Gloria seethed.
The informal nature of her paltry little cell worried Gloria, for all she refused to let it show on her surface. The “agents” who entrapped her existed outside the laws she knew, treating her as someone they intended to disappear rather than someone who would see a fair trial. Worse, the head agent, that bitch Heeren, used magic that Gloria had no idea how to counter, especially when wearing anti-magic chains.
She should have known that Phenalope’s obsession with that man, Riordan, would cause trouble. Gloria managed the rest of Phenalope’s growing eccentricities fine. Indeed, when the power hunger was upon Phenalope, the woman became more pliant, willing to compromise pesky morals if it gave her more power. All Gloria had to do was link the concepts of the cult being more powerful to Phenalope being more powerful and their dear leader had been more than willing to follow Gloria’s advice on how to gain proper control of the hearts and minds of their people.
There was nothing wrong with ensuring Gloria had enough power to do the important things in life. She certainly felt no regrets for her choices, aside from those that led to her capture and the loss of her hand. That man… No, that death mage! The hypocrisy of the agents showed strongly when they treated her like scum for her methods of magic, but another death mage wore their uniform and sat free on the other side of the table.
The stump of Gloria’s hand ached. The missing hand at least precluded the agents from using the numbing handcuffs that Helena had worn, but it did nothing to stop the collar they placed on her. A collar! Like she was a dog or a slave!
Gloria considered herself far too refined and in control to ever grind her teeth, but the urge remained. She wasn’t like Helena, curling up into a ball of defeat. Gloria would get out of here. And when she did, revenge would taste sweet.
Stupid, obsessed, blind Phenalope. The woman was given a gift in that tome of magic, one she guarded jealously for most of the time they had it, doling out bits of knowledge to string Gloria along. Not there weren’t apparently severe oversights in the knowledge contained there. They had stumbled upon a whole community of people aware of magic just because they didn’t know they needed to hide from them.
Or how to kill them properly. So much would have been avoided if their stupid goons had stayed long enough to make sure Riordan had bled out fully. Instead, he survived somehow and kept on surviving.
Gloria had seen the man when they recaptured him, mostly after Helena wrapped him up in a thick sleep spell. He was strong and handsome enough, if too dark for her tastes, but he had an air of having lost muscle and not eaten enough good meals. Weathered, perhaps. Nothing special. Nothing that should have been missed. The man was a cockroach.
Then there was that death mage, Quinn Morrish. He dressed like a hooligan and cast magic like a master. Gloria prided herself in being the most creative, careful, and skillful out of herself and her two friends, but the ease with which that man switched between charms and casting and strange ghosts outstripped her skill. She longed to pin him down and rape his mind much as the agent had violated her own. Only she wouldn’t stop until she learned everything from him.
Absently, Gloria wondered if she could turn a person into a grimoire. Perhaps a ritual sacrifice before binding their ghost. Or turning him into a book made of skin or a talking skull. Her imagination outraced her skill and the gap burned, feeding her simmering fury.
Oh, the things she would do.
“Do you want out?”
Gloria turned at the voice, seeing nothing and no one in her cell. With the collar on, she couldn’t use magic to sense anyone either.
“I want to see a lawyer and a full list of charges,” Gloria said, firmly sticking with her decision not to incriminate herself. “I am being detained illegally.”
“Yes, you are. The Department calls itself a law enforcement agency, but the only laws that matter are the ones that benefit it. Do you want freedom?”
“Of course I want freedom,” Gloria said, barely managing to keep from snapping after days of aggravation. “I am imprisoned against my will.”
“And what would you do if you were free?”
Gloria was hardly foolish enough to be honest with a disembodied voice in a prison cell run by mages. Providing false hope and appearing to be on her side were classic information gathering tactics, especially after letting her get isolated, lacking information and growing slowly desperate. She wasn’t going to fall for that.
“I want a lawyer and a list of charges,” she repeated. “I am a law-abiding citizen and entitled to a trial.”
“Mmm, because witch trials end so well.”
“I’m not a witch,” Gloria replied before she could stop herself. She cut herself off from embellishing further.
“No, but you are an ambitious woman whose methods are underappreciated and motivations are misunderstood. There’s nothing wrong with wanting the power to take care of yourself, after all.”
The echo of her own thoughts in that last sentence sent shivers through Gloria. Was this that mind-raping bitch or just another of the agents messing with her? And yet, the voice almost seemed like they understood.
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“Who are you?” Gloria asked.
“An ally. I have something that needs doing. You need to get out. And after that, I know someone who would think very highly of your… self-motivation and cleverness.”
Gloria sat up straighter, intrigued despite herself. “What are you asking for?”
“Your grimoire needs to vanish. I want you to take it and run.”
