Chapter 12 – Evidence

Constance Earl was not happy. Normally her job was straightforward enough, though it took a lot of attention to detail. Managing the interactions between the mundane world and the real one took a bit of finesse, and nobody really appreciated the light touch it took to keep the work to a minimum.

She sat at her desk, but she wasn’t working, she was thinking. There were papers stacked on the broad expanse of dark, polished wood, but she paid them far less mind than the needlepoint she’d taken from the basket she kept under the window behind her. It was something she’d learned as a girl and she still felt it helped keep her fingers busy while her mind worked. Plus she could work out her frustrations by stabbing something with a needle. Frustrations like how people did not appreciate the work she did.

Nobody was afraid of mundanes, but the sheer amount of effort it took to clean up after the more injudicious members of the supernatural community could very quickly spiral out of control. One incident led to another, mundanes sent in more personnel and became more suspicious, more mages or even fae or vampires were required to suppress it, and it could very quickly become an enormous mess. Like the incident with the BSE team chasing Wells, not even that long ago.

The current upheaval was making things a lot more difficult. Not only had her two best sources of additional resources been flat-out killed, but GAR and BSE had curtailed the number of people she could send to deal with things. Not to mention that the flow into her personal and House coffers was at its lowest ebb in decades.

That thought made her accidentally bend her needle in annoyance and she made a face as she got out a new one and threaded it. She was making a decoration for her grand-niece’s room, so maybe it wasn’t completely appropriate to work on it while she was annoyed, but she wanted to get it done on time. Which she wouldn’t if she kept destroying needles out of personal pique.

Not only was her income suffering, but her own House had limited the number of people she could call on. There had been some clashes between House estates over in Faerie, and even a few disappearances in the Deep Wilds and Nightlands — nobody she knew personally, but it was enough to make her House draw up their defenses. Nor was her House the only one, leaving GAR with an almost skeleton crew in some aspects and loading more work onto the Bureau of Secret Enforcement.

Even that was a problem because Taisen was missing, and if anyone knew where he was, they weren’t telling. His subordinates normally ran things anyway, but the House Fane sorts were at odds with the ones loyal to Taisen, and with both their masters gone it was a lot of squabbling. All of which meant GAR was barely functional when it came to enforcing its rules.

Rules such as those imposed by the Department of Acquisition. Constance lowered the needlework long enough scowl at the stack of reports on her desk. She was pretty sure that some of the vampire nests and fae enclaves were taking advantage and going over their allowed limits without checking with her first. She was the final word on what was appropriate, and there was always room for negotiation, but she did not appreciate people violating her dictates. Especially when she couldn’t hold them all to account.

Which wasn’t to say she was helpless to enforce her policies. In fact, it might be easier once she called in the right favors and set up the right channels. The preoccupation of the larger Houses could be made to work for her, too. They were so focused on themselves and their old enemies that they’d hardly notice what was going on outside them.

Her telekinesis focus had long been an extension of her mind, and she preferred her magic to her flesh, anyway. Healing magic was fine so far as it went, but perfection could only be found in magic. She would be glad when she finished her shell and had completely freed her power from mundane clay.

She used that telekinesis to shuffle through the reports, riffling through dozens of pages at once and sorting them out on her massive desk. After she found what she wanted, she lofted three different pens to start assigning penalties. The Guevara and Lorentz nests had been the most uncooperative – and the nearby fae enclave didn’t like them besides – so they were the easiest ones to deal with.

She would have called that enclave’s Prince, who went by Sirrelan, but he was the kind of fae that eschewed modern conveniences, so she was forced to send a handwritten note by messenger instead. It wasn’t a long note, but it didn’t need to be. All it really needed to contain was a brief explanation of what the enclosed documents meant. Generally the internal correspondence of the Department of Acquisition wasn’t meant for outside eyes, but in this case it was the entire point.

If GAR itself wasn’t moving against the people who were thumbing their noses at the Department, then someone else would. After all, technically they were all part of GAR. Deputizing them was no overstretch of her authority. That would trim the sails of the vampires well enough, and best of all Sirrelan would owe her another favor for letting him go on a hunt and add a few vampire heads to his mantel. Six or seven, by her judgement.

