯t have the practice Duvall does. Anyway, your attacker got away?¡±

    ¡°He flattened us,¡± Felicia confirmed. ¡°If he weren¡¯t trying to take prisoners we would have been dead before we used the homebonds. Next time I don¡¯t think he¡¯ll make that mistake.¡±

    ¡°Likely not,¡± Callum agreed. ¡°I don¡¯t suppose you have any way to track him?¡±

    ¡°He has protection,¡± Felicia said, sounding grim. ¡°He¡¯s got some fae enchantments, probably given to him by one of the princes of the Seven Lesser Courts.¡±

    ¡°He just shrugged off mordite rounds.¡± Ray¡¯s voice cut into the call. ¡°Not that I¡¯m completely sure I hit him. Most vampires can¡¯t actually dodge bullets but I think this one could.¡±

    ¡°It¡¯s probably Weltentor,¡± Felicia said. ¡°I never really paid close attention to him before, though. Nobody did.¡±

    ¡°I find it pretty suspect nobody realized there was a vampire around that could just casually break combat shields,¡± Ray said, sounding aggrieved. ¡°Not even Archmage Taisen.¡±

    ¡°I¡¯ve always figured there were big old monsters out there,¡± Callum said dryly. ¡°And I figured they¡¯d come out when the chance showed itself. If anything I¡¯m surprised you two survived.¡±

    ¡°Well, we won¡¯t if we run into him a second time,¡± Felicia said. ¡°Which was why I called. We are safe in Taisen¡¯s base, but we can¡¯t stay here. If nothing else, I need to finish tracking down the culprits who have been affecting mundane government officials.¡±

    ¡°The best defense being a good offense,¡± Callum mused. ¡°You need me to take out this vampire.¡±

    ¡°I do,¡± Felicia said. ¡°I beg it as a favor from The Ghost to Princess Blackblood.¡±

    Callum pursed his lips in a soundless whistle. Those were magic words ¡ª literally. While he hadn¡¯t internalized all the rules of supernatural interaction, he was no longer as ignorant as he had been and he knew that a favor was significant currency. Not that he would have turned down the request anyway, now that he was stuck in a web of alliances. For all that he¡¯d started out trying to avoid them, he had ended up with a lot of responsibilities.

    ¡°Of course,¡± Callum said, bending his mind to the problem. ¡°He probably isn¡¯t based out of the Night Lands anymore. I¡¯ll check anyway.¡± If he could catch the guy in the castle at the center of the now much-reduced settlement, that would solve everything.

    ¡°I very much doubt it,¡± Ray said. ¡°But I¡¯m not sure how we would figure out where Weltentor is. You showed how easy it was for a single person to hide.¡±

    ¡°Oh yeah, I¡¯m very much aware of that,¡± Callum said, sorting through his drones until he found the one parked in the Night Lands. ¡°I suspect we¡¯re going to have to lure him out. I¡¯m not sure how your glamours work, but could you show off a fake version of yourself? And Ray?¡± He had issues with glamours himself, but they seemed to actually function for everyone else so presumably a vampire would be fooled by a magical hologram.

    ¡°It¡¯s possible,¡± Felicia said after a few seconds. ¡°Though I do not think that I could effectively defend the glamoured versions.¡±

    ¡°No, it¡¯s mostly to absorb the alpha strike anyway,¡± Callum said, poking at the laptop connected to the drone in question, bringing up the proper feed and pushing the computer over to Lucy. ¡°A stakeout would be incredibly tedious but I can¡¯t think of any other way to do it.¡±

    ¡°Stakeouts are boring,¡± Ray agreed, and Callum blinked, only remembering just then that he was talking to investigative agents. Of course they¡¯d know. ¡°If we¡¯re going in that direction, though, we might as well have some of Taisen¡¯s people around.¡±

    ¡°Probably a good idea if they can keep out of sight,¡± Callum agreed. ¡°I can give you an anchor so I can be right there, and Taisen¡¯s people can be the sweepers or net or whatever the proper term is. I¡¯m sure he knows what he¡¯s doing on that score.¡±

    ¡°Yes indeed,¡± Ray said. ¡°I¡¯d be worried about casualties unless the Archmage himself was part of the force, though.¡±

    ¡°If he wants to be, great,¡± Callum said. ¡°Though if this vampire is anything like me he¡¯s not going to show up if there are a bunch of mage bubbles around. We¡¯ll have to play it by ear, and just be ready to hit hard when he shows up.¡±

    ¡°It¡¯s not much of a plan,¡± Ray sighed.

    ¡°Unfortunately, being on the defense doesn¡¯t give you too many options,¡± Callum said, watching the display from the laptop as Lucy sent the drone buzzing to where the settlement had been. What had been a large sprawl of lit estates was down to only a few, the Night Lands shuffling unprotected tracts of land off to somewhere else in the portal world, or destroying it entirely. The castle itself was gone as well, so there was no reconnaissance to be done.

    ¡°That¡¯s worrying,¡± Felicia said, when Callum reported on his findings in the Night Lands. ¡°If he¡¯s using fae methods to get from the Night Lands to Earth, and they¡¯re anchored to a building, then he could just let the Night Lands move it on a whim. I¡¯m not fully certain how it works but I doubt anyone could keep up with it.¡±

    ¡°Bearding a vampire in his lair is probably not in the cards,¡± Callum agreed.

    ¡°C¡¯mon, you can¡¯t mix metaphors that way,¡± Lucy said with a laugh. ¡°Will the cloak thing work to bypass the fae protection or does that mean mordite isn¡¯t going to work for you either?¡±

    ¡°That is a very good question, but if I understand it correctly I have to use my own methods to get around defenses. The cloak just keeps my vis hidden.¡± Callum shrugged. "It¡¯s a lot easier these days, though dealing with a vampire that has that much power might be an ordeal.¡±

    ¡°The more you try to stretch it, the weaker it¡¯s going to be,¡± Felicia added. ¡°If you only expect the cloak to hide you, it will be at its most effective.¡±

    ¡°Right,¡± Callum said. ¡°That¡¯s the plan.¡±

    Anti-mana was going to be necessary, but he was pretty sure it wouldn¡¯t be enough by itself. A vamp could move fast, and he could only make so many portals and aim them so quickly. The anti-material mordite rounds would be a great chaser, since he would bet that the anti-mana would take out whatever fae trinkets the vampire was using.

    He had no illusions it would be anything other than a scramble. Against supernatural opponents, he couldn¡¯t manage anything that wasn¡¯t an ambush, and this would be at best a counter-ambush. But since he¡¯d be operating through an anchor, the only real danger was to Felicia and Ray, and given sufficient glamour protections they probably wouldn¡¯t be in any real danger themselves.

    ¡°We should start this as soon as possible,¡± he added.

    ¡°The vampire wouldn¡¯t expect us to be out immediately, I think,¡± Felicia said. ¡°It¡¯ll give us time to brief a squad and get them ready.¡±

    ¡°Yeah, I can¡¯t give you any advice on acting natural,¡± Callum said. ¡°Just make sure you ping me before going anywhere. I¡¯ll have an anchor to you in a few minutes, if I can just hand it off to Taisen.¡±

    ¡°Yes, please.¡± Felicia said.

    A few minutes later, Felicia had a bad penny tucked in her pocket. He realized that was the first time anyone had actually gotten one of his anchors, and he¡¯d been putting them inside drones for so long that he barely ever used an unsupported portal anymore. They were always there inside the various remotes and nexus relays, but it had been years since he¡¯d used one by itself.

    ¡°Call me when you¡¯re ready,¡± Callum said. ¡°It¡¯ll be good to finally close out the vampires.¡±

    ***

    Weltentor stalked through the city streets, ignoring the spitting rain and the oblivious mundanes. He couldn¡¯t stay for long; the mana of the Night Lands was thin, fading away as he consumed it. So far away from the Ways connection even the newest vampire would draw on the mana faster than it could be replenished. Thanks to Wells, the entirety of Earth was a slowly drying desert.

    He had drained a number of mundanes since he¡¯d arrived but without the Night Lands mana aiding the process it hadn¡¯t done much. Better to stick to draining mages and drinking moonwater, if he wanted to stay satiated. He was sure that killing GAR mages would be looked on poorly by the organization, but they¡¯d become toothless so he hardly cared.

    The only people he actually respected were the fae princes and a few of the more aggressive Archmages. Hargrave and Taisen, of course, except they were unfortunately opposed to him. Janry was a calculating bastard, but Weltentor doubted he had much skill in combat ¡ª which made him, ultimately, just another useless fop. Archmages Saren and Tissini had actual skill, but hadn¡¯t used it for so long their acumen was more theoretical than real.

    ¡°Any word on the target?¡± He asked through the scry-comm. Weltentor¡¯s own network was, of course, nearly destroyed, so he had to rely on GAR and the Archmages for intelligence. A task at which they were at least reasonably capable. Finding the people he really wanted to kill would have been impossible otherwise.

    ¡°She still hasn¡¯t emerged from House Taisen,¡± the DAI agent on the other end replied. ¡°They¡¯re doing some sweeps in the area first.¡±

    Weltentor shrugged. He would rather have clashed with the mages directly, but it wouldn¡¯t have done anything to hurt the people he cared to. The Ghost himself was nearly unreachable, but the fae princess had to show herself. He was quite irked that he hadn¡¯t managed to capture her the first time, but that was what happened when he tried to follow other people¡¯s rules of engagement.

    Next time he¡¯d just kill her. It was easier and less prone to error. And he didn¡¯t have time to figure out where their enchantments were anyway, so the fae princes could go hunt their own food. The Ghost had already shown no fear of them, so Weltentor didn¡¯t think he owed them quite as much as they had accounted. Especially not with Jusael dead.

    The progression was simple. With the princess dead, it would break whatever it was that shielded The Ghost. Once The Ghost was found, he could be destroyed. Weltentor didn¡¯t know how, but not with a magical assault. Compelling a mundane general to deploy the most powerful mundane weaponry available would probably be the most effective. Weltentor would take no small satisfaction in that.

    Only with the threat of The Ghost removed could Weltentor begin rebuilding his power base once again. Now that Weltentor had more personal power it would be far quicker and easier, and he wouldn¡¯t by hampered by GAR delusion of hiding magic from the mundanes. That approach was gone, and the only reason the secret hadn¡¯t been broken yet was that people wanted to get this struggle done with first. Bringing Earth to heel would require all their energies, after all.

    ¡°Tell me when she appears,¡± he said, not for the first time. Considering how late they¡¯d been with notifying him the first time, he wasn¡¯t confident they¡¯d be attentive no matter how many times he said it, but he lacked the ability to go to the DAI and ensure they obeyed. Or rather, he lacked the time, given the restrictions of the new portal network. Gallivanting to France and back took entirely too long, considering how much he had to conserve his vis expenditure.

    ¡°Of course, sir,¡± the agent said, and Weltentor severed the connection.

    He glanced about and crossed the street, entering a liquor house of some repute, where there were no posted prices. Earth didn¡¯t boast anything quite like moonwater, but certain alcohols were at least pleasant, and the proprietor was happy enough to take gold coins instead of the worthless paper the mundanes claimed was currency.

    They were obsequious enough that he might even leave them alive when he had finished his tasks.

    He was finishing a third drink, some complex mix of ingredients whose names he didn¡¯t really care about, when the scry-comm activated. The voice of the DAI agent came on, giving him an address halfway across the city. The mundanes were amusingly incurious, but they probably had some comment when he left at speed, shattering the front door as he sped out into the city streets.

    Weltentor had a fae to kill.

 Chapter 9 - Dividends

    ¡°Man, I¡¯m glad I¡¯m not doing the stakeout,¡± Lucy remarked, holding out her hands to catch the foam ball Alex was aiming their way, then had to lunge when it went wide. ¡°Oof! Good throw, sweetie.¡±

    ¡°It¡¯s not exactly exciting,¡± Callum admitted, waiting for his turn in the game of catch. All he could do was pay attention through the anchor sitting in Felicia¡¯s pocket, so there was no point in holing up inside. Playing out on the front lawn seemed like a great way to pass the time. ¡°Even if it was my idea. Go long, kiddo!¡±

    ¡°They probably would have done the same thing without you,¡± Lucy shrugged. ¡°It¡¯s just that The Ghost makes it more likely to work.¡±

    ¡°If I can keep up,¡± Callum said, scooping up the ball and then throwing it back to Alex. ¡°That¡¯s the one thing I¡¯m worried about.¡± He well knew that supernatural speed was just too fast, and when they moved flat out he couldn¡¯t react in time. But they couldn¡¯t use that speed to the full inside buildings or on city blocks, so with teleports he might prove a match. Just obliterating the vamp with an alpha strike would be preferable, and he had the antimaterial rifle loaded exactly for that reason, but it would be unwise to rely on it.

    ¡°You¡¯ll do fine,¡± Lucy said. ¡°Hard to defend against a bad penny, you know?¡±

    ¡°Yeah,¡± Callum said, and missed catching the ball. He teleported it back to his hand, somewhat amused by being able to cheat that way, and threw it back to Alex.

    While he was enjoying himself, he was pretty sure that Felicia and Ray were not. It seemed like a lot of tedious work, interviewing person after person, writing things down, and just generally spending enormous amounts of time on minutiae. He had to credit that they were genuinely digging into the fae influence, and not just making noises.

    ¡°Contact!¡± The scry-comm tapped into Felicia¡¯s group suddenly blared, and Callum almost jumped. Acting as Felicia¡¯s guard was a dangerous thing, considering how easily the vampire had broken both mage and fae defenses, but nobody would believe she had no protection. Besides, Taisen had his own grudge against the person who had nearly shattered the secrecy of the supernatural. Who still might, since the fallout from the vampire killings hadn¡¯t exactly gone away.

    Callum held up a hand to show Lucy and Alex something was happening ¨C earning a foam ball to the gut ¨C and focused on what he could sense through the anchor, reaching for the remote on the table. He didn¡¯t think he¡¯d have a chance to use the rifle right away, especially not in a populated area, but there was no telling how fast things would move. Ray and Felicia were actually two rooms away from where their doppelgangers were conducting interviews, being impersonated by two of Felicia¡¯s retainers.

    He didn¡¯t like that those two were probably going to die, and felt personally responsible for it. They were protected as best could be done and they were volunteers, and if they were fae Secret Service it was their job to take that risk. But he¡¯d suggested the idea and if anything happened it¡¯d be on him, even though he couldn¡¯t think of a better way to deal with the kind of threat the vampire posed. He was still agonizing over it as he looked for the intruder.

    A moment after he began searching a blur crashed straight through the interior walls of the building, sending brick and drywall flying everywhere. The vampire just smashed straight through like a cannonball, barely slowed by the architecture. He teleported himself down the war room, since he didn¡¯t want to fight while out on the front lawn with his child, and spoke into the scry-comm.

    ¡°On it,¡± he told them tersely as the vampire exploded into the room with the decoys, and Callum tapped into his vis crystals to make anti-mana portals. He had to be at least a little careful about it; anti-mana would go straight through walls and he didn¡¯t want to hit any of the other mages or fae with it. Normal people, thankfully, wouldn¡¯t be affected at all.

    He pulled his cloak to him and donned it as he opened a pair of portals once again, in the rooms on the floor above. He aimed them to intersect in the middle of the room where the vampire and decoys were, but kept ahold as best he could to sweep them and saturate the room. It¡¯d been maybe half a second, but before the anti-mana could reach the room it looked like one of the decoy fae had been torn in half, the other smashed against a wall.

    Callum had seen fae survive that kind of thing before, but then the anti-mana splashed over both the fae and the form of the vampire as it paused for a fraction of a second. Without magic, being cut in half was probably lethal, and he winced but he couldn¡¯t redirect the massive columns gushing from the portals. Just swiveling them rendered them unstable, and they started to collapse moments later.

    The vampire emerged from the blank, mana-less area at speed, back through the hole he¡¯d punched in the walls on his way in. But it wasn¡¯t as fast or with as much power as before ¡ª the anti-mana hadn¡¯t instantly dropped him, like the vampires that had assaulted his house, but it had clearly taken a toll.

    ¡°Pursuing,¡± he said over the scry-comm and teleported the anchor after the vamp. Despite being able to move a thousand yards in a second he could only barely keep up as the target blazed out onto the city streets. There was clearly more magic than just body augmentation as the vamp could take corners without digging massive furrows in the asphalt, somehow redirecting the momentum of its incredible speed.

    It was less careful about the people in its way, and more than one bystander was sent flying as they were clipped by a speeding vampire. Callum caught them as he went, using a teleport to reposition them and absolutely cheating by removing their momentum in the process. It was only three or four people, since the cold rain kept most people off the streets, but it did come close to making him lose track of the vamp.

    Callum couldn¡¯t tell whether that was purposeful or it just didn¡¯t care that it was flinging people into traffic. On one hand it created a trail, but on the other it could have easily forced anyone else to slow down or stop to deal with the chaos. It clearly wasn¡¯t stupid, and whether or not it realized it¡¯d been had when it came to Felicia and Ray, it was moving faster than even Taisen¡¯s mages could manage. It also was taking a complicated route through the city, crossing roads at a single bound and going down alleyways or crossing rooftops.

    For some reason Callum had thought that the vampire would slow down when it got a few miles away, but it did not. If anything, once it reached the metro line it sped up, no longer having to worry about running into things or people. He had to stretch to his utmost to keep up, chain-teleporting along after the thing, and he didn¡¯t really register where they were until the vamp left the tunnels.

    They were headed for downtown Washington, DC, Capitol Hill and the National Mall. The only reason he even realized it was because they passed near enough to the Smithsonian for him to recognize a building. Part of him was wondering whether the vamp was intending to kill the president or part of congress, though he had no idea whether anyone was even there. Not that he knew why the vampire would bother, save for general disruption ¡ª something that the vampires clearly were aiming for.

    Fortunately, the vamp veered off toward the Mall, beelining for the Washington Monument. Callum knew exactly where the vampire was going when a tangle of fae magic came into his perceptions, covering part of the reflecting pool on the monument side. The vampire stopped for a moment, right on the edge of the pool, but before Callum could line up a shot the vamp dived into the pool.

    The fae magic unfolded, and Callum hastily shoved a thread of vis through to follow in the vampire¡¯s wake. It wasn¡¯t a portal, but it still folded space in some way so he had to follow close so he wouldn¡¯t be left behind. The moment he teleported into the place the fae passage led he winced, the space inside so displaced and distorted that it grated on his nerves. It seemed like it was a piece of Faerie, but not like any of the places he¡¯d seen before.

    As disconcerting as it was, he didn¡¯t need to unravel its mysteries immediately. Despite the weirdness inherent to the place, it wasn¡¯t so contorted that he couldn¡¯t get a shot. The vampire had finally slowed down, clearly thinking it was safe.

    Callum was tempted to bring in anti-mana once again, but he didn¡¯t know what it would do to such a seriously distorted space. It might end up unraveling and putting the vampire in some random corner of Earth, alive and intact and ready to cause mischief. So instead Callum stuck to the tried and true method of using a big gun.

    He snapped open a portal and toggled the remote, firing the bane-loaded antimaterial rifle. Whatever protections the vampire had against mordite had probably been stripped away by the anti-mana, but if not there wasn¡¯t much Callum could do about it. Though without anywhere to hide, he could just hammer the vamp with brute force.

    The first shot sent it stumbling, blowing a hole through its midsection. But it didn¡¯t drop immediately, and it darted forward even as the rifle cycled, and Callum¡¯s second shot missed. He cursed under his breath, since even if the vampire couldn¡¯t dodge bullets, hitting something that was zigging and zagging was difficult even with Callum¡¯s advantages.

    He waited for a few moments as the vampire zoomed forward, making its way through the bizarre interstitial space, teleporting the anchor up ahead between what was probably a tree and what was probably a bush, but the intense magic flux made it hard to know for certain. The vampire¡¯s head was bobbing around, but after a second to line up a shot Callum put a second hole through its torso.

    No matter how much vis the vampire had, punching bane material wounds through the thing¡¯s chest had to slow it down. It was a shame that he hadn¡¯t killed it instantly, but by sticking itself in this odd place, Callum didn¡¯t even need to worry about his backstop. Sure enough, a few seconds later it had slowed down to almost human speed, but at the same time it jumped through another fold in space ¡ª one leading to a familiar destination.

    He hadn¡¯t even noticed it thanks to how strange the entire surroundings were, but he wasn¡¯t about to let the vampire go. Given the slightest chance, Callum knew that such an enemy would come back and wreak as much havoc as possible. As powerful as the creature was, that would be a lot of havoc. He shifted through and teleported the anchor once again, into the Night Lands.

    It was the missing castle, and Callum knew that there were negative healing traps about so even before he took another shot he tapped the vis crystals and opened up another anti-mana portal before shoving it through into the Night Lands. The stuff billowed out, snapping all the wards and whatever they were connected to with contemptuous ease, and not coincidentally aimed right at the vampire.

    Callum had no idea what anti-mana looked like to anyone else. Neither he nor Lucy could see it, and from a pure visual inspection the other side was just the same as a normal portal worlds; some random liminal space with a vague relation to the local surroundings. But clearly others could sense it, since the vampire dived out of the way, but that just delayed the inevitable.

    He hit it with another bane bullet, and then a last one to the actual brain as it dropped to its knees. Considering how much punishment it had taken, Callum wasn¡¯t satisfied it was dead until he saw the vis start to fade from it, bleeding out into the surroundings. Only then did he reach for the scry-comm to report.

    ¡°Subject terminated,¡± he said, feeling like he was in a movie or something for using such language. ¡°Tracked him back to the Night Lands,¡± he added, glancing at the clock. The entire pursuit had taken maybe ten or fifteen minutes, which wasn¡¯t long but it was also one of the most involved actions he¡¯d performed since figuring out anchors.

    ¡°Understood,¡± the response came back, and Callum blinked, then rubbed his eyes. They were dry and gritty from staring, despite only using his perceptions. He left the gun remote in the war room and returned the cloak to the earth-side storage, then teleported himself back outside where Lucy was helping Alex read from a storybook.

    ¡°All done?¡± She asked after she finished a paragraph.

    ¡°Pretty much, but could you get Felicia on the horn? I need to ask her a few things. Whatcha reading, kiddo?¡± He added, taking Lucy¡¯s place with the book. They¡¯d pretty much rejected the books that the magic community had. Along with subtle anti-mundane sentiment, they just weren¡¯t as good as the books Callum¡¯s parents had used.

    Callum managed to finish the book before Lucy got through to Felicia. The delay wasn¡¯t too surprising; the vampire had done a lot of damage and probably set off all kinds of alarms and gotten everyone detained. Even if they could use the scry-comm network instead of cellphones, everyone was likely busy dealing with the chaos.

    ¡°Yes?¡± Felicia asked.

    ¡°The vampire tried to escape through some strange fae passageway thing,¡± Callum said, getting right to the point. ¡°It was located at the reflecting pool in the National Mall, on the Washington Monument side. There¡¯s another exit at the castle in the Night Lands, though where in the Night Lands I couldn¡¯t tell you. Figured I¡¯d check with you before I tried closing them.¡±

    The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.

    ¡°I see,¡± Felicia said after a moment. ¡°Yes, thank you. I can take care of the passageway on this end, but I would be obliged if you removed the Night Lands end of it.¡± He noticed she didn¡¯t bother asking how he would close it, or even question that he could.

    ¡°Roger that.¡± He wasn¡¯t incurious about what exactly the vampire had used, but he didn¡¯t want to prompt any fae secrets over the phone. They¡¯d probably be meeting face to face at some point anyway, simply because they were working together. He did find it amusing that he actually was meeting people in person, after so long keeping everyone at the other end of a portal. ¡°We¡¯ll touch base later.¡±

    Destroying the fae passage was easy enough. While he couldn¡¯t get through it with just his own talents, there was still a magical and material framework that held it in place in the castle. A quick anti-mana portal destroyed the magical part, and he simply teleported the framework away to storage. It seemed to be nothing more than a large mirror, and without magic it probably wasn¡¯t anything else. But he was sure Felicia would want to see it regardless, in case the source could be tracked.

    ¡°H¡¯okay, all done,¡± he told Lucy. ¡°Free for the rest of the day, barring catastrophes.¡±

    ¡°Don¡¯t tempt fate!¡± Lucy said. ¡°I¡¯ll see about going over to Chester¡¯s this afternoon. I know Alex is missing some of his friends.¡±

    ¡°Gonna see Jason?¡± Alex piped up.

    ¡°Yeah, we can go see Jason,¡± said Callum, teleporting the foam ball to himself and tossing it from hand to hand. ¡°Should be nice and relaxed.¡±

    He took over while Lucy went to call up Chester, just to make sure it was okay to visit. The portal anchors meant they were functionally neighbors, and heading over didn¡¯t take more than a thought, but it was rude to intrude without notice. Unfortunately, as it turned out, it wasn¡¯t just a friendly visit.

    ¡°I do have some business to discuss,¡± Chester said, a few hours later, after they¡¯d settled in.

    ¡°Lucy did say I shouldn¡¯t tempt fate,¡± Callum sighed. ¡°What¡¯s going on?¡±

    ¡°We¡¯ve been managing to keep the feds off our backs for now, thanks to your work,¡± Chester told him. ¡°Unfortunately, someone leaked a list of all my people and they¡¯re all being targeted now. Plus we¡¯ve all had our social media accounts banned off a bunch of platforms for no reason. You know, standard harassment tactics.¡±

    ¡°Ugh.¡± Callum scowled. The power of government bureaucracy was essentially unlimited and lacked any real oversight, so the amount of mischief someone could cause with it was also unlimited. In a lot of ways it wasn¡¯t any better than the supernatural bureaucracy, but he wasn¡¯t prepared to start fighting that war. At least when it came to supernaturals there was a clear line. ¡°I take it you need more IT support?¡±

    ¡°Yes,¡± Chester sighed. ¡°We also need to find out who is starting all this.¡±

    ¡°Janry, ultimately,¡± Callum said. ¡°I¡¯d be perfectly happy to remove him this very moment if I didn¡¯t think that¡¯d just unite all the other mage Houses against us.¡± He¡¯d really prefer to just kick in Janry¡¯s teeth, but he didn¡¯t want to spark open war and drag in the entire normal world in the bargain.

    ¡°It¡¯s a shame we can¡¯t redirect some of this attention to him,¡± Chester said. ¡°I doubt the Archmage¡¯s Council is going to care too much.¡±

    ¡°The bribes ought to help with that. Lot of Houses are going to be happy to have their own private portal world,¡± Callum said. ¡°For now though, I¡¯ll pitch it to Felicia. It¡¯s probably related to the fae manipulation we¡¯re seeing. If she can trace it to a specific source I¡¯ll take care of it.¡±

    ¡°And in the meantime, Lucy has a lot of work to do,¡± Chester said dryly, waving in the direction of the playroom.

    ¡°Sure,¡± Callum agreed. ¡°It¡¯s mostly tedious but I think she¡¯s still enjoying getting into government systems.¡±

    ¡°I¡¯d appreciate it if you could keep all the evidence, too,¡± Chester said. ¡°I think it¡¯s only a matter of time before the supernatural becomes known, and I want to be ready for it.¡±

    ¡°Really.¡± Callum raised his eyebrows. He wasn¡¯t certain that it was a good idea to introduce the two worlds, but he had to agree it was probably inevitable. The cult cover story for the vampires was incredibly weak, and when rooting through the government files it was obvious that a lot of people were still digging into the real culprits. And the identities of the people who had stopped them.

    ¡°The only reason why the secret¡¯s survived so long is people are generally primed to not believe it when they see weird stuff.¡± Chester shook his head, swirling his drink and making the ice clink. ¡°But tens of thousands of murders all at once ¡ª people will just keep prying at it. Not to mention that even with glamours, statistical analysis will turn up some weird stuff.¡±

    ¡°Well, you¡¯re more up to date than I am,¡± Callum said. He couldn¡¯t object to Chester¡¯s points, because he was surprised himself that the secret still kept. Though the population of supernaturals was tiny, relatively speaking. ¡°Did you have a plan?¡±

    ¡°Some plans,¡± Chester admitted. ¡°You¡¯re involved, though at a distance. Nothing you aren¡¯t doing already. I¡¯ll give you an actual proposal when we¡¯ve got things more nailed down. The first order of business is to finish this conflict. The worst possible thing is let the types who want to control Earth break things to mundanes.¡±

    ¡°Oh yeah. That wouldn¡¯t go well.¡± Callum had doubts things would go well no matter what, but it wasn¡¯t his circus. Chester had a good enough head on his shoulders that he might be able to make it work. Better to take charge of events than let events take charge. ¡°Though I¡¯m pretty sure nobody is going to be happy that I¡¯m manipulating government records when it all comes out.¡±

    ¡°Nobody is happy about anything that happens in war,¡± Chester said dryly. ¡°Fortunately, evidence that people are being bribed or coerced into doing the things you¡¯re reversing helps.¡± He waved it away. ¡°All worries for another time. For the moment, I have over a hundred people who are getting their banks locked down or their businesses cited or shuttered. Even my resources aren¡¯t unlimited.¡±

    ¡°Sure,¡± Callum said. ¡°Just send the list to Lucy and we¡¯ll see what we can do.¡±

    ***

    Felicia Black stood at the reflecting pool in the National Mall, examining the Gate of Water. The towering obelisk of the Washington Monument, cast into the water, served as the lynchpin for the Gate, the place where the point touched the sky and the water at the same time anchoring it in place. It was probably the best place for such a doorway, the strong iconography reinforcing its existence, and that was why she was stealing it.

    Ray stood next to her, hand on her back. He had no way to consciously control fae magic, but that didn¡¯t mean he couldn¡¯t affect it. Ray had been by her side for years, and that loyalty did more to stabilize her own power than most would imagine. No fae ruler had ever taken a non-fae consort before, but Felicia wasn¡¯t exactly a normal fae princess.

    ¡°Mine.¡± Felicia said, claiming the Gate. It shuddered and twisted in her grasp, but she stared it down until it acquiesced. But that wasn¡¯t enough. The Ways on Earth couldn¡¯t be allowed to run wild like they did on Faerie, because Earth belonged to the humans, not to the fae. ¡°Mine.¡± She said again, and the water in the reflecting pool boiled in protest.

    She wouldn¡¯t have been able to do it earlier, but the Ghost¡¯s favor had empowered her more than a little. To have someone as dangerous as Weltentor destroyed with no more than a word from her was a potent thing, and while it was not just her own power it was still quite usable. Bit by bit she wrestled the magic into submission, until it was finally under her full control. She looped it about her left wrist, then turned to Ray. He could only have followed a little bit of what she was doing, but he still smiled as he saw she was successful.

    ¡°Let¡¯s go see what¡¯s inside,¡± she suggested. ¡°We can¡¯t leave it here just as it is, even if I control it.¡±

    ¡°Ready when you are,¡± Ray said, his vis shell growing more intense as he energized his foci. Felicia didn¡¯t anticipate combat on the other side, but with the Ways it was always necessary to be cautious. She flicked her wrist and the Gate of Water unfolded, opening to the strange space of the Ways.

    The pair of them stepped through, onto a log bridge that crossed a burbling stream. Tall trees with white bark and whiter leaves rose on either side of the path, with vines bearing blood-red berries climbing their trunks. To one side was a meadow, with an ancient forest titan in the middle. Its branches bore the leaves of a dozen different types of trees, anchoring the Ways in North America, with paths wending their way out of the meadow to lead to other Gates.

    Distance was a vague suggestion in the Ways, and even as they watched it was shifting and changing, growing like the living thing it was. If there were any evidence of the Ghost¡¯s pursuit of the vampire, the Ways had consumed it. In fact, that was probably why the sudden growth spurt, as it consumed expended vis and turned the energy into its own fuel.

    ¡°We will have to take all of this,¡± Felicia said, feeling the press of magic as she turned around to survey the landscape. ¡°This runs deep into Faerie and anything, or anyone, could use it.¡±

    ¡°Makes sense,¡± Ray agreed. ¡°How do we take it?¡±

    ¡°The traditional fae way,¡± Felicia said, baring her teeth. Without her glamour, they were long and pointed. ¡°We fight for it.¡±

    ¡°Ready,¡± Ray said. Felicia flexed her will and her retainers emerged from her shadow, dark-suited with enchanted blades and arcanopistols. Not all of the fae that were swearing themselves into service were cut out for combat, but those that were got put through Taisen¡¯s training. They were cold, professional, and ready to put their lives before hers, though she preferred not to spend any lives she didn¡¯t need to.

    ¡°Let the spirit of the glade come forth!¡± She commanded, feeling the Ways flex under the crack of her voice. ¡°Let it establish its sovereignty, or yield to mine.¡±

    The tree swayed and twelve wolf-men shaped specters dropped from its branches, outnumbering them two to one. It was at least some sense of a fair fight, but Felicia was not there to fight. She was there to take control. Felicia held up her hand for everyone to hold their fire until the specters started to charge at them, then spoke.

    ¡°Fall.¡± She commanded, and the specters crumpled to their knees. She dropped her hand, and arcanopistols puffed. Ray¡¯s vis flicked out and detonated around two of the specters, tearing them apart while her retainers punched holes in the others. Immobilized, they made easy targets. It was absolutely one-sided, and that was the point.

    As the last of the specters dispersed, Felicia reached out and took hold of the magic¡¯s root. Unlike the Gate, it yielded meekly, settling into place under her mantle. It wasn¡¯t the entirety of the Ways, of course, merely a small portion of it, one still growing and maturing.

    ¡°Now,¡± she murmured to it, looking around the open meadow. ¡°There was a vampire that came through here. Show me all the places he¡¯s gone.¡±

    The landscape around them stretched and distorted, moving without moving as the paths leading outward aligned themselves. One was the Gate of Water, that they¡¯d come from. Another led to a severed piece of the Ways, a shattered arch choked with thorns and brambles, and she got the faint impression of hurt and resentment. That was a Gate of Glass, which had led to the Night Lands. There was no telling how Wells had closed it, but it didn¡¯t matter. She didn¡¯t want that open anyway.

    Two other paths called to her. They both used Gates of Bone, one somewhere far to the south, the other one east across the ocean. One gave her glimpses of jungle and ziggurats choked by vines, while the other was a dark castle closed in by mist and rain. The jungle ziggurat was faint, barely connected, so she ignored it and focused on the castle, beckoning for her people to follow along the narrow trail.

    The ivory trees lining that part of the Way loomed threateningly, then drew back from her presence. Even if she only controlled a small part of the Ways, the rest of it recognized her authority and let her pass without harassment. If she were to follow the far trail back to Faerie that would change, but the Earth-side Ways were cowed by her presence.

    She stopped at the Gate of Bones, the twisted ivory forming an archway at the end of the path. Skeletal hands grasped the joined femurs and skulls, holding it open as Felicia and Ray approached. Ray scowled at it, and Felicia could catch the whisper of his vis as he strained to sense through the Gate.

    ¡°That seems excessively macabre. And there is definitely someone on the other side.¡± His vis pulsed outward, echoing through nascent connections. ¡°Should we ask Taisen for more troops?¡±

    Felicia put her hands on the Gate, suppressing the whispers of the dead men whose bones had been used. Instead she sought the feeling of the castle beyond, sampling the flavors of magic and the presence of the living the Gate hungered for. She was fairly certain that the fae were from the Court of Roses, but without the backing of a Prince there was nobody on the other side that was too dangerous.

    ¡°No, we can handle it, and we¡¯d better before they realize that Weltentor is dead and the other Gate is closed.¡± Felicia frowned at the Gate of Bones. ¡°No need to let the Court of Roses recoup its investment.¡± Like most early fae royalty, she was collecting subordinates from her enemies, enforcing a change of loyalty. It was less of an issue than it would be for humans, at least until she found someone of significant power.

    At some point she would have to move on to swearing the fae enclaves on earth under her banner, but that would be on more generous terms than those she had personally bested. Once it became clear what she was doing, the most intelligent fae would be more than happy to swear allegiance. Felicia had no interest in changing enclaves that worked perfectly well, only in managing the interface between mundane and fae.

    ¡°Ready,¡± Ray said, and Felicia turned to the Gate.

    ¡°Open,¡± she commanded, and the Gate groaned as the connection to Earth was forced wide. Felicia wasn¡¯t willing to pay the conventional price for using a Gate of Bones, which was one of the worst to use ¡ª though the quickest and easiest to make, if one was willing to sacrifice enough people. Ray and two of her retainers stepped through, sweeping the room before she made her entrance.

    She stepped through just as two vampiric-looking fae were having their faces ground into the stone floor, one by a pair of her guards and the other by Ray¡¯s magic. She glanced at them and dismissed them; even on her own those two would be no threat. There was only one fae that was worrisome in the whole castle; the one drawing from the magic of the place.

    Ray glanced at her and she gave him a smile, pointing downward. He nodded and pushed vis through one of his combat foci, a sudden gale meshing with basic earth manipulation and tearing a hole in the floor. He flew down and the rest of them jumped, taking advantage of the confusion from a half-ton of stone scattering through the room.

    Felicia ignored the lesser fae, focusing on the one who was tied to the castle. He looked remarkably like Jusael, with pale skin and bat wings, showing he was more a follower than a man of imagination. Like many unimaginative fae, he grasped after the cheapest power, even though that meant he would never manage anything greater.

    ¡°I am Princess Felicity Blackblood,¡± she said, her voice carrying over the sounds of fighting and the whistle of wind. Drawing on a little of her power she blurred forward, her hand reaching out to snatch at the tether between the fae-vampire and the castle. With the other she batted aside the fae¡¯s instinctive cut with a broadsword, and bared her teeth at him. ¡°Kneel.¡±

    Her voice hammered him to his knees so hard the stone cracked, and she caught his sword as it fell to the ground. Despite not having wielded a blade in a very long time, not since she was a child, it felt natural enough as she pointed it at the fae. Though by the dazed look in his eye, he wasn¡¯t capable of much resistance.

    ¡°Do you yield?¡± She demanded, the point of the blade pressed against his throat.

    ¡°I¡ª¡± He swallowed, barely able to meet her eyes. ¡°I do.¡±

    ¡°Good. Then you will swear to me, forsaking all former bonds. There is no room for the Lesser Courts here on Earth.¡± Felicia glanced around, seeing that the other fae in the room had been subdued, with prejudice. The rest of the castle wouldn¡¯t be too difficult to take, either.

    While it seemed they were doing well, Felicia knew it was only a matter of time before the Lesser Courts moved again. They wouldn¡¯t let her gain dominion over Earth¡¯s fae without a fight, and Felicia had to have that dominion. The fae couldn¡¯t continue to act as they had, for many reasons. Simple morality was one, less for the fae as for the mundanes they interacted with, but more pragmatically was the fact that the American Alliance would not stand for it.

    If they wouldn¡¯t become part of Felicia¡¯s Court, they would probably end up being visited by The Ghost.

 Chapter 10 â€“ Retaliation

    ¡°The light touch isn¡¯t working,¡± Archmage Janry said flatly. The other mages sitting in his study looked uncomfortable, but they didn¡¯t deny it. He wouldn¡¯t have thought that the American Alliance would have had any political acumen at all, but they¡¯d been successful in fending off the indirect action Janry had been directing. Not to mention wooing away some of the Houses via the Guild of Enchanting, which was an organization that Janry didn¡¯t dare try to break just yet. Too many Houses were part of it, including his own, but he could order other action.

    ¡°I¡¯m not sure what else we can do without instigating a full war,¡± the representative of cadet house Leshiel said after a moment, her lips pursed in thought. ¡°The fae seem to be anxious for that but most people don¡¯t have an interest in inviting a direct attack from Archmage Taisen or Archmage Hargrave.¡±

    ¡°The Earth side has reason to avoid outright conflict, but we don¡¯t,¡± Janry said. ¡°They care more about preserving secrecy and they are, quite frankly, outnumbered. We need to take advantage of that and push. Just dare them to escalate.¡±

    ¡°Beyond killing one of the Princes of the Seven Lesser Courts?¡± the cadet house Horan representative asked.

    ¡°The fae don¡¯t care,¡± Janry waved it away. ¡°It¡¯s all fair play to them. That kind of assassination isn¡¯t really something they get mad at. Not like the Houses would if Wells went after an archmage, and he knows it.¡± If House Fane had more allies, or people had really appreciated the danger Wells posed, the entire thing would have broken open years ago, rather than ending up in the current morass.

    ¡°Attempting to assault House Hargrave would be a fool¡¯s errand, and we don¡¯t even know where House Taisen is,¡± Magus Leshiel pointed out. ¡°The only people we can really move against are the fae enclaves and Alpha Chester.¡±

    ¡°And Alpha Chester¡¯s the center of the whole damn American Alliance,¡± Janry said grimly. ¡°We should have just removed him earlier.¡±

    ¡°Easier said than done,¡± Magus Horan muttered. ¡°Do we just bring a bunch of mages and sink the place underground?¡±

    ¡°Yes, I have decided that would be for the best,¡± Janry said. ¡°Take the DAI, bring a bunch of mundane agents to tie their hands, and then have them all arrested. Either they fight back against the mundane government, which breaks their power, or they don¡¯t, which breaks their power. It doesn¡¯t matter if we actually kill him if we can remove him from play.¡± His lips quirked and he inclined his head toward Horan. ¡°And then we sink his place underground.¡±

    ¡°You¡¯re not worried about other people? Like Wells or, say, Archmage Wizzy?¡± Magus Leshiel asked as she dutifully noted down his orders.

    ¡°Not necessarily. Like I said, they don¡¯t want to start a war. They¡¯d have to strike our Houses directly, and even Wells would have trouble with that.¡± After seeing how he¡¯d approached the other assassinations, they¡¯d altered security enough that he was confident Wells couldn¡¯t simply stroll in. Not to mention acquiring proper jamming equipment to block off his access at any time. Fortunately he¡¯d had the foresight to get the equipment before the Guild of Enchanting had embargoed his House.

    ¡°There¡¯s also one ally we¡¯ve been forgetting.¡± Janry held up a finger and looked around. Though it was supposed to be a meeting, he was really only giving marching orders. ¡°The dragonblooded have been the ones most opposed to open war, and while they claim that¡¯s for neutral reasons, it actually benefits the Earth side most. I don¡¯t see any reason we should leave them in play.¡±

    ¡°Archmage Fane found that properly killing a dragonblooded was an issue,¡± Horan said. ¡°I¡¯d be afraid of opening another front.¡±

    ¡°I don¡¯t intend to open another front,¡± Janry said. ¡°I¡¯m going to take a page out of Wells¡¯ book. We aren¡¯t getting any benefit from keeping the dragonblooded around, so why not drop a few tons of rock onto their portal? That should be enough to close it.¡±

    ¡°That seems precipitous,¡± Horan said cautiously. ¡°Wells closing the vampire portal was what allowed us to get all the Houses to rally behind us.¡±

    ¡°And what good has it done?¡± Janry demanded. ¡°Yes, words and material support are fine, but without direct action it means nothing. Everyone tiptoes around the dragonblooded, but since they¡¯ve taken care not to get too engaged with people, nobody is going to be too miffed if we remove them.¡±

    ¡°As you say, Archmage,¡± Horan said, exchanging glances with Magus Leshiel. ¡°When did you want to do this?¡±

    ¡°As soon as may be. We need only delay long enough for our fae allies to join in.¡± Janry stood up and gestured to the door. ¡°Go ahead and give DAI their orders. I¡¯ll take care of the portal myself, now.¡±

    ¡°Yes, Archmage Janry,¡± Horan said, automatically standing when Janry did. ¡°It will be done.¡±

    Janry waited until they left and then strolled through the House grounds to the Earth portal. GAR at the very least still fulfilled the purpose of giving the Houses a proper Earth-side infrastructure, and despite the American Alliance spreading beyond the bounds of that particular country, most of Europe and China still hewed to its hierarchy. The people gave him the proper respect when he strode in, though he didn¡¯t stay.

    He didn¡¯t trust the teleport to the Dragonlands portal, especially not after what Wells had done with Fane. Unless Duvall personally verified the connection, it was safer and easier to move himself the old-fashioned way. The moment he stepped outside the office in France, he sank into the ground and shot off toward Switzerland.

    The earth welcomed him like an old friend, rock shifting and bending and helping him along. His control had long become instinctive, and the only issue was finding landmarks ¡ª something that was less common deep underground. Instead he pulsed his vis to map out the landscape, navigating by his familiarity with Europe¡¯s terrain and rock strata.

    The Matterhorn was fairly easy to recognize from underneath, and he aimed himself to emerge from side of the mountain. His temperature foci kept the chill away as he lifted himself into the air, flying the last few feet to the outpost. While he could have erased it just as easily without emerging from the ground, he had some pieces of equipment to detect more subtle mana variations just in case, and those needed a clear line of sight.

    He could feel the sheer amount of mana pouring from the portal, and while it would be a shame to lose that, he was sure that Duvall could generate a replacement in time. Or if not, permanently weakening Earth was not so terrible a thing. The mana had always been thin anyway, compared to his House estate in Faerie, so frankly it would hardly matter.

    The subdued blue sky of the Dragonlands was visible through the portal, but it wouldn¡¯t be for long. Janry stretched out his earth manipulation framework, and pulled down thousands of tons of rock. Wind whistled out of the cave as it shut with a juddering boom, the portal framework shearing and crushing stone. But the mass of the mountain was inevitable, and the mana began to fray and unravel under the sheer mass of rock.

    Another few seconds and the portal destabilized, collapsing into itself. He was a little surprised that no dragonblooded tried to stop it, but then, there likely wasn¡¯t much they could have done. Even if they threw all their power against preventing his rockslide, that much vis would probably disrupt the portal all by itself. Just before the connection vanished completely he thought he caught a flare of something from the other side, but it was too late.

    Snow cascaded down in an avalanche from the shift in the rock and the sound, but his shield deflected it without issue for the few moments that he was above ground. Satisfied that he¡¯d done what he came for, Janry sank back into the earth and headed back to Paris. It was so easy that he half-wondered why nobody had done it before. True, the dragonblooded had tremendous wealth and knowledge, but in the end, what did that matter if they wouldn¡¯t be of use to him?

    ***

    ¡°We¡¯ve tracked the fae influence to the Department of Arcane Investigation,¡± Ray said, looking into the camera pickup on one of Callum¡¯s remotes. ¡°I wish I could say I was surprised, but I¡¯m not. Felicia wasn¡¯t the only fae they employed, though I don¡¯t think anyone quite measured up to her.¡± Beside him, Felicia chuckled softly.

    ¡°I can¡¯t say I¡¯m surprised.¡± Callum frowned. ¡°Really, I should have looked at disassembling DAI and, frankly, all of GAR earlier. As soon as I had this fortress, probably.¡±

    ¡°I wish I could disagree,¡± Ray sighed. ¡°It had problems when we were there but now it¡¯s just an apparatus for Janry¡¯s policies. In a way I¡¯m surprised they haven¡¯t openly declared themselves to the mundane governments.¡±

    ¡°Most mages are a bit more conservative,¡± Lucy pointed out. ¡°A lot of the people leading the Houses remember the days when they had to hide out because they just weren¡¯t powerful. Convincing them to change a hundred-whatever years of policy takes time.¡±

    ¡°That said, all it takes is one unilateral action,¡± Ray replied. ¡°And GAR is being run more centrally than it used to.¡±

    ¡°Well, we can¡¯t let it stand,¡± Callum said, glancing over at Lucy. ¡°We¡¯ve got plenty of carrots for the other Houses, right? Private portal worlds, multiple spatial connections¡­¡± he ticked off the items on his fingers.

    ¡°Private intranets, safe connection to Earth networks and proxies for mundane good deliveries,¡± Lucy added. Callum added those items to his fingers and then closed the open hand that resulted. ¡°I think maybe it¡¯s time to apply a stick in addition to the carrots."

    ¡°Probably not something to spring on people,¡± Lucy said. ¡°Maybe it¡¯d be better to have the people on our side give an ultimatum? I dunno, maybe that¡¯d just make them dig in their heels.¡±

    ¡°It¡¯s not like I intend to just kill everyone in GAR,¡± Callum said, tapping the table as he thought. ¡°I was thinking more just disassembling the infrastructure. Take all their archives and records and vaults and hand them off to Taisen and Hargrave to be disbursed back to the Houses. A bureaucracy is more infrastructure than people, anyhow. And Felicia, I guess you could take the fae? I¡¯m not entirely certain how that works.¡±

    ¡°Talk about unilateral action,¡± Ray muttered, but looked at Felicia for the answer.

    ¡°I would have to absorb GAR¡¯s fae anyway, at some point,¡± Felicia admitted. ¡°Either under their own prince or directly.¡±

    ¡°I¡¯ll call everyone up,¡± Lucy said. ¡°Don¡¯t want to surprise people with a job,¡± she said, poking him in the side.

    ¡°Yeah, yeah,¡± he said, fending her off with a smile. ¡°It¡¯s not me that¡¯s making more work for everyone else.¡±

    ¡°Right, we¡¯ll be in contact pretty soon,¡± Lucy said to Ray and Felicia.

    ¡°And thank you for following up on that government compulsion stuff,¡± he added. ¡°I definitely appreciate it.¡±

    ¡°I agree with you that the separation of powers is necessary for any supernaturals who are going to live on Earth,¡± Felicia said somberly. ¡°Fae rules for fae, and mortal rules for mortals.¡± Callum winced slightly at the term ¡®mortal,¡¯ but it was the right attitude regardless.

    He wasn¡¯t looking forward to more meetings, but this wasn¡¯t something he could just do and damn the consequences. Not that he expected anyone to disagree with it, as such, but there was preparation to be done. Plus there probably were people that deserved to be removed, at the very top. In truth a good amount of GAR had probably done stuff that deserved death, but ultimately it was the organization itself that was the greatest problem.

    Before any such meetings could happen, though, he got a call from an unexpected source. While he hadn¡¯t actually forgotten his promise to the dragonblooded, he¡¯d been somewhat preoccupied by all the other things he needed to do with his portals. Not to mention that he wasn¡¯t entirely certain how to make a dimensional portal permanent, though he had a good idea. So when Shahey called him, Callum had braced himself for at least a mild scolding.

    ¡°Someone closed the Dragonlands portal,¡± Shahey said instead. ¡°I¡¯m holding open the link you gave us just so we can keep connection to our avatars, but that will only work for so long.¡±

    ¡°Oh, hell,¡± Callum said, his heartbeat spiking, while Lucy just blinked. It really shouldn¡¯t have taken him by surprise ¡ª and in fact, he would have to worry about someone doing that to the Deep Wilds portal, too. The dimensional portals were obvious weak points for any supernatural alliance, and while there were shifters in Europe that were on the side of GAR they might be considered acceptable losses. He¡¯d have to relocate the Deep Wilds portal soon.

    ¡°I suppose the question is, are you ready to open full, permanent portals yet?¡± Shahey said.

    ¡°I have no idea,¡± Callum answered honestly. ¡°But I suppose I¡¯d better find out.¡± He looked over to Lucy. ¡°Give me some time to get all my notes squared away and I¡¯ll see if I can open another portal.¡± It had to be an oversized dimensional portal, since his normal portals required a physical connection, and using a paired enchantment would be vulnerable to degradation and disruption.

    His accidental discovery with the oversized anti-mana portals made him suspect the key to duplicating the Dragonlands dimensional portal was to fully duplicate it, size and all. The structure just didn¡¯t work right any smaller, and since none of the other natural portals were small, he had to imagine that was true in general. The only exception might be the Mictl¨¡n portal, and that one was weird enough he hesitated to make any conclusions about it.

    Stolen novel; please report.

    ¡°You know where to find me,¡± Shahey said, and hung up.

    ¡°What the heck,¡± Lucy muttered. ¡°At least he doesn¡¯t seem panicked? Kind of extreme for that to happen though.¡±

    ¡°We¡¯re a half-step short of actual war,¡± Callum sighed, trying to shove aside his own anxiety. ¡°Could you warn Chester about a possible threat to the Deep Wilds portal while I¡¯m getting my notes? In fact, when we look into shaking up GAR we need to take control of the Deep Wilds portal away from them. That only leaves Portal World Five to worry about, and it wouldn¡¯t surprise me if Taisen already has control of that one.¡±

    ¡°Will do,¡± Lucy said, and turned back to her laptop.

    The Dragonlands portal was, fortunately, the one he¡¯d studied the closest and the one he¡¯d used for modeling most often. In theory he had the entire structure recorded, but that didn¡¯t guarantee it would work like he wanted. Especially since he wouldn¡¯t be able to punch through to the Dragonlands from just anywhere in the world.

    ¡°Ah heck,¡± Callum said. ¡°The Matterhorn isn¡¯t where the portal was originally. We can try but I don¡¯t think we¡¯ll get the Dragonlands from there.¡±

    ¡°Oh right, it was in China someplace,¡± Lucy said. ¡°Wonder if I can dig that up from the GAR servers. Not that there¡¯s much new stuff on there,¡± she muttered. ¡°People barely use the forums anymore, even. I spent a lot of time setting those up!¡±

    ¡°Well, they helped me at least,¡± Callum said. ¡°And a lot of Houses are going to want that for themselves, the big ones anyway.¡±

    ¡°Yeah, and I guess we can¡¯t tap all of them,¡± Lucy grumbled. ¡°H¡¯okay, I¡¯ll see what I can dig up.¡±

    While Lucy sorted through document archives, Callum sorted through his own files and thought about trying to instead open a portal from the Dragonlands to Earth, but he¡¯d not had any luck with that kind of experiment so far. While location mattered, it was also a hazy concept inside a portal world. The space inside wasn¡¯t fixed to anything in particular, as shown when he¡¯d formed the first portal to his redoubt. It really shouldn¡¯t have been falling at the same speed as the islands if space magic really conformed to the scientific concepts of the same.

    He was certain that the dragons would really prefer if he could anchor the portal to them rather than the cliffside, and it seemed like it would be possible, but he had no idea how. The only thing he could think of would be building a focus on both ends, but how to get that to work after he¡¯d created it was beyond him.

    It wasn¡¯t likely he¡¯d actually need any of the things he was considering, but Callum really didn¡¯t have faith in large, unsupported portals. They were too vulnerable, a single point of failure that was nearly impossible to hide. He also wasn¡¯t entirely convinced having an open portal flooding the Earth with mana was the best way to operate when smaller portal foci would do ¡ª but the amount of enchanting time and material that would require was prohibitive.

    He set aside his useless meanderings and started dripping vis into his spare crystals, since if he was going to reproduce the Dragonlands portal, it¡¯d be a nearly thirty-foot monstrosity. That was far larger than he¡¯d ever done before and he didn¡¯t expect to get it right the first go. At least he already had foci to help him with some of the more finnicky bits.

    ¡°Okay, we might have an issue,¡± Lucy said, while Callum was in the middle of piloting a drone over to the general region of China. Though given how large the country was, that was about as useful as having a single drone for the whole United States.

    ¡°Lay it on me.¡±

    ¡°The original location of the Dragonlands portal was on the ground of House Xu, which is still an active GAR-supporting House. Unless they¡¯ve got a monument up, that¡¯s probably as good as we¡¯re going to get,¡± Lucy told him, squinting at some poorly-scanned document on her laptop.

    ¡°That¡¯s not good.¡± Callum considered it. ¡°It might be possible to open a portal and then move it without someone interfering, but I doubt it. We¡¯re going to have to either parley with them or take over their yard for a bit.¡±

    ¡°Surely the dragonblooded will be willing to step in for this, right?¡± Lucy suggested. ¡°I can¡¯t imagine it would go well if anyone else was involved.¡±

    ¡°Yeah, definitely. Let¡¯s call up Shahey and see what he says.¡±

    The conversation was short and to the point. Shahey did indeed remember the exact location, and was perfectly willing to show up. In fact, all the dragons were, though Shahey didn¡¯t elaborate on that fact before he rang off.

    ¡°All, huh? I wonder how many that might be?¡± Lucy mused.

    ¡°Not many dragons, but there might be a lot of bodies. Pretty sure they can make as many as they like.¡± Callum knew what dragon magic could do, but he had no idea how that translated to actual combat. ¡°Right, let¡¯s get cracking.¡±

    House Xu was not actually anywhere near House Fane, actually being somewhere in south central China. It was still out in the middle of nowhere, a big sprawling estate nestled in the hills, and it took a little bit of time to get to just because they didn¡¯t have exact GPS coordinates. The records for the House only had a general area, so he had to search himself. Not that it was particularly hard to find.

    Despite the delay, it hadn¡¯t taken too long so he was surprised that the dragonblooded had beat him there. By the time Lucy piloted the drone down to the outside of the estate boundary there was a veritable army outside.

    He recognized Shahey¡¯s avatar, but Shahey was joined by three other semi-humanoid scaled types, each of them backed by what looked like honest-to-goodness cyborgs. They were vis dense enough that he couldn¡¯t really tell anything about them with his perceptions, but the video feed showed hulking black-and-chrome beasts seated in four distinct groups. Each of them looked like something that could rip through a tank, and there were twenty overall.

    Facing them were a number of mages on the other side of the wards, looking nervous ¡ª as well they might. While the dragonblooded¡¯s combat forms looked technological, they were packed with enough magic potency that they¡¯d probably shred any spell they cared to.

    ¡°That is not what I expected to see,¡± Callum commented as Lucy sent the drone in Shahey¡¯s direction.

    ¡°Yeah, no. Dragonblooded are supposed to be scary but I wasn¡¯t expecting mecha-lizards.¡± The four human-like avatars turned to watch the drone approach, and Lucy landed it on the ground.

    ¡°Mister Wells, I presume,¡± said one of the dragonblooded. Judging by the voice, it was at least affecting to be female.

    ¡°That¡¯s me,¡± he said, leaning closer to the mic pickup on his own laptop. ¡°Before we actually do anything, I¡¯d like to check if this is close enough to the original location. Just in case we don¡¯t need to impose on these people.¡±

    He hadn¡¯t yet had enough time to experiment on exactly how local portal worlds were, other than it wasn¡¯t some infinitesimal connection. There were definitely regions, and some of them quite large ¨C he¡¯d actually connected to Portal World Five more than once while searching for his redoubt ¨C but the specifics had yet to be determined. Testing it was easy enough though; he just formed a normal dimensional portal right there, punching through to what was on the other side.

    It only took a moment to see that he hadn¡¯t hit the dragonlands. The section of ordinary horizontal forest made that clear enough. It actually looked like a good candidate for adding to their selection to bribe other Houses with, maybe even House Xu in this case, but that¡¯d have to wait until later.

    ¡°Can you mark that one down,¡± Callum muttered to Lucy, before leaning into the mic pickup again. ¡°No good, we need to be closer to the original location.¡±

    One of the dragonblooded, not Shahey, turned to talk to the mages assembled on the other side of the barrier. Callum had no idea what they were saying, since he didn¡¯t speak Chinese, and he had a hunch that it was an ancient dialect anyway. The words escalated to shouting, and then one of the cyber-lizards went over and swiped a claw against the ward shielding. It absolutely shattered them, which silenced some of the shouting.

    For a moment Callum thought there¡¯d be an all-out brawl, but an older gentleman with a beard down to his knees managed to yell at everyone equally before bowing to the dragonblooded. In turn, the dragonblooded hefted a large sack and handed it over to the bearded mage. The probable patriarch lofted the sack with a telekinesis focus and barked at his people, before striding off with dignity.

    ¡°Bribery it is,¡± Shahey said mildly. ¡°Smart.¡±

    ¡°Yeah, those war-forms are scary,¡± Lucy said enthusiastically. ¡°Are they actual mech-borgs or what is that?¡±

    ¡°They¡¯re a collaboration between us,¡± Shahey said modestly. ¡°I admit they haven¡¯t seen too much use, but it¡¯s better to have them than not.¡±

    ¡°Ensharrehael,¡± the female dragonblooded said sharply.

    ¡°It¡¯s hardly a secret, Miyashientu,¡± Shahey protested. ¡°Besides, it¡¯s better to extend friendship to the person who is going to be making portals to new universes for us, don¡¯t you think?¡±

    ¡°I suppose,¡± Miyashientu said, without enthusiasm.

    ¡°I won¡¯t feel left out if you keep things secret,¡± Callum assured them. ¡°So long as you aren¡¯t kidnapping humans or anything it¡¯s not really any of my business.¡±

    ¡°Seems awfully trusting of The Ghost,¡± Miyashientu frowned.

    ¡°You had a noninterference policy long before I came along,¡± Callum said. ¡°Can¡¯t ask for anything else, can I?¡± Miyashientu grunted and turned away, and Shahey winked at the camera pickup.

    ¡°Miya¡¯s just grumpy because her avatar was driving when the portal cut off and she wrecked her favorite car,¡± he explained.

    ¡°It was vintage!¡± Miyashientu snapped. Callum wondered why that was such an issue when dragon magic implied she could repair any car damage with a mere thought, but he supposed it was the principle of the thing. Lucy had her hand over her mouth to suppress any noise, but her eyes were sparkling. Clearly she was tickled by the idea of a dragon being a car nut.

    ¡°Well, come on,¡± one of the other dragonblooded said, and Shahey picked up the drone as they headed into the estate. The cyber-lizards spread out to escort them, though if Callum understood things, it wasn¡¯t like they were separate entities or robots. They were all directly controlled by the dragons, just like with their more normal avatars.

    It was brisk walk through what was seemed like mostly open grass and trees, but a closer look showed they were carefully curated courtyards with decorative or fruiting plants. Lucy took frantic notes, snapping screenshots of the well-groomed estate, and Callum had to admit it¡¯d be nice to copy some of that for his own backyard. Mostly though, he was focused on seeing if he could find anything in the spatial environment that would imply there¡¯d been a portal there once. He just didn¡¯t believe that someone had opened a portal to one of the few portal worlds with intelligent life by chance.

    He could guess their destination when the camera caught a section of steep hill that had somehow become a polished cliff sometime in antiquity. There were characters engraved into the cliff face that he couldn¡¯t read, but it was only when he got closer that he found there really was some faint distortion to the local space. It wasn¡¯t anything that he would have easily noticed in passing, but it was something else to look out for while he was surveying for portal world connections.

    Such natural portals were the strongest argument against simply closing everything and trying to keep earth entirely free of magic. The magic would come through eventually, and if people weren¡¯t prepared something really nasty could appear. Like the dragons, only with the attitude of the vampires.

    ¡°Alright,¡± Callum said, as the procession came to a halt in front of the cliff face. ¡°I think this is going to work, but I¡¯ve never tried anything this large before so it might take a few tries.¡±

    ¡°Take your time,¡± Shahey said.

    ¡°But not too much,¡± Miya grumbled.

    Lucy chuckled and Callum shook his head, reaching out for the location and prodding it with his vis. Not that he expected a response, but he wasn¡¯t sure how the local flavor of space would affect portal creation. There was a rough sphere maybe fifty or sixty feet across, mostly inside the cliff face, that was different, but it didn¡¯t seem to affect his vis.

    ¡°Testing again,¡± he reported, and opened another small portal using the process that he¡¯d gotten familiar with over the past months. This time when it punched through to the portal world, not only did he get the Dragonlands, the entire sphere of spatial weirdness resonated, started to twist around it.

    ¡°Ah,¡± said one of the unnamed dragonblooded, clearly perking up at the bit of dragonlands mana coming through the portal.

    ¡°Yeah hang on, I think I gotta do this now,¡± Callum said, worried by the spatial instability. He wasn¡¯t sure if he¡¯d incited some kind of spontaneous formation or if he had prompted a collapse, but either way he wanted the permanent portal made and out of the way before nature took its course.

    He reached out to the vis crystals he¡¯d charged and then sent it all through his various foci. The multiple toruses and feeder structures assembled themselves on a scale he¡¯d never tried before, which meant that he predictably got it wrong the first time. A misalignment by a few degrees meant that instead of resonating with the spatial weak point, the structure grated against it, the portal itself unstable enough to collapse after an instant with a thunderclap of displaced air. Wherever it had led was not one of the compatible portal worlds.

    That was why he¡¯d prepared enough for multiple tries though, so he immediately started again, ignoring the strain. Even if he wasn¡¯t having to empty his own vis pool, he was still doing most of the work. The second time, his practice paid off. It all came together, and a big portal bloomed just in front of the cliff face.

    Which was when a big wave of vis came from underground and detonated the hill.

    All the dragons blurred into movement while Callum struggled to keep the portal together. Even incidental debris flying through the portal destabilized the affected portions, and while the structure definitely seemed to be pulling in sufficient mana to hold itself together, it was still fragile. He didn¡¯t even have time to think about the attack, entirely focused on preventing his new dimensional portal from falling apart.

    A few mage bubbles appeared on the edges of his perception, coming from below as well as the sides, but it seemed the dragonblooded had things in hand, at least for the moment. But Callum wasn¡¯t sure how long he could hold the portal and he had doubts they¡¯d get a second try. Now that the enemy knew where they needed to be, it would be trivial to make it impossible to access the area. Assuming GAR couldn¡¯t tap Duvall to make it literally impossible to open portals there, which Callum was not about to rule out.

    One of the dragons seemed to notice his issues because a flash of power formed a big metal sphere around the drone and the portal, with long spikes anchoring it in the ground. That gave him enough of a break for him to wrap the portal in a giant teleportation framework and pull it away. He would have liked to put it on the moon with his nexus, since that was the safest possible place, but that wasn¡¯t practical with an atmosphere on the other side so he dropped it off near Barbados via one of the drones he kept on one of the tiny islands there.

    His China drone remained inside the metal sphere, but given that it was dragon-made the dense vis cut off his perceptions and made it so he had no idea what was going on. Which was fine, because he had all his attention focused on the portal. Despite the successful connection, he still had to keep ahold of the structure, since the moment his control slipped the various components started drifting.

