The Agency

I still don't know what I'm going to call this one.

I did, however, realize that I've officially been writing the Agency for an entire year. A year! No wonder there's so many stories. *laugh* I need to update the archive of completed stories; I think "The Lost" is the most recent one up there.

Anyway. On with the weirdness.



Someone was singing.

Sara drifted in a dark sea of peace and pharmaceuticals, floating on her back, staring up at an imaginary sky full of stars, bound by the arm of the Milky Way. Water lapped around her and kept her insulated from thought and fear.

For a long time the only sound was of her heartbeat, but gradually she became aware of a second rhythm, much faster and higher-pitched than her own, coming from the epicenter of everywhere and nowhere. The two together brought to mind a drum circle, and she thought of dancing; it had been a long time since she’d danced.

Soft and low, she heard the song begin, and she tried to remember where she’d heard it before. Hadn’t it sounded like it was underwater? Or was she, too, underwater, floating beneath the ocean instead of on top of it?

Giving up on such thoughts, she relaxed again, and let herself drift, the tide carrying her up and down as the strange faraway music carried her.

When she woke she was still drifting, but the dark night and the ocean became brighter and resolved themselves into white walls and fluorescent lights. She blinked, unable to make sense of it.

A face peered into hers: female, lovely, with flame-red curls. “Sara?”

Her tongue felt thick in her mouth, but she asked, “What happened to the music?”

A frown. “Do you know where you are?”

“Not really.” Was that her voice? The words were definitely English, but sounded so funny. Hoarse, jagged at the edges, as if someone had rubbed it with sandpaper.

“You’re in the infirmary. You’ve been here since last night. Do you remember what happened?”

Everything was blurry. The face above her kept changing shape, but she was pretty sure she knew who it was. Name…name, name…Sage! Yes, Sage. "No."

"You were attacked. It was pretty bad. Rowan healed you."

Sara tried to laugh. "I don't feel very healed."

"Are you in pain? I'll get Dr. Nava."

Before she could protest Sage had disappeared, but that was all right; talking was taking a lot of effort. She wasn't in pain--she couldn't feel much of anything--but she had meant what she'd said. She could tell that if she weren't stoned out of her mind she would be hurting and probably fairly miserable.

Dr. Nava's dark head appeared in her line of sight. "Welcome back, Sara. How are you feeling?"

"I don’t know."

Sage said, "She doesn't remember anything."

Nava nodded. "She's still got a lot of drugs in her system."

Something awful occurred to Sara, and she reached down to her stomach, patting with clumsy hands, finding the bulge still there. "Baby?"

"The baby is still here. You went into premature labor, and you almost miscarried, but as far as we can tell everything's where it's supposed to be. I have to be honest with you, though, Sara; we can't be 100% sure that she wasn't affected by this. Her vitals are stable but you could still lose her if we're not very, very careful."

She saw movement in her peripheral vision, and another face joined Sage and the doctor. A hand touched her forehead gently. She smiled.

"How are you, anama?" Rowan asked.

She made a noncommittal noise. "You tell me, you fixed me."

The Elf sighed. "As much as I could. My knowledge of human anatomy is limited."

"You've always been pretty good with mine," Sara murmured.

Rowan chuckled. "That's my girl." He looked over at Nava. “How is she?”

“Dazed from the drugs, but she should be up and around in a day or so. As far as I can tell no damage was sustained to her body. Only time will tell for sure if the baby’s going to suffer for it.”

Rowan lowered his eyes to Sara’s belly, then placed his hand there. Sara felt him concentrating; they had a connection of their own, from so many months of working together and sleeping together, and she could tell when he was moving energy around even without invoking her own gifts.

He ran his power through her lightly. Obligingly, the tramera kicked.

The Elf smiled. “She’s all right. It almost felt like she was waving hello.”

“Hi, Dad,” Sara murmured sleepily, letting her eyes close halfway. “Things are great in here…just chilling out in the pool.”

“Why don’t we let you get some more rest,” Nava said. She reached over and picked something up, then lay it by Sara’s hand. “There’s the call button if you need something.”

Before they could leave, another person appeared, this one dark-haired with insanely blue eyes. “How’s the patient?”

“Aw,” said Sara, noticing that her words were getting more and more slurred, “Did you come down here to see me? I’m touched.”

Jason raised an eyebrow and smiled. “Actually I came to find Rowan. He’s needed. Urgently.”

Rowan frowned. “Why?”

“Another quickie in the broom closet,” replied Sara.

Jason rolled his eyes. “Once. That happened once. Now, if you’ll excuse us…”

He and Rowan popped out of sight, and Sara shrugged inwardly. Quickie, actual business, whatever. She had a nap to take.


*****

When Rowan laid eyes on Aradia through the interrogation room’s glass panel, Jason had to grab his arm to keep him from charging into the room and doing something that, while satisfying, would probably be detrimental to the case.

