After the surprising success with Helena Jones, Quinn had hoped that Gloria would prove equally as helpful once her situation and the effects of death magic were made clear.

They weren’t so lucky.

Gloria looked like an angel, but Quinn was convinced her heart was black as pitch and had been that way before death magic ever entered the equation. He suspected she had a strong influence on the direction that their rituals and cult had grown, feeding an increasingly unstable Penny ideas about how to claim and use power with all the panache of a villainous adviser from some Disney movie.

Helena had gotten into this mess because she believed in Penny and wanted to help her friend live her dreams. Gloria had gotten into it because she liked the power trip that came from taking down abusers and the hero worship that followed. It had been her idea to make structure to the basic spirituality that Penny had first offered, turning their non-profit steadily and completely into a cult at its heart.

Quinn wondered if it was her idea to make Penny a god. And if Penny had been an experiment before Gloria tried something similar for herself.

“I want to speak to a lawyer,” Gloria repeated primly, “I require a full list of charges against me.”

Agent Heeren maintained an equally stubborn facade. “And you shall not get either, because it’s not human law you will be tried under.”

“I want to speak to a lawyer.”

Quinn could practically see when Drika decided enough was enough. Yes, the Department of Magic was allied with human governance in this country, but the truth was that the magical community policed their own. With their own laws and methods, many of which would not fly under mortal ethics.

After all, when the laws were made with secrecy, expediency, and limited resources in mind, one seldom kept prisoners for long.

Drika pulled out her mage’s kit, not even bothering to hide what she was doing as she began setting up elements of some larger spell. Drika seemed to favor crystals as her focus and amplifier of choice, at least on a physical level. She could clearly do a lot with gesture and words alone, choosing to mix subtle magic with simply tricking the target to bring certain thoughts and memories to the front. If she was bothering with foci, then she was going to rip off every lie and obfuscation Gloria might have attempted and just drag the truth out of her.

Gloria didn’t look quite afraid, but she was at least upset or unsettled. Also intrigued, if Quinn read her right. Here was an example of a mage working an active spell she had never seen before, after all, likely one that Gloria herself would have loved to have in her repertoire. She didn’t strike Quinn as someone who was particularly concerned with consent or privacy.

Quinn admitted that he was equally interested in seeing Drika work her magic. He found that the manner in which mages worked their magic told him a lot about how they thought magic worked in general. In turn, that told Quinn something very important about who they were as people.

Magic was a very personal thing at heart. It inspired awe and fear, love and danger, mysteries and rules. Quinn used his magic very precisely and frugally because he was driven by necessity, but it was the awe of feeling the magic move that guided his casting.

Drika set up her casting with the air of a scientist preparing for some experiment, checking off her lists, confirming her ingredients, and ready to see the results of stimuli on her subject. It was a strange mix of clinical detachment and scientific curiosity that frankly reminded Quinn how dangerous she was. As a member of a great house, especially the regional main branch of the mind affinity, she was born and bred on intrigue, smiling as she slips metaphorical or literal knives into someone.

Quinn was very glad some days that he hadn’t been born a mage, even if the drawbacks of death magic sucked.

Gloria tried to leave her chair. Drika tapped the bracelet she wore, keyed to the collar Gloria wore, and gestured at the chair.

“Sit.”

Gloria sat, her face a moue of shock and rage. “What--”

“You are not the only one who dabbles in magical command spells, Ms. Robinson,” Drika said calmly, as if this happened every day. “Now, behave. If you don’t, then I will simply go through the hassle of making you behave.”

Quinn felt a bit dirty watching her work. Drika didn’t care about Gloria’s rights and emotions anymore than Gloria cared about anyone else. Vergil watched all of this with fascination, taking notes, though Quinn had no idea what he found so important to document.

In general, Quinn considered himself one of the good guys. He wasn’t so naive as to think the Department as a whole was good; bureaucracy and legacy politics was too messy for such idealism. But the work they did was definitely important. They were the bridge that kept the magical world safe from the mass of humanity and humanity safe from magic. Or tried to, anyway. They were stretched too thin to be anything but a net, catching as much as they could even as cases continually fell through the cracks.

In moments like these, however, Quinn didn’t feel good. Indeed, it felt like a glimpse of who or what he could become if he let himself become corrupted. His empathy kept him true to himself. Without it, Quinn could easily see the crimes he would commit in the name of expediency and necessity.

Drika finished her setup. She stood to begin casting.

Unsurprisingly, her spell relied heavily on chant and gesture, the movements precise and almost dance-like in their fluidity. The crystal prisms caught her words and resonated, holding them somehow to spread around the space, weaving around Gloria like a cage of words. In fact, the words literally became visible as they moved through the sequence of prisms, creating a beautiful swirl of dancing script.

The spell shone beautifully, entrancing Quinn in its cadence, inviting him to revel in the magic of the moment.

Then the light words stabbed inward, turning the cage into an iron maiden. Quinn flinched. Gloria just went completely still with a soft gasp.

Drika’s eyes unfocused, twitching side to side as if studying something Quinn couldn’t see. Her voice kept chanting the words of the spell, feeding more and more words into the cycle of the iron maiden, prying out secrets with magical force.

