I MIGHT HAVE BEEN the only one in the room who understood Nidhi’s curses, the Gujarati words she spat so quickly I could barely keep up.
“I don’t understand,” I said. “Victor’s insects went to find his father. How do we get from that to killing wendigos and attacking Lena’s tree?”
Nidhi watched the sleeping girl, her face unreadable. “Does your family know about your abilities, Isaac?”
I shook my head. “My brother walked in on me once while I was practicing pulling coins from
Deb’s lips pursed like she had eaten something sour. “My family doesn’t, but the Porters cost me a fiance about fifteen years back.”
“I didn’t know that,” I said.
“You don’t know everything about me, hon.”
“Victor’s father is a monster.” Nidhi turned to face us. “August Harrison beat his wife for years. That lasted until Victor was eleven years old. Two days after August broke his wife’s nose, Victor was watching through the window as his father mowed the lawn. He enchanted the family car, which smashed through the garage door and tore across the yard. August tried to get away, but he wasn’t fast enough. The car broke his femur. He spent more than a month in traction.”
I gave a low, soft whistle. Victor had always seemed so pleasant and easygoing, with half his attention permanently lost in his work. “And that’s the guy he wanted when he was dying?”
“Victor’s mother died eight years ago,” said Nidhi. “He had no siblings, no spouse. August Harrison was the only family he had left. And their relationship was…complex.”
Jeff snarled. “Doesn’t sound complex to me. Rip the bastard’s throat out and be done with it.” I relayed his comment for the others.
“When August finally returned from the hospital, he acted like he had changed,” Nidhi continued. “He apologized to his wife and son, and promised to make things better. Two days later, he took Victor out to dinner, bought him several new toys, and asked Victor to teach him magic.”
“Power and control,” Lena said softly.
“Exactly,” said Nidhi. “August used violence to control his family, but that was only one tactic of many. He threatened Victor’s mother to control his son, and threatened the son to control the mother. He kept tight rein over the finances and their social connections, making them dependent upon him for everything. Magic would have been one more weapon in his arsenal. And Victor was a child. He loved his father. For that reason, and because he thought it would appease August’s temper, Victor tried to do as his father had asked.”
“An eleven-year-old trying to teach a grown man magic?” That couldn’t have ended well. Magical ability almost always manifested during childhood or adolescence. If August had the slightest potential for magic, it would have shown up long before then. Victor had been untrained. He wouldn’t have known how he had controlled the car, let alone how to impart that understanding to others.
“He couldn’t do it,” Nidhi said. “Every failure enraged August further. He accused Victor of lying, of deliberately keeping his secrets to himself. He never again laid a finger on his wife, but he beat Victor three more times. The third time, Victor fought back.”
“How?”
Her lips twitched. “Do you remember Teddy Ruxpin?”
“Sure. My grandparents got me one when I was a kid. Stupid thing gave me nightmares.” I stopped when I realized where she was going with this. “Victor attacked his father with a talking teddy bear? All it did was move its eyes and mouth while it played cassette tapes.”
“Not when Victor was done with it,” Nidhi said. “That teddy bear climbed onto the mantel, leaped out, and garroted August with a length of mint dental floss. They left him unconscious on the floor.”
“Why would Victor reach out to
“Death is rarely rational,” Nicholas said absently. He appeared far more interested in the dead than the living.
I couldn’t hold Victor’s dying mistake against him. I just hoped we would be able to fix that mistake before August Harrison did any further damage. “Why didn’t the Porters wipe August’s memories?”
“In the beginning, they didn’t realize how much he had seen,” said Nidhi. “Victor refused to talk about the abuse. His parents told the Porters they thought Victor had been playing in the car, and the whole thing was an unfortunate accident. As far as we knew, neither of them suspected anything magical. We didn’t learn the truth until months later, when Victor told us how his father had cowed the family into silence. The Porters visited August Harrison and did their best to erase his knowledge.”
“That obviously didn’t work,” I said bitterly.
“It did for a time.” Nidhi sighed. “Victor was never as careful with magic as he should have been. Over the years, August must have seen enough to piece the truth back together.”
My parents and I hadn’t always gotten along, but I couldn’t imagine growing up as Victor had. I knew he had done time as a field agent, but I had never been able to imagine him facing off against monsters or magic- wielders gone bad. Now I understood. Monsters wouldn’t scare a man who had grown up with one.
“If August has no magic, how does he control the insects?” asked Lena.
“Nicholas—Victor—said something about a telepathic interface.” August couldn’t have built the insects, any more than he could have pulled my shock-gun from its book. But once I made that gun, anyone could point and shoot. Likewise, if the queen was telepathic, August didn’t need magic. “We know he has the queen. Who was the libriomancer with him?”
“August Harrison had no friends among the Porters,” Nidhi said. “The few people who knew of him felt nothing but contempt.”
“What happens if the queen dies?” asked Deb. “Do the rest of the bugs drop dead, or do they freak out and go after anything that moves?” When nobody answered, she punched Nicholas on the shoulder. “That was your cue to ask the dead guy.”
Nicholas scowled, but turned back toward the place where Victor had died. “Victor isn’t certain what will happen if the queen is killed. Her loss would stop them from breeding or evolving, but—”
“Breeding?” Three of us spoke at once.
“Victor used a fractal matrix for the core spells, allowing the queen’s magic to be passed on.” His eyes crinkled with amusement. “The insects aren’t the true danger. Victor says you should be more concerned about the knowledge they could hold. They were designed to interface with his personal computer network, to better share their findings.”
I sat down on the undersized pink desk chair and stared at the wall where Victor’s backup server had once sat. He had disguised the machine as a potted cactus. I remembered the first time I sensed the power coming from Victor’s system, and his mischievous smile as he watched me try to figure out what I was looking at.
Jeff cocked his head and let out a sharp grunt, somewhere between a bark and a growl. Of us all, he was the only one who wouldn’t understand the implications.
I had no idea what a fractal matrix was, but that was the least of our problems. “Victor Harrison designed most of the security for the Porter network.” Anyone else who tried to hack our database would be lucky to survive in their natural shape, but if Victor had programmed his pets to avoid such traps, and if they had access to his system and software…
“August Harrison could have everything,” Nidhi whispered. “Personnel records. Histories.”
“Research reports.”
