Adam Ahlgren leaned up against the wall of the main room of their temporary headquarters, watching Quinn send text messages to Riordan Kincaid. He also watched the rest of the house at the same time, tracking the movements of Drika, Xavier, Vergil, and their remaining prisoner, Helena.

Splitting his awareness limited his ability to attend to each one as well as he’d like, but no one could tell he had the spell up. He’d mastered his “I’m part of the wall” body language when doing sniper work and security.

His spells weren’t anything special, far weaker than the other talented mages shunted into the Department for political reasons. Adam joined the Department because the work meant something to him. He’d been skeptical about the Department’s ability to fulfill their mandate and about the decision to work with the human government, but he’d come around after meeting the second-in-command of the Department’s active response teams.

The actual head of the active response side of the Department was a giant political tool, in both senses of that word, but Jack Russo had worked his way up to second via talent and grit and despite a bunch of elitist pushback. And once he was up there, Jack had taken particular interest in the people who were chosen as handlers like Adam because Jack had started as one.

Adam focused his attention on Quinn again. The young man was too skinny. Too pale. Sick. Corrupted and dying. Some higher ups pushed Adam to take steps to neutralize the talented death mage already, even as they kept assigning the worst of the death magic missions to Quinn.

If the man had been born a mage, he would have been a genius, scooped up and lauded by some great house. Instead, Quinn was both an inferior mundane and a magical threat, all wrapped up in one.

Life was seldom fair. Prejudice never was.

A stab of pain made Adam close his eyes briefly, letting his mind and senses recenter before returning to awareness. The spell wasn’t too expensive in resources, physical or magical, but the cost in attention to maintain it left Adam useless for anything else at the same time.

Still, it served as a distraction and a balm to the constant vigilant paranoia thrumming quietly in his veins. Adam was used to operating without much support on the ground, expected to handle the worst case scenarios potentially on his own, his usual partner being also a potential hazard. He wasn’t used to operating with allies who were compromised to an unknown extent.

He’d considered the options repeatedly since the first possibility of an information leak in the Department came up. The fervor only grew after encountering the affinity eater spell and Gloria’s escape.

The best case scenario at this point was that an outside force had managed to get magical or mundane spying equipment or personnel past all of their security. There was too much evidence now to really believe that the previous best case–that the information really came from another source–was possible.

The worst case scenario was that all of the Department personnel were compromised, whether by unwittingly reporting to a traitor or by being that traitor. Adam tried not to dwell on that nightmare scenario, because then the Department would be the tool of a person or persons using death magic and forbidden spells without any restraint.

The truth was likely somewhere in between. Some number of Department agents were compromised. Given the mage politics involved, they might not even realize they were compromised if they were simply passing information back to their families. Most of the mage-born agents had mixed loyalties as it was.

Which was why Adam had gone straight to Jack. Unlike the majority of mages in the Department–and all the rest of the members in positions of power–Jack wasn’t part of any of the mage houses. He’d been born to mundane parents in New York City, which was apparently a whole culture in itself.

Wild mages, those humans born with magical affinities from some recessive bloodline, were controversial. They lacked the cultural indoctrination and traditional training of house mages, making their magic more untrained and often unpredictable. They invented ways of controlling their magic that lacked the years of practiced efficiency inherent in legacy spells, which gave wild mages a reputation as inferior casters.

Adam had seen Jack fight. His affinities and wells were far stronger than Adam’s, for all that Adam was from a respectable branch house and formally trained. Birth had nothing to do with talent, only privilege.

More locally, Adam didn’t know who to trust among their agents. At the time that Gloria escaped, or more likely was released, Adam only had eyes on Quinn. He knew Quinn wouldn’t release Gloria, even if his ward was secretly succumbing to death corruption or otherwise bribed. The enmity there was too strong and personal, especially from her side.

Xavier had been at the cult’s compound alone for some hours prior to Adam and Quinn and the shifters joining him. Xavier was an enchanter, possibly the most talented enchanter in America even if he lacked experience. His inventions were the key point in imprisoning and restraining the death mages.

Anyone rescuing Gloria would have needed to remove those restraints. That would have been easier with Xavier’s help. He even theoretically had time to release Gloria and then reach the compound before Adam, if Xavier had timed it perfectly for as soon as Adam left to rendezvous with the shifters, though that seemed more physical than Adam would have expected for the enchanter.

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Hendrika was a mind mage. Her cooperation could have puppeted the others to temporarily help or erased memories of her actions. She is also the team leader and a clean-up specialist. She wouldn’t have been easily surprised.

Adam didn’t remember lost time that day, but she was both very good and significantly more powerful than him. Her involvement could be sufficient to explain the supporting actions from the rest of them, though Xavier and Quinn were strong enough that her magic wouldn’t have been seamless there. If she wasn’t involved, then luring her out of their base of operations would have been a priority, as well as leaving no witnesses with memories to be read.