For all the showiness of the spell, Quinn noted that the results were private. Mind mages were considered sneaks for a reason. They guarded their privacy and secrets fiercely while prying into everyone else’s with aplomb.

Gloria was a terrible person who was impeding an important investigation. That was Quinn’s only consolation in this situation.

The spell ended and Gloria sagged, breathing heavily. To Quinn’s surprise, she composed herself quickly, expression going stony. “That can’t be legal,” she complained, slightly breathy.

“It is in cases of death mages. The willful and harmful use of death magic removes your rights under Morgan’s Code,” Drika explained, distracted with processing whatever she gleaned. “You were the one who chose murder, manipulation, and magic as your paths to power. The first two would have left you under mortal law. The last leaves you under magical law.”

Quinn had never heard it put quite like that. He wished he knew all of Morgan’s Code, but for a legal code that guided interactions in the magical community, it was surprisingly hard to get a full copy to review. He added this addendum to his mental list of the code.

Drika waved a hand at Gloria. “Escort her back to her room. I got what we need for now. Everything else can wait.”

Gloria objected despite her obvious continued disorientation. Quinn was glad enough of an excuse to escape the room for a while. Behind him, Drika collected the physical foci of her spell. Adam joined Quinn in the hallway and the pair led Gloria the short distance towards her room.

Gloria looked between Adam and Quinn before settling her pale blue eyes on Quinn. “You all are no better than I am,” she said, voice soft but clear. “Expediency and necessity justify much.”

Adam didn’t engage with her. He’d cultivated a thick layer of professional detachment in his role as Quinn’s handler. If Quinn’s suffering couldn’t touch Adam, Gloria’s suffering certainly wouldn’t.

Quinn couldn’t stay quiet though. “You chose to be a death mage. And once you became one, you saw no reason not to keep taking power from others.”

“You are a death mage too.”

“Not by choice,” Quinn countered. It had been a matter of survival at the time, fueled by desperation and ignorance, though he couldn’t fully regret it now that he’d experienced magic. He’d done important work with his time. His was a life well lived.

Gloria glanced at him sharply, but changed approach. “I have barely used death magic. You can hardly say I take power from others.”

“You do though. Worse, you saw no reason not to let your friends bear the worst of the consequences of death magic while reaping the benefits of their spells.”

That annoyed Gloria and she huffed. “Hardly. They made their own choices, because they were intelligent and independent.”

“Did you warn either of them when you noticed the side effects of death magic? Did you suggest different methods that might have fewer or slower side effects?”

Quinn didn’t have proof Gloria had noticed the mental or physical effects of death magic, but her shrewdness and own low level of corruption made the guess likely. He didn’t see any direct reaction through her stony facade, but her silence told enough on its own.

“That’s what I thought,” Quinn said with a sharp smile as they reached her room. “Have a good day, Ms. Robinson. We’ll talk again later, I’m sure.”

Back in the conference room, Drika had finished her cleanup and moved on to the “looking smug” portion of the day. Her attitude rankled Quinn and he wondered if her sense of superiority was in comparison to death mages or to anyone who wasn’t a mage. She was hard to read and diplomatic, so he couldn’t really tell.

Then again, Quinn had his own set of prejudices against the main mage culture, with all its uptight self importance.

Vergil finished up some documentation and looked up at Adam and Xavier, who had joined them. “Agent Heeren has shared the last known location of the grimoire according to Gloria’s memories. Will you be able to scan for it?”

Adam nodded, pulling out his own kit. Compared to the rest of the team, Adam wasn’t much of a mage. Or rather, he was more specialized. Spatial magic had a number of applications, but Adam stuck to tracking, surveillance, and the teleportation of small objects, such as bullets. As such, his kit was half mage kit and half micro surveillance equipment, combining technology with magic more than most traditional approaches.

A short flurry of description and directions followed before Adam spun his tiny computer around, runed mirror half of the screen showing an image of a hidden compartment in one of the seized vehicles from the ritual site.

“How did we miss that?” Vergil complained, taking notes on the specific location and vehicle details.

“It’s a clever compartment and completely non-magical,” Drika answered. “Even the grimoire isn’t magical. It’s just a book full of dangerous information. Ahlgren, can you retrieve that from here?”

Adam eyed the large book in his scrying mirror, calculating. “It’s stationary, not enchanted, and I have time to set up some amplifiers, so yes.”

Quinn appreciated the way Adam didn’t get twisted out of shape over the strengths or limitations of his magic. He just knew what he was capable of and then used that with lethal efficiency. Adam chose to use more runed mirrors for foci, his set up relying on precision of the array and an underlying connecting diagram that seemed to anchor the space. Quinn preferred it to Drika’s methods.

A moment later, the grimoire appeared in the center of the conference table. Adam sagged slightly, but said nothing as he packed his kit again.

Drika gestured for Xavier to examine the book more closely for traps of any sort, but her gaze was more introspective than critical as she watched him assess the magical and material composition of the text.

“It’s really strange,” she said, softly enough that Quinn suspected she was talking to herself, “how dangerous knowledge can be when paired with the hearts and hands of humanity.”