That seemed like a bitter enough indictment right there. Riordan could see it written all over Quinn that the Department was stretched thin. That made sense, given how recently it was formed, how it had to act in relative secrecy and separation from any other governmental group, and how large a territory it was trying to cover. Especially since it was probably dealing with a backlog of existing issues on top of any emerging ones like this.

How had the magical world lasted as long as it did without collapse?

The question was rhetorical. Riordan knew that things hadn’t been so bad before the advent of globalization. Local areas took care of local problems. A lot of things fell through the cracks, a hundred atrocities hidden in secrecy and forgotten to time, but the major things had been handled by the people nearest at hand. That wasn’t always the magic-users, of course. There was plenty of history for witch burning and sometimes that was deserved. Just because death mages always ended up twisted and insane didn’t mean regular mages weren’t assholes too sometimes.

Mages were people first and people came in a wide number of shapes and sizes and flaws. Magic tended to just make all of that more extreme, same as any tool. Still, he was glad that something like the Department existed now, for all of its flaws and limitations. The world had changed a lot in his lifetime and always seemed to be changing faster and faster every time he looked. The internet and the prevalence of video and cameras made the rapid sharing of information hard to beat. Eventually the reality of magic would likely need to be revealed to the world at large, just because hiding it would become impossible.

Riordan wasn’t sure when that tipping point would hit, but he saw things like the Department as steps towards getting ahead of that mess whenever it did hit. The public would be reassured to see something as familiar as a governmental branch dedicated to dealing with issues that arise from this new thing, especially one that had a provable history of being able to manage it right.

They just had their work cut out for them to get there first.

“Right,” Riordan sighed, “That’s nothing new. If we only have us to handle this, that’s no worse than it was before and more than I hoped for, honestly. It just means our tactics need to be about sharp precision strikes and not a brute force brawl. Gotta play to our strengths.”

Quinn blinked and then smiled, looking strangely pleased and relieved. “Sometimes I forget that you are used to having to make do with what you have.”

“That and the team I used to run with was small,” Riordan offered, shrugging to dispel any compliments on the subject, “You can do a lot with a good plan, a good team, and the ability to adapt to changing situations.”

“Well, we have the ability to adapt nailed between you and I. Sadly, the other things are still lacking, for all that we have good people individually. It takes time to turn people into a team.”

“And time is a precious commodity at current. I wish I could do more to assist without adding even more risk to the situation.”

Quinn ran his thin fingers through Riordan’s hair in a comforting gesture of shocking familiarity. Riordan gaped at him, causing Quinn to chuckle and repeat the gesture. “You’re helping, Riordan. Seriously. I’ve been through a bunch of these situations and we are weeks ahead of where I would expect to be on research and threat identification, especially for a mess this large. That’s because of you and your mad hat messing around. You just won’t sit still and keep stirring up the pot.”

“That ain’t a good thing,” Riordan growled, looking up at Quinn from where he sat. For some reason, he didn’t stop Quinn from touching him.

“It is if we can manage to ride the waves you’re causing. You’ve already mucked things up enough to bring things to the surface we wouldn’t have seen otherwise. Like, I don’t know how long it would have taken to find out there were more than one death mage if they weren’t out hunting you. Knowing that changes a lot and keeps us from being blindsided badly when we do make our move.” Quinn waved one hand wildly when he talked for emphasis, the other still playing with Riordan’s soft dark curls. “Ah, well, we’ll make it work. We have to.”

Riordan didn’t find that sentiment particularly reassuring and told Quinn as much. It got a laugh from Quinn who stepped away from Riordan finally, letting his hand trail down Riordan’s neck and shoulder before finally dropping from contact completely. Riordan shivered, as if he was trying to shake his body back into a normal configuration. He still felt unsettled, so he wasn’t sure how well that worked.

“I meant to drop off our new list of information for you to process,” Quinn said before beginning to dig into his large pants pockets for various pieces of note paper and printed lists. “Adam and I are going to do a night scout of the main community complexes and possibly the area near the tree as well. We want to see if we can see where the death mages bunk down as well as what security looks like after the civilians clear out for the day.”

“Alone?” Riordan asked with a frown.

“Billy is going as our driver. Adam and I will mostly be working from the car, doing remote viewing spells and working with my ghosts, but we’ll take an in-person look if it seems clear enough. It’s good to get two views to compare, in case of illusions or wards.” Quinn flattened the folded and crumpled papers futilely before handing them over to Riordan. “Don’t worry. We have the shaman and the rest of the Sleeping Bear security team on speed dial in the unlikely event something goes pear shaped.”

