MAYORAL PRIVILEGE

When I was dressed, fed, and katana'd, I walked back to the front of the House. I was on my way to Malik's office - I thought I'd give him a direct report - when I heard shouting.

I didn't like the idea of shouting in the vicinity of my Master, so I put a hand on my katana to keep it balanced and ran down the hal . I found Luc and Malik in his office.

The door was open, and they stood in the middle of the room, both with arms crossed. Their expressions were blank as they listened to a news report from a very expensive stereo. Both looked over and offered a nod of acknowledgment.

"And this man," said the woman on the radio, whom I guessed was the mayor, "this col eague of mine, was accosted by vampires on the street. And then he was questioned by the police as if he was to blame for it. What is this city coming to if these are the kinds of shenanigans playing out on our streets right now?"

McKetrick. I closed my eyes rueful y. Not just because he had been released - and so much for that plan - but because I'd played right into his hand. Granted, I was guilty only of walking down the street and defending myself, but he had friends in high places, and his version made a much more interesting headline.

Kowalczyk started up again. "I am, however, very happy to announce that by the end of the evening, supernatural registration wil be law. By the end of the night, we'l have the authority to track the location of supernaturals across the city, and they wil no longer be able to surprise citizens on the street."

With a sickened expression, Malik reached over and flipped off the radio.

"That woman is a piece of goddamned work," Luc spat out. "Who does she think she is, and how stupid is she that she believes McKetrick?" He blew out a breath and linked his hands atop his head. "She's a fascist with an ache to be president, and she isn't going to stop."

"Not while there are headlines to be made," Malik agreed. He looked at me. "Keley told me what actual y went down, that you arranged for Catcher to pick him up.

I'm hopeful he at least got some useful information before the release?"

"I'm going back to visit Tate. Catcher should be there, and I'l ask for the details."

"You're thinking Tate is in play?" Luc asked.

"I think, at a minimum, he knows what's going on." I told them about the old magic Claudia had mentioned and the scents of lemon and sugar that Catcher hadn't been convinced were meaningful.

But that didn't seem to faze Malik. "You stand Sentinel of this House for a reason, Merit. He trusted you. I trust you.

Luc trusts you. Your instincts are good. Fol ow them where they lead, and we wil support you whatever the result."

He may have taken the reigns of the House in regrettable circumstances, but there was no doubt he was a Master.

The second verse of getting to Tate was pretty much the same as the first, except for the part about careful y skirting the men with large guns who stood in front of the House.

I drove toward the lake and met Catcher at the factory gate. He looked exhausted, and I wasn't sure if the problems in the city or his sorceress were responsible for the bloodshot eyes.

"I hear McKetrick's back on the street."

"I heard the broadcast," he grumbled. "We didn't have a secure facility for interrogation. We cal ed Jacobs, who hauled him in. He questioned him through the night, let us sit in." That explained the exhaustion, I thought. "At least until the mayor cal ed and Jacobs had to let him go. I assume he trotted down to her office and they concocted the story."

"Did you get anything out of him?"

"Not much - but I'm not sure he has much to hide.

McKetrick's pretty clear about his position on vampires.

Genocide's a harsh word, but I wouldn't put it past him."

"Let's hope Kowalczyk is smart enough not to buy in. I don't suppose he gave up the location of his facility?"

"He did not. But he did give up his fingerprints and a little DNA, and we got another set from the gun you brought in.

That gives us something to work with if he starts making trouble."

"I suppose that's something," I conceded, but wondered if that data had been worth the risk. McKetrick was going to be pissed, and the episode was only going to tie McKetrick and Kowalczyk closer together. She'd rescued him, and that wasn't going to be something either one of them forgot.

He pul ed to a stop in front of the building, and I realized uniformed CPD guards, not fairies, were guarding it.

"This is a bad idea," I quietly said, surveying the officers, who al looked like rookies just out of training - and undoubtedly had no defenses against whatever magic Tate wielded.

"They're the reason we were able to get in at al ," Catcher said. "Chuck served with one of their grandfathers, and he cal ed in a favor. The boys in blue are loyal to each other."

"Maybe so," I said. "But these kids are no match for Tate.

He was able to manipulate Celina, and she's as stubborn and resilient as they come."

"There's no other choice," he said. "Chuck had to fight to keep Tate separated from the rest of the prison population.

To tel you the truth, I'm not sure if it's better or worse that Tate's no longer mayor. He started off strong enough - opened the Ombud's office. He was a real supporter of Chuck."

