The Returned (17 page)

Edward nodded.

“I don't like it,” Henry said.

“You don't have to,” Wraith said. “It sucks, but there's nothing more you can do to help. Honestly, Doc, you'd kind of be in the way at this point.”

“I would've worded it a little more delicately,” Edward said, “but she's not wrong.”

“And if something comes up and you need my help later?” Henry asked.

“You'll be called back into active duty,” Wraith said.

“So I'm in the reserves, then?” Henry asked.

“Pretty much,” Wraith said and smiled, but the analogy made her stomach twist a little, and she found herself thinking about the base.

“I think we need to step away from this for a little while,” Edward said, then looked at Wraith. “All of us.”

Wraith stuck her tongue out.

“Are you two related?” Edward asked Caitlin and Wraith.

Wraith glanced at Caitlin's curly red hair then at Edward. “Yeah, because we look so much alike.”

“I think Edward is right,” Caitlin said and gave Wraith a reproachful look. “Let's take the rest of the day off and come at this with a clear head tomorrow.”

Henry glanced at his watch. “I suppose there's still some time for you two to salvage part of the day and enjoy your honeymoon.”

“You mean there's more to New Orleans than crime scenes and the coroner's office?” Caitlin asked.

“We do have some other sites,” Henry said. “I can recommend some places for good music.”

“He made reservations for dinner,” Caitlin said.

“In that case,” Henry said, “I will end my protests at being dealt out if you two promise to enjoy some time together.”

“Deal,” Edward said.

Caitlin nodded.

“I'm going to go and thank Joker,” Wraith said and turned to Henry. “Any suggestion of good places for food to bring them?”

“Johnny's po-boys,” Henry said. “I'm partial to fried shrimp myself, but the roast beef is good too. Just make sure you get it dressed.”

“Yeah, naked sandwiches suck,” Wraith said and got up. “I'm off to deliver some food and take a nap before conducting some espionage.”

“Do you have to word it like that?” Caitlin said.

“Oh, is siesta better?” Wraith asked.

“No one likes a smart-ass,” Caitlin said.

“Have a nice dinner,” Wraith said, then turned to Henry. “See you later, Doc.”

Everyone made their good-byes and departed. After taking Henry's advice, Wraith took her po-boys and, using the tracker app on her phone, found Joker playing with Benji, Bones, and Matchbook on a corner. When they ended their song, she stepped up and opened her mouth to say hi.

“Hey, darling!” Joker said and threw her arms around her. “Everything good? You get your stuff handled?”

“Yeah,” Wraith said. “And thanks for stepping in with my friends.”

“Ain't no thing,” Joker said through a broad smile. “It was kind of cool to send the number men running scared for a change.”

“You stalking me, chere?” Benji asked as he stepped up.

“Please,” Joker said. “She's here for me.”

“Well,” Bones said, “us two chopped livers will just hang back away from the cool kids.”

“Actually, I was hoping I'd find you all,” Wraith said and held up the bag. “I brought you something to eat. I was told Johnny's was a good place for—”

The sandwiches were snatched out of her hand in quick order.

“Um,” Wraith said, “I guess so. I got three shrimp and two roast beef.”

“I call a shrimp,” Bones said.

“Same,” Matchbook said.

“I guess we carnivores will take the beef,” Benji said, taking one sandwich and handing another to Joker.

“There's an extra,” Bones said.

Joker smacked his head, then handed the sandwich to Wraith. “Dummy, she got one for herself.”

“Sorry, my bad.”

Wraith waved it away and joined them to eat on the sidewalk. They talked, drank (water), and just enjoyed the sublime pleasure of good food with friends. When Joker asked how Wraith had found her so quickly, Wraith diverted the question by asking Benji if he had a cell and, if so, could she have the number. After some hoots from Matchbook—who got another smack from Joker—Benji gave Wraith his number and a wink.

Wraith spent another hour or so hanging out with her new friends before begging off. She found an alcove, stepped through the universal junction point back to her safe house, then fell onto the couch. Before drifting off, she checked on Edward and Caitlin via her tracking app and set a warning to alert her if they went outside the Quarter, just in case.

