Chapter 3
Augustine changed lanes, avoiding a slow-moving truck with landscaping equipment in the back. He’d selected a black Mercedes GLC for this trip. It was a reliable car that handled well and looked like every other crossover SUV on the road.
Diana sat in the passenger seat, calmly watching Houston roll past the window.
She was carrying a small purse with her, containing her wallet and a pouch of the tigrionex milk.
The dog, whose name was Lila, lay on the back seat, her head resting on her big paws.
He requested to put one of their rune collars on her, and Diana agreed.
The collars were the latest gadget to come out of the MII’s Research and Development.
The sigils inscribed on them retained a small magic charge, allowing him to affix an illusion to it.
It only lasted for six minutes, but that would be long enough.
Three minutes into the drive, it occurred to him that he had talked way too much during their conversation in the office.
He had told her about his sister. He had explained the particulars of illusion magic, which was the kind of proprietary knowledge any sane mage would have kept to himself.
He had even disclosed the identities of his agents.
She had watched him and listened, and he had just kept talking and talking.
Blah-blah-blah. Why am I chattering?
No distractions, he reminded himself. This was a job, and he was bringing a client along, a client whom he would have to protect. While Lila was a biological weapon, she was still only a dog.
The traffic on 288 was surprisingly light. Their destination lay in Pearland, about fifteen miles south of Downtown, a large suburban city within the metro. Safe, convenient, lots of restaurants, schools, and box stores.
His car chimed, announcing an incoming call. He glanced at the number and sighed.
“Yes?”
Arabella’s light voice came out of the speakers. “Finished the Dunwoody thing. It’s in your inbox.”
“Did you find Phillip?”
“I did.”
That was quick. “Where was he?”
“Stuffed into a cistern in a barn.”
What? “Is he alive?”
“Yes. He had a fight with his girlfriend, was a total ass about it, and when she broke up with him, he decided to use his ice magic to keep her from leaving. She yeeted him into a cistern and then bounced. I’m surprised she was that chill about it. She showed a lot of restraint.”
“Stuffing a 16-year-old into a cistern and leaving him there for two days hardly qualifies as restraint.”
“It does if your last name is Madero.”
Oh. “Noted.”
Diana smiled.
Considering House Madero’s reputation, Phillip Dunwoody was lucky to have kept all of his limbs.
“Are you still considering?” Arabella asked.
“Yes.”
“What should I do next?”
“Talk to Lina. She will assign you a new case.”
“Okay!”
The call ended.
“What are you considering?” Diana asked him.
“She wants to go to Rice.”
Of all Texas’ colleges, Rice was the best when it came to magic education. It was private, had an excellent curriculum taught by nationally recognized scholars, and kept its enrollment very small. It was also local, which was a huge plus for Arabella.
“Why can’t she?” Diana asked.
“She doesn’t have the grades or the pedigree for it.
Even with the Path to College, her chances are slim.
She is not a bad kid, and the Baylors are a loving family.
Unfortunately, they have their hands full.
Once they figured out that she had control over her magic, they left her to her own devices.
She is independent, level-headed, and sharply intelligent, but she gets bored easily. Her grades suffer as a result.”
“Independence isn’t a bad quality,” Diana said.
“Agreed. The problem isn’t her independence.
The problem is their lack of supervision.
I know what my sister made on her last history exam.
I’m not sure the Baylors even know what subjects Arabella is taking.
She is thirty hours into her internship with MII, and I doubt anyone has asked her what she is doing with her afternoons. ”
Diana gazed into the distance, a contemplative look on her pretty face. “Sometimes being ignored is the better option.”
His interactions with Cornelius had convinced him that childhood in House Harrison wasn’t pleasant.
Perhaps that was why Diana still didn’t have a partner.
After all, the point of Prime marriages was all about children with the right genetic makeup.
She would have to choose another animal mage, and the burden to find a connection would be doubled…
And he was in the weeds again. What was it about today? He needed to get back to the subject at hand.
“Rice is very selective,” Augustine said.
“Low admission rate. Not only does that child want to go to Rice, but she wants to double major in Business Administration and AMT, Applied Magic Theory. She needs a letter of recommendation, and she identified me as the best sponsor. It’s the reason she started this internship in the first place. ”
“Are you the best sponsor?” she asked.
