“Seeing the grimoire would help me narrow down the possibilities,” Vera complained, returning to a previous point now that she’d terrorized Riordan with possible conspiracy theories, “or at least be prepared to recognize related issues in the future.”

“About that…” Riordan started before letting his voice trail off. He was still stuck on her theories.

Was there really someone out there seeding grimoires to make death mages? The very idea broke basic morality, Morgan’s Code, and common sense. If such a person or group existed, then they clearly had no problem with a large random death toll on the way to their ends.

Honestly, if more of these sorts of incidents started popping up, Riordan was going to bet on terrorists as his guess. The consequences of a large number of death mages during the information era could eventually be the end of magical society as they knew it.

“Riordan,” Vera warned when he didn’t continue, tapping on her desk to bring his attention back to the matter at hand. “Spit it out.”

Riordan winced. How did he end up being the bearer of this particular bad news? Probably just a matter of reports trickling in. Still, Vera needed to know so she could take proper steps as pack leader.

“Gloria escaped from Department custody and took the grimoire with her.”

“WHAT!”

Vera could get loud when she wanted.

“I take it the agents haven’t reported that to you or the pack yet?” Riordan asked dryly, rubbing his ears. He honestly wasn’t sure what the communication lines were like at the moment.

“No, they didn’t.” The venom in Vera’s voice could melt metal. Riordan was glad it wasn’t directed at him.

“Don’t be too hard on them about the slow report,” Riordan said, trying to be fair. “It happened around the same time we ran into trouble at the compound, which tied up three of the agents. Of the other two, one was knocked out at the site they kept the death mages. The other was out doing some errand and called the agents with us as soon as she knew there was an issue. Helena is still in custody.”

Vera growled, drawing herself up straighter. Thoughts flashed behind her eyes. For a wrinkly old granny, Vera looked very mama bear just then. Riordan was just glad that her ire wasn’t aimed at him for once.

“Do you think your trouble at the compound was related to the escape?” Vera asked finally.

Riordan considered that and then swore. “Fuck. Yeah, it probably was.”

He hadn’t gotten around to thinking too much about why everything had happened just yet. He’d still been stuck on “what the fuck had happened” with little forays into “good lord, what is this going to mean for the future” and “why can’t I seem to catch a break.”

Riordan broke it down for Vera to see if she agreed with his reasoning. “We were just dismantling some isolated spells in the entryway when a major spell triggered that wiped out any plugged-in electronics, dispersed any charms it touched to power it, and woke up a set of dormant zombies. It felt like someone had hit the self-destruct button on their operation, though we thought we’d done something to trigger it at the time.”

“Of the three death mages, something of this manner does seem Gloria’s style,” Vera agreed. “She wouldn’t think anything of destroying her allies’ spells in order to destroy evidence, not to mention any lives lost to… zombie attacks. Plus she is petty enough to want to leave nothing behind if she has to flee,” Vera paused, considering this new wrinkle with a decidedly displeased expression. “What is the Department doing about this?”

Riordan shrugged, because what could he say. “They certainly didn’t tell me. Ahlgren and Quinn were both injured in the same spell that hit me and Maudy. Vergil, who was the one who got knocked out, has a block of missing memories, but was supposedly fine physically.” Riordan switched from facts to speculation. “I’m sure they will be monitoring him. Heeren and De la Fuente will be their only physically sound agents for the moment and they are going to have to do something to secure Helena better after this.”

For all the honesty of his assessment, Riordan didn’t mention Ahlgren’s phone calls. Some of those had been to the local team, but not all. Ahlgren had enough to deal with in his own Department without the pack breathing down his neck. Let Hereen get the brunt of that enraged political inquest. Riordan trusted Ahlgren a hell of a lot more than he did Hereen.

Riordan also didn’t mention the forbidden magic bit to Vera. He’d tell Frankie, who could make her own choices from there, but Riordan really wasn’t interested in spreading that bit of news around. The original gag order persisted. Magical authorities of some ilk wanted the very idea of permanently removing affinities squashed. Riordan sympathized. Once an idea entered the collective consciousness as possible, someone would reinvent it.

