Aberrant Magic 7 (Patreon)

Okay, I have chapters 1-9 edited.  I think I lost focus on this one, which is why I wanted to rip this one up.  It's much more about Kavon's emotional journey now.  I have one week before school starts, so I want to hit the accelerator on this one, but I would love some feedback on whether the new direction works.  

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Chapter One

Darren groaned as he walked through the apartment door. “Long, damn day.” He passed the kitchen island and collapsed onto the couch.

Behind him, Kavon closed the door. “All we did was paperwork.”

Bennu had taken off, so Darren hadn’t even been able to get a little shamanic energy boost. Most days Bennu was better than coffee, but not today. “Exactly, that's what made it such a long day. Why is it so much harder to file reports than it is to chase down criminals?” 

“Because you like one more than the other?” Kavon followed Darren into the living room and dropped the mail on the coffee table before he doubled back to the refrigerator.

Darren flipped through the stack. “You might have me there. That and my supervising agent is a real bastard who just insists on having every T crossed and every I dotted.”

Kavon schooled his face into a stern expression. “Yes, he is.” The corner of his mouth twitched.

Darren laughed. Kavon held up two beers, but Darren shook his head. If he started drinking, he was going to turn into a couch potato for the night, and he had to get some laundry done. And apparently pay bills. Joy. He came to a classy cream envelope and tore it open. “Huh.”

“What?” Kavon settled on the couch with his beer.

“Art and Zach are getting married.” Darren held up the announcement. 

“The El Paso cops?” Kavon leaned closer to read the invite. “I guess they’re angling for a gift.”

Darren backhanded him. “I suspect Zach is trying to mend some fences between Bennu and Pochi. I get the feeling that they have a contentious history.” The longer Darren partnered with Bennu, the more he got flashes of emotion that suggested Bennu had been the bad-boy of the ifrit crowd, breaking rules at every turn. That explained why Bennu had never partnered with Kavon. 

Before they became lovers, Darren suspected Kavon had an intense and potentially sexual relationship with his FBI rulebook. If mystical guides chose partners with similar personality traits, Kavon and Bennu were a horrible match. Bennu, like Darren, was a little more flexible about working around rules. 

After a long silence, Kavon asked, “Do you want to go?” Confusion drifted across their bond.

Darren flashed Kavon a smile for even making the offer. “Nope, but we can buy them a nice card. I’m glad they’re finally tying the knot. They seem to really work as a couple, ya know?” Darren dropped the card on the table. “Did you ever think about getting married?”

Kavon put his beer down and his emotions grew sharper.

“Like when you were a kid,” Darren clarified. He wasn’t fishing for a proposal. Besides, the bond they shared with their guides would last this lifetime and the next. It didn’t get more permanent than a soul bond.

Kavon’s emotions settled. “I guess I assumed I would get married one day. Almost all the adults I knew were, so I’m not sure I considered any other options. But having Talent changed things.”

“Lots of people with Talent get married.” Hell the invitation from Zach and Art proved that. “Why did that change anything?”

Kavon rolled his beer bottle between his palms. “It wasn’t easy. Even before I chose to follow the shamanic path, my Talent put distance between me and other people.”

Darren toed off his shoes and tucked his feet under him. Kavon rarely shared stories from his childhood, and Darren tamped down his rabid curiosity out of fear that it would push Kavon into an emotional retreat. He asked quietly, “Why?”

Kavon huffed. “A lot of teens have shamanic markings when they first get their Talent, even if they haven’t chosen to be a shaman. The glow fades later if they choose to take the path of using dead magics.”

“Yeah, that’s how most of them find out they have magic,” Darren said. No matter shows and books for young adults suggested, Talent didn’t give kids unlimited cosmic powers. That took hard work and years of practice. 

Kavon grunted. “Those markings are particularly difficult for teenagers. A faint light that highlights every blemish plus adolescent acne...” He tipped his beer up, his Adam’s apple bobbing as he swallowed.

“That would have sucked.” Darren had been a popular athlete in high school and he still felt like he’d barely survived. He couldn’t imagine how much worse that would have been.

“Oh yeah.” Kavon untied his shoes and pulled them off before propping his socked feet up on his coffee table. “Being black made it worse. Kids were judgmental anyway, but when the Talent marks appeared, they were cruel.” Given Kavon’s habit of downplaying his own pain, the reality would have been much more sadistic than anything Kavon would admit. 

Darren asked, “Can we go to your class reunion so I can threaten some people?”

“I’d have to arrest you for intimidating idiots.”

“Oh, it would go beyond intimidation.”

Kavon finished his beer in one long swig. “I won’t go to my reunions. Do you know that makeup that shamans use to hide their marks?”

“Sure.” Les had a few tubes of the stuff in his desk to hide his adept marks on his hands. They were even more conspicuous than shamanic marks which only glowed when a shaman was using his power. 

Kavon’s voice grew distant. “They didn’t make that stuff dark enough for my skin, so my mom tried adding dark eye shadow to make it match. She told me it looked fine, but...” He took a deep breath and the bond was ominous devoid of any emotion.

“This isn’t going to be a happy story, is it?”

“Some kid called me nigger-rig, and that’s what my classmates called me the rest of senior year.” Kavon’s voice was utterly flat, and before Darren could come up with a response, he headed for the kitchen, empty beer bottle in hand.

His uncle Jack used that phrase for any rush job or half-assed patch that he didn’t expect to last. His mother used to scream at her brother every time he’d said it, but that didn’t stop him. But taking that incredibly offensive term and then applying it to a person—a kid who was struggling to begin with... Darren definitely needed to make these guys pay. Their newest agent was a weedy man who looked like he had endured his share of teasing. Maybe Darren could send Milton on a search and destroy mission through these assholes’ credit reports. However, if he showed any sympathy, Kavon was going to shut down tighter than a clam.

Darren blew out a breath and projected as much normalcy as possible. “My mom wasn’t thrilled when I started showing more interest in boys than girls around fifth or sixth grade, but even after I settled on the gay side of the street, I assumed I would get married, adopt, and shepherd a gaggle of children to church twice a year.”

Kavon came back with a second beer. “Do you want kids?”

“Now? Hell, no,” Darren said firmly. Even if they managed to reduce the number of hours they worked, there was still the impending threat of war. Other people could keep living their lives, but Darren and Zach and everyone partnered with one of the old ifrit guides had to focus on the coming battle. The evil ifrit could break through into Earth’s dimension at any time. “Besides, I gave up religion for Lent. I can’t exactly take kids to church when I can’t find one.”

“It’s not Lent,” Kavon said dryly.

Darren snorted. “Like you’d know.”

“Oh, I would. Your mother would be calling to make unsubtle hints about serving the church. Apparently she gives up manners for Lent.” Kavon turned on the local news station. His emotional lockdown on the bond started to ease, and the jagged edge of exhaustion and grief stained the air.

Darren cringed. His mother was obnoxious in her new-found Catholicism. But it wasn’t like Kavon to point that out. 

“If you want to go to the wedding, we have quite a bit of saved vacation time.”

Darren wondered about Kavon’s sudden willingness to take the time off. As much as Darren saw Kavon as Superman, apparently even the Man of Steel got worn down sometimes. “They should celebrate with their friends,” Darren said, “but we should spend that banked vacation time on us.” When Kavon gave him a confused look, Darren continued. “We could go to the beach, waste some money on fancy hotels or restaurants, you know, take a vacation.”

Kavon’s frown deepened. “We just had a vacation.”

“No, we had two days where we visited my mother after her heart attack. That's not a vacation.”

Kavon shrugged. “If you want to take time off, just file the paperwork.” Despite his calm tone, his emotions felt conflicted—almost hurt.

Darren rested a hand on Kavon’s knee. “I don't want to take time off by myself. I would like to be a normal human being who takes time off with his family.” Darren still got a little flutter in his stomach when he said that out loud. After years of unrequited love, he got to tell Kavon he loved him and publicly claim him. “Give me one reason why you can't take some time off right now.”

“Our unit is the only one handling Talent cases. Criminals don’t stop because we want time off.” Kavon turned the volume up on the television. The commentator was complaining about the city resources diverted to cleaning up magical spill areas.

“There are two supervisory agents,” Darren said over the television. “You might want to consider letting the other supervisor carry the weight for a while. Otherwise she might suspect you don’t trust her to do the job.” Darren doubted Coretta would ever reach that conclusion, but her sarcasm was starting to get a little sharp, at least when she wasn’t retreating into overly polite language. A polite Coretta was always dangerous.

“There's too much work for one team.” Kavon had a mulish expression.

In the past, Darren had allowed Kavon to get his way, but enough was enough. They both needed down time. “Six months ago one team handled everything. Coretta can handle it for a week or two weeks. Hell, she can borrow Milton and Anne, and she'll have more personnel than we ever had.” The two newest members of the team would probably appreciate a break from Kavon’s intensity. It took getting used to.

“Coretta is an able investigator, but she's a magic user. She needs someone who can handle the shamanic end of the Talent pool.”

“I thought that's why you two hired Joe,” Darren said. “He's a shaman. I even recall you saying that he felt like a strong shaman, so he can handle it.”

Kavon grimaced. “He has an octopus guide.”

“I'm starting to regret telling you that.” Darren only knew about Joe’s guide because Bennu delighted in meeting new guides. The small white cattle egret looked out of place perched on the giant orangey sea creature.

“Octopus guides are secretive and clever. You should be cautious around a shaman with an octopus guide.” Kavon sounded ready to launch into lecture mode.

“I imagine that's why he did so well working undercover when he was in the California office,” Darren said dryly.

The tone must have hit home because Kavon narrowed his eyes and, more significantly, quieted the bond. “Do you want to leave Rima with Milton and Anne? She’s going to shoot Milton if she spends too much time with him.”

Darren felt a twinge of pride at getting Kavon to use first names. A year ago, Kavon had even referred to Coretta by her last name. “She threatened to shoot Les more times that I can count. She never did it. I’m a good eighty percent sure she won’t shoot Milton.”

Kavon pressed his lips together, and every line of his body was tight with displeasure. “I have a responsibility to the Shamanic Council, and what about the ifrit war?”

Now Kavon was reaching. “You ignore the counsel so often that I’m not sure they’ll notice we’re gone. And the ifrit war could be thirty years away. Put on your supervisory hat. If you had an agent who refused to take time off and was in danger of burning out, what would you do?”

“If you're suggesting that I can’t handle the stress, we have a problem.”

Darren grabbed the remote and turned the volume down. He didn’t need to hear about the statistics on rising Talent-based crime and hate crimes against those with Talent. “If you plan on going years without a break because the war could start tomorrow… well, you can’t. It’s not healthy.”

“I know what I can handle.” Clearly expecting that gruff comment to end the debate, Kavon retreated to the kitchen. However, he had underestimated Darren’s powers of annoyance.

“You are exactly like your guide, a big stubborn bull who won't back down even when you should.”

Kavon crossed his arms. “Do you think we have decades?”

Darren had to admit that Kavon had a point. Darren had seen the numbers. In the past, a few young people would end up with guides like Kavon’s bull—big, dangerous, and full of old magic. However, most new shamans partnered with small, innocuous guides: birds, fish, or squirrels. But in the last six months, the DC Council had registered several large land predators including a buffalo, two whales, a shark, and a Steller's sea cow. For a guide to prefer the form of an animal that had gone extinct hundreds of years ago, it had to be old. Something was shifting, and all the guides knew it. Unfortunately, the guides lacked the ability to explain what.

“That’s even more reason for us to get away while we can. We can't work ourselves to the bone, and then expect to be on the top of our game if something happens.”

Kavon slapped his hand against the counter. “And we can't afford to be off on vacation when it starts. You and I both know it’s coming.”

DC, Mexico City, West Texas, and the Vatican were all showing vast increases in the number of magical “hot spots,” so Kavon was probably right. Darren knew for a fact there were ancient ifrit in Washington DC and El Paso, so that suggested that ifrit guides might have also returned to Mexico and the Vatican. Considering that Mexico was aligned with the Catholic Church, it would be normal for them to hide information from the Egyptian authorities. Some days, Darren regretted that the Talent community was so stereotypically human with political divisions and prejudices.

“There are these wondrous devices called aeroplanes,” Darren said. Sarcasm was never the best approach with Kavon, but damn it, he was tired and cranky and he just wanted to win one God damn fight. “If something happens while we’re away, we can come back. In fact, Selma would happily authorize the use of the private jet.”

“Selma will approve anything you ask for.” Kavon’s tone made it clear he didn’t approve.

“We can go visit your family. You know you miss them.” This was Darren’s biggest carrot. While Kavon kept a distance between himself and his family, when he talked to them, he radiated a soul-deep joy and longing.

Kavon looked away. “I do,” he admitted in a much softer voice. “However, I don't want to be visiting my family when some evil ifrit decides to turn us into a smoking crater. Bennu might have astounding powers, but so will every other ifrit that comes back to this world.”

