He nods. “It means we won’t actively monitor you and you can use your powers how you please—within the bylaws of the IBMA.”
I wince. “New laws?”
“Afraid so,” he says, then hands me a thin bit of metal. “This is new, thanks to a very wild witch we’ve been dealing with for the past two years. It has everything you need to know in it, and a contact form for anything it doesn’t.”
I accept the little plate and look at each side. There’s nothing to it at all.
“Just hold it up like you would your phone and activate it with your magic,” he says, registering the perplexed look pinching my eyebrows.
I focus on pushing my magic into the plate and it comes alive with an orange sparkle. Laurence’s face projects from the top in stunningly accurate 3D.
“Hello, Caitlin Kennedy. What do you want to know?” the projection asks.
“That’s interesting,” the real Laurence behind the desk says.
I look at him curiously and he goes on.
“You put my face in it.”
“You didn’t put your face in it?”
He shakes his head. “They were designed to adapt to the witch’s magic, and yours is, well, really good at mimicry. Uncanny, even.”
He leans in with a grimace as he touches his head.
“Does my hair really do that in the back?”
“It’s probably just a malfunction,” I say as I stop the flow of magic to the device.
His eyes narrow on the side of the desk, then on me. “Liar.”
I can’t contain my grin. “Yeah, sorry. You’ve got Alfalfa energy.”
He groans as he moves around the side of the desk, holding the back of his head. “You’re free to go.”
“Um, how?” I ask.
There’s a little menace in his smile as he says goodbye and taps me on the shoulder. Light sucks me out of the room and drops me back in the atrium, where Amyrah is waiting for me…
But isn’t alone.
forty-four
A Delightful Surprise
My gaze darts between the hulking red demon, the agile looking blue one, and the two women flanking them. They notice me just a second later and one with curly brown hair jumps and waves with excitement.
“Heyyou!” she shouts like she knows me. “Come here!”
I glance over my shoulder just to be certain she’s calling out to me and when it’s obvious there could be no one else, I take a few tentative steps. The closer I get, the more I recognize the demons. Despite being different colors, they have similar features to Bastian.
It can’t possibly be a coincidence.
They’re both winged, clawed, tailed, fanged monsters. Over six feet. Muscled or outright beef slabs. The differing features beyond color are that the red one has golden fissures snaking across his arms and shoulders like a cracked lava flow, and the blue has swirling, icy, tribal designs that pulse softly.
I stop next to the girl who can’t be much older than twenty, sporting short black hair with two red dyed strips framing her face.
She nods to me. “Big brother got your deets, huh?”
