“But we need that potion for Neuri!If there’s ever going to be a cure—”
“I know.”Caleb wiped some sweat off his brow.“I’m sorry, Lia.But everything we took from Jenkins’ little house of horrors burned up in the raid, even the crusty vial we found in the grocery, which was still in the labs.But maybe not all that’s out there.”
“The Reaper.”
“Yeah,” he scowled.“The goddamned Reaper.He’s now the only source for Jenkin’s
creation, yet nobody has gotten so much as a smell of him all week, despite us having hundreds of mages on it—”
“Hundreds?”That was basically all we had left!
Caleb nodded.“The old man is obsessed.After seeing what you could do the other night, he’s on a tear.He wants to make sure we get it before the other side, but so far, there’s not been a sign of the potion or the Reaper who’s been using it.”
“What about the dealer who was killed in Tartarus the other night?Sophie said they told you what they saw—”
“And we checked it out, but if he was our boy, we’re screwed.His body was gone by the time we got there, and his shop eradicated.”
“Eradicated?”
“That’s putting it mildly.There wasn’t so much as a shard of glass left in the place; the walls, floor, and ceiling were blackened with soot, where the whole thing had been incinerated; and below that, there were ridges in the walls where they’d been sandblasted.”
“Scouring spells.”
“Yep,” Caleb confirmed.“Someone really didn’t want a team of war mages going over that room.”
“Then why not scour it when they killed the guy in the first place?Why leave him there for an hour or more?”
“No clue, unless it wasn’t the Black Circle who killed him in the first place.That’s what has everybody tense back at HQ—those in the know, anyway.Which is most people these days, as you can’t send guys out looking for something when they don’t know what it is.And they’re all starting to wonder if we have multiple parties after that potion—”
I let my head slip under the water, but thanks to Were hearing, I could still hear Caleb—who knew that, so he didn’t stop talking.
“—and Kimmie isn’t the only replicator around.If anybody gets to it before we do...”
He didn’t finish, but he didn’t have to.There’d be dozens and then hundreds of bottles in somebody’s hands within hours.And a Relic army shortly after that.
But since no one had seen any sign of that, it looked like the competition had struck out, too.Assuming this was about the potion at all, and not some turf war or dissatisfied customer seeking revenge.One who specialized in spiritual attacks?
I surfaced again, feeling agitated.Like I was missing something obvious, but couldn’t think what it was.“So the Black Circle tried to kidnap Sebastian to get me to cough up the potion.And when that didn’t work, they grabbed Jace, hoping for the same outcome.But after the second attempt to force me to burgle HQ failed, they went in themselves, using whatever Relics they’d made from the pelts taken by this Reaper.”
“That’s how we figure it, yeah.”
“And now that that has also achieved nothing, except to torch the last of the potion, the only supply is whatever remains with said Reaper.Who now has both Circles looking for him.So how is he still out there?”
“At a guess?What we talked about the other day—he got an upgrade, too.Something that showed up in his family line after he ingested Jenkins’ crap, that helps him hide from us.And since we’re all still alive, it’s probably helping him stay ahead of the Black Circle, too, although for how long is anybody’s guess.”
“But somebody must knowsomething,” I pointed out.“He must have had friends, people who fenced his stuff for him, who he talked to—”
“Oh, I’m sure he did,” it was dry.“But the prospects are getting thin on the ground, with a lot of the local dealers suddenly closing up shop and skipping town.It’s almost as if they know something we don’t—which probably, since we don’t know shit!Even how many people are after this thing—”
“Maybe it’s not just people.Did Jen tell you what she saw in the dead man’s mind?”
“Yeah.”He scowled.“And at first we thought, you know, that fits.The dark has been using chindis against us, and it sounded like another was used to take out the dealer.Only Jen said no.They can make someone sick or befuddled, but not rip their hearts out!And while it’s possible that someone who could manage one kind of spiritual assault could do another, I gotta wonder—”
“If the Black Circle had something more powerful, why not use it on HQ?”I finished for him.“Why not bring out the big guns when you’re attacking one of the bastions of Silver Circle power on this continent?”
Caleb nodded.“But they didn’t, they just used weak-ass chindis, and failed partly because of that.”
“So what’s the current theory?”
