“Yeah. I figured you’d need someone nice and harmless looking to deal with the authorities, and a ride home after.”
Damn, he was good at this. “Thanks.”
“No problem.”
“We should probably talk about something else,” I suggested. “Distract me.”
“What would you like to discuss?”
“How’s the client holding up?”
“She’s a little shell-shocked, but she’s hanging in there. Paulie’s staying close to her.”
“Good.” The last thing we needed was for her to flip out. Not that I’d blame her if she did. As a normal person, she would never have had to deal with this kind of crap. I was actually used to shit storms, and this one was bad even by my standards. “Did Talia and Bubba get their guys?”
“Nah. When your guy bailed, the other ones set off some spell disks. By the time Bubba and Talia got through, all the bad guys were gone. Why didn’t you shoot your target?”
“That was Jack Finn. A clairvoyant told me to spare the pawn, and a ghost told me Jack was the pawn.”
“Well, shit. Doesn’t that just suck.”
I couldn’t argue with that sentiment, so I didn’t even try. After a minute or two of quiet sipping, I asked, “How are you on magical theory?”
“I was raised by my father,” he answered drily. “I picked up a bit.”
“Good.” I ignored his sarcasm. “I’m going to bounce ideas off you. But this is all hypothetical and confidential as hell. You didn’t hear anything. I didn’t say anything. Got it?”
“Got it.”
“I think”—I looked over at him as I finished off the first bottle—“that I’ve been an idiot.”
He raised an eyebrow at that but didn’t answer. That was probably a wise choice. We’re friends, but I was his boss now.
“It takes four mages to do the spell to control a node, right?”
“Yes,” he agreed, “one for each compass point. And the power of a full moon.”
I nodded. “And a mage has to die by magic to activate it.”
He blinked, apparently surprised that I knew that. I guess it’s not common knowledge among the unwashed masses. “Yes.”
“Does it have to be one of the four who are stationed at the compass points?” Isaac had said my idea was good, but he was also a champion liar. If he thought that I might interfere with the plan in order to save one of my friends, he’d lie to me to keep me out of the way and not feel guilty about it in the least. So I asked Kevin, knowing that he’d give me the truth, no matter how unpleasant. It’s just how he was.
“No. In fact, it’s better if it isn’t. If one of the four dies, the whole thing gets thrown off balance, and the other three have to work harder to keep things stable.”
Cool. That was what I’d hoped, and it was very good news for our side. But then the thing that had been bothering me all along, the thing I hadn’t been able to pinpoint, finally reared its ugly head. “Michelle isn’t a mage.”
“No,” Kevin answered.
I cursed briefly under my breath. This was a big problem that I couldn’t see a solution for. I kept talking, trying to work it out. “Since she’s not a mage, killing Michelle isn’t going to do Finn and his buddies any good at all as far as the node is concerned.”
“Whoa … Connor Finn is trying to get control of a node?” Kevin’s eyes widened. “Oh, fuck. That is bad. That is so bad.” Kevin didn’t say it was impossible or doubt my sanity. That was a really refreshing change.
“Yeah. Tell me about it. He and his buddies are going after the node beneath the Needle.”
Kevin shook his head. “Not doable so long as the prison’s up and running. The magical protections around it would put up too much interference.”
I opened the second bottle, chocolate mint. Not bad at all. I was starting to feel better, more in control. And chocolate after strawberry put me in mind of Neapolitan ice cream—one of my favorites. So I didn’t sound the least bit irritable or panicked when I said, “More than half the protections around the prison are already gone. Creede, Bruno, Matty, and Isabella DeLuca are headed out there to bring them back up.”
Kevin leaned back, stretched out with his elbows propping up his upper body. I could see that he had lost weight and gained muscle over the last few months and looked more like the man I’d crushed on when Emma and I had been in college together. “Repairing them should be much easier than tearing them down. You can use the existing remnants as a base instead of starting from scratch or having to break things so they won’t interfere with whatever bad stuff you were planning to do.”
“What would it have taken to bring down the Needle’s defenses?”
He answered without a second’s hesitation and without flinching. “Blood magic. And it will take more to destroy the last of them.”
So somebody had already died and the bad guys needed someone else to die in addition to the mage. Things were starting to make sense again. “What if Michelle’s death isn’t really about the old Finn-Garza feud? I mean, Connor Finn wants her dead because of the feud, and the curse is how he’s going to do it … But the reason he’s doing it
Kevin blew out a breath. “It scans, but it’s a little complicated. After all, Connor’s already got a direct link to Jack. He doesn’t need Michelle.”
“Yeah. But if he uses himself as the link, he can’t use blood magic to make the kill; it’d double back on him. And if he does something to block that, he breaks the link. And he still needs to kill someone else anyway. So to my way of thinking, Connor Finn’s decided to kill two birds with one stone.”
Kevin and I sat in silence for a bit after that, both of us thinking hard. Finally he said, “It makes sense. You may not be exactly right, but I think you’re at least in the ballpark.”
I didn’t know whether to be glad or sad. I suppose it was good that I had some idea of what was happening; it might make it easier try to counter the bad guys’ plans. But a little part of me had clung to the hope that there was a more benign explanation. Silly. I knew that Connor Finn was truly a
But I just have a hard time wrapping my head around the fact that there are people who have such little value for life. I looked at Kevin. “You know what pisses me off most?” I sighed. I felt so tired and so damned stupid. All of this should have occurred to me earlier. If it had …
“What?”
“I’m the idiot who tipped Jack off to what was going on. If I hadn’t, we’d still be safe over at Fred’s.”
“Well, hell. That sucks.” He shook his head. “Why’d you do that?”
“When I went to see Connor, he baited me, said I had no clue about the big picture. I figured Jack didn’t know he had Garza blood and would die if his father went through with the curse. I thought I might be able to turn Jack and that he would help us. And if I couldn’t, maybe he’d let something useful slip.”
“Not a bad idea.”
“Yeah.” I looked across the lake at the charred ruins of Fred’s home. “Didn’t work out so hot.”
“Nothing you can do about that now.” He gave my shoulder a reassuring squeeze. “And hey, we all survived.”
“Yeah, we did.”
“So now that you’ve figured out what’s going on, what’s the plan? Do you have any brilliant ideas?”
“As a matter of fact, I do—but I’m not sure you’re going to like them.”
29
Michelle was on her way to Kevin’s place out in the desert, where he always went for
