Sorceress, Interrupted - By A. J. Menden Page 0,47

than screeching guitars and pounding drums. “Hey, Chad.”

“Cyrus, what the hell have you gotten me involved in?” the person on the other end of the line practically shrieked. I jumped at how close he sounded.

“Chad? What’s going on?”

The only response was a loud screech, one that caused Cyrus to drop the phone and me to back against the wall. It might have been my imagination, but I could swear a wisp of something curled up around the phone, like magical smoke. It went silent.

“What the hell?” I gasped.

“Can you transport us over there?” Cyrus asked.

“If you know where we’re going.”

“I can track him.” He punched buttons on his phone, whispering something that sounded like an endless repetition of zeroes and ones. I recognized it as a techno mage spell, but I didn’t know enough about such magic to know what he was attempting.

“Coordinates.” He punched more numbers into the phone, and then showed me a tiny map with a dot on the display. “Can you go here?”

“It’s a good thing I always carry the right components for this. Hold on.” I nodded, pulled a small leather pouch from my pocket and began to cast.

We disappeared from the street and appeared again in a small, cramped apartment. Chad lay at its center, body still twitching, a chair half-under him like he was sitting and got knocked down. His eyes were focused hazily on the ceiling, almost like he was looking through it. There was a burned smell, something metallic, and a cell phone was still clutched in his hand.

There was also a weird feeling in the room, and every hair on my body stood on end. It took me a moment, but I finally recognized what the sensation was: the spiritual residue from a very powerful spell. The room still felt charged, which meant the magic had just been cast.

I knelt next to Chad, feeling for a pulse. He still had one, though it was erratic.

“Can you hear me?” I called.

He didn’t blink, just continued to stare up at the ceiling.

I closed my eyes and tried to work a tracing spell; the magic here was so freshly evoked that I might be able to follow it back to its caster. What I got for my trouble was the annoying feeling of trying to recall something just beyond my grasp, like trying to remember the name of an old aunt you were introduced to at a family party twenty years ago.

“Someone’s running interference,” I realized. I said to Cyrus, “A confusion spell. Someone besides the first magic-user is helping. He’s making sure no one finds out who’s casting these spells. It’s someone very powerful.”

Cyrus frowned. “More powerful than you?”

I was uncomfortable admitting it, but: “Maybe.”

Standing up from where he knelt by his friend, Cyrus pointed to the computer. “Well, they might be able to block us magically, but let’s hope they can’t hacker-wise. Chad was on his computer when this happened. He must have stumbled across something he wasn’t meant to see. Let’s hope whatever magic took him didn’t damage his system beyond repair.”

He picked up the boxy rectangle that was the blond-haired man’s computer and gave it a glance. “It might take a bit of time and work, but I just might be able to find out what he wasn’t meant to see.”

There came a pounding on the apartment door, and Cyrus and I both jumped. “Circuit breaker popped again,” we heard from the other side. “Chad? You home? I need to come in to fix it.” We heard the jangling of keys.

Cyrus yanked the computer free of its cords. “Get us out of here now!” he whispered.

I nodded and worked the spell. We were disappearing just as an older man came through Chad’s door . . . and then we were back in the building of the Elite Hands of Justice headquarters, standing next to the elevator bank downstairs.

We stood in silence for a moment, not sure of what to say next. Everything had happened so fast.

“I’ll see what I can do with this,” Cyrus said, indicating the computer with a slight lift.

“I’ll go back to my bar, see if anyone comes in. Maybe they’ll have information,” I said. “You never know when someone’s going to decide to brag or have heard someone else bragging.”

He nodded. “I’ll let you know if I get anywhere.”

“I’ll do the same.”

But neither of us left. We seemed to be silently circling the kiss and trying to figure out the best way to respond to