Dani ate a bite of tasteless meatloaf, sipped her tea, and tried to look relaxed. She had gone undercover at The Sevens first, and for the last four weeks she had made it a point to arriveat Table S an hour early for the five o’clock meal. Five was too dang early for supper in her opinion, not that anyone asked her. Civilized time was seven p.m. Or eight. Five was for children and the elderly.
At the table, she would sit alone, sipping iced tea while she relaxed. Dani claimed she liked to look out the window at the garden and rest after the exertions of magic class, which was partially true and completely a lie. There were other things to see out that window than the azalea garden, bird feeders, and the staff parking lot. There was Building Z.
Mable’s kicking and glare forced her to look away from the window again and back to their small group at Table S. She ate another few bites of her dinner and frowned. Marvin was right. It was awful. The green beans were overcooked, and the mashed potatoes were surely reconstituted from dried potato flakes.
Zeddie brought Marvin’s burger. Dani wasn’t much of a cook, but even she could see that the meat had been freezer-burned, was over cooked, and the bun was stale. Poor Marvin. Thanks to his well-invested riches, he and Mable were used to a better quality of life than what was offered by The Sevens. Zeddie glanced at her, his brows raised. Dani said, “Wine. Chardonnay, please.” Softer, she added, “And not from an opened bottle.”
Zeddie grinned, gave her a thumb’s up, and vanished.
While he was gone, she ate what she could of the horrible meal.
Thanks to Mable’s computer skills, Dani had learned early on that Zeddie had a strong weed habit and could easily be bribed to provide small necessities. In Marvin’s case, that meant booze and full-caffeine coffee. In her case, that meant two things: a small pitcher of iced sweet tea all to herself each evening, for an hour of silence and peace before supper (whichgave her an uninterrupted hour to watch out the window at Building Z), and a halfway decent bottle of wine when requested. Not the adulterated garbage offered by The Sevens to the other geezers in the magical school.
When he had time, Zeddie provided a bit of gossip. For cash, of course.
Zeddie was avoidwho worked as wait staff in the kitchen, helped out in the gym and swimming pool, and sometimes pulled shifts as security. Voids were in high demand in magic-training facilities, as they had a natural immunity to some forms of magic. He brought her a plastic wine glass full of beautiful golden liquid, gave her a wink, and waited. Dani pushed her plate away, sipped, decided the vintage was bearable, and gave him a single nod.
Zeddie grinned and vanished. Dani sat back with her plastic glass and stared out the window, her fingers stroking her pearls.
Mable had created her persona as the aloof, uppity, well-off woman, and that background worked, allowing her to sit back and observe without it looking as if she was snooping. In real life, Dani had been married to an ambulance chasing, personal injury lawyer. She knew all about appearing to be the person your client’s adversary needed you to be. She had lived for years with a man who said there was no real truth, only shades of the truth. “Uppity woman” wasn’t her, but it was a character she could work with.
When she first arrived, she had located and cozied up to all the gossips among the inmates—ah, students. She been warned by some of the residents that Building Z was rumored to be full of former inmates. There were also rumors that all of the inmates in the school were monitored 24-7, in case their magic went wonky. Potentially wonky magic was a good excuse for surveillance. It might even be a partial truth. People whocame into their magic after age fifty often had wild magic, out of control and dangerous, but the geezer students had no way to track down the cameras, the way Mabel had, when TriDevil took the case. There were indeed cameras nearly everywhere. Everyone was under observation.
During her routine hacking job into the bowels of The Sevens’ security and records systems, Mable had also discovered that some of the inmates had disappeared, proving that the gossips’ rumors were perhaps more than just speculation. And now there were changes in Building Z, but she wasn’t able to continue staring across the quad without being observed being nosy.