Kavon was annoyingly logical sometimes. “Okay, so we can visit someplace that you don't like. How about that town in Alabama where the local police captain called you the n-word? We can visit there and hope evil ifrit blow up the whole town. That would be a plus, yes?”

Kavon glared, but emotions leaked into the bond again, and amusement dominated the landscape.

“Look, I don't even care where we go. DC has beautiful resorts, so we can do a staycation. We can take a week to get away from the apartment and turn the phones off. And at the end of the week, we will be more prepared to handle any problems. As a bonus, Coretta will have time to gel with her new team without you glaring at them.” 

“Her team is untested. I don’t want them to leave her or Les or Ahtisham hanging if there’s an emergency.” That felt like a more honest answer, and Darren shared a tiny bit of his trepidation. After Traci Frane’s betrayal, Darren had struggled to trust anyone, and the lingering effects of that still made him search Milton’s nervous gestures for evidence he was faking or watch Anne type and wonder what she would say about the rest of them in her reports. But he tried to shut down that part of his brain. Joe had done extensive undercover work and Jen had top scores at Quantico. Anne was an experience field agent and Milton… well if anyone tried using him as a spy, they were idiots. All of the new people on Coretta’s team and theirs were ambitious agents looking for a fast track to promotions, and nothing in their behavior was objectively suspicious. 

“Not only are the number of Talent crimes increasing, but we have additional scrutiny on us as well.” Kavon’s bull showed up, a chunk of grass hanging from one side of his mouth as he looked for a threat. Darren braced himself for more of Kavon at his cantankerous best, but after a minute, he sagged against the kitchen island.

“We’re not leaving town,” Kavon said in a stubborn voice that someone else might have assumed meant he was digging in on his position, but Darren recognized a retreat when he saw it.

“Pick a resort.”

“My magical shields are strongest here.” Kavon crossed his arms over his chest, a touch of that stubbornness returning to his expression.

Darren sighed. Sometimes compromising with Kavon felt like putting his shoulder up to cape buffalo bull and pushing hard. But he’d take what he could get because Kavon needed the time off as badly as he did. “We turn all phones off, don’t check email and veg out on a week of bad movies.” Darren laid out his terms.

After a second, Kavon gave one jerky nod. “Deal. I’ll fill out the forms. But if the office blows up and Kaslov shoots Coretta in the back, I’m going to remind you of this.” Kavon abandoned his beer and headed for the spiral staircase that led up to the small office where Kavon liked to meditate.

Darren sighed. Apparently Kavon had demoted Joe to surname-references only. Baby steps. Darren glared and Kavon’s bull. “This is your fault. Your protective instincts are all turned on high and it’s sending him into overdrive.”

As usual, the guide ignored the complaint and kept chewing his imaginary grass. Guides. Darren frowned. When Kavon’s bull was around, Bennu usually rode along. Darren’s guide was conspicuously absent. He shook his head. Kavon’s paranoia was contagious.

Chapter Two

Darren woke with power flowing through the bond he shared with Kavon. In a blink, Darren fell though that conduit and lost himself inside Kavon’s dream, filled with caricatures of their work friends. Darren mentally clawed his way back to himself and clutched the blanket. 

In his sleep, Kavon stretched and blindly reached for Darren. The second Kavon rested his hand on Darren’s chest, affection and soft forms of longing filled the bond.

Darren ran his hands over Kavon’s side and trailed his fingers over Kavon’s hip where the adept colors stained his dark skin. Subtle reds and beiges swirled together into a handprint design. Darren’s handprint. Threads of color escaped the pattern and swirled into the surrounding skin. Darren traced the lines that led toward Kavon’s stomach, and he felt the echoing touch through his own bond mark.

Kavon slowly opened his eyes. Darren expected his sense of their bond to fade as Kavon reasserted his privacy. Instead Kavon held out his hand, and Darren threaded his own fingers with Kavon’s.

“Good morning.” Kavon offered an easy smile. Contentment and desire flowed through the bond. 

“We have nothing to do and nowhere to go.” Darren pressed his lips against Kavon’s in a chaste kiss, and he wanted more. He yearned for Kavon to pin him down and fuck him hard. Maybe Kavon felt that hunger because he squeezed Darren’s ass. Then his kiss became hungry and demanding as animalistic lust tangled with their underlying love.

Darren’s cock hardened, but Kavon chose to break the kiss. “You seem to need something.” Kavon pressed against Darren’s cock and the pressure almost made Darren’s eyes roll back in his head.

Darren gave Kavon his best come-hither look. “Whatever will we do with the morning?”

Kavon frowned, and for a second, Darren was insulted. He was offering morning sex, yet the bond echoed with confusion and a faint sense of alarm. Then Darren felt it. A tugging. A sense of the world slipping slightly out of phase. A wrongness.

“What the...” The spirit plane swirled around them, creating a tornado of color and power. It slowly settled into the familiar African plain with the vein-like network of tiny tributaries and rivers. The brightly painted Egyptian monuments stood in the distance. But one side of the landscape was dominated by a wall of unnaturally brilliant blue ice. A tall waterfall slipped over the ice cliffs, vanishing when it reached the base where the ice merged into the yellowing grasses of the veldt.

A man and woman stood next to the ice wall. He was late middle-aged, solidly built, and walking with the sort of confidence Darren associated with power. He also looked incredibly familiar. The woman was much younger and the way she walked at his side without touching suggested a professional rather than intimate relationship.

Kavon’s shock filled the bond. “Dave?” Kavon stepped forward. “I thought you had moved on to the next realm.”

Dave grinned. “How could I when this world is still so interesting?”

Darren remembered his first visit to the spirit plane back when Bennu had first chosen him. Kavon brought Darren to the spirit plane to meet his teacher: Dave Boyce. However, not long after that, Bennu had created a massive storm on the spirit plane when trying to save Kavon’s life. Kavon had said the chaos had either forced Dave to move to the next realm or that Dave had gotten hopelessly lost as the magical realm reformed into new patterns. 

Darren and Kavon had spent weeks traveling the spirit plane rescuing other shamans who had lost their way and couldn’t find the exits. But in all their explorations, they had never seen any hint of Dave.

“I hope I didn't pull you away from anything too important. I tried to wait until your auras had calmed and it felt like you were in a good place to leave the physical world,” Dave said.

Darren was starting to think that the universe in general had something against their sex life. They certainly got interrupted enough.

“It's fine,” Kavon said, even though it totally wasn't. “What is going on?”

A badger ran up to sit at Dave’s feet. The guide tilted his head to the side and studied Darren with undisguised curiosity. Dave said, “Pulling you into the spirit plain is a neat skill, isn’t it? Sometimes even an old dog learns new tricks if he tries hard enough and hangs around a while.”

“And if someone can teach him,” the woman said. “I am pleased to meet both of you.” Her features were too sharp to be called classically beautiful, but she was a handsome woman with long black hair and a flowing aqua dress with elaborate embroidery at the wrist. Something told Darren that she didn’t have a body in the physical world, although he couldn’t explain why he thought she’d died.

Most of the time, when people crossed over permanently, they chose a spirit form closer to middle age. However, this shaman either died young or had really enjoyed her early twenties.

Kavon took a small step to the side as if to shield Darren. Darren would have taken offense only he had the feeling this woman was dangerous. She stepped forward, forcing Dave to the side.

“We’ve actually met before. I’m Thuya Sherif,” she offered.

Shock made Darren blurt, “Thuya as in the dead Egyptian shaman whose suspicious death and we investigated last year?” Darren remembered the woman, both her aged body in her bed and meeting her on the spirit plane where she had still looked old. She had pointed them toward Arlington where Cruz tried to set up his own magical kingdom. Kavon blasted the bond with suspicion and fury, all colored with a hearty dose of fear.

Immediately, Kavon’s bull materialized. The guide shook his head so his long horns swept the air in search of an enemy to gore.

Thuya ignored the potential threat of evisceration. Her guide wasn’t visible, but when they’d met her shortly after her death, Darren had seen her mastodon guide. He had enough power to damage if not outright destroy Kavon’s bull.

She offered them a sweet, grandmotherly smile that didn’t fit with her youthful appearance. “I appreciate that you took my death so seriously, especially when I was not forthcoming about the cause.”

“You mean you avoided your people on the spirit plane, which left them to suspect something had happened.” Kavon’s tone dripped with anger. Thuya’s refusal to contact her colleagues on the spirit plane had devastated Salma. Salma had told Darren that she’d expected Thuya’s death, but to have her mentor vanish had been the hardest part of her life since becoming a magical adept.

“I spoke to them about the necessity of valuing the mission over the length of time one is able to spend in the physical realm.” Thuya’s words carried a mild sort of regret, but not the strong emotion of a mother-figure forced to leave a loved one behind. Darren firmly placed Thuya into a camp with people who mistakenly thought they were morally right.

Even Dave flinched, either because he disliked her lack of compassion or he felt Kavon’s anger.

“The mission?” Kavon asked coldly despite the anger quivering through the bond.

“Salma understood that if I chose not to make myself known in the world of Adam’s clay after my death, it meant that I had a more important role to fulfill. My absence served a purpose.”

“Would that purpose be to manipulate me into a relationship with the Egyptian authorities?” Kavon demanded. On the spirit plane, any lie she told would stain the air, which was the only reason Darren expected the truth from her. She had taught Salma that the goal of life was to defeat the evil ifrit, so he expected she would sacrifice truth for that goal.

“No. Absolutely not.” The crisp, cool sincerity spread through the spirit plane. “I hoped to manipulate the shaman who had been chosen by the ifrit Bennu.” Thuya shifted her attention to Darren.

Dave said with a shrug, “At least she's honest.”

“And manipulative,” Kavon said with less admiration.

When Thuya spoke, her words had a weight that filled the air. “We must focus on the mission. The consequences of failure are too great for us to worry about hurting feelings.”

“Dave knows I don't care about feelings,” Kavon said. “I do care about information. How long have you two been working together?”

Darren took Kavon’s distraction as an opportunity to move out from behind him.

“Since I died,” Thuya said. “Before that I was unaware that Americans understood the nature of the coming war. Of course the Catholics have their own preparations, but their immature approach is counter-productive. If they believe superstition can save them from the evil ifrit, they are idiots.”

Charming. Darren liked the woman less with every word. “I’m fairly sure Salma thinks that Allah is going to come in on our side, so I would not be so quick to accuse others of superstition.”

“I find Salma unforgivably superstitious. However, her beliefs don't prevent her from acting. She doesn't hide in the basement and hope that someone else will fix the world through faith.”

“Thuya,” Dave said sharply.

She rolled her eyes. “Egyptians have always known the war was coming, but we did not fully appreciate that there were others standing with us. Perhaps that is why Bennu chose to return here. Perhaps he forced us to seek alliance because we had grown too insular.”

Dave spoke a little louder. “Or perhaps your ifrit simply saw someone he liked.” Based on his tone, this was an old argument.

Thuya hand-waved Dave’s suggestion away. “Bennu is an ancient power who has lived for thousands of years. I doubt he would be easily swayed by the sight of a foolish youth.”

“Despite the faith and dedication of others, I was the first to see the ifrit return.” Dave’s aura reflected smugness. “And the first to act.”

Kavon tilted his head to the side and projected mild alarm. “Dave? What did you do?”

“I left the physical plane and focused my time here because my arthritis and my slowing mind were proving to be too much of a distraction.” Dave conjured a fallen tree and sat on the trunk. “Do you remember when your bull got caught in one of the ancient rivers?” he asked Kavon.

Kavon had told Darren that story as an example of the dangers on the spirit plane. As a young shaman, Kavon had grown too interested one of the deep magical wells. His bull had gotten stuck at the edge of it, forcing Kavon to wade into the waters and risk being pulled under. At least four times he’d told Darren the story, usually when he was trying to impress on Darren the idea that magical guides did not automatically understand the dangers inherent in magic.

“I remember,” Kavon said slowly.

Dave smiled. “That day, I knew I had to protect you.”

“You knew very little until I came,” Thuya said under her breath.

“Did you die to protect me?” Kavon flooded the bond with his horror and guilt.

“No, I moved to a different plane in order to better fight for my world. I knew Bennu was from the ancient realms, and I could protect you and search for the old ones from here.”

“None of this matters.” Thuya turned to look at the ice wall, and her focus made a huge fracture in the ice wall more visible. “The crack means one of the exiled ones has come through, but we cannot find him in the realm of Adam’s clay. He must be on Earth.” Water trickled from the jagged edges of the break and it turned into a waterfall as it tumbled over the blue ice. 

At least one evil ifrit had slipped through with that water. Panic wrapped itself around Darren’s heart. “Where’s Bennu?” he asked. No one answered, but the alarm stained the bond before Kavon shut it down.