“Whoa there,” Jason said calmly. “We need her to talk.”

“People talk when they’re in pain,” Rowan snapped, but he yielded to Jason’s cooler head and stood still.

“You’re here to read her, and to back me up. I can’t let you stay if you’re going to threaten her.”

Rowan took a deep breath and tried to ground himself. “You’re right. I’ll be fine.”

“Do you want to link via the Ears, or telepathically?”

Rowan made an impatient noise. “I don’t need an Ear.”

“Okay. Can you tell me anything about her? First impressions?”

Rowan studied the frowsy woman at the table, who was staring around her with terrified eyes, her hands clenched together in front of her. She, like Sara, had been snatched from her home in her pajamas in the middle of the night, but had been allowed to throw a cardigan over her Hello Kitty tank top.

He scanned her and frowned. “She’s about as psychic as a block of wood. I’d put her at a 2, telepathically. She’d be able to do basic ritual magic, but would get unimpressive results without a group to back her up. She’s a good channel, though—someone could work through her easily.”

“Do you sense any kind of outside drain, like a link to the Reaping Sphere?”

“Not immediately. I don’t think she’s good enough to conceal something like that. I’ll know more once you’ve got her talking.”

Rowan watched as Jason entered the interrogation room, his demeanor instantly changing from relaxed to all-business. He had drawn energy tightly around him and flooded it with darkness, something Rowan wasn’t sure he knew he did, sort of like a glamour—but this was no illusion. It was simply a part of Jason he usually downplayed.

When the woman saw him she went deathly pale, her eyes flicking from his face to his gun and back again.

Rowan snapped on the speaker so he could listen, and opened a psychic channel between himself and the vampire.

Jason flashed his badge and introduced himself, whereupon the woman immediately launched into a stammered profession of innocence. She didn’t know why she was here; she hadn’t done anything. It was about as believable as it was articulate.

Rowan crossed his arms, thinking back to when it had been Sara on the other side of the glass, and he had been watching Jason question her. He remembered the feeling, the second he’d seen her, that she was going to become very important to the Agency. He’d also known she was trustworthy. This Aradia person gave him no such feeling. She was out to save her own ass, that was all.

“Do you recognize this?” Jason asked, laying a plastic evidence bag with the cursed bone in between them on the table.

She stared at it, swallowing. “N—no.”

“This,” Jason said, ignoring the tears that were tumbling from her eyes, “is a child’s finger bone. We don’t know who it belonged to or how he died, but we do know that someone stole this bone and put a powerful hex on it. We also know that the coven you’re associated with has participated in the murders of at least two people, and that its leadership made threats against Sara Larson.”

“Sara? What happened to Sara?”

“Look at that symbol and tell me what you think.”

Aradia didn’t touch the bone, but she stared at it, still shaking her head. “I don’t understand.”

[She won’t touch it,] Rowan pointed out. [She’s not psychic enough to sense it’s dangerous. She must know what it’s for.]

“Why did you try to kill Sara Larson?”

“I didn’t! I swear I didn’t know anything about it!”

Jason remained completely unreactive to her borderline hysteria, and said, “You know, if you were coerced into acting by Blue Moon, and were willing to testify as such, we could make a deal.”

Rowan opened himself further, scanning her energy, watching it spike in accordance with her emotions. If she was linked to the coven at all there would be a cord between them and her, and if she’d been the agent of the attack there would be some kind of line from her to the bone.

“It wasn’t me,” she insisted. “Anyone could have put that in her drink. What about the guy at the counter who poured it? Are you hauling them out in the middle of the night too?”

Jason smiled. “No need.”

Rowan, too, was smiling, grimly. [It’s starting to show. Keep it up—I’ll have a conclusive link in a moment.]

“Miss Johnson, at no point have I mentioned the bone ending up in Sara’s drink.”

Aradia froze, realizing what she’d given away. “I was guessing,” she said. She saw the look on Jason’s face and actually pushed her chair back to put more space between them. “I didn’t have anything to do with it.”

Rowan’s attention latched onto a single tiny leak in the woman’s aura, and he honed in on it. [Got it. They’re watching her. The attack may not have been her idea but it was her hand that acted.]

Seething hot anger rose up inside Rowan, and he stared daggers into her, while Jason continued his line of questioning this time with the assumption of guilt. Rowan knew she was going to crack, but that they wouldn’t get anything useful out of her—these people had trained her well, and she’d go to the grave before betraying them.

We’ll see about that.

Rowan pulled open the door to the interrogation room, striding in with deadly purpose. Jason looked up at him in surprise.

“What are you—“

Without answering, Rowan reached down and hauled Aradia to her feet. She squeaked and struggled, but his grip was like iron; before she could speak he seized her mind in mental hands as rough as his physical one.

“Tell me,” he hissed.

He felt a hand on his shoulder and heard Jason say urgently, “Rowan, let her go.”

Rowan’s head snapped around to the vampire’s, and when Jason saw the look on his face, he withdrew his hand and took a step back.