Perhaps someone already had.

“This is a disaster,” Vera muttered.

Riordan wasn’t sure he had been meant to hear that, but he offered tentatively, “Unless Gloria sticks around for revenge, the immediate situation hasn’t changed much. The mundane case is progressing apace. A bunch of evidence was destroyed but we probably would have had to destroy half of it anyway to clean up mentions of magic. They’ll have to speed up making fake evidence and probably wrap the case up faster, but that’s not all a bad thing.”

Vera waved his words away like a bad smell, though she looked more like she pitied him than being upset now. “Gloria struck me as a very practical but petty woman,” Vera assessed grimly. “I expect her to run for now, gather strength, and then come back for revenge later. I did not want to have my pack hunted by a motivated death mage for the indeterminate future, Riordan. I would say the situation has very much changed.”

That statement painted a nasty but realistic picture to Riordan. Qusay used to joke about never leaving an enemy alive behind you, but there was some truth to that statement. The past didn’t always forget you just because you wanted to forget it. Riordan wondered how much of that desire for revenge Gloria might allot to Riordan in her mental balance sheet.

“I’m sorry,” Riordan told Vera, his words empty in the face of the end of her pack’s ability to feel safe ever again. He meant it.

“It’s not your fault, boy,” Vera sighed, her rage shrinking to a simmer for now. She sat in her desk chair and began sorting papers as if it was vitally important. “You didn’t bring these death mages to our doorstep and you didn’t help one escape. You may have been the one to get us involved at this juncture, but that was our duty. Likely, we would have become involved eventually, with potentially far worse results.”

The cult had slipped under the pack’s radar by being in that area between actual territories. No one watched those areas particularly closely, but nothing major tended to happen there, magically speaking, since most magical creatures, threats or allies, were drawn to places of power and the territories around them.

Death mages weren’t an exception to that. Eventually the dunes would have called to them. Or maybe they would have gone to one of the other places of power instead of Sleeping Bear. It’s hard to say. They might have drawn attention with their murders and power plays before they got that far.

Of course, by then they would have used the advanced techniques to make at least one of them into a demigod. Fighting that war would have been costly in lives and potentially secrecy.

Riordan couldn’t regret that things had turned out the way they had, except he really wished that they had just killed Gloria when they had the chance. Or staked her out as a stalking goat on purpose. The Department being compromised on an unknown level was making them dubious allies.

“What do you want me to do?” Riordan finally said, changing the subject rather than acknowledge her begrudging absolution of his part in bringing trouble to her pack.

“Stay out of trouble for a few days?” Vera suggested, though her tone carried dubious weight as to whether that was within Riordan’s capabilities. “Ideally, stay out of trouble until the case is closed, the Department has left the area, and Gloria is nicely back in custody. I will settle for no more trouble for the rest of the day though.”

“Your faith in me is overwhelming,” Riordan said dryly, rising from his seat.

“You want faith, boy? Earn it. I trust you to pull miracles out of your ass in a crisis, but I do not believe for a second that you are anything except a trouble magnet in calmer times.”

That assessment stung. Largely because it was way too true.

Riordan squared his shoulders and said “I’ll see myself out then.”

He turned and left--fled if he was being honest with himself, if no one else--before Vera could find some new way to be disappointed in Riordan and the shitty situation he’d landed her pack in.

Distantly, Riordan knew he was being a melodramatic prick again, but damn it, he was entitled. Today sucked absolute donkey balls. He’d had worse, and recently, but he’d still come closer to death or permanent injury than desired today, had some people he liked getting injured on his watch, and he’d failed to kill an enemy before she got away to plot revenge. Even if no one else was judging him, Riordan judged himself hard enough for the rest of them.

He needed a shower and to brush his teeth. The lingering taste of the cleansing potion and vomit killed any desire for food. After the day he had, food wasn’t optional. So it was shower, brush teeth, eat, and then he’d probably have to go talk to Frankie again, even if he wanted the next step to be a nap. One where he would pray that all of this bullshit had just been a bad dream and he’d wake up to things being fine.

Riordan was getting morose. Where was Daniel and his dark humor when Riordan needed him?