Riordan ran a hand over his face, feeling how scratchy his stubble was getting again. He needed to neaten that or shave it off entirely before he looked like some sort of wild woodsman or homeless vagabond. Never mind that he was basically a vagabond. A dark skinned, wild-eyed man like Riordan would probably get labeled as a potential terrorist if he let his beard grow without check, becoming big and bushy and untamed. He hated that he had to care. Caring was exhausting. And he was deflecting again.

“I’m going to worry,” Riordan sighed, letting his hand drop away and looking towards Quinn, “since I can’t go along. But I’ll hold down the base here and get your data entered.”

It felt like not enough. Then again, Riordan had a definite complex about these kinds of things. It probably had a name, but all he knew was that he had trouble believing something would go well in his absence. His brain screamed that if he couldn’t be there to make things work, they were going to fail. It hadn’t been that bad way back when, but Riordan figured that the years he’d spent isolated, counting only on himself and suffering from shifter withdrawal, had left marks that he’d be many more years in recognizing. He ran a hand over the crumpled papers, letting the feeling of the paper under the light brushing of his fingertips ground him. The sensation was mostly smooth, except where the roughed up fibers of the paper caught on his own calloused skin. It felt cool despite the summer heat, a trick of his mind.

“Well, I need to get going before Adam comes to look for me,” Quinn said, letting the awkwardness drop in favor of practicality, “Do you want me to kick Daniel out of Zeren’s house now or can it wait?”

“I don’t know. Can it?” Riordan asked, his eyes flicking to the stone on Quinn’s collar and to another pale white-ish one on Quinn’s bracelet that was likely Ingrid’s. “I have no idea how those things work.”

“Man, I wish I had time to teach you. It’s not often I get to talk shop. But either works. Daniel’s haunting you and tied to you and all that jazz, which means even if he pops out when I summon Zeren to get to work, he’d be able to get back to you, either directly or through popping in and out of the spirit realm. He’d be hard pressed to get back to me without an anchor, but finding you again will be easy for him now matter where he is.”

Quinn talked with the speed and enthusiasm of a man who loved his craft. His thin hands twitched with aborted gestures, as if desiring to sketch out the intricacies of the interconnectedness of ghost and their bonded haunt in glorious color. Mostly Riordan let it wash over him as it wasn’t anything surprising, but he did catch on one thing.

“You would teach me?” Riordan tilted his head back to study the death mage again, “What? Death magic?”

“Theoretical death magic anyway,” Quinn nodded, “You aren’t a death mage but have an intimate understanding of ghosts and death energy that is rare in anyone who isn’t one. Someone needs to preserve knowledge about death magic if it’s going to be dealt with safely and it is best if that is someone who isn’t doomed to go insane or die young. Heck, as a shifter, you’ve still got a long life ahead of you, right?”

“Assuming I don’t get killed in the next few days, then yes, I do,” Riordan replied, a bit stunned.

Preserving traditions was a common concept to Riordan. His cultures had long histories, stretching back into time through generations of hard work and care. He’d never been a tradition keeper himself, never one to remember the traditional crafts or to memorize the cadences of the oral histories, but he’d known them and respected them. America lacked those roots in the whole, though individual groups carried their threads with them and the natives clung to what they could after the literal and cultural genocide attempts of the colonizers.

Quinn wanted Riordan to be such a beast of burden, carrying important knowledge into the future inside himself. A tradition keeper was a vessel, one to absorb knowledge and pour it out again for others at need. Who would think of Riordan, recalcitrant and militant, for such a task?

Yet, Quinn was not wrong. Riordan was in his sixties but for a group that could live up to two hundred years, he wasn’t even halfway through his life and had many years left to do important things if he tried. And he did know ghosts as most did not now. Riordan thought of the suffering he’d seen in his ghostly pack members, but also their humanity. The way they faded and fuzzed as their sense of self was eroded, but could be nursed back to better identity or let to pass beyond the Veil into something. He thought of their fears and their strengths, their invisibility and their observation. They were not quite human anymore, yet not quite a spirit either. They existed somewhere in between but also were a thing of their own.

What was death, but a transition of state? Mourning made sense, given that grief arose from loss of something, even if it was a loss that transitioned into something different and new. Death freed the soul from the body, unmooring it from the physical realm. Riordan remembered half-heard conversations on nuclear bonds and wondered if that severance was part of the source of the burst of death energy released in a murder. Bonds could contain a lot of energy and this one was a mix of physical and spiritual and whatever else it was that went into the genesis of the soul. It was no wonder that there were bits that couldn’t be absorbed into another person.

Riordan had no idea if this was something he wanted as a responsibility, but if not him, then who? Who did handle that knowledge currently? The Department of Magic for one, obviously, yet they also apparently had a security leak in that knowledge. Beyond that, Riordan had no idea.

Quinn seemed ready to launch into another explanation, but Riordan held up a hand to stem him off.

“No promises, but I’ll think about it,” Riordan said. “Now get going before Agent Ahlgren drags you out.”