"Until he started manufacturing drugs and attempting to control vampires?"

"There is that," Catcher agreed. "I'm not saying those were good deeds. I just think they're anomalies in the bigger scheme of Tate."

I didn't disagree the change was odd, but I thought it revealed true colors Tate hadn't been able to hide any longer. "Scheme," I thought, was the key word.

I hopped out of the cart, offered up my weapons, then glanced back at Catcher. "You're staying here?"

He'd already pul ed out a book and was flipping through the pages. "Right here waiting, just like the song. I'm scanning the Ordernin>

Given his obvious exhaustion and tireless efforts, I managed not to make a juvenile joke about the "annals" of an organization with the acronym U-ASS.

"That sounds perfectly reasonable."

"We'l see," he grumbled in response, but he was already scanning the pages.

I headed for the door. The kid in uniform offered me a salute, then opened the door to the building. A second uniform stood point at the steel door that led into the office.

"Ma'am. Be careful in there," he said, and when I assured him I would, opened the door and let me inside.

It immediately slammed shut behind me.

I jumped a little, which wasn't exactly the brave facade I'd hoped to put on for this meeting.

"I don't bite, Bal erina," Tate cannily said. In his orange jumpsuit, he was seated at the aluminum table again. Since he clearly wasn't going to use my name, I didn't bother to correct him. I'd also already decided it was useless to play games with a liar, so I sat down across from him and got down to business.

"Are you the one manipulating the city right now?"

He looked back at me, head slightly tilted, his expression inscrutable. "I don't know what you're talking about."

His tone was equal y opaque. I couldn't tel if he was being sarcastic or if he was truly surprised by the question.

I decided there was no point in not putting al my cards on the table - not when the city was at stake.

"The lake went dead. The sky turned red. I understand we're seeing elemental magic, symptoms that are popping up because the city is unbalanced. We've seen water and air so far. Fire and earth could be next."

"And?"

I paused, picking a tone to offer up my theory. I opted for Ethan's "Slyer Than Thou" voice. "It's the strangest thing, Tate. Whenever I'm in your presence, I smel lemon and sugar - like cookies baking."

His expression stayed flat, but his pupils had narrowed just a smidge. I was on to something.

"Yesterday, while the sky was red, it rained. And I smel ed the same thing." I linked my hands together on the table, and leaned forward. "I know you're doing this. And you're going to tel me how to stop it, or we're going to go a round. Right here. Right now."

Okay, I might have gone a bit overboard on the last bit, and not just because I had no weapons and wasn't entirely sure what he could do. But Tate ignored the bravado.

"If I am the maker of these events, how, exactly did I arrange them from my humble abode?"

"I hadn't exactly gotten to that part."

He made a sound of disdain. "You hadn't gotten to any part. You could hardly be more wrong, and that bodes as poorly for the city as anything else. It is not in my nature to produce that kind of magic."

"What are you?" I asked him.

"If this magic isn't mine, why does it matter?"

"How could it possibly not matter?"

Tate frowned and shuffled in his chair. "Humans have an irritating desire to group their fel ow men and women into categories. To give them a type, and to give the type a name, so that by definition 'they' are otherwise. 'They' are not who 'we' are. Frankly, I find the endeavor exhausting. I am what I am, just as you are what you are."

A confession from Tate - of his magical identity and his responsibility for the water and sky - would have been nice.

But I knew when to push and when to listen. And even if he wasn't going to confess, he seemed to honestly believe he understood what was happening. That was definitely worth my time.

"If you didn't have anything to do with this, then tel me who did. Explain to me what's happening."

Slowly, a smile curved his lips. "Now this is interesting.

You asking me for information. For a favor, as it were."

"It's not a favor if I'm helping save the city you swore an oath to protect."

"Oaths are overrated. You've sworn them as wel , did you not? To protect your House?"

"I did, and I have," I growled out. He hadn't expressly suggested that I'd broken my oaths - presumably by failing to protect Ethan - but it rode beneath his words.

"Hmm," he noncommittal y said. "And if I was to give you this information, what's my incentive? My payment? My boon?"

"The public good?"

He laughed heartily. "You amuse me greatly, Bal erina.

You real y do. And while I enjoy Chicago, there are plenty of cities in the world. Saving this one is hardly incentive enough for the kind of information you're talking about."

It wasn't surprising that he wanted payment for the information. But I didn't want to offer up a prize without a little negotiation.

"I owe you nothing," I told him. "If anything, you owe me.

You're responsible for my Master's death."