    Normally there was an enchantment enforcing the structure, or he didn¡¯t care about the portal collapsing after he let it go, but in this case he needed it to stay intact. He was still studying the portal structure when one of Shahey¡¯s avatars popped into existence on the edge of his perceptions, on the Dragonlands side of the portal. Callum wasn¡¯t sure if it had ended up at the exact same part of the cliff as before, since so much of the rock was basically the same, but it seemed it was close enough.

    ¡°Lucy, can you set one of the screens to ah, drone oh-two-seven?¡± Callum said, reading off the engraved designation on the drone¡¯s cover. If Shahey had anything to say, Callum wouldn¡¯t be able to hear it ¨C or answer back ¨C without the proper connection.

    ¡°On it,¡± she said, flipping through the controls, and one of the viewscreens popped on to show the view of a beach, while the sound of surf came through the microphone. Shahey¡¯s avatar floated into view through the portal, glancing around until he spotted the drone sitting on the grass.

    ¡°It seems to be working, but it¡¯s not as strong a connection as before,¡± Shahey remarked. ¡°Better than nothing, but it is worrisome.¡±

    ¡°I¡¯ve never done this before,¡± Callum said after he activated the microphone. ¡°But I think it¡¯s still stabilizing. There¡¯s a lot of mana uptake into the portal structure itself.¡± All the vortex structures were pulling in mana at an unbelievable rate, but it didn¡¯t seem to be replacing the vis particularly quickly. Perhaps the entire thing would operate without his constant oversight when the mana was replaced. He hoped it would. ¡°I¡¯m still having to hold it in place.¡±

    ¡°I¡¯ll have the others disengage,¡± he said. ¡°No point in fighting if we got what we want.¡±

    ¡°Sure,¡± Callum said, and rubbed his eyes, glancing at the clock. ¡°Alright,¡± he told Lucy. ¡°I think we¡¯ll have to break out the coffee for this. I¡¯m not going to be able to do anything else for a while.¡±

    ¡°An excuse to have soda!¡± Lucy grinned. ¡°I¡¯ll go run pick up Alex and then I¡¯ll keep you company. Besides, what are the odds something else is going to happen tonight?¡±

 Chapter 11 â€“ Retreat

    A tug on the pack bonds woke Alpha Chester, rolling him out bed before his was properly awake. His body operated on autopilot, his eyes barely opening in time to catch sight of the time as he went. Nearly three in the morning, and the images he was getting through the pack bond of the convoy on its way to the compound did not bode well. Military jeeps and personnel carriers, and lots of people with guns. They hadn¡¯t gone so far as to bring tanks, but it looked like some kind of national guard deployment.

    That was bad enough by itself, but the shifters shadowing the group caught the distinct reek of magic. Considering that all the governmental interference had its origin in the supernatural community anyway, that was hardly a surprise, but a combined task force was tricky. If it were just mundanes or just supernaturals, it¡¯d be easy enough to apply the appropriate measures, but a mix of the two required more finesse.

    He prodded everyone else in the compound through the pack bonds to wake them up as he dressed and armed himself, holstering a shield-breaker he had acquired next to an ordinary ¨C if high-caliber ¨C pistol. That was all for show, since if it came down to combat it would all be done in war form, but weaponry sent a certain message. Chester had no illusions about what was coming, and the only question was how much damage would be done.

    Already some people were bundling up the children and all the important items and hustling them through the main portal to the Deep Wilds or the emergency portal to the fallback shelter in the Rocky Mountains. Chester didn¡¯t think there was anyone along with the firepower necessary to really threaten him, but accidents happened ¨C sometimes on purpose ¨C and it was better to be prepared.

    By the time he was outside, loping toward the edge of the compound, all the lights were on and some of the military materiel he¡¯d managed to acquire was manned. Mages had a nasty habit of flying about and anti-aircraft weaponry could at least keep them busy, if not outright kill the more careless or arrogant ones. Demonstrating that he had military-grade weaponry at his disposal would make for difficult explanations when it came to the mundane authorities, but that¡¯s what the wards and glamours were for.

    His Wolfpack joined him at the top of the guard post at the gates, while his scouts outpaced the cars to head back and join the rest of his people inside the walls. In the distance he could see the lights of the cars and hear the rumble of engines, and he waited with his arms crossed as the convoy drew closer. When the cars drew up outside the compound walls, he sent a message through the pack bonds and the floodlights came on, illuminating the men and vehicles.

    There were sounds of surprise. Chester wondered who exactly was so stupid as to think that their approach wouldn¡¯t be noticed. The mages would certainly know that shifters would spot that many people approaching long before they arrived, and the military-minded mundanes would have to expect some kind of monitoring to be in place. In his public persona, Chester had private security, so it wasn¡¯t like the authorities were surprising some random house in the suburbs.

    ¡°What can I do for you gentlemen?¡± He called down, his voice booming as he put a little extra effort into it. They were recording everything just in case, but he was sadly certain that nothing that happened would ever make it into the public record. He looked down over the people milling about outside his gates, marking the mages and passing the tactical appraisal along the pack bonds. Even now he wasn¡¯t entirely certain what the goal was, though considering the late hour it was definitely nothing good.

    ¡°Chester Fredrickson?¡± Someone shouted back after several minutes, long enough that Chester had gone past impatient into amused. The posse was clearly not a well-oiled machine. He would have figured that magical coercion or simple bribery would have put them all on the same page, but apparently not.

    ¡°As I said, what can I do for you gentlemen?¡±

    ¡°We¡¯re here to search this compound and take everyone here into custody!¡± The man shouted back, squinting up into the floodlights.

    ¡°Really now? And do you have a warrant for that?¡± Chester boomed, not that he had any intention of yielding to such an obvious abuse.

    ¡°Come out here and we can discuss it,¡± the answer came instead. Chester snorted. They probably had a warrant, but not a valid one, especially not at this time of night. Though that wasn¡¯t the point. The supernaturals just wanted to force a confrontation .

    ¡°No, I don¡¯t think I will. If you¡¯ve got a warrant, you can slip it through the gate.¡±

    ¡°Sir, you need to come out here so we can talk about this,¡± the man said. Chester suppressed a sigh. It was like talking to a brick wall, but better that than shooting, and the more time they spent arguing the more prepared everyone else could get.

    They went around in circles for the next ten minutes. Chester timed it. The preparation wasn¡¯t one-sided, since it gave the mundanes time to suit up and arm themselves, and more importantly, time for some of the mages to disappear and spread out to surround the compound. Chester had his wolfpack track them directly, since they¡¯d probably need to be taken down right away.

    There was no telling how long they could have spent bickering if someone hadn¡¯t forced events. He was pretty sure it was a mage, but it could have been an agent with or without a push from a fae. Either way, a sudden report of gunshots rang out and people started shouting. Flashbangs and gas grenades went off at the gate, and Chester gave the signal.

    The wards pulsed, a heavy burst of mana spreading outward and instantly rendering the mundanes unconscious. Which stopped most of the gunshots, and exposed the mages and fae mixed in with the ordinary soldiers. He sent instructions through the bonds to start incapacitating or killing the supernaturals, but even as the gates opened a bomb went off in the middle of the mundanes.

    At least, that was what it looked like. Chester could smell the distinct scent of human magic, and he realized instantly what was going on. If DAI couldn¡¯t get Chester to attack the mundanes, they¡¯d just engineer it to look like he had. He adjusted the orders to his local people as he jumped off the wall himself, shifting to war-form on the way.

    He broke through the shield of one of the mages with a swipe, the man¡¯s head flying off into the distance on the follow-through as the body simply dropped. His other people went after the rest of the supernaturals, but at least one fae simply faded away with a laugh. Others were not so lucky, and in a few seconds there were more dead bodies on the ground.

    Emergency treatment. Fetch Gayle. Chester didn¡¯t personally care that much about the mundane agents, many of whom probably weren¡¯t magically mind-controlled, but the political implications could be disastrous. The federal government did not look kindly upon people who killed their agents, or at least were framed as having done so. His mind was already racing ahead, to how he would deal with the fallout, but first he had to make sure as many people survived as possible.

    Rendering the mundanes unconscious had played right into the supernatural plan, knowing or not. None of them were conscious to provide witness. He growled deep in his throat as he pulled people out of burning cars, applied tourniquets, and separated the dead from the injured. Yet he knew that this wasn¡¯t over; as bad as the situation was he didn¡¯t believe that they¡¯d go that far and no further.

    Not less than two minutes later the ground started to shake. Chester took a moment to sort through what his subordinates were sending through the bonds. Only two of the dispersed mages had been removed; they had been incautious enough to stay low to the ground. The others had flown up out of sight, but the stench of magic was strong enough that they were clearly casting something into the ground. The wards were all ablaze with alarms and the shielding was activated, but the reserves were draining rapidly as they fended off vis attacks.

    Chester and his people could oppose mages in direct combat, but shifters didn¡¯t have anything to deal with long-range, indirect assaults like that ¡ª which was one reason that shifters had been under the GAR aegis for so long. While he¡¯d called on his allies, it was already too late for them to arrive. The real damage had been done.

    Get the mundanes through the portal, he decided, and his people started grabbing bodies, unconscious or otherwise. It was bad enough that some of them had died; leaving them to be found with whatever setup the mages had in mind would be catastrophic. At shifter speed, shuttling thirty people through the portal to the Deep Wilds did not take long, but long enough that the combined efforts of the mages were starting to be felt.

    ¡°They¡¯re going to level our home,¡± Lisa said over the radio, aggrieved. ¡°Someone has to pay for that.¡±

    ¡°They will,¡± he said grimly, tossing the last person through the portal into the arms of a waiting shifter. ¡°You¡¯d better evacuate too. No telling how far they¡¯ll go.¡± While his words were calm, he was looking forward to personally tearing the head off whoever was responsible. So far the only saving grace was that none of his people had been badly hurt; nothing that couldn¡¯t be taken care of by shifter healing and Gayle, anyway. The greater damage was to his official identity and the entire network he¡¯d built up over the years to support it.

    He was going to be leaving an awful lot of people high and dry, and he hated it.

    Lisa was the last one through the portal, but he didn¡¯t follow, instead taking the portal frame itself and hauling it off at speed. His wolfpack had the remaining ones, and they all scattered in different directions as some mage with a lot of earth power finally broke through the shielding wards. He had already memorized the scents of the mages in question and as the compound walls began to crumble, he burned it into his memory.

    Maybe the individuals were out of his reach, but he knew someone who was quite capable of removing targets with prejudice. No matter where they might be.

    ***

    Felicia woke to a whispering in her ear, and it took her but an instant to recognize it as the spirit she had bound to her in the Ways. She sat up straight to listen, its not-quite-words telling her about the fae that were sliding and slithering their way through the Ways, bringing with them scents of might-be and never-was.

    She knew that the Ways connected to Faerie itself, but that link was neither obvious nor easy, bridging the worlds as it did. Still, any doorway might be used even if it could only fit one person at a time, and a fae with the proper authority might well make the path easier for a time. It wasn¡¯t a link she could completely guard or close ¨C at least not yet ¨C but she had been keeping an eye on it to prevent any more deep Faerie monsters from wandering onto Earth.

    The monsters spoke not of monsters, however, but an army. Or, if that was too bombastic, at least a horde. Too many presences for mere coincidence.

    She rolled out of bed and dressed herself in the armor of her station. Felicia had yet to bring a fae into her service that could forge something fit for a princess, but the tactical outfit that she¡¯d purchased from House Taisen and combined with a cloak and some inspired embroidery made for a credible regalia. Her guards prepared as well, the ones who had been waiting in her shadow sliding out to rest while new, fresh ones suited themselves and checked their weaponry.

    ¡°Ray,¡± she said, rousing him. ¡°We have work to do.¡± Even though he wasn¡¯t much affected by her voice, she made sure to not invest her requests to him with any power. A relationship couldn¡¯t be filled with one-sided orders.

    Less than a minute later Ray was suited up as well. While he didn¡¯t have regalia ¨C yet ¨C he did have a fae-made patch on his breast with her iconography. Like her, he had a mage-produced set of tactical armor, which wasn¡¯t quite as good as she would have liked against fae magic but it was far better than nothing.

    ¡°What¡¯s happening?¡± He asked, his voice still rough from sleep. She had to suppress an urge to comment on how good that sounded and focused on the task at hand.

    ¡°Someone¡¯s coming through the Ways. We will have to see what we can do to stop or deflect them.¡± The spirit¡¯s whispering indicated that someone of real power was along, and while her own authority was steadily growing, she wasn¡¯t at the point that she could directly contend with a Prince of one of the Seven Lesser Courts. Which wasn¡¯t to say she couldn¡¯t do anything.

    The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.

    ¡°Should we get Taisen?¡± Ray asked, fingers going to the scry-comm pinned to his collar.

    ¡°If we can,¡± Felicia said. Taisen kept odd hours thanks to his global reach and living underground in Antarctica, but he was the only mage other than Ray that Felicia would be comfortable bringing into the Ways. Not just because of the secrecy, but because the Ways themselves would happily eat an unwary mage, given that they very much did not belong there.

    Ray activated the scry-comm and muttered at the person on the other end. The new ones were designed so that only the user could hear them, and while Felicia probably could have flexed some of her burgeoning power to listen in anyway, she didn¡¯t need to. She trusted Ray to handle things, while she turned on the faucet in the apartment kitchen and started to coax the Gate of Water from her wrist.

    ¡°He¡¯s dealing with an attack on Alpha Chester,¡± Ray reported grimly. ¡°So this is a full offensive. Which we weren¡¯t ready for.¡±

    ¡°No, not yet,¡± Felicia said, though she knew that she probably couldn¡¯t have been more ready than she was. Any fae was as much constrained by their story as empowered by it, and any shortcuts to power that she took would absolutely cripple her. If she wanted to compete with the old monsters of Faerie, she would need a lot more time. Even with, or maybe especially because of, her bloodline.

    ¡°Let¡¯s go, then,¡± Ray said, slinging an arcanorifle over his shoulder. The Ghost¡¯s success with firearms had made some mages, Ray included, carry them as backup weapons at the very least. They didn¡¯t have bane ammunition, but it wasn¡¯t a good idea to bring cold iron into the Ways to begin with.

    Felicia pulled on the Gate of Water, expanding the half-filled sink into a shimmering film that filled one of the doorways. By her will, a dozen of her guards went through, followed by Ray and then finally herself. The glade on the other side greeted her as she stepped through, and the very far edge of the clearing shifted to narrow its perspective, looking out and down a slope that hadn¡¯t existed before.

    It took her a moment to place what she was seeing; a procession of animals and animalistic humanoids mixed together, surrounded by ambling packs of humans with shriveled skin and blank faces. Though she hadn¡¯t encountered this court specifically, she did know of them. The Court of the Loa.

    Felicia felt it was in bad taste, but certain kinds of fae loved making deals with mortals. Even from this distance she could tell the zombie packs were just that; mortals who had made one too many deals with the fae and had paid the price for it. That made them more substantial than conjured minions or even lesser fae who had been subjugated by their superiors.

    The fae at the center of the invasion had styled himself after Baron Samedi, and several of his similarly-attired underlings anchored the other fae. Some of the others had forms that were barely corporeal, and they¡¯d need the help if they were to get to Earth. Which, looking at the forces and comparing them to her own, Felicia couldn¡¯t quite stop. But she could do something.

    She reached out and channeled her power into the glade. The slope grew, turning into a cliff, the paths that led to that part of the Ways falling away and melding back into the realm. If nothing else, she could cut them off from North America, locking them out of whatever was going on with Alpha Chester. They still could find other Gates to other places on Earth, but not to anywhere near something vulnerable.

    ¡°Let us have some target practice,¡± she said, gesturing to the cliff edge. While the Ways were not entirely a physical place, the things inside it were quite real. The terrain might be far more than it seemed, but they could still take advantage of the high ground to hit the enemy.

    ¡°That¡¯s a handy thing,¡± Ray said, lips quirking into half a smile. ¡°Though won¡¯t they just scale the cliff?¡±

    ¡°It¡¯s more than just a cliff, in this place,¡± Felicia said. ¡°Though if I am to cut them off from our position entirely, they will be cut off from us and we have only a limited window before they will be gone from our sight. Even now time is fleeting.¡±

    ¡°Then there¡¯s none to waste,¡± Ray said, unslinging the arcanorifle and handing it to her before stepping over to the cliff edge and channeling his vis. Felicia joined him with her guards, looking down at the procession passing through what had become a misty, haunted wood, and aimed the rifle.

    ¡°Fire,¡± she said, and squeezed the trigger. Ray¡¯s winds rushed downward just behind the first volley of bullets, but the actual damage was minor. A number of the transformed humans were thrown out into the depths of the Ways, and would never be seen again, and several of the lesser loa fell to bullets or cutting winds, but the deceptive distance of the Ways worked against them.

    None of the enemy panicked, though. Defensive magics of dozens of different types sprang into existence around the force while they searched for their attackers, but the Baron seemed to see straight through to where they were perched on their plateau. He raised his cane and pointed it in their direction, a great black shadow reaching, clawlike, and flashing up the cliff toward them.

    ¡°Stop.¡± Felicia commanded it. ¡°Be not.¡± The shadow froze and vanished, dissipating like dew in the morning sun. She sank down to one knee, feeling drained from the effort of contesting what was either the Prince of the Court of Loa or a direct lieutenant. Sadly, she couldn¡¯t see his reaction to his attack being so utterly destroyed, for their force was swallowed by the mists as her glade completely sealed itself off.

    Overall, it was a frustratingly inconclusive match, but they hadn¡¯t sustained any injuries and had at least denied the enemy an easy route into North America. But that wasn¡¯t enough for Felicia, because that troupe would still come out somewhere on Earth, and it would be disastrous for anyone nearby when that happened. Even if the Court of the Loa were not as deeply insidious as some of the others, they could very easily dig themselves into the right area and make it exceedingly difficult to remove them.

    ¡°Come on, Ray,¡± she said. ¡°We need to shadow them and let someone know where they¡¯re emerging.¡±

    ¡°Got your homebond?¡± Ray asked, holding up his hand to show the ring.

    ¡°I do,¡± Felicia said. Though it was really an exercise of last resort, especially in the Ways. There was no telling how much power she would lose if she simply fled that way. Escaping an assassin was one thing, hunting enemy fae was another. Ray¡¯s vis resonated with the enchantments in her armor and they lifted into the air.

    ¡°Firskin, Gallade; come along. The rest of you, stay here until I return,¡± Felicia said, and two of her guards leapt into her shadow while the remainder spread out over the glade.

    She opened a new path back out of the glade, manifesting as a steep mountain trail that they shot down at speed. While she had determined the basic form of the glade, she had no control over the winding of the path, nor of the craggy outcrops with trees clinging to them. There was a stretched and strained property to the cliffside, the half-real nature fighting with the presence of mage and fae.

    They shot down toward the misty forest, which rapidly became a narrow jungle trail. Below them, she could see where the Court of Loa fae were winding their way through a long and sinuous path, one that turned upon itself as if it had no desire to lead the intruders to their destination. Felicia had to wonder if even the parts she had not taken control of were aligning themselves with her, or maybe just against the natives of Faerie.

    By intent or simply by being lost after being cut off from North America, they had gone toward South America. Europe would have made more sense, as GAR still held most of its power there, but there wasn¡¯t very much in South or Central America to prevent the fae army from doing what it wanted. The whispers from the jungle spoke of another Gate, at the bottom of a sun-dappled cenote choked with bones. It was a combination of two Gates at once, and so harder to find, control, or use, but also far more difficult to displace or remove.

    Before she could figure out where, precisely, the Gate might be Earth-side, someone detected them. A whole section of the army peeled away and headed back toward them, and Ray promptly sent them rocketing the opposite direction. Great ghostly snakes chased them as they retreated, but a whispered word from Felicia slowed them and left them floundering in a swampy morass.

    ¡°We¡¯ll have to put out the word,¡± she said grimly. ¡°I might be able to cut off the Gate from this end once they¡¯re through, and erase their escape route. But I cannot deal with that many fae at once.¡±

    ¡°Understood,¡± Ray replied, his magic keeping his words from being snatched away by the breeze. ¡°Discretion is sometimes the better part of valor.¡±

    ***

    ¡°Details are still emerging about the raid on reclusive millionaire Chester Fredrickson¡¯s estate, which seems to have been completely destroyed, possibly due to stored explosives. The man operated a cult-like compound with dozens of people living inside its walls, and the authorities were investigating him for possible tax fraud and terrorist connections. Fredrickson himself has not yet been located, and authorities have refused to comment on what casualties, if any, might have been involved.¡±

    Callum stared at the news feed, a little loopy from lack of sleep. His mind was numb from holding the dimensional portal open for hours, but he could see how bad things were. There was just a big dirt hole where Chester¡¯s compound used to be.

    ¡°Maybe it¡¯s selfish, but I¡¯m glad we didn¡¯t decide to leave Alex there overnight,¡± Lucy said, trying to get their son to eat breakfast. Both of them were running on too little sleep, so of course he was more rambunctious than normal, but that was a reassuring piece of normalcy after everything that had happened. Despite the destruction of what he¡¯d considered a safe space, Callum was too tired to be properly angry about it, though the fact that they¡¯d already heard from Chester and knew he and his were safe helped.

    ¡°Yeah. Though maybe¡­¡± Callum trailed off and shook his head. He would have been useless in such a situation, at least unless he let the portal collapse. Even then, pitched battles weren¡¯t his best realm. In fact he was pretty sure that if people were flinging magic everywhere it¡¯d make it practically impossible for him to do anything.

    ¡°No, I guess it¡¯s for the best, but we were using Chester¡¯s place for a kind of headquarters. Not to mention for your medical checkups.¡± Lucy was well advanced with their second child now, and Callum was absolutely shameless about getting Gayle to smooth things along. Now that he had a redoubt there were other options for meeting, but being deprived of their normal safe place was disconcerting.

    ¡°Gonna make that meeting real interesting,¡± Lucy said, and yawned, clearly less concerned about that part than he was. ¡°C¡¯mon sweetie, you can¡¯t just have bacon.¡±

    ¡°Like bacon,¡± Alex proclaimed.

    ¡°Yeah, I do too, kiddo, but fruit¡¯s good too,¡± Callum told him, and held out a grape for Alex to eat. Which he did, reluctantly. ¡°Have we heard anything from Chester other than that he¡¯s okay?¡±

    ¡°Not yet. Given that mess it¡¯s probably going to be a while.¡± Lucy rubbed her eyes. ¡°Which means Alex won¡¯t be able to see his friends for a while maybe. Those poor kids, having to run out in the middle of the night.¡±

    ¡°It¡¯s an escalation,¡± Callum sighed. ¡°The fae are one thing, but mages and the federal government ¡ª I don¡¯t know. Is there any option that¡¯s not all-out war?¡±

    ¡°I mean. You were talking about taking down GAR anyway. Now there¡¯s just, y¡¯know, more of a reason?¡±

    ¡°It¡¯s more reason to aim at Janry, too,¡± Callum said. ¡°I¡¯ve always been a proponent of removing the people at the top, and we all know it¡¯s Janry who is giving GAR their orders. I know that nuking archmages might start a real war, even a nuclear one, but I hate being unable to do the right thing because of the fear of reprisal. At what point is it no longer worth it if they just abuse our restraint to do what they want?¡±

    ¡°I mean, the stakes are pretty high, what with the potential end of civilization and all,¡± Lucy replied, handing Alex his cup. ¡°Just a few more bites and we can go play, okay?¡±

    ¡°Okay!¡±

    Callum yawned. He didn¡¯t know how Lucy had the energy to play, other than copious amounts of caffeine. While he hadn¡¯t had more than a single soda, he was feeling pretty terrible from staying up all night, like his head was in a fog. Just the distraction from talking with his family was enough for one of the rings of the portal to start slipping, and he clamped it back in place.

    By his judgement some thirty or forty percent of the structure had converted itself to mana, and he had been right that those segments were stable ¡ª though he didn¡¯t know if it was because they were made of mana or if it was just that the structures had established themselves locally. He supposed it didn¡¯t really matter which, if the result was the same, but if he knew he might get a lead on Duvall¡¯s ability to fix local space permanently.

    He knew he should be focused on the debacle that had destroyed Chester¡¯s civilian identity and what they were going to do about it, but he was too tired and scatterbrained to make any inroads in that direction. He was just glad it wasn¡¯t worse, and there hadn¡¯t been archmage-versus-archmage combat. Though how anyone was going to explain the enormous sinkhole that was obviously not a crater, he didn¡¯t know. A secret government weapon, perhaps.

    ¡°You go ahead,¡± he told Lucy, as Alex squirmed off his seat. ¡°I¡¯m going to try and not fall asleep here.¡±

    ¡°C¡¯mon sweetie, daddy¡¯s tired. He¡¯ll join us later,¡± Lucy said, holding out her hand for Alex¡¯s. He looked at her and then walked over to Callum.

    ¡°Daddy needs to go to bed on time,¡± he said solemnly. Callum couldn¡¯t help but laugh.

    ¡°Yeah, you¡¯re right. I¡¯ll do better tonight.¡±

    Alex nodded and ran off to Lucy, both of them going outside. Callum yawned again and switched from the useless news report to the drone feed. The tiny island he was using off Barbados was populated by a number of the dragon war-forms, and not just of the cyber lizard type either. There were dozens of combat-capable Pteranodon-looking versions in the air as well. He wasn¡¯t entirely certain, but he could swear that they had guns. It showed why people respected the dragonblooded, even if Shahey¡¯s avatar hadn¡¯t been very fearsome.

    The stuff the dragons wielded was basically magic artillery controlled by a single mind. Callum didn¡¯t know how it stacked up against archmage powers but an arbitrary number of perfectly coordinated attackers was a terrifying thing indeed. He still didn¡¯t know what they intended to do to House Xu, since their payoff clearly hadn¡¯t stuck, but the answer was probably something along the lines of whatever they wanted.

    ¡°So have you reconsidered your neutral stance?¡± Callum asked via drone. Shahey had an aged, sage version of himself there, more to answer questions than to oversee things. He had a hunch they¡¯d be building a bunker around the portal as soon as it was safe, but at the moment nobody wanted to run the risk of destabilizing it.

    ¡°I think we¡¯ll be forced to put our hand in at least a little, if we want to stay on Earth,¡± Shahey said. ¡°I admit our current non-interference policy falls apart under the circumstances. Principles are all well and good, but only until they fail. Though I must confess; it is somewhat satisfying that we are not the cause of this upheaval.¡±

    ¡°I find that people are generally pretty good at upheaval all on their own,¡± Callum said. He wasn¡¯t exactly certain how having the dragons more officially on their side would help, though. Between himself and the two archmages, their side didn¡¯t lack the ability to apply force. It was more an issue of finesse.

    ¡°So it would seem,¡± Shahey said, amused. ¡°The supernaturals put this one together all on their own.¡±

    ¡°Gonna get messy though,¡± Callum said, stifling another yawn as he clamped down on portal drift yet again. ¡°If we¡¯re going to have open war that¡¯s just not going to turn out good for anyone.¡±

 Chapter 12 â€“ Wizzy

    ¡°Do a jaguar next!¡±

    ¡°No, a dragon!¡±

    Huitzilin smiled at the children as he handed the butterfly he had just finished whittling to the small girl hovering on his porch steps. She took it carefully and managed to squeak out thanks before dashing off to show it to her friends.

    ¡°A jaguar, ai?¡± He asked, taking the next block of wood. The little boy nodded eagerly, brushing the hair out of his eyes. Huitzilin started carving, but after the first two curls of wood peeled off, the phone in his pocket chimed. The ringtone identified it as coming from House Taisen, so he sighed and put the wood block down. ¡°Seems like work is calling. One will make a jaguar next time.¡±

    ¡°Okay gramps,¡± said the little boy, and Huitzilin narrowed his eyes at the kid. The children dispersed as he pulled out the phone and answered it.

    ¡°Yes?¡±

    ¡°This is Taisen,¡± the voice on the other end said. ¡°I have a report from Princess Felicia.¡±

    ¡°Ah?¡± That was a departure from the usual way of things. Huitzilin stepped inside the little house he had on the edge of the village, to have some privacy. ¡°Is there an issue?¡±

    ¡°There is,¡± a new voice sounded in his ear, and he could feel the power in it despite being unaffected himself, his blood denying it any hold. ¡°A group of hostile fae have just emerged somewhere in Central or South America. Not too far south though, and I know they came out somewhere in a deep cenote with lots of bones at the bottom. But I couldn¡¯t tell you their exact geographic area.¡±

    ¡°One suspects that that will not be necessary,¡± Huitzilin said, recalling old, old memories. It made sense that the fae would be attracted to such important and venerated places, old and bloody as they were.

    ¡°Archmage Taisen is extremely busy dealing with the aftermath of an attack on Alpha Chester; would you be confident in addressing the fae issue? They have someone fairly powerful with them, though not of archmage level.¡±

    ¡°Yes,¡± Huitzilin said. ¡°One will ensure that these fae commit no mischief.¡±

    ¡°I will block their escape route,¡± Felicia said. ¡°If they retreated there is no telling where they would end up. Not in Faerie, that is certain.¡±

    ¡°Very good,¡± Huitzilin said, and hung up the phone. He had never entirely agreed with modern notions like mercy anyway, for that required that the enemy be in some sense very similar, with only circumstance putting them at odds. For strange creatures like the fae, any that set themselves against him could not be granted clemency.

    ¡°Then we hunt again?¡± His shadow asked him, bright eyes opening where it was cast upon the wall. The language it used had been lost to the ages, dying out with his people in time lost to time.

    ¡°We do,¡± Huitzilin confirmed to his old friend. He stepped out of the back of his house, activating his foci. While he preferred walking most of the time, sometimes flight was a better option.

    The glamour kept him disguised as he flew out of the small village he lived in for the moment, carrying him past the hidden temple where the portal to Mictl¨¡n resided, and on toward other, half-remembered ritual sites. Most of them were after his time, but not all. People had been drawn to the same places again and again, as if there were something magical about them.

    Huitzilin knew there was. It wasn¡¯t the magic of mages, not the magic of vis, but something deeper and more primal. It was the kind of magic that raised and razed cities, the sheer will and determination of thousands crystallizing into a single point of action. Mictl¨¡n had done none of that, only bleeding off talented youth for the false promise of easy power. At least until he had sealed it.

    There was nothing amiss at the first sacrificial pool he checked, nor the next, or even the next. It wasn¡¯t until he¡¯d worked his way all the way to Campeche that he caught the first hint of fae presence. The blood of the earth twisted and turned, spiraling in toward the ancient cenote in ways that it should not.

    Huitzilin dropped down into the changed space, feeling the beating hearts of two, perhaps three banner worth of fae and humans. Or things that had once been human. The blood that flowed through them was too thick, moved too slowly, its nature twisted and changed by too much time in Faerie.

    He reached up to touch the thorns piercing his earlobes, tugging lightly to generate a few drops of blood, which he sent circling around him as he walked forward through the jungle. A few moments later he broke through into the clearing where the fae were assembled, all of them in some mockery of human or animal form.

    Of course, his arrival hadn¡¯t gone unnoticed. Several of the more human-looking fae turned toward him, while the one in the big hat stretched out his cane theatrically. Though with the fae, theatrics were inseparable from effectiveness.

    ¡°Halt, mage!¡± He boomed, shadows rising around him. ¡°You tread upon the Court of the Loa! Pay your respects or face the consequences.¡±

    ¡°You are invaders,¡± Huitzilin said softly. ¡°And will receive only what you have earned.¡±

    The altered humans were weak, and he simply seized control of their blood directly, puppeting them to turn around and immediately attack their masters. Weak though they were, it was a surprise to their fae masters to be set upon by five or six withered bodies clawing and grasping with savage ferocity. Not that Huitzilin expected the thralls to do all the work for him.

    He flung his blood forward, drops spattering against two of the fae ¨C a bull-headed man and an owl-headed woman ¨C and forced it into their veins. His vis tangled with theirs, his blood flowed in their veins. After a single moment, he ripped it all out of them, reducing them to dried chunks of meat and bone. The blood went splashing out, threatening the rest of the fae.

    The rest of them blurred into motion, several of them coming directly at him with weapons that may have looked unimpressive but were clearly heavily magical, meant to cleave and sever. All of which he ignored, for when they met his skin they stopped, the blood inside it stronger than steel and as immoveable as a mountain. All that did was bring them closer to death, for the few drops of blood they freed whipped out to flense flesh from bone.

    At the same time, the man in the oversized hat conjured up a great cresting wave of shadow, sending it Huitzilin¡¯s way with a flick of the cane. It withered anything it touched, plant, fae, and human alike, but Huitzilin had ways of dealing with that kind of thing. Perhaps he could have withstood it on sheer strength of power alone, but there was no need to take the risk.

    His shadow shot out to meet the one that the fae had conjured. For a moment the yawning abyss of Mictl¨¡n cracked open on Earth, the darkness there swallowing the pale imitation the fae had conjured and leaving only ash behind. That seemed to be enough for some of the fae, and a number of them jumped back down the cenote. Whatever they were expecting, it didn¡¯t happen, the bone-choked water merely rippling and splashing. Felicia had kept her word.

    From there the fight took on a note of desperation. The fae came at him in a horde, ignoring the ones who were being beaten to death by the hijacked thralls, and he welcomed them. All they did was speed up their own deaths, though his shirt and pants were torn to tatters. While his control over his own blood meant there was little in the way of injury they could inflict on him, it still sliced through the mundane material he was wearing as if it were air.

    The only one who was at all a challenge was the hat man, who didn¡¯t bother with anything physical and instead threw magical attacks. Not powerful ones, but insidious stuff, trying to infect the air he breathed and the light he saw. His old, dead friend was proof against that, a shadow that overmatched the darkness the fae could cast.

    Huitzilin strode forward, drops of blood hanging around him as the exsanguinated corpses of his foes crumbled onto the grass. The hat man¡¯s cane whistled through the air, the simple stick sharper than an obsidian blade. Even Huitzilin was wary of letting such a foul artifact touch him, especially since he could feel the hunger it had, so his blood pulled him to one side faster than mere muscle could move.

    Like any real fight, it was over in seconds. Huitzilin was not taking any chances, and he ripped into the fae with all the blood he had gathered. He forced it into the fae¡¯s mouth and nose, down its throat, into its ears and eyes. The hat man¡¯s shadows tried to tear at his vis, but instead his old friend devoured them, diamond eyes glowing.

    Then Huitzilin tore him apart from the inside, shredding his body and stealing his vis, funneling it into his shadow to repair what had been spent in the fight. Not that his friend would ever go away, but his shadow could only do so much without a ready supply of energy.

    It didn¡¯t take much longer to remove the rest of the enemies, with their lord and general gone. That left only the remaining altered humans, and Wizzy peered at them closely to see if any were still intact. But no, they had been that way so long that if they had minds, death would be a release. He stilled their blood in their veins, an instant mercy.

    In the bloody silence, he reached down for the water of the cenote and used it to wash things clean, scouring open a patch of earth to bury the remains and using one of his foci to seal stone around them. No need to burden the jungle with the problems that fae bodies could invite if they were left out for the birds and the worms.

    Huitzilin stretched and yawned, feeling a little bit drained from the encounter. He was of course unbothered by the carnage, since he had seen much worse and bloodier sights, and with less deserving victims. But he was out of practice, having not needed to use his offensive skills for a very long time.

    ¡°Thank you, old friend,¡± he said.

    ¡°It was fun,¡± the shadow replied.

    He took out his phone and frowned as he saw he had no service where he was, then energized his focus to take to the air again. He needed to return home anyway and get new clothes, for the current ones were in tatters and people would balk at seeing the innumerable bloodless papercuts put into his skin. Huitzilin flew over the jungle as the sky darkened, content with what he had managed.

    Even if he had not been a blood priest for a very long time, it was good to know that he still remembered how to deal with his enemies.

    ***

    With Alpha Chester¡¯s compound destroyed, House Hargrave ended up hosting what could credibly be described as a summit. Callum wasn¡¯t entirely happy with it, but there weren¡¯t too many choices. It needed to be held on Earth if the shifter and fae members were to be at all comfortable, unless Callum wanted to volunteer to hold portals open for the duration of their discussions. Which he didn¡¯t, especially since he was completely tapped out from his work with the dragons'' own portal.

    He was still keeping an eye on it, though it seemed to be stable enough, even if the mana flow wasn¡¯t yet at the level of the original. Perhaps it never would be, considering how rough and haphazard the process had been, but it was probably good enough. It weighed on his mind enough that he was still worrying over it by the time he had to leave, and only reluctantly teleported his family over.

    House Hargrave was astonishingly opulent to his sensibilities, the rooms enormous and spacious and filled with antiques. Hand-carved furniture, paintings that looked to be from the Dutch masters, and a lot of subtle enchanting for the lights, the windows, even the carpets. Though what surprised him the most was that there was an entire pack of shifters serving as guards and butlers.

    ¡°Welcome to House Hargrave, Master and Madam Wells, and of course the Young Master too,¡± one of the butlers said, bowing to them after they appeared in the vestibule of the House. Alex bounced happily at being called Young Master, staring around at the expensive carpets and hand-blown glass chandeliers. Callum had to admit he was impressed, though not entirely comfortable with that level of extreme wealth. While it was incredibly opulent, he suspected it was less showing off as just the way very powerful people lived when they accumulated wealth and connections over hundreds of years.

    This story has been unlawfully obtained without the author''s consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.

    ¡°Thank you,¡± Callum said, and followed the butler through the house to where he had already sensed a number of mage bubbles along with Wizzy and Shahey. Even though House Hargrave were allies, he was still twitchy being so deep in another mage¡¯s territory. It wasn¡¯t as nerve-wracking as his first contacts, at least, so he was able to focus on something other than escape plans.

    The sitting room had a half-dozen Hargraves, the family resemblance obvious when they were all gathered together, and the ones he hadn¡¯t met stared politely when the butler introduced them. It gave Callum a moment of befuddled confusion to see actual fear in their expressions, but of course he had a reputation. The fae cloak he was wearing probably contributed, since the material was clearly not of Earth and he was sure it looked intimidating to mage-sight.

    ¡°Alpha Chester should be arriving soon,¡± Archmage Hargrave said. ¡°And Princess Felicity is en route with Archmage Taisen.¡±

    ¡°That¡¯s fine,¡± Callum said. ¡°I¡¯m pretty sure we¡¯re all on the same page after the past couple days.¡±

    ¡°Their willingness to move to open hostilities is worrisome,¡± Archmage Hargrave acknowledged. ¡°Even I know that the incident at Chester¡¯s compound is getting far too much scrutiny. Especially after the vampire massacres. I¡¯m not sure that GAR is even bothering to try and cover it up.¡±

    ¡°The DAI inherited BSE¡¯s job, basically,¡± Lucy said, digging a book out of the bag for Alex, since he was sure to be fairly bored by the proceedings. ¡°And they don¡¯t have the expertise for it. Or the interest, probably. Isn¡¯t the new policy that they don¡¯t actually care about secrecy anymore?¡±

    ¡°It¡¯s not clear what the new policy is,¡± Glenda said, watching as Lucy settled Alex on her lap. ¡°We still have some people over in Faerie who talk to us, but the inner circle of Archmages are keeping their mouths shut.¡±

    ¡°Announcing Archmage Taisen, Princess Felicity Blackblood, and Princess-Consort Magus Raymond Danforth,¡± the butler said, which didn¡¯t surprise Callum since he¡¯d sensed them arrive. What did surprise him was the amount of power swirling around Felicia, significantly more than the last time he¡¯d seen her. She was also dressed in what could only be described as a tactical ballgown, an armored black dress that integrated both pistol and sword.

    ¡°There was never meant to be an inner circle of Archmages,¡± Taisen said, not at all ashamed about listening in on their conversation. ¡°But that¡¯s the nature of people. Even equals aren¡¯t equal.¡±

    There was another round of greetings as the new arrivals settled in, but aside from mild complaining nobody broached the serious topics. At least, not until the last guest arrived, only a few minutes after Taisen. Chester strode into the room looking grim, though not despondent, and for some reason smelling strongly of pine. Callum didn¡¯t ask, and Chester didn¡¯t explain.

    ¡°Let us begin, then,¡± Archmage Hargrave said, as honest-to-goodness maids came around to serve drinks and hors d¡¯oeuvres. Alex immediately gravitated toward the bacon cream cheese things, but the Hargraves or their household were thoughtful enough to also provide some fruit slices which were slightly more healthy. Callum left wrangling his kid to Lucy and focused on the topic at hand.

    ¡°It seems to me that we need to disassemble what remains of GAR and remove Archmage Janry,¡± Callum said. ¡°Perhaps in that order. I¡¯m not even sure what GAR still does at this point¡ª¡±

    ¡°Coordinates exchange between supernatural and mundane finances, settles grievances between parties, provides education and recordkeeping, recharge services for foci, a marketplace for fae items¡­¡± Taisen ticked off a list on his fingers. ¡°Removing GAR is going to mean a lot of trouble for a lot of people. Not that I disagree with you, but it does run the risk of making more enemies.¡±

    ¡°The fae, at least, should not be a problem,¡± Felicia said, sending the glasses to ringing in resonant sympathy. ¡°They will all have to come under my banner at some point, and it may be for the best if our craftsmanship is less easy to acquire. There are far too many things out there with hidden barbs.¡±

    ¡°The enclaves in the American Alliance aren¡¯t going to like that,¡± Chester warned. ¡°They prefer their independence.¡±

    ¡°I have no desire to dictate to people whose arrangements already work perfectly well,¡± Felicia said, waving it aside. ¡°Serving under the banner of the blood of Oberon is an entirely different prospect as well, compared to dealing with the Greater or Lesser Courts.¡±

    ¡°If you can negotiate with them, that is their business, but the American Alliance won¡¯t take kindly to any attempts to force our members to join,¡± Chester said, frowning at her. Felicia merely smiled and inclined her head.

    ¡°We¡¯ve got a lot of Houses pulling out of Janry¡¯s little alliance thanks to my portal worlds,¡± Callum said. ¡°Do they really need GAR? I mean, GAR does stuff on Earth and most of the rest of the Houses are over on Faerie or the Deep Wilds now.¡±

    ¡°Need?¡± Hargrave frowned. ¡°Perhaps not, but Earth has the sort of various sundries that even the Faerie types enjoy. The industry of billions of people produces things that magic just can¡¯t match at the price. Without some connection people will find they¡¯re missing many things they took for granted. As we found out when we were cut off ourselves.¡±

    ¡°So we set up a digital marketplace,¡± Lucy suggested. ¡°We take all of GAR¡¯s magical internet stuff, and model ourselves off of the mundane ones. Get some fae or shifters to deliver things or just send it through regular post.¡± That suggestion got some very considering looks, but Chester refused to be distracted.

    ¡°We may debate the specifics, but we need to take our pound of flesh,¡± Chester said, almost with a growl. ¡°These people are unafraid of any consequence but death.¡±

    ¡°Have to agree with that,¡± Callum sighed, glancing over to see that Alex was still focused on his book rather than the conversation. ¡°I¡¯d rather target the right people, though when it comes to GAR it¡¯s hard to figure out who¡¯s responsible for what.¡±

    ¡°For once I don¡¯t think we¡¯ll need The Ghost¡¯s assassination abilities,¡± Taisen said. ¡°If we¡¯re going in and clearing out GAR completely, then it¡¯s going to be a full military exercise. Your ability to bypass wards and retrieve items will be far more valuable. Besides, this isn¡¯t just your fight.¡±

    ¡°That was the sort of logic that ended up with the Night Lands debacle,¡± Callum said, not really arguing, just grumbling. ¡°Are we prepared for their response?¡±

    ¡°As we can be,¡± Hargrave said. ¡°This isn¡¯t something that can go unanswered. They¡¯re daring us to curb our response for fear of escalation. But nothing is stopping them from taking those steps anyway, save for the consequences.¡±

    Callum rubbed his temples. That was why he hadn¡¯t wanted to get into the political angles, but wherever there was power, that was bound to happen. Even if he wasn¡¯t interested in politics, politics was interested in him and he had to engage if he wanted to have any say in what was happening.

    ¡°So what are we going to do, if this whole alliance is going to be involved?¡±

    Lucy and Gayle went off with Alex to keep themselves occupied while everyone else spent the next few hours discussing tactics and strategy. Even some of the other Hargraves and Chester¡¯s shifters drifted in and out, since most of them had little to contribute. Callum was fed up with it early on but he stuck it out from sheer force of obligation.

    The surprise, at least to him, was that Wizzy volunteered to go along. So far as Callum understood it, Wizzy tended to stay out of these things. He might be willing to defend his own area, but he didn¡¯t get involved in other people¡¯s business. Unlike Callum, GAR seemed perfectly willing to let him be.

    ¡°One is not committing to the assault,¡± Wizzy cautioned them. ¡°But there must be an observer to attest to truth of the conflict. Whatever that truth may be.¡±

    There was no need to stall in their attack on GAR, but it wasn¡¯t just Callum this time and people needed time to get ready. That left several dead hours for Callum and Lucy to address the reason they¡¯d brought Alex along in the first place: magic testing. Callum was pretty certain he knew what Alex¡¯s aspect was considering some of the things he¡¯d caught his son doing, but he didn¡¯t say anything in case he prejudiced the tests.

    Fortunately it wasn¡¯t something as awful as the big box that Callum had been stuck in. It was instead a person-sized metal cylinder, heavy with enchantments, that Alex only had to walk into and put his hands on the handles. It was far gentler and lower-powered than what GAR had put Callum through, and it didn¡¯t seem to bother Alex at all.

    ¡°Feels all bubbly,¡± Alex commented, tugging on the handles while the complex enchantments worked. It was looking for some sort of manifestation, because there was no a priori way of determining a mage¡¯s aspect. Callum wouldn¡¯t have been surprised if a number of mages had slipped through the cracks just because their aspect was something nobody had seen before, but without practice and knowledge they wouldn¡¯t have been able to accomplish much.

    ¡°Just tell me if there¡¯s a problem, kiddo,¡± Callum said from outside the cylinder.

    ¡°It¡¯s okay, dad,¡± Alex said cheerfully, bouncing on the balls of his feet as he watched the wards light up around him. To Callum¡¯s view there was just a lot of vis boiling out at random, not really forming any structure for more than a fraction of a second.

    ¡°Huh,¡± Glenda said, squinting at the runes. ¡°That¡¯s odd.¡±

    ¡°What¡¯s odd?¡± Callum asked, or maybe even snapped. Those weren¡¯t words he wanted to hear when it came to his son.

    ¡°Well, he tripped the wards for gravity fully, but there was also some draw on light, metal, and fire. Just a touch. And some of the supplementary ward structures snapped.¡± Glenda tapped her lips with a forefinger, then shut the appraisal box down. ¡°Very well, we¡¯re done, Alex.¡±

    ¡°Aww,¡± Alex said, but let go of the handles and backed out of the cylinder.

    ¡°So what does all that mean?¡± Callum asked, reaching down to take Alex¡¯s hand. ¡°Sounds like maybe an aspect you aren¡¯t testing for?¡±

    ¡°That would be my guess,¡± Glenda agreed. ¡°I¡¯ve never seen it before but, no offense meant, most mages come from very established lines. Your pedigree is not exactly known.¡±

    ¡°Hey, mine is,¡± Lucy said, but she didn¡¯t seem too upset. ¡°But yeah, Callum here¡¯s a bit of a weirdo,¡± she continued affectionately, putting her arm around him.

    ¡°Dad¡¯s a weirdo,¡± Alex confirmed. Callum snorted and ruffled Alex¡¯s hair.

    ¡°Okay,¡± Callum said, some of his irritation fading. ¡°That¡¯s not as bad as it could have been, but¡­¡± He trailed off, contemplating the issue. It wasn¡¯t a great thing, because even if Alex ended up being able to do things no other mage could, he wouldn¡¯t have the benefit of hundreds of years of magical resources. Of course, neither had Callum, but he was hoping for something better for his son.

    On the other hand, there was no guarantee that they¡¯d ever manage to isolate what that aspect was. At least Alex had gravity as a fairly normal aspect, and even someone who was a master of it that they could consult for help. There was no way that Callum was going to suggest the internal method for his son though, not with an unknown aspect.

    Unless there was some way to split the methods by aspect.

    ¡°We¡¯ll figure it out,¡± Lucy said, interrupting his thoughts. ¡°It¡¯s good to know, and we¡¯ll get him started on the early stuff now.¡±

    ¡°Yeah,¡± Callum said. ¡°Hear that, kiddo? You¡¯re going to learn how to do magic stuff.¡±

    ¡°Like daddy?¡± Alex asked, eyes wide.

    ¡°Yeah, like daddy,¡± Callum confirmed.

    ***

    ¡°Not an unqualified success, but I¡¯d still call it a victory,¡± Director O¡¯Keefe reported. ¡°Over half the shifters we surveilled were gone, and most of the remainder have fortified themselves one way or another. I can¡¯t confirm that Alpha Chester is dead, especially since Archmage Taisen took control of the battle site, but all signs are that he is neutralized for the time being.¡±

    ¡°Without a body we have to assume he¡¯s not dead,¡± Janry said. ¡°If you¡¯d actually managed to bury him under a hundred feet of dirt that would do it even for someone of his power, but he¡¯s aligned with a spatial mage. He made it out. Not that killing Chester was the primary goal anyway.¡± Janry tapped the tip of his forefinger on his desk, regarding O¡¯Keefe.

    While taking Alpha Chester out of play was certainly worthwhile, even with the losses they¡¯d incurred, the fact that all the mundanes had disappeared made it less useful. The primary purpose had been casting Alpha Chester as a villain and an outlaw, setting him against the mundane government. All the evidence being buried in a mysterious sinkhole confused matters, and it was harder to portray Chester as a scoundrel when there was nobody to testify about how bad Chester was.

    The fae contribution to the attacks had run into some other kind of trouble, though nobody knew exactly what. Janry had wanted them to install themselves in some of the mundane cities inside Chester¡¯s former territory, to offset the enclaves that were already in North America, but they hadn¡¯t shown. He hadn¡¯t gotten a reply from them yet, but for all he knew they were going to pretend it had never happened. There was a fae power struggle involved and even people who had lived in Faerie for centuries didn¡¯t understand all the rules for those.

    ¡°Right, might as well strike while the iron is hot. Redirect all the personnel you can spare to the mundane conversion. The early signs were quite favorable, I think we just need to put more effort into it.¡± The mundanes had a lot of bizarre top-heavy organization, but Janry was confident that turning it all to his own purposes wouldn¡¯t be too difficult. There were just so many of them that it stretched GAR resources to keep control of the byzantine processes of their governments.

    So far they¡¯d avoided going after actual presidents or kings or whatever they styled themselves, and that was sadly partly due to the lack of vampires. Fae had to play by certain rules to target someone so important, and so far there hadn¡¯t been an opportunity to do so.

    ¡°Yes, sir,¡± O¡¯Keefe said. ¡°If I may ask, is there any progress with the Guild of Enchanting? We¡¯re starting to run low on scry-comms and there are some offices where the lights are no longer working. We¡¯ve moved some enchantments from the old Acquisition offices, but people are starting to notice.¡±

    ¡°We¡¯re having to deal under the table with some of the Houses that have declared neutrality,¡± Janry admitted unhappily. ¡°I¡¯ll put you in touch with my nephew; he¡¯s been handling that of late.¡± That particular coup on the part of the Earth alliance was an ongoing thorn in Janry¡¯s side, but there was nothing he could do about it at the moment. Once they¡¯d broken the Earth alliance though, there were going to be changes. There were enough people from his House in the Guild that he could probably replace Rossi and lose nothing of value, but for the moment he had to play nice.

    ¡°Yes, sir,¡± O¡¯Keefe repeated, and Janry dismissed him. Alone in his office, Janry stood and paced, looking out his window onto the courtyard of House Janry. When he¡¯d started the push to finalize the Archmage Council¡¯s control of Earth, and thus his, he had not anticipated so much resistance. The mundanes had little they could do, of course, but the resistance from the other Houses and the fae over on Earth had been surprising.

    It was exactly the reason the Houses made sure that no new mage could divorce themselves from the House system. Any free mage could be a threat, as Wells demonstrated, and it was clear that even allowing independent Houses wasn¡¯t sufficient for keeping proper order. Given how many Houses were willing to go neutral, many people even in Faerie had lost their understanding of the way the world worked.

    The offense had worked, so it was best to continue. Before the crisis with Wells he had been used to subtle dealings, but now he thought that blunt action would be a better policy. If people had no will to oppose him, he could open the door to his people and their fae allies to take what they could.

 Chapter 13 â€“ GAR

    Taisen¡¯s Antarctic base reminded Callum of a hotel more than a secret base. The corridors were large, the rooms well-furnished, and it was all heated and ventilated well enough that it was impossible to tell it was an enclosed building a mile beneath the ice. There were gyms and a well-catered cafeteria and, most importantly for the matter at hand, an operations room where Callum and Lucy could work.

    ¡°You know, on a personal note, I¡¯m glad for the babysitting,¡± Lucy said, as they made sure they were ready. Callum nodded agreement, glad of having a venue where Alex could interact with other mage children from House Taisen and House Hargrave. He wasn¡¯t entire a fan of the House¡¯s general attitude toward normal folks, but now that Alex was starting the magic exercises for children, he needed exposure to other mages.

    ¡°There are two primary targets, GAR US and GAR Paris,¡± Taisen said over the scry-comm, the briefing less for the people who were doing the assault as for the assorted support personnel back at the base. ¡°The US Branches are all next to each other so they¡¯re basically one target. Paris has more fae support, so be double-warded, though Princess Blackblood should negate most of that. Any questions?¡±

    Callum had none. There were all the little GAR offices, but they were minor, as was GAR China near Chengde, now that House Fane was gone. In fact, most of the minor offices were staffed through the central offices, with no means for being independent, so they should be easy enough to clean up later on.

    Lucy had her laptop sending drone feeds to various monitors in the operations room, and while Taisen wasn¡¯t present, he had an attach¨¦ to represent House Taisen in case that was necessary. Callum was coordinating with everyone else through scry-comm, and his role was actually relatively minor. Important, but minor.

    ¡°Good,¡± Taisen said, when no questions came. ¡°Sound off.¡±

    ¡°Gold squad, standing by,¡± someone from House Hargrave reported over the comms.

    ¡°Black squad, standing by,¡± House Taisen said.

    ¡°Red leader, standing by,¡± Lucy muttered under her breath, but kept her microphone off. Callum chuckled and activated the scry-comm.

    ¡°Gatecrasher, standing by,¡± he said.

    ¡°Ready for you to kick down the doors,¡± Alpha Chester said.

    ¡°Roger that,¡± he said, and turned to Lucy. ¡°You get to start.¡±

    ¡°I¡¯ve never had the opportunity to crash a whole service like this,¡± Lucy said cheerfully, and poked at her laptop. The back door to the GAR intranet was still in place, despite the fact that GAR clearly knew it was compromised. Callum wasn¡¯t sure whether it was just that they didn¡¯t have the expertise to isolate it, or didn¡¯t think Lucy could do more than pull down email conversations.

    Either way, Lucy was ready to take down the entire intranet, which meant it would also disable all the supernatural-oriented phones, laptops, and all the internal communication GAR relied on. Scry-comms weren¡¯t vulnerable to that, but within GAR only DAI tended to use them since they couldn¡¯t be networked like phones and were more expensive anyway.

    ¡°And down,¡± Lucy said, rapping a finger on her laptop for emphasis.

    ¡°Then here we go,¡± Callum said, and focused on his drones. GAR had adopted newer model warding, and even though the Guild of Enchanting was being relatively stingy with its sales, they still had protection that would give Callum issues if he was trying to be subtle. In this case, he didn¡¯t have to be subtle at all, so he simply spun up a pair of small anti-mana portals and aimed them at the wards.

    He''d noticed before that anti-mana had absolutely shredded through the wards on his own house, even if it hadn¡¯t hit the actual enchantment. When it came to the heavier, more thorough wards and glamours that covered the GAR buildings, the effect was even more severe. It seemed nobody had built them with anti-mana in mind.

    The wards fizzled, hissing around the foot-wide portals as they tried to compete against the anti-mana tearing them apart, and failed as the collapse propagated along the entire ward field. The building defenses fell in quick succession, first the ones in Paris, which were less robust, and then the ones surrounding the GAR America buildings. Faint sounds of audible alarms going off came through his drone microphones, and Callum toggled the scry-comm again.

    ¡°Gates are down, opening the door.¡± He still felt a little silly, using code-speak, even if it was fairly obvious code-speak, but Lucy sure got a kick out of it. He reached out and opened portals for the strike teams; four pair in all. Taisen and Felicia¡¯s forces went to Paris, while Hargrave and Chester¡¯s to the US branch.

    There was a huge difference between the way that Callum did things and the way an actual military force of mages did things. Every single one of them was in flight, and the people up front were armed with shield-breakers. He caught some snippets of the archmages announcing their respective Houses, and then things turned chaotic.

    Without opposing archmages, there really wasn¡¯t any chance of the employees of GAR resisting the military might of the people involved. Taisen and Hargrave weren¡¯t actually trying to kill anyone though, which made the process messier than simply flattening everything. The addition of extra enemy forces would have made it worse, so one of Callum¡¯s first jobs was to disable the teleporters.

    With the wards down, Callum yanked all the paired teleport cores out of their slots ¡ª some in storage in the switchboard room, others in permanent installations where they connected to individual Houses. He swept them all out into one of Taisen¡¯s storage rooms for later return to House Duvall, or whoever actually owned them. While they were disassembling GAR, it was worthwhile to remember that GAR itself was mostly composed of people and properties from various Houses and enclaves and it would salve some wounds if things were properly returned.

    Some things. It would be stupid or outright suicidal to rearm to their enemies, and mages played by an older set of rules anyway. The DAI would be lucky if Chester conceded even a single piece of paper. Not that Callum blamed him; the DAI had attacked his home on multiple fronts, and that made it personal.

    Despite Callum¡¯s practice with multitasking, too much was going on for him to be able to parse everything that happened as four forces stormed two locations simultaneously. He caught glimpses of Taisen and Hargrave using their force magic to section off hallways and block in offices, though that level of condensed vis also made it impossible for him to send his threads through.

    A sharp report, like some kind of explosion, came through one of the drone pickups, but he had to assume that the combatants had things under control. Remote as he was, his major concern was tripping any more negative-healing traps, carefully and cautiously jumping his bad pennies around and prodding places with vis. Most of what he accomplished was stealing into storage and record rooms and sweeping them out to the prepared storage rooms. It was an almost nostalgic sort of feeling, from the times when he was looting vampire nests, though on a far larger scale.

    There were basements chock full of papers. Bins and cabinets and drawers, all of which Callum scooped up and dropped off in the pseudo-warehouse below the operations room. One sub-basement in GAR Paris had a bunch of fae magic strung throughout it, but it didn¡¯t seem to impair Callum¡¯s salvage operations. Possibly thanks to the cloak, but more likely because of all the fighting going on.

    While he was emptying out the armory, someone blew a hole in the wall with a summoned chunk of stone and disrupted his teleportation framework. At GAR Paris, fire alarms had started to sound, both in the building and out in the streets. The problem was, Callum couldn¡¯t tell what bit of vis belonged to what party, or even which mage bubbles were aligned with what force.

    ¡°I¡¯m really no use in a straight up fight,¡± Callum muttered to Lucy, teleporting a whole rack of enchanted rifles of some sort from GAR US to Taisen¡¯s warehouse. While his perceptions could do a lot, and his remote method of operation made him practically untouchable, it also made him completely useless for pitched battles. Even if he could interfere with the fighting going on, there was no telling whether he¡¯d be targeting enemy or ally.

    ¡°Hey, we play to our strengths,¡± Lucy said. ¡°Can you put all the server stuff over in our warehouse? I might be able to set most of it back up so all those phones and stuff all the civilians have aren¡¯t useless. The enchanting dongle should still work, I¡¯m pretty sure.¡±

    ¡°On it,¡± Callum said. He teleported his drone down to the basement where Lucy used to work, and started grabbing all the tangle of server hardware and the connections to the enchanted ward-like tray that it used for validation. It was all so modern that he had to wonder who had been involved aside from Lucy.

    Teleporting the computers took longer than almost everything else, simply because he had to deal with all the cable connections. While he did have the juice to sever the connections in an emergency, it was still so difficult that taking the extra few seconds to wrap the teleportation framework was worth it. It was fortunate that Lucy had reminded him when she did, because between the first batch of servers and the second the basement floor bucked and crushed half the remaining equipment like a hydraulic press.

    ¡°Holy crap,¡± Callum said, hastily grabbing the intact server hardware before something else happened. ¡°It¡¯s a real warzone over there.¡± The GAR US forces seemed to be playing quite a bit rougher than GAR Paris, but neither of them had much regard for infrastructure and Callum winced at the damage they were doing to some fine old architecture in both places. Neither building was built to take the damage that mages could dish out even when they were being careful ¡ª and nobody was being particularly careful.

    The damage to people was somewhat less severe. Most of the people had surrendered, it seemed, since most of them were just office workers. Even if every mage spent some time out in the portal worlds and supposedly knew how to craft offensive spells, nobody who¡¯d spent the past several decades pushing papers and eating doughnuts was going to be in practice.

    There were some holdouts, which was where all the destruction was coming from. A single fire mage holding an incendiary shield in GAR Paris overwhelmed the poorly-maintained sprinkler system and the flames bit deep into the old, dry wood. In a sense it wasn¡¯t much of a loss, since the plan was to demolish the buildings before emergency services arrived, but Callum still cringed at the rapidly-spreading building fire.

    Over at GAR US, the same earth magic that had collapsed the basement had cracked pipes, shattered windows, and generally rendered the three-building campus unfit for habitation. Light fixtures dangled from the ceilings and as Callum went through to salvage what equipment he could, it was inevitable that somewhere the electricity would short.

    ¡°Why is everything on fire?¡± He asked rhetorically. Several of the drone feeds showed smoke rising from the buildings, which ¨C in addition to the general sounds of combat ¨C was sure to attract the attention of local authorities. One of the downsides of Callum¡¯s puncturing of the wards and glamour was that nothing was actually hidden from the populace at large, but he doubted the enchantments would have survived what was going on anyway.

    He kept looting everything he could even as he talked, and Taisen¡¯s warehouse was rapidly filling up, to the point where Callum was going to have to start dumping things in one of his backup caves. It was easy to underestimate how much stuff was inside office buildings, especially ones with basements. Though it didn¡¯t help the situation that Callum was taking literally everything that wasn¡¯t nailed down. Even the chairs, the pictures on the walls, the coffeemakers and water coolers.

    ¡°Every magic fight I¡¯ve ever seen ends up with something on fire,¡± Lucy said, and he wasn¡¯t sure she was entirely joking.

    ¡°Right, well, they¡¯d better hurry things up or they¡¯re going to have to explain that to the police and fire departments,¡± Callum said, hearing the wail of sirens in the background from GAR Paris. GAR US was outside the city enough that there might not be an immediate response, but the explosions and earthquake would probably draw military attention. At worst it might seem like someone had detonated a nuclear device, since to Callum¡¯s hazy knowledge those were tracked more with seismic data than anything else. Either way, hopefully the collateral damage was kept to a minimum.

    In a way, the open nature of the destruction was deliberate. The attack wasn¡¯t just to dismantle GAR entirely and destroy the infrastructure that the Archmage Council was using to influence Earth, though that would have been enough for Callum. It was a statement that Chester and the Earth-side Houses weren¡¯t going to let secrecy cripple them.

    ¡°Medical evacuation, entry one,¡± came Chester¡¯s voice over the scry-comm. He flipped his attention back to a bad penny left by the front door of GAR US and opened a portal to the hospital room with Gayle.

    ¡°Got it,¡± and opened a portal. He could barely track the shifter blurring in and out of his perceptions, but they threw someone through into the waiting area and the healers got to work. It wasn¡¯t the first medical evac, but there hadn¡¯t been many of them, and as things wrapped up they seemed less and less likely.

    A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

    He took another sweep through to try and make sure he¡¯d gotten everything. There was a lot of enchantment material built into the walls and floors and ceilings, but he couldn¡¯t extract that. There were also fewer hidden vaults or safes than Callum had expected, though there was plenty of weaponry and currency in the normal storage rooms. Also a lot of bottles of pills and packets of powders that made Callum wonder about drugs. It seemed entirely too banal for mages, but they were still human. Nothing made it impossible for them to be indulging themselves.

    Whatever it was, it went into the warehouses with everything else. When he was satisfied there was nothing else he could take, at least not without cutting things apart, he tapped the scry-comm to report.

    ¡°Bag is full,¡± he said, referencing the list of code phrases he¡¯d been given. Callum felt it was overwrought, but there was a reason that a military operation didn¡¯t abide casual chatter on open comms.

    ¡°Roger that,¡± Taisen¡¯s voice came. ¡°Prepare for exit. We¡¯re almost done here.¡±

    ***

    Alpha Chester was enjoying the chance to rip his way through GAR. He hadn¡¯t ever liked the organization, and its banal bureaucratic tyranny had only grown over time. In fact, he¡¯d left for the United States simply to get away from the overly officious oversight ¨C as Lisa had put it ¨C of Paris. Of course, then GAR US had introduced the Department of Arcane Investigation and the Bureau of Secret Enforcement, and things had been just as bad as before.

