Magic Slays (Kate Daniels 5)

"Found something?"

"We found something, alright." Henderson rose and strode farther behind the house. I followed. A large Humvee waited, parked under an oak. The canvas top was pulled back, exposing the rear bed containing two rucksacks and a plastic bin. Henderson set the bin on the ground and opened it with careful precision, as if he expected a pissed-off copperhead inside.

A simple rectangle of pale cotton lay inside the bin, displaying an assortment of herbs. Green poppy heads, hops cones, silver stems of lavender with purple petals, catnip, valerian, and a thick pale root, curved almost like a man in a fetal position, his legs bent at the knees. Mandragora. Rare, expensive, and powerful.

Traces of fine brown powder dusted the fabric. I touched it, licked my fingertip, and the familiar peppery taste nipped at my tongue. Kava kava root, ground to dust. There was enough herbal power here to put a small army to sleep.

I'd seen this before. The herbs had been combined with several pounds of dried kava kava powder, bound in cloth, treated with some heavy-duty magic, and then sealed. At the right moment the owner of this magic bundle tossed it on the ground, breaking the seal, and the pressurized magic exploded, spreading kava kava dust through the air. Instant knockout for anyone with lungs in a quarter-mile radius. They called it a sleep bomb.

The sleep bombs were invented shortly after the very first magic wave as a means of crowd control to peacefully subdue the panicked population during the Three-Month Riots. Back then magic was a new and untried force, and there was some question as to whether the sleep bombs would work. Unfortunately it was soon discovered that when the cops dropped the sleep bombs into the crowd, they worked so well that some of the rioters never woke up. The bombs were outlawed now.

Making a sleep bomb required a crapload of magic power, expertise, and some serious money. The best mandragora came from Europe, and kava kava had to be imported from Hawaii, Fiji, or Samoa. That cost a solid chunk of change. Adam had investors with deep pockets. Perhaps one of them had decided not to share the candy with the rest of the class. Sleep-bomb the guards, kidnap Adam, grab the device, keep all profits for yourself. Good plan.

I needed to get a list of those investors.

I glanced at the guts of the sleep bomb spread out on the cloth. All those herbs packed a magic wallop even when sealed. "Rene said this place was warded."

Henderson nodded. "Twice. The inner ward starts at the top of the driveway and protects the house and the workshop. The outer starts at the bottom of the driveway and circles the property."

"Are we inside the inner ward right now?"

"Yes."

"What's the threshold?" The defensive spells varied by intensity. Some let nothing through; some let specific magic through.

"If you're magic and not keyed to it, you can't pass," Henderson said. "It's a level-four ward."

The level-IV ward would keep out pretty much anything. "So a shapeshifter wouldn't be able to pass through it, correct?"

"Correct," Henderson confirmed.

"We just watched Andrea walk to the car and back. The magic is up. Where is the ward?"

We stared at the driveway.

Henderson pulled a chain from around his neck. A small piece of quartz hung from the metal next to his dog tags. He marched to the driveway and held out his hand. The stone dangled from the chain. Henderson stared at it for a long moment, swore, and turned down the driveway. I followed. At the foot of the gravel road Henderson waved the crystal again. It remained dull. Henderson looked at me. Wards were persistent spells and they didn't just go missing. It was possible to break a ward--I'd done it a few times--but wards began to regenerate almost immediately. They absorbed magic from the environment. If the wards had been broken, they should've started rebuilding themselves as soon as the new magic wave came. We were standing right at the ward boundary and I felt nothing. It was as if the defensive spells had never been there in the first place. That just didn't happen.

Besides, having your ward shattered felt like a cannon fired inside your skull. Sleep bomb or not, if someone had burst the wards, the guards would've awakened.

"The wards are gone," I said. Kate Daniels, Master of the Obvious.

"Looks that way," Henderson said.

"Were the wards present last night?"

"Yes," Henderson said.

"Sleep bombs emit magic even when sealed. You can't carry one through a level-four ward, so it must've been brought in during tech. Did Adam have any visitors?"

"No."

Muscles played along Henderson's jaw. I didn't need to spell it out. The person who had dropped five grand worth of rare herbs onto the inventor's lawn was wearing a Red Guard patch on his sleeve. And since everybody else was off in dreamland, that left Laurent de Harven as the most likely culprit. The Red Guard had a mole in it, and since Rene had handpicked people for this assignment, the buck stopped with her. She would have steam coming out of her ears.

That still didn't explain what had happened to the wards.

Andrea emerged from the shed, carrying an m-scanner printout in her hand.

"We have a problem," I told her.

"More than one." She handed me the paper. A wide strip of cornflower blue sliced across the paper, interrupted by a sharp narrow spike of such pale blue, it seemed almost silver. Human pine. That was an unmistakable magic profile, one of the first everyone learned when studying m-scans. De Harven had been sacrificed.

HENDERSON PACED BACK AND FORTH AT THE TOP OF the driveway. The three remaining guards from the graveyard shift stood in front of him at parade rest. Judging by Henderson's face, he was unleashing an ass-chewing of colossal proportions. Both Debra and Mason Vaughn, a stocky redhead, looked pissed off and embarrassed. Rig Devara did his best to pretend to be pissed off and embarrassed. Mostly he looked bored. According to the file, he was the most junior of his shift. Usually shit rolled down the hill, but by the time it got to him, there would be nothing left.

Andrea and I watched from the porch. Henderson had a lot of frustration to vent. He wouldn't be coherent anytime soon.

"We have a dead body and the weather is warming up," I said. "We have to figure out what to do with de Harven or he'll go ripe."

"What do you mean, what to do with him? We'll just call it in to Maxine and ... oh, fuck it." Andrea grimaced.

Yeah. The telepathic Order secretary, who conveniently took care of minor details like dead bodies, was no longer available. Welcome to the real world. If we called it in to the cops, they would quarantine the body. Neither one of us was law enforcement, and getting access to the corpse would be next to impossible. We might as well load our evidence into a rocket and send it to the moon.