"And the death of your enemy," he pointed out. He leaned forward over the table, hands flat on the tabletop, and stared at me like I was the subject of his psychological experiment. Which I probably was. "Does it bother you that you've kil ed? That a life was extinguished by your hand?"

Don't take the bait, I reminded myself. "Does it bother you that you were the true cause of her death?"

"Let's not get into a philosophical discussion about causation."

"Then let's agree that you owe me one, and you can tel me what you know."

"Interesting tactic, but no."

Probably not surprising that his questionable ethics didn't prompt him to help me out of his own accord. "What do you want?"

"What do you have?"

I thought about the question. Honestly, I didn't have much.

My dagger and sword were outside with Catcher. I didn't have much else of value beyond the family pearls in my room and the signed basebal Ethan had given me, and I wasn't giving those up.

While I considered the question, I absently touched the Cadogan medal aroogad wereund my neck. Tate's eyes widened at the move.

"That would be an interesting prize."

Instinctively, I cupped my fingers around it. His expression was guarded, but clearly sincere. I wasn't sure about his motivation, but unlike the fairies, I didn't think his interest was in the gold. Did the medal have magical properties? I'd never thought to ask. Regardless, it was precious to me.

"There's no way in hel you're getting this."

"Then we have nothing to talk about."

I recal ed the first time I'd made a bargain with a supernatural creature. "How about I owe you a favor? A boon of some kind?" That offer had worked with Morgan Greer, now Master of Navarre House, but Tate didn't seem impressed with it.

"You're a vampire. You could renege on your offer."

"I would never," I said, but since there's no tel ing the kind of favor Tate would extract, I silently admitted there was a possibility I wouldn't go through with it.

Tate sat back. "We're done here. You can solve this problem on your own. Perhaps one of your friends could help you. They're sorcerers, no? They should be able to explain things to you."

Should be able, but were at a loss, I thought.

I touched the pendant again, running my fingertip across the engraved letters. The medal had been mine since I was Commended into the House - promoted from Initiate to Novitiate vampire and given the position of Sentinel.

Ethan had clasped the medal around my neck. Since his death, I'd rarely removed it. But the problems facing Chicago and its supernaturals were bigger than me or Ethan or a smal bit of gold, so I relented.

Without a word to Tate - although I could feel his smug satisfaction from across the table - I unclasped the medal and let it fal into my hand.

Tate held out his hand to receive it, but I shook my head.

"Information first," I told him. "Prize later."

"I had no idea you were so . . . tenacious."

"I learned from the best," I said, smiling sweetly. "Get on with it."

Tate considered the bargain for a moment, and final y nodded.

"Fine. The deal is struck. But as you might imagine, I don't get visitors often. I'm taking the long road. Besides, you are clearly woeful y undereducated about the supernatural world."

I couldn't fight back a sigh. Getting a lengthy history lecture from Tate wasn't high on my list of things to accomplish tonight. ("Saving the city" was actual y number one on that list.) On the other hand, he was probably right. I was undereducated.

While he may have planned to take the long road, he didn't waste a moment getting comfortable in his chair and imparting his wisdom.

"Magic wasn't born on the eve of vampires' creation," he lectured. "It existed for mil ennia on this plane and others.

Good and evil lived together in relationship slightly more, shal we say, symbiotic than this one. They were partners, neither better than the other, coexisting in peace. There was a certain justice in the world. Magic was unified - dark and light. Good and evil. The distinctions didn't exist. Magic o nly was. Neither m/i> peace. Thoral or immoral, but amoral, as it was meant to be. And then one red-letter day, humans decided evil wasn't merely the other side of the coin - it was wrong. Bad. Not the other half of good, but its opposite. Its apotheosis."

Tate drew a square on the tabletop with a finger. "The evil was deemed a contamination. It was drawn from good, separated."

Mal ory had once told me that black magic was like a second four-quadrant grid that lay above the four Keys. It sounded like her explanation had been pretty accurate.

"How was the magic separated?" I wondered.

"Careful y," he said. "There were a number of iterations.

Gods were divided into two halves; one moral, one immoral. Sides were taken, and angels were deemed true or fal en. Most important, some would say, evil was placed into a vessel that would contain it. It was parceled out only to a few who would seek to wield it."

"What was the vessel?"

"It's cal ed the Maleficium."

"So what does this have to do with the city? I've been told we're seeing effects in the lake and sky because the four elements - earth, air, fire, and water - are unbalanced."

