Mind Magic (30 page)

Smith’s fingers tapped once on the table while he thought that over. Reluctantly he nodded. “Very well. Let’s move on.”

“Let’s do.” Tom smiled. “I want to know what you’re doing to find Lily Yu.”

Smith’s eyebrows twitched in an aborted frown. “I believe you were included in the update from Eric which I forwarded last night.”

“Yes, and a wonderful example of bureaucratic gobbledegook that was. Translated, it means: ‘It’s not my fault.’”

“Indeed, it isn’t Eric’s fault. Special Agent Yu—”

“Vanished.” His eyebrows lifted. “That is what happened, isn’t it . . . Edward?”

The young man’s voice was pleasant. Maybe it was the deliberate use of Smith’s first name which made the question so insolent. The two men’s eyes met.

Chuck scowled. Sharon burst out, “The hell with this. If he can’t show some respect—”

“No, no.” Smith dismissed the protests with a small wave of one hand. His eyes never left Tom’s. “Tom is keenly aware that while his interests and ours overlap, they do not coincide. Are you accusing me of something specific, Tom?”

“Specific?” Tom drawled. “No, I merely find myself . . . wondering. How odd it is for Yu to disappear when she did! And you can’t seem to find that underage sensitive of yours, can you? She’s vanished. Yu’s vanished. Now Turner’s vanished, too. And so I find myself wondering—am I witnessing an unfortunate level of incompetence? Or might you have arranged one or more of those disappearances and forgotten to mention it to me?”

Surprisingly, Smith chuckled. “Oh, Tom. Yes, certainly I had Target Tres—I really must insist that you use the correct designation—kidnapped. She will make an excellent replacement for Demi. A Unit Twelve agent will be so much more cooperative and easier to manage than a teenager.”

After a moment the younger man smiled and flung one hand up in a fencer’s acknowledgment of a hit. “Your point. But it is odd that Target Tres disappeared just now.”

“Not really. Look at the timing. She disappeared right after Target Duo was arrested. She must have assumed she was a target, too, though she can’t have actually known anything. Disappearing is a rather dramatic response to such a vague assumption, but she’s a rather dramatic young woman. Not that we can afford to allow either her or Target Duo to remain on the loose—and that, if I may be allowed to drag the conversation back on-topic, is why we’re here.” He paused for emphasis. “Tom is right about one thing. We have lost track of three people. I am very concerned about Demi connecting with either Target Duo or Target Tres.”

“Whoa,” Chuck said. “Isn’t that a bit of a leap? We’ve narrowed the area down where Demi might be, sure, based on Tom’s triangulation—”

“And a tedious job that was, too,” Tom put in.

“—but we’re still talking about an area of over a thousand square miles. Unless there’s information I’m unaware of—”

“There is.” Smith tapped his fingers on the table again, four times in rapid-fire—
tap-tap-tap-tap
. It was an unusual show of agitation. “Two of Eric’s people have been making the rounds of establishments in Whistle. A young man who works at a small service station in Whistle bears a strong resemblance to Demi. Two of Eric’s people discovered this when they spoke with the young man’s employer last night. They then went to have a chat with the young man, who calls himself Danny Stone. He wasn’t home. They’ve since corroborated the resemblance with several other residents of Whistle, including his landlady. The timing of his arrival in Whistle fits with when Demi fled D.C. last year.”

Silence. Then, tentatively, Chuck said, “Demi doesn’t have any male relatives.”

Sharon rolled her eyes. “For God’s sake, Chuck! She’s been passing as male.”

“I know that, dammit. I was eliminating one possibility, not—”

“Then why didn’t you say so? If that’s her—” Sharon broke off abruptly, her lips clamped tightly.

“She knows too much,” Tom said softly. “I’ve told you that before.”

The silence dragged on longer this time. Finally Sharon sighed. “And I’ve opposed disposing of her. I still think the reasons for keeping her alive are valid. It’s not sentiment,” she insisted. “We
need
a sensitive.”

Smith nodded. “Like you, Sharon, I’ve opposed eliminating Demi. Unlike you, I will admit that some of my reluctance stems from sentiment. But I have not and will not allow sentiment to interfere with our operation. I have always weighed Demi’s potential value against the risk she presents. In the past, her value trumped the risk. Not anymore.”