    It was no secret that most mages thought of shifters as a half-step above mundanes. Unfortunately ¨C compared to mages ¨C most shifters really weren¡¯t much different, as enhanced strength or speed or senses was nothing like the ability to move rock or shape metal at will. On the other hand, a sufficiently powerful shifter up close rendered all those fancy tricks completely useless. Chester was pretty sure he could shred even an archmage¡¯s vis, if he ever had need to and a clear line of attack.

    He smashed through the doors at the DAI offices only a few seconds after going through Wells¡¯ portals, his claws out. While Wells himself was concerned about making sure that every target deserved everything that was coming to them, Chester knew that the DAI as a whole was a rotten edifice. Everyone there was involved in the attack on his home and his family, and that was something he would not abide.

    The rest of the fighters he brought headed for the upper offices, while Chester went right for the Director¡¯s door. O¡¯Keefe was a new installation, but thoroughly a creature of the enemy. The wood shattered to splinters as he burst through, not bothering to open it.

    It would have been embarrassing if O¡¯Keefe weren¡¯t in, but they¡¯d ensured that most of the targets were there before the assault began. Not that it was unusual, since GAR was effectively the enemy headquarters, though it was a strange war indeed when there was no territory to take and no redoubts to defend. And yet there were certainly enemy combatants to remove.

    O¡¯Keefe¡¯s shield activated, a latticework of ice and swirling water, and to his credit he didn¡¯t hesitate before trying to drown Chester in a summoned wave of water. Ice and water mages were hilariously deadly, if for no other reason than everything needed to breathe, but Chester knew how to fight mages. The floor splintered underfoot as he launched himself up and to the side, his claws digging into the walls and ceiling as his feet punched through drywall and found a beam.

    It creaked and groaned but a flex of Chester¡¯s own magic let him use it as a springboard to pounce on O¡¯Keefe from above, his claws shredding the man¡¯s shield. Shards of ice went flying even as they evaporated back into raw mana, and water bubbled as the power that held it in reality was sheared apart. O¡¯Keefe¡¯s wide eyes stared at Chester just before claws wrapped around his throat.

    There was nothing Chester would have liked more than to tell O¡¯Keefe exactly why Chester was there, and exactly why he was going to die. But mages were too dangerous; even with Chester¡¯s claws on him the man could still wield magic. Or he might have a homebond, or some terrible fae artifact, or just a silverite knife somewhere close at hand.

    Chester just closed his hand, ordinary flesh and blood offering no resistance to shifter strength, and ignored the arterial spurt from O¡¯Keefe¡¯s severed throat. The corpse dropped to the floor and Chester felt the vis start to fade. Chester took a moment to sort through the impressions he got from the pack bonds, prodding his people to shift their attention to those who had encountered someone with silverite, or were otherwise above their ability to deal with.

    Chester never would have dared to assault GAR on his own. Despite his own personal power, and that of his Wolfpack, Archmage Hargrave was the only reason the mages at GAR hadn¡¯t just buried them. With him tying up the actual combat assets, everyone left was a bureaucratic paper-pusher and easy prey. They fought, if poorly, but considering that the shifters weren¡¯t taking prisoners, that was only to be expected.

    A metal whip swept through the wall as if it weren¡¯t there, and Chester bent over backward to duck out of the way. The steel flicked upward through the ceiling, not even aimed at him, and the room groaned as it started to collapse. He bounded out, following the whip, while distantly the roar of flames and the rumble of earth came from where Hargrave¡¯s people were fighting. There wasn¡¯t going to be much left of the buildings by the time it was over.

    The metal mage was not one of Hargrave¡¯s, fortunately. Less fortunately, the metal had been too much for Candace to handle, and she was barely hanging onto life, her body looking like she¡¯d stumbled into a blender. Chester lunged for the mage, calling on his magic to harden his flesh as the metal whip snapped his way and grabbing it the moment it tried to slash against his face.

    The mage tried to dissolve and reform it, but she was stuck at human speed. In Chester¡¯s accelerated frame, there was more than enough time for him to dig his claws into the floor and pounce through the wire shield the mage had. Metal strands snapped before he tore her face off. It wasn¡¯t as satisfying as dealing with O¡¯Keefe though, partly because of the shape Candace was in. He scooped her up and blurred back out of the building.

    ¡°Medical evacuation, entry one,¡± he said, tapping the scry-comm.

    ¡°Got it,¡± came Wells¡¯ voice, and a portal snapped open in front of Chester a moment later. Gayle was on the other side, along with some of his shifters with medical training, and he handed Candace over before rushing back in. In real combat, every second counted, and he didn¡¯t want to have to bring anyone else to the healers. Or have it be too late.

    ***

    Felicia strode forward, Ray at her side and guards ahead and behind her. They were starting to really settle into their roles; the black suits, sunglasses, and arcanopistols finally becoming part of them. Sadly, that excluded cold iron ammunition, but that was in short supply anyway.

    GAR Paris was almost its own little enclave, with fae magic sunk into the bones of the place from how long people had been living and working there. Even if she could overwhelm it with her own gathered legitimacy, it was a reminder of how she needed to take the existing enclaves for herself ¡ª else she would never have the power she needed to overwhelm any real holdouts. Taking control of the fae at GAR would be a good step, at least.

    She flexed her will over the domain she felt at the front door, even as Taisen led his people inside. The magic collapsed with a snap into a small pixie-like fae, her wings buzzing as she reeled backward. Felicia¡¯s hand snapped out and wrapped around the pixie before she could recover.

    ¡°Intinkity Belle, I am Princess Felicity Blackblood,¡± she said, and the pixie froze. ¡°Will you swear to serve me, or do you prefer to die?¡± Intinkity gave a desultory struggle, wings useless in Felicia¡¯s grasp, and then hung her tiny head.

    ¡°I swear to serve, Princess Felicity. Mind, heart, and breath.¡±

    ¡°Excellent choice.¡± Despite the pixie¡¯s small size, she had plenty of power, centered around controlling who could enter a place ¡ª or who could leave. Since Felicia needed to defend borders, both between Faerie and Earth and between fae and mundanes, Intinkity would be a good start. Not that Felicia trusted her just yet, but dealing with higher stakes would be good for Intinkity¡¯s story. Which was, in the end, the only thing most fae cared about.

    She dipped her fingers into the Gate of Water wound about her wrist, pulling it open far enough to send Intinkity through. Then she nodded at Ray, and he gestured them onward. Rumbles and thumps came from up ahead as Taisen¡¯s mages started to fight and take prisoners, and Felicia hummed a soothing tune. Her voice spread out ahead of them, undermining hostility and thoughts of resistance.

    Of course, that wasn¡¯t enough to stop all fighting, or even most. While Taisen focused on the upper levels, Felicia¡¯s team went downward into the basements and sub-basements that took advantage of Paris¡¯ extensive catacombs. Those places were more enticing to many types of fae, especially the insidious and secretive. Exactly the sort Felicia wanted.

    A dark shadow whipped up the stairwell toward them and Ray reacted with a projected wall of frozen air, stopping the attack cold. Felicia¡¯s guards took aim, enough power behind them that even regular bullets could pop the already-weakened spell. The report of arcanopistols firing filled the stairwell, and they continued on.

    The first basement was pitch-black. Ray conjured a light, but it failed to penetrate beyond the abandoned desk at the entrance. Felicia frowned, reaching out a hand to Ray¡¯s light, and brought it to just in front of her face. She whispered to it softly, and it brightened, going from a warm yellow glow to the brilliant green of foxfire.

    ¡°Try now,¡± she suggested to Ray, and he cast the foxfire out, splitting into a number of different, smaller points of light that scattered themselves throughout the basement. The green flames revealed rows of boxes and cabinets, but they also showed dozens of small, implike fae that would have been otherwise invisible. They clung to the shelving and ceiling fixtures, baring sharp teeth as Ray¡¯s light revealed them.

    ¡°Fire at will,¡± she said calmly. ¡°These are just pests.¡± The master of the domain was deeper, and they didn¡¯t have too much time to waste. Vibrations from spells being flung on the floors above them set the fixtures to rattling, and somewhere in the basement books fell off their shelves. They advanced to the popping of arcanopistols and Ray¡¯s gusts of wind.

    ¡°Here, I think,¡± Ray said, once they¡¯d gotten partway through the expansive basement. Two of Felicia¡¯s guard had knives out rather than guns, dealing with the little imps that tried to throw themselves past the outer ring. While they couldn¡¯t physically hurt her, allowing any of them to reach her would undermine her dignity, which was far worse a wound than anything done to flesh and blood. A princess, even at war, had to meet certain standards.

    There was nothing visually different about the spot Ray had located, but Felicia could feel it too, something subtly different. Fae magic and mage wards reinforced each other to hide something in ways that a single type of concealment alone would not. She gave it an experimental tug with her own authority, but it failed to yield.

    ¡°Be opened.¡± Her voice rang out and a doorway in the ground opened up, revealing a long spiral stairway cut into the stone. The remainders of the concealment spell she¡¯d broken fizzed away into the atmosphere, and a hollow, sepulchral voice echoed from below.

    ¡°Go. Away.¡±

    Felicia almost laughed. There was force behind the words, a cheap approximation of what her bloodline granted. Not that she was offended; imitation was the sincerest form of flattery, and every fae dreamed of being as powerful as Oberon.

    ¡°Do not try that on me,¡± she said scornfully. ¡°I am Princess Felicity Blackblood, Daughter of King Oberon and Queen Mab, and I command you to come forth.¡± Her own magic turned his attempts back on him, amplifying her command rather than nullifying it, and she could feel the flinch as a hunched, wrinkled gnome was dragged up the stairs.

    While he wasn¡¯t physically impressive, that clearly wasn¡¯t the point. The man was a burgeoning faerie prince, with his demesne spreading out into the catacombs below GAR Paris. Felicia could feel fae artifacts stowed somewhere below, where the gnome controlled a much larger volume than just the GAR basements.

    ¡°I¡¯m sure you can hear the combat above, Balobob,¡± Felicia said. Lucy¡¯s list of the fae in GAR employ had come in handy. The lesser ones, she could retrieve after they had surrendered to Taisen, but she needed to convert the most valuable ones herself. ¡°GAR is being removed, and the building itself is going to be destroyed. However, there is no need for that to be the end, for I have need of one such as you.¡±

    Balobob grunted. He was a sour-faced thing, but he recognized that he was in the presence of royalty, for he bowed with a grace that belied his short and lumpen stature. Felicia marked him as quite a bit more intelligent than most of the fae in GAR service.

    ¡°Begging your pardon, your Highness, but do you think that is not premature? The Guild of Arcane Regulation has mages and backing of its own. It seems rather precipitate to write it off already.¡± His voice was still deep, but less eerie without any power behind it.

    ¡°The Ghost has ensured there will be no reinforcements, and there are Archmages leading the attack. It is only a desire to spare lives that has let them withstand the assault for so long.¡±

    ¡°Ah.¡± The Ghost¡¯s name, at least, hit him hard, and Felicia felt that contribution to her authority stir, even if she knew The Ghost himself wasn¡¯t at all sensitive to it. Should he ever oppose her actions, she would be in dire straits. It was generally not the way of fae to make themselves so vulnerable, but Felicia¡¯s time among the humans had taught her the vulnerability in being a lone power. It had value too, but she was seeking to be a different kind of fae altogether.

    Felicia gave him a little bit of time to think, but not too long. Not only were they time-limited by Taisen¡¯s attacks, but it was neither right nor meet for a monarch to wait on her subject. The ground shook again, but this time there was no sound of anything toppling from shelves since everything was gone. Felicia hadn¡¯t even noticed the Ghost¡¯s magic coming in behind them, which only demonstrated how terrifyingly effective the man was. It also gave her authority a boost, just a touch of one, the mantle around her growing slightly more powerful, and Balobob sighed.

    ¡°Very well, Your Majesty. I swear myself to your service,¡± he said, kneeling. ¡°My hearth and my home is at your command.¡± Felicia felt the domain that the gnome had built down in the catacombs merge into her mantle, a deep expanse of rock and bone.

    It couldn¡¯t stay. Not only was the GAR building going away, but there was certain to be a lot of mundane attention. Then, of course, was the fact that Felicia had no desire to put down roots in Paris itself. Her kingdom spanned the whole globe, and she wanted to avoid squatting in the ruins of a failed organization. Moving the entire demesne was a challenge, but a monarch had responsibilities as surely as a subject did.

    ¡°Ray, could I get some water?¡± She spread her hands wide, closing her eyes as she felt out the magic tied into the rock.

    ¡°Absolutely,¡± he said, and she could feel the conjured water spin out in front of her, a rotating disk. She coxed the Gate of Water from her wrist again, tying it into Ray¡¯s contribution, and began to whisper words of encouragement. Sometimes a light touch did more than a command.

    The demesne began to resonate, gathering itself up and matching tones with the Gate of Water, the flooded depths of the catacombs swirling in anticipation. A ripple of laminar flow climbed the walls of the subterranean lair, the liquid like glass as it enclosed the entire twisted, expanded space of Balobob¡¯s archival basement. Her voice started to echo through the water itself, carrying her power until it suffused the entire space.

    ¡°Be moved.¡± She said, and with a wrench the catacombs vanished. At the same time, she felt the glade that she¡¯d taken in the Ways stagger under the influx of so much real matter. Even with the suffusion of Balobob¡¯s magic, it was more than the glade could comfortably handle. But it would have to, since she didn¡¯t have a base on Earth just yet.

    In fact, she might never have. While the Ways were not something people generally built in, it might be the most appropriate place for her. She would be everywhere and nowhere, able to touch all the borders. It certainly appealed to her gut. Another shudder rocked the basement, and Felicia turned away from the now-blank floor.

    ¡°Let¡¯s get out of here before the whole thing caves in on us,¡± Ray said, and Felicia nodded.

    ¡°And if we¡¯re lucky, we¡¯ll find some new people to join us.¡±

 Chapter 14 â€“ Summit

    ¡°So it¡¯s war, then.¡± Janry¡¯s voice was as calm and measured as ever, but inwardly he was seething.

    ¡°Not necessarily,¡± Archmage Lobran said. Janry¡¯s eyes flicked to him, not surprised that he disagreed. House Lobran had been one of the first to be swayed away from the plan by the Guild of Enchanting, but for some reason Lobran had kept showing up for any meetings that weren¡¯t specifically for Janry¡¯s inner circle.

    ¡°Outside of DAI personnel there were very few casualties, and most of the surrendered personnel have already been returned to their Houses,¡± Lobran continued, waving around at the gathered mages and archmages. ¡°The damage to GAR is irreparable, yes, but it was not necessarily an attack on us.¡±

    ¡°An attack on GAR is an attack on us,¡± Janry said flatly. ¡°The Guild of Arcane Regulation is the Archmage Council¡¯s authority on Earth. It¡¯s what ties the Houses together. Destroying it undermines the whole foundation of our relationships.¡±

    ¡°On Earth,¡± Lobran pointed out. ¡°The Houses have managed affairs well enough here in Faerie, where there aren¡¯t mundanes to worry about.¡±

    ¡°Are you even in Faerie anymore?¡± Janry asked pointedly.

    ¡°House Lobran has deep roots,¡± was Archmage Lobran¡¯s oblique reply, then he waved it away. ¡°I know that House Lobran personnel returned with a request for a summit. House Hargrave, House Taisen and all those people want to have an actual meeting before this goes any further. Anyone else care to confirm it?¡± He looked around the room.

    There were some reluctant mutters among some of the representatives for the cadet Houses. Janry sighed, not able to pretend that he hadn¡¯t heard the same thing. Not every member of House Janry in GAR had been in DAI, and a number of them ¨C along with all the duds that were employed in menial positions ¨C had returned with the same message.

    He looked around the room and found entirely too many people who looked like they preferred talking to fighting. He would have liked to ignore the message, but most people had no spine and would seize on any opportunity to avoid conflict. Trying to bull through at the moment might fracture the core he had left.

    ¡°I suppose there would be no harm in it,¡± he said grudgingly, but already he was considering how to turn it to his advantage. House Taisen was new, and House Hargrave was not known for their diplomatic prowess. The ancillary players were almost nonentities ¡ª the fae princess didn¡¯t have any real backing or heritage, and he didn¡¯t think Wells would show up himself. Even if he did, he might well be a millstone given his infamy.

    ¡°Under the circumstances I would suggest inviting House Duvall as well,¡± said Archmage Mayer. ¡°It ought to put more pressure on the Earth Alliance.¡±

    ¡°Assuming she¡¯s willing to come,¡± someone else muttered. ¡°She sure doesn¡¯t care about the conflict.¡±

    ¡°If we are going to deal in this waste of time, we need to ensure that we¡¯re in control,¡± Janry said. ¡°Should they have anything to say that is worth hearing, they can come here and say it to the majority of the supernatural community.¡±

    ¡°I don¡¯t think they¡¯ll like that,¡± Lobran said. ¡°What¡¯s wrong with a neutral location?¡±

    ¡°Can you name one?¡± Janry asked pointedly. ¡°The Guild of Enchanting isn¡¯t neutral, and neither are the dragons. Earth itself is in question, and most of our facilities have been disconnected from the teleportation network.¡± He ignored that the private links had already been returned to the Houses so they weren¡¯t entirely cut off from their peers in the Deep Wilds.

    ¡°If one of the Lesser Courts promised a neutral ground, they¡¯d be bound to uphold it,¡± Lobran replied.

    ¡°And how much are you willing to pay for that consideration?¡± Janry retorted. ¡°More, who would be willing to stake their reputation on keeping order among archmages?¡±

    ¡°We can keep our own order,¡± Lobran said cuttingly. ¡°Unless you plan to start trouble.¡±

    ¡°I was thinking about Wells. He certainly would try something, and the fae would probably let him!¡± It was unfortunate that the man had managed to parley his wanton savagery into a reputation that the fae actually appreciated. Certainly it made the entire diplomatic process more difficult, since the fae paid far more attention to monsters than to civilized folk. Without Wells it was likely the Lesser Courts would just see the Earth Alliance as a vague morass.

    ¡°From what I¡¯ve been hearing, the other Archmages are keeping him on a leash,¡± Lobran said with a shrug. ¡°Unless you think Taisen and Hargrave can¡¯t manage him between them, I don¡¯t think we have anything to worry about.¡±

    Janry considered for a moment. He could demolish Lobran¡¯s argument, but now that he¡¯d time to think it over it was probably better to consolidate things diplomatically. Pushing someone from the other side into violating a guaranteed neutrality wouldn¡¯t be that hard either, and might well pull back people to the proper side.

    ¡°Very well,¡± he said. ¡°Set it up.¡±

    ***

    ¡°This seems like a horrible idea,¡± Callum said, looking away from the gorgeous view of his front yard to focus on the laptop. ¡°There is a zero percent chance that it¡¯s not a trap.¡±

    ¡°We¡¯re the ones who suggested the summit,¡± Archmage Hargrave said with a touch of impatience. The rest of the gang was gathered at House Hargrave, mostly because that¡¯s where all the injured were convalescing. Despite arriving with overwhelming force, there had still been casualties. So far as he knew there were only two actual deaths, one mage and one shifter, which was still more than anyone wanted.

    There had been a lot more casualties on the other side, of course, but Callum couldn¡¯t bring himself to care overmuch about those. He might not have personally moved against them but with all the nasty underhanded evil that GAR was involved in, it was hard to summon any sympathy. So long as it wasn¡¯t supernaturals preying on mundanes, it really wasn¡¯t his place to cast judgement anyway.

    ¡°Sure, and I get why, but Faerie?¡± Callum asked, looking over to where Lucy was aiming a squirtgun at a laughing Alex. ¡°That¡¯s their home turf and there are all kinds of things they can pull! And I know there would be archmages meeting regardless, but letting them set the rules?¡±

    ¡°We won¡¯t be letting them set the rules,¡± Felicia spoke up. ¡°I will be setting the rules, and making sure that they are properly binding. In that sense it would actually be safer than holding it here on Earth.¡±

    ¡°Sure, but what about Chester and Shahey? Even if there¡¯s some kind of feeder portal, that¡¯s a major vulnerability. Like, all of us high muckity-mucks showing up in the same place? Why wouldn¡¯t they just try and drop a nuke or whatever?¡±

    ¡°With all due respect,¡± Taisen said. ¡°You¡¯re very much overthinking it. Most people aren¡¯t willing to commit wholesale massacre, especially not when they are themselves present. It won¡¯t just be Janry¡¯s crew; all the neutral archmages and the Guild of Enchanting are going to be there.¡±

    ¡°Mm.¡± Callum grunted, rubbing at the back of his neck. Taisen wasn¡¯t entirely wrong, but Callum couldn¡¯t help but worry that having everyone together in the same place might be too tempting for their enemies to pass up. Which might well be the exact reason that the proposed summit wouldn¡¯t be on Earth. His reputation working against him. ¡°I still don¡¯t like it. There¡¯s no way it¡¯s just some discussion. What even is there to discuss?¡±

    ¡°Mostly to see whether it¡¯s possible to wrap this up now, but I suspect they accepted because they¡¯re hoping to discredit us,¡± Shahey said dryly. ¡°Most of the archmages live in Faerie, and they don¡¯t know anything about you or I save for what they¡¯re told through channels. Like GAR, or the Guild of Enchanting. Most mages don¡¯t interact with the mundane world at all. Considering what just happened, Janry is probably trying to bring the Houses back on his side. To push for open conflict.¡±

    ¡°We just absolutely destroyed GAR¡¯s infrastructure and got rid of all of its records and most of its wealth. That¡¯s not open conflict?¡± In a way, Callum was just arguing from sheer incredulity. He well knew that so long as there was no official declaration, any fight, any combat, any losses could be swept under the rug one way or another. Especially in a society so old and ossified as the mage Houses.

    ¡°We¡¯re one step away,¡± Hargrave said, almost in confirmation. ¡°Leaving the GAR buildings destroyed goes against my old instincts, but the mundane authorities are absolutely aware something is going on now. It¡¯s going to be much harder for the other archmages to sneak around.¡±

    ¡°I don¡¯t think they¡¯re worried about that,¡± Callum said, and he wasn¡¯t entirely certain that any amount of alertness would help the governments deal with magic. Normal bureaucracies moved just as slowly as magical ones, and certainly didn¡¯t have the tools to deal with the supernatural. ¡°But I guess no amount of complaining from me is going to change the venue.¡±

    ¡°You don¡¯t have to go, I suppose,¡± Taisen said, but Felicia shook her head. The drone¡¯s pickup was a full circle, given its multiple cameras, so he had a good view of the room, even if he needed to tile the feeds.

    ¡°I think he does,¡± Felicia disagreed. ¡°The Ghost has been the lynchpin of this entire effort from the beginning. Freeing Earth from the depredations of the supernatural community. I know I can¡¯t command you,¡± she said, looking directly at the drone sitting on Hargrave¡¯s coffee table. ¡°But I think we¡¯d get the best results with your presence, so long as you fully invest in going. Come as The Ghost, the grim arbiter. People respond to strength. By yourself you could possibly force the point that Earth is independent from the supernatural sphere.¡±

    ¡°Ugh.¡± Callum sighed and rubbed his eyes. He really did not like the idea of attending some interminable, dangerous meeting of archmages and fae and trying to exert some kind of political pressure on people. Among other things, he was still quite convinced it was some kind of trap. Even if there wasn¡¯t a direct attack, there¡¯d be something, and he thought his allies were giving far too much credit to the opposition.

    On the other hand, he wasn¡¯t indifferent to the concept of a peaceful solution. He didn¡¯t actually like killing people, and he was very aware that every death had the potential to spiral into a never-ending feud. That these weren¡¯t obligate monsters anymore, like the vampires had been, but mages with families and Houses and backing. They were people, and that made things harder.

    ¡°There¡¯s another thing,¡± Felicia said quietly, reaching out to hold Ray¡¯s hand as she spoke. While Callum was used to her normal appearance, considering how he couldn¡¯t see glamours, the drone¡¯s feed also showed that she had dropped the human appearance and was back to the slightly fish-like form. Perhaps because she was now actually embracing her fae heritage. ¡°You¡¯re my largest backer. If you¡¯re willing to publicly support me, that would give me far more power and latitude to enforce politeness and neutrality at the summit.¡±

    ¡°Those are a lot of good points,¡± Callum grumbled. He didn¡¯t want to go. He really, really didn¡¯t. But if he was going to actually put his money where his mouth was, or whatever aphorism was appropriate, he would have to put forth the effort and take actual risk by showing up himself.

    ¡°I don¡¯t apologize,¡± Felicia said with a smile. ¡°The longer this goes on, the less likely it is we can resolve it without wholesale slaughter.¡±

    ¡°Right, okay.¡± Callum said with a growl. ¡°We¡¯ll go to this diplomatic summit. But I¡¯m going to be setting up some contingencies just in case.¡±

    ¡°I wouldn¡¯t expect any less,¡± Felicia said, almost proudly. Taisen just shrugged.

    ¡°It¡¯d be stupid not to,¡± he said. ¡°We should have a plan for everything up to and including a full archmage brawl. I happen to agree that they¡¯ll try something, though I don¡¯t imagine it will be direct force.¡±

    ¡°I¡¯m pretty sure that me showing up will throw them off no matter what,¡± Shahey said with a broad, toothy smile. ¡°They still don¡¯t know that you stabilized the portal. Hiding ourselves from people that came sniffing around was fairly simple afterward.¡±

    ¡°I hope the gym¡¯s still open,¡± Callum said, a bit wistfully. ¡°It was a good gym.¡±

    Stolen story; please report.

    ¡°Oh sure,¡± Shahey said with a laugh. ¡°I¡¯ve got a suit that looks perfectly human.¡±

    ¡°There is one problem,¡± Hargrave mused. ¡°You have no idea what the protocol is for such an event.¡±

    ¡°No, and I¡¯m not expected to,¡± Callum pointed out. ¡°I¡¯ll come as I am, or rather, as The Ghost is.¡± Even as he said it he knew he¡¯d regret it, but at the same time he was convinced he¡¯d regret not going more. But he wasn¡¯t going to be stupid about it.

    As soon as he rang off, he started planning. Fortunately the Guild of Enchanting was doing more extraction on the private portal world Callum had supplied, and with a few calls ¨C and parting with some of his hard-earned money ¨C he had enough extra raw metal for his preparations. So far as Callum could tell, the new material was somewhere between copper and gold, with a low melting point and soft enough that he could do some cold working with his limited industrial tools. It also started to lose its mana suffusion rapidly if it stayed molten too long, but it was fine for 3D printing small things ¡ª which most of Callum¡¯s enchantments were.

    The first thing he did was set up a series of vacuum boxes, at different speeds. Given that he had a week to work with, it was easy enough to plug the calculations into the tools he found online to find different yields for a handful of steel ball bearings. Now that he had somewhere to dump anything that went beyond what he considered safe ¨C which was to say, empty portal worlds ¨C he felt more comfortable dealing with something that might have nuclear potential.

    Those all got put into space, facing away from Earth just in case. If one broke containment it¡¯d still cause issues somewhere and some time, but at least he wouldn¡¯t accidentally start an orbital bombardment. Considering how rapidly enchantment materials degraded in space, even with the insulator he¡¯d cribbed from the Mictlan portal area, that was a real concern.

    Resolving to keep an eye on them, he turned to making a few more pairs of bad pennies. Although the scry-comms were useful, they lacked all the hundreds of features a proper modern voicechat had. If he was really going to some ridiculous summit with his allies, it¡¯d be best if everyone had a bad penny and everyone carried full wiring as well as a way for him to bounce around between individuals regardless of where they were.

    More than that, both Chester and Shahey would need to have a direct feed to their respective portal worlds, just in case. Even if the fae in charge of hosting the summit guaranteed mana access, it would be insane for any other supernatural to attend without a personal portal like that. Part of him was surprised that they didn¡¯t already have personal feeder portals, since it wasn¡¯t like he had invented them, but there were probably political implications. Between Duvall and GAR, mages would have made certain that other supernaturals didn¡¯t have the ability to hop portal worlds.

    ¡°You¡¯re sure working hard,¡± Lucy said, coming out to the machine shop with Alex and a couple glasses of lemonade. ¡°Guess I don¡¯t blame you though. High powered meetings aren¡¯t really that fun, but, y¡¯know, I wish I could go along.¡± She gave him a smile and he chuckled, leaning down to kiss her and put one hand on her swollen stomach.

    ¡°Yeah, I understand, but there¡¯s no way that they¡¯d let you leave. The fae track record with kids is not good.¡± He straightened up and shook his head, lifting his glass. ¡°Besides, I¡¯m going to have a hard enough time keeping myself safe. If you were there I wouldn¡¯t be able to think straight at all.¡±

    ¡°What, ¡®cause I¡¯m so sexy?¡± Lucy asked with a grin posing with her hands behind her head. Callum laughed.

    ¡°That too,¡± he said, though he was quite serious. He didn¡¯t trust anyone on the other side a single inch, and as much as he loved Lucy she didn¡¯t have a mage shield or anything to protect her. Even he would need to lean on the archmages for protection, since the best he could do was teleport away. Which he would absolutely do, but it wouldn¡¯t impress anyone.

    ¡°Y¡¯know, the best thing to do is think of this as some kind of top level business meeting,¡± Callum mused, shutting down the scriber as Alex crawled up into his lap. ¡°Hey kiddo, how¡¯s your practice been going?¡±

    ¡°Great!¡± Alex beamed, and pulsed out a child-sized version of a mage bubble. ¡°See? I can do the sphere thing!¡±

    ¡°Fantastic,¡± Callum said, smiling down at his son. ¡°I can¡¯t even do the sphere thing. You¡¯re going to be a lot better at the whole magic thing than I am.¡±

    ¡°No way,¡± Alex said. ¡°Dad¡¯s the best!¡±

    ¡°Don¡¯t know about that, kiddo,¡± Callum said. ¡°But I try.¡±

    When he eventually finished up the enchantments, he set up a second mini-nexus on the moon. It was absurd to consider that he could do something like that so casually, but it did show how far he¡¯d come. There was also a trip out to an electronics store with Lucy to get the microphones and earpieces for the comms network. Which Callum trusted more than the magic version, anyway.

    Then there was the trip to get clothing.

    ¡°Oh man, I really wish I could go,¡± Lucy said with a pout. ¡°I mean, I guess I don¡¯t exactly because this would be an issue,¡± she added, rubbing her swollen belly. ¡°But how often do you get a chance to go to the fanciest party ever?¡±

    ¡°Fanciest and most dangerous,¡± Callum said, as they examined three-piece suits. ¡°Pretty sure that it won¡¯t be as fun as it could be. Besides, I need you to run overwatch just in case.¡±

    ¡°Yeah, yeah,¡± Lucy waved it away. ¡°Go with the tan, it¡¯ll contrast the cloak,¡± she advised. ¡°Black¡¯s boring anyway.¡±

    ¡°Yeah, that works for me,¡± Callum agreed, and waved a hand to flag down an employee. Spending thousands on a suit was an odd experience, but it wasn¡¯t just for the summit. At some point he¡¯d get Taisen¡¯s people to reinforce it, both through materials and enchantments, because he was an actually important person now and he needed to dress the part. Eventually he might reach the same status as Wizzy, and command respect in jeans and a wifebeater, but he wasn¡¯t there yet.

    He suffered himself to be measured and poked and prodded, and paid the extra fee for the rush job. It wasn¡¯t something that would take that much time, but Savile Row was very justly proud of their handicraft and charged a premium for everything. In fairness, there were an awful lot of very important people who used the Savile Row shops for their wardrobe so they genuinely were busy.

    Much of his time leading up to the summit was spent discussing things with his allies. While he¡¯d been a proponent of simply seizing the Deep Wilds portal and moving it ahead of time, everyone else thought it was worth making that a concrete point at the summit. Including Chester, who he thought would be the one most anxious to get the Deep Wilds portal somewhere safe, but even if Callum thought of Chester as the king of all shifters, he really wasn¡¯t.

    ¡°I would appreciate it if you kept an eye on the portal, though,¡± Chester said privately, a few days before the summit, his face on the VoIP program on Callum¡¯s laptop drawn and unhappy. ¡°The problem is, I don¡¯t actually know where it was originally. Somewhere in Africa, I believe, before it was brought up to Norway, but Africa is a big place.¡±

    ¡°It sure is,¡± Callum replied, glancing over at Lucy. ¡°I¡¯ll see if I can have Lucy find out where it was originally just in case, but given what happened with the dragon portal I¡¯d rather not have to deal with that. Hell, I wouldn¡¯t be surprised if they¡¯ve already gone and sabotaged the original entry point by now.¡±

    ¡°And if we bring it up at the summit, they might get the idea to try and shut it down just like they did with the dragonlands one.¡± Chester told him, leaning back in his chair. Behind him was a window looking out onto the Deep Wilds, past a branch the size of a city block. ¡°Another thing we need to discuss ¡ª I still have all those federal agents here. I could ask Felicia or another fae to erase their memories and send them home, but I think it would be better to read them in and try to get them on our side.¡±

    ¡°Mmm.¡± Callum felt odd being consulted about it, but he was the one who was championing treating normal people in a fair and equitable manner. ¡°I mean, I am not a fan of holding people prisoner or brainwashing but under the circumstances it¡¯s not like you can just send ¡®em back.¡± He tapped his fingers against the desk, and looked at Lucy again.

    ¡°I dunno what you¡¯re looking at me for,¡± Lucy laughed. ¡°The whole mundane and supernatural thing is such a mess. I don¡¯t think I can solve it.¡±

    ¡°Well, with everything going on I imagine holding onto them is the best you can do,¡± Callum sighed. ¡°It can¡¯t last too long. They¡¯re probably going to be declared dead soon and then things will be even worse. I guess it depends on what happens at the summit. If we end up in a good position to start reconciling the supernatural groups¡­¡± He ended with a shrug. ¡°I¡¯m glad you¡¯ve got a plan to deal with it, because I sure don¡¯t.¡±

    Chester laughed.

    ¡°Plan might be too strong a word, but someone has to do it. At this point it¡¯d be stupid to think the various governments haven¡¯t started to look in the proper directions. Or if not the governments, at least certain highly-placed individuals. The longer we delay, the harder it¡¯s going to be to couch things the way we want.¡±

    ¡°Have fun with that,¡± Callum said dryly. ¡°Though I guess I¡¯m not completely out of it either. Since I still want to buy stuff from the real world.¡± The fact of the matter was that without Chester as a go-between, converting his supernatural payment to something actually useful was far more difficult.

    ¡°Consider how valuable your talents would be to the mundane world,¡± Chester pointed out. ¡°You need to start thinking like I do. As a sovereign power. You have your own land, hard power, and you¡¯re generally unassailable.¡±

    ¡°That is true enough,¡± Callum admitted, taking a mental step back to consider it. He didn¡¯t really feel independent, since he still purchased so much from the real world, but countries imported goods all the time and he certainly didn¡¯t use land anywhere on Earth. There were the few backup caves, but they weren¡¯t even accessible from the outside.

    He still considered himself an American citizen, despite his somewhat rocky relationship with the authorities there thanks to supernatural meddling, but he was certainly more than that. In a way what he¡¯d been striving for the entire time was the kind of independence only a sovereign nation had. Now that he was capable of creating ¨C or at least discovering ¨C entirely new realities, it was probably time to embrace that.

    ¡°Might as well make it official,¡± he said after a moment, and glanced at Lucy. ¡°Time to start styling ourselves as House Wells.¡±

    ¡°Woo!¡± Lucy cheered. ¡°I¡¯ve already got designs for our coat of arms. Wonder if it¡¯s too late to embroider onto your suit. Pretty sure I still know how to do embroidery.¡±

    ¡°How long have you been waiting for that?¡± Callum asked with amusement.

    ¡°A while,¡± Lucy admitted. ¡°I just wasn¡¯t sure how much we counted, being just the three of us.¡±

    ¡°It¡¯s a bit small,¡± Callum agreed, ignoring Chester¡¯s amused smile. ¡°But I guess everything starts that way.¡±

    Even if there wasn¡¯t much more Callum could do to prepare for the summit, it still didn¡¯t seem enough time before the day was upon him. They all gathered at House Hargrave, and Callum and Taisen ran through the final checks of their earpieces and microphones. Even Shahey got a set, and of course everyone had a bad penny in their pocket. Chester and Shahey actually had two ¨C for the feeder portal and the miniature nexus ¨C and while the mana flow would be obvious to anyone, there wasn¡¯t much he could do to hide it. Taisen and Callum had pinhole cameras, so Lucy could see what was going on, but none of the others had been interested in carrying such devices even if they were tied into the communications network.

    Callum also had a packet of antacids, because this was far and away the most stressful thing he¡¯d ever done. He was doing his best not to show it, drawing on experience from the few times he¡¯d talked to a high-powered executive, but he certainly felt the strain. It took all his willpower not to fiddle with his suit or his cloak, the latter of which seemed to have gotten even more lustrous over the past few weeks.

    Everyone else was dressed in similar finery, from Taisen¡¯s black military formals with honest-to-goodness medals to Shahey¡¯s oversized avatar equipped with gleaming plate. Even Wizzy was dressed up, in some extremely colorful Mesoamerican robe and a feathered headdress. If anything, Callum was underdressed, but he didn¡¯t have centuries¡¯ worth of history to don. The logo Lucy had come up with ¨C a simplified portal torus, with a single stylized downward-pointing projectile, all picked out in silver thread ¨C would have to do.

    Felicia and Ray were the last to arrive, she in her battle dress and Ray in a suit bearing Felicia¡¯s heraldry. It was still a winged cat, but it had shifted from facing away to facing forward. Callum¡¯s cloak had changed to mimic it, which was an odd thing to see happen all on its own, but he¡¯d accepted the fae artifact would just be weird that way.

    ¡°Everyone ready?¡± Hargrave asked, as the nominal senior of the group, though Callum was pretty sure Shahey was older and he knew Wizzy was. ¡°Then if you would, Archmage Wells.¡±

    ¡°Certainly,¡± he said. While he wasn¡¯t sure he really deserved the moniker just yet, there was hardly anyone who could contest it. Or rather, whatever technicalities there were behind becoming an archmage were irrelevant compared to what Callum could already do. Such as open portals into Faerie.

    The host for the summit was the Court of Leaves, presided over by Prince Galivrick. Callum had been there once before while he was looking for Ray, so navigating a shielded drone back there had been simple enough, and he¡¯d stashed it near the entrance at the enormous tree. Now he waved a hand, aware of the theatre as he created a ten-foot-wide portal in the Hargrave courtyard, positioning its opposite number at the end of the broad formal path that led into the tree. Hargrave formed a walkway through it at its widest point, the force construct shimmering, so they could walk abreast and not have to step over the edges of the circular portal.

    Callum took his place in the middle of the procession, aware that on one hand, he had no real defenses, but on the other, that everyone else around him could collectively shrug off a nuclear strike. Which didn¡¯t stop him from keeping a teleport framework tight around himself, ready to evacuate. Maybe he was overthinking it, but it seemed likely someone would take a shot at him.

    For the first time Callum actually entered Faerie, and found it to be a strange experience. The trees of the Court of Leaves were huge, bigger than redwoods, and exuded the feeling of age. It was like he¡¯d stepped into some primeval forest, with a scent that reminded him of the Appalachian mountains of his home, only more so. In fact, it was too intensely green and verdant, just barely crossing over some invisible line to become downright eerie.

    He knew it wasn¡¯t just a glamour, but he doubted it was entirely natural, for any given definition of the word. There was an absurd lot of magic bound up in all the trees and roots and leaves, not to mention things like flowers the size of oaks growing on either side of the path, their heads bowed and light dripping from their petals. The more he looked the weirder it seemed, like it was put together dreams and imagination rather than anything real, with all the exaggerations and overly sharp colors and sensation found only in the mind.

    They descended from Hargrave¡¯s force bridge to a pathway composed of what seemed to be densely interlaced flower petals, feeling like carpet underfoot. The fae themselves were strangely disappointing, being the absolute stereotype of an elf. Tall, pointed ears, looking like they believed themselves superior to God and all his angels. Callum disliked them on sight. Ahead of them, he could sense a lot of people and a lot of mage bubbles, many of them with the steely texture of archmages.

    He surreptitiously teleported an antacid into his mouth and crunched on it.

    Their group moved forward, ignoring the stares of all the elf-styled fae that were hanging around outside the venue, and Felicia waved one hand. A fae that looked like the spitting image of a secret service agent materialized out of her shadow, trotting ahead of them to whisper to the elf hovering at the entrance to the massive central tree. The fae in question bowed to them and opened the door, announcing them with a truly stentorian voice.

    ¡°Please bid welcome to Archmage Hargrave, of House Hargrave. Archmage Taisen, of House Taisen. Teopixqui Huitzilin, Archmage of Blood. Dragonblooded Ensharrehael. Princess Felicia Blackblood and consort. Alpha Chester of the Midwest Pack. The Ghost, Archmage Wells.¡±

 Chapter 15 â€“ Demands

    Archmage Janry was, in a way, hoping that the other side wouldn¡¯t show up to the summit. Their pet fae princess had made certain demands on Prince Galivrick that had nearly sunk the entire thing, but sadly the fae negotiations had been straightened out in the end. Still, it would have been far better if the princess had been the only one to represent her side. Even if there was to be no violence, he would have preferred his faction to dominate the talks.

    Most of the Archmage Council was there, and the Guild of Enchanting had somehow pulled off a miracle and even convinced Duvall to attend. It was clear her attendance was only grudging, and she made a point of seeking out Janry. Her perpetually sour face was pinched, even for her, and he braced himself for the lash of her tongue.

    ¡°If that heretic Wells shows up, you¡¯re ruined,¡± Duvall said instead, scowling fiercely. ¡°He is meddling in things not meant for mages. They¡¯re forbidden for a reason. I won¡¯t be sticking around if you provoke that man and his deviancy.¡±

    Janry made soothing remarks as he tried to steer her back to Rossi, glad that he wasn¡¯t as hidebound as Duvall was. The beliefs of the older Archmages made them easier to control, but they interfered just as much. There was nothing mystical about magic, or those who wielded it.

    In all, there were over twenty Archmages and at least that many Magus level personnel at the summit, plus all of Galivrick¡¯s fae playing host. It wasn¡¯t quite as one-sided as the numbers would indicate, since over half the council was neutral at best, and he could only count five other Archmages besides himself as being totally unshakeable. With luck, he could change that.

    He winced inwardly at some of the names as the herald spoke them, his voice ringing through the enormous meeting room. After the incident at House Xu he just didn¡¯t know whether or not the dragonblooded were still in play, but they¡¯d been quiet enough that he had hope they¡¯d been removed. Apparently he was wrong.

    The inclusion of Huitzilin was strange, since that man basically didn¡¯t bother with any politics. He just wanted to be left alone and generally was, only invited to meetings out of politeness. Janry doubted that he was genuinely as dangerous as some of the stories said either, but his lack of connections made him a bit of a non-entity.

    Then there was Wells. Janry had not expected him to come, considering the man¡¯s history and general unreachability, and he wasn¡¯t entirely certain what to think of that other than perhaps he was on someone¡¯s leash. Calling him an Archmage was laughable, but a fairly predictable strategy. A new mage was hardly going to get much respect.

    ¡°Those are the guests you expected?¡± Prince Galivrick asked disapprovingly, though Galivrick disapproved of almost everything. He was a tall, willowy fae that absolutely radiated contempt for anyone he believed to be beneath him. Which was essentially everyone.

    ¡°It¡¯s easier for people to make up their minds when they see what they¡¯re dealing with,¡± Janry said by way of explanation as he watched the group walk into the room. The air shivered with vis from dozens of mages using active senses, a low background thrum that painted the room and the magic therein onto his consciousness. He didn¡¯t need to see the guests with his own eyes to gauge them, though he liked to.

    Shahey¡¯s oversized avatar towering over everyone was strange, like some obscure joke Janry didn¡¯t quite get. The rest were, effectively, as he remembered them, though Wells didn¡¯t match the pictures from years ago. He¡¯d aged some ¨C another point against him being an archmage ¨C but that was made up for by the hard cast of his face. The expression of someone weighing life in his hands.

    Everyone was looking at the new arrivals, judging them. Even the people who had accepted the bribery via the Guild of Enchanting had never actually met Wells, and many of the people in the room had never been on good terms with either Hargrave or Taisen. Half of Janry¡¯s people were still outraged about the latter¡¯s unilateral formation of his own House.

    ¡°Come. We are the hosts,¡± Galivrick said, making his displeasure clear, though whether at the guests or at Janry remained ambiguous. The two of them walked across the polished wooden floor, past the tables laden with exotic fruits and meats, to greet the Earth Alliance. Janry had to admit it was exceedingly tempting to do something, given Wells didn¡¯t have a sphere of authority, but neither did Huitzilin and it was a matter of historical record that attacking him was a poor idea.

    ¡°Members of the Earth Alliance,¡± Galivrick said, in a tone that was just short of a sneer. ¡°Welcome to the Court of Leaves. As a reminder, you all agreed to begin no hostilities while you are here.¡±

    ¡°We understand,¡± said the princess, who looked relatively small and ordinary next to Galivrick¡¯s finery, though even Janry could feel the power in her voice. To his mage sight she was cloaked in vis, crackling down into a long train behind her, so despite the outer appearance she had some claim to being a contender.

    Of them all, it was Wells who had the least magical presence, just behind Huitzilin, though there was just the faintest hint of something that Janry couldn¡¯t resolve. Despite his opinion of Wells, he knew what the man had achieved before. There was no reason to underestimate what Wells could do, though both he and Huitzilin seemed completely blind without their own contribution to the buzz of active vis around them.

    ¡°I am Archmage Janry,¡± he said, though most of them already knew that. ¡°I¡¯m glad to welcome you here,¡± he continued, despite them all knowing it was a lie. ¡°Hopefully we can work out our differences and come to a mutually beneficial resolution of hostilities.¡±

    Wells¡¯ eyes fixed on him, and despite himself Janry felt a chill. It wasn¡¯t like Wells was angry, it was more like he was simply considering ways to kill. The gaze didn¡¯t last long, but it was a face of complete psychopathy. Janry revised his opinion; Wells was just insane.

    ¡°Unlikely,¡± Hargrave said, flat and matter of fact. ¡°But it does seem to be time to clarify where we stand. Sniping back and forth is sure to end in disaster.¡±

    ¡°Something you should have done before you decided to break the back of GAR,¡± Janry snapped.

    ¡°Then GAR should not have come after me in my own home,¡± Alpha Chester growled, low enough that Janry could feel it through his feet.

    ¡°We¡¯re not here for recriminations,¡± the princess said. ¡°There¡¯s plenty of those to go around. The point is to find something short of total annihilation.¡±

    ¡°Quite so,¡± Janry agreed, not entirely certain who had come out ahead in the exchange. ¡°I¡¯ll give you time to meet the rest of the archmages before we convene.¡±

    ¡°The food and drink are quite safe,¡± Galivrick said, as if it were unthinkable that a fae would ever serve questionable refreshments. ¡°Feel free to partake. I have other guests to attend to.¡± His tone made it quite clear that any other guests would do. Galivrick glided off, but that was fine. The fae had provocations to make, ones that might work even better with Wells around.

    ***

    Callum wasn¡¯t really impressed by the gathering of mages. He could tell how powerful they were from the steely mage bubbles and the sheer amount of vis in the air, every single one of them leaving trails through the heady mana of Faerie and pulsing out active senses, but they didn¡¯t look any different from normal people. Mostly grandfatherly or grandmotherly people, at that.

    By common agreement, Callum stuck with Taisen, Felicia, and Ray. Everyone else could take care of themselves and probably had their own deals to make. Even Chester could probably deal with an Archmage better than Callum could, but it wouldn¡¯t do to let anyone know that. Such gatherings were as much about theater as they were about fact.

    To that end he refused to show his own anxiety and kept his shoulders back, his head up straight, and looked people dead in the eyes. Though he couldn¡¯t help feeling somewhat diminutive compared to Shahey¡¯s eight-foot avatar, Chester¡¯s natural bulk, or the fact that most of the elves were over-tall, willowy things whose only way of looking seemed to be down their noses. Not to mention several of the archmages using foci or just their natural aspect to float about the place a few feet above the floor, rather than doing something so pedestrian as walking.

    In another time and place he might have been impressed by the huge wooden arches vaulting the ceiling, or the living vines twined around every column and beam, or the sprays of flowers with exotic colors not found in nature. It was all very sumptuous and calculated to impress, but the people made it impossible to enjoy. Callum couldn¡¯t help but track Janry¡¯s bubble as the archmage moved off elsewhere and had to fight the urge to do something about it.

    Fortunately, Rossi of the Guild of Enchantment came to rescue them before Callum had to really wrestle with temptation. It was his first time meeting the man on purpose, and Callum had to remind himself not to offer a hand. Mages didn¡¯t do that, thanks to the bubbles.

    ¡°Archmage Wells,¡± Rossi said, with a credible straight face. ¡°I¡¯d like to introduce you to Archmage Montgomery. Archmage Montgomery, this is our supplier for the private portal worlds.¡± Montgomery was a short and portly fellow who didn¡¯t look much older than Callum and, unlike most of the other archmages Callum could spot, he was beaming from ear to ear.

    ¡°Oh, excellent! I¡¯ve been very much enjoying the new locale. Faerie is fine but, the neighbors, you know?¡± Montgomery winked, and Callum felt his lips quirk upward despite himself. At least someone was happy with him, and he frankly couldn¡¯t blame Montgomery for not wanting to live next to fae. Especially ones who radiated arrogance like the Court of Leaves.

    ¡°Glad to hear it,¡± Callum said, summoning up the best diplomatic tone he could manage. ¡°I am of the opinion that separating the supernaturals out into their own individual worlds resolves many problems. Of course, for that to happen those individual worlds have to exist, and be worth living in.¡±

    ¡°Montgomery got the infinite fjord portal world.¡± Lucy¡¯s voice came through his earpiece, and Callum relaxed a little bit. Having someone else who could do all the referencing for him was a great help.

    ¡°The more connections we have, the better it is too,¡± Montgomery said. ¡°You ought to talk to Duvall. I¡¯m sure she¡¯s somewhere around here.¡±

    ¡°That would not be a good idea,¡± Callum said with a wince. He reflexively glanced around, but he didn¡¯t actually know what Duvall looked like. All he knew was that she was one of the female archmages, but that still left a half-dozen possibilities assuming she was even in the room. ¡°Duvall and I are not on good terms at all.¡±

    ¡°Ah, a shame. I¡¯m a water mage myself and I always found it useful to compare notes,¡± Montgomery said, completely indifferent to the grudge between Duvall and Callum. ¡°Maybe later, when things have calmed down a bit.¡±

    ¡°Perhaps,¡± Callum said, considering that, to Montgomery, later might well be fifty years down the line. There was no telling how old he was.

    ¡°Well, I shouldn¡¯t monopolize you too much,¡± Montgomery said, nodded to him, and wandered off. Rossi offered Callum a smile and waved his hand around at the assembled mages.

    ¡°Over half of them have portal worlds you provided,¡± he said. ¡°We can introduce you to a few more people before anything starts.¡±

    ¡°I would appreciate it,¡± Callum said, though he wasn¡¯t really looking forward to it. Gladhanding was an important part of networking but it was also the most tedious, insincere, and unpleasant part of it.

    ¡°I¡¯ll tag along,¡± Taisen said. ¡°In case any of them are having issues with local wildlife. My people screened the portal worlds first but there was hardly time for a thorough, years-long inspection.¡±

    ¡°I haven¡¯t heard any complaints,¡± Rossi said, waving a hand toward a thin, almost emaciated man who looked like he was bent under the weight of the world, but had a bubble as steely as Hargrave. Felicia waved her hand briefly and made for some fae, since it was clear that Taisen had things well in hand.

    Callum had himself braced for a long and exhausting time with strangers when there was a musical tone and a wood column in the middle of the room began to move. The base twisted outward, turning from a single post into a series of arches, revealing a spiral stairway that could not possibly fit into the post it had once been, or the column above. But still, from it came a trail of humans, some dancing and others playing instrument, presumably to provide entertainment.

    Every single one of them was clad in chains.

    The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

    Nor did they look particularly joyful, something false to the smiles and dancing. The real fae weren¡¯t exactly the fae of stories, but they were close enough. He¡¯d be hard-pressed to relate any specific examples, but he knew there were plenty of tales of artists or musicians trapped and forced to perform forever. Callum had seen some of that in passing the first time he¡¯d sent the drone through, but it hadn¡¯t been so blatant.

    ¡°Felicia,¡± he muttered, toggling the microphone with the remote in his pocket.

    ¡°Yes, I see.¡± Her voice sounded in his ear. ¡°It¡¯s a deliberate message.¡±

    ¡°Not very diplomatic,¡± he replied. ¡°We¡¯ve got to do something about it. We¡¯re here to show what we¡¯re about, right?¡±

    ¡°We did agree not to start trouble,¡± Hargrave¡¯s voice came over the line.

    ¡°We agreed not to start hostilities,¡± Felicia corrected him. ¡°As did they.¡±

    ¡°The only way to make this work is to show we¡¯ve got the biggest, brassest ones in the room,¡± Taisen chipped in. ¡°We¡¯re here to make demands, and the only way they¡¯ll take us seriously is if we take ourselves seriously.¡±

    ¡°I will deal with it; such a thing is my responsibility,¡± Felicia said. ¡°Just be ready in case I need to show exactly how strong my backing is.¡±

    ¡°You all be careful.¡± Lucy¡¯s voice came over the line. ¡°There¡¯s more of them than there are of you.¡±

    ¡°Yeah,¡± Callum sighed. ¡°That¡¯s my worry.¡±

    ¡°My lords and ladies,¡± Felicia said, not raising her voice but still cutting through all the sound commotion, severing the music even as it started. ¡°Is this seemly?¡±

    If they didn¡¯t have people¡¯s attention before, they did now. Mostly it was on Felicia and Ray, but Callum was wearing her heraldry and he drifted over her way along with Taisen. Their other allies were scattered around the room, but they all had the comms equipment so they knew what was happening.

    ¡°Prince Galivrick, you will explain yourself at once,¡± Felicia added, and the fae in question was abruptly right in front of her.

    ¡°Princess Blackblood,¡± Galivrick said, oily and condescending. ¡°I haven¡¯t any idea what you¡¯re talking about. There hasn¡¯t been any¡ª¡±

    ¡°Do you pretend to be unaware of the nature of The Ghost? Of what has driven the destruction of GAR, the removal of the vampires, and what has pushed the entire Archmage¡¯s Council to be here today?¡± Felicia¡¯s voice was withering, and nearby flowers sagged, some drying to husks, others rotting. ¡°Are you claiming to be that ignorant?¡±

    ¡°Certainly not,¡± Galivrick replied, his tone packing in all the imprecations lacking from his words. ¡°But everything and everyone here is part of the Court of Leaves or guests of the mage Houses. There is nothing for anyone to object to.¡±

    ¡°You claim that, and yet you have human slaves here,¡± Felicia was scornful, and while Galivrick didn¡¯t show anything, several of the fae nearby shrank away. ¡°Violating the entire purpose of our talks and flaunting your depravity. Insulting your guests and showing your true nature as hosts. Pathetic and insolent.¡±

    ¡°Strong words from a Princess without a Court,¡± Galivrick replied, apparently unconcerned. ¡°What do you intend to do? These are mortals bound by word and bargain, and even you cannot unbind the chains they have laid upon themselves.¡±

    Felicia smiled, suddenly and in a flash, her sharp teeth showing as she pounced upon the opening. Even Callum could see it, though maybe Galivrick didn¡¯t understand what Callum could do. Or discounted his ability to do it when surrounded by other mages.

    ¡°Would you like to make that a wager?¡± The words had an almost physical weight to them, and Callum could see all the other fae twitch. ¡°We cannot abide human slaves, and if these can be sundered from you, then all the rest shall as well. Should we prove unequal to the task¡ª¡±

    ¡°If you prove unequal to the task, you do not deserve to call yourself royalty,¡± Galivrick said.

    ¡°I would not,¡± Felicia agreed, and it suddenly struck Callum what Felicia was betting. She had to have a lot of faith if she was willing to risk everything.

    ¡°Then by all means, see what you can do for those poor souls,¡± Galivrick said, gesturing in the direction of the human players. The fae magic tightened down around them, latching onto the chains and collars. Felicia just looked at Callum and smiled. She didn¡¯t need to say anything.

    ¡°Big brass ones,¡± Callum muttered under his breath, reaching through his gut portal for his vis crystals and one of his drones. Working by fae rules, it probably would have been impossible to unshackle those people. But he had never bothered with the supernatural rules.

    At this point forming anti-mana portals was, if not easy, at least straightforward and something he could do without fumbling. He only needed one for the moment, formed out in the middle of the Midwest and stretched to enormous size, with two other, even larger portals directing the outflow to Faerie. The weaponized portals directed the anti-mana over the group of humans, catching them in the crossfire, though of course it didn¡¯t harm them directly.

    Galivrick was completely blindsided and let out a glass-shattering wail as the anti-mana ate through all the gathered fae stuff in a flash. It washed over the people and dissolved the chains, the collars, even most of the clothing, leaving them clad only in rags. The incidental damage to the fae realm was bizarre, with how much space and structure and god knew what else was based on the mana, all of which was being erased.

    Even outside the blast radius, the room seemed to contort, wood creaking ominously as the support columns near the disruption vanished. The poor victims made various noises of surprise but none of them dropped dead or aged a hundred years in an instant, but he wasn¡¯t going to leave them there. He made a few extra portals while everyone was still staring and abducted the entire ensemble, depositing them in the hospital at Taisen¡¯s base.

    The entire process took maybe five or ten seconds, during which Felicia somehow forced Galivrick to his knees. Not that the fae prince was resisting, since the blast of anti-mana destroying a chunk of his gathered power seemed to have put him into a catatonic stupor. The other fae all sprang to conjure defensive magic around themselves, and one of the mage bubbles vanished. Someone deciding to homebond out, apparently.

    Callum had become so inured to using anti-mana that he¡¯d forgotten basically nobody else had seen it. Even the people he¡¯d used it against had all died, save for Duvall. Now it¡¯d been used out in the open, and while he didn¡¯t know how it looked to other mages, it was an all-devouring black hole to his passive senses. It couldn¡¯t look much better to anyone else.

    In his earpiece he heard Lucy filling in the hospital staff, so they knew why there were suddenly a bunch of nearly-naked folks in their staging area, but the room in Faerie was dead silent. For a moment the only movement was the flash and ripple of various forms of active shields surrounding the mages. Even Hargrave had donned his golden force armor.

    ¡°We are not concerned with your bindings or bargains,¡± Felicia said, her voice shocking the room and stirring people back to life. ¡°As you can see we are well capable of negating any such frivolities.¡± She reached down and grabbed Galivrick by the neck, hauling him up to his feet. Even as Callum watched, fae mana swirled around Felicia and seemed to sink into her, though unlike with princes he¡¯d seen there was a definite distinction between her body and the surrounding mana. It seemed she was actually taking power from Galivrick.

    ¡°Now, will you fulfill your wager?¡± Felicia asked, shaking the dazed Galivrick. ¡°Or will I have to tear my winnings from you piece by piece?¡± That seemed to catalyze the prince, who finally focused on Felicia again, his hands coming up to pry her fingers from his throat. To no avail.

    ¡°You agreed to no hostilities,¡± he rasped instead. ¡°How dare you violate the guest agreements?¡± Felicia cocked her head, and instead of answering herself nodded to Callum. For himself, he would have rather left the wordplay to the fae, but perhaps it was better that he answer for himself.

    ¡°That wasn¡¯t hostility,¡± he said shortly. ¡°That wasn¡¯t even an attack. That was surgery. It¡¯s you who offered to put yourself under the knife.¡±

    ¡°How was that not an attack?¡± Galivrick demanded, incredulous.

    ¡°Because you aren¡¯t dead,¡± Callum said, his voice flat. Elsewhere in the room, Shahey laughed, a big booming guffaw.

    ¡°Now, are you going to do what you promised?¡± Felicia inquired, her voice dangerous.

    ¡°I won¡¯t stand for this,¡± Galivrick said, and Felicia smiled toothily.

    ¡°You have no choice in the matter,¡± she said. ¡°Or are you going to break your word and start a fight?¡± Galivrick¡¯s eyes darted from Felicia, to Callum, to Taisen. He didn¡¯t reply. ¡°I thought not,¡± Felicia said, and shoved him away. Galivrick stumbled backward, shorn of his haughty air.

    ¡°What the hell was that?¡± Someone demanded. One of the archmages that Callum had yet to be introduced to.

    ¡°That was The Ghost,¡± Hargrave said, projecting his voice to echo through the room. ¡°Before anyone gets excited, let us lay out exactly why we are here. Earth belongs to the mundanes. Our demands are simple ¡ª you do not prey on the humans there.¡±

    ¡°And what gives you the right?¡± It was Janry, who had drifted closer, his sleepy eyes narrowed. ¡°We all come from Earth, and most of us were there long before you.¡±

    ¡°If you don¡¯t understand the obvious moral arguments, then I can¡¯t help you,¡± Callum said. It was a bit of an insult, but he didn¡¯t much care. ¡°If you want a pragmatic argument, there¡¯s no point in the old setup. You¡¯ll get a lot more out of interacting with them normally than the potentially nuclear consequences of trying to conquer them.¡±

    ¡°Earth is still the nexus for the portal worlds,¡± Janry said. ¡°We can¡¯t possibly¡ª¡±

    ¡°Not anymore,¡± Callum interrupted. ¡°How many people here have the new portal worlds I opened up? How many of you are already living there? You want access to the various portal worlds, you can just work it out among yourselves.¡±

    ¡°We all have seen Fane¡¯s research notes,¡± Taisen continued. ¡°We know that mages benefit from experiencing a number of different portal worlds. Archmage Wells has expanded that number significantly, and between him and Archmage Duvall, the Guild of Enchanting can provide passage between them without needing any holdings on Earth at all.¡±

    ¡°That is ridiculous,¡± Janry said. ¡°You want to leave the mundanes to manage their own affairs? Without magic they can barely function, let alone run a planet. No, you¡¯re just wanting to hold Earth for yourself, with all its people and resources.¡±

    Callum almost sighed. Of course that was the conclusion Janry would draw; that type didn¡¯t understand that some people just wanted to be left alone. Or that they didn¡¯t want to grasp and take everything they could see. The tyrants throughout history, large and small, all had that same bent.

    ¡°I sure don¡¯t want to try and run a planet.¡± Callum clasped his hands behind him, aware of the fact that he was trying to look like an archmage, not some guy with a grudge. ¡°You have Faerie and the Deep Wilds, you have the other portal worlds. If you want things from Earth, you can get them the same way anyone else does.¡±

    ¡°The era of secrecy is ending¡ª¡± Shahey got out that much before people started talking over him. Callum was actually surprised that people had been quiet that long, rather than trying to shout each other down in the aftermath of his collaboration with Felicia. Though quite a few people were still looking at him with hard eyes.

    ¡°Well, the summit is in shambles already,¡± Lucy¡¯s voice sounded in his ear, more amused than anything. ¡°Twenty minutes in? I¡¯ll have to see who wins the betting pool.¡±

    Callum grunted, too distracted scanning for threats to engage in banter. Taisen was still close by, his vis stretching outward to intercept any magic that might be thrown. Anyone who started a slugging match with so many high-powered mages around was asking for trouble, and an all-out brawl between archmages would be terrifying.

    Fortunately it seemed like everyone was limiting themselves to words, though he caught some mages flexing their bubbles, pushing them out further than the normal radius. It reminded him of pufferfish, a little bit of amusement that broke through the stress of trying to figure out whether there¡¯d be some all-out magical war or not. After a few minutes, Hargrave and Janry between them did manage to wrangle people into some semblance of order though, and Felicia snapped something at Galivrick. Magic swirled and a truly massive table with enough chairs for everyone appeared from nowhere.

    ¡°Very good, now we¡¯re all ready to discuss things like civilized people.¡± Janry looked around the table as the last people seated themselves. Felicia, Ray, and Galivrick did not. The fae prince seemed to be rather wilted, and Callum noticed he hadn¡¯t yet produced any of his other human prisoners. But by the way Felicia was muttering to the pale-faced elf, that was taken care of. ¡°We can actually begin real negotiations.¡±

    ¡°No negotiations,¡± Callum said, before anyone else could reply. Perhaps he should let Hargrave and Taisen and Wizzy deal with it, and definitely would for any details, but he wanted to make things very clear from the outset. ¡°We¡¯re not telling you what to do in your own portal worlds or among yourselves, nor are we telling the fae out to act within their own borders. We¡¯re just enforcing Earth¡¯s sovereignty.¡±

    ¡°What is this nonsense about breaking magical secrecy?¡± One of the mages at Janry¡¯s side broke in. ¡°There¡¯s no need for the mundanes to be told. It¡¯s not like they can do anything about it.¡±

    ¡°There is plenty they can do about it,¡± Taisen rebuffed him. ¡°In fact, our demands are for your own good. The mundane world would absolutely respond to your attempts to undermine and control it with violence. And there are few enough of us that it¡¯s doubtful magekind would survive the encounter.¡±

    ¡°You think that mundanes can threaten us?¡± This time it was someone nominally on their side, one of the archmages that had gotten a private portal world. The face was familiar from the reports Rossi had passed back to him, though he couldn¡¯t remember the House in question. ¡°Maybe before we understood how magic truly worked, the threat of war was a serious one, but now?¡±

    ¡°I think I can arrange a demonstration,¡± Callum said. Part of him hated showing a card he would have preferred to keep in reserve, but the way people were nodding at the mage¡¯s skepticism showed they had no sense of reality. Or at least, no understanding of modern militaries and nuclear weapons. Besides, it wasn¡¯t like anyone would know how he did it. ¡°Felicia, is there any way we can get a view of the sky?¡±

    ¡°Galivrick,¡± Felicia said coldly, and the prince obediently snapped his fingers. Mana swirled and the room flexed and shifted, and rather than just a scrying view of the outside it seemed they had been taken outside, up to the top levels of the massive tree.

