Dash smiled, and shot me a warning look.
I just blinked innocently.
“Which are still alive?” Terric asked.
Dash pulled away three folders. I noted, with a twinge of anger, one was the ten-year-old girl.
“And what are the tattoos?” Terric asked.
Dash pointed a finger at files with each word his spoke. “Refresh. Enhance. Light. Light. Ground. Impact. Combust. Refresh.”
“Strange collection of spells,” I said. “I can understand Enhance and Refresh. But Ground and Light? Who uses light spells so much they want that tattooed on their body? Ground isn’t even needed anymore. Magic doesn’t ever get so out of control that it needs to be Grounded.”
“Some people just get a tat because they like the look of it,” Dash said. “Even when they don’t know what it means.”
“Okay,” I said, “so that’s one explanation. But if Eli is a part of this, a part of the tattoos, then they are in no way random.”
“Can you put the people in the order of when they went missing?” Terric asked.
“Yep.” Dash moved the files, lining them up in order.
“And the tattoos?” he asked.
“Light, Ground, Light, Refresh, Enhance, Impact. Combust, Refresh.”
“That’s a better setup,” Clyde said. “Cast Light, maybe it doesn’t work, so Ground to keep magic stable, then cast Light again. Maybe it fades too quickly, so you’d need Refresh, then Enhance to make it more focused and then Impact. Combust? Light doesn’t lend to that, Fire does, but okay. And Refresh to keep that strong. Not sure what that can be used for other than knocking the crap out of something or someone.”
“These are tattoos,” Dash said. “Not actual spells. It could be coincidence. You could be seeing order where there really isn’t any.”
“When did they get the tattoos?” Terric asked.
Dash thumbed through the files. “Um . . . other than this older man, Walter, all of the tattoos were fresh ink.”
“How fresh?” I asked.
Dash looked back a couple pages in the file. “On the dead? Coroner said very fresh. Maybe a few weeks or a month at the most.”
“So there’s a chance they were tattooed in preparation for being taken,” Clyde said.
Terric nodded. “They’ve each been missing for more than a few months, but they weren’t all kidnapped on the same day. They were kidnapped weeks, sometimes months apart.”
“Clyde’s theory is starting to look promising,” I said.
“But they’re tattoos,” Dash insisted. “Magic won’t fill a tattoo. It fills a glyph.”
“We don’t think Eli is using magic like normal people,” I said.
“How else can he use magic?”
“He can break it,” Terric said. “He has a Soul Complement. She’s been in a mental institution. Went missing from there. We think he knows where she is. And we know he wants us to rescue her before he kills again.”
Clyde went silent, rolling through just exactly what that all meant.
Exactly what it all meant was that Eli was a weapon now. Potentially just as powerful as Terric and me, or any other matched set.
“So, where is she?” Dash asked.
“We don’t know,” I said.
“And we don’t know where Eli is, other than his possible connection to a hospital,” Dash said.
“Yes,” I said. “But he has technology—probably triggered by magic—that lets him open up holes in space and walk into any room he wants to.”
“Which is how he got to Allie and Zay,” Clyde said.
“Yes.”
Clyde took off his baseball hat and rubbed his fingers through his thick black hair. “That, boys,” he said gravely, “is a situation.”
Chapter 21
We ordered in lunch. Terric and Clyde eventually went into the closed-off office to talk about responsible Authority things. Which was what Terric and I had planned.
That left me and Dash to dig into old Authority files on Thomas Leeds. I was hoping something in there would give me a little inside information on Dessa.
Not a lot on Thomas I could use. An old photo of him, looked like it was taken in a sports bar with friends. I didn’t see much of the family resemblance, except maybe around the eyes and forehead. Otherwise, he looked like a guy you’d expect to be running a small but useful business of some sort, who spent his weekends watching football.
All of the addresses on his file were in the Seattle area, the phone was disconnected, and when it came down to the list of family and friends, the file had been wiped.
Thanks, Victor.
Bored, I went outside to smoke and pace. Hadn’t even gotten a puff off my cigarette before I heard a voice behind me.
“Four sugars, four creams?” Dessa said.
I grinned, turned.
She had on jeans, a white collared blouse, and a short black jacket. No purse, shoes she could run in without breaking bones. She also had a cup of coffee in each hand.
“Dessa,” I said. “How did you know it was time for my coffee break?”
“I bugged the office.” She smiled, held the coffee out for me.
“That kind of behavior will get you in trouble,” I said.
“Bugging your office?”
“Ex-office and no, telling me about it. And I prefer six sugars and six creams, thank you.” I took the cup.
“I know.” She reached into her pocket and handed me extra sugars and cream.
“Why are you here?” I popped the cup lid, stuck a thumbnail in the creams, poured, and tore sugar packets with my teeth. Didn’t bother to stir. I liked a sweet kick at the end.
“You make it sound like I want something.”
“Because you do.”
She took a drink of her own coffee. “Yes, I do.”
“Good,” I said. “Let’s hear it.”
“I want you to take me to whoever is in charge of the Authority.”
“So they can tell you who killed your brother.”
“Am I that predictable?”
“Not at all. As a matter of fact, I think you already know who killed your brother. And you know why he did it.”
Everything about her stilled, tensed. If she had a gun smuggled somewhere on her body, all signals pointed to her pulling it.
“Who told you that?” Her voice had gone from playful to dead serious.
“Do you know a woman named Brandy Scott?”
Her brows tucked down, folding a line between them. “The name sounds familiar. But I’m not placing it. Should I know her?”
“Thomas’s killer thinks you should.”
“You talked to his killer?” That drunk ’em and trunk ’em look flashed in her eyes.
“We heard from him.”
“You know giving me a name—Brandy Scott—is enough to lead me to him.”
“Might be if you can find the connection. That’s not how I want this to play out.”
“How you want it? You had your chance, Shame. I asked you to help me, remember? You said you didn’t want to get involved. So I don’t see why you should have a say in what I do or don’t do with this information.”
“Wouldn’t dream of having a say. I want to make you a deal. You help me find Brandy Scott and I will cut you in on all the info we have on the killer.”
She hesitated. It was a tempting offer. “I’m supposed to believe you’ll do that?”
“I’m not a man who makes a habit of lying.”
“Yes, you are.”
“Okay. Yes, fine. But this is the truth.”
She drank coffee, thought about it. Then, with regret, “You’re still holding all the cards, Shame. And I know you don’t really want me involved and you’ll find a way to go around me. Sorry. I need to do this on my own.”
I don’t know why, but I hadn’t expected that. “Really? We had pizza together. I thought we had a certain something.”