According to what Margie Devoe—AKA the warden—had told the family, Franz Van Dijk had “gone missing,” just packed up and walked away from the school, without a word to anyone. His family said itcouldhave happened that way. Pop Franz had always been independent and stubborn. But his accounts had been drained and no one had seen or heard from Pop Franz for two months. And, citing privacy issues and HIPPA rights, the school had refused to provide the family any security camera footage to back up their claim that he had walked off campus and disappeared.
When the Van Dijk family came to the firm for advice, Mable had quickly discovered that at least five other inmates had gone missing in the last two years. The Van Dijks had hired TriDevi on the spot to track down Pop Franz. Marvin had assumed that the family also wanted his money back, but that wasn’t TriDevi’s concern. Their concern was Franz.
Tridevi’s current working theory was that a small group of the school’s staff was drugging and kidnapping people, moving them into magical slavery, harvesting their power. That made Building Z a potential hideaway. If so, the higherups had to know. The jackbooted security types, too. But not necessarilythe instructors, kitchen or cleaning staff, or even the medical personnel at The Sevens. They worked shifts and if a resident-student disappeared or appeared and there was a plausible explanation, why would anyone question the story they were told?
The medical people at Building Z probably never saw anything but comatose patients being admitted and thought they were working on braindead magic users who had never learned how to control their power. It wasn’t completely uncommon for magic users to sign specific Do Not Resuscitate forms, donating their bodies and power to provide for their families by allowing the harvesting of their magic.
It was a working hypothesis for what had happened to Franz. Working hypotheses had to be proven. So far, they had nothing but rumors, anxious clients, and worried old people who were pretty much prisoners in the school, people who had seen others disappear.
Mable kicked her again. Dani was going to end up with bruises.
Through the window, the staff at Building Z were still moving fast and taking no smoke breaks, acting the way they did when a VIP was on site.
The patient in the one room Dani could always see from her place at Table S—here and no place else, thanks to the perfect alignment of this table with the building across the way—was no longer in his bed. This was a subtle change, but it made her heartrate speed. The patient—possibly Franzen Rubin Van Dijk—was sitting in a chair, staring, unmoving. The black cords that usually were hung in neat coils on the wall behind the bed were now stretched from the wall to the back of the patient’s head. And if the geezers’ rumors and TriDevi’s working theory was right about Building Z, Dani was really worried for Franz.
Dani returned her gaze to the large mass of congealed meatloaf on her plate. Marvin was right about the food. Itwasdreadful. But this investigation had gone on too long, with too little to show for it. Every day they were here might be the day they slipped up and got caught, which could be a death sentence—or a sentence to Building Z where they might never be heard from again.
She looked back out the window. The truck was missing. It had moved while she had looked away.Damn it.
Mable kicked at her again but missed this time, her toes hitting the table leg. Mable sent her a pained expression. Served her right for kicking her.
Dani leaned back in her chair and checked the time on the clock on the wall. “My daughter hasn’t called yet. Have your kids called?” she asked the table in general.
Mable blew out a sigh of relief.
That started Marvin grumbling, loudly as usual, about his ungrateful kids. In real life, Dani knew, his kids were wonderful. After all, he’d made them rich. Mable began patting his hand and offering to show him pictures of her made-up, virtual grandkids, and Sandra called Zeddie over and demanded to know when she could have access to her cell phone to call her daughter.
The ruckus at Table S started all the other tables—A through T—fussing about talking to family, and no one was paying attention to her any longer because of the general commotion. Which got louder as the inmates who were hard of hearing got in on the demands. They—The Sevens—didn’t let the residents have cell phones or other electronics, because their emerging magic might make the devices malfunction or even catch on fire. Which was a bunch of hooey so far as she ever saw, but that claim kept the inmates quiescent and controlled.
Except when Marvin got them riled up.
From his seat across from her, Marvin called out, “I want my fucking phone. I need to call my ungrateful brats to bring me some decent food!” And he threw the nasty hamburger at the new chef when he emerged from the kitchen to check on the rising noise level.
