Chapter 34
Thirty-Four
Elodie
When I arrive down the street from the dance club, the bass is thumping through the black outer walls with their smattering of neon graffiti. I set my phone to Do Not Disturb and glance down at my knee-length dress.
Yeah, it’ll do. It’s more casual than the short and sparkly outfits on most of the women heading in, but I doubt the bouncers will be picky as long as I’m young and female.
I can’t navigate through the press of bodies inside while totally concealed, but I gather a little ephemera to lighten my hair and adjust my features—a bit older, a bit longer in the jaw, nose a bit perter.
My silk gloves I tuck in my purse, since they’ll definitely make me stand out among the drabs.
I conjure the same small illusion I’ve been using at home over my bond mark.
Mystery Woman Gwyn talked as if she’s been keeping tabs on my—and Other Elodie’s—investigations. I’d rather she and the rest of her group never know I came here.
The bouncer waves me through the club door without comment, and I meld into the mass of rocking bodies.
It’s still relatively early in the night, the dance floor crowded but not absolutely packed. I bob and sway with the pulsing beat, pausing here and veering there.
The sweeping spotlights turn everyone’s faces into fractured shapes and shadows. Sweat breaks out over my skin with the wafts of body heat.
Surreptitiously, I weave my way toward the back of the main room. A dim hallway there leads to the restrooms and whatever else the building holds.
If something nefarious is going on at Groove Garden, the evidence won’t be here among the dancers.
I slip away from the crowd as if to go to the ladies’ room. As soon as I’m in the seclusion of the hall, I wrap more magic around me to hide my form and venture down the hall past the bathrooms.
Farther down, there’s a door with a tarnished plaque saying MANAGER’S OFFICE, locked but with no magical protections. I could turn the deadbolt easily, but it’s hard to believe any lucent would keep sensitive materials so unguarded.
At another door, I risk a peek inside and find only cleaning supplies. Nose wrinkling at the pungent smell, I creep onward.
When I was here before—when I saw Dad’s consultant Ms. Lupul in the lane—she came out of a second-floor room with an outside entrance. Where are the inner stairs? Are the two levels totally separate?
The memory sends a chill coiling around my gut. Why was Ms. Lupul here at all? Does that mean—
I shake off the thought before it can fully form. Dad is smart and cautious—and a strong lucent in his own right. He wouldn’t be drawn in by claims about elevated powers.
I can’t believe he’d get involved with a group out to harm innocent people.
Maybe Ms. Lupul was investigating the same possible villains I am now? Or maybe Grady was coming to the club hoping to catch the notice of legitimate lucent mentors and Gwyn caught him in her murderous claws under their nose?
If the latter is true, then I won’t find any evidence I need here.
Tamping down my uneasiness, I slink onward to the end of the hall. Two doors remain, one with an EXIT sign glowing faintly overtop and the other plain and unlabeled.
I reach for the handle on the second door and halt with my hand still a couple of inches away. A hum of thickly layered ephemera prickles over my skin.
Oh, there’s something here all right, or I’m a princess of Atlantis.
The flat drone of the energy tugs at two threads of recognition. It’s a broad security measure, powerful but without much nuance, like the one on the estate Uncle Nik had me infiltrate a couple of years ago.
And beneath the surface, something about the vibration niggles at the edge of my awareness. Almost like… like that strangeness I sensed about the magic in Kenneth’s enhanced clothing.
Even when I concentrate, it’s hard to say for sure this ephemera has the same quality. It’s so subtle. If I hadn’t encountered a similar sensation before in a situation so intense it’s burned into my mind, I don’t think I’d have noticed anything at all.
Is the magic slightly heavier or more condensed than most spells I encounter? Or is that simply a result of how thickly this particular effect is layered?
I could be just grasping at random strings.
It doesn’t matter. Either way, I need to find out what someone at this club is protecting so avidly.
I gather energy of my own and test the barrier the way Nik taught me. Drag my needle of ephemera across the surface until it catches on some small notch.
