on it since it came into my possession. For one, his teamsters are now paid a living wage. Consequently, the incidents of theft are down thirty-seven percent. Soon, I shall simply sell the entire enterprise to myself, eliminating the need to perpetuate the Dugue impersonation. But I digress. I realized that Dugue wasn't fond of bets; if he invested in something, it was a sure thing. Given the obscene amount of money he'd sunk into Kamen, I revisited the matter. I went to see Adam."
"While he was under the Red Guard's supervision?"
"Of course."
So much for no visitors. I knew it was a shit job from the start. I knew Rene had denied me information. I could deal with it. But an outright lie went over the line. Strike one against Rene. "Go on."
"We chatted. Kamen was deeply damaged by his wife's death, a genius in his work, but practically nonfunctioning in all other areas of his life. It took me two visits to realize the machine was real. For a brief period I considered using it for my own means, but I've since come to my senses. It has to be destroyed."
I raised my hand. "Saiman, what does it do?"
He stared at me for a long moment. "You don't know?"
"Who is asking obvious questions now?"
Saiman leaned forward. "It destroys magic, Kate."
What? "You can't destroy magic. It's a form of energy--you can convert it, but it doesn't just disappear."
"You can also contain it," Saiman said. "Adam Kamen has built a device that collapses the fabric of magic in on itself. When activated, the device causes the magic around it to implode, converting it into a dense concentrated form. Think of it in terms of gas and liquid; if the magic's normal state in our world is gas, then Kamen's device pressurizes it into a liquid state."
He was crazy. "By what means?"
Saiman sighed. "I don't understand most of it. To be brutally simplistic, the apparatus is basically a cylinder with a reservoir within its core. The device must be permitted to charge during a magic wave for a certain period of time. Once the device is charged, it goes active. The actual process of magic cleansing takes very little time. Kamen's first prototype cleared an area half a mile across under ten minutes.
"The device pulls the magic inside its core, affecting a large radius directly around it. The magic enters the device and passes through a series of chambers. Each successive chamber causes it to implode further and further upon itself, so by the time it reaches the reservoir at the core, the magic is `liquid,' very dense. It occupies a very small volume in this state. When the next magic wave floods, the area affected by the device remains magic-free. I don't know why. I just know that it works."
My brain struggled to digest this. "We were told it was never tested." Saiman shook his head. "Kamen tested a small table model, the very first prototype he built. It was the size of a wine bottle and it cleared the magic in a half-mile radius. There is a spot in Sibley where there is no magic, Kate. I've stood on its edge and walked through it. I can give you the coordinates. The second prototype he had built was supposed to affect an area with a diameter of two point seven miles ..."
If the prototype I had seen in Rene's picture were activated, it could wipe out a small town. "What happens to people caught in the implosion?"
Saiman drained his glass. "I don't know. I can only tell you what Kamen told me, and so far he hasn't been proven wrong. He theorized that during the implosion anything that uses magic dies."
Ice slid down my spine. "Define `anything.' "
"Necromancers, vampires, creatures, your precious shapeshifters, you, me. Anyone with any significant amount of magic. We. All. Die."
Fucking shit. The entire city wiped out. Men, women, children ... By the latest estimates, at least thirty percent of the population used magic or depended on it. If the Lighthouse Keepers had the device, they would use it. It destroyed magic--they would fall over themselves in a rush to activate it and they could strike anywhere. If they turned that thing on near the Keep, Atlanta would be free of shapeshifters. Curran, dead. Julie, dead. Derek, Andrea, Raphael, Ascanio, dead, dead, dead.
I stared at Saiman. "Why would he build something like this?"
"Kamen's wife required dialysis to live," Saiman went on. "Three times a week. When