I fished my keys out of my pocket and opened my apartment door. “Because you find me entertaining?” I reminded him.
“I do find you entertaining. All the time.” His usual smirk returned and he repeated. “All the time.”
A few days passed—I got a weekend off and spent some time working on my paper for Sarge, something I was starting to attack with a frantic energy since November was just around the corner and I had the distinct feeling I was not handling the assignment the way Sarge wanted me to.
Monday night patrols went off without a hitch, we even got time to close out a few cases and clean up some whiteboards when we got back to the Cloisters—though the picture of the missing person the human police sent over in September stayed up.
I stared at the whiteboard that still had the missing woman’s photo.
Maybe we should follow up with the human police about her. I don’t know much about criminal activity and statistics, but I know enough to know that it’s very bad that so much time has passed without even seeing her.
Hopefully the police had found her, and they’d just forgotten to tell us. Either way, it was worth asking Sarge about at one of our squad musters.
I glanced back down at my report on the library fire and subsequent investigation. I was supposed to be checking to see if there was a detail I’d forgotten to include. The papers—dry on my fingertips—kept sticking together, and I’d bent more than a few corners as I tried peeling them apart.
Grove stood a few feet away wiping down one of the whiteboards while Tetiana watched, shuffling the deck of cards used for the team’s rousing games of go fish.
“This was a wonderful night,” Grove announced. “It was so quiet!”
April groaned from her desk. “You had to say it.”
Grove set his eraser down and turned towards April. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“That you’ve doomed us, and now we’re going to have something annoying happen,” April said.
“We have less than an hour of the shift left,” Juggernaut pointed out.
“Doesn’t matter,” April leaned back, the florescent lighting accenting her high cheekbones. “We’re in for a rough ride.”
A door whooshed as it was thrown open and Sarge strode inside, his silvery hair ruffled as if he’d been pulling on it. “Gather up, night squad,” he barked.
The door opened again, and a petite, blonde haired woman entered behind him carrying what looked like a ream’s worth of paper.
I stood up, my desk chair creaking, and joined my squadmates in a cluster by the whiteboards.
Sarge navigated his way through the huddles our desks were pushed into, but stepped aside and bowed to the woman when he reached us. “Night squad, this is Adept Hazel Medeis of House Medeis, protégé of Elite Bellus—the wizard representative on the Midwest Regional Committee of Magic.”
Hazel Medeis flashed a quick smile that was equal parts beauty and sass, and wriggled her fingers in a tiny greeting at April—a member of her wizard House—before her humor faded. “Hello, night shift! I wish we were meeting in better circumstances, but I’m here to deliver some bitter news.”
Bad news, delivered by an Adept…what are the chances this is about House Tellier and the library fire?
I already had my arms locked behind my back and my shoulders set, so I took a deep breath to steel myself.
“The Wizard Council has officially decided not to pursue any deeper investigation into House Tellier,” Hazel adjusted the white and blue jacket she was wearing—it was a wizard coat with the crest of House Medeis over the breast pocket. I saw a familiar flash of black on her belt when her coat moved, which I recognized as a gun holster.
Makes sense. House Medeis is the only wizard House that trains in firearms—it’s why April was also given a gun.
The training was also not that shocking considering that Hazel Medeis was married to the vampire Eminence Killian Drake, who trained his vampires to the point that I’d consider them all sharpshooters.
“They say there is insufficient evidence, and that Cloister resources would be spent better on issues that are truly a threat to human-supernatural relations,” Hazel continued. “As such, the investigation is closed.”
April, standing next to me, stiffened, her entire frame radiating tension. I also felt shocked followed by a wave of indignation washing through me.
How could they close the investigation? The fire could have harmed humans, which would bring repercussions down on the entire community. I know when Sarge and Captain Reese spoke of the issue in front of me, they said the Wizard Board doesn’t want to lose any Houses as it will mean a loss of power, but they can’t be that short sighted, can they?
Juggernaut jumped as if he’d been zapped. “Wait, so we can’t look into it anymore?”
“You can’t look into the library incident,” Hazel said. “However. If you find new incidences or, perhaps, evidence shows up that House Tellier has done anything in the past, that would be considered a new investigation.”
“Wowee.” Grove clapped his hands like he was applauding a musical performance. “You’re as good at bending rules as a fae! Nice job—the future of wizards is bright if you’ll one day be the Elite!”
“Grove.” Standing behind the Adept, Sarge shook his head and narrowed his eyes at our team’s medic.
Hazel laughed. “He’s not wrong. But I have a suggestion. If you do find something, pursue it as ruthlessly fast as possible and delay reporting it to the Regional Committee of Magic until you have House Tellier bagged and tied up. Then the Wizard Council won’t be able to complain, and you’ll have enough information that you can threaten to take it public if they try to stonewall a charge against them again.”
“Spoken like a true fae!” Grove proudly said.
The rest of the team nodded or gave murmured expressions of “understood,” except for April.
She pressed her lips flat and furrowed her eyebrows. “Are they really going to get off with no punishment for the library?”
“For now,” Hazel cracked a smile. “But they won’t get out pain free.” She held up her gigantic stack of paper. “I’ll bury the Wizard Board and House Tellier in paperwork—noise complaints, a failure to care for the front sidewalk, using magic in public, there’s at least a dozen violations we can throw at them between the human government and the Curia Cloisters.”
It was something, but I wasn’t the type who was clever enough to use paperwork to mete out justice so it still felt hollow to me.
April briefly raised her hand. “Should Blood, Binx, and I lodge a complaint about House Tellier’s conduct the night we went to speak to them?”
Hazel tilted her head. “It’s not a bad idea, but I’d like to keep House Tellier’s ire focused on me, so the task force doesn’t experience any hindrances to future investigations.”
So, the Adept plans to become our shield. It’s risky, but House Medeis is probably the strongest wizard House in Magiford—stronger, even, than Elite Bellus’s House.
“Any questions?” Sarge asked.