"Like I mentioned, that's a typical human instinct - to create categories to explain the world and blame the unfamiliar on a disruption in the categories. But categories don't explain things; they describe them. You've heard the myth of the four Keys?"

"The four divisions of magic? Yeah, but I've never heard them referred to as a 'myth.' "

Tate rol ed his eyes. "That's because sorcerers aren't honest with themselves. Every categorization of magic - by Keys, by elements, by astrological signs, whatever - is just a way of ordering the universe for purposes of their practice. Each sect creates its own divisions and distributes magical properties into those divisions. But the divisions don't matter."

I found that revelation to be surprisingly disappointing -

that the philosophy of magic Catcher had imparted to me those months ago wasn't quite accurate, or at least it was only one of many half-accurate ideas.

"The point, Merit, is not that the magical systems are incorrect - but that they simply aren't important."

"Then what is?"

"The distinction between dark and light." He placed a hand flat on the table. "Assume this hand is the entire world of magic." He spread his fingers. "Cal each finger a Key, an element, a drawer, what have you. The name doesn't matter. The point is, however you describe the categories, the categories are al part of a single system."

"Sure," I said with a nod.

"Now, imagine the system is ripped in two by those who decided good and evil were anathema to each other." His left hand flat on the table, he placed his right hand palm down a few inches above it. "Each hand is now half of the magic in the world. The world continues to function as we know it only while those two layers remain in balance."

My thoughts stopped whirling chaotical y and fel into order. "Which is why the lake stopped moving and the sky turned red - because the natural laws are askew."

"I wouldn't say 'askew.' I would say 'undergoing reorganization.' "

"So the nymphS pes, the siren, the fairies. They truly have nothing to do with it?"

"Bit players at best."

I sighed, regrouped, and kept going. "Why would things become unbalanced?"

"Because light and dark magic are being blended together. Because the separations between them have been violated. There are a variety of reasons, I suppose, to employ dark magic. Murder. Binding someone to service.

The creation of a familiar. Prophecy, for those who don't have the gift. Conjuring demons. Communing with otherworldly creatures."

"Then who's doing it? And how do I fix it?"

"How do you fix it?" He barked out a laugh. "You don't fix it. It's not a screw that needs tightening. It simply is. Some would say it's a return to the original world. The First World.

That Which Existed and Should Exist Again."

There was a self-satisfied gleam in his eyes that suggested he was looking forward to that day. It seemed clear he thought the world was ready for change.

"Wouldn't it be a return to war?" I wondered. "To Armageddon?"

He clucked his tongue. "That's such a na?ve view. Good and evil existed together for eons before humans - or vampires, for that matter - came into being. Don't knock what you don't understand."

I ignored the sass. "And the Maleficium. Where can I find it?"

He sat back in his chair and threw an arm over the back.

"Now, now, Bal erina. I can't give away al my secrets, can I?"

"Are you using the Maleficium to make magic of your own? To bring about that new world order?"

He smiled at me through half-lidded eyes. "Would I do such a thing?"

"Yes. And you'd lie about it."

He tilted his head to the side in obvious interest. "After al I've just given you, you accuse me of dishonesty?"

"You've lied your entire life. That you had the city's welfare at heart. That you were trying to help vampires. That you were human."

"Yes, wel . Amorality was easier before evil intent was ascribed to it."

I rol ed my eyes. "If you didn't have anything to do with it, why do the fairies think old magic is involved? And why did the city smel like lemon and sugar after it rained?"

"Just because I didn't make the magic doesn't mean I can't enjoy it. The Maleficium is old magic. The recombination of good and evil leaves its mark on the natural world - the water and sky. It also leaves its mark on the wind. In the latent magic in the air. I can't be faulted for wanting to sample it, can I?"

"How can you sample airborne magic from across town?"

"There is more to the universe, Horatio, than what you can see or believe to be true."

"I'm aware," I dryly said.

"The point is, magic doesn't need a freeway."

"If you don't have the Maleficium, who does?"

"The Order maintains possession of it. Guards it, if you wil ."

My stomach churned with butterflies. I was going to have to go back to to intainCatcher and accuse a sorcerer of screwing with the Maleficium . Yeah - maybe Mal ory was distorting the natural world in her fifteen minutes of free time each day.

Wel , regardless of whether I liked his answer, I couldn't fault him for not sticking to his word. I placed the medal on the table and slid it toward Tate. Without looking back, I rose from my chair and walked toward the door.

"Thank you for the prize," Tate said. "And don't be a stranger."

Frankly, I'd be fine if I never had to see him again. But I doubted I'd be that lucky.

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