“So that they’ll hunt me down, charge me with escaping custody, and you can reap any benefits?” Gloria slumped, disappointed. She was hoping for a serious chance at escape but this anonymous voice acted like a hustler. “You won’t even show yourself so I have nothing to tell them if anyone asks about you.”
“You’d sell me to the agents in a heartbeat if you thought it would help you.”
“You’re rude,” Gloria huffed, even though that assessment wasn’t untrue. Gloria looked after her own interests first and foremost and she wasn’t the least bit ashamed of that. Waiting for someone else to take care of her never worked out well. She’d learned to play it smart.
“I can always leave you here. It’s wasteful, but I could settle for destroying the grimoire.”
Strangely, the threat to the book bothered Gloria more than the threat to leave her. She could take care of herself, play nice until she got a proper chance for freedom, but the grimoire represented power in her mind. The secrets of magic lay within its pages. If she had a chance to really read it carefully, really study it, then Gloria could become a god far more effectively than Phenalope ever could have and without losing her mind and wallowing in useless guilt.
Her fingers twitched slightly, craving to snatch the grimoire and cling to it, even though it wasn’t anywhere in the room.
“And how do I know that this isn’t a trap?” Gloria hissed, her greed eating into her ability to maintain her facade, “I don’t, that’s how. You hold all the cards here.”
“Then perhaps I shall have to prove my sincerity first. Forgive my intrusion.”
“What--” Gloria cut off as a sharp pain pricked at the back of her neck and the world went dark.
When she next woke, her head throbbed, but the world felt crisper. More real. With a gasp, Gloria sat up, hand flying to her bare neck.
The collar was gone.
So was her prison cell, for that matter. Gloria sat in the driver’s seat of a plain sedan, dressed as she had been before expect minus all the restraints. She took stock of her physical state and found that she felt fine, aside from the rapidly fading headache.
A phone rang and she turned to stare at the passenger seat. A bland standard phone, the sort one bought minutes for in a store and used directly, sat on top of a book in the seat next to her.
No, not a book. Her grimoire.
Gloria grabbed the book and the phone all at once, fumbling badly when she forgot again that she was missing a hand. She barely managed to release her hold on the grimoire enough to answer the call, her handless arm clutching the book to her chest. “Hello?”
“Does this make you more willing to listen?”
“Is this real?” Gloria snapped out, unwilling to take what she was experiencing at face value. “If it is, did you have to knock me out?”
“I’m taking care of myself, Gloria, just like I expect you to take care of yourself. Everything is real. Feel free to verify however you like.”
Gloria didn’t end the call, but she did shift the phone so it sat between her shoulder and ear so she could flip the grimoire open. She started by checking the spells she knew best, looking for any inconsistencies and then thumbed through the rest in case anything stuck out there. She didn’t have many spells that she knew well, having preferred to let the others do the casting once she did the planning given the gradual side effects, but she had practiced with the mental effects of death magic more than the others.
She extended her senses, checking her body and mind for interference or tracking spells. When she found one of the latter, she frowned. “Are you tracking me?”
“I don’t need to have a spell on you for that,” the voice in the phone sounded smug, “I left that there for you to handle. I was curious if you’d notice before I pointed it out.”
Unraveling the spell took more effort than Gloria would ever admit, especially with a missing hand removing some of her options for casting, but she managed it. Her reserves of magic were lower than she liked. If she truly was making a bid for freedom, she would need to find someone convenient to recharge her well.
The phone rang again as soon as she finished. Gloria hadn’t even realized that the call had ended in her distraction, but answered it.
“Slow and unskilled, but I’d say you have potential. I can give you directions to shelter and, if you prove yourself, possibly a teacher as well. You will want to get moving quickly. The agents will discover you missing soon.”
A teacher. Gloria wasn’t foolish enough to take the words as anything more than bait at the moment, but the idea filled her with excitement. Magic could do so much, but she wanted to be intelligent about how she used it. The less she had to do directly, the more Gloria would be able to accomplish in the long run. A teacher would cut out so much experimentation.
Still, such considerations were for the future. First, she needed to secure her freedom properly.
“I’ll consider your suggestions, but I make no promises,” Gloria informed her insistently mysterious caller. “First, I need to give the agents something else to deal with.”
“Oh?”
“You’ll see.”
The drive to her security drop did not take long, the serious mood at odds with the pleasant summer weather and crisp sunshine casting leafy shadows over the roads. Gloria preferred to plan ahead. She hadn’t anticipated an attack at the ritual site by some sort of inhuman mages, but that was due to lacking crucial information and poor timing. Most of her plans had centered around the main compound of the cult.
She gathered her stored supplies--emergency food, clothing, cash, magical components, and prepared charms--before reaching the item she was looking for. She had joking called it her “self-destruct button” for the compound, though it wasn’t nearly as impressive as that. Helena had drawn the line at tying in actual explosives with it, though it should fry their electronics if they were still hooked up.
Oh, and it would wake the corpses in the basement.