That done, she closed her eyes and tried to get a little sleep before her big night.

“W
e need to leave soon if we're going to make it to the restaurant on time,” Edward said.

Caitlin could hear him pacing the hotel room. His near obsession with being punctual and tidy was at times amusing. This wasn't one of those times. “Don't you dare push me into a stereotype,” she said as she put on her mascara.

“I'm not really pushing you,” Edward said. “As much as observing—”

“You know this hotel room has a couch, right?”

“Have you seen the view from this window?” Edward said.

Caitlin laughed and gave herself one last look in the mirror. Today was a really good hair day, which always made her smile. She adjusted the dress and smiled a little more; the dark green lacey dress looked really good.

“Okay, I'm ready,” she said as she stepped out of the bathroom.

Edward checked his watch as he turned. “We've got time to walk if you—”

Caitlin felt her cheeks flush at his openmouthed stare.

“You look incredible,” he said after a long while.

She walked over, adjusted his tie, and gave him a kiss. “You look pretty good yourself. I've always liked how you look in a suit.”

Edward offered his arm. “Shall we away?”

Caitlin took it, and they made their way to the elevator.

“R
eservation for Huntington,” Edward said.

The maître d led them to a quiet booth at the back of the dimly lit restaurant, passing a waiter singing some opera song Caitlin didn't know. Edward slid in next to her, and they took their menus.

“Would you like some wine to start?” the maître d asked.

“Bottle of Riesling?” Caitlin asked Edward.

“Sounds great.”

“Very good,” the tuxedoed man said and departed.

“What do you think?” Edward asked.

“You did good,” Caitlin said and opened the menu. Everything on the menu sounded delicious, and Italian was her favorite.

Soon the wine came, and they toasted before drinking. It was wonderful, nicely sweet but not overly so. She took another drink, then looked around the room, admiring the brick walls and the singing waiters. Without thinking about it, she pressed closer to Edward and reached over to take his hand.

“This is perfect, thank you,” she said.

“I hope it's enough to forget about the events of the day,” he said. “At least for a little while.” He shook his head. “I really am sorry. I had this planned as a nice getaway for us. Just the two of us, you know? Enjoy some good times, romantic meals and walks, but—”

Caitlin took his hand. “This is more like us anyways.”

They shared a comfortable silence for a while, just drinking in the wine and ambiance. They ordered and enjoyed their food over easy conversation. For the next couple of hours, they smiled, laughed, and briefly forgot about all the darkness of the day. In all, it was as perfect an evening as Caitlin could've hoped for, finished with a delicious tiramisu. When dinner was done, they walked the Quarter, passing over Bourbon Street for the quieter Royal, which wasn't quiet but wasn't packed with drunken revelers. They came across a group of musicians near Saint Louis Cathedral, and Caitlin recognized the mandolin player as Joker. Edward did too, and they left a twenty for each band member in the hat before finding a quiet spot for Caitlin to call and talk to Fiona before she went to bed.

“Hi, Mommy!” Fiona said. “I miss you and Daddy.”

Caitlin felt her heart twinge. Edward, sensing it, came over and put his arm around her.

“We miss you too, peanut,” Caitlin said. “How was the aquarium?”

“We saw turtles, and I asked how old they were, but they didn't answer me.”

“Did you see Nemo?” Caitlin asked.

“No,” Fiona said. “I looked, but we couldn't find him. We saw penguins though, and a sea lion, and a big snake!”

“Wow, that sounds like a really good time.”

“It was. The seals kept barking at Nana though.” Fiona laughed. “She started barking back. She was being really silly. Oh, and Taid bought me a penguin, but she's just a stuffed one.”

“You got a friend for Paddy? What's his name?”

“It's a she, Mommy,” Fiona said in an exasperated tone. “Her name in Penny.”

Caitlin pressed herself closer to Edward and wiped her eyes. “Daddy wants to say hello.”