“The dean of the AMT faculty is a family friend.”
“Do you think she can do it?”
“Absolutely.”
He passed another slow-moving vehicle. What was the point of getting on a state highway if you were going to sit at fifty-five?
“Then why not give her the recommendation?”
He grimaced. “Because she doesn’t have the foundation for it.
The Baylors have been a House for five minutes, and the AMT faculty is a shark-infested whirlpool filled with multi-generation Primes.
They will rip her apart. If I give her the recommendation, I will be assuming responsibility for her, which means I will need to actually mentor her.
I don’t have the time, and I’m not sure I want to make the effort. ”
He took the exit and merged onto Sam Houston Parkway heading east. It was time. Augustine inwardly let off the imaginary brakes that held his magic back. It flowed over him and Diana, filling the car, coalescing over them and the dog, and he shaped it in a single breath with practiced ease.
The pressure lessened, and he exhaled softly.
His body generated magic at an accelerated rate. If he wasn’t careful, it would erupt out of him like a geyser. Maintaining his usual persona bled some of it out, but assuming a new identity was so much better.
“Please take a moment to check your reflection,” he said.
Diana flipped the sun visor on her side and looked in the mirror.
Diana blinked. The woman in the mirror blinked with her.
She was middle-aged, and her blond hair, streaked with grey, was pulled into a tight bun away from her full face.
The corners of her mouth and her eyes drooped slightly.
Sunspots marked her cheeks, barely obscured by a thin layer of makeup. She looked tired.
Diana tilted the visor, trying to get a better view. She had acquired a larger body, dressed in a brown pantsuit.
Diana blinked again, disoriented, and tried a smile. Her reflection mimicked her.
“No worries,” an elegant brunette in the driver seat said. “You can move your face.”
This new woman was in her forties, her makeup expertly applied, a nude lip, razor-precision eyebrows, and that classic top-income-bracket hair, parted in the center and spilling over her shoulders in loose waves.
A silk satin shirt, a grey pencil skirt.
She couldn’t see the shoes, but they were likely heels.
At once generic and familiar, an investment banker, a luxury real estate broker, a female entrepreneur giving an interview to Forbes.
“The illusion will hold until I choose to remove it.”
He didn’t just look different. He sounded different. His movements were different, and yet even in this new body, he was still him. He felt like Augustine.
This was a problem. She didn’t need these kinds of problems.
“What about Lila?”
The brunette nodded at the back. A large jacket lay on the seat, casually discarded.
“It would be best if she waited for us in the car,” Augustine said.
“Won’t the illusion break if we leave?”
“She’s wearing a rune collar that acts as a short-term battery for my enchantment. We won’t be long. I will leave the AC running, and once we are inside, nobody will notice.”
She glanced at the overcast sky through the car window. The weather was seasonably warm for April, with highs in the mid-seventies, but today the temperature dropped to the high sixties, a luxurious cooldown. Lila would be fine with the AC.
A two-story building came into view on their right. It sat in the middle of a large parking lot, bordered by stretches of grass wide enough to be called fields. A line of trees ran behind the building. The nearest business up ahead was at least six hundred feet away or more.
Augustine slowed the Mercedes and guided it into the parking lot.
She studied the structure. Two floors of sandy masonry walls with square lines and large windows.
The footprint was rectangular, with the upper story slightly smaller, so it sat atop the first like the second tier of a cake.
There must have been a balcony surrounding that second floor with a concrete wall acting as railing and a defensive barricade, because she could only see the top portion of the upper windows.
The first floor was large, likely around ten thousand square feet. The sign on the front spelled out “Gorwood and Associates.” It looked like a no-nonsense office built in the late nineties that had been given a fresh coat of cheerfully neutral paint.
“Is this the seedy underbelly?” she asked.
“One part of it.”
“I had expected something more sinister.”
The brunette Augustine gave her a one-shouldered shrug. Diana could’ve sworn her blouse was pure silk. The temptation to check the texture made her fingertips itch.
“What is this really?” she asked him.
“A front for the Hester family. They have two Significants and a single Prime, and they’re hoping to become a House.”