“Agent Warner called a few hours ago,” he said. “Told us to round up the agents that you wanted and send them up to flesh out the police details protecting the sorcerers.”
“Where are they now?” Sorsha demanded. Steven shrugged.
“I sent them over to Police Headquarters,” he said. “They’ll catch a floater there to take them up to their posts.”
Floaters were basically flying police cars invented by the sorcerer William Todd. They could fly, but they weren’t fast, and they could only hold about five people at a time, so the police didn’t use them often.
“They’re going to need more than one floater,” Alex said. “If I were the police dispatcher I’d probably send each group up in their own car.”
“Stevens,” Sorsha said, her tone one of a general commanding field troops. “Call whoever’s in charge at Manhattan Station and tell them to stop those floaters from leaving. All the FBI agents are to be detained and warn the police to be careful; some of them are German spies carrying the three remaining jars of plague.”
“You’re not serious,” Steven said, but the look on Sorsha’s face told him otherwise. “What if the floaters have already left?”
“I’ll call the sorcerers,” Sorsha said. “They’ll be able to capture anyone coming up in a floater as long as they know they’re coming. Now go.”
Stevens ran off toward the front desk and its telephone but Sorsha just reached into her handbag and pulled out what looked like a makeup mirror in a case. She opened it and set it on the floor facing her. Taking a few steps back, she uttered something in her deep, echo-y voice, and a moment later the image of a man in his late fifties with graying hair and a handlebar mustache appeared, floating above the mirror.
“Sorsha, my darling, you look radiant,” the man said in an easy voice. “To what do I owe the great pleasure of this call?”
Sorsha quickly outlined the German plot and its purpose.
“So,” the man said, twirling the ends of his mustache. “Hitler thinks he can put one over on us. I’ll show that Charlie Chaplin impersonator.”
“Focus, Andrew,” Sorsha said in a hard voice.
Alex was startled when he heard the name. Andrew Barton, the Lightning Lord, the man who provided power to all of Manhattan.
“Right now,” Sorsha was saying, “you are going to pass the word to everyone, and make sure they catch the men in those floaters.”
Andrew cupped his hand and a ball of lighting appeared in it. “That won’t be a problem, my dear,” he said.
“None of that,” Sorsha barked at him. “Some of the men in those cars are ordinary policemen. I don’t have to remind you what might happen if you kill any of them.”
Apparently, Andrew didn’t have to be reminded, because he closed his fist and the ball of lightning vanished.
“You take the fun out of everything, my dear,” he said with a sigh. “Speaking of which, when are you going to finally come dine with me?”
Sorsha cocked an eyebrow at him. “If I want to be chased around a table by a dirty old man, I’ll go to a bawdy house,” she said. “Now get the word out before someone gets killed.”
She snapped her fingers and the image disappeared.
“I’m guessing,” Alex said as the Sorceress bent down to pick up her mirror and fold it into its case, “that since you didn’t give any orders for extra FBI personnel, that Agent Warner took it upon himself. How long has he been with you?”
“He’s new,” Sorsha said, marching off toward the front door. “He and about a dozen other agents arrived in the New York office at the same time.”
Alex thought back to his associations with the young, blonde agent. Warner didn’t like him, but that was not surprising from an FBI man.
“I don’t see him as a Nazi agent,” Alex said.
“Let’s find him first,” Sorsha said. “Then you can ask him. He’s working the front door with Agent Davis.”
“No, he’s not,” Alex said, pulling Sorsha to a stop. “When I came in, Davis was there alone. Where else would Warner be?”
Sorsha thought for a moment, then set off toward the elevator. “I have a suite that we’ve been using as an office,” she said.
“Must be nice,” Alex said as the elevator operator opened the door for them.
“Penthouse,” she said, and the man turned the lever that sent the car rising into the air.
A long minute later they reached the door to the east penthouse room. Alex pulled his pistol from his jacket pocket.
“I have a rune that will unlock the door,” he said, before realizing that with his pistol in hand, and his other arm in a sling, he couldn’t reach his rune book.
“Never mind that,” Sorsha said. “Turn your back.”
She didn’t wait for him to comply, she simply raised her arms and spoke a word and the door burst as if it had been stuffed with gunpowder. Alex barely averted his face before he was showered in splinters and sawdust.
Sorsha strode into the room as if she had just been announced at Buckingham Palace. Alex followed after her, brushing chips of wood from his suit jacket with his pistol. The room beyond was a parlor, with a sunken area lined with elegant couches and chaise longues. A long bar of some light-colored wood filled one entire wall, and several hallways led out of the room.
Sorsha turned left, so Alex went right. He pulled open the first door he came to and found a bathroom. At the end of the hall was a tiny sunroom with a writing desk, a small couch, and a telephone.
“Sorceress,” Alex called, tucking his gun back into his pocket. “I don’t think Agent Warner is your Nazi.”
“Why not?” Sorsha called from the parlor.
“Because he’s dead.”
24
The Fall
Agent Warner lay slumped over the writing desk. Blood and brain matter covered the wall in front of him and he still had a service .38 clutched in his left hand.
“What to do you mean, he’s d—” Sorsha came through the door, but at the sight of the corpse, she turned her back. “Dear God,” she said, her voice heavy with the effort not to vomit. She took a few deep breaths, then turned back to the grisly scene.
“Did he shoot himself to keep from being caught?” she asked. “How did he know we were on to him?”
“Someone might have called him,” Alex said, indicating the phone where it had fallen on the floor, knocked off the table by Warner’s falling body. “But I don’t think that’s it. Especially since he didn’t kill himself.”
Sorsha looked up at him sharply.
“See how the blood is on the wall in front of him,” Alex explained. “He would have had to turn his head and tilt it up before pulling the trigger. That’s the kind of position he’d be in if he heard someone behind him and started to turn. If he’d shot himself while sitting normally, the blood should be here,” he said, indicating the window on Warner’s right side. “Also, that’s a lot of blood and brains for a .38. Looks like a bigger entry hole too. If I had to guess, it was a .45, like the one I carry.”
Sorsha raised one of her dark eyebrows.
“Are you trying to make me suspect you?” she asked. Alex shook his head and put his hand on Warner’s neck.
“No. This body is still warm,” he said. “This happened within the last twenty minutes, and since you and I were together for that time, I couldn’t have killed him. We do know someone else though, who uses the same kind of gun I do.”
“No.” Sorsha shook her head, a pleading, almost desperate look in her eyes. “It’s not possible.”
Alex pushed on unmercifully.
“Someone else who also had access to your suite.”
“He’s been part of my team for five years,” she said, still not willing to believe it.