Midnight Marked (Chicagoland Vampires, #12)(95)

“Caleb Franklin and his killer,” I said. “Both supernatural misfits, and both fell in with Adrien Reed. It’s like he’s a magnet for sociopaths.”

“Yeah,” Luc said. “We just need to find his sorcerer. I know this isn’t much, but I wanted you to know that he has an identity now. A name. A file with NAVR, which we will be updating.”

I gave the picture one last look and handed it back to Luc. “Thank you. I appreciate it.”

He nodded, and Ethan put an arm around me.

“It seems like all this is going to come to a head pretty soon,” Luc said. “We may not find him by then—this Logan. But sooner or later, we’ll find him.”

I doubted we’d have to wait that long. He’d probably find us first. But for now, we had bigger concerns.

“Put him on the back burner,” I said. “We have bigger news.”

“Oh?” Luc glanced between us.

“We have a cipher for the rest of the alchemy—the symbols we couldn’t translate. And the cipher was on Reed Industries stationery, which my grandfather thinks is enough for a warrant for Reed.”

Luc whistled. “Productive trip.”

“Damn straight,” I said. “I’m going to go upstairs, help Paige to finish the translation.”

“Do that,” Ethan said. “It’s that, or lose Chicago . . . and possibly ourselves.”

? ? ?

Two hours later, Paige and I stood in the library in identical poses: legs spread, arms crossed, chins down. The shifter-vampire teams had delivered the rest of the symbols from the QE’s tangents, and we’d arranged all the posters on their respective easels and marked them up with Caleb’s cipher. When we’d marked everything up, we took more photographs, sent them to Mallory and Catcher for the countermagic, and then walked the entire QE like a labyrinth, trying to ferret out from the magic the details of Reed’s plan.

We weren’t comforted.

“There’s nothing that suggests this is limited to shifters,” Paige said, squinting as she leaned in to look at one of the panels in the inner circle. She touched a finger on one of the symbols Caleb had decoded, which looked like an asterisk with a circle around it. It actually meant “magic” and, when paired with the skeleton icon, seemed to refer to those of us who possessed magic or were magical, whatever the form or degree.

“And I don’t want anyone poking around in my brain,” she added, standing straight again.

“Me, neither,” I said, and purposefully made myself put away the fact that Logan had already tried.

As far as the mechanics went, Mallory had been right on. The equation moved from one panel to the next, back and forth in a way that mirrored the magic of a sorcerer (illustrated by the drawing of a crucible) against that of the vampire (a crescent moon). Like the layers of glass in a camera lens, we thought the mirroring focused and magnified the magic. And when coupled with the waves of nullification would basically substitute the evildoers’ will for the supernaturals’.

It was terrifyingly creative.

The library door opened, and we both glanced back. Ethan walked in. His expression was too neutral for me to gauge his mood, but his magic was all over the place.

“Your grandfather just reported in. Detective Jacobs got a judge and got a warrant for Reed’s downtown offices. They’re preparing to execute it right now. He also called Nick Breckenridge, advised him of the search. He’ll be in place if they collect anything.”

Nick Breckenridge was a family friend, and a very well-respected journalist in Chicago. He had a Pulitzer for his investigative journalism, and would do a thorough job with Reed.

“They’ll collect something,” I said. “I don’t know what, and I don’t know how much, but Reed’s too arrogant not to have something about the Circle close at hand. He thinks he’s invincible. That will have made him sloppy.” I frowned at Ethan. “That’s good news, so why do you look unhappy?”

“If Reed doesn’t already know, he’ll find out. That may accelerate whatever else he has planned.”

“That’s a risk,” I agreed. “That’s why everyone is doing their part.”

He looked at the easels. “And how are you doing?”

“Good on the magic,” Paige put in. “Dire on the results.”

Ethan crossed his arms, expression transitioning to Masterly concentration. “And how does it work?”

Paige gave him the summary. “It’s very clever,” she concluded. “And narcissistic, and a smidge sociopathic. But very clever.”

“That sounds about right. Will it work?”

“Kyle Farr is evidence it already worked,” she said. “But on a smaller scale. We figured the symbol had to have a purpose—some reason to use that much magic, that much energy, for it to just be a laser light show.”

Ethan slid his hands into his pockets and regarded us with Masterly suspicion. “Why do I feel like you’re preparing me for something?”

“Because we are,” Paige said. “We think it’s a boundary. Or, maybe more accurately, a net.”

“A net . . . ,” Ethan began, then trailed off as realization struck him. “For the supernaturals in its border. The magic is supposed to reach all the supernaturals within its territory?”