helipad is under twenty feet of water.”
My mouth fell open. I snapped it shut. “Oh. Yes, of course.”
“We aren’t entirely clear on how the platform sank,” Lienna added, her assessing gaze on me. “Ezra speculated in his report that the suspects’ unknown spell damaged it.”
“My thought too,” I lied.
Lienna noted that in her folder. “As for the unidentified remains found in the water—”
“I only know the sorcerers’ first names,” I interrupted nervously. “We didn’t—”
“Not those remains.” Kit arched an eyebrow. “The other remains.”
“Reconstructing the suspects’ array on the platform may be impossible.” Lienna snapped her folder closed. “But our preliminary findings suggest the reptilian remains belong to some kind of fae.”
“Fae?” I blurted.
Kit fixed those bright blue eyes on me. “Definitely fae.”
“You agree, don’t you, Miss Page?” Lienna was also giving me an intent look.
I blinked. “Y-yes. Of course. Fae.”
“Good,” she said primly. “Make sure that’s included in your report. You don’t need to add any speculation on the array carved into the platform. It’s too damaged to reconstruct.”
“Fae beasty, no guesses on what that spell was for,” Kit summarized, glancing between Amalia and me. “Let’s not stress our poor overworked MagiPol boss-people with any mentions of portals and otherworldly monsters, mmkay?”
Lienna tensed, then rolled her eyes so hard her pupils disappeared. “Does the word ‘subtlety’ mean anything to you, Kit?”
“Sure, but Robin here didn’t seem to be getting it. No offense,” he added, flashing me a grin.
I was too anxious to be insulted. “I’ve got it.”
He slid his hands into his pockets. “Good. So, let’s all forget about Arcana Flamingostra—”
“Fenestram,” Lienna growled.
“—and not turn Vancouver into an episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer.”
Amalia folded her arms. “Dunno what you’re talking about. We killed a couple sicko murderers and their freaky pet fae. That’s it.”
“She gets it,” Kit told Lienna.
Another dramatic eye roll. “Let’s go before you start spilling agency secrets.”
He followed her to the door. “It wouldn’t matter what I said if the MPD had Neuralyzers like Men in Black. There’s got to be a magic equivalent to—”
“Or you could just be more careful with what you blurt out …”
Her voice trailed off as Kit swung the door shut.
Amalia and I stood in silence for a full minute after the agents had left. Finally, I let out a long, exhausted breath.
“Well,” Amalia drawled, “that was interesting.”
“They don’t want anything about portal magic in our reports,” I mused, nervously adjusting my glasses. “They came here just to make sure our story would match Ezra’s.”
“The question is why they want to push that fae bullshit instead of finding the truth.” She waved a hand. “Not that I’m complaining. We don’t want them investigating us.”
“Unless they are … unofficially.”
We exchanged worried looks.
“Have you talked to Ezra since we left him last night?” she asked.
“I’ve texted him four times asking him to call me. No answer.” I grimaced. “Sounds like he’s been busy, though. I guess reporting what happened was the smart thing to do. Someone would’ve eventually noticed the helipad had sunk and looked into it.”
“Still, would’ve been nice if he’d given us a heads-up.” She checked the time on her phone, stuffed it back in her pocket, and scooped up her patent paperwork. “I’m going to start getting ready.”
“Getting ready? We don’t need to leave for over an hour.”
“Yeah, but this is Zora’s ‘welcome back’ party. It’s her first time at the guild since she was hurt! We can’t be late for that.” She gave me a chiding look as though I were the one who never arrived on time for anything, then headed into her room.
Smiling at her new concern for promptness, I returned to the sofa. Since my beauty routine involved a straightening iron and a tube of lip gloss, I only needed a few minutes to prepare.
The grimoire sat on the coffee table, and beside it was Zylas’s book of landscape photography. The top corner was a mess of dog-eared pages. Bemusedly, I slid the book onto my lap and flipped through all the photos he’d marked. Wildebeest herds on the African savanna, the precariously narrow mountains of Hunan Province in China, a waterfall across black rocks in Iceland, snow-crusted mountains of the Antarctic, California’s breathtaking Redwood forests, towering sea cliffs on Scotland’s coast.
As I gazed at the last one, my imagination added Zylas and me to those cliffs. Looking out across the iron seas, the cold wind whipping at us. His awe and delight—and mine. Sights neither of us had seen. An adventure I could never imagine