Page 9 of Snag (Conduit #2)

Not a single shard of that glass hit us as we ran. That might have been a universe-directed intervention — aka my own inadvertent essence-wielding, uncontrollable and capricious as that is. But …

“The rain as well?” I ask quietly, my mind momentarily stuttering over the sheer power contained within a single shifter. Celestial dragons, gryphons, and cu-sith are all supposed to be mythological. “The fog?”

Rought nods stiffly, gaze flicking to Coda. The tech appears to be ignoring us, though I know they’re memorizing, quite possibly even documenting, everything we say.

Rath— or more specifically, his dragon— can control the elements. Water and air, at least. Which explains how he can fly without wings.

Powerful mages, usually wielding in concert, can use spells to harness the elements. And I’ve heard of awry who can wield one or two elements — earth, fire, air, or water. But —

“Grinder and Pinky are in charge of the crew going around town today,” Rought says, not-so-subtly redirecting the conversation. “Temporarily boarding up the windows and cleaning the streets. The replacement glass is already on order.”

“I don’t keep secrets from Coda,” I say, answering Rought’s previously unvoiced question.

Coda snorts belligerently. “Yeah, right.”

“I don’t keep relevant information from Coda,” I say stiffly.

“Sure you don’t.” Coda makes a production of pointing at a currently blank monitor to their upper right.

Then, with two more clicks on the keyboard, a different interior shot of the salon appears on-screen.

It includes the entrance, the cash register, and Kris seated near the perfectly intact front windows.

Coda’s already sifted through hours of vid.

Rought whistles under his breath, quietly impressed.

Kris’s dirty-blond hair is up in a few curlers, and she’s wearing a sage-colored printed T-shirt over blue jeans. The print on the shirt is a faded sunset, trees, with a rock formation jutting out of a beach. Maybe it’s a vintage tourist design?

Not what she was wearing when waiting tables at the Tasty Tart diner where we met, and not what she was wearing to the rave later that same day.

The person talking to Kris is partially cut off on the edge of the vid screen.

They’re seated across from each other on either side of a narrow table.

The type usually used to do manicures. The angle of the vid isn’t quite wide enough to fully cover that corner of the salon.

Or the camera has been subtly nudged out of alignment …

There are other people moving around in the background of the salon, but I focus on the stranger across from Kris.

Is this the dire mage? Bellamy? She’s very … average looking. But I can’t see her eyes— or sense the corrupted essence I already know she wields.

“Recognize her?” Coda asks, grabbing a series of still shots of the stranger in profile, shifting them over to a neighboring monitor, then triggering some sort of facial-tracking algorithm.

I mean, I’m guessing that’s what they’re doing, but it seems like a logical conclusion.

“No,” Rought says, settling a hand on Coda’s desk and leaning forward to peer at the screen with a frown. “Is there something wrong with the vid or the feed?”

“Essence interference,” Coda says. “I can work around it.”

Apparently, I’m not seeing the same images or vid they’re seeing, presumably because of my inherent resistance to essence-laced …

well, anything to do with essence, really.

No matter that my hold on it all is still shaky, it’s difficult to fool the senses of the Conduit, through whom all the essence that fuels the world flows. Supposedly.

“Like … a cloaking spell?” I say. “Or a glamour?”

Coda shakes their head. “Not certain. Yet.”

“Cay and Doc Z are right there in the room with them,” Rought says grimly.

“Kris hadn’t manifested her beast yet, but there’s no fucking way that a mage powerful enough to obscure their identity could be sitting only feet away without two shifters noticing.

Not only do dire mages stink, but shifters with the …

talents of those two would pick up more than just scent. Cloaked or otherwise.”

Kitsune and pegasus, he means. Both beasts likely lend their human counterparts extra abilities, even while not transformed. Rought’s being circumspect about the nature of Cay’s and Doc Z’s beasts, but Coda already knows.

The problem with being powerful? I often don’t notice things such as glamours or other essence spells, not even when they’re directed toward me.

Not even before I was the Conduit. Though if this is the dire mage who compromised and killed Kris, they’re powerful enough to have armed Chains with spells so malignant that they took down a club full of shifters. And those spells, I felt.

As well, even when wielding essence through Kris, the dire mage erected a shield barrier that momentarily stymied my senses last night. That level of essence-wielding isn’t as simple as a nasty spell that can be precast and contained in an essence-twisted object.

