Tarot Academy 4 - Sarah Piper Page 0,60

trying to cast doubt on Janelle—she’s been his fallback all along. His main goal was always the archives.”

“How did my mother get involved with Eastman?” Carly asks.

“It’s a complex web,” Casey says. “One we’re still trying to untangle. Our working theory is that Eastman and Janelle’s connecting point is Phaines.”

The coffee turns to lead in my stomach.

All roads lead back to the Dark Arcana. To the mage who nearly killed me.

“Can we back up a moment?” Professor Maddox asks. “Why did you suspect Agent Eastman in the first place? I’m not well-versed in APOA politics, but I was under the impression he was one of the most well-respected agents on staff. Many of us were surprised he’d even been assigned to the Academy.”

“As were we,” Casey says. “Which, in hindsight, was the first red flag. Normally, they just send field grunts out for this sort of thing, especially for the preliminary investigations. But when word came through that the Academy needed our help, he assigned himself immediately.”

“And no one questioned this?” Maddox asks.

“He’s been my boss and mentor for many years. I trusted him. I figured he had a plan.”

“He sure did,” I say. “Just not the one you were hoping for.”

“After the student attacks,” she continues, “I asked him about enhanced security, but the idea made him jumpy. Agent Quintana and I also started feeling like he wasn’t taking our concerns seriously—evidence was dismissed or downplayed as coincidence, and our requests for additional agent support on campus were repeatedly denied, even as it became clear that we were dealing with something much more serious than we initially believed.

“On a hunch, I sent some security footage to my source at the lab and asked him to comb through the feeds. I wasn’t expecting him to implicate Eastman directly. At most, I thought maybe Eastman was covering up a mistake, hiding his own incompetence. That would’ve been shocking enough, but what we discovered was just… It was appalling.”

“As you’ve probably deduced,” Quintana says, “it wasn’t the explosion at the library that damaged the archives. That was all Eastman’s doing—I’d bet my magick on it.”

Kirin shakes his head, his shoulders slumping. “I always assumed the archives lab was one of the safest and most well-guarded places on campus. I designed the security protocols myself.”

“Eastman is very clever,” Casey says. “Once he realized what you and Stevie were working on, he made it his mission to break those protocols. He used every tool at his disposal to do so.”

“But why?” I ask. “Does he have some grand plans to steal the Arcana objects and take control of magick? If that’s the case, he’d better take a number.”

“He’s not interested in stealing or controlling magick,” Casey says. “He wants to dismantle it. He believes—militantly—that humans were never meant to have magick, and that the prophecies—something that could help us protect and nurture magick for future generations—shouldn’t be translated at all.”

She drops back into her chair, eyes flashing with genuine anger. I feel it in her energy, a hot and prickly wave mixed with a deep sense of betrayal and a good dose of self-blame.

“After my contact at the lab discovered the video doctoring,” she continues, “he went through a virtual backdoor into Eastman’s online backups and network activity. He found a trove of anti-magick propaganda, including pseudonymous memberships on some of the most extremist anti-magick forums in existence. Worse, he found evidence tying Eastman to high-level non-magickal authorities working to stamp out magick. Unless it’s all part of some elaborate frame job, William Eastman has been ratting out magickal practitioners throughout the country—including some of the very families who work for him.”

The enormity of that settles in, weighing heavy on us all.

Nat, who’d been quietly braiding her multi-colored hair, finally pipes up. “Why the fuck does he still have a job? What he’s doing has to be illegal, right?”

“Legal is a term reserved for non-magickal authorities,” Casey says. “And he’s helping those authorities. In terms of APOA ethics, yes, he’s breaching every last one of them. But my contact is still working on securing admissible evidence. Unfortunately, most of APOA has their hands full protecting the larger community from the ongoing attacks and false arrests.”

“If Eastman is so bent on destroying magick,” Baz says, “and he’s working to frame witches and mages in the community at large, why bother with us?”

“He wants to end magick,” Casey replies. “Completely. What better place to start than the Academy responsible for honing the minds and magickal skills