Origin (Scales 'n' Spells 1)

Cameron had gotten this explanation already, and Lisette’s way of explaining it had been long-winded and somewhat confusing. He gave his sister the answer in a way that she could instantly grasp. “It’s like trying to run a Linux program on a DOS system. The two don’t like to talk to each other.”

Her expression was one of instant understanding. “Gotcha.”

“Now I’m confused,” Dieter muttered. “Was that supposed to be English?”

“Dieter,” Ravi sighed, shaking his head. “You’re so old.”

“Shut it, you,” Dieter growled back without heat.

Melissande fortunately remained undistracted by the sideline commentary and was weaving the cat through the building. It reminded Cameron strongly of a hospital facility. The back rooms of one—the part of the hospital that didn’t see patients but where all of the testing and such happened. It was uniformly white—the walls, the tiles on the floor, even the trim—all white. The doors had only labels of numbers on them, no words.

And there wasn’t a soul anywhere to be seen.

“This is just getting creepier and stranger by the second,” Cassie muttered. “Are we in a Stephen King book?”

“It reminds me of one,” Halmeoni muttered in agreement. She leaned over to peer into the mirror better. “What is this place?”

Ravi snorted. “Watch it be some government agency building and all they do here is file and screw up people’s taxes.”

“I hope that’s all it is, but something about this building doesn’t feel right.” Alric cocked his head slightly. “I hear voices. Where is that coming from?”

Elissa tweaked the spell a little, adding a layer of hearing onto the cat to enhance the volume, and the voices came through a little clearer. Melissande followed the sound down another hallway and to a door that was opened a crack.

One voice was speaking in German—yelling it sounded like—the tone angry and frustrated. Cameron shifted from one foot to the other, frustrated because he wasn’t catching even one word in twenty. His German wasn’t anywhere close to understanding this yet.

“Lisette?” Alric requested softly. “A translation spell for those who can’t understand.”

“Oh, of course.” Lisette moved forward and touched the edge of the mirror lightly with her fingertips. “Gabofozatta gev adi.”

The words took a moment before gradually switching. “—komme U.S. Amerikan und still you lost her! And where’s the agent who went missing? Have you found him yet?”

“No, sir,” a woman answered with an audible grimace. “Our tracking spells indicate he’s dead, though. We can’t lock onto him when searching for him alive.”

“You’re telling me we lost a field operative?!”

“I’m afraid so, sir.”

“And she’s gone, the mage we discovered? Gone where?”

“She boarded a flight for Berlin, but after that we’re not sure—”

Cassie and Alric hissed in an angry breath at the same moment. Cameron swore mentally, biting the words behind his tongue. How had they known that? How were they tracking her?

“Just her? No one else was with her? And I want to know how an untrained mage was able to kill our field operative, dammit! That shouldn’t have been possible. Did she have help? Has the Burkhard clan already latched onto her through her brother?”

You better believe it, fuckers, Cameron fumed mentally.

“The flight itinerary read that Noh Ha Na, Cassie Parks, Sasha Burkhard and Baldewin Burkhard all boarded the same flight to Berlin,” another female voice inserted timidly.

“So they have latched onto them! Shit.” Two hands slammed against the top of the desk. From this angle of the cat’s perspective, he could just see through the door and the back of a broad man. There were multiple women sitting around the table, a few men’s heads visible further down. The room was obviously a conference room, the lights dimmed to allow a projection on the far wall of the room.

“Sir,” another man said from further down, “I think this calls for another plan. A simple snatch-and-grab isn’t feasible at the moment. Their guard is up. And we don’t know how much information our operative gave them before he was killed. It could be they know who we are.”

“Oh, I think they do.”

The door abruptly opened wide and a man looked down at the cat as if he could see it perfectly even through the cloaking spell. His eyes were flat grey, no true emotion showing in them. There was a smile on his face that didn’t touch the rest of him, the lines around his mouth cruel. He leaned down and picked up the cat under its front arms as easily as he would a corporeal being.

Lisette gasped in surprise and quickly darted over to Melissande’s area.

“No,” Alric told her firmly. “Wait. I want to hear what he says next.”

The mage lifted the cat to eye level and the room behind him erupted as people bit off oaths, scrambling out of their seats and staring at the cat in abject horror.

“Seems we have a little spy in our midst,” the man said in curt tones. That strange, eerie smile on his face never faltered. “A gift from the Burkhards, no doubt. I recognize the spell. Hello. I have no doubt you can see and hear me, even though I can’t see you in return. Pity, that. Regardless, tell that king of yours he can’t have the mages. He owes us more than he can repay.”