    ¡°I am going to demonstrate one of the weapons that the so-called mundanes have,¡± he said, ignoring the stares from Taisen and Shahey, who knew exactly what he meant. They were probably questioning how and where he¡¯d gotten his hands on a nuclear warhead, but he wasn¡¯t about to answer that. ¡°I would advise you not to look directly at it. Archmages, a shield might be a good idea.¡±

    He pointed upward and off to the side, using his Alcubierre trick to shove a bad penny miles away. At least a hundred miles, judging from what he could see through the secondary portal he opened at the penny¡¯s location to gauge where he was. Then he reached out to two of his boxes, since he didn¡¯t want to impact the landscape. Instead he¡¯d have them hit each other, since they were basically two clumps of relativistic metal moving in a straight line. He created a portal loop in the air to redirect any missed impactors back toward each other, for as long as the portals lasted anyway, and then teleported the two spaces in between, facing each other.

    A new sun bloomed in the sky, washing out the light. On the moon, enough leaked through the penny portal before it collapsed to detonate the matching anchor in the nexus and bore a coin-sized hole in the regolith. A half-dozen magical shields snapped into place overhead and long moments passed as the shockwave visibly expanded, driving home how far away the detonation had been. There was no sound, and wouldn¡¯t be for minutes.

    Little trails of fire hung in the air where shrapnel, still moving at relativistic velocity, had gone off in each direction, making the still blooming firestorm look like some apocalyptic spider, its legs encircling the world. The force of the explosion was a hell of a lot more than he¡¯d anticipated, and he hadn¡¯t even used the fastest boxes. Mages and fae alike cursed, most of them in languages Callum couldn¡¯t understand.

    ¡°Now you know,¡± he said loudly, and Shahey did something insanely complex that immediately halted all noise but Callum¡¯s voice. ¡°How many of you could survive one of those? How about ten, or a hundred, or a thousand? Because there are thousands, and they will use them.¡±

    The only answer was silence.

 Chapter 16 â€“ Proliferation

    Felicia breathed in the heady fumes of conquest, feeling her own aspects and power base solidify around her. She had expected to have to match herself directly against the Seven Lesser Courts, but the Court of Leaves had been very careless. Perhaps they did not deal with inner Faerie enough, but they should have known better than to allow a wager.

    Admittedly, it wouldn¡¯t have been possible without The Ghost. She still wasn¡¯t sure what, precisely, he was doing to erase magic from its very foundations, but it was a tool that nobody else had. One she was not at all shy about using to cheat through any magical contest ¡ª a method which was usually more potent than winning one outright.

    Some of the power went to her own body, making her more, but she made sure most of it went back to her glade in the Ways, expanding its control and anchoring it even deeper. Some even went to Ray, which was an ongoing and ticklish business. Her power was shared with people who weren¡¯t fae, which was so far as she knew a completely new situation for fae royalty, or possibly fae in general.

    Along with the inflow of power, she could feel the humans she¡¯d won in the bet. Some of them were deeply infiltrated with Faerie¡¯s magic, others were merely bound by it. Prince Galivrick looked on as she pulled them across to her Ways, out of the Court of Leaves. She would deal with them later, perhaps with The Ghost¡¯s help, though by the terms of the wager she might be able to address it herself.

    ¡°You¡¯ll want to tell the others in the Lesser Courts that we¡¯ll be taking their mundanes as well,¡± Felicia said, one fae noble to another. ¡°They may surrender them properly, or suffer the same humiliation you did. I think you¡¯ll agree that we aren¡¯t lacking in ability.¡±

    ¡°No, I can¡¯t say you are.¡± Galivrick was not happy, but he¡¯d get over it. The way he¡¯d been crushed would, eventually, make for an interesting story, as would the demonstration of the human weapon. She didn¡¯t know how far across Faerie the explosion could be seen, but there was already an upwelling of significance around the Court of Leaves that could be eventually parleyed into something greater.

    ¡°Then go,¡± she said.

    Galivrick went.

    Felicia had to admit she enjoyed being able to tell one of the princes of the Lesser Courts to obey. It was not a power she¡¯d ever sought for herself but, now that she needed it, there was a certain pleasure in surpassing those who wished to control her.

    ¡°I didn¡¯t think we¡¯d be throwing our weight around this much,¡± Ray remarked. ¡°Not that I¡¯m complaining, mind you. I just imagined it¡¯d be a more gradual process.¡±

    ¡°As did I, but Galivrick was careless enough to offer me an opening.¡± Felica tilted her head toward where The Ghost stood, hands clasped behind him and watching the table full of archmages with a hard expression.

    ¡°I still find it hard to believe he¡¯s the one we¡¯re relying on.¡± Ray shook his head slowly. ¡°Such strange ships that pass in the night.¡±

    ¡°He¡¯s relying on us, too.¡± Felicia pointed out, as the last bits of power settled into her bones. ¡°We will have to move quickly and consolidate our hold over Earth¡¯s fae. Only then can we fulfill our side of the agreement.¡±

    For all that she had avoided it for so long, Felicia found that there was something very right about assuming her role as fae royalty. Her time as detective had rooted her story in humanity¡¯s mindset, rather than the fae one, and with that she could resist the temptation to grow her power by more expedient means. Without that past, she wouldn¡¯t have seen any reason to play the longer game and be more accommodating to those around her.

    ¡°Princess Felicity?¡±

    Felicia¡¯s eyes flicked to the fae who had approached her, instantly on guard. It looked like a black housecat, completely mundane save for a silver collar set with black opals. But she hadn¡¯t noticed it approaching, which was a disturbing prospect. Even now it had barely more presence than an ordinary animal. A flicker of a thought had her guards ready to leap from her shadow, while she inclined her head to the cat.

    ¡°I am Princess Felicity.¡±

    ¡°Good.¡± The cat yawned and stretched, then turned its head and somehow had a tiny scroll case in its jaws. It leapt onto her shoulder before anyone could react, purring as it settled down and offered her the case. Felicia very gingerly took it, uncertain of how to react, and unrolled the message therein. Then she blinked, because while it held only two words, every fae would know a message from the King of Faerie, her father, Oberon.

    Well done, it read, and that was all.

    ¡°You should come back home from time to time,¡± the cat said, washing its face with its paw. Then it sprang from her shoulder, fading into transparency before it vanished. Felicia let out a long breath.

    ¡°What the heck was that?¡± Ray said, and Felicia only belatedly recognized the vis swirling around him from his offensive foci.

    ¡°A messenger from my parents,¡± Felicia replied, staring off in the direction the cat had vanished. ¡°Cait Sidhe.¡±

    ¡°Oh.¡± Ray blinked, taken aback. ¡°Good news, I hope?¡±

    ¡°They approve of what I¡¯m doing,¡± Felicia said, almost wonderingly. ¡°I wasn¡¯t sure they would. After all, I did run away from home.¡±

    ¡°Most kids do, for a while at least,¡± Ray reassured her, putting a hand on her arm. After the day she¡¯d had, she might have wished for more, but anything more intimate would be inappropriate where they were. ¡°But I imagine most kids don¡¯t wind up gunning for the rulership of a whole planet.¡±

    Felicia laughed.

    ***

    Janry hated to admit that he was impressed. Irritated, infuriated, and incensed, but impressed. Wells¡¯ secret weapon, that terrible black hole that seemed to destroy mana, had certainly cowed the fae, and the Earth Alliance¡¯s complete disinterest in extracting concessions had reassured a number of the Houses. It was the final demonstration, though, that had quietly changed a number of minds.

    His side hadn¡¯t lost as badly as it might have seemed. It was obvious that if the mundanes indeed had access to weapons of such tremendous power, they couldn¡¯t be trusted with them. That, and it was clear Wells really was dabbling in things that no mage should, and he was too dangerous to let live. Unfortunately, even if he was willing to break the rules set by the fae at the summit, Archmage Taisen was too near, his shield practically covering Wells, and he was not someone taken lightly.

    The discussion had devolved into a tangent about how to best use the private portal worlds. There wasn¡¯t any negotiating to be done on terms, people either accepted them or didn¡¯t. If they didn¡¯t, it was at their peril. Of all people, the dragonblooded had made it clear that the gloves were off in the future. Janry was merely watching silently, pretending disinterest, and observing who was talking to whom. While he didn¡¯t feel like being there, leaving in a huff would be an unconscionable display of weakness.

    Their pet fae princess laughed, and the sheer musicality of it irked him. Janry restrained himself from glaring in her direction and focused on the other mages. He had to admit that he would enjoy a private portal world himself, but not one supplied by Wells. They were all poison pills, they had to be. There was no way that someone would provide such inestimably precious things without strings attached.

    But if Wells could make them, so could Duvall. Why she hadn¡¯t was a good question, though it had become clear she was not the expert in her field that she had claimed. With so many examples, surely she could divine the technique, and Janry preferred dealing with a neutral party over a psychopath like Wells.

    The man in question wasn¡¯t even involving himself in the debate, letting Rossi field all the questions relating to the worlds and standing like a gargoyle off to the side. It was impossible to understand how such an unpleasant person had ended up with so many allies ¡ª though perhaps it was the other way around. Hargrave and Taisen weren¡¯t supposed to be canny enough to put the Earth Alliance together on their own, but it was a matter of historical record that Alpha Chester had stumbled across Wells early on.

    Janry¡¯s eyes flicked to Chester, who returned his gaze immediately afterward. Janry frowned and turned to examine Rossi, disliking the way Chester was so aware of him. In general he didn¡¯t think much of shifters, but there were no records of what happened when they became powerful enough to challenge an archmage. There was no telling what sort of being he was, but it seemed clear that he was the heart of the alliance. Even more than the princess, even more than the Houses. Maybe even more than Wells.

    ¡°House Janry will withdraw for now,¡± he said abruptly as he stood. Many eyes went to him, including Wells and Chester, but he ignored them. ¡°There seems to be little value in the current negotiations for us.¡±

    ¡°You will keep in mind the requirements we set out, yes?¡± Hargrave half-asked, half-demanded.

    ¡°Of course.¡± Janry lied through his teeth. He had no more intention of submitting to the demands of the Earth supernaturals than he did of abandoning his own House. But there was no point in throwing down before he had assured himself of his own forces.

    With House Janry still in Faerie, returning with his allies was merely a matter of flight. Nothing dared to accost them, even in the neutral land between the mage enclaves and the Lesser Courts. Which was a shame, since he would have welcomed something to vent his spleen. As it was he merely dismissed his emotions as useless and landed in the courtyard of House Janry.

    Then he returned to his study and waited.

    In the next few hours, only three other Houses had joined him. Which was unfortunate, but Janry had done more with less in the past. He didn¡¯t ask what agreements they might have reached with others, for none of that was relevant. Only that they agreed with the right path.

    ¡°Whatever Wells is playing with is far too dangerous to leave him be,¡± Janry started out, getting nods from his allies. ¡°But there is, unfortunately, no way to remove him directly. It may take time to convince others away from their shiny new toys. If we want to defang the Earth Alliance we need to cut them off at the leg first. Their approach to mundanes.¡±

    ¡°What are they even thinking,¡± Archmage Moravin muttered. As head of one of the Houses that had ended up evacuating from the Night Lands, he had more of a grudge against Wells than most. It was a travesty how many of those Houses had been happy enough to take the bribe of a private world of their own.

    ¡°Indeed.¡± Janry held up two fingers. ¡°First, of them all only Alpha Chester has any real purchase in the mundane world. Destroying his compound was a beginning but we must remove him to eliminate the center of the alliance. Second, as the only supernaturals on Earth, it should be simple to ensure the Earth Alliance is blamed for anything and everything. If mundanes and supernaturals start out with bad blood, it will be easy to force the Earth Alliance into the very conflict they wish to avoid.¡±

    ¡°It will take some finesse,¡± Magus Leshiel, the head of one of Janry¡¯s cadet houses, said thoughtfully. ¡°It¡¯s always easy to blame someone else, especially someone who isn¡¯t there, so anything we do will need clear evidence of who is at fault. Evidence that mundanes will see, not vis traces or House crests.¡±

    ¡°We have plenty of former GAR employees to consult for that, though no DAI ones,¡± Janry said, somewhat pointedly.

    ¡°I hate to bring it up,¡± said Moravin. ¡°But what about that weapon that Wells demonstrated? So far we¡¯ve been assuming that even if we cornered these Earth Alliance types, there was only so much they could do. But those dogs have teeth.¡±

    ¡°That is indeed a worry,¡± Janry was forced to admit. ¡°I know that such devices are not nearly as common or simple to use as Wells said, but I can¡¯t rule out that he has at least one other. When we move, we¡¯re going to have to lock down all the portals to Faerie and use the jammers to protect us from Wells¡¯ portals. He still has to deliver it, and we can deny him that.¡±

    ¡°I¡¯m more worried about the mana destruction he demonstrated.¡± Archmage Harper spoke up at last. Of those present, he had the added pique of one of his House members ¨C admittedly just a dud ¨C joining with Wells. ¡°We can¡¯t simply refuse to act for fear of what the enemy can do, but that particular weapon ¡ª it¡¯s hard to imagine defenses.¡±

    Support the creativity of authors by visiting the original site for this novel and more.

    ¡°It is only mana, though. It can¡¯t hurt us by itself.¡± Janry waved it aside. ¡°I actually suggest we take a page out of Wells¡¯ book. He can¡¯t attack us if he can¡¯t find us, so we simply need to stage things from somewhere else for a while. Long enough for the Earth side of things to fall apart.¡±

    ***

    ¡°You know they¡¯re going to try something,¡± Shahey said as the last of Janry¡¯s allies left the summit.

    ¡°Oh, obviously,¡± Callum said. ¡°You have no idea how hard it was to restrain myself while they were here.¡±

    ¡°Hey now,¡± Lucy said in his ear. ¡°No preliminary nuking. Only nuke things at the appropriate time.¡± Callum chuckled and shook his head.

    ¡°But yeah, I¡¯m assuming they¡¯re going to try sabotage or the like, which is why I followed Janry home,¡± Callum said.

    ¡°Did you, now?¡± Shahey grinned. ¡°I¡¯m surprised they didn¡¯t notice.¡±

    ¡°Oh, I wasn¡¯t anywhere near them. Just followed their trail.¡± It had been some time since he¡¯d needed to use the trails mages left in ambient mana for anything, but if anything it was easier on Faerie than Earth. ¡°It¡¯s a shame that I can¡¯t bug all of them, but sticking listening devices in House Janry is a good start.¡±

    ¡°Unless they find them,¡± Shahey pointed out.

    ¡°Eh. I have some advantages in positioning them and unless they know exactly what to look for, it doesn¡¯t even need to be active all the time. I can just turn on the portal once a day and collect the feed.¡±

    ¡°Not once a day, don¡¯t have the batteries for that,¡± Lucy said. ¡°But yeah close enough.¡±

    ¡°And you can just send that all to Taisen.¡± Shahey nodded understanding, and Callum wasn¡¯t at all surprised that the dragon avatar could hear an earbud from a few feet away.

    ¡°So how did all the discussion go?¡± Callum pitched his voice low, since there were still groups of mages around, some of them still talking with Hargrave and Felicia. ¡°I have to admit I didn¡¯t really pay attention past a certain point.¡±

    ¡°It turns out most people are greedy,¡± Shahey said happily. ¡°Oh, I¡¯m sure a lot of them are just agreeing for now so they can get a portal world, but by the time they¡¯re moved and settled in, the effort of doing anything with Earth won¡¯t seem worth it.¡±

    ¡°Some people weren¡¯t happy with me wanting to take control of the Deep Wilds portal, but I pushed it through. Not like mages use it much anyway,¡± Chester added.

    ¡°Sounds like I have my work cut out for me, then,¡± Callum said. Moving the Deep Wilds portal was a one-time thing, but making new portal world connections seemed to be a full-time job. Which was just as well, since it was also the most valuable thing he could do. Between the favors owed and the actual royalties from the Enchanting Guild ¨C who was very much not supplying the portal worlds gratis ¨C House Wells was fairly wealthy. Assuming he could translate mage currency into real-world currency. The gold was straightforward enough, but enchanting material less so.

    If and when Chester and the other Houses actually opened up the supernatural world, it¡¯d be easier. After the debacle with Chester¡¯s compound, he wasn¡¯t sure what the plan was for that. He wasn¡¯t so na?ve as to think he wasn¡¯t involved in the plans, but if anyone expected him to do the negotiations they were crazy.

    ¡°We ¨C that is to say, dragons ¨C will be contributing to the purse,¡± Shahey said, as if he could read Callum¡¯s mind. ¡°Ultimately we will need hundreds, maybe even thousands of portal worlds.¡±

    ¡°Thousands,¡± Callum said, at the same time as Lucy. ¡°I¡¯m not sure the Earth has that many portal worlds. Though now that I¡¯ve got the dimensional portals wrangled, we could try punching outward from the ones we have¡­¡± He considered it for a moment, then shook his head. ¡°Best not to borrow trouble. We¡¯ll get to it when we get to it.¡±

    ¡°A wise attitude,¡± Shahey said.

    ¡°Are we done here?¡± Callum asked, glancing around at the now-sparsely-populated room.

    ¡°We are,¡± Taisen said, stepping up next to them. ¡°I was surprised at their restraint. Only four probes in your direction.¡±

    ¡°I only caught two of them,¡± Callum admitted. He hadn¡¯t had to do anything about them because Taisen¡¯s shielding was so quick, but it just reminded him of how damned vulnerable he was. He was going to stick to overwatch and drones in the future.

    It took a few dozen more minutes of pointless social niceties for the rest of their group to gather up. Callum glanced around and then opened a portal back to the Hargrave estate, and Hargrave did his invisible platform trick. To tell the truth, Callum was a little jealous of that ability, though he definitely wouldn¡¯t have traded his spatial magic for force.

    ¡°It will be better if we return through the Ways,¡± Felicia said as everyone else started through the portal, fingers going to the blue bracelet around her wrist. ¡°I will be in contact regarding the humans rescued from the Courts within the next few days, Archmage Wells.¡±

    ¡°Works for me,¡± Callum said, even though he had no idea what he could contribute. He could break the magic, but addressing the trauma or delusions of people who¡¯d been under fae thrall for so long was not in his wheelhouse. Still, he wasn¡¯t about to leave ordinary humans in fae control so he¡¯d have to deal with that responsibility.

    Felicia¡¯s bracelet turned into a shimmering circle, very unlike the holes in the air of Callum¡¯s portals, and Felicia and Ray walked through it. Callum¡¯s party took the force bridge, and when he closed the portal behind them he finally relaxed. It was already dark out, and he felt like he¡¯d been running full tilt the whole day.

    ¡°I¡¯m not cut out for politics,¡± he grumbled to Lucy the moment he made it back home.

    ¡°You can¡¯t trust anybody who is,¡± she said, embracing him and then standing back for Alex to run at Callum and launch himself without any hesitation.

    ¡°Daddy¡¯s all dressed up,¡± Alex said as Callum scooped him up, and Lucy grinned.

    ¡°Oof! Sure am, kiddo. Had to do a lot of boring stuff today.¡± Callum smiled down at his son, and it made all the annoying and stressful things he had to do worth it. It even made him more ready to see Chester and the rest open up the rest of the supernatural world, so Alex could actually go out and live like a normal person. ¡°Alright,¡± he decided. ¡°Let me get into normal clothes and we can go out for dinner.¡±

    ¡°Can we have pizza?¡± Alex asked, with all the fervor any three year old had for that particular dish.

    ¡°Absolutely,¡± Callum said. ¡°Pizza sounds great.¡±

    Work on portal worlds resumed the next day. Even if it was a lot of tedious busywork, he really couldn¡¯t complain. Not with the money, and not if it was part of the peace treaty.

    ¡°I¡¯m still working on some way to quickly catalogue the portal worlds,¡± Lucy said, setting up another new tool for him. It was just a simple grid, but it let him quickly section off areas that linked to the same portal world ¡ª something he verified by using multiple drones and seeing if they could pick up each other¡¯s transmissions. Rather than trying to actually figure out what was going on in any of the portal worlds, he took a quick snapshot, categorized it as livable, exploitable, or desolate, and continued on.

    For no particular reason he started in the Texas area and spiraled outward, though he wanted to focus more on the northern part. He didn¡¯t know how many of the portal worlds would ultimately wind up being used, but he didn¡¯t want any to be near the one he inhabited. Leaving the real world location of his portal world, or the dimensional adjacency, unknown and part of unsurveyed land was the best way to hide it.

    A concerted grid search rather than testing at interesting-looking areas resulted in finding a bunch of very similar portal worlds. Various desert-scrub landscapes stretched out under strange skies, those that had any light or visible sky at all. It wasn¡¯t like every square inch of Earth was packed with potential portal world connections ¡ª or even every square mile, or ten square miles, the latter of which was the resolution of his grid. Only perhaps one-third of portals led somewhere rather than collapsing outright ¡ª though the collapsed portals would have led somewhere too. Just not somewhere he wanted connected to Earth.

    There were even some portals that did work that he put on the list of do not use. Maybe one in every fifty or a hundred portal worlds was something like the bizarre sun-sized monster world he¡¯d opened up so long ago. He¡¯d poke his senses and a drone camera through and see some horrible stories-tall flesh beast or a mountain radiating palpable hate as city-sized eyes fixed, somehow, on the tiny portal. One just seemed to be an entire dimension of squirming dark something, webbed over a dead and desolate dimension. Those he closed with prejudice, and blasted the area with anti-mana just to be safe.

    Sometimes that ended up crossing off a lot of space, because the size of the dimensional adjacency was a real mixed bag, with some being restricted to a single ten-mile grid point, and others sprawling over a hundred-mile line. Some were blobs, though with the grid it was hard to tell the exact shape. Callum had the vague idea that he was seeing some higher-level geometry projected down onto the Earth¡¯s surface, but it followed no rhyme or reason that he could see.

    He kept a close eye out for any other dimensional weak points like he¡¯d seen with the dragonlands portal, especially whenever he found something horrible on the other side, though he didn¡¯t find any. If there was a portal world just waiting to open up somewhere in North America, it probably would have already. As the database filled up, Callum felt like he was engaging in nuclear proliferation all by his lonesome. Though it worked in the exact reverse manner: the more portal worlds there were, the less dangerous ownership of them was.

    While he was busy with that, Lucy was dealing with surveillance. He hadn¡¯t bothered to look over any of the feed that they¡¯d gotten from the couple of drones he¡¯d stashed in House Janry¡¯s walls, but he¡¯d activated the portals every so often for her. It was a bit of a risk, since not only was there intermittent jamming going on that threatened the stability of the portal, but it was always possible someone would simply notice the active connection. The spatial enchantment wasn¡¯t very large or obvious, against the background of enchantments in the House grounds, but it also wasn¡¯t supposed to be there.

    She was also helping Hargrave, Taisen, and Felicia take care of the GAR branch offices; all the little places in cities across the world. Lucy had a whole list of them, and combat mages and fae were far more suitable for dealing with them. Though there wasn¡¯t all that much infrastructure, relative to GAR, nor all that many branches considering the worldwide scope of GAR. The teleportation network centralizing everything was a real boon there.

    They weren¡¯t closing the buildings down, though, let alone destroying them. Instead they were being used as springboards for the Alliance¡¯s own transport system and the physical part of the brand new supernatural digital marketplace. The conversions and property ownership and all that sort of thing was a logistical nightmare that Callum was more than happy to leave to others. He barely had enough time for his family after taking care of all the portal world exploration.

    He was busy, but there was a sense of operating under a deadline. After the summit, not only did everyone who was clearly committed to the Earth Alliance¡¯s way of doing things need their portal worlds, but all of Janry¡¯s people had time to collaborate. In all, he had about a week¡¯s worth of quiet before the rest of the world intruded.

    ¡°They¡¯re totally setting up something nasty,¡± Lucy reported, which came as no surprise at all. ¡°Apparently they¡¯ve gone off to the Deep Wilds to set up a staging camp.¡±

    ¡°I hope someone tracked them,¡± Callum said with a frown. If he¡¯d been aware it was happening he probably could have done so, but he¡¯d been busy.

    ¡°Chester¡¯s on it,¡± Lucy said. ¡°Speaking of which, he wanted to know when you¡¯d be ready to move the Deep Wilds portal.¡±

    ¡°Oh, damn, I totally forgot,¡± Callum said, putting aside the drone feed. He¡¯d nearly forgotten about it since it¡¯d been over a week and he hadn¡¯t heard anything. ¡°I can do that now. Go ahead and put him on the line.¡±

    ¡°Already got him!¡± Lucy said cheerfully, and Callum¡¯s VoIP program chimed. He pulled it up and found himself looking at Chester in his war-form. Which was interesting, because that meant that he had dispensed with the usual glamour that fixed it so cameras didn¡¯t see eight foot tall, bipedal, furred predators.

    ¡°Mister Wells,¡± Chester said. ¡°That was prompt.¡±

    ¡°Honestly, I should have brought it up earlier,¡± Callum said. ¡°Just too many things on my mind, I guess. Where did you want me to put it?¡±

    ¡°We¡¯ve got a bolthole up in the mountains that will work. Have to hide it from magicals and mundanes, you know. Even when we¡¯re out in the open, that¡¯s just too vulnerable.¡± Chester sighed, leaning back in the very comfortable-looking oversized chair. ¡°I¡¯m thinking we may end up putting it out in the middle of the ocean, on an oil rig or the like, eventually.¡±

    ¡°I¡¯d suggest the moon, but you kind of need the mana on Earth,¡± Callum said. ¡°Ocean floor, maybe? Nice thing about portals, you don¡¯t need to worry about the supply chain.¡±

    ¡°Not a bad idea,¡± Chester admitted. ¡°I have some people who can probably make the pressure vessels for it. But for now, the mountain place.¡±

    ¡°Sure, just take a drone there,¡± Callum said, doublechecking to see if there was already one over in Chester¡¯s Deep Wilds facility. There was. ¡°Do you have official control over the portal? Both ends of the portal, even? I mean, it¡¯s going to be just as vulnerable from the Deep Wilds side.¡±

    ¡°The Deep Wilds side is protected by some allied Houses.¡± Chester didn¡¯t seem concerned. ¡°They don¡¯t want to lose access to Earth. Perhaps if and when they decide to move to their own portal world, but until then, only Earth-side needs to be secured. Nominally, it¡¯s been ceded over, but I expect some resistance anyway. Obstructionism, at least.¡±

    ¡°Should be fun,¡± Callum said dryly, groping through all the various drones in the nexus to figure out which one was where. While having sufficient enchanting material was a definite upside, he was far beyond his ability to keep track of things without a spreadsheet, not to mention having to refresh and replace the moon-side enchantments as they wore out. It took him several minutes, but eventually he had the proper drones isolated.

    The Deep Wilds portal was equipped in much the same way as the Night Lands portal had been. It was in the middle of some wilderness in Norway, with a protective fortress around the actual portal and a gate room to control passage in and out. Something which all the personal portals he¡¯d supplied to Chester and other Houses rendered entirely moot. Even before then, Duvall¡¯s portal network had made any control of the actual dimensional connection somewhat redundant.

    ¡°Right, I can do it whenever.¡± Callum scribbled the drone numbers down in his notebook.

    ¡°Give me a few hours. I¡¯ll want to get everyone together for this,¡± Chester said. Callum nodded, taking a break so he¡¯d be at full vis for the transfer. With all the practice he was better than he used to be, and the vis crystals meant that he could do extra-large teleports without knocking himself out, but something as big as a dimensional portal was still no small strain.

    One of Chester¡¯s people carried one of the drones through a portal frame, ending up somewhere in the Rockies, while Callum put on his cloak. After having seen the strange fae connection between Earth and the Night Lands, he had to assume Faerie had tendrils everywhere and he wouldn¡¯t put it past someone to try and sabotage the effort.

    It did occur to him that by moving the portal, he was effectively granting Chester sovereignty over Earth¡¯s shifters. Anyone not part of the de facto Earth Alliance could still use private portals, that was true, but there was a certain legitimacy from having control of the main portal. Besides, it wasn¡¯t likely that many people outside of the Earth Alliance actually had private portal connections to the Deep Wilds. Especially with GAR disassembled.

    Chester and five of his Wolfpack walked through to the Earth-side portal room, all of them big and bulky in war-form, and Chester beckoned to the mages on duty at the guard post. Callum braced for some sort of fight to break out, but apparently the agreements held for once and it just took some conversation. Shortly afterward the shifters wrestled the crossing ramp out of the portal itself, leaving it clear.

    ¡°Ready,¡± Chester said. ¡°Move it.¡±

    ¡°Roger that,¡± Callum said, and reached out to wrap the big dimensional portal in a teleportation framework. Holding the teleport box stable against the massive mana flow took a lot of work, but he only had to hold it long enough to tap his vis crystals and shift the entire space over to the miniature fortress in the Rockies. He could see Chester relax as the portal vanished, before suddenly laughing.

    ¡°Could we get a ride back?¡± Chester asked, eyeing the place where the portal had been.

    ¡°Absolutely.¡±

 Chapter 17 â€“ Consolidation

    Federal Agent Larry Johnson still wasn¡¯t sure what to think of the prison. It wasn¡¯t exactly the usual concrete cell block, and he and his fellow agents weren¡¯t being treated badly, but it was definitely a prison. The claim that the walls were for their protection was, of course, not to be trusted, but after seeing the outside of the compound he had to admit it wasn¡¯t entirely nonsense.

    Some people still hadn¡¯t admitted to themselves that they weren¡¯t on earth, and that their captors weren¡¯t human. There was some insistence that the whole thing was one big psyop, but Larry didn¡¯t think it something on that scale was possible. The sky was wrong, the smells were wrong, the massive animals outside the walls were all too real, and the so-called shifters were definitely real. The ease with which they could handle even ex-Marines was sobering.

    The outside courtyard of the walled compound was large enough and nice enough, and for lack of much else to do Larry was throwing a football around with some of the guys. A couple of the shifters were watching, eight-foot-tall wolf-men, who probably weren¡¯t participating because they¡¯d have to treat the federal agents like children. He threw the ball and then turned to look as a group of shifters emerged from the building that had to be the command center.

    The weird part was that there was no way in there. Or rather, nothing visible, since it was composed entirely of flat, blank walls. Shifters seemed to just emerge from nowhere in particular along a section of wall, and vanish there just the same. It was strange and eye-hurting but it sure happened, and even when he¡¯d managed to sneak over there he hadn¡¯t been able to spot anything. Normally only one or two shifters at a time went through the invisible doorway but this time it was a whole group, and one of them looked to be very much in charge.

    The football game ground to a halt as the big white-furred shifter approached, followed by several people who were obviously guards. Not that he seemed to need guards ¡ª Larry could tell just by the way the boss walked that he was a dangerous beast. Coupled with the insane strength and speed that the shifters had demonstrated, he was pretty sure the leader had nothing to fear from anything short of artillery.

    ¡°Mister Johnson,¡± the big shifter said, in a rumble like an idling tank. ¡°Your time here is nearly at an end.¡±

    ¡°Yes, sir?¡± Larry said, trying to ignore the potentially dire implications of that statement.

    ¡°Come with me,¡± the shifter said, and Larry glanced at the other agents, gave them a sign, and trailed after the wolf-man. It was clear they weren¡¯t quite wolves, so not exactly a mythical werewolf, but close enough to play one on television. Fortunately it didn¡¯t seem they were man-eaters. Larry was led off to one of the smaller side buildings, a log cabin type construction. Once inside, the shifter waved to a normal human-sized chair in the living room while taking an oversized one for himself.

    ¡°My name,¡± the shifter said, ¡°is Alpha Chester. Yes, the very same Chester Frederickson that you were being aimed at. I¡¯m sure you¡¯ve realized by now that there was something more at play than just a tax issue.¡±

    ¡°Yeah, no kidding.¡± The instructions had come from the top, but after seeing the weirdness that was in play, that didn¡¯t really mean anything. He could add two and two together just fine.

    ¡°While you have no reason to believe me, the explanation is that your people were being used as a weapon by other supernatural interests against me.¡± Before Larry¡¯s very eyes the big shifter ¨C Chester ¨C shimmered and changed, suddenly appearing human. One of the other shifters entered the room with a six-pack, tossing one beer to Chester and another to Larry, who caught it reflexively.

    ¡°Okay, and we¡¯re here because of secrecy reasons?¡± The beer was just an ordinary domestic brand, so he shrugged and cracked it, hearing the hiss of carbonation.

    ¡°Pretty much. But we¡¯re gearing up to dispense with that secrecy.¡± Chester took a sip of his beer. ¡°We¡¯ve been working to get our house in order first though, because you can just imagine what people would think if there were supernatural groups trying take over governments or siphon funds.¡±

    ¡°Yeah,¡± Larry agreed. ¡°That¡¯d be a problem.¡± He took a sip of his own drink, not entirely certain what to think. The pencil-pushers would probably have a lot to say about it, but he was mostly concerned about his own neck, and that of his men. ¡°So why is this all happening now?¡±

    ¡°Mostly, because of The Ghost,¡± Chester said, with a chuckle. ¡°Supernatural society got a shake-up and this is the fallout. I¡¯ve thought it was coming for years, but he accelerated the process.¡±

    ¡°Who¡¯s The Ghost?¡± Larry eyed Chester, concerned that actual ghosts were a possibility. Or maybe it was someone who was just as invisible to these people as they had been to him. Someone who could force a bunch of powerful people hidden in plain sight to dance to his tune was quite the threat.

    ¡°Someone who got fed up with the way normal people were treated,¡± Chester said. ¡°Which I personally agree with. That¡¯s why you¡¯re here, and we¡¯re talking.¡±

    ¡°To show you aren¡¯t the bad guys?¡±

    ¡°Something like that,¡± Chester agreed. ¡°When we get you back to the United States it¡¯ll be nice if you all are read in on the situation already.¡±

    ¡°I¡¯m not exactly high up in the food chain,¡± Larry said, just stating a fact. ¡°I don¡¯t think I can help you that much.¡±

    ¡°Sadly, you¡¯re going to be,¡± Chester said with a laugh, and Larry took another long drink of beer. ¡°Since you¡¯re basically engaged in first contact. Most of us are good, law-abiding citizens, but we¡¯re not human and we aren¡¯t even like each other. We¡¯ll try to get you all introduced to the various types before it¡¯s time to open up.¡±

    ¡°Right,¡± Larry said, skeptical but figuring there would be no harm. ¡°What else is there? Vampires?¡±

    ¡°Ha!¡± Chester laughed. ¡°Not anymore. The Ghost took care of that.¡±

    ¡°Um.¡± He hadn¡¯t expected that, and mentally raised the threat level of this Ghost up another notch. ¡°Am I going to meet The Ghost, too?¡±

    ¡°That isn¡¯t likely,¡± Chester said. ¡°But believe me, he has a vested interest in your safety.¡±

    ***

    ¡°You don¡¯t need to come yourself ¡ª after all, that¡¯s not what you do anyway. But I need The Ghost at my shoulder for this.¡±

    Callum didn¡¯t sigh or frown. He¡¯d brought this on himself, and Felicia¡¯s request was entirely reasonable. It wasn¡¯t like being virtually present was really that onerous a thing, even if he could swear that ¨C magical healing or no ¨C the stress was giving him more gray hairs.

    ¡°I suppose it doesn¡¯t hurt that I have a few tricks to cow even the most recalcitrant of fae, either,¡± he said instead.

    ¡°It does not,¡± Felicia agreed.

    ¡°You¡¯re going to have to teach me some of those tricks one day,¡± Ray observed, leaning into the pickup on the drone Felicia had been gifted. ¡°I¡¯m no slouch, but it¡¯d help if I had more punch than just wind magic.¡±

    ¡°Most of what I do isn¡¯t really reproducible,¡± Callum said. ¡°But I¡¯ll think about it. There might be something I can pass along.¡± It was easy enough to say, since he only used spatial magic, and mostly relied on his passive perceptions. A normal wind mage might as well have been another species for all he had in common. ¡°Guess you might as well bring a drone. The bad pennies are okay but drones are more functional.¡±

    ¡°Do we have permission to modify your remote to make it more appropriate? No offense, but they tend toward more toward function than elegance.¡±

    ¡°I don¡¯t mind, so long as it still works,¡± Callum said. He was sure Lucy would like to know what the new one looked like, too. They were less cobbled together at this point, so there was room to start discussing aesthetics.

    ¡°Dominic!¡± Felicia called, and very shortly a fae entered the relatively small perceptual bubble Callum was keeping around Felicia¡¯s drone. She was residing in the strange fae parallel universe that he¡¯d tracked the vampire through before, which Callum actually approved of. It represented a vector of attack that would have been unmonitored otherwise, and he wasn¡¯t sure it was even possible to collapse the whole thing. Or that it was a good idea to do so. Having an extra, secret, and secure way to get around worked to the advantage of his allies just as much as it had once benefitted his enemies.

    ¡°Eure Majest?t,¡± Dominic said, going to one knee. Through Callum¡¯s perceptions he resembled a musclebound gnome more than anything. Felicia responded in the same language, and then handed the drone over to the gnome. Callum nearly kicked himself for thinking that the fae would work like an engineer. Instead of doing something as blas¨¦ as unscrewing the housing or breaking out the multimeter, the gnome took it away to a table that formed out of nowhere and began to sing something under his breath.

    The liquid fae magic wrapped around and flowed through the drone. It didn¡¯t touch the bad penny enchantment, but the housing and the electronics shifted and warped like they were made of putty. The process wasn¡¯t instantaneous, but it was only a few minutes later that the drone had been changed into a small sphere with ducted turbines rather than quadrotors, the surface covered with a fine filigree that hid the camera protrusions, as well as the microphone and speakers. The decorations finished rippling into shape, forming the House Wells heraldry that Lucy had designed on one side of the drone, with Felicia¡¯s winged cat logo on the other.

    It floated into the air of its own accord, without needing to use the motors, which by itself made the device seem more like a fae ornament than a piece of technology. He couldn¡¯t object to its self-propelled nature as it went to hover at Felicia¡¯s shoulder either, since the entire point of that particular drone was to link him with the fae princess. The whole procedure was a reminder of exactly why he wore the cloak. Fae magic was completely unfair.

    ¡°Is that satisfactory?¡± Felicia asked.

    ¡°Yeah, it¡¯s actually fantastic,¡± Callum admitted, and Felicia said something to Dominic, dismissing him and walking toward the edge of the big clearing that held the beginnings of her castle. Despite being conversant with all kinds of spatial shenanigans, he was still fascinated by the way the clearing it twisted and flexed its size and scale with Felicia¡¯s movements, an opening appearing as if it had always been there as she walked.

    What appeared to be a leisurely walk through a wooded path was anything but, judging by the sheer amount of mana in the air and the occasional twitch of nervous reflexes on Ray¡¯s part. For once, Callum was relaxed when everyone else was nervous, the drone not even picking up any sound out of place. He found it a little bit amusing, though he would never say anything about it.

    They stopped at a vine-entrapped crystal gateway standing improbably by itself in the middle of the woods: a Door of Glass, as Felicia had called it. She reached out and pricked her finger on one of the thorns that curled about the mirror¡¯s frame, the drop of crimson staining the door before it swung open and Felicia and Ray stepped through. He recognized the destination, because he¡¯d been there before, by drone at least. The court of Jissarrell.

    It was as violent a place as ever, with at least two brawls that Callum could sense through his perceptions, and Felicia¡¯s guards appeared out of her shadow to flank her and Ray. None of Jissarrell¡¯s people approached though, instead falling away as Felicia walked through a short passageway, with a tiny pixie fae flying ahead to announce them.

    ¡°Princess Felicity Blackblood and Consort,¡± a voice boomed, and the court, centered around Jissarrel¡¯s throne nestled in the trunk of an ancient oak, came to a halt. Ray and Felicia walked up to the base of the throne, but neither of them knelt, or even bowed. Jissarrell was the same as ever, a large and intimidating man of bark and vines and leaves, and he inclined his head to the pair of them.

    ¡°To what do I owe the pleasure?¡± Jissarrell asked, the voice creaking and cracking like groaning bark over the microphone. No glamour covered it.

    ¡°I am sure our visit comes as no surprise,¡± Ray said, speaking for Felicia. ¡°My liege is here to collect your sworn oath. She has no desire to displace you or dispute your rule, change your court or even change your mind. The only commandment is that mortals must be treated by their own rules.¡±

    ¡°Not a very enticing prospect,¡± Jissarrell said, his court shifting and shuffling around. If Ray or Felicia seemed worried that they were surrounded, they didn¡¯t show it.

    ¡°Perhaps not, but a necessary one. You surely know how the world is changing, and with GAR gone it falls to fae to govern themselves in their own way. Princess Felicity is offering autonomy for all but a few provisos.¡± Ray¡¯s voice was reasonable, and reminiscent of the time he¡¯d come to Callum¡¯s door. Clearly he¡¯d been working on his manner.

    The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

    ¡°Perhaps the offer is reasonable, but how is she going to enforce it? You¡¯ve come to my Court with very little in the way of protection.¡±

    ¡°Have we?¡± Felicia spoke for the first time. ¡°The Ghost has my back. Who has yours?¡±

    ¡°Jissarrell,¡± Callum spoke into the microphone. ¡°I advise you to listen to Felicia.¡±

    With his words, he could actually see the shift and change in the fae magic within Jissarrell¡¯s enclave and Court. Obviously he didn¡¯t have any fae magic himself ¨C so far as he knew, the various types of supernatural power were incompatible ¨C but fae magic knew him. Or at least, it knew The Ghost.

    ¡°I see,¡± Jissarrell said. ¡°So you have decided to back power, rather than defy it?¡±

    ¡°I¡¯ve only ever wanted one thing: for supernaturals to not prey on normal folks,¡± Callum replied. ¡°Felicia¡¯s offer is a pretty good deal, and it means I don¡¯t have to worry about enacting punishment over the whole world for the rest of eternity.¡± Perhaps he shouldn¡¯t have replied, but he was a little stung by the accusation. He hadn¡¯t wanted to enforce anything, but unfortunately it had turned out that the only way to get people to play nice was one person with a really big stick.

    Callum¡¯s contribution wasn¡¯t exactly eloquent, but Jissarrell was apparently brighter than some of his compatriots back in Faerie. He leaned back with the groan of shifting wood and then nodded. With that capitulation, the Court shifted, lifting Ray and Felicia up above Jissarrell¡¯s throne on a dais. Abruptly, they were the masters of the Court and Jissarrell was the petitioner.

    Jissarrell left his throne, kneeling before Felicia as he made his oaths. Callum would have felt that his contribution was effectively nonexistent, were it not for the way that he had seen the magic shift. His reputation was putting in a lot of work.

    ¡°Rise, Prince Jissarrell,¡± Felicia spoke once again. ¡°You have Our approval to govern your Court as you see fit. We have no interest in your internal affairs, nor do We need tribute. Only your commitment to preventing abuse of, or conflict with, mundanes.¡±

    ¡°That should not be a problem,¡± Jissarrell assured them. ¡°Most of those with that sort of predilection have already been removed.¡± He cast a glance at the drone hovering at Felicia¡¯s shoulder and Callum suppressed a snort. It had been years since he¡¯d dealt with that particular wild hunt, but he still remembered it. So did everyone else, it seemed.

    It seemed that was all, for after that Felicia and Ray moved on. Which Callum appreciated, so he didn¡¯t have to sit and pay attention through endless diplomatic niceties. They went back through the parallel reality, emerging in Florida to deal with Ferrochar. Callum didn¡¯t think it was coincidence that they¡¯d started with the fae that had actually interacted with Callum. The Ghost was more real to them.

    Unlike Jissarrell, Ferrochar seemed entirely happy to see Felicia, as if he¡¯d been waiting for the opportunity. The members of his court weren¡¯t violent at all, but every single one of them was loaded down with gold or silver or gems, to the point where it went far past being tasteful and became an ugly sort of opulence. They all seemed happy enough with it though, so it wasn¡¯t really for him to criticize.

    ¡°We¡¯re looking forward to opening relations with the mundanes,¡± Ferrochar confided to Felicia after he gave his oaths. ¡°There will be more business opportunities, more reputation to be had. We can advertise magically-protected vaults!¡±

    ¡°Yeah, that¡¯s all well and good, but he probably shouldn¡¯t use this opportunity to financially prey on people either,¡± Lucy put in, having joined him just to see the reshaped drone. ¡°Like, insider trading type rules. Gonna be a lot of disruption when things go public.¡±

    ¡°Good point,¡± Callum said, and opened the mic to pass that along to Felicia. Ferrochar looked almost hurt by the insinuation.

    ¡°Of course not!¡± He said, as if it were unthinkable. ¡°Simply being more trustworthy is enough of an advantage, and we will certainly be under close scrutiny at the beginning. Integrity can be made very valuable.¡±

    Callum figured that would have to be good enough. He couldn¡¯t demand to see the receipts and, even if he did, lacked the expertise or interest to spot any chicanery. Even Lucy would probably have issues, so he had to trust to the fae¡¯s word and whatever magical enforcement was involved.

    With Ravaeb¡¯s court dispersed, there apparently weren¡¯t any other fae power centers in North America, just the small individual fae that had mostly been snapped up by the American Alliance. Those that weren¡¯t could be attended to by Felicia¡¯s subordinates ¡ª now that she had subordinates. The next few stops were somewhat more difficult for him, because he had no idea what anyone was saying. Felicia and Ray were multilingual, but Callum wasn¡¯t.

    Fortunately his role was very easy. All he had to do was flex a small bit of anti-mana if the fae in question seemed recalcitrant. He was not, fortunately, a bodyguard or anything of that nature. Felicia could take care of herself in that regard, and it¡¯d be hard to read the room anyway. Fae weren¡¯t human and could flip between emotions without any warning at all.

    The shortcut dimension that Felicia used meant that he lost track of exactly where they were fairly early on, though he recognized some of the languages. German, French, Swahili. He wasn¡¯t aware that there were so many fae princes throughout the world, though at the same time, it was surprising there were so few.

    Felicia was first attacked in France by the fae leader there, a large, bestial sort dressed in the finest fashion of two hundred years ago at the center of a Court that looked like a miniature Versailles. Callum had been prepared to intervene with a blast of anti-mana or possibly the anti-material rifle, but it wasn¡¯t necessary. Ray had stopped him cold with a blast of air mana ¨C which probably shouldn¡¯t have worked, as far as Callum understood it ¨C and then Felicia spoke.

    ¡°Yield.¡± Despite the word being in English, it had dropped the French prince and his entire court to their knees. Callum could practically mark Felicia¡¯s power level by the amount of people her commands affected. Though maybe she was still holding back; he had no idea how exactly the fae magic worked.

    ¡°I feel fairly irrelevant,¡± Callum remarked as Felicia left the Swahili-speaking court and its tiger-men behind. ¡°It¡¯s been interesting, I suppose, but not really my business most of the time.¡±

    ¡°On the contrary,¡± Felicia said. ¡°Your presence makes me much more powerful. I know you can¡¯t really feel it, but your story ¨C especially after your demonstration in Faerie ¨C makes your backing extremely potent.¡±

    ¡°Even I can feel it,¡± Ray remarked. ¡°It¡¯s like a strong tailwind, only for magic. An odd sensation.¡±

    ¡°I¡¯ve heard of having your reputation work for you, but this is something else!¡± Lucy said with a laugh.

    ¡°We need to formalize the Earth Alliance,¡± Felicia mused. ¡°Without your authority, it doesn¡¯t really exist.¡±

    ¡°Since when am I an authority?¡± Callum sighed, but he kept the mic off. Felicia didn¡¯t need to hear his grumbling.

    ¡°Anyone big and scary is an authority,¡± Lucy said, poking his side. ¡°And that¡¯s you.¡±

    ***

    ¡°I wish we had a better idea of what is going on Earth-side,¡± Archmage Tasser complained, though he didn¡¯t stop weaving metal through the protective dome meant to keep out the worst of the Deep Wild¡¯s creatures. The massive raptors and other flying things were quite capable of preying on the unwary mage, even with shields. Archmages had nothing to fear, but any operation needed more than just their best.

    ¡°I¡¯m not sure it really matters.¡± Janry shrugged, summoning stone from raw mana and spinning out buildings for their encampment. ¡°Until and unless they openly engage with the mundanes ¨C and believe me, we¡¯d hear about that in advance ¨C all they can do is spin their wheels. I¡¯m sure they¡¯ve got plenty of internal opposition to deal with ¡ª ones they can¡¯t just cow into submission. Not with how bleeding-heart they are.¡±

    ¡°I don¡¯t think they¡¯re as soft as you say,¡± Moravin argued, helping Tasser with the metalwork. ¡°I don¡¯t think you think they¡¯re as soft as you say, otherwise we¡¯d be doing this comfortably in our Houses.¡±

    Janry grunted, acknowledging the fact. It was almost certain that some of the other Houses were keeping an eye on Janry, and Faerie itself was questionable. After that pet princess had cowed the Lesser Courts, he couldn¡¯t trust that they wouldn¡¯t pay some extra attention to any temporary outpost. Especially since there were some people from the Greater Courts arriving and sniffing around, which Janry trusted even less. So they were stuck with the Deep Wilds, which weren¡¯t bad, but not nearly as nice as Faerie.

    The rest of the mages they¡¯d brought along were attending to the minor details to make the compound more livable, some of them making small alterations of the archmages¡¯ work, others installing basic enchantments. Nothing overly fancy, since they didn¡¯t intend to do more than stage some operations from the compound. No more than a few months of work, or maybe a year at the outside.

    ¡°We still have all the intelligence from GAR before they were taken apart,¡± Janry said instead. An irritatingly large amount of records had been seized and still not returned to the appropriate authorities, but Janry had the prior reports, at least. ¡°We know how the governments are structured, where they¡¯re located. Who to target. I doubt much will have changed in the past few weeks.¡±

    ¡°Well, we still need to¡ª¡± Moravin was interrupted by one of his subordinates emerging from the private teleporter and rushing over to them.

    ¡°Archmages,¡± the man said, offering a perfunctory bow. ¡°They¡¯ve seized control of the Deep Wilds portal. The Earth-side location has been altered.¡±

    ¡°That was faster than I thought,¡± Janry said with a frown. He wasn¡¯t truly surprised, since it was an obvious next step. ¡°That is why we have the teleports.¡± One benefit of that damnable Wells was that teleportation links had become far more available for personal use. Not to House Janry directly ¨C the Guild of Enchanting was still rather reserved on that matter ¨C but he had enough allies and contacts to get them indirectly.

    ¡°Is it even worth figuring out where the Earth side is?¡± Tasser asked, watching other, lesser mages appear through other teleport foci with furniture and supplies. ¡°We¡¯ll need it eventually but prowling around now might just tip our hand.¡±

    ¡°Agreed,¡± Janry said, nodding to the messenger. ¡°It¡¯s useful to know ¨C best to not even try to cross through the main portal ¨C but we don¡¯t need it now.¡±

    ¡°Right.¡± Tasser waved dismissal, and they continued to work. The reason for the compound was simple enough ¡ª practice. There had been enough half-baked groping around and vague plans carried out ad-hoc. They were going to do things right.

    The basic bones were simple enough, they just needed to frame the American Alliance ¨C Earth Alliance, now ¨C as the villains of the piece. It wasn¡¯t even that hard, since Wells had precipitated the vampire slaughter and Chester¡¯s name was already mud. All it would take would be a few pushes here and there, some falsified documentation and meeting the right people.

    Executing it so that none of the blowback hit the rest of the supernaturals and there were no cracks for the Earth Alliance to stick a wedge in, to blame things on House Janry or its allies, was harder. If that wasn¡¯t possible, at the very least he¡¯d have to make sure he was personally safe. There was no point otherwise. They also had to make sure that the teleport connections they had to Earth were secure ¡ª while it was possible they could leave through the Faerie portal, that was almost certainly being watched. It had been some time since the Houses had done more than jostle each other, but most Archmages remembered the early days. Janry, Moravin and Tasser, at least, knew how to shore up their flanks.

    Admittedly they hadn¡¯t been doing the best job, but Wells¡¯ ability to create new portal worlds had come out of nowhere and undercut all their plans. Sadly, it wasn¡¯t possible to prepare for contingencies nobody had ever seen coming. That and the devouring weapon that Wells had demonstrated were significant issues, but not unresolvable. If only Wells himself weren¡¯t so damnably difficult to get at.

    Janry mused at that while they finished the basic work for their operating base, their little black site as Taisen would put it, and decided he¡¯d put in another visit to Duvall. There was only one real counter to Wells¡¯ spatial nonsense, and that was their own spatial mage. She had been quite deficient, and she really needed to step up.

    After ensuring that the work could continue without his direct attention, Janry took the teleporter back to his House, only to immediately turn around and take another one to return to the Deep Wilds. The second jump was to the central area of the massive tree that housed the main portal and all the Houses that had settled in the Deep Wilds. Power had long ago centralized itself in Faerie, with the biggest and oldest of the Houses, but some holdouts like House Duvall had refused to move there.

    He swept the area by habit, but as the mountain-sized tree lacked stone his active vis pulses were not quite as sensitive as they should have been. Another reason why he was not so enamored with that particular portal world. There wasn¡¯t even good bedrock, just boulders.

    Janry energized his flight focus and headed upward, not really needing the signs that pointed to the enormous limb that House Duvall had claimed. It was somewhat rude to drop in without any prior warning, but that was offset by Janry coming himself rather than sending a messenger. Not that a messenger would have been appropriate anyway, since he wanted to talk archmage to archmage.

    A shifter butler greeted him and guided him to a front room that was put together with a very careful eye toward aesthetics, everything matching and color-coordinated. One of Duvall¡¯s quirks, and probably took time that she could have better spent on magic, but that was her business. He only wished she had been more inventive, and then Wells wouldn¡¯t have blindsided everybody.

    ¡°What.¡± Janry blinked at Duvall¡¯s annoyed snap as she almost stomped into the room. She¡¯d only kept him waiting maybe five minutes, which meant that she was eager to be rid of him.

    ¡°Archmage Duvall,¡± Janry said, standing and giving her a proper bow, to remind her that he deserved the respect appropriate an archmage if nothing else. ¡°I know I arrived without any prior warning, but I wanted to discuss the current state of affairs with you and the usual channels are somewhat suspect at the moment.¡±

    ¡°Mmph.¡± Duvall scowled and then waved him to sit, taking the chair across from him. ¡°You know I¡¯m staying out of that. I don¡¯t want anything to do with what¡¯s going on. House Duvall only concerns itself with spatial products.¡±

    ¡°Yes, exactly,¡± Janry nodded agreement. ¡°That is what I wanted to discuss. The proliferation of portal worlds has put us at somewhat of a disadvantage ¡ª which yes, you do not care about, but House Janry would be interested in purchasing a similar service from you.¡± He didn¡¯t ask if she could do it. At this point virtually all of Wells¡¯ secrets had been laid bare and he was certain that Duvall could duplicate it.

    ¡°You want me to create new portal world access,¡± Duvall said, not really a question.

    ¡°I do,¡± Janry admitted. ¡°I won¡¯t insult your pride by insinuating you can¡¯t do it, though I do wonder why you haven¡¯t yet.¡±

    ¡°It¡¯s dangerous,¡± Duvall said flatly. ¡°You saw what Wells did. That mana-devouring burst was no weapon. It¡¯s what¡¯s outside the walls of the universe, and all it takes is a little bit of carelessness for it to be permanent. Would you care to have a mana-devouring hole permanently placed in Faerie?¡±

    ¡°I would not,¡± Janry said, considering the apocalyptic potential of such a thing. ¡°That is even more reason to remove Wells and¡ª¡±

    ¡°I am not interested.¡± Duvall cut him off. ¡°He uses it as a weapon, don¡¯t give him more reasons to use it. It¡¯s not even the only danger from opening portal worlds ¡ª there are monsters in some of them.¡±

    ¡°We¡¯re archmages,¡± Janry scoffed. ¡°We managed to tame the Deep Wilds and Night Lands well enough.¡±

    ¡°Monsters the size of worlds and more powerful than dragons,¡± Duvall growled, pointing a finger at him. ¡°Not mere beasts. We¡¯re only lucky that none of them are close enough to our reality to survive here long. But for anyone who opens a portal, the consequences could be dire.¡±

    ¡°So give it long enough and the Wells problem might solve itself,¡± Janry said thoughtfully.

    ¡°Perhaps. He¡¯s clearly adept at using portals remotely, so perhaps not.¡± Duvall shrugged, unbothered by either possibility. ¡°I could attempt to open such portals, but the risk is too high and House Duvall has enough to do already.¡±

    ¡°I see,¡± Janry said, frustrated by Duvall¡¯s instant dismissal. ¡°You¡¯re not interested in opening new portals at all? House Janry has access to quite a vault; price is no object.¡±

    ¡°No,¡± Duvall said with finality. ¡°If you want one, make nice with the Guild of Enchantment. It¡¯s not hard.¡±

    ¡°Very well,¡± Janry said. ¡°I apologize for wasting your time.¡± He knew it was useless to try further threats or cajoling, but he would come back around to Duvall eventually. Janry did not intend to be deprived of such a valuable resource.

 Chapter 18 â€“ Alliance

    The glade inside the Ways of Earth was no longer a simple clearing. Nor was it small. While the perimeter was not all that much larger than it had been when she¡¯d first controlled it, the interior had bent to encompass several hundred square miles in order to accommodate Felicia¡¯s Court. The central tree and its attendant spirit remained, though it too had grown, and was now large enough to rival some of its progenitors in Faerie.

    Fae artisans had assembled a courtyard manor under the massive spreading boughs of the tree, not quite a castle, but a grand and stately residence for someone of proper stature to live. Ivy crawled on polished stone and windows gleamed, while inside carpets and burnished wood gave dozens of rooms ¨C including a grand ballroom ¨C the feeling of comfort and coziness rather than cold opulence.

    Beyond the manor was a spread of villages in a half dozen different styles, ranging from pre-industrial Japanese rustic ruralism to chrome retrofuturism americana. Felicia approved the enclaves. She didn¡¯t want her subjects to conform to the same style, because she was supposed to encompass all the fae on Earth, and enforcing a singular style for her seat of power would have undermined that effort. It also made the factions somewhat more visible, which was all to the good as she would be grappling with them for some time yet.

    It was one thing to overwhelm a fae prince with direct force and extract an oath, and it was another thing to expect true loyalty. The story of any ruler included scheming those who wished their treason to prosper. If it had seemed far too easy to extract the fealty of various fae princes, most of them through raw and naked threat, that was because it was only the first step. A prelude to a long silent struggle and political turmoil that would have to be kept out of sight.

    Felicia walked out of the manor, down the exquisitely-carved path that led out into the broader Earth-side Ways. Some of it had been done by artisans, but some of it had been done by the Ways themselves, the surroundings shifting and changing as it absorbed the workings of hundreds of fae with access to Earth technology and ideas. The Ways were taking on their own character, reflecting Earth¡¯s terrain, its flora and fauna, its places of importance.

    As a child grew and eventually left her parents behind, so too was it time for the Earth¡¯s Ways to part with Faerie¡¯s. Her authority over the Ways had finally reached the point that she could secure her borders, and declare Earth separate from Faerie. With Ray at her right hand, a procession formed behind her, drawn less by any proclamation on her part as by the reflection of her own intentions onto her demesne. Like an incoming tide, the pressure was palpable.

    Some of those falling in behind her were those she¡¯d hijacked from their original jobs, like Balobob and Intinkity, while others were those who had sought her out. Those included Dominic, Castellar, and other artisans who definitely wanted to serve actual royalty, as well as those who just wanted protection.

    Their power and prowess added to hers, integrated with hers, and while they weren¡¯t exactly servants she could order about ¨C not that she wanted to ¨C they were still subjects who worked for her goals. Balobob¡¯s archive formed the basis of the manor basement, and the massive expansion of the glade. Intinkity¡¯s guarding of gateways had translated into more secure travel along the Ways, and both of those fae had become more than they¡¯d ever thought they would under GAR.

    Her train grew as she proceeded to the edge of the glade, the woods shifting and parting to reveal a sun-dappled, tree-shaded pathway winding widdershins in a way that should have simply looped back to the clearing, but didn¡¯t. It was broad enough to fit the entire procession, the very action of walking it acknowledging and reinforcing the path¡¯s reality and making it firm.

    The path slowly looped, never intersecting itself, three full revolutions before it ended at a spit of land, a cliff jutting out over great dark seas stretching in all directions. A similar jut of forested rock rose facing them, only a small gap between the two, a crevasse bridged by precarious rope and wooden slats. All of it was real, and all of it was metaphor.

    There were fae on the other side of the bridge, though they were not organized. Merely watchers or guards, with little enthusiasm for being stuck in the Ways so long. The primeval forest behind them was more bloodthirsty than the one that bent to Felicia¡¯s will, and it was very clear that only monsters lived there. When Felicia emerged with her entourage, several individuals in animal guises bolted off, but they would be too late regardless of who they reported to.

    Felicia could have simply severed the connection. It would have been difficult, but it was possible. There wasn¡¯t any real point, though, as a new one would have formed eventually and been far more tenacious, and she didn¡¯t want to completely sever herself from Faerie. She just needed to control it.

    ¡°Let there be a great bridge of stone and steel,¡± she said softly, and felt the talents and magics of some of those at her back twining into her words. A great stone arch burst forth from the ground in front of them, rising toward the sky, and cables whipped out from its top. A walkway spun itself into existence as the cables raced forward, crossing a gap that widened itself in response, going from mere crevasse to a deep gorge. In a matter of minutes a stone-anchored suspension bridge crossed it, high and wide.

    ¡°Let there be an impassable gate,¡± she said. ¡°Let it be sealed against any and all who have no right or invitation to be here.¡± That took a slightly different set of talents, heavy silver and iron sliding down from the archway on their side like the closing of an enormous jaw, thudding into the ground with an impact that shuddered through the earth.

    It had no obvious means of opening, but the upper portion of the stone arch above the gate formed itself into an ornate house, sized for someone only a few inches tall. Intinkity Belle flitted forward, and the moment she crossed the threshold of the miniature dwelling the heavy metal bars of the gateway shivered, twisting themselves into fanciful patterns and assembling Felicia¡¯s crest to cover the center of the gate. Felicia felt the strain as she pushed forth her own power, trying to finalize a separation of worlds with a fresh and untested authority.

    For a moment she trembled, and then Ray¡¯s hand was at her back, his presence strengthening her resolve and the final length of the bridge spun itself into place. There was a sound like the ringing of an enormous bell, once, twice, and then a third time. The bridge shuddered and settled into place, cables taking up slack and obdurate stone melding with the ground. There was the feeling of a sigh from behind her as the changes washed over them, and Felicia turned around to regard her subjects.

    ¡°I, Queen Felicity Blackblood, declare Earth as its own, separate, and sovereign realm. We are peers with Faerie, not a colony, subordinate, or untamed land. Guests will find us welcoming; intruders and trespassers of the fae will find only their own end.¡±

    Her pronouncement didn¡¯t generate cheers, but more of a grim and knowing chuckle. Most of those on Earth were there because they didn¡¯t want anything to do with Faerie, either the Greater or Lesser Courts. While they didn¡¯t all necessarily welcome her rulership, it was better than being trampled by the old and vicious rulers that saw Earth as nothing more than a plaything.

    She had more power in the Ways than on the vast surface of Earth¡¯s globe, but one influenced the other. Eventually she would control the portal itself, and that would make certain things easier, but holding the Ways was vital. Even if the portal itself were destroyed, the Ways would remain.

    ¡°This is the beginning,¡± she said to the assembled fae. ¡°I name myself Queen not from a desire for power but because without that sovereignty, we are nothing. Just scattered barbarians for the Lesser Courts to prey upon. As a single kingdom, we have rights and borders and the power to contest them. We can protect our own ¡ª and protect the mundanes, who provide this home.¡± She looked around, left, right, and put her hand over Ray¡¯s, where it rested on her arm.

    ¡°We have work to do.¡±

    ***

    ¡°You¡¯ve got work to do,¡± Lucy said cheerfully, walking into the room where Callum was doing some of the early magic exercises with Alex. There was, sadly, a limit on the guidance he could give, both because he didn¡¯t use the shell method and because his internal vis method had made it impossible for him to see magic the way most mages did, with the naked eye. His spatial sense had a better fidelity for structure, but translating that to what Alex should see took some doing.

    ¡°I always have work to do,¡± Callum said, and put down the practice enchantment. ¡°Okay, kiddo, we can take a break.¡±

    ¡°Yeah!¡± Alex said, and hopped up, running over to the door and vanishing into the back yard. Then he ran back, gave Callum a hug, and ran off again before Callum could even say anything.

    ¡°So much energy,¡± Callum said, shaking his head. ¡°What¡¯s going on?¡±

    ¡°Time to put on your dancing shoes, or at least the suit again.¡± Lucy joined him on the couch, putting down the laptop she was carrying and leaning back with a grunt, laying her hands on her swollen belly. ¡°Taisen¡¯s on the line. We¡¯ve got another fancy event to go,¡± she said, as Callum put his hand on hers. Archmage Taisen was visible on the screen, and Callum nodded to him, reaching out to adjust the laptop angle slightly.

    ¡°Mister Wells.¡± Taisen¡¯s voice came from the laptop.