“Tell me why I shouldn’t kill you,” Rowan said to the woman.

She was sobbing now. “Please, please—I didn’t want to. They said if I didn’t do it I’d be next. Please.”

“I don’t believe you.”

He heard Jason say into his Ear, “No…stand down. I’ve got it under control.”

Aradia was still crying, incoherent now. “Fine,” Rowan said. “We’ll do this the hard way.”

He tightened his hold around her and pried her mind open, an easy task since there wasn’t much in the way of shields to stop him. He dug through until he could get a clear shot at the link between her and the coven. She tried to fight him off, weakly, and he paralyzed her mind for a moment so she wouldn’t accidentally hurt herself.

The link was cleverly concealed, and thready at best—even a month ago he wouldn’t have been able to follow it. But things were different now.

He dove in after it and traced it northward, toward Dallas. That wasn’t unexpected. What did surprise him was that once it reached DFW, it split. The main branch connected her to the coven, but the coven in turn was connected to…someone else. Someone more powerful than all the Witches put together, something that was pulling their strings.

Someone…

No. It can’t be.

Before he could withdraw, he felt something emerge from the link, a dark and twisted energy blasted toward them. It raced along the link like black lightning, and Rowan had to drop his hold on Aradia to shield himself from the onslaught.

The blast hit him like a train, his mind suddenly full of shadows and fire, and agony squeezed him in its fist. He realized, almost too late, that through him the energy could reach Sara, and Jason, and potentially everyone at the SA, and that its intent was murderous and angry at being discovered.

Rowan threw his power into his shields, slamming them up so hard that the attack struck him and bounced back, reverberating along the link until it returned to its creator.

He heard, or felt, a scream.

Energy sizzled through the room. Aftershock after aftershock hit him, and he grounded them out as best he could, but he could feel the building shaking, hear a cacophony of alarms blaring.

Rowan was shaking hard as he opened his eyes. His body was covered in sweat but he was freezing, and the arms around him weren’t helping.

“Hold still,” Jason said. “Nava’s on her way.”

The vampire’s voice was tight with tension, and Rowan started to reassure him he was fine, but it occurred to him that might not be true. He couldn’t seem to move.

“The girl,” he croaked.

Jason looked over past Rowan’s shoulder, then back down. “Dead.”

“Sara?”

“As far as I know she’s fine. Whatever the hell that was, it was contained to this room and a few tremors. Rowan…”

He knew what Jason was saying even without the words. “I didn’t kill her.”

“Maybe not. But you’d better hope Ness believes you.”

Rushing feet, and Rowan closed his eyes, listening as a med team surged into the small room, crowding it with voices and equipment. He heard them examining Aradia and pronouncing her dead.

“Ness,” Jason said, “I’m prepared to testify—“

“Don’t worry about it yet, SA-7,” Ness cut him off. She sounded angry, though surprisingly, not at either of them. “The Eyes got the whole thing. The second the energy in the room rose they started recording. That’s not to say SA-5 is off the hook. He and I are going to have words as soon as he’s fully conscious.”

Normally Rowan would have been upset at that, but he was too busy not screaming from the headache that was now pounding between his eyes. He whimpered and covered his face with his hands.

Dr. Nava knelt beside them and coaxed Rowan onto his back, saying, “From what you’ve told me, Ness, it’s probably just energy shock—he’s been through this before. Do you know where you are, Rowan?”

Rowan nodded. “Too bright.”

“Keep your eyes shut a minute, then. I just need to get your vitals.”

He obeyed mostly because he didn’t have any other option, and felt Nava poking around for his pulse and holding her stethoscope to his chest. Then she placed a cold metal disc on his arm—the digital scanner—and hooked it up to her computer. A moment later, there was a series of beeps.

“As I thought. He’ll be all right. Good thing he didn’t have any electronic equipment on him, like the inhibitor or an Ear, or it would be fried. SA-7, take him downstairs and put him to bed.”

Rowan listened to the voices and noises all around him, keeping his hands over his eyes as the thunder rolled in his head. He wanted to have some kind of emotional reaction to what had happened, but it was too soon—whether from the pain or the shock, he felt frozen inside. But there was one thing he absolutely had to do.

“Ness,” he said weakly. “I need Ness.”

“Yes, Rowan?” she bent over him, close enough that he could smell her perfume: lilacs. It seemed a little…girly…for her, but that was Ness, a study in contradictions. Just like the rest of them.

“The coven.” He forced the words out past waves of unconsciousness. “They’re working for someone. I followed the connection from the girl to them, and then to their boss. That’s who attacked me. They realized who I was and panicked.”

“We know that,” Ness replied. “It was pretty obvious from the readout on the Eyes.”

“But…when I found them…they knew me. And I knew her.”

“What? Who was it?”

He took a deep breath around a hard knot of what he knew was going to turn into grief. “It was my mother.”