Zayvion straightened in his chair, and Nola, on the couch, looked over.
“Ready?” I asked.
“I am.” He stood. “Thanks for the soup. It was wonderful.”
Nola stood too, exposing the old-fashioned manners she’d been raised with.
“It was great catching up with you again.” Here she shot me a mischievous look.
“Wait a minute.” I scowled. “You two weren’t talking about me, were you?”
Zayvion shrugged into his coat. Zipped it. “Your name might have come up.”
“Have a good meeting.” Nola gave me a quick hug. I shot Zayvion a questioning look, over her shoulder.
He blinked and poured on the Zen.
“Promise I didn’t tell him all your secrets,” Nola said.
“Better not. Two can play that game, you know.”
“What? With whom? Oh.” A rosy blush fanned across her freckled cheeks. “You’re horrible,” she laughed.
“Remember that,” I said with a straight face. “You do not want to play boyfriend chicken with me, missy. I aim low.”
I tugged my wet coat off the back of the door, rolled the locks, and opened the door. “I should be back in a few hours. I have a dinner date tonight with Violet, and I’ll talk to her about Cody. Don’t worry about cooking.”
“Is her number around here in case I need to get a hold of you?” she asked.
“On the computer, in the address book.” I so had to get a new cell phone. Kevin had told me he might have a suggestion for a phone that would work longer than fifteen minutes, and Zayvion had said the Authority might be able to supply me with something. I pulled my notebook out of my coat pocket, flipped to a blank page while I was walking out the door, and scribbled
I clipped the pen on that page, so that every time I put my hand in my pocket I’d know there was a note waiting for me to take care of it.
Zayvion paused, still one step inside my apartment, and said something so quietly to Nola even I couldn’t hear it, before he walked out the door behind me.
Nola shut the door, and I slowed my pace until I was sure I heard her set the locks. “I didn’t realize you two were such good buddies,” I said.
Zayvion tipped his head but did not drop the Zen act. “She and I had some time to talk,” he said evenly. “When you were in the coma.” He said the last part quietly, as if there wasn’t quite enough air to fill in the words.
“You like her?” I asked.
“Yes.”
We didn’t say anything more as we tromped down the stairs to the parking area behind the apartment building.
Zay unlocked the passenger’s-side door, and we both got in the car.
“Dinner with Violet?” he asked once we were on the street and heading northwest.
“I need to talk to her about a couple things. Business things,” I said, “and about Cody Miller.”
“What about Cody Miller?” Zay suddenly seemed very interested. Odd.
“Nola’s trying to foster him out on her farm. Away from magic. She’s running into red tape. Something about psych tests.”
Zayvion was impeccably calm. Blank. Zen.
“You already knew about this, didn’t you?” I asked.
“Yes.”
“Whoa. A straight answer. Are you feeling okay?”
“I’ve been worse.”
“So, about Cody?” I asked.
“The Authority is involved with clearing him so that he can be fostered by Nola. I haven’t been. . updated on the details.”
“Now, there’s the obscure, subject-dodging man I know,” I said. He gave me a look I pointedly ignored. “What should I tell Nola?”
“You can tell her that you found out Cody should be released soon. As soon as the psych eval is done.”
“Psych eval? Is that the story?”
He took a deep breath and let it out. “Allie, if you are going to become a part of the Authority, you are going to have to learn how to keep a few secrets. So, yes. That is the story until we hear otherwise.”
“And that’s all the story you’re telling me?”
“Yes.”
“I don’t think I like that.”
“Too bad.”
I scowled at him. I not only didn’t like being in the dark, I didn’t like that he was comfortable keeping me there. “Is there a list of who I can and cannot talk to about the Authority? I work with the police on occasion,” I said. “Can I talk to them?”
“The police don’t know about us. Detective Stotts shouldn’t either.”
“Shouldn’t?”
“We are fairly sure he doesn’t know about the Authority.”
“Why?”
“Because he hasn’t done anything to try to stop us.”
“You know, that makes it sound like you’re on the wrong side of the law.”
“You can talk to Violet if you want.”
“Way to avoid my observation,” I said.
“She knows about the Authority.” He continued like I hadn’t even spoken. “But she doesn’t know everything. And there are some things that would be best not to tell her. Things that would put her in danger. Like Cody being under evaluation with us.”
I rubbed at my face. “I give up,” I said into my palms. “One slip of conversation and someone’s going to get hurt? How do you keep track of it all?”
“Spreadsheet.”
“Right. So how do you know who knows what?”
The clouds grew darker the farther north we headed to the Fremont Bridge. He was silent awhile, maybe thinking about how to explain it to me, or maybe just paying attention to navigating the thicker traffic.
By the time he turned onto the bridge, it was raining steadily. The windshield wiper squeaked. “It’s not that difficult,” he finally said, picking up our conversation once we had merged with I-5 traffic. “The majority of people in the city, in the world, do not know about the Authority.”
“And why not? Why not just come out and come clean so we can all move forward with the same information?”
“The older uses for magic, the ancient spells, are far more dangerous than the simple magic approved for release to the masses. The older uses for magic-dark magic, light magic-have always been hidden from the world. The few times in history those magics have fallen into the wrong hands, wars and worse have nearly destroyed mankind.”
“Wait. Magic was approved to be released?”
He glanced at me. “You didn’t know that?” He shook his head. “Your father. .” He left it at that, then went on. “When the technology reached such a point that the common man could access magic safely-”
“Relatively safely,” I interrupted.
“Relatively safely,” he agreed, “and not without price or pain. When that technology was released, only certain magics, glyphs, spells, were ‘discovered’ and tested by the pioneers in the budding field of magic.
“And all of that happened under the control of the Authority,” he said. “Mostly.”
“So the Authority has been hiding magic for hundreds of years?”
“Thousands.”
Wow. “What changed?”
