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“I’m sorry. I’m trying here.” He shook his head, grimaced. “We weren’t all hired at the same time. Hennie’s been around longest. Otherwise it’s spread out over a few years. Nothing in the past eight years though.” He scrutinized the list again. “I think the theory of being from the same area is out
. Hennie’s from Vegas, and Sonny’s from California. Not sure on the rest.”
I blew out a sigh of disappointment. “Thanks anyway. I’ll check with Paul to see if he can run the names. Maybe something will pop as a connection.” I closed the journal and stood.
“Wait!” Bryce said. “Shit. I just realized—there is a connection.”
I spun to face him. “There is? What?”
“There was this one time we all went down—passed out or got really sick and dizzy—all at the same time. Several at the compound, including Mr. Farouche and Paul and me. It didn’t hit everyone, but every person I know on that list was somehow affected.”
My skin tingled. This was it. “Tell me what happened.”
“It was sudden, struck us all at once,” he said, face intense with the memory. “Some people had a bit of nausea, headache, vertigo, that sort of thing. Others collapsed completely. Lasted about ten minutes. Seriously weird.”
I felt my pulse quicken. “When was this? Date? Time?”
“No clue on the exact date. It was in November, late afternoon.” He paused in thought, then gave a firm nod. “It was a Wednesday, because Wednesday was always sushi day for Paul, and we’d decided to go eat dinner at Auntie Mimi’s Super Sashimi.”
Hot damn. “I know what the link is to the people collapsing,” I said with barely contained glee. “That’s the same date and time an attempted gate to the demon realm got fucked up and nearly collapsed.” I gave him a tight and triumphant smile. “It happened in that warehouse where you got shot, where you and Paul went chasing a wiggle.”
He nodded, but his brow creased. “Why would a collapsing gate affect some people and not others?”
“That’s what we have to find out,” I told him. Could it be summoning ability? No, I decided. There was no way there were that many summoners or people with arcane aptitude running around. I frowned. Farouche and the essence-eating murderer I’d tracked down the year before were non-summoner humans with arcane abilities. But what if it isn’t something so blatant? “When you think of each of those people, is there anything they do really well, or is unique?”
“You mean like arcane stuff?” He shook his head. “Paul and I are normal. I saw what the lord did in the demon realm, what you people did out here yesterday.” He lifted his chin toward the back yard. “We can’t do any of that.”
I smiled slyly. “Actually, that’s not true. Mzatal told me that Paul uses his computers and equipment to play with the arcane flows of Earth and can even sense them in the demon realm.” I hadn’t known Bryce long, but I’d seen him in action. “You ever get hunches? Feelings or intuition that seem to always pan out?”
Bryce shrugged. “Sometimes. Everybody does.”
Not the way he did, I was willing to bet. I traced a sigil on the porch rail. “Do you see anything? Feel anything?”
“Nope, don’t see anything.” But then he frowned. “I, uh, feel something right here though,” he said doubtfully, pressing a hand to his stomach. “Maybe. Probably my imagination.”
I dispelled the sigil. “Now?”
His frown deepened. “It’s gone.” He peered at me. “What’s the deal? I have stuff like that all the time.”
“Bear with me.” I pretended to trace another sigil. “What about now?”
“Nope, nothing. See? A coincidence.”
I smiled. “Yeah, sure,” I said and traced a complex warning sigil that pulsed and emitted a “loud” arcane broadcast.
“The back of my neck itches a little,” he said with a shrug, though I saw him wince.
I grinned and dispelled the sigil, feeling most triumphant. “Ha! You are so sensitive. I didn’t trace a sigil the second time.”
He shook his head in obvious disbelief. “I don’t know, Kara. That’s pretty out there.”
I gave him a withering look. “Excuse me. You spent two days on another world, were brought back from the brink of death by magic healing, and you say that butterflies in your tummy are Out There?”
Bryce gave a bark of laughter. “I mean for me. I’m just muscle.”
“Yeah, suuuure.” Brains too. He sure as hell didn’t get into vet school on brawn. Tito, the man Mzatal killed in the warehouse, fit the bill of muscle with a little arcane sensitivity. I had a feeling Bryce had a splash of arcane-bolstered intuition thrown in as well. “How many times have hunches saved your or your boss’s ass?”
He waved it off. “I have pretty good instincts in the field, and yeah, it’s been handy.”
