Chapter Thirty
“This is close to the place they dumped that other body,” Callie said as she peered out the passenger window. We slowly rolled into the mostly deserted employee parking structure at the southern corner of the huge rail yard. “It’s just across the freeway.”
“Yes, it is.” I looked at the map on my phone. “Two of the mages work within ten minutes of each other. What do you want to bet they both work night shifts?”
I tried to peer out through the opening slats of the parking structure to get a better sense of what we were getting into. Fat chance. A building stood between us and the rail lines, and if it hadn’t, there would have been an abundance of crates and cargo to block our view. This was a large rail yard that likely dealt with hundreds of shipments a day. I was no expert, but I bet someone could easily get lost in the shadows if they knew where to hide. Especially if they were the security.
“I have a good feeling about this,” I said into the quiet car.
“I feel sick.” Dizzy cleared his throat.
As Darius parked a few floors up, a long, forlorn horn sounded in the night.
“I didn’t know trains ran this late,” I said softly, letting the somber feeling of the empty parking structure press on me. I climbed from the car.
“Freight carriers certainly do,” Callie said, getting out the other side. She looked at her phone. “Penny is on the first floor.”
“How’d you get her to come?” Dizzy asked. His gaze swept the area and his hand firmly gripped the strap of the satchel that draped across his chest. His eyes settled on the exit sign on the far wall.
“I have a way with people.” Callie clearly didn’t see the irony of that statement. “She had to sneak out of the house to duck that atrocious mother of hers, but the…incident a couple of months ago left her wanting to learn. She trusts me.”
“She won’t after this,” I said, taking out my gun.
“I doubt this is going to be worse than a circle of women turning themselves into zombies, like at that mage battle.” Callie sniffed. “She’ll be fine. She’s a natural.”
I walked to the front of the car as the others started off toward the stairs. Above the wall in front of the car, which stopped at my chest, I could see a train passing below us, moving out of the vast, empty space lined with railroad tracks. To my left, on the other side of thelong, low building, the tracks continued in the other direction. Leaning out, I could just make out the rail yard, lined with containers and crates similar to the ones we’d seen on the shipping port on the other side of the freeway.
“It won’t tell us much, but it’ll give us an idea,” Darius said, waiting patiently. He never seemed to feel the urgency the rest of us did. Though seeing into his head had somewhat changed my perception of that. He was a lot better at hiding his feelings than the rest of us were.
“It’s a huge space.” I backed away from the wall and headed toward the stairs, which Callie and Dizzy were already making their way down. “With the buildings, and the rail cars, and the containers… If they’re here, how are we going to find them?”
“They will be using large quantities of magic, not to mention the demon’s power. Feeling magic is your specialty, is it not?” Darius’s hand settled on my lower back. “Don’t let what happened earlier make you second-guess yourself. Learn from it, and move on.”
“Thanks, coach.” I took a deep breath, starting down the stairs. “But it’s not that easy this time. I don’t know how to defeat this thing.”
“We have three of the four most powerful mages I’ve ever met. One might not be trained, but she is a natural, as Callie said. If you immobilize the demon, they can work with us to kill it. The trick will be wipingout the mage circle before the demon escapes.”
“Yes, that will be the trick, all right.”
Penny was sitting in her car, staring down at her phone, when Callie knocked on her window. The girl, about my age, jumped and flung up her hands to cover her head.
“Step one, work on those reactions,” I mumbled as I waited with Darius off to the side.
“As I said, untrained. Give her time,” Darius murmured as Penny exited her car.
“Wait, when did you meet her? You were gone by the time we got her out of the closet at that mage battle.”
“I occasionally have business in this part of the world. Like I do in many parts of the world.”
I frowned. Cryptic. Or was this part of some greater design? Vlad had told Darius he’d give him the professional courtesy of steering clear of the area because Darius had something cooking…
I pushed the thought away. It wasn’t important right now.
Penny tucked a flyaway strand of hair behind her ear before looking up at everyone through her thick black lashes. I couldn’t get over how much she looked like a Disney princess, with her large, luminous blue eyes, little pixie features, and plump lips.
What she didn’t look like was a girl who wouldstorm buildings, take down enemy mages, and dole out punches like they were business cards.
“Listen,” I said, holding up my hand. “She might be a natural, and she might want to learn, but this is the big time. We can’t bring in someone who freaks out halfway through and tries to run and hide. She could get herself, or one of us, killed.”