To make the spell this sturdy, it’s as if the ephemera is woven in heavy strands. Pushing through them directly is all but impossible. But like with a coarse fabric, the larger the strands, the more possibility for gaps in between if you know how to prod them open…
I hone my attention and press more emphatically.
The first snag sends a quiver through my nerves.
There. Now to slowly wiggle the gap looser like an imp unraveling the knitting…
An ache forms in the center of my forehead. A bead of sweat trickles down the back of my neck, but I don’t dare swipe at it. All my concentration fixes on the task at hand.
I don’t only need to finesse my way through—I need to do it before anyone else decides to come back here.
I sense the strands of energy easing farther apart. My honed ephemera traces a winding path through the layers of energy.
Holding that image in my mind, I grasp the door handle and pull it open.
As I ease over the threshold, my skin jitters. A sharp sensation slices through my lungs.
I step forward and nearly tumble over the lip of a stair.
My hand shoots out and collides with a railing. I clutch at the cool bar as my mind registers that I’m through the barrier.
And at the top of a dark flight of stairs—veering down rather than up.
Into the belly of the beast it is, then.
I hustle the rest of the way downstairs, senses on the alert. I’m out of sight of regular club-goers now, but that doesn’t mean whoever uses this space normally won’t stop by.
I need to scrounge through everything at top speed and then get the hell out of here.
My feet follow the steps until they hit a stretch of floor. No illumination follows this far from the tiny gaps around the door.
I pull out my phone and tap it to flashlight mode. A short hallway comes into view before me.
There’s another door just steps away. This one is locked too, but only mechanically. I sculpt a handful of ephemera into a key and push inside.
The phone’s thin light casts the room beyond in shades of gray.
A couple of slim wooden desks stand diagonally from each other by one corner.
Maps are tacked to the walls over them—one of the city, one of all of North America, and one of the whole world—but I can’t make out any markings on them to indicate specific areas of interest.
Another wall holds a set of antique-looking drawer units like I’ve seen in photos of old libraries, each drawer only big enough to hold index cards. Between the three tall units, they must have over a hundred drawers.
The only other furniture in the room is a small steel cabinet. I check that first, tugging the doors open with a faint squeak.
The shelves hold boxes of pens and stacks of blank cards as well as extra ink cartridges. Glancing around, I spot a printer tucked under one of the desks.
There are no computers in sight, but whoever uses this room could bring a laptop with them when they come and go.
As I move to the card drawers, a faint whiff of perfume—lightly aquatic with a hint of florals—reaches my nose. I pause with a hitch of my heart.
For that scent to be lingering in the air, the perfume-wearer must have been in this room not too long ago.
What if she’s only taking a brief break from her work?
With a sharper jolt of urgency, I grasp one of the drawers.
I start at the bottom, but the lowest ones are empty. When I reach for those higher up, I find them packed with cards, separated into caddies that can be lifted out individually.
Each caddy is about as long as my thumb. Most are no more than half full of cards.
Holding up my phone for light, I flick through one caddy’s contents and another’s with hasty fingers. Most of the cards only contain spidery writing in characters I don’t recognize. Some type of Asian script, maybe?
A few have been printed with photographs, with more of the unfamiliar writing on the backs. I don’t recognize the faces of the men and women in the first several of those. In some cases, the clothing choices and hair styles suggest the pictures were taken decades ago.
After trying a few drawers at random, I get a sense that the oldest images are highest up. I crouch down again, checking until I find what appear to be the most recently filled slots.
In the first of those, my searching fingers stumble on a photo of Grady Tadros. He’s standing next to a glossy marble wall looking off to the left, as if he didn’t know the picture was being taken.
My heart stops for a few beats. I lift the photograph with shaky fingers to snap a hasty picture of it with my phone and then another picture of the back in the hopes I’ll be able to translate the writing later.
His caddy only holds half a dozen cards, and that’s the only photo. Because he’s a new recruit to whatever secret villainy these cards are about?
That would fit the comments he’s made.
I take hasty pictures of the other cards and then paw through the rest of the caddies in that drawer. No one else I recognize catches my eye.