Vergil wasn’t a mage, but he was their administrative expert. He’d been in charge of organizing and monitoring their systems and had been the one to secure the grimoire according to Department policy and in preparation of either retrieval or shipping. He knew where all the pieces were located and would know how to cover the physical trail, but had no ability to handle any of the magics, aside from the authorities granted him over some of the enchanted items as a member of the team.

He’d been the only team member on site when Gloria escaped. Vergil had a minor head wound and a gap in his memories. That could have been to cover Gloria’s trail and any active interference by the secret organization that Adam was increasingly convinced existed. It also could have been to make Vergil look like a victim and to remove signs of his own involvement before Drika could read his mind. That did make it more likely that Vergil and Drika weren’t both involved, but that was slim consolation.

All Adam knew was that their original mission was fucked and it was his job to salvage what he could using questionable resources. Helena needed to be transported away from here and to a proper prison, which required reinforcements to arrive to handle that or for them to finish enough work to spare their own people. Adam had placed his recommendation to talk to her about becoming a Department death mage, with all that entails. It was that or execution, really. Imprisoning mages was hard and death mages weren’t able to be fully rehabilitated.

Quinn had a handle on Riordan. It was a loose one, but anything tight on that man would just make him fight, as Drika had discovered. The local pack was throwing their weight around now. They could get away with it too, especially since they had done the bear’s share of the work in stopping the death mages.

Control over the new Place of Power around the greater spirit of that tree was going to be contested for months, if not years. Adam could see it already. The mages would argue that it would be too dangerous for a proper settlement, but a research location or an observation base would be suggested. Manned by mages, of course, since mages were far more scientific than shifters, blah blah blah.

The shifters wouldn’t stand for that. Adam didn’t know them well enough to guess what they would propose instead, but he knew they had respect and reverence alike for the greater spirits and would do a better job working with the tree. The mages were likely to piss the tree off, underestimating this particular spirit’s independence. That trait had been stamped into its personality by a certain stubborn badger.

Speaking of shifters, Quinn tossed his phone onto the table in front of him and stretched.

“Well, that’s a bust,” the death mage sighed.

“Riordan won’t help us?” Xavier asked, looking up from his enchanting work. He’d been creating more jars for death energy.

“Not today, though he reassures me that he hasn’t sensed anything weird from the tree today either. Apparently he’s got pack duties today.”

Vergil snorted. “Pack duties. As if their issues are more important than an escaped death mage and our ongoing investigation. The paperwork is already a nightmare. Someone should just order their assistance.”

“It doesn’t work like that,” Drika reminded him, “I might wish otherwise sometimes, but the packs still hold significant power and status. I fear the local pack, for all their domesticity, do not respond well to shows of force or authority. I’ve been leveraging some resources to get the pack councils to override the protection on their death mage shaman, but I’m still not sure how that will play out.”

“Death mages are a threat to be handled immediately and without mercy, no exception. The Code is clear. It was made that way so that shifters would have to help without objection,” Vergil grumbled.

Quinn sat up straighter. He carefully picked up his phone and slipped it into his pocket, staring at Vergil. “I agree that death mages should be given serious consideration, but as my existence proves, there is more than one option for immediate action.”

Vergil waved the objection away, though he did look slightly like he swallowed lemons. “Yes, but you have a proper handler. That’s different.”

Quinn opened his mouth to argue further but subsided when Drika waved a hand through the air. “Enough,” she said. “Our time line is already disrupted by recent events. If we aren’t going to be able to check on the tree today, that just means we return to the rest of our list of tasks. I am going to be dealing with the mundane police all day. Creighton, you are with me. We have paperwork related to the legal status of our death mages and their property to handle and I need your expertise to make it perfect.”

Vergil preened at that. For a non-mage born into a mage house, the man had a ton of pride left. Drika continued, “De la Fuente, I need you to continue on magical clean-up, assuming you feel secure in doing so.”

Xavier nodded. “As bad as the situation at the compound was yesterday, it has admittedly sped up the process of dismantling many of the spells lingering there. I will be sweeping for remnants and any that missed destruction as well as pulling any extra death energy into the jars.”

“Ahlgren, Morrish, you are on guard duty. Make sure that our remaining prisoner has no issues before her pick-up can arrive.”

“Understood,” Adam simply said, taking it all in.

The team turned to their new tasks. Adam didn’t like relying on these people to perform their duties, but he had no grounds yet to single out any of them. They were stretched too thin and overworked compared to the issues at hand, with no one to trust, not even themselves.

Adam noted that Drika didn’t assign anyone to search for Gloria or the grimoire. That could simply be because they had no leads left and no spare manpower, but it still sat poorly with him since he knew what horrors that grimoire contained. They needed more help.

Unfortunately, Adam had no idea when or in what form help would come. The situation was a mess. Right now, all he could do was wait for Jack to return his calls.

And watch. Adam was always watching.