“Are we sure of that?” Chuck looked troubled. “We don’t even know definitely that Turner is in the area. The influx of lupi suggests he might be, but I can think of other possible explanations, and he’d be an idiot to go where he told his lawyer he would.”

“And even if he is,” Sharon put in, “proximity isn’t connection. We have nothing to suggest that Demi’s with Target Duo—”

Tom snorted. “I had no idea you were such a believer in coincidence. By the time you get confirmation that Turner is in the area—or Yu, if she really is wandering around freely—”

“Quit suggesting that Target Tres is in our hands!” Chuck snapped. “The boss told you—”

“Pax, Chuck. Naturally I accept Edward’s assurances. But Target Tres might have gone missing on purpose. I can see her leaving the D.C. area in an effort to assist her husband, just as he broke bail in order to look for her. That would be foolish, but love does scramble people’s brains. And yet I don’t think we can count on that, can we? Not with so much at stake.”

For the next twenty minutes they discussed what was at stake—they agreed about that—and what to do about it. They didn’t agree about that. Tom supported Smith’s proposal to deploy Cerberus; Chuck vacillated, worried because their stock of Lodan was so low; and Sharon adamantly opposed it.

Finally Smith said, “I have a meeting I cannot postpone. We’ll have to end discussion now.”

“But if we use Cerberus,” Sharon said stubbornly, “the risk of exposure is so much higher than the purely hypothetical risk associated with—”

“Enough.” Smith remained pleasant, but his voice was firm. “Despite my preference for consensus, this is not a democracy. Your opinion is noted. However, I judge the risk to be much higher if we do not deploy Cerberus. You will ready them.” Smith permitted himself a small, prim smile. “It will soon be clear to local, state, and federal authorities that the werewolves gathered at the wildlife area are extremely dangerous. Therefore, extreme measures to deal with them are both justified and necessary.”

TWENTY-SIX

MORNINGS
and Demi were not friends. That’s why she usually skipped them. This one was especially unwelcome for reasons that escaped her sleep-fogged brain. Also weird. Even before she opened her eyes, nothing was right. Her bed was too hard. Someone—a man—was talking way too close by, which made no sense. Mrs. MacGruder didn’t allow people to just wander around on . . .

Her eyes opened. She wasn’t in the trailer she rented from Mrs. MacGruder. She was on the run, hiding out in a tent in a clearing in the woods. Just outside that tent were Rule Turner and fifty-six more lupi.

That got her sitting up, but then she didn’t know what to do, with none of her usual morning actions available. There was no bathroom, no Wi-Fi, no clock. She had to think it through. She did have clean clothes, but only one set, and since she couldn’t shower, there didn’t seem much point in changing anything but her underwear. But there was a latrine.

She grimaced. A trench, that’s all it was, which was why she didn’t much care for camping out. It hadn’t been too smelly and nasty, though. Most of the time, Mike had told her, the lupi didn’t use the latrine, it being simpler to take care of business as a wolf. At least there was toilet paper.

The tent wasn’t tall enough for her to stand up, which made putting on clean tighty-whities awkward, especially since she was sore from last night’s hiking. Her thighs, mostly, though her calves were a bit achy, too. She pulled her jeans back on, thought about getting out clean socks, and decided it could wait. Washing stuff wasn’t going to be easy here, and she’d put on clean socks last night after bandaging her blister. Then she eyed the coiled elastic bandage she’d set on top of her backpack and shrugged. Didn’t seem much point in binding her breasts when everyone knew she was a girl. She didn’t have a bra, but the shirt was big and sloppy and her breasts were small, so that shouldn’t matter.

She pulled on last night’s socks and her shoes, grabbed the roll of TP that Mike had given her last night, and reached for the flute case. She needed to return that.

Her hands were shaky. She looked down at them, surprised. She was scared? She thought hard, trying to identify the fluttery feeling. Happy, scared, uncertain . . . giddy. That was the word.

It turned out her fantasy hadn’t been ruined after all. She was practically living it. Fifty-six lupi, half of them in wolf-form, waited on the other side of the canvas flap. She was giddy with lupi.