Chapter Three

Kavon sat up in bed. Nothing in the bedroom had changed, but Darren looked as shell-shocked as Kavon. When their gazes met, Kavon considered loosening his control over the bond, but Darren didn’t deserve to get flooded with darker emotions. Over the previous months, Kavon kept reminding Darren that the war could come at any moment, but now that it had arrived, Kavon felt utterly unprepared.

Darren hid his face in his hands. “Great. So we have an evil ifrit who has returned to the world who may or may not have already found a human partner to join with, but we have no idea who the human partner might be, nor do we know which ifrit returned,” he summarized Thuya’s warning. “Yeah. No problem there. And can we even believe her?”

There had been too many cases of magical hot spots showing up in the DC area to dismiss it. Kavon was more worried that multiple ifrit might have slipped into the world.

When Kavon didn’t answer, Darren sat up. “I'm not saying Thuya was wrong, but she admitted that she tried to manipulate me, and she withheld information the first time we met right after her death.” He sighed. “And I’m biased because she’s a raging bitch.”

Kavon climbed out of bed. His hopes for a quiet morning were gone. “I might agree with you there. After Salma’s stories, I had expected her to be more cerebral and devout.” Normally Kavon appreciated blunt and skeptical people. Those were two of his favorite traits in Coretta. He wondered if he would have more respect for Thuya if her message hadn’t inspired so much fear. 

Darren dramatically threw back the blanket, and when Kavon headed for the bathroom, Darren followed. “How are you feeling about Dave appearing on the spirit plane?”

“I was grateful to see him again,” Kavon said honestly. He had missed Dave, but knowing that Dave had manipulated him left a bitter taste in his mouth. Based in part on Dave’s recommendation, he’d gone into law enforcement when few shamans had. Did Dave believe that was best for Kavon or had he hoped to put Kavon in a place where he had resources? Or had he wanted to minimize Kavon’s interactions with other shamans to hide Bennu?

As a young agent, Kavon had struggled. Other agents hadn’t trusted a shaman, and now he wondered if he would have chosen another path without Dave’s involvement. After all, his guide was a bull—which spoke to Kavon’s need to have a herd. But until he’d formed the Talent unit, he’d been alone.

“I can't say I'm thrilled that he’s known about this problem for so many years and he never once talked to me,” Kavon admitted. Maybe his emotions had slipped through into the bond because Darren waited until Kavon finished pissing, and then he rested his hand on Kavon’s arm. The love and respect that flowed through the bond soothed some of the rough edges around Kavon’s heart. “I trusted him.” Kavon hated that his words came out sounding timid. No shaman could change the past, so he needed to get past these irrational feelings.

Darren asked, “When Bennu first partnered with me and we went through to the spirit plane, didn't you ask him about Bennu?”

Kavon washed his hands. “Yes, and as I recall, Dave's answer was that he had seen many spirit guides with my bull, and that he hadn't seen that particular cattle egret for many years.”

“Was he lying?”

Dave would never be that obvious; he had a badger guide. The slow hunters would cooperate with coyotes or other predators if it meant improving their own chance of getting a meal. Kavon should have been more cautious with a shaman chosen by a badger guide.

“Not even get Dave can lie on the spirit plane,” Kavon said, “However, he could have told part of the truth. Hell, maybe he warned Bennu to hide in the first place.” The bond shivered with fear, and Kavon gave Darren his full attention.

“You don't think…” Darren took a breath. “Could Bennu be in trouble?” The second he asked the question, it was as if emotional floodgates opened. The blast of fear that came through the bond nearly knocked Kavon off his feet.

Kavon took Darren's hand in his. “Bennu is fine. If he were injured or in trouble, we would feel it. That's part of the bond we share.” Kavon touched his soul mark. “I would feel it through the vows we took. You would feel it through the connection you share with your guide.”

The fear faded, but the bond was still heavy with grief and anxiety. “Then why is he missing?”

“If you were searching for a suspect and someone called you on the cell phone, would you answer?” Kavon asked.

Darren snorted. “My boss would eviscerate me if I tried.”

That was true enough. Kavon never wanted to lose one of his team, so if they did anything in the field that put their own or other lives in danger, Kavon would not easily forgive. Ben Anderson learned that when he tried to use his weak adept Talent to target Darren with bad luck while they were in the field. 

After Frane was uncovered as the spy who had cursed Darren and stirred up dissension in the unit, Coretta had asked Kavon to withdraw the complaint. As far as Coretta was concerned, Ben was a pawn manipulated by Traci Frane. Kavon had refused, and Ben had transferred to some other field office with a black mark on his record. Kavon felt no guilt about it.

“Exactly,” Kavon said.

“You think Bennu is searching for whatever evil ifrit came through.”

“Probably. If he takes his eyes off the field, he might miss his prey.” Kavon headed for the kitchen. He’d left his phone in there and he needed to text the rest of the team. If a magic war broke out, they would be on the front lines. They needed to know. So much for a vacation.

“Should we call Salma?” Darren asked.

Kavon disliked the idea. Her work in California could prevent a shamanic civil war of sorts—at least a social media version of one, and the anti-Talent groups would take advantage of any strife. And right now, the El Nogal Djedi Center resented how much money had flowed into Toronto and El Paso, and if they didn’t get some support, it would stir resentment.

Worse, Kavon couldn’t explain the situation to them. He didn’t know any of those people well enough to share a chocolate chip cookie recipe, so talking to them about the potential for a new guide civil war and purge was out of the question. “We’ll see what we can find before dragging her back here.” Kavon grabbed his phone because it was time to talk to their team.

Kavon was texting a confused Coretta when Darren appeared in a pair of jeans and an old t-shirt. Once Kavon convinced her to head over to the apartment as soon as she had an opportunity to drag Les and Rima out of the office, he put the phone down.

“You know,” Darren said as he worked on cooking breakfast, “another ifrit will have just as many powers as Bennu, but far fewer ethics. If Thuya is right, whatever enemy we have out there, he’s going to partner with whoever he finds most interesting or exciting. And unfortunately all too often interesting and exciting means crazy as hell.”

Unlike Darren, Kavon didn’t like to throw theories out too quickly. He preferred to have his feet on solid ground and his conclusions backed with solid evidence. “That would explain why magic got so out of hand last time.” It would also explain why so many of the jinn stories focused on the delight a jinn took in tricking humans into making ill-conceived wishes.

“Most ethical people I know lead fairly boring lives.” Darren stirred the scrambled eggs. “And I include us in that number. As a kid, I thought of the FBI as running around firing guns and arresting bad guys.”

“Between the paperwork, the training, the workshops, and the interagency cooperation meetings, we do occasionally arrest bad guys.”

“But are we interesting enough to attract one of these evil ifrit?”

Kavon wrapped his arms around Darren’s waist and leaned against his back while Darren cooked. Kavon didn’t want interesting. He wanted predictable. He kissed the back of Darren’s neck.

“I’m not even sure it's fair to call them evil,” Darren continued. “If these ifrit are looking for a world to explore, isn't it more fair to say that they’re immature or adrenaline junkies? It seems like any evil came from us.”

It was like Darren to seek the best in everyone, but despite his words, he still projected anxiety. All Kavon could do was hold him and offer whatever comfort he could. Bennu’s choice to partner with Darren meant that they would be on the front lines.

Kavon held Darren until the eggs were finished. As he was plating breakfast, Darren asked, “Those hotspots that showed up in Mexico City and the Vatican? Are those the result of creatures who came through the barrier? Could we have several evil ifrit here?”

“I don’t know,” Kavon admitted. “I think Dave and Thuya are being honest about calling us when they realized the barrier had been breached.” Kavon just wouldn’t put a bet on that assumption.

Instead of taking his plate to the breakfast bar, Darren rested both hands on the counter and leaned over it. “So we’re looking for any human being on the face of the planet who has an interesting life who may have recently come into contact with an energy being from another dimension who was offered phenomenal cosmic powers.”

Kavon rubbed Darren’s back. “That sounds right.”

“Fuck my life.”

Kavon confiscated Darren’s plate and moved both their breakfasts to the placemats. “Oh I think we’re getting fucked over enough already.”

Darren finally followed his food. “We need to bring the team in on this.”

“I already texted Coretta to bring them over as soon as she can get away.”

Darren stared at Kavon in shock. “Seriously?”

“Yes. Seriously. It’s time. I always said I would bring the others in when the time came.” Kavon would not have his people blindsided.

“Everyone?” Darren asked. “Are you going to call in Milton and Joe and Jen? How about Wyatt?”

“Whoa!” Kavon held up a hand. “We don't know our new people well enough to trust them with this kind of information, and Wyatt isn't a part of our team. He works computer support for any number of teams.”

“Wyatt has always had our backs,” Darren protested

“Against suspects, yes,” Kavon said. “I would never ask him to go against FBI policy.”

“We aren’t.”

“Really?” Kavon asked. “We know about a potential threat on domestic soil, and instead of going to our assistant director, we are bypassing White and handling it ourselves off the books. Do I need to explain how many FBI policies we are breaking right now?” Kavon was getting heartburn just thinking about it. He had always considered the rulebook a protection against abuse in the system, but the system wasn’t designed to handle an ifrit war.

“You’re a member of the shamanic council, and they handle problems in the Talent community.”

“Really?” Kavon put his fork down and turned to face off against Darren. “Did you or did you not take an oath to defend the Constitution?”

“Of course I did.” Now Darren’s aggravation flowed freely through the bond.

“We agreed to put the Constitution and the FBI ahead of personal obligations. Maybe Halverson or McLean could point to the council and say they were acting within the scope of their duties, but the FBI manual is fairly clear that I do not have any right to withhold evidence of a danger, foreign or domestic, to American interests.”

Darren frowned. His silence suggested he hadn’t considered the ramifications. If White or anyone else at the agency suspected that they had failed to report a danger, they would both get fired. Or jailed.

Darren pushed his eggs around on the plate. “What about Ahtisham?”

Kavon calmed himself. “As a mundane, he can't help us.”

Darren was more subdued now. “How is he going to feel if he finds out the rest of the team was involved?”

For Darren, the FBI was a passion, and he considered the team a family. Most agents didn’t see it that way. “He's using the unit to get practical experience so he can move into the negotiations team. He wouldn’t want to get involved.” Kavon wished they didn’t have so many new members of the team because it was going to make it difficult to keep the conflict quiet. Maybe he and Darren should take a leave of absence. Kavon could use his position on the DC Shamanic Council as an excuse. 

“What about Angel?”

Kavon gritted his teeth. He respected when Angel had done, going in undercover against the mob required a lot of guts. But he couldn’t forgive what Angel had done to Matt's uncle.

When Kavon didn’t answer, Darren sighed. “You're still hung up about the Vincent attack, aren't you?”

“I never said that.” Kavon wouldn’t say it out loud because he didn’t need another lecture from Darren or Les. Both were unreasonably trusting around the felon.

“Could you maybe trust me and my judgment?” Darren shoved aggravation and pain through the bond so stronger that Kavon winced.

“I do trust you.” Kavon reached for Darren’s hand, but Darren pulled it back.

“Angel didn't have a lot of choice. If he hadn’t hurt Vincent, Luschese would have killed both of them.”

“I understand that.” Kavon stabbed the last of his scrambled eggs.

“Do you?” Darren asked. “The last time I visited Angel and Matt, Vincent loved living with them. He was happy. He didn't hold a grudge.”

“Why am I not surprised?” Kavon asked drily.

Darren narrowed his eyes. “He's mentally disabled; he's not an idiot. He knew what his brother was. Hell, the only person who blames Angel for what happened is Angel. So maybe you can turn down the judgmental streak.”

Kavon pushed his plate to one side. “You said it yourself. Angel doesn't forgive himself. He knew it was wrong.

“It was the lesser evil. Maybe he hurt Vincent, but he saved both their lives.” Darren’s voice rose. “In case you've forgotten, he also saved our case.”

“I don't think he gave the shit about our case. Everything he did benefited him.” Kavon snorted. 

Darren studied Kavon, and confusion leaked into the bond. “What is this really about?”

“I’m listing reasons to distrust Angel. This is explosive information. You know what an ifrit war could mean to the Talent community.” Kavon had nightmares about another purge. 

Darren’s expression softened. “Yeah, I do. That’s why I want to bring Angel in. As a Native shaman, he has power we don’t. We need the help.”

“I do need your help—yours and the team’s.” Kavon never wanted to push Darren aside. Not only did he have the more powerful guide, but he had the stronger moral compass. When Darren knew he was right, neither heaven nor hell nor a clear regulation could stop him.

Darren sighed. “Then trust my gut. We can rely on Angel. We need him. When Cruz targeted you, you survived only because I had a source of magic that Cruz hadn’t anticipated. I was a mundane who used my natural Earth magic to get you out. As I’ve absorbed Bennu’s magic, I’ve lost that advantage. As a Native shaman, Angel brings that magic back to the table.”

