Chapter 17 #2
“How is that possible?” Mateo starts to pace the length of the living room.
“Do multiple people have vendettas against Christopher? Is that what this is? No. That doesn’t explain his guilty-as-all-fuck reaction back there.
Now I’m not sure if the blood ward at the office has anything to do with Topher at all.
But then, it has to. It can’t have been cast because we walked in the door.
We’re total strangers to all this and warded up the ass.
No one would have a reason to target us. ”
“One or both of his parents has to be a witch,” Ophelia says.
They all look at Topher but he shakes his head mutely.
Reaching for the figure, Ophelia says, “Let’s just ask whoever this is what’s going on.”
Mateo closes his fingers over it with a sharp, “No. Not you.” There’s no world where he lets her get into contact with some unknown, possibly hostile thing. It’s not just demons capable of possession, and Ophelia’s hold on her body is tenuous, at best. “I can try to contact it.”
“No, you can’t,” she counters because he obviously shouldn’t be using magic willy-nilly after the tarot thing and the near-freak-out in Christopher’s house. “I’d be better with it.”
“You don’t know that,” he snaps.
Now they’re staring at each other, an old argument about who should risk themselves to fix their situation sucking the air out of the room.
They shouldn’t have this conversation in front of Topher and Quincy, their instability would be laid too bare, but neither of them can deny that there’s something they could each try.
It’s extraordinarily dangerous to summon unfamiliar spirits—especially when one of them has a hard time staying in her body and the other has a hard time staying entirely human.
Inviting an unknown into that is asking for trouble.
“We can try to find the mom first,” Mateo says. It’s a Hail Mary play. The mom’s probably dead. But if she’s not, she could know something.
Ophelia smiles without humor because Mateo’s the auto-winner of this argument, the little figure held tight in his hand and he’s not giving it over.
Looking to Quincy, Mateo says, “Beyond Topher calling, texting, and emailing, anyone have any ideas how to find her?” He’s hoping—because of the Tokyo-drifting—that Quincy knows a secret way.
But it’s Topher who speaks. “I could check her emails, see if she’s met with other people, and see if she’s been using her credit cards,” he offers almost too quietly to hear, cheeks scarlet.
“What? How?” All Mateo can think is that Topher and his mother have joint accounts, like tweens too young to have their own account sometimes do.
Worrying hands together, Topher says, “I can hack her accounts.”
Topher could have said “I’m actually my own missing mother” and it would have been less unexpected.
The space between thought and speech is nonexistent in Mateo right now, so the room gets his real-time realization.
“You didn’t hire someone to track me down.
You tracked me down. With hacking. You hacked me? ”
Topher, eyes glued to the largest window in the room, looks like he’s considering going for it to free himself from this confession.
“Cool,” Ophelia says.
“I’m sorry,” Topher says desperately to the window because he can’t bring himself to look at Mateo.
“I didn’t know how else to figure out if you were legitimate.
You don’t have social media so I looked at your emails but you don’t really email anyone so I started looking at your purchase history and that was pretty encouraging but then I realized you don’t have a real birth certificate, ID, or medical records, and that’s weird but I don’t know your citizenship status and I thought if you did know magic that maybe you wouldn’t have those things anyway, like maybe you don’t adhere to the laws of man so then I thought—”
At this point in the never-ending run-on sentence Quincy puts a hand on Topher’s arm, startling him into silence.
Holy shit. This mouse boy could see his internet searches.
What about texts? He has no idea how hacking works, but Ophelia and he text 24/7.
The thought of someone reading those is mortifying.
Also, this guy knowing about his lack of ID stuff is pretty concerning, but mostly it’s the texts. Shit. They send pictures sometimes too.
“Focus,” Ophelia says, but something in his face shows the psychic damage he just took, and she assumes the lead.
“Topher, hack your mom. See if you can contact her or find someone else who knows how to or that she’s talked to lately.
Any locations where she might be. Where she works.
Lives. Last place she did anything. Teo, set up a date with that guy. ”
“What guy?”
“Back pocket.”
Mateo pulls the card out of his back pocket. Ethan of the great suit. “Why?”
“He’s our inside man. Ask about Christopher. Ask about anything weird at work. Ask if he’s seen a wizard and can give a description. Use your wiles.”
“Wiles?” Topher repeats with the same dismay Mateo feels.