She passed the phone to Edward and fought back the urge to drive to the airport and fly home then and there. It wasn't easy being away from Fiona. Sure, it was nothing like the night Fiona had been trapped in Tír na nÓg, but it was still hard. Her brain drifted back to the crime scene today, and she wondered about the innocent victims and their families; she couldn't imagine their pain. Just the thought of losing Fiona or Edward made her sick, and losing them like that? Well, she'd probably find a way to raise some of the bastards from the dead herself to—

“Oh my God,” she whispered. “That's it.”

Edward gave her a questioning look.

She shook her head.

When he'd finished talking to Fiona, Caitlin took the phone back and talked with Fiona some more. Every time the conversation started to end, she found another question to ask to keep it going. She didn't want to hang up.

“Mommy,” Fiona said, “you're keeping me up past my bedtime.”

“I guess I am,” Caitlin said. “I just miss you, sweetie.”

“You'll be home soon,” Fiona said.

Caitlin couldn't help but smile. “I guess you better get to bed, then. I'll call you in the morning, okay?”

“Night, Mommy. I love you.”

“I love you too.”

Fiona passed the phone to Mallory. Caitlin said her good-byes, then passed the phone to Edward to do the same. When he ended the call, he shook his head.

“You were right,” he said. “The impact Fiona is having is amazing.” He took her hand, and they started walking back to the hotel. “What were you thinking? I saw your face. Something came to you.”

Caitlin nodded. “Yeah, I think I know who's behind this.”

A
t just after midnight, Wraith stood outside the base, wrapped in both her cloaking equation and the false aura the now-activated charm produced. A few feet away, the quantum information of the massive ward drifted through the air like a river. The charm hanging from her neck was warm against her skin, under which her heart pounded. In the end, she'd decided to step through the ward at its edge. That way if her charm didn't work, she could bolt and stride out of the area. In case it had some sort of tracker in it, she'd head straight for the Order compound that she'd destroyed last year. Hopefully that would throw anyone off her trail if they chased after her.

What if it didn't? Was she ready to throw down against them? What if they captured her? Could she escape again? Who'd look out for Caitlin and Edward?

Stop stalling
, she told herself.
Just do it already.

Closing her eyes, she drew in a series of slow, deep breaths to calm herself. She could do this. Her charm was sound. She'd gone over it repeatedly, and besides that, Fritz didn't make shoddy stuff.

She opened her eyes and started walking forward. As she passed through the ward, it was like stepping through cobwebs. She tried to brush away strands that weren't really there, at least not physically. Moments later, she was through, and the sense of being covered in wispy spider webs passed. She stopped and listened for the alarms or the sounds of cars heading her way.

Nothing.

Even the sentries at the gate didn't budge; they just continued their conversation. Glancing down, she saw her cloaking equation was still in place and the charm was still running. Something was off though. The metal against her skin was growing warmer, and when she looked at her modified quantum information, she could see it deteriorating at the edges. It had never occurred to her that the ward might eat away at the quantum information. The equation was holding, replacing the parts that were failing, but the rate of replacement wasn't quite as fast as the degradation. Doing some quick math in her head, she figured it would last another hour, two at the most.

No time for sightseeing, then
, she thought and lowered her goggles. Nothing stood out right away to her, but she headed further into the base. Not quite running, but almost.

She passed by what looked like a residential neighborhood—she assumed it was for the families of people stationed here—and dismissed it as an unlikely place to start. A few cars drove by, but her cloaking equation kept her hidden. Farther in she saw some large buildings to her left that looked like they might house offices. Crossing the street, carefully so as not to get hit by a car that couldn't see her, she headed that way. As she neared it, something to her left, in the corner of her eye, drew her attention. When she turned, she saw faintly glowing yellow tendrils drifting above some trees.

That seemed like a better place to start, so she followed the road. There were large sections of woods to each side of her, broken only by plain-looking buildings. The road turned left into a large parking lot and continued as a dirt road straight ahead. Past the parking lot, through the trees behind it, she could see the yellow glow of magic coming from a squat gray building. She checked her phone and saw that even this little stroll had eaten up fifteen minutes.

She broke into a full-out run, crossing the asphalt and heading into the trees. The small section of trees, not even worth calling woods, reminded her of Kansas and the area around the Order compound. She pushed that thought aside and focused on her feet. The last thing she needed was to trip and twist her ankle.

