storeroom, closing the door behind us.
It was truck day, and there were boxes stacked four high, leaving barely enough room for one person, let alone two. “You know she thinks we’re ducking back here for some nookie, right?”
She was neither amused nor distracted by my crude humor. “What’s wrong, Jess?” It was that “Don’t give me your BS” voice.
I sighed softly. I didn’t want to tell her, and yet I knew I would feel profoundly relieved once I had. “Guy Archer is missing.”
She was quiet for a long time, nibbling her lower lip. “They’re dead, aren’t they?”
“We… don’t know that for sure.”
“But you think they are.”
I ran a hand over my hair, habitually checking to see that it was still confined tightly in its usual tail. “Yeah. I think they are.”
“And the others?”
“Ivan wants me to send out an all-call through Grapevine. He’s gonna come up here, when he’s done down in Mexico.”
She sighed, shaking her head. “Goddess… Poor Rosaline.”
“Yeah.” There was no doubt in my mind that Mira would get along just fine when something happened to me. I wasn’t so sure about Rosaline. “Ivan will see that she’s taken care of, and she has all of Miguel’s family, too.”
“Is there any way to find out how it happened? To put their souls at rest?”
I shrugged. “Ivan’s working on that, too. If there’s a way, he’ll find it.”
“I could scry for Guy, too. If I had something of his.”
“No.” Even as I gave my flat refusal, her jaw firmed and I knew I should have chosen a different tone. “There’s no reason for you to tax yourself that way. If Ivan wants him scoped out, he’ll find someone to do it. Miguel’s mother, maybe.” Miguel’s mother was a powerful bruja in her own right.
“Or you could just find a way to get me something of Guy’s, and I could do it myself.”
“I’m not going to do that.”
She crossed her arms over her chest, and I did the same. Mexican standoff. Great. “We have to know, Jesse. If Guy’s in trouble, if we can find him, we can’t afford to wait.”
I chewed on the inside of my lip for a bit, debating the different courses I could take. And in the end, I caved-sort of. “All right. I’ll see if I can find something. But, we give Ivan a chance first. He may not even need you to do this.”
A certain wariness crept into her green eyes. “And when he finds who did this?” she asked as if she already knew the answer. Maybe she did. She married me, after all.
“Then I’m going hunting.” I could have told her I’d stay out of it, but she knew better. My wife is a smart woman. “I think I’m going to go in early to work. I don’t really want to be alone at the house.”
She nodded a bit, her eyes dark and unfathomable. “Okay. I’ll work on the wards when I get home.”
I reached for the door, then paused. “Hey, Mira? Keep an eye out for any blue cars cruising the neighborhood that you don’t recognize, okay?”
“Blue cars?”
“Yeah, little ones. Ford Escorts.” Mira wouldn’t know an Escort from a Humvee, but it was worth a shot.
“Why, exactly?”
“Just because.” It felt like lying, and I hated that feeling. But she didn’t need any more worry. “I love you.” People say you should always tell your loved ones how you feel, because you might not get another chance. I wonder if they really, truly, to the depths of their souls, understand how true that is.
She reached out to grip my hand, squeezing with all her might. “I love you, too, Jesse. Please be careful.”
It occurred to me, much later, that she hadn’t actually agreed to my terms on the scrying. Dammit!
13
Despite what I’d told Mira, I swung back past the house again. Ivan needed me to get the word out, and it was far better than just sitting and doing nothing.
I felt a prickling on my skin as I ducked through the doorway into Mira’s sanctuary, no doubt crossing the boundary of some spell she’d placed there.
I didn’t come in there often. I always felt as if I was intruding. But that’s where the computer was, so on occasion, I dared to invade her domain. She didn’t seem to mind. I fired up the machine, waiting patiently as the ancient, five-year-old contraption whined and purred in its gyrations. If we could afford it, I planned to get her a new one for Christmas.
I had to jump through three or four security hoops before I could get to the site I was actually aiming for. Ivan had named the database Grapevine. I’m not even sure why. Within, you could find the names and addresses of every champion Ivan knew. You could also find the dates of battles, identities of clients, and various and sundry other trivia. That is, if you could get in. It was hidden behind I don’t know how many types of encryption and firewalls and security and… Well, we’ll just say I consider computers right up there with magic. I don’t understand them, and I don’t need to, so long as they work.
The elderly computer doggedly worked at loading the site, when a window popped up with a message and a woman’s electronic scream echoed from the speakers. “I see you!”
“Gah!” My heart slammed in my chest, and I heard a faint snicker coming from the earphones where they rested on the desk. After I recovered, I snatched up the headset with its handy mic and slapped it on. “Goddammit, Viljo, that’s not funny!”
The man’s voice on the other end chuckled. “It was from where I am sitting.” It never fails to amaze me how well he speaks English, especially after dealing with Ivan’s regular slaughtering of our language.
A Finnish native now residing somewhere near Pikes Peak, Viljo is our pet computer geek. By “our,” I mean Ivan and his champions. As far as I know, Ivan is all that stands between Viljo and extradition back to Finland to face charges for computer crimes.
Once upon a time, dear Viljo bargained his soul away. I’m not sure who fought for him, but as repayment for being freed, he kept Grapevine functional and tightly locked down as only a hacker can.
You might ask what a computer genius sells his soul for? (Well, I wanted to know, at least, so I asked.) The answer is the world’s greatest hack, of course. Ever hear of the Great Firewall of China? Yeah, that thing that pretty much edits whatever the Chinese folk get to access on the Internet? A couple years ago, a hacker with the handle GMontag brought it crashing down to the point where it took the Chinese government three months to get it functional again. GMontag was a legend amongst hackers, their very own cyber-messiah (or so I’m told). And GMontag was none other than our very own Viljo.
I asked him once if it was worth it. He said, “If I had been thinking clearly, I would have arranged to bring it down forever, not just for three months.” Ah, the clarity of hindsight.
“What brings you to my neck of the cyber world? You are not due to check in for another two weeks.” Another window popped up, this one with a choppy video feed of Viljo’s face. Our poor computer could barely handle it, and the resulting image was grainy and barely recognizable. It didn’t help that he was sitting in a dimly lit room, surrounded by at least seven computer monitors (that I could see). All I could make out was the dark outline of his glasses and the dyed matte black of his long hair. And was that a tiny scraggly attempt at a mustache? Ye gods.
He frowned at the screen in disgust. “You still do not have a camera? Or even an adequate operating system?” I watched him for a few moments as his attention focused on the three keyboards he kept within easy reach, the image jerking like bad stop-action animation. I knew he was poking around inside Mira’s computer as easily as he did his own.
Some ungodly wail came over the headset, and it took me a few moments to realize Viljo was listening to music. “Are you listening to Bjork?”
