Chapter 4
Rosabel La Rouge
Present day
My hands were sweaty, which was to be expected. I was inside a confined room with a siren, sitting right across from her, and as well as Redfire burned through compulsion magic, I was still nervous as all hell. I mean, look at her . Just the sight of her was enough to stop anyone in their tracks. Bright blue hair that could have been silk reached down to her hips. Wide blue eyes, and lips like they were made of cherry popsicles, every inch of skin smooth and pale and perfectly perfect —not to mention her smile.
Fuck, that smile could end wars.
Or start them.
Clearing my throat, I looked down at the file in my hands again, reinforcing the magic I’d put over myself to keep her compulsions at bay. Redfire magic was very… chaotic in nature, and as such it was extra resistant at times, which was why Cassie had asked me to come in here in the first place. That, and I could pull off third-degree protective spells without much bother.
Iridian spells fell anywhere from the first to the fourth degree, the first being the weakest. Anybody could do first-degree spells, and the vast majority did second degree without difficulty. Third-degree took a toll on most mages, and fourth degree could only be performed by the most skilled and powerful ones.
Like my grandmother—she could hit you with fourth-degree spells all day without breaking a sweat. It’s why she had as much power over people as she did.
I had never managed a fourth degree before—not that I’d tried often—but I was plenty powerful, more so than most people my age. My magic was my most powerful asset.
It didn’t mean much against a siren, though. I still felt her energy coming at me in waves, gently crashing onto my magic as if it were its shore, before it retreated and came again.
And again, and again, and again…
“Will you please stop that?” I said, my face and voice perfectly composed, as always.
She smiled, hands folded one over the other and cuffed to the table by irons as thick as my forearm. “But I’m not doing anything.” And she batted her icy blue lashes at me.
“It’s illegal to use your compulsion magic on an IDD agent,” I reminded her again. She hadn’t cared the first time, though, so I wasn’t very hopeful.
“An IDD agent—but you’re so young! You look thirteen, dear.” Another blinding smile. “If this is the IDD’s idea of getting me to succumb to their?—”
My badge was on the table before she could finish her sentence. Not my first rodeo with this type of behavior so I liked to shut it down quickly. It always worked. They saw my face, my name, and my agent ID number—something only an actually IDD agent would have—and they never brought back the but you’re so young bullshit for as long as the interrogation lasted.
“Oh,” the siren said. “I see.”
“Please state your name for our records,” I said, putting away my wallet and the badge. So far so good.
“You have my name in your records,” she said, nodding at the documents I’d spread in front of me on the metal tabletop.
“I have your human alias in my records—not your actual name.”
She leaned back on her chair. The sound of the chains rattling made me want to flinch. The room was small, and except for the dark window you couldn’t see through on the left, there really wasn’t anything here, so sounds bounced back a lot against the high ceiling.
“It’s rude to ask a siren her name,” she told me. “Didn’t they teach you that in your fancy schools, Iridian?”
“They did,” I told her. “And did they teach you in your schools that you can’t come to land without a special permit, and you can’t pretend to be a human, and you can’t use your compulsion magic to make butlers and maids out of them—and you most certainly cannot force humans to eat seaweed and think it’s the best food they’ve ever had in their lives?” I said all of this slowly, surely, and by the middle of it, she was already playing with her blueish nails.
“Nope,” she then said. “They never said that in school that I remember.” And she shrugged.
“Really. They didn’t tell you that it’s illegal to force people to serve you and pay you insane amounts of money for weeds.” She knew—of course she did. There weren’t a lot of sirens in the seas, but those who existed lived a really long life—close to five hundred years, if our research was to be trusted. They knew the rules perfectly well.
“Mhmm. Really. Nobody said a word,” she insisted.
I sighed. “Look, Miss Tritoness,” I started again. That’s the name she’d chosen for herself while she hid here in Baltimore for the past two months—Natalie Tritoness. “It is against the law to use compulsion—or any other kind of magic, for that matter—against humans. It is illegal for sirens to live on land without a special IDD permit. It is illegal?—”
“And who put you in charge around here, huh?” she said, hands against the tabletop again, her hair rising up in the air just slightly, some strands here and there pretending they were under water.
Not going to lie, I was scared shitless. I had no idea how powerful this siren was and if my control slipped, there was no telling what she could make me do. There was a reason why they needed a special permit to be up here in the first place.