    ¡°What¡¯s going on?¡± Callum inquired, not really expecting anything official after the summit meeting. Not until it was time to break supernatural secrecy for good.

    ¡°We¡¯re making the Earth Alliance official,¡± Taisen said. ¡°With GAR out of the way and the Archmage¡¯s Council at least considering our legitimacy, we need to push before the momentum lags.¡±

    ¡°Right,¡± Callum said, not even tempted to argue. Like it or not, he was one of the main guarantors for the Earth Alliance, and Chester had been right. He had to act like a sovereign power, which meant he had certain responsibilities. ¡°When and where?¡±

    ¡°House Hargrave is hosting,¡± Taisen told him. ¡°Two days from now. I know it¡¯s not much notice, but we want to get this done before Janry starts to move. No matter what he does, it¡¯s better that we act from a position of legitimacy.¡±

    ¡°I¡¯d rather just nuke him and be done with it,¡± Callum muttered, since Janry had more than earned a kiloton rebuke. But that¡¯d just undermine the attempts at legitimate authority ¡ª unless Janry attacked again. In which case it was just proper self defense.

    ¡°The day is coming, I¡¯m certain,¡± Taisen agreed. Callum hadn¡¯t yet been able to sneak a drone in to the secret compound that Janry¡¯s people had set up, not with the jamming and the sweeps they made specifically for anything out of place, but he had left one with shifters who were lurking around to keep an eye on things. ¡°In the meantime, it is better that we band together than stand separately.¡±

    ¡°Yeah.¡± Gone were the days of just hiding away from authority and hoping they¡¯d forget about him. He was the authority, and nobody dared ignore his presence. Perhaps it had always been inevitable that the only way he¡¯d be left alone was to make it so people feared crossing him. ¡°Anything in particular you need me to do?¡±

    ¡°Just a repeat of your performance at the summit,¡± Taisen said. ¡°Though with fewer explosions. There won¡¯t be too many surprises, but the Archmage¡¯s Council will be there.¡±

    ¡°Right,¡± Callum said, considering. ¡°Lucy, I think you and Alex can come to this one. Alex might have to stay with the other kids, though.¡± It wasn¡¯t like House Hargrave was unfamiliar, considering Alex went there for the mage equivalent of preschool. Though most of him still wanted to keep them in the private portal world, away from prying eyes and any possible threat, that wasn¡¯t fair to them. He didn¡¯t want to be a tyrant, and that was as true with his own family as with the world at large.

    ¡°Gonna need a lot of tailoring on my dress,¡± Lucy said, lightly patting her middle.

    ¡°Good thing we¡¯ve already been to Savile Row,¡± Callum replied.

    You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

    Unlike with the summit, Callum didn¡¯t worry about making an entrance. He arrived with his family like usual, through the dedicated drone, and Alex went off to see his friends while Lucy met with Gayle. So near to term, both Lucy and Gayle wanted a magical healer checking things regularly.

    Archmage Hargrave himself welcomed Callum, showing him to a big courtyard where mages and shifters were setting up furniture and snacks. There was definitely some magic involved in the weather, though it was a pleasant spring day regardless. Pleasant, but not quite a match for his own private portal world.

    ¡°None of Janry¡¯s people will be here, of course,¡± Hargrave said, walking the perimeter of the courtyard with Callum as chairs and tables floated into place. ¡°Not even the entire Council is going to be here. In fact, I¡¯m pretty sure we¡¯ll outnumber the neutral Houses.¡±

    ¡°At least one of them is going to be a Janry spy, or sympathetic anyway,¡± Callum pointed out, watching one of the shifter maids supervise place settings. ¡°At this point, it¡¯s clear he¡¯s treading the path of the tyrant and he wouldn¡¯t dare let his enemies meet without having an eye on it.¡±

    ¡°Which is all to the good. There¡¯s the faintest possibility that the alliance might pressure him enough to stop his foolishness.¡± Hargrave didn¡¯t sound hopeful, but Callum had to agree with him. Even a small chance they could avert a conflict with Janry was worthwhile, and they didn¡¯t need to sneak around in the dark anymore anyway.

    Lucy emerged from the interior with Gayle, and Hargrave passed Callum off to them as he went to go play host. There was still some kind of teleport network in place even with GAR gone, as most everyone seemed to be arriving through a portal frame set up inside its own set of wards in front of the main building.

    ¡°Honestly, I¡¯m a little excited,¡± Gayle confessed to them, taking a glass of some kind of supernatural wine that was probably worth more than Callum¡¯s house. ¡°We¡¯re almost ready to start reaching out to the mundanes, and I¡¯ve got an entire staff for that. Granddad let me be in charge of the diplomacy for House Hargrave.¡±

    ¡°Oh, they¡¯ll love you,¡± Lucy said, and Callum couldn¡¯t disagree. Gayle¡¯s charisma assured at least some degree of success, assuming she could deal with the scavengers. She came off as personally na?ve to some extent, but her family and her House certainly were not.

    Callum had thought himself early, but people were arriving despite the courtyard barely being set up. Felicia and Ray, in finery that could only be described as restrained opulence, then Wizzy, who was dressed in jeans and a plain white tee once again. Shahey showed up with another dragonblooded in tow, but the avatar looked female so he guessed it was the one who went by Miri. Both of them were using the oversized reptile-folk avatars and toted huge swords, which was probably a statement about their purpose at the meeting.

    Rossi was the first one not inside the inner circle to arrive, and he was accompanied by Archmage Montgomery, the man he¡¯d met at the summit before things took a turn for the dramatic. The round-faced man made a beeline for them and actually offered Lucy his hand, which was definitely not something normal archmages did.

    ¡°I do hope this new alliance works out better than GAR did,¡± Montgomery said, eyeing Shahey and Wizzy as they chatted.

    ¡°You knew GAR was a problem?¡± Callum had to restrain himself from asking why Montgomery hadn¡¯t done anything about it. He couldn¡¯t expect everyone to turn vigilante.

    ¡°Not until the wheels started coming off,¡± Montgomery replied. ¡°It was supposed to keep Earth from getting out of hand and give our younger mages experience with combat and the portal worlds. It did that, so I never really paid attention to it.¡±

    ¡°That¡¯s depressingly reasonable,¡± Callum said, swirling his glass and taking a sip of the wine. It did taste a little unusual, but he didn¡¯t have the palate to pinpoint exactly what about it was supernatural. Assuming he could even taste that part. ¡°So you¡¯re not really upset at us for taking it apart.¡±

    ¡°I wouldn¡¯t go that far,¡± Montgomery said, with a broad smile. ¡°If you hadn¡¯t stepped up with the portal worlds, there might have been issues. But the portal worlds, the new electronic networks and delivery services ¡ª all of these serve to salve the ego.¡±

    Callum blinked. It wasn¡¯t exactly a threat, and Montgomery was still friendly, but it was a good reminder that the people he was working with were much the same as cutthroat corporate executives the world over. It wasn¡¯t Montgomery¡¯s business to care about anyone else¡¯s well-being but his own, and his House¡¯s.

    ¡°I¡¯m glad that things worked out then,¡± Callum said, glancing over to where Lucy was laughing over something with Lisa. Chester was just prowling the grounds, clearly impatient. He obviously wanted to get things done quickly and Callum couldn¡¯t blame him. Chester¡¯s entire family had been displaced and this was one step toward fixing that.

    ¡°I guess I¡¯m a little surprised that you¡¯re so blas¨¦ about this,¡± he continued, less certain about Montgomery¡¯s attitude with that revelation. ¡°Opening up the supernatural and all.¡± Montgomery chuckled, pulling an hors d¡¯oeuvres to himself with a flip of telekinesis.

    ¡°I¡¯m old,¡± he said, despite being one of the younger-looking Archmages. ¡°I remember back when we could be killed by anyone with a sword or a bow or just a torch and some enthusiasm. I actually remember what it¡¯s like to be afraid of mundanes. That weapon you showed us just brings it back to the same point. This time, though, we¡¯re in a position to negotiate.¡±

    ¡°I never thought of it from that perspective before,¡± Callum said, having to take several mental steps back. ¡°I was raised mundane, after all.¡± He wasn¡¯t regretting his plan at all, he just hadn¡¯t thought about the idea that mages like Montgomery had put together their secret society for the same reason Callum had gone off the grid. Even now, if people started manifesting magical powers they would be put under lock and key by the government, so that particular worry hadn¡¯t entirely gone away.

    ¡°So long as you¡¯re not anti-mage,¡± Montgomery said, chuckling at his own non-joke.

    ¡°Certainly not,¡± Callum assured him. ¡°I¡¯m a mage, and my son is a mage. I definitely don¡¯t want us to become second-class citizens! I just don¡¯t want others to be considered that way.¡± He pursed his lips in thought. ¡°Is that worry, the anti-mage stuff, why Janry is trying so hard to control Earth?¡± Callum asked, more out of morbid curiosity than any interest in sympathizing with the man.

    ¡°No, he was born after mages had already separated themselves.¡± Montgomery shook his head. ¡°I wouldn¡¯t call him young, but he never had the proper fear for his own life instilled in him.¡±

    ¡°That makes a depressing amount of sense,¡± Callum sighed. ¡°You¡¯d think that a nuke would instill that fear but I guess not.¡±

    ¡°There¡¯s a difference between a show of force, and knowing that you¡¯re surrounded by an entire people willing to put a knife in you,¡± Montgomery said.

    ¡°You don¡¯t have to tell me that,¡± Callum said, thinking of his early days on the run from supernatural authority. He still didn¡¯t really trust them, but there was a big difference between being a hapless new mage hiding out and the leader of his own House.

    Mages continued to arrive for the next hour or so, trickling through the portal in ones and twos, and most of them weren¡¯t even archmages. He was dutifully introduced to them all, but most he didn¡¯t and wouldn¡¯t remember. It was strange having to suppress the urge to offer his hand every time, a reflex left over from years of living like a normal person.

    Half the mages were from House Hargrave or House Taisen, and half the rest were from other Houses located on Earth. Hargrave and Taisen weren¡¯t the only Houses left, and as a matter of course the rest of them had been invited. Only six archmages and twice that many lesser mages were from the Archmage¡¯s Council, but so far as Callum understood it that was pretty good representation. There weren¡¯t all that many archmages to begin with, and not every House had an Archmage, the cadet Houses especially.

    Most of them gave Shahey and Miri a wide berth, which amused Callum to no end. He was in an admittedly unusual position, but the dragonblooded had always seemed reasonable to him. Though from his perspective everyone there was doing impossible things and could squash him flat if they were so inclined and he was off-guard. For mages used to being impervious and in control, it might be different.

    At some point, presumably once all the guests had arrived, Hargrave stood and raised his hand for attention. He flared some sort of vis construct too, probably something eye-catching to mages, but Callum still couldn¡¯t see it. Something that he had yet to figure out.

    ¡°Attention, everyone,¡± Hargrave said. ¡°Today marks the official formation of the Earth Alliance. This is a momentous day, but it is important to emphasize that we are not going to be like the Guild of Arcane Regulation. This alliance has no advisory board, no bureaucracy. It¡¯s an agreement between peers, all of us that remain here on Earth, and a simple one at that. We do not treat mundanes as prey. Not like lessers, but not like fellow supernaturals.¡± He looked around at the assembled people and then gestured Felicia and Shahey forward.

    ¡°We dragons know that introducing magic and the existence of the supernatural to a population is fraught with issues,¡± Shahey said, his deep voice booming through the courtyard. ¡°We know that everyone will benefit from proper relations with Earth at large, and so we are willing to lend our strength to enforcing the very few provisions of the alliance. We are not a police, we will not settle disagreements between Houses or Fae. But we will make sure that there is no conflict between the supernatural and the mundane.¡±

    That seemed to be all he had to say, for he merely offered a bow and stepped back. Felicia stepped forward, resplendent in her black and white and gold dress armor, cloak billowing in the wind. Ray stood at her elbow, colors matching, and looking rather more imposing than he had as an agent.

    ¡°I am Felicity Blackblood, daughter of King Oberon and Queen Mab,¡± she said, though he doubted there was anyone there who didn¡¯t know who she was. ¡°I have assumed the sovereignty of all fae here on Earth, bringing it into a single demesne. One that is separate from Faerie. This will have no affect on most of you, even if you have prior arrangements with the local fae, save that it may be easier to entice some of us to work for you.

    ¡°This demesne and this alliance means that some fae are no longer welcome on Earth. They are monsters, and humans cannot abide monsters.¡± Felicia nodded in Callum¡¯s direction, and he suppressed a laugh. ¡°But nobody here should want monsters either. Even wielded against your enemies, they are an uncommonly treacherous tool. As Queen, I can¡¯t claim all such monsters have been removed, but they are not welcome here.¡±

    That last statement got some reactions, albeit muted ones. Hospitality was an ancient tradition, and while Callum wasn¡¯t sure exactly what stories Felicia was using, it sounded like she was giving supernaturals free license to kill off anyone still trying to prey on regular people. Possibly even incentive.

    Felicia¡¯s speech was followed by Taisen, expanding the remit of the Defensores Mundi to defense both from the portal worlds ¨C a threat that was much diminished in the modern day, and without the Night Lands to worry about ¨C and from bad actors within the supernatural community. Then Chester, who was fairly blunt about his desire to coexist with regular people. He even avoided the term mundanes.

    ¡°Unlike Queen Felicity, I don¡¯t have control of all of Earth¡¯s shifters, nor do I want it.¡± Chester finished, nodded to another shifter, who nodded back. Callum hadn¡¯t realized there were other shifter representatives, but he¡¯d basically never met anyone who wasn¡¯t part of Chester¡¯s pack.

    ¡°Most of us are represented here and, like Queen Felicity, we consider those who desire to prey on humans as monsters. Of all the supernaturals, we work closest with the non-magical population, so I don¡¯t deny we have the most to gain from this. We¡¯ll also be the ones doing the most to enforce it, as we¡¯re spread out over more area and will see trouble first.¡±

    Clearly the speeches were aimed at the Archmage¡¯s Council people, since he didn¡¯t need Chester or Taisen to tell him what they were doing. Though on further reflection, a recording of the Alliance might well be part of the initial opening with conventional authority. Proof that the Alliance was full of good guys.

    All propaganda, of course. Most of the people there had their own interests and were signing onto the Alliance because it was the best option, not because of any moral consideration. Which was just as well, because if the agreement relied on good people with pure hearts it would never come into existence.

    ¡°I am Huitzilin, though you may call me Wizzy. If anyone causes trouble in Central or South America, I will remove them.¡± Wizzy¡¯s speech wasn¡¯t really even that, just the two sentences delivered in blunt threat. Despite his lack of finery, or perhaps because of it, he radiated absolute danger.

    Callum was last. He didn¡¯t have much of a speech either, and would have preferred to skip the whole thing and just sign, but this was important. In a way it was the culmination of what he¡¯d worked for, something to keep both him and normal people safe from the supernatural. Just before he went up he did chew on an antacid, just as a precaution.

    ¡°I am Archmage Wells, but most of you know me as The Ghost,¡± Callum said, looking over the gathered people. Some he recognized, most he didn¡¯t. Despite being mostly focused on the ceremony, he kept his senses stretched out to check if there were any unexpected mage bubbles approaching. It would have been a perfect time to crash the party, though with all the archmages and the dragonblooded¡¯s archmage-level vis nobody would get very far.

    ¡°This is the last time most of you will ever see me,¡± he continued. ¡°You know what I have done, what I can do. What I want is a future where my family and I, and people like us, need not worry about the depredations of the supernatural. I will back this alliance with all my skill.¡±

    It wasn¡¯t as impressive a threat as Wizzy¡¯s, but he would rather let the alliance and its agreements be front and center. He didn¡¯t want attention for himself, any more than he already had at least. Almost everyone there was benefitting either from his portal worlds or his teleportation enchantments, not to mention Lucy¡¯s work on setting up digital conveniences. He was more than happy to fade into the background.

    Hargrave brought out the actual document they were to sign, which was fairly short. It wasn¡¯t a legal agreement and there weren¡¯t many requirements on the Alliance either, not even mutual defense pacts. The vast majority of the oversized vellum document was reserved for the signatures.

    They weren¡¯t just signing with normal ink, of course. Rossi had brought a pot of ink that was somehow a banic alloy suspension, and sealing wax that had been similarly treated. Callum was glad that he¡¯d gotten a heads-up enough to practice using that kind of ink pen, though he vaguely knew what he was doing from calligraphy classes lifetimes ago when he was still in college.

    Callum was the first one to put his name to the Alliance. He signed it just as The Ghost, and pressed the printed-that-morning House Wells seal into the molten wax next to his name, investing both with his vis. It wasn¡¯t an enchantment, just an extra indication that the signature was his. The rest followed suit, and he stood back while Lucy slipped her arm around his, watching the proceedings.

    There was still an immense amount of work to do, and of course Janry and his cronies still meant them harm, but something in Callum¡¯s gut eased as the signatures and seals trailed their way down the long scroll. The summit had been his debut, but here and now he had finally shed his past as a fugitive and outlaw. He was a peer, a force to be reckoned with, and someone not to cross.

    He was his own power, and he would be able to raise his family outside the trappings of secrecy or tyranny.

 Chapter 19 â€“ Blitz

    ¡°It doesn¡¯t change anything.¡±

    Archmage Janry wasn¡¯t too impressed by the official creation of the Earth Alliance. That¡¯s what he¡¯d been calling it for a while, and just signing a paper didn¡¯t really do much. The only consequence was the Earth Alliance being closer to actually engaging with the mundanes, and that meant Janry had to hurry.

    The people most worried about it weren¡¯t even his fellow mages. The news ¨C and subsequent doubts ¨C came from some of their fae allies. Not everyone on Earth was pleased with Princess Felicity¡¯s high-handed approach and her absolutely ruthless takeover of Earth¡¯s enclaves. She¡¯d gone after them all in the same day, so they couldn¡¯t even band together in defense.

    A triumvirate of objectors had emerged among Earth¡¯s fae, important and powerful individuals who leaned more toward Janry¡¯s direction than the Alliance¡¯s, represented by people from enclaves in the United States, India, and Europe. Some of them had the backing of their superiors and more were there simply for their own interests, but none of them had official approval. They wouldn¡¯t, with the fae.

    ¡°It changes how much time we have,¡± Archmage Moravin said, addressing the fae more than the mages. ¡°We may have to reduce the number of targets.¡±

    ¡°Yes, unfortunate.¡± Janry wasn¡¯t overly concerned by that. The more expansive the damage they could blame on the Earth Alliance, the better, but beyond a certain point it was just theatre. Important theatre, but he was certain that even just one or two points of contention would be enough to sink the Alliance¡¯s overtures to the mundanes.

    ¡°Do we have enough gremlins, at least?¡± He asked, directing his question at the fae representatives.

    ¡°Yes,¡± one of them ground out, without further explanation. The stony fae in question wasn¡¯t one for superfluous words.

    ¡°Then it will be easy enough to deal with the highest-value targets. Beyond that, we only need a few others for it to really stick.¡± Janry glanced over at Archmage Harper. He flicked up a glamour to demonstrate the current plan.

    ¡°We only have one supernatural target ¡ª Alpha Chester. His exact whereabouts are not well known, but considering he¡¯s taken control of the Deep Wilds portal on Earth, he can be lured out that way. Archmage Tasser is in charge of that.¡± Janry would have preferred to take care of that himself, but the entire Alliance knew to be wary of him at this point. One of his cadets would have to do, and since Tasser was an archmage it was more likely to be successful.

    ¡°For the mundane targets, since we want it to look like the Alliance is making a bid to take over, we¡¯ve targeted a number of top leaders.¡± Harper changed the glamour to show several portraits of individuals, rendered in ghostly mage-light. ¡°Most of them will purposely fail, though, as we want them capable of effectively ¡®discovering¡¯ the Alliance and taking action against them. Getting away from mundanes is easy enough, after all. We don¡¯t need actual chaos or destruction, we just need to show how dangerous the Earth Alliance is.¡±

    ¡°We¡¯ll be doing this at about the same time,¡± Moravin added. ¡°Distracting the Alliance by a noisy commotion at Chester¡¯s place is the best way to ensure that our teams succeed. The mundane security is irrelevant, of course.¡±

    ¡°Of course,¡± Harper agreed. ¡°The other attack vector is the mundane weapons. Since Wells clearly has access to their nuclear arsenal, it is the most plausible and attention-getting target. That¡¯s what we¡¯ll be asking your gremlins to do,¡± he said, pointing at the trio of fae representatives. ¡°There¡¯s a lot of mundane technology that we have to bypass, since it¡¯s apparently very tricky.¡±

    ¡°Having some of their own weapons used against them, combined with the knowledge that Wells has already compromised them, ought to make it easy to convince the mundanes they¡¯re a bad idea,¡± Janry pointed out. ¡°Just give them an easy solution and someone to blame and they¡¯ll do pretty much anything you want.¡±

    Moravin changed the glamour again, this time showing a map with highlighted points. Most were in the United States, but there were a sizeable amount in India, as well as Europe and China. Most of that was actually gleaned from old GAR files, and if nothing else Janry found it surprising how widely the weapons had proliferated. It was absolute madness.

    ¡°I, personally, am too high-profile to go along on any of the errands,¡± Janry said, though he wasn¡¯t too discomfited by the fact. It might not be the best way to show his support to his allies, but he knew that if he showed up anywhere he would be followed and surveyed. ¡°My cadet Houses will be going in my stead, while I am publicly elsewhere so it is not suspicious.¡±

    The other Archmages didn¡¯t seem completely happy about that, but they would have to cope. Anywhere he went would bring down too much attention and might tip their hand early. The fact that the fae were the ones taking the greatest risks offset that, though. It was the fae¡¯s territory, so it was only fair, and at the same time it wasn¡¯t like anyone would really miss them if something happened.

    ¡°Do we have a time frame on when the Alliance is intending to approach the mundanes?¡± Moravin asked the audience at large, the assembled mages and fae, many of whom had some sort of information source on the Earth side of things.

    ¡°So far as I know it¡¯s still a few weeks away. Chester, especially, has something he¡¯s working on.¡± Magus Leshiel volunteered. ¡°That¡¯s what I heard from my friend in House Xu, anyway.¡± Janry grunted and nodded to her. House Xu had been badly devastated in the altercation over the dragon¡¯s portal ¨C which would have been worth it if the portal had stayed closed ¨C but they¡¯d taken that as a sign to not work against the Alliance. At least overtly.

    ¡°Then we should take no longer than a week to get all our assets into place,¡± Janry judged. ¡°I¡¯ll provide the scry-comms from House Janry¡¯s vault. The Guild of Enchanting might be shy about providing new ones right now but we have a number of corite-linked ones that are still functional.¡±

    ¡°Yes, sir,¡± Leshiel said, making a note. ¡°Do we have a statement prepared yet?¡±

    ¡°A good point. I will write one after this meeting,¡± Janry noted. ¡°Several, I imagine. The contents will depend on exactly how our preparations go.¡±

    The topic moved on to specific ways and means. For the most part it wasn¡¯t difficult to bypass mundane security, as a simple glamour would keep people or cameras from noticing, but there were more than simple cameras protecting some places. Any mage worth his salt could still use brute force, but bypassing long hallways of doors controlled from the inside without breaking everything took spells that hadn¡¯t been invented yet. Or fae magic.

    Some of their targets were protected more by obfuscation than by armor. People without a public itinerary, who didn¡¯t necessarily spend the night at their own houses, were hard to track down for anyone. Janry passed along the names of several air-aspect mages who would be good for that kind of work, and didn¡¯t have much else to do anyway.

    Despite his apparent calm, Janry knew that if he missed this chance it would be awfully difficult to dislodge the Earth Alliance. The loss of secrecy wasn¡¯t something that could be undone and the exact circumstances would set the tone of relations for a long time to come. If they let the Earth Alliance do as planned, mages in Faerie could end up marginalized, their power eroding and their access to the wealth of Earth drying up.

    That was something that Janry wasn¡¯t going to let happen.

    A week was not much time to coordinate a simultaneous strike on twenty-four separate targets, but they¡¯d already been practicing and organizing for some time. For most mages among Janry¡¯s allies, it had been a long time since their tour in the portal worlds and they had to shake the rust off, or dig out and try to repair old foci. Then there was distributing scry-comms to the various fae and the occasional mage handler.

    Janry had to empty out more of his treasury than he liked to pay for it all, but wealth could be rebuilt. In fact, when he had some time it wouldn¡¯t be too hard to delve down into the Earth¡¯s crust and mantle and dredge out more gold. While he didn¡¯t have a metal aspect, he could at least sift it out of rock and let someone with the right magic extract pure elements from the undifferentiated mass.

    Trying to do the same thing in Faerie was not a good idea. One of the problems with the portal worlds was that delving too deep or going too far ended up running into the frayed edges of reality, going in circles, or finding that the world itself stopped acting as expected. He couldn¡¯t just pull riches out of the ground in Faerie as he could on Earth.

    Idly, he considered Wells¡¯ ability to open up portals while he sorted through the logistical paperwork. It had to be something that someone could duplicate. If there were other portal worlds, then perhaps there were other planets as well, and the riches and power that went with them. Hopefully places easier to tame than Earth.

    Part of him considered that perhaps a good war would make it easier. With so many mundanes they would undoubtedly be fractious, but if they spent all that energy on removing themselves, then the ones that remained would be far more biddable. Especially if they had a handy target to blame.

    Janry reached for a different set of papers and began altering the orders. He had initially considered only setting off one or two of the weapons, letting the rest be false victories that could be used to implicate the Earth Alliance. Upon reflection, it was probably better to set them all off and take advantage of the chaos. They¡¯d still need to make sure that the blame was adequately cast on the Earth Alliance ¨C and Wells in particular ¨C but the more damage the better.

    Fortunately, most of the gremlin-type fae, those who could interface with technology the best, would absolutely jump at the chance to meddle with something so powerful. It might be better to let each team believe that they were still one of the few who would have the chance, rather than letting them know all the sites would have detonations, but his plans would ensure there wouldn¡¯t be any problems in the end. The mages were a little bit less reliable, or rather, more self-interested.

    He''d have to keep a close eye on them and make sure he had someone of unimpeachable loyalty along with each team. After all, they hadn¡¯t had any real combat since their portal world days and some of them might be squeamish or just too weak to do what was necessary. The targets were just mundanes, but not everyone could keep things in perspective.

    Janry was aware that the entire plan could go badly, if the Earth Alliance got involved. Between Wizzy, Wells, and Chester, there were plenty of people with no compunctions about killing their fellow mages. At worst, the actual bones of the operation might be exposed, which would naturally lead back to him.

    Even if that happened, Janry wasn¡¯t all that worried. He wasn¡¯t taking any direct action himself, and House Janry had been around for a long time. Even if the cadet houses were implicated, many of them had been worryingly comfortable with the idea of accepting Wells¡¯ terms. It was probably better to let them bear the brunt of whatever backlash, since it would solve that problem and so long as his personal power was intact, so was House Janry.

    The other Archmages might not be happy with him, but it wasn¡¯t like they had shown any inclination other than to vacillate and scold. The only threat to him personally was the Earth Alliance, but sufficient political pressure would keep them at bay. Clearly someone with sense held Wells¡¯ leash, otherwise he would have been attacking people left and right.

    He''d faced more challenges in the endeavor than he had anticipated, but he was undeterred. Janry considered himself a reasonable man, and it was reasonable to admit that the opposition had taken him by surprise more times than he¡¯d liked, and undermined his slow growth with precipitous action. But new power made new mistakes. Someone like Wells or Taisen would overextend, push too far, and everyone would agree they needed to be stopped. Once people got over the shock of Wells¡¯ demonstration, and the Earth Alliance¡¯s power was curbed, he was sure everyone else would scramble to the proper viewpoint.

    Janry just needed to ensure the plan succeeded. That meant setting watchers, and being ready to set everything in motion at a moment¡¯s notice. If his plans leaked, he would need to ensure that everything happened regardless of the treason.

    ***

    Callum was happy to leave the preparations for any actual unveiling to others. He knew that Chester was pulling together with Felicia, the earth-based Houses, and the dragons to put together a plan of action ¨C speeches, demonstrations, and all kinds of political and public relations activities ¨C but Callum was not part of the public face. He was The Ghost, he would remain The Ghost, and be both the bogeyman that nobody ever saw and the mysterious benefactor that provided portal worlds for all.

    There was one serious reservation, and that was Janry¡¯s faction. Callum was very strongly inclined to just bomb their little supposedly-secret compound out in the Deep Wilds, but so far they hadn¡¯t actually done anything since the summit. He hated being so reactive, just waiting for someone to strike like in the early days, but there was nothing he could do without risking damage to his ultimate goal.

    He still had a kinetic impactor waiting in the wings, looping through portals even if he¡¯d stopped the acceleration. There was no way he wouldn¡¯t need it sooner or later. That was just a sideshow to his real job, though, which was a never-ending task of surveying for portal worlds. It was only grueling mentally; he was actually seated outside with his laptop and a glass of iced tea while he watched Alex drive a toy car around the back yard. He had to admit that being able to do all his work outside, in a floating island paradise, was quite the benefit.

    ¡°Phone for you,¡± Lucy said, coming outside and easing herself into a chair. ¡°Taisen sounded less than happy.¡±

    ¡°Right,¡± Callum said, flipping from the drone feed to the VoIP program. He waited a moment for the thing to load, and Taisen¡¯s face popped up in the window. ¡°What¡¯s going on?¡±

    This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

    ¡°Janry is making his move,¡± Taisen said shortly. ¡°We need to move now. We caught one of his teams heading out and they actually wanted to talk. One of his subordinates warned us about his targets, because there are more of them than we thought.¡±

    ¡°Not just us, then,¡± Callum said, already reaching out through his drones for his cloak. Felicia had granted him a small estate in her weird faerie dimension, little more than an apartment, and while he was never going to live there it did give him a useful place to keep his cloak and his wooden anti-fae ball so they wouldn¡¯t be destroyed. Also a safer place to open a feeder portal than Faerie proper.

    ¡°Not us at all.¡± Taisen looked even grimmer than normal, his mouth set in a hard line. ¡°We¡¯re collateral. He intends to assassinate a number of world leaders and then blame us. Worse, he intends to set off nuclear warheads and blame us.¡±

    Callum blinked.

    ¡°Is he insane?¡± Callum asked, too bewildered to even be properly angry. ¡°Even if he could do that, that¡¯s just ¡ª I mean, setting off a nuclear war is an incredibly stupid idea.¡±

    ¡°I¡¯m not sure he realizes the full import of what he¡¯s planning,¡± Taisen replied. ¡°I¡¯m not sure if people caught conscience or just didn¡¯t want to be held responsible, but it was crazy enough that we¡¯ve got some defectors.¡±

    ¡°At least not everyone is an idiot,¡± Callum muttered. ¡°Right, I¡¯m getting rid of that compound.¡±

    ¡°Doesn¡¯t matter,¡± Taisen said. ¡°Janry¡¯s not there, he¡¯s off glad-handing Rossi, and his teams are already en route. We need to move now before they actually do anything.¡±

    ¡°Yeah.¡± Callum cast a glance at Lucy and she nodded.

    ¡°Join you in the war room,¡± she said, and he teleported himself and his laptop down.

    Between the dragons providing money and the guild of enchanting selling resources, he had a surfeit of drones and his moon nexus had expanded. At this point he actually had multiple small nexus locations, all hidden under some concrete domes he¡¯d gotten for cheap. He started sorting through them as he pushed vis into the scry-comm so he could be on the same page as Taisen¡¯s people.

    ¡°We¡¯ve got fifteen targets,¡± Taisen said, over the laptop and scry-comm both. ¡°There were twenty-four, but the watchers intercepted some after half the mage teams defected.¡± Callum didn¡¯t ask if the information had been verified. They had access to fae and Felicia certainly could find someone to do truth-telling. ¡°Six assassinations, nine nuclear bunkers.¡±

    ¡°How did he even find out about nuclear bunkers?¡± Callum muttered to himself, still finding it all a little surreal. ¡°Where are we going?¡± Even with flight and Felicia¡¯s parallel dimension, he was the fastest way to move people around ¡ª and they needed a lot of people.

    ¡°Lieutenant Korin will fill you in,¡± Taisen said, unceremoniously handing Callum off to someone he vaguely recognized from the assault on GAR, and going to take control of the teams. Callum wasn¡¯t offended.

    ¡°I¡¯m on my way,¡± Felicia¡¯s voice came over the scry-comm, and Callum glanced through the drone she kept nearby. It was bobbing along in her wake, as she came with Ray and some big, nasty looking fae. Judging by the vis that swirled around them, they were powerful as well.

    Korin took his attention by starting to recite places and GPS coordinates, forcing Callum to scramble to match those with his closest drones. Part of him bemoaned the fact that they¡¯d disassembled the old teleport network, because he didn¡¯t have the worldwide saturation that GAR had achieved with its hundreds of connections. At least his Alcubierre trick meant that he could move his endpoints very quickly.

    Callum checked the remote-controlled weapons in his cache, summoning the triggers for each of them to his desk. It wasn¡¯t likely that he could deal with every single one of the teams himself, since knowing the general location wasn¡¯t the same as being able to track down everyone involved, especially not when time was of the essence. Anyone he did spot, he had no compunction removing.

    There were targets as widely scattered as DC, London, Beijing, and New Delhi. There were people in planes up in the air, and the nuclear bunkers were scattered throughout the countryside all over the world. Callum could multitask to some extent but not that much, and he had no idea where the priorities were. There had been no time to get a full briefing on what was most urgent, so he just went through the list as he got it.

    ¡°Okay, Buckingham Palace, that one¡¯s easy enough,¡± Callum said, teleporting his drone a few times in quick succession and putting it on top of the roof of the enormous old building. He quickly scanned with his perceptions and, while there were traces of liquid fae magic about, he didn¡¯t spot any active supernaturals. Nor did he know who was the actual target, given the number of people about.

    ¡°Team Three!¡± Taisen shouted loud enough to be heard over the drone microphone, and Korin glanced to one side as Callum opened a portal from the mustering room to the palace roof. There were a lot of people who were going to get their first exposure to magic, because it wasn¡¯t likely either side was going to feel like keeping the conflict quiet.

    An entire squad of mages flew through the portal, and Callum switched to the next, leaving the defense to Taisen¡¯s people. Beijing was more confusing, crowded and crammed full of people, and he wasn¡¯t even looking for the government buildings. He was aware of time pressing as he searched for the right block of skyscrapers, and then popped open another portal.

    ¡°Team Eight!¡± Taisen said, and the people who had only just managed to assemble flew through. Mages were still scrambling over in Taisen¡¯s base, bubbles swarming up from the various barracks and meeting rooms, so it was catch-as-catch-can for which teams went where.

    ¡°I¡¯ll take India,¡± Felicia said over the scry-comm, opening up a fae gateway to the heart of New Delhi. ¡°I know who was involved with this one.¡± Her voice was hard and cold, but Taisen just gave a distracted acknowledgement. It was afternoon in Europe, morning in the United States, and so evening and night further east. Felicia and the Beijing group were operating in darkness, which didn¡¯t seem to bother them.

    Washington, DC, was next on the list, and Callum teleported his drone over to the White House. This, at least, he was more familiar with, and while he couldn¡¯t recognize the current president by his spatial perceptions, it was pretty obvious who it was sitting at the desk in the Oval Office. It was also pretty obvious that the White House was sitting at the center of some confluence of fae nonsense, some strange vortex whipped up by the seven fae he could sense sitting around on the White House lawn.

    ¡°They¡¯re already at the President,¡± Callum snapped, reaching for his vis crystals and pulling open an anti-mana portal to blast the area. He opened a full size one, right in the Oval Office, and immediately alarms started to ring as a big hole to some other place opened up. Even if security couldn¡¯t see the anti-mana coming out and eating up the fae working ¨C because of course they wouldn¡¯t do something simple like shooting a person, a fae had to be more clever than that ¨C there was still a five foot portal to another world hovering in the air.

    ¡°Get me there,¡± Chester¡¯s voice came over the scry-comm. ¡°I¡¯ve got some federal agents read in already, that¡¯ll make it easier.¡±

    ¡°Right,¡± Callum said, letting the anti-mana portal go and flipping his attention over to the bad penny reserved for Chester. They¡¯d have to deal with jumpy secret service agents but shifters were pretty much bulletproof, so he opened another portal to the White House, out of the line of fire from the collapsing anti-mana one. Chester had a half-dozen normal people with him and they all piled through into the White House while Callum focused on the actual fae.

    They¡¯d started to scatter as soon as their working had been disrupted, but they weren¡¯t fast enough, or maybe stunned by having their magic broken. Either way, they were still in range of Callum¡¯s senses as he reached for his remote. Three of them, the weakest ones, simply died from a point-blank shotgun blast to the head. Two others required a double-tap, which implied a more powerful brand of fae than he normally dealt with.

    Of the three remaining, one performed some sort of fae travel trick and melted into the ground, its vis flowing through the earth at lightning speed. Callum tried to intercept him with another anti-mana portal, but it took too long to open and he cursed as the fae slipped away. Not wanting to waste the effort of opening another magic-devouring portal, he redirected the anti-mana jets still pouring from the collapsing hole in the Oval Office toward the last pair with another set of portals. They dodged the initial opening, but he could just sweep the angle of the portal as fast as he liked, and even the speedy fae couldn¡¯t outrun it.

    Just clipping them with the anti-mana seemed to be as good as pithing them, and he finished the job with two more shotgun shells, glad that he and Lucy had installed proper magazines on all the remote weapons. That left six corpses on the White House lawn, none of them human, but that was something he left to Chester to explain.

    ¡°I got all but one,¡± Callum said over the scry-comm, glancing at the clock to see that the whole incident had taken less than a minute. ¡°Last guy is still out there, Felicia might be able to track him down but there¡¯s no telling for now. I have to move on.¡±

    ¡°Understood,¡± Chester said. There was shouting in the background, and Callum didn¡¯t envy Chester his task. ¡°We¡¯ll guard things here.¡±

    Callum moved on to the next place on Korin¡¯s list, deep in the Midwest. Even if he hadn¡¯t been delayed much, it still felt like he was behind. Before he¡¯d managed to reposition the nearest drone, another voice broke onto the scry-comm.

    ¡°Dragons here.¡± Shahey¡¯s voice was not like Callum had ever heard before, deep and cold and vibrating with barely controlled fury, more even than when Janry had closed their portal. He couldn¡¯t help but remember the story Shahey had told of the worlds that had torn themselves apart, and how they¡¯d seen this sort of thing happen before despite their best efforts. ¡°Chester, we¡¯ll handle the mages at the Deep Wilds portal. Mister Wells, if you would?¡±

    ¡°On it,¡± Callum said, and delayed getting to the Midwest site in favor of scrambling through the portal links, wondering why nobody had told him about an invasion at Chester¡¯s place. At the Dragonlands portal, there were at least two dozen dragonblooded, all big musclebound avatars in full armor. In fact, it seemed they were armor, with no visible seams or joints. Even as he was watching, even larger avatars came through the portal, not humanoid at all. They were hulking lizardlike things five feet at the shoulder, looking more like classical dragons even if they lacked wings. Vis literally boiled off them, too magic-dense to completely contain in the relatively lesser mana field of the Earth.

    He pulled open a portal for them, the other side leading to Chester¡¯s secret bunker in the mountains, glad that he still had a drone there. In hindsight he should have guessed that Janry¡¯s final push would include a shot at Chester ¡ª and while Chester¡¯s Deep Wilds base was safe, it would be a simple matter for any mage to find the secret bunker by just crossing through the portal from the other side.

    Only the humanoid dragonblooded went through. They weren¡¯t as powerful as the big avatars, but encountering that many of them ¨C from at least six different dragons, if Callum was right ¨C would put a crimp in anyone¡¯s day. Even an archmage¡¯s.

    ¡°The behemoths are for the nuclear sites,¡± Shahey¡¯s voice came, disconcertingly, from one of the bestial avatars. ¡°Just in case.¡±

    ¡°Right,¡± Callum said, as Lucy came down the stairs, his sense of time completely distorted from the mad scramble of portals. ¡°Just in case.¡±

    ***

    Ensharrehael directed his half-dozen avatars with a brain larger than most Earth houses, though dragons had found out long ago that just increasing brain size didn¡¯t mean someone was smarter. There were certain tweaks so he could multitask, and he liked to think he was somewhat wiser than he¡¯d been when he was young, but he couldn¡¯t claim he was much more clever.

    That anyone would willingly incite a war of Armageddon still was beyond him. Or rather, it wasn¡¯t, but it had been centuries since he¡¯d needed to worry about such a thing and the situation on Earth had seemed to be stabilizing. They¡¯d even avoided making the same mistake they had with the vampires, and had avoided pushing House Janry into a corner. All the man had needed to do was to engage Earth on normal terms, but he couldn¡¯t be satisfied with that.

    With all the usual strictures gone, Ensharrehael was going to enjoy taking out his frustrations on the small people that would destroy the world in their arrogance. His friends might not feel quite as strongly, but each and every one had become attached to some aspect of Earth.

    Wells dropped them right by the portal to the Deep Wilds, at one end of a large room in a wooden building deep in the mountains. Chester had learned from the dragonblooded¡¯s experience with their own portal, so there was nothing of note to collapse onto the portal, but Shahey directed one of his avatars to reinforce it nonetheless. Compressed graphene-reinforced osmium-tungsten-titanium coils spun out of nothing, winding mobius loops up and around the portal, through it, circling the other side before emerging again on Earth. Perhaps dragons couldn¡¯t reproduce spatial magic, but they could certainly protect it.

    Wells¡¯ ¡°bad penny¡± portals allowed half the avatars to step through into the Deep Wilds without risking their connection, stationing themselves to protect it from both ends. Shahey took up station nearest the portal where it stood, deep in a hollow in one of the giant trees while Miyashientu and Tineustrillan sent their avatars further out to screen anyone coming in. The mana-dense nature of the trees and the lack of anything like a nature mage meant the Deep Wilds end was less vulnerable than the dragonlands portal had been, but an archmage would still be an issue.

    Less than five minutes later, while Miyashientu was squeezing a behemoth avatar through one of Wells¡¯ portals to somewhere in the midwestern United Stats, a seven-man-strong wing of mages swept in from above. Ensharrehael avatar had excellent vision, more akin to a mechanical multi-lens system than biological eyes, and it was clear the mage squad was surprised to see dragons waiting by the portal and not just shifters. It was enough for them to not quite commit to the combat foci that they already had out, the subtle shifting of their vis shells a dead giveaway that they had spells readied as they came in.

    ¡°You might want to take cover,¡± Ensharrehael said to the nearest shifters with one of his avatars. ¡°Unless you can take archmages.¡± The shifter snarled, but not at him, and a rapid patter in Celtic had the shifter guards withdraw through the portal. The head of the mage squad gestured and the mages dropped down to confront the dragonblooded avatars.

    ¡°We have business through the portal,¡± the leader said. It was Archmage Tasser, someone Ensharrehael knew as the head of one of Janry¡¯s cadet houses and a former resident of the Night Lands. He was almost certainly there thanks to what Wells had done in closing that particular portal, and not just his alignment with Janry. As a metal mage, he could actually take down the portal reinforcement, provided he could get past the absolute vis saturation that came with anything a dragon made.

    ¡°No, you don¡¯t,¡± one of Tineustrillan¡¯s avatars said. Unlike Ensharrehael, Tineustrillan almost always used a far deeper, gruffer, and significantly more hostile voice for his avatars. He sounded half a step from murder.

    For a moment they all stayed where they were, both groups staring each other down and knowing exactly what was going on. Then Tasser¡¯s finger twitched and spells exploded outward. Wires of glowing-hot metal shredded the air, beams of ravening light raked over armor, shards of ice and rock flung themselves at hurricane speeds. Compressed wind and liquid fire twisted together into a molten inferno, barely scorching the rock-hard bark of the great tree before vanishing.

    Ensharrehael unmade the spells as fast as they were cast, spending vis like water to destroy the matter and energy inside the attacks, creating an invisible wall where all the sound and fury simply stopped. The avatar that had created the portal reinforcement didn¡¯t have too much more vis left, and he discorporated it after just a few moments, but the rest had little trouble, even with the archmage-level attacks that sent hundreds of pounds of metal shrapnel crackling through disturbed air at hypersonic speed.

    In general he preferred attacking with the avatar bodies, as it was easier to overwhelm mage shields with the vis-saturated matter, but when they didn¡¯t need to worry about collateral damage there were other options. Miyashientu spun energetic fluorine compounds into existence, the impossibly reactive chemicals burning metal, water, ice, and even the air itself. Tineustrillan created pockets of intensely hypergolic liquid, subsequent detonations hammering at the mage shields and knocking about some of the less able ones.

    The first mage shield cracked after only a few seconds under the hellish conditions, the mages¡¯ own winds whipping about the poisonous, burning gasses and liquids. Mundane and arcane chemistry mixed, the result consumed by Ensharrehael before it could touch his avatars. Only screams were left as one by one the mages were wiped away under the sound of explosions as hyper-reactive compounds stripped flesh from bone and burned it to ash.

    A few breaths later, Tasser was the only surviving mage. He started to accelerate into the sky, trying to escape from the trap, so Miyashientu simply turned and flung one of Ensharrehael¡¯s avatars after the mage. His armored claw met a shield of metal vis, the protection failing a moment later as his claw punched through. Maybe only half an inch, but it was enough. Inside the bubble, where there was very little vis, Ensharrehael created a small ball of pure protons.

    Tasser didn¡¯t survive the result.

    ¡°Deep Wilds portal is safe,¡± one of his other avatars reported over the scry-comm, but he was already dealing with another, more urgent problem. One of the fae teams had beat them to a missile silo.

 Chapter 20 - Nuclear

    Callum had always known that Cheyenne Mountain existed, given its popularity in certain kinds of fiction, but for obvious reasons he¡¯d never been there himself. It was on the list though, so he sent the drone in past the enormous door, through the tunnels deep in the mountain, alert to any supernatural influence. The whole thing was an impressive fortress, however many years after the Cold War, and there weren¡¯t any traces in the background mana. No supernaturals had been there for ages, as far as he could tell.

    That changed when one of Taisen¡¯s squads went through into the control room for the actual silos, all glamoured up to keep their presence subtle, at least until Chester convinced the President that not only did supernaturals exist but there were some magical terrorists in play. The missiles themselves were in range of Callum¡¯s perceptive sphere, and the strange complexity of the internal mechanisms was so baffling that he could almost believe that fae magic didn¡¯t matter. But only almost.

    ¡°Next,¡± he said grimly, even as he opened a portal for one of the horrific behemoths the dragons had provided. It was so energetic it almost destabilized the portal as it went through, but Callum didn¡¯t mind putting in the extra effort it took to keep things stable. He didn¡¯t know exactly how much power was involved, but if it was enough that it was literally evaporating from the avatars, it had to be even more than archmages could manage.

    ¡°West Virginia,¡± Lieutenant Korin said, and then recited a string of GPS numbers. Lucy typed them in quickly and referenced them against the drone feeds, telling him the drone number without him trying to do it the slow way. He flipped to the proper one and started using the Alcubierre trick to flit the drone he kept near his home town of Tanner into the mountains where all the military bases were.

    After a few quick jaunts, Callum honed in on what seemed to be an ordinary farmhouse, sitting on top of a massive network of underground tunnels, the silo doors hidden by crop fields. He sent his drone straight down, teleporting through dirt and stone and metal into the cavernous spaces dug into the mountain. The base wasn¡¯t nearly as populated as Cheyenne, though that wouldn¡¯t make any difference to supernaturals with magical stealth.

    The base was absolutely huge and with the time crunch he couldn¡¯t be as thorough as he liked, just scanning around for anything out of place as he transported people in. One portal for Taisen¡¯s team and another for one of the behemoths, and he was ready to move on since there wasn¡¯t anything immediately out of place. At least until Shahey spoke over the scry-comm.

    ¡°There¡¯s a countdown.¡±

    ¡°Well, shit.¡± Callum dropped everything else and forced his perceptions wide on the military base, trying to find out where the fae were hiding. He didn¡¯t know if killing them would even stop anything, but it was the only action he could take.

    His enormous perceptual sphere really showed its worth when it only took a couple teleports to locate the fluid fae magic, which he found at the base of one of the missiles. The fae themselves were still there, little thumb-sized types crawling around inside the guts of machines. Despite their size, several of them had fairly potent vis, short of a fae prince but far more than a regular lackey.

    Callum didn¡¯t bother with any further investigation before opening an anti-mana portal to hose the area. There were probably all kinds of alarms going off if the fae had somehow managed to initiate a launch sequence, against all the safeguards meant to prevent exactly that, so it was far too late to be even slightly subtle.

    The ravening darkness blacked out the launch area, and when the portal collapsed there wasn¡¯t any trace of fae magic. He toggled the feed for the drone microphones, but the countdown crackling over the loudspeakers continued. Frankly the countdown itself had to be part of what the fae were doing, since he was certain that¡¯s not how it was supposed to work in real life, but whatever alterations they¡¯d made hadn¡¯t been fixed by his actions. There was no telling how or if it could be canceled.

    ¡°Guys, I think you¡¯re going to have to wreck the missiles,¡± Callum said, since the only ordnance he had large enough to do anything to such military hardware was nuclear-yield itself. He ran his perceptions through the missile, which was easy enough since it was all mundane, but all the pieces were so tightly fitted he couldn¡¯t easily teleport things out. Not that he knew what to target even if he wanted to destroy it, since the missile interior was insanely complex.

    The behemoth huffed and bored an eight-foot diameter hole in the nearest wall, the group heading straight for the silos. The mages and the dragonblooded avatar zipped through the opening and the passageway sealed up behind them. It only took a few moments to reach the silo, bypassing startled soldiers and ignoring pipes and wiring severed in the process, but in that time the automated countdown finished.

    The missile detonated.

    Callum flinched, despite being several links away from the blast, but the expected wave of nuclear fire never came. Shahey¡¯s behemoth had an iron wall of vis encircling the missile, consuming and containing the explosion. The thermonuclear explosion.

    While Callum¡¯s perception couldn¡¯t see through the massive vis expenditure of Shahey¡¯s behemoth, there was still leakage. The mage team had their shields pushed outside of their bubbles, interlinked and warding off sprays of plasma and radiation. The long seconds ticked on as Shahey¡¯s avatar steamed, scales ablating from everything that he couldn¡¯t eliminate, holding back an all-devouring nuclear fireball with raw power.

    Then it was suddenly gone, Shahey¡¯s vis dispersing back into mana and revealing that the top of the missile was gone, along with a good chunk of surrounding silo, a perfect sphere of annihilation where there had once been a warhead. The behemoth itself vanished with a final flare of vis, expended or self-destructed by Shahey after exhausting its energy.

    ¡°Well. That actually worked,¡± Shahey said, through one of his other avatars. Callum barked a laugh without any humor in it.

    ¡°Now we know it¡¯s not a bluff,¡± he said, his hands trembling slightly from adrenaline even if he, personally, had never been in any danger. But everyone else had, and he knew the consequences of any nuclear detonation. ¡°We¡¯d better hurry.¡±

    ¡°Send another me through,¡± Shahey said, prompting Callum to open a portal for another behemoth. The big monstrosity jumped through to land next to the mage team, and a few seconds later the damage had been reversed, new electronics and mechanisms spun into being from nothing. Callum didn¡¯t have time to marvel as he received the next location from Lieutenant Korin. They couldn¡¯t afford to cut it any closer than they already had.

    ***

    Felicia strode through the Gate of Bones into the court of Prince Nayamar. That particular fae had adopted the local mythology, which Felicia always found to be both a poor choice and in poor taste, for the passage of centuries tended to leave only gods and monsters. Nayamar¡¯s court featured people with too many arms, snake-bodied men and women with slit-pupiled eyes, and those with elephant or tiger heads.

    Despite the borrowed deific symbolism and the hollow power it had brought them, the nigh-giants inhabiting the enormous pagoda quailed away from the crackling mantle of her displeasure. Nayamar himself might have had the good sense not to pretend to actually be Ganesha, but he still presented himself as an oversized elephant-headed, gold-bedecked demigod, perched atop an opulent throne. He looked at her with indifference until she grabbed onto the oaths that bound him to her and pulled.

    The entire pagoda trembled as the foundations of Nayamar¡¯s power were assaulted, and while she couldn¡¯t quite exact the penalty for oathbreaking yet, he was still treading on the one constraint she¡¯d asked of her subjects. Not that a fae such as him would care overmuch if the mundane world crumbled to ash. All he needed was his own power base and his own subjects.

    ¡°Recall your agents,¡± she told him coldly. Some of the people in the court began moving in their direction, to encircle them, only to fall to the ground writhing as Ray snapped his fingers and sucked the air from their lungs. Nyamar¡¯s eyes flickered at the simultaneous collapse of a dozen of his most powerful court members, but he still affected an air of innocence.

    ¡°I have no idea what you mean, Princess Felicity,¡± he said, almost simpering.

    ¡°My people are already in New Delhi,¡± she told him. ¡°Your assassins are doomed. I will give you one chance to recall them, else I will name you oathbreaker and sever your power at its root.¡±

    ¡°Were any of my people in New Delhi, I doubt they would be doing anything of concern,¡± Nayamar demurred. Felicia sighed internally, completely unsurprised by the man¡¯s stubbornness. Instead she coaxed the Gate of Water from her wrist and pulled it open.

    With The Ghost backing her, she had found that she could mimic, in ever so faint a fashion, his habit of creating portals from place to place ¡ª provided she had made the proper preparations. In this case she had split the Gate of Water and given it to the leader of her combat squad. That particular fae had decided on a story that was decidedly not fantasy, a warrior from the future with faceless armor, inexhaustible stamina, and weapons of incredible potency. It would be some time before he was truly powerful, but for the moment he was perfectly suited to defending humankind from the depredations of Nayamar¡¯s monsters.

    ¡°Begin,¡± she said. Noises filtered through the Gate ¡ª shouting, hostile words in Hindi, laughter, and then the sounds of gunfire. Each report seemed to punch the air even through the Gate, Nayamar¡¯s entire court flinching from the deadly promise of those shots. Then there was a horrible, bloody silence.

    ¡°You see, there are plenty of stories of heroes,¡± Felicia said, her smile sharp and uncompromising. ¡°And they are all in my Court.¡±

    ¡°I see,¡± Nayamar said, flicking giant elephant ears forward and then back. ¡°That is certainly impressive, but such heroes only have power when there is an aligned humanity behind them. Break humanity, and their heroes mean nothing. The monsters will always be there in the dark.¡±

    ¡°And in the end, the monsters always lose,¡± Felicia said, gathering her mantle and her power to herself. Fae who acted the way Nayamar had, and the way he promised to continue acting, could not be allowed on Earth.

    ¡°In the end, maybe, but not today.¡± He pointed at the ceiling of the pagoda, which swirled and cleared to show in the distance a white pillar climbing to the sky. Ray sucked in his breath and Felicia felt a chill as she realized what it was.

    Nayamar cackled, anticipating the potency that came from presiding over destruction. Felicia would not have it. She knew that even one of those weapons being used could spell disaster for the entire world. The one she¡¯d sworn to protect.

    Felicia reached outward through the oath, not merely taking her due from the breaking but reaching down to the foundation of Nayamar¡¯s power, where he was connected to his court, his enclave, his history, and his story. He had caused this, so it was only fair that he would help solve it, drained unto death.

    She hauled mercilessly on that power, the accumulated vis and significance, the time and tide swirling about the court, and added it to her own, directing it toward that far-off speck glinting as it rose above the clouds. Her perspective winged along as if borne by an eagle, Ray¡¯s magic feeding into her own and moving as quick as air. The tower of metal standing on fire had its own grace and awe, a thing of terrible beauty.

    ¡°Death, I name you. Destroyer of worlds,¡± she whispered to it, voice carrying uncounted miles. ¡°Death I give to you, those forsworn, who have unjustly awakened you from your slumber. I beseech you now, stay your hand and return your rest.¡± The entire weight of her power and authority flooded through her, and the missile paused in its flight. Like a video in reverse, the white pillar shrank, fuel unburning, the missile returning to whence it came as the last few minutes of its existence were unwound.

    Nayamar¡¯s court withered. The pagoda turned to splinters and dust; the people to empty husks and ash. The opulent throne tarnished, gold turning to aged brass as all that power and potential was siphoned out to rewind a tiny slice of time and space. Far away, the fae that had triggered the launch to begin with burst into flame and burned away into nothing. Felicia staggered, and only Ray¡¯s strong hand kept her from collapsing to her knees.

    ¡°Come on,¡± he said, looking around at the crumbling remains of the Court and enclave. ¡°Let¡¯s get out of here.¡±

    ***

    ¡°All the sites are locked down, Alpha,¡± Gregori Morozov reported through the pack bonds. Russia had his loyalty as a person, but Chester had earned it as a shifter, and Gregori knew that he couldn¡¯t manage the oncoming storm without that strength. He was a relative newcomer to Chester¡¯s pack, his symbiote still not entirely familiar with the magical connections, but the link to Chester was strong enough.

    While he might have been new to Chester¡¯s pack, Russia had been his home since before the Cold War, and his family had a lot of connections within and without the army and even the secret police. After finding out the exact targets the Fae were looking for, he had made some calls and pulled some strings among his children and grandchildren. The result was a frenzy of activity that had physically disabled ¨C at least temporarily ¨C all the vulnerable nuclear sites, not just the ones they knew were being targeted.

    Chester¡¯s affirmation and approval came back through the bond, along with a glimpse of what the man was dealing with. He had the impression of United States Secret Service arguing with their President, agents and shifters all pitching in to make for a confusion of noise. Gregori was glad that wasn¡¯t him; all he had to do was deal with the mages that were out to kill his country¡¯s leader.

    Perhaps they thought they were clever, going after a helicopter in the air where most people, no matter whether they were supernatural or not, would be at a disadvantage. But the mages had never encountered modern weaponry, and while glamours might hide things from machines and mundanes, he knew exactly where they were. So did the two other members of the pack under him, and all of them were operating Kamovs.

    The mages swept in as a group, four of them with glamour rippling the air; Gregori could smell the stink of their magic even through the cockpit. His hand blurred as he input tracking for the others, coordinating between the escort helicopters and the ground-based anti-air batteries. While he didn¡¯t believe there was an archmage in the assassination squad, even regular mages could withstand quite a beating. One that he was eager to give them.

    You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

    The mages found themselves abruptly under fire by thirty-millimeter cannons at full autofire, the sawing rasp of the gun vibrating Gregori¡¯s cockpit as the air was saturated with heavy fire. The sheer weight of lead and raw startlement of the attack shattered the glamour, revealing the men floating in the air and the shields that protected them from the gunfire.

    Gregori bared his teeth as they swept away, keeping credible formation and flicking out offensive spells as they tried to evade the gunfire. He rattled off instructions, but the pack bonds were faster, the maneuverable attack helicopters dodging as supernatural reflexes kept the autocannons on target. One of the mages tried to target the craft with the important personage inside, but the old fae charm Gregori had placed there deflected the spell. There was no telling how much supernatural trickery that charm had warded off over the years.

    Russian security ¨C supernatural and mundane alike ¨C was highly trained, and despite the unusual nature of the attack they did their jobs, screening their escort as they poured fire on the flying bubbles. The shield had become nearly opaque, and while they could block cannon fire for a short time Gregori had faith in the supremacy of technology. Especially as the mages reached the appropriate distance from the agile helicopters.

    ¡°§°§ä§Ü§â§í§ä§î §à§Ô§à§ß§î!¡± he commanded, feeding the coordinates into the command network, and air-to-air missiles launched themselves from the helicopters, interlocking with fire from the ground. Explosions saturated the area where the mages had been, the wash from the shockwaves rocking his Kamov and forcing him to correct.

    The helicopters hurried away from the battle scene, as additional air support scrambled in, but Gregori was almost certain they wouldn¡¯t be needed. He¡¯d seen at least one of the shields fail himself, and while it was possible a mage or even two had escaped under glamour, they wouldn¡¯t be returning. After running into that kind of fire, most mages were far too interested in their own hides to dare again.

    What he wasn¡¯t looking forward to was explaining what had just happened. While to some extent he could claim ignorance, it would not be appropriate when several other countries had just been forcibly exposed to the supernatural. He tugged on the pack bond again, and Chester agreed. In fact, it would probably be for the best if the ruler of his nation and the ruler of his pack got together to compare notes ahead of the reveal.

    Gregori would leave the cleaning up to others. He surely wasn¡¯t being paid for it, in either money or favors, and he knew that he was no match for an archmage. Not without far more available to him than a set of Kamovs.

    From what he¡¯d heard of The Ghost, he wouldn¡¯t need to worry about it. If there was anything the accounts agreed on, it was that The Ghost took a very dim view of attacking mundanes. After Fane¡¯s death, it wasn¡¯t a question of whether he could remove whoever was behind this, but when.

    ***

    Archmage Harper regarded the scry-comm with distaste as Janry ended his stream of orders, tapping his fingers against his thigh. He had been less than convinced about Janry¡¯s plan to begin with, and while he didn¡¯t like the idea of ceding any ground to some upstart GAR replacement he did have limits on what he was willing to risk. More, he had limits on who he was willing to risk it for.

    ¡°He didn¡¯t even wait,¡± Moravin said, his voice tight and controlled. ¡°Magus Leshiel only reported that they¡¯d spotted Taisen¡¯s forces, not that she was defecting. The cowardly bastard had everything ready to go the moment he thought someone might have second thoughts.¡±

    ¡°This shouldn¡¯t surprise you,¡± Harper said, taking a glass of tea from the servant with a nod. Perhaps they were being indiscreet, simply staying at House Harper instead of following Janry¡¯s plan, but the time for discretion had long passed. To judge by the orders they¡¯d overheard on the scry-comm they weren¡¯t supposed to have, the time for anything but a final decision had passed.

    ¡°Perhaps not, but I did think he was overstating things.¡± Moravin scowled. ¡°Posturing is one thing. Sacrificing entire Houses ¨C his own cadet Houses! ¨C by blaming them for all this destruction is another.¡±

    Harper grunted. Neither of them cared all that much about the Earth Alliance, or even the mundanes so much, but at the same time they didn¡¯t care to be the bonfire upon which Archmage Janry¡¯s star rose. Harper, personally, had thought that the entire operation Janry had described would be a bluff. The teams ¨C all but the one Archmage Tasser was leading to take care of Alpha Chester¡¯s stronghold ¨C were all told they¡¯d most likely just be threatening the target. Only a few, if any, would actually go through with it.

    Except that was not what had happened. The moment Magus Leshiel had made sure she was intercepted by Archmage Taisen¡¯s forces, Janry had ordered every one of the teams under him ¨C almost all the fae and half the mages ¨C to move. While Janry himself stayed safe and uninvolved, willing to let everyone else shoulder the blame and consequences.

    ¡°He¡¯s going to drag us all down with him,¡± Harper said. There was no telling exactly how powerful the dragons were, and how much they could do, nor did Harper trust that the new princess was the same as a fae prince. Combined with what The Ghost could do, Harper wasn¡¯t willing to bet that this would be a success, let alone the clean sweep Janry wanted.

    ¡°Then what do we do?¡± Moravin would not normally have deferred to Harper ¨C they were fellow archmages, after all ¨C but with House Harper hosting House Moravin while the latter negotiated new land, he was extending a certain politeness. Harper appreciated it, but the question was rhetorical. Neither of them wanted to be left holding the bag.

    ¡°The question is, to whom can we turn?¡± If Harper and Moravin wanted to come out of this with their skins intact, they had to do two things. Bring Janry to account, and survive the experience. Moravin¡¯s metal aspect was far more suited to combat than Harper¡¯s water, but neither of them were particularly practiced or, frankly, nearly as powerful as Janry. As much as nobody wanted to admit it, not all archmages were equal.

    Moravin laughed, a dark and ugly thing. Harper looked at him and raised his eyebrows, not entirely encouraged by the expression on his fellow archmage¡¯s face.

    ¡°There¡¯s exactly one archmage aside from The Ghost himself that everyone fears, whether they admit it or not. Old Wizzy could deal with him, and I notice that Janry didn¡¯t send any teams to his area.¡± Moravin shrugged. ¡°Very unlikely that¡¯s coincidence.¡±

    ¡°Agreed,¡± Harper said, suppressing a shudder. That particular archmage was unbelievably disturbing, and people preferred to ignore him. But after the initial altercation when they¡¯d encountered him, he hadn¡¯t been a troublemaker. At least not until the Earth Alliance had brought him onto their side. ¡°We¡¯d best be off before it¡¯s too late.¡±

    He handed the tea off to his servant and Moravin followed suit. Wells¡¯ purge of GAR had erased most of the existing teleportation network, but there were still a few links. The connections to Portal World Five and Six still existed, as those had been in private hands to begin with and neither of those portal worlds had been in contention. Nobody actually cared about them too much.

    There were probably some of Taisen¡¯s people watching them of course, but that was of no moment. Neither he nor Moravin were doing anything anyone would object to, save Janry. With Janry¡¯s teams moving, Taisen would probably be pulling in everyone he could as soon as Leshiel spilled the orders, so any watchers would be busy very shortly anyway.

    The two of them exited the house grounds, using their flight foci to reach the small nexus set up Faerie-side in a matter of moments. No longer were there switchboard operators, each link having a dedicated teleportation framework. Harper synchronized his vis with the enchantment, and in a blink he was on Earth, near the bitter mana of Portal World Six. Moravin followed after, and the two of them barely had time to get their bearings before a dark shadow with diamond eyes slid along the carved wall toward them.

