Page 21 of Snag
“When was this? And where?” I ask Coda.
The tech doesn’t answer, tapping a key to slow the vid to half-speed as two dark-suited Authority agents slide into the booth across from Devlin. My aunt’s chosen greets them with a stiff nod and a sip of his coffee. Though Coda is extremely talented, the vid isn’t sharp enough for me to read the expression on the combat mage’s face, but his body language seems tense.
“What the fuck?” Rought snarls. “That’s Reck’s current crew.”
The Authority agents, he means. The red-haired, ruddy-skinned shifter, Brett Shaw, and the tall, slim, dead-gazed mage, Clara Wilson.
My heart twists in my chest. An odd reaction, so I try to ignore it.
Coda pulls up another feed from a camera I had no idea existed. Maybe it’s new. It’s a live feed that displays the mouth of the estate driveway. My driveway. It’s angled toward the two Authority agents sitting in their armored SUV.
Shaw, the shifter, has half-healed red slashes across his lower face and neck, running below the collar of his white dress shirt. Wilson, the mage, appears unharmed from theshoulders up. As far as I can tell. She’s rolling, or maybe dipping, her dark-wood wand in an ornate silver-plated box situated on the dashboard. I can’t see the interior of the box, but even through the vid, I can see a glimmer of essence threaded around it. Most mages who work with wands or other essence-enhanced objects refuel them with salt-and-herb-based spells.
That said, with the easily-discernible-even-on-vid deadened look in Wilson’s eyes, I wouldn’t be surprised if her fuel of choice was more like … nightshade and arsenic.
“Fuck,” Rought snarls. “Gigi said something about the Authority when she pulled up, but I got distracted.”
Coda snorts knowingly, presumably because they share the same distraction addiction — anything tech related.
Grimacing, Rought pulls out his phone, seriously pissed and already texting. “Were they here all night?”
“No,” I murmur. “Early this morning, I think.” Though I’m able to sense the Authority agents on the edge of the property, for me in the now, the Authority as a whole is just another pending confrontation that I’m not interested in triggering yet. So I’m ignoring them.
Rought huffs and turns away, still texting.
“Coda. I need to know when they met. And where.” I haven’t shifted my attention from the vid of Devlin and the agents in the diner, but I’m still not quite certain what I’m witnessing. An arranged meeting between my aunt’s chosen and agents of the Authority? Or just an opportunity to harass Devlin while he was off the estate, where the Authority has no jurisdiction?
Usually piecing together thewhyof it all isn’t my purview.
Or, let’s be honest, even a specific talent of mine.
Ifix things.
But I can’t fix the past. So I generally avoid it.
What I now know of my own past has settled in a low-grade ache around my heart. All the reasons I am the way I am are inextricably linked to it, including my need to constantly survive in the present.
Without looking away from his phone, Rought settles his hand on my lower back again. And that tiny glimmer of understanding, of my own psyche, settles within me. It’s difficult to be concerned about a past, aboutthepast, when you don’t realize you’re missing a massive chunk of it. Maybe ignoring that disconnect as thoroughly as I did was self-preservation.
But now … now I need toknow.
“Coda?” I prompt. The tech awry isn’t ignoring me, just buried deeply in their essence-wielding. “Was this right before my aunt went missing?”
Coda grunts in the affirmative. “Tracking back from when you … you know … about seven days before that. In a border town on the edge of California. No sense of Disa being in the area, but I never could track her. I’ve only got you now when you’ve got the phone on you.”
Coda is using the day that the powers of the Conduit transferred to me to build a timeline as they piece together my aunt’s movements. As I am now, Disa was always obscured from Coda’s sight. But tracking Devlin should be easier. Well, somewhat easier.
“Reck’s obviously involved,” Rought says, his tone dark edged and not at all surprised.
“I don’t have your brother connected to any of this,” Coda says, slightly cautious, which in and of itself is unusual. The awry tech doesn’t generally worry about ramifications stemming from the truths they uncover.
“Fucker.” Rought’s phone vibrates in his hand withmultiple text messages flashing on-screen. “It’s always him. I’m taking care of it.” He steps across the trailer, opening the door and stepping down and out into the rainy late morning.
Actually, it might well be early afternoon by now. My sense of time is seriously skewed.
“Well, that seems like it’s going in a bad direction,” Coda says quietly.
“Do you care?” I ask, suddenly weary.