Shamanic powers were deadly weapons in the wrong hands. Angel might have helped them once, but that didn’t make him one of the good guys. “If we have a lead, and it seems like he could prove useful…”

Darren sighed as if he was disappointed in Kavon’s reaction. “I was talking to a Native on the El Paso council. We can’t assign Angel tasks the way we might divvy up the chores on the team. Earth magic is more flexible and less reliable. But he could be the wild card the ifrit don’t expect.”

“He might talk to the wrong people, even if his heart is in the right place.” Kavon was eighty percent sure of that, but in order to avoid another fight with Darren, he wouldn’t mention the other twenty percent. 

“Other people know what’s coming. Art and Zack know. If the power spikes in the Vatican mean anything, the Catholic church has some inkling. We can tell him and bring him into it or we can shut him out and run the risk that he’s going to get involved in this fight on his own.”

Kavon doubted that. Angel appeared far too good at looking out for his own interests to jump into a war. 

A burst of earnestness came through the bond. “Trust me,” Darren implored. All the defenses Kavon had prepared about operational security and half-trained magic users dabbling in shamanism vanished.

Kavon sighed. “Text him and tell him to come over after p.m.” Since Coretta was handling all the cases, Kavon assumed she wouldn’t be able to get the team over before then. In the meantime, he planned to meditate and then call Halverson and McLean and see if they had heard anything about powerful new shamans appearing out of nowhere.

Chapter Four

“Can we get this started?” Les asked. He was sitting backward on one of the patio chairs Kavon had brought down. “I told Anita I would take her out for dinner, and I don’t want to get up in the dog house.”

“Again,” Darren added.

Les rolled his eyes. “Bruh, you don’t have to worry about keeping a woman happy. I don’t need your comments from the peanut gallery.”

Coretta cleared her throat. “Whatever magical insanity you two have landed in the middle of, let’s hear it.” She was in the arm chair, but she perched on the edge and nearly vibrated with worry. Rima was on the far side of Darren, and she watched with wide, worried eyes. These were Kavon’s people—his team. Settling down on the couch next to Darren, Kavon tried to present the problem in a logical order, the way he would introduce them to a case.

To a person, they all stared at him with horror. Kavon finished the spiel he’d practiced and waited. Silence filled the room. Rima twitched her hand like she might grab for a weapon, but then she stilled. Coretta leaned back with an expression like someone had punched her.

Les found his voice first. “So, evil gods from another dimension are trying to kill us all, is that about it?”

“Don’t exaggerate,” Kavon said. He respected Les, but he didn’t appreciate the man’s penchant for drama.

“Really? Because I can promise you, that's exactly the way mundanes are going to hear your story,” Les warned. “Bruh, magical creatures are invading. Yep. That's going to be the lead on certain news stations and you know it.”

Unfortunately, Kavon knew that already. “That's why we need to keep this quiet.”

Coretta said softly. “It'll start a new purge.” Her face twisted with horror.

“Funny thing you should mention that,” Darren said.

Before he could get further, Les demanded loudly, “What haven't you told us?”

Kavon tried to project a calm he didn’t feel. “The last time the ifrit had a war, they decided to put earth back the way they found it.”

Les made the connection fast, blurting out, “Oh dear God. They found it without any magic. Are you telling me that the ifrit started the purge? Because if that's what you're saying, I'm going to find Darren's little bird and I'm going to wring its neck.” Les had real anger in his voice.

That ruffled Darren’s feathers. “You can't kill Bennu over something that happened thousands of years ago.”

“Yes I really can,” Les said without any hesitation.

Coretta leaned forward, finally engaging in the conversation. Kavon trusted her to bring a more level head to the debate. “We can’t blame the ifrit for the prejudice people have toward Talent,” Coretta said. “When magic started reappearing in the 1500s, that led to a whole new round of purges and witch hunts led by humans. The ifrit had nothing to do with those or with the religious persecution people with Talent face today.”

“Fine.” Les glared at her. “Then let’s focus on the part where we’re all going to die. That's the part I find interesting anyway.”

“You’re exaggerating the situation,” Kavon snapped.

“Oh, I'm pretty sure I'm not. Your story sounds like an end of the world prediction. Either that or we're all going to be the slaves of evil gods who give psychopaths amazing new shamanic powers. Yes. That is so much better.” Les put his head down on his arms. “Will someone please shoot me?”

“I might,” Coretta said dryly.

“I assume we’re here to figure out how to stop that from happening,” Rima said. “What’s the plan?”

Rima was Kavon’s new favorite person. “We handle this like we would any other case.”

Coretta frowned. “Are you suggesting that we go out and interview witnesses, call Wyatt for a database search, and then file reports with Assistant Director White requesting additional resources?” Her tone dared him to say that.

Kavon would prefer to handle the case using FBI regulations; however, too many agents had their own anti-Talent biases, and Les was right about the general panic if the public found out about the returning ifrit. “We can’t bring others into this,” Darren said. “However, we already have reports of unusually strong magical artifacts and landmarks showing up, and we've talked about these hotspots. If we’re investigating them, that’s normal, right?”

“If we had spare time, sure,” Coretta said. “We have nearly three times the number of active cases compared to a year ago.”

“But it would be an easy and safe case for the new people to investigate,” Rima said. She spoke slowly as though thinking the words through as she spoke. “They could poke around and see if anyone suspicious is related to all the places where large amounts of magic had been left. Well, anyone other than Darren because we all know he tends to leave a few magical bombs in his wake.” She graced him with a teasing smile.

“Ha ha,” Darren said, although he didn’t deny the accusation.

“I don’t want the new members of the team involved,” Kavon said. “We don’t know them. I don’t want to deal with a panicking agent.”

“Then you should have avoided telling me,” Les whispered. 

“We might be able to get some sort of geographic profile from the reports,” Coretta suggested, “but none of us specializes in geographical profiling. Are we going to bring profilers in? We could use a false anonymous tip to link the sites to one of our active cases.”

“We’re already breaking enough regulations by not reporting any of this,” Kavon said. He might get hives from how many rules they were breaking, but every possible outcome he could imagine ended with chaos and panic if he told White. White would want a full inter-agency task force, and any hope of secrecy would go out the window. “We are not going to misappropriate FBI resources by falsely linking them to cases we already have. If we do that and get caught, we will betray the trust the FBI has placed in us.”

“Given that the world could potentially be ending, that upsets me much less than it would have yesterday,” Les said.

“Enough.” Kavon did not need Les distracting the team.

Les snorted. “Your disapproval is also less upsetting than it was yesterday.”

In a soft voice, Darren said, “Les.”

Where Kavon’s anger did nothing, Darren’s disapproval brought Les’s head up off his arms, and he nodded. “Right, right. I'm just having an existential moment here. I’m on board.”

Coretta tapped her fingers against her knee. “Then we don't link it to any current cases. We use the new resources we have. Your computer guy is driving me up the wall.”

“Milton?” Given that he had asked to be assigned to Coretta’s team, Kavon had expected him to impress her in an effort to earn a transfer.

“He's a menace. All he wants to do is show me his damn programs. He's like a flea buzzing in my ear.” Coretta pressed her lips into a thin, angry line.

“Fleas don't buzz, flies do,” Darren offered.

She glared at Darren“Milton is a menace, and I don't want to send him out in the field right now,” Coretta said. “I have too few experienced field agents, and two newbies. How about we give Milton all of the data on the hotspots, and ask him to write a program that predicts where another one might show up. That would be helpful to us in terms of identifying patterns of crime or potential crimes, and literally we are checking into the potential of crime. It's not a lie.”

Kavon hadn’t considered that. “Could he do it without knowing why we want the information?”

“If he is one quarter as good as he claims he is, he could write a program that would predict the time of the second coming,” Coretta said dryly.

Les added, “He is a little arrogant.” Coming from Les, that was a harsh condemnation.

Coretta shrugged. “But if he's good, we might not need a geographical profiler. And if White asks why I’ve assigned him to busywork instead of active cases, I can honestly say that I question your sanity in hiring him and I prefer not to put him in the field with any of my agents.”

“His magic is solid,” Les said in the weakest defense Kavon had heard yet. Kavon hadn’t worked with Milton long, but his only impression of the man was of a quiet, weedy young black man who always had his nose in a computer. Kavon was a little concerned about the others’ reactions.

“His magic, absolutely,” Coretta said, “his interpersonal skills.” She held up a hand and rocked it from side to side while giving Kavon a pointed look. “But he's on your team so I don't have to worry about it. Just as soon as you get back from vacation, you can handle him.”

“Assuming we don't all die first,” Les added.

Darren reached around Kavon to throw a pillow at him. “You’re sounding like a broken record.”

“I’m just saying that the rest of you seem to be ignoring the potential for death. I’m all in favor of seeing if our new guy do his technomage best, but I’m worried that we’re treating this like a case instead of Armageddon.”

Rima kicked him with a socked foot. “I thought you were supposed to be the laid-back one.”

“If you're talking about someone stealing my parking place or being late for dinner, I am more laid-back than any of you because those things don't matter.” Les took a second to look around the room before adding, “Death matters.”

“Look at the bright side, we could just be looking in a case of enslavement by evil gods,” Darren said with exaggerated humor

Everyone gave Darren incredulous looks.

Kavon stood, his movement commanding everyone’s attention. “So we have a plan. Coretta, have Milton work on a predictive model. We don’t know what’s causing these hot spots, so it’s a reasonable assignment. Darren and I are on vacation, so we can go out and do some interviews. We can check out the places that magic has appeared and see if there's any common denominator.”

“Isn’t that going to look suspicious, given that you're on vacation?” Coretta asked.

Darren outright laughed. “Do you think anyone is going to question why Kavon chooses to work on his days off?”

“You might have a point there.” She gave Kavon a weary look. “AT least he won’t be calling me for updates on our cases.”

Kavon had no intention of defending his honor because chasing leads was relaxing to him. However, he had hoped to give Darren a chance to play video games and recover from the general havoc they’d dealt with lately.

Just as Kavon got ready to invite the team to get to work on the plan, Les spoke up. “We need to bring Anita into this.”

Coretta spoke before Kavon could. “Your girlfriend Anita?” She sounded as horrified as Kavon felt. This was not a team picnic where spouses and significant others got an invite.

“She's a shaman. When something happens, people will tell the medical personnel at the Djedi center when they won't report attacks to the police. If someone is out there throwing his weight around, she’ll know or she’ll know of other nurses who have treated injuries.”

“How many attacks don't get reported?” Darren asked. Concern and horror flooded their bond. Despite Kavon’s discomfort with public affection, he caught Darren’s hand in his and interlocked their fingers. After a brief hesitation, Darren squeezed, and the bond settled as the negative emotions faded to the background.

“You've seen the reports on rape; do you think it’s significantly different with shamanic attacks?” Les asked. “They’re both about power, about violating someone. I mean, I don’t have numbers and I don’t even know if anyone out there is keeping statistics, but I know that every week or two, Anita asks me to talk to some victim.

“Fuck.” Rima’s voice was low and angry. She tucked her feet up under her and hugged her knees.

“What can you do?” Coretta’s words sounded cold, but her expression was full of horror.

“I ask them where the attack happened. If happened on the physical plane, I give them the name of a competent and unbiased detective. If it happens on the spirit plane, I encourage them to report it to McLean’s office. That’s the best I can do.” Les sounded genuinely distressed that he couldn’t do more.

Les had made a valid point. At least she would go toe to toe with Halverson himself if she had to. He’d seen that with his own eyes. “Brief her,” Kavon said. “Let’s find out if the Djedi nurses she knows have heard anything. Okay people, let’s get moving.”

“Tonight?” Les sounded eager to get back to the office and start work.

“Tomorrow,” Coretta said firmly, and she glared at Kavon as if daring him to argue. “If this is a war, we have to pace ourselves, so we go home, relax, and start tracking down leads in the morning when we’re all fresh.”

Part of Kavon wanted to charge in and start making headway, but his logical side knew she was right. Hopefully the war could wait until tomorrow.

Chapter Five

Darren scrolled through his texts as he waited for Les to answer. The man had been more than freaked out. While Kavon liked to pretend to be calm and cool, he had retreated to his meditation space on the terrace to panic in private. They all had good cause to worry.

Darren’s phone chimed as a new text came in.

--Nope. Anita=work : (

Darren cringed. Usually Les texted in sentences. For all his informal language in person, his written work had a formality that rivaled Kavon’s. For him to break out the sentence fragments, times were tough. And if Anita had gotten stuck working late, Les didn’t have anyone he could talk to about this shit. Darren pulled his legs up under him on the couch and dialed the phone.

Les answered with, “If you’re calling to tell me the world is ending, don’t.”

“Once upon a time I asked if you would want to know if the world was going to hell in a handbasket,” Darren reminded him.

“Did I give you a sane answer and tell you to leave me to revel in my ignorance?”

“Nope,” Darren answered.

“Damn.” Les’s humor reasserted itself with his exaggerated tone.