Then there were her contacts over in Faerie proper, the Old Fae that had a monopoly on corite and had a very limited list of what they exchanged it for. Their support was contingent on a steady supply of living bodies, though they weren’t picky about race. Vampires, humans, shifters, or even other fae. Constance had no idea how they kept the other races alive in Faerie and didn’t much care, but the current crisis might be a good opportunity to secure more corite.

The fae weren’t the only ones to receive her attention. She stayed away from the principal actors in the ongoing crisis, the American Midwest shifters, because there were already too many people involved, but there were plenty of others who had snubbed her. Recently or in the past. A few shifter packs in Spain, a fae enclave in the Netherlands. A moderate number of deaths at the hands of their neighbors should remind people to stay in line, and she’d acquire goodwill and debts from the people she’d empowered to act for her.

On such small and friendly favors did the world run.

Constance focused back on her needlepoint, now more relaxed that she’d decided what to do. A small smile crossed her lips as she unspooled a new color of thread. It hadn’t even been that difficult, in the end, to address the problems facing her. No more difficult than the needlepoint.

***

Alpha Chester slid to the side, claws flashing out to grip and throw Roy. The attempt to close was laudable, though a grapple wouldn’t go well even for one of the best of his Wolfpack. Though with John helping his brother in the spar, even a momentary loss of freedom could be a problem.

Half the reason for the spar was to work off his frustration. Chester did not enjoy the scavengers nibbling at the edges of his pack, but the fact that it was merely scavengers and merely nibbling showed that GAR lacked the will to do more. To some extent, they also lacked the ability, now. He was well aware of how much they relied – had relied – on Fane and his command of offensive healers for force supremacy.

There was also the sudden and severe shortage of personnel. The Houses were withdrawing into themselves, old alliances and rivalries coming back into focus as Fane’s death continued to send ripples through the supernatural world. There was a sudden sense of vulnerability from the death of that foul old titan Fane, and none of them liked it.

Of all of them, House Hargrave showed the most distance from GAR. Something that pleased Chester, as Archmage Hargrave was one of the few Archmages that was both militant and good enough at it that Chester couldn’t possibly subdue him. Other Archmages could wreak enormous amounts of devastation, especially Janry and Kolar with their Earth aspects, but were less inclined toward combat. It was well worth his time to consider approaching Hargrave, if carefully, to work out some understanding outside of GAR.

John wheezed as Chester’s foot caught him in the stomach, sending him flying into the steel-reinforced wall with a meaty thud. That forced him backward just long enough for Roy to smash into his side, but Chester spun with the impact, metal squealing underfoot as his claws dug in, and hammered Roy with an elbow. He was glad to see he hadn’t quite lost his touch, even if he was doing more administration than fighting these days.

He would need both those talents if he was going to deal with everything coming their way. GAR was hardly going to protect them even and especially with its reduced manpower, since Chester had all but declared independence from the governing body, but that meant he was more free to send his Wolfpack around to troubleshoot. Mostly by shooting trouble.

Ravaeb’s fae were the largest source of that for the moment. He could deal with petty fines and legal proceedings, which were slow and easily deflected if there weren’t real teeth behind them, but actual attacks were something else. Chester had known that Ravaeb had a cruel streak to him but he hadn’t realized how much the fae had been constrained by GAR.

It was obvious, now, what sort of story drove Ravaeb. Winter winds had brought wendigo sweeping down from the north, leaving paths of rot through shifter lands. Entire households had been reduced to rotting bone before he’d pulled his people back, closer to where more powerful members of his pack could protect them. His Wolfpack had destroyed two skinwalkers, and thank goodness they had extra cold iron to dispatch the horrid things.

It was the kind of skirmishing that presaged a war, and GAR was hardly going to stop it. If anything, they might move to support the fae, and not just through the bureaucratic machinery. But Chester wasn’t quite ready for that kind of conflict.

Chester needed allies, and that was a problem. The fae were notoriously mercurial, and the closest enclave was Ravaeb’s, whom Chester was going to hold to account for the deaths he’d caused. Somehow, some way. So there were no friends in that direction. The vampires existed more or less to counterbalance shifters, and the two groups got along basically nowhere. Mages were under the thumb of GAR, with few exceptions.

