are?”
“What?”
“Oh, come on. You don’t even know where your dad set up labs for Violet’s research?”
“Didn’t like him, didn’t know her, didn’t care. Which means no, of course I don’t know where the labs are.”
“It never came up in board meetings?”
Interesting question. It hadn’t come up in board meetings, but Violet had told me the subject of the lab, and more specifically the disks that were being developed there, was causing all sorts of suspicions among the stockholders and higher-ups of the company. So much so, she’d moved in with Kevin because of threats.
I felt like I was working a crossword puzzle with no clues. I should be guessing what was going on, but didn’t even know where to begin. People in the company were upset with her for something. The only thing I could put my finger on was that the disks had been used for a lot of bad things. And now Stotts wanted me out at the lab where the disks were made, to Hound something when there was very little magic left in the city.
A break-in? Maybe someone on the board got a judge on their side and was seizing property.
Whatever was going down out there, Stotts had not sounded happy.
“That’s a hell of a long time to think over your answer,” Shame said. “Try a short word like ‘no.’”
“Sorry,” I said. “It’s just-I think I’m missing something. That maybe Violet said something.” I pulled out my notebook and scanned back through the entries. Nothing that immediately looked like a clue. “And no, the lab hasn’t come up in any of the Beckstrom Enterprises business I’ve been involved in. But I’m not the CEO. Violet is.”
“And?”
“She told me there was some contention among the board members. They didn’t like not knowing what, exactly, she was developing, and why she wouldn’t let them get their hands on it. Plus, she moved in with Kevin.”
“Cooper? Her bodyguard?”
“She said she received threats. Why don’t you know about this? Kevin’s a part of the Authority. Doesn’t he report in or something?”
“Not to me. Any field agents-hell, all of us-report in to Sedra. She’s the mastermind.”
Yes, I knew that. I’d just never needed to report to her myself. Things had been really quiet the last couple months. All I’d been doing was training and learning. My teachers reported in for me.
“Do you think they can help Zayvion?” I asked. “Maeve, Jingo Jingo?”
Shame was quiet. “You said he went into a gate.”
“Yes.”
“He might find his way back. If a gate were opened near his body.” Shame took a breath and wiped his hand down his face, as if trying to mop off exhaustion. “Complicated by Jones using light and dark magic, all the disciplines. Opening a gate for him might go bad fast. Or it might help him remember what it’s like to be alive and bring him back.”
“So why aren’t they trying that? Hells, you and I could open a gate.”
Shame wiggled the fingers of one hand. “No magic, remember? It takes magic, a lot of it, or a lot of different kinds working together, to open a rift between life and death. Gates aren’t easy.”
Maybe not, but I’d watched Chase open and close them with a snap of her fingers. But then, she was Greyson’s Soul Complement. And they could break magic’s boundaries.
I rubbed at my forehead. The left side of my face still hurt. I’d probably be half tanned for the next few months. Since I had my notebook out, I made notes about everything that had happened. City lights, just electric, no magic, washed the pages in white and yellow. I finished my notes and gazed out the window at the magicless city.
Cars that were just cars, nothing shiny, nothing magic, drove past. In the low light of the sky’s exhalation into darkness, people walked the streets.
Mostly they looked the same. Oh, maybe a few older coats, maybe more bad hairstyles, thicker waistlines, and a limp or two. But mostly, the kinds of magic people used to enhance themselves were noticeable only close- up-the perfect noses, teeth, complexion, sparkling wit, dulcet voice, and so on.
We’d gotten so used to taking care of flaws with easy fixes. What’s a little headache now and then for the illusion of youth? Seeing people with their true faces on was odd. Fascinating. The big noses, laugh lines, thin lips, frowns, crooked teeth-the imperfections somehow caught at the soul of humanity, and left it bare to be seen, the beauty and ugliness. It felt like suddenly we’d become what we were. For good, and for bad.
That lack of magic gave me a glimpse of something I didn’t know I was missing. A reality, an honesty, magic could not create. And like seeing a foreign land for the first time, I was caught by the beauty of it.
Lead and glass lines and conduits still wrapped like steel ivy up the outsides of the buildings, crawled up and up, and met at building tops where the gold-tipped spires of Beckstrom Storm Rods stood like beacons to the stars.
But stripped free of Illusion, Glamour, or the comfortable blur magic offered, crumbling brick, peeling paint, rust, and disrepair showed through. The sidewalks were not as clean, the plants not as tended, windows dirty, broken, or boarded. Safety inspections had to be done to assess a building’s health without magical enhancements- I’d just been through a barrage of them with the leasing of the warehouse by Get Mugged-so I knew the buildings were stable. They were also old, showing their history, their lives, in every crack and slant.
I loved it.
This was not the Portland I knew. Rust-streaked pipes and mechanical units on rooftops-air conditioners, vents, and the like-sat like squat warts against the sky, changing the familiar horizon. I wondered if Stone was up there somewhere. I hadn’t seen him since the fight.
“Have you seen Stone?” I asked Shame.
He licked his bottom lip. Shame still looked like hell, and the anger that had brought him back to life at the inn seemed to be wearing off, leaving a sickly sweat behind.
“You know Stone’s an Animate.” He looked at me. Waited. I had no idea what he was getting at.
“An Animate is an inanimate object infused with magic,” he went on. “Magic puts the life in them. And when magic is gone, there is nothing. . ”
“No. Absolutely no. You did not just tell me Stone is dead.”
“Allie. .”
“Shut up.”
Stone was fine. He was smart enough to track me, he was smart enough to curl up around a backup spell or something. I refused to believe he was dead.
But the more I looked at the city around me, the more dread sank in. There just wasn’t that much magic left. Not for generators. Not for illusions. And not for a gargoyle, no matter how smart.
Shame said quietly, “When magic kicks back up after the storm hits, he’ll come to.” It was sweet, but I knew he didn’t think that would happen.
Stone was just a statue. A big stupid rock who left dust all over my apartment and wore my socks on his nose. But he was my big stupid rock. I was going to miss the hell out of him.
I tried not to think about it. Because I didn’t want to show up in front of Stotts crying.
Shame drove like he knew right where the lab was. And maybe he did. Maybe the Authority kept the lab on its watched list. But even if Shame hadn’t been driving, it wouldn’t have been hard to find the place.
Three police cars blocked the street. Beyond them the big white van of Stott’s MERC team parked half on the elm-lined sidewalk. A few police officers stood outside the building, which was more of a house, and two more at the street to keep people at a safe distance. I didn’t see Stotts’s crew: Julian, Roberts, and Garnet.
More police tape, a sullen yellow smear in the dying light, roped off the sidewalk outside the building.
The building really did look like a house out of a storybook. Old hand-placed stone walls scalloped the edges of the sidewalk. The Tudor-style house was set up on the small hill and faced the trees and golf course across the street. At least two stories, the house looked like a home rather than a lab, brick and stucco on arched doorways beneath steeply gabled roofs. The windows, slender and multipaned, had little light behind them.
In the driveway was Violet’s Mercedes-Benz.
My heartbeat did double time.
“Stop,” I told Shame. “I need to get out.”
