Chapter 2
CHAPTER TWO
Tori
The whiskey burned as it hit the back of my throat. I swallowed the mouthful and set my shot glass down on the bar with a loud clack.
Across from me, Ezra ignored the shot glass, the whiskey bottle, and the fact that it was barely past noon. He was considerate that way. Maybe too considerate.
Shifting my ass on my stool before it went numb, I turned my dry eyes to my laptop’s painfully bright screen. “Okay.”
Ezra glanced up from his laptop, the two devices sitting back-to-back on the bar.
“Izzah confirmed that three more members of Odin’s Eye had their bounty hunting licenses revoked,” I told him. “That’s most of their top teams now.”
“What was the reason this time?” Ezra asked in a flat tone that had become more familiar over the past weeks.
“Missed paperwork, an improperly filed bounty report, and a ‘system error.’”
My tone was as blandly neutral as his. The same dullness had infected my guildmates’ voices too. We were past confusion, disbelief, shock, or alarm at this point. It was just a “how bad is it now?” note of resignation.
“This goes way beyond coincidences or clerical errors.” I waved at my laptop, which contained my notes spanning the past couple of months.
“Odin’s Eye is losing all their bounty hunting licenses.
The Sea Devils had the approval for their new guild headquarters rescinded.
The Grand Grimoire has been audited three times—”
“Four. Their GM called Girard yesterday for advice on how to delay the new audit. Aaron told me about it.”
“Four,” I corrected, jabbing at my keyboard to add the new update. “They’ve been audited four times for illegal demon contracts since August. And that’s just the guild-level stuff.”
Ezra’s mismatched eyes turned down to his screen. “Ramsey knows an artifact dealer who had a portion of his stock confiscated because one of the artifacts had a ‘suspicious origin.’ I couldn’t find a report or case file.”
“Nothing?”
“Nothing.”
Jaw clenching, I returned to my document, scrolled to the “Reports Missing or Delayed” section, and added a new line about Ramsey’s artifact guy.
Above it was a list of texts that, according to Arcana Historia’s AGM, had been seized from their library for similarly flimsy reasons.
Above that, I’d recorded everything I’d learned from a local security guild about non-local MPD agents forcing their way into secure facilities.
I pressed two fingers to the spot between my eyebrows and tried to massage my tension headache away. Maybe more whiskey would help.
Ezra turned his laptop toward me. “I can’t verify this tip, but it should go on the feed anyway.”
On his screen was an email with a blank subject line that read:
Notice accessible only to regional precinct superintendents. Posted yesterday. No further information available.
- Capybara
Below the text was a screenshot easily recognizable as the MPD’s archaic website. I read then reread the bolded title of the article in the image. “Temporary evidence storage?”
It sounded innocent enough, but I knew from Ezra’s expression that it wasn’t.
“All case evidence involving magical weaponry or artifacts now has to be sent to a special storage location after four weeks.”
“Why?”
“According to the notice, ‘precinct storage limitations and security concerns.’ There’s no information on where the new storage locations are or who will have access to them or what will be done with evidence long-term or … anything.”
The navigation subheading at the top of the webpage read, “Bureau of Administration > … > Precinct Regulations > Building Codes > Storage > Case Materials > Evidence.”
“Building codes? Seriously?” I scoffed. “Who is this ‘Capybara’?”
“Someone with high MPD clearance.” Ezra arched his eyebrows. “I don’t know how they found out we’re collecting tips. We’ve been keeping all this far away from MPD eyes and ears.”
That was suspicious as hell. But then again, everything seemed suspicious to me now. An MPD agent could sneeze in my vicinity and I’d assume they planned to arrest me. Actually, I’d assume any agent in my vicinity, sneezing or not, had nefarious intentions.
“I’ll add the evidence storage thing to my list to send to Felix,” I said as Ezra swiveled his laptop back to access the keyboard. “The feed is due for an update.”
As I spoke, I glanced at the TV mounted on the wall beside the bar where it could be seen from anywhere in the pub. Simple white text on a black background filled the screen, summing up another MPD policy change: all Psychica mythics must re-register to reflect new ability definitions.
The text blinked to another bulletin: a list of active bounties in the Vancouver area that had been removed from the MPD Archives without explanation.
“Shit,” I muttered. “I hadn’t seen that one yet.”
“Me neither.” Ezra rubbed his face. “I bet it came from the Pandora Knights.”