In the next drawer over, I freeze over a photo of Kenneth Hearst.
Even though I was braced to see him, a wobble runs through my gut. For an instant, I’m back in the damp night when he launched himself at me with a stabbing knife and nothing but murder in his eyes.
How did this one woman turn him from the mild-mannered second son of an upper-crust family into that monster?
His caddy holds many more cards than Grady’s did. I take some pictures, but it’s impossible to tell what’s important when I can’t read them.
My heart starts thudding like a clock counting down ominous seconds in a horror film. I’ve been in here longer than I’d like already. I need to get going.
I yank open another drawer and another, pawing through the contents as quickly as I can, skimming for anything else that might help. Taking quick photos of the other apparently involved parties.
I’m about to call it a day when my finger flicks over a photograph that pierces into my soul.
It’s my dad. A little younger, no gray showing in his tawny hair yet, smiling broadly at someone off camera.
My head whirls. I have to grip the drawer to keep my balance.
No. It doesn’t make sense. Why would he—?
I knew I might see him too, even if I didn’t want to admit it. It’s much more plausible that Ms. Lupul has ties to this group than that she’s somehow operating against them out of the same building.
From the number of files here, it’s impossible to say how many schemes these people have in motion. I know Dad has no idea he’s associated with anyone who’d want to hurt me… so what are they doing with him?
There’s no way to find out for sure right now. All I can do is take as many pictures as my trembling hand will allow, shuffling through the caddy that holds a tale I can’t decipher.
Just as I’ve gotten halfway through the cards, the distant thump of a door shutting reaches my ears.
I freeze again, straining to hear past the booming of my pulse.
Footsteps tap down the stairs beyond this room’s door.
Shit. I’m screwed.
I snatch a couple of Dad’s cards and stuff them into my purse before shoving the caddy back into the drawer and the drawer closed.
A panicked glance around the room shows no ideal hiding place. I have to make do with the best I have.
I dash across the room, dive under one of the desks, and press myself against the wall beneath it. A tap of my phone plunges the room into total darkness again.
With a yank of ephemera, I wrap myself in a shell I hope will deflect any curious gazes.
The door opens. With a click, artificial light beams down from the ceiling.
Feet clad in elegant pumps stride into view, loose dress pants swishing around the slim legs above. I can’t see more than that.
The figure swivels as if taking in the whole room. She pauses facing the table I’m huddled under. “There you are. Let’s see who we’ve got.”
Even as she speaks, a surge of magical energy whips around me and yanks me forward.
I lash out with my own gathered ephemera, but the heave already has me tumbling into the light with a pained gasp. More magic clamps around my wrists and ankles, pinning them to the tiled floor.
A woman I’ve never seen before—tall, slim, blond, and somewhere around middle-aged—peers down at me. Her pale eyes glimmer with recognition.
“You,” she snarls. “How did you— Never mind. This is perfect. I can deal with the problem right here.”
I open my mouth to protest, to make an appeal, but more ephemera slaps against my lips and nostrils. My breath snuffs out.
I squirm against the restraints, my pulse lurching.
An ache spreads through my chest. My lungs pang for air.
The woman gazes down at me with a perfectly self-satisfied expression. As if she’s nothing but delighted to watch my torment.
The realization sweeps through me like a cutting winter gale.
“Deal with the problem.” The problem of me still being alive, she meant.
She’s planning to murder me now, here, where no one will ever know.
Except she can’t have counted on my glim.
The ache inside sharpens into jabbing daggers. My vision starts to haze.
And my innate power surges to life.
Warmth floods my chest with a soothing tingle. The woman’s body jerks.
As she clutches at her chest, her magic falters. I propel all the ephemera I can grasp to bash at my invisible bindings.
My magical restraints shatter. I shove myself to my feet and dash toward the door.
“No, you don’t,” the woman rasps, with a click of a safety switched off.
I’ve never heard that sound before. My body reacts on instinct alone.
I throw myself to the side just as the gun she’s drawn booms.
Pain explodes all through the right side of my torso. With a whimper, I sag to the ground.
And my glim flares again.