When she cleared the trees, she stood less than fifteen feet from the building, the back of it from the looks of it. It was a gray concrete cube with only a couple of windows—all dark—at the highest level; she wasn't sure, but it looked like it had three floors. Circling the building, she came to a dirt road and a modest parking lot with three black SUVs and a dark gray van in it. The hoods were cold, so they'd been there awhile. Maybe they kept them there and used their own cars or just something that didn't scream “Fed” when not on the clock.

She turned her attention to the building and looked it over. It was leaking yellow wisps of magic that hung in the air like smoke. The quantum information read like a shopping list of wards and protections. Carefully, she approached the front door, then smiled. It had a magnetic card swipe door lock but no magical protection. Whatever the source of the leaking magic was, it was inside. The number men must've figured their superawesome ward around the base was enough to trust the interior to mundane protections. The problem with that notion—which they thankfully didn't realize—was that electronics of any kind worked with just the most basic kind of data: binary code. This pad, for example, didn't really analyze the card you swiped to get in. It just sent that information to a computer that checked it and sent back a simple “yes” to let you in or a “no” to stay locked.

A quick glance around told her there were no sentries, but she did spot a few cameras; another measure easy to beat. She tossed the same video loop equation at the cameras that she'd used at the mental hospital and watched it feed into the lenses. Once the coast was clear, she wove another equation, this one very simple, and fed it to the swipe pad. There was a click as the magnetic lock disengaged.

Slowly, and checking for additional security—both magical and mundane—she pulled open the door and stepped inside. The door locked in place behind her with a click.

She was standing in an entryway; a wide hallway, painted in a boring cream color, went straight for maybe twenty feet, then came to a T. As she walked to the intersection, she spotted more cameras, which she quickly handled the same way as the ones outside. There were no motion detectors, laser nets, or anything fancy like that. She was sort of disappointed. Part of her had expected this to be all spy movie‒like. Then she reminded herself not to jinx her good luck. That was also when she noticed there was absolutely no signage inside the building. There was a large, wood-framed directory, but it was blank.

She flipped a mental coin, which came up heads, and took the hallway to the right. There were fluorescent lights on a low setting, so she could see, but clearly no one was home. Which was exactly what she'd hoped for.

The hallway turned again, and she realized it probably made a square, following the perimeter of the building, and if she followed it, she'd arrive back where she started. At the corner she found her first sign. It was on a door and read Stairs. She sighed. It was probably too much to expect one to read Secret Information Depository. That meant checking every room. She decided to start on the first floor and work her way up. There were doors on each side of the hall, evenly spaced apart, with small windows in them. She glanced in one and felt her blood run cold.

Inside, barely illuminated from the faint light in the hall, she saw what looked like a hospital room. An adjustable bed, replete with all kinds of machines, sat inside an intricate circle that had been etched into the floor tiles. Swallowing back her fear, she checked another door, and another. They were all the same—except for the one at the very back of the building.

The door was locked, but she easily popped it. She pushed the door open and stepped inside as a chill ran down her spine. There was no bed or medical equipment in this room. Just a bare floor, but where the circle should be, it looked like someone had taken a jackhammer to it and not stopped till they hit the foundation of the building. She turned slowly and looked over the walls. The paint in this room was just a shade darker than outside; it had been painted recently. Stepping closer, she could see the cinder blocks that made up the walls had been replaced in huge sections, the replacements not quite sitting flush with the older blocks.

“So I really was here,” she whispered. “The memory was real.” She could almost see her friends and Nightstick standing around the hospital bed again, fighting to protect her. Her eyes drifted down to where the previous Four had fallen.

Guilt started to rise, but anger beat it back. Whoever he'd been, he might still be alive if they hadn't tried to get into her head. Looking around the room, she wondered how many others had been here or in the other rooms. She wanted nothing more than to finish what she'd started, then level the entire building. But she reminded herself why she was here and that she was burning what little time she had. Reluctantly, she left the room and headed for the stairs. The first floor was probably nothing but those ritual rooms. That was when she remembered the windows. They'd all been on the top floor. If there were offices here, that was probably where they'd be.

