“You’re not unwelcome,” Terric said. “The Authority still needs you. Needs what you can teach.”
“Faith magic?” Victor smiled sadly. “The things I would teach are nothing more than a history lesson now. Those spells, Closing people, guarding gates, fighting to keep dangerous uses for magic secret and safe? Unnecessary.”
“All right,” I said, “fine. Things might not have worked out the way you wanted them to. We’ve all shed our tears. But we’re still breathing, and we all have a problem: Eli. How do we find him? How do we stop him?”
“I don’t know the answer to either of those questions, I’m afraid,” he said.
“Do you know about a woman named Dessa?” I asked.
He frowned. “The name isn’t familiar to me.”
“Dessa Leeds?”
His gray eyebrows pushed wrinkles up his forehead. “Leeds? Do you mean Thomas Leeds?”
“That’s her brother,” I said. “Dessa’s brother. You know him?”
“He was a Closer. Out of Seattle. He was working for us. What do you know about him?”
I leaned back. Studied him. “Nothing, really. I do know that you’re holding out on me, though.”
“Shame,” Terric said.
“Come on, Ter. The old man’s got a secret he doesn’t want to share.”
“Old man?” Victor drew himself up and gave me a stern glare. “You know I’m in contact with your mother, don’t you, Shamus?”
I grinned at his indignant tone. For all that I was angry about his decisions with Eli and Brandy, Victor was one of my teachers. I’d grown up with him being a stern, proper sort of uncle. Plus, he’d taught me some of the dirtiest tricks you could do with magic. He was family, and that bond couldn’t be broken. Not even over dangerously poor decisions.
“Go ahead,” I said. “Tell her I’m being disrespectful to one of my teachers. It won’t be the first time she hears it. Oh, and while you’re at it, ask her why you don’t have the balls to tell us the whole truth.”
Terric leaned back on the couch and threw his hands up. “Jesus, Shame. Did that Taser fry your brain?”
I just watched Victor. In the past, needling him couldn’t make the old man change his mind. I didn’t think it would work this time, but figured it wouldn’t hurt to try. People who are upset or angry tend to say all sorts of interesting things they would never say in a calm state of mind.
“We’ve known the government was becoming . . . interested in the members of the Authority,” he said quietly. “Certain members. Our Closers, our Soul Complements, and those of us in higher positions. But we didn’t know why. We needed someone on the inside. Someone who had a contact.”
“Thomas?” I asked.
“Yes. Thomas thought he could use his relationship with his sister—I do believe her name was Dessa—to get closer to the matter.”
So Dessa did work for the government. “Which department was he infiltrating?” I asked.
“He worked his way into a government-sponsored research and development facility. On the surface, it is a testing lab for biotechnology. Everything from increasing crop yields to deterring invasive species. But beneath that facade, Thomas found evidence of other tests. Human tests.”
“Medical tests on humans are far from rare, Victor,” I said. “What made these different?”
“The tests weren’t for medical advancement. They were searching for ways to weaponize people.”
“What?” Terric said.
Took the word right out of my mouth.
“Now that magic is a known resource, the government is very interested in what people can do with it. How it can be used as a protection. As a weapon.”
It made sense. Any government would want to know how magic could be used, and by whom.
“Okay,” I said. “How do Eli and Brandy fit into this?”
“Brandy disappeared a year and a half ago,” Victor said. “The official report is that she died from a stroke caused by side effects of the medication she was on. But we know she was taken. Stolen out of the institution. By the government. By this research lab.”
Terric opened the file again. Thumbed through it. “Thomas was looking for her, wasn’t he?”
“Yes.”
“And Eli?” he asked.
“We’d lost trace of him at the same time. I don’t know if he was taken, if he went looking for her, or if he was behind her kidnapping. Our . . . resources aren’t what they used to be. But our goal, that has remained the same. To keep the innocent safe from magic and the things people would do with it. Brandy is an innocent in this. But we believe she was taken by men who would use her as a weapon.”
“Tell me you know where the research facility is.”
“From the information Thomas was able to gather, it has branches across the country. We suspect one of them is here in the Northwest. And if they are trying to tap magic, it will need to be near a well.”
“There are a lot of wells. One under almost every city,” Terric said.
“And five under Portland,” Victor said.
“Eli opened a gate,” I said.
That got his attention.
“He— What?”
“He was in my bedroom, and after about two minutes, a gate opened behind him and he was pulled back through it.”
“He used magic?” Victor asked. “Broke magic to open the gate?”
I thought about it. “No. I can usually feel when magic breaks.” From the corner of my eye I saw Terric nod.
“There was magic involved. But there was also technology.”
“Eli spent too long working under Beckstrom Senior,” Terric said.
“I think you mean worshipping,” I said. “Spent too much time worshipping Allie’s father and all that experimental tech the Beckstrom fortune funded.”
“If they have gate technology,” Victor said, “then none of us are safe.”
“Which means we need to find Eli,” I said. “You didn’t happen to shoot him with a tracking chip over the years, did you?”
“Unfortunately, no,” Victor said. “I wish we’d thought of it.”
“Have you followed up on everyone connected to Brandy and Eli?” Terric asked. “Her doctors, caregivers? Eli’s contacts, where he’s lived, worked?”
“Yes,” Victor said. “We hit a dead end about eight months ago. That was also when we fell out of contact with Thomas.” He paused, then, “We think Thomas was killed.”
“He was,” I said. “Dessa said he was killed by Eli. Said he had marks in him like Joshua.”
“Was she sure?” Victor asked softly.
“She saw Joshua,” I said. “Saw the glyphs carved into him. She thinks it was made by the same magic user.”
Victor took off his glasses and closed his eyes. For a moment, I saw the weight of years change him. He had been in the Authority for longer than I had been alive. He’d seen all manners of horrors committed by both the right and the wrong people having too much power.
And now this.
“You have to stop him.” Victor replaced his glasses and opened his eyes. There was the iron strength of resolve in his words. “Eli Collins should have been killed years ago. We thought then that it was a mercy to just take his memories away. To give him a chance to build a normal life. But he turned to darkness. To killing. To murder. Joshua should not have had to pay the price for our mistakes. I want you to stop him. At any cost.”
“We should let the Overseer know,” Terric said.
“No. Not this,” Victor said. “It has never been the way of the Authority to kill unnecessarily. It is not the way we want to go forward in this new world of magic. But this is an old wound. An old ill that must be ended. Before more innocent people die. I do not want to be hampered by the Overseer’s decisions.