Chapter 52
MAGGIE
We circle the perimeter again, looking for ways in. Premises designed to hold the medically vulnerable – as volunteers undergoing drug trials would be – have to have an abundance of fire escapes, and any way out is a way in. Frey is particularly good at identifying CCTV.
‘It’s people like you that make my job so hard,’ I complain, and he grins.
‘Always got to be one step ahead of the law when you’re a designated domestic terrorist.’
Naomi and Sarah are experimenting with what magic they can do, at what distance.
‘Do you hear that?’ Sarah asks. Which is when I hear an owl hooting.
Wait. An owl, in a Montreal industrial park mid-morning? I’m sure Theodorou would tell me I’m imagining it. Only I’m not. Sarah’s conjured it.
‘I figured the sound of an angry mob at their gate might be a distraction. I can weave an auditory illusion. The only question is whether it could be heard inside the facility. Are all magical effects dampened by the perimeter, Lachlan, or is it only spellcasting ability? I guess all of it, because otherwise what would stop angry witches from standing at a safe distance and blasting fireballs straight through the gates.’
‘You can blast fireballs?’
Sarah winces. ‘Of course not. Just trying to give an example you could picture.’
‘Fireballs,’ says Lachlan, leaning in, ‘were very popular in Europe in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. All the Christian kings would try and recruit witches who’d mastered it to join their crusades.
Needless to say, none signed up. I’ve read enough to try it in a pinch, but this is more reliable. ’
He smacks his holstered gun. I can’t tell if he’s joking or not.
‘What if you create it and we send it through an amplifier,’ I say.
‘Would that de-magic it? My car has a PA system, it acts as a siren and loudhailer when I need to make clear it’s a police vehicle, seeing as its unmarked.
And Lachlan, why don’t you go create a distraction in person.
Make a scene at the front. Demand your daughter back. ’
He bares his teeth. ‘I was planning on it.’
‘Meanwhile I’ll go over the back here – Naomi, reckon you can boost me up? – and head straight to those areas that look like accommodation, to search for Harper.’
It’s a sketchy plan, but it plays to everything we’ve got and doesn’t rely on Lachlan blowing anything up.
If all their attention is on witches out front, then a cop round the back should be able to slip by unnoticed.
If all else fails, I won’t try stealth, I’ll simply pull rank on any security guards in there.
I’ve participated in many an armed raid on drug dens, and there’d be young girls’ lives at stake there too, sometimes.
Girlfriends coerced into being mules, or used to sell in nightclubs, or to recruit teen boys for dealing.
Hell, I’ve done busts where we discovered children and babies on the premises.
I know how to pluck the innocent out of hell-holes full of guilty people.
‘Let’s do this,’ I say, more confidently than I feel.
Sarah’s good. I’ve no idea how she’s done it – hey, magic!
– but she lets the noise build gradually, as if hundreds of people are converging.
She’s layered sounds I’m familiar with from years of policing demos: whistles, drums, vuvuzelas.
Marching feet and clapping hands. Call and response.
Witches’ rights, shouts one voice, are human rights!
comes the bellowed answer. Enchantments not experiments! is another cry.
My skin prickles at the sound. There were pro-witchcraft demonstrations outside the DC Congressional hearings last year, but all the participants were non-magical normies.
The right to assemble and raise your voice in protest is as fundamental, as First Amendment, as it gets.
But for witches, of course, it clashes with restrictions about associating with other witches outside of permitted forums such as the Moot.
If this protest Sarah has conjured up and is blasting from my car were real and taking place on American soil, and its participants were not mundanes but magicals, the authorities would be quaking in their boots.
I wait for it to build some more, then cast my bulletproof vest over a section of razor wire and tell Naomi – Up!
Dropping down on the other side, I press against the wall and flex my ankles while scanning the complex in front of me.
I’ve come in at the back of the main building, with the wings on either side, like our HQ back in Hartford.
There’s often a template to institutional structures – and that always includes emergency escape doors.
A quick assessment suggests ground floor offices and upper floor lab or tech space in the main building, while the two wings are likely a mix of units for trial participants, and further laboratory and monitoring spaces.
I want to avoid the centre, to which people will likely be rushing, so I search for an emergency door part-way along one wing.
It has a keypad lock, which I have to shoot off.
That’s an unauthorised discharge of a service weapon on foreign soil, but if it’s the worst thing I have to do here, I’ll be thrilled to have gotten off so lightly.
It’s an effort to lever the heavy door ajar.
Beyond it lies a strip-lit passageway that must lead to the main corridor.
The key to looking inconspicuous in these situations is not to hesitate but to move as though you’ve every right to the space.
But I break that rule straight away when I spy a woman in a lab coat walking down the corridor talking animatedly to Sandra Ortiz, flanked by a half-shaved dude I can’t pin down between muscle and magical. Maybe both. Is that you, Simeon Barr?
I slip into the first open door of an empty room I see – barely in time, as a young woman in green scrubs and lab clogs hurries clumsily toward them.
I hear her briefing them on what can only be Lachlan’s dramatic arrival outside.
Delacourt turns appealingly to Ortiz, as if for instructions, but the politician isn’t having any of it.
‘Frey,’ she spits. ‘I shouldn’t be seen here. This isn’t a government facility, and it might send unwise messages to potential investors. Until partnerships are formalised, I can’t be seen to be giving endorsements.’
Yeah, right. Doesn’t want her accessory-to-kidnap activities being reported, more like.
‘Shall I call the police?’ the medical assistant asks, only for both women to shut her down.
‘Look, Aurelie,’ Ortiz tells the woman who must be the lab chief, Delacourt. ‘All that’s going on here is academics researching witchcraft, with the co-operation of leaders of the magical community.’
She gestures to the man beside her, and when he grunts, Exactly, I remember the voice. I spoke to him toward the end of the Bittershore investigation when Naomi told me her alibi and suggested I ring her boss to confirm it. That’s Barr alright.
‘Frey is Silver-bound by the Moot,’ Ortiz says, ‘and the Hextek dampening here is very impressive, so you’ve nothing to fear from him. While you calm things down, I’ll wait here and maybe look in on some of the other areas of this impressive facility.’
Ortiz smiles, and Barr makes an after you gesture at Delacourt.
The ambushed scientist looks about like a woman searching for the fire exit after seeing flames lick up the walls, but Barr sort of herds her back in the direction I came.
I duck behind the reinforced-glass windowed doorway as they pass and am about to resume my search when the door opens, nearly flattening me against the wall.
‘Shit, shit,’ Ortiz is muttering, as she slams the door shut.
‘I hear ya!’ I say brightly, as I lay a finger to my lips and show her my gun.