One of those exceptions was Wells, whom Chester counted on his side. Chester was hesitant to call him an actual ally, since Wells was pathologically independent, but the man at least had no ill will toward him. The other was the Archmage, that he’d only found out about thanks to Lisa’s discussions with Lucy. Archmage Wizzy.

Chester hurled Roy at John, the latter reeling from another bruising kick, and he saw with approval that John wasn’t blindsided by it at all, instead helping Roy land braced on his feet. But Chester held up his hand, done with sparring. They could go all day, and had before, so long as they were careful not to inflict injuries with their claws, but he wanted to spend some time with his mate and children. It wasn’t good to do all his thinking during combat, since that colored his thoughts toward the militant and that was not always the best answer.

He mused on other options as he showered and ascended up to the open meadow behind the compound where pups gamboled in the grass. Wizzy was definitely neutral, but Archmage Hargrave was getting there, and House Hargrave itself had always treated shifters fairly. The Archmage had even managed to poach a small pack from under Chester’s nose a couple centuries prior, which spoke well of the Hargraves considering the shifters involved.

Then there was Shahey, who had once been called Scaletooth back when Chester was but a pup and might well be a resource now that Chester had a line to him. The dragonblooded famously didn’t take sides, but that didn’t mean they did nothing. A little bit of extra insight or resources here and there could be incredibly valuable, if he could convince them to play ball.

The pups ran over to crowd into their granddad’s lap and he laughed and tickled them. His family and his pack were a concrete reminder of why he was so careful, so cautious, and why he was so worried about what Wells was doing. The man might well crack open some other part of supernatural society, which made him dangerous beyond any personal threat.

There was part of him that reflexively wanted to remove that threat, no matter how helpful Wells had been, but Chester had learned to temper that reaction. That kind of thinking usually didn’t go to good places, not in the long run. Still, Wells had been fairly quiet for a while, and that was a worrying sign.

No news was not good news.

***

“It looks practically done,” Lucy observed, examining the small house. Or perhaps medium sized house, depending on one’s standards. The yard was mostly mud, but there was fencing up around what would eventually be the garden area, where Callum had planted the fruit trees.

When nobody was around, of course. It wouldn’t do to have a bunch of construction workers see dirt and potted trees flying around of their own accord. Even then he didn’t do as much as he could have, just to prevent people from being overly suspicious. Lucy was mostly inured to his quirks, but that had gotten a brief roll of her eyes and look of exasperation even if she didn’t argue the point.

“The interior needs finishing, and I don’t have any furniture for it,” Callum said. “But we can start moving in now.”

“That’ll be great. The beach house was nice and the Texas trailer was, well, not so nice, but there’s just something weird about living in a place that isn’t mine. Well, yours.”

“Could be ours,” Callum said, putting his arm around her. She leaned against him and tilted her head back, looking up at him with dancing dark eyes.

“Ours, huh?” Lucy said after a moment, mouth crinkling into a smile. “I kinda like the sound of that.”

“Yeah?” He pulled her closer, head drifting down toward hers.

“Yeah,” she said, and he kissed her.

He was quite satisfied with the way the vacation ended. It couldn’t last forever, though, and the bunker still needed work even if there was a roof over their head. With the portals it wasn’t like they even fully needed to move out of the Texas trailer, not yet. With Callum’s magic, it took more time to decide things than actually transport them.

One thing that he wanted to take advantage of, now that the basement was finished, was their experiments with the obsidian tiles. There was a lot of value in being able to hot-swap enchantments, especially ones that Lucy could control. Even if that control was no more than turning them on or off, like activating or deactivating wards and glamours. Just changing tiles let them vary the enchantment size from house-wide to panic-room, either manually or through programmed actuators sliding things into place.

The latter was planned, at least, to have an off-site location. Lucy being able to flip a switch and be somewhere far away, yet still accessible to Callum was an enticing prospect. They just needed more enchantment material.

