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“And your companions? The vampire, and the necromancer. I know you didn’t come alone.”
Damn it. The Lorica’s Eyes were always watching. “We came together, but when the bleeding started it all became a blur. I tried to get on-stage to do something, get Mona to stop. I don’t know. I was too late. By the time I checked, my friends were gone.”
Royce raised an eyebrow. “Fantastic. That tells us nothing.” He rubbed the center of his forehead. “God, this is a public relations disaster. I don’t need this right now.”
Wait, so he wasn’t a Wing after all? When the Lorica talked about public relations, that typically meant wiping people’s minds, or rearranging their memories, to rub out all traces of exposure to magic and keep the Veil intact. I couldn’t help myself.
“So, you’re like a Mouth?” I scratched the back of my head. “I honestly had you pegged for a Wing.”
Royce’s eyes narrowed, and he stepped impossibly closer. Somehow I hadn’t noticed how he was nearly a full head taller than me, but the size difference was really bearing on me now.
“They told me that you were a mouthy one. Sure. I’ll tell you. I used to be a Mouth. And a Wing.” The faintest beginnings of a smile crept into the corner of his lips, then faded. “But now I’m a Scion.”
I prayed that there was no actual way he could tell that a shiver had just run down my spine. You know when you ask to speak to the manager, and it turns out they are the manager? Well.
Scions were the most highly ranked of the Lorica’s members. These were powerful mages, those who displayed both expertise in their specialties and an ability to diversify by learning further magic. I’d only ever met one Scion, Odessa, an ageless woman in the body of a teenage girl who could erect massive force fields with little effort. I forced my eyes to stare Royce right in his smug face, hoping he couldn’t read my thoughts, which lingered on whether other Scions made a habit of going around looking all unkempt.
“I had no idea, um, Mr. Royce. Sir.” I don’t know what it was about Scions, but they just made me jittery. Maybe it was knowing that they had enough mystical power to wipe me off the face of the planet without blinking.
Royce frowned, his eyes appearing to focus on something in the distance. “Shush. Shut up for a minute.”
He raised two fingers to his temple, just above his right ear, like he was activating an invisible headset, or a bluetooth device that wasn’t really there. He was tapping into a telepathic connection. I’d seen it happen before, and, well, at some point in my distant past, I’d also used it to communicate with the same woman who had shoved a knife in my heart. Long story.
“Okay,” Royce said, to someone who wasn’t there. “Right. Understood.” He clapped his hands, the sound magically magnified as it thundered throughout the warehouse. “All right. Evacuate. HQ ordered an incineration protocol. Everybody out, and send me a signal when you’re clear.”
A flash of light burst on the stage, then again. It was a Wing, who had moved so fast that I barely caught them transporting Mona’s sleeping body out of the warehouse.
I blinked. “An incineration protocol? I thought you were joking. You’re not seriously going to – ”
“Just shut up,” he mumbled. Royce slung an arm over my shoulder, somehow making even the friendliest gesture seem so menacing. I caught a whiff of cigarettes, and aftershave. Then he snapped his fingers, and I smelled the wet night air, and somehow we weren’t in the warehouse anymore. He’d teleported us out onto the street, and I hadn’t even felt it.
I shrugged from under his grasp, but he pulled me in even harder. I had the weirdest feeling I was going to end the night wearing cement shoes at the bottom of a lake.
“Listen,” he said, speaking into my ear. “I’m keeping tabs on you and your motley little crew of friends. If I hear one thing – and I mean one tiny thing about you misbehaving, I’ll pounce on your ass so fast it’ll make your head explode.”
“Spin,” I said. “The expression is ‘make your head spin.’”
He scowled. “I know what I said. Did I stutter?”
I mean I got the gist. He was going to fuck me up. But playing dumb worked well enough for me in the past, so I just said nothing.
“You heard me, sweet cheeks.” He reached into his jacket, pulling out a single white card and slipping it into my shirt pocket. Then he patted my chest. “You give me a call if you get any leads on this case, which I’m sure you will. Don’t be greedy. Learn to share. We’re all in this together. Right?”
“We are?”
Royce gave me a mocking smile. He finally let me go, and the rush of night air running cold over my shoulder told me that he’d squeezed me tight enough to cut off at least a little bit of my circulation. The guy looked shabb
y, and mostly lean, but I had the sneaking suspicion that he could bear hug the life out of me if he wanted to. Just what I needed: a Scion on my ass, and one who wasn’t afraid to get physical, too.
I grimaced at him and rubbed my arm. He ignored me, holding two fingers up to his temple again.
“All clear? We sure? Right. Proceeding.” He turned to me again. “Remember, Graves. You hear anything, you get in touch.”
I nodded, biting back the stupid retort just itching to catapult its way out of my mouth. Or what? I thought.
Or this, his eyes seemed to say. Royce snapped his fingers, the last time I saw him do so that evening. I thought nothing had happened at first, but that was because the flames started from inside the warehouse. It only took a couple of minutes before it had turned into a blazing inferno.
I watched, my mouth half-open, as the fires swept the warehouse clean, imagining the way they ate at the corpses littering what used to be a concert. I watched as the Lorica, in its own ruthless way, upheld the law of the Veil.
