I turned the starter, and the ground trembled.
“Wow!” Quarters shook his head, unaccustomed to my vehicle.
I grinned and turned an invisible lever on the panel. The roar was cut off immediately, transforming instead into a deep growl, and the headlight mounted on the handlebars beamed rays of blinding light.
“Wow!” Quarters’ eyes were glued to my motorcycle. “How are you doing that?”
“Dark magic.”
Quarters raised an eyebrow.
“Well, how do I explain it to you… the movement of pistons creates a light wave instead of sound.”
“Apply for a patent!”
“What?” I did not understand.
“This. Needs. To be. Patented,” he repeated slowly. “The first person to see it will instantly steal it.”
“Come on…” I did not want to get involved in such an enterprise. I do not like bureaucracy.
Quarters instantly caught my mood: “Do you want me to attend to it? We’ll split the profits 50/50.”
“Agreed!”
Half is better than nothing, right? Quarters was more knowledgeable about such things, his dad was wealthy, and instinct for money was hard-coded into my friend’s genes, he believed. Well, we’ll see about that.
My life was filled with colors again: money (lots of it), a fury of battles with monsters from the other world, the taste of victory, and the realization that I was a “genius” (according to Quarters). What else does a dark magician need to be happy? A silly question: of course, the news that NZAMIPS was shut down! And Captain Baer hung up.
Chapter 10
The window in Conrad Baer’s office looked to the west: the setting sun was peeping through. An old tree protected the room from direct sunlight in the summer, but now its leafless branches only introduced chaos, casting a net of weird shadows on the wall. However, the owner of the office wasn’t going to draw the blinds—he preferred to add some anxiety to the atmosphere. Having climbed to the rank of captain, the policeman nicknamed Locomotive willy-nilly learned some professional tricks.
The senior regional coordinator arrived from Ho-Carg at Redstone; another one, not Larkes, whom Locomotive more or less got used to. Larkes had been moved into another position, and nobody knew whether it was a promotion or the former boss was sent to a distant place like the King’s Island as a “cleaner”. The new coordinator, as rumored, possessed dark power at the master’s level; he was young and pathologically active. Having arrived in town on the five p.m. express, he requested an urgent meeting in one hour. The captain did not invite to the meeting any of his own mages, but he dressed in the highest level safety suit (just in case) and replaced his secretary with an agile guy from the guard (there was no reason to risk the life of a mother of three kids). The senior analyst, the head of the investigation group, and the on-duty patrol officer were called to the meeting as well.
It remained to be seen what the new boss had in mind.
The senior coordinator (young, perhaps too immature) appeared at the meeting together with a youthful woman, carefully maintaining distance between them. She had an inconspicuous appearance, with clothing that was strongly reminiscent of an archive servant, but an amazingly penetrating green-eyed gaze unmasked her. Locomotive displayed a blank face; his entire look lent to that. It was not his first meeting with a white empath; he guessed that this girl was a walking X-ray.
The coordinator’s move went down the drain: Conrad Baer was not the son of a glazier. But the question remained: what caused a dark magician to work in cahoots with a white? Strange winds must be blowing at the top…
“Senior Coordinator Mr. Satal. Ms. Kevinahari,” the captain introduced the newcomers. “Mr. Vosker, Inspector Shtoss, Lieutenant Hamirson. May we help you with anything?”
The coordinator looked around the room with evident displeasure. Having plenty of experience dealing with dark mages (they accounted for a quarter of his staff), the captain had arranged the furniture in his office in such a way that the visitor from the capital would not be able to take the place of the office’s owner. Baer did not care how weird the arrangement looked. If he did not stop the instinctive proclivities of the coordinator from the very beginning, he would have to quarrel with the dark all the way, figuring out which one of the two was the boss.
The guest hesitated for a few seconds but did not wade through the bottleneck of chairs. His companion smiled faintly and sat in a chair pre-arranged for her.
“The reason for our visit is the alarming news from the suburbs of Redstone.”
“…And management decided to satisfy our request for more staff?” Baer continued for him.
Mr. Satal angrily shrugged: “It’s about outrageous lawlessness in Redstone County!”
The coordinator said the magic word “county”, and the captain relaxed a little: formally, his mandate ended at the town’s boundaries, and the county office had not reported any problems lately.
“Could you provide more detail?”
It was a tricky question, because Locomotive recalled outright dozens of incidents in the county office that could be characterized as malfeasance, but he did not want to ruin the career of the chief of the county’s “cleaners”; the old man deserved his honorable retirement.
“A case of illegal practice. Five episodes minimum!”
The captain instantly caught what was going on. No, he did not have his own agents outside the town, but a large part of the Baer family lived in remote rural areas. Regular visits by his cousins and aunts were enough to keep up with all the gossip. It did not make sense to deny the facts, and the captain allowed himself to correct the coordinator cautiously: “Probably, closer to two dozen cases.”
Mr. Satal crept: “Do you know what’s going on?”
“Only rumors, sir. The ssuburbs are outside my jurisdiction.”
For some time, the coordinator contemplated what was said, and Locomotive waited patiently to continue. He was surprised at the speed with which the news reached the capitol; generally, their superiors used to respond to the most urgent requests in a year, maybe a year and a half. The impression was that the couriers met in the middle or that a spy worked somewhere in the neighborhood, and his information went to the authorities directly.
“What exactly do you know?” Ms. Kevinahari finally gave tongue.
The captain shrugged: “Rumor is that any otherworldly problem could be solved without calling the “cleaners”. Inexpensive, fast, with a warranty.”
Not to mention that the unknown dark magician was polite and gave a discount to families with children.
“Nobody questions him about his certification and license,” the captain sighed.
“Do you consider it normal?”
Locomotive shrugged again: “Someone has to do the job!”
Locomotive did not want to inform on the county’s “cleaning” service or, rather, did not want to risk his life; the guests would leave, and he would stay. He knew firsthand the heart of the problem: townsfolk, faced with the boorishness of the county’s “cleaners”, often sent their complaints to the captain, and he and old Yudter, the chief of the “cleaners”, had to actually use their authority a few times to make the mages move their butts. At least a little bit. Alas, military status allowed the Division of the Supernatural Phenomena Liquidation (the official name of the “cleaning” service) to ignore opinions of the chief of the civil division of Redstone’s NZAMIPS. The “cleaners” paid him no mind, regularly and with pleasure.
“In some sense, you’re right,” Mr. Satal suddenly confessed. “All who approached the mage-infractor had direct or covert written rejections from the county’s “cleaners”. My team of internal investigators is working there now, and I guarantee that heads will roll. What an almshouse here, at taxpayers’ expense!”