The two of them laid out the tiles in the walled-off section of the basement, though of course they couldn’t experiment there while the workers were wandering around above them. With the obsidian being a limited resource – they weren’t ever going back to Mictlān if he could help it – being able to run multiple enchantment types through the same projection framework was very helpful

“We need to get more enchantments,” Lucy said, sliding around the tiles in the grid form she’d printed.

“Yeah, I had been trying to do that before GAR found you out,” Callum admitted. “Kind of got side-tracked after that.”

“Then let’s see what we can find.” Lucy picked up her laptop and prodded him “Since we don’t have internet here yet.”

“I know, I know, we need more portals,” Callum said. He wanted to legitimately purchase an internet connection in some distant country and just use an anchor to connect them, but they didn’t have enough free anchors to dedicate one to that. Instead, they went wardriving for public wifi.

Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

It wasn’t the best solution, because it exposed innocent people to potential reprisal. But state actors would know finding users of public wifi was hopeless and he had Lucy keep a log of whose access she used just in case. If supernaturals went after these businesses, he wanted to know.

Her hook into the GAR servers was still intact, though from what she said it wasn’t likely anyone would spot it unless they were very specifically looking for what she’d done. Possible, but unlikely, unless they brought in mundane talent who already suspected it. Still, he opened a portal into the armored van for them and then brought them out where one of the anchors was parked at the moment, out in Colorado.

It didn’t take long for Lucy to log into the server and start searching, but what she found was not the best news. Many of the largest repositories were off-limits simply due to being in Faerie, which he wasn’t prepared to deal with until he had a better handle on protecting himself from fae magic. The corite anchors might be sufficient, but they might not.

“If Faerie’s out, what’s the next best target?” He asked Lucy as they drove along the highway, keeping one eye out for some place to eat lunch.

“Well, I guess it depends on how risky you think it is to use your anchors,” she said. He nodded thoughtfully.

Callum’s magic practice had paid off fairly well, even if there was nothing dramatically new or improved. He was faster, the wards he put up over his portal anchors were more refined, and he could produce tubes efficiently enough that they only took something like two or three times the vis of his threads.

There was less progress in other avenues. Native threads were still faster by far, and despite being more fragile were generally good enough for what he was doing. They also cost less vis, which was still an issue since despite his practice he didn’t seem to be getting all that much magical endurance. His gut-portal made it less of an issue since he could get extra mana, but he still couldn’t sustain large constructs for significant lengths of time.

He’d also improved the ratio of spatial compression for his water grenades, even if he still couldn’t make the spatial changes permanent or even cover larger volumes. He was sure his version of the technique was terrible, the worst kind of brute force, but it worked. Considering he wanted it to destructively fail, being terrible was actually a good thing.

In general there hadn’t been any drastic improvements but, considering his portal anchor trick was so very good, that wasn’t a problem. He wasn’t exactly comfortable since he still lacked shielding, but once again physical dissociation and his perceptual sphere sidestepped that vulnerability under most circumstances. But at the same time, no new tricks meant he couldn’t surprise people as easily, so he wanted to look at more spell forms, which brought him around to pilfering again.

“I think that I can deal with mages,” he decided. “Even if we get caught, I don’t think there’s much they can do to us through the anchors.”

“Then House Fane,” Lucy said, fingers drumming on the desk mounted in the back of the van. “It’s one of the few Houses that’s still mostly Earth-side, and judging by these emails there’s some kind of internal power struggle.” She glanced up from the laptop with a toothy smile. “So I don’t think they’ll be hardened against someone like you.”

“Aye,” Callum agreed. The general chaos and confusion of infighting would work to his advantage when it came to borrowing and copying books or the like. People would be far too busy to keep a strict eye on their collections.

Callum didn’t intend to actually properly steal anything from them. He could, and it would be easy, but that wasn’t a road he wanted to go down. There might be circumstances where he could justify taking actual stuff rather than information from a House, but he wasn’t there yet.

Back in the bunker, he settled in the basement with Lucy to send their drone over to the target. House Fane was located somewhere in the central north of China, in the middle of nowhere more or less, close to the border with Mongolia. The wilderness compound was a picturesque slice of some lost age, with hundreds of acres of dynasty architecture sprawled across rugged rock and ribboned streams. He had to taken a moment to appreciate it before moving on to the task at hand.