Page 35 of Junk Magic

A commotion started up outside of our bubble before I could say any more and Hargroves dropped the shield. I looked up to see Caleb filling the doorway, looking belligerent, with his coat whipping about as if in a high wind. Maybe because he had a crowd of my new students behind him, and babysitting did not appear to have gone well.

Either that or I looked worse than I thought, because he was glowering at the boss in a way that was unwise if he wanted a promotion anytime soon.

He tossed me something and Hargroves caught it—fortunately. I would have sat there while it bonked me on the head, judging from the fact that my hand didn’t lift until the boss was already examining it. I pretended to be pushing back a strand of hair before anybody noticed.

“Your phone?” Hargroves asked, looking at Caleb.

“No, hers.” Caleb transferred the glare to me. “You scared the hell out of me! I called to ask about milk and it sounded like I dialed into a goddamned a war zone! Then you cut out and I had to listen to a couple of assholes deciding whether or not to kill you. They hadn’t made up their minds when somebody noticed the phone and that happened.”

“That” was putting a boot through it, by the look of things.

“I found it in the dirt,” he continued, before I could respond. “After we finally got there—”

“We?”

“Well, what did you expect me to do with them?” he hiked a savage thumb over his shoulder.

“I expect you to get them out of here,” Hargroves said, unamused. “They do not have clearance for this. They do not have clearance for anything!”

Sophie looked like she had something to say about that, but several of the others dragged her out before she could.

“Your distress signal was noticed by a patrol returning from Reno,” Caleb added. “Along with a farm in the process of burning down and a bunch of highly illegal fey plants, most of which were crispy fried by the time we arrived—”

“And the people?” I interrupted.

“The patrol didn’t find any people. Just tire tracks.”

I shook my head. “There were trailers there, a half dozen or so, and a bunch of Weres on a truck—”

I cut off, but too late. The magic word had been uttered, and damn it! Hargroves had been smart to talk to me when I was woozy as hell.

“Weres?” he said, very deliberately.

“Yeah. Did I not mention that the punch growers were Weres?”

He just looked at me.

“I got a name off of one: Cloud-Leaper. I can ask about it, find out what human name he goes by and if he has property registered anywhere else.”

Hargroves looked at me some more. His eyes said that he understood exactly how much this revelation complicated things. But I expected a measured response, since he was always measured.

I didn’t get it.

“I hate this shit,” he said, causing me to blink, because the American phrase sounded weird coming from an uptight Englishman.

“Um,” I said.

“I hate that I don’t have the people to properly patrol this territory. I hate that an operative almost died due to that. I hate that two very concerning issues, both having to do with Weres, have decided to crop up right before the Conclave—”

And, damn. I’d forgotten that the agreement between the Circle and the Were Council had only been for a year, and had to be renewed annually. The clan leaders were meeting in Vegas less than a week from now, and yeah.

The timing could have been better.

“—and I especially hate that I don’t have anyone else to trust with this, anyone who knows the clans well enough to pick up on what is going on, anyone—”

“Who isn’t your resident troublemaker.”

He didn’t bother to deny it.

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