It was very bright outside. The air smelled like coffee and bacon and spices. There were a couple men near the stone-edged fire, but most of the lupi were at the other end of the clearing—some on two legs, some on four. They were listening to that man who’d talked to Rule Turner when they first arrived last night. She couldn’t remember his name, but he seemed to be the only Hispanic person here, so he was easy to recognize. He appeared to be directing them in what looked like a complicated dance. It was fascinating. Wolves and men moved in a complex pattern, weaving—

A cold, wet nose poked her arm. She jumped. “Oh. Good morning,” she said politely to the wolf looking at her. She studied him carefully. He was really big, plus his ruff was more black than silver, and there was a roundish spot of paler fur over one shoulder . . . “Mike?”

The wolf wagged his tail once.

“What are they doing down there? Dancing? I—oh. You can’t talk right now.”

He snorted and looked pointedly at her foot, then at her face.

“I don’t understand.”

He tapped her heel with his nose, right where the bandage was.

“Oh, my blister? It’s okay.”

He took a couple steps away, then looked at her.

“You want me to go with you?”

He nodded.

Embarrassed, she lifted the roll of TP without speaking.

He nodded again.

Her fantasy had never involved toilet paper. She sighed.

The latrine was located well inside the trees, so she started walking. She was pretty stiff. Her blister wasn’t bothering her, but her thighs were. She liked Mike, but she didn’t like him escorting her to the latrine. She knew lupi didn’t have human attitudes about bodies. They had no modesty at all that way, but she was human and she did. She told Mike all that. She didn’t think he listened because he went with her anyway. After a while, he loped ahead. A few moments later he came back, grinned at her, and sat.

“You’re going to wait here?”

He nodded.

“You went ahead to . . .” She thought about it. “See if I’d be alone?”

Another nod.

“Thank you.” Maybe he had been listening. “Would you watch this for me?” She set the flute case down beside him.

Once she’d dealt with the difference between fantasy and reality, Demi rejoined Mike and reclaimed the flute and they returned to the clearing. For the first time she noticed the beat-up old pickup parked behind the largest tent. The truck bed held three large coolers. Someone must have driven it bumpety-thumpety across the ground because no roads reached the clearing. It must be hard to feed so many people without electricity or anything. She was thinking about that and about her empty stomach when they reached the campfire.

Two men waited there—an older man with dark skin, white hair, and a smile, and a pale-skinned man with hair that didn’t quite manage to be brown or blond, but hit somewhere in between. Both wore cut-off jeans and shoes. Mike gave a little yip. The older man nodded at him, still smiling. Mike trotted off.

She wished he hadn’t left. Had she met these men when they were furry, or were they the strangers they seemed to be? They introduced themselves—the smiling older man was Theo and the brown-blond-haired one was John—and told her to sit down and have some coffee. A large coffeepot rested on a stone next to the fire; a huge cast iron pot was suspended over it on a tripod. She peered inside the big pot. Chili, the all-meat kind. Oh, well. They were lupi, after all.

She sat and politely refused the coffee Theo held out. “Water’s fine,” she told them. “Um . . . I need to return Saul’s flute. Do you know where he is?”

“He’s four-footed right now,” the younger one—John—said. “You want some chili? It’s almost ready. Or if you’d like more breakfast-type food, I could fix some bacon and eggs pretty quick.”

“Thank you, but I don’t eat meat.”

No one said anything for a moment. Theo had stopped smiling. He asked, “Are you one of those vegans?”

“No, I’m vegetarian. You’re carnivores,” she told them, nodding firmly. Nodding was one of those gestures that meant different things, depending on the context. Demi wasn’t good at context, but an article she’d read said that people nodded to affirm the other person. This seemed like a good time to add an affirmation. “You’re supposed to eat meat. Technically I’m an omnivore, so you’d expect me to eat meat, too, but I like animals too much to eat them. Plus there’s substantial evidence that the consumption of meat—some say all animal products, but that’s contested—leads to inflammation, which is a cause or contributing factor in all sorts of diseases. I do eat eggs,” she added hopefully.