    ¡°Peace!¡± Moravin said, holding out his hands. ¡°We merely want to speak to your master.¡± Nobody really knew what Wizzy¡¯s shadow could do, as it was the only thing from Portal World Six on Earth. Or anywhere. Even to mage-sight it didn¡¯t look like more than a strange shadow, yet it could move and think and talk, so nobody was willing to risk it.

    The shadow paused, the white pinprick eyes looking them over, then vanished. A moment later Wizzy himself arrived in the underground chamber, sliding along the surface of the water as if it were a conveyor. Harper recognized the magic involved, of course, but Wizzy¡¯s control and finesse was still astounding to his eyes. It was too bad the man had no interest in the broader mage world, given his experience.

    ¡°Archmage,¡± Harper said, breaking himself from his admiration of magic technique. ¡°We¡¯re here because we have an important request.¡±

    ¡°Oh?¡± Wizzy¡¯s voice was not exactly welcoming, but Harper plowed on regardless.

    ¡°Archmage Janry has gone too far,¡± he admitted. ¡°While we might have disagreements with people in your Earth Alliance, neither of us are willing to be disposable catspaws for Janry to realize his vision.¡±

    ¡°And now that you see what trap you¡¯ve walked into, you come to this one begging for help in escaping it,¡± Wizzy said. It was not a question.

    ¡°Call it what you will, but we all know that archmages don¡¯t fight each other. We¡¯re all old, careful, and none of us really know how it¡¯ll turn out.¡± Moravin snorted and shook his head. ¡°The rest of us wouldn¡¯t stand for it anyway. But now? No, Janry thinks he is better than us, and that he will be some kind of kingmaker when the dust clears.¡±

    ¡°At this very moment, he¡¯s ordering people to sabotage the mundanes here on Earth,¡± Harper said. ¡°We were going to go along with the original plan, but even we have limits. What he¡¯s doing isn¡¯t just politics, it¡¯s going to get a lot of people killed and that is only if it works.¡± It might well be too late for some of the fae and mage teams.

    ¡°You want this one to clean up your mess.¡± Wizzy tilted his head just slightly, and Harper took a breath. This wasn¡¯t going how he expected. If anything, he¡¯d thought that Wizzy would be perfectly happy to help them out, since Janry was his enemy too. The man never participated in the politics of the Archmage¡¯s Council, so Harper thought Wizzy would be straightforward.

    ¡°We want to remove someone who has violated all the rules we put on ourselves,¡± Moravin said into the silence. ¡°He¡¯s willing to sacrifice his own cadet Houses. Maybe even his own House! After all, he¡¯s not at House Janry right now, where you¡¯d strike.¡±

    ¡°No?¡± Wizzy showed the first real expression, even if it wasn¡¯t much of one. A single eyebrow went up half an inch.

    ¡°He¡¯s with Magus Rossi,¡± Harper supplied. ¡°Not sure if it¡¯s for an alibi or if he wants hostages. He could probably destroy the entire Enchanting Guild if driven to it. But he might well come out to meet us, given the right excuse.¡±

    ¡°Simply baiting him out would be a pittance of the restitution required from you,¡± Wizzy said, which made Harper wonder how much Wizzy knew. The oldest archmage in the world was nobody¡¯s fool.

    ¡°Better than what Wells would do to us when all this is over,¡± Moravin said sourly. ¡°Or the dragons, or that new fae princess. Even if Janry¡¯s plan worked, that wouldn¡¯t shield us from reprisals for actual deaths.¡±

    ¡°It would not,¡± Wizzy acknowledged. ¡°Very well. Let us see an end to this foolishness.¡±

    ¡°What excuse are we using?¡± Moravin asked, looking over to Harper, who smiled in response.

    ¡°I am not quite as late to this conclusion as it may seem. There have been some messengers from the Greater Courts in Faerie asking about the Houses, and even Archmage Janry ¨C especially Archmage Janry ¨C would have to meet one in person. I was originally intending to suggest that the messenger summon Wells, but under the circumstances I doubt that would work out.¡±

    ¡°The Ghost cares not for Faerie¡¯s blessings,¡± Archmage Wizzy said, showing a slight trace of amusement. ¡°Yet, bidding a messenger from the Greater Courts will be on your own head. As will many other things.¡±

    ¡°Yes,¡± Harper sighed. ¡°Let¡¯s get on with it.¡±

    Wizzy stepped forward, his odd shadow coiled at his feet, and waved languidly at the teleportation circle. Neither of them had gotten more than two steps beyond it.

    Harper simply turned around and energized the teleportation framework once again, reappearing in the small common compound in Faerie. Archmage Wizzy appeared the moment he stepped out of the receiving circle, and Moravin came last. Harper had the distinct feeling that he was being escorted by Wizzy, rather than the other way around.

    The return to House Harper was entirely silent, the back of Harper¡¯s neck itching from Wizzy¡¯s regard. When they landed, Harper had a servant bring the appropriate scry-comm before they got past the vestibule. It wasn¡¯t like they were intending to stay.

    ¡°Archmage Saren? Yes, this is Harper. I was wondering if that fae messenger was still there with you.¡± So far, none of the people from the Greater Courts had been by House Harper, but that was perfectly fine with him. Nobody close to Earth dealt with what were euphemistically called the Summer or Winter Courts, since those fae were very far from human.

    ¡°Yes, it¡¯s ¡ª hang on,¡± Saren¡¯s voice came over the scry-comm, sounding distracted. ¡°It was here.¡±

    ¡°You wanted to see me?¡± Another voice interrupted Saren¡¯s, and Harper blinked down at the oversized black cat stretched languidly across the polished wooden floor.

    ¡°Ah, the messenger is here now,¡± Harper said, trying to remain calm. It was no good to try and expect normal behavior from deep fae. ¡°Thank you, Archmage Saren.¡±

    ¡°Better you than me,¡± Saren said, and the scry-comm clicked as he disconnected. Harper turned his attention to the cat, which didn¡¯t look all that powerful, but still had managed to teleport directly to House Harper, through all the wards, without him noticing.

    ¡°Yes,¡± Harper said to the cat, glancing back at where Wizzy stood, thumbs tucked into his belt loops. ¡°We were simply thinking that this would be a good time discuss your business in Faerie with Archmage Janry. I would simply need to summon him.¡±

    ¡°I smell treachery,¡± the cat said with a purr, rolling over in a sunbeam like any housecat ¡ª even though there were no windows to cast the beam where the cat lay. ¡°Delicious. Yes, do summon him. Tell him that Cait Sidhe of the Greater Courts requires his presence.¡±

    ¡°Please, come in,¡± Harper said, beckoning everyone into the front room and then heading into his office to retrieve the scry-comm in question. He took a breath and then activated it.

    ¡°Archmage Janry?¡±

    ¡°Yes? I am in the middle of a tour.¡± Janry¡¯s voice came back, dull as ever but still somehow sounding just a touch acerbic. Unstated was that he was also in the middle of an attempted coup.

    ¡°I have a fae from the Greater Courts here at House Harper requesting your presence. Under the circumstances I don¡¯t think it¡¯s in our interests to wait.¡±

    ¡°I see.¡± There was a pause as Harper waited, and he paced the floor in his study. He suspected that Janry would actually leap at the chance, but the man had never decided anything quickly in his life.

    ¡°Yes, very well, that does take precedence,¡± Janry said. ¡°I will be there shortly.¡±

    ¡°I¡¯ll be waiting,¡± Harper said, and cut the connection. Then he stepped out of the office and looked at the butler. ¡°Evacuate the staff immediately,¡± he told the man. ¡°Warn all mages to have shield and flight foci ready.¡± He hoped it wouldn¡¯t devolve to a battle, but there was no telling what would happen. He¡¯d never actually seen what Wizzy could do.

    People flowed out of the House, through the teleporters in the back, even as he returned to the front room. Wizzy was petting the Cait Sidhe, which seemed absolutely suicidal to Harper, but the fae was allowing it so he wasn¡¯t going to say anything.

    ¡°He¡¯s on his way,¡± Harper reported, not certain whether Janry would use the teleporter or fly in. ¡°Be ready.¡±

    ¡°I am,¡± Wizzy said, scratching the Cait Sidhe between its ears. Harper regarded him uncertainly, but since Wizzy didn¡¯t maintain a sphere of authority it was hard to know what to look for. It also didn¡¯t make him look like a mage, so it might be easier to surprise Janry. Fortunately, the combat was not his responsibility.

    Moravin cycled through his foci, sphere flickering slightly from reinforcing shields, and Harper went to the vestibule to greet Janry. If he weren¡¯t a water mage, he¡¯d be sweating. It was a long few minutes until the teleport pad activated and started to pull in mana, forming the spell framework before vanishing to reveal Archmage Janry.

    ¡°Welcome,¡± Harper said, hoping that if he looked at all nervous it¡¯d be attributed to the presence of the Cait Sidhe. ¡°It¡¯s just inside. I¡¯m not entirely certain what it wants.¡±

    ¡°Likely to discuss the disposition of Earth,¡± Janry said brusquely, almost brushing past Harper on his way through the door. ¡°Where is¡ª¡± He froze just past the vestibule, then whipped his head around, fixing Harper with a cold glare. ¡°Traitor.¡±

    Harper¡¯s shields reacted faster than he could, rigid water deflecting stone shards as the ground shook, massive slabs of rock punching through the floor and destroying walls. Metal formed a sphere to protect Moravin, but the Cait Sidhe just watched as Wizzy simply took one step forward. A tiny dot of red punctured stone and shields alike, zipping forward faster than Harper could track, and everything stopped.

    Janry stood rigid and unmoving, and Wizzy¡¯s eyes seemed to glow with a strange light as the displaced and conjured stone sank back into the ground. After an instant Harper understood that Wizzy was controlling Janry¡¯s own vis and undoing the spells he¡¯d cast. It didn¡¯t repair any of the damage that had been done, but removed all the obstacles Janry had thrown out in the few seconds of combat.

    ¡°I suppose¡ª¡± Moravin began, but was interrupted by a sudden portal opening, surprising him since he hadn¡¯t even seen the magic to create it. A hulking dragonblooded came through, followed by Archmage Taisen. As if Wizzy weren¡¯t bad enough.

    ¡°Ah,¡± said a voice, coming from a small metal box that Harper hadn¡¯t noticed before. ¡°You already have him.¡±

    ¡°He is helpless,¡± Wizzy said firmly. ¡°I will ensure he remains so.¡±

    ¡°Good,¡± said the voice from the box, which Harper knew had to be The Ghost. ¡°He has a lot to answer for.¡±

 Chapter 21 â€“ Revelation

    Callum was thrown by his other allies taking care of Janry while he¡¯d been busy putting out fires, but in the end that was what alliances were for. If he¡¯d been by himself, things would not have turned out so well. As it was, the outcome was mostly positive ¡ª at least for the Earth Alliance. Janry was rather less fortunate.

    One of Janry¡¯s allies was dead, and two others had turned on him ¡ª Callum didn¡¯t really get it, but the cadet Houses breaking with Janry was apparently a close equivalent to a country declaring independence. Nearly unprecedented, but under the circumstances it would probably stick. In addition, most of the mages and fae sent on the actual attacks were dead, absolutely severing Janry from any aligned forces.

    The Earth Alliance had stopped the vast majority of civilian casualties, but the veil of secrecy had been well and truly broken. Callum didn¡¯t know how that affected Chester¡¯s plans, and since it had only been a few hours after the mad scramble, there hadn¡¯t been time for it to really set in for anyone.

    Callum would have almost preferred to just end Janry right then and there, when Wizzy had him dead to rights and his guilt was obvious. Cooler heads prevailed, however, and he waited with everyone else for a proper reckoning. Not that he would have hesitated a moment if the rest of the archmages tried to pardon Janry, but they knew better than that.

    ¡°I believe we have a quorum,¡± said Archmage Montgomery, who was apparently even more important than he had seemed. Once again Callum was attending an event in person, but not one he¡¯d ever expected. He contented himself to stay behind Taisen and Hargrave, next to Gayle and Felicia¡¯s mage companion Ray, all of them standing in House Harper¡¯s courtyard.

    It wasn¡¯t exactly a trial. That would imply some sort of legal proceeding, some sort of charges. Instead it was simply most of the archmages coming together and agreeing that Janry had gone too far. It was easy to forget that most of these men and women came from an age where public executions were entertainment ¡ª and the only punishment short of death was exile.

    Janry was still under Wizzy¡¯s control; the Archmage of Blood lounging in the corner, showing no apparent strain at keeping Janry upright, unmoving, and awaiting his fate. Montgomery stood next to him, dressed in suit and tie, looking for all the world like a young accountant rather than someone about to pronounce death. The other archmages were similarly formal, but lacked the pomp and circumstance of the summit.

    ¡°For anyone who doesn¡¯t know, Archmage Janry hired a number of fae and instructed a number of mages to essentially destroy as much of Earth¡¯s mundane infrastructure as possible,¡± Montgomery said. Callum could quibble with the framing, but the details didn¡¯t matter too much. ¡°He broke our secrecy with Earth in the worst possible way and, worse, betrayed his House and all the cadet Houses that depended on him.

    ¡°Does anyone speak in his defense?¡± Montgomery surveyed the crowd. There was silence. He turned to Janry. ¡°Do you have anything to say for yourself?¡± Wizzy waggled a negligent finger, and the control slipped enough for Janry to glare at Montgomery.

    ¡°Cowards,¡± he snarled. ¡°History will remember you as the quislings that betrayed your¡ª¡±

    That was as far as he got before Wizzy cut him off. Montgomery was unbothered by the accusations, merely shaking his head theatrically. There was probably some sort of inter-mage politics going on, but it didn¡¯t involve Callum. Only Janry mattered.

    ¡°I think the best solution would be to simply exile Janry to a useless portal world. It was not an option we had before but, bereft of a homebond, he could not return.¡± Montgomery offered a half-bow in Callum¡¯s direction.

    ¡°Certainly,¡± Callum said, though he would have preferred to just shoot Janry and be done with it. Though there was no need to put Janry in a nice and comfortable portal world like his own. In fact, he knew exactly which one he wanted. ¡°Just give me one moment.¡± He lowered his voice, muttering an aside to Lucy, who was listening in. ¡°Lucy? Could you check the forbidden list and give me the coordinates on Hate Mountain?¡±

    ¡°Sure thing,¡± Lucy said, catching his intention, and after a minute read off the coordinates and the number of the nearest drone. He was aware of the attention focused on him while he maneuvered the drone to the appropriate area, letting Lucy fly it the last few hundred feet so it was on target, then looked up at Montgomery again.

    ¡°Ready.¡±

    Montgomery held up a ring, Janry¡¯s homebond, and then put it in his front pocket.

    ¡°We will discuss the disposition of House Janry at a later time, but the House as a whole does not seem to be implicated. I¡¯ll keep this to be returned to the House coffers.¡± He nodded to Callum. ¡°If you please, Mister Wells.¡±

    Callum reached out, his vis thread flowing through portals to the moon and back, to a specific place in the midwestern United States, and tore open a small portal between realities. Through that small portal he ran another thread, and created an opening between Faerie and the Mountain Made of Hate. Everyone save Wizzy took a step back at the blast of emotion radiating from the portal.

    Before anyone could say anything, Wizzy flipped his hand, hurling Janry with his fancy clothes through the portal. Callum snapped it shut. Once again he hosed down the dimensional link over in the US with anti-mana, since he did not want the Mountain Made of Hate to have even a fragment of a chance of breaking through into the real world.

    He didn¡¯t care what it did to Janry.

    ¡°What was that?¡± Felicia¡¯s voice floated past his ear, and he glanced back at the fae princess. Her equipment had become even more fanciful and ornate, but it didn¡¯t look at all delicate. If anything, the battle dress had an aura of impregnability about it, as if it could deflect tank shells.

    ¡°The reason why I have to be careful when opening new portal worlds,¡± he told her. ¡°Not everything out there is as pleasant as Faerie.¡±

    ¡°My homeland has its own thorns,¡± she remarked. ¡°But point taken.¡±

    ¡°We are done here,¡± Montgomery said, over the muttering that started to arise in the wake of the portal¡¯s closure. ¡°I¡¯m sure we all agree that the matter is settled.¡± His last two words were fairly pointed, and Callum wasn¡¯t certain whether he was sending a message to the Earth Alliance or the people who had agreed with Janry.

    Some of the archmages flitted up into the air, headed back to their own Houses. Others grouped up in twos and threes, discussing things, while Wizzy sauntered over to the Earth Alliance area. Callum would have been quite happy to leave himself, but he was everyone¡¯s ride so he had to be considerate.

    ¡°I¡¯d have preferred a public execution,¡± Wizzy remarked. ¡°But I think your demonstration was effective as well.¡± He narrowed his eyes at Callum, his shadow curling up over his shoulders. ¡°You¡¯re not opening up the hells, are you?¡±

    ¡°Absolutely not,¡± Callum assured him. ¡°Nobody knows how to get there but me, and I¡¯m making sure to eradicate the connection with prejudice.¡±

    ¡°Excellent,¡± Wizzy clapped him on the shoulder. He wasn¡¯t the only one who wanted to be certain that any link to such a place was properly severed. Montgomery himself didn¡¯t come over, but a few of the other archmages that Callum had seen in Montgomery¡¯s orbit approached with essentially the same concern. Nobody wanted to deal with monstrosities like the Mountain Made of Hate.

    They weren¡¯t intending to stay for long. The gathering was impromptu to begin with, and Chester was still dealing with world leaders. Yet before Callum had a chance to make a portal back he saw a man in ordinary clothes, a button-down shirt and slacks, following a cat, both of them walking straight toward him. Something about the man bothered him, but it took a moment for Callum to realize exactly what it was.

    Callum couldn¡¯t sense him.

    By his spatial perceptions, there was no one there. He could see the person, but there wasn¡¯t even the slightest disturbance in the mana field. The grass bent under the man¡¯s feet, and he seemed real enough, but something about him made Callum¡¯s hair stand on end.

    ¡°Ah, you are The Ghost?¡± He asked, the cat sitting down next to his feet and washing its paw.

    ¡°I am,¡± Callum said cautiously, ready to teleport away. Hargrave and Taisen were nearby and didn¡¯t seem concerned, but they didn¡¯t have Callum¡¯s senses.

    ¡°I appreciate you helping out Queen Felicity,¡± the man said, offering a hand. Callum took it, still disturbed by his inability to sense the man ¡ª but the hand was real enough, the handshake firm. ¡°Good luck with your Earth troubles. Just don¡¯t open any more portals like that here, eh?¡±

    ¡°Thank you,¡± Callum said, feeling somewhat at a loss. ¡°I don¡¯t intend to.¡± He wasn¡¯t sure what else to say, but Felicia rushed over, saying something in a rapid patter he couldn¡¯t understand at all. The man laughed and turned to her, replying in the same language, something that sounded a little like Gaelic. Then she hugged him, and turned to beckon Ray over.

    ¡°I wonder who that is,¡± Callum muttered, taking a step back, glad to leave the weird fae to people with more experience.

    ¡°No idea,¡± Lucy said into his earpiece. ¡°Shows up strange on the feed. Like, he¡¯s in higher fidelity than everything else, and that¡¯s just bizarre.¡±

    ¡°Fae are strange,¡± Callum agreed. The odd man wandered off after a brief conversation with Ray, the black cat trotting along next to him. Felicia stepped up to Callum, while Ray trailed in her wake, looking dazed.

    ¡°Ready to go,¡± she said, glancing at the other archmages who had come.

    ¡°Sure,¡± he said, reaching out to make a portal for them. While Felicia did have her own Ways transport, it didn¡¯t lead directly to House Hargrave. Not yet. ¡°Who was that, by the way?¡± Felicia blinked at him, then laughed musically, the grass dancing to the sound of her voice.

    ¡°That was my father,¡± she said, smiling. ¡°Oberon. King of Faerie.¡±

    ¡°Oh,¡± Callum managed, feeling as if someone had walked over his grave.

    ¡°Holy crap,¡± Lucy said.

    ¡°I think he likes you,¡± Felicia added. ¡°So long as you stay over on Earth, anyway.¡±

    ¡°That¡¯s the plan,¡± Callum said fervently.

    ¡°We¡¯d better go,¡± Hargrave butted in, either being more sanguine about the ruler of Faerie crashing the party or not actually knowing about it. Considering that nobody had really seemed to pay attention to Oberon, Callum guessed it was the latter. If Oberon could fool Callum¡¯s magical senses, then he could fool everyone else¡¯s.

    ¡°Right,¡± Callum said, and opened the portal to House Hargrave. ¡°Good luck.¡±

    Reading on this site? This novel is published elsewhere. Support the author by seeking out the original.

    Everyone went through, and Callum took one last glance around to see if he could see Oberon before teleporting himself home. Once he was in his own private portal world he relaxed somewhat, and opened a portal for Lucy from the war room so she didn¡¯t have to walk. Alex was happily snacking on fruit, completely unaware of the drama of the past few hours.

    ¡°Thanks, dear,¡± Lucy said, stepping through and easing herself onto the couch. ¡°How long before they make the announcement?¡±

    ¡°Another couple hours,¡± Callum said, putting his arm around her. ¡°I¡¯ll be playing taxi a little bit, but for the most part I¡¯m out of it. Honestly, I don¡¯t know if there¡¯s going to be total chaos or everyone is just going to collectively shrug and go on with their lives.¡±

    ¡°Probably both,¡± Lucy said. ¡°Why don¡¯t we invite the Connors over? Their daughter is only a little younger than Alex.¡±

    ¡°Sounds great,¡± Callum said, though he still felt he barely knew the people he¡¯d rescued years ago. They were definitely Lucy¡¯s friends, but it would be great for Alex to meet someone who wasn¡¯t a mage or shifter as well.

    Especially since the two worlds were about to finally meet.

    ***

    Chester stood on a stage in full war-form, wearing a suit and tie fitted to his stature. He had been working with his symbiote to adjust the details of his shifted state, making him look slightly less bestial. Instead he was carefully groomed to appear noble, elegant, civilized, courageous, and all the other things people attributed to wolves ¡ª even if he wasn¡¯t a wolf. Appearances mattered, and first impressions mattered most of all.

    Which was why Felicia, in her fantastical battle-dress, was being attended by pixies. There were none of the darker fae around for this, and while Felicia still looked dangerous, it was more along the lines of being a regal queen than a monster or thug. Taking up half the stage on the opposite side from Felicia, Shahey was present as a full winged dragon. Unlike his usual personas, the massive form was gold-scaled and clad in sleek black cybernetic barding, making him look more like a civilized person than a beast.

    House Hargrave and House Taisen represented those mages still based in Earth proper. Hargrave had his core family seated in chairs, while Taisen had a small squad with both men and women. The Hargraves all were dressed formally, in a fashion not quite like anything on Earth, while Taisen and his people were all in pseudo-military uniforms, making their disposition clear.

    He rather wished he could have had The Ghost there, considering how important Wells had been to the entire architecture of events that had brought the supernatural world to this point. But he hadn¡¯t even asked, for The Ghost was The Ghost and to serve as a proper bogeyman he should be invisible, unattainable, and unknown.

    Of course there weren¡¯t just supernaturals around, as that would have defeated the point. World leaders and captains of industry, as well as no few celebrities, had been invited and sat on riser platforms flanking the stage, catered to with fae delicacies. The press pool had representatives from major networks, as well as the biggest streamers he could find.

    The venue was not on Earth, nor was it Faerie or the Deep Wilds. The political implications of holding it in someone¡¯s territory were too tangled, and the entire point was to show that supernaturals were not of Earth. Instead, they were using one of Wells¡¯ new portal worlds, something fantastical enough to be obviously not Earth.

    There were three suns and four moons in the sky. The suns were visibly red, blue, and green, the moons were pastel, and one even had rings. In the distance, waterfalls cascaded up inverted mountains, dripping into shining spheres that floated lazily through the clouds, occasionally bursting and dumping their contents onto the landscape below. It was, frankly, unlivable; the entire landscape was unstable and the day was permanent, but it made for a perfect backdrop to demonstrate the reality of magic.

    ¡°Everything¡¯s ready,¡± Lisa murmured from where she was standing at the back of the stage. One of the advantages of shifter senses was that he could listen in on all the communication traffic without needing an earpiece. Chester acknowledged that through the pack bond and took a few steps forward to the podium. The microphone there was of dragon make, a sleek chrome thing set into the surface of the podium, and there were enchantments around the speakers to project them evenly over the entire gathering.

    ¡°People of Earth,¡± Chester said, not showing how amused he was to be using that particular phrase. ¡°My name is Chester, and I am speaking to you on behalf of the Earth Alliance of Supernaturals. I am the leader of the Midwest Shifters, and I am sure you can guess what branch of supernatural I represent.¡± He gestured to himself, his wolf-man form, and smiled at the chuckles from the press pool.

    ¡°I can assure you this is not a joke, not a stunt. Magic is very real, though this is a relatively recent phenomenon.¡± He didn¡¯t specify exactly how recent. There was inevitably going to be a balance of truth and spin, though it would do nobody any good to tell outright lies. ¡°It has been a secret, but the time for that secrecy is over.¡± Chester paused to look around at the cameras and phones, his ears flicking as he heard the muttered conversations between various people in the audience. Nobody disbelieved him, not after seeing things with their own eyes, but many of them were wondering exactly what the catch was. Chester didn¡¯t blame them.

    ¡°Some of you are no doubt aware of the disturbances of the past few hours. I am sure that many have speculated that it was a result of a terrorist organization, and on that you would be right. But it was not a terrorist organization of Earth. There are bad actors in every country, and ours are no exception. A small group of zealots tried to do as much damage as they could, to prevent us from establishing peaceful relations.¡± Chester shook his head in disapproval.

    ¡°They failed, and now they are no longer a threat.¡± He let his voice harden for the last half of the sentence. ¡°That leaves us free to engage in proper diplomacy without worrying about those who might try to sabotage the process.¡± Some of the major news networks were trying to shout questions, but Felicia had taken care of that. Those on the stage had total control of who could be heard, and how.

    ¡°Some of you may be wondering how it is that you¡¯re hearing me in your native tongue. Take it as a demonstration of magic, in addition to what you see around me.¡± Chester gestured at the stage. ¡°To my right is Queen Felicity Blackblood, ruler of Earth¡¯s fae. She has generously provided the translation spell that is rendering my words into the language of your choice. The venue itself has been provided by a certain individual who has been working tirelessly to keep people safe.¡± He waved his hand around at the absurd landscape. Let people take that as they would.

    ¡°Very little will be changing with this announcement. Very few of us actually dwell on Earth, and those that do are ordinary citizens. That will not change. Instead, we will be opening our borders. Trade, knowledge, and even immigration ¡ª because you certainly have as much to offer us as we have to offer you.¡± Chester smiled politely at the cameras, something that looked more rakish than hostile ¨C he had practiced it in the mirror ¨C and then half-turned to look at Felicia.

    ¡°And now I will let Queen Felicity introduce herself. After all, I only represent myself in this alliance, it¡¯s better that you hear from each of the members on their own terms.¡± He stepped away and Felicia glided to the microphone to begin her own speech. Chester fell back to stand with Lisa, who reached out to take his hand. The cameras caught it, of course, but that was by design. All of it was theatre, though he didn¡¯t need theatre to hold hands.

    Chester listened to Felicia¡¯s part, which was slanted to emphasize the separate nature of the fae. There was no in-depth explanation, not the sort of minutiae that would be of interest to lawmakers and businessmen, but something aimed more at the average citizen. Mostly she showed a face that was close to the lighter tales of fae, with just a hint of the underlying steel so people didn¡¯t think she was a pushover. Unlike with Chester¡¯s speech, she did allow one question through the veil of silence, right at the very end.

    ¡°What happened with the missile in India? How did you do that?¡±

    ¡°I asked it to return,¡± Felicia said, calm and serene, and then turned the stage over to Shahey.

    The advent of a multi-ton cybernetic dragon talking to the press caused more of a stir than a shifter or a fae queen did, even taking into account the single question she¡¯d allowed. Chester didn¡¯t mind; Shahey¡¯s form was rather dramatic. Unlike himself and Felicia, Shahey didn¡¯t have much to say. Dragons preferred to play their cards close to their vest, and even if Shahey and his fellows intended to take a more active role, they weren¡¯t like the other races. There just weren¡¯t many dragons.

    The mages were last, with good reason. Telling the rest of humanity that they could learn magic, or at least their great-grandchildren could, given proper care, would probably make it difficult to focus on anything else. Hargrave looked grandfatherly enough to radiate authority, and Taisen¡¯s sharp dress and sharper demeanor meant people would take him seriously when he discussed the dangers of portal worlds.

    When all the official speeches were over, Hargrave¡¯s people sunk the stage back into the ground with a judicious application of earth magic, and sound exploded as people could finally ask questions. Chester let his younger and more patient pack members mingle, but he kept himself separate, slipping into the risers where the VIPs were. Felicia did the same, but Shahey stood where he was, watching with amusement. For some reason people were less interested in mobbing a cyber-dragon the size of a schoolbus.

    ¡°I¡¯ve still got to pinch myself to make sure this is real.¡± The President of the United States took a sip of the faintly glowing fae drink in the fluted glass he was carrying. The Secret Service men near him looked acutely uncomfortable, and Chester didn¡¯t blame them. The security concerns had been the main sticking point for most of the people in attendance, but it turned out that when push came to shove, none of the leaders were going to pass up the opportunity to attend.

    ¡°I will admit we¡¯re playing some of it up,¡± Chester said, inclining his head to the president. ¡°Most of the time things are fairly normal. Most of what I do is just paperwork, which I¡¯m sure you understand.¡±

    ¡°Oh, do I,¡± he chuckled, though Chester could still smell the anxiety that underlay the casual conversation. ¡°You have no idea how much paperwork that a dozen new countries is going to cause. In fact, you all have, shall we say, rearranged all the normal political considerations. There¡¯s just supernaturals now.¡±

    ¡°I suspect that won¡¯t last long,¡± Lisa said, offering the president a reassuring smile, since she had remained in human form. ¡°Once it turns out that not much actually changes except for a few new luxuries, most people will go back to normal.¡±

    ¡°Maybe. I tell you what, it¡¯s going to wreak havoc with the election cycle,¡± the president said, and Chester laughed.

    ¡°Just have to remind people we¡¯re not the enemy,¡± Chester said. ¡°This is all in aid of not having to fight. Nobody wins if it comes to that.¡±

    ¡°I have to admit, using magic to prevent sabotage to the nuclear arsenals does rather endear you to most people,¡± the president said, not mentioning that it was magic that had allowed that in the first place. ¡°The one thing that does worry me is people wanting to leave to become mages or shifters or the like. Perhaps the grass is always greener, but hardly anyone would turn down nigh-immortality and physical or magical powers.¡±

    ¡°Absolutely,¡± Chester agreed. ¡°But these things aren¡¯t free. No supernatural is completely human, even mages, and anyone who wants to live by fae or shifter rules is going to find that their power comes with an awful lot of strings attached. Mages take generations to breed, and even then it doesn¡¯t guarantee anything.¡±

    ¡°And dragons?¡± The President glanced down at where Shahey was talking to one particularly brave reporter.

    ¡°Dragons are dragons. Bother them at your peril,¡± Chester said simply.

    ¡°Ha! Good to know the stories are right about that, at least.¡±

    ¡°Most of the stories and legends predate us,¡± Chester told him. Most of the world leaders had been briefed, but the Earth Alliance hadn¡¯t put together full histories or the like. It wasn¡¯t their place. ¡°We¡¯re still not entirely certain how the portal worlds work, and it might be those stories that influenced the way the magic manifests.¡±

    ¡°Interesting.¡± The president cocked his head, as someone muttered into his earpiece and Chester pretended he couldn¡¯t hear the question. The aides and security that the president had brought were spread out around the venue, but clearly someone was paying attention to their conversation. ¡°It occurs to me there¡¯s a major sort of legend missing.¡±

    ¡°Vampires, yes,¡± Chester admitted. ¡°They did exist, and there is a portal world where they live. Certain of us objected to the fact that vampires feed on people, so they were removed from Earth.¡±

    ¡°Now that sounds like a threat,¡± the president said. ¡°You can remove entire races from Earth?¡±

    ¡°If we closed all the portal worlds, Earth would go on as usual,¡± Lisa said softly. ¡°You wouldn¡¯t lose anything. It¡¯s the supernaturals who are strangers here.¡±

    ¡°As you say,¡± the president replied, not quite accepting it. ¡°I am quite surprised that you could push an entire species off Earth without anyone noticing.¡±

    ¡°We didn¡¯t,¡± Chester said. ¡°That worldwide suicide cult business a few years back ¡ª that was the vampires.¡±

    ¡°I see.¡± The president looked and smelled surprised, but that just went to show he hadn¡¯t actually read the full briefing. The vampires had been very thoroughly blamed for that, perhaps more than they should have been, but it was not too difficult to paint monsters as monsters. ¡°Taking care of something that large would have required a lot of personnel,¡± he hinted, listening to whoever was on the earpiece.

    ¡°Fewer than you¡¯d think,¡± Chester said with a laugh. ¡°The Ghost is quite the force multiplier.¡±

    ¡°Who exactly is this Ghost? I¡¯ve heard the name several times and it hasn¡¯t been made all that clear who, or what, that is.¡± Some of the other high-profile guests who had been standing around listening to the conversation all looked quite interested in that answer ¡ª especially with Felicia¡¯s spell rendering everyone temporarily omnilingual.

    ¡°He is someone who values his privacy,¡± Chester demurred. ¡°I can tell you this, however: his only interest is ensuring that there¡¯s no conflict between humans and supernaturals. He is entirely independent and, as you can imagine, somewhat terrifying. Not many people can provide entirely new portal worlds, after all.¡±

    ¡°Sounds like quite the bogeyman,¡± the Russian prime minister said.

    ¡°Yes, indeed,¡± Chester agreed.

 Chapter 22 â€“ Reality

    Callum cradled his new daughter, looking at her tiny wrinkled face while Lucy slept. The house was quiet, the light filtering in through the windows was warm, and the fresh air blowing in from the garden was sweet. It was peaceful in a way that he hadn¡¯t really experienced since the halcyon days of youth, and all his worries seemed so distant. Though part of that was because most of the things he¡¯d been worried about had been taken care of.

    He was certainly glad little Alice had waited to be born until after all the nonsense with Janry and the subsequent reveal to the world. There hadn¡¯t been any terrible incidents he needed to deal with, but there had been lots of shuttling to do while permanent portal infrastructure was being set up. Going public had actually been a relief. A few days of chaotic markets and various level of riot in a few places, but the general public had settled down fairly quickly. Some people, and some governments, were still so obviously hostile to supernaturals that nobody was going to be living there anytime soon, but even something as big as magic existing couldn¡¯t hold the headlines for all that long.

    There were still bills passing through the governments of half the countries in the world, debates, endless news articles, but it was just one of many things in the general furor of civilization. The problems weren¡¯t over, but he didn¡¯t have to worry about either a shadow war or a nuclear one. He didn¡¯t even have to worry about the inevitable political nonsense, because he was out of it.

    He glanced out of the open door at where Alex was driving around a miniature car in the back yard, and waved at his son. Alex waved back enthusiastically, nearly crashing into the porch, and Callum chuckled, waving again and making a face at his son. While Alex had dutifully met his little sister, there wasn¡¯t much he could do while she was sleeping and Callum was too distracted to try anything else at the moment.

    ¡°Hey, I think it¡¯s my turn.¡±

    Callum looked over to where Lucy had woken up, sitting up partway and making grabby hands in his direction. He chuckled and stood up, walking the few paces from the bedroom door and handing over Alice. Lucy cradled her daughter and made kissy noises before looking back up at him.

    ¡°Anything happen during my nap?¡±

    ¡°Nah,¡± Callum said, taking Alice back and settling her into the bassinet offering his hand to her to help Lucy up from the bed. ¡°We got a half-dozen emails about portals but no actual emergencies.¡±

    ¡°Bah, we¡¯re on vacation,¡± Lucy said, dismissing the inquiries from various presidents, premiers, and kings, and taking his hand to stand up. ¡°They can wait.¡±

    ¡°Yeah,¡± Callum agreed. He found he was less impressed by such titles after all he¡¯d been through. ¡°I¡¯m still worried I¡¯m going to get a ping from Chester or Taisen and have something dire happening.¡±

    ¡°They can solve their own problems,¡± Lucy said, the two of them walking outside into the pleasant sunny warmth of their private portal world. ¡°They¡¯ve got mages and dragons and Felicia¡¯s Gates. We¡¯ve put in enough effort.¡±

    In the weeks that followed, most of the demand on House Wells was actually Lucy¡¯s business. Various Houses settling into their own private portal worlds wanted proper internet and, combined with mages clueless about modern electronics, it made for an amusing and frustrating type of tech support. Information infrastructure wasn¡¯t magic, and that was the problem.

    She spent a lot of time on the phone, though a great may problems were mitigated when one of the dragons simply created an internet provider. It wasn¡¯t one of the dragons Callum had been properly introduced to, and the provider wasn¡¯t large, but it was good enough. The dragon could simply create new infrastructure from nothing and run optical fibers through tiny feeder portals, so there was just one building and Lucy didn¡¯t have to deal with third or fourth parties to get the installations done.

    He spent most of his time with his kids, but in his spare hours Callum found an opportunity to go back to his old profession. While mage Houses were sturdy and well-decorated, many of them were woefully designed. They just aped Gothic or Tudor styles without any real understanding of things like airflow or plumbing or wiring.

    It was great fun working with the Guild of Enchanting to create designs that incorporated the possibilities of magic and enchantments along with more conventional infrastructure. He didn¡¯t know who might be using his designs, but they probably didn¡¯t even know the plans came from The Ghost. Like the portal world distribution, it was done through Rossi both because Callum didn¡¯t feel like dickering and because it kept things anonymous.

    The money from that was deposited into a new account in a bank run by Miami¡¯s fae prince, Ferrochar. There had been some financial fallout in the markets from the supernatural reveal, just due to panic and speculation, but Ferrochar had so many existing contacts within Earth¡¯s financial space that he¡¯d taken over the bulk of the currency conversions. So far most of the Houses hadn¡¯t bothered to try and sell their services, as they were used to just dealing directly with other mages or fae, but it was only a matter of time.

    Unfortunately, while things seemed to be going mostly well when it came to the public knowledge of supernaturals, Chester was still having issues. The media blitz around what had happened at his compound had done a lot of damage, and even an official Presidential pardon didn¡¯t really fix that. Callum was pretty sure that if the government wanted to, they could have cleared up all the legal issues surrounding Chester¡¯s properties and people, but the higher ups weren¡¯t quite so grateful as to remove the leverage they had against the local supernaturals.

    ¡°It¡¯ll pass eventually,¡± Chester said when he visited, lounging appreciatively in a shifter-sized lawn chair. With his own private bad penny and homebond, Chester could travel the portal worlds as he pleased, and the shifter had played host so many times Callum had no problem inviting him over on occasion. ¡°I actually figured it¡¯d be worse, considering everything.¡±

    ¡°Governments don¡¯t like the idea of being manipulated or deceived. At least not when it becomes known,¡± Callum agreed, teleporting a couple of beers from the fridge. He handed one to Chester, who popped the stop off with a flick of his thumb.

    ¡°Exactly. Not being able to read in some of my allies ahead of time hurt, too. I wanted to, but Janry jumped the gun.¡± Chester shrugged and took a drink. ¡°Still, I have to admit I¡¯m a little disappointed, and I was thinking about other options for the future.¡±

    ¡°Yeah?¡± Callum raised his eyebrows, stretched out in his own chair watching Alex and a half-dozen shifter kids tear around the front yard. ¡°I mean, I¡¯d be happy to find you a portal world, but you¡¯re kind of stuck to the Deep Wilds, aren¡¯t you?¡±

    ¡°Sadly, yes. But I was thinking about the future. Ultimately the Deep Wilds portal itself needs to be moved somewhere that isn¡¯t owned by one government or another. Some of my pack are putting together a pressure chamber and we might prevail upon you to move it to the seafloor somewhere.¡± Chester¡¯s hand snapped out to catch a flying foam football, tossing it back to the kids.

    ¡°That is not a problem,¡± Callum assured him.

    ¡°The same team is also putting together a larger pressurized compound,¡± Chester confided ¡°I¡¯ve got a somewhat trickier request. I know that you have portals out in space. Given that all the land on Earth is more or less claimed, what about the moon?¡±

    ¡°Ha! Werewolves on the moon,¡± Callum said with a laugh. ¡°I know you aren¡¯t werewolves but it still amuses me.

    ¡°Wait until Lucy hears about it,¡± Chester said dryly. ¡°I¡¯ll never hear the end of it.¡±

    ¡°I think there¡¯s even a song about it,¡± Callum agreed with a smile. ¡°Absolutely doable, though. I honestly thought about doing that myself, but a portal world is a lot more livable. Since that isn¡¯t an option for you¡­¡± He shrugged and sipped at his own beer. ¡°Keep in mind I¡¯m still not great at transporting large things. I¡¯ll have to bring it over in pieces.¡±

    ¡°Believe me, just being able to casually transport stuff to the moon¡¯s surface is more than enough.¡± Chester lifted his beer in salute. ¡°Especially if it means that nobody¡¯s going to find out I¡¯m taking up room in a national park.¡±

    ¡°Yeah, I¡¯m sure that certain people would hold that against you,¡± Callum agreed, reaching out through his moon nexus and grabbing a space drone. Chester¡¯s request clearly wasn¡¯t all that time-sensitive, but Callum figured he might as well pull up a visual while they were talking. He didn¡¯t want to bother Lucy, who was pestering Lisa for cookie recipes, so he pulled his laptop to him and brought up the feed himself. ¡°I can imagine a bunch of people are going to be mad if you¡¯re the first moon colonist too, but oh well.¡±

    ¡°Can¡¯t please everyone,¡± Chester agreed, leaning over to look at the feed of the stark moonscape. ¡°That is absolutely surreal.¡±

    ¡°There¡¯s a reason why I¡¯m glad I found this place,¡± Callum said, gesturing out at the sunny day, the pleasant breeze, the rainbows of blowing mist in the distance from island waterfalls. ¡°The moon sounds great and all, but it¡¯s really not that exciting.¡±

    ¡°You¡¯re definitely biased,¡± Chester said with a chuckle. ¡°I don¡¯t think I¡¯d like to stay here long term myself, but you¡¯re damned lucky you found something this good.¡±

    ¡°I admit it,¡± Callum said. ¡°Though there are some nice ones for the other mage Houses. A few you¡¯d probably like, all forests. I think only one or two have serious beasts like the Deep Wilds or the Night Lands though. Let alone something like Faerie.¡± His personal theory was that all the portal worlds that had any significant presence had already broken through to Earth. It didn¡¯t seem a coincidence that, aside from certain exceptions, all the portal worlds he found were small and barren, relatively speaking.

    ¡°We¡¯ll stick with the Deep Wilds and the moon for now,¡± Chester said. ¡°There¡¯s no emergency.¡± Callum nodded agreement and the two of them sipped beer for a while until Lucy and Lisa vanished into the house.

    ¡°There they go,¡± Callum said with a laugh.

    ¡°Well, you¡¯re in for it,¡± Chester said. ¡°I¡¯ll give a you a warning.¡±

    ¡°Oh?¡± Callum lifted his eyebrows inquiringly.

    ¡°It takes a lot of exercise to work off those cookies,¡± Chester said. ¡°Lisa¡¯s recipe is addictive.¡±

    Chester¡¯s visit prodded Callum to go and finish some of the half-considered projects he¡¯d started before the crisis. There wasn¡¯t any reason to put things off anymore, aside from laziness and his preoccupation with the new addition to his family. The latter was a good reason, but the former wasn¡¯t.

    First, he made a permanent portal between his pocket universe and reality. After the dragon portal, he didn¡¯t have much trouble even if it was a lot of effort. He had to buy more vis crystals, but at this point he had enough spare wealth that was not a problem.

    ¡°So what¡¯s the plan here?¡± Lucy said, holding Alice and peering through the portal at the tiny island on the other side. Alex jumped back and forth through the portal threshold, from rock to grass and back again.

    ¡°Moon portal,¡± Callum said, watching Alex just in case he jumped too far and fell in the ocean. ¡°I¡¯ll buy one of Chester¡¯s habitats and put it up by the nexus. That way there¡¯s magic there and I don¡¯t have to replace stuff so often, and on the off chance we lose our drones there¡¯s a way back to our home reality. Plus, I know you love the moon nexus. I figure you¡¯d love a space room too.¡±

    ¡°Ooh!¡± Lucy grinned, her eyes sparkling as she envisioned it. ¡°Absolutely. If there¡¯s enough radiation shielding we can even take the kids. Does magic heal radiation damage? Gayle will want to find out I guess¡­¡±

    ¡°All of that,¡± Callum agreed. ¡°I guess for now, though, we can take a beach day.¡±

    ¡°Beach day!¡± Alex cheered, and ran off to the house to get his things.

    After the permanent connection was a success and he had a permanent link to the moon, Callum finally was ready to approach something he¡¯d promised a very long time ago. Frankly he was surprised that Shahey had been so patient, but perhaps he¡¯d been busy with the supernatural reveal. Or maybe dragons were just so long-lived that the delay wasn¡¯t really noticeable. Either way, Callum needed to figure out how to create portals to Earth from the portal worlds ¡ª and to whatever other universes the portal worlds bordered.

    You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

    Of all the extant portals, it was Portal World Five¡¯s connection that was, surprisingly, the most useful for that. Mictl¨¡n¡¯s portal was too strange, the Deep Wilds was too messy. The Fae portal seemed to be partly fae magic, and of course the dragonlands portal had been opened from Earth-side. The sea portal was the only one with a useful structure to crib from, and with his existing expertise he was able to get a sense of what changes he needed to make.

    Interestingly, the incoming structure, to jump from portal worlds to real universes, didn¡¯t seem to work on the Earth side of things, whereas the outgoing dimensional portal still functioned in portal worlds. There was obviously some complexity to the higher-dimensional topology that he didn¡¯t understand, but actually trying to map out the way all the magic and physics worked together was a job for someone else.

    He used one of the more barren and useless portal worlds for testing, a stretch of orange desert sand under a dull red sky, and punched holes in various directions. Some of them led back to the starting section in Arizona, but most did not. Straying too far from the point of origin or using the initial dimensional pattern usually meant the portal attempts just collapsed, but there were a few points of congruency with some other place.

    The little portal he made in the test world showed a completely different stretch of desert, sand and scrub and unfamiliar mountains. He hastily closed the portal and marked the area, but didn¡¯t go any further than that for the moment. It might well be just a deserted region, but if it was some other inhabited world he didn¡¯t want to kick off any potential problems by leaking magic through.

    ¡°You know, we could set up an interdimensional travel agency,¡± Lucy said, scrubbing back and forth through the little bit of footage there was of the portal¡¯s destination. ¡°We¡¯re halfway there already. Go visit exotic magic places! Other planets! The moon!¡±

    ¡°It¡¯s tempting,¡± Callum laughed. ¡°I¡¯m a little afraid of contamination though. Portal worlds are one thing, but if we break out into a normal physics universe I think we have to worry about actually running into nasty viruses or fungi or something.¡±

    ¡°Spoilsport,¡± Lucy accused him. ¡°But yeah I¡¯ve read enough horror stories that it¡¯s probably best to be careful.¡±

    ¡°I¡¯ll still make one for the dragons,¡± Callum remarked, looking over the images himself. ¡°They can deal with that sort of thing no problem.¡±

    ¡°Fae could, too. Probably shifters could,¡± Lucy pointed out.

    ¡°One way, yeah. But not the other way.¡± Callum wrinkled his nose, considering the strange flora and fauna of the Deep Wilds, or the weirdness of some of the fae. Not something he¡¯d want to unleash on an unsuspecting world. The dragons, at least, showed they had a respect for the fragility of alien civilizations.

    ¡°Now that you mention it, I¡¯m pretty sure you¡¯re right,¡± Lucy said. She frowned thoughtfully. ¡°Did this place have magic? Pretty sure contamination wouldn¡¯t be an issue if it did.¡±

    ¡°I couldn¡¯t tell,¡± Callum admitted. ¡°I didn¡¯t want to mess with it overmuch. I¡¯ll do more investigation with the dragons, just in case there¡¯s issues.¡±

    Shahey was enthusiastic about it when Callum called him up. He still had his gym business in Tanner, with that particular version of himself still anonymous. The dragons in general had seemed to make out well, aside from all the pestering they were getting from fantasy enthusiasts. And certain quarters of the internet, but that was inevitable. It turned out that most governments were quite happy to deal with people of nigh-infinite wealth.

    ¡°The more options we have, the better,¡± Shahey told him, his voice coming through an ordinary phone call. ¡°Even if you open up onto some deserted world or an airless iceball we can probably use it. There¡¯s always something to be learned, and if it¡¯s a different reality entirely there might be some tricks we can adapt. New physics is fun.¡±

    ¡°That¡¯s not a phrase I thought I¡¯d hear,¡± Callum remarked, shaking his head at the strangeness of dragons. ¡°I¡¯m not sure how easy it¡¯s going to be hit another reality with the size of your portal world. But we can give it a shot.¡±

    ¡°We¡¯ll be ready when you are,¡± Shahey said. ¡°We¡¯ve put some thought into how to properly protect portals now.¡±

    ¡°Yeah, I saw what you did for the Deep Wilds.¡± He actually hadn¡¯t seen what was going on with the dragonlands portal since that one had been entirely enclosed by a vis-dense fortress. The mana came out, but even he wouldn¡¯t find it easy to infiltrate the layers of metal and stone built up over the island. The Deep Wilds was less heavily protected, but there was still protection around the actual magical framework where it hung in space.

    It had been a while since he¡¯d done any work inside the dragonlands proper, and the dragons had built a little train system along the surface of the great cliff. Or more likely, simply magicked one into existence, since it was clearly there solely for conveying his drone around to various test sites. The car shot along the rails at a hundred miles an hour or more, carrying the drone to big metal spheres anchored in the infinite cliffside.

    At each stop Callum tested both of the dimensional portal types, trying to punch a hole either back to reality or deeper into the portal world space. While he¡¯d done a little bit of testing before, it hadn¡¯t gone very far before he¡¯d had to deal with other things. Now that he had all the time in the world, he could actually be thorough about it. He even had the time to recharge the vis crystals between tests, only doing a couple attempts each day.

    It was no surprise to Callum that most of the endless cliff didn¡¯t lead anywhere, the portals just collapsing when he tried. Considering that the portal world seemed to be transfinite, or at least larger than a planet, actually stumbling on a location that intersected some other place would take some real luck. Unless the destinations were infinite too, but that wasn¡¯t a thought process Callum was going to go into very much. Infinities stopped making sense pretty quickly.

    Surprisingly, after only a couple weeks of on-off experimentation, he did open a portal to a different reality. He popped a drone through and a single glance at the feed showed him that it was definitely not Earth. The sky was greener and there was a massive band stretching from horizon to horizon: a planetary ring. The surrounding foliage was green, but absolutely alien, forgoing the usual thin leaf shape for stretched balls that looked almost half-melted.

    The opening was at the base of a cliff, and while Callum didn¡¯t see any signs of intelligent life, complex plants were a good baseline. Interestingly, it did seem like the universe was one without magic. Mana poured through the portal, but it spread out and began dissipating into the environment very quickly, like water into sand.

    ¡°Found one,¡± Callum said over the line to Shahey. ¡°Why don¡¯t you take a look, see what you think?¡±

    Instantly a swirl of mana and vis condensed in the metal box anchored into the cliff face, and Shahey¡¯s avatar appeared. He peered through the dime-sized hole in the middle of the empty room, and then another insane expenditure of vis manifested a second avatar on the other side. The second one was, at least to Callum¡¯s viewpoint, absolutely hilarious as it was no more then three feet high, a tiny lizard-man that looked around and sniffed the air and kicked at the soil.

    ¡°Seems good,¡± the Shahey on the far side said. ¡°Nothing too bad here. We can deal with the quarantine.

    ¡°Right,¡± Callum said. ¡°Here we go.¡± He tapped into his vis crystals and tore open a massive hole between dimensions. A thirty-foot portal was still a hell of an effort, even with all his practice and with magical batteries to take up most of the slack. The moment it was open Shahey surrounded it with mana-conductive metal shaped exactly to the three-dimensional structure of the portal. The inner ring, multiple stabilization rings, the feeder vortices splaying out from the outer surfaces to inhale the local mana, everything was almost instantly cast in a permanent mold.

    ¡°Okay, that¡¯s impressive,¡± Callum admitted. ¡°I might have to ask for that for mine.¡± It wasn¡¯t exactly an enchantment, it was more like the structures were armored, allowed to flux and spin without giving anything the chance to interrupt it.

    ¡°That can be arranged,¡± Shahey said, the mini-Shahey dissipating now that the portal was open in full. Callum would still have to manage it until the mana took over, but it¡¯d be a faster process than the first time he¡¯d made a portal for the dragons. The mana-conductive support helped, as did the fact that this time the initial structure hadn¡¯t nearly fallen apart.

    Over the weeks that followed, Callum opened a few more permanent portals. One was from the Deep Wilds back into Earth, to be positioned as a connection between Chester¡¯s Deep Wilds base and his moon base. Another was a second alternate-universe connection for the dragons to yet another reality, and two others were for Houses who wanted permanent connections back to Earth.

    He tried to ignore the slow roil of the political issues between Earth and the various supernaturals as much as possible. The only time he¡¯d be necessary would be when The Ghost had to step in, which didn¡¯t happen too often now that the powers-that-be were against conflict. Which wasn¡¯t to say he was completely out of it.

    Despite all the agreements, a small group of breakaway mages from one of the Chinese houses decided to set themselves up as warlords in a rural district in Mongolia, and Taisen brought in The Ghost to neutralize them to prevent collateral damage. Callum didn¡¯t even need to kill anyone, he simply needed to hose the quartet down with anti-mana enough that they couldn¡¯t do more than voice complaints. Taisen came by to collect them with people from the main branch of the House, and Callum very much doubted they¡¯d be treated gently.

    Later in the year, a multinational interest hired a private military company to kidnap some shifters. While shifters were far more robust than humans, they weren¡¯t invulnerable, especially those who were lower in the hierarchy. At the same time, they were still supernaturals and neither the mercenaries nor their employers knew what they were dealing with.

    The Ghost evacuated the shifter families out from under the noses of their captors, and then opened the path for Chester and Felicia to take care of the soldiers. The fallout of that was significant, since there was very concrete proof and witnesses as to who wanted supernaturals for their own private purposes, and why. There were some nations that failed to extradite the masterminds, but they found themselves cut off from supernatural trade and support.

    Considering how long supernaturals lived, Callum was pretty sure that policy wasn¡¯t going to get reversed anytime soon. In fact he wouldn¡¯t care too much if the people in question ended up mysteriously committing suicide or the like, given how transparently guilty they were, but he wasn¡¯t getting involved himself. It wasn¡¯t his business, and The Ghost only had one role. Getting involved in the ever-present morass of politics was not it.

    As Alex started attending actual magic classes, Callum sat in because he¡¯d never had the background himself. Most of it wasn¡¯t helpful to him either, because so much focused on the bubble method, but he took notes anyway. He also didn¡¯t quite trust mage teachers, even if it was a House Hargrave tutor, so he wanted to be on hand in case any of the old attitudes toward so-called mundanes leaked through.

    Once they passed into the depths of summer, Lucy suggested a cookout, and Callum agreed. In a way it hadn¡¯t been all that long, but several months without needing to worry about anyone trying to hunt him down or hurt his friends or allies had been relaxing in a way he didn¡¯t know he needed. Ever since that day in the gym, he¡¯d been on guard against supernatural authorities of one type or another, but all that was gone. There was nobody out for his blood ¡ª or at least, if someone was he had plenty of protection and powerful allies.

    The invitation turned into an actual barbeque; shifters really liked cooking, and since Callum lacked the correct apparatus for anything more than grilling Chester brought his own. Not to mention coming an entire day early to get it started. Callum had to get extra outdoor furniture to fit everyone, since somehow it turned out there were more people than he¡¯d expected.

    The Connors and their kid came from Florida, and Chester and Lisa came with some of Alex¡¯s friends and their parents, along with the people he knew from Winut ¡ª Arthur, Jessica and Gerry, and Clara and her parents. Gayle, Glenda, and some of the Hargrave household, though not Archmage Hargrave himself. Ray and Felicia even showed up, which was a surprise considering that she was busy dealing with her own kingdom and it was just a barbeque, not an official gathering.

    It was a far cry from sitting in his back yard, practicing magic in secret.

    ¡°So what does House Wells intend to do now?¡± Gayle asked once all the food had started flowing from grills and smokers, using telekinesis to hold up some barbequed ribs rather than getting her fingers messy. Which probably wasn¡¯t really in the spirit of barbeque, but Callum wasn¡¯t going to complain. Especially since he started doing the same thing.

    ¡°I¡¯m not sure House Wells needs to do anything,¡± Callum remarked. ¡°It¡¯s just the four of us for now, and providing a new portal world once in a while is enough to keep us in the black for a very long time.¡± Now that they were being offered for public sale and not just to mage Houses, even with a number of restrictions and a fixed price, there was essentially no limit to how much money he could make.

    Most of that money was being reinvested by Lucy, because stacks of cash sitting around was useless, and he was happy enough to leave it to her. If most of the investments were in supernatural businesses, that was fine with him. It wasn¡¯t like their bank account was lacking.

    ¡°You can¡¯t just hang out having barbeques for the next hundred years,¡± Gayle pointed out. ¡°Okay, I guess you could, but I think you¡¯d get tired of it.¡±

    ¡°Ha.¡± Callum chuckled, watching Alex get absolutely smeared with barbeque sauce. ¡°Well, I¡¯ve got my family, and I¡¯ve still got to learn how to be a half-decent mage. I know like five tricks, and that¡¯s it. My enchanting repertoire has expanded a bit, but there¡¯s still so much I don¡¯t know, and stuff I don¡¯t know how to even start figuring out.¡±

    ¡°And most spatial knowledge rests with Archmage Duvall,¡± Gayle noted.

    ¡°Yeah, there¡¯s that. I don¡¯t think she¡¯s going to be happy to see me anytime in the next forever,¡± Callum said.

    ¡°I¡¯m sure she¡¯ll get over it in a decade or two,¡± Gayle said. ¡°It¡¯s not like your Houses are really competing, except for portal and teleport enchantments maybe. But you¡¯re not willing to go out with House teams, nor can you stabilize space, so there¡¯s plenty of room.¡±

    ¡°Maybe,¡± Callum said doubtfully, picking up his glass of lemonade and taking a sip. ¡°I¡¯m not too worried either way, though. She wants to ignore me, and I¡¯m happy to ignore her.¡±

    ¡°We¡¯ve got plenty of things to occupy our time,¡± Lucy said as she entered the conversation, returning after changing Alice. ¡°But I have to admit it¡¯s nice that it¡¯s all stuff I want to do rather than stuff I have to do. Never figured I¡¯d be retired before thirty but there it is.¡±

    ¡°One of the advantages of being part of a mage House is that you wield considerable resources,¡± Gayle agreed, then her lips curled upward in a smile. ¡°Also that nobody can tell you what to do.¡±

    ¡°Yeah! I mean, look what happened to the last people that tried to tell us what to do!¡± Lucy laughed and Callum shook his head, somewhat amused. It might have been in bad taste to gloat, but he did have more than a small amount of satisfaction that the authoritarian GAR was gone, and the more oppressive archmages dead, intimidated, or bribed into silence.

    He never would have imagined that he¡¯d have his own private dimension after his first, disastrous introduction to magic. Callum could still remember that he was just thinking about changing his identity, learning a few things, and staying under the radar. That had definitely not happened, and despite all the stress and worry of the past few years he wouldn¡¯t trade where he¡¯d ended up for anything.

    ¡°C¡¯mon dad! Let¡¯s go play squirtguns!¡± Alex came running up, his face and hands a mess of barbeque sauce. Lucy took one look at him and dissolved into giggles. Callum snorted.

    ¡°Sounds good, kiddo, but I might have to throw you in the creek first,¡± he said, standing up. Alex laughed and ran off, with Callum chasing behind.

 Epilogue

    Alexander channeled his vis through the Jumper, and watched the new portal form through the camera feed.

    ¡°Every time I see a new world, it just makes me think how weird it is your dad doesn¡¯t care about exploring,¡± Jennifer said, as a massive crystalline spire appeared through the opening, specks circling around it and glinting in the sunlight.  If he had to guess, Alexander would say there was an actual civilization there.  It wouldn¡¯t be the first one, but very few liminal spaces had people.

    ¡°It is a bit of a shame,¡± Alexander said to his wife.  ¡°He¡¯s practically the perfect explorer, but I guess if he did we wouldn¡¯t be able to.  We should be glad he¡¯s the most boring archmage.¡± Despite his words, his voice was fond.  Callum really was rather staid, even moreso than some archmages centuries older than him, but he¡¯d pioneered half the enchantments the Jumper used and had supported Alex¡¯s desire to explore.

    ¡°No, this is a lot of fun.¡±  Jennifer¡¯s hand hovered over the button that would send them through the portal.  ¡°Are we ready?¡±

    ¡°Looks like,¡± Alex said, glancing over the sensor readouts.  The foci that created the inch-diameter dimensional portals were located in their own sealed chamber, chock full of both technological and magical sensors.  More than once the destination on the far side had been unlivable, or even outright hostile.  When it came to portal worlds, a hostile landscape could be far more literal than the term normally implied.

    Jennifer hit the button, and the Jumper was wrapped in a teleportation matrix, a small thread going through the portal to unfold on the other side and shift the Jumper through.  The vehicle was the size of a van on the outside, but was effectively far larger thanks to the spatial connection back to Earth¡¯s moon.  Most of that size was given over to armor and enchantments to make sure it could safely traverse all the environments they might find.

    There was a spatial stabilization enchantment woven through the whole thing, to allow them to cross into the odder portal worlds, like Mictl¨¡n, while keeping the gravity the same as Earth¡¯s.  A separate enchantment allowed the Jumper to float and even fly, if not at the speeds of his father¡¯s drones.  The matte metal craft hovered over the exotic grasses of the alien world, and a brilliant sun shone in through the protective glass.

    Alex sent out a vis pulse, amplified by the skin of the ship, using his own particular aspects to appraise the surroundings beyond what he could see.  Gravity was straightforward enough, and he could tell that the portal world had something close to normal.  There were enough mana anomalies within the closest few miles that he was pretty sure someone or something was doing a lot of magical manipulation, however.

    His other aspect was more complicated.  It wasn¡¯t just light, it was electromagnetism.  Electric and magnetic fields and charges.  His mother had been fit to be tied over what that meant for his ability to compromise electronics, but mostly it was useful for spotting technology.  Or even magitech.  Civilization produced far different types and concentrations of energy than nature did, even if that civilization was strange by human standards.

    Alex¡¯s initial impression was proven right as the vis pulse picked up what felt like electrons moving through crystal in a set of parallel lines sweeping a half-mile under the ground.  More complex energy patterns flowed through crystalline hulls in the air ten miles above their heads, showing that it was based on technology as much as magic.  That only made sense, since most magic didn¡¯t act like what human mages could do, and reproduce most of what physics allowed.

    ¡°A crystal based tech, or magitech, maybe?¡± Alex hazarded, as the vis pulse faded.

    ¡°Ooh.  That sounds like it could be fun,¡± Jennifer said, as she started sending out messages.  The dragons were the de-facto ambassadors, the ones that actually made contact with other civilizations.  Not only did they have more experience, their avatars were expendable enough that a worst-case scenario simply wasn¡¯t.  ¡°That big tower is very pretty.  If it¡¯s all like that, this place is going to be gorgeous.¡±

    ¡°Maybe we can get some pieces for our estate,¡± Alex said, considering the unbroken shimmering expanse of the megastructure.  He¡¯d found his own liminal world for his own home, even though he could have built on one of the other islands in his parents¡¯ dimension.  Partly for the symbolic distance, since with teleports it wasn¡¯t like anyone was all that far away, but mostly because he liked having four seasons and not just the one.

    ¡°So long as they¡¯re friendly,¡± Jennifer sighed.  ¡°Though I can always do some charity work,¡± she said, volunteering the use of her own healing aspect.  Between enchantments and his own abilities, Alex could deal with most problems, but actually fixing people required something special.  That wasn¡¯t why he¡¯d married her, but it came in quite useful during their travels.

    He flooded the travel enchantments with vis, sending the Jumper forward toward the spire.  After several minutes they approached a town, but the spire hadn¡¯t seemed to get any smaller.  Alex had to revise his estimate of how damn big it was ¡ª and how big the things circling it were.

    ¡°Taisen is going to have a fit,¡± Jennifer said, looking up at it.  ¡°If they built that, they¡¯re not going to be too impressed with earth¡¯s tech.  Or ours, for that matter.¡±

    ¡°Maybe,¡± Alex cautioned.  ¡°There might be something about their magic that lets them make really big stuff, but doesn¡¯t help with anything else,¡± he said, watching something very much like a train slide into a station on shining rails.  It was obvious from the clean lines of the town, all built from various shades of crystal, that there wasn¡¯t muscle-powered squalor sprawling everywhere.

    The glamour should keep the Jumper invisible, and he pulsed his vis a couple times to make sure there was nothing active searching for them, but Alex knew not to rely on magical concealment.  It wouldn¡¯t have worked on his dad, for example, and Callum had been clear enough how too many assumptions could be lethal.  There was a reason the Jumper had several failsafes to teleport them to a secure location, just in case.  Fortunately, Shahey wasn¡¯t long.

