Amusement danced in his eyes. “It’s a small town, Agent. You never know who you will run into.”
She kept her pace steady as she walked down the hallway. The stonewalling didn’t bother her. It had happened before and would happen again. She already suspected something was going on with the Vault, but Scales’s hint of a political connection gave the situation a different spin.
Her sensing ability flickered as a shimmer of essence passed over her. She hesitated at the elevator. Someone was casting a spell, a damned large one, big enough to cause a wave front. Her skin prickled.
Back up the hall, a young man left Scales’s office and made his way to the floor exit at the far end. On his heels, Scales appeared at his office door with a box in his hands and a confused look on his face as he watched the retreating figure. As he turned back, he noticed her, nodded, and retreated into his office.
Something wasn’t right. The FBI didn’t have any fey on their teams. They didn’t like the fey on their teams. The president and Congress had determined it was a national-security issue to have nonhumans in the Bureau. Either she’d sensed something she wasn’t supposed to, or something was wrong. She decided not to let it go and walked back toward Scales’s office.
The essence intensified, and her body shield slammed on. Another wave front swept over her, strong enough to produce a hazy white light against her shield. She stumbled within it, surprised by its force.
The hallway exploded. A roaring sound filled her ears as plaster and wood and concrete showered down and hot black smoke billowed around her. She heard a high-pitched hiss as the sprinkler system sprang to life, cold water mixing in with the smoke and dust.
Coughing, she steadied herself against the wall. Smoke and water filled the air. Debris crowded her legs to the knees, but her body shield prevented them from being crushed. She grabbed a doorjamb and pulled out one leg at a time. The smoke thickened. She doubled over, coughing to clear her lungs. With a short-focused spell, she altered her body shield around her mouth-a simple cantrip to filter essence away from her, but it helped keep some smoke out of her lungs, too.
The smoke had an acrid, burning odor. She heard a deep hissing crackle. Fire. The building was on fire. Behind her, the elevator doors were bent inward, obviously jamming the car. More debris blocked the office doors around her. In the opposite direction, bursts of cooler air tangled with the heat.
“Scales?” she yelled. No answer. She called up his body signature in her inner vision and threw out a sending. Scales, it’s Tate. Shout if you can hear me. No answer. Laura kicked off her heels. Using the body shield to protect her feet as best she could, she moved in a crouch down the hall, avoiding the thicker smoke along the ceiling.
The smoke brightened with an ominous orange glow. The temperature increased, and the roar and crackle of fire filled the air. Wind buffeted the smoke, and flashes of daylight pierced the darkness. Even through the body shield, the heat pressed against her like a physical thing.
Scales? she sent again. Her limited range prevented her from directly sensing his body signature. He couldn’t return the sending, but she hoped he would at least call out. She hoped. Depending on where he was when the spell bomb blew, he could be either dead or unconscious.
She neared where she thought his office was. Her body shield rippled as it interacted with a sharp stroke of essence. Laura reached into the smoke and encountered something metallic. And hot. She jerked her hand back, feeling the fingertips blistering.
Calling up a ball of essence, she pushed the smoke away for a moment. It receded, and a piece of metal embedded in the wall became visible. The smoke coiled forward and hid it from view again. She closed her eyes against the stinging air and used her sensing ability to see. The metal radiated essence in her mind, a dark shape burning with a cool green light on the edges.
Fire engulfed the remains of Scales’s office. Flames shot outside the building through a gaping hole where his windows used to be. She sensed no living essence. Moving closer, the heat seared against her skin even through the body shield.
“Scales?” she shouted. As she stumbled in the rubble, she spotted two legs protruding from a pile of plaster and wood. Not far off, an arm jutted up. Not far, but too far away from the legs. She sensed nothing. Scales was dead. Superheated air started overwhelming her body shield. She backed out of the room, avoiding the slick fluid gushing from the ceiling and saturating everything.
Scattered metal vibrated around her with green essence. Metal conducted essence but didn’t have any appreciable essence of its own. She picked up a piece and touched a tentative finger to a small chunk the size of her palm. It was cool enough to hold and had essence radiating from it.
A wave of dizziness hit her. The fire was eating the oxygen out of the air. She closed her eyes again to concentrate, sensed the vague shape of an opening, and climbed her way toward it. Wind pressed against her back, funneling the smoke ahead of her. She reached a point where the floor became clear of debris. She ran. A fire exit came into sight. She hit the emergency release bar and staggered into a crowded stairwell. Hands grabbed her as she fell. The door was kicked shut.
“Keep moving!” someone shouted. Several more hands steadied her on her feet as a crush of people pushed down the stairs. Wracked with coughing, she forced herself to move with them. As they descended, the hazy air lightened and became cooler. Bright white light shone below. Laura turned at a landing, and a door to the outside stood open. In a wave of bodies, she stumbled out onto a sidewalk in blinding sunlight.
She wandered into the street. Smoke and fire shot through a hole in the side of the building. Fire trucks and emergency vehicles choked the street. She moved to the opposite sidewalk and scanned the crowd around her. People moved all around her, civilians running from the building or emergency personnel running in.
A cell phone rang. She looked down at her side, too stunned to laugh. Without thinking about it, she had walked through the chaos without losing her handbag. She opened it, dropped the chunk of metal inside, and retrieved the phone.
“I’m fine,” she said as she connected.
“Thanks be,” said Cress. “Get back here as quickly as you can. The city’s under attack.”
CHAPTER 20
SHE NEARLY COLLIDED with Cress as she came through the door to InterSec. “What the hell is happening?” Laura asked.
They hurried down the corridor. “Three bombs have gone off in the city,” said Cress. “Targets hit are the FBI building and the Guildhouse. A car bomb heading for the White House blew up at the gatehouse.”
At the end of the corridor, they swept into the InterSec situation room. Terryn sat on the long side of a table facing several monitors. Newsfeeds from across the city lit the wall. One monitor showed smoke billowing out of the FBI building. The outside wall of the building was scorched, and several windows were broken, but otherwise the damage looked minimal. The fire trucks on the scene seemed to have everything under control.
“Are you okay?” Terryn said.
Laura nodded. “Scales is dead. I was leaving his office when a bomb went off.”
“The gods were with you,” Cress said softly.
Guildhouse security feeds filled a second series of monitors. A car burned next to a shimmering white wall of essence in the alley behind the building. News channels showed distance shots of the entire building. Behind its large, activated essence barrier, the Guildhouse was undamaged.
Laura placed her handbag on the table and opened it. She pulled out the chunk of metal. “We need to get this analyzed. It’s a piece of metal from the bomb, with some kind of spell on it.”