Darren hated that he had brought so much misery into his friend’s life. But at the same time, he couldn’t imagine hiding the truth from Les. “Are you okay?”

“Do I sound okay?” Les asked, but then he sighed. “I’m just feeling a little stressed. You know, normal stuff. How do Anita and I save up for our vacation, where do I take my suits now that my regular dry cleaner closed, and how do we save the world. Yep. Normal.”

Darren snorted. “Yeah, tell me about it. Look, I didn’t want to ask around Kavon, but have you kept in touch with Angel?”

“No… why?” Les asked, and a half second later, he said in an exasperated tone, “Bruh! He’s a baby. Don’t drag his ass into this mess.”

Darren was fairly certain that all of them were babes compared to Bennu and the other ifrit. However, they didn’t get to sit out the coming battle. “If history repeats itself, the evil ifrit will make it hard to hide from trouble.”

“Evil ifrit. That’s a mouthful.”

“What should we call them?”

“Demons?” Les suggested.

Darren sighed. He wondered if he had been this annoying when he’d first found out that he’d landed in the middle of a prophecy. Probably. Luckily, he couldn’t remember his own annoyingness. “That's a little inflammatory.”

“Good,” Les said firmly. “I think this is a time for some inflammation. Besides, have you looked up ifrit on the Internet? Man, that is the stuff of nightmares. If these guys have even a fraction of the bad mojo I read about, we are in serious shit. Calling them evil demons seems a little redundant, though.”

“Ifrit is what the Egyptians call the old jinn.”

“Jinn?”

“Shamans, adepts, and guides. They see all of us as the same species, and that species is separate from humans.”

“I’m fairly certain I should take offense,” Les said in a flat tone. “Calling shamans and adepts something other than human is step one toward convincing the mundane world that hunting us to extinction is acceptable.”

Darren hadn’t thought of it that way. Most of what they knew came through Salma, and he hadn’t questioned her language. However, as an FBI agent, he knew the dangers of incorrect labelling. In the early days of the team, Kavon had assigned agents to play devil’s advocate to avoid closed-off thinking. That had been before Darren finely tuned his ability to go off on a tangent.

He reached for his laptop and pulled up a thesaurus. While he typed, he asked Les, “So, who do you think our jailbreaker will target as a partner?”

Les snorted. “You’re assuming either of us can think like one of these old guides.”

Darren put “GUIDE” into the thesaurus. “We’re just brainstorming.”

Les sighed. “Honestly? I have no idea. I still can’t believe an ifrit picked your sorry ass. But if this guide or his shaman are smart, they’ll make sure to keep any criminal activity inside the shamanic community. I’m not kidding when I say that too many of our people still don’t go to the police.”

Darren hated that, but he did understand why it happened. His gaze landed on one of the synonyms. “What about calling the ifrit vanguards?”

“You mean an advance group in front of an army? I don’t know… how do you feel about making mundanes irrationally insecure and defensive?”

Darren grimaced. “I hate that we have to worry about anti-Talent bias when we have bigger fish to fry.”

“Yeah, you won’t feel that way if we all get burned at the stake.”

“Speak for yourself,” Darren teased. “My guide will get me out of trouble.” The second he said the words, butterflies woke in his stomach. Bennu would save him if he could, but his absence worried Darren more than he wanted to admit. He offered Les the next word on the list that might work. “Guru?”

Les quickly retorted, “Naked guy on a mountain. Roue?”

“Roo-ah? What the hell is that?”

Les’s monotone suggested he was reading straight out of the dictionary. “A debauched man, especially an elderly one. Old and selfish. It might work for the evil half of the ifrit family.”

“It sounds stupid.”

“Which is tons better than sounding terrifying,” Les countered, and then he sighed. “I know, I know. I need to stop with the fear-mongering. Boucher is going to kill me if I can’t get a grip.”

“He gets it,” Darren said. Hell, Kavon was on the terrace, and the bond was locked down tight. That suggested he was dealing with his own fears.

“Nothing scares Boucher. I hate him a little for that.” Les quickly changed the subject. “So, rapscallion sounds too goofy and potentially culinary, but what about profligate?”

Darren frowned. “What the hell are you looking up?”

“Villains. If you’re going to drag me into a comic book plot, then I’m giving these evil ifrit a comic book name.

“I thought that meant something else, but I’m going for a hard ‘no’ either way. Most English speakers use the word guides, so the names should be related to that.” Darren frowned. “I wonder if the evil ifrit will go for someone interesting rather than someone with power. Everyone puts their lives on social media these days, so we could we make a list of people whose hobbies include jumping off cliffs and cave diving?”

Les’s snort made his opinion clear. “I dare you to suggest that to Milton. That man does not have patience for anything he perceives as stupid, and that’s a stupid idea.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah.” Darren scrolled though the synonyms the computer had suggested.

“And face it, we need a name that doesn’t have the baggage ifrit does. We need the general population to think of our guides and any invading ifrit as separate species or the anti-Talent hate is going to get worse. I still miss the way the islanders saw guides as just one more part of nature. When I transferred here…” Les sighed, but Darren had known the man long enough to hear what he didn’t say. He had struggled with the depth of the prejudices that existed in the DC area and even in the rest of the country. Hawaii was its own world.

“Docent,” Darren said.

“What’s that?”

Darren read from the definition. “A person who is a knowledgeable guide, especially one who conducts visitors through a museum and delivers a commentary on the exhibitions.”

Les didn’t answer immediately, which was usually a good sign. “That works. It’s got a nice boring connotation. No one is irrationally afraid of museum workers. So, for our jail breakers, how about durance?”

“Endurance?”

“Nope, no en. Just durance. It’s an archaic word for imprisonment.”

“I thought you were trying to avoid triggering fear. Bringing up prison seems like the wrong move.”

“Hey, people understand prisons. It’s way less scary than Islamic demons, and if they think of evil ifrit as prisoners then they might consider the docent the good guys who put them in that prison.”

That actually was brilliant. “Durance it is.” 

“Awesome!” Les sounded pleased. “That’s one item off the Armageddon shopping list.

Darren flinched. He wished he could protect his friends, and for the first time, he had a bone-deep understanding of Kavon’s overprotectiveness. Les didn’t have a docent. He didn’t have enough Talent to defend himself. And worse, he had a wasp guide. The two of them would throw themselves into any fight, no matter the cost to themselves. That terrified Darren.

And while they didn’t know whether they were hunting one durance or several, the ice walls of the ifrit prison were cracking. 

“So, what’s the next step?” Les asked.

Chapter Six

Kavon parked in the first spot he found. Parking in downtown DC was a nightmare.

“We have about a two block walk that way.” Darren didn’t look up from his phone as hepointed east. “If our durance left behind the power sink,he must be throwing around some serious magic.”

Durance. Kavon hated that name. However, he could appreciate Les’s concerns  “Possibly. We can’t make assumptions. In fact, this could be a trap designed to lure us in.”

“The docent, you mean,” Darren said.

And there was the other word Kavon disliked, although this term had some logic behind it. Kavon got out of the SUV and locked it. The autumn air was brisk and the trees showed off their brilliant colors. Nothing on the street hinted at a coming war, but Kavon felt the tension in his shoulders. 

He wished his bull or Darren’s Bennu would show up. Their absence made him suspect that the fight had started somewhere else, an idea Kavon hated. 

As they walked down the street, Darren stood out in his jeans and a sweatshirt. Thousand-dollar suits and counterfeit knockoffs dominated this part of town, and Darren looked like a college student who had ditched class for the day. As a black man, if Kavon let himself go, someone would call him a thug. Kavon did not want to deal with that. The suit was his armor against that possibility. 

They walked to the corner in silence before Darren asked, “What about the Monarch hotel? It’s right around the corner, and if I were returning from exile, I might want to go to the fanciest hotel in the city.”

“I don't think our suspects are concerned about room service.”

“No, but they might be concerned about people who are concerned about room service,” Darren countered. “Other than Congress or the White House, I can't imagine one place where you're going to have more power gathering under one roof,” Darren said. “Do you remember the case with the dead maid?”

That had been a nightmare of offended lawyers, diplomatic immunity, and blackmail. He sincerely hoped that Darren wasn’t implying that the evil ifrit might have joined with a diplomat. Shamans targeting a duly elected official of the government was step one in any war between the mundanes and those with Talent.

Darren walked with his nose in his phone. “Social media says a rock star is staying here this weekend. That might be interesting and exciting.”

“Maybe, but if your rock stars are only here for the weekend, that wouldn't explain how there was a magical spill a week ago.” Kavon knew they were getting close when he spotted the broken up ground and bare earth in the planting strip between the sidewalk and road. Magic users had stolen rocks, vegetation, and anything else they could carry away to power their own spells. In doing so, they’d left a hole a few feet deep, and some city worker had put a construction sawhorse over it.

The damage stopped just short of a tree. As a shaman, Kavon had no sense of the dead power left behind after magic had separated from guides, but Coretta had once told him that trees were particularly good at soaking up magic. She suspected that’s why wands had come to be associated with magic users—the wood absorbed magic and the user could draw it back out to power spells.

Luckily for this particular tree, it was difficult to chop down a tree in downtown DC without getting caught. However, it had lost several lower limbs and a chunk of bark. It might die from the abuse.

“Someone wanted a souvenir,” Darren commented.

Kavon snorted while keeping a close eye on the passing pedestrians. The art deco façade of the Monarch hotel contrasted sharply against its two modern neighbors, and Kavon let his gaze slip free of the real world. People became bundles of dully glowing wires floating past, each leaving a ghost image behind. A car passed, trailing a brilliant streak of red as another shaman sped through Kavon’s spirit sight.

Darren put his hand on Kavon’s arm, a tether that allowed Kavon to sink farther into the magic. His heart pounded so hard that it drowned the sound of traffic. A few dull stains superimposed over the hotel suggested either weak shamans or adepts were staying in the building.

Kavon blinked away the otherworldly images, and for a second the physical world appeared disjointed and unpleasantly angular. Slowly that sense of alien wrongness faded.

Darren leaned close. “Anything?”

Kavon shook his head. A man standing near the crosswalk pursed his lips and glared at Kavon. When Kavon used his magic, the power made his faint freckles glow, so the asshole probably didn’t like seeing magic used on the street. Either that or he was an old-fashioned homophobe. Kavon didn’t give a shit. “You know how some people can make themselves hard to find.” Kavon had never been able to track Bennu with his sight, and there was a chance all the ifrit could mask their magical signature.

Darren nodded.

“Let’s check out the lobby,” Kavon said. They passed a couple who couldn’t stop fighting long enough to get through the door, but Kavon focused on the rest of the people in the lobby. Several people in suits stood in small clusters, and Kavon almost groaned when he spotted the bright red NCCP button one of the men wore.

The New Christian Conservative Party. This group was so anti-Talent that even the First Purity Church had broken ties. They openly advocated for the sterilization of anyone with Talent. They claimed that was a more humane solution than violence, but every time one of them appeared on the news, they made it clear they would not be opposed to violence. They even turned on churches who had the blood-of-Jesus shamans, and they demonized all Catholics.

“Is that...” Darren stopped.

“Yep,” Kavon said in disgust. He had no idea how an ifrit might react to anti-Talent bigotry. If the evil ifrit decided to wipe the NCCP off the planet, Kavon wouldn’t mourn them. He walked over to the public computer screen next to the check-in desk and waited as the various announcement scrolled past. NCCP Policy and Position Meeting, NCCP Lobbying Training, NCCP Lawmaker Luncheon. The hotel was having a damn convention.

Darren blew out a breath. “Oh boy. This didn’t show up on the Internet.”

“Uh huh.” Kavon mentally probed his magical reserves. He’d grown used to the presence of his bull in the corner of his room and the quick and ready help from Bennu, who always wanted to find a way to share his power. Nothing made Bennu happier.

Without the two guides, Kavon had to hoard his magic more carefully. He’d gotten out of the habit. Worse, Darren could only hold a thimbleful. His capacity to carry magic had slowly grown over the past year or so, but without Bennu, he was still helpless in ways that made Kavon deeply uncomfortable. 

Kavon stomped down on an overprotective well of anxiety that made him want to wrap Darren in cotton. While it was true, as Darren always reminded the group, a bullet stopped a bad guy faster than a chant or spell, these ifrit had changed the equation. 

“Kavon?” Darren gave him an odd look.

Kavon tightened his control over the bond. “I'm fine.”

“So,” Darren said, “did our mysterious visitor drop magic bombs outside because of the NCCP, or is this a coincidence?”

Kavon scanned the room. Now that he knew there was a convention, he could see how most of the guests stood close to each other. They were a tribe, and only a few people didn’t fit that pattern. An older woman sat at the hotel bar watching the room and a man wandered from group to small group trying—and failing—to engage others in conversation. A young hotel employee projected aggravation, and a man with a service dog appeared busily reading his laptop, but his hand kept twitching. Kavon kept his attention on the lobby as he answered. “You know how I feel about coincidence.”

