AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Canadian bacon and mushroom.”
“It would be a real pity if we let it get cold.”
“And we should probably talk. I don’t think I can get away with staying too long without someone wondering what’s going on. They’ll either notice the pizza delivery guy hanging out for a long time or the fact that you’ve been silent for ages.”
“I’m starting to wonder how much they really are watching me,” I said as I unzipped the pizza bag. The aroma of hot pizza filled the room, and I inhaled deeply. I took out the cardboard box and opened it, then removed a slice. “Roger acts like he trusts me completely. He may be just arrogant enough to think that he’d know if I had the potential to be disloyal.”
Owen took his own slice of pizza, and we both sat on the sofa. I handed him some of the paper napkins from the pizza bag. “You don’t know what his bosses might be doing,” he said. “They may have figured out that he has his own agenda and might be watching you to see what that is.”
“Then they’re going to think I’m the pizza delivery guy’s fantasy customer,” I said, running my toes up his calf.
He turned bright red and smiled. “I hope you didn’t give that spell you gave me to Roger.”
“I wasn’t sure if he saw that page, so I made a few alterations before giving him anything. I’ve left out the rest so far this week.”
“Good, because it’s kind of scary.”
“Worse than turning people into frogs?”
“How about turning them into portraits? If you see anything hanging on the walls in that building, you might want to give it a second look. It could be the people who were running the Collegium a century ago—and I don’t mean pictures of them.”
“Is it reversible?”
“It might be, but that’s not contained within the spell. Frankly, figuring that out is low on my priority list right now.”
“I have more spells for you.” I finished the slice of pizza I was eating, wiped my hands on a napkin, and picked up the page I’d been working on. “There’s this one,” I said, handing it to him. Then I rose slightly to dig under the sofa cushions. “And these. I hope they’re at all accurate. It’s hard doing this sort of thing from memory.”
“You’re doing great. The ones you’ve sent so far could be really useful. If we could find that building to get inside, we could get straight to the core of things with one of those spells.”
“I’m not sure it’s just one building. In fact, I think I’m working in London right now. It’s like the building is just a collection of portals to other buildings.”
He raised an eyebrow. “Really? That’s interesting. I’ve heard of things like that, but haven’t seen it implemented. It would make travel a lot easier.”
“Yeah, too bad it seems the only way out is to come back to New York. I don’t know if there are exits everywhere.”
“I’d think there would have to be. Otherwise, why do such a thing? As it is, it would be the ideal way to escape to another jurisdiction if there’s ever a raid. That must be what the spell does, give you access to all those portals. If we could just get something into the building with you, we might be able to track it better.”
“Or plant one of those beacons to transport directly. But it wouldn’t go any farther than my changing room, or the alarms would go off. I’m not sure that knowing where the changing room is would do you much good.”
“What about when you leave the building with Roger during the day?”
“We don’t seem to go through the same security process when returning, but I haven’t tried to bring in anything from the outside, so I don’t know if I just haven’t noticed because I haven’t set off the alarms. I’m never out of his sight, though. Picking up anything would be tricky. You haven’t had any luck finding a way to get past the disguise spells on the car to follow it?”
“Nope, and we gave it another shot after that lunch you had with Minerva. She says your boss is terrifying, by the way.”
“Yeah, I’m starting to get that feeling. She picked up something?”
“She used words like ‘apocalypse.’”
“Yikes!”
“Which is why I don’t want to take any risk of putting you in danger.”
“Well, at least they can’t turn me into a portrait.”
“There are ways to remove your magical immunity. If you notice symptoms, don’t go back there, and let us know right away. We can hide you.”
“I don’t think he’d do that. He needs my immunity.”
