“Gremlins?” I looked frantically around, craning my neck to see where the little annoyances were. Nothing on the nearest street light or rooftops that I could see.”
“No sign of them,” Tully said.
Headlights flared in our windshield, and I threw up my hands, shielding my eyes. The lights dimmed and a black SUV with tinted windows stopped, facing us.
The doors opened and a slim blond woman in pantsuit and heels stepped down to the street.
I groaned. I knew that woman. Dara Kind.
My nemesis had just arrived.
8
I swear, her lip curled when she saw me. Dara Kind was an operative for the Arcane Security Agency. A multinational, extra-governmental agency of black ops types who thought they knew best about the supernatural. They had signed the Compact, but that only meant that they technically followed the laws of magic.
How they applied those laws varied. They were all about getting as much knowledge and mana as they could.
I suspected that meant breaking the Compact, but good luck catching them in the act.
Dara tapped a manicured fingernail against a manicured thumbnail. “You’re back in the field, Marquez.” It wasn’t a question, it was a statement, with an extra helping of implied scorn.
“Yup, sure am.” The grin I forced out hurt my face.
I nodded at the red-haired man in the off-the-rack suit, who looked like a reject for the presidential secret service. “Who’s your pal?”
“Riley,” the man said, giving me a hard stare. Oh, one of those types.
“Marquez,” I replied.
“We already know that!” he snapped.
My grin widened. Riley was all too easy to rile up.
“Just wanted to make sure you could follow along,” I said.
Tully emerged from the car.
“My partner, Tully,” I said.
Dara nodded. “John Lincoln Tully, formerly of the United States Army. The offer still stands.”
My eyes widened. She knew him?
Tully frowned. “I told Operative Fitzpatrick I wasn’t interested. That still stands. I don’t know you or Riley, but nothing has changed.”
“Pity,” Dara said, and sounded like she meant it.
I waved my arms. “Hey, Tully and I have places to go. So, if you don’t mind, we’ll do that.”
“As soon as you fix your engine.” She snickered.
I narrowed my eyes. “That was you? You’ve crossed the line, lady.” I put my hands on my hips. “Where do you get off spell-killing our transport? We’re on official R.U.N.E. business.”
She raised an eyebrow. “Oh, you mean that joke of an op just now at the strip mall. The one featuring gremlins and a boggart? The boggart that got away from you?”
I jabbed a finger at her. “Listen, if you hadn’t killed our engine we’d be on top of that boggart right now. You interfered in another supernatural organization’s business, Kind. You won’t be happy when this stinking mess hits the magical rotating oscillator.”
“Oh, quaint euphemism for shit hitting the fan,” she retorted. “Your mother isn’t going to save you this time.”
Tully joined me, looming like a mountain. He was a man-mountain, compared to me.
“You are hindering our assignment.” He kept his voice level.
She brightened at that. “Well, that’s what you get for working with Elizabeth.” She wrinkled her nose when she said my name, like she smelled something nasty. “The fact is, Marquez is up to no good and you’re stuck with her. An understandable mistake for a rookie. But still a mistake.”
If there had been any kind of manifestation in the vicinity, I would have cast a binding on it and sent it after Miss High-and-Mighty A.S.A. operative. I can be as petty as the next sorcerer, so sue me. But, there weren’t any manifestations handy.
I opened my mouth to tell her to move, but she raised a hand and began gesturing. Dara was an Invoker; she converted mana directly into spells.
Riley pointed a rod at us. It was copper, and had a basilisk twining along the body. I could tell because the whole thing glowed with orange.
“What part of hidden don’t you get?” I demanded. “If an ordinary sees us, the secret is out.”
“Our magic items are cloaked, like all artifacts.” Dara’s voice oozed with scorn. “I’d think you’d realize that.”
I felt like I was back in the fifth grade, arguing with Cindy Macklin, the rich kid in our otherwise middle-class school who always had to be right, because being right was her privilege, thanks to mom’s money.
“Listen, what’s your deal?” I asked her.
Dara’s lips pressed into a thin line. “I think you are using a prohibited magic item. It failed to nab the boggart.”
“That’s crazy,” Tully said, and he wasn’t hiding how he felt.
Dara kept her hand up, twiddling her fingers, her spell ready to be cast. “Ask your partner.”
I snorted. “We’re wasting time, we have to catch that boggart.”
Dara laughed and nodded at Riley. He reached inside his suit and pulled out the bag still brimming with jewelry and pearls that the boggart had been carrying. Riley’s suit must have a Deep Pocket, which was a very proscribed magical artifact. Those were demonically tricky to craft, too, since you were bonding an extradimensional manifestation to an inanimate manifestation.
“We did catch the boggart,” Dara said.
How in Hades had they managed that? I thought. They’d swooped down on us awfully fast. Which meant, they’d been nearby, very likely monitoring the outbreak at the strip mall. But Dara would deny it, if asked. The A.S.A. also played their cards very close.
I ground my teeth, then forced a smile. “Good. I’d like to interview it.” I tried to peer past her into the SUV, but the darkened interior and tinted windows made that impossible. “The Inter-Agencies Accords grant me that right as a member of one of the Agencies.” Sometimes supernatural rules and bureaucracy were your friend, annoyingly detailed and anal-retentive though those rules and bureaucracy could be.
“I’m afraid that won’t be possible,” Dara said, still twiddling her fingers, keeping whatever spell she had ready to throw at us on speed cast.
“Why not?” I demanded.
“Because we destroyed it,” Riley said.
I let out my breath, gave a little head
