“No reason to waste time on a ritual that would have resulted in the same thing,” he said, smirking, “only taken a lot more time. We in the A.S.A. aren’t inefficient blunderers like you R.U.N.E. people.”
“We’re done here,” I said to Tully. “Let’s see about getting the car running again. The spell effects should have worn off about now.” I glared at Dara. “I’m filing a complaint with the A.S.A. about your conduct.”
She giggled. “Really? That’s rich. You filing a complaint against me when you’re the one using prohibited magic.”
“That again.” I asked, gesturing at myself. I held up my pendant. Drew my binding knife. All legal artifacts for a sorcerer to carry. “My partner carries a standard-issue wand. It hasn’t been used tonight.” Not yet, I thought. I kept my gaze level. Sure, there was the amulet inside my jacket, but wasn’t a standard magical artifact, as such, it didn’t have mana in it. The idea of it, blood sacrifice, was what made it potent. She’d have no way of knowing I carried one. She couldn’t. Besides, if she did, she’d just come out and accuse me, and so far, she hadn’t. My lips were dry but I forced myself not to moisten them. I didn’t want her thinking I was nervous.
“My money is on an accidental misfire of her binding magic,” Riley said.
I swallowed back a retort.
“No, always bet on stupid,” Dara said. “It causes more accidents.”
“No, accidents cause more unintended consequences,” Riley replied.
“How long have you two been married?” I asked them.
Riley gave me a flat look.
Dara’s lips curled up into a humorless smile. “How amusing.”
Tully watched the three-sided back-and-forth without comment.
“You really should join in,” I told him.
He shrugged. “I don’t know the players like you.”
“There’s a place waiting for you at the A.S.A.,” Dara reminded him. She glared at me. “You, on the other hand, I’m starting an investigation into your conduct. That begins with taking you in for an interview.”
I laughed. “You’ve got to be kidding me. You have no cause to ‘take me in.’ I’m not going anywhere with you.” I turned to Tully and jerked my head at the Continental. “Come on, let’s see if we can start the battleship.” I started to turn my back on Dara.
“Schlaggen!” she commanded in German. Strike.
A spinning ball of blue light flashed into existence between her fingers. She hurled the spell at me. I tried jumping out of the way, but blue light engulfed my vision and a force like a mallet wrapped in velvet crashed into my skull.
The next thing I knew I was on the pavement, with a killer headache.
“Hold!” Tully said to Dara and Riley. “That’s enough. He had his phone out. “I’m calling Director Farlance.”
“You can’t,” I groaned. “He’s busy.” I groaned again and sat up. My head rang like a bell.
“He’ll want this call,” Tully said. He began dialing.
“Hold on,” Dara said. She pinched her lips. “That won’t be necessary.”
I managed to get to my feet, and shook my head to clear it. “I should file charges under the Compact against you for assaulting me with a spell. There was no provocation for that.”
She didn’t say anything.
“We still have our suspicions,” Riley said.
“Fine, you can have them,” I replied. “Everyone does. Now back off and let us do our jobs.”
Both of them looked like they’d been sucking on lemons. Dara’s glare could curdle milk, it was that ugly.
Tully and I got back in the car. Tully turned the key in the ignition. The Continental started up and we drove off.
“What a jerk,” I said, massaging my temples. My headache was a killer. Spell-induced ones were the worst.
“Where to?” Tully asked. He managed to look concerned and annoyed with me at the same time, quite an accomplishment in my book. The annoyance faded when I didn’t answer right away.
The thing was, I had no idea where to go from here.
I sat in my seat for a minute, just staring out the window.
“Marquez?” Tully asked me.
I didn’t answer. My headache had given birth to daughter headaches.
“Marquez,” he repeated. “Elizabeth, how are you?”
“I’d say, take me to urgent care, but how do you explain spell-induced concussion?” I asked. I wasn’t sure where we were driving just then, just like I wasn’t sure at that moment where we were in Portland.
Tully pulled over and parked the car in a darkened church parking lot. The clouds overhead had thinned and I thought I glimpsed Jupiter shining high in the southern sky above the church.
He unbuckled my seat belt, looked me over.
“Usually I ask for dinner before getting serious.”
Tully didn’t react to my latest attempt at humor. He continued checking me. He held up two fingers. “How many fingers do I have?”
“Well, normally five, but I know you want the answer to be two, so, two fingers it is.”
“Do you always have to make a joke out of everything?”
“It’s how I deal with chaos, stress, and deadly danger.” I tried to smile.
He shook his head. “Even there you had to try and make a joke out of your answer.”
I closed my eyes. My head was down to a dull ache. “Okay, so what I’m wondering about is where we go next.”
“We certainly aren’t any closer to getting to the cause of the gremlin outbreaks,” Tully pointed out.
“No, we’re not. I wish I could joke about that but, the truth is, we don’t have any suspects or arcane interviews. I really wanted that boggart.” I would have insisted that Dara and Riley let us talk to it, but they’d already executed it.
Tully watched me closely, listening without comment.
“I’m not concussed, really. Let’s review what we know. There have been five gremlin outbreaks now, as well as the boggart. The manifestations have taken place in a variety of locales. Only the last one involved theft.”
I thought for a moment. These outbreaks were very atypical. Why?
“What else do we know?” I asked Tully.
“The amount of mana drawn to these areas, and then consumed seems
