He shook his head. “Kincaid almost always stays in headquarters. Crawford and Shaw are frequently there, too. I’ve never, not once, seen all three gone at the same time”—he tapped his phone, with its tracking program—“and they’re far and away the most dangerous of the bunch. Distraction is vital.”
“But if they’ve never left headquarters together before, why are you sure they’llallcome out for Bernie and Willi?”
“Given sufficient reason ...” He shrugged. “They don’t want magic to become common knowledge, so two autodidacts popping wildly about the world should draw them out, and fast.”
“Auto ... ?”
“Sorry—autodidact. Self-taught person. Magically self-taught, in this case.” He lapsed into silence for a few seconds, then shook his head. “Crawford and Shaw always stick together, probably in case an autodidact proves unusually tough, so I expect they’ll go after one of our guys and Kincaid will take the other.”
She thought about this. “How dangerous is he? Kincaid, I mean—how good is he at magic?”
Hartgrave gave a small but unmistakable shudder. “Very.”
That set her off, too. She hoped Bernie wouldn’t draw him.
“Well?” Willi—tapping his foot. “Are we talking or are we working?”
No questionhetook it seriously.
Hartgrave fetched two more bottles of water from beneath the bed, tossed one to Bernie and drank the other. Then he gestured to Willi. “All right. Go ahead.”
She sat on the non-magical bed and leaned toward Bernie as the inexorable countdown once again echoed around the room. “How does Hartgrave have the energy to do it again with hardly a break?”
Bernie’s soft huff of laughter sounded rueful. “He’s a lot better at this than either of us, that’s how.”
But not better than the Organization hitwomen. And they, apparently, weren’t as powerful as Kincaid. Avoiding a direct confrontation would be critical—especially one involving Bernie.
She eyed him, biting her lip. He was in good shape for his age—she would have guessed fifty instead of sixty if he hadn’t mentioned when he went to college—but now it was all she could do not to see him as fragile.
Bernie caught her staring. “What? Why are you looking at me like that?”
“Are you sure you should be doing this? You know,” she said, nodding toward Willi and Hartgrave across the room,“this?”
“Well,” he said, “my doctor did recommend I get more exercise ...”
She wanted to shake the man. “Bernie! This couldkillyou.”
“You too.” He raised his eyebrows at her. “Have you thought about that?”
She knew it, of course, but she hadn’t spent more than a passing moment thinking about it. Her assignment was far less dangerous than his. But even so—people risked their lives every day, and for pointless reasons. To drive somewhere a few minutes faster. To get an adrenaline rush. To fit in. If she wanted to be a bit heroic, if she wanted to help stop the villains and save innocent people, why shouldn’t she?
Bernie, though, had never struck her as the rush-into-danger type. He struck her as the do-it-for-a-laugh type.
“Just tell me the reason you’re involved in this,” she said. “For real, no joking.”
He squirmed, cheeks going pink. Finally, he muttered, “‘Cowards die many times before their deaths; the valiant never taste of death but once.’”
Vaguely familiar. When in doubt: “Shakespeare?”
“Julius Caesar,” he said, the only part of this strange morning that reminded her he was, in fact, an English professor. “Of course, Caesar said that right before doing something stupid, but never mind that. The point is, what have I done with my life? Nothing. Nothing lasting, anyway. No grand love affairs. No children. No students inspired to take up medieval lit as a career. I’d like to dosomethingthat might outlive me.”
A good reason. Not that different from hers, actually.
“So—if you’re asking whether I’m taking this seriously, yes, I am.” He frowned at his hands. “I’m just fairly lousy at it.”
She cleared her throat. “Look at it this way: You’re way better at magic than I am.”
He snorted and glanced over his shoulder at thin air shimmering and reshaping itself into Willi. “Too bad the ‘powerful old wizard’ archetype doesn’t hold true if you’re already pretty old when you start.”