    The avatar he sent was clearly meant to impress, in formal dress with medals and ribbons, over-tall to the point of having to hunch over in the Jumper.  His wings threatened to bump into handles and buttons, but they never quite did as he peered out through the window.  Jennifer looked like she was trying to strangle a smile at the oddly graceful clumsiness and not quite succeeding.

    ¡°If nothing else they have style,¡± Shahey concluded.  ¡°Let me out here and I¡¯ll see what they¡¯re like.  I¡¯d like you to hang around for a bit in case it seems worth it to ask your father to open a permanent portal.¡±

    ¡°No problem,¡± Jennifer said, and toggled the airlock door for Shahey.  They watched his winged form swoop down toward the outskirts of town before it vanished.  When they chose to use it, dragon invisibility was impressive.  They could even fool Callum¡¯s eyes, though not his other senses.

    ¡°What odds do you give?¡± Alex asked.  One of the civilizations they¡¯d found had been so early that writing hadn¡¯t yet been discovered, and another had been so intensely xenophobic that the dragons had simply decided it wasn¡¯t worth the effort.  Neither species had been human-like either, but with all the jumping back and forth between regular universes and liminal spaces the Jumper had gotten quite far away from Earth in any direction that could be conceived.

    ¡°They have to be at least slightly friendly if they¡¯ve built big,¡± Jennifer suggested.  ¡°Unless they¡¯re ants, that means cooperation.  But a portal world, I don¡¯t know.  There might not be a night sky and nothing to suggest there¡¯s anything else in the universe.¡±  Jennifer chewed her lip as she looked down at the town.  ¡°I¡¯d like to hope they¡¯re friendly, at least.¡±

    ¡°We can hope,¡± Alex agreed.

    ***

    Alice trimmed her fruit trees with shears, physical and mundane instruments that she preferred to the foci other mages used.  The few that gardened, anyway ¡ª most mages didn¡¯t seem to have many hobbies that weren¡¯t focused on their magic, which Alice thought was pretty stupid.  Her parents certainly thought so, and they had made out pretty well.

    A garden had absolutely nothing to do with her magic, though she did ply her specific talents to water the plants.  Not to mention feeling out the hydration and nutrition, since she¡¯d gone with internal reinforcement instead of a shell, and learned most of her craft from Uncle Huitzilin.  At the time she hadn¡¯t thought too much about it, but in hindsight it was obvious that she couldn¡¯t have learned from House Harper, where she¡¯d probably gotten the water aspect from in the first place.

    Support the creativity of authors by visiting Royal Road for this novel and more.

    She stepped back and eyed her work, then reached out to adjust the enchantments she¡¯d made to control the light of her home.  Unlike her parents or her brother, she didn¡¯t reside in the endless liminal spaces of the universe, but rather in the real world.  Though admittedly, not on Earth.

    There were still portals, of course, since the depths of space had no mana, but the habitat itself spun in the blackness all by itself, far away from any planet.  It wasn¡¯t even a supernatural effort as such, mostly using standard technology.  The only real reliance was the gravity enchantment for very slow propulsion and the spatial gates for travel or shipping.

    She felt a portal open in her house and turned to wander back inside.  Even if she didn¡¯t have the range of her dad, not quite yet, she could at least sense that much.  It helped that she could detect the shape of the person who stepped through by the moisture they displaced.  Since that particular portal led back to her parents¡¯ house, she knew who it was right away.

    ¡°Hi, mom!¡± She said cheerfully, and enfolded the much smaller woman in a smothering hug.  Some trick of genetics, or possibly something to do with the internal reinforcement, had made Alice tower over both her parents by a full head.  Something she found endlessly amusing.

    ¡°Hi, sweetie,¡± Lucy said in a muffled voice, and waggled the pot Alice had pinned against Lucy¡¯s side with her embrace.  ¡°Alex sent over another plant for you.¡±

    ¡°And you wanted an excuse to come out to the space station.¡±

    ¡°And I wanted an excuse to come out to the space station,¡± Lucy agreed happily as Alice let her go.  ¡°Callum still gets people complaining that you¡¯re out here rather than doing whatever it is that mages are supposed to do.¡±  She rolled her eyes as Alice took the pot.  It looked ordinary enough, but there was a small portal in the bottom to let the plant¡¯s native magic leak through, which was how they¡¯d ended up dealing with plants from other realities.

    ¡°Can¡¯t he just do his death stare thing at them?¡±  Alice asked, examining the pot.  The sapling inside had tiny crystalline leaves, like it was made out of quartz, but she could feel the sap running through it.

    ¡°Only if they actually dare to ask in person, which they don¡¯t,¡± Lucy said with a laugh.  ¡°The Ghost is still a bit of a legend, even if he hasn¡¯t had to do anything for a couple years now.¡±

    ¡°For the best,¡± Alice said.  Her dad was often times boringly normal and sometimes a little goofy, but when he had to be The Ghost he was a totally different person and very much not himself.

    ¡°I would¡¯ve had him come but he¡¯s out with Alex and Shahey.¡± Lucy told her, following her outside.  Both of them stopped for a moment to look at the great transparent wall at the end of the habitat, too big to be called a window, that looked out on stars and the tiny specks of distant planets.  ¡°You know, I really love this view.¡±

    ¡°It is pretty good,¡± Alice said modestly.  The habitat was an enormous rotating cylinder ¨C far cheaper than trying to create a gravity enchantment large and powerful enough for that ¨C and the interior was mostly greenery, but the far wall always showed the stars.

    Her garden of unique plants stretched out behind her house, far enough to the left and right that they actually climbed up the curve of the cylinder, all of them from different liminal worlds and universes.  Most of them were unremarkable, save for the colors and shapes, but some of them were predatory, poisonous, or held more subtle magical dangers.  Some of them made miracles.

    She put the pot into the space reserved for incoming plants, not worried at the moment about the climate.  Alex had been sending her plants for years and he¡¯d never failed to provide the information she needed.  Instead she handed Lucy a basket and the two of them went out to pick some impossible fruit, things that even the fae would envy.  There were glowing spheres, hovering grapelike clusters that seemed connected by invisible stems, even long red spirals that played soft, chiming music.

    Alice had by far the largest plot of land on the station, which could be considered nepotism, but the entire habitat was owned by House Wells.  It wasn¡¯t really cheating if it was her family¡¯s to begin with.  The produce of her garden was mostly just for her family, especially some of the more potent things that had real value.  Nobody needed to know about the seeds that could permanently increase vis capacity, or the fruit that provided a few minutes of near-invulnerability.

    Some things were just too dangerous to offer on the open market, even for The Ghost.

    Lucy took a hearty bite of her favorite fruit, which looked like a purple strawberry, tasted like sour mangosteen, and probably added a few years to her life.  Alice had tried them herself and, while her mother and brother loved them, she couldn¡¯t stand the sour things.

    ¡°Your garden is great,¡± Lucy said, as she always did.  ¡°I¡¯ve got to come here more often,¡± she added, as she always did.

    ¡°You can come over anytime, mom,¡± Alice said, giving her mother a sideways hug.

    ¡°I know, sweetie, but I don¡¯t want to crowd you,¡± she said, taking another bite of strawberry-mangosteen-life-extension.  ¡°Though maybe you¡¯ll want to think about getting more people here,¡± she added with a sly grin.  ¡°You¡¯re never going to meet any men in the depths of space.¡±

    ¡°Mom,¡± Alice complained.

    ¡°Or women?¡±

    ¡°Mom!¡±

    ¡°What?¡± Lucy asked innocently.

    Alice just sighed and shook her head.

    ***

    Gloran Golarn, the best assassin on three worlds, shrouded himself as he approached the portal.  It was different from the Crystal Span, which connected the three worlds of reality ¡ª Soria, Loreth, and Gendarn.  This was some sort of strange magic, but clearly crude and poorly made.  There was nothing sleek or smooth to the design, a mere protected circle with a ramp through the middle.

    Nor were the people themselves very impressive, lumpen and dull and probably stupid as well.  Surely they¡¯d simply taken the magic to cross worlds from someone else.  He didn¡¯t imagine they really knew what they had, since they were so careless as to make the portal actually go to a proper city.

    He flitted through the portal into the room beyond, which was lit with crude electrical lighting so unlike the illumination that civilized folk used.  Gloran had already seen the use of electricity start to spread through Loreth, where the otherworldly visitors had appeared, and he hated it.  No wonder his masters sent him to remove the foreigners.

    Gloran wasn¡¯t the only anthren on the other side, as wealthy merchants and wealthier  tourists flowed through the small passage.  He breezed past them all, invisible and ineffable, out through the trade facility and into the open air of the place they called Earth.  Some rubes gawked at what was on the other side, but Gloran just saw ugly towers jutting from the ground, a mockery of the grandeur of the Crystal Span.

    At least the towers made it obvious where the important targets were.  Gloran had intelligence from other agents on what to look for and where, the names and locations.  Clearly the so-called humans were incredibly foolish to allow such easy access, but he wasn¡¯t going to complain about something that made his life easier.

    He scaled up the side of the tower that housed the portal, past flat planes of glass, heading to the uppermost floor.  It was a common wisdom that was true for as long as anthren history had persisted.  All you had to do was kill the king.

    The top of the tower housed the head of the enterprise that controlled the portal into the three worlds, even humans realizing that the lofty heights were meant for those of great prowess.  Though Gloran wasn¡¯t all that impressed with those he saw through the windows, all of them weak and small.  They seemed to be doing paperwork, even.

    It was only when he reached the top that he saw the quality of furnishings and decorations that he would have expected from a proper leader.  Less impressive than even a moderately powerful lord from the three worlds, but at least approximating the correct trappings of power.  The man behind the desk wasn¡¯t any stronger than the rest, though. The foreign magic these humans used wasn¡¯t as easy to discern, but just looking at the person¡¯s stance and bearing it was obvious the man had no physical ability.

    That made it boring, but at least it¡¯d be fast and he could move on to other targets.  There were a number of leaders on Earth, almost as if it were dozens of worlds rather than one, not to mention some stranger forces.  The human mages, the bizarre shifters, and something known as fae.  Getting to those leaders would be harder, but he was sure that agents would be drawn to the initial deaths and it would be easy enough to follow them back.

    He ghosted straight through the windowpane, exercising his own special technique, and dropped silently onto the carpet of the floor.  Gloran¡¯s blades made no sound as he withdrew them from their special sheaths, his body still invisible as he took two steps forward.  Just as he was about to pounce, there was a faint noise.

    He whipped around to deal with the ambusher, surprised and impressed that someone had been able to bypasses his senses, when a wave of weakness crashed over him.  His stealth failed, and even his weapons crumbled from the blast of something, though all he could see was a tiny hole in space.

    Gloran crumpled to the ground, all the strength gone from his limbs.  He was still struggling to rise again when a stream of water poured from a glass on the bemused man¡¯s desk.  Gloran¡¯s target didn¡¯t seem at all surprised as the water came down next to Gloran, building a doorway that a man and a woman stepped through.  The woman captured his attention, as she didn¡¯t look like a human, and unlike everyone else he¡¯d run into she did seem powerful.  Part of him was satisfied that he had been right, that he could draw out the true rulers of Earth with their pawns, but the rest of him was frozen in horror from having all his powers drained.  The man snapped his fingers and Gloran found himself lifted by an invisible force, looking into two pairs of cold eyes.

    ¡°You were right,¡± she said, clearly not to either him or her partner.  ¡°He stinks of death.  I¡¯ll take him back and question him.¡±

    ¡°You,¡± Gloran managed to croak, wondering how exactly she spoke his language.  ¡°How did you take my magic?¡±

    ¡°I didn¡¯t,¡± the woman said dismissively.  ¡°The Ghost did.¡±

    Worlds away, Callum stopped paying attention to the drama.  He¡¯d spotted the assassin and taken care of it, and that was where it ended for him.  Most of the time, he was just Callum Wells, and that was fine.  When someone needed him, The Ghost was there.

    END OF PARANOID MAGE

 Afterword and Next Stories

    Paranoid Mage has been a wild ride from start to finish. The huge success, the attention ¨C good and bad ¨C that it attracted. I¡¯m glad so many people liked it and found it a fun read. It¡¯s definitely not perfect though, and I think one of the biggest problems is with mismatched expectations.

    I knew when I started that Callum would have to remove the mage governmental structure, and to do that in a moral way would mean he couldn¡¯t just murder his way through it. But the first book didn¡¯t really hint at any of that so the entire vibe of Book 1 and even Book 2 was entirely different.

    Then there was letting Callum become a drone operator. While it made perfect sense within the ruleset I put forth for magic, Callum¡¯s mini-portal chaining that let him do everything remotely really stymied a lot of the fun action from 1 and 2. It wasn¡¯t obvious at the time how badly that¡¯d affect things, and of course given Callum¡¯s personality he wouldn¡¯t dare approach things any other way.

    There was also a somewhat smaller niggle that was still definitely an issue, and that was how my attempt to keep everything condensed and on point meant that the pacing was very pedestrian over the books. It all felt the same, more or less. Coupled with my struggles to move the story into the final act at the beginning of Book 4 it made things slog a bit.

    Still and all, it turned out well. It was definitely a fresh take in a lot of ways, and did some really fun things ¡ª like Ray and Felicia being the background ¡°normal urban fantasy protagonist¡± characters. I don¡¯t know that I¡¯ll be returning to the world of Paranoid Mage any time soon ¡ª if anything, setting some far future sci-fantasy there would make more sense, since I had to do quite a bit of dancing around to keep it from being pinned to any specific date or include any specific political developments.

    This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.

    For now, I¡¯ll be moving onto a completely different story ¨C and I hope you all will join me.

    The next story is called Chasing Sunlight, and it is an airship adventure inspired by Sunless Sea and HP Lovecraft, along with some bits and pieces of mythological fiction. It¡¯s likely only going to be a single, somewhat long book, rather than an extremely long multi-volume series, which I know is going to make it less interesting to some people, but I hope you¡¯ll give it a try anyway.

    Here''s the blurb for it:

    Jonathan Heights saw sunlight once. He must see it again.

    At least, that¡¯s what he claims when charters an expedition east beyond the bounds of civilization. The Illuminated King has an abiding interest in such legends, while the Reflected Council is more interested in the treasures that they are convinced he has found, out there in the dark. The truth is shrouded and motives uncertain as Jonathan and the agents of both Crown and underworld take the airship Endeavor east, beyond the bounds of human civilization.

    Wonders and horrors both lie between the human lands and his ultimate goal: things long-forgotten and long-dead, that which could not be recorded on any map. They are temptation and terror to the wise and foolish alike, but not to Jonathan. He only has one goal in mind, and will not brook anything that stands between him and sunlight.

    So a nice straightforward adventure, which I think ought to be a breath of fresh air. I already have a number of chapters done (of course) and it might be considered slow starting out, depending on your tastes, but by Chapter 5 you should be able to tell if you like it. Chasing Sunlight will go up on Royal Road in September, after I''ve had enough time to create more of a buffer than I already have.

    For anyone that has any lingering questions about Paranoid Mage, I''ll be answering questions here for a while, and of course there''s always Discord.

 Not A Chapter - New Story Announcement!

    Hello everyone! I''d like to invite you all to take a look at my new story - Chasing Sunlight.</a>

    <blockquote>

    In a world of lightless skies and endless secrets, humanity is a vigil of light against the eternal darkness. Under the imprimatur of the Illuminated King and the nefarious endorsement of the Reflected Council, a veteran explorer assembles an expedition to the far east. A place that no sane and god-fearing man would ever go.

    Love this story? Find the genuine version on the author''s preferred platform and support their work!

    Jonathan Heights will, and must, for he claims to have seen sunlight. A laughable myth and fairy tale, but he will not be stopped on his journey to find it again.

    Wonders and horrors both lie between the human lands and his ultimate goal; things long-forgotten and long-dead, that which could not be recorded on any map. They are temptation and terror to the wise and foolish alike, but not to Jonathan. His purpose is clear, and he has but one goal, yet the truth is shrouded and motives remain uncertain among the agents of both crown and underworld as they join Jonathan aboard the airship Endeavor to sail the strange and exotic lands out there in the darkness.

    <hr>

    Chasing Sunlight is an airship adventure inspired by Sunless Sea, HP Lovecraft, and a little bit of Moby Dick and The Odyssey. It will be a single book, somewhere between 25 and 30 chapters.

    Chapters will be every Friday at 5PM EST

    </blockquote>

    It may not be to everyone''s tastes - even for me, its an unusual story - but I hope you''ll join me!

 Not A Chapter - Webtoon version of Paranoid Mage released!

    Hello everyone! I am excited to announce that the Webtoon version of Paranoid Mage has premiered and is available here!</a>

    Yes, there are some deviations from the original. Some of this is streamlining - cutting out things that just weren''t all that necessary or are mostly textual. Some of it is adaptation - certain things show better visually if the details are altered, or are extremely hard to depict precisely as described, etc. Some of it is for the audience - Webtoon audiences have a slightly different flavor of thing that they prefer, and a few tweaks have been made to give it more of a balance between action and thought than the original had.

    This story has been taken without authorization. Report any sightings.

    I''m not too fussed about the changes, I always knew stuff like that would happen and there''s nothing too egregious. I''m an active participant in the creation process and doing my best to tweak things here and there to make them run smoother. I know some people wish certain details were kept in or the like, but I think a lot of people will enjoy it, and I hope you do too!

    There is a separate discord here</a> for discussing the webtoon.

 Not a Chapter - New Story Announcement!

    Hello, everyone! Once again I have a new story out - and in it I return (sort of) to the world of litRPGs.

    Systema Delenda Est</a>

    Book One: Invading the System

    <blockquote>

    When the System came to Earth, technology failed, monsters appeared, and billions died as humans were inducted into the game-like physics the System enforced.

    Unfortunately for the System, not all humans were on Earth. Some scattered postbiological individuals decided to push it back, and embarked on a decade-long crusade to eliminate the System from Earth.

    You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

    Cato is just an ordinary postbiological citizen, disgusted enough by the System¡¯s excesses to go through one of the portals on Earth and spread himself to the broader System just as Earth is completely freed. He has no magic, for the System can¡¯t be destroyed from within, but he does have the technology and knowledge of a civilization that is reaching toward the second rank of the Kardashev scale. Cato may have to operate under the System¡¯s limitations, but he certainly doesn¡¯t have to play by its rules, and fully intends to remove the threat it offers.

    ¡°¡­furthermore, I maintain that the System must be destroyed.¡±

    </blockquote>

    This is a hard scifi meets litRPG fantasy, reverse System Apocalypse sort of story. It will probably be three books or so, maybe more, certainly not less. If you find that idea interesting, come on over - at time of posting there are five chapters up, some 25,000 words for you to enjoy. And of course, thank you all for reading.

 Not A Chapter â€” New Story Poll

    Not A Chapter ¡ª New Story Poll

    Hello everyone! For my next story, I¡¯ve found I have a number of stories I want to do, but I am not certain what order to do them in. Most or all of these will be written eventually, but I¡¯m curious to know what people are most interested in right now.

    These are just a first chapter. Once more is written these will likely change a little bit, smooth out rough edges and alter some details. So this is not a final product, just an idea of what¡¯s going on.

    Below are four chapters from four different stories, as well as a blurb/author¡¯s notes on what is planned for the story. Please select the one you¡¯re most interested in seeing, and of course any comments you might have.

    <hr>

    Casual Blasphemy

    Blurb:

    Years ago, Antoq made a deal with a god.

    Now his service is ended. Powers returned, oaths fulfilled, he no longer walks with conquerors and kings. Instead he is simply a stranger out of place, who wants to go home.

    But home is a long way away. A long way to go without the prestige or ability he used to have, and with people who remember him when he came through with the fire and the fury of a god¡¯s chosen. The world looks very different from the shadows, and just because Antoq is done with the gods doesn¡¯t mean the gods are done with him.

    Author¡¯s Comments:

    This is meant to be an adventure story, the back half of the hero¡¯s journey. There should be more character development for the protagonist than progression as such. It¡¯s set in a mostly low-fantasy world, but with some occult-style elements in the vein of Chasing Sunlight ¡ª though the world is more familiar than that setting.

    Chapter 1

    Antoq put his pipe between his teeth and lit it with a bit of casual blasphemy.

    The heretical flame danced along his fingertips before he flicked it onto the blood-soaked front door of The Glory Institute. Gouged-out panes of stained glass windows stared brokenly over the dense fog shrouding the crumbling moor, just above the disemboweled ribs of the second-story beams where certain forces had reduced walls of the sprawling manor to dust. Fire bit deep into the ruined wood, spreading with startling swiftness as the smoke from his pipe curled upward to join the dark clouds billowing from the shattered manse.

    The clicking of gears and the sharp sound of steel on stone heralded the arrival of the local constabulary. Antoq turned to look, exhaling smoke in a long sigh, for while he should have been long gone his old bones were no longer as suited to fast movement, especially in the wet chill of the moor¡¯s pre-dawn gloom. He had wished a moment to recuperate, but as the world had not seen fit to grant him that much respite he shifted his coils to face the newcomers.

    Sharp-faced men in white and red, atop the thin-legged mechanical mounts favored by the Olstoi, emerged from the pre-dawn mists. Olstoi always reminded Antoq of the small jaguars that roamed the lower slopes of his homeland, cast in metallic shades rather than black ones, and the leader of the squad was a particularly rumpled example of such. Long, thin whiskers like spun gold protruded from a pinched silver face, and the world-weary slump of every public servant called from their bed at an ungodly hour. Even his sergeant¡¯s badge was askew, the points of the inscribed hexagram tilted from their proper orientation.

    ¡°Gods, what is that!¡± One of the men shouted, lowering his needle-thin shocklance to point at Antoq. The sergeant was somewhat brighter, raising a hand to halt his squad, sharp gray eyes studying Antoq¡¯s no-doubt alien form and maybe even recognizing him. Naga were not exactly common in their part of the world.

    ¡°Well, lads, you¡¯re a bit late,¡± Antoq said, smoke curling out from between his fangs as he looked at the sergeant, ignoring the pointed weapon. Without divine favor, the local tongue was harder to pronounce, but he made do. Behind him, fire licked across ancient wood and dried plaster, crackling as it consumed The Glory Institute with gleeful hunger. ¡°If you had been here earlier, perhaps you could have taken some of them alive.¡± The sergeant opened his mouth, closed it, gave Antoq a sharper look, and then nodded to himself.

    ¡°I remember you. Godridden, right. Two months ago?¡± The man¡¯s voice was as gruff as his look, a growl that came from a mouth used giving orders. ¡°Did y¡¯have to do all this?¡±

    ¡°Mm,¡± Antoq said, puffing on his pipe. ¡°In my defense, they involved me, not the other way around.¡± He waved a lazy hand at the burning spawl behind him. ¡°You can try to take a look, but I would not advise it.¡±

    ¡°It¡¯s on fire.¡± The man that spoke was the same one who still had the shocklance pointed at Antoq, some young and hotblooded recruit with delusions of competency.

    ¡°It is,¡± Antoq agreed, and pointed again, this time directing their attention upward above the main doorway, where the flames had already peeled away the paint to reveal a malevolent sigil embedded in the beams of the Institute¡¯s venerable walls. ¡°For the best, I think.¡±

    The sergeant flinched at the sight, though several of the others merely gawped like landed fish, unprepared for the sight. It spoke well of them, for Antoq would not wish familiarity with the dread signs of a dead god on anyone. That was the burden of the godridden ¡ª something he no longer was, but it seemed that is old occupation hadn¡¯t truly left him behind.

    ¡°Be that as it may,¡± the sergeant said, tearing his eyes off the burning building, whiskers twitching as he stared at Antoq. ¡°We need someone to answer questions about this.¡± Antoq considered him, the look in his eyes, the set of his jaw, the lines around his face and mouth, and let out a long exhalation of smoke.

    ¡°The people inside did not begin their debauchery out of nowhere, and tracking their movements should not be difficult.¡± Antoq told him, drawing his coils up under him and rising to a level with the still-mounted constabulary. ¡°They were very important people and there will be similarly important relatives for whom your questions will be more than inconvenient. There will be a certain pressure to make of me a goat, and avoid all that inconvenience.¡± Embers flared in the pipe as Antoq pulled in more smoke, meeting the sergeant¡¯s gaze.

    ¡°Aye,¡± the sergeant said at last, eyes narrowed at Antoq. ¡°Can¡¯t say there¡¯s much I can do ¡®bout anyone that outranks me.¡±

    ¡°Of course not, sergeant,¡± Antoq replied, slithering to one side as a piece of flaming balcony plummeted from above, scattering sparks across the flagstones in front of the Glory Institute. ¡°I propose that instead of taking me as a suspect, you send me down to the Duke with one of your lads. Sidestep all the problems in one go.¡±

    Antoq had no actual desire to speak with the local nobility, and would far rather have slid off into the night, but without the protection of his former station or the resources to sidestep the kingdom¡¯s wrath he had little choice. Better to take control of the situation himself, and prevent the trouble from becoming more than he could handle. He was familiar enough with taking control of situations, as well as being in more trouble than he could handle.

    ¡°S¡¯pose that¡¯s fair enough,¡± The sergeant replied after a moment, his eyes straying to the burning sigil before twitching back to Antoq. He turned to his squad, raising his voice to a sharp bark. ¡°Oi! Harrison! Give th¡¯ godridden your ¡®patic. Miyash, you escort him down to th¡¯ Duke.¡±

    The youngest and least experienced of the squad, obvious both by physical size and a softness in their expression, looked rebellious for nine-tenths of a second before saluting and opening the door of his peripateticon. It unfolded into a small staircase, and Harrison took two steps down, stepping well aside to avoid Antoq¡¯s massive bulk.

    Pouring himself into the narrow bucket seat of one of the mechanical mount was a complex operation, but he managed to rest himself on his own coils as he worked the levers and depressed the pedals with his tail. Miyash was clearly the second-in-command, almost as aged as the sergeant and, impressively, radiated boredom despite the Glory Institute¡¯s indiscretions.

    The Olstoi was a compact fellow, the muscle of someone half again his size compressed into a frame only just large enough to drive a peripateticon. It overflowed his diminutive form, bestowing a distinctly swollen impression upon the unfortunate man as he manipulated dials and levers, turning the peripateticon around and leading Antoq back out into the mist. It was tempting to use the obscuring vapor to lose his guide ¡ª but the clanking and clacking of Antoq¡¯s mount discouraged stealth, and besides Antoq couldn¡¯t outrun an Olstoi on the hunt. Naga had many talents, but endurance was not one of them.

    Only when Antoq was shrouded from the sight of the rest of the constabulary did he let himself slump, all the myriad cuts and bruises, broken ribs and crushed scales making their presence known in an all-over ache. He was far too old to be dealing with unhinged elites scrabbling after powers no mortal was meant to wield. Antoq didn¡¯t even have the support of his god any longer, with only a searing black calm in his heart where the presence of a deity used to rest. Nor did he have any companions at his back, for they had gone their own way once their duty was complete.

    They always did.

    He nudged the controls as he steered the peripateticon along the road, following Miyash toward the city below. Lights shone blearily through the morning mists, and he regarded the blurry line that marked the marina with a wistful dread. Boat travel had never much agreed with him, but it would be faster than going overland, and he was a long way from home. Alas, any such arrangements would have to wait until the unfortunate affair of the Glory Institute had been settled.

    Several times Miyash turned back to look at him, whiskers twitching as the Olstoi opened his mouth to ask some question ¡ª then thought better of it and looked front once again. Antoq was willing enough to make the journey in silence, with only the mechanical noises of his vehicle and the tapping of metal on stone for company. The contents of his pipe slowly turned to ash, smoke vanishing into the hazy white of the surrounding mists, growing whiter as the first reaching beams of dawn stole across the moor.

    Antoq was glad enough of his pipe once they reached the city itself. While Sien was cleaner than many places he had endured, the press of people created unavoidable filth. The woody bite of smoke drowned out the smell of the city outskirts, the peripateticon freeing him from the need to slither through the muck and the mud. There were certain downsides to having a tail rather than legs and feet, and the cities of the more bipedal races contained many of them.

    He attracted startled looks from the few people up at that hour ¡ª lamplighters, window-knockers, urchins and thieves slinking in alleyways, occasional couriers or merchants carting goods. The presence of one of the constabulary prevented any incidents more than a few muffled oaths at the sight of a blue-scaled snake-man perched precariously atop an official peripateticon. At least, until they reached manse the squatting at the center of Sien, a towering confection of quarried white stone and brass ichor-craft, where a quartet of guards barred the way through into the manor grounds.

    ¡°Halt!¡± Said one guard unnecessarily, pushing his mount forward with a jolt. Antoq peered out at the man from under the brim of his hat, upending the pipe and tapping ash onto the road as he waited for his escort to explain things. The guards were the usual mean-minded leg-breakers employed by powers everywhere, their eyes shallow and dull and their very skins bloated with their own importance. Dangerous, in a certain sort of way, but nothing that Antoq feared.

    The highest-ranked of the guards glared at Antoq while engaged in muttered conversation with Miyash, and Antoq responded by tipping his head to the man. Idly, he removed his scraper from an inner pocket and carefully cleaned out the bowl of his pipe, further incensing someone to whom the greatest sin was not recognizing some imagined authority. It was a petty enough provocation, but Antoq had never got along well with worldly authorities ¡ª or divine ones, for that matter.

    ¡°Come on,¡± the guard said at length, beckoning Antoq forward, and he put his pipe and scraper away in an inner pocket before nudging the controls. Brass legs rang against flagstones, then thumped against grass as he was guided, not to the front door, but to the carriage-yard and stable illuminated by small glass lanterns. Given the early hour and the less-than-favorable circumstances of his arrival, it was perhaps the best that could be expected.

    His tongue flicked out of its own accord, tasting the cloying rot of corruption, faint but recent. The same scent that had suffused The Glory Institute. Perhaps he no longer had the demands of a god driving him forward, but a life of hunting the creeping vermin of creation had left him with habits that were hard to break. He was not here for a quarry, but it seemed they would collide nonetheless. There was an inevitability to it; the machinations of the divine, perhaps, or just the nature of cleansing fire seeking out something to burn.

    Antoq brought the peripateticon to a staggered, stilted stop in front of the side door there, sliding out of the machine as it sighed into stillness. The mist-touched grass was cold against his scales, threatening to turn to mud under the tread of too many boots and machines. The guard glared at Antoq and dismounted the proper way, crossing to the side door and pressing a panel there.

    It was an ichor-driven device, the honey-gold stuff shimmering in channels along the jamb as it swung the heavy steel outward with nary a sound. Antoq made sure to study the windows, which were far less defended and, should he need to make an exit in haste, would be of more concern than a guarded portal. It was the sort of thing that had been drilled into his head years ago, when he was but a young godridden and more experienced types had been drawn to his side.

    ¡°You¡¯ll need to surrender your weapons,¡± said a stiff-faced majordomo holding a lantern just inside the vestibule, doing a credible job of not staring at twenty feet of snake-man. In reply, Antoq spread open his coat, showing that he carried nothing that might be classed as such, only small sundries in pockets and a purse filled with coins taken from dead men. The last was something nobody needed to know, as corpse robbing was generally considered uncouth behavior, even when the corpses in question certainly deserved it.

    ¡°What, you go around without weapons?¡± The man stared at Antoq as if he was expecting the long-coat to be holding an entire arsenal.

    ¡°Never much needed to, lad,¡± Antoq drawled, and the guard¡¯s face pinched as he clearly struggled to imagine what that meant.

    ¡°This way,¡± the majordomo said, opening a door into a long hallway lit by some form of oil sconce, low blue flames inside mirrored globes set at intervals along the walls. It illuminated intricate paneling and a rich burgundy carpet that, admittedly, was quite pleasant under his scutes. Antoq had to quash a wave of weariness that tempted him to simply stretch out to his full length on the soft, short-piled stuff. He could sleep later, or when he was dead.

    The reek of repossessed god-stuff grew stronger as he slithered past doors and halls, noting each turn, each staircase and each house bell. Years ago, a skilled investigator in a far distant city had guided him to a particularly well-hidden cabal, and Antoq had taken time to learn from the young woman. The resulting eye for detail was not as good as his teacher¡¯s, but it had still stood Antoq in good stead ¡ª either to find things hidden, or to understand that which was in plain sight.

    Inevitably, the trail of corruption passed through the same door the majordomo opened for him, revealing a room lined with books, the shelves tall enough to require a ladder. Several chairs faced a long, low couch across a table in the center of the room, the furniture gilt and cushioned in dark blue. Antoq slid inside, noting the paunch of the copper-gold man on the couch; clearly the duke, with books at his left hand and papers at his right, weighted down by a jeweled letter opener. The reek came not from him, however, but from the thin man perched upon one of the chairs, an older fellow in fine purple and possessed of a nervous energy that set him nearly toppling off his perch at the sight of Antoq¡¯s entrance.

    ¡°That¡¯s him!¡± The older man screeched, jabbing a finger at Antoq. ¡°That¡¯s the one!¡±

    ¡°I can see that, Mikel,¡± the duke said with far more calm, studying Antoq with clear recognition. The guards stationed in the room were less relaxed, hands going to weapons. Shocklances and swords were readied, though not drawn. ¡°The firesnake,¡± the duke said, invoking the hated diminutive that had somehow pursued Antoq across three continents. ¡°I can smell the smoke from here, but no knife?¡± He looked to the majordomo, noting the lack of any confiscated weapons.

    ¡°No knife,¡± Antoq rumbled, slithering inside and keeping an eye on the dispensation of the guards. He stopped a reasonable distance away from the table, coiling his tail under himself. ¡°I passed that off to the young prince of Takahil some years ago.¡± That was an old bit of business, and Antoq misliked someone taking an interest in it, so he moved past it without further comment. ¡°If you know who I am, then that vastly simplifies matters.¡±

    ¡°But you ¡ª¡± Mikel began to screech again, only to stop as the duke held up a hand.

    ¡°You say that, but Mikel here claims that you have attacked the Glory Institute. Godridden or not, I cannot simply let that pass.¡± The duke¡¯s tone was not as outraged as it ought to have been, revealing he was either unaware of the full extent of the Institute¡¯s destruction, or all too aware of its dealings.

    ¡°It is burning as we speak,¡± Antoq confirmed, clasping his hands behind him to prevent his fingers from taking out his pipe of their own accord. ¡°They condemned themselves by delving into the forbidden teachings of The Door In The Moon. Though I would not have known if certain of their members had not abducted me from the road ¡ª and I doubt I was the first. How many travelers have vanished into the Institute, Mikel?¡±

    ¡°I have no idea what you mean!¡± Mikel lied poorly, that much was clear even to a non-Olstoi like Antoq. The reek of corruption grew stronger, the scent of long-dead gods filling the room. Nobody else seemed to notice, but there was a reason why Antoq had stopped where he did. What seemed a safe distance for an Olstoi was striking distance for a naga.

    ¡°There were too many people involved for it to be a true secret,¡± Antoq remarked, keeping the duke¡¯s gaze. ¡°Of course such a personage of yourself would not be directly involved, so all those minor nobility would be, perhaps, conspiring against you. Seeking the power of a dead god to usurp the proper state of affairs.¡±

    His tongue flicked out, then back in scenting the emotions on the air. The duke himself was to free of the taint, but more nervous than he looked. Antoq knew that the Glory Institute had at least the duke¡¯s tacit backing, and when he was younger, Antoq would have been far heavier with his hand ¡ª but he no longer was a true godridden, and he had found out it was easier to provide people excuses to do the right thing.

    ¡°Yes, of course,¡± the duke replied, seizing upon the implied offer. ¡°The Church is the proper authority to investigate ¡ª¡±

    ¡°No!¡± Mikel shrieked, scrambling out of his chair. Antoq regarded him without pity as the stench of corruption reached a peak and something began to unfold itself from within Mikel¡¯s frame, a presence old and hungry, its wrath cold and distant as the stars. The Door in The Moon was no less dangerous for being dead.

    Antoq struck before it could manifest fully, coiled muscle sending him blurring forward. His hand snatched the jeweled letter opener in passing, flipping it around as he drove the point through Mikel¡¯s left eye with all of Antoq¡¯s weight behind the blow. It was like hitting a tree, Mikel¡¯s body bending but not yielding despite how thin and frail it was. The decorative hilt bent around the eye socket, and what emerged was not blood or gore but invidious shadow, a frozen exhalation as Mikel shrieked in a multiplicity of voices.

    Then Mikel was just meat once more, collapsing bonelessly to the floor. The guards belatedly stirred into action, readied weapons pointed at him long after the danger had passed. Antoq turned to the duke, who had turned a burnt bronze in fear from his first contact with the supernatural. Or simply with murder; Antoq often forgot that most people had not seen as much death as him.

    ¡°You should get someone in here to take care of this before it ruins your rug,¡± he said. It was, after all, a very fine rug.

    ¡°Heresiarch take the godridden,¡± The duke mumbled, clearly not meant for other ears to hear, and Antoq laughed without much humor.

    ¡°Any man could have done that,¡± Antoq replied. Before, when he succeeded in purging such cults, he would have drawn some satisfaction from it at least. Now he just felt tired. He still knew what kind of disaster he had averted, but without the god in his head the task wasn¡¯t something he enjoyed or wanted. Antoq just wanted to go home, not slog through the three continents getting into fights.

    ¡°Then you¡­¡± The duke trailed off, his whiskers twitching as he glanced around and signaled for his guards to stands down. ¡°Will you liaise with the Church on this? We have a Bishop of the Thrice-Born ¡ª¡±

    ¡°No,¡± Antoq cut him off. Even when he had been godridden, he hadn¡¯t bothered with any such diplomatic niceties. Now that he was merely Antoq, he had even less desire to deal with any local factions. The sooner he could leave, the better. ¡°I have done you enough favors by removing this issue for you. But you can tell me who informed you about the knife.¡±

    That Antoq had a particular blade entrusted to him for safekeeping, however temporarily, was not entirely a secret. It was also not well known outside of certain circles, and certainly was not the kind of news that should have made it to a minor Duke in an entirely different kingdom. Perhaps it was innocent, but Antoq had learned never to believe that.

    ¡°Ah?¡± The duke leaned forward, his gaze flicking between Antoq and the body on the floor. Political to a fault, he was clearly calculating how much he could get away with not saying. Wordlessly, the naga slithered back to the table, projecting diffidence even if he was exhausted. The illusion of strength was just as important as strength.

    ¡°A merchant came by after you passed through the first time,¡± the duke said at last. ¡°Bechsel, blue type. Had a bunch of exotic animals, said he¡¯d seen you a while back. I just thought he wanted to know where you come from since, well¡­¡± He gestured at Antoq, who was very much not a local.

    ¡°Name?¡± Bechsel weren¡¯t exactly common in the kingdom of the Olstoi either, as the ant-like people hailed from the far coast, but they weren¡¯t unknown. Antoq had made landfall at a port in their territory years ago, but he¡¯d already handed off the blade by then.

    ¡°Venable Kellek,¡± the duke said after a moment, which meant nothing to Antoq. A Blue Venerable was exactly in the middle of the caste hierarchy, and the name was so common that it might not even be a lie.

    ¡°I see. Well, lad, I¡¯ll leave you to clean up,¡± Antoq said, having no desire to get dragged into local politics, and whatever connection the Venerable Kellek had was far out of time and space. Best to simply move on as quickly as possible and leave it behind, as he so often did. As he always had. Gods demanded much from their mortal hands, and he¡¯d rarely slept in the same place twice.

    The duke hesitated and Antoq began considering the options if his hand were forced. Offense, defense; allowing himself to be imprisoned and escaping; simply burning the house down. Something of it must have registered to the duke, for he hastily waved at one of the guards.

    ¡°See the godridden out,¡± he said. ¡°And fetch the Bishop. We will have to address this before overlong.¡±

    Antoq slipped out the door of the library before anyone could think better of it. At some point, the question would be asked why he wasn¡¯t acting like a godridden anymore, and he did not dare lie about his status. He¡¯d had a god in his head and he well knew what could result from any pretense he still represented them. And without the backing of a god, he was as subject as anyone else to the mercy of men.

    Something there was very little of in the world.

    The majordomo hastened after him, relatively short legs working hard to keep up with the deceptive speed a naga could achieve. Those who relied on their feet found sinuous movement disconcerting, and Antoq took enough pity on the man to pause at the outer door. Though that was at least half because he¡¯d outpaced the news and the guard stationed there was eyeing him askance and letting his hand rest on the shocklance at his waist. Given how much larger Antoq was than any Olstoi, he had to give that particular guard credit for a certain aplomb.

    ¡°Fare you well, honored godridden,¡± the majordomo lied politely, clearly glad to see the last of him. Most people didn¡¯t appreciate a corpse in their house, much less one that would bring the scrutiny of any god¡¯s representative. Antoq touched a hand to the brim of his hat and slithered out the door.

    The peripateticon was, sadly, gone, forcing him to traverse the city of his own accord. Always an unpleasant, dirty process, but one he¡¯d long resigned himself to. There was no point in subterfuge, and Antoq made purchases with dead men¡¯s money as rapidly as he could. Food, smoking materials ¨C those two were of nearly equal importance ¨C some replacements for supplies that he had expended, lost, or had taken since the last time he was in civilization. And passage downriver, again openly. Departure time was not for hours, but he still crawled into his assigned bunk.

    The noise and motion of departure pulled him from a too-short sleep, and Antoq made sure he had all his belongings properly stowed and in waterproof casings. Had there not been such trouble with the Glory Institute, had there not been some strange Bechsel asking after him, he might have actually taken the boat downriver. Might.

    He ignored the knocking at his cabin door and the call to dinner; he¡¯d eaten at least ten pounds of meat earlier and that would take some days to digest, even were he of a mind to meet fellow passengers. Instead he watched the color drain from the world as night fell, then he slipped out the cabin window once it was dark. The water was cold, but he slipped into it with nary a splash, his tail braced against the window as he lowered himself in, then began to swim.

    While Antoq didn¡¯t have the endurance to keep it up for too long, he was more than quick enough in the water to make it to the banks of the big, lazy river, sliding up and into a dense and gnarled forest. He could feel the age of the place the moment he entered the canopy, a deep and abiding patience stretching down into the earth. It wasn¡¯t like sensing the presence of gods or their touch on the world, but rather an instinctive reaction to the deep and old places of the world.

    An excellent place to lose himself, at least for a while. Perhaps by the time he made his way south, whatever furor was coming would have passed. Or at least would be less damnably tired.

    He slid deeper into the ancient forest, finding a place where roots had displaced rocks and forced them to the surface, and gathered wood. Fire was, of course, easy, as he blasphemed once again with the one small understanding he had taken from having a god in his head for so long. A spark lit from his fingertips and caught the kindling.

    So long as he kept the fire small, he did not believe the forest would mind. Most people would not believe that a forest, even one so deep and ancient as the one that stretched below the moors, had things it liked and disliked. Years of experience had disabused Antoq of any such notion. Even after all his experience there were still powers in the world he did not understand, and he suspected ones even the gods could not explain.

    The longcoat was still drying by the fire when he sensed it. Some ineffable change in the way the wind blew through the stout trees, then a faint sound from without, indecipherably liquid. His tongue flicked out and caught the scent of something acrid and dark. Not The Door In The Moon, but something else, something familiar. He sighed and packed a particularly flavorful blend into his pipe and lit it with a splinter from the fire, setting his hat aside as it came out of the darkness.

    Bones and driftwood heaved themselves forward, formed into a massive feline shape that seemed to be coated in tar. Each movement was accompanied by cracking, popping, and a raw bubbling breath, as if motion itself was painful for the thing. It seemed unfair that after so long Antoq was still capable of fearing such things, but the frailties of mortal flesh could not be so easily discarded.

    ¡°Well, come on then,¡± he said, plucking a burning brand from his fire and holding it ready. Instead of a roar or growl or any normal monstrous sound, the thing rushed forward in silence. He dropped flat, darting forward under dripping ivory talons and raking his lit torch along the underside of the monster. The burning wood hissed, almost extinguished by the black, reeking stuff that bound the detritus together.

    The monster slammed a leg down, claws drawing a burning line along his scales where he hadn¡¯t quite avoided it and adding to the catalogue of aches and pains. Antoq darted off to the side, winding his way up one of the trees as the monster whirled, darting for him much faster than anything of that size should move. It tilted its head, looking up at him and taking those horrible, bubbling breaths, sounding as if it were drowning.

    Antoq slipped through the canopy, head down and arms to the side, but didn¡¯t dare stray too far from the firelight. The creature followed, despite the lack of apparent eyes, pacing him below and with a sudden rush crashing against the trunk of one of the trees. It groaned and held, but shook hard enough to rattle his fangs, numbing scales where his coils wrapped around the branches.

    In another time or place he would have had people with him. Or, if not, he would have had a god riding along in his head, lending him power and purpose. Now, he had just himself and a few small understandings. It would have to be enough.

    He lifted his hand and once again called for the glimpse he¡¯d had of terrible truths, the cleansing flame which burns away the dead wood of the world ¡ª then dropped down on top of the thing. The thick, tar-like stuff clung to his scales, his coils sinking into the bulk of the thing as it reared back in surprise as he wound himself about its neck. The tar simply gave under his scales as his squeezed, sinking into the muck, so instead he thrust the flame against its head.

    The spark caught. With it came a glimpse of something cruel and cloying, impressions forcing their way into his head as the fire found fuel. Not in anything physical, but in the unnatural threads that wound around the thing and tied it together. A curse.

    With that understanding the monster went up like dry tinder, and Antoq wrestled himself away, scales smarting from the heat as it burned, small flickers of flame consuming any clinging residue. He breathed heavily, pulling hard on his pipe and feeling the smoke flow through his mouth as the focus of combat gave way to the cold weariness afterward. The monster itself vanished into smoke, rising up among the trees ¡ª and leaving behind on the ground a naked woman, a human, slumped unconscious on the ground.

    Antoq stared for a moment, finding that he was still capable of surprise, then slithered over to her. He could smell the curse still lingering, sunk deep into her bones. In times past, that would have been it; the god riding his head would brook no corruption. Instead, Antoq picked her up and carried her to the fire, removing blankets from his pack and wrapping her in them before bandaging his own wound.

    ¡°What am I going to do with you?¡± Antoq muttered to himself, settling into his coils and staring at the fire, smoke curling from his pipe. The affairs of gods and monsters and curses should be behind him. He was no longer godridden, his deal was complete.

    All he wanted to do was go home.

    <hr>

    Objects in Motion

    Blurb: Superheroes are defenders of law and justice, protectors of the meek. Supervillains are those who abuse their power for their own gain and terrorize the citizenry. To those on the ground, there isn¡¯t much difference between the two; the ant suffers when gods war. For Isaac Hartson, supers of either variety are violent, dangerous, and subject to no consequences to their actions. He¡¯s out to supply some.

    While a metahuman himself, he¡¯s not anywhere near the upper reaches of power, so his desire requires more than just fists. It takes a little bit of caution, as well.

    Author¡¯s Comments:

    In some ways this is in the same vein as Paranoid Mage, with a small skillset exploited to the utmost and a contest against The Power That Be. However, this isn¡¯t The Boys where everyone¡¯s a psychopathic murderer. Nor will it be like Callum where Isaac flat out refuses to work within the system. So, superhero urban progfantasy with more emphasis on fighting smarter than punching harder.

    Chapter One

    ¡°Quake in fear under the might of Dimetria!¡±

    A girl in bubblegum-pink armor landed on the hood of the armored car, denting it heavily and sending the engine into a grinding, sputtering halt. Dimetria laughed aloud as the security immediately opened fire ¡ª and the bullets hit the armor, only to simply fall onto the hood of the car. With another bound she jumped to the rear of the armored car, bringing the wrecking bar in her hand down on the locked door. The length of steel gouged out the lock and latch mechanism both, and the door swung open.

    Inside the armored car were racks after racks of softchips in padded cases, and another guard whose bullets hit the pink armor and clinked to the ground. Dimetria grabbed two of the cases, one with each hand, and then turned and left with a mighty leap, vanishing into the tangle of buildings, railways, and roads with only a few more desultory gunshots. The car didn¡¯t have any meta security because, really, softchips were not valuable enough for any real villain to waste their time on.

    Dimetria jumped several more times, attracting some attention from ordinary folks on the ground, and then ducked into the stairwell of a parking garage. Off came the painted, printed foam of the armor, as well as the radioactive blonde wig, which were stuffed into the bottom of a burn barrel. The first appearance of Dimetria would also be the last.

    Isaac Hartson had no desire to actually be a supervillain. The ones that had any success were powerful, ruthless, and terrifying, all things that Isaac was not. All the rest were either independents who were quickly squashed by either heroes or other villains, or simply employed by the bigger names.

    Superheroes were cut from the same cloth, even if they were nominally playing police rather than predator. Violent and dangerous to everyone around, impressed with their own power. Growing up in the foster care system had shown him that the people in charge were mostly out for themselves. Even the foster housing had turned out to be a coldly calculated public relations campaign.

    The waiting shopping cart had a bottle of water and some wet wipes, which were used to get rid of heavy makeup, leaving a young man in rumpled, mismatched clothing instead of a supervillainess. Isaac opened the cases, dumping the contents into a garbage bag, which went into the shopping cart, and then tossed the cases into the culvert outside the stairwell. When he emerged from the stairwell himself, he looked like any other homeless man in Star City.

    He pushed his shopping cart through the parking garage, which was old enough to lack the ever-present surveillance in the nicer parts of the city, and when he was satisfied that he was alone he opened the trunk on an old beater car and shoved the garbage bag in. Closing the car again, he continued pushing the shopping cart. His route took him out of the garage and around to the intersection where he took out a cardboard anything helps sign.

    The whim he¡¯d had to try out theatre as a kid had turned out to pay dividends. Acting was useful, as was being able to spot people who were, themselves, acting. Isaac wouldn¡¯t consider himself any great master at it, but a surprising number of people just never bothered looking past the obvious. Which was why he was making himself obviously harmless.

    The disguise wasn¡¯t entirely safe; not because he thought he¡¯d get caught but because homeless beggars were organized. Isaac didn¡¯t know which supervillain it was, but it was obvious the moment anyone took a closer look at their too-uniform signs and mysterious ability to get to high traffic areas at peak times. His chosen corner, on the other hand, was out of the way and only needed to serve for a few hours.

    A pair of heroes flashed past as he was still trying to get comfortable ¡ª or as comfortable as he could be in thirdhand clothes on a street corner. One flying, one on the ground, both far faster than human speed. They completely ignored him, no doubt searching for the brand-new villainess that had been in no database. There were certainly supers who could have tracked him, but he hadn¡¯t even robbed the whole truck. Most of the top level heroes had better things to do than account for some idiot villainess grabbing a few hundred thousand credits worth of softchips.

    Isaac stayed on the street corner for a good three hours and accumulated exactly zero donations, despite his hangdog look and rough clothing. The closest he came was a trio of gangers shoving him over and upturning his shopping cart before going on their way. Acting like a harmless, homeless bum turned out to be harder than acting like an idiot teenage villainess. He could have easily thrashed the gangers, but that would have just made his life harder. Maybe even gotten a low-level meta called in, either hero or villain.

    Once the shadows stretched all the way across the street, he returned the shopping cart to his beater car, popping it apart by taking off a few screws. Even if he had just robbed an armored truck, he wasn¡¯t about to litter the streets by leaving a cart out where someone could drive into it. Isaac wasn¡¯t that much of a villain.

    The car clattered and grumbled on the way home, the old ¡®832 Odelle rattling with the same not-quite-disrepair as it had for the past decade. Twice on the drive he saw supers, once on the streets and once in the skies, going about whatever it was that had caught Star Central¡¯s attention. Distant sirens blared, then fell silent, but the car¡¯s radio had long been broken so he could merely wonder.

    He pulled into the cramped parking lot of his apartment complex, taking a moment to shove the garbage bag into a more normal-looking gym bag and then hiked up the stairs to the third floor. Letting himself in, he took a moment to breathe and ensure he was carrying himself normally before crossing into the common room where his roommate was tapping away at a computer. Isaac probably didn¡¯t need to, given how deeply Cayleb was involved with his work, but there was never telling what a tinker talent might notice.

    ¡°Hey, man,¡± Isaac called, finally relaxing. It actually took some effort to not seem too giddy, as he¡¯d finally taken the first steps he needed. Planning, thinking, and hoping were one thing, but actually crossing the line into action was another. Though admittedly, it was only a small bit of action, the robbery serving only to empower his brother in all but name.

    Cayleb swiveled his entire body around on his padded chair; the tinker¡¯s superpower had also given him a double-sized head, so he couldn¡¯t actually turn his neck, not against the brace that supported the oversized cranium. He gave Isaac a broad grin, clearly in a good mood even for him.

    ¡°Yo, man!¡± Cayleb said, lifting a hand. ¡°You just missed a super fight.¡±

    ¡°What, someone fighting here?¡± Isaac said, a sudden flush of alarm running up his spine. One of the reasons he¡¯d chosen the apartment block was that it was near to territory run by one of his targets, but he had thought it was far enough away to avoid the low-level supervillain gang wars that were a constant feature of the rougher parts of Star City.

    ¡°Nah, over by your hospital,¡± Cayleb said, swiveling back to poke at his tinker-rigged computer setup, a nest of wires and monitors. A video came up of several flying supers slugging it out with floating mechanical spheres in the sky, energy beams drawing blue and white lines. It didn¡¯t last long, but a blur at the bottom of the screen showed one of the spheres leaving the hospital at high speed. Whoever had sent them clearly got what they came for.

    ¡°Professor Mechaniacal¡¯s work, but not his modus operandi,¡± Cayleb enthused, waving a finger at the monitor. ¡°It¡¯s too loud and too small-scale. Someone must have found one of his stashes. Bet they¡¯re going to get in so much trouble when Mechaniacal finds them.¡±

    ¡°Don¡¯t scare me like that man,¡± Isaac asked, slapping Cayleb on the shoulder. ¡°I know we¡¯re both metas but any real superfight is going to crush us.¡± Cayleb swiveled slightly to look at him and made a slight movement of his head, the good humor in his eyes dimming for a second.

    Both of them were just one of hundreds of children who had ended up orphaned by one particular superfight, almost twenty years ago. The school panic rooms had remained intact, but not much else had in a twenty-block radius. It was one of the biggest death tolls in Star City¡¯s history, but the villain in question had never been caught. Instead, Blacktime and his people still flouted Star Central¡¯s rule and, pragmatically, controlled most of the crime in the Five City Alliance.

    Unlike Isaac, Cayleb didn¡¯t let the thought get him down for long. He just shrugged and continued onward, an attitude that made it clear Isaac was right not to actually read Cayleb in on future plans. Frankly, the guy was a born hero, easygoing and positive, and not at all cut out with the sort of skullduggery involved with supervillains. Such as how Blacktime was actually the lover of the other member of that superfight, at least according to rumor. Glorybeam certainly seemed to hang around the area Blacktime operated more than she should, at least.

    ¡°Anyway,¡± Isaac said, brushing aside his own comment. ¡°Who¡¯s this Mechaniacal? Never heard of him.¡± That was actually true, despite Isaac knowing a lot about Supers ¡ª admittedly, not as a fan in the way Cayleb often was.

    ¡°Mechaniacal is an old school villain, his tinker stuff doesn¡¯t even use electricity! Complete mystery origin, people think he might even be extradimensional.¡± Cayleb laughed, rubbing his bald and oversized head. He had no hair at all, despite being actually younger than Isaac. ¡°Man, his stuff is slick. I¡¯d love to pick his brain.¡±

    ¡°I can just bet,¡± Isaac laughed. ¡°Hey man, lemme grab a shower, then you can run the footage for me,¡± he said, hefting the gym bag as an excuse. Cayleb waved a dismissal, turning back to his monitors, and Isaac ducked into his own room, shoving the pilfered softchips under his bed.

    Much of the room was taken up by scraps of material and a few full costumes ¡ª a couple reproductions of fictional metas, and one game character. Some people liked to cosplay as actual supers, but Isaac had always thought that was just asking for legal entanglements. Star Central was understandingly protective of its superhero images ¡ª and aping supervillains was just not a good idea regardless.

    He grabbed his towel and bypassed his costuming work to pull out some ordinary clothes before heading to the shower to complete his cover story ¡ª and chew over his next move. Isaac wasn¡¯t so dumb as to think he had a chance of actually taking out Blacktime or anyone at that level, since ultimately he wasn¡¯t that powerful a meta. The local gang leader and one of Blacktime¡¯s lieutenants was another matter.

    Crash Hardiron ¨C and didn¡¯t that just say everything anyone needed to know about the guy ¨C was, so far as Isaac could tell from his research, an old friend of Blacktime¡¯s. Someone who would have dirt, connections, and other things that Isaac could use against people. Not himself necessarily, but selling it to rival gangs or the media would be enough. It wasn¡¯t necessary to kill Blacktime or Glorybeam to topple them.

    But to even think about touching someone like Crash, Isaac needed support. He wasn¡¯t going to pull Cayleb into his actual activities, but tinker work was necessary for someone with a low-level talent like Isaac. Armor and weapons were obvious, but transportation, communication, and fabrication were probably more useful. Isaac had already spent years on costume work, so leaning into that was probably for the best.

    When he opened the door again, he heard voices out in the living room, ones he didn¡¯t recognize. Despite the fact that it was probably nothing, given that there was no yelling and Isaac was pretty sure Cayleb¡¯s chair had weapons, it was still unexpected enough to send a jolt down Isaac¡¯s spine. He held onto his towel, charging inertia into it just in case it was needed and walked out the short hallway into the room, then froze.

    There were two supers in full uniform. He vaguely recognized them, but the uniforms had an insignia everyone knew; Star Central¡¯s signature golden-rayed icon. One was clearly a tech type, an albino man with a cybernetic slimsuit and what seemed to be mechanical eyes, while the other was probably a bruiser given her oversized gauntlets.

    ¡°Isaac Hartson, D-Class Strength-type power,¡± the cyborg muttered dismissively, returning his regard to Cayleb. The bruiser eyed him a moment longer, but also didn¡¯t seem much interested.

    ¡°Hey, Isaac!¡± Cayleb said, completely oblivious to the super¡¯s attitudes. ¡°Cyberlocution there snagged my drone from the hospital fight and thinks I¡¯ve got what it takes to work for Central!¡±

    ¡°Oh, wow, bro!¡± Isaac forced himself to speak as normally as he could, now that it seemed that they weren¡¯t there about his earlier theft. The mask he used at work slipped into place, something less confrontational and slightly duller than he was at home. A slight slump of the shoulders, a bit of droop to the eyes, and a certain set to his jaw made people see him as quite a bit dimmer than he actually was. It was especially hard since he had to force down his frustration at the timing; he never would have risked the robbery if he¡¯d known Cayleb was going to get that kind of offer. ¡°That¡¯s a hell of an offer. Congrats, man!¡±

    ¡°Heck yeah!¡± Cayleb said cheerfully. ¡°Imagine all the toys I¡¯ll get to work with!¡±

    ¡°You would be beholden to a certain degree of security, Mister Ruston,¡± Cyberlocution said to Cayleb, as if in an attempt to repress Cayleb¡¯s usual cheer.

    ¡°Oh, sure, sure. Not a problem,¡± Cayleb said. ¡°When do I start?¡±

    ¡°Immediately,¡± the bruiser grunted. ¡°We¡¯ve got a van inbound.¡± Isaac nearly rolled his eyes at the word choice, figuring that the super was ex-military. Or maybe she just read too many books.

    ¡°Oh. Oh, I see,¡± Cayleb said, his cheer disappearing as the potential suddenly became immediate. Isaac pursed his lips for a moment, then crossed over to clap Cayleb on the shoulder, not missing how both supers tracked him very closely as he did so.

    ¡°Hey man, it¡¯s going to be great,¡± he said. He personally didn¡¯t trust any of the supers, no matter what their designation was, but a tinker just couldn¡¯t get by in a cramped, low-income apartment. Cayleb was practically a brother, and Isaac wasn¡¯t going to let him ruin his chances with cold feet or just because it was personally inconvenient. ¡°They¡¯ll probably have something better than a neck brace for that giant noggin of yours, too. Just remember your pal Isaac when you¡¯re tinkering up supercars or something, eh?¡±

    ¡°Hah! Yeah, don¡¯t worry about that, man,¡± Cayleb said, thumping his chest in a salute that he¡¯d picked up from one of the Tech Legion¡¯s commanders. ¡°I¡¯ll make sure I make you some good stuff.¡±

    Cyberlocution politely waved Isaac away and produced a small packet from a pouch at his waist, eyes glowing before he pressed it against Cayleb¡¯s chest. In a moment it expanded outward into a cybernetic suit, but one that wrapped around Cayleb¡¯s oversized cranium. Cayleb blinked, and then stood ¡ª something he didn¡¯t do often. His grin somehow got even wider.

    It didn¡¯t take much more time from there. Some very professional movers bustled in, secured all of Cayleb¡¯s belongings, and bustled out in less than five minutes. Cyberlocution and the bruiser whose name Isaac still didn¡¯t know stood impatiently as Cayleb shook Isaac¡¯s hand, looking about as numb as Isaac felt. They¡¯d been roommates for over a decade, even back when they were teens in the system, and it was all over in the span of maybe twenty minutes.

    The two supers bustled Cayleb away, leaving the apartment much emptier. Isaac retreated to his room and dropped into his bed, letting out a long breath as he tried to relax. Cyberlocution had probably marked how nervous he was the entire time, but hopefully only the amount of nervousness anyone would have with two members of Star Central invading their personal space.

    Without the constant hum of Cayleb¡¯s machinery the apartment was eerily silent, but Isaac couldn¡¯t sit and stew. Things may have changed instantly for his roommate, but Isaac still had work the next day, bills to pay, and rent to make. Not to mention a hundred thousand credits of stolen softchip to somehow liquidate.

    The last thought really made it hit home, for some reason. He¡¯d planned the heist in secret for months, tested his powers where nobody was watching, and planned on ways to present the loot to Cayleb. Yet it had turned out to be entirely useless; his first great crime rendered without a point.

    ¡°It doesn¡¯t matter,¡± he told himself aloud, making a tossing-away gesture with one hand as if he could physically discard his worries. ¡°I¡¯ll figure it out tomorrow.¡±

    His shift at the hospital was just the same as any other. Saint Anne¡¯s served supers in addition to normal, and so it had some exceedingly heavy equipment that it was his job to move around. Isaac was little more than a glorified janitor, allowed to handle the megacredit machines simply because his so-called strength power came with a lot of finesse. He ran no risk of breaking anything when he moved it around, even when he was irritated.

    ¡°Come on, Isaac, we don¡¯t have all day!¡± Mister Graham said from the doorway of the freight elevator, as if he weren¡¯t responsible for scheduling and sending people out to shift equipment. Graham was a C-class psychometry super, something verging on technopathy, perfect for making sure that none of the scanners or bracers or regenerators were damaged or broken. He was also an A-class pain in the ass, taking all the credit and none of the blame for the maintenance and janitorial department and resulting in Isaac¡¯s nearly-nonexistent raises.

    In a way, Isaac was fine with that. Janitors were invisible, and that gave him more latitude to move around ¡ª and access to the hospital gave him more opportunity to find out about supers. But it wasn¡¯t like he would had much of a choice, either. Just being registered as a meta, even D-grade, closed a lot of doors, requiring overhead most normal employers would wish to avoid, and as a low grade super with, at least to the assessors, a simple strength ability, he didn¡¯t have any talents in great demand.

    The only other place he might have found a use was in construction ¨C there was plenty of that, thanks to the occasional destruction wrought by supervillains ¨C but that didn¡¯t appeal to him. More, it might expose his actual talent, which he certainly didn¡¯t want. Not only did he want to avoid being recruited by either heroes or villains, but that kind of scrutiny would make it harder for him to operate. Lacking any kind of stealth ability, he had remain anonymous.

    ¡°Coming, Mister Graham,¡± Isaac said patiently, in his persona as just another dumb strength meta, maneuvering the empty shell of a one-ton energy scanner through the halls so it could be returned to the maintenance area. The ruined device was one of the casualties of the previous day¡¯s supervillain raid, which had scavenged the components of a number of medical devices, most of which he was slowly ferrying down to the workshops in the basement.

    The ease with which he could move the shell around was thanks to his power, which wasn¡¯t actually strength. It was inertia, the resistance of something to a change in motion. Speeding up or slowing down. He couldn¡¯t do anything about gravity, since that was a constant acceleration, and the fact that he couldn¡¯t lift anything big was why he was a solid D-class power. But dropping the inertia of something huge down to near-nothing meant he could push heavy things very easily, put them around corners without effort, and wouldn¡¯t hurt a wall or a person if he rammed them.

    Even better, he could treat anything he invested with inertia as possessing either its original inertia or his changed amount. If push came to shove he could brace himself against the scanner shell as if it really were five tons, rather than the far lower inertia he¡¯d given it. Or when it came to things like his painted foam armor, he could move it as foam rather than push against the sheer amount of inertial resistance he¡¯d invested into it. The temporary borrowing and redistribution of inertia had no such benefits, and he rarely used because it was just so troublesome.

    Isaac rode the elevator down and maneuvered the shell into the maintenance bay, where Graham would almost certainly complain about it for some reason, and then went off to shift some tinker-made traction frame into one of the secure rooms. Someone was bringing a supervillain into the hospital, it seemed, as that was all those rooms were meant for.