As quickly and quietly as she could, she hoofed it up to the third floor. It was laid out similarly to the first, but in the center of the building was what looked like a lunch room or something. It had sofas, chairs, a large TV, and a couple of fridges. It was tempting to rot the food, but she reminded herself again about the ticking clock. There were fewer doors on the outside wall on this floor, but they all had signs on them. They each bore a single number from
1
to
7
. The
2
,
3
, and
4
shared one wall, the next three the opposite. The back wall was marked
1
and nothing else.

“Start with the boss,” she whispered and went to inspect the door.

This time she did find some magical wards on the door, and they were pretty good. From what she could tell though, they were just typical alarm and attack wards. Try to break in, and an alarm goes off, then you get a lightning bolt up your ass or something. Luckily, she didn't need to break in. She returned to the break room, closed the door, wove a formulation together, and draped it over the door. Normally, making a door-door—one that she could use to travel—from a mundane door took a long time. But because the doorways she wanted to connect were so close, it took her only a few minutes. When it was done, she opened the door and saw instead of the break room on the other side, a simple, sparsely decorated office. She stepped in and closed the door behind her, but she made sure to leave the connection in case she needed to make a quick escape. She might be able to tie the door to the office to another door somewhere else, but if it was off the base, it would probably trip the superward. With that in mind, she decided against it.

The office was large and almost empty, which just made it feel bigger. There was a bookshelf, but it held only a few books. They were all military manuals of one kind or another. There were some pictures on the walls of the base and various jets. It was probably the military equal to the generic art in motel rooms. There was, however, a locked file cabinet and a desk with a computer on it.

“Suckers,” she said through a smile as she looked at the computer.

Cracking that would be the easy part, so she started with the file cabinet. It was heavy steel, locked tight with a dial combination lock. Looking it over, she saw it was wrapped in wards. Each was woven into the next in an intricate and—she had to admit—impressive design. Like a lot of wards though, it wasn't protected against hacking. It occurred to her then that maybe she was unique in her ability to see quantum information. Once she had the equation of the wards, it was easy enough to splice her own formula into it and bypass them. It didn't deactivate the wards—it just made it so they wouldn't trip. The dial lock was almost insultingly simple. A quick look at its information told her the combination.

She pulled open the top drawer and found half a dozen or so thick folders. Picking one at random, she opened it and read over the contents. The first thing she learned was the group's real name. They were called the Legion of Solomon.

Interesting, she thought to herself and scanned over the pages. It was a personnel file, detailing the military career of Five, or Wallace Montesquie, as his parents called him.

“Montesquie?” Wraith whispered. “No wonder you go by Five.”

She skimmed over several pages. He was a chief petty officer in the navy, and his team specialty was divination magic. It made sense to presume each member had his own specialty. She replaced the file, being sure to put it back in exactly the same spot, and flipped through the others until she found the file for Ovation, a.k.a. Four, a.k.a. backstabbing bastard. Turns out the backstabbing bastard's name was actually Robert Collins, and he was a specialist in the army. Her anger started to rise, but when she shifted her weight from one foot to the other, the charm around her neck brushed her skin. It was getting hotter.

“I need more time,” she said under her breath.

Time, unfortunately, was something she hadn't quite figured out how to manipulate yet, but she was working on it. Instead she decided to go old-school spy. She started taking pictures with her phone, making sure the flash was off and the exposure setting was high. It took her several minutes to get through all seven files, or as much of them as she thought relevant. She didn't really need the detailed history of them all. But she did photograph Ovation's entire file.

Tucking her phone away, after confirming she'd spent thirty-six minutes so far, she replaced the files, closed the drawer, and set the dial back to where it had been when she found it. Lastly she returned the ward back to its previous state, carefully pulling her modification out.

As she sat down at the desk, it occurred to her that if she turned on the computer monitor, the light of it would be visible out the window, even with the blinds closed.

Then she smiled and wove together an interface from the quantum information around her. Since it was magic, no one but her would see it; unless of course someone was walking by and had goggles like hers or some other means of seeing magic. Keeping the monitor turned off, she powered up the computer.