“Yep, but your disbelief does not change the fact that sometimes it happens.”

It was equally possible that the ifrit had decided to target these people because one of them wanted power. Kavon suspected most of them hated Talent because they felt insecure around those who could control magic. If a powerful and old guide offered them magic, Kavon imagined more than one would take that offer.

“Ten o’clock,” Darren said under his breath. Kavon glanced over to see Mr. Schmoozer heading their way.

Kavon stepped forward, and the man gave him a smile. “Good morning.” The stranger held out his hand. “Mason Butler. So are you here for the conference?”

Kavon ignored the outstretched hand, but Darren shook it. “Darren Oberton, and this is my partner Kavon Boucher.”

“Partner?” Mason looked from one to the other. “I’m going to assume you’re not part of the NCCP. So, are you gentlemen here to protest the action? To serve legal papers? To poison the buffet?” Butler said he last part with a little too much enthusiasm.

“Why? Are you security?” Kavon asked.

“If you’re planning on poisoning someone, I'd love to get a comment.”

“You’re a reporter,” Darren said in a flat tone. Kavon wanted to run. Not even ifrit with cosmic powers scared him as much as reporters. He’d seen too many people destroyed by unfair news coverage.

“Guilty as charged, not that I want to show my credentials around this place.” Butler put his back to the wall and scanned the room. “These people are a little on the fanatical side, and my publisher happens to support shamans’ rights. So, would you care to give me your opinion on the new conservative freedom party's platform?”

“No comment.” Kavon walked away.

“Come on, you must have an opinion.” Butler chased after them. “Everyone has an opinion.”

Kavon pinned Butler with his coldest glare. “And why do you care about mine?”

The unctuous charm vanished, and Butler’s expression turned more serious. He leaned closer and dropped his voice to a whisper. “Maybe I’m curious about why one of the three members of the DC shamanic counsel would show up for an NCCP conference. Is this FBI business, or are you out here for the council?” Butler’s body was braced as if ready for a fight.

Kavon cursed the council seat that made him a damned public figure. People with an interest in shamanic business went out of their way to know his name and face, and Butler obviously had. Tapping his limited pool of magic, Kavon felt for the emotional threads around him. As an adept, Les could read emotional piles more easily, but with effort and an expenditure of his own resources, Kavon was able to do the same. 

He’d grown used to having Bennu’s power to draw on because without it, the emotions felt dulled and muted. Curiously pricked at his skin, and suspicion. Kavon might have picked up a hint of anticipation. All that fit with a reporting wanting to make a story, but this guy would get a comment on or off the record. “No comment.” He nodded toward the door, and Darren high-tailed it.

Butler followed. “I’ll keep it anonymous and just use you for background. Off the record, is something going on?”

Kavon walked faster.

“Has there been a threat made against the crazy brigade?” Butler guessed.

“Aren't you supposed to maintain journalistic objectivity?” Kavon asked.

“They’re inside voting on whether or not the Bible commands them to kill anyone with Talent.” Disgust stained the air. “That’s my Bible they’re maligning, and I'm pretty sure objectivity ends when conspiracy to commit homicide begins. Is that why the FBI is here? Are you looking at the NCCP as a potential terror group?”

Darren spoke up. “No comment means no comment.”

“Move away or I will consider this harassment,” Kavon added. Now that he was a political figure, he wasn’t sure he could make that charge stick as well as when he’d been a simple FBI agent, but he was willing to try.

Butler backed away, his hands up. “Right. Fine. But if you are here as part of your job in the FBI, I might unofficially encourage you to keep up the good work.” Butler walked backward for several steps before he turned and went back into the hotel.

Darren frowned, worry seeping through the bond. “What does he know that we don’t?”

Clues that didn’t fit always gave Kavon hives. Maybe the ifrit had already made a move here, something that had emboldened the reporter to chase the story. Then again, attacking the anti-Talent brigade felt like too human a motive for an ifrit. “Text Les and see if there are any open investigations featuring the NCCP, and while you’re at it, check out the reporter.”

“Assistant Director White is going to kill us if we stumble into a terror plot on our vacation,” Darren complained softly, but he was already texting. Kavon was less worried about White than he was about the last flare of fear he’d gotten from Butler. If someone was plotting a terrorist act, the staff were in the best position to know about it. And they’d know if a powerful shaman was asking questions about them.

Chapter Seven

Darren wasn’t surprised when Les brought the whole team into the text conversation.

Darren read from his texts. “Coretta is checking the system for any investigations that include the NCCP. Les is complaining about doing our leg work. Mason Butler works as a reporter for the Washington Conservative News. They are in the anti-Anti-Talent movement and have published a number of investigative pieces about corruption and abuse of power in government. They seem to take the position that a smaller government has less power to trample anyone’s rights, including those with Talent.”

“I’m less worried about the government than I am a lawless mob,” Kavon said dryly. 

“One of these days I’m going to get you to play Dungeons and Dragons. You would be a great dragonborn follower of Bahamut.” Hell, Darren was almost sure that whoever had created the game was a time traveler who had based lawful good theory on Kavon.

Kavon stopped at the end of the service alley and glared at Darren. Kavon pushed indulgent amusement though the bond. However, that didn’t mask the darker anger or the fear that fueled it. 

“Let’s see what the staff knows.” Kavon strode down the alley toward a clump of people smoking and leaning against the handrail that led up to the delivery bay. “Excuse me,” Kavon said. “Are any of you working the NCCP conference?”

Immediately, the employees were on edge. Darren hurried past Kavon since he tended to intimidate without trying. “We’re wondering if anyone has heard anything that concerned them, maybe something that made them wonder if they should call the police.”

An older woman with short hair dropped her cigarette and crushed it. “I’m getting the manager.” 

“We’re not supposed to discuss what guests might do or say with anyone outside hotel management,” a girl said. Several employees physically retreated toward the employee door. 

Darren wished he had enough magic to check their emotional state, but even if Bennu was around, they sucked at that sort of small, controlled magic. Bennu was more about big gestures. “We’re law enforcement,” Darren said in the most generic terms possible since he and Kavon had no legal grounds for an FBI investigation.

“Fuck off,” a round baby-faced man said. He was tall and massively built, and immediately, Kavon moved forward. His movement channeled his bull—powerful with a vague air of I will enjoy stomping you to death. Darren had seen murderers quail at that look; however, their young punk drew himself up straighter.

Darren wondered if Kavon would have turned out so overbearing only protective if he hadn't been a shaman. Without his bull to reinforce his idea of herd and the need to protect, would Kavon have the same personality? 

“I choose not to,” Kavon said in a dangerously quiet voice. Two of the young women fled into the hotel, and three others took out phones and started filming.

So much for subtlety.

“Maybe I’ll make you.” The young man jumped over the rail and landed with his arms outstretched. 

Kavon grew still. “If you choose to engage two armed federal agents, you will not like the results.”

Darren moved to the side so he would have a better angle if the confrontation grew violent, but the man hesitated now. He might want to show off in front of the women, but apparently it hadn’t occurred to him that he didn’t want to attack agents. He looked around as though searching for an out.

Before this guy could make matters worse, Darren redirected him back to Kavon’s question. “Have you overheard anything that the police might need to know about? Has anyone threatened or promoted violence?” 

The man frowned.

Kavon pressed the issue. “Did anyone in the NCCP meetings advocate violence?”

The man took a step back and the tension dropped. “They’re all talk,” he said. “But management says that any concerns go to them—not the police.” With a dismissive snort, he turned his back on them and headed into the hotel.

“So that would be a ‘yes.’ You have heard something.” Darren gave the young women a hopeful look, but they all retreated into the hotel. Darren sighed and turned to Kavon. “Do you want to follow?”

“You know how the management is here.”

“Protect the clients at all costs?” Darren remembered their blackmailing maid case. “Yeah, I remember.”

“Then there’s no reason to stick around. Hopefully one of the staff will start thinking about the potential for violence, but we don’t have a legal reason to push the issue.”

“Text Coretta?” Darren asked. Since he and Kavon were on vacation, she would be the one to handle any FBI follow up.

“With what?” Kavon headed back toward the street. “All we have is someone warning us that the NCCP hates those with Talent. That’s not actionable intel.”

As much as Darren wanted to argue that they should open an FBI case, Kavon was probably right that White would shut them down. Darren followed Kavon. Every choppy move of Kavon’s body radiated frustration as he turned toward their car. And the bond had gone conspicuously silent.

“Thuya did say our suspects like to cause chaos and create interesting conflicts.” Darren said. That put the NCCP members and haters on the suspect list.

“Don’t jump to any conclusions. We have other magical hot spots to investigate.”

“Could our durance be looking for a partner?” Darren mused aloud.

“Or he has one and they’re plotting something. The NCCP could be involved without being the source of the problem.”

If Darren had been  a newly returned durance who had joined with a shaman, he might see the NCCP as a threat. Guns and bombs were just as effective against shamans and adepts and magic users as they were against mundanes.

Given that the durance were driven out of the world by the simple but brutal act of killing all the shamans last time, Darren could imagine they would take steps to protect their human partners this time. As they passed the power sink, an older man was taking a knife to the magic-soaked tree. 

“If our suspect is partnering up with someone greedy, is it going to make them more greedy?” Darren asked Kavon.

Kavon frowned. “I don’t know.”

“How often do you think the partners aggravate a person's worst instincts?”

Kavon stopped and looked at Darren. “That makes it sound like you're assuming they do.”

A patrol car stopped and an officer yelled at the man trying to claim bits of wood from the damaged tree. Darren thought about his own personality quirks. Now that he had Bennu, he tended to do it just as much. But when Bennu was around, he had more power to get himself in trouble. Their first act as a partnership had been to blow up a city street. 

Darren’s habit of being impulsive had been magnified, not because Bennu was changing his personality as much as allowing him to be more himself.  “I was always quick to start things and sometimes not so quick to finish them,” Darren admitted. “I get the feeling my partner is the same, and sometimes I think that we feed each other’s impulsiveness.” Darren figured that’s why the other ifret in the deeper well world wanted Bennu to give his obedience to Kavon. 

Kavon frowned. “Do you blame my guide for my personality flaws?”

Darren blew out a breath. “I don't know. Do guides make our traits more… I don’t know. More evident? Stronger? Harder to control?”

Kavon spoke slowly. “I honestly don't know. Dave discouraged me from talking to other shamans about their experiences. He taught me how to negotiate with guides and shamans on the spirit plane in order to gain information or power, but he warned me against relationships or real world interactions.”

“Have you known people before and after they found guides?” Darren asked. The bond was quiet with a deeply buried strain of discomfort.

“No. I’ve never taken an interest in training potential shamans. Some people will not return from their first visit to the spirit plane, and the law takes a dim view on shamans who lose young people during training, especially when they’re in law enforcement. Besides, most people these days prefer the magic user end of the Talent pool.”

“I don’t think many people want to confront their own deaths,” Darren said. 

“True,” Kavon said. “Let’s check out the other sites. You can use some of that flighty energy of yours to brainstorm possible connections.”

Darren stepped to one side of the sidewalk to let a power-walking woman storm past. He was half afraid that if he didn't, she would bowl them over. This part of the city road was filled with more power players and less human decency than most of Washington DC. “If we do find a pattern, are we going to bring the rest of the team in on it?” Darren asked.

Kavon laughed ruefully. “Can you imagine getting the rest of the team to stay out of it?”

“You have a point there. They are a pushy group. Of course, that might be because they've had to learn to deal with you.”

“Are you insulting my leadership style?” Kavon’s control over the bond loosened and teasing amusement flowed across, although Darren still sensed that buried discomfort under it.

Darren was about to make a witty comment about the difficulty of handling a cranky Kavon when he felt something drag across to his skin. It was like walking through cobwebs. He stopped in the middle of the sidewalk.

“Problem?” Kavon’s eyes lost their focus and his freckles glowed with a faint blue light.

“I don't know. I thought something brushed past me.”

“Like what?” Kavon’s voice lost all the familiar cadence of Darren’s lover and took on the brisk, impatient qualities of his boss.

“I have no idea.” Darren was about ready to chalk it up to too little sleep and too much paranoia when a shiver went up his spine.

Kavon caught Darren by the arm. “I felt that.” He fast walked them back towards the SUV. It made sense since that was the closest place with magical protections. 

“What was it?” Darren asked. He was trying hard to avoid any potential freaking out, but Kavon’s voice had a sharp edge that Darren associated with firefights and magical explosions.

“I have no idea, but I'm not interested in standing on the street and finding out.”

One man cried out when Kavon practically elbowed him aside. Kavon didn’t even slow. In the distance, Darren heard a bird scream. He turned around, and a form appeared to swoop out of arrest in the sky. 