“The fact that we are the most powerful species in the world did,” I said, then willed my hands to stop sweating so much. Didn’t work.
The siren flinched as if the sound of my voice irritated her. “Nothing gets to you, does it,” she said, then proceeded to slam her hands on the table, hard. The sound made my heart just about break my ribcage, but my face remained expressionless, my eyes never blinking. I even forced a half smile on my face just to piss her off more.
“Are you done?”
She leaned back on her chair, folding her arms in front of her chest. “So what that I used my compulsion magic? We were given it for a reason,” she told me .
“You forced innocent humans to do your bidding against their will.”
“I did no such thing. They all wanted to serve me willingly,” she lied.
“I have proof and eyewitnesses that you used a great amount of magic to kick out the owner of the mansion you lived in, and then forced the staff to serve you. I have footage of you—” I was going over the files as I spoke, and I indeed had everything I was talking about. Cassie had been very thorough in gathering evidence for her file.
The thing was, the siren refused to let me speak.
“Why are you so agitated, dear? I can see it in your eyes, even if your face doesn’t show it,” she cut me off, putting her elbows on the table again as she slowly leaned in to rest her chin on the heels of her hands.
“I am not agitated,” I spit, and in the tiny moment, I didn’t notice how my focus was not on my magic at all, but on how infuriating she was.
Just one teeny tiny moment, and her magic had a hold of me the next time she spoke. “Tell me how you really feel, mage. Tell me. ”
We’d been exposed to compulsion magic both in school and in training at the IDD. The purpose then had been to be able to recognize it in case of an attack, but this was different. This was so fucking powerful that it took my breath away, and before I knew it, I was speaking.
“I feel filthy, unworthy, and afraid. I feel excited. I feel I’m going to die soon and I deserve to.”
Both my hands were in front of my mouth in the next second, to stop whatever else I was trying to say while the siren laughed.
Never before had I hit a suspect during interrogation, even though it wasn’t specifically forbidden—and even encouraged in certain cases—but I really, really wanted to slap the hell out of this woman right now. The bitch had gotten right into my head and pulled those words out of my mouth with ease.
Instead, I closed my eyes and I focused on my magic, put my back into my shield and I didn’t bring my hands down until I was a hundred percent sure that I was in control of my mind and body.
“You must be so proud of yourself,” I finally said.
“I certainly am. That was way too easy!” More laughter.
Unfortunately, she was right.
But my slip-up reminded me of the reason why I was so distracted, so frustrated so… filthy-unworthy-afraid. And now my hands were sweating for a whole different reason again.
Leaning back on the chair, I rubbed my eyes and welcomed the headache that had just been waiting to be born between my temples.
“Let’s try this again, shall we?” I said, and I didn’t allow myself a second in which I wasn’t focused on my magic. I kept it wrapped tightly around me like my favorite sweater. Then I looked at the siren, who was still shaking a bit with laughter. “My name is Agent La Rouge, and I am here to find out where you hid the treasures that the humans stole for you under the influence of your magic—the gold, the paintings, and the weapons.” I put the pictures in front of her, and even though she refused to look, I left them there. “Now, I have enough evidence here to lock you up for a lifetime, but if you can tell me where you hid what you stole?—”
“I didn’t steal anything, those were mine!”
“—then we can come to an agreement. We might even return you to your people and they can carry out your sentence and?— ”
“ No! No-no-no, I will not go back ! I will not ? — ”
“We’ll find these things you stole sooner or later. It’s completely up to you, Miss Tritoness.”
She kept on screaming. She kept on slamming those hands on the tabletop, but she didn’t even try to use her magic on me again, so terrified of going back to the sea. I knew it was going to be a long time before I got her to admit to anything, but it was okay. I was distracted.
And for the next three hours, the thought of Taland Tivoux didn’t even cross my mind.
“You cracked her.”
Cassie had a smile on her face that didn’t quite reach her eyes when I found her in the cafeteria.
“Not yet, but I’m close,” I said, sitting next to her. It was almost five in the morning, and plenty of agents were getting coffee to resist the call of sleep. It seemed to be strongest at dawn for most of us when we were working third shift.
I wasn’t, not technically tonight, but still.
“That bitch is crazy. Did she spell you?”
