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He didn’t get an answer. But the next second, the light man became a light wolf, huge and silently snarling out of a fang-filled mouth. I reached reflexively for a knife—it was that real—and heard Fin yelp something profane from behind me. The mage, however, didn’t so much as flinch.
“Must have gotten away,” he said, standing calmly next to his hologram horror, and checking a computerized notepad. “None of the bodies are weres.”
“Run him through the system. Find out if we’ve met him before.”
The mage nodded.
“Through the system?” I asked, still staring at the wolf. Which was snapping and lunging—in place, because he never moved from the mage’s side. But still. A furious, oversized, golden wolf, giving every impression that he wants to eat you, draws the eye.
“Yeah.” James looked at me. “Why?”
“You think a shifter was slaving shifters?”
He shrugged. “Why not? The fey traffic fey.”
“But not the same kind.”
He shook his head. “The first thing I learned in this job: some people will do anything if the money’s right.”
“Yeah, but—” I broke off, ducking low as something soared overhead, barely missing us.
Fin cursed, James just stood there, and I s
tared upward at the creature hovering near the ruined rafters. It was a phantom version of the eagle boy, I realized. And just as he’d been when, at a guess, he was injured in the fight and spilled a little blood. Which meant partially transformed, with a human body but huge, feathered wings.
They were currently shedding sparks that flew off through the air, or pattered down onto the floor, lighting up the old boards and turning the warehouse’s collection of “ghetto diamonds”—broken bottles and scattered glass—into what looked like the real thing. In the golden glow of the spell, he looked like a medieval depiction of an angel, a spectral otherworldly figure floating midair, and making the lofty warehouse appear momentarily cathedral-like.
“Like a Botticelli come to life, isn’t it?” James commented, looking upward. “Or a Fra Filippo Lippi.”
He wasn’t wrong.
But a nearby mage didn’t seem to agree. He was standing there with a frown on his face, watching the great golden wings beat the air. Maybe because the Corps now knew that the boy had been here, but didn’t know which side he was on.
I guess even magic has its limitations.
“He was one of the prisoners,” I said. “I saw him on the feed.”
That didn’t get an acknowledgment, but the mage noted something on his pad.
“I want that tape,” James told Fin, who nodded, his eyes still on the spectacle above us.
Guess he hadn’t seen that trick before, either.
Neither had I, because I’d never gotten this far into a Circle crime scene. I guess rank did have a few privileges, I thought, as another mage called out to James. He went striding off, his coat billowing up dramatically behind him.
“Think they put a spell on it, to make it do that?” Fin muttered.
I just shook my head, too busy gazing around at all the other activity to come up with a rejoinder. The warehouse was like a working anthill. Just in the area around us, a woman—clairvoyant, at a guess—was holding a guy’s wallet and looking pained; a white-coated medic was directing a line of levitating stretchers toward a heap of bodies; and a war mage was building a tiny, perfect replica of the warehouse out of light.
It was an exact copy, including even a clueless-looking little Fin and me, standing in the midst of all the activity, getting in everybody’s way. At least, that’s what I felt like: someone out of her element who wasn’t helping, and who couldn’t have, even if she’d wanted to. Because none of this was remotely in my skill set.
But then I noticed something that was.
Over by the door, dim and quiet and unnoticed, were the selkies I’d seen on the feed at Fin’s. They were still in seal form, and still piled up together; I didn’t know why. They had plenty of room to spread out now.
I also didn’t know why they hadn’t just left with the others. The open door, hanging half off its track, was only a little way behind them. And beyond that, across a few yards of dock, was the ocean, littered with light on the surface, but deep and dark and mysterious below. It would certainly give them an advantage over any pursuing mages.
But they hadn’t moved.