Not that there was anything simple about the casting that forced an entire motorcycle club to wither in pain, transform to save themselves, then seemingly get stuck in their beast forms. And my eyes would have adjusted to the dire mage’s barrier spell that Rought’s gryphon easily tore through. Eventually.

Speaking of rare shifter abilities— the gryphon not only sensed the barrier, but dispelled it without any blowback.

“I just see a dark-haired, tanned-skinned woman,” I say. “Heart-shaped face, big eyes, thinner upper lip. She’s got a set of oracle cards, or a custom tarot deck maybe, laid out on the table before her. Her nails are extra long, painted dark red.”

Both Coda and Rought turn to me, mouths slightly agape.

“Why?” I ask, just a little pissy. “What do you see?”

They both look back at the monitor.

Rought grunts .

Coda mutters, “What the fuck?” Then they capture a new set of screenshots.

“What?”

“That’s what, or who, we see,” Rought says quietly. “Now that you’ve pointed it out.”

“That a new party trick, Conduit?” Coda asks, like a total asshole.

I sigh. “I need to know if the dire mage is still in Cascadia.”

“And if she’s not?” Rought asks.

I think about that for a moment. I shouldn’t leave the intersection point when everything still feels so unsettled. “She’s near.”

“You know?” Rought voices that deceptively simple follow-up as if he knows on a different level what it means for me to know something.

I pause, giving that question the consideration it deserves. Also, just in case the universe wants to chime in with a contrary opinion. It doesn’t. “Yes, I know .”

“Fine, good,” Coda grouses. “Give me some space and a few fucking minutes of peace and I’ll find her for you.”

Rought’s fingers twitch as if he wants to offer to help. But then he slides his hand across my lower back and waits for me to move toward the door.

I shudder under his delicious touch— but thankfully only internally. Perhaps even on an essence-only level.

“You were tracking Devlin for me,” I say to Coda, trying to keep on track. Then I add, for Rought’s benefit, “Disa’s combat mage wasn’t on the property.”

“I know,” Rought says quietly. “I’ve been looking for him as well. I’ve never been able to track Disa directly.”

That isn’t at all surprising. The universe wouldn’t allow its Conduit to be vulnerable to any sort of tracking, friendly or otherwise.

“I’ve got something for you. Took my algos way too long to find it, but …” Coda sounds uncharacteristically cautious. “You want to hear it in front of AD?”

Rought stiffens, though I’m not certain if it’s the condescending nickname or the inference that I might not trust him that bothers him. But he looks at me instead of responding directly to Coda.

“Do you need to keep secrets from me right now?” he asks, surprisingly gentle.

“Did we keep secrets from each other … before?” I ask, not at all certain why that’s a question I suddenly need answered.

His eyes narrow thoughtfully. “I don’t think so. Not you and me.”

“Yeah,” Coda interjects. “I’m still piecing together all this past shit you’ve all got going on, but secrets are a little too cutesy to encompass what might have happened here right before … you know.”

“Before I became the Conduit,” I whisper.

My gaze is already riveted to the images Coda is pulling up on the screen.

It’s mostly pictures of various people, including a recent shot of Disa that the tech got off my phone, and a few snippets of vid of locations and vehicles.

Unfamiliar at first glance. To me, at least.

Rought jerks forward as if to get a closer look. Though with his beast rimming his eyes, there’s no way he’d miss any of the details of what Coda has uncovered.

“Authority agents like to run around with these little devices that knock out tech in a localized area.” Coda pulls even more images up on the screens, moving too quickly for me to follow the threads the tech is pulling forth .

“Black boxes,” Rought rasps.

“My algos didn’t key in on Devlin until I decided to look at the issue … let’s say through a different lens.”

Rought grunts, impressed. “You’re tracking the use of the black boxes.”

Coda shrugs offishly. “Let’s call it a hobby. I fuck with the Authority in my spare time.”

“You’ve got to be up the chain of command to have a black box,” Rought says. “Legally. Which helps narrow your focus … to anything the Authority might be trying to hide, specifically from people like you.”

“There aren’t any other people like me.” Coda’s tone is flat.

Usually the awry tech is ecstatic while on the cusp of a major reveal.

“A black box might be an impediment to any other hacker, though its focus is narrow. But me … I can grab the feed from the bank across the street, find what I’m tracking …

in this case Devlin … and sharpen it enough to see inside the cafe. ”