She looked at me for a long time, then Catcher.
“Your call,” he said. “These decisions have to be yours.”
She nodded, then put her hands flat on the table on either side of the medal and looked down, her eyes scanning back and forth as if she was reading a magical text. And maybe she was.
“Both of them are in there. A bit of Seth, a bit of Dominic.” She looked at me. “He sees you as his, in a way.”
I started. “He—what?”
She looked up. “Seth, not Dominic. He’s been part of your life for a very long time, and that’s meaningful to him.”
“Like, romantically?”
“No, Mary Sue. Not romantically. You’re just . . . there. Like an achievement, maybe because he was searching for something. Fame. Power. Popularity. In reality, of course, he probably wanted to rid himself of the parasitic demon that he didn’t know was attached to his soul. But, you know, details.”
“You got all that from my medal?”
She gestured offhandedly toward it. “It’s a piece of jewelry, not a memoir. But I can get a little. The issue will be the mechanism. We’ll have to link the medal to a map if we want to get anywhere with this.”
She spun on the stool and looked at Catcher, arms crossed. “What do you think? Compass in water? Map on a dart board? Google Maps?”
Catcher’s eyes shined. “Damn, I love it when you talk shop.”
“Especially when destroying the world isn’t the side dish,” Mallory murmured.
“That helps,” Catcher admitted.
• • •
They decided on their tools, and Catcher cleaned off the table while Mallory prepared the magic and the spell.
It was both more and less complex than I’d imagined it would be.
Less, because it involved such mundane materials. A map of the U.S. torn from a road atlas, the front cover of which bore a smiling insurance agent with perfectly coiffed brown hair. A large glass baking dish of water, which held a sliver of cork, the House medal stuck to the top with a thin sewing needle. The map was submerged in the water, the make-do magical compass bobbing above it.
Humble materials, but the magic was profound.
When her station was prepared, Mallory stretched and shook out her wrists and arms, rolled her shoulders like a swimmer preparing for a sprint. She was surprisingly calm, her movements reverential. Instead of making her anxious or manic, the preparations seemed to soothe her. Her hands, once chapped from the aftereffects of black magic, looked healthy again, although they were still marked by faint, crisscrossing lines from the damage she’d already done.
She looked up at me, smiled. “It’s different now. I mean, not the magic per se. But the preparations. They remind me why I’m doing what I’m doing, force me to calm myself, to approach it logically.”
I smiled a little. “Kind of like doing dishes?”
She chuckled. “Exactly like doing dishes. The North American Central Pack isn’t perfect, any more than the Keenes are perfect. But they know magic. A healthy kind of magic. A useful kind of magic. I couldn’t have gotten better without him. Not really.”
“This will be kind of like dousing,” Mallory said. “Water witching. Except we aren’t looking for water. We’re looking through it.”
She pulled her legs up, sitting cross-legged on a stool too small for it, which made her look a little like she was floating like a meditating yogi. She put her hands flat on the table and looked down at the water and the cork that bobbed inside it.
“And away we go,” she quietly said.
The buildup was so slow, so smooth, that I didn’t realize she’d begun spooling magic until the other objects on the table began to vibrate. The room had warmed, just a bit, not uncomfortably, but like I’d just moved a little closer to a roaring fire on a chilly day. I didn’t know I’d be able to tell the difference, but this was obviously good magic. There was no uncomfortable edge, no angry itch. It was calmer. Smoother, rippling the air in smooth waves that rolled across us instead of crashing into us like Mallory’s magic had once done.
By the expression on Catcher’s face, he was feeling it, too. He generally had three moods—bleak, pissed, and sardonic. (He might have been three of Snow White’s rejected dwarves.) But here, in this rehabbed basement with his rehabbed girlfriend, he actually looked . . . content. Proud and thoughtful, a little bit smitten, and generally satisfied with his lot.
Good for him. And her. They could use a little smitten and content.
Mallory drew the magic to a crescendo and pointed her index finger at my House medal. A blue spark sizzled from her finger to the cork. The medal heated, the edges glowing orange at first, then heating to white-hot, the metal warm enough to boil the water around it. The cork shivered and began to spin, whirling like a top in the middle of the water, then zigging across the surface like a bug, back and forth as it tried to find its target.
“Go on,” Mallory whispered encouragingly. As if in answer, like a child itching to please its mother, it dove and disappeared.
As fast as it had begun, the magic dissipated again.
“That’s a good girl,” Mallory said, standing to peer over the water.
“Did it work?” I asked, stepping carefully closer.
“It picked a spot,” Mallory said, wincing as she dipped her fingers into the edges of the dish.
“Hot, hot, hot,” she murmured, almost to herself, carefully lifting the map from the bottom of the dish.
The cork, still quivering, was neatly pinned to the near center of the map. Mallory let the rest of the water drain, then placed the map on the table.
Catcher stepped forward, peered over Mallory’s shoulder. “Portville, Indiana,” he said. “I guess that’s where you’ll find your man.”
Chapter Seventeen
THE BANKER
Portville, Indiana, was gritty, a hard-bitten industrial town on the southern tip of Lake Michigan, just across the Indiana border. Portville had a reputation as a crumbling, blue-collar city abandoned by industry, its remaining vacuum filled by gangs, poverty, and violence.
Seth Tate, a fallen angel with contrition on his mind, had taken up residence there. If he’d really been serious about making amends for his past bad acts, the location was entirely appropriate. It definitely seemed like a city that needed help. On the other hand, during his less angelic days, when he’d been under Dominic’s influence, he’d been a drug kingpin and a befouler of vampires. A dirty city was just the type of place for him to work some dirty magic.
Either way, I had nothing more than the town’s name, which the Internet told me had nearly one hundred thousand residents. Not an address, a workplace, a church, or a precinct—but a name. This was going to be a challenge.
This was a big task, and I was going to need a partner. Unfortunately, both my official partners were under wraps. Ethan was in custody, and Jonah was captain of a House whose Master had been called an enemy of Chicago. He was going to have his hands full keeping his people safe.
That meant I needed to look elsewhere. So when I was in the car again, I pulled out my phone and called Jeff.
“Hey, Merit.”
“Hey.” I got to the point, and quickly. “Can you get away for a little while?”
“You planning a trip?”
“I am, actually. What do you know about Portville, Indiana?”
“Not a thing. Should I?”
“It’s where Seth Tate’s currently living.”
“Ah,” he said. “Sulfur and smoke?”
“Actually, yeah. If she’s connected to the Messengers, he’s the best person to tell us how. I still have to check with Luc and Malik, but I think they’ll say yes.”