Considering he had a soulbond and a tenuous connection to his sister in his soul, and anchors burned into his bones by a goddess, Patrick had every incentive to lie through his teeth, perjury be damned. He didn’t want to possibly escape one capital charge only to be hit with another.
Danai pinned Preston with a hard look. “We’re ready if you are.”
Patrick would never be ready for something like this, but he had no choice but to comply. It wasn’t a court-ordered review of his soul, but that didn’t matter. Danai might have served the subpoena for the trishula and the lab report, but the need for the truth wasn’t going to go away, and the sooner he got this test over with, the better.
Preston signaled to the court reporter and videographer. “Let’s get started.”
Everyone was sworn in for the record, statements of everyone’s identities were given, and it wasn’t long before Patrick was facing down the two forensic witches. One opened her laptop, and the other opened the transport case in front of her. She extracted a handheld device that looked similar to a radar gun used to check speed.
Fredricka, as she’d given her name a few minutes earlier, gave him a brief smile. “I’ll be measuring your aura’s energy output for your magical signature with this. It won’t harm you.”
“What do you want me to do?” Patrick asked.
“We’ll need you to drop your shields and conjure a mageglobe how you normally would. I’ll ask you to do it a couple of times to get different readings. Please wait for my instructions on when to cast and when to draw down your magic.”
Patrick flexed his fingers beneath the table. “All right.”
He lowered his shields completely, not missing the way the witches twitched in their seats and how the other mage leaned back, an uncomfortable expression crossing his face.
“Oh,” Fredricka said, squinting at him.
“Soul wound,” Patrick said, trying not to bite off the words. “If you’ve seen the news, you’ll know how I got it.”
The damage he’d sustained, both as a child at Ethan’s hands and at the end of the Thirty-Day War, was evident in the feel of his magic when he didn’t have his shields up—it was uncomfortable for other magic users to be around. Setsuna had used that as an excuse from when he came on board the SOA to never assign him a partner. He was supposed to keep his head down, but the cases he’d handled over the years hadn’t helped with that.
“Right.” She cleared her throat while her partner continued tapping away at the keyboard of the laptop. “Let us get a couple of reads on you now for a baseline before you cast your mageglobe.”
It took them another minute to reconfigure whatever they had to on their end. Then Fredricka gave Patrick a polite nod and pointed the scanner at him.
“This won’t hurt,” she promised.
Patrick stared at the scanner, noticing the shine of the laser on the flat end of it. “Sure.”
It took about five minutes for them to get whatever baseline readings they needed before Fredricka nodded at Patrick. “We’re ready. Please cast your mageglobe.”
He did so with a silent command, magic pouring out of his soul into the burning ball of pale blue power that hovered in front of him over the conference table. Fredricka alternated aiming the scanner at him and his mageglobe for several minutes. Patrick tried to ignore the way the other mage monitored the proceedings, the foreign magic stifling him with no shields to guard against the focus.
Patrick fought back a grimace, staring at his mageglobe. He hoped that whatever results the witches and their tests came up with, it would all match what was in his records and not with what the government had on file wrapped around the trishula that had killed Youssef. His magical signature had been recorded when he first joined the SOA. Too much had happened between then and now for Patrick to be certain the results would be the same.
He was glad no one in the room was a werecreature; they wouldn’t be able to smell his fear or hear how fast his heart was beating. That wasn’t to say no one else in the building was a werecreature, but if they were, he hoped they were under his pack’s protection.
After ten minutes, Fredricka finally put the scanner down. “All right, we have what we need. Give us about thirty minutes to give you a preliminary report.”
Patrick blinked at her. “That quick?”
“We have your SOA records saved to file, and running the comparison program doesn’t take long. Certifying the report will need to wait until we get back to our office, but the preliminary results don’t take long, and both sides of this case requested an expedited answer.”
Preston looked at the mage. “Was there any attempt at tampering?”
“No,” the mage said after a long pause.
Preston didn’t appear happy about that statement, but he didn’t argue against it. He looked as if he wanted to, judging by his scowl.
“Let’s take a break,” Danai said.
After the court reporter and videographer designated a break for the record, Danai got to her feet. Patrick let his mageglobe fade to nothing, drawing down his magic even as he raised his shields. The way the witches and mage seemed to lose tension in their shoulders proved they hadn’t been comfortable around him for the duration of the test.
Patrick got up and followed Danai out of the conference room for the office set aside as their space for the meeting. He closed the door behind them and watched Danai take a seat in the chair behind the desk.
