Page 17 of War Games

“Don’t lie to me. Now, Hasan, there you are. You have important news about Mischa and Hisao. They’ve missed several family meetings at this point. Where are they?”

“Quarantine,” Hasan said immediately.

That changed the energy of my office as Niko and I glanced at each other, our confusion and worry about that answer a perfect match.

“Please explain,” Subira said, her lips thinning in a line.

“The Tribunal is dealing with a situation that requires a quarantine. I can’t say much other than it’s seemingly unrelated to the witch issues we’ve been facing. Hisao and Mischa aren’t involved in anything that will risk their lives or bring them harm. They are safe and in a secure location, recovering from exposure to something we are still investigating.” He lifted a hand, and I guess most of us must have opened our mouths to ask questions the moment he gave us a chance. “No, no one here can visit them, not even me. Right now, the immortal who runs the Mygi hospital is there organizing and leading the situation so that it doesn’t become something worse. He’s doing this as a favor to the Tribunal so long as we make sure there’s no panic outside ofthe quarantined area. Mischa and Hisao will be allowed to leave in a month, once they’ve been cleared.”

“A situation of wrong place, wrong time?” Subira was the first to speak.

“Yes, love. I have spoken to them over calls. I can put in a request for you to speak to them the next time I get a chance, but understand that the Tribunal will not allow you to engage with this. I won’t let you get involved with this. We have experts working on it.”

I was curious about why Hasan felt like he could draw that hard line with Subira. He was in the proverbial doghouse, forced to leave his island and now living in the unfinished underground home Subira was having built to keep him. The last update I heard was that some of the main areas were finished, like the kitchen, as well as their room, but the other wing, with rooms for the entire family, wasn’t.

“Can you hold that line?” Subira’s question was a challenge and a dare.

“I have to. I can’t risk anyone else getting sick and spreading it.” Hasan met that challenge, and I saw his eyes flash gold as he realized he had given away more than he planned. With a stressed look and a quick rub to his temples, he continued. “Subira, don’t make this difficult for me. Two of our children are recovering from an unknown illness that I shouldn’t be mentioning here, and the rest are preparing to hunt down witches. I can’t be fighting with you right now. We have an immortal and a nephilim dealing with it, both of whom are immune while the rest of us are not. Youcannotvisit Mischa and Hisao. Once they are fully recovered and cleared to leave, they will be escorted out by those uninfected and allowed to go about their way.”

“There’s nothing we can do to help them?” Zuri asked.

“It’s magic in origin and attacks magic,” Hasan said, shaking his head. “The Tribunal is trusting the immortal and the nephilim. The immortal is immune for obvious reasons. The nephilim is a masterful healer and is immune for whatever reason we can’t determine. If anyone here goes there, you will catch it, and those two are already working as hard as they can to keep it contained. Luckily, Mischa and Hisao weren’t hit as hard, but once they got sick, they decided to stop moving, realizing something was wrong.”

“Well, of course, we don’t get sick,” Subira said, her nostrils flaring. “Let me guess, neither took a phone or laptop while they were running around so Mischa could throw her tantrum in peace.”

“Yes.” Hasan’s short answer made his annoyance with that part as clear as Subira’s.

“If they are being taken care of, that’s fine. They’ll report to me when they are both fully recovered. You will get them here, Hasan. Understand?”

“Perfectly. I was planning on dragging their asses here to talk about it myself.”

“Good.” Subira purred the word, her eyes glittering in a way that made me grateful I wasn’t the one in trouble today. “Now, onto the real business of this meeting. Hasan, I take it you have the information we’ve needed from those damn witches.”

“I finally have the files, and I’ve already digitized them.” Hasan started clicking, and I heard a notification sound from my phone, and Niko’s vibrated. I quickly looked while everyone else seemed to be checking their own, Niko pulling his from his jacket beside me. I had an email from Hasan.

“There’s a master email and individual files for convenience. The largest file is for Niko and Jacky…” Hasan trailed off for a moment, but no one said anything. I wasn’t going to stop him from saying my name or explaining something. We weren’t onreal speaking terms, but I wasn’t so petty to make him explain to someone else just for me to hear it secondhand. This was too important.

“Continue, Hasan,” Subira said gently, giving him what he was clearly waiting on.

“It’s all the witches with the potential skills, education, and innate abilities who could have helped with the creation of their… new trick.” His distaste for the witches being able to hide the smell of magic was apparent and matched by the growls, grumbles, and hisses from the rest of us. “Some don’t meet that criteria but may have had some connection to the family coven in your area that tried taking over the Dallas Pack. Since they started this, that was the best place to start. Since we’re going to be looking further into this than the witches were willing to, I’m recommending that you reinterrogate every name on the list. Smell for the lies, dig into their employment and lives until we know everything.”

“Dirk will need to help us,” Niko said, already scrolling through his version of the email. “Davor has enough on his plate. Dirk has a lot of the same skills. He might need you to hack things sometimes, though, Davor, if you can offer that.”

“Of course. He’ll be a priority whenever I get a request.”

“Thank you, but Niko, we don’t have the same list,” I pointed out, showing him my phone and the PDF I quickly downloaded from Hasan’s email.

“Huh.”

“Niko, your list is a bit more expansive in area, and it leaves Texas,” Hasan continued, explaining the difference to us. “You’ll be using your contacts to look into other groups that might have had contact with the coven family in Texas, either temporary business arrangements, marriages, and the like. Find out if those people are even still around or if they’ve gone to ground. Find out if they purchased anything from the Texas coven. For bothof you, investigating so close to the origin point of this, I caution that you take care. Any one of these witches could be violent, and they won’t be expecting you.

“The Tribunal has kept everything quiet, so these witches don’t know that you have their information or what the Tribunal has already investigated about them. A few of them are already known criminals.” Hasan paused but didn’t give enough time for anyone to interrupt, just taking a quick breath. “As for Dirk helping, I would recommend that you ask anyone you trust to help. If Davor has been teaching him, I’m certain he’ll be a fine addition to the situation there. Since both events have happened in the Americas, you need the support.”

“The werewolves are training outside right now to run protection in Jacky’s territory and fight if necessary,” Niko said, making my jaw drop as he exposed that to Hasan. For a horrifying second, I wondered what the fallout was going to be and hoped someone else in my family recovered faster than it seemed I would.

7

CHAPTER SEVEN

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