There was no source on the screen to accompany the information, but that wasn’t surprising. We were getting tips from a whole bunch of sources, including anonymous ones like Capybara.
It wasn’t that we were doing something illegal—not yet—but we were pretty sure the MPD wouldn’t like it.
Converting all the tips into a regularly updated feed had been my idea. Summary emails were too long and difficult to digest. I’d wanted to see it all in easy, bite-sized, anxiety-inducing pieces, except now I kept finding myself staring at it without meaning to.
The feed had the same hypnotizing power over the dozen guildeds scattered at the tables around the pub.
They would glance at it every few minutes, even though Felix only updated it a few times a day.
The usual boisterous energy of a Saturday afternoon was distinctly absent, as it had been for weeks now.
Footsteps thumped down the stairs. Strong legs in blue jeans appeared, followed by a broad-shouldered torso and familiar copper hair.
Aaron’s stride was heavy with weariness as he headed toward Ezra and me, and he had little creases of stress around his mouth that I didn’t remember him having when we met a year and a half ago.
He slid onto the stool next to Ezra, his gaze snagging on the whiskey bottle. “Can I have some of that?”
I didn’t bother to get a new shot glass. The moment I’d spilled two ounces of amber liquid into it, Aaron tossed the shot back. That made two of us well on our way to a drinking problem. I should take up meditation instead.
I opened my mouth to speak, but the TV screen went black, which it only did when Felix updated it. My head snapped toward it, as did Ezra’s and Aaron’s. All the quiet conversations in the pub died as we waited to see the new info.
Color blinked back onto the TV: the familiar face of Kit Morris.
The text next to his image displayed his bounty value—now up to twenty-three million dollars—followed by the number of charges against him, which had increased too. With a blink of the screen, the bounty info was replaced by recent sightings.
“Nothing since he was seen in Morocco,” I muttered. “Do you think he’s still there?”
Aaron ran a hand over the stubble on his jaw. “I doubt he’d stay in one place for weeks. He’s probably long gone.”
“I hope so.”
My fingers drummed restlessly on the bar top, and the questions that had been haunting me for months took another turn through my head.
What top-secret investigation had Kit spent months working on with Darius out of our guild’s third-floor boardroom?
Why had Kit murdered two MPD bigwigs? And how were those two things connected?
I knew they had some sort of connection.
Kit appeared to have a very casual relationship with the rules and laws he was supposed to enforce as a MagiPol agent, a trait I appreciated as it had saved my butt, as well as Ezra’s, Aaron’s, and Darius’s, on multiple occasions.
But murdering people was way outside the scope of “casual rule breaking.”
Darius likely could have answered all my burning questions, but I couldn’t ask him because he wasn’t here. He was never at the guild anymore. Talk about really freaking bad timing for an extended vacation.
“When’s the last time you saw Darius?” I all but fired the question at Aaron, frustration sharpening my tone more than I’d intended.
He helped himself to the whiskey bottle. “I talked to him earlier today.”
I watched him pour another shot. “But when’s the last time you saw him?”
Aaron didn’t answer. He didn’t meet my eyes either.
I plucked the bottle out of his hand and waved it at the TV. “What has Darius told you about all of this? About Kit? About the MPD? You must have discussed it.”
Aaron gazed at the liquor in the shot glass but didn’t pick it up. “This morning, he told us he doesn’t want large numbers of our guild members gathering in one place anymore. He wants the officers to figure out a rotation for when members can be here.”
I stared at him. “I’m sorry, what? And why? How does that make any sense?”
Ezra frowned. “The last time the MPD targeted us, Darius had everyone gather here for safety. Is this different?”
“Yeah. Very different.”
A horrible cold weight pulled my stomach toward my toes. Placing my hands carefully on the bar so I wouldn’t be tempted to slam them down, I leaned toward Aaron. “Different how? Explain. Please.”
Again, he said nothing.
“What’s happening, Aaron?” Intensity hoarsened my voice. “Why are there so many secretive policy changes in the MPD? Why did it all start after Kit killed those men? What were he and Darius investigating for months?”
“Tori …”
I leaned even closer. “Why has the MPD targeted every bounty hunting guild in Vancouver with audits and confiscations and interference—except us?”
Apprehension darkened his blue eyes, but he offered no explanation.
I pushed away from the bar. Well, maybe our GM was okay with abandoning our guild headquarters, but I wasn’t. If Darius wanted us out of here, that made me all the more determined to do the exact opposite.