Darren had a brief impression of something with a massive predator’s body and a face like a skeleton, and then a blast of magic knocked him off his feet. Kavon executed a tuck and roll, grabbing Darren and hiding both of them in the shadow of a large sedan. A barking, atavistic cry filled the air, and Bennu streaked across the sky, his wings stretched out so far that his shadow covered the street from curb to curb. Kavon shouted, and a power shield shimmered around them.

“Bennu!” Darren cried out as Bennu flew straight at the monstrous bird that hovered above them. It had a body that appeared almost feline with wide shoulders tapering down to narrow hips and a multi-jointed pair of legs with heavy thighs. Bennu and the monster met in the air, claws and beaks tearing at each other as magic rained over the street.

Chapter Eight

“I think we found the durance,” Darren said.

Kavon's gritted his teeth and held the magic shield as power rained over them. “You don’t say.”

When Darren had felt threatened and had used Bennu’s power for the first time, he had created a storm that had flooded the street with magic, but that had been nothing compared to the power that surged and swirled around them now. Bennu and the monstrous guide clung to each other with huge talons, and ripped at one another. There was no strategy, only the cold fury of two powerful creatures trying to destroy each other.

“Darren, call him back,” Kavon yelled over the roar of the wind. Several people on the street were holding onto light posts and trees in an attempt to stay on their feet, but Kavon’s shield held out the worst of the storm.

“What?”

“Call him back. He needs to disengage. He's not winning.”

Darren's face twisted with fear, and their bond was suddenly blown open. For a moment, Kavon felt as if he’d been cut in two and existed in separate bodies. All of Darren's hopes and fears and memories, his frustrations and his ambition—all existed inside Kavon. “Pull him back!” Kavon yelled.

Darren tilted his head to the side, and a sense of recognition and awareness washed through the bond. Darren raised his hand toward the sky and mentally pushed against Bennu’s rage. Bunnu’s frustration and fury washed back along the bond, and Darren mentally sank under the waves of emotion, but Kavon gritted his teeth and shoved back the cold certainty that Bennu was losing and needed to disengage. They were at an impasse with neither of them controlling the emotions that raged through the bond, but then it was as if Darren came back online. He curled his fingers around Kavon’s arm and added his own determination to Kavon’s. Bennu gave a barking cry and beat his wings against the magical storm.

Bennu wanted this fight. He wanted to kill, to punish this being who he considered so reckless and dangerous. Anger flowed through the bond along with broken memories. Humans scattered across a bloody field, their bodies broken. Children twisted and deformed. Horses wearing rough leather tack from some primitive civilization fled through the carnage. The monster had done this. The memories were rich and powerful. This was the monster’s fault.

Darren touched the tattoo he wore. Kavon followed suit. Bennu had vowed to listen and to give Kavon the right to veto any foolish decisions, and right now Bennu was acting a fool.

With a cry, Bennu broke away and flew up into the dark sky. Dark gray storm clouds swirled in an impossible pattern, and the wind picked up every mote of dust, every leaf and twig and stray cigarette butt and sent them all airborn where they were torn apart down to the tiniest particles to become a haze so thick it resembled fog. 

“Find a blind spot!” Kavon yelled. They needed a weakness. They needed to distract the beast so that Bennu could attack from the rear.

Bennu soared straight up into the sky. At first Kavon thought that he was fleeing the battlefield. Instead, thunder cracked open the sky and a new power filled the air.

Darren stood, either to better see the conflict or to better direct the fight. It took every ounce of Kavon’s control not to grab him and pull him back down into the relative safety of the car’s shadow. Instead, Kavon stood next to him and pushed the shield upward. Without his bull or Bennu to channel magic toward him, he would not be able to maintain the shield for long. 

The new-comer, whatever it was, had a power that equaled Bennu's own. Kavon still couldn’t see whatever guide had joined the fray, but the monster clearly could. He twisted and screamed, and Bennu attacked its back. 

The monster ignored Bennu as it tried to catch whatever enemy was tormenting it from below. It swept its long, flat tail through the air, and Kavon felt the impact as magic was literally slapped out of somebody. He only recognized Pochi when the small hummingbird righted himself not far above Kavon's head. He fluffed itself up into an angry ball, before all of his feathers flattened out and he darted straight for the monster again.

The magic that had separated from Pochi during the attack took several moments to fade from Kavon’s awareness. Seeds in the earth sprouted. Bugs soaked it in, the bacteria in the ground flourished in those precious moments before Pochi’s magic died and became a different power—something only magic users could twist into their spells.

As Pochi flew up like an arrow aimed at a mythical monster, the creature dove to meet him. Its face was covered in bone armor that made it look like a living skeleton, a monster out of a children's book. It opened its huge eagle beak as it lunged towards Pochi, but the hummingbird darted away at the last moment, flying backwards in its escape. 

Bennu chose that moment of distraction to grab the monster’s long pointed ear. 

The monster screamed and so much magic flowed from the wound that Kavon's shields flickered and then died. Without them, hurricane blasted them. Kavon pinned Darren against the car so he would have some protection. 

Above them, the monster twisted in the air, his tail slapping at Bennu before he turned his gaze towards Kavon and Darren. Kavon shouted a warning and then the monster fell straight at them, his beak open. 

“Run!” Kavon jerked Darren away from the car half a second before the monster landed on it, crushing the roof as easily as if it had been cardboard. Darren's focus remained on the flight overhead, so Kavon decided to be the sane person on the ground. He dragged Darren to a van and mentally called on Bennu for help.

Pochi came to their aid instead.

Kavon knew that the size of a guide had nothing to do with its power, but he was still stunned at the amount of damage Pochi inflicted. The small hummingbird left gashes all over the monster’s stomach and legs. Bennu might be the flashier fighter, but the wounds he inflicted were healing as quickly as he could inflict them. Pochi did real, lasting damage. 

The little hummingbird shared a name with an Aztec war God, and for the first time, Kavon saw the connection. He was blindingly fast, confusing the enemy with his aerial acrobatics. But he was also wielded terrible power. When he slammed into the monster, the earth herself rumbled with magic.

Kavon jerked Darren behind a wall.

“Blind him,” Darren shouted over the roar of the storm. “Blind him for Pochi!”

The bond bulged. Kavon didn't have a different way of explaining it. It was as if too much information flowed between them and the connection felt strained, pregnant. But Bennu shifted his tactics.

He angled his body and flapped those twelve-foot wings in the creature's face. Guides learned to experience the world as the animals they joined with did, and this beast was clearly no different. With his eyes effectively covered, he listed to the side and began to lose altitude. 

Pochi redoubled his attacks, his small form darting in and out. But the beast wasn't done yet. It twisted and brought that broad tail around. Again he slammed Pochi. Thunder rolled and Pochi’s body fell towards the earth, landing on the pavement where he lay still like a little bit of fluff. The winds ruffled his feathers, but other than that small movement, he was still.

A barking cry cracked across the sky and Bennu’s anger filled all of reality. 

Kavon pulled at Darren, but once again Darren was lost inside Bennu's anger. Pain. Grief. All of it crashed through the bond, and Kavon struggled to close off the empathy that joined them. The emotions made his bones ache, and he fell to one knee.

Then his bull was there. It stood over Kavon and snorted and shook its horns, and then it started to grow as he took the form of an ancient wooly mammoth. He towered over both of them and trumpeted his fury. 

For the first time, Kavon felt his bull’s emotions. These people were his, and he would not move from them. If he died with his people, he would move to the next world with them, but he would not abandon them to this thing that did not belong. It was alien. It should not exist here. Kavon rested his hand against his guide’s huge leg and power flowed into him.

Kavon stood, and got a hand under Darren's arm and pulled him up as well. “Run!”

“Bennu!” Darren's emotions roiled. It was almost enough to send Kavon to his knees again. However, they had to move. They couldn’t survive this battlefield.

A few mundanes clung to sheltered places—one in the shadow of an old tree, another behind a low brick wall. However, they would be invisible to a guide. They were part of Earth in a way that shamans were not. Shamans carried power from the spirit plane and the ifrit would see that power like fairy lights in the darkness.

Kavon did not want to be here when the monster decided to put those lights out.

“Move. Now!” Kavon half dragged Darren several feet before Darren started running. The protections Kavon had built into the SUV wouldn’t hold for long—not against the sort of power these three were throwing around. However, it would give them some protection as they fled.

“We have to kill it!” Darren ran at Kavon’s side.

“Great! How?”

The blast of frustration Darren sent through the bond was an answer in itself. He didn’t know how. Bennu didn’t either. They would have to figure it out later because right now Kavon wanted to make sure that neither of them ended up like those humans from the fragment of memory he’d gotten from Bennu. Those broken bodies with their dead eyes staring up at the sky had been a fairly unambiguous warning about what would happen to people who got caught between battling ifrit.

They were almost at the SUV when Kavon felt his bull ripped away. He turned, his hands up to construct a quick shield. He hadn’t replenished all his power, but using the living magic around them, he could do that much. His bull was flying through the air, his back arched as if some great hand was dragging him away. While Kavon watched, the bull stopped, and then, still in his wooly mammoth form, he fell the thirty or forty feet to the ground. 

The attack took place in an unnatural silence. Neither Kavon’s guide or the ifrit monster made a sound, and Bennu’s cries had turned weak and plaintive. 

When the creature turned to stare at Kavon, Kavon knew his shield wouldn’t hold the beast more than a few seconds. “Run! Get to the SUV and get it started!” Kavon yelled as he cast his power out. He made his shield resemble a net, something to cling to the ifrit and tangle around him. It would slow the beast down. 

The bird monster dove toward him. When it hit the net, Kavon threw all his focus into holding the beast the few seconds it would take Darren to get the SUV started and turned around. If Darren had one ounce of common sense, he would hit the accelerator and leave Kavon behind. But he wouldn’t. Darren would wait for him.

Despite all Kavon’s efforts, the monster tore through them like they were no more than a cobweb.

“Darren!” Kavon screamed, but it was too late. The bird had the SUV in his claws, and he threw it into the corner of an ultramodern hotel. The side of the SUV caved in and bricks fell from the damaged building.

Kavon couldn’t breathe. Fear squeezed his heart as Bennu drove straight at the creature. It turned that ugly bone face toward Bennu and then the monster vanished. In the space that existed between two seconds, the storm, the monster, the rain of magic and furious winds all evaporated. The cloud of debris slowly settled back down to the ground, and the sounds of car alarms and screaming people filled the air.

Kavon ignored all of it. He ran toward the SUV which was gray with dust from the crumbling edge of the building. The passenger side was crushed and all the windows were blown out. Kavon scrambled up onto one tire so he could reach the driver’s door, praying with more passion than he had since childhood.

He used his own magic to rip the door open, and inside he found Darren unconscious and dangling from a seat belt that was slowly strangling him. But he was alive. Kavon chose to focus on the sense of flickering life he could still feel from his lover’s broken body.

Chapter Nine

Kavon was caught between two instincts. One urged him to pull Darren free of the wreckage and lay him gently on the sidewalk. The second was an instinct trained into him as a law enforcement officer not to move an injured man. Some shamans had the ability to stabilize patients or even heal them on scene. However, Kavon had never trained in that sort of medical procedure.

Before Kavon could make a decision, a sedan came screaming up the road, followed by an FBI SUV. Kavon hadn't had a chance to call for backup, though. 

Given the amount of destruction in the area, many people had likely called 911. Kavon braced himself for a confrontation with the anti-terrorism units or a tactical unit. Instead, his people tumbled out of the SUV and rushed into defensive positions around him. Anita, the shaman nurse from the DC Djedi Center, got out of the sedan and rushed to Kavon’s side.

“Where is he?” she asked, her voice full of urgency but without panic.

Kavon blinked, his mind temporarily unable to form thoughts. “He was driving. It got flipped. He’s hurt.” It was still on its side, and the upper two tires lazily spun.

She cast an evaluative gaze toward the vehicle before nodding. “Okay, give me a second to collect magic, and I can stabilize him.”

Kavon search the sky, and he quickly found what he was looking for. Bennu circled the area still in his ancient form. Kavon touched the tattoo on his hip and focused his thoughts. Just to avoid any misunderstandings, he spoke aloud. “Get down here and offer her your magic.” Kavon pushed as much determination and fear and anger as he could gather through their bond.

Bennu gave a barking cry at the same time that Anita asked in horror, “Are you snapping at your guide?”

Kavon was not about to explain that he was yelling at Darian's guide, so he said, “Do you need power or not?”

She hesitated a second before saying, “I need it. This kind of medical stabilization requires me to magically support the entire body at once.”

“Then you'll get power.” Kavon stared at Darren’s guide. Bennu landed on top of the SUV, his wings stretched out wider than the vehicle’s length. “Do it,” Kavon ordered the guide. Kavon felt the subtle shift in the air as the power moved.

Anita closed her eyes and tilted her head up toward the sky for a moment. When she opened her eyes, she gave Kavon a nod. “Thank you.”

“Just fix him.”