“She tried,” I said, rubbing the back of my neck. “Succeeded for a second there, but not again. She definitely organized those heists. I’m close,” I promised her, and I was. I got her name, at least—her true siren name. It was Olantha, and she claimed it meant the spot where the sky meets the sea, but I didn’t believe her. Not until she told me the whole truth about who she was and which sea she really came from.
“Good, good,” said Cassie, nodding way too many times. “She couldn’t have come at a worse time, what with the Iris Roe starting in a few days. We’re already understaffed in Monitoring.”
I held back a flinch. “Yes, I heard it’s this year.”
Iridians were very proud mages. They were very dedicated in whatever they chose to concern themselves with that year or decade or century. This century, the one thing they were most proud of was the City of Games, located right here in Maryland, just outside of Baltimore. They’d built it from the ground up some eighty years ago to scratch their itch for entertainment, but soon the City of Games had evolved into a fucking monster. It was like a year-round carnival that never slept, and magical Ferris wheels and rollercoasters were not the only thing you found there. Iridians—and other creatures who could afford to pay—could play all kinds of games with incredible rewards. It was like a magical casino, and the Iris Roe was one of the biggest games ever created, played once every four years. Only Iridians were allowed to play because it was a game of magic, and so many of them died every single time it happened, yet even more players joined the next. Why? Because the prize was not only the actual colors of a rainbow that Iridians collected from the best rainbows throughout the preparation years, but also five million dollars in cash.
“It is, and last time two agents lost their lives in there, and nobody can even tell you how . Top secret information. Even I can’t access that stuff—not to mention orcs and elves and Muds. Eleven Muds died in preparations —and who took responsibility? Nobody.”
My gut turned with disgust. Two agents and eleven Muds had actually died during the last game alone, and nobody even knew about it? I’d have remembered those numbers if they’d made them public. Back then I was barely sixteen, but I’d have remembered .
And I got Muds. They were basically mages with their colors all messed up in a way that it gave off a muddy brown signal and couldn’t be accessed or used the way magic should be. Iridians considered Muds lower than any other creature, magical or not—but their own agents?
“That’s right, it still shocks me, too,” Cassie said, tsk- king and shaking her head. She then took a big sip of her coffee. “Want some?”
The news about all those deaths was definitely shocking, but the way she kept talking about the game, and the way she averted her eyes away from my face so quickly…
Cassie was hiding something from me, and she’d managed to distract me, too.
My heart fell all the way to my heels when I remembered… “What is it, Cassie? Have you found something?”
Taland—the reason why I was in the Headquarters at this hour. The text—which I knew wasn’t a hoax, but I’d hoped it would be so, so badly…
Cassie squeezed her eyes shut for a second. “I did, yes. Tivoux is really on the loose.”
It was like a brand-new hole opened up underneath me and was pulling me in slowly.
My eyes closed and I willed myself to keep my emotions in check. Madeline was not here right now, but the world could still do terrible things to you if it saw your fear.
“Are you sure?” I asked— what a stupid fucking question.
“I am,” Cassie whispered, still avoiding my eyes as she drank her coffee. “He broke out today at one in the morning.”
“How?” He was in the Tomb. The fucking Tomb—an unbreakable fortress that only two people had been able to escape from since it first opened. Never in the past decade, though. They assured me that it wasn’t possible .
“Nobody knows yet, but he had help from both inside and outside. I’m sorry, Rora,” Cassie said.
I shook my head again and again. “I just…I don’t get it. How does one break out of the Tomb? What was he doing before he broke out? Where were the cameras?”
“Right there,” Cassie said, her whisper low, her eyes dark. “The cameras were right there. I managed to sneak a copy of the footage of him before he escaped. He was there one moment and then…just gone the next.”
Just gone.
Except that’s not how it worked, was it? Magic or not, you couldn’t just be gone from anywhere, let alone a place like the Tomb. With the number of security wards and locks and cameras and lasers and automatic lockdown systems—it just couldn’t be. It couldn’t.
“Show me,” I said, surprising myself just as much as I surprised Cassie.
“The footage?” I nodded. She squinted her eyes at me in suspicion. “Are you sure?”
Fuck no, I wasn’t sure. I’d gone so long without seeing his face, and I did not want to see it tonight—but what other choice did I really have?
“Yes, I’m sure. Show me, Cassie. I need to see.” Even my voice shook, and this time I didn’t try to hide it.
Cassie nodded reluctantly. She put her cup down and stood up.
“Follow me.”