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Chapter 26

Three hours later, I was sitting in a chair outside the office of Captain Gerald Paulson, commander of the Philadelphia Police Department’s 16th District. After I’d consulted my ley-line map and made the necessary adjustments, I confirmed that the next attack was going to occur that night, sometime between eight in the evening and two in the morning. I needed to convince the captain that we were his best option to prevent further deaths, and I needed to do so rapidly. After I showered and shaved, Connors drove me to meet him.

“He’s liable just to have me arrest you as soon as you’re done talking,” Connors had warned me on the way over. “It took a lot of convincing just for him to let me come get you instead of sending SWAT.”

I’d shaken my head. “He won’t.” I’d grunted. “Trust me.”

She’d looked over at me for a long minute from the driver’s seat, presumably trying to figure out what I was up to. She was tired, but she was still sharp, and as soon as she thought she’d put the pieces together she’d breathed in sharply and her nostrils flared.

“Quinn, you are not going to pull some Jedi mind trick on my captain.”

“No, Detective Connors. I’m not. The Arcanum frowns on mind control. I am going to convince him he’s better off with me not in a jail cell.”

She’d cocked her head. “How on earth are you going to do that?”

“I’m going to talk.” I’d left it at that.

She’d still looked wary, but she’d stopped pushing the issue.

“I hope you know what you’re doing.”

Now I was sitting outside his office, while she was in there letting him know I was ready to answer his questions.

She popped her head out. “He’s ready for you.”

I stood up and walked in as she held the door open for me. Captain Gerald Paulson sat behind a well-organized desk with his name and rank on a placard, just in case I’d missed the sign on the door. He was wearing a light gray suit with a checkered tie. He wasn’t old, but clearly well into middle age, the hair at his temples losing its color and the lines on his face already deeply pronounced. His expression was stern, his lips drawn tight—almost identical to Connors’s expression the first time we’d met.

“Thomas Quinn?” he asked in a deep voice.

I met his gaze, measuring him up. I had no magical ability to peer into his soul, but centuries of dealing with people had made me fairly skilled at reading them from the outside. This was a man used to authority. He liked things as they were supposed to be. He was a true believer—a cop who’d joined up because he believed in justice and wanted to do what was right.

That was good. It would make things easier.

“I’m Captain Gerald Paulson. Please have a seat. I’d like to ask you a few questions about what happened two days ago in Grays Ferry.”

I took one of the open chairs in front of his desk, Connors sitting in the other. But I remained silent for a moment and let the silence fill the room awkwardly, expectantly. This was the game—if I spoke first, he’d be in control. I needed him not to be. Not if I wanted to get out of here in a timely manner. I had to put him on the back foot. And after what seemed like a long moment of rising tension but was probably no more than a few seconds, I won.

“Mr. Quinn, I’ve got one detective fighting for his life with a missing arm, a half-burned down apartment building, and another detective who can’t seem to tell me much of anything useful about how that happened. I’ve been waiting for you to wake up so you can give me some answers. Now, are you going to cooperate, or do we need to have this conversation in an interrogation room?”

“Captain,” I said gruffly, “I’ve been cooperating with your department for over a week now. I’ve been trying to help your detectives catch a known serial killer. Exactly when do you imagine I stopped cooperating?”

“Probably around the time you led my detectives into an ambush that almost killed Henri Lajoie. That’s when I start to think maybe you’ve stopped helping us. If you ever were in the first place.”

I closed my eyes. Even though I’d known it was coming, I really didn’t like being accused of betraying my allies. Especially when said allies were specifically under my protection.

“Captain Paulson,” I began to reply, opening my eyes back up and meeting his, “I imagine it’s been very frustrating to you that Detective Connors here won’t give you any details about what happened in that stairwell. There are two reasons she won’t do that. First, she promised me she would keep my secrets, so long as I didn’t break any laws. And I’ve done nothing illegal, so she kept her word. Because she is an honorable person. And a good one, too. But second, and more importantly, even if she were willing to break her promise, she didn’t actually know what happened in the stairwell. She literally couldn’t tell you what happened. She didn’t see it. What happened was between me, Samantha Carr, and the two other suspects. Henri Lajoie was caught in the crossfire because I didn’t stop Sam soon enough. Detective Connors didn’t get the full story until she asked me a few hours ago.”

He raised his eyebrows, inviting me to continue, but didn’t interrupt.

“So I’ll tell you exactly what happened. And then you’re going to let me, and Detective Connors, get back to work.”

The Treaty of Tara forbid what I was about to do except in the direst of circumstances. Days ago, I’d agonized about the decision to initiate Adrienne Connors for that very reason. But now I was comfortable claiming that this was the direst of circumstances. I had also now officially been charged with dealing with the situation, earning me the benefit of the doubt on such decisions.

All of which meant the choice was far more straightforward now than it had been days ago—Captain Gerald Paulson was in the way of me stopping an existential threat to all life, and the simplest, easiest option to solve that problem without making an enemy of the entire Philly PD was to convince him he was better off letting me go, and in fact better off helping me with what I needed to do.

“For a week now,” I explained matter-of-factly, “your Detectives and I have been trying to stop an unknown number of sorcerers intent on building power for a potentially world-ending magical ritual, by murdering other sorcerers. While you believe I’m only a consultant, in point of fact I’ve been deputized to end this threat by the highest authority on magical law enforcement in human society.”

Paulson’s eyes narrowed as he tried to figure out whether I was making this up or merely insane. But I continued.