“Let's focus on moving him without causing more damage first.” Anita stood by the tire and put her hand on the undercarriage of the SUV before she closed her eyes. Her brow wrinkled in concentration, and then she said in a tight voice, “Quick, grab him.”

Kavon did not need a second invitation. He clambered up the side of the SUV to the driver side door. Darren was still hanging by his seatbelt. “Do I need to be careful about how I lift him?”

Anita’s voice was strained. “Not as long as I have stabilized his body. Just do it quickly before I run out of power.”

Kavon grabbed Darren's arm and hauled him up with one hand while he undid the seatbelt with the other. In a few seconds, he had Darren free of the SUV, and he laid him carefully out on the sidewalk. “Okay, he's clear.”

Anita blew out a relieved breath and Bennu took off to patrol the sky again. He kept his form invisible and Anita didn’t even notice when his wing went through her body. She knelt next to Darren and put her hand on his chest.

Only then did the scope of the damage register. The area still had a faint glow as the living magics faded into the dead magic that users could mine. The fight had shattered the windows in the surrounding hotels and glass glittered in the street. Weeds had forced their way up through cracks in the sidewalk and the road and the seam where the street and curb met had turned into a thick mat of wildflowers and burrs. A parked car even had a tree branch growing through a broken out back window.

The whole scene looked like some abandoned city that nature had reclaimed. Magic had spurred nature on and given her the power to overcome concrete and steel.

After a few seconds, Kavon asked, “Is he okay?” He held his breath and waited for her answer. Guides gave their shamans many amazing powers, but they couldn’t stop death. That thought echoed through Kavon’s head.

She looked at him. “Cracked ribs, contusions, a few pulled muscles and a bruised liver. Everything is fixable.”

The darkness that had wrapped itself around Kavon's heart eased, and he fell to his knees. The pain of hitting the pavement pushed him back toward reality, but so many emotions slammed into him that he couldn’t get up. Fear, anger, frustration, fury, grief, pain… Kavon couldn’t even tell whose emotions he endured, his own, Bennnu’s or his bull’s.

“He’ll be fine,” Anita repeated.

Kavon nodded mutely. He still couldn't find his voice, and he felt as if the world had somehow changed. Maybe it was just his world that had changed. For all of his overprotective instincts, up until this moment, Kavon had never truly believed that Darren could die before him. And now, that's all Kavon could think about. If it hadn’t been for Bennu and Pochi’s relentless defense, Darren could be dead right now.

Pochi. Kavon forced himself back up onto his feet. He looked around and found his team was still holding a perimeter. The tactical team had shown up, but Coretta was keeping them back. “Les!” Kavon called.

Les had taken a position to the north, near Coretta. Their newest shaman, Joe, was holding the south with Rima and Milton. Jen and Ahtisham had taken west with Anne and Rima holding east. His team had his back, and Kavon was nearly overwhelmed by gratitude. Unfortunately, none of them had the power to defend themselves if that monster reappeared. Their most powerful spells would be like shooting a forest fire with a water pistol.

“Boss?” Les asked. He glanced over toward Coretta. She jerked her head toward Kavon, releasing Les from perimeter guard duty and Les trotted toward Kavon.

“How’s Darren?” he immediately asked. 

Anita answered for Kavon.  “He should be fine.” That was less of an assurance than Kavon wanted, and Les blew out a breath and closed his eyes. 

Kavon moved to Les’s side. Only when he was so close that they could share words without being overheard did he say, “I need you to look for a guide.”

A confused frown flitted across Les’s face before it vanished. “Boss?” 

“It's a hummingbird guide, small.” Kavon held up his hands to show that the guide could fit in his cupped hand. “But very powerful. It was injured during the fight. Find it, Les.”

Les looked around the devastation, and his incredulity was evident on his face. “How am I supposed to find one hummingbird guide in all this?”

Kavon barely avoided yelling. “Have you or have you not been training with Selma?” he demanded. Right now he regretted that she was out of town.

Like Selma, Les had a guide that had patterned himself after an animal that preferred to live in groups. 

Since there were always more guides on the spirit plain than shamans and adapts to partner with them, Salma had been teaching Les how to have his wasp guide call other unattached wasp guides. That trick of working with groups of guides gave Salma as much power as most mid-level shamans. 

“Training is not the same as doing her tricks out there,” Les said.

Kavon needed Les to stop underplaying his power. If Pochi was dead, Kavon had no idea how other ifrit might react. Darren might call them docent, but that did not make them any less powerful. And if they lost one of their own, they might decide to fight this war the one way they knew would work—destroy every human with Talent. If that was a possibility, Kavon needed to know it now.

“Get every wasp guide from the entire spirit plane down here and get them to search for that hummingbird now.” Kavon bit down on all the other words he wanted to add. An ambulance was threading its way through the vehicles at the perimeter, and it looked like the tactical team had temporarily retreated to move their cars.

In the street, Les tilted hyis head toward the sky, and Kavon was gratified to see a swarm of wasps gathering around him before darting off in every direction. Wasps darted back and forth across the battlefield. 

Anita barked orders at the paramedics who had arrived. Her tone suggested urgency rather than panic, but Kavon still felt sick at his stomach as he watched the paramedics stabilize Darren’s neck and spine for transport.

Coretta came and stood next to Kavon. “How is he really?”

“Anita says he’ll be fine. How did you get here so fast?” Kavon knew his own tone was far too brusque, but Coretta didn’t seem to take offense. 

“Don’t get angry,” Coretta said quickly. Kavon frowned, but she spoke before he could. “We put a tracking spell on Darren, one that sent out a general alert if his heart rate exceeded safety.”

“We?” An irrational frustration rose so quickly that Kavon felt like he couldn’t speak.

Coretta sighed. “Rima is best with tracking spells, but Anita’s Talent is focused on medicine, so they worked together, and I authorized it. So if you’re going to get pissy with someone, that would be me.”

Kavon wanted to yell that he could protect his partner. He wanted to take offense, but they had been right. Darren still might die, and Kavon would follow him to the spirit plane. Kavon turned his attention back to Darren as the paramedics raised the stretcher. He stepped forward. “I’m riding with Darren.”

Anita broke away and stood between Kavon and the stretcher. “No, you aren’t. There’s only room for one extra person to ride, and I’m the best person to stabilize Darren if he has an emergency en route. You can meet us at the Center.”

Kavon took a step back and pressed his lips together as the paramedics moved Darren. Anita hesitated as if waiting for more argument, but after a few seconds, she hurried after Darren.

Kavon turned to Coretta. “I need a ride.”

“Done,” she said. Before they could even turn toward the SUV that was still upright, Les came up to them, shielding his hand from casual view. 

“Is this your missing guide?” Les asked. The hummingbird in Les’s hand and occasionally quivered so his feathers all fluffed up.

“That’s your guide?” Coretta sounded scandalized. Sometimes Kavon hated the assumptions non-shamans made.

“No, but he’s much more powerful than my guide,” Kavon said. “And he doesn’t let many people see him, so don’t mention this.” 

Coretta stared at Pochi, and Kavon could practically see the moment that the lightbulb went on over her head. This was one of the all-powerful ifrit they had discussed. She swallowed and reached into her pocket. She probably had protective crystals in there. “Right. I’ll consider it classified,” Coretta promised in an uneasy voice, but Kavon trusted her to keep her word, no matter how uncomfortable she felt about it.

“But is this the guide you were looking for?” Les asked again.

Kavon nodded. 

The ambulance started backing around the police vehicles that filled the street. Kavon barely avoided an urge to blow up every car in their way. That might make him feel better in the short term, but it wouldn’t get Darren to the Center any faster.

So he turned his attention back to Les and the shivering ball of fluff in his hand. Kavon wondered how many of the docent had been involved in their effort to stop the durance last time. He suspected it had taken many more than two. Either that or the durance had improved their fighting skills during their exile.

“What are we going to do?” Les asked. Pochi shivered and then flew into the air above Les’s hand. He wavered drunkenly for a moment before he vanished.

“Nothing,” Kavon said. “There's nothing to do. So we get to the Djedi Center and worry about the rest later.”

“It seems like later would be now,” Les muttered.

Kavon rubbed the back of his neck. Every once in a while, Kavon felt like a fraud, like he had slipped in the back door when no one was looking and everyone was about to notice that he didn’t have any answers, and the rulebook wasn’t any help. Right now he wasn't sure where to even start looking for answers. 

“I’m going to get Kavon to the Center. Hold the perimeter,” Coretta told Les.

“You got it,” he agreed. As the ambulance cleared the immediate traffic jam, Kavon headed for Coretta’s SUV. His phone chimed, and he pulled it out to find a text from Anita. 

–Still going strong–

The message helped, but he still wished he was by Darren’s side.

Coretta quickly moved toward the driver’s side. Kavon knew he was too emotional to drive, so he didn’t argue. “Are you okay?” she asked.

“Save your concern for Darren.” He got in and fought an urge to order Coretta to hurry. She wasn’t his subordinate, and even when she had been, she wouldn’t have let him micromanage her driving.

She started the SUV and quickly navigated local police cars, FBI tactical and terrorism units, emergency medical vehicles and dozens of nosy civilians who had all invaded the area.

“Oh, I can worry about both of you at the same time,” Coretta assured him. “However, Anita says he's stable. She can't say the same about you.”

“I'm not injured.”

Her sigh was almost pained. “You know that's not what I mean.”

Kavon tried to stare her down. After a minute, Kavon abandoned the attempt at intimidation. He admitted softly, “I couldn't protect him.”

“He’s alive. Given the scene, that’s a miracle.” Coretta’s words failed to make him feel any better. 

For several minutes they drove in silence. The faint chatter on the FBI radio was the only sound in the SUV. “White is going to want to report about how you managed to take your vacation at ground zero tactical nuclear strike.”

“Is it that bad?” Since Kavon had no affinity for dead magic, he wasn't sure how much power managed to soak into the area. 

Coretta raised an eyebrow. “I'm fairly sure my magical objects got fully charging just by standing in the middle of the street. I have never felt a magical sink like this one. There's more magic on that street than there was at Arlington when that asshole tried to set up his own kingdom.”

Kavon doubted that. But then O'Brien had been working with shamanic magics, so Coretta would not have been able to feel most of them. “What's the equivalent of a hazmat cleanup crew for magic spills?” Since shamanic power was living, it tended to rejoin nature quickly. Only large pools of shamanic power led to the disconnected, dead magic that users could manipulate. And only dead magic would linger in an area.

“Good question. We don't have one.” Coretta sounded particularly unhappy about that. “Every magic user on the East Coast is going to show up, and there's enough power here to keep all of them happy.”

Kavon grimaced as he considered the magic users he had met over his life. Most were good people, but access to power at this level would bring out magic users like Luschese—manipulative assholes who saw their Talent as permission to break the law. Of course Luschese was gone now and the remains of his criminal organization lacked the Talent to care about magic, but someone would move into the vacuum.

Other law breakers were like Angel—not inherently evil, but still possessed of a certain moral flexibility that made Kavon distrust them with power.

“Yeah, I know exactly what you're thinking,” Coretta said, “and one of us had better figure this out because White is going to be asking questions. This is like leaving C4 sitting in the middle of the road and hoping nobody comes along and sticks a detonator and it.” She frowned. “No, it's worse. In the case of C4, there are not many detonators or people who know how to correctly set them wandering around the country. There are literally thousands of magic users. And then there's the issue of who owns it.”

Kavon hadn’t even considered that mess. “Legal is going to give birth to kittens.”

Coretta gave an inelegant snort. “Legal is going to kill you and leave your body out as a warning for future team leads.”

“If that's the case, you get to handle the follow-up,” Kavon said.

“Oh no, you're not getting out of it that easy. We need a solution. What do we tell White about how to secure this scene? Back at Arlington, the spells Darren and O’Brien threw around used most of the power their guides spilled. The scene back there… I can’t even describe how much power is all there for the taking.”

“I hate to point this out,” Kavon started to say.

“Don't you dare say you're on vacation because we both know that's not true.” Coretta poked a finger in his direction to punctuate her words.

“I was going to point out that I can't even see the magic. I can't clean up what I'm incapable of perceiving.”

Coretta frowned. “Well, shit. That means this really is my mess. I hate you.”

He wouldn’t lie; he was grateful someone else was responsible for this problem. “Feel free to drag Rima and Milton into cleaning up.” That was the best he could do.  She pulled into the emergency drive of the Djedi Center.

“I’ve got it. Go. Make sure Darren is okay,” Coretta said.

Kavon was already heading for the doors. Common sense told him that he’d feel it if Darren died. They had taken vows that tied their life forces together and joined them with their guides. Their fates were too entangled for one of them to die without the others knowing about it. Most likely, the rest of them would have died with Darren if he passed on to the spirit plane.

Kavon often pretended that he didn’t care what other people thought—he even lied to himself most of the time. But for the first time in his life, he genuinely didn’t give a flying fuck about the rest of the universe. He wanted to hold his lover’s hand and see those beautiful eyes open.