    It wasn¡¯t his business though, so he just kept his head down and went about his work. It wasn¡¯t worth getting noticed, even by his immediate superior, and it wasn¡¯t like there was a lack of scut-work to do. Sweeping, mopping, polishing, and general fetching and carrying. Stuff that kept him essentially invisible, which was how he liked it. He¡¯d seen how often metas got picked up by one group or another, with very little choice on the part of the man or woman being recruited, and his goals were too important for that kind of thing.

    His job kept him busy for the next few weeks, during which he went about the ticklish business of fencing the softchips while he waited for word from Cayleb. One of the advantages of being near gang-controlled territory was that black markets were sure to exist, though he hadn¡¯t ever engaged with it himself. Fortunately, he did know some people from the foster home that had gone in that direction, and a few calls to some old contacts set up a meeting.

    Isaac dug through his clothes and costume scraps, putting together the proper outfit. A heavy jacket, even if it was starting to get warmer as spring wound onward; pants with chains. The blue and white armband that gangers used, even if he wasn¡¯t one. He even used some gel to slick back his short, dark hair, which he thought made him look like an idiot but was the style the local gangers used. Finally, he used one of his cosmetic pens to give himself a fake tattoo along his jaw; nothing fancy, but enough that he didn¡¯t look entirely baby-faced.

    Only once he was fully equipped did he set out, pushing inertia into his clothes as he walked the streets with the adolescent swagger of the ganger. He was a little older then most, a few years past twenty, but still could pull off the young-man¡¯s sneer. A few loitering pedestrians glanced his way, but nobody dared to bother him as he strolled up to the run-down gas station where he was supposed to meet his contact.

    Kevin was a former friend and a meta with the very unfortunate feature of having metal blades for forearms. It was the kind of thing that made him practically unemployable and so Isaac didn¡¯t much blame him for falling in with a supervillain gang, even if it was an obviously stupid decision. At least with the gangers he had some kind of worth and something like an income.

    The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.

    The other meta was easy enough to pick out as Isaac approached the gas station, steel-colored arms bare despite the colder weather. Compact, wiry, with a long face framed by dirty blond hair, a weak chin, and the twitchy, glazed look of the drug addict. Isaac was glad that he¡¯d figured out a way to make himself resistant to things like bullets and blades, since he didn¡¯t trust that Kevin wouldn¡¯t jump him. Or even accidentally hit him with razor-sharp edges.

    ¡°Yo, Kevin.¡± Isaac strolled up, getting all the way into Kevin¡¯s personal space the way a superior ganger might and looking down at the man. Kevin took a step back, eyes clearing from the drug-induced haze and taking in Isaac¡¯s posture. ¡°Long time, no see,¡± Isaac continued, barging forward and keeping the posture of the arrogant superior. Not that he had anything against Kevin, but there was no trusting anyone in the employ of a supervillain.

    ¡°Hey, uh, Isaac¡­¡± Kevin trailed off, not sure how to deal with Isaac¡¯s sneer. For his part, Isaac had to ruthlessly quash any empathy. If he wanted to sell off the softchips in any kind of timeframe, he needed to deal with criminals, and criminals were dangerous.

    ¡°Y¡¯said y¡¯had a contact.¡± Isaac loomed over Kevin, even if the blade meta was actually an inch or so taller. Clearly Keven was a bruiser, not a leader in the gangs, otherwise he might have actually stood up to Isaac¡¯s swagger.

    ¡°Oh, uh, yeah!¡± Kevin nodded convulsively. ¡°Yeah, I can introduce you to Kleppy.¡±

    ¡°By all means, lead the way,¡± Isaac said, not budging from where he stood. Kevin blinked at him again, then seemed to get the hint and circled around Isaac, glancing back two or three times in the span of a couple seconds. Isaac strolled after him, hands in pockets. He kept his back straight, acting like he owned the street, but his hands were wrapped around a couple of brass knuckles that he¡¯d stuffed into his jacket. With his abilities, he could pack a pretty mean punch.

    A few minutes of walking along dirty streets brought them to a pawn shop with bars on the windows and a bright sign proclaiming that they bought anything. Which was a place Isaac could have found himself, but hopefully with an actual introduction he could do more than just try to liquidate the softchips at one-tenth cost. Inside, it seemed the proprietor was ordinary enough, but not all metas were obvious and Isaac kept the inertia invested in his clothing just in case.

    ¡°Heeey, Kleppy. Got someone who wants to do business,¡± Kevin said, trying to match Isaac¡¯s swagger as if he were actually important.

    ¡°Oh yeah?¡± Kleppy squinted at Isaac from a tanned and wrinkled face, the guy looking like he¡¯d been dealing with shady customers for at least sixty years. ¡°What have you got?¡±

    ¡°Softchips,¡± Isaac said, withdrawing a sheet of the stuff from his pockets. They were packaged like pills, in perforated eight-by-sixteen plastic trays. He¡¯d only brought a quarter of what he pilfered, just in case, and the way that Kleppy¡¯s deeply-lined face lit up with avarice confirmed that was the right choice.

    ¡°How many you got?¡± Kleppy asked, holding out a hand. Isaac didn¡¯t hand over the merchandise. A thug might, but Isaac was playing a smart thug and should be more careful.

    ¡°How much are you paying?¡± Isaac countered, returning the sheet to his pockets and looking down his nose at Kleppy. It wasn¡¯t just an act either, since the entire point of the trip was the money. There was definitely a point at which it would be better to sell them at an online auction, even if it would take a very long time to offload them if he wanted to avoid suspicion.

    ¡°Ten per,¡± Kleppy said, and Isaac just turned around. Kleppy wasn¡¯t taking things seriously, since softchips were usually closer to a hundred and fifty creds secondhand. More, when they were fresh in the packaging like they were. He¡¯d gotten two steps toward the door when Kleppy¡¯s voice came again. ¡°Hey, I¡¯m just kidding! I can pay ninety for them.¡±

    Isaac paused, turning around to look at Kleppy and raising his brows while Kevin hovered uncertainly. After a moment Isaac extracted two sheets from his pocket and held them up, showing them to Kleppy.

    ¡°One-twenty,¡± Isaac said, no humor in his voice.

    ¡°Best I can do is ninety-five,¡± Kleppy said, eyeing the softchips.

    ¡°One-ten, but I¡¯ll provide a minimum of four sheets at once.¡± That was half a box, five hundred twelve, as softchips were sold in powers of two. Kleppy chewed on nothing in particular for a bit, focused on the softchips in Isaac¡¯s hand, then shrugged. ¡°One hundred, and four sheets at once.¡±

    ¡°Done,¡± Isaac said, able to do the math easily enough, and the two boxes would net him enough for a reasonable nest egg without breaking into the amounts of money that would draw serious attention. He took out the last two sheets from his pocket and held them out, although he was still expecting some attempt to cheat him. Maybe Kleppy would just grab them and refuse to pay.

    Surprisingly, the shifty-looking man actually unlocked a cabinet underneath the counter and extracted the required credsticks, placing them on the counter and stowing the softchips in the same place. Isaac figured that Kleppy was used to dealing with metas, who wouldn¡¯t be particularly forgiving if Kleppy welched on them. Or maybe it was just the promise of future product.

    ¡°Hey, you gonna have more?¡± Kleppy asked, while Kevin hung on every word for some reason.

    ¡°Probably,¡± Isaac said, refusing to make a commitment, and turned to leave. This time nobody stopped him, though Kevin tagged along behind. For all that Isaac had known Kevin once upon a time, he definitely didn¡¯t want a drugged-up meta following him around, so Isaac popped a couple of tabs off the smallest credstick and tossed them over.

    ¡°For your help,¡± Isaac said. ¡°Enjoy.¡± Kevin pocketed the money, looked at Isaac and worked his jaw for a moment.

    ¡°Hey man, I got ¡ª I got a dealer for Fasttab. Makes everything seem so slow, like whoosh.¡±

    ¡°No,¡± Isaac said, giving Kevin a scornful look that was mostly real. There was just no way he was going to join a junkie on a drug run. ¡°I stay clean,¡± he said, and waved the other meta off. Kevin frowned but scurried away after a moment, heading down the street deeper into gang territory. Isaac went the other way, keeping up the swagger so nobody thought about jumping him after clearly doing some business with the fence. Even if he looked like a ganger, that didn¡¯t make him safe, and it didn¡¯t require meta powers to slip a knife in someone¡¯s ribs or hit them over the head with a pipe.

    His brisk, purposeful walk deterred any scavengers from trying to approach him, and marching into a slightly better area of the city shed the pair of gangers following him. He ducked into an alley, taking a plastic bag from his pocket and removing his jacket and the chains from his pants, shoving them both in the bag and then ruffling his hair. An alcohol wipe got rid of the tattoo, and he relaxed his stance to the slight hunch of his janitor persona. When he emerged a few second later, he was obviously not a ganger, and was then more comfortable headed home.

    Some might have thought he was being overly cautious, but Isaac had been at the hospital long enough, and done enough research, to know how dangerous supervillains could be. Or for that matter, superheroes. They were all, without exception, brutal mercenaries who didn¡¯t think twice about destruction and death.

    When he got home, he checked his network accounts once again, still finding nothing from Cayleb. Which contributed to the growing unease and a gnawing feeling in the pit of Isaac¡¯s stomach, something that made his sleep restless and his job more irritating than ever. He went to work, returned home, went to work, returned home. Isaac had few friends outside his former roommate, and with Cayleb¡¯s status in flux it was hard to make any plans.

    Isaac returned to Kleppy¡¯s pawn shop three more times over the next two weeks, liquidating the remainder of the softchips. He used his ganger persona each time, sauntering fearlessly down the street, and nobody dared mess with him. Nobody called his bluff, either, which was fortunate since he wouldn¡¯t have been able to really fake being in Crash¡¯s gang.

    At the end of the third week after the superheroes recruited his friend, Isaac finally got a message from Cayleb. Yet he just felt a sense of foreboding as he clicked the item in his inbox, which had the header of whoops!

    Hey Isaac! If you¡¯re reading this I haven¡¯t been around to stop my dead man¡¯s switch from going off, or maybe I just forgot. If I forgot, feel free to slap me about the head. If I¡¯m not around, well, I¡¯m sure you know more about what¡¯s going on than I do. On the off chance someone needs a will, just send all my tinker stuff to Techbro, and you can have everything else.

    Isaac stared at the message, simple as it was, and felt the bile on his tongue. He rose from his computer, went to the bathroom, and spat, washing out his mouth and then chugging a glass of water. His thoughts spun pointlessly for a few minutes, his hands pouring himself another glass of water of their own accord, which downed before he turned to leave the apartment. There was only one thing he could think to do.

    In all his time in Star City he¡¯d never visited Star Central. Even when he was a kid at the children¡¯s home, despite Star Central actually funding the home, there¡¯d never been a trip out there. The enormous tower loomed in the middle of the city, taking up a full block and fifty stories tall, a pillar of white metal and dark glass, housing the superheroes that protected Star City from villains and the depredations of the world at large. For all that, the lot where Isaac parked his old, beat-up car was just like any other, if occupied by a higher class of vehicle than he normally saw.

    Isaac looked both ways before crossing the road and headed for the front doors, noting that there were more metas ¨C or properly, supers ¨C in evidence than anywhere else in the city. A sentinel inside, figures flying to and from balconies high up on the building, and there was almost certainly a tinker or two behind the slick, low-profile camera bubbles that were dotted all over the building.

    He was in his janitor persona, hair slightly unkempt, with a hunch to his shoulders and a droop to his eyelids. It put him at the bottom-most rung of the kinds who frequented Star Central, who seemed to be mostly individuals in suits or designer dresses. Or, of course, costumes.

    A gust of wind hit him just before he went inside, cold air seeming to blow right through his jacket. The interior was warm though, perfectly climate controlled as might be expected, spotless and populated with more metas than Isaac had seen in one place before. Mostly they were clustered around a desk with a sign above it labeled Tasks and Bounties, presumably loitering to wait for something they could fulfill, but many were entering or leaving a personnel-only area at the far side. Isaac ignored all that and crossed to the information desk, standing in line and tapping his fingers impatiently against his pockets.

    ¡°Can I help you?¡± A listless meta drawled, a third eye on her forehead managing to look just as bored as the rest of her.

    ¡°Uhh..¡± Isaac affected uncertainty, even if he¡¯d rehearsed dozens of lines in his mind. ¡°So, a friend of mine was recruited a few weeks ago? And I haven¡¯t heard from him,¡± Isaac explained, although he very much doubted that he¡¯d get anything useful from the receptionist. ¡°His name¡¯s Cayleb. Cayleb Ruston. Is he doing okay?¡±

    ¡°One moment,¡± the secretary said, still bored, and tapped at her computer. Then tapped again, as Isaac bounced impatiently on his feet, trying to ignore the taste of anxiety in his own saliva.

    ¡°Mister Ruston is on a classified project.¡± The voice came not from a secretary, but from a woman that had somehow appeared at Isaac¡¯s back. He whirled around before he could suppress his own reaction, eyeing a tall, busty super in a faceless black-and-gold armor with the icon of Star Central on both her shoulders. Glorybeam herself. ¡°You are Isaac Hartson. You work at Saint Anne¡¯s Metahuman Hospital.¡± It wasn¡¯t a question.

    ¡°Err. Yes.¡± Isaac said, gawking at the S-Class super and clinging desperately to his cover as a slightly dim janitor.

    ¡°Initial appraisal put you at D-Class, Strength type,¡± the woman said. ¡°I believe that may no longer be accurate. Methysia, schedule a follow-up appraisal for Mister Hartson on Monday.¡±

    ¡°Of course, Glorybeam,¡± the secretary replied, followed by the sound of keys rapidly striking a keyboard. ¡°Monday at noon.¡±

    ¡°Monday at noon,¡± Glorybeam said. ¡°Be there, Mister Hartson.¡±

    ¡°I, uh, okay then,¡± Isaac replied, although he was already trying to figure out how to get out of it. Whether Cayleb was perfectly fine and just isolated, or had been consumed by something terrible within Star Central, Isaac wouldn¡¯t be able to do what he wanted if the supers got their hands on him. No freedom, and certainly no accountability for either the supervillains or Cayleb. Not that he was going to give up, but for right now, it was time to leave.

    Isaac Hartson needed to disappear.

    <hr>

    Body of Words

    Blurb: Marcus and Cynthia, historian and linguist, are explorers of ruins ¨C the ruins of civilizations thousands of years old, out among the stars. Arriving on a new world isn¡¯t unusual for them, but that world having magic certainly is. The goal is straightforward: get back home. The path there certainly is not. The pair to contend with the native civilizations, which are powerful and dangerous in their own right, as well as the relic technology of the civilization that opened the way to this world in the first place.

    Author¡¯s Comments: In some ways the protagonists are from the same world as SDE, posthumans with some flourishes. But unlike SDE, we¡¯re working with magic. This is a breadth-oriented progression fantasy with some scifi elements. The magic system is pretty discrete and relatively low-powered, to avoid some of the inevitable cultivation world elements it¡¯d otherwise create.

    Chapter 1 ¨C Tipler

    ¡°This should really be a black hole.¡±

    Marcus stared through the viewscreen of the runabout Where There¡¯s A Whip There¡¯s A Way as it approached what looked to be an ordinary human habitat in the classic O¡¯Neill mold. A pair of counter-rotating cylinders, looking like they were made out of some silvery-matte metal hung in space, far from any star or planet. The visual was misleading, since the gravity readings they¡¯d taken from some light-years out confirmed there were thousands of stellar masses there ¡ª except none of it was in evidence close in.

    ¡°There¡¯s only one thing I can think it¡¯s made of,¡± Navigator Merle said over the commlink, pausing dramatically. The rest of the crew back on the main ship, the exploratory vessel The Well Known Jones, jeered at Merle¡¯s theatrics.

    ¡°Well?¡± Cynthia asked, Marcus¡¯ wife being the only other one on the Whip. ¡°We¡¯re the ones who are headed in there, Merle. Don¡¯t tease me!¡±

    ¡°Fine, fine,¡± Merle said, waving a tentacle from the viewscreen. As a four-ton cephalopod, her gestures were always expressive, by sheer scale if nothing else. ¡°I think it¡¯s a cosmic string.¡±

    ¡°I¡¯m not a physicist, but even I know that¡¯s silly,¡± Marcus said dryly. A cosmic string wasn¡¯t even a physical object as such, just a one-dimensional flaw in spacetime from the birth of the universe.

    ¡°That might explain the spectral analysis though,¡± Pilot Meck said with clear reluctance, his two-dimensional avatar pacing across the viewscreen. ¡°It¡¯s the weirdest damn thing I¡¯ve ever seen, flat all the way across.¡±

    ¡°Oh, that makes me feel so much better,¡± Cynthia said with a laugh. She wasn¡¯t physically present in the cockpit with Marcus, but rather resting in a small implant in the brain of bioengineered body Marcus was wearing. Unlike the rest of the crew she wasn¡¯t actually biologically based, but rather a natural-born AI.

    ¡°Mysterious megastructure, made out of impossible materials, which can¡¯t be explored remotely?¡± Marcus laughed, as the material blocked the signals from the drones they¡¯d sent to survey it, meaning it required more than some simple programming to map the interior. ¡°It¡¯s exciting, but there¡¯s a reason we use backups.¡±

    The pair of them were not just on the Whip, but also back on the Jones. Nobody explored relics left behind by human ¨C or alien ¨C civilizations without at least that contingency. For all that they loved their work, everyone on the Jones knew how dangerous relic technology could be. The Jones had explored hundreds of ruins over thousands of years, and had run into lethal response more than once. Captain Dromall had even needed to rebuild the Jones from scratch ¨C and restore everyone from backup ¨C twice.

    ¡°True, but keep yourself safe,¡± Dromall ordered. ¡°And make sure you take plenty of recordings, dammit. I don¡¯t want another incident where there¡¯s only some EyeCam footage of a priceless historical relic before it falls apart.¡±

    ¡°Hey, you try keeping focus when you¡¯re being assaulted by fish!¡± Merle protested. ¡°Besides, it was your idea for me to be the first one down to that ocean moon!¡±

    Marcus chuckled as the crew of the Jones continued to bicker good-naturedly, steering the Whip with gentle taps on the controls. This close to the Jones and to unknown artifacts, the only propulsion they dared use was cold-gas, meaning the trip between the exploration vessel and their target was not a short one. Nor was it purely ballistic, as despite entire suns worth gravity being somehow offset so close to the artifact, there were still some bobbles here and there that he had to correct for.

    ¡°I wonder if it was never decorated, or all the decorations got worn off the cosmic string material?¡± Cynthia mused as the shuttle drifted toward the habitat. ¡°I imagine it¡¯s practically indestructible.¡±

    So far there hadn¡¯t been a need for either his or Cynthia¡¯s specialties, as there were no markings or symbols for either an historian or a linguist to decipher. While Marcus had a thorough knowledge of much of humanity¡¯s spread across the stars, something as simple as an O¡¯Neill cylinder didn¡¯t tell him much, especially one so shorn of details.

    ¡°Merle, was there a supernova or something in the area in the past, oh, twenty or thirty thousand years?¡± Marcus asked. There was no telling how old the artifact might be, but he had a sneaking suspicion it was human. One of the problems with being some fifty thousand years behind the furthest frontier of expansion was that many of the ruins and artifacts they came across were relics of some long-ago colonization effort, from megastructures to cave drawings. Not that the galaxy was abandoned, but it was an extremely large place and active civilizations were few and far between.

    ¡°Looks like there could have been a nearby gamma-ray burster four thousand years ago,¡± Merle volunteered, and Marcus gestured triumphantly at the frosted-silver surface of the habitat. Even if such cataclysms wouldn¡¯t dent cosmic strings, they would certainly strip the paint.

    ¡°Well, hopefully we aren¡¯t looking at an artifact built by Sufficiently Advanced Morons,¡± Dromall said. ¡°Remember the Nothing Factory?¡± Everyone groaned. That particular relic was one of the most frustrating they¡¯d run across, as it was a clearly functioning machine, but there were no control surfaces, no symbology, no intake or output. Just something grinding away with no hint as to its true purpose.

    ¡°Well, at least this one opens up,¡± Meck said, as the habitat grew in the Whip¡¯s viewscreen. ¡°I¡¯m going to laugh if you can¡¯t get past the airlock, though.¡±

    ¡°Fair,¡± Marcus admitted, but that was why he was in his current body. Base human for the most part, some seven feet tall with long vantablack hair and electric blue eyes. Just a touch of engineering, enough to make it comfortable. Importantly, it was human, as many of the sensors left behind after thousands of years were at the lowest level and designed to detect a human presence.

    Of course, that detection could be anything. From basic mass and shape to heat, to electrical signals or genetic markers, respiration products, or acoustic analysis for heartbeat and blood flow. Everyone used different ones for different reasons, and the easiest way to try and trip them was simply to use a human frame. Of course, that wasn¡¯t a guarantee, but it worked often enough for a first try.

    ¡°Bah, if there¡¯s a network I can at least give it a try,¡± Cynthia said, as it wasn¡¯t just spoken languages Cynthia specialized in. It wasn¡¯t like anyone expected her to be able to compromise a clarketech system, but it was surprising how often just being able to ask work for things worked.

    Meck eased the Whip into place by the airlock, which was large enough to hold the little runabout and didn¡¯t require any of the extensive adaptation mechanisms the Whip carried. Marcus took it over for the final approach, as once it was inside the doors closed and cut them off from the Jones and their primary selves. The exterior cameras showed that there were markings on the walls of the airlock, and a set of squares that probably denoted tether areas for craft similar to the runabout. Lacking reason to do anything different, Marcus nudged the whip forward to align with one of the squares and shot out the Van der Waals tethers to hold it in place.

    Once the ship was stationary, air began to hiss into the sizeable airlock, and Marcus made a face at the composition.

    ¡°Oxy-nitrogen, bang on for base human. Dangit, I really was hoping for an alien relic this time.¡±

    ¡°What, clarketech isn¡¯t alien enough for you?¡± Cynthia asked with a laugh, her current avatar ¨C a leggy blonde kemonomimi of a species he didn¡¯t recognize ¨C lounging in the corner of his vision. ¡°Whoever produced this was probably about as far from normal human as any alien is likely to get.¡±

    ¡°You say that, but I say that we¡¯ll still find swear words and lewd graffiti in the corners if we look,¡± Marcus challenged.

    ¡°I¡¯ll take that bet.¡±

    ¡°You haven¡¯t won it yet,¡± Marcus warned her.

    ¡°Hope springs eternal,¡± she sighed.

    Lights on the far side of the airlock illuminated a set of doors, and Marcus unbuckled himself from the pilot¡¯s seat as Cynthia coaxed the Whip to disgorge their drones. A few dozen small, flying types were racked on a larger, mobile box that used Van der Waals tendrils to move itself about, able to operate in any environment. A surprising number of their excursions had been in microgravity.

    Marcus studied the symbols above each of the doors, concluding they were probably some sort of sequential designation ¨C not necessarily numbers, but something similar ¨C given that they were each denoted by a single glyph. Everything was recorded to the drone memory storage, to be eventually puzzled out. Choosing one at random, he stepped up to it and it opened for him, sliding sideways in a needlessly complex way for an airlock, but he couldn¡¯t complain too much.

    The hall beyond was off-white with bright blue stripes on each wall, lit by some indirect glow from the ceiling corners. Nothing special, so Marcus hurried along, drones in tow. At least the inner hull didn¡¯t cut off the signal the way the outer one did, so he still had a link back to the Whip. When he reached the end of the hall though, there was an elevator ¨C the design of which was similar no matter what technology was being used ¨C so he had one of the drones abandon its charges, smaller flight drones buzzing into the air as it stayed to be a relay point.

    ¡°You¡¯d think that after thousands of years, we¡¯d find better technology than push-buttons,¡± Cynthia mused as he poked the elevator call button, and the doors slid open.

    ¡°It¡¯s a little odd to see no digital screens anywhere,¡± Marcus agreed as he pulled himself inside a blue-striped box, finding that there were only two buttons, one above the other. ¡°But at least it¡¯s easy to interpret.¡± He poked the bottom button, the small aerial drones buzzing around him as the doors closed. There should have been holdfasts to keep from bumping into the ceiling of the elevator as it moved, but there was nothing ¡ª but neither did the elevator seem to accelerate.

    ¡°Is it broken?¡± He wondered aloud, which wouldn¡¯t be surprising given the age of artifact.

    ¡°Ping time to the relay is increasing,¡± Cynthia reassured him. ¡°We¡¯re going down, so I don¡¯t know what¡¯s going on. Something clarketech-related, I¡¯m sure.¡±

    ¡°If they have artificial gravity, you¡¯d think they¡¯d use it on the residential areas,¡± Marcus mused, as the elevator slide along with nary a vibration. The strangeness continued as, despite descending toward the rotating inner surface of the cylinder, microgravity continued, all the way and including when the door opened again.

    There was no grand habitat, no central living area. Just another long hall, silver with blue stripes, stretching out however many miles. More doors lined the hall, each with a five-character code, but the codes themselves were unlit. It was the strangest habitat he¡¯d seen for certain, not fitting either residential or industrial uses, but there was clearly some purpose behind it.

    ¡°Definitely alphanumerical designations,¡± Cynthia mused as he floated forward. ¡°In fact it matches ¡ª¡± She was interrupted by both of them suddenly getting a slew of strange errors from the network, and he froze for a moment, clutching onto the handhold of his helper drone, while Cynthia worked at it.

    ¡°That is odd¡­¡± Cynthia muttered. ¡°Move forward a bit more?¡± Marcus complied, steering the drone another few inches along the hall. In response, Cynthia made grumbling noises as she worked before finally sighing. ¡°I think I know what¡¯s going on, but I also don¡¯t really believe it.¡±

    ¡°That doesn¡¯t sound good,¡± Marcus observed, not really worried, because if it were serious the conversation would be much different. And likely be inside the Whip, having bailed on their current body.

    ¡°I don¡¯t have all the math for the theoretical framework of a Tipler cylinder, let alone this version of it, but so far as I can tell it¡¯s a little like the inner boundary of an event horizon. Space is time and time is space; relative time to the Whip and thus to the outside is almost entirely determined by how much space we traverse down here.¡±

    ¡°Huh,¡± Marcus said, chewing that over. He didn¡¯t know the equations either, and most of his knowledge of physics was merely by-the-way, but that didn¡¯t mean he was dumb. ¡°And we¡¯re floating because somehow offsetting the rotation is how the artifact keeps us from being flung about by our own relative time passing. I guess?¡±

    ¡°Or we could just be just making things up. This is all weird super-tech stuff,¡± Cyntha said with an exaggerated shrug. ¡°I sure couldn¡¯t say, and I won¡¯t even try. Just have to tweak the code a bit to account for the issue.¡±

    ¡°So long as it¡¯s nothing too bad,¡± Marcus said, drifting forward. The first dozen or so doors were closed, dark, powered down, but after that their alphanumeric labels were lit, and they opened at his approach. Each one opened into a truly enormous room that was, despite its side, devoid of anything but two features. Each of them had, side by side, two massive floor-to-ceiling pillars, one active, one inactive, to judge by the lights. After poking his head through seven active doors and finding the exact same features, he figured it was time to enter one.

    After making sure the pair of them were backed up on the Whip, Marcus pulled himself through the door and into the room, which had the same illumination as everywhere else. The drone pulled him along the floor toward the pillars, both of which were dark gray and decorated with white illuminated panels that probably had some sort of meaning, but looked abstract to him. Before touching either of them ¨C which was probably a bad idea but was why he had backups ¨C he circled around to inspect them. Each of them had an obvious, man-sized alcove at the rear, along with some genuine writing. While Cynthia still couldn¡¯t translate the writing from so few samples, the lines on the floor made it obvious that the active column was an entry and the inactive one was an exit.

    ¡°Shall we?¡± Marcus drifted toward the entrance alcove, ordering the other drone carrier to stay as a relay and directing a half-dozen of the atmospheric drones to attach themselves to his harness.

    ¡°Oh, let¡¯s,¡± Cynthia said. Marcus grinned and pushed off the drone, floating into the alcove. He expected some sort of elevator transport, perhaps even a clarketech version of the same. Instead there was a flash, and gravity returned ¡ª but everything else was different. Marcus fell five feet onto a slate roof, and rain washed over his helmet.

    ¡°The hell?¡± Cynthia said, a fast-forward warble as she shifted into a higher framerate. Marcus couldn¡¯t do that, but he slipped into crisis mode anyway, crouching down on the slippery stone as he looked around, trying to assess the surroundings for information and threats.

    While Marcus wasn¡¯t really a dedicated combatant ¨C they had Captain Dromall for that ¨C he wasn¡¯t an effete scholar, either. Crawling around the decaying remnants of ancient, spacefaring civilizations ¨C human or not ¨C was a dangerous task. His suit noted an oxy-nitrogen atmosphere, trace organics in line with human-base biology, while his eyes saw a dark, rain-swept village out of some old novel, tongue-and-groove wood with slate roofs. The rain and darkness blocked anything further, as it seemed to be night ¡ª and the only light came from burning buildings.

    ¡°HEAP,¡± Marcus said to Cynthia. ¡°We¡¯ve been dropped in a scenario.¡± Hostile Environment Adaptation Protocol was the somewhat oddly named collection of approaches meant for the astoundingly common situation of getting stuck in a virtual simulation, angelnet, or otherwise artificial construct of a world. It was a flip of a switch to consider everyone and everything in the environment as being purposely constructed to elicit particular behaviors from anyone inside it; essentially, a paranoia about the world¡¯s malevolence that presumed an intelligent agent controlling it all.

    ¡°Yeah, but I think this one might be real,¡± Cynthia replied after a second. ¡°Had connection for three nanoseconds after we arrived, which is about right for the timing delay of the alcove with. Space is time and time is space, after all. I think we got shunted into a Tipler Oracle, because all the timing issues just vanished. We¡¯re sideways to spacetime here.¡±

    ¡°Assuming that¡¯s true, that¡¯s actually really neat,¡± Marcus said, thinking it over. A Tipler Oracle was, at least theoretically, a pocket universe generally designed to run some infinite-computation problem in finite time, but there was no reason something else couldn¡¯t be done with the technology. Anyone who could weave cosmic strings into habitats could likely make such miracles if they wanted, and with the oddity of the Tipler Cylinder, make even more of a mockery of linear time.

    The exit, wherever it was, probably would put them out at the same moment they¡¯d entered; after all, space was time and time was space. The entrance had been probably been precisely sited specific point in spacetime, which implied some awful causal problems, but the Tipler Cylinder had already put them there so that was nothing new. ¡°All moot if we don¡¯t get back out of here to report back.¡±

    ¡°So let¡¯s see what¡¯s out there,¡± Cynthia said. They each took control of a drone, which were not exactly built for gusty, rainy weather, but smart enough to compensate. A feed popped up in a corner of Marcus¡¯ vision beyond the range of what his eyes fed him, linked into his visual cortex as the drones flitted out over the village.

    The buildings were laid out in concentric circles, with an honest-to-goodness outer palisade, and the buildings on fire described a wedge outward from an obvious entry point in the palisade. That was the broad overview, but Marcus was more interested in who actually lived in the village. His drone followed the sounds of shouting and splintering wood to the front of the band of burning buildings, where the cameras captured a number of what seemed like homo sapiens serthentis ¨C save for the wrong type of horns ¨C defending against someone much larger and more bestial. Gorilla sapiens lupathicas was the closest thing he could think of, but to put it more pragmatic terms, a giant gray-furred ogre was attacking a village of a bunch of deer-horned humans.

    While it wasn¡¯t guaranteed that the larger and less human-looking thing was, in fact, in the wrong, Marcus felt pretty confident in thinking that it needed to be taken care of. The serthentis were defending with, of all things, wooden spears, the efficacy of which was demonstrated when the lupathicas conjured a ball of fire and set one alight. Marcus sucked in a breath as he saw that.

    ¡°Angelnet, do you think?¡± Marcus muttered, not a stranger to some of the weirder simulations, emulations, and attempts at mysticism created by people with who found technology alone to be insufficient to the human spirit.

    ¡°Nothing on any spectrum I can reach,¡± Cynthia said. ¡°If there¡¯s any tech here, it¡¯s not using principles I know.¡±

    ¡°So, HEAP. I guess we¡¯re supposed to deal with this invader.¡± By the Protocols, in an artificial environment it was generally supposed that everything was fundamentally hostile, whether by direct physical violence or by manipulation and removal of choice. But until the parameters of the environment were obvious, following the given plot was the best choice. Not that Marcus would have been inclined to sit and watch a bunch of ordinary people get slaughtered by something three times their size that could, apparently, wield magic.

    ¡°I¡¯d help, but¡­¡± Cynthia¡¯s avatar waggled her fingers. ¡°We¡¯d need to figure out a way to get me into a frame.¡±

    ¡°You¡¯re already helping, dear,¡± Marcus assured her, as she took over the drone piloting and he started running across the roofs. ¡°Just run overwatch.¡± Cynthia never did like combat, at least, engaging in it. Even though as an AI she ought to be able to run fast enough to out-think and out-maneuver most humans, she¡¯d just never had the knack for it.

    Rain slid off his suit as he jumped, surefooted despite the light and weather. While his frame was mostly normal human biology, it was still at the peak of what normal human biology could be after a few tens of thousands of years of tinkering. There was no point in going around in a frame that was less physically capable than was reasonable.

    In a matter of moments he¡¯d reached the buildings near the invader, and after a brief instant of consideration, he pulled a slate tile free from roof he was standing on. He gripped it like an ancient Olympic discus thrower and spun, arm snapping out. Ten pounds of pointed stone whirred through the air and smashed into the ogre¡¯s face.

    Marcus wasn¡¯t really a fan of combat, but Dromall had made sure everyone ran the sims enough to be able to function adequately, and some real world experience had cemented the need to act rather than dither. So when the first improvised projectile failed to actually bring down the ogre ¨C even though it would absolutely have dropped any unaugmented human ¡ª he had a second tile in the air while it was still staggered from the first.

    Two hefty blows to the face left it reeling, and it roared, summoning flame once again. Just in time for a tile to mangle that hand, which seemed to be a signal to the defenders. There were shouts and whistles and they suddenly mobbed the thing with their spears. Which fulfilled the long legacy of a pointed stick, and a puncture through the ogre¡¯s throat sent it down for good. Marcus winced at the gore, though he¡¯d seen worse.

    ¡°No ideas what they¡¯re saying yet,¡± Cynthia mused. ¡°I can guess the general gist, but I¡¯m going to need to hear a lot more to give you anything near an accurate translation. Phonemic, not tonal, and nothing unusual for human speech. Definitely larynx and not a syrinx.¡± That was reassuring, as the more divergent people got from base human, the harder it was to understand them.

    ¡°I¡¯d say they¡¯re a neo-primitivist civ, but the conjuring fire throws me. Also the, you know, pocket universe,¡± Marcus replied, watching as a few people who were clearly more wary or intelligent than the others looked his way. He¡¯d technically done them a favor, but he was also twice the height of any of them, definitely not their species, and of course dressed in a white pressure suit with his name stenciled across it, complete with clear helmet. Nothing like the plain cloth the deer-people had.

    ¡°So, odds that they attack?¡± Cynthia asked, not particularly worried. With the drones flying overwatch nobody could sneak up on them, and at worst Marcus could simply run away.

    ¡°Absolutely even.¡± On one hand, there was the recognition that he¡¯d contributed to their defense. On the other, there was the unavoidable fact that he was an outsider, an alien, and likely even more threatening than the thing that just burned down a swath of their village. Which way they¡¯d jump depended on too many factors to list.

    One of the men shouted at him, a few short, sharp syllables. Cynthia couldn¡¯t provide a translation, but Marcus could well guess what was meant by them. The angry, demanding tone conveyed quite enough all by itself.

    ¡°I have no idea what you¡¯re saying,¡± Marcus replied in a calm tone, spreading his hands to show he was unarmed. He was happy enough to talk, but wasn¡¯t the same as putting himself in the hands of a bunch of frightened people holding weapons. He and Cynthia might be backed up aboard the Whip, an entire universe away, but that didn¡¯t mean he had a death wish. Besides which, if he died he could never lord his little adventure over the rest of the crew.

    The man repeated the syllables, sharper and louder, thumping the spear he was carrying against the loose cobble of the village roads and then aiming the point down. Once again the meaning was clear enough, but Marcus wasn¡¯t that trusting. Especially when all the other people still clutched their spears, and the drone feeds showed more arriving through the curtains of rain.

    ¡°Still no idea,¡± Marcus said, keeping his voice calm and friendly. ¡°If you want to negotiate something, please calm down.¡± Of course the native had no idea what Marcus was saying either ¡ª Marcus spoke a few hundred languages but the Galax East he was using certainly had no connection with the Tipler Cylinder. It was the tone of voice and cadence that was important, and Galax East was a very soft sounding language, soothing to listen to by most human standards. Sadly, it did no good. A third repetition of unhappy instructions, and everyone¡¯s spears came up in very obvious threat.

    ¡°Well, time to leave,¡± Marcus said, and sprinted off into the rain-soaked night, rain smearing over his helmet. Cries came from behind him, but leaping from roof to roof in the darkness, he far outpaced the natives, and even leaping over the palisade was no problem. In fact, it was almost too easy.

    ¡°If this is a contrived scenario, there might explicitly be different routes,¡± Cynthia mused. ¡°If the builders of the Cylinder shared a language with them, then saving the natives and negotiating would be easy. A dark, rain-swept night is something a normal person would want to be out of, but it¡¯s also perfect for vanishing without a trace.¡±

    ¡°Seems right for a digital scenario, but if this all alt-universe¡­¡± Marcus mused, running through wet grass. An additional pair of drones detached from his suit and buzzed ahead, sending him a feed of the nearby terrain. ¡°I guess the architects could just search through time and space to find a good entry point.¡± Considering the absolutely ridiculous nature of such a thing staggered even a bad imagination, but so did somehow turning a crack in space-time into a functional material. ¡°Which means there¡¯s an actual history here, whether artificially seeded or just something from an initial population.¡±

    ¡°Gotta get past the natives wanting to stab you if you want to do any digging, dear.¡± Cynthia¡¯s avatar waved her finger at him.

    ¡°Yeah, yeah,¡± Marcus laughed. ¡°That¡¯s going to be your job. Gotta be able to talk if we¡¯re going to get anywhere here.¡± As lighthearted as their banter was, figuring out the local culture was a genuine concern. He would eventually have to eat and sleep, and if this was an artificial scenario, there would almost certainly be barriers to any such sanctuary.

    ¡°I¡¯m listening, don¡¯t you worry,¡± Cynthia said, popping up an audio feed from the first pair of drones, left behind in the village and eavesdropping on conversations. Without a base station they had a limited range, but Marcus wasn¡¯t planning to go that far. At worst, he could use other drones to relay the signal, but they were a limited supply. And relatively fragile, even if the microfusion energy source and general design was meant for a good decade of operation.

    ¡°Let¡¯s find somewhere to hole up for a bit while you do that,¡± Marcus said, sending the scout drones out in a wider circle. There were stretches of fields outside of the village, of course, with what seemed to be storage sheds or the like visible through the rain. A muddy road stretched off in one direction, but Marcus was more interested in the looming shadow of what was probably a forest.

    Sprinting for ten minutes was no issue at all, and soon enough Marcus passing stumps of felled trees, then was in the forest proper. The actual species was unfamiliar; almost certainly deciduous with coarse bark and round, bowed leaves like green dishes. He jumped up into the lowest branches and then started making his way through the canopy. Just in case.

    ¡°Lest we forget that humans are monkeys,¡± Cynthia murmured grinning at him from the corner of his vision.

    ¡°This whole universe might be the result of monkey business,¡± Marcus said, with false aplomb. ¡°I would think you¡¯d appreciate the heritage.¡±

    ¡°I¡¯d appreciate it more if there was a clearly marked exit,¡± Cynthia said, and Marcus had to agree.

    After making his way a little deeper into the forest, he settled himself into a joint between a few branches and accessed his biological control system. While the frame he had was very close to base human and couldn¡¯t pull the kinds of tricks that Captain Dromall or Pilot Meck could, he could still adjust things so he¡¯d leave less of a scent trail and be less susceptible to poisons and toxins, though at a loss to efficiency.

    ¡°What in the stars is this?¡± Marcus asked, metaphorically staring at something that certainly was not part of his normal biology, icy fear running down his spine at the idea that someone had messed with his mind. In the meditative space of the control center, an entire extra area had been added on, containing something like the Vitruvian Man. Himself, then extended outward from it, skin, muscle, blood, bone, organs. The weirdest part though were the points of potentiality that proprioception assured him were currently empty, but could be filled.

    One on each hand, one on his feet, one each on skin, muscle, blood, bone, organ. And one that was filled, placed on his head, and containing a sigil that was visually unfamiliar but which expressed its meaning to him in an unmistakable manner. It was Cynthia.

    ¡°Not code,¡± Cynthia said, dropping her normal cheerful demeanor. ¡°No countermeasures activated or even noticed. Neuron trace says that there¡¯s no new additions. Looks to be some form of esoteric physical feedback. So far as I can tell my housing is still physically in your brain, but I have no idea what would happen if you tried to unequip me.¡±

    ¡°So now we know at least one thing that¡¯s different about this universe,¡± Marcus said after a moment, silently agreeing with her nomenclature. He took a breath, manually dialing down the panic response and waiting for adrenaline to stop flooding his system. ¡°The question is ¡ª what does it mean?¡±

    Bootlegger Leviathan

    Blurb: Sam O¡¯Doule was a bootlegger, rum-runner, and speakeasy owner ¡ª until some rivals murdered him and he ended up in the body of a horrific monster in a world that was very much not earth. Taking it not as a second chance, but as a challenge, he sets out to be better in his new life ¡ª though the fact that he has been put into the body of the world¡¯s greatest evil makes that a touch difficult.

    Author¡¯s Commentary: This is kind of a weird wildcard. In a way this would be closest to Blue Core, in that it¡¯s a larger-scale kingdom-builder type. Progression elements for certain, as though Sam starts out in an incredibly powerful body, he lacks any of the knowledge that the original inhabitant had put together. In general, a high fantasy monster progfantasy.

    <hr>

    Chapter One

    Sam O¡¯Doule died twice in the same minute.

    The first time was those bastard Rambau Boys putting a couple dozen bullets through the front door of Sam¡¯s speakeasy. One got him right in the ticker, and that was it. The second time, his still death-addled mind found itself in the body of something vast and tentacular, floating in the blackest sea and facing a group of oddly-attired figures casting forth strands of light that gathered together into one vast and blinding sword that came down and cut him in two.

    In the void that followed, Sam had to wonder what the hell kind of purgatory he¡¯d earned for himself. Now, he wouldn¡¯t exactly consider himself a bad person, but flouting the law and operating a speakeasy in defiance of the Eighteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution came with a certain amount of gray. He¡¯d never knocked over anyone else¡¯s place; never had the nerve for it, really, but playing at the same table as Brownie York and the Rambeau Boys required a certain amount of rough and tumble. Truth was he¡¯d always thought he¡¯d have time to deal with the whole repentance and bettering-his-life thing later on in life, after he got out of the bootlegging game.

    Accordingly, it made sense that the Almighty hadn¡¯t welcomed him through the pearly gates with a chorus of trumpets and angels singing, but Sam Jones was intended to end up in the Other Place, he would have expected a bit more in the fire and brimstone department. Maybe some pitchforks for flavor. Not whatever sort of nonsense he¡¯d just gone through, which didn¡¯t make the slightest lick of sense.

    Sam reached up with an arm he no longer possessed to remove a cap he wasn¡¯t wearing and got down on knees that didn¡¯t exist to do the only thing that made sense in a formless void after he¡¯d gotten his ticket punched. Pray, and hope the Almighty had something for him other than weird nightmare visions of monsters.

    The long nothingness had nothing but time to reflect. Not even reflect, not even dwell; he was given himself and nothing else, and in the clarity of hindsight there really wasn¡¯t much there to recommend. Aimless meandering through the criminal underbelly of New Orleans, and for what? He¡¯d ended up nice and dead at the ripe old age of twenty-three, estranged from family and with so-called friends being partners in crime.

    He''d been weak. That was the long and short of it. No excuses, no foisting the responsibility on others ¡ª he had known the kind of people he was getting involved with. He¡¯d known the problems, he¡¯d known who was being hurt. But he¡¯d never actually turned aside and resisted the easy path.

    How all that tied into the strange vision he¡¯d been given he didn¡¯t know, but he was sure it would come to him in time. What mattered was in what came next ¨C if there was a next ¨C he couldn¡¯t be weak any longer. Couldn¡¯t give in to the easy path, to the dawdling and dithering that had put him into the live he¡¯d lived of crime and alcohol. Not just think it, not just want to do it, but actually be different.

    Light began to filter back into the void, along with sensations, but not ones that Sam Jones could fit to his experience. Then emotion smashed him like a wall and convulsed in a sudden panic, unable to move or breathe like he should have. But he¡¯d been a Breaker Boy in the coal mine before his old man got them out and knew what things were like. If this was to be his purgatory, well, he¡¯d better be up to the task.

    ¡°Am I¡­?¡± He spoke, or at least tried to, but the whole apparatus was different. Sam¡¯s anatomy knowledge was restricted to a few books from the high-class clientele that came by the speakeasy, the doctors who debated theories while sipping bourbon, but he was pretty sure the tongue was supposed to be involved. Not some bizarre organ located, well, somewhere.

    He tried to pry his eyelids open, feeling like he¡¯d gone overboard on sampling his own product, and the hazy light snapped into focus. A blurry sun shimmered and danced above, and it took him far too long ¨C the brainbox wasn¡¯t exactly running smoothly for obvious reasons ¨C to realize that he was underwater. Reflexively, he tried to hold his breath, but realized two things. First, he didn¡¯t know how, and second, he was breathing water just fine. He could feel it passing through his body, cold and sluggish.

    Limbs ¨C too many limbs ¨C swept through the water as Sam tried to get handle on just what the hell was happening. Expecting punishment in the hereafter was one thing; just being confused seemed too damned unfair. He tried to ignore the profoundly wrong sensation of water running through whatever passed for lungs and strained to focus. If he was going to be better than the last time around, it wouldn¡¯t do to fall at the first hurdle.

    Memory that wasn¡¯t his filtered. It wasn¡¯t much, but it was rancid and rotten with malevolence and spite. A him that wasn¡¯t him knew those figures that made the enormous glowing sword, and it hated them. It hated the world, it hated creation, it hated the fishes in the sea and the birds in the sky. It especially hated that no matter happened, it couldn¡¯t die and it couldn¡¯t beat the figures.

    But it had a plan. A plan that dripped with dark glee as the originator of those memories watched the golden sword form above it. In the moment that the sword was created, it drew from regions beyond the world, beyond the sky. It opened itself to the stars and so, in turn, the stars were open to it. There was a movement and sensation like air, like water, like lightning, something immensely complex aimed at a tiny point in space and time where here became there and then ¡ª

    Sam gagged, despite not even knowing what he had for a mouth or a throat. The feel of the memories was vile. Slimy, wretched, foul, and every other thing his mother had used to describe the seedy underbelly of New Orleans. Whoever, whatever the former inhabitant of his body had been, it was undeniably evil.

    ¡°That¡¯s just jake,¡± he muttered, hearing the words click and ping oddly inside his head. The sensation made him shudder, an all-over vibration which was so alien that it disturbed him even more, and it was only by sheer stubborn will that he didn¡¯t go spiraling into a permanent panic. He remembered one man who¡¯d come from the Orient and pontificated on the benefits of meditation, but Sam hadn¡¯t paid much attention outside of supplying the foreigner with bourbon.

    With the grit he¡¯d learned in the coal mine, and the fight he¡¯d learned in the streets of New Orleans, he locked away the horrible swirling confusion and tried to actually think properly. He knew he wasn¡¯t being given a second chance; that wasn¡¯t how these things worked. He was being given a challenge. So what if everything was horrible and unfair? He sure hadn¡¯t earned the right for fair the first time around, not when he¡¯d been part of the biggest criminal operations operating out of the South.

    Sam tried looking around again, this time with some more care, and found the body he¡¯d been given sure had a lot of eyes, ones that even seemed to work just fine underwater. He was floating near some kind of cliff, with the water¡¯s surface far above and a corrugated floor far below. The entire face of the cliff was packed with sea life, but not the kind he¡¯d seen when diving in the Gulf and helping out the rum-runners.

    A riot of reds and blues, greens and purples, even perfect blacks and whites covered the rock. Long spiny plants and short fringed ones, odd suckered things and vine-like growths crawling and waving and flowing with the currents. Fish of every shape and size, from the conventional schematic to half-moon things jetting around to what seemed like swimming crystals flitted in and out of the veritable forest. Some of them would have looked exceedingly dangerous, with mouths full of teeth and wicked spines that practically glowed, but they were all so small.

    Or really, Sam was large. He had tried not to think about it too much, but the body was a true leviathan, something out of the writings of Jules Verne. At one end, enormous octopus tentacles, dangling down toward the depths, connected to a body much like a shark¡¯s bearing many, many eyes. Something powerful, sleek, with massive fins extending from the side like one of the Wright Brother¡¯s creations. At the front, massive ropelike tendrils coiled around his neck, yet both from the horrible memories and vague feelings from his own body, he could tell they were more than just decoration. One of them uncoiled, a long, waving thing that split, then split again, and continued until the end was a fine mass of tiny threads under his complete control.

    He felt queasy just looking at it.

    Just the movement sent some of the nearby marine life darting for cover, though it didn¡¯t last long. Sam kept watching the sea life as he tried to understand what the hell kind of body he was actually in, since it wasn¡¯t anything even slightly near human. Almost as bad, he had no idea what to do, as floating around in the depths of the ocean didn¡¯t get him anywhere. He hadn¡¯t arrived with any instructions, or even hints, save for his own death and that loathsome memory.

    His pa had always said that first things came first, and Sam wasn¡¯t going anywhere or doing anything if he didn¡¯t know how to actually move his body. People had hands and feet, fish had fins and tails, but he had big, grasping tentacles that he could barely use. There were too many limbs, and he guessed that the body¡¯s brain could handle it but he sure hadn¡¯t had any practice.

    The big tentacles felt immensely powerful, moving them like crooking a finger, only moreso. They curled in, and in, and in, folding around on themselves into actual coils, until he was forced to stop with another full-body shudder. Far too strange.

    At the other end of his body, the manipulator tendrils were no less strange, but felt more like hands than the tentacles did feet. The fins at each side of his body was a lot like wiggling his ears, stiff things that didn¡¯t have much play. He wasn¡¯t sure how long he was at it, his body slowly drifting long with the current, but eventually he thought he could move without breaking something. Except it felt wrong when he tried.

    Fish had tails to propel them, birds had wings, men had legs. Dragging himself about with the tentacles didn¡¯t fit with the fins; he ought to be moving nose-first. Some clumsy flailing managed to move him from the vertical to the horizontal, and immediately his body seemed happier. Then he tried moving forward and something very strange happened.

    That power of lightning, fire, water, and wind all combined, a strangeness he remembered from those vile memories seemed to run through his body, and he simply moved without actually having to make the movements of swimming. The experience was so shocking that he would have taken a tumble if it were an option. Since it wasn¡¯t, he just came to a halt in the middle of the deep blue, already a good distance from the cliff where he¡¯d awakened.

    ¡°Never seen a clumsy octopus before,¡± he grumbled to himself, hearing the bizarre clicking and groaning of the words bouncing off the bottom of the ocean ¡ª and the top, for that matter. He could see a distant shoal of fish flurry in panic as the sound of his words reached them, and wondered hazily what on earth ¨C or more to the point, not on earth ¨C Leviathans ate. He didn¡¯t feel hungry, but that wouldn¡¯t last. Or maybe it would; he had no idea.

    He was still trying to get his metaphorical feet under him and literal tentacles behind him when one of his upward-facing eyes noticed something floating on the surface above. Dark wood and white sails framed against the sky. Now, most of the smuggling to New Orleans just used steamships, but he had seen enough of the smaller, older types, inherited ships and other such relics, to know what he was looking at.

    Before he even thought about it he started upward, and then froze in place the moment his brain caught up with things. He was a giant sea monster, and whatever poor sod was sailing the ocean blue with nothing more than wind and stars wasn¡¯t going exactly welcome him aboard. Even as he watched, the surge of water from his movement rippled upward and practically hit the vessel square, sending it tilting precariously in otherwise calm seas. Then some poor soul plunged into the water next to the ship, probably shaken from the rigging, and Sam found out just how good his eyes were.

    The man wasn¡¯t a man at all, but some kind of green-scaled lizard creature in orange and red clothes, whose panicked expression was obvious even from a hundred feet below the waves. He hadn¡¯t much thought of it just looking at the keel of the ship above, but with the person ¨C the clothes made it a person ¨C he could see the details just as well as if it were an arm¡¯s width away. They made eye contact, or something like it considering the distances involved, and the lizard creature thrashed its way to the surface.

    Sam just hovered, not entirely certain what to do. He knew how dangerous it was to fall overboard on a ship, but given a line it wouldn¡¯t be too bad in the current weather. At least, so long as there weren¡¯t any monsters in the water. Something like him, only less befuddled.

    Fortunately someone did cast a line from the ship, so he no longer had to worry about intervening. Moments later, the poor lizard-man was dragged aboard what had to be something like a galleon, given the size, and Sam spotted a few other heads peering over the side as the wind swept the ship onward. Sam drifted after, considering the thought that maybe there were other monsters in the waters.

    Obviously had no idea what, specifically, he was meant to do, but it sure wouldn¡¯t hurt to tail the ship and make sure nothing attacked it. He was pretty sure they weren¡¯t pirates; the ship looked too new and the lizard¡¯s clothing had been some serious glad rags. So just wandering after it wasn¡¯t much, but as his ma had always said, if you can¡¯t start big, start small. Which seemed about right, considering how small the galleon was relative to the new body.

    Besides, it¡¯d give him time to try and get a handle on things. He could move, but it was like an infant toddling about, and if he tried to grip anything he¡¯d probably just crush it. A sorry way to go for anyone he was trying to help, and the absolute opposite of what he was trying to do. Good people didn¡¯t squish other people.

    The waters were mostly clear; there were some fish here and there, nothing like the teeming masses back by the cliff face. No obvious monsters, at least, and a lot of the sea life fled at his approach anyway. At least the quiet gave him some time to think and practice moving around.

    Now that he had some distance from the repulsive nature of the snippet of memory he¡¯d been given, Sam realized that it said a lot about the kind of place he¡¯d ended up in. Not to mention the actions of the prior inhabitant of the body. Reading between the lines, this was a world full of people who had reason to hate the monster, especially since it couldn¡¯t be defeated permanently. Clearly, that entity ¨C Sam hesitated to even call it a person with so much distilled hatred ¨C saw the place as hell. So far, the ocean was weird and Sam was pretty sure he¡¯d miss the little conveniences of civilization soon enough, but the memory was a cautionary tale about what could happen if he let it.

    He stewed on it to one degree or another as he trailed the ship from far below, slowly working out how to operate the monstrous body as the sun sank and the sky started to darken. Uncomfortably, Sam wasn¡¯t getting hungry or tired. Or thirsty for that matter, but he figured that being surrounded by water, salt or otherwise, made that particular need irrelevant. It seemed churlish to complain about, but he did mutter aloud as he swam along, listening to his voice ping and click from somewhere in the massive frame.

    ¡°O¡¯course I can¡¯t just go walking out and greet any of these guys. Who¡¯s gonna sit there and jaw with a million-ton octopus shark anyway?¡± A few heads poked over the side of the galleon, then vanished again. Sam had the urge to go up and test his question right away, but only for half a second. Maybe he needed to be a better person, but that didn¡¯t mean being a stupid person, and he¡¯d worked with Brownie York enough to know the only way to approach something you didn¡¯t know was carefully.

    ¡°Heck, maybe I¡¯ve already muffed the entire thing by getting spotted. I doubt those scaly folk are too happy about having me trail ¡®em. Not that I¡¯ve got any better idea! Talk about needing instructions¡­¡± Sam¡¯s muttering trailed away as it got dark enough to show the stars ¡ª and something else.

    Someone had clawed the sky.

    Long, vertical slices of light lay atop the dusting of stars, parallel groupings in twos and threes at different angles. It reminded him of a chunk of wood he¡¯d found out in the woods where some friends had spotted a big cat when he was a kid. He¡¯d never forgotten the big gouges and what they said about the strength of the claws behind them, and he had to figure something strong enough to leave clawmarks on the very firmament was terrifying indeed.

    Perhaps it had been the former inhabitant of the body. Clearly the fight that he¡¯d been dumped into the middle of was some high-powered thing, heroes of legend and all that. Something out of the Arthurian tales, but pumped up so much higher. But he was pretty sure he didn¡¯t have claws, so maybe something else of a similar scale, somewhere else in the world.

    Or maybe they came from without, a cat the size of a planet using it like a scratching post. He decided that was a worry that he could do without and left it for another day, trying and failing to find anything familiar in the skies. Not that he expected it; any old fool could guess that dying had left him somewhere other than Louisiana.

    Even in the darkness he could spot the boat ¨C his eyes were really good ¨C and as the hours went on following it became an unconscious thing. At least until he thought about it, and then he lost control of everything and drifted askew in the leviathan equivalent of tripping over his own two feet.

    ¡°At least there¡¯s nobody here to see but the fishes,¡± Sam grumbled, struggling to face himself forward again, tentacles thrashing against the open water as he reoriented himself. It took longer than he would have liked, the echoes of his meaningless muttering bouncing off of both the sea floor and the surface, but the white of the sail was not too difficult to spot under the light of the clawmarks, stars, and the sliver of a crescent moon.

    As he trailed after the ship, he realized there was another source of light somewhere up ahead, something he couldn¡¯t directly see because he was so far underwater. He could guess though, as the seafloor started to rise, that it was somewhere on the shore. A city, perhaps, though if it were a port he would have expected to see more than just the one ship.

    His thought was a few minutes ahead of reality, as he did start seeing the blobs of other ships on the skin of the ocean ahead of them, and the orange reflection off white sails grew brighter. Bits and pieces of ship became visible on the seafloor, as the ocean became shallower and the waves became more prominent, but what really made him twig to the problem was the smell. So far he hadn¡¯t really noticed any particular smell in general, and hadn¡¯t even thought about smelling things in water, but the scent and taste of ash was impossible to ignore.

    ¡°Gotta see what¡¯s going on,¡± Sam sighed, and for the first time since he¡¯d arrived he aimed to break the surface. He could easily ¡®stand,¡¯ the water was so shallow, the big octopus tentacles braced against the seafloor as the front, toothy part of his body broke the surface. That was probably not how he was supposed to do it, but if he tried to surface with the bizarre, invisible propulsion he¡¯d probably end up causing a tidal wave.

    What he saw was a city on fire, with brightly-colored buildings of an odd, spiraled, around design crowded close together around a river. Sounds of distant fighting reached his ears, and from somewhere deeper on the shore there came flashes of light, followed by echoing reports. Sam goggled for a minute, reminded of his old man¡¯s occasional stories of the Great War, a nightmare of gunfire and artillery. The sounds prickled his own mind, the crackling of tommy guns just before he¡¯d gotten it, but frankly the whole death thing had happened too quick for him to build up any great dread of it.

    The sight of great, blue-and-green glowing bolide arcing over the city stirred him to action. He¡¯d never been much to stick his nose in before, but just avoiding problems wasn¡¯t going to cut it anymore. The problem was, in a war there was no telling who was good and who was bad, or if that even applied. The lizard-people might be upstanding folks, or cannibalistic savages, and he wouldn¡¯t know the difference.

    While he was staring, the ship he¡¯d been following pulled into the harbor, shouts echoing over the water as what were obviously troops disembarked and ran into the city. Alas, Sam couldn¡¯t understand a word of it, and he heaved a big bubbly sigh before putting it out of his mind. Sufficient unto the day were the evils thereof; he was just going to start by trying to figure something he could do that wouldn¡¯t make things worse. Wanting to help was one thing, but the road to hell was paved with good intentions. He couldn¡¯t just go in half-cocked.

    If it weren¡¯t for the vastly improved eyesight of the new body, he wouldn¡¯t have been able to discern people getting into a series of smaller ships in the harbor ¡ª and not just people. Smaller lizard-folk, some of them in fancy clothes and others in less, being shepherded by a few larger ones. Kids, Sam would guess, getting evacuated, and seeing that a tension he hadn¡¯t been aware of eased. That was unequivocally something he could get behind, no matter who was fighting and why.

    He drifted a little closer, pulling himself along with tentacle ¡®feet,¡¯ not sure how he would help but ready to at least try. At the same time, there was something about the fighting that seemed a little odd compared to what he was familiar with. Fewer gunshots, more sounds of steel, but also odd hissing and crackling and other, less identifiable sounds. The distant mortars lobbed glowing balls of light in different colors, rather than actual shells. It was when a circle of grey and white light blocked one of those bolides that Sam had to admit he had no idea how war was waged in this new place.

    The gaggle of corks or frigates or whatever it was that the small passenger ships were called started pulling away from the harbor, catching a breeze he could only barely feel on exposed skin. It seemed to be brisk, given that they were making good time, but not brisk enough as the mortar shells began to land in the harbor. One arced toward the escapee convoy, and without thinking he reached out hand to bat it away. Only, it was one of those weird tendrils and reached out, out, way far out and smashed the blue-glowing sphere as if he were batting away a fly.

    It detonated in a frozen burst, stinging a bit like when he stuck his hand into the ice bucket, but he doubted a ship or a person would come off quite so well. And if there were as many flying into the harbor as onto the city, he¡¯d hardly be able to deflect them all. He was pretty surprised he¡¯d managed the one without tangling the tendrils up somehow, or missing entirely.

    Sinking back beneath the water, he unrolled the other tendrils, focusing hard enough that he¡¯d be squinting if he could still squint, and used them to grip each of the half-dozen refugee ships. He was very, very careful, afraid that he¡¯d crush them, but after a minute or so he had them all cupped like holding a wine bottle in his hand, times six. Then he began moving.

    So far he¡¯d been metaphorically crawling rather than walking or, heaven forfend, running. But even at that speed he could easily outpace sailboats, so he basically just picked up the ships and moved. Water churned as he sped away from the harbor and along the coast, trying to ignore the screams from the ships. Even if he couldn¡¯t speak the local language, those translated just fine. But it was all in good cause, and he let them down once they were out of sight of the harbor. He didn¡¯t know where they intended to go, but whatever direction it was, at least they were away from the attackers.

    Sam still had no idea what he was doing, but a small glow of pride for helping someone warmed what passed for his chest. It hit better than smuggling drinks and running a speakeasy, for sure. He figured it was a good enough start and sank back beneath the waves, turning around to return to the city and lurk some more. Hopefully his intervention wouldn¡¯t cause any real trouble.

    ***

    ¡°You¡¯re absolutely certain?¡± Saint Misele of the Floating City narrowed her eyes at the messenger. Normally she wouldn¡¯t impugn a fellow atril, but she had been opposing Nemesis her whole life and she knew its habits. After its defeat in the far north, it shouldn¡¯t have appeared for another hundred years at least. Merely twenty was very strange. The heroes who had suppressed it last time were even still alive!

    ¡°I went and checked the eyewitnesses myself,¡± Captain Corocol said. ¡°The memory magic confirmed it. I¡¯m not sure what about the Tashkali¡¯s current civil war attracted it, but several people saw it strike a siege frostlance in midair. Our diplomat was in time to see it pick up several ships of refugees and leave.¡±

    ¡°Those poor people,¡± Misele said heavily, slumping in her chair, feathers prickling as she considered the dire fate of the tashi who had been in the way of Nemesis.

    ¡°Well¡­¡± Corocol shifted uncertainly. ¡°It¡¯s not in the written report, because the diplomat wasn¡¯t supposed to leave the embassy. But he did, and the ships were just taken some twenty miles south and left there. No damage, no casualties.¡±

    ¡°What.¡± Misele stared. ¡°Why? Are the tashi in league with it?¡±

    ¡°That was exactly what I looked into before coming here,¡± Corocol said, the vibrant orange feathers atop his head bobbing as he nodded emphatically. ¡°But no, there were no summoning rituals, no cultists, no blood sacrifices anywhere in the city. Plenty of blood; it is a war. But just the normal kind of thing.¡±

    ¡°That¡¯s not how Nemesis acts,¡± Misele said, standing up and incidentally towering over Corocol. She flexed the wings on her back, golden feathers shimmering as she paced her office. Her talons thumped on the blue crystalline wood of the floor as she tried to puzzle out what could be behind the sudden change in behavior. The early return, showing itself without doing anything to accumulate power.

    It wasn¡¯t like the Church of the Floating City had ever managed to completely purge the fragmented cults Nemesis put together. There was always some tiny seed for it to build from, but she trusted Corocol and besides, it had never shown mush interest in the tashi before. Its preferred servants were actually her own kind, glorying as it did in the subversion of the Saint¡¯s people.

    ¡°Was the last battle some kind of feint?¡± She wondered aloud. ¡°Everything it did, even up to being defeated ¡ª was it just to appear there, out of expectation, and draw us into a trap?¡±

    ¡°That seems depressingly possible, Saint,¡± Corocol said. ¡°Though it¡¯s obvious if it is such an inducement, and that by itself¡­¡± He trailed off, shaking his head. ¡°I believe you have told me before not to try and read into the twists of its mind.¡±

    ¡°Else you¡¯d go mad,¡± Misele agreed. ¡°But we cannot refuse to move simply because we suspect its plans. Get my skyship ready, Corocol. I need to get the heroes back together.¡±