“In that stairwell, I was trying to trap our suspects. Instead, Samantha Carr, who I’d believed to be an ally, was working with them, and they trapped me instead. She attacked me from behind while I was focused on the threat to my front, hence my current injuries. She then lured your detectives upstairs and was able to injure Lajoie before I could stop her. I killed her, then killed one of her associates when they came to kidnap me. The other one ran away.”

His eyebrows were now raised almost comically high as he looked at me skeptically. Dismissively. “Are you done, Mr. Quinn?”

“Yes, I am.”

“Okay.” He glanced back at Connors, who was stony-faced and avoiding looking directly at either of us. He reached up and rubbed his temple with his right hand. “Let’s pretend any of that made even the slightest bit of sense. What was the explosion that caused the fire?”

“Magic. The two unnamed sorcerers set it off to knock me out so they could capture me alive.”

He shook his head. “Magic, huh? Yeah, okay, buddy…”

“Yes, Captain Paulson,” I interrupted, my voice deadly serious. “Magic.”

I locked eyes with him. Then I slowly stretched one hand out between us. And while I wasn’t willing to perform on demand for Lajoie in my shop, or for Connors in Aengus’s tent, this time I was in a hurry. As I continued to hold eye contact, I focused for a brief instant, and lightning burst into existence around my hand.

He jumped back.

“Holy shit!” His hand was halfway to his gun before he caught himself and realized he wasn’t under attack.

I hadn’t told Connors what I was planning, but she’d apparently figured it out and hadn’t even flinched. She looked at me and smiled faintly as blue bolts of electricity continued to wreath my arm halfway to the elbow. I shifted my gaze and met her eyes, then winked before returned to look at the Captain. Who was now staring wide-eyed at my hand, a look of mixed horror and curiosity on his face.

“…How?” he finally managed to gasp out.

“I told you.” I cupped my hand and drew the electricity into a ball, then willed it to rise several inches so it was between our faces, the heat on his skin, and forced his eyes to meet my solemn stare as I let it wink out of existence. “Magic.”

He continued to stare at me, slack jawed, for another moment or two before he shook himself and tried to regain his composure.

“Captain, I am a sorcerer.” I spoke very clearly and deliberately. “I am a high-ranking member of a secret magical society that has existed, hidden among humanity at large, for well over a thousand years. Your detectives have known this for days, since I took them through a portal to the homeland of the Faeries and they met multiple beings they’d always believed to be myths. They did not tell you, because they were warned of the potential consequences of revealing these truths to the uninitiated. I have been working with them to solve this case, under official orders from the Lord Marshal of the Arcane Court, because I believe those responsible are attempting to conduct a potentially catastrophic magical rite, and we have very little time to stop it. That’s the only reason I am telling you this now. Because I don’t have time to try any other options.”

I paused to let him process all that.

“It’s true, Captain,” Connors added. “All of it. You can ask Lajoie once he wakes up, too.”

He gulped. “This is crazy! This can’t be real!”

“I know.” She shrugged. “But it is. And right now, that man right there,” she gestured to me, “is the only weapon we have to stop the bad guys.”

He looked like a trapped animal, switching his astonished gaze back and forth between the two of us. I just stood there, my eyebrows raised, my arms crossed.

He met my eyes and gulped again. “How can this be real?”

“I don’t know,” I told him. “But it is, nonetheless. Do you need further proof?”

Without waiting for a reply, I waved my hand and murmured, and Captain Paulson began to levitate out of his chair before he knew what was happening, slowly rising into the air above his desk.

“What the fuck?!” he barked. Fortunately, he didn’t go for his gun this time. Maybe he was too shocked to think about it. Regardless of the reason, it was helpful—I didn’t want to have to restrain him as well.

I shrugged. “In case you thought my first demonstration might have been an illusion. As you can feel yourself, this is no trick of smoke and mirrors and misdirection. Don’t worry, I’ll put you down now.”

I waved my hand again and he returned to his seat, the arms of which he gripped tightly as if he were prone to floating away again at any moment. After a long few seconds of heavy breathing, he looked back at me and met my eye.

“How many of you…sorcerers…are there?”

“More than you’d think. Not enough to take on all of humanity if they decide we’re a threat.”

“Do sorcerers secretly control society or something?”

I grunted. “No, not for the most part. Normal humans muck things up plenty on their own. Mostly we keep to ourselves and protect humans from dangerous things.”

“What kinds of dangerous things?”

I raised an eyebrow. “Magical serial killers trying to cause the apocalypse, for example.”

He stared at me for a second, then nervously chuckled. “Yes, I suppose that would qualify as dangerous.” He closed his eyes for a few moments, apparently thinking over the things he’d just seen and experienced.

“Captain Paulson,” I said seriously, “I need you to trust Detective Connors’s judgement and accept that we’re on the same side. And then I need you, and Philadelphia PD, to help us kill or capture the people doing this. We don’t have much time until the next attack. We’re running out of chances to end this before it’s too late.”

He looked at Connors. “You trust him?”

She looked at me and, after a moment’s consideration, nodded. “I do, Captain. He can be a grumpy son of a bitch, and he’s still got too many secrets for my comfort, but I believe he’s on our side. And after the shit I’ve seen the past few days, I can pretty much guarantee we’re not going to stop these bastards without him.”

He sighed. “This is…a bit much. But either I’m going crazy, or I have to trust you know what you’re doing. I don’t suppose there’s much choice anyway—I don’t think we’ve got a cell that can hold sorcerers or X-Men or whatever the hell he actually is.” He paused and rubbed his temples. “You’re responsible for him, Adrienne. Don’t let him blow up any more buildings, please. At least, none with people in them.”


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